Slow Burn (Book 5): Torrent Read online

  The White was already out from behind the tree and coming at me with a mix of aggression and trepidation. Lowering my knife to my hip, I held it with the blade pointing up. Laying a trap, I slumped into a cowering stance.

  The White’s misgivings disappeared in a flash. Seeing what its simple brain interpreted as fear, he rushed me.

  At the last second, I stepped strongly toward him and shoved my blade up under his rib cage. His momentum drove his weight onto it. He made a sound like a cough and went limp.

  Thinking how lucky I was to have put the knife right where I wanted it—into his heart—I turned to the left so the White’s momentum would carry him around, rather than over me. To my surprise, it worked as though I’d practiced the move a thousand times.

  The infected man splashed into the shallow water and didn’t move.

  Nico screamed, turning my fleeting confidence into fear. Instinctively, I crouched and turned to my right, just in time to see a white blur and a silver blade.

  In a desperate move to dodge the blade, I fell to my left, way off balance. I rolled over the White I’d just killed and into the water as the blade was raised again. A Smart One was trying to slash me. Behind him, a mass of white, grasping hands were doing their best to clamp onto my flesh.

  I rolled further into the water, scraping myself on algae-covered limestone as I went. A White fell in and screamed as she hit the water. She flailed in panic, but I was beyond her reach.

  Followed by monkey squawks and yelps, I desperately tore handfuls of water to get myself away from the shore. I hit the boat with my shoulder and reached up to grab a rail that ran along the port side.

  On the bank, not ten feet away, reaching hands, raging faces and gnashing teeth fought between their want of my flesh and their fear of the water. I was so close, but far beyond reach.

  One White wasn’t reaching. He held the knife at his side while his muscles trembled. His rage was more cerebral than the others. He wasn’t just an angry white chimpanzee who’d lost his prey. He had complex thoughts in his head and real hate in his heart.

  I turned myself around and clambered into the boat. Nico didn’t help. He hadn’t moved since I went in. With adrenaline blasting past rational thought processes, I wanted to unleash my anger at him. At the same time, I knew his well-timed scream had kept that Smart One’s blade out of my back.

  Nico had just saved my life.

  Nothing is ever black and white.

  With my feet on the deck, I raised my pistol and aimed it at the Smart One with the knife.

  He glared at me as if daring me to shoot. And I wanted to, badly. I wanted to teach that fucker a fatal lesson for daring to raise a blade to me.

  But the adrenaline was waning and thoughts were starting to click. I paused. I looked around. Would one bullet cause too much trouble? Could the report of my pistol get lost in the fog before it advertised my location to too many ears?

  I knew even as I conceived those thoughts that they were the product of rationalization. With a dozen cannibals screaming for my blood right in front of me, the dissipating fog would be no blanket over my mistake. The riverboat behind me was losing its gray shroud. To fire the weapon would link the sound with the sight of the riverboat, even in the feeble brains of those still standing when the bullet killed the Smart One. No good could come from such a link.

  Lowering my weapon, I turned to Nico and whispered, “We need to go.”

  Chapter 16

  With all the speed of an arthritic old man, Nico collected his paddle and bent his frail body over his side of the boat.

  I was digging into the water with deep strokes, but Nico was doing nothing.

  “Dammit, Nico. Help me.”

  On a stem of creaky old bones, his head slowly swiveled his blank face in my direction.

  “What the hell, dude? Paddle.” I prompted him with some body language. “Now.”

  Back on the riverboat, through the remaining fog, I saw a head peek from behind a railing, followed by another. But we couldn’t go back there, not with hungry Whites watching us from the shore. The infected were deathly afraid of the water. But on the short list of things I absolutely knew about the new world was all of those single-digit IQs could add up to some creatively lethal solutions.

  At thirty feet from the shore, I pulled my paddle out of the water. Nico caught on to the change in sound and immediately pulled his paddle back into the boat, looking at me with a question on his face.

  I whispered, “We can’t go back.”

  “What?” he mouthed.

  I pointed at the Whites on the shore. “Not with them watching.”

  Nico turned and looked at the riverboat with a longing on his face that verged on tears.

  Jesus, being trapped in that house with Mr. Mays had really fucked him up.

  I waved at the riverboat, hoping that they understood from the gesture that Nico and I were okay. I pointed at the Whites on shore and then pointed downriver. They’d figure it out soon enough.

  I dropped into a seat at the boat’s helm, second-guessing my choice to leave the riverboat and check out the sound on the shore. But aside from cowering behind a railing on my knees and praying to a God who no longer seemed to care, no other solution came to mind. A choice to do nothing was a choice to passively die at the hands of a cruel future. I just wasn’t wired for that. I had to do. I had to fight, even if that put me at risk of dying sooner.

  Nico dropped his weary bones on a seat at the stern and slowly fell into himself, a sandstone sculpture of sadness, comatose, wearing away in a coarse wind.

  The ski boat spun in slow circles as it drifted. The rain pounded us with heavy drops. We passed naked Whites on the bank and drew their interest. Many followed along, hoping to be there when we made the mistake of coming ashore. Apparently, our use of mechanical transport overrode the sight of our white skin when the infected brain was deciding whether or not we were food.

  A mile or so downriver, with the tourist boat long out of sight, I said, “We’ll probably be out here all day. With all of those naked Whites on the north shore, I don’t feel comfortable returning unless it’s dark out.”

  “I…I…I…” Nico pounded his fist on the seat cushion. “Damn.”

  “Damn?” I calmly asked.

  “I…j…just w…want to be able to t…talk.”

  “Yeah?”

  Nico tore his stare away from his feet. “I… w…was supposed to stay o…on the b…boat.”

  I shrugged. He was being unreasonable and I didn’t feel like arguing with him. “Shit happens.”

  Nico turned away to look at the water over the starboard side.

  “We’ll float for a while and motor back upriver later this afternoon. We’ll drift back down to the riverboat tonight.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Yeah, me too, but life just sucks sometimes.”

  “You don’t h…have to be a d…dick, Zed.”

  And that was the last we spoke for a long time.

  I thought about arguing that point, but didn’t. Instead I went through a mental inventory of our weapons. I had a rifle and one magazine, full. Dumbass Nico was unarmed. I had a sturdy bowie knife and my pistol, also with a full magazine. I’d made the mistake of leaving the riverboat without a full load of ammo. And though Nico and I were in no danger at the moment, we likely would be before we got back to the riverboat. If anything, the morning’s adventure was a reiteration of the lesson that danger lurked everywhere. Everywhere. To go into the world unprepared was to tempt tragedy.

  The morning wore on in silence. The rain stopped and left spotty gray clouds across the sky. Between those, the sun, seemingly angry over its exile, scorched through the gaps.

  As we were rounding a big curve in the river, City Park came up on the north shore. Nico decided he was ready for normal conversation again. He pointed up at one of the hills on the south side of the river and said, “Th…that’s W…Willie Nelson’s house up th…there.”

&
nbsp; I looked up a glass walled structure at the peak. “That one with all the windows?”

  “Y…yeah.”

  “How do you know?”

  Nico huffed. God, he was touchy. “I don’t doubt it’s true. I was just curious how you found out.”

  “S… somebody t…told me.”

  I nodded, as if rumor was sufficient proof. Hell, it probably was. No, of course it was, because it didn’t matter. Willie was probably dead too, along with nearly everybody who ever gave a shit about him. Well, not everybody. In a weird way, I missed him. Maybe in the same weird way I missed Sarah Mansfield. They were the faces of the culture in which I grew up. That culture was dead.

  Turning away from Willie’s place, I looked back at City Park’s acres of dead grass. Curiously, not a single White was there. As I looked right, then left, none were in sight, and I tried to recall the last one I’d seen. “When was the last time you saw one of them?”

  Nico was back in a pissy mood. “I’ve b…been seeing them all d…day.”

  “Nico, chill. I haven’t seen one for a while. I was wondering if you had.”

  Nico cast a perfunctory glance at both banks. “No.”

  I gave some serious thought to walking to the back of the boat and giving him a smack. But the memory of Mr. Mays on the floor of his living room came to mind. Nico had been through more terror than he was capable of assimilating. So I put on my Dr. Freud cap, smiled sympathetically, and said, “That must have been some bad shit at Mr. Mays’ house. If you need to talk about it… Dude, I’ll listen.”

  Tears bulged in his eyes, but didn’t flow. He snapped his head around and pretended to look at something of interest on the south shore.

  After looking at him for several full minutes, I was about to give up and turn away when, without any hint of a stutter, he said, “I can’t.”

  “Can’t talk about it?”

  He shook his head.

  Taking a risk at confirming a suspicion, I asked, “Are you ashamed?”

  Nico shrugged and turned to the stern so I couldn’t see his face. His shoulders moved, but whether the gesture was a shrug or a sob, I couldn’t tell. I felt bad for him. At the same time, I loathed him. Perhaps loathe was too strong a word. But I felt a sense of blame boiling. Nico was a coward. I’d find out soon enough that wasn’t the worst of it.

  We floated past the boundary of City Park. We watched the deserted shore as house after house went by. A small, dilapidated marina came into view. Ski Shores Café, a dumpy little place with decent food and great atmosphere, sat on the shore just past the marina. Giant cypress trees grew up through a deck that hung well out over the water. I thought about times before the world changed when I sat on that deck with friends or with a girl whose pants I was interested in removing. We drank sweaty summer beers, ate greasy burgers and listened to a raspy-voiced man strum a guitar and sing about a better life in another time and place. And life in those days was good. So good.

  Through the haze of my nostalgia, I almost didn’t notice a big delivery truck sitting on the gravel parking lot behind the restaurant. That truck shouldn’t have been there. And its presence was best explained with a scenario that had the driver arriving with his weekly delivery. Unfortunate circumstances—most likely including his unhappy ending—had prompted him to abandon the truck. My guess, built on a foundation of my own wants, was the truck had plenty of food inside.

  Without hesitation, nor consultation with cowardly Nico, I picked up one of the boat’s paddles and went to work guiding the boat over toward the boat slips adjacent to the restaurant’s picnic-table-covered deck.

  “H…hey.” Nico wasn’t happy with the change in course. “Wh…what are y…you doing?”

  I gave him a look that I hoped said “Leave me alone. I’m busy.”

  Nico didn’t get any of that. “Wh…why are w…we g…going to shore?”

  Completely discounting the lesson I should have relearned earlier, that one about danger lurking around every corner, I huffed. “Dude, there’s a delivery truck in the parking lot. I’m going to check it for food.”

  Nico shook his head and made some sound I couldn’t identify. I understood disagreement.

  “Listen, Nico, we haven’t seen a White in miles…”

  Nico pointed vigorously at the shore. “B…but…” In his excitement, he couldn’t find the words to finish.

  I stood up straight and looked at him. “Here’s the deal. There are no Whites around that we can see. I know they might be sneaking around somewhere. They always seem to find the most inconvenient time to make themselves known. But we need food and I’m going to check that truck to see what’s in it. And we’re already out here, so let’s not waste the day. If I see any Whites, I’ll get back in the boat and we’ll stick with plan A.”

  “P…plan A?”

  “Don’t sweat it.”

  The bow bumped wood and I jumped out with a rope and wrapped it around a cleat. Leaning back into the boat, I whispered, “Don’t leave without me. Got it?”

  Nico sheepishly nodded and watched me walk down the pier.

  In no mood to fuck around, I had my rifle at my shoulder pointed out front. I’d already had one too many scares that morning. If anything moved, I’d shoot it, get back in the boat and spend the day relaxing while I stared at the clouds and let the water gently rock me off to sleep.

  Orderly picnic tables on the deck gave no hint anything in the world had gone awry. The restaurant could simply have been closed. None of the windows were broken. All of the doors were closed. Not a single scatter of bones or torn clothes lay anywhere to mark the passing of the recently deceased. Ski boats in the marina hung dry in their lifts. Even the trashcans stood upright with nothing spilling out. For a moment, the world wasn’t dying. It had just taken a day off.

  But that was a thought I needed to push off a cliff and maybe stomp on a few times. Those kinds of thoughts led to incautious behavior. And that led to bloody death.

  I stopped and slowly scanned across all that I could see. Still, nothing moved. No infected monster made nonsensical howls.

  As slowly and quietly as my feet could carry me across the gravel parking lot, I made my way over to the big delivery truck backed into the lot. The doors to the trailer faced the river. If it held food, it was optimally positioned for access from the river.

  I could still see the ski boat. I could still see Nico, motionless and useless. He wasn’t even looking at me. It was as though fear of what might be on the shore had put him into his catatonic state. At least he didn’t seem to be thinking about starting up the boat’s engine and ditching me.

  Coming up to the back of the trailer, I checked underneath.

  Nothing there.

  I looked right and left.

  Nothing.

  The situation was starting to have a too-good-to-be-true feel. With no Whites around to harass me, the trailer either had to be empty, and not worth the effort of checking out, or it was full of Whites who’d pile out once I opened the door.

  With that in mind, I rapped on the trailer door with my fist and listened for noises inside.

  Again, nothing.

  I beat again, a little louder this time.

  Nothing.

  Taking one hand off of my rifle, I worked the overly complicated latching mechanism on the door. It was creaky with years of rust, but still failed to muster any sound from inside. Nevertheless, caution was my friend. I stepped as far away from the door as I could, braced myself, and swung it open. I jumped back and raised my rifle all in a single motion.

  The door arced around its path, exposing a dimly lit interior down the end of my barrel. As I examined the darkness, the door banged against the side of the trailer. Nothing inside moved.

  Despite the uncomfortably loud bang of the door, I smiled. Was it going to be easy? Really?

  I looked left and right. I checked beneath the trailer again. Still nothing. No movement. No unnatural sounds. Where was the pitfall? Cases of fo
od were stacked neatly in a mostly full trailer, with no associated danger I could see.

  Had I, through some strange luck, stumbled upon the only place in Austin magically bereft of the infected?

  I steeled my nerves, climbed into the trailer and got a clear view of everything inside. “Holy crap.”

  The truck had to have stopped here early in its route. Cases of canned chili, beans, condiments and seasoning were stacked along one wall of the trailer along with fifty-pound bags of flour, sugar and corn meal. On the other wall, shrink wrapped on pallets, were stacked green five-gallon buckets full of sliced hamburger dills, cases of canned fruit, fifty-pound boxes of lard, boxes full of fortune cookies and dozens of cases of soda fountain syrup. The only thing missing from my post-apocalyptic gold mine was a rainbow and surly leprechaun.

  It was time to check my flanks again, so I hustled to the back of the truck and jumped down to the ground. I saw nothing but trees, bushes, a few parked cars, boats and orderly picnic tables. Not a single, howling, angry White.

  Fuck it.

  I climbed back into the trailer, grabbed a dolly strapped to one of the walls and lowered it quietly to the ground. I then spent a short while stacking cases of food at the back of the trailer where I could reach them from the ground. Sure, I could have left it all and come back the next day with Murphy. That would have been the safer course of action. But who knew what the situation would be the next day? The trailer might have gotten ransacked by then, or the whole area might be swarming with the naked horde. No. It was better to take the food while the opportunity existed.

  Without incident, I carted seven or eight dolly loads from the trailer, across the gravelly parking lot to the ski boat and cajoled Nico into helping me load them. I even took six heavy cases of the fountain syrup. I had no idea what exactly I’d do with them, but those, along with the lard, were concentrated calories. In spite of having little culinary value, those calories could keep us alive for a long, long time.