by Bobby Adair
In that, we had a kinship.
I felt like I understood Nico. And out of being able to identify with Nico grew a smidgen of trust. I wasn’t ready to bring him back to Sarah Mansfield’s house with me; Freitag had burned that bridge when she crossed over. Trust was going to be a hard thing to grant going forward.
Freitag. Ugh.
The thought of that bitch sent my thoughts back into a very dark place, a place where I murdered Mark in my thoughts and slaughtered Whites out of spite. It was a place where I would have killed Nancy, Bubbles, and Bluto if I had the means. If only I’d had the presence of mind to throw a loop of chain around Nancy’s skinny neck as we all ran toward the end of the dock. The world would have one less Smart One, and some normal people on the south side of the river would probably live to see a few more days.
The Smart Ones needed to die. All of them needed to die.
“That’s the marina you were talking about, right?” Nico pointed to the south bank.
“Yep.” I looked over the docks and into the shadows by the buildings on shore. I didn’t see any Whites, didn’t spot any movement, but they were there. The infected were always there, and for the next year or two, always would be.
“What’s the plan?”
I pointed to the longest of the three docs. “Let’s pull up to the end of that one. We need to get rid of this guy before we can do anything.” I thumbed back at the floater.
Nico looked at the body bobbing along behind us. His face slacked into a sickly expression.
“It’s messy, but we have to,” I told Nico. “We can’t carry him with us. He’s only manageable now because we’re in the water.”
“I know.” Nico’s tone told me he didn’t need or want to be told that obvious bit of truth.
“Same as last time. You pull the chain, I smash the head. You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.”
Nico shuddered. “You make it sound so…so…”
“Easy?” I finished for him.
Nico nodded. “You don’t feel…”
Into the long pause I said, “It doesn’t matter what I feel, Nico. The luxury of having good choices was a peculiarity of the modern world. For most of human history, life was brutal and bloody. Humanity just took a big backward step toward that. We can handle this. Humans are built for it. We’re just not used to it.”
“I don’t need a history lesson,” Nico responded, petulantly.
Of course he didn’t need a history lesson. But a slap on the head wouldn’t hurt. “Paddle us to that dock. Let’s make this quick. As soon as we’re done, let’s get back in the canoe and go back to the center of the river.”
“Why? We’ll be pretty close to the shop. Why not just go over there?”
“You can do what you want. Well, maybe you can’t, since we’re still chained together. But I’m not your boss. I’m just telling you that I’d like to be careful and go back out into the water for a bit and make sure that we haven’t riled up a bunch of hungry Whites with all the noise we’re going to make before we go onshore.”
Nico deflated. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”
He paddled us over to the dock until the bow hit wood. I steadied the canoe as he climbed out and looped our bow line over a cleat.
The next few moments were awkward. I walked down the length of the canoe as it drifted with the current away from the dock. Dragging along two-hundred pounds of floating corpse didn’t make it any easier. But I managed, and together, Nico and I got the White in place before realizing that the scuba tank was still in the canoe.
“Shit,” I hissed.
Nico looked scolded.
“Not your fault.” I stood up straight and looked around again to make sure we were still alone. We were. “Let’s get this done.”
It took several long minutes to retrieve the scuba tank and get the White back into position with his head on the dock and his body in the water. Then it was time to smash.
Nico closed his eyes and looked away. I brought the cylinder down hard. Once. Twice. Thrice.
“Damn!” The guy had a hard head. I hammered it three more times with the tank before it was malleable enough to push through the loop of chain around his neck.
The body slipped off of the deck and into the water. A slick of blood pooled around the deformed head as it drifted on the slow moving current. There was blood on the dock and five or six teeth laying on the wood between my feet. Nico stared at it all for a moment and then fell to his knees and heaved out the clear, sticky liquid contents of his stomach.
I gave him a moment and kept a lookout for dangers before saying, “C’mon man, we need to go.”
Back in the center of the river again, we waited. I reached down and splashed my face with the cool water a couple of times, closing my eyes and reveling in another moment of feeling good.
“I don’t see any of them,” Nico informed me.
“Give it a minute.”
“We should go check the shop. I don’t feel comfortable sitting out here in the middle of the river.”
I wanted to ask Nico why was he was even alive. Hadn’t he learned anything? But then I remembered how much my own life depended on luck. “Nico, it pays to be careful. And when you fuck up, you usually get killed.”
“But anyone can see us out here.”
“You know the Whites don’t like the water. You saw that right?”
“What?”
I looked up at Nico and put little effort into hiding my contempt. “What do you mean what?”
Nico saw the look on my face and turned indignant. “What makes you think they don’t like the water? Just because they can’t swim.”
“Nico,” I started, but stopped and took a deep breath before my anger ran off with my words. “Nico, I noticed when were down by the water, they went to great pains to keep their toes out of the water. They’d drink, of course, but they were weirdly neurotic about touching the water with anything but their lips or their hands.”
Nico looked at me with storm clouds growing behind his eyes.
In soothing tones I added, “Sometimes I notice little details. Besides, I talked to some girls up the river a few days ago. They were hiding out on that riverboat thing they take the tourists on sunset cruises with.”
“I know that boat,” Nico said.
Anyone who spent any time on Lake Austin would know it. It was hard to miss. “The girls said that sometimes the Whites would see them on the boat but they’d never come in the water to get them. I just put two and two together. I think they’re all afraid of the water for some reason.”
Nico looked around. “Somebody could shoot us out here.”
I was going to ask why, but nobody seemed to need a reason for that anymore. Instead I said, “Anybody with a gun who’s still alive has figured out by now that you only shoot as a last resort.”
“What if they haven’t figured that out yet?”
“Then they’re already dead, Nico.” I said, with enough finality that I hoped to shut him up. I was getting peeved. Really, why was he still alive? “I think we’re cool to go in, if you’re ready.”
“If we see some food, any kind of food, a vending machine, a sugar packet, an armadillo, a squirrel… I could really use something.”
I smiled. “I’m with you, man.”
Cautiously, Nico and I took extra care to be quiet while we paddled the boat back toward the Marina. We glided between the boat slips, heading toward a boardwalk built over the water. On the other side of the boardwalk stood the workshop.
Once the bow bumped wood, Nico took the bow line, looped it over a piling and we both carefully climbed up out of the boat, doing our best to keep our links of chain from jingling.
We crossed the wide boardwalk and sidled up next to a faded blue corrugated steel wall. Still, there was nothing moving anywhere that I could see. Nico pressed his ear to the metal wall to listen.
Good idea!
After a moment, he pulled his head away and I whispe
red, “Anything?”
He shook his head and opened his mouth to say something but it hung there for an awkwardly long time before the words finally came, “I know you think I’m useless, but I’m not. I’m just out of my element.”
In a whisper, I lied immediately. “No, Nico. I don’t think you’re useless. Sorry, I’m just edgy. Murphy says I have a tendency to be a dick for no reason.”
“Murphy is your buddy?”
I nodded.
“Do you think he’s right?”
I nodded again. “Nobody’s perfect. So…no one inside?”
“None that I could hear.”
There were several rolled down garage doors on our side of the building. They were all padlocked shut. “I think I saw a door on the other side,” I said. I started to move.
Nico grabbed my arm to stop me. “I know you’re probably going to ditch me as soon as we get these chains off. But you don’t have to run off and leave me stranded or anything. If you want to go solo, just say so. I’ll respect that.”
Nico’s eyes told me that he feared that possibility more than he respected it.
“I’ll be honest Nico. I am thinking about ditching you, but it’s got nothing to do with you.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’ve been running into some real problems when I trust people lately.”
Nico’s vulnerability was starting to show. “You’re the first person I’ve talked to since my wife…died. We could work together. We’d both have a better chance that way.”
I nodded. “Nico, I won’t run off and leave you when we cut the chains off. Cool? I’m not making any promises beyond that. Let’s see how all of this plays out and then we’ll go from there.”
“Okay.” Nico nodded. “Have you been with Murphy this whole time?”
I shushed Nico. “We’ll talk more once we’re back in the canoe.” I started off toward the corner.
There was indeed a door on the side of the building, painted white and easy to spot. I led Nico down to it, past a window with the blinds closed. I slowly turned the knob and was disappointed that it was locked. I looked back at Nico.
He shrugged.
“We can try the other side.”
Nico nodded agreement.
Together, we stealthily worked our way around the whole workshop. It was completely locked up. Frustrated, we found ourselves standing by the wall where we’d started, with the canoe across the boardwalk just a dozen feet away. Nico suggested, “We could break in.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, we probably could. I’m afraid we’d make too much noise and draw the Whites in.”
“But mostly, they leave us alone, right?”
“Not if we’re being noisy. When they hear certain noises, they think of food. It’s never good to sound like food with Whites around.” I looked around out of good habit while I came to a decision. “We can head upriver.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got some people up there. I don’t think they have any tools. Well maybe they do. We had a big toolbox on a pontoon boat a week or so ago but I don’t know if they ever brought it back to our place. Either way, at least we’ll have a safe place to sleep tonight.”
Nico didn’t give me an answer right away. “Were you going to tell me about these people if we got the chains off?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Thanks for being honest.”
“I’m not being honest. I’m being pragmatic. If we’d gotten the chains off, I was probably going to help you find a place to stay, and then I was going to leave you and go back on my own.”
Nico looked like I’d punched him in the gut.
“It’s not you Nico, really. I’m...I don’t know. I trusted some people and my buddy Murphy got shot. My buddy Jerome got shot for pretty much the same reason—trusting the wrong people.”
“Zed, I’m not going to shoot you or anybody else.” Nico slipped down into an uncomfortable introspective slope. “I think I’m a coward.”
“C’mon, let’s get going. It’s a ways upriver. It’ll take us the rest of the afternoon to paddle up there.”
Chapter 17
“So, what’s your deal man?”
In the front of the canoe, I was struggling to paddle up river on a stomach that had been empty for nearly a week, and it was hard. Any degree of exertion rushed my breathing and elevated my heart rate. In that state, it was easy to pass on the minimal effort it took to listen to Nico tell me about whatever he was telling me.
“So, what’s your deal man? Zed! Zed! Are you awake up there man?”
Pulling my paddle up across my lap to rest for a minute, I looked back at Nico. “What?”
“Man, you must be totally zoned out because I asked you like three times.”
“Asked me what?”
“I know you’re ignoring me but you could at least pretend to listen.”
“I thought I was.”
“You must be in worse shape than me. We need some food.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“We should slow the pace a bit. I’m really tired.”
I gave Nico a nod. “We can go easy for a while.”
“So what’s your deal man? I’ve practically told you my whole life story and I don’t know anything about you.”
I shrugged.
“What did you do before the virus hit.”
I hated that question but there was no point in hiding the answer. “I worked at Starbucks.”
That gave Nico a pause. “Did you ever think about going to college or something? I’ll bet you could get into the community college. That’s always a good place to start. I mean, if school isn’t your thing or whatever. It’s kind of a half-way-house to a real college. You know what I mean?”
“I have a degree, Nico.”
“Oh.” Nico was at a loss for words for a moment. But just for a moment. “The economy does kind of suck. A lot of people can’t find good jobs right now. What’s your degree in?”
“Philosophy.”
“Yeah, that might make it harder but you can work pretty much anywhere with that kind of degree. You know, and entry level gig. You seem like a smart guy. How long have you been at Starbucks?”
I shrugged out of habit and put my paddle back in the water for an easy stroke. “A couple of years I guess.”
“You’ve been looking for a job for a couple of years? Man, it must be worse out there than I thought.”
“Nico, I work at Starbucks because I want to.”
Nico was perplexed. “Are you a manager or something?”
I shook my head.
“What then? I’m curious.”
“Barista.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?”
“You seem like a bright guy. You’re educated. Why work at Starbucks?”
I thought about evading the question as I had so many thousands of times in the past. But really, what was the point anymore. “One job is as pointless as the next, Nico.”
“That sounds like some a philosopher’s answer.”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t you ever want to get married? Have some kids? Buy a house?”
“I’m not sure those questions are valid anymore, Nico.”
“You know what I mean. Didn’t you ever want those things?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do?”
“What do you mean, yes you do?”
“Exactly that?”
“What are you, some kind of psychologist or something? I thought you were a financial planner.”
“You remind me of my daughter.”
“What the fuck are you even talking about?”
“You’re like my daughter, Zed.”
I turned back to look at him with an unasked question hanging in the air.
“She’s distant and tightlipped too.”
If his dau
ghter was anything like me, I deduced that it was probably for many of the same reasons and replied with a tone dripping in accusations. “Yeah, why do you think that is, Nico?”
“What?” Nico was taken aback. “What are you saying, Zed?”
I shrugged and went back to paddling. “Nothing.”
Nico pulled his paddle out of the water and got his dander up. “No! What are you saying, Zed?”
I paddled a few more strokes. What the Hell? None if mattered anymore anyway. I let all of the accusations linger in my voice. “You tell me, Nico. Why does a little girl, what’d you say, five years old? Why does a little girl get tight lipped and withdrawn, Nico? Why would she do that?”
Nico became dead serious. “What are you asking me, Zed? Why don’t you quite pussyfooting around and just tell me what you want to say?”
“Okay. You say your daughter is just like me? Quiet. Distant. That’s not normal, Nico. That’s how damaged kids are, Nico.”
“Damaged?”
“Abused, Nico. Was she abused?”
“What?” Nico was shocked. “What are you saying? You were an abused child?”
I turned back forward and paddled some more, shaking my head. “So you’re not going to answer the question. Whatever man. You pushed it. You want to hide from it. What the hell do I care? None if it matters anymore.”
Bam!
I jerked around to look at Nico.
He’d slammed his paddled down across the gunwales. His face was red. His eyes were full of tears. His hands were shaking. His voice cracked when he spoke. “You listen to me you little bastard. I love my daughter. She may be gone, but she’ll always matter. You hear me! And just so you know, I would never, ever, ever, raise a hand to her. That’s just the way she was. Some people are just hardwired to be that way. They just don’t relate to people as well as others. That’s it, Zed. It’s not any more complicated than that. And I sure as hell didn’t abuse my own damn daughter so fuck you, Zed Zane. Fuck you!”
It was my turn to be taken aback.
I believed him.
And then I felt like a turd for making the accusation.
We floated silently on the river for a long time after that. Lost in our own thoughts, fearful of saying anymore until tempers settled. It was me who finally mustered the courage to speak. “I’m sorry, Nico. That was dickish of me. I…”
