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

  Slow Burn

  This Special Edition Contains All Nine Books in the Slow Burn Series

  and a Bonus Novella

  ZERO DAY, Book 1

  INFECTED, Book 2

  DESTROYER, Book 3

  DEAD FIRE, Book 4

  TORRENT, Book 5

  BLEED, Book 6

  CITY OF STIN, Book 7

  GRIND, Book 8

  SANCTUM, Book 9

  ALPHA, Bonus Novella

  A series of novels

  by

  Bobby Adair

  http://www.bobbyadair.com

  http://www.facebook.com/BobbyAdairAuthor

  Table of Contents

  Book 1, Zero Day

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Book 2, Infected

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Book 3, Destroyer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Book 4, Dead Fire

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Book 5, Torrent

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Book 6, Bleed

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Book 7, City of Stin

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23


  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Book 8, Grind

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Book 9, Sanctum

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  The End

  Reviews

  Newsletter and Facebook

  Slow Burn Book 1, ‘Zero Day’

  Chapter 1

  That day arrived like every other day in my life.

  I came into it ill-informed and unprepared.

  There had been exaggerated news reports over the past few weeks about the upcoming flu season’s annual pandemic. The whiners on the talking-head channels were making noise about racial cleansing that had spread out of Somalia and into Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Civil disorder had spread through China and the military was cracking down hard. Soldiers were marching. Tanks were rolling. Reporters were being arrested and internet communication had been disconnected, to whatever degree that can be done. Riots were tearing through Mediterranean cities and the Mideast had oscillated into a more violent phase of its perpetual cycle.

  The world was falling apart in all the usual ways.

  So I’d shrugged it off and spent my Saturday watching pre-season football with my buddies. I got a little too drunk, slept a little too late, and on that Sunday morning, my head hurt a little too much. It didn’t help that I was going to see my mom and Dan for a needling, nagging, degrading lunch that would end with my asking for a five-hundred dollar loan to cover rent, again, and I’d get another long speech about doing something with my life, showing a little enthusiasm, or developing some kind of work ethic.

  How else could that morning have started, other than with a few shots from a now-empty tequila bottle on my kitchen counter?

  And perhaps I should have not just noticed, but really paid attention to the weirdness in the streets on the drive over. But when one gets up in the morning and explicitly decides to paint oneself into oblivion behind a screen of booze, dark sunglasses, and heavy metal music, an unconcerned world just slides past, beyond an apathetic fog. Which is the whole point.

  All of that worked just as planned until I walked into Mom’s house and slipped in some blood on the floor in the foyer. I was dumbstruck at the scene in the living room: some semi-mutilated guy, sitting deathly still in a chair by the fireplace, my mother, on the living room floor in a pool of blood, and Dan, on his knees with his back to me, hunched over her with busy elbows and noisy hands.

  Time ticked languidly past. Unsavory images bombarded my optic nerve, only be to be rejected by my unreceptive brain.

  Unencumbered by the state of horrified surprise that afflicted me, Dan stood up and looked at me with his thin gray comb-over dangling in front of his pale round face. His blood-smeared lips smacked and his crazy dark eyes fixated on me.

  I yanked my phone from my pocket and threatened, “Dan, I’m going to call the police.” As if I wasn’t going to do that anyway.

  He came at me, clearly not afraid of the police.

  My feet somehow found traction on the slippery floor and I bounded into the kitchen. Dan gave chase with his big, blue-collar hands grasping at my shirttail.

  With surprising speed, he caught me near the dishwasher. A big ape hand squeezed into my arm and spun me around. The other reached for my throat, with toothy jaws following close behind. I tried to protect myself by throwing up my left arm.

  I reached over and pulled a large carving knife from the block on the counter, and I stabbed Dan, tentatively at first, but as his teeth tore my skin I stabbed again and again, with increasingly brutal enthusiasm.

  When it was over, I sat on the floor with my back to a cabinet door in a large, copper-smelling puddle of Dan’s blood, with his sweaty body pinned across my legs.

  He was dead.

  I was fixated on the horrid bite wound on my left forearm. For a long time I watched, hypnotized, as the blood oozed and dripped.

  Sometimes, a half-bottle of breakfast tequila just isn’t enough to deal with the day’s reality.

  I dropped the knife and proceeded to roll the flabby c
orpse onto the tile.

  I walked through the mess in the kitchen and found my cell phone on the floor in the foyer. Thankfully, it hadn’t broken in the scuffle. I dialed 911.

  Busy.

  Shit.

  I tried again.

  Busy.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I walked out the front door and onto the wide porch. The upper middle-class cracker neighborhood ignored me, focused instead on its own pockets of human chaos. Four houses down, across the street, some sort of scuffle had spilled out of the front door and people were struggling on the lawn. A car raced up the street at a very unsafe speed. Some residents loitered aimlessly.

  911 again. Still busy.

  What the hell?

  I went back into the house, closing and locking the front door behind me. Things weren’t making sense.

  Back in the living room, I looked down at my mother’s torn body and shook my head. It was surreal.

  Perhaps some people in that situation would have crumbled, some would have cried. As for me, I’d emotionally disconnected from life a long time ago. For that, I had to thank the skeletal bitch on the floor, with her greedy rodent soul and her short-tempered ape-mate in the kitchen. If anything, her death was a belated answer to old prayers, with a bit of an unexpected mess.

  I thought about an inheritance and an end to my financial troubles. I thought about the infection from Dan’s stale breath and yellow teeth beginning to fester under my skin. I thought about the eventual scar and the great bar room story it would make. Pain today, pussy tomorrow. Half a smile bent my lips.

  The guy in the chair was in bad shape. Not living, of course, but in bad shape even for a corpse. His right arm was missing whole bite-sized chunks of flesh, human bite-sized chunks. His head was beaten beyond recognition. On the floor beside the chair lay a bloody fireplace poker, quite likely the weapon that had given his skull its new shape.

  I felt sick to my stomach and an uncharacteristic chill.

  Looking down at the wound on my arm I noticed that coagulation hadn’t yet begun to staunch the flow of blood. I needed to do something about that.

  I dialed 911 again. Nothing.

  Crap.

  I went to Mom and Dan’s bedroom and into the master bath.

  Opening the medicine cabinet, I found an off-brand bottle of antibacterial liquid.

  My head started to pound. The morning’s tequila had outlived its usefulness.

  Looking around for something with which to scrub, I found myself staring at the toothbrush holder. Mom and Dan weren’t going to need those anymore. I lay my forearm over the sink, poured the antibacterial into the gaping tears, and clenched my teeth.

  Holy crap, it hurt.

  Next, I went after the wound with a toothbrush.

  More pain.

  More antibacterial.

  Rinse. Soap. Scrub. Pain, pain, pain.

  Rinse. Antibacterial.

  Clench the teeth.

  Don’t scream like a pussy.

  Antibacterial.

  Breathe.

  My head was about to explode.

  Letting my wound air-dry, I found a bottle of aspirin, threw four into my mouth and slurped some water from the sink to wash them down. I found a tube of antibacterial cream and squirted it liberally into the wounds as blood slowly mixed with it, trying to wash it back out. A box of Band-Aids would have to fulfill the next requirement, as no gauze or tape was in the cabinet.