by Bobby Adair
“You told me before,” he muttered.
“Because it’s fuckin’ important,” Murphy said with a fake grin before slapping Javendra on the back. “Be cool. Pay attention. And we’ll all live through this. Okay?”
Leaving the Javendra problem to Murphy, I leaned out the door, scanned what I could see of the sky, and figured it was time. I jogged out, looking back and forth as I headed for a spot between two tall pickups. The others followed.
I spotted a White almost immediately. She was working her way through the maze of cars, trying to find the source of the noise the helicopters were making. She’d just come around the front of one of the trucks as I was coming into the gap between them, and suddenly, we were face to face.
She froze, surprised to see me, slow to react.
I wasn’t slow. I had my machete up, ready to do its bloody work, and I brought it down and across, slashing at her throat.
Her arm came up to block my blade, but only after the machete had cut through her neck and banged against the fender of the truck to my left.
She collapsed, grasping at my flesh and struggling to catch a breath through all the blood flowing down her windpipe. She was going to die, one more to add to the mounds of corpses in my wake. I stepped over her and moved on.
Other Whites were in the parking lot but not as many as I expected. I saw them through the dirty windows of cars that separated us. Mostly they didn’t give me more than a glance. The helicopters were so much more tempting than a skinny bald White carrying a bloody machete.
We made it through the parking lot and crossed the street and then wove our way between closely jammed cars on the sidewalk and narrow lawn in front of the church. Once through those, I bounded up a handful of steps and crossed a portico to a pair of double doors, painted white and streaked with smears of dry blood. They sat ajar, a clear invitation for us to come on in.
We passed through a foyer and another set of doors into the chapel. Far at the other end of the oblong room, a lectern stood in front of a baptismal pool with a giant cross on the wall above. Row after row of pews was filled with the dead lying on the benches, laying on one another, some seated but bent over. Others were on the floor. Among them were some dogs, feeding on the carrion, more rats, and thick clouds of flies.
“What the fuck?” Murphy asked, talking more to himself than the rest of us all standing there with feet momentarily glued in place.
Nobody answered.
None of us had an answer to give. San Angelo was different than the other places we'd been. In all those places, the Whites had gnawed the corpses down to the bone, and they'd killed the dogs and the cats in their need to feed. And it had occurred over the whole of the cities and towns we'd visited. It had happened so fast that no hospital, no overflow church across the street had become overwhelmed with so many dying patients.
More to worry about later.
"C'mon,” I told them and jogged down the center of the chapel, past the pews. When I reached the front of the church, I didn't pause at the lectern, I turned left toward the door in the corner. Once there, I cautiously opened it, found a nearly empty room beyond, empty of the living, that is. A few bodies were rotting inside. A door on the other side of the room looked like the way to go.
Minutes later, after we’d passed through a building attached to the church, we were out the back and running through another packed parking lot, seeing disinterested Whites by the handful but certainly not by the hundreds. Behind us by a few blocks now, four helicopters were circling the hospital building we’d crashed on. Another Black Hawk was flying in from the Air Force base. No one was shooting.
We crossed another street and ran down a narrow alley, passing dumpsters and grease barrels behind restaurants that faced the street on the other side. Still, we weren’t seeing many Whites. The ones we did see at a distance didn’t howl, they didn’t chase, and they certainly didn’t attack.
I decided to push our transient luck and follow the alley through two more blocks before Fritz tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. I stopped by a dirty brick wall where the dumpsters on both sides would keep us from view of anyone passing by on the roads at both ends of the alley. Fritz pointed up at a sign on a door we'd just passed. The building was a bar. He said, "We're far enough away. Maybe we should hide."
I looked up at a narrow slit of blue sky I could see between the buildings on both sides of the alley. "We're not far enough from the hospital."
Grace stepped close. Panting, she put a hand on my shoulder. “We’re far enough. They’re not going to search door-to-door for us.”
“No,” Fritz agreed. “They can’t have that kind of manpower. They’ll fly overhead like they did back in Austin. That’s all. We’re better off inside, hiding, than outside where we risk being spotted when they conclude we’re not all dead in the helicopter crash.”
I glanced at the sky again, remembering our run through Austin after Murphy and me had helped Fritz and his friends escape from the Survivor Army. The Whites that night had been more dangerous to us than the helicopters and the Humvees. I climbed a few greasy steps and put a hand on the knob on the tavern’s back door. I glanced at the others for any objections. None.
I opened it.
Chapter 45
There wasn’t much to it, the same retro shit you see in every warehouse-district bar in every town—worn old brick on a wall or two, a ninety-year-old wooden floor covered in character-enhancing scars and varnish, an old-style stamped-tin ceiling that was probably plastic tiles with a faux patina. The genuine part of the bar was the stink of cigarette smoke and the smell of piss coming from the restrooms. No decay, though. No bodies were rotting away inside. That made the bar primo property for short-term guests like me and my friends.
“Somebody needs to go to the front and keep watch.” I pointed at the big windows that faced the street. “Maybe turn over some tables to hide behind so you won’t be noticeable.”
Eve said, “I’ll take guard duty.”
“I’m with her.” Fritz followed her toward the front.
Murphy took Jazz, and they went through a swinging door into what had to be the kitchen.
Grace went around behind the bar, and Javendra said, "I feel useless. Should I do something?"
I looked him up and down, standing, doing nothing, not knowing the first thing about staying alive in the world as it was. He was a fumbling liability no matter how valuable he might be in finding a vaccine. “Just watch what we do.” I nodded my head toward Grace. “We’ve got some experience at things you need to learn.”
Fritz called over from where he was by the front windows. “Don’t listen to him, Javendra.”
I turned to Fritz, a little offended. “What?”
“You’re talking down to him.” Fritz walked back toward us. He looked at Javendra. “Zed’s a good guy. He knows what he’s doing, but he gets stuck in dick mode.”
“What?” Didn’t I just save your ass? Again?
Fritz put a hand on my shoulder, and his salesman smile made everything seem okay. "Look, man, you've got to understand, this is a big change for Javendra. He's been living the good life—the safe life—inside the veterinary science building.
“I know that,” I said. “I want to keep him alive. We went to a lot of trouble for his sake.” In truth, it was for my sake and for everyone else’s. A small part of me believed there was still hope that Javendra, last of the scientists, would be able to come up with a vaccination to protect humanity’s future children from the virus. But to do that alone, with the jack-shit equipment he was likely to have out in Balmorhea, he’d have to be a fucking genius. Otherwise, I’d wasted my time and risked my life for pretty much nothing. I looked at Javendra. “You wouldn’t happen to be a fucking genius, would you?”
Javendra stuttered through a response that came out sounding like babbled noise.
Fritz put an arm over Javendra’s shoulder and guided him away. “If you’re going to learn from somebody,
it’s better you learn from me or Eve. We’re not infected. We don’t have white skin.”
“Isn’t that a little bit racist?” I asked them as they walked away.
Fritz turned to look at me, laughing. "Jesus, Zed. All I'm saying is you can walk out there, and the Whites won't mess with you. Me, Eve, Javendra, we can't. The rules are different for us. We still look like normal people used to look."
Javendra stepped back over to me, his hand extended. “Thank you.”
I shook his hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
He looked at Grace. "Thank you, too.” He called to the back where Murphy and Jazz were in the kitchen, "Thank—"
I shushed him with a harsh look and a raised hand. “Don’t call out.” I pointed outside. “The Whites will hear you. Like I said, don’t do anything you don’t see someone else do first.”
Javendra shrank and turned to walk to the front of the pub.
Fritz said to me, “He’s a smart guy. He’ll be fine. He just needs some time.”
“Yeah.” I scooted out a stool and sat down at the bar.
“What can I get you?” asked Grace from behind the bar. “Doesn’t look like the place was ransacked.”
“How’s that possible?” I peered over the bar. “Fritz, why don’t you grab a seat and let’s figure out what we’re doing next.”
Grace put a beer bottle down in front of me and popped the top open.
Fritz looked at it and told Grace, “Same for me.”
She put a bottle down for him and opened one for herself.
I drank. The temperature didn’t matter. It tasted like food.
Chapter 46
Murphy and Jazz bounced out of the kitchen with grins, paper towels, and a gallon-sized can of cheese sauce.
Murphy dropped the can on the bar and pushed it hard enough to slide down the smooth surface until it came to a stop in front of Fritz, Grace, and me. The viscous cheese sauce inside flowed up into a wave but settled back into the can before spilling over the edge.
Jazz placed a good-sized cardboard box in front of us and quickly opened it up, exposing a plastic bag full of tortilla chips. As an apology, she said, "They're stale."
We all reached in. Nobody cared about the loss of crunch or the slightly rancid taste.
Murphy came around behind the bar and opened a jar of sliced jalapeños he’d also found in the kitchen. He sat a few more bottles on the counter. Grace pulled some plates out from beneath the bar and spread them out for us.
“Hey you guys,” Murphy called, not too loudly, to Javendra and Eve. “We got nachos.”
I stuffed my mouth with chips and yellow cheese-like goo while I picked up one of the bottles Murphy had placed on the counter with a label that read, IRN-BRU. I looked up at him and asked, “What’s this?”
Murphy took the cap off the other bottle. "Man, I loved these when I was in Scotland."
“Scotland?” I asked. “When were you in Scotland?”
"You say that like it's a big surprise,” said Murphy. "Why wouldn't I go to Scotland if I wanted to?"
I started, “I just never thought—”
Fritz laughed and elbowed me. “Pissing off everybody, aren’t you?”
“Whatever.” Murphy put the open bottle down in front of me. “Try it.”
I picked it up, sniffed it, and examined the liquid through the clear plastic. “Looks like rust juice. Did it go bad?”
“Man,” said Murphy, as he opened the other bottle, “just try it.” He took a long drink from his bottle.
I tentatively put it to my lips.
“Try it,” he persisted.
I rolled my eyes and took a drink.
“Well?”
“It’s okay.”
Murphy shook his head.
Grace reached over. “You mind?”
I handed her the bottle. She drank and seemed to like it. “Not bad.”
Fritz reached out. “I’ll give it a shot.”
She passed the bottle to him.
“See?” Murphy taunted me. “Everybody likes it but you.”
Fritz drank and smiled. “Cold, I think I’d like it a lot.”
I glared at Fritz. “You’re just saying that because you’re in the mood to fuck with me.”
Fritz shook his head as he went to work piling chips on a plate and scooping out cheese with a big spoon. Eve took the plate when it was finished and turned back to the front. “C’mon Javendra, we’re still on duty.”
We ate for a while, letting the high-calorie food fill our stomachs while sugar or beer put us all on a nice buzz. We talked. We relaxed. We let some of the day’s tension unwind.
Eventually, Fritz got Murphy’s and my attention and said, “Sorry about Martin.”
"Yeah.” I put another cheese-drenched chip in my mouth and didn't want to think about the loss of another new friend—I was reluctant to call him a friend, but I suppose he was. "He was alright. But that's the way it goes, right?"
Murphy nodded and raised a bottle. The rest of us silently toasted Martin. All the others who’d died along the way weren’t mentioned. Was it that they’d died more than a day ago, ancient history in the post-virus world? Was the act of forgetting the dead and forgetting the grief one of the tricks of keeping one’s sanity? Whatever it was, it wasn’t fair, and nobody gave a shit about that either. We were breathing. They weren’t.
And that’s the way it goes.
“So what’s the plan?” Murphy asked. “Stay here until dark, then get out of town? We’re only a couple hundred miles from Balmorhea, right?”
I shook my head.
"Oh no.” Grace wasn't pleased. "I'm no expert in Zed body language, but I'd say one of the gerbils in his head is giving him bad ideas."
Fritz pretended to look closely at me. “Yes, Grace. You’re right.”
Murphy laughed.
“Look,” I started, “we can’t just leave town.”
Murphy sighed loudly. “Oh, no. Here it comes.”
I leaned forward and looked around to see all eyes on me. "These helicopter assholes keep fucking with us, probably like they fuck with everybody they see. If all of today's crap happened when we were back at Fort Hood, and we were heading out to West Texas, I'd say, who cares?"
"No, you wouldn't,” Murphy interrupted.
“I’m with Murphy on this,” Grace added.
“It’s true,” said Fritz.
Jazz stayed out of it.
“Balmorhea is an hour away by helicopter,” I pointed in the direction I thought it laid. “With these assholes here, it’s only a matter of time before they come out there to do whatever they do.”
“Kill people for no reason,” said Grace, empty-eyed, recalling what had happened to the people at the Capitol, the ones who’d saved her life back at the beginning of it all. “That’s what they do.”
“When it gets dark,” I announced, “I’m going to go back to the base and fix this shit once and for all.”
Murphy shook his head. “No sleep again tonight.”
“I’ll help,” said Grace as she looked at Jazz, who nodded and shrugged.
"We should just go,” said Fritz. "These guys don't deserve to live, but they're trouble. They've got us outnumbered, and they're armed."
I shrugged. “Makes no difference to me.”
Murphy said, “He’s not lyin’, Fritz.” He cocked his head at me. “You know how he is.”
“I’m not recruiting anybody,” I told them. “I’ve got an idea. I don’t need any help.”
“He always says something stupid just like this.” Murphy laughed. “It always starts this way.”
Chapter 47
It wasn’t a complicated plan. It wasn’t even original. I had a problem that required a straightforward solution—kill the fuckers. By the number of Black Hawks we’d seen, I guessed there could be as many as seventy or eighty helicopter assholes on the base, and that’s if all their helicopters were packed when they escaped from Fort Hood. I knew I couldn�
�t kill them all by myself. I knew my band of survivors couldn’t do it either. I needed to outsource some manpower. That meant Whites.
We spent the rest of the day in the bar, eating, napping, and talking through what needed to be done. And second-guessing. Was this something that needed to be done? I was adamant. I was doing it, alone or with help. I didn’t see it as a choice. It was a preemptive necessity. I’d learned too many lessons the hard way and the hard way always cost the life of somebody I was attached to.
I was done paying the price. It was time to start charging.
We left the bar at midnight.
I jogged on a slow serpentine path down the street with Grace behind me. No surprise, we started collecting a following, but way too slowly for our purposes. Still, not many Whites seemed to be in San Angelo. Of those, I guessed many had bedded down for the night. So, I started to make noise—I banged car fenders with my machete and circled individual blocks, coming back around to collect any Whites who woke up and came out to see what the noise was about. Some fell into line, and others watched us go by, not reacting at all.
Persistence paid.
Grace and I spent nearly two hours collecting a troop of a few hundred Whites as we worked our way through the dark streets, over the bridges, out of the center of town toward the Air Force base. I’d wanted twice that many in my line but the longer the night wore on, the more I rationalized that I had enough to do the job—I hoped.
We were heading to the southwest corner of the small base, where a complex of buildings I’d spotted on our way into Goodfellow looked like dorms or barracks. But that wasn’t a linchpin in the plan. I didn’t need to be right about where the helicopter assholes were bedding down for the night. I only needed a starting place. The base wasn’t large. We could search all the buildings before sunup.
Of course, there was the risk that grew the longer we searched—that we'd be found out and would lose the opportunity to surprise the assholes in their sleep. Things would get dicey then, but Grace and I had already decided that if the shooting started, we'd scrape our Whites off near the Survivor Army barracks, just as the Smart Ones liked to do, and let nature take its course. I didn't need for the Survivor Army dudes to die, though it would be nice if they all did. What I needed was for my Whites to distract them enough with saving their lives that Murphy and Fritz could handle their part of the plan.
