by Bobby Adair
Crap!
When I did finally get a solid grip on the hull, before I could congratulate myself, the bow bonked into something solid. I looked up. It was the dock in front of the house. So much for a stealthy approach. If Freitag was in there, she knew I was out here.
The water wasn’t more than four feet deep, so close to the shore, so I stood up slowly and was able to see a good part of the lawn and the roof of the house. I tied off the canoe and considered how to proceed. Why not just get out of the water, do my best not to look like a threat, and stroll up the house? I’d lost maybe ten pounds since Freitag last saw me. I was bald, scabby, and nearly naked. She probably wouldn’t recognize me. In front of the mirror in Sarah Mansfield’s bathroom, I barely recognized me.
I hauled myself out of the water and up onto the dock in front of the canoe. The ski boat was tied off on the opposite side of the dock, and I eyed it with a detective’s curiosity as I straightened up. No blood, nor any evidence of violence. That was good. Neither were there supplies of any sort. The keys were also gone. It was just an empty ski boat waiting on the lake for its owner to take it out for a sunny day on the water.
Satisfied that I’d learned all I could from the ski boat, I turned to head up the dock.
A rifle cracked and shattered the shoreline’s bucolic facade.
The canoe’s aluminum hull rang from the impact.
Before I even had time to think about it, I was doing some combination of jumping and falling back into the greenish water beside the dock.
I let my momentum carry me down to the bottom under less than three feet and struggled through the duckweed as I put some underwater distance between me and the dock.
It was so hard to remember to see myself through the lens of others’ prejudices. It didn’t matter whether Freitag did or did not recognize me. It didn’t matter that I was acting like a normal, unarmed person. I was White. And she hated anyone with the virus. In my anger over losing the canoe, I had overlooked that.
When I popped my head back out of the water nearly twenty feet from where I’d splashed into the river, I heard another gunshot and saw a burst of splinters on the surface of the dock. Two more gunshots followed in rapid succession. Freitag thought I was hiding in the water under the dock and was hoping to kill me with little more than luck.
Out of sight from the house, I let the current carry me down and I waded in chest-deep water toward the trees and undergrowth that bordered the property. In the frighteningly close distance, I heard the howls of the infected. They’d heard the shots too. They were coming.
Stupid Freitag. Before the infected got their hungry hands on her, I needed to get to her and find out what she did with my friends.
I climbed up out of the water and took the paring knife with its meager four-inch blade out of my pocket and looked at it. As a weapon, it was better than nothing, but not by much. Dragging my thumb over the edge, I tried to gauge how sharp it was. Eh, sharp enough for a stabbing weapon, but I had doubts about what I could cut with it. Skin, maybe. Jeans? No way.
I was in the undergrowth about twenty feet from the shore when I saw the first of the infected run off of the street in front of the house and start searching the house’s walls for a way in. Choosing to wait and watch, to know what I was getting myself into instead of walking in stupidly—again—I spotted at least twenty of the infected. Half of those lollygagged around the yard, seemingly unable to figure out what to do next. Some of them looked around, searching for the tasty source of the sound they’d heard. A handful were working their way around the perimeter of the house, touching walls and pushing on windows. Whether Smart Ones, or just smart enough to know that houses sometimes contained food, those Whites were my biggest concern at the moment.
A heavily vined trellis was anchored at right angles around the front corner of what I guessed was the garage. The flat roof of the garage appeared to have some sort of patio on it. That looked to me like a way in.
As quietly as I could, I crept through the bushes, trying my best to avoid thorny vines and prickly pears. My appreciation for shoes was growing by leaps and bounds. When I came out of the trees, I caught the apathetic attention of several of the Whites on that side of the house, but they quickly deduced that I was one of them and left me alone.
I crossed the yard quickly, in case Freitag was stupid enough to take another shot at me with so many Whites so close. But no bullets came. I arrived at the trellis and examined the vines. There were no thorns. Good. The wood framework looked strong enough to support my weight. My biggest worry would be that of getting shot when I topped the wall and made for the doors that I presumed were on the other side of the patio. With any luck, Freitag was still looking for my floating body out of the back of the house.
Glancing left and then right, I figured I had enough space to get to the top of the trellis before I caught too much attention from the lackadaisical Whites on my side of the house. So I climbed. I was halfway up when I heard a noise below me.
Dammit!
An infected woman was doing her best to follow me. I moved up as quickly as I could. When I reached the top, I peeked over.
I saw patio furniture, big potted plants, and a gas grill. On the wall of the house, there were two sets of French doors and a couple of large windows. There were no blinds or curtains on the windows, and I was able to see into the room beyond. Not a single thing moved. Assuming that Freitag was still alone, there was no way she could cover all sides of the house on her own.
With a few quick heaves, I threw my legs up over the edge of the wall and got my feet planted before looking back down. The woman on the trellis was just a few feet below and another White was half way up.
Ugh.
Grizzly duty was up next. I glanced back toward the house to make sure that I wouldn’t be surprised from behind. I waited for the infected woman to arrive.
As soon as her head popped up over the wall, I jammed the paring knife into and out of her eye in one rapid motion. She stiffened, and at the same time seemed to open both of her hands to lunge at me. But her balance was gone and she was falling. Whether it was the knife thrust or the fall that killed her didn’t matter to me. It didn’t even matter whether she was dead. She hit the ground and didn’t move. That was all I really cared about.
To my right, the other White climber gave her a look and seemed stuck in a moment of indecision over whether to go back down and feed, or to keep climbing for the real prize: tasty, uninfected flesh.
He chose wrong.
When his head came up over the edge of the wall, I stabbed the blade hard into his temple, a move that was a mistake. As the White lost his grip and started to fall, my paring knife wedged in his skull, and I was barely able to keep hold of it as he fell. But I did. The infected man hit the ground near the woman’s expanding pool of blood. That problem was solved.
Infected were running toward the two downed Whites by that time, and I faded back toward the French doors to let them all forget about me while they dined. I bounded lightly across the patio and came to a stop with one hand on a doorknob, peeking into the windows. Still only furniture and fixtures in the room. Nothing moved. I turned the knob.
Locked!
Damn.
Well, no big deal. I hurried over and checked the other doors. Locked as well.
To break the glass would be a mistake. The sound would alert Freitag. I couldn’t have that.
Checking further, both windows were locked as well.
Hmm.
Quietly making my way over to the edge of the patio that overlooked the front of the garage, I stealthily peeked around the corner of the wall and quickly pulled my head back. No infected eyes on the front lawn spotted me, but neither did I see anything that looked like an alternative way to get into the house.
Across the patio again, I peeked around the back wall on the side of the house that faced the river and saw something that might work. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was my best chance of getting into
the house quietly.
A sloped roof extended out from the back side of the house and the eaves overhead provided a path to a smaller patio further down on the back of the house.
As I jumped up onto the wall, my thoughts went, of course, to a hundred movies I’d seen in which the hero was running across a tile roof, only to have the tiles slip loose before sending him on a perilous skid to the edge of the roof.
Perhaps the guys who built this house had seen the same movies, learned a lesson, and had done a good job gluing these down.
I tested the stability of the first roof tile as I very, very slowly put my weight on it.
It held.
Away I went, slowly, so slowly, taking great care to check my footing with each forward step.
Before I knew it, I’d uneventfully arrived at the other patio. I hopped down to the concrete floor and made no sound at all beyond that of my bare feet slapping the cement.
A quick, deep breath and a quick look around were all I afforded myself before I checked the glass French door. It was open. I smiled.
I found myself in what appeared to be the master bedroom. It was decorated in a rustic Mediterranean style to match the house’s exterior. Lightly closing the glass door behind me, I listened, but heard nothing of importance. The infected weren’t inside the house. They didn’t know how to mask their victorious feelings with silence.
On the dark wooden floor, bare feet were a stealthy advantage, and I crossed the room noiselessly. The bedroom door opened with the slightest of creaks and I looked out into a hallway that opened at the end to the large sitting room I’d seen from the patio. In the house’s silence, every buffet of the wind against the windows, every yowl of a White outside was magnified. My heartbeat pounded its drum and my breathing shouted in my ears.
Trusting in the solidity of the floor, I stepped out into the hall. No boards sounded a complaint under my weight. Still, I stepped slowly, letting the weight of each of my steps come down gently on the bare wood. Off to my right, a wrought iron rail looked over a curving stairway that led down to the first floor. I suspected that the shots had been fired from downstairs, but I checked another upstairs bedroom and a couple of bathrooms to see if anyone was on the upper floor before I proceeded down.
The bottom of the stairs was hidden from view as I started around the curve at the top, so I stayed close to the wall, knife at the ready for Freitag, or anyone she might be with, or any infected. I expected Whites to be noisy, but assumptions kept getting me in trouble.
With each step down, the sound of rapid breathing from below became more distinct. My muscles were tense and my palms were sweating. It could be a White’s breathing that I heard, or it could be a fear-filled Freitag.
What came into view was the back of a petite dark-haired woman in camouflaged fatigues, holding an assault rifle in her hands, pointing it at the back of the house. It was Freitag!
Step lightly. Stay quiet.
The Whites were not in the house. If they were, she wouldn’t be standing out in the open at the bottom of the stairs.
Just four steps to go, nearly in arm’s reach, and Freitag was getting nervous. She hurried a glance at the kitchen off to her right.
Maybe it’s a sixth sense that people feel when someone is watching them that gives their spines the tingles. Maybe in Freitag’s case, it was just nervousness about the infected outside, coupled with an ominous sense of powerlessness and vulnerability. Either way, when I took another silent step down, her senses triggered and she looked back up over her shoulder like she expected something to be there. What she saw was a gaunt, bald creeper. She screamed as she tried to bring her rifle around to shoot me.
I pounced, blocked the rifle barrel toward the wall, and landed on her as she crumbled under my meager weight.
The gun went off, destroying the silence inside the house. We hit the floor with me on top, and I quickly wrestled myself into a position where I had her arms pinned under my legs with one hand pressing down on her forehead to hold her head against the floor. I pressed the warm metal of my dull blade against her throat.
Her eyes were wide with terror, but not recognition.
In a harsh whisper, I asked, “Are you alone?”
That did it.
She recognized my voice and her mouth fell open in a sad, silent wail. Tears flowed. The price for her sins had come due, and her murderer was sitting on her chest, or so she feared. It was a thought worth indulging, but I had more important problems to resolve than bleeding her stupid ass out all over that nice wooden floor.
“Do not scream,” I hissed. “Are there any others in the house?”
She was going catatonic, apparently focused entirely on her impending death.
“I’m not going to kill you. You deserve it, but I’m not going to. Where are my friends?”
Her continued silence made me realize that there weren’t others in the house. If assistance was available, she would have screamed for it already. She was alone. I pressed the point of the knife into her throat until it broke the skin. She needed some pain to bring her back into the moment. “If you don’t start fucking telling me where my friends are, I’m going to ram this knife through your throat and leave you for the infected to eat alive. Do you fucking hear me?”
“Don’t,” she pleaded.
“Talk!”
“I…”
“You’d better come up with a lot more than one fuckin’ syllable at a time.” I sat up and took my palm off of her forehead and let off a little of the pressure of the blade on her throat. “You’re a worthless bitch, but I’m not a murderer. At least I don’t plan to be. I just want to know where my friends are and what the fuck you did to them.”
“I didn’t…”
“I will kill you if I think you’re lying to me.”
Freitag looked to her right out across the floor and through the windows. Whites were on the back lawn and she could see them as well as I.
“They’ll be in here soon enough, and they’re not going to be coming after me when they come in. I’m tired of asking. Talk!”
Freitag looked back up at me and then looked away, “I didn’t leave you on purpose. I was in danger. I…”
“Don’t.” I pressed the knife against her throat again. “I don’t give a shit what you say about anything except my questions. Do you understand that? Your bullshit tears don’t mean anything to me. You are going to tell me what happened to my friends and then I’m going to leave, and if you’re lucky, I’ll leave you a gun to protect yourself with. Then I never want to see you again. There’s a whole big fuckin’ world out there. I live on this river now. Go be somewhere else. You got it?”
Chapter 30
We went upstairs where eyes peeping in windows wouldn’t be able to see us and whose owners, with any luck, might eventually wander off. Once we got to the master bedroom, she pointed at the pillow-laden bed and asked, “Are you going to rape me?”
I just shook my head and instructed her to sit on the edge of the bed.
The room was large, like all the room in all the mansions, on all the million dollar lots on the river. I took up a position beside a dresser, well away from her, but where I could keep an eye on her and see the dock out across the back lawn. Unfortunately, the canoe, holed by one of Freitag’s misplaced shots, had sunk. I had her pistol sitting on the dresser along with an extra magazine. Two full magazines for the M16 lay beside those. The rifle, I kept pointed at Freitag. “Here’s the way this is going to work. You’ll tell me everything I need to know. If I’m satisfied that your story isn’t completely bullshit, I’ll leave you a weapon. The more cooperative you are and the more truthful I think you are, the more bullets I’ll leave you. As for the boats, I’m taking the ski boat and the pontoon boat I came in. You can have the canoe.”
Freitag barely nodded. She hadn’t seen yet that she’d sunk the canoe with her bad shooting.
I raised the rifle with one hand and pointed to the pistol with the other. “Which
one?”
“I can have either one?”
“Makes no difference to me.”
“I’ll take the M16.”
“Fine.” I removed the magazine from the M16, tucked the pistol into my belt, picked up one of the M16’s magazines and started removing the bullets, lining them up neatly on the edge of the dresser. “Speak.”
“Do you want to know what happened at Sarah Mansfield’s house?”
“No. Scratch that. First tell me about Murphy.”
Freitag shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
“How is he?”
“Steph said he was going to be okay.”
“And how was he when you ditched him?”
“I didn’t ditch him.”
“How is he?”
“He was a little out of it. But he was walking and talking. I think he’ll be fine.”
I tossed Freitag a bullet. “I watched the archived video at the house. I saw what happened when you guys got overrun. So just tell me what happened after you left together in the ski boat.”
“Everybody was hating on me.”
I huffed to show my impatience.
Freitag glared at me. “I know you think I’m some kind of evil bitch, but it’s not like that. You need to understand why I had to do it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“They all blamed me for what happened to you.”
Duh!
“They didn’t say much about it. Mostly they just gave me dirty looks when they thought I wasn’t looking. Sergeant Dalhover, though, he gave me dirty looks all the time. He frightened me.”
I repressed a smile about that.
“Once we were all in the boat and Murphy realized that you weren’t with us… Well, he got very angry. I thought he was going to hurt me. Steph and Mandi calmed him down and made him sit in the back with Russell. The way he looked at me after that, I think he was going to do something.”
I tossed her another bullet and started emptying another magazine. So far, the bullshit sounded true enough.
“See, I didn’t have a choice.”
