Slow Burn | Book 10 | Firestorm

by Bobby Adair

  I looked up at him.

  He cut his eyes out across the mist, urging me to look away.

  I wanted to take his advice, but that rebellious prick that too often took control of my better senses insisted that I watch. “Cut it.”

  Without another moment of hesitation, Murphy swung the axe over his shoulder and lopped my hand off in one clean chop.

  Blood exploded out of my severed arm. The men holding me in place jumped away. I suddenly felt light-headed and collapsed in the dirt. How I stayed conscious is beyond me. I grasped at my forearm, as terror turned into a hurricane inside my head. It took every bit of control I could muster not to scream.

  Around me, men hurried this way and that. Orders were shouted. Through it all, Murphy stood, looking down on me with abject remorse in his eyes and the bloody axe still in his hands.

  I smelled hot roofing tar, and didn’t understand why, until a man yanked my shortened arm out of my good hand’s grasp, and before I could stop him, shoved it into a bucket of boiling tar.

  That’s when I screamed.

  80

  They put me in the box because apparently, I wasn’t the only idgit who’d spent too much time before the crash assimilating movies as a viable version of reality. In that reality, every POW camp, prison, concentration camp, or really any kind of place where men were confined against their will, had some sort of smallish outhouse-sized structure where they used weather, hunger, thirst, and loneliness to up the punishment level on the recalcitrant ones.

  The box wasn’t tall enough for me to stand up. It wasn’t wide enough for me to sit down. All I could do was wedge my knees against one wall and my hips against the other to scrunch into an ever-painful sort of propped squat. To enhance the experience, the box, having no floor of its own, was attached to a metal grate over a festering sewer pit swarming with biting flies.

  The first two days, they didn’t give me any food or water. It wasn’t their plan to starve me, though. I learned that on the third day when my first serving of oniony stink stew arrived. In a silver bowl. Distinctly not yellow. A big cup of water followed, cloudy with mud and foul floaties, like they’d scooped it out of a stagnant ditch.

  “You wanna act like a taint,” the guard told me when he shoved my bowl through the mail slot they fed me through, “you eat like a taint.”

  My fever was burning hot by then. Which, I figured was part of their plan—hold off on the nutrition to weaken me further, just to make sure my body couldn’t fight the infection that was most likely to follow my unsanitary amputation. As though the actual pain of my severed wrist and the phantom pain in my missing hand weren’t enough.

  By the end of my first week, spring crept into the weather pattern, leaving the sun to bake the box through the midday hours and the biting cold to settle in at night. Rainstorms blew south, soaking me through the leaky roof and leaving me shivering. By then, the stew they fed me three times a day drained through me and down through the grated floor so fast it hardly seemed worth the effort of eating it.

  I spent most of the second week delirious with fever, watching red streaks creep up my arm, knowing I was going to die. Knowing Pluta was going to win. Knowing I’d never see Steph again, but taking comfort in the hope that maybe an afterlife did exist, and we’d soon meet up in a fairyland in the clouds or be reincarnated together into a pleasure garden of taffy and unicorns.

  Somewhere in there, Pluta came to see me, blessing me with the only human words I’d heard since my guard told me to eat like a taint. I don’t know what he said, I was half out of my mind with fever, but I gathered my wits closely enough that I managed a threat, “You’re going to regret letting me live.”

  “Oh, I assure you,” he laughed in the squeaky prissy way of his. “You’re going to regret being alive a long, long time before that happens.” He strutted away, taking my guard with him, explaining to the guard that I was too far gone to worry about on a 24/7 basis. However, the guard was still to check on me daily so he could let Pluta know as soon as I finally died.

  That night, Murphy knocked on the wall of my box, waking me from a fitful sleep. With only a whisper, he shoved a big hunk of cornbread and a bowl of real stew through my mail slot. “Don’t eat that rancid crap they’ve been feeding you. I’ll be back tomorrow night with more.”

  “Thank you,” I croaked.

  “Stay alive, bro. I’ll get you through this.”

  In the third week, my fever broke. My digestive express train slowed to a normal speed. The tar on my wound started to flake off, tearing rotten flesh away from good flesh as it did. With a clearing mind and only six kinds of pain to torment me all day and night, I put some thought into what would happen when they finally opened the door to let me out. Because I knew one thing, no matter which backhanded tricks Pluta kept trying to snuff me with, he couldn’t outright kill me. In nebulous Bill’s system, I was a high yellow, and I had value.

  On the last day of my fourth week, with the yellows of Stalag 17 assembled outside, Pluta stood beside my box and bleated out a speech to underscore the lessons to be learned from my example. With a heart full of defiance, I decided my first act in turning my loss into victory was to stand up straight and strut past Pluta like I’d just spent four weeks at a Caribbean beach resort.

  The door finally opened.

  Squinting in the bright light, I took one step, and fell face first into the dirt.

  81

  A doctor—an actual, real-live doctor—awaited when Murphy and Peck carried me into the once-again crowded barracks and dumped me onto my new cot, right up near the window by Murphy’s. New rules, I guessed.

  The doctor examined me head to toe and spent a good deal of time on my shortened arm. He scraped away the persistent hunks of tar that hadn’t flaked off. He poked at my scabrous stump and seemed pleased. He gave me a jar of salve, instructing me to apply it daily. He left me with several bottles of medications and vitamins. He then fitted me with a prosthetic, which consisted of a strap around my chest, a cuff around my upper arm, and a hinged framework at the elbow that held a plastic sleeve in place over my forearm. Where my hand had been, I instead had a looped metal hook. Being a valued torch man in the New Tejas corps, the hook was sufficient to wield my weapon in battle.

  In a kindly surprise, the doctor assigned me ten days of recovery time in the barracks, told me more than once it was a wonder I’d survived the ordeal, and that his best guess, based on the healing he observed on my arm, was that I’d have a new hand in to six to eighteen months. It would be another year after that before it was as strong and fully coordinated as the old one.

  I laughed, a little manically, because it still didn’t seem possible to me that a human, virus or not, could regenerate anything. Hell, I couldn’t even regrow my hair.

  Ten days, unfortunately, passed in an eyeblink. I spent most of that time wandering the empty fields, plotting my next attempt to rescue Steph and escape.

  On the eleventh day, I woke to see pucker-face Pluta leaving the barracks. I guessed that we were getting another serving of stupid. Murphy’s voice boomed, waking and ordering us out of our bunks, and giving us a scant few minutes to take our morning pisses, gear up, and march to the transports.

  At the bottom of the loading ramp, Stinky Pete and his cook staff handed us each a good-sized loaf of mixed grain bread with a heavy portion of cornmeal. Fresh baked, and still warm. A very nice breakfast surprise.

  Murphy told us we were in for an hour’s drive, at least, so we might as well get comfortable. Not likely. The weather was cold, but the sky was clear. I took my usual spot up near the front of the trailer, shrugged my flamethrower tanks off, and dropped to the floor. Warming my cold hand on my hot loaf of bread, I lifted it to my nose and breathed in the scent. It reminded me of home—home in Balmorhea, where cornbread had been on the table at most meals. Of course, those thoughts brought with them a whole parade of other memories, more than a few featuring Steph.

  “Hey, bro.” Murphy
dropped down beside me.

  I told him, “Thanks.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ I did. Cornbread’s for everybody.”

  “No. I never thanked you for putting up with my shit through all of this. I know you saved my life.”

  “Everybody needs a hobby.”

  “I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble.”

  “Don’t be sorry for something you’d do again. And probably will do again as soon as you figure out you’re not Captain Hook.”

  “I know you’re trying to be funny. Do you want me to laugh even when you’re failing?”

  “Ditto right back at you surly boy.”

  “Hey, where’s Peck?”

  “Pluta has him off on some bullshit deal doing something. They came for him last night.”

  “I guess I slept right through it.”

  “You need to get healthy again.” Murphy took a big bite of his bread, and through the chewing said, “He told me to tell you that if they cut him loose before he gets back, well, you know, he said all the usual shit.”

  “I hope he does well out there.”

  “He made it fourteen years out in the world. He only has forever to go.”

  I stopped picking at my bread and looked at Murphy. “Do you really believe that forever shit?”

  Murphy shrugged.

  “I’m serious. Right now, all we have are rumors and propaganda about regeneration.”

  Murphy glanced at my hook and chuckled. “You better hope it’s all true or you took the most expensive joyride in history.”

  I held up my hook. “That’s my new middle finger in case you can’t tell.”

  “At least you can still make your feeble-ass attempts at jokes.”

  “Seriously, dude. What do you think about that immortality stuff?”

  Murphy sighed. He didn’t like being dragged into these kinds of discussions. “What am I supposed to say, man? It’s not like they’ve got some thousand-year-old dude to point to as proof.”

  “I hear a ‘but’ in there.”

  “You can’t argue with that business about the scars fading. I mean you’ve seen your skinny ass in the mirror, right? How many times have you been scraped, cut, stabbed, bit, or shot? I mean seriously, dude. You and me both should look like retired circus freaks, but you look like a Highland Park frat boy with that milky-ass Oil of Olay skin, and I look like a marble-chiseled Greek god.”

  “So, you believe?”

  “Man, it doesn’t matter what I believe, because you’re just waiting for me to stop talking so you can tell me what you think.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Why don’t we skip the rest of your pretend curiosity, and you just professor your way through some convoluted logic about this and that and whatever and tell me the answer you want me to give you.”

  “Murphy, some days, you’re a bigger dick than usual.”

  “That’s extra funny coming from you.”

  I went back to eating my bread.

  After a minute or two, Murphy said, “Are you gonna tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you think about all this immortality bullshit?”

  “Honestly, I really was hoping you’d figured some of it out already.”

  82

  We’d been riding in silence for a while when I said, “You’ve been out of the barracks a lot lately. Have they let you back into town yet?”

  Without answering, Murphy turned to stare outside.

  “What aren’t you telling me.”

  Murphy shook his head but stayed silent.

  Irritation, and worry rose in my tone. “Murphy?”

  Still without looking at me, Murphy told me, “You’re a smart motherfucker, Zed. You know that, right. I got nothing but respect for you in that department.”

  It was my turn to sit silently, only I felt my anxiety rising again.

  “I know how you feel about Steph. I really do. You know that, right?”

  “This is a weird way to avoid answering my question.”

  “What I’m trying to say is, you can figure stuff out most of us can’t. You see things most folks don’t. It’s like you can look around corners sometimes, read invisible Tarot cards. But this business going on with Steph, it turns you into a vampire who can’t see himself in the mirror.”

  “Murphy.”

  “It makes you crazy, man, and not in that funny ha-ha hanging with the bros sort of way, but legit, self-destructive, Mr. Potato Head insane. Now you got a hook for a hand. You somehow didn’t die after a month in the suck box, and you still got that psycho gleam in your eye when Steph’s name comes up.”

  “That’s because I love her.”

  “Enough to die?”

  “Zero doubt about it.”

  “Do you think she’d want you to get yourself killed for nothing at all?”

  “She’s not nothing, Murph. She needs me.”

  “She needs to know you’re okay. She needs to know you’re going to survive this, and that’s it. Dammit, Zed, I wish you could see yourself. You haven’t looked this bad since back in the Austin days when we were running crazy—goddamn, I still don’t know how we lived through that shit. We shoulda both been dead a long time ago.”

  We both sat for a time after that, listening to the hum of the tires on the crumbling asphalt.

  I spoke first. “I promise, I—”

  “See?”

  “See what?”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. You act like you can make me a promise about what you’re gonna do when you and I both know you can’t. Insanity will take over, and it won’t matter what you promise me right now.”

  I looked down at my breakfast loaf, still in my hand, inexplicably stuck. “Murphy, I know you’re probably right about all of that. I don’t know what to say. I still have to know, no matter what. And as insane as you say I get, I’m rational enough to know that ‘no matter what’ could mean I’ll die doing whatever it is the craziness compels me to do. I’ve made my peace with that.”

  “Why?” Murphy asked.

  “Reasons that will forever make sense in my heart, but not in my head, and never in any words I could twist into an argument.”

  Murphy heaved a heavy sigh and he shook his head. He understood. I knew he did, because I knew the devotion he felt toward those he loved. “Whatever happens, I’ll do what I can for you. If you don’t get so crazy you forget you can ask me for help, then do that, ask me.”

  “I won’t—”

  “Ask. Promise me that much at least, or I won’t tell you a damn thing.”

  I gave in with a nod.

  Murphy drew a pained breath. “They let me go to town for a few hours yesterday afternoon.”

  “And Steph?”

  “Of course, I went to the hospital. Zed, she was worried sick. Because of your truck antic, I haven’t been there in a month, and these sadistic fuckwits….” He thumbed in the direction of the cab, though we had no idea where Pluta was. “Nobody told Steph what was going on. All she could do was worry about the worst.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ain’t me you need to apologize to.”

  “I know.”

  “She asked about you.”

  I raised my hook. “Did you tell her?”

  “I told her enough. Zed, if you get yourself killed, you need to know this fact for certain, she’s not strong enough to survive the heartbreak.”

  “That bad?” I asked.

  “She says, some days, she wonders why she’s even in the hospital. Other days, she can’t get of bed to go to the bathroom without help. She looks like she’s hurting, but she keeps putting on that big smile of hers to hide it. I can see it, though. In her eyes, I mean. I’ve known her long enough to know.”

  “From the cancer? Is that what’s causing it?”

  “Cancer. The medications, maybe. I don’t know. She won’t tell me the details. Nobody up there will tell me anything. I know they give her stuff. They run t
ests all the time.”

  “Is any of it helping?”

  “Steph gets real cagey when I ask about that. Says I wouldn’t understand. Whatever. I know better than to argue with Steph about anything.”

  “I don’t see how they’d be able to manufacture any or all of the drugs that go in a chemo cocktail for the specific kind of cancer she has. Dammit, Zed, it’s like they’re not doing anything but making her suffer.” Murphy caught himself, realizing he’d spilled too much. “I’m sorry, man. I know—” He stopped, not trusting himself to say any more about it.

  I didn’t trust myself to say anything else, either. I stared through a ventilation hole, listening to the wind blow past, while I felt my rational mind slowly slipping toward raging black insanity.

  83

  We spent the entire day carrying bodies and stacking them in refrigerator trucks. Mostly Whites, ours and the feral kind. Lots of the feral ones. Looking at the scatter of corpses, I couldn’t figure out what happened, except that it was a chaotic mêlée. One more tactical masterpiece—double sarcasm intended—by one of Pluta’s counterparts from Camp 11, or 5, or whatever. A lot of people had died. The captive taints needed to be hauled to an evaluation center, and the corpses needed harvesting.

  We didn’t get back to the barracks until well after midnight. At least it felt that way. Again, no clocks. No watches, at least not among the dregs of Bill’s army. When I lay on my bunk, with no tire hum to buzz through my brain, and no potholes to bounce me between breaths, I fell asleep. Didn’t even bother removing the sleeve support for my prosthetic hand tool hook thing.

  I wish I’d been given more time to sleep that night. Maybe then, things would have turned out different.

  One of Stinky Pete’s kitchen lackeys shook me awake when it was still full dark outside. “You still got KP duty, taint. It’s meat day. Hurry your stink ass to the jib room.”

  Groggy, only half conscious, I rolled off my bunk and staggered outside. The cold air bit so hard I couldn’t help but snap awake. Not that being awake was better than sleepwalking into the slaughterhouse. Awake was a nightmare. In sleep, at least I had a chance of dreaming an escape from a world gone sour.