Slow Burn (Book 2): Infected Read online

  A novel

  by

  Bobby Adair

  http://www.bobbyadair.com

  http://www.facebook.com/BobbyAdairAuthor

  Text copyright © 2013, Bobby L. Adair

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design and Layout

  Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a. 187designz

  Editing & Proofreading

  Cathy Moeschet

  Lindsay Heuertz

  George Mathew

  Robyn Roopchan

  Margaret Ferguson

  Other Books by Bobby Adair

  Political Satire

  Zombie Fiction

  Foreword

  Let’s start with a thanks, a pre-apology, and some apologies.

  Fellow Longhorns, thanks for being cool about all the liberties I took with the UT campus in Slow Burn: Book One. I’ll continue the abuse here.

  Texas (you’ll see which parts), gosh, I’m kinda leaving the place in a mess. Sorry about that.

  Gun owners and enthusiasts. Okay, it’s obvious now that I don’t know anything about guns. I really did try to learn by watching hundreds of YouTube videos. Thank you, everyone who said something about my weapon faux pas (what’s the plural of faux pas?). There were things I got wrong, and most of the feedback was constructive and some of it very helpful. That inspired a few pages in the book. You’ll see when you get there.

  Prior to writing book one, I gave some thought to the question of who I knew that I could ask about the gun thing. My only previous experience with guns was minimal. I earned a pretty high level of marksman thingies with a .22 caliber rifle when I was in the scouts. I even owned a .22 caliber target pistol some years ago. But I never used it, so I eventually traded for a bicycle.

  As I’m writing this, I now recall that my ex-wife’s boyfriend is very knowledgeable, and even showed me his AK-47 once. No, not like that! It was oddly thrilling to feel the weight of it in my hand and look down the barrel and know what kind of power it possessed. If he has the time, I’ll try and get him to look over this book prior to publication. If not, please forgive me, I’ll get a gun guy/girl involved a little earlier in the process next time. But feel free to jump on my Facebook page and let me know where I’ve got it completely wrong.

  One of my fiancée’s best friends was in the military and so was her husband. I thought about asking him to review my characters’ gun usage but we had a bit of a tiff on Facebook a year or two ago. It ended with him telling me I was a pompous troll. I can see how some folks might see my writing as pompous (in social media, anyway) from time to time but I didn’t agree with the troll thing. Anyway, the fiancée’s friend is one of those people who takes wonderful photographs and always has something positive to say. I honestly don’t know the husband at all, aside from our Facebook exchange. So when I considered checking my gun facts through him, I wondered, would he purposefully lead me astray? I might end up writing something like, “Murphy changed the oil filter in his Glock because everybody knows that if you don’t do that and refresh the injector polarity then the fringleshmank gets inverted and you risk an upsurge backfire.” Which you’ve got to admit, if published, would be freakin’ funny. But in the end, I didn’t feel comfortable making the request given how we ended our last conversation.

  It’s unfortunate, and underscores one thing that I’ll get on a soapbox about. We’re all guilty of saying things, especially on social media, that hurt one another, that leave scars, and damage relationships. As I stumble over my mistakes in this area, I’m coming to realize that relationships with good people are precious things that should not be taken lightly. They are never worth risking for the sake of being right about some triviality that won’t be remembered a month or a year from now.

  On a technical note, I’ve read a lot of series over the years and, a common technique at the beginning of all but the first book is to wrap a bit of a recap into the story to catch readers up with where everything left off. I always find that kind of irritating because I want to get right into the story that I’ve been anxiously waiting for. I don’t want to figure out which pages I have to skip. So I haven’t done that with this book. If all of you out there feel differently, let me know. If I’m in the overwhelming minority, then I’ll weave in a recap going forward.

  Another technical note. Some of the characters use their phones to text one another. I considered making those texts life-like. I chose not to. The text-speak language is rapidly changing and always has been. If this book is being read 5 or 10 years from now, I don’t want those sections to use so many out-of-fashion abbreviations that they become indecipherable. So I treat the text messages with the same grammar rules that I use on conversations. I’ll let the characters speak colloquially, with poor grammar. I’ll leave some LOLs and some OMGs, but not much else.

  Then there’s the ambiguity. Kat and I met an elderly woman at an arts & crafts show in Houston about three years ago. The woman’s son had, a few months previously, bought her a smartphone and had taught her how to text. She told us that she thought LOL meant Lots of Love rather than Laugh Out Loud, so she’d end all of her text message conversations with LOL. All was fine with that until she passed along her condolences to a friend whose mother had died. LOL.

  On the proofreading and the timeline: If there are any proofreading errors, missed words, or inappropriate punctuations, please blame me, not my editors and proofreaders. My September release date was a little ambitious for Book 2. At the end, it put the editors and proofreaders under a heavy time crunch to meet a September 30th deadline. So readers, please accept my apologies on that one. If anything particularly peeves you and you feel compelled to rid the world of bad grammar one error at a time, go to my Facebook page and leave me a note. I’ll include the update when I publish a revised edition.

  Of course, no book would be complete without an acknowledgement of some sort. Thank you Tanya Soans. Tanya is one of those dedicated folks you see on TV every summer, fighting wildfires on our mountains and in our forests. She very patiently answered about a thousand fire - related questions. If it turns out that I got it all wrong, then I’ll take the blame for that. She proves she knows what she’s doing every day.

  I’d like to thank Dusty Duffield, who spent a good long while in Iraq, not in a military role but certainly around the military quite a bit, for some insight into military equipment. Also a big thanks for kicking around some ideas and providing some on the plot and direction of the book.

  On Book 3, I'll shoot for the end of November, but I'll promise the end of December. That'll give us an extra month if we need it.

  Finally, thank you so much for picking up a copy of Slow Burn: Infected. I hope I’ve written a story that keeps you riveted to the page, emotionally involves you, and makes you think about some of the characters’ dilemmas in the larger context of the world we’re all actively involved in building every day. But let’s be honest—mostly I hope you like it enough to read the next book in the series.

  I’m really starting to like some of the characters in the story and I really enjoyed writing it. Enjoy reading! If you do, please feel free to share that with your friends. If not, please feel free to keep it to yourself. ;-)

  …although constructive c
riticism is always appreciated.

  On to the story!

  Bobby

  Chapter 1

  Mid-afternoon in August is not a pleasant time to be outdoors in central Texas. The sun scorches anything foolish enough to leave the shadows and risk its wrath. Humid air flows north off of the gulf and heats to an angry, gaseous broth, in league with the sun to punish any soul it catches outdoors.

  Every patch of unirrigated grass gets baked to crisp hues of tan and brown. Every concrete sidewalk and stretch of bleached asphalt shimmers radiated heat.

  And, as if adding a million mindless infected to Austin’s empty streets wasn’t enough to make August suck more than usual, the smoke and ash from the fires devouring east Austin tainted the hot air. Great gray columns of smoke rose a thousand feet into the sky, boasting of destruction before drifting to the northeast.

  Jerome spoke quietly, “We need to go somewhere and talk.”

  Staying in the shadow of the ROTC building as we walked away from the dorm, Murphy said, “There’s nothing to talk about. I told you guys what I’m going to do—go find my mom and sister. Come if you want. Stay if you don’t. I don’t really give a shit.”

  One of the things I’d learned about Murphy was that he had the ability to tell you he didn’t give a shit in a way that didn’t leave you offended. But that was irrelevant to my mood. I was already livid over getting evicted by Mark and his ROTC boys, and I needed to make a choice: go with Murphy, squat in a shadow across the quad from the dorm and think about revenge, or some other thing I hadn’t thought of yet. Long experience told me that choosing while angry, more often than not, led to bad outcomes. But that never stopped me from doing it anyway.

  I continued walking. “I’m going with Murphy.”

  Jerome was miffed. “How can you just walk away? Mark and those guys hate us. They kicked us out of our own dorm for…for…”

  “For being white?” Murphy laughed.

  “For being infected,” Jerome answered, weakly.

  So Jerome was seething as well. It seemed only Murphy could smile and let the eviction roll off of his back.

  Not me. Oft times, anger was all I had, my sole defining characteristic. It clung to me like an insecure girlfriend, and I put as little effort into sloughing it off. Perhaps I could learn from Murphy.

  Jerome sulked, but came along.

  We followed a wide concrete staircase down past the east fountain, skirted along a tall wall to keep out of sight of our old dormitory, and turned left past the drama department. If the ROTC guys had entertained any ideas of taking a shot at us as we left, they’d lost their chance.

  Long minutes in the debilitating heat ticked by and took the edge off of my anger. We walked on a winding, shaded sidewalk that followed Waller Creek’s course north.

  “That Mark guy was nuts,” I finally said.

  “Yeah,” Murphy agreed.

  Numerous infected squatted in the shadows of the trees and the bushes all along the creek. I lowered my voice, “You saved us back there, Murphy.”

  “I know.”

  “How did you know what was going to happen?”

  “That things were going to go down the way they did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Zed, I didn’t. I just got a bad vibe from those dudes. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to waste any time getting out of there today. That’s why I went to Wilkins’ meeting geared up. When I saw things starting to turn in the wrong direction, I took a chance while everybody was watching Mark and Wilkins go at each other.”

  “It worked.” A few steps later, I added, “I wonder if this is how it’s going to be now.”

  Murphy asked, “What?”

  “I don’t know. I feel like a drama queen when I say it. But it seems like every time I turn around, I’m on the verge of getting killed by something.”

  “Is that why you’re so stressed out?” Murphy asked.

  I stopped and gestured at the world around us. “Really?”

  Murphy stopped and looked at me. “Yeah, that was a stupid thing to say. If we’re not careful, we may need to go see a shrink one day. Heh, heh, heh.”

  “What’s up with that laugh? Did you have a favorite cartoon character or something that laughed like that?” I asked.

  “No, man, that’s just my laugh. Heh, heh, heh.”

  Jerome came up and positioned himself in the middle of the wide sidewalk, with Murphy and me on either side. He looked around cautiously, but kept his mouth pinched shut, so that we’d know he was still pouting.

  The ringing of a telephone caught everyone’s attention.

  Murphy looked at me with a question on his face.

  I had no phone. I looked around.

  A moment later, it rang again.

  All of the infected within earshot showed an interest.

  On the third ring I identified a scatter of shredded, bloody remains by a building a short distance away.

  The infected were on their feet and looking for the source of the sound.

  “We should go,” Murphy whispered.

  Jerome shuffled nervously. I nodded up the path and we moved away.

  On the fourth ring, the infected swarmed over the clothes and bones.

  The phone didn’t ring again.

  Once we got thirty or forty feet away, I had a change of mind and announced, “I’m going to go back for the phone.”

  Jerome shook his head, “When the networks go down, that phone won’t be worth anything.”

  “They’re not down yet,” I hissed. “Murphy, do you mind waiting a few minutes? Once the infected calm down a bit and start to disperse, I’ll go over and find the phone.”

  Murphy made a show of looking at a watch that wasn’t on his wrist. “Cool, man, just don’t take too long. I’m gonna head up the trail and see what I can see.”

  Jerome said, “I’m going with Murphy.”

  “Don’t go too far,” I told them.

  “No sweat,” said Murphy.

  I watched the infected rip through the clothes looking for something to eat. Keys jangled out. A billfold hit the ground. A pair of torn jeans was cast aside and out of those jeans, a cell phone flew in a long arc.

  Crap.

  It landed in the grass and bounced.

  Opportunity?

  Keeping an eye on the squabbling infected, I walked over, picked up the phone, and quickly put some distance between them and me.

  A half block away, I came across a shaded bench along the trail.

  I sat down and examined the phone. It was the same brand of smartphone that I had before the police emptied my pockets during my arrest earlier in the week. I turned off the ringer. The infected had damaged brains, but they weren’t so damaged that they didn’t know which sounds to associate with people, with food. I checked the battery. It still had most of a charge.

  I recalled the number that Felicity had given me for Amber’s phone the day before. Or was it two days before? So much was happening so fast that I was losing track. I opened up a text message window.

  Me: This is Zed

  I only had to wait a moment.

  Amber: Zed…sorry.

  Me: Nothing to be sorry for.

  Amber: You saved our lives. I didn’t know what to do.

  Me: NP. I won’t hold it against you. You did the right thing. Staying there is safer for you.

  Amber: I’m worried. Mark frightens me.

  Me: That was some crazy shit but your chances are better if you stay together than if you split up. Wilkins is a solid guy. He’ll keep Mark’s crazy ass in line. Stick with him if anything happens.

  Amber: Okay

  Me: You have weapons and food enough to last a good long while but feel free to text me if you run short of anything. I don’t know if I’ll be able to help but I may. I have a lot more freedom of movement than you guys do.

  Amber: You’re a good man Zed : )

  Me: I have to go. The guys are waiting on me. I’ll try and find a charg
er for this phone. Keep in touch, if you want to.

  Amber: I do.

  Me: Me too.

  Amber: Be careful out there. Please stay safe.

  Me: Safe is my middle name.

  Amber: LOL! I KNOW that’s not true.

  Me: Gotta go. Bye.

  Amber: Bye.

  Stay safe? I hoped.

  Chapter 2

  When I caught up with the guys, I said, “There’s a University co-op up on the north side of campus.”

  “You want to go shopping?” Murphy asked, letting his surprise reveal how bad he thought the idea was.

  I said, “I keep getting ignored when I bring this up, but I need a computer and a flash drive.”

  Both Jerome and Murphy made a point of ignoring what I’d just said.

  I told them, “It’s only a block or two out of our way. It’ll take a few extra minutes.”

  “Fine,” Murphy said. “It’s probably a good idea, but don’t be asking me to stop at an internet café along the way. You can have all the time online that you want after we get to my mom’s house.”

  “I think it’s a waste of time,” Jerome butted in. “We probably won’t live long enough to run out of food, or electricity, or anything important.”

  “Oh, you’ll live,” Murphy said. “I have no doubt.”

  “Really?” Jerome asked, real curiosity in his voice. “What makes you think I’ll last?”

  “Because you’re a pussy!” Murphy’s big laugh caught the attention of every infected in sight.

  I shushed them both as I looked around. All of the infected were staring, but none were yet moving.

  We walked the next block in silence and the infected along the way lost interest. I stepped out ahead of the guys and made a left turn onto the cross street that would take us to the co-op.

  Through clenched teeth, Jerome told Murphy, “I am not a pussy.”

  Murphy asked quietly, “Oh? Who went out to get the guns while the other one sat in the room?”