Slow Burn (Book 5): Torrent (19 page)

An explosion rocked the building and debris flew away from the stairs.

Jesus, what the fuck is this place?

I dropped to my belly without a thought for the cuts I earned for my haste.

Murphy took cover behind a counter.

I clambered across the floor until I was behind what looked like a sturdy shelf and threw the barrel of my rifle over it, aiming at the stairs.

C’mon, motherfucker.

I’d gotten surprised by the explosion and I was pissed. Two surprises in as many minutes was a trend that did not bode well for long-term survival.

I waited. Murphy waited. We exchanged a look to let each other know that we were okay.

Still, nothing happened.

One benefit of the storm outside was not a single White came running into the building after Murphy and I had emptied the better part of three magazines. And, oh, by the way, something tried to blow us the fuck up. Well, maybe not us, exactly, but, damn, it was just right over there.

Thank God for thunder. It made good camouflage for such noises.

My anger was dissipating and adrenaline was stoking impatience. I whispered, “I’m going to go over there and see what’s up.”

“Me first. You follow. Be careful.” With his rifle at his shoulder aimed at the stairs, Murphy made his way carefully across the store’s main floor until he was beside a wall near the bottom of the stairs.

As soon as Murphy stopped, I ran across the sales floor, passed him by and crossed the wide foot of the stairs. I came to a stop and positioned myself beside the banister, pointing my rifle uselessly up at an empty landing where the stairs made their turn to come back up over my head. From Murphy’s position by the wall, he could shoot anything coming down from the second floor on the flight of stairs above me. My position sucked. I couldn’t shoot anything.

Still, nothing moved. No more noises came from above.

While we were waiting, I looked back across what I could see of the sales floor. Nothing had moved since we’d stopped shooting. 

Breathe.

Be calm.

Be cool.

We were in a dangerous situation. Riding a wave of adrenaline through a sequence of impulsive choices would only get me killed.

Breathe.

Up at the landing, an arm in what looked like a military MOPP suit lay down across a couple of stairs. A white-skinned hand dangled past the end of a sleeve. A steadily flowing rivulet of blood ran down over the hand and off of the index finger.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Murphy looked up at the empty staircase above my head and hollered. “Anybody up there?”

We waited, but no answer came.

“What just happened?” I asked.

He hollered again. “I’m coming up.”

Not liking the feeling of uselessness, I added, “Don’t shoot at us. If you’re up there and would prefer we leave, just tell us.”

“What the fuck is that?” Murphy chuckled. “Are good manners going to make a difference?”

I shrugged. “Go fu—“

Something, maybe a book, slid across the vinyl tiles on the floor at the top of the stairs.

I looked up as though I could see through the flight of stairs above me just as heavy feet started pounding the steps on the way down.

Murphy’s rifle tracked a target, but he didn’t fire.

“What is it?” I whispered, but I didn’t need to wait for Murphy to answer.

A tan-colored mass hit the wall at the back of the landing, slipped, scrambled around the corner, regained its footing and rushed down at me. It was one of the soldiers in a
MOPP suit. Familiar, from the day I’d seen a soldier in just such a suit murder Jerome. The suit’s hood was gone. His skin was white. His eyes were crazy and his mouth was bloody.

I ripped off three shots, hitting the White in the center of his chest. He came to a dead stop and dropped into a seated position on a stair, with his legs splaying out in front of him. His breath hissed slowly out of the holes in his chest.

Standing there with my rifle still trained on the dying White, I realized something profound. I whispered to Murphy, “That could—”

“I don’t think you need to whisper anymore.”

“That could have been the one that shot Jerome.”

“Could have been.”

I started up the stairs and stopped. “Oh, you wanted to go first.”

Murphy shook his head and answered the implied question. “I thought the stairs might be booby trapped, but I think that dead one on the landing took care of it for us. You go ahead.”

“That was the explosion, then?”

Murphy nodded.

With two Whites in military garb dead on the stairs, I figured there was little chance
of any normal soldiers still on the second floor. That boosted my courage. Whites I could deal with. The soldiers had lethally bested us on our last meeting.

The stairs
were slippery with fresh blood. I was extra careful as I made my way around the body on the landing, keeping my weapon trained at the top. Murphy came up behind, close enough to support me, but not so close that we could both be easily shot by a single gunman.

The wall on the backside of the landing was blackened from the explosion we heard. The handrail was bent and sticking out from the wall. With the greatest caution, I continued up the final flight of stairs, examining every step and every metal support on the banister as I went. I didn’t want to find any booby traps not yet tripped.

At the top of the wide staircase was another sales floor stacked with shelves of mostly textbooks, much more orderly than the first floor. Unfortunately, the shelves limited what we could see. Anyone or anything had a hundred places to hide. At least the second floor was smaller than the first. Doors off to our right led to the administrative offices, or so I guessed.

I ran over to a checkout counter, kneeled and waited for Murphy to join me.

Once he was there, I whispered, “I don’t like this place.”

“We’re here. Let’s get this done.” Murphy ran off to the wall on the left side of the floor.

I followed. Once there, keeping some distance between us, we started working our way through the racks and display cases. All we found were bodies, soldiers in various states of decay. Each of them had been fed on, probably by the two dead Whites on the stairs.

It all appeared to have happened just as Murphy figured. One of the soldiers had brought the infection into the building, either on his gear or in his blood. At least a few of the soldiers succumbed. The others either caught the virus or were killed by those already infected.

When we were finished clearing the upper floor, we’d found the bodies of eleven soldiers. More importantly, we found six M4s with silencers attached to the barrels. They weren’t ideal sniper rifles, but they were perfect for our purposes.

With five rifles in the back of the Humvee, Murphy took the passenger seat and was making himself comfortable with his new weapon when I got in on the driver’s side.

“How are we set for gas?” Murphy asked.

“Looks like three-quarters to me.”

“You have any idea how we’re getting back? Looks like the whole damn city is flooding.”

I rolled my eyes. “The whole city won’t flood.”

“You know what I mean, man. If the creek down the street has that much water in it, every creek in town is probably doing the same thing.”

“What are you getting at? Are you saying you want to stay down here tonight?”

Murphy looked at the rain pouring down around us. He shook his head. “If we can get back without drowning, that’s my preference. At least we can drive around right now without getting chased by Whites.”

Taking a moment to think about it, I said, “We can’t go directly across Austin. Even if we could find a way across Waller Creek, we’d never get across Shoal Creek. I think if we can make it up to Highway 183 and take that out to 620, we can head back south and hit the river that way.”

“That sounds like the long way around.”

“It is. But Highway 183 is raised. It won’t flood. 620 might be iffy, but mostly it’s built on high ground. At least, it looks that way to me.”

“You want to go all the way out to Mansfield Dam?” Murphy didn’t like the idea.

I shook my head. “Nope. I think if we cut through that subdivision up there…”

“Steiner Ranch?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Kind of in that area. If we get lucky enough to turn on the right streets, we should get pretty close, maybe a mile or two from where the boat is anchored.”

“Just so you know, if you drive this thing into a river again, I really am going to punch you in the face.”

I started the engine.

Lightning ripped the sky with scary frequency. The rumble and crack of thunder was nearly constant. Rain poured out of the clouds in torrents that made it difficult to see. The curbed streets we drove as we paralleled IH-35 were rivers flowing toward the creeks. The few infected we saw cowered under trees and made no attempt to come after us. With their intense fear of the water, the world must have seemed like zombie hell.

Nearly an hour passed by the time we found our way onto the southbound access road to Highway 183. On that access road, we headed north until we made a U-turn onto an entrance ramp. Unlike IH-35, which ran through the center of Austin and had lanes clogged in both directions with abandoned vehicles, almost no cars were on 183’s southbound lanes. Those lanes led into town. The northbound lanes were an escape route out of town and were full, bumper-to-bumper, with abandoned cars.

With visibility measured in a few dozen feet when the rain was coming down heavily, I kept the Humvee’s speed in what seemed like a safe range, below twenty.

From the gray blur of rain, a man materialized, coming into the traffic lanes, waving his arms. Before I knew it, he was in front of the Humvee. My first instinct was to accelerate and run him down.

Just as I pushed on the gas pedal, Murphy yelled, “That dude’s normal!”

I braked and swerved. The distance between the truck and the man was small and it was only our slow speed that saved his life. When we came to a stop, the man dropped his hands to the hood and looked in at us, shouting, “Help us, please!”

I looked at Murphy. Murphy looked at me. Neither of us was ready to jump out of the Humvee and do anything.

The man on the hood called again, “Please.”

“He thinks we’re soldiers,” Murphy said. “He thinks we’re the cavalry.”

I looked off to my left, then behind me to see what I could see through the drenching rain. “Or he thinks we’re targets.”

Murphy jerked around in his seat. “You think it’s an ambush? Maybe we should just get the fuck outta here.”

The man ran around to my side of the Humvee, pleading as he came. Once there, he slapped his palms flat on my window, pulled his face close to the glass, and shouted, “Please! Please! You have to help— Oh, my God. You’re a zombie!” He stumbled back a half-step.

I hollered. “I test zombie positive! But I’m just as normal as you!”

Murphy nudged my shoulder. “Let’s go, man. Let’s get outta here. If this isn’t an ambush, what’s he doing out here in the rain? I don’t feel good about this.”

That was good advice and Murphy’s instincts were usually on the mark. We were parked in the middle of four lanes of empty asphalt with rain pouring so heavily
we could have been surrounded by men with automatic weapons and not even known.

I turned away from the guy on the road and moved my foot back to the gas pedal. Just then, a child of maybe seven or eight came running out of the rain, wrapped an arm around the man’s thigh, shouting, “Daddy!”

Murphy muttered. “Shit.”

The man put a protective arm over the boy and backed up a few more steps.

Murphy, without any discussion on the question, opened his door and stepped out into the rain.

Dammit
.

Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it wasn’t. I was on the fence about it and couldn’t find my way off. So I stayed put and looked through the Humvee’s windows, trying to spy any danger from another direction.

When I looked back at the man and the boy, Murphy was on my side of the Humvee, three or four steps from the two. He had one hand on his rifle and one palm in the air as he talked. Both the boy and the man were frightened, and looked like they might take off at a run.

I couldn’t hear what Murphy was saying, but at some point, the man started speaking. He gestured toward the side of the road. He and Murphy spoke some more. More gestures. More pointing.

Maybe Murphy thought I could hear what was going on. Maybe he figured since he was already outside, exposed, he’d follow his instincts and make his own choices. Because that’s pretty much what he did. He looked over at me with a pained expression, turned and headed into the heavy gray rain.

Double dammit
.

I checked through all of the windows again to see what I could see, which was pretty much nothing.

Nervously, I stayed on the lookout for something bad to happen. Time passed slowly.

The rain didn’t let up. The lightning seemed to dissipate, though the rumbles of thunder, some near, most far, told me that dissipation was a misperception at best.

Trying to trust Murphy’s intuition, I whiled away long moments. Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer. If he was in trouble out there where I couldn’t see, I wasn’t going to let him be in trouble alone. And according to that line of thinking, waiting was pointless. I swung my door open and stepped out of the Humvee.

Wet though I was, the new rain was cold when it pummeled me and soaked through my clothes. It took all of two steps for the cold water to seep back into my boots.

With my rifle at my shoulder, I scanned back and forth in front of me, ready to fire at anything that looked like danger. As I made my way across one empty lane and then another, the shapes of people and a big square-ish thing formed out of the rain. Murphy and the man were behind an SUV that had gone off the road and come to a stop at a precarious angle on a steep embankment.

Murphy saw me as I neared. He hollered, “Man, we need to pull them out of here.”

I looked at Murphy and looked at the man, still not sure I
needed
to do anything. Did I want to? Sure. But one of the many things I was learning about life was it so much easier to be a super hero in video games.

The man pointed toward the front of the SUV and motioned me over to the edge of the shoulder.

The SUV was stuck with only one rear wheel on pavement. The front wheel I could see, the one on the passenger side, was buried in mud up to its axle. I guessed the wheels on the other side were similarly buried. It was both bad and good luck wrapped in the same package. Had the ground not been so saturated, the heavy SUV would have barreled down the steep embankment and slammed into whatever was parked on the highway access road thirty feet below. But now they were stuck.

Just as I turned to walk back to the rear of the truck, a girl of four or five pressed her face to the foggy passenger side window and stared at me. A woman pulled her away from the glass.

Crap.

“Are these your kids?” I asked the man.

“Yes.”

“How many do you have?”

“Three.”

“Why aren’t any of you infected?”

“None of us ever got the virus. I think we’re all immune.”

“All of you?”

The man shrugged. “We were all exposed. All of our neighbors, all of our friends got it. None of us ever came down with the fever.”

That didn’t seem at all plausible. But what could I argue? The evidence was right in front of me.

Going back to the rear of the truck, Murphy was wrapping a chain around the ball on the SUV’s trailer hitch. “They hydroplaned when the water got deep and they skidded off the highway.”

“Got it, Sherlock.” Looking around, I asked the man, “Why not just get another car?”

He pointed to the back window of the SUV. It was packed full. “It would take too long. We have all of our stuff in here.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Maybe five minutes.”

I pointed at the SUV’s wheels stuck in the mud. “So this just happened.”

The man nodded.

“Are you guys from here in Austin?”

“Yeah. We noticed there weren’t any infected out on the street. We thought we’d use the rain to shroud us so we could get out of town.”

“Where to?” I asked.

The man clammed up.

My old world sense of manners urged me to get miffed over the rudeness, until it occurred to me that if I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t tell the location of my next hideout to two armed strangers either. “Never mind. I understand.” Then, not seeing a pistol or rifle on the man’s person, I followed my intuition. “Are you armed? Do you have any weapons?”

More silence.

“Look, we obviously have guns. You don’t have a weapon on you. So I’m guessing you’ve only got one, in the car, probably. Please don’t tell me you don’t have anything.”

Unable to contain the guilt showing on his face, the man said, “Our house has a safe room. We stayed in there. We’ve kept quiet. We didn’t need anything. Hiding was working out.”

Looking around to distract myself while I thought about my next choice, I finally said, “Listen. We’ve been pretty lucky with collecting weapons. We’ve got plenty. We can spare a few.”

The man stuck his hand out to shake mine.

I didn’t put mine out. “Better you don’t touch me in case you’re wrong about the immunity thing.”

He dropped his hand and said, “Thank you.”

Murphy hollered at me. “Man, get that Humvee over here. I don’t want to be out here all day.”

I motioned the man to follow me and jogged over to the Humvee. “Hop in the passenger side.”

Once we were both in, I started to maneuver the Humvee over to the edge of the road.

The man looked around and spotted all the rifles and pistols in the back seat.

“Here’s the deal.” I pulled the Humvee up behind the SUV and came to a stop when Murphy motioned with his hand. “Every time I do what seems like the right thing, it bites me in the ass. See those rifles with the silencers on the end? Take one of those. The infected can’t hear the silenced weapons when they fire.”

The man nodded.

“Listen, and this part
is really important. Don’t ever shoot a gun without a silencer unless it’s a matter of life and death. These fuckers hear gunshots and come running like you’re giving away free french fries at McDonald’s. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Take another rifle, one without a silencer, and two pistols. Get as much ammo as you think you’ll need. We’ve got plenty back at the boat.”

“At the boat?” he asked.

More harshly than I wanted to, I said, “You can’t come with us. Trust me. That always ends badly. I’m giving you the weapons. Be cool with that, okay?”

The man was shaking his head, “No, I… thanks. The guns are enough. Thank you so much.”

“Just take care of your family. Okay? Be careful. I don’t know what’s going to work and what isn’t, but get as far away from the cities as you can. Hordes of these things can tear down any house they think people are inside of. Don’t underestimate them.”

The man gave me a serious look. “I’m
Greg. What’s your name?”

“I’m Zed. That’s Murphy out there.”

Murphy stood up straight and waved me to start pulling.

I nodded at the man, who wasted no time in gathering a couple of rifles and a couple of pistols.

“Take those and come back for the ammo.”

I gunned the engine. The wheels alternately caught and spun. We started to move.

With a jerk that seemed like it should have bent its frame, the SUV popped up onto the roadway. The SUV’s brake lights lit up and it came to a stop. I rolled the Humvee forward just a bit so Murphy would have enough slack in the chain to disconnect it.