Unity: Green Fields book 6

by Adrienne Lecter

  I gave him a weird look that he of course didn’t see, but wordlessly switched my Mossberg for my carbine. Then the Rover rocked around another bend in the winding road, and the source of all that smoke lay right ahead of us. I couldn’t say what my agitated mind had expected, but not this. The familiar shapes of the three dark SUVs were hard to make out between all the loose rock and soil, with several large trees lying this way and that across the road, partially burying the cars. Beyond the road, downhill, I could make out several more trunks, a swath of rock and debris cutting through the dense vegetation.

  As soon as Nate stopped the car, I was out, but before I could do more than step away from the Rover, strong arms wrapped around my middle and pulled me back, Nate slamming my side into the hood of the car. I tried to fight him but he held on to me.

  “Never run blindly into a field when you have no fucking idea if there are any IEDs buried in the road!” he hissed into my ear, making me cease my struggle as soon as the message sunk in. He let go when he was sure that I wouldn’t do anything stupid, turning to where Pia and Burns halted beside us.

  “But we have to—“ I tried to object—verbally only, this time—but Pia’s shake of the head made me fall silent. Those were our people out there—hers as much as mine; in Andrej’s case even more so—and when she didn’t run straight in there, she really must have had a good reason.

  People piled out of the cars, except for the gunner in the back, followed by the dogs when Shaun let down the tailgate. Patty walked up to us with the two larger dogs right next to her, her eyes scanning the mountain slope more than the disaster on the road. With a grim look on her face she turned to her dogs, talking in a calm but determined tone to them. Both animals trotted forward a few moments later, sniffing the ground as they went this way and that, easily loping around the tree trunks and skirting the cars after getting a few good nosefulls. The tension in the air was getting worse by the minute as the dogs worked their way through the field of debris. I couldn’t have been the only one just waiting for one of them to yip and turn into a spray of red and fur. Each and every time some rocks loosened or a trunk groaned I tensed, but the dogs made it over to where chaos turned to open road once more.

  Picking up a few sticks from the ground, Patty whistled, then threw them into the debris. The other dogs descended onto what must have looked like some giant adventure playground to them with lots of barking and yipping, unaware of the possible danger their mistress sent them in. I wisely kept my tongue that this was kind of cruel, but judging from the wry twist that came to Patty’s lips I did a shit job about it.

  “Trust me, my dogs mean a lot more to me than your people. But that’s what service animals do. They risk their lives so we have a better chance when we risk ours.” The first two dogs returned in the meantime, licking Patty’s hand before they stood at attention at her side, waiting for her to follow them this time. It was only then that I noticed that they weren’t just wearing normal leash harnesses, but contraptions that were covering their entire torsos, looking a little like bulletproof vests.

  “Bomb disposal squad?” Nate guessed, studying the dog harnesses briefly as he started walking behind Patty. They even had some unit insignia on one side.

  “Two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan,” Patty replied. “Lost a dog and three members of my squad. Didn’t get a scratch. Five days back in the US and some sucker careens right into my bike. Rail at the side of the road took my leg clean off. Had to tie the tourniquet myself because all that useless piece of shit could do was stand there and barf. What’s the fucking apocalypse compared to that?”

  The other dogs continued to return with sticks—likely not the ones Patty had thrown, if the sheer amount of torn-apart trees was any indication—and Patty sent them back into the fray each and every time. About three yards away from the bumper of the last car she stopped, crouching over one of the trunks and studying the splintered break that had torn apart the sturdy oak.

  “My guess is they didn’t have enough explosives to rig the road, so they rigged the trees instead,” she explained, turning to Nate. “Needs perfect timing and someone who detonates the charges remotely, but if you get lucky—“

  No need to explain. That our guys hadn’t been the lucky ones was obvious.

  She likely would have said more but just then a series of shots rang out ahead, making a wave of dogs descend on us. A grunt, followed by some cursing, cut off when a different voice let out a loud scream.

  Yeah, talking was the last thing I wanted to do right now.

  “Keep watch and follow me,” Nate barked, his eyes lingering on me for a second before he followed Patty over the first felled trunk. I brought my M4 up, feeling stupid for pretty much forgetting to secure our surroundings first. It hadn’t been like he or Pia hadn’t watched the dogs with the same anxiety that twisted my guts into knots.

  As we reached the first car—last in the short queue—I held my breath with dread, but both Clark and Santos were alive. Maybe a little banged up, and they definitely needed help from the outside to make it out of the car, but most of that was due to branches and dirt that seemed to have come down on the car after it had crashed into a massive tree that was like a natural barrier between the third and second car. Santos’s eyes were wide whenever he managed to keep them open, which wasn’t consistently. Concussion probably, as Nate noted. Clark was a little better off.

  “Go look after the others!” he grunted between pained coughs. “We were almost out of the blast zone when it happened, but I couldn’t slow down the car enough. Crashed right into that fucking tree,” he said, spitting out blood. “Think my ribs are cracked, and my left leg’s not feeling too great. But I’m fine.”

  I would have lingered longer but Nate took his self-assessment with a nod and stepped away from the car. Patty had meanwhile rounded the tree Clark had smashed into, momentarily out of sight. Nate followed her slowly, Pia and Burns crowding in behind him, all walking single-file. I followed, telling myself that I was doing no one a favor by succumbing to my sudden paranoia that someone was watching us. No shit, Sherlock—behind us were at least fifteen people from the settlement, only now moving forward with all sorts of gear to get the people out of the wrecked cars. The Nissan might still be salvageable, if we’d find a new motor block.

  As soon as I rounded the spindly roots of the tree and saw how the second and first car had fared, I knew that they were hopeless causes.

  While Burns and Pia searched the surrounding forest, Nate stepped up to the car. Smoke billowed out of the front, making me cough from yards away. I didn’t see into the front part of the cabin because part of another tree had come down smack in the middle of the car, smashing through glass and metal until it got stuck in the cargo. Nate was already walking over to the passenger side—without even trying to open the door—cursing under his breath. Pia was right behind him, and rather than grab a fire extinguisher and try to douse the flames that started to lick from the damaged foliage, they zeroed in on the other side of the car. But it made sense, of course. Taylor must have been driving, which would put Campbell in the passenger seat. As much as our resident tech wiz might not be the most physically imposing member of our troupe, that would change rapidly the moment he died.

  My guess was confirmed when Pia kept training her rifle on the window as Nate glanced in, not wavering when he started working on the door. “Burns, get Taylor out of there before the entire thing blows up!” he ordered, using the butt of his rifle to reduce what remained of the windshield to chunky shards.

  I tried to help Burns, but one look at how trashed the door was—and what little I could see of the seat and wheel inside—things didn’t look rosy. There was more smoke buildup going on inside, the air barely streaming in where bullet holes riddled the windows on Taylor’s side. The shots we’d heard must have come from him when he’d tried to at the very least get enough air to breathe. Burns attacked the cracked windows with a vengeance, but a sudden flare coming from the
fire, followed by some ominous cracking sounds, made us all back away. Nate’s last bash finally made the windshield buckle and partly fold in on itself, but the sudden rush of fresh oxygen made flames inside the car flare up further. Never minding the danger he was putting himself into, Nate dropped his rifle in favor of tearing the windshield out of the car before he leaned inside, cutting away at any belt harness he could reach. The fire was worse on Taylor’s side but he still went there first, and as soon as he leaned back over to Campbell’s, Burns hopped onto the hood and pulled Taylor free, likely dislocating Taylor’s shoulder in the process, but I doubted he’d care. His skin was red all over, already blackening in places and building bubbles in others, particularly on his legs. I froze for a moment, but as soon as Burns had dragged Taylor’s unmoving body away from the car and eased him to the ground, I helped him throw loose dirt onto the parts of his gear that were still smoldering. Once we’d doused the embers, Burns rolled Taylor on his back and checked his airways.

  “Doesn’t sound good but he’s still breathing. Let’s hope that the burn wounds aren’t too massive.” Or that Taylor would die of smoke inhalation, but I didn’t offer that tidbit up.

  Across from us, Campbell didn’t do quite that well, and when Burns saw that Nate was trying to resuscitate him, he sprang up, his AR at the ready.

  “You do know what happens when he stops breathing?” Burns barked, but Nate didn’t even pause for a second as he pounded Campbell’s chest with his hands, then breathed into his mouth again.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Nate snarled back when he came up again, continuing the chest compresses. “There should be some adrenaline shots in the back of the car. See if you can reach them.”

  Burns shook his head, keeping his weapon trained on Campbell’s head as he advanced. “So he’s extra juiced when he comes back? No way.”

  Nate briefly glared at him, but I could see agreement on Pia’s face. “You know that this is a lost cause. Can’t you do him the last honor of not letting him—“

  “No!” Nate shouted, his vehemence easily translating into force as he tried to start Campbell’s heart once more. “I won’t just give up—“

  Campbell’s chest expanded in an audible inhale, but it wasn’t a gulp of fresh air. Nate scrambled back immediately, going for his gun, but Campbell was faster. Within a heartbeat he was on Nate, fingers latching onto anything they could grasp—a shoulder on one side, shaggy hair on the other—just as jaws snapped shut, hungering to tear the flesh right off his face. My carbine was up in no time but I couldn’t exactly shoot the fresh zombie without turning Nate into a sieve. Burns had the exact same issue, as did Pia, only that she solved it in her own, unique way.

  “Down!” she hollered at Nate, then jumped behind the zombie and sent a slew of bullets into his head as soon as Nate went slack. Gore splashed everywhere as Campbell’s head exploded, most of it right into Nate’s face.

  I laughed. I knew it was the worst, and completely inappropriate, thing to do at the moment, but I couldn’t hold it back. Pia ignored me as she pulled the zombie off Nate, but I got a weirded-out look from him—and that, of course, made me laugh all the harder. Burns looked rather alarmed, at least until I got a pressed, “Now he’s a literal redhead!” out. That got me a bright grin, and I was sure Burns would have laughed as well if he hadn’t been afraid that Nate would shoot him.

  The man in question made it onto his feet with a snarl, wiping his face with his arm to get blood and brain out of his eyes. Not that it would do him much good, considering how his body armor was soiled with more of the same. Pia watched him for a second before her death glare encompassed us. “Don’t you have something else to do? Like make sure we don’t have a repetition of that happening with the last car?”

  That shut us up good, and Burns and I were in motion before she could say more. Patty had in the meantime finished checking the ground around the last car and was examining the trees and dirt more closely, while her dogs continued to run around, not giving a shit about human grief or vaporized zombie brains. I found that strange until I realized that they would also serve well as distraction should a sniper have his scope trained on us. Maybe not enough to save anyone, but likely to discourage less deadly intentions.

  If the second car had been bad, the last was worse. If Patty’s assumption was right and the charges had been set on the trees that had then fallen on the vehicles and caused half of the mountain to come down on the road, it must have been a trunk that had hit the car and sent it onto its roof. Unlike the other cars it hadn’t remained in the middle of the road but been driven into a boulder next to it, leaving half of the cargo bay hanging over the edge of the slope. Burns nodded for me to go right while he went left, leaving the passenger side for me. Dread closed up my throat as I stepped up to the door that resembled crumpled tinfoil more than car parts. The window pane was gone, leaving barely any pieces of glass at the corners, giving me a good look at Martinez’s blood-smeared, dirty face. His eyes were open, and he blinked when he focused on me, making air rush out of my lungs with relief. Then my eyes skipped to his torso where he was still strapped into the harness, and the gun that was pointed into the car, his hand shaking uncontrollably.

  “I think he’s stable but can’t be sure,” he muttered, coughing wetly at the last word. “He’s bleeding, but I can’t reach it. Something’s wrong with his lungs, but at least you can hear the rattling.”

  I knelt down next to him, dropping my carbine, and looked across his body to where Burns was checking up on Andrej. I could hear the rattle all right, low and raspy underneath Martinez’s pained gasps. Burns, seeing me watching, shrugged, then focused back on Andrej.

  “We’ll get you out of here in no time,” I promised Martinez, not sure just how much I was lying. There wasn’t even enough room in the smashed car that I could have reached inside unless I flattened myself on the ground. None of the metal parts looked like they had retained their original shapes, all squashed and compacted.

  “Doesn’t matter, really,” Martinez offered. “Can’t feel my legs. There’s something sticking in my back, must have severed my spinal column. Even if I survive and don’t bleed out, you know what that means in this world.”

  Swallowing got impossible for a moment, but I forced myself to put on as real a smile as I could muster. “Meals on wheels? I’m sure Campbell can build you some supercharged contraption that’s got rocket launchers and a machine gun…”

  And that’s when memory caught up with me and shut me up for good. Martinez kept studying my face with unblinking eyes. “Who of you shot him?”

  “Zilinsky,” I admitted. “Nate was trying to resuscitate him but he was already gone.”

  Martinez nodded, his lips compressing for a second. “The others?”

  So like our medic to keep asking about the group when he was probably right at the top of our grave injuries list.

  “Clark and Santos are banged up but should be good once we cut them out of the car. Taylor’s got burns all over his legs and torso, possible smoke inhalation.” Gripping the steel frame harder, I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice, but likely failed by miles. “What the fuck were you thinking, taking off like that? You had to know that it must be a trap—“

  Martinez’s wet cough made me shut up. I really didn’t want my possible last words to him to be a tirade like that. The realization that it could happen any minute now made me want to scream until I had no air left in my lungs.

  “We didn’t think they could spring a trap on us like that,” Martinez explained, his voice strained. “We thought we were getting lucky when we saw two vehicles cut across the path behind us. Like they kept lookouts trailing behind, and we had a real chance of catching them. Interrogate the fuckers. Find out where they’re heading.” He swallowed thickly, the hint of his smile terrible, and not just because it was upside down for me. “To avenge you. Make up for what they did to you. It all sounded so good in our heads. Andrej called a vote.
Unanimous. The cars were small, not made for this terrain. We’d run them down and grab ‘em, and by the time you got back from the village we’d have them all set for you, ready to spill their guts.”

  Hearing that made the pain that kept compressing my chest worse. “How could you have been so stupid?” I repeated myself, shaking my head before Martinez could try to find an answer. “It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here soon, and you’ll heal, and it will all be fine.” Worst lie I’d ever told—and it was quite obvious that no one believed it. But what else was there left for me to do but wax platitudes?

  Fuck.

  Chapter 5

  It took us until deep into the night to get everyone out of the cars and transported down to the settlement. Andrej woke up halfway through us trying to dismantle the car so we could somehow wrench out Martinez and his seat, hoping he wouldn’t bleed to death from his back injury in the meantime. That was fun.

  The only saving grace—and reason why we could even get a single one of them out of the wrecks, let alone all four—was that the settlement was so new, and they’d come prepared with all the heavy machinery to rebuild civilization, including logging equipment. Without the machines that could pull the trees away it would have been hopeless. After that it still took hours to bend steel—or try to cut through it any way possible—but together we managed. Over fifty people—half of the settlement—helped, some standing guard but most doing their damnedest to free our guys. Patty recruited Burns to help her analyze what remained of the explosive charges, and together they deduced that her first guess had been right.

  None of our people would have survived had Taggard’s guys been packing the kind of arsenal we’d set out with in the spring, including enough claymores to kill off part of the zombie streak near Harristown. It was still a hell of a lot of luck that no one had been directly squashed by a tree, but I figured Taylor and Campbell would have disagreed with that assessment.