by Adair, Bobby
“You’re always so thoughtful, Murphy.”
“You can’t get that Humvee,” said Jazz.
“Why?” I asked. “It’s right there. Like Murphy said, maybe we push a car or two out of the way but we can get it out.”
Shaking her head, Jazz said, “There’s a group of Crazies that live up there in the cars. They think the bridge is their turf.”
We didn’t have any normals with us, so our options for doing anything out in the open were greatly expanded. That included going out on the bridge and disposing of however many aggressive Whites lived up there. I said, “Fritz and Gabe need a safe vehicle.”
“We could always let ‘em get their own ride,” Murphy suggested.
Shaking my head, knowing I was putting a mask on my own reasons, I said, “They’ll get killed just trying to walk over there. I think there are way too many Whites around for them to get very far on their own.”
“Wait,” said Grace. “What are we talking about here? We’re supposed to be going to get groceries at Whole Foods.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Murphy slapped me on the back and looked at Grace. “Don’t mind him. Sometimes he looks for trouble for no good reason.”
“Why?” Grace asked sincerely as she gave me a look like I might truly be insane. “Doesn’t everybody get enough trouble for free these days?” She turned and headed for the sidewalk that led to Whole Foods.
Jazz smiled at me, shrugged, and followed.
Murphy said, “We’ll get the Humvee later.”
I huffed and tagged along.
Chapter 53
With Grace in the lead, and Jazz behind her spending too much time looking at the floor and nudging an occasional bottle with her toe to read the label, I followed them while Murphy took up the rear. We were working our way through an aisle of handmade soaps, shampoos, and lotions on the second floor of the Whole Foods grocery. Most of the bottles that had been on the shelves were now on the floor. They’d been trampled and kicked, and many opened as Whites had sampled what was inside to see if it was edible. When they’d discovered otherwise, they dropped the bottles and went on to other parts of the store. A tacky, multicolored mess now covered the linoleum underfoot and was evidence of all that had happened there.
Unfortunately, walking through it, peeling our feet off the ground with each step, and trying not to kick the empty bottles too loudly proved onerous and distracting.
At the end of the aisle, the wine section took up a whole corner of the store. Grace told us that among the countless broken wine bottles were hundreds of unopened ones. We all pretended that wine wasn’t a first choice and that calories were just calories these days, but we needed little convincing to head through the sticky shampoo aisle knowing what lay at the other end.
Clinking noises in the glass up ahead made it clear that something or someone was already rummaging among the overturned shelves and broken bottles. My guess was Whites. First off, they were being noisy. Normals still lucky enough to be alive and even Slow Burns had learned silence was always best. That and the noise didn’t seem to have any rhythmic order to it. Normal people engaged in tasks tended to do them in a steady fashion. So, any noise associated with the task tended to have a certain regularity. Whites were fidgety and random.
We were halfway up our aisle when a White peeked around the shelves to give us a look. He’d apparently heard us. No surprise.
He stared. He didn’t know what to make of us.
I hefted my machete. I already had a solution for him—him and what I was guessing were two or three others up in the wine section. They were the only ones making noise on this floor of the store. If any others were hidden, they were being quiet about it.
Grace looked over her shoulder in a quick glance at Jazz.
The White leaned out a little farther and stepped out into the aisle, exposing half of his body. He cocked his head.
Jazz nocked an aluminum-shafted arrow as she raised her bow.
Just loud enough for the sound to reach the end of the aisle, Grace whispered, “Are you a bad boy?”
The White’s eyes went wide. He tensed and took a step out from behind the aisle’s end cap as his mouth opened wide, baring his teeth. A howl just started in his throat as Jazz let fly the arrow that skewered the White’s head. He fell over, twitching and gurgling as he died.
Seeing the technique, I felt a little stupid. I’d have taken my machete and beat it on a shelf. Perhaps I’d have called out at the top of my lungs to get the attention of any Whites on the floor. Then, Murphy and I would have gambled that we could kill all that came running. Definitely a solution lacking the subtlety of Grace’s and Jazz’s method.
By the time we’d taken a few more steps, another White made her noisy way through the broken wine bottles and squatted beside her fallen comrade as she looked up at us.
Grace whispered, “Are you a good girl?”
The White immediately lunged as another of Jazz’s arrows buried itself in the infected girl’s chest, ending its life in an instant.
“Nice shot,” I whispered over Jazz’s shoulder.
She ignored me as she nocked another arrow.
Glass still clinked among the wine shelves. At least one more White was up ahead.
Stepping over the two Jazz had killed, we started to crunch glass under our shoes as we walked around the perimeter of what had been a large wine department.
Signs hung from the ceiling indicating the region the wine in the area below had come from. Beneath the Chile sign, we found a White, emaciated in clothes that hung off his thin frame. On his bloody knees with bleeding hands, he rummaged through bottles of wine both full and broken, catching cockroaches and stuffing the crunchy little beasts into his mouth. When he noticed us, he stopped what he was doing, looked blankly at us for a moment, and then went back to pushing bottles out of the way to scare up his prey.
“Are you a good boy?” Grace asked in her deathly whisper.
The White stopped and looked at her.
Jazz already had an arrow ready to fly.
After a moment of doing nothing more, the White turned back to his work.
“A Slow One,” she said to us.
Feeling a little guilt, I knew I’d probably have killed him had it been just Murphy and me in the store. We’d have dispatched the two predatory Whites with ease. Then, while our blood was running hot with the excitement of the kill, we’d have spotted Mr. Roach Wrangler, and I’d probably have lopped off his head. I asked, “You said you guys take the Slow Ones in. Is he coming back with us?”
Shaking her head with a sadness that seemed too profound for the situation, she said, “We can’t. Not anymore. When there were more of us. When we had a better place up at the Capitol we could take care of them. They could be productive. Now…” She shook her head and started to push through the broken glass with the toes of her boots again, looking for salvageable wine bottles.
Jazz left us and went back to the cosmetics and shampoo aisle, apparently making her way toward some coveted product she’d seen on our way through.
Murphy shrugged and followed her. He was thinking the same thing I was, “Don’t split up.”
I stayed with Grace. She picked up a couple of bottles of red wine. She read the labels, nodded approvingly and handed them to me. I pushed them into my backpack.
I said, “It really bothers you not to take them in, doesn’t it?”
Without turning my way, she nodded.
“Why?” For me, it was easy. Or at least it had grown easy. I recalled how I felt about Russell on first coming across him. If left up to me, I’m sure I’d have abandoned him in his house to fend for himself, just as he had been doing. Over time, though, I grew attached. He was a human. Perhaps that’s to say, in my mind I accepted him as a human and in a way, a friend. I felt a depth of responsibility for him that grew out of the attachment. It hurt like hell when he died.
Early on, I’d killed plenty of Whites. Hell, I was s
till doing it damn near every day. Some, I suspected afterward, were Slow Ones or even Slow Burns. That always bothered me when I had some downtime to think about it. The expressions on their faces—sometimes blank, sometimes vaguely pitiful—engendered a festering guilt that threatened my actions with doubt every time I faced a white-skinned monster.
Finally, Grace said, “It feels wrong.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yes.” She stood up straight and looked at me. She pointed at the Slow One rummaging for roaches. “You don’t feel bad about leaving him here?”
I shrugged and looked away. I knew I should have felt bad. But I didn’t. Mostly I felt hollow.
I couldn’t get past the thought that I’d have simply killed The Roach Wrangler and I was starting to feel just as guilty as if I had.
Grace went back to her work. “I understand. I really do.” She picked up a tall, skinny bottle of some kind of white wine—a moscato. “This is so much better when it’s cold.”
“Calories,” I muttered, accepting the bottle for the collection in my bag.
Jazz and Murphy came over, apparently finished shopping on the cosmetics aisle. She pointed a thumb at Murphy, “We’re going to check back in the deli.”
Grace looked across to the other side of the store. “Don’t go so far that we can’t hear you.”
With plenty of sarcasm, Jazz said, “Yes mother.” Murphy smiled.
Unfazed, Grace went back to looking through the bottles. She turned the conversation back to the Slow Ones. “I’ve seen plenty of people lose their humanity.”
I wasn’t sure that I started with my humanity intact. But that was a long story of shitty parents that I preferred to leave in the black hole of my memory for as much time as I could keep it there.
“With all the death, all the violence,” said Grace, “people have to protect themselves.” She patted the center of her chest. “In here. In their hearts. Turning a callous eye on the world helps. For some—the weak ones—it’s the only way.”
“The weak ones?” I asked. “Wait. Are you saying I’m weak?”
“Take it however you want,” said Grace. “We’ve all been through indescribable brutalities to get where we are now. Some of us were strong enough to keep the best parts of ourselves alive. Some of us weren’t.”
I wanted to say, ‘Fuck you.’ Yeah, I’m just that eloquent. Instead, I muttered, “For some of us, maybe this is the best part.” I stomped off to check what lay down another aisle. I can’t say I was any more or less interested in what was still on those shelves. I just wanted to get away from Grace. She was pushing me to think about things I’d rather not.
I’d grown comfortable—well maybe not comfortable—perhaps I’d just reached a state of détente with what I felt and what I thought I should feel. I was okay with my stupid choices and my addiction to danger. I was fine going from day to day with few emotional ties. I was fine with the killing.
The guilt was a price I paid, a necessary toll.
Something about the killing filled an empty hole in me.
I found myself looking at boxes and boxes of empty protein bars and empty bar wrappers. They were scattered near knee deep on the floor. The Whites had figured out how to tear open those packages. I guess not a hard thing, it was the intuitive leap of knowing that something might be edible inside—that was the part that seemed like it should have been beyond the abilities of their simple brains.
I took my time as I sorted through the trash, finding bars as I went, using my effort in the trivial search to focus my attention and hide from my thoughts. The darkest parts of my soul were thriving in the chaos of a world turned murderous black, and bereft of dreams. I was a downcast demigod, slayer of monsters. I bore the machete that drained their veins, stole their breath, and cut the life from their hearts.
I was the void.
I was the Null Spot.
Maybe I really was.
But still, the guilt.
By the time I was halfway down the aisle, I had collected a few dozen bars and they were stashed in my backpack along with the bottles of wine.
Grace came wading down through the cardboard and silvery wrappers. When she stopped beside me, she asked, “Any luck?”
“I’m finding plenty,” I said.
“Mind if I help?”
“Of course.” I looked at her. “I know sometimes I get pissed, but it’s nothing. I’m not entirely comfortable with the things I’ve done to stay alive. But that just is what it is. I’ve got to deal with it in my own way.”
“I’m sorry,” said Grace. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was judging you. It’s just the kind of things I think about when I can’t sleep at night.”
Lying, I said, “I don’t tend to think of anything except staying awake.”
“Afraid of what might happen if you go to sleep?” asked Grace. “The Crazies might come?”
I smiled and almost laughed before admitting, “The nightmares get pretty bad.”
“That’s normal.” Grace found a full box kicked up under the edge of a shelf and gave me a challenging look.
“Beginner’s luck,” I told her.
“What do you think of everything that Fritz and Gabe told us?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “What are you asking exactly?”
She said, “I’m thinking about going with them.”
Chapter 54
Grace’s announcement that she was thinking about going to College Station didn’t matter much to me. I barely knew her. I barely knew Fritz and Gabe. If I’d said I barely gave a shit, that would have been an exaggeration.
“Do you think they’re being honest?” she asked me.
I leaned an elbow on a shelf and said, “I think everybody lies about nearly everything.”
Grace shook her head and looked disappointed.
“But,” I continued, “I think it’s always been that way. Back in the old life, lies didn’t carry huge consequences so we just lived with them. Now, it’s different. When somebody deceives you, you end up dead.”
Murphy laughed.
I looked down to him and Jazz standing at the end of the aisle.
“See,” Murphy said, pointing at me and talking to Jazz. “That’s what I was talking about. When he goes into professor mode you might as well get a pillow. You can tell by that tone in his voice. It sounds like there’s a corncob in his butt.”
“Did you find anything good?” Grace asked.
Murphy slipped his backpack off his shoulder and held it open to show a load of cans and jars. He grinned. “This is my new favorite store.” Looking at Grace he asked, “What’s he lecturing you about?”
“Liars.” Grace smiled. “I was asking him if he trusted Fritz and Gabe. He went on about lying like he was the guy who discovered that humans don’t tell the truth sometimes.”
Murphy laughed loudly. “Oh my God. You already know what he’s like. I’ve been listening to this shit for like three months.”
Jazz giggled, looked at me and said, “What I heard sounded smart.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
Grace looked at Murphy and said, “I’m thinking about going with them to College Station.”
Murphy nodded and put on a thoughtful face.
“If you go,” said Jazz, “I’m going too.”
Shaking her head, Grace said, “You don’t have to go just because I am. It could be dangerous. No, it will be dangerous. We don’t know these guys.”
“I don’t have any friends here.” Jazz looked down at the floor like she was ashamed of what she’d just admitted. “Just you.”
“You think about it,” said Grace. She looked back up at Murphy. “Well?”
“Man,” he said, “I don’t know. I hate to say it, but honestly, I’m with Zed on this kind of shit. People do some crappy stuff. As far as I can tell, Fritz and Gabe don’t have any motivation to lie. I’d be inclined to think Fritz is telling the truth. I don’t know if what they’re
doing is worth the time or whether they can get it done. I know he believes it. I think he’s honest. If he was selling used cars, I’d sure buy one.” He looked at me. “What do you think, man? I mean without all the professor shit?”
I shrugged and looked back up at Murphy. “You about covered it, I guess. I pretty much think the same thing.”
Grace put a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Why?” asked Murphy. “I know why the Valiant Null Spot crusades across Texas but what’s your deal?”
“The Valiant Null Spot?” I asked. “Are you ever going to let that go?”
Laughing, Murphy shook his head. He looked at each of the girls. “He’s got a thing about saving people and doing the right thing. I only hang out with him because he’s lucky as hell and he’s invincible. Those are his superpowers.”
Grace and Jazz were laughing by then. Grace said, “You guys are a hoot. I can’t remember the last time I actually laughed.”
I smiled and chuckled along. Why fight it? I said, “Murphy’s a comedian. That’s why I keep him around.”
When the laughing stopped, Murphy looked at us and said, “We should check and see if anybody heard us.”
He headed off to check the escalator by the deli.
I nodded at Grace and we waded back through the empty boxes. “We’ll check the stairs.”
When we were passing through the wine section, Grace said, “The Valiant Null Spot? He really gave you a superhero name?”
“It’s been amusing him since he woke up from the fever.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.” I headed down the cosmetic aisle that ran off in a direction perpendicular to the path of the protein bar aisle.
“Not nothing.” She punched me lightly in the arm. “Spill it. You’ve been pretending like you don’t care about people or anything and now I find out that’s not true. What’s the story?”
“You’ll have to ask Murphy,” I said. “As far as I know I’m just doing what anybody would have done.”
“Like what?” she persisted.
