“Buckle up,” Nate called, his expression stony. “We have time to make up for, and the best is still ahead of us.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that sentiment, but it held enough truth to get me to drop behind the wheel with renewed purpose.
“Are we still sticking to the original plan?”
Nate nodded as he joined me. “For now. Let’s see if we can catch up to the others before the next catastrophic event happens.”
Somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just jinxed it.
Chapter 23
We made good time—for all of fifteen minutes. Even taking a different route than we’d approached, we got mired in shamblers all too soon once more. With no main group to protect we continued with beacons set to repel them, but that still made for a lot of the undead getting way too close to us for comfort. I was forced to slow down to barely faster than I could have run with the added benefit of doing my very best not to smash right into the zombies that were either too slow or too dense to shuffle out of the way. As soon as we managed to get away from one group, the next was already closing in on us. I gave up trying to stick to small roads after a while, keeping to the larger ones instead, even if they seemed to hold a lot more interest for the shamblers. At least there I had room aplenty to try to evade them. And with every mile we got closer to the Denver metro area, it got worse.
“Just how many of them are there?” I more mused to myself than actually asked, but Nate still had an answer for me.
“Looks like they had insane conversion rates around here, and no migration at all during the cold months.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Beats me,” he admitted.
“Think that they actively tried to retain the shamblers here? Keep them as a permanent deterrent for anyone who might venture close to their base?”
Nate’s shrug was rather ambiguous. “We still don’t know when the first beacons appeared, and while we think we know who primed some of the stronger zombies with the vests, we lack confirmation. We also don’t know how they direct them, if that can even be done. I doubt that they’ll do the old villain speech, letting us know all the details of their many plans because they are that convinced we will all die right there and never drag information to where it will be available freely for everyone.”
“Too bad,” I grumbled. “I was really looking forward to that.”
Our radio squawked before Nate could comment. “What’s up?” he asked, more weary than disappointed.
Gita’s voice sounded stressed, and quite as if she was being tossed around in the car, hard-pressed to hold on to something so she could speak. “How far behind us are you? We fucked up. We thought we were avoiding one group, but ran straight into the next. Somehow our vanguard made it through without disturbing them but they’re coming for us with a vengeance.”
Nate cursed under his breath, perfectly echoing my own sentiments. Checking his maps, he rattled off our current position, then listened to her do the same. “About twenty minutes, if traffic doesn’t get any heavier,” he uttered his final conclusion after tracing several possible routes. “But if it’s that bad, I’m not sure if three more cars will make a difference.” And didn’t that sound final.
“We get that,” Gita agreed with him, sounding surprisingly calm. “But any distraction will do. The others are working on a plan, but it won’t be enough to give most of the cars time to escape.”
That didn’t sound very promising. “So what do you intend us to do? Wave at them so they’ll follow us instead and let you be?”
“Something like that would be great,” Gita said, sounding like she was relaying someone else’s answer. “We just need a few minutes respite.”
Nate didn’t look particularly happy as he responded. “We’ll do our best. I’ll hail you again when we are in visual range.” Likely right on top of the mob of zombies that was bogging the others down, from what I’d gathered. When he turned to me, his expression was a grave one. “Exactly how exhausted are you?”
“I’m good.” Not even a lie. With all the food he’d been foisting on me, I was ready to burn the candle at both ends, no problem—as long as I didn’t run out of wax before we hit the base. “Why?”
“How about we put to the test exactly how much of a tough bitch you are?” he said, the lopsided grin he offered making me wonder if he was somehow reading my mind.
“We don’t happen to have another dose of that booster that the guys at the Silo cooked up?” I ventured a guess.
“Two, actually,” came Nate’s reply, not a hint of apology in his voice.
“And you’re only telling me that now because?”
Of course he had the audacity to shrug. “I have no idea if they still work, seeing as they should have been kept cool, and we went through desert level heat twice. They might have turned into a toxic cocktail that will kill us within seconds. Or, more likely, lost some of their potency.”
“But you think it’s worth the risk?”
My less than elegant swerving around a broken-down truck kept Nate from replying for a few seconds. “Maybe my grasp on the situation is wrong, but there’s a good chance that we will be driving right into a group of agitated shamblers with a higher than usual number of strong ones.” At my doubtful grunt he snorted. “That group we left back there wasn’t small, but even a single beacon would have been enough to keep them from overwhelming us, as long as the integrity of the cars remained intact.”
“Fancy way of describing getting our asses shot out from under us,” I grumbled, feeling my anger swell again.
“Still true. Only half the cars in the main convoy groups have beacons, but that should still keep twice their numbers safe. So why didn’t that work?”
“Because the beacons don’t work that well on the super strong ones,” I replied, feeling dejection well up inside of me. “Any guess why the guys at New Angeles didn’t tell us that?”
“They likely didn’t know,” Nate hazarded a guess, making me frown that, for once, he was the optimistic one of us. “Their stationary beacons are stronger. Maybe with that many zombies, the strong ones become sheep rather than leaders. How the fuck should I know? Maybe they were just lucky that all the juiced-up freaks stayed away from glorious California. It doesn’t matter, and it’s not the point, anyway.”
Exhaling slowly, I did my best to quell the rising panic inside of me. “So let me get this straight. Your plan is to shoot us full of drugs that make us think we’re invincible, so that we can then go toe-to-toe with the zombies that both possess the ability to resist our best defensive weapon, and easily match us in strength and stamina? Why am I not that ecstatic about this idea?”
Nate remained silent far too long, making me chance a glance at him. He was studying me—gauging me—and I really didn’t like that. The same as my constant grousing was a sign that I was feeling good about a plan, his flippant replies usually underlined that guess. Silence never boded well.
“You do realize that if the beacons fail, or simply don’t work, every single man and woman in those cars will die. They don’t stand a fighting chance, and the few guys of the vanguard group will only have the advantage of living a few moments longer to feel how they get torn limb from limb. If their presence would have made a difference, they wouldn’t have hailed us.”
“So what can we do?” I hated how that sense of defeat was trying to gnaw at my resolve, already chipped after losing so many people to simple mistakes and technical failures. “How can we, with three cars, make a difference?”
“We have two more doses of the booster in the Jeep, too,” Nate mentioned, almost casually. “Provided it still works, that means we have the upper hand in some ways. We can churn through our physical reserves for the next hours, and given that we don’t have to run but can use the cars, we should be able to lead the undead fuckers on a merry chase.”
“That’s a lot of wishful thinking,” I noted rather dryly, considering how sw
eaty my fingers were becoming.
“Can you really stand idly by while over a hundred people who trust in us die? For nothing?”
“Says the guy who has a dishonorable discharge in his career path.” I just couldn’t let that slide.
His answering sigh was less annoyed than I’d expected. “Well, shouldn’t that tell you just how much regrets can haunt you?”
Wasn’t that the truth. I was still not over losing Bates—and all the shit that had gone down, down, down from then on. I knew that he was aware of all that, but it sucked that he brought up the debate to force me to be part of the decision making process. Why again did I want this? Right.
Smacking my lips, I did my best to swallow my fear and put on a brave face. “Guess we’ll have to harass us some juiced-up zombies again.”
“Damn straight.”
It was impossible to quell the unease rising inside of me as Nate commed Pia to relay his orders, then told me to stop for a moment—not hard with shamblers blocking more and more of the road the further west we went. I didn’t bother with undressing, just pulled down the collar of my half-unzipped jacket and let Nate have a go at my neck with the syringe—after he used the first dose on himself. I flinched at the burn spreading down into my chest, not sure I’d felt that the first time around. Then again, I’d been scared out of my mind and high on my own body’s response to pain, and the entire area around where the shamblers had savaged my leg had already gone numb. I felt the vague sense of euphoria kick in almost immediately, but rather than relax it made me antsy to jump into action. No idea if that was the same as last time. Back then it had all slammed into me like a freight train, overruling sensible judgment and turning me down the lane of righteous destruction that should have become my legacy.
“You know that you’re the only one I know who scowls when she should be chasing the high?” Nate observed, faintly amused. Or not so faintly, I realized, when I caught his gaze and saw a familiar hint of mischief lurking there. At least it had been familiar to me, back when the world was complicated but oh so very simple at the same time—before the apocalypse had turned our priorities upside down. Maybe I was reading too much into this, but that moment it struck me just how serious and down he’d been since the factory.
“Maybe I would, if you didn’t constantly give me reasons to frown,” I shot back, incapable of holding in a smile. “Ready to kick some undead ass?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
Before he could tell me to, I floored the accelerator, clipping a few shamblers that had gotten too curious for their own good. The cars behind us picked up speed as well, leaving a few more heaps on the road for the other zombies to descend on. Watching them feed rather than come after us gave me a brilliant idea.
“If we kill enough of them, will they even be interested in our tin can cars? They behave strangely, like they’re so used to preying on each other that we’re not the top available food source to them.”
“Might have worked with just a handful of cars, but you may have a point there, anyway,” Nate acceded.
“Don’t I always?”
“No.” Well, wasn’t that disappointing? But I couldn’t hold on to that sentiment for long as Nate picked up the mic and hailed Gita once more. “We’re about ten minutes out. Did anyone try explosives on them yet? We picked up some extra RPGs that could make a difference.”
“They were on us too quickly,” she confessed. “One car tried but they barely made a dent into the onslaught. Then they were on us, and—“
“Yeah, I get it.” He grunted, cutting her off. The self-possessed smile on his face made me want to punch him in the dick. Or at least thigh, where he’d rammed the syringe into his muscles. “Anything else that worked? Or didn’t?”
Her lack of a reply likely meant that they were too busy running for their lives for her to talk strategy. The shamblers around us started to thin out, making me guess that they were the dregs of the group that had ultimately brought our guys to a halt. They thinned out further until there were only a handful in sight, letting me go even faster. Nate checked that he had full magazines in all of his weapons before he clapped me on the shoulder. “Try not to total the car while I’m up there.” I was just about to ask what he meant with that but had to forgo that in favor of swerving around another bunch of undead. Nate used that opportunity to crawl out of his seat and into the back row, fiddling with one of the climbing harnesses we had stashed back there somewhere.
“Are you shitting me?” I grumbled, flipping my com on. “Zilinsky, can you tell this asshole of a husband of mine that now’s not the time for stunts like shooting at zombies from the open top hatch of the car?”
Rather than Pia’s gravelly retort, I got a laugh from Burns that sounded like he’d taken a dive into a marijuana plantation. “She can’t answer you right now. She’s busy getting a few Claymores ready so she can throw ‘em at the fuckers.”
I silently shook my head, grunting when a crack in the road made the entire car rock as I hit it a little too hard. So much for hoping that being high on our own supply wouldn’t lead anyone to get their most insane stunts up.
“It worked at Harristown,” Nate informed us both over the com, his voice barely audible otherwise as he was already leaning out of the car from his hips upward.
“Because we got damn lucky!” I didn’t continue my protest because the light forest I’d been going through thinned out and let me catch a glimpse at what lay beyond, and that was enough to make me glad I’d opted for the diapers. “You guys seeing this?”
“Affirmative,” the Ice Queen replied for us all.
“You still happy that your ass is hanging out of the car?” I asked, incapable of quenching a snort. So many puns, so little time.
Nate wasn’t so amused anymore. “Keep the channel clear for tactical discussions,” he barked. “Try to hail Gita again and tell her that we’re about to start lighting up the fuckers.”
I did just that, using my knees to keep the wheel steady with one hand. “Gita?” I asked, but then switched right over to our open frequency. “Listen, guys and dolls, we’re about a minute out, heading into the bowl of shit you got yourself stuck in. We’ll try to distract them, maybe even make them come after us. Everyone who can, set your beacons to full aversion and hunker down. The rest, do your very best to make a bang, and then run like the apocalypse is coming right for you. If we distract them enough, this might just work.”
Anything else I wanted to say had to wait as I was about to barrel into the mass of zombies, which forced me to drop the mic in favor of wrenching the wheel to the side hard. The tires lost traction when I didn’t brake, making the armored rear of the Rover slam into the shamblers that would have otherwise become hood ornaments. I grinned at Nate swearing up a storm, but glanced back briefly to make sure that he’d snapped his harness to one of the support struts inside the car. He might still come in handy later.
And then I didn’t have time for checkups or bad puns as it took my entire amped-up concentration to keep the car moving, skimming along the mass of zombies that seemed to stretch from here to the horizon. I didn’t even flinch when a series of explosions went up what sounded like right next to my car, but considering I didn’t feel them, they must have been further out. That, or the mass of bodies they tore into muffled them, a lot. I tried to avoid hitting any zombies head-on, but even that became impossible soon, first splattering my windscreen, then making the frame of the car groan alarmingly as the impacts got worse and worse. I was still going as fast as I could, but with more and more bodies closing in around us, the more got under my wheels, making them lose traction with increasing frequency.
“Can you clear up a path ahead of us?” I asked, hoping that Nate would still be able to hear me over the almost nonstop bark of his assault rifle. “Unless it means blowing us up. Then, never mind.”
There was no immediate answer, making me slightly anxious, until—
“Brake, hard left!”
/> I followed suit without giving Nate’s order any thought, wrenching the wheel as hard to the side as I could. The car moved slower than I’d anticipated, almost grinding to a halt with the sudden increase of bodies on the side. Then the mine went off, close enough that it pressed the air right out of my lungs, body parts splattering the passenger side. A visceral wave ran through the zombies, making them ease back from the Rover. I floored it, escaping the worst of the fray.
“It’s working!” I heard Gita’s cheer from the radio, incapable of responding. “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up! They’re getting distracted!”
Two more explosions went off way too close for comfort, followed by Pia’s cursing. “All out of Claymores. More are coming our way. If we stick around much longer, they will swarm us!”
I let out a sigh of relief when the racket surrounding us dimmed as Nate ducked back into the car, closing the hatch just as two enterprising shamblers tried to jump on the hood. I quickly dissuaded them of their endeavor, braking hard, then running them over as soon as they’d staggered back to the ground. Nate didn’t bother with climbing into the front, just leaned closer to me. “We’re maybe fifty yards into the thick of the mob. Try to get out of here, aiming south.”
I let out a snort. “Do you think I have any clue where south is?”
I expected a scathing response, but instead Nate pointed at the left-most corner of the windscreen. “Somewhere over there.”
Gripping the wheel harder, I floored it, hoping that the press of bodies wouldn’t get too bad and get us stuck for good. A sudden pulse from the beacon went out behind me, strong enough to set my teeth on edge. Nate must have flipped the switch directly affixed to it. The zombies reared back from the car, creating just enough space so I could push through. There was no second pulse, but it wasn’t necessary, the mob finally thinning.
Green Fields (Book 6): Unity Page 33
