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

by Lecter, Adrienne

  Horror didn’t quite cut it. The only thing worse for me would have been if something inside of me had started responding to that gore and blood with anything but revulsion, but at least I was spared that.

  With the body rent asunder, the shamblers that continued to stream forward now started attacking those that were gorging themselves on the remains, either fighting for scraps or going for less-fresh but still edible substance. I realized that if I didn’t want to get dragged right into that feeding frenzy, I had to move away, and quick. Forcing myself to turn my back on what was going on was hard—also because it was the most likely threat angle. Before long, I dropped down onto all fours to be less visible for the shamblers hurtling in the opposite direction. That brought me way too close to what the ground was littered in, but then the scarf was as good a splash guard as I could hope for. Being able to see even in the pitch black underneath the cars helped me pick out areas too crowded by cars for the zombies to choose—which worked well until I had to get up and climb over them in order to escape.

  Glancing around me, I tried to gauge if the area ahead was clear, making me feel terribly exposed. That got even worse when I found no snapping jaws coming for me, and scrambled up and over the hood of first one car, then a second, immediately dropping into a crouch on the other side. The stupidity of that move became apparent when I had just a split-second to realize that the metal groaning behind me wasn’t caused by me, and then the shambler was on me. Swinging with the ax in my left hand, I managed to bury the weapon between its opening jaws, forcing it to a halt, but the impact in turn sent me staggering back. The blade of the ax became unstuck as I keeled over backward, sending me into a fall. Rather than try to break it, I trusted that I’d survive and my pack would cushion some of it, and instead hacked at the zombie with my right hand. As predicted, it came right for me, ignoring the ax—which sheered right across its gangly, exposed neck, severing the head with one perfect swoop. The shambler went slack, but I had no time to notice it as that was the moment I crashed into the ground, the corpse landing right on top of me. Fowl liquid oozed onto me, hitting my shoulder and upper torso before I managed to wrench us both to the side, using the momentum to get up. Revulsion hit me but I cut down on the impulse to clean myself, instead dashing for the gap between two cars, and around the next. Behind me, I heard another commotion forming, but I didn’t allow myself to look back, instead continuing forward. That shambler had been barely more than parchment stretched over bone, but still it seemed like a perfect source of food to others. I wouldn’t have been able to push a strong, fleshy one off me like that—and those that had come after Gallager had definitely been more massive.

  In my attempt to lose any tail I might still have, I kept weaving around cars until it got a little more quiet again. It was only then that I realized I had no fucking clue in which direction I was heading.

  Fuck.

  The lanes above should have been a clear giveaway, and my addled brain took a few moments of panic to realize that, but even so that only helped me so much. I was sure that my rough-and-tumble moment had turned me around to a certain degree. Finding a sign post might help, I told myself. I’d ended up farther away from the central part of the intersection, somewhere toward the shoulders of our highway, wherever they were visible now. The sky was dark, the moon and stars out now, not much help with directions. Asking on the coms was out of the question with any noise easily becoming a death sentence—and it wasn’t like anyone else could help me since they didn’t know where I was. The upside was that I seemed to be out of the worst of the zombie incursion, at least for the moment.

  I tried my best to keep moving forward in silence, but progress was insanely slow. Five minutes, then ten passed, and still nothing. I finally caved, and after squatting next to a pickup truck for twenty seconds and not hearing anything close to me, I pulled myself onto the truck bed, shimmying toward the cabin to try not to turn myself into a broadly visible silhouette. Easing myself into a crouch with my hands on the roof of the cabin, I tried to get a better look around.

  Bingo—somewhat off course but still up ahead I found the familiar outline of one of the buildings I’d noticed when we’d gotten closer to the intersection. I was a good four hundred yards away from where the highway disappeared into the city, and the ground between me and there was relatively undisturbed at the moment. The center of the intersection had turned into one writhing mass of bodies, not unlike a crowd at a concert. It was impossible to make out if there were people moving away from there as the streams still swelling inbound were too distracting—and I doubted any of my compatriots would be stupid enough to be seen at a distance. It was too dark now to see what was happening with the shamblers that had been coming up behind us, but the incredible din from the intersection was likely ringing the dinner bell for them as well. Except for unlucky Gallager, this might even turn out to be a blessing rather than a curse.

  With a general direction now fresh in my mind, I made my way down from the truck and set out once more, pausing every few steps to listen. My progress was painfully slow, but I knew I’d still be faster than if I got eaten. That tended to get in the way of reaching destinations more than being cautious. It took way more energy to proceed like that—and do my very best to remain as alert as possible—than trundling along the highway, and my body was starting to show it. Despite what common sense might have dictated, I forced myself to slow down even more, including taking a break once to gulp down some water. More than once I paused just in time to see a shambler move past where I would have been had I moved on—and damn, those sneaky assholes were quiet. Like the one that had tackled me, all of them were emaciated to the point of not being able to fluently move any longer, but move they still did. I realized that they must have been the underdogs, usually hiding where they wouldn’t become a meal themselves, now called forward by the promise of scraps. Even years in, I had no fucking clue how long it took for them to starve to death, or become too weak to be a menace for anything except carrion eaters. It was easy to guess that the strong ones were those smart enough to kill worthwhile prey, but what about the weak? Were they smart enough to eat vermin and bugs? That idea alarmed me to no end, because it would explain why they were still around—and would massively extend the lifespan of the entire undead population of the world. We could, technically, subsist on bugs only, so why not them?

  And sheesh, now was really not the time to contemplate shit like that, but exhaustion, dehydration, and hunger—even if I couldn’t feel it—will do that to the best of us.

  An endless eternity later, I finally made it over the last access ramp and back onto US-75, and even found a sign telling me I was heading in the right direction. Behind me, carnage was still going strong, but what had sounded like battle or rallying cries had subsided. Did that mean that there was nothing left of the fresh meat they had found? Or had they realized we were slipping through the cracks? I had no intention of finding out, and slowly continued to make my way toward downtown Dallas, hoping I would find someone alive before the dead found me.

  Chapter 10

  It wasn’t so much me finding them as them almost tripping over me. With the howling continuing behind me, I could only pay so much attention to shuffling sounds happening around me, but when I did hear the scrape of something on concrete, I hunkered down behind a car—and something backed into me from the other side. I stepped back and raised my tomahawks, ready to slice into whatever was inevitably coming for me any moment now, only to find one of Blake’s marines—wide-eyed and tense—about to do the same. I only lowered my arms after I was sure he’d recognized me—at least for one of our group, if not me personally—and he gave me an uneasy smile that looked more like a grimace. I looked around to see if there was someone else with him, but didn’t catch anyone. He shook his head when I glanced back to him. He didn’t protest when I signaled him that I’d take point and was quick to follow—or as quick as was possible, which wasn’t much. Our overall pace had slowed dow
n to little more than a crawl as an endless sequence of dash-and-duck will do to you. My heart was still hammering in my throat after escaping the intersection, but at least staying alert wasn’t an issue for the moment.

  It took me a while, but eventually I spotted two more people moving in similar fashion to us. A few hurled pebbles and some praying not to attract the wrong kind of attention, and we had caught up to each other. One was one of the scavengers, the other Danvers, Scott’s second-in-command. I was happy to relinquish my position to Danvers and let him scout instead, not that it changed much. It took us a good hour to be out of earshot of whatever was still going on at the intersection, and by then most of my adrenaline was burned up. My arms got increasingly heavy and soon I had to be just as careful not to fall over my own feet as not to stumble into a suddenly appearing shambler—and there were quite a few of those lurking between the wrecks now, drawn out by the night and possibly the screams of their undead brethren. Whenever we could avoid one, we did, but more often than not we had to put it down. Even skilled at doing so quickly and nearly silently, that still caused yet more ruckus that drew others out of hiding. While we didn’t catch up to anyone else from our group, the irregularly occurring thumps in front and behind us made me guess the others were working in a similar fashion. One thing was for sure: my timetable estimates had been wildly optimistic, at least for the nighttime hours. I couldn’t be sure of the exact distance we’d managed since the intersection, but miles-per-hour wasn’t in the measurements anymore. Nobody complained—or said anything, for that matter—but I could tell that I wasn’t the only one overdue for a longer rest.

  I would have missed Scott standing by one of the exit ramps but he flagged us down when we got close enough, the uneven motion pattern of our group enough to be spotted. He and Danvers did some whispering into each other’s ear and some pointing was involved, making me guess someone had established some kind of gathering point nearby.

  Leaving the relative safety of the highway made my skin crawl—even though it was populated, the broad band of lanes between concrete walls was good terrain to hide and move forward. The city surrounding it was one giant unknown. As we followed the ramp up, the terrain around us revealed itself, and I could see why they’d chosen to exit here. The broad roads were choked up with wrecks but didn’t disappear into the urban jungle I’d expected. A swath of undeveloped land surrounded a creek that cut through it, and that was exactly where Danvers was headed. As soon as we descended into the shallow valley, I saw two more lookouts—Hill and Cole, to my momentary relief—silently pointing us farther down. Maybe half a mile along the creek sat a small, squat building, our destination if I wasn’t completely wrong.

  It turned out to be some kind of maintenance building, likely from a park authority or something similar. It had a lower level that was half underground, with only two small windows high in the low wall that let in a little moonlight. That basement was now full of dirty, sweaty bodies in different stages of cleanup efforts.

  I felt more than a little elated to find Nate and the rest of my people down there, and not even Hamilton’s presence could put a damper on that. Everyone looked okay at a first glance, although Nate had a nasty gash down one cheek that Sonia insisted needed at the very least cleaning up, which he grudgingly agreed to after he saw me step into the basement. From what I could tell, only two more people were unaccounted for—and would remain so, I figured, when Scott, Richards, Cole, and Hill were the last to file in after us, effectively barricading first the upstairs entry, and then the door to the basement on their way down.

  Not giving a shit about anything except that we were safe, I let myself sag down onto the floor without even bothering to pull off my pack, glad to just sit there for the moment. Our hideout was ideal, not just coming with a basement but two entire shelves stacked with plastic water bottles—the big ones for those upside-down dispensers. A lot of them had burst or were caved in from years of heat and cold working their shit on the liquid inside, but all that mattered was that it was clean water. Nobody had escaped the intersection without getting a few more layers of grime caked on, and to get rid of that the water was still good enough.

  It took me watching a few minutes of the somewhat frantic scrubbing the marines got into to realize it wasn’t just personal preference. I also noticed that Sonia, armed with some clean rags, water, and bleach, wouldn’t go near anyone until they had cleaned up. My confusion clearing up must have played out on my face as I caught Eden smirking at me across the room from where she was equally as relaxed as me where getting doused was concerned.

  Giving myself a mental shake, I pushed my pack off and set to wiping zombie gunk off myself and my gear, which went much faster when Nate came to lend a hand. He remained at my side when I found a new space to park my tired ass against a wall, opposite the rest of our people. Burns gave me a lazy smile and a thumbs-up before he closed his eyes, looking tired enough to fall asleep right that second. Sonia and Marleen were still busy looking after scrapes and cuts, one of Blake’s men getting increasingly agitated about a gash on his arm where something had torn his jacket. It looked more like he’d gotten caught on a sharp scrap of metal than a shambler bite, as Sonia confirmed soon after, but he wouldn’t listen, continuing to mutter in low tones.

  “Press your finger down on the bandage,” I whisper-advised him. “What does it feel like?”

  At first, I wasn’t sure whether he’d understood as he kept staring nervously at me. Sonia, clearly at the end of her patience and energy alike, grabbed his arm and pressed her thumb into the center of the bandage she’d just applied, making him wince in discomfort.

  “Hurts,” he grunted.

  I offered him a tight-lipped smile. “Then you’re good. If it was infected, you wouldn’t feel anything.” Obviously agreeing with me, Sonia was already moving on, but the guy was now staring at me weirdly. I couldn’t hold in a snort. “Trust me—I’m kind of the authority on getting mauled by the undead assholes and limping away from that to tell the tale. Never regained the sensation around the scars, either.”

  He looked slightly more at ease now but still awfully spooked. Nate allowed himself a chuckle next to me. “As I remember it, you weren’t limping; you were driving like fury incarnate.”

  I slowly turned my head and gave him a deadpan stare. “Well, someone had to save your useless ass. I knew I was already dead. Might as well rescue those that weren’t.” Which reminded me of something I’d always wondered, and now might be the last opportunity to ask about it. Leaning forward and craning my neck, I found Hamilton slumped against a wall in the corner, right next to the basement stairs. He’d been watching the exchange in silence, and I felt a certain trepidation to get him talking, now that he was shutting up for once. “Hey, ass wipe—what exactly was your plan at that damn factory for the rest of us? As much as I always wanted to subscribe to the idea that you were incompetent enough not to execute Miller the second you had him cornered, I know that wasn’t the case.”

  Hamilton grimaced, as if the mere fact I was addressing him was paining him. Good. I half expected him not to respond, but he did. “My orders were to bring him in alive. I would have shot out his kneecaps before that, to ensure transport security.” If anything, Nate seemed to find that funny but remained silent.

  “And the others?”

  Hamilton gave a tired, one-shouldered shrug. “Of those we had captured already? I would have tried to reason with Burns. Zilinsky I would have put down like the rabid bitch she is. Never should have gotten the serum in the first place, if you ask me. The others, depends on their behavior. After one of you assholes already turned himself into a living weapon by converting, not sure it would have been worth risking that happening a second time. All of them were fucked up enough to stay with you after they had a chance to jump ship when you got marked up. I’m not standing in the way of anyone’s voluntary suicide.”

  I didn’t miss that Richards, Cole, and Hill all kept a rather low, neutra
l profile. I still had no clue whether they’d been part of that operation, but I’d gotten the sense in the past that hadn’t been the case. We might not have gotten away if Hamilton had more people with their kind of track record at his disposal. Then again, a part of me still marveled that we had gotten away at all, and while I didn’t voice it, deep down I harbored the suspicion that Hamilton had let us get away. I hated having to admit it, but he was more capable than that, and, confusion and luck aside, they could have made it impossible for us to evade their trap after springing it. Hadn’t he said in the past that it should have served as a warning to Nate? I didn’t remember—which only upset me so much right now. I’d certainly waltzed all over that attempt with my crusade—but that had been after I’d been kidnapped and locked in that damn white-tiled cell, and half of our team had either died or been severely crippled in that ambush in the woods.

  “My, it’s such a relief to see that we’re all one huge, happy family,” Marleen piped up as she found her own spot against the opposite wall, next to where Sonia shimmied up to Burns—who had the presence of mind to raise one arm so she could scoot under and press herself against his side. How cute. At least I got to abuse Nate’s shoulder for a pillow, and while he gave me a bemused look, he made no attempt to shove me off him. I might have, in his place, considering how lax I’d been in my cleanup efforts. Then my gaze fell on a bit of dried-up gunk on his thigh next to mine, complete with a clump of brittle hair sticking out of leathery skin, and I figured he couldn’t throw stones. I considered unsheathing my knife to gingerly pick that piece of gore off him, but it was too much effort. It wasn’t my leg.