Slow Burn (Book 2): Infected (8 page)

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 m
y 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.

The Ogre and the Harpy.

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.

“Run, God dammit!” Murphy yelled.

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 had to move!

I got my feet below me.

Why was this all so hard?

I got my M-4 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 M-4 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 of my gun. 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.”

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 me.

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 just have a motherfucker of a headache.”

“You don’t have any blood dripping out of your ears or nose or anything, do you?”

“No, Mom.”
Well, not anymore.

“Don’t be a dick, Zed. I’m worried about you, man.”

My fingers made a few more revolutions on my temples. “Murphy, 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.”

“Zed, there’s no hurry. We can hang up here as long 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 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, Zed, they aren’t. 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! How many maga-fucking-zines do you have, Murphy?”

“I have a dozen MFZs.”

“MFZs?”

“Maga-fucking-zines, Zed.”

“Murphy, you can be very frustrating. I emptied two clips. How many did you empty?”

“MFZs.”

“I emptied two magazines. How about you?”

“I fired all the MFBs in five MFZs.”

“What are MFBs?”

“Motherfucking bullets, of course.”

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. Heh, heh, heh. You were pretty dazed when I dragged your superhero ass off of the floor down there.”

“I’m past that part of it. Thanks, Murphy. 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.”

“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. 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. This is the place.”

“The size of it is impressive. 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?”

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 answered. “Any insulation on the wires probably burned off in the fire.”

I nodded. “If it wasn’t for the fire, this might have been a good place.”

“I don’t know. 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,” I smiled.

“Heh, heh, heh. You’re right about that.”

“Man, there’d better be somebody alive down there. I’ll be pissed if I got blown up by a grenade and it turned out to be rats or something.”

“Zed, if you want to be a drama queen and say you got blown up, 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 M-4 in my hands, 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, as 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 to do.

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 the 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.”

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. There were at least five dead 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. 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.