This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection) Read online

  This is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

  by Thorn Publishing

  Slow Burn: Zero Day, Book 1 by Bobby Adair

  The Retreat #1: Pandemic by Craig DiLouie with Stephen Knight and Joe McKinney

  Diary of the Displaced - Book 1 - The Journal of James Halldon by Glynn James

  Earthfall by Stephen Knight

  Contamination Prequel (Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Series) by T.W. Piperbrook

  Affliction Z: Patient Zero (Post Apocalyptic Thriller) by L.T. Ryan

  Reversion: The Inevitable Horror (The Portal Arcane Series - Book I) by J. Thorn

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  Text copyright © 2013, Bobby L. Adair

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design & Layout

  Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a. 187designz

  Editing

  Cathy Moeschet, Lindsay Heuertz, Kat Kramer, Robyn Roopchan

  Foreword

  First off, let me apologize to University of Texas alumni and current students. Much of this first book in the series takes place on the UT Austin campus, and I took some liberties with the campus layout. In many ways the fictional version of the campus in the book is similar to the campus as it was when I attended UT, so many years ago.

  And for those who aren’t familiar with UT, this book takes place in Austin, Texas just as Flying Soup did. As a child, I lived all over the US. I live in Denver now, but for most of my adult life, I lived in Austin. Austin is a great city that is easy to take for granted when you live there but hard to get over when you’re somewhere else. When I write, my stories feel comfortable in Austin.

  Slow Burn: Zero Day is the first in what is going to be a series of around a half-dozen books. At least I envision a story that might go on for that length, although things could change. The stories I write evolve along their own path as I write them, and they seldom turn out anything like I imagined when I started.

  That’s all that I’ll bore you with for now. I hope you enjoy the book.

  Bobby

  Chapter 1

  That day arrived like every other day in my life…

  I came into it ill-informed and unprepared.

  There had been exaggerated news reports over the past few weeks about the upcoming flu season’s annual pandemic. The whiners on the talking-head channels were making noise about racial cleansing that had spread out of Somalia and into Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan. There was widespread civil disorder in China and the military was cracking down hard. Soldiers were marching. Tanks were rolling. Reporters were being arrested and internet communication had been disconnected, to whatever degree that can be done. There was rioting in some Mediterranean cities and the Mideast had oscillated into a more violent phase of its perpetual cycle.

  The world was falling apart…

  …in all the usual ways.

  So I’d shrugged it off and spent my Saturday watching pre-season football with my buddies. I got a little too drunk, slept a little too late, and on that Sunday morning, my head hurt a little too much. It didn’t help that I was going to see my mom and Dan for a needling, nagging, degrading lunch that would end with my asking for a five-hundred dollar loan to cover rent, again, and I’d get another long speech about doing something with my life, showing a little enthusiasm, or developing some kind of work ethic.

  How else could that morning have started, other than with a few shots from a now-empty tequila bottle on my kitchen counter?

  And perhaps I should have not just noticed, but really paid attention to the weirdness in the streets on the drive over. But when one gets up in the morning and explicitly decides to paint oneself into oblivion behind a screen of booze, dark sunglasses, and heavy metal music, an unconcerned world just slides past, beyond an apathetic fog. Which is the whole point.

  All of that worked just as planned until I walked into Mom’s house and slipped in some blood on the floor in the foyer. I was dumbstruck at the scene in the living room: some semi-mutilated guy, sitting deathly still in a chair by the fireplace, my mother, on the living room floor in a pool of blood, and Dan, on his knees with his back to me, hunched over her with busy elbows and noisy hands.

  Time ticked languidly past. Unsavory images bombarded my optic nerve, only be to be rejected by my unreceptive brain.

  Unencumbered by the state of horrified surprise that afflicted me, Dan stood up and looked at me with his thin gray comb-over dangling in front of his pale round face. His blood-smeared lips smacked and his crazy dark eyes fixated on me.

  I yanked my phone from my pocket and threatened, “Dan, I’m going to call the police.” As if I wasn’t going to do that anyway.

  He came at me, clearly not afraid of the police.

  My feet somehow found traction on the slippery floor and I bounded into the kitchen. Dan gave chase with his big, blue-collar hands grasping at my shirttail.

  With surprising speed, he caught me near the dishwasher. A big ape hand squeezed into my arm and spun me around. The other reached for my throat, with toothy jaws following close behind. I tried to protect myself by throwing up my left arm.

  I reached over and pulled a large carving knife from the block on the counter, and I stabbed Dan, tentatively at first, but as his teeth tore my skin I stabbed again and again, with increasingly brutal enthusiasm.

  When it was over, I sat on the floor with my back to a cabinet door in a large, copper-smelling puddle of Dan’s blood, with his sweaty body pinned across my legs.

  He was dead.

  I was fixated on the horrid bite wound on my left forearm. For a long time I watched, hypnotized, as the blood oozed and dripped.

  Sometimes, a half-bottle of breakfast tequila just isn’t enough to deal with the day’s reality.

  I dropped the knife and proceeded to roll the flabby corpse onto the tile.

  I walked through the mess in the kitchen and found my cell phone on the floor in the foyer. Thankfully, it hadn’t broken in the scuffle. I dialed 911.

  Busy.

  Shit!

  I tried again.

  Busy.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  I walked out the front door and onto the wide porch. The upper middle-class cracker neighborhood ignored me, focused instead on its own pockets of human chaos. Four houses down, across the street, some sort of scuffle had spilled out of the front door and people were struggling on the lawn. A car raced up the street at a very unsafe speed. Some residents loitered aimlessly.

  I dialed 911 again. Still busy.

  What the hell?

  I went back into the house, closing and locking the front door behind me. Things weren’t making sense.

  I went into the living room and looked down at my mother’s torn body and shook my head. It was surreal.

  I guess some people in that situation would have crumbled, some would have cried, but I’d emotionally disconnected from life a long time ago. For that,
I had to thank the skeletal bitch on the floor, with her greedy rodent soul and her short-tempered ape-mate in the kitchen. If anything, her death was a belated answer to old prayers, with a bit of an unexpected mess.

  I thought about an inheritance and an end to my financial troubles. I thought about the infection from Dan’s stale breath and yellow teeth beginning to fester under my skin. I thought about the eventual scar and the great bar room story it would make. Pain today, pussy tomorrow. Half a smile bent my lips.

  The guy in the chair was in bad shape. Not living, of course, but in bad shape even for a corpse. His right arm was missing whole bite-sized chunks of flesh, human bite-sized chunks. His head was beaten beyond recognition. On the floor beside the chair lay a bloody fireplace poker, quite likely the weapon that had given his skull its new shape.

  I felt sick to my stomach. I felt an uncharacteristic chill.

  I looked down at the wound on my arm. Coagulation hadn’t yet begun to staunch the flow of blood. I needed to do something about that.

  I dialed 911 again. Nothing.

  Crap.

  I went to Mom and Dan’s bedroom and into the master bath, opening the medicine cabinet.

  I found an off-brand bottle of antibacterial liquid.

  My head started to pound. The morning’s tequila had outlived its usefulness.

  Looking around for something with which to scrub, I found myself staring at the toothbrush holder. Mom and Dan weren’t going to need those anymore. I lay my forearm over the sink, poured the antibacterial into the gaping tears, and clenched my teeth.

  Holy crap, it hurt.

  Next, I went after the wound with a toothbrush.

  More pain.

  More antibacterial.

  Rinse. Soap. Scrub. Pain, pain, pain.

  Rinse. Antibacterial.

  Clench the teeth.

  Don’t scream like a pussy.

  Antibacterial.

  Breathe.

  My head was about to explode.

  Letting my wound air-dry, I found a bottle of aspirin, threw four into my mouth and slurped some water from the sink to wash them down. I found a tube of antibacterial cream and squirted it liberally into the wounds as blood slowly mixed with it, trying to wash it back out. A box of Band-Aids would have to fulfill the next requirement, as no gauze or tape was in the cabinet.

  I felt another chill. A fever was coming. Not good.

  I used half the box of Band-Aids to pull the edges of my torn skin together. Blood oozed through. I found what appeared to be a clean washrag under the sink and used an Ace bandage to wrap it over my forearm.

  I stood up straight to leave the bathroom and dizziness hit me so hard that I lost my balance and fell against the wall.

  Christ!

  Blood loss. It had to be the blood loss.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and tried 911 again. Still busy.

  Suspecting then that the phone had been damaged in the scuffle with Dan, I made my way to the landline phone that sat on the nightstand by the bed.

  I picked it up and dialed 911. Busy.

  Dammit!

  Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

  The dizziness returned and I fell into a sitting position on the bed.

  The television’s remote control beckoned me from the nightstand. I grabbed it, leaned back on the headboard, and turned the television on. A few minutes of satisfying my addiction to mindless blabber would pass the time while I waited for the phones to free up. The news was on.

  Eh.

  Changing the channel suddenly seemed like an onerous chore, so I dropped the remote and let the TV’s colorful opiate wash over me.

  A worried newscaster was talking over a video of some shopping center in France. He described the scene as a riot, but the video showed something much more violent.

  People were running and screaming. Police were trying to restore order, but intermingled in the crowd were what appeared to be normal people, dressed in their Sunday afternoon casual clothes, going completely nuts.

  “What the hell?”

  The pounding in my head worsened. The chills carried with them a case of shivers. A high-grade fever was on the way. The four aspirin were proving insufficient. I reached for the telephone again to call 911, felt the room suddenly spin, and saw the hideous design on the carpet race up to smash me in the face.

  Chapter 2

  I woke up disoriented. My head throbbed. My throat was so dry I couldn’t swallow. My swollen arm hurt like hell. Numbness tingled my left hand.

  Cheap motel carpet scum clung to my skin as I peeled my face away from the rug. I got up on my hands and knees. Standing and walking was out of the question, so I crawled to the bathroom sink where I pulled myself up.

  Having accomplished that, I bent over at the waist and lay flat on the blue swirl faux marble counter top. I turned on the faucet. Beautiful, cool water flowed. I cupped a hand in the stream and sucked in what seemed like a gallon before I slipped back down to the floor.

  Morning light spread shadows across the bathroom and onto the far wall above the garden tub. For a while, I watched a square of sunlight slowly inch down the wall as the sun went about its normal rounds.

  As my dizziness waned, I pulled myself up to the sink again and gulped more water. My throat felt as if it had been sanded raw then left in the unforgiving sun to dry.

  I dropped to the floor again and closed my eyes for a moment that lasted long enough for the sun’s rays to slide its square of light onto the floor.

  When I opened my eyes again, my thoughts had cleared somewhat and I was able to hold a thought about something other than how completely shitty I felt. I pulled myself up to stand on wobbly legs.

  To my surprise, I remained upright.

  I drank again from the bathroom sink and looked down at the crusty brown washrag and bandage on my left forearm. I flexed my hand a few times. The damage wasn’t enough to hinder movement, but infection was sure to set in if I didn’t get to a doctor and get some antibiotics.

  That’s when it occurred to me that it was late morning. The sunlight spilling in through the east-facing window made that clear. I realized that I had slept through the entire night on the carpet in the bedroom. I recalled the scene in the living room—Mom, Dan, and the guy with the smashed skull. I needed to call the police about that. They’d be none too thrilled with the elapsed time between the deaths and the phone call to summon them.

  I thought back to Sunday’s breakfast tequila, and wondered how drunk I was when I’d gotten to Mom and Dan’s place. I wondered whether I’d been so drunk that I blacked out and delivered them some karma in a state of repressed psycho-rage.

  Crap. I shook my head.

  Maybe it was all just a nightmare.

  Using the dresser, then the walls, then the doorjambs for support, I slowly made my way into the hall and out to the living room.

  The pungent smell did its best to seep in through my pores as I forced my reluctant feet forward. The closer I got, the surer I was that my nightmare was real.

  Step. Step. Step.

  Christ!

  A swarm of industriously prolific flies had come into the house through the open back door. They buzzed over the feast of Mom’s stinky remains and a generation of young maggots vacationed on the corpse of the guy in the chair.

  Dan’s punctured body would be in the kitchen where I’d left it. I didn’t need a confirmation venture in there.

  I needed to call the police, and in spite of the gore on the floor and the stench in the air, I needed to get something to eat.

  I weighed the two priorities and the fear of the police’s authority sent me back into the master bedroom to the phone.

  My cell phone lay on the floor near where I’d gone comatose the night before.

  The landline on the nightstand, being so much closer to my hand, was my first choice. I lifted it to my ear.

  Dial tone.

  That was good.

  I dialed 911.

  Bu
sy.

  “Damn it!” I slammed it down. “What the hell is going on?!”

  I sat down on the bed and dropped my head into my hands.

  Well, no cops for the moment.

  Food, then.

  I managed my way back up the hall, passed the living room, and stopped at the entryway to the kitchen. The buzz of flies echoed off the tile and hard surfaces. A congealed puddle of Dan’s blood covered half the floor and spread all the way under the fridge.

  I was stuck. To get to the fridge, I’d have to wade through the nastiness of Dan’s spilled fluids.

  “Jesus, it just keeps getting worse.”

  Tracking Dan’s sticky blood all over the house didn’t sit well with me, so I found the cabinet with the kitchen towels, grabbed a stack, and laid them out in front of me like stepping stones in the blood.

  What seemed like a good plan prior to the first step, turned to shit when a towel slipped in the slime. My feet went out from under me and I fell. My head hit the tile and exploded in a flash of pain and bright lights. I sent a string of curse words echoing through the house.

  As disgusting as it was, I lay on the floor for several long minutes while the pain, in what seemed like every part of me, took its time to dissipate.

  At least nothing seemed to be broken. Feeling the disgusting brownish red goo all over my back, I rolled over onto my hands and knees and slowly stood.

  Bracing myself on the counters, I got to the fridge and pulled it open. For the second time in as many days, God’s good fortune shone on me. An unopened thirty-two ounce sports drink sat on the shelf.

  I reached in, wrestled with the cap for a moment, put it up to my mouth, and poured it into my throat.

  I stopped to take a breath. I sat the bottle on the island in the middle of the kitchen. The smooth granite invited my hands to linger on its cold surface. I leaned over, pressed my face on the stone, and reveled in the coolness.

  As the minutes passed, the sugar from the sports drink seeped into my bloodstream and the glucose hit me like a rush of cocaine. The contrast from bad to good was so drastic it brought tears to my eyes.