Oh, and the fact that we wouldn’t be on our feet for fifteen hours a day and had somewhere closed-off to sleep sounded mighty fine to me, too.
Wishful thinking was one thing, what we would actually find to work with quite another. Yet, the selection of five SUVs, lined up in the middle of the road at the other end of town, looked pretty promising. A Land Rover, a Jeep, two Toyotas, and a Nissan—all not completely new, but no old rust buckets that would break down within the first few miles. There had been some heavy debate about whether to go for newer or older cars, but in the end, it was the same—and if this actually worked, we could redistribute packs and people easily if one of the cars had to be discarded, possibly even two or three. And it wasn’t like we had that big a pool to make our selection from in the first place.
To say I was excited was the understatement of the century.
“How are we going to do this now?” I asked Andrej where he was still critically eyeing the Jeep—the oldest of the vehicles, but that didn’t seem to deter him one bit. He looked up and shrugged.
“We’re nineteen people. These are the only five cars that meet our criteria. Do the math.”
“How do we split up?” I asked, pointedly not glaring over my shoulder at Madeline, but I didn’t doubt that everyone was aware of our little talk there, even if they’d missed the details.
“First, we load up the provisions,” Nate cut right through my wannabe bitchfest in the making. “Then we see how much room there’s left in each car. And we still need to decide on whether we do designated drivers or switch on rotation.” That had been one of the things that we hadn’t been able to settle on last night. Which was better—letting someone wear themselves out until they couldn’t be trusted to do any other duties but leave the others rested enough to pick up the slack, or evenly distribute the load. That driving would demand a lot more focus than it had a month ago was a given, even if the cars didn’t draw the attention of every zombie mob in the state—which was just one more open question. We were only about a hundred miles south of Chicago, and there was no guessing how many shamblers had made it across that distance so far. Just because we hadn’t run into a stream of them since the very first week didn’t mean that they weren’t lurking around the next corner.
Our loot was quickly packed up, and I realized that I needn’t have bothered with questioning how we would distribute ourselves between the cars, as within the first ten minutes, packs appeared in front seats as they were claimed without much bickering between the forming teams. The sky blue Range Rover that was parked in the second spot from the front remained suspiciously empty besides the five fuel tanks and bags of flour, rice, and enough preserves to make me want to roll my eyes. Glancing sidelong at Nate, I heaved my pack up onto my right shoulder and made a beeline for the car. “I’m driving.”
He shot me a bemused look but went to the passenger side without a comment.
“Aren’t you going to fight me over this?” I prompted, watching him carefully over the roof of the car.
“Like I’d stand a chance arguing,” came his wry reply as he ducked inside and started loading the center console between the front seats with ammo and snacks for the road.
“It makes the most sense that I’m driving,” I argued, not sure why I was even putting an effort into it, seeing as he didn’t put up a fight. “You’re the much better shot, and you know where we’re going. And you’re still not at a hundred percent peak performance, physically I mean.”
His smile took on a hint of a leer.
“You didn’t complain last night about my performance.”
Burns’s chuckle from somewhere behind me was impossible to ignore, but I didn’t look away from Nate as I held his gaze evenly.
“Do you always congratulate yourself after shell-shocking a girl into compliance?”
“Usually,” he replied, still mighty satisfied with himself.
Shaking my head, I muttered a low, “Asshole,” under my breath, but didn’t try to hide my grin as I continued to stow away my pack. Resurfacing from the car, I looked around, my gaze inadvertently snatching to where Madeline and her kids were slowly approaching, her pulling an honest-to-God small hard case after her. Clearly, she’d taken up someone else on my offer. Glancing back to where Nate was also watching them, I couldn’t help but get the sense that he was about as happy to see them as I was. There were only two cars with free back rows left—our Land Rover and Andrej and Pia’s Jeep—with four people left to seat.
“I’m not riding with her,” I whispered to him, making sure that this time, my voice didn’t carry. Nate’s eyes met mine, but the look in them was unreadable.
Madeline came to a halt next to the Toyota behind us, her eyes quickly taking in the situation. The snarling twist her mouth took on made it obvious that she’d reached a similar conclusion as I had—and liked it just as much.
“I’m not splitting my kids up,” she objected before anyone could even suggest as much. Why she glared at me there I had no clue. “We will all ride together. In one car.”
Nobody seemed thrilled about that, although the larger Toyota easily had enough room for six people—the family, a driver, and someone with a rifle riding shotgun—but Nate had a different idea. Looking around, he shrugged.
“Pick any car you like. We’ll get it set up for you.”
Madeline looked surprised at the offer, but rather than being happy, suspicion spread on her face. Erica seemed relieved, at least, and the younger kids didn’t react at all, just kept clinging to their mother and sister. There was no guessing what went through her head right now, but it couldn’t have been very logical, because after some whispering with her daughter, she pointed at a mint green car a few driveways down from her position. “That one.”
Looks were exchanged and I caught more than one disbelieving murmur, but Bates and Martinez dutifully went over to the car and started checking the engine first, then topped off the tank before they rolled it backward out onto the street. It wasn’t exactly a bad car, but I’d expected her to go for something practical at least; the typical soccer mom “I need space, and even more space for all my kids and shit,” stuff. Not a tiny car that barely had enough room in the back row for the two car seats that had been set aside for the kids already, a trunk so small Madeline’s new case had to be stowed somewhere else, and Erica left with her backpack up front with her.
“Do we get some endorsement money for this shit at least?” Burns muttered to me, flashing me his signature grin.
“Beats me,” I shot back, shaking my head. Yet no one else spoke up and I’d already done enough quarreling with her to last me a lifetime, to I let it slide. “Then again, I’m the one in the bright blue gas guzzler. Not sure I should be the one throwing stones.”
Burns looked with a lot more appreciation at my car than I—or Madeline—had ever gotten from him.
“Don’t diss the color. Sure, it’s a little girly, but you’ll live,” he teased.
“Breaks up the silhouette against the sky from a distance,” Nate supplied. Was that defensiveness in his tone that I was detecting? Couldn’t very well be. At my pointed look, he smiled. “Plus, it has a great suspension and awesome leather seats. Are you really going to complain about a little creature comfort?”
“Never,” I replied, climbing in. And yup, those seats? To die for. The car even smelled nice, which I was afraid would change quickly if we sat in it, windows up, for an extended period of time. Not that I cared. Much. At least the seats and steering wheel were covered in dark leather, making me a little less concerned about the grime I was covered in and would undoubtedly leave behind.
Ten minutes later, we were all set, and at the signal from Burns, we started the engines.
Chapter 21
I was tense as hell as I rolled past the last house and out onto the open road. We were crawling at less than fifteen miles per hour, careful not to rev the engines beyond what was necessary. All cars had started, although Madeline’s had sta
lled briefly, making me roll my eyes. Now they were easing out of town one after the other, with enough space between to account for all manners of spooked sudden break or swerving maneuvers.
Ever since my first driving lesson back in high school, I’d never been this afraid of what lay beyond my windshield. Nate seemed more relaxed where he lounged next to me, but his knuckles stood out white against the black of his rifle. There were so many things we couldn’t account for, but just one way to find out: drive. I still didn’t envy Burns in the lead car. All I had to do was follow, at least until they were swallowed up in a wave of zombies.
But nothing like that happened. Not in the first hour when we barely made ten miles progress; not in the second when we dared speed up a little. Not even in the third, when Burns chanced taking a larger road, and we had to backtrack two miles later because the road was blocked where two trucks had produced so much scrap metal, with ditches left and right too steep to chance with the cars unless we absolutely had to. I saw the odd zombie come out of a field or from behind a tree a times or two, but they seemed mostly perplexed by the cars rather than see them as food on wheels. One did jump into the road, making me swerve hard as I forced the car around it, and the loud bump coming from behind us told me that Bates had chosen not to avoid it. Yet except for a dent in the bumper, the car remained undamaged.
We didn’t dare go faster than that, and already it was an improvement. Gross estimates had been that we would spend up to two weeks until we hit the Mississippi River from the Indiana border; now we were already west of Springfield, and not even four days had passed. The nasty voice in the back of my head helpfully supplied that before, we could have easily crossed Illinois within a single day, two max.
I was still a nervous, sweaty wreck as I more fell than climbed out of the car when we stopped, the sun inches above the horizon. To maximize fuel efficiency—and make our metal box that much harder to crack should we get overrun—we’d been driving with the windows up, full gear still on. Tomorrow I might leave my jacket off. My muscles were either cramping or felt soft and useless, and even after drinking a full two bottles of water, I was dehydrated, my throat parched. In principle, driving had sounded awesome. Actually, it wasn’t less strenuous than walking—just faster.
While I let the balmy evening air wash over my grimy, sweaty face, I watched as Nate and Pia coordinated a quick search detail, and half an hour later, everyone who wasn’t on watch detail was sitting around our makeshift campsite, the cars scattered around loosely enough not to give good coverage for anything that might jump us. I had expected to feel safer with them around, but after weeks on the road without, any change was something that needed getting used to, and not in the best way. I debated sleeping inside, but instead curled up in my sleeping bag next to Burns. Nate was somewhere out there on the perimeter, his own stuff—or what of it hadn’t remained in the car—deposited elsewhere, so I figured there was no sense in waiting up for him. Whatever it was that we had, it clearly didn’t include our sleeping arrangements.
I slept like the dead until Collins shook me awake gently, the sky no longer the deep black of night but dawn still hours away. Groggy, I heaved myself to my feet and got to work, making sure that everyone except Andrej and me could catch a few more hours of sleep—just like most mornings when I hadn’t been doing evening duty.
We mostly stuck to the same small roads as before, except for when we had to cross a river. Those were still problematic, maybe even more so, we found out at Havana. We made it through the better part of town without drawing too much of a crowd—and no one was shooting at us, that was something, too—but even before we got to the large intersection before the bridge across the Illinois River, abandoned cars forced us to seek less frequented streets than the US-136 along to where it merged into IL-97. And then there suddenly were zombies surging at us from all directions, jumping on the hood and clawing at the windows. What had started out as a slower crawl ended in a rather erratic blast down what looked like the most promising road, straight across abandoned parking lots and through gas stations, zombies howling after us. It was probably more luck than navigational prowess that led us to the bridge and across it. We stopped about three miles later because Martinez wanted to check on Madeline’s car, and I was still panting heavily by then, sweating from exertion.
Nate proved to be a rather pleasant passenger, if a mostly silent one. We barely talked when we had to, and I had way too much time inside my head. Time that I probably needed, anyway, but as soon as we made camp, I practically threw myself at Burns, Martinez, and Andrej, even welcoming Bates if he could keep his shifty eyes elsewhere than on my boobs. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d come to rely on constantly chatting to the guys to keep boredom and madness at bay.
Two days later—the holdup due to a sudden outbreak of diarrhea all over the camp; I blamed the last of the apple sauce—we reached the Mississippi. Once one of the big obstacles to settlers—I figured, looking at the thick river band from afar—it now proved a similar issue to us. Crossing into Iowa at Burlington was out of the question—even miles away, shamblers were everywhere, forcing us to circle around the greater area on this side of the river. That left the next two bridges as our best options, but even from outside Niota, we saw that the Fort Madison Toll Bridge was completely piled up with cars, creating an insurmountable obstacle.
Bates pointed out that the railroad bridge right next to it was clear, so we took that instead. Less zombies, no cars, and just the pleasant bumping of the rail track for what felt like ten miles to my lower back. But at least we’d managed to tick off another state from our sheer endless list of states we had to cross.
A little scrambling and weaving through abandoned cars and squatting zombies later, and we were speeding—moderately—away and into rural Iowa. There was some debate whether we should hit the Army Ammunitions Plant near Burlington, but decided against it in the end. Nate pointed out that they mostly manufactured large caliber ammo, and unless we found a tank idling around somewhere, we wouldn’t need it. Burns’s eyes definitely lit up at that idea, but right now we were still on the survival track and hadn’t yet descended into complete wank fantasy territory, and even he admitted that the tank would just have been a bitch to maintain.
But what we needed was food—again—and other provisions, both for us and the cars. We also had no maps that were good enough to navigate safely, and now that we had more room to stow things, it only made sense to keep stocking up on provisions.
Our choice for what town to loot next fell on Benning. Just north of the Des Moines river close to the Missouri border, it had two supermarkets, a pharmacy, a gun store, several gas stations, and just shy of three thousand inhabitants. That last part was what really made me antsy as we got into the cars that morning. With a smaller town we might have gotten lucky again and found most shamblers locked inside the houses, but I doubted that we’d get this lucky here.
I wasn’t the only one concerned about that, it seemed, because we stopped once again a couple miles outside of town so Pia and Nate could have another strategy heart-to-heart. Burns and Martinez soon joined them, and the conversation got decidedly heated. Drumming my fingers on the wheel, I wondered about what to do, but when another minute passed and they still hadn’t reached a decision, I got up and walked over to them.
“What’s the issue?”
I got a few looks that let me know that my being nosy wasn’t exactly appreciated, but Pia explained nevertheless.
“We’re not sure what to do with Madeline.”
I had a few choice opinions about that topic in general, but swallowed them. I was sure that they were well aware of my fondness of her.
“You’re afraid she’ll get in the way?” I suggested, trying not to gloat.
The nod I got from Nate was surprisingly without scorn. “It’s one thing to be annoyed with her presence, but quite another to accidentally set her up to find a horrible, violent end.”
“She’d be pr
etty much useless, but we can’t leave her behind,” Pia offered. “With so many targets that we have to hit at once, we don’t have the manpower to set someone up to guard her.”
Skip and Steve had offered to help. While they were still uneasy with guns, they could at least help load the cars. Knowing that, I could see only one alternative to actually pulling someone vital from the job.
“Then I’ll guard her.”
From the looks I got I could tell that this option had been up for debate already, but clearly wasn’t something they’d settled. That I offered now seemed to sway opinions, even though Nate didn’t look particularly thrilled about the idea. Why that gave me a twinge of satisfaction, I didn’t even want to analyze. Risking our lives like that was no place for petty games.
“You’ll likely get bored,” Andrej noted, confirming that yes, I’d just successfully doomed myself. “We’ll have her park at the other side of town from where we hit, so she can both get away easily once we’re done, and if we draw any attention to us, she’ll be as far away from that as possible.”
I wondered for a moment if that counted for me, too, but Nate answered that before I could ask.
“We’ll drive over there with her. You and I make sure the area is all clear. You stay there while I circle around town and join Andrej and Pia in scouring the gun store. If things remain quiet, I just swing by and pick you up. If not, you hop into Madeline’s car and get them out of there. We’ll meet up at any of the next designated landmarks.”
“Sure thing,” I acknowledged, already turning back to the car. The plan sounded simple enough—but I still had a bad feeling about it. It was easy to chalk it up to the animosity between us, but while that didn’t help, it wasn’t what got my heart beating just a little too fast. Why had I volunteered to be out there, all on my own, with just the weapons and ammo that I could carry?
Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak Page 26
