Retribution: Green Fields #11

by Adrienne Lecter

  After cleaning my hands again, I straightened and set to putting my gloves back on, finding most of our illustrious bunch watching me. Ignoring them, I checked on what Sonia was doing. She looked about finished herself, so I grabbed some water and jerky from my pack and did my best to fuel up my body since it would have to last me a while longer still. Part of me waited for Nate to check in with me, but I wasn’t terribly disappointed that he didn’t. He and Hamilton were busy poring over their maps, and since that very knowledge had just saved my life, I couldn’t really gripe about it.

  It turned out, the group that had left the park on the westernmost street had made it here in almost a straight line with minimal resistance. We had them to thank for finding the iron door that had blocked the entrance to the tunnel, just as the second group had come running, chased by a few shamblers. That would have been those we’d run into once we’d made it out of the pedestrian tunnels. All in all, it had only been my fireteam that had, rather successfully, landed in deep shit and had needed help with the extraction. Hill, following Eden and Amos here, explained that they hadn’t even realized the depth of the shit the three of us had landed ourselves in. One wrong turn and a seemingly smart decision will do that to you, I figured.

  With everyone patched up as well as could be expected, we finally set out. The zombies on the other side of the iron door had quieted down somewhat, most likely having wandered off. Since the area here was surprisingly clean—for railroad tunnels that had been abandoned long before any one of us had been born, but the shamblers did manage to destroy and stink up a place in no time—I hoped that these tunnels had somehow remained undisturbed, at least the part here leading to the lab. There were no signs anyone had come through here before us beyond where Marleen and Scott had scouted ahead so it couldn’t have been the entrance the Chemist and his people had frequently used, but simply not getting tackled and chomped at for the rest of our journey sounded damn good.

  As Nate told us to get ready—this time for real—it got quite apparent that our previous fireteams didn’t make sense anymore. The Silo marines were still at four people but Scott’s group was down to three, same as the Army bunch, and of the scavengers only Eden and Amos remained. To me, it would have made sense to combine these groups two and two, but I was clearly the only one who thought that way. You wouldn’t have believed the instant animosity that arose when I offered up that suggestion, just as if we weren’t locked in underneath a mega city teeming with the undead. While both the scavengers and army guys were happy to cooperate with me, they glared bloody murder at each other, and the marines amongst themselves still hadn’t buried their hatchet, either. Nate looked mostly amused at my frustration, probably having anticipated shit like that to happen. Very diplomatically—and very unlike his usual self—he instead suggested that his group split up, moving Marleen to Scott, Sonia and Burns to Blake’s people, and the two scavengers would do just as well on their own as he and Hamilton would. I had to admit, I was happy to stick with Richards—particularly if having Bucky breathing down my neck was the alternative—but it still irked me to realize nothing much had changed. Then again, why should it have? Just because our people were dying like flies, and, likely, the worst was yet to come?

  Since the cat was out of the bag about the side effects of the serum, it made the most sense that Nate, Hamilton, and my fireteam went first, going ahead of those that would need flashlights to navigate in the pitch-dark tunnels. It wasn’t like any of us could see in complete darkness, but the illumination behind us would likely be enough and preserve most of our low-light vision. Hamilton took point, smirking as he stepped past me into the tunnel, for whatever reason. I was too exhausted to give a shit, really.

  I hadn’t bothered to ask if this was the entrance they had planned to use or a different one. Since we were definitely on the right track, I didn’t do so now. I had to admit, I had expected something different. “Train” always made me think of those endless Amtrak things—or the good old steam engines from Wild West movies. What we found here was neither one nor the other as, for one, the tunnels weren’t sized for full-on modern trains with twenty cars. From what I’d gleaned overhearing the others, the network had been built to distribute goods and serve as an alternative to the clogged-up overground traffic routes. It made sense to go for smaller cars then that could be loaded with cargo quickly and moved to and fro without much ado. But all of that was gone now, at least in this part of the network, except for the rails. It was all a little underwhelming—just endless, dark tunnels interspersed with abandoned freight elevators. The tunnels must have been open to the surface in places as the air wasn’t too dank and the sound of water dripping echoed around us, and the odd rodent scurried away as we got closer. They still made me jump, but I much preferred them to the shamblers aboveground.

  I was surprised when, less than an hour later, Nate signaled us down what looked like an off-shoot side tunnel, announcing we had arrived. Disappointingly, there was no sign announcing “secret lab” or anything similar. All I could see was another dilapidated freight elevator next to a metal frame and door that had seen better days even when the railroad had still been active. What was also missing were any signs of recent usage.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked. “We are presuming that the Chemist and his buddies fled to here, right? Doesn’t look like anyone came in this way.”

  Hamilton was only too happy to enlighten me. “As we said before, this is the back door. Presumably, they’ve arrived days ago taking a different approach.” His expression turned belligerent. “Need me to sketch you a diagram?”

  I shook my head, hating that I’d run straight into this one. “How sure are you that this leads anywhere?”

  “Guess we’ll find out soon,” was all I got from him.

  I had to admit, I felt a little vindicated when, once everyone was ready, Hamilton tried the door and it wouldn’t budge. No amount of force worked. What a shame. I knew better than to articulate any of that but couldn’t help but smirk. At least until Hill dropped his pack and got out the C4.

  Cheaters.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that they came prepared, and considering that Nate and Burns were both bona fide pyromaniacs—sadly, not a talent you got to use much when civilization goes belly up—and even had certification for that, I could have counted on it coming in handy sooner or later. That apparently they’d found another enthusiast of all things that could go boom in Hill was just perfect. The fact that Sonia also sported a somewhat annoyed expression made me wonder what explosion-related shit I’d been missing while Nate and I had been hiding in the middle of nowhere.

  All of us retreated to behind the last bend in the tunnel when it was time to set off the charges, with only Hill and Nate remaining behind to do the deed. The resulting “boom” was loud enough that I was sure zombies over in Houston must have heard it, too, and I felt the shockwave even with that much distance to its cause. On our return, I found the entire door gone and what felt like a whole city block of pulverized dirt in the air, making me cough and my eyes sting. Great—just how much asbestos had been in that? Maybe that would kill me before the serum had a chance to do the trick.

  Massive as the explosion had been—and successful as well—it only helped us so much as the door might have been gone, but there was one at the other end of a short connective tunnel just like it. Rinse, repeat. With that gone, we still weren’t more than pulverized bedrock and thirty feet farther, at the next door—but this one was an improvement, relatively speaking. It looked much newer, came with an electronic keypad that was working, seemed even more massive than the other two doors, and there was a camera—trained in our direction—above it. I looked straight at it and waved, figuring that after two massive detonations, playing coy made only so much sense. I doubted they’d simply let us in if we lied and claimed we were selling girl scout cookies. Nate gave me a vexed look before he went to investigate the door closer.

  “Oh, you’re jus
t annoyed you can’t use your boomstick for knocking down these doors,” Cole accused as he joined me off to the side, grinning at my shotgun. The tomahawks had been useful—and necessary—for the shamblers, but if I could avoid going into melee from here on forward, I was all for it. Shotguns still produced enough gore and splatters that I’d have that aspect covered. I didn’t reward his statement with an answer.

  “Try zero-zero-zero-zero-zero,” I suggested. Nate and Hill ignored me. Burns chuckled under his breath. Hamilton grimaced—but tried it nevertheless. The keypad gave an indignant beep, the indicator above it flashing red. “One-two-three-four-five, maybe?” I helpfully provided. Hamilton, still smirking, looked tempted, but Nate knocked his hand away when he reached for the pad again.

  “We have no clue what happens when we guess the code wrong five times,” he suggested.

  “You mean, like poisonous gas getting released?” I figured it was a valid guess. “Or are you afraid the two detonations weren’t enough to alert everyone of our presence?”

  Nate ignored me in favor of looking at Hill’s pack. “How much more do we have left?”

  Hill shrugged. “Enough for this door, if it’s not too heavily reinforced. But that’s it.”

  “Then let’s do this.”

  Already familiar with the proceedings, the rest of us were about to file out when Cole spoke up. “I know I’m the first to give Lewis shit, but try nine-nine-nine-nine-nine.” Nate gave him a deadpan stare, which made Cole shrug. “Wouldn’t be the first time that some admin or another got annoyed with his people constantly forgetting the current passcode. Shit, I know I’ve done it. Not with anything this simple, but—”

  Nate had already turned around and was hitting the keypad, which emitted five identical beeps—and then the door swung outward. I wasn’t the only one that jumped, which might have been satisfying under different circumstances. Thankfully, no one’s head got blown off. That had to count for something. Nate and Hamilton shared a look, then Hamilton eased the door open with his assault rifle, ready for anything. I’d expected another door—because that would have been hilarious, if really bad for us—or some high-tech shit, but instead we were greeted with something that looked like a mix between a decontamination chamber and a foyer. It only took a minute to clear the room which meant I got to explore it soon enough. The hazmat suits I’d expected were there all right, but at a closer look they were rather different than what I was used to. “Are we sure that this is a bioweapons lab? Because that setup looks more like what you’d use for radiation decontamination than viral warfare.”

  Nate shrugged. “They likely overhauled it during the Cold War. They must have expected that atomic bombs would be more of an issue.”

  It turned out, the next door we encountered was a plain old wooden one, no explosives required. With no idea whatsoever how the facility was structured—and how many levels there were—Nate started dispatching us one fireteam at a time, slowly leap-frogging away from the entrance. What I presumed was the lowest level was mostly storage, we quickly found out, and abandoned from the looks of it. The lights didn’t work, and there was no hum of a ventilation system. If not for that third door, I would have presumed it was abandoned, but that one had had electricity. We also encountered some kind of guard room and a few offices, but all paper files that must have once been stored there were gone.

  After the hell aboveground Dallas had been, it was weird to be all alone in here—and not in a good way. My paranoia got worse with every turn we took, and still we found nothing. Whoever had been watching the feed of that camera above the door must have alerted their security forces, but we hadn’t heard a single footstep that wasn’t caused by one of us.

  We managed to clear the entire level in a little over thirty minutes. The most exciting thing anyone had come across was a candy wrapper, but since it had a production date from 1999 printed on it, that wasn’t necessarily a lead. Blake’s group had cased the elevators and set a guard at the staircase, but reported back that the sticker from the last maintenance overhaul was also from the last century. Frustration was spreading among us, except maybe for Fletcher, who looked like he was nearing the barf-your-soul-out stage. Nate took in the reports and then did the only sensible thing: told us to check the upper levels.

  The second level—still below-ground, judging from the lack of windows—wasn’t very promising, showing equal neglect. While I was still part of the search party for that level, Nate sent Scott’s team further up the stairs to see if they could find anything at a glance. They joined us once more when we were done down here, the slump in their shoulders already telling me what I didn’t want to know—nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly; the building seemed to be the right one, with the other floors turning out to be apartments, and not quite empty from what they’d heard. I felt my heart sink. Somehow, finding nothing was an option I hadn’t thought would be on the menu. This was, after all, the very same address that the boxes full of lab equipment had been addressed to. Had it all been just a front?

  Worse, had someone set that up, expecting us to get eaten in the attempt to get here? That would be really depressing.

  I was trying to come up with a suggestion—witty or not, right now, any idea sounded good to me—as Nate and Hamilton started discussing whether it was worth risking going back to the tunnels and trying for the city hall next. That building had also been part of the underground railway system, and might hold blueprints.

  Blueprints. Why did that set off something in my mind?

  Turning in a quick circle, I tried to both orient myself and see whether anything caught my attention. That corridor over there was right above the one through which we’d come in. And that over there led to what were the offices downstairs. That’s where Blake and his people had searched, and that over there our quadrant. Only that…

  “Who here has the best spatial awareness?” I asked. The murmurs around me dropped off as hopeful attention turned to me.

  It wasn’t without misgivings that I glanced at Hamilton, but he shook his head with equal disdain. “I’m great at memorizing maps, but that’s it.”

  No one else spoke up, until one of Blake’s marines cleared his throat. “What exactly are you looking for? I’m pretty good with those three-dimensional puzzles where you compare turned-over silhouettes to each other and select the one that makes sense.” That explanation didn’t, but it sounded like a useful skill—and exactly what I was looking for.

  “Check the layout of the rooms on all levels. Does anything outside of what you’d expect jump out to you?” When Nate was still frowning at that, I clucked my tongue at him. “What if the real lab is in one of the other buildings, like an annex? Maybe even underground, too. You said it yourself—they’ve been using this whole building here for almost a century, and eventually they gave it up and turned it into condos. Why leave the lower two levels as is? They could have converted them to parking spaces, or a gym. They also didn’t wall them off. What’s the thinking there?”

  People turned around and started staring at the walls—except for Hamilton, who was now squinting at me. Yet rather than call my idea the most stupid thing he’d ever heard, he offered up a low grunt. “It will be in the lower level.” When he saw my questioning look—and likely also the surprise that he hadn’t called me or my idea fucked in the head—he barked a brief laugh. “It makes sense, since they did list this as one of our black sites. One level off the street is too easy. But see that staircase? It’s wide enough for some unlucky bastards to drag all kinds of shit down to the lower level. That’s exactly how they must have gotten new stocks in. If everyone knows your secret hideout is a secret hideout, that’s a great recipe for getting bombed into the Stone Age.”

  It took our marine a while to familiarize himself with the floor plans, but then it was just a matter of fifteen minutes and some pacing, until he stopped in one of the offices. “That wall’s three feet further into the room than the one above,” he reported. The fact that Nate
and Hamilton had both spent the last five minutes also investigating that very room made that guess sound legit. I doubted I would have noticed the difference, and even now it looked like a plain old wall, without any drag marks on the floor or possible hidden shelves that could swing to the side.

  Nate started tapping on the wall, looking for hollow spots, but then gave up, instead asking Hill for his sledgehammer. The lot of us stood back, watching him take a swing, then another, plaster raining down onto the unremarkable linoleum floor—until he hit something more solid. One more powerful swing, and an entire panel—previously hidden well under the plaster—came off the wall, revealing a recessed door. It had an electronic lock but didn’t seem too sturdy—whoever had designed it must have expected that the panel’s concealment was the better defense—and one more swing was enough to smash the entire locking mechanism. A kick, and the door flew inward—

  A salvo of assault-rifle fire raked the room we were all standing in, lined up like the imbeciles we were.

  Bullets whizzed by my face but somehow managed to miss me. I dropped into a crouch and threw myself forward, hoping that a lower profile would do the trick of minimizing myself as a target. Landing on my side, my shotgun was already up, and I blindly fired back through the door, sure that I wouldn’t hit anything but suppressing their fire was more important right now. Someone was screaming—and someone else shouting orders—but disorientation from surprise and the terrible noise of weapons discharging turned the situation into the worst kind of a mess.

  That was, until Nate hurled himself through the door, sledgehammer a-swing, and somehow managed not to get shot in the back by all of us.

  I scrambled to my feet and pushed myself forward, immediately taking up a defensive stance as I cleared the door. Two men lay on the ground, both bleeding profusely and very obviously dead. At least I guessed the second had also been a guy, judging from his body size. His head was a smashed ruin, what was missing from it currently dripping from Nate’s sledgehammer. Hamilton, Scott, and Marleen came in after us, taking up forward positions, which let me check on Nate. Straightening, his face was locked in a grimace of pain, but he shook his head when I tried to reach for where blood was leaking from bullet holes in his side and left thigh. There was no spurting blood, so that was something, I figured, but really didn’t like the feeling of dread settling into my stomach.