Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12

by Lecter, Adrienne

  I paused when the next drawer was stuffed to the brim with papers, but most of that looked like notes from someone who needed their fingers to add up numbers from one to ten. They were in line with what Mike had explained, making me guess at first that they might actually be his notes—except for the fact that even at a glance I could make out three different handwriting styles.

  “Looks like this was a team effort,” I muttered, a new wave of annoyance coming up inside of me. “That lying piece of shit.” It didn’t really matter, since even having names and physical descriptions of the others wouldn’t have yielded different results. They must have left with the Chemist—days ago.

  Richards cleared his throat, making me look at him. He was still pretending to be Mr. Neutral. “Cole told me your interrogation didn’t work out so well?”

  “Depends,” I offered. “He told us about the drugs they manufactured, and how they beefed up their farm-labor force. That’s ten times what that bitch could deliver. But yes, he managed to get lucky and killed himself before I could get out the pliers.”

  “And how are you dealing with that?”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “That I didn’t have to torture another ass wipe to the point where pausing was a relief because he’d stop screaming? Not really bothering me a lot.”

  I could tell that Richards wasn’t very convinced of what sounded like a lie even to me, but I had no intention of explaining further. When nothing more came from me, he dropped the point—and went straight for the kill. “And how are you dealing with everything else? You know, you can talk to me if—”

  He cut off when I deliberately closed the drawer and glared at him. “Do you really think I’d do that, now that I have my entire crew back?”

  Richards didn’t look perturbed that I’d pretty much just told him that we weren’t friends.

  “Some things are easier to discuss with a virtual stranger,” he pointed out.

  “Which you aren’t.” I forestalled any possible response he could have given when his mouth snapped open. “Don’t play games with me, okay? My patience is about maxed out by the very presence of your former commanding officer, and that’s without the shakes, and the brain fog, and the fact that this entire place makes my skin crawl. From where I’m standing, I’m happy about every supporting hand readily lent, but I won’t let anyone try to get between me and the people I trust.” I also had no intention of shoving anyone away deliberately, so I waited until my ego let me back down a little. “We need to have a debriefing as soon as we know more, and plan what we’ll do next—and who will be along for the ride. I can have more than two friends, don’t worry. But right now I’m not really in the mood to talk.”

  Red nodded, if reluctantly—or maybe he was battling demons similar to mine. I turned back to my drawers, ready to sift through the next one, but he wasn’t done yet.

  “Hamilton and I talked last night,” he offered. “As you can imagine, that wasn’t a very elevating, light conversation. He didn’t mention any specifics, but extrapolating from what he didn’t say, I can imagine what’s on your mind right now.”

  Strangely, the annoyance ebbed rather than flowed at his words, but that didn’t mean our talk got any less strained. I made a point of catching his gaze before I responded. “And don’t you think I will take all the things that might weigh on my mind that my husband told me to the grave, and gladly? No offense, but again: if I needed to talk to someone, it wouldn’t be you.”

  Richards took my refusal to spill my guts with a curt nod. “I know that you both think that you can’t confide in anyone—”

  “I’d talk to Zilinsky if I needed to bawl my eyes out,” I told him, adding with a not-quite nice smile, “Been there. Done that. And I know she will take my grievances to the grave, too.”

  A look of surprise crossed Red’s features, something that I hadn’t expected. “I didn’t realize that you were that friendly with her.” The way he stressed “her” made me realize the Ice Queen’s reputation preceded her. That very fact made me grin in earnest.

  “She’s been Nate’s right hand for longer than I’ve known them. After making sure I wouldn’t accidentally kill myself with a gun, she started extending that same courtesy to me. I would talk to her if I needed to, and so would Nate. So unless you want to spill the beans on what Hamilton told you in confidence, or need someone to discuss private matters with, we’re done here.”

  Expecting him to keep his tongue, I turned back to my drawer, but paused with my fingers on the handle when Richards spoke up. “He’s leaving command of our soldiers to me. Said he was done with the army. I would be lying if I wasn’t at least a little concerned about his will to live, but when I was watching the three of you interact earlier, he seemed quite happy to be around. Looks like, indeed, he has become your problem rather than mine.”

  On some level, the fact that he was ready to confide in me felt good. His words, not so much, although I had been wondering about that already. Anger, coiled tight and impossible to disband, started roaring in the back of my mind but I did my best to ignore it, turning back to my drawer. More scrawled notes, no new revelations. The same was true for the next drawer. In the last, I found a basic organic chemistry book that had seen better days a long time ago. I leafed through it but the notes scrawled all over the margins seemed to belong to legions of students rather than give evidence of what they’d been up to here. It was just as bad as the books we’d liberated from that engineering department when Nate and I had been hunting for information on how to build electrical engines for the buggies.

  It was that very thought that made me pause, then check the front of the book. The title page was gone where, without a doubt, the stamp or sticker of the library had been where it had lived before ending up here. That gave me an idea.

  Ignoring Richards and his patient yet imploring gaze, I walked down the row of worktables to where I found a few boxes full of latex gloves. Someone had diligently unpacked them and stacked them, sorted by size, in the overhead racks above the tables. Looking inside the cupboards below the tables, I found them filled to the brim with plastic bags containing centrifuge vials of all sizes, again stacked according to size. I continued to open doors and drawers, skipping over to the central part of the warehouse—until, finally, I was met with brown cardboard rather than see-through plastic. And, wouldn’t you know it—the box even had the initial address label where it had been sent to on top.

  Not bothering with leaving the strangely organized state of the warehouse intact, I tore off the flap containing the packaging label and continued my search. In short order, I had a handful of torn cardboard in my hands, all of them coming from either of two addresses—in Texas. And while the companies didn’t ring a bell, the street names sounded familiar. Definitely something to bring up in the briefing tomorrow.

  “Found what you were looking for?” Richards asked when I looked ready to go.

  “Not really, but I might have found something.” When he kept eyeing me askance, I shrugged. “They must have had all their chemicals and containers from somewhere. Maybe that’s where they kept working on the serum project.” His utter lack of a reaction told me I was breaking new ground for him. “The Chemist’s assistant told us that they were continuing to tweak the serum—that’s what fried the worker bees’ brains and made the scavengers come back. I need to check back with Harris to confirm that guess, but after Colorado, that’s less of a surprise than I like to admit.”

  I didn’t miss the latent horror crossing his face before he schooled his expression, which was yet another layer of confirmation. Too much, actually, and I turned away before more grievance could make me say or do something I would later regret. Yet Richards held me back, physically reaching out to touch my arm.

  “Lewis, we are not your enemies,” he insisted, withdrawing his fingers when he felt me tense. I stared at where he had touched me, then at his face, trying to gauge whether his expression of openness was real or fake.

 
; “But you were the ones who started this,” I ground out before I could stop myself. “You were there, in Colorado. You were there when your faction promised to take care of all the soldiers that had already turned into zombies in everything but the need to eat flesh.” And my, didn’t that have a sour connotation to it now. “Why are there still experiments going on? Why did hundreds—no, thousands!—of scavengers get infected and ultimately doomed to the very same fate? And don’t you dare lie to my face and tell me this is the first you’ve heard of this. Is this why we went to France? So you could let the issues with the pesky scavengers take care of themselves? Is this what Emily Raynor has been cooking up in her lab for the past two and a half years?”

  The storm howling around the warehouse was quite the dramatic backdrop for my accusations, but Red remained stoically calm.

  “You mean because of what Hamilton said yesterday? That he’d been tasked to drop off the weaponized virus version here?” I nodded—no hesitation there. Richards looked doubtful, as if he was debating what to make of that himself, but ended up shaking his head. “Why don’t we ask him, rather than throw accusations out there where they can easily get people killed?” When he saw my surprise, he laughed, and it wasn’t a nice sound. “Don’t you think that all of us are very aware that this camp is a powder keg, maybe more so now than before? The last thing we need is you of all people giving those drugged-up assholes even more of a reason to slaughter us on a whim!”

  That accusation—and the mentioned consequences—made me draw up short, and it took me a few moments to work through my confusion. “You’re serious?”

  Under different circumstances, the exasperated look he shot me might have made me cheer, but today wasn’t the best day to finally wear his patience thin. “Deadly.”

  It was then that I realized the reason why Richards continued to plaster himself to me—thankfully at more of a physical distance than yesterday, but still—was less because of ulterior motives, and more so the simple reassurance that came with my reputation. I tried to remember where I’d seen the soldiers mill around since Nate had officially retired the previous leadership, but couldn’t remember. Somewhere with the Silo marines—who hadn’t ventured far from our established headquarters, either, come to think of it. Only Harris and his scavengers had left the Citadel to roam everywhere and celebrate.

  Huh. Maybe I should have paid more attention to this before.

  Richards cleared his throat, actually looking a little taken aback, as if his brief outburst had left him thoroughly embarrassed. “Look,” I started, not quite sure what to say. It fleetingly occurred to me that, maybe, he was trying this angle to get under my skin. Damn, but I hated that things had to be so complicated! “I appreciate that, for the second time, you and your men have risked your lives to help me rescue my husband. And yes, just between you and me, I do consider you as one of my friends, and one of the people I might confide in. Fact is, I’m having a really hard time hanging on to my sanity right now, and the last thing I need is this constant second-guessing. So let’s not read too much into anything until we know more for sure, okay? We still have countless buildings to search and people to beat into submission so they’ll share their nefarious plans with us. Then we’ll have the next powwow, and we’ll take it from there. Sounds good?”

  He nodded without being an asshole and let me hang for the few minutes I probably deserved to squirm under his calm gaze. “Sounds good,” he echoed. “Just, maybe, only accuse us of the things we’re actually responsible for. Not the ghosts that you’ve already exorcised.”

  I couldn’t quite suppress tensing up at the memory of where I’d first had to deal with that mind-destroying shit—Taggard’s white-tiled cell. “Aren’t you the least bit curious who is behind all this?” I asked as I turned toward the gate, only now realizing how dark it had gotten outside.

  “Of course I am,” Richards offered with a tight smile that was more of a grimace. “Those were my soldiers who had to take the first hit. I knew nine good men who lost their minds to that faulty serum. Nine good men who had defended this country against the undead, and helped rebuild without complaint or a single day of leave since the shit hit the fan. And all just because they believed there was an easy solution to the constant danger they had been in the entire time. And I lost several times that number to scavenger raids since. Do you think I’m a saint who doesn’t feel the itch to gun down every crazy-eyed, war-painted idiot who still believes they are fighting for their freedom when, actually, they are the ones who keep terrorizing the country? I’m not. But what I have learned is that, all too often, hardliners like Hamilton only exacerbate the situation, and without compromise, we’ll all be dead in no time. And as you know, when you bite it, it doesn’t matter what color your uniform was or whether you ever wore one in the first place.”

  I hadn’t expected quite such a speech, but for the first time since I’d gotten to know him better at the base in Canada and our journey to France, I felt like I was talking to the man, not the officer. Again, the nasty voice at the back of my mind whispered that it was entirely possible this was just his latest strategy to play me, but I didn’t believe it. He had little to lose and nothing to gain—except maybe make me realize I really needed to watch what I was saying and who was listening to it. Realizing that with Harris we had a strong ally who could not only get us into the camp but also help us overthrow Cortez and his people had made me feel kind of invincible, but I knew that was a dangerous liaison at best, and might come with them turning on us next at worst. I loathed Hamilton with a vengeance, and still didn’t trust the soldiers as much as their actions around me maybe deserved, but they were likely the more reliable compromise. Add to that both factions of marines—who would drop away as soon as the army left—and that latent sense of security suddenly turned into the opposite. Just maybe I should have brought more than three people on my little quest to find out more about the drug operations—and checked in with Pia to let her know what I was doing.

  I wouldn’t be making that mistake again in the future.

  Richards seemed satisfied with the following silence as we rejoined his men and started making our way back through the storm, the rain feeling even worse, if that was possible. We were getting close to the Citadel entrance when something occurred to me. Turning to Richards, I asked, “Exactly where do you know Zilinsky from?”

  I got a borderline sardonic smile for my trouble. “You mean, besides her being the XO of the biggest pain in our ass since the shit hit the fan?”

  I nodded. “Naturally. As much as I like to delude myself into thinking everyone believes that I’ve been running the show, we all know it isn’t so.”

  Richards waited until we were inside, shaking himself like a dog before responding. “You do realize that, medical personnel aside, only three people have ever been inoculated with the serum who haven’t been active service members of the army?”

  I was about to negate that but realized I already knew the answer. “You mean me, Zilinsky, and Romanoff?”

  I got a curt if satisfied nod. “I’m sure that for none of you, any records exist, but people talk, and the more horrifying the story, the more embellished it becomes. I presume you know their version of it?”

  “Actually, I only know bits and pieces,” I offered, feeling vaguely stupid. But one did not simply walk up to the Ice Queen and ask her why everyone and their mother perked up when her name was mentioned. “She told me that she’d been lost, and Miller helped her regain her sanity.” Which was oversimplifying it, but as close to the truth as I could get without spilling what little I knew of her past—which I would also take to my grave.

  It spoke volumes that both Hill and Cole were completely silent, listening with rapt attention. Richards snorted, without a doubt bemused at his men’s reaction—or my statement. “Let’s put it this way: not even the black ops branch of the army makes a habit of working with mercenaries that have rap sheets that make any manila folder trying to contain the
m burst at the seams. Unless said mercenaries can give the best of our best a run for their money, and come out laughing at how incompetent and nice we are. The story goes that not just one of our strike companies but also the search-and-rescue company sent after them got bogged down in a situation where both captains knew they and all their men were toast—only to be sprung by a small strike force whose only reason to be there was because they hadn’t been paid for their last contract and were now demanding their price in blood. The reason why the two surviving members agreed to work for us was because they were promised more of the same, over and over again—and the shot that would allow them to keep raining destructions on their enemies even beyond the grave. Sounds familiar?”

  I was tempted to shake my head but refrained. In a sense, I could see why Pia hadn’t been lying when she’d told me that Nate had “saved” her when he’d given her a new purpose in life. Also, the fact that she didn’t want her name right next to his on our scavenger company sheet took on an entirely new meaning.

  Also, the fact that she’d managed to get five factions to the meeting to plan the assault on the camp, with only Dispatch backing out, made a lot more sense now. And that nobody had dared attack the California settlement, either. Sleeping dogs, and all that shit.

  Suddenly, the idea that the scavengers would turn on us and shiv us in our sleep bothered me a lot less than a few minutes ago.

  “Well, at least I keep interesting company,” I muttered, ignoring the incredulous look Richards shot my way.

  “Is that all you’re going to say to that?” he called after me, quickly catching up once more.

  “What else is there to say?” I asked, grinning. “You had me worried there for a bit, but I think I’ll sleep soundly tonight.” Which, I was afraid, was likely still wishful thinking, but a girl could hope! When Richards kept staring at me, I snorted. “You know, ever since Hamilton told us that Decker was still alive, I was afraid he would come after us because he wanted his favorite lap dog back at his side. Now I’m starting to think that everything that happened was a preemptive strike to prevent said lap dog’s attack dog from tearing out anyone’s throat who might even glance the wrong way at said lap dog.”