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

by Bobby Adair

  Every single fucking thing.

  I came to a stop. My entourage did the same. I stared at the sun and tried to sear the image of Amber’s bruised face out of my brain. But it wouldn’t go. Spots in my vision were all I earned for my trouble.

  I wanted to squeeze Mark’s neck and see his eyes bulge, see his face twist, and hear the pinched sounds from his throat as he tried to gasp for breath. I wanted to revel in the ever-weakening pounding of his fists on my face, like a metronome winding down while his brain died from oxygen deprivation.

  But he was more likely dead than alive, a probability that increased with each passing minute. He might be a slow burn or a raving cannibal, one of a million white faces, none of which I’d ever recognize again. Unless fortune one day smiled on me, I’d never find him. Revenge would only ever be a little nugget of unrequited, unfulfilled hate, weighing on my soul.

  I needed to let it go, but I knew I never would.

  Ahead of me, a medicine capsule of a car seemed suddenly to be in the middle of the road, offensively bland, obnoxiously shiny. It angered me beyond reason and my machete wanted sorely to punish it. So with black fire in my eyes, I attacked, hacked at a fender, and rent ugly scars in the soft metal.

  Supportive even in violence, Russell was immediately beside me, beating on the hood with his baseball bat. And what the fuck was I going to do with him? Did I really need a Siamese twin?

  My infected hangers-on assailed the car with their fists and smashed their skulls against the windows until the glass spider-webbed and caved in.

  I jumped up on the hood and went after the roof with my blade.

  The Whites tore at the car’s leather seats. Russell screamed. I roared. The infected joined. We were the destroyers, and our victim’s pieces fell to the asphalt.

  Sweating and breathing heavily, I pointed my machete to the sky and screamed at God.

  White clouds morphed into other white clouds and slowly slid across the blue and gray. Such was his answer.

  I jumped down to the street and fell back on the hot asphalt—my dirty, matted hair my only pillow. The odor of unwashed sweat lingered over me. My knees and elbows were soiled and scraped. My arm, bandaged and scabbing still oozed pus from its own little infections. And the blood of the dead, of those Whites victimized by my bullets or my blade covered my clothes and skin in crusty, reddish-brown badges of every shape.

  Tired, thirsty, hungry, spent, I stared into the mottled blue.

  I was lost.

  My childhood came to mind, and for the millionth futile time I tried to forget it all. But the Ogre and the Harpy had so branded the stench of their wicked ineptitude on my soul that I would forever carry those scars, cursed to hear the Harpy’s hiss, even when I breathed my last breath.

  Forgetting is a skill learned by the lucky. I’d tried and tried, but always failed. In my failure, I’d watch over and over Jerome’s death while I hid behind a wall, I’d see Earl’s head explode in front of me as I ran across the street, I’d forever see Amber’s bloody, inanimate face.

  Nothing in life is worth remembering. The past is something to escape from, nothing more.

  On my feet again, I wandered through parts of Austin I’d never seen before. But no matter the street names, no matter the style of houses behind the curb, they were all the same—empty and lifeless, the realm of the infected.

  But I was infected.

  Was this realm now mine? King Zed and his dumb, white lackeys, destroyers of cars and screamers at the skies.

  That was worth a laugh, but a laugh was a million miles from my heart. I was wallowing in self-pity over a girl I barely knew, and there was no rational explanation for it. I needed a way to get past it. I was rational enough to know that.

  A house on a bend in Matheson Ridge Road with a wide, lush lawn and an open front door offered itself up as a distraction. The green grass was a thick carpet under my feet but it blackened my mood to imagine what would become of it when the electric grid failed and the automatic sprinklers stopped giving it life.

  Curiously, there were no signs of violence on the porch and the front door was undamaged, apparently just left open, forgotten in a rush.

  A soft, air-conditioned breeze whispered over me as I walked through the doorway. Behind me, Russell and our friends followed. Looking back, I saw that their faces showed no appreciation of the wonderfully cold air. “Oh, Russell. You poor, oblivious man.”

  As soon as his feet landed on the tile of the foyer, I slammed the door in the face of the infected behind, knocking the first one back into the others, who fell on the porch and the stairs.

  The doorknob clicked and I turned the deadbolt.

  A few seconds later, the infected were beating and pushing on the door. It wasn’t the frenzied behavior that I’d seen so many times already—it was different. It reminded me of Russell in those moments after I jumped into that attic and he stood on the bed, yelling, reaching, and frustrated.

  “Fuck ‘em.”

  Russell followed me into a large living room with a fireplace twelve feet wide, built of raw stone stacked all the way to the ceiling twenty feet over our heads. The room was filled with expensive leather furniture and inexplicably ornate doodads. It sported a glass wall on the back that gave us a view over a wide, wooded ravine, with glimpses of Austin’s downtown buildings in the distance.

  We had walked much farther than I’d have guessed.

  Though I wasn’t conscious of it, I had to be dehydrated, and my stomach, tired of futilely telling me how hungry I was, had given up. Russell, poker-faced, quiet, unshaven, stinking of sweat, needed water and food as much as I, though I doubted he’d do anything to resolve it if I didn’t put it in front of him.

  But should I?

  The empathy that had allowed Russell to attach himself to me the night before was under assault from the blackness of my mood. Did the world have room for Russell? Could I, should I be his keeper? Would it be kinder to cut him loose and let him die or to let him chase me all over Austin until we both fell to the tearing hands of the hungry infected?

  The kitchen, that’s where we needed to be.

  It was portioned from the living room by a giant marble-topped island surrounded by a dozen stools. The kitchen itself was as large as my apartment. Dual refrigerators built into a cabinet-covered wall proved to be well-stocked. Whoever had left this house had left us with a bounty.

  Bottled water was the first casualty of our refrigerator raid. I opened one and put it in Russell’s hand, then turned him around and put another seven or eight in his backpack. As Russell gulped his water, I opened another bottle and did the same. The cold water poured down my throat, bringing near orgasmic satisfaction. I was thirstier than I knew. Dangerously so, perhaps. Staying alive with my virus-dulled senses was going to require a little more introspective attention.

  With the water downed, Russell looked over my shoulder while I gathered up cold cuts, wheat bread, lettuce, and condiments. I dumped the sandwich fixings on the island and went to work stacking several thick sandwiches of expensive deli meats, aged cheeses, lettuce, and ripe tomatoes.

  I parked Russell on a stool and jammed a sandwich into his hands. We ate.

  I thought about Murphy and Mandi. Were they safe in Russell’s house, eating microwaved meals, sipping bottled water, and staying hidden from the infected massed around the charred dead behind the fence? How many hours had passed since Russell and I left? Could Murphy and Mandi be dead? Had it been long enough for that? Of course it had. I needed to get back to them, but I was drowning in emotions I didn’t understand and couldn’t process. I needed an outlet.

  With a full stomach and the distraction of Russell’s noisy chewing fading into the background, I sat on my stool and looked across the glossy expanse of marble, out the windows, and down the long ravine. The twenty-eight floor UT Tower stood several miles distant.

  Smoke hung like an ashy fog over the city and washed color and clarity from the world until it just fa
ded into horizonless gray. High above, black billows of smoke from the Houston refinery fires rolled west. What was it, a week since Dan killed the Harpy and bit me in the kitchen? And now the old world was casting about in messy throes of death.

  Following the city’s skyline from the tower south, the basketball arena stood beside the highway like a giant snare drum. Just to the right of that lay the Brackenridge hospital complex. I strained my eyes to tease details out of the distance, but none would come.

  Steph was in one of those buildings. Dead? Possibly. Probably.

  I fished my phone out of my pocket. It was silent and held no unread messages.

  I blinked as though tears were in my eyes, but I’d spent all of my tears over Amber’s body. There were no more left to fill the Harpy’s cup.

  Wicked, destructive thoughts slowly coalesced in my mind. Trying to find Mark would be a waste of time at best, so killing him wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps surrogates would feed the hunger for now. I needed to busy my hands in the bloody work of catharsis.

  Steph, dead or alive, somewhere up in Brackenridge, was convenient enough to rationalize the violence that was brewing within me. Better to know for sure if she was dead than to ruminate over it later. At least that’s how the rationalization came together.

  Null Spot—no, Null Spot the Destroyer—had work to do.

  Chapter 2

  With Russell close behind, I went into the garage, hoping for a wink of good fortune in the form of a sturdy automobile. Instead, the rows of decorator lights twinkled on a fat, low-slung motorcycle built to rumble as much as roll. Its chrome sparkled. Its leather gleamed. To ride it would be tantamount to suicide.

  Back through the kitchen door, on the wall by the fridge, I spotted a key hanger with three empty hooks and a fourth with a key ring dangling down. The leather key fob was adorned with a wicked death’s head logo hanging beside two keys and a garage door opener.

  They had to be for the bike.

  I stared at those keys for many long moments. My belly was full. My thirst was gone. Manufactured cool air, underappreciated just a week before, bathed me in its luxury. I was safe. I could lay on a couch and watch a movie. I could pretend, at least for a while, that the world wasn’t going to shit.

  But I burned with a hate and a need.

  "Fuck it." I grabbed the keys and marched back into the garage, slamming the door behind me to trap Russell in the house.

  He howled.

  I threw a leg over the dormant black machine and slipped the key into the ignition. With my heel, I pushed out the old-school kick-starter and put my weight into waking the engine. It rumbled to deafening life in the enclosed space. I doubted it could rocket down the road like my old repossessed Suzuki, but it sounded powerful enough.

  The garage door opener clicked with a satisfying snap under my thumb and I slid my sling around to level my M4 at the tiny, widening gap of daylight.

  The first White to crawl under the door got extinguished before his crazy eyes ever saw me. I shredded the legs of two more with 5.56mm bullets before the door was halfway up. They were busy bleeding out when the door stopped at the top. More infected ran up the driveway and were massacred for their trouble.

  With no others in sight, I slipped the M4 around in its sling so that it was on my back. I ran my fingers over the handle of my battered machete and checked that my pistol was handy in its holster. I put both hands on the handlebar grips, revved the beast, and raced out into the street like a thunder god riding a storm.

  The heavy bike hugged the pavement as I leaned hard into a left turn at a reckless speed. I took a right and then zigzagged through the neighborhood. A wall of sound stunned the infected as I blazed past. Pale white faces popped out of bushes and up from behind parked cars, all too late to make a dash for the road and cut me off.

  At 38th Street, I headed east. I opened up the throttle and blew past North Lamar Boulevard at ninety. I had to brake and swerve through the cars that cluttered the roads around Seton Hospital. I turned into another grid pattern neighborhood and repeated my zigzag tactic to avoid collecting infected on the road ahead of me. Helpfully, the motor’s throaty growl echoed among the houses, sending the infected scurrying in wrong directions.

  Wind pulled through my hair and tugged at my shirt. Parked cars, trees, and houses flew past in a blur. Whites appeared on the roadsides and disappeared behind. At Red River Street, I cut a hard right and let the bike’s big engine sweep me past the eastern edge of the university campus toward the looming basketball arena and the tall hospital buildings to the south.

  Luck, rumble, and speed were the only things keeping breath in my lungs and infected teeth out of my flesh. But I’d lose two of those when it came time to get off the bike. With the hospital less than a mile south, only luck would be left.

  Chapter 3

  Among the toppled barricades and abandoned military vehicles ahead, the infected froze in their steps and locked me in their famished stares. As I came up beside the basketball arena I checked my flanks for Whites.

  None.

  I squeezed both brake levers and the bike skidded to a stop.

  A cannonade of sound echoed between the buildings as I held the clutch and revved the engine, tempting the infected into a run. Mouths stretched and white faces contorted in desperate need. Running feet stomped the asphalt, carrying the graceful fast and the clumsy slow.

  Arms swung and dirty hands grasped.

  Howls drowned in the storm.

  In seconds, the horde bloated from hundreds to thousands, as debilitated brains reckoned that I represented a more attainable meal than those who defended themselves on the hospital’s upper floors.

  As the Whites drew near, I let go of the clutch, leaned the bike into a turn, and blasted toward the north end of the arena, slowing enough to make certain that I didn’t elude my pursuers. I hopped the bike over a curb and drove up onto the wide plaza that encompassed the arena.

  Compliant so far, my cohorts followed, tempted by the revving engine and a quarry that seemed too slow to lose them. I followed the curve of the building and came around into a southerly direction again. A few crazy Whites were off to my left and a few were dashing toward me from the front, teeth bared and fingers digging at the air.

  I crested a concrete knoll on the south end of the arena and saw that the hospital complex was relatively clear. Nearly all of the infected were busy chasing the mob around the other side of the arena. Abandoned vehicles, barricades, bodies, and angry, straggling infected were the only impediments to speed. As fast as I could without skidding the bike, I slalomed down the grade, past frustrated crawlers and chasing Whites.

  Behind me, the shrieks of the infected swarm swelled the hot air and pushed me to go faster, pushed me to greater risk. To my right the tail of the fetid host, the slowest among them, had not yet rounded the arena, and was in fact just coming up to it. They spotted me and changed course, howling their good fortune to the clouds.

  I mocked them with my glare. I was Null Spot the Destroyer. Their greedy, grasping fingers would touch nothing but air.

  But the Null Spot could extrapolate, and a quick mental exercise told me that I needed to get to my goal faster than my current course and speed allowed. The race was on.

  The big bike’s engine thundered back to angry acceleration, trying to pull me off the back. A crawler under my wheels nearly sent me into a skid, but I was on a beeline and out of choices. The bike hit a curb hard and bounced up in the front. I thanked God that the back wheel didn’t shatter as it bumped over the same curb and spun wildly on dead grass. Seconds later I bounced off of another curb, and my tires caught asphalt just a few dozen feet from the entrance to the parking garage across from the hospital.

  Five floors of concrete and empty automobiles would hold no interest for the infected so it had to be empty; such was the foundation upon which my hastily conceived plan was built.

  With nothing ahead but empty asphalt, I pushed the bike hard as
three or four particularly fast infected chased. I rounded the motorcycle into the garage’s east entrance as gravity’s fingers tugged me down. Rubber burned on concrete as I braked and slowed for a right turn up the ramp. I twisted the throttle. The engine’s reverberations hammered courage into my veins.

  I flew up the ramp and braked into a hairpin turn onto the second floor. Now I was aligned for the ramp up to three. Empty cars sat alone in their parking spaces. Not a single White was in the garage. If I hadn’t needed both hands to control the beast beneath me, I would have patted myself on the back.

  I passed the fourth floor too fast to think about it. The ramp to five spit me out into hazy gray sunshine on the top level. Bare, sun-bleached concrete, flaking yellow stripes, and a few dusty cars were all that waited for me there. I squeezed hard on the brakes and the bike skidded to a stop near the door to an enclosed stairwell. Hopefully the only thing waiting inside would be the reek of fermenting transient urine and stale cigarette smoke.

  The engine died when I turned the key and a peaceful silence existed for the second it took me to make out the wails of the infected, echoing up from the floors below. I dropped the kickstand, left the key in the ignition, and stepped off the bike. With my pistol in hand, I ran to the door of the stairwell and peeked in through the small glass window.

  There was no movement, so I opened the door and slid inside, closing it silently behind.

  I held my breath and listened.

  Nothing.

  A wicked grin stretched my lips. In spite of my supremely bad choice to ride that noisy motorcycle across town, my luck had held. I was alive. The stairwell was empty. I rushed downstairs, euphorically riding a wave of overconfidence that hid a riptide of anger churning in despair over Amber’s death.

  I exited the parking garage on the south side, unnoticed by the infected trying to jam themselves into the car entrance on the east corner. But the noise from above had ceased, and short attention spans were losing interest. The infected started to look around for other prey. Mostly, they were drawn back to the muffled gunshots coming from inside the hospital.