Slow Burn

ZERO DAY, Book 1

INFECTED, Book 2

DESTROYER, Book 3

A novel
by
Bobby Adair

http://www.bobbyadair.com

http://www.facebook.com/BobbyAdairAuthor

Chapter 1

That day arrived like every other day in my life.

I came into it ill-informed and unprepared.

There had been exaggerated news reports over the past few weeks about the upcoming flu season’s annual pandemic. The whiners on the talking-head channels were making noise about racial cleansing that had spread out of Somalia and into Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Civil disorder had spread through China and the military was cracking down hard. Soldiers were marching. Tanks were rolling. Reporters were being arrested and internet communication had been disconnected, to whatever degree that can be done. Riots were tearing through Mediterranean cities and the Mideast had oscillated into a more violent phase of its perpetual cycle.

The world was falling apart in all the usual ways.

So I’d shrugged it off and spent my Saturday watching pre-season football with my buddies. I got a little too drunk, slept a little too late, and on that Sunday morning, my head hurt a little too much. It didn’t help that I was going to see my mom and Dan for a needling, nagging, degrading lunch that would end with my asking for a five-hundred dollar loan to cover rent, again, and I’d get another long speech about doing something with my life, showing a little enthusiasm, or developing some kind of work ethic.

How else could that morning have started, other than with a few shots from a now-empty tequila bottle on my kitchen counter?

And perhaps I should have not just noticed, but really paid attention to the weirdness in the streets on the drive over. But when one gets up in the morning and explicitly decides to paint oneself into oblivion behind a screen of booze, dark sunglasses, and heavy metal music, an unconcerned world just slides past, beyond an apathetic fog. Which is the whole point.

All of that worked just as planned until I walked into Mom’s house and slipped in some blood on the floor in the foyer. I was dumbstruck at the scene in the living room: some semi-mutilated guy, sitting deathly still in a chair by the fireplace, my mother, on the living room floor in a pool of blood, and Dan, on his knees with his back to me, hunched over her with busy elbows and noisy hands.

Time ticked languidly past. Unsavory images bombarded my optic nerve, only be to be rejected by my unreceptive brain.

Unencumbered by the state of horrified surprise that afflicted me, Dan stood up and looked at me with his thin gray comb-over dangling in front of his pale round face. His blood-smeared lips smacked and his crazy dark eyes fixated on me.

I yanked my phone from my pocket and threatened, “Dan, I’m going to call the police.” As if I wasn’t going to do that anyway.

He came at me, clearly not afraid of the police.

My feet somehow found traction on the slippery floor and I bounded into the kitchen. Dan gave chase with his big, blue-collar hands grasping at my shirttail.

With surprising speed, he caught me near the dishwasher. A big ape hand squeezed into my arm and spun me around. The other reached for my throat, with toothy jaws following close behind. I tried to protect myself by throwing up my left arm.

I reached over and pulled a large carving knife from the block on the counter, and I stabbed Dan, tentatively at first, but as his teeth tore my skin I stabbed again and again, with increasingly brutal enthusiasm.

When it was over, I sat on the floor with my back to a cabinet door in a large, copper-smelling puddle of Dan’s blood, with his sweaty body pinned across my legs.

He was dead.

I was fixated on the horrid bite wound on my left forearm. For a long time I watched, hypnotized, as the blood oozed and dripped.

Sometimes, a half-bottle of breakfast tequila just isn’t enough to deal with the day’s reality.

I dropped the knife and proceeded to roll the flabby corpse onto the tile.

I walked through the mess in the kitchen and found my cell phone on the floor in the foyer. Thankfully, it hadn’t broken in the scuffle. I dialed 911.

Busy.

Shit.

I tried again.

Busy.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I walked out the front door and onto the wide porch. The upper middle-class cracker neighborhood ignored me, focused instead on its own pockets of human chaos. Four houses down, across the street, some sort of scuffle had spilled out of the front door and people were struggling on the lawn. A car raced up the street at a very unsafe speed. Some residents loitered aimlessly.

911 again. Still busy.

What the hell?

I went back into the house, closing and locking the front door behind me. Things weren’t making sense.

Back in the living room, I looked down at my mother’s torn body and shook my head. It was surreal.

Perhaps some people in that situation would have crumbled, some would have cried. As for me, I’d emotionally disconnected from life a long time ago. For that, I had to thank the skeletal bitch on the floor, with her greedy rodent soul and her short-tempered ape-mate in the kitchen. If anything, her death was a belated answer to old prayers, with a bit of an unexpected mess.

I thought about an inheritance and an end to my financial troubles. I thought about the infection from Dan’s stale breath and yellow teeth beginning to fester under my skin. I thought about the eventual scar and the great bar room story it would make. Pain today, pussy tomorrow. Half a smile bent my lips.

The guy in the chair was in bad shape. Not living, of course, but in bad shape even for a corpse. His right arm was missing whole bite-sized chunks of flesh, human bite-sized chunks. His head was beaten beyond recognition. On the floor beside the chair lay a bloody fireplace poker, quite likely the weapon that had given his skull its new shape.

I felt sick to my stomach and an uncharacteristic chill.

Looking down at the wound on my arm I noticed that coagulation hadn’t yet begun to staunch the flow of blood. I needed to do something about that.

I dialed 911 again. Nothing.

Crap.

I went to Mom and Dan’s bedroom and into the master bath.

Opening the medicine cabinet, I found an off-brand bottle of antibacterial liquid.

My head started to pound. The morning’s tequila had outlived its usefulness.

Looking around for something with which to scrub, I found myself staring at the toothbrush holder. Mom and Dan weren’t going to need those anymore. I lay my forearm over the sink, poured the antibacterial into the gaping tears, and clenched my teeth.

Holy crap, it hurt.

Next, I went after the wound with a toothbrush.

More pain.

More antibacterial.

Rinse. Soap. Scrub. Pain, pain, pain.

Rinse. Antibacterial.

Clench the teeth.

Don’t scream like a pussy.

Antibacterial.

Breathe.

My head was about to explode.

Letting my wound air-dry, I found a bottle of aspirin, threw four into my mouth and slurped some water from the sink to wash them down. I found a tube of antibacterial cream and squirted it liberally into the wounds as blood slowly mixed with it, trying to wash it back out. A box of Band-Aids would have to fulfill the next requirement, as no gauze or tape was in the cabinet.

A chill. A fever was coming. Not good.

I used half the box of Band-Aids to pull the edges of my torn skin together. Blood oozed through. I found what appeared to be a clean washrag under the sink and used an Ace bandage to wrap it over my forearm.

I stood up straight to leave the bathroom and dizziness hit me so hard that I lost my balance and fell against the wall.

Christ.

Blood loss. It had to be the blood loss.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and tried 911 again. Still busy.

Suspecting then that the phone had been damaged in the scuffle with Dan, I made my way to the landline phone that sat on the nightstand by the bed.

I picked it up and dialed 911. Busy.

Dammit.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

The dizziness returned and I fell into a sitting position on the bed.

The television’s remote control beckoned me from the nightstand. I grabbed it, leaned back on the headboard, and turned the television on. A few minutes of satisfying my addiction to mindless blabber would pass the time while I waited for the phones to free up. The news was on.

Eh.

Changing the channel suddenly seemed like an onerous chore, so I dropped the remote and let the TV’s colorful opiate wash over me.

A worried newscaster was talking over a video of some shopping center in France. He described the scene as a riot, but the video showed something much more violent.

People were running and screaming. Police were trying to restore order, but intermingled in the crowd were what appeared to be normal people, dressed in their Sunday afternoon casual clothes, going completely nuts.

“What the hell?”

The pounding in my head worsened. The chills carried with them a case of shivers. A high-grade fever was on the way. The four aspirin were proving insufficient. I reached for the telephone again to call 911, felt the room suddenly spin, and saw the hideous design on the carpet race up to smash me in the face.

Chapter 2

I woke up disoriented. My head throbbed. My throat was so dry I couldn’t swallow. My swollen arm hurt like hell. Numbness tingled my left hand.

Cheap motel carpet scum clung to my skin as I peeled my face away from the rug. I got up on my hands and knees. Standing and walking was out of the question, so I crawled to the bathroom sink where I pulled myself up.

Having accomplished that, I bent over at the waist and lay flat on the blue swirl faux marble counter top. I turned on the faucet. Beautiful, cool water flowed into my cupped hands and I sucked in what seemed like a gallon before I slipped back down to the floor.

Morning light spread shadows across the bathroom and onto the far wall above the garden tub. For a while, I watched a square of sunlight slowly inch down the wall as the sun went about its normal rounds.

As my dizziness waned, I pulled myself up to the sink again and gulped more water. My throat felt as if it had been sanded raw then left in the unforgiving sun to dry.

I dropped to the floor again and closed my eyes for a moment that lasted long enough for the sun’s rays to slide its square of light onto the floor.

When I opened my eyes again, my thoughts had cleared somewhat and I was able to hold a thought about something other than how completely shitty I felt. I pulled myself up to stand on wobbly legs.

To my surprise, I remained upright.

I drank again from the bathroom sink and looked down at the crusty brown washrag and bandage on my left forearm. I flexed my hand a few times. The damage wasn’t enough to hinder movement, but infection was sure to set in if I didn’t get to a doctor and get some antibiotics.

That’s when it occurred to me that it was late morning. The sunlight spilling in through the east-facing window made that clear. I realized that I had slept through the entire night on the carpet in the bedroom. I recalled the scene in the living room—Mom, Dan, and the guy with the smashed skull. I needed to call the police about that. They’d be none too thrilled with the elapsed time between the deaths and the phone call to summon them.

I thought back to Sunday’s breakfast tequila, and wondered how drunk I was when I’d gotten to Mom and Dan’s place. I wondered whether I’d been so drunk that I blacked out and delivered them some karma in a state of repressed psycho-rage.

Crap. I shook my head.

Maybe it was all just a nightmare.

Using the dresser, then the walls, then the doorjambs for support, I slowly made my way into the hall and out to the living room.

A pungent stench did its best to seep in through my pores as I forced my reluctant feet forward. The closer I got, the surer I was that my nightmare was real.

Step. Step. Step.

Christ.

A swarm of industriously prolific flies had come into the house through the open back door. They buzzed over the feast of Mom’s stinky remains while a generation of young maggots vacationed on the corpse of the guy in the chair.

Dan’s punctured body would be in the kitchen where I’d left it. I didn’t need a confirmation venture in there.

I needed to call the police, and in spite of the gore on the floor and the stench in the air, I needed to get something to eat.

I weighed the two priorities and the fear of the police’s authority sent me back into the master bedroom to the phone.

My cell phone lay on the floor near where I’d gone comatose the night before.

The landline on the nightstand, being so much closer to my hand, was my first choice. I lifted it to my ear.

Dial tone.

That was good.

I dialed 911.

Busy.

“Damn it.” I slammed it down. “What the hell is going on?”

I sat down on the bed and dropped my head into my hands.

Well, no cops for the moment.

Food, then.

I managed my way back up the hall, passed the living room, and stopped at the entryway to the kitchen. The buzz of flies echoed off the tile and hard surfaces. A congealed puddle of Dan’s blood covered half the floor and spread all the way under the fridge.

I was stuck. To get to the fridge, I’d have to wade through the nastiness of Dan’s spilled fluids.

“Jesus, it just keeps getting worse.”

Tracking Dan’s sticky blood all over the house didn’t sit well with me, so I found the cabinet with the kitchen towels, grabbed a stack, and laid them out in front of me like stepping stones in the blood.

What seemed like a good plan prior to the first step, turned to shit when a towel slipped in the slime. My feet went out from under me and I fell. My head hit the tile and exploded in a flash of pain and bright lights. I sent a string of curse words echoing through the house.

As disgusting as it was, I lay on the floor for several long minutes while the pain, in what seemed like every part of me, took its time to dissipate.

At least nothing seemed to be broken. Feeling the disgusting brownish red goo all over my back, I rolled over onto my hands and knees and slowly stood.

Bracing myself on the counters, I got to the fridge and pulled it open. For the second time in as many days, God’s good fortune shone on me. An unopened thirty-two ounce sports drink sat on the shelf.

I reached in, wrestled with the cap for a moment, put it up to my mouth, and poured it into my throat until I had to stop and breathe.

Setting the bottle down on the island in the middle of the kitchen, I looked at the smooth granite inviting my hands to linger on its cold surface. I leaned over, pressed my face on the stone, and reveled in the coolness.

As the minutes passed, the sugar from the sports drink seeped into my bloodstream and the glucose hit me like a rush of cocaine. The contrast from bad to good was so drastic it brought tears to my eyes.

With waning dizziness, I straightened up. I gulped down more of the sports drink and gingerly walked out of the kitchen.

I stopped for a brief pause in front of a large mirror in the foyer.

“Jeez.” I looked like crap, covered with blood, hair awry, an enormous makeshift bandage on my arm, and my skin so pale that I wondered how much blood I’d lost.

I went into the laundry room, stripped off my clothes, and threw them along with my gory tennis shoes into the washer. Naked, and still covered in the most disgusting goo, I walked to the guest bath and got into the shower to scrub myself clean and peel the crusty bandage off of my arm under the warm water.

After the shower, I sat naked on the bed and finished the sports drink as the sound of the washing machine in the next room vibrated. The wound on my arm oozed pus and blood. I’d need to rewrap it with whatever first aid supplies were left.

I picked up the remote and turned on the television. My thumb went on autopilot surf mode as I thought about what to do. The police, the hospital, or both?

News flickered to life on the screen.

Click. News.

Click. News.

Click. Still nothing but news.

“News sucks.”

I settled for one of the national cable news channels and turned up the volume.

The story was the same as Sunday, more rioting in France, but Germany, Italy, and England were added to the list. A panel of experts, or rather, speculators, argued about a virulent flu of some sort. International travel had been suspended by most countries. Airline stocks were tanking and the rest of the market was following their prices south. Video footage showed overwhelmed hospitals and bodies lying in the streets. An announcement from the White House was expected in a few hours.

The washer buzzed, so I went into the laundry room, put my things into the dryer, and started it up.

Back in the guest room, I turned down the volume on the television and tried 911 again.

This time, it rang.

Chapter 3

Meeting a naked psycho-creep in a house full of dead people was sure to leave a negative impression on the soon-to-be arriving police, so I retrieved my damp clothes from the dryer and dressed.

Suddenly worried about disturbing the crime scene, I chose to sit in a tiny clean spot in the wide foyer, taking care to keep my hands in my lap.

It wasn’t long before the doorbell chimed twice, followed by a series of rapid beats on the door.

“It’s the police. Open up,” a voice commanded from outside.

“All right. Just a sec.” I stood as quickly as I could, considering my blood loss.

Again, pounding on the door. “It’s the police. Open up.”

“All right,” I croaked, then muttered, “impatient bastards.”

More beating on the door. “Sir, you need to open up.”

I pulled the door open a dozen inches.

Two policemen fixed me in the predatory stare of their big, black, bug-eyed glasses before glancing down to the blood-covered white marble floor. One officer’s hand landed on the butt of his gun. The second officer grasped the handle of his weapon.

Very loudly, one of them commanded me to step slowly back from the door.

The other officer ordered me to show my hands.

“What?” was all I got out before the cop closest to me rushed forward, shouldered the door, and knocked me onto my back.

Before I could react, a cop was on me. My arm was wrenched around behind my me and I was leveraged onto my belly. A heavy knee landed on my neck, smashing my face into the floor. A handcuff caught one wrist. My other wrist was yanked back and cuffed to the first.

It all happened faster than I could come up with a snarky comment. “Hey. Hey. I’m the one who called you.”

They pretended like I hadn’t spoken.

“Don’t move.” one of the officers commanded, as he took his weight off of me.

I found myself staring at his shiny black shoe, situated just inches from my face.

Footsteps sounded as the other officer went further into the house.

“Oh, my God.” There was revulsion in the other officer’s voice.

“What?” the cop standing over me asked.

Nothing for a moment.

“Oh, my God,” said the second officer again.

“What?” the first officer demanded. Then, to me he barked, “Don’t move.”

I watched his feet step back slowly toward the living room. “Everything all right, Bill?”

Nothing.

“Bill?”

Just footsteps, shuffling backward.

Then Bill’s voice again, deflated this time. “Oh, my God.”

The second officer’s voice came next. “That’s sick.”

Then the footsteps got louder again.

The first officer’s voice yelled, “No.”

“You sick pig.” the second guy yelled, as I saw his shiny black shoe coming at my face.

Chapter 4

My right eye was swollen into a bluish lump. My lips were chapped. My throat was dry. My formerly clean shirt had a fresh coat of dried blood, some of it mine, all down the front. I was handcuffed to a metal table in a police interrogation room, alone and staring at the camera in the upper corner.

With no windows and no clocks, I didn’t know what time it was. I only knew I’d been in there for many, many long hours.

While I waited for my unscrupulous interrogator to return, I amused myself by tapping out a rhythm on the table, and alternately extending a middle finger from each hand at the camera above.

I leaned over and lay my face flat on the table, drawing minor comfort from the temperature of the steel. I closed my eyes, knowing that as soon as I dozed off, my interrogator would return to deprive me of sleep.

I heard the door open, but didn’t respond.

A phonebook slammed down on the table next to my head. I was too exhausted to react.

I heard a voice tell someone else, “This one’s still out. I don’t know what sent all the crackheads on a killing spree this week, but we’ve got to get that shit off the street.”

“Yeah,” another voice agreed. “I’ve got mine next door. Let me know if you come up with anything.”

A moment later, the chair across the table from me scooted out and a heavy man sat down.

He followed with a few exaggerated sighs. He loudly sipped from his coffee. He clinked the hard paper cup on the table next to my head.

Silence passed as he decided what to do next. A sharp exhalation and a hard slap on the back of my head announced his decision.

“Hey crackhead. Wake up.”

I didn’t react to the slap. Pain was becoming surprisingly easy to ignore.

I lolled my head in another direction and opened my eyes to look at my angry tormentor.

“What were you on?”

“What?” I feigned ignorance. I guess I was too hardheaded to cooperate.

He slapped me again.

“I thought police didn’t do this sort of thing anymore,” I said.

That earned me another slap.

The detective leaned back in his chair, drew a deep breath, and stared at me.

“Look, Ezekiel…Ezekiel, that’s your name, right?”

I picked my head up off the table. I straightened up in the chair, out of arm’s reach for the moment. “Yeah, but my friends call me Zed. Zed Zane.”

“Look, Zed, maybe you got started off on the wrong foot here.”

I looked down at the worn phone book on the desk and gave voice to my frustrations. “What? Is it your turn now to beat me with a phone book? Do you guys work in shifts or what? What time is it? Why can’t I get a lawyer? Why do you guys keep telling me the camera doesn’t work? Don’t you have one of those, ah…those, ah…who are those guys they have on TV? Oh, yeah, detectives. Why don’t you get one of them to look at the crime scene and confirm what I’ve been telling you all night? It has been all night hasn’t it?”

The detective ignored my outburst for several long breaths. “Are you done?”

In response, I chose a conversational technique that hadn’t failed me since junior high: I ignored him.

The big man leaned his furry forearms on the table. “You gotta understand, Zed. You come in here in wet clothes that you just washed all the evidence out of. You assault the arresting officers.” He shook his head.

“Bullshit.” I’d heard that accusation a thousand times at that point.

“You talk about killing your stepdad…You did kill him right? I mean you admitted that much, right? It’s right here in the file.”

Not any less irritated, I said, “I told you, it was self-defense. He was attacking me.” I drew a deep breath. “And where the hell do people even get phone books anymore?”

The officer crossed his big fuzzy arms and said nothing for a moment.

I did the same.

“Are you through?”

“Through with what?” I asked

“Acting like an ass?” he said.

“What? Are you kidding me? Really? I go to my mom’s house yesterday morning. I find my stepdad going all cannibal on her in the living room. He attacks me and I stab him with a knife to defend myself. I call the cops and then Dudley Do-Right and his partner show up, don’t even ask me a question, and decide instead to beat the shit out of me and drop me here. Does that about sum it up?”

No response.

I went on. “Now after who knows how long I’ve been in here, with you guys taking turns yelling at me, calling me a liar, oh, and beating me in the head with the phone book, you wanna say I’m acting like an ass? Well forgive me for being so goddamned rude.”

“Hi, I’m Zed Zane. I’m so pleased to meet you. Would you like a cup of tea?”

He didn’t react. He just stared at me.

So, we played the staring game for a good five minutes before I won and he asked, “Are you through now?”

“Whatever,” I responded.

“Let’s start again. I’m Detective Tom Wolsely.” He extended a hand across the table to shake mine.

I looked at his hand but made no move to respond. Of course, I did have two hands cuffed to the table.

“Don’t be an ass, Zed. It’s polite to shake a hand when it’s offered.”

“Maybe you guys should have thought about that whenever the hell it was that you locked me in here. How long have I been in here, anyway?”

The hand still hung over the table, just inches above the metal loop that constrained mine. “Zed?”

“Oh, good God.” I angled a wrist up and opened my palm.

He jiggled my hand roughly in the cuffs.

“Thank you, Zed.”

I let go and let my hand drop to the stainless steel.

“You have to understand, Zed, this story about your stepdad turning into a cannibal…what did you really think we’d think, Zed? It all sounds a little far-fetched, don’t you think? He was a deacon in the church. A member of the school board. A retired principal. Are we really supposed to believe he got all hopped up on crack and killed your mother and the neighbor?”

I nodded. “Of course I do. I thought the whole thing was pretty crazy when I got to my mom’s for lunch. Look, don’t you have some kind of forensics team or something? Don’t you guys look at evidence before you start beating the crap out of suspects anymore? I mean, Christ.”

“We’ve got people at the scene,” Detective Wolsely told me.

“So what’s the deal then? Are we going to just sit in this room until you get tired of beating me, or are you going to look at the evidence and then apologize to me?”

“Look, Zed. Let’s just put all of that aside for the moment. You keep saying you went to your mom’s house yesterday morning––”

“I did.”

“––and you tell us the story. But your story is so full of holes that you could drive a truck through it.”

“What? What holes? How can there be any holes? It’s not like you talked to the other witnesses, because you can’t, because they’re dead.”

“Zed, calm down. I’m trying to help you here, and in return I’d like for you to help me, too.”

“By being your punching bag?”

“Now, Zed, that wasn’t called for.”

“I don’t see how any time could be called for better than this one, do you? I mean, I have been in here for hours, being beaten and called a liar, yelled at, and berated, threatened, and, oh, did I mention, getting beaten like a punching bag?”

Wolsely leaned back in his chair and froze in his cross-armed pose again.

“Whatever.” I sat back in my chair and drew a few deep, calming breaths.

“Zed, you say you got to your parents’ house yesterday morning, and you found your mom and the dead neighbor. Then you fought with your stepdad and that he was killed in the fight.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what happened.”

“Well, Zed, that’s not possible.”

“What do you mean? How could you even come to that conclusion?”

“Zed, we’re not complete idiots here in the police department. For one thing, our forensic guys are pretty good at determining time of death. It’s simpler than you think, especially when it’s recent. They just compare the core temperature to the ambient temperature, and get a pretty quick estimate of the time of death.”

“Okay, I watch TV, too. So what’s the problem?”

“Your stepdad has been dead for at least two full days.”

“What? What? That’s not possible.”

“See, Zed?” Wolsely said. “Holes in your story.”

“Wait, wait. What day is this?”

“What day is it?” Wolsely repeated.

“Yes. I told you I went to my parents’ house on Sunday afternoon. I told you I passed out…I guess from blood loss or something, but it must have been longer than I thought.”

“You passed out for two solid days and never woke up?”

“Why, what’s today?”

“Late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning, you pick.”

“Wednesday?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. I guess so,” I said.

Detective Wolsely changed the subject. “Tell me about your mom, Zed.”

I huffed a couple of times and looked around the room while I thought about that.

After several minutes, I said, “You know, when I was a kid I used to watch this Tarzan show on TV, and there was this recurring concept in that show about an elephant graveyard. Kind of the African version of El Dorado, only with ivory instead of gold.”

Detective Wolsely asked, “What does this have to do with anything?”

“You asked me a question, Detective. I’m trying to answer it.”

“Fine.”

“So, Detective, when the white men came to Africa, they didn’t see any elephant carcasses lying about with all the free ivory they could carry, so they concocted this theory about the existence of an elephant graveyard, where all of the elephants would go to die. I used to think my mom was like that graveyard, only instead of elephants going there to die, happiness would.”

Detective Wolsely asked, “And now that she’s dead, you don’t think that anymore?”

“No, that’s not it at all. I think that like those white men that went to Africa, who’d erroneously deduced the existence of an elephant graveyard, I erred in my deduction that my mother was a passive graveyard for happiness.”

Wolsely was getting bored.

“Did you know that hyenas eat bone?” I asked.

Detective Wolsely shook his head.

“Yeah, they’ll eat pretty much anything. Even bone. They’re predators. They’re scavengers. They’re ugly. But most of all, they’re voracious. That’s my mother.”

“Your mother is a hyena?” Wolsely asked.

“In a way, I guess. You see, she’s not the graveyard where happiness goes to die. She’s a voracious scavenger, constantly searching for any waning happiness, so that she can kill it off and eat up any evidence that it ever existed. That’s my mom.”

Detective Wolsely looked at me like he’d just found me covered in dog poop. “What drugs are you on, Zed?”

“What?”

“What drugs are you on? Nobody loses track of two days and then just gets up all normal and calls the police.”

“Normal? I never said that. I told you I feel like crap. I was running a high fever. I still am.”

“So you say.”

“Yes, I do say. Get a thermometer and check for yourself. Holy freakin’ crap.”

“Just tell me what you were on, Zed. Tell me where you got it. There’s something seriously bad out on the street and it’s making people crazy. We need to catch the guy that sold it to you. Things might even go easier on you if we can prove it was the drugs that made you crazy.”

“What?”

“We took a blood sample while you were passed out, Zed. We’ll figure out what it was. I mean, whether it was crack or meth or whatever. But we need to figure out what it was laced with. We need to know where you got it, so we can get it off the street. There’s a lot of people going crazy on this stuff, Zed.”

“What about that flu in Europe or whatever it is? I saw rioting on TV.”

“Zed, let’s be realistic here. There is no flu that makes people crazy.”

“How can you say that?” I asked.

“Ratings,” Wolsely said. “Sure there’s a flu but the flu makes you puke and cough. It gives you diarrhea. It doesn’t make people crazy. Those were just frightened people, doing stupid things. Zed, the world is much simpler than all of you conspiracy nuts think it is. People make bad, irrational choices for the stupidest reasons every day. I see it all the time, believe me. There is no crazy flu going around. The answers are never that complicated. Trust me.”

“Whatever.”

“Besides, why Austin? Why not New York, or LA, or Chicago? There are a hundred cities more likely to get an outbreak of the flu than Austin. We’re not exactly a major point of entry here, are we Zed? Come on, just tell me what you were on and where you got it.”

I shook my head and looked at the floor. “Jeez, Tom. Listen to me, please. I didn’t take any drugs. I was drinking. I drank a lot on Saturday. I smoked some weed with my friends. I drank some tequila on Sunday morning before heading over to my mom’s house. I’ve told you this a thousand times.”

“When did you smoke the weed?”

“It was just weed.”

“When did you smoke it?”

“The night before, like I said.”

“When the night before? Zed, it may have been laced with PCP, or something worse. Surely you’ve heard of that before. PCP makes some people lose their shit, Zed. That may have happened to you.”

I shook my head again and weakly said, “No.”

“Where did you get the weed, Zed?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t even my weed.”

“Who did you smoke it with, Zed? They may be having problems too. They might be in worse shape, Zed. They could be dead for all you know.”

I gave up and told him the names of my buddies.

Chapter 5

The jail was old, like a hundred years old. The section I was in had been built in the late 1800s. It was dirty. It was smelly. Every surface was sticky beneath aged layers of oral ejecta and other human secretions.

I was in a holding cell about seven feet deep and thirty feet long. One long wall was brick. The other three were comprised of iron bars with layer upon layer of flakes, painted over by more layers of flakes. Two rows of bunks, one on the top and one on the bottom, hung from the wall for a total of eight. A single commode stood at one end, covered in stains and lumpy smears.

With my photograph taken and black ink on my fingers, I was shoved into the cell that already held twenty-five other guys, laying and sitting in the bunks and on the floor. At least a few of my fellow inmates were mentally unplugged. They stared blankly at the wall. Some paced across the spots of floor where a foot would fit. One very animated guy bounced around the cell like a chimp, screaming Tourette’s-like profanities and gibberish. Most looked drunk, hung-over, beaten up, or some combination thereof.

“I need to see a doctor,” I told the jailer, as he slammed the door shut.

He headed back to the end of the hall as though I’d said nothing at all.

“Hey, I need to see a doctor.”

Nothing.

“Hey.” I yelled.

The jailer stopped and glared at me. “Look, bud, you can see we’re having a busy day. So lighten up, would you?”

“But I need medical attention for my arm.”

“After you get assigned to a cell, you can ask your guard for permission to go to the infirmary.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” The guard turned and ignored further protests.

The Tourette’s guy shrieked at the ceiling from his perch on a top bunk. Nobody paid him any mind.

I looked around but there was no bunk space available. There was barely any floor space either, the only exception being a few feet next to a comatose giant of a black man leaning on the bars near the commode.

I stood, holding the bars of the door and looking up and down the short hall. Two long halls branched off at either end and led to rows of cells in the new section of the jail. I heard the rowdy noise of hundreds of other prisoners coming from down those halls.

Tourette’s guy shrieked again. “I’m hungry.”

I leaned my face against the sticky, flaky iron bars and closed my eyes. The bite on my arm throbbed noticeably but didn’t hurt. Infection was sure to set in. I worried about that, and about what Wolsely had said about drugs in the weed my buddies and I had smoked on Saturday night.

I wanted to feel angry about the lazy incompetence of the police who’d locked me up, but all I felt was drained and frustrated.

I wondered how long I’d have to wait for my inevitable release. I flexed the fingers of my left hand again, checking for loss of movement.

The lighting in the jail was too stark, unnaturally bright. It bothered my eyes. I longed for a pair of sunglasses.

I was mere minutes into my incarceration and I was already bored.

An old tube television hung from the ceiling across the hall from the cell. There was something on about riots again, something about the new flu virus. Having grown up with Mom and Dan’s addiction to the repetitive ravings of the non-stop cable news faces, I possessed a high tolerance for hysterical speculation. Football, baseball, even bowling would have been a better choice than news on the TV.

I looked down at my feet. “This place sucks.”

Off to my right, I heard Tourette’s boy start bouncing on his bunk.

“Man, shut up,” somebody over there said.

A few more voiced agreement.

I looked over. Tourette’s boy was getting more aggressive.

Then, he surprised everyone by bounding off of the top bunk and onto one of the sitting prisoners.

A frenzy of fighting exploded from the far end of the cell. Screaming, yelling, kicking, punching, and biting, lots of biting. The wave of pandemonium pushed toward me, and I decided the safest place in the cell was in the stinky muck in the corner behind the commode. I stepped quickly over the big black guy who was just starting to get up and I wormed my way into the corner.

Yelling from outside the cell told me that the guards already knew what was happening in the cell.

Arms and legs were wrestling. Fists were punching. Some guys were already down on the ground and other guys clambering into the bunks. The big black guy had his back to me and pretty much blocked all access to my end of the cell. I’m sure that defending me wasn’t what he intended. He just didn’t see me as a threat.

Suddenly, Tourette’s boy came flying out of the melee and landed in some sort of monkey grasp around the big guy’s head and shoulders. As the big guy grasped at him to pull him off, Tourette’s boy caught me with the craziest eyes I’d ever seen, opened his mouth wide, and chomped down on the big guy’s neck.

A canister clinked in through the bars. Smoke exploded into the cell, burning my eyes.

The heavy metal door swung open and the guards, dressed in riot gear, bulled their way in.

Chapter 6

Thirty minutes later I was sitting on one of the lower bunks with my hands cuffed behind me, shoulder to shoulder in a long row of cuffed, bloodied, coughing prisoners.

Tourette’s boy was gagged. His hands were cuffed and attached to the bars of the cell behind him. His feet were bound. He slumped forward, motionless. He had an enormous gash across his scalp. A couple of the guards had beaten him mercilessly after he’d bitten them during the fight. And just because they were covered in riot gear and pissed off, they beat several more of us into unconsciousness. Three of those were cuffed alongside Tourette’s boy, slumped forward and dripping blood into small pools on the crusty floor. Two of my former cellmates were bleeding so severely that they were dragged out of the cell—to the hospital, I presumed.

Of the rest of us, I was in the best shape, at least in terms of fresh wounds. I still had a scabby bandage on my arm that oozed red. Again, I flexed my left hand to make sure it still worked. The next link in my chain of new habits was to worry about my need to get some medical attention.

From around the corner, I heard noises of another cell erupting in violence. Not long after, a half-dozen guards in their gear clomped past us up the hallway.

The jail was exploding in craziness.

As luck would have it, the big black guy who’d been my shield during the scuffle was sitting right next to me on the bunk. Apparently more bored than I was, he looked my bloodstained clothing up and down and asked, “So, what’d you do?”

“How am I supposed to answer that?” I asked.

“Most guys like you make something up to seem all badass, you know, so they won’t get no shit while they’re in here.”

I laughed, and so did the black guy on the other side of me.

“What do you mean, guys like me?” I asked. “Is this a white thing?”

“No. You just don’t look like a thug. You look like a suburbanite or a cube farmer.”

“A cube farmer?”

“Somebody who sits in a cube all day,” the big guy explained.

The guy on the other side laughed and added, “Like a nerd.”

“A nerd?” I asked.

The big guy looked me over and nodded.

After their laughing subsided, I asked, “So do you want the truth, or a lie?”

“Man, you pick. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m just tired of staring at that damned yellow wall. I can barely see the TV from here, and besides, all they want to talk about anyway is that flu, like they know what’s going on. They don’t know anything.”

I shrugged, “I killed my stepdad.”

The big guy looked down at me again. “With all that blood all over you, I guess I’d buy that.”

The guy on the other side said, “He probably got arrested while trying to steal some cherry syrup from a jellybean factory.”

That got some laughs from the guys nearby.

“I wish.”

“What’d you do him with?” the big guy asked.

“A knife,” I answered.

“I guess that explains the mess on your clothes.”

“That’s not actually his blood…I don’t think,” I said.

The guy on my left said, “I suppose you killed somebody else, too.”

“It’s a long story,” I told them.

The big guy asked, “How many times did you stab him?”

I looked down, ashamed for a moment though I didn’t know why. “The cops said thirty-seven times.”

The guy to my left said, “Man, that’s bullshit.”

“You must have been pissed. What’d he do?” asked the big guy.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” I said. “What’d you do?”

“Just fighting.”

“Fighting? Like a bar fight?” I asked.

“Exactly like a bar fight,” he answered.

I nodded. “By the way, my name’s Zed Zane.”

“Murphy Smalls,” the big guy answered.

“Murphy Smalls? That’s not a very appropriate name for a big guy like you.”

“Well, at least you didn’t make a stupid joke about it,” Murphy said.

The guy to my left said, “That’s why we’re in here, one too many small jokes. I’m Earl Walker.”

“Good to meet you, Earl. Good to meet you Murphy.”

Earl asked, “So, did you really stab your stepdad?”

I nodded.

Earl said, “He must have done some crazy shit for you to go stabbing him thirty-seven times.”

I nodded. “Some pretty crazy shit.”

“Looks like you and me might as well become good friends, because we’re both going to be here a while,” said Earl.

“For fighting?” I asked.

“He’s on probation,” said Murphy. “They’ll probably violate him and send him back.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“You got that right,” Earl agreed. “All because Mr. Smalls is sensitive about his name.”

“Man, you know it’s not like that,” Murphy said. “Don’t you be starting any shit.”

Earl said no more on the topic.

After a few minutes of listening to the inmates around the corner go nuts, Murphy asked, “So what’d he do? I’m curious now.”

“My stepdad?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I thought about those gruesome Sunday morning images stuck in my mind. “I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure he killed my mother.”

“Yeah?”

“I was going over to their house for lunch for Spam pie on Sunday.”

“On Sunday?” Murphy asked.

“Yeah, on Sunday.”

“Spam pie?” Murphy asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s gross,” Murphy replied.

Earl said, “Man, that was three days ago. Why are you still covered in blood? Dumbass white people don’t know shit about getting away with doing criminal stuff. No wonder you’re in here.”

“It’s not like that.”

“What?” Earl asked.

“He attacked me and bit my arm.” I tried to pull my left arm around front to show the guys.

Earl said, “Man, that’s nasty.”

“Anyway, I think I was bleeding so bad that I passed out.”

“No shit?”

I nodded.

“And the cops found you like that?” Earl asked.

“When I woke up, I called them.”

“And they arrested you?” Murphy asked.

“They must have thought you were black under all that blood,” Earl added.

The sound of three quick gunshots blasting through the corridors opened every eye wide and snapped every head toward the intersecting hallway. Tourette’s boy was no exception. He immediately started to squirm and grunt.

“Shit,” Earl muttered.

The echo of running footsteps came up the hall to our left.

Seconds later, two officers hurried past, followed by four crazed inmates in torn, bloodied clothes.

The sound of another scuffle erupted, followed by more gunshots.

“This is not good,” Murphy told anybody who was listening.

I looked from left to right.

I heard the sound of…well, it sounded like wild animals.

More gunfire.

An inmate rounded the corner and ran at full speed in front of us across the length of our cell.

Another inmate rounded the corner, shoeless, shirtless, and screaming like an enraged baboon. He leapt up on the bars of our cell as if he were the one in the cage. He reached through the bars, seemingly focused on Earl. We all pressed our backs to the wall.

He screamed again as more crazed prisoners, spattered in blood, rounded the corner and flowed freely through the hall.

Several tried to reach in and grab at us before moving past the wall behind us.

Gunfire rang with alarming frequency.

More prisoners spilled from the hall at our right. They looked relatively normal, but understandably terrified.

What followed close behind them was another bunch of the wild-eyed, screaming men.

“This is gonna get ugly,” Earl said.

“I think you’re a little late on that newsflash,” I said.

Smoke billowed out of the halls from behind us. My eyes started to burn. We all started coughing again.

“I guess this is a prison riot,” Murphy coughed out.

“In the county jail?” Earl asked, shaking his head.

Tourette’s boy ripped out an earsplitting wail of victory as he freed one bloody hand from the cuffs that secured him to the bars. He spun and tore mercilessly at the hand that was cuffed to another bar.

Guys in the cell got up off of the bunks and moved away. Nobody wanted to be near the crazy guy. Only the unconscious guys, cuffed to the bars, didn’t move.

Another scream of triumph ripped through the violence as Tourette’s boy tore his other hand free, slinging blood across the ceiling, walls, and us.

Several of the inmates cursed.

Tourette’s boy yanked the gag out of his mouth and with teeth gnashing pounced on an inmate not smart enough to have moved out of the way. His teeth found flesh before the inmate could squirm away. Blood gushed from the wound.

In a flash, Murphy was on the move and ran a dozen steps to the far end of the cell, leaned his shoulder forward and slammed Tourette’s boy in the side. All three hundred pounds of Murphy smashed his body into the bars.

When Murphy pulled away, Tourette’s boy lay on the floor, twitching and stunned.

Everyone in the cell was staring at Murphy and the downed psycho when the door buzzer sounded in three long, loud blasts, shifting everyone’s attention to the cell door as it sprang open.

We were all frozen in disbelief and indecision. Run out of the cell and into the riot, make a break for freedom, or stay put?

With mayhem raging through the jailhouse, safety was my first thought.

Pounding feet and animal sounds rang up and down the halls, mixing with jubilant cries and fearful screams. Tourette’s boy squirmed and pushed himself up from the floor. He shook his head and made a loud, angry noise.

Earl yelled, “Let’s go, Murphy.”

Everyone piled through the door, out of the cell, and into the melee.

“I’m with you guys,” I declared, and followed Earl.

Murphy fell in behind us.

We made the left turn down the smoke-filled hall we’d all come in through.

Bodies lay everywhere, both sheriff’s deputies and prisoners alike. Men ran both in front and behind us. The crazy-eyed screamers were among us, attacking anybody, tearing at flesh with their hands and teeth.

“Move.” Murphy yelled from behind.

Earl picked up the pace and ran blindly into the thickening teargas.

We coughed, struggled, and fought our way toward where we remembered the exit to be. Each barred door we encountered was unlocked and swung open. The rioting prisoners had seen to that.

We stepped on and over men until we burst into the entrance lobby, where we saw daylight through the glass door and three windows of equal size, all shattered.

Gunfire popped in the street outside and in the halls and cells behind us. To run into the street was to risk being shot down. To go back seemed like certain death by fire, or mauling in the teeth and tearing hands of the screamers.

Earl hesitated and glanced back at Murphy for a decision. I looked back as well. It was so far beyond any situation I’d ever imagined. I was decidedly in follow-mode no matter what course Murphy chose.

Whatever Earl saw in Murphy’s silence was enough for him. He spun and bolted through the door. Murphy and I hurried behind.

We came out near the southwest corner of the detention center into thin clouds of teargas drifting in the smothering hot air and blistering sun.

Across the street, to the south of the detention center, a hilly park filled a city block. To our west was an old neighborhood that had been converted to condos and offices for attorneys and bail bondsmen. Parked cars lined the streets. To the south and east, police cars blocked the roadways. Police officers and sheriff’s deputies were everywhere, but the eight hundred prisoners spilling into the streets dwarfed their numbers.

We ran a short distance up the street. Earl ducked beside a parked car and looked over the fender. The popping of gunfire came from all directions. I got to the car a second later. Murphy bumped the car behind me, using its mass to bring him to a stop.

I squatted about midway back on the car, its black-tinted glass blocking my view across the street. Immediately frustrated, I stood and leaned forward to look over Earl’s shoulder, trying to spot a path away from the chaos. Something slammed into my chest and knocked the wind out of me. I fell to the sidewalk, gasping for a breath of air that wouldn’t come.

Sprawled on my back, I saw stark blue sky above. Running feet stomped the concrete near my head as people hurried past. The pandemonium slowly became insignificant background noise. My only concern was the pain radiating through my chest and my inability to gulp a single, life-sustaining breath.

Then it happened. Air filled my lungs. I could breathe.

Wide-eyed, Murphy leaned over me. “That was a beanbag, you lucky dumbass. Get up.”

Earl yelled, “We gotta go.”

I rolled over onto my stomach. With my wrists still cuffed behind me, it was difficult, but I managed to get to my feet.

Earl and Murphy were squatting again behind a car a little further up the street. They were making for the old neighborhood.

With my feet back on the street and air back in my lungs, I awkwardly sprinted to catch them, bullets be damned.

In the seconds it took me to catch up, Earl had squatted between the bumpers of two cars, looking for an opportune moment to cross the no man’s land of the body-strewn street. I fell in behind him. Murphy squeezed in behind me.

Earl looked up and down the street.

“Now where do we go?” Murphy asked.

“If we can get there, I know a place to hide for a while,” Earl said.

“Where?” Murphy asked.

“That survivalist dude that got evicted a few years back.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

Murphy looked up the street through the car windows. “Some dude built a bunker under his house or something.”

“Fuck it.” Earl yelled. He burst into a run across the street.

Without a thought about the danger, Murphy and I made tracks behind him.

Three steps into the road, and just ahead of me, Earl’s head exploded in a fountain of blood and gore.

Time slowed to a cold, syrupy drip.

Fear froze me.

In mid-stride, I mouthed a four-letter word. I lost all sense of how to proceed.

Thankfully, Murphy was still moving, and his bulk slammed into me from behind. His momentum carried our entangled bodies across the street, where we landed roughly in a jumble of limbs and curse words, between two cars on the far side.

Murphy rolled off of me and sat up to look at Earl’s corpse in the street. I struggled again to catch my breath, sucking in baked air off of the hot asphalt.

I peered under the car beside me and started in fright. A pair of eyes fixed on mine in a frozen stare. In a nanosecond, I registered the uniform of a sheriff’s deputy on the man and I panicked, but he made no move, no sound.

I drew another deep breath. The deputy remained still.

He was dead.

I knew what I had to do.

I squirmed up to my knees. Murphy’s attention was stuck on his dead cousin.

I peeked out along the sidewalk and saw the dead body of the officer lying on the curb, parallel to the car. A heavy cloud of smoke wafted across us, limiting visibility.

I wormed my way out until I was beside the deputy, trying my best to look wounded, dead, and unthreatening all at the same time.

I scraped my elbows on the concrete as I went. In moments, I was lying beside the deputy, feeling his front pocket for a set of keys. I located what felt like a metallic bulge. It took frighteningly long to sit up and angle my hand into his pocket but my effort was rewarded with the prize I sought. No sooner were the keys in my hand than I was up and running away from the car and into a driveway obscured from the street by a hedge.

I turned and called, “Murphy.”

He sat motionless. He couldn’t pull his attention away from Earl’s corpse.

“Murphy.” I yelled, louder.

He turned and for a second, looked at me like I was a stranger.

In the next instant, he came back to reality and bolted across the gap between us, sliding to his knees next to me.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

We took off at a run into the neighborhood with all of its sheltering old houses, trees, bushes, and parked cars.

Chapter 7

Still cuffed, but with the keys grasped tightly in my hand, Murphy and I ran between two houses, squeezed through the gap between a hedge and a detached garage, and crossed another street. Police sirens wailed in all directions.

“This is gonna be ground zero of a major shitstorm in about five minutes,” I panted, as we stopped behind a dumpster in an alley.

Murphy squatted down, trying to catch his breath. “We can’t stay in this alley,” he said. “We’re better off if we get behind the houses, hop a few fences, and hide in the bushes. It’ll be hard in these cuffs.”

I nodded. “I pulled some keys off of that dead deputy.”

“Who?” Murphy asked.

“There was a dead deputy by the cars. After Earl got hit.”

“I didn’t see him.” Murphy had a vacant look in his eyes.

“Murphy, you don’t look good. Did you get shot?”

Murphy shook his head. “No. I don’t feel good.”

I stood up straight and peered down the alley. Another hundred yards would get us across the next street, into some bushes, and another block further from the detention center. “Murphy, we need to get to those bushes over there. Then we’ll work on getting these cuffs off.”

“Okay.”

I nodded at Murphy. “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

I took off at a run as fast as my legs would carry me. I heard Murphy behind me at first, then all I heard was the air rushing in and out of my throat and my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

I got to the street and bounced into the fender of a parked car to come to a stop. I looked up and down the street. I saw no police cars, so I started running again.

I made it to the bushes.

Catching my breath, I looked back for Murphy. He was only halfway down the alley and moving at a jog.

“Shit.” I willed him to run faster.

Long, torturous seconds passed. Murphy came to the end of the ally and lumbered across the sidewalk, past the cars, and into the street, making no effort at all to conceal himself or check for police.

“Please, please don’t let there be a cop car,” I prayed aloud. “Hurry, Murphy.”

Passing another line of parked cars and crossing over the sidewalk brought Murphy beside the hedge. He didn’t slow but brushed past me. I turned and ran on past him into the space behind the converted houses.

I spied an area behind an old storage shed that would keep us hidden from the street and windows on the backsides of the houses.

We kicked some old metal trashcans to the side and squeezed into a gap between the shed and a tall privacy fence. I turned my back to Murphy and opened my hand. “Murphy, I’m going to hold the keys out one at a time. You tell me when I get to the one that looks like it’ll open the cuffs.”

“Got it,” said Murphy, after a few moments of jingling and fumbling.

The key felt distinctly different than the others. I hoped it would fit.

I fumbled around for a few more minutes before the keys slipped from my hands and dropped into the dirt.

“Shit.”

I fell to my knees, grabbed up the dirty keys, and tried again. The exercise was so much harder than it seemed like it should have been.

Click. I’d freed one wrist. “Thank God.”

The second cuff was off my wrist and lying in the dirt just seconds later.

“Murphy, you’re up. Turn around.” I looked up. Murphy was leaning against the wall of the shed, eyes closed, drenched in sweat.

I stood, concerned. “Murphy, are you okay?”

Murphy shook his head. I reached up and put a palm across his forehead. He was burning with a fever.

“We need to get you something for that fever, Murphy.”

The sound of a siren zoomed by on the next street over. Too close.

I drew a few slow, calming breaths. I needed to think.

We were out of the cell and three or four blocks away from the jail. We didn’t seem to be in any immediate physical danger, but that was only a guess. With the riot and mass escape, the police might have shot anybody that looked remotely like an escaped prisoner. Though we were missing our belts and shoelaces and had ink on our fingertips, we hadn’t been put into the orange jumpsuits that the jail’s long-term residents wore. There was hope. Our only sure safety lay far from the jail and far from the vindictive rage of the cops descending on us with every siren in the city.

Our one tiny advantage derived from the chaos of the jail riot and the hundreds of prisoners scampering for freedom in every direction.

I wasn’t at a hundred percent, but I knew I could run. I wasn’t so sure about Murphy. His condition was declining. Regardless, we had to move.

I turned Murphy around and removed his cuffs. He rubbed his sweaty face with his big hands and squatted back against the shed.

I considered abandoning him and making my escape alone, but guilt stopped me. That moment after Earl got shot and I had frozen in the street, Murphy had pushed me onto the other side. Had he not done so, I likely would have caught a sheriff’s bullet and died beside Earl. Murphy saved my life. Whether on purpose, or simply because I was in his way, I’d probably never know, but I felt the obligation of a debt.

“Murphy, can you move? Can you walk?”

Without opening his eyes, Murphy nodded.

I thought back to how dehydrated I was after my fever broke. I needed to get some water in him.

“Listen, Murphy. If we go another block or two west, we’ll hit Shoal Creek. From there, we can make our way north until we get outside of whatever perimeter the police have set up. We won’t have to run. I think we can walk, but we need to get moving.”

Murphy nodded. “I can do it.”

“C’mon.”

Chapter 8

Shoal Creek was a limestone crevice that snaked through Austin on a southwesterly course. During the frequent spring thunderstorms, it channeled flash-flood waters through its banks, six blocks west of the jail, before spilling into the Colorado River in downtown Austin, ten blocks south. It varied in depth from ten to twenty feet below street level and was lined with dense trees and shrubs. It could have provided an excellent avenue of escape. But with late afternoon temperatures over one hundred degrees, and the wind blowing over, rather than through the gulley, it was also a bone-dry oven.

The sound of sirens floated through the streets above. Occasional but frightening gunshots pierced the traffic noise. Trudging through the oppressive heat, Murphy and I made it to the 15th Street Bridge. At four lanes wide, with enormous old trees on the banks of the creek around the bridge beckoned, providing a shady and cool place to rest.

Stepping from sun to shade the temperature felt like it dropped twenty degrees. I motioned up the concrete embankment under the bridge. I said, “It’ll be cooler on the concrete that stays in the shade all day. Let’s go.”

Murphy looked at the concrete slope like it was an insurmountable obstacle.

I grabbed his arm and tugged him along.

Fifteen steps up, he dropped flat onto the cool concrete and lay motionless.

He should have climbed further up the slope. He would have been better hidden from searching eyes. But it was clear that he wasn’t moving.

I continued up to where the fat bridge supports lay on the upper edge of the embankment. Three expressionless transients watched me.

“I’m not staying,” I told them as the smell of urine and body odor hit me. I stopped. I was close enough.

I copied Murphy’s pose and lay flat, trying to get as much of my burning skin in contact with the cool concrete as possible. It wasn’t a cold swimming pool, but it worked. My irritating dizziness left me. The nauseous feeling in my stomach dissipated. The air I breathed seemed once again to contain oxygen. But we needed water. We needed it badly. Neither of us would make it more than another mile or two up the dry creek bed without it.

A thought occurred to me. I lolled my head around toward the transients, sitting above me in the shade. “Hey, is Pease Park close by?”

All three looked at me like I was speaking another language.

I waited.

And waited.

“Hey––” I started again.

“It’s right up yonder a piece,” one of them said, pointing up the creek bed.

“Like what? A half-mile? A mile?” I asked.

The speaker shook his head. “Just ‘round that bend in the creek.”

That perked me up. I knew there was an outdoor basketball court at the south end of the park. Right by the basketball court stood a public restroom and some water fountains. “Thank.”

I decided to give us five or ten minutes more to cool off. Then I’d try to drag Murphy to the park.

I dozed off.

The sound of heavy trucks slamming across the expansion joints of the bridge above aroused me. A dozen screaming sirens racing over the bridge got my full attention.

Wide-eyed and disoriented, I looked around. The transients were gone. I sat up quickly and paid for my haste with enough dizziness to give me pause. I looked down the embankment. Murphy hadn’t moved.

The creek bed was covered in the long shadows of early evening. Surprised, I guessed it was seven or eight o’clock. I’d slept for at least two hours but luck was with us. The police hadn’t found us.

I crab-walked down the concrete slope toward Murphy and shook him awake. It took more than a little shaking, but his eyes finally opened.

“I’m thirsty,” his voice rasped.

“There’s a park just up the creek a bit. We can get water there.”

“A bit?” Murphy asked.

“A hundred yards, two hundred at most. We can hide out in the restrooms and maybe get cleaned up a bit.”

Murphy nodded and with great effort pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He shook his head to clear it. “It better be close. I’ve never felt this bad.”

“It’s the heat and dehydration,” I lied.

It was the bite.

Chapter 9

The deserted park was dark in shadow when we arrived, with the sun having edged below the horizon. The sky still glowed a dull blue. The hot, stagnant air, only marginally cooler without the sun’s heat, draped us in its sticky blanket.

With an arm over my shoulder, Murphy leaned heavily on me as we made our way into a public restroom. We both drank greedily from the sink faucets. After guzzling what we could, I had the presence of mind to flip the deadbolt on the door and the restroom became our refuge.

I stripped off my dirty, bloody clothes and washed them in the sink. Murphy struggled to stay on his feet, but did the same. Afterwards, we hung our clothes over the stalls to dry, and sat on the floor in our underwear, resting against the walls.

After a while, Murphy said, “I need to go to the hospital.”

I nodded. “I need to see a doctor, too, before this bite gets infected any more than it is.”

Murphy nodded.

I said, “I think Brackenridge Hospital is about a mile or two up 15th Street. It’s closer than Seton Hospital. It’s walking distance, if you think you can make it.”

“Without that damned sun beating me down, I think I can.”

“It’s dark out now,” I offered.

In the distance we heard a series of angry human wails. We looked at one another.

Murphy said, “That sounds like that crazy fucker from the jail this morning.”

I nodded.

More screams followed, drawing closer.

“There must be a dozen of them,” said Murphy with worry in his eyes.

“Can you reach up and make sure that door is locked?” I asked, suddenly worried that I hadn’t latched it closed.

Murphy reached a long arm up and checked. He jiggled the door, but the lock held it closed.

That was a relief.

The sounds of the screamers quickly drew close. In seconds, they were outside the restroom. Something heavy slammed into the door and startled us both.

Not wanting to make a sound, I mouthed, “Holy crap.”

Outside, someone was beating his fists on the metal door and screaming in wild frustration. Thankfully, the door held strong.

Murphy’s face showed his concern. I’m sure he saw the same on mine.

After a few minutes, the pounding stopped and the sound of the screaming moved away, then faded into the background noise of cars, sirens, and occasional gunshots.

“This whole city is going to hell tonight,” Murphy observed.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think that’s all about the riot at the jail today?” Murphy asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“What then?”

“That crazy dude in the cell. Those crazy guys at the jail. The cops said something about PCP in the pot making everyone go nuts.” I shuddered to think about it. “But my stepdad…I don’t know. He was like that crazy guy in the cell. I don’t know what’s going on, Murphy.”

Murphy fell silent.

After a while, I said, “I’m sorry about Earl.”

Murphy nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

In the silence that followed, I thought about Earl getting so horrifically shot right in front of me. I thought about my dead mom and Dan. I thought about the dead guy in their living room. I thought about the mayhem at the jail.

I’d never in my life seen a dead person before seeing my mom being mutilated by Dan on the living room floor. Now, just days later, I had to struggle to count the corpses I’d seen.

Murphy said, “You know we’re screwed.”

I looked at Murphy, with a question on my face.

“They’re going to round us all up, eventually. We’ll get a year or more just for busting out of jail. We’ll get time for rioting, and maybe even capital murder for that dead cop you saw.”

My mouth hung open. I hadn’t thought of any of that. Finally, I said, “But we were running for our lives. We were in as much danger as the cops.”

Murphy shook his head. “A jury in Travis County might believe that about you, if you hadn’t already stabbed your stepdad thirty-seven times, but look at me.”

I nodded.

“No, look at me, Zed.”

I did. “What am I looking at?”

“You’re looking at a big black man who’s gonna be sitting in front of a bunch of white jurors in Texas who are gonna be looking to blame somebody, a lot of somebodies, for rioting in a jail and killing some cops.” Murphy shook his head and his gaze drifted down to the floor. “Damn, I get hauled off to jail for fighting and instead of a couple of nights, I’m gonna end up on death row.”

I thought the big man might start to cry. It was hard to watch, really hard. I wondered what would become of us.

More silence.

“There’s got to be something else going on here,” I finally said. “Too many people just going crazy.”

Murphy shrugged.

“What do you want to do, then?” I asked.

“I can’t do anything.” Murphy shook his head. “I can’t begin to tell you how bad I feel. I’ve never felt this sick. I have to get to a hospital, or I think I’m going to die.” Murphy’s eyes fixed me in place and I knew he was dead serious.

“You don’t think you’ll make the hike to Brackenridge?”

Murphy shook his head.

I pondered that for a minute. “Murphy, I have an idea. If you can make it out to the road, just across the basketball court, maybe I can flag down a car to take us over to the hospital.”

Murphy shook his head again, “Ain’t nobody in his right mind gonna stop for us with everything going on outside. I’m sure the jailbreak is all over the news.”

“It’s okay,” I disagreed. “This is Pease Park. Gay guys come down here all the time for…well, you know. They’re always getting busted down here for getting busy in the bushes.”

Murphy asked, “So?”

“So, I’ll get a car to stop. They’ll think I’m gay, and I’ll tell them that my good friend and I got mugged while we were walking in the park. Nobody is afraid of gay guys. Can you make it out to the road?”

Chapter 10

“This traffic is nuts,” I said.

Phil, the Good Samaritan who picked us up, agreed.

“Is there a concert tonight?” I asked. The Erwin Center, where all the big bands played when they came to Austin, sat across 15th street from the hospital.

“Not that I know of,” said Phil.

“Sorry you have to wait in all of this,” I said.

“No big deal,” Phil told me. “With the jailbreak today, I didn’t want to stay home by myself anymore, especially with all the sirens and gunfire. It’s not safe. Crazies are running around all over Central Austin.”

“I hear you,” I agreed.

“It’s just a few more blocks, anyway.”

A stoplight changed to green and we inched across the intersection.

“Those look like military trucks up there,” Phil observed.

I glimpsed between the cars ahead. I didn’t know what to think of that.

Phil checked his rearview mirror.

I glanced back at Murphy. “Are you doing okay, Murphy? We’re almost there.”

Murphy grunted and nodded.

“We’ll make it pretty quick now,” Phil reassured. “I wonder if this all has to do with that flu coming out of Europe.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t think so?” Phil asked.

“I was talking with a police detective about it and he assured me that the flu business in Europe was all hype,” I answered.

“What then?”

“He said something about the marijuana being laced with PCP or something.”

“Forgive me for saying so, Zed, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why would the Army be at the hospital?” Phil asked.

“I don’t know.” I looked ahead at the military vehicles.

Phil said, “Maybe they’re preparing, just in case. I heard the mortality rate for the flu is pretty high. There’s lots of footage on TV about rioting in Europe.”

“I saw some of that,” I said.

“I think I’m safe though,” Phil told me. “I get a flu shot every year. Do you get a flu shot, Zed?”

I shook my head.

“You’re young and healthy. You’re probably safe anyway. As for me, I’m playing it safe and heading to Waco tonight. I think with all the craziness here, I’m going to stay with my parents for a few weeks.”

“Probably a good idea,” I agreed.

We passed another block and it became clear that the military had cordoned off the hospital complex and the surrounding blocks. They were diverting traffic off to side streets.

We got to the corner and a policeman waved us off to take a right turn.

“Can you drop us at the curb there, Phil?” I asked, pointing. “We’ll have to walk the last block.”

“There’s got to be a place for me to drop you guys at the emergency room.”

“We’ll be stuck in traffic for another hour trying to find it,” I said. “It’ll be faster to walk, I think.”

“Okay.” Phil pulled the car over.

The cop at the corner pointed and waved vigorously. He was none too pleased with our choice to stop.

“Can you walk a block, Murphy? We’re almost there.”

“I’ll try,” he grunted.

Moments later, we were on the curb. I thanked Phil as profusely as I could before he made his escape from the chaos.

With Murphy leaning heavily on me, we waded through the crawling traffic and up to a break in the barriers manned by four soldiers and three police officers.

“We were mugged,” I told them loudly, as we neared. “My friend got hurt. He needs to see a doctor.”

A soldier waved us forward. “To your left, sir, into the triage area.”

I looked left, past the entrance. Indeed, a large green tent stood back in a grassy area. We had no real choice on direction, the cordons guided us, and with all the uniformed men standing around with tense faces and ready weapons, I gave not a single thought to crossing a barricade and making straight for the hospital building.

The soldiers stood back with watchful eyes and made no move to assist me with Murphy, so I continued helping him myself.

As we entered the tent, I saw a soldier to the left and one to the right, weapons pointed down but with hands near the triggers. Two nurses wearing surgical masks met us, but were also in no hurry to provide assistance or even come close. They stood back five or six feet.

“What happened?” Asked a nurse with some of her red hair falling out from under her cap.

“He’s bleeding,” I told them, pointing up at Murphy’s shoulder with my free hand.

The nurse nodded and asked again, “Yes, but what happened?”

“Can he sit down?” I asked. “His name is Murphy. He needs medical attention.”

“Yes, but what happened?”

Damn, persistent bitch. “I was…we were…jumped by some guys, and during the scuffle, one of them bit my friend.”

Everyone tensed.

The words I’d planned to say next stopped in the back of my throat.

The nurse on the right turned and called over a few orderlies, also in protective gear.

Behind and to my left, I noticed one of the soldiers nervously level his weapon at Murphy’s back.

“He’s sick,” I pleaded. “He needs to see a doctor.”

The nurse on the left said, “It’s okay. Calm down. We have a ward set up, offsite.”

“A ward?” I asked, feeling lost in my inability to understand any of what was going on around me.

“Has he been violent?” the nurse asked me.

I shook my head. “He can barely walk. He’s got a fever.”

“When did this a happen?” she asked me.

“Um…earlier. A while ago. It took us a long time to get here,” I told them.

The orderlies took Murphy’s weight off of me and helped him toward a doorway on the left side of the tent.

I started to move after them and the nurse put a hand out to stop me.

“You need to stay here.”

“What?”

“You can’t go into the quarantine ward.”

“What?”

I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and a voice said, “Sir.”

I turned to see a soldier there. I started to say something to him, but the nurse asked, “Sir, what happened to your arm?”

I looked down at my scabbed, oozing wound. “Um, I got bitten. I need to see a doctor about that too.”

“This looks days old,” the nurse said.

“It happened on Sunday.”

“On Sunday?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Was it an animal or a human?”

That seemed like a very odd question to me. “My stepdad.”

“And where is he now?” she asked.

“Um, I don’t know.”

The nurse didn’t believe me. I couldn’t see her face behind her surgical mask, but her lengthy pause gave her skepticism away.

“And this happened on Sunday?” she asked me again.

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Come over here for a moment.”

I followed her and one of the soldiers came along behind. She sat me on a cot and shoved a thermometer into my mouth. She pulled an Otoscope from her pocket and pushed my forehead back with her hand.

“I think it might be infected. I need to get some antibiotics,” I said.

“Keep your mouth shut while you have the thermometer in.” She shined the light into each of my eyes, first in, then away, then in again.

I squinted at the harsh little light.

“Have you taken any drugs today?” she asked.

“No,” I told her indignantly.

“Mouth shut,” she told me. “Any sensitivity to light?”

I nodded.

“Fever?”

I nodded.

The thermometer beeped. She yanked it from my mouth and looked at it. Her shoulders sagged. She was disappointed.

“What?” I asked.

She looked to the soldier and nodded. The soldier turned and called for someone.

“What?” I asked again.

She turned to me. “I’m sorry, you’ll need to go with your friend to the quarantine ward.”

The quarantine ward. That didn’t sound at all like a good place to be.

“I’m fine. I just need some antibiotics.” I raised my voice. “What’s going on?”

The soldier’s rifle came up and pointed at my chest. Another soldier hurried over, as did a few orderlies.

“Calm down, please,” said the nurse.

“I am calm,” I told her in a not calm voice. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“Please,” she said, “just go along with the orderlies. You’ll get all of your answers in the ward. I need to see to other patients.”

“What?”

“Please,” she begged.

One of the soldiers pushed the barrel of his rifle against my chest.

“Look.” It was my turn to beg. “I’m not sick. I don’t need to go to a ward. I’m fine. I just need some antibiotics.”

The nurse looked at me. She seemed torn between choices. Nobody moved. Finally, she said, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

She walked across the tent and approached another nurse. They began talking in hushed tones, casting glances my way. They were not in agreement, that much was clear. The conversation came to an end and my nurse came back over, with her head hanging a little lower, and her shoulders sagging a little more.

“I’m not sick,” I said, as she walked up.

“You’re symptomatic. You’ve got a low-grade fever. Your pupils are fixed and dilated.”

“What does that mean?”

“They don’t contract when I shine a light on them.”

“Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?” I asked. “I’m not sick.”

“Tell me about your stepdad. Was he sick?”

“I…”

“Was he?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he bit you. Why?”

“I don’t know,” I stammered. “There was something wrong with him.”

“What do you mean?”

I didn’t like where this was going. “He attacked me.”

“Were you having an argument?”

“No, he was just crazy. I––”

“I understand. What about after? What did he do after he bit you?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? He just left you alone?”

I said, “He’s dead.”

That stopped the conversation.

The nurse took a moment to recover. “What happened?”

“The police shot him.” It was the first lie I could think of that seemed plausible.

“Because he was attacking you?”

I nodded.

“And this happened on Sunday?”

“What about you? What happened after?”

“I…I guess I passed out.”

“You fainted?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I think I lost a lot of blood. But I’m okay now.”

“Your fever; have you had this ever since the bite?”

I nodded. “It was higher at first. I felt pretty crappy. Now…I didn’t even know I had a fever. I thought it broke.”

“Look, Mr…”

“Zane.”

“…Mr. Zane. Let these men take you to the ward. I’m sure you’ll be fine, but we have to follow the protocols.”

“Why?” I asked.

“For everyone’s safety.”

“So this is that flu from Europe that I saw on TV?”

“I honestly don’t know, Mr. Zane. Please, let them take you to the ward.” She turned and walked away.

The orderlies grabbed me by my elbows and guided me out of the same doorway through which Murphy had gone a few minutes earlier.

Backed up outside the tent was an enclosed military truck the size of an ambulance, but with benches along the sides like a paddy wagon. Four people were seated in the truck. Murphy lay on the floor on his face, looking like a dead man.

A half-dozen soldiers stood by, ensuring that all of us quarantine patients made it from the tent to the truck without wandering off.

I was guided into the truck, ordered to take a seat, and told quite firmly not to get back out.

I felt angry and defeated, caught again in a net of rules backed by the force of guns, in the hands of people who prejudged me as guilty of something I wouldn’t even understand until it was probably too late. A glance up at the soldiers with their murderous weapons assured me that it was already too late.

I put my head in my hands and looked down at the floor. Murphy was moving slightly with each unconscious breath. How long would he live without medical attention?

I started second-guessing my choices: calling the police from my mom’s house, telling the police the truth, escaping the prison, and dragging Murphy to the hospital. They had all seemed like the right things to do at the time, but each had just led me further and further down a hole that seemed to have no bottom.

“Mr. Zane.”

I looked up. The nurse who’d examined me stood a few feet away.

One of the soldiers was immediately beside her. “Ma’am, you shouldn’t be out here.”

“I need to give this patient some medication.”

“Ma’am, our orders––”

In a very stern tone she said, “Sergeant, this is a hospital. I am a nurse. It is my job to care for these people, no matter what is going on. Now, I’m going to give this patient his medication. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you talk to your commanding officer who can talk to my boss. But until you do that, you need to let me do my job.”

That was that. The soldier backed off.

The nurse came over to me and pushed a pill bottle into my hand.

“What’s this?” I asked. “Antibiotics?”

“No,” she answered in a hushed tone. “The bottle is empty. My name and cell number are written on it.”

“What?”

“Listen. You shouldn’t be going to the ward.”

“So I’m not sick.”

“Yes, you are but…listen, Mr. Zane. You have the symptoms. You caught whatever this is, but you seem to be recovering.”

That seemed like a curious thing to say. I asked, “Are you saying that most people aren’t recovering from this?”

She shook her head.

Crap.

“Mr. Zane, your blood probably has the antibodies that might help in making a vaccine, but nobody here wants to hear that. Avoid the ward if you can. Slip away if you’re able, but don’t lose my number. Call me. I need to see what I can do about getting you hooked up with a real doctor. And for God’s sake, please stay away from people if you do get away. We don’t know all the ways this can spread. You might still be contagious.”

“Why should I stay away from the ward?”

“Just avoid it if you can.” She turned and walked away.

“The other truck is back,” I heard one of the soldiers outside say. Without another moment’s pause, the doors of the truck slammed shut.

I looked around at my companions inside. None looked well. Two sat with elbows on their knees and faces in their hands. One stared at me with wide, fearful eyes. The last had passed out and fallen over sideways on the bench. All showed signs of recent, bruising struggles. Each of them wore the bloody evidence.

Not good.

Chapter 11

The engine started and the truck rolled across the grass. We bounced over a curb and accelerated away from the hospital.

In the dim light inside the truck I looked down at the empty brown pill bottle. “Steph G.” I memorized the number and stuffed the pill bottle into my pocket.

The link between the European flu and the insanity everywhere crystallized in my mind. Was I immune? Really? Or was it just a matter of time before I went nuts like Dan did, or like the men in the jail? I shuddered to think about it. Could there be a worse fate than losing one’s mind?

I flexed my left hand. My forearm felt stiff. I looked at the crusty scabs and surrounding puffy red flesh. I pressed a finger into the puffiness near one of the big scabs. I felt no pain but disgusting yellow pus oozed out. I felt sure it was only a matter of time before I lost my arm to infection.

I shook my head. My situation was dire. I was powerless to alter it. Despair washed over me, but my eyes stayed dry. If there was one thing that Dan and the dead harpy did for me, it was teaching me how to shunt away troublesome emotions before they caused me more problems.

I took a deep breath to clear my head. I needed to think. Steph said I needed to avoid the ward, and that’s what I intended to do. I needed to focus on escape.

The truck slowed. It bounced over another curb and maneuvered through some turns. It came to a stop and went into reverse, then stopped again.

The clink of metal on metal announced the opening of the doors.

Outside were more soldiers in protective gear, with guns either at the ready or pointing into the truck.

“Let’s go,” one of them ordered.

My quarantined companions who were able made their way to the rear of the truck.

I kneeled down to wake Murphy. His skin was hot to the touch—really hot.

“We’ll get him,” a soldier told me.

I looked at him, but ignored the order. “Murphy, c’mon. Get up.”

“Out of the truck, sir,” The soldier said harshly, pointing his weapon at me. Another stepped up to the open door and did the same.

I nodded and slowly stood. “You’re the boss.” I refrained from adding a vulgar aspersion.

Outside the transport truck, soldiers formed a corridor that led into a pair of open doors. There would be no escape at that point.

I walked through the doors and into an old, familiar-looking building. I quickly realized that we were on the university campus, which neighbored the hospital campus. They walked us through the entrance to a very old basketball arena. The soldiers herded us toward a pair of double doors that I knew to be one of many entrances to the main gym floor. They put us up in a tight line right at the center of the pair of doors.

One soldier spoke loudly to us, “Because of the infection, I’m going to open this door, and I need to close it as soon as possible. So, as soon as it opens, all five of you need to hurry through. Medical personnel in the quarantine area will take you from there and give you the medical attention that you require.”

Before anyone could ask a question or protest, the soldier ordered the door opened.

I was last in line and was roughly pushed forward by several strong hands on my back. I fell into the guy in front of me and we went down like walking dominoes. I bumped the edge of the door as they pushed me past and I tripped on a pile of bodies and fell. The door slammed shut behind me, locking us in.

Wicked thoughts blossomed with my anger and spilled out of my mouth in a long string of curses at the soldiers. I pushed myself up off of the guys below me and was silenced by what I saw in the gym.

Chapter 12

Gregory Gym was eighty years old but had been renovated nicely. The gleaming wooden floor had space for three full basketball courts. With the collapsible wooden bleachers pulled out and along with the upper level seating, the gym had room for a few thousand fans. With the doors locked and with platoons of soldiers ringing the building, it was a makeshift asylum for several thousand infected inside. More infected were being shoved through the door at discouragingly regular intervals.

Most of those in the gym were frenetic and aimless. They were noisy. They sniffed and prodded one another as though looking for a meal. They scuffled. They screamed. Most couldn’t remain still, though a good number sat catatonically or lay like corpses on the floor and benches. A few rattled on in nonsensical streams of words like crazed meth heads. More than a dozen ran around the gym, attacking and fighting with whomever they bumped.

It was a madhouse.

At one time, I guessed, hundreds of portable beds had been lined up in rows on the floor. By the time I arrived, they were in disarray. Random pieces of hospital equipment were scattered about. More than a few of those locked in the gym wore scrubs or hospital lab coats.

Very disturbing were frightening smears of blood and bits of meat in perhaps a dozen spots on the floor. More disturbing than that were the infected, who appeared to be licking at those spots or chewing on things I preferred not to look at too closely. It reminded me of Dan’s meticulous attention to the harpy’s carcass.

Many around the floor had bloody injuries, torn clothes, and quite often, bite marks. Many were unscathed, but all had dilated, crazy eyes. The same dilated, crazy eyes as me.

Having helped Murphy across the gym after the soldiers dumped him inside, I sat on the floor next to him. He’d since passed out on a cot next to a wall. He groaned and stirred. I reached out and felt his forehead. No change. He was still burning up with fever. The same fever I’d had that first night, I guessed.

Some guy with shaggy hair, a beard, and hippie sandals very suddenly came sprinting at me out of the crowd. I stood just as I noticed him, immediately on the defensive.

He made no effort to slow as he neared me, a fact I didn’t realize until it was too late. He hit me at full speed and slammed me into the wall, his face stopping at kissing distance.

“They’re gonna kill us all.” he screamed.

I put my hands to his chest and started pushing. “Get off me.”

He grabbed my shirt to pull himself closer.

I got the full stench of his hot, slobbery breath. His spit splattered my face.

“Get off me, motherfucker.” I pushed harder.

“Slaughter. Slaughter. Kill all the zombies.”

I knocked his hands free and pushed. The crazy guy fell on his back but bounced right up and ran off to accost someone else.

“Christ.” I looked around and saw a guy walking toward me in a bloodied lab coat. He seemed calm, normal even. I took a defensive stance and got ready to punch him in his glasses.

His palms went up in front of him and he said, “It’s okay.”

I relaxed a tad, but prepared myself for another kind of crazy.

“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’m like you.”

“What? What do you mean, like me?” I asked.

“Slow burn,” he responded.

“Back off, crazy man,” I told him.

“No, it’s okay. I’m not like them.”

“Just keep your distance,” I warned.

He stopped about five feet in front of me and put his arms down. “I’m Jerome, Jerome Barnett. I work for the CDC.”

I was taken aback. “The Center for Disease Control?”

Jerome nodded.

“The one in Atlanta?” I asked.

“The very same.”

“Okay.” I lowered my arms, then pointed out across the room, indicating the madness around us. “What the fuck?”

Jerome looked around, “Yeah. Kind of overwhelming isn’t it?”

“Overwhelming? Not my first choice of words,” I said.

Jerome said, “I guess your first choice was ‘fuck,’ wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “You gotta admit, Jerome, this is pretty fucked up. Do you know what the hell is going on?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got nothing but time, unless you believe that crazy dude that was just here.”

Jerome said, “I’ll talk quickly.”

That concerned me.

Jerome grabbed an upturned cot and pulled it over near the one Murphy laid on. He sat down in front of me. I found a bit of room on the corner of Murphy’s cot that wasn’t covered by Murphy and sat down to face him.

“This is a disease caused by a virus.”

“A virus?”

“Yes,” Jerome answered.

“Okay,” I prompted.

“There was an outbreak about two months ago in Africa at a refugee camp in Kenya, just across the border from Somalia.”

“What kind of outbreak?” I gestured around. “This?”

“Yes. You probably saw something in the news about it.”

I shrugged, “Bits and pieces I guess. I don’t really pay much attention to the news anymore.”

“I hear you,” Jerome agreed. “I work for the CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Services Officer.”

“Say what?”

“I’m an epidemiologist.”

I was impressed. Jerome didn’t look much older than me. He was clearly not the slacker I was.

Jerome continued, “I work in the field for the CDC. When there’s an outbreak of some disease somewhere, especially if they’re having trouble identifying it, they send me.”

“You’re the guy who actually does the identification?” I asked.

“No, there are doctors who specialize in that. I’m more of a response coordinator. When we don’t have a defined protocol, because we’re not sure what we’re dealing with, I usually get the call. Most times, it’s something run-of-the-mill, H1N1, Hantavirus, things like that, that aren’t getting identified correctly in the field. We rarely come across anything new, widespread, and deadly. I mean, we come across new strains and variants all the time, but nothing that meets all those criteria.”

“Widespread?” I asked. “Deadly?”

“I’ll get to that.”

I frowned.

Jerome continued, “So we started getting reports of something weird out of Kenya six or so weeks ago. It doesn’t take much to raise the CDC’s interest. A few cases of unusual symptoms is usually enough to get on our radar. So when this popped up, it was a few cases the first day, then a few dozen, mostly in refugees coming across the border. We realized immediately that something was happening in Somalia. But that place is pretty lawless, and we don’t go in there. Before you know it, I’m on a plane to Kenya and thirty hours later, I’m at the refugee camp. By the time I arrive, the cases are numbering in the hundreds, and it’s not just Somalian refugees fresh across the border anymore. Refugees in the camp are infected.

“Well, the first thing I try to do when I get there is try to quarantine the camp, but I’ve already missed that boat because it’s spread to neighboring villages. While I’m still figuring that out, it pops up in Sudan and Ethiopia.

“People from the WHO and CDC come pouring in, but at this point, there’s nothing in the media about it, because it’s just Africa and nobody really gives a crap about dead Africans, but everybody in the community…”

“The community?” I asked.

“CDC, WHO, all of us guys who watch this stuff. Well, we know it’s bad because it’s literally exploding out of control and we aren’t even close to knowing anything about it.”

“So that’s where we are?” I asked. “We don’t even know what it is?”

“You’re jumping ahead of me, ah…ah…”

“Zed. The name is Zed.”

“Well, Zed, things get pretty out of hand pretty quickly. People in charge start freaking out. The Kenyan army comes in and things start getting ugly. All of the expats, the aid workers, the volunteers…they start bugging out. The Chinese, the Europeans, the Americans, they all go. Everybody sees what’s going down and nobody wants to stay around for it.”

“What do you mean, ugly?” I asked.

“Look around, Zed. This is only the beginning. I don’t just mean the beginning of the infection, I mean the beginning of what the infected will start doing once their biological urges get the best of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hunger, sex, the basic urges, but I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“Okay, well, hurry up, because I’m waiting for the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-me part.”

“Okay, let me talk about the disease for a minute.”

I nodded, dramatically, prompting him to move it along.

“The virus—we’re pretty sure that’s what it is—is transferred through bodily fluids.”

“Okay.”

“So, in your case, I guess looking at your arm, you were bitten. Saliva gets in the wound, you get the virus.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Intercourse, of course.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Kissing would do it. Heck, if somebody sneezed or coughed and the droplets got in your eyes or you inhaled them, that would do it. This thing is contagious as hell.”

“Wow,” I said, not even with any sarcasm. “So I’m infected because I got bitten.”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked. “I’m not acting all whacked out like the rest of these…” I wanted to say zombies, but couldn’t bring myself to use the word.

“You’re infected, Zed. Everybody who gets bitten gets infected.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody.”

“But you said you didn’t know that much about it,” I said.

“Yeah, I did, but we’re almost certain that biting is a 100% effective transmission pathway.”

“Crap,” I muttered. “Did you get bitten? Is that why you’re in here?”

“Actually, I think mine was a sneeze or a cough when I was in a ward. I caught it that way.”

“That sucks.”

“More than you know…well actually, I guess you do know. But Zed, it doesn’t suck as much as it could have, and that’s why we’re having this conversation.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the infection doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Like the flu, some people get it bad, some don’t. Some die, most don’t.”

“So…” I prompted.

“When did you get bitten?” Jerome asked.

“Sunday.”

“And this is early Thursday morning.”

I nodded.

“And what symptoms did you have?”

“I felt feverish within fifteen or twenty minutes, and then within a half hour or so, I passed out and stayed out for two days.”

“What then?”

“Well, I woke up, disoriented, dehydrated, hungry as hell,” I told him. “I felt like crap.”

“And your eyes, they were dilated, like they are now?”

“Yeah, I guess, I mean I didn’t know until I got to the hospital. I just knew the sun and bright lights were bothersome.”

Jerome said, “Yeah, that’s because your eyes are permanently dilated now.”

“That sucks.”

“It could be worse.” Jerome looked around.

“Are you saying that I’m not going to wind up like them?”

“I can’t say for sure, but right now you and I are what they’re calling slow burners.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“When somebody catches this infection,” Jerome told me, “they develop a fever, usually pretty quickly, but sometimes it might take days to develop, depending on how they catch it. If the initial infection is small, it might take more time to develop enough of the virus in the body for symptoms to show.”

“I’m guessing that happens in the case of sneezing and coughing transmission?” I asked.

“We’re not certain yet, but maybe.”

“Okay.”

“So, the symptoms almost always include a fever, headache, nausea, and sometimes diarrhea.”

“Like the flu?” I asked.

Jerome answered, “Yes, but there’s more. The fever gets high, like in the 104 to 106 range, in a hurry.”

“I know that’s not good,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” said Jerome. “In most cases, brain damage occurs. Nerve damage as well.”

“What kind of brain damage?”

“In most cases the frontal lobe is severely damaged. Pretty much everything that makes us human, complex thought, emotion, and empathy are debilitated or destroyed.”

“Fuck,” slipped out of my mouth again before I could catch it.

“The basic functions mostly survive, though in ten to fifteen percent of the cases, the host just dies. The ones that don’t die, end up like these guys.” Jerome pointed to the aimless, chaotic mass in the room.

“We’ve figured out that the body temperature after the initial fever correlates very strongly with brain function loss.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Did anyone take your temperature, Zed?”

I shook my head. “Not until I got here.”

“You seem pretty normal, like you’ve got your wits about you. I’m guessing you’re between ninety-nine and a hundred.”

“Where are you?” I asked Jerome.

“I got lucky, Zed. I come in at ninety-nine point three. Just over a half-degree above normal.”

“You seem normal.”

“I am,” said Jerome. “I’m a little klutzy. I’m a little hyperactive, like I’m on a perpetual caffeine buzz, but I’m lucky.”

“And you think that’s where I’ll be?”

“I think so, Zed.”

“And you CDC guys call it a slow burn because the final temperature is above normal, but lower than these other guys?”

“Mostly right.” Jerome nodded. “For slow burners, the initial fever doesn’t go up to 106, and doesn’t stabilize too far above normal. The crazy guy that you were wrestling with when I walked up, he was probably running at about 102 to 103. The really whacked out ones in here, they’re above 104. With the high temperature, the metabolic rate shoots through the roof. They need calories like you wouldn’t believe. They probably need twice the calories that a normal person requires.”

“Wow.” I said.

“Like I said, their metabolisms are running amok. They need to feed.”

“So, are you sure I’m a slow burner?” I asked.

“Once the fever starts, the temperature can spike very fast, and they turn from normal to brain-damaged whack jobs pretty quickly, but for slow burners the whole thing usually runs its course in about two days. When you come out of it, based on what we know so far, you pretty much are what you are…mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Some continue to deteriorate.”

“You mean their temperature goes back up?”

“Yes, slowly.”

“And how many end up like us?” I asked. “How many are immune altogether?”

“Good questions, Zed. Our best data puts total immunity way below one percent, maybe a half, maybe a tenth.”

“And?”

“Of the infected, it looks like maybe one in a few thousand end up like you and me.”

“Is that genetic? Some kind of immunity?”

“We don’t know why,” Jerome answered. “This thing is moving so fast, it’s outpaced our ability to learn what we need to know.”

“So the others, the fast burners, what about them?” I asked.

“Over ninety percent of them end up with a total loss of higher brain function. They’re all over 104. The remaining ten percent or so mostly come in between 101 and 104, with the temperature determining how much human is left in them.”

“How much human?”

“Mostly, they’re just like a bunch of very violent, cannibalistic, chimpanzees. Most don’t think. They just want to eat and tend to their natural bodily functions. The ones that can think tend to lose any sense of empathy or morality. They’re dangerous. They’re vicious.”

“Like the crazy guy from earlier?” I asked

Jerome nodded. “Yes, like him.”

“Great. So, what’s the deal, then? All of these people are hungry and crazy? Are we in physical danger?”

Jerome shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“One of the things about people that is usually underrated is the importance of the sense of smell.”

“Go on.”

“Well this is my opinion, my theory, not the CDC’s position…”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.

“I think that in the absence of the higher brain functions, the lower brain functions are no longer overlooked, even with all the confusion in a damaged brain.”

“So far this means nothing to me,” I said.

“When these guys start eating people, they prefer not to eat each other. I don’t think they like the way they smell. Maybe they smell the disease on each other.”

“Oh,” I interjected, “like those dogs that sometimes smell when their owners get sick. Yeah, I saw something about that on TV once.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Jerome agreed. “But, that doesn’t mean they won’t eat each other. They just aren’t their first choice.”

“So, are you telling me that they only eat people, and that they prefer healthy people?”

“No, they’re still human, just diseased humans. They’re still omnivorous. But, back in the refugee camp, where—and I hate to say it this way—the most plentiful food source was other people, that’s what they ate.”

I reluctantly pointed to the bloody spots on the floor. “Is that what happened here?”

Jerome got a distant look in his eyes and nodded. “Doctors and nurses.”

“But they ignored you,” I said.

“Yes and no.”

“Okay, what does that mean?” I asked.

Jerome said, “They’re ignoring me for now, because I have the infection. I smell like them. But you and me, Zed, we’re slow burners, we’re mild cases. We smell more like healthy humans than they do.”

“Wait, what?”

“Zed, this gym they have us locked up in. This isn’t an original idea. This is pretty much the same thing we did in Kenya. We couldn’t keep them all in hospital tents, so someone had the great idea to start corralling them all, just to get them under control. Because, I mean, what do you do with them?”

I shrugged.

“Well, when they got hungry, they didn’t go after each other first. I mean, not really. They went after the slow burners, because they smelled the most normal. Then they went after the crazy ones. The weak and injured ones, the ones that were easy prey and couldn’t defend themselves.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“They broke out of the corral and the refugee camp fell apart. It was a nightmare, and somewhere in that mess, the army just started shooting the infected down. That became government policy…maybe it already was, I don’t know. Maybe they thought it was the only way to contain the virus.”

“But it didn’t work,” I said.

“It was already too late when they started.”

“So,” I said, “by extrapolation, the longer we stay here, the more likely it is that we’re either going to be eaten, or the soldiers outside are going to come inside and just shoot us.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up.”

“Great.” I looked down at Murphy and tried to assimilate all that I’d just been told.

Jerome asked, “When did your friend get bitten?”

“Twelve, eighteen hours ago, I guess. So, he’s got a chance, right?”

Jerome pointed at the crazies walking around the gym. “Zed, they’re going to start getting hungry soon. If we go find some place out of the way, maybe up at the top of the bleachers by the windows, maybe they’ll ignore us for a while, especially if we leave your friend lying here helpless.”

“That’s fucked up,” I told Jerome.

“It is what it is,” Jerome said. “Once they start feeding again, they’re going to eat your friend. You won’t be able to do anything about it except get eaten too.”

I shook my head. “I have an idea for a way to get out of here. If you want, you can help me with Murphy and come along. If not, you can fuck off and we’ll give it a go without you.”

“If you have an idea of a way to get out, Zed, you and I should just do that now. Murphy might come out of this, like us, or he might not.”

I nodded. “I don’t care. Murphy is coming with me. Are you?”

Jerome looked around. He wasn’t pleased. “What’s your idea?”

“Do you have a quarter?”

Chapter 13

Murphy was half-delirious, but Jerome and I managed to stand him up between us with one of his arms over each of our shoulders. Together, we shambled around behind the bleachers. Working Murphy through the monkey-bar framework of bleacher supports was not easy. He bumped his head and grumbled, but he kept his feet under himself.

I kept hitting my shins on horizontal supports that ran along at twelve inches above the floor. Jerome ran into everything.

“I’m not getting a warm fuzzy about this,” Jerome told me. “Hiding under the bleachers isn’t going to solve our problem.”

“Be cool, man,” I told him. “I know what I’m doing.”

A shriek ripped the air, followed quickly by others. Scuffles broke out on the basketball courts.

I looked questioningly at Jerome.

“The same thing happened earlier. They’re feeding.”

“It sounds like…”

“I know. We need to get out of here,” Jerome urged.

We came to a stop at a square metal panel nearly half the size of a door on the wall.

“What’s this?” Jerome asked.

“Give me the quarter. I need to get these screws out.”

“Okay,” Jerome said, tentatively. He pulled some change out of his pocket, passed me a quarter, and knelt down beside the panel.

“Help me with the screws,” I told him. “I went to college here. When I was a freshman, we were out goofing around one night and we came across these utility tunnels. This access panel leads down to the tunnel system. This is how we used to sneak in to see the volleyball games and stuff. One guy with a sports pass could come in and open up the panel and let the rest of us in.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow,” I confirmed. “If we get into the tunnel system, we can go nearly anywhere on campus. All of the buildings have access panels or doors into the basements.”

Jerome went to work on one of the eight screws. It would have gone faster with a screwdriver but you work with what you have.

With a few screws out, I heard the noise of somebody clumsily coming through the tangle of metal supports under the bleachers.

Jerome and I both looked. It was the crazy guy with the hippie sandals.

“Shit,” said Jerome.

My fingers were getting sweaty and it was hard to hold on to the little quarter.

Another screw dropped to the ground followed quickly by the one Jerome was working on.

The crazy guy hollered, “They’re gonna eat me. They’re gonna eat me.”

Jerome stood and fished around in his pocket. He pulled out a folding knife with a four-inch blade, opened it and handed it to me. “Zed, I’ve got this. You need to take care of him before he draws the rest of them back here.”

There was no time to argue. I grudgingly took the knife. “Get that panel off.”

I made my way through the supports toward the crazy guy.

“They’re gonna eat me.” he yelled again.

“Be quiet,” I told him, trying to keep my voice down.

He jumped up on a lower support, grabbed two vertical supports and used the weight of his body to shake them. The bleachers above rumbled with the vibration. He probably got the attention of every infected freak in the gym with that.

I hurried toward him to push him off, but when I got close, he leapt at me with his hands grasping and his mouth screaming.

It reminded me of my encounter with Dan. I stepped back to avoid his grasp and tripped over a support. The crazy guy came down on top of me.

In the struggle, I pummeled him in the head with the handle of the knife but it had no effect. He just kept yelling, and kept trying to pull my face closer to his mouth.

I lost my temper. I turned the pointed end of the knife at the crazy guy’s skull and drove the blade deep through the bone. He went limp on top of me but his blood poured out onto me from the wound.

I pulled myself free and looked to the ends of the bleachers as I stood up. At least a dozen infected were trying to make their way underneath.

“Damn it.” I turned to Jerome. “They’re coming.”

By the time I got back down beside Jerome, there were two screws left. He was working on one. I went to work on the other.

Both ends of the bleachers were packed with the infected and they were coming our way. Whether to feed on the crazy guy or make a meal of us all, I had no intention of finding out.

Jerome’s screw plinked to the floor. He shouted, “We need to get out of here.”

My screw dropped out and the panel fell free.

I spun around and shook Murphy. “Murphy, you need to wake back up. We need to go, man.” No response.

“Murphy.” I slapped him across the face, once, then twice. His eyes opened. Good.

I dragged him up off of his butt.

The first few of the infected reached the crazy guy’s body and fell on him with their mouths open and their hands tearing at his clothes.

Jerome was already in the tunnel, climbing down the ladder.

I pushed Murphy’s bulk toward the tunnel opening. It was hard. It was slow. The infected from the other direction were getting close. They started yelling and howling. They were excited.

“Murphy, turn around. It’s a ladder.” I yelled. “Murphy, we gotta go.”

Murphy complied and we got his feet into the hole. He started down the ladder but halfway in, he stopped and stared at me in a daze.

“Damn it, Murphy. Move.”

Eight or nine infected were gorging themselves on the crazy guy. Other infected were flowing around the scrum and were eyeing me.

I leaned forward, put my hands on Murphy’s shoulders, and pushed. “Move, Murphy.”

I felt his bulk move and then slide into the darkness. I knew it was about eight feet down to the floor of the tunnel, far enough to chance an injury but the alternative was to stay and die.

I felt fingers on my back, grasping at my shirt. All choices were gone save one. I dove into the hole.

Chapter 14

Through pure luck, the pursuing infected fell over one another coming through the hatch into the tunnel. In a tangle of bodies, with more piling in on top, none of them were able to pursue us until we were out of sight around a corner, and a few hundred yards down another long, straight tunnel.

When we were spotted, we made a quick turn down another tunnel that brought us expeditiously to an alcove with an unlocked door. That door led up to my old freshman dormitory. We hustled through the door and bolted it behind us.

The dormitory building was at least as old as Gregory Gym, but its last renovation was forty years behind, so it had no air conditioning. That meant that it was empty for the summer session of classes.

With keys pilfered from the administrative office, I led Murphy and Jerome up to the fifth floor, thinking for whatever reason that height equated to safety.

It was well past midnight when I unlocked a dorm room door. We quickly piled into the room’s hot, stagnant air. Once inside, closing and locking the door was top priority.

The dorm held four bunks and four empty desks. Jerome and I wrestled Murphy into one of the lower bunks and he passed out immediately on hitting the prone position.

“Pillow?” Jerome asked.

I looked around the room and didn’t immediately see one. I shrugged. Just as well.

Two five-foot tall dormer windows faced south. The room was dark but I stood to the side and carefully opened each by about six inches, enough to let some air flow into the room, but not open wide enough to be noticed from the ground.

Below us, across a lawn the size of a football field and across an empty professor’s parking lot, the gym from which we’d just escaped was alive with activity.

Jerome came up beside me to see what I was watching.

Soldiers were nervously walking in the parking lot, facing the building, talking, smoking, and keeping a ready hand near the triggers of their weapons. A group of police officers stood together, talking and gesturing at the gym.

What was going on? What was there to do about it? Those were the questions on everyone’s mind, and no doubt, the topic of discussion below.

Still staring out the window, I said, “I need to go back down to the office on the first floor and see if the phone is working. There’s a nurse I need to call.”

“About what?” Jerome asked.

“She’s one of the nurses from the hospital. She thinks I may have antibodies in my blood that might be helpful. She asked me to call her when I could.”

Jerome shook his head vigorously. “That’s a bad idea.”

“Is she wrong?”

“Um…no. I mean…what’s she going to do? She’s busy caring for patients and shuttling them off to the gym over there. She won’t be able to do anything with the antibodies in your blood.”

“I didn’t say that she was going to do anything herself,” I argued.

A crashing sound pulled our attention back to the plaza below.

Several panes in the enormous gym windows had broken out and fallen to the concrete twenty feet below. Through the windows, I saw the full silhouettes of the infected standing along the top row of bleacher seats inside, pressing their hands on the glass panes in the old metal frames.

A loud pop caught the attention of every ear in the plaza. One of the windows’ frames flexed across its entire width—roughly ten feet. More panes popped out and fell to the sidewalk. Before anyone below could react, a huge section of one of the window frames busted away from the wall and fell to the ground. Like water from a spigot turned fully on, the infected flowed out through the window.

Soldiers hollered in surprise. Some shouted for assistance.

The first infected out the window hit the ground and were soon covered by others falling out on top of them. Bodies piled into a pyramidal mound up to the height of the window and became a squirming, screaming ramp that more of the infected stumbled down as they poured out of the gym.

Soldiers in the parking lot started shooting tentatively over the heads of the advancing wave of infected.

What I didn’t think of until that moment—and what I’m sure the soldiers didn’t realize until it was too late—was that they weren’t dealing with rational humans beings. The hoard wasn’t frightened by the popping noise of the rifles.

In moments, the soldiers were in danger of being engulfed by the mass running at them.

The soldiers backpedaled and started shooting into the crowd.

Bodies erupted in bloody explosions where the bullets found their marks. Some of the infected fell, and some continued forward in spite of their wounds.

Soldiers went down as the hoard overwhelmed them. Some retreated, but kept firing. Others broke and ran.

“Holy crap,” I muttered as I inched back a little from the window.

“You can say that again,” said Jerome.

More soldiers and police hurried around the corner from the front of the building to support the retreating men, but it was too late. The situation was beyond control. Their line collapsed under the onslaught of the infected.

Screams followed. Not the wild screams of the infected, but the terrorized screams of the dying. Gunfire died away or faded into the distance.

In the first battle I’d ever seen, the infected rolled over the soldiers without slowing down. As a reward for their victory, many of them feasted on the fallen bodies of the soldiers and policemen, who had been either too brave to flee or too slow to get away.

“God, that’s horrible,” I said.

Jerome backed into the darkness away from the window. “We don’t want them to see us up here.”

“The police?” I asked.

“The infected,” he answered. “If they do, they may come after us.”

“Can they?” I asked, “Figure it out, I mean. With their frontal lobes fried, is getting up here too complex of a problem?”

“I don’t know, Zed. But I don’t want to find out.”

I stepped back from the window. “I don’t either.”

The battle wound down. Gunshots became less frequent. Most of the infected dispersed from the plaza.

I asked Jerome, “What next?”

“What next?” Jerome asked me, anger putting an edge in his voice. “You led us here. I figured you had a plan.”

“Don’t get pissed at me. You’re the guy from the CDC, who’s supposed to know everything about this…this plague or whatever it is.”

Jerome’s anger disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced. “Plagues are bacterial. This is almost certainly viral.”

“Whatever.”

“Call it a pandemic,” said Jerome.

“Double whatever,” I spat back. “I’m no doctor. I’m kind of on the user end of this disease thing, you know. From where I sit, plagues and pandemics are pretty much the same thing. Everybody catches cold. Everybody dies. Everybody turns into a mindless monster. It pretty much comes down to a bad something happening to everybody.”

“You don’t have to be a dick, Zed.”

I thought I did have to be a dick. I was still a little pissed about Jerome ordering me to take care of the crazy guy back in the gym. He had a PhD and worked for the CDC, but that didn’t make him my boss. I gave it a minute before I said, “Getting out of the gym was my only plan, at first. Like you said, we were in danger of getting attacked by the infected when we were in there. You were right about that. They seemed pretty anxious to get their hands on us when we were getting into the tunnel.”

Jerome nodded.

“Once we got into the tunnel,” I said, “the dorm was just the first place that came to mind as a place to hide out for a bit and figure things out. It seems to me that we’re in a pretty crappy situation. The infected see us as a meal. To the uninfected, we’re just more infected. To them, we’re a danger, and apparently the currently accepted cure for infection is a bullet.”

“The soldiers had to shoot them,” Jerome said. “You saw what happened. They didn’t have a choice.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

We stood there in the sweltering dorm room in silence for a good long while, listening to the sounds of the world falling apart outside.

Jerome broke the silence. “Whatever we do next, we need to keep an eye on Murphy.”

Jerome was probably right about that, so I said nothing.

He continued, “We don’t know for certain what he’s going to be when his fever breaks…or doesn’t break. If he comes out as a ninety-nine like us, then great. If he’s 104 or up, we need to be prepared to do something about him.”

“Do something?” I asked.

“Don’t be coy, Zed. You can see where this is going. You did what you thought was right in trying to get him to the hospital in the first place, but things are different now, and they’re going to hell in a hurry. We need to start thinking about survival.”

“Survival?” I asked.

“The police. The fire department. Hospitals. Doctors. They aren’t going to be here for us pretty soon. Maybe they’re gone already.”

I shook my head. “Will it really get that bad?”

“Zed, it’s that bad or worse everywhere this thing has spread.”

“But…”

“There aren’t any buts. Look out the window. The infected are taking over.”

What Jerome was telling me was a truth I didn’t want to accept.

“We’re going to have to look out for ourselves,” said Jerome. “At the very least, as you astutely pointed out, even if everything miraculously returns to normal, you and I are pariahs. We’re infected. We’ll have no one to take care of us but us. We’ll be lucky if we’re not gunned down. I don’t see any happy endings for you and me.”

I dropped into one of the desk chairs. Jerome was right, but I wasn’t quite ready to deal with that level of bleakness.

“All I’m saying,” said Jerome, “is that we need to talk about what to do with Murphy. If he goes full 104 or up, we’ll probably be able to escape if we decide quickly and execute our plan. But he’s a big guy. If he wakes up with a reduced brain capacity and a big appetite, he might kill both of us before we can do anything about it. Hell, he might kill both us if we’re fully prepared. He’s a big, really strong guy. Zed, he’s a time bomb.”

Jerome was right about that. I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t even want to acknowledge it, but he was right.

“Zed, I know you don’t want to talk about this but we need to. We need to be ready to put him down if it comes to that.”

“Kill him,” I said. “That’s what you mean.”

“Of course that’s what I mean. You know that. If he’s 104, then it’ll be him or us. We’ll need to run or we’ll need to kill him.”

“How do you propose we put him down?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Jerome. “I don’t have an answer to that. That’s part of why we’re talking now. If we wait until he comes back around, and he’s a 104 and we’re sitting here, or worse, sleeping here, then we’re dead.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I think one of us should sneak outside once it settles down a bit and try to grab a gun or two from those dead soldiers or police down there.”

“Excuse me for saying so,” I said as I shook my head, “but that sounds a lot like suicide.”

“Yes, it’s a risk, but I think we need to get ‘em while the gettin’ is good. I don’t know how bad things will get but they’re likely to get worse before they get better. We’re going to need to be armed if we’re going to survive this, and I don’t just mean Murphy.”

“What do you think the odds of your going down and getting one of those guns and getting back up here alive will be?” I asked.

“Probably a lot better than the odds of our still being alive an hour after Murphy wakes up as a 104, if we’re not armed,” Jerome suggested.

“Better?” I asked, “Why would they be better?”

“Right now, all of the infected are feeding. You have to remember, Zed, we’re a food source of last resort for them. I don’t think they like to eat each other.”

I peered out the window. A hundred or more infected were feeding on the bodies of the fallen soldiers.

“Or we could leave him here,” said Jerome. “We could go find another place to hole up. I mean, what’s your attachment to this guy, anyway? Is he your brother-in-law or something?”

“No,” I shrugged. “Well, he helped me out at the jail this morning.”

“The jail? You were in jail?”

He said it in a condescending way that made me want to punch him. I decided that I didn’t like him very much. I said, “It was bullshit. My stepdad, who I guess was infected, killed my mom and some guy from their church. The police arrested me because they thought I murdered them all.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Yeah.”

“So you just met Murphy this morning?” Jerome asked.

I nodded.

“And you helped him get to the hospital after he got bitten. And you saved him when we were in the gym. What’d he do for you at the jail?”

I said, “It’s not important. But there’s more.”

“What?” Jerome asked.

“Murphy knows of a place in east Austin.”

Jerome said, “You seem to cringe when you say that.”

“It’s not the best part of town.”

“Pretty soon I don’t think any part of town will be good. What kind of place is this?” Jerome asked.

“It’s a bunker under some guy’s house.”

“And he’s going to let Murphy in?” Jerome was skeptical.

“He died a few years ago or something,” I said. “He built this bunker under his house.”

“And Murphy knows where it is?”

I nodded. I hoped.

“And he knows how to get in?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “His cousin Earl did.”

“He did?”

“He got shot at the jail.”

“Oh.” What little enthusiasm Jerome had for the bunker idea seemed to wane but he said, “If ever there was a time to need a survivalist’s bunker, now would be it. Clearly, Murphy has some value. I think it’s worth the risk to take a chance on him. I think you should go down and get a gun.”

“Me? It was your idea.”

“I know, but hear me out on this, Zed. I work for the CDC, I know about the outbreak. I’m an expert, the kind the world might need if we’re going to get out of this with an intact society and you work for…Where do you work?”

“I have the most fulfilling job in the world,” I said.

“What?”

“I put a legal, yet addictive, drug in the hands of jonesing addicts and make them happy.”

“What are you talking about?” Jerome looked at me, seemingly clueless.

“For a CDC employee you sure can’t figure things out. I hope you’re good at memorization.”

“Stop playing games,” Jerome told me. “C’mon, what is it, like Starbuck’s, or something?”

I nodded.

“I thought you went to college here. Did you party too much and drop out?”

“No, I got a philosophy degree,” I mumbled.

“Oh.”

I sighed. “I’ll get the guns.”

Chapter 15

I stood at the first floor doorway, looking out across the lawn and parking lot. To the east, bordering the plaza, stood the ROTC building and a maintenance building. To the west lay a street lined with enormous old oaks full of squawking grackles. Across the street was a six-story building full of classrooms and professors’ offices.

Scattered across the lawn and parking lot lay the bodies and remnants of soldiers and policemen, all being eaten by the infected clustered around them.

Gunshots echoed regularly in the distance. Sirens wailed without end. The smell of smoke tainted the air. Ugly, low clouds hung in the sky, dirty orange in the light coming off of the city below.

With the glass door open, I had one foot in the building, one foot out, as I weighed the risk of death on the bloody plaza against the risk of death tomorrow or the next day for having no gun to defend myself. I pondered the value of stealing rifles from men who’d died trying to defend themselves with those very weapons. Mostly, I tried to find a way around my fear.

I wondered if my fear was pointless. I wondered, with the infection coursing through my veins, if I was effectively dead already, whether I was just pretending to be alive until the virus finished destroying my brain.

I got angry for being afraid, for giving in to it. I swore to myself when I was twelve, on one of a thousand occasions when I cowered in my room, while the wrathful ogre stormed up the hall to scar my skin with his fists, his boots, and his belt, that I would not let fear rule me. I got up off my knees on that day and stood in the face of Dan’s wrath. Through the years of living with the ogre and the harpy, I paid heavily for that choice, but what I got in return was a defiant strength that was impossible to measure.

So fuck Dan. Fuck the police. Fuck the doctors. Fuck Jerome. And fuck the infected.

I kicked the door wide, reached over to a nearby garden, grabbed a heavy rock, and placed it between the door and the jamb.

Daring the infected to come at me, I stormed out onto the lawn.

I don’t know what wild animals feel when they see strength in other animals—strength that they can’t stand against—but I think they feel fear.

I walked up to the body of a policeman. The infected that were feeding there scampered out of my way. I picked up the officer’s pistol. I was ready to put a bullet in the head of any infected that challenged me. They didn’t. They kept their distance and went back to feeding.

I fished around in the remains of the officer’s bloody garments and came up with his belt. The leather was torn through, but it held his spare magazines. They seemed full of bullets. The poor guy didn’t have a chance to reload before they overwhelmed him.

One of the infected got bold and snarled at me. I ignored him while I looked for anything else of value in the officer’s remains.

With the officer’s belt hanging over my shoulder and a pair of handcuffs in my pocket, I headed for the body of a nearby soldier. Whether my safety among the infected was a result of their fear of my anger or the satisfaction of their full bellies, it didn’t matter to me at that moment. They showed little interest in me.

There wasn’t much left of the soldier. His gory bones, uniform, helmet, and equipment were scattered widely across a red stain on the edge of the parking lot. The infected were done with him and had moved on.

I fell to my knees among the soldier’s remains trying to figure out what to take. The rifle was a no-brainer. I reached over and scooted that over in front of my knees. The soldier’s harness was covered in blood but looked to be intact. He’d have his extra ammunition and equipment stowed in pouches on the harness. I wanted it.

On hands and knees, I crawled over to the harness. Coming down off of the rage I felt after thinking about Dan, I started to think clearly. I glanced around quickly to assess my situation. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, out of the new ordinary, and naturally assumed that if I couldn’t see a danger, then it didn’t exist.

I stuffed the pistol into the front of my pants, picked up the soldier’s rifle and harness, and stood.

“Hey,” someone yelled out of the darkness. The voice startled me. I froze, but the head of every infected in the parking lot turned toward a doorway at the end of the building across the street.

Suddenly, running seemed like a good idea. I turned and bolted away from the sound of the voice. A waist-high hedge cut across the lawn and would offer cover in case I needed it.

My intuition to run proved correct, because in the next moment, I heard the sound of gunfire. One, two, and then three shots shattered the relative calm in the quadrangle.

The infected were on their feet and staring at the source of the shots.

I jumped, rolling in the air as I cleared the hedge and landed hard on my back. Out of breath, I rolled immediately, then crawled away as fast as I could from where I landed.

Three more shots echoed and I saw the ground erupt in divots where I’d landed behind the bushes.

In a singular wave, the infected broke into a run toward the shooter. Howls from more of the infected carried up and down the street. Hundreds of running feet pounded on the asphalt.

I ventured a peek over the bushes and saw at least a dozen infected frozen in their poses, standing and staring straight at me.

It was time to go. I hoped the shooter came to that same decision and was bugging out in the other direction. I grabbed my equipment and sprinted for the dormitory’s door.

Chapter 16

Back on the fifth floor, I knocked lightly on the dorm room door. “Jerome?”

Feet shuffled softly. The locked clicked. The door eased open. Jerome’s face showed neither relief, nor surprise. He was a cold prick.

I stepped into the room, angry, but not sure at exactly who or what.

Jerome picked up on my mood as he closed and locked the door. “We both knew it was dangerous, your going out to get the guns.”

Because you were too big of a pussy to do it, I didn’t say.

He stepped toward me, expecting me to hand him one of the weapons.

I didn’t.

I was planning to. I was going to. Just not at that moment. Jerome and I were going to have to figure out who the alpha was and I’d lost the first few rounds in that stupid game already. I didn’t want to play, but I absolutely wasn’t going to be subjugated by Jerome, either. I sensed that with him, there were only two choices: lead or follow. Cooperation wasn’t on the table.

But at that moment, I had all the guns. I had all the power. I wanted that to be clear.

“Did anything change with Murphy while I was downstairs?” I asked.

Jerome shrugged and looked toward Murphy, leading my eyes along. Murphy hadn’t moved.

I dropped the soldier’s harness to the floor and fished a pair of handcuffs out of my heavy left pocket. “I got these for Murphy.” I held them out to Jerome who just looked at them.

“That’s a good idea, but he’s your friend,” said Jerom. “You put them on him.”

“Whatever,” I muttered, petulant.

I knelt by Murphy’s bunk, careful to lay the rifle on the floor beside me. I cuffed Murphy’s wrist to the bed frame by the wall.

“He’s still burning up,” I said.

Jerome hadn’t moved an inch from his spot near the door. “It’s the fever.”

“He’s starting to lose his color,” I observed. “Why does that happen?”

“It’s a complicated process.”

“When you guys were studying this in Kenya, did you learn anything that might give us a clear indication of what Murphy will be like when he wakes up?” I asked. “Should we take his temperature?”

Jerome shook his head. “No. Temperature is one of the first things we looked at as a predictor. The ones that max on body temperature but regain their mobility quickly tend to be the ones with the greatest loss of intellectual capacity. The ones that linger, like Murphy, tend to have a better chance of coming out as a slow burn, like us. They also have the highest mortality rate. But what you have to understand is that nothing is clear-cut on this. Anything could happen.”

I took a seat on a bunk across the room from Murphy.

Jerome grabbed one of the desk chairs and sat down near me. “That was a good idea, getting the cuffs.”

I took the compliment at face value and thawed a bit. “Thanks.” I reached into my waistband, withdrew the policeman’s handgun, and held it out toward Jerome. “Are you cool with the pistol?”

“I think I’d prefer a pistol.”

“Cool,” I said. I hefted the rifle. “I think I’d rather have this thing for now. Oh, I think I’ve got three more clips for that pistol. I don’t know how many bullets come in a clip, though.”

“Depends on the gun, I guess,” said Jerome.

“Oh.”

“Zed, I don’t really know that much about guns.”

“Great,” I laughed. “I don’t know anything about them either.”

Jerome looked down and started to explore the pistol in his lap.

“Be careful,” I said.

Jerome’s expression made it clear that he didn’t want my trite advice.

I shrugged and started fumbling around with my rifle, realizing quickly that I was out of my depth. I certainly knew what the trigger did and from which end the bullets came out, but I didn’t know anything about how to eject or load a magazine. I didn’t know how or when to clean the thing. I knew that it was necessary. Gun people always talked about cleaning their guns. I didn’t know what kind of gun I had. It was some kind of military rifle, I knew that. Perhaps most importantly, I didn’t know whether or not it was empty, or even how to check, aside from pulling the trigger.

After some time spent experimenting with his weapon, Jerome said, “Thanks for going out and getting the guns. I didn’t really think you’d get shot at. I figured the only danger was from the infected, and most of them were feeding.”

I gave Jerome a nod. “I didn’t want to go out, but it had to be done.”

“And now we have guns we don’t know anything about.”

I smiled at the irony of it. “Jerome, why does it feel like we’re screwed anyway?”

“Possibly two reasons,” he answered immediately.

“Those would be?” I asked.

“One, we are screwed.”

I chuckled. Sometimes laughter is all you have to deal with stress. I asked, “Is the other one better?”

“We don’t have a plan,” said Jerome.

“A plan. You might be right about that. What did you guys do in Africa? I mean, you made it out of there alive.”

Jerome nodded. “I don’t know. I think we got lucky. First, when it became obvious that the infected were crossing borders into the other countries, then especially when we lost containment in the camp…I told you about the corrals, right?”

I nodded.

“The military came in and just started killing anyone that looked infected. I think I got out because I was white. I think I only made it onto the plane because no one else on the plane knew any more than I did about the infection. All of the doctors and other CDC personnel were as frightened as I was. I thought I was going to end up like the other infected. I figured that if I could get back to the states, I might have a better chance.”

“It’s just lucky genetics that have saved you?” I asked.

“So far,” Jerome added.

“So far,” I agreed.

“The CDC didn’t know what to do with me except quarantine me,” said Jerome. “They left me in isolation until Austin started to blow up. By that time, they figured I wasn’t contagious, but they also figured I wasn’t going to get any sicker. So, I was the best candidate to send here. Well, a lot of other guys came, pretty much the A team. Austin is ground zero for the first outbreak in the states.”

“I guess that’s why I didn’t hear about it,” I said.

“You said you don’t watch the news,” Jerome chided.

“I’m not completely oblivious,” I said. “But like you said, news stories about people dying in Africa don’t register with me as unusual events. Like everybody in the western hemisphere, I’ve built up a tolerance to it. Why do you think the virus hit Austin, and not some place like New York, or Los Angeles?”

“Maybe it has by now,” Jerome said, “if Africa can be used as any kind of template for the spread of the disease. As far as LA and New York go, the international airports have been shutting down and commerce came to a halt as the infection broke out in Europe and Asia. I think it came to Austin with a slow burner like you and me, only one that finished turning. There was a church group from Austin that was doing some kind of charity work in Uganda over the summer. They escaped on a chartered plane and got back to Austin a few weeks ago, before people here knew the extent of the problem. I think it was someone in that group.”

“A church group?” That piqued my interest. “Which church?”

“It was a long name. The Blood of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church or something like that.”

“Christ.” That was a surprise. “That’s where my mom and stepdad went to church.”

“Probably where they caught it,” Jerome said as he glanced toward the window as though looking for something. It was probably just nervousness.

We stopped talking and I collected my thoughts for a few moments. “So, the bottom line is that it was luck that got you out of Africa alive.”

Jerome nodded.

“Too bad,” I said. “I was hoping you guys had some proven protocols for getting through this kind of crap.”

Jerome shook his head. “We need to figure it out as we go along.”

I nodded. “I don’t know what the worst case scenario is, but after everything I’ve seen since Sunday and after hearing about what happened in Kenya, I think we need to prepare for that.”

“I agree.”

So, plan we did, for the next few days anyway. The first decision we took was that we needed to take turns standing guard at night. It looked like literally anything could happen at any time. It wouldn’t do for us both to be sleeping when a bad situation developed.

We needed to store water in case things got really bad and it stopped flowing from the taps. Our most convenient source of food was the dozen vending machines in the recreation room on the first floor. With the fall semester just a week from starting, I hoped that those were fully stocked and waiting for freshmen’s quarters. Vending machine food would not be nutritious, but suffering through weeks of zero nutrition would be far better than suffering through long days of zero calories.

We needed information. The virus was in Europe, Asia, Africa, and now in the western hemisphere. The world was changing, and all we knew about it was what we could see through the dormer windows. That wouldn’t do.

My smartphone was somewhere in the police station. Jerome’s cell phone was dead, and we had no cord with which to charge it. There were televisions in the rec room, but the rec room was on the first floor with lots of large windows. Turning those televisions on would attract the infected. There were a few computers, presumably with internet connections, in the rec room as well. They were set up for student access and required a password, so they were useless to us.

We were going to have to leave the dormitory and venture back out among the infected again. That was an unappealing thought, especially with the sound of gunfire ringing across the city.

Aside from brainstorming, we came up with few specifics. The hour was late. I was tired. I was hungry. In fact, I felt starved. I thought about when I’d last drank or eaten anything. Was it the tequila shots I’d drunk on Sunday morning? No, perhaps the sports drink from the fridge on Tuesday.

I needed to eat something.

I said, “We need to go down and raid those vending machines tonight.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Jerome asked.

“If not, then we need to chase down one of those infected bastards so we can eat him.”

“Are you serious?” Jerome asked, nervously.

“Dude, it was a joke.”

“You never know, nowadays.” Jerome smiled weakly.

I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t had anything to eat in days.”

Jerome said, “One of us should stay here and keep an eye on Murphy and one of us should go down.”

I looked expectantly at Jerome.

“What?” he asked.

“What, what?” I responded, “I went out and got the guns.”

“We talked about that. Not to say that my life’s more valuable than yours, because it’s not, but I have expertise that can help us fix all this.” Jerome shrugged. “You don’t.”

This was going to get old in a hurry. “Whatever.”

I stood up and headed for the door, then turned. “I don’t suppose you know how to break into a vending machine, do you?”

Jerome shook his head.

“Great.”

As it turned out, the damned things were resilient as hell. Kicking in the glass fronts, like they always did in the movies, proved to be a futile, noisy waste of time. I tried beating one with a fire extinguisher. Again, useless noise. What I finally settled on was a seat cushion I had pulled off of one of the couches in the rec room. With that folded around the barrel of my rifle, I pressed it against a vending machine’s lock and pulled the trigger. The front of the machine popped open.

It was louder than I’d hoped it would be, but not as loud as the kicking and beating I’d already tried.

I crept over to each of the nearby windows and checked on the state of the infected outside. None seemed to be paying the building any special attention.

I repeated the process on the lock of a soda machine, gathered up what I needed, and headed upstairs with ten thousand calories of assorted junk foods and carbonated drinks.

Chapter 17

Back in the room, I had first watch, so Jerome wasted no time in lying down on a bunk and closing his eyes. I took some pleasure in his squirming for twenty minutes as he tried to find a comfortable spot on the narrow, thin mattress.

The tower that stood at the center of campus showed that the time was close to three a.m. I drank two colas and ate a bag of chips, a candy bar, and some mixed nuts. I hoped the caffeine in the sodas would keep me awake for the next several hours.

I sat near the window, with Jerome’s light snoring and Murphy’s heavy breathing behind me. Gunshots sounded nearby and more rang from far away.

At around four in the morning, a battle erupted to the southeast near the hospital involving many guns and countless gunshots. Eventually it petered out, with no hint as to its resolution.

Far on the east side of town, I saw the glow of orange fire against a rising column of smoke. That was not good. Well into our third summer of drought, any fire, if not quickly controlled, would grow out of hand.

The smoke column rose and drifted to the north with the winds that flowed inland off of the gulf during the summer.

Fires were inevitable. Severe watering restrictions and months without rain left most lawns in Austin dry and brown. Non-native trees were dying all over the city. Even the old live oaks were under stress. For the first time in my life, I’d seen oaks killed by a drought. Any random spark from a gunshot had a chance of finding dry tinder on which it could feed.

Hours passed. The morning sun began to steal away the darkness in the eastern sky. It was my turn to sleep. With difficulty, I woke Jerome, planted him in the chair, and lay down on my bunk. I was out instantly.

Chapter 18

When I awoke, the room was stiflingly hot. I was drenched in sweat. The bright, late morning sun was shining in the window. The chair where I’d left Jerome was empty.

“Shit.” I sat up. Lightheaded, I swung my feet to the floor and looked at the door; it was closed. In a flash of panic, I looked down to the floor, where I’d laid my gun and shoes by the bed. They were just as I’d left them. I reached down and scooped up the rifle, a habit I figured I’d need to develop. The sound of Jerome’s snoring drifted down from the bunk above.

“Lazy bastard,” I muttered. I considered rudely slapping him back to consciousness but it would serve no purpose other than to satisfy my anger over his irresponsibility. He needed sleep as badly as I did, so I let him lie.

I walked over and checked on Murphy. He was still out. I shook him lightly to see if he’d wake and got no response.

Taking a seat in the chair I’d used for guard duty the night before, I looked out. The window was closed so I pushed it open to let the breeze flow in. It smelled of smoke and tasted of ash. The fires in east Austin had grown while I slept. Huge billows of black smoke hung in the eastern sky, casting an ominous threat over the old houses and ancient trees below.

I flexed the fingers on my left hand. They remained fully functional, though my arm still felt swollen around the bite. I needed antibiotics, or at least I thought I did. If I was going to survive the virus, I didn’t want to get killed off by a secondary infection.

I thought about running downstairs to grab some cold sodas from the vending machine I’d cracked open the night before, but with my two companions still asleep, it seemed like a bad idea. I settled for a breakfast of cold strawberry toaster pastries and warm soda. I leaned back in the chair and let the caffeine and sugar work their magic on my throbbing brain.

Loiterers wandered through the plaza below. As each came into view, I wondered whether they were normal or infected. In the bright morning light, especially with my dilated pupils, it was hard to discern the hue of their skin. It wasn’t until they came upon the remains of one of the fallen soldiers that I knew; they’d drop to the ground and scour for morsels.

Every single one was infected.

Just as when I went to bed, gunfire still rang in the distance, but at an ever-quickening frequency.

Over the buildings in my way, I saw an upper corner of Brackenridge hospital off to the southeast, but couldn’t tell if the military presence there had benefited them or not. I saw no movement. I wondered whether Steph the nurse was still there, still alive.

What appeared to be a traffic helicopter flew over from time to time, but I never saw the Star Flight helicopter land at the hospital. I suspected that was a bad sign for those at Brackenridge.

Alternatively, I spotted a contrail from an airliner high above. That was good. The whole country hadn’t fallen apart overnight, at least not that I could tell. But in truth, I didn’t know. The airplane could have been Air Force One spiriting the president off to safety on an isolated Pacific island.

At least Murphy, Jerome, and I were in a safe spot for the moment.

I wondered how long the crisis could last, how deeply everything would be affected. I felt foolish for even considering it, but I wondered how much of human civilization would be left when it was over. What if it was never over?

I needed information. I needed news. Absent that, I needed to prepare for the end of the world, or at least the end of modern civilization.

And what did that mean for me? I grew up in a city. I had a degree in philosophy; as useless an education as one could have in a world where figuring how to get your next meal and how not to become one might be as difficult as it had been a few thousand years ago. The great “why” questions of life very suddenly held zero importance.

There was only one real question. Did I want to live or not?

The future would tolerate no ambivalence, it would hold no room for anything but a desperate drive to survive another day, at whatever cost. Anything less would likely lead to death.

I considered for a moment how that would affect humanity in general, how it would affect my humanity. What would I become if I survived? Would I turn into a vicious brute?

I wanted to slap myself. I was already doing it. I was overthinking the problem.

If this was the beginning of the end of civilization, the only question was that of survival. That was it.

I amended the thought to include the survival of my friends. With the harpy rotting on her living room floor and Dan doing the same in their kitchen, at least I didn’t have to wrestle with the moral ambiguity of not having added them to the equation.

Information.

It occurred to me that I needed information on everything. I needed to know how to work that damned rifle in my lap. I needed to know about warfare and tactics. At least all those weekends playing in paintball tournaments hadn’t been wasted time...I hoped.

And what about survival in general? I could barely cook, let alone farm and hunt. What would it take to get clean water? How would I know it wasn’t infected? I needed medical supplies, not just for my arm, but for whatever might happen tomorrow or on any of a thousand tomorrows. What if I wanted electricity? How would I generate that? If this was the end of the world, our infrastructure would soon start breaking down. Water, electricity, the phone system would all go away, one at a time. And the internet…

The internet.

That was it. The internet was, if anything, the storage place for man’s accumulated knowledge. All of the information I needed was there, right now. I needed to find a way to get it. That, perhaps more than any other single thing, would be the key to long-term survival. Not just for me, but for anyone.

The sound of gunfire drawing near pulled my attention back to the now. I couldn’t guess how many people were shooting, but it was more than a half-dozen and probably less than twenty. I stood and tried to discern a direction, but I couldn’t. There were too many large buildings on campus, too many flat surfaces to echo off of.

I wondered if rescuers had arrived. I wondered if all of my thinking and planning were just wasted speculation.

Movement in the bushes down and to my left caught my eye. Between the cars, out of doorways and gaps between buildings, I saw dozens of heads pop up. Through the broken windows of the gymnasium across the quad, I saw movement...lots of it. The gym was brimming with the infected. Just as they had done the night before, they flowed out of the broken windows.

The blast of loud rifle fire caught my attention and I looked left. Coming around the corner on the east side of the gym was a squad of soldiers, weapons up, shooting the infected as they came into view.

The rate of fire increased as the soldiers filed into the plaza. Every infected in their line of sight was going down.

The soldiers were hunting the them and killing them.

Holy crap.

Up close, the infected were humanoid monsters. At a distance, they still looked like normal people.

I was taken aback. Any doubt I had was erased. It was open season on the infected.

People like me.

The soldiers confidently moved into the quad, killing the dozens of infected that they had disturbed there. They shot at the mass flowing out of Gregory Gym. From the west, a growing trickle of infected ran in from the center of campus.

The eight soldiers stood in a rough line across the quad about five or ten feet apart and shot down the rabid infected as they appeared.

The rate of fire increased to a steady din. I looked behind me. Murphy lay as comatose as the night before. Jerome snored as though nothing was going on. It was time he woke up.

I stepped over and let some of my frustration toward him out in a slap across the face. It was mean, but it felt good.

Jerome sat up immediately. A hand went to his cheek and he looked blearily at me. “Wha–?”

He heard the gunfire and looked to the window.

“Something’s happening,” I said. “Time to get up.”

I knelt in front of the window, giving me a good view without making my presence too easily visible.

More and more infected were funneling into the quad from the west.

The soldiers started to glance toward one another and move closer together. They were getting nervous. I would have been too. The hunt was turning into something they hadn’t expected.

From my high vantage, I saw the beginning of the end.

From a gap between the buildings to the rear of the soldiers, I saw a few, then a dozen infected running up behind them. The soldiers were so focused on defending themselves from the flow of infected in front of them that they were unaware of those behind.

I flung the window open wide and leaned out. I yelled, waved my arms, and pointed, but the tunnel vision that focuses your attention on the mortal threat right in front of you prevented them from noticing me.

I vainly yelled some more as the infected behind the soldiers closed the gap.

I raised my rifle and pointed it toward the now solid mass of infected people flowing between the buildings behind the soldiers. There were thousands.

I pulled the trigger and a burst of several bullets ripped toward the horde. Whether I hit anything or whether the mass flowed over my downed targets, I couldn’t tell. The mob surged ahead in blind hungry rage.

I fired again.

Jerome’s lips were in my ear, yelling, “Don’t. They can’t know we’re here.”

Whether he was talking about the soldiers or the infected, I didn’t know or care in that moment.

The soldiers, like the ones the night before, were going to get slaughtered. I had to help.

I fired again but the soldiers were already doomed.

The first of the flanking infected jumped on one of the soldiers from behind. The soldiers beside the downed soldier turned and saw the horde coming. I tried not to imagine the terror he must have been feeling.

I thought to run downstairs, swing the dormitory door open, and find a way to get the soldiers to come in, but they were surrounded before I completed the thought.

The soldiers’ formation collapsed as they tried to retreat under the onslaught, but there was nowhere to go.

The frequency of gunshots rapidly diminished as one by one the soldiers fell.

I pulled my gun back in the window, squatted, and watched the horror of another eight humans getting shredded and eaten by a mob of rabid monsters.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.

“I told you,” Jerome said. “It gets ugly.”

I turned my back to the wall, set my rifle down, put my face in my hands, and leaned back. There were tears in my eyes. The shock of what I’d just seen had gotten to me; all that I’d seen was getting at me. I had to get my emotions under control. I had to toughen up if I was going to survive.

The ogre and the harpy.

The ogre and the harpy.

They were shitty parents, but if anybody was emotionally prepared to deal with the world the way it was at that moment, it should have been me.

Chapter 19

Not far away, four or maybe five blocks, the sound of another battle echoed through the gaps in the buildings. Whether the gunfire represented a failed rescue attempt for the soldiers in the quad or another doomed hunting party, I would never know. All of the infected who couldn’t squeeze themselves close enough for a bite of one of the dead soldiers in the quad turned their attention to the sound of the new gunfire and ran off in that direction.

“How can there be so many, so fast?” I asked.

Jerome said, “I told you what Kenya was like.”

I nodded like I understood. Sure, I’d heard his description, but I hadn’t assimilated it. I didn’t believe it could be that bad.

“Do you know how many people are in Austin?” Jerome asked.

“In the city limits, or in the area?” I asked.

Jerome told me, “Diseases don’t see political boundaries.”

“A million, maybe more.”

“You can round off the numbers any way you want.” Jerome pointed out the window. “If there aren’t around a million infected out there right now, there will be by the end of the week.”

“That’s a pretty bleak outlook,” I complained.

“I’m just telling you what I know.”

“You don’t think––”

“No. I don’t think,” Jerome interrupted. “There is no hope. There is no cure. There is no way to stop it or slow it down.”

“Is that the CDC’s position, or your opinion?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter right now, does it?”

“Yes, it does,” I argued. “It tells us what we need to plan for.” Regardless of how much I agreed, I didn’t want to let go of the hope that this wasn’t the end. I liked drinking beer on Saturday night. I liked watching football. I liked casual sex. I loved air conditioning. I liked living without fear.

“Plan for the worst.”

I turned my attention back out the window.

We sat there and silently watched the infected feed.

After a while, I said, “We’ll need more weapons and more ammo.”

Jerome nodded. “Are you going down again?”

“Of course.” I made little effort to mask my irritation.

“I don’t think you’ll get shot at again,” Jerome told me. “I doubt there are any soldiers around that would mistake you for a zombie or a looter or whatever. It should be safe.”

“Provided the infected don’t eat me.” More sarcasm.

“They didn’t last time,” Jerome countered. “It should be safe.”

“But it’s still going to be going down there.”

“I could go,” Jerome said. “But you and I both know the unfortunate truth. I’m an epidemiologist. Expertise like mine isn’t going to be easy to come by in the future. If we as a society ever want to have a chance at returning to normal, we’re going to need people like me. You decide, Zed. I’ll go if you want me to.”

I turned away and picked up my MOLLE vest. I wished I’d taken the time the night before to rinse it off in one of the shower stalls. At least the blood on it was dry. It was serviceable.

As I checked my ammunition magazines, I told Jerome, “I agree that we need to prepare for the worst-case scenario. I thought about it a lot this morning.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know if this is where we’re going to end up for the long haul, but in the absence of an alternative, we need to hoard as much water, food, and ammunition as we possibly can. Do you know anything about this end of the world stuff? You don’t happen to be a closet survivalist, do you?”

Jerome shook his head. “I’ve killed zombies in video games, but that’s about it.”

“Did you grow up on a farm? Do you know anything about agriculture?”

“No, nothing,” Jerome answered.

I opened the door and said, “A couple of things. I think that if this really is going to get as bad as it looks right now, and if we manage to live through the first six months or a year, you know what is going to make the difference between long-term survival or starvation?”

“Lots of guns?” Jerome answered.

“No.” How could this guy have a PhD in anything? “Information.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Jerome, we don’t know jack about how to take care of ourselves once the grocery stores empty out. We don’t know how to farm. We don’t know how to hunt. We don’t know how to preserve food. We don’t know how to purify water. We don’t know anything about providing for ourselves that doesn’t involve a grocery store, an electric bill, or the internet. We need to gather up as much information on those subjects as we possibly can, before the internet goes down and we’re stuck with nothing.”

“But what good will it do in digital form?” Jerome asked. “There won’t be any electricity.”

It was time to talk to him like he was a child. “Jerome, there are solar chargers for laptops out there. We just need to find them. Hell, maybe we can even set up some solar panels on the roof and have electricity. But we don’t have any idea how to install that stuff. My point is that we can download a ton of information onto a flash drive. We’ll be able to work out a way to read it later when we need it, but we need to find a way to get busy on that as soon as possible.”

Jerome nodded. “Yeah. I agree.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” I said. “I’m not going to prop the door open downstairs with all of the infected running around. They could wander in here.”

“And?”

I tapped my index finger on Jerome’s sternum none too gently and said, “You need to come downstairs and mind the door while I go outside. If I come running back in a big hurry again, you need to be ready to open it up for me.”

Jerome just looked at me for several long moments as though I’d spoken another language.

“Jerome?”

“Who’s going to keep an eye on Murphy?” He asked.

“We have bigger problems than Murphy right now,” I told him. “I need your help here.”

“Yeah, fine.” Jerome nodded as he looked away from me. “I’ll take care of the door for you.”

Stepping toward the door, I said, “Then grab your gun and c’mon. Do you know how to work it yet?”

Touching his finger to the pistol’s trigger, he testily said, “I pull this.”

“Did you figure out how to change the clips last night,” I asked, “and turn the safety on and off?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I hope so,” I said as I opened the dorm room door. “Our lives are going to depend on these guns.”

“Yeah,” Jerome conceded. “I know.”

By the time we got downstairs, most of the infected had wandered off to chase other noises and presumably other prey. Less than a few dozen were still in the quad, squabbling over the scraps of the dead.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked.

Jerome looked through the glass at the carnage in the quad and nodded nervously.

“Okay,” I said, “when I go out, don’t let the door slam behind me. I don’t want the noise to call any attention to me.”

“Okay,” said Jerome, still looking past me and out through the glass door.

Fear elevated my heart rate, moistened my palms, and hastened my breathing.

I chanted my new mantra in my head. The ogre and the harpy. The ogre and the harpy.

There was no telling what might happen when I went out. Rational thought told me that the infected weren’t interested in eating me, but the world had just changed. I needed to change my assumptions along with it. My assumption last night that people wouldn’t randomly shoot at me had nearly gotten me killed.

I drew a deep breath and pushed on the door handle. “Here goes.”

I walked slowly out of the building, across the sidewalk, and onto the grass.

Please nobody pay attention to me.

The ogre and the harpy.

Only a few infected were left at the carcass of the first soldier I came to. I gathered up all that looked useful: another assault rifle, more ammunition, and a radio. The infected showed some interest in me at first, but realized quickly enough that I was one of them. My skin was pale. My eyes were dilated, like theirs. I wondered if I’d end up like them. I shuddered at the thought.

I went back to the door where Jerome waited. As planned, he opened the door and I dumped the goods on the floor inside.

Jerome smiled and nodded at me. “Good job.”

I smiled back, turned, and mouthed, “Fuck you, Jerome.” I headed out to scavenge from the next dead soldier.

By the time I arrived at what was left of the fourth soldier, I had a total of six full magazines for my assault rifle, plus a pistol in a holster and three magazines for it. An infected man was trying to pull some bloody, meaty bones out of the soldier’s tactical vest. I grabbed the vest and wrestled with it, hoping to shake the infected man’s grip on his prize. The vests, I was learning, held all the extra ammunition that the soldiers carried, plus other goodies.

A woman’s scream echoed from a few blocks to the west. I immediately looked up, as did every infected head in the quad.

While I squatted, frozen in the grass, evaluating the situation, the infected around me showed no evidence of such a paralyzing thought process. They were on their feet in an instant, heads swiveling to pinpoint the source of the sound.

Several of the infected started moving toward the chemistry building across and just down the street. Half of the rest followed at a walk or run. Many started to sprint.

I shot a glance toward Jerome, looking for advice I guess, but I only saw a reflection on the tinted glass of the closed door.

My survival instincts told me to run back to the door and get inside. With a live screaming human back in the picture, I had no idea what kind of feeding frenzy the infected might get into. I didn’t know if I’d get attacked.

The scream echoed again, closer this time.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

No infected were near me; they were all moving in pursuit.

I double-checked that the safety on my assault rifle was off and I brought it up to my shoulder. I pointed it out in front of me, the same way I used to carry my paintball gun. I checked over each of my shoulders to ensure that there were no infected flanking me.

Safe for the moment.

Chastising myself for the mistake I was sure I was making, I started walking toward the source of the sound.

It was coming from a fifty-foot wide breezeway cut through the building at its midpoint.

Another scream for help echoed out.

The infected from the quad swarmed toward the opening. More came from up the street. Those that could, sprinted. The injured among them hobbled or crawled.

The situation was clear. If the screamer came through that breezeway toward me, toward the hundreds of infected already running toward her, she was dead. They’d shred her before she made it to the street.

I flipped the switch on my gun to full auto and without an intelligent, restraining thought, I squeezed the trigger.

The infected I saw down my barrel fell. As the mass of them heard my gunfire, they skittered to a halt and turned toward me. I knew from watching the soldiers earlier that the balance of my life would be measured in seconds if I didn’t move my feet. The sound of my weapon would draw every infected from blocks around. Even if I did have enough ammunition to kill them all, they’d surround me—they’d come too fast.

My thirty-round magazine emptied. I ejected it, grabbed another from my vest and slapped it into the receiver. I mercilessly sent another thirty rounds into the horde moving in my direction.

I put in another clip. I checked my flanks and pulled the trigger.

No one came out. If someone had been running through, unless caught by the infected, they should have been out onto my side of the building.

I immediately lost hope and regretted my attempt to assist the screaming woman.

I backpedaled, and shot at the infected closest to me. I prepared to make a dash for the dormitory door and safety.

Movement to my left caught my eye. From around the end of the Chemistry building, just across the street from where I stood, a terrified girl came running.

“Uh oh.” I emptied another magazine to buy some seconds.

I ejected my clip and pushed in another as the girl started to cross the street. A half-dozen bloody infected pursued. She must have seen me as a chance to escape, because she ran right at me. I leveled my weapon at the infected behind her.

The three closest fell to my fire. I missed the fourth and got the sixth. Just as she got to me and with number four crossing the street, I fired another burst and his head exploded in a red mist. Number five tripped over the body. We had some seconds to work with.

The girl’s eyes were wide. She was gasping for air.

“We need to move,” I told her, fear and excitement turning it into a yell. I spun and raced for the door. She didn’t need further direction, and stuck with me step for step.

As we closed the distance to the door, I saw a few, then more infected coming up the gap between the buildings up ahead, the same gap they’d come through to get behind the dead soldiers in the quad earlier that day.

Panic was setting in as we reached the sidewalk in front of the door. It didn’t swing open.

“Damn it, Jerome.” I grabbed the handle and pulled.

“Hurry,” the girl screamed.

I pounded my fist on the glass. “Jerome.”

“Hurry.”

Chapter 20

I put my back to the locked door and scanned the quad. Perhaps twenty infected had just come off the street in front of the chemistry building and had rounded the corner off to our right. A half-dozen more were coming up in front of us, angling across the quad from the gap between the buildings to our left.

I could only think of one way out. “C’mon.”

I ran directly at the six infected who were angling across the quad and hoped the girl had the courage to follow or the good sense to run the other way while the infected were focused on me.

The gap closed between me and the infected rushing at me. I put the rifle to my hip, came to a sudden stop not ten feet from the closest in the group, and fired. They all fell as the magazine ran dry.

I switched my magazine and took out the closest of the pursuers behind. I shot another burst and realized that shooting more of the chasing infected was a futile effort. For each one shot, more filled in from those running up behind.

“C’mon.” I shouted at the girl. It was going to be a foot race for our lives.

I accelerated to a full sprint with the girl lagging behind. I slowed a tad, so that I didn’t leave her panicking and too far back.

I headed for the far side of the gym and prayed that when I rounded the corner, I’d be welcomed with an empty plaza.

Once at the corner, I overshot it at full speed. I didn’t want to make the turn blindly and step into the waiting arms of a lucky infected who might be there.

Fortunately, there was not one. Aside from those that I’d shot coming across the quad, any others from that side of the gym must have run around the gym in the other direction when they heard the noise of the gun and the screams.

The girl rounded the corner and she followed me toward the building’s entrance. The infected were getting close.

We made it to the doors and I thanked God that they weren’t locked. I swung one open and motioned the girl toward the door on the other side of the wide hall that led onto the basketball court where I’d been sequestered the night before with Murphy and Jerome. I stopped, fretted over my choice for half a second, and gambled. I shoved the barrel of the rifle through the looped metal handles of the double doors, effectively barring them. That wouldn’t keep the infected out, but it would buy us some time.

Just as I let go of the rifle, I heard the girl’s scream from inside on the court.

“Shit.” I drew my pistol and ran through the doors and onto the waxed wooden floor.

The girl had come to a stop just past the bleachers. I came in to see a bloody mess of bodies. Most were shot but not all were dead. None appeared to be completely mobile. Those that could move at all squirmed and crawled toward us.

“Let’s go.” I led the girl across the gym, hoping to get behind the far bleachers before the infected mob broke through the doors and saw our escape path.

The infected on the floor moaned and screamed their frustration at not being able to get their hands on us.

We made it under the bleachers and were halfway to the entrance to the tunnel system when I heard the gym’s door give way.

“We need to hurry.”

Stepping clumsily over the shin-high cross braces we arrived at the tunnel entrance. Dozens of the infected entered the gym, and their howls echoed through the cavernous space.

The girl saw where we were going and hesitated.

With no time for convincing, I simply said, “C’mon,” and jumped feet-first into the tunnel. I landed hard, eight feet below on the concrete floor and rolled forward into the pipe-covered wall.

I looked up. The girl was doing some combination of climbing and falling down the ladder.

Once she hit bottom, I held up a hand to bring her to a stop and a finger to my lips to beg her silence. Dead, noiseless air was our only friend at that moment.

If there were any infected in the tunnel already, the shadows kept the secret of their presence.

I pointed the pistol in front of me and waved for the girl to follow.

Chapter 21

We jogged quietly up the tunnel. I thought about the eventual failure of the electrical grid. How long would that take? The thought made me nervous. I had no flashlight and no matches. A failure at that moment would have left us in fatal darkness. I made a mental note of another assumption from the previous week’s life that I needed to discard—the dependability of electricity.

On one evening in the near future, nighttime would slither up over the horizon, and planet Earth would again know real darkness and the terrors that lurked there.

We followed the same route that Murphy, Jerome, and I had followed the night before. The tunnel sat parallel to the road that ran between the dorm and the chemistry building. It stretched the length of the campus from north to south.

Thankfully, I saw no movement in the distance in front of us, but that might not be the case once the infected that chased us into the gym discovered our escape route and followed us into the tunnel. The noise they’d make would alert anything in the tunnel to our presence. With only a few magazines for the pistol, I knew I couldn’t defend us for long if any infected swarmed toward us.

We needed an exit.

I made a right turn into the tunnel that led under the dorm that held Murphy and Jerome safely on the fifth floor. “Fucker,” I muttered.

The girl stopped, startled.

I shook my head to indicate that my utterance held no meaning.

“Almost there,” I whispered, pointing up the tunnel. “We’ll be safe when we get through that door at the end.” Of course, I didn’t mention that that was based only on the hope that the building wasn’t full of the infected.

I jogged down the tunnel with the girl close behind.

I had no faith that Jerome had come down and unlocked the door in the dormitory’s basement; so little, in fact, that I didn’t slow my pace as we came upon the alcove that kept the door to our dorm hidden from view. I focused instead on the doorway at the end of the tunnel that led into the building next to our dorm.

As I stepped in front of the shadowy alcove, I caught a blur of movement to my left. Before I could do little more than raise a protective arm, I was slammed hard against the other wall, with the weight of three struggling bodies pushing me to the floor.

They were infected.

For the second time in less than a week, a human jaw full of dirty teeth ripped into my left forearm.

I struggled to pull my pistol out. Just as I got hold of the handle, the infected biter threw her head back, grimaced in disgust, and spat my blood from her mouth.

She pushed forward with her arm to get off of me. The girl who’d been following me was apparently a tastier focus for her hunger. The other two infected gathered their feet beneath themselves.

As their weight came off, my pistol came free. I pressed it against the back of the head of the infected woman on top of me and pulled the trigger. Her face exploded onto the concrete floor of the tunnel.

The other two infected looked back, stunned by the explosive report of the pistol.

I raised the pistol and shot one through the neck. She fell across my legs as the other stepped to rush the uninfected girl. I shot him twice in the back. He fell but didn’t die.

The girl backed away from the writhing monster.

I squirmed out from underneath the bodies on top of me, stood, and fired a fourth bullet. It found home in the skull of the squirming man. He went limp.

The girl’s eyes were wide with shock. I probably had the same look on my face. We stood there for a second with overloaded brains and ringing ears.

A riot of screams echoed up the tunnel from whence we came.

“Oh, my God,” the girl mumbled.

We bolted at full speed toward the far end of the tunnel.

Please, God, let the door be unlocked.

A dozen seconds later, I was at the door with my hand on the knob. The life of the girl, and possibly my life, depended on whether it would turn.

I torqued the knob.

The locking mechanism inside clicked free.

I yanked hard on the door and the girl and I stepped into a dark, quiet basement.

I wasted no time in slamming the door shut, but there was no deadbolt, no latch. The only way to lock it was with a key. No key was in sight.

I scanned the dim room for something with which to secure the door.

“Damn it.” I said. “We need to keep going. They’ll figure out soon enough that we’re in here. When they do, we won’t be able to keep that door shut.”

The girl and I looked around. The basement was large, the size of a few classrooms. At its center stood an enormous heating and cooling unit. The walls were stacked with dusty junk and shelves. At the far corner, a staircase led down from a door at the top. The girl was already running toward it.

I gave one more glance to the door to the tunnel system, hoping desperately to see a lock that I knew wouldn’t be there. Confirmation of the lock’s absence sent me running to the stairs.

The girl reached the door at the top of the stairs before I made it to the first step. She grasped the handle with both hands and rattled it loudly in its frame. It was locked.

“No,” she yelled.

“Damn.” I looked around.

A chance at living returned when I spotted an elevator door to my left. It had been hidden from our view by the heating unit in the center of the room. I ran over and pressed the button. It responded with a faithful amber light.

I looked up at the girl with the last of my hopes on my face.

She looked back, frozen with the door handle in her hand, waiting for who knew what.

With my body language I urged the elevator to hasten its arrivel. The sound of the infected filled the hall outside the basement door through which we’d just come.

Ding.

The elevator was arriving.

Relief.

The girl bounded down the stairs as the door to the tunnel banged hard. The infected were on the other side.

The girl yelped something I didn’t catch.

The light from the elevator seeped through the seam between the doors. It was one level up. I stepped around the heating unit to see the tunnel door. It was jiggling and coming a few inches open, before slamming shut again under the weight of the infected crowding the tunnel behind it.

The doors of the elevator opened. The girl jumped in and pushed a button. I was immediately beside her. I pressed the button to close the doors just as the infected burst into the basement. Their frustrated screams echoed through the space as the doors pulled together.

I inhaled a breath of relief, then raised my pistol and steeled myself for a danger I just knew would await us when the door opened again.

The girl looked at my unsteady hand holding the raised pistol. She put her back to the wall of the elevator.

The ogre and the harpy.

The elevator dinged to announce its intention to stop on the building’s ground floor. I looked down at the panel. The light for the top floor glowed.

I drew a full magazine from the pouch on my vest. I didn’t intend to die while fumbling for a cartridge full of bullets.

I pointed the pistol at the seam between the elevator doors. “Push that close button as soon as the door opens. I won’t be able to keep the infected out for long.”

“Okay.” Her voice cracked with fear, but she was steady enough.

The elevator stopped. I drew a sharp breath and braced myself.

The doors slid silently apart.

The girl lunged for the button and pressed it over and over.

People stood in the hall—men dressed in khakis. They didn’t move. Their eyes showed their fright.

They didn’t look infected.

They held what looked like wooden training rifles by the barrels over their heads, ready to swing.

Nobody moved. None of us knew what to do. We all had clearly expected something different when the doors opened.

The elevator dinged again and the doors started to close.

“Hey,” one of the guys said.

I pulled the pistol back by my chest, stuffed the extra magazine into my pocket, then put my hand out to stop the elevator doors. “Hey,” I replied, flatly.

“Hey,” another one said.

“Say something else,” I commanded. “I need to know you’re not infected.”

“We’re not infected,” the guy directly in front of me said. “You look like you are.”

All the guys tensed. Their toy rifles inched menacingly higher.

“Back off, fucktards,” I told them. “My gun is real.”

“He’s fine,” the girl told them. “He saved me from…from them.”

From the hall to the left of the elevator a hand reached around and grabbed my wrist.

A big guy next to the talker lurched toward me, raising his wooden rifle to strike.

I fired a deafening round into the wall beside the big guy. Everybody froze.

“If you don’t get your hand off my wrist,” I shouted, “I’m going to shoot your fucking arm off.”

The hand released and disappeared around the corner.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked harshly.

The talker said, “You’re infected.”

“I’m not,” I answered.

“When were you bitten?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m immune.”

“Nobody is immune,” the talker argued. “Your skin is pale. You’re bleeding from a bite. You’re just not done changing yet.”

With frustration dripping from my tone, I said, “There’s an epidemiologist from the CDC in the building next door. He can tell you whatever you need to know. But in the meantime, you need to believe that I’m immune because I have a gun to prove it.”

“What does the gun prove?” the talker asked.

“It proves I can shoot anybody else who lays a hand on me or tries to hit me with one of those dumbass toy rifles.”

“So you’re the guy from the building next door who was out picking up the guns this morning?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Why didn’t the infected attack you?”

I looked down at my bleeding arm. “I told you, I’m immune. They think I’m one of them, most of the time.”

The girl chimed in, “Please, you guys. Can’t any of you see what’s going on outside? The infected are everywhere, killing everyone. Why are we at each other’s throats?”

“We have to be sure,” the talker answered. “We have to keep the infected out of the building or we’re not going to get through this.”

I said, “Well your basement is full of them. They chased us up the tunnel.”

“The building is secure,” the talker said.

“Thanks for forgetting the elevator,” I told him.

“That’s the only other way out of the basement.”

“If the building’s not secure, we’ll know soon enough.” I glanced quickly between the guys in the hall, looking for any sign that one of them was going to try something again. “Listen, I don’t want to stand in this elevator all day. If you guys will back off, I’ll be happy to go and wait by a door until the infected calm down outside and I can leave.”

The talker told his four companions to lower their wooden rifles. “My name is Mark. I’m second in command here.”

“Second in command?” I asked. He appeared to be in charge.

“We’re ROTC.”

“Oh?”

Mark said, “Maybe we can help each other out.”

“Now you want to be friends?” I asked.

“Why don’t you come see our CO, and we’ll talk about it?”

I was apprehensive. Moments before, they were raring to bash my head in with their wooden guns.

Mark said, “You two can come out of the elevator. We won’t hurt you. The building is safe.”

I looked at the girl. She seemed willing. I lowered the gun, but didn’t put it away. We stepped out of the elevator, but being surrounded by uniformed men—who just moments before were hostile—made me very nervous.

Mark looked at the big guy beside him. “Tom, would you secure the elevator?”

Tom stepped into the elevator.

“How many of you are there?” I asked.

“Us five and our CO,” Mark answered. “I’ll take you to meet him.”

Chapter 22

The CO was a retired military man with thinning hair, an expanding waistline, puffy cheeks, and a permanent scowl. We met him in a large storage room on the second floor that had long windows overlooking the plaza and the gym.

Mark saluted the CO when we came into the room. The CO returned his salute. Mark said, “Major Wilkins, these two entered the building through the utility tunnels and came up through the elevator.”

Wilkins asked, “Is the elevator secure now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The major turned his attention to me, “And you are?”

“Zed Zane.” I didn’t extend my hand to shake since I still held the pistol.

The major looked to the girl.

“Felicity Bingham,” she said. “I have friends in a dorm and…and we need help.”

Felicity was on the emotional edge. I expected her to burst into tears at any moment, but gave her kudos for keeping it together during our escape.

“We’ll get to that,” Wilkins said. He turned to me. “I saw what you did for Felicity out there, Mr. Zane. That was brave.”

Not comfortable taking the compliment, I shrugged.

Wilkins said, “You can holster your weapon. You’re safe in here.”

I shook my head. “Thanks for letting us in, I guess, but I think I’ll just hold it for now.”

“Why?” Wilkins asked, pointedly.

I gestured to the windows. “You’ve seen the infected. There are a lot of them.”

“They’re not in here,” Wilkins countered.

“Not yet,” I argued.

“You’re in no danger here,” Wilkins said.

“Your guys nearly attacked me coming out of the elevator.”

“When was the last time you looked in a mirror?” he asked. “You look like one of the infected.”

I looked down at myself. My skin had grown paler since I last checked. My arm was bleeding from another bite wound. I had blood and brain splattered on my shirt from when I shot the infected girl in the tunnel.

I looked back at Wilkins and shrugged. “I clean up nicely.”

Wilkins ignored that. “Let’s get right to it then. Are you infected?”

Yes, was the visible truth of it, but I had no desire to back away from my more complex version of the truth. “I’m immune.”

“Immune?” Wilkins said it slowly as though he’d just busted me stealing cookies from the jar on the counter.

“Immune,” I confirmed.

“When did you get bit?” he asked.

“About ten minutes ago in the tunnel.” True but certainly not the other true answer he was looking for.

“The utility tunnel?”

“Yeah.”

Wilkins looked hard at my forearm. “What about the other bite?”

“On Sunday,” I admitted.

“This past Sunday?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“You were bitten four days ago?”

I nodded.

“I’m assuming you’re not naturally an albino.”

“Where are you going with this?” I asked. “You can see I’m not albino. I have color in my skin, just not the normal amount. You can see I have a normal hair color.”

“But you got infected and you turned this way.”

“What do you mean, turned?”

“Turned into one of them,” Wilkins said.

“I think I’m still me.”

“You don’t seem crazed like the other infected,” Wilkins conceded.

I huffed. “I told you I’m immune.”

“Maybe you just haven’t finished turning yet,” Wilkins speculated. “There doesn’t seem to be any standard time for the infection to take over.”

“Look,” I said, coming to the end of my patience with the conversation, “there’s a guy from the CDC who’s holed up with me in the building next door. He says I won’t turn. He says I’m a slow burn.”

“A slow burn?” Wilkins asked. “What’s that?”

“Something about body temperature or something. Look, I’m fine.” I looked down at my ashen skin. “I’m just a little different now.”

“And the other infected, they won’t bother you.”

“I went over this with Mark,” I told him.

Wilkins stared me down.

I held up my arm. “They don’t like my flavor but they’re not very bright. They make mistakes.”

“So that’s why you were able to go out and strip the guns off of those dead soldiers?”

“Hey, that wasn’t you guys who shot at me last night, was it?” Anger rose in my voice.

Wilkins shook his head and patted his sidearm. “This is the only firearm we have. I’m not going to waste my ammo on a scavenger.”

“Yeah, well fuck you too,” I told him. “You can call me a scavenger or whatever, but you see what it’s like out there. We needed guns and I risked my life to get them.”

“I thought the infected didn’t like your flavor.”

“Wilkins, if you’ve been looking out the window, then you see what happens every time I go out there. I damn near get killed.”

Wilkins paused before altering course, “How many guns did you pick up altogether?”

“I’m not sure.” I wasn’t ready to give that information away.

Wilkins pushed on, “How many of you are over there?”

“What are you getting at?”

Wilkins took a deep breath, stood, and walked over to the window. “You’ve seen the news. You know what’s going on.”

I shook my head. “No, I haven’t seen the news. I don’t know shit. I know less than shit. All I know is that my stepdad went nuts, killed my mom, and bit me in the arm. I passed out for two days with a fever, and got arrested by some stupid police who thought I killed everybody. I got out of the jail during the riot…”

“The jail riot?” Wilkins interrupted. “You were in that?”

I brushed past Wilkins’ question and said, “So my friend and I made our way to the hospital, and instead of treating us, the Army tossed us over there in the gym with all of the infected. And now, the infected are running around everywhere killing everybody. Oh, and the CDC guy says it’s some incurable disease out of Somalia. There, that’s it. That’s all I know. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Wilkins nodded, “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Ya think?” Sarcasm; my favorite hobby.

Wilkins softened, “Are you guys thirsty, hungry?”

The change in direction threw me off. I nodded.

Felicity said, “Yes, both.”

Wilkins turned to the cadet who’d come in with us and Mark. “Dawkins, get some sodas and some chips or something.”

“Vending machine food?” I asked.

“The same thing you have next door, I guess,” said Wilkins.

“Yep.”

Wilkins walked over to a chair that gave him a view out the window. “Why don’t you two pull up a chair? I’ll fill you in. Felicity, I’m assuming you’re not with him. At least you weren’t until you came running across the street.”

Felicity shook her head as she sat down. “No, I’m with some girls in Blanton Hall. There were four of us.”

“Blanton?” Wilkins asked, “That dorm is on the other side of campus. How’d you get over here?”

“My friend Margaret and I went downstairs to raid a vending machine for some food and…”

“And?” Wilkins asked.

“We thought we were being quiet,” she said. “We didn’t know anyone else was down on the first floor.”

“The infected were there?” Wilkins asked.

Felicity nodded. “A bunch were right there in the building, on the first floor, and we didn’t even know it.”

“So you ran?” he asked.

“I couldn’t get back to the room,” Felicity said admitted, her eyes drifting into a stare. “They caught Margaret but I just kept running. I didn’t go back to help her.”

“You couldn’t have helped her,” Wilkins told her. “If you’d gone back, you’d be dead too.”

Felicity nodded. “I just ran and ran. I couldn’t get away until Zed started shooting them.”

“And your other friends, are they still in Blanton?” Wilkins asked.

“I guess.” She nodded. “They were there when I left.”

Wilkins asked, “Do you guys have an internet connection and cable TV? Is everything still operating?”

Felicity nodded.

“So you know what’s going on?” Wilkins asked.

Felicity nodded again.

Wilkins leaned forward and put a comforting hand on Felicity’s knee. Suddenly, he seemed more like a father than a retired major with a stick up his ass. “Felicity, I don’t know if we can help your friends right now, but I’m sure they’re being smart and sitting tight in their dorm room, just like we’re sitting tight here. Why don’t you go with Mark? He’s got a connection on his laptop. Why don’t you see if you can contact them and let them know you’re all right and then we’ll see what we can do?”

Felicity said, “I have my cell phone.”

Wilkins said, “But you probably don’t have a charger with you.”

Felicity shook her head.

“I have the same problem with mine,” he told her. “Why don’t you conserve your battery and try the laptop.” He looked over at Mark. “He has it plugged.”

Felicity nodded and stood to leave the room with Mark.

Dawkins returned with cold sodas and packaged cupcakes. He handed me one of each.

“Thanks,” I told him.

Dawkins went over to stand by the door.

Without making a show of it, I slipped my pistol into its holster. I asked, “So what’s the story? What’s happening?”

Wilkins got a distant look on his face. “The infection came out of Africa about six weeks ago. Nobody really knew what it was at the time. But wait, let me preface what I know with this—we’re getting all of our information off of the cable news channels and the internet, so take everything with a grain of salt. Half of what we know is probably speculation.”

“I hear you,” I said. “Some things never change.”

Wilkins smiled and nodded. “The disease came up out of Africa. Nobody knew what it was at first. By the time that we started getting brief mentions on the news over here, there were already tens of thousands of infected in Africa, but your CDC man probably told you that.”

“He knew quite a bit about Africa, but we don’t know much of anything about how things are now.”

“So you didn’t hear about China or Europe?”

“Major, let’s just pretend I don’t know anything and go from there.”

Wilkins nodded. “China has been establishing a big presence in Africa for the past five or ten years, so they had a lot of people there. Once things got out of hand in Africa, China pulled their people. Some other countries did as well. Americans trickled out slowly because there isn’t any central authority with the power to make them all leave, but the smart ones got out. Or at least it was smart for them, but bad for the rest of us.

“China, with a sudden influx of people from Africa, suddenly had thousands of the infected on their hands. So while our news outlets were foaming at the mouth with stories about minor outbreaks in Europe, this thing was already running amok in Asia. Things got out of hand real fast.”

“Out of hand?” I asked.

“Nobody has heard a word out of China since last weekend, about the time the infection broke out here.”

“How long did all of that take in China?”

“They pulled their people from Africa about four weeks ago. Two weeks later, the internet lit up with videos and pictures of the infected. The rest of the Far East followed suit. That was two weeks ago. Now China is a black hole.”

“A black hole?” I asked.

“No television. No reporters. Very little internet traffic. It just died out. Other governments lost contact with their government.”

I shook my head. “Is that what’s happening here?”

Wilkins nodded. “Here in Austin last weekend, Dallas and San Antonio by Monday. It started in Houston on Tuesday. Some east coast cities, and now it’s all over the country.”

I asked, “But we’re a modern country. Most of China is third world. Surely we have the infrastructure in place to handle something like this?”

“I don’t know,” said Wilkins. “I’d like to think that we’re more capable, but from what I’ve seen on the news, it looks like things are going to get very, very ugly.”

“End of the world?” I asked, expecting him to disabuse me of the notion.

Wilkins nodded.

Crap.

Chapter 23

Wilkins asked, “The people you’re with, how do they feel about you being infected?”

Taking a glance in the direction of the dorm, I said, “They don’t care.”

“You must have some very understanding friends.”

“I don’t know them that well,” I said as I tried to figure out if whether to take his statement at face value. “I just met them.”

“Really?” Wilkins paused. “In the gym?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“They were infected too?” He asked.

I nodded again.

“Were there a lot like you in the gym? Immune?”

I shook my head. “We were the only three, and I’m not sure about one of us.”

“So there are just three of you?”

“You know we’re armed.” I told him, wanting to make that point clear. As much as I wanted to trust Wilkins, my first moments in the building were giving me pause.

“That’s not why I’m asking,” he assured me. “We mean you no harm. The cadets didn’t intend to threaten you when the elevator door opened. It’s just that we all have to be more careful now. You understand that, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“I watched you through the window,” he said. “You picked up a lot of weapons for just three guys.”

“We were planning for the worst.”

“What can I do to talk you out of some of those weapons?” he asked.

That made me think. They were just people like me, trying not to get killed. They were wary. We all had a right to be. I asked, “What do you know about the rifles the soldiers were carrying?”

“It’s the standard weapon. It’s a military issue M-4.”

“Shows you what I know,” I said. “I was guessing an AR-15.”

“Same thing, Zed. One is for civilian use, the other, military.”

“Ah,” I said. “Well, I don’t know anything about how to use or take care of one.”

“You looked like you handled it pretty well out in the quad,” said Wilkins, “when you were shooting the infected.”

“Well, as long as nothing goes wrong, I’m good. But like I said, I don’t know anything about taking care of a gun unless it shoots paintballs.”

“You’re a paintball player?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“So is my son,” he said.

“It’s a lot of fun.”

“Yep,” he agreed. “I hope he’s okay.”

“Is he here in town?” I asked.

“No.” he shook his head. “He’s in the Army, stationed up at Fort Hood.”

I didn’t know whether to offer encouragement or condolences. “Look, we’ve got more guns than we need right now. We can spare at least one M-4, and I may be able to go out and pick up those other guns. I mean, my luck has got to get better than it’s been. If you’ll show me how to handle one of these properly and how to take care of it, we’ll call it even.”

“That sounds good. How are you guys set for food?” Wilkins asked.

“Same as you, I imagine. We had eight vending machines and they all seem stocked—at least the ones I broke into.”

“We’ve got four in this building,” Wilkins told me.

“But there have got to be at least a thousand spread all over campus,” I speculated.

“You’re probably right about that,” Wilkins agreed.

“It’s not nutritious, but it’s a lot of food with a long shelf life.” I thought for a second about what else we might need. “How are you guys set for electronics? We don’t have anything.”

“I’ve got a cell phone with half a charge,” said Wilkins. “Mark may have a charger for his. Most of the guys have laptops, but again, only a couple have cords to plug them in.”

I nodded. It wasn’t great but it was better than nothing.

“Zed, you seem like a good guy to me.”

“Okay…”

“I don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” said Wilkins, “but we might all be better off if we combine forces, so to speak, and work together.”

I nodded. “Sure, we don’t have plans past getting through the day. I mean, we talked about some things, but frankly, it’s all guesswork. Do you guys want to move in together?” I laughed. “Your place or ours?”

Wilkins thought on that for a few moments. “Getting together in one building would be best. This building isn’t defensible—too many windows downstairs. Your building has fewer ground floor windows that we’d need to fortify. We might make do with that until we figure out something better.”

“That’s fine,” I agreed. “We’ve got plenty of room. We’re camped out on the fifth floor. The rooms up there have great views of the surrounding areas and they each have bunks for four.”

“That sounds good,” said Wilkins. “Are you sure you’re comfortable with us moving in?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m not worried about the elevator thing. The world is going crazy and we’re all on edge. Besides Major, you seem like a good guy.”

Wilkins asked, “And your CDC man won’t mind?”

“I doubt it,” I answered. “He’d welcome the company. I think he’s afraid to be by himself.”

“Okay,” said Wilkins, seeming satisfied with the progress of our little negotiation. “That leaves the girls in Blanton.”

I shook my head on that subject. “What are you thinking?”

“I have an idea,” he said, “but you might not like it.”

Chapter 24

With a sour look on his face, Mark swung the door open and I walked out into the blazing afternoon heat with a fully-loaded pistol in hand and half a magazine to spare. The air tasted of ash. The formerly ubiquitous traffic noise from the highway was gone. Howls of the infected echoed between the buildings. The sound of distant gunfire popped in the air—the sounds of civilization falling apart.

My feet crunched brown blades of grass as I walked out into the center of the quad. The infected lurking in the shadows of the giant oaks and behind the shady bushes gave me only a passing glance.

I squinted in the harsh light and realized that I needed sunglasses if I was going to function in the daylight hours with permanently dilated pupils.

I turned and looked up at the window on the fifth floor of the dorm where I thought Jerome would be cowering—unless Murphy had turned, broke free, and ate him. I waved an arm and watched the dormer window.

Nothing.

I waved again, but got no response. “What a pussy.”

I went about my business of collecting. With a specific prize in mind, I was lucky to find a pair of sunglasses in the pocket of the first dead soldier I came to. Seeing that the infected had no interest in me, I collected two full sets of gear including tactical vests, helmets, and weapons.

On my way back to the ROTC building I angled close by the dormitory to see what I might see.

The click of the mirrored glass door on the side of the dorm startled me. I stopped and looked over. Jerome poked his head out nervously and waved me over.

I looked around to check on the state of the infected in the area. I headed over toward Jerome, and harshly whispered, “What the hell, dude.”

Jerome nodded his head toward the infected and gave me a look that said ‘stay quiet.’ He swung the door open wide for me and noiselessly pulled it closed behind us.

In the long hallway that ran the length of the building, I laid the equipment on the floor and turned on Jerome. I made no attempt to mask my anger. “Damn it, Jerome, I could have been killed by those infected. You were supposed to open the door. What the hell?”

“Dude, dude. Be cool, man.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t need to be cool, man. What I need to do is beat your ass.”

Jerome stepped back. In a condescending tone, he said, “Don’t go all Neanderthal on me, Zed. Grow up. I did what I had to do.”

“You had to lock me out because you’re a pussy, you mean?”

“Zed, if I had let you in with a hundred infected chasing you and hundreds more coming up the street, how long do you think that door would have held once they saw you come through it?”

I didn’t answer. My rage had bubbled to the surface and my brain, impaired by anger, was in no mood to hear reason.

“Think about it, man.”

I huffed and picked the gear up off the floor just to keep my fists from balling up and beating Jerome.

“You know I’m right. They would have come in here and killed you, me, Murphy, and that girl. And then where would you be?”

I held up my freshly bitten and still oozing forearm for Jerome to see. “They wouldn’t have killed us. They don’t seem to like our flavor.”

“But one bit you anyway,” he argued.

“Duh.” It’s amazing how much you can make one syllable sound like “fuck you anyway,” when you really try.

“Don’t you see, Zed?”

“See what?”

“Just because they don’t want to eat us doesn’t mean they won’t injure us if they’re in an excited state. They might even kill us.”

I headed toward the elevator.

“By the way, what happened to the girl?” he asked.

“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s in the building next door.”

As we rode the elevator up, I quickly related what had transpired. We were standing in the hall on the fifth floor when I finished and I told him about Wilkins’ idea that we join forces.

Jerome said, “That’s not a good idea.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to have them here. We don’t know these guys.”

“Jerome, twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t know you. Forty-eight hours ago, I didn’t know Murphy.”

Shaking his head, he argued, “That’s not what I’m trying to say. They’re not like us.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Infected.”

I snorted and looked away. “I talked to them. We’re cool. They know what the deal is. They know we’re fine. Speaking of which, how’s Murphy?”

“This is a bad idea.” We reached the door of our commandeered room. “Murphy started coming around about a half hour ago.”

“And?” I asked.

“And I think he’s going to be like us, a slow burner.”

I nodded and went in.

Murphy was sitting on the bed guzzling a sports drink. His cuffs were off.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Like crap,” Murphy answered.

“It gets better,” I offered. “Drink lots of liquids. Eat what you can. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be back to normal, or at least as normal as you’re ever going to be again.”

Murphy made a show of looking down at the light-colored skin on his arms. He shook his head. “Are you saying I’m staying this color?”

“Yes,” Jerome answered. “Just be happy you didn’t turn into one of the cannibals.”

“Cannibals?” Murphy asked.

I said, “You’ve missed a lot while you were out.”

“How long?” Murphy asked.

I turned to Jerome. “Why don’t you fill Murphy in? I’m going to get the people from next door.”

“Zed, I still think it’s a bad idea,” said Jerome.

“I know,” I answered. “But it’s a done deal, so let’s be big boys and deal with it.”

I picked up a couple of M-4s that were leaning against the wall, booty from my earlier trip outside. “Jerome, are these loaded?”

He nodded.

“I’ll take these two with me,” I told him. “Are those clips full?”

“The ones on the left are.” He pointed. “The ones on the right are empty.”

“Thanks.” I scooped up a few magazines.

Jerome said, “I know you’re mad, but you did the right thing, helping that girl. That was heroic.”

It was hard, really hard but I said, “You did too, Jerome. If you’d opened the door, we’d probably all have been killed.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Murphy asked.

“He’ll tell you.” I headed downstairs.

The dormitory and the ROTC building were rectangular buildings, erected in line with one another. They formed the southern boundary of the east mall, which lay on the opposite side of the buildings from the quad and Gregory Gym. Because of that, the door at the east end of the dorm fed directly into the door at the western end of the ROTC building with a mere twenty feet of sidewalk in between.

As Major Wilkins and I had arranged, his group was waiting at the western door of the ROTC building when I got to the dormitory’s eastern door. I leaned the extra M-4s against the wall just inside the door and checked the gap between the buildings for lingering infected. I saw that it was clear, and swung the door open. I held it wide and stepped out as far as I could into the gap. I saw infected in the distance, but there were no nearby threats.

I raised a finger to my lips to indicate quiet and waved Wilkins’ group across.

Moments later, Wilkins, Felicity, and the five ROTC guys were in the dorm—with the door closing behind—each exhaling breath they probably hadn’t realized they were holding.

Two of the ROTC guys, Mark and Tom, wasted no time in taking ownership of the weapons I’d leaned against the wall.

I said, “There’s more ammunition upstairs. We don’t have enough weapons for everyone, but there are a lot more outside.”

“Thanks,” Wilkins said, reaching out to shake my hand.

I grabbed Wilkins’ hand and noticed Mark flinch. I glanced and down at my hand to check for blood and gory bits. Nothing.

Mark’s reaction rattled me. Something wasn’t right.

Wilkins fished a pair of car keys out of his pocket and handed them to me. “I can go with you,” he said.

“I can go outside, because I’m infected,” I told him bluntly. “If you go out, the infected will come after you and we won’t stand a chance. Thanks for offering though.”

Wilkins silently agreed.

Felicity jumped between us and threw her arms around me. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

I shrugged as she let go. “Thank me when I get back with your friends.”

She pulled out her cell phone and gave it to me. “Remember, call Amber. She’s on my favorites list, the first one.”

“Okay,” I said. “They know I’m coming and they’re ready to go, right?”

“Yes,” Felicity confirmed.

“And your phone has enough of a charge?” I asked.

“About half a charge,” she said, “but that should be more than enough.”

“Yeah, okay.” I looked everyone over. “Jerome is up on the fifth floor. He and Murphy know you’re coming but be sure to say something when you get off the elevator, just in case.”

“Will do,” Wilkins told me.

With my pistol drawn, I opened the door and went back out into the heat.

Chapter 25

With a callousness that should never have grown so quickly, I walked among the scattered remains of the soldiers, picked out another M-4, and morbidly restocked my ammunition supply. An extra pistol seemed like a good idea, but I cut off my shopping trip there, not wanting to burden myself unduly for when I’d next have to run for my life.

A faculty parking lot lay two blocks over, just as Wilkins had told me. Among the half-dozen cars, I easily spotted his gray sedan. As I approached the vehicle, I clicked the remote once to unlock the driver’s side door. The car responded with a chirp and a flash of the parking lights.

Oops.

I looked around quickly as I realized that it would most likely be some old habit from a different world that would eventually get me killed.

A half-dozen infected were looking at or already running toward the car.

I ran the last twenty feet, flung the driver’s door open, tossed in the M-4, followed it in, and slammed the door shut just as two infected pounced on the car. One landed on the hood and immediately started to beat on the windshield with his fist. The other tried to press his face through the glass on the passenger side window.

“Stupid.” Adrenaline shook my hands as I found the ignition key and started the engine.

The sound of the relatively quiet engine was enough to send the infected into a frenzy. The car bounced as two more infected bodies slammed into its side. The windshield cracked under the persistent fist of the infected woman on the hood.

I shoved the car into reverse and spun the wheels as I backed out. I ran over a soft bump and counted one infected dead. With the crazy infected clawing at the glass all around, I backed into a parked pickup I didn’t see. I shifted the transmission, punched the accelerator to the floor, and the front-wheel drive pulled the car hard right, into two more infected. They rolled off the hood as I raced toward the parking lot exit. I swerved hard to make the turn, and the infected woman on my hood slipped away and skittered across the asphalt.

I raced out onto the street and caught another infected with the passenger side bumper, breaking out the headlight. I checked the rearview mirror. A dozen infected were running up the street in full speed pursuit.

When I hit forty, I figured I’d better dodge as many infected as I could, lest I damage the car’s radiator with an impact. They were everywhere—coming out into the street and onto the sidewalks, out on the expansive lawns, from the gardens and fountains. As I passed, every single head snapped in my direction. Every one of the infected flowed into the street after me.

Good God, there were thousands.

I pushed the car to sixty as another one of the infected glanced off the passenger side of the vehicle.

I smashed the brakes hard and rubber screamed on the asphalt as the car floated into a left turn. I spun the car out on a broad boulevard near the northern edge of the campus and headed west.

I regained control and accelerated toward a wide pedestrian bridge that linked the main campus with the buildings to the north. A hundred heads popped up above the rail on the pedestrian bridge as I rolled under. Just as the echo of the engine bounced back to me off of the concrete all around, I saw the dark silhouette of a body fall in front of me from the walkway above.

I braked and swerved as two more bodies fell. I hit one with the bumper just as the car jarred under the double impact of one on the hood and another on the roof. The windshield shattered into a translucent web.

My foot found the accelerator again and the infected rolled off, but I was nearly blind and speeding west.

I looked to my left and right to gauge my position in the road, and to judge how much further I needed to go. I prayed nothing lay in the street in front of me.

The car lurched from another impact. A body smashed partially through the windshield with a crunch of bones and a splatter of blood. The girl now stuck in the windshield had done me the favor of knocking out enough of the shattered glass for me to see ahead.

I spied a street to the left and cut the wheels hard, skidding loudly. I sideswiped a parked car and drew the attention of a few infected up the street, who immediately came at me.

I checked the rearview mirror. At least a hundred frenzied infected were rounding the corner behind me.

The car wasn’t going to last much longer. I needed to stop and get away from it as fast as possible, or the infected would shred me in their frenzy before they realized that I wasn’t tasty.

I aimed the car at a sharp right-hand corner ahead. Past caring about damage to the sedan, I ran down two more infected and watched parts of the bumper and parts of bodies fly past.

I slammed the brakes as I rounded the curve, and angled toward another parked car.

The collision crunched painfully loud. The airbag deployed and slapped my face hard enough to bloody my nose. The horn bleated and didn’t stop.

I tried the door but it was jammed shut. I elbowed out the fractured driver’s side window and crawled out as quickly as I could with no thought to cuts and scrapes.

I fell free and hit the asphalt with a slap.

I got my feet beneath me, pulled the pistol, and shot two infected who were only steps away.

Thanks to Wilkins’ demonstrably shitty plan, I only had seconds to live unless I put some distance between myself, the wailing car horn, and the infected mob coming up the street.

A quick glance around told me I might have time to grab the M-4 off of the passenger floorboard and get away. To face the frenzied infected without it was certain death.

I jumped back through the window, scrabbling forward. I got a hand on the M-4, smashed my forehead into the cracked passenger side window, and broke it out as I fell through.

I hit the asphalt and rolled into a somersault that put me back on my feet. I was so surprised that it worked that I almost forgot to move.

I made a beeline for the corner of the nearest building and faced eight infected as soon as I made the turn. They were running toward the sound of the car, but caught a magazine full of M-4 rounds for their trouble. I didn’t slow down at all.

Two infected came up out of a stairwell to the building’s basement just as I passed. I shouldered the first one and tumbled them both down the stairs.

I spied a door just ahead and prayed that it wasn’t locked.

Fast feet and adrenaline got me there. I cradled the M-4 in my right arm and pulled the door handle with my left.

It opened.

I stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind me, cutting off the howls of the infected running up the side of the building. I needed a place to hide, and I needed it now.

I ran into a stairwell as the vanguard of the infected horde hit the door. Thankfully, it was another door that opened out, rather than in. Their collective weight held it closed as they struggled to get in, but that would only last for a moment.

I bounded up the stairs and passed two, then three infected. I gasped for air. The first floor door burst open as hundreds of screams filled the stairwell.

I exited the stairwell on three. The hall was empty. Thank God.

Elevator.

If I could get inside, I might be safe.

I ran up the hall and hit the button. The light came on and I waited.

And I waited.

The infected were on the stairs.

“C’mon.”

The infected were close.

The stairwell door slammed open loudly and the infected tripped over each other, spilling into the third floor hall. They saw me.

The elevator chimed and I stepped inside, pushing the button to close the door.

Safe.

I flipped the emergency switch to lock the elevator to keep it from moving up or down— fell back against the wall, slid down to the floor, and finally breathed.

Two breaths later, the elevator doors reverberated with the impact of bodies smashing into it.

Damn. Persistent fuckers.

Fingers started to squeeze their way between the doors.

I jumped to my feet, unlocked the elevator, and pressed the button for the lowest level in the building. The elevator complied, and took me down to the basement. I reloaded the M-4, leveled it at the door, drew several deep breaths to steady myself, and prepared to run and shoot. The elevator chimed and the door opened. Nobody was there.

I stepped out just as I heard the sound of several pairs of feet running up the hall.

Infected.

I pointed the rifle, but knew that if I pulled the trigger, I would never get out of the building alive.

The ogre and the harpy.

It was time to gamble that these guys weren’t in the frenzied mob that was following me, but were lingering in the basement and simply attracted by the elevator noise. I stepped back against the wall, lowered my M-4, and drew the pistol.

The infected slowed as they neared me, stopped, looked me over, saw my white skin, and realized that I was one of them. They turned their attention to the closing elevator doors.

I drew a deep breath and stepped up next to them. Blending in couldn’t hurt.

They spent a full minute searching the elevator for something worth eating. They somehow decided amongst themselves that it was empty, and they followed one another through the open rooms on the basement floor, methodically searching for a live human. I searched with them. With the frenzied mob running through the floors above and howling in frustration, I figured the camouflage of being in a small group of infected might keep me safe.

None of the horde ventured into the basement, but it took a half hour before the noise above diminished.

One by one, the infected in my group gave up the search and settled themselves into a shadowy corner of one of the classrooms where they squatted and stared. I watched them for a bit and wondered how long they’d stay there in the absence of a stimulus.

I found an empty classroom as far from the infected in the basement as I could get. I went in and gently closed the door behind me. Calculus formulae and equations waited on the chalkboards for students who would never arrive. Desks sat in neat rows, waiting for years of rust and rot to erase them from the world.

Sunlight shone in from the west through three window wells that also provided me an ankle-level view outside.

I needed to be patient. The car’s incessant horn was keeping the infected feet outside hurrying urgently around in search of prey. I’d have to stay hidden until they lost interest or the battery died.

I took a seat on the floor where I could lean on the instructor’s desk and be hidden from any eyes peeking through the door.

I was drenched with sweat. I was thirsty and had an adrenaline hangover. At least the room was cool, the floor was wonderfully cold, and I felt somewhat safe.

It was time to think through the next steps. The original plan of loading up the girls and driving them back was off the table. That bad plan had been based on too many old world assumptions. The tunnels were likely still full of infected from my adventure with Felicity earlier in the day. Sneaking back on my own was an option, but the girls’ dormitory lay just across the street.

I needed to think.

The cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was Wilkins with a text message.

Wilkins: Zed, are you okay?

Me: I’m ok.

Wilkins: The girls said they heard a car crash.

Me: About that…

Wilkins: ?

Me: The car was an idea that sounded good but wasn’t. Your car is toast.

Wilkins: It’s wrecked?

Me: The car was a magnet for the infected. They swarmed it as soon as I opened the door.

Wilkins: But you’re okay?

Me: I got lucky, but yes.

Wilkins: Are you still going to try to get the girls, or will you come back?

Me: I don’t know.

Wilkins: Where are you?

Me: I’m in a basement classroom in the building across the street from Blanton.

Wilkins: I’ll let the girls know you’re there.

Me: Tell them to keep quiet. I need some time to figure this out. I’m open to any ideas you guys might have.

I got nothing back for several long minutes.

Wilkins: Nothing on this end. Will keep you posted.

Me: Ok.

I passed an hour in silence, with no ideas from Wilkins.

The shadows were growing long. The infected finally dispersed to wherever they preferred to lurk. I still had no idea how to get the girls back to the rest of the group, but sitting by myself in a basement wasn’t going to solve the problem. I texted Felicity’s friend Amber to let her know I was on the way, and that I’d knock very softly on their door when I arrived.

Chapter 26

Crossing the street was uneventful. Entering Blanton was no problem, as the first door I tried was unlocked. This made sense, since the dorm was in use for the summer session. In the recreation area, I passed at least a dozen infected women—former residents, I guessed—who squatted in a corner and eyed me as I passed by.

I passed the elevator, with its attractive chime, and slipped into a stairwell. I paused and listened. A few floors up, I heard the sound of the infected squabbling over scraps.

I quietly made my way up toward the sound. On the third floor landing, five infected girls were gnawing at someone’s remains—torn clothing, smears of blood, and ragged bones.

The infected snarled, and greedily pushed at me as I waded through. They had no intention of sharing with me.

A fat one squatted in front of the door at the top of the stairs and glared. She got irritated as I pushed past, but did nothing to harm me. I tried to close the door behind me, but she had shifted when I opened the door—her girth prevented it from closing.

The hall was empty in both directions. I took a guess and turned right, reading the door numbers as I walked. I arrived at the correct door and softly knocked.

No response.

Give me a break.

I knocked again.

A voice quietly asked from the other side, “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Zed,” I whispered. I heard noises from the stairwell and turned to my right. Nothing was coming, yet. “Open the door, please.”

I heard the working of the lock and then the door opened.

I stepped inside. A girl was behind the door ready to push it shut, but she pressed herself to the wall in fear when her eyes fell on me. A girl over by the window threw her hands over her mouth and screamed in wide-eyed terror.

“Damn it. Quiet.” I pushed the door shut, but heard a wail and the sounds of running footsteps coming up the hall.

The infected.

I turned to the girl and snapped, “What was that for?”

“I thought…I thought you were one of them,” she said.

“Damn it.” My frustration after a seemingly long sequence of fuck-ups was getting the best of me. “Does every fucking thing have to go wrong? Felicity should have told you about me. You two, get back.”

The girls moved over by the window. I stood in the center of the room and leveled my M-4 at the door, but I already knew that was a bad idea. Gunfire would draw every one of the crazy bastards from blocks around.

My mind raced for an escape plan but before the slightest inkling of a thought could gel, the door shook under the assault of a heavy body running at it. Fists pounded. The doorknob jiggled. The infected wailed and the door flexed.

“Shit.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that aloud. “Have either of you used a gun before?”

The screamer nodded. The other shook her head.

“It’s easy. Point and pull the trigger. But be careful and don’t shoot me.” I handed them each a pistol. “The safety is off.”

“Let’s block the door,” the screamer said.

D’oh. Good idea. “Is that desk bolted down?” I asked.

“It moves,” the screamer told me.

“Great,” I said, “Help me get it to the door.”

As fast as we could, we stacked the bulky desks in front of the door as it rattled in its frame.

I leaned into the wooden desks, adding my strength to the weight. I felt each blow to the door as the wood conveyed the vibration of each fist blow and headlong rush. The girls found every heavy object in the room and stacked them in and on the desks, adding to the dead weight supporting the door against the assault.

With everything moved, the screamer took a position beside me and leaned into the desk. She leaned close to and whispered, “Will they go away?”

I nodded. I hoped.

Chapter 27

Over the course of an hour, the beating on the door dissipated, then ceased. The girls and I silently maintained our positions, holding the desks against the wall for a good while past when we heard the last of the noises disappear.

Finally, we relaxed. I sat on the floor with my back to the desk. Each girl sat on a bed, exhausted, fearful, and hopeless.

No words were spoken between us. The hour-long assault taught us the value of silence when we didn’t know how close the nearest ears might be.

I reached into my pocket for the incessantly buzzing cell phone and handed it to one of the girls. Worried, the others had sent dozens of text messages. In the absence of a response, Felicity probably feared that her friends and I were dead. I’d leave it to the girls to sort it all out.

One of the girls put a hand to her mouth and pantomimed drinking something from a bottle. She pointed at me with a question on her face.

I looked around the room. Empty water bottles and soda cans were scattered on the floor, but nothing that looked like it held any liquid. They didn’t have anything and I didn’t bring anything to drink with me. My past life presumption on the ubiquity of clean water just got killed. I needed to stop learning things the hard way.

I shook my head.

One of the girls, the dark haired screamer, picked up a notepad and pen. She wrote on it and showed it to me.

Amber.

She pointed to herself.

I nodded.

She wrote another name and showed it to me and pointed to the blonde.

Marcy.

I nodded and smiled.

Amber handed the pad and pen to me.

I wrote my name and showed it to them. Didn’t they already know?

Amber took the pad, drew a large question mark and showed it to me.

I shrugged. She got a determined look on her face, but Marcy deflated and sagged against the wall. I thought she might cry.

I closed my eyes and let my head down into my hands, resting my elbows on my knees.

I needed to think.

I heard the very faint taps on the screen of the cellphone as Amber communicated with the other group. The other dorm was probably three quarters of a mile to a mile diagonally across campus. That distance was swarming with infected, all with apparently endless appetites and irritating persistence.

Options again?

Save my own ass and leave the girls? No.

A car? No fucking way.

The tunnels? A gamble with bad odds and no sure escape if things went sour.

I was stuck ruminating on those three options. There had to be others.

The last light of dusk faded slowly from the sky and another hour ticked past. Darkness and shadows from the streetlights were all I could see through the leaves of the oak trees outside the window. I thought about whether the darkness would offer us any advantage in an escape. I knew I couldn’t see any better in the dark, and I didn’t imagine the other infected could either. We all still had the same human physiology we’d had before the disease struck. They had diminished brain capacity. We all had less pigment and dilated pupils. Oh, and one other thing I was coming to suspect—sensations of pain seemed to be all but gone. I felt everything just as I had before, but things that should have hurt so much that I’d normally cry out in pain, didn’t. The painful part of sensation was gone. I’d need to ask Jerome about that.

An idea came to me but I needed to risk a conversation with the girls.

I scooted up on the floor and we all leaned in close together.

I bent forward and whispered, “So you guys texted Felicity, right?”

Amber and Marcy nodded.

“So you know the deal, then.” I looked at each until they nodded. “I have an idea to get us out of here so that we can join the others. Is that what you want to do?”

Marcy nodded.

Amber said, “If we stay here alone, it’s only a matter of time before…”

She was right about that; the fate that she couldn’t bring herself to speak. They would both die.

“I’ll be honest,” I said. “I don’t know that we’ll make it all the way across campus.”

Mary asked, “You think we might get stuck somewhere?”

“No,” I told her. “We might get killed.”

“Killed?”

“Yes.” I didn’t want to paint a rosy picture for them. They needed to know the honest reality in order to make their own choices. I didn’t want to carry the burden of a lie along with the burden of their deaths, if it came to that. “I think there’s very little chance that you’ll make it there alive.”

“But we have guns,” Marcy countered.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “There are too many of them. If we have to shoot, we’ll kill a few, but every infected on campus will come running. There are thousands.”

Marcy deflated and stared down at the nearly useless pistol. Fifteen rounds in a Glock would do little more than delay your death with a hundred infected coming at you. Guns were no solution when dealing with the infected. But guns bought time and time bought distance. Those were the things that could save your life. The only way for a normal not to get killed by the infected was to not be near them.

Amber asked, “If we stay, how long do you think it’ll be before someone comes to rescue us?”

I shook my head, “I don’t know. You probably know better than me. All I know is what Wilkins told me. I haven’t seen any news since, like, Saturday.”

Marcy hissed, “Amber, nobody’s coming. You’ve seen the news.” She dismissively pointed at me. “This is it.”

“Thanks.” Bitch.

Marcy interpreted my tone. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”

Amber stepped in, “She didn’t mean it like that, Zed. We’ve just been stuck in here for two days. We look out the window and we see what’s going on. We’ve been online; we know what’s going on everywhere. Marcy hasn’t been able to get her parents on the phone since Monday. My dad tried to drive in from Lubbock to get me, but he can’t get past the roadblocks around Abilene. We’ve lost our friends. We’re tired. We’re hungry. We’re thirsty, and we’re scared.” Tears filled her eyes.

I looked down at the floor. I felt bad. I wasn’t emotionally attached to the ones I’d lost, and as long as my temperature didn’t continue to rise, at least I had a good chance at remaining alive. For the girls, however, the losses were real, and death loomed large.

“Look, I don’t mean to be a dick,” I said. “It just kind of happens by itself. Marcy, can you pop open your laptop and pull up a campus map? I have an idea that might work. It might take us all night to get to the other dorm, but if we’re careful, I think we can do it.”

With the map in front of us, I explained my plan and was rewarded with a tiny spark of hope in their eyes. I told them to pack up their backpacks.

Marcy said, “I don’t even know what to take.”

“Whatever you’ll need for the rest of your life,” I told her with a straight face, then smiled.

Marcy smiled and rolled her eyes. Amber suppressed a laugh.

In a tense situation, any joke will do.

“I don’t know anything about all this end of the world stuff,” I said, “but if I were you, I’d wear the most rugged shoes I owned. Wear some jeans. Bring some socks and undies, maybe an extra shirt. Bring your computer and charger if you want. Don’t bring more than you can run with. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few days, it’s that you’ll have to run.”

“Why do we need our computers?” Amber asked.

“As long as we have electricity and an internet connection, they’ll come in real handy,” I said.

Both girls nodded.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s get these desks moved as quietly as possible.”

Moving everything while making no sound took a while. When we finished, I very slowly opened the door and peeked out. The hall was empty. I looked to the girls for final confirmation. They nodded.

I headed to the north end of the building. The girls closed the door behind.

I walked as quietly as I could up the hall. I heard no sounds from any lingering infected, but every shadow I passed made me nervous.

At the end of the hall, I slipped into the stairwell and stopped on the landing to listen. No sound came up from below.

I made my way down to the first floor and out into the hall. Just outside the stairwell, the girls told me there was a public restroom. I entered and closed the door silently behind me. I methodically checked each stall to ensure it was empty. The window on the exterior wall had been replaced by translucent glass block. That was good.

On the way out, I checked the door, and indeed, there was a deadbolt lock that could be set from the inside. That was a piece of luck. I closed the door and went back upstairs. From the hall, I texted the girls. A moment later, they opened the door and let me in.

“The bathroom at the bottom of the stairs is clear,” I told them. “The way there is clear. If we go quietly, we can make it.”

Amber nodded.

Marcy’s fear was getting the best of her. She stared through me.

I said, “If you want to back out, now is the time.”

“No.” Amber shook her head and authoritatively said, “We need to go. It’s our only chance.”

“Okay,” I said. “Remember—quiet.”

It took several tense minutes, but we made it down the hall, down the stairs, and into the restroom. I locked the door as we stepped in, then rechecked each stall to ensure that it hadn’t become occupied during my short absence.

“Okay,” I whispered to the girls. “Are we cool?”

Moving was doing Marcy good.

Amber nervously smiled.

I said, “The entrance to the bio-chem building is just across the street from the door at the bottom of the stairwell. I’m going to head across and find us a room there on the first floor. I’ll be back. Keep the door locked while I’m gone. If the infected come, remember, stay quiet. I’ll find a place to hide close by until they wander off. If all goes to shit, then I’ll just shoot them all and we’ll run back up to the room and hope for the best.”

Amber said, “Go ahead. We’re good.”

“Yes,” Marcy agreed.

I left the restroom and crept out across the street and into the bio-chem building. I found our next leap-frog room there on the second floor, just a short distance inside the building. The first floor wasn’t an option. Many infected were silently squatting in the hall up at the other end of the building.

In that fashion, we very slowly worked our way across campus, staying mostly inside, sometimes traversing the length of a building on the first floor, sometimes on the second, and sometimes on the third or fourth.

Thankfully, the school was in a summer session. During the regular semester, there would have been ten times as many students around, hence ten times as many infected in the buildings. As it was, I suspected many of the infected outdoors had wandered onto the campus from the surrounding city.

It took hours, but we arrived at the last outdoor space we had to cross—the street near where Felicity had run earlier that day. Unlike Felicity’s crossing, ours was uneventful. The door on the western end of the dormitory opened as we approached.

We’d made it.

Chapter 28

I stirred when the sun came up and the room got warm, but I pulled my pillow up over my head and extended the darkness.

Later in the morning, voices crept through, but I kept my eyes closed tight and sleep came again.

When I finally did roll over and surrender to the strident sunshine, it was close to ten in the morning. I was alone in the room. I stared at the bunk above me, listening to the morning sounds coming in through the windows and thinking about the previous day’s events. The breeze disturbed the window blinds. Grackles annoyed one another in the branches of the giant oaks. A squirrel chattered a warning. Occasional gunshots in the background were starting to seem ordinary.

The door opened and I tilted my head to see Jerome come into the room. He looked worried.

“Hey,” I said.

“You’re up?”

He came over and sat in the desk chair nearest my bunk. He took a long look out the window at nothing, then said, “The ROTC guys don’t like me.”

“Jerome, I don’t think junior high social concerns are at the top of the list of things we have to worry about.”

He grimaced. “You say that now, but they don’t like you either.”

“Big deal.” I rolled over on my side and then sat up.

“Zed, they’re afraid of us. That Mark guy said we’re an abomination in the face of God.”

That took me by surprise. “Did God tell him that?”

Jerome ignored me. “They think that because we’re infected, we’re a danger to them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Did you tell them that they didn’t have to worry?”

“Of course, I did.”

“And they didn’t believe you?” I asked though I couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t.

Jerome shook his head.

“Why not?” I asked. “You’re from the CDC, if anybody knows what’s going on, it’s you.”

Jerome stared at the floor. “Yeah, well, that’s just it.”

“What’s just it?” I asked.

More staring. More waiting. He said, “You’re going to find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you.”

“Okay,” I prompted.

“All that stuff I told you about the infection—I learned most of that on the internet.”

I swung my feet onto the floor and leaned forward, my interest piqued. “So, are you saying that the CDC didn’t send you to Africa?”

Jerome shook his head.

“So, you didn’t have any real experience with the infection when the CDC sent you to Austin.”

Jerome took a moment to respond. “The CDC didn’t send me to Austin.”

“So what, you just left Atlanta and came here on your own?”

“Zed, I’ve never been to Atlanta.”

“What? What are you saying, Jerome?”

Jerome sighed and looked out the window. “I don’t work for the CDC.”

I was taken aback. “But…”

He muttered, “I own a sub shop over on Guadalupe Street.”

“You own a sub shop across the street from campus?” I said more than asked as the volume in my voice grew.

Jerome nodded.

My temper flared. I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to punch him in the face a bunch of times. I jumped up from the bed and he flinched away. I paced around the room and drew several angry breaths. “Why are you telling me this now, Jerome? I already bought your line of bullshit about the CDC.”

Jerome stared out the window but didn’t answer.

“Well?” I prodded.

“Because those ROTC guys—Tom and Mark—they used to come into my shop all the time. They recognized me.”

“So, you’re just a lying pussy. That’s the bottom line here, right? You made up all that shit so that I’d get you out of the gym, so I’d take all the risks while you sat up here in the room all safe and sissy-like, too valuable to go outside.”

“It’s not like that.” Jerome was looking at the floor.

My fists were clenched. My voice was harsh. “I don’t see how it couldn’t be like that. But hey, why don’t you fuckin’ tell me what it’s like?”

Jerome didn’t.

“Well?” I demanded.

No reply.

“You fucker,” I muttered. I grabbed a warm can of soda and a package of plastic-wrapped something-or-other off of the stack on the desk and headed for the door.

In a weak voice, Jerome said, “Zed, I’m sorry.”

I ignored him and slammed the door shut on my way out of the room.

Wilkins was coming up the hall just in front of me. “Mad?” he asked.

“God damn Jerome,” I groused.

“I guess you found out he’s not with the CDC.”

“Yep.” I stomped down the hall. Jerome had literally sent me out among the infected, based on something he’d read on the internet. What really bothered me though, was the question of my prognosis. Was I going to turn? Was I going to become a mindless zombie, squatting in the shadows until a normal with a gun put me down?

I stomped into the common area with a scowl on my face. Murphy was sitting on a couch, chatting up Amber and Felicity, back to his loquacious self. The only difference from the time I first saw him was that he was a much paler brown than before.

“Thank you, thank you so much,” Amber told me as I walked up. “You saved our lives.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t nothing, but what else was I going to do? “Anybody would have done it.”

“Not Jerome,” said Felicity.

Murphy laughed heartily at that. “Man, I would have come with, but I was passed out from the infection.”

“Yeah,” I agreed and sat down on the couch. I opened my tiny donuts and cola. “Where is everybody?”

“They’re downstairs, fortifying the windows, I think,” Felicity said.

“With what?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“I guess it doesn’t matter.” I shrugged. “It needs to be done.”

Murphy spoke up, “Wilkins wants everybody to meet at three o’clock to talk about our situation.”

“Wilkins does?” I asked, unnecessarily.

“Yep,” Murphy said. “He’s in charge, right?”

I looked around. “Nobody told me.”

Amber shook her head and raised her palms. “We’re new.”

“We’re all new,” I told them. “Did you guys eat already?”

“Vending machine food never tasted so good,” said Amber.

“It’s going to get old in a hurry,” said Murphy.

We all agreed, then ran out of words. I started eating. Without the talking, the mood blackened as we were all left to our thoughts about what was going on outside—about what had happened over the past few days, the things we’d all seen, and the bleakness of the future.

It was Murphy who piped up first, “Man, the last thing I remember was you and me were in that creek bed. I don’t even know how we got in the creek bed, but I remember walking in the sun.”

I looked at him, “You don’t remember the transients? The guy who drove us to the hospital? The gym? Anything?”

“No man, nothing.” Murphy said loudly in a voice that was used to being at the center of attention, “Like I said, I was feeling like crap and walking up that creek bed with you, and that’s it.”

“I guess you were pretty sick.” I half smiled. “Probably delirious with the fever.”

“I guess, man,” Murphy agreed. “I didn’t know what to think when I woke up cuffed to that bed yesterday.”

“Jerome didn’t tell you anything?” I asked.

Murphy said, “No, mostly he just stared out the window. When I’d ask him a question, he’d shush me.”

I took some time to relate to Murphy the story of how we made it from the creek bed to the dorm. The girls listened with great interest. I purposefully didn’t mention the jail and Murphy didn’t bring it up.

When I finished, Felicity asked, “So you guys and Jerome are all infected.”

“It seems so,” I answered.

Amber scooted up in her chair but took a moment to formulate her question. In the end, she went with bluntness. “Are you guys going to turn out like…like the others?”

“The other infected?” I asked, though I knew what she meant.

Amber nodded.

“I don’t know.” I looked around and scratched my chin. “Jerome says no, but he just read that on the internet.”

“So you could turn any minute?” Amber pushed on.

“I don’t know. I think if it was going to happen, it would have.” Not really a lie—perhaps a hope.

Murphy added, “As long as I don’t get any whiter, I don’t care.”

We all laughed. We needed the levity.

“What does it feel like?” Amber asked.

“What?” I asked.

“Being infected,” she clarified.

“Like the flu, a really bad flu,” I answered.

“No,” Amber said, “I mean now. Do you feel normal?”

“Mostly, I guess.” I looked down at my hands, legs, and feet.

“I feel just fine,” Murphy added, “except bright light is hard to see in.”

“Our pupils are stuck in a dilated state,” I clarified.

“What?” Amber asked.

I said, “Jerome told me. When you’re infected, your pupils dilate and stay that way.”

“Does the bright light hurt?” Amber asked.

“No,” I shook my head, “it doesn’t hurt. It just feels uncomfortable.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

I turned to Felicity. “Do you remember that infected guy that jumped out and bit me on the arm when we were in the tunnel?”

She nodded, shuddering at the memory.

“I felt the bite, but it didn’t hurt. I mean, I could feel the pressure of his teeth on my arm, I even felt my skin tearing, but there wasn’t any pain.”

“Maybe you hit your head too hard when you fell against the wall,” Felicity speculated.

I leaned forward and put Amber’s hand on the large knot on the back of my head. “I felt it hit. But this didn’t hurt either.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“So, you’re like a leper?” Felicity asked.

“I don’t know anything about that,” I answered. “I can feel things just fine. I just seem to be losing the ability to feel pain.”

“Do you think you’ll get to the point when you won’t be able to feel anything?” Amber asked.

“I hope not.” I really hoped not.

Amber took out her telephone, checked it, and started to put it away.

“Hey,” I said. “Can I borrow that to make a call?”

“Sure.” She handed it to me. “Do you have family to call?”

I shook my head. “I need to call one of the nurses over at the hospital.”

I dialed the number Steph had given me. Murphy and the girls started talking again.

The phone rang a half-dozen times and went to voicemail. Into the phone I said, “Steph, this is Zed. Murphy and I made it out of the gym and we’re okay. Call me at this number when you can. Bye.”

I handed the phone back to Amber.

She asked, “Girlfriend?”

“Nope. Just a nurse who helped me and Murphy out.”

Chapter 29

In dark sunglasses, Murphy and I were outside, scavenging what we could off the dead soldiers in the quad. I was picking through the remains, and he was hauling the booty. At the moment, he had three rifles, two vests with clips and whatever else attached, and a couple of helmets, all covered in crusty blood.

We’d been out in the heat all through the noon hour. I was sweaty, tired, and feeling angry.

Murphy and I had talked while we were inside after bringing in a previous load and rinsing the equipment in the downstairs showers. He confirmed what Jerome had told me earlier, that Mark and the other ROTC guys were afraid of us. As for Jerome, he was nowhere to be seen, though he could easily have been assisting us in equipment collection.

While outside, we didn’t speak much for fear of attracting unwanted attention from the infected. In the sweltering silence, I ruminated darkly about the social dynamic. I was angry at Jerome for being right about how I’d feel about that. I’d probably saved the life of every one of those toy rifle-toting ROTC pukes. Now, because of Murphy and me, they were all armed. They had a chance at survival. But they thought they were better than me. That pissed me off the most. I hated that.

Oh, and what was that abomination shit about?

A couple of the infected were rummaging through the remains of a policeman who lay in the shadow of the gym—one chewed on a bone, the other was starting to gnaw on the officer’s gun belt. I decided I wanted the belt. In my darkening mood, I didn’t see the infected man as an obstacle. I reached down and grabbed the belt.

The infected made a snarling sound, then clamped his teeth on the belt. I yanked it hard, pulling it away.

The infected’s eyes went wide with rage. He howled and lunged for the belt.

“All right,” I mumbled, “if that’s the way you want it.”

Both of the infected by the body stopped what they were doing and stared up at me. The words must have triggered something in their rotted brains that told them I might be lunch. One sniffed at my leg while the one with the gun belt slinked a few steps away and started to gnaw on the belt again.

My anger and disgust blossomed. I pulled the M-4 off of my shoulder. I turned its flimsy-looking stock downward, stepped over to the infected with my black leather gun belt grinding between his teeth, and smashed the butt of my gun down between his malevolent eyes.

A jolt went through his body, and he rolled over on his back, arms and legs moving in a random swimming fashion. I smashed his skull again, then again, then again—until it was deformed and bleeding heavily. He went still.

I stood over the infected man with the butt of my gun dripping with blood, breathing heavily from my exertion. I felt no cathartic release. If anything, I was more angry than before I’d beaten him to death.

What was going to happen to me? What was happening to me? Was I going to be like them? A mindless raging cannibal?

The infected who’d been gnawing on the bone dropped it and slunk over to sniff at the corpse of the one I’d just murdered.

“Fuck you too,” I shouted and smashed his head in a similar fashion—again and again—until he lay limp at my feet.

I stared down at the bloody mess, lost in the darkness of my anger.

I felt a tug at my shoulder and I turned, ready for more violence, but it was Murphy, wide-eyed and worried.

Without a word, he held my gaze, and then made a show of looking around us.

I followed his lead and looked over the quad, across the street, and into the gaps between the buildings. Every infected—standing, squatting, kneeling in the remains of some dead human—all stared at me, frozen in indecision. In their little rotted brains they couldn’t tell whether I was one of them, whether I was food, or whether I was the alpha zombie.

I wanted to kill them all.

Murphy emphatically nodded his head toward the dorm a couple of times and took a tentative step in that direction.

I understood what he wanted. It was the smart thing to do. Our situation out among the infected was on the verge of getting bad in a hurry.

I snatched up my gun belt and followed Murphy back to the dorm. The infected didn’t take their eyes off of us.

One of the ROTC guys opened the door for us when we arrived. He stared at me as wide-eyed as Murphy had just moments before.

He feared me.

In that moment, I reveled in it.

The door closed on our uncomfortable silence.

I looked out through the glass at the infected, going back about their business.

In a post-tantrum rationalization, I tried to reconcile my emotions with my actions. They didn’t make sense. I tried to blame my behavior on my anger at Jerome, Wilkins, Tom, the stress, anybody, anything but me.

Murphy said, “Hey man, we need to rinse this stuff off.”

“Okay,” I answered.

Murphy said to the ROTC guy, “We won’t need you on the door anymore today. We’re not going back out. You can go do whatever you do.”

The ROTC guy looked at me and asked, “What was that all about?”

I shook my head to brush him off.

Murphy stepped in to cover for me, and in his big gruff voice he said, “That infected dude was coming after him, man.”

The ROTC guy said nothing for a moment then asked, “He was coming after you?”

I nodded, “Sure.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes.” I said it like a fuck-you dare for him to ask me again. He didn’t bite.

“Let’s take this stuff to the shower, man, and get started,” said Murphy.

The ROTC guy said, “When you guys get done, you should get upstairs. It’s close to three, and Major Wilkins wants you at the meeting.”

Chapter 30

Murphy stood in the shower stall, scrubbing the MOLLE vest with soap and hot water. I stood outside the stall, taking the ammunition magazines out of the vest before passing them in. The helmets were all cleaned and drying, as were the guns.

“Besides rinsing these guns off, what else do we need to do?” I asked.

“I’ll show you later,” Murphy said.

“Do you know much about guns?” I asked.

“I was in the Army for four years,” he replied.

“What?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Hard to believe, right?”

Yes, it was hard to believe. “So you know all about this gear, then.”

“Yeah, I can show you whatever you need to know,” Murphy told me.

“Good, because I don’t know much of anything besides shooting and reloading.”

“I’ll set you straight, man, but it’ll have to be when I get back.”

“Back?” I asked.

Murphy’s face lost its smile. “I’ve got to go find my mom and my sister.”

I asked, “Did you try borrowing a cell phone and calling them?”

“No answer.” Worry flashed over his face. “Both numbers went straight to voicemail.”

“You think their batteries are dead?” I asked.

Murphy nodded and handed me the wet vest. I handed him an empty one and hung the wet one over a shower stall divider to drip dry.

“Murphy,” I said, “you know how things are out there, right?”

“Yeah, man.”

“So, you know the odds aren’t in their favor, right?”

Nodding, Murphy said, “I know.”

“What’s your plan then?” I asked.

“Based on your experience with driving yesterday, I think that driving to my mom’s house isn’t the best way to go.”

“Where do they live?” I asked

“Over off of Loyola, near 183,” he told me while he pointed vaguely northeast.

“How far is that, like, five miles?” I asked. “Ten miles?”

“Man, I don’t know. When you’re driving you don’t know how far things are—you only know how long it’s going to take to get there. ”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess you’re walking, right?”

“It’s kind of the only option. I could steal a bike, but that might send the infected into a frenzy, too. I don’t want to be the guy who gets to figure that one out.”

I asked, “What are you going to do after you find you mom and sister?”

“There’s this crazy dude that Earl talked about.” Murphy looked away from the vest he was rinsing off. He nodded as he spoke. “You remember right?”

I did.

Murphy said, “The dude used to live in our neighborhood. He was one of those doomsday-prepper guys and five or six years ago, the city found out that he’d built this three-story bunker under his house.”

“Three stories under his house?” I was amazed.

“Yeah, like he had more square footage in his bunker than in his house. But like, when the city found out, they condemned his house.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Murphy shrugged. “He never got a permit or it wasn’t built to code. Maybe they just thought his house might cave in on top of it.”

“So what happened, then?”

Murphy said, “So the dude fights with the city for years and finally just keels over and dies one day.”

“That sucks.”

“For him, yeah.” Murphy stepped out of the shower and handed me the vest. “The house has been sitting empty ever since. The city never did anything with it. They never tore it down or anything. It’s just got a chain link fence around it and the crackheads go in there at night.”

“Do you think it’s still there then?” I asked.

“Man, it’s gotta still be there,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in. The house looks like a crack house. But there are solar panels on the roof and what looks like a solar water heater. There are a couple of little wind turbine things in the back yard. I mean, I don’t know what the guy’s setup was down there, but from the outside, it looked like he had all the right pieces in place.”

“I know this sounds like a stupid question,” I prefaced, “but how do you know somebody isn’t already there?”

Murphy shook his head, “I can’t know that, but it’s the best thing I can think to try right now.”

“This place isn’t so bad,” I said as I looked around.

“It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Man, did you notice how they were fortifying downstairs?”

I shook my head.

“Man,” Murphy waved an arm expansively, “they were just taking desks and furniture and piling them in front of the windows. Once the infected figure out there are people in here, it’s gonna take them like five minutes to break the windows and tear through that junk. Then it’s gonna be all over for Major Wilkins and those girls you saved.”

“I’m sure that’s only temporary,” I said.

“Yeah, man, I’m sure you’re right.” Murphy shook his head. He didn’t really believe I was right. “Until they get those barricades right, they’re all in danger, and if the infected break in here all worked into a frenzy, you’re gonna get killed whether you taste good or not.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

Chapter 31

When Murphy and I got to the common area on the fifth floor, Wilkins was already talking. I immediately noticed that Tom, Mark, and the other ROTC guys were all wearing MOLLE vests and had their M-4s with them. It made sense, but it made me uncomfortable. Wilkins had a sidearm, as did Marcy. Felicity, Amber, and Jerome were unarmed.

I had a Glock in a holster. Murphy however, was planning on announcing his departure and leaving directly after the meeting. He had a pistol, his M4, and carried twelve thirty-round magazines in his MOLLE vest, along with whatever else a real soldier would stuff in there.

The couches in the common area were arranged in a U-shape facing the hall. Jerome and the girls were on the couches. Wilkins stood in the hall, in front of everyone with Mark at his side. The other ROTC guys sat on stools behind the leather couches.

Murphy and I sat beside one another on one of the couches.

Wilkins acknowledged us as we sat. “As I was telling everyone, Marcy and I spent a good deal of the morning on the internet, trying to find what news we could of what’s going on.

“What we found isn’t hopeful. The infection is still spreading. San Antonio is in the same shape as Austin. It’s lost. Houston and Dallas are both a mess, with the infection spreading and the police trying to get a handle on the situation. The refugee center set up at Fort Hood fell apart overnight.

“The infection has shown up in nearly every major city in the country now and there’s hardly a place in the world that’s free. Most of Asia has followed China’s path. India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Korea are all in chaos or are silent. Nothing is coming out of Africa. Europe and Russia are in trouble. The infection has shown up in Brazil and Columbia.

“All over the country, the military has set up road blocks. All flights are grounded. All trains have stopped. Any travel between states and even cities is forbidden. The military has orders to shoot to kill anything or anyone that comes near the roadblocks.

“We’re effectively isolated here for the time being, at least until the military can get the situation stabilized.”

Amber asked, “How long will we be isolated?”

Wilkins answered, “It’s anybody’s guess, but it’s best that we plan for the long haul. We need to be prepared to take care of ourselves for at weeks or even months. It might be longer before we get help.”

“Longer?” Amber asked.

“It might be years,” Wilkins answered.

Felicity spoke up next, with heavy emotion in her voice, “Is this really the end of the world?”

Wilkins didn’t answer. Nobody spoke. The silent consensus was yes.

Wilkins said, “Human civilization is going to be very different going forward.”

Felicity looked down at the floor. I’m sure she already knew. Her question was little more than a desperate expression of hope.

I spoke up next, “Look, like I was telling Jerome yesterday, I’m not sure how we’re going to get through the next few weeks or months, but we need to get somebody online right now. I don’t know when or if we’re going to lose electricity. I don’t know when or if the internet is going to go out.”

I stood up to look at everybody, “Everything humans have ever learned or knew can be downloaded from the internet right now, for free, while the network is still up. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t know anything about farming and growing my own food. If what Wilkins is saying is right, we need to figure it out. It’ll be better for us if we figure it out with a book than by trial and error. There’s going to come a time when we run out of food to scavenge, and when that time comes, we’d better know how to grow something. We won’t be able to live through too many crop failures. And if we want to live anything remotely like the life we used to have, we’d better learn how to hook up some solar panels to an electrical grid. We need to learn how to manufacture gunpowder if we run out. There are a million little things that make life possible, and none of us knows much about any of them.”

I looked around the room for acknowledgment—for confirmation—but they just looked at me like I’d changed color again.

“Thoughts, anyone?” I asked.

“Well,” Wilkins started, “this is as good a time as any to talk about how you fit into that, Zed.”

“I don’t even have a computer,” I replied.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Wilkins asked.

What? That seemed odd to me. I looked around at the blank faces. Something wasn’t right.

As I stepped back toward the couch to take my place beside Murphy, I saw a very slight shake of his head. He was reading something that I’d missed.

As I turned to sit down, I noticed Murphy’s hand move discreetly toward the trigger on his M-4. He flicked the safety off.

“Zed,” Wilkins started, “we all appreciate what you‘ve done for us. Some of us definitely owe you our lives, and the rest of us probably do.”

I nodded, curious as to where this was going.

He said, “Because you and Murphy and Jerome are infected, you can move among the other infected with ease. You’re in no danger.”

“Mostly no danger,” I corrected him.

“Zed, please don’t take this the wrong way,” Wilkins gulped down a pause, “but you three are infected and that makes some of us pretty nervous. Not me, mind you. I’m not worried, but I have to speak for the group.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He said, “Again, as much as you’ve done for all of us, many here are afraid of you.”

“Afraid of me?” This was starting to sound like bullshit.

Wilkins went on, “We don’t know if we can catch the infection from you or how. We don’t know when we’re going to wake up and find you standing over our beds and attacking us. We don’t know what you are, and we need to do something about that.”

I heard shuffling behind me, and then Murphy’s big voice stopped everything. “I don’t know where this conversation is going, but just so you all know one thing, I’m leaving when this is done. Actually,” he continued, very deliberately standing and stepping toward the hallway, “I’m leaving right now. I need to go find my sister and my mom.”

Mark butted in and said, very pointedly, “We need that ammunition you’re carrying.”

Murphy, beside Wilkins now, turned so that he’d have no one at his back. He was holding the M-4 with one hand over the trigger and one under the barrel, in a way that made it clear that he was fully prepared to operate the weapon if necessary. “Zed and I picked up all of this ammunition. Zed and I picked up all of the guns that you bunch of pussies have right now. If it wasn’t for Zed, you wouldn’t have shit. You’d be sitting in that building next door like a bunch of zombie bait, waiting to get eaten.

“All of you people piss me off. After everything that Zed has done for you, you’re going to tell him to hit the bricks, aren’t you? Oh, and you want to take our guns and our ammo while you’re at it. Well, fuck you. I’m leaving here with this gun and this vest and the twelve magazines I’ve got. Just so you know.”

Everybody was surprised into motionless.

I spoke first, “Is that what’s happening here, Wilkins? You’re kicking me out?”

“Of course we are,” Mark muttered. “You’re possessed by demons. All three of you are.”

Wilkins ignored Mark and continued, “No, no. Let me finish, Zed. Clearly some of us don’t feel comfortable being so close to you. We can continue to work together but we’d feel more comfortable if maybe you guys moved into the building next door.”

“Without our guns,” I said, shaking my head.

“No,” Wilkins said, “That’s not what we’re saying.”

“That’s what Mark just told Murphy,” I argued.

Wilkins pointed out the window toward the quad. “You guys can walk outside and get all of the ammunition you need. You have to admit, it’s more dangerous for us.”

Murphy interrupted, “Zed, you want to come with me? Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Wait.” I couldn’t believe what was happening. I looked over at Felicity. I didn’t mean to plead but it probably came out that way. “I risked my life to save you guys.”

Felicity quickly spoke, “We’re so, so, so thankful for that. But, we saw what you did to those infected outside a little while ago. You worry us. We don’t know what you’re capable of, or what you might turn into.”

Amber looked down and shook her head, “I don’t agree, Zed, but…”

“This is bullshit,” I said. “Fine. I’m outta here. I’m not going to live in the servants’ quarters next door and run around and do your dirty work. You guys are on your own.”

I turned and started to walk up the hall as Murphy backpedaled beside me.

“Just so you know,” I told them. “I’m gearing up before I leave. Me and Murphy went out and collected all of this shit. I’m not going out empty-handed.”

They’d all stood up by then, and walked into the hall to watch Murphy and me go.

I stopped and turned, “What about you Jerome, are you coming or staying?”

Wilkins spoke up, “Jerome, we’d like for you to stay. We just need to work out some kind of quarantine to keep us all separate. We can’t risk getting infected. You understand, right?”

“I’d be by myself?” Jerome asked.

“Well…” Wilkins started.

Jerome shook his head. “No, no. I don’t want that. I’m going with them.”

We headed up the hall to get our stuff from the room.

Mark walked a few steps further up the hall and stopped. “Begone demon. Begone mindless monsters. You’re all going to suffer and die.”

“Put a lid on it, Mark,” Wilkins told him.

Ten minutes later, Murphy, Jerome, and I walked out of the dormitory, each with an M4, a pistol, a full load of ammunition in our MOLLE vests, canteens full of water, and enough junk food for a few meals. We hustled around the corner of the building and out of sight of the dormitory, just in case Mark went even more nuts and decided to shoot at us from the windows.

With the afternoon sun blazing in the sky, the billows of black smoke roiling up out of southeast Austin, infected lurking everywhere, and the sound of gunfire in the distance, we started our trek northeast to search for Murphy’s mother and sister.

The story continues in Slow Burn: Infected

the second book in the Slow Burn series

Slow Burn

INFECTED

Book 2

A novel
by
Bobby Adair

http://www.bobbyadair.com

http://www.facebook.com/BobbyAdairAuthor

Chapter 1

Mid-afternoon in August is not a pleasant time to be outdoors in central Texas. The sun scorches anything foolish enough to leave the shadows and risk its wrath. Humid air flows north off the gulf and heats to an angry, gaseous broth, in league with the sun to punish any soul it catches outdoors.

Every patch of grass without the blessing of a sprinkler system gets baked to crisp hues of tan and brown. Every concrete sidewalk and stretch of bleached asphalt shimmers radiated heat.

And, as if adding a million mindless infected to Austin’s empty streets wasn’t enough to make August suck more than usual, the smoke and ash from the fires devouring east Austin tainted the hot air. Great gray columns rose a thousand feet into the sky, boasting of destruction before drifting to the northeast.

Jerome spoke quietly, “We need to go somewhere and talk.”

Staying in the shadow of the ROTC building as we walked away from the dorm, Murphy said, “There’s nothing to talk about. I told you guys what I’m going to do—go find my mom and sister. Come if you want. Stay if you don’t. I don’t really give a shit.”

One of the things I’d learned about Murphy was that he had the ability to tell you he didn’t give a shit in a way that didn’t leave you offended. But that was irrelevant to my mood. I was already livid over getting evicted by Mark and his ROTC boys, and I needed to make a choice: go with Murphy, squat in a shadow across the quad from the dorm and think about revenge, or some other thing I hadn’t thought of yet. Long experience told me that choosing while angry, more often than not, led to bad outcomes. That never stopped me from doing it anyway.

I continued walking. “I’m going with Murphy.”

Jerome was miffed. “How can you just walk away? Mark and those guys hate us. They kicked us out of our own dorm for…for…”

“For being white?” Murphy laughed.

“For being infected,” Jerome answered, weakly.

So Jerome was seething as well. It seemed only Murphy could smile and let the eviction roll off his back.

Not me. Oft times, anger was all I had, my sole defining characteristic. It clung to me like an insecure girlfriend, and I put as little effort into sloughing it off. Perhaps I could learn from Murphy.

Jerome sulked, but came along.

We followed a wide concrete staircase down past the fountain at the end of the east mall, skirted along a tall wall to keep out of sight of our old dormitory, and turned left past the drama department. If the ROTC guys had entertained any ideas of taking a shot at us as we left, they’d lost their chance.

Long minutes in the debilitating heat ticked by and took the edge off of my anger. We walked on a winding, shaded sidewalk that followed Waller Creek’s course north.

“That Mark guy was nuts,” I finally said.

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed.

Numerous infected squatted in the shadows of the trees and the bushes all along the creek. I lowered my voice, “You saved us back there, Murphy.”

“I know.” Not a boast, just a fact.

“How did you know what was going to happen?” I asked.

“That things were going to go down the way they did?” He asked.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t.” He looked around at the shrubs and shadows. “I just got a bad vibe from those dudes. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to waste any time getting out of there today. That’s why I went to Wilkins’ meeting geared up. When I saw things starting to turn in the wrong direction, I took a chance while everybody was watching Mark and Wilkins go at each other.”

“It worked.” A few steps later, I added, “I wonder if this is how it’s going to be now.”

Murphy asked, “What?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like a drama queen when I say it. But it seems like every time I turn around, I’m on the verge of getting killed by something.”

“Is that why you’re so stressed out?” Murphy asked.

I stopped and gestured at the world around us. “Really?”

Murphy stopped and looked at me. “Yeah, that was a stupid thing to say. If we’re not careful, we may need to go see a shrink one day. Heh, heh, heh.”

“What’s up with that laugh? Did you have a favorite cartoon character or something that laughed like that?” I asked.

“No, man, that’s just my laugh.” He exaggerated it the second time as he smile. “Heh, heh, heh.”

Jerome came up and positioned himself on the wide sidewalk between Murphy and me. He looked around cautiously but kept his mouth pinched shut. He wanted us to know he was still pouting.

The ringing of a telephone caught everyone’s attention.

Murphy looked at me with a question on his face.

I had no phone. I looked around.

A moment later, it rang again.

All of the infected within earshot showed an interest.

On the third ring I identified a scatter of shredded, bloody remains by a building a short distance away.

The infected were on their feet and looking for the source of the sound.

“We should go,” Murphy whispered.

Jerome shuffled nervously. I nodded up the path and we moved away.

On the fourth ring, the infected swarmed over the clothes and bones.

The phone didn’t ring again.

Once we got thirty or forty feet distant from the spot where we’d heard the ring, I had a change of mind and announced, “I’m going to go back for the phone.”

Jerome shook his head, “When the networks go down, that phone won’t be worth anything.”

“They’re not down yet,” I hissed. “Murphy, do you mind waiting a few minutes? Once the infected calm down a bit and start to disperse, I’ll go over and find the phone.”

Murphy made a show of looking at a watch that wasn’t on his wrist. “Cool, man, just don’t take too long. I’m gonna head up the trail and see what I can see.”

Jerome said, “I’m going with Murphy.”

“Don’t go too far,” I told them.

“No sweat,” said Murphy.

Once I neared the infected going after the ringing sound, I stopped and watched the infected rip through the clothes looking for something to eat. Keys jangled out. A billfold hit the ground. A pair of torn jeans was cast aside and out of those jeans, a cell phone flew in a long arc.

Crap.

It landed in the grass and bounced.

Opportunity?

Keeping an eye on the squabbling infected, I walked over, picked up the phone, and quickly put some distance between them and me.

A half block away, I came across a shaded bench along the trail.

I sat down and examined the phone. It was the same brand of smartphone that I had before the police emptied my pockets during my arrest. I turned off the ringer. The infected had damaged brains, but they weren’t so damaged that they didn’t know which sounds to associate with people, with food. I checked the battery. It still had most of a charge.

I recalled the number that Felicity had given me for Amber’s phone the day before. Or was it two days before? So much was happening so fast that I was losing track. I opened up a text message window.

Me: This is Zed

I only had to wait a moment.

Amber: Zed…sorry.

Me: Nothing to be sorry for.

Amber: You saved our lives. I didn’t know what to do.

Me: NP. I won’t hold it against you. You did the right thing. Staying there is safer for you.

Amber: I’m worried. Mark frightens me.

Me: That was some crazy shit but your chances are better if you stay together than if you split up. Wilkins is a solid guy. He’ll keep Mark’s crazy ass in line. Stick with him if anything happens.

Amber: Okay

Me: You have weapons and food enough to last a good long while but feel free to text me if you run short of anything. I don’t know if I’ll be able to help but I may. I have a lot more freedom of movement than you guys do.

Amber: You’re a good man : )

Me: I have to go. The guys are waiting on me. I’ll try and find a charger for this phone. Keep in touch, if you want to.

Amber: I do.

Me: Me too.

Amber: Be careful out there. Please stay safe.

Me: Safe is my middle name.

Amber: LOL. I KNOW that’s not true.

Me: Gotta go. Bye.

Amber: Bye.

Stay safe? I hoped.

Chapter 2

When I caught up with the guys, I said, “There’s a University co-op up on the north side of campus.”

“You want to go shopping?” Murphy asked, exaggerating his surprise to reveal how bad he thought the idea was.

I said, “I keep getting ignored when I bring this up, but I need a computer and a flash drive.”

Both Jerome and Murphy made a point of ignoring what I’d just said.

I told them, “It’s only a block or two out of our way. It’ll take a few extra minutes.”

“Fine,” Murphy said. “It’s probably a good idea, but don’t be asking me to stop at an internet café along the way. You can have all the time online that you want after we get to my mom’s house.”

“I think it’s a waste of time,” Jerome butted in. “We probably won’t live long enough to run out of food, or electricity, or anything important.”

“Oh, you’ll live,” Murphy said, smiling. “I have no doubt.”

“Really?” Jerome asked, real curiosity in his voice. “What makes you think I’ll last?”

“Because you’re a pussy.” Murphy’s big laugh caught the attention of every infected in sight.

I shushed them both as I looked around. All of the infected were staring, but none were yet moving.

We walked the next block in silence and the infected along the way lost interest. I stepped out ahead of the guys and made a left turn onto the cross street that would take us to the co-op.

Through clenched teeth, Jerome told Murphy, “I am not a pussy.”

Murphy asked quietly, “Oh? Who went out to get the guns while the other one sat in the room?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Jerome responded.

“It sounded like that when Zed told me about it,” said Murphy. “Did I miss something?”

Jerome said nothing.

“So I didn’t miss anything,” Murphy continued. “Let me ask you, did you help Zed rescue those sorority chicks that were stuck in the other dorm?”

“They weren’t sorority chicks,” Jerome corrected.

“Are you saying that you did help rescue those chicks?” Murphy asked.

“I didn’t say that.” Jerome turned away as if looking for something to divert the subject to.

We walked another half a block in silence before Murphy added, “Sounds like you’re a pussy.”

Jerome shot Murphy a withering look and hurried ahead.

I shrugged.

Murphy grinned.

Another block passed and Murphy said, “Man, I didn’t thank you for getting me away from the jail after we busted out.”

“I think you did,” I said. “Besides, we helped each other that day.”

“How’s that?” he asked.

“You know,” I said.

“No.” He shook his head.

“You know,” I repeated. “When we were crossing the street when Earl got shot. I froze. You pushed me across. You probably saved me from getting hit, too.”

“Man, you were just in my way,” Murphy told.

I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. I said, “Whatever.”

Sweating heavily in the heat, we reached the university building across the street from the co-op and came to a stop in a shady spot behind a limestone block wall. I knelt down behind the short wall and scanned the broad intersection.

Two military Humvees sat in the middle of the intersection, empty. Bodies lay strewn about all over the asphalt, on the curbs, in the surrounding lawns, and in the parking lots.

“I guess there was a battle here,” I said.

“Do you think those Humvees have the keys in them?” Jerome asked.

That was the question on my mind as well.

Murphy said, “Humvees don’t have keys, dumbass.”

“I’m not a dumbass.” Jerome was irritated and probably regretting his decision to come along with us.

Murphy asked, “Did you lie about being a CDC scientist, when you really just owned a sub shop five blocks away?”

“That doesn’t make me a dumbass,” Jerome told him.

“No, but it does make you a pussy,” Murphy snickered.

Jerome fumed. “I’m not walking all the way across town in this heat. I am not a pussy. I’m getting a Humvee.” Jerome stepped out from behind the wall and with a determined look on his face, made his way through the maze of the dead toward the middle of the intersection.

“The infected don’t care if you step on them,” Murphy called.

“Quiet,” I told Murphy. “I’m not saying that Jerome doesn’t deserve it, but lighten up on him a bit.”

As Jerome neared the Humvees he slowed and glanced around.

I said, “I don’t know if driving is a good idea.”

“Those are up-armored Humvees,” Murphy told me. “They’re a lot more durable than that Toyota you totaled.”

“Okay.” I didn’t really agree, but I didn’t want to disagree either. I had no desire to walk six or seven miles in the heat, especially not knowing what dangers awaited us.

After a few moments of watching Jerome, Murphy looked back and forth across the wide intersection and said, “I don’t like this.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He pointed in a few directions across the intersection. “Look around, man.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“All those bodies lying around,” he said. “Where are the dead soldiers?”

I looked. I didn’t see a single uniform. “Maybe they all got infected and wandered off.”

“All of them?” Murphy asked as though my explanation was an admission of stupidity. “Wouldn’t at least some of them have gotten killed? I mean, look how many dead infected are out there.”

“It’s a mystery,” I said, dismissively.

Jerome arrived at the nearest of the two Humvees, opened the driver’s side door, and peered inside.

“And those doors will keep out the infected?” I asked.

“Unless they have a rocket launcher,” Murphy answered.

“So driving one of those might really work out for us?”

“Depends,” he said.

“On what?” I asked.

Murphy answered, “What are you going to do when you get to where you’re going and your Humvee is being swarmed by frenzied infected?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose we could just wait for them to get bored and wander away. They eventually do.”

“So we wouldn’t want to use it for short trips,” said Murphy.

“No, I guess not,” I admitted.

Movement from the opposite corner across the intersection caught our attention.

Two soldiers in gas masks stepped out of some bushes and moved cautiously toward the Humvee into which Jerome was leaning. From Jerome’s position, his view of them was blocked by the other Humvee.

“MOPP gear,” said Murphy, softly.

“Mop?”

“The military protective gear,” he explaind. “The gas masks, hoods, gloves, and stuff.”

“Oh.”

“That’s why those soldiers aren’t infected,” he said, “but it doesn’t explain why they weren’t killed by the infected, like everybody else.”

“They may be able to help us,” I said, as I started to stand, but Murphy put a restraining hand on my shoulder. That annoyed me. “What?”

Murphy put a finger to his lips and shook his head. He hoisted his weapon.

I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t see the danger he saw. What danger could there be? This was the Army. They’d been only six blocks from the dorm the whole time, and doing fine against the infected. Things weren’t as bad as Wilkins and crazy Mark thought they were.

The soldiers came up on Jerome from behind and startled him. One of the soldiers said something harsh, but with the distance, I couldn’t make it out.

Jerome stiffened, dropped his weapon, and raised his hands.

One of the soldiers took a defensive position at the rear of the Humvee and the other stepped up toward Jerome, stopping several feet away.

They said some things back and forth.

Jerome made some excited gestures and spoke loudly.

The soldier said something else. Jerome opened his shirt and showed his chest, leaning forward with eyes wide open.

The soldier spoke into a radio headset.

Jerome started talking again, but in a different tone of voice. He was pleading. That worried me for a second, but then again, he was a pussy. For his sake, I hoped he didn’t wet his pants.

Three weird clicks echoed as fire spat from the end of the soldier’s gun.

A bloody mist erupted from Jerome’s back. For the smallest fraction of a second, surprise froze on his face.

I gasped.

“We gotta go,” Murphy hissed, as Jerome crumpled to the asphalt.

“Fuck that.” I was pissed. I threw the barrel of my M4 over the wall and pointed it at the soldiers. Before I could pull the trigger, Murphy grabbed my shirt and pulled me into the shrubs and mulch. Shards of limestone exploded off of the top edge of the wall and stung my skin.

“What the hell?” I didn’t hear any gunshots. Everything was very suddenly going to shit, and I wasn’t putting the clues together fast enough.

“C’mon,” Murphy whispered. Bent over as short as he could make himself, he ran away from the wall, back the way we’d come, back to where there was plenty of cover.

I crouched and ran as fast as my legs would carry me.

We got to a row of tall bushes and rounded a corner, putting an entire building between us and the intersection.

Murphy stopped at the corner and cast a quick look back.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he told me. “Run.”

Murphy took off at a full sprint under the sprawling branches of the old campus oaks. He angled toward a building across a street and ran further into campus. I matched him stride for stride past one building, a second, and a third, arousing interest from the infected as we sped past. Thankfully, none gave chase.

When Murphy decided that we’d put enough distance between us and the soldiers at the intersection, he found an unlocked door and we slipped inside one of the university buildings. Welcome air conditioning washed over us, but I had not a moment to appreciate it.

We bounded up a staircase to the second floor and ran down the length of the building. We glanced through the glass door windows into each classroom we passed. The floor was deserted. We entered a classroom at the end of the hall and closed the door quietly behind us.

I caught my breath. Murphy did the same.

Chapter 3

It took a few moments for us to recover enough to speak. Murphy gasped, “Shit. I should have seen that coming.”

“What the hell just happened?” I asked.

“We got ambushed,” Murphy told me, clearly distressed. His absent smile and vacant eyes told me he blamed himself.

“They killed Jerome, for no reason,” I said.

Murphy peeked out one of the classroom’s large windows, careful not to expose himself more than was necessary. “Yeah, it would seem so.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I said.

“He was infected,” said Murphy. “They probably shot him because of that.”

“But he was a slow burn,” I argued. “He was talking to that dude. He wasn’t a danger to them.”

Murphy shrugged, shook his head, and said nothing.

“Is it open season on all of us?” I asked, wanting something to blame for wrong I’d just witnessed.

“I don’t know man,” said Murphy. “Maybe they were nervous. Maybe they were trigger-happy. Maybe they just like killing. With all of those dead infected laying around the intersection, they were definitely good at it.”

“Maybe they weren’t the Army,” I speculated. “Maybe it was just some guys.”

Murphy shook his head emphatically. “They were soldiers.”

I sat down at one of the desks bolted to the floor in neat rows, and stared out the windows at the oak branches and leaves that dappled the view of the buildings across the street.

It was murder.

Those soldiers murdered Jerome.

As that sank in, I muttered, “Fucking assholes.”

“We shouldn’t be surprised,” Murphy said. “The cops, the doctors, the Army, nobody has been sympathetic, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m angry, Murphy. I’m really fucking pissed. That was such bullshit. I mean he was standing there with that stupid pussy-ass look on his face, with his arms in the air and that dickhead just shot, shot him three fucking times. Fuck.”

Murphy said, “I was there, man.”

Murphy left me to my fuming and took up a position by the wall where he had a clear view out the window. Murphy was getting over Jerome’s death, or at least getting past it. He was looking out for pursuers. He was looking out for our safety. And I was having a tantrum.

I needed to get control.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

I breathed deeply and relaxed my clenched hands, then watched my palms as the blood flowed back in and filled the indentations left by my grip on my rifle.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

Anger would kill me if I didn’t get it under control. Clear thinking would keep me alive. I needed to follow Murphy’s example.

I stood and went over to check the window into the hall. No one and nothing. I nudged the door open and listened. Silence.

Minutes passed with no change. I let the door close and went to stand beside Murphy.

I asked, “So were those silencers on their guns?”

“Yup, suppressors.”

“I think that’s why they’re not already dead,” I said. “The soldiers I mean. If the infected don’t hear the gunshots, the soldiers can stay hidden while they shoot. They don’t have to worry about drawing in more infected than they can handle.”

Murphy nodded, “That’s pretty much how I see it.”

I said, “I think if these guns are going to be good for anything but a last resort, we need suppressors.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“Where can we get those?” I asked.

“We could check gun shops or find the house of some gun nut who wanted one bad enough to go through the permit process,” he said. “But with all the shit going on, who knows? I’m guessing any gun shop that might have one is cleaned out already.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” I looked back out the window.

Murphy said, “We could come back in a few days and take theirs.”

Looking back at him, I said, “I don’t follow.”

“C’mon, man.” He waved a hand back in the direction of the intersection. “Those guys can’t keep their MOPP gear on forever. They’ve got to take it off sooner or later. They’re probably camped out in a building around here somewhere. And every time they go in and out, they risk tracking in the infection with them. Hell, that guy that shot Jerome today probably got at least a little blood on his gear. He was close enough for it. He probably doesn’t even know it. So, when he goes back to wherever him and his buddies are hiding out, he might touch it or his buddy might touch it.”

I said, “I don’t know how long the virus can live outside of the body but I’m guessing that if it’s in blood, it has a better chance of staying alive than if it just gets sneezed out or something. So you’re thinking that by killing Jerome, those soldiers are going to wind up infected.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I like the karma of it.” I put on a smile but there was no joy in it, only mean revenge.

“If they get infected, the odds are that none of them will be immune,” said Murphy. “At least it seems like nearly nobody is. In a few days they’ll be wandering around here like the rest of the infected, if they don’t kill each other first.”

“I’m good either way,” I said. “Do you think they’re coming after us?”

“Nope.”

“Why?” I asked.

“If they were coming, I think they would have by now,” said Murphy. “Besides, I think they’re doing pretty well ambushing the infected where they are. They don’t need to hunt. Whitey just wanders by. I’m not sure they were trying to kill us as much as scare us away. After all, they knew Jerome was infected when they killed him. They didn’t know if we were.”

“Whitey?” I asked.

“I’m tired of saying infected.” Murphy shrugged. “Three syllable words suck.”

“You know, you’re practically white now.” I felt like I had to remind him.

“I’m mocha frost, man.”

“Mocha frost?”

“Yeah.”

I asked, “So we have mochas and whites. Any other color distinction?”

“You tell me, you’re the one with the hang-up about it.”

I took another long look out the window. “Murphy, you’re just trying to keep my mind off of Jerome, aren’t you?”

“Yeah man, you dwell on shit too much.” Murphy took a deep breath as he paused. “That’s obvious to me already. I know everything sucks and all, but we can’t do anything about it. Lighten up, man. It’s better to die with a smile on your face than a frown.”

Time to change the subject. I asked, “Do you think those soldiers were an isolated group who were lucky enough to have the right equipment and the good fortune to figure out effective tactics, or do you think the whole Army is just around the corner and heading this way, cleaning up as they go along?”

“Isolated,” Murphy answered.

“Why?” I asked.

He said, “If there was a big force coming in and clearing out the infected, we’d have heard the gunfire when we were outside. We didn’t hear any of that.”

“I guess we didn’t,” I admitted.

We watched silently out the windows for a while longer and periodically checked the hall.

When the conversation started again, I asked, “What should we do next, do you think?”

“I hate to say it, but I think Jerome was right.”

“About what?” I asked.

“We need a better plan than just walking to northeast Austin,” said Murphy. “I’m going there. I have to. But if I want to get there alive, then I need to think it through.”

I said, “We need to think it through.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that for a second.”

“What?” That surprised me. What was that supposed to mean?

“Zed, I’ve been thinking about this a lot while we’ve been in here. You almost got yourself killed out there when Jerome got shot. If I didn’t pull you down, those snipers would have got you.”

“Thanks for that,” I said.

“I’m not looking for thanks,” he said. “I want to know what you were thinking.”

My defenses flew up. Interrogatives always rubbed me the wrong way. My anger boiled for a second. I repressed it and calmly asked, “Why does it matter?”

“Let’s face it—we barely know each other,” he told me. “I don’t know you well enough to understand why you do what you do. I do know that your behavior is probably going to get you killed. I don’t want to be standing in the wrong place when that happens, because I might get killed too.”

“I don’t have the military training that you have,” I admitted. “When those soldiers shot Jerome, I didn’t think. I reacted. What they did was wrong.”

“And you were going to make it right?” Murphy asked.

“No, honestly, I didn’t think about that,” I said. “Not consciously anyway. Maybe I was just angry. Maybe…I don’t know.”

Murphy scrutinized me and said, “Let me ask you about what you did for Felicity, Amber, and Marcy. What about helping me when I was delirious? I mean, I’m thankful. I’m grateful. I know I owe you my life. But Zed, it’s like you’ve got some kind of hero complex or something.”

My simmering anger turned to laughter. “Sorry, you’ve got the wrong guy on that. I’m not a hero. I don’t want to wear a cape or have a secret identity, and I don’t need to hear anybody’s applause. I don’t even want a Batmobile. Well, maybe a Batmobile. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

“But you keep trying to do all this heroic shit,” said Murphy. “It’s like you think you’re invincible.”

“I definitely don’t think that,” I told him.

Murphy turned and focused his attention back out the window, leaving me with my thoughts.

I recalled what happened with Felicity. I didn’t think then. I reacted. I’d heard her scream and saw her running. I knew she was going to die if I did nothing. I wanted to run back to the safety of the dorm, I really did. But something in me wouldn’t let that happen. I made a split-second decision and just got lucky after that. She and I both lived.

The choice to rescue Amber and Marcy was made with a lot more forethought, and was based on a ton of inaccurate assumptions. None of us expected the amount of danger that I’d put myself in. But why did I do it? I didn’t know them or anything about them. Yet, I’d risked my life to help them.

And Wilkins and the ROTC boys; what about them? I’d helped them too, but why?

I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t a soldier and I wasn’t a boy scout. Still, I did what I did, and would likely do it all again. Perhaps I was trying to live up to some image I had of myself, and living up to that image was more important than staying alive. Or maybe it was all just a big basket of psychological Easter eggs left in my brain by the Ogre and the Harpy.

When I looked up from my thoughts, Murphy was looking at me. He started in, “Before I say what I’m going to say, I want you to know that I appreciate your offer to help me find my mom and my sister, even though the odds of me finding them alive are pretty much zero. But they’re my family, Zed. It’s my duty to go, no matter how small the chances of finding them. Hell, I might get killed before I make it across the highway. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I said immediately and then added, “No. Not really.”

“I don’t know why you’re helping me,” he said. “I don’t understand it. But I don’t want you to get killed trying to save some people who are probably already dead, or worse.”

I stood up and paced around the floor. I took my time collecting my thoughts before I responded. “Murphy, I don't know about your hero theory. Maybe right, maybe wrong. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m just trying to do the right thing. It’s just that simple.

I said, “Last week, I would have told you that the world couldn’t get any more fucked up than it was. Then it did. Last week, I made a living just rolling down the hill with all the the other unhappy assholes in the world. I got drunk and I got high a lot just so I wouldn’t have to think about it. And you know why, Murphy?”

Murphy said, “I don’t think I want to know.”

I told him anyway. “Because I didn’t know who I was. I was just trying to be whatever I thought I was supposed to be and not trying very hard at it. Well, I’m not doing that anymore. I’m tired of taking the easy way out of everything. I’m tired of being ashamed of who looks back at me in the mirror. It’s just that simple. If that gets me killed, then I just don’t give a fuck about that. At least I’ll die proud of myself for a change.

“As for why I’m tagging along with you? I’ve got no family. All of my friends are probably dead. And if they weren’t they’d probably care as little about me as I do about them. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even call them friends. They’re circumstantial companions. We all have crappy jobs and no girlfriends but we don’t like to drink alone. So, we hang out together and bitch about life. But none of us was ever going to do anything about it. It was always easier to just take another drink.

“On top of all that, you and I are the only people we know who are like us. I’m sure there are more out there, somewhere. There have to be. But in case you haven’t noticed, people like us are getting ostracized and killed just because we’re infected and we’re scary. Murphy, you and I are a persecuted minority.”

Murphy’s big laugh reverberated through the empty classroom. “Ain’t that a hoot? I go from being a mildly repressed minority to being a persecuted minority just because I got whiter.”

I laughed along with Murphy.

When we’d laughed ourselves out, Murphy said, “I think you’re right. Man, I think you’re a good guy, I mean, there’s a little bit of craziness in you, but maybe that’s what it’s gonna take to live in this fucked up world. I’ll stick with you if that’s what you want to do. We’ll have a better chance together than alone.”

Murphy reached out to shake my hand.

His hand engulfed mine and I nodded.

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

“What?” A protest, not a question.

Murphy announced, “Null Spot.”

“What?” A question.

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

“Whatever.”

Chapter 4

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

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

Murphy asked, “Who is Steph, again?”

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

“Is she cute?” he asked.

Making it sound like a scolding, I said, “I don’t think that should be your top concern anymore.”

“It’ll always be my top concern,” he told me anyway.

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

“Yeah, man, I heard that.”

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

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

“At the one by my house, I think they only hire white kids,” I said.

“Mocha frost, buddy.”

I shrugged. “So you don’t know.”

“Texting,” he said.

“Really?” I asked. “How do you know?”

“I’m guessing.”

I said, “Sounds right to me.”

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

“She gave it to me,” I told him.

“You’re a lot smoother than I thought.” Murphy grinned.

“I hear that a lot,” I said with a suave nod.

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

I nodded and followed as I texted.

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

Steph: OMG, you’re alive.

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

Steph: Yes. Lots of Army trucks and stuff.

Me: Great. Any soldiers out there with them?

Steph: No. Why?

Me: I’m going to steal one.

Steph: Where are you?

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

Steph: What do you know about what happened?

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

Steph: We?

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

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

Me: Where are you now?

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

Me: We?

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

Me: How many of you are there?

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

Me: The soldiers aren’t shooting the infected?

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

Me: I’ll bet.

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

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

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

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

Steph: That’s awful.

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

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

Me: Thousands outside?

Steph: Too many to count.

Me: Do you guys have an escape plan?

Steph: Escape? Where to?

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

Steph: I don’t think anywhere is safe.

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

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

Me: Why?

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

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

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

Me: You sound like you’ve given up.

I waited a long time for a response after that.

Steph: Zed, are you there?

Me: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

Me: What’s a Leadville?

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

Me: Why are they safe?

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

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

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

Me: Too white?

Steph: That’s one way to put it.

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

Steph: Everything is working against us.

Me: How so?

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

Me: I can see why you feel hopeless.

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

Me: What?

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

Me: Not disinterested.

Steph: You know what I mean.

Me: Whatever.

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

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

Steph: Let me finish.

Me: K.

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

Me: Ok.

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

Me: Which is?

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

Me: That sounds like wishful thinking.

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

Me: K.

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

Me: I’m with you so far.

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

Me: Or cautious.

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

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

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

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

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

Me: What then?

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

Me: Say what?

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

Me: Not exactly sanitary.

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

Me: That sounds like suicide.

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

Me: Everyone is okay with this?

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

Me: What will you do with the ones that show signs of the infection?

Steph: Shoot them.

Me: I don’t know what to say.

Steph: It’s a hard choice. We’re doctors and nurses. We’re supposed to help people.

Me: What about the slow burns? They’ll show signs of infection but might turn out like me.

Steph: It doesn’t matter. Same solution.

Steph: Zed?

Steph: Zed?

Steph: Are you still there?

Me: Yes.

Steph: Are you angry that some slow burns like you will get killed?

I didn’t answer at first because the answer was yes. I was more angry because I couldn’t think of a better solution.

Me: Take the infection. Kill the infected. It’s your only chance.

Steph:  Thanks for being honest.

Me: How will the vote go?

Steph:  We’ll vote to infect. It’s our only choice.

Me: Tell me before they infect you?

Steph:  I’ll give my phone to my friend Liz. She’ll let you know if I don’t make it.

Chapter 5

Crowded isn’t the first word I’d choose to describe how many infected were in the dimly lit tunnel system beneath the campus, but there were a lot more loitering around inside than I would have preferred. There were places on our lengthy trek where we had to squeeze past groups of infected squatting and resting or others trying to push their way through a door to gain access to one of the university buildings.

It was a stressful hike, but at least the tunnels were cool and the infected showed little interest in us.

When we finally arrived at the door we were looking for, we exited the tunnel into the bowels of the university’s twenty-thousand seat basketball arena. We were just north of the hospital complex. We found a staircase that led up to the ground-level concourse that traced a path around the circumference of the circular building. Without speaking, we followed the echoes of our footsteps around the wide, deserted circle.

The ground floor concourse was walled in glass, so it was easy for us to gauge our location simply by looking outside.

When we arrived at the south side of the arena we saw the hospital complex across a concrete plaza and a lawn of dying grass.

Carnage left by the days-long battle with the infected was everywhere.

Military vehicles were scattered about. A few were burned. Most were just abandoned, some with heavy doors swaying in the breeze. The triage tent that Murphy and I had been in a few days earlier had fallen. The barricades were in shambles.

In the streets, all over the parking lots, and on the lawns, lay the dead. Brutal evidence of the efficacy yet insufficiency of military firepower. The live infected were everywhere, walking, squatting in the shadows, or running toward the hospital’s main building. The lower floors of the hospital were swarming with them.

Muffled gunfire sounded from the hospital, punctuated by occasional explosions. A window blew out and a shower of glass rained on the infected trying to get into the building. The soldiers inside were losing another battle. The hospital staff was losing another floor.

I stared at the upper floors of the westernmost building, wondering what would become of Steph. I tried to squeeze some inspiration for a rescue plan out of my brain, but all I got were thoughts of helplessness and frustration.

Murphy gave me a shove in the shoulder to get my attention. “Forget it, Null Spot. There’s nothing we can do for them.”

“I wasn’t…”

“Whatever, man.”

There was no point arguing. Murphy was right.

“If we want an armored Humvee, this is the place,” Murphy said. “The soldiers are too busy staying alive up there to stop us. Whitey might be a problem though. He gets mad when you steal his cars. Heh, heh, heh.”

“Murphy, if you’re trying to piss me off with your Whitey remarks, you know, I don’t care about that stuff, right?”

Murphy grinned. “Man, I’m just trying to get you to lighten up a bit.”

I pointed out through the tinted glass. “We’re looking at a thousand rotting corpses. Lighten up?”

“Life is what you make it, man.” He shrugged.

I gave it a derisive little headshake.

He said, “All these infected wandering around might be a problem.”

“Yeah,” I agreed

He said, “Once we’re in a Humvee, an armored one, I don’t think they can do anything to get at us.” It sounded to me like he was trying to convince himself.

“But if they swarm us like they swarmed Wilkins’ car?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just being honest, man. If we’re going to back out, now is the time to do it, because once I open this door, who knows what happens. It’s all a gamble.”

“Yeah, I know.” My experience in the Toyota was weighing on me.

“One of those Humvees could come in real handy,” he said.

Nodding, perhaps trying to convince myself, I said, “We could be at your mom’s house in twenty minutes.”

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed. “I’m still worried about getting out once we get where we’re going.”

“All we need is patience.” More convincing. “They’ll get bored and wander off.”

Murphy stared at field of corpses. He fell silent.

We both understood the size of the risk we were about to take.

Finally, I said, “If we’re going to do this, we need to move it along. What do you think?”

“All right. Let’s do it.” Murphy pushed the glass doors open and walked out into the full sun, without looking to make sure I was behind. Over his shoulder, he whispered, “Damn, it’s hot out here.”

It was damn hot. We walked toward the nearest armored Humvee that appeared to have an obscured view from the hospital windows, just in case.

The smell of the dead bodies rotting in the sun was overwhelming, but the smoke in the air helped to mask it.

Thick clouds of flies swarmed us.

Smears and pools of bodily fluids, not quite dry, made the footing treacherous.

“This is disgusting,” said Murphy.

“Yeah.” I opened my mouth to stop breathing the rancid stench into my nose, but when the flies tried to land in my mouth I felt like I could taste the corpses on my tongue. I felt nauseous.

Bodies lay about, ripped open by bullets. Bellies were distended where the gases of rot had no hole to escape. Faces were stretched in agony.

“Can people eat rats?” I asked.

Murphy stopped and looked at me. His expression told me that he thought I might be cracking up. “What are you even talking about?”

“I’m just thinking that this place is going to be infested with rats pretty soon. The whole city will be. They’d be a plentiful food source.”

Murphy shook his head. “I’ll learn how to grow potatoes or something long before I eat a rat.” He turned and hurried across the distance to the Humvee we’d selected.

The vehicle was empty. That was good luck. Rotting corpses baking in the heat of a closed vehicle might have made it unusable.

I looked around at the infected nearby. They were either rummaging through bloody scraps or focused on the sound of gunshots coming from the hospital.

Murphy jumped into the Humvee’s driver’s seat. I got in on the passenger side.

Murphy looked at me. “It’s do or die now, buddy. You sure you wanna do this?”

I shrugged. “You know, in this armored Humvee, we can probably drive around here a bit and maybe draw some of the infected away from the hospital. You know, give Steph and the others a chance.”

Murphy shook his head, but didn’t look at me. Without a word, he slammed his door shut, catching the attention of all the nearby infected.

“Damn.” I quickly yanked my door shut as Murphy waited for the glow plugs in the diesel engine to warm up.

Whites ran at us from all directions.

Murphy cranked the starter. As soon as the engine fired, Murphy floored the accelerator and we sluggishly accelerated away from the hospital.

I’d have been a lot happier if heavy beast of a Humvee was quicker.

We ran over one bump, then another. I knew what those bumps were, but put the thought of it out of my mind and focused on the clear pavement ahead.

The Humvee shuddered with the impact of an infected body running into the side at full speed. A few found a grip on the rear and were trying to climb on. The infected on the side slid away as Murphy pushed the truck to go faster.

When we hit clear asphalt, Murphy ran the Humvee up past forty and said, “Null Spot. Heh, heh, heh.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” I asked. “Null Spot.”

“You’re all kind of whited out, man,” he said. “It’s like you’re not there. Like a spot with nothing in it. Null Spot.” Murphy’s big laugh filled the vehicle.

“Whatever,” I muttered and looked out the window.

“Null Spot.” He laughed again. “You and your stupid superhero shit. Man, did you watch too many Star Wars movies as a kid, or what?”

I said, “I just thought we might be able to help them, that’s all.”

Murphy changed the subject with a hard swerve. The Humvee almost hit a curb. At the last second, Murphy angled back for the center of the street.

“What the fuck, man?”

Murphy said, “Dude, did you see that?”

“What?”

“That White was right in front of me and he jumped out of the way. So I tried to get him anyway.” He laughed again.

“Maybe he was smarter than the others,” I suggested

Murphy cocked his head as if giving that some thought.

I said, “Maybe he did it on purpose.”

Murphy smiled and looked over at me. “My mom always said, ‘Never trust Whitey.’”

Shaking my head, I asked, “Does anybody actually think you’re funny?”

“Everybody but you.” More grins.

“Did she really tell you that?” I asked.

“No, man, I’m just fuckin’ with ya.” Without warning, Murphy slammed the brakes hard. The Humvee skidded to a stop. He threw the transmission into reverse and mashed the accelerator to the floor.

“God damn,” I shouted. “You drive like shit.” I pushed myself away from the dashboard and back into my seat.

“That bridge over the highway back there was clear,” he said, pointing out my window. “I think we can get across.”

The infected were swarming up behind us. “Hurry.”

The brakes locked. Tires skidded again. More infected pounced on the Humvee.

I looked back and saw hands, elbows, and screaming mouths. “Shit.”

“Don’t worry, man,” Murphy told me over my cursing. “They can’t get inside.” Murphy turned the Humvee and maneuvered between the cars on the road leading to the bridge.

The infected beat loudly on the roof.

Murphy looked over at me, then laughed again.  He was having too much fun. He slammed the brakes hard and a body rolled off the roof and down over the hood just as he pushed the accelerator again. The Humvee bounced over the body. We crossed over the bridge.

“I’ll get the others off on the next turn.”

Chapter 6

The further we rolled into east Austin, the thicker the smoke got and the fewer infected we saw. Those that we did see were headed away. Our hitchhikers chose to join them. They were all brain-fried monsters, but they still knew enough to fear the fires that were burning their way across the eastern half of the city.

My phone buzzed and I gave it a look to see who was calling. It was a text message from Amber. I smiled.

Murphy said, “Man, you’re worse than a teenager.”

“It’s Amber.”

“She was the cute one, right?”

I shrugged.

“How many women is that?” Murphy teased. “Player Zed.”

I ignored him.

Amber: Are you there, Zed?

Me: Yup. What’s up?

Amber: Are you at Murphy’s mom’s house?

Me: No. We got hung up.

Amber: Anything bad?

“Dude, Amber just asked me if anything bad happened.”

“What’d you say?” he asked.

Raising my eyebrows, I said, “Nothing yet.”

“No point in sugarcoating it,” he said. “I have a feeling we all need to get used to bad news.”

Me: Jerome got shot.

Amber: Oh no. Bad?

Me: He’s dead.

No response.

Me: How are things there? You guys sitting tight? Any news?

Amber: Tense : (

Me: What happened?

Amber: One of the guys, Darren, I think, is infected.

Me: How do you know for sure?

Amber: He was lethargic for a while after you left. Nobody thought much of it but then he started acting weird. Now we think he’s infected.

Me: Did you take his temperature?

Amber: We don’t have a thermometer. They locked him in one of the dorm rooms. After they locked him in he screamed crazy gibberish for a while. He’s quiet now. Mark is sure he’s infected. But he has a gift for certainty.

Me: Those kind of people worry me.

Amber: Me too.

Me: Maybe Darren couldn’t take it all and just went nuts. Maybe all he needs is a Valium.

Amber: Mark wants to shoot him but nobody wants to open the door and go in. Wilkins is against that but again, nobody except Wilkins wants to open the door to find out for sure. Every time Wilkins brings it up, Mark goes ballistic.

Me: Not good.

Amber: I think Mark is really insecure. I don’t think he’s handling all of this very well. I think he and Wilkins are going to have it out at some point.

Me: Why do you say that?

Amber: It’s like every time they talk, Mark seems less respectful, more assertive. He doesn’t want to be a team player. He wants to be in charge.

Me: What did he say, exactly?

Amber: Mostly it’s subtle stuff. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m just worried.

Me: I don’t know what to say.

Amber: You don’t have to say anything. I’m just telling you because I need somebody to talk to.

Me: What about Marcy and Felicity?

Amber: Felicity has been sleeping on the couch in the lounge most of the afternoon.

Me: She’s not infected, is she?

Amber: No, she’s just tired. Marcy is following Mark around like she’s a puppy. I’m embarrassed for her.

Me: Sounds like junior high for grown-ups. I’m almost glad we got evicted.

Amber: Except for Jerome, I guess.

Me. Yeah.

Amber: Yeah.

Me: Well, like I said before. Wilkins is a good guy. He’ll keep it all under control.

Amber: I hope.

Me: Can you do me a favor if you’re not doing anything else?

Amber: You saved my life. You know I will.

Me: You know that stuff I talked about? That stuff about downloading whatever we could about farming, and solar power, you know, anything about how things work, or how to treat people when they’re sick. Anything about survival.

Amber: Yeah.

Me: Could you download as much as you can from the internet, please?

Amber: Sure. I’ve got a 64 gig flash drive. I can save it there. How will I get it to you?

Me: We’ll work something out. I’ll talk to you later on, okay?

Amber: Okay. Bye.

Murphy said, “Man, don’t look so down. What’s going on over there?”

I told Murphy about the conversation.

Chapter 7

The smoke thickened and reduced visibility down to several car lengths. The air got hard to breathe. Nothing was moving anywhere.

“The fire must be close,” I said.

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked.

“More or less.” He shrugged. I didn’t feel the confidence.

I said, “It seems like we’re headed right for the fire.”

Murphy shrugged again. “I’m just looking for a wide street to head north again.”

“Okay,” I said tentatively. “I don’t think I want to get roasted or suffocated.”

“I hear you, man.”

A few minutes later, Murphy made a slow left turn onto a wide, car-strewn boulevard.

“Murphy, what are we going to do after we find your mom’s house?”

“Well, I’m not going to be your superhero sidekick if that’s what you’re going to ask me, Null Spot.” He laughed. He found that Null Spot thing really funny. He always found himself funny.

“Whatever.”

Murphy glanced over at me and said, “So, tell me about this peaches and cream world that you grew up in that made you wanna go and help everybody. It’s like you’re a Boy Scout trying to earn that merit badge you missed out on when you were fifteen.” Murphy laughed again.

“Not even close,” I told him. “I was never a Boy Scout. We spent all of our time at church.”

“You didn’t ride a bicycle around to people’s houses did you?”

I shook my head. “Definitely not. I never really bought into any of it.”

“I’ll bet your parents didn’t dig that,” he said. “Did they know?”

“Oh, yeah,” I answered. “I told them.”

“What’d they do about it?”

“My stepdad thought he could beat the Jesus into me.” I said in a matter-of-fact tone. I liked to tell myself it didn’t bother me.

“How’d that turn out?” Murphy asked, seriously for a change.

“Just like you’d expect,” I answered.

“I heard that, man. So, no brothers? No sisters?”

“Nope, just me,” I said. “My real dad has family around town. I never met any of them. My mom hated them all.”

“Your folks sound like real nice people.”

I shrugged.

Murphy said, “So you’re more of a Batman superhero, then.”

“What?”

“You know,” he said, nodding emphatically. “Childhood trauma makes you want to go out and do good in the world.”

I ignored Murphy and looked out the window into a dim gray bubble a few hundred feet wide. Nothing moved. Nothing attacked. Abandoned cars littered the road. Human remains lay here and there. Doors on houses hung open. Windows were smashed. Human clutter littered the streets, lawns, and parking lots.

Everything had changed so fast.

I wondered if each of those houses had their dead owners inside. I wondered if the occupants became infected and went rampaging into West Austin to kill and kill and kill. I wondered how many children’s bodies were lying under their beds or in their closets.

Those kids never knew that evil found you wherever you hid. Running and fighting were your only real choices.

I was getting depressed.

That was an emotional indulgence I couldn’t afford.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

Breathe.

Move ahead.

Suck it up and don’t be a pussy.

We passed through a flashing red light at a large intersection.

“I know where we are now,” I said.

“Yeah. If we’re lucky, it’ll be smoky when we get to my mom’s house and we won’t have a swarm of the infected on us.”

“If they’re not there, then what?” I asked.

“My mom and sister?” Murphy asked, clarifying my question.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” Murphy answered.

“Do you have other family around?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, man,” he said. “Aunts, uncles, cousins. Most live close by. My mom is pretty tight with my uncle. He lives a few blocks over. She could be at his house. Who knows?”

“I assume you tried calling him.”

“Yeah. I tried calling everybody.” Murphy sounded irritated by my question. His face sagged a little. He looked much older without his smile.

“Your family means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” I asked. It was obviously true. But I thought Murphy might need some urging to talk about it.

“Yeah.”

Looking around at the impenetrable gray, I said, “With all the smoke chasing the infected away, we can probably check all of your relatives’ houses.”

With no enthusiasm, Murphy said, “Null Spot rides again.”

I ignored the comment. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find somebody.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Chapter 8

What little I could see of Murphy’s neighborhood through the smoke didn’t bode well. Bodies of the dead infected were scattered everywhere. Car windows were smashed. The small old houses had belched their contents and dead occupants out onto the lawns.

Under the boughs of the grand old oaks that had shaded the streets for decades, Murphy’s neighbors had fought the infected, and the guns they used to defend themselves drew more infected in. It was a difficult first lesson to survive through. Dried blood, torn clothes, and gnawed bones marked the places where men, women, and their kids had learned that lesson too late.

In spite of the body count, I saw no firearms among the dead. Someone had lived through the battle. The area had been scavenged. That was a hopeful sign.

Murphy stopped the Humvee by the curb in front of a house that looked like all the rest. Through the thickening smoke, I could barely see the front door.

Murphy turned to me with his mouth in a resolute crease. “You can stay here if you want. You don’t have to come in.”

I simply said, “We’re in this together.”

Without another word, Murphy opened his door and climbed out. I did the same.

When I came around the back of the vehicle, Murphy was halfway across the front lawn.

I hurried my pace.

The front door was ajar. Murphy cautiously pushed it open as I came up to watch his back.

I checked our flanks, a lesson I learned from watching the soldiers die on the quad by the dorm. They didn’t understand their adversary. They got sloppy and they paid for their mistakes in the only currency this altered world seemed content to accept. Blood.

Murphy stepped into the house. He was tense. He was tentative.

He feared what he might find.

His breathing was ragged, but we hadn’t exerted ourselves. His smile, a dam that held back a river of emotions, crumbled in the flood.

I paused halfway in and listened. A noise was coming from somewhere inside. I didn’t know where, but I guessed what.

Murphy crossed the living room and leaned into the kitchen as I closed the front door behind me.

The furnishings were thirty years out of fashion and worn. The carpet was its own kind of ugly.

A wall covered with framed photos chronicled the lives of Murphy and his sister. Murphy as a Boy Scout. Murphy as a football player. A younger, thinner Murphy standing proud and stern in a crisp Army uniform.

Murphy’s sister, sitting on a pony at a young age. Pirouetting as a third grader at a dance recital. The camera caught her, clad in a cheerleader’s uniform, high in the air in a gymnastic bounce. Her wearing a cap and gown with a big grin in two separate photos from two different graduations.

Murphy’s mom was in some of the pictures, arms around the kids, always smiling. No picture of any father, anywhere.

Murphy’s mother and sister came to life on that wall even as their deaths were about to be confirmed.

Murphy looked back at me, his face taut, and his jaw clenched. He shook his head.

The kitchen was empty.

I followed him across the living room to the hall.

The sound was louder. Just as I became certain what it was, Murphy bolted up the hall. He must have figured it out as well.

It was the infected.

I hurried to follow.

A closed bedroom door at the end of the hall proved no obstacle for Murphy’s momentum. It cracked and splintered. Hinge screws ripped through wood as Murphy’s wrath exploded into the room.

Murphy’s fury found voice in a primordial scream that was seconded only to the shots exploding from his rifle.

The house fell suddenly silent.

The ugly business in that room was finished. Only sorrow and rage remained.

In the hall, I froze in my footsteps.

In that room, heavy feet pounded the wooden floor. Furniture bounced against walls. Trinkets shattered. A beast fought with its grief.

I wondered, was Murphy’s smile dying while I listened, while I cringed? Would he now wear the frown of the emotionally damaged, the same one worn now by so many?

There was too much emotion in that room for me to enter the fray. I’d rather face the infected. I withdrew past the only other door off the hall. It was also closed. If something was inside, I’d know soon enough.

I took up a position in the living room at the entrance to the hall. From there, I could see the front door, the back door, and of course, the hall. Nothing moved.

Moments later, Murphy burst from the room with a grimace on his face and tears in his eyes.

I looked toward the second hall door, and in the time it took me to focus my attention there, Murphy crossed the distance and smashed through it.

Half in the hall and half in the room; Murphy looked back and forth across it several times and then froze.

After a time, I softly asked, “Murphy?”

Murphy didn’t move.

I listened for movement in the house. I heard only silence.

The only infected in the house were those Murphy had killed in the back bedroom. Whether those infected had killed his family or whether they were his family was the burning question.

I shuddered at the thought. Murphy wasn’t like me. He loved his mother.

For the moment, Murphy was frozen by grief.

Shots had been fired. If any infected were near enough, they would hear, and they would come. One of us needed to get back in the game and that had to be me.

I hurried into the kitchen, stepped across the avocado-patterned linoleum floor and peeked through the window above the sink. There was no movement on that side of the house.

I hurried to the front of the house and pushed aside a homemade curtain to get a view of the street. “Mother fucker.”

Our Humvee was rolling away from the curb.

I ran to the front door and flung it open.

From behind, Murphy called, “What?”

I ran into the front yard and saw the Humvee disappear into the smoke. “God damn it. God damn motherfucking criminal bastard fuck-shits.”

Then Murphy was beside me. He bellowed curses up the street and pointed his weapon.

I put a hand on the barrel and pushed it down. “Don’t. It’s pointless.”

I looked around to see if we’d drawn any attention. In the small circle of the world that wasn’t obscured by smoke, I saw no movement. I heard none of the infected’s usual noises but I heard something. I heard a noise that didn’t belong.

With neither of us swearing at the moment, Murphy heard it too. "What's that?”

I looked south, toward the sound. It was a combination of a rumble and a rush of wind, growling and coming closer. The uniform gray smoke hanging over the houses started to glow in patches of orange and red.

"Shit. Murphy, we need to move. The fire is coming."

I ran a few steps and noticed that Murphy wasn't following. I stopped. "C'mon, Murphy. What the fuck?"

Murphy was fixated on the glow of the fire through the smoke. "We can't outrun that."

His voice was flat. Despondent.

Oh, no.

"I'm not quitting now,” I yelled at him. “I'm not dying here. Let's go.” I took a few more steps.

Nothing.

Fuck.

Suddenly, Murphy was back. He shouted, "We need a car."

"No time,” I argued.

"It's our only chance."

Damn.

Murphy was right.

I ran toward a car that sat in a neighbor’s yard with the driver’s door swung open. The front seat was a gory mess, but I jumped in. The keys were in the ignition. The windshield was spiderwebbed with cracks.
I cranked the engine. The starter groaned rhythmically, but the engine didn't fire.

"Shit," I shouted.

I cranked again.

Nothing.

It must have run out of fuel with the engine running after its driver had died. I was out of the car in a snap. Murphy was nowhere to be seen.

I looked around.

I heard a car engine crank and made out the shape of another car through the smoke across the street. I ran toward it and saw Murphy's big silhouette through the shattered driver's side window.

Just as my feet hit asphalt, the engine rumbled to life.

Murphy spun the wheels as he backed the car off of the curb.

I jumped and slid over the hood as the fire ignited the leaves of the oak tree shading above me.

A billow of heat singed my skin and seared my throat. Every tree I could see was engulfed in flames. It was all happening impossibly fast.

Beneath that flaming sky, I landed in the passenger seat and Murphy stomped on the accelerator.

The car fishtailed up the street. Embers from trees rained down from above. Lawns, bushes, and houses ignited.

Murphy pulled the car through the first left-hand turn and plunged us into thick smoke at thirty, forty, then fifty miles-per-hour. The oaks’ thick foliage crumbled into embers as the fire raced through the treetops in front of us. Visibility shrank to a deadly small margin for the speed we were moving. But with death's greedy hands grasping at our flesh, wild-eyed flight and long odds were our only chances for survival.

Murphy kept jerking the car from side to side to get past obstacles seen at the last moment. Four blocks passed before we got out from under the racing blaze.

I cast a morbidly curious glance at the conflagration behind us. "Jesus."

Murphy hit a hard right turn and then a quick left, angling across the path of the fire, but still moving away.

I was nervous about the choice. "Do you know a way out?"

"That dude with the bunker, his house isn't far. If we can get there ahead of the fire, we'll be safe." Murphy was tense. We weren’t out of danger.

"There’s a lot of hope in that plan," I told him.

"Do you have a better idea?" he asked.

“Drive like a mother fucker ‘til we run out of road?” Yeah, that seemed like the best choice to me.

“Once these streets burn, we’ll never find that bunker in the mess.” Murphy cast a quick, knowing glance at me.

“Shit.”

Chapter 9

Murphy stopped the car in front of a dilapidated two-story house with a chain-link fence falling down around it.

I looked back in the direction of the fire. Knowing what to listen for, I heard the distant roar but I saw no evidence of the glow. We had time—not a lot, but some.

Murphy grabbed his rifle and jumped out of the car.

I hurried behind. "Are you sure this is the place?"

"Yep."

The front door of the house was hanging on a single hinge. We ran inside.

The house had been vandalized to the point of worthlessness. Every window was shattered. The carpet was ripped from the slab. There were holes in the walls and holes in the ceiling large enough for someone to fall through. There were dirty, worn cushions on the floor, and graffiti on the walls.

Trash lay everywhere. Torn clothes were scattered with bones. The house stank like an overflowing port-a-potty.

We passed through the kitchen, which had been destroyed by vandals and copper tubing thieves.

Murphy flung open a door that led into the garage.

Infected.

“Shit.” I stumbled over my feet trying to back away.

Murphy, still full of pent up rage, wasn’t fazed. He barreled forward and popped off three rounds before swinging the butt of his gun around to work on the skull of one who was close enough to catch his fury.

I regained my footing and fired six shots at movement in the darkness.

Then it was still. My eyes adjusted and I saw eleven dead infected among the junk. That didn’t make sense. Some of them must already have been there. I also saw something very unusual. In the floor, there was a heavy, misshapen steel door. The rusty lock and handle had the look of having been pried open.

Murphy, pointed to my rifle, and pointed at the door in the floor.

I stood back and aimed my M4.

With one hand on his weapon, Murphy bent over, grabbed the door, and pulled.

It clinked on something, but it didn't open.

Murphy pulled on it again. It rattled in its frame.

It was jammed or locked.

Damn it.

How much time could we have?

He kicked it hard, and yelled, "If anyone's down there, get back. I'm blowing the door and then I'm coming in."

Murphy pulled a hand grenade from his MOLLE vest and placed it with both hands near the door's locking mechanism.

He looked up at me.

I needed no instructions. I ran back into the house and headed for the furthest end from the garage.

Murphy's heavy breathing behind me told me that I understood what was going to happen next.

We got to the end of a hall, and before I could get into the bedroom, the grenade's blast rocked the house.

I stopped and turned.

Murphy was already running back toward the garage.

As we passed the open front door on our way back, I saw the orange glow of the fire above the roofs of the houses across the street. All of our chips were on this one bet.

Time for delays and caution were gone. If the grenade had failed to do its work, we were dead.

The garage was full of floating filth and rearranged junk.

I coughed, inhaling more dusty crud.

It was hard to see. We made our way toward the center, where we knew the door lay on the floor. It had been swung open by the force of the blast, more bent than before.

Murphy looked at me for confirmation.

I nodded. What other choice did I have?

The first step creaked under his weight.

Chapter 10

No surprise; it was dark.

I’d expected a doomsday bunker that would generate its own electricity. It either wasn’t doing that, the light bulbs were shattered by the grenade’s concussion, or an ambush awaited us below.

The darkness implied only negative outcomes, hence my lack of surprise.

Murphy flicked on the flashlight mounted on the barrel of his M4, pointed the weapon into the gloom, and hustled down the stairs.

I let my M4 dangle from its harness, drew my Glock, shined my light over his shoulder, and followed.

The room was maybe a dozen feet wide and twenty or thirty feet long. It had a concrete floor and shelves with dusty boxes and unidentifiable equipment stacked within. At the far end of the room on the left wall, another door was shut. The mechanism was torn up. Someone had gone through that door as well.

And there were bodies. Some were clearly infected. Of others, I couldn’t be sure.

Murphy looked back at me. “If we can, we need to close that outer door. The fire will be here soon.”

“Yup.” I bounded back up the stairs, positioned myself on one end of the door, and lifted. Good God, it was heavy.

Murphy came up to help.

The hinges had been bent by the explosion, making it very difficult to swing the warped door up off of the garage floor.

As we got it back over the hole, in a position where gravity would close it once again, Murphy and I hurried down the stairs, chased by the roar of the approaching fire.

We ran to the far end of the bunker.

The second door hung slightly open, a fact I hadn’t noticed moments before in our hurry to check the room and reclose the outer door. We were carelessly racing into uncertainty, betting our lives on a guess that the bunker was safe.

We had no choice. The alternative was immolation.

Murphy took up a ready position outside the door. I put a hand on the handle. He nodded twice and on the third nod, I swung it open.

I jumped back and looked for movement in the blackness. I listened for sounds.

Nothing.

No, wait…I heard something.

I cast a fearful glance at Murphy. He looked back the way we’d come. The fire had to be on the house. Its roar filled the room.

Necessity drove us down the stairs.

In the beams of our lights, the room appeared to be a match for the one we’d just left, ten feet deeper in the earth, and set at a perpendicular angle.

No movement. That was good.

Murphy stopped at the bottom of the stairs and kept his rifle pointed down the length of the room.

I pulled the door shut behind us.

“Don’t worry about that,” Murphy said.

“No, we need to seal it if we can.”

“The fire?” he asked.

“I don’t know if it’ll suck all the oxygen out when it passes over,” I said, “but I don’t want to find out the hard way.”

“Do what you need to do.”

The door appeared to have a good rubber seal, but the door handle was missing and the metal around the hole was bent. That left a large gap for air to escape.

I shined my light on a nearby shelf and grabbed a handful of a rotten sleeping bag material and stuffed it into the hole. A fortuitously handy cinder block served to keep the door closed. “That’ll have to do.”

With the door sealed, the fire’s roar diminished significantly. I heard disturbingly familiar noises from the far end of the room.

Suddenly frightened and angry for having missed the infected in the darkness, I shined my light down the length of the bunker.

The room had rows of bunk beds along one wall, what appeared to be a kitchen area at the end, and the remains of some living room furniture in the middle. I counted three bodies but I saw no movement.

Where were they?

I scanned the room again, ready to shoot anything that wasn’t Murphy, but my light revealed nothing in the dark corners that it reached. No movement at all.

Still, I heard the sounds of the infected.

“There.” Murphy shined his light on the far end of the room, near the left corner. “Another door.”

“How big is this fucking place?” I asked, out of frustration.

With the fire roaring overhead and our situation stable for the moment, I should have been relieved, at least.

The door jiggled in its frame and the animal sounds of the infected behind grew louder.

They knew we were there.

I laid my flashlight on a shelf and pointed it down the length of the room. I ran a reassuring hand across the full magazines stored in my vest. I holstered my Glock and in a smooth, comfortable motion, I raised my M4 to a firing position.

I told Murphy, “We can’t beat that fire outside, but I’ll bet my ass that we can kill every brain-fried infected that funnels out of that door.”

“Make your shots count,” he told me.

“At this range, I can hit anything.”

The Ogre and the Harpy.

We stood in our ready poses for at least five minutes while the door rattled, the infected moaned, and the roar of the fire crescendoed above.

As time passed, I grew impatient. “I wish they’d just open the fuckin’ door and come out.”

Relaxing his stance, Murphy looked at me and in a hushed tone said, "I wonder if they're locked in."

I shrugged noncommittally.

Murphy said, "I'll bet those are folks from the neighborhood that hid down here when everything started. I’ll bet they bolted the door shut, not knowing that some of them were infected already, and now they’re all too stupid to figure out how to open it."

I said, “If I say I agree with your deduction, don’t call me your dear Watson.”

“Who’s Watson?” he asked.

“Murphy, there are some cultural gaps in your education that we need to discuss some time.”

“I take it Watson’s not a rapper,” he said.

“Whatever.”

Murphy said, "That must have been a nightmare when it all went down."

"Yeah,” I agreed. “The next time I start complaining, remind me about this and about how good I have it.”

“I will.”

“I know. So, what are our options, do you think?" I asked.

"We could stand here and wait for Whitey to come out.” Murphy half smiled. “That might take a few minutes or it might take a few days. They might never come out."

I asked, "Any other ideas?"

"Just bad ones."

I asked, “Like?”

He said, “We could try the grenade thing again, but if the shrapnel didn’t kill us, we'd get knocked senseless by the blast. Then, if we regained our senses in time, we might get to die while the infected down there eat us alive.”

“Yeah, I’m not a fan of that one.” I pursed my lips and thought for a second. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Yeah?”

I said, “We could block the door.”

"Not we," Murphy corrected.

"This isn't a good time for you to get lazy," I told him.

"Not lazy,” he said. “Smart. One of us can pile enough of this junk between the wall and the door to keep it jammed shut. The other one needs to keep a rifle trained on that door in case the infected figure out how to get it open. Having us both standing around with boxes of crap in our hands when a hundred infected come pouring out…well, that won’t have a happy ending."

"Not for us, I guess." I said.

"Nope, not for us,” Murphy agreed with a laugh.

Chapter 11

The door was blocked.

I was exhausted.

Murphy and I made ourselves comfortable at the opposite end of level two, at the foot of the stairs that led up to the first level. The infected finally calmed down, and not much noise came from beyond the door. After what sounded like the collapse of the house above us a few hours before, all the noise of the fire had gone away as well.

I left my flashlight turned on and sitting on a shelf to provide some light in the gloomy space. At least it provided enough light so that I could see whether the bag of chips I pulled of my bag were potato or corn.

“What do you got there?” Murphy asked.

I looked back in my bag. “Mostly chips, soda, and some donuts for breakfast.”

“Man, all I have are cupcakes, Peanut M&M’s, and three Dr. Peppers.”

“I’ve got like six bags of chips,” I said. “I’ll trade some for M&M’s.”

“Cool.”

“I need to find a watch,” I said, through a mouthful of corn chips. “I don’t want to burn up the battery on my phone by checking the time, but I hate not knowing what time it is.”

“There’ll be plenty around,” Murphy responded. “The trick is getting one that doesn’t require a battery.”

“Yeah. How do you tell?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Find one that looks old, I guess. Speaking of which, how’s your battery holding up?”

“Less than half. I need to get a solar charger for it.”

“That’s pointless, dude,” he said. “I don’t know when the cellular network will fail, but I know it will. I doubt that there’s anybody interested in keeping that stuff running anymore. The electric grid will fail, too. You can charge your cell phone in a wall socket until then. Besides, when the electric grid fails, the cellular network will go at the same time. So a solar charger for your cell phone is pointless.”

“Yeah, but I still need a solar charger for a computer.”

“Assuming you can get that flash drive from Amber,” said Murphy.

“I need to text her,” I said.

“You’re worried,” Murphy observed.

“Yeah, of course. She said Mark was going nuts.”

“He was already nuts.” Murphy smiled but his eyes betrayed his worry.

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“Does the Null Spot want to go back and save her?” he asked.

Fuck your Null Spot, Murphy.

I knew that if I ignored the Null Spot comments long enough, Murphy would give up on them. “I don’t know what we should do about her.”

“Or even if we have any responsibility to her,” he said. “You need to remember, we took them in and helped them. They repaid us by kicking us out.”

“It wasn’t a unanimous decision,” I argued.

“What you don’t seem to be getting here,” he said, “is that we’re different. You can think all of the ‘We Are The World’ thoughts you want, but we aren’t part of that club anymore.”

“Murphy, once things settle down…”

“No,” he stopped me. “Once people get a belief in their heads, it’s damn near impossible to change their minds. Once they decide all of us infected are a danger, they’ll always believe that, no matter what. Fear makes it all worse. Fear cements belief into people’s heads better than anything else. Right now, people are scared, right? As they should be.”

“That’s cynical,” I countered.

Murphy guffawed. “That’s what I like about you. You call me cynical and you don’t see the irony in it.” He laughed some more.

It was time to change the subject. “Do you mind if I ask what happened at your mom’s house? Were they both there?”

Murphy’s face instantly changed. The deep smile lines morphed into a furrowed frown. He didn’t say anything but started to stare at a shadow on floor. His mouth opened to start speaking a few times but nothing came out.

Feeling guilty for having asked, I said, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

It took a little time for Murphy to answer. “There were three infected in my mom’s room. My mom was dead. It was a hard thing to see.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t true. “And your sister, was she in the house?”

Murphy shook his head and refocused on the shadows. “I don’t know if she’s alive or turned infected or what. I’ll probably never know.”

“What about your relatives’ houses?” I asked.

“Anybody I can think of probably got their houses burned down when the fire blew through.”

“Oh. What do you want to do, then?” I asked.

“Sit in this bunker tonight and get some sleep.”

Shaking my head, I said, “No, I mean, after that.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, still staring at the shadows. “I don’t know what to do after that. You got any ideas?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Since this all started, I’ve been mostly just trying to stay alive for the next five minutes. I mean, I keep thinking we need to plan. We need to think through these problems. But everything we plan for keeps falling to shit. We got a place set up in the dorm and got kicked out. We went to your mom’s house…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up again. We stole a Humvee and some fuckers re-stole it. Jerome got shot for no good reason at all, except to teach us both a lesson that might keep us both alive for another day.”

Murphy cut in. “That’s what I’m saying. We need to expect that from the uninfected. Or at least be ready for it.”

I went on, “And now we’re in a bunker that we hoped might be a safe place for us to ride this whole thing out, and it’s a junked out shit hole full of the dead and infected.”

Murphy said, “It did save us from that fire.”

“Yeah.” He had a point about the fire. “Maybe I’m just being a whiny ass.”

I took a long drink out of a bottle of soda and said, “You know all that stuff I keep talking about? We need it. We need to know what to do to survive. The only things you and I really know are the stupid things we’ve seen in movies.”

Murphy shook his head. “I was in the Army.”

“Yeah man, you know I mean besides that.”

“You think too much,” he told me. “You’re still alive. That’s better than I can say for damn near everybody else. So, yeah, you are being a whiny ass. I’d say things have worked out pretty good for you so far.”

I looked around the dark, smelly bunker. “I wouldn’t say pretty good.”

“Well, I sure as hell would.” Murphy sat up straight and looked over at me. “You could be a brain-fried cannibal, but you’re not. Life is gonna be hard now. Get used to bad shit happening. If we want to make it, we need to suck it up and move on.”

“I didn’t realize that you were such an optimist.” It was sarcasm.

“I’m a pragmatist, man,” he said. “I think I’ve got a reasonably safe place to sleep tonight. I know I’ve got a pretty good load of ammo, an M4, and a Glock. I avoided getting barbecued. I’ve got a full belly and enough food and water to get me through breakfast. Hell, by today’s standards, I’m a rich man. If I had some fucked up hair, I’d be the new Donald Trump.” Murphy’s laugh found its way back.

I laughed along, and our laughter disturbed the infected in the lower level. They pushed on the door and it rattled. Too bad for them. It wasn’t going to open.

“Do you want first or second watch?” Murphy asked.

“I’m still on an adrenaline rush,” I said. “I don’t think I can sleep just yet. Besides, I want to check in with Amber and Steph if I can get a signal down here.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’m dead tired. You take the first watch. Wake me when you get sleepy.”

“Will do.”

Murphy made himself comfortable on his pallet and closed his eyes. I checked my phone’s signal strength. One bar.

I texted Amber and hoped for the best.

Me: Amber, it’s Zed. Are you there?

I waited for an answer for a bit and tried again.

Me: Amber?

I wondered whether she was sleeping, and I worried about other possibilities. Thankfully, before I could spin up too many horrible scenarios in my imagination, the phone displayed a response.

Amber: Hey.

Me: Sorry if I woke you.

Amber: I’m guessing there was a delay between your texts but they both arrived at the same time on my end.

Me: Ah. I was getting worried.

Amber: I would say not to, but I guess there’s cause.

Me: Yeah.

Amber: Did you get to Murphy’s mom’s house?

Me: Yes.

Amber: And?

Me: The mom was dead.

Amber: And his sister?

Me: Don’t know.

Amber: Are you guys staying there tonight?

Me: That’s a long story but we’re holed up in some abandoned survivalist’s bunker.

Amber: That sounds promising.

Me: It’s not. It’s pretty much just a hole in the ground right now but at least we’re safe for the night.

Amber: That’s something.

Me: How are things on your end? Did you get a chance to download any of that stuff?

Amber: Grim and yes.

Me: What?

Amber: I downloaded a ton of stuff today. I’ve stayed in my room most of the day doing that. I’ve got it on my flash drive.

Me: You said, grim.

Amber: Felicity and Major Wilkins are down with the fever.

Me: Shit.

Amber: They’re in another room. The guys are guarding the door. There’s talk of shooting them now.

Me: What ever happened with Darren?

Amber: Nothing yet. The door is still locked shut. He stays quiet most of the time but gets loud and violent when he hears us in the hall. There’s no doubt he’s infected.

Me: Do you have a gun?

Amber: Yes. I’m in your old room by myself and I’m keeping the door locked. But Mark has the master key he found in the office so he can lock or unlock any of the rooms.

Me: Is that something to worry about?

Amber: I don’t know. I only go out into the hall when I have to go to the bathroom and I bring the gun with me. Mostly I hear what’s going on with the others through the door.

Me: What do you think is going to happen?

Amber: It’s like Blanton all over again. I think a couple of the guys have sequestered themselves in another of the rooms like me. Marcy and Mark are parading around like the king and queen, but only one of the guys is out there for them to boss around. It’s surreal.

Me: I’m sorry.

Amber: When I got here this place seemed like a refuge. Now I don’t know what it is.

Me: Do you want me to come and get you out? I can’t come tonight, but I could try tomorrow.

Amber: Not a good idea. Everybody thinks you guys are the cause of the infection in here. They think you’re carriers. If they see you, they’ll kill you.

Me: What do you think?

Amber: I don’t know. There’s speculation about it all over the internet.

Me: If that’s true, then I’m truly sorry. I didn’t know. By getting you from the dorm, I may have condemned you.

Amber: We were going to die there anyway. It was just a matter of time.

Me: I’m sorry.

Amber: Don’t be. Things are how they are now.

Me: Don’t give up hope, Amber. We’ll work something out.

Amber: Hope is irrelevant. The infection is spreading among us. It’s only a matter of time before all of us here get exposed, if we’re not already. The internet says that exposure is inevitable. The virus is too resilient, too contagious.

Me: Still, you might be immune. You haven’t contracted the virus yet. If the others were exposed, then you were too. Or you might end up like Murphy and me.

Amber: Those are very slim chances.

Me: Not really. For as much as you’ve been around the virus, especially at Blanton, and you haven’t come down with any symptoms yet, I think there’s a good chance that you’re immune.

Amber: Thanks for the sunshine doctor Zed.

Me: I’m not a doctor but I’m in contact with some people over at the hospital and that’s what they think.

Amber: What?

Me: That the longer you go without catching the virus, the higher the chances are that it’s because you’re immune.

Amber: Really? The doctors said that?

Me: Yup.

Amber: Okay. I’m going to keep the flash drive in my front pocket. That way, if I get infected and I turn and they shoot me, you can find it there.

Me: Amber.

Amber: It’s reality. That’s how it is now. Get some sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning if you want.

Me: Absolutely.

I stared off into the darkness for a long time after my conversation ended while I ruminated over my choices. It was hard to tell which were good choices and which weren’t. They all turned sour at some point. They all seemed like mistakes.

Perhaps good needed to be measured in a new way. Perhaps good was just another day or hour of life. Was that as good as it was going to get? I wondered how Murphy would look at it.

It was time to check on Steph.

Me: Steph, are you there?

Steph: Will you be offended if I say again, wow, you’re still alive?

Me: It’s the new hello LOL.

Steph: Wow. You’re still alive.

Me: Wow. You’re still alive.

I took a few moments to convey my situation to Steph before proceeding.

Me: What’s the story at the hospital? Did you guys start infecting people?

Steph: Yes : (

Me: I’m sorry, but like you said before, it’s the only choice that gives some of you guys a chance.

Steph: That’s the logic but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Me: Are you okay with it all?

Steph: I don’t know. It was a hard thing to talk about. But imagining the difficulty was nothing compared to the reality of it.

Me: How many have you done?

Steph: We started right after you and I talked earlier.

Me: And?

Steph: We literally drew names and the first twenty names we pulled got infected. Eighteen of them started to show symptoms within a couple of hours, some right away.

Me: Did you follow through?

Steph: Are you asking if we shot them?

Me: Yes and no. I mean, you guys are doctors. I’m guessing you have drugs you could have used.

Steph: We decided that down the road, drugs would have more value. The soldiers have lots of bullets. An injection would be more humane but we’re still talking about killing people. Once you make the big moral leap, the question of how you do it loses significance. They were shot.

Me: So, eighteen shot and two left?

Steph: Yes. Everybody here is praying that the two make it. That’ll give credence to the theory underlying this fucking experiment. It’ll give us hope.

Me: Hope is important. When does the next group get infected?

Steph: About forty minutes.

Me: When will you know if you’re in that group?

Steph: We’re drawing right before we infect. That way nobody has to brood over their upcoming turn and maybe do something stupid.

Me: When will you know if the two that aren’t showing symptoms are immune?

Steph: We’re talking about that now but the consensus seems to be twenty-four hours.

Me: The doctors aren’t sure yet?

Steph: Nobody really knows.

Me: How are you holding up?

Steph: I’m alive.

Chapter 12

The darkness at the far end of the room grew as my flashlight battery slowly died. My eyelids got heavy. The hours wore on. I dozed off and jerked myself awake a half dozen times, taking deep breaths, and isometrically tensing my muscles each time to get my blood flowing again.

I stood up. I paced. I took care in keeping quiet. There was no point in disturbing the infected below.

I had the urge to check the hour on the phone for the hundredth time, but that would only serve to drain the remainder of my battery.

I sat on a storage bin, leaned back against the concrete wall, and let my thoughts wander. I tried to imagine a future when all of the infected were dead, all but the slow burns like me. I wondered how close life could return to normal. I wondered how many humans would be left when the chaos resolved to order.

I squirmed around and tried to find a comfortable spot on the hard surface.

Murphy’s heavy breathing taunted me with a temptation to sleep.

I wondered if Amber or Steph would be alive in the morning. I wondered whether I should go back to rescue Amber again. Undoubtedly, Murphy would tease me, but she had the flash drive. That flash drive was more valuable than gold.

And, in spite of all that was going on, I wanted to see her.

My eyelids grew heavy again.

Tink. Tink. Tink.

What the hell was that?

I sat up straight and stared into the shadows at the far end of the bunker.

I listened.

Was it my imagination?

Was I dreaming?

Breathing as quietly as I could, I slid slowly off of the storage container and walked to the center of the bunker.

Aside from Murphy’s heavy nighttime breathing, the bunker was as silent as a coffin.

I stilled my body and listened. I heard air flow through my throat. I heard my heartbeat in my ears. I strained at the silence, but no more noises revealed themselves.

Long minutes passed before I convinced myself that those three metallic tinks were my imagination.

I returned to my storage container. I checked the time on my cell phone. The light from the phone’s screen destroyed my night vision. When I turned it off, the previously dim bunker was nearly black. And the blackness was frightening.

I decided to go another twenty minutes before waking Murphy.

Tink, tink, tink.

I sat straight up, alert.

That was not my imagination.

I looked again into the shadows at the end of the bunker.

Tink, tink, tink.

My doubts were gone. It was metal on metal.

Was it one of the infected squirming in a dream as he leaned against the door? Was the noise a rodent hiding in the junk? There had to be an air vent leading to the surface somewhere. Could the noise be the wind blowing a metal flap on that vent?

I got to my feet and moved to the center of the room, my M4 up and ready. I made more noise than I’d wanted to, and as a result, I heard some stirring from beyond the door to the lower level.

I waited a long time for silence to return, and then I waited some more.

The noise was a mystery that I had to solve.

As quietly as I could, I stepped toward the door. I reached over the boxes blocking my way, steeled my nerves, lay a hand on the door’s cold metal, and listened.

Nothing.

I leaned close and pressed my ear to the door. I heard the breathing and night noises of half a hundred sleeping humans. No, not humans, not anymore. Monsters, in human skin.

Tink, tink, tink.

With my ear still pressed against the metal door, the sound was loud enough to startle me. I fell backwards.

The noise of my fall was more than sufficient to cause a stir beyond the door. At least a half dozen of the infected became animated and vocal.

I pulled myself to my feet as quickly as I could and leveled my weapon at the door. I waited.

The infected rustled around and pushed on the door but eventually calmed, and fell silent.

The metallic taps mystery was solved or at least the source identified. I asked myself whether someone could still be alive inside. If so, it had to be a slow burn.

I removed an ammo magazine from my vest and slipped out one round. I stepped back over to the door and with the brass end of the round, I tapped three times on the door: tink, tink, tink.

I inhaled a slow breath.

Tink, tink, tink.

Was it an answer or a coincidence?

I tapped twice more.

Two tinks answered my taps.

I tapped once.

I was answered with one.

Holy crap.

All doubt was gone. Someone was in there.

Chapter 13

Murphy and I stood about ten feet from the door to the lowest level. It was after three in the morning. I was dead tired, but the adrenaline was keeping me on my feet.

Murphy said, “What I don’t get is, if there’s somebody in there who isn’t infected, why didn’t they just come out?”

“I can’t answer that.” I looked over at the closed door. “But if they’re in there with all of those infected, my guess is that they’re not normal. They’ve got to be a slow burn, like us, or they’d have been killed.”

“So the Null Spot wants to save one of his own.”

I said, “I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Well there’s that, and then there’s the smart thing,” said Murphy. “If they’re locked in and can’t get out, then we’re safe for the night, anyway.”

I was miffed. “You want to leave them in there?”

“Chill, Zed. I’m just saying that we need to evaluate our choices and our chances before we jump into another pile of shit.”

“Fine,” I said. “What are our choices and chances?”

“Our first choice is to spend the night here, bail out in the morning and forget this place,” he said. “That way we live through another night and don’t take any risks.”

“Yeah but…”

“Let me finish,” he told me.

“Fine.” I huffed.

He said, “Obviously if we do that, then whoever is trapped in there will die. They can’t get out by themselves. If they could have, they would have.”

“Agreed.”

“Our alternative is to bust open the door,” said Murphy, “kill all of the infected inside, and save any slow burns that we find.”

“I’m resisting the urge to say something sarcastic right now,” I told him.

“I know I’m stating the obvious,” he said. “We only have two choices. But all the risk to us comes with the second choice. We only have one way to get that door open and that’s with one of our limited supply of hand grenades. And we already talked about the risk of blowing a grenade in this confined space. Then we’ll have who knows how many infected coming out after us. Can we kill them? Probably. They can’t surround us. They can’t because they all have to squeeze through that door. They probably can’t overwhelm us. But you never know. Something unexpected could happen. A gun could jam. One of us might trip and fall. Hell, anything could happen, and if it does, one or both of us wind up dead. Do you see what I’m saying?”

Of course I saw it. I said, “I know there’s an unquantifiable risk. If there’s anything I’ve learned so far, it’s that we live in a new world. I know that last week, if I tripped and fell, the worst-case result was a bruise, or a tear in my clothes. Now if I trip at the wrong time, I die. Last week, if my flashlight batteries died, I went to the store for more. Today, I die. Last week, if I was thirsty, I just got a drink of water anywhere I wanted. Today, if I don’t have enough water with me, I have to find some and risk getting killed doing it, or I die.

“You see,” I told him, “I do get it. Every mistake carries the death penalty. But Murphy, I can’t leave somebody in that bunker to die. I just can’t do it. We may be in an every-man-for-himself world now, but it will only be that if that’s what we survivors make it. I’m not doing that. I won’t. Help me or don’t help me. You decide. But I’m opening that door.”

Murphy took some time with his response but eventually he acquiesced. “Okay, Null Spot.”

Looking back at the door again, as though urgency to get it open was growing, I said, “You’re just saying that so that I’ll shut up.”

Murphy smiled, “Yes, I am. At this moment, I can’t think of a fate worse than listening to you babble through another ten minutes of your Null Spot bullshit.” He laughed. “I’ll help you do this. But just so you know, when everything turns to shit, I’m gonna save my ass. I’m not gonna get killed just to save somebody who’s gonna end up dead anyway.”

“Thanks.” I was sincere.

“This is your deal,” he told me. “What do you want to do?”

I walked over to the door and whispered loud enough to be heard on the other side. “Tap once for yes and twice for no. Do you understand?”

Tink.

Predictably, some of the infected on the other side of the door started to respond.

I asked, “Can you open the door from your side?”

Tink. Tink.

Crap.

“Are there a lot of infected in there, with you?”

Tink.

“Are there any more normal people besides you?”

Tink. Tink.

The infected were starting to get excited. At least a few of them were pushing and pulling on the door. More and more infected moans seeped through the door.

“Do you have any other way out of there other than this door?”

Tink. Tink.

“Go to the far end of the bunker. Cover your ears and hide behind something, if you can. It’ll take a little while, but we’re going to blow the door. Don’t come out until the shooting stops or until you hear me call for you. Good luck.”

Tink.

Murphy said, “Just so you know, you’re moving all that shit away from the door. I’ll stand guard.”

“But you stood guard when I stacked it all in front of the door,” I complained.

“Like I said, it’s your deal.” He shrugged. “If you want it moved, you have to do it.”

I moved all of the boxes and junk away from the door. I then stacked it all into a wall about halfway up the length of the second level. I left room on one side to walk around the wall. That was my escape route.

To reduce the concussion effects of the grenade in the confined space, we needed to open the other doors.

Opening the first door and going into level one showed us a room was just as we’d left it except for a haze of smoke that hung in the air.

The door to the outside was still hot and was hard to get open. It was covered with a layer of ash and embers.  But for the absence of Satan, the world outside looked like Hell.

The thick gray smoke that had blanketed East Austin was mostly gone. Black skeletons of gnarled old oak branches reached into the sky. Hulks of gray automobile carcasses littered the landscape. Nearly everything combustible was burned or smoldering.

Hot mounds of glowing embers were everywhere.

Most of the houses in the neighborhood were simply gone, replaced with geometrical piles of ash and occasional brick facades that hadn’t crumbled in the violence of the fire.

There were spots however, that the fire had bypassed. Far in the distance I saw a few houses with green bushes and dead lawns, untouched by flame.

To the north, the fire glowed orange in the sky. To the west of the interstate, city lights glowed and illuminated the smoke from underneath.

High above us, enormous billows of black smoke flowed west, blotting out wide swaths of starlight and trailing an oily stink.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing up at the heavy black smoke.

“I’ll bet the refineries in Houston are burning,” Murphy answered.

“You think?”

“Yeah,” said Murphy. “I worked at one between Houston and Galveston for a couple of years. We lost power once during a storm, and it was a big fucking deal. The place went on alert. The engineers had us running around and doing all kinds of shit, like they were afraid the place would blow up, or something.”

“Really?”

He said, “I don’t know. I was just a flunky. But I’m betting that if the power went out, something catastrophic happened. I’m betting that’s smoke from the refineries.”

“Jesus.” I looked back up at the black smoke. “How much oil is stored down there?”

“Enough to burn for months, I’ll bet.”

I scanned the area for movement, but saw none. I heard no human sound of any kind. Any infected that hadn’t run away from the fire had likely died in it. For the time being, it was safe to be out in the open.

Chapter 14

I was as prepared as I was going to get.

I stood in front of the steel door that blocked the way down to the third level. I looked to my left to confirm for the fifth time that my escape path was clear. I yelled to the person inside, “If you’re not at the back of the room yet, now is the time. I’m going to blow the door. Remember, hide behind something if you can. Cover your ears. Don’t come out right away.”

I took a few deep breaths.

I beat on the door with the butt of my pistol. The more infected that I could urge to crowd around the other side, the fewer I’d have to deal with after the grenade exploded.

Their excited screaming and pushing on the door let me know that we were all on the same page.

It was time. A thousand thoughts of what could go wrong flooded my brain. I pushed them aside. My course of action was set.

I pulled the pin on the grenade, but kept the spoon depressed. I carefully positioned it by a gap in the door created by previous work with a crowbar.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

In one smooth motion, I let the spoon slip from my fingers and spring outward as I bet my life once again on my fast feet and my ability to make quick decisions.

I shoved the grenade’s spoon into the gap on the door and wasted no time in evaluating how securely it was wedged there.

With my heart already beating a blistering rhythm, I sprinted around the wall of boxes I’d built and made for the stairs between level two and level one.

Making no effort to slow down, I bounded up to the fifth stair and let the wall stop my body as I made the ninety-degree turn to get through the door.

Two steps past the door on level one, I wondered why the grenade had not yet detonated. I wondered if I’d inadvertently depressed the spoon when I jammed it into place. I wondered whether it was a dud. I wondered how I’d work up the nerve to go back and check on what should be a live grenade. I wondered—

The grenade’s blast roared through the chamber.

The shockwave, confined in the long, narrow levels, blew up at me like a shotgun blast and knocked me onto my face.

I saw stars. I heard ringing in my ears.

I was confused.

The dirty, cold floor grated on my face. I tasted blood in my mouth. I needed to move. I needed to run but couldn’t remember why.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees.

I saw a rivulet of blood drain out of my nose.

Screaming?

Screams of pain, anger, and hunger raged up from behind me.

I shook my head.

“Get the fuck up,” a voice boomed above me.

The blood draining from my nose was so mesmerizing.

A hand grabbed the back of my MOLLE vest and pulled me roughly forward.

I made an effort to keep my hands and knees below me.

“God dammit,” the voice yelled again.

The hand let go of me and I nearly collapsed to the floor under the responsibility for my own weight.

The screaming behind me kicked up a notch.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

The gunfire was loud in the confined space.

My gun?

I needed to get my gun up.

Holy shit.

My thoughts cleared, but I was dizzy.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

I looked behind me.

Infected were pushing their way through the door from level two to level one.

Murphy yelled, “Run, God dammit.”

I staggered to my feet and made my way to the stairs.

Behind me, Murphy shot at the infected pursuing us.

I crawled up the stairs, afraid that my balance would fail me if I attempted them on my feet.

Murphy was beside me on the stairs.

The howling of the infected behind me didn’t diminish.

I got to the top of the stairs and rolled out into ashes on the concrete floor of what had been a garage.

“Go. Go. Dammit, Zed. You can’t stay there. You gotta move.”

I had to move.

I had to move.

I got my feet below me.

Why was this all so hard?

I got my M4 into my hands and turned to point it at the open stairway.

Murphy grabbed me by my collar and pulled me backward.

“You’re too close, God dammit.”

Holding his M4 in his other hand, thunder and fire blazed out the barrel and he fired wildly at the infected climbing out of the bunker.

Heads and bodies caught bullets and showered blood.

Ten or fifteen feet back from the doorway, Murphy let go of my collar and put both hands on his weapon.

I did the same. I depressed the trigger. My aim was non-existent, but the targets weren’t far away and I had lots of bullets.

The repercussion of each shot pounded my head like a hammer, but with each passing second, my thoughts grew sharper. Things started to make sense.

After several long minutes, the flow of infected coming out of the bunker ceased. I breathed heavily and stared at the body-filled bunker door.

Murphy scanned the surrounding desolation for any sign of life. “Holy shit, that was intense.”

I dropped to my knees then fell back on my butt. I sat with my mouth hanging open.

Murphy looked down and asked, “Are you all right?”

“No.”

Chapter 15

I sat in the darkness on a steel tire rim a short distance from the bunker’s door. My rifle lay across my thighs and I massaged my temples. My thoughts cleared and the confusion went away, but the headache chose to linger. The ash floating in the air coaxed me to cough every few minutes, and each time the pressure in my head tried to burst my skull.

Murphy stood patiently by, casting glances at the door, looking at me with worried eyes, but mostly scanning the distance for movement.

“How long have we been up here, do you think?” Murphy asked.

I laughed weakly and shook my head. “The battery on my phone is dead.”

Murphy asked, “Do you feel nauseous or anything?”

“No.”

“Dizzy?”

“No.” I gingerly shook my head and regretted the choice. “I just have a motherfucker of a headache.”

“You don’t have any blood dripping out of your ears or nose or anything, do you?” he asked.

“No, Mom.” Well, not anymore.

“Don’t be a dick,” he told me. “I’m worried about you, man.”

My fingers made a few more revolutions on my temples. “You’re being kind, and I am being a dick. I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s any damage that some aspirin and a bottle of tequila wouldn’t fix.”

“Breakfast of champions.” Murphy grinned. “Are you up for going back down, do you think?”

“I guess.” I don’t know why I said that. I’m pretty sure the answer was no.

“There’s no hurry,” he told me. “We can hang up here as long as you want.”

I asked, “How many clips do you have left?”

“None.”

What? I turned and looked over Murphy’s MOLLE vest. “Murphy, I can see clips right there in your vest. Are they all empty?”

“I don’t have any clips in my vest.”

I bore the pain in my head and stood up, walked over, and put an accusing finger on a pouch on his vest. “Right there, Murphy. What’s that?”

“That’s a magazine, Zed.”

“Same fucking thing.”

“No, they aren’t,” he told me. “If you didn’t get your weapons education by watching T.J. Hooker reruns, you would know that a clip holds bullets. A magazine feeds bullets. I have magazines. So do you.”

“Fine.” When is this headache going to go away? “How many maga-fucking-zines do you have?”

“I have a dozen MFZs.” He put on a smug face.

“MFZs?” I asked.

“Maga-fucking-zines.” He grinned.

“Murphy, you can be very frustrating. I emptied two clips. How many did you empty?”

“MFZs.”

I surrendered. “I emptied two magazines. How about you?”

“I fired all the MFBs in five MFZs.”

“What are MFBs?” I was getting frustrated.

“Motherfucking bullets, of course.” He grinned again.

I sat back down on the tire rim and put my head in my hands.

“I’m just trying to cheer you up, man. We’re wading in some pretty morbid shit, here.”

I flashed Murphy a weak smile. “I know.”

“Are you up for doing this?”

I shook my head gently, but said, “I think I’m as good as I’m likely to get for a while. I guess it’s not any worse than a bad hangover.”

“Man, I’ve been there.” Murphy laughed. “You were pretty dazed when I dragged your superhero ass off the floor down there.”

“I’m past that part of it,” I said. “Thanks. If you hadn’t come down to get me, I’d be dead right now.”

“Somebody has to ride shotgun in the Murph-mobile.”

“Somebody stole the Murph-mobile,” I reminded him.

“We’ll get another one.” Murphy looked around a bit more. “I don’t know how coherent you were, so you might not remember, but there were a lot more infected down there than I thought there’d be.”

“I wasn’t really paying attention to the count. Mostly, I think I was just trying to remember how many feet I had. How many of them do you think there were?”

“Two.” Murphy laughed.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “It seemed like forty, or fifty, maybe more.”

I said, “They must have really been packed in.”

“I guess.”

“And this is the place that guy built under his house without anybody knowing?” I asked.

“Yep.” He nodded. “This is the place.”

“The size of it is impressive.” I looked at the doorway, still packed with the dead infected. “I wonder how he got all that concrete down there.”

Murphy said, “I don’t know. Nobody does. The guy was a retired engineer or something. He lived alone. He never talked to his neighbors much. The newspaper never said much about how he did it. Mostly the stories were about his fight with the city.”

“How’d the city find it?” I asked.

Murphy pointed at two tall poles supported by guy wires in what used to be the house’s backyard. Each had a small wind turbine on top with charred fans spinning in the light breeze. “There was some kind of dispute about HOA rules and the wind turbines. Somehow, that brought the city inspectors out and they found the bunker.”

“I wonder if they still work.”

“I doubt it,” Murphy speculated. “Any insulation on the wires probably burned off in the fire.”

I looked around at the charred trees, ash, and embers. “If it wasn’t for the fire, this might have been a good place.”

“I don’t know.” Murphy shook his head. “It looked pretty trashed inside to me. I think it would take a lot of work to salvage it. Right now it’s just a hole in the ground full of dead people.”

“And some fucked up doors.” For some reason the memory of destroying them made me smile.

Murphy laughed out loud. “You’re right about that.”

“Man, there’d better be somebody alive down there,” I said. “I’ll be pissed if I got blown up by a grenade and it turned out to be rats or something.”

“If you want to be a drama queen and say you got blown up,” said Murphy, “I’ll go with it, but you didn’t actually get blown up.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re not the one who got blown up.” I managed another smile to let him know I was kidding.

“What do you say, are you ready to do this? I’m starting to feel uncomfortable standing around out here in the open.”

I nodded and pulled myself to my feet.

Murphy took the lead again. Feeling very naked without my M4 at my shoulder, I followed Murphy with my dying flashlight in one hand and my Glock in the other.

Unfortunately, going back into the bunker was a process. With a dozen infected lying about the entrance with bullet holes in them, it behooved us to ensure that each was indeed dead. In silent agreement, we decided that a couple of good kicks were enough to test for life.

The stairway was difficult to navigate. We had to push bodies off the sides as we went down.

Once into the darkness at the bottom, Murphy started lifting heads and looking at faces. That was at least a little odd, but I said nothing about it.

After checking all the bodies on the first level, Murphy pointed to the doorway down to level two and said, “Keep an eye on that other door for a second. I’m going to close the outer door, so that nobody wanders in behind us.”

“Will do.”

Murphy wrestled the heavy door over and let it fall shut with a deafening clang. Agitated moans from below let us know that we still had gruesome work ahead of us.

Murphy went to the other end of the bunker and retook the lead. He was up for it. I wasn’t.

On the stairs, he stopped and lifted the head of another woman.

Curiosity won out and I asked, “Murphy?”

“I need to check.”

“For?” I asked.

“This was my neighborhood, Zed. I’m checking for people I know.”

“Only the females?” I asked.

“My sister. I’m looking for my sister. She might be in here.”

“Oh.” I was embarrassed for not guessing. “Take your time.”

Murphy checked another body that was wedged between the stairs and the wall. It wasn’t her either.

Murphy worked his way down the stairs to a spot near the bottom and then stopped. I followed, close enough to support him, but far enough away that he’d have room to jump back.

From our positions on the stairs, we examined the second level with our flashlights. Only two infected lay on the floor at the terminus of long bloody smears. Both had been wounded by the grenade blast. They’d tried to come up after us, but there is only so much a body can do with broken bones, gaping wounds, and lost blood, even if it can’t feel pain.

One of the infected was a man, the other, a woman, shattered and dying, grasping for something they’d never reach, each a metaphor for the earth they’d soon leave.

I followed Murphy past the scattered containers on the floor. Without a hint of emotion, he put a bullet into each.

Pained moans still came from the lower room of the bunker.

I said, “More wounded. Be careful when you go down the stairs.”

Murphy nodded but didn’t speak. He was tense. His smile was gone. He clearly held unrealistic hopes or unwelcome fears that he would find his sister among the bodies. Perhaps the tiny comfort of knowing that she was dead was better than perpetual ambiguity.

The door to the lower level was completely blown off of its hinges. It lay bent on the floor. Murphy stepped around it and took up a position against the wall next to the doorway. Seeing that we weren’t going to go in blind, I positioned myself several long paces from the door but in a place that allowed me to see partially inside the room.

I shined my light in and saw blood and blast marks on the wall. That was just a preview of the carnage that awaited us.

Murphy called out, “Hey. Is there anybody down there?”

A weak, female voice called back, “Yes.”

I was both relieved and surprised.

“How many?” Murphy asked.

“What?” The voice was irritated.

Good God. I shouted, “Look, we’re coming in. Don’t shoot us. Okay?”

“Okay,” the girl’s voice said.

Murphy took a deep breath, and said, “Here goes.”

The stairs creaked and I followed him into the room in the same fashion that we’d come down to level two.

In my flashlight’s beam, I saw a severed leg and an arm on the stairs. Below, on the floor, in a large pool of blood, I saw their owners. At least five dead were on or around the stairs. The last of the wounded were on the floor at the bottom. Murphy dispatched those.

We stopped and listened as I shined my light down the length of the third level. The room was wider than the two rooms above and nearly twice as long, cut right into the limestone bedrock with a row of steel support beams down its center. Across the floor and against the walls were scattered the ghastly remains of more bodies than I could count.

In the far corner, I spotted a pair of eyes looking back at me from behind a large fiberglass cistern.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” the girl said.

“Are there any more infected that we don’t know about?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I think you killed them all.”

Murphy’s light illuminated the girl, adding to the glow of my light so that we could make out the features of her face.

Murphy’s shoulders drooped and his breath flowed out in a disappointed sigh. I guessed that she wasn’t his sister.

Chapter 16

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

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

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

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

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

I shook my head, “No, no it doesn’t.”

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

“Dude.” Murphy scolded me.

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

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

“Yeah.” I glanced over at him. “But you know as well as I do that everything else in Austin isn’t any better than this. It’s just different.”

Murphy glared at me.

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

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

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

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

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

Simple.

I breathed in. I breathed out.

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

Breathe.

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

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

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

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

“What day is it?” she asked.

“Saturday.” In truth, I wasn’t sure. “I think.”

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

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

Mandi confirmed with a nod. “Yes.”

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

“I don’t know.” Mandi looked at the bunker’s open door as she thought about it. “Maybe ten when we got here. We lived down the street. We knew the bunker was here. Everybody knew. When we arrived, we didn’t recognize most of the people. There was Mr. and Mrs. Simpkins, from a couple of houses down. There were some stoners that lived on the corner and there were some guys that looked like gangsters.”

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

“Mutt?” I asked in disbelief.

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

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

“I don’t know.” Mandi seemed exasperated by the question. “Is it important?”

“It might be,” I told her. “But go ahead.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Where is that food now?” Murphy asked.

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

“Oh.” Murphy’s voice sounded as disappointed as I felt. Something besides vending machine food would have been good.

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

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

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

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

“Why?” Murphy asked.

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

“Okay.”

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

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

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

“Because somebody locked in there with you was already infected?” I speculated.

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

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

Murphy asked, “What happened then?”

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

“Oh, no,” I said.

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

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

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

“They were dead?” Murphy asked unnecessarily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought…I thought…” Mandi drew in a deep breath. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You did respond. One of you did, anyway. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

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

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

Chapter 17

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

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

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

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

“How would I know?” he asked.

“What?”

Murphy pointed at his empty wrist and said, “You know my watch is still at the county jail.”

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

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

“Sorry,” I said. “I could use some coffee.”

“You and me both.”

Looking at the gun in his hands, I asked, “What’s that you‘ve got there?”

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

“Is it a good gun?”

“As good as any, I suppose.” Murphy turned it over in his hand and looked at it. “It’ll take the same nine millimeter ammo as the Glocks.”

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

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

“I passed out when you guys were talking last night.” I ventured a question I wasn’t sure I should ask. “What do you think of her?”

“She seemed all right to me.” Murphy looked up from his work. “What are you asking?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Nothing.” Murphy shook his head to emphasize it. “That big cistern down there has holes like the ones on the other levels.”

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

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

I rummaged in my bag for something to eat and drink. I found two packages of donuts I didn’t realize were there as well as a bag of peanuts. I set the peanuts and a package of miniature donuts aside for Mandi and opened the remaining donuts. She was one of us for the moment, and she needed a share of the food.

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

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

“Yeah, square one,” Murphy agreed.

“What about your sister?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

“Maybe.”

I tilted my head toward the door down to level three. “She’s been down there with all of those infected for days. She would have caught it if she wasn’t.”

“Sure.” Murphy glanced up at me then turned his attention back to the pistol. “I don’t know anything about any of that. You’re the college boy, so whatever you think.”

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

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

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

“I’ll tell you what I think.” Murphy set the weapon down in his lap. “I think you’re a little bit naïve about people’s intentions.”

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

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

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

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

“No.” I didn’t want to believe that. “The longer we last, the more unlikely it is that anybody we come across will be immune. They won’t need to fear us.”

Murphy leaned back against the wall. My argument apparently wasn’t worth being fully engaged. He said, “That’s exactly the kind of suburban white-boy bullshit I’m talking about when I say you’re naïve.”

“What?”

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

“I don’t have big eyes.” It was the best argument I could come up with.

Murphy laughed. “You don’t believe me now, but you will. Give it time.”

“Mandi isn’t afraid of us,” I argued.

“Not that you know,” he said.

“Amber –”

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

Chapter 18

It was well after noon when Murphy pushed the bunker door open. Sunshine poured in, and I squinted behind my sunglasses. With my M4 at the ready, I climbed into the blowing smoke. Surprisingly, it wasn’t nearly as hot as I’d expected.

“An August cold front.” Murphy grinned widely.

“It’s still got to be in the low nineties,” I countered, as Mandi came up between us.

Murphy frowned and looked down at me. “What’s the thing with you? How can you be the Null Spot and still be such a stick in the mud? If you weren’t so white, I’d have to change your superhero name to Dark Spot.”

“Wait. What?” Mandi asked. “Zed has a superhero name?”

“Thanks, Murphy,” I glared him.

Mandi said, “I think that’s neat. Why do you have a superhero name, Zed?”

Murphy laughed, “Because he keeps doing superhero shit. He’s always rushing around and saving this person or that person.”

“I think that’s valiant.” Mandi smiled at me and nodded.

I looked at Murphy. “Hah.”

Murphy grinned. “The Valiant Null Spot. I like that.”

Mandi asked, “Why is your superhero name Null Spot?”

“The Valiant Null Spot,” Murphy corrected.

“You’d have to ask Murphy,” I told her. “He made it up.”

Murphy said, “Man, it just sounded right.”

“Null Spot,” Mandi said, formally, “thank you for saving me from the bunker.”

“You already thanked me,” I reminded her. “And besides, it was both of us, not just me.”

“Thank you, anyway.”

Murphy nudged me. “Damn, dude, say ‘you’re welcome.’”

“You’re welcome, Mandi.”

Murphy looked at Mandi. “Don’t mind him. He’s a good guy. He always wants to do the right thing. He’s just moody.”

“I think it’s okay to be moody,” she told him. “With everything that’s happened, I think it can be expected.”

I scanned the area for potential dangers and said, “I’m not moody.”

The smoke thickened as the north wind picked up. Around us the fire-blackened world that faded into gray. I recalled the houses we’d seen the night before, the ones that had survived the fire. I couldn’t see them. They were obscured by the smoke.

I walked toward the street in front of the house, or what used to be the house. Murphy and Mandi followed. When we reached asphalt, we headed west.

We walked between rows of dead oaks, whose blackened branches reached futility for heaven. Burned kitchen appliances, mounds of unidentifiable junk, and partial masonry walls marked the remains of each structure we passed. Hulks of cars littered the lawns and roads. Among those lay the crusted, black bodies and bones of the dead.

Mandi spoke up. “Murphy, can I ask you a question?”

“You don’t need to ask me if you can ask me a question,” He told her. “Just ask it.”

“I’m just trying to be polite,” she said.

Murphy chuckled. “You don’t need to be that polite.”

“Fine,” Mandi said. “Why do you smile so much?”

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t all of this make you sad?” she asked.

“It doesn’t make a difference how I feel about all of this,” he said. “How I feel about it isn’t going to change any of it.”

“Why then?” she aked.

“Why not?” he answered. “It’s just how I am. The world is a fucked up place, but it’s always been a fucked up place. I just choose not to let it fuck me up, if you know what I mean.”

“I guess.” She sounded like she didn’t understand what he was talking about. It was too simple.

“It’s easy,” he said. “I get to choose how I’m going to feel about things. I don’t let the world tell me how I’m going to feel.”

I said, “That sounds like something you read on a motivational poster.”

“It doesn’t matter where I got the idea, does it?” asked Murphy. “I take life as it comes. I don’t complain about the bullshit. I make the best of it and I try to be happy.”

“Even in all of this?” Mandi didn’t believe. “Haven’t you lost anybody you love?”

“Mandi,” I said, a little too harshly. I shook my head when she looked at me.

Mandi’s face immediately creased in worry.

“Man, it’s okay,” Murphy told her. “I mean, it’s not okay, but it is what it is. I found my mother yesterday.”

Mandi timidly asked, “Was she dead?”

“She was,” Murphy answered.

“Didn’t you like her?” Mandi asked.

“No, man, that’s a Zed thing. Me, I loved my mom and my sister.”

“It didn’t make you sad?” Mandi’s voice was full of concern.

“More than that,” he admitted. “It breaks my heart. But I choose not to let it tear me up inside. I choose to put one foot in front of the other. In life, that’s one of the only choices you ever really have. You can choose to move ahead and take control, or you can sit and let life roll over you.”

“One of the only choices?” Mandi asked. “What are the others?”

Murphy stopped for emphasis and looked at both Mandi and me. “You get to choose how you’re going to feel about it. I choose to be happy.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, “how you can be happy when you just found out your mom was dead.”

“I’m a complex human being with complex emotions,” Murphy said theatrically. “I can be unhappy about my mom and still be the same happy guy I’ve always been. I don’t have to let it ruin me.”

We all walked on a bit and Mandi concluded, “I’ll have to think about your philosophy, Murphy.”

I muttered, “I think I need to get a what-would-Murphy-do bracelet.”

Murphy said, “They sell them online.”

“Really?” Mandi asked.

Murphy laughed.

“No, not really,” I told her.

“Well, I didn’t know.” Mandi got a little offended at being the butt of the joke. “I don’t know you well enough to know if you’re kidding.”

Half a block later, Mandi asked, “Is it safe to be out here?”

“We think the infected stay away from the smoke.” I looked around, just in case they were in the act of proving me wrong. “I think they understand that smoke means fire and like any animal with half a brain, they’re afraid of the fire. I think we’re fine for the moment.”

Mandi said, “I have half a brain and I’m not afraid of fire.”

Murphy burst out with a big laugh that carried for blocks. “That’s because you didn’t see the fire that we saw yesterday. Man, that damn near scared the shit out of me. And I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean, I nearly shit my pants.”

“Was it bad?” Mandi asked, “I mean to actually see it?”

I said, “I don’t know why we’re alive right now. We should be dead.”

Mandi’s face showed a pained expression. I couldn’t tell whether she was sincere or trying too hard to appear that way. She asked, “Can I ask another question?”

I said, “I thought you and Murphy agreed that you didn’t have to ask if you can ask a question.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a habit.”

“No sweat,” I answered. “What do you want to ask?”

“Why do you and Murphy act normal, but you look infected?”

I hesitated. “Murphy likes to talk. I’ll let him explain it.”

Chapter 19

We saw nothing alive as we walked through the destruction. Slowly, the smoke dwindled to a gray haze that floated around us like a thin layer of fog. Above was cloudless, peaceful blue. The sky was a hope of something better, but like everything better, it lay beyond reach.

Murphy and Mandi had fallen silent by the time we came to the block of houses left untouched by the fire.

On one side of the street lay nothing but mounds of ash and the metallic innards of family homes. On the other side of the street, the grass and leaves were wilted by the heat, the lawns cluttered with the detritus of a post-virus world. The houses bore their scars but were generally intact.

Still leading the way, I selected one of a dozen two-story tract homes and headed for the front door. With no vehicle in the carport and none parked on the street in front of the house, I deduced that the owners had gotten out of town when things got bad. Hence, there was little chance of us finding an occupant in the house, infected or otherwise. With Murphy’s arguments about the danger of people fresh in my mind, unoccupied houses seemed like the safest option.

The grass on the lawn was mostly green, but dry enough to crunch underfoot as we crossed it. The hedges were well-groomed and healthy. The flowers hanging over the edges of the pots on the porch were once lush but had turned dry and brown. Wilted petals lay scattered.

The front door was closed, so I stepped up to the porch and tried the knob. It refused to turn. Murphy stopped on the first step. Mandi stayed on the walkway.

I looked up and down the street, a developing habit.

I’m not sure why, but I rang the doorbell. It chimed inside.

Having chosen the path of good manners, I knocked on the door a moment later.

I waited but heard nothing from inside. I rang the doorbell again.

Murphy said, “That’s weird.”

“What?” I asked.

“The doorbell,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked, not getting the point.

“They still have electricity,” he said. “You’d think the fire would have burned the lines or something.”

I felt a little stupid because that thought hadn’t occurred to me. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. What do you say we go around back and see if the back door is open?

Murphy looked the door up and down. “I can kick it in.”

“Let’s not.” I turned to step off the porch.

“Why?” he asked. “Nobody’s around to hear.”

“I don’t know where we’re going to end up in the long run,” I said, “but I’m starting to think that if we have a list of places like this one, with front doors that lock, they might come in handy one day.”

Murphy wasn’t convinced. “If you say so.”

“We might never come back here,” I admitted. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to start making better decisions. Let’s check around back.”

Murphy turned to Mandi. “C’mon, we’re goin’ ‘round back.”

Murphy and Mandi filed off toward the side of the house and I followed. We crossed the carport and skirted a large oily spot in its center. Murphy and Mandi walked through a gap in a hedge and disappeared beside the house.

A storage room at the back of the carport caught my curiosity and I called to them, “I’m going to check to see if there’s anything useful in here.”

“Okay,” Murphy’s answer carried back through the leaves.

In a nice surprise, the storeroom door was not locked. I cautiously pulled it open and softly said, “Hello?”

Nothing. No sound at all.

I waited a few seconds and peeked in. It smelled of oil, gasoline, potting soil, and dry grass. It was small, but well organized. A lawn mower sat on the floor. A few rakes, shovels, a hedge trimmer, and a tree branch cutter hung on the wall. Beside those tools hung a sledgehammer, an axe, and a machete. “Well how about that?”

Bags of fertilizer were stacked on the floor. My first thought was that those were useless. Then I wondered about the recipe for constructing a bomb with fertilizer and diesel fuel. I had no need of such a bomb at the moment, but the world had turned into a very violent place. Who knew what might prove useful in the future? I made a mental note.

Two gas cans sat on the floor beside the lawn mower, one full, one empty. Another mental note.

I slipped the sheathed machete into my belt. I grabbed the hatchet. The machete was a keeper, but Murphy might appreciate the hatchet.

I closed the door behind me as I stepped out, cautiously looking around as I did. Slow, smart, and safe was better than fast, dumb, and dead.

I walked through the gap in the hedge and into a shadowy tunnel under the thick foliage of overhanging trees. Mosquitoes, hungry for a snack, swarmed out of their hiding places and buzzed in my ears.

The gate to the chain-link fence hung open and I hurried through without a sound.

Once in the backyard, I saw a long row of charred yards bordered by burned-out houses and separated by a chain-link fence. Several backyard widths away, the fence was pushed flat against the ground by the weight of hundreds of immolated bodies caught by the flames in an apparent attempt to escape. Their piled corpses smoldered and stank.

Sobbing caught my attention. I looked to my left.

Mandi sat on the back porch on a piece of lawn furniture with her face in her hands, crying softly. One of Murphy’s big hands rested on her shoulder, comforting again. When he saw me, he shrugged, but said nothing.

I walked up beside them. I wasn’t the nurturing type so no words found their way to my lips. I laid the hatchet on the table and said to Murphy, “If you want it.”

Murphy nodded. I saw approval in his eyes.

I went over and checked the back door. The knob turned and the door swung open.

I didn’t expect anyone or anything to be inside, but I drew my pistol as a matter of course and went in. The house was warm and dimly lit. The curtains were all pulled closed. I sniffed the air. I smelled nothing dead.

Everything was tidy. Pictures hung on the wall. Desiccated houseplants sat on shelves. The furniture was sparse, but well-organized. The kitchen counters were clean. No dirty dishes were piled in the sink.

I thought about my apartment and hoped that no survivor found their way in. I hadn’t cleaned in weeks. The mess was embarrassing.

I went down the short hallway off of the living room and checked the first door on the left, a bathroom. No one was inside.

Across the hall, a door hung, nearly closed. I pushed it open with the toe of my boot, holding my pistol out in front of me just like the police and soldiers I’d seen in a thousand movies.

A bedroom. Empty.

Before heading up the stairs, I took a moment to listen to the sounds in the house. I heard no creaking from the floor above. I heard no human noises.

I took my time climbing the stairs, opting for silence over speed again.

An eight-foot wide rectangular landing at the top of the stairs provided access to three doors, two open, one closed.

One open door led into a small, vacant bathroom.

I stepped across the landing for a view into a room used as an office. It was orderly, with a tidy desk. I spied a phone charger I thought might work on my phone. I took a moment to pull the cord from the wall and pocket it. The closet held nothing of concern: a file cabinet and storage boxes.

Out of the room and back across the landing, the last door was ajar, just like the bedroom door downstairs. I nudged it gently with my elbow and it swung open.

I was startled by the sight of a man sat on the edge of a bed, straight back, feet flat on the floor, palms on his thighs, staring through partially open blinds at the mound of corpses in the distance.

I pointed the gun and braced myself to pull the trigger.

“Hey,” I said.

No response. No movement.

Could he be dead in that position?

“Hey.”

Not the slightest move.

What the fuck?

I edged my way into the room, careful to keep myself positioned with my pistol pointed at his chest.

The man’s skin was pale like mine. He was infected.

My finger rested on the trigger of my pistol and I wrestled with the choice of whether to shoot.

He’s infected. He’s a threat.

But he was just sitting there. Was he a monster? Was he like me? Or was he something else?

As I came around to his side, I saw that his eyes were open. Tears left shiny tracks down the coarse skin of his cheeks. His middle-aged face was frozen sadness. I saw his chest move ever so slightly in and out. He was alive.

“Hey, man,” I said.

Still, he did not respond.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to touch him. Mostly I didn’t want to put myself within arm’s reach of an infected man without Murphy’s gun there to back me up.

After several long minutes of indecision, I inched my way out of the room and quietly pulled the door shut behind me.

I stepped quickly down the stairs to the living room and got to the bottom just as Murphy and Mandi were coming in the back door.

Murphy’s smile flashed instantly to worry when he saw me. “What?”

“There’s an infected guy upstairs,” I answered.

Murphy’s M4 was up in an instant.

“I don’t know what his deal is,” I said. “He might be a slow burn like us, but I think he’s catatonic.”

“Catatonic?” Mandi asked.

I pointed toward the room upstairs. “He’s just sitting there, staring out the window. He wouldn’t answer when I talked to him. He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t move. His skin was pale, so I know he’s infected, but he didn’t react to me at all.”

“That’s weird,” said Murphy. “What are you thinking we should do?”

“Honestly,” I admitted, “I almost shot him.”

Murphy said, “You almost shot him just because he was infected.”

I nodded.

Murphy went on, “Even though he wasn’t a danger.”

“I don’t know if he is or not,” I told him, feeling a little bit defensive.

“But he just sat there?” Murphy confirmed.

“Yes,” I told him.

“Uh, huh.” Murphy stared me down. “You know where I’m going with this, right?”

“The irony of it isn’t lost on me.” I huffed. “I don’t know what we should do about him, but I do know one thing.”

“And that is?” Murphy asked.

“You were right,” I answered.

“About?”

I hesitated. He was going to force the admission.

“C’mon, Zed. You can say it.”

I huffed and rattled, “You and me are infected. The uninfected will always fear us. To them, we’ll always be monsters.“

Murphy nodded.

I said, “I’m really starting to hate this fuckin’ world.”

“So what do you want to do with him?” Murphy asked.

“I’m not going to shoot him,” I said. “I guess we could get some food and water, get out of here, and just leave him alone. I don’t know.”

Mandi was incensed. “We can’t just leave him.”

“Mandi,” I said, “we don’t know anything about this guy. We don’t know if he’s dangerous, or what. Maybe he’s just sitting there until he gets hungry again, and then he’ll have one of us for lunch.”

Murphy added, “He might. These infected act pretty weird. Who knows what he’s up to.”

Mandi shook her head. “Or maybe he’s just like you guys.”

“Maybe something like us, but not just like us,” I admitted. “There’s something really wrong with this guy though.”

“What do you want to do, then?” Murphy asked me.

Mandi started toward the stairs. “If you guys can’t figure out what to do, I’ll go upstairs and see what’s wrong with him.”

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I raised a hand to stop her and said, “That big heart of yours is going to get you killed if you’re not careful. You can’t just run around acting like you acted last week. Things are different now.” I waited for her full attention. “There’s no telling what he’ll do when he sees an uninfected person come in.”

“Well, we can’t just do nothing,” she snapped.

“Yes we can.” Murphy nodded emphatically.

Mandi glared at me.

“Shit. Fine,” I said. “Murphy, you come up and keep your gun on the guy. I’ll go in and try a little harder to get his attention. But if he jumps at me or tries to bite me, shoot him. I don’t need any more God damned bites.”

Relieved, Mandi said, “Good.”

“One condition,” I said, turning to Mandi. “You’re staying down here.”

Mandi didn’t like that one bit. “You’re not my dad, Zed. You can’t just boss me around.”

Murphy grinned and giggled.

“Mandi,” I took a deep breath, “I’m not trying to be your dad. I’m just…Look, you just came out of that bunker, and you lived through that, so I know you’re tough, but when you saw all those bodies piled and burned out back, you fell apart and cried.”

Mandi threw her hands on her hips and stepped up in front of me. “That doesn’t make me fragile.”

“I’m just looking out for you,” I told her. “If we have to shoot this guy down, don’t you have enough gruesome images in your head? Do you really need one more right now? Look, you do whatever you want. Just don’t get in our way. Like I said, I don’t want any more of those fuckers biting me.” I turned and headed up the stairs, making no effort to be quiet.

Murphy clomped up after. Mandi’s tiny feet came up last.

I swung the bedroom door open and stepped in. Murphy took a position in the doorway with his M4 pointed at the guy’s back. Mandi peeked around Murphy.

I shuffled around the bed in the narrow gap between the mattress and the wall. The guy hadn’t moved a bit. He just stared at the pile of charred bodies spread across his neighbors’ back yards. I wondered if his friends, wife, or child might be among the dead. I wondered whether the mental stress was too much for his brain to handle, or whether in despair, he had just given up, just shut down.

“Hey,” I said as I stood just beyond arm’s reach.

Of course, no response.

Nothing ever just fucking works out by itself anymore.

I looked over at Murphy to ensure myself that his gun was pointed in the right place.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

I pulled my pistol down to my hip but kept it pointed at the man, gunslinger style. I knew my aim would be terrible shooting from the hip, but at a distance of a few feet, I doubted I could miss.

I stepped closer and reached out with my other hand and touched the man on the shoulder. “Hey.”

He very deliberately turned his middle-aged face toward me, but the eyes that blinked at his tears were those of a child.

“Man, are you okay?” I asked.

He blinked twice more, but said nothing.

“Do you understand me?” I asked.

The man’s facial expression changed slowly. He was confused, but after a moment, he nodded.

I glanced over at Murphy. He shook his head and shrugged. Mandi looked anxious, but clearly happy that we weren’t shooting.

Yet.

I looked back down at the guy. “Can you speak?”

The guy just looked back at me.

“Is this your house?” I asked.

Another blank stare.

“Are you able to move?” I asked. “Can you stand?”

The guy furrowed his brow in concentration. He nodded.

Frustrating.

I asked him, “Will you stand?”

Slowly, the man stood up beside the bed and faced me.

I tried another. “Can you walk?”

Another nod.

I pointed toward the door. “Why don’t you follow me into the kitchen?”

I backpedaled in the narrow space between the bed and the wall until I was out of the room, keeping my eye on the guy and keeping my pistol pointed at him.

“Murphy,” I warned, “once he sees Mandi, be ready.”

Mandi asked, “Why?”

I glanced at her. “Because you’re not infected.”

“Oh.” She understood, finally.

Once we got downstairs to the living room, I looked over at Mandi. “Would you check around and see if you can find a thermometer, please?”

I brought the guy into the kitchen and asked him to sit down, which he did. He was certainly compliant.

“What do you think, Murphy?”

“I don’t know man.” He took a long look at the guy. “I think his brain is fried or he’s gone off the deep end. I’m surprised he’s not dead already. Man, what do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said as something occurred to me. “I’m wondering about something Jerome told me.”

“Jerome the Liar?”

“Yeah, Jerome the Liar.” That seemed a little harsh thought it was completely true. “He said not all of us Slow Burns end up at the same temperature and that the higher your temperature, the lower your brain functions. Maybe this guy is high enough to be like this, but not quite high enough to be a monster.”

Murphy reiterated his point. “Based on what Jerome said, right?”

“Look,” I said, letting a little of my irritation show, “I don’t know if everything Jerome said was bullshit or not.”

Murphy shook his head and stepped back a bit, “But you do know everything he knew about the disease, he learned on the internet, right?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily make it untrue,” I argued.

Murphy said, “When you have a liar tell you something he learned on the world’s biggest repository of lies, I don’t know how probability works, but I think whatever probabilistic equation explains that situation will tell you that he was probably full of shit.”

“What?”

“You know,” said Murphy, “x plus y times q squared equals turd.” He laughed loudly.

Mandi came into the kitchen. “I found this thermometer in the medicine cabinet. It’s one of those ones that you just shine in your ear and it reads out the temperature digitally.”

“Perfect.” I reached out to take the thermometer but when she Mandi raised her hand she pointed at something else she was holding.

She said, “I also found this.”

Murphy asked, “What’s that?”

“It’s his badge,” Mandi told him. “He worked at the highway department. His name is Russell Coronado.”

“Russell Coronado,” I repeated.

Mandi handed me the thermometer and I holstered my pistol. Russell was seeming less and less like a danger, but I didn’t know what to think of him. I got in front of him and said, “Russell, I’m going to check your temperature. Is that okay?”

Russell just looked at me.

Whatever.

I put the thermometer to his ear and clicked the trigger. Russell didn’t react.

I read the thermometer’s display out loud. “One-oh-two point three.”

“That’s high,” said Mandi.

“For a normal person,” I said. “Here, Murphy. Check Mandi.”

Mandi came in at 98.6, exactly normal. My temperature was 99.4 and Murphy was 99.9.

For Mandi’s benefit, I said, “This guy Jerome told us…”

Murphy interrupted, “Jerome the Liar.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Jerome the Liar…”

Mandi asked, “Who’s Jerome, again?”

“Jerome got Karma-lized,” Murphy busted out laughing.

Mandi got cross and asked, “Caramelized? What?”

I didn’t know whether to smile, get angry at Murphy, or get angry at Jerome for all he’d done. I said, “It’s a pun, I think.”

“I’m not trying to be mean,” said Murphy. “Jerome got killed, but it’s like he was trying to deserve it.”

It was hard to deny.

Mandi asked, “Why do you call him Jerome the Liar?”

“Tell you what,” I said, “let’s see if there’s any food or water first around. Jerome is a long story. We can talk about it after we find something to eat.” I crossed the kitchen and opened a door that looked like it could be the pantry.

Murphy checked the kitchen sink for water pressure.

“I’ll check the fridge,” Mandi offered.

“No water,” Murphy said, playing with the knobs.

“There’s plenty of stuff in here,” I said.

“Jackpot.” Mandi said, pulling a bottled soda out of the fridge. “It’s cold.”

“I told you the electricity was still on,” said Murphy.

Mandi passed us each a soda. I opened mine up, gulped a third down, belched, and said, “I’m curious about the electricity thing.” I looked at Murphy. “Keep an eye on Russell.”

I headed for the back door. Russell got up and followed.

Oh, well.

Mandi pulled a single-serving frozen dinner out of the freezer. “I’m having lasagna. What do you guys want?”

Murphy was watching Russell follow me and asked, “What’s up with that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Mandi, cook me anything. Throw something in for Russell, too.”

Back outside on the porch, the site of the burned bodies piled along the fence line made me cringe. Russell stopped beside me and stared.

Out on the pile blackened hands reached out in permanent desperation. Faces were petrified in agony. They lay every which way imaginable, many trampled under the feet of the others, many clawing their way away from the terrible flames, all frozen in their dying pose, with clothes and hair burned away, skin blackened or gone, exposed red flesh rotting in the heat.

The macabre corpses grasped my attention and refused to let go. I wondered about the people in that pile, who they were, what they did for a living. I wondered how many used to be pretty girls, which ones were doctors or teachers. I wondered how many children in that pile would never grow up, how many of those kids’ last days and last hours were spent running and screaming in terror, chased by rabid white monsters.

I wanted to look away but was transfixed. I didn’t even blink. The image slowly cooked itself into my memory. It was the kind of vision that hardens your heart and slowly shatters your soul.

“Don’t stare at it, man,” Murphy said.

“You snuck up on me.” My words came out in a whisper as if under their own power.

“You were in a daze,” he told me. “Your sesame chicken is done. You want to eat out here?”

“No fuckin’ way.” I shook my head vigorously, taking my eyes off the pile of bodies. “Uhm, it’ll be safer in the house. I just came out to see what the deal was with the electric lines.”

Having reminded myself, I walked out into the yard. Russell followed. Indeed, there was a pole at the corner of the backyard. A line ran each toward our house and the house next door. Three broken, blackened cables hung off the other side of the pole. I pointed and asked, “What the hell?”

Looking at the burned line, Murphy asked, “So where’s the electricity coming from?”

I followed the lines back to the house with my eyes as I walked farther out into the yard. Russell stayed with me.

“Looks like you’ve got a new best friend, Zed.”

“Whatever.”

The line connected to the house just under the eaves at the back corner. Looking up onto the back roof I saw rows of shiny, dark gray glass. I pointed. “Look, solar panels. All across the roof.”

Murphy walked away from the porch so that he could see onto the roof as well. “I’ll be damned. They really do work.”

Like a puppy, Russell stayed on my heels and followed me back into the house. I went into the kitchen, where Mandi had set the table for four with a microwaved dinner and a cold bottle of soda at each place setting.

Using the cord I’d found in the office upstairs, I plugged my phone in and left it on the kitchen counter to charge while I sat down at the table. Russell took a seat beside me.

“I think he likes you,” Mandi joked.

I rolled my eyes. “We should have picked a different house.”

Murphy and Mandi sat down with us and I started to eat. I felt a measure of relief when Russell picked up his fork and started on his meal. If he hadn’t been capable of feeding himself, I didn’t know what we’d have done with him. Civilization had regressed past the luxury of providing care for invalids.

Also to my relief, Russell showed no undue interest in Mandi. Whatever cannibalistic tendencies lived in the squirming little brains of the other infected, Russell didn’t seem to have those.

As we ate, I told Mandi the story of Jerome, which, of course, led to the stories about our escapes from the gym and the jail. Mandi told us a little about herself. She worked part-time at a daycare for special needs children and went to school at the community college. She’d lived her whole life in Austin, in a house that was now ash, in a neighborhood that was now gone.

After we finished eating we sat around the table, enjoying a moment of anachronistic normalcy. Mandi asked, “Can I say something?”

“You’re too polite,” Murphy observed.

“I agree with Murphy,” I said, “but go ahead.”

Mandi sat up straight in her chair. She looked at both of us and announced, “I just want to say that I’m sorry.”

“Say what?” said Murphy.

I asked, “What are you sorry for?”

Mandi said, “I’m sorry for crying on the back porch when we got here.”

I waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

She nodded and said nothing for few moments while she collected her thoughts. “All those people burned to death back there…Do you think they were…do you think they were infected?”

“I’m sure they were,” I lied. In truth, I had no way of knowing.

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed. “They were infected who got caught by the fire. The infected aren’t that bright.”

Mandi argued, “Smart people get caught in fires, too.”

“Mandi,” I said, “it doesn’t matter, not one single bit. Not to sound cruel, but they’re dead. We can’t do anything about it.” My voice rose, perhaps more as a way to hide from my own weakness than to scold Mandi for hers. “If we’d been here when it happened, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. We’re all alive in a world that isn’t like the one we grew up in. We need to figure out how to deal with it. If not, we’ll die.”

“Dude,” admonished Murphy.

Mandi looked down at her plastic tray and fidgeted with a noodle for a moment. When she looked up, her eyes held restrained tears. “You don’t have to be harsh, Zed.”

I took a moment to think about what I wanted to say before I continued. “Mandi, I don’t mean to be an insensitive prick, but our new reality is cruel and violent. We all know it. We’ve all dealt with it firsthand, or we wouldn’t be here.”

I took a deep breath and rolled on. “Mandi, like I said before, I know you can be tough. And I do appreciate that you’re such a sweet girl that you feel like you have to ask for permission to ask a question. That kind of overly polite bullshit behavior probably served you well before, but now it’ll get you killed. Now, you need to be that tough girl that survived all those days in that bunker.”

With an edge in her voice Mandi asked, “Why can’t I be both?”

“I’m sure you can,” I lied. Like I actually knew. “Just don’t be too polite to stay alive.”

“And who are you, Zed?” Mandi asked, derisively as her excessive manners would allow. That made what she said all the more harsh. “What part of yourself did you give up to be tough enough for today’s world?”

“Now kids,” said Murphy, “we don’t need to argue.”

In a calm voice I said, “It’s cool, dude.” I looked back at Mandi. “I’m not trying to offend you. I’m really not. You seem like a really, really nice person. I wish I’d known you before all of this went down. But to answer your question, I came into this world hardwired for success, and I think Murphy did, too.”

Mandi laughed out loud. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Murphy scoffed, “This one might be good enough to listen to.”

I looked over at Murphy. “It’s like you said this morning, when you were talking to Mandi. You put a smile on your face and take the world as it comes. You don’t attach your happiness to any false expectations of reality. You don’t expect the world to give you a big house and an expensive car and fat wife—”

“—Hey.” Murphy cut in, “Who said anything about a fat wife?”

I continued, “—you’re not going to be unhappy without those things. You’re happy with what you have, not with what you think you should have. More importantly, you don’t wallow in the tears over what you’ve lost. Not many people are like that.”

I took a big gulp of soda and continued. “As for me, I’m kind of the opposite of Murphy, but with a similar benefit. I had a pair of sub-optimal parents.”

Mandi giggled, “Sub-optimal?”

Murphy leaned over and whispered loudly to Mandi, “He has a philosophy degree. He makes things more complicated than they need to be.”

I ignored them both. “I don’t get attached to things and people, like most folks. That’s to say that in yesterday’s world, I could probably have been considered emotionally unhealthy. I was too detached. In today’s world, that works well for me. All the despair and horror drift by without affecting me.”

“Dude,” Murphy scolded, “I’m not sure that’s true.”

“It’s true enough,” I argued.

Mandi said, “I like Murphy’s approach better.”

I said, “You don’t have to pick one or the other, just find a way within who you are to suck it up and deal with today. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Then why didn’t you just say that?” asked Mandi.

“Like Murphy said, I’m a philosophy graduate.”

Murphy laughed.

Chapter 20

It was after four o’clock. I was in the upstairs office since it had a window that opened to the front of the house and one that opened to the back. I sat at the desk, which, unfortunately looked out the back window and onto the grotesque heap of the dead. Russell squatted on the floor beside me. His inexplicable need to stay by me was already starting to creep me out.

Murphy was leaning on the windowsill, staring at the vastness of the fire’s destruction. Mandi was in the bathroom downstairs, using the water out of the toilet’s tank to wash all of the crap off of her skin from her time in the bottom of the bunker.

Murphy said, “I think we should stay here tonight.”

“It’s as good a place as any, I guess,” I said without looking away from the pile of corpses.

“But before it gets dark,” he said, “let’s go through some of these other houses and see if there are any goodies.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“What do you mean, like what?” Murphy turned to look at me. “I don’t know. You got a hatchet and a machete earlier. That’s good stuff.”

“We’ve got everything we need for the moment.” It wasn’t much of a protest. “There’s plenty of food downstairs to last us for three or four days. We’ve got nearly as much ammo as we can carry.”

“You’re not thinking ahead,” he said.

That rubbed me the wrong way, but I put a thin veneer on my irritation and said,  “I’m fuckin’ tired. My head is still pounding from when I got blown up by the grenade.”

Murphy laughed. “If you’re a pussy with a headache, just say, ‘I’m a pussy with a headache,’ and we’ll leave it at that. Don’t be such a drama queen.”

“Fine.” I wanted to say no. “Let me check my phone, and then I’ll go with you. But just a few houses, okay? I want to be back before it gets dark.”

“Fine by me. I’ll go check on Mandi.” Murphy left the office and tromped down the stairs.

I turned on my phone and saw that I had messages. I checked Steph first.

Chapter 21

Steph: Zed, are you there?

Steph: Zed, are you there?

Steph: Zed, I hope you’re alive to read this. But I know the truth of it. If you’re not answering this then it’s because you’re dead. Everybody is. So I’m just writing this to myself. Dear Diary, I can’t stop crying.

Steph: The first two groups all turned. Forty people infected and shot. We killed them. I feel like my heart is dying. We just infected twenty more.

Steph: It feels like suicide now. Nobody is talking here. Everyone stares at the walls or out the windows. There’s no hope. No hope, only prayers and tears.

Steph: If by some miracle you’re still alive and you read this, you need to know that I’m in the next group to get infected. I’m volunteering. Goodbye, Zed. Thank you for being a friend. I wish I’d gotten to know you better. I know I’ll die soon and I’m okay with that. I don’t want to be in this world anymore.

“Shit,” I blinked away tears and looked around, glad that I was alone. I wanted to do something to do something for Steph, anything, but I knew there was nothing. The messages were hours old. Steph had lost hope. She was likely infected. She was dying or dead.

That thought left me with a hollow, black feeling that stuck in my throat. Life had been so much easier without emotional attachments.

I texted Steph back several times.

I stared at the pile of holocaust corpses as I waited for a response.

God, the world was so fucked up.

Chapter 22

With hopes that felt unrealistic as soon as they bubbled up, I tried calling Amber.

No answer.

After the last ring, my text message icon indicated that a message had arrived.

Amber: Zed, is that you?

Me: Yes.

Amber: I can’t talk right now. Text me back.

Me: Why can’t you talk? What’s going on?

Amber: I’m trying to stay as quiet as I can.

Me: Why? What happened?

Amber: Things got really crazy then it got real quiet.

Me: Tell me what happened, exactly.

Amber: I don’t know exactly. I’ve been afraid to leave the room. What I know is that Felicity and Wilkins turned. They’re locked in a room down the hall. Another of the guys got the fever and they locked him up. Afterwards, there was a lot of shouting in the hall. Mark and Marcy were yelling at the other guys. There were shots then and I only heard Mark and Marcy’s voices. Mark started to run up and down the hall yelling and talking crazy with Marcy egging him on. It was insane for a while.

Me: For a while?

Amber: Not now. Everything is quiet.

Me: I’m coming to get you out. Right now.

Amber: No!. Please don’t come here.

Me: Why not?

Amber: Please don’t. Mark is crazy. He’ll kill you.

Me: No he won’t.

Amber: If you rush over here and risk your life you might not make it this time. If you keep risking your life, you’re going to get killed. And for what?

Me: To help.

Amber: We don’t even know yet that I need help. Mark and Marcy are probably infected. They’ve probably got the fever. That’s why they’re quiet. If I’m patient then they’ll wander off like all the other crazy infected do. If I sit tight for a few days, I’ll probably be fine.

Me: Fine. That makes sense. I hate doing nothing.

Amber: Besides, I might be infected. I might turn into one of them.

Me: Let’s hope not.

Amber: Hope is all I have.

Me: Hope is important. Hang in there. I’ll check in later, okay?

Amber: Okay.

Me: If anything changes, call. I have a full charge on my phone.

Chapter 23

The house next door, the first in our search, yielded nothing. The neighbors had taken everything of post-apocalyptic value with them when they made out of town. There was, of course, a nice flat panel television, decent furniture, and plenty of clothing, none of which was of any value to me.

Would I eventually need a winter coat? Sure. But the world was my closet. I’d find a coat in the nearest house when it got cold. Not that it made any difference, but that was finally a tick on the pro side of my pros and cons list for the post-virus world—free clothes.

I smiled. It felt empty. I was still thinking about my conversations—if you could call them that— with Amber and Steph.

Murphy gave me a questioning look.

We moved on to the next house.

Prior to kicking in the back door, I beat on it with my fist, followed, of course, by Russell beating on the door as soon as I finished. It seemed like a good way to wake any infected before we made the mistake of letting ourselves in and letting them out. A man, a woman, and three children, all infected, came to the back windows of the house and pressed themselves against the glass as they howled their frustration at not being able to get their hands on us.

Seeing the family, every single one of them, turned into rabid Whites, had an effect on each of us. It put us all in a shitty black mood.

I muttered, “We should have skipped this house.”

Murphy nodded.

Mandi held her tongue.

We hopped a fence and repeated the process at the third house. I beat on the door, expecting more infected. Russell beat on the door. We got no response. So Murphy broke the door down.

Inside, the house’s floor plan looked to be the mirror image of Russell’s house. With Murphy in the lead, we searched the house, guns out, ready to kill anything that might be a threat.

No infected were there to be found.

With the house clear, Murphy and Mandi started searching downstairs. Russell followed me toward the stairs to look for goodies.

Almost immediately, Mandi cried, “Jackpot.” She liked that word.

She stood in front of the pantry, the first place she checked.

I shushed her and went over. I understood her glee when I saw the water. The water was a blessing that we all needed, and the bottles would make great little canteens for refill later. I tossed some in my bag and headed upstairs with Russell in tow.

We started in a kid's room because I'd spied a school backpack there when we’d cleared the house. It lay on a bed covered with crumpled sheets.

With Russell observing, I removed some textbooks and notebooks from the backpack and stacked them neatly on the dresser. I don’t know why a tidy stack of schoolbooks was important to me. The back pocket on the pack held pens, keys, some change, a few markers, and a student ID.

I took a moment to examine the ID. Patrick Henry Dubois was a good-looking kid with a big grin. He must have been thrilled when they photographed him on his first day of ninth grade at the Science and Math Academy. The green polo shirt that Patrick wore in that picture was rumpled on the carpet along with a pair of kaki shorts, beneath Russell’s feet. A band instrument case stood against the wall. Posters of favorite bands and a college football team decorated the wall. A dormant computer sat on a desk.

A kid had lived in this room, a kid who I’d taken for granted as dead.

I felt hollow.

I lay the ID on the dresser beside the book. I didn't need to see the Patrick Dubois’ face. I didn't need to know what school he went to. I didn't need to know what grade he was in. It was all personal, humanizing information that made everything in the room real. It changed my activity from a scavenger hunt to a painful rummage through the possessions of a dead child.

I drew a deep breath and tried stifle what I was suddenly feeling.

Empathy for the dead and infected was an emotional luxury I knew I couldn't afford. I had to find a way past it. I was having trouble enough paying for the empathy I felt for the living.

Russell complied when I asked him to stand still. Like a parent getting his child ready for school, I put the empty backpack on him and adjusted the straps. Russell wasn't proving to be useful for much of anything, but he could at least carry his share of the load, a burden we were all going to have to get used to.

I searched the closet and found a twenty-seven-inch aluminum baseball bat, probably left over from the kid's little league days. I picked it up and hefted it in one hand. It was long enough to be lethal, but light enough to be wielded in one hand.

I spent a moment debating whether I'd be better off with the machete or the baseball bat, for times when bullets weren't the right answer.

The primary advantage of the baseball bat was that there was no risk of it getting stuck in the skull of an infected, which could happen with the machete. A skull-stuck machete could be a life-ending dilemma.

In the end, I slipped the bat into Russell's backpack, with the handle sticking out of the top. Nothing else in the room appeared to be of any value.

The master bedroom held a big bed, a television mounted on the wall, and a closet full of the kind of clothes that were well-suited to the modern world.

A small pair of hiking boots found its way into Russell's backpack. They might fit Mandi.

In the nightstand, I found a drawer full of medicine. Murphy's insistence that we search suddenly seemed well worth it when I came across a half-full bottle of amoxicillin. I opened the bottle and swallowed two of the antibiotic capsules immediately. I looked at the crusty bite scabs on my arm. I was probably out of the woods on infection, but the antibiotics were good insurance.

The amoxicillin, a big bottle of hydrocodone, some aspirin, and ibuprofen all went into Russell's backpack. The prescription medicines I wasn't familiar with, I left at first. On reflection, I went back and picked them up. Medicines could be of great value to the people who needed them, and the supply would eventually run low. At that point, expiration dates be damned. People on maintenance drugs would trade away anything to get them.

I heard Murphy’s and Mandi’s footsteps coming up the stairs.

Murphy said, “You need to see this shit.”

“What?” I asked.

He led me over to the window that faced the street.

I pulled the curtains back and peeked out. “What the fuck?”

Murphy said, “Uh-huh.”

Mandi asked, “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” said Murphy. “Some kind of crazy follow-the-leader bullshit?”

Several blocks up a street that came to a t-intersection with our unburned street, a line of about thirty infected were jogging in single file, following a serpentine path that was visible only to them.

“What the fuck?” I reiterated.

Mandi asked, “Are those infected? What are they doing?”

“Man that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” Murphy didn’t look away from the glass. “When I was looking out the front window downstairs, I thought I saw movement way down the street. Then I saw those Whites coming along, playing follow-the-leader up the street all lined up, just like that. Man, they do weird stuff, but this is really creepy.”

Mandi scooted away from the window. “It gives me the heebie jeebies.”

Murphy, Russell and I continued to stare. When the line of infected got to within half a block of our street, they all looked to their right in near unison. The group split in the middle and they jogged in their lines across a burned front yard, systematically around the remains of a house and a burned car, peeking through each gap and into each hole.

“What do you make of that?” Murphy asked.

“They’re searching,” I said, “Maybe they heard something.”

“Yeah, but look, they’re acting like a group,” Murphy emphasized.

“I see that,” I told him, “but it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, they’re all brain damaged. They aren’t that smart.”

With Russell standing silently beside me, I watched as the group of infected finished going around the house’s remains. They jogged back into the street where the relative disorder of the two groups resolved quickly into a single line. They resumed jogging a serpentine path toward our street. When the group arrived at the t-intersection a few houses over, the line made a right turn and jogged off to the north.

After a few minutes, Mandi asked, “Are they gone yet?”

“Yeah,” I answered, watching the empty street.

“What were they doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Are they learning how to work together?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said again. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Murphy said, “Creepy, huh?”

Both Mandi and I nodded.

“Snack?” Murphy asked, turning out attention.

“Yes.” Mandi said enthusiastically. She probably had several days’ worth of calories to catch up on.

We made ourselves comfortable in the master bedroom upstairs. Mandi sat on the bed and Murphy dropped down beside her. Russell and I sat on the floor. We shared a big box of kid’s cereal that we ate by the handful and washed down with warm soda.

Mandi and Murphy rattled on about the infected while I thought about the behavior and tried to squeeze it into the context of all the things I’d learned. When inspiration hit, I said, “Have you guys ever heard of emergent behavior?”

Mandi said, “I don’t even know what that means.”

I told her, “I have an idea about the infected we saw in the street.”

“Hey, Mandi, pass that cereal over here.” Murphy reached out a hand to take the box. “This sounds like it’s going to be a long answer, and I don’t want go hungry while I’m pretending to listen.”

Mandi giggled.

I said, “Emergent behavior is something you see in birds, for instance. Let’s say you have one bird and you want to understand everything there is to know about bird behavior. You can watch that bird all day long for years and years, from the moment it hatches until the moment it dies, and if all you ever have is that one bird, you’d never know anything about flocks of birds.”

Murphy was focused on his cereal, and making no effort to listen or pretend to.

Mandi though, was politely intent. “Okay, professor.”

I rolled my eyes. “When you see a flock of birds, they all seem to fly together. They move like one giant organism changing direction as one, going up and down, choosing to land and to take off.”

Murphy, who apparently was listening, asked through a mouthful of cereal, “Aren’t they just following the head bird or something?”

“No, that’s just it,” I said, getting excited about the subject. “They’ve done studies on bird behavior, and they don’t follow one bird. They all seem to turn at pretty much the same time. Nobody knows exactly how they decide that. It’s the same with fish. They school, and when they’re in a school, it’s like they stop being individuals and start being one organism. Again, without a leader that can be identified. It’s like they’re operating by consensus, but nobody knows how they come to their consensus decisions.”

“C’mon, man,” Murphy said, “there’s got to be one in charge.”

“Nope.” I shook my head vigorously. “They’ve studied the movement with video at multiple angles with computers. There doesn’t seem to be a leader.”

Mandi asked, “So the short version is?”

I rolled my eyes again. “The behavior of the group, that is, the behavior that can’t be predicted from observing the behavior of the individual, is called emergent behavior. There’s this interesting study this guy did with ants…”

Mandi cut me off. “That’s okay, Zed. I don’t need to know about the ants. Is there a shorter version?”

“But it’s really interesting stuff,” I protested.

“No, Zed. I’m good.” She took the box of cereal back from Murphy and grabbed a handful. “You make my brain hurt when you start talking all of your mumbo jumbo.”

I huffed and took a drink of soda.

Murphy said, “I don’t want to hear about the ants, but let’s say that you’re right about this emergent behavior thing. What does it mean for us in a practical sense? Do we need to be worried? Are the infected learning how to work in teams, like packs of wolves? Are they going to become more dangerous to us?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I guess that you could classify pack behavior in dogs and wolves as emergent. I’m not an expert in this stuff. So I’m kinda guessing. Wolves evolved to hunt together successfully, and they’re able to learn how to hunt certain animals in certain ways. I don’t know if the infected are learning to work together, or if what we saw was a manifestation of some kind of herding instinct that’s hardwired into the human brain. I’m going to guess that it doesn’t present any added threat to us, but I think we should keep an eye on them and see what happens. We are all in new territory.”

Mandi rolled her eyes and smiled. “Yeah, today’s world, not yesterday’s world. We’ve heard that speech already, Dad.”

Murphy laughed. “I think they’re all just a bunch of Russells.”

I said, “You guys can be a pain in the ass.”

That's when Murphy spotted another line of the infected jogging out of the distance. The group was larger than the last.

A lot larger.

I stood to look out the window. Mandi came over beside me. Murphy stood to see over us. As we watched, the group separated into a pair of lines that intertwined like a living double helix as they came up the street.

"There are hundreds in that bunch," Murphy said.

I nodded.

"Are we safe in here?" Mandi asked. "Is there somewhere we should go?"

I heard the sounds of the infected from somewhere behind us. I ran to the back window to look.

The group of thirty that had gone up the street much earlier had come around the unburned houses and found their way to the decaying corpses. I don't know if the sounds were jubilant, but they were loud. They fell on the pile of the dead and started to gorge themselves on the flesh.

I said, "Those guys must be starved."

From where Murphy stood by the front window, he said, "I think these guys heard that noise, because they're hauling ass now. Shit. They didn't turn at the street like the other guys.."

“Stay calm.” I ran to the front window and looked out. The wave of infected rolled across the street and broke on our block, spreading out and flowing between houses and into backyards. They became very vocal.

I heard them running past our walls outside.

"Shit,"." I shouted. "The back door is open."

"Oh, no." Mandi burst into frightened tears.

We all stood there for a second, frozen as the sudden danger of the situation sank in.

Murphy said, “The infected might bypass the houses and go straight for the burned corpses…Maybe.”

But as Mandi cried, and Murphy hoped, I’d passed hope and sprung to action with a few steps toward the bedroom door.

I was already too late.

The calm in the house shattered when the clumsy sounds of the infected burst into the living room below.

Mandi wasn't ready for another bout with danger. She fell to her knees, her face in her hands, trying to cover her mouth and muffle her cries.

Russell just stood beside me with a blank look on his face.

I looked back at Murphy, who raised his M4 and ran a hand across the bulges of grenades on his vest.

Thinking out loud, I looked around and mumbled, "No, this isn't going to happen. There's got to be a way out."

I glanced out the windows. There was no way to escape that way. I looked around the room and at the flimsy interior door. Its protective properties were nil.

I looked at the landing at the top of the stairs. Could Murphy and I shoot them all as they funneled onto the stairway?

I spotted a framed-out square in the center of the bedroom ceiling.

The attic.

The house was old. The ceilings weren't that high. It might work.

I pointed at the attic access panel. "Murphy, get Mandi up there, now."

Heavy footsteps pounded on the stairs.

I jumped out onto the landing. Over the rail on my left, several infected were hurrying up, likely prompted by the sound of my voice when I told Murphy and Mandi what to do.

I shouted, “God damn. We’re out of time.”

I drew my pistol and my machete. The last thing I saw before tunnel vision narrowed my sight to the lethal white monsters mounting the stairs was Murphy, jumping onto the bed and pushing the access panel out of the way.

The stairway was narrow, perhaps the only sparkling crumb of optimism in a rapidly deteriorating situation.

A shaggy-haired woman led the pack of infected charging up after me. As her foot landed on a step near the top of the stairs, her head came up above the edge of the rail.

Without a sliver of pause, I swung the machete in a powerful backhand that took off the top of her skull. A fountain of blood exploded in the air. She stiffened, but stayed upright as those behind her pushed ahead.

My momentum carried me the last four feet across the landing. Another half-turn put me face to face with the coming mob.

As the dead woman crumpled, I swung my arm down and cleaved another’s skull down through the eye socket.

Blood was everywhere, as the beating hearts of the two dying infected pumped the last life out of their bodies.

The infected behind the dying pushed and howled. The woman’s body was jammed up by my feet with the guy crumpled on top. As the next one climbed over, she caught my machete in the neck and went down.

Russell snagged my brief attention with a shrill scream, and swung down over the railing with the baseball bat I’d put in his pack. The bat connected with an infected woman’s head, but Russell was too uncoordinated to be much more than an irritating distraction. Still, he bounced his bat off the woman’s head again, and she stumbled.

With three dead infected and one down, it started to get harder for those below to push the mass. The count of infected below was swelling, their frenzy growing. In seconds they’d scramble over the dead.

I was in a losing position.

Murphy stepped into my field of vision with his M4 ready. He leaned over the rail and emptied his magazine down the stairs. In that moment, every one of those hundreds of infected outside knew we were there.

Firing the rifle was a mistake. That guaranteed our end.

Murphy yelled, “In the attic. Go.”

“But…”

“Go. God dammit.”

I spun and ran, shaking my head as I went.

Was Murphy sacrificing himself for the rest of us?

I felt my heart break.

I bounded up to the bed as a grenade explosion rocked the house. I fell off balance, bounced off the bed and hit the wall on the other side.

As I got up, Russell was standing on the bed, looking into the attic.

Murphy leapt into the room and screamed, “Get in the fucking attic. We only have a few seconds.”

I regained my feet and jumped up to the bed.

Murphy threw the front window open, pushed out the screen, and heaved a grenade.

I jumped and grabbed a two-by-four beam and hauled myself into the attic. Mandi tugged on my clothes to help me up.

A grenade explosion sounded from in front of the house just as Murphy ripped open the back window.

Russell screamed like an abandoned monkey and reached for the attic as tears poured across his face.

Another explosion rattled the house from the backyard.

I yelled, “Jump, Russell.”

Russell waved his arms and bent his knees but was afraid to make the leap.

“Jump,” I yelled.

Russell cried louder.

Then Murphy was on the bed, grabbing Russell in a bear hug around his thighs and lifting him up.

Mandi and I both grabbed whatever we could and pulled Russell in. As soon as his feet cleared the hole, Murphy hauled himself up.

“Get him quiet,” Murphy hissed. “Now.”

Mandi immediately put her arms around Russell and cradled his head on her shoulder.

Able to think of nothing else to do, I awkwardly hugged Russell. He started to calm.

Murphy slid the attic access panel back over the hole and whispered, “It’s time to pray. Silently.”

Outside, the infected were howling and screaming, preying on the wounded. Downstairs, it was much the same, until the sounds of infected running through the house reached the top floor.

Murphy drew his knife, reached over and pushed it into my hand. His look at Russell told me what he expected.

Mandi’s face turned to anguish.

If Russell made a sound, I’d need to kill him as silently as possible. It would be him or all of us.

But he wasn’t a monster anymore. He was just like me.

Wanting to cry out under the burden of my choice, I begged the gods of every form to please keep Russell silent. I breathed as quietly as I could and sat as still as a statue. Our options were used up. Meager shreds of hope were all that remained.

Chapter 24

With an outside temperature in the low nineties, the attic was dangerously hot. If not for a couple of attic fan domes sucking the oven-hot air out, we wouldn’t have survived for long.

As soon as the noise from the room directly below us dissipated, Murphy withdrew bottles of water from his bag and gave us each one. We had to hydrate.

Thank God for our luck in finding those in the pantry.

Russell settled down and sat quietly beside Mandi, content to do nothing at all except remain in our company. The rest of us sat still and poured sweat onto the insulation, despite expending no physical effort.

I returned Murphy’s knife to him, glad to be rid of it, glad to be rid of the mortal responsibility it implied. Mandi glared at both of us during the handoff.

I wanted to judge Mandi harshly for her resistance to the possibility of killing Russell. Mandi was too kind. I wondered if she’d be able to harden her heart enough to survive.

I knew I’d spent a lot of time wondering over the potential immoral necessity of killing Russell to preserve three other lives. I wondered who I’d see the next time I looked in the mirror. Would it be Zed, the underachiever, or Zed, the child murderer? After all, that’s what Russell was, a child in a man’s body. But those were thoughts for another day.

I let my breath drain out of me.

I spent a long time staring into the insulation between my feet after that, deciding whether I was worth the effort of inhaling another breath.

The sounds of the infected downstairs, fighting over the carcasses of their dead brought my thoughts back into the now. Like the infected who were eating the immolated corpses piled behind the house, those downstairs had to have gone hungry for days before happening upon us. Whether that meant that they’d run out of uninfected to eat, or if it meant the uninfected who were left had gotten good at staying off the dinner plate, I didn’t know.

I was coming to learn that well-fed infected were a lot less dangerous than the hungry.

An hour into our internment, the light coming in through the attic vents began to dim. An hour later, it was pitch black in the attic. Noises in the house below diminished significantly and finally disappeared. I pushed my flashlight into the loose insulation between the beams and turned it on. The dim light it provided was barely sufficient for me to make out the shapes of the others, but I couldn’t risk letting any amount of light leak out of the attic.

Murphy leaned very close and whispered, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

He said, “We can’t stay up here.”

“I know.”

Murphy said, “We can make it through the night, but when this attic heats up tomorrow afternoon, we’ll all overheat. We’ll stroke out or we’ll die of dehydration.”

I had no doubt that Murphy was right. We’d have to do something, which meant we needed to know the situation in the house below and outside. I said, “If we’re quiet about it, we can open the access panel and I’ll sneak down and scope things out.”

Murphy shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

He said, “If you go, Simple Russell might have a fit again. The dude has separation anxiety.”

Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t think that’s what he was screaming about.”

Mandi leaned close and said, “Yes, it was, Zed. He’s attached to you.”

“I’ll go,” whispered Murphy. “I’ll check things out and come back, and we’ll figure out how to get out of here.”

The issue was settled. I turned off the flashlight and Murphy very quietly moved the attic access panel out of the way. A big breath of relatively cool air followed the dim moonlight that flooded up from below.

After checking that the room below was empty, Murphy stealthily lowered himself down to the bed.

I cringed as the mattress springs creaked under his weight. I strained to hear any other sounds in the house; only breathing and snoring. We were safe for the moment.

Once Murphy got to the floor, I slid the panel over and covered most of the hole, leaving a six-inch gap on one end. I positioned myself so that I could sit on a ceiling beam and watch the bedroom door through the gap. We waited.

Impatient minutes passed. I looked at Mandi’s and Russell’s ghostly gray shapes in the darkness. Whether Mandi was feeling as anxious as I was over the elapsed time, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t make out the features on her face.

I wanted to check my text messages, but that’s as far as that thought went. The bright light from the smartphone’s screen could give us away.

I wondered about Amber and Steph. I thought about the state of the world. I thought about the future. I tried to imagine a way for us to get out with all the infected below. They had to be down there. Otherwise Murphy would have returned right away with the good news. The primary question on my mind was what Murphy was up to. What was taking him so long?

Whether thirty minutes or an hour had passed, I didn’t know, but when I heard a creak from the stairs below, I sat up at full attention, put a ready hand on the access panel, and waited.

Several long moments later, I heard another creak. Another step?

I looked at Mandi for confirmation that I wasn’t imagining the sounds. That was just a habit of normal communication, nulled by the darkness.

A muffled bump on the wall from somewhere below refocused my attention. I scanned what I could of the room through the gap in the ceiling, but saw nothing.

No sounds distinguished themselves from the background noise.

Long minutes passed.

Another creak.

Another muffled bump.

Something was going on in the house below. The sounds were distinct, but so patiently dispersed that it had to be Murphy.

Through the bedroom door, in the shadows of the landing, I spotted movement and tensed. I put a hand on my holstered pistol and prepared myself for whatever might come next.

Another bump on the wall was followed quickly by a second and a muffled groan.

I was surprised when I saw the end of a ladder come through the bedroom door followed by Murphy, who was carrying it.

I exhaled a long breath and felt some of my tension melt away.

I slipped the attic access panel open. Murphy carefully pushed the top of the ladder in through the square hole and leaned the lower part of the ladder against the edge of the bed.

He climbed the first few steps as the aluminum ladder creaked. He stopped with his head and shoulders through the hole.

Mandi and I leaned close enough for whispers.

Murphy said, “They’re all still down there. Maybe twenty or thirty in the house. Hundreds outside.”

“Hundreds?” Mandi asked, her tone telling us all we needed to know about how defeated she suddenly felt. “You guys go. Leave me here.” She was on the verge of tears again. “You should save yourselves.”

Murphy shook his head. “No. I have an idea. It might not work, but…”

I finished, “…But if we stay here, we’ll die.”

Mandi said, “If our choices are between dying or taking a chance, I choose the chance. I’ll do whatever you want, Murphy.”

I said, “I’ve got nothing. What do you have in mind?”

After several long minutes of whispering reassurances and instructions into Russell’s ear, I asked him to follow me down the ladder and to do his absolute best to make no noise at all.

I swung my feet through the hole and onto the rungs. I stopped and motioned Mandi to come close. I whispered, “If Russell starts screaming again, things are going to go to shit pretty fast. If that happens, go to the far end of the attic, cover yourself in some insulation and pray.” I stepped down the ladder.

Half way through the hole, I stopped and coaxed Russell over. I guided his feet onto the rungs. It was just like dealing with a child.

Thankfully, Russell stayed quiet.

Murphy held the ladder steady under the combined weight of us both, but it creaked loudly in protest. I fretted with each step until my feet found the floor.

While Murphy held the ladder for Mandi, I pulled my machete and pistol and went to stand by the door. My hands felt electrically charged. My blood was ready to burst from my veins and my heart was beating a manic rhythm. I was frightened out of my wits but I was catching a familiar, addictive adrenaline wave. I was ready to taunt the reaper.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

Russell came up behind me and looked over my shoulder. His baseball bat was in his hands, ready to annoy another infected.

When I turned to see how Mandi was progressing, she was already down and lying on the bed. Murphy wasted no time in wrapping the bed’s comforter around her and tossing her over his shoulder. She was small for a girl. He was big for a man. It was the only pair of factors in our favor.

Murphy hefted his hatchet in his right hand. Our eyes met. We understood each other. I crossed the landing at the top of the stairs.

The stairs were a bloody mess. I eased down, one slow, precarious step after another. Russell mimicked my motions and we reached the bottom without arousing any of the sleeping infected.

In the living room, the moonlight revealed the infected cuddled together on the floor and on the furniture. A path to the open back door was clear. All we needed was silence and luck.

I checked over my shoulder for Murphy. He carried his load with little difficulty.

I stepped over sprawled legs and avoided broken bits of porcelain. Russell and Murphy followed, placing their steps in the spots I’d chosen.

When my first foot landed on the patio outside the back door, I froze and surveyed the backyard. We had surpassed my most optimistic expectations for the plan. It was no time to let carelessness ruin it.

My night vision was adjusted for the darkness inside the house so the backyard seemed almost bright. I heard the familiar sound of feeding infected and had no trouble seeing the spot where the grenade Murphy had thrown out of the back window had destroyed the fence and left numerous dead infected. At least two dozen living infected were still greedily feeding on those bodies.

Alerted by my movement, heads turn in my direction. I waited. In turn, each went back to his or her meal. At the moment, I was of no interest.

Whether they’d show any interest when they saw Murphy’s makeshift camouflage, we’d know soon enough.

With Russell on my heels, I skirted the house going left. I stopped at the corner, one eye on the feeding infected, and held my breath.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

Murphy came out of the house with his cargo.

No reaction.

I couldn’t believe our luck. Would the chips finally fall in our favor?

I rounded the corner of the house and stepped into the deep shadows among the shrubs between the houses. The ground was covered in a carpet of dead, crunchy leaves.

I pressed slowly forward with all following behind.

I turned at a gap between two tall shrubs to get onto the neighbor’s carport and out of the noisy leaves.

I froze.

A tall, infected man stood three feet in front of me, knees slightly bent, hands out to his sides, teeth exposed, ready to pounce.

He’d heard us coming through the bushes and waited on his prey. When he saw me, he paused, trying to understand what I was.

I didn’t take time to think so much as react.

His pause would come with a high price.

I stepped forward in a move that the predator never expects from the prey.

His inherent reaction was to step away, but with a move I’d learned from a high school buddy who studied Kung-Fu, I stomped my left foot down on one of his, and all of my weight came over on top of it, pinning the foot in place.

The infected man lost his balance and fell backward.

Whether he intended to roar in anger or try to catch his balance before he fell, his brain would never have a chance to tell his body. My machete was already following an arc through the top of his head, splitting his skull down to the bridge of his nose.

The infected man died as he collapsed with my machete lodged in his cranium.

The machete made a loud, metallic clank on the concrete.

Russell was immediately beside the dead man and smashed him once across the chest with his baseball bat.

I looked around for more danger. I spied no other infected, no other movement.

Murphy emerged from behind the shrub with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. His hatchet was up, ready for action.

I stepped up to the end of the carport and scanned what I could see of the yards and the ash-covered desolation beyond.

Nothing moved.

I breathed.

I scanned again.

I listened.

I heard nothing unusual. No frenzied infected howls, no running feet, no crashing bodies.

We were safe.

For the moment.

I walked down the driveway to get a better view up and down the street. I saw the spot where the grenade Murphy had heaved out the front window had exploded. The only human remains were torn clothes and scattered bones.

The other infected had finished their work there and were gone.

I went back and wrestled my machete out of the infected guy’s skull, then headed for what felt like sanctuary at the moment—Russell’s house.

Long minutes later, we were back in Russell’s upstairs office, having checked the house to ensure it was empty, and locked the doors shut.

Murphy said, “I can’t believe that worked.”

Mandi harshly whispered, “What?”

Chapter 25

We hauled the mattresses from both bedrooms to Russell’s upstairs office. They took up most of the floor.

I helped Russell get his shoes off and realized he hadn’t changed his socks in days. Well, not that I had either. I wondered how many months or years would pass before I wouldn’t be surprised by how different the mundane had become.

I sat Russell on a mattress and told him to lie down.

Murphy said, “I’ll take first watch.”

“Um…” I started to protest, but couldn’t think of any reason why Murphy shouldn’t.

“Be quiet, Null Spot,” he told me. “We need to get on some kind of watch schedule, anyway. Good sleep patterns are important to your health.”

Mandi smiled for the first time in hours, and said, “Look at you, Murphy. Mr. Mom.”

“You can make fun if you want.” Murphy chuckled. “But you know I’m right.”

“We can talk about a schedule tomorrow,” Mandi told us. “You two should sleep. I’ll stay up and keep watch. I owe you both that much, at least.”

“But…” I started.

“Null Spot, if you say anything about it, I’m going to decide that you’re a chauvinist.” Mandi’s voice was stern, but her smile was real.

“Whatever.” I dropped onto a mattress and started to untie my boots.

Murphy said, “I’m cool. Mandi’s up first.”

With a sour look on my face, I said, “I haven’t had these boots off in days. So forgive me if my feet smell worse than Russell’s.”

Murphy grinned, “I doubt they can be.”

“Right,” Mandi agreed.

Mandi sat herself in a chair where she could see the infected out the back window of the office. “When do you think they’ll all leave?”

“Who knows?” Murphy answered.

I laid my weapons on the floor beside my spot on the mattress. Three grown men going to sleep on a bed made of two mattresses. Talk about a new mundane. But that was my last thought about that. When my head hit the pillow, my body felt like I’d melted onto the mattress.

I was exhausted. I needed downtime, but I was so keyed up, my brain so alert, that my eyes refused to stay closed.

Murphy, apparently in the same predicament, asked, “So, what's the plan, college boy?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “We can stay here at Russell’s place for a while. We have electricity, food, and a secure place to sleep, but no water. We can drain the water heater. That'll be plenty for a while. The other houses on this block are still intact. We might have enough food and water to last a month or two if we're careful.”

Mandi told us, “You guys should sleep. I’m not doing this all night.”

Murphy ignored her. “Do you think this place is safe enough?”

I said, “I don't know. Is any place safe?”

Mandi said, “Fine, if you’re not going to try to sleep, I’ll tell you my opinion. I think the bunker would have been safer.”

Rising to the debate, I said, “Murphy and I already talked about that. The bunker was trashed. Nothing works there anymore. It's a hole in the ground that we'd have to build out from scratch. We’d need a way to collect rainwater. We’d need a way to generate and store electricity. We’d have to clean it out. Not just the bodies, but all the crap down there. I think its only advantage is that it's underground and relatively hidden.”

Murphy added, “If we're going to spend the time building a place to stay, I don't think that's the place to do it. There aren't any resources around. I mean, if the bunker was stocked and functional, then I'd say let’s stay there for six months or a year and wait for things to settle down. But as it is right now, no.”

“Whether we like it or not, we need to find a way to feed ourselves,” I said. “That means that at some point, we need to learn how to farm. We have to grow our own food, raise some chickens, stuff like that.”

“There's got to be plenty of food in houses and grocery stores,” said Mandi. “We should be able to scavenge that and eat for a long time. I don’t know how many people are out there doing the same thing right now but there’s got to be plenty for everybody. We might go for years. We might be able to eat canned food forever.”

I said, “Yum.”

“It's better than going hungry,” Mandi countered.

“And better than all the vending machine crap we were eating,” said Murphy.

“So, what are our choices, really?” I asked. “We need to be able to protect ourselves from the infected. We need places where we can scavenge. We need a water source. Are we going to rely only on scavenging, or are we going to grow our own chickens and carrots and stuff?”

“What’s your thing with chickens?” Murphy asked.

Mandi brushed by Murphy’s comment and said, “Assuming that we're not going to find a fully stocked doomsday bunker anywhere, it sounds like we’re deciding between a place in town or a place in the country.”

Murphy laughed. “That's one way to put it, isn't it?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “We could probably wander out east and find any one of a thousand farms or ranches with no living owners. They probably all have wells, so water shouldn't be a problem. If we could find one with solar panels or wind turbines installed to generate electricity, then so much the better.”

Mandi said, “That doesn't sound so bad, I guess.”

I shifted around to lie on my side so I could look at them and said, “If we stay in town, something centrally located is probably best. That would give us access to the most stuff to scrounge. But in the short run, there'll be a lot more infected to deal with in town than in the country, just because that's where they are right now. In the long run, who knows? I'm guessing that the infected will end up near whatever place has available food. If they start eating each other, like Jerome said—”

“Jerome the Liar,” Murphy corrected.

“Yeah, him,” I continued. “Then who knows? Maybe they'll all stay in the cities.”

Mandi said, “I want to go where they won’t be.”

“Like I said, who knows where that’s gonna be?” I rolled over on my back and stared at the ceiling for bit after that, figuring to give sleeping a real try. Murphy seemed content to try. Russell started to snore.

We all stayed quiet for a while when Mandi started in again. “I don’t see anything moving around out back anymore.”

I sat up and got to my knees to peek out the front window.

“Zed, lay down,” Mandi told me. “I don’t need your help keeping watch.”

“I’m still wide awake,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Murphy.

I sat back down on the mattress and leaned back against the wall. “You know, we could go with something of a hybrid solution.”

“What?” asked Murphy.

“On the housing choice,” I said. “We could go down by Lake Austin and find one of those big estates right on the water. You know, one of those ones with three or four acres of lawn. That would be perfect for converting to growing vegetables or whatever. It'll have plenty of water, because it’s right on the river, and it’s still kind of close to town. As a matter of fact, we could probably use a boat to zip up and down the river in safety, and we could go scavenging wherever there aren't that many infected around. The downside is that there wouldn't be any farm tools or farm infrastructure.”

Mandi asked, “What do you mean?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Grain silos. Hay barns. Plows. Chicken coups. I don't know anything about farms except what I read in picture books in elementary school. All I know is that there's got to be a ton of stuff I don't know.”

Murphy sat up. “I've been thinking.”

“About?” I asked.

He put on a pensive look. “To steal a page from Mandi's etiquette manual, may I ask a question?”

Mandi said, “Very funny, Murphy.”

Murphy asked, “Who's going to win?”

“What?” I asked.

Murphy continued, “It's an easy question. Let's face it, the uninfected and the infected can't coexist. We don't get along, right?”

I nodded tentatively, not sure where Murphy was going.

Murphy said, “So at some point, one group is going to get killed off. Either all of the infected will get killed, or die of old age, or all of the uninfected will get killed or die of starvation or something.”

“What makes you so sure about that?” Mandi asked.

Murphy told us, “Because that's the way it always is. There's only one biggest, baddest motherfucker on the block. If there're two, there's gonna be a fight, and then there'll be one again. That's the way it is right now. There are two kinds of people now, and they both want to kill each other.”

“I think there are three kinds,” I disagreed. “Don't forget us.”

“Oh, yeah, us.” He nodded.

“Thanks.” I straightened up. The topic was interesting. “Murphy, what you’re saying makes evolutionary sense. You don't generally have two animals in the same biological niche. When you do, they compete and one wins out. In the long run, there's only one left. One dies out or moves on to greener pastures.”

Murphy shot Mandi a conspiratorial look then grinned. “Yeah professor, that's what I'm saying.”

I ignored the jab.

“So, it's us or them?” Mandi asked. “Either the infected will kill all of us or we'll kill all of them?”

“Yep,” said Murphy. “That's it. I think we all agree on that.”

“But there are so many of them,” said Mandi. “I don’t feel good about that.”

Murphy laughed out loud. “Don’t feel bad. People win. People always win.”

“Okay, Happy Murphy, why?” asked Mandi.

I laughed. “Happy Murphy. I like that. Maybe Mandi is a keeper.”

Murphy chuckled along with us. “Mandi, the easy answer is that eventually all of the infected will die of old age or something. I guarantee you that at least some normal people will survive. Hell, there's probably a hundred bunkers hidden in the mountains or out in west Texas with a hundred years’ worth of food and water, and I’ll bet they’re full of people just waiting until all of this blows over. Then they'll come out and have the whole planet to themselves.”

“Unless the infected start reproducing,” I countered.

Murphy paused. “I hadn't thought of that. Do you think they can?”

“Unless the virus makes them sterile.” I wondered about that. “Which is possible given their body temperatures. I don't see why not. You don't have to be that bright to make babies. Every species figures it out, no matter how small their brains are.”

“Maybe you're right,” Murphy conceded. “Maybe it won't be as easy as just waiting them out, but in the end the result will be the same. The only question is, when will intelligent humans be the dominant animal on the planet again?”

Mandi asked, “Why are you so sure they will be?”

“The same reason it's always been true,” said Murphy, triumphantly. “Because people are smarter.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I agree with that too. People evolved in places where all of the predators were stronger, bigger, and faster, and so were most of the prey animals. Our only advantage was that we were smart. Evolutionarily speaking, brains always trump brawn. Brains trump speed. Brains trump size. Brains trump everything, at least so far.”

Mandi asked, “So far?”

Murphy said, “Don't listen to him on that last part, Mandi. He thinks too much.”

Sarcastically, I thanked Murphy.

“I call ‘em as I see ‘em,” he told me.

“Whatever. What's the point of all this, Murphy?” I asked.

“Man,” he said, “my point is that one day, not tomorrow, probably not even next year, maybe not even five years from now, but one day, this will all be over. One day, the infected will either get wiped out by smarter, uninfected people or they'll just be some minor annoyance, like wolves or mountain lions were a few hundred years ago.”

I said, “I'm not sure that getting eaten by a mountain lion is something I'd call a minor annoyance.”

“Zed, don't be a dick. You know what I mean. When you were growing up in white boy suburbia, you never walked to school worrying about whether a mountain lion was going to eat you. There was a time when people did worry about that, but not now, because people are afraid of mountain lions, so they killed most of them off. It's gonna be the same with the infected. It'll take a while, but eventually, people will learn how to deal with them and they'll all get killed off.”

“Fine,” I said. “Where is all of this going?”

“Patience, grasshopper.” He grinned. He was getting excited. “I'm getting there.”

“Grasshopper?” Mandi asked.

I said, “Murphy spends too much time watching old TV shows.”

“Let me ask another question,” Murphy said. “Since we all agree that one day, the infected will be a problem that gets solved, what will become of the human race?”

Mandi said, “I don't understand what you're asking.”

“What I mean,” Murphy asked, “is what will life be like once all the infected are gone? Let's say that you could get in a time machine and come back here a hundred years after the infected were all dead, or two hundred years, however long you think it will take things to get back to normal. My question is, what will normal look like?”

That was an interesting question. I needed a moment to think about it. Murphy was a lot smarter than any of than he generally seemed. I asked, “How will humanity react when it realizes that it has survived an extinction event?”

Mandi ventured her guess. “Things will be just like they were before. Is that what you guys think? I mean they would, wouldn't they?”

I said, “Unfortunately the cynic in me agrees with you.”

“Why is that cynical?” Mandi asked. “That seems optimistic to me.”

I said, “It's cynical because I don't think that this will be a spiritually maturative event for humanity. I think eventually things will go back to being just the way they were. There'll be disgustingly rich people and abjectly poor people. Mankind will still find reasons to go to war. There'll still be starvation. There'll still be distrust between nations and people who are different. If anything, this virus might exacerbate that.

“The idealist in me wants to think that mankind will come out of this with a new perspective on how fragile a species we are, and how fragile an ecosystem we have. The idealist in me wants to think that we'll come out of this feeling like we've been given a second chance at building a civilization that doesn’t have all the evils of the old one, but it won't be that. We'll just rebuild the same thing we had before. That's how things have always happened in the past. After the Black Death, people just picked up the pieces and moved on, and things were just like they were before it happened.

“The pessimist in me says that this descent into chaos is forever, or at least for our lifetimes. All we have to hope for is a future where we'll scavenge for our meals and try not to become meals ourselves. Maybe in the long run, things will go back to the way they were, which, one day, will seem better than this. But I wonder how many people now see this as better.”

Mandi was shocked. “What?”

Murphy said, “You are a pessimist, Zed.”

I pressed on. “Before all this, how many people hated the reality of their meaningless, powerless, hopeless lives? That’s how most of us lived before. How many people want to face pointless materialism, debt, and anonymity? None of them. But that’s what we did. The world is a violent, terrible place now. But everything we do, from morning to midnight, is important. It’s all black and white now, live or die. There’s something real about that that our lives didn’t have before.”

“That’s what you want?” Mandi asked, her anger rising. “Everybody I know is dead.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “and I know it sounds harsh, but that doesn’t make you special. That fact will be true for everybody you ever meet from this day forward?”

She settled back in her seat and said softly, “Yes, I know. I just don’t like how it is now. I want to sleep in a bed. I want to close my eyes without shivering in fear. I want to eat in restaurants. I want to go to movies. I hate what the world has become.”

“Mandi,” I said, “that’s where everyone will get eventually. People will hate watching their children starve. They’ll hate being afraid. They’ll romanticize the memory of how things used to be, and they’ll want to rebuild. We’ll stop being survivors and turn into teachers, and accountants, and mechanics. We may live in walled villages. We may never walk alone in the woods again. But things will go back to the way they were, one day.”

Murphy said, “Jeez, Zed, when you get on a roll, you just can't shut up, can you?”

“I’m sorry. I know. Isn’t that the point of this discussion, Murphy, that things will be just as they once were?”

Murphy said, “Yes and no.”

“Why no?” I asked.

“Because it was just one point in my argument,” he said. “We haven't made it all the way to my conclusion yet.”

“Can you just get to the point?” Mandi asked. “Because if I have to listen to another one of Zed's lectures, I think my head is going to explode.”

Murphy laughed.

“Whatever.” In the habit of our new social dynamic, that was my line. I smiled anyway.

Murphy said, “I just wanted to make sure that we were all in agreement on the assumptions before I made my point.”

I shook my head. “And you call me a professor.”

“And your point is?” asked Mandi.

Murphy said, “We can all go and just try and figure out how to stay alive if you want, but—”

I cut in, “Staying alive is a pretty good option, I think.”

“For once,” said Mandi, “I agree with Zed.”

“There's more,” said Murphy.

I said, “So far just staying a live is pretty much a full time job.”

“My point is that things will settle down a bit,” said Murphy. “We can go live on a farm, grow potatoes, and Zed’s chickens, and wake up one day five or ten years from now, only to find out that the world is right back the way it was. Then we're right back where we were, trying to pay the rent, trying to earn enough to feed the kids, and wishing we had the Mercedes we'll never be able to afford. What I’m saying is that instead of just surviving, we can choose to thrive.”

“Choose to thrive?” I asked.

“Yes.” He grinned.

“Because we’re slow burns?” I asked.

“They're saying that the immunity rate on this virus is something like one in a thousand,” said Murphy. “But slow burns like us are rare, maybe one in ten thousand. Maybe one in a hundred thousand.”

“And where'd you get that information?” I asked. “Somebody who got it off the internet told you, right?”

“That’s immaterial,” Murphy told me. “You know it’s true. There aren't that many of us.”

“Fine,” I admitted. “I'll give you that.”

He pointed his finger at me. “My point is that you and I have a special talent. We can move around among the infected with a lot less danger than other people.”

“True,” I allowed.

“We can take advantage of that to position ourselves for the post-virus world.”

“How?” I asked.

“It's easy.” He said. “Instead of becoming farmers or scavengers, we become traders.”

“Traders?” I asked.

Mandi asked, “Traitors?”

“No,” I told her. “With a D.”

“Oh.”

Murphy said, “People are eventually going to group together to survive. They're going to build walls to keep out the infected. People want safe places to raise their families. You know what will be between all of those little villages that spring up?”

Mandi shook her head.

I said, “If I say no, will you just tell me?”

“Zed, Mandi, between those little villages will be badlands. The badlands will be full of the infected and full of valuable stuff. Zed, you and me, we can collect that stuff and trade it to the villagers for their valuables.”

Shaking my head, I said, “They hate us. You said that, remember?”

“But they don’t hate Mandi,” said Murphy. “She’s one of them.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“We can carry goods from one village to another,” he said. “We can build a whole trading empire transporting goods, rebuilding the economy, taking our little slice off the top, and getting rich in the process. We'll be like the John D. Rockefellers of tomorrow.”

“To start with,” I argued, being contrary just for the sake of being contrary, “we'd be more like the Cornelius Vanderbilts, since he was a railroad tycoon. He transported goods.”

Mandi said, “I think I just had a tiny explosion in my head.”

“That's irrelevant,” said Murphy. And he was right. It was. “My point is that these rich dudes saw an opportunity, and they took advantage of it and got rich. We’re all three in a special position to take advantage of today’s opportunity.”

I said, “I'll give you one thing, Murphy, you are the most optimistic person I’ve ever met. Everybody you ever met is getting eaten by the infected right now, and you see past all that, and better yet, see a way to get wealthy in the process. What about money? I think it’s pretty worthless right now. Doesn’t trade depend on currency?”

“Details, man,” he told me. “We can get around that.”

I adjusted my sitting position to get more comfortable and felt the phone in my front pocket push into my thigh, reminding me of its presence.

Mandi asked Murphy some more question, but I only half paid attention. I pulled my phone out, turned it on and waited.

The screen splashed the manufacturer’s logo. It took its time, but finally came to life.

I got three cellular bars.

The data icon lit up.

I waited.

The missed call badge didn’t flash red. The message badge didn’t flash. Those always took a few minutes to catch up after the phone booted.

Murphy and Mandi continued talking. My attention was fixed on the phone.

To hear nothing from Amber was good, based on our last conversation. To hear something from Steph would be a fantastic surprise. I was already taking the emotional steps toward accepting her death.

The phone vibrated and the phone’s missed call badge lit up.

Seven.

Holy crap.

I missed seven calls from Amber.

I checked for voicemail.

Nothing.

I checked for text messages.

Nothing.

I dialed Amber’s number, waited a moment, and listened to the phone ring again and again.

It switched to voicemail. I hung up.

Murphy said, “What’s up?”

I shook my head but didn’t answer.

I dialed again and listened to for the ringing.

Mandi asked, “Is everything okay?”

Voicemail.

Damn.

I dialed again. Murphy and Mandi were talking. I didn’t hear them.

Ring. Ring.

Voicemail.

“Shit.”

Chapter 26

The air outside was still warm, but it was a far cry from the heat that would come later in the morning after the sun came up.

I looked up at Murphy and asked, “Aren’t you going to call me Null Spot?”

Murphy’s face was cast in seriousness. “No. I don’t think you should go.”

“I have to go, Murphy.”

“You shouldn’t go by yourself,” he told me.

“I have Russell,” I answered.

Murphy shook his head. “You know what I mean, man.”

I did. I said, “Taking Mandi into that is likely to get us all killed. We can hardly leave Mandi here to fend for herself. So…”

Mandi had tears in her eyes, but she remained quiet.

“Look,” said Murphy, “don’t take this the wrong way, but you barely know this Amber chick. She was with them when they kicked us out.”

“Please stop saying that, Murphy.” I looked up the dark street. “She didn’t want that. She did what she had to do. It wasn’t any different than when you gave me the knife in the attic. To save ourselves, we would have killed Russell. It would have been wrong. But what choice would we have had? It was the same for Amber. She made a choice to survive.”

Murphy shook his head. “I’m going to tell you the same thing you told me about my mom and sister before we came up here. Just like I didn’t want to hear it. You’re not going to want to hear it. If she’s not answering phone it’s because she’s probably dead.”

I felt a lump in my throat. I nodded. I couldn’t chance a verbal answer. I needed a second to get a grip on my emotions.

“You like her, don’t you?” Murphy asked.

I nodded again. Then I shook my head. I managed to say, “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know what I feel. Like you said. I barely know her. It doesn’t make sense to me. I just know I have to do something to help her. She called me seven times, Murphy. She wouldn’t have called if she didn’t need help. She was counting on me.”

Murphy shook his head and softly said, “Zed…”

I said, “I have to do this.”

Murphy looked past me into the dark sky and didn’t say anything for a long time. When he did speak, he was as serious as I’d heard him yet. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I know we just met and all, but I love you like a brother, man.” He wrapped his big arms around me and hugged me tight. “Don’t get killed.”

I was stiff. My arms hung at my sides. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to respond, but through the gravel in my voice, I said, “Thank you. I…I…”

Murphy let go. “Man, you don’t need to say anything. It’s not like you’re trying to get laid, here, but maybe one day when you get that stick out of your ass, you can act like a normal person.” He gave me a smile and a nod. “Until then.”

Mandi came over and hugged me, too. “Please come back.” She stepped away and covered her face in her hands.

Murphy said, “You should have enough ammo and water.”

I said, “With any luck, we’ll be back by noon.”

“Luck? What the fuck is that?”

Chapter 27

The sky was clear and we had the light of the waxing moon over smokeless desolation. The wind had turned. It came out of the southeast, carrying humidity from the Gulf of Mexico.

With water, ammunition, and weapons, I was carrying at least twenty pounds. To balance the load between us, I put the bulk of the water and some food in Russell’s bag.

I cinched Russell’s backpack tight on his shoulders. I checked that his shoes were tied. “Are you ready for this Russell?”

Russell looked at me with his blank face and empty eyes.

“Good, me too.”

I turned and started a jog down the street. I set a slow, sustainable rhythm for my booted feet. As they clomped on the asphalt, I heard Russell’s steps fall in sync with mine. He stayed right behind me.

As the blocks passed, as the sweat ran over my skin, I slipped into a meditative state. Running always helped to clear my mind of anger and worries. As I ran, all that existed in the world was the breath in my lungs, the pounding in my chest, and the asphalt slapping the bottoms of my boots. But I missed the usual pain.

My knees didn’t feel the pounding of jogging with the extra weight. My lungs didn’t burn with exertion. My muscles didn’t complain about the burden.

I put two fingers on my neck to check my pulse. Without the feedback loop of pain to keep me from overexerting myself, even jogging could turn fatal.

Twenty or thirty minutes in to the run, I slowed to a walk to give Russell and me a chance to drink and rest. Five minutes was all I afforded us before I leaned back into a southwesterly jog.

Above us, enormous black plumes of smoke flowed out of the east. The Houston refinery smoke was back.

Miles passed. Sweat poured. Water bottles were emptied and returned to Russell’s pack.

I’d hoped to have found a car in which to chance a race to the campus by that time. But the fire’s ubiquitous destruction saw to it that no functioning car was anywhere to be had.

When we got to MLK Boulevard, we came across the first of several flocks of westbound infected that we’d encounter on our run. There were thousands in that first group, jogging up MLK with their pale sweaty skin glowing in the moonlight. They jogged in three serpentine, intersecting lines with marching band precision. Very creepy.

Russell and I waited on a side street and rested while the group passed. We needed to follow MLK down to campus but I had no desire to disturb the group, though the thought of jumping onto the end of a line did cross my mind. We were all infected. It may have worked.

It wasn’t until we encountered the third such group that I started to wonder if they were fleeing the Houston fires just as the infected in East Austin had fled our fires a few days before.

By six o’clock, the sky was painted a dull gray in the east and we crossed the MLK Bridge over IH-35. We were at the southeast corner of the university campus. Brackenridge Hospital was maybe a quarter mile south along the highway.

My clothes were drenched with sweat. Russell was soaked. I felt fatigue in every ounce of my flesh. I wondered why the virus couldn’t have damaged the part of my brain that made me feel that.

Russell and I downed more water and I pointed down toward the hospital campus. “It’s my favorite used car lot, Russell. I’m thinking I’d look good driving a tan Humvee. What do you think?”

Russell, of course, had nothing to say. He looked across the hospital complex with a pained expression on his face.

When I followed his gaze back, I noticed that there were a lot more infected around the hospital’s main building than there were when Murphy and I had stolen our last Humvee. I also noticed that the hundreds of bodies of the dead infected had been picked clean of flesh.

With the carrion gone, it wouldn’t be long before the infected started to turn on the weak among them, or any infected they came across.

“C’mon, Russell.”

We ran south on the highway’s access road, past the basketball arena.

It wasn’t long before we were among the bones and vehicles where Murphy and I had acquired our last Humvee.

The difference on this trip was that I wasn’t picky about which one I got. I wanted the first armored Humvee I could steal. With a vehicle under me, I’d be at the dorm in minutes with a means to get Amber free of that place.

I grew anxious as I thought about what I might find in the dorm but I steeled my heart for whatever I might have to do.

The first Humvee we came to had dry pools of blood on the floors. Blood stained the seats and shredded clothing lay scattered inside. It smelled of maggots and rot. It was disgusting, but bearable.

From the passenger side of the vehicle, I held the door open and told Russell to get in and sit down. He complied, but once I shut the door he became very agitated and started to howl as he fumbled with the door to try to get back out again.

I hurried around to the driver’s side of the vehicle. A hundred infected eyes were on me by the time I landed in the driver’s seat.

They came running at us as I closed the door.

“Jeez. Every fucking time. Are you kidding me?”

I started up the engine and lumbered away before any of the infected got close enough to lay a hand on the vehicle. Nevertheless, they were anxious to pursue.

“Russell, did I mention that things were going to get interesting? Oh, and if there are a bunch of infected by the dorm, things are going to get really interesting.”

The infected population appeared to have increased everywhere. I ran one down. Then another, and another. They flowed into the streets to chase us. Austin was thick with them.

I knew there were six million people in Houston before the virus. How many did the flames drive toward Austin? It seemed like all of them.

I cut hard at the first corner I came to, raced a short city block, and turned again. My goal was not to stay on any street long enough for the infected to see me coming and get out in front of us. Back and forth, right and left, I maneuvered the Humvee circuitously toward my goal.

We crossed MLK through an irrelevant red stoplight and sped north on Brazos Street. A quick left onto Jester circle and an almost immediate right put us on Speedway just two blocks from the dorm.

I swerved around cars in the street and made little effort to dodge the infected who got in my way, depending instead on the toughness of the vehicle.

In my growing excitement, I yelled at Russell, “This isn’t much of a plan, Russell. I hope it works.”

We passed the gym and I bounced the Humvee over the curb without slowing down. Its military grade suspension jostled us but didn’t fail. I took out a hedge as I angled across the grassy quad and headed for the gap between the dorm and the ROTC building.

I straightened the Humvee out as I neared the gap, and then dragged the front fender along the limestone wall of the old dorm. I slowed to align the front door of the Humvee with the alcove in which the recessed side door of the dorm waited.

I smashed the brakes and flung the Humvee door open. I wasted no time with subtleties in checking whether the door was locked. I blasted it with my M4. The glass shattered and mostly fell away.

The infected were already coming. The gunshots wouldn’t make a lick of difference.

I raced onto the first floor. Russell climbed over the driver’s seat and followed me through.

I took a quick glance back to gauge my chances of a successful exit and felt okay about it. The Humvee was wedged hard against the exterior wall of the building, completely blocking the entry. The only way for the infected to follow us into the building would be to crawl under. I had no doubt that some would, but relative to the horde that was gathering around the Humvee, the crawlers were a solvable problem.

I wasted no time with the elevator, but went straight for the stairs. I bounded up three and four at a time, with Russell chasing after.

When I flung the door open on the fifth floor, I was fully prepared to deliver some mayhem to Mark and whomever of his ROTC whack jobs were still there to get in my way.

Instead of a man with a gun, what assaulted me upon exiting the stairwell was the smell of death. From Amber’s texts, I knew that most of those we’d left in the dorm were dead or infected. Two of their bodies lay in the hall ahead of me.

I brought by M4 up to my shoulder and aimed it up the hall. “Hello.” I shouted.

No answer.

“Hello.”

“Amber.”

Nothing.

“Mark.”

Nothing.

“Marcy.”

I turned to check that Russell was with me. He stood a few paces back, breathing heavy, but blank-faced.

I weighed the choice between running straight for Amber’s room or taking the cautious route and clearing the rooms as I went.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

“Fuck it.” I ran up the hall at full speed.

I slid to a stop at Amber’s door and pounded. “Amber, it’s me, Zed.”

Russell pounded on the door.

I looked up and down the hall. No sign of life.

I pounded again. “Amber. It’s me, Zed.”

Russell pounded.

“Damn.”

I stood back to kick the door open then gave it a second thought and checked the doorknob. It turned.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

The door swung open and I rushed inside.

“No.”

Amber lay on the floor, naked except for a torn shirt. I dropped to my knees beside her motionless body. Russell dropped to his knees beside me.

I put hand on Amber’s heavily bruised face. I put two fingers to her neck to check her pulse.

“No. No. No.”

Russell started to sob. Of his own accord, he pulled her torn shirt together to cover her breasts.

He sat back on his feet and wailed like a dying beast.

I fell back onto my butt and felt my soul drain out of me.

Amber’s face was swollen and bloody. Her hands were bruised from defending herself.

Her skin was not white.

She’d never been infected. She was immune.

But she was dead.

I was numb. I was lost. I’d failed to save her.

I had failed.

I—

Breath came into my lungs and left.

Sounds fell on my ears and registered in my brain.

Amber’s body lying on the floor was the only thing in the universe that mattered at that moment.

Russell’s wails hurt my heart.

Amber hadn’t been killed by the infected. There were no signs of feeding. She’d been murdered.

I cut the deduction short and jumped to the only conclusion that made sense. She’d been beaten, raped, and murdered by Mark.

I barely knew her, but she was a friend.

She could have been more than that.

I cried.

In my head, the Harpy’s bony finger skewered my defenses and her harsh cackle poured in. The Ogre’s heavy fists punished me for my weakness and pushed me to rage.

Rage brought frustrated tears.

Tears brought humiliation.

Humiliation brought more rage.

In the little bits of my gray matter that could form a rational thought, I wondered whether the infection was for the best, whether we humans deserved to continue.

What did people ever do that didn’t end in tears?

What?

Two seemingly normal parents had raised the heartless Harpy, whose only joy in life was in ensuring that there was none in mine.

Who knew what had turned Dan into an iron-fisted Ogre?

Our culture made the cops that beat me. It trained the doctors that tried to dispose of me like a piece of hazardous waste.

But it made Steph who tried to save me from that fate. It made Amber, a sweet girl who was too afraid of her peers to stand against prejudice when Murphy, Jerome, and I were being cast out.

We humans made Mark, and Mark’s worth could only be measured in the blood and bruises on Amber’s skin.

My mind reeled, trying to find meaning for it all, just when meaning had lost its value.

Only one thing mattered anymore.

I had to find Mark.

Mark had to suffer.

Mark had to die.

The End

Follow Zed in his quest for survival in Book Three, Slow Burn: Destroyer.

Slow Burn

DESTROYER

Book 3

A novel
by
Bobby Adair

http://www.bobbyadair.com

Chapter 1

With Amber’s legacy, a flash drive in my pocket, I walked.

Russell followed.

What else was he going to do?

Through the university’s campus and into a neighborhood of old wooden houses, I walked past cars, corpses, and clothes. The dead left their remains where they gasped their last breaths and all the tidiness of the world flitted away in the breeze.

I had no destination. I had no goal. Dark thoughts of revenge and the stupidity of it followed me like the half dozen infected who each fell in line behind Russell, keeping step as we walked. Was social conformity so hardwired into the human brain that even the fever rot couldn’t burn it out?

Shadows shortened.

Summer heat shriveled hope as it boiled toward midday.

I wanted to douse myself in the kind of cheap tequila that starts punishing you the moment it passes your lips, and mosh through my hate with some raging, slamming, metal music. Oblivion and numbness, so familiar, beckoned me. I wanted to forget everything.

Every single fucking thing.

I came to a stop. My entourage did the same. I stared at the sun and tried to sear the image of Amber’s bruised face out of my brain. But it wouldn’t go. Spots in my vision were all I earned for my trouble.

I wanted to squeeze Mark’s neck and see his eyes bulge, see his face twist, and hear the pinched sounds from his throat as he tried to gasp for breath. I wanted to revel in the ever-weakening pounding of his fists on my face, like a metronome winding down while his brain died from oxygen deprivation.

But he was more likely dead than alive, a probability that increased with each passing minute. He might be a slow burn or a raving cannibal, one of a million white faces, none of which I’d ever recognize again. Unless fortune one day smiled on me, I’d never find him. Revenge would only ever be a little nugget of unrequited, unfulfilled hate, weighing on my soul.

I needed to let it go, but I knew I never would.

Ahead of me, a medicine capsule of a car seemed suddenly to be in the middle of the road, offensively bland, obnoxiously shiny. It angered me beyond reason and my machete wanted sorely to punish it. So with black fire in my eyes, I attacked, hacked at a fender, and rent ugly scars in the soft metal.

Supportive even in violence, Russell was immediately beside me, beating on the hood with his baseball bat. And what the fuck was I going to do with him? Did I really need a Siamese twin?

My infected hangers-on assailed the car with their fists and smashed their skulls against the windows until the glass spider-webbed and caved in.

I jumped up on the hood and went after the roof with my blade.

The Whites tore at the car’s leather seats. Russell screamed. I roared. The infected joined. We were the destroyers, and our victim’s pieces fell to the asphalt.

Sweating and breathing heavily, I pointed my machete to the sky and screamed at God.

White clouds morphed into other white clouds and slowly slid across the blue and gray. Such was his answer.

I jumped down to the street and fell back on the hot asphalt—my dirty, matted hair my only pillow. The odor of unwashed sweat lingered over me. My knees and elbows were soiled and scraped. My arm, bandaged and scabbing still oozed pus from its own little infections. And the blood of the dead, of those Whites victimized by my bullets or my blade covered my clothes and skin in crusty, reddish-brown badges of every shape.

Tired, thirsty, hungry, spent, I stared into the mottled blue.

I was lost.

My childhood came to mind, and for the millionth futile time I tried to forget it all. But the Ogre and the Harpy had so branded the stench of their wicked ineptitude on my soul that I would forever carry those scars, cursed to hear the Harpy’s hiss, even when I breathed my last breath.

Forgetting is a skill learned by the lucky. I’d tried and tried, but always failed. In my failure, I’d watch over and over Jerome’s death while I hid behind a wall, I’d see Earl’s head explode in front of me as I ran across the street, I’d forever see Amber’s bloody, inanimate face.

Nothing in life is worth remembering. The past is something to escape from, nothing more.

On my feet again, I wandered through parts of Austin I’d never seen before. But no matter the street names, no matter the style of houses behind the curb, they were all the same—empty and lifeless, the realm of the infected.

But I was infected.

Was this realm now mine? King Zed and his dumb, white lackeys, destroyers of cars and screamers at the skies.

That was worth a laugh, but a laugh was a million miles from my heart. I was wallowing in self-pity over a girl I barely knew, and there was no rational explanation for it. I needed a way to get past it. I was rational enough to know that.

A house on a bend in Matheson Ridge Road with a wide, lush lawn and an open front door offered itself up as a distraction. The green grass was a thick carpet under my feet but it blackened my mood to imagine what would become of it when the electric grid failed and the automatic sprinklers stopped giving it life.

Curiously, there were no signs of violence on the porch and the front door was undamaged, apparently just left open, forgotten in a rush.

A soft, air-conditioned breeze whispered over me as I walked through the doorway. Behind me, Russell and our friends followed. Looking back, I saw that their faces showed no appreciation of the wonderfully cold air. “Oh, Russell. You poor, oblivious man.”

As soon as his feet landed on the tile of the foyer, I slammed the door in the face of the infected behind, knocking the first one back into the others, who fell on the porch and the stairs.

The doorknob clicked and I turned the deadbolt.

A few seconds later, the infected were beating and pushing on the door. It wasn’t the frenzied behavior that I’d seen so many times already—it was different. It reminded me of Russell in those moments after I jumped into that attic and he stood on the bed, yelling, reaching, and frustrated.

“Fuck ‘em.”

Russell followed me into a large living room with a fireplace twelve feet wide, built of raw stone stacked all the way to the ceiling twenty feet over our heads. The room was filled with expensive leather furniture and inexplicably ornate doodads. It sported a glass wall on the back that gave us a view over a wide, wooded ravine, with glimpses of Austin’s downtown buildings in the distance.

We had walked much farther than I’d have guessed.

Though I wasn’t conscious of it, I had to be dehydrated, and my stomach, tired of futilely telling me how hungry I was, had given up. Russell, poker-faced, quiet, unshaven, stinking of sweat, needed water and food as much as I, though I doubted he’d do anything to resolve it if I didn’t put it in front of him.

But should I?

The empathy that had allowed Russell to attach himself to me the night before was under assault from the blackness of my mood. Did the world have room for Russell? Could I, should I be his keeper? Would it be kinder to cut him loose and let him die or to let him chase me all over Austin until we both fell to the tearing hands of the hungry infected?

The kitchen, that’s where we needed to be.

It was portioned from the living room by a giant marble-topped island surrounded by a dozen stools. The kitchen itself was as large as my apartment. Dual refrigerators built into a cabinet-covered wall proved to be well-stocked. Whoever had left this house had left us with a bounty.

Bottled water was the first casualty of our refrigerator raid. I opened one and put it in Russell’s hand, then turned him around and put another seven or eight in his backpack. As Russell gulped his water, I opened another bottle and did the same. The cold water poured down my throat, bringing near orgasmic satisfaction. I was thirstier than I knew. Dangerously so, perhaps. Staying alive with my virus-dulled senses was going to require a little more introspective attention.

With the water downed, Russell looked over my shoulder while I gathered up cold cuts, wheat bread, lettuce, and condiments. I dumped the sandwich fixings on the island and went to work stacking several thick sandwiches of expensive deli meats, aged cheeses, lettuce, and ripe tomatoes.

I parked Russell on a stool and jammed a sandwich into his hands. We ate.

I thought about Murphy and Mandi. Were they safe in Russell’s house, eating microwaved meals, sipping bottled water, and staying hidden from the infected massed around the charred dead behind the fence? How many hours had passed since Russell and I left? Could Murphy and Mandi be dead? Had it been long enough for that? Of course it had. I needed to get back to them, but I was drowning in emotions I didn’t understand and couldn’t process. I needed an outlet.

With a full stomach and the distraction of Russell’s noisy chewing fading into the background, I sat on my stool and looked across the glossy expanse of marble, out the windows, and down the long ravine. The twenty-eight floor UT Tower stood several miles distant.

Smoke hung like an ashy fog over the city and washed color and clarity from the world until it just faded into horizonless gray. High above, black billows of smoke from the Houston refinery fires rolled west. What was it, a week since Dan killed the Harpy and bit me in the kitchen? And now the old world was casting about in messy throes of death.

Following the city’s skyline from the tower south, the basketball arena stood beside the highway like a giant snare drum. Just to the right of that lay the Brackenridge hospital complex. I strained my eyes to tease details out of the distance, but none would come.

Steph was in one of those buildings. Dead? Possibly. Probably.

I fished my phone out of my pocket. It was silent and held no unread messages.

I blinked as though tears were in my eyes, but I’d spent all of my tears over Amber’s body. There were no more left to fill the Harpy’s cup.

Wicked, destructive thoughts slowly coalesced in my mind. Trying to find Mark would be a waste of time at best, so killing him wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps surrogates would feed the hunger for now. I needed to busy my hands in the bloody work of catharsis.

Steph, dead or alive, somewhere up in Brackenridge, was convenient enough to rationalize the violence that was brewing within me. Better to know for sure if she was dead than to ruminate over it later. At least that’s how the rationalization came together.

Null Spot—no, Null Spot the Destroyer—had work to do.

Chapter 2

With Russell close behind, I went into the garage, hoping for a wink of good fortune in the form of a sturdy automobile. Instead, the rows of decorator lights twinkled on a fat, low-slung motorcycle built to rumble as much as roll. Its chrome sparkled. Its leather gleamed. To ride it would be tantamount to suicide.

Back through the kitchen door, on the wall by the fridge, I spotted a key hanger with three empty hooks and a fourth with a key ring dangling down. The leather key fob was adorned with a wicked death’s head logo hanging beside two keys and a garage door opener.

They had to be for the bike.

I stared at those keys for many long moments. My belly was full. My thirst was gone. Manufactured cool air, underappreciated just a week before, bathed me in its luxury. I was safe. I could lay on a couch and watch a movie. I could pretend, at least for a while, that the world wasn’t going to shit.

But I burned with a hate and a need.

"Fuck it." I grabbed the keys and marched back into the garage, slamming the door behind me to trap Russell in the house.

He howled.

I threw a leg over the dormant black machine and slipped the key into the ignition. With my heel, I pushed out the old-school kick-starter and put my weight into waking the engine. It rumbled to deafening life in the enclosed space. I doubted it could rocket down the road like my old repossessed Suzuki, but it sounded powerful enough.

The garage door opener clicked with a satisfying snap under my thumb and I slid my sling around to level my M4 at the tiny, widening gap of daylight.

The first White to crawl under the door got extinguished before his crazy eyes ever saw me. I shredded the legs of two more with 5.56mm bullets before the door was halfway up. They were busy bleeding out when the door stopped at the top. More infected ran up the driveway and were massacred for their trouble.

With no others in sight, I slipped the M4 around in its sling so that it was on my back. I ran my fingers over the handle of my battered machete and checked that my pistol was handy in its holster. I put both hands on the handlebar grips, revved the beast, and raced out into the street like a thunder god riding a storm.

The heavy bike hugged the pavement as I leaned hard into a left turn at a reckless speed. I took a right and then zigzagged through the neighborhood. A wall of sound stunned the infected as I blazed past. Pale white faces popped out of bushes and up from behind parked cars, all too late to make a dash for the road and cut me off.

At 38th Street, I headed east. I opened up the throttle and blew past North Lamar Boulevard at ninety. I had to brake and swerve through the cars that cluttered the roads around Seton Hospital. I turned into another grid pattern neighborhood and repeated my zigzag tactic to avoid collecting infected on the road ahead of me. Helpfully, the motor’s throaty growl echoed among the houses, sending the infected scurrying in wrong directions.

Wind pulled through my hair and tugged at my shirt. Parked cars, trees, and houses flew past in a blur. Whites appeared on the roadsides and disappeared behind. At Red River Street, I cut a hard right and let the bike’s big engine sweep me past the eastern edge of the university campus toward the looming basketball arena and the tall hospital buildings to the south.

Luck, rumble, and speed were the only things keeping breath in my lungs and infected teeth out of my flesh. But I’d lose two of those when it came time to get off the bike. With the hospital less than a mile south, only luck would be left.

Chapter 3

Among the toppled barricades and abandoned military vehicles ahead, the infected froze in their steps and locked me in their famished stares. As I came up beside the basketball arena I checked my flanks for Whites.

None.

I squeezed both brake levers and the bike skidded to a stop.

A cannonade of sound echoed between the buildings as I held the clutch and revved the engine, tempting the infected into a run. Mouths stretched and white faces contorted in desperate need. Running feet stomped the asphalt, carrying the graceful fast and the clumsy slow.

Arms swung and dirty hands grasped.

Howls drowned in the storm.

In seconds, the horde bloated from hundreds to thousands, as debilitated brains reckoned that I represented a more attainable meal than those who defended themselves on the hospital’s upper floors.

As the Whites drew near, I let go of the clutch, leaned the bike into a turn, and blasted toward the north end of the arena, slowing enough to make certain that I didn’t elude my pursuers. I hopped the bike over a curb and drove up onto the wide plaza that encompassed the arena.

Compliant so far, my cohorts followed, tempted by the revving engine and a quarry that seemed too slow to lose them. I followed the curve of the building and came around into a southerly direction again. A few crazy Whites were off to my left and a few were dashing toward me from the front, teeth bared and fingers digging at the air.

I crested a concrete knoll on the south end of the arena and saw that the hospital complex was relatively clear. Nearly all of the infected were busy chasing the mob around the other side of the arena. Abandoned vehicles, barricades, bodies, and angry, straggling infected were the only impediments to speed. As fast as I could without skidding the bike, I slalomed down the grade, past frustrated crawlers and chasing Whites.

Behind me, the shrieks of the infected swarm swelled the hot air and pushed me to go faster, pushed me to greater risk. To my right the tail of the fetid host, the slowest among them, had not yet rounded the arena, and was in fact just coming up to it. They spotted me and changed course, howling their good fortune to the clouds.

I mocked them with my glare. I was Null Spot the Destroyer. Their greedy, grasping fingers would touch nothing but air.

But the Null Spot could extrapolate, and a quick mental exercise told me that I needed to get to my goal faster than my current course and speed allowed. The race was on.

The big bike’s engine thundered back to angry acceleration, trying to pull me off the back. A crawler under my wheels nearly sent me into a skid, but I was on a beeline and out of choices. The bike hit a curb hard and bounced up in the front. I thanked God that the back wheel didn’t shatter as it bumped over the same curb and spun wildly on dead grass. Seconds later I bounced off of another curb, and my tires caught asphalt just a few dozen feet from the entrance to the parking garage across from the hospital.

Five floors of concrete and empty automobiles would hold no interest for the infected so it had to be empty; such was the foundation upon which my hastily conceived plan was built.

With nothing ahead but empty asphalt, I pushed the bike hard as three or four particularly fast infected chased. I rounded the motorcycle into the garage’s east entrance as gravity’s fingers tugged me down. Rubber burned on concrete as I braked and slowed for a right turn up the ramp. I twisted the throttle. The engine’s reverberations hammered courage into my veins.

I flew up the ramp and braked into a hairpin turn onto the second floor. Now I was aligned for the ramp up to three. Empty cars sat alone in their parking spaces. Not a single White was in the garage. If I hadn’t needed both hands to control the beast beneath me, I would have patted myself on the back.

I passed the fourth floor too fast to think about it. The ramp to five spit me out into hazy gray sunshine on the top level. Bare, sun-bleached concrete, flaking yellow stripes, and a few dusty cars were all that waited for me there. I squeezed hard on the brakes and the bike skidded to a stop near the door to an enclosed stairwell. Hopefully the only thing waiting inside would be the reek of fermenting transient urine and stale cigarette smoke.

The engine died when I turned the key and a peaceful silence existed for the second it took me to make out the wails of the infected, echoing up from the floors below. I dropped the kickstand, left the key in the ignition, and stepped off the bike. With my pistol in hand, I ran to the door of the stairwell and peeked in through the small glass window.

There was no movement, so I opened the door and slid inside, closing it silently behind.

I held my breath and listened.

Nothing.

A wicked grin stretched my lips. In spite of my supremely bad choice to ride that noisy motorcycle across town, my luck had held. I was alive. The stairwell was empty. I rushed downstairs, euphorically riding a wave of overconfidence that hid a riptide of anger churning in despair over Amber’s death.

I exited the parking garage on the south side, unnoticed and unaccosted by the infected trying to jam themselves into the car entrance on the east corner. But the noise from above had ceased, and short attention spans were losing interest. The infected started to look around for other prey. Mostly, they were drawn back to the muffled gunshots coming from inside the hospital.

That wouldn’t last much longer.

Null Spot the Destroyer still had an imagination full of bad ideas and a pocket full of stupid to spend.

Far up the street, closer to the arena than the hospital, I spied a Humvee sitting on the grass. Its doors were swung open and a big machine gun was mounted on the top. With that, I could sweep my soul clean of the painful clutter and put it back into stark order.

Chapter 4

A crust of blood covered the seats and floors of the Humvee, gluing down shreds of uniforms and bits of bone. Pieces of equipment and empty boots littered the ground around the vehicle. Keeping a wary eye on the infected still frittering near the parking garage entrance, I spent a few minutes looking for full magazines to top off the ammo for my M4. Nothing for the Glock but I even found a grenade. Those were rare, but very handy to have around.

Back inside the Humvee, I climbed up through the roof hatch and familiarized myself with the mechanisms for opening, closing, and latching it. That was the kind of thing a careful, smart person would do, the kind of person who had a chance to live through the day, the kind of person I aspired to be, though the morning’s activities might have suggested otherwise.

I took my time fumbling around with the big machine gun while images gelled in my mind of dead Whites, all with Mark’s pious whack-job face piled high in the dirt.

A big rectangular box for fifty-caliber rounds was attached to the side of the gun. It was empty, but a glance down into the Humvee confirmed what I’d noticed on the way up: another half-dozen boxes. I slipped down through the hatch and checked each box. Two were empty and four were full of big brass cartridges stuffed with cordite and plugged with fat lead slugs, each nearly the length of my hand from wrist to fingertips. Some had colored tips, most didn’t.

I hefted a canister up to the roof as quietly as I could manage and replaced the empty one mounted on the side of the gun. My heart started to pound with morbid excitement over the power that was coming together in my hands.

There was a gap on the side of the gun that looked like the place where an ammo belt might feed into it. I played around with every moving piece I could find. I found the safety. I figured out how to load it and guessed that the curved lever on the back of the gun, perfectly positioned for a thumb to press while holding the two handles, had to be the trigger.

Satisfied that I had it right, I scanned the hospital grounds. Perhaps twenty infected were close enough to make a dash for me when the shooting started. Eight or nine were grouped in a dense shadow under an oak. They presented a nice, big target. They would die first.

A staircase attached to the side of the hospital caught my attention. It was encased in walls of glass filled to bursting with squirming white bodies. I had no idea what the effective range of the machine gun might be, but I was going to fire on the stairwell a block to the south and find out.

I crawled back down and took a moment to pull up the handles on the Humvee’s combat locks. I thought about putting a second ammunition canister on the roof beside the machine gun so that I could reload faster, but a look back at the infected spreading out as they exited the parking garage convinced me that wasn’t a good idea. I’d be lucky to empty the gun’s first belt before those infected were on me.

Back up through the top hatch, I pulled back on a big crank handle on the right side of the gun, guessing that was the first step to firing the weapon. I pointed the gun at the pod of infected under the tree.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

I pressed the trigger.

The gun bucked more than expected and half of the rounds went wild. But enough of them didn’t.

A head exploded. Gouts of blood burst from bodies. Limbs were severed. Bodies crumpled to the ground. Red mist hung in the air.

“Holy shit.”

It was loud, though nothing like I expected. It did command the attention of every infected in sight, and that was expected, as was what followed. They were all running directly at me.

With the power of leaden lightning in my hands and the Ogre and the Harpy to calm my breathing, I let loose again with the big machine gun and shot down all of the infected nearby, clearing a zone that stretched for a couple hundred rapidly shrinking yards.

A great host of Whites flowed out of the parking garage, running through the exits and tumbling over the waist-high walls. Their wails drove the wind before them, wavering my resolve. But fear was no newcomer to me. I measured my chances and pointed the gun at the glass stairwell, sending a stream of big bullets down range.

Tracers drew a fiery thin line of destruction through the shattering walls and disintegrating bodies. Razor sharp crystal shards and pieces of what used to be people rained down on the infected below. Blood and agony filled the air.

Then, with an anticlimactic click, the ammunition belt came to its end.

The raging horde from the garage was frighteningly close.

I let gravity pull me down into the Humvee, closing the top hatch as I fell through. I latched it just as the first infected hit the Humvee in a mad rush. I jumped into the driver’s seat as a second and third pounced on the vehicle. I needed to get moving. If the Humvee got swarmed, I was sure I’d die.

Realizing that I’d assumed that the Humvee had gas in it, knowing I should have checked, knowing it with that sinking feeling in my stomach that tardy knowledge always brings, I pushed the ignition button with a prayer on my lips.

The engine rumbled to life.

Thank God.

I slammed the vehicle into gear and mashed the accelerator to the floor and the Humvee started to roll. These damned things never seemed to have enough pep. Infected hands grabbed onto the Humvee where they could and dragged their owners on the ground as I lumbered away. A White was on the hood. More were on the roof.

Trundling toward the arena, I checked over my shoulder to make sure the mob was giving chase. But not wanting them to give up, I kept my speed controlled.

It worked once. Why not again?

Down to five miles per hour, the mass of infected quickly closed the gap. Others who had been lurking around the arena saw the slow-moving Humvee and came at me. I felt their impacts on the vehicle as they tried to tackle it or jump on.

At the north end of the arena, I sped up a little. A few infected fell off of the Humvee. Those on the roof might become a problem if I didn’t get rid of them.

Rounding the west side of the arena, I headed back south toward the parking garage and coaxed some more speed out of the Humvee. There was still a trickle of infected coming out of the parking garage, but not enough to bring the five thousand pound vehicle to a stop when I ran them down.

I swayed the Humvee left and right and lost a few of the Whites that had been clinging to the roof. I jumped a curb without slowing and bounced a few more Whites to the ground, breaking their bones and bloodying their skin as they skipped across the ground like stones on water.

Then I was in the trickle of infected coming out of the garage, and the Humvee’s heavy steel brush guard mowed them down with little effect on my momentum.

With many dead in my wake and way too much blood on the hood, I turned into the parking garage just as another of my potentially foolish assumptions occurred to me. Was the garage tall enough to accommodate the Humvee and its roof-mounted machine gun?

I clenched my teeth as I passed under the first concrete support beam.

Nothing.

The height in the garage had apparently been designed to accommodate those big four-wheel drive pickups so popular in Texas. Good for me.

Goddamn good for me.

Following the ramps back up one after another, I converted a dozen more infected from toothy hazards into slippery speed bumps. I reached the end of the ramp on the top level and brought the Humvee to a skidding halt near the waiting motorcycle and the stairwell door: my escape route.

The top level of the garage was once again empty.

Fantastic.

I jumped into the back of the truck and popped open the top hatch. As quickly as I could, I shoved three canisters of fifty-caliber ammunition up on the roof.

Enraged screeching welled up from the lower levels, confirming that my plan was working. The infected were pouring back into the garage.

I fumbled, trying to load a belt into the machine gun as fast as my one practice session allowed. But my luck held. Everything clicked into place and I pointed the utilitarian weapon down the ramp.

The infected would arrive any moment. And on cue, they did. First a few, then a few dozen, then a solid, riotous mass of white flowed around the corner and onto the ramp fifty yards down.

I depressed the firing lever.

Nothing.

“Shit.”

I looked down at the gun as though my anxious expression would admonish the weapon into proper performance.

“Shit.”

Aside from wishing I were elsewhere, the thing I wanted in that moment more than anything else was to kick Arnold Schwarzenegger in the balls. This kind of shit always worked in the movies.

Options?

The horde was too thick to drive through.

The door to the stairwell was just a dozen feet behind me.

It was time to bail.

Then I remembered…

With seconds that could have been used for escape dwindling away, I instead bet my life on the big handle on the right side of the gun. I yanked it back with all the strength that panic could bring to bear and pointed the weapon at the closest of the infected.

I pushed down on the firing lever with both thumbs and Null Spot was instantly transformed from frightened pants-pisser into fiery god of thunder.

Slaughter.

A heavy lead torrent ripped through packed bodies. Each bullet shredded two, three, and four deep among them. Instantly, a hundred surrogate Marks died most satisfyingly with agonized grimaces on their pinched faces.

The vanguard became a slippery, bleeding, red and white wall. The mass behind surged and stalled, but then flowed up and over, a river of rage and tearing fingers.

In a ridiculously small number of seconds, the first ammo belt ran dry and as I looked down the throat of a million gnashing teeth, I knew my plan was fucked.

In my imagination, I’d been able to kill so many Whites that they’d clogged the ramp with their bodies. I’d been able to bide my time as I sprayed the glass stairwell and hospital grounds across the street, clearing an escape path for everyone trapped inside. Then I’d walk leisurely down the stairs to my hero’s welcome.

Oops.

There was no time to load another belt and still kill the new vanguard of bloody runners sprinting to tear my lungs out.

It was time for me to run.

I wriggled up through the hatch and jumped off the roof of the Humvee, falling through the air with my eyes on the salvation of the stairwell door. With adrenaline pumping at full tilt and my heart banging out a fierce rhythm, I saw, but didn’t register, the absence of the stairwell’s light through the door’s window.

I hit the concrete running, closed the gap to the door in a flash, and grasped the handle. As I turned it, the crazed face of an infected woman smashed itself harshly against the glass. The door burst open, knocking me back. I tried to catch my balance as a mass of infected fell over one another, roiling through the gap.

“Oh fuck.”

Breathe.

Breathe.

My hands were instantly on my M4. My fingers, now practiced and intimate with the gun, sprayed a dozen rounds into the pile and bought me a few seconds of life in which I tried to think of a way out.

But there was none.

I ran toward a corner of the parking structure, not with a plan, but because that was the only direction that wasn’t already crawling with infected monsters bent on killing me.

I made it to the corner and emptied a magazine at the running Whites closest to me.

Out of some primal instinct, I climbed up on the top edge of the six-inch wide wall, trying to get above my pursuers and completely ignoring the five-story drop to the ground below. A large square support pillar on the corner offered me another two feet of height. A few fast, precarious steps ended with a teetering jump. I landed on a square of concrete, at face level with a thousand Whites and their grasping hands.

But what was a kick in the face to a beast that felt no pain?

They were going to tear my skin and shred my flesh. My heart would pump its last between the teeth of a virus-tainted horror.

With a million simultaneous thoughts of death and desperate deliverance blazing through my synapses, my hands automatically pushed another magazine into my rifle. Before the trigger sent the bullets flying, I caught sight of movement down to my right, on the side of the parking garage, where abso-fuckin’-lutely no movement should have been.

It took a few nanoseconds of full attention to process what I saw. But with only seconds left to live, that was an immeasurable investment.

It was a banner.

An enormous, nylon mesh banner fifteen feet wide and forty feet long hung from the top edge of the wall and reached down to somewhere around the second floor. That bottom edge was still too far off the ground to risk a jump, but that was thinking too far ahead. I’d likely be dead before that became a problem.

Was that it? Was that my only miniscule chance?

I glanced back up to the oncoming mob, emptied my magazine to clear the closest of them and jumped off the concrete corner support. Two seconds later, I had the top edge of the banner in my grasp with my boots slipping off of the wall’s gritty edge.

The Ogre and the Harpy. The Ogre and the Harpy.

Going off the side of the building was a terrible, shitty, awful choice, with an infinitesimally small chance of being alive at the bottom. But no matter how fast my brain spun, there was no other way. Once those clutching white fingers caught my clothes, my chances of continuing life would hit absolute zero.

Infinitesimally small looked good.

I squeezed my hands and tried to bunch the taut nylon into something easier to hang on to as my legs flailed out over the drop. Before I had time to hope for the best, gravity seized me and pulled me madly toward the sidewalk far below.

I held on to the banner as tightly as I could, but the nylon slipped rapidly through my grasp, friction heating and tearing my skin. To put a damper on my acceleration, I pulled my feet in to squeeze the mesh between the rubber soles of my boots.

I started to slow. I had half a thought that I might live.

My boots hit something solid and kicked my feet out to the sides. Before I could shit my pants at that surprise, my hands caught onto a round metal rod sewn into the bottom edge of the banner, and I came to a joint-rending halt, hanging twenty feet above the ground.

“Holy shit.”

I was alive?

Frustrated shrieks cascaded down.

I looked up. “Oh no.”

One was climbing over the wall.

Like a fish on a line, I wriggled my body to swing the banner and out it went. Then back. Not far enough.

A White fell past me, grabbing at my boots, screaming not out of fear, but out of frustration for my being beyond her grasp. She hit the sidewalk in a sickening combination of a thump and a splat. The banner swung out further, then back.

Trying to time the rhythm of my bodily gyrations to the slow rhythm of the banner’s swing, I went way out over the sidewalk just as another infected woman came sliding down the center of the sloping banner. Her weight helped push it back toward the garage. She missed me by five feet when she slipped past with just enough of an arc to drop her past the sidewalk and into the grass with a sound of breaking bones wrapped in tearing flesh.

On the backswing, I flew into the gap between the second and third floors. Suddenly, with concrete just four or five feet below me, I let go. I landed roughly, bruising knees and scraping elbows. My weapons clattered on the floor as I rolled but my sling didn’t slip off. My Glock stayed in its holder. Only my machete slipped away.

The few infected running through the second level looked at me but didn’t slow. The party was upstairs. Any White with ears could hear that.

With bloody, jittery hands, I gathered my machete and crawled to a shaded corner where my breath wheezed out in a nervous rattle. The coolness of the concrete offered what comfort it could while I assimilated the fact that due to little more than luck, I’d just lived through that ordeal. My heart started to slow and my nerves began the long process of winding back down.

I ventured a look down at my torn, blistered hands and thanked the virus that most sensations of pain were in my past. The hands were still functional, but they’d need attention, and soon. Such was the latest price I paid for my life.

Camouflaged in gleaming white skin, crusty bloodstains, and body odor, in that moment I exhibited none of the noisy behaviors of the tasty immune. The infected continuing through the second floor ignored me. I leaned my head against the wall, and for a moment, closed my eyes. Exhaustion was knocking at the door.

I was emotionally drained, empty, as lost as I’d felt before I tried to fill the hole in my heart with the murder of Mark’s proxies. After so many years of being the dog that Dan kicked, couldn’t violence cure my rage, salve my sadness just once?

Residual adrenaline coursed through my veins. My hands were unsteady. I needed time to regroup. I breathed in hot, smoky air. I smelled blood and cordite.

The angry yowls of the infected mixed with the shrieks of the dying.

I tried to clear my mind and disappear, even for just a second, but images of dead faces haunted me: Jerome, Wilkins, Earl, the Ogre, the Harpy, Felicity, Marcy, and a thousand white faces that used to be human. No, were human. Just unfortunate, diseased humans.

Amber was in that procession. Steph’s dead face would join soon. The virus was very effectively killing off every person to which I had even the tiniest connection.

The virus was binging on humanity, one overflowing spoonful after another, and with each death, human civilization ticked inexorably toward its end. And what the virus didn’t destroy, the natural entropy of the universe would. Long held at bay by human arrogance, it would soon crumble the fragile foundations of the world. Fires burned in east Austin. Blazing refineries in Houston disgorged untold tons of toxicity. The reactors would eventually melt down, and our failing dams would wash the reactors’ Chernobyl waste into the oceans, killing everything in the marine world as well.

Empty skyscrapers would be tombstones to our dead cities. Satellites would fall from the sky. When the blood of our dead was washed away by time, the rusting carcasses of a billion cars would again stain the earth red.

How much of that would I live to see? Did I want to see any of it?

Did I want to face a future alone among the mindless monsters?

Alone.

Lost in the blackness of my mood, my scavenged cell phone buzzed in my pocket, teasing me with evidence of another life that would soon come to a violent end.

I wanted to cry, but the Ogre and the Harpy had beaten so, so many tears out of me, and nothing seemed to anger them more than a little boy’s tears.

I felt like I was twelve years old again, alone and imprisoned in a heartless world with countless days of pain in my past and endless days of fear in my future.

And I knelt at Amber’s body while Russell’s wails vocalized my pain.

The cell phone buzzed again.

And Jerome—cowardly, lying, useless Jerome—killed for no reason at all. What the fuck was that?

Was there a path forward, a road out of the darkness? Could I once again find in myself the strength that stood me before the Ogre’s wrath so many years ago, or would life’s cruelty finally prevail?

As I searched my heart for that answer, the cell phone vibrated for half a second, then cut short.

Whether the battery in the phone, the life at the other end, or the hope of the caller—something else had just died.

Chapter 5

I thought about a buddy of mine from seventh grade, Benny Clark. We met after school one afternoon to settle with our fists some little something so trivial that memory misplaced it almost immediately once it was over.

We fought that afternoon, or more accurately, we boxed. But I didn't try; not really. Benny was a smaller kid than me, and that made a real difference at that age. And though we were fighting, he was my friend, and I had no desire to hurt him. He wasn't big enough to pack a punch that could do more than bruise. So, the fight was destined to go unresolved.

But assistant principal McQuig, being much more observant than I’d have given him credit for, caught us both and hauled us to his office. He laid a choice on the table: we could take the paddle, or he would call our parents to explain the suspension.

Well, that was a no-brainer for both Benny and me. He opted for the combo pack—the call and a suspension. I asked to the point of begging for the paddle.

Paddling was punishment with an end. I'd bend over the desk and McQuig would haul back for a baseball-style swing and lay into my ass with all his gray-haired might. There was no defined number of swats for fighting, nor for any offense. Punishment ended when McQuig's temper settled, or his back and shoulders grew tired. This usually happened between three and five swats.

It was a difficult dynamic to predict. In the mornings, McQuig was full of energy and ready for five; not so much in the afternoon. But in the afternoons, his temper was short from a long day of dealing with the likes of me, so he was more inclined to shoot for five.

I took five that day. Perhaps my frequent flyer status was built into the equation somehow.

In spite of paying the price, however, I was too naïve at that age to understand how things really worked in the world. At the time, Dan was an assistant principal at another school in the district. I guess it only made sense that he knew McQuig.

Perhaps McQuig called to tell Dan of the favor he'd done him by tanning my hide. All I knew for a fact was that when Dan got home from work that day, he felt compelled to bellow at me for what seemed to me to be a thousand times, "You wanna fight? You wanna be a boxer? Is this what you wanna do? You wanna embarrass me?"

Of course the questions were all rhetorical. They were not to be answered with my words, nor Dan's.

The answers were in Dan's knuckles.

He beat me all the way through my fear and my pain, leaving only a crusty residue of anger and hate that I carried to school the next day, where a hundred snickering laughers pointed at my bruised face. Humiliation is such a powerful motivator in seventh grade.

So on the fourth day, when Benny returned to school, I found him in the hall. He smiled at me the way he always smiled when he saw me. I didn’t smile back. Instead, I beat him down. With each pound of my fist, Dan's anger rolled through me and down to Benny. And when I was done, Benny looked like me, with fresh blood running from his mouth and nose. He had hollow, helpless eyes that understood something new about cruelty in the world.

I got eight swats from McQuig that day. Perhaps a new record. I got suspended, and Dan beat me daily until I went back. But what the fuck; he probably would have beaten me anyway.

What I should have learned about catharsis that day was the lesson that eluded me every time I ever let my anger run free. Catharsis is a bullshit concept.

Benny had been my best friend for years before that fight. After I beat him in the hall, he never spoke to me again. All that catharsis did for me was cost me a little piece of my humanity.

Slaughtering Whites for what Mark did to Amber was like that. When the rage flowed and the Whites died, it felt like something, something with a frightening name. But after, I felt like a death camp Nazi who’d finally looked into one too many pairs of sunken eyes.

And now I sat in a humid charnel house of my own making, having tried to assuage a vindictive rage with the murder of the wrong people. Mark had to die for the world to ever be right again. In my mind, it was a necessary step. But I knew that it was also an indulgence of the darkness, a choice to forever cultivate a hate. It was a backward path. And to chase Mark down that path, the easy path, was to shower myself in the blood of the Whites until my luck ran out and I was as dead as the pile of infected at my feet. And would Mark be in that pile? Not likely.

But what real choice did I have? To move forward instead? To what?

I’d only ever been an isolated spectator to an endless parade of tragedies. Being alone in the dark was all I knew. All my life I’d collected acquaintances and discarded them before they became real friends, before they became too much of an emotional risk. And as much as I had needed to find Amber, as much as I needed now to know what had happened to Steph, in my choices, I’d scraped off Murphy, Mandi, and Russell and isolated myself again. The cycle of my habit was at work under the guise of rational choice.

So what was forward for me?

That hard path was to pick up the fragile pieces of a nascent chance at life, a life that I’d very handily scattered across a dying city. That path seemed so difficult and so urgent, but the hard part, if I was still alive at the end of the day, was to chance a real relationship with another person, with other people.

And I know I didn’t think it through at the time that I let Russell latch on to me, but maybe that was Russell’s value. Non-judgmental, silent, and simple, Russell wholly accepted and needed me. He took those intangible but important parts of a relationship and put them on the table while asking for nothing in return. Was it possible that in helping Russell to stay alive he would unwittingly help me to take the baby steps of learning how to fit into normal society, or at least whatever might be left of society when this was all over?

Were the first few steps of the hard path forward to ironically be illuminated for me by Russell?

Perhaps.

So with Russell’s help, I chose to move forward, and all those parts that I was good at planning for came together in a snap. I was ready to go, alert and back in the present. My eyes were open and I was aware of my surroundings.

Three infected lurked near a support column at the top of a ramp, fixated on me, puffing up their courage. Their faces were gaunt, their hands very busy at invisible nothings that needed desperate attention. Their eyes were alert and shifting from focus to focus, but always finding their way back to me.

They looked hungry, but were unaware of the feast that awaited them for free, if they’d only follow the parking garage’s ramps up another three floors. Maybe they were just lazy. Maybe they thought I looked like I was dying, infected like them, but an easy meal.

I laid my machete across my thighs, its grip slippery in my bleeding palm. I decided that I wasn’t going to slaughter the three skinny Whites, and neither was I going to be eaten by them. But their hunger was going to make them do something stupid, very soon.

A step on the path forward was control and I was going to take it by bringing the situation to a head. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the concrete wall. I calmed my breathing.

It was time.

The infected couldn’t resist the temptation that my closed eyes presented. Just a moment after closing them, I heard the sound of a half-dozen feet running across the concrete floor.

And by choosing the path forward, my old mantra was outmoded, but still effective.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

I drew a sharp breath, opened my eyes, and jumped to my feet just as the three stepped within machete range. Their eyes widened as they each struggled to halt their momentum. Even their malfunctioning brains were able to register surprise.

My machete swung up as I straightened and slashed deeply across the belly of the leftmost of the trio. Pushing my blade’s momentum in the same swing, I ripped it through the jaw of the one in the middle. Both went down and the third jumped back.

The first infected hit the floor immediately, unconscious and rapidly bleeding to death. The one with the jaw injury was flailing, half silly from the blow to his head, splattering blood in every direction.

I roared and charged at the last one still on her feet. She turned and ran.

Victory.

Chapter 6

When my feet hit the street that ran between the hospital and the garage, the infected on the upper floors of the were still in a tizzy over their lost meal, though many had fallen silent, perhaps feasting on their dead brethren instead. At street level, there were infected loitering and resting in shadows, and others gathered around the doors into the hospital, drawn by the promise of warm flesh upstairs.

But something was profoundly different. The world felt a little more dead than it had just hours before.

Was it me, or was I sensing something real?

I looked out across the street. All of the hospital windows were dark. The giant full color sign in front of the basketball arena had no advertisement for upcoming concerts. It was black. Its lights were out. The traffic signal at the corner flashed red in an unflinching rhythm.

Looking back into the garage, I saw that the overhead lights were out. The lights in the stairwells were off.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. No cellular network. No data.

No, wait. There was a bar…then it was gone. I slowly waved the phone through the air, trying to catch a signal, but it would only come for a second or two at a time. It was out there, but it was weak. I concluded the only thing that made sense.

The power grid had failed.

Mankind had just taken another giant step backward.

Soon the batteries that powered the flashing stoplights would go dead, and the rapidly weakening batteries on the cell towers would follow. If the virus itself wasn’t the beginning of the end of civilization, the failure of the power grid surely was.

I pocketed my cell phone. It was no good now as a communication device, but it was still a pocket-sized computer, though I’d need to find a solar charger for it.

Looking back toward the hospital, I had a clear view of the glass stairwell that I’d shot to hell earlier. Nearly every pane on its glass walls was shattered. Bloody bodies of the infected lay on the stairs, hung out over the edges, or were piled on the ground below. At least a hundred Whites greedily fed on those bodies.

Still, there was barely any movement to be seen on the stairs themselves.

Perhaps an opportunity lay in that carnage.

With blood still glistening on the scarred blade of my machete, I hefted it in my right hand, drew my Glock with my left, and walked across the street toward the feeding infected.

They were noisy. They were sloppy. They tore at clothes with their hands, and with their teeth, they lacerated flesh that seethed with the same virus that had scorched their brains. All around, crimson painted the grass and pooled in the dirt. In the blood, bits of bone, eyeglasses, and shoes were strewn.

The infected paid no attention to me.

At the moment, I was one of them, a white beast from a child’s nightmare, strong and deadly, not worth a second thought when the ground was covered in a bounty of bleeding human meat.

At the bottom of the stairwell, I stepped through a shattered glass wall into the epicenter of the slaughter. The big fifty-caliber bullets had smashed the tempered glass into thousands of razor sharp bits of crystalline shrapnel. Every white body was broken, shredded, and bled out, dripping down the concrete steps. Agonized mouths stretched across broken faces. Bones splintered through skin. And the smell of death, blood, and everything ripped from stomachs and intestines was heavy in the air.

Up I walked, careful with each placement of my foot, lest I slipped. Live infected were among the bodies on the first few floors, feeding on the scraps of their brothers and sisters. By the third floor, their numbers thinned. By the fifth, there were only one or two per flight, faces buried in the work of gorging themselves on newly dead remains.

That made my task easy as I went to work with my machete, hacking at the backs of necks and severing heads. I wanted no breathing White nearby when I got to the top.

I passed the sixth floor and killed three. I passed the seventh and killed two more. Between the eighth and ninth, there were four. One struggled and attacked. As a result, I wore more of his blood than I did of the others.

When I finally reached the top of the stairs, I had to climb over a makeshift barricade of hospital beds, chairs, and cabinets. The barrier had no hope of stopping any infected from climbing over, but it did serve the purpose of slowing them down, and more importantly, it kept them from massing and pushing their combined weight on the door.

Once over the barricade, there was enough room for me to stand in front of the steel fire door. Above the doorknob, about eight inches wide and two feet tall was a long rectangular window.

Through the reinforcing wire mesh in the glass, I saw two soldiers standing across the hall with dispassionate faces and nervous eyes, aiming their weapons at me.

I shouted, “Hey.”

The soldiers shared a glance, but didn’t respond.

“Hey, listen,” I said. “I know you’re kind of freaked out about seeing me out here, but I need to talk to someone. Can I count on you not to shoot me?”

One soldier looked nervously at the other. He said something that I couldn’t make out through the heavy door.

I shouted again, “Look, I’m not going to stay out here all day. It’s only a matter of time before the infected hear me up here and come. So go talk to whoever you need to talk to and let me in. I’m not a danger. I won’t stay long. I need to talk to Steph.”

“Go away,” the previously silent soldier ordered.

I huffed. “Look, man, don’t be a dick. Go get your boss or whatever you need to do, but hurry up about it.”

“If you don’t leave, we’ll shoot.”

I guess I should have been happy that they didn’t start the conversation with bullets, but I wasn’t. I was impatient. “Look, let me be clear about a couple of things. First, there aren’t any infected out here. All the ones in this stairwell are dead. At least until you get down to the third floor or so. Second, I’m going to come in there and see Steph. I don’t mean anybody any harm, but I gotta tell you guys, I’m already tired of fucking around about it. I went to a lot of trouble to get here and if I’d wanted to hurt you, I would have just blown the door open with a grenade, come in, and shot your dumbasses.”

I pulled a pin from one of my three grenades, slipped the pin into my pocket, and then held it up to the glass for the soldiers to see. “You see what I have here, right? I know you’re thinking that you really want to shoot me through the door now, but if you do, this grenade goes off. The door gets blown open, and the infected come running. Do you know what happens after that? You do, don’t you? All of you die. But that’s not what I want and I know that’s not what you want. I just want to come in and talk to Steph. I don’t mean anyone in there any harm. I sure don’t want anybody to harm me. Just open the fuckin’ door. I’ll come in, and then I’ll leave.”

I peeked through the glass. The soldiers were talking again. As I watched, one ran off down the hall.

The other soldier said, “You’re infected, right?”

“I’m a slow burn.” I nodded. “I am infected. Aside from that, I’m just as normal as you.”

The soldier said, “You could infect us all if we let you in. Do you want that on your conscience?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing already anyway?” I asked. “Infecting yourselves, trying to find the immune ones?”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Because I’ve been talking to Steph on the phone about it.” I glared through the window to be sure he saw my anger at him. “She’s a nurse. Cute, with red hair, about five-foot-five.”

The soldier asked, “The network is still up?”

I shook my head. “No. I think the power grid failed. I think there are batteries in the towers, but I guess they’re dying. I couldn’t get a signal when I checked.”

The soldier nodded. “The emergency generator here kicked on a few hours ago.”

With no more questions on his mind, the soldier stood and watched me.

Not concerned with small talk, I thought about racing my motorcycle several years ago out on FM 2222, blazing over the hills and around the sharp turns, trying to shake the carnivorous banshees that lived in my soul. No matter how fast I flew down the road, I couldn’t slip them. When I hit a guardrail and my body crashed through the upper branches of some trees on a downward slope, I ended up a summertime resident of the hospital.

The main building, the oldest, was laid out in something of a T-shape with the top bar of the T being too long for a properly formed letter. The upper floors each had a central hall down each branch of the T with patient rooms on both sides. An expansive nurses’ station stood at the intersection of the three branches on each floor. At least that was the layout of the upper floors. The lower two or three had grown maze-like with additions through the years. On the fourth floor, a breezeway connected at an angle from the shortest leg of the T to a roughly circular and relatively new children’s hospital.

Knowing the layout as well as I knew the house I grew up in, I started to plan how I was going to find Steph if I had to force my way in. Of course, I should rather have been considering what an all-around stupid idea that was, but that thought never really bubbled to the surface.

The other soldier came hurrying back into view with a guy in a soiled white lab coat. The three of them conferred quietly for a few minutes and then the guy in the lab coat came over to the glass.

I asked, “Are you the doctor in charge?”

“I might be.”

“Christ,” I said, letting my frustration who. “I’m not a Chinese spy. Are you in charge?”

The guy in the lab coat peered through the window, trying to see as much as he could see. After he was satisfied with whatever he was looking for he said, “Yes, I am in charge. I’m Dr. Paul Evans.”

“Zed Zane. Will you please open the door and let me in?”

Dr. Evans looked blankly at me, but said nothing.

Quietly, but sternly, I said, “Look, the infected downstairs are going to…”

Dr. Evans held up a hand to silence me and said, “I know, I know.”

He stepped back over near the others. More whispered conversations among the three and a few too many suspicious glances at my white face through the glass left me uneasy.

But they came to a decision. Dr. Evans raised a hand to the door and the lock clicked. He pushed the door open. I had one fist gripped around my fragmentation grenade and the other held my Glock with my finger on the trigger. I walked through.

The soldiers held their weapons pointed at the floor, but enhanced my distrust by surrounding me, one behind and one beside me. Dr. Evans stood in front.

“You’re in.” Dr. Evans’ tone was condescending and angry when he pointed to my hand grenade. “Do you intend to kill us with that?”

“No.” I glanced over my shoulder at the guy behind me. “I just don’t trust any of you.”

“Then why come here?” he asked.

“Like I told the guys.” I nodded at each of the soldiers. “I’m here for Steph.”

“Steph?” he asked.

The soldier to my left, the one I’d been talking to, said, “Nurse Leonard.”

So that was Steph’s last name. It had never occurred to me to ask.

Dr. Evans asked, “Are you a relative?”

Without an ounce of respect for authority left anywhere in me, I spouted, “Really? After all that’s happened, you’re going to stonewall me with a protocol that nobody gives a shit about anymore?”

That pissed him off. Dr. Evans’ face flashed anger, but returned quickly to an icy cold nothing expression, except for his lips, which remained pinched closed.

I stood half a head shorter than him, but having separated so many souls from so many different sized bodies over the past week, I was no longer intimidated by physical stature.

Dr. Evans forced his voice to sound calm. “I was curious, Mr. Zane, that’s all. No, no, I’m not curious. I need to know. For better or worse, I’m in charge here. I’m trying to keep as many of these people alive as I can. They’re my responsibility. So, unless you want to detonate that hand grenade right here and kill us all, then you’ll have to answer my questions, because you’re not taking one step further until I get some answers.”

I cocked my head at the soldier behind me. “Why is he back there?”

Dr. Evans looked at the soldier behind me and motioned to his right. “Corporal.”

The guy behind me walked around me to stand a few paces behind the doctor.

“Let me ask you something, Dr. Evans. How long have you been in charge here—since the beginning?”

“Why do you want to know?” He was cautious.

“Who set up all the triage tents outside?” I asked, not sure why I chose to go down that rat hole. “Who decided on the protocols that put all of the infected in that gym and then left them there to die? Was that you?”

“Is that what this is, then?” Dr. Evans motioned at the two soldiers. “You men go up the hall to a safe distance.” He looked down his long, narrow nose and said, “I did that. I was in charge here when those decisions were made. If you’re here to kill me over some grudge about that, then shoot me. Don’t detonate that grenade in here and compromise the safety of the others.”

“No.” I shook my head emphatically. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m not here to kill you, though now that you mention it, it sounds like an appealing idea. I was in that gym. I almost died there. I’m a person, you fucker. I’m not a piece of medical waste. But that’s how you saw me, right?”

Dr. Evans shook his head. His face softened. He was troubled. “Mr. Zane, don’t pretend to be naïve. You wouldn’t be alive if you were. I made hard decisions to try to contain the infection and save as many people as I could. I’m not going to ask you to understand. I’m not going to ask you to care how difficult it was. I’m a doctor, Mr. Zane. I’ve dedicated my life to saving other people’s lives. Maybe my decisions that night were wrong. Maybe they were the worst decisions. But maybe there weren’t any good choices. Mr. Zane, I did what I thought was the best, given what I knew at the time. If that caused you harm, then I apologize for that harm, but I can’t change what’s passed.”

“Look,” I said, “I’ll be honest. I’m kind of pissed about all of that, but I’m not an idiot. I understand that choices were made for the greater good. I’m pissed because in any kind of greater-good choice, somebody always gets fucked. I was the guy who got fucked this time. But to get back to the point, I’m not here to kill you or anybody else.” Then, as sincerely as I could, given the tension, I added, “But I do respect you for taking responsibility, even though you thought I might be here to kill you for it.”

Dr. Evans exhaled a long breath and said, “That’s a relief. Can I ask you to put the pin back in that grenade?”

“Perhaps, in a minute,” I said. “Right now, let’s just say that I have trust issues.”

“Why are you here?” he asked.

At the root of it, that was a question I didn’t really have an answer to.

“Mr. Zane?”

“Like I said,” I nearly blurted, “I need to see Steph. She told me last night she was going to volunteer for the infection.” I took a deep breath. “She’s my friend. I need to know if she’s dead. Is she?”

Dr. Evans slowly shook his head, sloughing off his anger and exposing his sadness. “I don’t know.”

I relaxed a little. “Where is she?”

“She’s two floors down. What do you intend to do when you see her?”

“I don’t know.” I softened. “I…I’ve seen so many people…too many friends die. I guess I just have to know, one way or the other.”

Dr. Evans’ eyes examined my face for an uncomfortably long time after that. “I’m sorry I had you put in that infected ward. I really am.”

With some reluctance, I gave Dr. Evans a nod of acceptance.

“One thing you might want to know is that if I’d let you into the hospital that night, you’d probably be dead now.” Dr. Evans looked around as though trying to see something that wasn’t there. “I’m not trying to find some ex-post justification for my decisions that night, but if you’ve been talking to Nurse Leonard, you know how bad things have been here.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

Dr. Evans turned to the two soldiers. “You men keep this door secure.” To me, he said, “C’mon, Mr. Zane. I’ll take you down to see Steph.”

“Thank you.” Before following, I took a gamble. I holstered my Glock and fished the grenade pin out of my pocket and pushed it back into place in the grenade. I turned and handed it to one of the soldiers, noticing as I opened my palm that the grenade was red and sticky with my blood. “I’ve got two more clean ones if you don’t want that one.”

The soldier accepted the bloody grenade with a nod of thanks.

Then I doubled down and gave a grenade to the other guard. I said, “I can probably find some more outside eventually.”

The second guard thanked me, as did Dr. Evans.

Chapter 7

We walked together up the hall. “Was that you outside on the parking garage?” Dr. Evans asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“That was a real Tarzan stunt you pulled getting off of that roof.”

“Thanks,” I shrugged.

“Some of us were watching out the window,” he said. “None of us thought you’d make it.”

I half smiled. “Me neither.”

“Sliding down that banner, is that how you injured your hands?” he asked.

I looked down at one of my still-bleeding hands and nodded.

“How do you even make the decision, to go over the edge of a garage?” he asked. “Are you one of those adrenaline junkies that bungee jumps and does skateboard tricks?”

“Desperation,” I told him.

“Oh.” Dr. Evans looked me up and down. “Is it true that you don’t feel pain, Mr. Zane?”

“Call me Zed. That’s what everybody calls me. But yes, it’s true. I get some monster headaches and I feel tired when I should, but mostly things don’t hurt. My hands, I can tell they’re messed up. I can feel that, but they don’t hurt. And I’ve been bitten twice by Whites.” I showed Dr. Evans my arm. “Neither one hurts.”

Dr. Evans’ face grew pensive. “That is interesting. I read something about it on the internet, but there are so many people making guesses out there right now, it’s hard to know what to believe. Listen, do you want me to fix up those hands before we head down?”

That was a unexpected offer. I nodded enthusiastically. “I’d like that very much.”

“Do you have your insurance card?” Dr. Evans smiled for the first time.

I smiled back, acknowledging his attempt to lighten the situation with a little humor. “Could you look at the bites on my arm, too, if you don’t mind?”

“Sure.”

We sat at the nurse’s station while he patched up my hands and he said, “The volunteers are two floors down. When we’re finished, we’ll have to go to the other stairwell to get down there. We have that one blocked about five floors down. It’s secure for the moment.”

“Don’t bandage my hands too heavily,” I said as he worked. “I need to be able to handle my rifle and stuff.”

Dr. Evans nodded as he gingerly cleaned one of my hands with a gauze pad and disinfectant. “They look worse than they are. Your injuries are all superficial. If you could feel the pain, I’m sure they’d hurt a lot. I’d probably prescribe a pain killer and tell you not to use your hands for a week or so.”

“Superficial is good,” I said.

“But they can get infected,” he said. “You need to keep them clean.”

“I will,” I said, knowing that keeping a wound clean was an easy task in yesterday’s world. Now, with no running water, no corner drugstore, and not even a certain roof over my head every night, that was a much more difficult thing to do.

“I heard that things went bad at the gym.” Dr. Evans voice took on a distant air. “At first I didn’t believe it, but now, well, we’ve all learned something about how violent the infected can be. How did you get out?”

As Dr. Evans treated my wounds, I told him the story of my escape from the gym and everything since. Afterwards, he worked and I stared at the sparklingly waxed vinyl floor tiles, the faux cloth texture of the wallpaper wainscot, the black rubber-wheeled stainless steel medical devices, and I thought a lot about my yesterdays. All such things were commonplace in those days.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on in the rest of the world?” I asked, absently.

“Academically, it’s interesting to see the whole world in a panic,” Dr. Evans replied, without looking up from what he was doing. “If our species makes it through this, I wonder what kind of history from this period will survive.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Dr. Evans said, “In the beginning there’ll be news footage and a trove of personal accounts on the webservers if any of those survive. I wonder if anybody will record any of this on their cell phones, or if it’ll all be handwritten diaries and archeological records eventually.”

“At first,” I agreed, “I’m sure it’ll be cell phones. You know, pictures and video. The virus was probably documented on Facebook better than anywhere before things started to get really bad. You know how people are about posting anything unusual, anything special.”

“I don’t use it,” Dr. Evans said. “But my kids do, so I know what you mean.”

“Your kids?” I asked.

Dr. Evans ignored the question and kept working. “We’ve heard of islands that quarantined early and are infection free. Little places in the Pacific. Grand Cayman in the Caribbean.”

“I’ve always wanted to dive there,” I mused.

“The water is so blue and clear.” Dr. Evans looked up and stared, but not at anything in particular. “We were there a few years back, diving near a wreck. You could see for a hundred feet, maybe two hundred. The water was spectacular that day. A school of tarpon swam by us, five or six feet long at least, close enough to reach out and touch. Their scales were glittering in the sunlight. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

“I wish I could have gone diving,” I said.

“Who knows?” Dr. Evans finished with my hands and went to work cleaning the wounds on my arm. “Most of Europe isn’t any better than here. There’s sporadic internet traffic, but it’s dying away.”

“I heard it started in Africa,” I added.

“As far as anybody knows, there’s not a single functioning human brain on that continent. Yes, that’s where it started.”

“And the Middle East?” I asked, the next region that came to mind.

Dr. Evans said, “Israel nuked Iran.”

That was a surprising change. “What?”

“Who knows why?” said Dr. Evans. “I don’t imagine it makes any difference anyway.”

“I guess not. What about South America, Australia, New Zealand, places like that?”

He said, “High population densities present favorable conditions for the virus to spread. South America went quickly. Australia, I don’t know. The infection is there, but it’s not bad yet. New Zealand quarantined itself and seems to be successful so far.”

“Good for them.” I wished I was in New Zealand. “How about here?”

“Here?” he asked.

“America,” I clarified.

“What’s not like Austin soon will be,” he said. “I can’t think of any major city in which the virus hasn’t been found.”

I asked, “Are any of them handling it?”

“None yet.” Dr. Evans shook his head slowly as he said it. “It’s so contagious, it’s nearly impossible to contain. Well, not nearly. It’s proven impossible to contain.”

“So this really is the end.” I looked at him, hoping to discern whether the forthcoming answer was honest, no exaggerated.

“The end?” he asked.

“Of us. Of humans.”

Dr. Evans shook his head and looked up at me. “No, I don’t think so. Some will survive. You’ll survive if you can make it out of this hospital.”

I certainly planned to make it out.

“It’ll be the beginning of another dark age,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll come out if it. Different, I hope. Better.” Dr. Evans taped a last bandage across my arm. He dropped his hands to his knees and exhaled to indicate he was finished.

“Am I in any mortal danger?” I asked. “Am I going to die of an infection?”

“Probably not.” Dr. Evans got up off of his stool and motioned for me to follow. But he looked like he was walking to his own hanging. “Lets go see the volunteers. They’ve got the whole floor down there.”

“So it wasn’t just Steph who volunteered?” I asked as I followed him.

“Did Steph tell you what the mood was like here?”

I nodded. “Hopeless.”

“Yes,” he said. “That word was all I heard last night. After the first few trials with no survivors, everybody was hopeless. You know, I’ve used that word all my life. I’ve read it in books. I saw it in movies, but I never really knew what it meant until last night. Maybe I learned slowly as the week went along, but now I know in the same way I know what love is.”

“Love?” What an odd analogy.

“Not just in my head, Zed. I felt it down to the marrow of my bones, with every beat of my heart, and with every blink of my eye. I felt it with the same all-inclusive intensity that I’ve felt love. You’re a young man; have you ever been in love?”

I shook my head. Lust, certainly. Infatuation, of course. Love, no. “I know the hopelessness you’re talking about.”

“Yet here you are?” he said.

“Here we both are,” I countered. “Dr. Evans, how many are down there?”

“Call me Paul. Formalities are for the past, I think.”

“Okay, Paul.”

Paul came to a stop and turned to face me. “When Steph volunteered last night, it was like she was the catalyst for everyone’s courage. Maybe she’s a natural leader. Or maybe she was everyone’s hope. When she gave up, everybody else did, too.”

“What do you mean, everybody else?” I asked.

“Look around.” Paul waved a hand at the empty corridor. “Do you see anybody up here?”

It occurred to me as I looked, I’d seen almost no one since coming onto the floor.

“Nearly everybody volunteered for infection,” he said. “There are only seventeen of us left who are keeping the place secure in case anyone comes out of the experiment with immunity.”

“How many are immune so far?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to go downstairs to watch. You see, there are one hundred and fifty-three people down there, Zed. All infected. And if the first trials are any indicator, half of them are dead already, and we’ll shoot the other half by midnight.”

“You have lost hope,” I observed.

“Hopelessness,” Paul reiterated, “is an emotion with so many ugly faces. You know, I was in the Army before I came here. I was a doctor in Iraq in both wars. I’ve seen my share of things that would make most people weep. I’ve had boys younger than you bleed to death right there on my table. Boys in uniform, who looked me in the eye, sometimes holding my hand, in that moment when they gave their lives for something they believed in.”

Dr. Evans’ eyes looked down the hall at something that wasn’t there. “You do your best, but sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes, they die anyway. When I thought of infecting us all to save a few, intellectually it was the right thing to do, the only logical thing.”

Dr. Evans seemed at a loss for words, so I said, “I think Steph felt the same way about it.”

“Everything about it feels wrong.”

I wrestled with a tactful way to express a harsh thought but went with, “Maybe you’d feel better about it if you’d volunteered to go first.”

“I couldn’t.” Dr. Evans’ wide, sad eyes fell back on me.

“Why?” I asked, expecting to hear some bullshit about how the whole place would fall apart without him at the helm.

“Because I’m immune.”

“What?” That was a surprise.

“I was exposed the Saturday before everything got bad.” Dr. Evans pulled up the sleeve on his left arm.

“How?” I asked.

“I was bitten by a violent patient.” Dr. Evans showed me a bandaged wound on his forearm. “He was infected with the virus. His skin was pale. His temperature was elevated. His pupils were dilated. His behavior was deranged.”

I said, “I got it on that Sunday. Obviously, I wasn’t as lucky you.”

“Or perhaps, I wasn’t as lucky as you,” Dr. Evans suggested. “You can walk among them. You’ll survive if you’re careful. I’m a prey animal now.”

“Is anyone else here immune?” I asked.

“There’s Sergeant Dalhover downstairs. He got bitten early on. Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. He never turned. Like me, he never showed any symptoms. He and I are the only two here who are immune that we know of.”

“So naturally, you assumed there had to be more?” I asked.

Dr. Evans nodded. “It was the logical conclusion.”

“Is Sergeant Dalhover the one in charge of shooting of the infected downstairs?” I asked, trying to mask the urgency I felt at the thought of finally arriving at Steph’s location, only to get there one bullet too late.

Dr. Evans confirmed with a nod. We arrived at the door to the stairwell that would take us down. He looked through the window to confirm there was no movement on the landing. In a new habit of all the living, Dr. Evans very quietly pushed the door open.

I followed him into the stairwell, carefully and without a sound. As much as I wanted to hurry, hurrying led to mistakes, and mistakes were paid for in blood. I stopped when he did. We listened to the sounds from far below. The infected were down there, and they were pissed.

Dr. Evans looked down the center gap between the stairs.

“Anything?” I softly asked, leaning over to look myself. The pungent smell of their unwashed bodies, thick enough to taste, wafted up in the confined space.

“We’re clear for now,” he whispered. “Let’s go. They're trying to get at the soldiers behind the barrier down there. They never give up."

“Can they see the soldiers through the barrier?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” he answered.

“They won't give up as long as they can see your guys,” I said.

Evans stopped halfway down the first flight of stairs and gave me his attention.

“Look,” I said to him, “if they can't see you or hear you, they eventually lose interest and go away.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“I got lucky,” I said. “It worked the first time I tried it.”

Evans started downward and didn't speak again until we were on the next flight of stairs. “I don’t think Sergeant Dalhover would agree with you on that.”

I figured I’d give him another nugget of solid gold advice. “You know every time you shoot a gun all you accomplish is to draw more of them in.”

“It's been discussed,” said Paul.

“It's true,” I reiterated.

Dr. Evans said nothing else on the subject until he swung the door open for us to leave the stairwell. “Why don’t you talk with Sergeant Dalhover about what you know? If we need to alter our tactics, we will.”

We came out at the nurse’s station just like the one two floors up where Dr. Evans had treated my wounds. A skinny man in civilian clothes with a very unmilitary slouch and a droopy, broken man's face eyed us lazily.

A soldier far down the hall, his weapon at the ready, called, “Everything all right, Top?”

In a raspy, smoker's voice, the skinny sergeant replied, “Yeah.” Then with no change in his posture or facial expression, he looked me over and asked Dr. Evans, “What's this?”

“Slow burn,” Evans answered as though all the life had drained out of him. He hadn’t emotionally prepared himself to be down among the volunteers.

“So they’re real?” the sergeant asked.

“So it seems,” he said.

“I'm real,” I confirmed, “and just a normal as you.”

“Yeah.” The sergeant said it in a way that made it clear he didn't agree.

I already didn't like him.

The entire length of the long hall was lined with chairs spaced about five feet apart. In most of those sat a sagging person with a torn bed sheet gag between his or her teeth, arms and feet restrained. Some of them stared at the wall across the hall. Some slept with chins on their chests. A few looked at us with interested eyes. Ten or eleven were obviously transitioning from human to beast. One close to the nurse’s station was bleeding from his mouth while trying desperately to gnaw through his gag. Down from him, the skin of a woman’s wrists and ankles were worn through from her struggles against her bonds.

Many of the chairs were empty and sat below big, bloody stains on the wall. And like red entrance ramps to a highway that nobody wanted to be on, a trail of blood led from each chair to merge with a long bloody smear to the end of the hall. It was immediately clear what was going on. When the volunteers turned symptomatic, they were shot where they sat. I asked Evans, “What are you doing with the bodies?”

In his gruff voice, Dalhover answered for Evans, “Throwin’ ‘em out the window.”

Just listening to his voice made me want to cough the phlegm out of my own lungs. “That's a bad idea.”

Using apathy as a defense, the sergeant said, “Can't keep ‘em here.”

“But the infected are eating them below,” I protested. “You're giving them a reason to keep hanging around.”

“Doesn't matter,” he said. “They'll be eating us all soon enough.”

Dr. Evans cut in. “Zed Zane, this is Sergeant Dalhover.”

Sergeant Dalhover looked at me again, with no change in his droopy eyes. He made no effort to shake my hand.

I was apparently untouchable. Fuck him.

I said, “Hello.”

No response.

Double fuck him.

Dr. Evans, in a voice that saddened more with each word, asked of Sergeant Dalhover, “How many so far? I see lots of empty chairs.”

“Eighty-three.”

Eighty-three people, all shot in the head and tossed out a window.

Dr. Evans looked at me. “This was my idea. I’m the one who convinced these people to bet their lives on hope.”

Droopy-eyed Dalhover just stared at him.

Dr. Evans was getting hard to look at, so I scanned up and down the hall, searching for a head of red hair. “Is Steph alive or dead?”

“Steph?” Dalhover asked.

“Nurse Leonard,” I clarified.

With the smallest of gestures, he pointed. “She’s down the hall.”

My mood perked up, but I quickly tamped it down. “Fever?”

Dalhover croaked, “No.”

I didn’t ask for any more information, nor did I wait for permission. I stepped out of Dalhover’s sad gaze and hurried down the hall, looking at each face as I passed. I’d only seen Steph with a surgical mask on. Aside from red hair, green eyes, and fair skin, I had little idea what she looked like.

Chapter 8

To look down that long hall had the emotional effect of looking through a neighbor’s window while they beat a crippled dog. Walking down the hall, trying to avoid stepping on the viscous trail of coagulated blood, was viscerally painful.

Some volunteers, seeing only their last hopeless thoughts, let me pass like an invisible man.

One woman stared with tears on her cheeks at a mural of blood above an empty chair directly across the hall from her. Right there, over five or ten or twelve hours she had seen a person, perhaps someone she knew, perhaps a close friend, slowly turn from human into something else. She had watched the face lose hope when the fever came on. She witnessed the deterioration of the mind. She saw the animalistic gnawing at the gag and the scraping of skin until blood flowed. She saw the black, wild eyes where no human intellect lived anymore.

I wondered, when Dalhover’s revolver fired, ringing everyone’s ears, splitting that skull, whether she saw it as a mercy or a horror.

Down that trail of tears, blood, and utter despair, I spotted a redhead with tear-drained, but alert eyes turning to watch me approach. Recognition perked her to life and I couldn’t stop myself from running the last steps. Stopping beside her chair, I immediately started untying the strip of bed sheet that gagged her mouth.

“Hey,” Dalhover rasped from somewhere behind me.

I ignored him and removed the gag.

In a hoarse voice, Steph said, “Wow, you’re still alive.”

I swallowed hard on a lump in my throat as a faint, but real, smile stretched my lips. “Wow, you’re still alive.”

Steph’s smile was real, but it was competing with the pain on the rest of her face.

The guy in the next chair over started to squirm and grunt through his gag.

“Can you take his off too?” Steph asked.

“Okay.” I stepped over and started on the guy.

“God dammit.” Dalhover’s voice echoed up the hall.

I didn’t even look at Dalhover, but I heard his voice drop to background noise as he droned something at Dr. Evans.

To Steph I said, “And I thought I was uptight.”

Steph answered, “It hasn’t been easy for any of us.”

I shrugged as I removed the gag from the guy.

He thanked both Steph and me, then opened and closed his mouth several times to stretch his jaw muscles.

I squatted down beside Steph and started to untie her hands.

“Don’t,” she told me.

“Why?” I asked.

She said, “I might turn.”

I stopped and looked up at her. “But…”

“Leave them.” She was firm.

I stood up and stepped in front of her chair, but suddenly had no words.

The guy in the next chair over had no such problem and spoke very fast, “We were infected last night around seven. It’s like one o’clock now. We’ve got to wait until seven before we know if we’re immune, but we won’t be, though the theory is sound. Some of us, maybe a lot of us, should be immune. But so far, no winners. You know what I mean?”

“You’ll have to excuse him,” Steph said to me. “He gets excited and can’t shut up.”

The guy said, “I think fast. That’s just how I am. But not for long.” Then very softly he whispered to us. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got the fever.”

Steph tried to repress a sob.

The guy looked at Steph, pain in his eyes. Then at a normal talking speed, he said, “I’m sorry, babe.”

Babe?

Steph looked at me. “Put your hand on his forehead, see if he feels hot.”

I stepped over and laid my hand across the guy’s forehead, feeling his temperature on the skin between my bandages.

“I’m Jeff Aubrey,” he smiled weakly.

“Zed Zane,” I answered, looking down at him and shaking my head slightly. He was hot.

“I saw that,” Steph said. “He has the fever, doesn’t he?”

Jeff said, “If I hit one-oh-four before Dalhover checks us again…”

“Jeff, don’t say that,” Steph implored.

I checked Steph’s forehead for a fever. She was cooler than me.

“Babe,” said Jeff, “the odds of both of us being immune are astronomical. With me infected, that makes your odds better. I’m okay with that.” Jeff looked up at me. “Well?”

I told him, “She feels normal.”

Steph sniffled up another sob.

“Why the gags?” I asked.

“They’re to keep us from biting anyone when we turn,” Jeff answered.

Steph asked, “How did you get in here, Zed?”

I took a few minutes to convey an abbreviated version of my story.

“So, all that shooting outside a little while ago,” Jeff asked. “That was you?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Tell me again, why did you come here?” he asked.

I looked at Steph, again wondering the same thing. I looked up and down the hall as I tried to cull my thoughts on the matter. I looked back at Steph before I spoke, “Hope. I think I was looking for hope.”

Jeff laughed bitterly. “If this is where you came to find hope, I’m glad I’m not out there.”

Without looking back to Jeff, I asked Steph, “Does he ever stop talking?”

“No,” she answered. “Now you know why I needed you to talk to.”

“For what its worth,” I said, “I’m glad you’re still alive. I’m glad that you still have a chance.”

“Hey, Zed.” Jeff demanded my attention like a needy toddler.

“Yes, Jeff?”

“I’m going to be dead in an hour or two,” he said. “I don’t know you, but you look like you like Steph.”

“It’s not like that,” I interrupted.

He asked, “Will you look out for her?”

“Jeff,” Steph implored.

“I’m already doing that,” I told him. “Besides, you might not turn. You might be a slow burn, like me.”

“That’s like hoping I win the lottery.” Jeff’s face show how little he thought of that. “Besides, that’s not what we’re doing here. Dalhover is going to shoot me at one-oh-four.”

“I can stop him,” I said, feeling the confidence of my dustup with the Whites.

“I don’t want to be one of them,” he said.

“You guys don’t need to shoot everybody as soon as they get the fever.” I looked up and down the hall at the men with guns and the evidence of what they’d been doing. It disgusted me. “You’ve got nothing to lose by waiting.”

Jeff said, “It’s been discussed. It’s been decided. I knew what I was getting into when I volunteered for the infection.”

I said, “I guess I did come to wrong place for hope.”

“There might be a speck of hope,” Jeff contradicted me.

I thought about punching him in the face. Not seriously, but the thought did cross my mind. Looking back at Steph again, I asked, “Does he always do this?” To Jeff I said, “Would you pick one side of the issue? Are you hopeless or not?”

“I analyze things,” he said. “I look at all sides. I’m a numbers guy. There is hope in the numbers.”

I looked back at Steph. “What does that mean?”

“This is new to me,” she said.

Jeff squirmed against his bonds, wanting very much to move his hands as he talked. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about things while I’ve been here, waiting for the infection to rot my brain.”

“And?” I asked.

“This whole thing is only going to last six to eighteen months,” he told us. “If you can find a way to last that long, then you’re home free.”

Steph asked Jeff, “What does that even mean?”

In his rapid fire speech, Jeff said, “The infection rate was over ninety-nine percent. Some of the infected died outright; most of them turned into white-skinned cannibals. For the Austin area, that meant we had nearly a million infected running around, trying to eat anything that moved.”

“Seems like I’ve heard this before.” It was like listening to Jerome all over again.

Jeff pressed on. “By the time the infection runs through the population, there might be ten thousand people who are either immune or slow burns, maybe less. Not very good odds.”

I looked up and down the hall again. I was already bored. Dalhover and Evans were talking quietly near the nurse’s station. The soldiers at each end of the hall were attentive, but hadn’t moved from their positions. About four chairs down, one of the tied-up volunteers was starting to get very agitated. He’d turned.

“Of those ten thousand,” Jeff continued, “who knows how many are still alive? It might be five thousand. It might be a couple of thousand. But with a million infected on the loose, the odds of an immune person staying alive are pretty bleak.”

Steph said, “And that’s one of the reasons everyone here was so hopeless. How can we to fight a million infected?”

“That’s just it,” said Jeff, his voice notching up a level. “We don’t have to. We just have to figure out a way to feed ourselves and stay hidden until the problem solves itself.”

Okay, I was interested. “What does that mean, solve itself?”

“When the infected get hungry, and there aren’t any of us around for dinner, they eat each other, right?” Jeff asked.

“I’ve seen that,” I confirmed.

“So that’s true?” Steph asked.

I nodded.

“People are omnivores,” said Jeff, “With a million infected running around Austin, they’ll eat every piece of biomass they can get their hands on, whether it’s a house cat, an acorn, or us. Pretty quickly, the most plentiful food source available to them is going to be each other. Do you know that the average American contains about two-hundred-thousand usable calories?”

“Really?” That was a surprisingly morbid bit of trivia. “How could you know that?”

Jeff went through the calculation with me. “If you take the average weight of a Texan and subtract the weight of the skeleton, then figure the body fat percentage, you can calculate the calories.”

“And that comes out to two-hundred-thousand per person?” I asked.

Jeff nodded. “The average calorie intake for a person of the average size is about twenty-five-hundred calories.”

“That seems high,” Steph countered.

“We’re talking averages,” Jeff shot back. “There are a lot of really big people out there.”

“I thought their metabolisms run a lot faster than normal,” I said.

“That’s been suggested, but not proven,” said Jeff. “If it’s true, then that works in our favor.”

“How’s that?” Steph asked, surprised.

“It works in our favor,” Jeff continued, “because if we can stay hidden, then the infected will eat each other up that much faster.”

“How fast?” she asked.

“If they are their only food source, they’ll probably eat each other up at the rate of eight to nine percent per month. So a million infected today turns into about a hundred thousand in six months and about ten thousand six months after that.”

“And all of the infected coming this way from the Houston fires?” I asked.

“Doesn’t change the math much,” said Jeff. “More infected means more mouths to feed. More mouths to feed means more infected get eaten. The result doesn’t change in the end.”

Steph’s face looked almost hopeful. “That makes it sound like we have a chance.”

“And you did all this math in your head while you sat there?” I asked with as much disbelief as I could put into my voice.

Steph said, “He’s really good with numbers.”

I shook my head. “I’d need a spreadsheet to figure all that out.”

“Jeff doesn’t,” Steph reassured me.

“Wow.” That was impressive. “You know, I saw a news story about the drought and the reduction of the state’s cattle herds, and one of the surprising bits of information I came across was that there were something like five or six million cattle in Texas. What do cattle weigh? Somewhere between five hundred and fifteen hundred pounds? That’s a lot of calories, right?”

“Enough to seriously change the math,” Jeff agreed.

“And then there are the other farm animals. Sheep, goats, horses, whatever,” I added.

“But to get those calories, the infected have to leave the city to find them,” said Jeff. “They have to figure out how to eat them. Cowhide is tough, probably too tough for our tiny blunt teeth to bite through. But that’s not the most important point.  The infected don’t know that all of those calories are out there for free. They’re not that smart. They only see the calories running around the cities with them. Those are the ones they’ll try to eat.”

“You may be right,” I agreed, “but it sounds like there are a lot of hopes and guesses built into your calculations.”

Jeff nodded. “There are lots of factors that can affect the final number, but the only real question about the end result is when we arrive at ten thousand infected, not if we arrive there. How long do you have to wait until the infected population kills itself off? That might be six months. It might be two years. It might be five years. But however you look at it, there’s a time in the not too distant future when the infected become a manageable problem. All you have to do is stay alive until then.”

Jeff talked for another five or ten minutes before he got a very glassy look in his eyes and then passed out mid-sentence. Steph had me check his pulse. He wasn’t dead, but he was burning up.

In the silence left by Jeff’s unconsciousness, I asked, “So you guys are a thing?”

“We’re engaged,” Steph said, with little enthusiasm.

I felt a pang of irrational jealousy.

What did I have to be jealous about?

“Zed, I should have told you that I had a fiancé.”

I shook my head, “No, it’s not… That’s not why I came.”

“At least now you know why I needed someone to talk to.” She nodded at unconscious Jeff. “There’s barely enough room in Jeff’s conversations for Jeff, let alone me.”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for coming. It means a lot to me.”

I shrugged. “I was worried. I had to know if you’d made it.”

“Was it worth risking your life to find out?”

That was a hard question. “I lived through it, so yes, I guess so. Do you think you’ll make it?”

Steph shrugged and shook her head with minimal effort and less result. “I don’t know. Maybe. None of the others that we infected lasted this long.”

Chapter 9

After talking with Steph for another half hour about the only things on our minds, the virus, the infected, and our experiences, I returned to the nurse’s station. Evans and Dalhover stopped talking and looked at me when I walked up. During my time down the hall, Dr. Evans seemed to have regained something of himself. He stood a little straighter. His face was a little more animated. Dalhover’s face retained its permanent disappointment.

“First off,” I said, “thank you for not trying to kill me yet.” It seemed like a good way to start the conversation.

“There are no evil people here, Mr. Zane,” Dr. Evans told me, instantly back into the harsh, stonewalling man I’d first met upstairs.

“That wasn’t sarcasm. I meant that sincerely,” I told him. “Things out there are pretty dangerous for people like me right now. I’m learning to expect the worst. So thanks for being good people.”

Dr. Evans said, “Sorry I got defensive.”

“Discourtesies are the least of my problems these days.” I shrugged then charged bluntly into my request. “I know all of you debated and decided to shoot the volunteers when they hit one-oh-four, but I think that’s a bad idea. There may be slow burns like me among them.”

Dalhover snorted and started walking away, “Oh, you’re one of those.”

I really didn’t like that guy.

Dr. Evans leaned close and in a soft voice said, “Sergeant Dalhover doesn’t actually shoot them as soon as they reach that temperature. Before we started this experiment, we all agreed that we would, but Sergeant Dalhover waits for the dementia and the violent behavior so he knows for sure.”

“Oh.” I turned toward Dalhover to apologize but he was walking toward the end of the hall, a thermometer in one hand and a pistol in the other. “I don’t understand, then.”

“He goes through the temperature checks every hour because that’s the procedure we agreed on.”

“But why?”

“Waiting for the volunteers to turn before shooting them presents a real risk to the rest of us. But Dalhover is the one who shoots them. Then he and these men carry the bodies to a window and throw them out. It’s gruesome, emotionally difficult work. Dalhover refused to shoot anyone until there was no doubt what they were.”

“And no one else would step up to do the dirty work,” I deduced.

Dr. Evans’ face turned sadder and he nodded.

“I guess it’s easier when they’re actively trying to kill you,” I surmised. “But tied up in a chair? Yeah, sitting there looking like normal people…for the most part. Yeah, it would be hard.” I looked back down the hall at Dalhover, who slumped as he walked under the burden of his duties.

“Sergeant Dalhover is a good man,” Dr. Evans said. “He’s prickly, but he’s a good man.”

“Is he organizing your defense? I mean, who’s in charge of that?”

“I retired as a colonel, but I was doctor. If anyone is in charge here, it’s me. After me, Sergeant Dalhover has been the ranking military man for three days now. Yes, he organizes our defense.”

“Will he listen to me if I talk to him about your tactics?” I asked.

“He’s prickly, but not closed-minded,” Said Evans. “Do keep in mind though, we’re all learning as we go.”

Down at the end of the hall, Dalhover started taking temperatures. More than a dozen volunteers were sitting up straight in their chairs with their attention focused on the proceedings. Steph was turned toward Dalhover, her thick red hair hanging down to her shoulders. I wondered how it must feel, watching the executioner working his way up the hall, not knowing if it was your turn to die.

I said, “That guy down there, Jeff Aubrey, he has some interesting thoughts on how the infected might kill each other off.”

“Really?” Dr. Evans was interested.

“Yeah, you should talk to him pretty soon,” I said flatly. “He’s got the fever.”

“I was hoping he’d make it,” said Evans. “He’s a bright guy.”

“He could turn out to be a slow burn,” I hoped aloud.

“I’m afraid that’s a lot rarer than you think.”

“But you don’t know for sure, do you?” I asked.

“Nobody knows for sure,” Dr. Evans conceded.

Changing the subject, I asked, “May I make an observation?”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t want to come down here, did you?” I asked. “It was easy to see. But you seem a little better now.”

Dr. Evans nodded. “Seventeen of the volunteers haven’t shown any signs of the virus yet.”

“Meaning?”

“I hate to venture a guess,” said Dr. Evans, “I’m hopeful. After all of the volunteers in the first two groups died, I was afraid that we were making a big mistake. But with seventeen showing no symptoms eighteen hours after exposure, it’s a positive sign.”

“So Steph might make it?” I asked.

“Don’t get your hopes up unrealistically.”

“I’m learning new degrees of pessimism every day,” I said, “but I do know that good things can happen, even with everything that’s going on. Hoping that Steph or any of these other people will be okay isn’t the same as believing they will be.”

Dr. Evans gave me a half-dozen nods, I guess to emphasize his agreement. “We’re on the same page, then. I don’t know if Steph will make it, but I’m sure some of the seventeen will. At least for me, that was more hope than I came down here with. Let me ask you, Zed. Now that you’re here, are you staying?”

“No.” Through all the morning’s blood and despair, I’d chosen a path to my hope, and my own hope lay with those that desperate, shared struggle had bonded to me, my new family, Murphy, Mandi, and Russell. “I have people to get back to.”

“Leaving will be harder than coming,” said Evans.

“I don’t know.” I half smiled. “Coming was pretty hard.”

“Yes, I guess it was.” Dr. Evans caught a little bit of a smile himself.

“Listen,” I said, “after you finish your experiment with the volunteers, get up on the top floor, stay quiet, and don’t let the infected see you. Eventually, they’ll leave you alone.”

“I appreciate the advice,” said Dr. Evans, “and we may do just that, but please do talk to Sergeant Dalhover. He has some opinions about the behavior of the infected that you might find interesting.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“I’m not in agreement, so it would be better if he explained his position.”

“Okay,” I said. “Listen, after I get out of here, I’ll try and find a way to get back in contact with you. My buddy and I are both Slow Burns; we can move among them without too much danger. We may be able to help you if you start running low on supplies.”

“Why don’t you both join us?”

I stifled a sarcastic laugh, “We haven’t had much luck with the uninfected so far.”

Dr. Evans put a fatherly, trusting hand on my shoulder. “You won’t have any problems here. I know you’re not a danger.”

“You’re the first.”

Chapter 10

With a small Styrofoam pitcher full of water—the kind put on the bed trays of patients—along with a few single-serving containers of applesauce, I sat on a chair by Steph while I waited for Dalhover to finish his rounds.

“You should eat some of this applesauce,” I said, holding a plastic spoonful up to her mouth.

She shook her head. “I may still turn. The food shouldn’t be wasted on me.”

“Drink some water at least,” I prodded.

After enough convincing, she finally did.

“Dalhover hasn’t shot anybody, and he’s almost done,” I said. “Is that a positive sign?

Steph shook her head, “I count seven or eight that are acting out. I’m surprised he didn’t shoot them. Maybe he doesn’t feel comfortable doing it while you’re here.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Who knows? Maybe it’s guilt. He probably feels bad enough doing it already, and having a stranger watch him do it makes it too hard, too monstrous.”

“How long have you been a nurse?” I asked.

“That’s a change of subject,” Steph smiled.

“Just curious,” I said.

“Seven years.”

“Really?” I hadn’t expected that number.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Ah…I was gonna say that that would make you thirty or thirty one…”

“Thanks,” Steph said insincerely.

“But you don’t look that old,” I said. “I mean, you seem mature but you look like you’re in your mid-twenties.”

“Mature?”

I shrugged as I fished for the right words. “Confident. Strong. Not hung up in pretending you are or aren’t something. Like back in the triage tent. You seemed in control. That was a crazy night, and everything could have fallen apart so much faster than I guess it eventually did. But you’re one of those people who’s kind of like a rock in a storm. It calms the people around you.”

Steph smiled and almost laughed, “That’s the nicest I’ve heard it said.”

“What’s that?”

Steph nodded over at Jeff, “He says I have a stick up my ass all the time.”

It was my turn for muted laughter.

“Thanks,” she said, sarcastically, again.

“No, it’s not that,” I said. “It’s just that I’ve been told the same thing. Apparently I’m a bit uptight.”

Steph looked off to my right, and I followed her gazed to see Dalhover’s sour face looking down on me. “Oh, I didn’t hear you come up.”

Dalhover, of course, said nothing, but simply waited for me to proceed.

I said, “Dr. Evans asked me to talk to you about your tactics with the infected.”

“Okay,” Dalhover responded, as though the word took more effort than he had energy for.

“Okay,” I parroted, for no other reason than to be a dick. “My experience with the infected is different than yours, but when I’ve been trapped with people, kind of like you guys are here, I found that if I remained hidden and stayed quiet, they forget about me. They’re not smart. They don’t have long attention spans. They eventually go away.” I didn’t want to tell Dalhover outright that they were dealing with the infected all together incorrectly but it needed to be said. “Whenever people out there fire a gun, start up a car, or even start talking too loud, the infected hear and they swarm to the source. Every time. They know what sounds to associate with normal people. Whenever you fire a gun, it’s like ringing a bell for Pavlov’s dog.”

Dalhover’s flat expression didn’t change. He just looked at me.

I looked back and unsuccessfully tried to gesture a response out of him.

Nothing.

I got a little irritated. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Dalhover paused just long enough to hint at rudeness and said, “Yes.”

I decided to be blunt. “Do you think maybe you should change your tactics then? Maybe hide out here? Maybe give yourselves a chance?”

“No.”

“What?” The volume of my voice shot up a few notches.

“Zed,” Steph said, trying to defuse my rising temper.

“Why?” I asked Dalhover. “Why stick with what you’re doing when you know it’s not working?”

Over Dalhover’s shoulder, one of the soldiers was starting to fidget with his gun and look around. He was clearly uncomfortable with the tone of the conversation.

Dalhover decided to speak. “When Evans asked you to talk with me, did you think that you’d just tell me how it was because you’re the only one who knows anything about killing the infected? Or did he want us to share what we both know?”

“Well…” I started, immediately on the defensive.

Steph cut in. “Zed, listen to Sergeant Dalhover. Maybe with what he knows and what you know, you might figure out some more things about the infected.”

I wanted to protest and tell them I knew all the important things there were to know, but I didn’t. As much as I thought it was true, it also felt a lot like arrogance, which meant that’s probably what it was. So I nodded and tried my best to sound sincere. “I’m sorry, Sergeant Dalhover. I’d like to hear what you know about fighting them.”

Dalhover stared at me for another length of time that bordered on rudeness before his rusty voice said, “Everything you said is right, but you’ve missed the most important point.”

I jumped in with, “The emergent behavior.”

“What?” Dalhover asked, either surprised or not understanding a word outside of his vocabulary.

“Ah, how they follow each other around and stuff,” I explained.

“That’s part of it.” Dalhover told me. “Call that whatever you want. For some reason, they like to mimic. The part that’ll get you killed though, and I mean you because you think you already seem know everything, except this one thing, are the Smart Ones.”

“The Smart Ones?” I asked, my tone dripping with disbelief.

“Zed,” Steph cut in again, “the virus doesn’t have the same effect on everybody. Mostly it turns people into… into them.”

“The Whites,” I said.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “But there are others, well, like you. You’re fine. Normal. But there are lots in between with different levels of brain function.”

Like Russell, I thought. Then I recalled that Jerome had said something about it on that first night, but I’d taken to assuming that so much of what he’d said was just bullshit to sell his CDC lie.

“Between attacks,” said Dalhover, “I watch them out the windows. I see what they do down there in the grass. The Smart Ones go down there and walk around until they get a bunch of infected following them. Then they lead them up here to attack us. So we shoot as many as we can, but the Smart Ones are goddamned good at getting away. I keep seeing the same damn Smart Ones down there in the grass, rounding up herds of the dumb ones to do the dirty work.”

I shook my head. “But why? Why would they do that?”

“I think that some of them are like the criminally insane,” said Steph. “I don’t think there’s any way to explain their actions in a rational way. For some reason, some of the Smart Ones have decided that they need to attack us up here and that’s what they do.”

“That’s why hiding and staying quiet won’t work,” Dalhover told me. “They’ll come anyway. We have to fight them off.”

I didn’t want to believe it because it added a whole new dimension to the problem of dealing with the infected, a much more dangerous dimension. “You guys need to get out of here. We need to get you to a safer place.”

“Where would we go?” asked Steph.

Dalhover asked, “Where is this safer place?”

I was at a complete loss on that answer, and my silence let that be known. Finally, I admitted, “I don’t know. But listen, my buddy Murphy, he’s a slow burn, like me. Maybe there’s something we can figure out together to help you guys out a little. Hell, maybe he and I together can get one of those Humvees with a fifty cal on the top and drive by and do strafing runs and kill a bunch of them off for you. Fewer you’ll have to deal with up here, that way.”

Dalhover’s face grew darker and more disappointed, “Like you said, Zane, every shot draws more of them in. For every one you shoot, the noise will bring two. Hell, all that noise you made shooting the place up will probably bring in every infected within a mile.”

Shit. He was right. I’d very likely done more harm than good with my stupid Rambo stunt. My eyes fell to the floor and my heart sank.

Guilt.

Chapter 11

The glass-walled stairwell that I’d shot up had refilled with infected from the streets below, effectively ruining my chance to exit the hospital by the way I’d come in. That’s why Dalhover and I were in a short stub of a hall, just long enough for the bank of four elevators, with two doors on one wall behind us and two in front.

Dalhover said, “This is where I was going to get out after everybody died.”

“Was?” I asked.

“They won’t all die,” he said. “Some of them will be immune like me and the colonel.”

“So you’ll stay with the group, then?” I asked.

Dalhover nodded and grunted an affirmation.

I told him, “I’ll try and round up some radios or something and get you one so we can keep in contact.”

“Yeah.” Dalhover’s listless tone of voice verged on pissing me off, until it occurred to me that his complete lack of non-verbal communication made his words something of a Rorschach test, and I might be reading too many of my own emotions into it.  Which begged the question, why was I pissed off? Steph was alive and probably immune. I was happy about that. The situation in the hospital was deteriorating, but stable enough for the time being. Could it be jealousy over Steph and Jeff? I had to ask myself if I really was that immature.

I didn’t bother to answer.

I put a hand on the seam between the sliding elevator doors for no reason other than to turn my attention away from Dalhover.

He hefted a long crowbar that he’d gotten from who knew where and said, “The last time I had the doors open, the elevators were all down around the first or second floor. The shafts were clear. There’s a maintenance ladder over here on the right-hand wall of the shaft. You’ll have to hold on to the conduit and metal supports on the wall and climb around to it.”

“Too far to reach, huh?” I asked.

“It’s a six- or seven-foot gap over a hundred-and-twenty foot drop. You could jump it if you wanted to.” The barest smidgen of a smile crossed Dalhover’s face.

“My balls aren’t that big,” I told him. “I was always good on the monkey bars as a kid. I’ll climb it.”

Dalhover slipped the business end of the crowbar in the seam between the elevator doors and pried back and forth to create a gap.

I stepped back to give him room to work.

He got his fingers in the gap, handed me the crowbar, and then used both hands to pull the doors open.

As the narrow gap expanded from one inch to two, then suddenly a dozen, several sets of white fingers wrapped around the doors’ edges from the inside out. That took us both by surprise.

Dalhover lost his balance and fell back.

Infected howls poured through the gap as hands pushed the doors all the way open.

The dark interior walls of the shaft were crawling with Whites.

“Shit.” I drew my machete as a white face popped out past the door and looked down at Dalhover.

I jumped over and hacked, cutting a diagonal chasm across its face. Blood erupted from the wound along with an enraged scream that followed the White as it fell back into the shaft.

Dalhover yelled something, but my focus was on another White trying to climb out on the far side of the doorway. I swung the machete in an arc to the right and cleaved the infected’s hand between the fingers. The hand lost its grip and gravity pulled him down the shaft.

Howling swelled up from the bottom. The frenzy was on.

A pair of feet dangled down from the top edge of the elevator doorway. I hacked across the ankle and blood poured out.

Two heads came up from below. Neither survived long enough to get more than an arm through the door. I felt confident for about two seconds, believing that I could hold them off with the machete while Dalhover figured out how to fix the problem we’d just created. Movement to my left snuffed the life out of that line of thinking.

After seeing the first elevator door slide open, I guessed that the infected had enough brain capacity to apply that same solution to opening the second set of doors in the two-elevator wide shaft. Machete time was over.

“God damned Smart Ones,” Dalhover groused. He fired the first shots, hitting the Whites squirming through the gap between the other set of doors.

“They’ll be coming through all of the elevator doors on these shafts now.” Dalhover shouted with the decisive authority of a man who’d been listened to his whole life. “The two floors above will get ambushed.”

I grabbed my last hand grenade, pulled the pin, got as close to the elevator door as I dared, and tossed it underhand up into the shaft above.

Sergeant Dalhover understood immediately my intent and the risk of it. He was already scampering away from the elevator bank when I turned to follow. I had nothing by which to gauge where in the shaft the grenade would detonate. I only knew that I didn’t want to be standing in front of the open elevator door if it happened there on its fall back down. I ran after Dalhover and just made it around the corner when the blast reverberated through the halls. Sergeant Dalhover and I immediately spun on our heels to go back.

“I’ll hold them at the elevators as long as I can,” he shouted at me before we started to move. “You need to warn them upstairs. The Smart Ones will be coming through the elevators.”

I sprinted back toward the nurse’s station. The halls seemed to narrow and enhance my sensation of speed. I felt like I was flying, which was exactly what I needed to be doing.

Behind me, Dalhover’s rifle fired.

At the T-intersection with the main hall, I looked right and left. The guards that had been at each end were running at full speed toward me and were close.

“The infected are in the elevator shafts,” I shouted. “They’ve figured out how to open the doors.” I pointed at one of them. “You, run upstairs and warn them.”  I pointed at the other. “You, go help Dalhover.”

“What about them?” a guard asked, pointing at the volunteers as he moved.

“Go,” I commanded.

Both soldiers ran.

Up and down the hall, the volunteers that still had the mental capacity for it understood that danger was on the way and they were struggling against their bonds. The experiment was over. I ran at full speed down to Steph.

“What’s happening?” Jeff asked, conscious again.

“Zed?” Steph’s eyes were wide with terror.

I drew my knife and quickly cut her loose. I jumped over and proceeded to cut Jeff loose. As soon as his hands were free, I gave him the knife and told him, “Go cut loose anyone who’s not symptomatic.”

I turned and pushed my Glock into Steph’s hand. “Can you use this?”

“Yes.”

I pulled out four magazines and put them in her lap as I very urgently told her, “They’re coming in the through the elevator shafts. Take everybody upstairs to twelve.” Without another word, I ran back toward the sound of gunfire.

“Zed.” I heard Steph’s voice behind me. “Zed.”

I ran on. There was nothing more to say.

I rounded the nurse’s station and slid to a stop as the gunfire suddenly ceased. A half-second later, Sergeant Dalhover ran out of the short hall between the elevators. Five steps behind him, an infected man rounded the corner, screaming and grasping.

I dropped to a knee and aimed my M4.

Two more infected followed.

Dalhover ran right at me, and in his face I finally saw emotion. Fear.

Pointing my rifle at his chest, I yelled, “Duck.”

He took two steps to comprehend, then chose to trust me. He hit the floor like he was sliding into second base.

As soon as his body fell out of my sights, I fired a three-round burst at the infected man who’d been on his heels. His chest exploded in red and he lurched to the side. I fired again and again at the other two, and enough of my bullets hit flesh. Faster than I thought possible, Dalhover was back on his feet and hugging the wall as he ran toward me.

More infected ran out of the elevator bank. Five, seven, ten…

Oh, shit.

Dalhover took up a position on the opposite side of the hall and brought his weapon to bear. “The elevator shafts were full of ‘em.” He fired. “We won’t be able to hold ’em.”

There were at least a dozen dead or dying in the hall and another ten or twelve stumbling over the bodies of the fallen. They were coming around the corner faster than Dalhover and I could kill them.

“We need to retreat to twelve,” Dalhover yelled to me.

I leaned back and peeked up and down the hall full of volunteers. Five or six people were on their feet, two helping Steph to get someone free, the others running for the stairwell.

“Not yet,” I hollered. “We need a few minutes.”

“What?” Dalhover was livid. He jumped to his feet and stepped back into the main hall. He looked up and down then paused, red-faced with rage or urgency, I didn’t know. But without another word, he returned to his kneeling position and fired.

We were killing and killing and killing, but the infected were advancing. I wished I still had those two other grenades. We didn’t have a few minutes. I yelled back up the hall, “Steph. Jeff. You’re almost out of time.”

Dalhover dropped a magazine to the floor and reloaded with enviable speed. “Last mag.”

I ran a hand across my vest, pulled out a few, and flung them across to him.

He gave me a nod. I emptied another magazine, filling the hall with screams, before I paused to reload. As soon as the magazine clicked in, I looked back around the corner. Steph and five others were running toward me. The stairwell was just to my right around the corner. I yelled, “Dalhover, they’re coming. Go when you’re ready.”

Dalhover jumped across the hall and got right in my ear. “Go into the stairwell and yell. I’ve got two men manning the barricade five floors down. Make ‘em run. We have to hold the stairwell door until they get upstairs or they’re dead.”

I was around the corner in half a second and through the door. I screamed down the stairwell. “Hey. Hey.”

“Almost there,” an out-of-breath voice called from a floor below.

Steph and the other volunteers poured through the door, and I directed them upstairs before stepping back out into the hall to support Sergeant Dalhover. The infected were less than twenty feet away. I fired rounds as fast as they would pour out of the rifle, then dropped my magazine and started on another as soon as I loaded it.

I only had three full magazines left in my vest, one hundred and twenty rounds, less those flying from my barrel. I was on the verge of panic.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

The mantra calmed me. I thought clearly. The situation appeared to have only one end, but that wasn’t true. I was not going to die in this fucking hospital. With seventy people still tied to chairs in some state of fever or infection, the mass of our pursuers was likely to take pause on the tenth floor to gorge themselves on the unlucky before refocusing on us.

I felt no emotional attachment to the seventy lives I’d just clicked off. The infected volunteers were going to die anyway. At least their lives could be traded for time.

“Give me twenty seconds and get your ass in the stairwell,” I shouted, not out of fear now, but out of necessity.

In the blink of an eye, I was out of my firing position and bounding to the other end to the nurse’s station. I grasped the cold steel end of a gurney and wheeled it toward the stairway door.

The gurney smashed into the door, and Dalhover gave me a glance. I ran around, turned the handle and wrestled the wide gurney through the door.

Twenty seconds had passed. Dalhover was still firing. The gurney was heavier and more unwieldy than I’d hoped. But having pushed it through the door, I shouted to Dalhover to come as I manhandled it up the stairs to clear the swing of the door.

A second later, Dalhover squeezed past the door into the stairwell and I slammed the gurney back into it, turning it over, jamming it between the door and second step up. A second later, the infected hit the door from the other side. The door rattled. The gurney jiggled, but only slid far enough for the door to open an inch or two.

Dalhover climbed up over the gurney to the stairs beside me. “Good thinking.”

A different kind of whooping and yelling came through the door as the Whites noticed the bounty of living flesh tied to the chairs in the hall.

Seventy lives traded for time. Time would save lives that still had a chance.

I felt shame, but shoved it into a dark place for later, guilty rumination.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

Dalhover peeked down the stairwell between the rails. “Anybody else down there?”

No human answer came, but the infected below were screaming and tearing at the barricade five floors down.

“Let’s go.” Dalhover ran up the steps and I followed. “If things are this bad on twelve, we’re done.”

Chapter 12

At the last flight of stairs, we passed two soldiers with grim looks on their faces and their weapons pointed down. Several of the hospital staff were starting to build a new barricade at the top of the stairs using chairs, beds, and pieces of equipment I couldn’t identify.

As soon as we exited the stairwell and stepped into the hall, I heard gunfire blasting from down near the elevators.

The battle for twelve was already on.

Dr. Evans was standing at the nurse’s station where he had a view of all three wings. He was pointing to a couple of the staff and giving them instructions.

Dalhover and I ran up beside him as the two staff members hustled off. To Dr. Evans, Dalhover said, “Colonel, ten is overrun. Zed cut the staff loose that weren’t symptomatic yet.”

Like a meth addict, my adrenaline rush had my attention blazing on overload and I couldn’t stand still. I noticed Jeff Aubrey, pale and unconscious again in a chair behind the nurse’s station. When he next awoke, he’d be one of the infected. We would need to deal with that.

Dr. Evans told Dalhover, “We’ve got everyone off of eleven. We’ve got six men at the elevator bank keeping them back, but all four doors are open. There’s no activity on the exterior stairway yet, but that will change with all of the commotion. You saw that we’re trying to seal off this stairway.  I think there are twenty-six of us now, but I’m not positive on the count. Half military, half infected hospital staff.”

Already bored with Evans’ status report, having deduced that much two seconds after I came out of the stairwell, I was watching the nurses and other doctors running in and out of rooms, gathering equipment. It was urgent, but organized, controlled. I didn’t see Steph among them.

“We’re setting up a fallback barricade on the north wing,” Dr. Evans said.

Fallback, fallback, fallback?

“No.” I didn’t shout it. I just said it.

Dalhover and Evans stopped, surprised, and looked at me.

“No?” Evans asked.

I spoke quickly, but not in panic. “Dalhover’s right about the Smart Ones. Some of them are trying to work cooperatively. The fact that the other elevator shaft is now open proves that. They must have opened it. They’re able to find the weaknesses in your defenses. It’s obvious that hiding here won’t end well. If we don’t escape, we’ll die.”

“Escape is suicide,” Dr. Evans disagreed.

Without a moment of hesitation, Dalhover nodded his head at me and said, “He’s right.”

Dr. Evans shrank and sagged back into the man I’d first met two hours before. That’s what despair looked like. Weakly, he asked, “How?”

Dalhover said, “We’ve probably got some time while the infected are on ten. We’ll have to figure something out and then take a chance. Some of us are bound to make it.”

Dr. Evans shook his head, not at us, but more at himself and some internal dialogue.

“We’ll go with Dalhover’s escape plan,” I said. “We’re going down the elevator shafts.”

Dalhover’s droopy, apathetic eyes found another new expression when they looked at me. The expression said, “Dumbass.”

Chapter 13

It was a suck plan, but our choices were sucky or shitty. You take what you can get.

Thirty minutes after my arrival on the twelfth floor, the flow of infected climbing up out of the elevator shafts had slowed to a trickle. Most were exiting on the tenth floor, drawn by the ecstatic howls advertising the feast below. I peeked down both shafts to confirm that. There was light coming in from some open doors twelve floors down and light from the open doors near the top, but most of the shaft was hidden in deep shadow. Any part of the walls illuminated with dispersed light was covered with fearless white climbers. The bottoms of both shafts were covered with dead Whites and those among the infected who were happy to eat their own.

Having done my final check of the shafts, I hurried back around the corner to where everyone and everything was staged. Dr. Evans and Sergeant Dalhover looked at me with expectant eyes. “Last chance guys. Are we doing this? If not, I’ll go out by myself or with whoever else wants to chance it.”

“I don’t expect more than half of us to make it, and that’s if we get lucky,” Dr. Evans said. He was back to being detached, efficient Evans. His analysis was probably right.

I looked at Dalhover. In his flat, gravelly voice he said, “Everybody’s in. They all see where this is going to end if we stay.”

“Then we run for it.” I pasted on my best fake smile. “Running has worked for me more times than I can count.”

Dr. Evans turned to the survivors arrayed by the wheeled hospital beds up the hall. He yelled, “Does everyone know what to do?”

Only silent, stern faces looked back. Heads nodded.

I looked for Steph’s face in the hall. Our eyes met. Hers were red from crying over Jeff. She wouldn’t allow anyone to shoot him, and she wouldn’t leave him at the nurse’s station. I’d given her a hand moving him into a small storage room near the end of the main hall. She locked the door from the inside and left him there. Sure, there was a chance he’d awaken in a day or two as a slow burn, like me, but…

“If anyone gets separated from the group, you’re on your own,” Dr. Evans said. “We can’t go back and look for you. We’ll have to presume you’re dead. Stay together.”

No response from the group. No questions.

We all stood in an awkward moment of silence, readying ourselves to rush into death’s greedy maw.

Dalhover’s gruff voice snapped everyone’s attention forward, not because it carried, but because they were used to listening to it and he was used to their listening. “This ain’t gonna be a pep talk, but soldiers, listen up. I don’t know if any of us will make it out of here, but these civilians volunteered to get infected. They’re probably all immune or they’d be dead down on ten right now. These civilians have a chance. Most of you don’t. Some of you may be immune, but the truth is that most of you will probably be infected and dead by the end of the week. You know that as well as I do. When we run outta here, I’m not telling you to sacrifice yourself for the civilians. I’m just tellin’ you to keep that in mind. If we get in a bad situation, remember why you put on that uniform. Be soldiers.”

Dalhover didn’t waste any time waiting for acceptance, agreement, or even a smile or a nod. He headed for the elevator shafts.

Dr. Evans looked around. He watched Sergeant Dalhover go, then looked at me. “Ready?”

I nodded.

Dr. Evans yelled, “Good luck and God bless. Let’s go.”

Hospital beds, gurneys stacked with computers, patient monitors, chairs, rolling cabinets, anything with wheels or any heavy object that could be piled on top were rolled toward the elevator bank.

Down at the corner by the elevators, Dalhover and I stood out of the way and watched as the soldiers guided each piece of heavy equipment into one each of the four open elevator doors. Each piece bounced down the shaft, making a hell of a noise, scrubbing the climbing infected from the walls, and hitting the bottom with the sound of a grenade explosion.

And more equipment followed.

The sound of automatic gunfire from far around the corner confirmed that the diversion had started. Three of the soldiers stood at the top of the exterior stairwell and fired at the hordes of infected who were either still on top of the garage or below on the west side of the hospital grounds.

If that worked, many of the Whites still outside would be drawn to that side of the hospital to feed on the dead.

A steady flow of beds rounded the corner and quickly disappeared down the shafts.

Fifteen minutes in the gunfire had stopped. Those soldiers handling the diversion secured the door and had come into the hall on rearguard duty.

A guy by the one of the shafts yelled, “Clear. I think.”

I ran over and stuck my head through the open elevator door. A single bald, white head leaned through the door on the tenth floor, looking up at me. There was no light coming from the bottom of the shaft. It was clogged with a thick tangle of stainless steel, hospital bedding, shattered equipment, and shattered white bodies, at least that’s what I imagined. It was black. On the parts of the walls I could see in the light coming through our open doors, there were no climbers. I hoped that no more would be able to make it up through the jumble at the bottom. Only those on ten would be a problem.

It was time to do or die, run or cry. I looked at Sergeant Dalhover and he gave me a nod. The two soldiers that I’d first met guarding the door to the exterior stairwell stood ready, along with a third, to follow me down.

Two deep breaths and I reached into the shaft, grabbed a sturdy piece of conduit, and swung a leg out over the chasm to find footing on the wall. I spider-crawled sideways, grabbing onto anything that looked like it would hold my weight. The three men followed me.

Sergeant Dalhover and three other soldiers were in the shaft across the hall doing the same.

After a frightfully long time that in reality couldn’t have been more than a minute, I put one bandaged, slippery hand on a rung of the service ladder and thanked God, though I don’t know why.

My feet found the rungs below and I wasted no time in working my way down to make room for the following soldiers. Moments later, I was down to the tenth floor, but well beyond the reach of rapacious hands.

Looking to solve that problem, a bold White leaned far out into the shaft and focused on the meals coming down the ladder. A moment later, a computer monitor crushed his head as it fell from above, dragging his big white body into the chasm. More infected were there behind him but it wasn’t my job to deal with them. That was for the three men above—soldiers to spread out on the walls around ten, opposite the elevator doors. They had side arms, and their job was to keep the infected focused on this shaft, another diversion.

I hurried down into the darkness, hoping nothing waited for me down there on the wall or the ladder.

The floor numbers were sloppily spray painted in large numerals on the concrete walls of the shaft beside each set of elevator doors. I had just passed the seventh and was barely able to make it out in the darkness when a white body and another piece of equipment crashed down not two feet away from me.

Gunshots echoed down through the shaft.

Two more bodies fell.

I passed the sixth floor. A computer monitor, terrifyingly close, whooshed by and crashed into the pile of medical equipment and bodies below.

Only two floors to go.

But I was in the blackness now, feeling my way down the ladder, pausing between labored breaths and listening for the sound of a White. The air was full of sound seeping through the walls from outside, echoing down from above and up from below. From down there, the sounds were of dying Whites, wrenched in the broken equipment at the bottom of the shaft. Or if my luck had turned to shit, it was the labored breathing of Whites climbing up out of the darkness toward me.

I hurried as fast as my bandaged hands allowed.

A very faint seam of light outlined the edges of a set of elevator doors. That was five.

More gunfire.

Another body.

I was breathing heavily from the exertion. My arms and hands were stiff.

Four.

I hollered up, “I’m here. Don’t drop anything else.”

I worked my way off the ladder and onto a thin metal support attached to the wall, wide enough for only my toes. I grabbed conduit and pieces of metal framework and went as swiftly as I could.

More gunfire from above. I pressed myself to the wall, in case a flailing infected body was coming.

More gunfire.

“Damn. I just need another minute.”

A body brushed me as it fell past.

“Fuck.”

“You all right?” a voice called from above.

“I’m good.” My hands were shaking. I was breathing a lot more rapidly than necessary.

Calm down. I have to do this. I have to.

Necessity pushed caution aside. The longer I stayed on the wall of the shaft, the more likely it was that I would die at the bottom. I grabbed hurriedly with my hands and shuffled my feet. I slipped, almost fell, but recovered.

In seconds, I was in position beside the door.

I drew my machete, reached across the smooth, stainless steel width of the door, jammed it into the seam, and pried.

A gap appeared.

Light.

I looked around me. There were smears of blood on the wall. Bits of scalp here and there where sharp edges of the supporting steel framework stuck out an inch or two into the shaft. And below me, nothing moved on the walls, but the dying moans from the white bodies crammed into the broken equipment drew me to look down. That was an image queued up for repression. I turned away quickly.

I wiggled, pried, and pushed.

The doors parted, then slid apart. I adjusted my footing and my grip so that I could avoid the sliding door, then I stopped and listened.

I heard howling. I heard gunfire. I heard screams, but I didn’t hear or see anything on the fourth floor.

Luck?

I climbed past the door to where I could peek into the hall through the gap between the doors. Two infected squatted in the hall between the elevators, looking at me as curiously as I was looking at them.

None of us made any aggressive moves, but the Whites looked around at the ceiling, the walls, and the closed elevator doors. Sound was everywhere and they were trying to identify a source they could get to. The elevator doors across the hall seemed to be piquing their interest the most.

I climbed out of the shaft and planted my feet firmly on the floor. With my machete in hand, ready to do the necessary work, I reached down for my Glock as a backup. It wasn’t there, and I recalled that I had given it to Steph. A curse was on my lips, but I felt better with her having it. She needed at least one weapon.

With both infected facing away from me for the moment, killing the first was easy. I swung hard at the back of her neck, severed her spine, and she crumbled. Blood spewed across the waxed floor. The other infected looked down at his partner rather than over at me. He seemed transfixed by the glossy, pooling blood. When he did see the blade of my machete swinging toward his throat, he tried vainly to block the blow but lost all the fingers on his right hand. The blade gashed his neck open anyway.

But he wasn’t dead.

His bloody, fingerless hand reached out for me. His mouth opened and closed, trying to scream or bite. I jumped back and he fell on his face, adding his blood to the pool on the floor.

I stepped over to the elevator door through which I’d come and waved up the shaft, holding out four fingers.

From above, a voice yelled, “Four.”

More gunfire followed.

I crossed the hall, jammed my machete into the seam between the elevator doors, and in moments I had them pried apart. Sergeant Dalhover was on the service ladder, looking back at me. I leaned in and looked up the ladder. It was full of our people. I didn’t look down to see if we’d lost any in their attempts to climb around the wall and make it over to the ladder. That was useless information that only held bad memories and nightmares.

Dalhover worked his way around the wall with the athleticism of a spider monkey, and within seconds was standing on the floor beside me.

“Any trouble on ten?” I asked.

He shook his head. “The diversion is working, but we lost one. She slipped and fell trying to get to the ladder.” Dalhover read the question on my face. “It wasn’t Nurse Leonard.”

“I’ll clear this floor while you get everyone out.”

Dalhover looked down at the two dead.

“There may be more.” I shrugged as though I needed to provide some kind of excuse for the two dead Whites. Intellectually, I knew they were murderous cannibals, but they looked as human as me. Some emotional artifacts of morality are hard to slough off.

I took off at a jog around the corner, peering into any open door, looking for movement. Closed doors I left alone.

Chapter 14

Five more infected on the fourth floor died under my blade by the time I rendezvoused with the group at the elevator bank.

Twenty or thirty of us stood close, shuffling nervously, pointing weapons up and down the hall.

A soldier was firing his pistol up the elevator shaft that I’d come down. I was wishing he wouldn’t, but he knew the risks as well as I did. A scream echoed out of the shaft and the soldier jumped back. The now-familiar sound of bodies crashing into the medical equipment below drew every eye to the door. The soldier anxiously frowned and said, “They’re coming down the shaft.”

Dalhover asked, “McWilliams, Cook?”

The soldier shook his head.

Two more dead.

Dr. Evans looked at me.

I knew my part. I was the scout. The infected didn’t see me as a meal or a threat, mostly, so it made sense. I took off at a run. One of the soldiers followed thirty or forty feet behind.

The breezeway to the children’s hospital building was angled off of the main hall, so I could see more and more of its length as I ran on. Through the glass walls of the breezeway, I saw down to the eight-lane highway that ran past the other side of the children’s hospital. It was clogged with cars and littered with human remains. East Austin was visible in the distance with its demarcation of charred black to the north and lucky, impoverished neighborhoods to the south.

Bodies in various states of consumption lay in the hall. Equipment was scattered among bits of medical supplies.

Dead soldiers. Yes.

I chastised myself for the moment of excitement. They weren’t just potential sources of ammunition and weapons. I had to remember that the soldiers had been people, too. Or maybe it was better that I didn’t.

I scrounged some magazines that seemed full and left the rest for those following behind. Though the evidence kept suggesting otherwise, it was hard to let go of the action-movie truism that more weapons in more good guy hands was a good thing.

I ran out onto the breezeway. The sun glared through the glass walls, casting painful reflections off of the gleaming floor. Other than the remnants of a barricade, there wasn’t much of anything in the breezeway: the remains of some bodies marked by their scattered detritus, brass bullet casings, and blood on the glass. It was disturbingly beautiful translucent red in the sun’s brilliance, hand prints smeared in long arcs from eye level to floor, sprays where severed arteries emptied. But lower, chest height and down, the blood was smudged into nothingness. That caught my attention. It occurred to me that it had been licked off of the glass.

Could it get any worse?

Gunshots from far behind urged us both forward. The infected from upstairs in the other building were coming down.

But there was motion ahead.

I raised a hand to signal the soldier following me to slow.

Down at the end of the breezeway, at the entrance to the children’s hospital, infected were feeding on the dead. As I moved closer, I counted seven heads bobbing up and down, tearing back and forth, grinding their teeth into the flesh of the corpses. I paused and almost stumbled.

The feeding infected were all children, white and skinny, in hospital gowns. One child looked up at me with wispy strands of hair over a bald head, dark circles under sunken eyes. That kid must have had cancer when the virus claimed him. Another face popped up, sallow cheeks smeared in blood, chewing teeth working on a stringy strand of muscle.

There were so few children among the infected that it was a surprise to see these. Children were slow, weak, and naïve; natural victims and easy prey. Of course there weren’t that many.

With the eyes of children, not beasts, they watched me approach, curious and innocent, innocent with mouths dripping the clotting blood of the dead.

They all needed to die, and I needed to kill them.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

As I got close, the wispy-haired cancer kid sat up on his heels and waited for me. With as much self-hate as I’d ever felt, I hauled my blade back and swung it around. He didn’t move. Like a young Russell, he just watched the blade arc toward his tiny skull, which nearly exploded as the machete tore through fragile bone. For the second time in a day, and perhaps just the second time since I was twelve, I wanted to cry.

A girl of eleven or twelve with long blond hair squatted beside the boy, blinking bits of his brain matter out of her eyes when my backhand swing severed her thin neck with little resistance. Her blond hair whipped across my eyes as her head spun into the air. A splash of her arterial blood splattered my face and open mouth. I wailed.

Another girl, maybe five, rolled over, grabbed my left foot, and tried to bite through my boot. I dropped to a knee and felt bones crunch as my weight came down her. She was coughing blood and trying vainly to move her arms when I slashed a dark-haired boy who’d figured out that I was a threat.

The last three children were coming at me by then and I hacked wildly at grasping hands, tiny arms, and vicious little teeth. It only took a few seconds and they were all down. I froze in a ready position, breathing heavily between the blood-splattered windows and dripping ceiling, hacked limbs and severed heads at my feet. Disgusted by the taste, I spit what felt like a mouthful of the blond girl’s blood onto the floor.

One child’s body jerked, headless on the floor, not yet all the way dead. The broken girl still coughed up blood as she cried and lolled her head, but wasn’t able to do more.

I looked back to the other end of the breezeway. The soldier’s expression was hard to read in the distance, but his mouth was hanging open, his arms dangling at his sides. He’d been as horrified watching as I’d been in the doing.

But it was necessary. Of course it was necessary.

It had to be necessary.

I felt like a monster.

A loathsome, shame-filled monster.

Move. Move.

Breathe.

Don’t think about it.

The hallway at the end of the breezeway split to the left and right into the children’s hospital. I pointed left and waited for a confirming nod from the still frozen soldier before moving cautiously ahead.

Rounding the corner, I was confronted by a thin girl of about thirteen with heavily bandaged arms. Further down the hall was a boy of a similar size. Behind me in the hall, leading in the other direction, a girl of four or five sat by the wall, gnawing on something.

Please, God, let this be all of them.

The thin girl with the bandages charged.

I turned away from the little gnawing one and hacked down with my machete. The blade tore through the thin girl’s collarbone and into her chest, lodging in her rib cage. I cursed myself for having notched the blade when I’d vented my frustration on the car earlier that morning. Deep red blood gushed from her mouth, and she coughed a wicked scream as she sank to the floor.

The patter of small feet and an asthmatic wheeze came from behind me. I spun and kicked the gnawing little girl hard under the jaw. Her head snapped back and she dropped to the floor, wide-eyed and bloody-mouthed, but motionless.

For the first time in my life, I wished the Harpy's harsh words and the Ogre's menacing fists had finished their work and beaten all of the humanity out of me when they had the chance.

Ill-prepared to bear the grinding of bone on metal, I placed a boot on the thin girl’s chest and wrestled my machete loose, freeing her blood to roll across the shiny floor. Up the hall, the gangly brown-haired boy stood, frozen and staring with a familiar blankness on his face, a blankness that wouldn’t last.

With dripping machete in hand, I ran at him, intent on chopping that accusatory blankness away. And he did nothing but watch as I hacked him down.

Once on the floor, he was just a pale skinned child, staring and silent. Blood oozed out of fresh wounds, capillary action pulling it into florid red blossoms on his hospital gown, gluing the gown to his bony ribs as it dampened. His mouth worked slowly, as if trying to tell me something important, but no words came, only burbles of blood and spit that splattered up in a little fountain driven by his dying breaths, staining his face with pain as it rained back down and flowed into his brown hair.

His eyes looked up at me for many long, accusing seconds before they glassed over with death.

His brilliant red blood crept across the floor in a sadly feeble attempt to drown its owner’s killer. Still the dead eyes stared.

And stared.

The boy hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t been aggressive. He hadn’t moved.

The familiarity of the blankness on his face clicked in my mind. Russell.

Had I just killed a younger version of Russell?

Every curse word I knew exploded in my mind, held back by my stifling lips. I wanted to scream and scream and scream.

The slap of bare feet on the smooth floor pulled my attention back into the moment.

Another girl was running up the hall, at me… or past me. It didn’t matter. When she got within range of my machete, I cut her down to bleed and die beside the docile, brown-haired boy. After she went down, there was silence in the curved hall. Nothing moved except the blood, crawling it’s way across the smooth floor and clinging to my soles.

My soul.

Was the children’s hospital the most horrific place yet?

It felt that way.

Stuff it away.

Stuff it away.

Put it all some place black and deep.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

I ran around the curve of the hall until I reached a stairwell door. That was my goal. That was our planned escape route. Unfortunately, There was no window on the door to reveal the interior. I muttered a curse, turned the knob, and pushed it open.

“Shit.”

The stairwell was full of infected.

The big ones.

They howled as I pulled the door shut again.

My kingdom for a grenade.

A group too dumb to work a door, though—my favorite kind. At least there was that. But how long would the door stay shut now that they had seen me open and close it? The fear of being trapped kicked my brain into a higher gear. I needed to find another exit. The description of the children’s hospital provided by Dr. Evans included an atrium further up the hall with a wide stairway that curved all the way down to ground level. It was time to run again. If the atrium wasn’t clear, we’d have to chance another elevator shaft. But did we have time for that?

No.

Every moment in the halls of the hospital with no barricade between us and the infected was a risk, a big, big risk. We couldn’t hope to hold off any significant number of them with only bullets.

Ahead of me, the hall opened up to the four-story atrium, walled with glass, filled with tropical plants and sunshine. I came to a halt against a chrome railing, supported by waist-high glass panels. As promised, a wide, open stairway meandered down through the space to the lobby floor. Remains of the dead littered the lobby. Among the remains, a White that looked like a hobbit’s grandmother with fucked-up hair rambled in a circle. Her fitful grunts echoed off the sterile walls.

Choosing to gloss over any thoughts about why a grandmother might have been at the children’s hospital when the world went to shit a week ago, I instead focused on her physical unsightliness. She would die quickly when I got down there.

I repositioned to get a better angle on a view out the front doors. The infected were out there, but not many. The diversion had worked. We had a chance if I could get the others here in a hurry.

I bolted back up the hall.

Chapter 15

The tall glass wall on the front of the atrium gave us a slightly sterilized view of the world on the outside. It muffled the jagged edge of the wailing infected out there. The tint on the glass hid the ash that tainted the air.

Four vehicles were visible on the lawn: two armored Humvees, an ambulance like the one that transported Murphy and me to the gym on the first night, and an un-armored Humvee for anyone with more stupid in his soul than me. Squeezing us all into the two armored Humvees and the ambulance would be tight, but the ambulance was vulnerable.

Dalhover quickly separated the people into vehicle-sized groups and told them to organize themselves fast. Better to pick a driver and call shotgun now, in the momentary safety of the atrium, rather than out in the trampled grass, running for our lives. The small delay caused by two people trying to get through the same door at the same time might get them both killed.

Dr. Evans, apparently evaluating the vehicles just as I was, asked me, “Is that ambulance safe?”

“Only if it sticks close behind a Humvee,” I answered. “On its own, the infected will destroy it. Remember, they can’t feel pain like you can, so beating a windshield with their fists until it shatters won’t bother them one bit. They’ll jump on a moving car without a thought as to whether they’ll get injured or killed. Once they get all jazzed into hysterics, unarmored vehicles can’t survive.”

“What else is out there that we can’t see from here?” he asked. “Should we skip it, then?”

“No,” I shook my head, “it’s one of the closest vehicles to the door. There probably aren’t more than three or four more armored Humvees out there. The only other one that I know of for sure is too far to get to safely. Tell you what: I can walk out first and grab the farthest one and bring it back over. But I’ll warn you before I start the engine. Once I do that, shit gets crazy faster than you can imagine.”

Dr. Evans thought for a second. “We’ll do that. Don’t start the engine until you see us run out the door. Then drive back over and pick up who you can. I’ll ride in the ambulance with one of the soldiers driving.”

“No,” I didn’t agree at all. “You’re immune. You’re in charge. You need to be in a Humvee.”

“No, Zane. The biggest risk is in the ambulance. I won’t ask someone else to do it.”

Arguing was pointless.

“Be sure you have a weapon,” I told him.

“I want Dalhover with you in the lead vehicle.” Dr. Evans looked out across the grass as he talked. “You’ve been out there. You know what it’s like. The two of you leading works well. The ambulance will fall in right behind, with the other two Humvees in the rear.”

I followed Dr. Evans’ gaze out the window. As relatively calm as the lawn looked at that moment, it was deceptive.

I said, “We may not be able to straighten that out until we get into east Austin, but that depends on how far they chase us, I guess. Oh, and I’m taking Steph in my vehicle. I don’t care who else comes along.”

“That’s up to you,” said Evan. “Dalhover will organize the rest.”

Down on the floor of the lobby, Grandma Baggins was still circling. Far behind us, in the other building, gunfire still echoed. At least a few of the soldiers were back there paying for our escape with their lives.

I steeled my courage with their bravery and asked, “Would you let Dalhover get Steph and wait by the front door? I’ll pick them up there. I’ll head down and get that Humvee. I’ll probably be in it and ready by the time you guys get downstairs. But make sure I’m in the driver’s seat before you come out. Oh, and one more thing: once you’re outside, you’ve got about thirty or forty seconds to get inside those vehicles, get ‘em buttoned up, and start moving. Shoot anything in your way or anything nearby. Shooting will draw about a bazillion infected from the other side of the building, but if you’re not already in the vehicles and moving by the time they get here, it’ll be because you’re already dead.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” Dr. Evans smiled wryly.

Good. At least he wasn’t humorless.

I ran down the stairs, stepping as quickly and as lightly as possible, so as not to announce my presence to any infected in the off-shooting halls. When I hit the terrazzo floor of the lobby, the bloody-mouthed little troll of a woman was gawking at me with irritation in her eyes. At full speed, I ran at her and slashed my machete through most of her fat neck.

Not looking to see the results of my work, I spotted movement to my left near an information desk. Three Whites were there, feeding on the body of a child. I got only the usual glances as each infected greedily pulled the corpse closer to themselves, trying to set their territory.

I slowed down only enough to make the turn toward them. They were surprised that I was suddenly on them.

My machete swung at the back of the head of the man nearest me, but he turned to look up at the last moment, causing my machete to glance off of his skull, taking hair and skin, but little bone. He fell, dazed. I swung again and slashed one across the face. She rolled onto her back, not moving.

The third pounced at me, and I barely got my machete up to defend myself. We both fell over. I landed on my back with her on top of me, my blade jammed into her chest. She struggled and spewed blood, but was dying.

The scalped one had regained his senses enough to grab my foot and pull. I kicked at him with my free foot while I struggled to get the dying woman off of me.

The infected guy crawled and clawed his way onto me and tried to bite my leg. My knee smashed a solid blow to his temple and his eyes rolled back in his head.

That gave me a chance to get the bloody woman off of me and to get to my knees. I punched the guy twice in the face while noticing how much he looked like Mark. That made it easier. I jumped to my feet and finished him with three crushing kicks between his crazy blue eyes.

The dying woman was on her back, struggling and gurgling for breath.

At least they weren’t kids.

I stepped on her chest to pry my blade out. I yanked several times. Again, the nicks in the blade were a problem. I’d need to find a replacement.

Finished with the three, I hurried back out into the center of the lobby. Dr. Evans was leaning over the railing four floors up, looking down with wide eyes and a concerned face. Most of the group was already hurrying down the stairs.

Dripping in blood, again, thankfully none of it mine, I waved and ran through one of the wide rows of glass doors at the front of the lobby. Despite the circumstances, it felt better to be outside than in. The heat embraced me like an old friend and I ran toward a Humvee a full block away.

The sounds of the infected were all around, but there weren’t that many to be seen.

Something wasn’t right. Something really wasn’t right.

I looked left and right as I put distance between myself and the doors. The few infected I passed looked me over but made no aggressive moves. That would change soon enough.

I reached the Humvee. Its doors were closed and nothing was moving inside. I cupped my hands and looked in through the windows. No infected. No bodies and no blood. Empty and clean. It didn’t get any better than that.

I looked back toward the atrium doors. “Oh, shit.”

In my surprise, I’d said it too loud and caught the attention of a nearby White whose little goldfish brain connected the verbalization with the taste of food and rushed me. Unprepared for the attack, my machete caught him under the arm, almost too late but effective enough. His nearly amputated arm threw him off balance and he spun to the side with the momentum of it. My next blow cut a deep, blood-spewing gash across his neck and he fell to the grass to bleed out under the cruel sun.

The infected I’d heard, but hadn’t seen when I ran out of the building, were squatted along the wall of the building on both sides of the door, sheltering themselves from the sun among the shrubs in a narrow band of shade. There were hundreds.

Dr. Evans and the hospital survivors were arrayed at the glass doors, ready to push. Neither group was aware of the other. People were about to die.

I raised a palm and exaggerated a motion for them to stay.

Smiles and up-pointed thumbs were the response.

Fuck.

Hands were on the doors, ready to push. Freedom for them was a door-glass thickness away. Anticipating escape, they were going to come out any second now.

I could think of one thing to do to avert disaster. I swung open the door of the Humvee, tossed my machete in, and raised my M4. I looked left. I looked right. I had some space. I fired at the infected by the walls.

A thousand howls ripped the air and the squatting Whites moved as one, as though the hospital wall itself had jumped. The mass of them raced toward me as I emptied the magazine.

I jumped into the Humvee as the vanguard of the horde from the west side of the hospital rounded the corner, chasing a sound they’d heard and of which they were anxious to find the source. I was surrounded. I scrambled over the seats and set all of the combat locks. It wouldn’t do to have Smart Ones opening the doors while I was running for my life.

Back in the driver’s seat, I cranked the Humvee. Its engine rumbled to life. I floored it. The tires spun on the dry turf and sent dirt, grass, and dust into the air. If any infected had any doubt where their human morsel had gone, I’d erased that doubt for them. I steered straight for the infected mass rounding the corner and raced the engine.

The first infected I hit was obliterated by the bumper, and the next few died just as badly.

When the crowd grew thick, I angled to my right to stay out of the mob. I couldn’t let them bring me to a stop. Stopping was dying. The Humvee bounced over bodies, fallen barricades, and curbs. In a sea of screaming white faces and chomping jaws, I didn’t have a thought to spare for the survivors from the hospital. I’d done what I could. Personal survival trumped philanthropy.

The Humvee slowed under the press of human flesh.

I wondered if I’d done too much.

The vehicle lurched as it slowed and the tires spun on bloody wet humans, former humans. Whites were all over the vehicle, pounding on the roof, bashing their fists at the glass.

The Humvee swayed. I was losing control to the weight of the flowing bodies.

If the Humvee stopped, it was over. The Whites wouldn’t leave and I wouldn’t be able to get out. The Humvee would run out of gas. The AC would go. I’d die of heat stroke before day’s end.

But I wasn’t angry, as was my habit.

Fright gave way to acceptance of the high likelihood that I’d pushed my luck one too many times.

Chapter 16

The Humvee crept through the crush of bodies. I wrestled with the steering wheel, played with the gas, and fought for control. The infected screamed in frustration.

Inexplicably, the riot of bodies thinned on my right side, so I cut the steering wheel hard in that direction. I threw a prayer at the sky to aid in my escape. Who knew what might work?

With the diminished effects of the infected pushing on the right side, those on the left began to win the push-me-pull-you contest and the vehicle leaned hard to the right. I gunned the engine. The wheels alternately spun and caught, spun and moved, then miraculously caught and accelerated.

There were fewer Whites ahead than behind.

With the devil in my grin, I forgot the god of whom I’d just asked a favor and screamed in triumph. More bumps. More jerks. More Whites maimed under my wheels.

I saw spots of clear turf in the gaps between the infected piled on the hood. At twenty miles per hour, I jerked hard to the left, then back to the right, trying to induce a rhythmic sway in the cumbersome vehicle. Four or five fell off, and I was able to see well enough around the remaining ones that I wouldn’t hit a tree.

The hospital was to my right, and when a determined woman fell off of the driver’s side door, I saw over the heads of the mob. Neither the ambulance nor the Humvees that the survivors had planned to take were there.

Something about the plan had worked.

I let myself feel good about that without spending a thought on how many had died in the run for the vehicles.

The Humvee bounced over a particularly large pile of infected bodies and dropped over a curb.  My tires were on asphalt. I turned hard to the right and hit thirty. The street ahead was relatively clear. I had to slalom through the haphazardly scattered cars, but that worked to my purposes anyway. I lost one or two of my riders with each sway to the left and right.

I caught a right-hand turn and thought I might roll the Humvee as I headed back toward downtown. A curbed median appeared in the road and instead of braking, I accelerated toward it. When the tires hit the curb, I bounced out of my seat and hit the roof of the Humvee, hearing the infected bounce and roll across the Humvee’s roof as I landed back in my seat.

“Sweet.”

I was on the wrong side of the road, but what difference did that make to anybody anymore? I guessed that there were maybe three or four Whites still on the Humvee. Manageable.

I wondered how long the survivors would wait for me at the rally point, but that was a secondary concern to my other responsibilities. I’d left Russell in that house, and I needed to go get him. He wouldn’t survive on his own. I needed to get back to Murphy and Mandi. With what I now knew of the Smart Ones among the infected, they were in more danger than they knew.

I made a left turn and started my zigzag tactic through the square city blocks to work my way west.

Chapter 17

The drive through the infested city was time-consuming and strenuous. My arms were tired from constantly turning the steering wheel at each corner, to avoid large groups, or to run down solitary Whites. That last, a questionable practice. How durable was the armored Humvee, after all?

But some of them looked enough like Mark that each time, it seemed worth the risk to the vehicle.

I glanced down at the Humvee’s radio about a thousand times on my circuitous journey. Contact with Dalhover, Evans, and the other survivors waited for me through that little metal box, but each time I looked at it, I was immediately befuddled. It was nothing like Dan’s simple CB radio that I’d found stashed in the garage when I was a kid. That radio had an on/off switch, a channel selector, and a volume knob. It was easy, both to figure out and to operate.

But this thing had about a half-dozen knobs, only a few of which seemed to have an understandable purpose, several jacks, and a keypad. A keypad. What the hell was that for? Even what I thought was the on/off switch looked to have nine positions.

Frustrating.

Without an operator’s manual, figuring it out could take hours, or days. Certainly not something to be done while running like a mad mouse through west-central Austin. Perhaps Murphy knew how the thing worked.

With something resembling optimism, I finally made the right turn onto Matheson Ridge Road, committed to running over any infected anywhere near my path. One died on the asphalt as soon as I rounded the corner. Others were in front yards or driveways as I passed, and not worth the risk, though they did pursue.

A opportunity would have it, a huddle of Whites were on the driveway of the house where I’d left Russell, feeding on their dead, looking up at my Humvee as it bore down on them. But there just weren’t enough functional synapses left in their brains to process the lethal conclusion coming their way at forty miles per hour.

I braked hard into the turn and Humvee’s tires squealed loudly as the heavy truck bounced over the mailbox and up the driveway. Some of the Whites jumped at the last second. Most of those thudded against steel as I ran them down just before crashing into the garage door. Long panels of bent aluminum and shrieked as the Humvee barreled through. After all of that, to my surprise, two infected were pinned to the back wall of the garage by the Humvee’s bumper when I came to a stop. They were messed up and bloody as hell, but alive and pissed.

I jumped out of the driver's side door with my M4 in my hands. No point in trying to be quiet now.

A White came running at me from outside. I fired about three rounds before I got the guy. He fell back, squirming, but not a danger for the moment. It took three more shots to finish off the other two on the wall. I turned my attention back to the garage door, almost too late.

"Dammit."

The infected I’d shot was crawling at me, and close. I couldn’t miss at this range. I shot him twice in the chest and he stopped moving.

I saw no movement down the driveway and out into the street. That wasn’t going to last.

Now, for the moment that I’d dreaded.

Please, let Russell be okay.

With only a few rounds left in my magazine, I switched it for a full one. Ammunition was way low. That was a real concern. I positioned myself by the doorway to the kitchen, with one hand ready to pull the trigger and the other on the doorknob. I didn't expect anything dangerous inside, but caution could not be overrated.

I turned the knob, tugged the door, and jumped back several feet as I raised my weapon. The door slowly swung open, and the sunlight pouring in through the bank of windows on the back of the house silhouetted a man standing just inside the kitchen.

"Russell."

He didn't move.

I stepped closer and squinted at the light. Russell's face was streaked with tears. He stared emptily forward, back in the state in which I'd originally found him.

I felt like shit.

I wondered what emotions Russell could feel. I wondered what thoughts went through his simple brain. Did he feel abandoned? Did he think I was never coming back? I let my rifle dangle from its sling and put a hand on his shoulder. I looked into his unresponsive eyes and said, "Russell, are you okay?"

He, of course, said nothing.

I squeezed into the kitchen, closing and locking the door behind me. Pushing past him, I took his hand and said, "C'mon, Russell," hoping that he'd follow.

He did.

We walked back over to the granite-covered island. A room-temperature sandwich still sat there on a plate. I tore it in two and set a half in front of each of our stools. "Russell, let's sit down and eat. C'mon, sit down."

Russell complied, and together, we shared another meal.

Chapter 18

With Russell back to normal, or perhaps after no apparent change in Russell, but with my guilt assuaged, I did a quick search of the house for goodies. There were no firearms, but there was a good quantity of food and water. Twenty minutes of silence in the house had left the garage empty of infected, though there were several who’d started feeding on the newly dead in the driveway.

Bad choice for them.

With no trouble from the feeding infected, I loaded the Humvee with enough food and bottled water to last four people for a few days.

After getting Russell loaded into the passenger seat, it was a just a matter of running down the infected in the driveway again, and another long, tiring drive through the neighborhoods north of downtown. I found a passable bridge over the highway and lost a few platoons of chasing infected as I sped the Humvee into the ash-covered wasteland of east Austin.

Thankfully, it was still a dead zone.

I slowed the Humvee down to thirty miles per hour, a safe speed for navigating around road hazards. With nearly every structure burned to a black skeleton and piles of ash, and with all the street signs unreadable, there were few landmarks, but the towering concrete overpasses at the intersection of highways 183 and 290 were visible from the tops of hills miles away.

Knowing that I’d been too long in getting to the rally point, I chose to go there before picking up Murphy and Mandi. I felt sure they were safe for the time being.

As I approached the southwest corner of the highway intersection, in what had been a parking lot for a small complex of low-rent duplexes, I spotted a single Humvee with a thin slouched man standing on the roof keeping watch with a pair of binoculars: Dalhover. He had to have seen us as we approached, but remained vigilant in watching the other directions for threats.

Russell,” I said, as I pointed, “there they are.”

I spotted Steph’s flaming red hair catching in the breeze as she exited their Humvee. She was followed by one of the soldiers. Among the burned ruins of the duplexes, I saw no other vehicles and no other people got out of the Humvee. My heart sank. Surely they weren’t the only escapees.

I navigated my Humvee through the maze of streets toward Dalhover’s position. A straight line across the ruins of houses would have been quicker, but who knew what hazards lay under the ash and in the twisted metal and brick remains? There was no immediate need for urgency, so no need to risk the Humvee’s tires.

After stopping my Humvee close to the other and taking a moment to survey the surrounding area for movement, I got out. Russell immediately howled and I had to hustle around to let him out of the other side.

Dalhover, Steph, and the soldier were waiting between the Humvees, giving me odd looks as I led Russell back around.

Dalhover looked at me flatly. “You made it.”

The soldier shook my hand, and gave me a nod and wan smile. Steph stepped up close, and seemed for a moment caught between a hug and a handshake. In the end, she threw an arm around my neck and gave me a quick squeeze. “Wow, you’re still alive.”

“It’s the new hello,” I answered as she pulled away.

Both Dalhover and the soldier were looking at Russell suspiciously.

“Don’t worry about him,” I told them. “He’s harmless. Just ah…just…I think the virus fried his brain, but he’s not a danger. Are there more of you? Please don’t tell me this is all that made it out.”

Dalhover shook his head and said, “We lost seven.”

“So, how many?” I asked.

Dalhover answered, “Us and fifteen others made it.”

“Dr. Evans?” I asked.

“Yes,” Steph said. “He made it.”

I shook my head and looked down. “I didn’t know all of those infected were in the shadow of the building. I almost didn’t see them.”

With no change in his tone, Dalhover said, “Everyone knew the risk.”

“Where are the others?” I asked.

Dalhover pointed between the towering bridges of the highway interchange. “Dr. Evans’ family has a farm out near Taylor, maybe twenty miles northeast.”

“He knows that his family probably isn’t alive, right?” I asked.

Steph kindly said, “It kind of goes without saying, Zed.”

“Yeah,” I answered, “I guess so. And you guys waited here for me?”

Each of them nodded.

“Thanks.” That seemed insufficient for how I felt. They’d taken a risk and waited for me past the point where hope that I’d arrive had run out. That meant a lot to me. I struggled in search of a way to express that, but I was at a loss.

Dalhover gestured toward Russell. “You said you had three friends.”

“Two of them are in a house near here,” I answered. “I have to get them...um…or go there.” I suddenly realized that past the rendezvous point, I’d made no further plans with these people. Did they wait out of gratitude, or were they planning on sticking together now?

Into the ambiguity, Steph said, “We’ll go get them together.”

That’s what I wanted, or so I was thinking at the moment. But how would that turn out? I looked around at the burnt landscape to check for movement and to collect my thoughts. I looked at my feet. I glanced at their faces. My silence had grown awkward, so I just put it on the table. “I know what people see when they look at me and Russell. We’re monsters. Now that everybody has escaped from the hospital and they don’t need my help… well, I know how things go from here.”

“No,” Steph disagreed emphatically. “It’s not like that. Come with us. We don’t feel that way.”

I shook my head. “That’s how you feel, Steph.” I looked at each of them. “Maybe all of you do.”

Dalhover nodded, going back on word rations.

I went on, “The rest of them might feel that way, too, but right now they feel gratitude for me helping them get out. Or, maybe they’re angry at me for dragging them out of a place they thought was safe. Maybe they’re angry at me for getting their friends killed. However they feel right now, eventually all of that will fade, and what will be left is the fear, then the hate. It’ll always be like that.”

“Yeah,” Dalhover groused.

Steph was instantly angry. “I didn’t have you figured for a quitter. What are you going to do? Give up and go be a hermit in the woods?”

I laughed bitterly. “Considering what I did this morning, I don’t think that quitter is the right word.”

“But you’re giving up on people, aren’t you?” Steph asked. “You don’t even want to come with us and try?”

“Yes, I do,” I nodded. “But the last group of people I helped turned on me once they had full bellies and guns in their hands.” My voice was notching up. “They wanted to kill me and my friends. We had a good place to hole up, in a dorm over on the campus, and we took those people in. After they kicked us to the curb, a half hour later, one of us was dead. These were people just like all of you, people that needed my help, people that were grateful. But in the end, I was just another monster to them.”

Dalhover said, “Man, I need a cigarette. Do you have any?”

“Nope.” I shook my head.

“You mind if I check your vehicle?” Dalhover asked.

“It’s not really mine,” I told him.

“It is now,” Dalhover countered.

“Yeah,” I said. “Go ahead.”

Dalhover swung the driver’s side door open and started rummaging.

We all watched in silence, because it was better than what we were talking about.

“Goddamn.” Dalhover jumped out of my Humvee with a red and white package of cigarettes raised in one hand. “It’s my lucky goddamned day.” He took one out and placed it between his lips, then fished a lighter out of his pocket. He looked me in the eye and said, “We’ll go with you to get your friends if you want. We owe you at least that much. After, if you want to come along with us, we’ll talk to all the others when we get to Colonel Evans’ place. You can decide from there if you want to stay or go. But I personally guaran-god-damn-tee you that you won’t be harmed by anybody there.”

“A guaran-god-damn-tee,” Steph said, awkwardly stumbling over the curse with a smile. “That’s a pretty good guarantee.”

I looked over at the soldier with them. He smiled thinly and nodded.

I said, “You don’t say much, do you?”

“No, sir,” he answered.

“Let’s go get my friends.” I extended a hand to Dalhover. “If they want to join up with you guys, we’ll tag along.”

Chapter 19

We parked a quarter of a mile from Russell's old house, among a collection of burned out cars that would serve to hide the Humvees from a casual observer. With the pile of charred bodies located on the opposite side of the block of unburned houses, we had a good chance of remaining hidden from the infected feasting there.

Russell and I headed out on foot toward his old house. I didn’t see a single infected moving about as we approached. That made me nervous. I was getting conditioned to expect one to jump at me every time I blinked.

As we stepped up onto the curb and started across Russell's dead lawn, the front door opened and Mandi peeked out. She cast a nervous glance both left and right, but her smile glowed as bright as the sun.

I hurried the last few steps up onto the porch and through the door as Mandi swung it wide for both Russell and me. Without a word, she closed and locked the door behind us.

Murphy, who had been keeping lookout through the window on the back door, turned and grinned widely when he saw us inside.

Mandi threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly. She did the same with Russell and got pretty much the same response. Nothing. Though I, at least, did smile.

"Let's get upstairs," Murphy said, leading the way to the office.

Once we were all upstairs, Murphy pointed out the back window and said softly, "There's got to be at least a thousand of them out there now. They've been coming in groups all day. They wander in from the east, mostly. When they get close, I think they smell the dead and find their way here.”

Through the back window, I saw that the pile of corpses had been dragged all over the blackened grass. The burned yards were covered with infected, surrounding and mutilating each corpse as they fed. Bodies had been dragged right up to Russell's back fence, and fifty or sixty Whites fed on them, not thirty feet from where Murphy and I stood at the window.

Murphy nodded his head toward the infected out back, "They make me nervous, being that close."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"I'm so glad you made it back," Mandi’s voice burbled with excitement.

Murphy took that as a cue and slapped my back. "God damn, I am too, man. I figured you were gonna get killed running off in the middle of the night like that."

I shrugged.

"What's the story with Amber?" Murphy was suddenly very serious.

I shook my head and tried to say that she was dead, but the words got caught in my throat.

Crap. Why did that happen?

Mandi hugged me again. "She's in a better place."

I nodded at the cliché and drew a deep breath as I pulled away. "Mark killed her. I think he's a slow burn."

"If he's a slow burn, why'd he kill her?” Murphy nodded his head toward the infected behind the house. “Maybe he was just like them."

"Nothing fed on her," I said, trying to push an image of Amber's bruised face out my mind. "She was beaten to death."

"That doesn't make any sense. Are you sure it was Mark?" Murphy asked.

I nodded. "Everybody else was dead. The building was still closed up.”

"All of them?" Murphy was surprised.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "All of them were infected except for Amber."

"Getting kicked out of there was probably the best thing for us," Murphy said.

I didn’t want to agree, but we were alive. That was better than the alternative.

Mandi asked, "Could Mark be immune, do you think?"

"No," I answered. "Amber was pretty sure he got infected."

"Man, that just doesn't make any sense.” Murphy was shaking his head and starting to pace around the room. Amber’s death was at least as frustrating for him as it was for me. “I don't understand why he'd kill her if he was a slow burn. I don't understand why he didn't feed on her if he was infected."

"Dalhover has a theory that some of the slow burns aren't like us. More like the criminally insane. I’ve seen it myself. I think he’s right."

Mandi asked, "Who's Dalhover?"

It took nearly a half hour to bring Murphy and Mandi up to speed on what had happened. It took a little longer to discuss joining up with the hospital survivors. In the end, we decided to joining would be best. We headed for the Evans’ family farm.

Chapter 20

Ash and black turned to tan grass and rolling hills as we drove out into the country. Wind-tortured trees grew along the fence lines. Houses, trailers, sun-bleached barns, and rotted sheds dotted the hill crests or rested in valleys.

Cattle grazed in parched fields or huddled like Whites where the trees provided shade. Fields of dry corn stalks and cotton waited for harvests that would never come. We saw not one living human as we navigated the narrow county roads and farm-to-market roads.

Escape to the country was starting to seem like a really good idea.

Following Dalhover, Steph, and the soldier in the lead vehicle, Murphy drove our Humvee in uncharacteristic silence. He and Mandi kept sharing furtive glances and worried smiles; I guessed that their relationship had changed, perhaps significantly, in my absence.

In a shallow valley, the road bisected a grove of tall pecan trees that mercifully shaded us for a half-mile. At the end of the grove, we came upon a small collection of buildings at a T-intersection. A town name was painted on a green highway sign in reflective white, but I didn’t bother to read it. It was one of those towns so small that its name was only ever mentioned by people giving directions that included the phrase “down yonder.”

A closed store with a sagging wooden sign weathered away on one corner. A bar was boarded up with sheets of gray plywood, delaminating with age. The five or six houses in the speck of a town were in such a state of disrepair that the owners had to have died or stopped caring years before I was born.

Brown stains, clothing remnants, and a few bones littered the crushed caliche parking lot in front of the bar. At the edge of the road, coyotes fought over the remains of a child-sized body.

Mandi turned away from the sight outside her window and looked at Russell and me in the back seat. In a tone that made it clear that she was convincing herself, she said, “It’s better out here, I think.”

“Yeah,” I grunted, leaning my head on the glass, staring emptily out of the window. My ability to pay attention was starting to fade. My butt was in a cushioned seat. Cool air blew over my skin. Fatigue, held at bay all day by a river of adrenaline, was coming to collect its due.

“We’re doing the right thing,” Mandi bounced out in her squeaky wheel voice.

She said some more things, but my fatigue made her words seem like sing-song noise, not worth comprehending. My attention drifted. My eyelids grew heavy and I fell asleep. I needed the sleep. But sleeping led to dreaming; running and chasing and killing and dying and murder and blood and screaming and screaming and screaming…

And those kids.

Those pitiful fucking kids.

I shot up straight in my seat. I had a crick in my neck and drool on my cheek. I was disoriented.

The Humvee was idling but not moving. Russell sat beside me and stared straight ahead. Through the windshield I saw the other Humvee sitting on the road. A longhorn—yeah, a big fucking cow with horns longer than my outstretched arms—trotted between the two vehicles.

“What the…?” I wondered if I was still asleep.

Another of the big cattle followed the first.

Murphy laughed, “Man, you know you’re in Texas when you see a stampede.”

Mandi giggled, “There’s only like ten cows. That’s hardly a stampede. And they’re not in a hurry.”

To our left, one of the big longhorns jumped over a barbed wire fence and walked out into a crop of dying sorghum. The rust-colored bull sniffed at the plants but didn’t seem interested in eating.

Murphy pointed down at a farm in the dip between the rolling hills. “Look, down there beside that barn.”

Mandi looked. “What?”

“That’s a Humvee. I’ll bet that’s the farm.”

Dalhover jumped out of his Humvee and trotted back toward us, giving the longhorns a wide berth.

Murphy opened his door a bit so that Dalhover could speak to him. “After these damn longhorns get out of the road ahead of us, we’ll get moving again.” Dalhover pointed to the farm down the slope. “That’s the place, over there.”

“Gotcha, Top,” Murphy answered.

Without another word, Dalhover hurried back to his vehicle.

To no one in particular, Mandi said, “I hope they have running water. I really need a shower.”

“I’ll say,” Murphy laughed.

“Don’t be a pig.” Mandi punched Murphy in the arm.

Something had definitely happened between them.

Outside, the longhorns had lost all sense of urgency. No one in the Humvee seemed to care. With our goal in sight, and no two-legged monsters in pursuit, our need to hurry was gone as well. My head lolled over against the glass and I closed my eyes again.

Rest.

“I like it here,” Mandi said. “If there’s not enough room for everyone in the house, I’ll bet there are empty farmhouses nearby that we could move into.”

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed.

“What kind of crops can you grow here?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Murphy answered. “Whatever we need, probably.”

“We even have cows. I like steak. Do longhorns taste like regular cows?” Mandi asked.

Murphy chuckled. “They don’t have as much fat, I think.”

“Look,” Mandi said excitedly. “There’s someone on the porch. They’re waving at us.”

More things were said, but I was starting to fade back to dreamland, or maybe dream hell and sleep land. But there was a change in Mandi’s tone of voice. “Why are all the longhorns looking in that direction?”

I opened my eyes and sat up. Not alarmed, but alert.

The longhorns outside had all come to a stop and were looking back toward the farmhouse to our east. Two weeks before, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But running for your life at every turn changes a person. I put a hand on my rifle and looked around for the danger.

Murphy had tensed as well. He sat up straight in his seat, saying nothing.

“What is it?” Mandi asked, seeing the change in Murphy and looking back at me.

“Don’t know,” Murphy answered.

The longhorns bolted.

Given their thousand-pound weight, their quickness was surprising. The impact of their hooves hitting the ground vibrated up through the Humvee’s tires. They each hopped the fence to our left and plowed through the sorghum, sending clouds of rusty pollen up in their wake.

The people on the porch had stopped waving and were looking around. Whatever had spooked the longhorns had piqued their attention too.

I listened. Over the sound of the Humvee’s engine and the longhorn’s hoof beats, I couldn’t make out anything.

“Infected.” Mandi pointed, fear tweaking her voice.

Perhaps a mile away, on the other side of the valley, a double-helix of stark white infected were cresting the hill.

With the house between the people on the porch and the infected coming over the hill behind them, they had no way of seeing the Whites.

“Are they naked?” Mandi asked, her voice no less urgent.

Ahead of us, Dalhover jumped out of the Humvee and aimed his rifle into the distance. He fired. He had no hope of hitting anything at that range, but I assumed the sound was meant as a warning.

The people on the porch froze. Dalhover fired again.

“Get inside,” Mandi pleaded.

“They will,” Murphy comforted her, putting a hand on her thigh.

As if they’d been waiting on permission from Murphy, the people on the porch hurried into the house and closed the door. Several more helices of jogging infected crested the hill to the east.

Dalhover shot the rifle in the air three times in rapid succession and looked down at the house.

“They should be safe now that they’re inside,” Murphy said. “They just need to be quiet.”

More infected came. Then more. And more. It looked like God had dumped a city-sized bucket of Whites on the other side of the hill, and they were splashing over and pouring into the valley.

With my voice stressed to the point of betraying my fear for those below, I shouted, “They need to get out of there.” I swung my door open and pulled my weapon up to my shoulder as I ran around to the other side of the vehicle. Russell was on my heels.

Dalhover shot me a worried look. The far hill was solid with running Whites. They didn’t shout. They didn’t howl—they didn’t see the people in the house yet—but the sound of tens of thousands of running feet and heavy breathing rolled across the valley like a swarm of ghostly locusts.

Where the hell did they all come from?

“Good God,” Dalhover shouted, in a rare display of emotion.

I fired my rifle indiscriminately at the horde.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, naked and hairless (and what the fuck was up with that anyway?) were distracted by the crack of my gun and altered their direction to run at us. The rest washed over the house.

From below, gunfire popped. Glass broke. A great howl gathered the strength of every rabid voice in the valley and blew the hush all to hell.

The Ogre and the Fucking Harpy.

It took all my willpower not to run. I swapped my empty magazine for a full one.

A grenade explosion disturbed the mass of bodies on the porch, but its sound was lost in the tsunami of screams. The bloody void left in its passing was quickly filled with struggling white bodies.

Still the infected flooded over the hill. How many could there be?

Dr. Evans and a woman crawled out of a second floor window and onto the roof above the porch. Another woman clawed her way out as Dr. Evans climbed the rough brick chimney to get to the top of the house. The infected were out the window now. They caught the third woman. She was shrieking. That’s to say that her mouth was open wide, her face stretched in fear. But the sound was lost.

My finger hovered over the trigger.

Dr. Evans and the first woman made it to the roof. A dozen infected were on the porch roof, running about, searching. More climbed out through the window.

Dalhover aimed at the house and fired, but the million-legged anemone absorbed the bullets with no effect. I followed his example with thirty more futile bullets.

A White started the climb up the side of the chimney. When his head peeked over the edge of the roof, it exploded in a spray of brilliant red over white skin. He fell and bounced off the roof below where his body was swallowed by the mass.

More infected followed.

However many bullets Evans had in his pistol, it wasn’t enough.

Dalhover hung his head, and like a warped, wooden man, walked back to the front seat of his Humvee. The infected were starting to run up the long slope toward us. It was time to go.

My danger-driven talent for fast thinking kicked in and I ran up to Dalhover’s side of the Humvee, yelling at him through the window, “Follow us.”

“What?” He looked back at me with a stolid face and eyes that had seen too much pain. He didn’t nod or shake his head.

“Follow us.” I pointed at our Humvee.

I ran back to my Humvee and jumped in behind Murphy. “We’re taking the lead.”

Without a word, Murphy gunned the engine, ran through a ditch to get around Dalhover, and pushed the lumbering Humvee to speed away from the farm.

Chapter 21

"Murphy," I said, not an ounce of humor in my voice, "remember when you asked me whether emergent behavior in the infected would present any added danger? I think I can answer that now."

"I know the answer," Murphy responded, flatly.

Mandi, with tears in her eyes, said, "That was terrible. Those people didn't have a chance."

"No." I shook my head and wondered whether they'd still be alive if I'd left them in the hospital, probably the same question going through the minds of those in the other Humvee.

No, they wouldn't. Rationalization?

No. I told myself that wasn't the case. Whether I'd been there or not, the infected would have discovered access to the upper floors of the hospital through the elevator shafts. Had Dalhover and I not chanced on them coming up the shafts at the moment that we did, all of those in the hospital may have died that morning.

But they were all dead, just the same.

In helping them escape, perhaps I'd only succeeded in buying them a few more hours of life. What killed them wasn’t my help; it was an unlucky choice. Dr. Evans's family farm wasn't as secure as its isolation implied. As a result, they paid the price for the mistake.

Blood. Pain. Terror. Death.

It was a failure to understand the new rules. And every failure was paid in blood. That goddamned lesson insisted on repeating itself, and it was pissing me off.  Still, another dozen good people were dead. If any corollary was there to be learned, it was that nothing should be taken for granted. Not one single thing.

Houses were never safe. Escape plans must always be laid. Guards must always be posted.

Those in the house apparently hadn't posted a lookout; an oversight that had cost them their lives. Had they seen the flood of infected pouring into the valley, perhaps they could have escaped in their vehicles. They depended on flimsy doors and brittle glass to protect them. They fucked up.

And I knew that the doors and windows at Russell's house that Murphy, Mandi, and I thought had protected us the night before, in fact hadn’t. What had protected us was luck. The mountain of burned bodies behind Russell's house gave the infected a much more tempting distraction than a potentially fruitless search of abandoned houses.

I wondered whether my life or anyone’s was simply a measure of the number of lucky guesses made. That was depressing to think about. Disempowering.

Dr. Evans and company could have kept the vehicles near the doors and pointed away from the house, ready for a quick escape. They could have set up a diversion in the barn to draw any infected away and buy themselves some time.

They must have been at the farm for a few hours before we arrived. Surely they were all tired, frazzled by their experiences. Free from immediate threat for the first time in days. So they rested. They let their guard down. And that was another lesson for me. No downtime until all preparations that could be made were made.

All mistakes are paid for in blood. Again, the most important lesson of all.

The future promised to be grueling for those who survived, grueling and tense. Learning the new rules would be as important to continued life as eating, drinking, and breathing.

With no roadmap, no syllabus, and no list of requirements for the future, the hospital survivors who’d died had opened the book of tomorrow’s secrets to a page of useful knowledge, paid for with their lives. I silently thanked them, and took the lessons to heart.

“Why didn’t they have any hair?” Mandi asked. “Why were they naked?”

“They had hair,” Murphy argued.

Mandi shook her head for emphasis, but her shaking was slow, as though the work of doing it while under the burden of what she’d just seen was difficult. “No, they didn’t.”

“I’m not a fan of seventies porn,” Murphy told her. “I know the difference between hairy and hairless.”

Mandi turned to look out the window, and with no emotion in her voice she said, “You are a pig, Murphy.”

I said, “Murphy’s right. They were bald, not hairless.”

That seemed to settle the hair question with no resolution. After half a mile, Mandi said, “So.”

“So what?” I asked.

“So what does it mean?” She turned to look back at me.

“I’m not sure,” I answered, happy to take my mind off the horror and get lost for a second in the clinical questions on the quirkiness of the Whites. “It can’t be natural, I don’t think.”

“Am I going the right way?” Murphy asked.

“Yeah,” I pointed. “Just stay on this road for now.”

“What do you mean, not natural?” Mandi asked.

“I mean,” I said, “these are the only bald Whites that we’ve seen. And as porn king Murphy pointed out, they definitely weren’t hairless. I’m not a doctor or anything, but it seems to me that if the virus was going to make your hair fall out, it would all fall out, not just the hair on your head.”

“Makes sense, I guess.” Mandi turned back forward in her seat. “What then?”

“I don’t know.” But that didn’t prevent me from speculating. “Maybe they do more than follow each other around. Maybe it’s another emergent behavior thing and they’re trying to look alike too.”

“So what,” Murphy scoffed, “one bald nudist walks down the street and all the other Whites say to themselves, hey, I wanna be like him?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“It’s your idea,” Murphy countered.

“I don’t know.” I wasn’t going to put too much into defending a guess.

Nothing was said for a bit after that until we passed back through the small, nameless town and the pecan grove. Mandi said, “When they started to come up the slope toward, I think one of them had a knife.”

“What?” I asked in surprise.

“No way.” Murphy responded.

Mandi nodded and looked at us. “I think so. It was far away. I can’t be sure, but I think one of them was carrying a knife.”

That was enough to kill the conversation in the Humvee. Perhaps we all knew the ominous implications if some of the infected could use weapons. There was indeed a whole spectrum of intellectual capacities among them.

The Humvee bounced down the bumpy country roads, back in the direction we'd just come.

Without any of the usual pep in his voice, Murphy asked, "You're the man with the plan, Zed. Where are we going?”

“Not Russell’s house,” Mandi interjected, staring despondently out the window.

Pointing needlessly out through the windshield, I said, “Let’s head back to that bridge over I-35 that was clear.”

“At Thirty-Second Street?” Murphy asked

“Yeah, sure.”

“Are you thinking back to the university?” he asked. “Back to one of those big old buildings? You think we can hold out against…?” Murphy’s voice trailed off, as though mentioning the endless horde would confirm that they were more than a nightmare.

“I have an idea,” I said.

“Okay.” Murphy glanced back at me. “Let's hear it."

I scooted up in my seat. Russell mimicked. The mood in the Humvee was settling into a darkness from which it would be hard to come back. Mandi had gone silent and was staring at nothing. The absence of Murphy’s smile was hard to bear. He was in no shape at that moment to pick the mood up off of the floor, but it needed to be done before despair set in and we gave up. So it was up to me redirect our collective mood.

“Do you know where Mt. Bonnell Road is?” I asked Murphy.

“On the other side of town, where all the rich white people live.”

“Yeah, well not all of them, but some of them,” I said. “That's where we're going.”

“Back into the hornet’s nest,” Murphy absently muttered.

“It's not that bad, if we do it right,” I told him.

Murphy's voice flipped to defiance. “Yeah, I'll just run down any mother fuckers that get in our way.”

“Not any,” I disagreed. “There's an upper limit to that.”

“Yeah,” Murphy answered absently. His mind was back on the horde.

“If you see any really big groups, let's not try to plow through them,” I said. “We'll need to drive around.”

Murphy grunted an acknowledgement.

Mandi was still silent.

I took a moment to explain my tactic of zigzagging through the neighborhoods to keep the infected from clogging the streets ahead. I emphasized how important it was not to lose the other Humvee in our maneuvers.

With that taken care of, I changed the subject. “I used to date this short red-headed girl named Jackie.”

“War stories?” That surprised Murphy, but his tone suggested that he wasn’t in the mood.

Defensively, I said, “There's a point.”

Mandi looked over her shoulder at me, showing her watery eyes. Then she went back to staring through the glass.

“When I was a freshman at UT, I met her in my psychology class,” I said. “Well, she met me. I mean, she kind of picked me up in class and then we started going out.”

“Was she cute?” Murphy asked.

“Of course,” I answered. “Really nice little ah...” I looked over at Mandi, but she was working hard at ignoring me. “Well the thing is, she still lived at home and drove into school each day. Her parents had a big house up on Mt. Bonnell.”

Murphy raised his voice for emphasis, “God damn, Null Spot. How many women do you want to try to save?”

“That's not where I'm going with this,” I countered.

Mandi muttered, “I doubt that.”

“No, really,” I said. “Hear me out.”

“I'm guessing we don't have a choice.” Murphy smiled.

I continued with my story. “So, like, back when we were dating, I'd go over to her house and we'd watch movies and stuff and study together.”

“Uh huh,” Murphy's tone implied a lot inappropriate activity.

“I'm sure you were studying.” Mandi was sarcastic, not at all happy with my topic of choice. But at least she was starting to engage.

“Sometimes, maybe,” I said. “Well, the truth is, we were both eighteen and horny as hell, and it seemed like all she ever wanted to do was screw.”

Mandi scoffed, “Like you didn't.”

“Oh, no, don't get me wrong,” I answered. “I love sex. Lots of it.”

Murphy snickered.

I continued, “But Jackie, oh my God, she was like a nympho or something. She'd wanted to screw every day, more than once. Sometimes four or five times.”

“Oh, whatever,” Mandi scoffed.

“You'd be surprised how virile a motivated eighteen-year-old can be,” I countered.

Murphy raised his eyebrows and gave us a speculative, “Maybe.”

“Well, she wore me out, I'll tell you. There were times when I'd make up excuses not to go over to her house just so I could get a day of rest.”

Mandi shook her head. “This story is getting unbelievable. You said there is a point, right? It's not just you making up stories about your sexual exploits.”

I said, “Well, there is that part, but...”

Murphy laughed.

“…I’ll get to the point,” I finished. “Jackie liked to have sex everywhere. In her bed, of course. In the wine cellar when her parents were upstairs…”

“The wine cellar?” Mandi asked.

“Rich people,” Murphy muttered.

“Everybody who lives on Mt. Bonnell has money,” I said. “People with money have wine cellars.” At least that’s the way I saw it.

“A rich girl who likes to have sex all the time?” Mandi didn’t believe a word of it. “And why would you ever leave a girl like that?”

“She dumped me,” I admitted. “She said I was too emotionally distant.”

Murphy laughed out loud. “I’m so surprised.”

“Well, to get on with my point, we’d sometimes go for walks in the neighborhood, and whenever they were building a new house, she’d want to sneak in at night and have sex in it.”

“Say what?” Murphy grinned.

“No way,” Mandi scoffed again.

“No, I’m serious,” I said. “I told you. She was kind of a nympho and a little kinky.  And I’ll admit, it was kind of a turn-on.”

Mandi made a show of looking back out the window. She wasn’t ready to give up on her mood. “And the point is?”

I said, “There was this one house just off the street, kind of set back in the trees. It was an ugly kind of modern-ish box thing, like a tiny three-story Walmart or something. All concrete and not enough windows.”

“Sounds hideous,” Mandi said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s what I thought. We went there probably three or four times. Then, one night, we were upstairs in what was probably going to be a master bedroom or something. It had these great views over the cliffs of Lake Austin and we… you know, were doing our thing, when this dude with a flashlight and a gun came in and scared the crap out of us.”

“What?” That surprised Mandi.

“It was a security guard, an off-duty cop,” I said. “He was kind of pervy about seeing Jackie naked. I think that’s why he didn’t arrest us for trespassing. After that, there was a cop there all the time. And I mean all the time.”

“Why?” Mandi asked.

“I think the place belonged to some reclusive rich dude or something. I’m not sure, but I think they built a wall around it. I mean, they were building something the last time I was there. But the way the terrain is there, you can’t see the place until you go through the trees and just kind of run into it. You can’t see it from the road. You can’t even see it from up at the park on top of Mt. Bonnell.”

“The owner must have been really paranoid,” Mandi deduced.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Murphy said, “If they finished that wall, it sounds like it could be a safe place for us, if there’s nobody there.”

“Even without the wall, the place seemed pretty secure.” I said. “I’m guessing the owner holed up there pretty quick once this whole infection thing started. So going there might be a waste of time.”

“After what we just saw at that farm, I say we give it a shot.” Murphy looked over at Mandi, as if for permission. “We’ve got nothing to lose.”

Mandi nodded, neither enthusiastically nor reluctantly.

Chapter 22

Mt. Bonnell, like every hill in central Texas, is covered in a forest of squat cedar trees, sprinkled with stunted oaks over jagged limestone and thin dirt. Most trees are ten to fifteen feet tall but thick from root to tip with dark green foliage. They look to be as much shrub as tree.

The uncurbed asphalt road disintegrated at its edge into gravel and dirt under the overhanging branches of cedars all along Mt. Bonnell Road. The only breaks in the forest were wide patches of green grass lawns fronting oversized houses and lush flowerbeds. Relatively few people had lived in the area before the virus hit.  That meant few of the infected—the formerly wealthy or their live-in domestic help.

Halfway up Mt. Bonnell Road, the houses on both sides of the street suddenly stopped and only the shadowy cedars remained. And we were alone. A few infected chased up the slope, but far behind. They’d lose interest soon enough.

“Slow down, Murphy.” I scanned ahead, looking for a familiar break in the trees.

Murphy let up on the gas and the Humvee coasted down to twenty-five miles per hour.

“The place we’re looking for is near the top, but it’s easy to miss,” I told him.

“And you can’t see it at all from the road?” Mandi asked.

“No,” I answered. “You can’t tell, because of the trees, but the road we’re on isn’t on the crest of the hill. It’s on the Austin side of the hill. All the houses on the left, between the road and the river, are on the crest or on the other side of it. This house is like that, on the other side of the crest, and with all the trees, you can’t see it.”

“Why do that?” Mandi asked. “It seems like if you spent a bazillion dollars on a big house with a gorgeous view, you’d want to show it off.”

“The same reason that the Klingons have a cloaking device,” Murphy answered.

“I’m sorry, Murphy, I have a life.” Mandi’s tone was disdainful. “You’ll have to explain to me what that means.”

“If you don’t want to fight,” Murphy explained, “you hide. The cloaking device makes you invisible.”

“Just like the house,” I finished. “The people who own the place like their privacy a lot. I doubt they were thinking about fighting anybody when they built the place, but hiding the house is a big step toward making it secure. For us, if the infected never see the place, they won’t ever try to swarm over it.”

A narrow caliche driveway split the wall of cedars on the left. I pointed. “I think that’s our turn.”

Murphy slowed the Humvee and turned into the gap. Ahead, the narrow, dusty road curved almost immediately, allowing a view of nothing from the road but more cedars. Dalhover’s Humvee followed very closely behind.

Mandi said, “It’s like a road to a trailer park.”

“Exactly,” I said.

The road made a wide arc and curved back to the left before coming up along a wall. We were headed back downhill again on the dirt road as it ran along the wall on our right, with Mt. Bonnell Road on our left, on the other side of a hedge of cedar trees.

“Looks like they finished the wall,” Murphy observed.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Mandi asked.

“It’s got to be,” I answered.

Murphy said, “That wall has got to be at least ten feet tall.”

After a few hundred feet of wall, we came to the end of the drive, a large semicircle that allowed room for cars to turn in and out of the gate. Rectangular blocks of limestone the size of coffee tables bordered the semicircle. Outside the ring of limestone, the terrain grew much more rugged. The gate itself was designed to roll on a track on the other side of the wall for opening and closing. It was covered from top to bottom in sheets of steel and hid the property just as effectively as the wall.

Murphy stopped the Humvee and we all shared a look. We were idling at the gates of a possible refuge with no obvious way to get inside.

I looked at the shadows in the cedars. “Do you guys see any Whites out there?”

All eyes peered into the darkness under the trees.

Nothing. We were momentarily safe.

“Keep an eye out,” I told them. I opened my door and very deliberately climbed out, allowing Russell to come along. I didn’t need him making a noisy scene. Who knew what could be hiding in the dusky shadows?

An obtrusive surveillance camera on the top edge of the wall was pointed down at an intercom on a post. I pressed the call button on the intercom, and a red light indicated something, so I spoke while waving up at the camera. “Hello in there.”

I watched the camera, listened, and waited.

Nothing.

I gave it another moment, then tried again. “Hello in there. Listen, we want to come in. If you’re in there and don’t want us inside, now’s the time tell me. Otherwise, we’re going to climb the wall.”

I waited. No response.

“Hello,” I tried again.

Still nothing.

I pressed the button a final time. “Listen, I’m coming over the wall. If you’re in there with a rifle, it’ll be easier to tell me to go away than it will be to shoot me. At least it’ll be easier on me. Hello. Hello.”

Nothing.

I looked around into the growing darkness under the trees. I had no idea if any Whites might be around, but if there were any close, the idling Humvees would eventually draw them in. I went back to the Humvee and maneuvered myself and Russell inside.

“Okay guys,” I said. “There’s either nobody home or they chose not to answer. Murphy, if you can angle this thing up against that wall, I may be able to get on top and climb over.”

“That’s your plan?” Murphy asked. His dislike for the idea sounded clearly in his tone.

I shrugged. “I’m making it up as I go along.”

“Yeah, aren’t we all?” Murphy nodded. “We don’t know what’s over there and you’re not exactly an expert with that rifle.”

“I’m getting better,” I protested. “I hit most of what I shoot at.”

“Eventually.”

“I’m not staying here by myself,” Mandi protested.

“It’s not safe for you to come with us,” Murphy told her gently.

I thumbed back at the other Humvee. “I’m gonna let them know what’s going on. I’ll get Dalhover to come up here with you, Mandi. Cool?”

“That’s fine. What about Russell?”

I looked over at Russell, who was staring out the front window with no expression on his face. “Mandi, he seems to respond well to you. Can you sit back here with him and keep him calm?”

“Okay.”

I cast another glance around before I swung my door open and hopped out. Better safe than dead. Once my feet were back on the ground outside, I looked around and listened. Russell was having a fit, but the sound was muffled through the armor and thick glass. The wind was blowing through the cedars. Birds were squawking. There was a sound of shuffling in the rocks and twigs somewhere off to my left. Something was out there, something noisy.

I raised my M4 to my shoulder, pointed it at the noise and said, “Hey.”

The noise stopped immediately.

I relaxed. It was more scared of me than I was of it. Probably an armadillo.

I hurried back to Dalhover’s Humvee. He got out halfway and looked around cautiously before settling his sad gaze on me. He softly rasped, “What’s this place?”

In as few words as I could manage, I explained that it might be a refuge for us and told him our plan for going over the wall.

“Will you be able to open the gate from the inside?” Dalhover asked.

“You know I can’t answer that. I’m just hoping.”

Dalhover nodded. “Yeah, I know. Listen, after you and Murphy go over the wall, I’m going to stay on the top of the Humvee and keep an ear out.”

“I’ll holler over and let you know what’s shakin’,” I told him.

“We need some tactical radios,” Dalhover groused. “Running around like a bunch of yahoos is going to get us all killed.”

I nodded. We needed a lot of things.

Murphy got the Humvee into position right up next to the wall and cut the engine. With both engines off, only the normal noises of the evening were left: the wind, the birds, the crickets. But somewhere in the background was the sound of electric motors. I angled my head but couldn’t pinpoint the direction of the source.

Dalhover heard it too, and looked at me with eyebrows slightly raised.

We both shrugged and climbed onto the Humvee.

From the top of the Humvee, the wall was still tall. I revised my guess to twelve feet or so. The top edge of the cinder blocks was at the top of my head, but a smooth round limestone coping added another ten or twelve inches. I reached over the top and ran my hands across the dry, chalky surface, finding nothing at all to grip.

Dalhover looked at me with a question on his face.

I pulled my arms down. “The wall’s got to be a foot or so thick. There’s nothing to grab onto.”

Dalhover stood on tiptoe and reached over the wall, straightening his curved spine. His rough hands scraped across the limestone.

“What’s up?” Murphy asked in a low voice as he climbed up beside us.

Dalhover shook his head. “Goddamned wall.”

Murphy stepped up next to the wall and reached over with as little success as I’d had.

Looking at Murphy, Dalhover shook his head. He leaned back against the wall and interlaced his fingers to form a stirrup. He looked at me. “You first, Zane. Put a foot in. Step on my shoulder if you need to, but don’t kick me in the face.”

It was little uncomfortable standing face to face with Dalhover, my nose only a half-inch from his, smelling his tobacco breath and un-brushed teeth. Personal hygiene habits were taking quite a beating. Toothpaste was going to have to find a place on my future scavenge list.

Putting two hands on his shoulders and a foot in his hands, I gave Dalhover a nod, and jumped while pushing up with my hands. As I reached the top of the wall, I stepped up to one of his shoulders and threw an arm over, twisting sideways to throw a leg up. To my surprise, I topped the wall and stopped there, draped like a sloth on a branch with one foot and one arm on each side and my face lying on the dusty limestone coping.

“Shit,” Murphy muttered. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“Your turn,” Dalhover said, scooting over near the end of the Humvee’s roof. “You’re a big guy. Don’t know if I can hold you. You might get bruised.”

“It won’t be the first time,” Murphy said as the two got into position.

I turned to look into the compound.

Chapter 23

The wall surrounded a couple of terraced acres that curved in steps that followed the countour of the mountain. At the bottom edge of the lowest terrace there was no wall, just an unbroken row of smooth limestone blocks laid flush with the grass from the north wall to the south wall. The sharpness of the edge and the invisibility of anything beyond implied a sudden drop down the steep slopes and cliffs to the river.

In the growing darkness, I spotted the source of the electric motor sound. On each of the five terraces, a green, turtle-like robot mower hummed across the grass. On the second tier down, the mower was followed by four infected, keeping pace with the slow-moving machine. Two of the infected wore some kind of private security uniform. One looked like a lanky high-school kid. One was a shapely naked woman with one of those stylishly expensive haircuts that looked like it was on backwards. She struggled in the rear to keep up while limping on an injured ankle. One of her forearms had an obvious extra angle.

“What do you see?” Dalhover hissed in a loud whisper.

Looking down at him, I whispered back, “Four infected. They don’t see me yet.”

“Nobody else?” Murphy asked, as he stood with one foot in the stirrup of Dalhover’s hands.

“No.”

“Nobody with rifles?” he asked.

“Nobody is shooting yet,” I answered.

“And the house?”

“Everything looks fine,” I said. “Perfectly normal for rich people, except for the Whites in the grass.”

Dalhover rasped, “What do you think?”

I looked over the house. It was built down the slope a bit and didn’t appear to have any windows or doors on the bottom floor. The only entrance was across a breezeway from the second floor that ran over a little ravine between the house and a six-car garage built around one side of a circular plaza of a driveway.

“I don’t see any movement in the house.” I looked back down at Dalhover and Murphy. “There are Whites, so the virus is inside. If it’s inside then everybody inside is probably infected. Except for the Whites, the place seems safe.”

“You wanna go in, then?” Murphy asked.

“This place looks safe as hell to me,” I answered. “I think it’s worth the risk.”

And that was enough talk. Dalhover boosted, Murphy jumped, and then worked on pulling himself up into the same sloth-like position I’d adopted.

Dalhover turned to scan the darkness in the cedars.

Murphy quietly said, “Man, it looks a lot farther down to the ground from up here.”

“Yeah,” I whispered back.

“It’s gonna hurt.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“You wanna go first?”

“No.” Nevertheless, I shifted my weight so that my feet started to slide over the wall and down inside the compound. It was slow at first, but as my clothes dragged across the chalky surface of the limestone, I quickly passed the point of no return. There was nothing to grab and no way to slow my descent. Any chance of landing safely was predetermined by my initial shift and the physics of friction.

Then I was falling.

I hit the ground and rolled out onto the crushed granite driveway. My joints were jarred from the impact and probably would have hurt enough to take my breath away if not for the virus. Everything felt suddenly stiff but nothing felt broken. I was on my back and rolled quickly onto my stomach and pushed myself up to my knees, pulling my weapon up to a firing position as I did so. Necessity makes you tough.

From above, Murphy whispered, “Is that crushed granite any softer to land on than the grass?”

“Yes,” I lied.

A sliding sound announced Murphy’s decision to join me, and a second later he grunted when the ground knocked the wind out of him.

“Damn,” he groaned after a deep breath, not making any effort to move from his prone position. “That sucked.”

I could no longer see the infected that were on the second terrace down. They either didn’t see us when we were on the wall or weren’t interested. They didn’t come after us.

“What first?” I asked. “Do we try to get the gates open or check the house?”

Murphy rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself to his hands and knees. “Did I say that sucked?”

“Yep.”

“There are lights on in the house,” Murphy said.

“Solar power,” I suggested.

“Convenient.”

“Yep.”

Murphy got to his feet, looked around, and then pointed to a security camera mounted on the corner of the house. “If somebody is still inside, they know we’re here.”

That made me uncomfortable. I looked around again, and now that I was looking for them, I spotted several cameras. “What do you think?”

Murphy said, “I’m with you. I don’t think there’s anybody home but we need to check it out before we try to figure out the gate.”

“Let’s go.” I jumped up and started a jog up the driveway with no cover except the fading light of evening. Murphy huffed loudly behind me.

At the end of the driveway, I angled across to the corner of the garage and stopped beside the wall, partially hiding myself from the house. Murphy came to a stop, breathing heavily beside me.

An old, two-door Mercedes convertible with oversized spinner rims and low-profile tires sat in the courtyard. I shook my head. “What a way to fuck up a car.”

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed.

Following the line of the curved garage, I spotted a set of double doors at the other end. That was a people entrance. The doors were decorative, after a modern fashion, but still managed to look formidable.

“You wanna try the doors?” Murphy asked.

“Might as well,” I answered. “If there’s someone in there, they know we’re here. They haven’t done anything yet, but if we sneak around, they might think we’re more of a danger than we are.” I walked out onto the courtyard and followed the curve of the garage.

“I’ll cover you,” Murphy said from behind.

At the first garage door, I checked to see if it would open, but was immediately befuddled. There was no exterior handle. The door was made of long metal slats that could, I presumed, roll up to the ceiling inside. I pushed it with my hand. If felt weighty and solid. This was no ordinary sheet metal garage door. Without even the smallest gap into which to push my fingers, I pressed my hands flat against the metal and pushed upwards. It didn’t budge, nor did it flex. It may as well have been a solid wall. I shot a look back at Murphy.

He wore a questioning expression, but refocused his attention on the house.

I bypassed the other five garage doors without stopping to test them. Once I reached the double door entrance, I was again stumped. The doors stood nine solid, patinated feet tall. I pushed one, then the other. Neither rattled in the slightest, nor were there handles to pull.

I looked back at Murphy and shrugged.

He returned the gesture.

A railing ran from the corner of the garage, from just beside the double doors, around a third of the plaza’s circumference. It kept people from falling off of the plaza and into the ravine that separated it from the house. Halfway along the garage wall, a breezeway extended out toward the house’s front door. There was no way to reach it from the outside.

I stepped back and looked up at the roof of the garage.

Crap.

The eaves of the roof stretched out at least three feet from the wall and were at least ten feet up. I’d need a ladder to get up there.

I went over and peeked around the corner again.

Double crap.

Even if I did get on the roof of the garage as a means to get onto the roof of the breezeway, I wouldn’t be able to get to the house. The roof of the breezeway was a tall V-shape, with a wide curved peak. Like the coppice on the walls, only made of smooth metal, it would be impossible to grip. Worse still, there was no way to get from the roof down to the house’s entrance without pulling some kind of crazy Spiderman move.

I looked back at Murphy, threw up my hands and shook my head.

He waved me back over.

I jogged back.

“Let’s go out behind the garage and see what we can see,” he suggested.

“Yeah.”

I followed Murphy along the featureless garage wall, around the corner, and down the slope of the mountain. We descended along the back wall of the garage, which grew taller and taller as we went down. At the opposite corner, we came out onto one of the terraces that formed the ravine between the garage and the house. The breezeway was fifteen or twenty feet above us by then.

“That sucks.” Murphy was not thrilled.

I didn’t say that I’d expected that, though I did. “We probably need some ladders to get up there. We may have to go back out and ransack the neighborhood.”

“It’s almost dark,” Murphy countered. “Let’s check around the other side of the house. If there’s no way in, I think it might be best if we all hop the wall and just camp here in the grass tonight. It won’t be comfortable but it’ll be safe.”

He was probably right, but the idea of trying to sleep on the ground with the fire ants and the scorpions didn’t sound like any kind of rest to me. On the other hand, when was the last time I’d had a full night’s sleep?

We made our way around to the side of the house and then to the back. The last colors of the sunset were fading from the western horizon. Below us, the terraces were separated by vertical walls of stacked limestone five or six feet tall.  Above us, the back porch of the house was too high up for any kind of ladder that we’d likely be able to scrounge from neighbors’ garages. Whoever had designed the house had designed it to have only one way in, over the catwalk.

We followed the wall back around to the other side of the house. The bulk of the two acres spread out below us on the terraces. The four infected we’d spotted earlier were at the far end of the terrace above us, near the car entrance, still following the mower.

“We need to take those Whites out before we get the others,” Murphy suggested.

“Okay.”

We climbed up a short terrace wall to get up to their level. From there, Murphy led the way down. I drew my machete as we went. He pulled his hatchet and held a knife in his other hand. I reached for my Glock as a backup weapon and recalled that I’d given it to Steph.

As we closed on the infected, the mower made a turn and followed the wall at the back edge of the terrace, leading the four infected toward us.

“The security dudes first,” Murphy whispered. “As we pass, I’ll take number two, you take number one.”

“Okay.”

The Whites were following each other in a tight formation, so instead of following directly behind Murphy, a position that would have left me no room to wield my machete, I stepped to my left, so that I was jogging directly at the oncoming lawnmower.

The infected saw us, but didn’t alter their behavior. We were just like them, two more Whites following one another across the grass. At least that’s what they thought, until Murphy came up beside guard number two and smashed him across the head with his hatchet.

As soon as I saw Murphy move, I slashed guard number one across his throat. He gushed blood and fell.

Guard number two was down, but wasn’t dead. Murphy’s hatchet was stuck in the guy’s skull at an odd angle and he was trying to get up. The kid was lunging at Murphy, but I was too far back to help. At the last second, Murphy jabbed and drove his knife up through the kid’s larynx.

In that moment, I pulled my machete up for another swing and punished guard number two for not dying right away. I caught him across his left shoulder and he rolled over, unable to support himself any longer with that arm. He rolled onto his back, his teeth still gnashing at Murphy’s ankle, until my machete cleaved his face and he died.

Looking up from that, I saw Murphy pulling his knife from the kid’s blood-spewing throat.

The naked, limping woman was howling and doing her best to close the gap between herself and Murphy. It only hastened her death as Murphy kicked her hard in her good leg and she went down. My machete ended her struggles, too.

With darkness in my eyes, but victory in my heart, splattered with another layer of fresh blood, I looked at Murphy. He shone his twisted grin back at me. It was gruesome, disgusting work. But winning a life or death struggle left you on an emotional high with a contradictory weight of guilt that was hard to reconcile.

“You all right?” Murphy asked.

I nodded. “You?”

“Yeah.”

The teenager made a gurgling sound and refocused our attention as his soon-to-be lifeless body struggled to breathe. Aside from the blood flowing from his mouth, nose, and throat, he looked normal. Just a regular kid, whose only concern a week before had been looking cool for his friends and getting his hands into the jeans of the cute girls at school. Now, he was dying on his lawn.

His gurgling went on, accompanied by raspy breaths as his empty eyes stared at the stars and blinked. Murphy stepped back beside me and looked down at the kid. I didn’t see Murphy’s face, but the change in his breathing told me he was as troubled as I was. Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke as first five, then ten minutes ticked by, while the kid so very painfully, very slowly finished dying.

When the last noise gurgled out of the kid’s slashed throat, the last light of the sun had gone from the sky, and the crickets chirped loudly into the hollow night.

In a hoarse voice, Murphy said, “We should go.”

Some were easy. Some were hard. Some were really hard. I asked myself how many infected I needed to kill before I would stop paying an emotional toll.

I climbed the short wall to the next tier and froze. “You know what?”

“What?” Murphy was immediately alert and looking around as he brought his rifle up.

“That’s the kid’s car up there.”

“That fucked up Mercedes?” Murphy asked.

I nodded and jumped down to the grass beside the kid and started going through his pockets. I found his billfold, of no use to me. Then I found his keys. I pulled them from his pocket. They glimmered in the light of the half moon as I looked up at Murphy and tried to smile. “Bingo.”

“House keys?” He asked.

I nodded. “And the car. I’ll bet he has a garage door opener in the car.”

“Fuck, yeah,” Murphy said with as much enthusiasm as could be mustered.

Chapter 24

“Zed, why don’t you run up there and check out the dude’s car? I’ll go let Dalhover know what’s up.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m sure they’re wondering by now.”

Together we clambered up the terrace walls and took off in our separate directions.

The run back across the property took an unexpected toll. When I reached the flagstones of the courtyard, I was breathing heavy, sweating rivers, and dragging my feet. I realized that I’d been pushing myself way too hard for too many days. I needed sleep, a full night of it, maybe a few. I bent over, putting my hands on my knees to catch my breath, and looked down along the line of the wall. Murphy was agitated and walking up and down in front of the section of the wall that we’d entered over. Uh oh. Something wasn’t right.

What do to? Run back down the hill and shout futilely at a wall, or proceed with the plan? We had no way to get back over the wall. I put my hopes on the Mercedes and ran as fast as my tired legs would carry me. When I got close to the car, I fumbled with the keys and then pressed the single worn button on what looked like a car’s keyless entry fob.

Click.

The noise didn’t come from the car. I looked to my right, at the double door entrance at the end of the garage.

“Oh.”

It clicked again. Relocking itself, I assumed.

I pressed the button again and the door clicked again. Sweet.

The door’s locking mechanism clicked again as I jammed the most likely-looking key on the ring into the old Mercedes’ door lock. Luck. I hopped in and a few seconds later, cranked the starter and the German engine purred.

Something was actually going right. Hard to believe.

With the headlights off, the agile little car zipped around the curve of the courtyard and crunched loudly on the crushed granite driveway. In seconds, I was rolling down my window and skidding up next to Murphy. His face was as worried as it had been the day we’d stormed into his mother’s house. In a taut voice he said, “No answer. I checked up and down the wall.”

“This is the spot where we came over.” I yanked a three-button garage door opener off the visor and showed it to him. I’ll bet one of these opens the gate.”

The wall on the front side of the house ran in a straight line that paralleled Mt. Bonnell Road. At one corner was the gate near where we’d parked the Humvees. Perpendicular to the front wall, and through the gate, was what I guessed was a long section of the driveway, that ran along the side wall of the property for eight or nine car lengths. That section of the driveway was blocked off from the main compound by another wall. At the far end of that section was an interior gate that matched the gate to the outside.

Murphy ran toward that gate as I drove toward it, pressing button two as I went. I didn’t know how the remote was programmed, but button two made sense. Button one for the exterior gate. Button two for the interior gate. Button three for the garage door. Or vice versa. Either way, two was the answer.

Over the revving engine, I heard the mechanical click from some large piece of machinery. The interior gate started its slow slide open. I killed the engine, pocketed the keys and ran with Murphy through the widening gap.

To my right, as I passed through the gate, I saw a guard shack built into the back wall. Beside that was parked a small black pickup truck. A peek through the shack’s windows revealed that it was empty. Good.

I caught up with Murphy as he ran down the length of the walled  gauntlet and I pressed the first, then the third button. Nothing happened.

“Fuck.”

I stopped and looked down at the three-button controller. I pressed button one, then three again.

Murphy stopped and looked at me with eyes full of anxious, silent questions.

Looking back at the door still open behind us, I quickly deduced that the outside door might not open until the interior door was closed. From a security perspective, that made sense. I pressed button two and the interior door started to close. With exaggerated body English I urged the interior gate to close while Murphy ran toward the exterior gate to wait.

Paranoid fucking owners.

But that was a good thing, assuming we could take control of the place.

The interior gate finally locked into place and I tried button one again as I ran toward the outer gate and was rewarded with the metallic sound of the outer gate sliding to the left.

As soon as the gap was wide enough, Murphy squeezed through. I followed him onto the moonlit dirt road between the compound wall and the cedar forest. Once through, I paused and thumbed the remote. As the gate stopped and reversed its motion, Murphy rushed toward the dark shapes of the Humvees parked along the wall.

I waited for the gate to come to a close before proceeding. It wouldn’t do to have any Whites running into the compound while we weren’t looking. Once the sound of the gate’s mechanism silenced, I heard disturbing noises coming out of the darkness up the gravel road: scuffling, shuffling, and sobbing.

Shit.

I ran toward the murky shadows by the Humvees and saw a cluster of black figures struggling in the dark. My rifle was up and I was ready to shoot, but as I drew closer, the details resolved.

What the hell happened?

Chapter 25

“Dammit,” I hissed, as I came in close.

Murphy was engulfing Mandi in his big arms.

Steph lay on the driveway, sobbing and trying to give instructions to Dalhover, who was working at trying to stop the bleeding on her neck, or shoulder, I couldn’t tell.

The other soldier, the guy whose name I’d never learned, lay face down on the caliche in a mess of blood and brains with his feet and legs still in the Humvee.

Kneeling down beside Steph, I asked, “What the fuck?”

Dalhover looked over at me with his permanently sad face and rasped, “Jackson turned and attacked Nurse Leonard.”

I grabbed Steph’s hand and leaned over. She was frightened and hyperventilating. Tears flowed.

She gasped, “I…I…don’t think…it’s bad...We…need…to stop…the…bleeding.”

“We will,” I said as calmly as I could fake. I looked over at Dalhover.

“It’s a nasty bite,” he told me. “Tore off part of the trapezius near her neck. It’s bleeding like crazy, but… I think we can stop it. This is a military first aid kit. The gauze has a coagulant in it.”

“Steph,” I said, leaning over and looking into her panicked eyes, “can we move you inside? Do we risk making it worse?”

She shook her head immediately. “No risk… Move me… Keep…the…pressure on…the…wound.”

“Okay.” I took a microsecond to collect my thoughts and devise a plan. I jumped to my feet and looked around. “Mandi, you come here and keep the pressure on Steph’s wound. Murphy, you pick her up and get in the passenger side of Dalhover’s Humvee. Dalhover, you drive it. I’ll take the first one. You follow me in. Let’s go. Now.”

They all jumped at my command. I ran to the Humvee in front and got into the driver’s seat. I looked back. All the others were getting loaded up. With the engine started, I pulled forward and pressed button number one on the remote. The gate started its slow slide open while Dalhover’s Humvee came up behind me.

Once the gate opened wide enough, I turned right and drove quickly inside, pulling all the way to the end of the gauntlet with Dalhover behind. I pressed button one again and the exterior gate obediently stopped, then reversed direction.

Again, I urged it forward. “C’mon.”

But it didn’t close fast enough.

First one, then two more infected came running through the shrinking gap and pounced on Dalhover’s Humvee.

“God dammit.”

I jumped out, drew my machete, and ran to the back corner of my Humvee. The gap in the door was almost closed. Another infected had just run through. I spotted movement through the gap in the gate. Whites were running through the cedars toward the opening, probably drawn by the noise of the opening and closing.

The time for machetes was past. Time to think clearly.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

There were four in the walled gauntlet and more on the way. I wanted to shoot those running for the door. Getting the door closed with the minimum number of infected inside had to be a priority. An open gate and an unknown number of Whites inbound, were the first ingredients in the recipe for disaster.

But fast moving targets in the dark over seventy feet away were targets I’d likely miss. And once I pulled the trigger, the ones already inside would charge. I only had one choice but I needed to be goddamned quick about it.

I pointed my rifle at the closest of the infected, the one trying to get through Dalhover’s door. He wasn’t more than six feet away. I fired and his chest erupted in a fountain of blood. The two infected on top of the Humvee immediately sprang at me. The female led and fell over the windshield. She spider-crawled across the hood, scraping her knees and palms to blood in her hurry to taste my flesh. She caught two rapidly fired bullets, one in the head, and one through the throat. Without missing a beat in my firing rhythm, I hit high on my next shot, but the fourth caught the next White in the shoulder, spinning him over the other side of the Humvee.

The running guy was closing fast, but Dalhover swung the Humvee door open at the last second and the running White collided with it and fell. Two shots accompanied by muzzle flashes from behind the door told me that that the infected was dead.

I looked back toward the gate. “Damn.” It had reversed direction after hitting an infected who was down, but struggling through. Apparently a safety feature built into the closing mechanism had reversed it.

I ran toward her, firing as I did.

Bam, bam, bam.

All three shots missed.

I stopped and steadied my gun. She was up and running at me with wild eyes and chomping teeth.

Breathe.

I pulled the trigger again, once, twice. She fell.

I reached into my pocket and fingered the remote again, pressing all the buttons. The gate stopped and reversed again.

I ran toward the closing gap.

I saw two more infected men jump over the big stone blocks that bordered the drive, running at me. I fired again and again and again, four shots at the two runners to get one down, but the gate closed. The last White outside hit the metal gate with a loud bang then went quiet, knocked out by his own anxious stupidity, perhaps.

“Jesus.” I gulped a deep breath and looked around. Dalhover was out of his Humvee and on the other side. He shot two more times and that last wounded White was dead.

I listened. Somewhere out there, I heard the sound of a few infected, screaming. I couldn’t gauge the distance with the walls, but they were few and far enough away that I felt safe for the moment.

Dalhover hurried around the back of his Humvee and checked each body as he went.

“All dead?” I asked as I ran by.

He nodded.

I pressed button two on my remote and the interior gate slid slowly open. I hopped into my Humvee and as soon as the gap was wide enough, I drove in. Once through the gate, the Humvee’s tires chewed up some of the lush green sod as I drove it around the little convertible I’d left on the driveway.

With both Humvees through, I fingered button two, then waited to watch the gate close and stop.

God damn.

With Dalhover behind, I sped up to the courtyard in front of the garage. I slowed once my tires hit the flagstones and I pressed button three. The door on the end of the garage, the furthest from the breezeway, opened and exposed a well-lit empty spot. I pulled in and to my left I saw an old blue mid-sixties Corvette convertible with the top down. To the left of that sat a Tesla.

I jumped out and ran past those two cars and a Bentley, then passed an empty space. At the other end of the garage sat a very shiny Mercedes. It was silver, sleek, and expensive as hell. That much was clear. It was also clear that it wasn’t locked.

I flung the door open and hopped into the driver’s seat, realizing immediately that I didn’t have the keys to start it. I wanted Dalhover’s Humvee in the garage and the Mercedes out, but I had no way to move it. I jumped out of the Mercedes and ran back up to the garage door that I’d left open.

Murphy, carrying Steph, came in with Russell who was glued to Mandi’s side, and Dalhover behind. I pressed the button on my remote and the garage door closed. Then, it was silent except for our labored breathing and Steph’s pained, soft moans. We were safe, but somehow, that concept didn’t sink through to attenuate our need for urgency.

Realizing suddenly that all eyes were on me, I said, “C’mon.” I hurried back toward a pair of double doors at the other end of the garage. They matched the two I’d seen outside, so I deduced that they must open onto the breezeway to the house. Once at the doors, I stopped. There was no knob. Of fucking course, it had no knob. “Really? Every fucking tiny little thing.”

I glanced at the faces of the others. They were expectant, anxious.

Fuck.

I jammed a hand into my pocket and pulled out the old Mercedes keys. The key fob with the other remote. That had to be it. I pressed that button and the door clicked and swung open. As though I’d planned it all along, I held it open and ushered the others through. As we hurried across the breezeway, the door clicked shut behind us.

A very roomy patio was inset into the house at the other end of the breezeway. Flowerpots of every size held tropical plants and flowers. The front door was way oversized compared to any house I’d ever been in. It was constructed out of black iron in an ornate pattern of ivy and flowers, with a sheet of glass behind. It had a large iron handle.

A handle. Thank God.

I pulled on the handle, but it didn’t budge. I tried the key fob again. A welcoming click followed. I pulled on the handle and we all stepped into the immeasurable comfort of an air-conditioned house.

Chapter 26

“Damn,” Murphy muttered.

The entryway was set on a dais four steps above the biggest living room I’d ever seen. It was a vast expanse of light-colored wood floors, modern furniture, stark white walls, and widely dispersed abstract art. The most stunning feature was the two-story wall of windows stretching around the convex curve on the back of the house.

Through the windows, the sky glowed a faint purple along the horizon. The black hills across the river were dotted with the tiny stars of solar-powered landscape lights and occasional fully lit houses. The wide Colorado River shimmered far below in the moonlight and stretched out around a bend heading west and south.

“Wow,” Mandi said.

To our left, a dining room held a very long table that looked to have been sliced vertically from a three-hundred-year-old tree and spanned enough length to seat twenty. To our right, a wide staircase of the same light-colored wood as the rest of the house rose and sank at intricate and unexpected angles like something designed by M. C. Escher.

Somewhere up those stairs, footsteps echoed.

We all shared a look. The house was not empty.

I nodded to Murphy, still with Steph in his arms. He backed into a corner to the left of the door. Mandi did the same. Thankfully, Russell stuck with her. Perhaps he’d tired of my abandoning him.

Dalhover tracked the barrel of his rifle back and forth across all the spaces, keeping an eye out for movement. That left the stairs for me, so I positioned myself at the foot of the staircase and waited.

The clomping footsteps above were awkward, careless, and urgent. It had to be a White, alerted to our presence by the sound of the opening and closing of the door. I reached again for a pistol that wasn’t there, and thought of taking back the one I’d given Steph. She was in no shape to use it.

Too late.

Through the gaps between the steps I saw jeans, a turquoise t-shirt, and white skin. The White was on the stairs. In no time, it tromped down, made its way around the last sharp corner, and howled.

She was a short, stout, Hispanic woman with her black and gray hair pulled back in a bun. She had blood smeared through the wrinkles on her face and down the front of her tent-like t-shirt. I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t trip, stumbling and running as she was. Looking past my alabaster skin, she focused on Dalhover and rushed toward him, which made my task easy.

I stepped to the side and as she passed, swinging my machete around and catching her across the back of the neck. My machete, wedged between her vertebrae, was yanked out of my hand when she dropped. I reluctantly let it go, raised my M4, and pointed it up the stairs.

The paralyzed woman struggled to breathe as she bled out at my feet. I listened for more noises in the house, but couldn’t make anything out with the woman’s mouth making dying noises below me.

It stopped.

I glanced down to see Dalhover’s knife sticking out of the side of her head. He was standing back up and raising his weapon. Problem solved.

The relative silence revealed a noise somewhere down the stairs. Dalhover heard it, too. It was a muffled, thumping sound. We listened for a few moments longer. The sound wasn’t getting closer. It definitely wasn’t getting farther away. Someone was trapped somewhere below.

“Hey,” I called into the house, hoping to draw any more infected to us.

Still, the muffled thumping from below.

“Hey.” We waited.

I gave it a few more minutes and shouted again, “Hey.”

Nothing but the thumping.

Dalhover quietly told me, “We need to clear the house.”

I nodded my agreement, then looked back at Murphy. “You got this?”

“Yeah.” He laid Steph on the floor and brought his weapon up. Mandi kneeled down beside Steph to keep the pressure on her wound. Russell kneeled beside her. Steph seemed stable, not calm, but not hyperventilating anymore.

I looked at Dalhover with raised eyebrows. Which way first?

Dalhover tilted his head to his left and moved into the dining room. I followed. It was clearly empty, but there was a doorway at the far end, on the right.

Dalhover hurried down one side of the long table. I went down the other. Glancing to my left through the windows, I saw the walled gauntlet we’d driven through and the curved terraces of the lawn. The bodies of the two security guards, the naked woman, and the boy lay down there. But the only movement came from the lawnmowers.

Dalhover stopped against the wall beside the doorway into the kitchen. From across the dining room, I walked forward slowly, scanning across the kitchen in an arc. It was empty. I nodded the all-clear to Dalhover and he jumped through the doorway and down five steps to the kitchen’s tile floor.

I hurried across and joined him.

The under-cabinet lighting gleamed off the stainless steel counter tops and smooth black lacquer cabinets. Dalhover was moving left around the central island and opened a door to a pantry. A light came on automatically as the door swung. From where I stood it appeared to be large, but sparsely stocked.

Dalhover grunted something unintelligible and closed the door. He hurried over to the two refrigerators built side by side into the cabinetry. He opened one, then the other, bathing himself in the glow of the refrigerator lamp. Upon closing the second, he looked at me and his sad eyes turned angry. “Goddamned vegetarians.”

The far wall of the kitchen was just an extension of the floor-to-ceiling windows we’d seen from across the living room, but only half the height. There was apparently a room above the kitchen.

A long, stainless steel bar separated the kitchen from the living room and was lined with a row of barstools. I followed Dalhover around it and into the living room. On the other side of the glass ran a balcony the length of the house. Nothing out there but patio furniture.

The living room had plenty of furniture, but was devoid of anything alive. On the back wall of the living room, there were several doors and the entrance to a hall. Above those rooms, the doors on the upstairs rooms, swung out to an open hallway that ran the length of the house.

The first door off the living room led into an empty bathroom. The next, a library with a desk and more couches. Down at the end of the living room, a short hall opened up to a washroom on the right, a maid’s quarters on the left, and a downstairs guest room.

A narrow stairway in the washroom led us upstairs, where it came out beside a linen closet. From there we walked into the master bedroom, which took up one whole end of the house. It, of course, had the requisite floor-to-ceiling windows, along with a bathroom that might better be labeled a spa. It was larger than my apartment and decorated in dichroic glass tiles and translucent glass bricks. Off of that were two closets large enough to garage a car.

“Jesus,” I muttered to Dalhover.

“Yeah,” Dalhover answered. It was good to be rich.

We came out of the master bedroom onto the upstairs walkway, and I glanced down into the living room. Nothing moved down there, but the muffled thumping from somewhere downstairs could still be heard.

The first door led to a gym. No infected there. Another bathroom was empty. Next, a guest room with its own bathroom proved empty.

We crossed a catwalk near the stairs, and Murphy, Mandi, and Russell silently watched us pass.

The room at the other end of the catwalk had to be a kid’s room, probably the one we’d killed on the lawn. It looked like a cross between the master suite and a teenager’s room. Great views, enormous bathroom, cavernous closet. Our shock over the opulence was starting to wear off, and the stark reality of life’s unfairness was sinking in.

Satisfied that the second floor was clear, I followed Dalhover back to the stairs. Above us, the stairs climbed up to a landing with a glass door that opened to the outside.

“Up or down?” I whispered.

Dalhover shrugged, “The noisy one downstairs isn’t going anywhere. It’s the quiet ones that worry me right now.”

I whispered down to Murphy from the catwalk, “We’re going up. Are you cool?”

“I got it, man.” Murphy refocused his attention down the barrel of his rifle, which was pointed at the stairs.

Dalhover and I climbed.

Once at the top, looking through the glass door, I said, “I’ll go out first. You stay inside. I wanna be sure the door doesn’t lock us out.”

“Yeah,” was Dalhover’s reply.

I went outside and let the door close behind me. It closed with a click. I retried it and it opened.

Finally, a normal door.

Dalhover came outside with me.

On the roof, a large swimming pool was surrounded by pergolas, from which hung rows of hoses designed to spray a cooling mist over the tanning chairs.

I walked around the counters of an outdoor kitchen and looked over the rail at the edge. Dalhover’s Humvee sat undisturbed in the courtyard, just as we’d left it. The garage’s roof was a solid mass of solar panels. “I wonder if that provides enough electricity to power the whole house.”

“I hope so,” Dalhover answered.

After walking the roof’s perimeter and satisfying ourselves with the view of the property from the top, we let ourselves back inside and headed downstairs. We passed Murphy on the main floor with a nod and proceeded down.

At the bottom, the stairs flared wide into an expansive room set up like a theater lobby. Above a curtained entrance to what could only be a home theater, a marquee surrounded in little golden bulbs advertised some movie I’d never heard of. A snack bar complete with soda machine, popcorn machine, and candy counter stood off to the side. A pair of restrooms marked ladies and gents opened out of one wall.

One wall of glass panels separated the brightly lit faux lobby from the dim light of a wine cellar. An arched doorway of old-looking wood opened to a tasting area that was flanked by a dozen dark wooden shelves, full of bottles. The cellar was bigger than most of the liquor stores I’d been in, and I’d been in a lot. There was no one inside.

Dalhover and I shared a look. I was trying to do the math in my head. How much more money than me did the owner of this house have? I guessed something similar was going through his mind.

I looked around again. The sound that had been thumping from down there had stopped. But there was a White around somewhere.

The two restrooms had open entrances with angled halls inside, just like you might find in a theater. The entrance to the theater itself was draped with a heavy curtain. If we were going to get surprised by a White rushing out, it would be from either the restrooms or the theater. The doors, we’d hear opening.

I nodded to the theater and Dalhover gave me a minimal expression of affirmation. He stepped over to the side of the entrance, and put a hand on the curtain. I understood his intent and centered myself in front of the curtain, rifle at the ready.

He slowly drew the curtain back.

Beyond, I saw several rows of plush recliners facing a movie screen at least a dozen feet wide. Just as in the rest of the house, night-lights held the room in a dim glow. Nothing moved, so I proceeded cautiously in, looking left and right in rapid succession as I passed the curtain. No White was waiting there to ambush me. The walls, I noticed, were decorated with an assortment of movie posters, all featuring the actress Sarah Mansfield.

Oh, shit.

I connected the face of the naked woman on the lawn to the smiling face on the posters. This was her house. I’d killed Sarah Mansfield, hacked her to death with a machete.

…And watched her infected son drown in his own blood.

Of course, I didn’t know Sarah Mansfield, but her death felt personal. I’d seen so many of her movies—even finding some private satisfaction while I re-watched a particularly racy movie of hers when I was alone in my room—that I felt like I knew her.

I felt bad. The sadness was coming to crush me. Was it Sarah’s death, or was her death just a release valve for all the bottled up shit from the past few weeks?

My eyes welled up.

No.

No time for that now.

Stuff it down.

Put it somewhere dark.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

Breathe.

Move the feet. Focus.

A quick circuit through the fat leather chairs proved the theater empty, and I exited. The restrooms were next, and I followed Dalhover into the ladies’ and then the men’s. Both were free of infected.

Back in the lobby again, I whispered, “This is Sarah Mansfield’s house.”

“The Sarah Mansfield?”

Before I could answer, a metal door to our left thumped with the sound of a fist pounding it from the other side. Well, that answered that question, and the next question. That was the source of the sound, and whoever was making it did know we were there.

Dalhover took up a position by the wall and off to the side, with his rifle leveled at the door. Just to be certain, I knocked on the door and said, “Hey.”

Fists on the other side went nuts and the door shuddered under their violence. It had to be a White.

I looked over at Dalhover. “This is going to be fun.”

He looked at the door, then back at me, all business.

I wished I had my pistol. I wished I’d taken the time to retrieve my machete. Alas, I only had the M4. Not the best weapon for very close quarters. I drew a deep breath and turned the knob slowly. The locking mechanism slid on lubricated brass, and as soon as the catch was free of the strike plate, I pushed.

The pounding stopped, and big white fingers immediately snaked around the edge of the door, flinging it back and dragging me off balance in the process.

I tried to raise my rifle as I fell, but an enormous beast of a man pounced out of the room, and with a brutal swipe of his arm, knocked my weapon away. Before I could react, two apelike hands gripped my head and pulled my face up to his gaping maw.

Putrid breath. Brilliantly white teeth. Black eyes. And I was a rag doll, too slow to keep the bellowing monster from ripping my face off.

Terror.

Dalhover yelled something. I may have heard gunshots. But those teeth were coming at my face and I could do nothing to stop them.

Then, in what looked like a thoughtful pause, the man looked up and down my white face, notched up to a new level of frustration, and discarded me. He tossed my head—thankfully with the rest of me still attached—as though he were passing a basketball, and it bounced off the hard floor in a similar fashion. Through the stars in my eyes, I saw the rabid mountain gorilla leap across the lobby and bound up the stairs.

Dalhover’s rifle erupted. Wood splintered. Sheetrock exploded with bursts of dust. Metal sparked.

The White disappeared upstairs.

Three staccato bangs were followed by three more, then the sound of a heavy body hit the wall and I watched as the giant man tumbled back down, bouncing on stairs until coming to a stop with the loud slap of skin on tile.

Dalhover wasted not a second. He crossed the lobby and smashed the butt of his rifle into the man’s skull. One, crunch. Two, crunch. Three…  The sound of bone mashing into meat.

“Holy Christ.” I tried to pull myself up off the floor, but ghostly hues of color and shadows swam across my vision. I blacked out.

Chapter 27

That tenuous state of awareness that lives between sleep and consciousness lasts for spans of time that feel like hours, but I know can only be minutes. Some mornings, in that time before waking, I cling to gossamer pornographic dramas and lusts that feel like love. Most mornings, and often in the middle of the night, I squirm away from a faceless, suffocating monster covered in dirty, dreadlocked fur. It waits in my dreams to rend my flesh, swallow my soul, and leech my bones. They are dreams of terror and trying so, so hard to run. But my feet never move. My hands are syrupy slow. I scream through dead vocal chords. I try to drag myself through the middle realm and open my eyes, but the nightmare sucks me back, tenaciously holding on.

It was Steph’s face I saw, washed in golden, late afternoon sunlight, when I finally caught my breath and opened my eyes.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said.

I blinked.

“You almost sounded like you were…” She said the next word like she thought it might be offensive. “…Whimpering.”

It sounded like screaming in my head.

“Are you okay?”

I managed a nod.

“What were you dreaming about?”

“Nothing,” I whispered the lie. “I don’t remember my dreams.”

Steph laid her hand on my forehead then touched my face. Satisfied with whatever information she gleaned, she straightened up in her seat, but her eyes didn’t leave my face.

I noticed a bulky bandage on her shoulder and she seemed be letting her right arm rest in her lap. “Your arm…?”

“I’ll be okay,” she said, “Murphy stitched up my shoulder.”

“Murphy?”

“I’ll have an ugly scar.” She smiled.

Won’t we all?

I crooked a tiny smile and nodded. Unexpected, unexplainable tears welled up in my eyes and I clenched them shut.

Where did that come from?

“Does your head hurt?” She asked.

I nodded a lie. Well, not really. My head felt like it was made of broken glass.

A plastic pill bottle rattled and the lid burped off as Steph said, “You have a nasty bump on your head. I don’t think you have a concussion, but...I’m not positive. Can you sit up?”

Everything in the world seemed to disconnect and slide around my field of vision as I pushed myself up on my elbows and closed my eyes. Steph’s fingers touched my lips and pressed two pills between. She said, “Swallow those. They’ll help.”

When I opened my eyes again, she was bringing a straw to my lips. I drank the pills down and sucked greedily on the straw, realizing suddenly how utterly parched I felt. After the straw slurped loudly on the bottom of the empty cup, I laid my head very, very gently back on a pillow and breathed deeply.

Steph’s hand came to rest on my forehead again and stayed. “You have a fever, but that’s expected.”

“What’s my temperature?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“Ninety-nine point six.”

I sank further into the cushions. That temperature was two tenths of a degree warmer than when I’d checked it at Russell’s house. Was the virus winning its battle with my immune system? Would my brain start dying?

Steph said, “I can give you something for the fever.”

Pills wouldn’t help with that. It was the first thing everybody tried. I squinted into the brightness of the room and asked, “Sunglasses? Do you have my sunglasses?”

“Yes.” She turned and picked them up off of the coffee table she was sitting on and slipped them onto my face.

“Thanks.” Under the protection of the sunglasses, I opened my eyes wide and let them linger on her face. Her eyes were kind but determined. She was lean, like a marathoner. She wasn’t pretty, not really. Plain, maybe. But when she smiled, she lit up. I asked, “What day is it?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter anymore?”

“No,” I said, “I was wondering…wondering… Is this tomorrow?”

A touch of a smile crossed Steph’s face. “Are you asking if you got injured last night?”

“Yes. Sorry. My brains are kind of rattled.”

Steph nodded, “Yes, it happened last night.”

“What time is it?”

“Late afternoon?” Steph craned her neck to look at a clock. “It’s quarter after four.”

“Wow.” Was it the blow to my head or was I just that exhausted? Probably both. “So, no concussion?”

“I don’t think so.”

I put a hand on the back of the sofa and very, very slowly pulled myself up to sit.

“You don’t have to sit if you’re not up to it,” Steph told me.

“I want to.” I finished getting myself upright and felt dizzy. “I do not feel good.”

“Do you feel nauseous?” The concern was heavy in Steph’s voice.

“No.” I started to shake my head to clear the cobwebs, but a sharp pain put a stop to that. “I feel crappy all over.”

“Besides the bump, you’re probably dehydrated. You need to get some food in you, too. When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know. I…I had a sandwich with Russell yesterday.” Yesterday? “Where is Russell?”

“He’s with Mandi.”

“Hmm. He must be mad at me.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Long story.”

“I’ll go fix you something. Are you hungry?” Steph jumped up from the giant square coffee table and headed off toward the kitchen. My answer to the question was apparently not going to matter. So I just watched her go. Nicely fitting jeans. A clean t-shirt draped just to the waistline. Her red hair shimmering like it belonged in a shampoo commercial.

What the fuck? Am I awake?

I looked around the living room. It was modern luxury. It was orderly. The glass wall was clean. No panes were broken. I saw no smoke on the horizon. I heard no distant gunfire. I saw no Whites. I breathed in cool, crisp, clean air and savored the essence of civilization: air conditioning.

Juxtaposed against the stark cleanliness of the living room, I realized that I reeked. My clothes felt crispy with the salt of evaporated sweat and things I didn’t care to think about. I hadn’t had a shower in more days than I could count. My hair was full of so much crud that it stood at weird angles on my head.

Water was running into the sink in the kitchen as Steph leaned over a counter.

“Water too?” I asked loudly, my voice echoing in the expanse.

“All we’ll ever need,” Steph called back.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“We think it’s piped up from the river and filtered. There’s a big water system downstairs.”

“That explains why you’re all cleaned up.”

Steph smiled at me and went about her business. A blender spun loudly in the kitchen. “And you know the best part?”

“No,” I said.

“There’s a whole closet full of clothes upstairs that fit me perfectly.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

I leaned my head back on the couch, closed my eyes, and found a position that let the lump on my head rest on a soft spot. I felt sure I could get on my feet if I needed to. It would be painful. Balance might be difficult. But I’d risen to the task so many times over the past several days that I had a new concept of what I could endure.

Perhaps the apocalypse had made me a better person.

Achieve personal growth through the end of the world.

That was a silly thought. Likely the most laudable achievement in my future would be surviving the day and going to sleep in a safe place. Perhaps that was as good as it would ever get again.

The noise of my weapons scooting across the wooden top of the coffee table caused me to jerk my head up faster than was prudent. Shards of pain radiated through my brain. “Ouch.”

Steph sat down on the table in front of me. “I made you a smoothie. It’s frozen strawberries, bananas, and blueberries. There was a big jug of some kind of organic protein powder in the pantry. I put some of that in there, too.”

“Thanks.” I sipped a big gulp through the straw. “Damn, that’s good.”

Steph smiled, but it evaporated as quickly as it came.

I sipped some more.

“It’s not a very substantial meal, but there isn’t much food around,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I think Ms. Mansfield was vegan,” Steph told me. “Lots of semi-wilted fruits and veggies in the fridge, along with some tofu. Enough pasta, beans, and some sauces in the pantry for a couple of days, if we’re not too hungry. Oh, and frozen fruit in the freezer.” Steph pushed a glass of water into my free hand.

“This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” I said, only half-joking. The pureed, frozen fruit in my stomach made me realize how famished I was.

“Thanks. Cooking isn’t my forte.”

Silence settled in while I slurped. Thoughts of all that had gone on and all that was happening outside the walls started to sneak back in. Not wanting to think about any of that, I said, “You seem to be doing okay with your shoulder.”

Steph nodded, and with a confident look on her face said, “Yes, about that. I’m sorry, I kind of freaked out when it happened.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“If I stand too quickly I get a bit dizzy,” she said. “I think I must have bled out at least a pint by the time they got me stitched up.”

I shivered. “I’ll bet that didn’t feel good without anesthetic.”

“Sergeant Dalhover found a nice bottle of vodka to help out with that.” She smiled again. “I think my hangover this morning was worse than the pain in my shoulder.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there,” I said. “You know, I found a big bottle of hydrocodone in a house a couple of days ago. Murphy might know where it is.”

“He already gave me the bottle,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. So what’s the deal? What’d I miss while I was out?”

Steph looked around for a moment then said, “We’re staying in Sarah Mansfield’s house, but you know that, right?”

I grimaced. “I think I killed her.”

“The virus killed her, Zed. You just put her out of her misery.”

“That’s a nice way to think about it,” I said. “I guess that was probably her son out there on the lawn with her last night. He’s dead too.”

“I guess,” Steph answered. “I didn’t see them. I’ve been in the ward with you since they stitched me up.”

A small laugh was all I could manage. “This isn’t bad for a sick ward.”

“Actually, it’s everything for the moment. We all slept in here on the couches last night.”

“Really?”

Steph looked around the big living room. “I think everybody felt comfortable being in the same room together.”

“Did somebody stand watch?” I asked, concerned.

“I’m pretty sure. I was out of it once the hydrocodone kicked in, but they were talking about taking shifts in the video room when I passed out.”

“The video room?” That didn’t sound right at all. “You mean the theater?”

“No, not the theater.”

That puzzled me, and it showed on my face.

“That’s what Dalhover and Murphy called it,” said Steph. “I haven’t been down there yet.”

“Downstairs?”

“Yes, there’s a room for the security guards down there where they can monitor all of the video cameras. It was the room where you got…bounced around last night.”

I smirked. “Bounced around. That’s about right. How many cameras?”

“I think Dalhover said there are twenty or thirty. You can see all of the common areas in the house, anything on the grounds, and outside the wall.”

“No shit?” That was a nice surprise.

“It’s true,” Steph confirmed.

“I guess that’ll make it easy to stand watch at night.”

“Mandi is down there now,” Steph said. “Sergeant Dalhover insisted that somebody be on watch at all times.”

“So there is something to like about Dalhover.”

“He’s a good man,” she said. “He’s just surly.”

“I think he’s the saddest man I’ve ever met.”

Steph gave me a little, patronizing smile and said, “I’m going to try and take a shift tomorrow. I shouldn’t do any manual labor for a week or two, but I can take sitting in a rolling chair and watching video monitors.”

“I’m starting to have trouble focusing on what you’re saying.” I said, a little dreamily. “What were those pills you gave me?”

“Hydrocodone.”

“Oh.”

Somewhere in the next few moments, sleep stole everything away.

Chapter 28

Several days passed. Life in Sarah Mansfield’s compound was a surreal concoction of normalcy, opulence, and the separate reality of the world beyond the walls. We were showered, fed, and comfortable. We had soft beds, clean sheets, and not a single White to chase us around. But the sounds of gunshots from the city increased in frequency and drew closer each day. Whether through overwrought fears or accurate observation, it seemed the carnage was coming our way.

The memories of our experiences, all the dying, all the dead, and all the infected haunted our quiet times. We talked a lot about anything or nothing, whatever it took to keep us from staring at the walls and sinking into our thoughts. We’d all been through so much. We needed time to heal.

We distracted ourselves with the seemingly endless library of movies in the basement theater. We drank wine in the evenings and watched the panoramic sunsets over the hills across the river. All the ash and smoke in the air made for brilliant reds, purples, and oranges. The death of our world painted in spectacular beauty on the sky.

We took turns maintaining our vigil in the guardroom, watching the walls, watching for the threats that were sure to come.

I thought often about the naked horde that overran Dr. Evans’ farm. Would all the Whites eventually shed their clothes in their primal regression and band together into unstoppable, hungry armies? Would they scour the land and devour every last person before finally consuming themselves, as Jeff Aubrey’s calculations had predicted?

Were we going extinct, or did we have hope?

Perhaps hope. Murphy’s big smile was back. Mandi was still sweet. Those two had moved into an upstairs room together. The rest of us, not wanting to be alone at night, shared Sarah Mansfield’s very large former bedroom.

We had all the electricity we needed. Pretty much. The battery banks in the garage would store a few days’ worth if we kept the temperature in the house at seventy-eight degrees. Most of the lights were LEDs and used barely any electricity. Nevertheless, we removed any light bulbs that left us visible at night from across the river.

We were hidden in plain sight, with a strong motivation to stay that way.

Sarah Mansfield, movie star, activist, environmentalist, vegetarian, and paparazzi paranoiac, left us a house absent of firearms, meat, or animal products of any kind—generally a little short on edibles—but otherwise it couldn’t have been more perfect. In the long term, the terraces would be good for farming. The walls provided protection. An elevator down to a surprisingly secure boathouse gave us access to the river. And a primo surveillance system ensured that no infected hand would ever touch our walls without our knowing ahead of time.

Chapter 29

It was mid-afternoon and I had the watch. Murphy sat in one of the high-backed leather office chairs, as did I. He was busy on the computer, but keeping me company. Russell squatted by the wall behind us. The wall in front of us was covered with color video monitors, all mounted at angles to give the person sitting at the center of the monitoring desk a good view of each; one monitor for each camera. Each had a bright red LED that would light up when the motion detector attached to the camera activated.

Two forty-two-inch screens were centered on the wall directly in front of the chairs. The video feed from the small monitors would scroll across the big ones at regular intervals. Below the big screens at the center of the desk was a map of the compound that showed each camera location. The ones displaying on the large monitors would light in green. With the press of a button, any monitor could be called up to the big screens. Audio from that camera could be piped in. It was an impressive system.

On one of the big screens I was watching, two infected were a good way down the street, squatting beside a brick mailbox under the deep shade of an oak.

Murphy, with a copy of Amber’s flash drive and a laptop from the kid’s room, was busy stitching together Google satellite map images to get a full map of Austin. “Don’t let this go to your head, Zed, but it was a good idea to download all this stuff to the flash drive.”

“The maps were Amber’s idea. I didn’t think to ask for that.” I’d have preferred not to have Amber’s name mentioned. Her swollen, bloody face still haunted my thoughts and those thoughts always turned into rekindled hatred for Mark, and in the darkness of that mood, I’d entertain fantasies of how I’d slowly dismember him and listen to his high-pitched girlie screams as I sliced off his genitals one small piece at a time. I thought of stapling his lips back against his face and breaking his teeth, but leaving the painful stumps in his mouth. I wanted to flay his skin, smash his fingers with a hammer, and gouge out his eyes with a grapefruit spoon. It was a dark, twisted place of glorified revenge and torturous pain that bordered on evil. It was not a healthy place for my thoughts to wander.

“Well, we owe her,” said Murphy. “When I’m done putting this together, this map will come in real handy. Hell, it might be the only one in existence. That makes it valuable as hell.”

And because my dark mood made me feel contrary, I said, “But there’s got to be gas station maps everywhere.”

“Man, those are fine for driving, but a satellite map is a whole different deal. You see where the Walmarts are, and the food. You can see where the houses are, where the trees are for cover.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I know.”

Murphy grinned. “So you were just being a dick, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He said, “Now that you’ve got that out of your system for a few minutes, I’ve been thinking.”

“About?” I asked.

“I think we need to put together a plan to defend this place.”

“I think we don’t,” I answered.

“You’re not done being a dick yet?” Murphy asked.

“No, that’s not it. I think we let the walls keep out the infected and let the house do the rest. I don’t think we do anything.”

Murphy shook his head emphatically, “Man, that’s the pussy approach, Zed. This is a sweet place. We need to hold on to it.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Just then, Steph came in through the open door, that like most of the interior doors, we’d propped open. “What are you guys doing?”

I nodded toward the monitors, “Watching some Whites down the street.”

Steph’s casual demeanor was obliterated by an involuntary tensing. Her eyes turned worried, then fearful, then she tried to mask it, all in the gap of a second or two.

“It’s just a couple, and they aren’t doing anything right now,” I told her. “They rambled up the street a little while ago, looking for food, I guess. Now they’re resting in the shade.”

Steph relaxed and walked over to stand between the chairs.

Murphy reached up with one of his long arms and pointed them out on the monitor. “They’re way down the street. See ‘em there, just by that mailbox?”

“Yes,” Steph nodded. “I see.”

“They don’t look like a threat,” Murphy reassured.

Neither Steph nor I responded to that. For my part, I just didn’t agree. They were all threats, either active or waiting to materialize. I looked up at Steph. “I thought you were watching a movie with Mandi.”

She turned to sit on the desk in front of us. “Too sappy. I got bored.”

Murphy asked, “Is Mandi still in there?”

“She recommended it. She said it was one of her favorite movies,” Steph answered.

“She digs the chick flicks,” Murphy allowed.

We looked at each other silently for a moment then Steph stood and said, “Well, hey, I didn’t mean to interrupt you guys.”

“No, no,” I said, hurriedly. “We were just talking about defending this place. Stuff like that. Stay if you want.”

“I shouldn’t feel this way, but this place seems pretty well-defended already,” Steph said.

“That’s what I’m saying,” I agreed.

“But what do we do when they come?” Murphy asked. “Because you know they’re gonna come. It’s just a matter of time.”

“We don’t know that for sure.” Steph’s wan smile appeared. She was trying to convince herself as much as Murphy. “This place is hard to find. You can’t see it from the road unless you hike through the trees. The only way to find it is by accident.”

“Unless you’re across the river,” Murphy disagreed. “Then you just have to look up. From over there, this place probably looks like…like...”

“Like Olympus,” I concluded for him.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Like Olympus.”

“But the infected aren’t smart enough to see us from across the river, figure out how to get over here, and then find us, too.” Steph argued, “They don’t have that much mental capacity.”

Murphy shook his head emphatically. “Not according to Sergeant Dalhover. From what he says about the Smart Ones, those guys could figure it out. What we need to do is mount four or five fifty caliber machine guns on the roof. Then if those fuckers come for us, we just shred ‘em when they try to come over the wall.”

A gruff, flat voice said, “That’s a bad idea.”

We all looked at the door. Leaning on the doorjamb was Dalhover, his face stretched down into his comfortable frown. But with all of our eyes on him, he didn’t feel the need to elaborate.

“Hey, Top,” Murphy asked after a few moments of waiting. “Why are the fifties a bad idea?”

“Those walls aren’t made for defense. They’re made for privacy. Sarah Mansfield wasn’t interested in keeping an army of infected out when she built this place. She was interested in keeping the paparazzi from taking pictures of her tits.” Dalhover stopped talking and looked at us as if that were sufficient information.

It wasn’t.

I didn’t agree with Murphy, but I didn’t know what Dalhover was getting at, so I asked, “What do you mean, exactly?”

“Those are cinder block walls. Fifty caliber bullets will go right through them,” Dalhover told me.

I didn’t see a downside to that, assuming the infected were on the other side of the wall.

Dalhover went on, “A swarm of those infected will show up. Everybody will run up to the roof, all panicked and such. With no experience behind one of those guns, shooting fifty caliber bullets at the infected coming over the walls, what you’re going to shred won’t be the infected, it’ll be the trees and the walls. Then the infected will waltz right in through the gaps.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Murphy. “Every window and door in this place has those steel doors that roll down to close ‘em up. The infected can’t get through those.”

Dalhover argued, “You’ve got a lot of confidence in this house’s defenses—defenses that you didn’t design or build. You don’t know where the weaknesses are. You only see the strengths. But the Smart Ones, they’ll find the weaknesses. They did at the hospital. They’ll do that here.”

“I don’t think they’re that smart,” said Murphy.

“Doesn’t matter,” I countered.

“Why?” Murphy asked, his tone telling me that he thought I was just being a contrary dick again.

“Once we get a thousand or two thousand of them out there, they’ll creep around and dig their little fingers into every little nook and crevice.” I looked at each of them. “They’ll test every door, every window. They’ll climb up on the garage roof if they can. They’ll try to get across the catwalk roof from the garage. Most will fall off. Some might make it. Who knows? Think of it like a hacker trying to get into a computer. They set up a program that tries a million passwords and keeps on trying until one works. The Whites are like that. Whether they’re smart or not. With enough of them out there, trying and trying to get at us in here, one of them will eventually find a way. When one does, the rest will follow.”

“Yep,” Dalhover agreed.

“So what are you saying, then?” Murphy asked. “Do we just abandon the place the first time a White gets curious about the wall?”

Dalhover looked at Murphy without changing his expression in the slightest, but without giving him a response.

“Man.” Murphy was exasperated. “Top, I’m not being disrespectful. I like it here. I like sleeping in a clean bed. I like sitting in a recliner and watching movies. I like taking showers and having clean clothes. I don’t want to leave. I honestly don’t know what you expect us to do when the Whites show up.”

Dalhover thought about that for a minute. His face somehow found a way to grow even sadder, and in his gruff voice, he said, “All I know is that what we did at the hospital didn’t work, and in the end, everybody died except us two. Once we fired the first shot, all of our choices disappeared. We were just reacting and retreating. And dying.”

Steph looked down at the floor. Thinking through the problem, perhaps, or thinking about too many painful memories.

After several long moments of depressing silence, I said, “Hide and run.”

“Running and hiding is how we got here,” Murphy scoffed.

“No.” I shook my head emphatically. “I mean it as a tactic.”

“Oh, no.” Murphy dramatically lolled his head back and looked at the ceiling. “I’ve heard that tone before. You guys will want to get comfortable for the lecture.”

Ignoring Murphy’s taunting hadn’t yet produced any results, but in the absence of any other plan, I went with it again. “Those guys that killed Jerome: Murphy, do you remember what we talked about afterwards?”

Murphy wrinkled his brow. “We talked about a lot of stuff. I think that’s when we decided to go steady.” He laughed.

I pushed on. “I mean, about why those guys that killed Jerome were still alive. They’d killed a couple of hundred infected and they were still alive, trying to kill more.”

“Because they had suppressors, man.”

“Right,” I agreed, “but the silencers and the way they used them to snipe the infected—it was a new tactic, an effective tactic, to fight a new enemy, with new strengths and new weaknesses.”

“Fine, Null Spot, I’ll play along,” Murphy said. “So when you say ‘hide and run’, you don’t mean, ‘run and hide.’”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “That’s a cliché. What I mean by hide and run is that instead of fighting them head-on or just shooting them, what we do instead is hide. That’s what those snipers did, they stayed hidden, for the most part, and without giving away their hiding places, they were able to kill the infected. And the other thing we do is run away, retreat. We need to make sure that we always have a path of retreat that’ll take us to our next hiding spot. According to the math done by Jeff, every day we stay hidden, there’ll be fewer of them out there, because they’ll have to eat each other if they can’t eat us. In a year or so, there won’t be that many left. At least, there won’t be any mega-hordes like that one that overran the Evans farm.”

“We have an escape route,” Dalhover rasped. “Down the elevator and through the tunnel to the boathouse. We’ll all fit in the ski boat.”

“Zed’s right,” Steph said, with the kind of authority in her voice that people listen to naturally. So naturally, all of us looked at Steph. “We’ll fight when we have to. We’ll kill them when we have to. But we need to be prepared to run, always. That’s how we’ll survive.”

“When do we run?” Murphy asked, not quite sold on the plan.

“I’ll decide,” Steph told us, as though it were the most natural of choices.

Say what?

Murphy looked at me, as surprised as I was.

“She’s the only officer here,” Dalhover told us.

Say what again?

“Wait,” I started, but was momentarily at a loss for words.

Everybody was looking at me, waiting.

I pointed at Steph, “You’re an officer?”

“I was a captain,” she said.

“Was a captain?” I asked.

“I’m a civilian now.”

I pointed at Murphy. “And I knew you were in the Army.”

“Four years in the infantry,” he confirmed.

I looked at Dalhover.

“First Sergeant. Twenty years. Retired.”

I rubbed my hand across my face, as though that might have helped with my frustration at feeling suddenly very much like an outsider. “So, what exactly is going on here? Is Steph in charge? I’m just asking.”

“Somebody needs to be in charge,” Steph announced. “A squad of soldiers with a leader will survive where a leaderless gang of ruffians will get killed.”

“Man, I can agree with that,” Murphy added enthusiastically.

Dalhover nodded.

Steph said, “Zed, you’re a natural leader, though I don’t think you see yourself that way. You’re brave and you’re smart. But you don’t have any respect for your own life, so you do stupid, stupid, stupid things and you get lucky.”

“Do you think three stupids was enough?” I asked, a little petulantly.

“This isn’t a coup,” Steph told me. “As far as I can tell, everybody here owes you their life.”

“Uh-oh,” I interrupted. “I’m having déjà vu.”

“Grow up.” Steph didn’t yell, but her voice was as firm as a hard slap. “I respect you, Zed. And I like you. I really do. There’s nothing happening here that you’re not a part of. I think we all need somebody in charge. That’s just that truth of it. Running everything by committee will get us killed. You want to be the leader. I’m fine with that. I’ll bet my life on your instincts and your luck. Why not? You saved me. Is that what you want?”

Shit. She was being rational, authoritative, and firm. I was outclassed.

“We can vote on it. We can do anything you like,” Steph looked around at us. “I think Zed’s spot-on about the strategy. Hide and run. But, not to be sexist, that’s just not a strategy that a man is going to be good at implementing. You guys get your testosterone up and you all want to pull out your machine guns and go all Null Spot on the Whites.”

“Not you, too,” I interrupted with a feeble smile.

She said, “I think a woman is better at being able to make the choice to retreat. So if hide and run is our strategy, I think I’m the natural choice to lead us.”

Dalhover spoke up first. “I’m fine with that.”

Murphy followed immediately, showing me his apologetic face while he spoke. “I’m good with Steph.”

All eyes fell to me and frankly, I agreed. “Yeah, Steph, I can follow you.”

“Thank you.” Steph gave us a curt smile. “Just so you know, this isn’t the Army. We’re all in this together. We’ll talk about decisions as much as you feel like we need to, but when the chips are down, when the Whites are coming, we won’t have time to dicker. We do what I say and we argue about it later. Agreed?”

Nods all around.

Mandi excused herself ever so politely to get around Dalhover and came inside with the rest of us. “What’s everybody talking about?”

Chapter 30

Mandi looked at me with a face painted in several layers of empathy. “Zed, are you okay with this?”

“Steph is smart and brave, and I respect her,” I said.

“Don’t be a dick,” Murphy interrupted. It was the kind of thing a friend could say to another without starting a fistfight.

“I know it sounds that way,” I said, “I do. But I mean it. I think Steph is the right choice, the best choice. I’m good with it.” I smiled. I really was good with it. Steph was smart and I trusted her.

Mandi gave me an unnecessary hug. Still looking at me, she announced to the group, “If you guys are good with it, I am too.”

Steph looked at Dalhover and said, “Sergeant, will you put together a duty roster?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She looked at the rest of us. “We have a roster for keeping watch, but unless we want this beautiful place to turn into a pig sty, we need to start taking turns keeping it clean, sweeping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms. Do you guys agree?”

Of course, we all did.

“We’re running short on supplies. Murphy, Zed, you guys are the obvious choice to go out and scavenge. That will probably be your primary duty on the roster.”

“I’m cool with that,” Murphy answered.

“That sounds fair,” I answered. “Besides, we’re the only ones who can hide in plain sight out there. It makes sense.”

“We’re almost out of food,” Steph said. Everybody already knew that. “Zed, are you up to going out today or tonight?

I looked at the scabs on my hand and the mostly healed wounds on my arms. I ran a hand across the shrinking lump on the back of my head. “More ready than I’ve been for half the shit I’ve done in the last few weeks, I guess.”

“No, really, Zed.” Steph was all business. “We can all skip some meals if we need to. How are you feeling?”

Looking directly at her, I said, “I’m okay. Really. I’m not a hundred percent, but I’m good to go. Remember, I do have the advantage of not feeling most of the pain from my cuts and bruises. So as long as I’m not dizzy or bleeding out, I’m good.”

“You don’t need to hurt yourself or risk getting Murphy hurt because you’re trying to be the Valiant Null Spot.” She smiled at me.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not fine. I’m sure I don’t look fine, but I’m good. Murphy and I are a good team. We’ve been through some shit together. We’re both good.”

“I’ll leave it to you two to decide when to head out and where to go. But we need food…”

“Meat, if you can find it,” Dalhover spoke up, surprising everyone with the request. We were all becoming used to his economy with words.

“I’m with that, man,” Murphy agreed.

“The other priority will be a rally point,” said Steph. “We need a place to run to when this place is compromised.”

“Don’t you mean ‘if’?” Mandi asked.

“I think we can only hope for ‘if’,” I said. “But we need to plan for ‘when’.”

“I’ve got a satellite map here,” Murphy said. “Zed had Amber put it together for us, along with everything else. We can find some places along the river that might work, and check them when we go out.”

“That sounds good,” Steph told us, “but we need just one place tonight. Find one good one. We’ll try and get three or four safe houses lined up over the next week or two. The more options we have, the more likely that we’ll all live when we have to move.”

Chapter 31

The sun had slipped below the mountains west of the river an hour earlier. The sky had relatively few clouds and there was plenty of moonlight by which to navigate. I pressed the garage door opener on the boat’s dashboard and the boathouse’s door rose out of the water.

Murphy and I used paddles to push the ski boat out into the lazy current. Russell, who had re-glued himself to my side, waved a paddle to no effect except to splash the water around the boat.

“Hey, Murphy, when you guys came down here the first time, did you check under the water?”

“For what?”

“To see if someone could get in that way.”

“Yeah, man, Top jumped in the water and checked it out. There’s a metal fence from the wall all the way down to the river bottom. The biggest thing that can get in is a catfish.”

“Cool.”

Well away from the boathouse, we seated ourselves and let the current take us. The boat slowly spun and rocked. Tiny waves lapped the hull. Cicadas sounded like little monkeys with kazoos. Frogs and crickets chirped. The breeze rustled its way through the thick trees.

It was peaceful, mostly.

Heavy gunfire from Camp Mabry, easily heard from the pool deck on Sarah Mansfield’s roof, echoed off the houses on the far side of the river. It was the familiar sound of organized, well-armed people trying to hold out against the infected. It’s what the hospital sounded like before it was overrun.

Occasional staccato gunshots rang in the distance, though it was nothing like the frequency of gunshots in those first few days after the infection stomped on Austin with both feet. At first, the near constant sound of gunfire disturbed me. Now, it was a reassuring sound. It meant that there were other survivors out there. The virus hadn’t yet won.

After a long silence between us, Murphy asked, “How far downstream should we go?”

Looking around, I answered, “There’s a marina about a quarter of a mile up from the dam. I’ll start the engine when we get there.”

The plan was to exit the boathouse as stealthily as possible. Taking our new hide and run strategy into account, keeping Sarah Mansfield’s house and our presence there unknown was paramount. So we burned off forty-five minutes of the evening by drifting down the river before starting the boat’s engine. Once the engine was running, we’d glide upriver past hundreds of boathouses including Sarah Mansfield’s until we were at our destination. We’d wrap up business there, and on the way back down, cut our engine and let the current bring us home while hiding silently in the darkness.

As expected, the marina came up beside us. Murphy was sitting in the port side seat with his rifle at the ready. Russell sat on a bench seat in the stern, uninterested, as usual. The engine started easily with a muffled rumble that seemed unduly loud, but that, too, was expected.

I throttled the engine and we headed upriver.

At the bend in the river below the tan colored limestone cliffs of Mt. Bonnell, I saw the crenelated shapes of the houses along the crest and silently thanked Dalhover for his insistence on light discipline. All of them, including Sarah Mansfield’s house, were black.

Miles passed in silence. Murphy and I focused on scanning the banks for Whites lurking in the trees, but the only human forms we passed were occasional bloated bodies floating in the water.

After poring over the satellite photos of the river between the two dams, we’d picked out a house that was our first candidate for both scavenging and scouting as a possible rally point. The house was large, very large. It had two garages, enough space for four cars. It had a pool on the back porch between the house and the river. It sprawled across a large slice of riverfront property on an otherwise undeveloped isthmus, formed by the river and a wide tributary that flowed in from the north. At the landward end of the isthmus, what appeared to be a tall limestone cliff sealed it off from access through the trees. The only way on or off the property was across a gated bridge over the tributary.

The next closest houses were a group of five or six a quarter-mile away. That general area of the river was only sparsely developed, and there were many square miles of virgin forest behind it. So, although any number of infected could have wandered into the area, the indigenous infected might number only in the dozens. Depending on the depth of the water in the tributary and the height and slope of the cliffs, the place might be safe.

With a mile or two still to go, Murphy quietly said, “The river would make a good trading route.”

“You’re still on that idea?” I asked, as I steered the boat through the center of the river.

“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m not looking for a superhero job during reconstruction, like you. I told you, man, I want to take advantage of the opportunity.”

“Reconstruction?” I asked.

“Yeah, man. The post-post-apocalyptic period. You know, after everything has finished going to shit and we start picking up the pieces. That’s reconstruction.”

I looked back out across the river, thinking that I preferred the silence.

“I’m telling you man,” Murphy continued his pitch. “We’re in the position. We can make it happen.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Murphy took my lack of interest as a sign to change the subject. “So what’s up with you and Steph?”

“Nothing.” Deflection time. “What’s up with you and Mandi?”

Murphy grinned. “We have our own room and we sleep in the same bed. Is it a secret about what’s up with me and Mandi?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Then stop pretending we’re in junior high for a minute, and just answer my question.” Murphy grinned and then laughed.

“There’s nothing up with me and Steph,” I told him.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you mad because she’s the boss now?” He asked.

I laughed. “No. I honestly believe putting her in charge was a good move for us.”

“Okay, so you don’t think she’s cute?”

“I guess she’s pretty,” I said. “I mean, when she smiles.”

“So?”

“So, what?” I asked.

“What are you gonna do?”

“Murphy, she’s engaged.”

“Probably not. You may not have noticed, but damn near everybody is dead.”

“Maybe,” I said. “He was in the hospital with her. He was passed out with the fever when we left.”

Murphy was suddenly serious. “He was alive when you guys left him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t have a choice. He had the fever. He was probably going to turn. She couldn’t stay with him. If she had, she’d be dead now. We couldn’t carry him along. We barely escaped as it was.”

“That must have been hard on her,” Murphy allowed. “But we’ve all been through the shit, man. Or none of us would be here. You move on, or you die. That’s the way it is now.”

“Smile and get over it. Is that how the Murphy philosophy goes? I never got my wristband.” I put a smile on my face to try to mask the harshness.

Murphy was silent for a few moments, then said, “I like you Zed. You know that, right? But sometimes you’re just a dick for no reason at all. It’s like you wanna grow up to be a grumpy old bastard like Dalhover or somethin’.”

The boat skimmed around another long, slow bend and the silence lingered between us. I finally said, “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

Murphy slapped me on the back and said, “It ain’t nothin’, man.”

A few minutes later, he said, “You should do something about Steph, though. She’s a good one.”

“Just so we’re clear on one thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“When I get to be Dalhover’s age, I don’t want to be anything like him.”

Murphy laughed. “Man, we won’t live that long.”

Chapter 32

Murphy said, “Up there on the right, past that tree hanging over the bank.”

I followed the line of Murphy’s pointing finger and spotted it. “How can you tell?”

“That’s the boathouse from the satellite picture. It’s got that weird wooden roof.”

“I can see the boathouse,” I said, “but I can’t make out the roof details. You can see that?”

“Yeah, man. Angle over that way, Skipper.”

“Do you want to pass it and drift back?” I asked.

“No, man. Fuck that. I want to get out of this boat.”

I chuckled, “If you need to whiz, you can do it over the side.”

“No, man, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s the other thing.”

“You can sit on the side of the boat and hang over,” I said, “but if you make a mess on the hull, you’re cleaning it up.”

“Man, just pull up to the boathouse. I’ll use the bathroom inside.”

“Well, don’t forget to flush.”

Murphy ignored me after that.

At the boathouse I killed the engine and drifted the last few boat lengths toward the dock. Murphy jumped out, pulled the bow in by a rope, and tied it to a cleat. With that done, the back of the boat drifted downstream with the current, keeping it parallel to the dock.

Murphy picked up the stern rope. I shook my head, “Let’s just leave the bow line tied in case we need to leave in a hurry.”

“Okay.”

Unfortunately, with the stern of the boat not tied, it made exiting to the dock a tad tricky, but both Russell and I managed it without getting wet. Murphy was already halfway up the paved path between the house and the dock.

Underneath the pavilion-style boathouse, Russell and I hustled past a big pontoon boat and headed toward the house. We skirted the pool. Murphy already had his face pressed to a window, peeking into the dark house.

“Anything?” I whispered as we neared.

Murphy turned as we got close. “Another rich person’s bedroom.”

“Just because it’s a million dollar house on a million dollar piece of land doesn’t mean they’re rich,” I sarcastically countered.

Murphy ignored me and moved over to a door of rectangular panes of glass that gave us a view of the kitchen. It was empty as well. Murphy tried the doorknob. Not locked. He turned to me and grinned. We slipped into the darkness and were immediately alerted to the sound coming from the next room over: the familiar sounds of feeding infected.

I was turning to leave, thinking that was the prudent path, but with his pistol held close to his body and his hatchet raised, Murphy crept through the kitchen toward a wide doorway that led to the next room.

I hesitated, torn between using my M4 or the combination of the machete and the pistol that I’d gotten back from Steph. The lump was still on the back of my head. The humiliation of getting tossed about like a rag doll by that behemoth of a man still stung my pride and underscored the fragility of the invincibility lie I’d been telling myself.

But we were in the house. It was spacious with wide doorways, so it probably had wide halls. The sound wouldn’t carry far outside. And no matter how many infected were in the house, I had more bullets than they had lives. At least that’s how the rationalization went. I really wanted the power of the M4 in my hands.

I followed a few paces behind Murphy. Russell shuffled along with me.

Murphy paused at the doorway and looked at something in the darkness on the floor. He shook his head and his shoulders sagged. But he had to move. He made a hard right turn through the doorway, staying close to the wall on the other side.

With Murphy out of the way, I saw what he’d been looking at. It was a pink tennis shoe, sized for a little girl of four or five. My heart sank.

I sidled up to the doorjamb. Across a formal dining room, a ten-foot-long fish tank divided the next room, probably a living room, leaving space on either end to move from room to room. The sounds of feeding were louder: grunting, tearing, and breathing through mouthfuls of wet flesh.

Russell whimpered.

What the fuck.

Russell was staring at the shoe. His whimpering grew louder.

All sounds from the other room stopped.

Feet shuffled.

Murphy was on the move to the end of the table to cover the far entrance. I aimed my rifle at the near entrance and waited.

Russell wailed.

Might as well get things moving. I yelled, “C’mon, fucktards.”

Footsteps.

An old man, not frail, but old, with white hair, white skin, rabid eyes, and clacking teeth rounded the fish tank and took nearly a whole step toward me before I pulled the trigger and sent him falling back. To my right, Murphy was on the move. Chairs scooted. A body hit the wall.

An old woman, plump and garishly dressed in a blinding, flowered tent of a dress stepped on her dying husband as she rounded the fish tank and came at me. Three bursts from my rifle, plus her momentum, left her sprawled at my feet, bleeding out a rapidly expanding pool of red.

The sound to my right stopped.

I glanced.

Murphy stood, ready. Breathing heavily, but ready.

No more movement in front. Still, Russell wailed louder with each passing second as he cradled the shoe in his hands.

I watched my end of the fish tank, waiting for another threat, but was surprised when a fifty-pound bag of sticks hit me from behind. Balanced as I was against a frontal assault, I went down, cursing my surprise as I hit the floor.

I brought an elbow around to smash my attacker in the skull before he had time to sink his teeth in. Through layers of thin skin, bone hit bone. Once, twice, then a miss.

Russell was suddenly above me, slapping and punching at my assailant.

I felt hot breath in my ear as strong, thin arms worked their way around my throat.

Murphy’s big voice yelled, “Damn it.”

A sickening crunch of wet bone vibrated through my head as my assailant’s skull pushed hard against the back of mine. Then he went limp.

Russell still beat my attacker while I squirmed to roll it off of my back. I gathered my feet beneath me and looked down. It wasn’t a he, it was a she, a bony grade school girl with a bloody blouse and a vacant, dead stare.

Looking up, Murphy’s eyes were wide with concern.

“I’m okay,” I told him without an ounce of dignity in my voice. “Stop, Russell. Stop hitting her.”

Murphy was immediately back on alert, listening and looking in all directions.

Russell stopped beating, but fell to his knees and sobbed.

We waited there in the dining room for a good while, covering the entries in case anything else in the house should find us interesting. But nothing did. Afterwards, it took fifteen cautious minutes to search the sprawling house for others. It was empty. Nor were there any Whites on the lawn or in the empty lots next door. The isthmus was deserted.

We found ourselves back in the living room, on the other side of the fish tank, standing among the remains of five or six kids, probably the older couple’s grandchildren. Russell was on his knees among them, the tiny pink shoe still in his hands, crying like a father next to the body of his own lifeless daughter.

It was painful to see, so much so that I saw the glassiness of repressed tears in Murphy’s eyes. He’d murdered his first child just minutes before. Sure, he had been saving my life, but that just didn’t make it any fucking easier when a child’s dead eyes stared up at you from the floor, begging you for an answer to the question of why they couldn’t wake up from their nightmares. Why won’t the monsters go away? Please daddy… I’m so scared.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Move the feet.

Change the subject.

Look away.

Anything.

Murphy looked and Russell and asked softly, “You think he lost his kids?”

“Maybe in that fire,” I said.

“That would fuckin’ suck.”

“Yeah.” How hard would it be retain the full depth of human emotional pain while being completely incapable of understanding it? That was Russell’s burden, another measure of the virus’s cruelty.

Perhaps needing to redirect his attention as much as I, Murphy said, “I saw a gun safe in the library.”

“If it’s open, cool,” I said. “If not, I think we’re screwed.”

“You check that. I’m gonna go take care of some business, if you know what I mean. Then I’m going to see if I can raid grandpa’s toolbox. The guy had some serious tools in that workshop.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’ll make Dalhover happy. There aren’t many tools in Sarah’s house.”

“Nothing will ever make Dalhover happy.”

“Okay, do your business,” I said. “Then work on making Dalhover less unhappy. I’ll check the gun safe, then head upstairs and get the medicine cabinets. After, I’ll come back down and try to get Russell to help me with the pantry.”

“All right.” Murphy hurried off.

Before leaving Russell to wallow alone with his grief, I spotted a nice watch on the old man’s wrist. He wouldn’t need that anymore.

I went upstairs where most of the house’s bedrooms were located. I hurried through the rooms that appeared to have been used by the children visiting their grandparents. I stopped long enough to steal the pillowcases and backpacks. I dumped the contents of those on the beds without taking any time to look. No upside there. I also found three laptop computers and four cell phone chargers. Those weren’t at all necessary for our immediate survival needs, but could come in really handy in alleviating the inevitable boredom that was to come from being imprisoned in Sarah Mansfield’s house.

In the boat I stashed the laptops, two pillowcases full of medications raided from the master bedroom, and a couple of his and hers revolvers from the nightstands by the bed. Next, I checked the gun safe. It had a combination lock and a formidable appearance. I scratched that off the list.

Back in the living room, I went through the children’s pants pockets and found their phones. Then I took Russell by the hand and nearly had to drag him away from the carnage to help me with the pantry. Once back in the kitchen, where he could see no bodies, he started to improve.

Five cases of bottled water were stacked in the back of the pantry. We didn’t need that at Sarah’s house, but one case was going to the boat as part of our emergency supply, to be left there. The rest would stay in the pantry as part of our supply at this safe house. I also set aside several shelves’ worth of canned food for the same purpose.

Russell and I filled pillowcases with canned soups, canned meats, olive oil, pasta, and boxes and boxes of wonderfully sugary breakfast cereals, the kind that kids love, exactly the kind that was absent from Sarah’s house. We made five trips to the boat to carry it all. Once done loading, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Murphy the whole time.

Damn it.

I should have noticed sooner.

I instructed Russell to stay close and quiet. Mostly, I just hoped he would. We hurried off in the direction of the garage. After passing through a large washroom, I stood in the doorway to the garage and workshop. There were no windows in the garage. It was pitch black. I shined my flashlight around, but saw nothing. “Murphy.”

Nothing.

“Murphy.”

I went in and searched around a partially assembled antique pickup, inside, underneath, and in the bed. Murphy was nowhere to be seen. Tools were scattered everywhere. He had to have been there.

A loud noise from somewhere outside panicked me.

I reversed direction in the dark garage, nearly running Russell over in the process, and headed back toward the laundry room door. I sprinted through the house, pausing at each window I passed, looking for movement outside.

I reached the kitchen in seconds that passed like agonizing minutes. Through the windows, I was able to see out to the boathouse. I spotted a dark figure standing at the stern of the pontoon boat. I immediately thought the worst and rushed through the back door with my weapon up, aimed at the shadowy figure.

Fear didn’t occur to me in that moment. I was in Null Spot mode. If Murphy needed help, I’d help. I ran around the pool and down the slope toward the boathouse.

Getting closer and closer, I slowed. All of the detail, previously obscured by darkness and distance, resolved. It was Murphy standing by the stern of the pontoon boat.

When he turned, his big grin shone like a beacon. “Oops.”

“Oops?” I asked.

“Yeah, man.” Murphy pointed to a big red box, five feet long and three feet wide, lying on the flat deck of the pontoon boat. “I was trying to roll this toolbox onto the pontoon boat.”

“What?”

“I was trying to—”

“Why?” I asked impatiently. “We have a boat.”

“I scrounged up all the good tools in the garage, but there were a lot of them, and you never know what you’re gonna need.”

“So you brought all of ‘em?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Nice watch,” Murphy complimented me.

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

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

“Does it matter anymore?” I asked.

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

Chapter 33

We’d planned to be back at Sarah’s house by midnight, but it was just after ten o’clock. So we went upriver to check out a second location on the south bank. We left the pontoon boat at the safe house, with plans to pick it up on the way back.

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

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

“Nope.”

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

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

Murphy stood and pulled his rifle up to the ready.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Exactly.” He said it with little enthusiasm.

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

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

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

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

“Probably,” I nodded.

“If it was some kind of ambush,” said Murphy, rubbing his chin, “they would have shot us already.”

“Maybe,” I agreed.

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

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

Murphy told me, “It’s safe for us to get on the boat.”

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

“Man, it’s cool,” Murphy reassured. “Take us over there. I’m gonna check it out.”

“It’s a bad idea.” I didn’t make any move toward the throttle.

“Take us over there,” Murphy insisted.

Oh, well.

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

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

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

Chapter 34

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

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

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

“Hey, hey,” I shouted.

Russell was suddenly on his feet beside me.

What the hell was he doing?

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

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

“I fell,” Murphy yelled back.

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

The heads appeared to be conferring.

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

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

You guys?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harsh, muffled words followed between them.

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

“Slow burns?” Another female voice asked.

Well, that answered that question. They were all three girls.

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

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

“Don’t tell ‘em,” Murphy whispered.

“There are six of us,” I answered.

“Are they all like you?” she asked.

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

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

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

“Until what?” the voice was suspicious.

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

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

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

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

“Dude, chill,” I told him.

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

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

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

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

“I know,” I told him.

“What are you saying?” Amy asked.

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

Another pause and Amy answered, “No.”

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

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

The three conferred for a moment.

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

“We boil it,” Brittany answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

The other girls thanked us as well.

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, all of the girls did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Security cameras,” I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I smiled and nodded, hoping that he was right.

Chapter 35

At first, I thought it was thunder. But the sky was still clear. The wind hadn’t changed direction. Nothing was different. It was just another hot, mosquito-filled Texas night. But the rumble grew louder the further we went downriver.

Russell was growing agitated in the back of the boat. Murphy was looking up at the mountain crests on the north side of the river with worry furrowing his face.

“That can’t all be gunfire, can it?” I asked him.

Murphy slowly nodded. “It’s over in west Austin somewhere. I’m betting Camp Mabry. Sounds like they’re shooting everything they’ve got.”

“I’m glad I’m not a White over there right now.”

Murphy shook his head. “I’m just glad I’m not over there right now.”

“That’s all machine guns and grenades and stuff?” I asked.

“Yep.” Murphy was nodding again.

“I can’t even imagine how many Whites they must be slaughtering with all that.”

Murphy stood and looked off into the darkness. “I can’t imagine how many Whites are attacking them if they’re still shooting.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, as the realization of that sank in.

Murphy looked down at me with a request forming on his lips, but it didn’t need completion. I throttled forward. Noise be damned, and get the pontoon boat another night. Shit was going down. There was no time to waste.

The miles disappeared in a hurry as the ski boat slid over the smooth water. We skipped the drift phase and motored right into the boathouse. After docking, we ran up the tunnel with several pillowcases full of groceries and the extra revolver. When we exited the elevator in Sarah’s basement, Steph was waiting for us with a poker face, but with dread in her eyes.

“What’s the story?” I asked.

“Sergeant Dalhover and Mandi are on the roof—” Steph started.

“What are they doing there?” I interrupted.

“Listening.” Steph was terse.

Murphy asked, “What’s going on?”

Steph gave Murphy a stern look. “You take the video room. We don’t know yet what’s happening, but you know as well as I do that it’s big. Zed, all of the steel doors have been rolled down over the windows and the patio. We’re secure, but you take Russell and check every window and every door. Double-check the garage.”

“But we haven’t been out there,” I protested.

“Doesn’t matter,” she told me. “Double-check them all. Do it now.”

“Yes, ma’am.” That grated on me. I hated being told what to do. But she was the boss. And she was right about the double-checking. I ran toward the stairs.

“When you finish up here, go back down and double-check the boathouse.”

“Do you want us to bring up the rest of the groceries on our way back?” I asked.

Steph was surprised. “There’s more?”

I pointed to the pillowcases we’d laid by the wall. “That much and a little more.”

“Bring what you can, then come to the roof. That’s where the rest of us will be.” She turned to Murphy. “I’ll send Mandi down once we get upstairs.” Then she looked at all of us. “Stick together. Stay in your buddy pairs until this blows over. Now go.”

Murphy went to the video room. Steph headed for the elevator, and Russell and I ran up the stairs.

It took maybe thirty minutes to check all the windows, the garage doors, and the boathouse. It was a big house, but everything was as buttoned up as it could be. We were secure.

Russell and I got off the elevator on the roof to see Steph and Dalhover leaning on the rail looking east toward the sound. I looked too and saw nothing but trees.

“It’s all secure,” I told them I as I walked up.

“Thank you,” said Steph. “Double-checking all of the windows makes us more secure, you understand that right?”

“Of course,” I answered. “Mistakes are paid in blood.”

Both Steph and Dalhover gave me an odd look.

I shrugged, but didn’t think it needed explaining.

Steph said, “You’re right. We can’t afford to make any mistakes.”

“Murphy thinks there’s a battle over at Camp Mabry,” I said, diverting back to the salient issue.

“Yeah,” Dalhover agreed.

Steph pointed east over the trees. “We’ve seen flashes from explosions over there. Sergeant Dalhover doesn’t think they’re far away.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Camp Mabry is only a couple of miles that way. It sounds intense. Do you think that maybe the Army is finally here?”

Dalhover shook his head and looked back out into the night.

I didn’t pursue the point. I knew it had been a stupid question to ask.

“It sounds like it’s slowing down to me. But it doesn’t look like we’re going to learn anything up here that we can’t learn from downstairs,” Steph said. “All we’re doing is exposing ourselves to stray bullets, even if we are out of their effective range. Sergeant, what do you think?

“Can’t see dick up here,” Dalhover answered.

Steph pointed toward the door. “Let’s go down to the video room.”

So we all trooped downstairs.

When we got there, Murphy and Mandi were sharing cold Pop Tarts. It didn’t take much more than the smell of the sugar and the crinkle of a foil wrapper to tempt the rest of us to join in. After several days of perfectly healthy veggies, the Pop Tarts were delicious.

Steph spoke first. “Sergeant Dalhover, what are your thoughts?”

Dalhover spent a minute collecting those thoughts before he answered. “I’d say there’s a pretty good force over at Camp Mabry. National Guard. Maybe some regular Army. Maybe some civilians. Probably hiding out there the same way we were at the hospital.”

He paused for a long time.

“With the same result?” I asked.

Everybody silently looked at me.

Uncomfortable moments stretched through the silence.

“Looks that way,” Dalhover finally confirmed.

Steph asked, “Why do you think there are so many infected?”

Dalhover shook his head. “Don’t know. Maybe it’s the bunch from the hospital. Maybe it’s the bunch from the farm. Maybe the guys just started shooting at some Whites and didn’t stop soon enough, so everyone on this side of town came running. Maybe the Smart Ones found ‘em.”

“Any other guesses?” Steph asked.

There weren’t any.

“Are we in danger?” Mandi asked.

Murphy put a hand on her shoulder, but didn’t say anything one way or the other.

“We don’t know, Mandi,” Steph told her, “but we’re going to play it safe. Tonight, we’ll keep watch in pairs.” She looked at me and then Murphy. “You guys have been out doing your job. Sergeant Dalhover and I will take the first watch.”

While Steph was looking at each of us for questions, I said, “I think we should all stay down here tonight. Close. We can sleep in the recliners in the theater.”

“I can do that,” Murphy said. “Those things are comfortable.”

“We should probably keep a bug-out pack close too,” I added. “Just in case.”

“Hide and run,” Steph confirmed. “That’s our strategy. I agree.”

“Wait,” Murphy’s tone got everyone’s instant attention. He pointed up at one of the screens.

Three people were running across the road; two soldiers and a civilian. It took half a second to extrapolate their path through the trees, onto the dirt road, and right at our walls.

I did a quick check of my rifle, pistol, and machete and was stepping toward the door while asking, “Are we going to bring them in?”

There was a pause. Dalhover looked at Steph. Murphy looked at me. Mandi looked worried. Russell followed me over to the door.

“Somebody open the gate when they come to it,” I said. “Don’t let ‘em through the second gate until I’m there.”

“No,” Steph said, suddenly past her indecision. “Don’t go alone. Mandi, you stay here and watch the monitors. The rest of us will go. Let’s not take any chances.”

Chapter 36

We spread out in a semicircle around the end of the driveway, where the gate would slide open. I was by the wall, with Russell standing too close. I had my machete and pistol at the ready. Murphy stood away from the door and would likely be the first one the soldiers saw once the door slid open. Dalhover was off to Murphy’s other side, and Steph was opposite me with the door opener in her hand.

The howling of Whites in the trees was noticeable. They weren’t there when we left the video room, and with no way to communicate with Mandi, we had no idea how many were out there. It was more than a handful and less than a few dozen. In the distance though, there were hundreds. Their vocalizations were starting to overwhelm the sounds of battle, which were decreasing significantly. What did that mean?

So we stood there, not knowing for sure what was beyond the door. Had Mandi opened the outside gate for the soldiers, only to have them chased in by a mob of Whites? We should have left the decision to open the interior gate in her hands. At this point, she was the only one who knew what was beyond.

That’s what I was thinking when Steph raised the opener and very dramatically pressed the button. The gate’s opening mechanism clanged and the tall steel gate lurched.

Murphy readied himself in front of the gap. I hefted the machete.

“Hello,” Steph called a greeting, barely audible over the sound of the rolling gate.

When the gap created by the opening gate was maybe eighteen inches wide, it became time to pay a bloody price for another mistake. But I didn’t think about that until later.

A gun went off.

In the microseconds that it took to be surprised and process the sound, Murphy’s head snapped hard to the right and he seemed to have lost his balance. There was blood in the air. He was falling.

Dalhover cursed.

My mood flipped from caution to blinding, white-hot rage.

Two hands, holding a pistol out in front, policeman-style, pushed through the gap in the gate and without the tiniest hint of hesitation, I swung my machete in a big arc over my head and chopped across both wrists.

A severed hand and a pistol spun off toward Steph.

A man shrieked.

The other hand dangled from a forearm on ragged tendons. Blood spewed.

The gate stopped and reversed as I dropped my Glock and machete and pulled my M4 up to maximize my killing power, because it was time to do some killing. In half a second I was pushing my rifle barrel through the shrinking gap and pointing it at a handless, screaming man on the ground beneath a fountain of his own blood.

Steph’s voice was screaming, too, not in panic, but in harsh orders. The words didn’t process and I didn’t care. Only the trigger and the soon-to-be-dead man mattered to me. Just as I pulled the trigger, my rifle jerked hard upward and I sent three rounds over the wall.

“God damn it,” I raged.

Before I even knew what was happening, Dalhover had my rifle pushed back against my chest and pointed at the sky, while pinning me against the cinder block abutment where the gate closed. His eyes were hard to match with the blaze in mine.

The gate clanged shut.

“What the fuck,” I screamed at Dalhover.

With hands like stone and an expressionless statue face, he didn’t respond.

How could that skinny fucker be so strong?

My hands were shaking, I was so angry. But I fought to control the rage. Without that control, Dalhover wasn’t going to let go of me. And if Dalhover didn’t let go of me in those next few seconds, things were going to get very ugly.

Over Dalhover’s shoulder, I saw Steph kneeling at Murphy’s side. Her hands immediately went to work at his head. I had to get over there.

“Let me go,” I told Dalhover, in as calm a tone as I could muster.

He waited a few seconds before releasing me, using those seconds to reassure me that he was in control. But he let go and stepped out of my way.

I was immediately on my knees on Murphy’s other side.

“Cover that gate.” Steph ordered Dalhover, pressing a cloth to the side of Murphy’s head.

Murphy was breathing. His eyes were open, but didn’t appear to see anything. His left arm was busy trying to do something repetitive.

I felt helpless.

The End

Follow Zed and Murphy in Slow Burn: Dead Fire, the fourth book in the Slow Burn series.

Here’s that link:

http://bit.ly/SlowBurn4

Reviews

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Newsletter and Facebook

Let’s be straight up about it, if you’ve read this far in the series it’s either because you enjoyed the book or you are admirably persistent. Either plays into my grand design, to get you to buy more of my books. The best way for me to notify you about new releases and even older releases I think you might like will be to have you sign up for my email list. It’s not spammy. I’ll send you something from time to time but I’ll try not to bother you too much. I’ve run contests for subscribers in the past and who knows what I’ll do in the future. If it turns out the emails are bothersome, unsubscribing is done with a single click. Here’s the link to join.

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Book Credits

Cover Design and Layout

Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a. 187designz

Editing & Proofreading

Cathy Moeschet

Lindsay Heuertz

Robyn Roopchan

George Mathew

eBook and Print Formatting

Kat Kramer

Text copyright © 2013, Bobby L. Adair

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED