by Bobby Adair
Chapter 36
We spread out in a semicircle around the end of the driveway, where the gate would slide open. I was by the wall, with Russell standing too close. I had my machete and pistol at the ready. Murphy stood away from the door and would likely be the first one the soldiers saw once the door slid open. Dalhover was off to Murphy’s other side, and Steph was opposite me with the door opener in her hand.
The howling of Whites in the trees was noticeable. They weren’t there when we left the video room, and with no way to communicate with Mandi, we had no idea how many were out there. It was more than a handful and less than a few dozen. In the distance though, there were hundreds. Their vocalizations were starting to overwhelm the sounds of battle, which were decreasing significantly. What did that mean?
So we stood there, not knowing for sure what was beyond the door. Had Mandi opened the outside gate for the soldiers, only to have them chased in by a mob of Whites? We should have left the decision to open the interior gate in her hands. At this point, she was the only one who knew what was beyond.
That’s what I was thinking when Steph raised the opener and very dramatically pressed the button. The gate’s opening mechanism clanged and the tall steel gate lurched.
Murphy readied himself in front of the gap. I hefted the machete.
“Hello,” Steph called a greeting, barely audible over the sound of the rolling gate.
When the gap created by the opening gate was maybe eighteen inches wide, it became time to pay a bloody price for another mistake. But I didn’t think about that until later.
A gun went off.
In the microseconds that it took to be surprised and process the sound, Murphy’s head snapped hard to the right and he seemed to have lost his balance. There was blood in the air. He was falling.
Dalhover cursed.
My mood flipped from caution to blinding, white-hot rage.
Two hands, holding a pistol out in front, policeman-style, pushed through the gap in the gate and without the tiniest hint of hesitation, I swung my machete in a big arc over my head and chopped across both wrists.
A severed hand and a pistol spun off toward Steph.
A man shrieked.
The other hand dangled from a forearm on ragged tendons. Blood spewed.
The gate stopped and reversed as I dropped my Glock and machete and pulled my M4 up to maximize my killing power, because it was time to do some killing. In half a second I was pushing my rifle barrel through the shrinking gap and pointing it at a handless, screaming man on the ground beneath a fountain of his own blood.
Steph’s voice was screaming, too, not in panic, but in harsh orders. The words didn’t process and I didn’t care. Only the trigger and the soon-to-be-dead man mattered to me. Just as I pulled the trigger, my rifle jerked hard upward and I sent three rounds over the wall.
“God damn it,” I raged.
Before I even knew what was happening, Dalhover had my rifle pushed back against my chest and pointed at the sky, while pinning me against the cinder block abutment where the gate closed. His eyes were hard to match with the blaze in mine.
The gate clanged shut.
“What the fuck,” I screamed at Dalhover.
With hands like stone and an expressionless statue face, he didn’t respond.
How could that skinny fucker be so strong?
My hands were shaking, I was so angry. But I fought to control the rage. Without that control, Dalhover wasn’t going to let go of me. And if Dalhover didn’t let go of me in those next few seconds, things were going to get very ugly.
Over Dalhover’s shoulder, I saw Steph kneeling at Murphy’s side. Her hands immediately went to work at his head. I had to get over there.
“Let me go,” I told Dalhover, in as calm a tone as I could muster.
He waited a few seconds before releasing me, using those seconds to reassure me that he was in control. But he let go and stepped out of my way.
I was immediately on my knees on Murphy’s other side.
“Cover that gate.” Steph ordered Dalhover, pressing a cloth to the side of Murphy’s head.
Murphy was breathing. His eyes were open, but didn’t appear to see anything. His left arm was busy trying to do something repetitive.
I felt helpless.
Slow Burn Book 4, ‘Dead Fire’
Chapter 1
Steph, in nothing but a bra and jeans, was on her knees at Murphy’s side with two fingers divining for a pulse on the side of his throat. She pressed her t-shirt to the wound on his head and moved her lips in whispers, whether to herself or Murphy, who knew?
Gunshots rang the driveway door’s steel sheets and punched three neat holes around Russell, who stood, oblivious, watching Steph and me.
“Cease fire!” Dalhover ordered. “Cease fire!”
Three more gunshots.
“God dammit!” Dalhover yelled, with real anger in his voice. “This is First Sergeant Dalhover, US Army, retired. If you fire one more round, I’m gonna open this door and shove that weapon up your ass! Do you hear me?”
Still on one knee beside Murphy, I was pointing my M4 at the door, ready to send a full magazine of punishment back through the sheet metal.
“Move, Russell!” Dalhover ordered.
Russell didn’t respond.
“Russell!” I yelled sharply to get his attention. I pointed to where Dalhover had protected himself behind the abutment. “Go stand behind Sergeant Dalhover. Move!”
Russell shuffled to his left.
Once he was beside Dalhover, the situation hit a tense stasis. No one spoke. No weapons discharged. Steph’s lips moved in silent entreaties as she tended to Murphy. A bleeding man on the other side of the gate—too stupid to think before he acted—mewled while his remaining hand dangled by a tendon. The infected out in the cedar forest yowled and the popcorn bursts of distant rifle fire punctuated their cries.
Dalhover broke the tension with, “Who is on the other side of this wall?”
An uncomfortably long silence followed before a female voice answered, “Specialist Freitag and Specialist Harris, sir. We have a man down.”
The expression on Dalhover’s face turned to something else too quickly to decipher, before switching back to apathy-masked danger.
Fists pounding on the outside gate announced the arrival of the infected. I stifled a curse. The gunshots. The shouting. The noisy rolling of the gates. Every White within earshot was on its way.
Dalhover looked to Steph and asked, “Captain, in or out?”
Steph appeared frozen by the choice. I glanced at her, then back at the gate. But before she passed the point where my impatience compelled me to answer for her, in an emotionless voice she said, “In. If we can get them in safely. Any risk, and they can go back out with the infected.” She refocused her attention on Murphy and his wound.
My simmering rage was coming to a boil, stoked by the sight of the bloody T-shirt pressed to the side of Murphy’s head. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving. But the part of my brain that was still rational enough to slough off the anger reminded me that rage was not my friend. It was my favorite addiction, but it only ever led to tears and regret.
Breathe!
Breathe.
Suck it up, bitch.
Calm down.
For now, anyway. For now.
“Freitag,” Dalhover called softly, “can you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Freitag answered, mimicking his volume.
“We were trying to help you. You have a man down. We have a man down. Accidents happen…”
And then my emotions slipped. “Accident, bullshit! That fucker shot Murphy on purpose!”
“Quiet, Zane!” Dalhover lashed out with the practiced authority of a long-time sergeant. “Shit happens in the real world. Now grow up or shut your God damned mouth!”
I was cowed.
But Dalhover was right.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Don’t f
uck this up more than it already is.
Dalhover called back, “Specialist Freitag, you can wait until the Whites outside leave, we’ll open that gate, and you can go. Or you come in, and you won’t be harmed. But I swear to God, if you raise a weapon at one of my people, I’ll beat your ass so bad that you’ll God damned well thank me when I throw your stupid ass back over the wall. Your choice.”
I didn’t hear anything through the gate, though I guessed they were discussing their choices in hushed voices. The handless man had fallen silent, passed out or dead.
Freitag answered, “Sir, we’d like to come in.”
Dalhover looked back to Steph again. It was clear that she had the final say. She looked at both Dalhover and me, perhaps giving us a chance to voice dissent. We didn’t. She gave Dalhover a nod, raised the clicker, and pushed the button to open the gate.
The electric motor and rattling wheels echoed up through the flat metal panels of the gate and drowned out the sound of the Whites pounding outside.
I looked down the barrel of my rifle and tracked across the growing gap, ready to stop on the first target that came into view. But the bloody body of the handless man came first. I passed. A big, bald man in fatigues, with thick shoulders, Murphy’s size, knelt beside the handless man, tending his wounds. The gate rolled further open. A young, dark-haired woman in camouflaged fatigues, seemingly designed to camouflage her gender more than anything else, stood with a rifle in her sling, pointed at the dirt. Her round, young face held no expression, though her eyes immediately locked on Murphy.
“Specialist Freitag?” Dalhover asked.
“Yes.”
Another odd look on Dalhover’s face. He looked suspicious to me, and that put me on edge.
Dalhover said, “Get your man. And be quiet about it. Let’s get this gate closed.”
Using a two-man saddleback carry, the soldiers picked up and carried their injured companion into the compound.
Steph fingered the button on the clicker and the gate started closing behind them. She stood up, looking at the situation: two potentially hostile soldiers carrying a wounded man, the four of us with Murphy still on the ground, and Dalhover and me standing there with weapons at the ready. The rumble of a Humvee engine behind us caught our attention.
Racing one of the Humvees down from the house, Mandi brought the vehicle to a dramatic stop behind us, jumped out, and immediately fell to her knees beside Murphy.
As though she had planned it that way, Steph didn’t waste a second. She pointed to Murphy and then to the bleeding man. “Put them in the Humvee.”
The two soldiers immediately moved to comply. Dalhover looked at me, then nodded toward Murphy. It was clear from his stance and the placement of his hands on his rifle that I needed to figure out how to get Murphy loaded up without his help. Dalhover intended to stay at the ready.
Still at Murphy’s side, I shouted a command to Russell to come help me.
“How bad is it?” Mandi asked Steph through her tears.
“It might be superficial,” Steph answered, “but get behind the wheel. You’re driving us back to the house.”
Mandi started to protest, but understood enough about the situation to just nod and comply. She straightened back up.
Freitag and Harris had little trouble loading their skinny charge into the rear passenger side of the Humvee. For Russell and me with limp Murphy, the going was tougher, even with Steph’s help. He weighed so damn much. Not lifeless, but disturbingly close.
I closed the door on the Humvee and noticed Freitag and Harris standing to the side with blank faces and idle hands. I wanted to berate them for not helping with Murphy, but I held my tongue. Had they given us a hand with him, I would have wanted to berate them for that. Such was my anger. Any excuse would detonate it.
As the Humvee started to roll, Dalhover ordered, “Up to the house. We’ll unload them and move them downstairs to the lobby outside the video room. Zane, you lead when we get to the house. I’ll take up the rear. Go.”
One step into my run, Dalhover said, “Zane, wait. Pick up the hand.”
“What?!”
“Pick up the hand.”
Fuck you, was the phrase on my lips, but I managed to say, “Why? We can’t reattach it without a doctor.”
“Just get it. Move. Let’s go!”
God damn!
The three soldiers jogged toward the house. I went over and picked up the wounded guy’s pistol. I slipped it into my belt, shivering. My fingers lingered in the air just above the severed hand on the ground. In spite of all the death I’d seen, the thought of picking up the amputated hand gave me the willies. But if I didn’t, I’d get shamed by Dalhover in front of the others when I caught up with them at the house. That would be worse than touching the macabre artifact.
I pinched the thumb between my fingers and lifted. It was supple, warm, just like living flesh. A silver bracelet slipped off of the wrist and jingled to the ground. I nearly ignored it, but paused instead, and bent back down to give it a closer look. Embossed on the silver was a six-armed red cross. I flipped it over to look at the back and rubbed the blood away with my thumb so that I could read the text.
Uh, oh.
Chapter 2
A stream of blood, maybe three inches wide, crawled slowly across the floor, forging a meandering path of deep red against stark white marble. The contrast of colors and slow, worming movement was hypnotic, even beautiful if you could forget for a moment that it was the essence of life, flowing from the open veins of a bird-thin man in blood-soaked clothes three sizes too big. He lay semi-conscious, smearing the pristine red into ugly smudges around his body, his face stretched into a silent grimace. Thin, brittle hair tried to cover an oversized skull. Bulbous elbow joints stood out from holocaust arms like the lump of his larynx riding up and down under pallid skin.
Most of us were there in the lobby between the theater and the video room. Freitag and Steph were tending to the wraith who had lost his hands. Well, he’d lost one hand. The other was for all practical purposes, lost. Murphy lay on the floor with a pillow under his head, eyes closed. Mandi was keeping pressure on his wound, tears silently slipping down her cheeks. Beside her, Russell, with his hands on Murphy, quietly stared. The well of his tears had run dry.
Dalhover stood in the doorway of the video room, passing occasional instructions over his shoulder to Specialist Harris, whom he had parked in front of the monitors.
The blood oozed its way past the toes of my boots and it occurred to me that I still had that amputated hand, somehow forgotten, as though it held onto me as much as I onto it. In my other hand, I grasped the bloody silver bracelet. “I don’t think you can save him,” I said.
In doing so, I accepted the reality of what my anger-fueled machete swing had been, justified or not— murder.
Freitag ignored me.
Without looking at me, Steph said, “Zed, go out to the Humvees and see if you can find some more of these bandages.”
I didn’t comply. My anger was gone. Harsh reason was back.
Irritated, Steph repeated, “Zed. I need you to get us more bandages.”
That snapped me out of my own thoughts. “He’s a hemophiliac.”
Both Freitag and Steph stopped working and turned to look at me. I reached out and presented the bloody silver medical ID bracelet to them. Steph took it and looked at it closely. “Where did you get this?”
I raised the amputated hand and showed it to them.
Freitag looked down at the bird-thin bleeder.
“All the more reason to get those bandages. Now!” Steph emphasized.
Separating my emotions from the situation, I said, “I don’t think we should.”
“You want him to die?” Freitag snapped, letting her anger run free.
“Calm down,” Dalhover ordered, his hands wrapped very comfortably around his rifle.
“I…” Freitag started, but couldn’t find the words to proceed.
“Zed,�
� Steph cut in. “We talked about exactly this kind of situation. The chips are down. You need to go get those bandages.”
“I will,” I told her flatly. “But it would be a mistake.”
Steph’s eyes went cold with anger, but her face showed no emotion at all.
I asked, “Can you save him? Even if I get the bandages, can you save him?”
Freitag was ready to explode. Steph’s face didn’t change.
“If we were at the hospital right now,” I asked, “in the emergency room, back before all this virus shit went down, could you save him?”
“I don’t think…”
I’d heard bullshit wrapped in authority enough times in my life that I didn’t need to hear any more to know what was coming. I cut Steph off. “Answer me honestly. Even if we were at the hospital, could you save him?”
Steph’s anger shot up in a rush. She ground her teeth and pinched her lips but she didn’t speak until she breathed in and out a few times. Finally, with an unexpected meekness, she answered, “A hemophiliac with a double amputation…maybe, but his odds would be low.”
“And here?” I asked. “Here, with no medical facilities, no coagulating agents, no doctors, no sanitary facility? Do we want to use our precious few medical supplies in an attempt to save a man who has…what, a one or two percent chance of living through the night?”
“We’re not even going to try?” Freitag let all of her disgust for the question flow through her words.
I pushed on, “And what if he does make it through the night? What are his chances of being alive once infection sets in? And you know it will. You have to put tourniquets on both arms to stop the bleeding, am I right? He’s a hemophiliac. His blood won’t clot. A tourniquet is the only way we can stop the bleeding. But with the tourniquets on, the flesh lower on the arm will die. Then what?”
Steph’s gaze fell to the floor. She couldn’t stomach giving up.
“He’s right,” Dalhover rasped.
Freitag slumped as she sat and draped her bloody hands across her knees, staring absently at the amputee. Strands of her black hair had come out from under her cap and were tipped with straw thin scabs of blood where they’d dragged across the bleeder’s wounds. Her light brown Hispanic skin was smudged with red where her dainty hands had wiped at her sweat. Her smooth, doll-like face was failing completely at masking the hate.
