Slow Burn (Book 9): Sanctum

by Bobby Adair

  We decided to stay in San Angelo for two or three days while we gathered up what we needed and prepared ourselves for the trip.

  It was when the meeting was breaking up that Javendra caught me by the arm to get my attention. He produced a thermometer and reached toward me. “May I take your temperature?”

  "Why?” I shook loose of his lax grip and stepped back.

  “I need it,” he said innocently. “We recorded body temperatures for Grace and Jazz when they came to join us in College Station. Their temperatures run a few degrees warmer than normal but two or three degrees cooler than the aggressive, mindless infected ones.”

  “I’m the same.” I turned to leave the kitchen.

  Fritz said, “Let him take it, Zed.”

  “I need more than two data points,” Javendra persisted. “For Slow Burns—that’s what you call yourselves, right? You four are the only ones we…I’ve seen.”

  Suddenly Murphy was there by Javendra. “Hey man, take mine.” He pointed at me. “He’s antsy about it. He thinks by knowing it’ll somehow make him turn into one of the crazy ones sooner.”

  “Whatever.” It was the only thing I could think to say. Murphy wasn’t entirely wrong.

  Javendra scanned Murphy’s forehead with the digital device, looked at it and said, “Pretty much the same range as Jazz and Grace. Do you know how high your fever went when you first succumbed?”

  Murphy glanced at me. “You’ll have to ask him. He nursed me through.”

  Javendra turned back to me.

  I shook my head. “Don’t know.”

  Murphy reached out and grabbed my arm in a grip that let me know I wouldn’t be stepping away again. “Your turn, Zed.”

  I huffed and told Javendra, “Take it, but I don’t want to know what it is.”

  “Told you,” Murphy laughed.

  Javendra scanned my forehead, looked at the results and said, “A little higher than the others.”

  I yanked my arm away from Murphy and spat at Javendra, “I told you I don’t want to know.”

  “Why?” Javendra asked, puzzled.

  "Because, it's just what Murphy said. If my temperature keeps going up, I'd rather not know I'm turning. I deal with too much shit already. Hell, we all do. I'd rather just wake up one morning not knowing who I am than worry every day about how soon it's going to happen.” I stomped my way through the living room and took up a position at the front of the house looking out the window.

  Javendra apologized as I walked away but I ignored him. He went on to talk with Fritz, Murphy, and Eve, “I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’d like to get some sample temperatures from some of the infected here in San Angelo.”

  Murphy busted out laughing. “You hear that, Zed?”

  I did, but I didn’t respond.

  “Why?” Eve asked.

  Javendra pointed at me. "Zed and I were talking this morning. He and Murphy have seen thousands of the infected all over Central Texas, mostly in Austin. He believes these in San Angelo are less aggressive than most. He may be something of an expert on the matter, and I'd like to run some tests on local specimens to see if it will lead anywhere."

  Murphy laughed again, “You hear that, Zed? Javendra wants us to go trapping.”

  Chapter 52

  We prioritized our do list and concluded collecting data for Javendra, while a worthy endeavor, was not the highest priority. Transportation and fuel were at the top of the list. With the possibility of Survivor Army assholes still around and with the naked horde still fresh in everyone's memory, having the ability to get out of town in a hurry was what everybody wanted.

  It was a toss-up deciding whether to leave Fritz, Eve, and Javendra at the house while the rest of us went searching for trucks. On the one hand, leaving the normal-skin-toned people hidden would keep them and the rest of us safe. On the other hand, splitting up carried mortal risks as well. What started out as a discussion eventually turned into an argument and tempers flared, and people took sides. The point I made that nobody seemed to want to listen to was it didn’t matter which we did. Both options sucked. Apparently none of them had come to realize that it was the current state of affairs—not just for me, or for us, but for all of humanity.

  I concluded they were all stuck in a pre-virus paradigm, and most of them would end up dead. But for better or worse, they were my people.

  They reached a point where they got tired of arguing, and we gathered up our gear, and we all went out together, four Slow Burns and three normals, most of us in a bad mood because of the pointless bickering.

  Thankfully, the mood changed instantly when ten minutes into our search, working our way through the neighborhood, block by block, we found a diesel pickup that matched our list of requirements exactly. Like I said, Texas. It was a buyer’s market for big pickups.

  The truck still had paper plates, so it couldn't have been more than a month old when the owner had parked in the driveway for the last time. Murphy and Jazz went into the house to search for the keys and found them in the pants pocket of a man, sitting in his recliner in front of a television, slowly decaying.

  Two blocks over, we found another truck, not as new as the first but in good condition with plenty of tread on the tires, a good spare, and a manual transmission, nearly a necessity if we were going to get it started. The batteries on cars, sitting for so many months, were more often than not, dead. We could push-start a truck with a manual transmission, not an automatic.

  Getting them both started was a bit of a trick. That worked out in San Angelo but would have had disastrous consequences in Austin where the Whites were more numerous and aggressive. We push started the first in the street in front of the house where we'd found it. It took three tries popping the clutch before the engine fired. Then it was loud, as big diesels tend to be. We all piled in the back and Fritz, who was behind the wheel, drove us around to the house with the second pickup we intended to commandeer.

  Leaving the engine in the first truck running, Fritz jumped in the bed along with Eve and they stood there, rifles at the ready, keeping watch over the rest of us as we worked on push-starting the second truck.

  By the time we drove away, Fritz had only needed to shoot a single White. Three or four curious Whites had come into the street but kept their distance.

  We didn’t want to attract Whites to the house we were staying at by driving the trucks up and parking them in the driveway, so we drove them to the parking lot at a warehouse grocery store not far from the house where we were staying. At least, a handful of Whites saw us drive up, park the trucks and get out. Not one of them made an aggressive move toward us. They watched and then went back to scavenging or wandering aimlessly. It was hard to tell which.

  The surprise came when Fritz suggested we go inside the store to see what might be left for us to find. I wasn't optimistic given that grocery stores tended to be empty everywhere—they were the first obvious place to stop for people who saw disaster looming. Hell, in Texas people flock to the grocery store when the weatherman predicts a hard freeze. The consensus was against me, though, maybe because everybody was in a good mood over our luck with the trucks and nobody wanted to fall back into an argument over nothing.

  With limited expectations, we filed through the front door.

  Sunlight coming in through the skylights on the ceiling high above provided enough light to see that a hurricane of shoppers had blown through some time ago, leaving a carpet of cardboard, trampled packages, and overturned shopping carts. Looters had likely come after, but it was clear whoever had come had only taken the low-hanging fruit. The warehouse racks, in rows from the front to the back of the giant store, stood thirty feet tall and were not empty. Sure, the lower two levels had been ransacked, and in some cases, pallets looked to have been pushed off the upper racks, all but exploded on the floor below, but most pallets on the top level were wrapped in plastic, untouched.

  Easy pickings.

  All the food we'd need to feed oursel
ves, possibly for a year, maybe two if we decided to stay. Staying wasn't an option any of us seriously entertained, but San Angelo was a place we were likely to return to. A few days with a semi truck and enough people to load it would give us a huge haul to take back to Balmorhea, the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow.

  At least, that was the idea I'd sold everyone on.

  Chapter 53

  After spending the night in the warehouse grocery store, the group decided to split up. I was past giving a care one way or the other, so I didn't say much. In truth, I was sinking into a mood, and I didn't know where it was coming from. Things were going well in Easy Town—as Murphy had taken to calling it—where we weren't harassed by Whites, we weren't attacked, and besides Martin, none of us had died. Against the odds, we'd won a victory against the Survivor Army—hopefully, the final victory. And we were finding all the food and drink we needed, along with a bounty to load in our trucks and take with us.

  Everyone was in a good mood. Some of us were getting complacent, not me, Murphy, or Grace. It was hard to tell with Jazz. She didn't talk much, and she wasn't big on letting anyone know what was on her mind. Eve, Fritz, and especially Javendra, seemed to have completely forgotten that real danger was out there, waiting to ambush us when we weren't looking.

  The lineup for the day put Fritz, Eve, Jazz, and Grace at the warehouse store. They were charged with shopping through the chaos to get the trucks loaded with a good mix of supplies. Murphy and I got Javendra duty. The group decided Javendra's data was well worth accumulating, and all seven of us weren't needed to load the trucks.

  I’d have felt better leaving Javendra behind, given the handicap of his skin tone, but he insisted his presence was necessary to ensure his data was recorded correctly. He was clueless about the dangers out in the world. Had he not been lucky enough to be sequestered and protected early on, I was sure he’d have been long dead.

  So, we recycled the trick we’d used getting the professors out of the veterinary sciences buildings. We put Javendra in long pants and a hoodie—it was chilly outside so no big deal there. On his skin that was showing, we dusted him in baby powder we'd found among the ignored personal hygiene products, and we set out.

  “What do you think?” Murphy asked as we filed out a door into the warehouse grocer’s parking lot. He pointed at a pair of Whites a hundred yards away who were squatting and digging through a weathered cardboard box, tossing out torn bits of plastic wrapping. “You want to start with these?”

  Javendra said, "These will do for a start, but I would like to get samples from as wide an area as possible."

  I looked right and left, feeling the pressure of things going well. “Stay on your toes, Javendra. Be ready to run if I say so. All right?”

  “Yes,” Javendra huffed. “You told me a dozen times already this morning.”

  “Lighten up, man,” Murphy chuckled.

  “It’s not me who’s going to get munched,” I told them.

  Murphy looked back at Javendra. "We'll get as many as we can, but we don't want to wander too far. It's not safe for all of us to be split up all day. Cool?"

  “We’ll start with those two.” Javendra walked toward the pair of Whites.

  I jogged a few steps ahead to get beside Murphy. “How do you want to handle this?”

  Murphy shrugged. "You've spent more time in close company with them than I have. I'd say I hang back with Javendra, and you go up there and take the temperatures.” Murphy looked over at Javendra. "You cool with that?"

  “I’d like to take the temperatures myself,” he said.

  "I'll have to kill them,” I told him, not happy to have to do it. I’d been feeling guilty all morning about the Whites I'd led to the slaughter at the hands of the survivor assholes. Most of them weren't the aggressive type. Most of them didn't need to be killed. At least, that's what I was starting to believe about many of the infected in San Angelo. "They're not likely to sit still once they figure out you're normal."

  “I had the fever,” he argued. “I got better. Maybe they’ll sense that.”

  I stopped and pointed at the Whites. “You want to do this your way? Go ahead. Walk over there and take their temperatures.”

  Murphy chuckled again. “This is going to be a fun day.”

  I reached out an empty hand.

  Javendra put on a pouty face but handed me the thermometer.

  Armed with my machete in one hand, knife in a sheath, a pistol in a holster, and a white plastic thermometer, I crossed the rest of the parking lot as Javendra and Murphy slowed their pace to let me get ahead. Javendra's job, whether he liked it or not, was to observe. Murphy's job was to stay by him to keep him safe, just in case.

  As I closed in, the Whites stopped rifling through the garbage and watched me. The nearer I got, the more worried they seemed to get. I don't know if it was my machete or just skinny, bald Zed with a perturbed scowl on my face. Maybe to them, I looked like the monster that hides in their closet. I had the urge to say something soothing, like something I might say to a stray dog I was trying to feed.

  Of course, I didn’t say anything.

  When I was just three steps away from the Whites, they jumped up and ran away.

  What the hell?

  From a few dozen steps back, Murphy laughed.

  Chapter 54

  Javendra, still watching where the two Whites disappeared around the corner of the warehouse asked, “Why did they run?”

  “They’re afraid of Null Spot the Destroyer.” Murphy laughed some more as he looked around to see if any Whites were near enough to care.

  I walked back toward them.

  “Null Spot the Destroyer?” Javendra asked, realizing he was outside of an inside joke.

  Murphy stopped laughing and started to explain to Javendra the Null Spot story but couldn’t stop laughing.

  I focused on Javendra. “When we were in the commissary in College Station, did Murphy tell you about a guy who was with us named Russell?”

  “I don’t know.” Javendra rubbed his forehead. “He talked a lot. He mentioned a lot of names.”

  Murphy was starting to wind down.

  "Russell was infected,” I told Javendra. "We found him in his house. He had white skin like us. But he was docile. You could talk to him and tell him to do simple things, but he couldn't speak."

  “What happened to him?” Javendra asked.

  I started to tell him the story of Russell’s death but the words caught in my throat, unexpectedly bringing a sense of loss. I’d been a lot more attached to him than I wanted to admit. I settled for a shake of my head. Javendra didn’t need to know the details of how Russell had died.

  Murphy's laughter came to a sudden end, and he took up the answer. "Lots of people died,” He told Javendra, before turning away to scan the area for danger.

  “Sorry.” Javendra understood that some things in our past were still raw with unresolved emotions. “You didn’t happen to take his temperature, did you?”

  "Yeah. I'm sure Steph did. And back at the house where we found him.” I almost said Mandi checked his temperature that day, but I didn't want to mention her name. It had taken Murphy a long time to get past her death, and I sometimes wondered if he had ever completely put it behind him. "I don't recall what the number was.” I looked at Murphy for the answer.

  “Don’t remember.” He didn’t look at us. He stayed on task, watching for threats.

  “That’s okay,” said Javendra. “Why do you bring him up?”

  “I was just wondering,” I said, “if maybe a lot of these people in San Angelo are like Russell.” I nudged Murphy. “It kind of seems that way, doesn’t it?”

  “You gave us a speech yesterday about danger this and danger that,” he told me. “You need to decide which side of the fence you want to be on. Should we be afraid, or are we in Russell land?”

  “I’m just asking what you think of these Whites here,” I said. “Mostly they seem kind of docile, like Russell.”r />
  Murphy nodded. "Yeah, maybe you're right. Like that dude you ran into near the hospital when it was flooding back in Austin."

  “Aubrey?” I asked. “Jeff Aubrey?”

  “Who’s that?” asked Javendra.

  “What if they can talk?” Murphy asked me, pointing at San Angelo in general. “All these Whites.”

  Turning to Javendra, I said, “Aubrey was a grad student I ran into at Brackenridge hospital when it was all still happening. He’d just contracted the virus. He had a fever.”

  “But he survived?” asked Javendra.

  “Yeah.” I nodded at Murphy. “We ran into him again, like a month later. He was brain-fried but functional. I mean, he could speak.”

  “He was whacked, man.” Murphy twirled his finger beside his head. “That dude didn’t know what was going on.”

  “But he wasn’t aggressive.” I thought about it for a second before I looked to Javendra. “Do you think maybe Russell and Jeff Aubrey might have had a different strain of the virus than us?” I looked up and down the road in front of the grocery store. “Do you think maybe most of the people in San Angelo maybe got infected with that strain and not the crazy strain?”

  “And maybe you and Murphy have a different strain altogether.” Javendra added. “That’s possible, too. It might be the answer we’ve been searching for at A&M was the wrong one in the sense we were looking to create a universal vaccine. Perhaps what we should have been searching for was a strain with attenuated effects.”