“We’re at the gate now,” I told the rest of our team, still talking in a low voice but no longer feeling the need to whisper. “We also took out two stationed just beyond the gate. Keeping position for now to see if more will come to us. Anyone south of the gate, I think you’re free to make a run for the wall.”
Since still no resistance appeared at the other side of the gate, I signaled Martinez to check behind us while I kept watch forward. Tense minutes passed while farther north shots were still being traded. Then Martinez gave my left shoulder a slight nudge. “I see Sonia and Burns up on the walkway. They’ve seen me. I say we let them guard our backs and move on.”
No objection to that from me, so that was exactly what we did. In passing, I made sure that both men we’d shot were indeed dead. Both had single-X marks on their necks and their gear was rough, but something just didn’t feel right. I considered keeping with my pistol but instead relieved one of them of his M16 and his two spare magazines. No need to fumble with my pack if I could just pick it up on the way. Martinez and I advanced further, with me keeping to the right and him a few steps behind me to the left.
As soon as I got a good look at the next shooter, I aimed and fired, only having to pause for another twenty seconds before the next one came running into his doom. He didn’t even try for a strategic position, although there wasn’t any cover in the stretch from the gate right to the end of the palisade, where a smaller entrance and similar watch box was located, from what I remembered. But there were two stairs leading up onto the walkway ahead of us yet farther down, still out of sight, obscured by darkness. I was doing my best to locate them. Being able to hunker down on the steps would make for great defensive positions.
Five more shooters in three positions we gunned down, and none of them tried to hide anywhere near the stairs. The night had almost fallen silent when the last one dropped, only the bark of a single assault rifle coming from up ahead. Our people had stopped shooting after I’d reported in, and more than one group had reached the trenches in the meantime. The lone shooter went on, emptying another magazine even after our last shots had killed his remaining compatriots. Chancing a glance down into the plain, I couldn’t find what he was shooting at. The fires were still burning but the lines had turned into haphazard patches, leaving scorched earth behind that could be easily traversed.
I raised my hand to signal Martinez to pause and switched back to my Glock. My brain was screaming at me to stop being so fucking stupid as I advanced on the last shooter’s position with inferior firepower. I aimed at his shoulder when I shot, squeezing the trigger two times in quick succession. His rifle wavered as he lost control of his right arm, pointing uselessly at the boards in front of him. His attention remained on the plains, which made no sense, as even the most stunned, going-into-shock gunman would have at least looked around in confusion to see where the shots had come from. Advancing further on him, I put two more bullets into his torso but aimed lower, for his hips. The rifle slid to the ground as he folded in on himself, ending in a partially kneeling position. I could smell the blood gushing from his wounds, and still he didn’t even acknowledge me. My mind was screaming at me to finish him off—and I would have loved to oblige as his behavior was freaking me out more than getting shot at—but I forced myself to close the distance to him until I could press the muzzle of my gun against his cheek. He didn’t flinch away although the hot metal must have burned against his skin. Following instinct, I gave his bleeding shoulder a kick that got him sprawling onto his back, and put another round straight into his chest.
Martinez appeared by my side, inhaling in what I knew must have been to question what the fuck I was doing, but I forestalled him, my gun not wavering from where I kept pointing it at the shooter’s head. “Wait for it…”
And, true enough, ten seconds after a gargling death rattle left his chest, his body gave a jerk as he reanimated. I emptied my magazine into his head, reducing it to so much gore, putting a final end to the spectacle.
Martinez looked slightly shaken when I finally glanced at him over my shoulder. “Did you know he’d convert?” he wanted to know.
“Nope. But it was an educated guess.” His night-vision goggles hid his frown, but I knew it must be there, so I explained. “I could be wrong, but I think most of them must have been shot up with the mind-control shit that works on the older versions of the serum—and probably on the faulty one the scavengers got as well. Still good enough for mindless shooting at anything that moves in a designated target area. Only the ones at the gates actually reacted to us decimating them.”
Martinez cursed under his breath but didn’t debate my assessment.
Looking back the way we had come, I saw several people moving on the walkway. “All clear,” I called in before I turned to look at the dark settlement below. I was sure that our entrance was no longer a matter of surprise. If there still were people down there, they would have responded to us. Our people, that was. That the intruders hadn’t shot at us yet was a marvel, and as soon as I thought that, Nate’s voice came over the radio for us to stop fucking around and take cover. There was none, really, but crouching low so that we weren’t silhouetted against the sky was a first step. The group closest to us joined us, turning out to be Blake and two of his marines. While they secured the area, I got busy getting fresh magazines from my pack and finally readying my M4. I had a feeling that the time for stealth was over.
Someone down there in the settlement seemed to agree with me as moments after I was done, a succession of explosions went off, lighting up parts of the town.
“That’s the docks,” Martinez muttered, his face partly turned away so his eyes wouldn’t get completely fried.
I had a feeling I knew where we would be headed next.
Chapter 7
"Check the houses closest to the wall. Converge at the gate," came Nate's command a few seconds later.
I waited a moment for Blake to assume command of our impromptu fireteam, but when he just looked at me instead, I gave him a brief nod back. “Understood,” I told Nate after identifying myself. “We’re at the northernmost part. We’ll need a while to be back at the gate. Unless you want us to go snooping to the north—”
“That’s a negative,” Nate told me, his voice completely void of humor. “Gate. Now.”
Far was it from me to protest a direct order—if it suited me just fine—but it soon became apparent that it made sense in a different way as well, when I watched Blake and Martinez both wince their way down the steps to the ground, each man physically hampered in his own way. For a moment I felt bad not even considering that just because I had no issues with running, others might not be that fortunate, but I was the first to admit that I wasn’t used to not being the weakest link. That said more about the people I had been running with in both the recent and more distant past than my own shortcomings, but it was something to consider now. Not that I aimed to be rid of them shortly, but I could see how Nate wouldn’t forget.
I took point, signaling to one marine to immediately follow me and for the other to bring up the rear. The two of us in the lead could easily case any room we ducked into, and most buildings here didn’t have more than that; keeping the other three on the street to keep our backs clear made the most sense, anyway. I still found Blake grimacing as he was sidelined to guard duty, but neither he nor Martinez protested.
Our job was easy enough since there was nobody alive—or undead—in any of the buildings we checked. After seeing the two bodies in the street earlier, I’d expected the worst, but the bunkhouse and two small warehouses we checked were abandoned, with minimal signs of a forced entry anywhere. It made sense—whoever had breached the settlement and set the guards to shoot at us had likely found more resistance in the southern part of the settlement where I knew most families lived, and where all the common areas like the cantina were situated. In the bunkhouse particularly there was some disarray from where someone must have made a quick exit—and a few bul
let holes by the door spoke of a not-quite easy exit—but that was the extent of the damage we found.
At the corner of the next house over, Burns and Sonia were waiting for us, having taken the nearby steps down. I motioned for them to fall in line behind me and the marine, building a second group to check on houses. They’d already cleared this one so we went on to the next. As soon as I peeked through the doorway, I wished I hadn’t. The scent of blood already gave away what my eyes confirmed a moment later—four dead in the middle of the room, behind the makeshift barricade of an overturned table. I forced myself to check that they were indeed dead for good, but that meant I couldn’t ignore the fact that it had been a family with two adolescent girls, both just old enough to try to defend themselves effectively, but they’d gotten mowed down just as quickly as their parents, judging from where the bodies had fallen. None of their faces looked familiar—a small mercy that I knew wasn’t something I shared with Martinez, Burns, or Sonia.
The next house was thankfully abandoned, but in the two that followed we found the same—small groups of people killed, and quickly enough that they hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight. Not a single body we found was wearing heavy gear, or looked like they didn’t belong.
We caught up to the others at the next intersection, the houses between there and the gate already cleared from that direction. Nate was waiting at the broader road inside the gate, currently debriefing the groups that had come in from the south. I joined them to quickly relay our findings, scarce as they had been. Nate took it all in with a stoic look on his face—even the part with the converting guard. “That’s likely the reason we haven’t found any of them dead down here,” he surmised. “They must be busy eating the next best thing that still has a heartbeat.” My, wasn’t that a positive outlook on life?
It was too quiet for many shamblers to be lurking close by, even the smart ones—and, usually, the freshly turned ones weren’t smart. They were still strong enough to go after any prey they wanted, with all the hunger in the world driving them, and that didn’t make for stealthy hunters. The explosion coming from the direction of the docks had remained the only disturbance since we’d killed the last guards up at the palisades—but there was still almost the entire settlement to search, and our entrance had been far from stealthy.
“What’s up with that?” I asked, glancing at the still-barricaded gate.
Nate didn’t even check what I was referring to. “Rigged to blow,” he pointed out. “I’ll go about dismantling the charges later. If we even need to. Since we won’t be staying here, simply blowing it up will be safer.”
I couldn’t say why that idea hit me in the stomach like a well-aimed punch, but it was only then that it occurred to me that there might not be enough of the settlement left to save—meaning its inhabitants—to bother with recovery.
“How many did we lose?” I asked, trying to get a better idea of who was missing.
“No casualties,” Nate told me. “But two badly burned, and one is down from smoke inhalation. They’re outside at the northern gate tower.” He did a quick sweep of our assembly, singling out Blake, who was trying hard to look like he wasn’t favoring his injured leg. “Choose two to guard the gate with. Just because we can’t undo the charges now doesn’t mean we’ll leave it free for just anyone to blow up at our backs.”
Blake acknowledged that with a somber nod and motioned for the two men who had been with him before to join him. I would have loved to keep sneaking on with Burns and Martinez, but Nate had other ideas. He assigned Martinez to the team that would go check on the northern parts—more warehouses, the body shop, and vehicle storage areas. Burns he sent as fireteam leader of a larger group of scavengers and what remained of the local people who’d come with us to assault the camp. I got slapped with Cole, Hill, and most of the remaining scavengers, while Nate left himself, Hamilton, and Sonia—of all people—out of the count. She seemed as thrilled as Burns with that choice but didn’t speak up. The remaining soldiers and marines each built their own teams. Nate gave us the signal to swarm out, so that’s what I did, taking point down the center of the largest street—until I could duck into cover after the second house to the left. I may have been out for blood, but I wasn’t suicidal.
Five houses deep from the gate, someone must have cleaned up after them, because that was exactly how long it took us to find the first shambler munching on a dead settler. I heard it before I even looked into the house and might have bypassed the building altogether, except that one peek inside revealed that it wasn’t wearing more than a stained shirt with pants tangled around its ankles, and was digging into the intestines of a similarly scantily-dressed woman. The zombie was hunched over in a way that didn’t allow me to see the back of its neck, but I was going out on a limb and guessed it didn’t have just a single mark there. I couldn’t leave one of the super-juiced ones at our back, but I wasn’t stupid enough to go in there armed with melee weapons. Signing Cole and Hill behind me that we had a heavy hitter on the floor, I got my M4 ready—and let Hill surge past me into the middle of the room, bringing his shotgun to bear at the back of the head of the still-oblivious shambler. The roar of the discharge was loud, same as the resulting splatter of brains and skull shrapnel was impressive. Dead for good, the corpse dropped onto the woman’s body, making the three of us exhale in relief—until she reared up, rage-filled eyes wide, coming for Hill.
He shied away instinctively, backing into Cole, which took them both out for the moment. My mind was still reeling from the sheer incredulity the situation caused—just how out of this world was it to turn and reanimate as your fuck-buddy was busy tearing out your intestines to get to your liver and heart?—and I was slow to act. The zombie was already halfway across the room and aiming for me by the time I had her in my sights and pulled the trigger. Five of the six bullets I sent flying hit home, spraying from the shambler’s shoulder across her body down to the gaping hole in her middle. The impacts made it jerk, but none of the hits was lethal, and, if anything, only enraged her further. She let out a blood-curdling scream before she launched herself at me, closing what remained of the distance between us. I was ready, bringing up the rifle to keep it from pushing me to the ground, and kicked at the right knee, putting all my strength in the move. Fresh and sturdy didn’t help when my boot broke something important, making the howling zombie fold to the ground. The stock of my rifle, smashed into a fragile temple, was enough to down it completely, so it was easy for Hill to blow its head to smithereens, too. The entire encounter had taken less than twenty seconds, adrenaline only now slamming my heart into overdrive. Hill and I stared at each other over the corpses until he gave himself a visible shake. “Now I’ve seen it all.”
Cole nudged the male zombie with his boot, just to make sure it stayed down, shaking his head before he glanced to me. “Glimpse into your future, huh?”
I stared at him, my wits needing a moment to catch up. “I would have so torn your face off if you’d given me five seconds to come after you. Just saying.” Rather than wait for a retort, I stepped back outside, checking carefully that it was our people who came out of the next house instead of an ambush. All around us I heard shots, making me guess they’d found similar surprises.
Twice more we went through the same process until I signaled the rest of my group to keep heading along the street while I took Cole and Hill with me deeper into the houses. Rather than continue with cleanup, I signaled them to move forward, angling away from the sounds of shots. A few times I heard unsavory sounds of feeding coming from a window I ducked underneath, but there wasn’t much I could do short of continuing to give my position away. There were no survivors in this part of the settlement; else they would have had ample time to creep out with the distraction our shots created, or join us.
Living quarters changed to houses filled with work stations of all kinds, most for food processing, from what I could tell—going by the terrible stench of rotten fish. I was just coming out of th
e second house—wishing I’d encountered a zombie rather than a heap of half-processed fish from what I estimated was the day before yesterday—when something pinged against the wall right next to where I was standing, silently surveilling the street. I quickly glanced around, trying to see where the pebble currently rolling away on the ground had come from. I felt ready to kick myself, having forgotten to ask what the inside signals of the people here might be, but in a pinch let out a low whistle.
The answer came swiftly, from the direction of the roofs of the houses on the opposite side of the street. “Marco!” someone whisper-shouted.
Incredulity had me halt for a moment, but at least that cleared up whether the settlers were our people—definitely yes.
“You got to be fucking kidding me,” Cole grumbled next to me.
I flashed him a grin and obliged the pebble-thrower on the roof. “Polo!”
A head popped out from behind the roof, eyes narrowed at us. I didn’t know the guy’s name but I remembered him from my brief stay here weeks ago. He seemed to recognize me as well after some squinting. “You Martinez’s friend, right?”
I nodded, hoping he would see it in the relative darkness of the door I was still standing in—but then he had seen enough of me to make sense of my features. “I am. He’s farther north, checking on the houses.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 84
