Read Online August Burning (Book 2): Survival by Tyler Lahey - Free Book Online Page A

her dry hands. She spoke softly and calmly, to Jaxton’s infuriation. “It’s gone.”
    “Huh! Where’s the fucking gas!” Jaxton screeched, the veins on his neck bulging.
    The woman kept wiping, intent on removing the eggs from under her fingernails. “He took it,” she said softly. Jaxton drew up on her, inches from her face, his eyes bulging. Liam raced forward.
    “Terrence took the gasoline.” Bennett rounded the corner, his arms holding three rifles like kindling. Leeroy and Joseph flanked him, armed and with firebrands to illuminate the growing dark. The woman with fish guts frowned and opened her mouth but was shoved aside before she could speak.
    “Bennett. What? Bennett we need the gas. Adira. The others. They’re in trouble.”
    “We heard on our radio. The gas is gone. Terrence has it. I don’t know where he went. We’re coming with you.”
    Jaxton ran his hands through his hair, “I’m going to kill him. I swear to God.”
    Liam felt himself tugged outside the ring of bewildered people, noting with tenderness the way Harley tied her ponytail. She spoke softly, but urgently to him. “Jax is losing his mind. We need to get the group moving. Is there another way?”
    Liam racked his mind, hearing the panic of Adira’s voice ringing in his ears. He couldn’t think.
    Harley remained calm, and answered her own question. “The horses.”
    Liam strode into the center of the group, once again the bear. “The gym! We take the horses!”
    As one they were running, limbs pumping in frenzy. The panic was spreading. Their leader wasn’t himself. It made them all nervous. Jaxton would still lead the charge however, his jaw clicking and his breath visible in the brisk evening air.
    …
     
     
    Liam tightened his meaty thighs around the cantering beast. Its worn hooves clattered on the asphalt as he clung, petrified, to its thick brown mane in the night air. There had been no time to affix the saddles they had taken back. Harley held on for dear life behind him, bareback.
    It was clear Jaxton had little idea how to ride a horse. Somehow, through his ferocity, the muscled animal was willed in the right direction. He rode bareback, thumping his heavy hiking boots into the animal’s ribcage so hard Liam winced. To steer, he yanked the mane to a chorus of protesting neighs and whineys. The other beasts seemed to take its lead, to follow where Jaxton’s horse went. Liam was sure Jaxton would ride the animal into the ground before giving up. Leeroy and Joseph shared another, a sandy colored roan that had never moved so fast in its entire life. Bennett rode the last.
    The group clattered past the general store and skirted around a silent traffic jam of several modern vehicles. He could barely see. The moonlight offered a pale glimpse of their direction, though Liam couldn’t make out any detail in the forests to their flanks. Again and again, he forced himself to stop contemplating how big a meal the horses would be for the infected. They had had no choice.
    Bearded, with spittle flying from his wretched grimace, Jaxton led them on a mad dash in the moonlight. The horses tore around another bend in the winding road. To their left, the steel factory sat inert and towering in the trees, a great metal affront to nature. Its mighty columns blocked out the stars above. It had already been twenty minutes since the radio call. Surely they were too late?
    They went on, deeper into the backwoods, past cold gas stations and little shops that once promised psychic readings for a cool $5. Into the Cathedral. Liam felt his skin prickle. A lonely half-mile stretch of road flanked by densely packed great willow trees, its boughs having grown over the road in a hundred years. There was no moonlight inside. The trees swayed in the soft breeze, ominously crowding them from above. Liam could only urge his struggling mare forward to the sound of Jaxton’s exertions ahead. Then they were out, into a wave of colder, paler