There was one more thing to do before we hit the road in the afternoon again—check in with the guys at the Silo. I was a little surprised when Nate clarified that, besides him, no one actually knew that I hadn’t died. After his explanations of how he’d checked in with Sunny, I’d kind of guessed that they knew that I’d survived. Alas, no, it turned out. Nate had been close-mouthed as ever. After what had happened in that factory, I didn’t exactly fault him for it.
It took some fiddling to reconnect the radio. Apparently, Nate had ripped the entire thing out after we’d settled in the motel. Why he didn’t say, but then again, he didn’t need to. It was one thing to trust Tamara and the mechanics in Dispatch when they’d explained to us that our radio couldn’t be tracked if we didn’t set the transponder to online; but someone had planned a scheme elaborate enough to get the better of us and hadn’t shied away from killing a substantial amount of their own soldiers. Getting someone to rig car radios to make them appear to be offline but actually sending was not that far-fetched. And until we had an idea of how anyone could have gotten confirmation that I had been pregnant, neither of us was ready to take any risks.
Considering all that, it didn’t come as much of a surprise that Nate hesitated before hooking up the radio once more.
“Are you sure that you want to do this?” he asked, surprising me. When he saw the weird look I gave him, he offered me a slight smile. “Rejoin civilization, as it is. We could just drop off the map completely. Go north, where even in summer there can’t be that many undead around. Build our own little fortress, stock up for the winter. People a lot less skilled than us did it centuries ago. We can do it, too. That is, if we want to. It’s your choice.”
My, my, wasn’t he agreeable these days. I mulled over his proposition, but as pseudo-idyllic as it sounded, I shook my head in the end.
“I’m not sure what exactly I want,” I admitted. “But I can’t just let this slide. Bates and the cannibals were one thing. But losing Cho and Bailey… this is just too much. Someone did this, deliberately, and I don’t think I can go ahead and ignore this. I’m not saying I want to exact bloody, brutal revenge on them…“ I cut off there, reflecting on what I’d just said. “Actually, scratch that. I want to exact bloody, brutal revenge on whoever fucking did this. Starting with Bucky, and slicing and dicing my way up right to the top. I know it’s stupid, and we’ll likely all die in the process, but as things are right now, that’s a likely outcome whatever we do.”
I waited for him to laugh in my face, but his grim nod of satisfaction was giving me quite the feels.
“See?” he prompted. “I didn’t just ask you to marry me because of your nice rack.”
That got the snort it deserved. “Yeah, or what’s left of that. So, warpath it is?”
He shrugged. “First, you need to get better. Which, incidentally, means I need to keep us both alive long enough that we make it back to the Silo. Don’t glare at me like that. You know that right now you’re next to useless. You need more rest, and you need lots and lots more nutrition. I need to eat, too. I’ve been basically starving for the past days, and while that wasn’t much of a concern to me while I thought you were dying, I need to bulk up again. So what we’ll do, after calling in, is to go short distances, get as much rest as we can, and get some more provisions. Any complaints?”
“Can it please not be tuna?”
He gave me a pained look before he focused back on the radio. “Always with the nagging. Burns is right. We already sound like an old couple, whether we’ve been married for less than a day or not.”
I was content with just watching him work, keeping my thoughts to myself. It was probably better this way.
When he finally had the radio hooked up again, Nate needed a few minutes to get on a frequency that worked. The momentary feedback made me wince, but I wisely kept my trap shut when he gave me a warning glance.
“This is Silo actual,” a male voice came over the speakers. “Unidentified radio, who am I talking to?”
Nate grimaced, but there was a hint of humor in there, too. “Good to hear your voice, Silo actual. This is Thirteen alpha calling in. Can I leave a message with you for my unit?”
There was an audible pause, followed by some unintelligible chatter in the background. My, someone was getting excited. When whoever was manning the radio came on, he managed to pitch his voice appropriately mournful, though. “Sure thing, Nate.” Clearly, we were celebrities enough to be known by name. “Whatcha need?”
“Can you tell them to come back out of whatever hole they’ve drunken themselves into and meet me back at the Silo? My ETA is a little sketchy but I’d say in a week from now should work.”
“Will do,” the radio guy acknowledged. “Listen, how are you holding up—“
That was as far as he got before Nate shut the radio off with a succinct, “Thanks.” I watched as he quickly dismantled the contraption he’d previously taped together.
“You know, you could have left that on for a few more minutes,” I noted. “Would have been fun to listen to them gush all over my cold, dead body.”
Nate shook his head, sighing under his breath. “Only you could find that funny.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t you see the humor in it? I refused to go to my own wake, and now I can, theoretically, listen to the world mourn for me! That is, if you let them. Really quite disappointing.”
He spared me the answer that I likely deserved and instead reached for one of the refilled water bottles. “Ready to get on the road? I probably won’t even need you for navigating, but it’s kind of nice to still have you around. A little less boring this way.”
“Kinda nice?” I echoed. “Maybe I should look into how to get this marriage of ours annulled. You’re just so much more trouble than you’re worth.”
“I’ll remind you of that next time you need me for some menial task,” he offered, dropping the bottle and maps in my lap. And off we went.
I tried to hold on to the momentary feeling of levity that our banter had instated, but soon ended up more or less cowering in my seat. It was hot as hell, even with the windows down, and the glare of the sunlight was barely tolerable. Even with my boonie hat pulled deep into my face and the glasses pressed as close to my nose as they would get it was still way too bright out there for me to see anything beyond vague shapes. I thought that Nate glanced at me often, worry firmly etched into his features, but I couldn’t be sure. At least the splitting headache I got distracted me from the ounces of tears that ran down my face. Under different circumstances I might have been embarrassed, but I was way beyond that. At least not having to use my legs meant that my thigh could recover somewhat, even if it still hurt from last night’s abuse.
It was about thirty minutes into our ride when he suddenly stopped the car, then reversed and backed into a field, stopping behind two trees that were conveniently standing beside the road. At first I thought he’d simply given up on watching me dissolve into liquids, but when he got out, his binoculars at the ready, I couldn’t help but wonder what made him look so tense. I waited for a few seconds until my vision somewhat normalized before I followed. He was standing beside my door, staring over the rolling plains toward the horizon.
“What’s wrong?”
He didn’t react at first, but then handed me the binoculars. “See that rise over there? Leading back the way we’ve come. Do you see the plume of dust?”
I didn’t see anything, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. It took a lot of blinking and wiping away residual moisture before I could focus on that hill he’d referred to. I was just about to hand back the glasses when I noticed that the air above part of the rise was hazy.
“A group of cars?” I guessed, checking once more before I let him have his fancy tool again.
“I think so,” he replied. “Could be a stampede of cows, too, but I doubt it. Zombies wouldn’t be stirring up that much dust.”
It could have been our streak, hungering for beef once m
ore, but I had to agree—that cloud seemed to be shifting, faster than even a super-charged zombie could run cross-country.
“Should we try to hail them?” I said, more wondering aloud than actually asking.
Nate hesitated, that in and of itself alarming me. “Let’s not,” he suggested. “Actually, let’s not let them know that we’re here. Although I’m afraid that it’s already too late for that.”
“You think they came after us?”
He shrugged. “They’re certainly honing in on where we were when we placed that call. Call me paranoid, but isn’t that too much of a coincidence?”
“But why now?” I asked. “We stayed at the motel for over a week. They could have hunted us down way easier there. And you did talk to Sunny from there, right?”
Nate gave me a quizzical look. “Campbell may or may not have set up a signal scrambler while we were clearing the building. There was no time to get it when we had to flee.”
Now didn’t that sound promising?
“Shit.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up at my exclamation. “At least now we know—or as good as know—that the channels aren’t safe.”
“You think it’s someone at the Silo who ratted us out?” I asked, really not liking those implications. Not feeling safe out here was one thing—but not knowing who else to trust made me a different kind of antsy.
Nate shook his head. “No. But I think the network is compromised. Let’s try not to test this until we’re close enough to where they can’t just pick us up off the road and make us disappear for good.”
A sobering thought, as if I’d needed any more of those.
We kept watching the plume of dust disappear in the distance before we got back into the car and continued on, this time heading north. Nate debated taking a greater detour, but it wasn’t like it was hard to get lost in rural Minnesota. It was likely a good idea not to take the most direct route, so that’s what we decided on.
Nate took pity on me once the sun was close to setting—or maybe he figured that by then I was moderately useful again. With paranoia riding shotgun, we hadn’t really made a lot of headway since noon, and the house we ended up selecting for our nightly stay was so well hidden that we only chanced upon it because we were trying to avoid coming too close to the next larger road. I got out with Nate, supposedly for backup, but it took almost my entire strength to remain upright, my shotgun ready. If I’d actually had to use it, it would likely have kicked the living shit out of me, and that without me hitting anything in the first place. The house was empty, looking deserted even before the shit had hit the fan. A summer cabin, likely, with the owners finding their end someplace else. There wasn’t much loot to be found for that very same reason, but we didn’t need much. The sack of rice and canned beans that we happened upon in the pantry were more than sufficient for our dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast. There were even some spices in a small cupboard, a rare treat on the road.
While Nate dragged the mattress off the bed in the other room to get it into the front one—better exit possibilities, and we could keep an eye on the car—I busied myself cooking dinner over our small camping stove. I still managed to burn the rice but Nate didn’t protest, spooning up his portion with gusto. I waited until mine had cooled a little before I dug in—and stopped once I forced the first, bland mouthful down. When I kept glaring at the still steaming bowl, Nate nudged my knee with his. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I finally get why that tuna was so god-awful,” I replied. “That fucking virus fried my sense of taste.”
Nate kept on chewing, even if somewhat pensively. “That shit is spicy hot. If you can’t define exactly what it tastes like, that might be the culprit.”
I looked from my bowl to him. “It tastes like bland dough. Like nothing. I feel the texture of the rice and beans, but that’s about it. Nothing hot, spicy, or anything. Could be soggy cardboard, too.”
He continued to frown, not that it kept him from eating. “Maybe we should hunt something so you can try some raw, bloody meat?”
I wasn’t sure whether he was joking, but it didn’t matter. “Ha, ha, very funny. It’s not that I’d rather eat anything else. And I can still smell how this should taste. It’s actually not bad. But the moment it hits my tongue—nada. Don’t ask me how that works.” Actually, I had an idea, if a very vague one.
“You still have to eat something, even if it tastes like nothing,” he insisted. “Aren’t you hungry? I feel like there’s a hole left where my stomach used to be.”
I tried to listen to what my body was demanding, but I was neither hungry nor thirsty. “Not really.”
He paused, then put down his bowl in favor of checking our water bottles, coming up with a succinct, “Shit.” Next, he plunked down one of them in front of me. “Here, drink that. As in, empty it.”
“Right now? I’m really not—“
His exasperated sigh made me halt and sip a few mouthfuls, but not particularly enthusiastically.
“Bree, it’s a million degrees out there during the day. You’re sweating, and you’re also leaking fluid from your eyes that you need to replenish as well.” Reaching over, he checked my forehead, his hand somewhat cooler than my skin. “No fever, but you’re not cool. I think you’re already starting to get seriously dehydrated. Drink. Eat. If I have to, I’ll start keeping lists.”
It was mostly the concern in his tone that made me chug down some more water before I went back to poking around the rice bowl, forcing myself to ingest it, one agonizingly bland bite at a time. By the time I was done, Nate had polished off two more bowls, leaving nothing in the makeshift pot, not even the burnt rice that had been sticking to the bottom. I knew that I should have felt at least moderately satiated now, but nothing seemed different from when I’d been practically famished.
“Well, this sucks,” I summed up my glum thoughts. “So far this surviving death thing is highly overrated.”
Nate looked less than happy but gave a playful snort at that. “Oh, come on. Could be worse.”
“Yeah, I could have woken up with your sense of humor,” I replied. “I think I’ll take tasteless food over that.”
“Let’s just hope that it didn’t kill your sex drive, because your company is hard to suffer at best with you putting out. Without that…” He trailed off, giving me a suggestive look, but when I just stared back he visibly deflated. “Too soon?” he guessed, sounding a little chagrined.
“Nah, I was just wondering,” I mused. “If I can actually no longer taste anything, that means that your spunk might finally, for the first time ever, be something less than absolutely repulsive. See, there’s a bright side to everything.”
His answering bark of laughter made me grin as I crawled over to our makeshift bed. “Give me a few more days,” I said. “When I’m no longer feeling like my body’s trying to self-destruct. And we should maybe pick up condoms along the way.” His eyes narrowed, and I didn’t miss the look of sadness in them before he got a grip on himself. Scoffing, I shook my head. “I’m not stupid. I doubt that after this shit going down I can get pregnant again. But there’s that whole trying not to introduce infection thing, and until I know for a fact that I can’t infect you, I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
That was about as far as I got. The next moment, he was over me, leaning in for a deep, lingering kiss that certainly involved tongue. And saliva. I tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t budge. When he finally pulled back, my head was spinning a little, proving once more that I really wasn’t up for anything yet. Smirking, he plonked down on his side next to me.
“See, now we’ll know,” he joked before he got serious again. “I’ve been bitten by zombies. I doubt that kissing you can get any worse than that.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You know what I mean. But sure, we’ll get condoms. But not because I’m afraid I’ll catch anything from you.” He paused, checking the time. “I’ll take first watch. I’ll wake you up when I
get too tired to be of any use anymore.” Which would likely mean that I would get to sleep through the night. I was tempted to protest, but ended up nodding before I curled up on my side.
Exhaustion made it easy to tune out my thoughts, unpleasant as they got as soon as my mind started to shut down. I had too much to think about, and none of it pleasant.
“Nate?” I asked into the gloomy darkness when sleep just wouldn’t come.
I saw him tense where he’d taken up position next to one of the windows. “I’m here.”
“Yeah, I can see you,” I teased, but it came out hollow. “Do you really think they’re out there, hunting for us?”
His answering silence was more than I wanted to hear. “I’d love to say that it isn’t so, but honestly, after that hit at the factory I’m willing to believe anything,” he replied. “Don’t worry about it. The only reason they managed to pin us down was because they led us straight into a well-planned and executed trap. Now the only thing they know is where we were hours ago, and where we might drop by in a week or so. Remember how paranoid Wilkes and his guys were, even before that? I’d bet my life on the fact that in the meantime, they’ve turned their entire backyard into a gauntlet that’s virtually impenetrable. And we won’t make the same mistakes again.” He laughed softly. “Besides, they couldn’t catch us when you were driving like a maniac, high out of your mind. I think that sober and careful, we’re virtually invincible.”
That I wasn’t so sure of, but his confidence helped ease my nerves somewhat.
“Sleep,” he said, smiling. “Tomorrow everything will be just a little better. Trust me, it always is.”
Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 Page 6