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

  Earl asked, “So, did you really stab your stepdad?”

  I nodded.

  Earl said, “He must have done some crazy shit for you to go stabbing him thirty-seven times.”

  I nodded. “Some pretty crazy shit.”

  “Looks like you and me might as well become good friends, because we’re both going to be here a while,” said Earl.

  “For fighting?” I asked.

  “He’s on probation,” said Murphy. “They’ll probably violate him and send him back.”

  “That sucks,” I said.

  “You got that right,” Earl agreed. “All because Mr. Smalls is sensitive about his name.”

  “Man, you know it’s not like that,” Murphy said. “Don’t you be starting any shit.”

  Earl said no more on the topic.

  After a few minutes of listening to the inmates around the corner go nuts, Murphy asked, “So what’d he do? I’m curious now.”

  “My stepdad?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I thought about those gruesome Sunday morning images stuck in my mind. “I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure he killed my mother.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was going over to their house for lunch for Spam pie on Sunday.”

  “On Sunday?” Murphy asked.

  “Yeah, on Sunday.”

  “Spam pie?” Murphy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s gross,” Murphy replied.

  Earl said, “Man, that was three days ago. Why are you still covered in blood? Dumbass white people don’t know shit about getting away with doing criminal stuff. No wonder you’re in here.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What?” Earl asked.

  “He attacked me and bit my arm.” I tried to pull my left arm around front to show the guys.

  Earl said, “Man, that’s nasty.”

  “Anyway, I think I was bleeding so bad that I passed out.”

  “No shit?”

  I nodded.

  “And the cops found you like that?” Earl asked.

  “When I woke up, I called them.”

  “And they arrested you?” Murphy asked.

  “They must have thought you were black under all that blood,” Earl added.

  The sound of three quick gunshots blasting through the corridors opened every eye wide and snapped every head toward the intersecting hallway. Tourette’s boy was no exception. He immediately started to squirm and grunt.

  “Shit,” Earl muttered.

  The echo of running footsteps came up the hall to our left.

  Seconds later, two officers hurried past, followed by four crazed inmates in torn, bloodied clothes.

  The sound of another scuffle erupted, followed by more gunshots.

  “This is not good,” Murphy told anybody who was listening.

  I looked from left to right.

  I heard the sound of…well, it sounded like wild animals.

  More gunfire.

  An inmate rounded the corner and ran at full speed in front of us across the length of our cell.

  Another inmate rounded the corner, shoeless, shirtless, and screaming like an enraged baboon. He leapt up on the bars of our cell as if he were the one in the cage. He reached through the bars, seemingly focused on Earl. We all pressed our backs to the wall.

  He screamed again as more crazed prisoners, spattered in blood, rounded the corner and flowed freely through the hall.

  Several tried to reach in and grab at us before moving past the wall behind us.

  Gunfire rang with alarming frequency.

  More prisoners spilled from the hall at our right. They looked relatively normal, but understandably terrified.

  What followed close behind them was another bunch of the wild-eyed, screaming men.

  “This is gonna get ugly,” Earl said.

  “I think you’re a little late on that newsflash,” I said.

  Smoke billowed out of the halls from behind us. My eyes started to burn. We all started coughing again.

  “I guess this is a prison riot,” Murphy coughed out.

  “In the county jail?” Earl asked, shaking his head.

  Tourette’s boy ripped out an earsplitting wail of victory as he freed one bloody hand from the cuffs that secured him to the bars. He spun and tore mercilessly at the hand that was cuffed to another bar.

  Guys in the cell got up off of the bunks and moved away. Nobody wanted to be near the crazy guy. Only the unconscious guys, cuffed to the bars, didn’t move.

  Another scream of triumph ripped through the violence as Tourette’s boy tore his other hand free, slinging blood across the ceiling, walls, and us.

  Several of the inmates cursed.

  Tourette’s boy yanked the gag out of his mouth and with teeth gnashing pounced on an inmate not smart enough to have moved out of the way. His teeth found flesh before the inmate could squirm away. Blood gushed from the wound.

  In a flash, Murphy was on the move and ran a dozen steps to the far end of the cell, leaned his shoulder forward and slammed Tourette’s boy in the side. All three hundred pounds of Murphy smashed his body into the bars.

  When Murphy pulled away, Tourette’s boy lay on the floor, twitching and stunned.

  Everyone in the cell was staring at Murphy and the downed psycho when the door buzzer sounded in three long, loud blasts, shifting everyone’s attention to the cell door as it sprang open.

  We were all frozen in disbelief and indecision. Run out of the cell and into the riot, make a break for freedom, or stay put?

  With mayhem raging through the jailhouse, safety was my first thought.

  Pounding feet and animal sounds rang up and down the halls, mixing with jubilant cries and fearful screams. Tourette’s boy squirmed and pushed himself up from the floor. He shook his head and made a loud, angry noise.

  Earl yelled, “Let’s go, Murphy.”

  Everyone piled through the door, out of the cell, and into the melee.

  “I’m with you guys,” I declared, and followed Earl.

  Murphy fell in behind us.

  We made the left turn down the smoke-filled hall we’d all come in through.

  Bodies lay everywhere, both sheriff’s deputies and prisoners alike. Men ran both in front and behind us. The crazy-eyed screamers were among us, attacking anybody, tearing at flesh with their hands and teeth.

  “Move.” Murphy yelled from behind.

  Earl picked up the pace and ran blindly into the thickening teargas.

  We coughed, struggled, and fought our way toward where we remembered the exit to be. Each barred door we encountered was unlocked and swung open. The rioting prisoners had seen to that.

  We stepped on and over men until we burst into the entrance lobby, where we saw daylight through the glass door and three windows of equal size, all shattered.

  Gunfire popped in the street outside and in the halls and cells behind us. To run into the street was to risk being shot down. To go back seemed like certain death by fire, or mauling in the teeth and tearing hands of the screamers.

  Earl hesitated and glanced back at Murphy for a decision. I looked back as well. It was so far beyond any situation I’d ever imagined. I was decidedly in follow-mode no matter what course Murphy chose.

  Whatever Earl saw in Murphy’s silence was enough for him. He spun and bolted through the door. Murphy and I hurried behind.

  We came out near the southwest corner of the detention center into thin clouds of teargas drifting in the smothering hot air and blistering sun.

  Across the street, to the south of the detention center, a hilly park filled a city block. To our west was an old neighborhood that had been converted to condos and offices for attorneys and bail bondsmen. Parked cars lined the streets. To the south and east, police cars blocked the roadways. Police officers and sheriff’s deputies were everywhere, but the eight hundred prisoners spilling into the streets dwarfed their numbers.

  We ran a shor
t distance up the street. Earl ducked beside a parked car and looked over the fender. The popping of gunfire came from all directions. I got to the car a second later. Murphy bumped the car behind me, using its mass to bring him to a stop.

  I squatted about midway back on the car, its black-tinted glass blocking my view across the street. Immediately frustrated, I stood and leaned forward to look over Earl’s shoulder, trying to spot a path away from the chaos. Something slammed into my chest and knocked the wind out of me. I fell to the sidewalk, gasping for a breath of air that wouldn’t come.

  Sprawled on my back, I saw stark blue sky above. Running feet stomped the concrete near my head as people hurried past. The pandemonium slowly became insignificant background noise. My only concern was the pain radiating through my chest and my inability to gulp a single, life-sustaining breath.

  Then it happened. Air filled my lungs. I could breathe.

  Wide-eyed, Murphy leaned over me. “That was a beanbag, you lucky dumbass. Get up.”

  Earl yelled, “We gotta go.”

  I rolled over onto my stomach. With my wrists still cuffed behind me, it was difficult, but I managed to get to my feet.

  Earl and Murphy were squatting again behind a car a little further up the street. They were making for the old neighborhood.

  With my feet back on the street and air back in my lungs, I awkwardly sprinted to catch them, bullets be damned.

  In the seconds it took me to catch up, Earl had squatted between the bumpers of two cars, looking for an opportune moment to cross the no man’s land of the body-strewn street. I fell in behind him. Murphy squeezed in behind me.

  Earl looked up and down the street.

  “Now where do we go?” Murphy asked.

  “If we can get there, I know a place to hide for a while,” Earl said.

  “Where?” Murphy asked.

  “That survivalist dude that got evicted a few years back.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Murphy looked up the street through the car windows. “Some dude built a bunker under his house or something.”

  “Fuck it.” Earl yelled. He burst into a run across the street.

  Without a thought about the danger, Murphy and I made tracks behind him.

  Three steps into the road, and just ahead of me, Earl’s head exploded in a fountain of blood and gore.

  Time slowed to a cold, syrupy drip.

  Fear froze me.

  In mid-stride, I mouthed a four-letter word. I lost all sense of how to proceed.

  Thankfully, Murphy was still moving, and his bulk slammed into me from behind. His momentum carried our entangled bodies across the street, where we landed roughly in a jumble of limbs and curse words, between two cars on the far side.

  Murphy rolled off of me and sat up to look at Earl’s corpse in the street. I struggled again to catch my breath, sucking in baked air off of the hot asphalt.

  I peered under the car beside me and started in fright. A pair of eyes fixed on mine in a frozen stare. In a nanosecond, I registered the uniform of a sheriff’s deputy on the man and I panicked, but he made no move, no sound.

  I drew another deep breath. The deputy remained still.

  He was dead.

  I knew what I had to do.

  I squirmed up to my knees. Murphy’s attention was stuck on his dead cousin.

  I peeked out along the sidewalk and saw the dead body of the officer lying on the curb, parallel to the car. A heavy cloud of smoke wafted across us, limiting visibility.

  I wormed my way out until I was beside the deputy, trying my best to look wounded, dead, and unthreatening all at the same time.

  I scraped my elbows on the concrete as I went. In moments, I was lying beside the deputy, feeling his front pocket for a set of keys. I located what felt like a metallic bulge. It took frighteningly long to sit up and angle my hand into his pocket but my effort was rewarded with the prize I sought. No sooner were the keys in my hand than I was up and running away from the car and into a driveway obscured from the street by a hedge.

  I turned and called, “Murphy.”

  He sat motionless. He couldn’t pull his attention away from Earl’s corpse.

  “Murphy.” I yelled, louder.

  He turned and for a second, looked at me like I was a stranger.

  In the next instant, he came back to reality and bolted across the gap between us, sliding to his knees next to me.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  We took off at a run into the neighborhood with all of its sheltering old houses, trees, bushes, and parked cars.

  Chapter 7

  Still cuffed, but with the keys grasped tightly in my hand, Murphy and I ran between two houses, squeezed through the gap between a hedge and a detached garage, and crossed another street. Police sirens wailed in all directions.

  “This is gonna be ground zero of a major shitstorm in about five minutes,” I panted, as we stopped behind a dumpster in an alley.

  Murphy squatted down, trying to catch his breath. “We can’t stay in this alley,” he said. “We’re better off if we get behind the houses, hop a few fences, and hide in the bushes. It’ll be hard in these cuffs.”

  I nodded. “I pulled some keys off of that dead deputy.”

  “Who?” Murphy asked.

  “There was a dead deputy by the cars. After Earl got hit.”

  “I didn’t see him.” Murphy had a vacant look in his eyes.

  “Murphy, you don’t look good. Did you get shot?”

  Murphy shook his head. “No. I don’t feel good.”

  I stood up straight and peered down the alley. Another hundred yards would get us across the next street, into some bushes, and another block further from the detention center. “Murphy, we need to get to those bushes over there. Then we’ll work on getting these cuffs off.”

  “Okay.”

  I nodded at Murphy. “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  I took off at a run as fast as my legs would carry me. I heard Murphy behind me at first, then all I heard was the air rushing in and out of my throat and my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

  I got to the street and bounced into the fender of a parked car to come to a stop. I looked up and down the street. I saw no police cars, so I started running again.

  I made it to the bushes.

  Catching my breath, I looked back for Murphy. He was only halfway down the alley and moving at a jog.

  “Shit.” I willed him to run faster.

  Long, torturous seconds passed. Murphy came to the end of the alley and lumbered across the sidewalk, past the cars, and into the street, making no effort at all to conceal himself or check for police.

  “Please, please don’t let there be a cop car,” I prayed aloud. “Hurry, Murphy.”

  Passing another line of parked cars and crossing over the sidewalk brought Murphy beside the hedge. He didn’t slow but brushed past me. I turned and ran on past him into the space behind the converted houses.

  I spied an area behind an old storage shed that would keep us hidden from the street and windows on the backsides of the houses.

  We kicked some old metal trashcans to the side and squeezed into a gap between the shed and a tall privacy fence. I turned my back to Murphy and opened my hand. “Murphy, I’m going to hold the keys out one at a time. You tell me when I get to the one that looks like it’ll open the cuffs.”

  “Got it,” said Murphy, after a few moments of jingling and fumbling.

  The key felt distinctly different than the others. I hoped it would fit.

  I fumbled around for a few more minutes before the keys slipped from my hands and dropped into the dirt.

  “Shit.”

  I fell to my knees, grabbed up the dirty keys, and tried again. The exercise was so much harder than it seemed like it should have been.

  Click. I’d freed one wrist. “Thank God.”

  The second cuff was off my wrist and lying in the dirt just seconds later.


  “Murphy, you’re up. Turn around.” I looked up. Murphy was leaning against the wall of the shed, eyes closed, drenched in sweat.

  I stood, concerned. “Murphy, are you okay?”

  Murphy shook his head. I reached up and put a palm across his forehead. He was burning with a fever.

  “We need to get you something for that fever, Murphy.”

  The sound of a siren zoomed by on the next street over. Too close.

  I drew a few slow, calming breaths. I needed to think.

  We were out of the cell and three or four blocks away from the jail. We didn’t seem to be in any immediate physical danger, but that was only a guess. With the riot and mass escape, the police might have shot anybody that looked remotely like an escaped prisoner. Though we were missing our belts and shoelaces and had ink on our fingertips, we hadn’t been put into the orange jumpsuits that the jail’s long-term residents wore. There was hope. Our only sure safety lay far from the jail and far from the vindictive rage of the cops descending on us with every siren in the city.

  Our one tiny advantage derived from the chaos of the jail riot and the hundreds of prisoners scampering for freedom in every direction.

  I wasn’t at a hundred percent, but I knew I could run. I wasn’t so sure about Murphy. His condition was declining. Regardless, we had to move.

  I turned Murphy around and removed his cuffs. He rubbed his sweaty face with his big hands and squatted back against the shed.

  I considered abandoning him and making my escape alone, but guilt stopped me. That moment after Earl got shot and I had frozen in the street, Murphy had pushed me onto the other side. Had he not done so, I likely would have caught a sheriff’s bullet and died beside Earl. Murphy saved my life. Whether on purpose, or simply because I was in his way, I’d probably never know, but I felt the obligation of a debt.

  “Murphy, can you move? Can you walk?”

  Without opening his eyes, Murphy nodded.

  I thought back to how dehydrated I was after my fever broke. I needed to get some water in him.

  “Listen, Murphy. If we go another block or two west, we’ll hit Shoal Creek. From there, we can make our way north until we get outside of whatever perimeter the police have set up. We won’t have to run. I think we can walk, but we need to get moving.”

  Murphy nodded. “I can do it.”