August Burning (Book 2): Survival (27 page)

Jaxton opened and closed his mouth. The woman spoke again, her stench almost unbearable at such proximity. “Kill us all, please. We don’t want, to live.” Jaxton froze, almost certain he sensed a trace of sadness in that emotionless face. Then it was gone.

He took a step back. “I will,” he said. “Remember, help the blue faces.”

The woman’s teeth snapped and Jaxton turned on his heel.

Adira felt Troy relax visibly as Jaxton came striding back to them over the frozen field. Several rifles were lowered.

“And?” Troy demanded.

“They’re with us,” he growled.

…

“And…they’re just infected people, with a different strain?”

The pasty ginger flashed his yellow teeth. “So I hear, sir. If you remember when we first arrive here, the other survivors described them as “hillsmen” when they made first contact. Our scouts found them holed up in an old factory north of town, near the ridge. They killed one of our men. Ripped his neck out. They all deserve to die.”

Agis shuddered; Hernandez made him sick. Still, he nodded. “We’ll hit them tomorrow, then. We need to keep the people moving, keep their minds from thinking too much. Everyone will go. Weapons all around.”

Hernandez licked his bleeding lips. “Even…Jaxton and the others? Do you trust them?”

“Of course not,” Agis said as the watched the crowd filtering into the gymnasium. “We will take care of that problem tomorrow. A lot of things can happen…in a battle.” He saw Hernandez shaking with glee as he continued. “Let us see to it that they fall victim to some unfortunate friendly fire. Perhaps they turned infected, and needed to be put down. Whatever you like.”

“And…what of the other soldiers?”

Agis drew back from the stench of bad breath. “You failed me there. They were all supposed to die, that night.”

Hernandez said nothing, staring at the floor like a scolded child. Agis reached out and touched him briefly, for as long as he could stand. “We will hunt them down when this is over. They are alone, and weak in the cold. We have them outnumbered five to one. Fear not. This is our time.”

Taking a step away from Hernandez, Agis raised his hands and beckoned the crowd closer, like his favorite children. Their anticipation was palpable. They knew what was coming.

“Friends. Come closer. That’s it. Now listen to me. We are so close. We are so close to achieving peace. By tomorrow night, this town will be ours. Just one more threat remains. One more threat to our safety.”

Someone in the back cried out a complaint, and Agis was pleased to see him assaulted by two metal batons from his men. The others looked, but were too nervous to make any effort to help. Agis continued over his cries of pain. “Tomorrow, we will set out, as one people, one community, all of us, and we will destroy this scourge. These infected attacked and killed one of our brothers today. Felix will be missed, and his death will be avenged!” Some in the crowd roared approval. Others were silent, with nervous eyes that searched for the officers’ batons.

“With our victory tomorrow we fight for the future we want! Stand with me!” His officers raised their batons and roared. Many more with bloodshot eyes and black rims hooted their loyalty, even as their bodies craved another high. Many remained silent, intimidated into complacency. Agis shrugged as the scattered cheering continued. Fear would keep them in line.

Chapter Eighteen

Elvis saw a figure cutting a crisp shadow against the tapestry of stars on that frigid winter night. As he approached, he marveled at his friend’s bulky form, bereft of any coat or outerwear.

“What are you grinning about?” Liam demanded.

“Would you rather I frowned when I saw you?”

Liam dangled one of his feet over the roof’s ledge, “the others send you over here to drag me back?”

Elvis rubbed his own arms against the chill and looked back across the roof. He could just barely make out several shapes huddling on the pointed apex of the school’s clock tower. “I just thought I’d make sure you weren’t brooding yourself into oblivion, over here.”

Liam grunted, the cold beginning to work its way past his brawny muscles. “I’m thinking about tomorrow.”

Elvis stood by his side, so both men were looking out over the school’s empty parking lot. “So am I.”

Liam looked at the smaller man beside him, wondering at the changes that had taken place in him. “Who would have thought, Elvis, once the king of pompous swag, now a hardened bastard?”

Elvis chuckled. “Who would have ever thought the once surprisingly sensitive Liam would make comments like that?”

They shared a glance and chuckled softly together under the starlight. A long silence stretched between them, in which only the soft voices of their other friends could be heard floating on the frigid air.

“Are you ready?” Elvis asked, his voice solid steel.

“I don’t know. I think I am. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be here with you guys, if I wasn’t so selfish.”

Elvis didn’t look over. “Selfish?”

Liam sniffled aggressively, feeling a cold coming on. “If I hadn’t taken Harley from you. And if she in turn hadn’t left me for Agis, I don’t know if I would be here, ready to fight and die to bring that bastard down.”

Elvis chuckled darkly, noting this was the first time Liam and he had spoken about the girl with auburn hair. “You didn’t take her from me. And I don’t blame you. Once a girl like that sets you in her sight, you’re powerless. It’s done. Only a man of supreme will would be able to deny her calculated advance.”

Liam spat, and raised his glistening eyes to the stars. “Perhaps. But I betrayed you. And for that, I am sorry.”

Elvis moved a little closer to communicate physically. “Forget the vixen.”

“I hate him. Agis. I feel, for the first time, rage running through me. It’s a constant, like anxiety. But where anxiety saps, rage invigorates.”

Elvis felt his heart beating a little faster, glad Liam would be at his side when the offered challenge to Agis. “Use it. But don’t be reckless out there. There’s no telling what will happen.”

“That’s why you’re here.” Liam said with a twinkle.

“To watch your back? You’re damn right.”

Liam turned to regard him with keen eyes. “What happened to you? You are a different man, you know.”

Elvis felt his stomach roiling with the toxic memories of that last day with his family. “I don’t want to talk about what happened. But I know what I have to do.” His words were harsh with emotion. “I must not fail you all. I was a coward once. That will never happen again, even if it means my life.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Liam said quickly, feeling uneasy.

“You have your motives, and I have mine. Let’s leave it there. Expect to see me at your side tomorrow though, and at the front where the fighting is the fiercest.”

Liam turned, and would have laughed at their words were the looming prospect of death not rolling up on them as the earth continued to spin. Instead, it made him sick. But then he pictured Agis’s well-cropped, handsome face. And his hands shook with the greedy anticipation of violence against that man.

…

“What do you think they’re on about?” Adira looked to Wilder, the young man who had grown from a charming boy to a reckless and headstrong man in the span of a few months. Adira could only just make out the blond beard that covered his face.

“They have unfinished business. It’s good they can talk this out before tomorrow.” Jaxton stood at the edge of the clock tower, fifty feet above the ground. “Everyone needs to make peace with any demons they have tonight. We can’t afford to carry those tomorrow.”

“We’re ready. I prepped ten of the others, those who want to stand with us against Agis. They know the strategy,” Wilder assured them.

Jaxton turned, his face hard in the pale moonlight. “You best have picked the right ones. One wrong move and Agis will be alerted to our plan.”

Wilder bristled visibly, insulted his abilities were being doubted. “I know what the risks are.”

Duke tugged a black balaclava up around his pudgy face. “I’ll watch his back. Don’t you worry.”

“And the beta-infected are not to be harmed. I know. I know they killed Tessa. Which they will pay for. But we need them for now. Do you understand?” Jaxton demanded.

Wilder looked away, out pasts the silent, dark forests to where they hid. “I do.”

“Once the shooting starts, go for the officers, like we discussed. We are not at war with the people as a whole. The majority nurse their hatred of him in private, and they will come when we call,” Jaxton said confidently.

“What of the infected? The hordes?” Duke asked quietly. Jaxton had told them all about Troy’s revelations.

“We will not worry about them until Agis has fallen.”

Liam and Elvis emerged out of the shadows. “Miss us?”

As they joined the others, Adira held Jaxton close. “I’m coming with you.”

Jaxton spoke slowly; he had already anticipated this. “I know. I want to argue with you, to tell you no. For obvious reasons. But… I think I’ve learned enough by now. You’ll come with us, but you will stay by my side and behind me at all times. In that there will be no discussion. Agreed?”

Adira could see his light eyes gleaming with silent intensity. She held them for a long while, and drew from the vast well of his strength and passion. She let it warm her limbs on that cold night, and then she nodded. “I understand,” she whispered. He smiled a sad smile that shook her to the bone. There was fear there. And it drew her closer to him. She was so glad she had found him. She could scarcely contemplate her life in the cold, vicious new world without Jaxton.

Jaxton broke off their embrace, and beckoned his friends closer. “We weren’t supposed to survive this long.” They turned to the one who led them with steely eyes. They were all afraid. “We should have all died, in those horrible months last spring. A lifetime ago, no? We should have died already.”

Even in the dark, they could see he had a powerful physique.

“But we did not die. And I know you are all afraid of the dawn. As am I. We are fighting for our survival. For each other. Nature is coming for us in all her homicidal fury, to blot us out and send us to meet our fathers and mothers waiting for us on the other side. I will not allow myself to go so easily. She thinks she can come and take us, as she has taken millions. She thinks we will falter and stumble, that we will be swept over in a scarlet sea. Tomorrow, we will take down Agis and cleanse the scourge from within our ranks. And the day after, we will muster all our strength and steel ourselves to face the coming holocaust.”

Jaxton looked skyward, and took comfort from the white, glowing full moon. How many thousands across history had looked to that same moon in times of despair?

“We must not be afraid of the dawn, of what tomorrow will bring. The dawn will let us look our enemy in the eye when we collapse his world around him. I welcome the dawn.”

…

The wind was whipping across the parking lot when the columns began to move out under the pale light of the mid-day sun. Over a hundred of them would go. Twenty of the wounded remained in the school, now clustered around the front doors, watching the others go with the festivity of a fair. Adira could see Joseph standing there meekly, his body bandaged and broken. The columns of men and women bristled with rifles and ammunition. They chattered excitedly, as if their destination was a football game and not a killing field in the forests to the north. Adira itched her face and looked at her hands, where there was a smear of blue face paint. The others looked them oddly, but they had seen stranger things since the world ended. Jaxton turned to look at her and forced a grin, his cheeks bright blue. Agis had inquired personally about it, but they assured him it was war paint, for the battle to come.

Adira stared at Jaxton’s back as they walked. To her flanks and rear marched Liam, Wilder, Duke, and Elvis, all blue faced. Within earshot were the others they trusted. There were several friends they had made in the spring months, the first people to join them at the Citadel. All outcasts and those who resisted the tyranny of Agis advanced beside them. Adira surveyed their group, their bright blue faces resembling some hardy war band of Vikings an eon past. She did not fail to notice the quality of the weapons the police had given them. Whereas those in Agis’s favor held military grade assault rifles, clean and modern pistols, and the most powerful hunting rifles and shotguns, she held a creaking old weapon. Strapped to Jaxton’s back was a sniper rifle with a scope that didn’t work, and a broken wooden stock. It was the same all up and down the line.