I waited for my stomach to seize up, but all I felt inside was, at best, a vague sense of unease. “I say we go for it then. Three months as the prize for getting the single last item checked off our to-do list? Worth it. If we can make it count, that is. I won’t go for a needless, stupid sacrifice. If I go out willingly, it has to be with bravado and grandstanding, or nobody will believe I did it on purpose.”
I could tell that my joke annoyed him, but at the same time it made him crack a smile. “Good.”
“Good? That’s all you have to say to me agreeing to some clandestine suicide pact you still won’t tell me the details of? You can do better than that.”
“I can,” he agreed. “But I’m not going to, unless I have to. I still plan on us surviving this and going for that mountain-top, mutually assured destruction ending.”
“I’d be okay with a beach, too,” I offered. He turned back to the window without comment, making me sigh. All my great humor, lost on this man. “I presume we’re leaving today?”
Nate inclined his head. “I still have to discuss some things with Minerva, but after breakfast we hit the road. If you still need to do anything that requires civilization, I’d get to it now.”
I was tempted to snark at him that I hardly required a mani-pedi treatment with barely any nails left, but since I’d have to spend the rest of the day in the car with him, I found it wiser not to annoy him too much. I could have asked to join them but figured he would have invited me if he thought it was necessary—or a conversation I’d enjoy. So instead I stole a kiss on the way to the door, and went to hunt down whoever would get me my first cup of coffee of the morning.
Nobody was surprised that we weren’t staying any longer, but trepidation came mostly from those who had decided to stay—Moore and Collins. I knew something was up when Collins was already waiting, steaming coffee in hand, when I made it over to the fire pits, an appeasement if I’d ever seen one. Still sore from fighting and dragging corpses for two days straight, I let him fidget his way through my first mug, and only relieved him when he almost spilled my refill.
“Nobody’s holding it against you if you want to stay, you know,” I pointed out wisely, hoping I wasn’t accidentally lying through my teeth. “I for one will rest more easily knowing that Sadie has a few familiar faces around. And once things settle in, you can decide whether you want to stay here, go back to join the others in California, or take a trip over the mountains and head to Wyoming. I’m sure Bert and Emma can’t wait to see their granddaughter for the first time.” I’d been surprised when Sadie had told me that neither of the four of them had crossed state borders since she’d bailed on her parents, deciding that the safety of her child was her highest priority. I was sure they’d gotten some chances to talk on the radio, but that was hardly the same.
“We’ll see,” Collins offered. “Shit, but I thought it would be hard to ‘fess up that we want to stay behind. Now I feel like an asshole for kind of wanting to come along.”
That made me laugh. “Can’t help you with that.” This, at least, was one dilemma I didn’t have.
One after the other, the rest of our group turned up, Pia markedly missing. Since Nate’s meeting with the leader of the town here was likely all about taking care of what was left of the people from the California town, it made sense for Pia to join them. I was glad to see that the scavengers—with very few exceptions—looked mostly sober, and while there was the mandatory grumbling about lack of leave going on, nobody seemed serious about it. Then again, we’d all known where we would be heading for a couple of days now; California had been a necessary detour that had cost us time, ammo, and lives. We didn’t have any more to spare. In an hour or two from now, we’d be back on the road, but for now we could still eat, drink, laugh, and joke around, and that’s exactly what we did.
Nate and Pia joined us about an hour later, and while their arrival produced the expected momentary lull, since no orders were given, we resumed stuffing our faces. Pia joined in enthusiastically while Nate nursed his psychopath-black coffee, seemingly content to watch me make an ass of myself next to him. Most of the residents who had joined us earlier were leaving to go about their day, but some from the night duties were dropping by still, so it was all a pretty loud affair.
That changed when Minerva herself came to join us, looking grim. “A call just came in on the radio for you,” she told Nate—and me, I realized, when her attention didn’t remain centered on him. “Sounds like you should take it.”
The radio station wasn’t far from the fire pits, in easy walking distance from the gates and parking spaces, so we made it there in under two minutes. And by “we” I meant pretty much our entire entourage, a few already with their weapons in hand, others still sipping coffee and meditatively munching their bread. I was surprised when one of the operators directed Nate to a receiver setup on the outside of the building, but figured it must have been rigged to the speaker systems used for alarms—and the odd entertainment event. The amps were off so the entire settlement wouldn’t be listening in, but it worked well for the fifty-odd people crowding in around us. Hamilton slipped through the ranks just as Nate grabbed the mic, doing his best to ignore me. I had a certain feeling that would be the only blessing I’d receive this morning.
“You want to speak to me? Here I am,” Nate said, sounding harsher and colder than I’d heard him in quite some time.
I hadn’t quite made up my mind yet who to expect on the other end of the line, but hearing Rita’s voice was one of the better options. I’d had a feeling that we weren’t done yet with Dispatch.
“Good to hear your voice,” she enthused, giving me slightly weird vibes with that semi-seductive undertone she so loved to use around Nate.
Usually, he was happy to ignore that, but not so today. If anything, he sounded more hostile as he responded. “You mean, after you opted to let my ass rot in a seven-by-three-foot cell?”
Rita laughed, the sound a little too sharp. “I trusted that your wife was more than capable of springing you with the support she had already gathered. Turns out, I was right.”
Nate didn’t look too happy, and neither did Hamilton, I noticed, realizing for the first time that I had absolutely no clue how Bucky and Rita stood with each other. I knew they’d been fuck buddies in the past—after she’d rubbed her cooties all over Nate, which didn’t endear her more to me at all—but had no clue if that still meant anything for either of them. Dispatch had been scavenger central from the start so I doubted they’d had much official contact, but that didn’t necessarily have to mean much where personal sentiments were concerned. Hamilton looked neutral enough not to give me anything to speculate on now, either. I almost missed his constant sneer in my direction—which was to say, until he noticed me scrutinizing him, which brought on a sudden return of my favorite expression. At least that I could still rely on.
Nate—as usual ignoring our glaring match—didn’t laud my prowess in freeing him, but then neither I nor my ego needed it right now. I was too curious what this was about to care much, truth be told.
“Why are you calling, since this doesn’t have the feel of a courtesy chat?”
The radio picked up a low sound that reminded me of a vexed grunt. “Can’t I be contacting an old friend to express my sincerest condolences?”
I was surprised to see Nate tense. “You’re a week late for that,” he ground out. “I’m done playing games. State your reason, or get off the line.”
I expected her to be pissed off now, but while her tone cooled somewhat, that made it sound hollow rather than annoyed. “You’re right. I am. Part of that is because I didn’t want to paint even more of a target on your back by pointing a finger in your direction. A useless effort, I had to realize, since you couldn’t have been long inside the Utah settlement’s walls before a visitor announced they would like to have a chat.” She paused, but didn’t force Nate to ask what she meant by that. “I was asked to extend an invitation to you. I don’t
know the specifics beyond that it exists, and that it comes with a deadline. A very close deadline, and one I think you should take seriously.”
Now that didn’t sound good. Murmurs rose all around us, but cut off immediately when Nate replied. “What does the invitation say? And what kind of deadline?”
The following pause was a pregnant one. “I don’t know, honestly,” Rita admitted. “All I was told was to tell you an invitation is waiting for you—a literal invitation in a sealed envelope—that I was asked to inform you about and hold until I can directly give it to you. You have seven days exactly from today to come get it from me, here in Dispatch. You will not be harmed and you will not be hindered on whatever route you decide to take to get here—barring natural disasters or free roaming critters that cannot be influenced, of course. The invitation is for all three of you—Miller, Hamilton, Lewis; so if your plan was to ditch your wife somewhere along the way to keep her safe, don’t. That won’t do either of you any good.”
That didn’t sound foreboding at all—and absolutely not like a trap. Hamilton wasn’t the only one who was grimacing, although Nate did his best to keep his tone level. “Anything else? Like, your opinion on this?”
“I don’t have an opinion,” came Rita’s flat reply. “And I wouldn’t threaten the lives of those that depend on me by speaking it out loud if I did have one.” So much for guessing how much free will was involved in this call. What irked me the most about it was that I was burning to know what Decker had against her—and that it was he who must be behind this was no question. When it became obvious that Nate wouldn’t respond, she spoke up once more. “The best route would be to head straight through Colorado. It will save you up to a day.”
“Thanks, but I can plot my own routes,” Nate said gruffly, but something about his tone rubbed me the wrong way. He briefly glanced at Hamilton and me, but really, he needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t like either of us would speak up against what we both already knew would be his answer. “See you seven days from now.”
Silence followed as Nate handed the mic back to the operator who, presumably, killed the line before retreating into the background, without a doubt to eavesdrop.
“Do I need to say it?” I offered when nobody else would speak up. “I doubt it, but I kind of want to. It’s a trap!”
I got a few grins and chuckles for my effort—not so from Nate, of course. He stood there, considering, for almost a minute before he turned to fully face the crowd silently surrounding us, with himself, Bucky, and me still in their midst.
“Yes, I’m well aware of that,” Nate acknowledged, his tone utterly devoid of humor. “But I would be lying if I claimed I hadn’t been waiting for something like this. And I intend to exploit it since it’s likely the only chance we get to end this in our favor.”
Nobody protested, and there was minimal muttering going on. That quickly changed when Nate turned to where the marines had congregated around their two sergeants and told them, point blank, “You’re not coming with us.” He paused for just long enough for the worst to die down before he explained. “It’s not that I’m not trusting you—on the contrary. I don’t need to spell out to you that if what we think is our final destination is in fact the location of a well-reinforced bunker, it won’t matter whether there are ten more people along, or a thousand. This is our mess—and has been so from the very beginning. I appreciate the help all of you have lent us, but this is where we part ways.” He briefly glanced at the army soldiers standing next to the marines. “And the same goes for you. Go with the marines back to the Silo, or return to whatever base you were stationed at before this started. Wait there for how it ends—if it ends. There’s no need to risk your lives any further. But I may very well need you as a last contingency if nothing we do makes a difference.”
“That sounds ominous enough,” Blake offered in a gruff voice. “And unnaturally pessimistic for someone who didn’t bat an eyelash heading into Dallas, hunting after a lead that was paper-thin at best.”
Nate held his gaze evenly without flinching or fidgeting. “I’ve spent what feels like an eternity ducking my head and running as low to the ground as possible. I’m done aiming for diplomatic solutions.” I almost laughed out loud there—Nate’s version of diplomacy wasn’t exactly Ambassador to the United Nations worthy. Thankfully, he kept talking before I could interject anything along those lines. “It wasn’t enough that they came after my family—first, my brother; then, my wife—no. They came after our civilians, and they came after anyone likely to lend us a helping hand, and this is where I draw the line. Yes, I have a plan, and even if that goes horribly wrong, I’m convinced I can pull it off and end this, once and for all. But if it doesn’t end with this, or if I’ve miscalculated and my own worst-case scenario comes true and they manage to turn me into a weapon against you, I need you to be ready. If worse comes to worst, I need you to nuke that fucking bunker back into the stone age, and if that leaves half of the country an irradiated wasteland, so be it. There are few enough of us left that we can do with a handful of states that will be uninhabitable for a while.”
I had to admit, that declaration stunned me a little—and there was no doubt that he was serious. I wasn’t the only one. Buehler picked up on what seemed like the least of the hitches in Nate’s plan. “And where exactly would we get those nukes from?”
Nate gave her a scathing look that I was all too familiar with, making her draw up short. “Your headquarters are in a decommissioned missile silo. Don’t tell me you don’t have the locations of at least twenty others just like it that were only cleared on the outside. I’m sure that someone, somewhere might even still have launch codes lying around, if you don’t want to get your hands dirty. We never got to ask Scott where exactly his people had their home base. And I can’t be the only one who’s been wondering all this time where the SEAL teams disappeared to.”
Blake allowed himself a grin that was very much like the cat who’d just licked the cream. “Not wondering, no. But we’re not going to tell you.”
Nate looked momentarily annoyed but chose to ignore that topic for another day—that would likely never come. And considering where we were going, it wasn’t a bad idea not to collect any more clandestine information that could be beaten and tortured out of us.
While Blake seemed satisfied with Nate’s explanation—and Buehler was reluctant to speak up against him—Cole took it upon himself to be the voice of dissent from the army corner. “What’s stopping them from simply killing you on sight? Or just after they let you waltz through their gates? The three of you may think that you’re unstoppable, but recent history has proven otherwise—repeatedly.” I sure didn’t need that reminder, but he wasn’t wrong, I had to admit.
Seeing the murderous rage shining out of Nate’s eyes for a second before he reined himself in made me glad I hadn’t voiced that thought. “Wanna know something funny?” he asked in Cole’s direction, but went on talking before he could get an answer from anyone. “One of my wife’s favorite sayings is that her superpower is people constantly underestimating her. She’s not wrong with that. I myself have underestimated her—more than once, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I’ve also used other people’s penchant for underestimating her against them. Knowing all that, what makes you think that I’m any different?” The silence that followed wasn’t entirely comfortable, and Nate broke it after doing a quick sweep of the crowd with his gaze.
“I think it goes without saying that I have a certain reputation, or else none of you would ever have considered following me. But has no one amongst you ever asked yourself why I have that reputation when most of my actions over the past years speak a very different tale? The only thing you can hold against me is my dishonorable discharge, and you very well know that I planned for that to happen because it was my only way out so I could do what I thought needed to be done. I’ve spent the last ten years cleaning up other people’s shit, trying to minimize any possible fallout, and atoning for sins
that, if I’m honest, I didn’t commit. I’ve tried my damnedest to turn my life around the only way I know how. But underneath all that—behind every decision to do the right thing—the old me… the real me has always been lurking. Decker recognized that potential in me decades ago and did his best to hammer me into a tool that’s good for only one thing: destruction. More to spite him than to do what’s right, I turned all that around on him, step by step, when I was finally done being someone else’s pawn. That spite eventually took on the face of atonement, but if I’m honest, it only ever went skin deep. But for a while, that was enough. When the fucking zombie apocalypse kicked off, I thought I’d been granted a new lease on life. I survived; I rallied some of my closest friends and confidants around me; I got the girl.”
He paused for a moment to grin at me, but the fervor of his speech never left his gaze.
“I would have been content to go on doing my thing for the rest of my life—to live free, passingly help others in turn for some creature comforts, and forget that anything before the damn outbreak existed. But that wasn’t meant to be, because one dirty old bastard couldn’t bury the hatchet and let sleeping dogs lie. He had to send my former best friend after us to kill my wife and turn my people against me, and when even that failed, he made damn sure that I’d end up going insane, alone, in a deep, dark pit of my own despair. He made one mistake: he should have killed me when his henchmen had all the chances in the world. But he didn’t, because death would have been the easy way out, or the absolution that he didn’t feel I deserved just yet. I’m done turning the other cheek. I’m done waiting for the other shoe to drop. If he’s stupid enough to let me get close to him, he dies. I’m out of fucks to give about anything else—and I will succeed. For some reason or another that I cannot quite understand, he thinks I’m some kind of bleeding heart who will beg for mercy—if not my own, then for my wife. I don’t need to tell you this because you’ve met her—she’s the last one who needs anyone to step up to protect her. Because if I can’t kill Decker, she will. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 97
