Beyond Green Fields (Book 1): Beginnings [A Post-Apocalyptic Anthology]

by Lecter, Adrienne

  I spend another moment standing there, letting the fire of my own indignation warm me. The concrete floor of the garage is fucking cold, and the idea of spending half the night out there doesn’t exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

  “Well, see you tomorrow, I guess,” I quip as I get ready to leave, waiting for Martinez’s reply. Realistically, we might cross paths briefly in the afternoon, but for being locked in way too little free space down here, it’s surprisingly easy not to spend time with each other. Since he’s more grease monkey than medic at the moment, Martinez rarely leaves the vicinity of the cars, and unless I have a reason to be here, I get chased around every other corner of the bunker. I’m starting to suspect he’s abusing his skills to get out of everything except mandatory workout and sparring sessions. Asshole. I’d do it, too, if I could, but none of them would let me.

  “Have fun!” he calls out from underneath the car, not even bothering with looking up at me. “And don’t trash another vehicle if possible. I still haven’t gotten to your fender bender from last week.”

  I flip him the bird as I leave. No way he could have seen that, but his laughter is still chasing me out of the garage.

  Outside, Bates is already waiting inside the Jeep. I didn’t expect to get to drive Andrej’s baby, but far be it from me to protest. It’s almost as great a vehicle as my Rover, and I know Andrej bribed Martinez into leaving it for last to kill the electronics—including central heating. I’m not stupid enough to waste gas on radio, sat nav, or seat heating, but not turning into an icicle within the next twenty minutes is one of the few luxuries I’m happy to enjoy. There may even have been a brief skip in my step as I hop over to the driver’s side, dropping my pack and shotgun in the back row before climbing in.

  “Where to?” I ask Bates, not surprised that he doesn’t even have a map out. For our short sorties we don’t need one, and since it’s all about teaching me how to pilot the car in the most insane ways, not necessarily to get to any destination, let alone in the shortest way possible, it’s all the same.

  “Wind River Reservation,” Bates lets me know. “Romanoff is out hunting. We’re to pick him up at around two north of Crowheart.”

  So it’s not just the bad weather that might turn driving impossible—Andrej and the hunting party want a ride home. I don’t mind, as long as I get to drive. I wish it would be somewhere else but don’t protest, instead start up the car and set to easing it through our gauntlet of mines and wires to get it onto the road toward the highway.

  The reservation creeps me the fuck out. The northern border of what used to be the reservation runs right through our backyard—half of our southern and southwestern perimeter is technically on reservation land. I only found that out a few days ago when I managed to get a good look at one of the maps. Trespassing, not really a concern these days—but that’s not what sets my teeth on edge. What does is the fact that the entirety of the open reservation land, outside of the few towns, is completely deserted. And I don’t mean in the sense that most of the state of Wyoming is deserted, I mean rapture-level deserted. No corpses, no shamblers, but also no provisions, not even winter clothes are left. The most useful items we’ve found are old kitchen items and plates too banged up to use. The conclusion is obvious—the news of the zombie virus outbreak must have spread just in time and people listened, packing up everything they might need as they retreated to higher ground, away from the roads and cities. Logically, it makes sense that if we went looking, we’d probably find a large community happily thriving in the Tetons, or Yellowstone. I’m really not fond of getting a faceful of zombie every time I bust in a door, but the fact that down there, you can just walk into a house and not get jumped is creepy as hell. I still can’t shake the suspicion that they are simply hiding, waiting to get the jump on me—and I’m not sure whether I actually mean the shamblers, or human survivors. Besides the fact that there isn’t much to loot, Bert and Nate agreed that we wouldn’t take anything of what’s left—we can get better stuff elsewhere, anyway. But what we need to do is head there to hunt, because there’s plenty of game in the foothills, a lot of the territory accessible by car.

  Thinking along those lines, I realize what my afternoon will be spent with—prepping whatever our brave hunters have managed to shoot or catch in their traps. Gosh, nothing like bathing in deer entrails. Could be worse, I figure, as I ease the Jeep around the last trap and onto the road. They could make me walk back.

  3:46 pm

  It is worse: I am walking back. Not just me, but Andrej, Clark, Cho, and Santos. Bates is driving back home with the car full of deer, rabbit, and fowl carcasses wrapped in tarps. Guess who will get to wash them once she gets back to the bunker? You bet!

  Despite that glum prediction, I’m smiling as I follow Andrej across the plains, the turkey I shot twenty minutes ago slung over my shoulder. Since the others had no issues raiding my pack—and the extra rations Sadie packed for me—it’s not a heavy load. We have another five miles ahead of us, but nobody is complaining about it. The sun is still out but dark clouds are amassing over the plains to the east—by tonight the storm will hit us. We’ve had a lot of luck with the weather until now, leaving us plenty of time to raid and scavenge, but Clark insists that today will likely be the last day of fall. I’m so not looking forward to tonight’s watch.

  5:14 pm

  My momentary joy of getting home with enough time to spare to grab a bite to eat before I have to go back out into the dusk is slashed when Andrej declares that I might as well help prep what will be our meals for the next few days—and, of course, he doesn’t mean cutting onions. I don’t quite get why it seems to delight the lot of them to have me skin the animals and help take them apart; it’s been months since my last girlish attitude fled, hunger and the plain need to survive doing away with that. I’ve never balked at eating cat food, and I don’t see why cutting apart the venison should do the trick now—until Andrej grabs the heart of the deer I’m still busy working on and bites right into the knot of muscle, chewing loudly as blood drips down his chin. Yeah, my trail rations are making a reappearance, but I try just as hard to keep it all down as I’m forcing myself not to look away. He’s baiting me, I know that, but it doesn’t really help. More than one of the idiots are smirking—until Sadie comes outside, already shivering although she’s bundled up in a thick winter parka. “Mom sent me to fetch the turkey for plucking—”

  That’s when her eyes fall on Andrej and she goes white as a sheet, drawing up short. I can’t help but smirk a little myself. Her eyes are huge and she swallows repeatedly. I can see how that reaction is funny—only that I’m not looking like I’m about to hurl up dinner that I haven’t yet had.

  Burns takes pity on the girl and grabs the dead bird, stepping up to her so that he’s in her direct line of sight to Andrej. “Here ya go. Need some help?”

  Sadie needs a few moments to shake herself out of it. She extends her hand, but Burns is smart enough not to let his prize go and instead offers to carry it inside. It’s only after the door falls shut behind them that Taylor starts laughing, which turns out to be as infectious as the damn virus. I laugh, too, even if it’s with a slightly hysteric note. “You’re such an ass,” Taylor tells Andrej. Nobody speaks up to defend him, not even the perpetrator himself. Neither Nate nor Pia are around, so nobody feels like actually admonishing him. Andrej shrugs, swallows the—single—bite he took out of the deer heart, and drops it into the bucket with the other pieces that will end up in the pot tonight. The remark how unsanitary that is burns on my tongue but I swallow that, too—not a battle I feel like fighting today. Instead, I keep cutting. We’re only field dressing today; the skinning and butchering we’ll do once the meat has had time to age. With temperatures this cold, it doesn’t matter that we don’t have a working freezer. At least the work is quick, and I have ten minutes to spare to clean up and grab a bowl of hot soup and some coffee before I add another layer of insulation and head back out into the cold.
>
  7:36 pm

  The sun set a while ago but that doesn’t really matter—it’s been dark as night for the past hour. The storm is here, gale-force winds tearing at my clothes while sleet pelts what little is uncovered of my face. I’m cold, I’m miserable, and Bates and Burns aren’t really good company, spread out over the whole three miles of circular perimeter as we are. Since the conditions are worsening by the minute, Burns has decided we do the closer circuit only. It’s not like we’d be able to see or hear anything sneaking past our defenses in this weather, anyway.

  9:55 pm

  Misery, thy name is Bree. I hate this. I hate this so fucking much that words fail me. Twenty minutes ago I passed by the bunker to grab a refill of tea, hoping that would help keep the ice at bay that’s creeping through my veins. Somehow, getting a few minutes of warmth—that burned like hell on my skin—only makes returning to this worse. I’m shivering all over, and I don’t think I’ll ever warm up—and it’s not even winter yet. What the fuck did they think when they decided to build their damn bunker in Wyoming? I doubt it’s this horrible in, say, Florida right now.

  And just to make it even worse, now it starts to snow. Perfect. Just perfect!

  10:18 pm

  Fuck. I’m lost.

  I can’t see shit, I’m shivering hard enough that I can’t properly hold my shotgun anymore, and I have no fucking clue where I am. Even accounting for how much the snow and wind slows me down, I should have passed the three oaks by now but they are nowhere to be found. I also don’t see any tracks on the ground besides those behind me. Not that I can make out much—the snow’s not coming down heavy enough to withstand the wind yet, and the ground’s too cold for prints in the mud. It’s mostly grass with some gravel, anyway.

  The smart thing would be to abandon my quest and backtrack, so that’s what I do. Only that, five minutes later, I lose what little is left of my own tracks. A couple minutes later, I no longer have a clue of any direction, let alone where I am. It’s not like a compass will help me as I have no idea where I am relative to the others, the bunker, or any other landmark.

  Fuck.

  Despair claws at my throat, all the bitching about the cold and misery forgotten, replaced by real, deep-seated fear. I don’t think I will die of hypothermia if I spend the night outside, but the idea isn’t a pleasant one. I know at least ten places where I could get out of the worst, curl up, and weather the storm—but to get to any one of those I’d need to know where I fucking am!

  Breathe.

  Bad idea—I’m already close to hyperventilating; trying to calm my nerves this way doesn’t help. I cast around frantically for a second—still nothing.

  I try to remember the list of contingencies Pia has drilled into me for surviving in bad weather, particularly in winter. It’s not like nobody expected this to happen. I don’t even feel bad about messing up—I’ll take all the ribbing I have coming if I’m still alive and well to receive it. Before I can let my fright bloom into full-blown panic, I fumble for the thermos in my pack. Now, the tea is still warm and can do something to keep my core temperature up—there’s no sense in letting it cool to where it can’t any longer. I shiver, partly with pleasure, as the warm liquid sloshes down into my stomach, the sense of comfort doing more than the actual physical feedback—

  Until a growl, coming from right in front of me, makes me freeze, thermos still at my lips.

  My heart slams into danger mode as every single hair on my body stands up, my fight-or-flight reaction coming on—and there’s no question that the unspoken answer is “flight.” Before I can do anything incredibly stupid, I finally do what I should have done all along—I one-handedly turn off my flashlight, drop it, and reach up to pull my night vision goggles over my eyes. Most nights I try to avoid them when I know I won’t need them. Looks like that may just turn into that one fatal mistake.

  There’s a wolf crouching right in front of me—as in, ten or eleven feet away from me, close enough that it could be on me in a powerful bound or two. Part of my mind wonders if wolves indeed do leap and bound. I quickly shut that voice up. It doesn’t really matter—or not as much as the fact that the overgrown canine brought his two best buddies while I’m sorely missing mine.

  What to do now? Easy: not be prey. I remember almost laughing when the Ice Queen lectured me on that, but mostly because the idea of her not being the obvious apex predator in any given situation is hilarious. Me, right now? A lot less so. Right—no running, no looking scared, no shitting my pants even though there’s a certain need for it. I don’t remember whether I should be shouting or not, but it seems like the first thing to do, so I shout—and it sounds more like a pathetic mewl to me. The wolves don’t react, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If they leave me alone, I’m quite happy with that outcome.

  But that’s not happening, I realize, when the lead one—the one that growled before—takes a step toward me, as if testing my mettle. At least that is what it looks like, resembling the behavior of virtually everyone I live with. I idly wonder if that’s what we’ve become: a pack of rabid dogs. Everything inside of me screams to whip around and run, but I’m smarter than to do the obviously stupidest thing possible.

  I have a weapon. I’m wearing enough clothes that even sharp teeth and powerful jaws won’t immediately kill me. I have a choice, and I have options.

  I also have a half-full thermos in my hand that keeps me from using said weapon, so I do the smart thing and hurl the thermos at the wolf, narrowly avoiding sloshing the remaining tea all over me. It lands right in front of the wolf—it’s that close—but it doesn’t look impressed. Guess I should be happy it didn’t lunge for me right away.

  I try to decide what to do next but really, it’s a very short list of options. While I’m still frozen in the spot from fear, I feel exasperation lick up my spine. I’m freezing here—would that damn wolf please have the common decency to make up its mind and either attack or let me be? It’s the anticipation that’s killing me, not necessarily the mortal danger I’m in.

  I feel like that sentiment says a lot about my mental health—and how hanging out with Nate and the guys is starting to change my reactions.

  The wolf still isn’t coming for me but none of them are backing away, and the fact that I didn’t get a second warning growl I take as a sign that they have no intention of letting their snack get away. So I do what I probably should have done to start with—I grab my shotgun harder and fire, not even trying to aim for the animals but hoping the muzzle flash and bang of the weapon going off will do what the thermos and shout haven’t accomplished.

  One of the wolves yips and all of them tense and back up, if only inches. They seem to know that my boom-stick isn’t their best friend—but they don’t run away. Damnit! Something inside of me snaps and I take a step forward, anger making me stupid as I shout, “Why won’t you fucking assholes leave me the fuck alone?”

  The wolves look less than impressed, but suddenly, their attention snaps from me to something behind me. I almost jump when I hear twigs snap. It would be just my luck that in trying to scare off the wolves, I made myself grizzly food. A moment passes, then the wolves back down and slowly start to retreat, if at a more measured pace than I’m comfortable with.

  It’s no bear, I realize—but close. “You okay over there?” Burns calls, and it’s no coincidence that he doesn’t keep his voice down.

  “I am,” I should back, still watching the wolves. My voice has no business being as steady as it is. My heart is still galloping in my throat. That was close. Too fucking close!

  It’s not just Burns, I realize, when Bates is actually first to reach me. He doesn’t stop by my side but puts himself between me and the wolves, advancing toward them to make them back away faster. They do, finally turning around and slinking away, just as if nothing happened. They look almost at ease around us. I wonder if they actually are sick—there’s a lot of game around thanks to virtually no human predation and very few shamblers
here by the mountains.

  Or maybe I happened upon my lupine equivalent, a couple of youngsters that got caught out in the storm, disoriented, and I scared the fuck out of them. I like that version better, for whatever reason.

  Bates is still staring after the wolves while Burns does a quick check on me, my word not enough, apparently. “I think we should head home,” he concludes, for once not laughing. I feel my shoulders relax in relief. They haven’t realized I got lost. Mustn’t have strayed from the track too far after all. But he continues, and my stomach sinks. “There’s no sense in staying out here. We’ll only get lost, and then wolves will laugh their asses off at us, and—”

  I silently shake my head at him, no verbal answer required to draw a chuckle from him. Instead of bothering with more, I fetch my flashlight and thermos, trying hard to keep the jitters at bay. Another things I’ve learned: adrenaline plus fright plus relief doesn’t exactly make me a happy camper—and even less so when feeling stupid is in the mix as well.

  It only gets worse when I realize that I’ve gotten lost less than a ten-minute trot away from the bunker, straight north of it where the flat of the basin meets the hills. I run by this very spot Every. Single. Day.

  And the best part? That’s close enough that everyone inside likely heard the shot going off. Now I can’t even pretend like nothing happened and try to badger Bates and Burns into lying. A perfect ending to a perfectly miserable day.

  I’m barely going through the motions of stowing away my shotgun and pack before starting to peel myself out of my many layers while Pia accosts us, ten seconds after we step inside. Burns quickly explains what happened—zero visibility, high risk of injury because of a fall, and no sense to send the next shift out there. She listens in silence and agrees with a simple nod. Everyone ignores me, which is a good thing because I really don’t feel like explaining.