Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12

by Lecter, Adrienne

  I had the sinking feeling we’d either never find out, or find out way too late, and I didn’t get my hopes up that this endeavor would go down any better than Paris.

  Chapter 8

  The next day wasn’t exactly boring, but came and went without any noticeable events. Like every single time we’d traveled over a state border before, it was kind of anticlimactic. Keeping to small roads farther away from the trade network and going at a slower pace meant we didn’t draw anyone’s attention—that we were aware of. We finally got a chance to acquire some maps, and I spent the last two hours riding shotgun with Blake studying them. I’d never been to Texas before the shit hit the fan, but even so I was aware that the Dallas-Fort Worth area was one of the most heavily populated regions in the country. The heat might have been the only thing working in our favor, but I somehow doubted that it had driven the millions of shamblers out of the area. All former population centers had remained heavily infested, and I doubted Dallas was the exception. With buildings providing easy shelter and a river running through the city as a reliable water source, it wasn’t a bad setup—for them, which made it very inconvenient for us. It was impossible to shake the latent unease that knowledge left, sitting deep in my stomach.

  Dinner turned out to be a somber affair, the tension in the air palpable. I wasn’t yet halfway done with my hunk of bread when Nate spoke up, making it a point to look at every single one of us—minus the guards out on perimeter duty—as he addressed the assembly. “I hope that as we get closer to Dallas, we’ll manage to get better maps, but for now, these will do. This is the situation: we need to get into one of the buildings in downtown Dallas, and nothing less than up to several million zombies stand between us and our destination. Options and opinions, please.”

  At first, nobody wanted to speak up, until Amos cleared his throat. The tall scavenger looked as subdued as the rest of us, but the way his leg kept bouncing spoke of a need to burn energy that I decidedly didn’t feel. “I guess simply not going there is not an option?”

  “It’s not,” Nate agreed, a little softer than I was sure he would have with me. Amos nodded, but didn’t offer anything else.

  Since nobody else was speaking up, I went next. “Can we use the river that runs through the city and around the western and southern half of downtown Dallas? On the maps it looks like Trinity River has a nice, wide bed that’s easy to follow.”

  I expected Nate to shoot me down. Scott took that over from him, instead. “I doubt it.”

  “Why—”

  The marine leader grimaced. “I presume you got the idea because of how you went about your thing in France?” I was surprised he knew about that—including the details—but maybe shouldn’t have been. Nate and Hamilton had spent some quality time with Scott and Blake both. It only now occurred to me to question why they hadn’t included me in those meetings. Maybe I had been expected to join? Nothing I could do about that now.

  “Won’t work,” Scott professed. “I’ve never been to Paris, but I presume the geography of the city and river helped. And that it was winter, too. We don’t have any current data from the large cities in Texas, but we know they got hit hard by draughts and tornadoes. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the city had burned at one time, and storms and rain washed all possible debris into the river. Think canalization, dead people, still moving dead assholes—you name it. It wouldn’t have taken much to clog up the river, turning the water brackish and into a breeding ground for all kinds of critters and diseases. Even if we found boats and ways to get around everything that gunked together in the water, half of us would probably be too weak from fever and diarrhea to fight by the time we dragged ourselves into the city.”

  That made sense. I could think of a better way to spend my time than to drag myself through foul swamps. The storm that had come down on the camp had likely affected Dallas as well, if not directly then by sending water into the tributaries of the river.

  “What about the storm drains?” one of Blake’s marines offered. “Some might be clogged up, but if they have been washed free, they might be a way to get through some tight spots.”

  I continued to study my maps, but no drains or ditches were marked in there. “Or we could just walk right along the interstate,” I proposed. “US-75 runs straight into downtown.” Usually, highways were a no-go closer to cities, but since we could just walk around the heaps of rusting wrecks as we’d leave the cars farther back, it was an option.

  I knew Hamilton was about to shoot me down—and dreaded what I was sure would be a great reason—but surprised the pants off of me when he agreed. “That was my idea, too,” he said, pausing a moment to smirk at me. I just glared back. “In most parts, the highways are elevated and out in the sun. Only a stupid mofo of a zombie would be insane enough to be up there in the middle of the day. They must have stripped anything organic from the cars before the first winter. With luck, not too many of the overpasses will have been destroyed, but we’ll bring ropes to get over any gaps.” His triumphant smirk took on a really nasty twist as he singled me out again. “No worries for those who are climbing impaired. We’ll just tie a rope around your useless carcass and drag you along with us.”

  Three of the scavengers laughed. Eden didn’t, her eyes narrowing at Hamilton’s attempt at a joke. She didn’t speak up, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Her attention flipped to me, and I gave her my best, “yeah, that asshole!” look. That did the trick and pulled a smile out of her, but it wasn’t a pleasant one. I wouldn’t exactly have called her a surprising ally—not after finding out how much the actual scavengers diverged from the tales told about them—but it was good to know that if I needed someone to hold Hamilton down when I finally decided to castrate him, she’d lend a hand. The male scavengers, too, I was certain, if only to be part of something bloody and brutal. Musing along those lines made Hamilton’s assessment of my moral deterioration echo through my head, which was the last thing I needed to consider right now.

  Nate ignored the glaring going on to instead voice his opinion of the plan. “That might work, or it will turn into a kill chute for us. I say we consider it but it needs further assessment as we get closer to the city.” He glanced at his maps. “I say we try to drive the cars on US-75 as close as we can—likely north of McKinney. That way we’ll have an easy time finding them again and we can use that spot as a fallback and rallying point.”

  I tried to gauge the distance. “That’s, what? Forty miles from our destination?”

  Nate nodded. “Give or take a few, depending on how many detours we will have to make. I expect it will take us two days to make it since we can’t just waltz into there without looking left or right.”

  “Realistically, closer to four days,” Hamilton corrected. “Unless we never need to find shelter, which I doubt will happen. A handful of people could maybe do it in one go, but a group as large as ours will inevitably attract attention. Depending on that, we will need to split up to maximize the chance that any one group will make it to our destination.”

  I really didn’t care for the sound of that, but judging from the grim nods all around me, it didn’t come as a surprise. Nate’s attention turned to me, and I could guess at his question before he posed it. “Still want to go with Richards?”

  Judging from how my gut was twisting in knots, I was far from certain, but I forced myself not to hesitate as I inclined my head. “Yes. Makes more sense from a tactical point. Besides, I wouldn’t want to risk over two thirds of our chances for the propagation of the species in one fireteam.” I didn’t know why I added that—Nate certainly ignored it, as did Richards—but Hamilton gave an almost imperceptible jerk before glancing at Richards, then me. Oh, he knew. And now he knew that I knew. I stared back, the twisting, snarling beast of anger in the back of my mind growing cold, and for once there was no taunt in his gaze, either. It was so easy to forget that there was a reason why he’d been in the position I’d met him in, time and time again, and that hadn’t bee
n because he’d excelled at kissing ass. His brash demeanor, particularly toward me, made it so tantalizingly hard to remember that there was a ruthless kind of intelligence lurking behind those eyes that likely came close to rivaling Nate’s. I absolutely didn’t understand why Hamilton acted the way he did, particularly around me—but obviously, he had been snooping around the updated file that they had on me, and he knew about that note that Richards had told me about in his needlessly cryptic remark a few days ago…

  And now was the worst time to let my mind get sidetracked with what-ifs and maybes, and letting what amounted to my arch nemesis see into my cards wasn’t that smart. More to remind myself to prioritize than because I thought it was needed, I added, “Plus, I don’t trust Hamilton not to knife me in the back.” The moment passed—if it had even existed outside of my imagination; Hamilton was that good about shutting down his expression when he wasn’t going out of his way to behave like an ass—and the possible culprit in question offered up a brief smirk and returned to mostly ignoring me.

  Nate glanced from one of us to the other—and there was a certain warning in his expression that neither of us missed—before he turned to the group at large. “We likely won’t get much use out of our coms as remaining as silent as possible will be key. Everyone up to date on their hand signals?” Kudos to him for not singling out the scavengers, but he did check in with them. Once everyone had nodded, he went on. “If you get lost, try to make your way to our destination, or if you’re wounded or running low on ammo, retreat to the cars. I had a few possible rallying points underway in mind but since we have no idea how we will get into the city and be able to move forward, this is it. The idea with the highway is a good one—if it works. That will get us close, but downtown Dallas will be a nightmare every which way we look at it. These here are the exact coordinates of our destination.” He prattled them off, also including the street name and number. It took me a little to find it on my map, particularly as it was lost in a cluster of buildings—and, if I wasn’t mistaken, none of them would be small ones or easily accessible.

  “How exactly are we supposed to make it there?” I asked when no one else posed the obvious question.

  “Likely with very slow, very deliberate movements,” Nate responded, showing humor that I really didn’t feel. “But we may have one more ace up our sleeves that we didn’t expect, and might explain how they managed to keep a lab running there.” He pulled up a different map, this one crudely hand-drawn. Because of the position of the highways, I could more or less imagine what area it covered. Pointing at marks and connective lines drawn in red on the black and blue outlines of the city, Nate added, “Tunnels.”

  Danvers, Scott’s second in command, perked up. “You mean the underground pedestrian network?” When most of us eyed him with confusion, he explained. “The city of Dallas built connective underground tunnels between key buildings to keep pedestrians out of the heat. A few sky bridges are also included. It’s somewhat close to an extension of public transport access.”

  Nate shook his head. “We may have to cross through there as well, but I’d presume those tunnels are full of nesting shamblers since they give them shelter from all elements, not just the heat. No, I mean the closed railroad tunnels beneath what used to be the Santa Fe Freight Terminal. Luckily for us, the building we are aiming for was part of that at one time. They barricaded and walled off the tunnel entrances when the railroads went out of order decades ago, but I bet not all of them, or not permanently.”

  “Exactly how sure are we that this is the right address?” I asked. This was sounding more obscure by the moment.

  Nate gave me a surprisingly acerbic smile. “Exactly how paranoid do you want to get?”

  I already had plenty of that going on, but that was an easy answer. “Shoot.”

  Switching back to the street map he’d been using before, he circled four spots—three buildings and what looked like a parking lot. “Those are the sites that used to make up the Terminal. One building has been torn down and turned into a parking lot. One’s in use by the federal government. One has been converted into apartments, and the last is a hotel. I bet that if the internet was still working, we’d find old listings for those apartments—but I doubt more than a few have ever been rented out or sold. That’s the building we’re headed to.”

  “What’s the part about this that should make me all paranoid?” It sounded very convenient, yes, but France had been worse, really.

  Nate flashed me a quick smile. “The Santa Fe Terminal Complex railroads have also been used to transport soldiers right from where they’d been recruited by the army for World War II.”

  And with Decker being an army recruiter himself, and the lab part of the complex…

  “Exactly when did they start the serum program?” I asked, trying not to sound a little bit hysterical. “From what Alders said, I thought in the late seventies to early eighties, and it didn’t go into full swing until the nineties.”

  “That’s what I know, too,” he mused. “But some things do make one wonder, right?”

  While that connection—purely speculative as it was—freaked me out, it helped underline the theory. “Decker as a recruiter would have heard of that story, even if we are seeing ghosts where none are,” I extrapolated from there. “And with the tunnels, it sounds like a good hiding place to weather out the first waves of the apocalypse.”

  Nate agreed with me. “That, and don’t forget, there’s still the possibility that it was never supposed to get that bad. Confusion, a few months of civil war, and nothing more was likely closer to the plan. Having access to a large city for possible looting should things continue on is a good contingency plan. And who would have bothered to go looking there? Even if things escalated further, Texas is a great hideout for the winter.”

  I looked at the tunnel map again. “Do we know how far out they extend?”

  He shook his head. “That’s what we found of the official, historic tunnels. I doubt we’ll find any mention of any possible extensions, and even if we were to scour the archives at City Hall, I doubt we’d find blueprints of that. Since we have no way of knowing, we can’t plan for that. It may make for a good exit strategy after we’re done.”

  This was more information than I had expected to be able to go by. I did my best to memorize the hand-drawn map while Richards noted all the locations mentioned on the map I had been abusing before.

  Once Nate had made sure everyone was up to date, he resumed the briefing. “It’s as simple as this—we make it to the building aboveground, or we use what tunnels we know lead there, if we can access them. All of that depends on us getting into the general downtown area first, and not getting killed out on the streets. I don’t need to stress how much depends on this. We don’t expect heavy opposition once we are in the lab, but hiding in a former city of millions that are now guarding it is more of a defense than we can hope to overcome. We have no real numbers from Texas for the metro areas, but even the rural areas had over seventy percent conversion rate—which means they were hit hard at the very beginning of the outbreak.” That could be a further clue that we were on the right track—and also meant that most people who had eaten contaminated food had turned rather than simply died.

  “Anyone got any questions?” Nate wanted to know. “No? Good. Try to get as much rest tonight as you can. There’s a good chance you won’t get any shut-eye until we have made it to the lab and shut it down. Maybe not even until we’re back outside the city.”

  Things looked about concluded when one of the scavengers whose name I still didn’t know spoke up. “What should we do with the bodies? Of anyone who dies, I mean.”

  Nate cast him a sidelong look. It was Hamilton who responded. “There won’t be any bodies. Whoever goes down will get torn to shreds.”

  My, didn’t that sound lovely? I couldn’t help but glance at the assembled clumps of people. Who of them would still be alive tomorrow by this time? And the day after?

&nbs
p; Nate got up, officially ending our meeting. “On that cheerful note—make sure to pack your packs tonight so that whenever we need to abandon the cars tomorrow, you will be ready. We start out at sunrise. By the time we’re out there, the sun will beat down on us mercilessly, so pack enough water and make sure you have your filtration systems with you. We’ll be hard-pressed to find anything we can use that isn’t foul from having something dead in it. Dismissed.”

  Finishing what was left of my dinner wasn’t exactly high priority for me right now, but I made myself gulp down the nutrients my body would likely be screaming for come tomorrow if it didn’t get them. Nobody seemed up for a chat, and those who had the last guard shift in the early morning were already hitting the rack. I tried to gauge if Nate looked ready for something—including talking but not necessarily that—but he continued to ignore me. Fine by me. It wasn’t like we were walking into our near-certain doom or anything.

  Annoyed more than angry, I eventually called it a night myself.

  Sleep was hard to come by even though I knew I needed it and would miss it dearly tomorrow, but my mind was still in overdrive—mostly churning ruts around the sheer idiocy of our endeavor. I couldn’t have dozed more than a few minutes at a time when Cole woke me up for my shift, and I forewent the coffee I usually got to make sure I remained alert. No problem with that now, but if I could catch another ninety minutes before we left, I wouldn’t be devastated. It was cool enough to blast the tendrils of sleepiness from my mind, and I did my thing while I listened into the quiet night—or as quiet as the night ever gets when every damn nocturnal animal is out and about and screaming to get laid. Every animal but me.