Slow Burn: Zero Day, Book 1

by Bobby Adair

  I gave Jerome a nod. “I didn’t want to go out, but it had to be done.”

  “And now we have guns we don’t know anything about.”

  I smiled at the irony of it. “Jerome, why does it feel like we’re screwed anyway?”

  “Possibly two reasons,” he answered immediately.

  “Those would be?” I asked.

  “One, we are screwed.”

  I chuckled. “Is the other one better?”

  “We don’t have a plan,” Jerome said.

  “A plan. You might be right about that. What did you guys do in Africa? I mean, you made it out of there alive.”

  Jerome nodded. “I don’t know. I think we got lucky. First, when it became obvious that the infected were crossing borders into the other countries, then especially when we lost containment in the camp…I told you about the corrals, right?”

  I nodded.

  “The military came in and just started killing anyone that looked infected. I think I got out because I was white. I think I only made it onto the plane because no one else on the plane knew any more than I did about the infection. All of the doctors and other CDC personnel were as frightened as I was. I thought I was going to end up like the other infected. I figured that if I could get back to the states, I might have a better chance.”

  “It’s just lucky genetics that have saved you.”

  “So far,” Jerome added.

  “So far,” I agreed.

  “The CDC didn’t know what to do with me except quarantine me. They left me in the quarantine room until Austin started to blow up. By that time, they figured I wasn’t contagious, but they also figured I wasn’t going to get any sicker. So, I was the best candidate to send here. Well, a lot of other guys came, pretty much the A team. Austin is ground zero for the first outbreak in the states.”

  “I guess that’s why I didn’t hear about it,” I said.

  “You said you don’t watch the news,” Jerome chided.

  “I’m not completely oblivious, but like you said, news stories about people dying in Africa don’t register with me as unusual events. Like everybody in the western hemisphere, I’ve built up a tolerance to it. Why do you think the virus hit Austin, and not some place like New York, or Los Angeles?”

  “Maybe it has by now,” Jerome said, “if Africa can be used as any kind of template for the spread of the disease. As far as L.A. and New York go, the international airports have been shutting down and commerce came to a halt as the infection broke out in Europe and Asia. I think it came to Austin with a slow burner like you and me, Zed, only one that finished turning. There was a church group from Austin that was doing some kind of charity work in Uganda over the summer. They escaped on a chartered plane from Uganda and got back to Austin a few weeks ago, before people here knew the extent of the problem. I think it was someone in that group.”

  “A church group? Which church” I asked.

  “It was a long name. The Blood of Christ the Holy Redeemer Church or something like that.”

  “Christ, Jerome! That’s where my mom and stepdad went to church.”

  “Probably where they caught it, Zed.”

  We stopped talking and I collected my thoughts for a few moments. “So, the bottom line is that it was luck that got you out of Africa alive.”

  Jerome nodded.

  “Too bad,” I said. “I was hoping you guys had some proven protocols for getting through this kind of crap.”

  Jerome shook his head. “We need to figure it out as we go along.”

  I nodded. “Jerome, I don’t know what the worst case scenario is, but after everything I’ve seen since Sunday and after hearing about what happened in Kenya, I think we need to prepare for a worst case scenario.”

  “I agree.”

  So, plan we did, for the next few days anyway. The first decision we took was that we needed to take turns standing guard at night. It looked like literally anything could happen at any time. It wouldn’t do for us both to be sleeping when a bad situation developed.

  We needed to store water in case things got really bad and it stopped flowing from the taps. Our most convenient source of food was the dozen vending machines in the recreation room on the first floor. With the fall semester just a week from starting, I hoped that those were fully-stocked and waiting for freshmen’s quarters. Vending machine food would not be nutritious, but suffering through weeks of zero nutrition would be far better than suffering through long days of zero calories.

  We needed information. The virus was in Europe, Asia, Africa, and now in the western hemisphere. The world was changing, and all we knew about it was what we could see the through the dormer windows. That wouldn’t do.

  My smartphone was somewhere in the police station. Jerome’s cell phone was dead, and we had no cord with which to charge it. There were televisions in the rec room, but the rec room was on the first floor with lots of large windows. Turning those televisions on would attract the infected. There were a few computers, presumably with internet connections, in the rec room as well. They were set up for student access and would require a password, so useless to us.

  We were going to have to leave the dormitory and venture back out among the infected again. That was an unappealing thought, especially with the sound of gunfire ringing across the city.

  Aside from brainstorming, we came up with few specifics. The hour was late. I was tired. I was hungry. In fact, I felt starved. I thought about when I’d last eaten anything. Was it the tequila shots I’d drunk on Sunday morning? No, perhaps the sports drink from the ‘fridge on Tuesday. I needed to eat something.

  I said, “We need to go down and raid those vending machines tonight.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?” Jerome asked.

  “If not, then we need to chase down one of those infected bastards so we can eat him.”

  “Are you serious?” Jerome asked, nervously.

  “Dude, it was a joke.”

  “You never know, nowadays.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t had anything to eat in days.”

  Jerome said, “One of us should stay here and keep an eye on Murphy and one of us should go down.”

  I looked expectantly as Jerome.

  “What?” he asked.

  “What, what?” I responded, “I went out and got the guns.”

  “We talked about that. Not to say that my life’s more valuable than yours, because it’s not, but I have expertise that can help us fix all this.” Jerome shrugged. “You don’t.”

  This was going to get old in a hurry. “Whatever.”

  I stood up and headed for the door, then turned. “I don’t suppose you know how to break into a vending machine, do you?”

  Jerome shook his head.

  “Great.”

  As it turned out, the damned things were resilient as hell. Kicking in the glass fronts, like they always did in the movies, proved to be a futile, noisy waste of time. I tried beating one with a fire extinguisher. Again, useless noise. What I finally settled on was a seat cushion I had pulled off of one of the couches in the rec room. With that folded around the barrel of my rifle, I pressed it against a vending machine’s lock and pulled the trigger. The front of the machine popped open.

  It was louder than I’d hoped it would be, but not as loud as the kicking and beating I’d already tried.

  I crept over to each of the nearby windows and checked on the state of the infected outside. None seemed to be paying the building any special attention.

  I repeated the process on the lock of a soda machine, gathered up what I needed, and headed upstairs with ten thousand calories of assorted junk foods and carbonated drinks.

  Chapter 17

  Back in the room, I had first watch, so Jerome wasted no time in lying down on a bunk and closing his eyes. I took some pleasure in his squirming for twenty minutes as he tried to find a comfortable spot on the narrow, thin mattress.

  The tower that stood at the center of campus showed that t
he time was close to three a.m. I drank two colas, ate a bag of chips, a candy bar, and some mixed nuts. I hoped the caffeine in the sodas would keep me awake for the next several hours.

  I sat near the window, with Jerome’s light snoring and Murphy’s heavy breathing behind me. There was some gunfire nearby and more far away.

  At around four in the morning, a battle erupted to the southeast near the hospital involving many guns and countless gunshots. Eventually it petered out, with no hint as to its resolution.

  Far on the east side of town, I saw the glow of orange fire against a rising column of smoke. That was not good. Well into our third summer of drought, any fire, if not quickly controlled, would grow out of hand.

  The smoke column rose and drifted to the north with the winds that flowed inland off of the gulf during the summer.

  Fires were inevitable. Severe watering restrictions and months without rain left most lawns in Austin dry and brown. Non-native trees were dying all over the city. Even the old live oaks were under stress. For the first time in my life, I’d seen oaks killed by a drought. Any random spark from a gunshot had a chance of finding dry tinder on which it could feed.

  Hours passed. The morning sun began to steal away the darkness in the eastern sky. It was my turn to sleep. With difficulty, I woke Jerome, planted him in the chair, and lay down on my bunk. I was out instantly.

  Chapter 18

  When I awoke, the room was stiflingly hot. I was drenched in sweat. The bright, late morning sun was shining in the window. The chair where I’d left Jerome was empty.

  “Shit!” I sat up. Lightheaded, I swung my feet to the floor. I looked at the door; it was closed. In a flash of panic, I looked down to the floor, where I’d laid my gun and shoes by the bed. They were just as I’d left them. I reached down and scooped up the gun, a habit I figured I’d need to develop. The sound of Jerome’s snoring drifted down from the bunk above.

  “Lazy bastard,” I muttered. I considered rudely slapping him back to consciousness but it would serve no purpose other than to satisfy my anger over his irresponsibility. He needed sleep as badly as I did, so I let him lie.

  I walked over and checked on Murphy. He was still out. I shook him lightly to see if he’d wake. I got no response.

  I sat in the chair I’d used the night before and looked out. The window was closed so I pushed it open to let the breeze flow in. It smelled of smoke and tasted of ash. The fires in east Austin had grown while I slept. Huge billows of black smoke hung in the eastern sky casting an ominous threat over the old houses and ancient trees below.

  I flexed the fingers on my left hand. They remained fully functional, though my arm still felt swollen around the bite. I needed antibiotics, or at least I thought I did. If I was going to survive the virus, I didn’t want to get killed off by a secondary infection.

  I thought about running downstairs to grab some cold sodas from the vending machine I’d cracked open the night before, but with my two companions still asleep, it seemed like a bad idea. I settled for a breakfast of cold strawberry toaster pastries and warm soda. I leaned back in the chair and let the caffeine and sugar work their magic on my throbbing brain.

  Loiterers wandered through the plaza below. As each came into view, I’d wonder whether they were normal or infected. In the bright morning light, especially with my dilated pupils, it was hard to discern the hue of their skin. It wasn’t until they came upon the remains of one of the fallen soldiers that I knew; they’d drop to the ground and scour for morsels.

  Every single one was infected.

  Just as when I went to bed, gunfire still rang in the distance, but at an ever-quickening frequency.

  I saw an upper corner of Brackenridge hospital off to the southeast, but couldn’t tell if the military presence there had benefited them or not. I saw no movement. I wondered whether Steph the nurse was still there, still alive.

  What appeared to be a traffic helicopter flew over from time to time, but I never saw the Star Flight helicopter land at the hospital. I suspected that was a bad sign for the hospital.

  Alternatively, I spotted a contrail from an airliner high above. That was good. The whole country hadn’t fallen apart overnight, at least not that I could tell. But in truth, I didn’t know. The airplane could have been Air Force One spiriting the president off to safety on an isolated Pacific island.

  At least Murphy, Jerome, and I were in a safe spot for the moment.

  I wondered how long the crisis could last, how deeply everything would be affected. I felt foolish for even considering it, but I wondered how much of human civilization would be left when it was over. What if it was never over?

  I needed information. I needed news. Absent that, I needed to prepare for the end of the world, or at least the end of modern civilization.

  And what did that mean for me? I grew up in a city. I had a degree in philosophy; as useless an education as one could have in a world where figuring how to get your next meal and how not to become one might be as difficult as it had been a few thousand years ago. The great “why” questions of life very suddenly held zero importance.

  There was only one real question. Did I want to live or not?

  There would be no room for ambivalence, no room for anything but a desperate drive to survive another day, at whatever cost. Anything less would likely lead to death.

  I considered for a moment how that would affect humanity in general, how it would affect my humanity. What would I become if I survived? Would I turn into a vicious brute?

  I wanted to slap myself. I was already doing it. I was overthinking it.

  If this was the beginning of the end of civilization, the only question was that of survival. That was it.

  I amended the thought to include the survival of my friends. With the harpy rotting on her living room floor, at least I didn’t have to wrestle with the moral ambiguity of not having added her to the equation.

  Information!

  It occurred to me that I needed information on everything. I need to know how to work that damn gun in my lap. I needed to know about warfare and tactics. At least all those of weekends playing in paintball tournaments hadn’t been wasted time...I hoped.

  And what about survival in general? I could barely cook, let alone farm and hunt. What would it take to get clean water? How would I know it wasn’t infected? I needed some medical supplies, not just for my arm, but for whatever might happen tomorrow or on any of a thousand tomorrows. What if I wanted electricity? How would I generate that? If this was the end of the world, our infrastructure would soon start breaking down. Water, electricity, the phone system would all go away, one at a time. And the internet…

  The internet!

  That was it. The internet was, if anything, the storage place for man’s accumulated knowledge. All of the information I needed was there, right now. I needed to find a way to get it. That, perhaps more than any other single thing, would be the key to long-term survival. Not just for me, but for anyone.

  The sound of gunfire drawing near pulled my attention back to the now. I couldn’t guess how many people were firing, but it was more than a half-dozen and probably less than a few dozen. I stood and tried to discern a direction, but I couldn’t. There were too many large buildings on campus, too many flat surfaces to echo off of.

  I wondered if rescuers had arrived. I wondered if all of my thinking and planning were just wasted speculation.

  Movement in the bushes down and to my left caught my eye. Between the cars, out of doorways and gaps between buildings, I saw dozens of heads pop up. Through the broken windows of the gymnasium across the quad, I saw movement...lots of movement. The gym was overrun with the infected. Just as they had done the night before, they flowed out of the broken windows.

  The blast of loud rifle fire caught my attention and I looked left. Coming around the corner on the east side of the gym was a squad of soldiers, weapons up, shooting the infected as they came into view.

  The rate of fire increa
sed as the soldiers filed into the plaza. Every infected in their line of sight was going down.

  The soldiers were hunting the infected and killing them.

  Holy crap!

  Up close, the infected were humanoid monsters. At a distance, they still looked like people.

  I was taken aback. Any doubt I had was erased. It was open season on the infected.

  I was infected.

  The soldiers confidently moved into the quad, killing the dozens of infected that they had disturbed there. They shot at the mass flowing out of Gregory Gym. From the west, a growing trickle of infected ran in from the center of campus.

  The eight soldiers stood in a rough line across the quad about five or ten feet apart and shot down the rabid infected as they appeared.

  The rate of fire increased to a steady din. I looked behind me. Murphy lay as comatose as the night before. Jerome snored as though nothing was going on. It was time he woke up.

  I stepped over and let some of my frustration toward him out in a slap across the face. It was mean, but it felt good.

  Jerome sat up immediately. A hand went his cheek and he looked blearily at me. “Wha–?”

  He heard the gunfire and looked to the window.

  “Something’s happening,” I said. “Time to get up.”

  I knelt in front of the window, giving me a good view without making my presence too easily visible.

  More and more infected were funneling into the quad from the west.

  The soldiers started to glance toward one another and move closer together. They were getting nervous. I would have been too. The hunt was turning into something they hadn’t expected.

  From my high vantage, I saw the beginning of the end.

  From a gap between the buildings to the rear of the soldiers, I saw a few, then a dozen infected running up behind them. The soldiers were so focused on defending themselves from the flow of infected in front of them that they were unaware of those behind.