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

the back of the reservoir hill, so she could see the shimmering blue waters lapping up on the back of the earthen dam. Adira killed the engine and waited. She could hear Donald whimpering in the back seat, and she could hear the carnage developing on the reservoir. She hadn’t been followed. Snatching Donald’s sniper rifle from his flailing limbs, Adira raced to a little clearing beside the elevated road.
    Adira deployed the bi-pod and laid down in the underbrush. Down below her vantage point, the ATVs had crested the hill. She could see the four drivers, and seven Wolf troopers with their camouflage body-suits and compound hunting bows.
    Putting her eye to the scope, she searched for targets.
    Seventeen, eighteen, twenty? The bodies littered the reservoir’s earthen hill below, many still moving with colorful barbs sticking out of their bodies. Others straggled in from the forest below. She knew the ravine lay deeper inside, long since abandoned by its guardians.
    The infected were mounting the hill. There were at least twenty of them sprinting up the grass, swift as their compromised limbs would allow. They did not dodge or shy from the arrows that flew down the hill to meet them.
    Adira led her first target by a hair, and pulled the trigger viciously with a sweaty finger. The shot embedded itself in the dirt. Cursing, Adira adjusted her stance, and selected another. This time, she squeezed, and the bullet found purchase with a satisfying a detonation of flesh.
    Adira fired again, and again, the weapon discharging loudly in the dusk. The sun was setting. She could see the ATVs being loaded up; Kylie was organizing. A wall of infected was about to hit them. Adira watched the panic, barely contained before, now explode on the hilltop. Through the scope, she saw men fighting with the bows as melee weapons as the infected fell among them. Kylie flipped her pistol around and used it as a club to send the foe tumbling back down the incline.
    The sniper rifle put a round through an infected’s shoulder, decapitating the foe. Her infected target used his remaining hand to rip half a Wolf Trooper’s painted face off. Three ATV’s were already speeding away, along the top of the earthen dam towards Adira’s position in the forest.
    A single ATV remained on the crest, surrounded by three survivors. As Kylie fended off another attacker, the Wolf trooper with half his face torn off mounted the ATV and gunned it. Adira snarled audibly as he attempted to speed away from the danger. He hadn’t made it twenty feet before he was flung back from the vehicle, left to clutch a smoking wound in his chest. Adira reloaded the rifle.
    Kylie and the final trooper sprinted to it, leaving the wounded man rolling in the grass. As the final ATV sped away, the infected fell on the coward.
    Adira spun on her heel; they had to warn the Citadel.
     
     
    Near the North Eastern Ravines, The Church
     
     
    Liam hoisted the shotgun, and was reassured. He looked around in the church; some of the others here had .22s. They would be useless. Passing through the rotting pews, he stared down his compatriots with a steely gaze. They were no heroes. The survivors around him were slower, weaker, more fearful, and less aggressive than those in the Eagle, the Lion, or the Wolf. These were the last line of defense, and as a result, they were the weakest line.
    Liam stopped to aid a wide-eyed girl with high, elegant cheekbones. He kneeled between the pews, and saw her eyes flash over his uniform and heavy boots. He tried to smile. “Your name is Cassidy, right?”
    She smiled sheepishly, and ran her fingers over her legs. “Yeah. And obviously I know who you are.”
    “I didn’t assume that,” he said with a smile.
    Her smile faded. “Is this it?”
    Liam stiffened, feeling the others in the room leaning in. He fixed his eyes on her sigil, the bear sewn to her jacket. “I’d be lying if I said I knew.”
    “You’ve been here since the beginning, right?