Scott looked less than impressed with her tirade but voiced little of that. “We’ve been guarding the president,” he offered. A round of murmurs rose, almost drowning out his much smaller amendment to, “Presidents.”
I hated taking the reins out of Pia’s hands but that one was too good not to jump on it. “We actually have a president? Or several, if I heard you right?”
One of the hulking figures next to Scott grumbled, “Hard to keep them alive if they keep dying on us.” I must have let out a snort, or otherwise looked amused because his eyes narrowed. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”
“Learning how to survive and kick ass? No, absolutely not,” I offered, but chose to ignore him in favor of Scott. “What happened? I know I’ve been out of the loop for a while but I have a pretty good idea of what went down the summer of the apocalypse and the first year afterward. Why did we never hear anything about surviving politicians? And since when do the marines guard the president?”
I should maybe have dropped the last point unasked since more than one military member from our happy circle scowled my way, but the rest were valid questions—not that anyone seemed to care that I kept asking those.
Scott scratched his beard, not happy that I was—intentionally or not—questioning his competence. “The why is easy to explain—right place at the right time. I formed my team from competent members that I found through several steps of the evacuation process, and we ended up guarding one of the bunkers where then-vice president Thompson was waiting for further news from his family. The only news we ever got was that the secret service had gotten overwhelmed and lost fifty members of congress and the White House, including his three predecessors, so we took over from there. To you, the numbers may look like incompetence, but we’ve been battling assassination attempts since the first hour. We are right now on our Commander in Chief number fifteen.”
I couldn’t hold back a whistle. “That’s quite a lot. Any idea where your leak is?”
His expression darkened further as he ground out, “We have suspicions. Danvers here is convinced that we’ve had attacks from several interested parties over the years.”
Much to my surprise—but I probably should have seen this coming on some level—Marleen next to me spoke up. “You actually do, and on so many levels. Not to trash your conspiracy theories, but number twelve, Evans, was me. Very likely unrelated, so better disregard that entire fracas.”
Scott looked ready to chew through stone—and several of the members of the other factions drew up short—but the fact that he didn’t point any guns at Marleen or even tried to come after her told me a thing or two. Again, this was too good to drop.
“You killed a president?” I asked, not quite sure whether to settle on awe or derision.
She shrugged both emotions mingling in my tone off as if I’d accused her of double-dipping into our morning coffee reserves. “Trust me, I did the world a favor. I accepted that contract the week before everything went to shit, just before your husband contacted me and let me know that, just maybe, he’d need me on standby should that thing he had going on go south. Since there was no time bonus on the contract, I postponed it—and the rest is history.”
Scott wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. “He died three fucking months ago! Why do it now? Why do it at all, after everything that’s happened?”
She gave him a look as if he’d just insulted her honor—which was probably true. “I was tempted to let bygones be bygones, but then I heard of his surprise nomination and figured, if he was going to make a grab for power, he had this coming. I don’t have proof for it but my inside source gave me some good hints that he was likely to blame for number ten, eleven, and his two main competitors biting the dust. So, cry me a river.” Marleen then turned to me, still chipper and very much unconcerned by the topic. “I took the hit because I got presented with evidence that he was an absolute bag of shit. Ick-factor level child molester, corrupt to the bone, and well-enough connected that he has been untouchable for over a decade. Don’t spill a single tear for him.”
That was easy to respond to, even with curiosity—and a latent sense of horror—still riding shotgun. “Not really tempted. I’m not known for being very compassionate with anyone, least of all assholes.”
Marleen grinned and glanced back to Scott. “As I said, you have multiple moles and leaks in your operation, and your good man Danvers here is on to a few of them. You should listen to him more closely. If you play nice, I might even confirm a few of them later. Play your cards right, and you may hold on to number seventeen a little longer.”
“What’s with fifteen and sixteen?” Burns wanted to know.
Marleen made a throw-away gesture. “Already pretty much dead, unless we cause way more of a fuss than is good for us. Probably even if we do. Not our concern at the moment, trust me.”
The guy who’d been hulking next to Scott—presumably the Danvers in question—turned around and stalked back to one of their two Humvees, presumably to radio the new information in. A few people looked after him, and Scott’s glare made me guess that as soon as he could get his hands on Marleen’s neck, he’d try to wring some answers out of her, but didn’t speak up further—in her direction. Instead, he turned to fix Red with his glare. “Explain to me again why I let you talk me into coming here? Because so far, all I see are posers and madmen, and I have something better to do with my life than waste it like this.”
I waited for Richards to say something. When he didn’t, I waited for Pia to speak up, but she was studying the army bunch the same as I was. I even waited for Rita to offer her opinion but she in turn was glaring at us and Harris’s scavengers.
Looked like I would have to be the one to do the deed—oh joy.
Taking a step forward so I was right next to the Ice Queen, I cleared my throat, getting way more attention than I felt comfortable with, and not just because I got the sense that nobody wanted to be here. Last time I’d done something like this had gone so phenomenally well—what could possibly go wrong?
“The way I see it, we all have a common problem. And if we leave all the bullshit behind, we can all admit that yes, that problem exists, and yes, somebody needs to do something about it. That’s why we’re here, even if some of our motives may be different. So why don’t we tackle that first and maybe we won’t have to go into detail on the crap that really doesn’t concern anyone else who isn’t neck-deep in it?”
Rita let out a derisive snort. “So you’re the voice of reason now?”
I smiled briefly. “Trust me, the irony of that isn’t lost on me. And, like most of you, I don’t want to be here and I have very little reason to trust any of you or want to cooperate with you, but why don’t we at least pretend to be adults and talk about it?”
Blake and Richards looked close to agreeing with me, but Scott obviously didn’t. “I couldn’t give less of a shit about what happens to your husband, and I will not let any of my men get killed to rescue a traitor.”
I was a little surprised that I wasn’t even mad at him; dealing with Bucky Hamilton for weeks had apparently turned me into a better person. Who would have thought?
“But you clearly give a shit about something, and just maybe, you’ll need my husband to take out the trash? And me, and our people, because believe it or not, we’re a package deal. Just had a good reason not to get too tied up with each other over the past years.” I made a point to look at each group before addressing all of them. “None of you brought anywhere near enough people for what I need, and you know that—and still, you are here. Let’s hear it. What’s your why?”
Rita was the first to speak up, again surprising me, but then nothing here seemed to go according to plan. “A word of advice? Tuck your tail between your legs, turn around, and go back to wherever you’ve been hiding from the world for the past years,” she offered, her eyes zeroed in on my face. “With luck, it’s not too late to save yourself. Right now, you’re just a blip on someone’
s radar. Don’t become a signal.”
Ah, and there it was—the hint I had been waiting for. And not just me, judging from how Scott perked up. Since he didn’t demand clarification, I spoke up instead.
“That’s cold, even for your standards. I mean, I’d have expected you to feed me to the wolves if it was my ass grounded in that slaver camp, but Miller’s? And here I thought he was one of the few people you still cared about, and one of only two who could actually understand you. Guess since Hamilton—the other one so lucky—bit it, you’re all about letting others clean up after you?”
Her mouth twisted into a thin line, and she definitely didn’t like being called out like that, but also didn’t refute my accusation. I would have considered that interesting except that this was the one thing I didn’t want confirmation for. Fucking Decker…
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this was about something else entirely, like her being afraid Nate would try to usurp her standing in Dispatch, or become more of a nuisance than I had been when I’d called for a crusade, or whatnot. I didn’t know her well enough to take a guess.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to, since she was all too happy to explain. “Don’t be so fucking dense, Bree. It’s no coincidence that they found you, and that you got away. It’s a last warning. Heed it. You don’t want to bear the consequences, trust me.”
If she really thought that would deter me, she knew me even less well than I knew her. I didn’t bother with checking in with Pia, but instead cocked my head to the side, striking a considering pose. “If that’s true—and I’m not convinced it is, but let’s pretend you’re right—that would mean that Decker already has his claws in his favorite pet. That’s not something I want to consider and still be able to sleep well. Shouldn’t you be calling for us to go hunt him down and kill him if there’s a chance that someone brainwashed my husband?”
While I had addressed her directly, I watched the others for reactions. I got none from the scavengers nor the traders, and Richards and his people hadn’t given me anything back in France, either, but several of the Silo marines gave a little jerk—as did Scott. It was he who finally asked the relevant question.
“Who the fuck is this Decker guy?”
His mistake was that he asked me rather than Rita, so all I could do was shrug. “Wish I knew? It’s kind of funny to collect all the rumors of rumors people tell each other, but not very satisfying. It’s almost as if he wasn’t real.”
“Oh, he is real,” Rita ground out, taking my bait hook, line, and sinker, which in itself told me just how much the topic was a trigger for her. I still had no clue how she had been involved in all this, but what Martinez had told me about her trying to commit suicide made it pretty obvious that Nate’s reaction to hearing that Decker was still alive wasn’t a fluke, or something that had come out of nowhere.
Since she didn’t offer up more, I had to goad her on further. “And you really think that he’s behind that slaver camp? Sounds a little far-fetched to me.”
Rita looked less than amused by my dismissal. “You think? Guess again. Just look around, at what the world has become. Do you think that if he was just a ghost story, the world would have turned into a free-for-all, real-life death match?”
As easy as it was for me to dismiss her first guess, hearing that made my blood run cold. Scott reacted a little more irreverently, cursing under his breath before adding, louder, “Yeah, right. Because one single guy, however well-connected, has that much influence, and in a world where you can easily go weeks without meeting another human soul.”
“He doesn’t need that much direct influence,” I pointed out, deciding to run with it. When Scott’s glare turned to me, I shrugged. “I still don’t buy that the slaver camp is connected to him, or at least not the part that they got to us. That’s a hundred percent on us, rookie-level mistake, I hate to admit.” When Rita looked ready to tell me I was full of shit, I laughed softly. “They caught me while taking a shit, at night, in the woods. I’d love to say it’s the only time anyone caught me with my pants around my ankles but it’s not. Not my point—they clearly expected heavy opposition, and they came packing for that. We gave them a good fight, but there’s only so much two people can do. But that’s exactly my point—they expected someone, not us. They had no clue who we were, and they made it disturbingly easy for me to get away. When we were in France, I was stupid enough to give Hamilton, Richards, and their soldiers a good look at what I’m capable of, and I’m pretty sure that had anyone in that camp known it was me, they wouldn’t have been stupid enough to pretty much leave the door unlocked for me to walk out.”
Buehler, across the ring of mostly silent onlookers, cleared her throat. “That’s what they did?” She sounded appropriately doubtful.
“Well, not exactly,” I offered, hard-pressed not to massage my right hand. “But they drugged me, cuffed me to a bed, and tried to beat the shit out of me. Do you have any idea how fucking stupid you need to be to do that to someone who already has serious anger management issues when she has her full mental capacity? I’d love to entertain you with all the gory details, but I pretty much ran on autopilot after that first punch hit, and woke up the next day covered in blood from head to toe, up on a branch in a tree. Even those of you who don’t think I’m a homicidal bitch wouldn’t have been that negligent.” No protests came up, and a few of the soldiers behind Richards looked impressed. Apparently, someone had already updated the file they had on me—just as I’d predicted. Scott looked less impressed, but I had a feeling I’d have to pull weirder stunts to accomplish a change there.
Turning back to Rita, I paused for a moment, considering. “I do think you’re right that it was a warning. A warning I’m not going to heed, because I’ll be damned to let the man I love rot away in a deep, dark hole. If by doing this I’m turning the blip I am into a steady signal on anyone’s radar, so be it. Maybe that’s exactly what the world needs—a signal.”
Rita continued to glare at me, and I thought I recognized Cole’s voice that murmured from over there, “And here we go again.”
I forced my focus to remain with Rita instead. “Is that the only reason you came? To warn me? Message received. You can go now.” That dismissal must have grated, and I could tell that she was itching to physically fling herself at me and punch me in the face, but she had considerably more self-control than I could have mustered. That realization also gave me pause—and part of me was tempted to ask how she managed that feat—but only for so long.
Turning back to the others, I spread my arms wide so my following shrug was oddly exaggerated. “Do I love making myself into a martyr, again? Fuck, no! But someone has to do something, and from what I can tell, the only thing you or the factions you represent have done is stick your heads in the sand and slam your doors shut to ignore that everyone else out there is dying. And there I thought the zombies would be our real problem going forward, naive that I am sometimes. Great job you’ve done serving the greatest country in the world, like most of you probably swore at one time or another.” I sure as hell deserved the hostility I got for that from all sides—including Sonia and Burns—but since the highway wasn’t an option, I had to do it my way. “Don’t like hearing that? Well, I don’t see anyone protest that it’s true nevertheless. How about we change something about that before it’s too late?”
Glances were exchanged and a few murmurs rose, but dropped away as soon as Rita offered a cold, hard laugh. “You think we’re selfishly ignorant?” she said, taking a look around but mostly focusing on me. “Let me tell you something, Bree.” She spit my name out as if it was a slur. Maybe to her, it was. “The only reason why Dispatch still stands is because I did exactly that—at the first sign of danger, we closed ranks, we sealed everything tightly, and made sure that we minded our own fucking business. Wilkes did the exact same thing with the Silo, only that he was smart enough to use that—and the influx of able people—to increase his offensive strength to achieve true independence once
more.” I didn’t miss that her gaze briefly dropped to Red, underlining whose influence the silo’s commander had greatly limited. “Think I’m lying? Look what Greene got for trying to be a middle ground. And look how he and everyone else in New Angeles scurried when they got their docks blown up. Not a day later, the city’s security was as tight as a virgin’s asshole, and has remained like that ever since. All of us got the message, loud and clear. Only you’re too optimistic to see it for what it really is. I warned them, and they listened. What do you have to say to that?”
All I had for her was a tight smile. “Well, you knew Decker personally, back in the day. You’d know his MO.”
No audible gasps went through the gathered ranks, but I could tell that a few of the people—like Scott—suddenly got a lot more interested in what Rita had to say. Her eyes narrowed, and it was quite obvious that any goodwill she’d ever had toward me was gone now. Too bad—I really felt like bawling my eyes out over the loss.
“You fucking conniving little bitch,” she spit out, not quite taking a step toward me but looking like she really wanted to. “You think you can throw me under the bus like that? Well, guess again. Everyone here knows how much power I have—as in, actual manpower. If I don’t make it home, there will be hell to pay, and no one here wants to risk that. You know what? Not everyone will be as lenient as Hamilton was when he had the perfect chance to kill you without even getting his own hands dirty. Someone, and likely very soon, will get you, and that will be a great day indeed.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 26
