by Bobby Adair
Steph smiled, but it evaporated as quickly as it came.
I sipped some more.
“It’s not a very substantial meal, but there isn’t much food around,” she said.
“Oh?”
“I think Ms. Mansfield was vegan,” Steph told me. “Lots of semi-wilted fruits and veggies in the fridge, along with some tofu. Enough pasta, beans, and some sauces in the pantry for a couple of days, if we’re not too hungry. Oh, and frozen fruit in the freezer.” Steph pushed a glass of water into my free hand.
“This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” I said, only half-joking. The pureed, frozen fruit in my stomach made me realize how famished I was.
“Thanks. Cooking isn’t my forte.”
Silence settled in while I slurped. Thoughts of all that had gone on and all that was happening outside the walls started to sneak back in. Not wanting to think about any of that, I said, “You seem to be doing okay with your shoulder.”
Steph nodded, and with a confident look on her face said, “Yes, about that. I’m sorry, I kind of freaked out when it happened.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“If I stand too quickly I get a bit dizzy,” she said. “I think I must have bled out at least a pint by the time they got me stitched up.”
I shivered. “I’ll bet that didn’t feel good without anesthetic.”
“Sergeant Dalhover found a nice bottle of vodka to help out with that.” She smiled again. “I think my hangover this morning was worse than the pain in my shoulder.”
“Yeah, I’ve been there,” I said. “You know, I found a big bottle of hydrocodone in a house a couple of days ago. Murphy might know where it is.”
“He already gave me the bottle,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. So what’s the deal? What’d I miss while I was out?”
Steph looked around for a moment then said, “We’re staying in Sarah Mansfield’s house, but you know that, right?”
I grimaced. “I think I killed her.”
“The virus killed her, Zed. You just put her out of her misery.”
“That’s a nice way to think about it,” I said. “I guess that was probably her son out there on the lawn with her last night. He’s dead too.”
“I guess,” Steph answered. “I didn’t see them. I’ve been in the ward with you since they stitched me up.”
A small laugh was all I could manage. “This isn’t bad for a sick ward.”
“Actually, it’s everything for the moment. We all slept in here on the couches last night.”
“Really?”
Steph looked around the big living room. “I think everybody felt comfortable being in the same room together.”
“Did somebody stand watch?” I asked, concerned.
“I’m pretty sure. I was out of it once the hydrocodone kicked in, but they were talking about taking shifts in the video room when I passed out.”
“The video room?” That didn’t sound right at all. “You mean the theater?”
“No, not the theater.”
That puzzled me, and it showed on my face.
“That’s what Dalhover and Murphy called it,” said Steph. “I haven’t been down there yet.”
“Downstairs?”
“Yes, there’s a room for the security guards down there where they can monitor all of the video cameras. It was the room where you got…bounced around last night.”
I smirked. “Bounced around. That’s about right. How many cameras?”
“I think Dalhover said there are twenty or thirty. You can see all of the common areas in the house, anything on the grounds, and outside the wall.”
“No shit?” That was a nice surprise.
“It’s true,” Steph confirmed.
“I guess that’ll make it easy to stand watch at night.”
“Mandi is down there now,” Steph said. “Sergeant Dalhover insisted that somebody be on watch at all times.”
“So there is something to like about Dalhover.”
“He’s a good man,” she said. “He’s just surly.”
“I think he’s the saddest man I’ve ever met.”
Steph gave me a little, patronizing smile and said, “I’m going to try and take a shift tomorrow. I shouldn’t do any manual labor for a week or two, but I can take sitting in a rolling chair and watching video monitors.”
“I’m starting to have trouble focusing on what you’re saying.” I said, a little dreamily. “What were those pills you gave me?”
“Hydrocodone.”
“Oh.”
Somewhere in the next few moments, sleep stole everything away.
Chapter 28
Several days passed. Life in Sarah Mansfield’s compound was a surreal concoction of normalcy, opulence, and the separate reality of the world beyond the walls. We were showered, fed, and comfortable. We had soft beds, clean sheets, and not a single White to chase us around. But the sounds of gunshots from the city increased in frequency and drew closer each day. Whether through overwrought fears or accurate observation, it seemed the carnage was coming our way.
The memories of our experiences, all the dying, all the dead, and all the infected haunted our quiet times. We talked a lot about anything or nothing, whatever it took to keep us from staring at the walls and sinking into our thoughts. We’d all been through so much. We needed time to heal.
We distracted ourselves with the seemingly endless library of movies in the basement theater. We drank wine in the evenings and watched the panoramic sunsets over the hills across the river. All the ash and smoke in the air made for brilliant reds, purples, and oranges. The death of our world painted in spectacular beauty on the sky.
We took turns maintaining our vigil in the guardroom, watching the walls, watching for the threats that were sure to come.
I thought often about the naked horde that overran Dr. Evans’ farm. Would all the Whites eventually shed their clothes in their primal regression and band together into unstoppable, hungry armies? Would they scour the land and devour every last person before finally consuming themselves, as Jeff Aubrey’s calculations had predicted?
Were we going extinct, or did we have hope?
Perhaps hope. Murphy’s big smile was back. Mandi was still sweet. Those two had moved into an upstairs room together. The rest of us, not wanting to be alone at night, shared Sarah Mansfield’s very large former bedroom.
We had all the electricity we needed. Pretty much. The battery banks in the garage would store a few days’ worth if we kept the temperature in the house at seventy-eight degrees. Most of the lights were LEDs and used barely any electricity. Nevertheless, we removed any light bulbs that left us visible at night from across the river.
We were hidden in plain sight, with a strong motivation to stay that way.
Sarah Mansfield, movie star, activist, environmentalist, vegetarian, and paparazzi paranoiac, left us a house absent of firearms, meat, or animal products of any kind—generally a little short on edibles—but otherwise it couldn’t have been more perfect. In the long term, the terraces would be good for farming. The walls provided protection. An elevator down to a surprisingly secure boathouse gave us access to the river. And a primo surveillance system ensured that no infected hand would ever touch our walls without our knowing ahead of time.
Chapter 29
It was mid-afternoon and I had the watch. Murphy sat in one of the high-backed leather office chairs, as did I. He was busy on the computer, but keeping me company. Russell squatted by the wall behind us. The wall in front of us was covered with color video monitors, all mounted at angles to give the person sitting at the center of the monitoring desk a good view of each; one monitor for each camera. Each had a bright red LED that would light up when the motion detector attached to the camera activated.
Two forty-two-inch screens were centered on the wall directly in front of the chairs. The video feed from the small monitors would scroll across the big ones at regular inte
rvals. Below the big screens at the center of the desk was a map of the compound that showed each camera location. The ones displaying on the large monitors would light in green. With the press of a button, any monitor could be called up to the big screens. Audio from that camera could be piped in. It was an impressive system.
On one of the big screens I was watching, two infected were a good way down the street, squatting beside a brick mailbox under the deep shade of an oak.
Murphy, with a copy of Amber’s flash drive and a laptop from the kid’s room, was busy stitching together Google satellite map images to get a full map of Austin. “Don’t let this go to your head, Zed, but it was a good idea to download all this stuff to the flash drive.”
“The maps were Amber’s idea. I didn’t think to ask for that.” I’d have preferred not to have Amber’s name mentioned. Her swollen, bloody face still haunted my thoughts and those thoughts always turned into rekindled hatred for Mark, and in the darkness of that mood, I’d entertain fantasies of how I’d slowly dismember him and listen to his high-pitched girlie screams as I sliced off his genitals one small piece at a time. I thought of stapling his lips back against his face and breaking his teeth, but leaving the painful stumps in his mouth. I wanted to flay his skin, smash his fingers with a hammer, and gouge out his eyes with a grapefruit spoon. It was a dark, twisted place of glorified revenge and torturous pain that bordered on evil. It was not a healthy place for my thoughts to wander.
“Well, we owe her,” said Murphy. “When I’m done putting this together, this map will come in real handy. Hell, it might be the only one in existence. That makes it valuable as hell.”
And because my dark mood made me feel contrary, I said, “But there’s got to be gas station maps everywhere.”
“Man, those are fine for driving, but a satellite map is a whole different deal. You see where the Walmarts are, and the food. You can see where the houses are, where the trees are for cover.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I know.”
Murphy grinned. “So you were just being a dick, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He said, “Now that you’ve got that out of your system for a few minutes, I’ve been thinking.”
“About?” I asked.
“I think we need to put together a plan to defend this place.”
“I think we don’t,” I answered.
“You’re not done being a dick yet?” Murphy asked.
“No, that’s not it. I think we let the walls keep out the infected and let the house do the rest. I don’t think we do anything.”
Murphy shook his head emphatically, “Man, that’s the pussy approach, Zed. This is a sweet place. We need to hold on to it.”
“What do you have in mind?”
Just then, Steph came in through the open door, that like most of the interior doors, we’d propped open. “What are you guys doing?”
I nodded toward the monitors, “Watching some Whites down the street.”
Steph’s casual demeanor was obliterated by an involuntary tensing. Her eyes turned worried, then fearful, then she tried to mask it, all in the gap of a second or two.
“It’s just a couple, and they aren’t doing anything right now,” I told her. “They rambled up the street a little while ago, looking for food, I guess. Now they’re resting in the shade.”
Steph relaxed and walked over to stand between the chairs.
Murphy reached up with one of his long arms and pointed them out on the monitor. “They’re way down the street. See ‘em there, just by that mailbox?”
“Yes,” Steph nodded. “I see.”
“They don’t look like a threat,” Murphy reassured.
Neither Steph nor I responded to that. For my part, I just didn’t agree. They were all threats, either active or waiting to materialize. I looked up at Steph. “I thought you were watching a movie with Mandi.”
She turned to sit on the desk in front of us. “Too sappy. I got bored.”
Murphy asked, “Is Mandi still in there?”
“She recommended it. She said it was one of her favorite movies,” Steph answered.
“She digs the chick flicks,” Murphy allowed.
We looked at each other silently for a moment then Steph stood and said, “Well, hey, I didn’t mean to interrupt you guys.”
“No, no,” I said, hurriedly. “We were just talking about defending this place. Stuff like that. Stay if you want.”
“I shouldn’t feel this way, but this place seems pretty well-defended already,” Steph said.
“That’s what I’m saying,” I agreed.
“But what do we do when they come?” Murphy asked. “Because you know they’re gonna come. It’s just a matter of time.”
“We don’t know that for sure.” Steph’s wan smile appeared. She was trying to convince herself as much as Murphy. “This place is hard to find. You can’t see it from the road unless you hike through the trees. The only way to find it is by accident.”
“Unless you’re across the river,” Murphy disagreed. “Then you just have to look up. From over there, this place probably looks like…like...”
“Like Olympus,” I concluded for him.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Like Olympus.”
“But the infected aren’t smart enough to see us from across the river, figure out how to get over here, and then find us, too.” Steph argued, “They don’t have that much mental capacity.”
Murphy shook his head emphatically. “Not according to Sergeant Dalhover. From what he says about the Smart Ones, those guys could figure it out. What we need to do is mount four or five fifty caliber machine guns on the roof. Then if those fuckers come for us, we just shred ‘em when they try to come over the wall.”
A gruff, flat voice said, “That’s a bad idea.”
We all looked at the door. Leaning on the doorjamb was Dalhover, his face stretched down into his comfortable frown. But with all of our eyes on him, he didn’t feel the need to elaborate.
“Hey, Top,” Murphy asked after a few moments of waiting. “Why are the fifties a bad idea?”
“Those walls aren’t made for defense. They’re made for privacy. Sarah Mansfield wasn’t interested in keeping an army of infected out when she built this place. She was interested in keeping the paparazzi from taking pictures of her tits.” Dalhover stopped talking and looked at us as if that were sufficient information.
It wasn’t.
I didn’t agree with Murphy, but I didn’t know what Dalhover was getting at, so I asked, “What do you mean, exactly?”
“Those are cinder block walls. Fifty caliber bullets will go right through them,” Dalhover told me.
I didn’t see a downside to that, assuming the infected were on the other side of the wall.
Dalhover went on, “A swarm of those infected will show up. Everybody will run up to the roof, all panicked and such. With no experience behind one of those guns, shooting fifty caliber bullets at the infected coming over the walls, what you’re going to shred won’t be the infected, it’ll be the trees and the walls. Then the infected will waltz right in through the gaps.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Murphy. “Every window and door in this place has those steel doors that roll down to close ‘em up. The infected can’t get through those.”
Dalhover argued, “You’ve got a lot of confidence in this house’s defenses—defenses that you didn’t design or build. You don’t know where the weaknesses are. You only see the strengths. But the Smart Ones, they’ll find the weaknesses. They did at the hospital. They’ll do that here.”
“I don’t think they’re that smart,” said Murphy.
“Doesn’t matter,” I countered.
“Why?” Murphy asked, his tone telling me that he thought I was just being a contrary dick again.
“Once we get a thousand or two thousand of them out there, they’ll creep around and dig their little fingers into every little nook and crevice.” I looked at each of them. “Th
ey’ll test every door, every window. They’ll climb up on the garage roof if they can. They’ll try to get across the catwalk roof from the garage. Most will fall off. Some might make it. Who knows? Think of it like a hacker trying to get into a computer. They set up a program that tries a million passwords and keeps on trying until one works. The Whites are like that. Whether they’re smart or not. With enough of them out there, trying and trying to get at us in here, one of them will eventually find a way. When one does, the rest will follow.”
“Yep,” Dalhover agreed.
“So what are you saying, then?” Murphy asked. “Do we just abandon the place the first time a White gets curious about the wall?”
Dalhover looked at Murphy without changing his expression in the slightest, but without giving him a response.
“Man.” Murphy was exasperated. “Top, I’m not being disrespectful. I like it here. I like sleeping in a clean bed. I like sitting in a recliner and watching movies. I like taking showers and having clean clothes. I don’t want to leave. I honestly don’t know what you expect us to do when the Whites show up.”
Dalhover thought about that for a minute. His face somehow found a way to grow even sadder, and in his gruff voice, he said, “All I know is that what we did at the hospital didn’t work, and in the end, everybody died except us two. Once we fired the first shot, all of our choices disappeared. We were just reacting and retreating. And dying.”
Steph looked down at the floor. Thinking through the problem, perhaps, or thinking about too many painful memories.
After several long moments of depressing silence, I said, “Hide and run.”
“Running and hiding is how we got here,” Murphy scoffed.
“No.” I shook my head emphatically. “I mean it as a tactic.”
“Oh, no.” Murphy dramatically lolled his head back and looked at the ceiling. “I’ve heard that tone before. You guys will want to get comfortable for the lecture.”
Ignoring Murphy’s taunting hadn’t yet produced any results, but in the absence of any other plan, I went with it again. “Those guys that killed Jerome: Murphy, do you remember what we talked about afterwards?”
