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

by Bobby Adair

  The far wall of the kitchen was just an extension of the floor-to-ceiling windows we’d seen from across the living room, but only half the height. There was apparently a room above the kitchen.

  A long, stainless steel bar separated the kitchen from the living room and was lined with a row of barstools. I followed Dalhover around it and into the living room. On the other side of the glass ran a balcony the length of the house. Nothing out there but patio furniture.

  The living room had plenty of furniture, but was devoid of anything alive. On the back wall of the living room, there were several doors and the entrance to a hall. Above those rooms, the doors on the upstairs rooms, swung out to an open hallway that ran the length of the house.

  The first door off the living room led into an empty bathroom. The next, a library with a desk and more couches. Down at the end of the living room, a short hall opened up to a washroom on the right, a maid’s quarters on the left, and a downstairs guest room.

  A narrow stairway in the washroom led us upstairs, where it came out beside a linen closet. From there we walked into the master bedroom, which took up one whole end of the house. It, of course, had the requisite floor-to-ceiling windows, along with a bathroom that might better be labeled a spa. It was larger than my apartment and decorated in dichroic glass tiles and translucent glass bricks. Off of that were two closets large enough to garage a car.

  “Jesus,” I muttered to Dalhover.

  “Yeah,” Dalhover answered. It was good to be rich.

  We came out of the master bedroom onto the upstairs walkway, and I glanced down into the living room. Nothing moved down there, but the muffled thumping from somewhere downstairs could still be heard.

  The first door led to a gym. No infected there. Another bathroom was empty. Next, a guest room with its own bathroom proved empty.

  We crossed a catwalk near the stairs, and Murphy, Mandi, and Russell silently watched us pass.

  The room at the other end of the catwalk had to be a kid’s room, probably the one we’d killed on the lawn. It looked like a cross between the master suite and a teenager’s room. Great views, enormous bathroom, cavernous closet. Our shock over the opulence was starting to wear off, and the stark reality of life’s unfairness was sinking in.

  Satisfied that the second floor was clear, I followed Dalhover back to the stairs. Above us, the stairs climbed up to a landing with a glass door that opened to the outside.

  “Up or down?” I whispered.

  Dalhover shrugged, “The noisy one downstairs isn’t going anywhere. It’s the quiet ones that worry me right now.”

  I whispered down to Murphy from the catwalk, “We’re going up. Are you cool?”

  “I got it, man.” Murphy refocused his attention down the barrel of his rifle, which was pointed at the stairs.

  Dalhover and I climbed.

  Once at the top, looking through the glass door, I said, “I’ll go out first. You stay inside. I wanna be sure the door doesn’t lock us out.”

  “Yeah,” was Dalhover’s reply.

  I went outside and let the door close behind me. It closed with a click. I retried it and it opened.

  Finally, a normal door.

  Dalhover came outside with me.

  On the roof, a large swimming pool was surrounded by pergolas, from which hung rows of hoses designed to spray a cooling mist over the tanning chairs.

  I walked around the counters of an outdoor kitchen and looked over the rail at the edge. Dalhover’s Humvee sat undisturbed in the courtyard, just as we’d left it. The garage’s roof was a solid mass of solar panels. “I wonder if that provides enough electricity to power the whole house.”

  “I hope so,” Dalhover answered.

  After walking the roof’s perimeter and satisfying ourselves with the view of the property from the top, we let ourselves back inside and headed downstairs. We passed Murphy on the main floor with a nod and proceeded down.

  At the bottom, the stairs flared wide into an expansive room set up like a theater lobby. Above a curtained entrance to what could only be a home theater, a marquee surrounded in little golden bulbs advertised some movie I’d never heard of. A snack bar complete with soda machine, popcorn machine, and candy counter stood off to the side. A pair of restrooms marked ladies and gents opened out of one wall.

  One wall of glass panels separated the brightly lit faux lobby from the dim light of a wine cellar. An arched doorway of old-looking wood opened to a tasting area that was flanked by a dozen dark wooden shelves, full of bottles. The cellar was bigger than most of the liquor stores I’d been in, and I’d been in a lot. There was no one inside.

  Dalhover and I shared a look. I was trying to do the math in my head. How much more money than me did the owner of this house have? I guessed something similar was going through his mind.

  I looked around again. The sound that had been thumping from down there had stopped. But there was a White around somewhere.

  The two restrooms had open entrances with angled halls inside, just like you might find in a theater. The entrance to the theater itself was draped with a heavy curtain. If we were going to get surprised by a White rushing out, it would be from either the restrooms or the theater. The doors, we’d hear opening.

  I nodded to the theater and Dalhover gave me a minimal expression of affirmation. He stepped over to the side of the entrance, and put a hand on the curtain. I understood his intent and centered myself in front of the curtain, rifle at the ready.

  He slowly drew the curtain back.

  Beyond, I saw several rows of plush recliners facing a movie screen at least a dozen feet wide. Just as in the rest of the house, night-lights held the room in a dim glow. Nothing moved, so I proceeded cautiously in, looking left and right in rapid succession as I passed the curtain. No White was waiting there to ambush me. The walls, I noticed, were decorated with an assortment of movie posters, all featuring the actress Sarah Mansfield.

  Oh, shit.

  I connected the face of the naked woman on the lawn to the smiling face on the posters. This was her house. I’d killed Sarah Mansfield, hacked her to death with a machete.

  …And watched her infected son drown in his own blood.

  Of course, I didn’t know Sarah Mansfield, but her death felt personal. I’d seen so many of her movies—even finding some private satisfaction while I re-watched a particularly racy movie of hers when I was alone in my room—that I felt like I knew her.

  I felt bad. The sadness was coming to crush me. Was it Sarah’s death, or was her death just a release valve for all the bottled up shit from the past few weeks?

  My eyes welled up.

  No.

  No time for that now.

  Stuff it down.

  Put it somewhere dark.

  The Ogre and the Harpy.

  Breathe.

  Move the feet. Focus.

  A quick circuit through the fat leather chairs proved the theater empty, and I exited. The restrooms were next, and I followed Dalhover into the ladies’ and then the men’s. Both were free of infected.

  Back in the lobby again, I whispered, “This is Sarah Mansfield’s house.”

  “The Sarah Mansfield?”

  Before I could answer, a metal door to our left thumped with the sound of a fist pounding it from the other side. Well, that answered that question, and the next question. That was the source of the sound, and whoever was making it did know we were there.

  Dalhover took up a position by the wall and off to the side, with his rifle leveled at the door. Just to be certain, I knocked on the door and said, “Hey.”

  Fists on the other side went nuts and the door shuddered under their violence. It had to be a White.

  I looked over at Dalhover. “This is going to be fun.”

  He looked at the door, then back at me, all business.

  I wished I had my pistol. I wished I’d taken the time to retrieve my machete. Alas, I only had the M4. Not the best weapon for very close quarters. I dr
ew a deep breath and turned the knob slowly. The locking mechanism slid on lubricated brass, and as soon as the catch was free of the strike plate, I pushed.

  The pounding stopped, and big white fingers immediately snaked around the edge of the door, flinging it back and dragging me off balance in the process.

  I tried to raise my rifle as I fell, but an enormous beast of a man pounced out of the room, and with a brutal swipe of his arm, knocked my weapon away. Before I could react, two apelike hands gripped my head and pulled my face up to his gaping maw.

  Putrid breath. Brilliantly white teeth. Black eyes. And I was a rag doll, too slow to keep the bellowing monster from ripping my face off.

  Terror.

  Dalhover yelled something. I may have heard gunshots. But those teeth were coming at my face and I could do nothing to stop them.

  Then, in what looked like a thoughtful pause, the man looked up and down my white face, notched up to a new level of frustration, and discarded me. He tossed my head—thankfully with the rest of me still attached—as though he were passing a basketball, and it bounced off the hard floor in a similar fashion. Through the stars in my eyes, I saw the rabid mountain gorilla leap across the lobby and bound up the stairs.

  Dalhover’s rifle erupted. Wood splintered. Sheetrock exploded with bursts of dust. Metal sparked.

  The White disappeared upstairs.

  Three staccato bangs were followed by three more, then the sound of a heavy body hit the wall and I watched as the giant man tumbled back down, bouncing on stairs until coming to a stop with the loud slap of skin on tile.

  Dalhover wasted not a second. He crossed the lobby and smashed the butt of his rifle into the man’s skull. One, crunch. Two, crunch. Three… The sound of bone mashing into meat.

  “Holy Christ.” I tried to pull myself up off the floor, but ghostly hues of color and shadows swam across my vision. I blacked out.

  Chapter 27

  That tenuous state of awareness that lives between sleep and consciousness lasts for spans of time that feel like hours, but I know can only be minutes. Some mornings, in that time before waking, I cling to gossamer pornographic dramas and lusts that feel like love. Most mornings, and often in the middle of the night, I squirm away from a faceless, suffocating monster covered in dirty, dreadlocked fur. It waits in my dreams to rend my flesh, swallow my soul, and leech my bones. They are dreams of terror and trying so, so hard to run. But my feet never move. My hands are syrupy slow. I scream through dead vocal chords. I try to drag myself through the middle realm and open my eyes, but the nightmare sucks me back, tenaciously holding on.

  It was Steph’s face I saw, washed in golden, late afternoon sunlight, when I finally caught my breath and opened my eyes.

  “You were having a nightmare,” she said.

  I blinked.

  “You almost sounded like you were…” She said the next word like she thought it might be offensive. “…Whimpering.”

  It sounded like screaming in my head.

  “Are you okay?”

  I managed a nod.

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “Nothing,” I whispered the lie. “I don’t remember my dreams.”

  Steph laid her hand on my forehead then touched my face. Satisfied with whatever information she gleaned, she straightened up in her seat, but her eyes didn’t leave my face.

  I noticed a bulky bandage on her shoulder and she seemed be letting her right arm rest in her lap. “Your arm…?”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said, “Murphy stitched up my shoulder.”

  “Murphy?”

  “I’ll have an ugly scar.” She smiled.

  Won’t we all?

  I crooked a tiny smile and nodded. Unexpected, unexplainable tears welled up in my eyes and I clenched them shut.

  Where did that come from?

  “Does your head hurt?” She asked.

  I nodded a lie. Well, not really. My head felt like it was made of broken glass.

  A plastic pill bottle rattled and the lid burped off as Steph said, “You have a nasty bump on your head. I don’t think you have a concussion, but...I’m not positive. Can you sit up?”

  Everything in the world seemed to disconnect and slide around my field of vision as I pushed myself up on my elbows and closed my eyes. Steph’s fingers touched my lips and pressed two pills between. She said, “Swallow those. They’ll help.”

  When I opened my eyes again, she was bringing a straw to my lips. I drank the pills down and sucked greedily on the straw, realizing suddenly how utterly parched I felt. After the straw slurped loudly on the bottom of the empty cup, I laid my head very, very gently back on a pillow and breathed deeply.

  Steph’s hand came to rest on my forehead again and stayed. “You have a fever, but that’s expected.”

  “What’s my temperature?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  “Ninety-nine point six.”

  I sank further into the cushions. That temperature was two tenths of a degree warmer than when I’d checked it at Russell’s house. Was the virus winning its battle with my immune system? Would my brain start dying?

  Steph said, “I can give you something for the fever.”

  Pills wouldn’t help with that. It was the first thing everybody tried. I squinted into the brightness of the room and asked, “Sunglasses? Do you have my sunglasses?”

  “Yes.” She turned and picked them up off of the coffee table she was sitting on and slipped them onto my face.

  “Thanks.” Under the protection of the sunglasses, I opened my eyes wide and let them linger on her face. Her eyes were kind but determined. She was lean, like a marathoner. She wasn’t pretty, not really. Plain, maybe. But when she smiled, she lit up. I asked, “What day is it?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter anymore?”

  “No,” I said, “I was wondering…wondering… Is this tomorrow?”

  A touch of a smile crossed Steph’s face. “Are you asking if you got injured last night?”

  “Yes. Sorry. My brains are kind of rattled.”

  Steph nodded, “Yes, it happened last night.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Late afternoon?” Steph craned her neck to look at a clock. “It’s quarter after four.”

  “Wow.” Was it the blow to my head or was I just that exhausted? Probably both. “So, no concussion?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I put a hand on the back of the sofa and very, very slowly pulled myself up to sit.

  “You don’t have to sit if you’re not up to it,” Steph told me.

  “I want to.” I finished getting myself upright and felt dizzy. “I do not feel good.”

  “Do you feel nauseous?” The concern was heavy in Steph’s voice.

  “No.” I started to shake my head to clear the cobwebs, but a sharp pain put a stop to that. “I feel crappy all over.”

  “Besides the bump, you’re probably dehydrated. You need to get some food in you, too. When was the last time you ate?”

  “I don’t know. I…I had a sandwich with Russell yesterday.” Yesterday? “Where is Russell?”

  “He’s with Mandi.”

  “Hmm. He must be mad at me.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “Long story.”

  “I’ll go fix you something. Are you hungry?” Steph jumped up from the giant square coffee table and headed off toward the kitchen. My answer to the question was apparently not going to matter. So I just watched her go. Nicely fitting jeans. A clean t-shirt draped just to the waistline. Her red hair shimmering like it belonged in a shampoo commercial.

  What the fuck? Am I awake?

  I looked around the living room. It was modern luxury. It was orderly. The glass wall was clean. No panes were broken. I saw no smoke on the horizon. I heard no distant gunfire. I saw no Whites. I breathed in cool, crisp, clean air and savored the essence of civilization: air conditioning.

  Juxtaposed against the stark clean
liness of the living room, I realized that I reeked. My clothes felt crispy with the salt of evaporated sweat and things I didn’t care to think about. I hadn’t had a shower in more days than I could count. My hair was full of so much crud that it stood at weird angles on my head.

  Water was running into the sink in the kitchen as Steph leaned over a counter.

  “Water too?” I asked loudly, my voice echoing in the expanse.

  “All we’ll ever need,” Steph called back.

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “We think it’s piped up from the river and filtered. There’s a big water system downstairs.”

  “That explains why you’re all cleaned up.”

  Steph smiled at me and went about her business. A blender spun loudly in the kitchen. “And you know the best part?”

  “No,” I said.

  “There’s a whole closet full of clothes upstairs that fit me perfectly.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  I leaned my head back on the couch, closed my eyes, and found a position that let the lump on my head rest on a soft spot. I felt sure I could get on my feet if I needed to. It would be painful. Balance might be difficult. But I’d risen to the task so many times over the past several days that I had a new concept of what I could endure.

  Perhaps the apocalypse had made me a better person.

  Achieve personal growth through the end of the world.

  That was a silly thought. Likely the most laudable achievement in my future would be surviving the day and going to sleep in a safe place. Perhaps that was as good as it would ever get again.

  The noise of my weapons scooting across the wooden top of the coffee table caused me to jerk my head up faster than was prudent. Shards of pain radiated through my brain. “Ouch.”

  Steph sat down on the table in front of me. “I made you a smoothie. It’s frozen strawberries, bananas, and blueberries. There was a big jug of some kind of organic protein powder in the pantry. I put some of that in there, too.”

  “Thanks.” I sipped a big gulp through the straw. “Damn, that’s good.”