Martinez listened in silence, not trying to interrupt me or add anything. By the end of my little speech, his expression had turned pensive. “Maybe you’re wrong.”
“Oh, you don’t say,” I griped—but then inclined my head. “About what?”
“That your withdrawing yourselves from the equation put a hold on things, and nothing further. What if you’re wrong? Because, correct me if I’m wrong, but if you’d returned with Burns and Gita, if you’d been here when New Angeles was attacked and when Jason lost so many of his people, and then demands had risen up for your head—what would you have done?”
“I really don’t want to think about that,” I admitted.
“Nobody who cares about you does,” he said, snorting softly. “You would have given yourself up, that’s what would have happened. After you tried, and failed, to rally people under a common banner once more. Nothing would have changed, except that you’d be dead. Or…” He stared off into space, considering.
“Or what?” I wasn’t even being pesky, or anxious for his answer. I really didn’t understand.
His eyes found mine, an almost unfamiliar intensity burning in his gaze. “Okay, this is coming from way out there, and likely heavily influenced by the fact that I had a little too much to drink earlier, and you’ve been all up in my business with conspiracy theories all night…” He paused to let me protest, and seemed surprised when none came from me, so he went on. “I didn’t see it as such at the time when it was happening, but what if a lot of what happened did happen to draw you out? Yes, you going on the crusade tagged the troublemakers, but even more so, it tagged the people who you were close with. People who you formed bonds with on the road, if for no other reason because they were in the same boat with you. I mean, take Chino Torres and his Raiders. If we hadn’t gotten caught up in the factory ambush with them, you never would have thought about checking up on Gussy, Taggard’s guys could never have sprung the trap on you, and you never would have led Torres and his people to NORAD and slaughter that bad impression of a mad scientist. Just like with Jason and the Chargers, who would never have worked with us again and again if we hadn’t shown up that morning to join them to free Harristown of the zombie siege.”
“What exactly are you getting at?”
He visibly deflated as he let the air rush out of his lungs. “I have no fucking clue? Made more sense in my head than out loud.” A quick grin followed. “Sound like someone you know?”
I was very tempted to roll my eyes at him. “Very funny.” Even so, I mulled over what he’d said. “There’s just one flaw in this theory, or non-theory, or whatever it is.”
“Which is?” he wanted to know.
“That’s all connected to me. Or us, as the Lucky Thirteen. Wouldn’t shit that’s planned to flush out Nate cut closer to his heart?”
Now, Martinez’s smile almost got belligerent. “Don’t you see? That’s exactly my point. You are his heart, and his soul. His greatest strength and vulnerability. Which is why it makes sense, kinda.” I must have looked rather doubtful because he went on explaining. “Just think. Sure, you’re concerned about his health and well-being right now, but deep down, you know he will be all right—why is that?”
“Because he’s a damn mean motherfucker himself and virtually impossible to break?” I suggested, awfully tempted to add, “Duh.”
Animated as he had gotten, Martinez leaned forward, staring straight into my eyes. “And, what, five minutes ago you told me that all it took to throw him off-kilter was to make him complicit in roughing you up a little? Come on. I know you like to think of him as invulnerable with almost saint-level endurance, but that sounds like a huge fucking flaw to me.” I could tell that he wasn’t done yet when he rocked back to lean into the couch, staring up at the ceiling. I sure didn’t like the paranoia his words got creeping up my spine. “Which makes me wonder…” he went on, his eyes snapping back to me. “Did Hamilton tell you why exactly he pulled that stunt? He could have simply told you about the mind-control drug. Or made Nate jump on one leg for a minute. No, he sent you a message, and he reinforced it when he told you about Decker later.” Once more his gaze flipped up to the ceiling, and he looked almost impressed by his powers of deduction.
“Or, you know, Bucky Hamilton is a gigantic ass wipe who deserved to have his balls cut off by me and shoved down his throat,” I suggested, smiling sweetly.
Martinez snorted, shaking his head. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. I mean, you did spend some quality time with him. Way more than I did. But they were friends once, you know? And you’ve seen how keen Nate’s instincts are for who to trust, and to see through people’s bullshit. Even now, his name is enough to make people abandon what lives they built to come help us get him out of that hellhole. Do you really think he could have been that dead wrong about a guy?”
I did not like where this was going—but in the end, it didn’t matter. “He’s dead now, so who cares?”
“Right.” Martinez even added a nod for emphasis. “Sorry that you didn’t get to cut off his balls and feed them to him. I’m sure that would have undone all the damage he did that you are still lamenting about.”
“Now you’re sounding an awful lot like my husband,” I let him know.
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” he insisted, taking some of the sting from his words with his grin. “But, seriously—I don’t have to tell you that people in your line of work should work harder on their anger management issues. Whatever he did, or almost did—is it worth you losing your humanity? I’m not even going to start with things like your soul or compromising your moral compass because I know that will only get me mocked, but let’s face it. If you lose it completely, you’re gone, forever, just as if someone had put a gun to your head and pulled the trigger.” He paused for effect, his intense gaze holding mine captive. “Just a thought—if what Hamilton warned you about is true. If Decker is still alive, and he’s pulling the strings—has it occurred to you that you may be playing straight into his hands? Your anger, particularly as volatile as it is, centered on Hamilton, is a ticking time bomb. What if that was planted deliberately? Someone only has to spend an hour around you to understand that part of your personality. Inoculating you with the serum added a layer of security for Nate, a way to keep you alive that would make him worry less about you—but it also opened that one huge flaw in your defenses.”
Speaking of flaws—
“Hamilton insisted that he had orders to kill me first, and then watch me die a slow, painful death when they realized I’d started rotting from the inside out,” I insisted. “He actually went against those orders when he let me live so I could get shot up with the serum.”
Martinez gave me a tight, toothless smile. “What if he lied?”
It sounded very stupid, but I hadn’t considered that possibility until now. Of all the things that asshole had said or done, this had been the least suspicious. And he had even explained it—that I’d looked so fucking miserable, weak as I’d been, but still managed to hold on and pull through that he’d felt I deserved that one break—or something like that.
But what if that had been the plan all along? Like Nate, I knew that Hamilton was an accomplished liar who could go toe-to-toe with the best—or at least, I presumed so, since they were so damn similar in way too many traits. Looking back, if he had tried to trigger me, or just see how far he could push me, or indoctrinate me into having a hard time keeping a lid on my rage—his constant being all over my business, doing his very best to set my teeth on edge and make my blood boil, made a lot of sense.
Too much sense.
“That fucking bastard—” I muttered under my breath, not quite sure how to give word to what I was actually feeling—besides the rage, once again churning in my stomach. Focusing on Martinez, I did my best to keep at least a calm exterior, if not actually relax inside. “You think that’s really it?”
Martinez shrugged, looking less certain than moments ago. “Only one person alive who
could give a valid guess, right? Since you can’t beat the answer out of Hamilton anymore, that is.”
“Well, perfect that we’re already planning to spring him from the slaver colony,” I said, more chipper than I felt.
He had nothing to say to that, and neither did I. Since it was well past midnight now—and our talk had done its own to further exhaust both of us—I didn’t think that would change any time soon.
“Let’s call it a night, shall we?” I suggested, hard-pressed to avoid a yawn.
“Sounds like a plan,” Martinez responded, getting up slowly, his body obviously protesting. Seeing him wince as he turned around and walked—slowly and deliberately—over to the bed made my heart seize up. So much had changed. So much we had lost. Was it really worth it?
I was just about to plonk down on the sheets on my sofa when Martinez cleared his throat, making me look up at him once more. He looked just as serious as before, all his usual smiles gone. “Promise me something, Bree. Whether our theories are right or wrong—don’t let them win. Don’t ever give up, don’t ever give in to the anger that’s constantly raging deep down inside of you. Keep on living. Keep on laughing. Keep on loving with all your heart.”
“You say that like it’s that easy,” I griped. When he kept staring at me, I eventually inclined my head. “I swear, I won’t let them win.”
He flashed me another grin, if a small, private one. I must have looked rather confused because he explained as he sat down on the bed with a sigh. “You asked me earlier if it’s easier to deal with shit if you have faith. Well, you tell me—is it?”
I hated it when he pulled a stunt like that on me—and that wasn’t even the tenth time since we’d become thick as thieves that he’d done it. I just shook my head and turned my back on him, refusing to answer—but deep down, I knew that he was right. Faith may be a shield to some, a crutch to others—but as long as we refused to give up, there was always one thing: hope.
And if hope was all I had left, I’d ride that bitch until kingdom come.
Chapter 16
“Any idea how long this will take?” I wanted to know, hard-pressed to keep the frustration out of my voice.
Eight days. I’d spent eight entire days in the settlement at the California coast already, and still we were biding our time, with no real progress made. The first day or two had been a nice respite, and a much needed one at that—also to catch up with the rest of my friends—but now every hour that passed without us hitting the road grated on my nerves. Consequently, my annoyed pacing grated on the Ice Queen’s nerves, which was never a good idea.
Like the four times before that we’d had this conversation, her emotional range ran from annoyed to vexed, and a slightly homicidal edge had started leaking into the mix. “As I told you before, we cannot rush into this, unless you want us all to end up dead? Missions take preparation!” she reminded me, none too patiently, I might add. “And we’re still waiting for more detailed intel, and without enough ammo and suitable vehicles we won’t get very far, either.”
I raised both my hands in a mute show that I wasn’t blaming her for any of this, but that didn’t change anything. That she shared my torment only made it worse, not better. At least we’d heard back from a few of her contacts, adding eight more people to our not-so-merry band of misfits—providing the last four made it to us, but at least they were en route. Me included, that made eighteen—which wasn’t that bad a number, but came with its own issues.
“How is it possible that you can only allocate three cars?” I asked, also not for the first time. “We had over fifteen working vehicles when we left for the Silo that late fall! Nate and I fucking built our buggies almost from scratch! And now you tell me we, what? Have to walk almost two thousand miles across the country?”
Pia’s eyes narrowed, and I knew I’d gone that one step too far—but somehow she managed not to come after me and punch me in the face. Her glare almost accomplished the feat but I did my best to steel my spine and not let her intimidate me. That had, for sure, changed over the past years—feeling like I was actually Nate’s equal had put an end to my already sketchy view on accepting anyone else’s authority. I had no intention of going toe-to-toe with her—and she was, by far, the most capable XO and logistics officer I’d ever met, and that wasn’t anything I was going to contend with her for—but all this stalling and “can’t do” attitude was slowly getting the best of me.
“We have vehicles,” she informed me, her tone biting but less aggressive than I’d expected. “But only three that will make it two thousand miles without needing maintenance or other kinds of fuel we will not find on the road, or that would be sorely missed here.” Her eyes narrowed, and I fully expected her to chew me out next, but instead she looked actually chagrined. “I planned for a lot of contingencies. I fully expected the two of you to show up on our doorstep sooner or later, probably in need of help. But I did not plan for something like this. I’m sorry. My primary concern was about moving as many people out of the camp and to a safe location, not to go on the warpath instead.”
To say I was gawking at her was probably an understatement, and I forced myself to stop when I saw that most of her self-directed anger was about to acquire a new target.
“You couldn’t have anticipated everything,” I offered up quickly—and it was true. Biting my lip, I was at a loss for how to navigate this unexpected, new minefield. Should I apologize as well? Would that make her even angrier? In the end, I went with the truth—usually the best with her. “I’m just so fucking frustrated! It took me a small eternity to finally get here, and now it takes even longer in the other direction? I’d laugh if it wasn’t kind of a time-sensitive thing.”
Pia shared a quick, true smile with me that was gone as soon as I’d caught it. “I know. And it’s not without mirth to see how similar to him you’ve become. No wonder, being stuck together day in, day out, for years, but—” She paused, considering me for a bit. “You have changed, no doubt there.”
I couldn’t help but laugh softly under my breath. “You mean because I no longer let you boss me around, unchallenged?”
She gave me a vexed look for that, but followed it up with a shrug. “That, too. But you’re no longer the woman who left the camp at the coast in fall to find out what was wrong with her. I’m not quite sure what to make of the woman who came back to us, yet.”
Her statement confused me, and I would have been lying if I’d said that it didn’t set my teeth on edge—but no way around this, I figured. “A lot happened since then. I can’t change any of it, so why dwell on whether the change was for the better or not?”
“That’s not what I meant,” she insisted, the way she kept studying me remaining critical. “I guess just like I didn’t think we’d meet again to launch a rescue mission, I didn’t expect that you’d lose all remaining will to bow to authority—although I should have expected that, particularly if Miller was convinced that Decker is still in the game. In that case, the last thing he’d want was to make you susceptible to following anyone’s orders ever again.”
“Or, you know, it could be a side effect of being married for three years and spending most of that time just with each other,” I suggested, playing for levity that I didn’t necessarily feel. “I honestly don’t think we would have survived if we’d continued to take each other too seriously.”
“There’s that,” she agreed, snorting.
Looking around—as if that would, miraculously, make more vehicles appear—I realized that a young man, in his early twenties at most, came sprinting toward us, eyes fixed on Zilinsky. She visibly drew herself up into a commanding posture as he came into shouting distance.
“We got news from the others,” he called out to her as soon as he came to a skidding stop. “They called ahead to say one of their vehicles broke down, and if maybe you’d want to head out and fetch them?”
Her brows drew together as she looked less than happy. “Where are they now? Are they in any dange
r, or just too lazy to pile into a single car?”
The boy shook his head. “They said they secured the location but you’d want to head out with spare parts and a mechanic. They got stuck west of Yosemite. I have the coordinates right here, and the parts they were asking for.”
Pia took the paper he offered, giving me a slightly exasperated look—that I could now see for what it was: the same frustration I felt at yet another delay.
“I’m coming with you,” I insisted more than offered. I was useless in the settlement as it was, unlike everyone else she could have asked for. She didn’t protest, likely having expected as much already. “We’ll take Romanoff, Martinez, and three of the local guards,” Pia declared. “You wanna drive?”
This time, I didn’t have to force a smile. “You bet I do.”
And, just like that, twenty minutes later, we were off, heading north with two solar-powered pickup trucks and enough weapons and ammo for a small army.
With two hundred miles to go, it was obvious that this would turn into a longer field trip that didn’t end with us back in the settlement by sunset. I didn’t mind, although I had gotten rather fond of the couch in Martinez’s cabin, to say the least. Even though it was a reason for further delays, driving north gave me something to do, and distracted me from what was going on—at least for the first few miles, until we cut through a swath of land that, while lush green now, showed signs of terrible devastation everywhere. The heat of the summer hadn’t started yet so the vegetation that had reclaimed the burnt ground was still here, but it wasn’t enough to hide the destruction that the fires had left behind. Even with no personal loss and connection to what had happened, it put quite the damper on my mood.
Green Fields (Book 10): Uprising: Page 22