Slow Burn: Zero Day, Book 1

by Bobby Adair

“I guess it doesn’t matter. It needs to be done.”

  Murphy spoke up, “Wilkins wants everybody to meet at three o’clock to talk about our situation.”

  “Wilkins does?” I asked, unnecessarily.

  “Yep. He’s in charge, right?” Murphy asked.

  I looked around. “Nobody told me.”

  Amber shook her head and raised her palms. “We’re new.”

  “We’re all new,” I told them. “Did you guys eat already?”

  “Vending machine food never tasted so good,” Amber said.

  “It’s going to get old in a hurry,” said Murphy.

  We all agreed, then ran out of words. I started eating. Without the talking, the mood blackened as we were all left to our thoughts about what was going on outside—about what had happened over the past few days, the things we’d all seen, and the bleakness of the future.

  It was Murphy who piped up, “Man, the last thing I remember was you and me were in that creek bed. I don’t even know how we got in the creek bed, but I remember walking in the sun.”

  I looked at him, “You don’t remember anything? The transients? The guy who drove us to the hospital? The gym? Anything?”

  “No man, nothing. Like I said, I was feeling like crap and walking up that creek bed with you, and that’s it.”

  “I guess you were pretty sick—probably delirious with the fever.”

  “I guess, man,” Murphy agreed. “I didn’t know what to think when I woke up cuffed to that bed yesterday.”

  “Jerome didn’t tell you anything?” I asked.

  “No, mostly he just stared out the window. When I’d ask him a question, he’d shush me.”

  So, I took some time to relate to Murphy the story of how we made it from the creek bed to the dorm. The girls listened with great interest. I purposefully didn’t mention the jail and Murphy didn’t bring it up.

  When I finished, Felicity asked, “So you guys and Jerome are all infected.”

  “It seems so.”

  Amber scooted up in her chair but took a moment to formulate her question. In the end, she went with bluntness. “Are you guys going to turn out like…like the others?”

  “The other infected?” I asked, though I knew what she meant.

  Amber nodded.

  “I don’t know. Jerome says no, but he just read that on the internet.”

  “So you could turn any minute?” Amber pushed on.

  “I don’t know. I think if it was going to happen, it would have.” Not really a lie—perhaps a hope.

  Murphy added, “As long as I don’t get any whiter, I don’t care.”

  We all laughed. We needed the levity.

  “What does it feel like?” Amber asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Being infected,” she clarified.

  “Like the flu, a really bad flu.” I answered.

  “No,” Amber said, “I mean now. Do you feel normal?”

  “Mostly, I guess.”

  “I feel just fine,” Murphy said, “Except bright light is hard to see in.”

  “Our pupils are stuck in a dilated state,” I clarified.

  “What?” Amber asked.

  I said, “Jerome told me. When you’re infected, your pupils dilate and stay that way.”

  “Does the bright light hurt?” Amber asked.

  “No,” I shook my head, “it doesn’t hurt. It just feels uncomfortable.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Felicity,” I asked, “Do you remember that infected guy that jumped out and bit me on the arm when we were in the tunnel?”

  She nodded, shuddering at the memory.

  “I felt the bite, but it didn’t hurt. I mean, I could feel the pressure of his teeth on my arm, I even felt my skin tearing, but there wasn’t any pain. It didn’t hurt.”

  “Maybe you hit your head too hard when you fell against the wall.” Felicity speculated.

  I leaned forward and put Amber’s hand on the large knot on the back of my head. “I felt it hit. But this didn’t hurt either.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  “So, you’re like a leper?” Felicity asked.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I answered, “I can feel things just fine. I just seem to be losing the ability to feel pain.”

  “Do you think you’ll get to the point when you won’t be able to feel anything?” Amber asked.

  “I hope not.”

  Amber took out her telephone, checked it, and started to put it away.

  “Hey,” I said. “Can I borrow that to make a call?”

  “Sure.” She handed it to me. “Do you have family to call?”

  I shook my head. “I need to call one of the nurses over at the hospital.”

  I dialed the number Steph had given me. Murphy and the girls started talking again.

  The phone rang a half-dozen times and went to voicemail. I said, “Steph, this is Zed. Murphy and I made it out of the gym and we’re okay. Call me at this number when you can. Bye.”

  I handed the phone back to Amber. She asked, “Girlfriend?”

  “Nope. Just a nurse who helped me and Murphy out.”

  Chapter 29

  In dark sunglasses, Murphy and I were outside, scavenging what we could off of the dead soldiers in the quad. I was picking through the remains, and he was hauling the booty. At the moment, he had three rifles, two vests with clips and whatever else attached, and a couple of helmets, all covered in crusty blood.

  We’d been out in the heat all through the noon hour. I was hot, sweaty, and angry.

  Murphy and I talked while we were inside, rinsing the equipment in the downstairs showers. He confirmed what Jerome had told me earlier, that Mark and the other ROTC guys were afraid of us. As for Jerome, he was nowhere to be seen, though he could easily have been assisting us in equipment collection.

  While outside, we didn’t speak much for fear of attracting unwanted attention from the infected. But in the sweltering silence, I ruminated darkly about the social dynamic. I was angry at Jerome for being right about how I’d feel about that. I’d probably saved the life of every one of those toy rifle-toting ROTC pukes. Now, because of Murphy and I, they were all armed. They had a chance at survival. But they thought they were better than me. That pissed me off the most. I hated that.

  Oh, and what was that abomination shit about?

  A couple of the infected were rummaging through the remains of a policeman who lay in the shadow of the gym—one chewed on a bone, the other was starting to gnaw on the officer’s gun belt. I decided that I wanted the belt. In my darkening mood, I didn’t see the infected man as an obstacle. I reached down and grabbed the belt.

  The infected made some kind of snarling sound, then clamped his teeth on the belt. So I yanked it hard, pulling it away.

  The infected’s eyes went wide with rage. He howled and lunged for the belt.

  “All right,” I mumbled, “If that’s the way you want it.”

  Both of the infected stopped what they were doing and stared up at me. The words must have triggered something in their rotted brains that told them I might be lunch. One sniffed at my leg while the one with the gun belt slinked a few steps away and started to gnaw on the belt again.

  My anger and disgust blossomed. I pulled the M-4 off of my shoulder. I turned its flimsy-looking stock downward, stepped over to the infected with my black leather gun belt grinding between his teeth, and smashed the butt of my gun down between his malevolent eyes.

  A jolt went through his body, and he rolled over on his back, arms and legs moving in a random swimming fashion. I smashed his skull again, then again, then again—until it was deformed and bleeding heavily. He went still.

  I stood over the infected man with the butt of my gun dripping with blood, breathing heavily from my exertion. I felt no cathartic release. If anything, I was more angry than before I’d beaten him to death.

  What was going to hap
pen to me? What was happening to me? Was I going to be like them? A mindless raging cannibal?

  The infected who’d been gnawing on the bone dropped it and slunk over to sniff at the corpse of the one I’d just murdered.

  “Fuck you too!” I shouted and smashed his head in a similar fashion—again and again—until he lay limp at my feet.

  I stared down at the bloody mess, lost in the darkness of my anger.

  I felt a tug at my shoulder and I turned, ready to for more violence, but it was Murphy, wide-eyed and worried.

  Without a word, he held my gaze, then made a show of looking around us.

  I followed his gaze. Around the quad, across the street, and into the gaps between the buildings. Every infected—standing, squatting, kneeling in the remains of some dead human—all stared at me, frozen in indecision. In their little rotted brains they couldn’t tell whether I was one of them, whether I was food, or whether I was the alpha zombie.

  I wanted to kill them all.

  Murphy emphatically nodded his head toward the dorm a couple of times and took a tentative step in that direction.

  I understood what he wanted. It was the smart thing to do. Our situation out among the infected was on the verge of getting bad in a hurry.

  I snatched up my gun belt and followed Murphy back to the dorm. The infected didn’t take their eyes off of us.

  One of the ROTC guys opened the door for us when we arrived. He stared at me as wide-eyed as Murphy had just moments before.

  He did fear me. In that moment, I reveled in his fear.

  The door closed on our uncomfortable silence.

  I looked out through the glass at the infected, going back about their business.

  In a post-tantrum rationalization, I tried to reconcile my emotions with my actions. It didn’t make sense. I tried to blame it on my anger at Jerome, Wilkins, Tom, the stress, anybody, anything but me.

  Murphy said, “Hey man, we need to rinse this stuff off.”

  “Okay,” I answered.

  Murphy said to the ROTC guy, “We won’t need you on the door anymore today. We’re not going back out. You can go do whatever you do.”

  The ROTC guy looked at me and asked, “What was that all about?”

  I shook my head to brush him off.

  Murphy stepped in to cover for me, and in his big gruff voice he said, “That infected dude was coming after him, man.”

  The ROTC guy said nothing for a moment then asked, “He was coming after you?”

  I nodded, “Sure.”

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s take this stuff to the shower, man, and get started,” said Murphy.

  “When you guys get done, you should get upstairs. It’s close to three, and Major Wilkins wants you at the meeting.”

  Chapter 30

  Murphy stood in the shower stall, scrubbing the MOLLE vest with soap and hot water. I stood outside the stall, taking the ammunition magazines out of the vest before passing them in. The helmets were all cleaned and drying, as were the guns.

  “Besides rinsing these guns off, what else do we need to do?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you later,” Murphy said.

  “Do you know much about guns?”

  “I was in the Army for four years,” he replied.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, hard to believe, right?”

  Yes, it was hard to believe. “So you know all about this gear, then.”

  “Yeah, I can show you whatever you need to know,” Murphy told me.

  “Good, because I don’t know much of anything besides shooting and reloading.”

  “I’ll set you straight, man, but it’ll have to be when I get back.”

  “Back?” I asked.

  “I’ve got to go find my mom and my sister.”

  I asked, “Did you try borrowing a cell phone and calling them?”

  “No answer. Both numbers went straight to voicemail.”

  “You think their batteries are dead?”

  Murphy nodded and handed me the wet vest. I handed him an empty one and hung the wet one over a shower stall divider to drip dry.

  “Murphy,” I said, “you know how things are out there, right?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  “So, you know the odds aren’t in their favor, right?”

  “Yeah, man. I know.”

  “What’s your plan then?”

  “Based on your experience with driving yesterday, I think that driving to my mom’s house isn’t the best plan.”

  “Where do they live?” I asked

  “Over off of Loyola, near 183.”

  “How far is that, like, five miles? Ten miles?”

  “Man, I don’t know. When you’re driving you don’t know how far things are—you know how long it’s going to take to get there. ”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess you’re walking, right?”

  “It’s kind of the only option. I could steal a bike, but that might send the infected into a frenzy, too. I don’t want to be the guy who gets to figure that one out.”

  I asked, “What are you going to do after you get them?”

  “There’s this crazy dude that used to live in our neighborhood. He was one of those doomsday-prepper guys and five or six years ago, the city found out that he’d build this three-story bunker under his house.”

  “Three stories under his house?” I was amazed.

  “Yeah, like he had more square footage in his bunker than in his house. But like, when the city found out, they condemned his house.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He never got a permit or it wasn’t built to code. Maybe they just thought his house might cave in on top of it.”

  “So what happened, then?”

  “So the dude fights with the city for years and finally just keels over and dies one day.”

  “That sucks.”

  “For him, yeah.” Murphy stepped out of the shower and handed me the vest. “The house has been sitting empty ever since. The city never did anything with it. They never tore it down or anything. It’s just got a chain link fence around it and the crackheads go in there at night.”

  “Do you think it’s still there then?” I asked.

  “Man, it’s gotta still be there. I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in. The house looks like a crack house. But there are solar panels on the roof and what looks like a solar water heater. There are a couple of little wind turbine things in the back yard. I mean, I don’t know what the guy’s setup was down there, but from the outside, it looked like he had all the right pieces in place.”

  “I know this sounds like a stupid question, but how do you know somebody isn’t already there?”

  Murphy shook his head, “I can’t know that, but it’s the best thing I can think to try right now.”

  “This place isn’t so bad,” I said.

  “It’s a disaster waiting to happen, Zed.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Man, did you notice how they were fortifying downstairs?”

  I shook my head.

  “Man, they were just taking desks and furniture and piling it in front of the windows. Once the infected figure out that there are people in here, it’s gonna take them like five minutes to break the windows and tear through that junk. Then it’s gonna be all over for Major Wilkins and those girls you saved.”

  “I’m sure that’s only temporary.”

  “Yeah, man, I’m sure you’re right, but until they get it right, they’re all in danger, and if the infected break in here all worked into a frenzy, you’re gonna get killed whether you taste good or not.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Chapter 31

  When Murphy and I got to the common area on the fifth floor, Wilkins was already talking. I noticed immediately that Tom, Mark, and the other ROTC guys were all wearing MOLLE vests and had their M-4s with them. It made sense, but it made me uncomfortable. Wilkins had a sid
earm, as did Marcy. Felicity, Amber, and Jerome were unarmed.

  I had a Glock in a holster. Murphy however, was planning on announcing his departure and leaving directly after the meeting. He had a pistol—his M-4—and carried twelve thirty-round clips in his MOLLE vest, along with whatever else a real soldier would stuff in there.

  The couches in the common area were arranged in a U-shape facing the hall. Jerome and the girls were on the couches. Wilkins stood in the hall, in front of everyone with Mark at his side. The other ROTC guys sat on stools behind the leather couches.

  Murphy and I sat beside one another on one of the couches.

  Wilkins acknowledged us as we sat. “As I was telling everyone, Marcy and I spent a good deal of the morning on the internet, trying to find what news we could of what’s going on.

  “What we found isn’t hopeful. The infection is still spreading. San Antonio is in the same shape as Austin. It’s lost. Houston and Dallas are both a mess, with the infection spreading and the police trying to get a handle on the situation. The refugee center set up at Fort Hood fell apart overnight.

  “The infection has shown up in nearly every major city in the country now and there’s hardly a place in the world that’s free. Most of Asia has followed China’s path. India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Korea are all in chaos or are silent. Nothing is coming out of Africa. Europe and Russia are in trouble. The infection has shown up in Brazil and Columbia.

  “All over the country, the military has set up road blocks. All flights are grounded. All trains have stopped. Any travel between states and even cities is forbidden. The military has orders to shoot to kill anything or anyone that comes near the roadblocks.

  “We’re effectively isolated here for the time being, at least until the military can get the situation stabilized.”

  Amber asked, “So, how long will we be isolated?”

  Wilkins answered, “It’s anybody’s guess, but it’s best that we plan for the long haul. We need to be prepared to take care of ourselves for at least weeks, or even months. It might be longer before we get help.”

  “Longer?” Amber asked.

  “It might be years, Amber,” Wilkins answered.

  Felicity spoke up next, with heavy emotion in her voice, “Is this really the end of the world?”