“Status!”
This time, I was more aware of Hamilton’s demand, yet Cole replied, voice cold and calm, before I could.
“Rodriguez turned. Lewis put her down as she went for Carter. Lewis put him out of his misery before he could turn as well.” As he responded, Cole’s gaze found mine, and the way he regarded me was different from before. If my head hadn’t been pounding hard enough from Rodriguez’s blow to still make it hard to focus on anything now that I was calming down, I might have said something.
Burns’s harsh mirth was unmistakable, even over the static-filled line. “Damn, girl, you’re cleaning house.”
Hamilton sounded much less amused. “Confirmed dead?”
Hill kicked both corpses in what remained of their heads—in Rodriguez’s case his boot went right through the remains. “Confirmed,” he called in.
“ETA in less than four minutes. Get your asses over to the shed and secure the boats.”
I was a little disappointed that no barb at me followed, but he couldn’t very well threaten to court-martial me for disobeying orders and then be equally unprofessional himself.
Cole acknowledged for all of us, but I didn’t miss the pause as he waited for me to do it first. So it wasn’t just Munez. Interesting.
I waited for someone to inquire about my health, although of course neither Burns nor Nate could know that I’d gotten a little banged up in the process. I was glad when they both kept their traps shut. When nothing followed, I walked over to the corpses to retrieve my ax, gritting my teeth when it remained stuck even when I put my foot on Rodriguez’s chest—my grip kept slipping even though I should have had enough leverage. Hill nudged me aside and—quite easily—pulled my tomahawk free, switching his grip so he could offer it to me handle first. I snatched it from his hand without comment, hesitating before I bent over and cleaned it on Carter’s left leg. I was sure he wouldn’t mind anymore.
I was surprised when Hill and Cole started to methodically strip both corpses of first their weapons and packs, then everything else that was easy to retrieve. Cole still had that weird stare going on, and when he saw me watching, he frowned for a second. “Anything else you can use of hers?”
“Like what?” It was a valid question, and I couldn’t help but feel like there was an underlying accusation in that gaze, even though he must have known that if I hadn’t killed her, he likely would have had to.
Cole shrugged. “Boots, jacket—you name it. She’s the only one roughly your size.”
I didn’t correct him about the slip in tenses and shook my head. It made sense to take what we could carry considering our very limited resources, but I would have felt weird about rummaging through her pack for her lightly used bras. Besides, that came with us, anyway.
“Nah, I’m good.” While they continued their gruesome duty, I made sure that no more surprises were waiting for us, but then hesitated. “Gimme one of your trash bags,” I told Cole, almost in afterthought. He followed suit but grunted when he realized I was turning it inside out to be able to grab Rodriguez’s blood and gore-drenched scarf, and what bits and pieces were easily removable from Carter’s ruin of a face. “Samples,” I told Cole when I secured it all and handed the knotted-up bag back to him. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one weirded out by this. She shouldn’t have turned, not like that. Whether she got the serum or not—”
“She was one of us,” he affirmed my not-quite guess.
I nodded. “We are a lot harder to kill than this. And we don’t come back like that.” It was only then that I realized exactly how lucky I’d gotten when she’d socked me a good one—or not. “That blow should have shattered my temple. Sure, she was crazy strong, but not insta-converted going on nuclear strong. This doesn’t add up. Even if the samples degrade, I’m sure someone will want to take a look at this.”
Cole gave me a humorless smile but packed the bag away without protest.
“You mean someone like you?”
I shrugged, happy that the approaching rest of our group gave me a very good reason not to respond. I didn’t know how they’d managed to slay all the shamblers, but they’d done a decent enough job, giving us ample time to find the boats and get them into the water before the next enterprising shamblers tried to come after us. By then I was safely huddled at the bow of the boat, using one of the spare blankets that had been stored with them for a cover, right next to Nate. He didn’t say anything, nor did he appear to do anything except check that everyone else in the boat with him was secure before we cast off, but once we’d settled and Ines engaged the engine, his arm reached underneath the blanket and pulled me back against him, anchoring me to his side. At first, I thought it was a quiet show of support—after all, he was aware that, quite often, I wasn’t as stone-cold a killer as I liked to pretend—but it was only after a few minutes of leaning into him that an alternative motive occurred to me: he was likely damn glad that I was still alive after not just one, but almost two of the people who’d been inoculated with the serum died and came back right next to me. Considering my obvious—and decidedly severe—physical limitations, I should have been dead.
But I was still here, alive and kicking, ready to die another day. And considering what lay ahead, that was a damn fine perspective on life.
Chapter 9
The plan with the boats was a good one—ignoring that it had remained the only option that didn’t guarantee our untimely and imminent demise—but it came with some considerable drawbacks, the first among them the attention the boat motors drew. They weren’t just noisy, they were loud, too loud to allow for communication between the boats without our coms. Even in the pre-apocalyptic world they would have been considered that, but now it was even worse. Getting them ready hadn’t really been a problem, but from the moment on when all three had been in the water and Antoine gave the signal to start the engines, it was on.
And “on” meant pretty much every shambler in running distance of the river seemed to congregate at the riverbanks, at some points so many that they were pushing each other into the water—and soon the ice that had formed where the currents weren’t strong enough to sweep it away.
Of course we’d known that would be a problem, but once again, being directly confronted with something made it way more real than concepts had managed to convey. Lack of sleep and still being weirded out about Rodriguez turning didn’t help.
Antoine was steering the lead boat, Raphael the second, and ours—in the very back of the short line—had Noah in control, with Ines standing by for later. Hamilton, Richards, and a few others had donned their night vision goggles while the rest tried to get some sleep, which was impossible between the whine of the motors and the howls floating across the river from all sides. Judging from the terse chatter going on, they were aware of what was going on over there, but not to the full extent.
“Exactly how long do we intend to do this?” I asked a good thirty minutes after we’d left the golf course behind. “Because I’m not sure if you’re aware of this but we are causing a hell of a lot of a racket. If we keep this up, we won’t need ice on the river for them to reach the boats. They’ll simply drop down on us from the bridges that are still intact.” Sadly, no adventuring shambler demonstrated that move, but I’d seen plenty of them reaching for us from perches up high.
I waited for Hamilton to—again—shoot me down cold, but it took him a few moments to respond. “How would you know? It’s pitch black out there and you’re not wearing your night vision gear.”
I did a mental check—no, I’d never had watch the same time as he’d been out, and his men must be less chatty than I’d presumed. I was tempted to point out that with snow covering parts of the landscape it wasn’t actually that dark, but he had a point. Kind of. I couldn’t hold back a smirk as I responded.
“Looks like they didn’t give you all the details about me in what must have been an amazingly titillating briefing.” Maybe I should have kept that to myself but the fact that I could one
-up him in this was worth giving him a look into my cards. There was no response, but I was sure that if I just listened hard enough, I’d catch the sound of Bucky gnashing his teeth. “Ever since I got infected, I have stellar low-light vision. It’s not as good as it was when I first woke up from what should have been my deathbed, but it’s still pretty decent. Actually, way more useful now after Raynor fixed my eyes and toned down the bright light sensitivity somehow. I’ll likely be blind as a bat in a dark room underground, but out here in this? I see plenty.”
To me, the pause that followed seemed to be lasting forever, but maybe that was just because I enjoyed my not-so-silent gloating too much for my own good.
“Exactly how good is ‘stellar’?” Richards inquired.
“Cast-over day bright at midnight?” I tried to find a good comparison. “I obviously don’t see colors, but to me it’s rather obvious that we’re the main act for thousands of shamblers right now—and we’re not even close to the city itself.” More to Nate than the others, yet without muting the com, I mused, “Think that would shift my chances further toward survival if Decker ever got his claws into me? I think I’m what you’d call an asset for that quirk alone.” Nate didn’t respond beyond giving me the flat stare I deserved, but Hamilton’s lack of an answer sounded like delicious agreement to me.
“We knew this was going to be a problem,” Red offered. “That’s why we need to go further upriver before we float right back.”
“If we make it that far,” I pointed out, looking back to Noah and Ines. “Have you guys ever done this before? Or do you generally only use the motors from the coast up to where the boats were stashed, and float different ones down through Paris?”
Ines remained quiet while Noah gave me a similarly pinched look as he had as we’d entered the golf course. Perfect. Just perfect.
“It’s a sound plan,” Antoine insisted from one of the other boats, arrogance more than certainty in his voice. “And it’s the only plan.”
“We won’t make it in the dark when they’re active and have full visual advantage on us,” I voiced what I was sure was on everyone’s mind. “It’s the only plan, but not under these conditions. We stand a much better chance if we go by day where half of them will be too cautious to be out in the open, and we can see them up on the bridges.”
Hamilton didn’t even protest, which instantly made me suspicious. “We’ll lose a full day if we stop now and set out in the morning.”
“Still better than losing a third or half of our people. Or what do you think will happen if one of them does manage to drop into a boat? They’ll either smash right through it or cause it to capsize, and that water is ice cold. In full gear, we’ll sink and drown before we can even get paranoid about whether their bites can make us convert or not.”
I hadn’t expected him to, but that got Nate joining the conversation. “She’s not wrong with that assessment. And you just lost two people because you didn’t listen to her concerns.”
That made me snort. Hamilton sounded a lot less pleased. “Aren’t you obliged to always agree with her? I think there’s a word for this… right—”
“Smart,” I offered before he could rain on my parade. I thought it was Burns who laughed but couldn’t be sure; he was in one of the other boats.
“Do I have to remind all of you that this is not a democracy?” Hamilton ground out—but before I could continue with my wisecracks, he doused my gloating effectively. “If you see that much better, it only makes sense you should be our lookout. Just tell us if things don’t go as planned.”
That wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear, particularly as I was really fond of trying to sleep—but he kind of had a point. My bad, after having to brag how good my vision really was. I didn’t miss Nate’s soft laugh—or misunderstood how it was meant. I glared at him for his trouble and made sure to plant my elbow in something vital as I shifted to grab some binoculars from my pack.
“If you insist—”
“I do,” Hamilton confirmed. “Unless you absolutely need your beauty sleep, princess?”
I didn’t reward that with an answer. The lead boat started falling back behind us, and while I knew it was simple imagination, I felt twice as exposed as before. This was going to be one hell of a long night—and I had a certain feeling that tomorrow would only get worse.
“You good?” Nate’s question—and quite questionable wording—made me snort.
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice,” he murmured, the words almost drowned out by the barking of the motor.
A few wrecks of what must have been river cruise ships came up ahead, drawing my attention to them. They looked deserted, rusting hulls that they had been reduced to, but I didn’t trust that assessment. My late reply was absentminded at best. “A little sleep deprivation won’t kill me. You’ve put me through worse last year—both incidentally and quite deliberately.” I’d remember that week for the rest of my life where he, Pia, and Andrej had set their minds to not letting me sleep until I fell over from exhaustion, both proving to me that I was stronger than I thought, and exactly how crappy I’d feel when it was about to happen. Ah, fun times that we’d had in that bunker last winter. Considering my current circumstances, I felt a strong pang of homesickness come up inside of me. Things hadn’t been exactly rosy back then, but the company had been much better—and I’d still had all my fingers to try to count the hours I’d already been awake for.
Nate remained silent until we’d passed the wrecks. “That’s not why I’m asking. And you know that.”
True, but if Hamilton’s order for me to turn into a bona fide pathfinder now had one advantage, it was that my mind had something to occupy itself with other than itself. “I’m good.”
“You just killed two people,” he pointed out, still speaking low enough that the din of the engine easily scrambled what his mic would capture.
“Not my people.”
No response followed, and I spent a good five minutes scanning the river before glancing back to Nate. He was watching me in turn, the look on his face a long shot from blank. Yeah, he wasn’t buying that. Mostly to avoid his, I let my gaze skip over to the other boats following us, catching Hamilton staring my way as well—as did a few of the others. Should have cut the coms ahead of that conversation, maybe, but now it was too late. I considered what to say, but nothing came to mind that sounded anything other than apologetic.
“What I did was necessary,” I amended, more to them than myself. “Rodriguez killed Carter in under twenty seconds, and it wasn’t just surprise that got him. Something was wrong with her, and I couldn’t exactly ask her what. We caught a lucky break as it is, because if she’d turned later on one of the boats, our number of casualties would be much higher. Or the shamblers could have overrun us while we were distracted with her. Did I enjoy ending her life? No, but you know since Smith that I have a knack for killing people others care about. Martinez forgave me for that; I’m sure they’ll get over it, too, seeing as none of the big strong men could accomplish what the weak cripple did.” If the last part came out bitter, there was no way around it.
Nate looked tempted to get in my face but refrained when I absentmindedly touched my gear over where the mic was hidden, telling him silently that this wasn’t my first rodeo, and I could play the manipulation card as well. I knew he was burning to berate me for actually feeling worse than I let on, but the damage was done, and crying over spilled beans wasn’t doing anyone any good. It sure made me miss the Ice Queen even more not to get snapped at for throwing myself a pity party.
Leave it to Hamilton to make me feel much better. Try as I might, his muttered, “Freak,” came over the frequency audibly enough not to be an accidental uttering. I still chose to ignore it.
“How much fuel does this thing eat up, anyway?” I asked Ines, not just as a welcome distraction. “Do we need to refuel? Do we have a place where we can? Because that over there doesn’t look too inviting.” I jer
ked my chin at the riverbank, shamblers still popping up everywhere.
“We have a safe spot two thirds of the way there,” she offered. “We likely won’t need it but if we can stop there, we will. We should be there in about an hour or so.”
“That soon?”
She nodded. “We still need to go farther upriver so they quiet down and forget about us, but we could be at Pont de Neuilly in about two hours from now if we go at maximum speed. That’s the bridge leading to La Défense,” she explained when I just stared at her. “We could go slower but it wouldn’t save much more fuel, and if we float back, it won’t be a problem.”
Again I asked myself why the rush but didn’t bring up the point. I certainly didn’t mind not having to be on the lookout for the entire night. Speaking of lookouts, what I saw up ahead made me frown. “Is that a fork in the river?”
“Islands,” Ines clarified. “The Seine meanders in these parts. We’ve already passed two larger ones.” She paused, looking over her shoulder to Noah. A brief exchange followed before she turned back to me. “Up ahead, after the next, what do you call it? Riverbend? Sling? There’s another lock at Andresy. It’s across one of the smaller islands, forest for the most part. The larger ones, closer to Paris, they have houses on them. We will need to get out of the boats and drag them over the lock, anyway, but with luck the island is empty so we could camp there for the night, or at least a few hours. We can test the theory there that the undead will quiet down if we’re silent. Just upriver of La Défense is also a lock, and while we likely can’t stay at that island, if it’s just a few minutes until they lose interest, we can remain in the water and don’t have to traverse the dams in both directions.”
I wasn’t quite sure whether I understood, but not wasting idle time sounded great—as did catching a break. “Sounds good. How much farther until that first lock?”
“Twenty minutes, if there aren’t any more obstacles here,” Ines explained. “Not too many bridges here, either. But there are plenty in Paris. We should avoid them, going upriver.” Making so much noise, she meant, I was sure.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 85