by Bobby Adair
Leaning my head back, I slowly surfaced while holding onto the cable support, putting just my face above the water. I grabbed another deep breath, pushed my luck and took a second, then went back under again.
I listened.
The sound of the helicopter’s blades beating the air wasn’t as loud as it had been a few moments before.
I waited.
Maybe they were leaving.
Maybe they were hovering over the house, looking for Murphy. Maybe they were just up higher where they could get a view over a larger area. I had no way to know. I only had a need to breathe, and a hope not to be seen when I surfaced.
I held my breath as long as I dared.
Moving slowly, I came out from under the dock and rose to the surface, looking for any movement, any shape against the grayness of the clouds. Nothing.
I took two more deep breaths and tried to get an idea of where the helicopter was. Somewhere high above the other dock was all I could figure. In fact, a lot higher. They were leaving. I sank myself back below the dock again and listened carefully.
The sound diminished while I continued to wonder, what were they doing? Did they see the pontoon boat’s wake from where they were flying? Did they come over to check on survivors? They must have been surprised when they saw two Whites on a boat. I wondered what was going through their heads now that they’d gotten past their knee-jerk choice to try and kill us. Were they familiar with Slow Burns and Smart Ones? They must have thought we were both of some dangerous variety of White.
I needed air.
I surfaced again and stayed up, looking around.
The helicopter was at least a mile distant and flying away.
Chapter 7
When the helicopter was far enough away that I couldn’t hear it over wind and waves I climbed up on the dock and looked around. The boards on the dock near where our boat had been were barbed with splinters where the machine gun’s bullets had ripped through.
I saw no body on the dock and none floating—good.
I saw no pontoon boat—bad.
The bastards had sunk our boat.
I looked around on the shore, thinking of calling out to Murphy—stupid idea. Any Whites already on their way to investigate the helicopter and machine gun noise would zero in on my voice and I’d soon be running from them instead of finding Murphy. The smart money would have been to hoof it down shore and put some distance between me and the scene of the attack. That was smart if saving my skin was the only thing I was concerned about. So, not an option. Just as I knew Murphy wouldn’t abandon me, I wouldn’t abandon him.
Keeping an eye on the trees and lawns I jogged off the dock and headed toward the house where we’d hoped to find the shotgun. I listened. I craned my neck to glimpse around corners.
And there it was. The sound. Whites were inbound.
I stopped and waited a second, listening to assess the threat. At least a few dozen were on their way, and the nearest were pretty close. I pulled my machete out. Depending on how crazed they were by noise and hunger, I’d have work to do while looking for Murphy.
I crossed a yard, shrunken by the high level of the lake, and worked my way through a copse with all the natural underbrush removed. Thank the previous residents for that. Too many of the natural undergrowth plants protected themselves from tromping feet with thorns.
Movement in my peripheral vision on the left caught my attention. Two Whites were on the road, just now coming off the asphalt and angling through the trees toward me.
Damn.
I guess one of their half-pint brains must have decided that the first moving, person-shaped thing they saw was the cause of the ruckus. The other was probably a me-too White, following along because he was too stupid to even come to a wrong conclusion.
I looked left and right again as I turned to face my two admirers. Nothing else around, yet.
I backpedaled, both to boost my pursuers’ confidence and to move into a space between the trees where I had plenty of room to swing my machete.
I took a calm breath, focused on my prey, and figured I’d seal the deal with a few words to put them into a thought-free frenzy. “Hey, buddy. I taste pretty good.”
The first one salivated. The second grunted some kind of weird happy pig noise. They started to run.
When the fastest of the two was within a few steps of me, I did a little matador sidestep and swung my machete up towards his throat. His momentum did all the work. Cartilage crunched. Blood exploded from his throat. He went down.
Surprised by all the blood, the grunter’s eyes focused on the wrong things and he didn’t see my backhanded swing slash down on the side of his head until it was way too late to do little more than blink.
At my feet, the first one twitched and got on with his dying. The second one dropped in a limp pile of white skin on top of his buddy.
I guessed—besides leaving an enormous gash across the grunter’s face, probably having broken if not cut through his jaw—he was probably knocked out. I glanced back toward the road looking for more Whites, saw none, and hacked down on the back of the grunting White’s neck.
Done.
I stepped away from the fresh corpses and surveyed the area around me again. Silent movement ten feet to my right startled me and I jumped back as I recognized the big white shape. “Dammit, Murphy. You sneaky bastard. You scared the shit out of me.”
Murphy chuckled. “We need to get out of sight.”
I looked around again—assessing, planning. Run or hide? “Those assholes sank our boat.”
“They shot that house up too.” Murphy pointed. “It’s got an attic I think we can hide inside for awhile.”
My shoulders sagged as I thought about the last time we’d used an attic for refuge.
“I checked it out while those guys were trying to shoot you,” said Murphy. “I figured they’d come after me so I was looking for a good place to hide and ambush them.”
“Ambush a helicopter?” I asked.
“No, man. The dudes if they landed and got out to come find me.” Murphy shook his head to make sure I knew the misunderstanding was all my fault. He pointed at the house. “It’s a pretty nice attic. It’s even got windows.”
Good enough.
I nodded toward the house. “Lead the way.”
Chapter 8
As attics go, it wasn’t bad. Nothing much was stored there. Indeed, it seemed to have been built out as a hideaway for children or grandchildren, accessible only by a pull-down ladder through the ceiling of the floor below. Three dormer windows facing the lake let a breeze blow in. The only drawback was a low, awkwardly shaped ceiling.
As Murphy and I sat up there in silence, we watched at least a hundred Whites show up outside, individually and in groups, there to investigate the noisy sounds of normal humans, the helicopter, and the gunshots. They wandered around the grounds. Some walked out onto the splintered dock and looked curiously at the holes. A few found their way inside the house.
It took a few hours for most of them to leave. Some stayed downstairs. We didn’t know how many.
Murphy whispered, “Let’s just hang here for the day. We’ll give those Whites a chance to get hungry, then they’ll take off to search for food somewhere else.”
It made sense. No point wasting ammunition and taking the risk when an afternoon of boredom would cause the Whites to lose interest and move on. “What do you think about the helicopter assholes?”
“They don’t seem like nice folks to me.” Murphy grinned at the understatement.
“Why do you think they shot at us?”
Murphy chuckled softly. “We’re Whites.”
“The world is full of Whites,” I argued.
Murphy pretended to put some thought into his response before he said, “Okay professor, why don’t you tell me what you think?”
“I think they thought we were survivors until they saw us up close. Then I think they deduced that we were Smart Ones because we were drivin
g the boat. I think that’s why they spent a little extra time trying to kill us. Just like we learned about Smart Ones, it’s worth it to go out of your way to kill them.”
Murphy rubbed his hand over his chin. He was skeptical. “How’s that different than what I said?”
“Fuck you, Murphy.”
He laughed.
“Keep it down,” I scolded. “The Whites will hear you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Don’t get your skivvies in a bunch. I’ll play along. Do you think the helicopter assholes know the difference between Slow Burns and Smart Ones? Or do they know and not care? I mean, that’s why we stayed, isn’t it? Instead of going out to Balmorhea with the rest of them.”
“Because normal people are going to hate us no matter what.” I said it like a too-often uttered cliché, because it was.
Nodding, Murphy said, “They just proved that. So what do we do now?”
I crawled on my hands and knees over to a window to look out at the lake while I thought about our options. Murphy took off his backpack and laid it on the floor, leaned back against a wall covered in bright blue carpet, the same shaggy carpet that covered the floor.
“Here’s what I think,” I half-whispered.
“These people need to update their décor?” Murphy chuckled. “This shit looks like something from the seventies.”
I hissed, “Keep it quiet.”
“I sense a Null Spot moment coming.”
I shook my head. “Hear me out.”
“Unless I fall asleep while you ramble on about it, I don’t think I have a choice.”
“Nope,” I told him. “I know you’re not going to like it, but I think we stick with the plan.”
Sarcastically, Murphy said, “I can’t wait to hear why.”
“I thought you were going to fall asleep from boredom.”
“Oh, you’ve got my attention now.”
“Good,” I said, with a big fake smile. “First off, if these helicopter assholes are going to start flying around Austin shooting at us every time we take our boat out or presumably drive a car or anything, I’m going to get pissed. I don’t want to get shot by some machine gun-happy chucklehead in a helicopter. I think we need to know what these guys are about. I think we at least need to assess the danger. Do they think we’re dangerous Smart Ones? Or do they just shoot at all Whites? Finally, there’s the off-chance they’ll be friendly enough—”
“Tolerant is your best hope,” Murphy told me. “That they’ll have short-term tolerance.”
“Yeah, tolerant,” I agreed. “We need to find out if we can at least communicate with them well enough so you can find out whether they’re in contact with your sister and the others. Or we need to know if they‘re a new danger in the neighborhood.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, and?” I asked.
Murphy shook his head. “There’s always a hidden ‘and’ with you. That all sounds too rational, so I’m wondering about the hidden part. You know, that part that warms the Null Spot cockles.”
“You don’t even know what a cockle is.”
Murphy shrugged. “What was the ‘and’? I’m still listening for that part.”
I looked back out the window. “There doesn’t have to be an ‘and’.”
“But there is, isn’t there? Just tell me what it is.”
I huffed. “If they’re a danger to us,” I said, “I think I’d maybe like to toss a grenade or two in each of their helicopters when they park them for the night. I don’t like being at a disadvantage.”
“Just toss in a grenade.” Murphy laughed. “Yeah, right. It’ll be that easy.”
“No.” Of course it wouldn’t. “Let’s scout out the situation and go from there. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Whatever.”
Chapter 9
By the time the Whites left the house, it was late in the day and our best choice was to spend the night in the attic. The next morning, we went out on our shotgun hunt. We got lucky—in the second house we searched we found an old double-barrel shotgun with a pair of barrels so long that I thought the gun might be more effective at poking Whites from a distance to keep them away from me.
As much as I’d romanticized the lethal potency of a double-barrel shotgun—I’m a big action movie fan, but I’ve mentioned that before—the damn thing was impractical to the point of being more harmful than useful. The idea of two shots, reload, two shots, reload seemed only slightly more effective than my machete. Two Whites I figured I could handle pretty easily with my blade. I’d done that and more on countless occasions.
Murphy convinced me that any weapon—as a backup plan—was better than none. We started searching houses for a hacksaw to shorten the barrel; an idea I liked a lot. A short-barrel hand cannon with a spread I couldn’t miss with had an immeasurable movie-based cool factor.
It was nearing noon when we were searching through a house that had been somebody’s idea of a modern design forty years ago. Now it was just ugly. One day it would be a collection of concrete piers and rotten wood.
The house’s garage held nothing except a dusty sedan—no lawn equipment, no skis, no shovels, and no tools. We figured the house was a bust for finding a hacksaw. Nevertheless, we’d already determined it was free of Whites so why not search it?
I was rummaging through a cluttered home office with a view of the lake out a big window when Murphy called from another room. I went running through the house with my machete ready, expecting anything.
When I jumped through the door, prepared to hack, I saw Murphy looking at a tall gun safe hidden inside a closet. The door hung slightly open.
I said, “Makes sense.”
“How’s that?” Murphy carefully swung the door wide open, stepping back as he did so. Why? Why not? You just never know.
Craning my neck to get a better look inside the safe, I said, “You know, with everything happening, I’m sure the guy needed his guns handy. Why lock it?”
Murphy reached into the safe among a dozen rifles standing in a rack, all tidy, each with a space. He pulled one out—some kind of rifle-looking thing with a pistol grip. He turned to me with a wide grin as he reached the gun out toward me. “Get rid of that old shotgun. This is what you need.”
I leaned the long double-barrel grandpa gun against the wall and accepted the one Murphy handed me. It was compact. It didn’t have the shoulder stock, unnecessary since I couldn’t hit a damn thing when I shot that way. I was going to be shooting from the hip, literally.
“That’s a Mossberg Tactical,” he said. “Badass shotgun.”
“It’s a shotgun?” I asked. I held it up, hefting it in my hands to get a feel for the weight of it. I took a close look at the barrel, which extended maybe four or five inches past the pump mechanism. I liked it.
Murphy said, “Not enough extra barrel on that thing to make it worth sawing off.”
Nodding, satisfied, I said, “This will work.”
“That’ll have six or eight shots,” said Murphy. “I’m not sure.”
“Better than two,” I smiled. The Mossberg felt like a real weapon. “I need to test it out.”
Kneeling down in front of the gun safe and shuffling some boxes around on a shelf inside, Murphy said, “There’s a shitload of twelve gauge shells in here.” He started pulling them out and cradling them in his arm.
“I think I like this guy,” I said, as I looked around at the room. “I hope he made it.”
Murphy started handing me the boxes of shells. “Load up with as much as you feel comfortable carrying.”
I set the gun down, shed my Hello Kitty bag and opened it up. I had room. “What I need is a bandolier for these shells.”
“Yeah, so does everybody else, Poncho Villa.” Murphy laughed. “Keep on the lookout when we’re scavenging. Maybe you’ll come across something. In the meantime, get in the habit of carrying shells in your right front pocket. You can reload from there.”
“No problemos.”
“The good thing about a twelve gauge is that they’re popular and cheap. Everybody’s got one. Shells should be easy to find.” Murphy pointed at the stacks of ammunition boxes in the safe, “Like this.”
Chapter 10
We found another boat later that day that had run aground, just one more of hundreds, if not thousands of boats on the lake that had loosed its mooring lines and went adrift. It was a ski boat with a half tank of gasoline and a charge on the battery sufficient to crank the motor.
We drove it for a bit before shutting down the motor and paddling our way toward a long dock sticking out into the lake near a cluster of closely packed houses. The presence of so many houses all but guaranteed that some of their former residents turned white by the virus would still be lingering.
We anchored far enough from the end of the dock that no overzealous Whites would be tempted to make the jump if they decided they had reason. We needed to get down to the end of the lake, but didn’t want to leave a wake easily spotted by the helicopters when they made their afternoon trip from south to north, going back home.
Thankfully, it wasn’t too late when we saw a single helicopter cross below the clouds. Having seen them pass by twice a day for over a month, I knew that usually one trip was made in each direction each day. The number of helicopters varied from one to three, but on the days when more than one flew, they flew together.
As the sound dissipated and the helicopter turned into a black speck before disappearing, Murphy and I started to paddle our boat toward the dock.
We were safe to run our test.
Once we were at the end of the dock, I leaned out and looped the bow line around a cleat. I wanted it to be easy to remove so I didn’t wrap it. I climbed out of the boat and looked across fifty feet of wooden planks into somebody’s backyard.
Dead grass and knee-deep weeds covered the ground between a few tall oaks whose bows spread widely to shade the entire lawn. The only shrubs grew in a line along the wall of the house. As I looked at the yard, what I saw were only a few tree trunks and no significant bushes behind which Whites could conceal themselves. And that was nearly always my first thought when I looked at any area, where could the Whites be hiding?
