“Still not quite over how we met at your home base?” I suggested when he spent a good thirty minutes glancing at me in the rearview mirror but not giving a single peep or grunt.
“We did lose a good amount of scientists because of you,” he reminded me.
I shook my head. “No. The Silo lost some of its smartest because they were acting dumb. All of you should have been more cautious around a possibly infected corpse. They got too curious, so they got dead. It’s as simple as that.”
I could tell that he agreed with me but wasn’t ready to admit it. Fine with me. I wondered if I should ask him about what had become of Petty Officer Stanton—who had gotten infected when she had tried to save the scientists, and ended up in the same Canadian base as me, if with less luck about what the virus had done to her. I decided against it, not sure if she’d tried to make contact with her former comrades. Disfigured and wheelchair bound, I could see why maybe she’d decided to stay there. Or make a one-way trip to the armory and call it a day.
Fletcher—the navigator—and Marleen continued to chat amicably, and at our next stop I offered to switch places with him to preserve his ability to use his neck come morning. Blake looked rather amused at how ecstatic the younger man seemed, if only where he couldn’t see. It was going on noon, it was hot as fuck outside, and of course the car didn’t have AC, which left me a lot less amused. Since only the three Humvees had any—and Nate had told them to shut off anything non-vital to preserve what battery power they had—it shouldn’t have mattered, but I kind of missed riding with Richards and his guys. I would have preferred Martinez and his snazzy new ride, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Using the route Nate and Hamilton had agreed on, we’d spend two and a half days on the road before we’d abandon the cars at the outskirts of our destination, from where we’d have to hoof it. That sounded simple enough—if one ignored the fact that the destination was downtown Dallas, and the aforementioned outskirts were what counted as one or two towns over to the north.
The level of idiocy it took to even consider heading into the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex made the fact that we were all dead men walking pale in comparison. I had the distinct feeling that the true marvel would be that any of us stayed alive long enough to run out of time.
The bulk of the scavengers had definitely been smart to withdraw from the mission. That left me wondering what this said about us, the comparatively “sane” ones. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines.
“Are you going to address the elephant in the room, or keep pretending this isn’t a suicide mission?” Blake asked downright conversationally, his eyes remaining trained on the vehicle driving in front of ours, one of Scott’s Humvees.
“Well, since usually I’m the elephant, I feel out of my league to discuss this,” I offered, trying myself at a bad joke—and even got a small smile for my effort, which surprised me.
When he saw my sidelong glance, Blake gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Figured you’d be used to both by now.”
“I think you massively overestimate the amount of suicidal turns my life has taken,” I muttered. “If it was up to me, I’d never risk my hide for anything.”
Flirting with Marleen didn’t keep Fletcher from interjecting from the back row. “Except for pretty much everything you did since the undead took over the earth, you mean?”
I didn’t bother looking back as I flipped him off. “Most of that was simply trying to survive while someone else raised the stakes without asking me first.” Yet even I could see why now was different—to a point. “But yeah, this shit isn’t that outside of my usual MO.”
Blake looked mildly scandalized, making me wonder if he was itching to throw a tart, “language!” in sideways—or his version of my reality varied greatly from my own.
Marleen apparently had also gotten bored of monopolizing Fletcher, now that there was something more interesting to do. “Is that a thing you do often, venture into zombie-overrun cities to hunt for black-ops labs?”
I wondered for a moment if she was kidding me. “More often than I feel comfortable with, actually.” None of the other three said anything, but I could feel the tension in the air rising with curiosity. “Let’s put it this way—this would be my third somewhat clandestine laboratory inside a crowded population center.” I couldn’t help but laugh, also at myself. “I really should start making better life choices. But in my defense, they were all built by the same people so it says more about their operations than my need to constantly risk my neck for science.”
“I thought this was more of a manhunt?” Marleen asked, her voice carefully neutral. “Not sure I want to risk my neck for some stuffy formulas.”
I could see how she’d come to that conclusion—as would everyone else in this car who wasn’t me. “I’m not keeping my hopes up to find anything, but if we make it to the lab, and we’ll have an hour or two, I’ll check what they’ve been working on, pre- and post-apocalypse. Call it wishful thinking, but I’m already risking my life getting there. I might as well spend some time trying to preserve it, too.”
Blake gave a slow nod. “It makes more sense that Miller’s taking you along, considering.”
That made me chortle under my breath. “So you don’t think it’s romantic that my husband drags me into certain mortal danger just to make sure nobody can abduct me in the meantime?”
Blake shrugged. “Ever considered getting a divorce?”
Fletcher laughed, and Marleen was smiling slightly. All I had for them was a grunt. “Since we already did the death-do-us-part shit before we actually got hitched, it always sounded like a good idea to stick it out together until that’s final.”
“Ah, true romance,” Marleen offered. I wasn’t quite sure whether she meant that for real or sarcastically, but it didn’t really matter.
“So you’ll keep looking for a cure?” Blake wanted to know. “Not yet used to knowing you’re about to die? That’s nothing new for you, either.”
I shook my head, chuckling under my breath. “Never quite loses its novelty. And no, I won’t stop. I’ve never been one to accept conclusions that don’t quite gel with my outlook on life.”
“Good luck with that,” Blake offered—and sounded like he meant it. I eyed him askance but he didn’t add anything, instead concentrating on the road. With not much else to do—since we were driving in the middle of our little convoy, and someone else had taken on the task of pathfinder—I idly flipped through the maps that we had, none of them with the level of detail that we’d need to plan the last leg of our journey. I knew Nate had a bunch of better maps, and the first thing we’d do once we got to the Texas border was to hunt for more—but none of that gave me anything to do right now.
Which turned out to be a good thing, as staring out of the side window in frustration made me notice the light plume of dust far on the horizon. Grabbing my binoculars, I tried to get a better look at it, but it could be anything—a large group of grazing animals on the move, a zombie streak, or another caravan of cars. From what I could tell, it was heading in the same direction as we were, likely on rougher ground or with a lot more individuals. Experience made me rule out the animal option as Nate and I on our own had, at the most, seen three larger herds of cattle or deer in two years, and outside of hunting range. That left vehicles or zombies, and I wasn’t sure which I preferred.
Reaching for the car’s radio, I turned it to the general team frequency. “Miller, do you copy?” Nate was in the first car, either driving or annoying the fuck out of whoever was behind the wheel. Since it wasn’t me, I couldn’t care less, but suspected it would be Hamilton. “Did you see the cloud of dust to our one? Could be shamblers, or another caravan heading for the road we are on, or the larger one to the north that we’re trying to avoid right now.” Going ten to fifteen miles to the south of one of the established trade routes had sounded like a bright idea this morning as the entire corridor had, so far, been looted, leaving few obstacl
es on the roads or enterprising scavengers about. I’d seen firsthand how thorough the residents of the camp had been about scouring the landscape for anything useable, including dishes.
“I see it,” came Nate’s reply a few moments later, with enough of a lag to make me guess he’d had to check up on the plume first. My momentary triumph was a stale, short-lived one.
“Do we change course?” I asked when no further instructions came.
“I say we check it out first,” Nate responded after an equally long pause as before. “If it’s a streak, we’ll see it long before they can come after us. If it’s cars, we decide on what to do once we can identify their payload.”
I made a face, about to ask what came of the stealthy approach he’d preached this very morning, but instead put the mic back into its cradle and switched the radio to receive only. The following silence in the car seemed deafening to me, but was likely just three pairs of eyes trying to catch sight of said plume. Since Blake was driving and the others didn’t have a good vantage point in the back, that sounded reasonable.
Blake cleared his throat to make me focus on him. “You know, if you’re that opposed to following commands, you’re maybe in the wrong car,” he noted, rather self-satisfied.
“I probably am,” I agreed, making him chuckle but otherwise keep his tongue. I was surprised that none of them made an attempt to learn more about my animosity with a certain man I was less and less happy to see still alive, karmic backlash and all that notwithstanding. Maybe when I’d crooned about wishing Hamilton a long, long life to enjoy his daily nightmares I should have specified that happening far, far away, maybe on another continent. So much for being careful for what you wish for.
Eventually, conversation resumed in the back row, with Blake and me not-so-stealthily listening in as he kept driving. The plume continued to grow yet its spread remained somewhat contained, which limited it to a smaller zombie streak, if it was one at all. Nate and I had once seen one that dragged a haze that spanned the entire horizon behind it, churning dust up after a long, dry summer going into an equally warm and dry fall. That this had only been less than a year ago felt weird now, as if the raid on our tree house had somehow slowed down the time passing since then. For Nate, that must have been awfully true. For me? With my mind only now clearing up and the shakes still present, it was hard to gauge anything that went beyond my current withdrawal symptoms.
We took another break an hour after I’d first noticed the dust rising, driving the cars off the road and into the trees to make stumbling into us a little less likely. That left recharging with the portable solar panels impossible, but getting up to stretch our legs seemed more of a priority. I’d mulled over the possibility of switching cars, but one look at Hamilton sliding from behind the wheel was enough to decide that I did, indeed, appreciate the present company more. The one and only time I’d met Blake before, he’d been rather hostile toward me, but babysitting the pariah that everyone blamed for losing half of their scientists might do that to the most even-tempered man—and those weren’t adjectives I’d assign to the marine sergeant. I was surprised that he was putting in an effort to let bygones be bygones. Or maybe I’d just hung out with too many assholes so that common, professional courtesy seemed downright friendly to me. Then again, Richards had never acted any differently, either. Looking back, Hamilton and Taggard had been the exception. Just my luck that I was collecting assholes like them.
With none of us expecting serious trouble until we couldn’t avoid the urban areas any longer, everyone was happy to stuff their faces while rations weren’t something we had to weigh the amount of ammo we’d be bringing against. From what I could tell, nobody found it strange that I wasn’t riding with Nate—or Burns and Sonia—and the somewhat strict demarcation line between the different groups seemed to have gotten more blurred in just half a day of travel. I wondered if I should go hunt for yet another ride but the disapproving look I got from Scott when he saw me eyeing their Humvees made me decide that Blake was as friendly as it would get, unless I wanted to oust Gallager—or delegate him to the jump seat once more. The idea was tempting for a moment, until I realized that Cole and Hill would probably call me out on my ruminations on my own mortality within the first five miles, and my ego wasn’t quite up for that yet. While the scavengers had turned out more friendly and pleasant toward me than I’d expected from what I’d been told before—and had seen firsthand before they realized Harris and I were friends—I wasn’t keen on riding with them right now. Too tempting was the idea to try to stave off the withdrawal symptoms with a refresher hit of whatever they had brought along for the ride. Just because they appeared borderline sober today didn’t mean the same would be true for me. If not for our mission and the overbearing energy expenditure I expected to come with it, I might have considered not eating a thing for a few days and subsisting purely on water to completely flush my metabolism, but we were far beyond that possibility. And, I hated to admit, the idea of putting unnecessary strain on my body that might just turn into a slippery slope right to insta-conversion gave me the creeps. Just standing in the sweltering midday heat, even in the shade of the trees, made me want to reduce the stress on my system.
Yeah, going into zombie-infested downtown Dallas really sounded like a bright idea!
We ended up back in the cars before I got a chance to chat with Nate, but since I had nothing to share and he seemed busy talking to Hamilton and Scott, that was fine with me. We switched up our driving order once more, with both of Scott’s Humvees taking point and the army Humvee bringing up the rear. Conversation was either light or non-existent, which I didn’t mind since the last few days had been, quite frankly, overwhelming on so many levels. I used to rib Nate about being able to spend days on end without talking; now that we were back in what counted for civilization, I realized I’d lost some of my constant need to exchange pleasantries. Looking back, Martinez had been leading most conversations that we’d had on the road. And damn, our reunion had been too short by years.
In the forest, we’d lost sight of the plume of dust, but as soon as we were out of the trees a few miles farther west, it was easy to find once more, closer now although we’d taken some quality time off the road. It was still moving, if at a weird pace. That was, until I checked the maps and, yup, as I’d expected, there was a larger road intersection in that direction. A caravan switching directions would leave a somewhat stationary cloud for a while. I was about to get on the radio and share my observation when I pictured Hamilton’s reaction—to me reporting the fact that everyone else had likely come up with already. Latent anger was ready to flare but I did my best to keep a lid on it, and instead turned to Blake.
“Does Dispatch still keep track of convoys that have signed in? And before you ask, I don’t know what Richards did when he picked me up and brought me to California, and our convoy back was, if not trying to fly under the radar, not advertising our position. I’ve been off the grid since last we saw each other.”
His smile let me know that he’d been ready to tease me about my lack of knowledge—and really, I should have known the answer—but instead obliged my quest for knowledge. “The scavengers no longer sign in unless they are doing something highly official, which never happens. But some of the traders, particularly the larger convoys with extra guards, hope that the more visible they are, the safer. Why?”
“Just wondering,” I mused, and picked up the radio after all. “Cole, how good are your hacking skills with the radio network?”
Chatter on the general frequency died, and it took the sour former Delta operator only a heartbeat to do what he did best—underline how little clue about anything I had.
“It may surprise you, but one doesn’t have anything to do with the other,” he let me know, not without mirth. I’d never get how being incapable of something could be a triumph for anyone.
“So you can’t, I don’t know, hack into the official Dispatch frequency network and splice us in so we can see
if that plume over there is a sanctioned convoy and likely happy not to get too close to us?”
Muttering answered me, yet before Cole could get in my face again, a different voice responded—Richards. “I don’t think he can. But the contraband transponder unit that we have in our vehicle can.”
Part of me was annoyed, and not only because of the rebuke I’d gotten, but because on some level, I still identified more with the traders we were about to stalk than any other faction. Those had been my people, back when assholes had forced me to take sides. Hell, before there had been sides, even, considering Nate had set out in the first spring from the bunker to do just that—help get a little of the civilization that we’d all lost back to those who couldn’t do it themselves. Look where that had gotten us.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 53