I lost my orientation ducking around two more corners and weaving between smaller and larger streets, but about that time I heard shots being fired all around us, making me guess that Nate had ordered the others to engage. Patrols were coming after us from three directions, keeping us busy for quite a while until I managed to shoot the last one chasing us. Pressed against the side of a small house, I tried to radio in—including a quick report about what we’d seen from our sniper perch—but no one answered. Looking down at my com unit to see if I’d accidentally switched it off, I saw why Nate had stopped nagging me: the small box was trashed, likely cracking in my fall from the roof, and not getting better since then.
Cole noted what I was staring at, flashing me a quick grin. “Well, that explains it.”
“Explains what?” I asked.
“Why you’ve been so meek and demure over the past few minutes,” he shot back. “Give me a moment to save your marriage.” He thumped something on his com without waiting for my response. “Cole reporting in. Lewis just realized she smashed her battery pack.” He then prattled off the info about the guards at the cantina, the blown-up piers, and no further damage to the port facilities. The pensive look on his face that followed made me guess he was listening to Nate’s response. When he finally turned back to me, he did so with a shit-eating grin. “Your husband loves you and cares about you very much.”
All I had for that was a grunt. “That’s so not what he just said.”
“It’s not,” Cole agreed, still highly amused. “But I think that’s what he meant. He may or may not put you on a leash next chance he gets.”
“He can try,” I huffed back.
Hill shook his head in defeat while Cole continued to be in high spirits, both of them now listening to more directions. I busied myself keeping watch, but the patrols seemed to have lost our trail for good—or we had, indeed, killed all of them.
“Acknowledged,” Cole said, then turned to me to relay the news. “We are to rendezvous with the others by the cantina, northeast corner. House with green shutters, second row back from the open space. And I’m to take point.”
“That an order, too?” I asked.
Cole, already stepping out in front of me, snorted. “Nope. But it makes sense since you’re running blind and deaf.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that so I shut up and followed, letting Hill guard our backs. Twice we had to backtrack at a corner since we didn’t want to alert the opposition, making our already slow progress even slower. My body was singing with adrenaline, the need to run and fight and kill almost overwhelming. Both men with me looked grim enough to make me guess I wasn’t the only one who hated being stealthy and careful, but with the entire settlement on alert now, it was the wise choice. Also the only choice, really, I conceded when I realized that the patrols had beefed up, more than ten men passing by the mouth of one alley we were hiding in a few minutes later. They were easier to evade now, so many people carrying flashlights doing their part to give away their position. The fact that they’d rigged both main entrances into the town and cleaned up the streets should have already told me that they came with lots of manpower, but I had underestimated just how outgunned we’d be.
We arrived at our destination what felt like an eternity later, finding seven people already inside the house. Sonia was busy tending to two wounded scavengers on the ground. There was no sign of Hamilton, but Nate’s glower at me was strong enough to make me want to run right back out and find the next patrol.
“So good of you to finally join us,” he said, forgoing a repetition of the chewing out I’d apparently missed thanks to my busted radio. “Anyone hot on your heels?”
I shook my head. “No. We killed the first few who found us. Since then, we’ve been able to evade the others. Hard to guess, but there must be at least thirty people patrolling in the southern quadrant between the shops and the docks.”
Nate took that in with a curt nod. His momentarily vacant expression made me guess he was receiving another message over his com. I was starting to feel left out, but dismissed that idea when Hamilton materialized inside the door a moment later. He was smelling of blood, which went well with how dirty the baseball bat he was carrying looked. He rocked to a halt next to me incidentally—it was either that, or step over the wounded on the ground to be face to face with Nate—to report in. “Finished clearing up the outer perimeter to the north, so we should have an exit there.” His attention snapped to me. “So you’re still alive, huh? Thought you’d bit it since I didn’t hear you rambling all over the team frequency.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Broke my com unit.”
I hated how faintly amused he already looked. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but how did you manage that? Shot it while missing your own kneecap?”
No measure of composure was enough to keep the blood from rushing into my cheeks. “I must have fallen on it. When I came crashing down off a roof.”
Hamilton’s grin was so gleeful it cost me all I had not to try to punch it right off his visage. Nate wasn’t pleased—and not just because our chatter was keeping him from business. “Exactly what were you of all people doing up on a roof?” he wanted to know.
“Cole and I were trying to get a better overview of the situation,” I explained. “And before you ask, why not Hill? I figured with me being half his mass, it would make more sense for me to climb up since I could hide better.”
Hamilton gave something very close to a chortle. “And exactly how did that work out for you?”
Since I’d already explained that, I instead filled them in on our observations. Nate’s expression turned, if anything, more grim, but at least he didn’t laugh his ass off over my mishap. “Any idea how many of these assholes you killed?”
I shrugged. “High twenties, I’d estimate. I don’t think there were any between the docks and here left, but by now they’ve probably returned and regrouped.”
“We need to get into the damn cantina,” Nate stressed. He did a quick head count—we were up to fifteen people in here now, a few more having just snuck in. “Take two full fireteams with you and head back to the docks,” he ordered. “Then do your best to draw their attention to you. I’ll try to rush the building with the rest.” His eyes then flitted on to Hamilton. “You go with her.”
Both Bucky and I looked ready to protest, but a squint from Nate was enough to shut us up. Since Sonia was about done patching people up, I took her and Burns, plus Cole and Hill with me, filling up the remaining slots with the scavengers I’d come to more or less know. Cole took point, sneaking ahead to make sure the street outside the building was clear, the rest following quickly. Hamilton brought up the rear, apparently trying to put as much distance between me and him as possible. We had to step over quite a few bodies that we’d dropped since the patrols hadn’t tried to clean up after themselves, but ran into nobody still alive. It was only halfway back to the dock that I realized I maybe should have counted them, and taken the odd moment to make sure none of them were reanimating, but now it was too late. It took us maybe ten minutes until all of us, split into three clusters, had taken up position by the docks. I signaled Cole to let Nate know we were ready. Waiting for an answer felt endless—particularly since I could clearly hear movement and shots from the northern half of the settlement beyond our destination—but eventually Cole stilled before relaying the answer back to me. “We are to cause a commotion to draw them out, and then make our way along the main road to the cantina.” There was a bend in the road so I couldn’t see the main doors from here, but we were in direct line of sight of the building.
I acknowledged that with a nod. “Any idea how we should go about that?” I asked nobody in particular.
Sadly, Hamilton turned out to be the one who felt himself addressed. “Why don’t you do what you can do best, and scream like a girl?”
I glared daggers at him—but I didn’t need to see Sonia and Burns both nod in agreement to realize it wasn’t the wor
st of ideas. Hill was hard-pressed to hide a smile. Cole didn’t bother with the hiding part. That they all expected me to do the—literal—screaming was obvious. I had to admit, it wasn’t the worst of ideas. I just hated that apparently, they’d already agreed it should be me who did it. Then again, I could see why high, female screeches might draw a different kind of attention than gruff, male shouting. Well, if it helped make this a little easier, it had to be done.
I wasn’t stupid enough to leave my cover for this, but remaining crouching behind a small fishing boat someone had dragged up onto the port wall made me feel incredibly stupid as I called out a loud, “Help!” Cole went so far as to shake his head in disappointment at me. Hamilton looked ready to give me cause to holler. With my eyes boring into his, I tried again, this time going for a wordless wail. And then another, because after hours of whispering, it took my voice box a little to reach full capacity. Seeing him smirk back at me made me want to switch to a very different kind of utterance, but I refrained. I wouldn’t let him push me as far as to sabotage our mission.
I cut off when my throat started to hurt—and then we waited, collectively holding our breaths, or so it felt. I knew well enough that it was unrealistic for anyone to turn up instantly, but waiting still felt endless. I tried counting down from one hundred, but every little creak and scratch made me perk up and lose count, so I quickly gave up.
I almost missed it when, finally, a patrol did make it down toward where we were hiding, the five men—judging from their height—using slow, deliberate movements as they advanced, staying in the shadows of the houses wherever possible. They missed our outlooks, and were smack in the middle of our position by the time we sprung the trap on them. I was likely not the best suited to try to overwhelm a guy who was easily a head taller than me, but my knife sank into the side of his neck just the same. I knew that there would have been some sense in trying to take at least one of them alive, but I didn’t want to risk him alerting the rest. The scuffle was a brief and bloody one, and a minute later we were back in our hiding spaces. When no second patrol followed, Hamilton gave me a pointed look—and I did my screeching routine again. Thanks to me being slightly winded from the action, it sounded more erratic—and realistic enough that it gave me the creeps—and this time, a larger group, composed of at least twenty men and women, came to investigate. It gave me only limited mental reprieve to see that the two female scavengers had the same vacant look on their faces as half of the guys.
We had been careful to hide the bodies, but that still left two enormous pools of blood on the ground where some of them had found their end, and this patrol was less stupid than the first one. Two of the more alert ones advanced, covered by a cloud of five of their drones. I would have waited for them to get to the pools of blood but they stopped close to our hideouts, listening. The lot of us could be silent, but not that silent, so it only made sense to take the initiative. At my sharp whistle, we surged forward as one. I didn’t bother with trying to close the distance but aimed and shot instead, using the few moments I’d have before this turned into a black-on-black melee in the shadows. The guy I aimed for went down, but I didn’t have time to finish him off before Burns smashed his head in with the butt of his rifle.
Our forces would have been evenly matched if all the patrol members had had their full mental capacity, but like on the palisades, the drones had a hard time reacting to suddenly appearing targets outside of where they had been ordered to look—and we did have the advantage of competence in all things related to killing on our side. From the corner of my eye I noticed that Sonia wisely kept herself to the side of the thick of the fray. I had no such qualms, using my smaller size and increased agility and speed to my advantage. It took us a good five minutes to overwhelm the entire patrol, only taking a few bruises in return.
Looking up after Hamilton felled the last one, I saw ten more people surge down the street toward our position—and if they’d been smart and had proceeded to shoot at us blindly, they would have stood a chance. Yet before it could come to that, Nate and his smaller group gunned them down from the rear before turning toward the cantina. Trusting that he had a better idea about troop strength than I did, I gave the others the signal to advance up the street, not quite running but making haste for the building.
By the time we got there, chaos reigned. The first thing I noticed were the bodies on the ground. At least half of them looked like they’d been guards, still bleeding from wounds, not dead for long enough to have stopped leaking. But just as many dead were slumped against the walls, faces pale after having bled out hours ago, or in some cases, days, the early stages of decomposition already having set in. There was no rhyme or reason to their order, making abject horror claw at the back of my throat when I realized what must have been going on here: they must have killed a few of them each hour that passed since they had taken over—days ago. I recognized several faces, but only passingly. None of them were any of my close friends, which was only so much of a relief.
The next thing my attention snagged to—after verifying that the building was secured—were the two people standing, back to back, in the middle of the room. Although “standing” was a bit much for at least one of them, I realized when I recognized the bloody, beaten male as Andrej. It took me a few more moments to make sense of why he suddenly looked taller; he wasn’t standing on his own volition, instead being held up by two meat hooks suspended from the ceiling that had been driven through his shoulders, the ends of the hooks jutting out, black with crusted blood, from below his collar bones. His entire body was slumped, his toes barely reaching the ground, his bare torso smeared with yet more blood and what looked like multiple lacerations and burn wounds. Barely lucid, his face was halfway raised to where Nate was advancing toward him right now.
The second figure, partly obscured by his body, turned out to be Sadie, I realized as I went forward, mirroring Nate’s motions on the other side. I almost felt like sighing with relief when I realized that she looked mostly unscathed—and was still standing on her own volition, the blood all over her head and upper torso likely Andrej’s from where their bodies were bound together with a multitude of chains that must have further weighed down on him. Underneath the bonds I could see that she had something bulky covering her torso—maybe a plate carrier? Her eyes were wide and red, tears streaking lighter paths through the blood caked all over her face. She was nearly silent in her sobbing, but no less hysterical for it.
And to make the situation perfect, the back wall of the building was going up in flames that quickly spread to the rafters above.
Nate had almost reached Andrej when Sadie—facing the spreading flames—caught sight of us. “Stop! They rigged us to blow up!”
Nate paused for a second, but, if anything, her cry got him closing the distance to them in record time. I wanted to follow but stopped when Nate signaled me to stay back, so I continued my circuit instead, until I got too close to the flames that the heat made me pause. Nate and Burns set to looking at the contraption our friends were caught in, with Hill and Hamilton joining in after a few moments. Sonia stepped up to me, looking equally horrified and conflicted as I felt—there was nothing we could do for them for now, and with four large men crowding in, there wasn’t room for us left.
Sadie started to protest when Nate grabbed some bolt cutters from his pack and went to town on the chains, in quick order making them clank onto the ground as they fell away. Andrej gave a low, guttural grunt but otherwise remained passive, while Sadie started to shake uncontrollably. From what I could tell, my first guess had been right—her torso was encased by what looked like a plate carrier, only that instead of extra magazines, blocks of what looked like C4 were strapped to her front, and if I wasn’t deluded, back as well. There was no big digital clock spelling out that she only had five minutes and counting until it would detonate, but judging from how gingerly Nate touched the contraption, I figured it was wired and ready to blow.
The heat from the
burning wall increased, making Sonia and me step back. Just as I was about to shout at Nate that we should try to extinguish the fire, he paused and looked up, likely because some stray ash had burned him. He cast a longer look around the room, then up to the rafters, before his eyes fell on me. “Get everyone out of here. Radius at least a hundred feet outside the building.”
I vehemently shook my head. “I’m staying.”
His attention was already back on the contraption, now checking how Andrej and Sadie were connected to each other. “Then get everyone else but your stupid self out!”
That sounded like a plan. Only half of our people had followed inside, the rest keeping watch outside, and in short order I’d sent everyone else but Sonia and me scurrying, someone finally going on the hunt for some fire extinguishers—if not for the building, for anyone stupid enough to remain inside now who might require dousing with foam later. Above the roar of the flames, I thought I heard Martinez protesting from outside as someone must have kept him from entering, but quickly dismissed my concern for him. We had more pressing matters at hand.
Finally ignoring Nate’s signal from before, I stepped up to him, trying to calm Sadie down with what was likely more grimace than smile. She did her best to hold on to what little composure she had left. “They’re bound together by three leather belts,” Nate explained, going right on before I could ask the obvious—why he hadn’t cut through them yet. “Sadie’s standing on some kind of pressure plate, and since there are wires running up the chains, I think it’s a double-rigged system. It blows if she steps off the plate, but also goes off if the weight hanging on the chains lessens.”
So much for the idea of putting something Sadie-weighted down on the pressure plate.
I was still at a loss for suggestions when Andrej’s croak made all of us turn our focus on him. “Cut the girl loose and hold me down until you get her out of here,” he suggested between a series of wheezing coughs. Had the damn hooks punctured his lungs, too? “And then you run. Didn’t get a good look at the detonators, but they have a response lag. If you run like hell, you’ll be out of here before it all goes boom.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 86
