August Burning (Book 1): Outbreak

by Lahey, Tyler

  Their silhouettes were rimmed with a fiery glow. The city was dying. Jaxton imagined sickening screams carried on the wind as the proud steel skyscrapers raged with fire. He shuddered visibly, grateful they were so far removed from the burning city. He watched the carnage below with an obsession bordering on fascination. His entire life, he had waited for something to change the rules. Now that it had finally arrived, his head was a swirl of emotions. He felt recklessly stupid and shameful for ever praying normality would end.

  His nostrils flared as a wave of smoke rolled through the shadowy trees on a summer morning, miles from its source. From their vantage point far above, the group felt some semblance of safety. For the first time all week they relaxed visibly, their forms drooping with fatigue in the morning air.

  Harley drew closer to Liam’s mottled skin, her face a mask of pain and fear. Her hazel eyes skittered nervously. Liam absent mindedly began pulling the brambles stuck in her long auburn hair. The delightful energy in her mannerisms that drew men to her was dead. All that magic was gone now.

  “Do you think we will ever see them again? Our families?” Liam asked with effort, his bloodshot eyes never leaving the horizon.

  Jaxton clenched his callused hands and took a last gulp from their dwindling supply of water. No one answered.

  Bennett’s hands rose to tussle his own blond hair. “At least its quiet up here,” he said bitterly, shooting a glance into the forest behind them. The hair on Jaxton’s back stood on end as more rumbles echoed in the burning city so far away. “Those men didn’t need to die today,” Bennett continued flatly.

  “You’re a bit of a hypocrite these days, aren’t you? You play the morally righteous one when it suits you?”” Jaxton breathed.

  “I wouldn’t wanna follow someone who kills so easily, would you?” Bennett turned to Adira, who stared at him angrily.

  “Here? Now? Yea, I would,” Harley said.

  Jaxton clenched his jaw. “Did you think they were just going to let us go? Let us drive off with their ATVs?”

  Bennett kneaded his hands. “You shouldn’t have that gun. You’re going to get us all hurt one day. You’re too impulsive to handle something with that much power.”

  Adira cut him off curtly, “Bennett, enough.” Adira rubbed her dark eyes with dirt-stained hands. “I don’t know if it was right to kill them, but I’m glad as hell I didn’t have to make that call. And I bet you are too.”

  “I suppose, this would be the part of a movie where someone says…God is Dead,” Bennett mused pretentiously, looking out over the distant burning landscape, paying the others no mind.

  “There’s no God. There’s just man,” Liam croaked. He spat up a wad of phlegm and leaned back into Harley.

  Tessa laughed darkly. “I just feel numb. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

  “So you all don’t think it was wrong?” Bennett asked.

  Adira shooed him, “none of that now, Bennett, let’s just rest.”

  Jaxton set his jaw again, grinding his teeth in that way when he was feeling overwhelmed. “I didn’t even make a decision. I just…did it,” he said evenly. “Is that what you want to hear?”

  Bennett leaned in, utterly focused with beady, bloodshot eyes. “I want you to admit it was wrong. Everyone else seems to think you’re infallible. Our leader.”

  “There’s no one to judge you!” Liam growled, almost resembling a lunatic in delirium.

  Jaxton rose alone, and silently strolled away.

  Bennett watched him go. “We can’t abandon morality just because the decisions become tougher.” Bennett paused, scratching his roughened knees with scratched hands. “Those are the times morality becomes the most important. Did those men have to die? He’ll go to the grave wondering, did they have to die?”

  Harley looked up, all her magnetic energy gone. “I hated that. Just there. I hated that.”

  Bennett frowned at her.

  “Don’t try to fill the air. The world is falling apart. How did you manage to turn that into something so fucking pretentious?”

  Liam opened his eyes in wonder. He scoffed, and chuckled through his coughs. Then he tugged the hazel-eyed girl closer and laid his head on her lap.

  Harley shook her head, looking towards the wall of fire. “And there’s no one watching out for us.” She rose, and dragged Liam to a patch of grass nearby, where they intertwined in slumber. Tessa rose and stumbled off to find Jaxton. Bennett and Adira were left alone.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Believe what?”

  “There’s no God, no power at be.”

  “I didn’t take you for a believer.”

  Bennett smiled easily, despite everything. “Of course there’s someone watching us. Because since the dawn of humanity, every human culture and subculture has created religion of its own accord. They’ve been isolated by thousands of miles. Never been in contact. Yet every civilization, independently, decided to believe there is something greater than themselves. There is no uniquely atheist culture. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Sure. It tells me a lot of human nature. About fear of the unknown.”

  “Fear? No this isn’t about fear. This is about blinding beauty. I choose to believe in something other than all this, simply because I can. I’m better off. How can all the beauty in the world exist and you tell me there’s nothing to it?”

  Adira turned her dark, tired eyes to the horizon, where a solid wall of black smoke and flame was spilling into the frigid lower atmosphere. In that moment, she hated the man seated next to her. “Because of that,” she spat and rose. “That’s enough to balance out the beauty of a lifetime.”

  Bennett was left frowning to himself in angry resignation, wondering when Adira would cool down enough to let him have a go at her.

  …

  They didn’t jump at the gunshots anymore. Jaxton grimaced at the dark rings around his friends’ eyes. He knew he looked just as overrun. Jaxton flexed his muscles and felt every fiber of his being ache. They had been lounging on the hilltop for hours. They needed more food. He kneeled beside Liam and clasped his neck gingerly, to let him know he was cared for.

  “You’re the luckiest man on this little expedition,” he said, indicating Harley. “She hasn’t left your side.”

  “I keep trying to scare her away. It hasn’t worked,” Liam groaned ruefully.

  Jaxton rose and turned to leave before turning back, “We’re going to find you some medicine Liam.”

  Liam looked to the girl who regarded him so tenderly. “You will probably get sick too, you know, caring for me like this.”

  Harley recoiled slightly. “That hardly matters. You’re sick. I’m not. I have to take care of you.”

  Liam chuckled lightly, trying not to move too much.

  “Besides, if you die…where am I going to find any burly gentle giant to fall in love with?”

  Liam failed to contain his laughter this time. He squinted at her with one eye. “Love, huh. Breaking out the big guns.”

  “Hardly. We’ve still got a while before we start playing that game.”

  “What game is that, dear?”

  “Don’t call me dear. It sounds old. And you know, the game where we try to figure out what the other is thinking, without saying it first.”

  Liam groaned as he lay in the high grass. “Sounds like a blast.”

  “It is. And of course, whoever says it first has less power in the relationship going forward.” Harley said in a mock matter-of-fact tone.

  “Sounds like you already have this whole thing figured out, huh.”

  “But in reality the person who cares less has more power. That wont be me, just so you know.”

  Liam smiled at her, appreciatively. “So you’ll be generous enough to hand that position of power over to me.”

  Harley shrugged, unable to hide a growing smile any longer. “We’ll see.”

  “So what would I be then? Your seventh love? Eighth?”

>   She faked indignation, and rapped him on the shoulder. “You have no faith in me!”

  “I don’t know you all that well, you have to forgive me.”

  “Of course you know me.”

  “I don’t.” Liam struggled to sit up and look Harley in her eyes. “And I can’t figure out why you care about me as if we do know each other.”

  Harley mused out loud, excessively. “Hmmmm. Because you feel protective and gentle at the same time. And for some absurd reason, I know if I or anyone else was sick like you are now, you would be caring for them. You’re like the older brother for the whole group. Obviously…I’m into it.”

  Liam laughed heartily for the first time in days. “Well. Not quite the answer I was expecting, but I’ll take it.”

  “Why are you here with me then? Aside from the fact you’d be a fool to deny my tender love and care? Why do you like me?”

  Liam wanted to smile, but his skin swarmed with the chills. “Back to that hard hitting question for all middle schoolers. I see. Why don’t you ask me in a few weeks? Can I get back to you?”

  “Psh. Very well. I won’t forget this though.”

  Liam felt like quitting here on this hilltop, and wanted to puke, but he couldn’t help but grin.

  Later that night, Bennett rose and reached out to Adira, intending for them to find another place to have sex, as they had been doing for the past several nights. Adira remained motionless. She shook her head gently in refusal, and Bennett’s nostrils flared. In front of the group, he re-seated himself and hung his head. While the others talked about their dreams, Bennett obsessed over his change in fortune.

  Chapter Thirteen

  9 days after Outbreak. Appalachia

  Jaxton breathed deeply, hoping his next draught of air would not be that sickly stench that had surrounded them for the previous two days. The comfortable days of spring turned to hot, humid affairs as their filthy clothing clung to wet frames. The smell of death came on in waves, unexpectedly. Its pungent strength filled the nostrils with alarming speed. It was heady, and overpowering.

  “I don’t see any movement. None at all,” Jaxton said quietly. His lightly bearded face pulsed with alarm, stretching into a mask of barely contained despair. Deep green eyes scanned the small town below, nestled in the morning Appalachian fog. Its church steeple glinted in the rushing dawn, but there was that stench again, on the air. He shifted his heavily muscled frame and dropped his backpack, sighing in frustration. The mad hope that had carried him to this very rock outcropping far above the forest fled from his heart, and the vacuum was unsettling.

  “I don’t know if I expected anything different.” Bennett looked to his friend from underneath tussled blond hair, his sturdy form clenching in anxious anticipation. He shot a glance back over his shoulder, down the rocky path shouldered by ancient pines. The others were nearing the top, pushing hard with the confidence their salvation was near at hand. Only one faltered. Jaxton winced as he saw Liam stumble and nearly fall at the very back of the line. He doubled over, straining hard to catch his faltering breath as the fever ravaged his endurance. Harley too stumbled on the treacherous path, and lost her footing. A heavy hand reached out to support her slender frame at the waist, and she grinned wildly at the danger that had almost sent her tumbling back down the dusty track. Liam forced a smile to the girl, but as soon as she looked away his visage became a grimace of pain.

  Jaxton stretched out a callused hand to another, who was sweating mightily to gain the summit. Adira looked lean and mean, her dark hair was matted and filthy. The sun had been kissing her skin the entire trek, and it had responded with vigor, bursting into a coat of bronze that now shimmered in the summer haze. She looked at Jaxton without smiling. “Do you see anything?”

  “It looks totally dead,” Bennett said quietly. The morning sun ascended in the sky with aching slowness, as the forest came to life around them.

  Adira cursed quietly, decidedly out of character, and doubled over, struggling to collect her breath in the growing summer heat. Jaxton resisted the sudden urge to comfort her, though he did not shy from staring. When he lifted his eyes, Bennett was glaring at him.

  Jaxton felt the itching sweat beginning to collect in his brow, his jeans trapping the heat close to his skin. He waited till the other three crested the peak, and took a deep breath. More than a touch of shame ran amok inside his breast. This had been his plan. A month ago he had been absolutely sure pressing for home through the backwoods had been the best course of action. Doubt now plagued his mind.

  Tessa eyed the valley below with a keen glance, seemingly oblivious to the heat and exhaustion that plagued the rest of them. She moved well, despite everything. Dismounting a boulder, she strode towards the group with a strange, easy confidence. “I don’t see any movement down there.”

  A noise to their right revealed a family approaching through the pines. Their gaits were jolly and energetic, as if they were partaking in a Sunday stroll in the park. The pasty, slightly overweight father was wearing his best hiking gear, and was struggling mightily under the weight of an obscenely large pack. He laughed and forced gaiety on his two young childern, who were equally enthusiastic. A boy and girl bounded in front of their parents, covered in sun screen, and pointing at this thing or that. Jaxton stared on in horror, as if he were witnessing some sick satire. As the group entered the clearing the children bounded up to them.

  "Hi there! Are you guys hiking too?!" Their excited eyes ogled for a response.

  Before anyone could respond, the wheezing father hurried up, wiping a thick glob of white paste off his nose. He adjusted his sport glasses and grinned. "They certainly are! Great day for a hike right?!"

  Jaxton frowned, "What the fuc-"

  But Adira cut him off- "Its a beautiful day. Its great to see you guys out here too."

  The mother looked on without speaking, holding a fixed smile that trembled ever so slightly.

  "How’s Cold Spring?" Adira inquired, as casually as possible.

  The father's eyes grew wide in an instant, but then snapped back to their unnatural friendliness. "Well, everyone is on a big vacation, it’s a special weekend right? People are all over the place! Like I told you kids huh?"

  "Rrrrright! C’mon lets keep going!" The boy, no older than 6, cheered and rose a fist in the air.

  The wife laughed out loud, uncomfortably breaking the silence. She crooned over her children, caressing their hair. "We're already on vacation, aren't we?" The little girl played shyly with the hem of her mothers' shorts, staring at Adira. "I think she likes you. Evelyn, don't be shy. Introduce yourself to the nice lady."

  Adira kneeled, and smiled. The little girl hooted happily and extended a tiny hand for a miniature handshake. "I like your hair," she said confidently.

  Adira played the part perfectly as the others looked on. The mood was beginning to turn. They all needed some normalcy injected back into their lives. The man looked to Jaxton and held his gaze for a moment. For just an instant there was an understanding there, a hidden reality that they had chosen to deny. But the man was no fool. There was deep horror that had infected his bones, being contained for the sake of his children. His goofy grin returned.

  "Evelyn! Look at that! Tommy is already beating you!"

  The little girl's tiny, chubby face turned into a scowl and she yelped. Then she launched herself after her brother, who was already scampering down the trail in front of them. The mother chuckled, and with a wave was gone.

  Jaxton closed the distance between him and the man in a rush, and gripped his arm. "What's it like down there?"

  The man exhaled and sputtered, and then drew in even closer. "Get your hand off me or I'll break your neck."

  Jaxton recoiled, and the man followed his family as the sun rose even higher in the sky.

  "At first I thought he was a total loony toon," Tessa said.

  "No, he knows exactly what he's doing," Adira countered grimly.

  "I can't wait any long
er. We have to get down there," Jax said, moving towards the northern edge of the hill.

  "Pharmacy first," Harley demanded, her arms crossed.

  "Pharmacy first," Jaxton said, agreeing wholeheartedly with her. Liam looked on with the same lost, pained eyes.

  "I can't believe we made it," Bennett said slowly, his face breaking out into a full grin for the first time since leaving school. He started laughing, and his mood was infectious. The others joined in, sharing in the feeling of triumph. Safety was close at hand, and maybe even their families.

  "C’mon, I'll even carry that god damn duffel."

  Jaxton opened his mouth for a retort when they heard a scream. Its resonance was bone-chilling, rising and rolling over the top of the hill and fading out over the valley behind them. It was a little girl’s voice.

  Adira ran to the southern edge of the hill and strained her eyes, looking for any motion on the rocky path leading into the pines groves below. "No..no..no..no," she whispered, a fever growing on her words.

  For a long series of moments, the group remained motionless, willing themselves to hear nothing more.

  A savage cry rolled up the hillside, of a man. It was blood curdling. A tiny haze of dust rose two hundred feet below them, among the pines.

  The father tore out of the bushes, gripping a weeping wound on his right arm. His daughter and another figure were bolting back up the hill in some kind of ferocious pursuit. The girl’s movements had changed. She tore up the steep shale face, bounding tirelessly with arms and legs slipping on tumbling rocks. Flecks of blood flew from the corners of her open mouth and she snarled hungrily like a wild animal. The second figure was a man, equally possessed, dressed in a paramedic's gear. The father wailed endlessly as he fled, and the distance was closing fast.

  Adira felt a strong hand push her out of the way. Jaxton took a firm footing on the lip of the vale, his jet-black rifle extending beyond his frame, an effortless affront to peace and calm. He shook his head, angrily, tears gathering in his eyes. “Not again, not again,” he whispered.

  Her own lip was trembling. "Wwwait.." The words tumbled out of her mouth, breathlessly. She felt tears welling in her eyes and limiting her vision. All was now a mosaic of colors and sounds.