She could have been lying, of course, but I didn’t see what that would have helped her. It was easy enough to verify later, and it wasn’t like we’d lose much if the goods never arrived with our people. We’d just have to gather more elsewhere.
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, then eyed Nate cautiously. He’d been close enough to listen in—and object—but completely ignored me now. Clearly, that decision was mine to make.
We went over the list together while I sifted through the things to store with them until someone would bring them back over to Meeteetse. After checking what remained in the other cargo holds, I dragged a few more palettes of food and boxes of guns and ammo out, too. In the end, it didn’t really matter which of the strongholds kept them, and if they had enough to get by and defend themselves, they might part with their surplus more easily in the future. Shayla looked actually guilty as she sent Adonis back to fetch more people to help store everything away, and while we waited for them to arrive, she finally coughed up why exactly they all were so damn cautious.
“We sent out several parties of people before, you know?” she said. “But almost none of them returned.”
“Zombies got them?” I suggested. It was the most likely option, and considering our recent discoveries in Douglas and the plains, it only made sense that bad luck might have been the end of them.
“That’s what we thought at first, too,” she admitted. “And the fuckers got enough of us as it is, before we learned to be more cautious. But it was only when we got a message over the radio from one of the folks down in Missouri that we found out the truth.” She still hesitated, but finally spilled the beans. “Those weirdos in Illinois? Kevin said you already heard of them. Those cannibals. They got them.”
“Shit.” There really wasn’t anything else to say.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“But isn’t that like, almost a thousand miles east?”
She shrugged. “Some of the guys knew someone in the region. Wanted to check back to see if they’d made it, you know? And when they didn’t return, two more groups left after them. I think they were hoping that the reason they hadn’t returned yet was that they’d found some kind of safe haven. And when they didn’t return, we sent one last group, but then gave up. Turns out, someone from another group that ran into those motherfuckers recognized some of our people. She got away, made it to Missouri, and then told the guys there, who brought the news back to us. Not that we can confirm it, but they’ve been gone all winter. Either way, they’re dead.”
As scary as the very concept was, what she’d said still didn’t sit completely right with me. Nate jumped right onto that.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you sent, what, like twenty to thirty people out there?” She nodded. “And still the cannibals overwhelmed them all, with none getting away?”
“Not sure how many they were when you ran into them, but they’ve been busy recruiting,” the guy who’d come over with Shayla replied. “From what Marie said, they offer the strongest ones and those with skills the option to join them. For the rest, it’s into the pens, and then the pan.”
He grinned at his own pun, getting the scowl that deserved from Shayla. Yet when she turned back to us, she nodded.
“Something like that. Marie—that’s the woman who got away—she said they were over fifty people strong already. All with guns, and well fed, as you can imagine.” So much for bolstering our own diets with cat food.
Nate took that in with a rather grim look on his face. “You’re sure about the numbers?”
“They’re from last November,” Shayla replied. “No guessing how many more there are by now. Probably not less, if they’ve continued to go hunting.”
There was the chance that if all those zombies from the Chicago metro area had done a similar exodus south like those from Rapid City that this had taken care of the problem already, but I somehow doubted it. That would have been convenient, and convenience wasn’t anything I felt like we could still depend on.
“Do you know if there were any recent reports?” Nate questioned.
Shayla shrugged. “We only kept asking about our people, but I can call in with Dave, see if he has a list compiled. Or if the Missouri guys know more.”
The emerging radio network was still patchy as hell, but I couldn’t fathom that there wasn’t anyone around from a state closer to Illinois than here. Then again, they could all be like Simone, who’d only a few weeks ago admitted that she hadn’t left her house more than five times since the start of this whole shitstorm, and was doing quite well for herself on a constant diet of ramen.
“We need more outposts,” I told Nate, making him raise his brows as he smiled. “Just like you said. And stop grinning like that. I never said it was a stupid idea. Just not our problem.”
“People are probably lacking gear,” Shayla supplied. “Took us three months to even consider seeing if anyone was sending on any of the local frequencies, and another two to assemble enough portable units to send our groups out with them so we could keep all parts of the settlement connected. And it’s still unreliable as hell. Three weeks ago the radio up in Wind Cave went dead and we spent an entire week scared shitless that something had killed them all, until someone made it over here on foot to tell us that they’d just had some water damage that killed the battery, and they hadn’t managed to replace it yet.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Nate murmured.
“What isn’t?”
“Getting portable radios,” he replied. “Both for the cars, and to take with us so we can set more groups that we meet up with them. So far, Kevin and Dave are in contact with how many people?”
I shrugged, having absolutely no idea. “A hundred maybe, give or take?”
“We already know that at least a thousand are still around and kicking, and that’s just between us, the folks here, and that town in Missouri. Just think how many more there have to be.”
“If the zombies that went streaming south with the winter didn’t eat them all,” Shayla suggested.
“There’s that,” I agreed. “But until I see otherwise, I don’t believe that they’ve actually decimated us to less than ten thousand strong yet.”
Nate thought about that for a moment. “Could we maybe take a look at your radio setup? Then we could just assemble our own.”
Shayla and the guy traded glances, until he gave a noncommittal grunt. “I can fetch one of the portable ones, if you’d like. The stationary one is just that plugged into a series of car batteries. If you know your way around electronics, it’s easy to up or downscale.”
“I don’t, but one of my guys does,” Nate replied. “Campbell! Get your useless ass over here. I have a task for you.”
Ten minutes later, Campbell left with Shayla and her people to check their radio setups, and wait for an update from Dave or Emma.
“So we’re going cannibal hunting?” I asked Nate where he sat on the hood of the rover, idly looking at the mountains around us.
“Looks like it,” he replied, smiling as he studied me studying him. “No objections?”
“Would it matter if I objected?” I asked, not quite able—but also not really trying—to keep the edge out of my voice.
“I do value your opinions. I just don’t always share them,” he replied.
“But?”
He grimaced. “This is becoming more and more of a problem. We don’t know how many they were when we encountered them, but couldn’t have been more than fifteen. In the fall, they were at forty already. Might be over a hundred by the end of this year. Do you really want to give up an entire state to them? And that’s hoping that they stay put. What keeps them from sending raiding parties into other regions? We might be safe here, but I really don’t like the idea that I have to deal with maneaters on top of zombies out there.”
That we could agree on. So it was settled. We were going to hunt us some cannibals—and hopefully not end up on a spit ourselves. Woohoo.
&nb
sp; Chapter 9
We ended up spending another day with Shayla and her group, then two more doing quick supply runs to the other parts of their network here. In true “because we can” fashion we camped out at Mt. Rushmore one night, before we eventually started heading east again. Not alone, it turned out, because two pickup trucks from the Black Hills group joined us to go search for seeds and plants they might bring back with them—Sadie’s idea had clearly taken root, pun intended. We agreed to help them in exchange for them sharing their loot with the Wyoming collective. They mostly kept to themselves, not really wanting to socialize with us, and we let them. In the end, it was each group out for themselves, our new networking idea notwithstanding.
We crossed the Missouri River at Chamberlain, and after driving around what seemed at random to me, raiding farms, we sent the pickups back the way we had come, laden to maximum capacity with sacks and boxes of… stuff. Not having the first clue about botany or agriculture, I trusted that they knew what they’d been looking for, and had apparently found.
Whenever we weren’t on the road or checking barns and greenhouses, Campbell had been busy fiddling around with parts, doing his thing. We already had two spare car batteries in each trunk, but added a few more, for convenience. Not knowing the first thing about batteries or electronics, I should probably have paid attention, but I was happy enough knowing how to change car batteries and recharge them, in and outside of the car. Stopping the cars for an hour or two in the middle of nowhere, engines idling, to do that seemed stupid to me—but mostly because of the noise generated. I wondered if I should propose maybe crafting some portable solar panels for us, but not knowing where on the “possible to insane” idea spectrum that was, I kept my opinion to myself.
In the meantime, the rest of us were busy planning and plotting how to approach the cannibal problem. One thing was clear—we didn’t want to run straight into any of their traps. That would have been counterproductive, and while the idea of infiltrating them was something that came up a time or two, no one was particularly enamored by it. Fact was, while we all were in top physical condition, we had no idea what their selection criteria were, and the prospect of having to share meals with them wasn’t much better. As long as we had no information to go on, we couldn’t really settle on any one plan, as it was.
A much more pressing discussion point right now was where between Sioux Falls and Sioux City we should head toward Iowa, or if we should bypass the entire area to the north and cut through Minnesota instead. That had been my idea, but I was shut down with only a look from Nate. Apparently, the concept of up to a quarter million zombies roaming the area was a thing worth investigating. It was days like that when I wondered if I should just remain behind with the next semi-sessile group that we met. Poking the odd shambler with a stick to see if it would bite was one thing; driving into a potential disaster head-on was quite another.
One day further east, and we hit the first signs of the trail that we’d been expecting to find, if not necessarily were happy to see. Like with Rapid City, it was obvious that a great many zombies—because what else could it have been?—had trudged through the grasslands, ignoring roads but heading more or less steadily south. Either that, or an uncommon aggregation of tornadoes had savaged the land, destroying everything that was smaller than a barn that lay in their path. Wildlife had returned in the meantime, but the path was still easy to track by the heaps of rags and cleaned bones. I couldn’t fathom how anything that had been in their way had survived.
But why had they migrated south? Was it some kind of seasonal behavior? Did that mean that they were down in the south now, possibly in Mexico, ready to surge north when the heat drove them to seek a climate where they could find water easily? We still didn’t know whether they actually needed it, but we’d seen enough zombies drink to assume that instinct drove them to seek it out.
Moving to Alaska or some deserted island sounded better and better.
As we continued to roll through the devastated landscape, going slow not to attract any attention, I couldn’t help but lose myself in the momentary gloom. The small horde we’d encountered before we’d set out again this spring was one thing; a group that spanned hundreds of thousands was nothing short of the ultimate nightmare. But did they really move as one horde? Could they even find enough to sustain them? Did that inadvertently lead to cannibalism among them, thus culling the horde quicker than Nate had guessed? Did that really bode well for us if only the strongest, fastest, smartest individuals survived? It was hard to tell with most, but some of them were much harder to kill than others. The possible emergence of some kind of super zombies really wasn’t what helped me shake myself out of my funk.
And glancing over to Nate, I couldn’t help but wonder if I didn’t already know exactly how those fuckers had originated.
Just because an undefined amount of zombies had been on the move didn’t mean that all of them had joined in. All the small towns that we hit still had a resident population, and not just those who’d been locked in. And while I so didn’t agree with the idea to see what had happened to a larger city that lay in the path of the mass exodus, my curiosity was piqued. It seemed all but impossible, but if they’d really all left the big cities, that was the best place to go loot now. After fleeing Lexington last May—the last city over ten thousand strong that I’d been in, or even close to since then—I hadn’t expected to see a skyscraper in my lifetime again. As they said—there was only one way to find out.
The next morning we made sure to check that all the extra plating on the cars was okay, that we had our entire weapons and ammo cache in reach, and we wouldn’t need to leave the cars in the next day or two—before we set out to scout the greater region of Sioux Falls.
“For the record, I’m convinced this is the most stupid idea we’ve had so far,” I grumbled as I angled the car onto the first northbound road that we selected to get us there.
“It likely is,” Nate agreed, surprising me.
“Then why are we doing this?”
“Because who else is there to do it?” he offered. “People like Emma, Bo, or Shayla will never make it anywhere near the cities again. We have the equipment, and we’re likely the ones who will have to go in there sooner or later for supplies. Might as well check out the territory while we’re at it. The loot we’d find there will make a difference down the road. And it’s not like I’m expecting to find it as a complete ghost town where we can just load everything up and be done with it.”
“That would be nice,” I griped.
“Your protest is duly noted and ignored,” he told me, flashing me a grin that was too bright. “And if we have to beat it, you get to say ‘I told you so.’ Happy now?”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer, continuing on in silence.
We stuck right along the edge of the trail of destruction, crossing it a few times when obstacles forced me to switch to another road, or go through the grass directly. There were a few zombies about, but I did my best to ignore them—and most of them repaid the favor. That was new, but then I didn’t complain.
We made it about two miles to the city, where we could already see blocks and blocks of houses standing next to each other, litter everywhere. And zombies. Would be stupid to forget the zombies.
“What now?” I asked, letting the car roll to a halt.
“Now we walk.”
It turned out to be a little more difficult than that—but that wasn’t really much of a surprise. Seeing zombies out and about actually proved to be the least of our problems—that was something we could deal with. The ones still locked in the houses—or just squatting there—were way more of a concern, making it hard to plot the best route into the city. “Not” still wasn’t considered an option, although I voiced it again.
I should have been suspicious from the start, when Nate told me that one backpack each was enough. This was supposed to be a supply run, so why not take enough containers with us to beat it once we had acquired
said supplies? But several days on the road and months spent carrying only light gear for the current patrol cycle had apparently made me stupid in the head, and I neither suspected anything nor found it suspicious that I only had one pack with me, filled with enough ammo to last me a week, if not the hours we were supposedly about to spend in the city.
The plan was to approach the city coming from the south, and after traversing I-29 and making it across the green of a golf course, we were to split up into small groups, cross the Big Sioux river at any of the many parks, and head downtown. There were several hospitals in the city and countless stores that were prime targets. Considering that we had absolutely no idea how far we could get between the buildings and what we would find, the plan pretty much fell apart right there. After how our trip into Douglas had ended, I really wasn’t happy about this grab-and-dash policy.
It was getting close to midday as we hit the highway, where—after minimal hushed discussion—we decided to split up ahead of time, underlining just how half-assed that approach was already. Pia, Andrej, and a few of the others would head north instead, while Nate, Bates, Burns, Cho, Santos, and I would take the original route.
I felt tense rather than afraid as I made my way across the highway, finding enough cover between the endless stretch of abandoned and half-trashed cars. There were a few shamblers sifting through the trash, but this stretch had been hit during the big exodus, leaving little of interest for anyone behind. They weren’t even worth the bother of sneaking up behind them to put them to eternal rest, so I just waited until the closest had moved a little further down the road before I crossed the many lanes and angled toward the golf course on the other side. The others followed in a drawn-out line that left a good mile between me and where Santos was bringing up the rear.
By the time we hit the golf course, Santos and Cho had slinked off, as did Burns and Bates at the park that followed the meandering bed of the river. That left just me and Nate, and a world of angry silence stretching between us. Since trying to be as stealthy about our approach as possible, that wasn’t exactly a bad thing, and ranting at him inside my head kept me occupied—a strategy that wasn’t exactly new, and grated all the more for it. I wondered if that had been his intention in pissing me off in the first place, but that sounded a little too childish even for us. Besides, I hoped that he considered me more capable of taking care of myself than needing that kind of help.
The Green Fields Series Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 69