August Burning (Book 2): Survival (30 page)
Duke stared at him from his knees, “How is it you have a joke for a time like this? What the fuck is wrong with you?” He gasped between breaths, a pudgy red face that looked about to burst.
Troy jogged to their position, barely worn out. “My men should be on all the exits by now.” His eyes were wild, and the men around him were restless. They remembered how their brothers had been cut down in the night like sheep.
Harley finally turned, trembling, her weapon long since dropped. Her eyes paused on her perceived salvation, and she leapt towards them. “Liam! Oh thank god!” She ran to him as if to hide under his big arms.
Liam raised his shotgun at her approach, still hot from the blood spilt on the snow. “Not one step closer, bitch.”
She reeled, as if her docile mother had struck her. Those eyes darted around the fifty survivors that had gathered below the school, accusing and mean. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’ve doomed yourselves, and you’re all going to die.” Her last words she finished with a savage grin, as she swept her hair back over her head. Liam remained frozen in place, though the others around her jeered and spat.
“Why do you stand there and do nothing?!” A voice rolled over the asphalt from above. All eyes turned skyward.
Agis was there, his paltry band in black standing at the lip of the roof, eyeing them all with contempt. Adira could see the wounded, and those who refused to fight, clustering on the same lip nervously to watch what would happen. She saw Billy, the bearded hillbilly, and Annabelle, the doctor, watching the conversation with wide eyes. Billy nodded at her, ever so slightly.
Most in the crowd below had their weapons raised, matching the officers above. “Don’t shoot yet,” Jaxton growled.
“Jaxton and his band of outlaws have betrayed me, they have betrayed us!!” Those below could see Agis’s spittle flying as he spoke, the veins on his forehead straining. “Kill him! Kill him now! He has ruined what we have built here!”
Jaxton looked to see Elvis trotting up to them, clutching his shoulder. He nodded, his heart filled with respect.
Jaxton looked to the roof as Elvis placed himself directly next to Jaxton. “Where would Agis be today, without his drugs, and his whores, to keep the men in line?” His hands chopped the air. “How many of you up there, standing with Agis, were wounded at the hands of his officers!?”
Troy stalked through the crowd, his beard shaking with anger. “He ordered his men to ambush my friends and I! Soldiers doing their duty and looking for a place to sleep! Twenty two men dead in the forest at his hand!” The soldiers below roared, their fists trembling and fingers itching for the kill.
“It is true.” Agis continued, his anger a little more controlled. “I made hard choices, made hard calls to protect us! To protect us from these monsters! Who wanted to steal our supplies and our women! You should be thanking me!”
Harley whooped like a drunken vixen, and a mean looking soldier drove the butt of his rifle into her stomach. She doubled over, spit dripping from her mouth. No one moved to help her.
“These men are no officers of the law. They are imposters. I have seen it myself, a box filled with uniforms and nametags. They are no men to trust.” Jaxton spat.
Adira frowned. The pale officer with yellow teeth slowly pushed another magazine into his rifle. She looked to her lover as he nodded encouragement to the mob around him. Her eyes shot back to the yellow grin above as it gleamed greedily behind a raised rifle, and she knew she was too far away.
“JAX!” Her voice sounded small.
There was a single shot, and a blur of motion in the crowd. A figure dropped to his knees.
The mob came alive with a howl, and sent a flurry of hot metal searing towards the roof with their firearms. Adira pushed and shoved the firing maniacs, too lost in their rage to care for the kneeling man.
She counted time again when she saw his face. Jaxton held Elvis in his arms. Jaxton moved his hand to wipe away his own tears, “He fucking pushed me out of the way. He fucking took the shot.” Jaxton rocked back and forth, his bloody hands clutching the slumping form tight to his chest.
Liam kneeled beside him, pushing his beefy hands on the weeping wound. The waves of blood leaked out of the dead man like a broken dam, his chest soaked in hot scarlet.
Elvis’ head lolled to the side, like a broken doll. Jaxton roared at the sight, his bulky form shuddering with hate. Placing the body of Elvis on the ground with tender care, he rose with murder in his shining eyes. Taking two steps, he grabbed a fistful of long auburn hair and dragged it down to his waist. His other hand snatched a long fishing knife from his belt and placed the cold steel on Harley’s slender neck.
“Liam, help me!” She wailed through her tears. But Liam could only look to his dead friend, lying with his limbs contorted unnaturally on the frozen grass. He raised his eyes and stared at Harley, ambivalent to her cries for deliverance.
“I have your toy here! And if you do not drop your arms now and come out, this cold steel will be the last thing she ever feels.” Jaxton’s voice trembled, but the others around him were with him. The mob nodded and twitched their assent at the threat. Adira looked at him, horrified.
They could see nothing above, save a pale sky. Then there was a voice. “Friends. Do not move, or all these people up here will die.” It floated down as a whisper, a promise signed in blood.
Very slowly, they appeared. Agis’s men forced the group of wounded civilians to the edge at gunpoint, till they teetered on the cusp with bandaged arms and hobbled legs. Agis appeared, his chiseled face etched in sinister delight. “Shoot, and these friends die.”
Adira gasped. Billy’s face was poised far above as he stood on the edge, a mask of barely contained emotion. Annabelle’s tears ran freely down her tired face, and Joseph, the kindest among them, struggled not to tumble to the asphalt below.
“Now, where were we?” Agis asked, with a friendly smile. “Ah, you were attempting to force my hand.” He lowered his gaze chuckled darkly, and rose wide eyes. “You assume I care for her.” He paused. “You assume too much.” In a flash of motion he raised a pistol and fired it.
Harley’s head snapped back under Jaxton’s knife, struck in the left eye socket with a bullet. She dropped like a sack of bricks with a moist thud to the cold pavement.
The mob reeled, scattering and scampering, but there were no more gunshots. The soldiers raised their weapons again, fingers itching to fire. “HOLD!” Troy roared. “You’ll hit the civies.”
Seeing there would be no retribution for his crime, Agis giggled happily as he postured himself behind Joseph for safety.
Liam thought Joseph was looking at him. He thought the man of God was looking at him in the crowd, as he kneeled there on that lip. Hoping it was so, Liam nodded softly.
Joseph rose. Agis stared at him, his lip quivering. “Face the edge again,” he commanded.
Joseph trembled, and drove his right fist into Agis’s throat. Agis squawked like an injured goose and flapped his arms in delirious pain. Joseph hit him again.
As the pale-skinned police officer moved to attack Joseph, Billy tackled him. Annabelle drove her sharp heel into the groaning officer’s yellow teeth till he screamed. Then the others moved, wounded as they were. They swarmed the officers above, kicking and screaming. As Agis teetered on the edge, Joseph kicked him off.
Agis hit the asphalt three stories below with a wet snap. He was still conscious, but he could barely think through the pain. It pulsed through every fiber of his being incessantly, relentlessly. Agis tried to move but couldn’t. He raised an arm to find it flop down halfway through his forearm, white bone chilled by the cold breeze. His lungs screamed at him for air, but his windpipe had collapsed and was hugging his spinal column with glee. There was a shadow. Who was it?
Jaxton accepted the hatchet from Wilder.
He ran his fingers along it. It was rusty, and crude.
Good.
Jaxton raised it above his head and brought its weight down into the form writhing below him.
Agis screamed.
Jaxton handed it to Wilder. Wilder ignored the screaming and raised the hatchet again, with the same result. Wilder passed it to Troy, who passed it to Liam after he too had extracted his blood payment. The form below him was barely recognizable, but it still quivered, just slightly, as if it was a little cold.
Liam brought down the hatchet, and all was silent.
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They survived the Lieutenant’s wrath, but the Infected Hordes are descending on the valley, and the hour is late. The Journey comes to an end in AUGUST BURNING: Last Stand (Book 3) coming soon on all Kindle platforms via Amazon.
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