9.0 - Sanctum (21 page)

Murphy and Fritz were already at the pub when the rest of us arrived.  We took a moment to compare notes—all of the Black Hawks were destroyed.  I had no way of knowing how many of the Survivor Army's soldiers had died, but at least our objective was met.  Without helicopters, the remnants of the Survivor Army were just another bunch of assholes slugging it out in the dirt with the Whites and the rest of us.

It was time to plan, time to move.  Staying so close to our helicopter's crash site wasn't a good idea in the realm of worst-case scenarios.  For all we knew, the Survivor Army had another dozen helicopters and a thousand assholes in armored Humvees parked just outside of town, pissed-off about their buddies and ready to charge into San Angelo and root us out.  It wasn't far-fetched considering what had happened in Austin the night we sprang Fritz and Gabriel, from Judge What's-his-fuck's prison.

Everyone got something quick to eat.  Nachos swimming in room-temperature cheese-goo with enough jalapeños to make the flavor irrelevant was the top choice.  Bottles of beer and warm soda washed it all down.  We loaded what we could into our bags, checked that the street was empty, the sky was clear, and headed down a dark street toward the west side of town, looking for a place to bed down for the night.

I had the last watch of the night, so I was already awake when gray, early-morning light exposed the street outside to be just as lifeless as it had probably been before the virus came.  Little San Angelo out in West Texas was such a backwater compared to Austin.  But people in Dallas probably thought the same thing about where I'd lived.  And New Yorkers probably thought Dallas was full of hillbillies.  The people in San Angelo probably felt sorry for New Yorkers being trapped in a noisy maze of tall buildings hiding the sky.

The circle of life.

Cars were parked in driveways, all fading to the sandy color of the dust settling in layers over their fenders, hoods, and windows.  In the street and in the yards, few cars were abandoned.  Just like the houses, few windows were broken, few doors open.  Not a lot of clutter had been dragged into the grass by brain-fried scavengers or looters. 

Even the house we’d spent the night in was in a state of absence, as though the owners simply forgot to come home from work one day or were raptured up to heaven.  All their food was in the pantry.  Their fridge was full of moldering vegetables and rotting meats.  The litter box still held turds though the cat was long gone, escaped through the kitty door when the free food and water stopped appearing in its bowl.

And no human or White moved out in the street.  No voices howled.  No gunshots rang.

A pack of dogs trotted up the street, sniffing apathetically at upturned garbage cans they’d dug through months ago.

Dogs?

I’d seen almost no dogs in Austin and few anywhere since the virus arrived. 

Murphy shuffled into the living room, rubbing his eyes.  "Man, it's good to sleep in a real bed, but I think my body was so not used to it, it woke me up early.”  He grinned.  "Maybe I should have slept on the floor."

I didn’t turn away from the window I was looking through.  “I’m sure somebody would have traded their spot on the floor with you.”

Murphy crossed the living room into the kitchen.  “Anybody else up yet?”

"I heard somebody go out back earlier for a whiz in the bushes—Javendra, I think.  He went back to bed, though."

“I’m awake,” said Javendra, quietly coming down the hall. 

“You see anything out there?” Murphy called from the kitchen as he dug in the pantry.

“Korean food,” I answered.

Javendra looked at me like I might be a little bit crazy as he crossed the living room.

Murphy came out of the kitchen and looked at me from the doorway.  “You look like you’re over there thinking about that professor shit again, Zed.  What’s up?”

"San Angelo,” I said.  "It's different here."

“What?” Murphy asked.  “You still pissed because those Whites you gathered up last night didn’t attack the Survivor Army assholes like you wanted.”

"There's that.”  I looked up and down the street before turning around to face Murphy and Javendra, who'd come to a stop to include himself in our conversation.  "I've never seen Whites not go after the guys shooting the guns before.  And this whole place, I mean, besides those Whites in the hospital, we haven't been attacked at all."

“What about the parking lot when we were running away?” Murphy asked.

"I killed that one,” I agreed, "but she wasn't being aggressive, she just happened to be there."

“It doesn’t matter,” argued Murphy.  “I think you’re starting to spin up a different memory for whatever theory you’re mushing together in that golf ball head of yours.  Man, you don’t wait to see if they’re going to bite you before you put ‘em down.”  Murphy looked at Javendra for support.  “You know what I mean?”

Javendra, uncomfortable to be put on the spot, nodded.

“You don’t know dick,” Murphy told Javendra.  “You’ve been hiding in a castle this whole time.”

“It was a science building,” Javendra shot back though Murphy was already ignoring him and looking at me.

I took another glance up and down the street before looking back at Murphy.  “Hardly anything’s been looted.  It looks like everybody just left.  There aren’t corpses everywhere.  Things are different here.  Why?”

“There were plenty at the hospital and in that church,” Murphy argued.

“But they hadn’t been grazed on by the Whites,” I told him.  “Everywhere else, the Whites eat their own when they’re hungry.  I think the disease was different here.  Maybe another strain.  Again.”  I turned to Javendra.  “You’re the scientist.  What do you think?”

“I…”  Javendra looked at Murphy, uncomfortably.

I pointed at Murphy.  “Don’t mind him.”

“Whatever.”  Murphy went back to the pantry. 

I refocused on Javendra.  “Tell me what you think.”

Javendra moved over in front of the couch.  “Mind if I sit?”

“You don’t have to ask for permission.”

“Nobody else was sitting.  I thought there might be a rule.”  Touché.  Javendra had a sarcastic streak.  He smiled and sat down.  “The virus mutates quickly.  It creates new strains all the time.  Most of them die in the host.  Some of them are viable and go on to infect other hosts.”

“Other people,” I clarified.  “That’s what you’re saying, right?”

“Of course.”  Javendra shuffled around in his seat.  “That was the point of our work at A&M.  We were trying to develop a vaccine that would be effective for all the strains, not just one.”

“Because a vaccine for only one is nearly useless,” I confirmed.

Javendra nodded.

“And what we’re seeing here in San Angelo?”

"Based on what you're saying,” said Javendra, "because I haven't been outside seeing all you've seen, but I have read and heard about how the disease has affected different parts of the country and different cities around the world, at least, when we had some communications, and—"

“Yeah,” I interrupted, “get to the point.”

“I was saying, it seems that the mortality rate of the strain that affected San Angelo was much higher than in most places.  And if what you say is true about the aggressiveness of the survivors, perhaps the negative effects on the brain weren’t as severe as in most cases.  In one way, a worse virus, in another way, a better strain of the virus, but a strain that we could potentially learn a lot from.”

“Hear that Murphy?” I called across the living room.  “I’m right.  The doc here says so.”

Murphy stopped what he was doing with a can in the kitchen and said, "I don't think he said that exactly.  I think he's humoring you so you'll think you're right, and you'll shut up.  Maybe somebody told him how you are.”  Murphy laughed.

I said, “You seem like you’re back to your usual self.”

Murphy stuck his head out of the kitchen and looked at Javendra.  “Now he’s changing the subject because he knows I’m right.  Pay attention and you’ll learn how to deal with him.”

I rolled my eyes and went back to looking out the front window.
 

Most of us were sitting around the breakfast table late that morning.  We’d all eaten.  We were all rested at least a little.  Jazz was keeping watch through the front windows.  Murphy was keeping watch on her and trying to chat her up with all the entertaining nothing-talk Murphy was good at.  Fritz was trying to be discreet at keeping an eye on them while he, Grace, and Eve talked through a wish list of supplies we might gather before proceeding the final two hundred miles to Balmorhea. 

We were going to be loading up two long-bed pickups for the trip.  We’d have no trouble finding them.  In fact, probably half the vehicles in town were pickups.  Hell, maybe more.  We’d have to be picky and find the four-wheel-drive models with brush guards and crew cabs—room in the back seat for passengers.  Even at that, there were plenty around.  This was West Texas.

It didn't seem like we'd have any trouble collecting food.  It seemed most of the residents had died so quickly that few had time or need to loot and hoard.  Guns and ammunition were on the list.  We didn't anticipate a big problem there either—again, the West Texas thing.  Most houses had, at least, a hunting rifle.  It was the medical supplies that Eve requested and Javendra's wish list I didn't think we'd be able to fill.  Judging by all the dead we'd seen at the hospital, I figured most medical supplies in town got used.  As far as equipment for setting up a lab for Javendra, the hospital was the best place to scavenge, and none of us wanted to venture back over there.  The Survivor Army remnants might be lying in wait to see if we had any inclination to revisit the crash site of our helicopter.  It wasn't a chance worth taking.

We decided to stay in San Angelo for two or three days while we gathered up what we needed and prepared ourselves for the trip. 

It was when the meeting was breaking up that Javendra caught me by the arm to get my attention.  He produced a thermometer and reached toward me.  “May I take your temperature?”

"Why?” I shook loose of his lax grip and stepped back.

“I need it,” he said innocently.  “We recorded body temperatures for Grace and Jazz when they came to join us in College Station.  Their temperatures run a few degrees warmer than normal but two or three degrees cooler than the aggressive, mindless infected ones.”

“I’m the same.”  I turned to leave the kitchen.

Fritz said, “Let him take it, Zed.”

“I need more than two data points,” Javendra persisted.  “For Slow Burns—that’s what you call yourselves, right? You four are the only ones we…I’ve seen.”

Suddenly Murphy was there by Javendra.  “Hey man, take mine.”  He pointed at me.  “He’s antsy about it.  He thinks by knowing it’ll somehow make him turn into one of the crazy ones sooner.”

“Whatever.”  It was the only thing I could think to say.  Murphy wasn’t entirely wrong.

Javendra scanned Murphy’s forehead with the digital device, looked at it and said, “Pretty much the same range as Jazz and Grace.  Do you know how high your fever went when you first succumbed?”

Murphy glanced at me.  “You’ll have to ask him.  He nursed me through.”

Javendra turned back to me.

I shook my head.  “Don’t know.”

Murphy reached out and grabbed my arm in a grip that let me know I wouldn’t be stepping away again.  “Your turn, Zed.”

I huffed and told Javendra, “Take it, but I don’t want to know what it is.”

“Told you,” Murphy laughed.

Javendra scanned my forehead, looked at the results and said, “A little higher than the others.”

I yanked my arm away from Murphy and spat at Javendra, “I told you I don’t want to know.”

“Why?” Javendra asked, puzzled.

"Because, it's just what Murphy said.  If my temperature keeps going up, I'd rather not know I'm turning.  I deal with too much shit already.  Hell, we all do.  I'd rather just wake up one morning not knowing who I am than worry every day about how soon it's going to happen.”  I stomped my way through the living room and took up a position at the front of the house looking out the window.

Javendra apologized as I walked away but I ignored him.  He went on to talk with Fritz, Murphy, and Eve, “I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’d like to get some sample temperatures from some of the infected here in San Angelo.”

Murphy busted out laughing.  “You hear that, Zed?”

I did, but I didn’t respond.

“Why?” Eve asked.

Javendra pointed at me.  "Zed and I were talking this morning.  He and Murphy have seen thousands of the infected all over Central Texas, mostly in Austin.  He believes these in San Angelo are less aggressive than most.  He may be something of an expert on the matter, and I'd like to run some tests on local specimens to see if it will lead anywhere."

Murphy laughed again, “You hear that, Zed? Javendra wants us to go trapping.”

We prioritized our do list and concluded collecting data for Javendra, while a worthy endeavor, was not the highest priority.  Transportation and fuel were at the top of the list.  With the possibility of Survivor Army assholes still around and with the naked horde still fresh in everyone's memory, having the ability to get out of town in a hurry was what everybody wanted.

It was a toss-up deciding whether to leave Fritz, Eve, and Javendra at the house while the rest of us went searching for trucks.  On the one hand, leaving the normal-skin-toned people hidden would keep them and the rest of us safe.  On the other hand, splitting up carried mortal risks as well.  What started out as a discussion eventually turned into an argument and tempers flared, and people took sides.  The point I made that nobody seemed to want to listen to was it didn’t matter which we did.  Both options sucked.  Apparently none of them had come to realize that it was the current state of affairs—not just for me, or for us, but for all of humanity. 

I concluded they were all stuck in a pre-virus paradigm, and most of them would end up dead.  But for better or worse, they were my people.

They reached a point where they got tired of arguing, and we gathered up our gear, and we all went out together, four Slow Burns and three normals, most of us in a bad mood because of the pointless bickering.

Thankfully, the mood changed instantly when ten minutes into our search, working our way through the neighborhood, block by block, we found a diesel pickup that matched our list of requirements exactly.  Like I said, Texas.  It was a buyer’s market for big pickups. 

The truck still had paper plates, so it couldn't have been more than a month old when the owner had parked in the driveway for the last time.  Murphy and Jazz went into the house to search for the keys and found them in the pants pocket of a man, sitting in his recliner in front of a television, slowly decaying.

Two blocks over, we found another truck, not as new as the first but in good condition with plenty of tread on the tires, a good spare, and a manual transmission, nearly a necessity if we were going to get it started.  The batteries on cars, sitting for so many months, were more often than not, dead.  We could push-start a truck with a manual transmission, not an automatic.

Getting them both started was a bit of a trick.  That worked out in San Angelo but would have had disastrous consequences in Austin where the Whites were more numerous and aggressive.  We push started the first in the street in front of the house where we'd found it.  It took three tries popping the clutch before the engine fired.  Then it was loud, as big diesels tend to be.  We all piled in the back and Fritz, who was behind the wheel, drove us around to the house with the second pickup we intended to commandeer.

Leaving the engine in the first truck running, Fritz jumped in the bed along with Eve and they stood there, rifles at the ready, keeping watch over the rest of us as we worked on push-starting the second truck.

By the time we drove away, Fritz had only needed to shoot a single White.  Three or four curious Whites had come into the street but kept their distance.

We didn’t want to attract Whites to the house we were staying at by driving the trucks up and parking them in the driveway, so we drove them to the parking lot at a warehouse grocery store not far from the house where we were staying.  At least, a handful of Whites saw us drive up, park the trucks and get out.  Not one of them made an aggressive move toward us.  They watched and then went back to scavenging or wandering aimlessly.  It was hard to tell which. 

The surprise came when Fritz suggested we go inside the store to see what might be left for us to find.  I wasn't optimistic given that grocery stores tended to be empty everywhere—they were the first obvious place to stop for people who saw disaster looming.  Hell, in Texas people flock to the grocery store when the weatherman predicts a hard freeze.  The consensus was against me, though, maybe because everybody was in a good mood over our luck with the trucks and nobody wanted to fall back into an argument over nothing.

With limited expectations, we filed through the front door.

Sunlight coming in through the skylights on the ceiling high above provided enough light to see that a hurricane of shoppers had blown through some time ago, leaving a carpet of cardboard, trampled packages, and overturned shopping carts.  Looters had likely come after, but it was clear whoever had come had only taken the low-hanging fruit.  The warehouse racks, in rows from the front to the back of the giant store, stood thirty feet tall and were not empty.  Sure, the lower two levels had been ransacked, and in some cases, pallets looked to have been pushed off the upper racks, all but exploded on the floor below, but most pallets on the top level were wrapped in plastic, untouched.

Easy pickings. 

All the food we'd need to feed ourselves, possibly for a year, maybe two if we decided to stay.  Staying wasn't an option any of us seriously entertained, but San Angelo was a place we were likely to return to.  A few days with a semi truck and enough people to load it would give us a huge haul to take back to Balmorhea, the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow.

At least, that was the idea I'd sold everyone on.