We reached the intersection a few minutes later. There was no car waiting—or anywhere nearby, hidden under a tarp—with no tire tracks in the grown-over muddy ruts the road had gotten covered with over the winter. We hadn’t been fast; the others should have made it here well ahead of us. “Looks like we’re taking the long way home,” I noted when Nate took one last look around and continued walking.
Clearing my throat, I followed him, but couldn’t keep the silence up any longer. “Was it worth the risk today? What did we actually learn? Correct me if I’m wrong, but we know exactly as much as we did this morning.”
He took his time to reply, which in and of itself set my nerves on edge once more.
“We know that something is going on out there,” he offered.
“That last one could have gotten infected the usual way, and he just happened to be somewhere people would take samples,” I said. “Or he could have been a junkie. There’s no real way we can say when the needle marks happened. Or why he was restrained. If we were hiding out somewhere and one of us was turning, we’d probably tie him up, too. And once fully zombified, those restraints just didn’t hold any longer.”
Nate gave me a look that spoke clearly that he’d never let it come to that, reminding me all too well of just how effortless he and the Ice Queen had made dispatching zombies by hand look. I couldn’t suppress an involuntary shudder.
“Are you going to say something to that, or just leave me to stew in silence?” I asked, maybe a little sharply.
“What do you want me to say? That we should start jumping at our own shadows? That we can’t trust anyone out there that’s still alive?” When I shrugged in return, Nate snorted. “Been there, done that, didn’t really like how stupid it made me feel. As it is, we know squat. If something weird is going on, it’s on a much smaller scale than we were guessing. Too small a scale to pin it down right now. Are you really pissed that we didn’t stumble right over the next big conspiracy? If we come across something suspicious in the future, we can go all paranoid. But as it is, I think we’re jumping at shadows. If we follow down that road, we’ll end up holed up in a bunker again before summer ramps up. Do you want that? I’m sure that your friends in Aurora will take you back in a pinch, even after you bitch-slapped them in the face.”
My first reaction was to go off at his sarcastic remark, but instead I chose to swallow my ire and give him some of his stoic silence in return. So all of a sudden my concerns were invalid? Then there was no reason to continue to bore him with them. I was itching to scoff at him for making me sound all hostile now when it had been Nate who couldn’t get away from the settlements fast enough, but so be it. Neither of us was above hypocrisy. And, right now, I really wasn’t in the mood to fight.
It turned out, we didn’t have to walk all the way back to camp as about two hours later, a familiar dark car came lumbering down the road in the other direction, meeting us halfway between two small patches of trees. One look at the cargo lashing belts Burns threw at us, and I knew the ride back wasn’t going to be a smooth one. I could kind of sympathize, with us drenched to the bone and still covered in bits of decaying zombie, but it didn’t exactly brighten my mood. It was oddly fitting to return to camp more or less strapped to the back of the car, standing on the reinforced rear bumper. Nate was grinning into the rain that kept splashing our faces, his mood at least somewhat infectious. In the end, the only thing that counted was that we’d gotten away—today was good.
Then we arrived at our camp, and my slight smile found an abrupt end. One look at the smoldering remains of the pyre, stacked up to the side as not to set anything else alight, and what remained of my usually sunny disposition went down the drain. I could understand why Phil had decided to hang himself shortly after we’d left the camp, but that didn’t change the fact that the acrid smell that hung in the air tugged on memories that I didn’t need to relive. I also didn’t need the look—condescending as hell—that Nate taxed me with as he rounded on me. “Shake it off. You’ve had a month to get over it. Trust me, all of us have managed to get someone else killed along the way. You’re not the first, and you’re not going to be the last. It’s about time for you to stop moping over it.”
I just stared at him, speechless, before I turned around and stalked off, my spine stiff enough that it should have snapped.
So much for a little compassion.
But deep down, I knew that he was right. I hated to admit it, but he was right. I needed to move past what had happened to Bates. It was just so much easier to say so than actually do it.
With no need to stay any longer, the others started breaking camp while Martinez helped me scrub the grisly remains off my gear before I shucked it in favor of my second set of backups. The entire interior of the Rover was reeking of bleach, just making this oh so glorious day a little worse yet. I was tempted to either ask for one of the guys to let me catch a ride with them or bully Nate to switch with someone, but I knew that he’d just ridicule me—rightly so—and that was the last thing I needed. Instead, I gnashed my teeth in silence as I followed Jason’s lead car back out onto the winding country roads, heading ever east.
Chapter 13
It took us three more days to make it to Dispatch. Three boring, uneventful days full of munching bread that was starting to go stale, with a side of warm beans and the odd dried fruits. Three days of Nate and me barely exchanging ten words while we were on the road. I wasn’t exactly pissed off, but as soon as I could get away from him, I did. Cabin fever, no doubt. The nights were warm enough now to sleep outside, so that’s what I did, usually somewhere between Burns and Martinez—my default to fall back onto whenever I wasn’t paired with anyone else. I could tell that Nate was about as exasperated with me as I was with him, but he didn’t speak up, so I just let it go on, hoping that once we got a little space, the tension between us would fizzle out. I was tempted to get a little passive-aggressive so things would come to a head instead, but refrained. That was stupid, immature behavior that would have proven him right, and consequently not anything I wanted to engage in. Something akin to this had happened before, a few times during the winter months. I’d never really been a loner, but since the shit had hit the fan last year, I hadn’t gone a single day without being around the very same people—and that usually meant Nate. As much as I didn’t miss the bunker with all its cramped space, at least there’d been the perimeter to guard, with lots of clean, fresh air around and miles between me and anyone except for who I was with on watch detail. Now it was just the damn car and the camp, over and over and over again.
I might not have confronted Nate, and I certainly avoided him where I could, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t watching him like a hawk as soon as we made camp each night. He certainly gave me enough to think about. Something about his behavior on our long trek back from that valley continued to tick me off. Maybe it was only now that I noticed, but he spent a lot more time checking in with Pia and Andrej than anyone else—but also with Burns, Campbell, and Bailey, the other lucky recipients of that super soldier serum. With every single watch shift, one of them was out and about, usually armed with a night vision scope. They also checked in with each other. I would probably have chalked all that up to me being oblivious before if not for Martinez pulling me aside the evening before we reached our destination, asking cautiously what was going on. Getting confirmation that I wasn’t losing it was one thing; being frustrated because I had no answer for him quite another. It vexed me that Nate hadn’t explained anything to me, seeing as I was technically acting as his counterbalance to all things, but then I could have asked—which I didn’t, because I was getting more stir crazy by the hour, and I was sure that if it had been something vital, he would have told me. Me, and all the others, too, because as much as he was our esteemed leader, he usually didn’t dictate over everyone’s head.
In short, we all really needed a break, but after the welcome we’d received over the last couple of weeks, it wasn’t exact
ly a surprise that all of us were apprehensive of what was to come.
Jason’s guys, on the other hand, proved to be quite the rowdy bunch after spending one night in quiet mourning. The next, they kept us all up well past midnight, joking and cheering and laughing. They all looked forward to reaching Dispatch, so I kept telling myself that it couldn’t be that bad. They’d been there twice before and clearly couldn’t get there fast enough again. If that wasn’t a good sign, I didn’t know what else to make of their behavior. And they’d had a lot more experience with settlements than we did. I had to remind myself that three towns did not the world make.
It was on that last day before reaching Dispatch that our radios finally started working long-range once more. I left the talking to Jason, but couldn’t suppress a wince when Tamara confirmed what I’d secretly been dreading—the mayor of Harristown hadn’t wasted any time complaining about the whole lot of us breaking the rules. From what I could glean, no one in Dispatch gave a crap about that, but I wondered how it would reflect on our continuing relations with the other settlements. It didn’t go unnoticed that the following evening, Campbell checked all the cars, repeatedly. It took me a while to figure out what he was searching for—some kind of jammer, or similar tech that could have suppressed our long-range radio signal. That he didn’t find anything—that I knew of—wasn’t exactly smoothing my ruffled feathers. Then again, we had been around the cars the entire time we’d been inside the settlement, so hiding something on them would have been quite the feat. The radio had been patchy at best in the entire region to start with. There was likely a very good, non-conspiratorial explanation for that.
Or maybe I was just getting too paranoid.
The last day of our journey with the Chargers dawned bright and early, and we were on the road as soon as everyone had finished whatever constituted their morning routine. Traveling with enough people that not everyone had to stand guard at night was neat, but I could have done without the early morning sausage parade. The air was laced with anticipation, and I couldn’t help but feel even more grumpy when that didn’t positively affect me. A lot could still happen in the last hundred miles of backwater roads that had to be traversed.
Nothing actually did happen in those four hours, though. No zombies. No cannibals. Not even the odd confused animal begging to become roadkill, and consequently, dinner. But just after ten in the morning, we turned into an access road that looked like hundreds of others that we’d been using for a month, only to come to a sudden halt. No obstacle anywhere in sight, but right next to the road someone had installed a huge slatted board, serving as a sign, with “Two hours to Paradise” spray-painted on it. I was still staring at the marker when I heard Jason call into Dispatch, leaving a simple message. “Passing the outer perimeter now. See ya all for lunch.”
I really didn’t know what to expect—and for the next hour didn’t see anything, although Nate kept scanning the surroundings through his binoculars constantly. We passed two more similar signs that provided an astonishingly accurate countdown, but then no one was blasting down country roads at top speed nowadays. It was after we hit the one-hour mark when I saw something on a rise about half a click west of us. “Is that a water tower?” I asked my mostly silent companion, squinting against the bright light.
“Deer stand,” Nate replied. “Third already that I’ve seen.”
I wondered if that was a jibe against my focus, but then I was paying attention to what was going on around and on the road, not outside the range that could get dangerous to us. That was his job.
As we continued on, I saw several more of these stands. On the horizon a small plume of dust made me tense for a second until I realized that it hailed from another group of cars, rolling in the opposite direction. We passed the thirty-minutes marker soon after that, and when we topped another rise, I almost hit the brakes when I saw two tank trucks idling in the middle of the road. The surrounding area was swarming with people—or what counted for a swarm these days, maybe fifty of them. Half were busy pushing cars off the road ahead of the tanker, while the remainder was spread out further, guarding the others and their precious cargo. Two men and a woman were busy pulling huge hoses from car to car, presumably pumping fuel from those tanks that hadn’t sprung leaks over the winter. They mostly ignored us as we slowly drove around them, but I couldn’t help but gawk. The entire stretch of road behind them was free, all cars cleared from the asphalt. It was only a small road with two lanes, less frequented than most, but it must have taken them weeks to get this far out here. About ten minutes later, we encountered another, similar column, this one loading cars onto tow trucks, or simply dismantling those that were beyond repair.
I was starting to get the feeling that Dispatch was a lot more than just a few crazy scavengers holed up in their radio station.
The closer we got, the more life we saw all over the flattening landscape. There were no palisades out here but all the deer stands were reinforced, and I could easily pick out the kill zones they’d established between them. It suddenly made a lot more sense that we hadn’t seen a single shambler—or even remains of one—since mid-morning. Clearly, whoever had set up permanent residence here intended to keep it this way. I was liking this more and more, I had to admit.
Then we came around a last rolling hill, and the sprawl of what had once been Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base lay before us. We’d tracked right through here only last summer, but the entire complex looked nothing like I remembered. There was a lot more sprawl, for lack of a different term, going on, beyond what used to be the runways and base itself. There were a lot more stands and other defensive structures around, all of them manned, with cars at the ready, presumably to facilitate quick transport between them. But there were also people, and tents, easily hundreds, if not thousands of them. From what I could tell, they were all outside of the sturdy rows of chain-link fence that ringed the entire base.
Jason ignored them and drove right on toward the east side of the complex, close to where we’d made our way into the base all those months ago. Only now there were roads and access ways built here that hadn’t existed before—not paved, but the hard-packed dirt looked sturdy enough to withstand torrential rainfalls—leading up to a checkpoint that was overrun with people on foot and in cars, all queueing at twin sets of boom barriers in front of a huge gate. As happy as being pretty much safe and secure once we made it through that might have left me, the very idea of spending the next hours out here, unmoving, in the heat, was nothing I looked forward to. I really hadn’t expected something like this. A few cars, maybe, but not this.
Reaching for the radio, I made sure that we were still on our team frequency. “Let me guess. We have to stand in line like the good little soldiers that we are?”
Burns’s bray didn’t need identification, but Jason answered before anyone else could. “Ye of little faith. Just watch the magic happen.” A quick pause followed, and when he went on, I figured he’d switched to the open com channel.
“Dispatch, do you copy? Chargers and Lucky Thirteen ready to come in.”
A few seconds later, the high voice of a slightly harassed-sounding woman answered. “This is Dispatch Gate Control Actual. Reading you, Jason. Come on in, we’ll clear the way for you.” As she said that, lights started flashing all around what I’d thought were the outbound lanes of the road, unused right now. Ripples of movement went through the queued people as heads turned and parents pulled their children to the side. Even the cars idling there moved off the right side of the road, where there was room. Jason’s car rolled forward, so I followed him, still perplexed by the spectacle. As we drew closer, I saw that there was a billboard-like electronic display above the gate, indicating for the crammed left lanes to move further to the left. Just then, the right side of the display, previously black, lit up with two fat arrows, one above each of the free lanes. The left one was blue, the other red, and as we drew closer still, two ATVs appeared behind the slowly raising poles before the g
ate. At the back, straddling the passenger seat, were two girls, each holding up a cardboard sign. The left had “Luke’s Chargers” scrawled on it in blue paint, the right our group logo, a 13 in a somewhat lopsided scrawl. The paint was still dripping on it, but the sheer fact that anyone knew what decals we’d painted on our cars was leaving me just a little stunned.
Without further directions needed, our cars split up, building two shorter columns side by side instead of our marching order long one. Even from the right-most lane it was easy to scan the people in the crowd before the gate. All of them looked like they’d seen better days—faces gaunt, cheeks hollow, clothes mended a few too many times to count as anything but rags. Most had packs on their backs or sitting next to where they were waiting. The cars didn’t look much better. While none of our gear might have been pristine, it was worlds apart from what they called their own. Raiding malls clearly came with privileges. These weren’t scavengers. These weren’t even organized groups like we’d seen in the settlements. These were survivors, straight out of the hell the world had turned into.
As we got closer to the front of the line, I saw several guards herd people into a small building to the side, still a good distance from the fence. A few were arguing with the guards, making my stomach cramp up, but whatever happened there, no one was forced, as several people changing their minds and turning around proved. But most went forward, and even if they were dragging their feet, their faces were lighting up with new hope. The tent city started right behind the building, and that was where the people who had refused went. The others were led through a smaller gate into the base proper, where long rows of tables filled with water bottles and food, but also other small necessities were waiting for them. Watching more than just a few halt between stuffing their faces to rub absentmindedly at the outside of a hand or the back of their neck made me realize something else—no one who went into Dispatch did so without getting the mark of the scavengers inked into their skin first.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 17