One of Harris’s guys woke us up what felt like only moments later. No further shamblers had been sighted, but everyone seemed happy to know that we were up for guard duty—at least those that hadn’t stared at us with wide eyes and hunched shoulders last night. Maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me, but things hadn’t changed much by the time our uneventful two hours were up and I waited for Tanner and Gita to crawl out of their car, slurping my morning coffee. As soon as there was enough light to see colors, Burns, Nate, Tanner, and Harris started down the hill once more to check on what was left of our little gore-fest from last night, with Gita—and, surprisingly—the idiot brigade tagging along.
At first glance, I almost agreed with the assessment of the other scavengers, but then realized that the reason why the bodies were literally dismembered were some nocturnal predators that had torn into the two fleshier zombies in particular and must have hauled off the best parts. There was still enough of them left to confirm my guess from last night—they hadn’t been newly turned zombies. Yet in the light of day, they also didn’t look like they’d been living rough for the past one and a half years. While the idiots were busy gawking and poking the remains with a stick, Nate checked what remained of their clothes. When he caught my gaze, he silently shook his head—inconclusive at best. I didn’t want to voice the creeping suspicion that I felt at least the two of us had—that, just maybe, those two had been some of the earliest victims of the tweaked super-soldier serum—but with nothing pointing directly that way, it didn’t make any sense to speculate.
“Let’s hope these are the only ones we encounter,” Nate said with a last look at the remains, turning to Harris. “Have there been many reports of them in the region?”
Harris shook his head. “Not that I know of. And I think that’s something people would share. Communication has gotten patchy since summer, but nobody wants to deliberately send anyone into the gaping mouths of those freaks. Least of all as that would feed them good.”
The rest of us were already turning away but Blondie was still transfixed with the corpses. It took some urging from his compatriots to get him moving, making me guess that they hadn’t been part of any of the more industrious scavenger groups in the past. Somehow that made them coming along even more annoying to me. If they’d at least been capable… but really, it didn’t make much of a difference.
Driving order was the same as the day before, only that it seemed to me as if most of the cars remained closer together, forcing Harris to set a somewhat slower pace. With nothing much around once we cleared the hills, that wasn’t exactly very entertaining. I got all the more excited when Harris hailed us over the private frequency just before noon.
“Folks, you up for a bit of fun? The Salt Lake City settlement hailed us. Because of the influx of people they’ve seen over the past weeks they’re falling a little short on everything that’s not food. Anyone in the mood for a quick shopping trip?”
Nate didn’t even glance my way before he answered. “Always. Got a good location in mind?”
Harris chuckled, our agreement obviously not a surprise. “There’s a mall supposed to be about fifty miles from here. We can be there in around two hours if we follow the road for another twenty miles, leave the townies with some guards, and then veer off the track. It’s far enough away that if we run into any trouble, we can lose it before returning to camp, or make a second trip if that’s needed. Sound good?”
“I presume you don’t have any intel on the building itself?” Nate asked.
“Nope, but I’m sure they have plans displayed aplenty. We can’t be the first ones to get there, but the stretch of land is deserted enough that the other looters must have left something for us to drag off as well. I’ll tell the others now.”
And so it was that, somewhat later than planned but still in broad daylight, we arrived at the location. I hadn’t expected much as all we’d passed were small clusters of houses that looked like they’d been mostly abandoned long before the undead had turned the world into one gigantic ghost town. From the outside, the mall looked like a hulking beast made out of five connected buildings, the middle two of them about as large as the average warehouse while the remaining ones had only two stories rather than three and were more recent additions. Recent as in the early ‘90s, I guessed. It lay on the outskirts of another scattered small town, next to a car dealership and motel. A few cars and lots of debris remained on the huge parking lot, and judging from the fact that all windows I could see were broken, Harris hadn’t been kidding about us not being the first to drop by. If it had been just the three of us, I would have checked next door to go hunting for a replacement for the Rover, but I doubted I would have found anything useable. The good cars had likely been driven off while they still had batteries that worked and there was gasoline easily available to keep them running. Ah, but I missed that damn deathtrap on four wheels.
Harris didn’t bother with telling us to split into groups—that took care of itself. Half of the New Angeles people had remained behind. Two scavenger cars we’d left about a mile out to serve as lookouts, one roaming north, the other south to get a good view of the surroundings—reporting nothing so far except for a few shamblers moseying around near the town center, far enough away not to become an issue any time soon. That left us with five strike teams of three to five people each—us, Harris, Tanner, the other scavengers, and the idiot brigade. We’d dropped off everything not strictly necessary at the camp, leaving our cars with room aplenty for several hauls from inside the buildings. The only thing that was missing was for someone to declare this as a race—one that I intended to win, if I had my way.
The mall had three entrances, and after studying the map—as predicted, already displayed outside, if faded enough to make it partly useless—we split up. We got the southern entrance all to ourselves, while Tanner and the idiots got the northern, and the rest the one to the west. Nate took point while Burns got to secure our backs, but with the gaping maw of the entrance looming several feet wide, broken glass everywhere, it wasn’t like we could do this in a line. My Mossberg was securely in my hands but I had my M4 strapped to my pack, should I need quantity over short-range firepower. I doubted it, but ever since the factory debacle I was committed not to end up on the “sorry” side of history again.
Right inside the glass box of the entrance, we scared up a bunch of raccoons that ran deeper into the building after bitching us out, having made a comfortable hovel out of some boxes, dry leaves, and a stash of clothes they must have dragged there. To the left, there was a toy store—something we immediately ignored after a quick tour to make sure nothing was hiding in there—while to the right, a hunting and outdoor store lay sprawling over several fronts. It was ransacked all right, but that didn’t mean that we wouldn’t find loot aplenty. It certainly held more interest than the nail parlor that was next to the toys.
Nate went to check if there were still any weapons or ammo left—knives often went ignored. Burns made for the winter clothes, badly stocked as they were with the last delivery having come in May last year, while I ambled for the hiking section, almost tripping a few times over the shit that lay discarded on the floor everywhere. Options were rather limited, but I still grabbed what was left of the children’s hiking boots, dropping an entire garbage bag full of them outside the store before going back in. I got the last of the ropes and hauled them into two pink daypacks for hiking that had survived the purge as well. The bottom shelf of supplements and vitamins followed, and while I rooted through what used to be sleeping bags—stinking badly enough of animal that I figured the raccoons had used them as their winter hideout away from the entrance—I found some camping dishes that went into the packs as well. As I dropped all that off, our heap of loot had already grown to what would amount to at least two trips to the car. Most not exactly valuable, but better than nothing.
I joined the others as they did a last round through the trashed shelves, not surprised to see Nate frowning wi
th frustration. “Maybe we should hit a few houses up in the mountains to get better gear,” I suggested. “Stores are what everyone goes for first. Whatever else happened to society, people still don’t like invading someone else’s property.”
He gave a curt nod, but still didn’t ease up. “I don’t like this.”
Glancing at the torn T-shirts littering the floor in front of us, I shrugged. “It’s a waste, sure, but—“
“This doesn’t look like random looting. Someone actively vandalized this store.”
“Former disgruntled employee?” I guessed. “Desperation makes people do stupid things.” I paused to flash him a quick grin. “Like getting married, and shit.”
He only had a grunt for me in return. Our time was better spent dragging the loot into the car, anyway. At least Burns looked happy with the new fake-fur-lined hat that he’d found in the storeroom. To each their own.
We went back in and checked the next few stores, but nothing useful anywhere. The mall didn’t just look old, it had also been stacked with crappy stores, a lot of the goods already useless although they’d done nothing but sit—sometimes even undisturbed—on the shelves. We found a few badly decomposed bodies, but none that were still moving.
Way faster than we’d planned, we stepped into the food court, where destruction reigned, as did the residual stench of decay. Someone had tried to barricade themselves inside one of the burger joints from the looks of it, the walls and counter covered in dried blood that had long ago started to flake off. There were no bodies remaining, only rags, and several badly-torn packs. Early looters, likely, falling prey to the ones that had come before them and guzzled up too much of the contaminated foods so readily available here in this temple of cardiovascular suicide.
After a brief circuit, Nate stepped up to another map of the mall, studying it carefully. “There’s a pharmacy in Tanner’s section. Even looted, that likely still holds something we can use.” He cast a sidelong glance my way before going on. “There are also two small electronics stores that might be worth looking at. The rest’s worthless.”
“I don’t know about that,” I offered. “I’m sure the beds and sofas over there could be put to some good use.”
Nate smirked while Burns had a derisive grunt for me. “I’m not standing guard while you two yahoos get it on in there. Drop me off with Tanner and his bunch first.”
Not a bad idea, I figured, watching Nate fiddle with his com gear, if for another reason. “Tanner, do you read me? Find anything useful in your sector?”
The answer came after a crackle followed by some cursing. “A few thermal shirts and some socks, but otherwise it’s a bust. Pharmacy, too, although Gita’s still rooting through it. Someone took the time to topple over all the shelves and trash the place. But if you’ve got nothing better on your end—“
“We’ll be there in ten,” Nate told him and nodded at us. “Let’s go.”
We passed a few clothing stores on the way to the escalators that would lead us up to the pharmacy. If we’d had more vehicles, I might have opted to drag everything even remotely useable out of them, but as it was, we didn’t, and nobody needed another tank top or hot pants, anyway. Not for the first time I groused about the zombie apocalypse happening at the beginning of summer, leaving us with a lot of useless shit for loot rather than useful gear. What little of that had been readily available was long gone.
Climbing to the top floor left me slightly winded. I tried to downplay it, but I could tell from the way Nate was studying me that he was well aware of my wheezing. I ignored his look of concern and instead strode by Tanner into the somewhat illuminated pharmacy, thanks to a couple flashlights deposited on the floor. It looked worse in here than the food court. My first guess was that a bunch of drug addicts had tried to get one last fix—either that, or people already too sick to think clearly had gotten frustrated that cough drops didn’t keep them from dying. Either way, it was a mess, but that didn’t have to turn out for the worst, I realized, when the second bottle of pills I picked up turned out to be Ibuprofen. Whipping out another trash bag, I threw it in, then rooted around some more to find another five.
A few others of the New Angeles people were busy collecting bottles and boxes as well, even if it was slow going. Gita was at the very back of the storeroom, grumbling to herself as she kept chucking bottle after bottle over her shoulder. “Looking for anything specific? Maybe I can help,” I offered.
Without looking up from the next label she was scanning, she shrugged. “Any T-blocker would be awesome, and I’ll take some E if you find it.” Two more bottles went the way of the others. “Fucking bigoted red states.” She then realized that I was still standing there, if not confused, somewhat puzzled. “Testosterone blockers and estrogen? Don’t you have a degree that should make you at least somewhat aware of these things?”
Ah. Made sense. Dropping down next to her, I wedged my flashlight between my shoulder and cheek so I could work with both hands. “To tell you in minute detail how ebola will liquify your organs. Pretty useless in practical application until recently.” Staring at the label of the bottle for several seconds, I asked, “Any brand names? I’m a little murky on my antiandrogens.”
She rattled off a rather impressive list that I was hard-pressed to remember, ending with a sigh. “Doubt we’ll find anything here. They likely had to special order it in this forsaken, bumfuck of nowhere town.”
The next bottle wasn’t what she was looking for, either, but still went into my bag. Even with cardio being much more important than, say, two years ago for imminent survival, people would still need arthritis meds.
“How far were you along when the shit hit the fan?” I didn’t ask her if the question was too personal. She’d likely tell me to fuck off if she didn’t want to talk about it.
Gita paused for a moment, glancing over to me, as if to gauge my intent. “Six months into transitioning. Just long enough to make everything shrink but nothing grow.” She gave a brief laugh. “Because I was technically still a minor when I started, they put me on a low dose. Was fine with me, never had much to shave off, anyway. And it’s not like I was already making an appointment for a boob job—not with that scrawny ass to balance it out. But it sucks when you get all the weird shit of the hormones slamming your mind around, and then right over again when you slowly have to wean yourself off because you can’t find the shit anywhere. I was lucky, got my last injection the week before the news reports turned into a living nightmare, and managed to steal some pills from my roomie when she didn’t—“ She paused, swallowing hard. “She didn’t need them anymore. Found another bottle when we made it to New Angeles, but that ran out in spring. I know that it’s absolutely low priority, but we’re here and got nothing else to do. Might as well take a look, right?”
“Never hurts,” I offered.
A sly smile spread across her face. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
I shook my head, laughing softly. “Nope. But you do realize that I hang out all the time with a bunch of guys who, when I asked our medic about tampons, wanted to know why I’d need any because nobody had punched me in the face and I didn’t have a nosebleed otherwise. Let’s just say that sensitivity isn’t one of my strengths anymore—if it ever was.”
Gita looked unperturbed by that claim. “I couldn’t care less about that. I generally don’t give a shit about what people think about me. I just want to be who I am, know what I mean? And for people to respect that. Tanner constantly hulking over me and glaring at anyone who’s an ass to me isn’t a permanent solution. But I won’t impress anyone by sitting around on my lazy ass and being depressed because I don’t look pretty enough.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “In this economy, I’m not sure if beauty has any advantages. Besides, no one looks appealing with gore splashed all over them.” I paused, considering. “Is that the reason why you’re tagging along? So you can convince the world that you’re one tough bitch? Been there, done it, didn’t exact
ly like the consequences.” As if on command, the scar tissue on my upper thigh gave a twinge, making me shift onto my other leg.
“Just got bored in the city after we got back,” Gita admitted. “When I first got there, before we started rebuilding, I was so glad to be out of that hell. We lost so many people getting there that I thought I’d never want to be outside of the gates—or at least in sight of them—ever again. But after coming to Colorado with you, it just wasn’t the same anymore. Sure, I could have volunteered for one of the trading parties or signed up for extended perimeter watch, but that kind of sucks balls, too.”
“And Greene wanted a reliable source of information along,” I hazarded a guess. I didn’t doubt that Tanner would report back, too, but considering his camaraderie with Burns in particular he seemed the much less reliable option if push came to shove.
Gita didn’t even deny it. “Might come in handy, too, you know? Some doors will open for him that will forever remain barred to you.”
I shook my head, but more in disgust than denial. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”
Static spewing from the com made me tense and reach for my shotgun that rested propped against one of the overturned shelves. Harris sounded a little breathless as he spoke. “We could use some backup here. Found a pocket of zombies, and they’re giving us some grief.” I hadn’t heard any gunshots yet, so I presumed they’d tried to subdue them otherwise.
“On it,” Nate responded, then called to me inside the storeroom. “I’m taking Tanner and Burns with me. You stay here and see what you can find, then take it all back to the cars.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 13