Catharsis

by Adrienne Lecter

  “We’ve got what we came here for. We’re heading south. Aimes, Wu, Rodriguez, you take point. Call in for reinforcements the second you see anything so we can do some proper recon. The rest, get ready. We’re moving out in five.”

  Chapter 12

  It took us about twenty minutes, heading south by southeast, to realize just how damn lucky we’d been with picking our entry vector—or that was how long it took for our luck to run out. Maybe the shit-ton of ammo we’d had to waste to clear Cabourg should have given it away, but I’d chalked that up to a fluke. The beach had been empty, after all. But when we kept running into groups of undead, whether we stuck to the roads or tracked across the fields, one thing soon became obvious.

  France—and extrapolating from that, Europe—was a zombie-infested hellhole.

  And it wasn’t like shooting one group took care of the problem.

  It was noon by the time that Cabourg and most of the coast line disappeared from view behind us, cutting our progress down to less than a mile an hour. Over the last hours, Richards had tried to establish a routine tactic—let recon try to deal with any stragglers they couldn’t avoid after sneaking around larger groups—but even to me, it was obvious that this wasn’t going to cut it. Next time we were all gathered in a loose bunch, Nate left his post at my side and strode through the soldiers to where Red and Bucky were trying to look like they knew what they were doing. I was sure they did—or thought they did—but considering that this situation much more resembled our MO of how to survive the apocalypse than what they had to deal with, it only made sense to share tactics. Neither of them looked surprised as Nate stepped up to them, but their closed-off expressions were far from inviting.

  “You know that this will only get us all killed if you keep it up much longer?” Nate spoke loudly enough that he was easily heard by everyone around, another change from the quiet decision-making process of before.

  Bucky, already gearing up for a fight, wasn’t impressed by Nate’s statement.

  “You’re the one who has two girls along who wouldn’t have passed our standards for field deployment,” he offered, his voice equally carrying back to us. I felt my teeth grate against each other before I’d willfully started gritting them, but Nate shrugged off Bucky’s taunt without a single muscle moving in his face.

  “And yet they both survived that first summer without having a hint of combat expertise or could hide behind secure walls. I’m not afraid for them—besides the fact that we’d have their backs if needed. It’s the rest of us I’m concerned about. Three people at random rotations aren’t enough.”

  While Hamilton was still thinking of the next insult he could hurl in my general direction, Red jumped into the breach. His entire demeanor was that he was talking to Nate at eye-level, not down from above like the idiot-in-charge. “Fire teams of three to four people, two out, thirty to sixty minute rotations?”

  Nate gave a nod that seemed equally leveled, like it was the smart and obvious solution.

  “That gives everyone plenty of time to rest, and I’m sure we can secure our own backs. If we get more intel from up ahead, we can avoid most obstacles and it will be faster and less tiring for all of us.”

  “Good thinking,” Red agreed. The sidelong glance he cast at Hamilton wasn’t exactly a warning—outright insubordination wasn’t his thing—but even to me it was clear that had Bucky protested now, he’d simply have looked like a petulant child screaming at the smart decision the adults had just reached. Hamilton gave the barest hint of a nod, then wasted a good ten seconds in a glaring duel with Nate—who stared right back, not giving an inch.

  “How is it that suddenly I’m the mature one?” I asked Burns, who had a hearty laugh for me but wisely no retort. “Didn’t take him long to flip back into leader mode.”

  “This again?” Burns grumbled, not giving me the time of day for my glare. “Come on. You knew this was going to happen sooner or later. And considering the alternative, do you want to be the one in charge? We both know that you’re not the most diplomatic person.”

  Looking at where their glaring match was still going on, I shook my head.

  “No, I really don’t want to. And I’m glad that he found his backbone. It just…” I trailed off there, not knowing how to finish that sentence.

  “Rankles that you’re back to common grunt?” Burns teased.

  He wasn’t wrong there. “Kinda.”

  “You’ll get over it,” Burns was quick to assure me, his hearty slap on my shoulder proving that no, I wasn’t quite there yet.

  Red was quick to split us up into fire teams, thankfully leaving it to Nate where the five of us were concerned, and volunteered to act as third party in our second team. It made the most sense for Nate, Burns, and me to form one team, leaving Gita and Tanner with Red as the other. I doubted that, had Nate known just how overrun the European continent seemed to be, he would have let me out of his sight even for a second back in Cabourg. That was a thing of the past now. The soldiers split into two teams of four and two teams of three, making up a grand total of six teams. Firearms were switched for anything that could—silently—exact blunt force trauma, and rather than send out single recon troops, Red had two fire teams advancing, with the others hanging back, on a thirty-minute rotation, just as he’d suggested. As the first seven were sprinting ahead, we resumed our trek. I kept studying the soldiers, trying to judge their reception of Nate stepping up from his previous role as the exiled recluse. There was doubt and open anger on some faces, but most—predominantly from those who I’d had a chance to talk to before—pretty much ignored what was happening. The command hierarchy was still in place, and that seemed to be enough for them. For the first time I wondered exactly what all their ranks—and history—were. I was sure Burns would know but as he didn’t volunteer the information, I didn’t ask. Just being cold, miserable, and tired was taking up enough of my concentration as it was.

  “Why are there so many shamblers around here?” I mused an hour later, after we’d fallen back from the forward position. “I know that Europe had some large cities, but nothing really comparing to New York City or Los Angeles.”

  Nate gave me a sharp look. “You do realize that, discounting Russia, Europe had twice the population we did? There’s a reason we set up the bunker in Wyoming, and why most of our solo tours have run through the Midwest.”

  That wasn’t exactly news to me, but also something I hadn’t really considered. “So there are, what, possibly up to twenty million shamblers hanging around here?”

  “Likely closer to fifty,” Red interjected from where he was walking slightly ahead of us, not looking back. “We can’t know for sure as we haven’t yet managed to set up communications with anyone from around here, but considering the outbreak in central Europe was mostly propagated by the virus directly, not via contaminated food sources, we estimate that the conversion rate was higher.” He paused, and now he did look back at me. “Didn’t you notice that there were a lot of corpses left on the East Coast when this shit all started, but not that many as soon as you got into the previously already borderline deserted stretches of land?”

  I hated to admit it, but he was right. I still remembered wondering about coming to the same—back then puzzling—conclusion when we’d switched from hoofing it to acquiring cars. Virtually everyone in that damn town where we’d picked up the Rover had converted, with barely any permanently dead around.

  Unlike me, Gita got hung up on something else than conversion statistics. “Fifty million zombies? Just in France? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Red shrugged, his attention strafing forward once more. “The plan is to avoid most of them. Might get a little hairy the farther inland we get, but we just need to find the right tactics to avoid them. I doubt the weather will remain as mild as it is now. Give us some good snowstorms, and the roads will likely be as deserted as they should be.”

  Silently shaking my head, I tried not to let my spirit drop at the very id
ea of that. I was freezing to the point of my body giving involuntary shivers every few seconds, and the cold was making my joints ache, particularly on my hands. To say I was physically miserable was an understatement, and that was discounting the pain my still not-quite recovered body was lighting up with whenever I moved. I knew that there was no way around that, so I gritted my teeth and tried to tough it out—which went well for another forward rotation, but when it was time to get ready for the next, I found myself trundling through a stretch of forest, and the last time I’d actively paid attention to my surroundings had been crossing a small access road between fields.

  Fuck.

  I forced my senses to focus—which worked well enough, now that I tried—but I hadn’t yet made up my mind how to deal with this when I realized that just following the bobbing motion of Nate’s pack before me was lulling me into stasis once more.

  “I think I’m slipping.”

  Nate halted immediately, turning around to scrutinize my face. Burns caught up to us, making sure to keep watch so we could let our guard down for a bit. The three of us stopping immediately drew more attention than I’d ever wanted—or needed, right then—with Hill and Aimes wandering over.

  “Found anything?” Hill asked while he and Aimes joined Burns in momentarily securing the location.

  “Nope, just a little maintenance required,” Nate muttered as he motioned me to turn around so he could start rooting around in the top of my pack for the last few portions of Raynor’s protein sludge.

  “I’m neither hungry nor malnourished,” I complained as he thrust the pre-mixed thermos at me. Just considering downing that without-a-doubt ice-cold shit gave me hives—and made me shiver hard enough for my teeth to clatter, but that likely came from standing still for over a minute now.

  “You’re exhausted,” Hill observed before I could do more then take a first gulp. Yup, it was as bad as I’d imagined. Not just to humor him but also to distract myself from what I was doing, I raised my brows at him. That was all it took for the beefy soldier to chuckle and jerk his chin at me. “I know you tried to build up strength and stamina on the trip over, but there’s no way your body has recovered fully after what you’ve been through. Several hours of physically taxing march, plus that pack of yours, and it doesn’t take a medic to guess why you’re all white in the face and shaking.”

  “It’s cold,” I supplied, trying for rational but mostly sounding petulant.

  “Which means your body is burning through even more fuel,” Hill replied, then turned to Nate. “How many boxes of ammo do you have her carrying? Don’t even think about denying it. I ran into her back in town and got to see firsthand that she’s an ammo packrat. Makes sense for a fight, but she won’t get to reload all of the magazines if she falls over and dies within the first day.” He gave a low chuckle. “Besides, would likely take a good bunch of what I’m carrying to take her down, and I’d like to hang on to that until we get to some obstacles that can’t be avoided. Stop being such pansies about this. She’s not up to fighting strength yet, so don’t treat her like she is. She deserves better than that.”

  I didn’t need to turn to Nate to hear him gnash his teeth, but cut off what I knew would be not the friendliest answer possible.

  “Excuse me? I think I can estimate better than anyone else here what I can carry, and what’s too heavy.”

  A hard jerk coming from my back made me stagger, Nate starting to dig through my pack in many ways undermining what I’d just said. Hill didn’t even try to suppress a wide grin as he watched my dear supporting husband and Burns distribute the heavy containers full of cartridges between them. I glared at them silently, but felt so fucking relieved with the weight off my back that it was hard not to cry—ignoring that I wasn’t prone to doing that, except when I was… damn exhausted.

  “What’s the holdup?” Red must have given the others the order to halt before he came over, a slightly guarded look on his face as he found us standing there with Hill still playing Cheshire Cat.

  “Just got a little hungry, is all,” I offered, saluting him with the sludge. “And apparently everyone else is so bored out of their minds that they found that entertaining enough to stop and watch.”

  I could tell that he knew that I was bullshitting him, but since no one else spoke up, Red left it at a small nod. “Not a bad idea. Wu, Williams, get some hot beans started. Forward teams, take five to grab a snack or two, you’ll get the leftovers later. We’ll make camp two hours from now, maybe three, depending on the terrain up ahead. We’ll have to deviate from the direct route, Munez just found a larger group of undead clogging the plateau beyond the woods.” He lingered for a moment longer, trying to read more off my face than I was happy to give, but then trudged back the way he had come, the dry, high grass at the edge of the clearing rustling with his every motion.

  Rather than get a fire going, Wu broke out a camping burner, Williams helping him dump cans of beans into a larger pot to streamline the process. Crackers and bread were pooled and redistributed, and our recon teams were just about getting ready to defend the perimeter when Wu came over, pushing two steaming aluminum cups full of beans at Nate and me. I was more than happy to wrap my fingers around the mug, gloves and all, while Nate grimaced.

  “Something wrong with the beans?” I asked belatedly as I was already chewing on the first spoonful. The others got their cups in turn, no one hesitating—but it was then that I noticed that more than one smirk was beamed in Nate’s direction. He actually waited until the very last ration was portioned off before he dug in, ignoring my curious looks. “What the fuck is that all about?” I asked Burns instead, hoping he’d answer me. “I’m obviously missing something.” I didn’t need to catch a snort from Cole to underline that.

  Burns—who had gotten his cup after Gita and Tanner, and several of the other soldiers as well—was amused by my question, but for once did his own staring at the smirkers. “Nothing important, really. Nothing that concerns you,” he quickly amended after getting a glare from Nate that was shy of baleful. Only the worst of our combined shenanigans had ever earned us such looks, and usually delivered by the Ice Queen. Remembering that made me miss her even more. I was sure that she would have cut right through any stupid games going on, as there so obviously were. I just didn’t know the rules.

  “Oh, come on. Now you have to tell me,” I needled Burns.

  He was still reluctant, but Nate finally tore himself out of his glower, ladling beans into his mouth with abandon. “It’s Army tradition that the men eat first, officers last. It’s an officer’s obligation that those under his command are strong enough to fight, and it’s a sign of their respect for him if they then share their parts if rations are running low.”

  I stared at him, meditatively chewing my beans, feeling a little like a cow chewing cud.

  “So, basically, they snubbed you.” He nodded. “And you’re making it so much worse because now you’re glaring at everyone like a hurt little baby.”

  I definitely deserved Nate’s—bordering on warning—glare, but Cole’s guffaw and Aimes trying not to choke on his beans was well worth that. I couldn’t keep a smile from spreading across my face, hoping that my good-natured snort might smooth a few ruffled feathers. “That’s just ridiculous. Plus, we are each carrying pounds of food in addition to what we have along for communal distribution. They couldn’t starve you even if you were the most respected guy in charge ever.”

  That whole intermission made me think. Had we ever done shit like that? I honestly couldn’t remember. More days than not that first summer, I’d been so exhausted that I’d been useless for preparing food, and I’d literally eaten everything anyone had pushed at me, not caring for anything else until it was all gone and the dregs licked up. And this year, with thirteen going on ten, then only four people left, it had usually been a matter of who opened a can first and handed it off later in regards to any kind of order in which we’d eaten.

  Hill, also still loitering
near us, turned to Burns. “You kept her along for the entertainment value, right?” Burns wisely kept his opinion to himself, but even that didn’t break Nate’s brooding.

  I should have been able to relate—after all, it was only hours since I’d whined to Burns that I felt left out—but it wasn’t like he had a right to expect them to treat him any other way, as he himself sometimes reminded me. Come to think of it, it was kind of a surprising gesture as most seemed to think his opinion at least valid, but therein likely lay the very reason for the action. Going toe to toe with Bucky and hashing things out with Red had left more of an impression than I had guessed at first, and now it was time to put Nate in his place, and more so, remind everyone else of where he belonged.

  Damn, but sometimes I was glad not to have to get caught in all that bullshit.

  Raising my cup in Wu’s direction—and by extension, Bucky’s near him—I grinned brightly. “Please keep feeding me first! I need the sustenance, and any gesture short of punching me in the face will go unnoticed, I guarantee that.” And I was more than happy to receive the wave of good-natured chuckles that earned me—doing a lot to disband the latent tension and gloating. Even Nate allowed himself a small smile as he pumped his knee against mine. I didn’t miss Bucky’s expression souring. So easy. So worth it.

  I finished my sludge while everyone else was digging into their beans, grudgingly accepting the remainder of a pack of nuts from Nate when he foisted it at me. I so didn’t care for being babied like that—even if the small voice at the back of my mind reminded me that I likely needed it. Way to hijack my victory. My pack sure felt a lot lighter as we moved out once more when everyone was done stuffing their faces. When Burns caught my scowl, he had an easy grin for me but kept the inevitable reaming that I knew I had coming to himself. That didn’t keep me from noticing that a few of the soldiers were smirking as well, killing what little levity had managed to sneak into my thoughts. So much for letting my guard down. But at least I wasn’t about to fall asleep while walking anymore.