“Just one problem,” Nate replied. “I have no fucking clue where that road is.”
I was about to laugh when something crashed into the front of the car right next to me—a Humvee, definitely larger than my pockmarked Rover. The impact was hard enough to make my foot slide off the gas pedal, making the Rover come to a momentary halt once all of its wheels were back on the ground. My head smashed back into the seat, stunning me for a second. Shouts got loud outside my window and something thumped against it. Bright patches were still dancing in front of my eyes from the floodlights, but beyond that I was able to make out the forms of several armed men running toward us. I floored it, but rather than jump forward, the back wheels of the car spit up dirt as they were trying to gain traction.
“Any moment now would be good,” Nate harped, then cursed when something small and light fell down onto the hood, making a “ping” as it hit. “Brace—“
Slamming the car into reverse, the wheels finally got grip and shoved the car backward, making whatever had ended up on the hood roll off. The grenade exploded, causing me to scream as what little of my sight that had returned disappeared once more, but I didn’t let that hold me back. Trying to remember where I’d last seen the men advancing on us, I sent the car into a tight circle, still driving in reverse, hoping I’d either scare them away, or back right into them. My heart skipped a beat when I hit something comparatively soft just before I rocked into a solid wall—the still-parked Humvee. Not bothering to wait for another explosive to finally do the job and incapacitate the car, I shifted into gear and shot forward. Something grated, then whined, but the Rover dutifully changed directions, gaining a little speed as it rocked over the meadow away from the patch of burning grass that was a welcome beacon in my rearview mirror.
“Road is to your six!” Pia shouted. “We’re hanging back—“
“Go!” Nate contradicted her. “Turn on the headlights if you must, but go! We’ll be right behind you!”
I didn’t protest although I wasn’t convinced that was what was going to happen. More shots hitting the left rear side of the car just underscored my pessimism. I was about to steer the car away but Nate grabbed the wheel again. “They’re herding us farther and farther back from the road,” he insisted. “If you go right through them…”
Not a possibility I wanted to entertain, but as soon as he let go of the wheel, I followed his directions, swerving toward the gunfire rather than away from it. A spray of bullets went by my door, then hit the hood and windshield head-on. The glass broke in two places with loud, popping sounds and I braced myself for the bullets to go through next. Instead, I mowed over what felt like at least two bodies, but I forced myself to keep accelerating. The rifles continued to spit bullets but they pinged off our armored rear, doing little damage there. And then I finally saw the road, gray against the dark soil.
“Floor it!” Nate shouted, apparently coming to the same conclusion. I didn’t need the incentive but followed suit, making the Rover shoot forward as it vaulted over the last bumps of the meadow and back onto hard, even asphalt. The bank of lights came on again but this time behind me, still making my eyes water but also doing a nice job illuminating our surroundings for me. Lighter than the Humvee, we quickly started to increase the distance between us, leaving the open space behind in favor of the patchy canopy of trees swallowing us again.
“Clear,” Nate reported in, getting the same confirmation back from Pia. At least for the moment it seemed like the road ahead was free, but I didn’t let myself relax this time. With the lights chasing me it was impossible to gauge whether it was just a single vehicle or several that were coming after us, but if we could get away that would be all the same—
“Fuck!” Burns’s voice belched into my ear. “Roadblock ahead, several trees. I’ll try to go around to the north—“
“Take that trail,” Pia cut him off, then louder to us, “You’ll get to an intersection in about a minute. Go south.”
“We’re not splitting up!” I protested, but Nate talked right over me.
“We’ll meet at forward point A or B. Good luck.”
The intersection Pia had been talking about came hurtling toward me—or rather, me toward the gap in the trees—and I turned hard left to make it. Even with the four-wheel drive the back of the Rover skidded away, but a well-placed tree stump stopped it. Gritting my teeth against the impact, I floored it again, the entire car bumping up and down until all wheels were in the ruts of the mostly overgrown, unpaved trek. Road, my ass. At least it was dark again, but only for the moment it took the Humvee to come after me.
“Shit,” I voiced my misgivings, but did my very best to further increase the distance between us. Rustling coming next to me made me look toward Nate for a second, glancing at the maps he was trying to spread in front of him. “Not sure this road is on there,” I supplied.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m trying to get a feel for where we’re heading.”
“Not much besides lakes and forest around here,” I helpfully offered, cursing when a boulder in the road made the car rock unappealingly.
Nate remained mute for a good minute. “There are railroad tracks somewhere to the south, meandering. Once you hit those, follow them. They’ll lead us to a larger road.”
“And we want that?”
“Definitively,” he agreed.
We skimmed another meadow, the sky now visibly lightening to my left. I tried to make a grab for the center console where my shades usually rested, but they must have fallen out during the chase. Nate stopped me with a grunt. “I’ll take over as soon as it gets too bright for you.” When I raised my brows at him, he shrugged. “If we haven’t shaken them by then we’ll be in a lot of shit. Tank’s about half full, and we can only refuel from the outside.” So much for having half our cargo hold filled with gasoline canisters.
A few low-hanging branches slapped the front of the car, forcing my attention back on the road.
“Should I try to hide somewhere in the undergrowth?” I suggested.
“No, keep heading south. They would have to be blind not to see our tracks, particularly with the lights still on.”
Just as if Nate had jinxed it, the floodlights turned off, leaving us literally in the dark about what was going on behind us. I felt like swearing again but it helped my eyes focus on details in front of me as I wasn’t distracted by blinking away tears anymore. Feeling adventurous, I increased the speed, then a little more when I managed to remain in the ruts even when careening through another bend in the road.
“You know, this could almost be fun if we weren’t constantly chased by people trying to kill us,” I remarked in what I hoped was an absentminded way.
“You’d just get bored and do something stupid,” Nate replied, the hint of a smile on his face.
“Me? Never!” I still mulled that over for a moment. “Stupid like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure you’d come up with something that beats hurtling down an overgrown road in the dark with a Humvee bent on turning us into roadkill hot on our wheels.”
I couldn’t say why that made me grin, but it did.
Before I could find a sufficient reply, the trees thinned out ahead, and I got a glimpse at the train tracks running perpendicular to our road. “Hold on to something,” I warned as I gripped the steering wheel harder, then wrenched it to the right while using the handbrake to reduce our momentum somewhat. The Rover dutifully skidded over the stretch of grass right next to the small bridge in the road that sent it over the tracks. With some jostling to and fro we managed to get up onto the bank the tracks ran along, my speed massively decreased by the much more uneven ground. At first I winced at every bump hitting us with every crosstie we went over, but I was quickly getting used to it. Behind us, the Humvee went over the bridge without changing directions, followed by two more. The last one slowed down as someone realized that they weren’t going after us, but before they’d managed to reverse, we were already around the
softly sloping turn in the tracks.
“What next?” I asked as I watched with rising trepidation as Nate unbuckled his harness and climbed into the cargo hold, taking his sniper rifle with him as he stood up and opened the top hatch.
“Let’s see exactly how well armored their Humvees are,” he proposed, trying to find a position to brace himself against the periodic jostling. I tried to ease the car more steadily over the crossties, but it was hopeless. At least now I could give up splitting my attention between where I was going and what was coming after us, seeing as my rearview mirror was full of Nate’s ass. Definitely an improvement.
I knew as soon as our pursuers started gaining on us, because that’s when the sniper rifle went off. Nate didn’t leave it at one shot but emptied the entire magazine before he ducked back down, yet instead of reloading he simply grabbed my M24 from the rack and went on shooting, a satisfied huff letting me know that he’d not just hit one of the vehicles but must have incapacitated it somehow.
“That should buy us some time,” he told me as he reclaimed his seat, but left the harness untouched. “There’s another road crossing the tracks about a mile away. Take that back north.”
“Wasn’t the plan to head south?” As far as I remembered, all our set meet-up points were in that direction, too.
“Not if we want to shake them completely,” he answered as he set to reloading both rifles. “Looks like I took out the driver of one Humvee and the engine block of another. They’ll have to regroup; that might give us just enough time to get away. We rendezvous with Burns and Zilinsky, kill their tail, then take care of ours. At the very least we can liberate a few more weapons from them. I have a certain feeling that we’re going to need those.”
The aforementioned road came up and I turned onto it, back into the forest. It was an actual road, paved and all, making me hope that they might miss the tracks I left in the gravel on the side and think we either turned south or remained on the tracks. As soon as I could, I accelerated once more, sending the Rover flying around the few rusting cars lightly peppering the lanes.
Just before I could try to get a com signal, a dark shape swerved onto the road right behind us, a hail of bullets following. Cursing, I almost sent the Rover into a fallen tree partly obscuring the right lane, needing a few seconds to straighten it once more. Nate switched his sniper rifle for one of his trusty ARs, but wisely remained seated this time. There was no telling whether we’d inadvertently caught up to the other group’s tail, or if there were more than two search parties out for blood.
“Can you tell how many vehicles there are?” Nate inquired.
I shook my head, but did a little lane switching to both avoid some of the bullets pelting our rear, and maybe see beyond the Humvee. “I think it’s two, but not sure.” I tried speeding up again, but apparently going at break-neck speed through the post-apocalyptic landscape was no longer a guarantee for successful flight as they remained glued to my bumper. I tried hailing Burns again but only got static. “Do we have anything that could help us shake them?”
“Like what?”
“Explosives?” I suggested. “Helped with zombies all right.”
Nate made a face. “Don’t you think that if I had something at hand I would have pitched it at them ages ago?”
He had a point there. “What about Molotov cocktails, or something like that?”
“Useless against any type of armored vehicle,” he pointed out. “Wouldn’t work with us, either, which is likely the reason why your windshield is just cracked, not melted or still on fire.”
A new barrage of shots shut us both up, and I took a hard turn right when I saw another road branch off. The rising sun hit me square in the eyes but I forced myself to ignore the burn. The trees started growing more sparsely to my right, and I realized that we were headed toward a lake. That gave me an idea. “How much heavier than the Rover are these Humvees? And how do they do with mud or water?”
Nate gave me a sidelong glance that made me guess he was wondering whether I’d gone insane, but then shrugged. “Heavier than us, but they’re built for shit like this. The Rover maybe once was, but with all the modifications, and factoring in that things keep breaking and need to be patched up, you’ll likely just strand us.”
“What about the RPGs that you picked up while I was gone?” I suggested.
“Both launchers are in the Jeep,” Nate offered, snorting. “No need to tell me that this was shitty planning.”
“So we find the Jeep, we get the RPGs,” I summed that up, nervously looking at the mirrors again. Yup, three more Humvees came out behind those already following us, easily visible as we beelined it along the shore of the lake.
“Exactly.” Nate hesitated for a moment, then reached for the radio. There was a good chance that our pursuers were monitoring the frequencies, but nothing could be done about that. Yet before he could switch it on, I stopped him.
“Wait. Let’s think this through again. There were three vehicles after us, and now there are five. Where did the others come from? I doubt that they just hid in the woods on the off-chance that we’d veer north again.”
As usual, Nate was quick to pick up on what I was going for. “You mean they lost the other two and now they come after us?”
“My guess,” I agreed.
“Not the best chances for us,” Nate pointed out.
“As long as we stay in the car, right?”
He took a few seconds to think that over, then gave a curt nod. “But you do realize what that means? There’s a good chance they’ll destroy the Rover, and it leaves us two to twenty or more outnumbered. That means you can’t just go around shooting people in the face with your shotgun. And they won’t be mindless shamblers.”
I took a hard left when I saw a gap in the trees, speeding away from the shore once more and into the light underbrush. There were ruts still visible in what was mostly forest, but I doubted anyone would be able to still find this path in a few years from now. I felt my heart sink with the implications of Nate’s words, but now was not the time to grow a conscience. And it wasn’t like I had started this.
My curt nod was all Nate needed for an answer.
“Then find us a place where you can try to make the car disappear long enough so we can bolt. Don’t bother grabbing any larger firearms. Only shoot your gun if you absolutely have to. Your knife and hands will have to do,” he explained. I so didn’t like the sound of that, but simply nodded again.
Another road crossed the one we were following, just as overgrown, and I took it. Up ahead I saw what used to be a stack of logs, the partly cut-down tree trunks tumbled across the road, leaving just enough space to squeeze through to one side. I did just that but took a hard turn right behind what remained of the stack, hoping that partial concealment was better than none. As soon as the car came to a halt, I pulled the handbrake and vaulted out of the door, running away from the vehicle. I heard something crash through the undergrowth somewhere behind and to my right—Nate, going in the opposite direction from me—and then it was just the sound of the Humvees drawing up to the tumbled logs.
Looking around frantically, I spied a maple tree just fifty yards from me, tall enough that the lower branches would easily hold me. Trying to make as little noise as possible as I fought my way through the vegetation and dead leaves I reached it just as voices got loud behind me, soon followed by the sound of doors slamming shut. So much for hoping we’d get a little more of a head start—but in the end it was the same, I figured.
Reaching the maple, I ignored a lower branch to the right of the trunk and made a jump for the thicker, higher one on the left so I could pull myself up. To make sure that I wasn’t too easy a target I climbed up higher, trying to avoid looking straight down. With my clothes all muted colors I hoped that I wouldn’t be too visible from the ground, a good twelve feet up. Flattening myself on my stomach against the branch, I let out my breath slowly, then held it, listening. No sounds coming from anywhere close t
o me—even the birds had fallen silent—but I could make out movement and occasional voices shouting to and fro from back by the road.
Exhaling slowly, I forced my ragged breaths to even out until I made virtually no sound. Now all I could do was lay in wait—and hope that this idiotic plan wouldn’t get me killed. Or worse.
Chapter 7
The soldiers fanned out as the first rays of sunlight broke through the tree canopy. I heard them long before they walked into my field of vision—searching, but rarely looking up from the ground. I could still trace my tracks from the logs through the long grass and underbrush, but none of them seemed to have actual tracking skills. Or, more likely, the lingering darkness between the trees just got more impenetrable for them now that a few beams of light dissected it.
Their slow approach gave my mind ample time to start down paths I really didn’t want to consider right now, like whether it counted as murder when I dropped down and killed them. When, not if. Unless whoever commanded them called them back in the next couple of minutes, that was going to happen. I might still feel hesitant about it—planned stealth was a lot different from self-defense—but I knew that Nate wouldn’t, and I couldn’t very well hide up in my tree while he did all the dirty work. Not and still live with myself.
It also left me with a good opportunity to gauge their numbers and tactics. Unlike us, they didn’t all have coms, or at least didn’t use them as they remained in shouting distance of each other. I saw eleven men swarm out to this side of the road, so I figured they must be close to thirty—a third to each side, and the rest to guard the cars. At least that’s how I would have set up my search party. They were in full combat gear, but none of it was new, and several items didn’t quite fit in with the rest. Not a surprise—and pretty much what I’d expected—but I could have done without the helmets and body armor. All of them were carrying rifles or shotguns, and while they weren’t moving in any kind of formation that I could make out, they weren’t behaving like a lot of bumbling idiots. After the trap they’d sprung on us, that seemed like a logical conclusion, but was quite inconvenient.
Green Fields (Book 6): Unity Page 9
