“Not sure I’m feeling like electrical engineering tonight,” I mused as I let my attention drift over the three rows of books crammed onto the shelf that mostly served to separate our living space from where we kept a thick mattress on the floor for a bed—also a plus.
“Don’t kid yourself. You haven’t touched any of those books since we finished rebuilding the charging station for the buggies,” Nate muttered under his breath, his motions precise and sure in the gloom the single candle he had lit produced.
I allowed myself a small smile at him using my preferred term for our DIY mode of transportation but wisely hid it from him as I kept perusing the tomes.
“It’s not like I need to since you’re doing all the maintenance on that as well.”
The curse that followed did its own to brighten my smile. “You could try crocheting again,” came Nate’s acerbic remark from behind me. “That went so well last time.”
Now it was my turn to grimace, but I did my best to swallow my ire—as I gave him the finger, or what was left of it on my left hand. “I still did a better job than you,” I remarked. “And what’s your excuse?”
Silence fell, but I’d long since gotten used to not reading too much into it. Sometimes days passed where I’d need to strike up a conversation with myself if I wanted to hear someone talk.
I was still judging my options when Nate putting down one of the shotguns with a little too much emphasis made me pause and glance over at him. He was staring at the weapon on the table in front of him, hands relaxed and empty, but it was impossible to miss the set of his shoulders. As if he could feel my gaze, he looked up, locking eyes with me for a second. “You don’t want to leave yet.” A statement, not a question.
I did my best to mirror his calm expression, knowing I was likely failing. “What can I say. I like it here. And there’s the salad.”
“You like the lake house, too,” he pointed out.
“In summer, yes. But it’s not warm enough yet that the water is balmy. If I have to swim as hard as I can not to freeze my tits off, it’s a workout, not a relaxing soak.”
“We can fill the tub on the patio. A good scrubbing to get rid of whatever died in there over the winter, plus a few hours with buckets, and we’re set. Give the sun a few days and it should be just right to keep all parts of your anatomy in prime working condition.”
I cut down on the impulse to stick my tongue out at him and let my silence be my response.
Nate glanced back at the shotgun before he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “You think I’m just being a paranoid freak again?”
Stranger things had happened. But still… “The shamblers have me on edge, too,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t have to mean anything sinister. And if they followed a crafty, smart one here that managed to hide from us, that’s reason to stay and hunt it down.”
Nate considered my point. “Fair enough. I still think we should move.”
It wasn’t that hard to hide my disappointment, particularly as his decision wasn’t exactly a surprise. “Should I start packing already? The batteries of the buggies should be good to go tomorrow morning if we don’t mind stopping early to recharge.”
His amused grin had a decidedly wry twist to it. “So you do think I’m being paranoid.”
My temper was ready to rear its ugly head but I did my best to keep my voice measured and calm. “Yes, but that has kept us alive for the past two years. Not that we ever found any signs that it was warranted, but no harm done. Except to the salad, of course.”
“Of course.” He continued to consider but eventually came to his feet with a soft laugh, abandoning his weapon cleaning supplies in favor of sauntering over to me. “Let’s give it another week. That’s enough time to stock up on jerky for the road and check whether we’ve dealt with the threat of incursion or just culled the herd a little.” He stared at the books just as I had before, then shook his head slightly. “How about we don’t head to the lake, or the caves? Let’s do something fun. Check on a town, or scout a new location.”
“Because looting another creepy time capsule of an abandoned attic isn’t weird at all,” I snarked, looking away when the frown on his face got a little too imploring. I ended up staring at my hands as I forced my fingers to unclench, the scars—faded and looking older than they were—standing out in familiar light and raised lines. With all the liquids involved in killing the rabbits and prepping dinner, I hadn’t bothered with donning my gloves again. Usually, I didn’t wear them inside the house, but right then I could have done without the reminder.
To distract myself, I looked back at Nate, finding him doing pretty much the same. “Creepy attic it is,” he offered, speaking softer than before. Because, “I miss them, too,” was what he wasn’t saying out loud.
“But we both know we’re doing this for a reason,” was what I didn’t reply. And we both knew that we weren’t not-talking about my wayward appendages. Unbidden, my gaze crept over to the arsenal on the table, and on to the stacks of ammo boxes stashed by the door, and the bed, and on the kitchen counter. Yeah, we had a damn good reason for sitting here in the middle of nowhere, armed to the teeth, jumping at shadows.
“How about you finish up there while I do a last perimeter check?” I suggested, already heading toward the makeshift porch and rope ladder. “That way I don’t have to feel like I’m hanging off a cliff just because I need to hit the head one more time.”
“Suit yourself,” Nate muttered, already falling back into ignoring me and my barbs. It hadn’t been my bright idea not to include some kind of bathroom in the construction of the building, if one wanted to call it that. Walking backward for the last three steps, I blew him a kiss, and down off the platform I went.
Chapter 2
I was well aware of the fact that Nate was simply being paranoid, but still walked the entirety of the close perimeter we kept around the house. It had been months since we’d last seen—fully sentient—human beings, and only from a distance. There was absolutely no reason to believe that now would be different. And it wasn’t, not really. The forest around me was alive with the sounds of nocturnal animals going about their night, my near-silent passing barely muting their productive scurrying. Stopping for a second, I inhaled deeply and found only the normal scents lingering around me—no hint of decay except for the normal cycles of nature.
It was pretty much the most unremarkable night-time sortie I’d ever been on. Time to take a shit and be done with this.
We kept an extra spade by the roots of the tree that served as the main support for our base high up in the canopy, so quickly digging a pit wasn’t much work, although I did end up tripping over a root that I hadn’t seen in the pitch-darkness of the forest at night. Done, I paused for a moment to listen once more, coming up with the same findings as before. Yeah, paranoid, all right. Satisfied with my findings, I got down to business, hard-pressed to keep from humming to myself to keep the latent unease at bay that finding absolutely nothing that could have tripped up my senses caused. Shouldn’t there have been some crafty predators doing away with the rabbit carcasses? The still-lingering scent coming from our fire pit usually didn’t keep them away for long—and was, likely, ringing the dinner bell for them as sure as my own musk and sweat must be keeping them away. Animals in the wild weren’t stupid, and after years of civilization being a thing of the past, it was as if humanity had never taken over the globe—at least around here where even then we hadn’t had that large of a foothold yet. The more active part of my imagination still expected that I was about to get jumped, so it took me a while to conclude what had me staying down here still. But nothing happened, so I cleaned up, chuckling to myself, and went about filling in the pit I’d dug once more. Better not tell Nate exactly how jumpy I was or else I wouldn’t live that down for a week.
The stock of a rifle crashed down on my temple with me still completely unaware.
Pain exploded through my head and vertigo hit when
my body tried to compensate as I both stumbled and started to go down while my instincts kicked in and my senses snapped to full focus. My vision was useless, the pain making red and white splotches dance all over the darkness of what my eyes were actually seeing, and for a second, I was so disoriented that I tripped and ended up on the ground, likely because of the same blasted root as before.
But vision wasn’t the only sense I was relying on, and while that was still giving haywire disconnect signals, the others picked up the slack. Beyond the sounds my own body was making, I could pick up the scrape of fabric against harder materials as whoever had clobbered me lowered the rifle once more, clearly audible in the sudden silence my stumble and groan had brought on. I could sense his physical presence somewhere behind and to my left side—and call me jaded, but my money was on it being a “him,” going on experience. Also, that blow must have come from slightly above, speaking of inches in height my opponent must have on me. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I caught a hint of sweat and weapon oil in the air that was both familiar yet not at the same time—not Nate, and not what our living space was reeking of at the moment.
My empty palms hit the mossy ground, and I allowed myself a second to try to decide what to do. Call out a warning? Chances were, Nate was already on alert after how much noise I’d just made, and there was little sense in letting my assailant know that there were more people around. Then again, if he didn’t know our numbers, making him believe that the cavalry would arrive in force momentarily could be a bonus—or make him act more ruthlessly to take me out quicker.
I felt him move toward me and decided he’d already chosen to go for option two, so rather than waste my breath, I inhaled silently to get as much air into my lungs as possible, and went about dissuading him of the notion that I was an easy target.
Giving the adrenaline in my system free reign to whip me into a frenzy, I shot up and pounced at my attacker, never mind wasting seconds to cast around in the dark for a suitable weapon. He was nice enough to have one at hand, literally, so there was no need for me to find another. As I shot toward him, I had a moment of “oh shit” as my senses were triggered by something else—and, a few feet shy of my target, a second body slammed into my side, taking me down in a perfect tackle. We rolled, which gave me the chance to bounce up and tear myself free before he could bury me under his much heavier weight. Thank fuck for all the times Nate had pulled that very move on me as I’d gotten pretty good at evading it.
My triumph was short-lived as the first assailant was right there as soon as I staggered to my feet—only that, really, he was the third, I realized, when my spatial awareness caught up with the motions my body had gone through. My vision finally snapped into focus but I could feel blood trickle down my temple, a reminder that I wasn’t quite as unscathed as my body momentarily felt. With that, I finally got a look at my opponents, even as two of them came rushing me again. They all wore heavy gear, and the two currently on their feet were in rather impressively intricate ghillie suits, their faces mostly hidden by night vision goggles. That made me wonder exactly how long they had already been hiding in the bushes that the surrounding wildlife hadn’t gotten triggered by their presence. I vaguely remembered doing a nude streak through the forest last night when a late evening need to relieve myself ended with Nate and me—
It was easy to push those thoughts away and ignore them for now as I did my best to block a kick coming toward my face while at the same time keeping my back toward the forest. That gave the third one enough time to get to his feet, and they immediately did a great job surrounding me. They also didn’t do me the courtesy of only attacking me one at a time so I could show off my impressive kung-fu moves, like they always do in bad movies. While I was busy trying not to get kicked or tackled, a rifle stock came crashing down at the back of my head, making me see stars all over again as my knees threatened to give out.
Their strategy gave away a few things that I rapidly tried to analyze to find my way out of this. Obviously, their gear and tactics spoke of a well-trained unit, not just a bunch of weirdos who just happened to be preying on hapless women digging latrine pits in the forest at night. From what I could see of the non-ghillied-up one’s gear it was as patched up and mismatched as our own, which was the first—and, really, only—good news. Unless they were trying to be confusing and difficult to pin down, that was. My guess was still on scavengers over a certain special-ops hit squat, which was more of a relief than my current situation let on.
The pain from the hit radiated through my skull, making thinking impossible for a second, but my body was more than happy to pick up the slack. I blocked, weaved, and dropped to the ground when I couldn’t evade another kick. While down there, I grabbed grass, moss, leaves, and dirt to throw at the next face appearing above me, hoping that if I could make it stick to the goggles, I’d temporarily blind one of them. Yet my fling went wide and I got a boot heel to my right shoulder for my trouble, which hurt like hell but also gave me some extra momentum as I writhed away from it. With no time to try to get my feet underneath me, I made a grab for the next leg I found. No idea who it belonged to, but since his other leg was raised for another kick at the moment, I managed to unbalance him enough that he came crashing down. Seizing the opportunity, I pounced on him, immediately punching for his throat with as much force as my body could muster. In near-perfect timing, my fist hit just as his head rolled to the side on impact, leaving his throat exposed. Bone crunched and cartilage gave, the sounds audible even over the general ruckus of the fight. Triumph flared alive in me when I realized that it was a killing blow unless they had a really good medic along with them—too bad.
I paid dearly for that moment of bloodthirsty elation as it left my entire back exposed, and the seconds I spent staring down at my victim and gloating about just how precise my blow had been cost me time I didn’t have. The downed man underneath me tried, in vain, to take a rattling breath as another kick landed squarely between my shoulder blades, sending me forward and pushing me off him. I tried to roll but they anticipated it, and I had to take two more kicks to my lower back and stomach before I could get one in on my own. Yet, it was badly aimed and only warded off another boot instead of sending anyone crashing to the ground. Again, the stock of a rifle smashed into my head, hitting my other temple, and this time the pain was strong enough to make me vomit. I tried to fight the urge but my body was already leaning to the side to leave my airways clear as I hurled up stomach acid and chunks of rabbit, my body going into panic mode with my lungs screaming for air. Before I could get a grip on myself, I was grabbed underneath my arms and pulled upright, and the last bits of upchucked dinner landed squarely in the face of the guy getting ready to punch me. That was a small win in turn for him socking me two good ones, the first hitting me in the jaw, the second breaking my nose.
This wasn’t looking good.
It looked even worse when three more figures materialized out of thin air behind the one giving my face a good work-over. It was about time that I turned the tables on them—
And that’s when another asshole that I hadn’t seen coming jabbed a needle into the side of my neck, leaving behind a burning sensation that rapidly started to spread into the center of my body and then further out into my limbs.
Uh-oh. Not good. So not good!
It wasn’t a paralytic—or at least not the same potent stuff that, back in the day, Emily Raynor had shot me up with that had completely and utterly immobilized me—but it was definitely some kind of tranquilizer. The asshole who had been holding me let go, yet as much as I willed my body to lash out—or, failing that, to run—all I managed was a staggering step, and it took all my strength to remain upright. That quickly changed when another punch hit my jaw. I went down like the proverbial sack of rice, incapable of breaking my fall as my arms wouldn’t cooperate fast enough. I waited for panic to set in, to maybe undercut the need to fight and give me that extra bit of strength to fight through the haze of the drugs,
but there was nothing but that ever-seething pool of rage deep inside of me—that I suddenly couldn’t access anymore. Oh, my pulse was still racing and I could feel the jitters left by the adrenaline all right, but try as I might to grasp that extra strength and stamina that should have been there, it was like I was attempting to hold on to water in a gurgling stream.
Sounds of fighting coming from farther into the forest pulled my attention away from my frustration. They must have found Nate; or he had found them. I waited for shots to be fired, dying screams to be uttered, but wasn’t rewarded. One of the idiots kicked me again, hitting my left thigh, right where titanium met bone. It hurt like hell, and for a moment, that pain cut through the effects of the drug. Gathering what strength I could, I launched myself forward in something between a crawl and a four-legged pounce, toward where I saw something straight and solid on the ground. Nothing in nature was ever that perfectly geometrical—and I was right, I realized, as my fingers closed around the spade.
Gone was my perception of who or what moved around me, but I still hit solid flesh when I rolled over onto my back and flailed at whatever might be coming for me, doing my best to orient myself once more. The scent of freshly turned earth—among other things—made me guess that I was very close to my pit once more, which meant that my shotgun should have been somewhere around here as well. The sounds of fighting I could still hear didn’t come from where I guessed the tree house was, so that must be going on down on the ground as well. Bright as the sky seemed compared to the trees all around me, it was still so dark here that I could barely make out the shapes converging on me as they drew closer. With their gear, it would be the same to them where this went down, but I’d definitely have an advantage if I made it to the small forest clearing that I knew must be around a hundred feet to the south of where I was. Out there, I would be able to see them, and if I saw what was coming, maybe I could better react. But my shotgun wasn’t out there in the brighter light coming from the stars and what little illumination the moon cast tonight.
Green Fields (Book 10): Uprising: Page 3