Slow Burn (Book 5): Torrent (14 page)

We passed Sarah Mansfield’s boathouse, Mr. Mays’ house, with his remains still in it, the dock where Nico and I made our escape from Nancy’s chain gang and the country club with the Humvee still sitting in the water at the end of the boat ramp. We collected a solid-looking, aluminum-hulled canoe along the way.

Eventually we came within view of the old, gray concrete of Tom Miller Dam. It wasn’t a big dam, at least not compared to the three-hundred-foot-tall Mansfield Dam that divided this section of the river from Lake Travis some fifteen or twenty miles upriver.

Ahead of us on the left was a restaurant called The Hula Hut, with a wide wooden pier for a dining room. Having sat at a table on that pier, sipping a beer and waiting on my food many times with a summer breeze blowing across, I’d stared at the peculiarly constructed dam. Built into the near side was a small hydroelectric power plant. On the far end, a spillway effectively limited the level of the river. At most times, water didn’t flow over the spillway. Instead, the river’s flow ran through the hydroelectric turbines.

Through the center section of the dam were nine more spillways, taller than the main spillway, each topped with an enormous floodgate. If those gates were opened, the level of the river behind the dam would drop ten feet. I’d never seen them open. I’d also never seen the water running over
them. But the water was roaring over them that morning.

I said to Sergeant
Dalhover, “We shouldn’t get too close to the dam. It looks like the current gets pretty strong.”

Sergeant
Dalhover nodded.

I pointed to a building on the southern bank where Bee Creek added its flow to the river. “It would be nice to be closer, but why don’t you drop us off over there?”

Is that close enough?” Amy asked. “You’ll have to carry the canoe for, like, a mile to get below the dam.”

I smiled. “I’ll make Murphy carry it. He’s a big dude.”

“Hey, man,” Murphy said.

“It won’t be more than a half-mile.”

Dalhover took a long, hard look at the building and the thick trees growing down to the edge of the bank. “Don’t see any of ‘em over there.”

Murphy looked intently at that part of the shore. “Looks clear to me, man. Let’s hit it.”

Dalhover caught my attention. “Listen, Zane.”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful going through the trees.”

“I know,” I said.

“You guys will be carrying the canoe. You’ll be vulnerable. Don’t rush. Take your time. Be careful.”

“Yep.”

“A low bridge is a couple of hundred yards downstream from the dam. With the river as high as it is, the water may be running over. If not, it’ll probably still be too high to go under.”

That made sense. I gave him a nod.

“Stay in the trees until you get past the bridge and the rapids, then put your canoe in.”

The water on both sides of the dam was normally smooth, with only a gentle current that could be felt, but seldom seen. But the water wasn’t usually flowing over the dam, either. “Okay.”

“Don’t rush to get back tonight if it’s not safe. Take your time.”

It was all good advice.
“We’ll be careful.”

Murphy
slapped me on the back. “I wish.”

I shot him a hard look. “We’ll be
careful. As careful as we can be.”

After stumbling through the fast-moving water between the pontoon boat and the shore, Murphy and I were soaked. We trudged up the steep bank, wrestling the canoe through tree branches along the way. Reaching level ground, we stopped for a breather.

Looking into the damp shade beneath the oaks and between the cedars, I whispered, “We can’t keep going this way. One of us needs to have a gun in hand.”

Murphy gave me a nod. “I can carry the canoe. You be the guard.”

Despite my earlier joke, I didn’t like that idea at all. “I’ll carry it.”

Murphy actually laughed out loud at that. “Whatever, man. You’re like an albino Somali. I’m surprised you can pick
yourself
up sometimes.”

“At least
you
think you’re funny.” I was mildly offended.

“Look man, put your end down. You know I can carry it easier than you.”

I huffed and looked at my wiry arms. I was stronger than I looked. I was sure of that.

“Don’t worry, dude.
Steph likes your He-Man muscles.”

I stepped out from under the canoe and let it fall.

Murphy lost his balance for a moment, but to his credit, caught the weight before the canoe hit the ground. He took a moment arranging it at an angle on his back and shoulders, with the stern down low behind him and the bow up in the air in front. He gripped the gunwales with his hands, keeping it stable and making it look like the easiest thing in the world. He gave me a stern look. “Even you know that was stupid.”

He was right. If the canoe had banged on the ground, it could have brought unwanted attention. That was the only dumbass moment I could afford for the day. Actually, it was more than I could afford. I’d put us both in danger with a petulant choice.

I arranged my rifle into a comfortable shooting position before I turned to Murphy and said, “Sorry.”

He smiled, making it look less awkward to be carrying the canoe alone than with my help. “No sweat.”

And off we went, with little more than a destination and a skeleton of a plan.

Moving at a pretty good pace, we came out
of the trees and onto a curved asphalt road that emptied into a small parking lot in front the windowless, two-story utility company building. Not a single infected person was anywhere to be seen. I waved Murphy to follow and we hurried across the empty parking lot. At the opposite end, a row of steel power line towers cut across the landscape. Below, all of the cedar trees had been cut to nubs, leaving only the prickly pear cacti and some hardy weeds growing up through the rough limestone.

The power lines went off in a direction that roughly paralleled the river. I pointed and in a soft voice said, “That’s our path.”

The canoe wobbled from left to right on Murphy’s shrug.

I led. Murphy followed.

Broken bits of limestone crunched under foot. Nothing in the trees seemed to notice the rhythmic noise. The infected were strangely absent. As I watched for movement in the trees, the reason for their absence occurred to me. The terrain on this side of the dam was hilly, cut by steep ravines, and dense with cedars, oaks and all manner of thorny bushes and vines. It was a difficult and expensive place to build. Still, the hilltops and ridge crests, with their breathtaking views of downtown Austin, were dotted with widely spaced, extravagantly priced houses. Any infected or their victims in this part of town were likely to be up there. Down where Murphy and I hiked were only fire ants, scorpions and swarms of mosquitoes.

The
roar of the water pouring over the dam started to dissipate and I realized we were spending more time going up than down. The path under the power lines, as easy as it was to walk, was taking us inconveniently far from the river. I started examining the woods to our left, looking for a game trail that might lead back to the water.

But one of the habits keeping me alive in the post-viral world was paying attention to everything happening around me. I’d made plenty of mistakes by focusing too intently on things at the center of my attention, only to be blindsided by something else. So as we moved, as we searched for a game trail, I kept looking ahead, behind us and to the other side of the clear-cut power line easement.

That’s when I spotted movement.

I froze, but just for a second.

I spun and urged Murphy to move quickly behind some concealing cedar branches. I hustled over beside him, and whispered, “There’s something ahead. I’m going to sneak up through the woods and see what’s up. You wait here.”

“Wait here? Why?
Ain’t like somebody’s gonna come and steal the canoe if I leave it. Besides, my arms are tired.”

“Sometimes I think you live to be contrary.”

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle white.” Murphy grinned, amused with himself.

“White?”

“Yeah, you know, ‘cause we’re all white now. It seemed apropos.”

“Apropos? How do you even know that word?”

“Just ‘cause I spent most of my educational career skipping class and getting laid doesn’t mean I don’t read.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” My frustration was coming out.

“Lighten up, man. You’re gonna give yourself an aneurysm.”

“Whatever. Put it down and c’mon.”

It took several long minutes of stealthy sneaking to get into a position with a good view. From our hiding place behind the dense cedars, we saw a six-foot chain link fence topped with barbed wire cutting across the power line easement, on a line running right down to the river. On the other side of the fence was Redbud Trail, a street that ran from the bridge Dalhover warned us about all the way to the top of the hills, south of the river. And an unending helix of naked Whites snaked their way up the steep road.

I squatted down to reduce the chance I might be seen. Murphy dropped down beside me.
“I guess that explains why we haven’t seen any Whites since we came ashore.”

Murphy’s face asked silently for
an explanation.

“The chain-link fence. I’ll bet this whole
area, from the road, down to the river and back to Bee Creek belongs to the utility company, and it’s surrounded by that fence.”

“You know they could knock down the fence, right?”

“Of course,” I said, nodding. “But why? There’s nothing over here but trees as far as they can see.”

“Good point.”

“I wonder if they’re all migrating west, now that they’ve found a way to get over the river.”

“Do you mean south?”

“Jesus, does it matter?”

“Not to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wonder how many of them there are.”

“A shitload.”

“I knew that much.” I looked back over my shoulder through a gap in the foliage. “We can’t get across Redbud Trail with all of those Whites out there. You know as well as I do that Smart Ones are in the mix. They’ll spot us. With the canoe, we won’t be able to evade them.”

Murphy peeked around the tree. “What are you thinking?”

I shrugged and pointed toward the river. “I say we go cross country and see if we can get into the water somewhere on this side of the fence. Otherwise, we need to scrap this canoe plan and figure out another way to get across town.”

“Man, I wish I knew where we could find some silencers nearby. I’m not
diggin’ this idea of going back over to UT.”

“They might be all over town, for all we know. But we don’t have any idea where.”

Murphy asked, “Do you know where any gun shops are on this side of town?”

“I’m not exactly from this neighborhood.”

“Yeah, my billfold’s too skinny for this side of town, too.”

I looked into the woods. “You want to give it a go?”

Murphy made no effort to move. “I’m not a whiz at maps and geometry and stuff, but if we’re on this side of the fence and the road is on that side of the fence, it seems to me if we go in the water back here somewhere, we’re gonna be upstream from the bridge Top told us to get downstream of. ‘Cause that road up there is the one that runs right down to that bridge.”

“Yep. I’m sure that’s right.”

Murphy gave me a flat stare. “You’re gonna try and drown me again, aren’t you?”

I grinned. “Let’s just go down there and look.
Dalhover might be wrong.”

“It seems to me he keeps being right about stuff when nobody thinks he’s
gonna be.” Murphy paused. “You want me to get the canoe?”

“Why? We might not even use it.”

It was Murphy’s turn to grin. “You hear that noise, right?”

“The water from the dam?”

Murphy nodded. “That’s not all the dam. That’s the sound of rapids.”

“And?”

“I know you, Zed. We’re gonna get down there and no matter what it looks like, you’re gonna come up with some crazy rationalization about why you think we’ll be able to get down the river in the canoe alive.”

“Leave the canoe. That’ll give you time to talk me out of my crazy idea on the way back up here to get it.”

Murphy shook his head. “If you give me the time, I’ll talk myself out of it. I say let’s take the canoe and if you think we should go, let’s go. You’ve been good luck for me so far.”

“You’re a frustrating man, Murphy.”

Murphy shrugged.

It took a while to carry the canoe through the woods and down to the edge of the river. It was clearly running two or three feet over its banks, and water was rushing between the trunks of trees lining the shore.

Out in the
main flow, the water rose up in white, frothy humps over submerged rocks and sank in deep eddies. It was rough. Not class five rough, but it bordered on dangerous for two city boys, one of whom couldn’t swim.

“A couple of things,” I said.

“Shit.”

“Shit?”

“You wouldn’t have started that way unless you were thinking about getting into that.”

“Well, a different couple of things.”

“You’re gonna shame me into going, aren’t you?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You remember I can’t swim, don’t you?”

“That water’s not more than five or six feet deep.”

Murphy looked at the rushing water. “I don’t think that makes it any better when it’s like that.”

I pasted on a smile. He was right. We could both drown out there. “Yeah.”

“Remind me. Why do we need the silencers so bad?”

“We can kill all of the Whites we want. Our guns become an advantage, rather than a liability.”

“And we can’t make it without them?”

“Murphy, you know as well as I do that the only people we’ve seen who’ve had any success against the infected were those guys with silencers who killed Jerome. I think the silencers are the only thing that can ensure we’ll live through this.”

“And this has got nothing to do with hunting down Mark and killing him?”

I looked at the bridge. I didn’t want to answer that question. “We can try and figure out another way.”

“Why don’t you just tell me your couple of things and I’ll let you know if I’m stupid enough to follow along?”

“What couple of things?”

“The couple of things you mentioned when you looked at Niagara Falls out there and decided it might be a good idea to jump in.”

“Look, I can go myself if I need to.”

Murphy laughed derisively. “You’re going to jump in the river by yourself, somehow not drown, paddle all the way downtown, hike up through the middle of Austin and get to the university campus, all without getting killed. And then you’re going to find those silencers, like you even know what one looks like, pick them all up, again without getting yourself killed, and find your way all the way back across Austin to the river boat.”

I nodded.

Murphy finished. “And you base your optimism about being able to do this by yourself on what?”

“I’m not dead yet.”

Murphy rolled his eyes and shook his head. “If we go, we go together.”

“Fine.” I pointed inside the canoe. “First off, those bungee cords holding the paddles to the benches will keep them from floating away.”

Murphy’s face turned to worry. “Why would they float away?”

I turned and pointed to the bridge. “Because the canoe will be upside down.”

“This plan already sucks.”

“The water is only about two feet below the bottom of the bridge. We can’t be in the canoe and go under.”

Murphy scrutinized the bridge and nodded. “I’ll give you that. But why upside down? Why don’t we just hang onto the canoe’s sides and float down with it that way?”

“We could, but if we’re going to be in the water anyway, it doesn’t matter if the canoe is upside down or not.”

“It’ll sink.”

Pointing at the bow of the canoe, I asked, “See this compartment at each end of the canoe?”

“Let’s go back to that basic fact that I can’t swim, Zed. I don’t swim. I don’t canoe. I don’t kayak. I don’t ski. I don’t scuba dive. I don’t like it when you drive the Humvee into the river without warning me. I’m not into water sports, in case you haven’t deduced that yet.”

“You don’t need to get all
pissy about it.”

“I’m not. Just stop asking me stupid questions.”

I decided to put the conversation back on a productive track. I pointed at the bow. “Lots of canoes have those watertight compartments at the bow and stern. This canoe won’t sink whether it’s upside down or right side up. Sure, it’ll fill up with water and
swamp
, but it’ll never sink.”

Murphy gave the compartments a long, hard look. “Are you sure about that?”

“Positive. I’m thinking if we turn the canoe over, it’ll work better for us in a couple of ways. First, we won’t have to hang onto the sides with one hand. We’ll be able to hang onto the cross braces with both hands. That reduces the chance the current will pull us away from the canoe and drown us.”

“Okay.”

“If we’re beneath the canoe, we’ll have a pocket of air to breathe, and the Whites on the bridge won’t ever see us. If they don’t see us, they’re not likely to follow us downriver and fuck with us when we try and get out.”

“You think they’d follow us all the way into downtown?”

“Murphy, I don’t know what they’ll do. All I really know is every time I make an assumption about how safe I’ll be around them, they surprise me and I end up in danger.”

“I heard that.” Murphy examined the river again. “So you really think this’ll work?”

I shrugged. I thought it would be easy, though I should have known better. “As long as we stick with the canoe, we’ll get wet, but I think that’s the worse that’ll happen.”

“Back to that point about me not being able to swim. You know if I lose my grip on the canoe, I’ll probably drown, right?”

“I’m a good swimmer, Murphy, and if I lose my grip on the canoe, that water is rough enough that I’d probably drown, too. So we’re even.”

“I’m not sure if that makes you dumber than me or not.”

“If I didn’t think we could both hang onto the canoe, I wouldn’t suggest we try.”

“And how sure are you that this’ll work?”

“Ninety-nine percent.”

Murphy laughed. “That’s bullshit.”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine.”

Murphy shook his head. “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”

We spent enough time on shore to make sure everything we had was secure.

I laced my shoes
up tightly. I buttoned the flaps closed on the big pockets on the thighs of my shorts. Those held four magazines for my rifle. Two more magazines were stuffed into one of my back pockets, but they were long enough that they prevented me from buttoning the flap closed. I worried I’d lose those in the rough water. My other back pocket held a few magazines for my pistol, but I was able to stuff those in sideways. My knife was secure in the old leather sheath on my belt. As for the pistol, I’d been carrying that in a front pocket, but didn’t want to risk losing it. Tucking it into my belt wouldn’t work. So I set the safety, undid my canvas belt, rolled the end and pushed it through the trigger guard before lacing it back through the loops on my cargo shorts.

“You should take the magazine out and make sure there isn’t a bullet in the chamber.”

I looked down at the gun dangling on my hip.

“You don’t want that safety getting flipped off when the river is dragging you over some rocks. You could shoot your dick off.”

I grimaced. “I like my dick.”

After that, Murphy helped me adjust my sling so my M4 was strapped across my back, rather than dangling by one end.

And we were ready to go.

Together we lifted the canoe over our heads and carried it beside an outcrop of stone and bushes that would keep us hidden from curious eyes on the bridge. Knowing Murphy would not be the first to step into the river, I led the way.

By the time I was knee-deep, the current was tugging chaotically at my legs. It was strong enough to be a worry. When the water was up to mid-thigh, I was having trouble keeping my balance.

Murphy was just stepping into the river behind me.

“Be careful with the current.”

Murphy grunted something. All of his concentration was focused on making himself do something he must really have hated.

At waist-deep, bracing myself on the outcrop, I could proceed no further without getting washed away.

“Damn
.” Murphy cursed as the canoe lurched to my left.

I
bent my knees and prepared to go in, but Murphy caught his balance. For the moment, we weren’t moving. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Murphy was well into the water, mid-thigh. With our heads inside the upturned canoe, I said, “This is our last chance to bail out of this.”

Murphy grumbled something
to underscore his reluctance, but he was willing to go forward with the plan.

“Hold
on tight. We need to take a couple of steps to our left and just drop down into the water. Then we can let the current carry us. Don’t fight it, okay? If you do, you’ll lose your grip and then you’ll be fucked, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean. Let’s do this before I change my mind.”

“Here goes.” Not waiting for a response, I shuffled to my left, going deeper as I moved. The current pulled exponentially harder the more I submerged my body.

Just as my footing slipped and I knew I was going, I shouted, “Now
.” I sank into the water and lifted my legs as the canoe torqued and jostled. With a big splash behind me, Murphy fell into the main current.

With the canoe settling into the water and the current pulling us rapidly downstream, I looked back over my shoulder and flipped my hand
s on the cross brace so I could face Murphy. He was wide-eyed and gripping his cross brace tight enough to leave hand prints.

“That was the hard part.”
I hoped. My voice echoed oddly over the water and under the canoe’s aluminum hull. “Relax and flow with the water. Don’t try to walk or push against the rocks with your feet. That’s how you get hurt.”

The canoe bounced up over a wave.

“How do you know this shit?” Murphy asked, urgency heavy in his voice.

“I’m guessing.”

We started to float sideways in the current.

“I’m
gonna punch you in the face when we get out of this.”

I couldn’t tell if Murphy was serious.

More jostling.

The canoe jerked hard to the right and I almost lost my grip. Water splashed my face.

Murphy cursed.

The ride was much worse than I expected.

My feet dragged through some underwater bushes and got caught. I panicked. The canoe jerked out of my hands. I got pulled underwater.

All of those moments over the past month when I’d chanted my calming mantra taught me how to quickly stuff my panic into a little black box and ignore it. Panic was the enemy of clear, quick thought and clear, quick thought was what I needed more than anything.

Murphy’s knees hit me in the face just as his boots kicked me in the gut. But that was okay, as okay as things were going to get. I threw my arms around his legs and hoped his grip on the boat was stronger than the bush’s hold on my feet.

The current bent me back and jerked my feet against the bush, but I didn’t come free. My arms slipped down Murphy’s legs and stopped on his boots. All I could hear was the bubbling thunder of rushing water.

The situation was momentarily static as the river tested Murphy’s strength against the bush’s grip on me.

But I was the weak link. I was only going to last another thirty seconds more without a breath.

As I was thinking rapidly through my alternatives, the bush gave way and the water jerked me downstream.

Thank God
.

I needed air.

Using Murphy like a ladder as the current twisted me around behind him, I crawled my way up, gripping anything I could as the swirling water pulled me in every direction.

Miracle
.

Nearly punching Murphy in the back of the head as I reached above the water’s surface, my hand caught onto the edge of the canoe’s rear seat. I fished my other hand around above the water’s ill-defined surface, caught onto Murphy’s shoulder and pulled my head above water for breath.

Thank God, for real.

“God damn, Zed
.”

I got my other hand on the back edge of the seat and pulled my head as far up out of the water as I could. With my chin against Murphy’s shoulder and our skulls bouncing together with each rough wave, I shouted, “Thanks for not letting go.”

Murphy said something, but I couldn’t tell what.

The current jostled us some more and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, metal shrieked on concrete. The canoe lurched to a near stop and our bodies jerked forward in the current.

It was time to hang on for all we could.

“
Shit.
” It was my voice. It was Murphy’s voice. It was the cry of the metal wailing on and on and on until I was sure the canoe’s bottom had been ripped from its frame.