This time, all I could do was gape at her.
“You can’t be serious.”
Tamara shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “There are an awful lot of coincidences,” she repeated. “You have to admit, it’s hard to draw lines in the sand when you have the same people with the same allegiances on both sides.”
The very implication of that made me want to recoil. “You wanna know why? Because they simply had a leg up in surviving, as did everyone else who had survival training, or was paranoid enough to keep a bug-out bag next to their door and their gas tank filled up all the time. I myself wouldn’t have stood a chance if not for Nate and his people—“
“See? You were important. They made sure that someone was there to pick you up. No one did the same for the rest of us.”
“Makes you twice as tough in my eyes.”
My compliment didn’t seem to make a difference. “Don’t you see? They are everywhere. In every settlement, in every scavenger group. Always watching, always ready for action. Who says that they aren’t reporting in all the time as well? How can we be sure that we aren’t harboring traitors in our very midst?”
Suddenly, the weird looks I had been getting all over camp made me feel perfectly paranoid—and mad as hell. “We are getting slaughtered out there, and still you doubt us?”
“It’s not just us, as in the people of Dispatch and the other settlements,” Tamara professed, slightly chagrined. “It’s the traders, too. Or why do you think no one has done anything all summer long, until you gave them what might as well turn out as the killing blow rather than a beacon of hope?”
“Then why are so many people here? Why did they join us?”
The grunt she offered could have meant anything. “Guess they just don’t want to admit that if it’s true, we’re all so screwed.” She paused, worrying her lip between her teeth. When she caught my gaze again, reproach was still in there, but also agitation. “Tell me that they are wrong. That when we get to that base, you won’t turn on us. Tell me that every single word you’ve said in that speech is right. There’s too much uncertainty out there, too much room for doubt. Tell me that I can trust in you, a hundred percent, and I will.”
“You can trust me,” I told her before my reeling mind’s hesitation could make her doubt me. “I don’t know how I can convince you of that, but I’ve said nothing but the truth. If you want to, I can explain how all those things that make you suspicious of us are really just coincidence, or there’s a very good reason for that, beyond us being a bunch of conniving traitors.”
She nodded thoughtfully, but I didn’t miss how the corner of her mouth turned down for a second. Of course, if I were a lying, conniving traitor, that’s exactly what I would say. Shit.
“Just do the right thing,” she offered weakly, turning away from me to head toward where the cars were starting to gather by the road. “But keep in mind that if you screw us over, people will hear from us. You can try to kill us all, but you won’t manage. Not before we’ll get out the word.”
She left me standing there with that positive outlook on life, uncertain what I should do. It wasn’t like I didn’t get where that doubt came from. It had taken me weeks to sort out my own conflicting emotions about Nate and his people, and whenever a new detail—like his dishonorable discharge—came up, there was that flicker of doubt again, eating away at my soul. Rita wasn’t without fail, either, and just because someone had gotten the three marks tattooed didn’t automatically turn them into a saint. Things weren’t just black and white, good and bad. But still. How could so many people be so distrustful after all we’d given for this country?
To say that I was in a morose mood by the time I returned to the Rover was an understatement. Nate picked up on it right away, frowning as he took his seat on the passenger side while I slid behind the wheel. I made sure to close the door properly and checked twice that none of the windows was cracked. Only then did I turn to him. “Are we doing the right thing?”
“Depends. What got your gorge rising this time?”
“Don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently people believe that we’re just gathering them up like sheep to lead them to their slaughter.”
He considered that for a moment, but the fact that he didn’t laugh outright let me know that he’d heard the same rumors—and not discussed that point with me. His previous words echoed through my mind again, about why he’d set me up as a figure head. Plausible deniability. It always came down to that. Anger licked up my spine, but I did my best to quench it. Of all the things bothering me today, doubting him shouldn’t have been one of them.
“You do realize that not betraying them will be the easiest, quickest way to refute their fears,” he offered when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to go off in his face. I’d reserve that for later.
“But what if something goes wrong? What if the beacons don’t work, or work too well, and the entire lot of us gets eaten by the shamblers, leaving the others to fend for themselves at the base?”
His snort held a certain derisive note. “Considering that in this case we’ll be dead, I don’t really give a shit.” His statement didn’t draw my ire out into the open, either, and Nate chuckled harshly as he leaned his head against the seat, slitting his eyes. “Welcome to my world. I told you this before, but it seems like it never really sunk in. Ever since I woke up after they inoculated me, no one has treated me the same as before. Now they extend that very same courtesy to you. In many ways, the zombie apocalypse was the great equalizer, dividing us into those that survived, and those that didn’t. People adapt, and things change. Now you have to prove yourself to them. They will doubt you, until you’ve burned so many bridges that the only way is forward. And that way leads straight into Colorado.”
Exhaling slowly, I glanced from him to the road, visible through my dusty windshield.
“That’s why laying low was never an option for you, right?” I ventured what felt like a suddenly very informed guess. “Why you didn’t wait for Emma to kick us out. Why once we were in the game as scavengers, you opted to take the high-risk, high-profile contracts. Why going to New Angeles on what was barely more than a whim was a good option. And why, even if I did believe Aimes, which I don’t, I cannot give myself up, trade myself in for the lives of everyone else. We gotta burn those bridges and eliminate all other options, because otherwise they’ll never be on our side.”
There was a hint of sadness in his eyes, like he’d wished I’d never had to come to that conclusion, but he didn’t voice those thoughts aloud. Instead, he nodded toward the road, a lopsided smile taking over his face. “If you already know what to do, why are we still wasting time?”
With that none-too-comforting thought, I started the car and brought it up to the road. Not all the cars I’d expected followed, but as I drove by those standing at the ready, I saw determination rather than trepidation on their faces. Maybe Tamara had been wrong, and far fewer people doubted us. Or maybe, everyone had some shit sticking to them that they hoped the fire of battle would cleanse them of. In the end, it was all the same, because only one thing counted: to come up ahead, and remain alive until the sun rose again tomorrow. I couldn’t say why, but that idea eased my mind. Staying alive? That was something I’d gotten damn good at over the past year and a half.
Chapter 22
It took us a good two hours until we saw the first larger group of shamblers, and another stretch of the road until we couldn’t just drive by them slowly without attracting much attention. With an entire day of driving ahead and so many miles to eat up, we had a lot of time for splitting up into smaller groups, concentrating the main part of our force into two bulks, with eight small trains that would play bait in between. All in all we were over two hundred cars that rolled over the border into Colorado—a force to be reckoned with. If my mood might have taken a hit this morning, the chatter coming over the short-range frequencies spoke an entirely different story. Sure, some of that bravado was just that, a go
od front to hide fear, but if the last year had taught me anything, it was that shitting your pants without plastering a fierce smile on your face didn’t make it any more pleasant, either.
Nate saw the movement up ahead in the distance first, calling for a halt about a hundred miles into our trek. A few moments of fiddling, and the two drones that our part of the convoy had with them—courtesy of the fine people of the geeky persuasion who liked to call Dispatch their home—rose from the beds of the pickup trucks that had been carrying them. Not the puny, civilian kind of drones they were, but over four feet long, and loud enough to hear them zoom away overhead. I remained in the car while Nate coordinated with the other groups, getting the same information from the northernmost one, if not the middle one yet—zombies were up ahead, and unless we wanted to make a dive for, say, Texas, there was no way of avoiding them. Part of me had been waiting to feel them up ahead, pooled together by a few individuals wearing those beacon-like devices strapped to their chests, but it was only my imagination that made me sense anything.
“Anyone needing a moment to yourself, now’s the time to go for it,” Nate announced, leaning in briefly to bark into the radio. “Lead groups one and two will head out in five. The rest of you stay put until you get confirmation that they are following us. Then you move out.”
I hesitated, but then got out, happy to feel the wind on my face for a few minutes. We were part of the southernmost group, a good fifty vehicles idling on the road behind us, and about twenty more just at the edge of what I could see without binoculars, somewhat north of us, following another small road running parallel to ours. The mood was good, jokes and insults getting traded with bags of beef jerky and water bottles. I mindlessly stuffed my face with the protein bars Burns held out to me, chewing just enough not to choke on them as I swallowed. One of the drivers of a nearby car gave me a weird look but cast his gaze elsewhere when he realized his staring had drawn my attention. We were smack in the middle of the road, not even a ditch or tree nearby, so I just hunkered down behind the opened back door of the car to take care of business. As I came up and plucked everything back into place, unable to keep from wincing with the knowledge of what was ahead for me today, I found Gita giving me a horrified look. “Why the hell are you wearing diapers?”
Ah, to be so young and naive again. Snorting, I turned to fully face her, giving her a feral smile. “I’m not getting out of this car in the next ten to fifteen hours. I know that there’s an art to pissing into bottles that I have kind of perfected, but that only works for a few hours. I’d rather take a rash and the urinary tract infection of the ages than get my ass chewed on by shamblers. Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but life on the road out there can get very glamorous at times.”
I heard Burns snicker somewhere behind me, but refrained from glaring at him. Sometimes all that let you hang on to your dignity was a brave face. Gita visibly shook herself, doing a shit job hiding her derision—pun intended—but didn’t say anything else. Wise girl.
“Think I should say something now?” I asked Nate as he joined me, holding out some more beef jerky to me. A few of the men standing nearby—most of them sporting three rather than one mark across their necks—perked up, but not enough to answer that question for me. Nate gave me a shrug that didn’t help much, either. No grand speech it was.
Then it was time to put action to plan, and head into the fray.
I gritted my teeth as I waited for Nate to be done strapping himself in, telling myself repeatedly that I could do this, and that I wasn’t the dumbest bitch out there for trying to lead our crusade. We hadn’t really had a chance to test our portable beacons except fire them up a time or two on the move. They were significantly weaker than those that protected New Angeles—not blacking out was a plus—but still strong enough to make my stomach severely upset with me and the world in general. To make sure not to single-handedly kill off everyone if this went wrong, our vanguard rolled out first, stopping a good mile away from the other cars. Up ahead, I could tell that the zombies, spread out over the road and surrounding fields as they were, started to notice us, small ripples running through the mob of easily two hundred or more. Keeping my eyes on them, I reached for the radio, keying it to our master frequency.
“Okay, folks, it’s time to see if this will work,” I started, not quite sure what else to say. “Southern vanguard, move out. Every group will take it from here on their own. Report in with the guys you can stay in visual contact with, if you can. See you on the flip side.”
At my nod, Nate flipped the small switch taped to the center console, engaging the battery and generator stored in the very back of our cargo hold. I didn’t need the little green light to come on to tell that it was working. Almost instantly, the pull to climb back there and wrap myself around the device sending out those even, short bursts was there, like the scent of bacon making your mouth water.
“You good?” Nate asked under his breath, eyeing me critically.
“That’s tuned to what, low?”
“Two out of ten,” he affirmed.
“Give me a five, and we’re good to go.” As soon as the intensity increased, it drowned out the small blips coming from the cars behind me, but still let me keep my hands on the steering wheel. Exhaling with resolution, I put the car back into gear and stepped on the accelerator. The crowd up ahead surged forward, the squatters coming to their feet and the standing ones starting toward us. Swallowing thickly, I forced a lid on my instincts that told me to turn around and run, and increased the speed instead. Faster and faster I went, and the closer I drew, the more agitated the zombies got.
“Take a left over there,” Nate noted, indicating the small, unpaved road splitting off ahead, halfway between me and the horde we were approaching. “About half a mile south, then turn east again at a soft turn.”
And so it began.
One thing was certain from the moment our cars skidded around the turn and into the smaller road—the first part of the plan was working beautifully. Even from the lead car I could tell that the zombies surged after the four vehicles to a single individual, going fast enough that I didn’t hesitate to accelerate more to give the others some space to maneuver. A few were smart enough to take the road, but over the long grass and weeds I saw a good portion try to go the straightest way, slowed down by the underbrush they suddenly found themselves stuck in.
“How’s it looking back there?” Nate asked, using our personal com system rather than the radio.
“So far it’s working,” Burns’s voice replied in my ear. “For now we’ll keep the intensity low. Most of them are aiming for you rather than us. Let’s keep it that way.” Of course he had to underline that with a chuckle.
I grunted, only the fact that I needed to keep my eyes peeled on the road keeping me from rolling them. “We’re so going to switch this up every thirty minutes,” I promised.
“Like you’d survive giving up the lead,” Burns shot back. “I’d much rather have your ass wriggling in front of me.”
Nate snorted, but wisely left the fact that I was actually swerving a little much due to some carcasses left behind on the road uncommented.
“Not sure if I need the shamblers to do the job. Your jokes are enough to kill me,” I offered.
Burns laughed. “Always happy to oblige.” None of the other scavengers answered, but I was sure that they were laughing their asses off at us.
I reached that bend Nate had told me of, spewing gravel everywhere as I had to wrench the wheel harder than I’d intended to, taking the turn a little too fast. The rear wheel skidded into the grass next to the ruts, finding traction and letting me shoot up ahead. In the mirror I saw the next car careen around the bend as well, incidentally smacking into one of the faster zombies that had almost caught up to us. Oh well. What a shame.
“Straight for two miles, then take a right at the intersection,” Nate informed me, briefly glancing at his map to make sure his instructions were correct.
“
Won’t that put us too close to the area we’re trying to clear?”
“Not if we’ve already cleared it,” he pointed out. “We have to see how many stragglers we produce—from the start, after one mile, five, ten, you get the drift. Once we get back to the initial road we started from can we tell if the group following us can make it through unharmed, or how much they’ll have to turn up their repulsing beacons.” A very logical excursion, but not one my brain had capacity for with me careening across the roads faster than I should have been going, even without zombies hot on our heels. And slamming into the rear of the car, I realized, when something hit the back fender hard.
Ten minutes later I reached the broader road once more, a speck in the sky overhead telling me that the others were using their drones to keep track of us. The road was surprisingly clear, at least if one ignored the maybe fifty zombies that had been squatting on it by the intersection and were now joining the increasing throng that we were gathering. I remained on the road for about a mile, then zig-zagged south once more, this time straying a good three miles away. “How’s this working?” Nate asked over the radio, the answer coming about a minute later.
“Better, but there are still a handful of the undead hanging around,” Tanner informed us from the front of the follow-up party. “We’ll try blasting them with the beacons now. Get back onto the road about five miles further west so we can check back in with you.” That we did, and the answer we received made me flash Nate a quick, if somewhat insane, grin that he answered in turn. “It’s working. Fuckers, here we come!”
Green Fields (Book 6): Unity Page 31
