Slow Burn (Book 8): Grind Page 9

  The jumble of Whites on the ground shifted. One rolled into the backs of my legs and sent me to the ground. Immediately, another White stepped on the side of my head, pushing my face into the dirt. It then stepped on my back as it hurried over.

  Surrounded by feet and ankles, feeling them kick and step on me, I realized I was in danger of being trampled.

  I was being trampled.

  I tried to roll to the side and push myself away from the ground.

  The weight of thousands of bodies pressing in is something I’d never thought of as a problem when I was a stupid stoner, watching TV on my couch. Seeing heroes and villains swept up in a crowd always seemed like a false dilemma. In my mind, I always thought, yeah, right. I could get out of that. Whatever that was. “Why not just walk out?” I’d ask.

  Turns out that the press of human weight, pushing down and pushing to the sides, is more than can be resisted. You become a speck of dust in a breeze, with little you can do to affect your circumstances. When the crowd flows, you flow, or you fall. When you fall, you die.

  At least that’s what I extrapolated in short order.

  Through urgent effort, I managed to pull my short knife out of my boot.

  I slashed and stabbed.

  Whites howled, but with so much violence and screaming all around, it went unnoticed.

  I couldn’t tell if any Whites I stabbed noticed. At first.

  Then they started to fall.

  I dragged my knife across the Achilles tendon of every ankle I could reach. That, I found, was the quickest way to bring a White down.

  And as the Whites fell, others tripped on them. Some of them got stomped.

  Breathing room: that’s another expression that gets overused into meaninglessness. In the mass of Whites, with the weight of all those bodies pressing together, breathing—yeah, just having the space to expand your chest and take a breath—was hard.

  In what seemed miraculous by the time I did it, I pulled my feet below me. A couple dozen Whites were on the ground around me, half bleeding, half trying to get back to their feet. Some of those were the ones I’d slashed.

  A big explosion hit me in the back with a shockwave that knocked me back to my knees and sent a ripple through the mass.

  I quickly jumped back up. The Whites surged forward, and I stabbed the throat of the one in front of me. She went down. I stepped on top of her, stealing the space she’d been in as I reached out and cut the one who’d been behind her.

  The flames on the combine had grown four stories tall by then, casting an orange glow over everything. Whites close to the flames were screaming in pain, instead of predatory rage.

  The mob stopped flowing, but I kept stabbing and slashing my way through.

  Eventually, the numbers of infected thinned enough that I no longer needed to slash. I walked between Whites, with an occasional bump and shove, and I had time to stop and look around. I was up the slope of the field I’d been plowing, moving at an angle toward the road.

  The combine was nearly a mile behind me. It still burned in an enormous pillar of orange fire and black smoke at the center of a sea of Whites, all seemingly wanting to get a hand on it. Everywhere, the injured were sprawled in the dirt, getting eaten by their brothers and sisters.

  Not a bad thing.

  I gave myself credit for sowing the chaos that had caused those injuries.

  I wanted to pat myself on the back and congratulate the Valiant Null Spot. He was victorious again, and he probably should have turned back to scan the naked horde for some sign of the Smart Ones and Mark—they were probably holed up in some farmhouse near the center. But he was bruised and feeling lucky to still be breathing. Some brushes with death come at a steep price.

  I worked my way toward the road because it looked relatively clear. Plenty of Whites were in the ditches on both sides. Hardly a spot existed in the field where I couldn’t reach out and touch one or be pressed in on all sides by them. The absence of them on the road gave me pause to wonder whether they had an aversion to asphalt that I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps it was a new phobia. Maybe one walked off the pavement chasing a toad and the rest didn’t have the good sense not to imitate.

  You never know with Whites.

  Down the road and across the field where I’d done my work stood a collection of buildings that could have been a hundred years old. A big farmhouse with steep rooflines and dormer windows had a porch that wrapped all the way around the first floor. Near it stood some barns, sheds, a chicken coop made out of discarded pallets, and a couple of smaller houses in various states of repair.

  The house was full of Whites, going in and out through the doors and poking their heads through broken windows. The story was the same with the barns and sheds.

  Whites can be curious fuckers.

  One barn stood taller than the two-story house and was covered in a roof of rust-colored sheet metal, most of it still in place.

  I didn’t know where those muzzle flashes came from, but my guess, my hope, was from up in that barn. Up there, the sniper could probably hide. If he’d been shooting from the house, I suspected he was already dead.

  Or maybe she. You never know.

  Nevertheless, I figured I owed the shooter a favor. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that he’d saved my life when I was in the cab of the combine, but he had eased my escape.

  I made my way toward the barn.

  Chapter 23

  While the Green Bug burned, and I worked my way out of the mob and down the road, the sky had squeezed itself full of fat gray clouds and pushed beneath them a cold wind from the northwest. Weatherman Zed deduced that it was going to rain before the morning was out.

  A logical leap from there told me I’d be better off inside than out when those cold rains came. Except for my boots and a crusty layer of dirt and gore on my skin, I was still naked.

  I walked onto the farmer’s gravel driveway and gave the structures one more look. The barn was still my best guess for a place to snipe and hide. If it looked that way to me, it probably looked that way to the shooter.

  A wretched tree grew out of one corner of the barn. It probably should have been cut down thirty or fifty years ago, before it’d had the chance to merge with the barn’s framework. Now, some of its twiggy fingers reached higher than the barn’s tall peak, while others grew up through gaps where wind had peeled sheets of tin off the roof. Down one side of the barn were doorless stalls, between supports that looked to have been tree trunks as big around as my leg, cut to the right height. Two were bowed by weather and age. One leaned so far that it appeared to hang from—rather than support—the beam above. Only one of the poles stood straight.

  In one of the stalls sat a tractor so old that the tires were half eaten away, and most of the metal was reddish-brown rust. Farm tools, pieces of old plows, wheels, troughs, and all manner of metal, trash and weeds covered the floors of the other stalls.

  The barn’s walls were mostly sheets of tin and aged gray boards. Holes in the tin had been patched with what looked like chewing gum and aluminum foil. Except for that one post in the stalls, nothing on the old structure stood at a right angle to anything. It looked like the next high wind might blow the whole thing down, but I knew better even as I had that thought.

  I’d seen plenty of old barns, sheds, and houses on my excursion out of town. How the rotting things remained upright was a mystery that I’d have indulged a good deal of thoughtful curiosity on, but I had more pressing matters at hand.

  I looked in through the open door on the front and saw a dozen Whites already inside. Half of those were rummaging through decaying cardboard boxes and shelves of dusty old jugs, bottles, and cans. The barn must have been used for storing what the owner thought of as antiques in the process of aging themselves into value.

  A wide loft ran around the second level and was stacked with as much junk as the bottom floor. One side sagged badly and looked ready to collapse.

  Above the loft was a fla
t ceiling—odd for a barn. In the ceiling, a flat door gave a clue that an attic existed above. On the loft level just below the door, three Whites were standing, looking up. A fourth was up there looking around and letting his gaze settle on different objects in the farmer’s vast collection. He seemed to evaluate each and then look back up at the doorway in the ceiling.

  I didn’t know if he was a Smart One, but I knew some half-baked thoughts were squirrel-chasing around in his hairless head. If any of those thoughts bore fruit, things would go badly for the shooter whom I now decided had to be hiding in the attic.

  The chilly wind gusted outside, sending dirt and dry leaves flying through gaps in the wall boards. Joints creaked, walls shuddered, and somewhere high above, a sheet of tin flapped against the roof beams.

  I waded through corroding scraps and around a pile of junk to get to a staircase built into one of the walls.

  A few Whites walked cautiously into the barn through the wide front doors.

  The wind outside gusted again. Thunder rolled in the distance.

  I climbed the stairs, careful to test each board before putting my weight on it.

  At the second floor, I avoided the sagging side of the loft and walked the long way around to take up a place by the four Whites whose fascination with the attic had turned into action. The one I’d picked out as the smartest of the group was picking up boxes and stacking them beneath the door in the ceiling.

  The three less-intelligent Whites joined the effort and a pyramid-shaped pile quickly grew.

  Seeing an opportunity for a quick solution to a problem, I joined the Whites. I searched for items nearby that looked sturdy enough to support the weight of what might be piled on top of them, but too frail for much more. I found a box of old vinyl records. It was heavy, but the cardboard was disintegrating. It took some effort to pick it up and keep it intact, though it is worth mentioning that every two-handed job was awkward, given that I had no intention of setting my machete aside while I worked.

  I got the record box onto the pile and went back to the mounds of junk to look for more. I found a gas can so rusty that I was able to poke a finger through the metal on the side and create new holes. That wouldn’t support much weight. I added it to the pile, and just like the box of records, I put it on the same side, the side facing the edge of the loft.

  Chapter 24

  Fat raindrops tapped on the barn’s tin roof. More Whites found their way inside through the wide, open door. Some turned enchanted eyes at the pseudo antiques that lay in every direction. Others turned back to the open doorway, warily watching the clouds bring in the storm.

  Up in the loft, the pile of boxes had reached a height that satisfied the semi-Smart One who’d put himself in charge.

  The other three infected worker bees with us became distracted with the influx of rain refugees downstairs and the head guy smacked a couple of them in the head to refocus their attention. When he looked at me with a raised hand, I drilled him with a look that dared him to slap. He glanced at my machete, and he turned away.

  Perhaps that was a rule in the social structure of the naked horde: the guy with the biggest knife is the boss.

  The smart White mounted the first level of boxes at the base of the pyramid we’d built and looked at the four of us to be sure we understood what was to come next.

  Imitation time.

  One of the other Whites jumped up beside him.

  The head guy stepped higher and the last two Whites figured it out. They climbed onto the pyramid. The head White, full of expectations, looked at me and waited for me to join in.

  I climbed onto a sturdy metal thing on the lowest level of the pyramid, but on the opposite side of the loft railing. The others took that as a cue to race to the top of the rickety construct. When the Smart One was just reaching his hand up to the doorway through the floor above us, and the others were shouldering each other to be the first to follow him through, I pushed on a big box two of them were standing on.

  The pyramid swayed.

  A White grunted, surprised.

  The guy at the top looked down and spat an angry sound at me.

  I pushed with all my strength. Rusty metal on the other side of the pile crunched. Boxes crumbled and the pyramid of dusty antiques fell onto the railing.

  A White fell with a scream, hitting the rail and spinning down to the barn floor.

  The loft railing held the weight of the leaning pyramid for a moment, giving me just enough time to jump off the box I was on.

  The old wood creaked and gave way. Most of the pile and the other three Whites went over the side with a crash of wood, metal, glass, and screams.

  A billow of dust and straw flew into the air, filling the barn and making everyone cough.

  I stepped close to the edge of the loft and looked down at my handiwork. Junk and jumble, bodies and blood. Whites moved and groaned. Maybe a dozen were off their feet. At least half of those wouldn’t be getting back up. Already, the uninjured Whites on the perimeter were eyeing their downed comrades.

  I didn’t need to see any more of that sort of thing. I turned away.

  The rain on the roof grew into a steady pounding of big drops that drowned the sounds of dying growing from below. I looked back up at the doorway into the attic. If I was going to get up there, it was time to figure out how.

  The tree growing up through the corner of the barn looked to be the easiest way up, with caveats of course. The loft sagged the most on that side. The wood all around that corner looked to be the most rotted because rain came in so easily through holes in the roof above, where sheets of tin were missing.

  So as long as I didn’t fall through the floor with a mound of rusty shit, it looked easy.

  I scanned the second floor for another way. Besides the door above me—a door visible to every White in the barn, hence bad news for anyone upstairs if the Whites saw me go through it—the tree in the rotted corner of the barn was the only way.

  So screw it.

  Across the creaky, sagging boards I went, testing the strength of each before I put my full weight on it, hoping the floor’s groans would be masked from the Whites below by the noise of the heavy rain. I came to a point where an exceptionally large mound of junk blocked my way. I had to climb over, taking care not to let any piece of jagged, rusty metal cut my legs.

  It was slow going.

  When I reached the other side, the rain outside had all but ceased, and I cursed myself for not having made the transit across the loft more quickly. I was hoping the heavy rainfall would hide me from view outside the barn when I started my climb through the tree’s branches. Given that the tree was partially in and out of the barn, Whites outside had the ability to see me, and any adventurous ones could follow.

  I stepped onto a fat limb, reached outside the barn through missing boards, and grabbed a wet branch to pull myself up. Fat drops of rain started to fall again. Before I could thank my luck, a howling wind drove the drops sideways and brought more sheets of rain with it.

  I scrambled out through the gaps in the wall and dragged myself onto a tree limb. I didn’t waste time to look around to see who might be watching. The rain was so heavy that I could see little besides gray and ill-defined shapes.

  With my machete still in hand—where else was I going to carry it, being naked and all?—I awkwardly climbed. I didn’t have to go far, just up three or four thick branches, until I was able to lean over and reach the edge of a hole where a large sheet of tin had blown off the roof.

  I peeked inside and didn’t see anything except more hoarded trash and dark shadows. I whispered as loud as I dared, “I’m coming in. I’m not one of them. Don’t shoot.”

  A shadow with a rifle at his shoulder stood up from behind a mound of refuse. In a familiar voice, it said, “Null Spot the Farmer, Dumb as a Pumpkin, Annoyer of Zombies.”

  “Hello, Murphy.”

  Chapter 25

  By the time I woke, the rain had blown past, leaving a blustery
blanket of gray cold in the sky. The last stragglers of the naked horde were slowly flowing north, following the path of the main body. The barn below us had cleared out, as did the neighboring farmhouse. Or so we guessed. It looked empty.

  Peeking out of the barn between a gap in two warped boards, Murphy softly said, “I think it’s safe to talk now.”

  I rubbed the crusty bits out of my eyes. “Thanks for letting me sleep.”

  “You had a long couple of nights.”

  Looking around the attic, I said, “I can keep watch if you need to pass out for a while.”

  “I’m good.” Murphy stood up, stretched, and walked over to look out through a gap to see a different side of the barn. “How many do you think you killed with the combine?”

  Feeling proud about the numbers and a little bit sickened by the parade of carnage, I said, “I don’t know. Seemed like thousands.”

  “Maybe.” He pointed through the gap between the boards. “Lots of bones out there in the field. I’m guessing you didn’t get Mark.”

  “No.” I told him about the house where I thought they were holed up the first night. “I thought maybe if I chased the horde with the combine, I’d disrupt things enough that I could get to the Smart Ones wherever they were hiding.” It was one of those things that became true in retrospect. It fit the facts closely enough.

  “You hungry?” Murphy came over and sat down beside me.

  “Yeah, I think all I’ve had to eat over the last few days are some Dr. Peppers I found in the cab of the combine. And some jerky.” The memory of Moe’s stench came back to me and I shuddered. Some corpses smell worse than others.

  Murphy dug a couple of candy bars out of his bag. “Start with those.” He handed me a bottle of water.

  “Thanks for following,” I said. “Thanks for keeping an eye on me.”

  Busying himself with something inside his backpack, he said, “You need to find a way to work through your shit, man. What you’re doing isn’t healthy for you. I mean you don’t think your luck is going to hold out forever, do you?”