August Burning (Book 2): Survival (8 page)

Liam cackled. “Yes he did. Yes he did. Typical frat-star move.”

Jaxton grinned broadly. “We had some good times, no?”

“The best times were at the pump-house. The pump palace.”

“I feel like that terminology sounds so homo-erotic. But so hilarious.” Jaxton surveyed the faded paint on the concrete wall detailing the weightlifting achievements of some particularly beastly athletes in years past. The room’s faded leather pads still stank with ingrained sweat, and all the iron was rusting lightly.

“Sometimes I feel like there’s no point to doing this, staying strong like this.”

Liam indicated the bruise on his face. “I know why I do it now.”

Jaxton sighed, scratching his beard again. “I should have been there at the start.”

Liam shook his head vigorously. “No. Fuck no. I should have handled him myself. And Terrence took it to me. Do you know how that feels, man?”

Jaxton sighed. “You know how it was when I went to school here. Shame is worse than fear. It’s more powerful than fear. At least for me. And apparently for you too.”

“I need to get back at him. In front of the others.”

Jaxton nodded, “That doesn’t sound like you. But I know. I remember shame. I fucking hate it. I hated carrying that fear. That I would fail in front of others, that others would see me backing down, or letting someone walk on top of me.” He ran his callused hands over the rough iron bar, and raised fierce steely eyes. “But we’re in a new world. We’re strong, you and I. Never let anyone shame us. Hit first, think later. Better to have others see you act, than freeze. Better people think you’re crazy, or think you’re stupid, than think you’re a coward.”

Liam opened his mouth, considering his old friend’s words, when the hand-held crackled.

Adira.

Jaxton snatched it from the musty rubber mat. “Adira, Adira try again. I didn’t understand you.” He nodded at Liam, concerned but confident. But in an instant the confidence was gone.

“Being chased! We need help! Th-“ The girl’s voice was broken up with static. But they had both heard it. Her voice was laced with panic. “Through the Cathedral!” More static. Jaxton was motionless. “Help me!” Jaxton’s eyes burned bright. “JAXTON!” Her voice sounded powerfully, on that single word.

“Adira! Adira!” There was nothing. “Fuck. Oh no. No. I need to go.”

Liam grasped his shoulder. Jaxton’s eyes were blazing and twitching with a possession. He would stop at nothing to save the girl, and until that was achieved he would heed no advice, take no precautions, and not allow anything to get in his way. Fear steered him. Liam opened his mouth, “I’m with you. Guns first.”

“Guns.” Jaxton nodded ferociously, licking his lips. They left the musty tomb of iron to the growing darkness.

Jaxton barreled through the double doors of the gymnasium, past a group playing badminton next to the four horses, blissfully unaware. Into the next room he charged, and past several barricaded entrances. Two men on guard duty shouted out in the hallways, but he didn’t hear them. Liam summoned them at once. Without question they followed. They had been cooped up in the school too long. And all knew Jaxton held Adira close. She was a muse to all the others, in her sultry mystique. They would fight for her, and for Jax.

They ran past Harley helping a girl with a fever eat cubed ham for the third time today, on a soiled cot in the cafeteria. Liam motioned to her, and she came.

The small band burst out above the fields of cold-weather vegetables and across from the dam stocked with new tiny fish. There were several ATVs still in the parking lot, and several old Jeeps and SUVs without digital chips. Jax slammed on the hood of one. “We’ll take this! Let’s move! Gas! GAS!”

He dismounted frantically, searching the little arches of the field house for the containers of siphoned fuel. The others joined, matching his growing frenzy.

A woman came around the corner, wiping fish guts from her dry hands. She spoke softly and calmly, to Jaxton’s infuriation. “It’s gone.”

“Huh! Where’s the fucking gas!” Jaxton screeched, the veins on his neck bulging.

The woman kept wiping, intent on removing the eggs from under her fingernails. “He took it,” she said softly. Jaxton drew up on her, inches from her face, his eyes bulging. Liam raced forward.

“Terrence took the gasoline.” Bennett rounded the corner, his arms holding three rifles like kindling. Leeroy and Joseph flanked him, armed and with firebrands to illuminate the growing dark. The woman with fish guts frowned and opened her mouth but was shoved aside before she could speak.

“Bennett. What? Bennett we need the gas. Adira. The others. They’re in trouble.”

“We heard on our radio. The gas is gone. Terrence has it. I don’t know where he went. We’re coming with you.”

Jaxton ran his hands through his hair, “I’m going to kill him. I swear to God.”

Liam felt himself tugged outside the ring of bewildered people, noting with tenderness the way Harley tied her ponytail. She spoke softly, but urgently to him. “Jax is losing his mind. We need to get the group moving. Is there another way?”

Liam racked his mind, hearing the panic of Adira’s voice ringing in his ears. He couldn’t think.

Harley remained calm, and answered her own question. “The horses.”

Liam strode into the center of the group, once again the bear. “The gym! We take the horses!”

As one they were running, limbs pumping in frenzy. The panic was spreading. Their leader wasn’t himself. It made them all nervous. Jaxton would still lead the charge however, his jaw clicking and his breath visible in the brisk evening air.

…

Liam tightened his meaty thighs around the cantering beast. Its worn hooves clattered on the asphalt as he clung, petrified, to its thick brown mane in the night air. There had been no time to affix the saddles they had taken back. Harley held on for dear life behind him, bareback.

It was clear Jaxton had little idea how to ride a horse. Somehow, through his ferocity, the muscled animal was willed in the right direction. He rode bareback, thumping his heavy hiking boots into the animal’s ribcage so hard Liam winced. To steer, he yanked the mane to a chorus of protesting neighs and whineys. The other beasts seemed to take its lead, to follow where Jaxton’s horse went. Liam was sure Jaxton would ride the animal into the ground before giving up. Leeroy and Joseph shared another, a sandy colored roan that had never moved so fast in its entire life. Bennett rode the last.

The group clattered past the general store and skirted around a silent traffic jam of several modern vehicles. He could barely see. The moonlight offered a pale glimpse of their direction, though Liam couldn’t make out any detail in the forests to their flanks. Again and again, he forced himself to stop contemplating how big a meal the horses would be for the infected. They had had no choice.

Bearded, with spittle flying from his wretched grimace, Jaxton led them on a mad dash in the moonlight. The horses tore around another bend in the winding road. To their left, the steel factory sat inert and towering in the trees, a great metal affront to nature. Its mighty columns blocked out the stars above. It had already been twenty minutes since the radio call. Surely they were too late?

They went on, deeper into the backwoods, past cold gas stations and little shops that once promised psychic readings for a cool $5. Into the Cathedral. Liam felt his skin prickle. A lonely half-mile stretch of road flanked by densely packed great willow trees, its boughs having grown over the road in a hundred years. There was no moonlight inside. The trees swayed in the soft breeze, ominously crowding them from above. Liam could only urge his struggling mare forward to the sound of Jaxton’s exertions ahead. Then they were out, into a wave of colder, paler air.

There were the cars, and the ATV. A field of waist-high dead wheat grass extended across a lonely dirt road in front of them. Jaxton dismounted in the dark, alarmed to hear nothing but grass, swaying in the starlight. He mounted the minivan and screamed. “ADIRA!”

“Fuck,” Leeroy muttered at the noise. He adjusted his strap and brought his rifle to bear, beady eyes scanning the darkness. Harley shivered, so Liam went to her.

“Where are is the trailer park?”

Bennett indicated the field. “Just beyond that. It’s pretty high, past the waist in places. Where did she say they last were?”

“I have no idea. I couldn’t hear.” Jaxton paused, before launching himself into the tickling grass at the quick step.

“Someone needs to watch the horses.”

“I’ll stay. Harley, go with them please,” Liam whispered. He thought he saw Bennett staring him down, in a show of condescension that was visible even in the moonlight.

Harley clasped him close quickly, so small against his bear-like frame. She followed the others, disappearing into the grass. Liam frowned to himself. The horses were the biggest targets for any infected nearby. He would be damned if he put her in that position. And despite himself, he felt anger boiling- did they think he was being a coward?

A bird, floating lazily overheard, saw five black shadows parting the grass in tiny waves.

Jaxton felt his mind would burst as he stumbled through the grass. He could scarcely contemplate the failure that he feared lay before him. He had to find her. Fuck the others. If she was alive and they were dead, he would take that. He could see a tree-line in the distance, looming above the field. Picking up into a run, he nearly ran Duke over in the tall grass. Someone screamed, hoarse and bone-chilling… it resonated over the desolate plain.

Wilder hissed hysterically, fresh tears streaming down his pale face as he crouched. The grass was flattened in a small circle. There was Duke, shaking and trying to bury himself beneath the grass. There was Tessa, lying in a pool of dark wetness, with motionless eyes. Her neck was hacked to the spinal column, which was eerily shone white in the pale light. And there was Adira, her breast heaving and her lips trembling. Jaxton collapsed on top of her, and she wailed in a desperate thanksgiving.

The others broke into the clearing. Leeroy puked when he saw the dead girl. Joseph dropped to his knees, his breath ragged and short. He drew back his bowstring, so the razor-tipped arrowhead was quivering as it pointed at the tall stalks of grass. Harley stood at the edge, with blank eyes, gripping her shotgun.

Jaxton was crying too. “Where are
they?
” He scratched out through the tears, holding Adira to his chest.

Wilder could barely speak. He was hyperventilating. Jaxton cuffed him on the side of the head, hard. “
Where
?”

Wilder shrieked, his hands sticky with the dark liquid that pooled and made the matted grass spongy.

“Where’s Elvis?” Harley said.

They looked around. He was not in the circle. “Where is Elvis?!” She sounded off, more shrill this time.

Duke sat up. His rifle was still smoking in the chilly breeze. “He lead them away.”

“He ran?”

Adira spoke in muffled tones. “He sacrificed himself, so we could hide.”

“We need to watch the grass.” Bennett whispered. Joseph and Leeroy responded, weapons at the ready. Harley eyed Bennett up. She didn’t like his measured calm. Did he not see the girl lying in a pool of her own blood? Wilder pressed his scarlet hands to Tessa’s inert neck once more, as if to stop the bleeding.

“Elvis?”

They spun to see what Jaxton was looking at. There was a set of eyes, almost hidden among the reeds, shining at them. Someone was crouching not ten feet away, in the grass.

“KILL IT!” Wilder shrieked. Adira trembled, stammering over her words. Duke backpedaled, and ran.

Four guns were brought to bear.  Jaxton rose, placing Adira behind him. “
Elvis?” He asked, his voice shaking as well.

Wilder snatched Duke’s rifle from the bed of grass. It was still hot. He groaned in terror and squeezed the trigger, snapping the brisk air with a sonic boom. Target hit. There was a scream that wailed and echoed across the field.

Bennett craned on his toes, scanning the high-grass. “Something’s coming. Five. Six. Eight. They’re coming, fast.”

“GO!” Adira screamed. They left Tessa to rot on a carpet of scarlet.

Chapter Seven