Silence followed, until my impatience made me ask, “So, are you going to use it or not?”
Richards took his sweet time responding. “Are you just curious, or is there more to this?”
I hated justifying myself—particularly with everyone who was listening in—but this wasn’t just on a whim. “We’re trying to stay under the radar, at least until we are close to our destination? I think they just took a turn onto the road we’re following, and considering how much closer we have gotten in the past minutes, I’d say we will show up in their rearview mirrors in less than twenty minutes. They must have seen our own dust plume, so switching roads will likely just make them question why we are avoiding them.”
I’d hoped to keep the radio frequencies free of Captain Asshole, but he took it upon himself to cut in now. “And how is any of that of any consequence to us, Lewis? Except that you’re bored and need to start shit, apparently.”
I did my best to ignore Hamilton’s interjection, but the way my jaws hurt from grinding my teeth, I was doing a shit job. That it was a valid question didn’t help. At least nobody was speaking up in his favor, but I felt the silent agreement of the group close in on me.
Great—more paranoia. Just what I’d needed.
“Well, we are heading in a more or less straight line from our well-established, last known point of residence to our new destination. The people we are hunting will know where we might be headed if we are on their trail. Do we absolutely need to confirm that?”
I knew I was on to something when Nate responded. “If it’s a convoy—and it looks like it, from the proposed direction change you mentioned—they have already seen us and likely reported us in. Where does that leave us?”
“Misdirection!” I maybe shouldn’t have sounded so gleeful, but the idea that had just come up in my mind was too good not to be enthusiastic about it. Just then, the terrain after the next bend in the road fell away, opening up into a plain—and, true enough, I didn’t need the binoculars to see the caravan of vehicles crawling toward the horizon. Or those were the most orderly-walking shamblers I’d ever seen. Roughly halfway to the last car I saw the intersection they must have taken. I stalled for a moment to take it all in and do a quick calculation how soon we would reach them. Half an hour sounded reasonable—unless we floored it. “Okay, I know this will sound crazy, but I have an idea that might work without much planning or chance of shit going sideways.”
Hamilton couldn’t pass that one up. “No planning? That does sound like you.”
I couldn’t help but bare my teeth at the windshield in a silent grimace, fighting hard to keep my cool—or at least a semblance of it.
“No worries. This one won’t backfire in your face and require someone else to lay down their lives so you can get away,” I bit out, instantly hating that I’d let him bait me like this. Before it could get any worse, I forced out the words I should have uttered in the first place. “We don’t want to look like we’re heavily armed, well-equipped, and on a clandestine mission, right? So we need to look like we have a reason to be on the road but not hunting down assholes. We can’t do anything about the cars or our equipment, but we can absolutely do something about the optics.”
I took a deep breath, which was too long, I realized, when the radio spewed out static—but at least it was Nate who asked, impatiently, “How?”
“We pretend that we’re scavengers,” I explained. No reaction followed, making me deflate for a second. “Which is easy, and a good plan,” I went on. Still nothing. Blake beside me was grinning, but most likely because of me rather than the plan. “Oh, come on! All we need to do is let Eden and Amos take point—the paint on their car will be a clear indicator of what’s going on. Add some reckless driving and a little bit of swerving, and we’re all set. Maybe roll down a window and flip them off as we pass by.” Still nothing. “Wanna know why it will work? Because they will apply the same snap judgment you just showed, and not question it after coming to the wrong—right—conclusion. Easy peasy.”
It was a good plan, with barely a hitch possible and no flaw to be found. Nate, of course, had to disagree. “You do realize that half of our cars are military vehicles?”
“And?”
I could picture the annoyed look on Nate’s face when I forced him to explain.
“That’s a lot of armor plates for a scavenger group,” he pointed out.
“And you know that from where exactly?” I asked succinctly. “Last time I checked, you had about the same exposure to their vehicles as I did. Maybe even less. I came into the camp in one of their cars. You didn’t.” Maybe not the best reminder, but I was getting near the end of my rope.
Nate didn’t fare much better, although I doubted most of the others caught the hard edge in his voice. “And exactly how many Humvees have you seen them driving? Or stashed at the camp?”
That… was a good point. It occurred to me then that I had somehow missed the opportunities to ask both Hamilton and Cindy what had happened to the vehicles they had been driving getting close to the camp. Damnit! Yet far was it from me to accept defeat so easily. “You absolutely sure that none of the scavengers—all several thousand of them that are out there—have gotten their hands on any Humvees? I’m pretty sure nobody will ‘fess up if I ask now, but all of the military factions must have, at one time or another, lost some of their transportation, or had a base raided. They managed to blow up the docks in New Angeles. Don’t tell me they can’t get their grubby little hands on a couple of Humvees.”
More silence—until a wry, female voice offered, “Why don’t you ask the scum directly how well they are doing in the transportation department?”
Eden’s tone made me grin. “From what I’ve seen, quite well, but, sure. How are you doing?”
“Better than the traders,” she drawled—which I could tell was the true point of contention. Looking back, her reaction toward me and the bunch of traders who had been along when we’d hitched a ride on the boat to New Angeles took on a somewhat new tint. It had been easy for me to discard them as the savages they so loved to style themselves as, but I could understand how losing all the privileges with the settlements—that the traders retained—must have rankled. “I’m not dishing intel about our troop strength, but we have, in fact, acquired a handful of Humvees over the past two years, and they are still operational. We have, more than once, also used them as decoy vehicles, so them not looking visibly different actually works for your narrative. Which is a good idea, Amos would have me tell you. I agree. Those assholes are very quick to discard us, and they will buy it if you sell it right.”
Part of me was a little disconcerted about so much agreement coming my way; I wasn’t used to that. Considering the scavengers seemed to be on board with anything as long as it was fun or violent—or, preferably, both—might have helped.
Nobody spoke up, so I did. “The plan’s easy. You take point. My car goes last. The Humvees go in the middle. We sell it. They just drive. Sounds good?”
Blake looked tempted to ask how I intended to do that, but just then Richards interrupted. “We got into their open channel. They just reported in that a suspicious group is trying to catch up to them. They seem to assume that we want to rob them, or otherwise stir up shit.”
That was better than I’d been fearing—and like they were already halfway to guessing what we wanted them to believe.
“Any way all of us can listen in?” I questioned.
“I can put them on the team frequency, but then we can’t keep up this most enlightening conversation,” Cole offered, his smirk plain in his voice.
I did my best to ignore that. “Do it. Eden, take point. The rest, just do what you usually do and either ignore them as we pass by, or look grim. Maybe brandish a rifle or two.” Belatedly, I added, “Anyone got any objections?” meaning Nate, and expecting Hamilton to pipe up. Neither of them did, and Eden signed off with a whoop, just as their car started accelerating. I watched with amusement as the othe
rs let them pass, the way they inched to the side making the hulking, larger vehicles look like they were apprehensive of the garishly made-up smaller car. It had taken some discussion for them to do away with the skull-and-bones hood ornaments, but they’d refused to get rid of the bright red paint splatters on the sides. A little more rearranging, and we ended up as the tail guard of our little group, the column of six vehicles stretched out before us.
The radio gave a squawk as Cole did his thing, and unfamiliar voices took over. Someone was right now in the middle of a status report, rattling off road conditions and damage, making me guess it was still the caravan in front of us, talking about the unmistakable traces last week’s storm had left. We’d had to work our way through several mudslides, drive around felled trees, and ford the odd low part of road where rain water had formed a temporary, shallow lake. The wry part of me mused that now that the camp was in disarray, nobody would go out there and clear up the damage anymore, like I was sure the raiding parties would have before. That made me wonder why the caravan was underway this close to the camp territory in the first place, but it explained their guess about our intentions.
Five minutes later and a good third of the distance to the caravan closer, a female voice that was vaguely familiar came on the radio again. It took me a few moments to recognize Tamara, one of Dispatch’s initial radio operators. What felt like a million years ago, I’d spent a wild evening dancing with her and her sister. The next time I’d seen either, they’d been rather cautious about the lot of us. Now, I was borderline sure she’d shoot us in the face if we got down to talking distance.
“An update on the raiders?” she asked, sounding apprehensive.
The guy from before was back, answering. “They are catching up to us, no shit. But so far they haven’t made a move to send us off the road with RPGs or some shit.” He fell silent, making me guess he was studying us the way we were studying them. “Seven vehicles from what I can tell. Some armor but no larger transports. Looks small for a raiding party.”
“You know that doesn’t have to mean anything,” Tamara cautioned. “But let’s hope that Bo is right and they’ll lose interest once they see that you can defend yourselves.”
I would have expected Blake to appear grim at anyone accusing him and his people of ill will toward traders, but he still looked amused. When he caught my gaze, he chuckled. “I’m sure Scott and his grandstanders have their egos all up in a twist, but I frankly don’t give a shit until they start shooting at us in preemptive self-defense. The Silo’s never really been a part of the network. Sure, we’ve always welcomed traders and scavengers because they made our work easier, but that was about it.”
“Unless they were disease-ridden, trigger-happy assholes, right?” I mused.
He gave me a pointed look. “We did let you in, right? And gave the rest of your group a cabin to live in while you ran your tests. Trust me, if you’d asked the same of Dispatch, Rita would have personally shot you in the head.”
I had the distinct suspicion that he was right.
“You know that Stanton was giving us intel, right?” I asked after deciding that there was no harm in sharing that now, years later.
Blake didn’t look perturbed by what was likely an open secret, at least to the command staff. “You didn’t hear this from me, but rumor has it that Wilkes set his assistants to build—and maintain—their own networks of spies and connections, should the day ever come that the Silo required an additional layer of protection. Stanton used to be an army brat before she decided to join the marines. Doesn’t surprise me she became the unofficial army liaison.” He cast me a sidelong glance, as if to gauge whether the news that we’d been thrown into that same bucket would make me bristle. It didn’t.
“So you never actually were with your backs against the wall?” I asked. “We got the impression that Hamilton was putting some pressure on you, or whoever was calling the shots.”
Blake’s smile turned wry, as if my reluctance to call the devil by his name was funny to him. He wasn’t alone with that, I had to admit. “Exactly how cornered can you be when you’re dug in like ticks in a decommissioned missile silo? You saw our surface extensions on your last visit. We’ve done an even better job underground. No need to advertise that by showing anyone our true strength. Unlike a certain group of show-offs, we’re content to guard our own and prosper without anyone else the wiser of how much they are missing.”
I took the snide remark for what it was, although a part of me wanted to bristle. It wasn’t like my crusade had been a planned thing in the first place. Since I was sure he wouldn’t tell me exactly how many people they were now, I didn’t ask. That they were actively recruiting and training people was obvious; I hadn’t tried to talk to the three assholes we’d dropped off there as potential spies, but from their demeanor I could tell that someone had taught them in the meantime how to be more than a ragtag band of scavengers. If anything, that underlined how little I still knew about what had been going on while Nate and I had spent some quality time driving each other insane in the middle of nowhere.
I couldn’t quite quench my latent paranoia that this lack of knowledge would come back to bite me in the ass.
The guy from the caravan kept reporting in on our progress, which seemed tame enough in my eyes—until whoever was driving—likely Amos—suddenly floored it, shooting ahead of the next vehicle. Scott’s marines were quick to catch up, the entire train of vehicles picking up speed in an unquestioned waste of resources. “You may want to buckle up,” Blake noted, unnecessarily since I had been strapped into my seat the entire time—and he gave me quite the weird look when, instead, I unbuckled the seat harness and started stripping off the layers covering my torso. Not everything—and, truth be told, my sports bra more than covered the goods—but my sudden exhibitionistic exploits hit him right out of left field. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
I paused with my tank top partly over my head, grinning broadly. “Creating a diversion. Not for you—them. Please don’t crash the car, I already have little enough skin that’s not criss-crossed with scars, and I don’t want to spend the next day picking pieces of the windshield out of my tits.”
Blake dutifully looked straight ahead as soon as I reprimanded him, but the peanut gallery in the back was less inclined to do so. I did my best to ignore Fletcher repeatedly leering my way, although it didn’t look sexual. More catch-a-look-at-the-full-freak-show style. Or at least that’s what it felt like to me. Marleen, if anything, appeared befuddled. “Need some help?” she asked, holding out a small jar of black paint to me. I presumed it was for night-ops face paint camouflage purposes, but didn’t question why she had it further.
“Never hurts,” I offered with a smirk.
While I did my best to give myself raccoon eyes and some dramatic streaks across my cheek bones, Marleen peeled herself out of her outer, upper layers as well, although she stopped at the tight, short-sleeved shirt. I would have, too, if not for what had given me this idea in the first place. Good thing I had chosen this vehicle since it was one of very few that had windows that would roll down.
The scavenger car in front was maybe a hundred yards from the last caravan vehicle when I scandalized Blake one step further by not just rolling down my window but getting up into a crouch on my seat so I could partly climb out of the window, at least far enough that my lower back was fully exposed. A last check revealed that we were going close to fifty miles an hour, which might not have been that much—for roads that got regular maintenance, and weren’t covered by years and years of debris and broken-down car wracks. The wind hit my face and torso with merciless pressure, whipping the loose ends of my braids against my shoulders and upper back. Last night I’d asked one of the scavenger girls if she’d help me get the mess on my head back under control, and I’d gotten more enthusiasm in response than I’d dreamed possible. A lot of negotiating had been required to make her braid it up right from the roots like I’d usually worn it when expe
cting no chance for personal hygiene but lots of running from shamblers. She hadn’t budged on leaving the ends open to add a little bit of dramatic flair. Sure, I could have rolled the whole bunch into a bun, but when Nate didn’t have a coronary when he saw me with a half-open, partly braided ponytail, I’d decided to go with it for now. In all the many too-close encounters with shamblers, somehow my hair had never been a good point to grab on to, and I kind of hoped that was still true. Besides, I had a bunch of hair ties, and a knife if need be.
By the time I’d straightened, the fingers of my right hand wrapped tightly around the oh-shit handle, the first car blasted by the stragglers of the caravan. Up close—and unhindered by the frame of the car—I could see that the last three cars were stuffed full with men in heavy gear who appear to be mercenaries or guards, bristling with weapons. Their attention was focused on the first two cars, still oblivious to me, which was a good thing since I needed some time to get my perch perfected that wouldn’t end with me falling off the car and becoming so much road kill. The belt looped around my legs sure didn’t feel supportive enough.
Marleen joined me in my endeavor to gain tons of road rash on the diagonal side of the car, instructing Fletcher not to let go of her legs, for fuck’s sake! Smaller than me, she was likely standing straight. She took a moment to orient herself, but I saw the same silly grin tug on her face that must have been plastered onto my own. Insane as my endeavor was, it was also a lot of fun!
The guards noticed us as the car before us passed by them. We were close enough that I saw the eyes of one of the men go wide, and I didn’t waste the opportunity for some crude hand signs after throwing my arms into the air and whooping loudly. Not sure if they heard the obscenities I was shouting their way, but they sure got the gist.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 54