“That was for human use only! For surgical operations, or as a heavy painkiller. Can you imagine how many people could have found relief for what you just shot up into those fucking animals?”
Looking up from where she was done tying the end of the lead rope of one cow to the Jeep, she gave me a dazzling grin.
“Zero. Would all have ended up on the black market for someone to get high on it. This way people eat. You can always tough out setting a broken bone without painkillers, but you can’t heal if you’re starving.”
She had a point there, but I was still miffed that no one had told me this was an option. I filed that away for later, likely when one of them had a sore tooth again and complained about it.
“So what’s the plan now?” I asked, staring at the cows lying between the cars. If the shamblers decided to come after us, we’d have to cut them loose, because dragging a tranqued-up cow would slow us down too much—besides killing the animal and subjecting it to needless torment. I was realistic enough that I wasn’t weeping for the animal that I’d killed—and without that carcass drawing the zombies’ attention, we likely wouldn’t have gotten away clean—but there was a difference between making a sacrifice and torture.
Rather than answer me, Nate unbuckled himself and got out to check the right front of the car. I hesitated, then did the same, if only after making sure that my jacket was properly zipped up. Shotgun in hand, I walked to the rear, grimacing at the new dent in our armor plates and blood smears, complete with little tufts of fur dangling from them. Someone would have to clean that up. That someone would likely be me.
“Light’s busted but nothing grave,” Nate declared as he came around the back to stand beside me.
“Cosmetic damage only,” I reported, nudging the plates with my foot. No give whatsoever. Everything was still firmly in place.
We looked at each other. I knew a sarcastic remark was coming, but interesting enough, Nate swallowed it in favor of turning away to look in the direction that we’d come from. We were too far away to see the rise clearly, but that tree close to where the cow had found its end was still visible.
“We should go investigate,” he said—not a proposition, clearly. “Romanoff, take Cho, Martinez, Taylor, and Lewis with you. No need to rouse any more of the undead fuckers, but find out how many of them are hiding there. Swing by the farm house, too. Maybe we can find a couple of batteries and tools. If it’s crawling with zombies, ignore it and report back. You have two hours. By then, the cows should be up and running.” He paused. “If they come for us, we’ll take the cars to New Town. Meet us there.”
Glancing longingly at the cow blood, I sighed and ducked back into the car to get the rest of my gear—pack, more ammo, baseball bat for a more silent melee option. Last, I switched my beloved aviators for the wrap-around shooting glasses, leaving the others on the dashboard. I was already sweating under my baseball cap as it was, and on second thought decided that I didn’t need full-face protection. I had no intention whatsoever to get close enough to any of the shamblers for them to bleed into my mouth.
With our mission being a run-of-the-mill recon job, we left the cars behind, silence more important than comfort. Andrej took off across the field in the direction of the farm at a moderate pace, meaning that I would have to flat-out run to keep up. A year ago, the very idea of running three miles, playing hide and seek with the undead, and returning the long way around would have been out of the question—and not just because it included zombies. Now I didn’t exactly look forward to doing my daily workout session in the noon heat, dressed for a climate easily thirty degrees below what was beating down on us, but it wasn’t an automatic death sentence from cardiac arrest anymore.
We made good ground, reaching the farm about thirty minutes later. From afar, it had looked abandoned, but the reek of shit and decay made it apparent that the ditches weren’t the only stretch of land that the zombies had claimed as their own. Using the scope of my sniper rifle, I scanned the buildings. There was movement—if not much—inside, making us abandon our plan to search the premises. Instead Andrej had us fan out to sneak around and check a few other hiding places—a small copse of trees to the south, a few more hollows, the large combine rusting away in the field. I got the trees, but didn’t need to go closer than half a mile to see that they were well-inhabited, too. Wherever there was shade to be found and some protection from the elements, shamblers seemed to be squatting. And if most of them had apparently been trudging toward the road, judging from the tracks in the dirt they had left, there were still plenty more around. More than there should have been in a stretch of land that had never had that many inhabitants when they’d still been alive.
With results the same everywhere, we beat it to find a good position to surveil what was happening at the road. Andrej and Taylor ended up climbing an oak tree that was standing at the border between a pasture and a wheat field, the two zombies squatting there quickly and silently dispatched. I waited in the shade, alert but allowing myself to relax a little. The stench was bad here as well, impossible to keep out of my nose even when I pulled up the scarf that doubled as a face mask for that very purpose. It was usually as much of a dead giveaway—pun intended—as picked-clean remains out in the open, but because we’d had the windows closed up after the cows took off, we’d missed it. I filed that info away for later, too.
About ten minutes later, Taylor dropped out of the tree, shaking his head at us when Martinez eyed him askance. “At least five hundred of them, maybe more. If we go any closer, we’ll just draw their attention.”
Andrej followed, brushing oak leaves from his gear. “We go around east, then cut around them to the north and return to the cars from there. That should let us avoid those that ran after you when you fled.”
I shared blankly back at him when he added the last, looking at me, but I didn’t respond. Making a run for it had been my only option, and I’d learned months ago that it never ended well if I tried to defend myself. Why I still couldn’t shut up when Nate was annoying me was a different thing entirely.
It took us about an hour to return to the cars, but we barely met any resistance on the way back. We did find out where all the zombies had come from, though—further east of the ditches, we crossed a patch of land that was churned earth only, not even grass surviving. The swath cut across pastures and fields, angling east and south as far as I could see. A massive horde of zombies must have been moving along to destroy so much previously fertile ground. Whether they’d wintered here or come along more recently—likely on the way north after migrating south last fall—I couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter. We’d been damn lucky not to run into them head-on, or all of us would be toast now. Judging from the amount of damage, I didn’t doubt that there were more in the area that we hadn’t seen yet. Perfect.
Our mood was somewhat subdued on the way back, me clearly not the only one lost in gloomy thoughts. Seeing the cows up, if still staggering around, was good news. The sooner we got away from here, the better.
Andrej reported our findings, making frowns appear across faces, fingers curling around guns. I got behind the wheel without saying anything, after checking the car over once more. The light had been “fixed” with duct tape, and the gore was gone from both sides. Seeing my aviators on the dashboard, I hesitated for a moment but then put them away in the center console. As much as I loved to laugh in Nate’s face whenever he griped at me for defaulting to them when I didn’t have to shoot, I wasn’t stupid enough to push it when I didn’t have to. I also left the jacket zipped up to my throat, not bothering with taking off my gloves. With the windows cracked to check for stench, I’d survive baking in the car. And, with luck, I’d get a chance to clean up, maybe even soak in a tub, in an hour or so from now when we reached the settlement. After two weeks on the road, simple comforts like that sounded just as appealing as sitting safely behind a fence that someone else guarded—or maybe even more so.
Oh, what a great new worl
d we were living in.
Chapter 2
We reached New Town—the most creatively named settlement we’d passed so far—at just after five in the afternoon, or so Nate told me. We could have easily made it there within the hour, but that wasn’t accounting for the cows who, none too happily, trotted along between the middle three cars of our convoy. They were docile enough, making me guess that they hadn’t quite forgotten that earlier in their lives, humans had meant creature comforts for them like fresh hay, or getting milked. Burns and Santos had spent most of the way over debating over the radio whether the cows had been bred for dairy or beef. With a year since anyone had fed them some nice hormone-contaminated chow, it was impossible to tell—at least for someone like me who mistook young bulls for cows. Not my brightest moment, I had to admit—and I was sure that Nate would remind me of it again and again, likely whenever we saw some cattle grazing in the distance. Which was more often than I’d expected after how hard it had been for us to make it across the country without getting eaten by the undead. But either cows had better survival instincts than the likes of me—entirely possible—or there simply had been a damn lot of them, too much to get eradicated within the span of one year. The amount of calves that had been with the main herd made me guess that if they continued to be smart, beef would remain on the menu in years to come.
I hadn’t expected New Town to look like much, but the three rows of chain-link, barbwire-topped fence with wooden palisades inside that kept the settlement itself out of sight was a lot more impressive than the already good defenses Aurora’d had. They’d even started digging ditches between the fences, making scaling them harder still.
As we approached, I saw no one outside, but the two lookouts above the gate box had been eyeing us the entire time of our approach. I’d debated radioing ahead, but the light cloud of dust that our cars raised was different from anything else moving out there, and the cows were kind of a dead giveaway, too. I still switched on the transponder on our radio when we were about a mile out, the red light coming on a distraction I didn’t need. A sidelong glance at Nate revealed that he had that same stony look on his face that I’d last seen as we’d left Aurora, Kansas, two weeks ago. We’d hit several targets in the meantime, but this was the first settlement that we approached. There were seven between Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri that we knew of, and until the cattle job none of them had given us any incentive to come any closer, hygiene-related wish-fulfillment aside.
Static cracked over the radio before an unfamiliar voice came on, laced with a soft mid-western accent.
“Convoy approaching, please identify yourself, and state your business.”
I found that oddly formal, but what did I know? Reaching for the mic, I pushed the button to engage it and rattled off the details. “Lucky Thirteen, code three-nine-seven-five-zulu. Thirteen Alpha pilot speaking, Bree Lewis. Heard you were looking for cows?”
There was some movement going on up at the palisade, but no one made a move to open the outer gate of what I expected was a similar two-tier mechanism as they’d had in Aurora—letting one vehicle in at a time, creating a kill chute between the two gates to make sure that no shamblers could gain access alongside.
The radio gave another squeak that made me grimace. “Can you repeat that?” the voice asked.
“Which part? That we’re the five cars right outside your gate? Or that we have your cows, tied to said cars?”
More silence followed. “Your code.”
I looked at Nate, but he gave me nothing. Apparently, he was still deadly serious about that part where I was dealing with all civilian matters. I really didn’t like where this was going, but still rattled off the number again. When after another pause that I guessed was several people debating the voice came on and wanted to know, “How many?” I figured he wasn’t asking about the cows. Nate’s knuckles went white for a second as he cracked them.
“Six.”
As expected, the following silence was even longer now, making me gnash my teeth. So much for this glorious new civilization acting civilized.
“We can’t let you in,” the voice replied, sounding small now.
“Come again?” Even if I’d tried, I couldn’t have kept the sharpness out of my voice. “You know, those papers that your settlement signed to belong to this fucking great new alliance? We signed them, too. You’re obliged to let us in.” That, and more, but with my dream of bathing slipping away like water through fingers scooping it up, I wasn’t going to haggle about the details.
The voice sounded sincerely apologetic but not exactly sad as it came on again. “We would, normally. But we already have two groups in here. They brought cows, too. We don’t need any more.”
This was getting better and better. “When did they get here?”
“Yesterday,” the guy admitted.
Screwing my eyes shut, I debated screaming, but seeing as that would get me nowhere…
“Are you fucking kidding me? We signed in with Dispatch this morning. You were still looking for cows then. And now you tell me that we risked our lives for nothing, because you were too fucking stupid to cancel your order?”
Nate gave me a smile that was as sweet as they got. “I love it when you get all diplomatic.”
I didn’t know who to be more angry at, him or these idiots, but after hitting the steering wheel twice, I forced myself to assume a semblance of calm.
“Will you at least take the cows? You can have them if you give us something to eat.” Somehow I got the feeling that I was doing this bartering thing wrong. Next I would be begging them to let us play fetch for everyone.
“We don’t need them,” the guy repeated. “And we don’t have much food to spare.”
Glaring at the palisades didn’t help, and neither did Nate’s smirk.
“Well, what did you feed those other two scavenger groups?”
Another pause, this one long enough to make me want to reach for the box of grenades that we kept in the back row and lob a few over the wire fences.
“Beef stew,” came the eventual answer.
“And is there still some left of that? Or, you know, you could just slaughter one of your fucking cows if you get three more now, anyway.” I’d intended to warn them that we’d drugged the cows with ketamine, but considering the circumstances, I was happy to get someone really sleepy if they were unlucky.
“Some.” This time, the pause was shorter. “We’ll send someone out with a pot, if you have something to store the stew in? Don’t stay here.”
“And the cows?” When I didn’t get a reply straight away, I added, “I swear to you, if you don’t take the damn cows inside, we’re going to slaughter them right in front of your gate. Less than an hour away the hills are swarming with zombies. We had to sacrifice one cow to get away. They’ll smell the carcasses and be here before nightfall. Even if they don’t tear down your flimsy little excuse for a barricade, they’ll squat here for days, if not weeks. And for every single one you shoot, ten more will come. Just consider how fucking long you’ll be stuck with your scavengers then?”
Surprisingly, that got him talking.
“Don’t do that! Jesus Christ, you fuckers really are all insane!” Someone grumbled something in the background, and a moment later the guy was back on. “We’ll take the cows. Just sent someone running to get the stew, but it’s mostly veggies and potatoes. Some bread, too, but we don’t have much left from lunch.”
Exhaling slowly, I allowed myself to ease up a little, although I wasn’t beyond seeing Nate’s smirk deepen. Asshole.
“Veggies sound good actually. Meat we can easily just grill ourselves. Cook, not so much. Bread’s awesome.”
So it came to be that after an endless twenty minutes of waiting, the gate opened and ten weary-looking men, armed to the teeth, exited. I’d gotten tired of waiting in the car about twenty hours ago so I was standing next to my door, watching them approach. They eyed us as cautiously as if we’d had zombies chained up rather
than cattle, and when the one that approached us saw the dark marks in the shapes of three Xs on Nate’s and Pia’s necks, he blanched visibly. Only after I’d pointedly turned around and showed him that I only had one X across my neck he seemed to find his voice again. It was the guy from the radio.
“We’ll take the cows in. You can come with us to fetch the stew. Only you.”
I stared right back at him, not moving a muscle. If he thought I was less dangerous than some of my companions, he deserved to get his dick chewed off by zombies. Sure, I wouldn’t rise as one of the super fast, insanely durable undead if someone gunned me down, and I might not be able to continue walking for two days after I got speared by a rebar, but the shotgun in my hands wasn’t just for show. I could see that realization dawn on him as he kept studying me—combat boots, tactical cargo pants, jacket, orange-tinted shooting glasses, hair tied securely out of my face to make sure that my vanity wouldn’t be the end of me. That I was the only one left with long hair since Bates had bit the dust was one concession I wasn’t going to let go, faded pinkish-red ends notwithstanding. And as long as I didn’t stand right next to Burns, I didn’t look that much shorter than the others.
My silence had apparently been answer enough because the guy continued to fidget while five others went to fetch the cows.
“I take it that’s a no?”
“That’s a 'how stupid do you think I am?' no,” I confirmed his guess.
His gaze dropped down to my shotgun, then over to the cows. It was nice that, for once, someone was taking me seriously. I didn’t tell him that I had no intention whatsoever to lock them all in their little settlement—but their open hostility and mistrust was gnawing on me. I hadn’t exactly expected to be welcomed with open arms, but this went a little far.
“We’ll do the exchange at the gate then,” he relented when I continued to stare at him. I hadn’t thought that would work—it never did on the guys—but far was it from me to complain.
Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction Page 2