Slow Burn (Book 4): Dead Fire (11 page)

Nico let all of that sink in. “Either you’re really good at bullshitting, or you think on your feet better than anybody I’ve ever met.”

“Well,” I shrugged, “I don’t know, but I did think about all of that before I jumped off the pier.”

“What’s the plan now?” Nico asked.

“A couple of miles down, just a little ways up from the dam, there’s a marina that I think has an engine repair shop.”

“Yeah,” Nico nodded, “I know the place.”

“I’m hoping we can sneak in there and find some tools to cut these chains off. Or at least get rid of Whitey back here.”

“Whitey?” Nico smiled.

“I picked it up from my buddy.”

Nico Wright was a talker. He used to be a financial planner, had three kids and a wife—emphasis on the past tense—made good money, lived in this part of town, had a nice house and a German car. And if it weren’t for the dams on the river, he could have talked the canoe all the way down to the gulf.

I pretended to listen for a while. I guess he needed to talk about it all, the loss of his family, his dog, his cat
, the kids’ goldfish. I’m sure that talking was the mentally healthy thing to do. It’s not easy for a person whose concept of risk is defined by high volatility in an undiversified portfolio to change that definition to something measured in agonizing, bloody death. Perhaps for Nico, words were a salve for the emotional wounds he suffered watching his children get murdered by the neighbors on the front lawn. His wife had died trying to save them. Nico, the analytical type, knew they didn’t have a chance, knew his wife didn’t have a chance when she ran out of the house to try, but Nico had to live with never knowing whether it was the coldest of pragmatic analyses or cowardice that kept him in the house that day.

I think his choice not to attempt escape from Nancy’s and Bubbles’ chain gang on his own was a way to punish himself for that choice.

He told the whole story without shedding a tear. He didn’t even look troubled. The further he went into the disturbing parts, the more matter-of-fact he became. It sounded like a recitation of a quarterly report for a boring company with average earnings.

Perhaps, one day way off in Nico’s future, when he told the part about his little blonde-haired five-year old daughter, wearing a party dress, gasping her last breath with the neighbor’s jaws clamped on her throat, he’d cry. Maybe then, he’d have a chance to find some peace with it. Until then, Nico was damaged, distanced from emotions he was ill-equipped to process.

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 whispered, “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.”