Slow Burn (Book 8): Grind

by Adair, Bobby

  Nothing did.

  Murphy came up behind me.

  Stacked in the dining room chairs against the walls, clothing piles towered. Various garments, all sorted by type, were piled on a sagging, flowery couch and the puffy chairs beside it. They were heaped on an old cabinet-style television and draped on hangers from the moldings above the doorways.

  Bam.

  I craned my neck to see if I could determine the source of the sound, which came from down the hall. Probably one of the bedrooms—both doors down there were open.

  What the fuck?

  Turning to Murphy, I said, “The bedroom doors are open.”

  Murphy stepped into the living room and peered down the hall. “Yup.”

  “But the noise is coming from down there.”

  He nodded.

  Gripping my machete, I crossed the living room, seeing where the ceiling had flowered in patches of greenish black. That explained the mildew smell, though the house had plenty of other stale odors to compete.

  A peek into the first room revealed nothing but an open closet packed full of clothing, and a bed piled up to chest level with neatly folded shirts.

  “Hoarder,” Murphy whispered.

  Bam.

  The sound was louder. It came from the room down the hall.

  Murphy nodded toward it. I once again brandished my machete. Maybe I had something to prove to myself. It didn’t make sense, but in a mind that’s been fucked with for so long by so many things, I figured it was par for the course.

  On silent feet, I exited the bedroom and tiptoed up the hall toward the only other door.

  Chapter 33

  Just outside the room, I stopped.

  Bam.

  Without a doubt, something inside was making the sound. I put a palm on Murphy’s chest and pushed him back a few steps. With the blunt edge of my machete, I tapped the door jamb. Better to let the White come out into the hall and die in surprise than for me to risk being ambushed by unexpected circumstances inside the room.

  Bam.

  No change. Just a randomly-timed noise.

  “Hey, dipshit.” I gripped my machete handle and readied it to swing.

  Nothing happened.

  I listened for footsteps. I heard no grunt from a startled White. Only the wind gusting through the branches in the trees outside.

  “C’mon, you silly monster,” I called. “Come play with us.”

  Bam.

  I braced myself, but nothing followed the noise.

  Bam.

  I glanced over my shoulder to let Murphy know what was coming next.

  I stepped quietly into the doorway. A bed. A dresser. Every horizontal surface stacked with folded clothes, and hanging clothes in an open closet, but no sign of anything moving in the room.

  A shadow moved outside the curtains. I gasped and jumped back.

  Bam.

  The shadow moved again.

  Nothing came at me.

  “It’s outside,” I announced, turning to run up the hall.

  Murphy stopped me and put a finger to his lips. He whispered, “How many?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t know.”

  He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  “I saw something through the curtains.”

  “Beating up the house?” Murphy asked.

  “What do you mean, beating up the house?”

  “That sound,” said Murphy. “That White is hitting the house with something. Why?”

  “Man, you know what they’re like. They don’t need reasons for stupid shit.”

  Murphy conceded the point by cocking his head. He nudged me to move aside. "I'll peek out the window and see what's what before we go out front."

  Shaking my head, I hurried into the room. I whispered, “I’ve got it.” Okay, so I was being a little pissy.

  After a quick glance into the blind spot on the other side of the dresser, inside the closet, and to the floor on the other side of the bed, I put myself beside the window.

  Bam.

  The sound outside was loud enough to startle, powerful enough to send a vibration through the house’s old boards.

  I pushed the curtain to the side just wide enough that I could get a clear view out with one eye.

  No Whites. Only some half-dead shrubs and a tree planted too close to the house.

  What the hell?

  The wind gusted again, and the tree branches swayed. I involuntarily ducked as a branch as thick as my arm swayed past and smacked the eaves.

  Fuck!” I yelled as I jumped back, startled. Then I laughed.

  “What?” Murphy asked from the doorway, concern on his face.

  “It’s a tree branch.”

  Murphy laughed too.

  Chapter 34

  “It’s like a used clothing store,” I said, as I sorted through a stack of jeans, looking for the right size.

  Murphy had already selected a t-shirt, sweatshirt, and jacket for me. He laid them on the arm of a couch beside the piles of blue jeans I was looking through. He groused, “This is some weird shit.”

  Nodding, I said, “You know how some Whites get obsessed with weird habits. At least this one works for us. You need anything?”

  He pointed to a jacket lying over the back of a chair. “Got me one already.”

  “Did you see any food?”

  “Not a scrap.”

  Wondering how far our luck could run on this one, I suggested, “Maybe the food is in a different house.

  Murphy walked over to the back wall as I slipped on a pair of jeans. I sat down to put a clean pair of socks on my feet before putting my boots back on. He looked out a window at the field of tiny, new plants. “Maybe this isn’t the work of Whites.”

  “Because of the vegetable garden out back?”

  “Yeah,” said Murphy.

  “You think maybe regular people did this? Normals?”

  Murphy shrugged. “Could still be around here in one of these houses.”

  I pulled the T-shirt over my head. “Maybe they aren’t hostile.”

  “Maybe they’re sneaking around outside to ambush us when we come out of the house.”

  I walked over to get a look out a window on the front of the house.

  “Finish getting dressed,” said Murphy. “We need to decide whether we’re going out the way we came or whether we’re going to check out what’s in town.”

  “I don’t want to restart our conversation on luck,” I said, “but I don’t want to press mine anymore today.” I stuffed my arms into the sweatshirt’s sleeves. Looking out, I said, “Something’s off about this place.”

  Murphy crossed the room, flipping a few sweaters off the top of a pile on the television. “This place creeps me out.”

  “Back to the woods then?” I asked. “Maybe head down the road a bit and see if we can find a place to hole up before dark.”

  Murphy pushed a curtain to the side to look across the green field. “That sounds like a—”

  “What?”

  Murphy scooted out of the window as he peeked around the edge, waving a hand to hush me down.

  Shit.

  I hurried as fast as I could to finish dressing and get my machete back in my hand. Once I was ready, I jogged across the room and took a spot on the other side of the window.

  “Watch the line of trees,” Murphy whispered.

  It took thirty or forty seconds to see, but a line of naked Whites jogged out of the trees, following one after the other. Twelve—no, thirteen. They cut a goodly-sized arc through the vegetable field, stomping on the new crop like so much grass. They curved back into the trees.

  “What do you make of that?” I asked.

  “That’s all they’re doing,” said Murphy. “Running in and out of the forest in that stupid curvy path they follow when they’re going nowhere in particular.”

  “That might be the key,” I said. “When they're going nowhere in particular, they do that. When they're chasing, well, we got a prett
y good idea of what that looks like."

  “Yup.”

  "Have you seen any more?" I asked.

  “None yet.” Murphy rubbed a hand over his face, clearly thinking about how this new development affected our options.

  “But you think there are more in the trees.”

  He looked at me, angrily surprised. “Don’t you?”

  “Just thinking out loud, I guess.” I shrugged. It was a stupid question. We both believed more Whites were in the woods. Whether they were the ones looking for us or just more stragglers from the naked horde didn’t matter. Naked Whites were fucking dangerous. And like roaches. For every one you saw, a hundred more lurked out of sight. “We should get out of here.”

  Murphy turned and headed for the front door.

  I followed. The decision was made. We were going to take our chances with the invisible townsfolk. Perhaps being chased by naked Whites for a good part of the day and thinking we were going to end up as food diminished our fear that we might be ambushed by farmers with guns when we went out the front door.

  However, we had a short menu of choices, and they all sucked.

  Murphy put a hand on the worn brass knob and paused, giving me a look that asked whether I was ready.

  I raised a finger to indicate that he should wait for a moment. I peeked out a front window, a necessary step Murphy forgot in his moment of decisiveness. That’s why we were a good pair. We caught one another’s mistakes.

  “Clear as far as I can see,” I said.

  With a nod at me, Murphy swung the door open. He put the rifle to his shoulder, stepped out, and panned his aim across the other houses, pausing at items of interest. I stepped onto the porch beside him, machete in one hand, knife in the other, ready to do some killing.

  The wind blew a tumble of big, crispy leaves across the yard and street. The branch beat on the eaves of the house. Trees rustled in the gust. Nothing alive moved anywhere.

  “Follow me." Murphy leapt off the squat porch and hurried toward the street.

  On his heels, I followed him to a house across the street not very different from the one we’d just left. It, too, was tidy enough. The doors were closed. Most of the windows were intact, with curtains opened wide. I couldn’t help but peep inside.

  It didn’t appear to have been ransacked. Well, not much. All the cupboards and closets were open. In the rooms where the windows weren’t broken were stacks and stacks of dishes, pots, pans, and piles of utensils—all sorted. Forks in one, spoons in another. One for spatulas, one for knives.

  “This place is fuckin’ weird,” Murphy whispered.

  “No shit.”

  We snuck around a garage with no door. I stopped Murphy and motioned toward a dusty car sitting inside. “I’m going to check it.” Driving a car, especially in the daylight hours with so many Whites around, was a damn risky proposition. But Whites were in the woods close by and we were stuck in creepy town with a hearty desire to get the fuck out—quickly.

  “Don’t lollygag,” Murphy told me. “If the keys aren’t in it, let’s just go.” He tucked himself between a big bush and the garage wall and scanned for movement.

  I hurried back around to the front of the garage and slipped inside. Out of the wind, it was suddenly quiet again. I avoided touching the car as I passed it. I didn’t want to knock away any of the accumulated dust, which would be evidence of my passing. After seeing Whites looking for our tracks in the field earlier, I didn’t want to leave any sign.

  The car’s front door was unlocked. I swung it open and squeezed inside, feeling the awkward bulk of my clothing and thinking how quickly I’d gotten used to running around naked. Once in the driver’s seat, I saw the keys were not in the ignition. Having seeing way too many movies, I, of course, checked the visor. No keys. "Damn, doesn't anybody understand the rules?" I chuckled at my stupid little joke while I wished more people would have watched the same movies I’d seen. I checked under the floor mat, under the seat, and in the glove box. No keys.

  Crap.

  I got out of the car, crept back out of the garage and took up a spot beside Murphy and his bush.

  “No luck?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I thought I heard you saying something in there.” Murphy turned to me and grinned. “Did you try asking nicely for it to start?”

  “Yes.” Lies are always a good defense against sarcasm. I stepped out from behind the bush and jogged to a house about fifty yards across two unfenced backyards. Murphy followed, trying to suppress his chuckles as he kept his rifle at his shoulder.

  A peek through the windows showed stacks and stacks of blankets, sheets, and pillows. “What is up with this crazy place?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

  We crossed a few more yards.

  We came to a row of houses in various states of disassembly. Not destroyed, but methodically taken apart. One house had little left except concrete block foundation pillars, pipes, and a fireplace. One was torn down to the frame. In another, much of the wood used to frame it was missing, leaving mostly just the floor.

  Still, we saw no more Whites, no living humans, and no houses stocked with food. Given the separation of items in each house by type, I figured we'd maybe come across one filled with canned goods, or bottled soft drinks. Hell, one of the houses might be full of liquor. I found myself looking at all the homes in sight, trying to guess which one was hiding the beer.

  I thought I saw something moving between the houses in the distance. It was getting late in the day, and with the overcast sky, it was hard to make out shapes in the dimming light. Maybe they were bushes moving in the wind.

  Murphy nudged me and pointed at the grain silos. A rusty ladder cage ran up the side of one, all the way to the top, where an unusual metal tower with numerous platforms stood precariously on the edge. Two of the towers appeared flat across their tops. Three others had some irregular constructions on the roofs.

  I didn’t indulge Murphy’s pointless worry. Movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention and I looked, but saw nothing.

  “What?” Murphy asked.

  “Not sure,” I said, even though I was thinking pretty hard in that moment anything with enough energy to move probably had enough energy to try and eat me. “What’s your thing with the grain silos?”

  “Might be a place to go up and spend the night in safety,” said Murphy. “Only one way in and one way out.”

  I turned to Murphy. “I thought you wanted to get out of this creepy little village. Besides, with all the wind, I’ll bet it’s cold as shit up there.”

  Murphy pointed back at the house with all the blankets. “Plenty in there to keep us warm.” He tensed as he finished his sentence.

  That alarmed me and I looked toward the blanket house.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  I shook my head and pointed in the other direction. “Nope. But I’ve been seeing some other things. Over there and over there.”

  “Whites?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked around again. “If it’s Whites, they’re being sneaky.”

  “And you saw them over there,” Murphy looked around behind us again, “and now back there. They’ve got us surrounded.”

  “Run for it?” I asked.

  “It’s worked for us so far.”

  I heaved a big sigh and leaned on the wall of the house as I thought about our situation. “If it’s Whites, there’s got to be Smart Ones with them.”

  “’Cause?”

  “They haven’t attacked yet.”

  Murphy nodded. “Okay, Professor, but make this quick. I’m getting itchy feet.”

  “I don’t think this is the bunch that chased us this morning,” I said. “If it was, they wouldn’t be sneaking around. They’d come right for us.”

  Murphy shrugged and nodded. “I’ll give you that. Or it’s the creepy people who live here.”

  “Either way,” I said, “I don’t think there are that many of them. Again,
if they had overwhelming numbers, they’d have come at us already.”

  “Whatever,” said Murphy. “What direction haven’t you seen anything moving in?”

  I pointed.

  “You ready to scoot your ass?”

  I nodded.

  Murphy gestured in that direction. “We’ll run as fast as we can that way.” He paused and looked at me. “As fast as you can. To that blue house way over there. That looks like the edge of town. If I stop by the garage to look around, stop with me. If I don't stop, it'll be because I spotted a White, and I'll keep hauling ass to the woods on the other side."

  “If I see a White?” I asked.

  “Same deal. Don’t stop. I’ll keep running with you.”

  “Got it, Sarge.”

  “Stay close.” Murphy took off running.

  A White howled to warn his buddies of our attempt to flee before we'd made it a dozen steps.

  Shaking his head, Murphy muttered, “Motherfucker.”

  If the situation didn’t feel so suddenly dire, I’d have laughed. We were having a run of shit luck.

  Chapter 35

  Way off to our left, in the gaps past the houses, I saw a trio pacing us, running parallel to our path.

  Off to our right, Whites were scattered, maybe six or seven of them, trying to close in before we got to the blue house. More Whites were behind, but I didn’t spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder. It’s damn difficult to maintain a sprint while looking backwards.

  As we got close to the blue house, Murphy panted, “How many do you see?”

  “Maybe fifteen.” I glanced around. It was mostly a guess.

  “Two choices,” he said. “In the house or in the woods.”

  The advantage of either choice was dependent on the number of Whites coming. If many more than my guess of fifteen were out there, any benefit of using the house for defense would be negated by so many attacking through the doors and windows all at once. If we ran into the woods, well, that might put us back in the situation we’d been in for most of the day, being chased by an ever-growing mob of infected boneheads.

  Or, I suppose, we could have stood our ground and spent a good deal of Murphy’s last two magazines, while I hacked and stabbed as many as I was able.