Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (3 page)

I really didn’t like this.

Trying to get as good a grip as possible, I looked down, immediately regretting the decision. It was dark enough to make it almost impossible to really see, but that didn’t help the immediate sense of vertigo that hit me. Yeah, me and heights—never going to become fast friends.
 

Looking over to Nate’s pine, I saw that he had somehow attached himself to the tree with some kind of harness—the likely reason for the long delay—and was still busy shooting down at the zombies. A few had followed me, but while they seemed to have no issues whatsoever identifying me up here as food, they eventually all turned and lumbered back to their fellows, waiting to get shot one after the other. Turning back to the tree, I rested my forehead against the rough bark, and waited. What for, I couldn’t exactly say, but I hoped that it came before I lost my grip and plummeted to my certain death.

Endless minutes passed—hours, really, but I knew that if I’d checked my watch, it would have told me just mere minutes—and the zombies still didn’t quiet down. There must have been thirty or forty dead ones down there already, and still more kept coming. And judging from the wet, disgusting sounds, some of them had started to go for the easy pickings rather than more prickly food.

“Bree? Are you still out there?” Nate called, his voice disembodied in the darkness. Loath to lead the zombies back to me, I just gave a chuffing sound, hopeful that they wouldn’t hear it over the din of their own… meal. Whether Nate heard it was a different thing entirely, but one could hope.

“Gotcha,” he said, somewhat less loudly, but considering that the zombies were all around his tree, there wasn’t really any sense in keeping quiet for him. “I say we stay here for another hour or two, then we move out.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ground out, caring less about the noise now. “I’ll be lucky if I manage to stay up here for the next fifteen minutes!”

Silence answered me—nicely interrupted by growling, chewing, and other general munching sounds—until Nate replied.

“I can’t climb down until they’ve fed and shambled off to sleep somewhere.” Not that we were sure they were actually sleeping, but they seemed to zone out sometimes. Or maybe that had just been malnutrition and the cold. “But I can try to hop to one of the firs and use that as an escape route.”

That sounded like a recipe for disaster, but unlike me, he wouldn’t join the undead hordes just because he got scratched or bitten. I still couldn’t fathom that he looked forward to almost breaking his neck, and needing thorough wound cleaning and stitches afterward.

“We could split up,” I proposed.

“I’m not keen on spending the next week looking for you, particularly if our outer perimeter has turned into a hot zone now.”

That made me roll my eyes, which didn’t help with the vertigo, either. “I’m not that bad with directions. You know that.”

“In the dark, in uncommon terrain, with zombies chasing you? Yeah, you’ll get lost. You’re also out of shotgun ammo, and if they catch up to you where you can’t shoot them with the sniper rifle, you’re toast. Did I forget anything? Oh, right, you don’t even have a sleeping bag in your pack.”

“And who’s fault is that?” I griped back, hating that he made so much sense. “You told me that I didn’t need it.”

“I told you that you didn’t need it for other things besides sleeping,” he offered, and I didn’t need to see his face in the dark to know that he was smirking.

“So not helping right now!” I pressed out, then fell silent when I heard something move in the grass and needles underneath my tree. Counting to ten, I forced my eyes to open so I could look. Yup, one of the shamblers had decided that it was very curious about this tree. And I couldn’t even free a hand to shoot at it—or likely just drop my gun, which wouldn’t be very impressive, I figured. I really should have tried the other pine.

“How many do you have below your tree?” Nate asked, sounding less concerned than I felt.

“At least one, but probably ten by the time we’re done talking,” I pressed out.

“I have an idea, but I can already tell that you won’t like it.”

“Why, does it entail my sudden but inevitable death?” I hedged.

“Possibly,” he replied, quite conversationally. “If you drop down now, you’ll only have to fend off one or two. And if you run, hopefully enough of them will follow you so that I can clear the ground and come after you.”

Definitely not what I would have chosen for myself, but—

“You think they won’t overwhelm me? There seemed to be quite a bunch of them before,” I objected.

“I think we just scared up some squatters from the trees,” he said. “They’ve stopped now. And the last from the mob that we saw outside on the plain have caught up, I think.”

Oh, great—kid zombies. Theoretically, that should have been good news—smaller bodies meant less strength—but while I had fewer reservations about bashing faces in than, say, a year ago, it was still so much harder with the kids. And their bites were just as infectious as with the adult ones.

But with my arms and thighs screaming from the strain of keeping myself up in the tree, and my fingers getting weaker and weaker by the minute, there wasn’t really much of an alternative.

“When?”

“As soon as you’re ready,” Nate replied, chuckling. “I think I’ll notice when they start making a fuss again, and you probably won’t miss the blasts of a few more grenades going off behind you.”

Breathing out forcefully, I just hoped that this wasn’t the last bad decision of my life.

“Okay, then let’s do this.”

And with that, I started easing myself back down the trunk.

At first, things went according to plan, but the closer I got to the ground, the more my arms started to shake. It was dark enough that I couldn’t make out the terrain at the roots of the tree, but I could see the shape crouching there, munching on something—maybe a leg that it had torn off? It was less bulky than most of the zombies that had been chasing us, but still normal sized, so I figured it had been a woman before.
 

My decision whether to drop down on it or try to shimmy around to the other side of the trunk was suddenly taken from me when I lost my hold with my right foot, and gravity did the rest. Unable to cut off the scream that tore itself from my throat, I fell, my impact somewhat cushioned by the thing I came down on.
 

I scrambled up as soon as I regained my balance, dancing out of reach of the also rearing zombie. Like most of the others, it was wearing full winter gear, although the once-light parka was torn in places and streaked with what I presumed was blood and dirt. It snapped its jaws, reaching for me, but instead of engaging, I stepped away, bringing more distance between us. That made me trip over something on the ground, but when I realized that it was an old bough, I immediately picked it up. Now armed with my makeshift club, it was easier to fend off the zombie, but it was making enough noise that I could already hear others come closer. Gritting my teeth, I aimed for its head, putting my entire weight into the swing. With uncanny dexterity, it managed to evade me—but not the kick that I aimed at its knee. They might not feel pain, but it still screamed as the leg gave out under its weight, making it fall.

I didn’t linger to finish it off or see how the other zombies might react, but ran off in the direction Nate had indicated for that cliff. Behind me, I heard several grenades go off, the incendiaries briefly painting the darkness bright as day. I screwed my eyes shut, trying to keep my night sight up as much as possible.
 

And then I was running through the dark forest, zombies howling behind me, the club in my hand the most reliable weapon. No gunshots followed so Nate’s plan must have worked so far—now they were all coming for me. My arms and fingers were so tired that I didn’t even dare change the half-empty magazine of my handgun. Fumbling in the dark and losing the weapon was one thing—shooting myself in the knee quite another. So I ran, less concerned with being silent than smacking into trees face-first.

I knew I was on the right track when the trees grew more scarce and the ground started sloping upward ever so slightly. Finally able to see something again was great. Looking back and realizing there were more then twenty shamblers chasing me, not so much. Fear closed down my throat, but I forced myself to go on. Sure, it had been months since the last time I’d seen this many at once, but that didn’t mean that I hadn’t learned a thing or two.

Finally out on the frozen prairie, I pushed myself harder, forcing my legs to pump at maximum capacity. In front of me I saw the cliff Nate had been talking about white in the moonlight. I only had another mile to cover, then I would be there—and should I make it up there somehow, I might even be safe.

Crashing in the frozen grass maybe twenty yards away from me made me look away from my destination, afraid that one of the shamblers had managed an uncanny burst of speed. It took me a moment to actually focus on Nate, his overwhites now working their magic on the snowy ground. There were maybe another twenty yards between him and the fastest of the zombies, the distance widening as we raced on.

A good minute away from the cliff, the ground sloped up toward the stark mountain face, making footing easier—for the lack of frozen grass—but I backslid a few times as I tried to scramble up as quickly as possible. The zombies seemed to have less problems with that, which didn’t seem fair to me.
 

“Give me your hand,” Nate urged, extending his arm back toward me. The moment my fingers wrapped around his, he pulled me forward, giving me a push as soon as we were on the same level. Dropping my club, I used both hands to scramble onward, and made it to the foot of the wall just as Nate emptied another magazine into the zombies. So much for hoping to make a clean getaway.

I’d never been good at climbing, but I still set to the task with fervor, quickly finding hand- and footholds to pull myself up. I was well out of reach by the time Nate hit the cliff wall next to me, scrambling up like a deranged monkey. The howls and shouts of the zombies dropped away underneath us, a continuing reason for me to move swiftly yet carefully.

“How far up until there’s a ledge or something?” I asked, pausing for a moment to gather my breath. Nate looked from me up the wall, and back.

“Maybe a hundred yards?”

“Why is it always a hundred yards with you?” I huffed, but dutifully continued to pull myself up. This was so not what I’d signed up for when I’d left the security of our compound at noon.

We continued on in silence, Nate staying with me although I was sure that he could have climbed the wall in half the time it took me. Tired and drained from the adventure with the tree already, I had to rest several times before I moved on—not just because I didn’t want to continue climbing, but because I was afraid I wouldn’t have the strength to if I didn’t take it one yard at a time.

And suddenly, Nate was gone, if only for a moment. Looking over, I realized that there was an opening in the rugged side of the mountain—a cave. Mobilizing the remainder of my strength, I pulled myself up, not protesting when Nate reached down to grab the straps of my backpack to help. I rolled over onto my side as soon as I felt horizontal ground underneath me again, panting from both relief and exertion.

“You always take me to the most romantic places,” I huffed as I finally found the will to roll over and look back down the cliff. Yup, the zombies were still there, trying to climb all over each other to reach us. A few even made it several feet up, but they lacked the coordination climbing required. Now if we’d just spend the remainder of our lifespans in caves…

“It’s not so bad,” Nate replied, looking out over the rolling hills that flattened into prairie that went on and on and on below, everything cast in darkness and silver moonlight. “And, look, I even brought dinner.” Reaching into his pack, he offered me a sealed tub of applesauce. Grimacing, I accepted it, not bothering with cutlery as I drank it straight from the plastic container. It was by far not as sweet as the stuff I’d been used to since childhood, but came with the added benefit that now that sugar was pretty much a no-go for us, there was still sweetness to the fruits. It didn’t hurt that Sadie had added a generous amount of rum to the mixture when she’d cooked it, insisting that it was required for conservation. The issue was, we’d spent a good three weeks picking fruit for her to preserve, and consequently, a huge chunk of our stocks was applesauce now. As great as that had been after two months on the road, relying on cat food—half a year later, it had gotten kind of old. But then so had pretty much everything else in our storage. In the end, it was all the same, because the only thing that still mattered was getting enough nutrients not to waste away and die.

We shared the tub until it was empty, listening to the growls of the zombies below. Yes, indeed, very romantic. Love in the time of zombies—not really what they write novels about.

“What do you think? How long until we can climb back down?”

I more felt than saw Nate shrug in the deeper darkness of the cave entrance.
 

“If we’re lucky, tomorrow. If we don’t turn up by midnight, they’ll send a search party out, and our tracks should be easy to follow. Either that will take care of the problem, or they’ll get hungry and search out the corpses.”

The problem was, by late October, just before we’d gotten snowed in for the first time and stopped ranging for more food, we’d still found zombies locked in houses that hadn’t had a thing to eat since they’d turned earlier that year in May. While they’d looked more decomposed than not, their instincts had been all about getting anything edible between their jaws, making them just as deadly as the well-fed ones. They easily made up for strength with craziness—and that was saying something, considering that the average zombie didn’t start out incredibly sane.