The pause that followed could have been due to him keeping his attention on the wolves, but I doubted it. “Because you’ve been pointing your shotgun at your own feet for the past five minutes. You need to eat something.”
Shit. I quickly straightened, getting my weapon up to where it belonged. “Yeah, good idea in theory, but remember how that went last time?”
A longer pause followed. “I have some dextrose in my pack.”
The chuckle that made it over my lips was a harsh one. “Gee, so sick of me already?” I hadn’t forgotten about Bailey insta-converting due to eating a contaminated chocolate bar.
“I’m overwhelmingly sure that it’s safe for consumption.”
Now that was a phrasing that needed an explanation. “Exactly how sure?”
“Eighty-eight percent?” Nate hazarded a guess. “I swiped it off the Cheyenne Mountain compound when we left. It came from the stocks that they were eating from, so I don’t think they contaminated their own food.”
“Or they just made it look like they used it,” I voiced the part he left unsaid.
“Hence the twelve percent chance you’ll kill us all before the wolves or shamblers get to us.”
I tried to come up with a witty answer, but my brain drew a blank. “Not sure my body still has enough glycogen stored up for that.” And right there was my answer. “Gimme some sugar.”
The situation couldn’t be dire enough that Burns didn’t laugh about a crack of mine like that, which was oddly comforting. I staggered twice until Nate had managed to get the stuff from his pack and it reached me through a line of tired, injured people fumbling with their weapons. That no one seemed interested in swiping any let me know just how much they trusted Nate’s assessment. Under different circumstances, I wouldn’t have chanced it, but if you don’t have any sane options left, any option will do.
It was one of those packs that contained the single pieces wrapped individually. I didn’t try to unwrap it—my fingers were way too frozen and clumsy for that, gloves notwithstanding. So all it took was some fumbling to get my scarf off the lower half of my face so I could tear into the packaging with my teeth. I chewed it all as best I could before I swallowed, spitting out the inedible chunks I managed to separate from the rest. I had a moment where I thought it would come right up my esophagus again, my mind rejecting the possible danger after all, but it went down—and stayed down as well. I kept chewing, as best I could without taking my entire attention off my surroundings.
“Are you dead yet?” Nate asked a while later. No idea how much time had passed, but considering how quickly Bailey had converted at that factory, I should at least have felt something by now.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but hanging on.” I did a quick assessment. “Actually feeling just a little less like a slab of meat right now, but I doubt it will hold up for long.”
“Only needs to hold up long enough,” Nate answered—and the zombies rushed us as one cohesive unit.
Instinct took over—instinct crafted and honed last year—and I started running for the middle of the lake rather than try to make a stand. Long before my body had turned into my own worst enemy, Nate had drilled one imperative into me: run. My body lacked the reserves to go on for hours, but now it might just have a shot at a quick burst of speed, so that’s what I went for. Gita kept up with me, with Charlie lumbering after us across the bumpy but still surprisingly slippery ice. And it wasn’t like the wolves weren’t happy to give chase, another hassle to deal with.
I ran until the first beast made a jump for me, powerful jaws snapping shut around my left arm. I blindly punched at the animal as I slid to a halt, Gita using the stock of her rifle to batter at its head. The wolf let go and died as soon as I managed to swing my shotgun around to blow its head off. As I was already standing, I aimed and shot at everything that came at me, snarling and yipping, until the last slug was spent. Then I reloaded and sent another five wolves onto the ice.
More running, more shooting. My shotgun got too heavy so I shoved it toward my back and continued shooting with my Beretta—less lethal, but a hit from up close still hurt, and was better than a powerful slug going wide. Charlie’s last magazine ran empty and he grabbed for my Mossberg, which I happily gave up to him. It was a little weird to shoot at wolves from a defensive stance while Charlie pawed my pockets for ammo, but I was well beyond caring by then.
The last wolf finally dropped to the ground, blood spreading where Gita had nailed it in the stomach. Taking a moment to catch my breath, I looked back at where the others were still battling with the zombies. Two were down—none of them ours, I noticed with relief—but they were too well matched to end this soon. Actually, even with Nate, Burns, and Tanner fighting with everything they had and Jason not a lightweight in any sense of the word, they were about to get overwhelmed.
Glancing to the other side of the lake, I could just make out the shapes of a few buildings. My strength was waning quickly, but I was sure that if I started for them now, I’d reach them—but not much beyond that. Gita and Charlie would have to clear them out of anything lurking there on their own, so my effort would be wasted. But I was only thirty yards away from where I could make a difference.
“Run for those buildings over there, see if we can use them for shelter. Check the garage, too. Anything we can use to get away from here’s good. Now, go.”
Charlie turned without comment, but Gita hung back. “What about you?”
I thought about assuring her that I would be fine, but we were well beyond that point to be still believable. “Just go. That’s an order.”
I turned away before the hurt look on her face could do more than merely register. Dropping my pack from my shoulder, I pulled my M24 from where it had been strapped on. Maybe overkill to use a sniper rifle at this distance, but the rounds sure carried a hell of a punch, and I could easily fire if from a prone position, propped up on my pack. Prone was good. More so, manageable. So that’s what I did.
The first round went wide, but made enough of a boom to draw attention. I hit the zombie that was wrestling with Nate right in the thigh, pretty much amputating the leg above the knee. That was enough of a distraction that Nate would do the rest, so I moved on to the one that was clawing at Tanner. A hit in the shoulder just made bone and flesh spray everywhere, but the second in the side of the head did the trick. The one that had been bugging Jason turned to come for me, but Nate jumping on its back and wrestling it down to the ground dissuaded it from that notion. There were too many friendlies in my scope to keep going right then so I reloaded, then finished off the last one when it staggered away from Burns, its throat already gushing blood and goo from where Burns had almost severed its head from the neck.
Silence fell, not that I heard it over the ringing in my ears. I reloaded again, my motions so sluggish that I only managed to get three rounds inside before I slumped onto the pack, barely managing to turn my head to the side so I could continue to breathe. Even that became a struggle, my vision narrowing rapidly.
Nate fell on his knees next to me, pulling the sniper rifle from my hands before he rolled me onto my back. I tried to croak out to him that I was fine, but barely managed a whimper. Concern was etched deep into the lines of his face, but his motions were quick and methodical, efficient. In short order, he heaved me up onto his back, balancing my body across his shoulders so he could keep me up there without my help. Burns grabbed our gear while Tanner and Jason flanked us, but no wolf or shambler followed from the shore.
I was barely conscious by the time we made it to the other side of the lake where Gita and Charlie were anxiously waiting for us. The vertigo that hit me when Nate hauled me off his shoulders as soon as we were inside the house was the last thing I felt—then, sweet nothing.
Chapter 19
I came to a few times during the night, disoriented enough that I had no clue what was going on, but Nate’s soothing voice dragged me back to sleep each and every time. I woke up again when I felt mys
elf get picked up and the temperature changed around me, but I was warm and cozy, and the gentle shaking all around me rocked me right back to sleep. I roused again a while later, long enough to realize that I was lying on a makeshift stretcher, bundled up in what must have been the combined duvets of several multi-person households. I tried to hold on to consciousness longer this time, but was out cold before I could turn my head and look around.
I had no idea how much time passed. A day, maybe. Possibly two, as I had a vague sense of a longer stop before the rocking resumed. I didn’t dream. I certainly didn’t think, which was a small mercy.
Something pricking my arm, then itching like crazy finally dragged me back out of my comatose lethargy. We were somewhere inside—another barn, I guessed, from the straw sticking out from underneath my cocoon—and there was a low fire burning somewhere off to my left, the flickering flames creating a play of light and shadows all over the walls. I tried to stretch my arms and legs, but my muscles weren’t quite responding yet, locked-up after hours of inactivity. Glancing toward my itching arm, I found a needle sticking out of the crook of my elbow, a thin, dark line connecting it to Nate’s. He was sitting on the floor next to me, chewing a piece of apple, but the moment he noticed me stir, he focused on me.
“Blood transfusion?” I croaked out, not even trying to make sense of that.
“I doubt that with all the shit going on with your body, that’s going to kill you,” he joked, even managing a slight smile. That was a good sign; he hadn’t been joking back in that motel when we’d both been so sure that I was dying.
“Of course it’s not,” I grumbled. “You’re O negative. Your blood’s about the only thing about you that won’t kill me.”
He shrugged. “With no other way to get any food into you, we figured it was worth a try. I’ve been munching my way through our rations all day while Burns and Tanner took turns hauling your sorry ass around. Not the worst lot in life I can think of.”
“Glad you’re getting something out of this, too,” I muttered. When I tried to push myself up, I found my legs too weak to comply, but my arms managed to get me into a slightly more upright position. Nate reached over, bunching up the blankets underneath me so they created more of a pillow behind my back. Glancing around, I found the others fast asleep, no other guard up. From the lumps underneath their clothes I could tell that I’d missed a grand round of everyone getting patched up. “How long was I out?”
“A little over two days,” Nate replied. “We made good progress, but we’re still a hundred miles from our destination.”
That was closer than I’d figured, but still too far to make me feel enthusiastic. “That’s what, three days? Four?”
“We’re hoping closer to two. We found a couple ATVs stashed away in a house about half a mile from here. The spare batteries were set to charge on a solar panel array, so they should be working.”
His lack of enthusiasm made me frown. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
Nate grimaced. “We checked the tires. Besides gravel and mud, there’s gore and blood mixed in there. I could be wrong, but if I’d had to take a guess, someone was using them to run over shamblers not too long ago.”
My mind was too tired to go off on a paranoid tangent. “Why not just refrain from looking the gift horse in the mouth?” I suggested.
“That’s what Burns said, too. I think your symbiotic idiocy has officially reached alarming levels.”
That made me chuckle. “Always happy to annoy you.” I gave that some more thought. “Any signs it’s some kind of cache or way station for the people we most want to avoid but can’t?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. They didn’t leave a mission statement,” Nate offered. “But we also found some MREs in a box with spare ammo. Touched neither because we’re not that stupid. There’s enough fuel to make it to our destination, but not much farther if we take all three vehicles.”
That remark took me a while to figure out. “You’re thinking about bailing on the rest?”
He laughed softly. “That’s one way of phrasing it. But the idea has crossed my mind. If I bundle you up and we leave in the middle of the night, it might be morning before they notice that we’re gone. They’d never catch up, so why try? Would make much more sense to try to conserve fuel and make it back to the States, even if they are just limping at walking pace.”
“Burns will kill you if you do that,” I pointed out.
Nate’s eyes briefly flickered over to the snoring hump a few feet away from us. “Doubt it. That was his idea, too.”
That surprised me—but then again, it didn’t. Whatever was waiting for us at that address, none of us would go anywhere near it if it wasn’t for me. We’d needed the others to get this far—and would likely miss them the rest of the way as it would turn into one grueling tour de force for Nate, with no rest and all the responsibility lying on his shoulders—but there was no reason why they should further endanger their lives.
“I don’t want you to give yourself up for me,” I told him, speaking right over his starting protest as his mouth snapped open. “I know that I can’t talk you out of it. But I need to say it.”
“Your protest is duly noted and ignored.”
“So when are we doing this? You’ll need all the strength you got from munching yourself fat over the last day. You can always tie me to your back and we’re good.”
He looked down at the line connecting us to each other. “I’d say let’s wait a little longer, but there’s no sense to it, right? You’re awake and as strong as you’re going to get. Let’s do this. Unless you want to spend some more time poring over Raleigh’s notes?”
I shook my head. “Nope, I found everything I need in there already. Let’s do this.”
We needed longer than I was comfortable with breaking camp. It took me embarrassingly long to get my arm back into the many layers Nate had extracted it from to get to my bare skin. Even in the dim light the spreading bruises and rash were impossible to ignore. I tried anyway. He got everything else ready in the meantime. Then all that was left to do was to douse the fire and get over to the ATVs.
I maybe could have walked, but Nate shushed me before I could more than try, carrying me instead. It wasn’t as dark outside as I’d expected, the bright moon in the clear skies casting everything in cold, blue light. I had to agree with Nate’s assessment—the ATVs were in way too good a state to have been abandoned here since the shit had hit the fan. We chose the smallest one, leaving those that could lug more than two people around for the others. While I waited, Nate rolled it out onto the road, the harsh wind still going strong having swept most of the snow off it. A quick but heated debate followed as we discussed who’d sit where. I won, reasoning that his arms were long enough that he could reach forward around me if I was no longer fit to drive, and the shelter of his body would keep mine going for longer. He still forced me to eat a second dextrose stick before he gave in. I really could have done with some help from him climbing on, but as he remarked with anger simmering in his voice, if I couldn’t do that, how was I supposed to drive. So I managed myself, even if it took me several minutes. Nate hopped on behind me with ease, and we spent some more time squabbling with each other until all legs and knees had been arranged to everyone’s satisfaction.
The engine started with more ease than the Rover or Jeep had ever managed, and we were off with none of the others the wiser. I had the sinking feeling that this might be a more permanent kind of goodbye than I’d wanted, but if it saved them from getting caught up in my shit, I was okay with that. They’d risked enough for me. What happened from here on out was all on me.
Chapter 20
Riding an ATV through the moonlit night across icy roads with wind slicing cold knives across my face wasn’t exactly my kind of fun. Doing so without backup—that we’d deliberately left behind—rations, or our usual arsenal of weapons didn’t make things any better. All of that I found out at our first stop shy of early dawn when Nat
e insisted on a break to fill me up with tepid tea—after a coughing fit that was bad enough that I felt like I was hawking up half of my lungs forced me to let the ATV roll to a halt. It also sent another one of my teeth flying but I didn’t tell Nate that. With all the bloody phlegm coming up, it was easy to hide. Focusing on other things was more important. I’d noticed the lack of his trusty AK and both our sniper rifles, but thought little of it, until I discovered that the pack he had brought was too light to contain any of our personal effects. Sure, we still had enough weapons and ammo to go down in a blaze of fire, but nothing that couldn’t be easily replaced later. The fact that he hadn’t packed any food for himself bothered me, but as he reminded me at the thirty-mile mark—it wasn’t that much farther that we had to go. Why waste precious resources that would go to waste if we didn’t use them up on the road? It all made a lot of sense, but left me with a clammy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Or maybe that was just my body starting to eat itself for good. Who knew?
More importantly, who cared?
We made moderately good time, at least until I slumped over the handlebars mid-morning from one moment to the next, only the fact that my hand slipped off the throttle keeping the ATV from racing straight into the next tree. I’d been zoning out for a while by then, but been too proud and stubborn to admit it. Nate looked ready to chew me out for that, but swallowed his ire instead. We tried switching places, but when he narrowly avoided throwing me off as he went over some hidden obstacle on the partly obscured road, he had to admit that it wasn’t a good idea. While he could reach around me, it didn’t make for good driving, and we more limped than skipped along the last leg of our journey. At least the well-maintained ATV didn’t disassemble right under our asses—unlike me. That had to count for something.
The snowy plains of the Canadian prairies had one huge advantage—they were as empty as they came. No more wolves that we saw, no shamblers, and only a handful of tracks left by smaller animals like hares or foxes that crossed the roads occasionally. Just our luck that we had traipsed in the wrong direction the day before. Or maybe it was because we didn’t stop, and with just the two of us and the high-pitched whine of the ATV, nothing considered us worth the hassle of taking us down. I could have done with some rest but was glad that for once Nate didn’t push it. Being out for so long had proven that we absolutely had no time to waste. With every mile that we flew toward our destination, I felt like my very life was draining from me like sand through a half-closed fist. I couldn’t help but worry what would happen once we reached our destination. It wasn’t like we had a street map with us, unless Nate had bothered to find one while I’d been out. All I knew was that the address we were aiming for was somewhere to the south of town.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 27