Indeed he had, but I forced myself not to dwell on that. “Keep trying. I’d like to know if I can take my time finding the perfect route, or if we have to wing it.”
“Wing it,” Nate agreed, not even considering option number one. “When have we ever not done that?”
I was afraid that there was more truth to that statement than we both preferred—and the fact that it made me excited as I threw the Rover into another turn that made gravel spew up behind the rear wheels did not bode well. Or maybe it did. Time would tell.
Before long, we switched up the driving order, mostly because my erratic driving made it hard for the other cars to keep up, and not miss turns. I couldn’t remember the last time any of the indicators of the Rover had worked. I wasn’t sure Martinez had put them back in after working on the lights last winter. It wasn’t like anyone would give me a ticket for not using them, and in usual marching order we’d relied on the coms for information exchange. That left me with the random ambitious shambler trying to climb up onto the roof of the car. A few even managed, but were easily discouraged from remaining there.
Then I went around another bend in the small road we were following, slowly climbing into the foothills of the Front Range, when the radio lit up. Nate made a grab for it, switching to our open frequency immediately. The list of status reports that followed made me grin. Oh, we were definitely not the only ones who’d managed to make it through the densely populated corridor, and while our detour further south had made us fashionably late, we were still on schedule.
“ETA for the first groups should be just after sundown,” Tamara informed us once the general check-in was concluded. None of her sister’s doubt from this morning was audible in her statement, but I hadn’t forgotten about that yet. “So far we have seven groups reporting in who have acquired a tail. You’ll make the eighth. You’ll have to coordinate so you hit the meeting point roughly on time. Good luck.”
“We’ll need it,” I muttered under my breath. Nate didn’t react but I could tell that he was thinking along the same lines.
With us now outside of the signal scramblers, Nate checked in with the other two cars, not that they needed it. We were still following one of the routes that had been declared as possible attack vectors, and it wasn’t like there was that much room for deviation that didn’t include driving straight down the mountainside. As we kept driving further away from civilization, the shamblers started to thin out more, to the point where I was starting to be concerned whether we should switch on the beacons once more. Since leaving the city we’d kept them turned off, once more relying on the tantalizing attraction any moving object held for the undead.
“Here, eat something.” Nate offered me the second half of the protein bar he’d been chewing. I opened my mouth, letting him shove it in, yet before I could do more than chew—and well before I could make a stupid joke—our little convoy went over a small rise where the road we’d been following opened up into a larger area. Covered with grass, it had likely been used for loading wood onto trucks, judging from the deep ruts still visible. Now it was a gathering place of a different kind—and not the welcome one.
The driver of the car right in front of me stepped on the brakes, and I narrowly missed smashing into the passenger rear side as I went around it, too fast to stop.
There were zombies everywhere, almost as thick as down in the flatlands. And at least to me it seemed like they turned as a single unit, staring at us.
Nate hit the switch for the beacon. The pulse that went out was strong enough to force the barely swallowed protein bar back up my esophagus, but I couldn’t have cared less. A few of the shamblers closest to us pushed back, but only a step or two; the press of those behind them was too strong to let them evade, and the pulse clearly too weak to affect those farther away.
“What do we do?” I whispered, even though I knew they wouldn’t have heard me had I screamed—or at least it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
Nate’s slow exhale spoke of the same kind of panic-laced caution that was gripping me hard. “I think we’re well past the point where we stand a chance that they’ll just ignore us. Start driving, but as slow as you can and still make progress. Somewhere to our right there must be another road leading away from this.” He reached for the radio, still speaking softly as he relayed the same orders to the others. “Put your beacons on full aversion and follow us. We’ll try to look as uninteresting to them as possible. Whatever you do, don’t shoot. Don’t make any noise you can possibly avoid. If we stay calm, we have a chance of getting out of this somehow.”
At his nod, I eased the car into first and rolled forward, trying to keep as close to the edge of the clearing as possible. As soon as the car moved, a surge went through the zombies as they tried to press forward, but those that felt the pulses the strongest resisted just enough to keep maybe two feet of space between us. I forced myself to keep looking ahead rather than through my side window, but with my peripheral vision full of the undead it was impossible to calm down. Not that I tried, much; if I really had to do something drastic, I’d need the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
Something crashed into the rear of the car, followed by three loud “thumps” as yet more zombies vaulted over their undead brethren to get onto the vehicle—our merry tail had caught up to us, it seemed. Chancing a glance back, it was easy to make out the two different groups as they started tearing into each other as soon as they were about to merge, but that still left enough enterprising ones that tried to catch a ride with us. I didn’t even wonder why—or how—they acted aggressive toward each other; any distraction was welcome right now, unless it led to our quick and bloody demise. I swerved around a little to shake the enterprising piggy-backers off but we were going too slow—and the sudden, more erratic motions drew a lot of attention from the resident crowd, so I forced myself to level out the car once more. The hatch was secure and the roof reinforced. I wasn’t afraid they’d punch their way inside, even if they tried, and so far they hadn’t.
Just as I thought that, something hit the roof right over my head, causing me to jerk the wheel to the side instinctively. Nate cursed, making a grab for one of my shotguns from the rack, but eased himself back into his seat a second later.
“What, killing our hearing for good not worth saving the paint job of the car?” I teased between gritted teeth. More and more “thumps” followed, until I started feeling how top heavy we were becoming. “Something’s not working about this strategy!” I called, uttering a delightfully girlish scream when the next zombie crashed right into my door, not even trying to go up. If I wasn’t mistaken, that one had been part of our so-far silent onlookers. I tried to catch a glimpse of the other two cars but the mass of bodies was slowly seeping in between us, making it impossible. I could still tell where they were from their beacons, but even at full strength they’d obviously lost their effectiveness—
“Shut off the beacon!”
Nate gave me an incredulous look. “Come again?”
“Shut it off! It’s not working. If anything, I think we’ve trained those that we picked up before to follow us, using that signal. And if the others learn from them—“
“We’re fucked,” Nate agreed, reaching for the switch, quickly relaying the news to the other cars. Their beacons went out seconds later, leaving me feeling almost relieved—
And able to pick up the far more low-key pulsing that came from three different locations inside the mass of shamblers.
“It’s one of the streaks. Or at least they have those beacon vests, too.” I presumed that was the case, rather than a stationary attracting beacon that the zombies would likely have destroyed within minutes of gathering around it. “So this is one of the watchdog groups that Aimes was hinting at?”
“Only thing that makes sense,” Nate replied. “Accelerate a little, then brake hard. Maybe we can shake some loose this way.”
I tried, and while some shamblers tumbled off our roof, the mome
nt I stopped a few more jumped right on, making me swear under my breath.
“How much farther until we get back on the road?” Even if we couldn’t shake them, limiting the space would make getting away easier.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Nate muttered, sounding preoccupied. When I dared to look at him rather than the shamblers, I found him frowning toward the meadow. Somehow I got the sense that he wasn’t just trying to murder the undead next to the cars with his glare.
“You’re going to try to shoot them, aren’t you?” I asked, then answered my own question, knowing all too well what Nate would reply. “Of course you are.”
His shrug could only be described as infinitesimal. “Considering you feel them and I don’t, it would make more sense if you were to give it a shot.” He gave a dramatic pause, a momentary silly grin breaking through the tension. “But seeing as you’re driving…”
“We’re going slow enough that we could easily switch,” I suggested, silently questioning my sanity.
“Actually, we could,” Nate agreed, surprising me.
“Wait, did I just sign up to go up through the hatch with our car roof crawling with zombies?”
“Yes, you did,” he said, shelving the shotgun and already reaching over to unsnap my harness.
Keeping my eyes peeled on the mass of bodies around us, I did my best to blindly shrug off the belts without making the car swerve. “Next time, remind me not to volunteer for the suicide mission.”
“But where would be the fun in that?” he snarked back. “Top or bottom?”
It was a relevant question, but loopy as I was right now with dawning horror just adding to the perpetual swagger my mind had succumbed to—exactly what was in that booster cocktail that turned me into a complete adrenaline junkie?—I couldn’t hold back a snicker. “You should know by now that, given a choice, I’m always on top.”
“Yeah, more like letting me do all the work,” he muttered, but dutifully pushed himself deeper into the seat so I could start climbing over to his side, level with the windshield. With a shambler plastered upside down to the outside of the glass, sneering at me, that was quite the pleasant exercise.
“Is it normal that the booster makes your mind go off on tangents?” I inquired, trying my best to keep the wheel steady with one hand while I kept most of my weight balanced with an iron grip on the oh-shit handle of the opposite side. The car did some impressive jostling as Nate pushed himself in the opposite direction underneath me, steadying the wheel as soon as his ass hit my seat.
“It should let you focus better on complicated tasks,” he offered. “Guess your brain’s just weird.”
I left that uncommented on, staring out of the window instead while I tried to calm myself down a little. Focus, right. Exhaling slowly, I closed my eyes, trying to pinpoint the origin of the beacon blips I still felt coming from the undead mass, but without visual confirmation it was hard to get more than a general direction. “What should I do about our blind passengers?” I wanted to know when I felt as ready as I was going to get.
“Try to ignore them,” came Nate’s unhelpful answer. When my silence apparently spoke loudly of my enthusiasm, he tore his eyes away from the windshield. “If I accelerate, more will jump on, and that could get worse for you. This way they’ll only try to grab and bite you. If they have momentum, they might succeed in pulling you outside, and short of you blowing yourself up with a grenade I don’t see how you’d avoid getting torn apart within seconds.”
“Gee, never tell me my odds,” I muttered, trying to disband the image his words burned into my mind’s eye. “Do we wait until we see the road—“
“We won’t see it until we’re on it.”
I nodded, then reached for the radio to cue in the others. “Listen, I’m going to do something incredibly stupid in a few seconds from now, so keep yourself ready. The plan is to veer off first chance we get somewhere to the right. Try not to get bogged down. If you get the chance to push through the mass and make a run for it, take it. Good luck.” Rather than wait for their replies—and likely reasonable alarm that would make me question what I was about to do—I climbed over my seat, pulling my sniper rifle along with me. I hadn’t exactly expected to use the M24 for this endeavor, and I wasn’t sure if I could hit a barn door under the current circumstances, but as they said, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
What I dreaded the most was getting pulled out of the car, but the second the hatch opened, the immense stench assaulted me, wiping my mind clear of any other concern than trying not to barf. I forced myself to take shallow breaths only as I pushed myself up to my full height, almost welcoming the distraction when I had to punch a shambler in the face to keep it from coming right at me. My elevated position gave me a great view of our surroundings, but that was a mixed blessing at best. At least I could verify that there was a road leading off the vast open space, and it was closer than I’d expected.
There was no way to keep the car steady, not that Nate seemed to try. Yet what shook off the enterprising shamblers also made my work pretty much impossible, even as I tried to brace myself by wedging my back into a corner of the hatch. The orange rays of the setting sun did their own to disorient me, and after I’d had to bat away the third undead trying to reach for me I gave up, got my sniper rifle ready, and shot in the vague direction of one of the pulses I felt, somewhere to my left. Nothing happened, but then I hadn’t expected anything different. Even if I hit the zombie wearing the vest, the beacon would still be active, unless I lucked out and hit whatever powered that thing. The loud echo of the shot boomed across the moaning and screaming of the zombies, agitating them even more. Just peachy.
“Whatever you’re waiting for, either get the job done or get back inside,” I heard Nate’s voice grate through my earpiece. “The fuckers are getting restless.”
I only wasted a glance to confirm his assertion, then sent two more shots in the same direction before switching targets. For a second I thought I caught something through the scope, but the next jostle had my aim off by a good five feet. I considered reloading, but instead grabbed the next best larger weapon I could grope for blindly, coming back up with an M4. That would do for what I had in mind.
“Radio the car behind us to get up front,” I told my illustrious driver. “Once they are past us, I’ll do some good old-fashioned crowd control.” No idea why I was itching to blindly tear into the press of bodies all around us, but I suspected that I couldn’t exactly blame the booster for that. I knew it was a waste of ammo, but far was it from me to give a shit.
It didn’t take the other vehicle long to close up to us, and a spray of bullets later they managed to pull ahead, drawing up to the lead car. I managed to down a few shamblers, but their places were quickly filled up from behind. My guess was that this horde had long since learned to sustain itself by culling the weak, and it was likely just the crazy amount of sound that we made that got them to focus on us. The sane thing would have been to relay that to the others and build a plan on that—like to stop and see if they’d lose interest eventually—but we didn’t exactly have time for that. Ahead, I saw the first car amble onto the road, immediately picking up speed when the mass of zombies started to thin out. I emptied the magazine into the shamblers toward the thick of the mass, then slammed a new one into the carbine. A few more fell, but the screams that answered me made my blood curdle.
Nate floored it as he reached the road, breaking away from the worst of the sea of undead. A few quick ones tried to jump onto the car but I shot them off, sending another sixty rounds into them. This time when the magazine was empty I dropped into a crouch and closed the hatch rather than reloaded. A sharp turn in the road sent me flying backward into the passenger back window, drawing a rather undignified “uff” from me. Cursing under my breath, I fumbled for a new magazine but rather than secure the M4 to the rack, I shoved it through the straps of one of the ready packs stored back here. Then I squeezed myself back front. Through the badly s
meared windshield I could make out the other two cars. The Rover was definitely up for a good wash.
“How much more of this—“ I started to ask just as a string of zombies tumbled onto the road ahead, forcing Nate to slow down not to total the car as he slammed into them. Not yet secured in the harness, I barely managed to brace myself against the dashboard, smacking the side of my head against the glass.
“You okay?” Nate asked between swerves, accelerating as soon as the way was moderately clear again.
“I’ll live,” I huffed, gingerly patting for blood but only coming away with gore. I must have made quite the disgusted sound because Nate started to laugh, which got me to lean over and smear what had ended up on my hand across the side of his face. At least now we were both reeking like a decomposing trash heap. Nate grimaced but couldn’t exactly do anything, seeing as he needed both hands on the wheel to keep the car on the road. More and more zombies came down the side of the hill behind us, swelling the ranks of those chasing after us. Then another stream came down up front, forcing us to slow down even more. Nate accelerated as soon as he was through them, but in doing so he missed the left turn in the road and continued on straight at the crossroads. Craning my neck, I caught a last glimpse of the other two cars disappearing in that direction.
“Looks like you’re on your own,” I radioed in. “See you at the rendezvous point.” Up ahead the forest grew denser again, quickly cutting off the last bright rays of sunshine. “Switch,” I told Nate.
He answered with an unenthusiastic grunt, echoed by two shamblers vaulting back onto the roof of the car.
“Seriously, I mean it,” I insisted.
“Shut up and catch some rest. You’ve been driving all day. I still need you sharp when the actual part of our mission begins.” Just as he said that, Nate hit a rough patch in the road where roots had cracked the asphalt, almost sending us straight into the trees closing in around us.
Green Fields (Book 6): Unity Page 35
