Slow Burn (Book 7): City of Stin (5 page)

We found another boat later that day that had run aground, just one more of hundreds, if not thousands of boats on the lake that had loosed its mooring lines and went adrift. It was a ski boat with a half tank of gasoline and a charge on the battery sufficient to crank the motor.

We drove it for a bit before shutting down the motor and paddling our way toward a long dock sticking out into the lake near a cluster of closely packed houses. The presence of so many houses all but guaranteed that some of their former residents turned white by the virus would still be lingering.

We anchored far enough from the end of the dock that no overzealous Whites would be tempted to make the jump if they decided they had reason. We needed to get down to the end of the lake, but didn’t want to leave a wake easily spotted by the helicopters when they made their afternoon trip from south to north, going back home.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too late when we saw a single helicopter cross below the clouds. Having seen them pass by twice a day for over a month, I knew that usually one trip was made in each direction each day. The number of helicopters varied from one to three, but on the days when more than one flew, they flew together.

As the sound dissipated and the helicopter turned into a black speck before disappearing, Murphy and I started to paddle our boat toward the dock.

We were safe to run our test.

Once we were at the end of the dock, I leaned out and looped the bow line around a cleat. I wanted it to be easy to remove so I didn’t wrap it. I climbed out of the boat and looked across fifty feet of wooden planks into somebody’s backyard.

Dead grass and knee-deep weeds covered the ground between a few tall oaks whose bows spread widely to shade the entire lawn. The only shrubs grew in a line along the wall of the house. As I looked at the yard, what I saw were only a few tree trunks and no significant bushes behind which Whites could conceal themselves. And that was nearly always my first thought when I looked at any area, where could the Whites be hiding?

For the purposes of my test, the yard was good—not perfect, but good. Any Whites coming would be easily seen a good while before they reached the dock. Bottom line, if my test was going to get out of hand, I’d see it getting that way in plenty of time to get my ass to safety.

With my Hello Kitty bag on my back and my pockets full of twelve gauge shells, I took up a position halfway up the length of the dock. I turned to Murphy who was standing at my side, looking up and down the shore. I said, “I’d feel better if I left my bag in the boat.”

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed. “That would be the smart thing, I guess. But you’ve swam with it before. If you end up in the water you’ll be fine.”

I sighed.

“Besides, you said you wanted a realistic test,” he told me. “We always have backpacks on. That’s just the way life is now. You gotta carry your shit with you. Why not run your test while you’re wearing it?”

Makes sense.

Murphy walked a few paces up the dock to put himself between me and the boat. He readied his M4, but kept the butt at his shoulder and kept it aimed at the water. “I’ll take ‘em out if it turns out you need a hand. Don’t want my Null Spot to get any more teeth marks on his pretty white skin.” He laughed.

“I’m not feeling the sincerity.”

Murphy grinned. “Start when you’re ready.”

I looked at the black shotgun in my hands and got a little bit of an excited tingle. It felt solid. It felt powerful. And it looked badass. I adjusted my stance, leveled the gun, and stabilized my wrist against my hip. I pointed the shotgun at the fat trunk of the nearest oak and fired. The thunder of the gunshot echoed off the house, obnoxiously loud. Instantly, the Whites nearby howled.

Murphy chuckled. “Your test will be here in a minute. Do you want to shoot a few more rounds before they get here? You know, to get a feel for the gun. Maybe reload too?”

Good idea. I pumped the gun and fired at the tree five more times. It was pretty far away, but I know at least some of the shot hit wood. I hurried to reload, moving my hands slowly, putting myself in my calm state as I did. Whites were howling all along the shore, dozens. A few were already crossing the yard, running toward the end of the dock, running toward the tasty stupid man with the noisy gun.

When the first of the Whites pounded his feet on the boards, I had six shells in the shotgun and I was as ready as I was going to be.

I felt the White’s steps vibrate through the dock. An infected girl followed the first one in his sprint toward me. I fired. He lost his balance, spun to his left, and fell into the water. It wasn’t a direct hit by any means, but enough of the pellets had hit him to get the job done. The second White, the girl, was a few paces closer when I fired the second time. She caught most of the shot in her chest. Her legs gave way and she hit the dock with the sound of a large slab of meat.

Excited, I glanced back at Murphy. “Damn. This works.”

With a calm face, he nodded and pointed across the lawn. More whites were trickling into view. Maybe ten were visible running through the knee-deep grass. I had a moment before some of them would be close enough for me to have any hope of shooting them. I pushed two more shells into my new gun and waited.

Twenty-five feet of weathered planks lay between me and the end of the dock. It seems like a good length when you say it, but when frenzied Whites are running at you full speed across the gap, you realize pretty quick that twenty-five feet is a lot like nothing. And as the Whites on the lawn came closer together, looking to mass themselves near the other end—not just two, but at least a dozen more Whites than I had shells loaded in my shotgun—I knew that I’d put myself into a life-or-death situation. Murphy’s well-armed, insuring presence behind me became an afterthought. The safety of the deep water to my left and right was a small comfort.

As soon as a White stepped onto the dock, I fired. My shot killed one following behind him and wounded another. The first White was two long paces closer when my second shot blew a large gout of red out of his chest. That left me three rounds, and at the moment, no Whites on the dock. I finished off the wounded one with a single shot and fired twice more at Whites running across the lawn. They were too far out. I missed both.

Calm.

Breathe.

I reloaded. I did it quickly. More Whites would be on the dock in seconds.

“You good?” Murphy asked, tension in his voice.

“I’m good.” I pushed in six smooth, quick rounds, raised the shotgun to my hip, and fired as a White reached the end of the dock.

Got her.

My confidence was growing with each burst of red blood from white skin.

A group of several more arrived at the other end of the dock.

Too many.

I emptied my shotgun at them in patient shots, giving the wounded and dying a chance to fall before sending my pellets at those behind.

When I was empty, two were still clambering toward me over the dead and writhing bodies.

The number of running Whites coming across the grass was way more than I knew I could handle.

I started to reload, keeping my eye on the two Whites. It was immediately clear that I wouldn’t get the shells into my rifle in time. Everything happened in adrenaline-soaked fast time. I dropped the shells from my hand and pulled out my machete, hacking down in one motion as the first of the two neared me.

Murphy shot the second, and it fell to the dock in front of me.

I chopped down with my machete and lodged the tip into the boards at my feet, took a quick glance at the coming Whites, and decided I had time to reload, provided I didn’t let my nerves get away from me and fumble the attempt.

I didn’t. I finished reloading.

I killed four more Whites with six more shots.

By then, so many of the infected were converging on the end of the dock, Murphy said, “I think we should go.”

“Yeah.” Feeling good, I yanked my machete out of the wood.

Murphy ran to the boat and I followed. I loosed the bow line and shoved off. We floated out by nearly a dozen feet when a runner jumped off the dock and landed in the water close to the boat. I shot him.

Murphy started the engine and I fired at more Whites running up the dock.

As the boat started to pick up speed, I relaxed. We were safe.

“Good test?” Murphy asked.

“I think the shotgun was the right call,” I smiled.

It was good to have a guy who had some experience with real weapons.

“Just keep in mind the noise,” Murphy told me.

“It’s hard to ignore.” I sat down in the passenger seat. “I know panic is what leads to bad choices when it comes time to shoot. We both know all too well that once the shooting starts, things get bad in a hurry. The shotgun is a last resort.”

“Don’t forget it.” He started to chuckle. “Null Spot.”

It was late in the day but still light outside when Murphy and I docked the boat at the edge of the lake where the water, a tree-covered slope, and a steep, rocky side of the levee converged. The levee extended the dam a quarter mile to the southeast and only ever held water back when the lake was overfilled like it was now.

No Whites were around. Better yet, no helicopters full of belligerent assholes were buzzing about to strafe us.

Murphy tied off the boat. I left the keys in it, and we carefully negotiated the long climb over the rocks to get to the top of the levee. Still, we were alone and the afternoon was starting to settle down to a quiet that belied the would-be dangers lurking when dark finally settled. The air was dead calm.

Prior to the arrival of the virus, the ambient noise of life was the sound of cars and trucks careening over the asphalt at high speed. It was a sound I’d learned to ignore. I’d recalled noticing when it was replaced by a new ubiquitous noise—gunfire. I remember that the gunfire peaked a few days after everything went to shit. For a time, it was near constant—sometimes close, sometimes far away. As the virus ate away at humanity, the gunshots grew more sporadic until a day came when I found myself standing and looking around, sensing something was missing but unable to figure out what it was. Like the absence of the traffic noise, the absence of the gunshots was hard to figure out.

By then, the world’s natural sound was that of birds which seemed to be thriving and tweeting everywhere—house sparrows, cardinals, and doves.  Coyotes loved the new order of things, as I heard their howls and yelps nearly every night. The only manmade sound left was that made by Whites. I guess when the virus fried their powers of speech away, it left them with the desire to vocalize anyway, howling and yelping like the coyotes, screaming when they were on the hunt or being hunted by other Whites. Near or far, their voices were almost always on the wind.

None of the loud ones were around when Murphy and I reached the top edge of the dam, and we didn’t see any moving nearby. Far below and downstream on the riverbank, I saw some Whites trying to corral a small animal. Unless it was able to get into the water and swim away pretty quickly, I didn’t hold out any hope for it.

Murphy and I climbed down the long, treacherous slope on the other side of the levee, coming off it near the shoulder of ranch-to-market road 620. Out of habit, I looked both ways before crossing the five lanes of asphalt, nearly empty except for those cars and trucks stopped on the bridge.

Once across, we concealed ourselves in the dense trees and took a moment to catch our breath.

“So far, so good,” said Murphy.

I shrugged and silently scanned the shadows under the trees around us, expecting a gang of quiet, sneaky Whites to be lurking there, ready to ambush us. I knew they were out there. They were
always
out there.

We started down toward the river, following the path of a narrow road that meandered its way through the trees toward the low-water crossing, the place where we had a boat tied off. Along the way, we didn’t see any Whites but we could hear them—there weren’t many, and they weren’t agitated, just regular Whites going about their business.

When we came within sight of the water, I saw our boat drifting on its tether just as we’d left it six weeks ago. Its shine was dulled under a layer of clingy dirt, dust that settled on dry afternoons, turning to mud when the dew settled overnight.

“You’re expecting trouble?” Murphy nodded as he said it. He was expecting trouble, too. Hell, we were always expecting it.

“I just don’t want it to be a surprise. Know what I mean?”

Murphy grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He was joking, of course.

“You cover me from up here,” I said. “I’ll head down. If any Whites come to fuck with me, well, shoot ‘em if you can. If not, and I can’t handle ‘em, I’ll jump in the water and swim downriver a bit. We can hook up down there.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

I moved through the trees, crunching brown autumn leaves and hating them for making me noisy. I paused behind thick, gnarled trunks and took my time to look around. We’d gone too long without trouble. That worried me, but nothing happened.

I reached the bank, squatted, and scanned the other side of the river before I stepped through knee-deep water to climb into the boat. The keys were dangling in the ignition. All was just as we’d left it. I raised my shotgun to my shoulder, but the awkwardness of the pistol grip made me feel foolish. I lowered it and laid my wrist on my hip as I pointed the gun uselessly at the far shore. I leaned against a gunwale and waved Murphy to come down.

He made almost no noise at all as he worked his way through the trees. He untied the bow line when he arrived, then jumped into the boat beside me, shoving off as he did so. He said, “That was easy.”

Nodding, I replied, “You ride shotgun, I’ll drive.”