Slow Burn — Zero Day - Bobby Adair

    2013; 236 pages.  Book 1 (out of 10) in the "Slow Burn" series.  Full Title: Slow Burn – Zero Day.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Horror; Plague; Zombies.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    There’s ethnic cleansing in Somalia and it’s spreading into neighboring African countries.  Ho hum.  There’s civil unrest in China, and the military there is cracking down heavily.  Who cares.  There’s violence in the Middle East.  That’s nothing to worry about for Zed, who lives in Austin, Texas.

 

    What is a problem for him, however, is having to attend a family lunch at his mom’s and stepdad’s house.  There will be the usual hassling and talking-to from both of them, telling Zed to get his life together.  But that’s par for the course; he’s ready for it.

 

    He definitely wasn’t ready for what he saw when he opened the front door.  His mom laying dead in a pool of blood, in the living room.  His stepdad hunched over her, slurping away on her blood.  And a strange semi-mutilated guy sitting in a chair by the fireplace, watching the macabre scene.

 

    I have a feeling lunch is not going to be served.

 

What’s To Like...

    Slow Burn – Zero Day is the opening book in a 10-volume (plus one novella) horror series set in Bobby Adair’s hometown of Austin, Texas.  The tale is told from the first-person POV, Zed’s, and the action starts right away.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that the storyline has the standard “zombie” structure: zillions of infected undead creatures seeking out the vastly-outnumbered, uninfected human survivors.

 

    However in this series a third, even smaller category is spawned: the “infected yet semi-immune” victims.  Zed of course is one of those.  Although his skin has grown pale, and he is running a fever, he retains his human thought-processes and, perhaps most importantly, tasted horrible to zombies trying to eat him.

 

    It is quickly established that the zombie infection originated in Africa.  From there it spread rapidly into Asia.  There’s no cure in sight, and it has reached the United States frighteningly fast.  I found it eerie how this mirrored the real-world COVID epidemic that hit America in 2020,.  It started elsewhere, we knew it was coming, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.  

 

    The main storyline follows Zed as he searches for others who are uninfected.  That is no small task.  The zombies need to eat too and are swarming throughout Austin looking for delicious uninfected victims to eat.  Zed’s survivalist skills are minimal (so are mine), food is scarce (and for now being scrounged from vending machines), and acquiring weaponry (mostly dropped by now-dead soldiers sent to kill zombies) is dangerous, bordering on suicidal.

 

    Zed needs to find some long-term solutions to all those challenges on the college campus of UT-Austin where he's holed up.  I’m sure his degree in Philosophy will be of great help in this endeavor.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 4,558 ratings and 1,629 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.91/5 based on 5,830 ratings and 501 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “They’re going to round us all up, eventually.  We’ll get a year or more just for busting out of jail.  We’ll get time for rioting, and maybe even capital murder for that dead cop you saw.”

    My mouth hung open.  I hadn’t thought of any of that.  Finally, I said, “But we were running for our lives.  We were in as much danger as the cops.”

    Murphy shook his head.  “A jury in Travis County might believe that about you, if you hadn’t already stabbed your stepdad thirty-seven times...”  (pg. 62)

 

    “You guys nearly attacked me coming out of the elevator.”

    “When was the last time you looked in a mirror?  You look like one of the infected.”

    I looked down at myself.  My skin had grown paler since I last checked.  My arm was bleeding from another bite wound.  I had blood and brain splattered on my shirt from when I shot the infected guy in the tunnel.

    I looked back at Wilkins and shrugged.  “I clean up nicely, though.”  (pg. 164)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Kindle version of Slow Burn – Zero Day currently costs $4.99 at Amazon.  The paperback format, which is what I read, costs $9.95.  The other individual e-books in the series go for $4.99 apiece, with the exception of Book 10 which runs a dollar more.  Alternatively, you can buy the 3-ebook bundle for $9.99; or the 9-ebook bundle for $5.99.  Yeah, I don’t understand the bundle pricing structure either.

 

The great “why” questions of life very suddenly held zero importance.  (pg. 133)

    The profanity level in Slow Burn – Zero Day is moderate.  I noted 18 instances in the first 10% of the book, primarily of the milder ilk.  Later on, some  f-bombs spring up, plus a couple references to male genitalia.

 

    I spotted only three typos: ally/alley; form/from; Mary/Marcy, and one indenting glitch, which no doubt arose during the printing stage.  Kudos to whoever did the editing on this.

 

    The main issue I had was with the storytelling.  The tale ends at a pivotal spot, but with none of the plot threads having been tied up.  Zero.  Nada.  So Book One is little more than an introduction to the 10-book series.  Which means by reading it, you are committing to nine more books, even if you read them via one of the bundles.

 

    Unfortunately, I acquired the paperback version, coming across it at a nearby used-book store.  I doubt that the paperback version of Book 2, Slow Burn – Infected will show up there anytime soon.  So sadly, this is probably as far as I'll go in this series.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  I became familiar with Bobby Adair’s novels via Facebook, where he regularly posts ads, mostly for the audiobook bundle of this series.  I don’t do audiobooks, but thanks to the ads, his name became engrained in my head, and I recognized it instantly while browsing at the bookstore.  So if you’re an indie author endeavoring to enlarge your reading audience, you might consider touting your books on Facebook.