“Really, why’s there no blood on this yet?” I playfully complained. “Didn’t you once say that you’re the only one who’s allowed to insult me?”
He shot me a long look before pulling his night vision goggles on. “What happened to you not wanting to cause a scene?”
“That was inside the settlement. No settlement inside a fifty-mile radius now. I doubt anyone would miss them.”
Nate’s snort was a thing of true beauty. “Have I told you lately that I love your murderous ambitions?”
“You keep mentioning shit like that,” I muttered, but kept on smiling. “I’m starting to think you’re trying to condition me.”
“Good behavior deserves reinforcement.”
Then we were close enough that the zombies both heard and saw us, and things went downhill rather quickly—for them. The first shambler came at us with a burst of speed, only maximizing the Newtons smashing into its face thanks to the feet of sturdy wood in my hands. It dropped like a wet rag, making room for the next one to meet a similar fate at Nate’s hands. We separated, me stepping to the right while Nate took the left, confusing the undead for a few moments as their seemingly singular target split. Just for the heck of it, I screamed as I hurled myself toward the next, making several heads snap my way—and thus turning Nate’s work into child’s play. One of the last shamblers to come up went for the easy target and tore into one of the downed ones rather than attack us, leaving the back of its head nicely exposed. If I hit it a few more times than strictly necessary, it was pure coincidence.
Panting, I looked around, ready to grin triumphantly at Nate—when suddenly, a hand clenched around my left ankle and pulled, sending me off-balance and consequently crashing to the ground. I barely had time to bring the bat up between me and the shambler that came charging right for my face, wood meeting surprisingly sturdy flesh rather than barely held-together tissues.
Shit. One of the juiced-up ones!
Teeth snapped together inches away from my nose. It took all my strength to keep it from getting any closer, the angle far from perfect with me having to push up while the zombie could rely on gravity to help it along. Panting, my legs scrambled for purchase until I managed to rotate my hip enough so I could get a good kick in, my boot hitting a meaty thigh. It wasn’t enough to get it off me, but the shambler got distracted for a moment, letting me pull both my legs to my chest and aim better. Using my entire strength, I slammed my heels upward, hurling the zombie into the air and off my body.
I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could, my thighs protesting under the abuse. Not a moment too soon as the zombie came charging right back at me, slamming its body into mine with enough force to drive the air right out of my lungs as I went down once more. This time I was prepared, rolling backward over my left shoulder to avoid getting trapped again. But like a deranged gorilla, the zombie kept coming, hunkering down on all fours before it sprang after me. It barreled into my hip, clawing fingers raking along the sturdy material of my cargo pants. Had I been wearing normal jeans, it would likely have rent the skin and muscles along my thigh.
I swung the bat blindly, hoping to hit something vital. While my swing connected, it only seemed to enrage the zombie further, making it howl with anger. It body-slammed me again, hitting my stomach with its shoulder, sending us back down in a tangle of limbs. And fuck, that thing stank!
“A little help here!” I huffed out between pants. Somehow, the zombie managed to get a hold on my bat and tore it right out of my grasp, twisting enough that my wrist protested. Not wasting a moment, I slammed my fists up into anything they would connect with, then grabbed what was left of the zombie’s clothing—some kind of uniform jacket, or outdoor gear, I couldn’t tell in the darkness—and tried to roll with it to come up on top. I didn’t quite manage, my right leg remaining trapped, but I came up crouching over it, which gave me a great opportunity to first punch it in the face, then follow up with my elbow. Bone crunched, echoed by a satisfying gurgling sound, interrupted by irregular wheezing. It stopped trying to pull me in close so it could chew on me, instead shifting to throw me off. The second I could free my leg, I let myself fall onto the ground and away from the thing, kicking and scrambling until I managed to spring to my feet once more.
As soon as I cleared the body, Nate was there, swinging the bat down hard on the shambler’s kneecaps to break them before he went in for the kill. Five whacks and it went slack, leaving just our irregular pants as the only sound in the night. Turning around, I made sure that none of the other undead came back to life—a second time—before I leaned over, gasping to catch my breath. Judging from the hunk of meat lying a few feet away from the one that had given me some trouble, it hadn’t been one but two of the juiced-up freaks.
While Nate made sure that none of them could become a problem anymore, even if it had been crafty enough to play possum, I rolled the two permanent corpses over to check the backs of their necks. Nada, but that didn’t have to mean anything. They weren’t wearing any weapons—not that they needed any, or could use them—and what was left of their gear was torn and soiled beyond recognition, making me guess that they’d turned a long time ago, maybe even in the initial wave. What was truly disconcerting was in what stellar shape—particularly compared to the other, normal shamblers—their bodies still were. They were almost intact, just the odd finger, a few teeth, and some of the hair on their heads missing. Taking my knife, I cut open the sleeves of the jacket of the one that had come after Nate, checking for wounds, finding a lot of scar tissue and even a few mottled bruises.
“Shit. They have actual wound healing,” I shared my find.
Nate returned to where I was crouching, staring down at the corpse. “Makes sense.” When I glanced up, likely with a look of horror crossing my features, he shrugged. “They engineered us to inflict as much damage as possible after conversion. The standard assumed situation was that we’d die under duress—torture, getting blown to bits, turned into a sieve by bullets. Even ignoring systemic shock setting in—likely due to blood loss—there’s only so much a body that’s clinically dead can do. We already knew those fuckers are damn resilient from the ones we hunted in the spring. If they didn’t heal, I doubt they could remain that strong.”
“Gee, what a wonderful thought.” Straightening, I quickly checked my gear. No tears, but I definitely needed a good scrubbing with water and bleach. But at least I wasn’t bored any longer. Among other things.
Nate stared my way for several seconds before he pushed the goggles up, letting me see the look of amusement on his face. “Don’t tell me that almost getting chewed to pieces gets your libido up?”
“Well, you were the one talking about bonding exercises. Maybe all I needed was a little bit of excitement to get my blood pumping.”
Nate heaved a theatrical sigh in response. “Other women want flowers and chocolates. Typical that I have to get the homicidal bitch.”
“Where would you get roses from? And chocolates would likely kill me, or turn me into one of those things. I think you got the better deal,” I informed him.
“Did I ever,” he agreed, stepping up to me—but rather than lean in for a kiss, he wiped blood, gore, and zombie brain gunk off my forehead and hair, making me laugh, somewhat shrilly.
“Let’s get back before the others get any weird ideas. Or weirder ones than they already have,” I proposed. “We can talk about the rest when we’re not reeking of carcass anymore.”
“Talking’s not exactly on my agenda,” Nate offered up, but turned back toward the camp.
I scooped up my bat in passing, taking a moment to wipe the worst of the gore off on the rags of one of the normal zombies. It was only when I let go that the torn sleeve fell away, revealing the back of the hand of the shambler—and the barely visible X-shaped mark, mostly obscured by decay and dirt. I hesitated, but then straightened and jogged a few steps to catch up to Nate. Nothing I could do for that poor fucker now—except thank the universe that, for anot
her day, that wasn’t me down there on the ground.
Maybe boredom wasn’t so bad, after all.
Chapter 9
Blondie looked ready to offer his—without a doubt very meaningful and well thought-through—opinion when he saw us approach the camp fire, but no salacious comment followed as the state of our gear—and, more importantly, its stench—became obvious. “Get the bleach,” was Nate’s singular order to Burns, who was quick to follow through. A few of the new scavengers looked somewhat concerned, and the townies downright alarmed, but after letting them do their gawking for a few seconds I answered Harris’s silent question.
“We saw a few shamblers down the hill. Not worth alerting anyone. We took care of them. Got a little messy when two of them turned out to be juiced-up fuckers, but that’s what we’re here for, right?”
Murmurs rose as I turned my back on them, closing my eyes as Burns started to splash bleach and water all over me so he could scrub the blood and gore off to the point where I could peel myself out of my outer layer and finish the rest myself.
“Why not just shoot them?” the third of the idiots—the one who’d stood guard in the alley—asked, sounding more than a little perplexed.
I shrugged, not quite incidentally aiming to appear like it hadn’t been a big thing. Trust it to Nate to steal my thunder.
“A gunshot, out in the open, in an area like this?” He looked around at the side of the hill, then down into the plateau below. “Rings easily over five, if not ten miles. No shit, if things get dire, I don’t give a fuck that I alert every living thing around, but if I can avoid ringing the dinner bell for yet more of the undead, I will. Besides, would have been a waste of ammo. A little exercise never hurt anyone.”
Blondie looked at him as if Nate had gone insane, a sentiment that several of the other scavengers shared. “It was only seven or eight, with two of them the strong fuckers that took a little more work,” I tried to placate them. For whatever reason, that didn’t work. Maybe because they shared Harris’s sentiment, who mouthed a near-silent “only” to his second-in-command. Ah, well. Burns was in good spirits again, ribbing me that we hadn’t cared to share, but that was more comforting than not having anything to roll my eyes at.
“Make sure that everyone on guard duty is on alert,” Nate offered up when he was done with cleanup, shrugging into a fresh—or at least, less stained—jacket. “And if they find anything, wake us.” Rather than reassured, that line seemed to make the others even more antsy, but there was nothing we could do about that. And, really, if they were out and about in these lands and still hadn’t gotten the message that everywhere something was out to eat them, I couldn’t help them.
I left my soaked clothes spread out across the hood of the Jeep before I climbed inside, but rather than turn in for the night, I accosted Burns in the back row. “Can you hand me our emergency makeup kit?”
He snickered. “Why, did the bleach make your lipstick wear off?”
That made me heave a heavy sigh. “Not the box you idiots have started to fill so you can endear yourself to the ladies. The other one.” I was pretty sure he’d known what bag I was referring to from the start, but what would you do if you lacked other forms of entertainment?
It didn’t take long for Burns to excavate a small bag from the bottom of where we stored our gear, handing it to me. Turning around, I thrust it at Nate. “You know what to do.”
“Why do I have to get that sticky shit all over my fingers?” he complained as he fished around for the orange and light-colored foundation bottles and patches.
“Because I don’t have eyes at the back of my head, and I don’t trust Burns not to write a crude invitation with eye liner underneath my marks.”
Burns laughed at that. “What’s wrong with two matching hearts? Would suit a delicate flower like you perfectly.”
Nate set to work, and ten minutes later there was only one X-shaped mark in the very middle of my neck visible. I raised my brows at Nate to ask whether he wanted me to repay the favor, but he shook his head. “I’m by far not as recognizable as you are,” he noted. “And only a fraction as paranoid.”
I ignored his jibe. “Better paranoid than sorry. Been there, done that way too many times this year. I doubt that we’ll run into any trouble on the way over to Jason’s people that will be connected to my identity, but if I’m wrong, I’d rather spend my days with an icky sensation across my neck than shot in the face on sight.”
“She’s right, you know?” Burns remarked, grinning at Nate’s frown as he sided with me. “While you were busy, a few of the new ones were asking about you. Us, really. Told them we were part of a group that had been hanging around to the east until coming to California in the fall. Not exactly a lie, but vague enough to throw them off our tail. I’m sure that if they’d seen her marks, their suspicion would have flared up right again. As much as I like to brag like the next guy about my zombie killing prowess, maybe tone it down a little. I think the asshole brigade got the message, but no need to alarm the others more.”
I could see that he had a point there, something that Nate agreed with, if a little grudgingly. “Works for me. Let’s be antisocial loner psychopaths then, who love to go bash in zombie heads for fun.”
“How exactly is that hiding who we are?” I quipped, laughing when he gave me a stare that was very befitting his proposed disguise.
“I’ll go talk to Tanner and Harris,” Nate said as he reached for the car door, letting in a gust of cool air that made me shiver and curse. “You ladies get your beauty sleep. You both look like you need it.”
“Same!” I called after him, sure that the shutting door cut me right off. Ignoring the gleeful humming from the back row, I got as comfortable as I was going to get in my seat, snuggling into my sleeping bag and extra blanket. As much as the space inside the car got rather crammed with the three of us, at least it remained decently warm. By the time Nate returned, I was already dozing off, much to his disappointment, I hoped.
One of Harris’s guys woke us up what felt like only moments later. No further shamblers had been sighted, but everyone seemed happy to know that we were up for guard duty—at least those that hadn’t stared at us with wide eyes and hunched shoulders last night. Maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me, but things hadn’t changed much by the time our uneventful two hours were up and I waited for Tanner and Gita to crawl out of their car, slurping my morning coffee. As soon as there was enough light to see colors, Burns, Nate, Tanner, and Harris started down the hill once more to check on what was left of our little gore-fest from last night, with Gita—and, surprisingly—the idiot brigade tagging along.
At first glance, I almost agreed with the assessment of the other scavengers, but then realized that the reason why the bodies were literally dismembered were some nocturnal predators that had torn into the two fleshier zombies in particular and must have hauled off the best parts. There was still enough of them left to confirm my guess from last night—they hadn’t been newly turned zombies. Yet in the light of day, they also didn’t look like they’d been living rough for the past one and a half years. While the idiots were busy gawking and poking the remains with a stick, Nate checked what remained of their clothes. When he caught my gaze, he silently shook his head—inconclusive at best. I didn’t want to voice the creeping suspicion that I felt at least the two of us had—that, just maybe, those two had been some of the earliest victims of the tweaked super-soldier serum—but with nothing pointing directly that way, it didn’t make any sense to speculate.
“Let’s hope these are the only ones we encounter,” Nate said with a last look at the remains, turning to Harris. “Have there been many reports of them in the region?”
Harris shook his head. “Not that I know of. And I think that’s something people would share. Communication has gotten patchy since summer, but nobody wants to deliberately send anyone into the gaping mouths of those freaks. Least of all as that would feed them good.”
The rest of us were already turning away but Blondie was still transfixed with the corpses. It took some urging from his compatriots to get him moving, making me guess that they hadn’t been part of any of the more industrious scavenger groups in the past. Somehow that made them coming along even more annoying to me. If they’d at least been capable… but really, it didn’t make much of a difference.
Driving order was the same as the day before, only that it seemed to me as if most of the cars remained closer together, forcing Harris to set a somewhat slower pace. With nothing much around once we cleared the hills, that wasn’t exactly very entertaining. I got all the more excited when Harris hailed us over the private frequency just before noon.
“Folks, you up for a bit of fun? The Salt Lake City settlement hailed us. Because of the influx of people they’ve seen over the past weeks they’re falling a little short on everything that’s not food. Anyone in the mood for a quick shopping trip?”
Nate didn’t even glance my way before he answered. “Always. Got a good location in mind?”
Harris chuckled, our agreement obviously not a surprise. “There’s a mall supposed to be about fifty miles from here. We can be there in around two hours if we follow the road for another twenty miles, leave the townies with some guards, and then veer off the track. It’s far enough away that if we run into any trouble, we can lose it before returning to camp, or make a second trip if that’s needed. Sound good?”
Green Fields (Book 7): Affliction Page 12