Slow Burn Box Set: The Complete Post Apocalyptic Series (Books 1-9)

by Bobby Adair

  “Are you ready for this?” I asked.

  Jerome looked through the glass at the carnage in the quad and nodded nervously.

  “Okay,” I said, “when I go out, don’t let the door slam behind me. I don’t want the noise to call any attention to me.”

  “Okay,” said Jerome, still looking past me and out through the glass door.

  Fear elevated my heart rate, moistened my palms, and hastened my breathing.

  I chanted my new mantra in my head. The ogre and the harpy. The ogre and the harpy.

  There was no telling what might happen when I went out. Rational thought told me that the infected weren’t interested in eating me, but the world had just changed. I needed to change my assumptions along with it. My assumption last night that people wouldn’t randomly shoot at me had nearly gotten me killed.

  I drew a deep breath and pushed on the door handle. “Here goes.”

  I walked slowly out of the building, across the sidewalk, and onto the grass.

  Please nobody pay attention to me.

  The ogre and the harpy.

  Only a few infected were left at the carcass of the first soldier I came to. I gathered up all that looked useful: another assault rifle, more ammunition, and a radio. The infected showed some interest in me at first, but realized quickly enough that I was one of them. My skin was pale. My eyes were dilated, like theirs. I wondered if I’d end up like them. I shuddered at the thought.

  I went back to the door where Jerome waited. As planned, he opened the door and I dumped the goods on the floor inside.

  Jerome smiled and nodded at me. “Good job.”

  I smiled back, turned, and mouthed, “Fuck you, Jerome.” I headed out to scavenge from the next dead soldier.

  By the time I arrived at what was left of the fourth soldier, I had a total of six full magazines for my assault rifle, plus a pistol in a holster and three magazines for it. An infected man was trying to pull some bloody, meaty bones out of the soldier’s tactical vest. I grabbed the vest and wrestled with it, hoping to shake the infected man’s grip on his prize. The vests, I was learning, held all the extra ammunition that the soldiers carried, plus other goodies.

  A woman’s scream echoed from a few blocks to the west. I immediately looked up, as did every infected head in the quad.

  While I squatted, frozen in the grass, evaluating the situation, the infected around me showed no evidence of such a paralyzing thought process. They were on their feet in an instant, heads swiveling to pinpoint the source of the sound.

  Several of the infected started moving toward the chemistry building across and just down the street. Half of the rest followed at a walk or run. Many started to sprint.

  I shot a glance toward Jerome, looking for advice I guess, but I only saw a reflection on the tinted glass of the closed door.

  My survival instincts told me to run back to the door and get inside. With a live screaming human back in the picture, I had no idea what kind of feeding frenzy the infected might get into. I didn’t know if I’d get attacked.

  The scream echoed again, closer this time.

  “Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

  No infected were near me; they were all moving in pursuit.

  I double-checked that the safety on my assault rifle was off and I brought it up to my shoulder. I pointed it out in front of me, the same way I used to carry my paintball gun. I checked over each of my shoulders to ensure that there were no infected flanking me.

  Safe for the moment.

  Chastising myself for the mistake I was sure I was making, I started walking toward the source of the sound.

  It was coming from a fifty-foot wide breezeway cut through the building at its midpoint.

  Another scream for help echoed out.

  The infected from the quad swarmed toward the opening. More came from up the street. Those that could, sprinted. The injured among them hobbled or crawled.

  The situation was clear. If the screamer came through that breezeway toward me, toward the hundreds of infected already running toward her, she was dead. They’d shred her before she made it to the street.

  I flipped the switch on my gun to full auto and without an intelligent, restraining thought, I squeezed the trigger.

  The infected I saw down my barrel fell. As the mass of them heard my gunfire, they skittered to a halt and turned toward me. I knew from watching the soldiers earlier that the balance of my life would be measured in seconds if I didn’t move my feet. The sound of my weapon would draw every infected from blocks around. Even if I did have enough ammunition to kill them all, they’d surround me—they’d come too fast.

  My thirty-round magazine emptied. I ejected it, grabbed another from my vest and slapped it into the receiver. I mercilessly sent another thirty rounds into the horde moving in my direction.

  I put in another clip. I checked my flanks and pulled the trigger.

  No one came out. If someone had been running through, unless caught by the infected, they should have been out onto my side of the building.

  I immediately lost hope and regretted my attempt to assist the screaming woman.

  I backpedaled, and shot at the infected closest to me. I prepared to make a dash for the dormitory door and safety.

  Movement to my left caught my eye. From around the end of the Chemistry building, just across the street from where I stood, a terrified girl came running.

  “Uh oh.” I emptied another magazine to buy some seconds.

  I ejected my clip and pushed in another as the girl started to cross the street. A half-dozen bloody infected pursued. She must have seen me as a chance to escape, because she ran right at me. I leveled my weapon at the infected behind her.

  The three closest fell to my fire. I missed the fourth and got the sixth. Just as she got to me and with number four crossing the street, I fired another burst and his head exploded in a red mist. Number five tripped over the body. We had some seconds to work with.

  The girl’s eyes were wide. She was gasping for air.

  “We need to move,” I told her, fear and excitement turning it into a yell. I spun and raced for the door. She didn’t need further direction, and stuck with me step for step.

  As we closed the distance to the door, I saw a few, then more infected coming up the gap between the buildings up ahead, the same gap they’d come through to get behind the dead soldiers in the quad earlier that day.

  Panic was setting in as we reached the sidewalk in front of the door. It didn’t swing open.

  “Damn it, Jerome.” I grabbed the handle and pulled.

  “Hurry,” the girl screamed.

  I pounded my fist on the glass. “Jerome.”

  “Hurry.”

  Chapter 20

  I put my back to the locked door and scanned the quad. Perhaps twenty infected had just come off the street in front of the chemistry building and had rounded the corner off to our right. A half-dozen more were coming up in front of us, angling across the quad from the gap between the buildings to our left.

  I could only think of one way out. “C’mon.”

  I ran directly at the six infected who were angling across the quad and hoped the girl had the courage to follow or the good sense to run the other way while the infected were focused on me.

  The gap closed between me and the infected rushing at me. I put the rifle to my hip, came to a sudden stop not ten feet from the closest in the group, and fired. They all fell as the magazine ran dry.

  I switched my magazine and took out the closest of the pursuers behind. I shot another burst and realized that shooting more of the chasing infected was a futile effort. For each one shot, more filled in from those running up behind.

  “C’mon.” I shouted at the girl. It was going to be a foot race for our lives.

  I accelerated to a full sprint with the girl lagging behind. I slowed a tad, so that I didn’t leave her panicking and too far back.

  I headed for the far side of the gym and prayed t
hat when I rounded the corner, I’d be welcomed with an empty plaza.

  Once at the corner, I overshot it at full speed. I didn’t want to make the turn blindly and step into the waiting arms of a lucky infected who might be there.

  Fortunately, there was not one. Aside from those that I’d shot coming across the quad, any others from that side of the gym must have run around the gym in the other direction when they heard the noise of the gun and the screams.

  The girl rounded the corner and she followed me toward the building’s entrance. The infected were getting close.

  We made it to the doors and I thanked God that they weren’t locked. I swung one open and motioned the girl toward the door on the other side of the wide hall that led onto the basketball court where I’d been sequestered the night before with Murphy and Jerome. I stopped, fretted over my choice for half a second, and gambled. I shoved the barrel of the rifle through the looped metal handles of the double doors, effectively barring them. That wouldn’t keep the infected out, but it would buy us some time.

  Just as I let go of the rifle, I heard the girl’s scream from inside on the court.

  “Shit.” I drew my pistol and ran through the doors and onto the waxed wooden floor.

  The girl had come to a stop just past the bleachers. I came in to see a bloody mess of bodies. Most were shot but not all were dead. None appeared to be completely mobile. Those that could move at all squirmed and crawled toward us.

  “Let’s go.” I led the girl across the gym, hoping to get behind the far bleachers before the infected mob broke through the doors and saw our escape path.

  The infected on the floor moaned and screamed their frustration at not being able to get their hands on us.

  We made it under the bleachers and were halfway to the entrance to the tunnel system when I heard the gym’s door give way.

  “We need to hurry.”

  Stepping clumsily over the shin-high cross braces we arrived at the tunnel entrance. Dozens of the infected entered the gym, and their howls echoed through the cavernous space.

  The girl saw where we were going and hesitated.

  With no time for convincing, I simply said, “C’mon,” and jumped feet-first into the tunnel. I landed hard, eight feet below on the concrete floor and rolled forward into the pipe-covered wall.

  I looked up. The girl was doing some combination of climbing and falling down the ladder.

  Once she hit bottom, I held up a hand to bring her to a stop and a finger to my lips to beg her silence. Dead, noiseless air was our only friend at that moment.

  If there were any infected in the tunnel already, the shadows kept the secret of their presence.

  I pointed the pistol in front of me and waved for the girl to follow.

  Chapter 21

  We jogged quietly up the tunnel. I thought about the eventual failure of the electrical grid. How long would that take? The thought made me nervous. I had no flashlight and no matches. A failure at that moment would have left us in fatal darkness. I made a mental note of another assumption from the previous week’s life that I needed to discard—the dependability of electricity.

  On one evening in the near future, nighttime would slither up over the horizon, and planet Earth would again know real darkness and the terrors that lurked there.

  We followed the same route that Murphy, Jerome, and I had followed the night before. The tunnel sat parallel to the road that ran between the dorm and the chemistry building. It stretched the length of the campus from north to south.

  Thankfully, I saw no movement in the distance in front of us, but that might not be the case once the infected that chased us into the gym discovered our escape route and followed us into the tunnel. The noise they’d make would alert anything in the tunnel to our presence. With only a few magazines for the pistol, I knew I couldn’t defend us for long if any infected swarmed toward us.

  We needed an exit.

  I made a right turn into the tunnel that led under the dorm that held Murphy and Jerome safely on the fifth floor. “Fucker,” I muttered.

  The girl stopped, startled.

  I shook my head to indicate that my utterance held no meaning.

  “Almost there,” I whispered, pointing up the tunnel. “We’ll be safe when we get through that door at the end.” Of course, I didn’t mention that that was based only on the hope that the building wasn’t full of the infected.

  I jogged down the tunnel with the girl close behind.

  I had no faith that Jerome had come down and unlocked the door in the dormitory’s basement; so little, in fact, that I didn’t slow my pace as we came upon the alcove that kept the door to our dorm hidden from view. I focused instead on the doorway at the end of the tunnel that led into the building next to our dorm.

  As I stepped in front of the shadowy alcove, I caught a blur of movement to my left. Before I could do little more than raise a protective arm, I was slammed hard against the other wall, with the weight of three struggling bodies pushing me to the floor.

  They were infected.

  For the second time in less than a week, a human jaw full of dirty teeth ripped into my left forearm.

  I struggled to pull my pistol out. Just as I got hold of the handle, the infected biter threw her head back, grimaced in disgust, and spat my blood from her mouth.

  She pushed forward with her arm to get off of me. The girl who’d been following me was apparently a tastier focus for her hunger. The other two infected gathered their feet beneath themselves.

  As their weight came off, my pistol came free. I pressed it against the back of the head of the infected woman on top of me and pulled the trigger. Her face exploded onto the concrete floor of the tunnel.

  The other two infected looked back, stunned by the explosive report of the pistol.

  I raised the pistol and shot one through the neck. She fell across my legs as the other stepped to rush the uninfected girl. I shot him twice in the back. He fell but didn’t die.

  The girl backed away from the writhing monster.

  I squirmed out from underneath the bodies on top of me, stood, and fired a fourth bullet. It found home in the skull of the squirming man. He went limp.

  The girl’s eyes were wide with shock. I probably had the same look on my face. We stood there for a second with overloaded brains and ringing ears.

  A riot of screams echoed up the tunnel from whence we came.

  “Oh, my God,” the girl mumbled.

  We bolted at full speed toward the far end of the tunnel.

  Please, God, let the door be unlocked.

  A dozen seconds later, I was at the door with my hand on the knob. The life of the girl, and possibly my life, depended on whether it would turn.

  I torqued the knob.

  The locking mechanism inside clicked free.

  I yanked hard on the door and the girl and I stepped into a dark, quiet basement.

  I wasted no time in slamming the door shut, but there was no deadbolt, no latch. The only way to lock it was with a key. No key was in sight.

  I scanned the dim room for something with which to secure the door.

  “Damn it.” I said. “We need to keep going. They’ll figure out soon enough that we’re in here. When they do, we won’t be able to keep that door shut.”

  The girl and I looked around. The basement was large, the size of a few classrooms. At its center stood an enormous heating and cooling unit. The walls were stacked with dusty junk and shelves. At the far corner, a staircase led down from a door at the top. The girl was already running toward it.

  I gave one more glance to the door to the tunnel system, hoping desperately to see a lock that I knew wouldn’t be there. Confirmation of the lock’s absence sent me running to the stairs.

  The girl reached the door at the top of the stairs before I made it to the first step. She grasped the handle with both hands and rattled it loudly in its frame. It was locked.

  “No,” she yelled.

  “Damn.�
� I looked around.

  A chance at living returned when I spotted an elevator door to my left. It had been hidden from our view by the heating unit in the center of the room. I ran over and pressed the button. It responded with a faithful amber light.

  I looked up at the girl with the last of my hopes on my face.

  She looked back, frozen with the door handle in her hand, waiting for who knew what.

  With my body language I urged the elevator to hasten its arrival. The sound of the infected filled the hall outside the basement door through which we’d just come.

  Ding.

  The elevator was arriving.

  Relief.

  The girl bounded down the stairs as the door to the tunnel banged hard. The infected were on the other side.

  The girl yelped something I didn’t catch.

  The light from the elevator seeped through the seam between the doors. It was one level up. I stepped around the heating unit to see the tunnel door. It was jiggling and coming a few inches open, before slamming shut again under the weight of the infected crowding the tunnel behind it.

  The doors of the elevator opened. The girl jumped in and pushed a button. I was immediately beside her. I pressed the button to close the doors just as the infected burst into the basement. Their frustrated screams echoed through the space as the doors pulled together.

  I inhaled a breath of relief, then raised my pistol and steeled myself for a danger I just knew would await us when the door opened again.

  The girl looked at my unsteady hand holding the raised pistol. She put her back to the wall of the elevator.

  The ogre and the harpy.

  The elevator dinged to announce its intention to stop on the building’s ground floor. I looked down at the panel. The light for the top floor glowed.

  I drew a full magazine from the pouch on my vest. I didn’t intend to die while fumbling for a cartridge full of bullets.

  I pointed the pistol at the seam between the elevator doors. “Push that close button as soon as the door opens. I won’t be able to keep the infected out for long.”

  “Okay.” Her voice cracked with fear, but she was steady enough.