Read Slow Burn (Book 2): Infected for Free Online

my brain, but all I got were thoughts of helplessness and frustration.
    Murphy gave me a shove in the shoulder to get my attention. “Forget it, Null Spot. There’s nothing we can do for them.”
    “I wasn’t…”
    “Whatever, man.”
    There was no point arguing. Murphy was right.
    “If we want an armored Humvee, this is the place,” Murphy said. “The soldiers are too busy staying alive up there to stop us. Whitey might be a problem though. He gets mad when you steal his cars. Heh, heh, heh.”
    “Murphy, if you’re trying to piss me off with your Whitey remarks, you know, I don’t care about that stuff, right?”
    “Man, I’m just trying to get you lighten up a bit.”
    “Murphy, we’re looking at a thousand rotting corpses. Lighten up?”
    “Life is what you make it, man.”
    I gave it a derisive little headshake.
    “All these infected wandering around might be a problem.”
    “Yeah,” I agreed, “But like we talked, once we’re in a Humvee, an armored one, I don’t think they can do anything to get at us.”
    “But if they swarm us like they swarmed Wilkins’ car…”
    “Yeah?” I asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Murphy, if we’re going to back out, now is the time to do it, because once I open this door, who knows what happens. It’s all a gamble.”
    “Yeah, man, I know.”
    “One of those Humvees could come in real handy. We could be at your mom’s house in twenty minutes.”
    “Yeah, Zed, but I’m still worried about getting out once we get where we’re going.”
    “All we need is patience. They’ll get bored and wander off.”
    Murphy stared at the scene before us, but remained silent.
    ”Murphy if we’re going to do this, we need to move it along. What do you wanna do?”
    “All right. If we’re gonna do this, then let’s do it.” Murphy pushed the glass doors open and walked out into the full sun, without looking to make sure I was behind. Over his shoulder, he whispered, “Damn, it’s hot out here.”
    I nodded. It was damn hot. We walked toward the nearest armored Humvee that appeared to have an obscured view from the hospital windows, just in case.
    The smell of all of the dead bodies rotting in the sun was overwhelming, but the smoke in the air helped to mask it.
    Thick clouds of flies swarmed us.
    Smears and pools of bodily fluids, not quite dry, made the footing treacherous.
    “This is disgusting,” Murphy said.
    “Yeah.” I opened my mouth to stop breathing the rancid stench into my nose, but when the flies tried to land in my mouth I felt like I could taste the corpses on my tongue. I felt nauseous.
    Bodies lay about, ripped open by bullets. Bellies were distended where the gases of rot had no hole to escape. Faces were stretched in agony.
    “Can people eat rats?” I asked.
    Murphy stopped and looked at me. His expression told me that he thought I might be cracking up. “What are you even talking about?”
    “I’m just thinking that this place is going to be infested with rats pretty soon. The whole city will be. They’d be a plentiful food source.”
    Murphy shook his head , “I’ll learn how to grow potatoes or something long before I eat a rat.” He turned and hurried across the distance to the Humvee we’d selected.
    The vehicle was empty. That was good luck. Rotting corpses baking in the heat of a closed vehicle might have made it unusable.
    I looked around at the infected nearby. They were either rummaging through bloody scraps or focused on the gunshots coming from the hospital.
    Murphy jumped into the Humvee’s driver’s seat. I got in on the passenger side.
    Murphy looked at me. “It’s do or die now, buddy. You sure you wanna do this?”
    I shrugged. “You know, in this armored Humvee, we can probably drive around here a bit and maybe draw some of the infected away from the hospital. You know, give Steph and the others a chance.”
    Murphy shook his head, but didn’t look at me. Without a word, he slammed his door shut, catching the