Slow Burn (Book 3): Destroyer (19 page)

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.

“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?”

Mandi looked at me with a face painted in several layers of empathy. “Zed, are you okay with this?”

I answered, “Steph is smart and brave, and I respect her.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Murphy interrupted. It was the kind of thing a friend could say to another without starting a
fist fight.

“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.

Steph continued, “The other priority will be a rally point. 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.”

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 at Sarah Mansfield’s house, echoed off of 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 closes
t 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, Zed,” Murphy grinned. “Heh, heh, heh.”

“There’s nothing up with me and Steph.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you mad because she’s the boss now?”

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 mean, when she smiles.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“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. 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.”

“What’s that?”

“When I get to be Dalhover’s age, I don’t want to be anything like that.”

Murphy laughed. “Man, we won’t live that long.”