At least he seemed to understand that I was upset—and quite determined—because after a moment he gave another one of those nods that I was starting to hate.
“We can do that,” he offered. “But I’m not dragging everyone into a potential disaster.”
“Meaning?”
“That I’ll ask for volunteers.”
Just peachy—but what alternative did I have? So I nodded grudgingly.
“But you’re coming with us,” he clarified, his eyes intent on my face. “I’ll not let anyone risk their lives for something only you need while you sit around here in relative safety.”
“I didn’t expect anything else,” I replied, meaning it.
“Very well,” Nate said, turning to the group at large. There were too many grins visible for the whole affair not to be public knowledge by now. “We’re going on a very special supply run,” he explained, looking around. “Who’s up for it? No packs, just weapons and ammo.” It seemed natural that there would be some stupid joking now, but Burns and that other guy—I really needed to ask his name now—got up without much hesitation. Martinez made as if to follow, but Nate shook his head in his direction. “Not you. Until we find someone else who can stitch someone together, I’m not taking both of you on a mission like that. Burns, Bates, you’re with me.”
So it was decided, and less than ten minutes later we set out, our backpacks remaining with the others. It felt strange not to be lugging around part of my body weight with me at all times. I had my bat and knife with me, and still felt fucking exposed as I followed behind Nate and Bates, with Burns bringing up the rear. It took me a while to realize why—I’d so gotten used to Andrej’s quiet presence that now that he was not right there, I was missing him. But that was certainly not what really had me on edge.
As we slogged through the dripping wet grass, it occurred to me that today really was a bad day for this undertaking. Not only was visibility still crap, but the rain and mud made moving at a quick pace kind of a pain in the ass—and we were only miles away from the town where we’d lost two of our own, and leaving two more wounded. Then again, I doubted that I could have swayed Nate if he’d actually thought we were in higher danger than we always were. Still, my paranoia was on high alert again, which was probably just as well—considering that the alternative was acting like a hurt, stupid girl.
We reached a road eventually, small enough to be free of zombies, with houses visible in the distance.
“So what exactly is it that we’re looking for?” Burns asked, taking a moment to grin in my direction. “I don’t buy the excuse that this is just a tampon run.”
Nate gave him an amused look which was still enough to make me want to punch him in the face.
“The usual. Food, mostly. But first, we should take care of the really important things,” he said, staring directly at me. I couldn’t help but glare back, but bit down on my tongue to swallow the acerbic reply I was really itching to slam in his face. “So, where to?” he asked when I didn’t open my mouth.
It took me a moment to realize that he actually was asking me to select a route or possible target. Looking around, my gaze kept snapping to the houses, but so far we’d done our best to avoid buildings that were potentially full of locked-in zombies.
“We could try one of the cars,” I suggested. “Even if there’s nothing in the luggage, women don’t leave their houses without purses.” Burns eyed me as if that was a complete non-sequitur, so I explained. “And one thing any woman has in her purse are tampons. I know, I’m completely destroying the mystery for you right now.”
As usual, my remark left him unfazed. “Any woman except you, huh?”
Apparently, today was one of those days.
“Well, I would have thought about running through half of the building to get my purse from the lab except that there were zombies streaming inside through the holes you fucking idiots left in the walls. Oh, and the fact that it was about to blow up on all of us. So excuse me if I was a little preoccupied with surviving this shit rather than grabbing my lipstick.”
Nate didn’t react at all to my grumbling, and Bates did a good job appearing completely disinterested.
“Pick a car then,” Burns suggested. “Or want me to? That blue one over there looks good.”
Looking in the direction he was pointing, it was hard to miss the little bright cyan hatchback.
“What makes you pick that one?” I asked.
“Because it looks like the kind of car that the ladies dig.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at him. “Just because it’s small and economic it must be driven by a woman? Not everyone’s ready to sink their entire paycheck into a gas guzzler.”
Burns opened his mouth to reply, but Nate cut him off before he could get there.
“The chip on your shoulder aside, wouldn’t you for once agree that if you were looking for a car that was driven by a woman, you’d pick that one over the other two over there?”
I glared at him, but considering options two and three were a sleek sports car that screamed midlife crisis and an abused looking Jeep that had seen better years, I had to agree that he was right.
“Maybe?”
Nate let out a pointedly loud sigh and jerked his head toward the blue car. Silently, we moved out again.
Unlike with some cars, it wasn’t hard to guess what had happened to this one. There were dark tire marks in a swerving pattern across the road leading right to where the vehicle had ended up halfway across both lanes, the door on the driver’s side open. There was a huge dent in the front bumper and the airbags had been deployed. A look inside revealed no purse, and when Burns sprung the hatch, there was only the usual detritus that all cars accumulated over the years. Nate filched the first aid kit while I checked the glove compartment, my hope already sinking. I found a pair of oversized aviator glasses there, nothing else. On second thought, I slid them into my pocket; my wrap-around sports glasses were getting kind of boring.
But no purse.
Leaning back out of the car, I was ready to admit defeat, when my gaze fell on the lump a few feet away from the car. I’d been ignoring at as I’d checked the front—it wasn’t the first lump that I’d seen on the roads, or even the hundredth—but now something else occurred to me. Walking closer, I kept checking the fields around but there was nothing moving in there, except for the grass that still got pelted by the rain.
At closer inspection, the “lump” turned out to be exactly what I’d known it to be—the torn-apart, gnawed-on remains of a human being, the clothes so shredded and stained with fluids that they were virtually unrecognizable.
And right under parts of it—remarkably untouched—the bright pink purse the woman had likely been clutching to her chest as she’d tried to run from the zombie that she’d crashed her car into.
Glancing back, I felt disdain at the guys watching me, but then decided that I was not going to let that get me down. Using the bat, I gingerly pushed away what remained of her leg—I thought—until I could pull the purse out. Even through the rain, the stench was strong enough to make me want to retch, but instead I dropped the bat and got out my knife, slicing the purse open so I could sift through the contents, staying away from the part where fluids had leaked into the leather. True to the myth, there was a lot of shit in there that absolutely no one needed, not even before the shit had hit the fan—and two tampons, complete with applicator. More importantly, they were still wrapped, which was a small mercy.
Sliding them into one of my pockets, I couldn’t help but deflate a little. It was better than nothing, but not by much.
The guys had approached in the meantime, studying the contents of the purse that had spilled onto the street with curiosity, which in itself was an annoyance.
“Found what you were looking for?” Burns asked, uncustomarily wary. If that was due to the way I glared at him now, well, served him right.
“About enough to last me, oh, until lunch break.”
> “We usually don’t do lunch breaks,” he offered.
“Exactly.”
Looking over to Nate, I half-expected another stupid remark, but he just held my gaze evenly.
“House next?” I suggested cautiously. There were a few more cars around, but at this rate my period would be over by the time I found enough tampons. So far we’d tried to avoid private residences, but, really? I was a little beyond caring.
“Which one?” he asked, again leaving me choice that I didn’t even want to have.
Looking around us, I scanned the few properties bordering the road. There were five—all of them small and quaint, with lawns surrounding them on all sides—almost indistinguishable from each other besides small details. Except—
“That one over there,” I pointed at the second one north of the road.
“Why?” came his simple question.
I couldn’t help the surge of heat into my cheeks. “Because it looks the most promising.”
“Again, why?”
So he was really going to make me spell this out? Bastard.
“See the flowers on the porch? And the curtains are kind of fancy. I could be wrong, but that looks more like someone gave a shit about the small details, and that usually means a woman in the house. The SUV in the driveway doesn’t really scream ‘grandma’ to me, so it’s our best bet. And woman in the house likely also means stocked pantry,” I replied.
Nate’s smile let me know that he was well aware that I’d done the exact same typecasting as Burns with the car before, and that it really didn’t sit right with me. He still started out in that direction without another word, the other two following us along the road.
“You know, it’s about time you got rid of some of your more stupid notions,” he offered under his breath, low enough that I wasn’t sure Burns and Bates would have understood if they’d tried.
“It’s so nice to hear you articulate just how highly you value my opinions,” I shot back, just as softly.
I expected an amused grin, but he looked more annoyed than anything.
“I get it. You get high on your own politically correct supply. Well, guess what—nobody gives a fuck.” He let that sink in before he went on, a little more heat creeping into his words. “Like it or not, this is about survival, not misogyny. Every target we set out toward holds risks—the exactly same risk as every other. The only way we can minimize that risk is if we’re smart and only go for targets that look promising in the first place. So we go for the girly-girl car when we’re looking for a purse, or the family home rather than the fishing cabin when we are hunting down food. I’m not telling you to change the way you look at things, but to simply acknowledge what you already know.”
That didn’t deserve a reply—particularly as I could see that he was right, even if it didn’t sit well with me—so we spent the rest of our walk over to the house in silence.
We stopped in the driveway. While the other two were doing a quick circuit of the house, Nate and I inspected the car. It was locked, and I was damn happy about the absence of a car seat in the back row. The pink sweater I could see through the window looked promising, though.
“There’s a door in the back. Unlocked,” Bates reported. “Looks abandoned.”
Nate nodded, and stepped up the porch to the front door. A little fiddling with the lock, and we were in, Nate and Bates canvasing the rooms while Burns and I followed, my bat at the ready.
The house was eerily quiet. Not just silent, but except for the drone of the rain on the roof and windows there was nothing in here. The air smelled stale, making me guess that since whoever had lived here had vacated the premises, it had stood empty. It felt weird to break into someone’s home like that, but at the same time it didn’t really feel like a home at all.
I waited in the hallway while the guys made sure that the ground floor was empty except for us. Burns and Bates went up the stairs next, while I only waited for Nate’s nod before I ducked into the bathroom right off the foyer.
It was clearly just a small one, but there should still have been what I was looking for around. Yet all I found was lots and lots of toilet paper and air freshener bottles—both not that interesting to me now—and the usual trinkets. Frustrated, I stepped back outside, my eyes scanning the rooms for more clues.
It didn’t take me long to realize why the interior of the house looked kind of skewed—it was right there in the hallway, on the pictures. Lots and lots of pictures of a happy family of three—dad, mom, and their sweet little girl. Until it was just the dad and daughter, the light somehow gone from their eyes. Cancer, I guessed, judging from the age of the woman in the pictures, and the slight decline of health that was visible. My heart ached for them, even though I knew that it was a stupid sentiment—likely, both father and daughter were dead now, if they were lucky. But that seriously cut back on the chance for me to find my price.
“Upstairs is clear,” Bates reported as he joined Nate in the kitchen, slinging a tool-belt around his waist. Nate had meanwhile located the food storage in the kitchen, banging cupboards as he scanned them for anything that was either stored away in cans, or would otherwise survive the trip back through the rain. The pantry wasn’t as well-stocked as it should have been—another glaring detail about the previous occupants of the house and their history—but we found several bags of rice and a box full of camping gear, including a couple of small propane burners. I already had some granola bars ready to serve as my next meal but stopped as I scanned the ingredients list. The flickering fear that roared to life the moment my gaze skipped over the “syrup” part rather early in the list made me drop them immediately.
I checked the fridge next, but as expected, that was a dead end. There wasn’t much in there to start with, and it had clearly been cleaned out before the house had been abandoned. But as I closed the door, my eyes skimmed over the schedule pinned to it—the daughter’s class schedule that held way too many AP classes to belong to a middle school kid.
“I’ll go take a look upstairs. Maybe I’ll find something there,” I said, already heading for the stairs. Burns was still up there, so I figured that he’d shoot our way free if we had to flee and something was getting between us and the exit. Nate ignored me, and Bates was too busy chugging down two bottles of light beer to care.
Upstairs, there were only four rooms—the master bedroom, the girl’s room, another bathroom that was a complete dead end, and a hall closet. I was about to give up and head back down but then thought better of it and went back into the daughter’s room. Judging from the pictures downstairs—and a few more in here, with her friends—she’s been shorter and lither than me, but after a week of heavy physical exertion and a clear lack of quality food, the pants I was wearing had already gone from comfortable to requiring the belt they came with, so I wasn’t too discouraged as I started sifting through her clothes. Most of it was completely unusable, but I found some sports gear and swim suits in a bottom drawer that I packed up in a cutesy, pink jute bag that I found hanging on the inside of the door. It wasn’t even summer yet and I was sweating like a pig underneath my jacket every day; wearing tank tops rather than normal shirts sounded like a mighty good idea. And—come what may—I was not going to jump into a lake in my underwear if I could help it.
It was when I straightened and took one last look around when my eyes landed on the door half-hidden behind the open cupboard doors—a private bathroom, just the thing that every teenage girl needed.
“Burns?”
“Need something?” came his voice from the other end of the floor, presumably the bathroom. “I’m busy taking a dump.” More confirmation than I needed—but not the worst idea in the world. Flushing might not be a thing without electricity to get water pressure up, but I doubted that anyone would object.
“No, I’m fine on my own,” I replied, leaving my bag on the floor in favor of having both hands free. Just a precaution. Slowly, I stepped up to the door, then knocked—feeling absolutely ri
diculous, but ridicule hadn’t killed anyone yet. Counting to ten in my head, I held my breath, intent on listening to anything move beyond the door.
Nothing, but that didn’t come as a surprise. The house showed signs of having been cleared out.
Reaching for the door handle, I pushed it down—nothing happened. I gave it a push, then pulled—still nothing. Looking down, I saw a key on the floor, right where it must have dropped after whoever had locked the door. Smiling, I bent over and stuck it back in the lock, turning it quickly. Probably not the most rational decision, but I could so see a girl lock her bathroom before leaving, just because the thought that some random stranger might later trespass here made her uncomfortable. A click and the lock disengaged, and with a light push, the door swung inward.
She was on me before I had even time to look around the room, let alone grab my bat with both hands. Or “it,” more precisely, my mind provided as my brain kicked my body into overdrive.
I had no time to react, let alone think, and barely got my arm up in front of my body before the zombie slammed into me, all snapping teeth and reaching hands. An odor so foul that it made me gag hit my nose, but a second later I went down under the sheer onslaught of her momentum, the fall forcing the remaining air out of my lungs. Bony fingers sank into my arm and shoulders, digging in so deep that it hurt, while only my forearm wedged against her windpipe kept her jaws out of reach of my body. She still tried to get closer, and I dropped the useless bat in favor of trying to push her off me. She was only wearing a tank top and shorts—likely her sleeping clothes that she had died in—leaving too much soft, awfully squishy flesh for me to touch. Slamming my hand into her forehead, I tried to get her off me, but she twisted, and I narrowly avoided her sinking her teeth into my fingers.
Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak Page 14