by Adair, Bobby
Got her.
My confidence was growing with each burst of red blood from white skin.
A group of several more arrived at the other end of the dock.
Too many.
I emptied my shotgun at them in patient shots, giving the wounded and dying a chance to fall before sending my pellets at those behind.
When I was empty, two were still clambering toward me over the dead and writhing bodies.
The number of running Whites coming across the grass was way more than I knew I could handle.
I started to reload, keeping my eye on the two Whites. It was immediately clear that I wouldn’t get the shells into my rifle in time. Everything happened in adrenaline-soaked fast time. I dropped the shells from my hand and pulled out my machete, hacking down in one motion as the first of the two neared me.
Murphy shot the second, and it fell to the dock in front of me.
I chopped down with my machete and lodged the tip into the boards at my feet, took a quick glance at the coming Whites, and decided I had time to reload, provided I didn’t let my nerves get away from me and fumble the attempt.
I didn’t. I finished reloading.
I killed four more Whites with six more shots.
By then, so many of the infected were converging on the end of the dock, Murphy said, “I think we should go.”
“Yeah.” Feeling good, I yanked my machete out of the wood.
Murphy ran to the boat and I followed. I loosed the bow line and shoved off. We floated out by nearly a dozen feet when a runner jumped off the dock and landed in the water close to the boat. I shot him.
Murphy started the engine and I fired at more Whites running up the dock.
As the boat started to pick up speed, I relaxed. We were safe.
“Good test?” Murphy asked.
“I think the shotgun was the right call,” I smiled.
It was good to have a guy who had some experience with real weapons.
“Just keep in mind the noise,” Murphy told me.
“It’s hard to ignore.” I sat down in the passenger seat. “I know panic is what leads to bad choices when it comes time to shoot. We both know all too well that once the shooting starts, things get bad in a hurry. The shotgun is a last resort.”
“Don’t forget it.” He started to chuckle. “Null Spot.”
Chapter 11
It was late in the day but still light outside when Murphy and I docked the boat at the edge of the lake where the water, a tree-covered slope, and a steep, rocky side of the levee converged. The levee extended the dam a quarter mile to the southeast and only ever held water back when the lake was overfilled like it was now.
No Whites were around. Better yet, no helicopters full of belligerent assholes were buzzing about to strafe us.
Murphy tied off the boat. I left the keys in it, and we carefully negotiated the long climb over the rocks to get to the top of the levee. Still, we were alone and the afternoon was starting to settle down to a quiet that belied the would-be dangers lurking when dark finally settled. The air was dead calm.
Prior to the arrival of the virus, the ambient noise of life was the sound of cars and trucks careening over the asphalt at high speed. It was a sound I’d learned to ignore. I’d recalled noticing when it was replaced by a new ubiquitous noise—gunfire. I remember that the gunfire peaked a few days after everything went to shit. For a time, it was near constant—sometimes close, sometimes far away. As the virus ate away at humanity, the gunshots grew more sporadic until a day came when I found myself standing and looking around, sensing something was missing but unable to figure out what it was. Like the absence of the traffic noise, the absence of the gunshots was hard to figure out.
By then, the world’s natural sound was that of birds which seemed to be thriving and tweeting everywhere—house sparrows, cardinals, and doves. Coyotes loved the new order of things, as I heard their howls and yelps nearly every night. The only manmade sound left was that made by Whites. I guess when the virus fried their powers of speech away, it left them with the desire to vocalize anyway, howling and yelping like the coyotes, screaming when they were on the hunt or being hunted by other Whites. Near or far, their voices were almost always on the wind.
None of the loud ones were around when Murphy and I reached the top edge of the dam, and we didn’t see any moving nearby. Far below and downstream on the riverbank, I saw some Whites trying to corral a small animal. Unless it was able to get into the water and swim away pretty quickly, I didn’t hold out any hope for it.
Murphy and I climbed down the long, treacherous slope on the other side of the levee, coming off it near the shoulder of ranch-to-market road 620. Out of habit, I looked both ways before crossing the five lanes of asphalt, nearly empty except for those cars and trucks stopped on the bridge.
Once across, we concealed ourselves in the dense trees and took a moment to catch our breath.
“So far, so good,” said Murphy.
I shrugged and silently scanned the shadows under the trees around us, expecting a gang of quiet, sneaky Whites to be lurking there, ready to ambush us. I knew they were out there. They were always out there.
We started down toward the river, following the path of a narrow road that meandered its way through the trees toward the low-water crossing, the place where we had a boat tied off. Along the way, we didn’t see any Whites but we could hear them—there weren’t many, and they weren’t agitated, just regular Whites going about their business.
When we came within sight of the water, I saw our boat drifting on its tether just as we’d left it six weeks ago. Its shine was dulled under a layer of clingy dirt, dust that settled on dry afternoons, turning to mud when the dew settled overnight.
“You’re expecting trouble?” Murphy nodded as he said it. He was expecting trouble, too. Hell, we were always expecting it.
“I just don’t want it to be a surprise. Know what I mean?”
Murphy grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”
He was joking, of course.
“You cover me from up here,” I said. “I’ll head down. If any Whites come to fuck with me, well, shoot ‘em if you can. If not, and I can’t handle ‘em, I’ll jump in the water and swim downriver a bit. We can hook up down there.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
I moved through the trees, crunching brown autumn leaves and hating them for making me noisy. I paused behind thick, gnarled trunks and took my time to look around. We’d gone too long without trouble. That worried me, but nothing happened.
I reached the bank, squatted, and scanned the other side of the river before I stepped through knee-deep water to climb into the boat. The keys were dangling in the ignition. All was just as we’d left it. I raised my shotgun to my shoulder, but the awkwardness of the pistol grip made me feel foolish. I lowered it and laid my wrist on my hip as I pointed the gun uselessly at the far shore. I leaned against a gunwale and waved Murphy to come down.
He made almost no noise at all as he worked his way through the trees. He untied the bow line when he arrived, then jumped into the boat beside me, shoving off as he did so. He said, “That was easy.”
Nodding, I replied, “You ride shotgun, I’ll drive.”
Chapter 12
We were out in the center of the river and starting to float downstream when Murphy lowered his rifle, glanced at me, then looked up at the far end of the dam. “We’re doing this the wrong way.”
I looked up at the tall hill on the other side of the river and saw houses built among the trees. I looked at the dam for a clue as to what Murphy was talking about and then I looked around the boat. “What?”
He said, “We need to start working the night shift.”
“Murphy, have you been smoking some weed I don’t know about? You’re not making any sense.”
“Hey man, I’m having an inspiration.” Murphy shot me a fake frown. “I’m trying to make a major improvement in our lives.”
“U
h, oh.” I cranked the starter on the engine.
“Don’t start the boat,” Murphy said as he came up to sit in the seat opposite me. “Hear me out on this one. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hiking around and riding boats up and down the river.”
I scanned the banks as we sat in the boat, starting to drift. “Assholes in the helicopter aside, it’s safe for us to travel this way… mostly. On the river, the Whites don’t mess with us. Even when we’re walking, they mostly don’t mess with us unless we start talking or shooting.”
Murphy replied, “What I’m saying is, we’ve got night vision goggles.”
“And?” There had to be more to Murphy’s epiphany than that.
Murphy scooted around in his seat and leaned forward, ready to sell. “What if we had a silent car to go along with our night vision goggles? Then we could go anywhere.”
“Okay, Batman, I give up,” I said as I looked downriver. “Are you saying we should maybe go back to Sarah Mansfield’s house and get her Tesla? I doubt it still has a charge on the batteries, but it’s electric. It’ll be silent.”
“No.” Murphy grinned and pointed out past the other end of the dam. “I was watching this video online a month or so before the outbreak. There’s this dude, Mitch something-or-other, who’s got a shop right up on 620 just past the dam.”
“And?” I asked.
“His thing was converting old muscle cars to electric.”
“Battery-powered muscle cars?” I wasn’t buying it.
“I swear man, it’s true,” said Murphy. “His first car was this old sixty-something Mustang he called the Zombie 222.”
“Okay, now I know you’re fuckin’ with me.” I cranked the boat engine and it started up.
“I’m serious.”
“Uh, huh.” I put the boat in gear to engage the prop.
“No, I really am,” he said. “It’s a real thing. He makes these cars and they’re fast as shit. They generate like eighteen hundred horsepower. No lie. And they’re quiet.”
“The reason I know you’re fuckin’ with me is that nobody, and I mean nobody, would ever put an electric motor in a muscle car. That’s pretty much a religious debate in itself.”
Murphy paused to think. “No, he retired from high-tech or something and it was his pet project. He said he could get more torque out of an electric motor, and he set a speed record. I’m not shitting you.”
Murphy did seem serious. I dropped my hands from the wheel and rested them in my lap. “So you’re thinking we get us an electric car and drive it around Austin at night when nobody can see us or hear us.”
“Yeah,” said Murphy, slapping a palm on his head. “We’ve got the advantage of the night vision goggles. I don’t know why we haven’t been doing this all along.”
“Me neither,” I sarcastically agreed. “Charging could be a problem. Half the time the roads are full of crap. An electric car doesn’t offer us any protection.” I rubbed my chin. “Anything else I’m forgetting?”
“Yeah,” said Murphy. “You forgot to apologize for being a dick just because this isn’t your idea.”
I rolled my eyes and started to say something but realized he was probably right. I sighed and forced an apology. I turned off the boat engine.
Murphy laughed and slapped me on the back, hard enough that I nearly bumped my head on the windshield. “It’s just how you are, man. Don’t you think I know that by now?”
I rolled my eyes again. “Do you remember that map we made when we were at Sarah Mansfield’s house? Do you still have it?”
Murphy shook his head. “Long gone, dude. Too much wear and tear. Know what I mean? Too much shit goin’ on.”
I nodded. “If only we could have laminated it.”
“Why?” he asked.
“A satellite map would show us where all the houses in Austin with solar panels are.”
“Yeah.” Murphy grinned. “All of our gas stations.”
I started to accept the idea. “We could get a network of places around town where we could get a charge if we needed it. I went with a buddy once to look at a Nissan Leaf. They told him he needed to spend like fifteen hundred bucks to install a charging station in his garage, but if he was out somewhere away from home he could just plug the car into a regular outlet for thirty minutes or so and get a half charge or seventy-five percent or something like that.”
That pumped up Murphy’s confidence in the idea. “So we could charge it up anywhere if we had to.”
I shrugged. “Lots of houses in Austin have solar panels.”
“I think we need to go car shopping.”
“And this electric Mustang is a real thing?” I asked, still a little skeptical. In truth, any electric car would do. Plenty of them were around Austin. The old Mustang, though, appealed to me in a sexy, impractical way that made no good sense. But it felt good to think about it. And that good feeling was something I’d been missing for a while.
Murphy picked up a paddle and leaned over the side of the boat, ready to dig into the water to get us to the bank across the river. “Google it if you don’t believe me.”
Chapter 13
An hour later, with our boat tied to a tree overhanging the other side of the river, Murphy and I were standing at the peak of a cone-shaped hill looking up and down the length of 620. We were a little less than a mile from the dam but could easily see the road from our vantage. Plenty of cars littered 620’s lanes but it was passable. Trash and other things that had once been loaded in cars or hastily packed in suitcases lay on the road, in the trees, or washed into piles in the ditches. The remains of bodies—sometimes whole, most often not—lay all over the place with broken bones, clothes, and clumps of hair. More frequently, dark brownish stains on the bleached asphalt marked the spots where people had been slaughtered and devoured.
“Look,” said Murphy, pointing down 620 away from the dam. “Down just past those coyotes in the road. See on the left, maybe a quarter mile? That tan metal building back in the trees there?”
“Sure.” A dozen metal buildings were back in the trees along the road. The sun-faded color of any of them could be described as tan. But whatever.
“That one, there, with all the solar panels on the roof,” said Murphy.
“You’re thinking because he makes electric muscle cars, he’s got solar panels too?” I asked, guessing at the same time that it made sense.
“Sure, why not? Solar panels are cheap compared to what his cars cost.”
“How much?” I asked.
“I don’t know. A hundred to a hundred fifty grand, maybe?”
“Seriously?”
Murphy shrugged. “I don’t know. A Tesla is around ninety, isn’t it?”
“I guess.” I stared blankly down the road, still not convinced we were doing anything but wasting our time. Murphy had already sold himself on the idea of the car, though. “Fuck it. Let’s go steal a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar car if it’s there.”
Chapter 14
Despite the obvious advantage of being able to read signs posted in front of the businesses along the way, we decided to stay off the main road—too much visibility being out in the middle of five paved lanes with so much of the day’s light still left in the sky. From the top of the hill we’d spied an indirect path down a few trails, along several short stretches of dirt road, and up a paved street that would lead us to the shop where Murphy guessed the electric Mustang waited. It didn’t look like much of a trek, maybe a half mile, maybe a little more.
I followed Murphy down a zigzagging trail off the peak of the hill. We came out onto a dusty stretch of bumpy road between thick cedar forests on both sides. We passed around a long, slow bend to the point where all we were able to see besides the dimming sky above was the dirt road curving away into the trees in front and back.
Murphy came to a sudden stop, snapping his M4 up to a firing position and glancing quickly back at me before looking forward again. He scanned back and forth across all the
trees.
I gripped my machete and raised the blade as I stepped up beside him and stopped.
Without the crunch of our boots on the gravelly road to mask the subtleties of the sounds around us, I heard something out in the trees to our left. I hoped it was a noisy armadillo but knew it was Whites.
I looked around for movement in the trees far ahead. For some reason, Murphy suspected something in front of us. I had to believe he was right. I peered into the dark shadows in the trees behind and beside us. Nothing. I glanced at Murphy. He nodded forward. He whispered, “They’re going to ambush us.”
“How do you know that?”
His eyes passed over my machete as he glanced at my shotgun. “You may need to use that.”
“Should we go back?” I asked.
“I think they’re ahead of us and behind us,” he said just as a hail of jagged chunks of white limestone—roughly the size of baseballs—arced in our direction from the trees on both sides of the road. The stones weren’t aimed well enough to hit either of us except by luck. Plenty were coming, though.
“I guess they’ve run out of regular people to eat,” I said, keeping my calm despite the hail of stones, “and now they’ve banded together to hunt the weak.”
“Yeah Professor, whatever,” Murphy said, with urgency in his voice. He nodded in the direction we’d come from. “My guess is they’ll be weakest that way. I’ll lead. You keep an eye on our rear.”
One of the rocks hit me in the shoulder, missing my skull by inches. “Motherfucker.”
Murphy looked up at the other rocks still coming. “We need to go.” Scanning from side to side with his rifle, he hurried but didn’t run.
I followed, trying to use his massive size as a rock shield while I kept looking behind and to the sides.
The Whites way behind us—in the direction we’d originally been going—yelped and growled. They seemed frustrated that their plan wasn’t working out. The tree limbs around us rattled with the sound of bodies brushing past. Thankfully, the foliage was thick enough to keep them from simply running through and engulfing us. The Whites were smart enough to set the trap but not quite bright enough to figure out how to react once Murphy and I took some active steps to avoid being ensnared.
