Free City of Steel (Chaos Awakens Book 3) by Heath Pfaff

Some of the infected townspeople were already dissipating, heading towards the burning building like insects drawn to their doom in a campfire.  Perhaps he should have felt some small piece of regret or compassion, but instead he found a grim chuckle rising up from inside of him.  The laughter that slipped from his lips was dark and chaotic, a creature of malice and madness that he didn't even know had grown inside of him.
    He finished emptying the oil and then dropped the lanterns into the remaining crowd around his building. The fire took off fast, burning the lamp oil and the rotting fat reserves on the walking corpses. The insects snapped and popped in the air as the flames spread. As the horde erupted into flames the creatures’ screams tore through the night sky to join the roar of the fire. The foul infected were ripping at one another as they burned, screaming incoherently as their feted flesh scorched and blackened, sending one of the foulest smells Xan had ever encountered coursing into the night sky. The smoke was inky black.
    "Do you plan on watching until the fires go out, or were you going to get away?" Xandrith was started by his own voice from behind him.  He turned away from the fire, the terrible laughter that had consumed him slipping away.  The other Xan wasn't behind him.  All that stood at his back was the blood covered sack of metal that he was supposed to return to the caravan. 
    "You're right."  He said to the empty rooftop.  "I need to leave."  He ran forward and grabbed the scrap metal.  It was time to take his leave of this doomed town. 
     
    The fire had spread faster than he'd anticipated.  The distraction it caused worked perfectly, but by the time he was making his way to the gates of the town the flames had already gotten ahead of him.  It hadn't helped that he'd been forced to take side routes on a few occasions in order to avoid some of the larger groups of infected townspeople, but the speed with which everything burned was still startling.  It was as though the place wanted to die.  The town had seen too much, and all it wanted was to dress itself in red and orange and roar at the night sky until nothing remained but broken lives and ash.
    The gates were burning as Xan approached them, but the heavy crossbeam was still in place and the wall was still standing firm despite its cloak of fire.  There was no way Xandrith could possibly hope to use the winch system to lift open the crossbeam, the whole system was aflame. Even if he could have stood the heat, the ropes and pulleys were burning and wouldn’t function for long if at all.  He had to think fast if he was going to find a path of escape before he was consumed in the town's desperate self-immolation. 
    An open door to one of the towers near the gate caught Xan's eye.  He dashed for it as the flames began to lick their way up the wall, feeding on the dry wood without mercy.  The door opened onto a tightly curving stairway that climbed up to what Xan guessed would be the walkway along the wall.  Xan ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.  The inside of the towers was getting hot, and the side nearest the fire was already beginning to burn. The wood crackled angrily and smoke poured into the already claustrophobic stairwell.  Xan reached the top of the stairs and ran into a locked door. 
    "Shit!" He cursed as he tried the handle and it resisted. If he'd had his picks, the lock would have been easy enough to manage, but he didn't. He looked over his shoulder to see a red glow rising from what had moments before been the dark stairwell he'd just climbed. He took a few steps back and then slammed his booted heel into the locking mechanism. The door was solid and didn't give way. He tried the handle to see if he'd knocked anything loose, but it was still solid. Xandrith wiped at the sweat that was beading on his brow. This didn’t seem like a good way to die.
    "I don't feel like burning to death." Young Xan