August Burning (Book 1): Outbreak

by Lahey, Tyler

  “-will be halted. The well being of American people is our first and only priority in this time of danger. As I said before, there is an infection in progress in the immediate New York City area. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and eastern Pennsylvania are being evacuated. I have ordered our best citizen soldiers to get to work in the areas in question, and I already have reports the infected are being corralled and contained until a cure can be developed. I urge everyone to remain calm, and to trust that God and our own strength and wisdom will see us through this difficult time. God Bless the United States of America.”

  Another voice came on, schooled in the smooth accent of anchor-people who sounded like they were from the 1940s. “What more could you want? The President is telling it like it is-“

  Jaxton slammed the dial off. “This difficult time?” Jaxton snarled. “What a bunch of bullshit. Did he even see that video?”

  “Stop yelling. My head hurts,” Bennett ventured.

  “How can you guys just sit there? Doesn’t this work you up?!” Jaxton demanded.

  “Yes. I agree. Calm down please, or let someone else drive,” Adira said.

  Jaxton cursed and slammed on the brakes as a shiny new car sped across the grass divider and began driving down the north-bound lanes.

  “Oh, fuck.” Harley pointed.

  All along the line, cars began peeling away from the southbound lanes of traffic. They crossed the grass and resumed their trip south with frantic turns and jolts. Within a minute there was a hundred cars, and Jaxton was laying on the horn, refusing to swerve. His trembling palms gripped the slick wheel. There was a flash of headlights, and a sudden force slammed his head against the steering wheel violently. The airbags exploded from the dashboard, driving Liam backwards. When he drew back, his face was covered in a sheet of blood. Everyone screamed, but it was overpowered by the screech of metal grinding on metal.

  The minivan froze to a halt.

  Jaxton felt his head swimming, and struggled to gain clarity.

  “JESUS!” Jaxton felt hungry hands pawing him from behind. “Are you ok?! Fuck, get out!” He noticed the rain grew louder, but he couldn’t see very much. His head rang with pain, throbbing in waves that refused to abate. He wanted to scream, it hurt so bad. But he felt too drunk to scream. Panicking, he thrust open his door and wrenched himself onto the wet asphalt. The delicious, cool spring rain felt too good. He opened his eyes some more and saw two female faces leaning over him. Adira and Tessa. He trembled, feeling his panic abating. The pain remained, though. “What the fuck happened?”

  Adira rose, her long black hair sticking to her lithe form. “He hit you.” She pointed to the guard rail. A silver sedan was crumped up against it, twisted and broken like a toy.

  As the rain poured down, cars kept peeling around the site of the accident. Some slowed, but no one stopped. Society didn’t take much to crack, Jaxton realized. He rose slowly. Liam was still sitting in his passenger seat. Harley tended to him, cooing like a concerned mother. Liam had split the bridge of his nose. “It’s not broken. Just hit it really hard.” His words were garbled as the blood ran down the back of his throat.

  Jaxton tested his weight. He felt ok, somewhat. “Hey!” He called at the broken car, but there was no answer. Adira held Jaxton’s shoulders tenderly as Bennett approached the vehicle. When he reached the front doors, he set his jaw and promptly turned away, walking into the grass as the sky broke open above them.

  Jaxton started forward, even as Adira tried to restrain him. The other driver was crumpled like a broken toy soldier on a piece of the guard rail. The front window was shattered, and his neck was twisted grotesquely. Two lifeless pale eyes peered out from his wretched head.

  “Oh my god,” he muttered. “I don’t even know, I mean, it was his fault, I don’t even know, he shouldn’t have been in my lane, I couldn’t see him. Rain, and lights, I don’t even know, Right?”

  The others said nothing, though Adira nodded emphatically even as she tried to distance herself from the dead man. They stood alone in the pouring rain as the cars peeled around them,

  “WHAT A FUCKING MORON!” Jaxton screamed to the sky. “YOU MORON!” He raged in anger, feeling only hate for the idiot who had been driving the wrong way, trying to survive. He hated the man for how he looked right now, the whites of his eyes bulging. He couldn’t stop staring.

  “What do we fucking do?” Liam asked.

  Tessa laid her hands on Jaxton’s broad shoulders, and he accepted her touch. “Stop looking,” she said, her own voice shaking.

  Adira covered her mouth in horror and sought out Bennett, who stood watching the lightning arc across the sky a hundred miles away. He shoved his phone back in his pocket. “911 is busy. Busy,” he repeated.

  “We can’t just leave this, can we?” Adira asked.

  “We should go,” Harley said quietly, staring ahead at the moving hunks of metal.

  “What are you doing?”

  Tessa was crawling in the back seat of the fractured sedan. A paper box came flying out. “We should see if he has a card, we can call someone, right? We can’t just go.”

  Jaxton opened his own mouth to speak, but found no words. Liam stood beside him, his face was a watery mask of red. “This was his fault. And Tessa’s right. Come on, someone else will drive the rest of the way.”

  He grimaced. Jaxton saw his teeth were painted a savage scarlet.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Tessa said. There was a thud. A heavy metal pistol tumbled off the cloth seat and into the rain.

  “I’m not touching that,” Jaxton said. He opened the back of the mini-van and seated himself in the back seat. Tessa exhaled and followed him.

  The others stared at the instrument of death as it lay on the slick pavement. Adira and Bennett looked to one another. “Can you drive?” She asked. Bennett nodded, and they re-entered the car. Liam tore his eyes from the broken man’s corpse, and joined them.

  Harley stood alone, feeling the little drops of rain running down her skin. Without thinking much, she picked up the pistol and slowly clambered back inside.

  They were forced to drive on the grass divider for the next ten miles, as their own lane was overrun with traffic. Bennett drove silently, with two hands cautiously on the wheel. Adira rubbed the back of his neck and looked at him expectantly in a shameless desire to empathize. The duffle bags of canned food jostled and jingled as the minivan navigated over the grassy bumps.

  “Bennett. Slow down, those bumps hurt my nose.” The bleeding in Liam’s nose still hadn’t subsided. “Bennett! Slow down!”

  Bennett startled, as if out of a dream. “Oh Jesus man, I’m sorry.”

  Liam looked to Jaxton, as if to share an understanding. “You ok, dude?”

  Bennett breathed in. “Everything is changing.”

  Jaxton frowned. “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to talk about it.” He hated how grotesque the broken man had looked. He hated that man for crashing his car, for dying, and most of all for giving him that horrific image of the twisted neck.

  “Are you ok?” Adira cooed. Her voice was silky. Jaxon thought she had never looked more beautiful and fragile than she did right then, soaked and dark.

  It was Bennett who answered her. “We just witnessed-we were just a part of terrible violence. And we moved on without batting an eye.”

  “What would you have us do?” Liam growled, as the pain grated on his nerves.

  “Nothing. I just can’t shake the feeling we just took a huge turn, for better or worse. I think that was just the beginning.”

  “It was his own damn fault. I hate him for what he gave me. I’ll think of that till I die, now,” Jaxton snapped, horrifying himself. The words just spilled out.

  In a calmer tone, Bennett resumed, “Look at how fragile society is. How proudly we all preached our moralities before all this. And it’s been like what, 3 days? And everything is gone. Nothing matters when people are trying not to die.”

  �
��I just didn’t…expect to see it so fast,” Adira whispered.

  “The only thing that matters is getting home, staying away from the infected, and finding our families,” Jaxton said.

  “Look.” Harley said quietly, her bleary hazel eyes staring ahead blankly in the fog and rain. All across the northbound lanes there was a wall of armored vehicles. Black rifles protruded skyward across a one hundred foot front. It was a homicidal wall of black and dark green, and their mini van was facing it.

  Bennett’s callused hands gripped the leather wheel till they could all hear it creaking. “Guys, what the fuck is the plan.” He struggled to keep his voice even. The car sped past a green sign; Philadelphia: 80 miles East.

  Harley pointed to the side of the highway, where there was a little clearing in the forest wall. They were still too far to see the white of the soldiers’ eyes, but they felt they were being watched intently. Jaxton could feel the nervous energy in the car picking up steam. It would snowball until it led them to ruin or salvation. Seizing the moment, Jaxton indicated the clearing. “Bennett. At the last minute, get us into that clearing. Everyone else, grab everything you can carry.”

  “Why don’t we drive up to them?” Adira asked.

  “No!” Jaxton shouted. “No, we can’t. They’ll take us away. We just need to get away from all these people!”

  “What are you talking about?” Bennett asked, his voice strained.

  “Make for the clearing,” Liam said. The car erupted into a shouting match as the clearing drew closer. At the last second Bennett yanked the wheel over and eased the car to a stop beside the road. They were three hundred feet from the soldiers.

  At Jaxton’s insistence the six of them burst out of the broken vehicle and made for the tree line. There was a violent rumble of thunder, and the snap of purple lightning lit up the sky overhead. Jaxton could tell they had made it to the trees without looking around. He could smell it. There was a sweet, wet smell that had been made somewhat sickly by the fresh rainwater. Glistening green leaves crowded the space around him. He indicated the deeper woods. “Go!”

  The storm became more furious as darkness fell. They skittered like refugees among boarded up houses, advancing as fast as they could through empty streets with garbage drifting in the howling winds. The tempest seemed intent on savaging their small band of six. Crouching under dripping porches, Jaxton snuck a look at the water-logged map. By now, all their phones were all dead, and most of the lights in the quaint little neighborhood were out. They had to scuffle out of sight a few times, as roaring Army vehicles came rolling through. Though most of the civilians had left, some remained, peering out suspiciously from curtained windows in the night. Slowly, Jaxton led them north-west, through the bigger towns of southern Pennsylvania.

  Bennett trodded alongside Jaxton, both men struggling with their payloads.

  “Still think we made the right call?” Bennett groaned. The others had fallen behind some distance.

  Jaxton nodded, somewhat annoyed. “What’s the alternative?”

  “Could have easily gone south with those columns of refugees.”

  Jaxton kept his eyes forward, searching out safe places to step in the gloom. The highway, now deserted, laid a stone’s throw to their right. “You saw the video.”

  “And?”

  “And what do you think the chances are this thing can’t be stopped? I’d say pretty damn high.”

  “I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate here. I’m still on board, Jax.”

  Bennett saw Jaxton frown in the wet darkness as he opened his mouth. “So lets assume this thing can’t be stopped. Let’s assume it keeps spreading, pushing south, west, and north…until the entire continent is overrun. Where will our families try to find us, if they survive?”

  “The entire continent? Are you serious?”

  “Completely. Home is our best bet if the world crumbles. And it’s isolated. We know the terrain; we know there are weapons there. Don’t challenge me in front of the others unless you have a better plan, got it?”

  Bennett couldn’t filter his thoughts, couldn’t say how he felt. The night was dark, and he was cold. He remained silent.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jaxton muttered to himself. He couldn’t feel his shoulders any more. The bags, heavy as they were from canned food, were even more unwieldy logged down with rain-water. The water collected in his hair and trickled in his vision. The sneakers that had been with him faithfully since sophomore year were falling apart. He halted, and dropped the duffel bags unceremoniously. The air was thick with humidity.

  A small hand rested on his back. “Going to let me carry one now?” Tessa looked prettier in the rain, her smile undiminished even in the fierce tempest. Jax felt himself smiling, despite how his body ached.

  “Let’s rest for the night. We can start again tomorrow.”

  Tessa grinned easily. Her face was relaxed, somehow. “I don’t know if you could hear up there at the front, but Harley’s been bitching for the last mile.”

  Jaxton couldn’t help but chuckle darkly as the others drew close, huddling beneath a flickering street light in a vacant cul-de-sac. Harley did look exhausted, though the rain made her clothes stick to her body, Jaxton did not fail to notice.

  “Enough for tonight.”

  “Now what?” Bennett asked. “Are we guna sleep out here?”

  “I need to get out of the fucking cold,” Liam mumbled, a bloody tissue stuffed in his nose.

  “What about those houses?” Harley asked. She motioned to a neighborhood nestled in shrubbery and patches of ominous trees.

  “Ring the doorbell and ask if we can stay the night? I think not.” Bennett said.

  “I think they evacuated this area,” Jaxton ventured.

  Harley held onto Liam’s bulky arm and examined his nose. “We’ll take our damn chances. Come on Liam, we’ll fix you up inside.” She dragged him forward till he was stumbling. Jaxton followed; relieved someone else had made the call for once.

  …

  They approached a squat residence with no cars in the driveway. Its dark windows were more fully illuminated with the violent crack of white lightning. Jaxton repressed a shudder. It looked creepy. They knocked savagely on the wooden door. No answer.

  “Liam, open it,” Harley commanded.

  “What, break it down?”

  “I’m sorry guys, I don’t care anymore.” Liam stepped back and hammered his huge shoulder into it, and the frame cracked. They scurried inside like frightened pets, and tried the lights. They worked.

  “Whoever left did it in a hurry. No one’s home.”

  Jaxton surveyed the foyer. Clothes and empty boxes lay scattered around the tiled floor. Harley emerged from the kitchen with a can opener, and snatched a few selections from the duffel. They stood around awkwardly, feeling decidedly strange around pictures of another family. Harley was the first to move. After they had stripped their soaking clothes and changed into whatever they could find in the bedrooms upstairs, they gathered in the living room.

  “Well, I guess this could be worse….but for the record this doesn’t feel right at all.” Liam looked sheepish wearing an obscenely small t-shirt that didn’t belong to him.

  “Dryer works,” Harley said, licking her lips.

  “There’s food?”

  “They left a bunch of shit in the fridge.” She grinned, dipping a spoon into a jar of Nutella.

  Bennett emerged from the pantry. He had not taken his own clothes off. “I can’t stop thinking about his eyes. So fucking white. Bulging.”

  “Bennett, shut the fuck up,” Liam said, his voice hoarse.

  The group settled quietly on the couches, but nothing was said. Jaxton rose quickly, feeling the anxiety of the day infecting them all. That needed to be replaced, swiftly. He returned with a small grin, hoping they could share some measure of happiness that night. He wanted to crawl into a warm corner and knock himself out with drugs, but he relented.

  He drew a bottle of clear
liquid from behind his back, with exaggerated majesty. “Behold. The finest elixir.”

  Artificial laughter broke out between the couches. Jaxton placed a plastic bottle of vodka on the glass coffee table.

  Jaxton tried to smile expectantly at his friends, and realized they might not do anything. He couldn’t go to sleep sober. Adira made eye contact with him and she forced a false smile.

  “Oh ho ho. Fancy. Whipped cream flavored always was my first choice,” Adira grabbed the bottle and poured herself a shot. Then she passed it around. “Everyone should partake. You won’t want to miss out.”

  Slowly, one by one, they gathered in a tight circle clutching shot glasses with warm cheap vodka, their clothes all too small or too large, in a house they had never visited before.

  “Lets have a toast to these fine people, who have been so gracious as to let us stay the night.” Jaxton raised his glass. “And hopefully they are sleeping safely somewhere south tonight.” He finished solemnly, and drained the shot.

  As time passed, they forgot their fears. They stopped obsessing over where their families were. They were sick of it. Instead, they became giddy with their newly found warmth; they knew they would sleep in soft beds tonight.

  Within an hour, burly Liam was leading Harley up the stairs. Always the gentleman, he insisted on carrying her up, which was completed with some degree of difficulty due to his stuffed nose. Jaxton looked at his friends through a warm haze. He felt slightly giddy, yet there was a terror at the edge of his mind, whispering to him.

  Bennett’s eyes wandered. He seemed to be in a cloud, looking but not seeing much. He remained quite sober, and always refused a re-fill as time passed. At some point, he entered the kitchen to down half a bottle of Nyquil. As he became loopier, Bennett laid his head in Adira’s lap, and stared at her from below.

  Tessa drew herself close to Jaxton, and talked about what she was going to do after the infection was over. Jaxton smiled and nodded, not paying much mind. He felt his own eyes kept flicking to Adira’s. She hadn’t properly washed the eye makeup off her face, so that it stained her cheeks and ran. He couldn’t stop staring. Her dark eyes glittered as she met his own gaze. He looked away hastily, feeling like he was intruding on something. When he looked again, she continued to calmly meet his gaze, seemingly appraising him. It felt uncanny. She didn’t seem drunk at all, and her eyes were unwavering.