August Burning (Book 3): Last Stand Read online

  AUGUST BURNING: Last Stand

  By Tyler Lahey

  Copyright © 2016 Tyler Lahey

  All rights reserved

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One 2

  Chapter Two 8

  Chapter Three 14

  Chapter Four 19

  Chapter Five 26

  Chapter Six 28

  Chapter Seven 36

  Chapter Eight 46

  Chapter Nine 59

  Chapter Ten 69

  Chapter Eleven 81

  Chapter Twelve 93

  Epilogue 103

  Chapter One

  Cold Spring, Appalachia. 440 days after Outbreak, August.

  Kill the traitors. That had been his directive. He would see it done, and the cicadas would cover their approach.

  Troy snapped his head back, to the eastern sky. It was still pitch black. Good. “Faster,” he snarled. The three boats began to glide across the surface of the lake, the algae-covered oars dipping into the murky waters.

  The forest was a living thing, its dark boughs filled with the chirping of tiny buzzing insects. Troy could see the shore closing in ahead, its steep wooded slope sparkling with lazily floating fireflies.

  They had to be quick.

  Troy checked his kneepads and helmet, feeling the sweat collecting under his camouflage. They had done this a dozen times before, but it never got any easier. Troy rocked forward, and nearly lost his grip on the M4 assault rifle as the boat ground up on the lakebed. “Damnit,” he cursed under his breath. “Move!”

  His team leapt off the metal rowboats and felt their boots scrape against the rocky shore. There was the tree line. No one moved.

  Troy looked around him, and saw eight sets of eyes, all looking to him for the command.

  “Troy?” Wilder was staring at him, two orbs of white in a paste of black face paint. Troy could see the sweat dripping down his face in the moonlight.

  “Remind me again why we do this?” Troy asked.

  His men chuckled darkly around him, but only Wilder stepped forward on the rocky shore. He tapped an Eagle insignia sewn into his camouflage, visible in the moonlight.

  Troy shook his head and smiled, fighting to overcome his nerves. “How could I forget? We have a reputation to uphold. Are all of you men proud to be part of the Eagle?”

  All eight clasped their right fist to their breast, in a silent salute.

  Troy nodded, steeling himself. He flicked off the safety on his rifle. “Then follow me.”

  …

  The mansion loomed ahead. Troy could see a structure, made of brick and ornate, rusted iron. The mansion resembled a turn-of-the-century steel tycoon’s summer retreat, a massive five story fortress surrounded by unkempt gardens and broken stone fountains. It was here the renegades had taken shelter. They could not be allowed to live.

  The Eagle raced up the steep wooded slope in the darkness, the sounds of their footsteps masked by the forest. Troy saw the towers and spires of the looming structure peering through the trees.

  “How big is this fucking place?” Wilder muttered.

  Suddenly the apparitions were in the open, nine shadows moving across an unkempt field littered with broken imitation statues of the Caesars. The tycoon had had a taste for the gaudy. Troy’s men advanced up a dry waterbed, a concrete fountain system that had run dry for a century. Hedges grew wild at their flanks.

  Troy spun on his heel and raised his weapon. Shadows in the dark. Deer. He exhaled, watching the furry family bound across the tree line.

  “Keep moving. Let’s find an entry.”

  They advanced closer to the brick and stone beast, till they were pressing up against the base of its mammoth five story structure. Troy strained to see past the moth-eaten white curtains inside the windows. The moonlight revealed rich wooden walls inside.

  Troy’s men were spread out, all facing different directions in the overgrown garden. Their rifles scanned the broken colonnades and little pools endlessly. Troy had chosen well. His were highly trained, the best to come out of the Citadel; the Eagle was the most elite unit in the valley.

  Only Wilder remained at Troy’s side, his black paint hiding a boyish face. “What was this place?”

  “It’s been abandoned for a hundred years. Some fat cat’s forest getaway in the age of steel and oil. Turn of the century stuff. We used to come here as kids, and explore.”

  “What’s inside?”

  “Mostly empty rooms, with ornate staircases and broken light fixtures. But it is massive. A dozen fireplaces, multiple basement levels that they carved into the bedrock. We need to be careful. The traitors could be anywhere.”

  Wilder stiffened, suddenly aware of the structure’s danger. “Where did Duke say they would be?”

  “He had to stop meeting with me. Said the traitors were getting suspicious of him. All I know, is that there are seven of them.”

  “Right. Just give the word, Lt.”

  Troy tightened his helmet strap, and turned the corner. The team skirted around an empty reflecting pool flanked by massive oak trees. They moved silently, rifles at the ready, with jet-black silencers extending six inches beyond the end of the barrels.

  “Lt,” one of his men whispered hoarsely. He indicated a massive set of wooden and wrought iron doors set back into the brick. Troy frowned. Could it really be that easy? The left door was ajar two inches. Troy advanced slowly up the staircase, and paused before the door, his hand extended. Why was the front door open? He prepared to open the door when his instincts revolted. Something was off, something wasn’t right.

  Troy took several steps back, silently. He signaled his team to swing back around the mansion, to the servant’s quarters. “Something isn’t right.”

  “Did you see someone?” Wilder demanded.

  “No. We’re not going through the front. There’s a plumbing entrance. Follow me.”

  The team moved quickly across stalks of high grass that tickled their torsos, and through a system of rotting wooden stables. Troy could see a metal panel in the middle of a stone cobble driveway, tucked around the back of the estate. It was illuminated, more than it should have been. He cursed. The sun was rising in the east, casting the forest around him in a sickly grey color.

  Troy signaled towards the metal grate. Without hesitation his men removed it. Troy dropped down first, having know the place as a boy. His men followed, the trust in their commander absolute. “Torch,” he ordered.

  One of his men clicked on a single lamp, powered by the final batteries in the valley. The nine men stood in the belly of a subterranean boiler system, surrounded by massive rusting metal structures. Water dripped on Troy’s weapon as he scanned the shadows around the old tanks. The air stank of mold and rust. “On me.”

  The team moved deeper into basement, leaving their exit behind. They advanced past a metal grate hand elevator, used by servants a century past.

  “Kill the torch.” Troy led them up the narrow servant’s staircase, into a silent kitchen. There had been a whisper of inspiration, a touch of instinct when Troy neared the front door. He was operating now entirely based on that instinct, as he had learned to do. Leading his men, he emerged onto the second floor. Suddenly, he paused. The granite floors ended before him. From here on out, it was old, noisy wood. They would hear his men coming.

  Wilder drew up beside him, and saw the same, “If we choose to move now, we can’t stop.”

  Troy nodded slightly, “I know. Move,” he ordered.

  Then they were jogging, as quietly as they could manage. The echoes of their footsteps reverberated around the stone fixtures and fine mahogany walls. Troy was at the front, his eyes now adjusting to th
e pale light that faded in from between the moth eaten drapes. This was the time to strike. His enemy would be confused.

  “James?” He heard a voice whisper. Here was the foe.

  A bleary eyed ruffian with a huge potbelly stumbled out of a bedroom to Troy’s right. Troy could see the shock on his eyes for half a second before his forehead exploded. One.

  “Right side,” Troy barked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two of his own men peel off and enter the room. He heard a metallic thud, and desperately wished silencers worked better on rifles. Two.

  They still had the advantage. The mansion was ill defended; the traitors had not expected a night assault. Fools.

  Troy’s team swept room-by-room, finding jewels and trinkets the traitors had stashed in various drawing rooms in oaken closets. These, Troy ignored with disgust.

  There was shouting ahead, and below them. Troy passed another stone staircase, and heard the panic drifting up from the lower levels.

  Troy saw a flicker of motion on the left. He felt the shift in his formation as his men noticed the same and moved to adjust. As they passed close to the door, a half naked woman drunkenly jumped out wielding a metal baseball bat. She was dead before she hit the floor. Three.

  Troy sent Wilder with three men down the stairs, and led the rest of his team forward towards the front of the house on the second level. They emerged silently onto an interior balcony, set above the main entryway. There was a barricade below them, a lazily strung together wall of old tables and cabinets; it surrounded the front door, which was still ajar. Troy could see three men now on the barricade, desperately torn between defending the trap they had created for the front door and the sounds now developing to their rear. They shouted endlessly, their voices laced with panic and completely oblivious to the threat above them. In the flickering torchlight, Troy saw a figure he recognized, bound and gagged behind the barricade. A portly woman held a butchers cleaver to Duke’s throat. So the traitors had discovered the rat in their midst, and had sought to draw his own men in the front door for a massacre.

  Troy shook his head, and almost laughed. Raising his rifle, he took careful aim. It was a far shot, and the woman was swaying with fear. He wouldn’t risk it. Dropping his barrel a hair, he put two rounds in her bloated chest. Four.

  The stone railing exploded in front of Troy, and he felt the fragments tear into his gear. Reeling back, he shook his head in disbelief. “They weren’t supposed to have any guns.” He took a look at his own rifle, smoking where some of the buckshot had destroyed his M4, one of nine still working in the valley.

  Peeking over the edge, he spied the culprit. One of the men below was busy stuffing two more slugs into a double-barreled hunting shotgun. “Cover me,” he ordered, and leapt over the edge of the balcony. Landing cleanly on the dirty marble floor, Troy drew his sidearm and advanced. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw two figures raise wood-axes and move to intercept him. They were ten feet from him, Troy estimated. Before they had taken two steps, both stumbled and slid across the floor, crimson spraying from their entry wounds. Five and Six.

  The fool saw him now. The portly man dropped his first slug, and it clattered loudly on the marble. His hands shook and his beard vibrated as he saw Troy’s men surrounding him in the foyer. Troy could make out his face now, in the morning light.

  “It’s going to be a lovely day, I think,” Troy said. “Do you hear the morning birds outside?”

  As the sweaty man finally slid a slug into his weapon, Troy bounded across the space and delivered a hard kick to his groin. As he fell to his knees, Troy snatched the weapon from the air.

  “Are you from the Citadel?” The brigand croaked through his tears. “What faction are you? What is this!?” His eyes danced around the room, struggling to interpret the heavily armed soldiers that now stood before him.

  Troy removed his helmet. “The Eagle isn’t a very well know faction. We like to keep it that way. You probably thought they would send the Lion straight through the front door, with their loud shield formations and rusty melee weapons…or maybe you thought the Bear would meander around the outskirts of the mansion with their old guns…like this one you managed to steal. Or maybe you thought the Wolf…with their hunting bows. No.” Troy kneeled before the man, so he could smell his putrid breath. He was probably thirty. He looked forty. “No. You see, those factions all deal with the infected. There is only one faction that deals with other survivors that betray the Citadel.” Troy tapped his Eagle insignia as he spoke.

  He rose, and turned on his heel, confident his own men would finish the job. “The Citadel sends its regards.”

  He heard a pop that echoed like thunder in the marble foyer. Seven.

  Chapter Two

  The Citadel

  She loved the feeling of his rough fingers tickling her scar tissue. It had been a long winter, and a slow spring. Adira shivered, and laughed lightly.

  “At least you let me touch it now…”

  Adira pursed her lean lips and rubbed her aches and bruises. “I’m going to miss summer,” she said, before turning to Jaxton. His brown beard had been trimmed back from its winter glory, and his head was shaved. There was a scar above his left cheek, and dozens of others secreted away across his body. But they were all scarred these days.

  “Remember last summer? When we couldn’t even bathe because the infected were still wandering near all the rivers and lakes?”

  Adira shook her head. “I remember discovering how humans really smell, for the first time. I remember learning how to stop caring. But you stuck around,” she winked. The pair pulled away from each other and kept walking around the back of the old field house. As they rounded the corner a pair of survivors jumped to their feet for their officer. Adira waved their salutes down, not even bothering to make eye contact.

  “Did the Eagle succeed?” Adira asked sideways.

  Jaxton nodded, hoping that no one had overheard. Troy’s unit had an almost mythical aura, and he hoped to keep it that way. “Of course. Those idiots that stole our supplies, beat up three of our men, and occupied the Mansion got what they deserved.”

  “So they were all killed?” Adira asked softly.

  Jaxton sighed. “I don’t ask questions. The Eagle gets an order. They execute it.” He noticed Adira’s measured silence, and continued. “I can’t control the faction leaders like I can my own men. Ultimately he answers to you and I, I suppose, but Troy needs to have some of his own authority. And besides, it’s no coincidence Wilder found his way onto the team.”

  Adira chuckled, supremely confident. “Your little inside man?”

  A girl approached, her hair totally shaved. Her bright eyes flashed happily and she grinned. “Adira!” she shouted.

  Jaxton slowed, but Adira kept strolling forward, as if she was in a park one fine Sunday before the Outbreak. “Don’t tell me about the gasoline supply, I already know.”

  The girl fell in alongside the couple. Jaxton admired the rearing horse on her olive tank top. Adira had chosen a fine symbol for her faction. The Destrier had never let anyone down. “We ran the horses into the ground for that extraction yesterday, for the Eagle’s retreat from the Mansion. We need to be more aggressive taming those foals. They’ve never seen the infected before, and when they do-“

  Adira finally paused and turned to her officer with a knowing smile. “Kylie, you don’t have to ask permission from me to make these decisions. You’re my first officer for a reason.”

  Kylie blushed and fought to control it. Jaxton guessed she was only twenty or so, and had shown up in the spring with other groups of wandering survivors, fleeing the Hordes. Adira rubbed her shoulders briefly, like a stern matron would her child. “Then break the foals in. They’re big enough to be part of the full unit now.”

  Kylie nodded, delighted. She flashed a quick smile at Jaxton and dashed back towards the pastures over the old baseball fields, where six trainers were working with the horses already.

  “Sh
e reminds me of everything and everyone before the Outbreak.” Jaxton mused aloud.

  Adira rapped him on the arm playfully, her sheared black hair shifting only slightly in the summer breeze. “Some innocence is harder to crush than you might think. I admire it.”

  The pair strolled between rows of ATVs and pickup trucks, all modified with metal bumpers and shields. Half a dozen mechanics crawled over the iron beasts, the warhorse insignia on their breasts.

  Jaxton waved at a cloud of little gnats looking for another meal in the summer sun. “She must not have seen much, to be so naïve.”

  Adira stiffened beside him. “Her family came up from the South. It’s medieval down there. There are hundreds of little warlords and factions fighting over limited supplies in the mountains and the bayou. Merciless.” Adira stopped to examine the faction’s lone sedan, a Dodge Charger outfitted with thin metal plate. She nodded approvingly to a mechanic.

  “Is it that different anywhere else?” Jaxton asked.

  Adira mounted the top of a freshly built wooden fence. “I like to think this valley is different. For us, for everyone who lives here. And sometimes, justice gets its due,” she finished stonily, looking over fields of farmers who toiled to bring in the next round of crops.

  Jaxton remained silent for a moment, before looking back towards the old high school, the Citadel. He remembered a rainy day, Adira’s broken body, and Terrence’s shattered face. “That wasn’t justice claiming anything. Justice doesn’t get the credit. That was you, seizing your own fate.”

  Adira sighed, and dropped her hand to her side, hoping Jaxton would notice. He did, and he clasped her hand tightly.

  “Do you think they’re real?”

  Jaxton looked away from her, towards more survivors training with compound hunting bows on a target range. “I think they’re real.”

  “What does it mean for us? What if they come to the valley?”

  Jaxton spat on the ground and Adira felt him squeeze her hand. “We’ll send them back over the ridges, as we’ve done a hundred times since the winter.”