Right, we still had some cleanup to do—a few thousand rotting shamblers worth of cleanup. The range of my taste buds might be limited but my olfactory system was working just fine, so I simply opted for some black coffee and called that my breakfast. No sense in wasting food by eating it now and hurling it up thirty minutes later.
Nate was gone by the time I returned to the cabin to change into my full gear, but I didn’t mind since I’d gotten more than my fair share of him all night long. I almost laughed at the goofy grin I felt spreading across my face. At the very least, I could claim increasing mental decline for acting like a teenager on hormones, but I doubted anyone would buy the excuse.
Back by the gate, I didn’t bother with looking for anyone I knew but simply hopped on the closest truck, figuring that I’d have plenty of time to either make new friends out there or find comrades-in-misery already hard at work. Since the truck driver stopped next to where Pia and Burns were already dragging bodies into a heap to be weighed down with wood to later be incinerated, I figured people recognized me better than I did them. Fine with me.
Burns paused after heaving yet another body onto the growing stack when he saw me sauntering up to them. “You’re doing it wrong if you can still walk straight the next morning,” he drawled instead of a greeting.
Looking over my shoulder to where, a short distance away, Sonia was helping with unloading wood, I couldn’t help but laugh. “You sure you don’t want to take that back?”
He kept grinning but held his tongue. Before the Ice Queen could add a barb that would leave us both hurting, I walked over to the closest shambler and started dragging it backward by a leg. Since it used to be moderately substantial, that even worked without me having to return for the second half. It happened. It wasn’t often that I’d had to help with shit like this, but when it had been just Nate and me, we’d never dared to leave the remains out in the open unless carrion feeders had already beat us to the punch. If those assholes hadn’t dragged us away from the treehouse, we would have returned to the plantation to burn and bury what was left of the shamblers we’d found there.
“Why the sour face?” Burns asked when we crossed paths once more.
“Isn’t being knee-deep in rotting undead reason for that enough?”
He shrugged. “Too much wistfulness in it, not enough outright disgust.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I was mourning my salad.”
He actually paused and gave me a strange look. “I can take a lot from you—bloody revenge, ice-cold murder, cackling with glee while you descend on your enemies—but if you keep going on about that fucking greenery, I’ll have to consider our friendship null and void. I have my limits.”
Grabbing another shambler—this one by the upper few inches of the spine, ending where someone had lopped off its head—I started dragging again. “Seriously? You’ll abandon me over my priceless, perfectly organic, hand-watered romaine or lettuce or whatever the fuck it would have grown into? You wound me. You absolutely wound me.”
Pia, always the show-off, caught up to me where she was dragging her own corpse. “You didn’t even know what kind of salad it was? Stick to the meat. We’re not going to survive your moaning and complaining if you accidentally eat poison ivy.”
“Oh, you’re just jealous because I didn’t bring any of my amazing salad with me,” I muttered.
“Green with envy,” Burns agreed. “Just like your salad.”
We kept our rapport up for this and the next three pyres but then it was getting too hot for shooting the shit, our grisly work turning all the worse for the lack of distraction. But it had to be done, and since we didn’t want to needlessly endanger anyone who could get infected by handling the undead, it was up to us to do it. The settlement people more than pulled their own weight, bringing more wood and digging trenches to make sure the fires we lit couldn’t escape and set the entire state ablaze. I could tell they had more practice than I did—but so did Burns and the Ice Queen, I had to admit.
Farther away from the settlement, the corpses were in better condition, which made the work so much worse—and not just because they were heavier. Yesterday, all of them had been damn hard to kill and almost as deadly as we were, if not more so in some cases. It had been easier to ignore that a few weeks prior, they had likely been walking among us. A lot of them were still wearing the typical haphazardly assembled scavenger gear, in some places with red paint still visible where it hadn’t been completely covered in fecal matter and dried blood. Many of them had been younger than me, and more than I’d realized the day before had been women. I tried hard not to look in too many pallid, often destroyed faces, but more than once I felt the low gut-punch of memories stirring. Because of my absence in this part of the country for the past two years, it was unlikely I’d actually known any of them, but considering I’d run into my ex-girlfriend of all people out in Nowhere, Nebraska, one could never know. I really didn’t want to know, but that didn’t keep my brain from being stupid.
Every few hours, we took short breaks, Martinez driving out from the settlement with fresh, cold water. The first time I bothered with wasting some water on cleaning up. By the third time, I had him hold the bottle for me so I could drink, my arms hanging uselessly and heavy by my side, with me likely resembling a shambler myself. We were almost done by then, and I felt about as grimy as the day before, although not fighting for my life helped. The more heat and exhaustion sent my mind into a stupor, the more I felt that damn droning come back, but since it came with enough adrenaline to keep me up and working, I told myself I didn’t mind so much.
I knew it was a mistake to let Martinez dump the rest of the water onto my head to cool off a little when I realized he was scrutinizing my hickey, only visible now since I’d pulled my jacket open a bit to let the water dribble inside. Part of me wanted to zip it up with resolution and forestall any comments that might follow, but I was too tired and hot for that shit, to be honest.
“You maybe should let me clean that up for you,” he advised, his voice bland enough that I wasn’t quite sure whether he knew exactly where the scabbed-over bite marks atop the bruise stemmed from, or if he was mad because he thought I’d gotten careless about after-battle care just because I couldn’t catch the virus.
“I’m sure it will be all healed up by tomorrow,” I offered.
Martinez let out a mirthless chuckle. “You mean like the two tantalizingly similar ones I stitched up for Miller today? Yes, don’t go all doe-eyed on me. He needed two stitches on his left shoulder and one on his ass. I can think of a better way to be woken up than that.”
Burns guffawed behind us, making me glance at him over my shoulder. “Stop it, or I’ll mention the salad, and where would you find your entertainment if not from me, huh?”
Martinez shook himself as if to say “I’m not even gonna ask” before letting out a dramatic sigh. “I never thought I’d say I miss the days when you were a rookie and all twisted around yourself, worried that you’d lose street cred you didn’t yet have if anyone thought you were his girlfriend and at the same time stalking around camp, glaring at that Madeline woman if she even dared look in the general direction of your man, but I kinda do. I can deal with pretending like I don’t care that he’s sitting there, munching on his bandit or raider or other assorted asshole jerky, but if you’re now literally tearing chunks out of each other, I’m done. You heard me—this is where I draw the line.”
I got that he was serious but I couldn’t help but grin—and yes, the term “asshole jerky” would become a thing, if I had a say in it. “So I’m not allowed to have life-affirming, deal-with-grief, post-fight sex now? You’re such a prude.”
Of course Burns found that statement hilarious—and I caught Pia turning away a little too slowly to completely hide the smile crossing her face—but Martinez would have none of it. “Fuck however the fuck you like, but don’t end up in my triage station afterward!”
Burns continued to chortle—and, o
f course, found the perfect remark to make it all worse. “Maybe we could pick up some chew toys for them? You know, like what you’d get for a dog? Or we could head into what’s left of Salt Lake City and go look for a quality sex shop. I’m sure that nobody thought to raid those, and at the very least, they should have some gags left.”
I was ready to join Martinez in trying to pretend he hadn’t heard that, but instead smiled brightly at Burns. “You calling me a bitch now?”
“Kinky bitch,” Burns corrected.
Thank fuck that Sonia wasn’t around or we both would have been back in the dog house—which of course cracked me up now, which lead to a round of demanding looks so I had to explain, and the lot of us ended up sharing goofy grins—except for the Ice Queen. “If you have energy enough to act like idiotic fifteen-year-olds, you can go back to work. Scoot!”
Properly chastised, Martinez sent me a last warning look before he hopped back into the car. I turned to Burns one last time as we trudged over to where the next corpses were waiting for us. “While you’re there, you could pick up a whip for her. I feel like it would suit her.”
Burns was about to agree—grinning from ear to ear—when Pia turned around and glared at us, obviously having caught that part. “You should,” she told us, calm and collected, and thus scary as hell. “It will come in handy when you two slack off digging latrine pits for the next two weeks.”
Burns grimaced—but only where she couldn’t see—while I went ahead and saluted her with a bright grin. She ignored me, but again, she was too slow to hide a hint of a smile. As much as I hated getting permanently delegated to the worst job on the go, at least that was something.
Chapter 15
Grime, sweat, and corpse fluids aside, cleaning up that evening went much faster than the day before since dragging around corpses was still cleaner than having them bleed all over you while they were still moving. I also didn’t feel the need to decompress, so I got a good four hours of sitting around the fires, everyone telling jokes and anecdotes while eating unhealthy amounts of food and drinking what felt like half the moonshine the Utah settlement must have distilled last year, although I passed up the booze since it wouldn’t affect me anyway—such a waste. Sadie was still hanging around with us so I figured her grand reveal to me had been a lie—or, more precisely, the excuse she needed to tell herself to be able to stomach the fact that once we left, she’d likely never see us again. I couldn’t fault her for that, but it still kind of rankled. I didn’t see Sam again and thus got no chance to scope out the woman who had ultimately replaced me, which was probably for the best. While I was sure all the others were very aware of who Sam had been to me, nobody mentioned her. There were plenty more interesting topics to discuss, and it was well past midnight by the time we were back in our cabin.
We did go at it again, although at a more leisurely pace. While I had been right and I was mostly healed up after cleanup this evening, we didn’t give Martinez any more reason to go off in our faces, but I didn’t miss how Nate—lovingly—continued to nuzzle that spot. I had to admit, I wouldn’t have minded if he’d bit down hard again when I came with him fucking me from behind. That was all just normal, passionate behavior, right?
Since “wrong” wasn’t an option, I chose not to dwell on it. Exactly how long could it take us to get to that damn bunker? Three weeks? Four, tops, if we ran into any serious trouble? We’d easily hold out until then. What were a few love bites between a loving husband and wife?
It was one thing to know that we could both run several days on sleep deprivation but it made no sense to push ourselves further, so we caught some quality sleep, once more curled up around each other, sweating profusely on top of the sheets because of it, but both loath to let go. I had to admit, I got a kick out of Nate being more physical, even if it was mostly happening when it was just the two of us. Just to myself, in the dark of night, I could admit that I’d been concerned—and just a little hurt—when he’d withdrawn from me after we’d liberated the camp, particularly en route to Dallas. I got that he’d needed some time to get his head in the right mindset again—and it irked me to no end that I still had no clue what he and Hamilton had been up to whenever they’d vanished—but that didn’t change my feelings. This wasn’t even about our mad daydreaming about missing our rapidly closing procreation window; I had to admit, since Andrej’s death—and finding Sadie hysterical over believing her child dead, if only for a few minutes—that desire had greatly diminished. If it happened, great. If not, just as well. And with that droning sensation ebbing and flowing inside of me with everything that made my pulse spike, I didn’t feel too confident it was even on the menu still.
Nate woke me up just as the sky started to lighten—accidentally, as he slipped out of bed and then thought better of it, returning to place one last, lingering kiss on my shoulder that roused me from my slumber—but it was just as well. I felt marginally more rested than when we’d decided to call it a night, which meant my batteries were well on their way to being fully recharged. We’d finished with the cleanup yesterday so, technically, our work here was done—from what “conditions” Minerva had named in exchange for offering us her hospitality—but we weren’t in that much of a rush. One day more or less wouldn’t make a difference.
I realized I was wrong as I watched Nate dress, then halt at the window that let him stare at the mountains where the sun would be rising in an hour or so. It was then that I knew we would be leaving today. I waited to feel disappointed at not getting another day off—this one preferably also including not working my ass off—but found only excitement fluttering in my chest.
What was way less exciting was seeing worry and indecision on his features, but the mere fact that he didn’t close up when he caught me watching him counted as something.
“What’s with the doubt?” I asked as I slid partially out of bed, angling for the discarded underwear I hadn’t really gotten much use out of since dressing after decontamination last night. “Aren’t you a few hours too late to have one of those ‘dark night of the soul’ moments?”
Nate allowed himself a small smile—probably prompted by me almost falling off the bed to reach my bra and tank top without actually leaving the bed yet—but his expression was somber when he spoke. “Not doubt, exactly. Indecision, for the most part.”
I couldn’t help but pause and stare at him. “That’s a first.”
“That I admit it to you, maybe,” he teased, but his heart wasn’t in the brief show of levity. “It’s one thing to send a bunch of trigger-happy idiots gunning for what they want to be gunning for in the first place. It’s quite another to actually try to decide how much my own life is worth—and how much yours is.”
I didn’t like the sound of that but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Am I missing something here? We know where we’re going. We have backup, and you know that we’re one radio call away from easily tripling that in size, if need be. This may be a little more complicated than storming the slaver camp, but it can’t be impossible.”
He shook his head. “That’s not it, although I’m sure that getting in by force will be excessively hard to pull off.”
“Again, what am I missing?”
“I’m just playing guessing games here,” Nate admitted. “But I can’t help but feel like the other shoe is about to drop. And it drives me fucking insane that I don’t know where it will be coming from, and I’m having a hard time coming up with any kind of plan when I don’t know who I can trust.”
“But you do know,” I pointed out. “You can trust me. You can trust our people. And considering how much of a beating they have taken for us, I’d say you can trust what’s left of the soldiers who’ve set out for the camp in the initial run. I admit, that’s less than thirty people, but it’s better than nothing.”
Nate slowly inclined his head. “It’s more people than I had for half of the non-sanctioned missions I’ve been sent on in my entire life.”
“Then
why the long face?”
I’d almost given up hope on getting an answer—in the meantime I finished dressing—while Nate was back to staring at the brightening sky. When he finally turned back to face me, Nate stared at me with an intensity that made the spot between my shoulder blades itch that was impossible to scratch. “I need an honest answer from you. No bravado. No grandstanding. This is just between you and me, and won’t leave this room.”
I was tempted to crack a joke, but he was way too serious and strung out to appreciate it. “Sure. Shoot.”
“If we have a choice—and I’m not sure we’ll get one, but say we do—to go all in and sacrifice ourselves for the greater good, would you? No guarantees, but say I have one last ace up my sleeve that could give us that option.”
That explained his sourpuss mood. Knowing Nate, we were talking contingency plans more than wishful thinking here.
I gave it some thought, but realized not much of it was required. “I presume this was brought on by losing Romanoff?”
“In a sense,” Nate admitted. “But it’s less about him going for the ultimate sacrifice, and more about the general circumstances. Call me inspired.”
Now that wasn’t sounding cryptic at all, yet if he didn’t want to spill the beans but keep this theoretical only, I was happy to work with that. “Realistically, we won’t live much past the huge showdown, whether we survive it or not, right? No bullshitting me now, either.”
He shook his head. “I give us maybe three months? I doubt we’ll get to ignore another Christmas as is.” Since it had just been him and me, and neither of us big on arbitrary celebrations, we’d ignored those dates passing for the past two years. With no one but us around, it had seemed sad rather than festive to go hunt for a tree and craft ornaments out of shell casings.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 96