Slow Burn (Book 5): Torrent (15 page)

The bow of the canoe bobbed up.

The stern bobbed down and dunked me. But the canoe’s buoyancy compartment popped back to the surface and pulled me and my head up into the air inside the canoe just as the screeching stopped.

“We made it,” Murphy hollered, with all the joy of a man coming out of a near-death experience.

We hadn’t made it, at least not yet. But we’d gone under the bridge. The river would only deepen the further we floated, and the rapids would diminish. No, we hadn’t made it, but the hardest part was behind us.

Lady Bird Lake was what they called the usually placid section of the Colorado River between the Tom Miller Dam and the Longhorn Dam, six miles downstream. But placid isn’t what it was that day. The water in the lake wasn’t dangerous, but it was swift.

Keeping a hand on one of the
canoe’s cross braces, I submerged and came up on the outside of the capsized boat. Murphy did the same. The river was expanding up the wide, flat banks and the water’s surface was relatively calm. Well ahead of us, a concrete-pillared bridge spanned the river a hundred feet up.

Giant cypress trees lined the banks between enormous old oaks with fat trunks and long, crooked branches. Behind those trees, on the south shore, was some of the city’s most expensive real estate. On the north, the neighborhoods were giving way to short buildings, giving way in turn to taller buildings. Downtown Austin was only a few miles ahead.

Coming up on the south shore was a kayak and canoe rental business built on the edge of the river. It had several floating docks secured to the bank and the river bottom by steel cables. But the cables were breaking in the current and one section of dock, about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide, had swung out into the river moored by only a single, resilient cable. The corner nearest the bank was at least ten feet from shore.

“Let’s try to get over to that dock,” I said.

“You think it’s safe?”

“Safe?”

Murphy laughed. “Yeah. I keep forgetting that safe is your middle name.”

“No, it’s careful.”

“Whatever.”

I pulled myself along a submerged gunwale until I came to the bow of the canoe. I grasped a metal eye built into the bow and started to swim toward the dock. “Keep holding onto the canoe and kick,” I called back to Murphy.

“Just because I can’t swim doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

Murphy and I had spent so much time
together, we were starting to talk to each other like a grouchy married couple.

“Just kick. I’ll steer.”

After swimming hard to pull the canoe across the current, I managed to grab hold of a bare cleat bolted on the edge of the dock before we were swept past. The stern of the boat swung around with Murphy holding on. “Give it a sec,” I hollered.

A few seconds was all it took. The aluminum hull banged against the floating dock and Murphy grabbed onto a swim ladder.

Not in any hurry to move, I caught my breath and looked at the trees to make sure we wouldn’t have any company. Despite the wide gap of water between the dock and the shore, I still worried. Who knew what a crazed White might do? I turned to Murphy. “I can hang onto the canoe if you want to climb up on the dock.”

“You sure you’ve got it?”

“No problem.”

Murphy hauled himself up out of the water a lot more quickly than he could have a few weeks before. The weight loss was doing him good.

Once he had both feet on the deck, I said, “Hey, see that yellow rope over there?”

Murphy looked toward the other side of the dock.

“Can you cut a length of it and tie it to this eyehole on the canoe? I can’t get out of the water until we tie it off.”

“Gotcha, boss.” In no time Murphy chopped a length of rope with his hatchet, tied it to the canoe and secured it to a cleat on the dock.

I climbed out of the water.

Murphy gave me a head-to-toe look. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You lost your shoes.”

I shrugged. “They were free. Let’s get this canoe turned right side up real quick. That last cable might give way.”

Murphy looked at the cable. “So? The dock floats.”

“I suppose you’re right. Can you give me a hand anyway?”

Murphy knelt down at the stern of the boat. I leaned over the edge of the dock near the canoe’s bow. With a stable dock underfoot, righting the canoe was a snap. Doing so in the water was always a pain, left water in the boat and presented the difficulty of getting back inside without re-capsizing it.

“I hope we didn’t put a hole in the canoe under that bridge.” I examined the bottom to see if any water was bubbling in.

“We’re already wet.” Murphy grinned.

Satisfied enough with the seaworthiness of our boat, I stood up and looked back at the trees on shore. Still safe. I looked at Murphy’s equipment. “Looks like you didn’t lose anything.”

Murphy ran his hands over his MOLLE vest and weapons. “I’m good.”

“And you’re all right? No broken bones? No major cuts?”

Murphy shook his head. “Surprised I lived through that, but I’m good.
A few bruises, is all.”

“Good.” I ran my hands over my pockets and checked my weapons. My pistol was still on my belt. I had the knife. All of the magazines from my back pockets were gone and one of my front pockets was empty. I was back down to a T-shirt, shorts, a usable rifle and a little extra ammunition. “We’ll have to scavenge on the way, if that’s cool.”

“I don’t have any other appointments today.”

“Did you get punched a lot in school?”

“That reminds me. I need to punch you in the face.”

I rolled my eyes and looked back at the woods. “I’ll tell you what. Next time I come up with a stupid idea, like jumping into a flood stage river with a shitty canoe, punch me in the face. Maybe it’ll bring me back to my senses.”

With a little too much enthusiasm, Murphy said, “Yeah, I can do that. You want to get going?”

“I don’t see any point in staying here. You take the stern, I’ll take the bow.”

“You got it, boss.”

Moments later, we were back in the canoe, right side up and moving quickly with the current.

I craned my neck so I could see Murphy. “With the water moving this fast, we don’t need to paddle to keep the canoe moving. We’ll be there before we know it. We just need to steer ourselves over to the north side of the river.”

“Works for me.”

I resituated myself in the canoe and went to work keeping the bow pointed roughly at the north shore. The rain was coming in squalls by then with drizzle in between. Thunder was rumbling in the distance. It wouldn’t be good to stay in the water too much longer.

With the kayak rental business receding behind us, the Loop 1 Bridge dominated my attention. The closer we got, the more it looked like a contested bridge from the last world war. Two sand-colored Abrams tanks with their severe angles and 120mm cannons squatted on one end of the bridge, daring anything to cross. As intimidating as they looked, they were no more than armored skeletons of dead beasts, as dead as the soldiers inside.

Nothing moved on the bridge among the carcasses of exploded vehicles, with their burnt innards and metal skin flowering out on rusty petals. The concrete and steel rail at the south end of the bridge was broken through. The rear ends of two cars stuck vertically up out of the water.

As we floated under, I looked up and wondered how many bones of how many people lay on the concrete above.

Ahead of us, trees grew thick on both banks, and a slight curve in the river kept the North Lamar Boulevard Bridge—the next one we’d pass—hidden from sight. Tall downtown buildings peeked above the treetops, far enough away that it was impossible to tell that anything was amiss.

B
irds squawked in branches. Ducks swam in twos and threes near the shore. Turtles piled themselves on exposed logs and larger rocks, hoping the hot sun would return. Even the sound of rifle fire and the howls of the hungry infected were absent. Only the rain and thunder remained. The temptation was heavy to forget that beyond the trees was a broken world full of dead humans and white monsters.

Succumbing to that temptation, my
paddle found its way out of the water and across my lap. I looked up at the sky and closed my eyes, letting the light rain between the squalls drip on my face.

I stayed that way for a long time.

I realized how tired I was, not just physically but emotionally. I’d been blazing away for weeks in full survival mode, riding a tsunami of rage, vengeance and fear. How long had it been? It was so easy to lose track of the days when all of the calendar-based events in life fell away.

The virus hit in mid
-August and now it was mid-September, I guessed. I’d survived a month. According to Jeff Aubrey’s equations, I only had to make it another eleven months to earn a real chance at staying in this world long enough to see my hair turn gray.

But I doubted I could
make it. Thinking about all that happened, I wondered why I was still alive.

The wooden paddle across my lap nagged at me to pick it up and put it to use in the now onerous task of pulling it through the water.
The weight of my world, so precariously dammed behind my anger, burst through and smashed every bit of desire I had to move forward. The rain stopped feeling good. The bird’s songs were an irritating racket. The turtles were just stupid, slow reptiles whose heads would one day be bitten off in the jaws of hungry Whites.

I slumped forward, leaned on my paddle, and wondered how I was going to make it all the way across town to the university campus.

“You all right, man?” Murphy was concerned. He sensed the change in my mood.

I nodded. What choice did I have but to be all right?

Still, I leaned on my paddle and stared at the greenish water, at the splashes of tiny raindrops and little expanding circles, dying as they each drowned in the waves of other circles on the surface of the water.

I was one of those circles, and I felt like I’d expanded to my limit. I was waiting to get washed away. In that moment, I would have welcomed it.

The absence of the sound of a paddle in the water behind me told me Murphy had pulled his paddle into the boat as well. “Are you okay, Zed?”

Sitting up straight, I perfunctorily dipped my paddle back into the water. “I just need to keep moving.”

“What?” He heard me. He was one of those many people who use the single word “what” as a request for more information.

I stroked the paddle. “When I’m moving, I’m okay. When I stop and give myself time to think, all of this craziness starts to seep through the cracks.” I drew in a deep breath. My confession had a weight of its own. “It’s wearing me down, Murphy.”

Murphy didn’t respond immediately. Finally, he said, “You know what I think, man?”

I shook my head. “Do I want to know?”

“If we see a liquor store on the way, we need to get a few bottles of the hard stuff. And when we get back to the boat, we need to drink ourselves out of all this bullshit for a while.”

I turned back to Murphy. “Yeah, that sounds good.” It did indeed.

“Some pussy wouldn’t hurt either.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“Man, I’m tellin’ you. I can’t figure out why you and Steph aren’t bumpin’ uglies yet.”

I nearly laughed at that. Murphy did have a way. “
Bumpin’ uglies? How old is that expression?”

Murphy shrugged.

“It’s complicated.”

“How complicated could it be? She likes you. You like her. I don’t know if you’re holding out for something better, but in case you haven’t noticed, there’s not likely to be anything else around. You know what I mean, man?”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it, then? She’s a little on the skinny side for my taste but we’re all
gettin’ that way, right?”

I smiled and looked down at myself. I couldn’t afford to get much skinnier.

“So what is it? Spill the beans.”

“I don’t know.” I looked down the river. I looked at the trees. “Sometimes, all I think about is
her. Other times, she pisses me off with her bossy bullshit, and all I want to do is go somewhere where I don’t have to listen to her.”

Murphy laughed loudly and the sound carried across the water. “You just don’t like being told what to do.”

“It’s not that.” It was.

“Don’t
lie to me, man.”

I turned forward again and started paddling.

“When you get those bossy ones in bed, Zed, take my word for it, you won’t go away unhappy.”

I shook my head. I was steering the boat again. I was doing something. I was moving forward. Murphy was a better friend than I deserved.

To our right, the wide mouth of Barton Creek opened up onto the river. The banks of the creek were thick with trees and shrubs. I saw two of the infected squatting among the bushes on the shore. One of them had a canoe paddle over his shoulder, probably one of the many available at another canoe rental business a half-mile up the creek. Both Whites were intently watching a spot in the water just a few feet away from the bank. One of them looked up at us in our canoe and oddly, didn’t seem to have any interest.

T
he one with the paddle smacked it down hard on the surface of the water. The other jumped up and waded in, going chest deep just three steps from shore. As I started to wonder what was going on, the one in the water lifted a sizable turtle out by its back leg and showed it to the one with the paddle.