Fire by William Esmont & Lynn O'Dell & Glendon Haddix

Author:William Esmont & Lynn O'Dell & Glendon Haddix [Esmont, William & O'Dell, Lynn & Haddix, Glendon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Horror
ISBN: 9780982875834
Publisher: William Esmont
Published: 2011-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Kevin Salerno ran a torn piece of t-shirt along the barrel of his pistol, taking care to catch all the oil he could see in the glow from his red LED flashlight. His other pistol, a .22, lay on the table beside his right knee, ready in case he needed it. The boy scouts had been right all along. Always be prepared. In four practiced motions, he reassembled the pistol, jammed in a fresh fourteen-round magazine, and chambered a round. He clicked the safety on. Done.

He set the pistol aside, picked up the .22, and began taking it apart by memory. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and listened for his pulse. The process of cleaning his guns always stirred up conflicting emotions. On one hand, he felt an overwhelming sense of calm, a meditative peace in which everything else in his life faded into the background. Disassemble the weapon, clean it, apply oil, wipe, and then reassemble. Simple, repeatable, and predictable. At the same time, by the time he was finished, he always had a raging hard-on and wanted to fuck. This reaction had embarrassed him until his shrink told him it was normal, something to do with power.

He rolled his shoulders again, cracked his neck, then listened for sounds from outside. No change. A few minutes later, he was done with the second weapon. It went into the holster strapped on his thigh. He picked up the first pistol and went to the window. He peered outside. Although it was dark, he sensed movement around him, a lurking presence, rustling, shifting, ebbing and flowing like a deep, raging river. It was a swarm of the undead, the biggest he had ever seen.

Kevin was camped on the top floor of a mostly-complete condominium complex in Marana, just north of Tucson. Loading his motorcycle with camping gear and bugging out of town before things completely fell apart, he had barely escaped from Boise as the zombie uprising mushroomed out of control. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the extent of what was happening to the world, and he correctly figured the best place to be was anywhere but a major city. He had watched the bombs fall from the side of I-25, weeping uncontrollably as they blanketed his beloved western landscape with brilliant, incandescent flashes and far-off rumbles. The only direction untouched by the bombs was south, so that was where he had headed.

Now that he was there, at the far corner of what remained of the United States, he was second-guessing his decision. There were a lot of undead, far more than he ever expected. It hadn’t been that way when he arrived. When he first rolled into town, he was pleasantly surprised to discover only a few stragglers. He avoided them easily, collecting supplies for the next leg of his trip and allowing himself to relax for the first time in as long as he could remember.

Tucson seemed as good a place as any

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