August Burning (Book 3): Last Stand

by Lahey, Tyler

  Liam felt the shudder as the cart stopped once more, and he locked eyes with Jaxton.

  Running to the back of the cart, Liam launched his foot into two of his own men, one after the other. They tumbled off the cart, and struck the pavement hard outside the Lion’s wall.

  “LIAM!” Jaxton screamed.

  Liam ignored his friend’s cries, set his jaw, and squeezed the trigger of his shotgun, exploding his compatriot’s calf. Within a second the other survivor was screaming in pain as well, immobilized.

  “What the fuck is he doing!?”

  Jaxton’s mouth quivered in horror. “He’s leaving them as bait.”

  Jaxton was shaken out of his own horror as the column began to collapse inward, the Lion driven back into a struggling mass of men that fought in the immediate shadow of the cart. Jaxton looked to the front, and screamed out, his voice hoarse, “Abandon the rear! Troopers to the front! Cut the path forward!”

  Seven troopers from the back of the line began to shift, their eyes showing more horror at Liam than the infected. Stronger men than Liam, they pushed and shoved to the front, knowing the fate of the entire company fell to them and their axes. At the quick step they fell into combat, hacking through the collecting wall of infected.

  Jaxton mounted the cart, and looked to the rear. Liam was standing, in the middle of the road. His two squealing compatriots were to either side of him, writhing in pain. The entire focus of the infected in that sector now surged to him. Liam’s shotgun hung loosely at his side. He leaned down, transfixed. “Cassidy, is that you?”

  “What did you do to me!?” The girl at his feet screamed.

  Liam’s hands began to shake uncontrollably, and he reached down gently towards his fellows. They screamed and writhed away from him on the hot blacktop.

  “What have I done?!” His hands flew to his hair, and he stumbled away from them even as the infected began to swarm.

  The infected fell upon the wounded survivors with a frenzy.

  Jaxton felt the cart lurch, and its forward pace resumed, now possible with the reinforcements from the rear. Jaxton stood motionless as Liam stumbled and fell twenty feet behind the convoy. He could see his friend struggling to rise through a haze of limbs and axes.

  Jaxton looked to the fore, and saw the path clear slightly. The wagon snapped forward, rolling down the road. The Citadel was not far. But Liam was fifty feet away, a single man standing against the tide of savage predators. In the summer haze he tried to sprint to safety, his eyes streaming with tears and his limbs shaking. Realizing he was too far, Jaxton saw him raise his shotgun and fire wildly. The infected pushed closer, till they breached the mist of smoke surrounding his scorching weapon. Jaxton saw him wield his shotgun like a club and wailing, battering away those closest to him. And then he was lost in a tide of the foe. Still the cart moved forward.

  Through the trees in the distance, Jaxton could see the red bricks of his old high school; the Citadel was not far.

  The Citadel

  Jaxton tried to shut out the snarling moans. It was futile. They came from five thousand lips; it produced a constant, ceaseless drone that continued through the night.

  Jaxton peered over the edge, and found a wall of them ten feet thick clawing at the bricks. They looked up, spotting him, and their incessant moaning increased in its pitch.

  He threw a brick down, and it shattered one of their faces. His target fell underneath a stampede of feet and was lost.

  Liam was dead. Jaxton looked up as the night deepened across the valley, and he chuckled at his own numbness. Then he shuddered and wept, and shot a glance over his shoulder to make sure he was alone on the rooftop.

  Wiping his tears, he considered what he knew. Two hundred and twenty survivors were either missing or dead outside the Citadel. Every settlement save the mother colony had been overrun and destroyed. There remained a paltry seventy survivors alive inside the Citadel, most of whom were too frightened to move from their rooms.

  “So this is what the end feels like,” he said to himself.

  He knew Adira had left to go warn him, to try and rescue him from the hordes of infected. She had never made it back, along with Bennett, and Joseph. Wilder still had not returned. Logically, he knew they were almost certainly dead, or would be soon. But by his nature, he secretly believed it was impossible for that to be so. Maybe they would escape the valley, and find a new home west.

  Jaxton would not be there to join them.

  He drew his pistol and fired a few times into the crowd that now surrounded the school in a seething mob. Even if he wanted to go search, it would be impossible to get out.

  “Jax.”

  “How did you get up here?”

  Troy swayed, and stumbled onto the roof. One of his wooden crutches lay under him in splintered wooden pieces. “Not easily,” he groaned.

  Jaxton didn’t move to help his friend. He watched him struggle instead.

  “I heard what happened.”

  “It was disgusting,” Jaxton mumbled. He felt Troy sit down beside him.

  “He panicked?”

  “Of course he panicked. We were all panicking.”

  Troy tossed another loose brick off into the seething crowd three stories below them. “Tell me.”

  Jaxton sighed harshly, and wiped away his own tears. “It will destroy your memory of him, forever. I can’t.”

  “I won’t be alive much longer to cherish it, anyways. I have to know. What kind of man he was. I need to know.”

  “I could see him starting to panic. First, he stopped giving orders. Then he stopped shooting his weapon, and just stood there on the top of the cart, his eyes just scanning the carnage endlessly. I heard the screaming, even above all that slaughter. When I looked back again, he had kicked two of his own off the back of the cart.” Jaxton tossed his pistol off the roof, and continued. “Shot them. I guess to try and draw away the infected and save us.”

  “Save himself,” Troy corrected him.

  “And then I think he realized what he had done. He realized he knew those people, and he got off the cart. Even as the infected got closer, he didn’t even see them. It was a total reversal. Liam went to the girl and the guy he had shot, and he stood over them, just staring again. The convoy had moved forty feet by now. There were dozens of infected between us and him. He started to fight at the very end, as they closed in around him. I think he finally realized what he had done.”

  “So our friend deserved to die,” Troy said.

  “I don’t know. Did he?”

  Troy was silent. Jaxton saw the sweat breaking out on his brow, despite the cool summer air. “You don’t look good.”

  “No,” Troy smiled, “I don’t. My leg hurts.”

  “One minute. Sixty seconds of something changed my opinion of Liam forever. Erased a lifetime of memories, emotions, experiences. Growing up together, in this fucking building. But if I die tonight or in forty years, today is all I’ll ever remember.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t for his odd mix of weakness and fear, all of you would have died out there today. It allowed you guys to make the final push to these doors, didn’t it?”

  Jaxton considered briefly. “Yes, because they were probably eating him and the others alive.”

  Troy licked his lips absent-mindedly. “I’m hungry.”

  “Do you not care?” Jaxton demanded.

  As he massaged his festering leg, Troy looked skywards. “I’ve seen two dozen people I’ve truly cared about die in this past year. Two dozen. You get to a point where it’s just like, why bother putting yourself through that?”

  “So it’s a choice for you.”

  “It’s not really a choice. Fate made the choice for me, when the infected ate half my platoon in the capital, when I lost friends I had made along the road, when Liam died today.”

  “What if he’s out there, right now?”

  “Who? Liam?”

  Jaxton nodded.

  “I’m sure he is. He’s pro
bably one of these, right here below us, just dying to eat us. And I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him. Don’t waste time mourning the dead, Jaxton. They certainly aren’t thinking about us.”

  “What if there’s an afterlife, and the infected are stuck in limbo?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if Liam’s soul is stuck here, because he’s infected. I mean, they have to retain some of their original…qualities, right? It’s not like Liam died and came back to life infected. He was infected while alive, just like everyone else. It’s a disease without a cure.”

  “So what are you guna do, save him? Find him and save his soul?”

  “Fuck you, Troy.”

  Troy chuckled darkly. “I’ve seen hints of a savage in you at times this past year, but it’s never come full circle.”

  Jaxton poked a bloodstain in Troy’s camouflage aggressively. “I think you’ll die too.”

  Troy winced, and then forced a smile back on his face. He was still sweating. “You won’t have to save my soul Jaxton. I’ll kill myself if the infected get too close. So what’s the plan now? Now, at the end of it all?”

  There was a roar in the night.

  Jaxton shook, hearing something above the moans. Yes, there it was again. His pulse quickened, and his eyes strained in the darkness. “Troy, do you hear that?” The driveway was illuminated in a flash and two trucks came rushing up the drive.

  “Fucking hell, hey! Hey!!!” He rose and waved his arms.

  The two jeeps rolled past at high speeds, circling in the parking lot. Each one had a figure standing in the sunroof, firing a rifle. Wilder’s head stuck out of the driver’s side door. “ROPE!” He screamed.

  The Jeep whipped around, slammed into a pack of zombies and continued to loop around the parking lot, evading strays or crushing them under the squealing wheels.

  “Rope. Rope. Rope!” Jaxton stammered to himself. He ran back to the ladder and banged on it. “We need help! Is anyone down there?!”

  Billy appeared. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  “Two trucks outside, survivors! I think they’re guna try and climb the wall! Get some fucking rope and get some men up here, lets move!”

  Jaxton sprinted past a struggling Troy to the music wing’s roof, where the roof was barely ten feet off the ground. The heady roar from the Jeeps was beginning to interest the massed groups of zombies clawing at the brick walls. In twos and threes they peeled off and began to pursue the trucks around the parking lot.

  “Hold it here!”

  Billy emerged from the hatch with several other survivors and flung a length of worn rope down to the ground below. He signaled five of his followers to grip it from atop the roof.

  “You only brought one!?”

  Billy looked to Jaxton, exasperated. “I had no damn time! Get one of the trucks over here now!”

  Jaxton advanced to the lip and waved his arms frantically, catching one of the driver’s attentions.

  The vehicle surged forward in the night, striking two more infected and sending their crumpled bodies to the sides. The vehicle launched up onto the sidewalk and came hurtling towards the wall. The infected followed, nearly fifty strong now.

  Skidding to a halt just below the wall, the first pair of hands emerged from the sunroof and clutched the rope.

  “PULL!” Jaxton screamed.

  The team of survivors responded with vigor, yanking the woman up the brick wall till she could clamber up the final inches.

  Jaxton tried to smile, but it was not Adira. The rope team repeated the process three more times as the infected surrounded the vehicle. Billy and two others began picking them off with pistols that snapped in the clear air; the foe’s bodies tumbling from the running boards.

  Bennett came up last. Jaxton gripped him by the jacket. “Adira?” He asked, his voice strained.

  Bennett glanced backwards, wide eyed, and pointed at the second Jeep, now hurtling through a mass of infected.

  “Move the rope over! Hey! Come on! Come on!” Jaxton cried.

  The Jeep tried to turn, but its wheel well was stuffed with an infected’s corpse, which had gotten jammed above the wheel. The driver swung a hard right, thinking there was something in front blocking him, but the vehicle tipped. With a crash it slammed down on its side, stranded fifty feet from the wall.

  Without thinking Jaxton extended his hands. “Pistols. Now.” Billy and two others slapped two sidearms into his hands and several extra magazines. “Cover me,” he ordered.

  Jaxton slid down the rope, and felt his boots sink into the mulch. There was a thud beside him, and he saw Bennett was with him. The two made blistering eye contact.

  “Make for the truck.”

  The pair took of sprinting, their long legs pumping furiously, racing to the overturned vehicle before the infected had a chance to swarm it.

  Jaxton reached it and mounted the hood from the side, seeking to open one of the doors now facing the sky. He ripped open the door and stuck his clammy hand inside, expecting the worst.

  It was gripped, firmly. Wrenching upwards, he saw a familiar face. Adira clutched him by the shoulders, and there was shared ecstasy. The fragile moment was shattered by gunfire. Bennett stood atop the overturned hood, his dual pistols snapping back again and again. The infected tumbled and fell all around them, struck by hot lead.

  “Help me!” Adira screamed.

  Together they pulled two others out of the wreck. Wilder came out roaring. Joseph came up last, his eyes wild.

  “We gotta move!” Bennett roared. One of the pistols clattered to the pavement as Bennett fumbled attempting a reload. Jaxton leapt down beside him, and took stock of the situation. They had fifty feet of ground to cover, and it was littered with the infected, which were now hurtling towards them in a mass.

  Like an apparition from the heavens, two dozen figures appeared on the roof, outlined against the starlight. Jaxton could see the muzzle flashes, and the infected began to fall.

  Jaxton gripped Adira’s hand, and he nodded to Bennett and the other survivors. They sprinted. The infected recoiled in bloody mists as the rounds took them off their feet. The snipers atop the roof were paving a way forward, thinning the herd. Jaxton and Bennett ran with their sidearm’s to the fore, snapping back with recoil. Then they were at the ropes, and the survivors were climbing.

  Jaxton and Bennett did an about face, and tried to hold off the foe. One got too close, and Jaxton shuddered at its stench. Bennett drove a steel-toed boot into his abdomen and it broke free on the other side.

  Jaxton heard shouting from above, and he screamed. “GO!”

  Bennett fired three more rounds, and he hissed. “Not a chance.”

  Cursing, Jaxton mounted the rope and felt his weight being yanked upwards. Bennett came last, and as he stumbled up onto the roof, a mass of infected slammed into the brick wall below, furious at having been denied their prize.

  The survivors above collapsed to their knees around each other. There were no cheers, and no exultation. They clutched friends they had never expected to see again.

  Bennett looked to Adira and Jaxton, who now clutched each other in the throes of rapture. A smile came unbidden to him, and he breathed deeply in relief. He felt a clap on the shoulder, and turned to see an unlikely set of faces. Wilder and Joseph stood beside him, smiles etched in their exhausted and gaunt faces. They nodded to each other, too overwhelmed to speak.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Citadel

  In any other circumstances, they would have stood. But none had eaten in the past day, so they sat. Under the metal rafters Jaxton mounted the bleachers. He stared at them. Their tired, dirty, hopeless faces stared back at him, nearly one hundred of them. What they wanted to hear, Jaxton knew. He knew they wanted to hear a plan of action, some ingenious diversion that would allow the others to escape. He drew his breath, and saw Adira give him a slight nod of encouragement from the crowd.

  “The Citadel is completely surrounded. Every
possible exit, covered by hundreds of infected. They form a ring outside the walls, drawn by our bodies, which they are desperate to devour. More come in every hour, I have seen it. By dawn, there will be thousands.” He paused to let the reality sink in among his comrades.

  “We have no vehicles. We are down to one day’s supply of food. We are down to several hundred rounds of ammunition. The barricades….the barricades are being pressed even as we speak. I fear that in the press, in the relentless press of their thousands, at some point one of the doors will break open. At that point, there will be nothing left for us.”

  The crowd had its faces on the ground, or staring absently into space. Only his friends maintained his gaze. He saw Adira, Bennett, Duke, Wilder and Troy. There were others, whom he had grown to respect. Billy, Annabelle, Joseph, Kylie. Only they were able to meet his gaze evenly.

  “If you seek to deny the reality which now confronts us, I will take that away from you. I will not allow us to be drawn into the delusion of mad hope. There is no one coming, to save us. We are all going to die here.”

  He heard a high-pitched wailing in the back of the gymnasium and forced himself to continue. Though several seated on the cool wood were even more crestfallen than before, he could see he had the attention of several more. They had been expecting a grandiose speech on hope, but now that he had proved he would entertain no such delusions, some met him with steely eyes and trembling lips.

  To these survivors, the realists and dreamers among them, he preached.

  “Sooner or later, the infected will create a breach in one of the barricades. And when they do, they will pour into the Citadel, spreading on every level. No matter what we do, they will enter, and they will hunt us down.”

  “There remains one final aspect we can control, each one of us can control. It falls to us to determine how we will go out. We have seven hundred rounds of ammunition for the firearms, several riot shields, spears, axes, mauls, and armor. We have the Lion, the Bear, the Destrier….we have men and women of strong flesh and hot blood. What more can we ask for, at such a time?”