“Not even an excuse needed,” Jason offered. “Remember when I told you we had plans to drop by our people in Utah to help bring in the harvest? First crops are ready right now. The reason we dropped by your folks was because it was one of the secure settlements on the way there.” I didn’t contradict him about our change in allegiance, and he went on without pausing, either ignoring his faux-pas or not quite aware of having committed one. “We can either use I-80 or I-70. If we go through Colorado, we can bypass Salt Lake City, even if that adds some miles to our route. We have some cargo loaded that any settlement along the way will be happy to divest us of. Who says this wasn’t the plan all along? And if we do run into any complications, Utah is close enough that we can send another group back and let them broker the deal. We get and unload shit for someone else to distribute all the time. No one from outside will find that suspicious. Provided you can spare a week or three?”
It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than taking unnecessary risks. I let Nate nod in affirmation. “Just get her down there in one piece,” he agreed.
“If you meet Gussy there, can you maybe ask her about the father? Just to be sure exactly how paranoid I need to be,” I said.
Charlie and Jason traded looks. Charlie answered. “Gussy’s not in Frenton, last I heard. She and part of what is left of their group went to Yuma, I think. That’s a new settlement in eastern Colorado, close to the old border. I doubt she’ll leave there soon. The entire middle part of the state is still a hot zone. If she were to visit her mother she’d have to go up to Wyoming and then south west of Aspen, or come up from the south. The entire state’s a mess.”
I nodded, thinking. I trusted his assessment—the Chargers were from Colorado initially, and the fact that they now considered Utah their home was saying a lot. Come to think of it, it struck me as strange that they sounded somewhat reluctant to visit any settlement there, including Frenton. But maybe it was something similar to our cooled-down enthusiasm toward the Wyoming Collective. Nate had explained it to me before—nothing stung like getting exiled by the people who should have had your back.
“Yuma it is then,” Nate agreed after making eye contact with me. “Any idea where they lie on the scale of unfriendly to pitch-fork-wielding?”
Jason shrugged. “They let the Raiders in. I think their head honcho is a local? Could be wrong. We haven’t been there but so far I haven’t heard of any red flags. They have no lab or military installations, far as we know. I could ask around, but that’s probably not the smartest idea.”
That we could easily agree on. “Can’t be worse than them not letting us in, right?”
“It’s worth a shot,” Nate said. I was a little surprised that he didn’t protest that entire, possibly stupid idea, but we didn’t exactly have places to be. As much as I yearned to tick off the settlements on the list that Dave had given us, Gussy was someone we knew, and a much better bet than hunting ghosts.
“We should probably head south tomorrow,” Jason suggested. “The less time we spend together, the less conspicuous we’ll appear. Although, if you say you have the time, I think sending someone up from Utah is the better bet. If they really watch you that closely, they’ll check up on us, too.”
That was a decision that I left to Nate. My knee-jerk reaction would have been to try to get Sadie out there as soon as possible, but he was the one who had the tight connection to her. I’d already killed our child; I didn’t want to be responsible for nixing another name on the list of those near and dear to him.
And my, wasn’t I the cheerful one today.
“Go home first,” Nate eventually stated, his voice slightly gruff. “Sadie’s not on her own, and I trust her to be smart enough to disappear if it takes too long. Her survival chances might not be up to par with what I put Bree through last winter, but I taught her a thing or two over the years that I’m sure her parents wouldn’t approve of. In a pinch, she won’t need us to get out. And as we proved over the past weeks, it’s easy for two people to disappear off the grid. If we’d never turned on the radio and made a point to stay clear of anything moving out there, no one would know that we’re both still alive.”
Jason nodded, pensive. I couldn’t quite keep my tongue, even though I knew I was straining Nate’s patience with this.
“And, in the end, what else is she but a young, impressionable woman who already is known to associate with the wrong people?” I got a glare back from Nate, but he didn’t speak up to contradict me. That made it worse, somehow—and for the first time I realized that he might have had another reason to go rather than stay at the bunker and wait for all of us to be vetted. Technically, it wasn’t hard to find out where we’d spent the winter, but there was no public record of us being there. Long before Emma had instated herself as governor we’d left, and I doubted that many more than the folks we’d helped directly still remembered us. He might have spared us the grief of getting exiled by the people we knew—but he’d also made sure to protect Sadie the only way that he knew how to. Me he hadn’t done that same courtesy. Not that I would have wanted it, but that thought still stung.
A knock on the door tore me out of my gloomy thoughts, not a second too early. At Nate’s gruff answer Pia stuck her head in, letting the heavenly scent of fresh stew waft through the crack. “Dinner is ready, if you’re done hiding?”
I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the annoyance lacing her voice. “We are,” I said. “At least I am.”
“You’re up for graveyard shift,” she told me succinctly. So much for sparing me. It was strangely soothing that the fact that I’d been here for the inside talk still didn’t change a thing about her giving me the shitty guard duty.
I took that with a nod, and after a last glance at the others left the room. Whether Nate still had anything to discuss with Jason or not wasn’t my responsibility, or else he would have already brought it up. After the news of the day, I needed some time alone to process all that. So I got myself a cup of stew and some bread that were both as tasteless as I’d known they would be, and went outside to watch the rain from below the awning of the roof, trying to get comfy on the somewhat dry hay stacked up there, alone with my glum thoughts.
Chapter 19
The next day dawned bright and early, at least for me, seeing as I couldn’t fall asleep after my watch was over and I told Martinez and Clark to get the rest that my mind wouldn’t let me have. Nate wasn’t particularly thrilled when he found out that I’d pulled an all-nighter, but he spared me the embarrassment of treating me like a child in front of everyone else. It made more sense for me to nap during the day when it was too bright for me to safely drive, anyway. Not that he was ecstatic about that, either, but again, not even a grumbled remark made it my way. Under different circumstances I might have been tempted to see just how far I could push him before he snapped, but antagonizing him was about as inviting as the food he forced me to eat for lunch. And dinner. And breakfast again the next day.
I was well aware that my abysmal mood was dragging the others down, but it was hard to pretend like I didn’t feel like a zombie for real. Why I’d expected things to change now that we were a group again I couldn’t say, but whatever I did, whatever happened, it was painstakingly obvious that we’d lost two people. It was that second morning after swinging by what used to be our people that the realization sank in that this must have been how Nate had been feeling those early days of the apocalypse. He’d lost a lot of his people, a few good friends among them. He'd been injured, high on drugs that he knew couldn’t last another day, and on top of everything else, he had me to drag along. Despite all that, he hadn’t faltered, hadn’t allowed himself to cave and let his weakness show. It rankled so much that I couldn’t do the same now, but that thought helped. Once again it was stubbornness that forced me to keep fighting my inner demons, and although I didn’t feel like I was winning, at least I was still kicking. And every time I caught Nate’s concerned look and all I was capable of giving him was a bla
nk stare back, I knew that he was aware of what was going on. Somehow that helped steel my spine, but it also did its own to broaden the gap between us. Not that there was anything he could have said or done to stop that from happening, but doing nothing didn’t help, either.
Wyoming gave way to Nebraska, not that the surroundings changed much. It was still hot and dry, grass long gone brown and wind sweeping dust through the air. We were traveling along the same road that had brought us here last summer, only that back then the sheer fact that we had a goal—and cars to get us there fast and safe—had been enough to keep my spirits up. Now it was just one bland, hot day after the next. Then eastern Colorado followed, with more of the same. We encountered the odd group of shamblers, but more often than not chose to backtrack and avoid them rather than go into full-on confrontation. I would have loved to smash in some zombie heads, but Nate had a point—why risk our lives if we didn’t even know if this region would appreciate it?
As we rolled toward Yuma, I asked myself for the umpteenth time if it was that Yuma from the movie, or any of many more. Only that this time around my utter lack of geographical and historical knowledge gnawed less on me than before. What concerned me more was what we would find there. Would they even let us in? I didn’t dare hope that they’d welcome us. But why were we even doing this? What good would getting confirmation from Gussy do me in the end? I already didn’t care for the underlying resentment that welled up inside of me whenever I thought of Sadie, and that was something I absolutely hated myself for. She was still a girl, for fuck’s sake, and one I’d come to really like over the past year. Now she was all alone, the guy she’d had a relationship with was dead, with no one she could share her grief with, and on top of all that she was with child. There was absolutely nothing about her situation that should have stoked my resentment toward her, but as human emotions go, I was rocking that one even if I was fighting it tooth and nail. I had none of that compassion going for Gussy, so at the very best, hearing her explain could only throw me for another loop.
Shit, but I really needed to knock myself out of this funk, because this? This was going nowhere.
I spent the second half of our last night on the road on watch detail, alternating between gnashing my teeth and cradling my Mossberg as if it were the child I would never have. Just as dawn started to paint the eastern sky blue, Andrej stepped up to me, taking over from Clark. I gave him a level look that I expected his night vision goggles picked up all right, but still he didn’t step away to start his perimeter round.
“If you have something to say, why don’t you just spit it out? It’s helping no one if we just stand around like this,” I whispered, careful to pitch my voice too low for it to carry.
Andrej gave a shrug, the hint of a smile creeping onto his face. “Anyone ever told you that you resemble a small, yappy dog when you get like this?”
In spite of myself I couldn’t help but grin for a second. “I am well aware of that. Pointing it out now doesn’t change a thing, except make me even more angry.”
“Still angry at him for lying to you?” Andrej guessed.
I shook my head. “I’m angry at the world. And at myself. As I can’t exactly punch either in the face, I don’t see that changing any time soon.”
“It’s not healthy to keep in that resentment,” he advised, snorting at how that statement made him sound. “You need to blow off steam. That usually helps.”
“Why, you volunteering for that?” I jeered, hoping that my teeth were glinting in the last of the moonlight.
His ambivalent shrug was making me more uncomfortable than I liked to admit, but his jovial reply eased me once more. “You need to relax. You need to let go. Like you did in Dispatch. Not give a shit about anything, for one day, or just one hour. You’re too focused on your task. You know that it leads to nowhere, right?”
I hated admitting that he was right, but considering that I’d spent hours berating myself for exactly that very thing…
“It’s not that easy,” I whispered, the following sigh heavy enough to surprise me. “I’m trying to let go. I’m trying so very hard to just put it all behind me and move on. But I can’t. It’s like this festering ulcer deep inside my chest—“
Burns would have made a stupid joke there but Andrej just nodded, compassion on his face as he reached up and removed the goggles. I must have looked more surprised than I’d thought because he gave me a shrug. “Remember, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I was there when Pia lost herself. I was there when Nate learned that his brother’s attempt to save him ended with him dead. Loss affects us all differently, but it is the same to everyone in the end.”
“Have you ever lost someone?” I asked, not sure if I even wanted that answer.
Andrej remained silent for long enough to make me wish I hadn’t brought up the point. “Friends. Comrades,” he said. “My family died early, and I never bothered to strengthen ties after that. Until this, of course.” He looked around, nodding at the sleeping huddles on the floor all around us. “I maybe don’t show it, but you all are my family. You’re closer to me than any relatives I maybe still have, out there, somewhere. But there is always loss where there is life. Old age, sickness, some fucker with a gun—it’s all the same. Either you take it in stride, or you allow it to kill you, too. Your choice.”
I reflected on that for a few minutes. It sounded awfully close to the “just suck it up” that I felt like I deserved, but he’d said it with such an even voice that the words held no hidden meaning. I hadn’t expected Andrej of all people to be that zen about anything.
“You think it’s that easy?” I asked a while later.
He shook his head. “It’s that hard.” He then started walking around the group, resuming the perimeter that I should have been guarding the entire time. I listened to his boots crunch on the dry grass, my mind heavy but at the same time blank. Maybe he had a point there. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was that exact same mindset that had helped the others move on from where I felt I’d churned myself so deep into the mud that there was no moving forward anymore.
I didn’t find an answer until it was time to rouse the others, and I spent the morning still caught in that same somber mood. If Nate noticed a difference, he didn’t comment on it, but he seemed just a little more relaxed this morning. I’d expected him to get jumpy the closer we were to Yuma, but the contrary seemed to be the case. Maybe it was his way of dealing with rejection. Our recent experiences hadn’t exactly set us up to be angry about not being let into a settlement, considering Harristown or the gigantic fail that the factory had been.
We were about ten miles out when Nate called for a halt. He, Pia, and Andrej met up to talk under the shadow of a lone tree next to the road. I hesitated but then joined them. The Ice Queen gave me a sidelong glance that was pure “finally!” if there’d ever been such a thing, and Nate paused for a moment to wait until I’d rocked to a halt next to him.
“We’re trying to decide how to do this,” he explained, switching back from Serbian to English for my benefit. One of these days I really had to ask why they always did that, except for the eavesdropping factor.
Pia grunted. “We’re too obvious if we go in like that, even now that we’ve scraped off the decals from the cars. There is no other group that has two females and six of us at ten people strong,” she noted.
“So not all of us go in,” I said. “And we have the patches that Sadie gave us.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Nate stated. Was that a hint of a smile on his face? Couldn’t be.
“Who comes? Besides Pia and me, because we’re the inconspicuous white flags of the group,” I noted. The Ice Queen snorted at that, but she didn’t contradict me. Dispatch had proven one thing—none of the people out on the roads, not even the traders, were what anyone would consider soft. She might have a more commanding presence than I did, but people still shied away less from her than most of the guys, Martinez and his easy smile maybe excluded. So it
made sense to include us—and him probably, too. When I said so, Nate inclined his head.
“I’m coming as well, and we’ll take Taylor and Martinez. Andrej is in charge of those that remain outside.” He waited for Andrej to nod his acknowledgement before he went on. “The three of us will test-drive the patches. And you need to let your hair down. Literally,” he added when my brows shot up.
“What’s wrong with my ‘do?” I asked, reaching up to pat the tightly braided strands.
“Nothing for when you need to make sure that no zombie can grab on to it and pull you down,” Nate said. “But I think we can all agree that people will find you more approachable if you rock a more… feminine appeal.”
I was ready to let my fist tell his nose what I thought of that idea but then forced my anger to simmer down again. He was right, of course.
“Next thing you’ll stick me in a dress,” I grumbled as I reached up and started undoing what had taken me the better part of an evening to accomplish.
“Too impractical for survival out there,” Nate said dismissively, ignoring my sneer. “We need to get our story straight first. Why are we here? What are we looking for? With the five of us in two cars we can pose as traders, but question is, will they buy that?”
We continued to discuss our options until we had hashed out all the details. As much as it rankled, posing as traders was the safer bet. There was the chance of any of the Raiders recognizing us, but it was likely slim. They’d only seen us in full gear, swagger and bravado included. If we toned it down and tried to mimic normal people behavior, there was a good chance they’d just tag us as competent survivalists. I had to admit, I would have ignored anyone not in full gear and bristling with weapons in their place, too.
Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 Page 22
