Slow Burn (Book 4): Dead Fire (5 page)

Sleep came easier and deeper than I ever would have guessed possible. I didn’t dream. I didn’t stir.

When I woke
again, laying flat in a recliner in the theater, the only sounds were those of Murphy’s deep breathing and Mandi’s light snoring. I checked my watch. It was after nine, and I was starved. Quietly, so as not to disturb the sleepers, I got up and exited the theater, visited the restroom to take care of necessary business, and threw some water on my face.

In the mirror, I looked thinner and
couldn’t help but run a hand over the hollows in my cheeks. My hair wasn’t to the unruly stage yet, though I’d need a haircut soon. Well, I’d want a haircut soon. Wants and needs were different now. At least living in the Mansfield mansion afforded me the luxury of washing my hair and shaving every day. Electricity and water made personal hygiene so easy.

Feeling rested
, but a touch groggy, I was wondering what troubles the new day would bring when I came out of the restroom and walked up to the theater-style snack bar, behind which Sergeant Dalhover had positioned himself with one foot propped up on a shelf, savoring a cigarette. He was watching across the foyer where Freitag was having a tense but hushed conversation with Steph. Steph was inside the video room. Freitag was in the doorway.

I leaned on the snack bar counter and gave Dalhover a nod. I asked, “Any update on Murphy?”

Dalhover shook his head. “Is he still unconscious?”

“Yeah
.”

Dalhover shook his head again. “It would be better if he was awake.”

Of course!
I nodded. “What does Steph think?”

“
She says we won’t know until he wakes up.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s only been, what
, nine or ten hours? That’s not abnormal, right?”

Dalhover’s eyebrows knit. “More
like twenty-four, Rip Van Winkle.”

“What?”

Dalhover tapped a finger on the face of my watch. “P.m., not a.m.”

I looked at him like he’d lost his senses.

“You slept all day.”

“Wow.” I rubbed my hands over my face and shook my head
. I looked back at Dalhover, still not sure whether to believe him.

“Go up top and look outside. It’s dark again.”

“I guess I must have needed the sleep.”

Dalhover nodded and reached under the counter
. He pulled out a box of chocolate candies from inside the glass display case and laid them in front of me. “You should eat something.”

Chocolate candies for breakfast late in the evening.
Hmm.

Dalhover read the look on my face and said, “Specialist Harris is in the kitchen making dinner for everyone. He says he was trained as a chef.”

“I think I’ll wait for that, then.”

“He just went upstairs. We were waiting for you and Mandi to get up before we ate
dinner, but we’re all hungry. Nevertheless, it’ll probably be a bit before it’s done. Eat the candy.”

He was right. “Could you give me a Coke
, too?”

Dalhover scooped up a cup full of ice and drew me a soda out of the fountain while I opened up the box of
chocolate covered nuts. Over my shoulder, Freitag was getting animated with her irritation, and I turned to look, a little curious about what kind of bug she had up her ass. I was starting to think she probably had a whole crop of cultivated ass-bugs.

I thanked Dalhover for the snack and then he fell silent, watching the exchange between Freitag and Steph. I took my ho
rs d’oeuvres, crossed the foyer, and planted myself on the floor with my back against the glass wall of the wine cellar.

Using
one of Sarah Mansfield’s expensive, organically grown, hand-picked-by-a-happy-farmer-on-a-sustainable-farm Egyptian cotton towels, I started to clean the crud off of my machete blade. After that, I planned to spend some time cleaning up everything in my kit, at least until dinner was ready. I thought about asking Dalhover to give me some training on how to care for my rifle and my pistol.

But as I sat there
wiping and re-wiping the nicked blade, I couldn’t help but see that bird man’s body was still lying next to the wall across the foyer, and in spite of the sugar and caffeine working their way into my bloodstream, that dragged my mood down.

Becoming t
ransfixed on the amorphous, blanketed lump, I slowly wiped back and forth on the blade that had killed the man inside. I tried hard to put the memory of that clusterfuck out of my mind. I tried to think of something good to replace it with. My success at getting the Whites away from the gates the night before felt good to think about for nearly a whole second. But that led, of course, to memories of the
no
-screaming gymnast who’d paid for our safety with her life.

Why were those memories even back?

Repress!

Repress!

I gave nothingness a shot. The oblivious serenity of an empty mind, that’s what I longed for. How good would it be to shed all of my messy memories and live for a day in Russell’s blank mind?

A gray void swallowed my thoughts
, and for a little while, all that existed in my world was the zen of a clean blade. There was no dead bird man. There were no harsh, hushed arguments across the room. There were no cannibals with virus-laden brains.

S
omewhere in my nothingness, I started to feel okay.

Dalhover kick
ing a booted foot that was splayed out in front of me brought it all to an end. Awareness of reality was back. I looked up at him, too disappointed to be startled. I didn’t ask why he was getting my attention, I simply let the question hang in the expression on my face.
Yes?

Dalhover squatted down and leaned in close, his tobacco breath assaulting my senses again.

Good
Lord!
There had to something going on in his mouth besides just poor dental hygiene.

I looked past him. I no longer saw Freitag in the door of the video room. I didn’t see anyone in the foyer.

“We need to get rid of the body.” Dalhover tilted his head slightly in the direction of the bird man.

“Okay.” I quickly deduced
that I was going to have a role in that chore.

“Freitag wants to bury him outside.” Dalhover shook his head. His gesture made that idea se
em like the stupidest thing he’d heard in a while.

“The noise of digging might bring more infected in?” I guessed.

Dalhover nodded.

“What did you do with the other bodies?” I asked.

Dalhover knew I was talking about Sarah Mansfield, her son, and the security guards. Dalhover, Murphy, and Mandi had gotten rid of those when I was passed out on the couch in the first few days of our residence in Sarah’s house. He answered, “The river.”

“You pitched them in the river?” The tone of my voice maybe contained a little antipathy for the idea.
“What about the water supply for those downriver?”

Dalhover looked at me expressionlessly.

Of course, it was the only idea that made sense. The bodies needed to go. It was the least bad of several options. I nodded toward the dead man. “Is that what we’re going to do with him?”

Dalhover nodded.

“Me?” I asked. “You want me to do it?”

“You and Freitag,” Dalhover confirmed.

Good, she could at least help me with her dead brother-in-law or whatever the fuck he was to her. “What about Specialist Harris?”

Dalhover’s face went expressionless again. He shook his head.

It occurred to me why. I was a little slow of late. I wondered if the virus was starting its grizzly work on my synapses. “You don’t want them both down in the boathouse alone, do you?”

Dalhover didn’t respond
, but his lack of response was enough to confirm it.

“You don’t trust them not to run of
f with our boat, do you?” I figured I’d push it. I already had a strong distaste for Freitag, but I still wanted to hear Dalhover’s reasons. “Why?”

Dalh
over played the blank face on me again.

I persisted. “Why? I’m not saying I won’t do it. But I need to know why you don’t trust Specialist Harris and Freitag.”

Dalhover looked over each of his shoulders and seemed to have some difficulty dredging up a voice. “It’s her. Something’s not right about her.”

I raised my eyebrows in question.

Dalhover just looked at me.

He knew what I was asking
, but he just didn’t like to offer up anything voluntarily. “What exactly is not right about her?”

Dalhover’s lips creased shut for a moment before he said, “I don’t think she’s military.”

“What?” I sat up straight. “Why?”

“Just things.”

“Like?”

“She doesn’t speak like she’s in the Army. She doesn’t stand like it.” Dalhover shook his head. “She doesn’t act like it.”

What the fuck?

“Why would she lie about that?” I wondered aloud. “And Harris?”

Dalhover nodded, but his face looked troubled.

“You think he is military
, but you don’t trust him, do you?” I thought about that for a second. “That’s why you want me to go down with Freitag. In case something bad happens, you think I can handle the chick but you can handle Harris.”

Dalhover gave me a nearly imperceptible nod.

“He’s twice your size.”

Dalhover’s blank facial expression made it clear that that wasn’t a problem. “Can you handle the girl?”

Fuck you!
“Yes.”

“Take the body down. Let her say whatever she needs to say. Put it in the river
, then come back up. Don’t dick around. Got it?”

“Yes. Are you going to confront Freitag about the military thing
?”

Dalhover shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Why?”

“Captain Leonard chose not to
.”

“Why?” I was a little miffed about that.

Dalhover looked a tad angry. He was miffed because I’d questioned a decision that came down the chain of command.

Then it occurred to me. “Steph wants to wait until
Freitag has time to get over the death of what’s-his-name.” I nodded toward the dead guy. “Can we have dinner first?”

“It’s not ready yet.”

Freitag had
his feet. I had the other end as we carried bird man down the tunnel to the boathouse. It was tense, nearly silent work, with Freitag spitting just enough words to facilitate the task. At least the guy wasn’t heavy.

Once in the boathouse, with dim moonlight reflecting through the open door, Freitag
stared at sparkles on the surface of the water and scrutinized the dark cedar forests covering the hills on the far bank. Somewhere in that reverie, her face changed. What had been a bronze-faced Medusa morphed into a young, friendless girl. “We can’t leave him in the river,” she said, softly, almost to herself.

The change was disarming.
Sure, she’d shown me nothing but repugnance since entering the compound, but she also had to watch somebody close to her slowly die a grisly death. How would that kind of thing affect me, I wondered? Somewhere in that thought process I concluded that only thing that made sense, was that Dalhover’s mistrust had been misplaced. He was just a sour old man who saw in others the empty disappointments of his own life.

That was something to remember for the future.

Still, I didn’t see any ready alternative to ditching the bird man’s body in the cold, black water.

I bent my knees slowly and Freitag picked up on the body language
, and we lay bird man on the pier beside the ski boat. I looked around the boathouse, as though a solution to the dilemma might be hanging on the walls among the skis and water toys.

Ropes!

We had ski rope hanging on the walls. Good to know. Good to remember that they were there. How handy would rope become in our future?

But back to the task at hand. I cast an exploratory glance at Freitag and she was looking at me.
She didn’t appear ready to cry, but she was sad, and looking like she had something to say. I ventured a question, “What are you thinking?”

“I can’t put him in the water.”

I nodded, but still had no alternative. So I listened.

T
entatively, Freitag asked, “Can we take the boat out and maybe bury him in somebody’s yard?”

Absolutely not!
Conciliatorily, I said, “I… We can’t risk being out there, digging a hole. It would attract attention.” She knew exactly what kind of attention that would be.

She looked down at the body
, then squatted and lay her hands on the legs. She looked up at me and I felt her pain. “Please.”

I looked out into the darkness
and thought about it. Was there something I could do to assuage the guilt that was moldering on my soul? “Maybe… Look, we can’t bury him. But you know what? Maybe we can take him down the river a bit and find a peaceful place to leave his body.”

“Not in the water,” she pleaded.

“A peaceful place on the shore somewhere,” I offered.

She nodded and I felt a little better about the situation. Dalhover wouldn’t be pleased
, but fuck him. He wasn’t my dad and sure wasn’t my fucking boss. “Let’s get him in the boat.”

We worked together
quietly to lay bird man on the couch across the stern of the boat. I didn’t resent the silence anymore. I understood—I thought—and respected it. Time for logistics. “When we get where we’re going, it’ll be better if I take him ashore. There’s less risk that way.”

“Thank you,” Freitag gave me a doleful look. “I was afraid of running from those…”

“They don’t generally bother me. I’ll take care of him. Have you driven a ski boat before?”

Freitag looked at the controls, a steering wheel, a throttle
, and a couple of gauges. “It doesn’t look hard.”

“It’s not. The two big things to keep in mind are first that the boat doesn’t stop on a dime. I
n that way, it’s not like driving a car. Secondly, the engine is noisy, like a hot rod. Don’t rev it or every White on the river will come out to see what’s up.”

“Okay.”

“Take the helm. I’ll loose the lines and push her out. We’ll drift down a bit before we start the engine.”

Freitag looked at me with a question on her face.

“It reduces the chance that anybody will see us coming and going from the boathouse. If they don’t know we’re here, then we have a better chance of keeping our presence here hidden and we’ll have better chance of staying alive. Know what I mean?”

Freitag have me a nod and took her seat.

I took the ropes off of the cleats, pushed the boat and then jumped onto the deck. With an oar, I pushed the boat out into the river.

Moments later, the boathouse
door was closed again and we were drifting down the green-black river, listening to the night sounds. I made myself comfortable in the passenger seat and stared up at the stars. Clouds passed in front of the moon, catching a glowing sliver lining as they went by.

Freitag wasn’t able to appreciate the calm
as we drifted down the center of the river. She kept staring back at the body, playing what-if games in her head and grieving.

I checked my watch
for no other reason than new habit. I looked around at both shorelines. “What was his name?”

Softly, Freitag answered, “Harvey Marin.”

“You said he was a painter.”

Freitag nodded.

“What kinds of things did he paint?”

She
thought about that for a moment. “Do you know what Día de los Muertos is?”

“The Day of the Dead, right?”

Freitag nodded but didn’t take her eyes off of Harvey. “He painted Día de los Muertos art. Big flowery pieces. He sold them at festivals and a couple of shops downtown. He didn’t make a lot of money, but he made my aunt happy.”

I looked down at the deck of the boat.
I thought an apology, no matter how sincerely expressed, would sound more insulting than remorseful. I stayed silent.

Some houses drifted past on the south s
hore and I let the silence smooth the abrasive edges off of my guilt. Harvey was dead because he fucked up and paid the price for that. I thought about Murphy and wondered if he was going to make it. I absently wondered how Russell would handle if it Murphy died. As my mind wandered, I thought about that day in the living room when I came to on the couch the day after the giant security guard nearly smashed my skull. I thought about how lovely Steph looked as she was walking toward the kitchen to make me breakfast, shiny red hair and clean clothes, a normal woman in a normal world.

I wondered if Murphy was right about her and
me. There was something there, I felt certain about that. But that something was hard to define.

Freitag interrupted
my thoughts when she asked, “They call you Zed?”

I nodded.

“Is that what you want to be called?”

I shrugged. I’d never really thought about it.
It’s just what my friends have called me since forever ago. It fit well enough. “And you?”

“Specialist Freitag,
” she answered.

“Do you have a first name?”

“Dianna. What’s your real name?”

“It doesn’t matter. It sucks anyway.”

Freitag looked over at me. “I don’t like my name either. I prefer Specialist Freitag.”

“
Dianna is a good name. Can I just call you Freitag?”

“If you want.”

It seemed like as good a time as any, and something needed to be said. “I didn’t mean to kill Harvey.”

“Like
Sergeant Dalhover said, it was a bad situation. Things got out of control. Bad things happened.”

I nodded.

“We were all under a lot of stress. It was… it was…” Freitag couldn’t find the words.

I helped her out. “We’ve all been there. It’s intense. We’re all fighting for our lives. None of us are used to it.”

“No,” Freitag agreed.

I pointed to a covered dock on the other side of the river. “
We shouldn’t go much further. How about that place over there?”

Freitag stood up in the boat and looked around, taking her time to see every detail. “Can we go a little further?”

I nodded, thinking that she might have to reset her expectations. She wasn’t going to find the perfect spot. Nevertheless, I did want to smooth things over and I thought I could afford a little extra time and risk to do so.

Freitag sat up on the back of the skipper’s seat with her feet on the
seat cushion and watched the shoreline, scrutinizing every house that passed.

I looked back and forth from shore to shore,
focusing for movement in the black shadows under the trees, movement that seemed to be getting more and more frequent. Or perhaps my imagination was starting to see things in the blackness simply because I was looking so intently at it.

Finally, Freitag pointed to a particular house on the south bank and said, “There.”

We’d been drifting the whole time and there was no good reason to start the boat now. So together, Freitag and I paddled over to the almost-boathouse and up next to the dock. I hopped out and looped the bow line around a cleat on the dock and handed the rope to Freitag. “Here’s the deal. Don’t tie the rope. If you need to make a break, just drop the rope and push the boat out into the water. The Whites don’t swim. Start the engine once you’re out in the water. Go past our boathouse then drift back down in silence. Got it?”

“I won’t leave you here,” Freitag told me perfunctorily.

“No heroics are necessary. If you see me running this way with them after me, then yeah, it’d be cool if you waited. But if you’re out here alone and they come, just go. I’ll be okay. They generally leave me alone unless I do something that identifies me as normal, like talk, or shoot a gun, or start up a car. They get really excited about that kind of shit.”

Freitag gave me a nod.
“Because you look just like them?”

“Yeah,” I answered
. “If you have to bail out, I’ll just steal another boat and head upriver when things calm down. Like I said, they’ll probably leave me alone. I’ll probably be fine. There’s no point in endangering yourself for nothing.”

“You’re the boss.”

“No, Steph is the boss.” Sometimes, my urge to be contrary just can’t be contained. “I’ll leave Harvey up there in that flower garden by the house. It looks like a nice, peaceful place. Cool?”

“Yes,” Freitag agreed
. “That’s a nice place. Thank you.”

I nodded. “After I take care of Harvey, if the house looks empty, I may do a quick check in the pantry. I mean, we’re here already and we have more mouths to feed.”

“How long will you be inside?” Freitag was looking up and down the river.

I looked up at the house
. “Ten minutes at most.”

“And if there are infected inside?”

I shrugged. “I’ll skip it. Or we can skip it all together and go back and get some dinner while it’s still warm.”

“No,” Freitag told me
. “We’re here. Like you said, we’ll need the food.”

“
Are we cool?”

“Yes.”

I turned to look at the property and gave it one slow scan. Satisfied that we were safe, I worked with Freitag to get Harvey out of the boat. Thankfully, his body was light enough that I was able to carry it awkwardly over my shoulder.

Leaving Freitag behind with the boat, I walked quietly up the pier and onto
a thick green lawn that sloped gently down to the river’s edge. Giant oaks supported a dappled canopy of dark green leaves scattered above like clouds. Twenty-foot crepe myrtles bloomed brilliant pink even in the darkness. A meandering stone path edged with monkey grass led to a lush flower garden, still alive in moist soil so close to the river. I kneeled, and as gently as I could, I laid Harvey on his back amongst the brightly colored blooms.

I stood up
straight and took a long look down at Harvey’s blanket-wrapped corpse among the flowers. I felt a pang of envy. In the comforting darkness, in a fragrant bed of rich color, Harvey was at peace. Freitag was right. This spot was better than the river.

T
here were no words to be said for Harvey’s impromptu disposal, not by me anyway, so I said none. I waited a silent moment longer, whether to make myself of Freitag feel better, I didn’t know.

Such was Harvey Marin’s
funeral. I could risk no more time. There were monsters about.

I
looked around the grounds to see what I could see in the darkness. I heard noises. The infected were near, but nothing moved save the sway of branches in the light breeze. I glanced back to Freitag. She stood as I’d left her, a Hispanic Barbie in frumpy fatigues, holding a rope, waiting in the boat.

The
risk of running a quick pantry raid seemed small. We had the time for it. Why not?

I followed a meandering stone path around the edge of the garden.

The house was old, probably built in the fifties or sixties on a middle-class income before Austin had sprawled out into the western hills and drove the value of even modest lake front properties into the millions of dollars. It was a single-story structure with clapboard siding, a shingle roof, and one of those enormous single-pane living room windows that had been so popular back in those days.