“The side effects of old age,” he suggested, smiling himself.
“You’d think that not getting shot and stabbed might help, too,” I grumbled back.
Someone else might have shown pity for my plight now. Nate’s smirk didn’t bode well, so mostly to shut him up, I pushed myself up and climbed over him. My back protested, but once he scrambled up into a sitting position, his hands conveniently cupped around my ass cheeks to push me against him, it wasn’t so bad. As long as I didn’t twist my torso, that would work—and contrary to his hip issue, mine were doing just great. A few seconds of experimental dry humping had him nod his affirmation, which made me chuckle in turn—until the unmistakable sounds of someone overstraining a car’s suspension, overshadowed by a woman’s very enthusiastic utterance that she didn’t give a shit about the vehicular damage, cut through the night. My face almost hurt from my resulting grin, Nate mirroring it if with a somewhat critical frown on his forehead. Others didn’t seem to take it with the same amount of amusement, though, as about ten seconds after the moan had cut off with a fit of giggles, Martinez called across the clearing—a little too loud for the middle of nowhere with who knew what lurking out there, but very understandably, “I just put you two back together! Can you at least let others sleep even if you absolutely need to tear your stitches—again!”
Nate and I shared another amused look before I leaned toward the door—careful not to twist—so I could open it a crack and shout back. “Sorry to disappoint you, chico, but we haven’t quite made it there yet. I’ll make sure not to leave you with more work this once. Promise!”
Someone else laughed, and I could hear a few more chuffs and chuckles coming from all around. After a pregnant pause, Martinez answered, his voice pitched lower now. “Sorry, my bad.” More amusement followed, particularly when he added, “Please resume.”
Rather than deign to answer, I pulled the door shut again, the sound itself raising another round of what now sounded tantalizingly close to cheers. Nate was grinning at me, and before he could say something to ruin the mood—and the wonderful, bright feeling of levity that flared in my chest—I silenced him with my lips and tongue, and soon hands and other parts. There was some grunting and wincing involved on both sides that didn’t exactly belong to these activities, but it wasn’t the first time that we somehow had to make it work outside of perfect conditions. I couldn’t deny that once my heart rate was up enough to shut my brain up, there was also desperation twisting into the mix, fueled both from the sheer joy of survival, and also fear that the very thing we were celebrating—being alive—was a resource that was dwindling too fast. And it wasn’t just me—I could tell from the way Nate tensed underneath me, how his hands turned from teasing and supporting to holding on to me for dear life—
I hadn’t expected to come—circumstances aside, my body was trashed and every single motion brought spikes of pain zinging away from the stab wound—but my mind clearly had other priorities than comfort and being reasonable, allowing me a few seconds of losing myself in the endorphin rush that, for once, didn’t have anything to do with fighting for my life. Not exactly having been passive before, Nate took over, letting me ride out the waves of my pleasure as he succumbed to his own. We stopped moving, joined together not just physically. He stared at me, wide-eyed, just as I must have been staring at him, breathing heavily. His hands let go of my ass—carefully skipping the middle of my back—and stroked up my arms before he wrapped them around my head and pulled me down into a tender kiss. I felt a twinge in my heart, but for once it wasn’t guilt or misery but something soft and positive, something I felt I needed to close my own hands around to protect and keep alive for as long as possible. We stayed like that for several minutes when, usually, that was my cue to scramble away and clean up. It felt good to just be there, with him, stealing seconds that turned into minutes that, for whatever reason, we’d always felt we didn’t have.
And then the moment was over, my back complaining about the same time Nate winced, muttering something about a cramp in his thigh as I pushed off him. I plunked down on my ass, momentarily not quite sure what to do with myself. In true Nate fashion, he had to make the moment perfect—or perfectly destroy it—as he scrutinized me, still rubbing his hip. “Do you need to lie down with your legs raised, or some shit like that?”
Irritation zipped up my spine, even though it made me realize I’d ended up sitting there weirdly with my pelvis tilted up and forward, as if to prevent… leakage. I couldn’t help but snort, even as I reached for what was left of my discarded shirt, using the side that wasn’t caked with blood and other fluids to wipe myself clean before dumping it in a trash bag—that was already half full of other blood-soiled clothes ready to be burned. “What, don’t trust your swimmers to go in the right direction? Maybe you should have drawn up a map for them, too.”
Nate looked vexed—probably because I hadn’t handed him the shirt to use before dumping it, as usual—but set to dressing himself, leaving my barb uncommented on. I followed suit, but couldn’t shake off that pervasive feeling of something I couldn’t make sense of clinging to me.
“Is this weird?” I mused. “Why is this weird? I don’t want this to be weird.”
Nate paused, giving me a—well, weird—long look before he moved over, reaching for my shoulder to make me halt. “Nothing’s weird,” he assured me. A rueful smile replaced the slight frown on his expression. “Neither of us is dying just yet. Stop overthinking this. It is what it is—nothing more, nothing less.”
I wished it was that easy. Throughout the day, I’d had light cramps and spotting after Sonia had removed the IUD, and even now there’d been some smears on the tank top. “I don’t even know if I can get pregnant,” I muttered, more to myself than Nate. “And I don’t know if I even want to, with everything that’s going on. I hate that it’s suddenly something I can’t ignore anymore, like a cancer growing in my brain—always there, impossible to ignore.”
Nate’s mouth took on an amusing twist as he leaned back, looking at me as if I were some peculiar specimen. “If your reason to make it through this alive is so you can kill Hamilton in more ways than even you can imagine, mine is so I can tell the world that you equated our possible future child to cancer.”
I stared at him, hard-pressed to keep scowling rather than break out in laughter. “You’re such an asshole.”
He flashed me a bright grin. “And your verbal diarrhea has reached peak performance.”
“Yeah? If you keep going like that, you won’t have anything to tell anyone because the only action you’ll be getting is your right hand.”
With the way he grinned back at me, I was waiting for him to correct me that since he was left-dominant, I’d chosen the wrong limb, but instead he leaned closer, kissing me—under quickly dwindling protest from yours truly. “Considering that for fucking forever I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear those outbursts again, you won’t get any protest from me,” he whispered against my lips, then kept me from responding for a while longer. Which was a good thing, because how exactly was I supposed to respond to that? The need to touch him—to physically make sure that he was really here, and here to stay—got overwhelming, and with no reason whatsoever not to follow up on it, I did. Nate’s arms came around me, still careful not to hurt me where possible, taking me down with him as he stretched out on his back. There were a million things I could have said, but my mind was quiet for once, and it took me a while to realize why: I was content. Not happy; not without fear or dread. But right here, right now, I had everything I needed—and that was enough. And I didn’t care whether it was the exhaustion, or latent trauma from our mission to Dallas, or acceptance of our limited future, or plain old post-orgasmic bliss—the need to rail against my fate was gone. Oh, I was sure that it would rear its ugly head soon enough, likely as soon as I saw Hamilton lurking around somewhere, my constant reminder of all the things that were wrong with my world. But for one night only, it felt good to just let go a
nd simply exist. In the end, there was nothing I could do against the mountain of misgivings and grievances that I kept dragging around with me, and having a moment to just be together and not give a shit was a luxury to be cherished.
I had the distinct feeling that it would be a close to singular circumstance to get to enjoy it.
Chapter 2
I woke up when Nate did his best to extricate himself from me without jostling me awake. I got a pained grimace for his failure—and whatever his hip was getting up to—and a peck on the nose before he slid out the door, leaving me feeling bewildered and quite drowsy. I hadn’t expected to get much rest but had actually slept well for a few hours, even with the occasional painful wake-up call when I moved in my sleep. I tried to doze off again but my bladder was full and my torso and old scars needed some movement before I inflicted another day of sitting on my body, so I forced myself to get up as well.
It was early still, maybe thirty minutes to sunrise, the quiet of the morning settling like a comfortable blanket around my shoulders. Coffee was already brewing and the omnipresent rice and beans was cooking over a low fire, thanks to the last guard shift having gotten hungry—or bored. Someone had dumped canned soup from our laboratory raid in there as well, adding flavor that I was kind of glad I couldn’t taste. Nate was nowhere to be seen so I got some coffee, and after staring off into the quiet Texas landscape for a bit, I joined Amos and two scavengers I didn’t know by the fire. He hadn’t mentioned Eden since we found her—also killed by Marleen—or the other two of his people who hadn’t survived. The three of them were chatting quietly about some mall raiding they had done before joining the assault on the camp. I got a few curious glances from the two men, but since Amos had greeted me with a nod, I was apparently to be treated as one of their own. The marines on the other side of the fire were also quite chatty for the early hour but kept eyeing us as if they couldn’t quite believe nobody was coming for them. I still hadn’t found out whether it was all prejudice, or caution based on a rough three years of bad experiences.
Maybe it was about time that I changed that.
“Amos, can I ask you a question?” I interjected when the other two shut up for a moment.
The tall scavenger smirked. “I think you just did.”
I playfully scowled at him as I took a sip of coffee. “I feel like I’m still missing some details about what happened while we were gone. I have three different versions—why not add another? Why did the scavengers blow up the docks of New Angeles?”
The other conversations didn’t exactly screech to a halt, but I could tell that I wasn’t the only one curious for his reply. Santos and Martinez meanwhile joined us, sitting down on my other side—not exactly apart from the scavengers, but with me as a convenient go-between.
Amos watched them, still amused, before he focused on me. “What if I told you that we didn’t?”
One of the marines spat into the dirt in front of the log he was sitting on, but Amos ignored him. Martinez and Santos were both quiet as they tried to decide whether the food was edible—nothing out of the ordinary, but very inconspicuous at the same time. The other two scavengers held their tongues, but they looked defiant—a reaction I’d seen from a lot of them recently, when they weren’t loud, boastful, and probably playing up the effects of whatever drugs they liked to consume recreationally.
“Everyone else says different,” I pointed out, but tried not to make it an accusation.
Amos grinned, but it was on the nasty side. “And everyone’s calling you a vengeful cunt.”
I shrugged. “They might not be wrong about that,” I pointed out, not really feeling guilty about it.
“True,” Amos admitted, still grinning. “But it completely ignores context, and the fact that people are lining up to give you plenty of reasons to come after them.”
He wasn’t wrong there. “So what motive did you have for blowing up the docks?”
For whatever reason, he hesitated, giving one of the marines the opportunity to inject himself into our conversation. “Because they’re a bunch of violent assholes who think the rest of us owes them shit.”
Amos definitely had some “here we go again” going on in his expression, and for once, it was easy for me to agree with him. “You did ostracize us,” I pointed out. “We were convenient for all the settlements that didn’t dare leave their cozy little barricades, and even the Silo was happy to send us out on little fetch quests that ended up killing scores of us—even without the involvement of other parties. You went as far as not just telling us to our faces that we were dispensable, you wrote it right into your statutes how long we were allowed to stay. How anyone expected that not to bite everyone in the ass is beyond me.”
The marine looked ready to swear up a storm, but Blake limping over to us and, sitting down between his people and Amos—and exchanging a quick nod in greeting with the scavenger—put a swift end to it. I couldn’t help but smirk, and didn’t miss how in tune with the scavengers that put me. Martinez and Santos were still pretending to be neutral, but I was sure that they, too, were remembering how our mission at the factory had ended—and the Silo had been passingly involved in getting us headed there.
Damn, but sometimes it was really hard not to be paranoid about every single little thing that had happened.
“So what did happen with the docks?” I asked Amos while everyone was watching Blake turn into the next one to be suspicious of breakfast. “All personal animosity aside, New Angeles always treated us fairly, and they were actively helping with establishing more towns where we could bug down—for the winter or much longer. Why bite the hand that literally fed us?”
I fully expected Amos to slap me in the face with new information I’d missed so far—like that Greene had changed the terms of the deal and I was, again, being too naive. Instead, he pursed his lips, as if he were trying to decide how much to tell me, present company considered.
“What if I told you that it was all an accident?” he finally offered, not without a sidelong glance at the marines—whose disbelief was out in full force. Even Blake scowled, and neither Santos nor Martinez looked happy—but they weren’t protesting.
I couldn’t exactly keep my own bewilderment out of my voice. “So you accidentally found yourself with enough explosives right there, and then someone lit a cigarette, and, oops?”
Amos nodded, as if he was agreeing with me on how ridiculous that sounded. “Of course not. Our people had spent a good month dragging sacks of fertilizer from abandoned farms and factories across the country to load three ships, and Greene had sent half of the scientists he had in the city there to make sure that nothing could go wrong. I was with one of the parties involved in the gathering, but we remained behind because there wasn’t enough room for all of our vehicles, and we figured we might better keep looking and catch a head start for ship number four. That’s why Eden and I got away—we weren’t there. Of course, no one directly involved survived, so it’s hard to guess at what actually went down.”
“That’s a load of bullshit,” said a gruff voice behind us—Hill, it turned out, with Cole on his heels. The two of them looked a little lost with none of their buddies a part of the group, but at Martinez’s gesturing ended up sitting down next to him and Santos.
The younger scavenger next to Amos snorted. “Sure. The army would say that.”
Hill gave him a condescending look that I was all too familiar with, but his answer was surprisingly sensible. “No. I’m saying that as someone who has a clue about explosives. You can ask Miller or Burns, too, if you trust them more. Fertilizer on its own is incredibly explosive, and three ships of that shit is more than enough to blow up the docks and maybe even some buildings close by. Nobody who’s ever had anything to do with agriculture would be stupid enough to allow those ships to dock at the same time.”
I wasn’t the only one frowning at that statement, but when I turned to Amos, I realized he was still riding the usual animosity train. I wasn’t ju
st trying to distract him when I asked, “What scientists?” When he glanced from Hill to me, I clarified. “You said New Angeles scientists. Last time I dropped in there before we left the stage for the rest of you, there were no scientists in New Angeles, or none who declared themselves as such. I’m sure that they had their share of survivors with PhDs and other titles, but no science division I was aware of.”
At first, Amos seemed irritated by my question, but unlike with someone else posing it, he gave me the benefit of the doubt. “That was two years ago,” he reminded me. “And I’d never been to the city before. Neither had Eden, or our leader. We got the call to go fetch, so we went to fetch. At the ships, the people in charge sure behaved like scientists. Very uppity, wouldn’t answer questions, just told us what to do—you know the drill.”
Silence fell, mostly because I didn’t respond and, suddenly everyone seemed to be hanging on my lips. I couldn’t help but feel unease creeping up my spine. I wondered who else to ask about this, but both Blake and my people just gave me blank stares. Pia or Sadie might have known better since I was sure they had quickly established strong ties to Greene, or whoever handled the day-to-day shit in New Angeles. And none of them seemed to think that what Amos had just shared was out of the ordinary, except that he was obviously lying and downplaying the scavengers’ role in this…
I really didn’t like the conclusions my mind was jumping to, but part of me absolutely hoped that I was seeing nails everywhere because my only tool was a hammer.
“Has anyone seen my husband?” I asked. “Or his asshole lapdog?”
Hill frowned at my question—or, more likely, at that last part—while Cole smirked, but both shook their heads. Some muttering went on between the others until one of the marines got up and went into the trees, only to return with Nate and Hamilton in tow a few moments later. I would have much rather not talked to him directly, but since Nate was even more unlikely than me to know, Hamilton was my best option.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 77
