August Burning (Book 1): Outbreak (10 page)

“To Pennsylvania?” Elvis asked.

Jaxton nodded. “It’s 130 miles, maybe
more if we stay off the roads. I have no idea how many days that would take us.
We could get a car, somehow, maybe. Drive north as far as we can and then make
the rest of the trip on foot.”

“My parents are leaving today. They
have a car, and we’re going to try and make it home as soon as I leave here,”
Elvis ventured.

“Is there room?” Harley asked.

Elvis grimaced. “I’m sorry, they have
so much shit from my room…”

The girl put some distance between
them, her mouth hanging open. “They could easily fit three or four of us if
they trashed the stuff.”

Elvis could scarcely look at the eyes
of his friends. “They don’t see this thing as a huge deal yet. I’m sorry.”

Jaxton spat on the floor. “We’ll make
our own way. If we’re all lucky, we’ll see you at home in a few days. Alright
everyone. Liam, Bennett, Elvis and I grew up in Cold Spring together. It’s in
the country, pretty far from major towns and roads. Cold Spring probably has
5,000 people in it, and it sits in a small valley, enclosed on all four sides
by steep ridges that cut across the earth. It’s the perfect place to be in a
situation like this. We’re going to do everything we can to get back there
before this really explodes. Anyone who wants to come with us is welcome,”
Jaxton said, his eyes steely grey.

Bennett stood, nodding. “I don’t trust
the government. I want to make our way.”

“Anyone else who wants to come, we’ll
go together,” Jaxton added.

Tessa immediately stood, her long,
dirty-blond hair falling in curls to her mid-back. She looked nervous, but
spoke cleanly. “I’m coming.”

“What about those things? From the
video?”

“Don’t think about them now. We need
to get somewhere isolated.”

Bennett drew Adira to the side as the
others began to organize. “Are you coming with us?”

Adira hesitated. “I…I don’t know…my
family is so far. How would I get to Boston?”

Bennett smiled slightly, and his warm
eyes sparked Adira’s flagging heart. “Come with us,” he said softly.

“What’s this?” Jaxton asked, having
overheard them.

Adira looked to him, and she thought
there was a strange glitter there. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Bennett answered for her. “She’s thinking about coming with us to
Pennsylvania.”

Jaxton nodded emphatically. “Of course
she should. Your family is in Boston right? Our part of Pennsylvania is so far
from the city. It’s the boondocks. We’ll weather whatever storm this is, and
you can go from there.”

She noticed Jaxton lean in as he
waited for her response, and she felt herself agreeing.

 
12 hours after Outbreak. Washington, D.C

The group of six crossed the street at
the quick step. Jaxton looked back at them, and analyzed the friends that
remained. No one had seen Troy again; he was gone. Elvis was in a car looping
around far to the west, back to Pennsylvania with his own parents.

Jaxton felt vaguely responsible for
the others that followed him. This was his plan. He would bear the consequences
if it failed. He knew they saw him as the leader, and he would do everything in
his power to make sure they survived. Liam returned his glance with a sharp nod.
His broad shoulders carried two obscenely bulky duffel bags, one at each hip.
The metal cans of food inside rang as they bumped together. Campus was
significantly more deserted than the days previous, Jaxton noticed with wary
eyes. The only souls still outside were fiendishly hoarding supplies and making
for various modes of transport. The families had almost all cleared out over
the previous night. Streams of vehicles clogged the arteries of transit running
south. They group rounded the brick building and approached the ZIPCAR service
parking lot. It was totally empty save for a beaten-up silver minivan.

“Is this going to work?” Bennett asked
nervously.

“We can’t just take the car,” Adira
ventured.

“We have to,” Jaxton croaked, his
voice hoarse with fear. “Just stick with the plan, ok?” Jaxton felt his hands
shaking as the sirens droned in his ears. “Remember the video. They’re coming
for us.”

Bennett shook his head angrily. “What
are we doing here?”

Jaxton rounded on him. “How else are
we going to get up there? None of us can legally rent a car yet. I know this
fucking guy. He monitors the lot, leaves his damn keys in his booth all day.”

Bennett drew up as they crouched
behind the brick wall. “Adira, don’t do this if you don’t want to.”

“Don’t do this now, Bennett,” Jaxton
breathed.

Adira looked to the two men, both
willing her to choose. “I don’t know if I want to.”

Harley stood up, her auburn hair
framing her curvy form. She sniffed and rubbed her eyes, still red. “I’ll do
it.”

Liam’s eyes met hers. “We could get in
a lot of trouble if this goes wrong.”

Harley looked at him hard, her giddy
energy gone. “I want to get out of the city.” Without another word she trotted
across the vacant lot, to the sleepy booth. As she approached, she began
shouting at the man inside.

“Ok, let’s see how good her acting
is,” Jaxton whispered.

“This is so fucked up,” Bennett hissed.

Harley’s emphatic hand motions drew
the pot-bellied man out of the booth, and the two took off at a jog down the
opposite street.

“What did you tell her to say?”

Jaxton shrugged. “I didn’t have time
to. She must have made it up on the fly. He’s out of sight. Go!”

The group sprinted across the lot and
Jaxton stormed into the booth, which was filled with lazy jazz beats. He
emerged with a set of keys, and unlocked the doors.

Adira took a peek inside, and recoiled
at the stench. “What the hell.”

“Did you see the fucking guy? Get in,”
Jaxton commanded.

Liam tossed the duffel bags into the
back and seated himself in the passenger seat. Tessa, Adira, and Bennett
clambered into the back.

“Oh, fuck. She’s coming back already man!” Liam shouted.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jaxton muttered.
He fumbled with the keys and dropped them on the floor. Coming back up, he saw
Harley racing back towards the car through the rear-view mirror.

“Leave the sliding door open!”

Jaxton fired the engine and wrenched
the old minivan out of park. Harley leapt into the side of the vehicle and
yelled. Jaxton reversed the vehicle and scraped against the fence, and a figure
appeared at the open side.

“What the hell do you think you’re
doing?!” The blustering fat man was too fast for his size. He sputtered and
raged, trying to drag himself into the vehicle as it moved slowly forward.

“Push him out damnit!” Jaxton ordered.

Bennett, seated closest to him, did
nothing. His face was a mask of confused horror.

The vehicle rolled towards the exit,
and Harley reached over Bennett to slam the sliding door. As it snapped closed,
they all heard a sickening crunch and the pasty man with a balding head tumbled
backwards out of the vehicle.

“You just broke his fucking hand!
What’s wrong with you?!” Adira screamed.

Jaxton was shaking his head over and
over, though he couldn’t say why. His sweaty palms gripped the wheel and he
dropped the steel to the floorboard.

The car made a whining sound as it
moved forward, though Jaxton could scarcely hear it above the thunderstorm.
Thick deciduous forest crowded both flanks of the highway, and Jaxton dreamed
of their homes, which were nestled in lazy mountain greenery one hundred miles
to the north. The southbound lanes were completely clogged with traffic. As
nature poured a homicidal deluge upon the thousands of travelers, Jaxton nursed
the accelerator. He squinted; the arrow was dipping below a quarter tank of
fuel. Cursing silently, he set the cruise control once more, letting the
ancient mini-van coast at 50 miles per hour, the best speed for maintaining
gasoline. The wipers were slamming back and forth excitedly, barely allowing
vision. The rain drummed incessantly on the roof, and the sky cracked with
vicious lightning. Jaxton caught Tessa’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and
forced himself to smile. There was no sense showing them how nervous he was.
They had made it out of the capitol and progressed about 30 miles, laden with
all the bags of supplies they could manage to squeeze in. The others had barely
spoken since stealing the car. Jaxton told himself that he had urged them to do
what was necessary. Others weren’t willing to make the tough choices like he
was.

The paper maps crinkled as Liam
fumbled with them in the passenger seat. “I’m too used to an app for this sort
of thing. Are you still not getting service? I’m seeing nothing.”

“Just something in case the road is
blocked ahead.” Jaxton peered ahead. The line of cars to his left honked
angrily, almost in a continuous delirium. It grated on his already frayed
nerves. It smelled musty, and wet in the car. Jaxton found himself reaching for
the AM radio knob and turning it. A voice every American knew crackled across
the old speaker system, its country drawl lingering on almost every note.

“-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.