“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 how 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.
“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 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.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 14