Slow Burn (Book 8): Grind (13 page)

We ran another mile or two before coming to a place where the fields gave way to a thick forest of pine, pecan, and oak. Having not seen a naked White since we left that group by the cows, we ran into the trees, and when we could see nothing around us but tree trunks and undergrowth, we slowed to a walk.

Murphy stopped, leaned over and put his hands on his knees. “We can’t keep getting lucky forever.”

“You been holding that in all morning?” I asked.

“It needed to be said.” He stood up and fished a bottle of water out of his bag. He drank half of it down and offered the rest to me.

I guzzled it and looked around, listening closely as I did.

Murphy grinned and put the empty bottle back in his bag. “That was some intense shit.”

I nodded with a chuckle.

Murphy looked around and started through the trees again. “You can only flip a coin so many times before it comes up tails. We can’t keep pushing our luck.”

Following along, I said, “I don’t agree.”

Murphy laughed loudly enough that animals hiding in the brown leaves skittered away. “Of course, you don’t agree. Okay, Professor, why don’t you explain to me why we haven’t been pushing our luck? I just can’t wait to hear this one.”

The undergrowth thinned out. The trees stood taller overhead. They were spaced widely enough that I was able to catch up a few steps to walk beside Murphy.

“You’ve got goosebumps all over you,” he said with a glance. “You feel cold?”

I looked at my arms. Indeed, they were covered with goosebumps, under a sheen of sweat that was evaporating away. "I don't feel chilly.”

Murphy blew out a big puff of condensation. “It’s getting colder. We need to find you something to wear.”

Still looking at my arms, I nodded and wondered again how the growing cold would affect the naked horde. "We're bound to find a house or something. I'll find some clothes and get dressed until I to go back out hunting for Mark again."

“And pushing your luck,” said Murphy.

“You know everything you’re calling luck isn’t luck, right?”

Murphy didn’t look at me when he replied. “Every time we make it through some sticky-ass situation, it seems like luck to me. Like it was pretty damn lucky those cows were there just when we needed them, right?”

“No.”

“No?” Murphy laughed some more. “I think the virus in your brain is turning you into a golf ball head who hasn’t figured out he stopped being smart about four months ago.”

“Maybe,” I allowed, “and I don’t disagree that we’ve gotten lucky plenty of times, but I’ll tell you what I think happened this morning. We got unlucky a lot more than we got lucky.”

“And here we are, unlucky enough to still be alive.”

I ignored the comment and said, “When we left the barn this morning there weren’t any Whites around, at least none close enough to bother us. We got unlucky when those Whites from inside the house spotted you in your GI Joe outfit and came after us.”

“I’m not going naked,” said Murphy. “I don’t care what you think you’re doing with all of your naked, undercover bullshit." Murphy looked around for Whites. Habit dictated it.

“I’ll do what I need to do to kill, Mark." I looked around, as well. It was like yawning at that point. When one person looked around, everybody else did too. You just never knew when some white fuckers were trying to sneak up on you for a meal.

“So because we had some bad luck when those Whites from the house spotted us,” Murphy said, “that’s your argument for why we don’t always have good luck?”

“Not completely,” I told him. “But when they came after us, we didn’t get away from them by luck. We used our brains to figure it out.”

“And my marksmanship,” said Murphy.

I waved a hand at my naked white skin. “And my ability to fit in and hobble the ones I could. None of that was luck. We were smart about using what advantages we had to get away.”

“But we
didn’t
get away,” Murphy argued. “Because they started screaming and alerted all those other golf ball heads to chase us. Bad luck or good luck?”

“More bad luck,” I said. “And what did we do? We got into the trees and would have gotten away from those guys, too, if not for that other mob that was out searching for us. And at each turn of bad luck, we didn't depend on good luck to get away. We evaluated the situation for what it was, and we used our brains and brawn to take what was there and turn it to our advantage. The fact that none of the things we tried this morning worked out proves that it wasn’t luck that saved us. We only needed to stay ahead of the Whites long enough for one of our plans to work out. One eventually did: the cows.”

“And if the cows weren’t there?” Murphy asked. “If we didn’t have the good luck of the cows being there, then what?”

“Something else.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

We came out of the trees and into another field, not large compared to the one we’d spent a good part of the day running through, maybe the size of a football field. One side was bordered, of course, by the forest, and two other sides by a dirt path and a narrow asphalt road. Across the field from us stood a collection of houses; several dozen spread over ten or twenty acres. Standing a hundred feet tall above the village were five Siamese twins—concrete grain silos connected across their tops by a rusty, metal-framed catwalk and some weird-shaped roofs that didn’t make any sense to me.

Murphy stared at the silos, fascinated by something up there.

I was already past my interest in the aging grain silos and studied the field as we shuffled between the short, green plants—plants that hadn't been trampled by white feet and hadn't been grazed to nubs by herds of passing cattle and feral pigs.

I stopped walking. “Murphy.”

He kept going. “What?”

We were maybe halfway across the width of the field. “Murphy, stop for a second.”

He looked around at the tree line and the houses and turned to face me nervously. We were exposed in the open, and he wanted to make sure I understood that.

I pointed at the ground. “These plants. They’re small.”

“Duh. It’s almost winter.”

“No.” I shook my finger at the green sprouts. “This looks like a vegetable garden. These were all planted recently, like in the last month or so.”

Murphy’s rifle flew to his shoulder in an instant. He scanned back and forth across the houses in front of us.

We walked slowly forward, the barrel of Murphy’s rifle pausing on anything that moved—leaves floating down from an autumn tree, a sheet flapping on a clothesline, a window screen slapping when the wind gusted.

In a cautious voice, he said, “This place already gives me the creeps.”

I looked for more signs someone might be nearby. I saw no footprints, not even in the tilled furrows beneath our feet. I realized those would have been washed out in the heavy rain, but the plants were here, and no weeds were among them. They'd been tended.

I looked hard at the windows of each house, the broken ones and the closed ones. I saw nothing but faded curtains and shadows.

We stopped when we reached a clapboard back wall of an old house with peeling paint. Even from outside, it smelled faintly of mildew and rancid bacon fat.

Murphy peeked through a curtained window, held his head up for a moment and put his back to the wall.

I raised my eyebrows in a silent question.

Murphy shook his head. He’d seen no one inside.

I pointed to the smallish porch under an awning on the back of the house to let Murphy know what I intended. I took off, skipped the porch steps, and bounded up to put my back to a wall beside a windowed back door. I looked in, but saw only a kitchen. Dirty dishes filled the sink. The cupboard doors hung open on their hinges. Nothing moved.

Murphy had followed me over and took up a spot by the wall next to the porch. With urgency on his face, he pointed at something over my shoulder.

I crouched and spun, ready to hack. Nothing.

I looked at him and mouthed a silent
“What?”

He waggled his finger at the wall again.

Frustrated, I looked back at the wall and this time whispered, “What?”

Murphy pointed again. “The thermometer.”

I huffed and looked at a big round thermometer with a dial on its face.

“Thirty-nine, man. We need to get you in some clothes.”

“Yes, Mom.”

I turned back to the door and tried the knob. It turned on gravelly innards that clicked satisfactorily, quietly. I tugged the door open. One of the hinges squeaked. Not loud. Just irritating. I stepped through.

Murphy reached from his spot on the ground and took hold of the door. He shook his head, pointed at me, patted his rifle, and patted his chest.

I shook my head and raised my machete as I stepped onto the worn, green linoleum inside. Boards creaked. Another step and I was fully inside, out of the wind. The sound of rustling tree branches and shrubs—loud background noise a moment before—became dull outside noises.

Something thumped on wood inside the house. I jumped in fright, but nothing moved that I could see.

Another thump.

And while I stared at the part of the house’s interior I could see, it pounded again.

It sounded like a baseball bat beating a wall. It reminded me of the sound of that monstrous White’s fist on the door in the basement that first night when we broke into Sarah Mansfield’s mansion. That thought slapped me with a repressed fear and a feeling of terrible inadequacy. That monster of a man would have killed me if Sergeant Dalhover hadn’t had the composure to put some bullets into him.

Bam.

I figured a White must be trapped somewhere in the house.

I leaned out of the door and waved Murphy inside.

A moment later, we were both standing in the narrow space between the messy counters in the kitchen, with a view through a doorway into the dining room. I wanted to see around the corner into the living room but all I saw were piles of folded clothes stacked high on the dining room table.

Bam.

I turned to Murphy and whispered. “What do you make of that noise?”

“White.”

What else?

He tried to push past me to take the lead. I blocked him and all but bounded into the dining room, raising my machete as I did, ready to hack down whatever might attack me.

Nothing did.

Murphy came up behind me.

Stacked in the dining room chairs against the walls, clothing piles towered. Various garments, all sorted by type, were piled on a sagging, flowery couch and the puffy chairs beside it. They were heaped on an old cabinet-style television and draped on hangers from the moldings above the doorways.

Bam.

I craned my neck to see if I could determine the source of the sound, which came from down the hall. Probably one of the bedrooms—both doors down there were open.

What the fuck?

Turning to Murphy, I said, “The bedroom doors are open.”

Murphy stepped into the living room and peered down the hall. “Yup.”

“But the noise is coming from down there.”

He nodded.

Gripping my machete, I crossed the living room, seeing where the ceiling had flowered in patches of greenish black. That explained the mildew smell, though the house had plenty of other stale odors to compete.

A peek into the first room revealed nothing but an open closet packed full of clothing, and a bed piled up to chest level with neatly folded shirts.

“Hoarder,” Murphy whispered.

Bam.

The sound was louder. It came from the room down the hall.

Murphy nodded toward it. I once again brandished my machete. Maybe I had something to prove to myself. It didn’t make sense, but in a mind that’s been fucked with for so long by so many things, I figured it was par for the course.

On silent feet, I exited the bedroom and tiptoed up the hall toward the only other door.

Just outside the room, I stopped.

Bam.

Without a doubt, something inside was making the sound. I put a palm on Murphy’s chest and pushed him back a few steps. With the blunt edge of my machete, I tapped the door jamb. Better to let the White come out into the hall and die in surprise than for me to risk being ambushed by unexpected circumstances inside the room.

Bam.

No change. Just a randomly-timed noise.

“Hey, dipshit.” I gripped my machete handle and readied it to swing.

Nothing happened.

I listened for footsteps. I heard no grunt from a startled White. Only the wind gusting through the branches in the trees outside.

“C’mon, you silly monster,” I called. “Come play with us.”

Bam.

I braced myself, but nothing followed the noise.

Bam.

I glanced over my shoulder to let Murphy know what was coming next.

I stepped quietly into the doorway. A bed. A dresser. Every horizontal surface stacked with folded clothes, and hanging clothes in an open closet, but no sign of anything moving in the room.

A shadow moved outside the curtains. I gasped and jumped back.

Bam.

The shadow moved again.

Nothing came at me.

“It’s outside,” I announced, turning to run up the hall.

Murphy stopped me and put a finger to his lips. He whispered, “How many?”

Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t know.”

He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I saw something through the curtains.”

“Beating up the house?” Murphy asked.

“What do you mean, beating up the house?”

“That sound,” said Murphy. “That White is hitting the house with something. Why?”

“Man, you know what they’re like. They don’t need reasons for stupid shit.”

Murphy conceded the point by cocking his head. He nudged me to move aside. "I'll peek out the window and see what's what before we go out front."

Shaking my head, I hurried into the room. I whispered, “I’ve got it.” Okay, so I was being a little pissy.

After a quick glance into the blind spot on the other side of the dresser, inside the closet, and to the floor on the other side of the bed, I put myself beside the window.

Bam.

The sound outside was loud enough to startle, powerful enough to send a vibration through the house’s old boards.

I pushed the curtain to the side just wide enough that I could get a clear view out with one eye.

No Whites. Only some half-dead shrubs and a tree planted too close to the house.

What the hell?

The wind gusted again, and the tree branches swayed. I involuntarily ducked as a branch as thick as my arm swayed past and smacked the eaves.

Fuck!” I yelled as I jumped back, startled. Then I laughed.

“What?” Murphy asked from the doorway, concern on his face.

“It’s a tree branch.”

Murphy laughed too.