I couldn’t tell how many soldiers I’d hit—and how many of them were dead—but there was a body slumped on the floor next to me, so I did my best to roll over and behind it, using it for cover. I had a moment to try to orient myself. Then a small, light body descended on me—Marleen. One of her knees landed in the pit of my stomach—what was it with this woman and the softer parts of my torso?—and as soon as she’d regained her balance, she brought her elbow down toward my face. Thank fuck I had an assault rifle of unknown make to ram up and between us, using it like an unwieldy club. Something connected—her shoulder, maybe?—and I felt her rear back. Twisting, I managed to dislodge her from me, giving me the chance to come staggering to my feet—only to feel a random spray of bullets pass by and chew into the wall next to me, the chunks of concrete and insulation hitting my side and shoulder. The rifle was gone but there was another one right by my left foot, so I hunched down to grab it.
Someone—way more substantial than Marleen—barreled into me and took me down. I tried to push the body off me but since it was trying to get away from something, that didn’t quite work. Then it went still, rocking as more bullets bit into it. I tried to shove it off, but it was—literally—dead weight… only to reanimate moments later. Shit!
The only warning I got was a growl before teeth bit into my unprotected lower left arm, right down to the bone. I screamed—which I myself didn’t really hear over all the shots going off—and blindly punched with my other fist in the direction of the pain radiating from my arm. The pain increased, pushing away panic and confusion, letting the rage deep inside of me take over. Twisting, I managed to grab a chunk of hair belonging to the biter, and kicked with my right leg, hitting it square in the face—and a second time when the first didn’t quite do the trick to dislodge it. I was sure that it managed to take a chunk out of my arm but at least I got free of it. Blindly grabbing for the next available weapon, my fingers closed around something smaller—a handgun, either from Marleen or one of the soldiers, I didn’t give a fuck. I aimed at where I heard my attacker growl, getting ready for another pounce, and pulled the trigger twice. There was resistance the first time, making me guess the gun had a safety trigger. On the second pull, it shot all right, hitting the fresh zombie square in the face. While the afterimages of the muzzle flash were still seared into my retinas, I fired twice more, and the damn thing dropped onto my legs, dead for good. Rolling up into a crouch over my left shoulder, I tried to orient myself—which was pretty much impossible. A high-pitched scream rang out somewhere to my left—Gita. I saw her cowering in the corner, a large form looming over her—Richards. It took a few muzzle flashes for me to make out that he was trying to shield her with his body—that couldn’t be a good idea.
Before I could react—not much that I could do from across the room, half-blind in the dark—I felt something move close to me. Letting instinct take over, I twisted, shooting before I even had something to aim at. It was probably stupid, with likely less than ten bullets left in the magazine, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure if I hit anything, but not getting grabbed or kicked felt like a triumph. Then my wrist hit something hard—the wall. Easing up on the trigger, I pushed myself onto my feet, standing up, hoping that against the wall I wouldn’t get shot immediately. With crying, screaming, grunting, moaning, and still more shooting going on all around, it was impossible to orient myself well.
Then I saw her, crouching in front of me, still staring at where I had just been. Not hesitating for a moment, I brought the gun down and pulled the trigger. At the last moment, Marleen suddenly moved as if to get up, so what was supposed to be a perfect head shot hit her in the shoulder and chest instead. The gun clicked empty as she screamed, but that only sounded like an invitation to me. With a primal shout, I launched myself at her, my shoulder hitting her fresh wound. Marleen dropped onto her back, gasping—which soon turned into a bloody gurgle as I pistol-whipped her with as much force as I could. That wasn’t enough, but there was another discarded rifle on the floor, which I grabbed, and using the stock now and much more momentum, drove it into the bloody ruin that used to be her face, over and over again. I felt her try to shake me off once but then she went still, and I likely wouldn’t have stopped smashing the rifle stock into her until it met concrete if a stray bullet hadn’t burned its way across my already bleeding arm, distracting me.
Right. My job here wasn’t done yet.
I tried to get a better look at the situation. A lot of bodies were on the floor, most of them still with only a few writhing in their death throes. The problem was, the drones had been easiest to hit since they hadn’t made a move to defend themselves after they had dropped their guns—at least those that had done that and hadn’t started to shoot. Unlike the other soldiers—who stayed down—they were starting to reanimate, at an alarming rate. The blood saturating the air made most of them fall on the next best body to gnaw on, but a few were looking around for other targets. Glancing at the dais, I realized that there was a commotion going on, at least ten of the soldiers involved. Nate, if I had to take a guess, so I couldn’t exactly fire at them. Richards was still busy trying to keep Gita safe in the corner, and as I kept scanning the crowd, I saw Hamilton drag himself out from under two dead bodies, aiming for the next freshly-turned shambler coming for him.
I had no intention of saving him, but every zombie that stayed down was one less hazard for all of us, so it only made sense that I went to help him.
Not bothering with checking the ammo of the rifle, I brought it to my shoulder and aimed three shots at where I’d last seen the shambler come for Hamilton. In the bright flashes I produced myself, I saw that I had to course-correct, but the last one hit it in the back of the head, bringing it down. Immediately, I aimed away from Hamilton and for the next moving target, and then the next. Something roared way too close to my face on my side of the room so I quickly dropped to one knee and shot an entire salvo blindly, seeing the outline of a shambler jerk as it fell. Two more shots and the magazine was empty. I was kneeling right next to one of the dead soldiers so I blindly groped at him with one hand, elated to find a fresh magazine quickly. Hamilton had started shooting in the meantime, killing the last two standing soldiers in the half of the room with the door. I saw three more shamblers move so I hosed down the general area, hearing their grunts and moans die.
Looking back toward the dais, I saw that the knot was starting to loosen up, thanks to Richards—having grabbed a discarded assault rifle himself—aiming what I hoped were precise shots into the fray. Two more soldiers died, but a third realized where the shots were coming from and brought his rifle around. I was already moving, pivoting myself, a scream of warning on my lips—but I was too late. No more muzzle flashes came from the corner, Richards likely having run out of ammo himself—and then the soldier shot, two bursts of full-auto salvos going off. It was too dark in the corner to see, but I heard the impact of bullets on flesh, with a wet gurgling sound underneath that must have been his dying breath. My own scream finally made it over my lips, my rifle spitting death, chewing through the soldier and his comrade beside him, dropping them to the ground seconds too late.
Then it was silent for a moment, all weapons spent or people reloading. That made it easier to hear the motion of several bodies dragging themselves across the floor, and the sounds of chewing, swallowing, tearing…
Something hissed, and a second later, I had to whip my face away as light blinded me—someone must have found a lighter. Squinting, I realized that it was Hamilton, currently backing away from a dead body on the ground that he must have just set alight, first scorching part of its uniform to catch, then breaking the lighter over it to accelerate the rapid spread of the flames. Suddenly being able to see once more helped, and I quickly killed two more zombies that had gotten way too close to me for comfort, but were now staring, transfixed, into the flames. I didn’t want to look, but I knew I had to, my attention drawn to the back corner of the room.
The entire
front of Red’s body was a mess, the bullets having shredded his torso and face. Horrible as that was, it didn’t compare to how my stomach seized up when I realized that he was still moving. No, scratch that—moving again, and with Gita currently trying to squirm out from underneath and behind him, it was a very easy guess who he’d go for first.
“Hey, asshole!” I shouted, my heart seizing in my chest. “Why don’t you take on someone a little more your size?”
Stepping over the dead in front of me, I advanced on him, sparing a momentary glance at the other end of the dais. Only three soldiers were left standing now, and I could see Nate throwing punches and kicks, trying to keep them too closely engaged to bring their weapons to bear. I didn’t see Hamilton’s sister but presumed that she must have been hiding somewhere around there, likely between the wall and the soldiers where Nate couldn’t get to her—yet.
Disbanding all thought about them, I focused on Richards. He had Gita in what looked like a painful grasp but hadn’t started chewing on her yet, instead staring at me. Fuck, but I hated seeing that all too familiar inhuman stare in his eyes, nobody home except rage and the need to feed. Even the drones looked more human than that. I knew what I had to do, but that didn’t make it any easier. Exhaling slowly, I stopped so I could aim properly—and pulled the trigger. What was left of Richards’s face turned into a ghastly ruin, leaving a spray of dark red on the wall behind.
Gita gave a choking sound as Red’s body fell on her, making me curse under my breath. Before I could get there, Hamilton was already pulling her free, using brute strength I couldn’t have mustered. He sent her stumbling toward the door, making sure she was out of the way. He and I stared at each other for a moment. There was no smirk on his blood-stained face now. I’d actually never seen his face that expressionless. Oh, he was still home—but he looked like he had nothing left to fight for. In a sense, I got that. And still, he moved toward the dais, getting ready to help Nate.
Nate must have seen us come to his aid—or it was sheer desperation that made him lash out, a series of kicks sending the soldiers staggering back, far enough so that we could shoot them without fear of hitting him. He was swaying, his bare arms and face stained with blood, and I realized he must have been stabbed or shot—or both—several times… and he was still standing.
Turning around slowly, he focused on the figure lying prone on the dais. She was still alive; still moving, actually, trying to crawl away from him even though there was nowhere she could have hidden anymore. Nate was on her in a second, using his weight to pin her to the ground. I expected him to punch her now, to let off steam, but instead, his hands closed around her throat, choking her. Her body started to convulse, her heels drumming uselessly on the floor, her hands first trying to claw at his face but—like me—she couldn’t reach it, so she tried to pry off his fingers. He kept crouching there, unmoving, staring down at her.
“I’m so fucking sorry for everything that happened to you,” I heard him whisper, his voice raw with guilt and utterly lacking anger. “It should never have come to this. And I’m sorry that I never tried to reach out to you later. Never tried to ask you if there was anything I could do to help you deal with the shit that you never deserved. Maybe if I had, it would never have come to this.” He paused, likely to swallow.
Her mouth was open as if to scream as she continued to gasp for air, but it was obvious that she wasn’t getting any. Her motions were already turning sluggish, even less effective than before.
When he continued, Nate’s rasp was still gentle, but the emotion was leaking out of it now. “But none of that gave you any right to do the fucked-up shit that you did. I could see past you killing my brother, although that’s already pushing it. But everything you did after that? Trying to kill thousands of soldiers who had done nothing to deserve it, just to wipe out a few assholes who did? Adding billions of innocent civilians to that? And then continuing with those that survived? Where’s the reasoning in that? None of them had anything to do with you. And all of them deserved so much better.” He swallowed again, and now there was anger—only a tendril at first, but quickly growing stronger. Judging from how the muscles in his arms bulged, he was squeezing her throat harder, probably already having broken her hyoid bone. “You killed my friends. My wife, twice, if she wasn’t so damn hard to kill and even less likely to give up and stop fighting. And trust me when I say I am not a man who subscribes to any ‘turn the other cheek’ mentality—so this is also for what you did to me! You did not deserve to get raped, but you absolutely deserve to die. And I’m fucking glad that it’s at my hands, and my face is the last fucking thing you see!”
He fell silent then but remained like that for another minute—well past when her body stopped moving and then went utterly slack. I doubted she’d been able to process even half of what he’d growled in her face, but that was okay. It wasn’t really for her benefit, but for his.
And then it was over. Technically, we’d won—but I’d seldom felt this empty inside.
A creak sounded behind us, making Hamilton and me whip around and Gita shy back from where she was leaning against the wall, close to the door. The door had swung open, and illuminated by red emergency lights outside and several beams of flashlights, a woman stood, silhouetted against the backdrop of several confused-looking civilians in plain clothes, likely admin staff. The fire from the burning body on the floor cast shadows into her face as she took one more step forward, but paused before the blood on the floor could reach her sensible, cream-colored pumps. Her silvery-white hair was gathered in an elegant twist at the back of her head, and she was wearing light but tasteful makeup, the kind that cost a fortune and took hours to apply. Her dress was conservative yet stylish, a scarf casually thrown over her shoulders. She must have been in her sixties, maybe early seventies, but still very spry for her age. She surveyed the scene with a casual calm that belied her obvious civilian status, and she barely more than glanced at Gita, Hamilton, and me, ignoring the weapons now trained at her. Her focus was drawn to Nate, who was still crouching over the dead woman’s body, his hands still around her neck, squinting into the light and looking very much like the monster he so loved to call himself. I could see liquid glisten against his side and leg where he was still bleeding, but he didn’t seem to care about that.
The elder woman cleared her throat once she was done with her assessment of the situation. “Took you long enough,” she said in a clear clip, not a trace of horror in her tone. If anything, she sounded annoyed. “I expected you to take care of this years ago. One might go so far as to say I had almost given up hope that you would. A shame, really. So much time wasted sitting on your hands idly, rather than doing what is important.”
“Are you done?” Nate ground out, somewhere between a rasp and a shout. What her voice was lacking in fear, his was filled with anger.
Unperturbed by his outburst, the woman inclined her head. “Obviously, there is no sense in berating you about your tardiness. It just had to be said. I’m sure you knew it already.”
I almost expected him to bark the question at her as to why she’d said it. Instead, he let go and came to his feet in one fluid motion, but then almost staggered off the dais, pain catching up to him. Yet he remained standing, refusing to clutch any of his wounds as he kept staring at her, slowly coming to stand between me and Hamilton once more. I didn’t know what to do with my rifle, yet was reluctant when Nate signaled me to lower it. We’d seen plenty of soldiers outside, and I was sure that many more were on the way from wherever they had their barracks.
The woman noticed, although she seemed to focus more on my face now than Nate’s gesture. “Oh, there’s no need to shoot anyone else,” she assured me, sounding like she meant it. Actually, as if it was a ridiculous concept. “There’s no one left standing who would dare lift a finger against you. You can go now.” She paused, switching from talking to all of us to Nate specifically again. “Or, you could stay. We easily have room for a handful more peo
ple. And since you killed our beloved queen, the people need a new leader.” There was sarcasm in her voice, stating plainly that she wouldn’t spill a single tear. Interesting… but also so very confusing.
Not so much for Nate, it seemed. “Fuck, no,” he uttered. “You can all go to hell in your ark here.”
She shrugged, as if it was all the same to her. “Then please close the door on your way out. We wouldn’t want to catch a cold in the draft.”
Nate glared at her some more, then looked at me, then over to Gita and Hamilton, and then paused. Feeling my heart seize up, I nodded toward the corner, where most of Richards’s body lay. Nate’s face froze for a moment—in grief and regret, I realized—before he jerked his chin at the body. Hamilton finally lowered his rifle—yet kept it slung over his shoulder—and the two of them went to fetch the body, dragging it between them. I watched them pass by me, then went over to Gita, offering her a supporting arm under her shoulder when I realized it wasn’t just shock that kept her rooted in the spot. She was bleeding from a wound in her thigh, but it wasn’t life-threatening from what I could tell, just a hell of a painful nuisance.
The woman stepped out of their way as Nate and Hamilton reached the door, yet Nate lingered right in front of her for a second. “Why are you here? I guess I was kind of hoping for it, seeing as you were helping Decker, but—”
She shushed him with a surprisingly gentle sound. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You know that it makes sense that she tracked me down soon after she killed him, and not just because she likely found our correspondence. She wanted to use me against you, of course. She was pretending to be diplomatic, so I turned the tables on her and accepted her offer to help her. It was too late to warn you, and she didn’t give me a chance to contact you once she’d stashed me here. And then there were no phone lines operational anymore, with that nasty apocalypse business. People were disturbed about what was going on, and I very quickly made myself indispensable so she couldn’t kill me on the spot. As they say, the rest is history.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 108
