Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction

by Adrienne Lecter

  It was well past ten—usually the time when things started to quiet down, mostly because early sunrise meant more hours of daylight we could spend on the move, and Pia didn’t believe in letting us waste any—when Burns asked how the Chargers had all found each other. Jason and Charlie shared a few glances, and it was Charlie who launched into the story.

  “Easy, really. Most of us were members of the South Colorado militia. We had an informal exercise planned for the weekend when the shit hit the fan. So we found ourselves, armed to the teeth, food and preserves ready, with our children and wives in the middle of nowhere, in the woods north of Grand Junction. Took us a few days to realize what was going on. The first wave passed us by without us even knowing anything had happened. We lost a couple of people when the Denver area started to empty out, but the warnings about the contaminated food hit us before that could become a problem. We did well until the winter.”

  His marked pause made my stomach sink, although the general air of levity remained.

  Jason picked up where his friend had left off.

  “People got sick. The real flu, not this zombie crap. We did well with fortifying our hideout, but we didn’t expect the winter to get so cold so soon. Lost about a third to the cold and diseases that, a year ago, would have barely been a reason to keep the kids home from school for a couple days. That drove us out to look for meds, which got another bunch of us killed. If we hadn’t run into some traders heading east from Utah, we wouldn’t have made it through the winter. They convinced us to pack everyone up and come with them. Best decision we ever made.” The others seemed to agree with him, even though the mood remained—understandably—subdued.

  Charlie took over once more when the booze reached Jason.

  “Then spring came, and it got harder to ignore that there wasn’t really a place for us in the town anymore. All of us, we lost every relative that we had. Those who still had families, they stayed, but we decided to leave. The town needed everything from clothes to preserves to electronics, and who was better suited to go out than those who didn’t have much left to lose? When we heard about the treaty, things were a done deal for us. After months of inactivity, being out here sounded like a damn good alternative to planting crops and bringing in the harvest. Although we might still help with that in the summer. Our people agreed that we could come home and stay for however long we want any time. I’m sure they’d be happy to extend the same to you if we tell them we sent you.”

  Nate shrugged but didn’t look very tempted by the offer. Utah, not a state I’d figured I’d want to settle down in. Then again, I’d never been there, and after last winter, hunkering down somewhere with a little less than several feet of snow wasn’t the worst idea. Just made me wonder how much the warmer climate would draw the shamblers come fall. Unlike me, Nate managed to keep his tone level as he replied. “Thanks, man. Maybe we’ll take you up on that later in the year.”

  Some jokes followed as the bottle made another round, until Jason glanced at our bunch in particular. “So how did you guys meet? And what’s with the wrong head count?”

  Nate looked at me as if he wanted to give me the chance to answer that question, but I refrained, preferring to hide behind the bread I was industriously munching on.

  “We set out as thirteen this spring, but lost one man before we got to Aurora. Seemed only fair to add him to the list, even if he couldn’t annoy the fuck out of us anymore. And ‘thirteen’ sounded better than ‘twelve.’”

  “Could have made it a dozen,” Charlie offered.

  “Too ominous,” Burns interjected. “And too much brainpower needed to count.”

  Martinez didn’t let that slide by uncommented. “For you, maybe, big guy. The rest of us have no issues counting to more than we can with our fingers.”

  Burns answered with a bright smile. “And some of us can just count in inches.”

  That made me groan loudly. “Hate to break it to you, but as most of us can attest after the spectacle today—and trust me when I tell you that none of us wanted to know—that’s not thirteen inches that you have dangling between your legs.”

  Of course that made his smile grow—and hopefully only his smile, or else I was so going to get my shotgun between us. “Just because the water was cold. Gimme five minutes and you can get your ruler ready.”

  Snorting, I shook my head. “You’re such an ass.”

  “Dick,” he corrected me. “The word you were looking for is dick.”

  It was impossible not to let the chorus of laughter get to me, and I shook it off with a smile. “Remind me why I put up with you again?”

  Burns had an answer for that, too. “Because you’d get bored out of your mind without me. Easy as that.”

  Jason had watched our conversation with that intense fascination only drunk people could muster, now glancing between us on the one side and our little command huddle, as usual without me, on the other. “Let me guess. You guys are all former military. Marines maybe?”

  “Army,” Nate was quick to correct him.

  Jason snorted. “Figures. And explains a lot. But you,” he pointed at me, “you’re not a soldier. No offense, but I’ve been around service members most of my life. You just don’t have that same vibe to you.”

  I waited for one of the guys to make a crude comment, but when they all kept their traps shut, I shrugged. “None taken. I’m not a soldier. I’m a scientist. Or was. Not much science to do these days when you’re out on the road.” On some level that still felt like a lie, but it was the truth.

  Some murmurs rose among the Chargers, and it was Charlie who summed up the gist of it. “So, let me guess, you were with USAMRIID and they were your security detail when you embarked on a secret mission to save the world or some shit?”

  I realized that I must have drunk more than I’d wanted to when I couldn’t help but let out an embarrassing, braying laugh. Looking across the fire at Nate, I got a smirk back from him. “I wish,” was what I finally replied. “I never even touched a gun before the world as we knew it went to hell.”

  “Private sector then?” Jason guessed, looking at Nate for confirmation when I started laughing again.

  “I needed her help for a mission,” Nate replied. “Unofficial business. It’s a little complicated.”

  Jason started to look slightly irritated at my antics so I tried to shut up, but it wasn’t easy, particularly when Martinez smirked at me. Yeah, that again. Damn contamination shower. I should have never told any of them about that.

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” Charlie interjected. “You plan your mission. You recruit her. She helps you. You end up sticking together. Not quite so different from what we’ve heard from people all over.”

  Nate opened his mouth to reply, but this time I was faster. “What you just said would have been what everyone else but him would have done. The sane thing, you know? But that’s never what he does. Same as other groups are happy to raid malls while we have to go into a fucking overrun city and chase down supercharged zombies, just for kicks and giggles.”

  Nate gave me a sharp look. “The point was to find out how hard they are to kill. It wasn’t all just fun.”

  “Stressing ‘just,’” I harped at him before I turned back to Charlie and Jason. “He didn’t recruit me. Not in the sense you normally would. Like approach someone, tell them of your plan, convince them to see reason, and they help you. No, he stalked me, got his pet hacker to open up all my records. Then he tracked me down, posing as a harmless jogger in the park. He seduced me. We had some weird kind of deranged, fuck-like-teenagers-on-steroids kind of affair that lasted a couple of weeks. And one afternoon he texts me to check if I’m still at work. In the lab at the biotech company I was working for. And next thing I know these idiots blow up half the building. They chase me through the air ducts. They actually shot me out of the air ducts,” I said, stressing that part. “After they caught me, they almost got me strangled by one of their other hostages, who tried to keep me fr
om being able to cooperate with them. I had no other option but to help them, really, only to get slapped in the face by one of the most insane conspiracy theories ever. Next thing I know, this other bunch here,” I pointed at Martinez, Cho, and Burns, “think it’s funny to blow a few more holes into the building, letting in a raging horde of zombies. Then the whole building comes down on us and I think to myself, shit, this is the worst day of my life. But, guess what? I jinxed it. Because the following weeks were way worse. Plus, I have to put up with these idiots ever since.”

  I was waiting for Nate to add that my recount was wildly exaggerated, but he only grinned back at me. “You did forget the part where it was all about preventing the zombie apocalypse, only that we were too late.”

  “That’s the part you feel I neglected to add?” I snarled back, glaring at him. Might have made more of an impact if I hadn’t been grinning at the same time.

  Jason’s raucous laughter cut off anything else I might have added. Pia used that moment to offer her objections.

  “Romanoff had you rounded up fifteen minutes after we took over the building. If you’d stayed with him, I wouldn’t have had to chase you down twice. If I’d wanted to shoot you, you would have been dead in that bacteria room.”

  That put a momentary damper on my twin outrage and mirth. “You knew that I was hiding in there?”

  I got a shrug in return. “Suspected it. Not many more places to go.”

  “And you still shot at me? You could have killed me! And you knew that he,” I nodded toward Nate, “wanted my cooperation.”

  The blank stare she directed at me made my blood run cold. The slight smile that replaced it wasn’t much better. “I never agreed with that part of the plan,” the Ice Queen retorted, again proving that I’d picked the right monicker for her in my mind. “He had the training, he didn’t need you. You were a wild card at best, a liability at worst. I figured that if I could make you hide for long enough, he would go on with the plan without you. But you were too clumsy to stay out of sight, so we wasted useless hours before we could execute the final stage. Without that, we would have been long gone by the time the other team could track us down and almost foil our plan.” That it had all ended up being pointless didn’t seem to matter. Typical.

  I continued to stare at her for a couple more moments before I elbowed Martinez in the ribs. “See, the only reason why we ever met was because I suck at stealth.”

  He grinned and put his hand over his heart, leaning in as if to kiss me. “My life would be so dull without you in it, chica.”

  After eyeing all of us with bewilderment still strong on his features, Charlie shook his head. “How do you guys even sleep at night without being afraid that she’ll just up and shank you out of spite?”

  Nate shrugged, not a hint of concern in the lines of his body. “She’s loud. She can be vindictive as hell. But she’s smarter than that. Even if she doesn’t always sound like it.”

  I couldn’t let that sit on me like that. “Gee. And I know someone who won’t get laid any time soon.”

  Nate completely ignored me as he went on recounting my finer qualities.

  “She also picked up a few unsavory habits from us, like talking trash all day long. Then again, they offered her to take over the lab in Aurora and she still stuck with us, so maybe the smart part isn’t quite that true.”

  Turning to Burns, I gave his knee a suggestive nudge with mine. “Do you have a ruler? Because the more I think about it, the more curious I get. No idea why.”

  Burns laughed, which went partly ignored by the rest when Pia grew tired of me constantly sidetracking the conversation and finished the recount of how our glorious bunch had come together.

  “Most of the members of our former group decided to set out on their own, but a few of the soldiers they’d sent to stop us joined us. We picked up Santos over there just before leaving the city, and met up with the rest at our reinforced bunker, where we spent the winter. Some stayed behind to help guard our civilians, the rest of us set out on the road. Lewis isn’t completely wrong when she says that Miller here has a thing for idiotic missions, but that you already know, as that is how we met. End of story.”

  I was surprised to hear that she agreed with me, and even more so as I clearly didn’t count among said “civilians” any longer. More so than anything any of the guys could have said that made me feel like I really had made the right decisions—over and over again. And how could I have known that crawling into the air ducts would end up with me beaten and bruised?

  Momentary silence settled, all of us thinking about one particularly fond memory or another, I was sure. Phil broke the spell a while later, almost too inebriated to talk—but then again, he had a reason to. “Tell us how you took down the cannibals. When we heard about that, Jason bitched around like a little girl for a week. Said he wanted us to do the trick.” His eyes glazed over for a moment before they focused on me. “No offense?”

  “I think I bitch like a big girl, usually,” I replied, my smile maybe a little sad but coming easier than I’d expected.

  Burns was only too happy to oblige him. I had to admit, I enjoyed hearing his version of the events, making me sound a lot more badass than I felt—although I could have done without his in-detail recount of how I’d finished off Bates and then went for the cannibal leaders that we’d managed to capture. After he was done—to a chorus of cheers—I couldn’t help but feel like any doubt any of the Chargers still had why I was with my group had disappeared. Not that there seemed to have been much doubt. They’d all known who’d driven that first car that had went down into the plains around Harristown.

  Talk turned to other things, and it was a good half hour later until Jason remembered a detail that we’d mostly glossed over in between all the hilarity ensuing. Looking at Nate and Pia first, he posed the question at me.

  “One of you said you tried to prevent this shit from happening.” No need to explain what he was referring to. “Did you actually have anything to do with that?”

  I didn’t care for the silence that followed, as if no one dared to breathe all of a sudden. I glanced at Nate, trying to glean a hint from him how much he wanted me to explain, but his face remained the stoic mask it usually assumed whenever anyone mentioned Raleigh. Unlike before, I didn’t miss the utter sadness in his eyes. Maybe some details didn’t need to be mentioned.

  “No,” I said, perhaps a little late, considering how heavy the silence had gotten by then. “But someone in the company I was working for had been studying what we’ve coined the super soldier serum. You know, the shit that makes six of us really popular in any settlement now?” Jason gave a quick nod—no need to explain. Two of his guys had gone through that same ordeal, reaping the benefits now. “He was trying to find an antidote for it. To reverse the effects. The terminal one, I guess, but he didn’t really include a mission statement in his notes.” That made Jason perk up, but I shook my head in silent negation before he could ask. “He never finished his work. His coworker infected him with the live strain of the virus, and because his antidote wasn’t working yet, he died. I managed to destroy all stored material that was still in the building, but as we all know, all that was too little, too late. I’m not even sure how any of that is connected to the zombies, except that it’s the same basic virus. None of the people working in that building would have been stupid enough to unleash that on the world, let alone hit all of us like they did. I could go into the details, but my guys usually shut me up whenever I whip out the biochem jargon.”

  Charlie nodded, but Jason still wasn’t satisfied. “That doesn’t really make any sense. If the dude was dead already—“

  “He was my brother,” Nate answered, immediately silencing anything else Jason might have said. “I needed to know what exactly had happened, and I needed to put a final end to anything that was still going on about his research. Bree I recruited because at his funeral, she was the only one who wasn’t repeating the same lame tale about h
ow he must have gotten sloppy and infected himself. That’s what made me notice her in the first place.”

  The moment was heavy enough that it needed some levity. Cocking my head to the side, I gave Nate my most insipid smile. “Aw, you’re so sweet. Any way you look at it, I doomed myself. A match made in heaven.” I got a smile in return that made me revert my previous threat about my celibacy stint. It wasn’t like Nate ever took me serious about that anyway.

  Chatter picked up again and I spent a few minutes just listening to the jokes going around the fire, but my mind kept snagging back to the recount of how things had started between all of us. More specifically, the reason why Nate had launched his operation. Something bothered me about it. Something just didn’t sit quite right with me. Not that anything that had been said wasn’t something I’d known for a year now—except for Pia being a sneaky bitch, but that was one battle I would never fight—but I’d been so preoccupied with surviving that I’d never really spared much thought about it. Yet since Aurora, my thoughts inevitably kept returning to the central premise—what if we could have prevented all this? A moot point as the virus hadn’t originated from the Green Fields Biotech labs. But still—

  “Nate?” He raised his brows at me when I spoke up. “Do you have a minute?”

  He gave me a look that told me that he was a breath away from making fun of my phrasing, but instead got up and nodded toward the Rover—to a chorus of raunchy cheers. I rolled my eyes—and it wasn’t quite coincidental that I knocked Burns in the shoulder with my knee—but followed Nate into the gloom away from the fire without setting anyone straight. Leaning against the front of the car, Nate crossed his arms over his chest and waited for me to say something, but there was still a hint of humor ghosting around his lips. I was sure that I’d just need to say the word and we could postpone that talk in favor of what everyone apparently assumed we were up to. Which, considering that I felt like I’d been beaten to within an inch of my life was kind of hilarious. Then again, I also felt like a life-affirming victory fuck was in order. Later maybe.