Read Online Slow Burn (Book 3): Destroyer by Bobby Adair - Free Book Online

enough.”
    Dr. Evans cut in. “Zed Zane, this is Sergeant Dalhover.”
    Sergeant Dalhover looked at me again, with no change in his droopy eyes. He made no effort to shake my hand.
    I was apparently untouchable. Fuck him!
    “Hello.”
    No response.
    Double fuck him!
    Dr. Evans, in a voice that saddened more with each word, asked of Sergeant Dalhover, “How many so far? I see lots of empty chairs.”
    “Eighty-three.”
    Eighty-three people, all shot in the head and tossed out a window.
    Dr. Evans looked at me. “This was my idea. I’m the one who convinced these people to bet their lives on hope.”
    Droopy-eyed Dalhover just stared at him.
    Dr. Evans was getting hard to look at, so I scanned up and down the hall, searching for a head of red hair. “Is Steph alive or dead?”
    “Steph?” Dalhover asked.
    “Nurse Leonard,” I clarified.
    With the smallest of gestures, he pointed. “She’s down the hall.”
    My mood perked up, but I quickly tamped it down. “Fever?”
    Dalhover croaked, “No.”
    I didn’t ask for any more information, nor did I wait for permission. I stepped out of Dalhover’s sad gaze and hurried down the hall, looking at each face as I passed. I’d only seen Steph with a surgical mask on. Aside from red hair, green eyes, and fair skin, I had little idea what she looked like.

Chapter 8
    To look down that long hall had the emotional effect of looking through a neighbor’s window while they beat a crippled dog. Walking down the hall, trying to avoid stepping on the viscous trail of coagulated blood, was viscerally painful.
    Some volunteers, seeing only their last hopeless thoughts, let me pass like an invisible man.
    One woman stared with tears on her cheeks at a mural of blood above an empty chair directly across the hall from her. Right there, over five or ten or twelve hours she had seen a person, perhaps someone she knew, perhaps a close friend, slowly turn from human into something else. She had watched the face lose hope when the fever came on. She witnessed the deterioration of the mind. She saw the animalistic gnawing at the gag and the scraping of skin until blood flowed. She saw the black, wild eyes where no human intellect lived anymore.
    I wondered, when Dalhover’s revolver fired, ringing everyone’s ears, splitting that skull, whether she saw it as a mercy or a horror.
    Down that trail of tears, blood, and utter despair, I spotted a redhead with tear-drained, but alert eyes turning to watch me approach. Recognition perked her to life and I couldn’t stop myself from running the last steps. Stopping beside her chair, I immediately started untying the strip of bed sheet that gagged her mouth.
    “Hey,” Dalhover rasped from somewhere behind me.
    I ignored him and removed the gag.
    In a hoarse voice, Steph said, “Wow, you’re still alive.”
    I swallowed hard on a lump in my throat as a faint, but real, smile stretched my lips. “Wow, you’re still alive.”
    Steph’s smile was real, but it was competing with the pain in the rest of her face.
    The guy in the next chair over started to squirm and grunt through his gag.
    “Can you take his off too?” Steph asked.
    “Okay.” I stepped over and started on the guy.
    “God dammit!” Dalhover’s voice echoed up the hall.
    I didn’t even look at Dalhover, but I heard his voice drop to background noise as he droned something at Dr. Evans.
    To Steph I said, “And I thought I was uptight.”
    Steph answered, “It hasn’t been easy for any of us.”
    I shrugged as I removed the gag from the guy.
    He thanked both Steph and me, then opened and closed his mouth several times to stretch his jaw muscles.
    I squatted down beside Steph and started to untie her hands.
    “Don’t,” she told me.
    “Why?”
    “Zed, I might turn.”
    I stopped and looked up at her. “But…”
    “Leave them.” She was firm.
    I stood up and stepped in front of her chair, but suddenly had no words.
    The guy in the next chair over had no such