Slow Burn

It was just a random mutation - one of a billion that happen in viruses every day. But this one was different. It exploded out of Somalia and spread across the oceans before anybody thought to look up from their cell phones to see what was going on. The infected breathed the virus into the air around them, spreading it through the cities faster than anyone thought possible. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Police lines crumbled. Quarantine sites disintegrated. Cities started to collapse.

Fourteen years have passed since the virus ripped through the global population, crushing the modern world and leaving the cities crawling with the infected. The immune who survived the violence of the collapse fled to remote havens like Balmorhea, a tiny town in the desert of Far West Texas. 

Marcus Baldwin III is a preacher’s son with a sealed juvenile record that every cop in Austin seems to have read anyway. He’s been through seventeen shrinks, takes three prescriptions to help manage his moods, and for four years, he’s kept his nose clean enough earn him a spot as acting Cadet Commander of the UT Army ROTC. Best of all, he’s finally met a girl. Now, just a week before the fall semester is set to start, that strange disease from the TV is showing up around Austin.

Twelve girls. Twenty miles. One monster to carry them home.Mark Baldwin woke up on the far side of the fever with his mind intact and his skin the color of a fish belly. The infected mobs that own the streets of Austin don't give him a second look. Mostly. The few normal people left alive shoot...