Slow Burn (Book 8): Grind Read Free Page B

flashlight, one of those with a single LED, designed for hanging on key chains he said, “Turn left up at this next corner.”
    “I think that sign back there said 1704.” I looked at the trees lining the road and craned my neck as though that would help me see around the corner we’d just passed.
    “That’s the one,” confirmed Fritz.
    “You guys mapped this out on your way here?” I asked as I drove the car through another turn.
    “Yeah.” Fritz dragged his finger through the spot of light left on the paper by his tiny LED. “It took us four tries to find open roads all the way to Austin.”
    “The roads are that bad out here?” I asked.
    “Some of them are,” said Fritz. “In some places the bridges are blocked. I guess the farmers figured if they barricaded the bridges, they’d protect themselves.”
    I made no attempt to hide the bitterness in my laugh. “Most of these bridges run over dry creeks.”
    “They were worried about people driving into their area, however they defined it, and bringing the infection with them,” said Fritz. “They didn’t think about all the infected coming on foot.”
    “It’s hard to think of everything,” I allowed. I’d been through plenty of mistakes where the thing or things I’d missed nearly cost me my life. That led directly to thoughts of all the lives my mistakes did cost. That, of course, led directly to thoughts of Steph and even Amber.
    Painful, festering shit.
    We passed a cluster of a dozen houses centered on an antique shop and a convenience store with signs out front advertising shelled pecans and gooey nut-filled candies. I asked, “What’s the story with all the little towns out this way? Are they road-blocked?”
    “Nope. Not all of them.” Fritz didn't look up from his map. "We'll have to go through Lexington. It's not that big, but we saw a bunch of the infected when we passed through on the way here. That could be trouble. In Dime Box, the locals tried to block the road but did a pretty bad job. Getting through was easier than it looked like it would be. Caldwell might be a problem.”
    I nodded knowingly. Caldwell was one of the largest of the small towns between Austin and College Station. Bigger town, more infected. Simple logic.
    With apologies hiding in the tone of his voice, Fritz said, “We couldn’t find a way without going through at least some towns. We tried.”
    We crested a rolling hill that had a view of the paved road running over the terrain and across a bridge over a creek at the bottom. Past the creek, the road climbed back up to the crest of the next hill. Just ahead, a herd of cattle charged across, stampeding through the shrubs, weeds, and fencing.
    Without even thinking that I was wearing night vision goggles, I asked, “You seeing this?”
    Fritz looked up, raising his pistol as he tried to make out shapes in the darkness ahead.
    The light coming off the thin sliver of moon was okay, but not great.
    I pointed as I took my foot off the accelerator. “Way up there. The cows.”
    “I see something moving across the road,” said Fritz. “It’s hard to tell.”
    “It’s like a thousand cows on a stampede or something.”
    “Stampeding?” he asked.
    The slower the car rolled, the more the beat of those hooves hitting the ground vibrated up through the tires. I laid a hand on the dashboard. “You can feel it.”
    Fritz put a palm on the dash and cocked his head. “I feel it. I hear ‘em, too.”
    Looking to my left, across fields stretched over hills that rolled all the way to the black horizon, I said, "I don't know if you can make them out, but there are thousands of them—and I do mean thousands—already out there." I was hoping Fritz could make out the black silhouettes of individuals, separated from the herd, standing out against the tan-colored field.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    I looked back ahead at the cattle still crossing the road. “We can’t get through that.”
    Fritz shook his head to agree, then