“You don’t think that Harris and his guys would join us?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Ideally, I’d try to make it back south to Utah and stay with Jason and his people. Watching you stalk around like a bristling cat whenever you see Sam might make for prime entertainment.”
He got a scathing look for that. “Yeah, like you wouldn’t get jealous within a day or two.”
“Never happened before. Don’t see why it should happen then.”
“Because you never had any competition,” I pointed out, pursing my lips. “Might actually be worth it to see just how miserable you’d get once you realized you’re not that damn special.”
“But I am,” he pointed out, flashing his teeth in a self-deprecating smile. “Consequently, your point is moot.”
Mere months ago, I would have let that bait me into going off in his face, but now I just settled more firmly into my camping chair. “Keep deluding yourself. I’ll have a front-row seat to watch you eat your own words.”
“Wanna bet?” Nate taunted.
I considered for a moment. “Right now I can’t think of a single thing you could offer that I wouldn’t get otherwise anyway.”
“So honor and bragging rights aren’t good enough for you anymore?”
“Never were, never will be,” I shot back. “Now drink your cocoa. I need to take a leak, and might as well do a quick perimeter check, even if you want to ‘wing it.’” I even raised my hands to do the air quotes, but stopped, turning over my right hand to scrutinize my fingers. In the near darkness it was hard to make out, but for a moment I’d thought that there were slight discolorations on my pinky—besides the scrapes on my knuckles from sparring without using any hand wraps. I flexed my fingers a few times and, considering everything worked just fine, I discarded it as a fluke. Getting up, I grabbed my shotgun and set out to do exactly what I’d stated I’d do, leaving Nate and his slurping behind.
Chapter 6
The following day dawned late and overcast, the weather a little better than before, but not much. I was cold and kind of miserable where I’d parked my ass against the grill of the Jeep, watching the sky lighten gradually. The settlement had no visible outward guard posts near, but we’d noticed a change of guards just after midnight, and another well into my early morning shift. That was the likely reason we hadn’t seen so much as a fox during the night to disturb our slumber. Still not very effective, considering they’d let us come up right to the gates before not letting us in, but it was apparently enough—for now. It was anyone’s guess if there would be a zombie migration happening toward the southern, warmer states this winter, and how much the beacon maze around New Angeles would draw them away from the mountains around here.
The weather notwithstanding, I felt pretty cheerful this morning, and as soon as Nate crawled out of the car, I ditched my shotgun and jacket to take off at an easy lope around the settlement. He caught up with me halfway around the more or less circular palisades, first falling into step with me, then starting to push. Soon, we were running full out, doing a good three laps before Burns joined us. Gita and Tanner watched us from where they’d started a fresh fire for coffee, Tanner shaking his head at us when I tried to get him to join. Without the outer layer to protect me from the wind, I was rather cold at first, but quickly worked up a sweat. In the camp I might have done a lot to avoid running laps—like sparring with Nate, knowing full well that I wasn’t a match for him—but after being back on the road with no respite in sight, it was nice to power through my body’s energy reserves to counteract all that stasis of sitting for hours on end. Driving was exhausting, no question, but it didn’t compare to running full-out across the hard-packed dirt, letting my body find its own rhythm. Before long, I left Nate and Burns behind me, dipping deep into my reserves.
The next time we zoomed by the settlement gate, I saw movement there, not just up where the guards were posted, but at the gate itself. My stomach seized with anticipation, and I might have run just a little faster to get one last lap done before I’d ease up. True enough, when I neared the same point again, cars started trundling out through the gate, Harris already waiting next to them with a bowl heaped with steaming food. Gita and Tanner were busy getting their part of breakfast, a good idea if anyone had asked me.
I was already slowing down, changing course to head over to Harris, when I caught motion from the very corner of my field of vision. Instinctually, I tensed, zagging to the left when I more felt than saw Nate make a grab for me. He still managed to get a hold on my elbow, jerking me around and to a halt, but I was ready, kicking high to aim for the center of his body mass. My boot connected flawlessly with his abdomen, sending him staggering back, the fingers around my arm disappearing. Pivoting, I followed that up with a second kick, that one aimed for Nate’s thigh, hitting again—but also leaving myself open for his fist to dive underneath my raised arm and plant itself into my side. It was more shock as the air was driven from my lungs than pain that made me gasp, quickly disengaging from him. Nate grinned back at me, his arms raised in front of his body, taunting. I jabbed toward his face, using the momentum of my body carrying me forward to send my knee up as well. He blocked both attacks, opening his mouth to, without a doubt, offer a scathing retort—which left him completely open and vulnerable from the side, where Burns came barreling into him at full speed. I danced back, making sure not to get caught in the fray as both men went down, Burns using his extra weight to bear Nate to the ground like a cement sack toppling over. Nate was quick to recover, getting one knee between their bodies as he started grappling with Burns, trying to gain the upper hand, but it only took Burns ten seconds to have him back down in a choke hold. Quick on his feet Nate may be, but wrestling? Not so much.
Grinning down at them, I hopped in place for a few more seconds as my heart rate slowly came down, then allowed myself to stop. Didn’t look like I was needed there anymore as Burns and Nate kept rolling around in the dirt. Still in high spirits, I walked over to Harris, accepting the water bottle he held out to me. The townies from our convoy kept staring, their attention equally divided between the spectacle on the ground and my partially bared midriff, it seemed. Grabbing the hem of my thermal, I rubbed sweat off my brow, then pulled it back into place, hiding the tattoo on my lower back from sight. Tanner held out the bowl of food—scrambled eggs with onions and lots of bacon—which I gladly accepted, using the provided fork to get it straight into me rather than shovel some onto a separate plate. The rate at which I decimated the food seemed even more interesting to the townies, making me smirk around a mouthful of eggs.
Burns finally let Nate go, who looked rather indignant as he jumped to his feet and started wiping dirt from his body, only succeeding into working it into nice layers of paste wherever dust met sweat. I tried but couldn’t hold back the raucous laugh bursting from my chest. I held out the bowl as a form of appeasement, sure that if I’d been empty-handed, I would have ended up on the ground on my back—and with my body still singing with adrenaline, that wasn’t the worst of ideas out there. Nate took the peace offering from me, still glowering, but gave me a weird look when he realized that I was practically leering at him. Burns snickered, using Nate’s momentary distraction to shovel half of what was still in the bowl onto the lid the container had come with.
“You should consider therapy,” Burns advised around the first forkful that disappeared into his mouth. “It’s not quite healthy when you can only keep the spark alive by beating the shit out of each other.”
Snorting, I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re just jealous because you’re not getting any.”
Burns shrugged, not exactly denying my claim. “Hanging around camp and being just a boat ride away from New Angeles had its perks.”
One of the townies—I thought I remembered him being the one who’d protested us tagging along before—sidled up to Harris, looking half of a mind that staying in the settlement would have been the better idea. “Are they always like that?
”
Harris grinned and opened his mouth to reply, but then conceded to me with a nod when he saw me watching them. Stepping closer to the two men, I did my best not to shiver as my body became overly aware of the temperatures now that it had cooled down once more. “Let me ask you a question before I answer that. What are you living for?”
The guy looked at me cross-eyed before he gave a somewhat awkward shrug. “To make a good life, I guess? Build a family, get us into the next generation. Stuff like that. Why?”
I ignored his question. “What do you think we’re living for?” I didn’t need to indicate Nate and Burns. It was obvious where the divide ran, although I wasn’t quite sure where he saw Harris and the other scavengers.
“Uhm,” came the eloquent reply that turned my easy smile forced.
“I live for living another day,” I explained, letting my arms drop so that I didn’t look as defensive as I suddenly felt. “Of course I could hunker down behind a nice wall and pray that the undead fuckers don’t wise up and manage to eat us overnight. But I don’t want to. I want to be out here. I want to take stupid risks and live life to the max, because, guess what? Today could be my last day. Yours, too. It could be the zombies, or a mountain lion or bear, or God knows what else. There are still hundreds of millions infected roaming the country, and who knows what that virus they are carrying might evolve into. Last year might have just been phase one, and we’re in for a hell of a lot worse still. That’s what you’re all afraid of, huddling together in your settlements, too chickenshit to let us in because we could be carrying something you don’t want to get too close to. Well, guess what, chances are we’re way less likely to catch anything and transmit it than any one of you. What you’re doing is absolutely idiotic. Might as well have fun while I wait for the inevitable to come, right? So I’ll be damned if I let anyone rain on my parade. Maybe you should try it. Makes life a whole lot less miserable.”
As I turned around and walked away, Nate gave me a weird, “where did that come from?” look that I ignored in favor of getting some coffee in a travel mug for the road. Behind me, I heard the townie grumble something under his breath, followed by Nate’s succinct, “Hey, I’m getting laid. What do I have to complain about?” which did make me grunt.
Gita caught it, flashing me a brilliant smile that forced me to answer with a mellow one of my own.
We were off ten minutes later, Burns driving, me riding shotgun, and Nate still trying to brush now-dried dirt off his body in the back. Harris aimed to take point, but let us shoot by him once I explained, succinctly, that there was a good chance that the road ahead wouldn’t be as clear as before, and we might as well drive up ahead in case we had to get out to do some cleanup soon, anyway.
As long as we remained down in the plains, that wasn’t necessary, thanks to the extended lines of beacons that had been installed over the past weeks even up here, but as soon as we turned onto the smaller, winding road heading into Yosemite National Park, things changed quickly. Fallen trees were blocking the road, mudslides had buried it, and about two miles in we saw the first group of shamblers come surging out of the underbrush, hungry for fresh food. Most of them resembled desiccated husks, making me guess that they were stragglers from one of the resident streaks that had fallen too far behind the main horde when the beacons had switched, letting them end up on their own, with the forests looking more inviting than the stark, open flatlands they’d gotten stranded on. That didn’t mean that they weren’t strong as fuck, hunger and desperation lending them extra determination. We stopped as it became obvious that we wouldn’t be able to avoid them as they came for us, me and Nate getting out while Burns lingered in the car. We were using the same equipment that had come in handy back at the siege of Harristown—Nate a heavy sledgehammer while I made do with a well-balanced ax—to cut a swath through them, then finished off the rest. I got some nice claw marks across my cheek for my effort, ending up huffing and puffing with exhaustion as the last headless fucker finally stopped moving. They hadn’t managed to bite through the heavy fabric of my jacket and pants, but there were a few rents and tears that I didn’t know if they were worth patching up anymore. Nate was somewhat less winded but equally covered in gore, and we spent another twenty minutes getting changed and scrubbing our gear while the others built a pyre to take care of the remains. None of the settlement people got out to lend a helping hand, but what they lacked for in usefulness, they made up in staring. It was only then that I realized something: today might have been the first time that they’d come to watch us kill the undead, either since they’d hunkered down behind their walls, or maybe even at all. I had long ago become so used to that level of violence that it was an unusual day on the road that went by without slaughter. Glancing at where my ax, scrubbed clean and oiled now, rested against the back tire of the Jeep, I couldn’t help but ask myself what else I had become used to that still wasn’t “normal” to others.
We had to wait until the pyre had consumed most of the body parts before we could start dousing the flames so we could move on. It was way too dry to let the fire go on unchecked, unless we wanted to risk burning down half of the state. There were enough areas where previous fires had eaten up anything in their path, unchecked and unchallenged, that we didn’t need to contribute to that. Before we went back into the cars, Nate examined the scratch on my cheek critically, but left it at a grunt after cleaning it thoroughly.
The climb up into the mountains, using the scenic—and only—route wasn’t as eventful as I’d hoped. Twice more we had to get rid of enterprising shamblers, and the last group was stronger and well fed, giving us some grief until we retreated to get our guns. I gave up on my torn jacket after that, figuring that either of the two spares would do a much better job, many times mended as they were. Either those undead fuckers were truly vicious, or I was not quite up to my usual game. The next time more zombies crowded in around us—coming from a camping area by a lake—I hung back a little, letting Nate and Burns cut through them while I cleaned up in their wake. If either of them noticed, they didn’t say anything. But I noticed, and that was bad enough.
It was early afternoon by the time the radio squawked, making me reach for it as Nate had to concentrate on the road. A massive landslide had brought down part of the mountain to the north, boulders the size of RVs blocking half the valley.
“Yup,” I said without formal greeting, figuring that it must be someone who knew us well enough if they had the transponder codes for the Jeep.
I couldn’t help but grin when Martinez’s voice came out of the speakers. “You’re not dead yet? After how you left us, I’m a bit disappointed.”
“Glad to hear you, too!” I quipped, getting a little more comfortable in my seat after handing the binoculars to Burns in the back row. “How are things down by the coast? We’re living close to some bona-fide assholes, just saying.”
“And you only realize that now?” Martinez laughed. “I thought you’d noticed New Angeles was just around the corner.”
Speaking of which…
“Let me guess. Greene called you, asking for an update from us?”
The brief grunt I got was answer enough. “He said it would be too conspicuous if he called you directly. Apparently, playing telephone with his own people was too much of a hassle. Care to tell us what’s going on? Until he called earlier, I thought you’d just gotten bored and would use any available excuse to get out of baking duty. But when your proclaimed arch nemesis is getting nosy, I feel like there’s a lot more going on than I probably want to know.”
I hesitated, but it wasn’t like this was critical information. The line was likely as secure as it got simply because no one would bother to try to listen in on us, anyway. “Who else is there with you?”
“Romanoff and Zilinsky,” Martinez reported. “Sadie’s too pissed off to care, and everyone else bought the excuse theory that we’ve spent the last days spreading whenever we could.”
Nate jerked his chi
n toward me, making me extend the mic in his direction. “Thanks for that,” he offered up, his eyes never leaving the road. I raised my brows, surprised that neither he nor Burns had told me about that order, but it wouldn’t have been the first time.
“I’m not sure what it says about the lazy lot of you that you’d so easily believe we’re simply gallivanting through the country because we got cabin fever,” I muttered.
Burns laughed behind me. “My guess is they bought it because of some other, much more believable, reasons,” he offered, then went on to do some bow-chicca-wow-wow noises.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, trying to sound more annoyed than amused. “And what exactly does that make you, huh?” I shot back, then turned to the mic again. “What can I say? I’m not dead yet. Might as well enjoy life as it is.”
I’d meant that as a joke, but the fact that Martinez took a few moments to reply set my teeth on edge. “But you’re concerned enough that you didn’t just stick your head in the sand and ignore it until it goes away? If you’ve already started looking for another shabby, rundown motel on the side of the road, this time we’re coming after you, just saying.”
What a heart-warming consideration. I tried to disband the unease rising deep inside of me with a quick chuckle. “I hope it won’t get that far, but you’ll be the first to know. Well, after the guys at the Silo, and us, and Harris and his guys, and likely the townies that are tracking along, too. How does thirtieth to know sound to you?”
“Like bullshit,” Martinez grumbled, but the concern in his voice was already dissipating. “Makes sense. That you’re heading for the lab that contains your most current blood work. I told Romanoff that but he wouldn’t listen.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 8