Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak

by Lecter, Adrienne

  “Yeah, it’s not her fault,” Martinez came to my rescue—or did he? Grinning up at me, he winked. “Seriously. It’s only been four weeks since he got impaled by a rebar. Not sure I could get it up so soon after that.”

  Snickers and the beginning of raucous laughter answered him, and the confused look on Madeline’s face made it almost worth being at the butt-end of a joke. I still sent Martinez a glare that let him know that he was on my shit list now, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  Dropping down onto my sleeping bag, I shrugged my jacket on, but before I could even come up with a good reply, Nate materialized out of the darkness, hulking over Martinez in what could only be described as a menacing way.

  “I find it quite endearing that you worry about my ability to get and maintain an erection in a professional way, but let me assure you—that’s not an issue.” He briefly looked over to me and graced me with a smile—that special smile that did weird things to me that I felt I wasn’t responsible for anymore. That smile that had made me accept his invitation for coffee. That smile that made me follow him through hell and back. And here we were, a month later, and everything around us had changed—except that. I found that strangely reassuring.

  The moment passed—although not without Burns snickering, because that would have been too perfect otherwise—and Nate shot a look around that was anything but alluring. “Anyone else got anything to say on the matter of my sex life? Or can we cut right to the actually important things, like how and where we can get some cars? I for one wouldn’t mind not having to sleep out in the open one night longer if I can get away from potential cannibals at the same time. And returning to the age-old tradition of screwing in the backseat of a car rather than in the woods would be a nice benefit, too.”

  So much for that.

  But at least Madeline closed her mouth with an audible snap, and when she caught my gaze across the circle of our group, she looked away first. Guess that matter was resolved, too.

  Chapter 20

  Exhaling slowly, I forced my hands to stop shaking. Sweat was trickling down my temples, and it didn’t just come from the ever-present heat. My entire body was tense as hell, and for once that was a good thing. If I could just keep the jitters down, my aim would be steady enough.

  A loud bang from up ahead made me jump, but I forced my stance to remain as it was, shutgun at the ready. Just a door kicked in. Staring down main street, I waited for zombies to pour forth from some hiding place that hadn’t been obvious to us before—but the street remained empty. Figures moved forward, near silent in the singing heat of noon. Another bang sounded as yet another door gave way to a well-aimed boot kick. Another house cleared. They’d been at it for hours, it seemed, although I knew that rationally, maybe twenty minutes had passed. Fifteen houses ticked off already, with only five more to go. And I hadn’t even come close to a shambler yet.

  Martinez chuckled as he saw me tense yet again, his own rifle at the ready—and a lot more steady than my shotgun.

  “It gets easier with time,” he observed, my annoyance apparently quite obvious.

  “You say that like it’s a good thing,” I griped back, hiding a smile.

  Grinning, he looked at me for a second before bringing his focus back on the main road that we were supposed to be guarding. “That’s what she said.”

  That got a snort from me. “Exactly how long are you guys going to keep this up? Because it’s getting old fast.”

  “It got old the first time Burns said it when he kicked me awake,” Martinez replied. “Doesn’t mean any of us will shut up until long after we don’t get a rise out of you anymore.”

  I was tempted to roll my eyes at him—not that he’d see, but that was kind of the point—but motion to my right made me snap to attention immediately. It was just a curtain moving in the wind from where someone had shoved a window open—likely to air out the house because it dearly needed that—but better safe than sorry. I doubted anyone had expected this part of the operation to be this easy, and I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Then again, I was exceptionally jumpy today, and no guessing how long it would take for my nerves to even out again.

  I hadn’t slept particularly well last night, and not just because we’d been up another hour, discussing how to best proceed. Even before it was time to move out just after sunrise I’d been staring at the lightening sky above me, my mind caught in an endless loop of… not even anything concrete, but the fist of fear that had closed around my heart and kept squeezing made it impossible to find anything to distract myself for long. Sure, my body had been more relaxed than in weeks—endorphin rushes will do that to you—but that had easily been counteracted by the steadily rising level of anxiety as Nate’s words kept sinking deeper and deeper into my subconscious.

  No place was safe. We had nowhere left to run. But giving up was not an option.

  Pretty much the only thing I wasn’t worrying about was the change in how the guys treated me—and that had, surprise, surprise, nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it was out in the open now that Nate and I were a thing. There was plenty of ribbing going on—and not just centered on me—but that didn’t bother me. In the morning, as an astonishing amount of cans and dried food changed hands I realized that they’d actually had a betting pool going on that Bates had lost catastrophically. As Burns had informed me while munching his way through a bag of salted peanuts, the top bet had been that I would come after Madeline with either my knife or gun and beat her to a bloody pulp. I didn’t know how I felt about that. The losing bet—the reason for why Bates now had a pretty empty pack—had been that Nate would ditch me for her. I certainly knew how I felt about that, and didn’t even try to tone down my glares at him whenever Bates slinked through my field of vision. No one had actually hit the jackpot, mainly because there had been no screaming and drama involved—what that said about how they saw me I didn’t even want to consider—so I’d claimed the prize myself, daring anyone with death glares to protest as I chewed myself through the two bags of home-made beef jerky, feeling completely entitled to them. But even with all the teasing, it was pretty much the usual, with a slightly different topic.

  No, the real change was that my anxiety coupled with what Martinez had classified as your typical shell-shocked traumatized look in my eyes made it obvious that Nate and I’d had “the talk,” and apparently, the fact that I wasn’t sitting in a corner, rocking myself to sleep, or having hysterics elevated me to the status of worth being regarded as an equal. I might still be the rookie where shooting, sneaking, and tactics were involved, but now I was in the know of what was really going on, and that deserved some recognition.

  What it actually meant was more straight talk and a lot less coddling, both things I only realized had been different when suddenly there wasn’t anyone there to help me heave my pack up, and it was expected that I could follow orders and directions at a glance only. Not that I felt like complaining about that. At all.

  So when we’d finally made it to our destination—skipping two other small towns before because they were either overrun or looked a little too dingy for what we had in mind—there’d been no debate about me joining the mission to clear the village and get a couple of cars on the road and moving. That I wasn’t part of the clean-up crew made sense—even with learning the ropes, I was still the rookie, and it was safer for everyone if I was part of the backup, waiting to run in if the situation got hot, rather than creating a potential problem if I messed up and the others had to both abandon their posts and get me out of there, further endangering everyone. It rankled a little, but Cho and Santos were also waiting with us, not chomping at the bit, so I took it for what it was—someone needed to be backup. Might as well be me.

  I was still tense as hell as the last house was declared clear, and Nate came sauntering back to us, still warily glancing at his surroundings. At the other end of the street—and there really wasn’t anything to this town expect that one street,
not even an intersection in the middle or something—I could make out Burns and Andrej disappearing into a carport, while Pia walked back into the last house she’d done. I still wasn’t quite sure about how I felt about that part of the big reveal—but knowing that we had at least four people in our midst who were de facto immune to zombie bites was oddly relieving. It only made sense to let them hurl themselves into the thick of things when they knew that they had much better chances of surviving. It was hard to make myself stop to guess who else might be affected, but Nate had been pretty final about his denial to give up more than I had to know—again proving that he could be trusted.

  And it wasn’t like he behaved differently toward me now—if anything, I’d gotten even more scorn than usual for fumbling with my shotgun while checking it over than usual. Apparently, the fact that I hadn’t balked during our talk gave him the justification he needed to continue not sugar-coating anything. That didn’t mean that I was any less resentful about getting barked at for pretty much nothing at all, but it was easier to deal with it now. A little. But I would have been lying if I hadn’t been plotting sweet revenge in the few moments where my mind wasn’t full of, “Oh God, oh God, we’re all gonna die!” happy thoughts.

  Stopping in front of us, he nodded at Santos first. “Run back and get the others. Even if we run into any opposition now, it can’t be that bad. They should make it here until we’re done getting what we need.” Santos nodded and took off in the direction we’d came from, cutting right through the field bordering the lawn of the last house to the northeast. Not knowing in how much trouble we would get ourselves, we’d left Madeline, the kids, Skip, and Steve with Taylor and Campbell.

  One thing had changed for me—I now tried to remember all the names of the people I was with. “That guy who loves to kick roadkill we pass,” just didn’t cut it anymore now that I knew in just how deep a shit we really were.

  “The rest of you, split up and help us search the houses. Take anything that looks worth stowing in the cars. Martinez, Lewis, you go look for meds. And not just first-aid stuff, either. If room and weight isn’t an issue anymore, we can stock up on anything we might possibly need. I have absolutely no patience to listen to someone hack up phlegm for a month just because we missed getting any cough drops.”

  I was burning to tell him that if any one of us got bronchitis this winter, cough drops wouldn’t cut it, but I could already imagine his scathing answer, so I refrained. Instead, I tagged after Martinez, and when he ran after Bates and Cho into one house, I took the opposite one, following Nate and Collins.

  In the first round, they’d already killed a good twenty zombies, and our more diligent—and much louder—search now rounded up another fifteen, making me guess that not many people had gotten away from this town. We also didn’t find more than four gnawed-to-shreds remains, putting this town at a dangerously high conversion rate. Why they’d remained squatting here rather than roaming the countryside was a mystery, but maybe it was as simple as that they hadn’t seen anything to hunt after and had ended up mostly standing around, not even resorting to cannibalism yet. Or maybe it was something in the water. What did I know?

  With so many infected, we were naturally cautious about taking food, but we still ended up with a decent pile of provisions in the middle of the road. It was more than we’d scavenged at any one time on our entire trip so far, and I wasn’t the only one who kept glancing at all that stuff wistfully. Had we made our life deliberately difficult the way we’d been working so far? Or was this town just a one-off exception and we would have all been long dead if we hadn’t stayed clear whenever we could avoid any assortment of buildings?

  Madeline and the others finally arrived, while Andrej, Martinez, and Burns were busy rolling cars out of garages and carports, still bickering over which ones to select. Since Martinez could pretty much hotwire any car, we weren’t depending on finding keys, although that wasn’t much of an issue to start with.

  Madeline had completely ignored me this morning, and now there was more disdain in her gaze as it skipped over me than I felt I deserved. Yes, there might have been some gloating going on—particularly after scoring the beef jerky—but Nate had made it pretty clear that there was no competition, so why bother fighting? Not that I had been fighting in the first place. Sadly, Madeline didn’t get that memo, I was afraid.

  Her creepy-eyed kids were trudging docilely behind her, if anything even less lively today. Erica was looking at the houses with a mixture of fright and longing, and it was that which finally kicked me out of my indecision and made me go over to her.

  “We’ve found some toys and clothing in most of the houses. If you want to, I’ll go inside with you so you can pick and choose some. For your family, you know?”

  The way she taxed me now was more calculating than any thirteen-year-old had a right to be, and she reminded me a lot of her mother there.

  “Thank you, but I think we can do without your alms,” she replied before she breezed by me, joining her mother where she was busy sweet-talking Bates into something—likely exactly what I’d just offered them. I couldn’t quell the anger welling up inside of me, and after a moment I stopped trying.

  “You know, anything you get from any of us are alms, whether you pretend you’re doing something for that in exchange or just accept that someone wants to help you,” I called after her, loud enough that heads turned up and down the street. I was sure that I would have gotten a glare from Nate, but he was conveniently busy somewhere else. What a shame.

  Erica frowned, her lower lip quivering slightly, and that was enough for me to feel at least a little guilty, but her mother didn’t even need that for an excuse to whip around and stalk toward me, looking ridiculous in her leggings and sundress between all the outdoor gear and weapons. Just a little taller, she used every inch that she had on me to glare down her nose, but I didn’t see how that should have had any effect on me. I still had my shotgun casually propped on my left arm, gun and knife strapped to my thighs; it wasn’t like posturing would do anything against that.

  “You will not speak like that to my daughter!” she told me heatedly, narrowing her eyes into a sneer. “In fact, you will not speak to any of my children. At all.”

  I wondered if this was how I looked to Nate when I was throwing a hissy fit, or what he claimed to be one. I was starting to see why it never did the trick.

  “Or what?” I asked, not bothering to tone down the arrogance in my voice. “You’ll bitch me out? You’ll ask Bates to pout at me, too? I don’t care how many cocks you suck. You still won’t get any of them to act up against me.” Not that I was that sure they wouldn’t take her side, but I didn’t need Burns or Nate glowering over my shoulder to know that everyone was well aware of whose support I could count on. And it wasn’t like I’d made some unreasonable request.

  I expected her to go off in my face now—might have even counted on it a little—but Madeline proved that she had better self-control, leaving it at a huff.

  “You think you’re so clever, huh?”

  I shrugged, not denying that I actually did.

  “At least I’m not stupid enough to try to get the guy in charge to whore out the woman he’s screwing himself,” I shot back.

  “Well, we can’t all be perky little soldier dolls,” she replied, leaning close enough that she was pretty much all up in my face.

  “I don’t judge you for what you do, so you should at the very least extend that same curtesy to me.”

  Her laugh was derisive, and I wouldn’t have put it beyond her to spit at me any moment now. “You don’t judge? Missy, I hate to tell you, but you do nothing but judge. You’re a prude, a stuck-up, judgmental, liberal flaming heart.”

  I didn’t even know where to start on that so I didn’t try.

  “Same as I’m a lesbian, huh?” I replied, smirking at her. She just glared back, huffing. The wise thing would have been to just walk away, but the needless tension of the past days had me so on edge
that I decided that it was better to clear the air now and hopefully be done with it. “I mean, you do realize that all I want to do is help you? No strings attached, not even a ‘thank you’ needed, because I know how much it bugs you whenever you have to rely on me. You don’t like the clothes we picked for you because we thought they were the most suitable for our circumstances rather than what speaks to your fashion sense? Well, here’s your chance to make your own choices.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she hissed.

  “No, you don’t,” I agreed. “But you also don’t need to whore around to get what you need. I’m not keeping you from contributing what you think you can offer, but don’t you get it? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. We will continue to feed you, protect you, find you new clothes and whatnot you need. For free. Because that’s what you do when there are only a handful of us left and you’re not complete scum.”

  Madeline didn’t react for a full five seconds, making it obvious that I was wasting my breath here. Maybe she really thought that I was wrong—or she simply couldn’t live with accepting that truth—but that didn’t mean she had the right to laugh in my face now, pretty much bringing my patience to an end.

  “Girly, you still have so much to learn,” she said as she turned around and started walking away, leaving me standing in the middle of the street, fuming. I glared after her for another wasted couple of seconds before I shook my head and walked down the road to where the next car was set up for departure.

  We’d been debating over what cars to go for pretty much since we set out this morning, and the majority vote had been for anything with a four-wheel drive, and preferably some decent storage. Speed was less of a criterium than the ability not to get bogged down in the first puddle we hit. And speaking of hitting—it should be sturdy enough to take a pounding if we had to make our own way. So far, most highways had been too clogged up in sections to be of much use, but utility roads might even be clear enough that we wouldn’t have to backtrack much. I’d never gone off-roading before, but the idea to catch up on that didn’t sound too bad.