August Burning (Book 2): Survival (22 page)

She sat next to him and rubbed his head till he was breathing deeply.

Layla licked her lips as she drew a towel around her, and put on her slippers and a fur hat. “I need to go to the bathroom,” she whispered.

Bennett just groaned, half asleep. She laughed absent-mindedly, and sauntered away. Bennett found himself watching her go, and knew her power over him was growing again. He lay awake for what seemed like an eternity waiting for her body to come back to him, but somewhere along the way sleep stole over him like a thief in the night.

The second she cleared the door to the annex, her pace quickened. She wiped the insides of her thighs dry and shivered. Agis had provided her with a supply of birth control for the assignment, but the risk still scared her. She jogged down the empty halls barely lit by starlight from the overhead windows. Passing the doors, she caught the guards staring at her vacantly. Her footsteps lead her up the stairs.

There was Annabelle, her heels clicking on the tile. She slowed to a stop, her hair pulled back tight in a ponytail.

Annabelle snorted. “A midnight visit from the town harlot. Just what I wanted to see.”

“Do you have these little quips stored away for every time you see me?” Layla snapped, the slow vocal fry gone from her voice.

“I see you’re that Bennett’s little slut. Agis probably didn’t have to spend much time convincing you for this one did he.”

Layla’s lips tightened. “Everyone has their place,” she spat quickly. “Even you, bitch.”

“Be careful what you tell him this time. He seems to listen to you carefully. Why he does that, I can’t begin to imagine.”

Layla smirked in the soft white light, shadows across her face. “Don’t pretend like you’re so much better than me. I remember what you did in the last town. What you gave to all those people. Just like he asked.”

Annabelle’s slender, elegant frame became rigid. “Don’t you ever speak of that again. Do you hear me?” Her words projected violently from her mouth, and she was unaware of the spit that flew with each word.

Layla grinned wolfishly as she kept walking. “Just don’t think I’ll let you forget.”

By the time Layla had gone, Annabelle was leaning against the cold concrete to support herself.

Layla drew into the library, and approached the door. She knocked three times.

Agis’s face appeared, flushed with hazy eyes. He grinned greedily, and opened the door wider to reveal a naked and impressive musculature. He drew her in, and tore the towel from her body. Shadows from the flickering torches danced across her and another lying on a cot. Harley rose on her elbow and inhaled appreciatively. “About time,” she cooed.

“Wait. I should report to you now. I can’t be long. He’s sleeping but he could wake up.”

Agis pressed himself against her as Harley drew her nose close to the table. Snorting violently, she leaned back, anticipating the heady flow that would come from the painkillers. He nibbled on Layla’s ear. “Stay a few minutes. Have something.”

He pushed her towards Harley’s naked form.

Layla surveyed the bags and bags of powders, pills, and opiates that were scattered around the room with covetous eyes. “What the fuck; I didn’t think you had this much?”

Harley reached up and drew Layla to her. “What do you want? Anything you want.”

Layla’s heartbeat was thumping for the first time that night, despite Bennett’s best efforts. “I- I could go for some blow,” she pushed out, her voice husky.

She turned as she felt Agis’s hands groping her. The report would have to wait.

…

“I miss the old Cathedral.”

Adira groaned in soft approval, looking up nostalgically at the twisting grey branches that had grown over the road. The magic of that green summer tunnel was all gone now. She pulled a scarf up to cover her mouth, her lips were chapped against the cold. “I used to love winter. Didn’t you?”

Jaxton grunted, his bright eyes scanning the wooded hills to their flanks with the poise of a predator. He hadn’t wanted her to come.

“I used to, Adira.” Liam said, barely above a whisper. Words seemed to carry farther in the cold.

Their little band trudged deeper into the defile as the wasteland stretched out before them. Adira heard a scurry in the leaves, and snapped her head to the noise. The squirrel stole away without a backwards glance.

“We should split up, if we ever hope to find something.” Elvis said flatly. Like them all, he clutched a rifle that would have to be given up as soon as they re-entered the school. It had taken some convincing, for Agis to allow them all to hunt together.

Jaxton shook his head slightly, his all-black form menacing indeed. “Not this close to the hillsmen.”

“Ha!” Wilder shouted as he jumped forward. He rested his knee on the worn pavement and brought his scoped rifle to bear. There was a flash of movement near the frozen river to their right, among the oaks. A shot rang out, wild.

“Nice. I mean really well done. Just great.” Duke exhaled loudly, his breath expelling like a plume in the pale light. He rubbed his red face with his gloves; his pistol remained at his hip.

“I almost had him,” Wilder whispered.

Duke kept rubbing, intent on generating some warmth. “False. That was simply a terrible shot. Let old Tex handle the next one.” He drew his pistol and pretended to fire it.

“Was it a deer?” Jaxton drew closer, his face etched in lines of gravity.

“I think so.”

Jaxton took off at a jog. “Let’s see if we can’t find it again.”

The old factory loomed before them, a titanic beast of rust that lay in the midst of a forest. Its copper towers stood double the height of any tree in their vision.

With only a second’s hesitation Jaxton led them closer. Elvis and Liam fanned out in the dead field, once a carefully manicured lawn. Duke and Wilder raced to an old gas station perched next to the rusted relic of Appalachia.

The metal beast intrigued Adira. It awakened powerful sweeps of nostalgia within her, though she had never had any memories here. It was a relic of another way of life, now long forgotten. The prices reflected on the peeling gas station sign would have been cheap for a decade prior. There was a broken neon Coca Cola light in the window.

Jaxton hissed, and urged them to remain still. There was the deer, a majestic specimen, the alpha of his harem, no doubt. She saw Jaxton raise his rifle with infinite slowness, intent on bringing them all the pride of their first kill. They had been out in the cold each and every day. And every night they had to make the trek back to the school to accept handouts from Agis’s men. They hated it.

Jaxton hesitated for a moment as the deer locked eyes with him, and it spurred into motion. The beast led with its 6-pointed rack of antlers and burst into an empty hanger door. He cursed, and they charged. “Check for other exits!”

Wilder and Duke peeled off to sweep the outside of the structure. Liam, Jaxton, Elvis, and Adira entered the factory, and immediately their eyes struggled to adjust. There were broken sets of corroded machinery all around them. A pale light filtered through a wall of dirty white-colored windows to their right. They stepped over sheets of broken glass and heard a clatter. Passing through the room of broken machines, they entered a second smaller hanger, down a small staircase.

“No where to run,” Jax grunted happily.

Jaxton stopped immediately. The ceiling was low, and the windows in this room were small squares that offered tiny portals to the outside world. Adira squinted in the dark haze, struggling to make out the shapes before her. They were tall and immobile.

She sniffed, and was repulsed by the odors that filled her quivering nostrils. It reeked of death, and festering rot. A sickening dread rushed into her stomach, and she heaved up a paltry breakfast of oatmeal. The stench was organic, as was the material on the floor around her. She raised her boot, and inspected the sticky film that had collected there with confusion.

“What the hell is this?” Liam said, stumbling backwards.

“Animals, maybe.” Elvis said in a surprisingly flat tone. He took a step forward, peering at the immobile tall shapes that were stacked in the dark haze ahead.

Jaxton held a quivering hand up, and hissed.

There was a primal, blood-curdling shriek of a docile animal meeting a savage death somewhere ahead, its screams echoing again and again. Elvis stood a foot in front of Jaxton, his rifle raised. “Get out.”

“Infected?” Jaxton asked in a shaky voice, to no one in particular.

There was a shuffle of movement ahead, and their entire field of vision shifted in the festering haze of the factory basement. The immobile pillars were moving, shifting slowly in the fog of blood and rot. The entire contingent of survivors was paralyzed by fear. Nothing could strike more fear into a heart than the unknown, and these moving shapes in that darkness chilled them all down their spines.

Jaxton stepped back and gave Adira a rough shove towards the staircase. As she stumbled up the creaking metal, she cast a glance back over her shoulder. Advancing towards the men in lazy, methodical sweeps were the same pale-eyed men and women Adira had confronted in the field, all those weeks ago. She turned to run forever, her heart pounding, but knew she would regret it if she just ran. “Jax!” She screamed. But he was already there, as were the others. They charged back up the stairs, the wall of hillsmen stalking through the organic haze a few paces behind.

The five survivors burst out of the factory hanger and into the pale frost. The sun had retreated behind the clouds, and the day was eerily devoid of light and life.

Wilder and Duke were not alone. They stood in the field, shaking visibly. Around them was a motionless contingent of hillsmen. Women with vacant eyes and torn dresses, their aprons tattered and pathetic. Men with vacant eyes and dirty, one-piece mechanic’s overalls. There were twenty of them, all standing at a measured distance from the two men, whose manic eyes darted around ceaselessly.

Jaxton and the others drew closer, rifles pointed.

“Don’t shoot,” a woman croaked. Her vocal chords sounded like they themselves were rotting. She had seen this woman before. Her hair ran in less than a dozen filthy strands that sprouted from a bleeding head and ran past her hips. Her pale eyes resembled those of the infected, but she had spoken. She took a step closer, a hatchet in her hand.

Adira instinctively drew Jaxton closer to her, and felt a presence at their back. Another two dozen hillsmen had emerged from the factory basement, covered in similar articles of stained clothing. The oil marks were old, but the blood was fresh. A great bearded man with pale eyes dropped the dead deer at his feet. Its neck had been ripped out, and the bearded’s mans face dripped with fresh scarlet. He gave them a weird expression, so that Adira could see the red staining his rotting teeth. It wasn’t quite a smile. It was like a person was smiling for the first time, and hadn’t quite figured it out yet.

The hillsmen shuffled around quietly, peering at them like confused predators, or confused prey. It was hard to tell. But Adira saw their hatchets, their hammers, and their axes. And she was afraid.

“Don’t shoot.” The woman repeated slowly with rotting vocal chords, staring at each of them in turn. He mouth snapped a few times like a nervous tick.

“They’re not infected?” Liam asked aloud as he lowered his shotgun a hair.

“They’re fucking infected. It was them who killed Tessa,” Wilder growled, his dirty face a mask of rage as he eyed the hatchets the hillsmen wielded. He began to raise his rifle once more. Elvis crossed to him in a blink and held it down forcibly. “Now is not the time for that,” he said forcefully.

“What are you?” Jaxton kept spinning on his heel, checking to ensure they were not creeping up on his rear.

The woman continued to sway as her tendrils of hair caught the wind. “Like you. But,” she raised her lanky, mottled arm to reveal a bite mark below the shoulder.

The survivors gripped their weapons with a renewed fervor. “They’re infected. I told you.” Wilder hissed.

“There’s something different about them. That’s obvious.” Adira hissed right back.

“Food.” The woman croaked slowly. As she did, the bearded man with his face covered in scarlet dragged the dead deer to their feet. He snorted viciously and shook his head violently, as if to fight off a spasm, before withdrawing.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Jaxton lowered his weapon. “I have no idea. Don’t touch the deer. If his blood got on it, we could become infected.”

“Food.” The bearded man croaked. “Food. Food.”

“You’ve all been bitten, then?”

The others continued swaying in the cold wind, which they seemed oblivious to. Some snapped their jaws in response. Adira thought she heard a few jumbled words floating on the wind, but most remained silent.

“Why did you attack us?” Adira demanded, forcing herself to stare the pale lady in the eyes.

The woman took a measured step forward, her jaw snapping. Adira jumped back by instinct. “You, came. To us.”

“Give me the word, Jax, and I’ll carve these fuckers up.” Wilder growled.