August Burning (Book 2): Survival (12 page)

“Die, you fucking pig.”

The hammer snapped back and then forward on the heavy revolver, and the beast’s pasty face exploded in an orgy of fluid.

She collapsed on top of the corpse, too drained to move.

…

Terrence had broken their pact. That much was certain. What he planned to do now, Bennett was terrified of. The truck wouldn’t go any faster.

“What? What are you looking at? I fucking know.” Bennett spat, annoyed that Leeroy was still staring at him with those beady little eyes.

Bennett turned off the windshield wipers. The rusted truck strained up the gentle incline of wet asphalt, loaded down with four people in the bed.

Bennett felt his pulse racing. Had anyone seen him cut the bonds that bound the beast? They couldn’t have. The grass was too high; he had made sure of it.

The convoy peeled past the little white church with its black steeple that dominated the skyline from the high school. The grey storm clouds were lifting back, drawing up as a curtain and revealing a pale white sky above.

“This was not a good plan.” Leeroy mumbled, wiping away little drops of moisture from the glass.

Bennett fumed privately. “We made the mistake of trusting him, that’s all. It was a sound plan.”

“Where do you think he’s off to?”

Bennett met Leeroy’s beady eyes evenly. “We both know where he’s going. He’s not a person that takes humiliation lightly. We just have to get there before it’s too late.”

“We’re five minutes and 35 seconds behind him.” Leeroy bleated.

“Why the fuck do you know that?”

Leeroy stared out the window in response.

An eternity later, their truck screeched to a halt in a muddy puddle outside the Citadel. The others poured out of the flatbeds and off the off-road vehicles. Jaxton was already inside. Their footsteps sounded in a rhythmic clacking. People peeled off into classrooms, bolted up the stairs, crying out her name. Bennett was horrified for what he might have done to her, but also disgusted. Where was the outpouring of concern when the other girl died? The survivors idolized Adira, the brooding muse and partner of their leader. And Bennett hated it.

All the same, he didn’t know what he would do if she had been hurt. Every fiber of his being was drawn to her, and this failure would finish him. He was attempting to fathom the guilt he might feel when he saw them, standing in a hushed crowd around the door to the cafeteria annex.

“He tried to rape her. She shot him, thank god.” He heard.

He shouldered his way past, and peered inside, his heart thumping.  It was dark inside. Wilder and Duke were still catching their breath, so furiously had they torn through the hallways with rifles at the ready. Liam held a torch aloft, so little fingers of whirling light gently touched the faces within. His hand lay on Harley’s shoulder, who kneeled in a slump. At the center of this frozen image was Jaxton, who held Adira’s broken body with a
striking tenderness. Her face was swollen and bruised, with specks of sticky blood that plastered tendrils of her dark her to it. She was breathing, though. Bennett exhaled, not sure if he should be relieved.

A gunshot snapped. Then three more. Wilder held a smoking silver-colored pistol. The blood from Terrence’s corpse was pooling at his feet.

“Enough.” Jaxton commanded. He sounded exhausted. With infinite weariness he lifted the broken form in his arms and passed through the silent crowd. All present shook at the sight, so overwhelmed were they. Even Terrence’s brawny cronies held their heads low, in deep shame.

As Adira passed him her hand flopped out from the embrace, extended un-consciously. It brushed his arm. At this light touch Bennett turned on his heel and ran, as fast as he had ever run. He mounted a still-running ATV and tore down the main road of the abandoned town, where he could scream and no would hear him.

Chapter Ten

“We have to go look for him.”

Liam sighed, his stomach rumbling in complaint. He felt like sleeping, but he knew he couldn’t do it. She would never waste the day. He regarded her coolly, marveling at the changes time had wrought on her. Harley had shaved both sides of her head, so that her flowing auburn hair resembled some a rough mohawk. There was always a pistol strapped to her thigh, and he almost never saw her out of survivalist gear, except when they had sex, which they still did frequently. Liam found that it was never as enjoyable as before. Watching her sliding a knife into her belt, he realized he was intimated by her. But it drew him in, despite his attempts to fight it. She had him.

Liam stood, “Ok. Let’s go.” He snatched his shotgun from the cot in the dimly light classroom and waited.

“You don’t wanna check with Jax?”

He bristled. “Why would I?”

Harley nodded, and smiled. Her hand reached up to touch his face. Her eyes softened and she opened her mouth, as if to say something to him. His heart swelled and oddly, he felt himself urging her privately to say something he desperately wanted to hear. And when she hesitated, and instead turned to leave, he was crestfallen. He willed himself to ignore the hunger, the cold, and the anything that would try to harm them outside. He could give her more. He would be better for her.

Though he couldn’t be sure, Liam thought it had to be November. The trees were almost barren, and that delicious chill he had been drawn to so many nights prior was now a numbing frost. He saw the sun edging down towards the horizon. Was it truly so late in the year already?

Their ATV rattled along, struggling to run on a mixture of gasoline. No one was rationing it anymore. Jaxton barely came out of her room. Adira was healing, he knew, but it would take weeks before she would look the same. He sensed she would never, however, act the same.  He had imagined if Harley had been in Adira’s place, and he had become intimately familiar with the anxiety that crowded his mind while doing so. Terrence was dead, but there was no triumph. No one did anything all day; they sat around in silence, or slept. The crops had died. The dam was broken, and the guards didn’t patrol the roof anymore. It was cold, and they were hungry.
The infected wandered aimlessly in the parking lot of the school.

Bennett had left the day prior, with a few men, to hunt. They had not been heard from since. The police had not shown up as promised, and a frigid week had passed. Liam suspected his departure was just as much to avoid the questions that followed.

For the past five days, Harley and Liam had searched for Elvis. They had taken extensive pains to avoid the trailer parks in the deeper woods, and instead prowled across little rivers and beds of dead leaves in the barren forest. Each search brought them closer to the field with the dead grass. There was no sign of him. Liam was concerned. Elvis had been his friend for a few years. But he did not share Harley’s zest for the search. Privately, he recognized that he was alarmed Harley cared so much.

They drove a little further west this time, edging up against the great western wall of the valley. The ridge rose suddenly hundreds of feet, a dark mass speckled with tiny abandoned houses.

“Maybe he took refuge in one of those houses.”

“Harley, I don’t thi-“ But she was already climbing, her boots sending tiny landslides of turf cascading down the hill behind her.

Liam clamped his mouth shut and moved his legs.

As they trekked, the sun began to slowly set, basking the valley behind him in a golden hue of late autumn.

“Where are the houses on this hill?”

“I mean, I’ve never hiked on it but…come on follow me. I think I can get us there.”

He shot a glance warily down behind him. Just there at a distance, appearing as a brown speck, was the field with the dead grass. Shuddering, he realized Tessa’s body was probably rotting in that grass. He gulped, feeling the sober thought settling on his fraying mind. He hated all of this.

“Just there. There used to be a little community of eccentrics that lived up here. Rich ones, not like the hillsmen, whatever they are.” He pointed ahead.

There was a clearing, which clearly used to be a lawn surrounded by trees. Now it was overgrown, as was the garden that flanked the structure. Its massive wooden deck loomed out over the hillside, and the modern house looked cut into the earth. Its two floors were all white-washed right-angles. They crept closer, stopping periodically to listen for any noises. The hillside was silent.

Liam cringed as his heavy boots thumped on the worn wooden planks. The back door, flanked by walls of solid glass, was slightly ajar. Harley frowned, and drew her small caliber black pistol. She went in first. The interior was sparsely furnished with modern black and white furniture.

Liam tapped her shoulder. There was a cutting board on the granite countertop, its accompanying knife glistening with fresh blood. The mangled carcass of a baby doe was sitting next to an open book.

“Stay calm. Turn slowly.”

Elvis stood in the living room in a trail of mud that jumped off the white carpet. His head was shaved close to the skull, and he wore a white apron. He lowered his weapon upon seeing their faces, but he did not smile. Liam found himself smiling for the both of them; it was good to see his friend alive. Harley yelped joyously and embraced him like a long-lost friend. Elvis’ arms stayed as his sides. His expression was grave. “No one followed you?”

“No, Elvis, we’re alone,” Liam said.

Harley was ecstatic. “I can’t believe you’re alive! Oh my god what are you doing here?”

Elvis broke off her needy grip and slapped a cut of meat onto the granite. “I’m doing my own thing.”

Harley moved closer to him. “But Elvis, you saved those people. Duke, Wilder, Adira. They’re alive because you drew those infected savages off.”

Elvis sniffed, and began to saw into the raw meat. “Those people aren’t infected like the others.”

Liam’s brow furrowed. “How do you know?”

Elvis stopped cutting, and he raised a stony gaze. “Why didn’t you say Tessa?”

“Elvis, the others, they-“

Liam cut Harley off. “She’s dead. She died in that field. But it’s not your fault. And Harley’s right. The others owe you their lives, and they would be up here today if they weren’t…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t want to talk about Terrence’s crime yet.

“Elvis, you have to come back with us.”

Elvis shook his head. “Not going to happen.” The sawing motion resumed.

Liam tried to catch his friend’s eye. “What do you mean? You can’t stay up here. People think you’re dead.”

Elvis shrugged again. “So tell them I’m not. Or don’t. I don’t care.”

Liam felt that ambivalence infuriating, and it was not something he was used to seeing from his friend. Gone was the goofy confidence, the polished look, the artificial swagger.

“Elvis, Tessa didn’t die because of you. Is that what you think?”

“No. I did all I could, and I know that.” He paused. “But it’s not enough.”

“Not enough?”

Blood was spraying the pure white apron with rhythmic ease. Liam found himself transfixed.

“Not enough to pay for…for my sin. I don’t want to deal with it all. With you all. I want to be alone, up here.”

“Your sin? What the fuck are you talking about?”

The knife clattered on the floor. “My transgression! My crime! My affront to morality!” He was breathing hard. “Whatever you want to call it.”

Harley looked crestfallen. “You know you can trust us, right? With anything? We’re your friends, you know.”

Elvis eyed her up and down. But it was not sexually, Liam noticed. It was an appraisal. An appraisal of her worth to him. Elvis sniffed again. “You are not my friend.”

She opened her mouth, but Elvis continued. “Perhaps you thought the sight of yourself would endear me to you once more. Perhaps you heard how brave I was or whatever they’re saying down there and it intrigued you. Maybe you just like the attention. I’m not sure. And I don’t really care. I can look at you, standing there, and tell you that despite your pleading, you no longer have an effect on me. I am numb.” He turned to Liam, “and I forgive you for stealing her from me.”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

Elvis shrugged. “Now get out.”