Slow Burn (Book 7): City of Stin (3 page)

Murphy pulled me out of the lake and retrieved my machete from the buoy, letting me sulk for a while as he motored up the lake.

After the wind had blown over my skin long enough to dry it out, leaving me with cold, wet pants and a soaked shirt, I said, “You remember how I told you I used to play paintball all the time, right?”

“You mentioned it,” said Murphy.

“There was this one time, I was down in San Antonio with some friends,” I said. “There was this indoor course set up in an old warehouse with lots of obstacles and stuff.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“They made ‘em out of plywood, little house-like things, and mazes and stuff, a couple of towers. They kept the place dimly lit. They had black lights and strobe lights. Hell, they even had a disco ball.”

Murphy laughed. “Sounds like a skating rink.”

“They wanted the players to be able to sneak around inside,” I said. “You know, to make it interesting.”

Murphy grunted an acknowledgment.

“My buddy Rusty and I were on different teams. And…” I looked back at Murphy. “You’ve played paintball, right? You know how the guns work?”

“Little hopper on top full of paintballs,” he said, “compressed air canister. Sure.”

I rolled my eyes. A yes or no would have been sufficient. “Well I’m not sure what happened exactly, but we were playing this game and it got down to just me and Rusty. I was running down to get behind this obstacle over by a wall, thinking I was going to flank him and shoot him in the back.”

Murphy laughed. “That’s always the best way to shoot somebody.”

I smiled. Paintball had been fun back in those days. “The real shock came when I realized he was thinking the same thing as me, running around the obstacle from the other direction. We both got there at the same time, surprised as hell.”

“I’ll bet.”

“We both came to a stop,” I continued, “and unloaded at each other from like ten feet away.”

“Sounds painful,” said Murphy. “Those paintballs leave a welt.”

“That’s the funny thing.” I shook my head to emphasize my point. “He never hit me.”

“He was a terrible shot,” Murphy concluded.

“I never hit him either.”

“Wait.” Murphy had been looking out over the bow but turned to look at me directly. “You
used
to be pretty good with a gun. Are you saying you’ve always sucked? I’m confused.”

“No,” I told him. “Not that at all. I think we surprised each other and our adrenaline was pumping and we were so busy trying to shoot as many balls off as we could that our aim went wild. Even from that close we couldn’t hit each other.”

“So your point is that you’re excited when you shoot now?” said Murphy. “That’s why you miss?”

“No,” I said. “Let me finish. I think something about the virus in my brain is making me a shitty shot. I think if we get in a situation where I need to be able to shoot something, I may be calm, I might not be. If I’m not, my aim will get worse. I think I’ll be useless with the M4.”

“Those buoys are smaller than people.”

“Yeah, but I need to hit a lot more than three or four out of thirty shots,” I said, “and from a lot farther away.”

Giving up, Murphy nodded. “What do you think then, no gun for you?”

“I think maybe a shotgun like you suggested is the best thing, at least for a last resort weapon.”

Nodding, Murphy said, “Then we should saw it off if we can find a hacksaw.”

“I’m all for the cool factor of a sawed-off shotgun,” I said. “Besides that, why saw it off?”

“Sawing it off will make it spread faster so you’ll be more likely to hit what you’re pointing at.”

“Any downside?” I asked.

“Sawing it off reduces its lethal range, but that won’t matter to you,” Murphy laughed. “You won’t be able to hit anything that’s not pretty much standing next to you anyway.”

“I’ll update the shopping list.” Having made my attempt at humor, I thought to ask, “Do they make suppressors for shotguns?”

“Yes, but they don’t quiet the weapon down as much as you might think. And they’re long and bulky. One would make the shotgun too clumsy to do you any good.”

I removed the suppressor from my M4 and put it in my backpack. It was too valuable to leave with the boat, which is where the M4 was going to stay with one full magazine attached, placed in a bin under one of the seats along the port side. With a weapon added to the stores of food already onboard, the pontoon boat would be a great backup plan for whatever crazy shit befell us as we tromped around town.

Murphy pulled the boat into shallow water near the bank as we started to survey houses for candidates—something pretty close to shore, no Whites around, looking like it might have a shotgun inside. We didn’t have any criteria for the shotgun part. Not really. I was looking for oversized pickup trucks parked by the houses. In my mind, guns and 4x4 pickups with big knobby tires correlated strongly. No point in risking a house search if the odds aren’t in your favor.

I didn’t ask Murphy what he was looking for.

Murphy throttled back on the engine, putting it briefly into reverse before cutting it off, letting the boat drift toward a dock extending out from the shore by a few boat lengths.

With the sound of the boat’s engine silenced, I noticed the whup-whup-whup of the helicopters moving across the sky on their morning run south. I stepped over to the port side of the boat and leaned out from under the canopy to see. The sound was louder than usual, closer.

Murphy leaned out to look up. He pointed. “That helicopter is circling back. You think they’re coming this way? It sure looks like it.”

Behind our boat, the white foam of our wake was dissipating in the waves, but would have been visible from afar. “Maybe they saw us.”

Murphy looked from left to right, I think searching for a place to hide.

I walked out from under the canopy and onto the bow deck. The helicopter was definitely headed our way. “If they come over here and land, it could save us a trip downtown.”

Murphy shook his head. He was nervous and I’d learned to trust his instincts. He was seldom wrong.

The helicopter descended down near the water fifty or so yards out. Waves flattened as the helicopter pushed a rush of air down. Engine noise drowned out our words. The rotors blew a spray of lake water over the boat and into our eyes.

Murphy raised his rifle to his shoulder.

With my rifle stowed under a bench already, I raised my machete as I eyed the greenish, dark water, hoping it was deep enough for a dive, hoping I could swim the long distance down shore to the next dock. I didn’t know if I’d have to make the attempt, but if I found myself in the water, I’d need to find somewhere to hide.

The helicopter’s skids weren’t ten feet above the surface.

In the cockpit, the copilot stared at us. The side doors of the cargo area were pushed all the way open. Several men in ragtag military uniforms sat inside—some looking out, others bored and staring at nothing. One sat with his legs dangling out in the air from his seat beside a mounted machine gun on the side of the helicopter. Through the passing of a second or two they all saw us—faces showing first their surprise, then their fear.

Shit.

“Go!” Murphy shouted.

The guy by the machine gun scrambled to get behind it as the helicopter lurched left and started to rise.

Murphy jumped out of the boat and onto the dock.

The machine gun ripped a rapid series of wildly aimed, panicked bullets. They tore through our boat’s deck and aluminum pontoons.

I dove for the water as another burst shredded our boat.

Well, I can’t outswim a helicopter underwater. Not even on the surface. No surprise. I could swim deep though, and I knew that all I needed was a little more than three feet. Hey, I used to watch TV before the Whites made a mess of everything. You can learn some stuff there. What I knew was that about three feet was plenty of water to keep me safe from bullets. The other factor in my favor was the pea-green murk of Lake Travis that left visibility near the surface at maybe five feet on a sunny day. Thankfully, the sun was still behind a layer of clouds, which meant less visibility.

I swam.

With my backpack and my machete weighing me down, it was no problem to keep my depth.

I spun in a barrel roll as I kicked, getting a long glance at the surface and seeing nothing but glowing green. If I couldn’t see the helicopter, it couldn’t see me. I still heard its repetitive thumping. I still heard the machine gun fire. I heard rounds splash the surface and I saw bubble trails emerge from the glow. I let myself sink deeper. After all, you can’t believe everything you see on TV.

Feeling momentarily invulnerable, I was glad the helicopter’s gunner was firing at me, probably the most prominent blur of fast-moving white skin he saw after pulling his trigger. That would give Murphy time to escape. I didn’t entertain the possibility that Murphy was laying on the dock full of holes and bleeding.

I swam away from the direction implied by the bullet’s bubble trails. The gunner had guessed where I was based on how I dove into the water. I wasn’t going to come up for air along that vector. I wasn’t going to be easy prey.

Instead, I turned on a path that paralleled the shore, putting me on an intersecting course with the other dock I’d seen. I didn’t think I had enough air in my lungs to reach the dock, but I needed to try.

No, I needed to make it.

It was that kind of situation. To come up for air with nothing to hide me—a bright, white-skinned head with little hair against the green water—would make me an easy target.

The dock was cover. If I could get there and swim below it, I could surface on the other side where the men in the helicopter wouldn’t see me. I liked the unrealistic idea of surfacing in the air gap beneath the dock, but those gaps were only under the docks on Lake Austin below the dam. The water there was kept at a constant level—when it wasn’t flooding. The water on Lake Travis rose and fell by dozens of feet through the course of a year of normal rainfall. All the marinas and docks were built on enormous cubes of foam to keep them afloat on the water’s surface leaving no room for coming to the surface beneath them.

The sound of bullet splashes grew faint.

The helicopter was so loud it was impossible to tell where it was.

The machine gun fire stopped.

I pushed on.

I needed air, but that was nothing new. It seemed like every time I got into the water anymore, I needed to hold my breath way past the point of comfort. I was becoming very familiar with how far past my perceived limits I could actually push myself.

I was way past the point of protests from my lungs and into that part of oxygen deprivation where my vision was starting to tunnel black around the edges. It was time to surface or drown. I curled into a ball, put my feet in the muck on the lakebed, and exhaled all of my air as I pushed to the surface. I was only going up long enough to suck in some air, then go right back down again.

My shoulder hit something hard and my head bounced against foam.

I’d made it to the other dock.

But I needed air, right now.

I scrambled through the water, grabbing for the dock’s edge, found it, and pushed my face above the surface. I sucked in my breath, got a quick glimpse at the sky, and went back down again, moving over beneath the dock.

I found a cable support on the bottom side of the floating structure to hold onto. I needed to keep myself still. I also needed another breath. After holding my breath too long the first time, the second one didn’t last.

Leaning my head back, I slowly surfaced while holding onto the cable support, putting just my face above the water. I grabbed another deep breath, pushed my luck and took a second, then went back under again.

I listened.

The sound of the helicopter’s blades beating the air wasn’t as loud as it had been a few moments before.

I waited.

Maybe they were leaving.

Maybe they were hovering over the house, looking for Murphy. Maybe they were just up higher where they could get a view over a larger area. I had no way to know. I only had a need to breathe, and a hope not to be seen when I surfaced.

I held my breath as long as I dared.

Moving slowly, I came out from under the dock and rose to the surface, looking for any movement, any shape against the grayness of the clouds. Nothing.

I took two more deep breaths and tried to get an idea of where the helicopter was. Somewhere high above the other dock was all I could figure. In fact, a lot higher. They were leaving. I sank myself back below the dock again and listened carefully.

The sound diminished while I continued to wonder, what were they doing? Did they see the pontoon boat’s wake from where they were flying? Did they come over to check on survivors? They must have been surprised when they saw two Whites on a boat. I wondered what was going through their heads now that they’d gotten past their knee-jerk choice to try and kill us. Were they familiar with Slow Burns and Smart Ones? They
must
have thought we were both of some dangerous variety of White.

I needed air.

I surfaced again and stayed up, looking around.

The helicopter was at least a mile distant and flying away.