9.0 - Sanctum (22 page)

After spending the night in the warehouse grocery store, the group decided to split up.  I was past giving a care one way or the other, so I didn't say much.  In truth, I was sinking into a mood, and I didn't know where it was coming from.  Things were going well in Easy Town—as Murphy had taken to calling it—where we weren't harassed by Whites, we weren't attacked, and besides Martin, none of us had died.  Against the odds, we'd won a victory against the Survivor Army—hopefully, the final victory.  And we were finding all the food and drink we needed, along with a bounty to load in our trucks and take with us.

Everyone was in a good mood.  Some of us were getting complacent, not me, Murphy, or Grace.  It was hard to tell with Jazz.  She didn't talk much, and she wasn't big on letting anyone know what was on her mind.  Eve, Fritz, and especially Javendra, seemed to have completely forgotten that real danger was out there, waiting to ambush us when we weren't looking.

The lineup for the day put Fritz, Eve, Jazz, and Grace at the warehouse store.  They were charged with shopping through the chaos to get the trucks loaded with a good mix of supplies.  Murphy and I got Javendra duty.  The group decided Javendra's data was well worth accumulating, and all seven of us weren't needed to load the trucks. 

I’d have felt better leaving Javendra behind, given the handicap of his skin tone, but he insisted his presence was necessary to ensure his data was recorded correctly.  He was clueless about the dangers out in the world.  Had he not been lucky enough to be sequestered and protected early on, I was sure he’d have been long dead.

So, we recycled the trick we’d used getting the professors out of the veterinary sciences buildings.  We put Javendra in long pants and a hoodie—it was chilly outside so no big deal there.  On his skin that was showing, we dusted him in baby powder we'd found among the ignored personal hygiene products, and we set out.

“What do you think?” Murphy asked as we filed out a door into the warehouse grocer’s parking lot.  He pointed at a pair of Whites a hundred yards away who were squatting and digging through a weathered cardboard box, tossing out torn bits of plastic wrapping.  “You want to start with these?”

Javendra said, "These will do for a start, but I would like to get samples from as wide an area as possible."

I looked right and left, feeling the pressure of things going well.  “Stay on your toes, Javendra.  Be ready to run if I say so.  All right?”

“Yes,” Javendra huffed.  “You told me a dozen times already this morning.”

“Lighten up, man,” Murphy chuckled.

“It’s not me who’s going to get munched,” I told them.

Murphy looked back at Javendra.  "We'll get as many as we can, but we don't want to wander too far.  It's not safe for all of us to be split up all day.  Cool?"

“We’ll start with those two.”  Javendra walked toward the pair of Whites.

I jogged a few steps ahead to get beside Murphy.  “How do you want to handle this?”

Murphy shrugged.  "You've spent more time in close company with them than I have.  I'd say I hang back with Javendra, and you go up there and take the temperatures.”  Murphy looked over at Javendra.  "You cool with that?"

“I’d like to take the temperatures myself,” he said.

"I'll have to kill them,” I told him, not happy to have to do it.  I’d been feeling guilty all morning about the Whites I'd led to the slaughter at the hands of the survivor assholes.  Most of them weren't the aggressive type.  Most of them didn't need to be killed.  At least, that's what I was starting to believe about many of the infected in San Angelo.  "They're not likely to sit still once they figure out you're normal."

“I had the fever,” he argued.  “I got better.  Maybe they’ll sense that.”

I stopped and pointed at the Whites.  “You want to do this your way? Go ahead.  Walk over there and take their temperatures.” 

Murphy chuckled again.  “This is going to be a fun day.”

I reached out an empty hand. 

Javendra put on a pouty face but handed me the thermometer.

Armed with my machete in one hand, knife in a sheath, a pistol in a holster, and a white plastic thermometer, I crossed the rest of the parking lot as Javendra and Murphy slowed their pace to let me get ahead.  Javendra's job, whether he liked it or not, was to observe.  Murphy's job was to stay by him to keep him safe, just in case.

As I closed in, the Whites stopped rifling through the garbage and watched me.  The nearer I got, the more worried they seemed to get.  I don't know if it was my machete or just skinny, bald Zed with a perturbed scowl on my face.  Maybe to them, I looked like the monster that hides in their closet.  I had the urge to say something soothing, like something I might say to a stray dog I was trying to feed.

Of course, I didn’t say anything.

When I was just three steps away from the Whites, they jumped up and ran away.

What the hell?

From a few dozen steps back, Murphy laughed.

Javendra, still watching where the two Whites disappeared around the corner of the warehouse asked, “Why did they run?”

“They’re afraid of Null Spot the Destroyer.”  Murphy laughed some more as he looked around to see if any Whites were near enough to care. 

I walked back toward them.

“Null Spot the Destroyer?” Javendra asked, realizing he was outside of an inside joke.

Murphy stopped laughing and started to explain to Javendra the Null Spot story but couldn’t stop laughing.

I focused on Javendra.  “When we were in the commissary in College Station, did Murphy tell you about a guy who was with us named Russell?”

“I don’t know.”  Javendra rubbed his forehead.  “He talked a lot.  He mentioned a lot of names.”

Murphy was starting to wind down.

"Russell was infected,” I told Javendra.  "We found him in his house.  He had white skin like us.  But he was docile.  You could talk to him and tell him to do simple things, but he couldn't speak."

“What happened to him?” Javendra asked.

I started to tell him the story of Russell’s death but the words caught in my throat, unexpectedly bringing a sense of loss.  I’d been a lot more attached to him than I wanted to admit.  I settled for a shake of my head.  Javendra didn’t need to know the details of how Russell had died. 

Murphy's laughter came to a sudden end, and he took up the answer.  "Lots of people died,” He told Javendra, before turning away to scan the area for danger.

“Sorry.”  Javendra understood that some things in our past were still raw with unresolved emotions.  “You didn’t happen to take his temperature, did you?”

"Yeah.  I'm sure Steph did.  And back at the house where we found him.”  I almost said Mandi checked his temperature that day, but I didn't want to mention her name.  It had taken Murphy a long time to get past her death, and I sometimes wondered if he had ever completely put it behind him.  "I don't recall what the number was.”  I looked at Murphy for the answer.

“Don’t remember.”  He didn’t look at us.  He stayed on task, watching for threats.

“That’s okay,” said Javendra.  “Why do you bring him up?”

“I was just wondering,” I said, “if maybe a lot of these people in San Angelo are like Russell.”  I nudged Murphy.  “It kind of seems that way, doesn’t it?”

“You gave us a speech yesterday about danger this and danger that,” he told me.  “You need to decide which side of the fence you want to be on.  Should we be afraid, or are we in Russell land?”

“I’m just asking what you think of these Whites here,” I said.  “Mostly they seem kind of docile, like Russell.”

Murphy nodded.  "Yeah, maybe you're right.  Like that dude you ran into near the hospital when it was flooding back in Austin."

“Aubrey?” I asked.  “Jeff Aubrey?”

“Who’s that?” asked Javendra.

“What if they can talk?” Murphy asked me, pointing at San Angelo in general.  “All these Whites.”

Turning to Javendra, I said, “Aubrey was a grad student I ran into at Brackenridge hospital when it was all still happening.  He’d just contracted the virus.  He had a fever.”

“But he survived?” asked Javendra.

“Yeah.”  I nodded at Murphy.  “We ran into him again, like a month later.  He was brain-fried but functional.  I mean, he could speak.”

“He was whacked, man.”  Murphy twirled his finger beside his head.  “That dude didn’t know what was going on.”

“But he wasn’t aggressive.”  I thought about it for a second before I looked to Javendra.  “Do you think maybe Russell and Jeff Aubrey might have had a different strain of the virus than us?” I looked up and down the road in front of the grocery store.  “Do you think maybe most of the people in San Angelo maybe got infected with that strain and not the crazy strain?”

“And maybe you and Murphy have a different strain altogether.”  Javendra added.  “That’s possible, too.  It might be the answer we’ve been searching for at A&M was the wrong one in the sense we were looking to create a universal vaccine.  Perhaps what we should have been searching for was a strain with attenuated effects.”

“Say what?” asked Murphy.

Javendra turned to Murphy.  “What if the strain you and Zed have—or even the one these people in San Angelo have—is the strain we should infect people with to give them immunity to the virus.  That way they won’t turn into monsters.  They’ll just have white skin.”

“What about the strain you have?” I asked.  “You’ve come through it fairly normal?”

"Yes.  Yes.”  Javendra grew excited.  "I hadn't thought of myself.  But you're right, if I have a separate strain, and it turns out that it's not simply a case of my body reacting differently to the most common strain, then the answer might be in my blood."

“Man,” said Murphy.  “It can’t be that easy.”

“I’m not sure easy is the right word,” argued Javendra.  “This is just a first step, a hypothesis.  Months, maybe years of work need to go into the testing just to see if it’s right.  That’s before any therapy can be developed based on the idea.”

“Oh good,” said Murphy, “because for a moment there, I thought you were going to say you had the magic answer to the world’s problems.”  He nodded emphatically.  “But it’s just more of the same.  You know, bad news.  But that’s okay.”  Murphy slapped me on the shoulder.  “We’re used to that kind of shit, right Zed?”

I smiled weakly.  He was right.  We were used to that kind of shit.

What a long, frustrating, fucking day. 

Once we accepted the apparent truth that most of the Whites in San Angelo were docile, it made both Murphy and me overly cautious.  We didn't want to kill them but getting them to sit still while we checked their temperatures was a pain in the ass.  The tactic that finally worked out was when we spotted one or two, we'd hide Javendra behind a bush or whatever happened to be nearby.  Then, I'd jog with Murphy following like we had somewhere to go.  We'd pass close to the White and most of the time they'd jump at the end of our short line.  At some point, I'd lead the little train into a backyard or a gap between a couple of houses with a fence at one end, and we'd turn on the White all of a sudden and tackle it.

I got punched, kicked, and bit.  One bite was just a bruise in the shape of a woman’s dental imprint, the other bled badly for a while and served to piss me all the way off.  I hated the damn bites.  Murphy seemed to get out of every scuffle with nothing but a little more sweat and a grin. 

Through it all, we had to kill six.  They were the aggressive types.  We ended up collecting temperature data from nearly twenty.

As we walked back to the warehouse grocery store, Murphy got Javendra's attention and said, "I hope you got enough because this is too much work."

I held up my arm, which was still bleeding a little bit through the duct tape I’d wrapped it with—duct tape was the first thing we’d found.  “I’ve only got so much blood.”

“That’s because you spend too much time doing shit like we did today,” Murphy told me, “and you don’t eat enough.”

“It’s not like I can just stop by a McDonald’s and get a Big Mac,” I shot back.  “I don’t know if you noticed, but most of them are closed now.”

“Do you two always bicker like this?” Javendra asked.

“It’s not bickering,” Murphy told him.  “We’re just talking.”

“Yeah,” I added.  “So what’s the story? Do you have enough data? Did you find anything interesting?”

“Twenty samples is hardly enough to extrapolate any—”

“Oh, Jesus!”  Murphy stopped and slapped his hands over his head.

Javendra panicked and looked around for danger.

“You alright?” I asked, looking for blood coming out of a wound that I couldn’t pinpoint, my imagination running to a suspicion that Murphy had just been shot.

Murphy froze for a second, his eyes staring widely into the sky.  “No, I’m okay.”

“What?” Javendra stepped close to Murphy, running through a cursory visual examination.

“For a second there,” said Murphy, “it’s like I was surrounded by two Professor Zeds.”  He laughed loudly.  “My brain couldn’t handle it, man.”  He started walking again, laughing while Javendra stood without moving.

I sighed loudly.  “C’mon, Javendra.”

“I don’t understand,” said Javendra.

“It’s just Murphy being Murphy,” I told him.  “Ignore it.”  I looked around to see if any Whites—the aggressive kind—were paying attention to us.  We were talking too loudly and talking too much.  “What did you see in the data?”

“A surprise.”

“What kind of surprise?”

“The temperatures for most of them, most of the docile ones, were lower than your temperature.”

“What?” That was surprising until I realized I ran a little hot for a Slow Burn.  “You mean like Murphy or Grace?”

“A little lower than that, even,” he told me.  “Not much above normal.”

“How is that possible?” I asked.

Murphy looked over his shoulder at Javendra and said, “Man, you’re just like Zed, all full of half-ass theories and crazy reasons why this all happened.”

“It’s called the scientific method,” Javendra snapped.  “It’s how we do—”

“Man,” Murphy interrupted, “tell it to Zed.  He likes that kind of shit.  You two twins go on if you want.  I already know all the answers I need to know.”

Javendra started to speak but I put an arm over his shoulder and said, “Don’t.  It’s not worth it.”

Murphy laughed.  “It might be.”

“What answers?” asked Javendra.

He turned around to face us.  "The world is fucked up.  It's full of crazy white fuckers that want to have us for dinner.  These Whites in Easy Town didn't get the memo about that, and that's nice.  But it's not like this in the rest of the world.  Hell, you guys know that.  This isn't news.  But you get all brain-whacked with your theories and shit and you forget all we need to do is keep ourselves fed and keep ourselves alive.”  Murphy shook his head as his grin turned into something he was wearing for show.  "And do the same for our friends and…"

“And?” Javendra asked.

I elbowed Javendra.  “You know.  The people we love.  But it doesn’t always work out.”

Murphy walked on.

“We’ve all lost,” said Javendra.

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “We have.”

We walked on in silence for a little while before I asked Murphy if he was okay.

“Yeah, man.  I’m fine.”

“As fine as you can be considering all the shit?” I asked.  “Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah.”  He nodded and drew a deep breath.  “It’s hard staying on the Murphy plan lately.  Know what I mean?”

“You sleeping alright?”

Murphy laughed again.  “Man, I haven’t slept alright since I napped in jail before that dude went crazy-monkey on us.”  Murphy grinned, for real this time.  “You remember that shit?”

“Yeah.” 

“That riot was intense.”

It was.  That was the day it all started.

Murphy’s voice turned a little bit sad again.  “Earl bought it when we were escaping.”

"You saved me that day.”  It was the first thing that came to mind at the mention of our escape from the county jail, a memory inexorably linked to the image of seeing Earl's skull come apart as a bullet tore through it.  "You pushed me out of the middle of the street, or I'd have gotten shot too."

"I told you, man,” said Murphy, "I don't really remember that part.  Things got pretty hazy for me after we got out of the jail.  The fever was beating me down pretty hard.  I remember seeing Earl get shot and after that, pretty much the next thing I remember is sitting with you in that dorm room with Jerome The Liar."

"Jerome the Liar.”  I laughed.  I hadn't given him more than a passing thought in months.  But at the time, I'd nearly hated him.  And I'd been angry, so angry over his murder by those soldiers.  Now, all those emotions had faded, and all I was left with were the memories of the events and the words that described how I felt.  The emotions hardly ever attached themselves to the memories anymore.  I wondered if that would happen with all the painful shit one day.  Maybe even all the painful shit that kept stabbing me in the heart every time I thought of Steph with her flaming red hair and intense green eyes.  Maybe the memory of the feeling of her hand going limp in mine that day on the shore of Lake Travis when we'd all been so close to making our escape from the shit would fade too.