Slow Burn (Book 7): City of Stin (22 page)

Grace’s announcement that she was thinking about going to College Station didn’t matter much to me. I barely knew her. I barely knew Fritz and Gabe. If I’d said I barely gave a shit, that would have been an exaggeration.

“Do you think they’re being honest?” she asked me.

I leaned an elbow on a shelf and said, “I think everybody lies about nearly everything.”

Grace shook her head and looked disappointed.

“But,” I continued, “I think it’s always been that way. Back in the old life, lies didn’t carry huge consequences so we just lived with them. Now, it’s different. When somebody deceives you, you end up dead.”

Murphy laughed.

I looked down to him and Jazz standing at the end of the aisle.

“See,” Murphy said, pointing at me and talking to Jazz. “That’s what I was talking about. When he goes into professor mode you might as well get a pillow. You can tell by that tone in his voice. It sounds like there’s a corncob in his butt.”

“Did you find anything good?” Grace asked.

Murphy slipped his backpack off his shoulder and held it open to show a load of cans and jars. He grinned. “This is my new favorite store.” Looking at Grace he asked, “What’s he lecturing you about?”

“Liars.” Grace smiled. “I was asking him if he trusted Fritz and Gabe. He went on about lying like he was the guy who discovered that humans don’t tell the truth sometimes.”

Murphy laughed loudly. “Oh my God. You already know what he’s like. I’ve been listening to this shit for like three months.”

Jazz giggled, looked at me and said, “What I heard sounded smart.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”

Grace looked at Murphy and said, “I’m thinking about going with them to College Station.”

Murphy nodded and put on a thoughtful face.

“If you go,” said Jazz, “I’m going too.”

Shaking her head, Grace said, “You don’t have to go just because I am. It could be dangerous. No, it
will
be dangerous. We don’t know these guys.”

“I don’t have any friends here.” Jazz looked down at the floor like she was ashamed of what she’d just admitted. “Just you.”

“You think about it,” said Grace. She looked back up at Murphy. “Well?”

“Man,” he said, “I don’t know. I hate to say it, but honestly, I’m with Zed on this kind of shit. People do some crappy stuff. As far as I can tell, Fritz and Gabe don’t have any motivation to lie. I’d be inclined to think Fritz is telling the truth. I don’t know if what they’re doing is worth the time or whether they can get it done. I know he believes it. I think he’s honest. If he was selling used cars, I’d sure buy one.” He looked at me. “What do you think, man? I mean without all the professor shit?”

I shrugged and looked back up at Murphy. “You about covered it, I guess. I pretty much think the same thing.”

Grace put a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Why?” asked Murphy. “I know why the Valiant Null Spot crusades across Texas but what’s your deal?”

“The Valiant Null Spot?” I asked. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

Laughing, Murphy shook his head. He looked at each of the girls. “He’s got a thing about saving people and doing the right thing. I only hang out with him because he’s lucky as hell and he’s invincible. Those are his superpowers.”

Grace and Jazz were laughing by then. Grace said, “You guys are a hoot. I can’t remember the last time I actually laughed.”

I smiled and chuckled along. Why fight it? I said, “Murphy’s a comedian. That’s why I keep him around.”

When the laughing stopped, Murphy looked at us and said, “We should check and see if anybody heard us.”

He headed off to check the escalator by the deli.

I nodded at Grace and we waded back through the empty boxes. “We’ll check the stairs.”

When we were passing through the wine section, Grace said, “The Valiant Null Spot? He really gave you a superhero name?”

“It’s been amusing him since he woke up from the fever.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.” I headed down the cosmetic aisle that ran off in a direction perpendicular to the path of the protein bar aisle.

“Not nothing.” She punched me lightly in the arm. “Spill it. You’ve been pretending like you don’t care about people or anything and now I find out that’s not true. What’s the story?”

“You’ll have to ask Murphy,” I said. “As far as I know I’m just doing what anybody would have done.”

“Like what?” she persisted.

“You know,” I said. “You’re still alive. You’ve been through plenty of shit. Sometimes you have to make some choices.”

“Choices to help other people?” asked Grace. “That’s what it sounds like.”

Stopping and wheeling around to face her, I snapped. “And every time it turns to shit. Every single time. I’m not a fucking hero. I’m a bad luck charm who doesn’t mind doing all the evil shit I have to do to get from day to day. And I’m fucking good at it.”

We reached the staircase and I leaned over the rail to look and listen.

Grace whispered, “I think we’re safe. I don’t hear any more coming.”

Leaning back, I nodded.

“Why does he stay with you?” Grace asked me. “If you’re such a bad luck charm, feeling sorry for yourself so much, why doesn’t he ditch you?”

“Are you some kind of psychologist?” I asked.

“High school geometry teacher,” she said. “Along with algebra and trig. I’ve seen spoiled rich kids like you pull that sorry crap in my classes since you were putting your hands in your diapers and playing with your own shit.”

“I don’t feel sorry for myself,” I told her. “Look. I did a lot of crazy shit to help people when I thought I could do some good. I’m angry because most of those people ended up dead anyway. I’m angry at myself, not sorry.”

Shaking her head, Grace said, “Do you think you’re the only one? All of us have done good things to help each other and most of us are dead.” She pointed out through the glass wall facing West Austin. “All of those houses are empty except for corpses and Crazies. We’re all trying, Zed. We’re all failing, over and over and over. Despite that, you’re still here. I’m still here. Jazz and Murphy are here. We have to be doing something right. You can be a pussy if you want to—”

I laughed out loud.

“What?” she asked. “What’s so funny?”

“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting a geometry teacher to have the vocabulary of a sailor and call me a pussy.”

“Oh, God,” she said with a smile. “I’m stuck with a fifteen-year-old.”

“Pretty much.” How could I disagree? I’d been me my whole life.

Grace planted herself in front of me and said, “Don’t give up, Zed. Not now. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for Murphy. It’s clear to everybody that he loves you.”

“What?” Sure, I wanted to spin it into a joke. That was the easiest way to deflect.

“Grow up,” she told me seriously. “He can’t lose you. You can’t lose him. At least stay in the game for that.”

Having slept that day while the sun was up, I was wide awake, even though we were in the dead silent hours of the morning well before the sun was due to rise. We’d been back from the run to Whole Foods for a couple of hours. Most of the residents in the power plant were sleeping. A few stood watch.

With Murphy along, we made our way to the upper floor of the power plant and climbed through a broken window up onto some giant piece of machinery on the north side of the building beside the smokestacks—all left there, perhaps, to keep the character of the old building and drive up rents with a steampunk appearance. The silhouette of the Austin skyline stood against the stars. Far to the northeast, lights glowing on the roof of the basketball arena made it pretty clear that Baird’s helicopter assholes were still around.

Murphy asked, “How long will the car hold a charge just sitting out on the street?”

“I don’t know.” In fact, it wasn’t something I’d thought about. Would the batteries slowly drain whether the car was plugged in or not?

“What do you think about Grace and Jazz going off to College Station with Fritz and Gabe?”

“She’s a do-gooder,” I said. “She feels compelled to go.”

“Like a Mrs. Null Spot?” Murphy laughed.

“There’s no Mrs. Null Spot.” I shook my head. “Besides, she’s too old for me.”

“Well, maybe Null Girl, you know, kind of a sidekick role.”

Flatly, I said, “I thought
you
were my sidekick.”

“No, man,” said Murphy. “You’ve got that wrong. You’re Mighty Murphy’s surly sidekick.”

“Surly?”

“Don’t be a denier, man,” said Murphy. “If you’re going to be a surly little prick the rest of your life, at least be honest about it.”

I shook my head and muttered, “Not you, too.”

“Seriously, man,” said Murphy. “It’s time to move on.”

I didn’t say anything in response. Instead, I let my thoughts slip into my introspective rationalizations as I tried to piece together who I thought I
was
with who I thought I
wanted to be
—existential bullshit that twenty-something philosophy graduates like to dwell on.

It was all pointless.

I was a man with a pistol and a machete in a world that required me to put them to use. I had a kill-or-be-killed life. Nothing more. When I got tired of killing, I’d die. Life was simple. No gray, ambiguous questions to mull, no uncertainty about the future, only bleakness and pain until death.

“Man,” said Murphy. “You should start talking or something, you sound like you’re sitting over there getting pissed off over nothing.”

“What?” I gave him a dubious look. “How can you say that? I’m not saying anything.”

“The way you’re breathing through your nose,” he said. “It’s like you’re snorting like a raging bull or something.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Seriously.”

I sighed.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

I took a moment before I asked, “Honestly?”

“Honestly,” he said. “I’ll be your shrink. Spill it.”

“I’m tired,” I said. “Steph’s death hurt too much. I just don’t give a fuck anymore. You know what I mean?”

Murphy crinkled his eyebrows and asked, “You’re not going to jump off a bridge, are you?”

“I’m just tired of the pointlessness of it all.”

Murphy thought about things for a few minutes before saying, “You gave up.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s not ‘how’ anything,” he said. “You gave up. You go through the motions. I know you still get off on the adrenaline when the Whites are chasing us and shit. But that’s all you’ve got. You don’t care anymore. You don’t want to try. After Steph, you quit.”

“Quit?” I asked.

“You’re not suicidal,” said Murphy. “Maybe you’re too big a pussy to whack yourself. I don’t know. But you don’t care anymore.”

“I dragged you down here to the Capitol,” I protested. “What was that about if I’d given up?”

“Doesn’t matter what it was,” said Murphy. “It can be whatever you tell yourself it was. The truth is you’ve quit. Now I’m going to have to chase you around town until you finally do something stupid enough to get yourself killed.”

“Sorry.” Of course, it sounded like I didn’t mean it, but the truth was I did. I just didn’t want to accept what Murphy was saying.

“I talked to Grace for a while after we got back,” said Murphy.

I didn’t ask what they talked about. Since Murphy brought it up, I guessed they’d talked about me.

“I’m gonna go with Grace and Jazz.”

That felt like a punch in the face. It felt like more than that. My heart started to hurt all over again. He said he was going. He didn’t say
we
were going. I looked off into the blackness of the sky and croaked out, “Okay.”

“Okay?” asked Murphy. “That’s all you got to say?”

I shook my head. It was actually all I
could
say. I’d never had a friend like Murphy before and with all of my wallowing and bullshit, I’d fucked it up. He was tired of it. He was moving on.

What the fuck was I gonna do?

Exactly what I wanted to do, walk around among the Whites and slaughter them until something in my soul finally felt better.

After some time, trying to get used to the idea of Murphy bailing out, I finally said, “Grace has a good head on her shoulders. I hope whatever you guys end up doing out there in College Station helps.”

Shaking his head, happy to show me all the disappointment he was feeling, Murphy said, “Why don’t you come with us?”

“No,” I said, feeling admittedly sorry for myself. “You guys go ahead.”

“Man.” Murphy was frustrated. “This isn’t some kinda boyfriend-girlfriend-junior-high bullshit. Don’t do that. Look dude, I’m going with Grace because I want my life to be more than killing Whites and eating burritos.”

“Burritos?” I muttered. “I haven’t seen a burrito since August.”

“When I get killed,” said Murphy, “I want it to be for a good reason. I know you used to feel the same way. That’s why you tried to save Amber and her friends from the dorm that night. That’s why you blew open the door on that bunker and saved Mandi. That’s why you went all Tarzan at the hospital. That’s why you dragged me halfway across Austin and saved my ass after the riot at the jail. That’s why I’m trying to save your ass from yourself right now. You’re a surly little whiny shit, but you’re my friend. Pull your head out of your ass and listen to me. Let’s go do this thing with Grace and Jazz. Let’s do something with a little meaning to it instead of just running around this stinky-ass city waiting to die. Stop overthinking it. Life is simple now—fucked-up but simple. Get your shit together and come.”

I don’t know how long we sat there after that. I was shivering from the cold and staring at the stars, trying to work my way through the complex web of bullshit I’d woven inside my head.

Murphy, to his credit, stayed with me the whole time.

Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was Murphy’s patience. Whichever, I finally circled through all the thoughts enough times to realize that Murphy was right. I said, “I’m sorry I’ve been such a useless turd. If you guys want me along, I’d like to come. I really would.”