I almost laughed at the relief that I saw on their faces. It absolutely made me want to criticize their mission briefings but I could see where, maybe, it had made sense to hash over details that they needn’t concern themselves with—and it wasn’t like the way over there wasn’t more likely to kill them than anything that might be lurking in the hot lab. The serum would probably prevent them from catching most, if not all, lethal bacteria or viruses. It certainly eased the flutter low in my stomach.
Just then, the door opened, admitting Richards. Apparently, whatever he and Hamilton had to discuss was done. More than one pair of eyes avoided him as he scanned the room, without a doubt picking up on the shift in mood from twenty minutes ago when he’d left. I would have asked the bunch of assholes what was going on; he seemed content with getting some hot chow and ignoring it.
I figured that was it, but Hill spoke up after most of the others had turned their attention elsewhere. “So that’s why you never flipped and joined our side, at whatever opportunity you had. Whether directly or not, Miller got you convinced from the start that what you’re doing is the right thing to do.”
I considered that for a moment but eventually inclined my head. “I didn’t really think that much when it was them or you back after they’d blown up the building. I was tired and scared, and just went with the familiar over the people who were there to smoke them out. When they offered me to take over the lab in Kansas, I was tempted but it didn’t make any sense to abandon my family. I knew there wasn’t a cure to be found.” I couldn’t help the sarcastic smile creeping onto my face. Thought I’d known, rather. “And at the factory, or Taggard’s tiled prison, or the Colorado base—I was a hundred percent convinced that I was deciding in the interest of my survival, not that I ever really had a choice to begin with. Your side really needs to work on your sales pitches.”
“But you still think we’re the bad guys?”
I gave that some thought, coming up ambivalent. It was easier to focus on the facts. “I didn’t have a choice to come with you. You would have killed my friends if I hadn’t agreed. Your esteemed leader has done nothing but be a complete and utter asshole to me, and I don’t believe for a second that it’s only that hypothetical cure that we’re here to fetch. Tell me what about all this should have changed my mind, huh?” Leaning closer, I stared deep into his eyes. “Yes, I take my clues on how to orient myself toward unknown entities from my husband, but I’ve had opportunity aplenty to build my own opinion going forward. If you’re afraid I will just up and kill you, or sabotage the mission out of spite, rest assured—I won’t. I’m better than that.”
“I’m not afraid,” Hill said, and with enough conviction to sound like he really meant it. “But if all of that’s true, I don’t have a reason to trust you.”
“Fair enough,” I admitted, then glanced in Burns and Nate’s direction. “You trust them?”
He hesitated but then offered, “Mostly.”
“Then trust me mostly, too,” I advised. “I’m no more or less of a wildcard than they are.”
I was about to consider that point over and done, but Hill leaned closer still, pretending to fiddle with something on the side of his pack. “I trust them more because I know Hamilton won’t fuck with them. He has orders to bring them into the fold if possible. You’re likely still on the kill list, whatever bull he told you a few days ago. And it’s obvious that if he fucks with you, you will react, and I’d prefer not to get caught in the middle of that.”
I blinked, partly irritated, partly perplexed. Had he just warned me to watch my back? He had already turned away, joking with Aimes about the subpar quality of the food, making it impossible for me to question him—not that I felt the need to. Fuck. Just when I felt that I’d finally gotten a sense of how to play this game and come out alive, the rules had to change. Unless, of course, Hamilton had set Hill to screw with me.
Nate picked up on my sudden change in mood, eyeing me askance but I shook my head ever so slightly—nothing he needed to concern himself with. I was sure that he wouldn’t let his guard down around Hamilton either way. That bridge was burned for good.
Not for the first time I wondered what Red’s place in all this was. He made it really easy to trust him, which was my main reason of why I didn’t. And I couldn’t just get up and ask him, right?
At least mulling that over gave me something to distract me from the cold, and how much my body was still in recovery mode. Only one way to find out, right? I hoped that it wouldn’t be too late by then.
Chapter 8
I barely got any sleep because I remained cold and jumpy as hell through the night, which didn’t turn me into a ray of sunshine the next morning, the endorphin high of the previous day having worn off for good. We were up and moving by first light of pre-dawn again, trying to maximize how far we got before night forced us to hunker down once more. Food helped, even if I still couldn’t taste a thing—as did after-hours conversations. I hadn’t forgotten about Hill and Cole both stressing on different occasions that they didn’t quite trust me, but even those of the soldiers who clearly didn’t like me had so far done nothing to stoke the fire of my latent paranoia. Maybe what Burns and Tanner had been doing—trying to forge connections beyond ideological issues—had paid off. Or maybe the other shoe simply hadn’t dropped yet. It shouldn’t have made me feel safer but knowing that Bucky actively depended on my help alleviated some of my fears—and finding ourselves constantly neck-deep in undead helped in a sense as well. That was a danger that was familiar, and while deadly, it was easy to see them as an obstacle that we’d managed to deal with for long enough to, just maybe, get a little complacent about.
We tried to push forward at the same speed the following day, but our progress got slowed to a crawl—sometimes literally—as we found more and more convenient routes blocked by the undead. It was obvious that Ines and Raphael knew where we were headed; more than once I saw them check on what I realized were old marks left behind from previous trips, but that didn’t help much when we were trying to go one way only to find every direction except where we had come from swarmed with shamblers. Most of them looked docile and self-occupied enough, but every single time we inadvertently drew their attention, they came after us with the fervor of the horde of starved predators that they were. Most of them were well-fed enough to be a real menace, and once they identified us as food, there was no letting up. Even though we tried to be silent, the fight usually drew even more in, which in turn forced us to eventually retreat, hacking and bashing at anything that came after us. By the end of day two I was tired enough that I fell asleep with my gear only partly cleaned of gore, my senses so accustomed to the stench that it didn’t make a difference anymore.
Day four promised to get worse as we woke to dense fog that cut down visibility to less than a hundred feet at times, making it impossible to see what was lurking out of sight but still remained close enough to hear and smell us. I doubted the stench of our gear would completely masquerade whatever sounded the dinner bell.
“How much longer until we reach the river?” I asked Raphael when we paused mid-afternoon to refuel and get some hot tea into us to try to stave off the cold. While perky at the beginning, the French scouts were as tired and weary as the rest of us now. Compared to this, last week had been a piece of cake.
“Not much longer,” he said, but I didn’t quite buy it. He read that right off my face, giving a small shrug. “Before nightfall. Without the detours, we would have reached the river this morning but you can see for yourself now why we’ve been delayed. It should be smooth sailing once we reach the golf course. The boats are hidden in the shed right where it meets the riverbank.”
I thought about offering a quip about whether he planned to work on his stroke but then paused. “Not many people died on the golf course, I presume?”
Raphael gave me the hint of a smile. “And they had the river access cordoned off,” he said, finishing my train of thought. “Unless there’s
an incursion on the grounds itself, we shouldn’t have too much trouble. We’ve used the main house as a refuge a time or two to wait for the undead crowds to thin out or pass.”
That still left a lot of potential for issues but considering the alternatives—like towns—it made sense to stash the boats there. Or so I hoped.
It took us the rest of the day to finally make it to the golf course. By then I was tired enough that even standing still was hard while Ines got busy undoing the cable binders they’d secured the part of the wire-mesh fence with they’d cut out last time they’d come this way. My attention was wavering, making it impossible to concentrate on anything for more than a few moments at a time. I’d given up trying to hide it an hour ago, and the way Nate was watching me rather than our surroundings wasn’t very comforting. I’d tried fueling up on the go, snacking on beef jerky and nuts, but lack of nutrients didn’t seem to be the issue. I was exhausted, plain and simple, and that didn’t bode well for what lay ahead.
And after pretty much crashing the morning after I’d had the bright idea to key myself up with pain, I wasn’t ready to do that again just for fun. I was sure that if push came to shove, I’d find plenty of volunteers to punch me into that enlightened state of consciousness.
“Maybe we should camp on site tonight,” Tanner proposed when Red ambled close. It was only then that I realized that Gita was swaying ever so slightly on her feet.
Richards hesitated, but rather than shake his head he gave a shrug. “Let’s see how overrun the territory is first.”
“Might be our last chance before we head into the city,” Nate offered, his tone saying quite plainly that doing anything else would be foolish.
Either drawn by our conversation, or wanting to check on Ines’s slow progress, Hamilton joined us, barely glancing my way. “She can sleep on the boat. We’ll spend hours going upstream; even if we have to take care of some enterprising undead, I doubt we’ll need everyone available on lookout.”
Nate seemed perfectly annoyed by that rebuke, mirroring my feelings, but kept his tongue. I hated how Hamilton’s remark made me stand up straighter, as he’d no doubt intended. I once again entertained myself with the question of whether I should have tried to castrate him when I’d had the chance, back when we’d been sparring in the makeshift gym at the destroyer. Definitely yes.
“Done,” the French scout whispered as she straightened, pulling a flap barely large enough to let a grown man, without his gear, through. Some shuffling and rearranging ensued as everyone got ready to crawl through. Donning my pack on the other side once more was more than annihilating the brief respite of not having it on my back for a few moments. Damn, but I really missed our cars, and not just for sentimental reasons.
Once everyone was through, Ines used fresh wire to close up the hole in the mesh once more, a quick solution but still taking more time than I was comfortable with. We’d spent a good thirty minutes killing shamblers to clear the vicinity of the fence so we could remain in the open, undisturbed, but while I couldn’t see the corpses we’d left back in the trees anymore, I could hear the unmistakable sounds of something tearing into them.
“Spread out. We advance together,” Red ordered, taking point himself with Russell and Hill. I hung back a little but not far enough to be part of the rear guard. Nate seemed to consider hovering but then trudged forward, leaving Burns to watch my six—just like the good old days. Noah, the guy from the group we’d rescued, ended up to my right, repeatedly looking back over his shoulder. While the other three were more relaxed now that we were inside the fence of the golf club, his anxiety seemed to increase.
“Did you notice anything?” I whispered, making him jump momentarily.
He shook his head, but the frown never left his face. “Too quiet. I don’t like it.”
“But shouldn’t the course be safe?”
He looked out over the rolling, overgrown meadow, the brown grass high enough to make it impossible to tell where the former green had begun. “We always had some trouble. No trouble means more trouble, usually,” he offered in broken English.
“How many times have you been here in the past?” It seemed like a valid question.
He continued scanning our right flank for a good thirty seconds before he replied. “Three times. Always ran into trouble.”
The ground started to slope down toward what I realized was a small pond at the very bottom of the hollow. That’s when it hit me—not exactly a whiff of decay, but something that made the hairs at the nape of my neck stand on end.
“Wait,” I called out, just loud enough that Red and Bucky could hear, maybe thirty yards ahead of me. To my surprise, Red halted, giving the signal for the others to pause as well. I continued to stride forward until I was next to them, inhaling deeply.
“Saw something?” Red asked, momentarily focusing his attention on me rather than our surroundings. Hamilton shot me a look that was shy of condescending, but also held a certain kind of anticipation.
“Not sure what tipped me off, but I have a bad feeling about this.”
Someone to our left—Hill, I thought—chuckled under his breath, but I ignored him. The light current of air—too light to be called wind, really—came from the west, not helping much. The last rays of the setting sun were partly obscured by the fog, casting parts of the landscape into stark relief while others completely disappeared in darkness, the residual light impairing my enhanced low-light vision considerably.
Rustling of gear spoke of the general restlessness spreading through our group, but I continued to scan the lightly moving grass ahead of us. We hadn’t found a single corpse or gnawed remains yet, but I just knew that the golf course wasn’t as deserted as it seemed…
“We can’t stop every time you get twitchy,” Bucky grated out. “Move—”
I interrupted him yet refused to look at him directly. “We should backtrack and head toward the river outside of the fence. When they come for us, we’ll be penned in like sheep. I know that they are hiding out there somewhere.”
All rustling around us stopped, and I could tell that the group collectively held their breaths. Red cleared his throat, and I didn’t miss the warning glance he cast my way. I ignored that, too.
“What, you the zombie whisperer now?” Bucky joked, offering up a small laugh that made it plain how ridiculous that notion was. In spite of my annoyance with him, that term made me smirk for a second. And that had been way before I’d joined the ranks of the no-longer-quite humans…
I knew it was an exercise in futility but I closed my eyes for a second, attempting to give my senses a boost, as if trying to actually sense them was something I was capable of. Maybe without the visual clues, my nose would pick up something… but to no avail.
“I’m not wrong,” I insisted as I snapped my eyes open once more, finally deigning to give Hamilton my full attention. “They are out there. I’m not saying I have some supernatural zombie sense or something, but we’ve had a few close calls since you didn’t manage to kill me at the factory, and we’ve always avoided them because I was right to trust my gut.” I didn’t mention the weird town I’d stumbled into after escaping Taggard’s white-tiled prison with all the stashed converted shamblers that had almost gotten me. In hindsight, if I hadn’t been starved and half insane with thirst, I would have known not to sneak in there.
As expected, my warning continued to be met with deaf ears. Hamilton’s lips twisted into a sneer, and I so didn’t care for the gleeful glint coming to his eyes, promising violence. “You about done disobeying a direct order? Don’t think that just because we might need you alive until we breach the labs that I won’t lay down the law right fucking now. And trust me, you won’t like that any more than my previous attempt to appeal to your common sense, obviously lacking as it is.”
My teeth clacked together as I forced my jaws to close on the slew of profanities I wanted to hurl at him, but I forced myself to put a lid on the wave of anger that surged up inside of me. The
world around me snapped into sharp focus, my body following my mind in gearing up for a fight—and not a verbal one. At the very edge of my conscience, the nasty voice always lurking there reminded me that Hamilton likely believed me and had said that to get me into top fighting form, but that didn’t help me much right now. Not even the lick of fear that followed managed to cool down the heat surging into my cheeks. I continued to stare straight into his eyes, letting my silence be the only affirmation he’d get.
Hamilton’s lingering smirk at getting a rise out of me morphed into a more neutral expression as he nodded once at Red, who followed suit and gave the “move out” signal.
“Just don’t cry later if only half of us make it to the river alive,” I grumbled as the first soldiers stalked past me, Hamilton joining Russell after a few more tense seconds passed.
I’d thought he’d been out of earshot but apparently not so, as Bucky hollered back over his shoulder—low enough that his voice barely carried—“Not your choice. Welcome to the joy of following orders.”
I was sure that it wasn’t a coincidence that Burns bumped into my shoulder, gently pushing me into motion rather than passing by me. I let my body pick up the momentum, trying to focus on the grass around us more than the rage churning in my stomach. “Don’t believe me, either?” I snapped, ignoring the smile I knew was coming.
I was wrong. When I turned to glance at Burns, I found him alert and tense—ready for the attack I’d predicted. “Nah, I know you’re right if you get like that.” He relented, giving me the hint of his usual bright grin. “Zombie girl.” I couldn’t hold back a snort, ruffled feathers or not.
“This is going to bite us in the ass—quite literally,”
Burns continued to grin but made sure to give me enough space that we wouldn’t hinder each other once the shit hit the fan… any second now.
Green Fields (Book 9): Exodus Page 11