Until I suddenly could.
“Blood,” I muttered, catching Nate’s gaze as his eyes went from the door to me. “I smell blood. And judging from the fact that the scent is strong enough to come through the door, I’d say it’s a lot.”
His forehead furrowed as he tried to affirm my statement, but that was obviously not possible. Rather than ask me if I was sure—which would have just gotten him snapped at—he flashed me a quick, somewhat out-of-place, grin. “Next you’ll go all, ‘Argh! Brains!’ on me?”
I really didn’t see the humor in that statement, but of course Burns had to snicker. My fingers tightened around my Beretta, but I kept the barrel pointed down. Like Nate, Burns ignored my glare. “Remind me again how that not being able to taste anything works?”
“Ha, ha, very funny,” I offered, calming myself with a sigh. “Go on, storm in there blindly. But if you end up on your ass because you slip in a pool of blood, not my fault.”
Burns kept on grinning but he motioned with his chin for me to focus on the objective again—as if I needed that reminder. Nate looked way too amused still, but pulled his own gun out of the holster. The response was the same when he rapped again, yet rather than kick in the door next, he knelt down, getting a small hand mirror out. I didn’t quite understand why until he slid it partly underneath the door, adjusting it a few times as he must have tried to scan the room beyond.
I knew I’d been right about the blood when he tensed, but rather than caution us he put his mirror away.
“Clear,” he reported as he got to his feet again and turned to Burns. “Door’s secured with a latch only, but there’s a string attached to it that must have snapped when they closed it from the outside but tried to make it look like it was barred from the inside. No charges that I can see.”
Burns’s mirth gone now, he nodded, his eyes skipping on to my shotgun. “Would you like to do the honors?”
The three of us had to do some rather undignified shuffling to make room enough so I could switch weapons and line up my Mossberg with the door. I pulled the trigger, reducing what used to be the latch to so many splinters. The door swung inward from the force of the slug’s impact, revealing—
It took me several seconds of staring to make sense of what that reddish thing was that was hanging suspended from the rafters.
“Fuck,” Nate murmured from behind my shoulder as he pushed past me, careful not to step in front of my lowered shotgun. That tore me out of my momentary daze, but I was still incapable of tearing my gaze from that… thing. When Burns lightly tapped my shoulder I stepped into the room to make space for the others to follow.
“What—“ I started to ask, then had to cough when the—much harsher in here—cloying scent of blood tickled my nostrils. “I mean, who—“
The thing’s head snapped up and it tried to scream, yet no sound came out between its teeth—there were no lips left. Fingers, blood still dripping from where they had been the lowest parts of the limbs, reached for me, making the entire thing start to swing as it strained. I took a step back, my shotgun ready, but I was too perplexed to pull the trigger. “Is that still alive?” I croaked, hard-pressed to keep bile from rising.
“Wouldn’t exactly call it that,” Nate rasped, cocking his head to the side as he watched the thing struggle. “But he sure was when they started skinning him.”
That would explain the heap of what I’d first thought were bloody rags in the corner. I widened my eyes and quickly looked away, about to lose my battle against what I’d had for lunch. There wasn’t much else in the room to focus on—just a cot and small dresser, everything backlit by the sun streaming in through the windows.
“How do you know it’s… it was a guy?” I asked, still trying to distract myself.
Nate shot me a sidelong glance that held way too much humor for the situation. “First off, even with a flat-chested woman you’d expect more subcutaneous fat in the chest. But considering they were really adamant about preserving the underlying tissues, you shouldn’t really have many issues identifying him as male.” He went as far as to lean forward to get a better look. “You have to hand that to them—there’s thorough, and there’s this.”
Of course I had to check that thing’s groin now, which gave me a new favorite tableau for my nightmares. Burns muttered a low, “Jesus!” behind me, and when I finally managed to tear my gaze away, I found even the Ice Queen looking a little white in the face. Stepping back, Nate scrutinized the body that kept swinging gently to and fro for another second before he shot it right between the eyes, making it stop moving. Loud steps on the landing outside made me guess that the villagers had decided to see for themselves what was going on, but I couldn’t have cared less.
“Help me cut that down,” Nate said as he went to the bed, tearing the sheets off to drape them over the blood-saturated floor underneath the corpse. Pia kicked over a stool from the corner and cut the rope while Nate did his best to steady the body without getting too much blood on himself in the meantime.
Burns got out his knife and started poking through the heap of skin flaps. “Dark hair, moderately short,” he reported, looking at me over his shoulder with what looked like a piece of scalp impaled on his knife. “Sound familiar to you?”
Breathing out slowly through my nose, I couldn’t help but give the body one last, lingering look as it fell onto the already soaked-through sheet.
“Ethan,” I more whispered than said, clearing my throat to regain my voice. “At least that’s my guess.”
“And it’s a good one,” Nate remarked as he bundled up what had likely been the junior scientist. “Muscle tone’s not really developed. Even lazy traders would have had stronger calf and thigh muscles.” He looked up at Jared and Shaun who were standing just inside the door. “Or are you missing anyone?”
Jared’s eyes took a few moments to turn from the bloody bundle to Nate’s face. He shook his head wordlessly.
Ever efficient, Pia rounded on them and told them to get her a bucket with hot water, soap, bleach, and more sheets. Shaun scrambled to obey. I couldn’t hold that against him. I would have run, too, if I were him. The Ice Queen grabbed the pillowcase and told Burns to ditch his macabre puzzle game in there, preferably before anyone else could see what had happened here. Nate used a so-far unstained corner of the sheet to wipe his hands, if not clean, at least dry, before he started looking around him.
“Exactly how long does it take to skin a human body?” I croaked, asking no one in particular.
Nate gave me an unreadable look. “Why exactly do you think I know the answer to that?”
I couldn’t staunch my surprise. “You don’t? Guess there’s a first for everything.”
He snorted and turned back to searching the room, picking up something from the dresser. I didn’t see what it was, but the frown on his forehead deepened. “Looks like this is for you,” he said and held out a blood-spattered envelope to me, the paper inside sticking out from where he hadn’t put it back completely. I was tempted to gripe about him opening my mail for me now, but kept my trap shut as I turned the envelope over, seeing my name—Dr. Brianna Lewis—in a scrawl across the front. Inside there was just that single sheaf of paper, spelling out in a line, “Now you know loss.” No signature, but I could take a good guess who had written the message.
“This makes absolutely no sense,” I said, handing everything on to Pia and Burns so they could scrutinize it as well.
Nate’s smirk was a weak one at best. “Didn’t you say you liked the nerdy shithead before?”
I stared right back at him. “He still left me to rot in that cell to get gang-raped by his buddies. That does a thing or two to negate all favorable sentiments I harbor for someone.” Jared gave a choked sound from where he still wasn’t done staring at the remnants of the carnage, making me snort at him. “You didn’t really think we were hunting a group more than twice our size over nothing?”
I didn’t get my rhetorical question answered, but w
hen Shaun returned with the cleaning supplies a few moments later, he murmured a low, “Well, aren’t you glad you didn’t take them up on their recruitment offer now?” to the younger guy.
That made all of us perk up. “They’re still recruiting?” I asked, my voice turning hard and lifeless.
Jared and Shaun traded glances. Shaun nodded, looking uncomfortable. “Not aggressively so, but while the one who was in charge was talking to Titus, two of the other guys got chatty with us. Said they were looking for capable men who were ready to kick some ass. Said the offer came with some great benefits, too.”
Whether it was the way I was incapable of keeping the hatred out of my gaze, or what I’d said before, Jared scoffed. “I’m starting to think it’s just not worth it.”
Before I could launch into a tirade about just how right he was, Pia cut into our conversation. “How many people in the village do you have that are immune?”
Jared was confused for a moment before his eyes flitted to the back of her hand. “Only two, and they’re both out hunting and scouting. Why?”
Pia turned to Nate for her reply. “We’ll do the cleanup. There’s nothing we can do about the blood that has soaked into the wood, but they can always cut it out or keep dousing it with bleach. We should burn the body.” Nate gave her a simple nod, then bent over to grab the feet of the wrapped bundle while she took the shoulders. Burns handed me the envelope back so he could scoop up the pillowcase and cleaning supplies, leaving the canister of bleach behind. I briefly considered trying to wipe some of the remaining blood away, but that reminded me awfully much of how that not-quite-zombie soldier had scrubbed the concrete floor in Taggard’s compound. Without another word, I followed the others down and outside, tapping the envelope against my palm.
Taggard must have realized that Ethan had told me too much, or had almost flipped to help me. That he’d turned into a zombie could only mean two things—either they’d shot him up with their version of the serum, or they’d infected him with my blood. He’d certainly had enough time for either. As gruesome as the tableau was that he’d staged for us, it wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg that made up his insanity—but it did make me question whether he was actually insane, not just a sadistic, misogynistic asshole on the power trip of his life. Killing Ethan for his transgressions, sure. I could see the reasoning in that. Ethan himself had been scared that helping me might endanger his life.
But that message? It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Even if Ethan and I had become friends in Aurora, and if he’d tried to help me in the underground complex, it still wouldn’t have been enough of a bond to warrant that. Maybe before the shit had hit the fan, but all of us had lost family and friends, reducing the demise of one barely acquainted, ambiguously motivated person to barely more than a hitch in the road.
It occurred to me that Sam would have been horrified if she’d known I was thinking like that, but it was true, I realized, as I watched Nate and Pia build a makeshift pyre over the blood-soaked bundle. Had I wished Ethan to die? Not really. And not even on my worst enemy I would wish a tormented death as his must have been. The very idea of someone cutting my skin away from my body, piece by piece, made me shudder violently.
Unlike our entry, the erection of the pyre—and Nate shooting the skinned zombie—had drawn a crowd, people from all over the settlement converging on the large, open stretch of road in front of the cabin. Titus and Aurelia tried to calm everyone, but their stammered words weren’t really doing much except alarm their people further. Nate and Pia were swift and methodical in their work, but that still left enough time for everyone to catch a good look at the soaked sheets. Thanks to a canister of gas the pyre caught quickly. The by now too-familiar scent of wood smoke and blackening flesh burned at the back of my throat, but it was the letter in my hand that disturbed me the most.
Nate stepped up to me, his eyes fixed on the flames, but when I didn’t speak up, he turned to Pia. “Tell the others to come over to the settlement. We’re about done here.”
She whipped around with a curt nod and stalked over to the Jeep, but as soon as she’d turned on the radio, her back went stiff. I couldn’t help the frown that made it onto my forehead as she barked into the radio. “Stand down! I repeat, stand down! Turn around right fucking now and meet us at the gate!”
The hiss of static that answered her was loud enough that I could catch it, followed by a garbled fragment of speech that I thought was Andrej.
“—in pursuit… two vehicles… uphill—“
It cut off, the line returning to almost-silence, in itself a bad sign. Pia tried again, then straightened and looked at Jared. “Do you have a signal scrambler up?”
Jared shook his head. “We barely have the equipment to keep our radio station running—“
Pia cut him off with a jerk of her head, but whatever she opened her mouth to say got drowned out by a massive boom.
Chapter 4
I felt the explosion in my bones—and teeth—seconds after the sound made my ears ring. While it left me vaguely disoriented, it had originated far enough away not to completely knock me on my ass. The charges that had sent the Green Fields Biotech building down on us, for instance, had had a much stronger impact.
Dread raced up my spine, making my next inhale painful, not just because the detonation had done its own to press the air out of my lungs. The entire village had fallen silent and was only now waking from its stunned stupor, making the sounds of trees splitting and crashing to the ground eerily loud.
Looking around frantically, I finally found the source of the racket, about a third up the mountain to the northwest. Smoke billowed up into a rising pillar, maybe two miles out from the settlement.
My fingers tightened around the envelope, reducing the paper to a crumpled ball. “That wasn’t about Ethan—“ I started, catching Nate’s wide-eyed gaze.
“No shit it wasn’t,” he replied, turning to Pia. Without needing to be prompted, she tried hailing the others again, but no answer. My pulse sped up, and for a second I was afraid I would start to hyperventilate, but Jared barking orders to his people distracted me.
“Call in the workers, and somebody get a message out to the hunting parties! I want everyone inside the gate within twenty minutes! Man the defenses and make sure that everyone is armed and ready to fend off an attack!” He kept going on, giving directions to specific people, but I drowned him out. I didn’t give a shit about the settlement. All I cared about were my own people.
Nate was right behind me as I aimed for the Rover, as was Jared, I realized. “I can show you the quickest route up there,” he explained as he started squeezing himself into our half-empty cargo hold behind the seats. To Shaun, who still hovered next to us, he said, “Tell Patty to get the dogs!”
Shaun nodded, still looking scared, but Jared’s confidence seemed to instill some in him as well. Whipping around, he ran back across the road, hollering at one of the trailers parked there. “Patty, strap on your leg! We need you and the dogs!”
A woman stepped out of the trailer, her head snapping toward the smoke rather than the by now almost forgotten pyre in the middle of the road. She held herself upright with two crutches, and when she turned back into the trailer, I realized that her left leg ended in a stump just above her knee. It was enough of a peculiar sight to make me pause and stare, my fingers snapping the harness shut in full auto mode. Moments later she emerged again, the crutches gone, her fingers deftly rolling down her pants leg over a prosthetic leg ending in a boot. Two dogs stormed out after her, almost knocking her over, a German Shepard and a black lab. Several more followed, most of them smaller but making up for what they lacked in size with their energetic barking. She shooed them onto the back of a pickup, even the smallest mutt making it up on its own. While she got into the passenger seat, Shaun hopped behind the wheel, just as Nate sent the Rover into a tight curve back toward the gate that was already opening. The Jeep was right behind us, as were two other SUVs and one p
ickup, this one with a machine gun mounted on a tripod in the back.
“Take a sharp turn left just before that bend,” Jared directed Nate. “Then another, about twenty yards down the access road, at the tree stump. Drive through the foliage; it’s just a few branches that we’ve tied to hide the trail. You got four-wheel drive, I presume? Then we should be all set.”
Nate gave an affirmative grunt as he pretty much sent the car straight into what looked like a thick patch of vegetation. It took some jostling to and fro but then the Rover ended up in the ruts, gaining speed as soon as Nate could see as the last branches whipped away and into the front of the Jeep.
I cleared my throat as I tried to find a compromise between holding on to my shotgun and grabbing the oh-shit handle. “Let me guess. You’re not just a random worker, right?”
Jared uttered a good-natured, if still grim, scoff. “Would make me a damn lax chief of security if I let just anyone greet a group that’s got a stack of warrants on their heads,” he said, confirming my guess. “Over there, drive up that mudslide. Should be dry enough by now that you can get some traction.”
Nate managed but barely, the tires sending up gravel and spraying it everywhere. The other cars waited below until we were up on a sturdier road, except for Pia, of course. At least the dogs seemed to be having the time of their lives. I didn’t quite share their sentiment.
“What weapon?” I asked Nate as he continued to follow Jared’s instructions. He considered that for longer than I expected. “Well?”
“I’m thinking!” Nate barked back, his jaw standing out hard where he was gnashing his teeth. “Pick a rifle. That’s probably the best compromise, if you’ll even need one.”
I gave him a weird look that he of course didn’t see, but wordlessly switched my Mossberg for my carbine. Then the Rover rocked around another bend in the winding road, and the source of all that smoke lay right ahead of us. I couldn’t say what my agitated mind had expected, but not this. The familiar shapes of the three dark SUVs were hard to make out between all the loose rock and soil, with several large trees lying this way and that across the road, partially burying the cars. Beyond the road, downhill, I could make out several more trunks, a swath of rock and debris cutting through the dense vegetation.
Green Fields (Book 6): Unity Page 5
