Green Fields (Book 7): Affliction

by Lecter, Adrienne

  Greene weathered out my tirade without wincing even once. When I was done, rather than answer, he leaned back to look over to where Nate had long ago abandoned his talk in favor of listening to me rant. “Kudos to you for not constantly keeping her tied up and gagged in the back of the car. I wouldn’t be able to stand her for a day.”

  Nate’s answering snort was way too amused for his own good. “Why do you think I let her drive all the time? Distracts her enough that she needs to shut up more often than not.”

  I considered throwing bacon at them, but chose to eat it instead. “You’re so damn funny, you know that?” I asked no one in particular. “I’m not the one who was planning to commit suicide by zombie after his favorite sex toy bit it.”

  Nate beamed a brilliant smile at me, then mouthed something that might have been ‘love you, too,’ or a rather short instruction where to shove it, while Tanner choked on the apple he had been chewing meditatively all through my rant. Greene let out a heavy sigh as if having to deal with me was ruining his mojo. I sincerely hoped it was.

  “Eat up,” Nate told me, for once not shoving a refill that I really didn’t want my way. “We have another hour until the second shift of boats leave. I’d like to be rid of all the provisions we brought by then, and have an idea when we’ll join the convoy. You can continue trading insults when we’re back.” To Greene he added, “Send someone back to our camp with everything Sadie called in they’d need. We can’t lose any more time playing mule.”

  I couldn’t say why, but the conviction in his tone—that we would be back, and that I would still be capable of said activity—took some of the weight off my chest. Nate was a lot of things, but not a believer in holding on to lost causes. And if there was anyone out there who could force the world to turn the other way round, it would be him. As much as his usual stoicism and often stubbornness made me fly into a rage more often than not, now it lent all the comfort I’d need.

  “Looking forward to it,” I said as I shoved my chair back, spooning up the last of my eggs. I hesitated, but then swiped another croissant from the table.

  “Don’t I ever,” Greene called after us as we left, sounding overly cheerful as ever. “And if you happen to find any world-changing secrets, bring them back with you! Much obliged.”

  Why did I have the sinking feeling that his flippant remark was more of an informed guess? Only time would tell.

  Chapter 4

  By late afternoon we were back home, and that’s when the fun part really started. The boat ride back to the Jeep had left my stomach upset and queasy, but that wasn’t the reason I stopped the car just outside the gates and turned off the engine, waiting for Nate to get out—alone. He hesitated for a moment, the look he shot my way a lingering question in and of itself—did I really think this was necessary? I glanced away, staring at the dry stalks of grass swaying in the wind just outside the trenches and palisades. The car rocked slightly as he threw the door shut, and I had to force myself to let go of the steering wheel not to spend the entire time waiting gripping it hard enough that my knuckles appeared white underneath my skin. Instead, I drummed a staccato on the steering wheel that didn’t do a thing to calm me down.

  We’d called ahead, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise that most of the gang was on high alert as soon as they saw Nate walk into the encampment. He tried heading straight for the main building where our sleeping places and what few personal belongings we had were kept, but Sadie accosted him before he’d made it halfway across the central square. With the windows shut, I couldn’t hear a thing of what she screamed at him, but that she was shouting was obvious. There was a lot of comedic potential in the tableau unfolding in front of me—a heavily pregnant teenager screaming at a man twice her age who just stood there and took it with the most stoic look on his face that I’d ever seen—but most of that humor was lost on me. He let the verbal deluge wash over him and didn’t try to step away when she slammed her palms against his chest, but eventually succumbed to the urge and started arguing with her. She continued to scream. Then she started to cry, not that it slowed her down one bit. Nate’s frustration seemed about level with the self-loathing that welled up inside of me. I was doing this to her. It might not be my fault—and just thinking of that petri dish erased any doubt I might have had that we were doing the right thing—but that didn’t change anything. I knew that. Nate knew that. I was even sure Sadie did, as well, but none of that mattered.

  The others—Andrej, Martinez, Pia, Burns, Collins, Santos, and a good twenty of the other settlers—tried their very best to keep their distance, but the few glances thrown my way spoke of curiosity well beyond quelling. Nate eventually gave up, simply turning and entering the building. Sadie remained outside, wailing like a banshee before she stopped, her motions jerky as she whipped around and glared in my direction. I held her gaze across the distance, forcing my mind to go blank. I was sure that her mother would have been scandalized about the obscenities she screamed my way before she stalked—or rather, waddled—off. Pia hesitated, her expression troubled as she looked after Sadie, then over to me, before she followed her charge. One less name on the roster of who would come with us. It didn’t come as a surprise—ever since we first came to New Angeles I’d guessed that she’d accepted it as her new mission in life to get Sadie and her kid through whatever fate might throw in their way—but it made me more uncomfortable than I liked to admit. The Ice Queen had been an unrelenting task mistress and trainer when she’d taught me the basics of how to survive after the shit hit the fan, but however much I may have cursed her out in my head—never daring to do so out loud—her presence had often felt like a security blanket to me, much like Nate’s. Sure, I had survived out there without either of them, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier otherwise. Now venturing forth without her, ready to chide me if I left my shotgun by the fire just to take a dump, scared me, a lot more than I had expected. And it wasn’t like she would be the only one to remain behind.

  It took Nate a good twenty minutes to reappear, but I could see at a glance why. He and Burns were both in full gear, carrying as many packs and weapons as humanly possible between them. I felt the corner of my mouth quirk up when I recognized the dark cases of both his sniper rifle and my M24—formerly also his, now mine, a constant point of contention between us—but it was for a fleeting moment only. Even considering that one of those packs must be holding my heavy gear, Nate was carrying a lot more than I’d expected, pretty much everything either of us owned. Nate continued to march across the camp without so much as glancing at anyone, and Burns only stopped to exchange a few words with Martinez and Andrej, both keeping a little to the side. He had to run to catch up with Nate, both of them reaching the car at the same time.

  As if reading my mind, Burns nudged my shoulder as he started stowing my gear away behind my seat. “You didn’t really expect to leave without me? Someone has to watch your juicy ass while you do your best to offend everyone to start the next war before first snow.” I let an exasperated sigh be my only answer, but deep inside, I was glad.

  Once everything was stowed away, they had to go back inside the gate, but only to the nearby munitions bunker. This time they were much quicker to return, but not much less overloaded. I didn’t even ask why they thought to bring an entire crate of Claymores and some extra C4 along. Boys will be boys, and those two in particular loved to make something go boom.

  Then it was time to leave for good, and I barely waited for Burns to close the door in the back row before I gunned the engine and threw the car into reverse. Heading back the way we’d come until I could amble for the access road to the highway didn’t help as it left my rearview mirror packed with all the people I’d hoped to spend at the very least the entire winter with. The last that dropped out of my view were Martinez and Andrej, looking about as miserable as I felt.

  “Can someone catch me up on what we’re actually doing?” Burns asked, cutting right through my brooding. “Because I�
��m not buying the shit that we need to play babysitters for a group of deserters.”

  Exhaling slowly, I tried to come up with the best way of phrasing it, but Nate cut right to the chase. “Bree had a complete freakout when the test results came back inconclusive, and she now thinks that the nerds at the Silo are the only ones who stand a chance finding out what’s going on with her.”

  Heavy silence followed, and it took me a few seconds to realize that Burns was waiting for me to go off in Nate’s face. I was really off my game today. “Pretty much what he said,” I offered up when Nate pointedly cleared his throat. “Only that he left out the graphic bits.”

  “Like what?” Burns wanted to know. “Did you finally castrate Greene? I’m sure he was begging for it.”

  “When isn’t he?” I harped, but it didn’t sound sincere even to me. Crap. “The results weren’t exactly inconclusive. They were actually very conclusive, only that doesn’t tell me shit. But it’s not something I can ignore. So to the Silo it is. We’re using the people we need to ferry around as a kind of Trojan Horse so we stand a chance that they’ll let us in. Or at least let me talk to Dom or Sunny. Trust me, a whisper of what I think is going on and they’ll talk Wilkes’s ears off until he lets them do their thing just so they’ll shut up.”

  “Yeah, I hear squints are good at that,” Burns joked, but it was hard to miss the strain in his voice. Concern. “They’re the ones that have your latest results, too, right? When we met up again there after your little honeymoon romp?”

  “That’s one way of phrasing it,” I shot back, chuckling under my breath. The sidelong glance I caught from Nate was wry at best.

  “I presume the reason why you didn’t come into town were those results?” Burns hazarded a guess.

  I nodded. “I’m not sure whether it’s something that can even be contracted, but with Sadie and the kid I didn’t want to risk it. Plus, half our people are still healing from injuries as well. The last thing they need is some mutated superbug from me.” If I was contagious, they’d likely caught it already. We used hot water and soap to clean our dishes and clothes, but none of that was fit to create the kind of conditions that would actively kill bacteria, just get rid of most of the grime and dirt. It hadn’t even occurred to me to insist on changing that. The first wave of light cold and clogged-up noses had already swept through camp so it was too late to stave that off.

  “Hamster wheel,” Nate prodded surprisingly gently, his tone more than his words drawing my attention back to our conversation before I could get lost in my own thoughts.

  “Just a lot on my mind,” I admitted.

  “And nothing you can do until you know more, so stop wasting energy on it. We have three hours to get to the rendezvous point with Harris, then another two before nightfall to get to where the New Angeles people should join us. Tanner said they’d hitch a ride with one of the ferries?”

  I nodded. Those were actual ferries, built to transport up to twenty cars in and out of the city. As much as the New Angeles people loved their maze of a destroyed city and the surrounding beacons that kept herding immense groups of zombies around, our exodus in late summer had proven that it was better to have a quick solution on hand as well. The two ferry boats were moored at the docks in New Angeles, so not an easy option for us if we wanted to head into the city, but the other way round they were the smoothest option to get a bunch of people and provisions out. There was even talk of establishing a weekly course up and down the coast to keep the satellite camps—like ours—better connected to the central hub.

  Not that any of that mattered to me now—and maybe never again, the nasty voice at the back of my mind muttered.

  “Road trip it is,” Burns proclaimed loudly as he leaned back in his seat behind Nate, getting comfy with his assault rifle perched across his thighs. “Anyone know any good songs?”

  Nate’s growl made me flash a bright grin. Turning to him, I couldn’t help but laugh at the face he was making. “We can still turn back,” I offered. “But maybe this will do you some good. So you appreciate my presence a little more, and don’t get any weird ideas, from Greene no less.”

  “Why, what did our residential asshat in chief advise?” Burns piped up.

  “Nothing,” Nate offered.

  I talked right over him. “Oh, only that he doesn’t get why my dear husband doesn’t keep me tied up and gagged, locked in the trunk the entire time.”

  Burns’s snicker annoyed Nate even more but he kept his trap shut. Wise man. “Would be bad for operational security,” Burns opined. “He was so damn glad when you could finally handle a gun well enough to defend yourself so he didn’t constantly have to set one of us on babysitting duty. I don’t see him wanting to go back on that.”

  “Damn glad, huh?” I teased.

  Nate shot me a warning glance. “Don’t tempt me.”

  More laughter from Burns. “Hey, keep your kink contained to where I don’t have to be a part of it! I’d say get a room but considering we’ll be all out of that until we get to the Silo, I’ll have to make do with keep it in your pants, and wherever you’ve stored your paraphernalia.”

  “You’re likely sitting on them,” I quipped back, then cut the joking short as we got closer to the intersection ahead. “Where to?”

  “East,” Nate told me. “About five miles, then a quick swerve south and you should come to a two-lane road that will hopefully be open. I think we scouted that last week. You can follow that right up to the rendezvous point.”

  We trundled along the mostly abandoned lane for a few minutes before Burns spoke up again. “Are you going to tell the others about whatever the fuck’s going on with you?”

  That wasn’t even a stupid question, although I didn’t like the answer I gave him. “No. I know it’s probably a shitty move, but I feel a lot better endangering semi-random strangers than my own people. But I will do my best to keep myself from possibly contaminating anything that someone else might come in contact with. Wash my own dishes, not drink from anything anyone passes around. Shit like that. Worst that can happen this way is that people think I’m a weirdo.”

  “Of that you don’t need to convince anyone,” Nate helpfully supplied.

  “Least of all you, huh?” I replied, smiling sweetly. “And still, you married me.”

  “Guess I’m a weirdo as well.”

  “Not contesting that.”

  As usual, Burns had his fun listening to our rapport, but it was impossible to ignore the underlying strain of worry. Here was hoping that no one else would pick up on that any time soon.

  By late afternoon, we turned away from the broader roads and took the overgrown dirt track to the rendezvous point Dan Harris had called in when we’d managed to hail him from New Angeles this morning. I’d expected maybe two to three cars waiting for us, but there were a full five of them, all slightly dented and scratched but in good working order. Of the people milling around, I only recognized two—Harris himself and the hulking fellow that reminded me a little of a horse that I thought was his right-hand man—with two more that returned from guarding the perimeter upon our arrival. Harris made quite the show out of welcoming us and shaking our hands, finishing with a quick, “And I’m sure you remember Pete, John, and Hunter.” I nodded at his men in turn, forgetting their names almost as soon as he’d called them out. Judging from Harris’s grin, he wasn’t oblivious to that fact, but didn’t rub it in my face.

  “And the rest?” I inquired, glancing at the men milling around in the background, not quite staring at us with pinched looks on their faces but clearly holding their distance.

  “Some of the folks we agreed to help bring to their new home safely,” Harris declared, not bothering with keeping the scorn out of his voice. “We were already underway to escort them over to the Mariposa settlement so they could hitch a ride with someone else, but seeing as we got reinforcements, we might as well go on the round trip. Can’t say I terribly mind stretching my legs before the winter sets in. R
ight, boys?” His men murmured something unintelligible, not quite as thrilled as Harris appeared to be, but none of them protested.

  “We’re camping here for the night?” I presumed, looking at the fire pit someone had already gotten started.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Harris agreed. “Tanner called ahead. They’re going to be a little late. Had to switch out vehicles because one of their trucks stalled. Either they make it just after nightfall or they’ll camp out and join us in the morning. That fine with you?”

  I nodded, not even thinking it odd that Harris would coordinate with me—after all, we’d gone through that very same spiel on an almost daily basis for days on end in summer—but one of the settlers spoke up, rather rudely if I might say so.

  “Why are you asking permission from her? You’re our caravan leader.”

  Harris ignored the challenge in the question, or maybe that’s what made him crack a benevolent, tobacco-stained smile. “Because that’s Bree Lewis, and I don’t think there’s a man out there who’s stupid enough to think he can tell her what to do, present company included.” That earned him a snicker from Burns, while Nate didn’t even acknowledge the jibe. The insolent imbecile’s eyes widened slightly, but Harris talked right over him before he could say something even more stupid. “On my watch, ain’t nobody disrespecting her. If you’ve got a beef with that, I haven’t had my daily exercise yet so we might as well go a few rounds. Or better yet, you take it up straight with her. Never seen her shy away from a fight.”

  I had to admit, I really wasn’t in for punching anyone in the teeth with my muscles complaining because I’d spent most of the day crammed into the car without rest stops, but it only took a flat stare to dissuade the guy from any further action. He mumbled something along the lines of not meaning any disrespect before he slinked off.

  Harris snorted, shaking his head. “You three want to split night watch? We’re exposed as fuck up here but at least that means clear sight for miles. If Tanner and his people get here soon enough, you might as well push it on them. Townies will help but I wouldn’t rely too heavily on ‘em if I were you.”