Read Slow Burn: Dead Fire, Book 4 for Free Online Page B

guns never ran out of bullets when a thousand monsters where running at you on the top of a parking garage. I realized that I seriously needed to disabuse myself of any truisms that I’d learned from my favorite action heroes.
    I didn’t have any experience with blowing up cars . It made no sense to bet my life on getting it right on the first try.
    What else , then?
    Could I puncture that tank and then torch the leaking gasoline? Sure, but then there was the noise of puncturing the tank, noise that would be loudest when I was lying o n my back halfway under a car, a very vulnerable position when making appetizing sounds among the ravenous predators.
    No, that was a bad idea. Kick it to the curb.
    What else?
    I could start the engine, put the car in gear, and let it roll out into the street. There was little doubt that would attract the attention of every White in sight. But would it make enough of a commotion that the mob would be drawn away from the gate? I looked up the street and tried to gauge the distance to the gate hidden among the cedars. It was at least a hundred yards, maybe a couple of hundred.
    The risk -to-reward ratio on that plan was too high.
    What about the horn?
    Hmm.
    Noisy? Yes.
    Easy getaway? Yes.
    Well, probably.
    But could I wedge something in the horn button to make it sound? I thought about the way that car horns were constructed. Sure, in an older car where there was a horn button of some sort, that idea might work, but how many modern cars had the horn button embedded with the airbag beneath the vinyl in the center of the steering wheel? Damn near all of them. So, wedging something in the horn was a crap plan.
    I looked down the street. The helix of Whites had filled the road. If they kept coming, they’d soon join those at the gates.
    I looked at the SUV for a moment longer , and then something obvious occurred to me.
    Duh!
    I looked around to see where the closest Whites were. There were many more around than I felt comfortable with, but the nearest was far enough away that my inspiration might bear riskless fruit. I pushed my pistol into its holster and put the machete into the scabbard I had rigged on my back. A hunk of limestone the size of a soccer ball, decorative, I guess, lay among the brown stalks in the flowerbed. I walked over and squatted down to it. Lift with your legs , the voice in my head told me. So I did, with a grunt. With another grunt, I pushed it up to rest on my shoulder, with both hands holding it steady.
    Here goes nothing!
    A few slow steps and then three quick ones toward the SUV gave me all the momentum I needed. With another grunt, I launched the stone toward the driver’s side window. The glass shattered, rocking the SUV back and forth. A siren under the hood bleated overbearingly. Without slowing, I ran past the SUV and around the corner of the garage to get myself out of sight. Best not to be associated with the noisy car. In the infected mind, noisy meant tasty. I had no plans to be tasted.
    Once past the house and out of sight behin d a large shrub, I looked back. The Whites I could see were running toward the car. At least six, then nine, then a bunch. The car very cooperatively switched to a different, but just as obnoxious, noise.
    Ha, bitch!
    I skirted around the back of the house to put some distance between me and the car, then made my way through the cedars again until I came to another yard of mowed, dead, grass. My machete and pistol were back in my hands. They felt comfortable there, necessary extensions of the new me.
    The yard contained a big wooden play-scape and a big stone-covered patio with lots of outdoor furniture, but thankfully nothing that moved. I made my way out to the front yard, and as I rounded the house, the long helix of Whites that had been down at the end of the street were winding their way past, heading for the squawking SUV. There were at least twenty Whites already on the car, doing what they could to expose the tasty morsels