Slow Burn (Book 8): Grind (24 page)

Thirty minutes or an hour into the battle, I started to question my choice to tell Murphy to go to the Expo Center, as I realized my perch on the roof of the Red Lobster was exactly what we’d wanted to find. Then I recalled what I’d gone through to get here. I’d been surrounded by naked Whites nearly the whole time after separating from Murphy. They’d have killed him.

Sending him away was the best thing.

It wasn’t clear yet which way the battle was going to go. It wasn’t quite winding down, but the intensity was diminishing. Maybe half the helicopters had disengaged one at a time and flown back to Fort Hood. I assumed they’d run out of ammunition and had gone to resupply or refuel. The fact that none had yet returned left other possibilities on the table. They might have seen the fight as lost and fled while they still had sufficient ammunition and fuel to get away. The other possibility was that some of those Whites who’d peeled off from the main horde had run onto the base. The Smart Ones had to know Fort Hood lay up the road. They had probably deduced where the copters and armored vehicles had come from. Whites may have been waiting to ambush the helicopters when they landed for resupply.

Without the helicopters, it looked to me like it would be very hard for any in the Survivor Army to live through the day.

The two tanks that had brutishly plowed into the horde had indeed left carnage in their wake. But they’d been completely swarmed by Whites, such that the tanks became invisible under the layers. Their drivers were probably blind, as well. One of them ran into a concrete drainage ditch with vertical sides, and got stuck. Another drove through the wall of a welding supply store. Shortly after, a huge explosion blew the roof off the building and took out one of the helicopters that had the misfortune to be flying nearby. It had been burning and exploding ever since.

At least a third of the Humvees were out of action. Some were gone, though it was clear that they were fighting a running engagement through the streets, using their mobility to their advantage.

As for the horde, naked bodies were everywhere, in many places, forming a carpet so thick that I couldn’t see the color of the ground around them.

I grew anxious as I realized that the battle might fizzle out in the next hour or so. I’d scanned over the horde so many times that I started to doubt that the Smart Ones were there at all. I wondered if they’d taken cover in one of the buildings in the area and how I’d figure out which one, because as much as I tried to see messengers running across the current of the moving horde, that became impossible. Minutes after the gunfire started, it seemed every White was moving in a different direction, although the mass of them still flowed toward the guns.

The more I thought about the idea of cover, the more it made sense. I’d been looking for the Smart Ones out in the open, but I wasn’t out in the open. At least, not out in the killing zone. Why? Because I wasn’t stupid. It was too easy to die out there with all those bullets flying. That meant the Smart Ones wouldn’t be out there, either.

I strained my eyes as I looked from building to building for any Whites behaving unusually.

I’d taken a hard look at four or five when I noticed a large culvert running beneath the highway—actually a series of four culverts, one under each access road, one beneath each set of highway lanes. In the flat creek bed on both sides of one of the culverts, dozens of Whites stood, all looking into the pipe.

They weren’t looking at the battle around them. They didn’t look up at the helicopters when they flew over. They didn’t crouch when something exploded nearby. They were waiting in line.

As I watched, one after another ran out from under the road in an unexplained direction. Other Whites ran down into the ditch and into the culvert.

I’ve got you fuckers now.

All I needed was a plan. Short that, I had my machete, my knife, and enough confidence that I knew I could stroll right into that culvert and do some real damage before I fought my way out or they all ran away like a bunch of pussies.

At least, that’s how it all looked when I pictured it in my imagination.

Plenty of Whites were still running up Highway 190 toward the battle. They were the slowest of the horde, spread out thinly for miles. Lucky for them, I thought. They’d miss most of the chances to be killed by the time they joined the battle. The good thing for me about running with them was that the helicopter pilots were largely ignoring the highway, as the density of the horde there was thinnest relative to most everywhere else.

As I crossed the distance to the culvert, my excitement subsided a bit and I had time to think. Most importantly, I had time to realize that my Rambo plan, that of running into the culvert with blades flying, was doomed to failure. It was a plan born of impatience and a need for vengeance, built on an intuition for slaughter learned from watching action movies.

I’d realized a long time ago how useless that intuition was. I just needed the presence of mind not to listen to it when it prompted me into something extra stupid.

I chose not to listen.

Instead, I calmed myself, thought about my goal, and considered—given my limited resources—the best way to achieve it.

Given the variables, it wasn’t a difficult problem to solve.

When I neared the culvert, I stopped running and dropped down to a knee beside the guardrail. It had to be there to keep inattentive drivers from running off the shoulder and crashing into the creek next to the road.

I caught my breath, unscrewed the cap on my quart of lighter fluid and broke the foil seal on the bottle. I put the cap back on and then tested one of the lighters, just to make sure. I’d had too many little things go wrong too many times to have my plan fail on account of a malfunctioning disposable lighter.

Out of habit, I took a look around. The battle still raged. Naked Whites were dying by the thousands against a well-armed army of dipshits. But the dipshits were losing, they just didn’t know it.

I got up and jogged along the guardrail until I was over the culvert. I leaned over. Just below me, where the concrete walls had been poured to funnel floodwaters into the big pipe beneath the highway, at least thirty Whites were standing, patiently waiting to be told what to do. Those messengers could speak, at least in a rudimentary fashion. Some of them were probably even of normal human intelligence. Either way, the mix was good for my purposes.

I reached out with my lighter fluid and squirted it, squeezing hard to empty the bottle as quickly as possible, trying hard to get at least some on every one of the Whites waiting below.

A few protested with grunts and dirty looks. Some wiped at their faces and eyes. Most shuffled around as the lighter fluid rained down. The Whites on the right-hand side got the biggest dose.

As soon as the bottle emptied, I bounded a few quick steps and leapt over the guardrail onto the sloping ground beside the road. My boots skidded down the slope as I kept my balance and made a turn into the gaping concrete mouth of the culvert.

Most of the messenger Whites were looking at me by then, I suppose wondering what craziness I was up to. The ones I’d doused with the biggest dose of lighter fluid were closest to where I came to a stop.

I wasted no time. I rushed them, keeping a tight grip on my machete, holding it in front of me to keep their bodies from touching mine. I flicked my lighter to get a flame. In the confusion, the first White didn’t notice the lighter come close to her skin. Too bad.

The fluid on her shoulder caught fire, and the flame spread instantly around her neck, over her face, and onto her bald head. She screamed as any animal would, no matter how stupid. Fear of the flame is burned deep into the instincts.

She turned, waving her arms, trying to flee, spreading the flames to those beside her.

I jumped back a step and started to swing my machete.

Whites pushed back and tried to run away from me. They’d all been in the horde long enough to know that when a blade came out, the White on the business end of it turned into supper. They’d learned to fear the blade.

The flames spread across the whole bunch of them as they panicked, screamed, and pushed for all they were worth into the culvert.

They stampeded into the Smart Ones inside.

I dropped my lighter, quickly pulled my knife out of my boot, and followed, hearing nothing but agonizing fear echoing out of the big metal pipe.

Whites were falling and scrambling forward on hands and knees. Some went down and stayed there, injured by trampling feet.

As I ran by, I slashed at any who weren’t on fire, taking an extra swipe at ones who resisted. Those, I guessed, were the Smart Ones.

When I was halfway through the pipe, I came to a White nursing a wrist as he got up on his knees, looking at me with the clearest blue eyes and the most intense stare.

I’d seen that fucker before.

He was the one who’d set himself up on that makeshift throne all those months ago in Sarah Mansfield’s living room—King Monkey Fucker. He was the leader.

I raised my machete.

“Don’t,” he said, “I’m not like them.”

Exactly!

I swung down as he raised his good hand to block. My blade cut his hand in half and sank into his skull.

I wrenched the machete out as he fell over, twitching and gulping.

I yelled into the darkness, “Mark!”

At the other end of the culvert, out in the daylight, I saw a silhouetted figure on its hands and knees look up.

I ran, feeling a rush of joy so profound I nearly cried. But that shifted to rage in a rush of blame I’d attached to him for the pain of all my losses.

When I came into the light, Mark was looking up at me, confusion on his face.

I kicked him in the face and he fell over backward.

All around us, injured and dazed Whites were on the ground crawling away or just laying there. Plenty were still on fire and running while they screamed.

I put a boot on Mark’s chest and put the blade of my machete to his throat. “You remember me?”

He laughed and sputtered blood through his teeth. He shook his head.

“Speak, fucker.”

Mark looked cautiously left and right. He had his habits, too.

“You recognize me?” I asked again.

“No.”

“I’m Zed Zane. I saved your dumb ass back at the dorm on campus.”

Mark laughed again. Blood flowed out of his mouth, courtesy of the boot I’d planted there. He said, “You didn’t save me. I’m a god. We’re all gods. This is our world now.”

“Gods?” I asked. “Gods don’t bleed.”

“And they don’t die, either.” Mark laughed again, as though the joke were on me.

I swung my blade down to prove him wrong, but he moved his head and grabbed my ankle. The end of my blade ripped through his face, cutting a long slash all the way down through his sinus cavity. His grip on my ankle relaxed. Mark’s mouth opened and closed a few times, and his eyes blinked.

I raised my machete and cut straight down, burying it through the center of his head.

He didn’t move after that.

Habit took over, and I looked around, right, left, and behind, not taking any time to revel in the feeling. No White was paying any particular attention to me.

Machine gun fire was still everywhere. Helicopters still flew over and strafed. Whites still screamed.

It was time for me to go.

I ran.

It was late in the day, and I was tired as hell.

After spending the day sneaking and running through Killeen, Harker Heights, and part of Belton, I came out of the trees on the backside of the Expo Center. In front of me was a fairly small, fenced parking lot, probably reserved for exhibitors and what not. An easy deduction, since a giant rolling steel door on the back of the building opened onto the parking lot.

I climbed the fence, being extra careful to keep my man parts off the barbed wire loops at the top. I crossed the parking lot and walked in through the open door.

“Hey.”

It startled me at first, but I calmed instantly. “Hey, Murphy.”

“I see you made it.”

“Did you find a way to get up top?” I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I've been up there all day. I saw you coming across those fields over that way, so I came down to meet you."

“Thanks.” I smiled.

“You got him?”

I nodded.

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” Murphy dug into his pocket and came up with the scratch-off ticket he’d taken from the convenience store. “You won.”

“How much?”

“Does it matter?”

I shook my head. “You didn’t happen to pick up my clothes after I left you this morning, did you?”

Murphy shook his head again. “There's a custodian's locker room or something like that.” He pointed to the other side of the arena. “I think you might be able to find something there.”

“Good.” I walked onto the arena floor. Murphy came along.

“You really did kill him?”

I nodded again.

“How did he go?”

“Badly,” I said. “Very badly. For him, anyway.”

“Good.” Murphy heaved a dramatic sigh. “So we got that out of our system?”

I nodded.

“What next then?”

“You still wanna go to College Station?”

“What the fuck do you think?”