Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (8 page)

There was no sense in looking anywhere else with no more place to stash anything, so we just drove around town twice until we’d found all the police cruisers and got the weapons, ammo, and usable gear—if available—from them while the other half of our people hit the bars to do the same—and stock up on hard liquor. Somehow, there was always room for another bottle of vodka.
 

Then we were off again, driving back to the meeting point in Meeteetse, reaching it just after nightfall now that we were a little more cocky because nothing had jumped us on the road. We’d agreed with Emma’s plan to use the bar as a headquarter to redistribute food and items—a safe place to gather, but far enough from our own bunker not to invite trouble.
 

Over the course of the following two weeks, we did five more runs like that, until we had gathered what felt like half a hardware store and enough cans to last the entirety of Wyoming until civilization was back on its feet, ready to relaunch the space program. By then, my ass had become accustomed to the car again, if not to Nate’s constant backseat driving gripes. After a long debate with the still forming neighborhood watch, we decided that we needed to hit a larger town, because weapons, ammo, and medical supplies were still lacking. Riverton was one option, but we decided to go for Douglas instead. So I had another chance to maybe see the jackalope statue, after all. My excitement dulled somewhat with the prospect of how many zombies six thousand people could have yielded, or at least fed over the winter. They still preferred fresh meat to carrion, but Douglas sounded a little above our pay grade. Yet with demand strong, there wasn’t much else we could do—unless we wanted to leave half our own supplies behind, which was out of the question. So Operation Douglas was launched on what Emma insisted was the first Thursday in April, but could really have been just any day of spring.

Unlike with our previous loot runs, we planned this one a lot better. We even got a map and had people tell us where exactly we’d find any prospective targets like gun shops, pharmacies, the hospital, or the police station. This one we wouldn’t hit by car but on foot, trying to keep as low a profile as possible. I would have proposed to invite anyone to join us who was up for the challenge, but Nate didn’t even broach the subject. That made me wonder if he didn’t trust the others enough, but that sounded a little paranoid even for him. Then again, I had spent the entire winter learning how to shoot, sneak, and how best to react in dangerous situations; it made sense that we—as a team—had a much better chance of surviving this than a ragtag band of people who knew barely enough about guns to know which end to point where—Andrej’s assessment, not mine.

We spent the night before the hit in the no man’s grassland of Thunder Basin, huddled together for warmth, not daring to light a fire. As soon as dawn arrived, we made our way down to the outskirts of the town where we left our cars, ready to be stocked with whatever we could scavenge. In winter, when Martinez had outfitted all cars with a system that used the same keys for all of them, I’d laughed at the very idea of anyone actually stealing our rides. Now, I was a lot less amused by that idea. Sure, there would be cars aplenty all over Douglas, but likely few of them with a battery that would still start—and none that had been zombie proofed. If worse turned to worst, we could always hunker down in our fortresses on wheels and just wait until the undead fuckers lost interest. Seeing no less than twenty undead come out of the grasslands even five miles away from town—drawn by the sound of our engines—made me very glad about that.

Armed to the teeth and carrying backpacks that were too large for comfort—even empty—but just small enough not to be a true hindrance, we set out, first disabusing those shamblers of the idea that we were their ideal meal, then spreading out in the teams Pia had sorted us into. It came as no surprise that I was—once again—teamed up with Andrej, Burns, and Bates, and although I would have preferred to have Nate by my side, with just thirteen people and three entry vectors identified, it made no sense to set up our group as the fiver one. Pia’s group would hit the truck and auto repair shops to the south; Nate and Martinez were honing in on the hospital, care center, and what schools they passed; and our job was to clean out the two larger gun stores and the police station.
 

Just before we split up, I shared a lingering look with Nate that was packed with a lot more emotion than it probably should have been, making me hope that it wasn’t the last. Then we headed south while the rest swung to the east, planning to split up farther along the way.

With silence and stealth being key, there was a lot less joking going on between Burns and me than usual, with only the odd word exchanged when we had to stop and duck, or take care of a shambler. The last few days had been balmy already—not quite warm, but warm enough that we’d ditched the winter gear for the summer jackets, with the odd layer of fleece underneath. The sun was shining with not a cloud in the sky, making this the perfect weather to enjoy spring—if not for what lay ahead of us. When we’d first come to Wyoming last summer, we’d made a beeline through the state, avoiding all towns. So far, we’d only hit the small ones, and usually gotten away before most of the resident undead population could even become aware of us. But Douglas was the largest settlement we’d even come close to since we’d left Lexington back in May last year, leaving us at a complete loss of intel for how bad it would get in there. And the increasing number of shamblers that greeted us the closer we got to the city limits didn’t really bode that well for our undertaking.

It shouldn’t have taken us significantly longer than one and a half hours to make the five-mile distance to town, but we spent closer to two hours with all the sneaking we had to do—not easy on flat ground with nothing to hide behind. It quickly became apparent why so few people we’d met at the meetings were from larger towns—even now it was hard to get close, let alone bug out with your entire family in tow. At least there were buildings—of course—and trees around the closer we got, but it was still slow going. The longer it took us, the happier I was about the fact that we only had three destinations to hit. The others had up to seven.

The town had once, without a doubt, been a green jewel in the otherwise brown grassland, but the trees were pretty much the only thing left untouched. While the winter had been a hard one, it in no way accounted for the overall damage that was apparent even before we reached the first houses. Doors and windows had been busted, furniture and the dead dragged out. Of them only rags and surprisingly few bones remained. I crouched down at the third such heap that we found, a little grossed out by just how clean the remains were. We’d seen enough that had been gnawed on by coyotes and other critters, but as far as I could tell, those were all human tooth marks. It was as if after the initial kill and feasting on the body, there’d been several more rounds of predation, to the point where less than twenty percent of the skeleton was anywhere to be found, and that not left whole. They’d probably even sucked out the marrow where they could get to it.
 

The houses weren’t the only thing that looked basically trashed. Car windows had been smashed as well, doors torn off, hoods and hatches damaged to the point of leaving just a rusting heap of metal behind. So much for plan C to leave the city with cars that we got going along the way. In most of the cars we didn’t even see remains or old bloodstains. Someone—or rather, something—had simply destroyed them, venting anger and rage beyond what we’d encountered so far. The shamblers we’d seen around had been strong and healthy, but not aggressive enough to account for that.

The closer to the evenly populated areas we got, the worse the destruction was. Fences had been knocked down, mailboxes torn off, and the ground was unevenly littered with anything from pillows and clothes to bent tools and wooden slats.
 

“I’m having a really bad feeling about this,” Bates murmured after we crossed the second intersection, ducking behind what used to be a small garden shed.

“Shall we check one of the houses?” I suggested. When three pairs of eyes just looked at me, I shrugged. “To see if they’re squatting inside? Because I don’t want to get caught deeper in town, finding out that there’s a hidden sea of zombies between me and the exit.”

Andrej shrugged. “Pick one. We can still escape through the river. Haven’t seen any of them swim yet.” That ice-cold water, swelled by the melting snow, sounded like a good alternative was not something that alleviated my fears.
 

Nodding at the house on the same property as we were on already, I took point, running across the open lawn to flatten myself against the wood, waiting for the others to follow. As soon as Burns was there, I inched toward the next window, getting onto my tiptoes to peek inside. The destruction was even worse there, but, alas, no squatters. Sneaking forward, I kept checking windows until I reached the corner at the back of the house. There, we found what used to be garden furniture completely wrecked and partly deposited in the now dirty, greenish water of the pool, with a lump of something drifting in the middle. It took me a moment to realize that it must be the remains of a zombie that had fallen in and drowned. Or died of a more violent death. There was no way of telling now—months later—as it had been reduced to so much foul-smelling refuse.

The steps of the back porch stairs were splintered and partly destroyed, so I heaved myself up over the low railing instead, touching down as softly as possible on the other side. Only Bates followed me, with Burns and Andrej taking on defensive positions on the lawn. The kitchen door was down in the pool so our entry wasn’t hindered by anything major.

Stepping inside, I immediately held my breath when a wave of decay washed over me. There were two bodies on the floor, both dead—permanently—and torn apart, but their bones not yet picked as clean as those from outside. Black smears of congealed blood were all across the hardwood floors, leaving a macabre tableau of a Rorschach test behind. I couldn’t say for sure how long they’d been rotting away there, but it was a lot less than ten months. I wasn’t sure how much snow there’d been around here, but the fact that there was blood probably meant that they’d found their end in the last two weeks.

There was absolutely nothing of interest in the room beside that, so after making sure that nothing was hiding anywhere, I stepped into the hallway and on into what used to be the den. The room was in an even worse condition, the sofa reduced to what looked oddly like a nest. And the stench was beyond comparison.

Coughing, I quickly wrenched up my scarf over my mouth and nose, but I felt my eyes water nonetheless. Never in my entire life had I been subjected to anything like that. And it wasn’t just the reek, but also what it was coming from, that made me want to hurl.

“What the hell is this?” Bates murmured between noises that sounded awfully like gagging.

Looking at what he was nudging with the very tip of his boot, I couldn’t help but shiver.

“I think that’s zombie shit. And vomit.”

His eyes widened comically. “Shit? The fuckers actually shit out what they eat?” He paused, mulling that over in his head. “And you can tell the difference between what comes out top and bottom?”

Shrugging, I looked from one heap to the next. “That one still has parts in it that look like it came from something that once was alive. I’d say that’s barf. The rest, shit.”

“But we haven’t really seen any of them…” He trailed off there, clearly too baffled to finish.

“Take a dump?” I suggested. “I doubt that they’ll go round looking for the next potty. And besides, did you ever try to find out if their pants are stained from food, decomposing zombie bits, or what their bowels might evacuate?”

His lips quirked up for a moment, but he still looked decidedly shocked. “Not really, but now I’m kinda curious.” Taking a step further into the room, he inspected the “nest” more closely. “Do you think they’ve been squatting here? Not sure I’d call it living with the fuckers. But, you know. Staying here for an extended amount of time?”

I didn’t like considering that—and the ramifications that followed. “Judging from the bodies in the kitchen and the fact that everything in here is still liquid enough that the wind and cold got it to dry out, I’d say they’re still using this as a shelter.”

That left the uncomfortable question of where they were right now, but I could see from the look on Bates’s face that I didn’t need to articulate this.
 

“Shit.”

“Well, yeah, we already established that,” I teased, jerking my chin toward the back porch. “Let’s get out of here. As much as I don’t mind stinking up the car, I don’t want this stuff anywhere near my body, lingering scents or not.”

That we could easily agree on, and a minute later we joined the other two back outside. Spring air had seldom tasted better.

We shared our observations in hushed tones, making the other two eye us with revulsion that was funny on its own. I hesitated, but asked the question no one wanted to tackle. “Do we continue, fully knowing that somewhere in this town there are likely a few hundred zombies who’ve made their home here?”

“Few hundred?” Burns asked, his usual humor completely gone now.

I nodded. “So far, we’ve always estimated that one in ten or so has turned. I don’t remember where we got that number—“

“I think Martinez dragged that in from somewhere,” Andrej offered.

“Maybe. Probably. But remember that town where we picked up the cars?” Burns nodded. “There were easily enough zombies there to account for a ninety percent conversion rate, even if that still left them easy pickings for us, killing them one house at a time. Now, if Douglas had what, over six thousand inhabitants and only a tenth of them is shambling around now, that’s six hundred. If we go up to ninety? Do the math.”