Slow Burn (Book 3): Destroyer (6 page)

“Why do you say that?”

“I got lucky. It worked the first time I tried it.”

Evans started downward and didn't speak again until we were on next flight of stairs. “I don’t think Sergeant Dalhover would agree with you on that.”

“You know that every time you shoot a gun all you accomplish is to draw more of them in.”

“It's been discussed.”

“It's true,” I reiterated.

Dr. Evans said nothing else on the subject until he swung the door open for us to leave the stairwell. “Why don’t you talk with Sergeant Dalhover about what you know? If we need to alter our tactics, we will.”

We came out at the nurse’s station, just like the one two floors up where Dr. Evans had treated my wounds. A skinny man in civilian clothes with a very unmilitary slouch and a droopy, broken man's face eyed us lazily.

A soldier far down the hall, his weapon at the ready, called, “Everything all right, Top?”

In a raspy, smoker's voice, the skinny sergeant replied, “Yeah.” Then with no change in his posture or facial expression, he looked me over and asked Dr. Evans, “What's this?”

“Slow burn,” Evans answered as though all the life had drained out of him. He hadn’t emotionally prepared himself to be down among the volunteers.

“So they’re real?” the sergeant asked.

“So it seems.”

“I'm real,” I confirmed, “and just a normal as you.”

“Yeah.” The sergeant said it in a way that made it clear he didn't agree.

I already didn't like him.

The entire length of the long hall was lined with chairs spaced about five feet apart. In most of those sat a sagging person with a torn bed sheet gag between his or her teeth, arms and feet restrained. Some of them stared at the wall across the hall. Some slept with chins on their chests. A few looked at us with interested eyes. Ten or eleven were obviously transitioning from human to beast. One close to the nurse’s station was bleeding from his mouth while trying desperately to gnaw through his gag. Down from him, the skin of a woman’s wrists and ankles was worn through from her struggles against her bonds.

Many of the chairs were empty and sat below big, bloody stains on the wall. And like red entrance ramps to a highway that nobody wanted to be on, a trail of blood led from each chair to merge with a long bloody smear to the end of the hall. It was immediately clear what was going on. When the volunteers turned symptomatic, they were shot where they sat. I asked Evans, “What are you doing with the bodies?”

In his gruff voice, Dalhover answered for Evans, “
Throwin’ ‘em out the window.”

Just listening to his voice made me want to cough the phlegm out of my own lungs. “That's a bad idea.”

Using apathy as a defense, the sergeant said, “Can't keep ‘em here.”

“But the infected are eating them below,” I protested. “You're giving them a reason to keep hanging around.”

“Doesn't matter. They'll be eating us all soon enough.”

Dr. Evans cut in. “Zed Zane, this is Sergeant Dalhover.”

Sergeant Dalhover looked at me again, with no change in his droopy eyes. He made no effort to shake my hand.

I was apparently untouchable.
Fuck him!

“Hello.”

No response.

Double fuck him!

Dr. Evans, in a voice that saddened more with each word, asked of Sergeant Dalhover, “How many so far? I see lots of empty chairs.”

“Eighty-three.”

Eighty-three people, all shot in the head and tossed out a window.

Dr. Evans looked at me. “This was my idea. I’m the one who convinced these people to bet their lives on hope.”

Droopy-eyed Dalhover just stared at him.

Dr. Evans was getting hard to look at, so I scanned up and down the hall, searching for a head of red hair. “Is Steph alive or dead?”

“Steph?” Dalhover asked.

“Nurse Leonard,” I clarified.

With the smallest of gestures, he pointed. “She’s down the hall.”

My mood perked up, but I quickly tamped it down. “Fever?”

Dalhover croaked, “No.”

I didn’t ask for any more information, nor did I wait for permission. I stepped out of Dalhover’s sad gaze and hurried down the hall, looking at each face as I passed. I’d only seen Steph with a surgical mask on. Aside from red hair, green eyes, and fair skin, I had little idea what she looked like.

To look down that long hall had the emotional effect of looking through a neighbor’s window while they beat a crippled dog. Walking down the hall, trying to avoid stepping on the viscous trail of coagulated blood, was viscerally painful.

Some volunteers, seeing only their last hopeless thoughts, let me pass like an invisible man.

One woman stared with tears on her cheeks at a mural of blood above an empty chair directly across the hall from her. Right there, over five or ten or twelve hours she had seen a person, perhaps someone she knew, perhaps a close friend, slowly turn from human into something else. She had watched the face lose hope when the fever came on. She witnessed the deterioration of the mind. She saw the animalistic gnawing at the gag and the scraping of skin until blood flowed. She saw the black, wild eyes where no human intellect lived anymore.

I wondered, when Dalhover’s revolver fired, ringing everyone’s ears, splitting that skull, whether she saw it as a mercy or a horror.

Down that trail of tears, blood, and utter despair, I spotted a redhead with tear-drained, but alert eyes turning to watch me approach. Recognition perked her to life and I couldn’t stop myself from running the last steps. Stopping beside her chair, I immediately started untying the strip of bed sheet that gagged her mouth.

“Hey,” Dalhover rasped from somewhere behind me.

I ignored him and removed the gag.

In a hoarse voice, Steph said, “Wow, you’re still alive.”

I swallowed hard on a lump in my throat as a faint, but real, smile stretched my lips. “Wow, you’re still alive.”

Steph’s smile was real, but it was competing with the pain in the rest of her face.

The guy in the next chair over started to squirm and grunt through his gag.

“Can you take his off too?” Steph asked.

“Okay.” I stepped over and started on the guy.

“God dammit!” Dalhover’s voice echoed up the hall.

I didn’t even look at Dalhover, but I heard his voice drop to background noise as he droned something at Dr. Evans.

To Steph I said, “And I thought I was uptight.”

Steph answered, “It hasn’t been easy for any of us.”

I shrugged as I removed the gag from the guy.

He thanked both Steph and me, then opened and closed his mouth several times to stretch his jaw muscles.

I squatted down beside Steph and started to untie her hands.

“Don’t,” she told me.

“Why?”

“Zed, I might turn.”

I stopped and looked up at her. “But…”

“Leave them.” She was firm.

I stood up and stepped in front of her chair, but suddenly had no words.

The guy in the next chair over had no such problem and spoke very fast, “We were infected last night around seven. It’s like one o’clock now. We’ve got to wait until seven before we know if we’re immune, but we won’t be, though the theory is sound. Some of us, maybe a lot of us, should be immune.
But so far, no winners. You know what I mean?”

“You’ll have to excuse him,” Steph said to me. “He gets excited and can’t shut up.”

The guy said, “I think fast. That’s just how I am. But not for long.” Then very softly he whispered to us. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got the fever.”

Steph tried to repress a sob.

The guy looked at Steph, pain in his eyes. Then at a normal speed, he said, “I’m sorry, babe.”

Babe?

“Zed, put your hand on his forehead, see if he feels hot.”

I did as I was ordered. I stepped over and laid my hand across the guy’s forehead, feeling his temperature on the skin between my bandages.

“I’m Jeff Aubrey,” he smiled weakly.

“Zed Zane,” I answered, looking down at him and shaking my head slightly. He was hot.

“I saw that, Zed,” Steph said. “He has the fever, doesn’t he?”

Jeff said, “If I hit one-oh-four before Dalhover checks us again…”

“Jeff, don’t say that,” Steph implored.

I checked Steph’s forehead for a fever. She was cooler than me.

“Babe, the odds of both of us being immune were astronomical. But with me infected, that makes your odds good. I’m okay with that.” Jeff looked up at me. “Well?”

I told him, “She feels normal.”

Steph sniffled up another sob.

“Why the gags?” I asked.

“They’re to keep us from biting anyone when we turn,” Jeff answered.

Steph asked, “How did you get in here, Zed?”

I took a few minutes to convey an abbreviated version of my story.

“So, all that shooting outside a little while ago,”
Jeff asked. “That was you?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Tell me again, why did you come here?” asked Jeff.

I looked at Steph, again wondering the same thing. I looked up and down the hall as I tried to cull my thoughts on the matter. I looked back at Steph before I spoke, “Hope. I think I was looking for hope.”

Jeff laughed bitterly. “If this is where you came to find hope, I’m glad I’m not out there.”

Without looking back to Jeff, I asked Steph, “Does he ever stop talking?”

“No,” she answered. “Now you know why I needed you to talk to.”

“For what its worth,” I said, “I’m glad you’re still alive. I’m glad that you still have a chance.”

“Hey, Zed.” Jeff demanded my attention like a spastic toddler.

“Yes, Jeff?”

“Look, I’m going to be dead in an hour or two. I don’t know you, but you look like you like Steph…”

“It’s not like that,” I interrupted.

“…Will you look out for her?”

“Jeff,” Steph implored.

“I’m already doing that,” I told him. “Besides, you might not turn. You might be a slow burn, like me.”

“That’s like hoping I win the lottery,” retorted Jeff. “Besides, that’s not what we’re doing here. Dalhover is going to shoot me at one-oh-four.”

“I can stop him,” I offered.

“I don’t want to be one of them, Zed.”

“You guys don’t need to shoot everybody as soon as they get the fever. You’ve got nothing to lose by waiting.”

Jeff said, “It’s been discussed. It’s been decided. I knew what I was getting into when I volunteered for the infection.”

“I guess I did come to wrong place for hope,” I said.

“There might be a speck of hope,” Jeff contradicted me.

I thought about punching him in the face. Not seriously, but the thought did cross my mind. Looking back at Steph again, I asked, “Does he always do this?” To Jeff I said, “Would you pick a side of the issue, Jeff? Are you hopeless or not?”

“I analyze things. I look at all sides. I’m a numbers guy. There is hope in the numbers.”

I asked Steph, “What does that mean?”

“This is new to me,” she answered.

Jeff said, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about things while I’ve been tied up, waiting for the infection to rot my brain.”

“And?” I asked.

“This whole thing is only going to last six to eighteen months,” Jeff told us. “If you can find a way to last that long, then you’re home free.”

Steph asked, “What does that even mean, Jeff?”

In his rapid fire speech, Jeff said, “The infection rate was over ninety-nine percent. Some of the infected died outright; most of them turned into white-skinned cannibals. For the Austin area, that meant we had nearly a million infected running around, trying to eat anything that moved.”

“Seems like I’ve heard this before.” It was like listening to Jerome all over again.

Jeff pressed on, “By the time the infection runs through the population, there might be ten thousand people who are either immune or slow burns, maybe less. Not very good odds.”

I looked up and down the hall. I was already bored. Dalhover and Evans were talking quietly near the nurse’s station. The soldiers at each end of the hall were attentive, but hadn’t moved from their positions. About four chairs down, one of the tied up volunteers was starting to get very agitated. He’d turned.

“Of those ten thousand,” Jeff continued, “who knows how many are still alive? It might be five thousand. It might be a couple of thousand. But with a million infected running around, it makes the odds of staying alive pretty bleak for the immune.”

Steph said, “And that’s one of the reasons everyone here was so hopeless, Jeff. How can we hope to fight that?”

“That’s just it,” Jeff said, his voice notching up a level. “We don’t have to. We just have to figure out a way to feed ourselves and stay hidden until the problem solves itself.”

Okay, I was interested.
“What does that mean, solve itself?”

“When the infected get hungry, and there aren’t any of us around for dinner, they eat each other, right?” Jeff asked.

“I’ve seen that.” I confirmed.

“So that’s true?” Steph asked.

I nodded.

Jeff said, “People are omnivores. But with a million infected running around Austin, they’ll eat every piece of biomass they can get their hands on, whether it’s a house cat, an acorn, or us. Pretty quickly, the most plentiful food source available to them is going to be each other. Do you know that the average American contains about two-hundred-thousand usable calories?”

“Really?” That was a surprisingly morbid bit of trivia. “How could you know that?”

Jeff went through the calculation with me. “If you take the average weight of a Texan and subtract the weight of the skeleton, then figure the body fat percentage, you can calculate the calories.”

“And that comes out to two-hundred-thousand per person?” I asked.

Jeff nodded. “The average calorie intake for a person of the average size is about twenty-five-hundred calories.”

“That seems high,” Steph countered.

“We’re talking averages, Steph,” Jeff shot back. “There are a lot of really big people out there.”

“I thought their metabolisms run a lot faster than normal,” I said.

“That’s been suggested, but not proven,” Jeff answered. “If it’s true, then that works in our favor.”

“How’s that?” Steph was surprised.

“It works in our favor,” Jeff continued, “because if we can stay hidden, then the infected will eat each other up that much faster.”

“How fast?” she asked.

“If they are their only food source, they’ll probably eat each other up at the rate of eight to nine percent per month. So a million infected today turns into about a hundred thousand in six months and about ten thousand six months after that.”

“And all of the infected coming this way from the Houston fires?” I asked.

“Doesn’t change the math much. More infected means more mouths to feed. More mouths to feed means more infected get eaten. The result doesn’t change much,” Jeff argued.

Steph’s face looked almost hopeful. “Jeff, that makes it sound like we have a chance.”

“And you did all this math in your head while you sat there?” I asked with as much disbelief as I could put into my voice.

Steph said, “He’s really good with numbers.”

I shook my head. “I’d need a spreadsheet to figure all that out.”

“Jeff doesn’t,” Steph reassured me.

“Wow.” That was impressive. “You know, I saw a news story about the drought and the reduction of the state’s cattle herds, and one of the surprising bits of information I came across was that there were something like five or six million cattle in Texas. What do cattle weigh?
Somewhere between five hundred and fifteen hundred pounds? That’s a lot of calories, right?”

“Enough to seriously change the math,” Jeff agreed.

“And then there are the other farm animals. Sheep, goats, horses, whatever,” I added.

“But to get those calories, the infected have to leave the city to find them. They have to figure out how to eat them. Cowhide is tough, probably too tough for our tiny blunt teeth to bite through. But that’s not the most important point.  The infected don’t know that all of those calories are out there for free. They’re not that smart. They only see the calories running around the cities with them. Those are the ones they’ll try to eat.”

“You may be right,” I agreed, “but it sounds like there are a lot of hopes and guesses built into your calculations.”

Jeff nodded, “There are lots of factors that can affect the final number, but the only real question about the end result is
when
we arrive at ten thousand, not
if
we arrive there. How long do you have to wait until the infected population kills itself off? That might be six months. It might be two years. It might be five years. But however you look at it, there’s a time in the not too distant future when the infected become a manageable problem. All you have to do is stay alive until then.”

Jeff talked for another five or ten minutes before he got a very glassy look in his eyes and then passed out mid-sentence. Steph had me check his pulse. He wasn’t dead, but he was burning up.