Slow Burn (Book 3): Destroyer (17 page)

Dalhover took up a position by the wall and off to the side, with his rifle leveled at the door. Just to be certain, I knocked on the door and said, “Hey.”

Fists on the other side went nuts and the door shuddered under their violence. It had to be a White.

I looked over at Dalhover. “This is going to be fun.”

He looked at the door, then back at me, all business.

I wished I had my pistol. I wished I’d taken the time to retrieve my machete. Alas, I only had the M-4. Not the best weapon for very close quarters. I drew a deep breath and turned the knob slowly. The locking mechanism slid on lubricated brass, and as soon as the catch was free of the strike plate, I pushed.

The pounding stopped, and b
ig white fingers immediately snaked around the edge of the door, flinging it back and dragging me off balance in the process.

I
tried to raise my rifle as I fell, but an enormous beast of a man pounced out of the room, and with a brutal swipe of his arm, knocked the weapon away. Before I could react, two apelike hands gripped my head and pulled my face up to his gaping maw.

Putrid
breath. Brilliantly white teeth. Black eyes. And I was a rag doll, too slow to keep the bellowing monster from ripping my face off.

Terror!

Dalhover yelled something. I may have heard gunshots. But those teeth were coming at my face and I could do nothing to stop them.

Then, in what looked like a thoughtful pause, the man looked up and down my white face, notched up to a new level of frustration, and discarded me. He tossed my head—thankfully with the rest of me still attached—as though he were passing a basketball, and it bounced off the hard floor in a similar fashion. Through the stars in my eyes, I saw the rabid mountain gorilla leap across the lobby and bound up the stairs.

Dalhover’s rifle erupted. Wood splintered. Sheetrock exploded with bursts of dust. Metal sparked.

The White disappeared upstairs.

Three staccato bangs were followed by three more, then the sound of a heavy body hit the wall and I watched as the giant man tumbled back down, bouncing on stairs until coming to a stop with the loud slap of skin on tile.

Dalhover wasted not a second. He crossed the lobby and smashed the butt of his rifle into the man’s skull.
One, crunch. Two, crunch. Three…  The sound of bone mashing into meat.

“Holy Christ!” I tried to pull myself up off the floor, but ghostly hues of color and shadows swam across my vision. I blacked out.

That tenuous state of awareness that lives between sleep and consciousness lasts for spans of time that feel like hours, but I know can only be minutes. Some mornings, in that time before waking, I cling to gossamer pornographic dramas and lusts that feel like love. Most mornings, and often in the middle of the night, I squirm away from a faceless, suffocating
monster covered in dirty, dreadlocked fur. It waits in my dreams to rend my flesh, swallow my soul, and leech my bones. They are dreams of terror and trying so, so hard to run. But my feet never move. My hands are syrupy slow. I scream through dead vocal chords. I try to drag myself through the middle realm and open my eyes, but the nightmare sucks me back, tenaciously holding on.

It was Steph’s face I saw, washed in golden, late afternoon sunlight, when I finally caught my breath and opened my eyes.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said.

I blinked.

“You almost sounded like you were…” She said the next word like she thought it might be offensive. “…Whimpering.”

It sounded like screaming in my head.

“Are you okay?”

I managed a nod.

“What were you dreaming about?”

“Nothing,” I whispered the lie. “I don’t remember my dreams.”

Steph laid her hand on my forehead then touched my face. Satisfied with whatever information she gleaned, she straightened up in her seat, but her eyes didn’t leave my face.

I noticed a bulky bandage on her shoulder and she seemed be letting her right
arm rest in her lap. “Your arm…?”

“I’ll be okay. Murphy stitched up my shoulder.”

“Murphy?”

“I’ll have an ugly sca
r.”

Won
’t we all
?

I crooked a tiny smile and nodded. Unexpected, unexplainable tears welled up in my eyes and I clenched them shut.

Where did that come from?

“Does your head hurt?”

I nodded a lie. Well, not really. My head felt like it was made of broken glass.

A plastic pill bottle rattled and the lid burped off as Steph said, “You have a nasty bump on your head. I don’t think you have a concussion, but...I’m not positive. Can you sit up?”

Everything in the world seemed to disconnect and slide around my field of vision as I pushed myself up on my elbows and closed my eyes. Steph’s fingers touched my lips and pressed two pills between. “Swallow those. They’ll help.”

When I opened my eyes again, she was bringing a straw to my lips. I drank the pills down and sucked greedily on the straw, realizing suddenly how utterly parched I felt. After the straw slurped loudly on the bottom of the empty cup, I laid my head very, very gently back on a pillow and breathed deeply.

Steph’s hand came to rest on my forehead again and stayed. “You have a fever, but that’s expected.”

“What’s my temperature? Do you know?”

“Ninety-nine point six.”

I sank further into the cushions. That temperature was
two tenths of a degree warmer than when I’d checked while at Russell’s house. Was the virus winning its battle with my immune system? Would my brain start dying?

Steph said, “I can give you something for the fever.
”

Pills wouldn’t help with that.
I squinted into the brightness of the room and asked, “Sunglasses? Do you have my sunglasses?”

“Yes.
” She turned and picked them up off of the coffee table she was sitting on and slipped them onto my face.

“Thanks.” Under the protection of the sunglasses, I opened my eyes wide and let them linger on her face. Her eyes were kind but determined. She was lean, like a marathoner. She wasn’t pretty, not really.
Plain, maybe. But when she smiled, she lit up. I asked, “What day is it?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter anymore?”

“No. I was just wondering…wondering… Is this tomorrow?”

A touch of a smile crossed Steph’s face. “Are you asking if you got injured last night?”

“Yes. Sorry. My brains are kind of rattled.”

Steph nodded, “Yes, it was last night.”

“What time is it?”

“Late afternoon?” Steph craned her neck to look at a clock. “It’s quarter after four.”

“Wow.” Was it the blow to my head or was I just that exhausted? Probably both. “So, no concussion?”

“I don’t think so.”

I put a hand on the back of the sofa and very, very slowly pulled myself up to sit.

“You don’t have to sit if you’re not up to it,” Steph told me.

“I want to.” I finished getting myself upright and felt dizzy. “I do
not
feel good.”

“Do you feel nauseous?” The concern was heavy in Steph’s voice.

“No.” I started to shake my head to clear the cobwebs, but a sharp pain put a stop to that. “I feel crappy all over.”

“Besides the bump, you’re probably dehydrated. You need to get some food in you, too. When
was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know. I…I had a sandwich with Russell yesterday. Where is Russell?”

“He’s with Mandi.”

“Hmm. He
must be mad at me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Long story.”

“I’ll go fix you something. Are you hungry?” Steph jumped up from the giant square coffee table and headed off toward the kitchen. My answer to the question was apparently not going to matter. So I just watched her go. N
icely fitting jeans. A clean t-shirt draped just to the waistline. Her red hair shimmering like it belonged in a shampoo commercial.

What the fuck?
Am I awake?

I looked around the living room. It was modern luxury. It was orderly. The glass wall was clean. No panes were broken. I saw no smoke on the horizon. I heard no distant gunfire. I saw no Whites. I breathed in cool, crisp, clean air and savored the essence of civilization: air conditioning.

Juxtaposed against the stark cleanliness of the living room, I realized that I reeked. My clothes felt crispy with the salt of evaporated sweat and things I didn’t care to think about. I hadn’t had a shower in more days than I could count. My hair was full of so much crud that it stood at weird angles on my head.

Water was running into the sink in the kitchen as Steph leaned over a counter.

“Water too?” I asked loudly, my voice echoing in the expanse.

“All we’ll ever need,” Steph called back.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“We think it’s piped up from the river and filtered. There’s a big water system downstairs.”

“That explains why you’re all cleaned up.”

Steph smiled at me and went about her business. A blender spun loudly in the kitchen. “And you know the best part?”

“No.”

“
There’s a whole closet full of clothes upstairs that fit me perfectly.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah!”

I leaned my head back on the couch, closed my eyes, and found a position that let the lump on my
head rest on a soft spot. I felt sure I could get on my feet if I needed to. It would be painful. Balance might be difficult. But I’d risen to the task so many times over the past several days that I had a new concept of what I could endure.

Perhaps the apocalypse had made me a better person.

Achieve personal growth through the end of the world!

That was a silly thought. Likely the most laudable achievement in my future would be surviving the day and going to sleep in a safe place. Perhaps that was as good as it would ever get again.

The noise of my weapons scooting across the wooden top of the coffee table caused me to jerk my head up faster than was prudent. Shards of pain radiated through my brain. “Ouch.”

Steph sat down on the table in front of me. “I made you a smoothie. It’s frozen strawberries, bananas, and blueberries. There was a big jug of some kind of organic protein powder in the pantry. I put some of that in there, too.”

“Thanks.” I sipped a big gulp through the straw. “Damn, that’s good.”

Steph smiled, but it evaporated as quickly as it came.

I sipped some more.

“It’s not a very substantial meal, but there isn’t that much around.”

“Oh?”

“I think Ms. Mansfield was a vegan,” Steph told me. “Lots of semi-wilted fruits and veggies in the fridge, along with some tofu. Enough pasta, beans, and some sauces in the pantry for a couple of days, if we’re not too hungry. Oh, and frozen fruit in the freezer.” Steph pushed a glass of water into my free hand.

“This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” I said, only half-joking. The pureed, frozen fruit in my stomach made me realize how famished I was.

“Thanks. Cooking isn’t my forte.”

Silence settled in while I slurped. Thoughts of all that had gone on and all that was happening outside the walls started to sneak back in. Not wanting to think about any of that, I said, “You seem to be doing okay with your shoulder.”

Steph nodded
, and with a confident look on her face said, “Yes, about that. I’m sorry, I kind of freaked out when it happened.”

“Don’t worry about
it.”

“If I stand too quickly I get a bit dizzy.
I think I must have bled out at least a pint by the time they got me stitched up.”

I shivered. “I’ll bet that didn’t feel good without anesthetic.”

“Sergeant Dalhover found a nice bottle of vodka to help out with that. I think my hangover this morning was worse than the pain in my shoulder.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there. You know, I found a big bottle of hydrocodone in a house a couple of days ago. Murphy might know where it is.”

“He already gave me the bottle. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. So what’s the deal? What’d I miss while I was out?”

Steph looked around for a moment then said, “We’re staying in Sarah Mansfield’s house, but you know that, right?”

I grimaced. “I think I killed her.”

“The virus killed her, Zed. You just put her out of her misery.”

“That’s a nice way to think about it. I guess that was probably her son out there on the lawn with her last night. He’s dead too.”

“I guess,” Steph answered. “I didn’t see them. I’ve been in the ward with you since they stitched me up.”

A small laugh was all I could manage. “This isn’t bad for a sick ward.”

“Actually, it’s everything for the moment. We all slept in here on the couches last night.”

“Really?”

“I think everybody felt comfortable being in the same room together.”

“Did somebody stand watch?” I asked, concerned.

“I’m pretty sure. I was out of it once the hydrocodone kicked in, but they were talking about taking shifts in the video room when I passed out.”

“The video room?” That didn’t sound right at all. “You mean the theater?”

“No, not the theater.”

That puzzled me, and it showed on my face.

“That’s what Dalhover and Murphy called it. I haven’t been down there yet.”

“Downstairs?”

“Yes, there’s a room for the security guards down there where they can monitor all of the video cameras. It was the room where you got…bounced around last night.”

I smirked. “Bounced around. That’s about right. How many cameras?”

“I think Dalhover said there are twenty or thirty. You can see all of the common areas in the house, anything on the grounds, and outside the wall.”

“No shit?” That was a nice surprise.

“It’s true.” Steph confirmed.

“I guess that’ll make it easy to stand watch at night.”

“Mandi is down there now,” Steph said. “Sergeant Dalhover insisted that somebody be on watch at all times.”

“So there
is
something to like about Dalhover.”

“He’s a good man. He’s just surly.”

“I think he’s the saddest man I’ve ever met.”

Steph gave me a little, patronizing smile and she said, “I’m going to try and take a shift tomorrow. I shouldn’t do any manual labor for a week or two, but I can take sitting in a rolling chair and watching video monitors.”

“I’m starting to have trouble focusing on what you’re saying.” I said, a little dreamily. “What were those pills that you gave me?”

“Hydrocodone.”

“Oh.”

Somewhere in the next few moments, sleep stole everything away.