Slow Burn (Book 2): Infected (14 page)

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?
”

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 find any reason why Murphy shouldn’t.

“Be quiet, Null Spot. 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.”

“Heh, heh, heh. You can make fun if you want, but you know I’m right.”

Mandi said, “We can talk about a schedule tomorrow. 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.”

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 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?” responded Murphy.

I laid my weapons on the floor beside my spot on the mattresses. 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?”

“You know what I mean. 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 sleep…well, the bunker would have been safe.”

I argued, “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 rain water. 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. 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,” I said.

Mandi said, “There's got to be plenty of food in houses and grocery stores. 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.

I asked, “So, what are our choices, really? 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, Zed?” 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. “I mean, 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 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 stared at the ceiling for bit after that. Russell started to snore.

Mandi said, “I don’t see anything moving around out back anymore.”

I sat up and got up on my knees to peek out the front window.

“Zed, lay down, I don’t need 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.

I answered, “On the housing choice. 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 answered, “I don't know. 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?”

“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 continued, “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 old age, 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 disagreed, “I think there are three kinds, Murphy. Don't forget us.”

“Oh, yeah, us,” he agreed.

“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 it.

Mandi asked, “So, it's us or them? Either the infected will kill all of us or we'll kill all of them?”

Murphy nodded, “Yep, Mandi, that's it. I think we all agree on that.”

Mandi said, “But there are so many of them. I don’t feel good about that.”

Murphy laughed out loud at that. “Don’t. 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?”

I said, “Unless the virus makes them sterile, 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. Because people are smarter,” Murphy said, triumphantly.

I said, ”Yeah, 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.”

“Whatever. What's the point of all this, Murphy?” I asked.

”Man, 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 worried 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, Murphy. Where is all of this going?” I asked.

“Patience, grasshopper. I'm getting there.”

“Grasshopper?” Mandi asked.

I said, “Murphy spends too much time watching old TV shows, Mandi.”

“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, Murphy.”

Murphy said, “What I mean 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 gone, 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 us, including Murphy, thought he was. I asked, “How will humanity react when it realizes that it has survived an extinction event?”