“We’re not exactly much for community,” Nate retorted, nibbling on a hunk of cheese. “Might come as a complete surprise, seeing as we spent the entirety of the warmer months out there on the road.”
Minerva wasn’t perturbed by that statement. “As Jason must have already explained, we here have a place for everyone. You can spend days on guard duty or hunting and never meet another human soul, if that’s your thing. There are abandoned cottages all over the hills and up in the mountains, and we only need a few days to build new ones. And there’s the matter of looting.” Her gaze skipped from us to Jason. “The city and metro area are still not safe to visit, but there are lots of houses outside of that, full of everyday items that are still useable and no one cared to carry off yet. We can’t send in larger vehicles that are too slow to get away in case they attract the wrong kind of attention, but the cars you drive should be able to make a clean getaway easily. Might not be glamorous, going house by house, street by street, stripping them of glorious items like pots and winter clothes, but it’s a hell of a lot safer than being out on the road where anything can happen. Plus, more equipment means we have surplus to either barter away, or attract more permanent residents.” She paused, considering our obvious lack of an enthusiastic reaction. “It’s pretty much what Emma set her people to doing all summer long, besides building their wall. I heard that all started with a somewhat misguided trip to Douglas, and ended with Wyoming establishing the first large, independent community.”
Sighing theatrically, I turned to Nate, remembering our venture into the town all too well. “And I still haven’t seen that damn jackalope statue.”
“Put it on your bucket list,” he grumbled, still more interested in his cheese. I could tell that the topic bothered him, but didn’t know what to say to diffuse the tension.
Minerva, uncannily reading his reaction, leaned forward. “If you’re reluctant to join us because you’re afraid that history will repeat itself and you get shunned for all the work you put into rebuilding what has been lost, I can guarantee that it won’t happen here. If Jason’s word isn’t enough, you can ask anyone here. We’ve never turned anyone away simply because we didn’t agree with where they came from, or what they’ve done in the past. We value action above everything else. Clean up your act, contribute to our community, and you’re valued and welcome here.”
Nate’s soft laugh held a clear edge. “Do you really think I’m that shallow or vain that I hold a grudge against Emma because she didn’t value our contributions?”
Minerva ignored his biting tone. “No, I think you’re right to have cut all ties to the people who were so ready to forget that it was your effort that brought them through the long and harsh winter, and who didn’t hesitate to ostracize those of you who have already sacrificed for our country long before we knew just how valuable that price paid in blood would become. I wouldn’t want to deal with people who are that short-sighted myself. The worst that would happen to you here if we chose to kick you out is we’d limit your access to the communal areas under supervision, and provide you with an easily defendable home outside of the inner perimeter of our settlement. Seeing as you’ve already stressed that you don’t want to live smack in the middle of a sheep pen, I think you’d likely even prefer to live a day’s walk away from the bustling heart of our community. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the camp your people have established north of New Angeles sounds very close to that concept.”
She wasn’t exactly wrong there, and that seemed to vex Nate more than he liked to admit.
“What is it with you townspeople and wanting to keep us easily accessible right outside of your barricades?” he mused.
“Strategic advantage,” Minerva replied, not bothering with sweet-talking things. “But I see that you don’t agree with my ideas.”
“On the contrary,” Nate admitted. “But agreement doesn’t mean that it’s an offer I’m willing to take.”
She gracefully inclined her head. “It’s an offer without a time limit and only few conditions. Whenever you change your mind, know that you’ll always have a place here.” A wry smile turned the corner of her mouth up. “And judging from what Jason told me about your wife, I think she’d much rather live here in the mountains than deal with the egotistic megalomaniac on the coast every day.”
She wasn’t wrong there, but like Nate I didn’t feel like it was an option worth considering. Maybe once the snow was melting again, but winter in balmy California didn’t sound so bad. All that was pure fantasy right now, with the huge uncertainty of what was going on with me making future planning somewhat impossible.
“Thank you,” Nate replied, for once sounding like he meant it, if grudgingly. “We appreciate the offer.”
Minerva continued studying him, her head cocked to the side. “Not sure you actually do,” she mused, quickly raising a hand to forestall Nate’s objection. “Oh, in terms of being polite I’m sure you meant it. But you’re a nomad. You have no intention of putting down roots anywhere. For a little while, maybe, when circumstances force it. Look at how quickly you left your barely established camp to be out on the road again.”
Nate’s forehead furrowed. “We told you before why we’re heading north.”
Minerva’s smile was a knowing one. “But did you really need to set out immediately? Couldn’t you have waited out the winter? I understand why your wife is alarmed. The more you know, the easier it is for concerns to take hold and drive you crazy. But something tells me that it wasn’t her urging that got you to up and leave.” Her hawk-like gaze skipped on to me. “Now, she doesn’t mind being out there or in here. She has found her home, and that’s wherever you are. Maybe one day she will yearn to settle down, but right now she still has too much joy catching up on the many things she never got to do before her life got derailed.”
I couldn’t hold back a snort. “You talked to Sam, didn’t you?”
Minerva’s shrug wasn’t much of an answer. “Your name only came up once in passing conversation. You’re a scientist. Academia’s prized child. There couldn’t have been much room for being wild and untamed between working your ass off for your achievements. And now, look at you! Not a month passes without you changing tracks. Once the hunted, then the hunter. Makes one wonder what comes next.” Her attention returned to Nate. “It bothers you that you know that it is only the two of you when things boil down to the essentials. That the rest of your team prefers to settle down rather than remain a roaming group of nomads.”
Nate responded with a smirk twisting the side of his mouth up. “And still, it isn’t just the two of us that arrived here.”
“You know better than I do that loyalty easily supersedes need for comfort, but need there still is,” she pointed out. “Your people will always follow you if the need arises. But how much further do you want to lead them, knowing that your goals no longer go hand in hand with theirs?” For once, Nate didn’t have a snappy comeback to that, leading Minerva to chuckle softly. “What do I know, old woman that I am? I’m sure that, come tomorrow, you’ll have already forgotten about me. But maybe you should spend a little more time finding an answer for that question.” She got up, stretching vigorously. “I bid you all a good night. I will have the goods for Wilkes and his people ready when you depart in the morning. Don’t forget that, should worse come to worst, you are always welcome here.”
I waited until she was well out of earshot before I turned to Jason. “Is she always like that?”
“Usually worse,” he offered, laughing. “Don’t mind her. It’s part of her gig to psychoanalyze everyone. Also helps when all her advice eventually boils down to ‘listen to me, I know best,’ don’t you think?”
The woman plastered to his side nodded. “She’s been bugging us for months to get hitched. Not because of religious reasons, but so she can rest assured that Jason always has a reason to come back. Not that he needs the extra incentive, but never hurts to strengthen the ties, or something like that.” The humor in h
er tone—and the partly wistful look on Jason’s face—made me guess that, just maybe, Minerva was trying to be a good sport as well.
We remained sitting at the fire for another hour, snuggled in blankets and just enjoying such creature comforts as great company and not having to watch our backs. Eventually, even the most steadfast drinker was happy to turn in, and we ended up in the cramped room in one of the larger buildings closer to the gate that I presumed were for guest lodgings. Yet it had a bed—even if that took up ninety percent of the available space—and a door that shut tight, making it the most luxurious housing we’d enjoyed since leaving on our road trip. My coughing had receded, likely due to the gallons of hot tea I’d gulped down, but halfway through the evening I’d started to sneeze, making me feel like the sexiest woman alive with my clogged-up yet still somehow runny nose. Nate was still lost in thought, more broody than usual. We still did it, because, hello? Bed, door, privacy—all things that shouldn’t go to waste. And it was a nice change of pace compared to having to sneak away and watch our backs the whole time—heavy emphasis on “nice.” Far was it from me to complain, and Nate seemed content enough when I snuggled into his side, abusing his outstretched arm for a pillow. Yet the way he kept staring up into the dark rafters I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t quite here with me.
“It bothers you what she said, doesn’t it?” I hazarded a guess. Which part I wasn’t sure about, but that it did was rather obvious.
He briefly glanced at me, his expression turning a different kind of pensive. “Bother is too strong a word for it. But she wasn’t exactly wrong,” Nate admitted.
“So what if you don’t want to settle down? You heard what she also said. I’ll stick to you like one of these small, annoying, yippy dogs.”
“Now that’s a comforting thought.” His soft laughter made me smile.
“It better be! Because, as I said, I’m not going anywhere.”
Nate took his sweet time replying, but I didn’t mind. I was almost about to doze off when he opened his mouth again. “Guess I’m just not used to not knowing what comes next. Still not used to it,” he amended. “And it makes me feel terribly conceited that I’ve never been in that situation.”
That made me laugh in earnest. “Yeah, like you don’t get off on your superiority complex. Tell me something new.”
“Well, how do you do it?” he teased.
“Remember, yippy dog.” I pointed at myself. “I don’t have to have a plan, because before I know it, fate will sucker-punch me into the next great adventure. Come to think of it, it’s a marvel that we even made it down to the coast so we could help start building the camp. Maybe we just missed the blinking neon sign along the way?”
“I was being serious,” Nate insisted.
“Me, too.” I flashed a brilliant grin at him before I turned over onto my stomach, propping myself up on my arms so I could still look at him. “Why are you bothered by that now? We have our mission—get me to the Silo, and, preferably, not shot on sight. Which seems awfully like a constant these days. We’ll take it from there. Whatever the outcome, we can always come back here and take Minerva up on her offer to help them carry off whatever they might need. Or we go back to our people. I’m sure that if we fill the Jeep up with baby stuff, Sadie will forgive you for running out on her like that.” If I sounded a tad bitter mentioning her, there was nothing I could do about it. “Or we go straight down to New Angeles and annoy Greene on a daily basis with your sunny disposition. Not much else we can do with winter right around the corner, but correct me if I’m wrong. Those are a lot more options than we had this time of the year last fall.” I had to admit, I hadn’t wasted a thought on the lack of options back then, too busy with learning how to get by.
“Is any of that really something you want to do?” Nate questioned, sounding a lot more like it wasn’t anything that held his interest. “We busted our asses to force that truce, and now we do what? Count beans and lug around furniture?”
“It could be way worse. I could make you get shit from a Swedish furniture store and you’d have to assemble it, too.”
His sigh of exasperation was rather satisfying—as was him suddenly pushing me over so he could perch right above me, not-quite incidentally ending up between my spread legs. Looked like someone really wasn’t ready to call it a night yet. He leaned down to kiss me but turned the move into pinning my arms to the bed, staring at me from up close, our breaths mingling. “I just can’t make up my mind what I want to do next.”
Hooking one leg up over his ass, I forced him to lower his hips a few inches. “Oh, I can think of a ton of things right now,” I drawled, briefly flexing my arms to try to throw him off. He didn’t budge, superior strength and gravity keeping me right where I was. “Maybe that will make your mind shut up. Just a thought.”
The hunger in his eyes told me that he was tempted, but apparently not tempted enough. “Do you ever wonder if what we did last summer was a mistake? That, not on the grand scale but on a selfish, just-concerning-us level, we should have done things differently?”
That made me pause for a second, annoyance over him forcing me to think warring with mindless lust. It took me a few moments to decide that, yes, I should let my brain do some more thinking rather than spend what was left of its capacity on shutting Nate up.
“Hello, have you met me? Everything I do makes me second-guess, and those few things that don’t end up biting me in the ass. Like that little tidbit that Minerva shared with us today, about me practically being responsible for wiping out a third of the Silo’s scientists. Not only was that a waste of intellectual capacity, but we don’t even know who of them is still alive. I’m banking on being able to persuade Dom and Sunny easily, but what if they’re among those that bit it? Then I’ve retroactively screwed myself. Story of my life.”
Nate’s lips twisted into a grin. “Shit, I’ve missed your constant melodrama so fucking much.”
“Easy for you to say,” I harped. “I know I didn’t hold a gun to their heads and pull the trigger. There’s an entire chain of fuck-ups connected to this. But that doesn’t really change anything. I was a spiteful bitch, and now they’re dead. Same as if we’d made sure that Alders had survived, we’d have someone to go to who actually knows everything about the fucking zombie virus. If I hadn’t killed Taggard, I could have beaten the answer out of him about what happened to Erica. And I could have angled for better terms with Bucky. But maybe not doing all that shit would have gotten us killed months ago, or ended with everyone we know slaughtered rather than sitting around cozy campfires and grumbling about the coming snow. Can’t change it now so all there’s left to do is deal with the fallout.” And why was I rambling about this now? Ah, right. “So what if we could have done things differently? We didn’t. It’s all water under the bridge. Just let it go.” I reared up and stole a breathless kiss from him before I settled more relaxed back into the mattress. “You’ve spent months telling me to own my shit and stop dwelling on what could have been. Maybe take a hint from your own playbook?”
As expected, that was the kind of chiding that didn’t sit well with him, but seeing as the action it prompted involved some increased physical contact, I so didn’t mind. As soon as he shifted his weight, I used that opportunity to wrap myself around him and give him very good reason to stop thinking.
It was only later—surprisingly much later—that I realized that we’d never finished our conversation, and I still didn’t know what had him second-guessing. Damn, but sometimes this man was too difficult for his own good.
I woke up the next morning to Nate getting increasingly more handsy. Apparently, being at odds with yourself about your questionable choices turns you into a randy bastard. Not that I minded; on the contrary. What I minded even less was that, once we were both a sweaty mess, he got up to check on the others, leaving me to enjoy a few quiet moments alone, cozied up in the blankets. With everything warm except for my toes, this was as close to bliss as I’d
expected to feel any time before next spring.
Eventually, I decided that I couldn’t shirk my duty any longer when voices got loud outside the building, making me guess everyone but me was getting ready. I threw off the heap of blankets in a dramatic flurry—it wasn’t like I could easily kick them off the bed, as on three sides it bordered the walls—and halted when my gaze landed on my legs. Cue the horror after not shaving for more than a year and a half; but the abundance of fur wasn’t what made me pause. No, it was the fact that my shins and calves were mottled with bruises, and my toes had a distinctly whitish cast. When I reached down I expected them to feel cool to the touch—duh, with me barely being able to feel them from the cold—but they were distinctly warm. Huh.
Turning over, I found a larger, purplish bruise on my left thigh. It hurt all right when I prodded at it, but that actually made me feel relieved. Bruises, hurting, nothing new there. I tried to remember when I must have gotten them, but came out blank. Then I remembered rolling around in the dirt with the zombie, relaxing instantly. Yeah, that would have done it. I hadn’t realized that I must have kicked so much, but Pia had spent ages teaching me that my hips and thighs were the strongest parts of my body, and I should use them whenever I had to grapple with anyone. And let’s just say that sparring with Nate was easier when I kicked him rather than gave him the chance to use his superior reach and punch me. Remembering that made my jaw ache where the tooth had been, but everything still felt normal when I tongued the area.
Yeah, me being paranoid. What else was new?
Freaked out as I was about my toes, I quickly dressed, feeling better immediately when the hopping around made them tingle, then quiet down as they warmed up. I debated telling Nate, but then decided against it. He’d likely just laugh at me, and that was the last thing I needed. Truth was, after losing my fair share of toenails last year on our endless trek across the country, I’d stopped worrying so much if I only got a blister or two. And being on the road where dressing and washing was usually a quick-as-possible act that left the minimum of skin exposed, it was easy to find bruises days after getting them, often when they were already partly faded.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 18