Author’s Note: Book 11 steps back to the dawn of the Slow Burn apocalypse to explore the untold origin of Zed’s nemesis, the villain, Mark Baldwin. Why not more Zed and Murphy after all these years? The short answer, Hollywood reasons. I’ll explain all that in more detail once you get inside. If you’re new to the Slow Burn universe, Mark’s Story is a good place to start before going all the way back to Slow Burn 1 to hear the Zed and Murphy’s story from there.

Before the apocalypse, they called him a monster. When the world ended, they needed him to be one.

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. People with skin as white as skim milk and pupils blown black are running around campus, loitering lethargically in the heat, or turning violent for no reason at all.

The National Guard has turned the gym into a quarantine ward, the county jail is on fire, and there’s gunfire in the streets. Mark is trying to safeguard his freshman cadets until the officers figure out what to do next, only with each passing day, everything outside, just gets worse.

Mark is about to learn the one thing no therapist ever told him. In a world that's coming apart, the wrong kind of man is exactly the kind the world needs.

Until he isn't.

Slow Burn 11, Mark’s Damnation, is the first of four books in the Slow Burn Series that tell Mark Baldwin’s apocalyptic story.