The smart thing would have been to decline, but I’d never been known to choose the easy way out. “What do you need from us?”
Richards was quick to launch into an explanation that went right over my head on the second sentence, but the key objective was simple enough—another retrieval mission. If the squints believed it could make a difference for us, who was I to object?
That was, until Richards came to an end of his explanation, and Morris took over once more. “We got a call about an hour ago that was rather disturbing—and it matches the calls the police received yesterday about a purported terrorist attack. The claims were too outrageous to be believed, considering the more pressing matters at hand, so no one responded, but in connection with the new information we gathered, it paints a different picture. It turns out that you are not the first team to be sent to that very destination, although it begs the question that the people on site have no clue what they are sitting on. Expect heavy opposition, Captain. I won’t tell you to needlessly risk anything, but if you can, retrieve those soldiers worth retrieving as well. You might have to use excessive force, but if I can have five or more exceptionally resilient specimen on my side, I will.”
Ah, that explained why he’d called for me to bring more company.
“Any names I might know?” I asked, wondering what that bullshit about heavy opposition was about. We were all fighting on the same side, after all. Had been for years, even decades, in some cases.
“No confirmed reports,” Richards offered. “And they didn’t name any names. But through the grapevine we heard weeks ago that there was surprising activity going on around the city from sources I’m not permitted to admit I have.”
“Cut the crap. Who am I looking for?”
This time Richard did glance at his notes. “Campbell. Bailey. Walters. Lee. Matthews.” He only paused for a second, but I could tell that he was intently reading our reactions as he went on. “Bates. Romanoff. Zilinsky. Miller.”
Fucking asshole—
I forced myself to keep breathing evenly, giving my very best not to betray a single emotion. The way both Morris and Richards were staring my way made it obvious that they knew of my connections to some of the names mentioned, but I’d be damned if I gave them the satisfaction of seeing how much that affected me. But of all the cockroaches that got ready to survive a nuke, it had to be that special one that had come crawling out of whatever hidey-hole it had scuttled into.
Unaffected by my emotions, my mind came up with an explanation. “Where exactly are you sending us again?”
Richards didn’t seem particularly annoyed about having to repeat himself. “The Green Fields Biotech headquarters.”
“Makes sense.” Was that actually genuine surprise on Richards’s face? “Miller’s brother worked for that company,” I supplied, not quite sure why that snippet of information had stuck. Then something else occurred to me. “You think this is connected?”
Morris gave a grunt that underlined that he wasn’t interested in the grunts asking for intel that wasn’t strictly need-to-know, but he answered nevertheless. “Our analysts don’t think so, but you never know. Fact is, these people are there, and as things stand, we cannot leave a single vital soldier in the field that can be of good use in the coming months. Go there, obtain the objective, and get as many of them to come with you as you can. Never thought I’d say this, but command has issued a generalized pardon. We are fighting with our backs against the wall, Captain. This is no time to let egos do the talking.”
I inclined my head, although my first instinct was to tell him that he had no fucking idea what he was talking about. “When do you want us to move out?” I asked instead.
“We still need the manpower to get everything ready for evacuation,” Richards explained. “But you should be ready to move out by 0500.”
“We will be,” I assured him.
I knew what was coming as soon as I turned to leave, but Burns had the sense to wait until we were outside the tent before he spoke up. “You know that this is an opportunity, right? Let bygones be bygones. The general was right. We need every able hand right now.”
In front of the brass I hadn’t allowed myself to blow a gasket like I’d wanted to, but we were well out of earshot of them now. Yet rather than tear into Burns like he deserved for that comment, I did my best to ignore the imploring look he gave me. “We have our orders, Sergeant,” I reminded him, incapable of keeping a certain bite out of my voice. “It’s your job to follow them.”
He saluted, if with enough hesitation to make it plain that it was deliberate. There was nothing I could do about that so I let it slide. Technically, I could have busted his ass, but I’d seen in the past how that went. I wasn’t going to let history repeat itself. Instead, I told the men to get to work.
With no rest and only a sorry excuse for rations filling our bellies, we marched out of the EZ at exactly ten after five in the morning, our numbers swelled by the additions of Green and Yellow teams. The sky was lightening to the east, daylight revealing that the night hadn’t been kind to the city. The stench of refuse and ash hung in the air, but most of the visible damage was the work of looters who had used the cover of darkness to go about their work. All the good that it had done them, as several heaps on sidewalks or behind vehicles proved. The alarms had stopped as even more parts of the grid had given out, but there was an eerie tension hanging in the air, like a foreboding sense that the real danger still lay ahead. At least the rumbling of our train of vehicles—two Bradleys taking point to clear the road, followed by three Humvees and two trucks to transport us to where we needed to go quicker—drowned out what other noise there was around. From my seat on the passenger side of the lead Humvee I had a good vantage point to see several pale faces stare toward us, some still locked inside the houses, way more crouching at the ready below cars and behind dumpsters. If we’d tried to make the trek on foot, we wouldn’t have managed to get more than three blocks out of the EZ. We’d definitively overstayed our welcome, and I couldn’t wait to be out of the hellhole this fucking town was turning into.
We reached our destination with minimal hindrance, none of which kept us detained for more than a minute or two. From afar, the huge concrete, steel, and glass abomination of modern architecture looked undisturbed, but as we got closer to the rear loading dock, it became obvious that it wasn’t the case. Both the loading dock and employee parking entrance had been reduced to rubble, the sheer amount of concrete exposed making me guess that the charges had been perfectly placed for maximum damage. That just made me gnash my teeth, confirming who was likely behind all this. We could have tried breaching the building from that side, but that would have taken hours—time that we didn’t have left—so I ordered the Bradleys to take the scenic route around and up to the front of the building. That looked even worse, but because of all that glass it was far easier to penetrate. What little remained of the former entrance was barricaded, and I could see movement there already. Under different circumstances, I would have expected that whoever sat in there had been smart and dug themselves in knowing what was about to come, but the intel Richards had dished out spoke a different tale. So rather than diplomacy, I decided to let good old C4 and the Bradleys’ 25mm Bushmasters do the talking.
Twenty minutes later, half of my men were making their way into the building through a gaping hole in the western side of the main tract, while I took the rest through the breach that had ultimately become the second Bradley’s final resting place. The yelling started up immediately as soon as we managed to secure parts of the barricades—and came to a sudden stop when the howling began.
Enough of my men had come with me from D.C. and the other forward bases that we’d had to give up one by one to know what this meant. Even those freshly joining here had been out on patrol last night and had gotten a first taste of what was to come. We’d lost enough good men to the first few packs, but those had been easy to explain away—drunk idiots, and college freshmen hi
gh on some crystal meth they’d rolled in now that finals were suspended indefinitely. People who were afraid did stupid shit every day, no need to go looking for any kind of supernatural explanation.
But that howling, coming from hundreds of voices, every single one sentient but inhuman—that wasn’t something you rationalized. While you were still grasping for reason, the lizard part of your brain was already accepting what was going on, and what was about to happen.
Either you fight—or you die. And I would be damned if I bit it today of all days.
The assholes who’d taken over the building seemed to come to the same conclusion, concentrating fire on what staggered through the breach rather than on us. The acrid smell of the burning Bradley made my eyes water and turned my throat into sandpaper, but I did my best to get my men into formation and defending our new position. Over the radio I heard team after incursion team at the other side of the building meet a gruesome end as they got overrun. The clock was ticking and everyone knew it, and finally, the idiots’ head honcho made an appearance, stepping forward from their side of the defenses.
“Miller,” I called across the blood- and gore-splattered granite floor, my trigger finger itching like mad. I had my orders, true, but with some people, you were better off without them, even if you were outnumbered and outgunned.
“Bucky!” he jeered back as he sauntered closer, all fake smiles. “What do you want? Twenty words or less, we’re kind of on a schedule here.”
I did my best to give a civil response. I had a certain feeling that ample opportunities would present itself later to rid the world of that scum for good. “The vaccine.”
Shithead’s face froze, if only for a moment. Ah, so someone had actually done away with his brother along the line, and sweet, sweet revenge was still out of his grasp. Too bad. I’d never believed that excuse that a senior scientist just happened to infect himself accidentally.
“There is no vaccine,” Miller called over.
Bullshit. “I know that they were working on it. It has to be…”
“There is no vaccine,” he insisted. “They never managed to develop a working version of it.” I listened to him prattle on about that, until he ended with one little tidbit. “Besides, what stocks there were kept in the viral vault were manually destroyed.”
Until then, I’d ignored the redhead in the dirty lab coat cowering behind him, but once I focused on her, I recognized her. Fucking bitch. At least now it was obvious why she hadn’t come home to her sick girlfriend—and what had been important enough to leave her to suffer all on her own. That there was definitely Dr. Brianna Lewis, the nerd we’d been sent to pick up near campus, and who hadn’t been around. Maybe this mission wasn’t such a bust, after all.
“Her?” I asked, as if I needed any more confirmation. The knowledge that had put her on our VIP pickup list must have been what made Miller recruit her.
“Just my technical advisor,” Miller lied, absently checking his watch. “We’re out of time. The first charges will blow in just under a minute, and then we have exactly enough time to get out of the blast radius if we run like hell.”
Anger ran up my spine, this time not just because I wanted to punch that fucking asshole until there was nothing left of his face except a bloody ruin. I had no idea how many men I’d lost in this bust of a mission, but I would be damned if I lost a single one more. Turning to Martinez and Smith—however they had ended up with Miller now was beyond questionable, but at least someone from the incursion teams had made it—I asked, “Anyone still deeper in the building?”
Martinez quickly negated that. “We lost contact with two other teams. And considering what came after us—“
Whatever else he wanted to say got drowned out by more howls and screams. Time to go.
“Everyone, get ready. We’re moving out,” I called to my men. No sense now to cry over spilled milk.
Maybe ten seconds later, a series of charges detonated deeper within the building, sending everything into chaos. I did my best to keep order, but within moments, it all devolved to running, ducking, evading, shooting—and when all else failed, brutally punching my way through the howlers to get back out of the building. Seasoned fighters to the last, my men knew to handle themselves, quickly forming defensive positions as soon as they cleared the building, keeping each other’s back secure. With Soto and Thompson at my side, I reached the road first, just in time…
To watch the entire building behind us cave in on itself, burying whatever was too slow or uncoordinated underneath tons and tons of rubble. Including our transportation, but I didn’t give a flying fuck about that anymore.
It took some time for everyone to reorient themselves, but within ten minutes, Thompson had small groups searching through the rubble while the remainder established a perimeter. Part of me was hoping that because we’d been closest to the breach, we wouldn’t find many survivors beyond our men.
A series of shots drew my attention. I signaled Soto and the three soldiers of his group to quit kicking up dust and together we made our way over to the source of the attention that we really damn well could have done without, considering what was lurking in the city.
There they huddled, the fucking lot of them, the red-haired scientist among them. It must have been her who caused this, judging from where she was half-sitting on her ass, staring with horror at the body of the dead girl mere feet away from here.
“Everything in the green over here?” I barked, mostly to tear her out of it. The last thing I needed now was a fucking civilian losing it. We needed to get out of here, stat.
Miller gave a jerk of his head, and it was only then that I noticed how beat up he was. Bandages, already soaked through with blood, were covering his torso, and he was white in the face, sweat breaking out all over his body. Ah, Karma must have been watching, for once turning out not quite as fickle a bitch as I was used to. Maybe, just maybe, that issue was about to take care of itself. “A-okay,” he grunted, but even to the dumbed fuck it was obvious that it wasn’t.
“Get ready. We’re moving out in five,” I told them, ready to beat it, but the geek called after me.
“Care to tell us what the fuck is going on?” Her voice was shaking, panic destroying the consternation she tried to put into it. I looked at Miller, trying to gauge from his reaction what exactly she was talking about. How much had he really told her about what was going on? Little, from the drivel she spewed as she went on. “Don’t bother with any bullshit! Where are the first responders? Why aren’t there even any people? And what the fuck is going on with these maniacs?”
Something occurred to me. “Just how long have you been holed up inside that lab?”
She offered a slight shrug, looking more confused now. “Since yesterday morning when I went to work. Why?”
Ah. This was getting better and better. “So you missed the whole fun of when the shit hit the fan?” I laughed, but it came out dry. “You’re a smarty-pants scientist, right? Just what does this look like to you?”
I walked over to the corpse of the girl and lifted it by the bloody, torn rags it was wearing, thrusting it toward the scientist. She jerked away, horrified, scrambling onto her feet. I could see the exact moment she understood, when excuses and rational belief gave way to instinct-driven action. No longer could she ignore the blood staining the girl’s teeth, the flesh that had come off her claw-like hands as she’d dragged herself over.
“Exactly what does this look like to you?” I repeated, almost shouting now. She continued to stare, horrified, at me, and I was only too happy to spell it out for her. “Like a fucking zombie.”
I stepped back, dropping that lifeless corpse in front of her and spread my arms wide.
“Welcome to the fucking zombie apocalypse.”
Patreon
Love the books and short stories? Can’t get enough of them? Need something to fill the void until the next one is out? Maybe fancy a few outtakes and behind-the-scenes information? I have just the th
ing for you! I’m now on Patreon where I post exclusive content on a monthly basis—starting with the Prequel, of how everything began between Bree and Nate, before that fateful Friday that they met again at the coffee vending machine in the Green Fields Biotech atrium. Here’s a quick teaser for you!
I absolutely don’t get what my brother saw in her. Dr. Brianna Lewis, Bree to her friends, cutie pie to her girlfriend. She’s so not his type.
I allow myself a momentary smirk at reducing a woman whose academic credentials are longer than her name to her appearance. I’m sure she must love that whenever it happens.
Of course, my brother’s interest in her started—and presumably ended, as well—with her intellect. I’ve read her dissertation and all of the scientific publications that she has to her name, but understanding is a different thing. That’s why she has a PhD, and I’m the product of the research she was hired to work on—presumably. That I can’t say this with certainty has been irking me for months.
What I can say for sure is that Dr. Lewis is one thing above all else: boring as fuck.
Beyond Green Fields | Book 3 | Lost & Found [A Post-Apocalyptic Anthology] Page 11