Slow Burn (Book 4): Dead Fire (15 page)

Mandi’s face was running with tears and she was screaming. It was clear, even as Harris was being overwhelmed, that he was urging her to run.

Mandi fell into the elevator and pressed the button to close the door. A White bypassed Harris and ran toward the closing door, but Mandi fired three shots. Blood and brains exploded from the White’s head, and he fell short.

The elevator door closed, and the mass of bloody Whites shredded Harris’ body as he screamed.

Harris had made a bad choice, but he was a brave man. In the end, he’d sacrificed himself to save Mandi. How the hell did he get stuck with Freitag?

Pausing the video, I made a mental note of the timestamp and took several long, deep breaths. It was hard to watch.

They’re going to make it. They’re going to make it.

Apprehensively, I started the video again. After many painfully long seconds, Harris stopped struggling. By that time, Mandi, staggering under the weight of her tears and grief, had fallen onto Dalhover, who took a moment to understand what had happened before guiding her into the ski boat. Moments later, the ski boat rumbled out into the river and headed upstream leaving only dead Specialist Harris behind.

It was only video, but I still felt a sense of abandonment.

Back on the chain gang, I’d never doubted—well, almost never doubted—that I’d get free, never doubted that I’d be reunited with my friends. But I knew then exactly where they were. Now, I didn’t.

Disconnecting from those emotions, I focused instead on an academic question. I slid the progress bar on the video back to where the first of the White helices emerged from the cedars across the street, and did the simple math in my head. A feeling of helplessness fell on me so deep that it roiled nausea up from my stomach and through my throat.

Twenty-three minutes.

That’s it.

Twenty-minutes after the first of the helices came out of the cedars was all it took for Specialist Harris to fall under an onslaught of hungry Whites while the elevator door closed on Mandi’s tears.

Fast
forward.

It took seventeen minutes for the horde to amass enough strength to push the wall down. After that, just a hair under six minutes was all it took for the Whites to figure out how to push the cars into the culvert to gain access to the catwalk, break in the front door, and get their grip on Specialist Harris.

How long had Murphy and I been in the compound before we finally got inside? An hour? Two? The Whites were inside for six minutes.

But it wasn’t the thought that the combined intelligence of the horde was smarter than me that was strangling my hopes. In Sarah Mansfield’s relatively hidden, seemingly well-defended compound, we’d fared no better than the hospital staff had at Dr. Evans’ farm in their hundred-year-old farmhouse with easily breakable windows and flimsy doors.

The emergent intelligence of the mob along with the guidance of the Smart Ones had broken down the defenses with ease. With Smart Ones in the world, perhaps no hideout was safe. The real lesson that I needed to learn, one that I kept avoiding with all of my running and hiding and hoping, was simple. If the Smart Ones lived, humanity would die.

Only one conclusion made sense after that. Genetics and luck had burdened me with the perfect camouflage for hiding among the infected. And with that luck, nature had granted me a license to kill them.

Especially the Smart Ones.

Sorting back through the video archives, I found the one that contained Freitag’s return after she abandoned me down the river. Dalhover and Steph had been in the video room at that moment, so before Freitag had even closed the boathouse exterior door, they knew that she was alone.

When
Freitag exited the elevator into the theater lobby, she stepped into a hornet’s nest of taut emotions. Everybody but Murphy was in the brightly lit foyer. Steph’s face was hard and her eyes were cold. Her body language was confrontational and she didn’t hesitate one second in starting her interrogation. But she didn’t get outwardly emotional.

Not so much for Mandi, who, with every word she spoke, spewed her emotions all over the lobby. She was yelling. She was crying. She was mad as hell. It was Specialist
Harris’ big, restraining hands that kept her from physically assaulting Freitag.

Dalhover stood back, his poker face gone, his eyes ablaze. His hands were on his rifle, and I had no doubt he would have used it if the situation escalated. Or maybe if he had any good excuse to do so.

Freitag, for her part, was motionless. She let Steph and Mandi blaze through their anger in silence. When they wound down, though, tears were running down her face.

Good! At least you feel guilty, bitch!

Then Freitag said something, maybe five or six detached words. Mandi exploded and screamed at her again. I don’t know what Mandi said. I’m no lip reader. But she repeated it several times. Harris gently pulled her away from Freitag.

I wanted to turn up the volume and listen but felt sure that that would cause a problem with my infected peanut gallery.

When Freitag spoke again, she gestured to her shirt, and opened it up. The buttons were gone. The T-shirt underneath was torn.

What the fuck?

Her garments had not been in that state when she ditched me. Had she stopped on the way back and been attacked?

Freitag proceeded and her tears flowed in earnest. She gestured dramatically.

Without the context of her words, it was impossible to know exactly what she was telling them, but it was clear that she was conveying a story of violence. She had been attacked.

Steph seemed to soften. Specialist
Harris’ face darkened. Mandi was having none of it.

Then it occurred to me. Her tears were a ruse, an act. She was selling them a load of bullshit about me. She was painting herself as a victim and me as some kind of villain.

I hated her.

In the end, I don’t know if they believed her, but they appeared to accept her story. What other choice did they have? I wasn’t there to present my side. Dalhover eyes still blazed, however, and his face was as cold as a chunk of weathered granite. He didn’t buy a word of Freitag’s bullshit.

Back on real-time video, I spent some time looking at the Whites in all of the common areas. Some were feeding, some lying down to sleep, others very disturbingly engaged in sexual acts. I hoped that my guess about body temperatures being too high to produce sperm was correct. I shuddered to think what would become of babies born to infected, brain-fried mothers with insufficient calories and nutrients. How many would be stillborn or deformed? Would the survivors grow up to rule the world in a giant, intellectually-backward step, or would they become bloody little dinners for the other infected?

Surprisingly, the garage remained secure, protecting a Humvee and several very expensive cars in climate-controlled sterility. That prompted me to search on the computer for a program to manage the keypad codes on the doors around the compound. Having already figured out how to access the menu system, it was easy to find. It appeared to be a web-based application, and to my greater surprise, when I opened the admin screen, the password had been cached. I got right in. From there, it was a snap to grant my ATM PIN number—one number I was sure not to forget—a virtual all-access pass to the compound. I didn’t have any plans about what to do with that access, or if anything useful would be left of the compound when the Whites finally cleared out. It was just an inexpensive hedge against uncertainties in the future.

When I looked at the camera that had the best view of the living room, I was taken aback and switched the video feed to the one of the big screens. My first impression of the scene was that of Caligula’s throne room. Like every other room in the house, there were Whites, eating, squabbling, and fucking. But there was more going on there. The couches were rearranged along the walls. On those couches lounged a few dozen Whites, all men. Around them, servile infected women attended. The coffee tables were pushed together at one end of the room, creating a dais. In the center of the dais was a single chair where a naked White with intense blue eyes sat, looking out over his court like…

Like…

Like King Monkey Fucker!

Was this guy the head White in the naked horde or just a successful opportunist riding a wave of emergent behavior? No, fuck the emergent behavior theory. Sure, there was probably enough of that going on, but it was the hand of the Smart Ones that multiplied the lethal effectiveness of the Whites. 

Whether right or wrong, I concluded that the bald-headed leader’s dumb ass was the reason all of these Whites, including me, were bald and naked.

Dammit, Zed!

I chastised myself for calling the dude a dumbass. He was at the head of an infected army tens of thousands strong, and very effectively destroying every pocket of human resistance in Austin. I was just a dipshit burglar with a stolen canoe, not in any position to besmirch King Monkey Fucker’s intelligence.

I hated him. But until that day in the future when I put a bullet into his squirmy, infected brain, I knew that I’d better respect him. And just as it had been when I was chained up by Nancy and Bubbles, intelligence and knowledge were my—were humanity’s—only advantages in fighting the Whites. After Jeff Aubrey’s lecture about the infected cannibalizing themselves, I had thought that time was on the side of humanity as well, but the Smart Ones were handily negating that advantage.

While thinking all of that through, the goals of my mission back into Sarah Mansfield’s house changed. I had learned what there was to be learned about Freitag and my friends. But
I was, for the moment, in a unique position to garner a wealth of intelligence about the naked horde and its leaders. I’d likely never get that kind of chance again. So I sat and I watched, and all of my new, bright White friends in the video room helped.

I fumbled with keyboard for a few minutes
to get the living room camera to pan and zoom. Once I had control, I started with King Monkey Fucker. I zoomed in and paid close attention. He sat still and confident. He definitely didn’t have that blank Forest Gump-like stare I’d seen on the faces of so many of the infected. He was watching those around him, and he was scheming.

A W
hite came running into the room. The lackeys on the couch showed no interest. The White jumped up to the dais and bent over to whisper into the bald-headed leader’s ear, exactly as Nancy and Bubbles had conversed with their collection of halfwits.

Eventually the conversation came to an end and the bald guy pointed to a couple of indolent courtiers, whispered a final instruction, and the runner went to the two Whites who had been pointed out. The runner passed along the whispered instructions, and the three of them got up and jogged out through the house’s broken front door.

Very curious about what instructions could have been passed along, I watched the various cameras to see where the trio went—out onto the catwalk, down the Humvee ladder, across the compound, over the fallen wall, through the cedars, and down the street. I lost track of them among the infected in the distance.

Hmm.

I didn’t have any faith in the efficiency of a command-and-control system based on whispers and runners, but the results couldn’t be disparaged. There just had to be a significant emergent behavior component driving the horde. It had to be that the bald-headed leader and the other Smart Ones were adept, talented even, at nudging the horde in the direction that most fit their desires.

And as happens so often, my imagination, built on a foundation of a thousand grossly unrealistic action movies, switched gears, and ginned up a plan to slaughter King Monkey Fucker, his courtiers, and a pretty good number of his horde. With some luck and the right wind direction, I might kill off the whole damn bunch.

I smiled.

Switching the camera feed on the main screen to one of those in the garage, I had a look around in there. I switched to another camera in the garage, spent a moment scanning, and found that which I hoped would meet my needs.

Excellent! I can make this work.

And not like last time! I didn’t want any suicidal Tarzan moves in my future. Luck had its limits.

After switching back to the main menu, I searched around and found the house’s climate control system. I discovered that I could control the water purification system. I saw the status of the battery levels. I could change the house temperature and change when the outdoor lights came on and off. I could even see historical energy consumption reports and projections based on the schedule changes I was about to make.

Pretty spiffy.

I experimented with the lighting on the roof, and found that turning the lights off and setting them to turn back on at any time in the future was as easy as a few clicks.

Good.

I turned them off and killed the water in the misters attached to the pergolas as well.

Before getting up to leave, I gave some long, hard thought to whether I should spend more time surveilling the Smart Ones in the living room. In the end, my anxiousness to implement my plan eclipsed my desire to learn more. Besides, they’d all be dead in a few hours anyway. I knew enough.

Turning toward the door of the video room as I prepared to stand, I was startled.

Standing just to my right and looking down at me were two tall, wiry Whites, one male and one female, Yin and Yang in a match set. They didn’t look happy. And they were looking down at me. That one look up at them was enough motivation to make me tightly grasp my knife and prepare to use it. I could spring up and jam the blade up into the base of the brain through the throat just under the jaw. That would get one of them. The question was, would the other attack me if I did so?

Deciding which one to kill first came down to the eyes. In spite of the gender difference, they were equally formidable in appearance, covered with lean, athletic muscle. The male looked a little dim behind the eyes. The female looked just as sharp as King Monkey Fucker.

That settled it.

Just as I was about to launch myself at her, the female raised a finger to the side of her head. She left it there for a second, then pointed it at her mouth and then pointed it at me.

What?

She repeated the series of gestures.

I glanced at the man. He just stared.

The girl did it again.

She was trying to communicate with me!

Not knowing exactly how to react, I finally chose to mimic her gesture.

In return, I got the faintest of smiles, but the smile was only on the girl’s lips. It didn’t touch her eyes. She stepped back, pushing a mesmerized White out of her way as she moved. She gestured with her hand, making it clear that she wanted me to come along.

I hesitated.

She took another step. The guy moved to stay by her. She gestured again.

Steeling my nerves for what might come next, I slowly stood and followed, keeping my grip tight on the handle of my knife. If they’d found me out and had decided to kill me out on the lobby floor, I wasn’t going to go easily.

The girl continued to push through the Whites. Soon, I was following her out of the video room and across the marble-floored foyer. She guided me toward the ladies’ restroom, and as we neared, I spotted in the corner what I could only guess were Specialist
Harris’ remains. In that bloody mess of clothing, boots, and  bones, I saw his rifle and his MOLLE vest. He’d never had a chance to reload when the Whites flooded down the stairs. Some of the magazines in that vest had to be full.

If I could make it work, those items were coming with me when I made my exit.

The girl and the guy went into the bathroom and I followed them in. Inside it was just like any public restroom you might come across. There were two sinks on one wall, along with a hand dryer. Two stalls were on the opposite wall.

The woman checked one stall to ensure that it was empty and then she led me—reluctantly I might add—into the other stall. Her man squeezed in with us. It was definitely not the kind of place for three people who, through choice or necessity, had given up on personal hygiene.

Unexpectedly, it was the guy who spoke first. He leaned in close, cupped his hands over my ear, and in a harsh whisper said, “Kill the him. Kill the her. Kill the all!”

What the fuck was he telling me to do?

He pulled his cupped hands away, leaving the stench of his rotting breath hanging in the air around my head. I leaned away in what little space was available. He looked at me with the same dim eyes I’d first seen in him. Did he expect something from me? I looked at the girl and she leaned in close with her own whisper. “Blade hand has talk?” It was a question.

Was it advantageous to answer or not?

She leaned in again, breathing out a rotten halitosis that was as bad as her twin’s. “Blade hand has talk?”

We were in a confined space, and I decided that if push came to shove, I could kill them both before they did me any serious harm. Why not see where this would go? I nodded.

The insincere smile turned up on the girl’s face again and she nodded at me.

I shrugged.

She nodded at me again.

I shrugged.
What?

She reached out and pulled my empty hand up to her ear. I figured that she wanted me to say something. That made me very nervous indeed. Nevertheless, I complied. Tiptoeing to reach her ear, I whispered, “Yes.”

When I pulled away, the guy leaned in close and cupped my ear. “Kill the him. Kill the her. Kill the all!”

Jesus, what a creepy bastard!

The girl leaned in. “More say.”

I was already impatient with this, but there was no way around it. I tiptoed up to her and asked, “More say? What do you want?”

When I pulled back, she looked astonished. She whispered to me again, with some urgency in her voice, “More say.”

I was perplexed. Their speech was obviously impaired by the virus. But how much could they understand? I whispered back, “I don’t understand what you want from me.”

Again she was astonished, and right away she whispered to me, “Many talks.”

The guy leaned in close. “Kill the him. Kill the her. Kill the all!”

I ignored him and thought about what the girl was asking or telling. I wasn’t sure. I whispered back. “I can talk. Can you understand me?”

The girl was perplexed. She whispered back, “Underpants?”

Say what?

“Kill the him. Kill the her. Kill the all!”

That dude needed to back off!

Inspiration struck. I tiptoed up to the girl. “You must follow me.”

She looked confused. She asked, “The Joel ass head?”

I nodded, and after a second of decoding, I confirmed with my whisper, “The Joel has said.”

Who the fuck is Joel?

She nodded at me and then whispered something to the male. Who knew what was going on in his insufficient maggot brain? But I think I had just put myself in charge.

With all three of us crowded into the stall, it was difficult getting the door back open. Some very close contact between smelly, sweaty bodies was required to get it done. I led the pair out of the stall, out of the restroom, across the messy lobby floor, and up the stairs. Wanting not to be seen by the Smart Ones in the living room, I led the pair through the dining room and then down the few stairs into the kitchen. Not going far enough into the kitchen so that I would be visible over the bar between it and the living room, I squatted down near a cabinet that I knew contained some pots and pans. Taking care not to clank them together, I withdrew the three largest pots and their companion lids.