Slow Burn (Book 9): Sanctum Read online

  “True.” Murphy leaned on the wall. “But you know as well as I do, when you chased these naked dipshits halfway across the state you weren’t on a mission to do anything like that. You were bent on killing. All that saving-somebody-somewhere-in-the-future stuff is just bullshit icing on your revenge cake.”

  “My revenge cake?” I laughed. “Is that like a metaphor or something?”

  “Yes.” Murphy straightened up and proudly looked to the horizon. “Zed Zane’s revenge cupcake. Hell, you got about a dozen of them, right, when you torched those Whites with the lighter fluid and ran them through that drainage tunnel?”

  I nodded and smiled. Whatever demon lived in my soul, he'd loved it. The bit of justice had been gruesome and brutal. Nothing about killing those Smart Ones that day felt immoral. Nothing in the act felt wrong. It felt satisfying and victorious, but none of the gruesome good lasted. It morphed into an emptiness in my heart that made no sense to me. "I don't think it's that."

  “What?” asked Murphy. “You lost me.”

  "It's not the revenge thing. The killing needed to be done. It's that simple. It's in the past now. A prerequisite for my future."

  “Uh oh,” said Murphy. “I know overthinking when I hear it.”

  “I just need something to do. I need a purpose.”

  “You need to get laid.”

  “Are you offering?”

  Murphy leaned an elbow on the waist-high wall around the edge of the roof and looked at me. “You’re deflecting. You never want to give me a straight answer to anything.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Murphy laughed. “You just did it.”

  I shook my head and thought more about it as I futilely tried to focus on counting Whites out on the streets I could see. “I miss Steph.” I had no idea why that came to the surface. It found its own way out.

  Murphy let that lie for a bit before he stood up straight and announced, “Here’s what I’m thinking. Tonight, we head out, search the convenience stores in the area and find some batteries for the night vision goggles. There aren’t that many Whites in the neighborhoods nearby so we shouldn’t run into any trouble.”

  “You mean no more than usual?” I asked.

  “Yeah, of course. Then with the goggles, we’ve got the nighttime advantage again. We head over to the base, get what we need, and get out of Dodge.”

  “Get what we need?” I asked.

  "You've got a knife, a machete, and some janitor guy’s coveralls with shoes that don't fit. I'm low on ammo, and I'd like to load up with grenades and maybe some other good stuff. If you're still thinking we need to head to College Station—hell, even if you're not—one of those Humvees down there would come in handy loaded up with food, if we can find any, and things that go boom."

  I turned away from the wall and started walking across the Expo Center's big flat roof. Why stay and sulk? I needed to be moving. "Sounds like a plan to me."

  Chapter 2

  "Westcliff Road.” Murphy pointed at a street sign. "That's how you know we're on the right track."

  I glanced at the sign, but mostly I watched the darkness for Whites. I heard them around us but couldn't tell if they were blocks away or behind the next house. "Westcliff?"

  “My mother’s maiden name.”

  “I hope you’re not reading portents from the road signs.”

  “I’m just saying it’s good luck.”

  “Sometimes it’s like we don’t even speak the same language.”

  Murphy punched me in the arm. “That’s what I’ve been saying since August.”

  No point in responding. I sighed instead.

  We’d left the Expo Center after dark and found a convenience store with empty shelves. We spent at least an hour searching through garbage and shit—literal shit—on the floor to find several unopened packages of batteries. Looters often knocked or dropped inventory on the floor in their hurry to be on their way. Murphy and me spent the next few hours working our way carefully across Killeen, heading roughly west toward Fort Hood.

  We found ourselves finally on a corner of an L-bent street, crouching behind a burned out car on rusty rims in somebody’s yard. The car was one of many along the roads and in the grass in both directions. Across the street to our right stood a concrete water tank, old and discolored, part of a pumping station for the local utility. Nothing but scant moonlight, dark empty fields, and scattered trees lay behind the pumping station.

  Across the other street around the corner lay a downed chain link fence that had marked one of the boundaries between Killeen and Fort Hood property. The barbed wire that topped the fence had been ripped away and spread across a wide field beyond, curling among the bodies of naked Whites, bloody and broken, burnt and shredded. Scattered among the rotting corpses lay bones of those who had died earlier, gnawed clean and bleaching whiter with each passing day. The US Army and later the Survivor Army had made the Whites pay a severe price for their attacks.

  Past the carnage, spread over the hundreds of yards of killing ground stood dozens of fifty-year-old, utilitarian buildings that were part of Fort Hood. Behind the widely spaced buildings and parking lots stood what looked like airplane hangars. I pointed and asked, "What do you make of those?"

  “Buildings.” Murphy answered. “Is it that dark that you can’t see the buildings? Is it the virus? Are your eyes going bad?”

  “Says the guy with the night vision goggles.”

  "I didn't leave mine in a badass electric car. And I didn't give the keys to some chicks we just met. And I didn't watch them drive away with all your shit. So I've got my night vision goggles, fresh batteries, and I can see stuff."

  “If you want to get all technical about it,” I countered. “I gave the keys to you. You gave them to the chicks we just met.”

  “It was your dumb ass that decided to run around naked in the middle of the winter.”

  I didn't want to argue pointlessly, so I pointed at the dark shape across the field. "Are those airplane hangars?"

  "Looks like it,” said Murphy. "They don't have airplanes here, though. Tanks. Humvees. MRAPs. Strykers. All kinds of support trucks. And helicopters."

  Of course. “This is where the Survivor Army got their helicopters, I’ll bet.”

  “You think?”

  “You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

  “You think?”

  Jesus. I took one more look around and said, “C’mon.” I ran across the street, aiming roughly in the direction of the nearest buildings. Murphy followed.

  Chapter 3

  We had to take care as we waded among the carcasses. Plenty of skulls lay ready to turn an ankle when stepped on by anyone expecting flat ground. Rib bones arched up in the weeds to catch a foot and trip. The bones of the dead had become obstacles to slow future Whites on the rampage.

  We came to a parking lot with the usual assortment of cars, parked between painted stripes, left there by owners who’d never returned. Others were burned, still more were wrecked. Most had broken glass. We took care as we crossed. Some Whites liked to use cars as places to take shelter at night.

  We came to a building bordered by tall bushes, thriving despite an obvious lack of human attention. I followed as Murphy plowed through the shrubs. We pressed our backs against a brick wall as Murphy used his enhanced vision to look back the way we’d come to ensure nothing was on our trail.

  I slipped along the side of the building behind the bushes, until I came out on a sidewalk to peek through a pair of doors with all the glass broken out. No surprise, it was darker inside than out.

  I stepped back behind the bushes and whispered, “You want to go in and check it out?”

  “I doubt there’ll be anything in here we want.” Murphy stepped around me and looked through the doors. “Looks like an administration building to me.”

  I took a turn to peek inside, and Murphy followed me out of the bushes. I said, “Looks like the hall runs straight through. The hangars are on the
other side. We might find something useful over there.”

  Murphy shrugged. “Lead the way if that’s what you want to do.”

  I slipped around the corner and crunched through the shattered glass on the ground. By the time I was five steps inside, I realized the dim moonlight glowing in through the doors at the far end of the long hall had given me the impression the hallway was brighter than it was.

  I slowed down, trying to make out shapes on the floor—chairs, papers, computers—anything that had been inside the offices lining both sides of the hall. Clearly Whites had been in the building, tearing their way through everything that wasn’t attached, looking for food in all the wrong places.

  Thankfully, most of the offices had plenty of windows on the exterior walls and some moonlight filtered into the halls through the doors that were open. I was stepping in front of one such door and leaning forward to look inside when a human shape jumped toward me. It raised its arms and shouted something unintelligible. I jumped back, slipped, and fell.

  Murphy swung the barrel of his weapon around to fire.

  “No, don’t.” The guy who’d startled me fell back into the office, pleading, “Don’t shoot. Please.”

  Murphy cursed. “Drop the gun. Now!”

  Metal hit the floor.

  I jumped to my feet with my machete raised.

  “I’m like you,” said the guy.

  Murphy cut a glance at me. “He’s one of them.”

  All I could make out was the silhouette lump of a man sitting on the floor. “Survivor Army?”

  Murphy nodded.

  “You’re…” the guy started, “you’re…”

  Murphy huffed. He was conflicted. He wanted to kill the guy, but useless, old-world morality was holding him back.

  I stepped forward, getting within machete range.

  “Please!” The guy raised a hand to block my blade as he scooted farther into the office. “Please. I’m not like the others.”

  “The others?” I asked, doubt taking hold, as I thought for a moment that maybe he wasn’t a member of the Survivor Army but a Slow Burn just like me. It was too dark to tell with unaided vision. My raised blade didn’t move.

  “Crap.” Murphy’s angry breath was all the sound between us for several long moments.

  “Please.” The guy inched deeper into the office.

  “Stop!” I commanded, as I tried to make out details in the darkness. I glanced at Murphy. “Is he armed?”

  “Just that gun on the floor by your feet.” Murphy nudged me to the side with the barrel of his rifle, so that he’d have a clear shot at the guy. “We can’t leave him here. We can’t let him go. It’s too late for that. He’ll kill us first chance he gets.”

  “No, no,” the guy pleaded. “It’s not like that. I’m not like those guys.”

  “The Survivor Army?” I spat.

  “No.” He sounded ready to cry. “I just fly. That’s it. I don’t do—”

  Into the truncated phrase, I asked, “Do what?”

  “My name’s Martin. I’m just a pilot.” The guy turned away.

  “A helicopter pilot?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He scooted a little farther from my raised machete. “What else?”

  Murphy said, “He’s too old and fat to be a helicopter pilot.”

  “I’m retired,” he pleaded. “They made me fly.”

  “And where are they now?” I asked.

  “I’m alone,” he said.

  “You know he’s lying,” said Murphy. “Wouldn’t you if you were him? Don’t listen to him. I think we should shoot him and just get out of here.”

  I asked the guy on the floor, “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everybody else is dead. Why not you? Why are you in this building in the middle of the night with an empty gun? You should be dead.”

  “What makes you think it’s empty?” he asked.

  “Because you’d have shot me if it wasn’t.” Yeah, I’m a pro with the logical deductions.

  “I’ve got a place,” he said.

  “A place?”

  “To hide,” he answered. “I hid there when it started. I mean after I turned white.” He held up his hand to show me his skin but in the dark I couldn’t tell the shade. He looked in the direction of the center of the base. “They would have killed me.”

  “They?” I asked. “The soldiers?”

  He nodded. “You don’t know what it was like then?”

  Murphy laughed. “This dude’s an idiot.”

  “Show us where you were hiding,” I ordered.

  “Okay,” said the guy.

  “This is a mistake,” said Murphy. “This is stupid. What’s it gonna prove if homie shows us where he’s been hiding?” Murphy huffed. “Nothing. Not a damn thing. That’s if he’s not gonna lead us into an ambush with his little knucklehead Army buddies over there.”

  I nudged the guy with my boot. “Roll over on your belly.”

  “Don’t kill me,” the guy pleaded.

  “What are you gonna do with him?” Murphy asked.

  “On your belly, dude.” I’m sure I sounded angry. Murphy’s attitude was affecting my tone.

  “Man, listen,” the guy scooted farther away from me.

  “Dammit.” I stepped toward him and brandished my blade. “If you don’t quit squirming, I swear to God—”

  “Okay, okay.” He lay down and rolled over. “There’s a helicopter out there, the one I was flying. I can pilot it. I can take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Chapter 4

  “Bullshit.” Murphy looked up and down the hall and stepped into the office with me and the guy who’d finally complied and rolled over onto his belly. Murphy closed the door and flipped his night vision goggles up. He planted his foot between our new prisoner’s shoulder blades and looked at me. “If you want to be stupid again, okay. At least, let’s be smart about it, all right?”

  I chuckled. “What does that mean?”

  “You want to believe knucklehead boy here, that’s fine, I don’t. You want to follow him to his non-existent hideout. You go ahead. You want to believe he can fly a helicopter, I don’t care. Just because he’s wearing a raggedy uniform doesn’t mean anything. You’re wearing a janitor’s uniform, and you’re not a janitor.”

  I sighed. Murphy was right about that.

  “I get that you don’t want to kill him, I understand that. I don’t want to kill him either, but you know how these Survivor Army assholes operate. Five seconds after we leave him, he’ll find whatever friends he still has alive, and he’ll try to kill us.”

  “No I won’t,” said the prisoner. “I’m alone. I told you.”

  I kicked the prisoner. Honestly, it was more of an ambivalent nudge with my shoe. “You shut up.” I looked at Murphy. “I don’t know what to do. I want to believe him because I don’t want to kill him. I’m tired of feeling guilty about…everybody who’s dead and shouldn’t be. Even the ones I wasn’t sure about.”

  “Like that Smart One, that gymnast chick you killed outside of Sarah Mansfield’s gate that time?”

  “Her.” I nodded. Murphy was right on the money. “And others. One day the world has to get normal again.”

  “Man,” said Murphy, “you get a little revenge out of your system, and suddenly you’re an idealist.”

  “It’s not like that. I just don’t want to kill him if we don’t need to.”

  “Please,” said the prisoner. “You don’t have to kill me.”

  I kicked him again, just as impotently as the first time. “You don’t have a say in this.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Murphy’s grinning teeth nearly glowed in the dark. “Kick him a few more times. But stop being a sissy bitch about it.”

  “Maybe he’s not like them. He’s not an idiot like that guy we interrogated back in the Capitol annex.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Murphy agreed.

  I pointed down at the prisoner. “He seem
s just like you and me, a Slow Burn.”

  “Whatever, man,” said Murphy. “You decide. I’ll go along with it. I just don’t wanna go walking into any traps. We need to be smart about this.”

  “Fine.” I took a moment and thought it through, then nudged the prisoner with the toe of my boot. “Tell me exactly where this hiding place is.” Looking back up at Murphy, I said, “You’ll stay here with him. I’ll go check it out and see if he’s lying. Then I’ll come back here, and we’ll decide what to do with him after we know whether or not he’s a liar.”

  “Nope.” Murphy tapped his night vision goggles. “You stay with your new buddy. I’ll go check things out. That’s the only way I’m doing this. I’m tired of bailing your ass out of the shit you get yourself into.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Chapter 5

  We moved Martin to a corner office on the building’s third floor that gave me a view through windows in two directions. Martin—that was his name—sat on the cold tile in the corner beneath the windows with his wrists and ankles bound. Office network cables were proving to be a ubiquitous and handy commodity. For my safety, as much as it could be called that with remnants of the naked horde around, I had the sturdy office door shut and locked. As long as Martin and I stayed relatively quiet, we’d be good until Murphy returned.

  “You still see him?” Martin asked.

  Looking out the window, I mostly saw dark shapes and darker shadows. Nothing moved. I shook my head.

  Rather than going directly to the hangars, Murphy had crossed the lawn between our office building and the next one. He was working his way into a flanking position on any ambushers—potential Martin friends—that might be waiting for us. Now that he was out of sight, I was worried.

  “When did you get it?” Martin asked.

  “Get what?”

  “The virus.”

  My last day of normalcy? I recalled my mom’s spidery corpse on the floor that Sunday morning with crazy-eyed Dan tearing through her innards. I still felt nothing for her. I harbored no guilt over killing Dan. Who says no good can come from hate? “First day.”

  Martin looked puzzled. “You were in Somalia?”