Slow Burn (Book 8): Grind (20 page)

The road curved on the way into town, passing old houses built of native stone, some of institutional reddish-orange brick under flat roofs, and even a tall, Victorian-style house in disrepair, with vehicles that hadn’t run since the seventies on the lawn. The trees in what was left of the yards stood tall and broad enough to hang over the road and muffle some of the sound that our big, diesel engine rattled out from underneath its hood.

Half the trees had large boughs broken and lying beneath. Other limbs were partially ripped from the trunks and hanging from tree to road. Smaller limbs lay everywhere. Most roofs were partially torn away or had wide sections with missing shingles.

The town had gotten hit hard when that hurricane blew into central Texas a few months back.

We passed a grocery store with all the plate glass windows across its front broken away. The metal shelving units and cashier stations were piled into ramparts around the front of the store. Bare bones lay scattered across the asphalt. The folks in this small town had made their last stand at the Piggly Wiggly.

A road scattered with vehicles in disarray straightened out as it ran through the center of town. Among those vehicles, several dozen Whites jumped to attention, pulled away from whatever they were scavenging by the sound of our engine.

I floored it.

The exhaust roared and spat out a cloud of smoke.

The heavy truck accelerated faster than a Humvee, but didn’t instill any confidence in me as for how well it would maneuver through town, where lots of slow turns and subsequent accelerations would be necessary to keep infected hands off its faded paint. Still, all the engine and exhaust noise had the effect I'd hoped for when I pushed the pedal down. Whites ran into the street several blocks ahead of us, eager to be the first to get a bite.

“Put on your seatbelt.” My voice ratcheted up with excitement. “It’s gonna get fun.”

Murphy quickly strapped himself in, left his M4 in his lap, and readied his pistol.

I swerved around a dead pickup. Pickups were the most common form of transportation in that part of Texas.

I ran down some Whites with a bang of bone against steel. The truck bounced as it rolled over their bodies.

We passed a feed store on the left and a barbecue shack on the right. After that, the one- and two-story buildings on both sides of the street filled in wall to wall.

“You see the road blocked up there?” Murphy asked.

“I’m turning left at the corner." I didn't slow the truck much. Instead, I swerved to the right side of the road and cut a wide turn through the intersection, smashing more Whites with the pickup’s heavy-duty brush guard. The truck leaned hard and the tires complained loudly, but they held the road.

Murphy pointed his pistol at some Whites who got close to his side, but not close enough for him to waste a bullet.

Just as well. The truck fishtailed coming out of the corner and slammed a running White full on the side, batting him twenty feet across a sidewalk and into a wall.

Murphy laughed out loud. “Damn, did you see that?”

I was laughing, too, as I proudly checked my mirror to see whether the White was getting up.

“Dude!” Murphy shouted.

I looked forward just in time to avoid slamming into a parked delivery truck.

“Keep your eyes out front.” Murphy was getting revved up with the excitement, too.

“Yes, sir.” I sped the truck past two more blocks. “I think this next one is where I turn.”

Murphy reached out and held onto the dashboard. We were going too fast to corner. I braked and the truck skidded into the turn. I gunned the engine again and straightened out on the road.

“Oh, shit.” I mashed the brakes to the floor. A tree was down across the road in front of us.

The tires skidded and bounced. The engine knocked and stalled as we smashed into the branches.

"Good thing you put on your seatbelt," I told Murphy as I turned the key to crank the starter.

He turned in his seat to see if any Whites were coming around the corner behind us.

The engine didn’t start.

“Let me know if you see any,” I told him loudly.

“Oh, you’ll know.” Murphy holstered the pistol and swung the barrel of his rifle over the truck’s backseat to point out the rear window.

I cranked again as I looked for what I could see through brown leaves and gray branches. “C’mon, you old piece of shit.”

“Don’t pump the gas pedal,” Murphy told me without looking. “You’re flooding it.”

“Can you flood a diesel?” I asked, wondering if old diesels had carburetors or fuel injection, but mostly thinking we should abandon the truck before Whites came around the corner. It would be easier to evade them before they got eyes on us.

Murphy fired his rifle. The bullets shattered the truck’s rear glass.

So much for running away.

Murphy fired off several more rounds.

I looked over my shoulder and saw a half-dozen Whites sprinting around the corner behind us.

I cranked the starter, keeping my foot off the gas pedal. The engine rattled to life. I pushed the shifter into reverse and floored it again. The rear tires spun and then caught, dragging the truck backward toward the Whites.

The hood was barely out of the downed tree branches when the first White disappeared under the rear bumper.

I had an arm up on the back of the seat and was half turned around by then as I raced.

A female jumped onto the back of the truck. Another thumped against the tailgate.

Murphy shot the woman climbing into the bed and two more jumped up to take her place.

I hit a clump of Whites at the corner and cut the wheels hard. The truck spun sideways into the cross street.

One White fell out of the back. The other hit his head and fell over, bleeding and unconscious.

“Go. Go!” Murphy shouted.

I shifted into forward and put the pedal to the floor, keeping my eyes ahead.

Murphy fired at least a dozen more shots.

“I think I took the wrong turn back there.”

“No shit?” Murphy laughed. He glanced forward. “What about staying on this road? It looks clear.”

“Can’t,” I told him. “We need the road going out of town to the west. This will take—”

“Don’t care,” Murphy shouted. “Just get us out of here.” He fired a few more shots.

We didn’t have much of a lead and didn’t have many choices. The road we were on only had three more cross streets before running out of town. If any roads existed out past the edge of town that would get us to where we were going, I didn’t know which ones they were. I hadn’t looked at the map in that kind of detail.

I chanced the next right turn we came to. "Hang on." The truck wasn't moving fast enough for the tires to squeal much, but it leaned hard anyway.

The truck started to bounce.

“Damn,” Murphy complained.

“Potholes,” I told him. “Write a letter to the mayor.”

The way ahead looked clear for several blocks between houses roughed up by the storm. I slowed and tried to avoid the biggest holes in the road. By the time we passed the first intersection, Whites were rounding the corner behind us and coming our way.

At each intersection, I looked right to get a glimpse at the road through the center of town, the one we needed to be on when we drove out the other side. We were paralleling it, and if we could get past the roadblock and get back on that road, we’d be home free.

At least that was my plan—or hope.

We came to a jumble of branches that looked more and more impassable the closer we came. Rather than risk getting hung up, I took a right turn, hoping we’d gone far enough to get past the roadblock. Whites, the clothed variety, came at us out of the houses as we passed. Not in big numbers; a couple here, a couple there.

More debris had to be avoided, so I drove through somebody’s front yard. Murphy had to shoot a White who was waiting on a front porch for the opportunity to pounce on us as we passed.

I made a left turn onto the main street as Murphy shouted, “Dude, perfect!”

In my rearview mirror, I caught a glance of overturned pickups blocking the road just behind me. The thump of a White hitting the brush guard pulled my attention forward again. We were back among the naked ones. Not many, but enough.

I raced the big noisy engine and swerved back and forth in the road. I needed to avoid stalled vehicles and debris that looked like it could put a hole in a tire. Murphy shot down a few Whites who took advantage of our reduced speed.

Moments later, we were out of the center of town and racing past storm-thrashed houses again. I kept an eye on the road signs, hoping the ones I needed hadn’t been run down by fleeing motorists.

At a Y-intersection, I saw the sign I’d been looking for, along with an arrow pointing right. I sped the truck up over sixty and took the right leg of the intersection. The road up ahead looked clear. Farms spread out on both sides of the road and the last of the town's houses disappeared behind us.

I was riding high on my victory and shouted, “All right! Let’s get this show on the road!”

We made the first ten miles pretty quickly over roads that were mostly clear. That’s when we reached a blocked bridge over a shallow river. The terrain along the banks took the possibility of attempting a crossing in the truck off the table. We spent nearly an hour backtracking for a way around.

When we finally got back on course, we were getting into the later hours of the afternoon. Murphy spotted a tall sign for a bed and breakfast standing on a hill across a wide field planted in a uniform, grassy, green crop that hadn’t died. The two-story main house, the barns, and a silo—which stood half again taller than the house—were all painted in red with white trim, and looked just as unperturbed as if awaiting weekend visitors from a pre-virus world.

From up there, I immediately guessed I’d be able to see for miles in all directions.

We needed to stop and get our bearings.

The dude ranch, or whatever it was, had a fancy iron gate that stood fifteen feet tall at least, and looked to have successfully kept out the casually wandering Whites. It, however, was designed for ornamental value rather than security. I drove through it at twenty and my much-abused farm truck jolted, but didn't lose any momentum. The caliche drive crackled under our tires as I rolled the truck cautiously around the curves on a winding driveway up through the green grass toward the house.

I stopped the truck with the passenger side facing the house.

Murphy said, “Honk the horn a few times. I’ll shoot whoever comes out.”

What didn't need to be said was that if too many Whites came out, I'd drive off, and we'd try somewhere else. I leaned on the horn. That, along with the noisy diesel, was bound to bring any infected residents out to greet us.

We waited.

I honked again, and before the sound ended, three Whites came running around a corner of the house, vocalizing and grabbing, though the truck sat thirty yards beyond their reach.

Murphy squeezed off five shots to get them all.

Two were dead. That was easy enough to tell. The last was badly wounded and writhing on the ground, babbling nonsensical sounds full of anger while blood pulsed out of the torn artery that would soon be the cause of its death.

Another White was kind enough to come running around the same corner, and Murphy shot her through the throat. She collapsed, twitching and gurgling blood.

“Honk it again,” Murphy told me.

I did.

No more Whites came to greet us.

Taking time to look around in all directions, Murphy said, “Drive ‘round back.”

I drove the truck over the lawn, giving the main house a wide berth. Once we got around behind the house, I skirted a large pool full of green water and floating vegetation. Spread just below the crest of the hill, facing west, stood a row of seven cottages, each with a view over miles of rolling hills toward a spot where the sun would set.

“Damn pretty view,” I observed.

“Don’t make your reservations yet,” said Murphy.

I honked the horn before he had a chance to tell me to do it.

A couple of Whites pushed their way through the open door on one of the cabins. Because they were on my side of the truck, Murphy didn’t have a shot.

“Go,” he ordered.

“I got this.” I pushed the pedal to the floor and spun gravel and turf into the air.

Before I created too much of a gap between me and the Whites coming for us, I skidded the truck to a stop, threw it into reverse, and backed toward the Whites, who—in their eagerness to get at us—didn’t bother to get out of the way. The rear bumper hit them and at least one of them went under the tires, not unlike a speed bump. I stopped, reversed course, and ran them over again going forward, trying my best to gas the truck just as the wheels rolled over the bodies.

Did spinning the wheels on a dying White’s body seem unnecessarily brutal? Yeah, sure. But what the fuck? My guilt over the killing of Whites who maybe didn’t deserve it because they might have been Slow Burns was manifesting itself in a weird way.

We made a few more trips, weaving through the farm buildings, honking the horn and making as much noise as we could before we decided it was safe to get out.

I stopped the truck in front of the silo and looked at Murphy for protests before I killed the engine. He said nothing. Off it went.

I flung the truck door open and leapt out with my machete at the ready.

Murphy took up a position at the front of the truck with his rifle aimed at a pair of double doors at the base of the silo.

Without hesitation, I opened one wide and stepped aside as I yelled, “Hey!”

I waited from my position against the wall and watched Murphy. From where he stood, he had a view inside the silo. After a moment, he shrugged.

Good enough
. I turned and ran inside.

The silo was clearly not functional for storing grain, I decided, based on my recent experience inside an operational one. This silo was configured with a spiral staircase up the center to what had to be a viewing platform. The silo was just a façade for nostalgic guests. I didn’t care. It was perfect for my needs.

I started up the stairs.

Murphy ran inside and I told him, “Close and lock the doors. Then come up.”

Once I reached the platform at the top, I was pleased. All around the circumference of the silo at the platform level were tall windows, giving me an unobstructed view of the countryside in every direction. And if that wasn’t enough, a large telescope stood ready for use, along with a shelf housing several pairs of binoculars.

“Nice,” said Murphy as he stepped up to the observation floor with me.

“You get the doors locked?” I asked.

“Nobody’s gonna wander in,” he told me. “If a bunch of ‘em decide to bust those doors down, they won’t have any trouble.”

Spinning around for a cursory glance at the nearby property, I said, “Unless there are a bunch of ‘em hiding in the barn, I think we’re good. You didn’t happen to bring that map up, did you?”

Murphy slapped a pocket on his vest.

“Good.” I stepped in front of a window and looked in the direction I figured the naked horde should be. “Help me search. We need to find them before it gets dark.”