“Lewis here. What’s your status?” I asked, trying to look through Martinez’s window at the Humvee parked right next to us. All I could make out was a vague shape that wasn’t trees or grass.
Richards answered me. “I’m sending Gallager out to check on the camp. You ready over there?”
I couldn’t help but grin. “We’re all cozy and warm and have no intention of leaving, so I guess, yeah?”
Even with the coms distorting his snort with static, I heard it well enough. “We’re still fifteen minutes from the earliest estimate, but it never hurts to be prepared.”
“So she said,” I quipped. Someone else laughed on the open channel—might very well have been Cole. Richards wasn’t going to come with us, but I could see why the soldiers were happy to stay bundled up in their Humvees until the very last minute. I considered switching the radio back off but refrained. There wasn’t much I felt like chatting about, and the “go” could come any moment now.
Moments turned into minutes, but sooner than expected I heard Gallager’s excited voice in my ear. “The gate’s opening! I don’t see the light signal but it’s awfully murky out there.” A pause, and even before he acknowledged, I saw a quick sequence of bright flashes coming from the gate. “That’s the all-clear!”
Taking a last look at the others in the car, I took a deep breath, then ordered, “We are a go! Might still be a trap, so keep watching for anything that trips you up, but for now, let’s get out of this damn storm!”
Martinez was already starting the car, and we rolled back onto the road right behind the lead Humvee with Cole, Hill, and the other two members of our team in it. It only made sense to let the armored half-tank take point. Across the field, by a different patch of trees, I saw shapes moving as the four vehicles that had been hiding there also made for the road. I was sure that the others followed behind us.
Nobody shot at us, nobody tried to force us to a halt, and we made it to the gate in good time, if with some sliding and slipping in the mudslide that the road had turned into. Marleen and Scott were waiting inside the gate, the heavy wood held open by two of the raider trucks wedged against them. I caught a few bodies slumped on the ground in a corner—and no prisoners visible—but didn’t waste another second on it. As soon as Martinez brought the car to a halt, I flashed him a quick hand signal for “don’t screw around” and got out, ignoring what he signed back.
The second the storm hit me, I felt my hair get drenched to the scalp, icy cold water sluicing away what sweat had accumulated since I’d dressed earlier. I did my best to ignore it as I stepped away and toward the side of the open square to gather my people around me and not get mowed down by the other vehicles following. Only a third would stay inside, the rest parked outside the gate should we lose control of it. Cole, Hill, and the other two soldiers were already waiting for us, so as soon as Burns brought up the rear, I gave the signal to move out and turned south toward where the hulking shape of the barn was barely visible through the sheets of rain. Since I knew where we were headed—and was the one with the shotgun since we were expecting close quarter combat—I took point, with Cole right by my side to clear up anything that was out of range for me. I saw a few shapes moving deeper in the camp but no alarm sounded, making me guess it was either our people or someone caught out in the rain, ready to get into the next dry building as soon as possible. It was early enough still that most people would be asleep, particularly with the storm making all outside ventures uncomfortable bordering on impossible.
Part of me hoped that meant we’d find the barn mostly empty, with only a few drugged-up, bleary-eyed whores sleeping there.
The rest of me was hungering for carnage.
Turned out, I needn’t have worried that I had packed needless amounts of ammo. With nothing else to do, and the weather too hostile for raiding, the “kennels” were well-frequented. A few quick glances made sure that the prep room outside was deserted and quickly barred with a conveniently handy wooden bar that I figured was there to keep any girls already dragged into the main part of the barn from leaving; Hill was happy to kick the main door in for me, opening up the reception area for us. A good ten hairy, unwashed assholes stared back at us, all at least mildly, most heavily inebriated as they lounged by the well-stocked bar and on stools, waiting for their turn. Their presence was damning enough for me; I didn’t hesitate one second after getting a good overview of the room. I was three slugs in when Cole and Hill opened fire, and by the time Sonia made it in last, there were only corpses left to step over. Burns and Sonia veered off to the left where the door to the prep room remained untouched to secure both exits of the room at once. I took the others with me to the corridor with the walled-off stalls. Storm or no storm, we’d caused enough of a ruckus that two half-naked men came stumbling into the corridor to meet a quick and grizzly end. I forced my mind to concentrate on the task at hand only, but my stomach seized up nevertheless as I kicked open the first stall door to my right and found another disgusting bastard on top of a limp girl who didn’t even look up as I stepped next to her so that when I blew that asshole’s head off, I didn’t hit her with more than a spray of blood and liquified brain matter. What was left of him remained lying on her, pinning her to the cot, but I didn’t have the time to drop my weapon and pull him off. We’d do that later, after we finished with the cleanup.
The boom of Hill’s shotgun was nicely interspersed with single-shot discharges of the assault rifles as I stepped back into the corridor and got ready for the next stall, three partitions down. Cole was halfway down the corridor, keeping that clear as the rest of us went from door to door, working in tandem left and right, left and right. I figured it said a lot about the operation here that only four of the assholes came venturing out into the corridor to check or defend the others, and a single one made it halfway out a window before one of the other soldiers gunned him down.
We were almost to the last two stalls—one of them the one I knew best—when the door to the other opened but nobody stepped out. I advanced cautiously, letting Hill and Cole take care of the other doors. Inside the room I found several women huddled together, clutching each other, only one holding a handgun, and she dropped it as soon as she saw us outside. I didn’t exactly recognize her from before—what little I still remembered was sketchy at best—but the simple fact that she and the older woman next to her were clean with decent going on nice clothes while the other girls were filthy and covered in bruises, their dresses barely more than rags, kind of made them stand out.
“Thank God you’re here to rescue—” the older woman—the madam of this fine establishment—started to say. I blew her head to smithereens, hard-pressed not to smile at the splatter pattern it left on the wood behind her. Only two of the whores seemed lucid enough to realize what was going on and shied away, but with enough lag to make me guess they were too out of it to act. The blonde remained where she was, unmoving, but the way her eyes darted between us made it obvious that she was trying hard to assess the situation. A whistle from me and Cole came in from the corridor, nodding as soon as he saw her. That she didn’t seem to recognize him in turn didn’t surprise me, all buttoned up as he was with helmet and balaclava to save his pretty face from the storm and hail of blood.
“Yup, that’s her,” he confirmed for me.
Glancing back from him to the blonde, I gave a brief jerk with my shotgun, signaling her to get up. She did, slowly raising her hands, still playing the frightened innocent.
“You can take whatever you want,” she said, her voice trembling, but I didn’t buy it. “We’ll cooperate. Just please, don’t hurt the girls. They’ve already been through so much.”
Cocking my head to the side, I allowed myself a slow smile. “And whose fault is that, exactly, huh?” She blinked slowly, still assessing. There was no recognition on her face. “Don’t remember me? Well, too bad.” My gaze fell on the satchel resting on the floor next to where she’d been crouching. “Let me repay the favor, huh
?”
Another jerk with my shotgun had her step away further from the girls. I dropped my weapon on its sling and let Cole guard her so I could grab the satchel and root through it. Coming back up with a filled syringe, I fixed her with what was likely a malicious glare, judging from how she paled. Or maybe that was due to my smile? Hard to tell.
“Master Sergeant Cindy Cooper, it’s time to pay for the crimes you committed,” I declared, and aimed the syringe toward her neck.
She didn’t try to fight me, but that would have been stupid with Cole’s M16 in her face. All she uttered was a resounding, “Shit,” as I plunged the needle into her neck and gave her a shot of her own medicine. She crumpled into a heap on the ground within seconds, her eyes wide open but her body unresponsive. The only reaction from the other girls was to move back enough so she didn’t hit them on the way down. There was no hope or relief on their faces, but I hadn’t expected either.
Cole got busy tying Cindy’s wrists with zip ties behind her back as I turned to the two girls who seemed in marginally better shape than the others. “We’re taking over the camp,” I told them. “Every other customer in the building is dead. We need you to stay inside to stay safe. Can you help us get the other girls together?” Fear and more stoic passivity met me, making me realize I needed to explain better. “So you can help each other clean up, maybe get some fresh clothes and something to eat. We’ll leave you alone after that. You’re free. You just need to stay inside because there’s a fucking hurricane coming for us, and we don’t want you to get caught in any crossfire. Okay? Can you do that?”
They all looked lost—and the lucid ones suspicious—but then one of them nodded and slowly got onto shaky feet. “We can do that.”
I nodded and backed out of the room and into the corridor. They all seemed calmer with no armed strangers in the room with them. Cole gave me a look I couldn’t read before he joined the others in getting rid of the dead trash. While we were busy dragging the bodies into the front room, a few of the girls followed us to get the ones still in the stalls. They shuffled by and stepped over the corpses without a sign of revulsion or hesitation, as if they were nothing but piles of rags. Only one girl, her face so swollen that she could barely look out of one eye, kicked the corpse who’d been in her room as another guided her outside. It took some effort to keep my breakfast down but survival beat emotional turmoil any day. We were done in under half an hour, ready to depart and drop Cindy’s unresponsive ass off with Romanoff by the gate. I met grim faces—or eyes, where nothing else was visible—all around, and Cole was the one who asked what they must have been thinking.
“This is where you ended up?”
I nodded. “And where I carved up the pig who wanted to take his anger for killing some of his friends out on me.” I paused, glancing down the now empty corridor, only smears of blood left from the carnage. “I wish I could have done that back then, but didn’t like the odds. I knew I’d have to come back.”
“Good,” Cole offered simply, pulling Cindy along with him as he turned toward the door. “Let’s get this cunt’s ass to the vehicles so we can join the fun elsewhere. Lots more assholes that need killing.”
I’d never had less remorse about taking anyone’s life before than here, and while my body told me that it had only just started, I kind of hoped that this would remain the worst we’d find today—but I had a certain feeling that wouldn’t be the case.
Chapter 26
It hadn’t gotten much lighter outside in the meantime, but the town had clearly been shaken awake by our arrival. We didn’t meet with any resistance as we dropped our burden off, but the previously empty yard inside the gate was now filling with confused and hung-over scavengers, some of them already making their way into the wilderness outside, but a few ready to join the fight. I was surprised to find Eden and Amos waiting for us but probably shouldn’t have. They were responsible for rallying their own people, and as soon as they saw me, they pawned off the task to someone else and told me in no uncertain terms that they were ready to rumble. So rather than set out with six sober, hardened fighters at my back, I had them and a good thirty drunk—on booze and the need for violence alike—scavengers in tow. Sonia didn’t look happy about that at all but the soldiers took it for what it was—distraction and potential meat shields they could be using for cover. Eden in particular came in handy as she strode proudly next to where I tried to duck from cover to cover at first but soon gave up, joining her as she shouted at every scavenger who ducked his head out of a tavern door to see what was going on. The few corpses of gunned-down guards went mostly ignored, small signs of the progress of the other fire teams as they were.
Then we reached the end of the entertainment quarter where the betting rings were, a much larger group of people already gathered there. Dan Harris was shouting obscenities at another guy who looked as equally enraged and out of it as he did, both drawing up short as we arrived. Harris was quick to ignore his opponent and run up to me, grabbing my arm—barely giving me the time to drop my shotgun first—to pull it up and cry, “Here she is! Our savior, in the flesh!”
Hundreds whooped and screamed; equally as many scowled and remained standing there, glowering. Harris’s grip was tight enough to make my fingers go numb but I didn’t fight him. I sure didn’t get any pointers from his mad grin. Apparently, he’d spent the night partaking in more shit that screwed with his system than I had, but judging from the mood of the crowd, he’d also been spreading his new gospel—whatever the shit that was.
Nobody was chanting, “Speech! Speech!” yet but there were a lot of expectant faces turned my way. As soon as Harris let go, I made sure to keep my arms to myself but stepped forward into the open space that Harris and that other guy had been using for their shouting match.
“I’m Bree Lewis,” I called out, making sure that my voice carried. “And I’m here with an offer you can’t refuse!”
Cheers went up all around, making me blink in irritation at first. They hadn’t even let me get to the good parts first! Or any part, really, for that matter. I half turned to glance at where Cole and Burns were standing together but only got a blank stare from Cole and a grin from Burns. As per usual, no pointers from the peanut gallery. Guess it was a good thing that I was used to doing everything myself.
“Listen up, please!” I called, hoping they would quiet down a little. The opposite was the case, so I decided I needed to shut them up another way. “To cut to the chase, we’re here to take over this camp! And by ‘we’ I mean a joint task force made up of yours truly and my old gang, the Lucky Thirteen!” More cheering. “Plus some of you fine folk, thanks to Dan Harris and his people!” More cheers. “We also got the finest examples of special forces from the army, marine corps, and some of the Silo’s best!”
Some of the cheering died down at the mention of Red’s men but was back by the time I got to mention Blake and Buehler’s bunch. There were still frowns aplenty, but at least those were the ones who were listening to me. “As you can tell, we’re quite the diverse group—and there’s a reason for that. And the reason is that this camp here has a problem. You all know it as a place to relax and let down your guard, but it’s the opposite for some people. That arena? That’s a huge issue.”
That got their attention—and me some less than favorable shouts. I ignored them. “Remember last night’s fight?” I called. “The contender that you know as the Nameless Monster? I call him husband and bastard, depending on my mood, and you likely know him as Nate Miller, co-leader of the Lucky Thirteen and driving force behind our strike against the assholes that were stealing our women and gunning us down two years ago. And guess what? The same assholes who locked him up here and forced him to kill for your fucking enjoyment also drag people like you into this shit! And your women? They lock them up in a barn and rape them! That damn barn right there on the southern part of the camp, where none of you go because that’s for the guards only. We just cleaned it out. Wanna know what we found? Mo
re than half the girls locked up in there had the same marks across their necks as you do! They are your girlfriends, sisters, mothers, and daughters!” Well, they sure didn’t like that. Caught up in my own hype, I screamed, “And can someone fucking explain to me what it is with assholes and constantly thinking they need to lock us up and rape us?! There are plenty of us insane bitches out there who are happy to kill and raid with you, and fuck you when we’re done!” A chorus of affirmative shouts, led by Eden, rose in response, making me grin. “I mean, I was more than happy to watch my husband tear out some guy’s heart and eat it, and then jump his bones first chance I got! You like ‘em strong, willing, and a little insane, well, here we are!” And just like that, I had the crowd back, and quite a few raunchy suggestions and offers that I ignored.
When I gestured at them to shut it, they quieted down, way too much attention on me to make me feel safe, but there was no going back now. “This hellhole of a town has its problems, sure, but that’s why we’re here. We want to clean it up, kick out the assholes who prey on all of us, but that doesn’t mean we have to burn it all to the ground. Wanna know what Harris told me when I asked him about support to attack the camp? He would have followed me out of loyalty, but he didn’t want to unless he had to. Because I know that a lot of you consider this your home away from home now. Well, I say, why not make it your home for good? Nobody has ever wanted the scavengers. It’s about time we got a city all of our own!”
There was a poignant pause, long enough to make me afraid that I’d made a colossal mistake. But then the crowd roared as one, deafening even over the storm. I didn’t try to quiet them down. That would have been impossible. Instead, I pulled Harris into a hug, both so I could talk to him but also grasp his hand in mine and pull it up. “Your new mayor!” I yelled, kicking off another wave of euphoria. To the man himself, I said, “Hope you don’t mind, but you kind of had that coming, volunteering to help and all that.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 40