Read Online Slow Burn (Book 4): Dead Fire by Bobby Adair - Free Book Online
Authors: Bobby Adair
Tags: Zombie Apocalypse
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the garden.
The house was old, probably built in the fifties or sixties on a middle-class income before Austin had sprawled out into the western hills and drove the value of even modest lake front properties into the millions of dollars. It was a single-story structure with clapboard siding, a shingle roof, and one of those enormous single-pane living room windows that had been so popular back in those days.
It was a security nightmare.
I tried the knob on the back door but it was locked.
I crept down near the end of the house to a sliding glass door. It didn’t fit with the architectural style and had probably been installed in later years. Good for me. I could break in through one of those with ease, something I’d learned as a kid when I’d broken into the house of a kid from school through just such a door to steal all of his Nintendo games.
It’s easy to guess how that turned out.
The sliding door was locked, so I jimmied my machete into a tiny gap near the door’s handle and jiggled as I wedged the blade through. It didn’t take much time and didn’t make much noise. The lock compliantly popped loose. Before sliding it open, I took a moment to look and listen.
Still and quiet, my new favorite state of things.
I slowly moved the door on its track, opening up the house and allowing stale, hot air, damp with the sticky smell of death, to flow over me. I felt my gorge rise.
The sliding door had opened to a bedroom. A corpse lay rotting, tangled in blood stained sheets, horrid black bite wounds on its arms and neck. Maggots crawled through wounds and across the skin giving the impression of movement, a grotesque living being. My grip tightened on my pistol. At the foot of the bed lay another body with a good portion of its skull gone. A brownish splatter of drips and lumps decorated the far wall. It was easy to see what had happened, a couple, one infected, one not. The White attacked the one on the bed, who’d waited a few bites too long before using the gun on her lover.
I stepped around a blackish spot on the floor and tried not to taste the fetid air. Leaning over the bed, I pried at the rigor mortis grip of the decaying fingers on the revolver. There was a disgusting sound as I yanked it free. I scooted away from the bed as quickly as three steps would take me. In a dresser, I found a flimsy shirt in the top drawer. I wrapped the shirt around the pistol before dropping it into my backpack. I had no desire to get that repulsive stink in my bag. I wiped my hands on another shirt and tossed it on the corpse.
Loo king up from that task, it occurred to me that the bedroom door was open. And it occurred to me that I’d been in the house less than five minutes and I’d already fucked up. I should have cleared the house before I went to work scavenging the revolver. Once again, luck had carried me through a mistake. I went to the bedroom door and banged on the wall with the butt of my pistol and said, “Hey.”
I waited and listened , but heard no other sounds from inside the house.
I repeated the exercise and waited.
No Whites came.
“Anyone in here? If there’s anyone in here, just say so, and I’ll leave. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to raid your pantry. That is , unless you’re using it.” I felt stupid for saying all that. Was there a protocol for breaking into someone’s house if they were inside, hiding from people that looked just like me? I’d have to give that some thought.
After waiting for what seemed like a long enough time, I went back to search through the bedroom with the two corpses. In spite of the time I spent killing brain cells and memories as I wasted away the last years of my youth, I did read a lot. I did listen. And I learned. The world was a fountain of trivia and one bit of trivia that found a home in my brain was that though the number of guns per capita in America was on a steady rise, the number of gun owners wasn’t. Simple math led to the
The house was old, probably built in the fifties or sixties on a middle-class income before Austin had sprawled out into the western hills and drove the value of even modest lake front properties into the millions of dollars. It was a single-story structure with clapboard siding, a shingle roof, and one of those enormous single-pane living room windows that had been so popular back in those days.
It was a security nightmare.
I tried the knob on the back door but it was locked.
I crept down near the end of the house to a sliding glass door. It didn’t fit with the architectural style and had probably been installed in later years. Good for me. I could break in through one of those with ease, something I’d learned as a kid when I’d broken into the house of a kid from school through just such a door to steal all of his Nintendo games.
It’s easy to guess how that turned out.
The sliding door was locked, so I jimmied my machete into a tiny gap near the door’s handle and jiggled as I wedged the blade through. It didn’t take much time and didn’t make much noise. The lock compliantly popped loose. Before sliding it open, I took a moment to look and listen.
Still and quiet, my new favorite state of things.
I slowly moved the door on its track, opening up the house and allowing stale, hot air, damp with the sticky smell of death, to flow over me. I felt my gorge rise.
The sliding door had opened to a bedroom. A corpse lay rotting, tangled in blood stained sheets, horrid black bite wounds on its arms and neck. Maggots crawled through wounds and across the skin giving the impression of movement, a grotesque living being. My grip tightened on my pistol. At the foot of the bed lay another body with a good portion of its skull gone. A brownish splatter of drips and lumps decorated the far wall. It was easy to see what had happened, a couple, one infected, one not. The White attacked the one on the bed, who’d waited a few bites too long before using the gun on her lover.
I stepped around a blackish spot on the floor and tried not to taste the fetid air. Leaning over the bed, I pried at the rigor mortis grip of the decaying fingers on the revolver. There was a disgusting sound as I yanked it free. I scooted away from the bed as quickly as three steps would take me. In a dresser, I found a flimsy shirt in the top drawer. I wrapped the shirt around the pistol before dropping it into my backpack. I had no desire to get that repulsive stink in my bag. I wiped my hands on another shirt and tossed it on the corpse.
Loo king up from that task, it occurred to me that the bedroom door was open. And it occurred to me that I’d been in the house less than five minutes and I’d already fucked up. I should have cleared the house before I went to work scavenging the revolver. Once again, luck had carried me through a mistake. I went to the bedroom door and banged on the wall with the butt of my pistol and said, “Hey.”
I waited and listened , but heard no other sounds from inside the house.
I repeated the exercise and waited.
No Whites came.
“Anyone in here? If there’s anyone in here, just say so, and I’ll leave. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to raid your pantry. That is , unless you’re using it.” I felt stupid for saying all that. Was there a protocol for breaking into someone’s house if they were inside, hiding from people that looked just like me? I’d have to give that some thought.
After waiting for what seemed like a long enough time, I went back to search through the bedroom with the two corpses. In spite of the time I spent killing brain cells and memories as I wasted away the last years of my youth, I did read a lot. I did listen. And I learned. The world was a fountain of trivia and one bit of trivia that found a home in my brain was that though the number of guns per capita in America was on a steady rise, the number of gun owners wasn’t. Simple math led to the
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