What was my concern was trying to decide what we would do now.
Nate called a meeting late in the afternoon—command staff only since everyone else was ready to crash by then, most people not having slept for two days or longer. I was surprised not to see Burns or Sonia, but Martinez showed up, he and Pia the only former residents of the town. Of course Hamilton was there, with Amos speaking for our scavengers, and Sergeants Buehler and the recently returned Blake from the Silo marines. If I had to guess, it seemed like the army bunch had resorted to taking their orders directly from Nate, which I could tell he was both pleased with and annoyed by. Judging from how tense he looked leaning against what used to be the dining-room table in the small house he had declared as our headquarters, it was hard for him to remain still, even if it was for just a few minutes.
“I presume most people will go to New Angeles?” he asked as a first point.
Pia inclined her head. “Most are wounded or otherwise in bad shape. Dehydration and lack of food for days, plus the less-than-gentle treatment by those assholes—can’t hold it against them. And we’ll leave without feeling like we are abandoning them,” she pointed out.
Martinez agreed with her. “I know a few will want to come along, but for most it’s a matter of leaving here as soon as possible. I’m sure Greene will send a few search parties for salvaging efforts later, when things have died down.”
Nate seemed to see that issue solved with their assessment. “Good. That begs the question—what do we do with the people we need to keep safe? Chiefly Sadie and her kid.” When momentary silence answered him, he scratched his chin as if he hadn’t already come to a conclusion. “I’m tempted to send them along with the others to let them disappear into one of the larger cities we have, but I’m afraid that will get them killed all the quicker.”
When he glanced at me as if for confirmation, I spoke up. “That means we take them elsewhere. Utah, Wyoming, or the Silo sound like the best places—but also the most obvious.”
“That’s exactly what I hate about the idea,” Nate professed.
I was surprised when Hamilton was next to voice his opinion. “I’d go with the Utah settlement.” When I eyed him askance, he grimaced. “Wyoming is farther away, and since the girl has her parents there, it’s the most obvious hideout. From what I know, they did zero vetting of the people streaming in and blowing up their population numbers early on, so you’ll have moles aplenty there.”
I couldn’t help it; while I agreed with his assessment, the Wyoming Collective still felt the closest place to home to me now that the town here was toast, and I couldn’t let him bad-mouth my people—even if they’d, quite publicly, kicked us out. “Like that’s any different with the other two options.”
“But it is,” Hamilton half-sneered in my face, then pitched his voice into more diplomatic territory as he addressed the assembly at large, maybe realizing that if he kept this up, the Ice Queen would use his face for anger management therapy. “The Silo’s just as bad, although I have a feeling that Wilkes knows way more about who to be suspicious of. But last time I read a situational report, the Salt Lake City settlement was still void of any deep cover operatives. True, that intel is over a year old, but that mayor of theirs has been a pest to deal with from the very beginning.”
I wasn’t surprised that Martinez was happy to speak up for the settlement his boyfriend was from, but that was not the only reason why he agreed with Hamilton. “Minerva’s also been very keen on keeping the core of her settlement rather loosely populated. Charlie’s been complaining that they’ve had lots of issues with wolves during the winters because they kept getting through their fences. What we consider the settlement proper is really closer to at least five different communities, all in walking distance of each other. Making sure to keep Sadie somewhere secluded where nothing can happen to her is easier there than anywhere else. And there’s no question that they will help us.”
Nate gave that a moment’s thought before he nodded. “So it’s decided. We leave in thirty.”
For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating. “Excuse me?”
I could tell just how tense he was that he didn’t even make fun of me for my question. “We leave as soon as we can, which means right now. We know who’s up to coming with us—the rest will stay behind and can go to New Angeles tomorrow, or next week for all I care. We’re sitting ducks here, with bad defenses, and everyone in the country knows where we are. The cars have been standing idle for almost the entire day, so we can drive them a few hours into the darkness without issues. The sooner we disappear, the better.”
I glanced at Pia, but of course she didn’t speak up in protest. Bringing up Burns’s idea of a wake didn’t sound too smart now so I kept my trap shut. It wasn’t like much was keeping me here—and I could, and would, grieve just as well on the road, if not better. At least driving, setting up camp, and being all-around busy would keep my mind from getting too caught up with itself, or so I hoped. Martinez offered up a grimace, but since it was a silent one, lacking protest, it was decided. Amos seemed not to care whether he and his people were staying or going, and Buehler and Blake were just as ready to go.
So it was decided, and all we had to do was get back into our cars and leave.
There was the small matter of deciding who to take with us, and what vehicles to stuff them into. Santos, Clark, Collins, and Moore had already declared they were coming with us—between them only having a few scrapes and bruises, miraculously—the latter two likely to stay with Sadie in Utah, if their previous behavior was any indication. I hadn’t really paid that much attention before, too caught up in getting out there again to save Nate, but the guys had always turned up somewhere around Sadie and her kid, either still acting like the silent shadows Nate had long ago ordered them to be—or, much more likely, having become a family of sorts, the exact dynamics of which I wasn’t privy to. It certainly had been telling that Sadie and her daughter had been inseparable all day long—until Moore turned up, liberated from one of the hostage cellars. She’d still fussed over the kid but with only a little coaxing needed, Moore managed to get her to hand the kid over to him so Sadie could get cleaned up and grab some chow. And really, just what went on between them and how they managed things was none of my business.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take much longer than Nate’s ordered half an hour for us to be ready to leave. Between those of us who had been on the move in the caravan leaving the slaver camp for California, the vanguard breaking away from them, and our Dallas group, plus a handful of people from the town who were useful enough and ready to head to Utah instead, we made up thirty-nine people, including Sadie and Chris. The vehicles Pia’s vanguard had been using were reduced to burnt-out ruins, but Martinez verified that there were enough extra vehicles in their central garage and bodyshop left that could be used. I did a double-take when—except for two trucks—those turned out to be a fleet of ATVs that could also be hooked up to the portable solar panels overnight to recharge. At least their riders would be able to use the wind generated from driving speed to cool off, while the rest would continue to cook in the cars. I wondered if, just maybe, we should leave the batteries charging all day and drive by night, and when I mentioned that to Nate, he looked like he approved.
Unlike the last—and only—time I’d been to the Utah settlement, we decided that we should head straight east, then north after surpassing New Vegas, pretty much crossing Nevada in the south and driving the length of Utah—close to the route we’d taken when rallying for our attack on the Colorado base, but off the trade route most of that had turned into in the meantime. Barring distractions—and I didn’t give us much chance to avoid those—the trek was around eight hundred miles long. If we could avoid dying of heat in Death Valley—by not going there, for the most part—we could do it in under a week, even considering the slower speed the ATVs would force on us.
There was both surprise and disappointment on the faces of those sending us off,
but just the same I could tell that most were happy to see us gone. It was an understandable reaction—my arrival in the town had led to kicking off the cascade of shit that had rained down on them over the past week, and while a few of us had been their neighbors and friends for a long time, the rest were a bunch of trigger-happy, unwashed assholes they’d be happy to have out of their lives. I was still glad that Pia seemed too worn out to see all that play out on their expressions. The only hitch in our departure had been when it suddenly occurred to her that her constant sidekick in all things vehicular was gone, leaving her without a designated car to ride in. I would have offered up ours but wasn’t too unhappy when she decided to catch a ride with Martinez instead. I was sure our chatty medic would get even her talking, even if it was only idle banter; riding with us would have meant me being locked in with the only two people I knew who felt comfortable in complete silence. Sadie and Chris were also riding with Martinez in his snazzy new car, which worked just as well.
It didn’t come as much of a surprise that the scavengers fell over each other volunteering for the ATVs, particularly since they could dump their packs on us and just carry provisions for the day and enough ammo for the rest of the century. Even Amos, still recuperating from his injuries sustained underneath Dallas, opted to ride as gunner with one of his guys. That whoever was riding the back would get to do the shooting was a given, although I was sincerely hoping it wouldn’t come to that since relative agility and smaller size were the only advantages the ATVs had.
We decided to drive through the night until the first vehicle started to stall on us, roughly following the same route we’d used to get to the town what felt like longer ago than…yesterday, I realized, with no small amount of disturbance. If our opposition had been smart rather than relying on numbers and cheats, they could likely have taken the lot of us out that evening, sleep deprivation making us less than perfectly alert drivers. But no ambush happened, and besides a few scares thanks to wandering deer and dogs, the night was quiet. Too quiet, really, and I was happy to jump out of the driver’s seat whenever we took a break to get a few moments of social contact in. Sadie didn’t know anything except the most basic details since we’d left for the camp, and Pia wanted an in-depth recount of the shit that had gone down in Dallas, so there was plenty to share in ten-minute intervals.
It was well past three in the earliest of early mornings when Nate called for a longer halt when Pia pointed out an abandoned, derelict farmhouse they’d used in the past. A few miles off any of the trade routes, there was a good chance nobody would come looking for us there. We had to chase away a family of raccoons and some smaller critters, but since some of us were sleeping in the cars, that wasn’t much of an issue to begin with. I didn’t protest when Nate put us both on the last watch rotation, but felt a hint of surprise when rather than hang out with Hamilton—or Pia, although she insisted she needed sleep—he returned to the car only minutes past the unofficial curfew. Not sure how soon—and with what little warning—we would have to get up, I was sleeping on top of my sleeping bag, boots and pants on, but with my jacket serving as a rolled-up pillow the only concession to easy dressing options. Turning over, I studied his profile as he kept staring up at the ceiling of the car after getting comfy, ignoring me. Or so I thought, until I heard him utter the smallest of sighs—it barely qualified as more than an exhale, really—and he turned his head so he was looking back at me instead.
“I don’t feel like talking,” he muttered. “And not much like fucking, either.”
My first impulse was to laugh—which probably said a lot about both of us. I idly wondered if I should be offended at the rebuke, but then again I was sharing that part of the sentiment, so there wasn’t much use to that. He didn’t sound like he was spoiling for a fight, but I didn’t like how quiet he’d been all night long. Not just Nate-quiet, but quiet even for him. He hadn’t even offered an acerbic remark when I’d almost turned two rabbits into roadkill earlier, thus adding to our limited provisions on the road. Thinking about food made me wonder whether I should ask if he’d had anything to eat during our quick stay in town but chose to refrain from it this once. Instead, I bypassed all the possible bullshit I could have chattered on and on about, and went for what I really wanted to say.
“I’m sorry that there was nothing we could have done for him.” Meaning Andrej, of course.
Not a single muscle jumped in Nate’s face, creeping me out a little. It was almost as if he was ready to shut down—or was already there.
“I know,” he finally said, proving me partly wrong—but then nothing else came, confirming my guess.
“It’s not our fault,” I offered up next. “You heard Zilinsky. He knew he was going to die soon. I know all of us wish we could have allowed him to sacrifice himself in a more active way, but in a sense, I think he was glad he didn’t force us to have to put him down later.”
“I know,” Nate repeated in that same hollow tone as before.
I waited for anything more to come from him, but, surprise, surprise! That wasn’t the case. The way he kept staring at me made me first uncomfortable, then started to freak me out, and eventually, something inside of me gave. “Is there anything you can say besides that?”
Of course he had to mutter “I don’t know” a third time, but the corner of his mouth was quivering even before I let out a low growl. Another frustrated exhale followed, but at least this time he didn’t remain silent. “The fact is, ‘I don’t know’ sums up everything right now, and that’s—”
“Aggravating?” I helpfully supplied.
“Killing me,” he delivered with a pained smirk. I stared right back at him, but at least he finally broke eye contact, turning to the ceiling instead.
“Because of what happened to Andrej?”
“That doesn’t help,” Nate professed but wasn’t finished yet. “It’s everything. I knew something like this was going to happen, but I thought we had better precautions. I thought we could prevent it, or not all fall over like dominos placed in a perfect row. I thought—” He cut off there, speech turning into a low utterance that was too close to a snarl not to set my teeth on edge.
I didn’t know what to say. “You weren’t the only one in charge so it’s not all on you,” I tried, but realized I’d missed the mark by a mile when I got a veritable glare from him.
“Do you think this is about blame? I don’t fucking care whether it’s just me, or me and Zilinsky, or every fucking man and woman out there for themselves! We have nothing, don’t you understand? Nothing!”
Color me confused, but I didn’t quite get that point. “Well, we do have Sadie and Chris, plus Zilinsky and most of the vanguard we were afraid was already dead. And a third of the townspeople.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed, as if he was actually pissed off at me. “We have no leads, and no fucking clue who’s behind this. Besides the obvious.”
That was a sentiment we shared. “It’s my fault, too. That we don’t know. I knew we should have kept some of them alive, but I was so fucking angry, and I knew we had to get to the cantina—”
“Bree, stop,” Nate insisted, interrupting me, now turning our displays of emotion around. When he saw my confusion—next to the unmistakable rage, I was sure—he grunted. “Don’t you get it? It was all the same.” When he realized that was just adding fuel to my flames, he frowned. “What did you do all day that I have to spell this out for you?”
“Uh, drag around the dead and burn them, maybe? Oh, and hunt down the remaining shamblers? Didn’t have time to stop for a chat, you know,” I pointed out acerbically.
Nate took the hit with more grace than I’d expected, which was bad as long as it didn’t lead to him going off in my face and ending with angry, passionate sex that would do both of us good to blow off some steam. Well, it had been worth a try.
He didn’t go so far as to apologize—we may have survived the apocalypse but hell hadn’t frozen over yet—but looked a little more mollified. “Nobod
y knows who the moles even were. That’s what frustrates me the most. They must have triggered their attack when they realized Zilinsky and her people were two days away from the town, then let in their support, and were among the first who got the mind-control shit. They lobotomized themselves to ensure that nobody could tell us anything. Or did you see anyone among the competent ones who looked remotely like they were a leader or in control?”
That was a nasty surprise, albeit not quite out of left field. “You mean like the assholes who sacrificed themselves to blow up the fertilizer ships in the New Angeles harbor?”
I was a little taken aback that it took my remark for Nate to make the connection, but then we were all suffering from sleep deprivation, and even if he didn’t spell it out, I knew that losing Andrej must have felt like someone had cut out his heart and fed it to him—pun intended, because I was a horrible person and my mind got weird under stress.
“Exactly like that,” Nate muttered, momentarily lost in thought.
I waited for his attention to return to me before I picked up the thread. “It doesn’t matter that we don’t know,” I pointed out. “Besides personal satisfaction, of course, but I feel like we’ve always been running short on that resource. I got to shoot Taggard and you got to tear off Cortez’s head, but that’s about it—and how much good did that do us?”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 88
