August Burning (Book 3): Last Stand

AUGUST BURNING: Last Stand

By Tyler Lahey

Copyright © 2016 Tyler Lahey

All rights reserved

Table of Contents

Chapter One
      
2

Chapter Two
      
8

Chapter Three
      
14

Chapter Four
      
19

Chapter Five
      
26

Chapter Six
      
28

Chapter Seven
      
36

Chapter Eight
      
46

Chapter Nine
      
59

Chapter Ten
      
69

Chapter Eleven
      
81

Chapter Twelve
      
93

Epilogue
      
103

Chapter One

Cold Spring, Appalachia. 440 days after Outbreak, August.

Kill the traitors. That had been his directive. He would see it done, and the cicadas would cover their approach.

Troy snapped his head back, to the eastern sky. It was still pitch black. Good. “Faster,” he snarled. The three boats began to glide across the surface of the lake, the algae-covered oars dipping into the murky waters.

The forest was a living thing, its dark boughs filled with the chirping of tiny buzzing insects. Troy could see the shore closing in ahead, its steep wooded slope sparkling with lazily floating fireflies.

They had to be quick.

Troy checked his kneepads and helmet, feeling the sweat collecting under his camouflage. They had done this a dozen times before, but it never got any easier. Troy rocked forward, and nearly lost his grip on the M4 assault rifle as the boat ground up on the lakebed. “Damnit,” he cursed under his breath. “Move!”

His team leapt off the metal rowboats and felt their boots scrape against the rocky shore. There was the tree line. No one moved.

Troy looked around him, and saw eight sets of eyes, all looking to him for the command.

“Troy?” Wilder was staring at him, two orbs of white in a paste of black face paint. Troy could see the sweat dripping down his face in the moonlight.

“Remind me again why we do this?” Troy asked.

His men chuckled darkly around him, but only Wilder stepped forward on the rocky shore. He tapped an Eagle insignia sewn into his camouflage, visible in the moonlight.

Troy shook his head and smiled, fighting to overcome his nerves. “How could I forget? We have a reputation to uphold. Are all of you men proud to be part of the Eagle?”

All eight clasped their right fist to their breast, in a silent salute.

Troy nodded, steeling himself. He flicked off the safety on his rifle. “Then follow me.”

…

The mansion loomed ahead. Troy could see a structure, made of brick and ornate, rusted iron. The mansion resembled a turn-of-the-century steel tycoon’s summer retreat, a massive five story fortress surrounded by unkempt gardens and broken stone fountains. It was here the renegades had taken shelter. They could not be allowed to live.

The Eagle raced up the steep wooded slope in the darkness, the sounds of their footsteps masked by the forest. Troy saw the towers and spires of the looming structure peering through the trees.

“How big is this fucking place?” Wilder muttered.

Suddenly the apparitions were in the open, nine shadows moving across an unkempt field littered with broken imitation statues of the Caesars. The tycoon had had a taste for the gaudy. Troy’s men advanced up a dry waterbed, a concrete fountain system that had run dry for a century. Hedges grew wild at their flanks.

Troy spun on his heel and raised his weapon. Shadows in the dark. Deer. He exhaled, watching the furry family bound across the tree line.

“Keep moving. Let’s find an entry.”

They advanced closer to the brick and stone beast, till they were pressing up against the base of its mammoth five story structure. Troy strained to see past the moth-eaten white curtains inside the windows. The moonlight revealed rich wooden walls inside.

Troy’s men were spread out, all facing different directions in the overgrown garden. Their rifles scanned the broken colonnades and little pools endlessly. Troy had chosen well. His were highly trained, the best to come out of the Citadel; the Eagle was the most elite unit in the valley.

Only Wilder remained at Troy’s side, his black paint hiding a boyish face. “What was this place?”

“It’s been abandoned for a hundred years. Some fat cat’s forest getaway in the age of steel and oil. Turn of the century stuff. We used to come here as kids, and explore.”

“What’s inside?”

“Mostly empty rooms, with ornate staircases and broken light fixtures. But it is massive. A dozen fireplaces, multiple basement levels that they carved into the bedrock. We need to be careful. The traitors could be anywhere.”

Wilder stiffened, suddenly aware of the structure’s danger. “Where did Duke say they would be?”

“He had to stop meeting with me. Said the traitors were getting suspicious of him. All I know, is that there are seven of them.”

“Right. Just give the word, Lt.”

Troy tightened his helmet strap, and turned the corner. The team skirted around an empty reflecting pool flanked by massive oak trees. They moved silently, rifles at the ready, with jet-black silencers extending six inches beyond the end of the barrels.

“Lt,” one of his men whispered hoarsely. He indicated a massive set of wooden and wrought iron doors set back into the brick. Troy frowned. Could it really be that easy? The left door was ajar two inches. Troy advanced slowly up the staircase, and paused before the door, his hand extended. Why was the front door open? He prepared to open the door when his instincts revolted. Something was off, something wasn’t right.

Troy took several steps back, silently. He signaled his team to swing back around the mansion, to the servant’s quarters. “Something isn’t right.”

“Did you see someone?” Wilder demanded.

“No. We’re not going through the front. There’s a plumbing entrance. Follow me.”

The team moved quickly across stalks of high grass that tickled their torsos, and through a system of rotting wooden stables. Troy could see a metal panel in the middle of a stone cobble driveway, tucked around the back of the estate. It was illuminated, more than it should have been. He cursed. The sun was rising in the east, casting the forest around him in a sickly grey color.

Troy signaled towards the metal grate. Without hesitation his men removed it. Troy dropped down first, having know the place as a boy. His men followed, the trust in their commander absolute. “Torch,” he ordered.

One of his men clicked on a single lamp, powered by the final batteries in the valley. The nine men stood in the belly of a subterranean boiler system, surrounded by massive rusting metal structures. Water dripped on Troy’s weapon as he scanned the shadows around the old tanks. The air stank of mold and rust. “On me.”

The team moved deeper into basement, leaving their exit behind. They advanced past a metal grate hand elevator, used by servants a century past.

“Kill the torch.” Troy led them up the narrow servant’s staircase, into a silent kitchen. There had been a whisper of inspiration, a touch of instinct when Troy neared the front door. He was operating now entirely based on that instinct, as he had learned to do. Leading his men, he emerged onto the second floor. Suddenly, he paused. The granite floors ended before him. From here on out, it was old, noisy wood. They would hear his men coming.
      

Wilder drew up beside him, and saw the same, “If we choose to move now, we can’t stop.”

Troy nodded slightly, “I know. Move,” he ordered.

Then they were jogging, as quietly as they could manage. The echoes of their footsteps reverberated around the stone fixtures and fine mahogany walls. Troy was at the front, his eyes now adjusting to the pale light that faded in from between the moth eaten drapes. This was the time to strike. His enemy would be confused.

“James?” He heard a voice whisper. Here was the foe.

A bleary eyed ruffian with a huge potbelly stumbled out of a bedroom to Troy’s right. Troy could see the shock on his eyes for half a second before his forehead exploded. One.

“Right side,” Troy barked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two of his own men peel off and enter the room. He heard a metallic thud, and desperately wished silencers worked better on rifles. Two.

They still had the advantage. The mansion was ill defended; the traitors had not expected a night assault.
Fools.

Troy’s team swept room-by-room, finding jewels and trinkets the traitors had stashed in various drawing rooms in oaken closets. These, Troy ignored with disgust.

There was shouting ahead, and below them. Troy passed another stone staircase, and heard the panic drifting up from the lower levels.

Troy saw a flicker of motion on the left. He felt the shift in his formation as his men noticed the same and moved to adjust. As they passed close to the door, a half naked woman drunkenly jumped out wielding a metal baseball bat. She was dead before she hit the floor. Three.

Troy sent Wilder with three men down the stairs, and led the rest of his team forward towards the front of the house on the second level. They emerged silently onto an interior balcony, set above the main entryway. There was a barricade below them, a lazily strung together wall of old tables and cabinets; it surrounded the front door, which was still ajar. Troy could see three men now on the barricade, desperately torn between defending the trap they had created for the front door and the sounds now developing to their rear. They shouted endlessly, their voices laced with panic and completely oblivious to the threat above them. In the flickering torchlight, Troy saw a figure he recognized, bound and gagged behind the barricade. A portly woman held a butchers cleaver to Duke’s throat. So the traitors had discovered the rat in their midst, and had sought to draw his own men in the front door for a massacre.

Troy shook his head, and almost laughed. Raising his rifle, he took careful aim. It was a far shot, and the woman was swaying with fear. He wouldn’t risk it. Dropping his barrel a hair, he put two rounds in her bloated chest. Four.

The stone railing exploded in front of Troy, and he felt the fragments tear into his gear. Reeling back, he shook his head in disbelief. “They weren’t supposed to have any guns.” He took a look at his own rifle, smoking where some of the buckshot had destroyed his M4, one of nine still working in the valley.

Peeking over the edge, he spied the culprit. One of the men below was busy stuffing two more slugs into a double-barreled hunting shotgun. “Cover me,” he ordered, and leapt over the edge of the balcony. Landing cleanly on the dirty marble floor, Troy drew his sidearm and advanced. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw two figures raise wood-axes and move to intercept him. They were ten feet from him, Troy estimated. Before they had taken two steps, both stumbled and slid across the floor, crimson spraying from their entry wounds. Five and Six.