Slow Burn (Book 4): Dead Fire by Bobby Adair Page B

ithout warning, the cedar gate swung open. A girl and boy, late teens or early twenties rushed out, eyes wide with the surprise of seeing my surprised white face right in front of them.
    The girl swerved to her right as she passed, keeping out of my arms’ reach. The guy, slow to react, lost his balance, teetered through a few running steps as he passed me, and tripped over his own feet, landing on his face. The girl was immediately bent over beside him, tugging his shirt to get him back to his feet. With the boy suddenly lying so close, the chain gang froze, as virus-slowed brains processed the good fortune that landed so very suddenly within reach. Before they could surge toward the boy, the girl’s eyes went wide with terror. Movement just past me inside the gate caught her attention.
    I interpreted th e fear as a warning and snapped my head around to look. A White with arms swimming in the air and mouth agape was running through.
    Withou t a thought, I stuck a foot in front of the crazed White. He tripped and tumbled into a disoriented pile. While he was trying to figure out which way was up, I charged toward him. Too bad for him, he looked up just in time to catch my boot, in a full kick, right under his jaw. Bone cracked, blood gushed, and the White’s face dropped to the dirt.
    One of the Whites in the chain gang gasped loudly.
    I realized as I watched blood flow from every orifice of the White’s head that it was one of the free Whites, one of Nancy’s pets.
    Good. O ne down.
    I cast a guilty look over my shoulder to be sure that neither Nancy nor Bubbles had witnessed my crime. They hadn’t. The girl who’d just gotten the boy to his feet, looked at me, confused and surprised. I gave her a nod, and she turned and ran into the trees between the houses with the boy right behind.
    A moment later, anothe r White ran out of the backyard, but totally missed the fact that the boy and girl had run off into the woods. The White instead ran to the corner of the garage and made a left turn into the front yard.
    There was another gunshot from inside and some more noise , and then the only sounds I heard were elated yowls. The Whites had won. They were starting their feast on the dead. At least none of us pack mules would be on the menu for dinner. I’d live through another night.

Chapter 13
    As the sun sank behind the trees and the light started to fade, I wondered how many people had died in the house. Neither Nancy nor Bubbles had come out to check on us. I guessed that they were still gorging themselves on uninfected flesh or had passed out with bloated bellies into tryptophan-induced comas for the night.
    Maybe Nancy and Bubbles were dead. Perhaps they’d been shot in their greedy rush to feed. But that was just wishful thinking. Well, sort of. If Nancy never came out of the house with the keys, I’d die of thirst chained to a tree.
    Wrinkly Nancy certainly would have been smart enough to let the other Whites go in first and catch the bullets. As much as it pained me to think of them that way, Nancy and Bubbles were Smart Ones. They not only knew how to survive, but they were smart enough to organize other Whites to do their irrational bidding, and to domesticate draft animals, namely me. They were far from stupid.
    The free White that I’d kicked in the face never moved again. He breathed for a long time through bubbly red snot and cracked teeth but eventually that petered out to lifelessness. Unfortunately for the Whites on the chain, I was the only one able to reach the downed man, which meant that none of them could get their teeth into his cooling flesh. That pissed them off for a long time, their agitation expressed in the bloody sores on their necks from the chain that yanked each of them back whenever they lunged for a bite. But all of that had come to a stop as they eventually accepted that it was going to be another long, hungry night under a buzzing blanket of feasting mosquitoes and crawling fire