August Burning (Book 1): Outbreak

by Lahey, Tyler

  "Bennett!" Jaxton roared without taking his eyes off the incoming figures. His friend snapped out of his frozen reverie and took position with his own instrument of death. He clutched the heavy pistol from the highway accident a lifetime ago. "Safety off. Safety off!"

  "Wait! Wait don’t fucking shoot!" Adira screamed.

  Tears fell onto Jaxton’s rifle, and he struggled to blink them away. In that moment the girl caught her father. Her tiny teeth ripped into his lower calf. The man screeched like a harpy and fell forward. Without hesitation his daughter mounted him like a predator and attacked his flying arms. The sick paramedic joined the fray. Teeth flashed like fangs. They watched, from a mere one hundred feet, as they tore the man to pieces. His stupid white globs of sunscreen were blotted with his own red essence. The goofy flat brimmed adventure hat he wore was stomped in the dust. Jaxton felt a wave of shame. The pathetic death the man endured hurt him to the core.

  Suddenly, the pair of attackers was silent. The father had stopped struggling. Jaxton felt the fear rolling through his body. No longer was he a spectator to some twisted carnage. The infected turned their bloodshot eyes to the summit, and charged. Before they had made it ten feet, the father rose, his wounds still weeping. His eyes were different; he charged too.

  “We have to do this,” Jaxton whispered. Adira approached him from behind and held him gently, her dark eyes closed. Exhaling forcefully, Jaxton pulled the trigger. Bennett shook his head and cursed.

  The two weapons discharged loudly, firmly. They cracked and burped hot lead, which tore down the side of the defile. The three infected ran headlong into the stream of bullets that whined and snapped in the afternoon haze. Undaunted, they continued forward. Their possessed bodies were coming straight at them. A round took the paramedic through the chest, sending him tumbling back down the slope. The father and daughter closed to within fifty feet. Bennett could feel his hands trembling, his body screaming defiance. He pulled the trigger anyways, three more times in rapid succession. Two rounds exploded with kinetic force through the base of the father's pasty neck, nearly decapitating him. The girl closed to within twenty feet, her tiny limbs flailing as she gained the summit. Bennett and Jaxton fired together. Someone hit her, and she didn't rise again.

  But they were home.

  10,035 Days After Outbreak

  “Did you almost make it?”

  The spider-webs of wrinkles tickling the corners of the man’s eyes deepened. He spat on the rough-hewn floor, as the other recoiled at his lack of manners. The old man didn’t care. He raised faded blue eyes to peer deep into the interviewer. “I think a more indicative question is…did we want to make it, at that point?” His gravelly voice filled the room.

  “What do you mean?”

  The hazy blue eyes narrowed even further, bristling. The stooped figure drew up, and then the words tumbled out of him musically, after he paused to enhance the effect.

  “There was a time when I did not mark the days at all, and they ran by, so many numberless dawns and nights. The sun would rise, and then his sister the moon, but I never changed. My friends were young, my lovers were young, and my parents were old. And it was sad to see the old, but it was not a sadness that we carried. A fleeting reflection it was, gone the moment the scenery changed. We always had second chances, and nothing was forever. In the prime, it was our generation that decided what was right and what was wrong, what was fashionable or not. We, the young, stood haughtily, the fixed point at the center of a swirling existence, the old and the even younger at the peripheries. The others, they strove to have their say, but it was always us that led the way. I would later realize what an immense but silent satisfaction it was possessing the unconscious knowledge knowing my friends and acquaintances were all existing at the same time as me, following their own paths. Though they might not have crossed unless I forced them to, it was steeling to the heart to know at any moment I could reach out and find any number of them, young and full of vitality like me. And time roared on like this until it felt like it would forever. Until, piece-by-piece, everything changed. I watched the world we all built become bitter and stale, break down and collapse in on it, only to be replaced by another more young and vigorous one. But this time, we shared no part in it. And at first, this was an insult to the very fibers of our being, it was unjust, it was impossible. But we slowly realized this was how it had always been, and would always be. All the things that once drove us to mad passion and sweet sorrow, no one seemed to care about anymore. They regarded the things that had driven us mad with passion, fear, joy, and rage with a simple, casual ambivalence. They simply didn’t care. The road grew lonelier as those we once regarded as “the old” died, and the culture that once beat with vitality around our beings abandoned us. As a boy, life was framed by all the things we would once be able to do. And then, it became all the things we could now do. Then there was the agony of having those abilities taken away piecemeal, slowly. All we began to have left was each other, dying reminders of our own faded glory. Life became a journey steeped in sickening nostalgia. And it has been my fate to be the very last. Until we sit here now, and at night I am overwhelmed by a simple consideration. It is when I realize that all my idols, my friends, my lovers, my family…have withered away slowly and left this place. Every soul and body that once burned with emotion and the vivacity of life was forced to watch that power slip from them, piece by piece. Every worthy enemy, every friend you could count on, every wondrous woman. That strength I once had, from knowing my friends were all across the world, doing great things, or doing nothing much at all, disappeared when I realized they had all gone. All those I once shared dreams, fears, and visions with have left. How could it have happened to them all? Every last one? Youth, I realized, was the most intoxicating, enthralling pull of all. And by its nature, you only understand its power as it slips away.” He cocked a bushy white eyebrow, waiting patiently with a grin across his lips.

  “Jesus. Slow down- uhh can I quote you on some of that?”

  A cackling filled with raw contempt echoed in the little room. “Fuck yourself.”

  The younger man recoiled, as if stung. His mouth was agape as the clattering keyboard ceased.

  “Anyways, that’s what my poetic mind conjures up when I imagine old age. My friends never got to watch their strength slip away, boy. They never got that far in the journey. I’ve done it all alone.”

  The younger man struggled to regain his composure, peering down at his little white screen. Then he raised his eyes and assumed a somber gaze. “How many did you start with, then?”

  “At the height, we had almost four hundred souls.” His thin lips resumed their perpetual grimace.

  “And at the final hour?””

  His lip twitched. “There were three.”

  Continue the journey in… AUGUST BURNING: Survival (Book 2)…coming soon