Slow Burn (Book 9): Sanctum

by Bobby Adair

  Murphy looked surprised. “And leave ‘em if they can’t keep up?”

  “I’ll stay with them,” she told us. “We’ll walk if we have to.”

  “That’s a bad idea.” I tried to imagine an alternative.

  She looked at Dr. Oaks again, her face concerned.

  "Odds are,” I said, "He's going to die anyway. All of them have been exposed, or they soon will be. We know where that leads. Don't risk your life for nothing."

  Grace nodded.

  I didn’t believe her. “You stay with the old ones at the rear. Talk to Jazz before we go. If she hangs back with you, that’s cool with me.” I looked at Murphy for agreement. He nodded. “Murphy and me will take the rest down the street.” I turned toward Dr. Oaks. “Even as slow as he’ll be going, what do you think it’ll take, maybe twenty minutes?”

  “If it takes longer than that,” Murphy chuckled, “he might die of old age.”

  Grace rolled her eyes.

  Chapter 32

  We started down the street and just as Grace predicted, Dr. Oaks and the other guy whose name I didn’t know fell immediately behind. They didn’t even attempt to run. I guess they knew their limitations.

  Or they’d already given up.

  That thought angered me, but I put it aside. I didn't want Grace or Jazz risking their lives for people who'd already decided to let themselves die. But I had other contrary charges to take care of.

  I jogged slowly, making a serpentine path across the parking lot and kept periodic watch over my shoulder to make sure all were doing as told, follow-the-leader. Whites were all over the place, some heading somewhere, some feeding on a carcass, many settling down inside of abandoned cars, in the buildings, or in the shrubs. Everybody wanted a warm, dry place to sleep.

  As we crossed over a sidewalk and a strip of dead grass, I saw the outpost on the corner where I’d killed the Whites in the library. That brought back a lot of weird emotions I tried to turn into a memory of victory. I’d killed a lot of them in that room, single-handed. But I didn’t feel like Null Spot the Destroyer at the moment. More like a serial killer.

  What did I need to do to get back in a Null Spot state of mind? Null Spot was confident and invincible. Zed Zane worried too much about shit that didn’t matter.

  We passed non-descript little buildings on our right and another parking lot on the left. I kept my group jogging a slalom down the turn lane in the middle of the road. Ahead, it looked like the number of Whites thinned. Not many in the roads, and not many near the buildings along the way. Or they were there and just lurking in the night shadows, ready to fuck up my evening as soon as I started to think things were going well.

  We passed over a crosswalk and past a bus with a wheel up on the curb. A couple of windows broken out. No surprise. We went past a row of greenhouses on the left, and through the glass walls I saw lots of movement. Nothing came out, though.

  I was getting worried. Something had to go wrong. Something always did.

  And suddenly, there it was, a building with tall concrete walls, and no windows. Kitchen-style exhaust vents on the roof ensured we’d reached the place Dr. Oaks had described. I crossed the parking lot with my little band behind, took a look way up the street, and saw Grace with her slow followers still coming.

  We entered the building through the front door and spread out into a lobby that contained no Whites. I stopped at the door and looked back up the street.

  Murphy put a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Don’t even think about it. They made their choice. You and me can’t go back to help them. We need to make sure this place is secure. There might be Whites. C’mon.”

  Chapter 33

  Our powder-coated people waited nervously in a hall while Murphy and I started the search. We were armed, and used to being naked—at least I was. They weren't. They were still holding hands over their private parts and looking at the walls and ceiling rather than each other.

  Sorry kids. All the niceties of our old life are luxuries we can’t afford.

  Murphy and I checked the front offices. Easy enough. A few had been ransacked. My guess was looters rather than Whites. The infected were much more vigorous and thorough than normals when they were looking for something to eat.

  The industrial kitchen in back was too dark to see anything but the largest of black shapes against a murky background with glints of dull moonlight off stainless steel equipment. Skylights in the roof let the moonlight in.

  “What do you think?” Murphy whispered as we stood in the door.

  I shook my head. The kitchen might have been empty or a hundred Whites might have been sitting inside on the floor. I stepped out and pushed the door closed. I bit my lip while I thought about it. “We don’t have a light. We can’t run around campus trying to find one.”

  Murphy agreed. “We’ve been lucky so far. Who knows what happens if we take these knuckleheads back outside.

  I crossed the lobby and looked out the front door again. Grace and Jazz had covered half the distance with the two old professors.

  Murphy came up beside me. “They’ll make it. What are we gonna do?”

  I heaved a labored sigh. The only solution that came to mind was the unpleasant one. I crossed the lobby again to the hall that led to the offices, and pointed toward one of the doors off the corridor and told them, "Go in that office. Close the door. Be quiet about it. Oh, and if you hear a bunch of screaming in a minute, shove a desk in front of the door and hope for the best."

  “What?” It was the grumbler from earlier. “You can’t just—”

  Murphy stopped him with a raised hand and an angry face. "We're doing the best we can here, buddy. Okay? This is a risk for us too, man."

  A woman grabbed the grumbler’s arm and tugged him toward the office. The other powder-coated people filed silently in.

  “See if you can find a lighter or something in the desk,” I told them. Maybe we’d get lucky if the office belonged to a smoker.

  Murphy and I crossed the lobby to get back to the kitchen door. We stopped, and he looked at me, feigning patience.

  “You wanna hold the door open or ambush the ones who come out?” I asked.

  “If there are a bunch of them in there it won’t matter.”

  “Don’t be a pessimist,” I told him. “You take the door.”

  Murphy stepped to one side and put a hand on the knob. I stood against the wall far enough from the doorway that I’d be able to get a full swing at anybody who came out. I nodded at Murphy. Ready.

  He nodded back and swung the door open.

  I tapped my machete on the doorjamb and waited.

  Nothing but the echo of the sound came back to us.

  I stepped closer to the door and leaned into the dark opening. “Dinner time, dipshits.”

  I jumped back and raised my blade high.

  Nothing.

  “We can’t be this lucky,” Murphy whispered. He turned to face the dark kitchen. “Come on out of here and I’ll let you eat Zed first.”

  No howls. No bare feet running on the unglazed tile floor. No kitchen equipment getting knocked around.

  “I think it’s empty,” I said. “Maybe it was too dark for the Whites to want to go inside.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Go get them.” I pointed at the closed office door. “Get them inside the kitchen.” I went back to the front door and looked out the window and waited. The girls were almost to the parking lot in front of our new building.

  Murphy, still whispering, just in case, herded the academics from the office into the kitchen. They shuffled around. They bumped things. They knocked metal utensils and pans, cursing through whispers when they did.

  Still, no White in the building made a noise. We had to be alone. Unlikely, but there it was.

  With tension building, because I just knew something had to go terribly wrong somewhere, I watched the girls shepherd their charges across the parking lot, up the few steps, and to the front door.


  I swung it open, looking from side to side for the mob I expected to ambush me. They didn’t materialize.

  "Thanks,” Dr. Oaks was out of breath, but he grabbed my arm for emphasis.

  I pointed to the kitchen door at the back of the lobby.

  Jazz asked, “Is everything okay? Are we safe?”

  I nodded. “The place seems empty.”

  “Seems?” Grace asked.

  “Too dark to tell in the kitchen,” I told her. “But we checked it best we could.”

  “We’re good, then?”

  I was almost afraid to say it, like accepting that nothing had gone to shit would be akin to springing the trap on our good fortune. “Yes.”

  Nothing bad happened. The trap didn’t spring.

  I followed them into the kitchen.

  Chapter 34

  Not an hour after we got settled into the kitchen, one of the professors got the chills and started shivering with loudly chattering teeth. Everybody whispered among themselves in their little cliques while looking at barely visible black silhouettes of each other. They were cold, we all were. They tried to convince each other that the fever hadn’t caught one of their own. They reassured one another it couldn’t be happening so fast.

  It had. They cultivated their pointless doubts. I had none. Soon, they’d all be infected. The comas would follow, then they’d start to wake, and mercy killings would necessarily follow.

  Shiver. Sizzle. Coma. Die. My recipe for a successful conclusion.

  I can be a real asshole in my thoughts.

  But I prayed some of them would make it. They were still humanity’s hope.

  Grace and Jazz went into the offices of the lobby for a meticulous search. A lighter or matches were our need. Hell, flint and steel would have been terrific if we could have found those.

  I sat down on the floor in the lobby, just outside the door to the kitchen, leaning against the wall. Unless some Whites popped out to surprise us or came to break through the door in the lobby, my part in everything was finished until I went out to meet the helicopter in the morning.

  Murphy came out of the blackness of the kitchen and stood in the doorway, leaning on the doorjamb. “Another sleepless night.”

  “Yeah.” I agreed.

  Inside, Dr. Oaks was talking softly to the feverish woman and a couple of others. He was trying to rally them around the plan we’d all agreed on. It was time to spread the infection.

  Murphy squatted down and in a voice just above a whisper, he said, “If it doesn’t go well for her, she could turn by morning.”

  I ran my fingers across the scarred blade laying on my knees. “Not a good way to go.”

  “A bullet would be better,” he said. “Maybe she’ll last until Martin gets here with the helicopter.”

  “What good would it do?” I asked. “He’s meeting us at the top of the pharmacy building. How would you get back here with your rifle? Hell, how will we get back here at all? We’ll need to have Martin pick us up and drop us somewhere else on campus.”

  “Maybe we do a repeat of yesterday’s performance,” said Murphy. “Drop on the drilling field. They had to have reloaded the machine guns, right? There was plenty of that ammo in the other helicopters.”

  "I don't see why they wouldn't, but you never know, right?” I looked over at Murphy. "Landing at Fort Hood won't be much less dangerous than landing here. And getting rearmed? It’ll be harder for them than us. We’re Whites. We can move among the infected. They can’t.”

  “What if they don’t show?” Murphy asked.

  I shrugged. I'd worried about it too. How trustworthy was Martin?

  “Fritz is a good guy,” said Murphy. “He’s dependable. I trust him more than Martin.”

  “I suppose you’re right. I guess if they don’t show tomorrow, then we go back to the roof the next day, maybe the day after.”

  “After that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Yeah.” Murphy sat his hatchet and knife on the floor and rubbed his hands over his face. “If they don’t come by then, they’re not coming.”

  “Anything can happen. Hell, for all we know, the helicopter sucked a bird into an engine and crashed just over the horizon.”

  “You can stop with the sunshine now.” Murphy sat down.

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I know how you are.”

  “Why don’t you try and get some sleep?”

  Murphy looked at the door we’d entered the building through. “They’re out there.”

  “I’ll wake you up if something happens.”

  Murphy looked guilty.

  "You sleep for an hour or two, and then I'll wake you, and I'll lie down. Cool?"

  Murphy nodded and laid himself on the floor in the doorway. Why not? It was as good a piece of floor as any.

  Chapter 35

  The morning was grim. A dozen powdery people streaked in sweat and smudged from the dirty, cold floor were shivering because the temperature overnight had fallen to near freezing outside and our building didn't hold heat well. The professors who weren't shivering from the cold were shaking with fever or near comatose, lying motionless except for their breathing.

  Some of those would wake later in the day as brain-fried Whites. We’d have to put them down.

  I got off the floor after watching the academics silently suffer, as much from thoughts of what was coming as what they were physically enduring. Maybe it had been a mistake to take them out of the veterinary science building and infect them. Maybe we should have stayed—clothed, warm, and waiting for an influx of white-skinned scavengers to kill them all. And they’d have come. Too many rotting bodies lay in that building not to draw in the scavengers and their buddies.

  Both choices sucked. Had I wanted to put the effort into thinking of a third or fourth choice it would have been a waste of time. We were in a world where all options sucked all the time.

  I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and yawned. A headache was coming. I was in a black mood. It was going to be a shitty day.

  I thought about the killing, the running, and the hoping. I didn’t know why I bothered with the hoping. But still, there was that little something inside that kept telling me that if I just rolled the dice enough times, I’d one day win.

  Had that ever happened? Or was every day snake eyes?

  I dredged my memories for anything, but came upon images of tragedy and echoes of screams from people I knew, liked, and loved.

  What about the people on the silos?

  I nodded in response to the questions in my head as I recalled our time there. Those people were in good shape, considering all that had happened. They were secure and well fed. They had a future. And I hadn’t left them worse than I found them.

  Not everything is your fault!

  Most of it wasn’t. I guess.

  Most times, it didn’t matter. Tragedy was on the hunt for all of us. Nobody had to fuck up to feel its bite. It just had to be time. Everybody’s luck ran out eventually.

  I noticed Murphy chuckling, and I turned away from the dim kitchen, and I looked through the door into the lobby. He was leaning against a reception counter talking to Jazz, who was nearby and keeping an eye out through the tinted windows on the other side of the lobby.

  “You’re awake?” It was Grace.

  “Yeah.” I turned back into the kitchen to see her sitting against the wall just inside the door. The room was cast in a dull, gray light coming in through a few dozen skylights. “This place is huge.”

  Grace pointed to a wall on one side of the kitchen. “Walk-in refrigerators over there. And a storeroom. Might be something good inside.”

  I wrinkled my nose and shuddered. “I wouldn’t open the walk-in fridge or freezer. Everything inside has got to be rotten.”

  "You want to check the storeroom with me?"

  “I don’t know.” I looked back out through the windows in the lobby, unable to get a gauge of the brightness of the light through the dark t
int. “What time is it?”

  “Early.” Grace straightened herself up. “It only just got light outside. I don’t know. Maybe a half hour ago.”

  “You get any sleep?”

  Grace nodded.

  “You guys find any matches or a lighter or anything?” That’s when I realized I’d never awakened Murphy after my watch. I’d never talked to Grace and Jazz when they finished searching the night before. I didn’t remember going to sleep. “Holy shit.”

  Grace smiled weakly and nodded. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I just realized,” I said, “I fell asleep.”

  “I know. Jazz and I took turns keeping watch.”

  “Shit.” I sat up straight and rubbed my face again. I wanted to beat my fists on something. I’d fallen asleep while it was my turn to stand watch. I could have gotten all of us killed.

  Grace put a hand on my leg. “Don’t worry about it. We had it covered. You’re tired. It happens.”

  Yes. Sure. But dammit. The cost of a mistake is all the blood in your veins and all the blood in your friends’ veins. I couldn’t afford to fuck up. Nobody could.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it.” Grace sat back against the wall and looked around the room. “Or do. If that’s your thing.” She scanned across the wretched professors. “It’s done. It’s in the past. We’re still alive.”

  I looked at her. She wasn't judging, just offering advice, I guess—advice that worked for her. "Sorry.” I got up on my feet and offered a hand to Grace. She accepted the courtesy and stood up beside me.

  A phlegm-choked cough came from down the hall. I tensed and hefted my machete.

  “Dr. Oaks,” said Grace. “He went down there to use the restroom.”

  “It was clear?” Dammit. Another mistake. I didn’t check the restrooms when we’d arrived. I didn’t think to tell anyone to. All the sleep deprivation and skipped meals were catching up with me.

  “We checked them last night.”

  “Thanks.” I relaxed and looked back in the kitchen at the storeroom door. “I’ll tell Murphy and Jazz. Then let’s check that stockroom. After that, we need to figure out what we’re going to do about meeting the helicopter.” I discreetly pointed at the professors. “And we need to decide what to do about them.”