August Burning (Book 2): Survival

by Tyler Lahey

  Jaxton advanced through the hail of gunfire as the wall of beta-infected reached the firing line with their hand-weapons. They swarmed the black officers even as they were shot from all sides, metal poles rising and falling with the vicious application of unbound violence. Jaxton snatched up a metal hatchet at the sprint, his furiously pumping limbs carrying him across that field in the blink of an eye. He could see dozens of survivors running away, across the field. Others advanced to support the officers, while his blue-faced allies fell upon the stragglers in furious hand-to-hand combat.

  The infected man swept aside Adira’s arms for the last time and leaned down, his mouth ajar and trembling with anticipation. Adira wailed and hammered at his face with her gloved hands, to no avail.

  Jaxton was too far. He could see her defenses were swept aside, and he raised the hand-axe, already dripping with scarlet. In a supreme effort of will, he launched the axe like a warhead through the cold air.

  Adira closed her eyes as the flashing teeth drew near, and then heard a crunch. She saw a metal head explode through the front of the infected’s skull, and he collapsed on top of Adira’s shaking form.

  The corpse was flung off of her, landing several feet away in the red snow. Jaxton was there. He wrenched her off the ground so hard she feared her shoulder would pop of its socket, and shoved her forward. “RUN!” Bullets kicked up snow to their left and right.

  Elvis could see Agis’s men grappling with his blue-faced allies in the center of the melee, hammering into each other’s bodies with gloved hands and straining to gain purchase on a weapon. Two attempted to charge Agis and his bodyguards, but were cut down in a barrage of lead. Elvis sprinted to the nearest corpse and snatched up a loaded pistol. Lying down, he felt its retort he squeezed the trigger again and again.

  “ELVIS!” A voice cried, shrill on the air. Wilder and Duke were caught in a savage dance with two beta-infected who had turned. Elvis rose, and got the pair in his sights. His next shot tore through an infected woman’s blistering face, spraying the snow. He adjusted to fire again, when he felt a punch slam into his shoulder, knocking him back. He turned, stunned, to see who his attacker had been able to generate such force. There was no one. He looked down, and then felt a wave of blood pumping out of his skin, where the shoulder met the chest. He had been shot. That was odd. Then the pain hit him in successive waves. Elvis screamed and dropped to his knees.

  …

  “NEED A MAGAZINE!” Bennett screamed, as he heard his rifle click empty. The beta-infected were driving them back with their hatchets, hacking into the men as nervous shots scampered left and right of their targets. Bennett could see his fellows writhing on the ground, clutching open wounds on their torsos and legs. One man’s leg had been sheared off clean at the knee, and Bennett thought the sight of white bone would make him puke.

  He felt a pressure on his shoulder, and he found himself face to face with Agis, grim and steely eyed. “Take it,” he growled.

  Bennett slammed the full clip into the weapon and pressed his thumb down on the bolt catch, careful not to get his finger caught in the weapon’s metal receiver as it slammed forward. He saw a blue faced woman taking pot-shots at another officer, too busy grappling with a great burly infected. She was in his sights, a mere fifty feet away across the snowy plain. Bennett shook his head visibly and got a beta-infected in his sights instead. Three of his rounds cascaded through the beefy man’s swollen chest and sent him tumbling backwards.

  The field was chaos. The officers and their supporters in black had been driven back a hundred feet across the field, pursued by the relentless advance of the infected. Bennett could see the blue-faced survivors, at a distance near the factory, firing rifles and pistols they had snatched up from the frozen turf. Newly turned alpha infected were raging all over the field, attacking anyone in sight.

  Bennett swept his gaze across the tapestry as the storm above ground to a silent halt. The dead and dying were everywhere, his allies and his enemies writhing about in puddles of their own frozen entrails. He looked behind him, to where Layla and the others had fled at the first sign of trouble. There were two dozen of them, streaking back towards the forest, and the Cathedral.

  Through a haze, Bennett saw Agis struggling to organize his men as the infected staggered and fell within their ranks. A heavily armored man in black yanked off his helmet as his pistol clicked empty and used it to bludgeon the next two who came at him. It smashed into the skull of a woman, crushing it into paste with a sickening crunch. The next, he elbowed in the face with a bellow. But the third sunk her decaying canines through the heavy pants and into sweaty flesh. With a roar, the officer collapsed his attacker’s eye socket with the butt of his pistol.

  Bennett fired off another string of rounds at an approaching pack, and turned to see Agis draw his pistol and in the same fluid motion send a round bursting into his officer’s already infected brain.

  Agis pointed, and his cronies snarled with their weapons raised. Harley’s face was set in stone as she raised her own rifle, her lips trembling with the intensity of her decision. Bennett could scarcely make out the group that was huddling in the snow a hundred feet away, still in the shadow of the factory. His senses revolted. It was his friends, all in one group. They were lifting up Elvis, his blue face straining with pain. Adira and Liam propped him up by the shoulders, as Jaxton, Wilder, and Duke scanned the field, oblivious to the men that now targeted them in the swirling chaos.

  …

  “It’s not so fucking bad,” Elvis growled as he got to his feet. He tried to move his arm and howled in pain, his eyes welling with eager tears. “Ok, ok, ok, ok,” he whispered with his eyes clenched tight. “It’s pretty bad.”

  Jaxton spun around, looking to the tree line, thick with brambles and boulders. “Did you shoot the flare?!” He demanded. Elvis nodded.

  Jaxton could barely make out what was going on upon the field before him. There was fighting everywhere, and the cracks and rolls of gunfire still hammered his ears. “God, no,” he whispered. There was a small band in all black, their faces covered and helmeted, and Jaxton could look down their smoking barrels as they faced him, those messengers of death. There were too many of them, at a distance of a hundred feet.

  Without thinking he stood in front of Adira, who clawed at his shoulders in confusion. The others stood, wide eyed, at his shoulders. Elvis would never make it, wounded as he was. He saw the threat at the same time, as he saw his friends remained motionless, facing down those pale demons in black. “Go! Go now!” He screamed. “Get away from here!” His voice was hoarse with dread.

  No one moved.

  And then, their savior moved with sudden kinetic violence. A man in black hammered the closest figure next to him in the face, sending him to his knees. Their redeemer pressed his barrel against the officer’s chest and fired twice. The others turned, and Jaxton could see Agis, screaming with red-faced rage. Harley spun with a flick of auburn hair, her eyes wide with terror.

  Bennett fired again, striking Agis in the stomach.

  Without speaking Jaxton’s group split and sprinted across the field, moving fast for the nearest weapons. Then Agis’s cronies opened up, rifles rocking back against their shoulders.

  Jaxton saw the snow peppering in front of him as he moved closer to a lonely rifle in the snow. His lungs strained with the effort, and his heart was hammering in his head. Where was Adira now?

  A steady thunder rolled across the frosty field of death, popping and snapping with intoxicating rhythm. The trees came alive. Masters of death were among them, and their vengeance was at hand. The revenants stormed out of the thick brambles astride the factory, their weapons smoking and hot. Jaxton hefted his fist into the pale air and roared in triumph.

  Troy and his soldiers stormed out of the forest and dropped into prone positions to unleash their personal brand of hell. Their bullets tore into the remaining groups of officers and supporters, sending them reeling. They fell to the snow in great
sprays of scarlet.

  Jaxton heard Elvis laughing first, and then they were all giggling with the ecstasy of salvation. They watched as the blue-faced soldiers drove the survivors back across the field.

  “We’ve done it!” One man cried, leaping into the air like a child.

  Jaxton braced himself as he saw Adira sprinting to him in a giddy embrace. He ran his hands over her. “Are you alright? Are you injured? Anywhere?”

  Her eyes gleamed. “I’m ok. I’m ok Jax.”

  “What should we do Jax?!” Another girl cried, her face eager. The rifle she held had clearly been stolen off the corpse of a dead officer.

  His friends gathered around him breathing heavily, looking to him for command with eager blue faces.

  Jaxton set his jaw. “We finish it.”

  Without another second’s delay Jaxton led them across the field, in close pursuit of Agis’s fleeing war band.

  “Hold your fire!” He raised his voice to carry over their exertions. Two dozen of Agis’s civilian supporters had surrendered some distance ahead, all in a mass with their hands raised. Jaxton had no qualms with them, only their master. Bennett was among them, and he strove to make eye contact with his old friends. They sneered their distaste and kept moving, though he thought he saw Jaxton give him an unperceivable nod. Jaxton designated a handful of his own allies to supervise their surrender and care for the wounded. Justice for Bennett would have to wait.

  Jaxton’s band rejoined with Troy’s soldiers, who advanced in a staggered line. There was no need for tactics in this pursuit- Agis made no attempt at any rearguard action. The ecstasy of survival enabled the predators to continue running far past the onset of their exhaustion. The prey, they ran to survive. Jaxton’s band caught them at intervals, tumbling through trees and across little frozen rivers, where the survivors would be shot and left to die like wounded horses on a forced march. Agis’s officers scampered like wounded curs being nipped at the heels, clumsy from a heady concoction of fatigue and terror. The surviving beta-infected, only a handful, pressed their attack with inhuman speed, loping on with cracked bones and bleeding bodies.

  The pursuit took them through the old town, silent save for the pursuit of several haughty men destined to die. By the time Jaxton’s corps was rounding the driveway to the Citadel, all of Agis’s civilians had surrendered. Only his officers remained, a corps of seven in black including their master and his whore. The auburn hair swung with a little less intensity as Harley fell back; she could scarcely keep pace.

  Ignoring the cramp building in his gut, Jaxton peered ahead. The men in black were surging towards the only open door, with Harley some distance behind. She was calling out to them, her voice laced with panic. They paid her no mind as they bustled inside to safety and sealed the entrance behind them. She hammered on the thick doors with her fists, to no avail.

  “Cover the exits!” Troy roared at the quick step. A dozen of his troops in camouflage veered different directions to make sure all the doors were covered by a man and a loaded rifle.

  Jaxton craned his head up; Joseph and the others were atop the school, waiting for their return. His band slowed to a walk, and they stopped in front of the entrance, their heads looked up to the roof three stories above. The other survivors straggled in as pairs or triples, their hands on quaking knees. Jaxton did his best to control his breathing, and he refused to double over- they would be watching him.

  “How the fuck did that turn our way?” Wilder winced, his face hot with exertion. “And how did you keep up?”

  Duke stared at him from his knees, “How is it you have a joke for a time like this? What the fuck is wrong with you?” He gasped between breaths, a pudgy red face that looked about to burst.

  Troy jogged to their position, barely worn out. “My men should be on all the exits by now.” His eyes were wild, and the men around him were restless. They remembered how their brothers had been cut down in the night like sheep.

  Harley finally turned, trembling, her weapon long since dropped. Her eyes paused on her perceived salvation, and she leapt towards them. “Liam! Oh thank god!” She ran to him as if to hide under his big arms.

  Liam raised his shotgun at her approach, still hot from the blood spilt on the snow. “Not one step closer, bitch.”

  She reeled, as if her docile mother had struck her. Those eyes darted around the fifty survivors that had gathered below the school, accusing and mean. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’ve doomed yourselves, and you’re all going to die.” Her last words she finished with a savage grin, as she swept her hair back over her head. Liam remained frozen in place, though the others around her jeered and spat.

  “Why do you stand there and do nothing?!” A voice rolled over the asphalt from above. All eyes turned skyward.

  Agis was there, his paltry band in black standing at the lip of the roof, eyeing them all with contempt. Adira could see the wounded, and those who refused to fight, clustering on the same lip nervously to watch what would happen. She saw Billy, the bearded hillbilly, and Annabelle, the doctor, watching the conversation with wide eyes. Billy nodded at her, ever so slightly.

  Most in the crowd below had their weapons raised, matching the officers above. “Don’t shoot yet,” Jaxton growled.

  “Jaxton and his band of outlaws have betrayed me, they have betrayed us!!” Those below could see Agis’s spittle flying as he spoke, the veins on his forehead straining. “Kill him! Kill him now! He has ruined what we have built here!”

  Jaxton looked to see Elvis trotting up to them, clutching his shoulder. He nodded, his heart filled with respect.

  Jaxton looked to the roof as Elvis placed himself directly next to Jaxton. “Where would Agis be today, without his drugs, and his whores, to keep the men in line?” His hands chopped the air. “How many of you up there, standing with Agis, were wounded at the hands of his officers!?”

  Troy stalked through the crowd, his beard shaking with anger. “He ordered his men to ambush my friends and I! Soldiers doing their duty and looking for a place to sleep! Twenty two men dead in the forest at his hand!” The soldiers below roared, their fists trembling and fingers itching for the kill.

  “It is true.” Agis continued, his anger a little more controlled. “I made hard choices, made hard calls to protect us! To protect us from these monsters! Who wanted to steal our supplies and our women! You should be thanking me!”

  Harley whooped like a drunken vixen, and a mean looking soldier drove the butt of his rifle into her stomach. She doubled over, spit dripping from her mouth. No one moved to help her.

  “These men are no officers of the law. They are imposters. I have seen it myself, a box filled with uniforms and nametags. They are no men to trust.” Jaxton spat.

  Adira frowned. The pale officer with yellow teeth slowly pushed another magazine into his rifle. She looked to her lover as he nodded encouragement to the mob around him. Her eyes shot back to the yellow grin above as it gleamed greedily behind a raised rifle, and she knew she was too far away.

  “JAX!” Her voice sounded small.

  There was a single shot, and a blur of motion in the crowd. A figure dropped to his knees.

  The mob came alive with a howl, and sent a flurry of hot metal searing towards the roof with their firearms. Adira pushed and shoved the firing maniacs, too lost in their rage to care for the kneeling man.

  She counted time again when she saw his face. Jaxton held Elvis in his arms. Jaxton moved his hand to wipe away his own tears, “He fucking pushed me out of the way. He fucking took the shot.” Jaxton rocked back and forth, his bloody hands clutching the slumping form tight to his chest.

  Liam kneeled beside him, pushing his beefy hands on the weeping wound. The waves of blood leaked out of the dead man like a broken dam, his chest soaked in hot scarlet.

  Elvis’ head lolled to the side, like a broken doll. Jaxton roared at the sight, his bulky form shuddering with hate. Placing the body of Elvis on the ground with tender car
e, he rose with murder in his shining eyes. Taking two steps, he grabbed a fistful of long auburn hair and dragged it down to his waist. His other hand snatched a long fishing knife from his belt and placed the cold steel on Harley’s slender neck.

  “Liam, help me!” She wailed through her tears. But Liam could only look to his dead friend, lying with his limbs contorted unnaturally on the frozen grass. He raised his eyes and stared at Harley, ambivalent to her cries for deliverance.

  “I have your toy here! And if you do not drop your arms now and come out, this cold steel will be the last thing she ever feels.” Jaxton’s voice trembled, but the others around him were with him. The mob nodded and twitched their assent at the threat. Adira looked at him, horrified.

  They could see nothing above, save a pale sky. Then there was a voice. “Friends. Do not move, or all these people up here will die.” It floated down as a whisper, a promise signed in blood.

  Very slowly, they appeared. Agis’s men forced the group of wounded civilians to the edge at gunpoint, till they teetered on the cusp with bandaged arms and hobbled legs. Agis appeared, his chiseled face etched in sinister delight. “Shoot, and these friends die.”

  Adira gasped. Billy’s face was poised far above as he stood on the edge, a mask of barely contained emotion. Annabelle’s tears ran freely down her tired face, and Joseph, the kindest among them, struggled not to tumble to the asphalt below.

  “Now, where were we?” Agis asked, with a friendly smile. “Ah, you were attempting to force my hand.” He lowered his gaze chuckled darkly, and rose wide eyes. “You assume I care for her.” He paused. “You assume too much.” In a flash of motion he raised a pistol and fired it.

  Harley’s head snapped back under Jaxton’s knife, struck in the left eye socket with a bullet. She dropped like a sack of bricks with a moist thud to the cold pavement.