by Bobby Adair
“I don’t know.” It seemed tempting to have a place within reach that might be a sanctuary.
“Do you think the Whites could get to us there?”
“I don’t know, Murphy. I just know every time we underestimate them, every time we think we’re safe, it all goes to shit.”
“Ah, Pessimistic Zed. It’s good to have you back, man.”
I shook my head and smiled. “I’m just trying to work the Murphy plan. Shouldn’t you be encouraging me?”
“I was.”
“Whatever.”
As the sky above us blackened enough for the stars to sparkle, Murphy said, “I wonder how many normal people survived.”
“I don’t know.”
“Mr. Mays would have been the last one we saw, right?”
“There were a bunch of them holed up at Camp Mabry.”
“But they’re all dead now, right?”
I shook my head emphatically. “We don’t know that.”
“We saw the bones, man.”
“Yeah, we saw a lot of bones. But Freitag and Harris got out with that skinny guy, what’s-his-name. More must have gotten away.”
Murphy shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose so. You think there might be some all around then, just hiding?”
“Hiding seems to be the best solution. Or getting out of town. Holy shit. I forgot about the family we helped up on 183 the other day.”
Murphy smiled. “Yeah, I totally forgot about that. Zed, I feel good about that.” Murphy stopped walking and turned to look at me. “This is a big, fucked up world now. But I feel good about that. We did the right thing.”
I never was the sentimental type, nor the enthusiastic type, but Murphy’s happiness over the good deed rubbed off. It was something to feel good about. It was a sad little tragedy in the making that, because of our intervention, had a happy ending. Without the vocabulary to express how good it did feel, I simply said, “Yeah.”
With smiles buoyed by that one act of kindness, we walked down the dark road toward the other side of the lake.
Slow Burn Book 6, ‘Bleed’
Chapter 1
The sound of ten thousand wild apes was on the wind. It drifted over the terrain on an unsteady breeze. It floated over us and disappeared, only to come back. The naked horde was near. Where, we weren’t sure.
At the end of the dam, Murphy looked at me and said, “Well?”
“Bon Jovi concert?”
Murphy bit back a laugh. “It’s nice when you take that stick out of your ass. You’re almost a funny guy.”
“Sounds like envy talking, to me.”
The moon was on the rise and its light gave us a view of Lake Travis’ water level—well above normal. A park spread across a peninsula to our right. Picnic pavilions down near the water’s edge were partially submerged. Waves lapped over their concrete benches and tables.
Pointing almost directly north, across the base of the peninsula, I said, “If we cut straight that way, we’ll be in the woods that run along the shore.”
Murphy had no preference on direction, though he swiveled his head, trying to find the location of the horde. “Okay.”
“I don’t know if you ever came out to Lake Travis much…”
“Can’t swim.”
“Yeah.” I continued to point across the park. “The shore of Lake Travis is mostly a series of peninsulas separated by inlets that used to be canyons or creeks flowing down to the Colorado River.”
“It’s like I’m back in seventh-grade geography.”
I ignored Murphy’s comment. “And most of the inlets have marinas in them. Where there’s no marina, there should be plenty of private boathouses. I’m betting we won’t have to walk far to find a boat.”
“Sounds good.” Murphy looked off in the direction that the sound of the horde seemed to be coming from. “What about them?”
“Don’t know. The way the sound bounces around the hills, I can’t tell from one minute to the next where they are. What do you think? Should we go back across the dam and try the other side of the lake?”
Murphy looked back along the road across the top of the dam. “They could be over there too. Until we actually see ‘em, we’re not gonna know where they are for sure. I’d say let’s stay close to the water on this side. If we need to escape, we just go in.”
I pretended a double take. “You want to go in the water?”
Murphy said, “I can’t swim, but I’m not neurotic about it. The water’s calm, so if I have to wade in chest-deep to keep from getting eaten by a bunch of those skinny bastards, it won’t bother me a bit.”
I looked across the park. Nearly all of the dense cedars had been cut down, leaving only the big oaks. Despite the moonlight and shadows, I was able to see most of the park. I didn’t see any infected moving about. I could only hope they weren’t squatting in the deep shadows. “Let’s cut across the park, get on the other side of that cove over there, and start following the shore. It’ll take longer to get where we’re going, but it’s the safe play. You’re right, having the water as an escape route is a good thing. Besides, we might come across a stray boat along the way.”
“Rock on, brother.”
Keeping a vigilant eye all around, we followed the road as it curved off the dam. We turned right onto the paved park road and descended as quietly as we could while the pavement changed from smooth asphalt to crunchy chip seal.
Murphy leaned in close and whispered, “In this light, you damn near glow.”
I looked down at my arms and legs. He was right. I frowned. Anyone or anything in the shadows would easily see us.
Murphy grinned. “At least when the Whites see us, they’ll think we’re just like them.”
I shrugged. He was probably right about that.
“Maybe they won’t fuck with us.”
It was a valid hope.
We followed the road down past the ranger’s booth. Nobody was there to take our fee. I smiled at the thought of getting into the park for free, probably just a manifestation of my over-developed aversion to authority. Near the edge of the water, the road traced the curve of the cove on the north boundary of the park’s peninsula.
The sound of the Whites seemed to fade as we followed the shore. The thing we didn’t take into account, not really, as we walked along with the lake on our right, was that the hill rising to our left deflected most of the howls and cries above us, making the voices of the infected seem more distant than they actually were.
At the tip of the peninsula, as it started its curve back around to the next cove, the hill that ran the length of the peninsula was cut off, forming a cliff that grew to thirty or forty feet above the level of the water. Before starting up the hill, I asked, “If we go up there, we might find ourselves having to jump off. Are you afraid of heights?”
“I’m afraid of depths.” Murphy said, as though his meaning was perfectly clear.
“Depths?”
“You know, how deep will that water be when I splash down? Seems that if it’s deep enough for me to jump in without getting hurt, it’ll be over my head and I’ll drown.”
“You need to learn to swim.” I looked up the face at the highest point on the cliff. “Let’s take it real slow. If we hear or see anybody, we can run back down before getting in the water.”
With a nod, Murphy said, “Works for me.”
The light from the moon grew brighter and whiter the further up it moved in the sky. Shadows shortened, and it became easier to see between the trees and understand the shapes we saw in the shadows around us. Out across the lake, the pale limestone walls of the old church at the peak of the hill on Monk’s Island stood out prominently against the dark green and black background on the far shore.
“We’ll be there soon enough,” Murphy whispered, seeing that I was looking more toward the goal than watching for dangers.
As we neared the top of the hill, the sound of the naked horde grew exponentially louder, and it became apparent that they were
somewhere down on the other side. I stopped, squatted, and looked back at Murphy. In a soft voice, I asked, “You hearing what I’m hearing?”
“Yup.”
“Should we go back?” I asked.
“To go back is to go all the way around the lake.” Murphy thought about that for a moment as his gaze followed the tall pale-colored dam standing high above the surface of the lake to where it merged with the far shore. “Or we cut through the woods and hope we don’t run into them somewhere out there.”
“So, what are you saying?”
Murphy nodded his head in the direction leading just over the crest of the hill. “They’re over there. There’s no doubt about that. But it doesn’t sound to me like they’re that close. Maybe they’re across the water, on the next peninsula over. If that’s the case, we might find a boat just down there in the water, and we’re home free.”
Stalling while I thought about it, I scanned the shadows through the thick cedar fronds. Usually, it was me rushing in with half a plan and my balls in my hand. Suddenly finding myself in the role of advocating the cautious path felt awkward. “Or there are a hundred of them squatting in the shadows just over the ridge and getting ready to eat us for dinner.”
“Here’s what I think.” Murphy patted a big hand across his M4. “We’ve got these. We’ve got suppressors. We’ve got lots of ammunition.”
“Murphy, you know as well as I do that I can’t hit a damn thing I shoot at anymore.” My frustration over that recent development came out in my tone.
“Don’t get all bitchy on me, dude. The Murphy’s got a plan. We’re not going to shoot at anything far away, just Whites that happen to be coming at us. With our suppressors, that’s kind of a safe thing for us. Sure, every White close by will come at us, but not every single one within a mile. Wear your gun down on your hip, like they do in the movies. Don’t aim. Just point and shoot. When they get close enough, you’ll hit them. You’ll use up lots of bullets, but as long as you reload in a hurry, they’ll never lay a hand on you.”
“And you think that’ll work.” I wasn’t sold.
Murphy grinned. “Sure it will.”
Murphy held his rifle up. “Look at the way I’m supporting the barrel with my left hand right now. See how I have my index finger pointing parallel to the barrel?”
“Looks awkward,” I said.
“It’s a night firing technique. You don’t aim. You just point your finger at what you want to shoot and you hit it. It’s supposed to be a more natural mental process, I mean pointing your finger rather than aiming your gun.”
It sounded like a lie, but what the fuck. I put my pistol in its holster and sheathed my machete. It took a moment to get my sling adjusted. I stood up, and feeling like a silent Rambo with both hands on my rifle, I practiced the grip and the movement.
“At least you look cool.” Murphy chuckled softly.
And I felt pretty cool, too. I only hoped that I could hit something before it was close enough to bite me. “Let’s go.”
With slow, silent footsteps, we crested the hill. The wide mouth of the cove was visible down through the trees. Wide implied deep, and that implied a marina might be off to our left somewhere, out of sight. Taking alternate looks into the trees, down the hill along the edge of the cliff, and across the wide mouth of the inlet, I didn’t see any white bodies glowing in the moonlight. The sound of the howling and hooting made it clear that the horde was close.
Halfway down the hill, a giant chunk of limestone jutted up to our left like a daredevil’s motorcycle jumping ramp, its highest point just above the height of the trees that grew out of the hill at the foot of the ramp.
I turned to Murphy and pointed up the ramp.
He looked up, thought about it for a second and nodded. “Careful, though. I’ll bet we’ll be able to see the whole cove from up there—”
I interrupted, “But anything in the cove will be able to see us.”
He nodded.
Double-checking the shadows in the trees to my right and left, I started my slow walk up the limestone ramp. At first, the soil was thick enough to support the growth of grass, but by the time I was halfway up, the soil had thinned to nothing. I sank to a crouch. The crouch became a crawl on my hands and knees, and at the top, that turned into a belly crawl. I poked my nubby-haired white head over the edge, silhouetting myself against the dark sky behind, hoping I’d go unnoticed.
Murphy scrambled up beside me.
Just below us, a dense canopy of cedars and oaks blanketed the slope all the way to the water’s edge. A crooked finger of an inlet a few hundred feet wide and a half-mile long cut back between the hills. Down at the end of the cove, the trees gave way to a solid mass of naked, angry white bodies covering the shores, roofs, and docks—the horde. They howled, they jumped, and they grasped. They were frustrated about the expanse of water that separated them from a ski boat floating in water down near the end, trapped there by a shamble of floating docks. Those docks appeared to have detached from their moorings during the flooding and jammed themselves together to form a floating barrier across the width of the cove. And that barrier was covered with hundreds of bald-headed Whites.
Those people trapped in the ski boat had to be normal.
“We can’t do anything to help those people.” Murphy looked down at his watch before whispering, “I’ll give you thirty seconds to lay your Null Spot bullshit on me before we get out of here.”
Without looking at him, I said, “Fuck you, Murphy.”
“Time’s a wastin’.”
I pointed to our right. “Look over there. I see three boats close enough to shore that we can get one. They’re all probably far enough away from the infected that they won’t notice.”
In a tentative tone, Murphy said, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I know that’s not all.”
I shook my head and flatly replied, “Maybe if we float out close to the docks, shoot a few Whites, toss a few hand grenades, we can give those people a chance to get out.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We’ll be in the boat,” I said. “We won’t be in any danger.”
“You know it won’t work out like that, right?”
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” I told him.
“Fine, but if I get bit—“
“Yeah, I know,” I said flatly. “You’re going to punch me in the face.”
Murphy grinned. “You’re my favorite, Null Spot. I’d never punch you in the face.”
We put our crawling skills in reverse and made our way back down the ramp.
Chapter 2
I chose the ski boat drifting closest to the mouth of the cove, the one furthest from the mob of Whites wreaking their havoc on the marina. The vessel wasn’t close enough to shore to wade out to, but it was no trouble to swim. I climbed in at the stern, up the ski ladder, through deep ankle deep rainwater still standing on the deck, and took a seat at the helm. That’s when the gaping hole in my plan exposed itself.
No key.
No fucking key.
Why in the hell did I have a blind spot in my brain for the necessity of boat keys?
“Dammit.” I huffed and tried my best not to throw a toddler tantrum, and thought about punching the steering wheel as though it was the boat’s fault for requiring the key. Well, I guess in a way, it was. But noise was bad, a lesson I’d been taught at least a dozen times already.
I calmed myself with a long, slow breath, looked over to where I’d left Murphy on the shore and signaled a thumbs-down. Murphy stepped out of his concealing shadow. I pantomimed turning a key in the ignition and shook my head. He deflated and looked around the cove. He was as disappointed as I was.
Nevertheless, I found a rope attached near the bow. Taking it in hand, I slipped silently into the water on the boat’s starboard side and went to work towing the boat back near the shore. It was slow going, of course, but I only had to cover half the distance before my feet hit bottom, fifteen f
eet from shore. I stood up and waved Murphy over.
A few minutes later we were both squatted in the boat, the hull hiding us from view. I whispered, “This one’s got no keys.”
“Yeah, I got that.” Murphy looked around inside the boat. “You thinking we should paddle this thing?”
Down at the end of the cove, the Whites erupted in an enthusiastic roar. I guessed that one of the people trapped in the ski boat had done something to raise their excitement and make them think their long-awaited meal was at hand.
“No paddling,” I told Murphy. “I figured you were safer here in the boat than on shore. You can wait here while I swim to the other boats and see if I can find one that’ll start.”
Murphy looked up over the gunwale. “Boats are scattered all up and down the inlet. Can you swim that far?”
I looked up, though I didn’t really need to. Whether I could swim that far or not was irrelevant. I’d already decided that I would swim that far and that was that. I ditched the rest of my equipment, save my knife and pants. I removed my boots and stood up to get a good look at the boats that were scattered around the cove. I figured I’d start with boats closer to the mouth of the cove and slowly work my way through the boats in order as they got close to the end of the marina. It was a choice of order that would mean more swimming than just going from boat to closest boat, but staying away from the Whites was my priority.
“If you can do it quietly, why don’t you bail this water out while I check the other boats? That way, if we have to paddle, this one will weigh less.” I slipped over the side. Before I swam away, I said, “Wish me luck.”
“Luck.”
It was a hundred-yard swim to a pontoon boat floating in the middle of the cove’s mouth. In all the time I’d spent on our old pontoon boat down on Lake Austin, I’d developed an affinity for the cumbersome but useful watercraft. As I climbed up on the pontoon boat’s deck, I was hoping pretty hard that the keys would be aboard. I spent ten minutes silently searching in compartments and under seat cushions for a hidden spare set, but had no luck. I slipped back into the water and headed for the next boat.
