Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we are all wrong. What’s the worst that will happen then? That I spend a summer in the mountains with lots of fresh air, and if things clear up by fall, I can return to my family. But if I’m right, I need to make sure that remains our worst-case scenario.
Leaving still feels wrong, but maybe that’s because we are sneaking out under the cover of darkness, with no one the wiser. Turns out, knowing the guard schedules makes my life easier one last time. Just thinking about sneaking and schedules makes my heart heavy again, but I push the thoughts away quickly. I need to look forward now—so that’s what I do.
16 SADIE - LATE AUGUST
Walking along the side of the road in the midday sun is taking a lot out of me. We’ve already taken shelter for a break twice, but we can’t risk missing the convoy. It’s been three days since Moore got back from a quick hunting trip, grinning ear to ear. Not only have our people won—not that I doubted them for a moment—but they are moving down to California, right along the route we would have used once the heat of summer let up. I can still move with relative ease, but being on my feet—carrying a pack, if a much lighter one than Moore—for hours on end is getting more exhausting by the day. We’ve been up since five, and if not for the dust plumes ahead, we would have made siesta hours ago—but being reunited with people I know and trust after weeks of isolation adds a spring to my step that I have no business exhibiting.
It takes us another hour until we reach the intersection. For the past mile we’ve been hearing the cars go by, a few at a time in irregular intervals. There are very few undead in the mountains so I’m not overly afraid we will run into any, and the heat, sunshine, and noise will keep other predators away as well. We’ve barely made it to the other road when the subsequent car stops, the scavenger on the passenger side grinning at us. “Are you Sadie?” he asks me.
Moore and I share glances. I’m mostly baffled while Moore looks a little more cautious. “Why are you asking?” he responds—not very smart as that’s an affirmation if I’ve ever heard one.
The scavenger keeps grinning as he reaches for the mic. “Your friends are looking for you,” he tells me before he speaks into the mic, mentioning the intersection. A few more cars have stopped behind theirs, but his driver waves all but one to go on forward. “We’ll wait here with you, if you don’t mind,” the guy tells us. “Do you need food? Water? Anything else?”
We decline. They look more emaciated than us, although compared to earlier in the spring, everyone is well fed. I’m happy to sit down in the shade of a pine, letting the light breeze ruffle my sweat-soaked hair. Moore starts chatting with the scavengers. I listen to the tales they tell. I’m sure some of it is embellished—I mean, seriously? Bree vaulting down from the upper level right into the midst of scavengers and soldiers, and cold-bloodedly shooting the guy who kidnapped her? I could see Nate pulling a stunt like that, but not her. I’m happy to hear about the truce they struck, and that casualties remained in the double digits. None of the scavengers in the car have more than a single mark, and none of them sound like they’re former military, but I can tell that Moore’s glad to hear he won’t have to start shooting at his former comrades in arms any time soon.
All conversation trails off when a car advances on our position, remarkable only as it’s driving against the steady stream of vehicles going the other way. I grin when I recognize who’s behind the wheel. In short order, I find myself picked up and hugged by Burns and Collins, both of them doing a double-take at my bulging silhouette once they set me down again. With so many people around, I’ve ditched my jacket, and there’s no way to hide my belly now. Turns out I must be coming after my father’s side of the family after all—a week after we left, I pretty much ballooned, soon needing new pants when even those that the guys brought me got too tight. To think I still have three to four months makes me anxious in so many ways, but at least I won’t have to do much walking today anymore. In short order, I’m being bundled into the back row of the car, Moore beside me busy stuffing his face—what else? The heat has made me queasy so I’m content as I am, armed with just a bottle of warm water.
It turns out that all of them already knew I’m knocked up, but apparently it took seeing me with my little melon in front of me for the news to sink in. I’m sure that’s the reason why Burns keeps grinning to himself, and to me across the back mirror whenever he takes his eyes off the road. I scowl back at him but then break out into another happy smile.
Today is good. Great, actually—even though hearing that Taylor and Campbell died weeks ago dims my happiness a little. Moore tried to get news whenever possible, but he couldn’t leave me alone for long, and Collins didn’t want to leave too much incriminating material to be found should anyone suspect that he was regularly sneaking out to leave updates and food at a drop-off point. And then he went and joined the crusade, leaving us none the wiser and without fresh-baked bread, subsisting on fresh game and berries.
Burns finally cracks and asks what must be on all their minds. “So, you and Bates, huh?”
The other two keep their traps shut, but I can tell that they’ve spent months biting their tongues. I shrug, rearranging myself so the belts don’t press on any tender parts of me. “It is what it is.”
Burns snorts. “You could say that.” He pauses as something occurs to him, his forehead creasing up. “Wait. That one time when I found him lurking around in the garage—”
I smile at the memory but can’t keep from wincing just the same. “You totally almost walked in on us. Five minutes earlier, and you would have.”
He laughs, but quickly sobers up after that. “You didn’t believe the BS we were shooting, right?”
I try to deny it but inevitably end up grimacing. Rather than rib me, Burns looks guilty. That won’t do, so I quickly explain. “It may have made me feel a little insecure, and let’s just put it this way: sneaking around and never really having a good chance to have a heart-to-heart with each other didn’t make things easier.”
Moore and Collins are both silent like mice waiting for the cat to leave the kitchen, but Burns has no problem carrying on the conversation. “He really loved you. You know that, kid?” He then clears his throat and amends that to, “Sadie.”
I can’t help but chortle at his antics. Like anyone can ignore the fact that I’m a grown woman now. “Maybe.” He makes a face so I’m the one to backtrack now. “Probably. Before you left, he said when he’d come back we’d talk about it and, well. We all know how that turned out.” Tears threaten to break free from my eyes but I swallow them down. “I know I meant more to him than just a quick fling, but not sure he would have been so happy to hear about this.”
Burns is strangely silent, likely fighting his own grief. I know that he and Chris were tight for a long time, and while I try to sound indifferent, I can’t keep my own pain out of my voice. He actually clears his throat, loudly, before he reaches back and gestures at the foot space of my seat. “There’s a small pack underneath there with his personal effects. I’m sure he’d want you to have that.”
I hesitate before I try to reach down, but belted in, with my belly in the way, I have no chance of reaching it. Moore is quick to slip off his belt and reach over to help me. It’s a small sack, secured against water and easily thrown into a much larger container, but who of us has a lot of things to take with us? My own pack has a similar bag, and it’s even smaller since I left most of my things with my parents. Most of it are tools or random, useful stuff like a lighter; that’s the first item that makes me swallow convulsively when I turn it over and see the bald eagle in flight etched into the metal—a gift from my Dad. Then there are his dog tags, carefully cleaned from what I belatedly realize must have been a lot of blood. The idea kills me, the pain so strong that for a moment I can’t breathe, so I quickly drop them back in with the rest. There’s one more thing at the bottom, something hard but not metal—and I stare at the small box as I pull it out, my brain refusing to make s
ense of it for several seconds. I’m not stupid; I know what this is—but it can’t be, right? My fingers are shaking so hard I barely manage to open the box, and of course there’s a ring in it, because my heart hasn’t broken enough times already.
I cry, and this time I don’t even try to hold back. Moore reaches over and wraps his arms around me, still awkward but I don’t care. It hurts to breathe—to exist, really—and for a few moments I lose myself in my grief all over again. Then I feel the baby kick, and I force myself to take a few deep breaths. I won’t be a sad, broken mom, that’s for sure. I’ll always have a smile for my kid, even if I’m dying inside.
When I look up, I find Burns cursing softly. When he realizes he has my attention, he stops, and his voice is just a little scratchy when he asks, “So, I presume he didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head, having to fight tears. “No,” I more sob than say, but a few more breaths and I already feel a little more like myself. “I thought he was talking his way up to telling me that he loves me! Not that he wants to marry me! Asshole.”
All of us share a laugh, and it helps a lot to raise our spirits. Sagging back into my seat, I stroke my belly, smiling down at my child. Burns chortles, although he still looks sad. “True. I wish he’d said something to me. I’d have told him you do that shit before you leave. Always. You never know whether you come back.”
I still don’t know how to feel about it. Part of me is glad he didn’t, because it would have complicated things—and maybe made them even more painful. But of course I’m sad, because I can’t exactly ask him if it’s true anymore, and the smidgen of doubt left because of that will haunt me for the rest of my life. What’s important, though, is that I carry the product of said love with me, and that makes everything else pale in comparison.
“Did he know?” I glance up at the question. Burns is staring at me in the mirror again.
I shake my head. It’s obvious what he’s asking. “I didn’t even suspect until you were gone. And I only found out after Martinez called and told us…” I look away, trying to swallow more tears. “I couldn’t even tell him that, maybe… but maybe that’s for the best.”
“For you, it was,” Burns insists. “Ask Bree why when those two idiots finally deign to join us.”
At first, I’m confused what he means with that since Bree must have been the one to tell them about me, but then I realize he must mean something else. Something I’d rather not talk about, because I can think of a few things that would make her drop diplomacy and shoot someone in cold blood, after all—and while she’s definitely someone who’d seek vengeance for someone else, I don’t think she’d give up her soul and principles for anything short of seeking it for herself.
I understand now why many of the scavengers are filled with hate toward the settlements, and I’m kind of glad we’re heading to the coast to build new towns for us. Even though most of the women that disappeared were from settlements, a not insignificant portion of them were traders and scavengers as well, and we pretty much painted the targets across the backs of their necks. As far as I know, nobody has asked people like me, Collins, and Moore—who later left the settlements, without getting inked—to get the marks, but I wouldn’t hesitate if it meant I could stay with my people and not get ostracized, turning things on their heads. As much as I miss my parents—and I miss them every single day that I’m gone—I don’t want to go back. They are part of this failed experiment that we thought was us rebuilding civilization. I want to do better than that. I want my child to grow up without having to look over his shoulder, fearing death or worse all the time. And I feel I’m with the only people who can make that happen now—and that’s a good thing.
I hesitate, but then reach into Chris’s pack to pull out his dog tags, and add the ring before I pull the thin chain over my head and let it disappear into my clothes. It feels wrong to put it on my finger since he didn’t, but it’s one last thing I know he wanted me to have—and I’ll carry it with me forever.
Patreon
Love the books and short stories? Can’t get enough of them? Need something to fill the void until the next one is out? Maybe fancy a few outtakes and behind-the-scenes information? I have just the thing for you! I’m now on Patreon where I post exclusive content on a monthly basis—starting with the Prequel, of how everything began between Bree and Nate, before that fateful Friday that they met again at the coffee vending machine in the Green Fields Biotech atrium. Here’s a quick teaser for you!
I absolutely don’t get what my brother saw in her. Dr. Brianna Lewis, Bree to her friends, cutie pie to her girlfriend. She’s so not his type.
I allow myself a momentary smirk at reducing a woman whose academic credentials are longer than her name to her appearance. I’m sure she must love that whenever it happens.
Of course, my brother’s interest in her started—and presumably ended, as well—with her intellect. I’ve read her dissertation and all of the scientific publications that she has to her name, but understanding is a different thing. That’s why she has a PhD, and I’m the product of the research she was hired to work on—presumably. That I can’t say this with certainty has been irking me for months.
What I can say for sure is that Dr. Lewis is one thing above all else: boring as fuck.
Find out more on Patreon!
About the Author
Adrienne Lecter has a background in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, loves ranting at inaccuracies in movies, and spends increasingly more time at the shooting range. She lives with the man and two cats of her life in Vienna, Austria and is working on the books of a new series.
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Books published
Green Fields series - novels
#1: Incubation
#2: Outbreak
#3: Escalation
#4: Extinction
#5: Resurgence
#6: Unity
#7: Affliction
#8: Catharsis
#9: Exodus
#10: Uprising
#11: Retribution
#12: Annihilation
Also available as boxed sets (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12)
Green Fields series - short story anthologies:
Beyond Green Fields
#1 - Beginnings
#2: Regrets
#3: Lost & Found
#4: The Ballad of Sadie & Bates
#5: Survival
— all five parts available in one omnibus paperback edition as well!
Find more outtakes and short stories on Patreon!
Beyond Green Fields #4 - The Ballad of Sadie & Bates: A post-apocalyptic anthology Page 16