Slow Burn: Bleed, Book 6 (19 page)

It was as much a showroom as a garage. The guy owned seven cars, all old, all expensive, arrayed for display across a gleaming epoxy-coated floor. The walls were hung with neon signs and old metal car product signs. A row of red toolboxes lined one section of wall, filled with more tools than I’d ever need, likely more than I could identify.

The trailer, parked along one wall just inside one of the garage doors, was fully enclosed. Inside, the front eight feet were set up as a small overnight camper. The back held tool boxes, racks for tires, and a Porsche painted in red, white, and blue racing stripes and numbers. Inside was also mounted a fuel tank for storing a few hundred gallons of custom race fuel for the Porsche.

“If we ditch the Porsche,” I said, as though that was a decision we’d have to spend some time thinking about, “there’s a ton of room. We could haul off most—if not all—of the food and weapons these guys collected.”

Nodding, Murphy said, “And we’ll be set when we get to Balmorhea.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Murphy walked around the front of the trailer. “We just need to figure out how to make the trailer hitch work with the one on the back of the Humvee.”

Pointing around the room, I said, “I think there are enough tools here that we can make anything work.”

Murphy looked at the tool cabinets and nodded.

I looked at Molly. “You talk to the girls and make sure they’re on board. If so, we need to get to work.” To Murphy I said, “In the three Humvees we’ll have room for twelve, but we’ll have fourteen people. What do you think?”

“Instead of hooking the trailer up to a Humvee,” said Molly, “why not use that crew cab F-350 to haul it, then you’ve got room for at least five comfortably, and more if you need to squeeze them in.”

Shaking my head, I said, “Won’t work. The Whites go nuts when they see a running vehicle. They’ll break right through those windows and kill everyone inside.”

Molly said, “I’ll bet there’s a welding rig in here. We could cut some metal out of the fence and weld it across the windows or something. That’ll protect everyone inside.”

“And over the grill,” Murphy added. “That’ll protect the radiator when you have to run some over. And you
will
have to run some over.”

“That could work,” I agreed. “That’ll give us enough room for everyone.”

While Murphy spent the afternoon in a shaded spot on the roof keeping an eye on our perimeter, two of the girls—one who’d had some experience welding—went to work with an acetylene torch cutting sections of fence and welding them over the grill and windows on the Ford pickup. Aesthetically, it was hideous. But it was functional. Molly, me, and the other girl spent the afternoon loading the trailer with every weapon, every bit of food, and all the ammunition we could find in the house.

Though the trailer already had tool cabinets built in, we loaded other tools we thought might be of use. After that, we siphoned the diesel out of the tanks of cars in the collection across the front yard and in the cul-de-sac. In doing so, we topped off the tanks of all three Humvees and the pickup. With no need for the high-octane gasoline stored in the trailer for racing the Porsche, we dumped it and put the rest of our diesel there.

It was after midnight when Molly and I climbed the ladder at the back of the house to get onto the roof. Murphy, by that time, had a lawn chair set up on the roof, though he wasn’t sitting in it. He was looking through his night vision goggles and scanning along the fence line. As we approached, he asked, “We ready?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

He flipped up his goggles and asked, “What’s the plan?”

I pointed out at the Humvee with the fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the roof. “We head out in the dark. I’ll drive that one. Murphy, you’ll be up on the roof with the fifty. Molly will be right behind us with the trailer. We’ll put one of the girls—”

“Marissa,” Molly cut in, reminding me of her name.

“Yeah, Marissa,” I said. “Each of the other two girls will follow in the last two Humvees. We’ll take it slow and stay tight.”

Nodding, Murphy said, “Yeah, that should work.”

“We shouldn’t get too many Whites out after us,” I said. “If we do, we’ll run down what we can. If we get in trouble, we’ll speed up or shred ‘em with the fifty.”

“We’ve got plenty of ammo for it,” Murphy confirmed.

“And you’ll never guess what we found,” I said, grinning.

“What?”

“A grenade launcher.”

“What?” Murphy asked. “Like an RPG or something?”

Shaking my head I said, “Like some kind of thing with a magazine on the side. It looks kind of like the machine gun but with a barrel this big.” I held my hand up and made a big circle with my fingers.

“Probably an MK19.”

“So it
is
a grenade launcher?” I asked.

Murphy grinned. “It’s like a big grenade machine gun. I think one of the Humvees has a mount for an MK19.”

Smiling, I looked at Molly. She smiled wickedly in return. She was probably thinking of slaughtering the infected. I was thinking of slaughtering Jay and his thugs.

“When are we heading out, then?” Murphy asked.

“We’re ready to go now,” I answered. “We can go back to the boathouse tonight, get everyone fed, then spend tomorrow afternoon getting ready. Tomorrow night we should be able to get the girls from Jay.”

Nodding, Murphy said, “Then we bail out of town?”

“That’s the plan.”

My experience in the post-apocalyptic world put me in a state of mind such that I was always surprised when things went as planned. And so I was surprised when our little convoy drove an hour without incident to a residential street that ran along the side of a hill, above the cove where our friends were hiding in the boathouse.

Without seeing a single White after we parked, we offloaded some food and enough weapons for our task. The rest of the night and the next day we spent planning, preparing, and of course, getting some sleep. At least that’s what Murphy and I needed most. The others in the boathouse, having spent their time being worried, bored, and hungry, had plenty of time to rest while waiting for us to return.

I’d tried to convince the others that I could rescue the girls all on my own. All I needed was a pair of night vision goggles, my machete, and a dark night. My plan was to swim out to the island, silent and invisible. I’d sneak around until I found Jay sleeping in his hut, dispatch him with a few brutal machete hacks, and maybe whack a few more of his fucktards. I’d then find Steph, Amy, and Megan, pilfer a boat, and get out of Dodge.

To me, it was that simple. But nobody liked my cowboy plan. They thought I might murder one too many innocents as I crept ninja-style around the island.

Dalhover and Gretchen had other ideas. They thought they could intimidate Jay with our newly gained superior firepower. They’d blow up or sink a few boats and threaten to sink the rest. Jay would read the writing on the wall and give over his hostages. The thing they just didn’t understand nor accept when I argued the point was that Jay was crazy. Gretchen had dealt with him, recognized his oddities, but couldn’t accept that he’d act more irrationally than he already had.

As for me, I’d seen enough crazy in the eyes of irrational people to know it when I saw it in Jay. So, while Dalhover was finding a way to secure the fifty-caliber machine gun on the bow deck of the cabin cruiser, Murphy had put the MK19 grenade launcher on its tripod on the pontoon boat. I’d insisted, to the point of leaving the group, that I was swimming out to the island. They’d all finally agreed to let me go on with what they saw as my heroic stupidity. I was the backup plan in case Jay went nuts.

The hard part in all of it was going to come when choosing who to kill. I knew there were good people on that island, frightened and following Jay’s lead just because he exuded those two most important of leadership characteristics: passion and certainty. Too bad people readily accepted that combination as a valid replacement for competence. History is littered with the fallen empires of kings, dictators, and fools who were passionate, certain,
and
wrong.

By the time night fell that next day, we were ready. What’s more, we couldn’t have asked for a better night—well, maybe not much better. Only a sliver of a moon shed light on the lake, but only when it could find a gap in the clouds. The near blackness of the night significantly enhanced the advantage of our night vision.

I looked down at a newly acquired watch on my wrist and looked out the Humvee’s window to get my bearings. Using night vision goggles, Rachel drove the Humvee slowly enough to be careful, and quickly enough that no White could follow our sound through the darkness. We’d crossed over the dam and driven up Ranch Road 620 until we made a left on Bullick Hollow Road and were roughly following the shore of the lake on a narrow, winding asphalt road through a dense forest.

Molly, who sat in the passenger side of the front, was also wearing night vision goggles. In her hands she held one of the M4s with a suppressor on the barrel. Rachel’s rifle lay between the seats. My machete, three pistols, extra magazines, hand grenades, a flare gun, a life preserver, and a pair of swim fins lay in the back seat with me. The life preserver would keep me afloat with all the extra equipment I’d be carrying. The fins would get me across the quarter mile of lake between the island and where I planned to enter the water.

Molly said, “I don’t know where we are.”

“That’s okay,” Rachel answered. “I know this area. We just follow the road and turn left at the T-intersection. Then we’re looking for a street I don’t know the name of, but I’ll know when we get there. That’ll take us down to the water, as close to the island as we’re likely to get.”

“And you guys will keep the Humvee parked back away from the shore, right?” I asked. “If you drive across somebody’s yard trying to get the Humvee down to the water’s edge, Jay’s thugs on the island might hear you.”

“We’ll stay up at the road,” said Rachel. “At least until the shooting starts. Once that happens, nobody will notice the sound of a Humvee coming down to the shore over here. Everybody will be looking at the boats on the other side of the island.”

A White wandered into the road in the darkness in front of us. Rachel didn’t speed up, she didn’t slow down. She didn’t swerve. She just ran it over without comment.

Not much was said after that. We drove on for another thirty slow minutes until Rachel made a left turn into a neighborhood of widely-spaced houses with plenty of natural tree growth in between. On our right side, I saw the surface of the lake between the houses. As we proceeded down the street, I spotted the silhouette of Monk’s Island out in the water.

I said, “This is the place.”

“We’ll go down just a bit further,” said Rachel. “The shore curves out a little up here. It’ll be a shorter swim for you.”

“Cool.” I watched the island as we passed each gap. “You guys be sure and stay in the vehicle, okay?”

“Yes, Dad.” It was Molly.

I huffed. “Whatever.”

“It’s just up here,” said Rachel as she slowed the Humvee.

Two more houses passed, and she pulled into a driveway and killed the engine. On the front porch of the house next door, five or six Whites stood up and looked into the darkness. They’d heard the sound of the engine but couldn’t see anything.

I tapped Rachel on the shoulder. I said, “Over there.”

Rachel patted her rifle. “We can take care of them if we have to.”

“Okay.” I looked out the other side of the Humvee. “You see anything out there, Molly?”

“Nothing close enough to worry about,” she answered.

I took a deep breath and looked at my watch. “We’ve made good time getting over here. I’ve still got an hour before the party starts.”

“Are you going to wait before you head out?” Rachel asked.

“Nope,” I answered. “It’ll be better if I get going. You know, just in case.”

“Just in case is what worries me,” she said.

“Me too. I haven’t had to run for my life in over twenty-four hours.” I grinned and swung my door open. I got out, looked around again, and gathered up my equipment. It took only a few moments before I gave the girls a nod and headed down past a house with a machete in one hand, a pistol in the other, a life preserver hanging around my neck, a backpack full of goodies, and a pair of fins tucked into the back of my waistband.

I found myself standing by some oaks near the edge of the water, looking at a dock that extended thirty feet out into the lake. No boats were tied to it. Anything of use had apparently been scavenged by the people of Monk’s Island. The dock was just a row of bare planks with three Whites squatting near the end, staring out into the lake.

Off to my right, the shore curved into a cove. A few floating marina docks had come loose in the flooding and drifted. To my left, each of the neighbors had a boathouse or dock, each with Whites sleeping or looking around into the darkness. The closest of the structures was a boathouse with at least a dozen Whites on the roof, some sitting, some standing and looking in the direction of noises they couldn’t see. Most of them were looking in my direction. But I was wearing night vision goggles, they weren’t.

None of the Whites I saw were naked, though their clothes were tattered and soiled. I wondered if these, like the ones that had come after us in the cove where we stole the big speedboat, were swimmers. I’d need to be careful even as I got into the water. Too much noise might draw them to me.

The island lay four or five hundred feet off shore. The backside of the old Spanish mission faced me. From where the water lapped on the limestone shore, it would be a steep climb on my hands and knees up to the mission’s back wall. Halfway along the length of the back wall, it jumped to a height of twenty feet or so. That section was actually the back wall of the mission’s chapel building. On a front corner of the chapel a bell tower stood another twenty feet above the chapel’s flat roof. The bell had long since been salvaged for its brass, leaving the tower with only a single purpose, that of an observation post from where everything on this part of the lake could be seen—except for the blind spots behind the back wall.

The islanders had bet their security on being able to see any threats far out in the water, and that bet depended on sufficient light.

Of the two islanders currently tasked with that security up in the old bell tower, I saw one leaning over against a support pillar. He wasn’t moving, and I guessed that guard was sleeping. The other guard leaned on another support pillar and stared out at the blackness in the other direction. Both had hunting rifles of some sort, definitely not of a military style.

My chances of getting to the back wall unseen were more than excellent as long as I didn’t arouse the curiosity of too many Whites while I was getting into the lake.

I examined the shore for a spot to make my landing, and decided I’d observed as much as I was going to be able to observe given the distance. It was time to proceed. I took off my boots, tied the laces around my belt, and waded into the lake, careful not to splash. When I was up to mid-thigh, I sat down in the water and awkwardly put my fins on. Awkward is the only way to get that done, especially when dealing with a body’s natural buoyancy. I then put my life preserver in the water and lay on top of it. I kicked my way as quietly as possible toward Monk’s Island.

I looked around at the world of greenish sparkles through my night vision goggles. I looked across the lake. I looked at the trees on the far banks and spotted Whites here and there. It was a wonderfully surreal moment that made it easy, for a bit, to forget about all the craziness.

When I looked up at the tower growing more ominous as I approached, the two guards up there had changed position. They were both standing alert, looking—it appeared—in my direction. One held the rifle to his shoulder, pointed at me. But no shot came. No bullets splashed the water around me.

The more I swam, the more I worried about the guards, but nothing happened, and I started to wonder if the night vision goggles were playing tricks with what I thought I saw. Could it be the guards were looking in the other direction and my brain was taking insufficient visual information and imagining the rest?

When I swam into the blind spot behind the chapel I was no longer able to see the tower. Blind spots work in both directions. But with the tower and its curious guards out of sight, I felt confident that my stealthy approach to the island had worked.

I arrived at the shore, but it turned out not to be a shore at all—just a very steep rock wall from somewhere down deep in the water to ten or fifteen feet over my head. I grabbed hold of a protruding stone and steadied myself in the water as I looked back and forth. From back on the shore, it hadn’t appeared steep. 

I checked the time. That hour I had when I’d gotten out of the Humvee had all but evaporated. There was no time to swim around to the side of the island searching for an easier point of egress. Climbing was my only choice. I reached down and pulled off my fins, letting them sink to the bottom of the lake. I put a leg forward and found a toehold. I grabbed some more rock in my other hand and slid off the life preserver, putting all my weight on bits of stone I held onto.

Tentatively, I started to climb. It took only a few moments to get myself nearly out of the water when it occurred to me that I should have kept the life preserver. If I slipped off and fell back into the water without it, the weight of the revolvers, the machete, the full magazines, and the hand grenades might drown me. Oh well, I was out of choices on that. My only path was up.

When I was nearing the top, a gravelly noise off to my right startled me and froze me in place.

I listened.

I waited.

Nothing.

I looked back and forth along the cliff and tried to see the wall above, but since it was set back from the edge of the cliff by several feet, I couldn’t see anything above me except the top edge of the wall.

I started my climb again.

Nearing the top, I thought I heard another gravelly noise. I stopped and listened again. But the noise didn’t repeat.

Once at the top, I felt thankful. Prematurely.

To my right, maybe ten feet away, stood a guard cast in green hues—one of the guys who had been with Rachel when Murphy and I rescued her. His name was Karl. He had a hand on the wall, one on a revolver, and he was staring into the darkness—staring at the sound of my breathing.

He couldn’t see me, but he knew I was here.

A quick glance to my left doubled my problems. Karl’s malcontent buddy, Bill, was doing the same thing not six feet away.