“I have something I need to bounce off of you,” I started. He just kept staring at me flatly, so I jumped right in. “What exactly was it that Raleigh wanted to accomplish?” Nate opened his mouth, clearly poised to deliver one of his favorite scathing remarks, but I forestalled him with a raised hand. “Bear with me. I’ve had almost three weeks now to think this over, and I’m not sure that what is going on in Aurora is what they wanted me to think they’re actually doing.”
He mulled that over for a moment. “You think they are lying to us.”
I nodded. “They’re not working on a cure. The cure was your brother’s pet project. It was never what they hired him for. Back then, they were still tweaking the virus itself, their super soldier serum. And the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that they never stopped their efforts. They’ve just put a different ribbon around everything to keep selling it to the people as their salvation.”
He stared at me for several seconds before he shrugged. Not the reaction I’d expected. “Makes sense,” he offered.
“It does?” I echoed, not quite sure how to take that. “So you don’t think I’m letting my paranoia get the better of me?”
He gave that some thought. “Honestly, it does sound a little crazy, but then we’re neck deep in zombies. What doesn’t sound crazy in this world? And it’s the perfect explanation for why less than a month ago you managed to run away from a bunch of the super freaks, and today they almost got us in the car, speeding over open ground.”
As much as I hated being the butt-end of a joke, I would have preferred that to his acknowledgment.
“So you agree with me? That there’s a chance they are still working on a yet more potent version of the serum, even after their very virus almost killed all of us? I do have an alternate explanation for the tech we found strapped to that zombie, or the reason why it looked so damn healthy.”
“Which is?” he asked, raising his brows.
Exhaling forcefully, I explained. “To have a chance at developing a vaccine that would work in the uninfected, they would have to study the infected. I could be wrong, but from what we’ve seen, zombies don’t really have much of a normal metabolism left, even if they puke and defecate. They would need to study a subject that was infected but still alive to, maybe, possibly, find a mechanism to bring the spread of the infection to a halt. Even if enough of us still get infected, none of that happens near a lab and someone who can take samples to study later. Now, if you were to manually infect someone, or shoot one of you guys full of syrup, there’d be a chance to conduct a full time-course experiment, straight out of a textbook. And who really gives a shit if a bunch of scavengers disappear off the face of the earth?”
Nate grimaced, but I saw in his eyes that he believed me. Not that it was what had happened, from what we could tell—but it was entirely within the realm of possibility.
“There’d be track marks visible, right?” he asked. “They’d gather as much data as possible.”
I nodded. “They’d draw blood at least every two hours, maybe as often as every thirty minutes. Even a body with fast healing would show signs, particularly if wound healing would come to a complete stop upon death. Not that we know if zombies recover from bruising, but I’d expect there to be some marks or scars.”
“And if it happened recently, the zombies would look more healthy than those that have been out for an entire year now,” Nate finished my thought. Again. I hated that, of all times, it had to happen now.
Silence fell and stretched, making me stare at the ground between us, little of it that was visible in the dark. “We could check,” I proposed, surprised that I had to suppress a certain amount of giddiness. “I really didn’t pay any attention to the shamblers today, but if we catch up to the remaining horde, we could visually check, from afar, if any of them look fresh. Maybe hunt a few down, see if they have puncture marks. We could also check if more of the juiced ones have something strapped to them, or if they got the tattoos. Not that if we find all that it would be conclusive, but—“
“But the very idea that there’s someone abusing us as guinea pigs for whatever reason is reason enough for me to get suspicious,” Nate replied.
I nodded. “Yup. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“How so?”
I shrugged. “Remember that horde of zombies that surprised us back at the bunker? With the caves? That looked like an entire settlement. What if they were infected deliberately? It might sound crazy at first, but what happened at Harristown today just has my teeth on edge. I still can’t quite believe that we managed to draw so many of them away without them following us back. Who says that it’s coincidence? Maybe it was all just a test run, and when we swept in, they pulled out their most valuable subjects, leaving us to clean up the foot soldiers?”
“To what end?” Nate asked, sounding more like he was debating the question himself rather than demanding an answer from me.
“You tell me,” I replied. “Control? Blackmail? Sheer and utter madness? Don’t forget, there’s someone out there who engineered the zombie virus from the serum. It’s easy to see that undefined ‘them’ as one amorphous, hidden enemy, but it could be two, or maybe even many more factions. Someone who created the serum. Someone who used the virus to infect as many people as possible. Someone who’s looking for a cure. Someone who still wants to create the perfect weapon. Someone who’s just plain out evil and does shit because they can. Who knows? As much as I dislike Brandon Stone and whoever he’s working for because they banned all of us to the fringes of society, I don’t think that he’s the kind of man who would jeopardize a settlement of hundreds, and leave the zombie horde to roam the countryside uncontrolled and strong out there. Then again, I don’t think he’d have many qualms about sacrificing some of us in the sake of finding a cure. Or maybe I’m completely wrong, which is entirely possible, seeing as in the past I never thought that he was more than an overpaid secretary.”
Nate was silent for longer than I was comfortable with, making me wonder not for the first time if there were still bits and pieces that he was hiding from me. His voice was just a little gruff when he finally answered, telling me nothing.
“Honestly, I don’t think he would have been stupid enough to give you wrong information. He seemed genuinely upset when you decided to throw your lot in with us. If he’d so obviously lied to you as to tell you he was looking for a cure but really trying to fine-tune the serum, he’d have had to expect that you’d turn on him sooner rather than later once you found out the truth. For all the misgivings I have about him, I believe him when he said he was trying to make a difference.” He paused, offering up a snort. “But I don’t think he’d have any qualms shooting me up with contaminated sugar and watching me turn into a monster. He’d probably even get a kick out of it. My guess is as good as yours. Right now, all we have are theories and wild speculation.”
I waited for him to say the words that I didn’t want to hear, but they didn’t come—so I uttered them, my pulse starting to race. That couldn’t have been anticipation, right? No.
“We’re going hunting again, aren’t we?”
Nate nodded, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a smirk. “Damn straight we are.”
Chapter 10
Another night spent tossing and turning, although I should have been exhausted enough to be out cold the moment I rolled up inside my sleeping bag. After listening to that for more than an hour, Nate—quite grumpily—suggested a solution that might take some of the edge off, but I tartly informed him that I could very well keep it in my pants for another few days until we made it to Dispatch. Usually, I had fewer qualms about getting it on while everyone else was more or less forced into perpetual celibacy, but with the Chargers around the very idea of sex made me feel downright uncomfortable. Not that I’d gotten the impression that anyone would view me as the camp slut—if anything, they seemed to see me as Nate’s wife, if not completely asexual—but it just didn’t
seem right. Listening to Phil cough through the night didn’t help. The events at Harristown had indeed made me feel like celebrating being alive and healthy, but the stale aftertaste our exit had left on my tongue was still there. Not even knowing that in the morning, we would go out there again to get up close and personal with the undead helped. Yay for me and my paranoia. But at least I wouldn’t be spending the day watching Phil die.
First light came both way sooner than I’d wanted, and much, much later than I’d yearned for. I was up as soon as I could justify leaving the comfortable chill of the car, exchanging it for the much less bearable early morning cold outside. There were drunk and hungover men everywhere, mostly sleeping and snoring, making it quite the task to tiptoe over to where Martinez had started the coffee early. Only Nate, I, and two volunteers—Pia and Burns—would be going on the sortie today, leaving the rest of us to guard the camp until we either returned, or Jason was ready to take the rest of his men to Dispatch. There was no question now that Phil was on his last day, and the least we owed him and his comrades was to give them all the time they needed.
No one had protested last night when Nate had explained what we were about to do—skipping over some of the details, but dishing out a lot more than I would have volunteered. Then again, everyone had by then heard about the pieces of tech that we’d found on that one zombie, and it was probably a good idea not to leave speculations running wild if we could show everyone that we were on it. “It,” of course, being to investigate, and considering how that had gone down last time in Sioux Falls, that would likely include me being up to my elbows in gore. What else was new?
Because the Rover had no real back row anymore, we took the Land Cruiser that Burns, Martinez, and Cho shared. Most of the medical supplies and all of the cargo usually stored in it remained in camp, but in their stead we had two crates full of explosives with us. A year ago that very thought would have scared me shitless; now I wasn’t more than moderately concerned, even when we hit the odd bump in the road. As long as I didn't have to handle them I was fine. Burns was driving while I was riding shotgun. It was a quiet morning, the day promising to remain somewhat cool with clouds passing by overhead. We hadn’t bothered with breakfast in camp, so I still had some leftover bread from the day before to chew on while Burns angled us ever northwest, toward where we expected the remainders of the zombie horde to be off to. It might have been faster to just drive back to Harristown and follow the riverbed from there, but we were hoping to cut ahead of the streak instead. I had no idea if we were still in Missouri or already in Iowa—everything looked the same to me in the early rays of sunshine that broke through the cloud cover occasionally.
The prospect of going hunting for zombies yet again made me a little queasy, but that might have been just the coffee. Maybe I was getting high on my own supply, but after Sioux Falls I couldn’t help but feel like this was less of a suicide mission than it should have been. And what was the worst that could happen?
No one was talking, but for once I didn’t mind. Depending on my mood, Nate was usually either chatty or happy to leave me be, but it was highly unusual for Burns to keep his trap shut. Yesterday evening’s merry recounting had brought up a few notions that I was conflicted about. It bothered me a little that now I was asking myself just how close I’d come to Pia taking me out—for the good of the mission. Then again, after that she had never given me any reason to doubt her. Particularly in the first weeks of our trek across the country she’d helped me—taught me the most basic self-defense and offense moves in martial arts, made sure I was upping my agility game, things like that. Except for Nate himself, she’d been the most adamant about teaching me how to shoot, and how to keep my weapons in top condition. No one had made her do that, and it hadn’t been necessary—the guys would have done so gladly, I was sure. Only that, of course, it had been easier to train hand-to-hand combat with her and Martinez, where no misplaced grip or accidental grope could turn awkward in seconds. Martinez and I were also best matched where height and weight were concerned. Even on a bad day, Burns could easily bench-press me. Over the course of the winter I’d won a few sparring rounds against Pia, albeit never the entire fight. I was still asking myself why exactly she hadn’t balked at me co-managing our little band of misfits, but I knew that she respected me. More importantly, she’d always have my back.
Yet still, her admission bothered me on some level. Why of all the close calls I’d had over the past year that bothered me now, I couldn’t tell. It certainly didn’t take my mind off what we were about to do.
It took us almost four hours to track down the zombies, and not for lack of trying. One would have thought that a group well over a thousand strong was easy to find, but alas, it wasn’t so. The logical thing to do was track the riverbed upward and try to cross it about thirty miles north of Harristown. That was about how far they should have come since yesterday. But once we got there, we only saw a few lonesome shamblers swaying along the cracked and previously flooded road. No wide berth of churned earth, no carcasses left in the horde’s wake. So we went west, until we hit the I-35 between Bethany and Osceola, expecting the zombies to have been smart enough to take the way of least resistance. Last summer, the interstates had always been a hazard, but now we were met by a deserted stretch of road gently sloping through the meadows. Nate went as far as to get out and check the ditches, returning with a rather alarming realization—the highway seemed to have been frequented until very recently, but now there was no trace of the zombies left. The streak was gathering strength again, likely negating everything that we’d risked our lives for. That bothered me. A lot. And not just because that meant we’d have to face more of them. The more zombies, the harder it would be to track down those we were looking for.
Further west we went, until we finally hit gold—but only because the horde had run into something that seemed to have even more draw than whatever kept them together: food. As we topped a rise, another broad valley opened before us, and across the lower plateau there they were, feasting on what remained of well over fifty cow carcasses. I wondered if those had been “our” cows that we’d tracked a few days ago. There was of course no way of telling, but we weren’t too far from where we’d started chasing the herd. That meant that the settlement that hadn’t given us the time of day was close, too. I wondered if I should have spoken up in favor of trying to reach them via radio to warn them, but considering that I was the only one in the car with just a single mark on my neck I held my tongue. Besides, with luck the zombies would continue heading in their previous direction, and that would lead them past the settlement, not toward it. There was a good chance that the radio still wasn’t working. It hadn’t, last night before we made camp.
Burns didn’t leave the car up on the rise but let it roll back as soon as we’d all gotten a good look at what lay beyond, then reversed and drove a good two miles back the way we had come, over to a small barn we’d seen by the side of the road. Nate and Pia got out to check it for squatters, and five minutes later the car was safely stowed away, with the four of us making the way back on foot. I’d brought my Mossberg, as usual ignoring Nate’s gripe, but didn’t intend to use the shotgun much, if at all. Today was all about working from a distance, so my sniper rifle would hopefully be all I needed. It had been a few weeks since I’d shot it, but I had a certain feeling that I’d get to use most of the forty spare rounds of ammo that I’d packed.
As we closed in on the rise, Nate gestured us to spread out—me and Burns toward the north, him and Pia south. By the time I got a glimpse at the valley below, the other two were barely visible through the high grass anymore, blending in well. Burns gave me a bright grin that made some of the flutters in my stomach quiet down, and together we crawled the last yards to make sure not to stand out silhouetted against the sky.
Exhaling slowly, I settled into a comfortable position on the ground and adjusted the scope before I started scanning the crowds below. The valley was a good four miles w
ide, and with the gentle slope of the grassy hills I could see most of the area from where I was. There was no telling how many more zombies were further south or beyond the rise and swell that I could take in—but the knowledge that we were once more so close to so many of them made my heart thud with fear. Around the larger lumps of the cow carcasses they looked almost like flies.
Static crackled in my ear, followed by Nate’s voice on the open com channel. “Remember what we’re here for. Report anything unusual that you see. Do not engage at all if all of them look just the same to you. Actually, do not engage unless you really have to.” That last bit was likely not meant for me. I usually wasn’t that trigger happy.
I didn’t acknowledge his order, knowing all too well that he expected it to be followed. Remaining as immobile and silent as possible was key.
It took me a little to achieve that quiet focus needed to clear my mind, for my hands to stop shaking, until my view finally evened out. I started at the closest carcass, a good three hundred yards away. The bones of the massive ribcage were showing, making me estimate that the cow had found its end during the night, maybe the early morning. It was hard to guess. So far I’d never paid attention to how quickly zombies decimated food, always trying to get away as fast as possible myself. They were moving slow and sluggish as they continued to tear at flesh and viscera, but that was likely both from the fact that it was daylight, and they’d had ample time to gorge themselves. All of the ten zombies at the carcass that I could at least partially see looked just as we’d gotten used to—none too fresh, with obvious signs of decay marring their bodies, but all-over still intact and moving. None of them looked what I would have described as newer. Their clothes were tatters only, making it obvious that they’d been out and about for a long time.
Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction Page 14