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

  The hand still hung over the table, just inches above the metal loop that constrained mine. “Zed?”

  “Oh, good God.” I angled a wrist up and opened my palm.

  He jiggled my hand roughly in the cuffs.

  “Thank you, Zed.”

  I let go and let my hand drop to the stainless steel.

  “You have to understand, Zed, this story about your stepdad turning into a cannibal…what did you really think we’d think, Zed? It all sounds a little far-fetched, don’t you think? He was a deacon in the church. A member of the school board. A retired principal. Are we really supposed to believe he got all hopped up on crack and killed your mother and the neighbor?”

  I nodded. “Of course I do. I thought the whole thing was pretty crazy when I got to my mom’s for lunch. Look, don’t you have some kind of forensics team or something? Don’t you guys look at evidence before you start beating the crap out of suspects anymore? I mean, Christ.”

  “We’ve got people at the scene,” Detective Wolsely told me.

  “So what’s the deal then? Are we going to just sit in this room until you get tired of beating me, or are you going to look at the evidence and then apologize to me?”

  “Look, Zed. Let’s just put all of that aside for the moment. You keep saying you went to your mom’s house yesterday morning––”

  “I did.”

  “––and you tell us the story. But your story is so full of holes that you could drive a truck through it.”

  “What? What holes? How can there be any holes? It’s not like you talked to the other witnesses, because you can’t, because they’re dead.”

  “Zed, calm down. I’m trying to help you here, and in return I’d like for you to help me, too.”

  “By being your punching bag?”

  “Now, Zed, that wasn’t called for.”

  “I don’t see how any time could be called for better than this one, do you? I mean, I have been in here for hours, being beaten and called a liar, yelled at, and berated, threatened, and, oh, did I mention, getting beaten like a punching bag?”

  Wolsely leaned back in his chair and froze in his cross-armed pose again.

  “Whatever.” I sat back in my chair and drew a few deep, calming breaths.

  “Zed, you say you got to your parents’ house yesterday morning, and you found your mom and the dead neighbor. Then you fought with your stepdad and that he was killed in the fight.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what happened.”

  “Well, Zed, that’s not possible.”

  “What do you mean? How could you even come to that conclusion?”

  “Zed, we’re not complete idiots here in the police department. For one thing, our forensic guys are pretty good at determining time of death. It’s simpler than you think, especially when it’s recent. They just compare the core temperature to the ambient temperature, and get a pretty quick estimate of the time of death.”

  “Okay, I watch TV, too. So what’s the problem?”

  “Your stepdad has been dead for at least two full days.”

  “What? What? That’s not possible.”

  “See, Zed?” Wolsely said. “Holes in your story.”

  “Wait, wait. What day is this?”

  “What day is it?” Wolsely repeated.

  “Yes. I told you I went to my parents’ house on Sunday afternoon. I told you I passed out…I guess from blood loss or something, but it must have been longer than I thought.”

  “You passed out for two solid days and never woke up?”

  “Why, what’s today?”

  “Late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning, you pick.”

  “Wednesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow. I guess so,” I said.

  Detective Wolsely changed the subject. “Tell me about your mom, Zed.”

  I huffed a couple of times and looked around the room while I thought about that.

  After several minutes, I said, “You know, when I was a kid I used to watch this Tarzan show on TV, and there was this recurring concept in that show about an elephant graveyard. Kind of the African version of El Dorado, only with ivory instead of gold.”

  Detective Wolsely asked, “What does this have to do with anything?”

  “You asked me a question, Detective. I’m trying to answer it.”

  “Fine.”

  “So, Detective, when the white men came to Africa, they didn’t see any elephant carcasses lying about with all the free ivory they could carry, so they concocted this theory about the existence of an elephant graveyard, where all of the elephants would go to die. I used to think my mom was like that graveyard, only instead of elephants going there to die, happiness would.”

  Detective Wolsely asked, “And now that she’s dead, you don’t think that anymore?”

  “No, that’s not it at all. I think that like those white men that went to Africa, who’d erroneously deduced the existence of an elephant graveyard, I erred in my deduction that my mother was a passive graveyard for happiness.”

  Wolsely was getting bored.

  “Did you know that hyenas eat bone?” I asked.

  Detective Wolsely shook his head.

  “Yeah, they’ll eat pretty much anything. Even bone. They’re predators. They’re scavengers. They’re ugly. But most of all, they’re voracious. That’s my mother.”

  “Your mother is a hyena?” Wolsely asked.

  “In a way, I guess. You see, she’s not the graveyard where happiness goes to die. She’s a voracious scavenger, constantly searching for any waning happiness, so that she can kill it off and eat up any evidence that it ever existed. That’s my mom.”

  Detective Wolsely looked at me like he’d just found me covered in dog poop. “What drugs are you on, Zed?”

  “What?”

  “What drugs are you on? Nobody loses track of two days and then just gets up all normal and calls the police.”

  “Normal? I never said that. I told you I feel like crap. I was running a high fever. I still am.”

  “So you say.”

  “Yes, I do say. Get a thermometer and check for yourself. Holy freakin’ crap.”

  “Just tell me what you were on, Zed. Tell me where you got it. There’s something seriously bad out on the street and it’s making people crazy. We need to catch the guy that sold it to you. Things might even go easier on you if we can prove it was the drugs that made you crazy.”

  “What?”

  “We took a blood sample while you were passed out, Zed. We’ll figure out what it was. I mean, whether it was crack or meth or whatever. But we need to figure out what it was laced with. We need to know where you got it, so we can get it off the street. There’s a lot of people going crazy on this stuff, Zed.”

  “What about that flu in Europe or whatever it is? I saw rioting on TV.”

  “Zed, let’s be realistic here. There is no flu that makes people crazy.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked.

  “Ratings,” Wolsely said. “Sure there’s a flu but the flu makes you puke and cough. It gives you diarrhea. It doesn’t make people crazy. Those were just frightened people, doing stupid things. Zed, the world is much simpler than all of you conspiracy nuts think it is. People make bad, irrational choices for the stupidest reasons every day. I see it all the time, believe me. There is no crazy flu going around. The answers are never that complicated. Trust me.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Besides, why Austin? Why not New York, or LA, or Chicago? There are a hundred cities more likely to get an outbreak of the flu than Austin. We’re not exactly a major point of entry here, are we Zed? Come on, just tell me what you were on and where you got it.”

  I shook my head and looked at the floor. “Jeez, Tom. Listen to me, please. I didn’t take any drugs. I was drinking. I drank a lot on Saturday. I smoked some weed with my friends. I drank some tequila on Sunday morning before heading over to my mom’s house. I’ve told you this a thousand times.”r />
  “When did you smoke the weed?”

  “It was just weed.”

  “When did you smoke it?”

  “The night before, like I said.”

  “When the night before? Zed, it may have been laced with PCP, or something worse. Surely you’ve heard of that before. PCP makes some people lose their shit, Zed. That may have happened to you.”

  I shook my head again and weakly said, “No.”

  “Where did you get the weed, Zed?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t even my weed.”

  “Who did you smoke it with, Zed? They may be having problems too. They might be in worse shape, Zed. They could be dead for all you know.”

  I gave up and told him the names of my buddies.

  Chapter 5

  The jail was old, like a hundred years old. The section I was in had been built in the late 1800s. It was dirty. It was smelly. Every surface was sticky beneath aged layers of oral ejecta and other human secretions.

  I was in a holding cell about seven feet deep and thirty feet long. One long wall was brick. The other three were comprised of iron bars with layer upon layer of flakes, painted over by more layers of flakes. Two rows of bunks, one on the top and one on the bottom, hung from the wall for a total of eight. A single commode stood at one end, covered in stains and lumpy smears.

  With my photograph taken and black ink on my fingers, I was shoved into the cell that already held twenty-five other guys, laying and sitting in the bunks and on the floor. At least a few of my fellow inmates were mentally unplugged. They stared blankly at the wall. Some paced across the spots of floor where a foot would fit. One very animated guy bounced around the cell like a chimp, screaming Tourette’s-like profanities and gibberish. Most looked drunk, hung-over, beaten up, or some combination thereof.

  “I need to see a doctor,” I told the jailer, as he slammed the door shut.

  He headed back to the end of the hall as though I’d said nothing at all.

  “Hey, I need to see a doctor.”

  Nothing.

  “Hey.” I yelled.

  The jailer stopped and glared at me. “Look, bud, you can see we’re having a busy day. So lighten up, would you?”

  “But I need medical attention for my arm.”

  “After you get assigned to a cell, you can ask your guard for permission to go to the infirmary.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” The guard turned and ignored further protests.

  The Tourette’s guy shrieked at the ceiling from his perch on a top bunk. Nobody paid him any mind.

  I looked around but there was no bunk space available. There was barely any floor space either, the only exception being a few feet next to a comatose giant of a black man leaning on the bars near the commode.

  I stood, holding the bars of the door and looking up and down the short hall. Two long halls branched off at either end and led to rows of cells in the new section of the jail. I heard the rowdy noise of hundreds of other prisoners coming from down those halls.

  Tourette’s guy shrieked again. “I’m hungry.”

  I leaned my face against the sticky, flaky iron bars and closed my eyes. The bite on my arm throbbed noticeably but didn’t hurt. Infection was sure to set in. I worried about that, and about what Wolsely had said about drugs in the weed my buddies and I had smoked on Saturday night.

  I wanted to feel angry about the lazy incompetence of the police who’d locked me up, but all I felt was drained and frustrated.

  I wondered how long I’d have to wait for my inevitable release. I flexed the fingers of my left hand again, checking for loss of movement.

  The lighting in the jail was too stark, unnaturally bright. It bothered my eyes. I longed for a pair of sunglasses.

  I was mere minutes into my incarceration and I was already bored.

  An old tube television hung from the ceiling across the hall from the cell. There was something on about riots again, something about the new flu virus. Having grown up with Mom and Dan’s addiction to the repetitive ravings of the non-stop cable news faces, I possessed a high tolerance for hysterical speculation. Football, baseball, even bowling would have been a better choice than news on the TV.

  I looked down at my feet. “This place sucks.”

  Off to my right, I heard Tourette’s boy start bouncing on his bunk.

  “Man, shut up,” somebody over there said.

  A few more voiced agreement.

  I looked over. Tourette’s boy was getting more aggressive.

  Then, he surprised everyone by bounding off of the top bunk and onto one of the sitting prisoners.

  A frenzy of fighting exploded from the far end of the cell. Screaming, yelling, kicking, punching, and biting, lots of biting. The wave of pandemonium pushed toward me, and I decided the safest place in the cell was in the stinky muck in the corner behind the commode. I stepped quickly over the big black guy who was just starting to get up and I wormed my way into the corner.

  Yelling from outside the cell told me that the guards already knew what was happening in the cell.

  Arms and legs were wrestling. Fists were punching. Some guys were already down on the ground and other guys clambering into the bunks. The big black guy had his back to me and pretty much blocked all access to my end of the cell. I’m sure that defending me wasn’t what he intended. He just didn’t see me as a threat.

  Suddenly, Tourette’s boy came flying out of the melee and landed in some sort of monkey grasp around the big guy’s head and shoulders. As the big guy grasped at him to pull him off, Tourette’s boy caught me with the craziest eyes I’d ever seen, opened his mouth wide, and chomped down on the big guy’s neck.

  A canister clinked in through the bars. Smoke exploded into the cell, burning my eyes.

  The heavy metal door swung open and the guards, dressed in riot gear, bulled their way in.

  Chapter 6

  Thirty minutes later I was sitting on one of the lower bunks with my hands cuffed behind me, shoulder to shoulder in a long row of cuffed, bloodied, coughing prisoners.

  Tourette’s boy was gagged. His hands were cuffed and attached to the bars of the cell behind him. His feet were bound. He slumped forward, motionless. He had an enormous gash across his scalp. A couple of the guards had beaten him mercilessly after he’d bitten them during the fight. And just because they were covered in riot gear and pissed off, they beat several more of us into unconsciousness. Three of those were cuffed alongside Tourette’s boy, slumped forward and dripping blood into small pools on the crusty floor. Two of my former cellmates were bleeding so severely that they were dragged out of the cell—to the hospital, I presumed.

  Of the rest of us, I was in the best shape, at least in terms of fresh wounds. I still had a scabby bandage on my arm that oozed red. Again, I flexed my left hand to make sure it still worked. The next link in my chain of new habits was to worry about my need to get some medical attention.

  From around the corner, I heard noises of another cell erupting in violence. Not long after, a half-dozen guards in their gear clomped past us up the hallway.

  The jail was exploding in craziness.

  As luck would have it, the big black guy who’d been my shield during the scuffle was sitting right next to me on the bunk. Apparently more bored than I was, he looked my bloodstained clothing up and down and asked, “So, what’d you do?”

  “How am I supposed to answer that?” I asked.

  “Most guys like you make something up to seem all badass, you know, so they won’t get no shit while they’re in here.”

  I laughed, and so did the black guy on the other side of me.

  “What do you mean, guys like me?” I asked. “Is this a white thing?”

  “No. You just don’t look like a thug. You look like a suburbanite or a cube farmer.”

  “A cube farmer?”

  “Somebody who sits in a cube all day,” the big guy explained.

  The guy on the other side laughed
and added, “Like a nerd.”

  “A nerd?” I asked.

  The big guy looked me over and nodded.

  After their laughing subsided, I asked, “So do you want the truth, or a lie?”

  “Man, you pick. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m just tired of staring at that damned yellow wall. I can barely see the TV from here, and besides, all they want to talk about anyway is that flu, like they know what’s going on. They don’t know anything.”

  I shrugged, “I killed my stepdad.”

  The big guy looked down at me again. “With all that blood all over you, I guess I’d buy that.”

  The guy on the other side said, “He probably got arrested while trying to steal some cherry syrup from a jellybean factory.”

  That got some laughs from the guys nearby.

  “I wish.”

  “What’d you do him with?” the big guy asked.

  “A knife,” I answered.

  “I guess that explains the mess on your clothes.”

  “That’s not actually his blood…I don’t think,” I said.

  The guy on my left said, “I suppose you killed somebody else, too.”

  “It’s a long story,” I told them.

  The big guy asked, “How many times did you stab him?”

  I looked down, ashamed for a moment though I didn’t know why. “The cops said thirty-seven times.”

  The guy to my left said, “Man, that’s bullshit.”

  “You must have been pissed. What’d he do?” asked the big guy.

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” I said. “What’d you do?”

  “Just fighting.”

  “Fighting? Like a bar fight?” I asked.

  “Exactly like a bar fight,” he answered.

  I nodded. “By the way, my name’s Zed Zane.”

  “Murphy Smalls,” the big guy answered.

  “Murphy Smalls? That’s not a very appropriate name for a big guy like you.”

  “Well, at least you didn’t make a stupid joke about it,” Murphy said.

  The guy to my left said, “That’s why we’re in here, one too many small jokes. I’m Earl Walker.”

  “Good to meet you, Earl. Good to meet you Murphy.”