Free August Burning (Book 3): Last Stand by Tyler Lahey

he by his compatriots’ savage efficiency. They would never die.
    Todd could see the leader, the head of the Council, the one who had created all the factions. Jaxton’s dark hair fell from his helmet and mask, and his spear was dripping with crimson.
    “CLEAR!” A gravelly voice called out from the left wing of the line. Jaxton took a step out from the shield wall, his body shaking. “Check them.”
    The shield wall opened up, and those with hand weapons disengaged from it, moving among the corpses to bloody each one again. Jaxton heard a yelp, and saw a figure in the trees. His throat tightened, till he saw it climbing down a ladder in the gloom.
    “Identify yourself.”
    “Todd, Todd Kravel. I’m in the Wolf,” he said quickly, tapping at the insignia sewn to his camouflage. Extracting his rifle from underneath a fallen corpse, he smiled. “You might have hurried a little more.”
    “Where’s the rest of your unit?” A masked figure demanded.
    Todd stood a little straighter. “They fled, sir. I stayed to hold them off.”
    Jaxton indicated the tree. “Is that so. Seems to me you were stuck.”
    Todd looked back, and shrugged. “It’s a matter of perspective.”
    Jaxton laughed heartily and took several paces forward.  There was a sudden movement at his feet and one of his men shoved him back. Todd blinked, and an infected boy, no more than ten years old, was working at the flesh of his thigh through the light camouflage. Todd wailed and drove his rifle butt into the boy’s face, collapsing its structure.
    He looked up, his eyes watering in pain. He held up his hands.
    “Wait. Sir.” Todd took a step back. “Sir. I’m good. Didn’t break the skin. Just, let’s… I’m good.”
    The men in black were all facing him, gripping their dripping weapons in the flickering torchlight. Todd turned and ran, and the others did not move.
    “Shall I kill him?” One of the officers asked quietly.
    Jaxton shook his head and hung it. “He’ll die on his own.”
     
    …
     
    Todd cursed loudly as he ran, spittle flying from his thin lips. He stumbled through the hazy summer night, and heard movement all around him. His leg radiated pain as he sprinted through the shadowy pillars and sighing trees. He had to get away, had to keep running and he would be fine. But the leg wouldn’t hold. It failed him as he strained to crest a tiny rise in the forest, and Todd tumbled into a thick patch of thorny berry bushes. He shrieked in the night, seeing tiny peeks of starlight drifting down through the floating boughs.
    Todd shuddered involuntarily, and felt his skin was boiling. It felt stifling, and his head was throbbing. He clutched his sweating head with shaking hands, and felt his limbs begin to quake involuntarily. Todd collapsed back onto the bush, and contorted as a war raged in his brain. There was a hazy pain, and a feverish aching that drove him deeper inside his mind. He felt aloof, and detached, and he knew his mind was losing. Todd stopped moving his limbs voluntarily, and the infection claimed them. He could still think, and struggled to exert control over his motions, but it was folly. His mind was all alarm bells, vicious and horrific bells that slammed his senses, shouting at him, telling him there was a foreign presence. He was not alone. Todd was driven to the back recesses of his fractured mind, and he was alone with his mind, which urged him that he was ok, that he would be ok. And then a sinister corruption tickled his mind and it turned on Todd.
    It stood up, and it did not feel the thorns as they entered its feet.
     
    …
     
    Jaxton heard screaming in the deep woods.
    The men gathered under the torches, and heard motion all around them.
    “They’ve breached the ravine. They’re in the valley. What do we do?”
    “We hold the ravine. Send a messenger back to the settlements, and bring up more men to clear the stragglers that made it through.”
    “You heard him, get moving!  Five hundred