Green Fields (Book 6): Unity

by Adrienne Lecter

  “You really think this is going to work?” I asked Nate when the others were out of earshot.

  He gave me a lopsided grin that was direly lacking in humor. “First rule of combat: Any and all plans go to hell. Now that we’ve gotten past that stage, it can only get better.”

  “Or we could all end up dead, or locked in tiny, tiled cells,” I offered.

  “How I’ve missed your idealistic outlook on life,” he harped, but rather than turn away and leave me fuming, he grabbed my hips and pulled me close, his forehead touching mine. Considering the amount of blood and grime we were both covered in, that wasn’t the most romantic gesture I could have come up with. Like, handing me a wet towel to clean up with, for instance. I glared up at him, letting him read those thoughts right off my eyes, which warmed his smile considerably. “Yes, I think it will work. It’s not like we won’t continue with our random ass driving, and we will have two or three rallying points just to be sure that our strategy is extra confusing. It sucks that we had to kill what we thought were our own people, but for everyone we’ve lost, we’ve now gained two more people who are convinced they are fighting the good fight. No one would have bothered with staging a coup like that if they thought we were insignificant.”

  “Those that won’t slink away during the night because they’ve had enough,” I grumbled.

  “No loss there. Let them go. Those that stay count. Way down the road, this might have been the best thing that happened to us. We still got a week to gather more people. A week that people might change their mind and join us, when before they would have just sat this one out. I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried.”

  That was not the most comforting idea. I hesitated, but still asked, “Did you?”

  Nate’s clear hesitation made me want to slap him, but then I saw that smile dip into a smirk just before he shook his head. “Of course not. But I like that you’re at the point now where you consider possibilities like this.”

  “Oh, you like it when I don’t trust you?”

  He snorted. “You trust me, one hundred percent. But you also know that sometimes, people have to be ruthless, and if I have the choice between doing what’s good for random people compared to making sure that we make it, I won’t shed a tear for the suckers.”

  I didn’t follow him as he stepped away and walked off, likely to hunt down Pia and get a more in-depth report of her scouting mission. For the first time I asked myself not whether we were fighting for a better world, but if I would still be able to live with myself once we’d accomplished our goal.

  Chapter 19

  No one attacked us during the night, except for a pack of wolves that must have been drawn close by the stench of blood, but they were easily discouraged from their endeavor. I wondered if they belonged to the same pack that had given us a hard time last winter. They certainly knew not to mess with armed humans, but their presence was a reminder of what lay underneath the patches of turned earth that we left behind when we set out in the morning.

  Barely anyone seemed to notice the handful of cars that had disappeared during the night—some of them belonging to Jason and his guys, with Pia hitching a ride. I envied her the chance to do some bona fida recon, but I could see where it was important that Nate and I remained with the main group to let the others slip away unnoticed. The plan was for t

  A far more pleasant surprise was heading our way maybe five miles out from where we’d camped, when we saw a string of cars aim for our position coming from the northwest. The sun was only just rising over the flatlands to the east when the convoy came to a halt next to ours. Some of the tension inside of me drained away when I recognized not one, but three of the men who exited the cars, coming over to greet us. I’d spent an entire summer tracking through the zombie-infested country with Collins, not to forget the subsequent winter. He’d been one of the people that had stayed behind at the bunker; Nate’s badly disguised mole, judging from how the two men shook hands now. The others I’d only seen twice, at the meetings in early spring when we’d started rallying people all over western Wyoming. I was surprised to see the grizzled brothers stand right next to Collins, but the way they kept glancing at us spoke volumes.

  “We didn’t want to join at first,” Roger explained, after reintroducing himself. “But Seth here, he wouldn’t shut up last night after Kevin told us what he’d heard on the radio. So we grabbed some gear, a little food, and headed out after midnight.” He looked back at the two pickups idling at the back of their queue. “Jody and Briggs won’t come with us. They’ll bring your wounded to our HQ, see that they are taken care of. I presume some of ‘em can still hold a gun, to defend the cars if anything should come their way?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Nate replied, how he kept glancing my way a slightly teasing, “I told you so.”

  “Emma won’t give you shit for this?” I asked, a little perplexed still.

  “No doubt,” Seth, Roger’s brother, offered. “But sometimes you gotta do what’s right, not what’s pleasant, eh?”

  Collins had his own opinion to offer up regarding the self-declared Governor of Wyoming. “She’s been hounding me for weeks now, ever since Moore and Sadie up and left. Getting chewed on by shamblers can’t be any worse. Besides...” he jerked his chin in Roger’s direction “...people remember who rallied them, and who got them set up with shit so they could band together and live in relative safety. We figured after yesterday you might have some issues with trusting people. You can trust us. And that’s a handful of people more who can keep watch. Thought you deserved a break.”

  And a much-welcome one that was.

  About half an hour later, we were off again, with the two pickup trucks and three additional cars turning back the way they had come, carrying those few too banged up to be much use in a fight, but well enough that they’d make a speedy recovery under better circumstances. And the people joining us from the Wyoming Collective weren’t the only ones. We were barely past Cheyenne when another train of cars hailed us, coming south from the Dakotas. Part of them had already been en route to meet up with us, but the news of yesterday’s fight had swelled their numbers by a third from the settlement they’d hunkered down in, waiting for us to be close enough to make contact. As the day went by, Gita regularly updated us on more people asking for the coordinates of the new meeting points, until I started debating whether we shouldn’t just blast the information across the open channels.

  Two days later we rolled toward what used to be North Platte, Nebraska, and I finally had a reason to drop my latent resentment against the state. We’d expected to meet five groups there, coming up from as far as Texas and Arizona, but not the spectacle that spread before us. For convenience mostly we’d chosen the intersection where US-83 crossed I-80, as it left us enough room to maneuver should something else but potential allies be waiting up on that bridge for us. Instead of a fleet of Humvees with RPGs we were met with an entirely different kind of spectacle. Of the four lanes of the interstate, only the middle two were free. The others, and the grass all around, were buzzing with people, some getting ready to hop into the vehicles almost piled on top of one another, the rest gawking at us, some waving flags or blaring their horns. They’d even gone to the length of clearing the broken down car wrecks from the area to make room. A string of motorcycles was parked right along the eastern free lane, and several ATVs a little further down the road. The entire gathering had a downright festive vibe to it, with people singing and playing music somewhere off to the side. Crates brimming with food were set up on tables behind the bikes, and everyone seemed to be in high spirits as they cheered our arrival.

  “This is so fucking surreal,” I muttered, squinting at the people as much as the bright sunshine overhead. Nate replied with a grunt, his attention more on the road than what surrounded it, for once to avoid running anyone over as he brought the Rover to a halt at the end of the line of motorcycles. There must have easily been three hundred people milling aro
und if I wasn’t completely mistaken. Maybe more; I couldn’t see anything past the bridge spanning the Interstate. The entire scene reminded me more of a country fair than a meeting of people who were about to head into battle together, but I would have had to be blind not to see that everyone was armed, and most people were wearing gear that left them ready to wade into the next herd of zombies, no change required.

  Somewhat of a commotion started up in front of us when a group of people rushed toward the road, trying to find their way through the onlookers. None of them looked familiar, but that wasn’t a surprise. Nate got out of the car, and after a moment’s hesitation I pulled my hat deeper into my face and followed him. I needed a few seconds to adjust to the bright sunlight—and the sheer amount of people all around us. Not to mention the attention of so many expectant faces centered on me—us, really, but it didn’t feel like that. Not all of them were that friendly looking. One of the women with the bikers—like them, clad in black leather, but with bleached-blonde hair that looked freshly blow-dried and more makeup than I would have known how to apply—practically sneered at me. Stepping up to Nate, I did my best not to move my lips too much as I whispered. “Hey, if Gemma over there shanks me, avenge me.” Nate snorted under his breath but otherwise didn’t react. Typical.

  “I presume you know who we are?” he asked as he shook the first man’s hand, a burly guy sporting a rather impressive mustache. He wasn’t one of the bikers, judging from his gear, but looked right at home between the hogs.

  “The name’s Flint. And I sure hope so,” he barked out, grinning brightly. “Good to see you folks arrive in one piece, more or less. When we heard what happened, we were afraid you’d just up and leave us here to continue drinking ourselves into a stupor!” Cheers rose from all around, making me guess that the core group of the gathering had been waiting around for quite some time already.

  Nate shot a sidelong glance in my direction. “I presume you haven’t heard much about my wife yet. She’s like one of those pesky little dogs once she has her sights set on something. Won’t ever let you go, even if it’s not quite the sanest idea to attack something twice your size and quite capable of kicking you down.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I groused. “But who exactly do you think I got that attitude from?”

  The blonde biker chick turned to the guy hovering behind her, smirking at him. “I like her. If all else fails, we could keep her.”

  I didn’t reward that comment with an answer, but I might have inched a little closer to the refuge of the Rover.

  “Mighty fine that you finally showed up here,” Flint went on, ignoring the running commentary on the side. “Not everyone’s made it here yet, but we got people from as far as Arizona and Oklahoma showing up. The guys from Texas and New Mexico are still en route, but we’ll just let them know where we’ll hunker down for the night so they can join us then.”

  What little tension there had been in the air upon our arrival dissipated quickly. With Jason, Torres, and the people that had come with them, it had been natural to joke from the get-go as they knew that we weren’t exactly behaving like your typical military unit, but I’d been afraid that acting like this around someone completely unfamiliar with us might have rubbed them the wrong way. The opposite was true, it turned out. Within minutes, our group was seamlessly integrated into the much larger community here, and when we set out together, about two hours later, our numbers had swelled to over three hundred people. Not everyone who’d come to the gathering was ready to head into open war, but the surplus of food and ammo would certainly come in handy. I’d expected those that remained to disperse now, but about half of them declared they’d hold down the fort here, at least until they’d hear whether there were any wounded to treat, or stragglers to collect. Flint—mustache guy—explained that there had even been talk about turning their camp into a permanent way station, halfway between Dispatch, the Silo, and New Angeles as the region lay.

  No longer were we driving at the head of our unruly column, but instead the bikers took the lead, rolling south, away from the Interstate. At first it seemed like the most idiotic idea as I watched them get on their hogs in teams of two, the rider in the back snapping themselves to the one in front in some kind of harness. Then I realized that this let them stay on securely while lending them mobility to shoot at anything coming up to either side or even from behind. It must have been a system that was working—otherwise they wouldn’t have survived this long. Even knowing that it was eerie to no longer be in the lead. What that said about my ego, I didn’t want to contemplate.

  This time it wasn’t us setting a meeting point that set the direction we were headed in, but Gita, talking almost too fast to be understood in her excitement, letting us know that she’d gotten coordinates from the direction that would either make or break our endeavor: Dispatch. My first instinct was to suspect a setup, but when we patched him into the conversation, Flint explained that they’d seen some cars arrive to the south for days now.

  We were still about an hour away from Trenton—the town the Dispatch people had taken over for themselves—when up on a small rise in the distance I saw a few dark shapes. Grabbing the binoculars, I checked—and, true enough, there were three Humvees up there, with several soldiers standing guard around them, watching us. While not exactly out in the open near a barn and some trees, they hadn’t taken care to hide. They made no move to mobilize so I figured they were watching us, just as we were watching them. Of course it could have been another, somewhat better equipped group, still hesitant to join us, but I doubted it. It didn’t come as a surprise that they were watching us, but I didn’t care for it. Not at all.

  Then we topped a last hill in the more or less straight road we’d been following, and most of my misgivings went overboard.

  North Platte had been a pleasant surprise. Trenton was a pot of gold.

  Less so the town that lay south of the road, but the sea of tents and cars that opened up beyond, reaching from the last houses over to the lake that spread out to the west. I would have been lying if I hadn’t counted on Rita coming through, but this was beyond what I’d been expecting.

  “Looks like this is your army,” Nate noted, sounding just a little bewildered.

  “Our army,” I corrected, unable to tear my eyes from the sight. Even considering that some of the people down there were likely just support, it must have shoved our numbers well past the one thousand mark. The very idea of that was enough to make me feel small—yet at the same time, invincible. Hell, it might just be enough to give us a fighting chance.

  Just like Dispatch itself had been an organized chaos, we were soon met with the exact same impression of their camp on the move. The place they’d chosen to camp in was ideal—the visibility all around was good as no one could approach without being seen by the guards first. Off to the west the lake served both for drinking water and other uses, while the patches of trees between the lake and town yielded some much-needed respite from both the sun beating down during the day and the biting cold winds the night brought with it. At a first glance, colored flags and lines seemed to have been set up at random, but as we drew closer, I noticed the ATVs I’d seen zoom to and fro in Dispatch present here, too, using cordoned-off lanes for routes between the idling population. It didn’t take long for a red and green colored one to make it out of the chaos and up to the road, where their obnoxiously painted signs told us to split up. The green one read, “rabble” while the red one said, “command.”

  “Very quaint,” I noted, much to Nate’s wry amusement. Just to spite whoever was in command—and I had a very good guess who that was—I would have followed the green arrows, but Nate dutifully ambled the Rover to the side of the road to let other cars pass as they headed down into the camp. The Jeep that now held Burns, Gita, and a still somewhat banged-up Tanner remained with us, same as Torres, Harris, Flint, and a few of the other people we’d gathered up at North Platte. It took a satisfyingly long time until the last car of the
green section had lumbered past. The red ATV took off further down the road and only veered toward the lake when we were close enough to the water that I could smell it through the cracked window. We didn’t have to go much farther as the ATV led us to a free spot with good road access where we were signaled to leave the cars in the cordoned-off space.

  Our arrival had stirred up quite the attention, but I ignored the gathering crowd of onlookers for the most part as I walked deeper into the camp along the red lines, Nate next to me with the others following behind. Before long, the corridor opened up into something akin to a plaza in front of several large tents, with tables set up in front of them. And next to that, several familiar faces watched our approach, some lit up with joy, and one in particular closed off with somewhat of a pinched look on it. I couldn’t help but grin when I saw Jaymie positively jump up and down with glee, her sister somewhat more subdued at her side. I wasn’t surprised to see Tamara here—we could certainly use someone who had spent the better part of the year coordinating the movement of the traders and scavengers on the roads out there—but Jaymie was somewhat of an unexpected addition. She’d ditched her pinup-girl getup in favor of muted camo-patterned gear, but she was still wearing her cherry-red lipstick and bright purple headband. I recognized some of the—more or less hostile—geek squad that I’d forgotten the names of. Seeing them made me smirk at the memory of how easy it had been to make fun of them, but my mirth found a quick end when I remembered what had become of Ethan, the Aurora lab’s most famous expat. Suspicion immediately whispered up my spine as I wondered exactly how many of them could have been influenced by Taggard and his outfit. Then my gaze skipped on to Ms. Pinchy Face next to them, and I felt my hackles fall once more—a peculiar realization, considering how much of a hissy fit I’d wanted to throw in Rita’s face the last time we’d shared the same breathing air. Then again, that had been before I’d risen to infamy as a killer of hapless soldiers and had almost started a war, and her helping me find my people to avoid being crucified in Halsey. How things could change in just a few months. Rather than scowl at her like I might have shortly after our stay in Dispatch, I smiled, a little surprised that she didn’t reciprocate. Turning to Nate to catch a clue from him, I found him pretty much glaring daggers at her. Oh, well. If that worked at discouraging Rita from trying to rub herself all over him—again—and I didn’t need to stake my territory—also, again—I wasn’t going to protest. In the light of what we had gathered here to do, interpersonal squabbling seemed such a petty, needless endeavor.