Slow Burn (Book 5): Torrent (3 page)

Murphy hurried into the woods to our left, and I followed until we were well away from the trail. He squatted among some thick bushes and looked at the trail, pulling a finger to his lips to indicate quiet.

I didn’t need that much direction, but an immature retort could be disastrous if Murphy’s sense of danger was accurate.

I squinted between the branches and leaves but saw nothing, felt nothing but wet.

I knew my intuition for danger wasn’t as sharp as Murphy’s. All of the trouble I’d gotten myself into when he wasn’t around was proof enough. Drawing my pistol from my pocket with one hand, I gripped my kitchen knife in the other and checked the woods behind us and off to our sides. Murphy was focused on dangers that might be on the trail. So checking our flanks for sneaking infected or possible escape routes became my responsibility.

Noise from the direction of the trail got my attention and sent my heart racing. Moments later, I saw movement through the trees. Murphy crouched lower behind our concealing bushes, as did I.

A troop of Whites, maybe a dozen strong, came into view, moving on the trail, slowly, quietly, on the balls of their feet. Their heads swiveled, looking forward and back, peeking through gaps in the cedar fronds on the right and left.

Holy shit
. They were hunting.

As we watched, a runner came up the trail from the other direction and stopped in front of the group’s leader. All halted. Most stood there doing nothing, staring at nothing. Some stayed alert, scrutinizing the woods.

The runner cupped her hands over the leader’s ear and whispered something brief. The leader whispered something to the runner and pointed up the trail in the direction from which the runner had come.

With a confused look on her face, the runner looked at the leader of the group.

This visibly angered the leader. His body language turned aggressive and when he was no longer able to contain his frustration, he slapped the runner hard across her face, dropping her to her knees.

The runner tried to escape, pushing herself backward on the rough ground.

The leader caught her by the shoulder, bent over and whispered again into her ear. He punctuated his message with another slap and pointed up the trail.

The girl crawled some more before standing up beyond the leader’s reach. Blood flowed from her mouth and nose. But she didn’t run off to deliver the message she’d been given.

The leader took another aggressive step toward her and raised his fist.

The girl finally seemed to understand. She turned and ran back up the trail.  The leader of the group looked around, listened, then followed the same path, taking the time to place his feet noiselessly as he moved.

Murphy and I waited.

When I felt sure the hunting party was far enough out of earshot, I whispered to Murphy, “I’d bet your balls they were looking for us.”

“Me, too.”

“Do you think that was that Smart One that saw us cross the road by the country club?”

Murphy nodded. “I don’t see who else it could be.”

“When I was naked among them, they thought I was one of them. I think that’s the only safe way to do this, to be just as naked and bald as they are.”

“And without weapons,” Murphy added. It was clear from his tone that he didn’t have any intention of being in their company without a rifle. “Why do you think they didn’t come after us on the road if the Smart One knew what we were?”

“I think they’re learning
. If we have guns and if they don’t have numbers on their side, they know they shouldn’t come after us.”

“If they know what guns are, why don’t they just pick them up and kill us?”

“Being smart enough to know that a gun can kill you isn’t the same as being smart enough to use one.”

Murphy looked around a bit before he
said, “I think they’re getting a big pack together to come hunt us down.”

“
Uh-huh.” I hadn’t thought of that. But it made perfect sense, considering what we’d seen with the messenger girl. Something was being coordinated.

“What do you think we should do?”

“We could bail out and I could come back later in spy mode.”

“Spy mode?”

“Naked. With a knife. Alone.”

Murphy shook his head. “Being out here alone is too dangerous. You should know that better than anybody.”

“I just need to be more careful.”

“You don’t even know what that word means.”

I shrugged, looked around between the trees and listened through the sound of the rain.

“I say we see what we can see on our way back to the boat and call it a day,” Murphy said.

It was a disappointing choice, but Murphy was right. We were in danger. Weapons, ammunition, and maybe even MREs were available somewhere on the base. But without a better plan to find and get away with some of it, we weren’t likely to have a happy outcome.

“We should stay off the trail.”

I agreed on that point, as well.

Murphy pointed through the woods. “I think the boat is back that way, if we’re cutting straight through the woods.”

I’d lost my sense of direction. I looked around as though that might help me get my bearings. “Sure.”

“Lead the way.”

So I did.

Murphy followed me t
hrough the dense cedar branches as I grew more and more nervous. While stealth was necessary, it was slow. If those Smart Ones were gathering their numbers for a hunt, time was definitely against us.

The smell of wet death embraced us in a clammy hug as we neared the edge of the forest.
When we finally came out, to our right stood a row of widely-spaced buildings of painted cinder block and fifty-year-old brick. Among those was a gravel road with vehicles scattered about. Human bones with all but the smallest bits of rotting flesh gnawed off lay in puddles and on the grass across the empty space. Thousands had died there.

“Can you tell where we are?” Murphy whispered, aghast at the sight of so many dead.

Deal with it later. You’ve got more immediate problems.

I tried not to look at the bones. “I don’t know where we are. You have any idea?”

“Nope. This is my first time here. But I think on the other side of those buildings is the parade ground, the one you see when you drive by on the highway.”

“Loop 1, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we must be completely turned around. I thought we were heading back toward the river.”

Murphy shrugged. His face looked aged under a burden of worry.

Directly across the clearing stood some sheds, perhaps for maintenance. Behind those, another growth of cedar forest. “I think if we cut through there, those ammo bunkers might be on the other side,” I said.

“And?”

“I think I can find my way out from there.”

Murphy looked left then right, and took a long, hard look at the distance between the sheds and us. “Are we running or walking?”

“What do you think, about a hundred yards to get us into those trees?”

“About that.”

“With Smart Ones around looking for us, I think it’s best to keep out of sight as much as possible. Are you up for the run?”

“I haven’t been this thin since I was in the Army. Don’t lose sight of me. I might just run all the way back to the river.”

“Let’s go.”

Murphy took off at a sprint across the killing field. I lit out on his heels, glancing left and right as I went. Better to see coming danger than to simply run and pray. Though I could make a pretty good case for run and pray.

Murphy stumbled on a slippery skull and nearly fell, but caught his balance and kept his feet moving. I slowed to wait. We had to stay together.

We had just crossed over a gravel road and were nearly at the maintenance sheds when a line of Whites snaked out of the trees in front of us.

Shit.

Murphy slowed to a jog. I matched his speed.

The Whites saw us. We were upright and running across a flat field. They each cast glances our way as they formed a helix and paralleled the tree line, blocking our way with fifty, then sixty and more. And they kept filing out of a gap in the trees.

We veered to our right, and moved in the same direction as the Whites. They didn’t come after us. I guessed nearly all of them were of the variety with limited intellectual capacity. To them, Murphy and I were nothing special.

Through his heavy breathing Murphy said, “I say we shoot the one in front. He’s the
Smart One.”

I shook my head. “Then the rest will charge us.”

“We need to do something pretty quick or we’re fucked.”

He was right. Of that, I had no doubt.

Another helix of Whites snaked out between the buildings off to our right.

“They’re herding us, Murphy.” I came to a stop and looked back. Whites were coming out of the woods behind us. We were surrounded. And they had more bodies than we had bullets.

Murphy’s eyes went wide with the adrenaline.

I was sure my eyes were just as wide as I raced through options in my mind, trying to come up with an escape plan.

All three of the helices changed direction on some silent cue and started to spiral in on us.

My panic rose under my attempts to quash it.

Murphy shouted, “Fuck this. C’mon!” With his weapon on his hip, he took off at full speed toward our original destination, the forest behind the maintenance sheds.

My feet were moving before I even had time to think.

Our sudden choice to run sent the helices into turmoil as the leaders—presumably Smart Ones—each angled directly toward us.

I had my pistol up, ready to shoot, but was determined not to use it until the last moment. Once a gun sounded, all of those Whites running around in their helices would lose all sense of order, scream like bloody hell and rush us. Gnashing teeth and tearing fingers would be the last thing I’d see.

We were on a collision course with the leader of the first helix we saw, and the trees were just fifteen or twenty feet behind him, but so were a whole line of Whites.

With just a few steps between them, Murphy ripped out a guttural wail, braced his weapon in both hands across the front of his body and charged the Smart One. The Smart One’s brain made the sudden, instinctual switch from predator to prey, and fear hit him almost as hard as Murphy did an instant later. The White never had a chance to react. Murphy bowled over him and barely slowed.

The helix fell into disarray, but only for a moment.

A wave of howls tore through the rain, a call to charge, and the disorganized jogging Whites boiled over with berserk rage and came at us.

Murphy, with better instincts for fighting than me, immediately fired his weapon at a White in front of us. As that one was falling, I popped several rounds toward the Whites between us and the trees. As for those behind, I’d outrun them or I wouldn’t.

With our path momentarily clear, Murphy crashed into the cedars with me on his heels. Branches tore painlessly at my skin.

The horde hit the trees a handful of seconds behind us, breaking branches and jamming themselves into the gaps in the foliage. The dense branches would only give so far. The Whites tripped over one another, screaming in frustration.

We got some distance on them, but ran at a careless speed.

The thicket of trees was not as wide as the clearing we’d just crossed, and before I knew it, we broke out on the other side. We were on clear, bone-strewn ground again with another helix of Whites coming around a bend off to our left and bearing down on the ruckus. We were right in their path.

To our right, I saw a rectangular section of barbed wire-topped chain-link fence surrounding two berms, with flat concrete walls at the front of each. Centered on each wall was a doorway large enough to drive through. One bunker was sealed by a heavy metal door. The door on the other bunker was slid to the side on its tracks leaving it open.

“The ammunition bunkers
!” I shouted.

Murphy veered right, willing to accept any idea, any direction.

It was a foot race between us and the helix rounding the bend.

We ran, demanding every painful spasm of speed we could wrench out of our lungs and legs. Our lives depended on it, and it was going to be close.

Without breaking stride, and with the leaders of the new helix just a few dozen feet away, Murphy let go with several bursts of his rifle and four or five Whites at the front fell. Those behind tumbled over.

That bought us the time we needed. We crossed through the open gate in the chain-link fence and headed toward the open bunker.

That’s when it occurred to me. “We can’t go in there.

“Fuck that.” Murphy crossed through the threshold and turned to make an attempt at closing the door.

“We’ll be trapped in here if we shut that door.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you want me to do
, but you better figure something out, professor.” Murphy ran a dozen paces inside, turned, dropped to a knee, and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He started popping off rounds as the first of the infected tried to come in behind us.

The open door was nearly ten feet wide, wide enough to drive a vehicle inside for loading and unloading. Murphy wouldn’t be able
to hold the mob at the door for very long. Once they massed outside, they’d overwhelm him easily. My pistol would be of no help when that happened.

Near frantic, I looked around as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Breathe.

Breathe
.

The place was disorganized
. Not full, but more crates, boxes and canisters were there than I imagined we’d ever need. Many were open. Some were spilled. Whomever had been in here last had been in one hell of a hurry.

Then I saw them. Grenades.

A box of fragmentation grenades laid broken open on the far side of the bunker. Those were probably the only weapons in the whole place we could put to lethal use in the short seconds available to us. The fact that they’d also alert thousands of Whites within a mile to our presence didn’t matter. If we didn’t use them, we’d die.

I ran over and grabbed as many as I could cradle in my hands and forearms, bounded back across the bunker and dropped a half-dozen on the ground at Murphy’s feet.

His face turned from grim to grin.

He reached down and picked one up. “Grab one, toss it, then get the fuck out of the way
.”

He was already pulling the pin on one when I got my finger through the pin on mine. He tossed his through the open door and moved to the side to get out of the direct line of any fragments that the blast would send back in our direction. A half second later, my grenade followed
his and I ran back over to the open box of grenades on the floor.

The twin blasts knocked me off of my feet and I landed roughly.
Fragments sizzled the air.

As I picked myself up. Murphy was
already pulling a pin from another grenade.

Writhing bodies of screaming Whites, their dead and their dazed brethren lay in the mud outside the door.
Murphy threw the grenade through the rainy smoke and squatted to gather up more. He’d only just gotten out of line with the door’s opening when the grenade exploded.

Seconds later, I’d pulled a Hello Kitty backpack from my pocket and was loading it with loose hand grenades. The other bag got its share of grenades just as quickly. I yelled to Murphy, “We need to get the fuck out of here and make a run for it.”

“How many grenades you got?”

“Fuck. Does it matter?”

“Give me the word and we’ll make a run for it.”

Another grenade blast rang my ears.

Having stuffed my pistol back in my pocket, I jumped to my feet with a bag in each hand. They were heavy and awkward enough that running would be damn difficult. “Ready.”

“Beside the door,” Murphy shouted, running to put his back to the wall just inside. “We’ll toss out two more, and as soon as they blow, follow me out.”

“Right.” I was beside him in a flash and passed him a bag. We both pulled a pin from a grenade. Murphy tossed his around the corner. I did the same and immediately stepped around the corner to run.

Murphy threw an arm around my neck and jerked me roughly back, pinning me against the wall just as the first grenade detonated.

As the second one exploded, it occurred to me I’d forgotten to wait for the grenades to blow before chasing them through the door. Murphy had just saved my life. Again.

With ears ringing and my brains rattling, Murphy yelled, “A grenade in each hand. Pull the pins. If any motherfucker gets in my way I’m
gonna run him down. Throw a grenade at any bunch you see, whether they’re coming or not. Stay on my ass.
Now!
” Murphy ran through the door and into the smoke.