Nate and I both ended up in our own, private bubble of misery. His smirk disappeared twenty seconds into our gruesome work, but long before we were done, I couldn’t help but crack a smile of my own. As disgusting as this was, it was also hilarious. Then I remembered the sheer lunacy of our undertaking, and gone was most of my mirth once more. We both knew that we had to do this—but that didn’t help. At all. Sometimes, being the one with the bright ideas just plain sucked.
It was a good twenty minutes before the car reappeared and Burns came to a halt next to us, not chancing opening the door or cracking a window as he let out what I hoped wouldn’t be his last, worst one-liner. “Best ghillie suit ever.”
I briefly considered getting up, wrenching that door open, and giving him a good, long hug, but decided that staying stretched out on the ground was more favorable. The less I moved, the less I’d feel what I was covered in. And there was a good chance that I’d need all that energy that was buzzing unspent through my muscles soon enough.
“Can we get this underway? As much as I love my new corpse suit, let’s not prolong this unnecessarily,” I offered, looking over to Nate. How he managed not to retch from the stench was beyond me. The bandana he had tied over his nose and lower half of his face couldn’t make much of a difference. With my breathing mask on I already felt like I would hurl any moment now.
“Your wish is my command,” Nate said, the words understandable because his throat mic picked them up. “Everyone knows what to do? Good. Then let’s hope we won’t get each other killed.”
At a last glance at him, I rolled fully onto my front, getting as comfortable as I could with my sniper rifle. Our first—and main—objective was to take out the two zombies we’d tagged before. The rest was optional. Because she would likely go down with just one moderately good hit I’d gotten assigned the female. It only took me a few moments to get her in my scope again. She—it—was still busy chewing on the cow. Exhaling slowly, I forced my mind to empty and pulled the trigger.
The shot wasn’t perfect, but with the caliber of rounds that the M24 was packing, the torso hit was enough to make the body sink to the ground and stay down. Instinctively I checked the other target, only a few feet away, but the muted thud of Nate taking a shot should have told me already what I could visually confirm a moment later—a perfect head shot. There wasn’t much above the neck remaining, so I figured that was the end of one more juiced-up zombie. Now for the fun part.
The car rumbled down into the valley below as soon as Nate gave them the signal, the sound and motion drawing every zombie’s attention, already alert from the two rifle shots ringing out across the rolling hills. Yet only a few let off from where they were still gorging on cow or sleeping it off to give chase. As I squeezed off round after round, I tried to find good targets, but they were few and far between—in the mass of zombies that waited down there. It should have been easy, really, but I didn’t want to waste ammo on just any undead fucker. And as placid as the horde had seemed en masse, those that sprang up and went for the car made good, if hard to hit, targets.
I didn’t count how many times I pulled the trigger, but I hit at least two out of five shots. I was waiting for Nate to berate me, but he was busy decimating the set-up spare ammo between us, for once focused on something else than bitching at my performance. It was that more than anything else that made me realize that the training wheels were off—today I was expected to pull my own weight, and it wasn’t his problem anymore if my accuracy left a lot to be desired. No pressure whatsoever. Great.
The last of the spare rounds hit, and I took another moment to track the car where it took a sharp turn toward the left, hopping onto a small road that ran perpendicular to the river that had carved its way through the valley. There were a good hundred zombies giving chase, with several more streaming in that direction, but now that they had solid ground back under their wheels, the car was already accelerating. Nate’s sniper rifle gave two more loud barks, and he was done. I was already scrambling to my feet as he slapped my upper arm in a silent signal to get moving. Under different circumstances we would have taken the cartridge casings with us, but we barely had minutes to do what we'd come here for—salvage would have to wait for another day. Or never, as I couldn’t quite see us return for thin loot like that. Maybe some other group would happen upon it in the weeks or years to come. Who knew?
Focus, right. I forced my attention to snap to the zombies directly ahead of us at the valley floor as we half walked, half trotted down the slope to join them. Stealth was one thing, but they were already agitated, and two lone figures moving were a lot less interesting than the loud car in the distance and the screams and howls of the zombies giving chase. I was surprised when we barely drew any attention, and within minutes we’d reached the cow carcass we’d been aiming for. My pulse was racing but—so far—my hands were steady, fear making me focused rather than insane with panic.
Nate quite eloquently used a stone to bash in what remained of the skull of the male zombie, although it was obvious at a glance that this one wouldn’t get up again. There wasn't really much left to be bashed in, but better to be careful. Our little experiment in Sioux Falls had taught us as much—and now more than ever I was happy that we’d gone that extra mile and made sure that a severed spine at the neck was the surefire way to take them out. The first thing I checked on my corpse was her neck—one mark only. She was dead for good—and looked it—but the blood oozing from the huge hole in her chest cavity still looked like what was supposed to come out of wounds, not the goo I was covered in. It was hard to pull my attention away from her sightless, staring eyes, but I forced myself to act quickly, checking her throat first, followed by both arms.
“Nothing,” I whispered, barely loud enough for my throat mic to pick it up. Nate looked up and shook his head. Same over there. I was already about to get up and head for the next sunken heap that used to be a zombie when he knelt down next to me and yanked something from the corpse’s neck. When he saw me looking, Nate briefly opened his hand before he closed it around the two sets of thin metal plates.
“Dog tags,” he murmured. “Whoever they were, if we can tell someone that they died, we will. Let’s go.”
I let him take the lead, following in a lumbering half-crouch. The gesture with the tags made me feel kind of weird. None of the people who’d originally been with Nate had any, but I knew that Burns, Martinez, Cho, and Santos still had theirs. The thought that should they bite it, someone would maybe find them and drop them off at the next settlement was oddly comforting. Me? I didn’t even have a tattoo on my body except for the damn marks that would identify me as anything but a random scavenger, and as much as the washed-out red color at the ends of my hair annoyed me sometimes, it wasn’t enough to make me unique.
A zombie taking a little too much casual interest in me made my mind snap back to what was important right now. It remained hunched over the remains of another cow carcass, but it continued to follow my progress until it was out of my field of vision—and likely didn’t stop there, just because I wasn’t watching it in turn any longer. A few more heads raised, dead eyes following us. So not good.
We reached the next shambler that we’d taken out. Nate was quick to check its neck, pat down the partly torn camouflage jacket, then look for needle marks. Nothing. He took off again and I followed, increasingly nervous as more and more zombies looked at us.
“I really don’t like this.”
“Don’t like what?” he asked as he stopped for a moment, crouching down.
“That they are staring at us,” I replied. “I don’t think our little dress-up attempt is working.”
I’d barely uttered the words when one of our creepy onlookers decided that we were an edible source of protein and fat, and came right for us. I had the butt of my shotgun ready—still unwilling to blow its head off and alert every other, so far subdued zombie—but Nate simply punched it in the throat before sending it to the ground with a kick. T
wo more to the head followed, turning what was left of its brain to mush. A quick, violent, effective takedown. The zombie gave a last, hard jerk before it stilled, but from my other side I heard a telltale hiss that made me aware that we weren’t out of the thick of it yet.
Another zombie came at us, and this time I got to use the stock of my shotgun to bash its face in. It fell away, wounded but not mortally so, apparently deciding that we weren’t worth it after all. Two more thought differently, but Nate took them down before they could become a problem. In the heat of the moment his bandana slipped down, and it was when the remaining zombies all focused on me that I realized something.
“It’s your face,” I whisper-shouted, too busy to articulate my sudden epiphany as I dispatched another shambler. The moment I had some air, I scrambled to get the snap of my helmet undone and pulled it off. The breathing mask followed to pool around my neck. I sneered at the next zombie that came for me—it had worked on that base once, why not again?—and, true enough, the shambler lost interest after rearing back, instead falling on one of the dead we’d left on the ground. A few more kept eyeing us critically, but then joined their undead brothers and sisters.
Nate was panting just as heavily as I was as we looked at each other across the gruesome ongoings between us. He gave a slight shrug, then motioned for me to join him and turn around. Within seconds, he had my helmet secured to my pack, and off we went again. Eerie as that had been, I wasn’t going to protest.
Although the zombies ignored us for the most part, with the car disappearing to the south, their restlessness became more palpable. We checked on five more bodies, but the results were the same. Until we crouched down next to what I hoped was the last—and hit gold.
At a first glance, it didn’t look that healthy, but that was mostly due to the dried blood in its short hair and beard. There was only a single X, but as soon as Nate turned the body over, I noticed the puncture marks all over the side of its neck. A few quick slices with the knife had the arms uncovered, revealing many more. That, and what looked like barely scabbed-over wounds from restraints that had been too tight. Nate found the same on the ankles as he pulled the laced-up boots off its feet. Through my gloves I couldn’t quite say if the skin and muscle underneath felt like a human’s, but there was still very little give, and the color wasn’t too far off. No tech shit strapped to the jacket our mark had been wearing before it had met its untimely end, but maybe it was better not to get all my suspicions confirmed at once.
“Go?” Nate asked when I looked back to him after eyeing the spread-out mass around us critically. I didn’t need to think twice, just nodded and got up. We’d found what we’d come here for—now it was time to hit the road.
Chapter 12
The way back out of the valley was short but all the more nerve-wracking for it. Before we were ten feet away from the last dead body, zombies from all around streamed toward it, turning it into so much gore within seconds. They kept watching us, a few coming closer, the tension in the air rising with every step that we took. Nate pulled me down into a crouch a few times, pretending he was looking at something on the ground, but even us staying in one place like that, motionless, didn’t make them lose interest completely. Everything inside of me screamed for me to run, but I knew that would have ended badly, fast. Our camouflage, whatever it was worth, wasn’t working effectively. Even hitting the odd zombie that got too close wasn’t doing much anymore. We’d overstayed our welcome, and I couldn’t be out of here fast enough.
It took us forever to make it back to the slope, and I had the feeling that every time I slipped or stumbled, a million eyes behind me were judging whether I was acceptable food now, or if they should still wait a little longer. Halfway up, Nate stopped and silently gestured for me to take the lead, making me realize that I wasn’t just being paranoid. They seemed to show a little more reservation toward him, but we still had a small trail of zombies coming up after us. Just before the first one topped the rise, I flattened myself to the ground in the high grass, Nate dropping down beside me. We remained there for a good twenty minutes, watching the undead lumbering across the meadow, going this way and that, confused where their quarry had ended up. The sky overhead grew darker and darker until it started to drizzle, then rain, the thick drops quickly plastering my hair to my head. At least that would, eventually, take care of all the gore still smeared all across my gear.
The last lurking shambler lost interest and returned to the valley, letting us get up and start our way back to camp—after sneaking the mile back up north to gather the spent cartridges. Neither of us said a word, relying on gestures and looks alone. There wasn’t really anything to say, and the less sound we made, the better. The rain had turned into a veritable downpour as we passed the barn and angled southeast, aiming for the intersection where we’d hopefully meet the other two again.
With elation now replacing fear, adrenaline-taut muscles relaxing one after the other, I couldn’t help but crack a smile that Nate returned. That one had been a close call—but we’d made it.
One upside of the rain? We were the only thing moving out there, because anything with two braincells to rub together hid under trees or bushes. A few times we spied the odd cluster of zombies in the distance, but the streak had done a great job depopulating the area all around the valley, leaving us almost on our own. Feeling the rain slowly soak through my gear would have been enough to make me miserable any day, but it was all but impossible to really weigh down my spirit, with me still a little high on my own supply. It was a good three miles from the valley—and maybe another from the intersection we were heading toward—when I broke the silence, unable to keep my thoughts from bubbling over my lips.
“This was so fucking awesome.”
Nate snorted, but I could tell from the way his eyes were alight that he didn’t disagree with me.
“Turning into a little adrenaline junkie, are we now?” he guessed.
I thought about that, shrugging it off, but then forced myself to get real. “Still. We need to stop doing shit like this,” I said, stopping briefly to clear my throat. Nate gave me a sidelong glance but seemed only too happy to let me go on uninterrupted. “We’re getting too cocky. Just because we had a few close calls that we made it out of unscathed doesn’t mean this is going to continue like that.”
Nate remained silent for a few moments, a pensive look on his face.
“Things worked as well as could be expected,” he pointed out.
“Pessimist much?” I teased before I forced myself to get serious once more. “We were about three minutes away from getting torn to shreds. Didn’t you feel the tension in the air? One loud sound, one motion that was too fast, and they would have been on us.”
“But it didn’t happen.”
“And your camouflage?” I went on with my rant, my voice slowly gaining heat. “That was the bust of the century. Did you just do that to annoy me? Seriously. I don’t think I’ll feel clean even if I end up soaking in every lake we encounter all summer long.”
He shook his head, unperturbed. “It worked. Maybe not perfectly, but it made a difference. They reacted a lot more docile toward me than when I was down there the first time with Zilinsky.”
“But they were honing in on me.”
Nate shrugged. “At least now we know that they still react to social cues. Facial expressions, posturing; likely aggressive behavior in general. That could prove useful next time.”
“There shouldn’t be a next time—if we’re smart,” I replied.
“There will always be a next time.”
“We’re provoking them. You know that. Who is that fucking stupid?”
A rhetorical question, really, but Nate still gave me a grin. “Us, apparently.”
Against my better judgement that made me chortle with mirth. “How come I’m suddenly the voice of reason?”
“You are?” he wondered, his tone belying any affirmation that his smile might have conveyed.
&nbs
p; “I am,” I insisted. “You don’t get it, do you? We are all losing our natural instincts. I was a lot less afraid going down there than driving the car into the mass around Harristown.”
“You weren’t exactly relaxed today.”
I shook my head. “Why, wanna offer me a good back rub? No, but I wasn’t scared shitless like I should have been. I’m getting stupid, and so are you. Just because it’s been months since we lost anyone doesn’t mean we’re not hours away from that happening again. Look at Jason’s guys. They lost one of theirs yesterday, almost two. And several over the winter, when they were out and about and not hunkering down in a place like we did. We just think we’re invincible because we hit an enormous lucky streak. It’s just not worth it.”
I only got a shrug in return, so I shut up and spent the next five minutes stewing over my own words. I wasn’t exactly feeling morose, but with the exhilaration leaking out of me, it was hard to ignore just how lucky we’d been. And, as little as I believed in karma, it was only a matter of time until our luck would run dry. Statistics, if nothing else, proved that.
It was only then that I realized something else.
“You didn’t contradict me,” I said, staring off over the darkening plains.
“No, I didn’t,” Nate replied. He left it at that even when I eyed him askance, but that could have gotten lost in the gloom.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 16