Slow Burn (Book 9): Sanctum

by Bobby Adair

  “They’re tired,” said Dr. Oaks. “And they’re frightened.”

  “They need to get used to that,” I told him.

  “That they do,” said Dr. Oaks. “Things are changing for the worse again.”

  “Yes, they are,” Grace agreed.

  Dr. Oaks started walking up the hall, stretching his legs in slow steps. “I need to get the circulation going.” He reached over and patted my belly. “I’m not a lean young man anymore. Not for about fifty years, I guess.” He laughed at his joke, and that turned into a series of coughs. When he got past that, he pointed at the bodies strewn on the floor in front of us. “It’s going to smell pretty bad in here by this time tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Grace agreed.

  Dr. Oaks stopped and looked Grace in the eye. “I’m sorry. I didn’t thank you.”

  Grace shook her head uncomfortably.

  “My dear. Just say, ‘you’re welcome.’”

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled thinly.

  “What is the state of things?”

  Grace looked down the hall. “There were no more survivors in the veterinary science building.” She pointed up and down the corridor. “You’re it.”

  Dr. Oaks frowned and set his jaw purposefully. “We lost more than thirty of our colleagues. That’ll be hard to recover from.” He heaved a sigh into his rattling old lungs, and he frowned. “It will get worse.”

  “Because of the others?” Grace asked. “Nearly none of the volunteers survived the attack.”

  “It may not matter,” he said, in a quiet voice. “They won’t have much to protect soon anyway.”

  “Don’t give up now, Dr. Oaks.” She patted her chest. “There are four of us like this. The infected don’t know what we are, and that gives us a big advantage.”

  “It’s not the infected that worries me now,” said Dr. Oaks.

  “It’s the infection,” I said, giving away the answer Dr. Oaks was circling around to.

  Dr. Oaks nodded.

  I looked at Grace. “Fritz told me these guys were never exposed to the virus. That’s why they were able to save so many doctors and professors in one place. It wasn’t a fortuitous number of immune cases, it was good quarantine procedures.”

  “Now,” said Dr. Oaks, “quarantine is broken. We’ve all been exposed.”

  Grace slumped against the wall.

  Dr. Oaks pointed down the hall at the other academics. “We may all be goners, we’re just not dead yet.” He smiled as though there had been some dark humor there to qualify it as a joke. Maybe he was correct.

  “Still,” I said, “we need a plan. Grace is right, staying here won’t end well. The Whites will come. They will get up to this floor. They will find you in your stockroom. You can take my word for it or not. I can’t offer you anything to prove that I know what I’m talking about except to say that I’m alive, so far.”

  Dr. Oaks smiled at that. “Best resume I’ve heard all day.”

  I chuckled. I liked his wry wit. “If any of you are going to make it, we need to get you someplace safer.”

  Grace straightened up again. “It throws me off when you turn optimistic, Zed.”

  “There’s a chance some of you are immune,” I told Dr. Oaks as if I might know more about the disease than him. “If not, some of you may survive the infection with your brain functions intact.”

  “Some. That’s a gross overestimation.” Dr. Oaks laughed. “However, I agree with your intent.”

  “I’ve got a suggestion, then.” I looked at Grace and Dr. Oaks, the apparent man in charge of the academics, for tacit permission to proceed. Neither objected. “It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. There are four of us.” I patted myself on the chest for clarity. I meant the Slow Burns. “Two of us can stay here to watch things. Two of us can go out and find a better place to hide. Something defensible. Something easily hidden. Camouflage works better as a defense than nearly anything else with the naked horde. Hopefully, we’ll find a place where it’s easy to get food and water. We need somewhere larger than your storeroom because we’ll be there for three or four days.”

  “Waiting for the disease to run its course,” said Dr. Oaks. He looked at me. “That’s what you’re suggesting, isn’t it?”

  “I am,” I told him.

  “Before you take the survivors to your sanctum, right?” he guessed.

  “Sanctum?” The oddity of the phrase caught me off guard and I laughed. “I wouldn’t get all formal. Safe places don’t tend to last.”

  Getting down to more serious questions, Dr. Oaks asked, “What will we do with the ones who the virus doesn’t kill? The ones who don’t recover?”

  “You mean the ones who turn into monsters?” Grace asked.

  “There’s only one solution.” I didn’t want to say it, but it needed to be said. “It sucks, but it’s the only way. They went through something like this at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin.” I looked at both of them, as though they might not know the place. “They restrained the infected ones before they infected—”

  “They infected?” Dr. Oaks interrupted.

  “It was a fucked up situation,” I told him. “They had their reasons for doing it that way. They infected everyone in groups. They restrained them. The ones who recovered, they let loose. The ones who turned symptomatic, they killed.”

  “They didn’t wait,” Dr. Oaks asked, “to see if any got better, like you two?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t agree completely with their methods, but I wasn’t there when they started the whole thing. I didn’t have a say in it. Not sure it would have made a difference anyway. Everybody was desperate then and willing to try anything to avoid what looked like the inevitable.”

  Dr. Oaks frowned and looked at his wrists as he mused, “Restraints.”

  “It may be best,” said Grace. “It could work.”

  “But we need to find a place,” I told them. “We need to do it quickly. If your people were exposed, then they’ll start showing symptoms any time.”

  “And what if they weren’t all exposed?” Grace asked. “What if they don’t get exposed until we think they’re immune, and they turn later?”

  “We make sure,” said Dr. Oaks.”

  I replied, “At Brackenridge they used—”

  “All it takes is a big wet kiss,” said Dr. Oaks. “That’s enough.”

  Grace sighed and stepped up to Dr. Oaks and pursed her lips. “If this is what you’ve decided.”

  He pecked her on the lips and laughed. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been kissed by a pretty young woman in a long time.”

  Grace stepped back and blushed.

  “We need to wait until one of us turns feverish,” said Dr. Oaks. “That person needs to do the kissing. Like most viruses, it’s not likely to be contagious after the fever subsides.” Dr. Oaks looked up and down the hall. “I hope it’s one of the young ladies who gets it first.”

  “Okay, then.” I decided to move things along. “Me and Grace will head out to scout for a place to hole up. Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated since you know the campus better than either of us. Murphy and Jazz will stay here to guard you guys, but you’ll have to get back inside the storeroom, just in case.”

  “We can’t,” said Dr. Oaks.

  Grace and Dr. Oaks shared a glance.

  I was being left out of something. “What?”

  “We need to save what we can of our research.” Dr. Oaks pointed at Grace. “She gets motherly when I bring it up.”

  I rubbed my eyes as I fought with competing requirements. “You stay on this floor, you won’t be safe. If you go into the adjoining buildings, you probably get killed and draw in enough Whites to kill everyone else.”

  “No, no,” said Dr. Oaks. “Most of us work in this building on the top two floors.”

  “Get what you can on this floor,” I told him. “We’ll get the most important stuff off of the third floor when we get back. Either way, you can’t take anyt
hing with you now. I’d say secure it as best you can,” I glanced at Grace, “some of us will come back after things cool down here and gather everything up.”

  Dr. Oaks nodded. “Food and water. If we can do something about that. We don’t have any stored here. The volunteers protecting us kept us supplied with food.”

  Skip a meal! I didn’t say that. These people had a lot to learn about life in the world nowadays. “We’ll see if we can find something.”

  Grace put a hand on Dr. Oaks arm. “We’ll find some food.”

  “And something we’re not thinking about,” said Dr. Oaks, “if we go somewhere else on campus—”

  “When,” I interrupted, “not if. You can’t stay here. Everyone will die, probably by this time tomorrow. It’s that simple. I’m not exaggerating. This place is risk-factor central. Believe me on this point.”

  “I do,” said Dr. Oaks, “but how will we cross the campus? The infected will see us, won’t they?” He looked at Grace. “They’ll come after us, won’t they? We’re not like you two.”

  He was right. My ease at walking among the Whites was turning into a false generalization to all other people, normal people.

  “What if we disguise them,” said Grace, “maybe put them in gloves and hoodies? Hide as much skin as possible.”

  “The naked ones will see the clothes,” I said, “and come after them.”

  “I have an idea,” said Dr. Oaks. “It might solve both problems at once.”

  “Both?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Dinner and disguise, of course. If you find some food, maybe find some flour as well.”

  Chapter 28

  I followed Grace across the street toward the four-story pharmacy building. When we’d started down the stairs from the fourth floor of the veterinary sciences addition, I’d thought I was running the show, but she had a way of slowly taking charge that trumped my anti-authoritarian tendencies. Or perhaps it was the sight of her naked body that kept me in line. Sure, she was maybe twenty years older than me. She had a few wrinkles, some gray hair, but those seemed unimportant with her clothes gone.

  We ran through the grass and around to the side of the building, avoiding the dead Whites and live ones grazing on their fallen. We stepped into a hedge of fat, round bushes standing taller than us despite the extreme weather and loss of irrigation. Grace stopped, put a finger to her lips, and looked from side to side.

  I kept quiet and scanned. No Whites were in the bushes that I could see. The nearest live ones were thirty or forty yards away.

  Grace leaned in close. “You need to stop looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?” I didn’t think she’d noticed.

  “There are naked infected everywhere,” she huffed. “I’d have thought you’d be used to it by now.”

  Busted. Why not just go with it? “Sorry.” I pointed at the Whites across the lawn, naked females were among them. “Something in my brain clicks off when I see them. To me, those ones are just monsters.”

  “Really?”

  Mostly. I didn’t think it was good to mention the females I’d spooned with that night before I took that combine and ran down a few thousand of them in a cornfield.

  “Listen, Zed, you’re cute, but you’re stupid. I’m not going to make an emotional investment in somebody who’s intent on getting themselves killed. Okay?”

  Emotional?

  Honestly, I was only thinking about sex, but the truth I didn’t tell myself was I knew sex would lead to something more, something that I was never good at dealing with even before the world fell apart—emotional attachments. I was still a newbie in that department, fucking my relationships up at every turn. I wasn’t an abusive monster like Dan, and I wasn’t a sharp-tongued, screeching cunt like the Harpy. I had tried to navigate the hormone-charged high school and college years having not had the opportunity to see a healthy relationship at work, no template, so to speak. That left me with trial and error, which so far hadn’t produced good results.

  “Don’t pout.” Grace smiled and looked me up and down. “If you were the last guy on earth,” she shrugged and thought it through, “you’d do. We could find a little house on the prairie and make little pale-skinned babies to repopulate the earth. I’d stay home and make doilies and biscuits, and you could go out and hunt for buffalo. It’d be fun.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Be careful what you joke about. I am just about that last guy on earth. You might end up with a half dozen toddlers that look just like me.”

  Grace shook her head. “You’ll be dead a long time before that.”

  “That’s what everybody says,” I smiled. “Yet here I am.”

  “It defies all logic.” Grace peeked through the foliage. “Well, we can’t stand out here in the bushes all day. We’re not middle-schoolers anymore.” She pointed down the side of the building. “There’s a way in over here. They kept the food stored in one of the rooms on the second floor down at the far end of the building. They figured if they ever got the service elevator running it would make sense. You know, they wouldn’t have to carry it as far.”

  “They have canned stuff in there?”

  “That’s pretty much all there is left to scavenge. Pretty much. The infected get most everything else.”

  That was true. It didn’t take much brainpower to figure a box of cereal with a giant picture of Fruit Loops on the front might have something yummy inside. Then there was the meager effort required to find out.

  “They’ve got some of those canvas grocery bags in there,” she said. “Grab one when we get there. Don’t overfill it. You want to be able to run.”

  I knew how to handle the loads of things I needed to run with. I didn’t need Grace telling me. “Yes, mother.”

  “That’s why you never get laid.” Grace turned and punched me in the arm. “You always say the wrong thing.” She hurried through the bushes toward the door.

  A little too loudly, I called after her, “Or because most of the girls are dead?” I followed, muttering, “We do have this virus thing going on.”

  Chapter 29

  Inside, the dead lay on the floor as thick as they were in the veterinary science building. Plenty of live ones worked on filling their bellies from the corpses. We didn’t kill any of them. We were on a different mission than that. Instead, we went into the stairwell and climbed up to the second floor. More dead. Fewer Whites feeding. A handful down the hall near the other end.

  Grace and I headed down the hall to the room that had been dedicated for the pantry. It was the first classroom on our right. The feeding Whites barely gave us a glance. That was hopeful until we neared the pantry door and I heard sounds from within. Whites were in there, and they sounded pissed.

  Nodding to the door, I pointed at the knob, then raised my machete and stood to the side so I could ambush and kill any beast that sprang out when Grace opened it up.

  She positioned herself behind the door, gave me a confirming glance and pulled, stepping far out of the way.

  The noise from inside didn’t stop, at least not immediately, but after a moment of waiting, I was rewarded. A White ran out the door, right past me. I swung my blade at the back of his neck. He dropped as a second came out the door. I wasn’t in position to get her with my machete, so I jabbed at her throat with the knife in my left hand and shoved the blade all the way through the back of her neck. She crumbled, limp, gurgling blood through her breath.

  I straightened up and stepped into the pantry. The last of the Whites—a wiry guy with a full sleeve tattoo on his naked arm—glanced at me and then went back to smashing a gallon-sized can against the floor, holding it up to look at the picture of sliced peaches on the label after every couple of tries.

  I motioned Grace to come in. She followed, closing the door behind her. I headed straight for the White, deciding to take care of him so he wouldn’t become a distraction while we sifted through the mess to find some groceries.

  The White, though, eyed me suspiciously an
d stopped pounding the can immediately after I started toward him. By my second step, he was on his feet and moving to the other side of a shelf.

  Damn, a skittish one. Unusual.

  I looked back to make sure the door was closed, set my feet, and raised my machete. “Here, Whitey, Whitey…”

  The White looked at me but didn’t move.

  “Come here, buddy,” I said. “I’m going to kill you.”

  Still, he didn’t move.

  To my left, Grace started to work her way around to the White’s other side. He got nervous, glancing back and forth between us, and stepping toward the far corner of the room.

  Then I stopped. This was different. “Can you understand me?”

  It looked at me blankly, still glancing between us.

  “Hey,” I said. “Nod your head. Blink. Wave your hand. Say something if you can. Do you understand me?”

  It stepped closer into the corner.

  I sighed. It wasn’t a Smart One. It wasn’t a Slow Burn. It wasn’t as smart as Russell had been but it seemed relatively harmless to me. It didn’t wig out and attack me when I’d spoken. Killing it didn’t feel right. “Grace.”

  “Yes?” she responded in a soft voice.

  “Go open the door again, and stand out of the way.”

  “Are you sure that’s how you want to handle this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think it’s a mistake.”

  “Yeah.” I looked at her. “I don’t need any more guilt. Let’s let it go.”

  Grace shook her head and stepped quickly to the door.

  Once she had it open, I grunted a gorilla sound, raised my machete and charged the White in the corner, doing it slowly enough, and leaving him plenty of room to run along the windows, cross the room, and disappear out the door. All I heard after that was the sound of his feet running down the hall.

  Grace came back into the pantry and closed the door behind.

  “Easy enough,” I told her softly.

  “We’ll see.” In the dim moonlight coming in through the windows, I scanned the room. “You guys had a lot of food in here.”

  “They were stocked enough to last for a while.”

  “Besides the flour Dr. Oaks asked for? What should we bring back?”