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

With no pain and no noise, my feet
gently touched the ground. I let go of the rope, and feeling the slack, Dalhover and Harris pulled it quickly back up over the wall. I was back in Indian Territory.

S
ilent in the darkness, I looked around and listened. Just like at the front wall, the cedar forest was set back from the side wall by a fifteen-foot wide clear-cut buffer. The moonlight revealed no infected along its length. Out in the night, pops of gunfire mixed with sounds of coyotes, monkeys, and crows—the infected. White fists beating on our gate would draw all of those infected in if I didn’t solve that problem.

Nervousness sweat
ed my palms.

Stop
thinking! Start moving!

I crossed the
clear-cut band and stepped into the inky darkness among the cedars. My boots crunched too loudly across limestone gravel and I froze. Stealth was important, but the forest floor was mottled with shadows and pads of brown cedar needles that had accumulated in the low spots. Among the dark blotches, my feet needed to find those that were the rotting cedar needles. Those spots would be soft and silent.

Slowly, I made my way through the trees,
careful to avoid prickly pears and thorny vines, careful to keep close enough to the edge of the trees so that I could see the compound walls and maintain my bearings. Nervousness melted away as I sank into the task.

Upon reaching the corner of the compound
, I peered through the trees down to the front gate at the far end and made out the gray shapes of the raucous mob. The sound of their pounding fists and wails carried easily to me up the caliche road.

I thought for a second about taking a direct approach down along the wall
, but thought better of it. I didn’t want that Smart One on the rock to see me coming. But with at least a half dozen thorns of one type or another already sticking through my pants and irritating my skin, I decided that the stealthy approach through the woods was more trouble than it was worth. Instead of continuing through the woods, I followed the caliche road back out to the street and made a right onto the asphalt. That put me on a path parallel to the compound’s front wall. Once down the street, a short traipse through trees would bring me up behind the Smart One and the mob.

Sticking close to the edge of the road, I moved. T
here were seven or eight Whites far down the street who caught my attention. Movement in the trees across the street gave away the presence of at least ten more. Up the street behind me, I spotted a group of three, very interested in something moving amongst the cedars.

My machete found its way into my right hand and
I cradled my pistol comfortably in my left. Quick, deliberate steps moved me toward my goal. The Whites gave me little more than a passing glance. As far as they could tell, I was one of them. But what they couldn’t know was that I was walking death, hidden in plain sight among them. That thought brought with it a feeling of power. Nervousness, fear, and that sense of power made for a heady mix of emotions, and I had to suppress a laugh.

I
was a wicked pirate assassin on my way to kill.

A
rrgh!

My chosen spot in the cedars came up on the right. The sound of the
infected beating on the gate and yelping made it clear that I was close enough. Off of the asphalt and into the trees I went, back to looking for dark spots on the ground between the trees and avoiding the prickly pears. Far off to my left, I heard the sound of at least a couple of Whites crashing through the trees as well, chasing the sound at the gate.

T
he moonlight ahead of me grew brighter. The light tan color of the caliche road that ran along the outside of the wall became visible. The wall itself looked black and ominous. I spotted white arms, legs, and heads as I came to a stop at the edge trees.

I was at the point wher
e the road widened out to form the circular turning area in front of the gate. Not ten feet to my left, the Smart One still sat on her rectangular slab of limestone, scrutinizing. She was a small woman, just a hair over five feet tall, with the athletic look of an Olympic gymnast. She sat on the edge of the stone and dangled her feet, occasionally dragging her toes in the gravel. Her hands busied themselves in slow movements, fondling her fingers first on one hand and then the other, then starting over again. She was concentrating on the obstacle of the gate. Unlike the mob, she was silent.

She was thinking.

That was simply not acceptable. Death had arrived to reconcile that transgression.

I stepped out of the woods and meandered toward her, feigning attention on the mob.

She looked at me, but I didn’t look back. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw her facial expression change. I froze, but after a few moments, she looked back at the wall.

I
pretended to keep my attention on the mob as I slowly sidled to my left.

She looked at me again
, but this time, didn’t look away.

I focused on the Whites in front of me.

Still, she stared.

And stared.

Three or four minutes passed until I couldn’t take the staring anymore. I looked back at her. Her concentration was gone, replaced by blank curiosity, but those eyes, deep brown and indecipherable, were almost human. How much was going on inside that diseased brain?

I tried my best to
mirror her blank expression to no effect. Still, she stared.

I looked
back toward the mob, hoping she might do the same. After a minute, she did. She looked at the mob, the gate, the wall. Whether it was my imagination or not, her expression didn’t go back to the concentrated look she had before. Only curiosity was left.

She
was about four feet to my left, just beyond arm’s reach. With my machete, I knew I could spin and bring the blade around with enough force to cleave a mortal wound in her small body. She wouldn’t have a chance. By the time she realized what was happening, her flesh would be tearing open. The thought of it gave me pause, but she had to die. If she didn’t, Steph, Murphy, Mandi,—all of us—were at risk.

Pirate assassin.

Arrgh!

Like a striking
cobra—at least in my mind—I made my move. The blade came up and out. My arm pulled it down over my head as I stepped and spun with all the fury and speed that virus-infected muscles could deliver. But in those microseconds it took for my blade to reach the diminutive woman, she not only saw me move, but reacted fast enough to jump to her left in a blink. My blade hit rock, ringing loudly and throwing sparks.

Surprised by her speed and my failure, I
found my eyes glued in disbelief to the sight of the blade’s edge grating against stone, not buried in flesh.

But the mob, at least those in the back
, were moving, turning their attention to me. Things were going to get very interesting very fast. I looked down the length of my blade and followed it up toward the gymnast. Her momentum was still carrying her to her left and she was trying to catch her balance, in a weird bit of awkwardness that seemed out of place for her apparent athleticism. Then I spotted it.

Blood.

She teetered two steps further from me, then another.

The blood was on her arm, halfway between the shoulder and elbow. Lots of blood.
And her shirt was cut across the ribs. There was blood there too.

When s
he came to a stop ten feet away she stared at me with a look of horror that told me she understood, with every bit of imagination and intellectual abstraction, exactly what was coming next in all of its gory, painful, finality.

A White from the mob on my right screamed and started to move. Another scream of jubilation followed and was joined by
more.

For an impossibly long time, the gymnast eyed me, accusing, hating. Then she ran. Eight or nine Whites
with blood in their eyes chased her into the dark cedars—hounds on the hunt.

Full of ambivalence and remorse, I ran after.

Finish what you start!

She ha
s to die!

Right?

On the heels of the other White chimps on the hunt, we screamed with one voice. We were a pack.

Branches snapped. Grunts. Breathing. Underbrush mashed underfoot.

The girl stayed in the trees and veered to her right, away from the road. She was prey. All she thought was
escape, survive
.

Something in the sound changed up ahead.

Struggle in the trees.

That was quick!

The girl was caught.

Screaming!
Not the pursuing Whites, but the girl.

The hair on my neck stood. My blood flowed ice cold. It sounded like murder.
The wolves had caught Little Red Riding Hood and were eating her alive.

I stopped and watched the
last Whites ahead of me disappear into the darkness.

The girl’s voice didn’t sound like that of an animal.
It sounded human.
She
sounded human.

“No!”
A voice ripped through the black forest in a bloody gurgle, then squelched down to nothing.

Only the
sounds of the beasts remained, triumphal, snarling at one another, staking their claim at the kill.

“
No!”

Is that what I heard?

Like a jackboot kicking me in the head, a pariah of a thought hit my brain. What if she wasn’t a Smart One? What if she was a Slow Burn, just like me? What if she had simply been wondering how she could get inside and join us?

What if?

What if?

She screamed just a like a normal human.

What if?

No!

Fuck!

In the blackest of moods, I marched down the center of the street, the tip of my blade still red with the gymnast
’s blood. A long helix of Whites was rounding a corner far ahead. But my thoughts were elsewhere.

Some thoughts should never be conceived. Some questions should never be asked
, because they have no answer, and the questions themselves serve only to haunt with grinding guilt and second-guessing.

“
No!
” That’s what she screamed, but it couldn’t have been.

I simply had to remember it differently.

Repression is your friend.

I had black holes aplenty in my heart for tossing
in such memories. I just needed to keep shoving until this fucking memory let go and fell.

I angled toward a pair of Whites squatting beside
a bed full of dead brown flowers beneath three enormous oaks in the front yard of an oversized, overpriced house, with ridiculously oversized white columns holding up a stupid little roof over a just-pissed-me-off-for-being-there front porch. When I stepped off of the asphalt and into the grass, I had their complete attention. They were both disheveled, with blood on their shirts and smears on their faces, indisputable evidence of what they were; mindless, murderous, monsters. Their death would cleanse the guilt I felt over the gymnast.

But she had to be a monster
, too. She had to be.

I raised my machete to do the bloody work that was only necessary
to rip the memory of that gymnast’s screams from my mind and push the whole episode into a forgettable black Hell. But the pair wasn’t mindless enough. I don’t know what they saw or what they deduced, but just before I got within machete range, they both jumped to their feet, ran across the yard, and around the corner, casting furtive glances behind.

I
didn’t chase.

Fuck.

I squatted down beside the bed of dead flowers and stared at the grass.

Did she really scream
“No”?

Should I have maybe made a sign with my hands? I didn’t know sign language. A thumbs up? An okay sign? How do you communicate without talking?

Repression skills, don’t fail me now.

I looked around. The next house over
had an SUV sitting in the driveway. My plan was to blow it up. Well, not that one in particular, just the first one I came to. And that one was first. I’d need to break into the house and get a towel or a pillowcase or something to stuff into the gas tank. I could light it and run off. The explosion would draw the mob away from our gate. Hopefully.

It was
a simple plan.

But as I sat there looking at the SUV, I started to ask myself some questions. Does it really work when you blow up a car like that? In all honesty, I didn’t know. It always worked in the movies. But in the movies, machine guns never ran out of bullets when a thousand
monsters where running at you on the top of a parking garage. I realized that I seriously needed to disabuse myself of any truisms that I’d learned from my favorite action heroes.

I didn’t have any experience with blowing up cars
. It made no sense to bet my life on getting it right on the first try.

What else
,
then?

Could I puncture that tank and then torch the leaking gasoline? Sure, but then there was the noise of puncturing the tank, noise that would be loudest when I was lying o
n my back halfway under a car, a very vulnerable position when making appetizing sounds among the ravenous predators.

No, that was a bad idea. Kick it to the curb.

What else?

I could start the engine, put the car in gear, and let
it roll out into the street. There was little doubt that would attract the attention of every White in sight. But would it make enough of a commotion that the mob would be drawn away from the gate? I looked up the street and tried to gauge the distance to the gate hidden among the cedars. It was at least a hundred yards, maybe a couple of hundred.

The risk
-to-reward ratio on that plan was too high.

What about the horn?

Hmm.

Noisy?
Yes.

Easy getaway?
Yes.

Well, probably.

But could I wedge something in the horn button to make it sound? I thought about the way that car horns were constructed. Sure, in an older car where there was a horn button of some sort, that idea might work, but how many modern cars had the horn button embedded with the airbag beneath the vinyl in the center of the steering wheel? Damn near all of them. So, wedging something in the horn was a crap plan.

I looked down the street. The helix of Whites had filled the
road. If they kept coming, they’d soon join those at the gates.

I looked at the SUV for a moment longer
, and then something obvious occurred to me.

Duh!

I looked around to see where the closest Whites were. There were many more around than I felt comfortable with, but the nearest was far enough away that my inspiration might bear riskless fruit. I pushed my pistol into its holster and put the machete into the scabbard I had rigged on my back. A hunk of limestone the size of a soccer ball, decorative, I guess, lay among the brown stalks in the flowerbed. I walked over and squatted down to it.
Lift with your legs
, the voice in my head told me. So I did, with a grunt. With another grunt, I pushed it up to rest on my shoulder, with both hands holding it steady.

Here goes nothing!

A few slow steps and then three quick ones toward the SUV gave me all the momentum I needed. With another grunt, I launched the stone toward the driver’s side window. The glass shattered, rocking the SUV back and forth. A siren under the hood bleated overbearingly. Without slowing, I ran past the SUV and around the corner of the garage to get myself out of sight. Best not to be associated with the noisy car. In the infected mind, noisy meant tasty. I had no plans to be tasted.

Once past the house and out of sight behin
d a large shrub, I looked back. The Whites I could see were running toward the car. At least six, then nine, then a bunch. The car very cooperatively switched to a different, but just as obnoxious, noise.

Ha, bitch!

I skirted around the back of the house to put some distance between me and the car, then made my way through the cedars again until I came to another yard of mowed, dead, grass. My machete and pistol were back in my hands. They felt comfortable there, necessary extensions of the new me.

The yard contained a big wooden play-scape
and a big stone-covered patio with lots of outdoor furniture, but thankfully nothing that moved. I made my way out to the front yard, and as I rounded the house, the long helix of Whites that had been down at the end of the street were winding their way past, heading for the squawking SUV. There were at least twenty Whites already on the car, doing what they could to expose the tasty morsels that just had to be inside.

I stepped up onto a big terracotta
flowerpot to get a view up the street. A steady trickle of infected were coming out of the cedars up around where the gate to Sarah Mansfield’s compound stood. The plan appeared to be working. A short distance down the road, I spotted another car, much newer and much smaller. If my luck held, it also had an obnoxious alarm. And that was the updated plan—smash, wail, repeat. Work my way down the street.

To my surprise, the plan worked w
ithout incident. I tripped the alarms on five cars, the furthest a mile down Mt. Bonnell Road and around a sharp bend. At that point, the street behind me was overrun with Whites, manic in their search for edible people in and around the bleating cars.

It was time to head home.

As promised, Dalhover and Specialist Harris were waiting for me when I arrived back at the wall. The knotted sheet-rope hung down from the top of the wall and I barely had to expend any effort as they dragged me up. The wide arc of the coppice worked in our favor for that.

Leaving our makeshift ladder in place, we headed back inside.

“I didn’t check the front gate,” I said. “Did it work?”

Dalhover gave me a nod and the faintest of smiles. High praise from him.

“Any trouble?” Specialist Harris asked.

I shrugged. What was there to say about that?

We climbed up a wall at the back of one of the tiers. I checked my watch then looked up at the sky. It was just starting to turn gray in the east.

Finally, the end of a long,
long, fucked up night.