August Burning (Book 1): Outbreak (14 page)

Jaxton looked to Bennett, and the two
men shared burning eyes. Their guard on board brought his rifle to bear and
shrieked, “Everyone get off!”

Liam roared in primal desperation, and
barreled the camouflaged figure over, sending him shrieking into the murky
river. As Adria struggled to reach the end of the boat, she saw fleeing several
soldiers trip and falter. Their tired limbs gave out and they tumbled on the
dusty riverbank. The infected were on them instantly, their canines flashing
red and white. These sick humans were nurses, construction workers, teachers,
soldiers, children, parents, and businessmen. They crowded around the fallen
soldiers, their mouths covered in scarlet as they feasted. The others blew past
them at a full sprint and continued the pursuit with bloodshot eyes and
snapping teeth.

Two soldiers turned their empty boat
around and gunned it for the opposite bank. Another boat’s engine fired, manned
entirely by civilians, and ran headlong into the dock, where it got stuck under
the wood. Everywhere she looked, people battled for control of the boats. The
civilians and soldiers scrambled and brawled, tumbling and bleeding. The
arrival of the fleeing soldiers turned the tide. The returning soldiers
barreled through the civilians, sending women and children falling into the
water. They ripped old men and women from the boats and took their place, then
urged the boat captains to flee with all speed. The soldiers were utterly lost,
and Adira shuddered to behold the shame of their desperation.

“We need to get the fuck off this
dock!” Jaxton roared.

The boat-captain shook his head. “We
can’t leave without them!” He stammered.

Jaxton froze, and stared at the
carnage drawing ever closer to them. The soldiers had been driven off the bank
entirely, and were spilling back onto the rotting wooden planks. Half the boats
had already left, or were preparing to leave. Less than twenty feet away, a
pack of infected barreled through the commanding officer’s corps and swarmed a
pontoon boat overloaded with civilians. The boat’s motor caught a woman
struggling in the murky water and ripped the skin from her jaw and left eye
socket.

“Now! Take us back now!” Harley
shrieked.

They saw a soldier crane his arm back
to fling a grenade when an infected priest slammed into him, sending the live
explosive tumbling. It detonated near a screaming mass of overweight civilians,
ripping into their soft flesh with hot metal fragments. The poor fools
collapsed to the dock, screaming in pain as their detached limbs tumbled into
the waters around them. Jaxton looked to the tree line as the illumination
flare finally extinguished itself and disappeared. In the final flash of light,
he saw another wave at full sprint.

Jaxton made a sudden move for the
wheel, shoving the captain aside with brutal force. The soldier’s face turned
bright red and he cocked his arm back to deliver a punishing right hand. Before
he could unleash it, Bennett caught his shoulder.

Jaxton and Bennett wrestled the boat
captain to the boat’s slippery floor, where they took his heavy side-arm. His
red face looked about to burst as Jaxton pinned his shoulders down. “Take us
back. NOW!” Jaxton roared.

“Get the fuck off me and we’ll go.”

“We don’t need him. Send him over!”
Another civilian cried.

“No! No!” the soldier shouted, barely
twenty years old with a shaved head and a hint of facial hair. “I’ll take you.”

He manned the controls as Jaxton and
Bennett stood beside him, willing him to make a wrong move. As the boat rotated
to leave, Adira crawled to the back with Tessa. Before they made it ten feet
away from the rotting docks, several infected leapt into the water and
attempted to swim for them. Their faces became smaller and smaller as the
waters lapped at the sides of the pontoon boat.

In the shimmering light of a spring
dawn, the infected smashed into their prey, sending them careening. They fell
upon soldiers and civilians still grappling in their own blood. Several boats
never made it off the dock, and were swarmed by infected even as their captains
tried to turn them around. The infected leapt into the waters and attacked
those trying to make for shore. As the two distinct sides became a mindless
blur of motion from afar, Adira felt the urge to puke. The air still smelled
like gunpowder.

 
2 days after Outbreak. Maryland

Bennett turned away from the stink of
vomit. He gripped his hands together and tried to stop the shaking. It was
futile. The soldier guiding the boat closer to the northern shore was staring
straight ahead, his hands white with tension.

No one wanted to look at each other.

Liam dropped the assault rifle
haphazardly and Harley buried her auburn hair into his burly chest. His chest
was rising and falling rapidly, in the throes the hyperventilation.

“Was that them? They were so fast. I
can’t… what will we do?” Adira pleaded, her dark eyes glittering in the morning
sun.

Jaxton shook his head. “We need to get
out of here, away from people. Nothing has changed. We go to Cold Spring. The
valley will protect us.” When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and raw with
emotion. “C’mon, c’mon we can make it. We can make it, c’mon,” he muttered to
himself. Jaxton picked up the weapon gingerly, and the lone soldier stared at
him with unseeing eyes. He stuffed three extra magazines into his jacket
gingerly, and stood straight. Jaxton held the weapon unnaturally in his hands,
and he felt the eyes of all his friends on him, bloodshot and desperate.

There were soldiers on the docks.

“You there! No one’s answering on the
comms, what’s the situation private?!” A burly officer demanded. “We have
another load of civvies coming in soon.”

Jaxton stepped off the dock first, and
reached back to help Adira out. The boat’s driver sunk onto his chair and
stuttered, “it all happened so fast, they were there, on the other side, I
mean-“

“The infected? Spit it out! How many
were there?”

The officer shoved past Jaxton and Adira
and rounded on the driver. “Why didn’t you take the sick into custody? Like the
order specified? Why are there civilians on this boat?”

Liam’s eyes burned as he made eye
contact with a man equal to his stature. Liam reached back to help Harley, who
leaned into him as soon as she stood on the floating wood.

“Stop right there! Private this man
has one of our weapons!”

Jaxton halted several feet away from
the Lieutenant, his broad back frozen. The Lieutenant’s boots clacked loudly on
the wooden planks as he approached.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He
stood inches from Jaxton’s face, and there was white spittle collecting at the
corners of his mouth. Several dozen soldiers with gas masks and rifles stood on
the grassy shore nearby, watching the scene.

“Why do you have a US Army rifle?”

Jaxton said nothing, but his hands
balled into little fists at his sides, a reaction not unnoticed by the
blustering officer.

Adira, a full head shorter, shoved her
way in between the two peacocks. Her straight black hair shone as she pushed
Jaxton backwards several steps. When the Lieutenant took a measured step
closer, Adira turned her glittering dark eyes on him. For just a moment, the
man faltered.

“Your men. They ran. They tried to
offload us like cattle, and they ran. They tried to storm the boats. I saw them
bulldozing through kids, old women, just to have a chance to run.
 
I’ve never been so ashamed in my life,
and you should be too. I’m scared, we’re all scared, but I feel sick. I feel
sick because I watched your men shriek like children instead of trying to give
everyone a chance. Don’t lay a hand on me, or anyone who goes with me. You’re
cowards.”

The Lieutenant’s ramrod straight back
wilted under the dark hair girl’s verbal assault. He looked to the boat driver
without speaking, his eyes longing. The boat driver turned his trembling lips
and red eyes to the murky waters. The Lieutenant stepped aside a hair, his eyes
wandered frantically as he attempted to process her words.

Adira quickly walked back and grabbed
Harley, urging her forward. “Move,
move
!”

As the soldiers stood silently, Adira
led them all off the docks, and onto the asphalt, which was already beginning
to heat under the morning sun.

No one knew where to go, or how to go.
Adira led the aimless group north as best she could, based on the single paper
road-map they had brought. They didn’t talk, and they didn’t look up when they
walked.

At a loss, Adira guided her friends
into a massive, naked, dirt field with a single mound of earth, piled in the
center. They mounted the crest of plowed earth and sat apart as the sun sank
beneath the horizon. In the beginning, they sat apart, looking out over the
fields at the forests beyond, daring to hope they were safe for the night.
Jaxton left the rifle in the dust, and lay on the earth. As night fell and
temperature plummeted, they all drew close, pressing together against the
night’s chill. Bennett placed Adira’s head on his chest, and ran his slender
fingers through her long black hair. She could feel his chest rising and
falling, but it gave her little solace as the horrors of the day smoldered
inside her.

 
    
Feeling
the heat of two bodies on either side, Adira entered a restless limbo that
barely resembled sleep. She could hear teeth chattering all around her, but
somehow, someway, she found a desperate solace in that noise. It meant she was
not alone.

She awoke as a figure shifted beside
her. Adira felt her limbs quaking against the chill, relentless on a May night.
Rubbing her bleary eyes, she rose on one arm. A figure stumbled away on the
hill, disappearing out of vision.

For some reason, Adira rose to follow.
She already knew who it was.

His back shuddered and shook as he
wept in the night. She wanted to be close.

“Jax?”

The figure grunted. Jaxton did not
turn to look as Adira seated herself on a rock beside him, a stone’s throw from
the group. Without looking, he rested his lightly bearded face on her slender
shoulder. Adira found herself wrapping her arms around the broad figure, and
she was overwhelmed how good it felt to make contact.

They sat together, pressed close
against the wind that swept across the floor of the earth, for a long while.

“How will we ever make it?” He
croaked, his voice muffled against her jacket.

“Don’t say that,” she whispered. “I can’t
listen to you say that, do you hear me?”

“They weren’t humans, anymore. How can
we survive? Against that? What about our families?”

She ran her long finger along the
shaved sides of his head, and then on top, to where it was much longer.

“We’ll stick the back roads, we’ll
stay away from the highways. Like you said. We can make it Jax.”

“I don’t think so,” he muttered. “I
don’t know what to do. How to do it. Whenever I want to close my eyes, I
imagine them coming through the forest, hundreds of them.”

“Can I tell you something?”

He sniffled, and wiped his nose across
his hands shamelessly.

“Out of all of us, I find myself
looking to you. When I’m scared or uncertain, I look to you. Liam’s a huge guy,
looks fierce and everything, and Bennett’s might as well be in love with me,
but I look to you.”

“I don’t know if I can lead us home. I
don’t know what I will be like tomorrow, when the dawn comes.”

She heard her own stomach growl
angrily.

“For your friends, you need to be
strong. And for me, too. Can you do that?”

Jaxton pulled away slightly, but
remained so their shoulders were touching.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

She smiled wistfully in the darkness,
with tears in her eyes. “So am I.”

 
6 days after Outbreak. Pennsylvania

The sun clung to the horizon,
desperately. Every day it held on a little bit longer. As they left the strip
malls and vast housing developments behind, the foliage began to swallow them.
Four lane roads became two lane roads. Gas prices dropped. Chain-stores became
single-town stores. There was more forest than cleared land, and the roads were
mostly empty. A few solitary cars roared past them every day, laden with
supplies. There was little sign of life in the dilapidated houses with rugged
plots of land.

“You ok?” Adira strode beside Bennett,
at the rear of the column. Their worn tennis shoes scraped the gravel on the
side of road. She could see the first hint of white pinpoints pushing through
the darkness to the east. To the western sky, Adira turned her dark eyes to a
heart-stirring collage of excited yellows and moody reds.

Bennett’s eyes darted ahead, judging
how quietly he would have to speak to avoid being overheard. He could see the
bobbing heads rising and falling. “Are you?” His eyes burned bright. Normally
they were bland.

Adira felt her senses flare up.

Bennett continued, “What the fuck are
we doing? We should have stayed in the capital, or gone south like they ordered
us to originally. Those things weren’t people anymore, they were animals. We
should stick with the army. What hope do we have against them, alone? We’re
making good time…we’re probably only another two days from Cold Spring…but what
are we going to do when we get there? Are our families magically going to be
waiting for us, as if nothing had ever happened?”

The wind danced through the trees like
a hushed whisper. It was darker under their boughs.

“What do you miss the most about
home?” Adira asked.

After a while, she heard him chuckle
behind her.

“I have a bulldog. He’s probably
grumbling around the house right now, wondering when my parents are coming home
to feed him.”

Adira felt the corners of her mouth
being pulled up. “What’s his name?”

Bennett snorted. “Don’t judge.
Lugnut.”

Adira laughed gaily, feeling some of
the pain falling off her shoulders. “Lugnut. I already have an image of an
overweight, grumpy bulldog that can’t fit his tongue inside his goofy mouth. I
hope I’m not disappointed.”

For several seconds Adira could only
listen to the sounds of gravel crunching beneath their feet.

“I’ve been trying not to think what
it’s like there, at home. I don’t know if there will be anyone left.”

“What’s it like?”

She could imagine Bennett grinning as
they passed under the leaves. “I have so many memories that come rushing at me,
from every season. Sledding as a kid, waiting on the same block for the bus,
getting so fucking nervous cause girls were the bane of my existence. And it
all happened in that valley. That one little town.”

She looked ahead to the trodding
figure at the head of the column, and she remembered how soothing it had been
to lean against him before they returned to sleep.

In the next moment, she felt Bennett’s
hands around her torso. Before she could speak his mouth was on hers, and he
pulled her tight to him. Reflexively, she raised her long, slender fingers to
explore the corded muscles of his upper body. When he pulled away, she could
see the hunger that hung in his eyes.

She felt a wave a lust, and was
grateful for it. She jumped at anything that would push the fear away, even for
a moment.

“Just didn’t want you to think I
couldn’t make an impulsive decision. You see? I’m learning.”

She laughed lightly. “I don’t know how
I feel about this new, cocky Bennett.”

The night grew darker as they broke
off the embrace.

Bennett stopped smiling, and looked
away. “I hope it’s a little warmer tonight.”

They made camp that night in a little
grove, just out of eyesight of the road. Cursing themselves, they swore never
again to make a camp at night. It took them a full hour to set up the tents in
the darkness. Somehow, only two flashlights had made it into their sacks.
Originally they had discussed rationing, but in their frustration and
exhaustion they gorged themselves on cans of food, and attacked the crushed
loaves of bread. As they lay together in the glade to sleep, Adira could feel
Jaxton’s eyes on her.

Though they all slept close, she could
feel Bennett’s hands moving greedily on her body under the worn jacket.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” Bennett whispered, his
voice hoarse with desire and shame.

After a moment of indecision, she
rose. She didn’t want Jaxton to see. “Follow me.”

She led Bennett away from the others,
deeper into the woods where the chill tickled their skin. She pressed herself
against him and found him hard against her cool hand. He shuddered against her
touch and kissed her clumsily. She tried to slow it down, but he was frantic.
His rough hands tugged impatiently at her jacket and then forced her to her
knees.

She hesitated.

“What? Is this not ok?” He asked,
lording over her.

“It’s fine,” she whispered.

“Thank you, I need this,” he said
huskily, as his hands pulled back her hair.

When they stumbled back into camp, she
thought she saw Jaxton close his eyes.

By the time the dawn had broken, with
spirited sunshine and equally spirited birdcalls, Liam was coughing
relentlessly. His color had faded, until he was a mottled mix of white and red.

Bennett took his duffel bag, and Liam
popped a dose of painkillers for the growing torment in his throat. They all
urged him to allow the group to break off their trail for the nearest town
pharmacy to the east, but he refused. After a more carefully rationed meal of
canned food, the group set off with a noticeable pall hanging over them. Liam’s
relentless hacking followed them for the four miles they hiked. As the sun rose
in the sky, the group’s track through the woodlands took them into more hilly
terrain, with great rolling carpets of green stretching far to the east and
west. Still, they pressed north.

Bennett trudged alongside his oldest
friend. “We need to get him medicine. It hurts to see such a powerful looking
guy so frail.”

Jaxton nodded, “I know, man.”

“Remember how much time we used to
waste wondering how we were guna spend our lives?”

Jaxton laughed half-heartedly. “I used
to pray for something like this. Did you know that?”

Bennett frowned. “You jinxed us.”

“I used to pray for anything to change
the game. And now its here, and I hate it.”

“There’s only one good thing that’s
come out of it,” Bennett said ruefully, indicating Adira trekking up the trail
two hundred feet behind them. Jaxton eyed her black hair and dark eyes jealously.

“Oh? How’s that?”

Bennett thought there was something
more than genuine concern behind that voice. Bennett’s heart swelled with pride
to imagine his friend jealous.

“She doesn’t make me nervous anymore.
Look at her. She’s perfect.”

Jaxton chuckled darkly. “Sound a bit
douchey, did you know that?”

“Who gives a shit? After all, now we
know what’s out there, chasing us. Those things, so fast, just-“

“Shut the fuck up man,” Jaxton cut him
off harshly. He wanted to hike alone.

“Last night, I wanted her to blow me.
So she did it.”

“You better not let her hear you,”
Jaxton warned, feeling an anger rising inside him.

“I don’t think it really matters. I
apologized for being rough or whatever, and she took it just fine. I’ve been
trying to figure out how I can sleep with her again, with everyone around all
the time.” Bennett looked eagerly to his friend, hoping there was some sort of
reaction.

“You got a fucking problem?” Jaxton
asked, slowing their walk.

Bennett drew closer. “What do you
mean? You’re the one who’s always looking at her. Do you think I haven’t
noticed?”

Jaxton shook his head. “Look, I don’t
know why you’re trying to get a rise out of me. We’re all fucking tired, and
we’re all fucking scared. So just shut your mouth and keep moving.”

Bennett felt his pulse quicken,
excited by his recent exploits. “For once it feels great to have something and
know you can’t have it.”

“I don’t think I like the new Bennett
much,” Jaxton spat.

Bennett grinned savagely.

Jaxton opened his mouth and closed it
as Adira made eye contact with him down below, oblivious. He smiled back, and
turned away.

The heat of late spring baked their
skin. Rolling beads of sweat itched their faces and little clouds of hungry
gnats tormented their every step. Jaxton lost sight of the road, and driven to
a feverish anxiety by Liam’s growing sickness, he led them up a rocky defile
laden with huge granite boulders. By the time they had mounted the rocky
challenge, Liam was still a hundred feet behind them, stumbling around in a
haze with Harley attempting to guide.

Bennett pointed down into the valley.
“I know this town. I’ve been here before.” His eyes peered down into the valley,
which was shouldered by two great hilly crests on either side. They could all
make out a smattering of roofs clustered around a steeple nestled in the woods
below. Little houses rose to the west and east, hugging the hillsides. Bennett
pointed north-east. “There’s a river coming into the valley somewhere that way,
and I think the main road crosses it a mile or two that way, before heading
into the valley.”

Adira wiped the sweat from her brow.
“Do they have a pharmacy?”

“Definitely,” Bennett said, looking at
Liam struggling below them.

“He needs antibiotics.” Jaxton
wheezed, feeling the weight of the rifle on his back.

Liam forced his legs to drive into the
stony dirt, though he felt as if his lungs would give out. His head swam and
the chills tickled around his limbs, making him feel weak.

“Come on, just a bit more.” The auburn-haired
girl beside him offered gentle encouragement, as she had been doing all day.
The sight of her bright hazel eyes caught in the late May sunlight gave him
spirit. She was sweating just as much as he, but she never faltered.

As he crested the mound, Liam saw
Jaxton had a map laid out on a rock. He pointed. “Here’s the town. And
here’s….Cold Spring. About 25 miles. I have no idea how long that will take,”
he looked to Liam, “two days? Three?”

“Lets get in there, and find something
we can give him,” Adira said quickly. Jaxton’s eyes met her own, and she
watched them soften. Her lips were curved perfectly, he thought.

“Aye, alright. Liam you stay here.
Harley…”

“-Ill go with you,” Harley asserted.
Her auburn hair was matted and oily.

“No, you stay with him. I’ll go,”
Adira countered. “We shouldn’t be long.”

“We’re pretty far out now. These
people, they’re not what you’re used to in D.C or Boston. I don’t know what to
expect,” Bennett said cautiously.

“Coal mining?”

Bennett nodded. “It was. And when they
dug all of that up a lot of people stayed, and, well, you’ll see.”

Jaxton urged them forward. “Let’s
roll.”

Adira’s legs were all
fire by the time she cleared the bottom of the hill. The tendrils of dark hair
that had escaped her ponytail were matted to her forehead with sweat. She heard
a commotion behind her. Bennett’s leaner frame had beaten Jaxton’s own, more
beefy frame.

His face glistened
when he drew close to her. “About last night, Adira. I don’t know what came
over me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Adira regarded him
keenly. “It’s ok. I mean, I feel those things too. I don’t like the way you
went about it though, I will say that.”

Bennett drew up as
Jaxton approached. “It won’t happen again.”

Adira nodded, annoyed
at the distraction. She didn’t want to think about it. They needed the
medicine.

“What are you guys
talking about?”

Bennett’s lip
twitched. “I hope there’s something left in there. Maybe the panic hasn’t
reached this far out yet.”

“No sense worrying
now. Let’s not let our minds run wild. C’mon, lead us,” Jaxton said.

Within five minutes
they had reached the road, a tiny two-lane track that wound through the dense
deciduous forest, a wall of green that popped with vibrancy.

The road wound deeper
into the defile, and the three trekkers made sure to keep it within sight as
they moved. They passed the first structure, a gas station that was deserted,
its prices reflecting the backwoods they were entering. The first house, a
one-story structure with a tiny wooden porch, had a rusted ATV that Jaxton eyed
with envy. The town was not completely abandoned, however. As the houses began
to appear around them in wooded plots of one or two acres, the trio could see
movement. Several individuals were boarding up their houses, or shifting
supplies from cars to the home. Adira spotted weapons in the hands of more than
a few, proud owners of shotguns and hunting rifles, with handguns strapped to
their hips.