The Burning Men: A Nathaniel Cade Story Read Online Free PDF

any scanner anywhere in the U.S.
    He didn’t expect much of it. Then it hit. Someone used the card to pay for a hotel room in a Comfort Inn near Springfield College.
    It only took them about fifteen minutes to drive from the mall to the hotel. It only took a cold stare from Cade to get the desk clerk to give up the room number.
    Zach called Ramos. “Hey. We think we’ve got one. Any way you can tell us how to keep them from blowing up would be really helpful right now.”
    Eight seconds of silence followed.
    “You still there?”
    “I think Cade might have been right,” Ramos finally said. “I can’t figure out any biological way they’re doing this. This guy, the one you brought back, his insides were basically mush. His fat had already liquefied, to make it into some kind of accelerant. His muscles are filled with flammable compounds that should have killed him long before you found him. And I’ve got no idea how that happened.”
    “Well, super,” Zach said.
    “I’ll keep looking,” she said. “But I think your best bet is to stop the reaction before it begins. However they’re triggering it, it has to be a conscious process. Cade only stopped it when he killed this one.”
    “Yeah. We already knew that. Thanks.”
    Ramos started to apologize, but Zach hung up on her. He looked at Cade. “You caught all that?”
    Cade nodded. His hearing, like everything else about him, was inhuman. “It doesn’t change anything.”
    “We need information from this guy, Cade.”
    “If he’s like the others, he can trigger the explosion in less than 30 seconds. I’m not inclined to give him the chance.”
    “I’m ordering you to wait and see if he’s hostile first. Maybe we can talk to him.”
    Cade hesitated, then nodded so slowly that it looked like it was painful. Zach finally realized something. Fire was one of the few things that could kill Cade again. And permanently, this time.
    “I know I’m asking you to take a risk here,” he said.
    Cade’s mouth twitched. “What’s life without risk?”
    Then he began walking. A moment later, they stood on the concrete balcony outside the second floor room.
    Cade hesitated outside the door. He sniffed.
    “Are you certain you should be here?” Cade asked.
    Zach didn’t need a vampire’s senses. The same smell. Sulfur.
    “I’m not waiting in the car.”
    “Idiot.”
    Cade used the master key card from the front desk. He went in first.
    Zach waited for a moment, crouching, half-expecting a fireball to erupt from the room.
    Then Cade called him inside.
    Zach entered. He saw a slightly doughy young man sitting in a chair by the bed, watching the coverage on CNN. Josh Gregory.
    The video was already making the rounds. Zach checked the screen. The local fire marshal was explaining to Wolf Blitzer about the freak accident.
    Josh made no attempt to get up, or even move. He sat next to a half-empty box of pizza.
    “I wondered when somebody would show up,” he said.
    Cade closed the door behind Zach.
    They both pul led up chairs.
    Josh looked at them. His eyes were red and puffy. He’d been crying.
    “I guess you probably want to know what’s going on, huh?”
     
    
     
    One month earlier. The Black Rock Desert, Nevada.
    “The system is corrupt,” Julius said. “You can’t work withi n a corrupt system and expect anything to change.”
    “That’s cynical bullshit. An excuse to sit on the sidelines while other people make the decisions and take the risks. You’ve got to get involved.”
    “We’re looking at two or three degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures in our lifetime. More if the methane feedback kicks in when the arctic permafrosts melt. Everything below the Arctic and Antarctic circles become deserts. The plankton in the seas dies off, and so do all the fish. So do all the crops. We run out of food. Wars. Plagues. Everyone dies. And you want to vote on it, like we’re in student council?”
    “Like you have the balls to do