I glared at him for several seconds straight, daring him to look at me once more, but seeing the truth in his eyes didn’t make a difference.
“Don’t you think I know that?” I bit out, sinking my fingers into my own arms to keep myself from wrapping them around his throat. “And do you have any idea just how fucking hard that is for me to swallow?”
He considered that for a moment but didn’t back down. “But you do, and you move on. That’s all any of us can do. Deal with it. Live with it. Don’t dwell on the shit that happened, but make damn sure history won’t repeat itself. Hate me for saying that—“ He paused, offering a mirthless smile. “Hate yourself for believing in it. I don’t care. I didn’t make the rules, but I will always make sure that you’ll come up ahead, whether you play by them or break them.”
With someone else saying that, I would have laughed him in the face, but as usual when Nate got like this, I couldn’t ignore it for boisterous claims.
“This wouldn’t be connected to Aimes claiming I could single-handedly secure peace by turning myself over, now, would it?”
A muscle jumped in Nate’s cheek. “I’d rather strangle you myself than let that happen,” he vowed. “But if you need a bargaining chip, use me. I don’t care whether I live or die, if it means that you stay out of another cage, whether it’s a physical or just a gilded one.”
As professions of love went, that was a rather dramatic one, and so very typical for him, involving the possibility of him killing me. And people said that romance was lost in the times of the zombie apocalypse.
Now it was my turn to smile in spite of myself, but I didn’t give him the answer he was obviously fishing for, yet again. Instead I skipped to the next tidbit we needed to discuss. “You caught that part about the streaks?”
“Hard to ignore what might become our problem number one.”
Might. So I wasn’t just imagining things. “Gabriel Greene has a mole inside that organization, and very likely even in that very complex we’re about to storm.”
Nate’s ambiguous shrug wasn’t very comforting. “I’d be surprised if it was just one,” he professed. “What’s more important is that he already knew before he sent us off. Why send enough beacons with us to clean an entire state, but not give us accurate troop numbers?”
That aspect I hadn’t considered, but it made the answer obvious. “Whoever’s his informant doesn’t want to be too obvious about it. And he certainly doesn’t want to hand us our victory. Guess it’s just a mere coincidence that five soldiers turned up here who just happen to know the guard schedules and outlying defenses, but cannot for the life of them give us accurate overall numbers?”
“If he wants to ensure that we cannot overwhelm them just like that and force any conditions we want on them, that’s the way to go.”
Sometimes I hated being paranoid, but this once it made me feel vindicated. Then again, knowing that Aimes had been sent here for that very reason made me feel a little better about having to rely on his numbers.
“So we attack, the roving zombies notwithstanding,” I presumed.
Nate nodded. “That’s the plan. Setting up the beacons to draw them away might take a few days, but we should be in the clear after that.”
I was about to agree, but then stopped myself. A rather idiotic idea made its way through my mind, but instead of disbanding it right away, I blurted it out. “What if we don’t use the beacons for that? What if we turn their game around on them?”
Nate’s brows shot up, but he considered my words rather than told me to go screw myself. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
It was hard to contain the sudden surge of energy that excitement kicked through my veins. “You heard what that guy with Aimes told us? And what Pia and the others will report back as soon as they make it here. They’re dug in well, with trenches and barb-wire fences and all that shit? If any history lesson about the wars of the twentieth century taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to end up in a rut where it takes days and hundreds of lives lost to gain just a few yards of ground. We don’t have enough grenades to blast a way through their defenses. But what we do have is a bunch of heavily armored cars and people who know how to drive them, and enough portable beacons to gather up quite the zombie storm. Let them do the breaching for us.”
I knew I wasn’t just babbling nonsense when Nate didn’t laugh right in my face. “You do know that it’s not quite that easy?” he suggested. “The ‘let them do the breaching for us’ part, I mean.”
I shrugged, pretending like that aspect didn’t make me want to shit my pants right away.
“We just need a good distraction,” I explained. “Buildings are buildings, and if I remember correctly, bringing them down is one of your specialties.”
“After spending months infiltrating said buildings, which included setting charges all over the structurally important parts,” he reminded me.
“Well, then let’s be glad we don’t actually have to blow anything up,” I quipped back. “We just have to get to said buildings. That’s the hard part. Aimes even said it himself. If we get around the zombies, we have a good chance to force a standoff.”
“And what, pray tell, is your grandiose idea?”
“Not quite settled on that one,” I admitted, snorting at the ridiculousness of him asking me for tactical advice. “Something like strapping the beacons to our cars, driving around the zombies to get their attention, and then just aim right for their defenses. I bet that if we time it right and shut down the beacons just as the soldiers open fire on us and the shamblers, they’ll forget all about eating us and will go straight for the less well-armored squishy humans they can just eat straight away without having to pull them from their sardine-can cars first.”
I had meant that as a joke—mostly—but Nate’s expression turned considering.
“That might just work,” he eventually offered. “Still needs some fine-tuning, but it’s the best plan anyone has come up with yet.”
“Seriously?”
He gave me a lopsided grin for an answer. “I didn’t just marry you because that’s the best insurance against celibacy I could think of.”
“Gee, way to make a girl feel appreciated,” I harped, but couldn’t help but feel slightly mollified. Figurehead, my ass. Maybe I should have ended our conversation there, coming up ahead with my feathers only slightly ruffled, but I couldn’t. He’d gotten his answers first. Now I would get mine. “So what did you do to earn that dishonorable discharge?” I asked, settling into a more relaxed stance. “You don’t need to go into details if you don’t want to. Just the bare facts. You don’t need to tell anyone else. But I want to know.”
The answering wry smile I got told me that he hadn’t expected to get away with leaving me in the dark.
“You just couldn’t let sleeping giants rest, eh?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Spill it. Rip that Band-Aid right off.”
Nate’s sigh was a wary one, and he only took a few seconds to consider his words.
“I think I told you once before that my military career wasn’t quite what it is for most people?”
“Like that you got a promotion just for surviving the serum, because they direly needed people in charge among the grunts?”
He nodded. “Something like that. Don’t get me wrong, I did my time, I jumped through the hoops, all that. But I’ve always been aware of the fact that they turned us into weapons ready to be used, not stored and hidden away somewhere. With that came certain… let’s call them expectations. You fulfilled those expectations, you got your rewards. Ruthless behavior was a prerequisite for officers. You can’t build yourself a shock-and-awe strike force if they take the time to second-guess their orders and show mercy when all you want is burnt earth. They also sent us onto a lot of missions where that behavior was the only way to ensure survival, so it’s not like they made it hard for us, most of the time. But it takes a toll. Makes you hate yourself sometimes. There’s a reason
why so many of us have a chip on our shoulders. Rita isn’t a functional alcoholic for nothing.” That part I hadn’t been aware of yet. Nate gave me a moment to ask, but resumed talking when I remained silent.
“I knew what I signed up for, but it was years after Raleigh went off in my face when he discovered they’d turned me into a ticking time-bomb when I started to resent my decision. I would never have acted on that resentment, but it was there. It led to some… complications over time.” I was sure there was more to that, but gestured for him to go on. Nate stared at his dirty fingernails before he went on, his jaw set. “Then my brother died, and things changed. My priorities did, at least. I had to cash in all the favors anyone owed me just to be able to go to his funeral, and that left me convinced that all my misgivings, all my suspicions were true.” He didn’t need to stress that my doubt that Raleigh had been responsible for his own death must have been part of that. Nate’s weak smile, brought on by the memory of his brother, turned sardonic. “Now you come along and tell me that it wasn’t the people Raleigh had sold his soul to in exchange for them letting him try to find a cure for me who killed him. That throws quite the wrench into my path of righteous revenge, but it’s not like I can undo anything that’s happened. Long story short, I needed out, and people like me, for us there was only one way out: in a coffin. So I gave them a reason why they’d consider me too much of a liability to continue to use me.”
“Let me guess. It wasn’t something like you refusing to go on a mission, right?”
He shook his head, his expression still grim. “No. It was a gamble, of course. There was a sixty percent chance they’d just put me down like a dog, but turns out, they’d rather shelf me than destroy their weapon. There were conditions, of course, but I never intended to hold my end of the bargain up. The only thing that counted was that I was out, and free to pursue my new, my only goal in life. I knew that going through with that plan would leave me with only a handful of people I could use. People like Romanoff and Zilinsky, whose loyalty had always been to me over the forces they committed to when they joined. People like Bates and Campbell, who were mercenary enough that paying them good money that would let them disappear and do whatever they wanted once my work was done. That’s why I couldn’t ask Burns or Martinez to come along. They wouldn’t have ratted me out, but they wouldn’t have broken the vows they’d taken, betrayed the principles they stood for. And don’t think they didn’t chew me out later, on the road, when they realized what they’d missed when I suddenly dropped off the radar, only to reappear the day the world went to shit. You were surprised when Burns opted to take up Greene’s offer to find a permanent place in New Angeles? I wasn’t. If not for you and the others, he’d likely have remained behind in Dispatch, or joined the sappers we met at Harristown. And look what Martinez got from sticking with me.”
Part of me felt the distinct need to hug him, offer comfort in any way I could, but I knew that he didn’t want it. Didn’t extend the same courtesy to me, ever. I figured we just weren’t those kind of people.
“Well, that explains why you have been such a mopey piece of shit for the past weeks,” I said, daring him with my eyes to contradict me. He didn’t. “Guess it’s for the best that I do have a nice set of physical assets so you can push me ahead of you, for everyone to ogle.”
It was a relief to get a small smile—a genuine one—for that. “Trust me, I’d much rather be the only one ogling your goods, but can’t have everything, right?”
“Yeah, too bad that you have to settle for being the only one who gets to grope them,” I teased. “Speaking of which. That’s gonna happen now, or should I just get comfy on my lonesome? I’m both too tired and amped up to play games right now. Fuck me or leave it, I don’t care. Just choose either, and let’s be done with it in five. If we’re actually going to bring down a shit-load of zombies on that installation by pretty much taking them by the hands and walking them there, I need to recharge my batteries, and that means catching up on all the food and rest I didn’t get on the road over the past days—as you keep reminding me on a daily basis.”
Nate put on a considering expression but I could already tell which option sounded more enticing to him. “Make that ten.”
“Ten what?”
“Minutes,” he said succinctly. “I know that your definition of good sex is more of a ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’ three minutes until you come approach, but I like to enjoy myself a little longer.”
I was on him before that smirk of his could bloom to its full potential, and no, not all of the physical contact I initiated was of the pleasant, aimed at satisfaction kind, but he so had that coming. It took us closer to twenty minutes than three, but that wasn’t my fault, either. His assessment about my part of the equation was, as usual, spot on, but far was it from me to complain about his level of competence.
It stood to hope that we’d fare just as well once we set this insane plan to take over the installation in motion.
Chapter 21
The recon team returned in the early hours of the next morning, aiming straight for our camp thanks to running into a few stragglers from the North Platte meeting point. I pretended to be wide awake while I sipped my coffee, listening to them pretty much confirming what Aimes and his people had told us. Good defenses, lots of guards, and a shit-ton of zombies to boot. If not for the talk I’d had with Nate last night, the news would have sounded like a recipe for a crushing defeat. Even so it was a daunting number of obstacles that we’d have to overcome, and all that before we actually made it into the buildings. There were three of them—the command building with the barracks underneath; adjacent to that the science wing; and across the yard the armory. Add to that a few reinforced maintenance shacks and the odd guard post further out from the base—and no good guess on the numbers. Aimes swore that the barracks had been filling when they’d left, with two more groups of soldiers arriving, but he had no exact numbers. It stood to reason that the science wing would be moderately abandoned, but there could have been anything from a couple people in the infirmary to hundreds of zombies stored in there. As Nate noted wryly, we’d find out soon enough.
And that was the point where everyone gathered around the table holding maps of the area and too many notes to still make sense of fell silent.
“When do we launch our attack?” I asked, looking first at Nate and Pia, then the rest of the gathered people. Rita gave an ambivalent shrug—not being part of the actual attack apparently excused her of voicing an opinion.
One of the North Platte folks—Flint, if I remembered correctly—cleared his throat. “We need to plan this well. Best would be to go back round Colorado in the north, cut through Wyoming, maybe even Utah, down to I-70 and follow that through the mountains. Gives us a good week to prepare, work on a detailed plan—“
I shook my head, making him trail off, which wasn’t hard, considering he didn’t sound too convinced himself. “I’m not too fond of the idea of traversing the flat half of the state where we know a lot of zombies are out and about, but if we give them that much more time to prepare, we will die. Either through another attack coming from within, or because they can launch one of their own.”
“What’s the alternative?” the blonde biker chick asked, spearing me with her gaze. “Drive straight through the prairie until we hit the mountains and knock on their front door?”
“And why not?” I shot back. “Nobody would be that crazy as to attempt it. They might not even have locked their back door, knowing that the undead will take care of anything that comes from that direction.”
I got the vague sense that I’d said something stupid, considering how much more awkward the following silence turned. Nate finally had the sense to break it to me. “The entire area, reaching up to Cheyenne, had almost five million people. If you consider how high the conversion rates in the larger cities were, that makes a hell of a lot of shamblers out there, even if you factor in predation, and however many of them got lost elsewher
e when they migrated south last winter.”
That didn’t sound like odds that could be swayed in our favor. “How did Aimes and his people get through that?”
Rita made a face. “On foot, and further to the south.”
“What keeps us from going the same way back?” I suggested, pointing at a possible route on the maps. “Might add a couple of miles to our trek—“
“About two hundred,” Nate helpfully supplied.
I shrugged off his sarcasm. “If we’d had to walk, I’d consider that a drawback, but it’s just a few extra hours in the cars, even going slow enough to avoid drawing attention. Heck, if we’d hop onto the road right now, we might be there before nightfall.” Casting a careful look around, I tapped the map with my finger again. “And what exactly keeps us from doing that?” I was met with too many blank looks for my comfort. “Well?”
“Where would we camp?” the guy from before protested. “That close to their base, they could just launch an assault—“
“Not if we do that first,” I said. He gave me quite the weird look for it. “Just bear with me, okay? I’m not fond of the idea of baking in the car for eight to ten hours, and then start the attack without getting much rest, but that’s exactly my point. Who would do shit like that? If they see us coming—and they will, because even driving slowly, so many cars will create enough of a dust cloud that they can see us from up in the mountains easily—they won’t expect us to go right on with the plan. They’ll expect us to hunker down somewhere so they can send recon troops our way during the night. Even if they find us, it will be too late for them to turn around and report. We hit them, and we hit them hard. By the time the sun goes up again, we will be done, either way. Don’t shit on my plan just because it’s simple.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 103