Slow Burn (Book 7): City of Stin (21 page)

We made quite an odd group, me with my machete and pistol, wearing my night vision goggles of course, Murphy in his goggles with his suppressed M4, and Grace and Jazz, both with knives, bows, and one pistol between them. They had nothing to aid their vision. They were taking a different tack on silent defense. Since they were still alive, it was obvious it was working for them.

Along the way through the tunnel, Grace explained that they’d fortified the lower levels of the old power plant, welding metal across all the windows, and sealing the doors. The only way in or out now was through the utility tunnel that led under Cesar Chavez Street over to the Town Lake side. All of the jagged pieces of metal and glass sticking out from flood debris mounds along the path had been placed there by our new friends to discourage Whites from wandering down. The thinking was that after a few sharp pokes, the Whites might turn around. Better yet, they were less likely to want to come back that way when they were out on their daily or nightly scavenging. The Whites were dimwits, but not completely stupid. They could be trained.

Along the way through the debris mounds, I whispered, “Do you guys have a plan on where we’re headed tonight?”

Jazz said, “We’ve mapped out the area, and we’re working our way systematically through. We’re headed to the Whole Foods grocery store tonight.”

“There’s still food there?” I asked.

She smiled and said, “The Crazies went through it early on and ate everything they could figure out how to put in their mouths. After that they made a mess of the place. Shelves are overturned. Trash is everywhere. The remains of the dead are in there, too.”

“Pretty much like everywhere,” I suggested.

“Yeah,” Jazz nodded as she kept an eye on our surroundings. “Like lots of places. We’ve been doing pretty well there. We’ve been going there for maybe three weeks.”

We were coming to the end of the path through the debris mounds and Grace said, “You two be quiet.”

Murphy shot me a look and grinned. He wasn’t impressed with Grace’s authoritative air.

We found ourselves walking uphill over what had been a small park adjacent to North Lamar, near where it crossed the river on a wide bridge. A block downriver from the North Lamar Bridge, a pedestrian bridge crossed the river as well. Just as we’d seen on our boat trip downriver a few months prior, both bridges were still jammed with cars and military vehicles, many burned. Even the park we walked through was jammed with cars abandoned there by people who presumably were going to chance a bridge crossing on foot.

Once we made it up to the street level and were able to see across the North Lamar Bridge, Grace urged us to be silent and careful—unnecessary warnings. Murphy and I had been out among the Whites plenty of times.

Murphy climbed up onto a car, looking around as he did so. With the night vision goggles, he and I were able to see so much more, especially what lurked in the shadows cast by the moon. He slowly scanned right and left, taking a bit of time to examine the darkness under the trees across the road.

Standing up and looking over the top of the car, I saw for myself that plenty of Whites were around, depending on your definition of plenty. I guessed maybe twenty or thirty were walking or scavenging in groups of a few or a half dozen. Deep in the shadows at the inside corner of a building I saw a group squatting down and huddling close, settling down for the evening. Through windows on a few of the buildings, I spotted Whites peeking out.

The number of Whites concerned me. I knew for each one I saw, there had to be hundreds visible, both near and far. Our experiences over the past few days had proven that. The thing that worried me about that was the question of how they were feeding themselves. Were Jeff Aubrey’s equations at work? Were his predictions true? I had no accurate way to take a headcount on Whites, but I’d hoped by now I’d be seeing a reduction in their numbers as they slowly cannibalized themselves. It didn’t seem like that was happening.

With all I’d seen with the Smart Ones and semi-Smart Ones and the whole spectrum of White behavior, I had to wonder whether they were intelligent enough to leave the city and search for food out on the farms, which had to be brimming with cattle and sheep. I wondered if they were eating the plentiful deer, maybe even the coyotes, stray dogs, and house cats. Jeff Aubrey’s equations never took any of that into account.

“Well?” Grace whispered to Murphy.

He wasn’t looking north up the three blocks to the Whole Foods grocery store, he was looking south at the battle’s aftermath on the bridge. Having been prompted by the sound of her voice, he hopped down and motioned for us all to lean in close. He said, “I saw a couple of those armored Humvees over there. I don’t know what shape they’re in, but there’s one that looks like we can get it out. It’s not jammed in by too many other vehicles.”

“For Fritz and Gabe?” I asked.

He nodded. “Unless we’re giving them a ride back to College Station, they need some transportation.”

“You’re always so thoughtful, Murphy.”

“You can’t get that Humvee,” said Jazz.

“Why?” I asked. “It’s right there. Like Murphy said, maybe we push a car or two out of the way but we can get it out.”

Shaking her head, Jazz said, “There’s a group of Crazies that live up there in the cars. They think the bridge is their turf.”

We didn’t have any normals with us, so our options for doing anything out in the open were greatly expanded. That included going out on the bridge and disposing of however many aggressive Whites lived up there. I said, “Fritz and Gabe need a safe vehicle.”

“We could always let ‘em get their own ride,” Murphy suggested.

Shaking my head, knowing I was putting a mask on my own reasons, I said, “They’ll get killed just trying to walk over there. I think there are way too many Whites around for them to get very far on their own.”

“Wait,” said Grace. “What are we talking about here? We’re supposed to be going to get groceries at Whole Foods.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Murphy slapped me on the back and looked at Grace. “Don’t mind him. Sometimes he looks for trouble for no good reason.”

“Why?” Grace asked sincerely as she gave me a look like I might truly be insane. “Doesn’t everybody get enough trouble for free these days?” She turned and headed for the sidewalk that led to Whole Foods.

Jazz smiled at me, shrugged, and followed.

Murphy said, “We’ll get the Humvee later.”

I huffed and tagged along.

With Grace in the lead, and Jazz behind her spending too much time looking at the floor and nudging an occasional bottle with her toe to read the label, I followed them while Murphy took up the rear. We were working our way through an aisle of handmade soaps, shampoos, and lotions on the second floor of the Whole Foods grocery. Most of the bottles that had been on the shelves were now on the floor. They’d been trampled and kicked, and many opened as Whites had sampled what was inside to see if it was edible. When they’d discovered otherwise, they dropped the bottles and went on to other parts of the store. A tacky, multicolored mess now covered the linoleum underfoot and was evidence of all that had happened there.

Unfortunately, walking through it, peeling our feet off the ground with each step, and trying not to kick the empty bottles too loudly proved onerous and distracting.

At the end of the aisle, the wine section took up a whole corner of the store. Grace told us that among the countless broken wine bottles were hundreds of unopened ones. We all pretended that wine wasn’t a first choice and that calories were just calories these days, but we needed little convincing to head through the sticky shampoo aisle knowing what lay at the other end.

Clinking noises in the glass up ahead made it clear that something or someone was already rummaging among the overturned shelves and broken bottles. My guess was Whites. First off, they were being noisy. Normals still lucky enough to be alive and even Slow Burns had learned silence was always best. That and the noise didn’t seem to have any rhythmic order to it. Normal people engaged in tasks tended to do them in a steady fashion. So, any noise associated with the task tended to have a certain regularity. Whites were fidgety and random.

We were halfway up our aisle when a White peeked around the shelves to give us a look. He’d apparently heard us. No surprise.

He stared. He didn’t know what to make of us.

I hefted my machete. I already had a solution for him—him and what I was guessing were two or three others up in the wine section. They were the only ones making noise on this floor of the store. If any others were hidden, they were being quiet about it.

Grace looked over her shoulder in a quick glance at Jazz.

The White leaned out a little farther and stepped out into the aisle, exposing half of his body. He cocked his head.

Jazz nocked an aluminum-shafted arrow as she raised her bow.

Just loud enough for the sound to reach the end of the aisle, Grace whispered, “Are you a bad boy?”

The White’s eyes went wide. He tensed and took a step out from behind the aisle’s end cap as his mouth opened wide, baring his teeth. A howl just started in his throat as Jazz let fly the arrow that skewered the White’s head. He fell over, twitching and gurgling as he died.

Seeing the technique, I felt a little stupid. I’d have taken my machete and beat it on a shelf. Perhaps I’d have called out at the top of my lungs to get the attention of any Whites on the floor. Then, Murphy and I would have gambled that we could kill all that came running. Definitely a solution lacking the subtlety of Grace’s and Jazz’s method.

By the time we’d taken a few more steps, another White made her noisy way through the broken wine bottles and squatted beside her fallen comrade as she looked up at us.

Grace whispered, “Are you a good girl?”

The White immediately lunged as another of Jazz’s arrows buried itself in the infected girl’s chest, ending its life in an instant.

“Nice shot,” I whispered over Jazz’s shoulder.

She ignored me as she nocked another arrow.

Glass still clinked among the wine shelves. At least one more White was up ahead.

Stepping over the two Jazz had killed, we started to crunch glass under our shoes as we walked around the perimeter of what had been a large wine department.

Signs hung from the ceiling indicating the region the wine in the area below had come from. Beneath the Chile sign, we found a White, emaciated in clothes that hung off his thin frame. On his bloody knees with bleeding hands, he rummaged through bottles of wine both full and broken, catching cockroaches and stuffing the crunchy little beasts into his mouth. When he noticed us, he stopped what he was doing, looked blankly at us for a moment, and then went back to pushing bottles out of the way to scare up his prey.

“Are you a good boy?” Grace asked in her deathly whisper.

The White stopped and looked at her.

Jazz already had an arrow ready to fly.

After a moment of doing nothing more, the White turned back to his work.

“A Slow One,” she said to us.

Feeling a little guilt, I knew I’d probably have killed him had it been just Murphy and me in the store. We’d have dispatched the two predatory Whites with ease. Then, while our blood was running hot with the excitement of the kill, we’d have spotted Mr. Roach Wrangler, and I’d probably have lopped off his head. I asked, “You said you guys take the Slow Ones in. Is he coming back with us?”

Shaking her head with a sadness that seemed too profound for the situation, she said, “We can’t. Not anymore. When there were more of us. When we had a better place up at the Capitol we could take care of them. They could be productive. Now…” She shook her head and started to push through the broken glass with the toes of her boots again, looking for salvageable wine bottles.

Jazz left us and went back to the cosmetics and shampoo aisle, apparently making her way toward some coveted product she’d seen on our way through.

Murphy shrugged and followed her. He was thinking the same thing I was, “Don’t split up.”

I stayed with Grace. She picked up a couple of bottles of red wine. She read the labels, nodded approvingly and handed them to me. I pushed them into my backpack.

I said, “It really bothers you not to take them in, doesn’t it?”

Without turning my way, she nodded.

“Why?” For me, it was easy. Or at least it had grown easy. I recalled how I felt about Russell on first coming across him. If left up to me, I’m sure I’d have abandoned him in his house to fend for himself, just as he had been doing. Over time, though, I grew attached. He was a human. Perhaps that’s to say, in my mind I accepted him as a human and in a way, a friend. I felt a depth of responsibility for him that grew out of the attachment. It hurt like hell when he died.

Early on, I’d killed plenty of Whites. Hell, I was still doing it damn near every day. Some, I suspected afterward, were Slow Ones or even Slow Burns. That always bothered me when I had some downtime to think about it. The expressions on their faces—sometimes blank, sometimes vaguely pitiful—engendered a festering guilt that threatened my actions with doubt every time I faced a white-skinned monster.

Finally, Grace said, “It feels wrong.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Yes.” She stood up straight and looked at me. She pointed at the Slow One rummaging for roaches. “You don’t feel bad about leaving him here?”

I shrugged and looked away. I knew I should have felt bad. But I didn’t. Mostly I felt hollow.

I couldn’t get past the thought that I’d have simply killed The Roach Wrangler and I was starting to feel just as guilty as if I had.

Grace went back to her work. “I understand. I really do.” She picked up a tall, skinny bottle of some kind of white wine—a moscato. “This is so much better when it’s cold.”

“Calories,” I muttered, accepting the bottle for the collection in my bag.

Jazz and Murphy came over, apparently finished shopping on the cosmetics aisle. She pointed a thumb at Murphy, “We’re going to check back in the deli.”

Grace looked across to the other side of the store. “Don’t go so far that we can’t hear you.”

With plenty of sarcasm, Jazz said, “Yes mother.” Murphy smiled.

Unfazed, Grace went back to looking through the bottles. She turned the conversation back to the Slow Ones. “I’ve seen plenty of people lose their humanity.”

I wasn’t sure that I started with my humanity intact. But that was a long story of shitty parents that I preferred to leave in the black hole of my memory for as much time as I could keep it there.

“With all the death, all the violence,” said Grace, “people have to protect themselves.” She patted the center of her chest. “In here. In their hearts. Turning a callous eye on the world helps. For some—the weak ones—it’s the only way.”

“The weak ones?” I asked. “Wait. Are you saying I’m weak?”

“Take it however you want,” said Grace. “We’ve all been through indescribable brutalities to get where we are now. Some of us were strong enough to keep the best parts of ourselves alive. Some of us weren’t.”

I wanted to say, ‘
Fuck you
.’ Yeah, I’m just that eloquent. Instead, I muttered, “For some of us, maybe this is the best part.” I stomped off to check what lay down another aisle. I can’t say I was any more or less interested in what was still on those shelves. I just wanted to get away from Grace. She was pushing me to think about things I’d rather not.

I’d grown comfortable—well maybe not comfortable—perhaps I’d just reached a state of détente with what I felt and what I thought I should feel. I was okay with my stupid choices and my addiction to danger. I was fine going from day to day with few emotional ties. I was fine with the killing.

The guilt was a price I paid, a necessary toll.

Something about the killing filled an empty hole in me.

I found myself looking at boxes and boxes of empty protein bars and empty bar wrappers. They were scattered near knee deep on the floor. The Whites had figured out how to tear open those packages. I guess not a hard thing, it was the intuitive leap of knowing that something might be edible inside—that was the part that seemed like it should have been beyond the abilities of their simple brains.

I took my time as I sorted through the trash, finding bars as I went, using my effort in the trivial search to focus my attention and hide from my thoughts. The darkest parts of my soul were thriving in the chaos of a world turned murderous black, and bereft of dreams. I was a downcast demigod, slayer of monsters. I bore the machete that drained their veins, stole their breath, and cut the life from their hearts.

I was the void.

I was the Null Spot.

Maybe I really was.

But still, the guilt.

By the time I was halfway down the aisle, I had collected a few dozen bars and they were stashed in my backpack along with the bottles of wine.

Grace came wading down through the cardboard and silvery wrappers. When she stopped beside me, she asked, “Any luck?”

“I’m finding plenty,” I said.

“Mind if I help?”

“Of course.” I looked at her. “I know sometimes I get pissed, but it’s nothing. I’m not entirely comfortable with the things I’ve done to stay alive. But that just is what it is. I’ve got to deal with it in my own way.”

“I’m sorry,” said Grace. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was judging you. It’s just the kind of things I think about when I can’t sleep at night.”

Lying, I said, “I don’t tend to think of anything except staying awake.”

“Afraid of what might happen if you go to sleep?” asked Grace. “The Crazies might come?”

I smiled and almost laughed before admitting, “The nightmares get pretty bad.”

“That’s normal.” Grace found a full box kicked up under the edge of a shelf and gave me a challenging look.

“Beginner’s luck,” I told her.

“What do you think of everything that Fritz and Gabe told us?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “What are you asking exactly?”

She said, “I’m thinking about going with them.”