A low curse rang out, followed by some scrambling, and in short order three men came sliding down the side of the roof. “Men” was pushing it as only the guy who had been talking was past twenty. The other two weren’t old enough for proper beard growth yet, their wide eyes and scared body language speaking volumes. They stopped and almost shied away when they saw Cole and Hill lurking behind me, but when I motioned them to follow us back into the house we’d just cleared, they did.
“You’re the ones they were shooting at?” the lead guy guessed.
I nodded. “Took us a little to clear the barricades. The gate’s still rigged to blow, but if you go up on top of the palisades, you can use our ropes to get outside, if you want. Not sure I’d recommend it. Half the kill zone outside is still burning. They tried to incinerate us as we snuck up on them,” I explained, seeing the bewilderment on their faces.
Lead Guy quickly shook off his surprise. “Fucking assholes got here three days ago, middle of the night,” he said. “Not quite sure how it happened, really. Me and my boys, we were out on one of the fishing boats, using the gentle night for some extra catches. Next thing we know, someone hails us with a warning, and then we get shot at when we’re trying to dock. We’ve been hiding in the attic of my shop since then.”
“Infiltrators,” I presumed. “We had a mole, too.”
“Killed him, huh?” the guy presumed.
I shook my head. “Bitch knifed me in the back and took a few others down. Escaped. Long story. Do you know if anyone else is still around? We’ve found bodies—and quite a lot of fresh shamblers—but by far not enough to account for how many people I know live here.”
He licked his lips, nervous. “We saw them round up people. Only the cantina and the gathering hall in the town square are large enough to hold that many people. You know where they are?”
I nodded. “Patrols?”
“Haphazardly,” he said. “If you haven’t run into any live opposition since the barricades, they must be waiting for you to come to them.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Cole muttered.
I ignored him. “Anything else you can tell us?”
The guy thought about it but shook his head. One of his sons looked twitchy enough that I stared at him, which made him shrink back, but finally offer, “I think I recognized a few, three guys in particular. They’re from the New Vegas bunch.”
The way he said it made it plain he wanted to follow it up with “fucking scavenger scum” but something in my face must have made him shut up before he got to that part. “Were they acting normal?”
He blinked, confused. “Normal like what? They’re usually fucking high as soon as they get here.”
“Well, were they acting high? Because what opposition we’ve killed so far wasn’t.”
He didn’t respond, but his brother finally piped up. “I saw them, too. They weren’t doing a good job patrolling. At least not like Zilinsky always drills us. Just marched down the center of the street from intersection to intersection. Stopped when they startled up a bunch of rats but missed me hiding in almost plain sight down in the shop. They must have been bored out of their minds to be that blind.”
Or someone had given them the wrong kind of orders. Maybe it was a complete shot in the dark, but those could have been the scouts I had talked to on the radio—and someone had shot them up with that mind-control shit after they’d been caught.
I really didn’t like to think along those lines when, inevitably, the next question was whether they’d also caught our vanguard—and also shot them up with the same shit. It would work on Andrej and Pia both, and I didn’t think it beyond those assholes to infect those with their faulty serum who had not yet been exposed to any of the versions. I didn’t know everyone well who was along, but Clark was among them; things might not look any better for Collins or Moore, who’d remained here to lend a hand to Sadie should she need it.
Shit, but this wasn’t looking good.
I was just about to chase the three hideouts back into their perch—they sounded friendly enough, but after Marleen I wasn’t taking any chances—when the team com frequency spewed out static, followed by my husband’s dulcet tones. “Where the fuck is Lewis? Has anyone seen her?”
I didn’t miss Hill’s snicker, but he and Cole both remained silent. One of the people I should have been with piped up a few moments later. “She and the two army dudes went south.”
Gee, thanks for ratting me out! Before I could complain loudly—or as much as whispered conversations not to draw unwanted attention could be considered loud—Nate’s curse forestalled me. Deciding that my continuing silence was only making matters worse, I spoke up. “We’re at the workshops close to the part of the docks that’s not blown up, judging from the lack of smoke in the air.” I paused, then added, “We found three of the townspeople, alive and well. They’ve been—”
I didn’t get further than that before Nate hissed right over me. “Why the fuck are you disobeying my direct order?”
The other two’s mirth was increasing, which didn’t help my already not quite sunny disposition—but it wasn’t exactly like I had a good base here to defend my actions. “Because I’m a strong, independent woman?” I suggested.
Laughter followed—not from Nate, and probably not Martinez and Burns since they knew better than to keep their mics on for actions like that—but quickly died when Nate’s voice came back on.
“And you don’t think I give orders like that for a reason?”
“I’m sure you always have a good reason for everything you do,” I offered, carefully glancing down the street to see if another patrol was close. “I just didn’t see it in that specific order. Plus, we did find those three guys, and they pretty much confirmed what I found with the guys defending the palisades—they’re pretty much badly-calibrated automatons, likely due to the mind-control shit the army’s been developing. Or, knowing what we know now, I’d say the assholes dug in underneath Dallas. Whatever.” Something else occurred to me—something Hamilton and the Chemist’s assistant had said before committing suicide. “Or it’s all last-stage, faulty-serum scavengers. I don’t have a fucking clue. But nobody has found us yet, and that’s intel useful to us. Can you keep the chewing-me-out part until it’s just you and me and you’re not giving Cole more ammo for his exceedingly funny remarks?” The asshole in question flashed me a smirk, but went right back to guarding the doorway.
The fact that Nate had let me explain was testament to his willingness to listen, but even my news didn’t change his foul mood. “We’re massively outnumbered and I can’t get anything done if we’re spread out too far. You need to back-track and follow the path I initially told you to follow. And yes, that’s an order.”
I had a better idea. Thumbing my mic off, I turned to the guy and his sons. “Did you see where exactly the patrols came from or went to? What about the other townspeople? The bodies we found don’t make up for enough that they could have killed everyone. You mentioned the cantina and town hall. What’s your best guess?”
The guy shook his head, as did one of the boys, but the older one answered after a guilty look at his father. “I did some sneaking last night, when it was the most quiet after three in the morning. I saw some lights coming from two of the houses at the other end of the port, where we do the port admin shit. Stuff, I mean,” he quickly corrected himself. I gave him a look that should have told him plainly he really didn’t need to watch his language around me. He quickly went on when he caught his father’s scowl. “I also saw some lights coming from the cantina but didn’t dare go any closer. I was hungry,” he offered apologetically.
“You did good,” I assured him, then quickly relayed what he’d said to Nate. “Sounds like that’s what blew up after we cleared the palisades,” I guessed. “It’s not that far from here, or at least I can find a position where I can get a good look.” The boy quickly nodded, understanding I meant someone could show me. “The cantina is a good distance from where you
are. If you need to split off people to check on the docks, you’ll lose time and firepower. We’re already here.”
No sound came over the line but I knew Nate well enough to perfectly hear how he was gnashing his teeth. “Go check,” he finally ground out. “Just to get an overview. Then you loop back to where the rest of your people are, exactly where I told you to lead them.”
I swallowed the remark that his exact orders had been slightly different, but now wasn’t the time for quarreling. “Sure thing. I’ll report in with an update as soon as we can talk freely.” No answer came, so I turned to the boy. “Might be too dicey for you to lead us to a possible perch, so do your best to describe where we need to go.”
He looked slightly disappointed but was happy to draw us a map in the dirt right outside of the door. I studied it briefly, doing my best to commit it to memory. “Thanks for your help,” I told the three of them. “Now go back and hide. Once everything has died down—and you’re sure we’re the only ones left standing—get out of the town and head to one of the gathering places.” I was sure Pia had designated some for emergencies. “If all else fails, make your way to New Angeles.”
They were gone in no time, the father leaving us with a hushed “good hunting” before following his boys. I waited until the night was quiet again before I made my way down the street, careful to keep checking our surroundings even with a clear goal in mind. All of the other shops and houses looked deserted, and we didn’t find any other bodies. The house with the ladder leading onto a hidden sniper perch on the next house over was exactly where the boy had told us it would be. I stepped aside to let Cole go first. Hill signaled me he would guard the street, leaving me to the shitty task of having to climb up myself, no assistant with a rope for me this time. The “ladder” was little more than weathered slats nailed in haphazard intervals on the walls of the house, on both sides of a corner. They were clearly spaced for someone well above my height, and the weight of my pack didn’t help. Halfway up, I had to traverse the entire wall to get up onto the roof, and then continue up the other house’s side. Cole was watching our surroundings from up high but kept peering down at me, concerned I would make too much sound so he’d get shot, I was sure.
I finally made it, remaining on my stomach for a few seconds after pulling myself up onto the walled platform, not because I was being stealthy but because my hands were giving me so much grief I needed a few seconds to breathe through the pain and concentrate on anything else. Cole had gotten his binoculars out and handed them to me, silently pointing where to check as I pushed myself into a crouch next to him. The target—the cantina—was easy enough to find, light spilling out of open windows and doorways like beacons in the darkness. I only had to wait ten seconds before a dark silhouette crossed a doorway—a patrolling guard. I tried to follow his path, but before he got to the next door, another walked by it from the opposite direction. I easily counted five people—and that was, at best, a rough estimate, of those smack out in the open. I couldn’t see inside well, but I thought I saw movement through the windows—more guards. If they were smart, they’d have any hostages tied up and sitting or lying on the floor. It was hard to sneak out or run when you had a hard time coming to your feet in the first place.
I checked on the main part of the docks next, also visible from up here. Heavy clouds of smoke obscured most of my view, but a few residual flames eating up the wood of the long piers reaching into the bay the settlement was curving around made it obvious that there wasn’t much of those structures left. The buildings themselves seemed intact, making me guess they’d set off planted charges there to prevent an incursion from the ocean. In hindsight, my plans all turned out to be shit—the cars would have helped with the fire and gotten us right to the wall—but walking from inland had been the better choice than trying from the water. I waited to catch some movement, but the smoke was too strong. Even up here, it tickled my nose, and as I kept breathing, I felt my throat get scratchy as well.
Unsure how acoustics would work up here, I signaled Cole to follow me once I was down to street level, giving him another couple of minutes to check our surroundings. Getting down was worse than crawling up since I couldn’t allow gravity to help along, thus alerting everyone in the settlement to my exact position—and considering how the day was going, I’d end up breaking my neck, anyway.
I was just about to start the last leg of my descent—twelve feet of clinging to that damn corner of the house—when rustling sounds coming from up the street drew my attention. For a moment, I thought it was just the wind carrying some debris along—or rats or other vermin playing hide and seek in it—but then it came again, quickly turning into the regular sounds of footsteps. My body wanted to freeze but that was the worst possible position since I was terribly exposed, easily visible against the side of the house. The same was true if I decided to crawl down—the motion would make me even easier to catch, even to someone who didn’t have the same level of low-light vision as I did. Up wasn’t an option since that meant crossing the wall again. I was pretty much caught up here, detection almost inevitable.
I wasn’t going to make it that easy for them.
If I could have counted on letting myself be caught to get closer to possible hostages, I might have considered that option, but if it was mindless drones out on patrol, they’d probably just shoot me. I was sure that whoever was in charge would want me dead, and I wasn’t going to let them turn me into a hostage against Nate. Looking across the streets, I tried to gauge the distance to the next roofs over, both to the east and north. North was out of the question, the thoroughfare below wide enough for two vehicles to pass—and it was the direction from where the patrol was coming. East was the route we’d been following, little more than a footpath between houses.
Trying to be as silent as possible, I took three steps back, then flew forward and across the gap before I could think better of it. Triumph welled up inside of me as I went sailing across the gap easily—only to come down on the angled slate roof with a crash that was loud enough to be heard over by the docks. So much for hiding. And not only was it loud, but my weight was enough to destabilize the shingles, what felt like the entire roof starting to tear loose and slide down into the street. Or maybe that was just me, misjudging the steepness of the roof. I had just enough time to fight for balance to realize it was a losing battle before I slid backward off the roof, incapable of bracing myself. So I did the only thing I could think of, and tucked myself into as compact a ball as I could as I came crashing down.
I heard shots coming in my direction before I hit the ground, the worst of the impact on my right hip and thigh—directly below my freshly-healed wound. Agony exploded through my body, strong enough that for a moment I thought I would throw up. My rolling momentum found an immediate end when my pack hit the ground after something close to a tucked-in somersault, the second shock stoking the flames of the first. I ended up gasping on my side, my vision red with pain. Muzzle fire partly blinded me, but none of the rounds bit into my squishy body. Return fire came from directly next to me, four quick bursts. I was still blinking stupidly when a strong hand grabbed my arm and pulled me up and backward, making me stumble along blindly. Since nobody punched me in the face to knock me out for good, I figured the hand must belong to Hill, pulling me around the corner to the wider street. Terribly exposed in the open only mattered so much when he shot at what remained of the patrol, about to follow us. Two figures fell to the ground. Silence followed, our panting the only sound. Making sure I was standing on my own again, Hill then went to investigate, meeting Cole at the corner. Apparently, my disaster of a descent had given him time aplenty to come down himself. All three of the scavengers making up the patrol were dead, each felled for good with a head shot next to several likely lethal hits in the upper torsos. I trusted Hill to make sure they were gone for good and instead checked their appearance and gear. One of the men looked like your average town guy, no armor but with sturdy boots. The other man a
nd the woman were scavengers, although they were lacking the garish face and body paint I’d seen on Eden, Amos, and their bunch, making me guess they’d become mindless drones long enough ago for all of that to have worn off. They certainly stank like they were in need of a good dunking—not dissimilar to the shooters up on the palisade, but there I hadn’t paid that much attention.
We barely had time for a cursory check—and to grab their spare magazines—before the sound of voices coming from the north made us scramble, heading back into the houses to the east, incidentally following the directions Nate had given us. Unintelligible words turned to shouts when whoever was following us must have tripped over the patrol. My mind screamed at me to run, but the three of us were smarter than that, placing feet deliberately to go fast but remain as silent as possible as we went from cover to cover. That strategy went well—until I peeked around a corner and found myself face-to-face with a patrol that looked not just very alert, but also knew exactly how to respond to intruders.
I barely managed to duck back behind the corner before a spray of bullets hit the air where my head had been, a few chewing right through the boards of the wall since I could feel them crash into the wood I was leaning against on the other side of the corner. Shouts behind us made it obvious that we’d gotten surrounded. Rather than try to evade, I dropped down to one knee and leaned forward so I could shoot blindly at the patrol in front of us, counting on the fact that they weren’t seeking cover since they wanted to chase us. I felled two and killed one, Cole easily taking out the other two. I was tempted to try to beat the shit out of the surviving guy currently rolling on the ground, screaming his head off, but when Cole ran right past him, I followed quickly. The screaming would be a welcome distraction and likely hide the sounds we made. We were out of the street before the guy could decide that grabbing his dropped rifle and shooting us made more sense than to clutch his perforated intestines. Hill pushed against my shoulder when I wanted to slow down, making both me and Cole speed up into a full-out run.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 85