Only that as soon as I stretched out on my sleeping bag, my mind was wide awake, making it impossible for me to doze off until the first watch shift was up. Even the lull of the sedate snoring all around me didn’t do its usual trick.
When I finally went under, my dreams were full of nightmares, making me startle awake with a scream what couldn’t have been more than an hour later.
Way to get everyone’s attention.
Rather than assure them that I was fine, I flopped over onto my other side, my back to the center of our group, listening to the guys settling back down. Shame made my cheeks heat up, and I would have welcomed the usual ribbing such actions used to draw. It had been a long time since I’d had to cry myself to sleep—although crying was the last thing on my mind.
Synthetic fabric rustled beside me, making me look up, just in time to catch Nate as he spread out his sleeping bag right next to mine. He dropped down and slung his arm across my hip, grabbing me so he could pull me flush against his body.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I whisper-hissed, trying—quite futilely—to wrestle his arms away from around me.
“Shut up and sleep,” he murmured into my hair. “Nobody’s gonna catch any rest if you keep tossing and turning like that.”
I was tempted to pinch him, but considering that might have called the ticklepocalypse down on me, I refrained from it. That still didn’t mean that I had to relax against him—even if it was so damn tempting.
“Since when are you into cuddling?” I asked.
“Since they screwed you up bad enough that your subconscious needs some plain-old physical comfort for you to let your guard down,” came his murmured reply. That made me tense, but the way he snuggled even closer to me felt almost like a silent apology.
“I’m not screwed up,” I retorted. “Just a little jumpy.”
I’d given up hope to get an answer when Nate finally replied. “It’s not a sign of weakness to admit that shit’s sticking when they keep flinging it at you in tons. No one’s expecting you to just pretend like nothing happened.” He paused, then added, “Whatever it is that happened.”
I felt like rolling my eyes at him but stomped down on that impulse. Not because he couldn’t see it, but because I knew him well enough to be sure he was aware of my reaction. “I told you what happened. Can we drop this now? Please?”
“It’s not healthy to keep it all in,” he pointed out.
“Says you, the master of disclosing what bothers him.”
“True,” he admitted. “But shouldn’t that be enough to make you realize how stupid that is?”
I didn’t reward that with a reply, and after about a minute I felt him relax further as he gave up waiting for one. Trying to find the perfect position to sleep—unused to a warm body wrapped around mine as I was, that wasn’t an easy feat—I couldn’t help but smile.
“If you keep rubbing your ass against me like that I’ll start thinking that sleeping really is the last thing on your mind,” Nate drawled into my ear, making me chuckle softly.
“Stop deluding yourself,” I whispered back. “We’re married now. I’m no longer obliged to put out. I’ve reached the highest goal any woman could aim for.”
“I know. I’m such a catch,” he teased.
“You have no idea.”
I was surprised that he was that easily deterred, but I really was dead tired—and if I wasn’t completely deluded, so was he.
“We’ll talk about that tomorrow,” he said, finality heavy in his tone.
I thought about objecting, but decided that my silence was as much agreement—or dissent—as was required. After all, being stuck in a car the entire day long could turn endless quickly. But I wouldn’t have wanted things to be any other way.
Chapter 2
Even with Nate’s surprisingly calming presence, I didn’t really sleep that much during the night. I was vaguely aware that he got up as the sky started to lighten, but refused to leave the cocoon of my sleeping bag, even at his insistent nudging. That made him chuckle softly but he left me alone after that. One by one the others roused, but no one bothered me. I could eat on the road just as well, and there was no sense in rising before coffee was ready—not that I could taste it, but who cared?
My blissful state of half-awareness was suddenly jarred when I felt a strong, deep, almost visceral thrumming zoom through my entire body. I knew that sensation well enough by now—the damn zombie attraction devices. It felt just like at the motel—only that now it was something like thirty feet away from me.
I exploded up from the ground, grabbing for my shotgun in one smooth motion as I kicked the sleeping bag away. Yet rather than the pack of zombies my mind expected, I only found Campbell and Santos at the other end of my shotgun where they were crouching next to one of our camping cookers.
“Easy there,” Campbell said, trying to dissuade me from shooting him in the face on principle.
Santos was all snickers. “Guess that tells you what that switch does,” he told the other guy.
Panic slowly gave way to annoyance, and I waited another five seconds before easing out of my stance. “You idiots do realize that I almost shot you, right?”
Santos gave me a weird look, but Campbell smirked. “Trial and error is a dangerous job.”
I continued to glare at him for another second before I focused on the box in his hand. “That’s the thing we picked up outside of Halsey?”
He nodded. “Rigged it up to one of the spare batteries.” He glanced at the car battery resting next to him. “It’s a less sophisticated model than what we found on that undead fucker outside of Harristown, but the wiring is virtually the same. And judging from your reaction, it can work both ways—deter and attract.”
“Exactly what does it do?” I had to admit, as much as it freaked me out, it was an interesting piece of tech.
“Emits frequencies that humans can’t hear,” he offered, following with a semi-apologetic smile. “Or think we can’t. I left it turned on half the night at the southern quadrant of the perimeter at the lowest settings, and both Santos and Romanoff told me this morning they had a weird feeling about the area, startling two times out of three when they passed. Should probably have warned you before I switched it around and turned it to full blast.”
“Yeah, maybe that would have been a good idea,” I replied, but dropped the point. “Any clue who manufactured it? Probably a stupid question, but…”
“Beats me,” Campbell said. “It was someone who knew what they were doing, and the models look alike enough that I think they all come from the same source. Might even be a team effort. Some of the outside work in particular’s rather crude, while the circuitry inside is on the nifty side.”
Remembering the zombies in that abandoned town and how they’d crowded around what had likely been one of those boxes made me shudder. When I mentioned that to Campbell, he gave me a look that was short of incredulous. “I guess that’s possible, to get them to stay in there like that. But what puzzles me is that they haven’t started eating each other yet.”
I shrugged. “Most of them looked rather fresh to me. Less than three months, if that. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but thinking back, someone might have been stashing them there.” I got a lot of weirded-out looks for that, making me sigh. “I’m not saying it’s a sane thing to do, but nothing that happened in that underground complex was. But if they really are working on a new version of the serum, they will have a certain rate of rejects, right?”
Campbell and Taylor traded glances at that, but Andrej was quick to interject.
“You think this is connected to the weird new ones we’ve encountered?”
I gave him a deadpan stare back. “The devices. The track marks. The fact that some of them are stronger than the juiced-up fuckers we’ve encountered before—it makes sense.”
Nate stepped up behind me, standing out somewhat in his full gear from his watch detail compared to the rest of us. “Didn’t you
say that most of the personnel in the complex were rookies?”
“Doesn’t need to be a contradiction,” I replied. “Even someone without much combat training will become damn hard to put down when he turns. And you didn’t see the amount of damage Gussy caused after she turned.”
“And you still walked up to that zombie, trying to talk sense into it?” Nate snarked, making me want to punch him.
“Told you, I thought there might be something of her former self left because she could have made me go splat against the wall before but let me go.”
Pia cleared her throat, joining the discussion. “That might have been instinct. It likely perceived you as less of a threat, being small and scrawny.”
I hated having to admit that, maybe, she was right. “In the end it doesn’t matter. She’s dead and burned, and that’s that.” Looking up at Nate, I asked, “Are you just here to annoy me, or do you have some news?”
“Stanton called ten minutes ago. She has a lead, but she hasn’t been able to confirm it yet. Looks like they’re headed northeast—if it’s them.”
I felt a flutter of excitement grip me, and from the way Burns looked ready to bounce to his feet I wasn’t the only one, but Pia proved to be the voice of reason once more. “If she cannot confirm, we’re running the risk of taking off in the wrong direction, and then we will never catch up, even if she calls back tomorrow with the right coordinates.”
Nate inclined his head. “It’s a risk.”
“How sure is she?” I wanted to know.
“About eighty percent,” he said. “There isn’t much traffic going on in the state, and she managed to track our progress toward Halsey. There are three other convoys moving in the general region, and only the one heading northeast is large enough to transport equipment and more than a handful of people. She has data on them from yesterday and the day before, but reception was bad two days ago. I say we go for it. Anyone against it?”
No one spoke up in opposition. It was the best lead we had—and after our talk with Wilkes last night, likely the only lead we’d get.
“How much of a head start do they have?” I asked.
“About five hundred miles,” Nate said, his tone flat. “They’re halfway to Canada already.”
I tried to pull up a mental map of the continent in my head, failing somewhat until I realized toward what region they must have been heading. “They’re going for Minnesota and North Dakota, where they staged the trap at the factory, and we found all the raided towns.”
Nate gave a curt jerk of his head. “And don’t forget the zombies that almost ate us at the motel. They had that same tech strapped on.”
As if I’d needed another reason for the very thought of revisiting the region to make my gorge rise. Far was it from me to protest, though.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked, reaching for my shotgun.
Nate kicked the weapon right out of my grasp. “First, we eat. If we try to catch up to them and run ourselves ragged on the way, they’ll just have to give us a good push and we’re done. They have days on us. A few minutes won’t make a difference.”
I glared at him but swallowed my protest. I’d been wondering already exactly how long it would take until he reverted to his usual asshole behavior. He looked surprised at my lack of a comeback, but I decided that focusing on the bowl of porridge that Clark handed me was the better part of valor. I was too exhausted to put up with his bullshit right now.
I could tell that Nate wasn’t the only one surprised at my lack of a reaction, but I did my best to ignore Martinez’s concerned look. The others seemed subdued in their lack of stupid jokes, too, making me downright jumpy. Halfway through my bowl—well, aluminum cup—I had enough, surging to my feet, the food all but forgotten.
“Can we get this shit done with right fucking now? I know that I screwed up when they snatched me up, and I’ve gotten somewhat scrawny in the meantime. But that’s no reason to behave as if I’m some kind of fragile, damaged doll!”
Burns eyed me curiously as if I’d suddenly sprouted horns, but a few of the other guys had the grace to glance away. Not so with Andrej, who seemed vaguely pissed at my outburst.
“No one thinks you’re weak,” he said. “But excuse us if it takes us a day or two to get over the fact that you’re not dead!”
That disturbed me more than I’d expected. “You thought I was dead?” I echoed like a demented llama. “Why?”
I deserved the weird look I got from Martinez now. “Uh, maybe because once we tracked down that girl, she was having hysterics, crying and wailing that she was sorry but she couldn’t save you?” I presumed he was talking about Gussy’s sister, the seamstress.
Pia made a face. “I think that was mostly because he”—she nodded in Nate’s direction—“picked her up and threw her against the wall.”
That made my jaw drop. “Seriously? You roughed up a defenseless, crying girl?”
I got a deadpan stare back. “That’s mildly exaggerated. And she was already acting up when I pushed her against the wall. It worked. She told us everything she knew, little use that did us.”
I could very well imagine how that conversation had gone down. Martinez filled in the blanks before I could ask.
“She could only tell us what was obvious. Someone recognized us and sold us out to those fucktards. By the time we realized that you were gone, it was too late. No one had seen any military vehicles leaving so they must have snuck out in one of the trader vans. The girl told us that they’d been waiting for someone to come investigate. I don’t think they expected us, but that’s what they got.”
“Did you hurt her?” I had to ask, although I didn’t want an answer.
Nate shook his head. “Scared her, but no more than she already was. We sent her with a trader convoy to Dispatch. With no other leads, we tried to get ahold of Jason so he could maybe check in with the settlement where her mother was, but that turned out to be a bust.”
Burns let out a loud, if unhappy, laugh. “That’s one way to describe it. They lost two people trying to get out of town, but not because of us. Same trap, better execution. They sprung it on the second day the Chargers were at the settlement, early in the morning. Same day it happened with us. They only thought about warning us when it was too late. Nobody thinks shit like that’s connected, right?”
I didn’t care for how stupid all that made me feel. “Shit.” Catching Burns’s imploring gaze, I let out my breath slowly. “Sylvie is dead. Gussy told me.” I omitted the part about how she’d died. There was absolutely no reason to recount that.
“There goes nothing,” Taylor grumbled. At my sharp look, he shrugged. “Don’t think anyone expected anything different, but she did know where all the women she’d helped get out went. If they tortured her—“
“They know,” I confirmed. Taylor snapped his mouth shut when he realized that I hadn’t just finished his sentence but provided an answer already. Of course I had no way to be sure, but Taggard didn’t strike me as stupid enough not to get the information first. After all, that was exactly what he needed to know so he could harvest the next… batch.
Pia grimaced. “If they’re running, at least the women are safe. For now.”
I would have loved to agree with her, but shook my head. “I think they have several splinter cells out there that do the collecting. If I’m not completely wrong, they’re still recruiting, and from what it looks like, people are buying the bull they’re selling.” At Pia’s curious look, I shrugged. “The guards in Halsey. Two of them were from Harristown. I remember Dave mentioning that they had some disappearances there. My guess is they grabbed the women and used them as exchange for being let in. Or maybe they’ve already been smuggling them out for months.”
Santos nodded rather emphatically at that. “Makes sense. When I was talking to Skip and Steve there, one of them mentioned that someone had approached them about an opportunity no one can refuse.”
“After calling us too hardcore,” I
complained, remembering all too well. “Looks like Skip at least joined them. He and that asshole of a mayor.” I couldn’t quite quench the twinge of satisfaction that came up inside of me. That one wasn’t a problem anymore.
“Still doesn’t add up,” Campbell objected. “The rookies, obviously the new recruits. But if they’re dealing with fresh shamblers on a regular basis, they need well-trained personnel.”
That was something I’d been mulling over for days, too, without getting anywhere.
“They knew you’re technically infected?” Nate guessed. “Because they used your blood to infect the girl?”
I nodded, the memory enough to make me want to hurl. “They did. At first the idiots they sent in to draw my blood wore protective gear, but I think that was more for my benefit than theirs. My guess is that everyone who was at that compound had already gotten the serum, so they were at least somewhat less concerned about the virus.” Except for that one soldier Gussy had bitten, who’d looked about ready to shit his pants. Maybe not everyone.
Nate appeared more concerned than I’d expected. When he caught my gaze, he made a face. “I’m not saying it’s impossible that they still had some doses stored somewhere, but back in the day when most of us got inoculated, they used only a hundred doses per tranche because supplies were limited. If we add all the idiots we had to get through at the factory, and those recruiting teams you mentioned, that makes likely over five hundred people. Bucky’s one of the original ones, and I think I recognized a few others, but that’s well beyond what makes sense.”
Green Fields (Book 6): Unity Page 2
