“Still sucks,” Burns grunted. “No more sweet stuff? Not sure that’s a world I still wanna live in.”
They continued to joke between them—if softly enough not to be heard a few yards away from our group—while I let myself fall behind a little, cherishing my moment of solitude. It was deceptively calm around us, and I couldn’t help the sense of peace that the surrounding forest wanted to lull me in. For now, not running for my life seemed like true luxury.
Chapter 5
It had probably been obvious from the moment we went off the highway and into the woods, but it still came as a rather unpleasant surprise when the woods started to thin out, and before long we ended up standing at the edge of the forest, with nowhere else to go but out into the grassland. There was forest around aplenty, but broken up by just as much meadows and farm land, with roads and settlements in the valleys everywhere. Andrej must have found the longest continuous stretch of wooded area around, but now we were out of trees—and as soon as we stepped out into the afternoon sunshine, the scent of fire and smoke tickled my nostrils.
Everyone seemed reluctant to leave the canopy of the trees, but when the two guys who had been scouting ahead returned and reported that the way was clear, the group started moving forward, and I followed. I wondered for a moment if now was the time to get one of the bats ready, but I was tired enough that just trudging forward was a feat.
Less than a mile later, we reached the edge of a small ridge, and Pia had us spread out lower to the ground as we advanced. At her signal, everyone crouched down, my heart once again jump-starting into high alert. Andrej got out binoculars and inched forward until he could look down into the valley, uttering a low curse under his breath. I didn’t even want to know what caused it, but when he looked back at me, brows raised, I joined him, crawling toward the edge until I could look down.
At first glance, everything seemed quiet—but therein lay the problem. A small road meandered through the valley, and from our vantage point I could just see the two neighboring towns that had grown alongside and around it. We were too far away to hear anything, but even before I brought the binoculars to my eyes I caught movement on the road.
They were out in full force. Hundreds of bodies were moving along the road, most heading west—away from Lexington, if I had to take a guess. A few were crouching on the ground, and I didn’t have to guess hard to come up with the reason for why; most were trudging along the road, swaying to and fro, about as fast as a slow walker. But some of them were much quicker, almost running, and the others more often than not suddenly focused on one of those and increased their speed also. Even those that had been crouching on the ground were up and moving in no time, leaving behind a heap of something that I deliberately looked away from. More and more of them started moving quicker, with still more moving onto the stretch of road behind them. One thing was clear—that road we wouldn’t be crossing, or even getting near to. Of course it could be coincidence, but if a small country lane was enough to draw that much “traffic,” just how bad would the highways be?
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, already pushing myself back until I was securely out of sight. Not that I’d seen any of them glancing up the hill, but I didn’t doubt that, if alerted, the whole mass would come after us.
So much for almost everyone in our group being armed to the teeth.
Handing back the binoculars to Andrej, I rolled partly onto my side, trying to get comfortable for the moment, but with my heart and mind racing, that was easier said than done. It made sense to close my eyes for a minute and try to rest; with danger right now out of reach, I could just enjoy the sunshine and try to conserve energy…
I must have drifted off, because when someone shook me awake gently, the sun was deeper in the sky, heading toward the hills already. For a blissful moment, I was disoriented enough that my mind was happy to dwell on the good things only—the warmth of the sun on my skin, the scent of the grass in my nose—until everything came back like a suckerpunch in the gut. Starting, I likely would have came straight to my feet if Nate hadn’t put a hand on my shoulder and kept me down. With my heart in my throat, I tried to gauge whether his behavior screamed imminent danger, but he relaxed and let go as soon as he was sure that I wouldn’t bolt. He winced as he rearranged himself, making me guess that while he looked moderately okay, he wasn’t really feeling it.
A brief glance around revealed that the entirety of our group was still spread out across the hollow before the ridge, and I wasn’t the only one who had napped, it seemed. At first, remaining out in the open sounded like a hell of a hazardous bet, but then I realized that what made us vulnerable here also served as a good lookout possibility; no one would have managed to approach and surprise whoever had been on watch. But while that might explain the place, it didn’t explain the reason.
“Why stop here? And so long?” I was really bad at judging the passage of time via where the sun was in the sky, but it clearly had been hours. When I’d fallen asleep, the sun had been hot enough to make my jacket stifling; while still balmy, the air had now cooled off to the point where I might have felt chilled in just a shirt.
“We all needed the rest,” Nate replied, his voice barely louder than a whisper. When I opened my mouth to protest, he stalled me by shaking his head. “Not just you. My men have been on their feet the same day and a half. It serves no one if we’re all too tired to take care and end up dead because of negligence. Besides, no one can fight nor run when they’re exhausted enough to keel over.”
That made sense, but I could tell that it wasn’t everything.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He flashed me a wan smile.
“There’s the fact that we were hoping that the roads would clear up a little.”
Craning my neck was useless; from our vantage point, I only saw grass around us, with the ridge still several feet away.
“They’re still out there?” I guessed.
His grim nod was answer enough. “Maybe things will get better with nightfall, but I doubt it.”
And that still wasn’t everything. Staring at him, I could tell that he knew that I knew, but I dropped the point after a few seconds. Really, it wasn’t important. Not in the light of everything else—like survival. Nothing was as important as that.
“So what’s the plan?”
I could tell that he was relieved that I switched to the topic at hand.
“We’ll move out in ten minutes. Eat something, drink some water. Take care of other business, but, seriously, I would get rid of any ideas of modesty right now in favor of not getting eaten alive with my pants tangled around my ankles.” Glancing where he looked at, I had to admit, the deepening shadows of the forest didn’t appear quite as inviting as they had when we’d been trudging through the woods.
I nodded. “Sure. Will do.”
“I mean it,” he stressed, briefly raising his hand as if to touch me, but dropping it instead. “Eat. Drink. Shit. Unless we find a good place to secure and hunker down in, we’ll likely spend the entire night on the move, maybe even the next full day, too. We got out of dodge all right, but I doubt that things will continue to go quite so smoothly.”
While the first part had sounded vaguely amusing, that last part didn’t sit well with me at all.
“We lost, what, five people?”
“Seven,” he supplied after a short pause.
“And you call that going smoothly?”
Nate shrugged. “They were wounded, and all of them knew that they were just slowing us down. Part of being a fighter is to know when you’re out of fight to give. They might have been fine if all that had been waiting out there was the police, but, even so, I think most would have preferred a fighting chance over a life sentence in jail. And they could have gone with Bucky.”
I really didn’t like his fatalistic view, but in that he was right.
“Then why didn’t they? You knew what was coming. I bet that they did, too. So why take th
at chance?”
Nate’s gaze took on a slightly feverish tint as he kept holding mine.
“Some things are worth fighting for. Dying for. Freedom is one of them. I sincerely hope that you’ll never get to understand the true meaning of that.”
With that cryptic message, he left me to my own devices, and to once again ponder what exactly I had gotten myself into here.
True to Nate’s words, we moved out shortly. With the setting sun shining in our faces and the scents of nature around, it could have been an idyllic evening stroll. Sleeping for a few hours might have helped take the edge off the exhaustion, but my feet were still killing me, my pack weighed a ton, and the knowledge that we were barely a mile above a never-ending stream of zombies did its own to keep me jittery and jumpy. Unlike in the woods where things had been a little more relaxed and progress had been fast, our group’s speed slowed down to molasses rather than cheetah. Every couple of minutes, we hunkered down and checked our progress, making my anxiety skyrocket each time. I was sure that the moment we halted, the mob would be upon us, no doubt.
The problem was, there were stragglers even in the hills, only it took me almost half an hour to realize that—but our sentries were out to dispatch them as quietly as possible. Only when the corpses ended up right next to our path—heads smashed in yet barely bleeding—did I realize what had been going on the entire time. The fact that we had several people out and about to make sure the core group wasn’t attacked was somewhat of a relief; the knowledge that even though I couldn’t see them, there were still more zombies lurking around just made everything ten times worse.
The farther west we got, the more the valley broadened, opening up into a plateau where two rivers met. In the dusk with no street lights, it was hard to make out the streets between the scattered buildings, but even without binoculars I could still see movement down there, and that scared me shitless. Nate called for another rest to wait and see what would happen after the sun set, but I could tell already from the restlessness of the people around me that things didn’t shape up. Still, sitting in the grass, stretching my feet out was like a moment stolen from paradise—one I intended to get the most of. Somehow I got the feeling that indulgences of all kinds would be hard to come by in the coming days.
About an hour after the sun had disappeared behind the hills we moved out again, the rising moon providing just enough illumination to make even a well-paved road treacherous footing—and we were still out and about around already uneven ground to start with. I stumbled and almost fell more than once, and I wasn’t the only one by far. We still made it down the slope into a wheat field, the stalks soft and not yet fully grown in late May.
Not sure how large our group was to begin with—and with however many people around scouting at any time—I still noticed when suddenly it was just me, Andrej, two other guys, and Nate. Looking around, I saw another cluster huddled together about fifty yards away, straying further from us, while up ahead I could see yet more figures move, crouched over to minimize their silhouettes against the sky.
“We’re splitting up,” Nate whispered to me, explaining. “We won’t make it to the other side as a large group, but maybe in parts we stand a chance.”
I so didn’t like the sound of that, but who was I to protest? I was well aware that I was only still alive because the others knew what they were doing.
It still seemed like forever until one of the guys whose names I still didn’t know started forward, followed by Nate and the other. Andrej remained behind me, only needing to give me a gentle nudge once to follow the others. After hours spent with my heart racing, one might have thought that I was slowly getting used to it, but—if anything—that just made it worse as we crept across the field, pausing briefly before traversing a small, unpaved road and continuing on across unmowed, high grass. I told myself to relax when nothing jumped us right away, but that was impossible to accomplish.
Then the grass evened out into a lawn, and I realized that we must now be in someone’s backyard. Up ahead I could see several dark shapes looming—houses and a barn, if I wasn’t completely wrong. Judging from the smell, there should have been horses somewhere around, but I didn’t hear a single neigh or snort.
Guess juicy human wasn’t the only thing on the menu.
My fingers were itching to get one of my bats ready, but when I moved as if to take off my pack, Andrej was right there. “You run. We fight.” I opened my mouth to protest—although, really? Considering they all had rifles and handguns while I carried two freaking baseball bats made me kind of happy that no one expected me to join the fray—but Andrej whispered right over my protest. “We’ll be faster knowing that you take care of yourself and won’t lag behind. If we run into an obstacle, you take off ahead, and we’ll follow. You only fight if you can’t run anymore.” That reminded me awfully much of the guy we’d lost while crossing the bridge, but I did my best to disband that mental image.
We remained hunkered down at the edge of the lawn for maybe five minutes before the guy taking point sprinted across the open space until he disappeared into the shadows by the barn. Nate waited maybe ten more seconds before he took off, and the same pattern repeated itself with the other guy. Then it was my turn. Vaulting away from the ground, I forced my legs to run at full speed, even if it felt like barely more than a lumbering walk to me, my pack bouncing on my back. As I drew closer to the barn, I could see the others crouching low toward the front edge, looking out over the next open space to the main house. Panting heavily with my pulse beating a deafening staccato in my ears, I sank down next to Nate, my entire body shaking with tension.
Why had I ever thought it was a good idea not to run ten miles every morning, just in case I’d ever need to run for my life?
Andrej had barely crouched down behind me when guy number one took off again, slinking across the yard until he hunkered down near the front corner of the house. He looked around briefly, then waved, and Nate followed him. Again we went through the same spiel, and this time I didn’t need Andrej’s signal to know when to start.
After the corner of the house came an abandoned tractor, followed by a rickety carport. Beyond, I could already see the main road at the end of a snaking driveway. It was dark enough that everything beyond our short sprint distances was hard to make out, even in the silvery moonlight, but I didn’t need to see well.
Because now I could hear them.
Feet—too many to count—shuffling along. The irregular scratching of clothing against clothing. The occasional moan or grunt, interspersed by huffing chuffs, and as I listened on, a howl followed by more agitated sounds before they died down again. While it didn’t sound like quite so many as we’d seen before from above, there were still plenty of them out and about—but then a single one would have been one too many.
I expected some kind of weighing of options now, but as soon as Andrej got here, the first guy took off again. He started down the driveway, but then suddenly stopped, hunkering down in the grass beside the road. Endless seconds ticked by before he continued, slower now, making sure to remain on the grass. When Nate finally followed, he avoided the road altogether, and I realized that the crunching of the gravel must have alerted the zombies.
And then it was my turn. Unlike before, I didn’t dash at full speed but stayed at a more careful pace, trying to be as silent as possible. Up ahead, I could barely make out three crouching shapes by the mailbox—and beyond them at least ten shambling figures walking down the road, staring straight ahead. My breath caught in my throat as panic clawed at my mind, making me want to scream and run, but I forced myself to keep going. Closer and closer I got, my fingers aching from how tightly balled my fists were.
This was insane. This was madness. This—
Nate pulled me down next to him as soon as I reached our group, apparently having changed places with guy number two. I would have let out a startled sound if he hadn’t put his hand over my mouth quickly, and he didn’t ease up until he was
sure that I had a grip on myself. Leaning close enough that I could feel his warm breath against my cheek, one arm remained across my shoulders, comforting, supporting.
“As far as we can see, they are everywhere, but they mostly stick to the streets. We’ll try to slink across lawns wherever possible, but we will have to cross several streets until we’re through this part. We’ll go one by one in irregular intervals. You’ll go when I tap on your shoulder, understand?” I nodded, although the very idea of running right through the throng of zombies make me want to vomit. Nate continued to look into my eyes for a moment longer, than gave a brief nod in turn. “I know that you can make it. We will make it. Just stay low and run when I give you the signal. Don’t think, don’t hesitate. Just run.”
Biting my lip, I nodded again, but couldn’t keep it at that.
“What do I do when they notice me? Or when they come after one of the others?”
In the gloom, it was hard to judge the look he was giving me, but it wasn’t a friendly, warm one.
“Then you continue to duck and run. You try to stay hidden, and get away from any fight that breaks out. I’ll find you once we’ve taken care of them. Don’t come back, don’t hesitate. Our goal is to reach that forest straight across the valley. If you have to, you just make a run for it, and hide in the trees until morning. I won’t leave, promise.”
There was still the option that he might no longer be alive to look for me, but I didn’t voice that. Just thinking of that felt too much like I was already jinxing it. So what I did was nod, and try to quell the panic that was in full swing now.
During our hushed conversation, the two guys in front of us had melted into the night, leaving just us and Andrej behind. Squinting, I could make out one of them crouching a few yards down the road, still in the ditch but watching both sides now. I was surprised when I realized that the dark lump by the hedge across the road was the other guy. I hadn’t even realized that he’d already made the dash, but then I’d just been focused on the clusters of zombies swaying down the street. Clearly, they hadn’t noticed, either. That gave me a glimmer of hope, if not a brightly shining one.
Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak Page 6