Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (21 page)

Another zombie came at us, and this time I got to use the stock of my shotgun to bash its face in. It fell away, wounded but not mortally so, apparently deciding that we weren’t worth it after all. Two more thought differently, but Nate took them down before they could become a problem. In the heat of the moment his bandana slipped down, and it was when the remaining zombies all focused on me that I realized something.

“It’s your face,” I whisper-shouted, too busy to articulate my sudden epiphany as I dispatched another shambler. The moment I had some air, I scrambled to get the snap of my helmet undone and pulled it off. The breathing mask followed to pool around my neck. I sneered at the next zombie that came for me—it had worked on that base once, why not again?—and, true enough, the shambler lost interest after rearing back, instead falling on one of the dead we’d left on the ground. A few more kept eyeing us critically, but then joined their undead brothers and sisters.

Nate was panting just as heavily as I was as we looked at each other across the gruesome ongoings between us. He gave a slight shrug, then motioned for me to join him and turn around. Within seconds, he had my helmet secured to my pack, and off we went again. Eerie as that had been, I wasn’t going to protest.

Although the zombies ignored us for the most part, with the car disappearing to the south, their restlessness became more palpable. We checked on five more bodies, but the results were the same. Until we crouched down next to what I hoped was the last—and hit gold.

At a first glance, it didn’t look that healthy, but that was mostly due to the dried blood in its short hair and beard. There was only a single X, but as soon as Nate turned the body over, I noticed the puncture marks all over the side of its neck. A few quick slices with the knife had the arms uncovered, revealing many more. That, and what looked like barely scabbed-over wounds from restraints that had been too tight. Nate found the same on the ankles as he pulled the laced-up boots off its feet. Through my gloves I couldn’t quite say if the skin and muscle underneath felt like a human’s, but there was still very little give, and the color wasn’t too far off. No tech shit strapped to the jacket our mark had been wearing before it had met its untimely end, but maybe it was better not to get all my suspicions confirmed at once.

“Go?” Nate asked when I looked back to him after eyeing the spread-out mass around us critically. I didn’t need to think twice, just nodded and got up. We’d found what we’d come here for—now it was time to hit the road.

The way back out of the valley was short but all the more nerve-wracking for it. Before we were ten feet away from the last dead body, zombies from all around streamed toward it, turning it into so much gore within seconds. They kept watching us, a few coming closer, the tension in the air rising with every step that we took. Nate pulled me down into a crouch a few times, pretending he was looking at something on the ground, but even us staying in one place like that, motionless, didn’t make them lose interest completely. Everything inside of me screamed for me to run, but I knew that would have ended badly, fast. Our camouflage, whatever it was worth, wasn’t working effectively. Even hitting the odd zombie that got too close wasn’t doing much anymore. We’d overstayed our welcome, and I couldn’t be out of here fast enough.

It took us forever to make it back to the slope, and I had the feeling that every time I slipped or stumbled, a million eyes behind me were judging whether I was acceptable food now, or if they should still wait a little longer. Halfway up, Nate stopped and silently gestured for me to take the lead, making me realize that I wasn’t just being paranoid. They seemed to show a little more reservation toward him, but we still had a small trail of zombies coming up after us. Just before the first one topped the rise, I flattened myself to the ground in the high grass, Nate dropping down beside me. We remained there for a good twenty minutes, watching the undead lumbering across the meadow, going this way and that, confused where their query had ended up. The sky overhead grew darker and darker until it started to drizzle, then rain, the thick drops quickly plastering my hair to my head. At least that would, eventually, take care of all the gore still smeared all across my gear.

The last lurking shambler lost interest and returned to the valley, letting us get up and start our way back to camp—after sneaking the mile back up north to gather the spent cartridges. Neither of us said a word, relying on gestures and looks alone. There wasn’t really anything to say, and the less sound we made, the better. The rain had turned into a veritable downpour as we passed the barn and angled southeast, aiming for the intersection where we’d hopefully meet the other two again.

With elation now replacing fear, adrenaline-taut muscles relaxing one after the other, I couldn’t help but crack a smile that Nate returned. That one had been a close call—but we’d made it.
 

One upside of the rain? We were the only thing moving out there, because anything with two braincells to rub together hid under trees or bushes. A few times we spied the odd cluster of zombies in the distance, but the streak had done a great job depopulating the area all around the valley, leaving us almost on our own. Feeling the rain slowly soak through my gear would have been enough to make me miserable any day, but it was all but impossible to really weigh down my spirit, with me still a little high on my own supply. It was a good three miles from the valley—and maybe another from the intersection we were heading toward—when I broke the silence, unable to keep my thoughts from bubbling over my lips.

“This was so fucking awesome.”

Nate snorted, but I could tell from the way his eyes were alight that he didn’t disagree with me.

“Turning into a little adrenaline junkie, are we now?” he guessed.

I thought about that, shrugging it off, but then forced myself to get real. “Still. We need to stop doing shit like this,” I said, stopping briefly to clear my throat. Nate gave me a sidelong glance but seemed only too happy to let me go on uninterrupted. “We’re getting too cocky. Just because we had a few close calls that we made it out of unscathed doesn’t mean this is going to continue like that.”

Nate remained silent for a few moments, a pensive look on his face.

“Things worked as well as could be expected,” he pointed out.

“Pessimist much?” I teased before I forced myself to get serious once more. “We were about three minutes away from getting torn to shreds. Didn’t you feel the tension in the air? One loud sound, one motion that was too fast, and they would have been on us.”

“But it didn’t happen.”

“And your camouflage?” I went on with my rant, my voice slowly gaining heat. “That was the bust of the century. Did you just do that to annoy me? Seriously. I don’t think I’ll feel clean even if I end up soaking in every lake we encounter all summer long.”

He shook his head, unperturbed. “It worked. Maybe not perfectly, but it made a difference. They reacted a lot more docile toward me than when I was down there the first time with Zilinsky.”

“But they were honing in on me.”

Nate shrugged. “At least now we know that they still react to social cues. Facial expressions, posturing; likely aggressive behavior in general. That could prove useful next time.”

“There shouldn’t be a next time—if we’re smart,” I replied.

“There will always be a next time.”

“We’re provoking them. You know that. Who is that fucking stupid?”

A rhetorical question, really, but Nate still gave me a grin. “Us, apparently.”

Against my better judgement that made me chortle with mirth. “How come I’m suddenly the voice of reason?”

“You are?” he wondered, his tone belying any affirmation that his smile might have conveyed.

“I am,” I insisted. “You don’t get it, do you? We are all losing our natural instincts. I was a lot less afraid going down there than driving the car into the mass around Harristown.”

“You weren’t exactly relaxed today.”

I shook my head. “Why, wanna offer me a good back rub? No, but I wasn’t scared shitless like I should have been. I’m getting stupid, and so are you. Just because it’s been months since we lost anyone doesn’t mean we’re not hours away from that happening again. Look at Jason’s guys. They lost one of theirs yesterday, almost two. And several over the winter, when they were out and about and not hunkering down in a place like we did. We just think we’re invincible because we hit an enormous lucky streak. It’s just not worth it.”
 

I only got a shrug in return, so I shut up and spent the next five minutes stewing over my own words. I wasn’t exactly feeling morose, but with the exhilaration leaking out of me, it was hard to ignore just how lucky we’d been. And, as little as I believed in karma, it was only a matter of time until our luck would run dry. Statistics, if nothing else, proved that.

It was only then that I realized something else.
 

“You didn’t contradict me,” I said, staring off over the darkening plains.

“No, I didn’t,” Nate replied. He left it at that even when I eyed him askance, but that could have gotten lost in the gloom.

We reached the intersection a few minutes later. There was no car waiting—or anywhere nearby, hidden under a tarp—with no tire tracks in the grown-over muddy ruts the road had gotten covered with over the winter. We hadn’t been fast; the others should have made it here well ahead of us. “Looks like we’re taking the long way home,” I noted when Nate took one last look around and continued walking.

Clearing my throat, I followed him, but couldn’t keep the silence up any longer. “Was it worth the risk today? What did we actually learn? Correct me if I’m wrong, but we know exactly as much as we did this morning.”

He took his time to reply, which in and of itself set my nerves on edge once more.

“We know that something is going on out there,” he offered.

“That last one could have gotten infected the usual way, and he just happened to be somewhere people would take samples,” I said. “Or he could have been a junkie. There’s no real way we can say when the needle marks happened. Or why he was restrained. If we were hiding out somewhere and one of us was turning, we’d probably tie him up, too. And once fully zombified, those restraints just didn’t hold any longer.”

Nate gave me a look that spoke clearly that he’d never let it come to that, reminding me all too well of just how effortless he and the Ice Queen had made dispatching zombies by hand look. I couldn’t suppress an involuntary shudder.

“Are you going to say something to that, or just leave me to stew in silence?” I asked, maybe a little sharply.

“What do you want me to say? That we should start jumping at our own shadows? That we can’t trust anyone out there that’s still alive?” When I shrugged in return, Nate snorted. “Been there, done that, didn’t really like how stupid it made me feel. As it is, we know squat. If something weird is going on, it’s on a much smaller scale than we were guessing. Too small a scale to pin it down right now. Are you really pissed that we didn’t stumble right over the next big conspiracy? If we come across something suspicious in the future, we can go all paranoid. But as it is, I think we’re jumping at shadows. If we follow down that road, we’ll end up holed up in a bunker again before summer ramps up. Do you want that? I’m sure that your friends in Aurora will take you back in a pinch, even after you bitch-slapped them in the face.”

My first reaction was to go off at his sarcastic remark, but instead I chose to swallow my ire and give him some of his stoic silence in return. So all of a sudden my concerns were invalid? Then there was no reason to continue to bore him with them. I was itching to scoff at him for making me sound all hostile now when it had been Nate who couldn’t get away from the settlements fast enough, but so be it. Neither of us was above hypocrisy. And, right now, I really wasn’t in the mood to fight.

It turned out, we didn’t have to walk all the way back to camp as about two hours later, a familiar dark car came lumbering down the road in the other direction, meeting us halfway between two small patches of trees. One look at the cargo lashing belts Burns threw at us, and I knew the ride back wasn’t going to be a smooth one. I could kind of sympathize, with us drenched to the bone and still covered in bits of decaying zombie, but it didn’t exactly brighten my mood. It was oddly fitting to return to camp more or less strapped to the back of the car, standing on the reinforced rear bumper. Nate was grinning into the rain that kept splashing our faces, his mood at least somewhat infectious. In the end, the only thing that counted was that we’d gotten away—today was good.

Then we arrived at our camp, and my slight smile found an abrupt end. One look at the smoldering remains of the pyre, stacked up to the side as not to set anything else alight, and what remained of my usually sunny disposition went down the drain. I could understand why Phil had decided to hang himself shortly after we’d left the camp, but that didn’t change the fact that the acrid smell that hung in the air tugged on memories that I didn’t need to relive. I also didn’t need the look—condescending as hell—that Nate taxed me with as he rounded on me. “Shake it off. You’ve had a month to get over it. Trust me, all of us have managed to get someone else killed along the way. You’re not the first, and you’re not going to be the last. It’s about time for you to stop moping over it.”

I just stared at him, speechless, before I turned around and stalked off, my spine stiff enough that it should have snapped.