Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction

by Adrienne Lecter

  Rather than waste air on a reply, I tore off in the indicated direction, going right by the other cars. The Jeep fell in behind me while the other cars went west and south. The more targets the harder each of us was to run down. With luck I’d see the rest of them when we got to the rendezvous point later today. If we got to the rendezvous point, but I wasn’t going to consider that.

  The town was abandoned but as I was going full speed, I drew the odd shambler from its hiding place. A little swerving and we were safely out on the open road at the other side, the Jeep still following. I was just about to relax a little when I heard Nate sniff loudly next to me.

  “What’s that stench?”

  Likely parts of the contents of my bowels, but I couldn’t be too sure about that. The bleach was still too heavy in the air to tell. It took me a few seconds to realize that he must have meant that.

  “Bleach,” I explained. “Got shot. Needed to clean up the wound.”

  “Badly?” Nate asked, his tone taking on a note of alarm.

  I shook my head. The fact that I was able to drive should have given him his answer already.

  “Nah. Dug out the bullet myself.” One of them, at least. I wasn’t sure how many had found their way into my squishy parts, but he didn’t need to know that. Yet.

  A pause followed, then I saw Nate pick up something from the foot space of his seat. A sidelong glance revealed the glue tube and syringe in his hands.

  “What the—“ he started, then cut off when he could, this time, find his own answer. “Did you take that entire fucking dose?”

  That begged the question whether he was referring to the glue or the booster, but considering that I couldn’t think of any reason why the coagulant was a cause for alarm, I figured he meant the booster. And if my thoughts kept racing on like that I was going to go insane any moment now!

  Turning my head to look at him, I gave Nate a bright smile. “Guess what?”

  He bit off a curse but then settled back into his seat, reloading his rifle.

  “You can’t just half-ass anything once in your life, can you?”

  “Where would be the fun in that?” I replied, forcing my attention back to the road.

  Nate grunted, but he seemed to take the news relatively well. “Just let me know before you go into shock or some shit. I’d hate to get away alive from this only to die when you crash the car into a tree.”

  “I’ll do my best not to bite it today,” I informed him, still smiling. I would be dead by tomorrow, at the latest the day after tomorrow, anyway. Why waste the inherent drama of that on a random tree? And what exactly was in that damn booster that it made me feel actually happy about this?

  “You’re so damn high right now,” Nate said with a cute little snort.

  He kept looking sideways at me, making me realize that he was waiting for something. “Oh, was that a question? I thought that was obvious.”

  Nate shook his head, muttering something to himself under his breath. Louder, he asked, “Sure you don’t want me to drive?”

  I nodded. “Yup. I’m having a hard enough time to stay on the road as it is. You’ll have to shoot. Can’t do that.”

  “Shoot what?”

  I briefly glanced from the road to him, then on to what kept irritating me at the left corner of my vision. “That convoy over there. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks a lot like your dear friend Bucky isn’t ready to throw in the towel.” Nate’s drive to banter found a sudden end when he became aware of the ten vehicles, all larger than ours, coming toward us from that side. So much for getting away clean. He tried the radio next, but, surprise, surprise, that was dead. “They’re likely still jamming us.”

  “My, aren’t you full of useful information today?” Nate bit back. I didn’t care, just gave him a long look.

  “Didn’t you notice before that our coms weren’t working?” I asked him.

  “Sorry if I was doing my very best to cover your ass so you wouldn’t get shot.”

  “Great job,” I replied. The vehicles were still a mile out, so we had some time yet. I tried accelerating, but the winding road really didn’t lend itself to breakneck speeds.

  “Actually, I think it was,” he deadpanned. I didn’t need to glance at him to know that the look on his face was grim. Losing Bailey like that couldn’t have been easy. It also made me wonder whether they always drew straws before each mission to agree on who would take the fall if the shit hit the fan. Likely.

  “Do you know if the others made it out alive?”

  That question drew my attention back to the important things. “Cho didn’t,” I offered, feeling the mirth drain from my voice. “But I think the others did. Didn’t have time for a head count.”

  Nate cursed again. Any other questions would have to wait for later, I realized, when the first bullets pinged uselessly into the fortified driver’s side of the car.

  “Let’s see that we keep it at that number,” Nate said. “Take that right over there.”

  And thus started our merry chase through the wetter parts of Minnesota. They were good, but they couldn’t quite keep up with us. Andrej was just as good a driver as I was—even injured—and Nate and Pia did their best to throw—quite literally—everything we had at them. Soon, ten cars had dwindled to eight, one of which was falling behind quickly. We still had half a tank of fuel and hours of sunlight to burn. If I felt a little woozy, that was likely just the drugs keeping my body at a hundred and twenty percent.

  Then we hit another blocked bridge and the road we’d been going on ended in a mud slide, leaving me with nowhere to go.

  “River?” I asked, actually giddy about the idea.

  “River,” Nate affirmed, grabbing the overhead handrail hard. “Just try not to wreck the car again.”

  This river was actually carrying some water, if not as much as it could have. My little adventure around Harristown certainly came in handy now as navigating the slope and rocks came a lot easier, particularly with the reinforced undercarriage. The Jeep remained hot on our bumper while only five cars of our pursuers made it down the slope. There was some gurgling going on, and I wasn’t sure if there wasn’t water getting in through a few new holes in the back left quarter, but we made it through the stream without the engine stuttering once. The other river bank was muddy enough that getting out was more of a hassle, but a well-placed hard bump from Andrej, and the Rover was finally getting traction. The Jeep followed, but so did the other cars, albeit with us gaining a few extra minutes that we very well needed. My heart was racing uncontrollably by then and I was starting to feel a scratch in my throat, but now was not the time to pay any heed to that.

  Soon I was through the third bottle of water that Nate handed over, but when he tried to follow it up with one of our remaining protein bars, I vehemently shook my head. “Don’t waste that on me.”

  I got a weird look for that. “Doesn’t do me any good if you run yourself into the ground just because you’re stubborn.”

  “I’m not stubborn,” I protested, trying hard to come up with a good coverup for my slip. “I just think that once I hit the end of this, whatever this is, I’m going to just barf up anything you feed me now. Water’s fine. Just keep the solids until later.” Why Nate bought that, I didn’t know, but when he didn’t try again I left it at that.

  Finally we hit the interstate, but that was as much a curse as a blessing. Sure, here I could accelerate the Rover to speeds it had never gone before—at least not since becoming my precious little castle on four wheels—but there were a lot of obstacles to navigate around, not all of them broken down or rusting. I had no illusions what would happen to us if I hit a zombie head-on going over a hundred miles an hour. Or even sixty. Just staying on the road took everything I had, and the farther northwest we were speeding, the more I felt my concentration and stamina waning. And now those shitheads were gaining on us again because they could use our weaving paths to plot their own.

  “Any ideas?” I asked, cle
aring my throat to keep my voice from cracking.

  “All out,” Nate chuffed, looking repeatedly over his shoulder. At the speed we were going, it was impossible for him to try to aim, let alone get up and open the hatch to lug something at our tail. I also had the suspicion that we were fresh out of explosives of any kind except for our fuel reserves.

  Another long right curve and I saw a bridge ahead. “Should we take that exit over there?” I asked, having to blink twice to see it clearly. Shit. This was so not going to end well if we didn’t get rid of those cars stat. Nate glanced down at his maps but then got his binoculars out instead. A frown appeared on his forehead but was quickly replaced by the hint of a grin. “Just drive on steady. Maybe try to swerve less.”

  “Wha—“

  “Just do it!” he barked, then exhaled forcefully. “And accelerate if you can.”

  I quite frankly didn’t have the concentration left to snap at him so I just followed along. A few seconds later I realized what must have prompted that order. “Is there someone on that bridge?”

  “Yes.”

  Apprehension gripped me, but Nate sounded too relaxed for it to be the likely end of our journey. Just as I thought that, something bright came streaking at us—or rather, over us. “Stay calm. Don’t wreck the car—“ Nate started, but was cut off when the lead car of our pursuers went up in a giant ball of flame, the shockwave from the explosion not rocking the car exactly, but I still felt it in my lungs.

  “What the—“

  “RPG,” Nate explained, laughing when two more rockets came streaking over us, hitting their targets just as perfectly as the first.

  And just like that, it was only the Rover and the Jeep, with smoking wrecks left behind. Maybe someone had survived but I sure as hell wasn’t going to check. Let the resident shamblers take care of that.

  “Take that exit,” Nate said, bracing when I stepped on the brakes a little too hard so I could make it onto the ramp. Andrej shot by us but I was sure that there was another ramp on the other side. Directions, not that important anymore.

  As we drew closer to the three cars that were parked smack in the middle of the bridge, I could make out Burns, rocket launcher still on his shoulder, laughing and shaking hands with one of the Raiders. Their gear, obviously, although it would have come in handy earlier. Nate gave me a cursory look that I answered with a jerk of the head. He got out, leaving me to my water bottle as he went over to talk to the others briefly. Very briefly, as it turned out, as he was back two minutes later, telling me to beat it. We only waited for the Jeep to join us, then we took the road south while the two Raiders vehicles went north, parting ways. Of the cars that had been hunting us I only saw billowing smoke and zombies that were swarming toward them like ants to a sugar cube.

  “That was almost anticlimactic,” I remarked, fighting really hard to keep a giddy grin in. Damn, but this drug cocktail was starting to get on my nerves.

  “Why are you always complaining?” Nate, well, complained, before he told me to take a left. Breathing in after taking the turn hurt just a little less than before. I wondered whether that was the adrenaline leaking from my veins now that the chase was over, but when it got hard to take anything but shallow breaths a few minutes later I realized that yep, the numbness was spreading. That sobering thought shut me up for a while. Our radio was still dead but the coms were working again, and Nate got busy coordinating with the others. We were still missing two of our cars, but we’d seen them get away, so chances were that they’d made it.

  I simply concentrated on driving. The sun was shining, the birds were likely singing—not that I could hear them with the windows up—what was there to complain about?

  Chapter 23

  It became obvious when we breached the range of the jammers as our radio lit up like a Christmas tree from one bump in the road to the next. It was that very same emergency bulletin signal that had warned us about the streaks what felt like a small eternity ago, but was closer to a month. So much could happen in a month. Heck, days, really. Hours. Minutes. While I lost myself in some nostalgic musing, Nate switched on the receiver, but kept his hands away from our transponder. No need to let the world know that we were still alive and kicking. For now.

  Tamara’s voice filled the relative silence of the car, as pressed and harassed as I’d never heard her before, not even back then.

  “—eryone, listen, if you’re in a settlement, get the fuck out of there! I repeat, the settlements are no longer safe! If you can, get on the road right now, even if you don’t make it to another shelter before nightfall. If you need help coordinating, we can tell you who else is in your area so you can build a convoy. This is a nationwide warning. The settlements are no longer safe. Don’t trust anyone you don’t know personally. Keep off the well-used routes. Come to us. We here at Dispatch and the folks over at the Silo have our gates open for you. I repeat, all sworn government installations are no longer safe—”

  I couldn’t help but smirk at Nate. “Think that was us?”

  He found that a lot less funny, and I didn’t speak up again as I continued to listen to Tamara continue with her bulletin.

  “Today two of our own teams were attacked. Information is sketchy at best, but I’m sure you’ve all heard of people disappearing. Now they hit someone who didn’t go down easily, and as far as we know a good handful of them made it away to warn us. Gussy from the Raiders just called in, telling us that she and her team barely got away, suffering heavy losses.” The name didn’t ring a bell, but considering that the Raiders only had a single female member, I figured that must have been the girl. Good to know that she’d survived after all.

  I made as if to reach for the radio to call in, but Nate quickly batted away my hand. “We stay off the grid until we know more,” he said. “You just drive.”

  Tamara repeated the news twice more, then cut off abruptly. “I just got Chino Torres of the Raiders on the line. Patching him through now. Torres, you’re live.”

  Static filled the line but normalized as Tamara must have worked her magic. Torres’s voice was still choppy, but borderline understandable.

  “Not exactly sure what they wanted, but the contract we took was definitely a trap,” he explained.

  Tamara cleared her throat. “And you can verify that it was government troops that shot at you?”

  “Not just shot at us,” Torres spit out. “They had the entire building rigged, and a few hundred undead locked away that they released on us. That’s not just someone having a beef with you, or wanting to gain leverage. That any of us made it out there is a miracle.” He chuckled wryly. “Well, that and what you get when you corner a bunch of absolutely insane fuckers. I know I was ranting earlier this week because you paired us up with them, but shit. I thought we were crazy. We have nothing on them.”

  I felt the corner of my mouth quirk up, but my stomach did a rather upsetting roll. Nothing that had happened today was anything I was happy about. And I so wouldn’t miss not being able to beat myself up over it for weeks and weeks on end.

  There was some commotion in the background going on, and it wasn’t Tamara who came back on the line, but a different female voice.

  “This is Rita, Chief of Security over here. Can you confirm how many of them got away?”

  I shot Nate a sidelong glance. “Look, your girlfriend is worried about you!”

  His snort was answer enough what he thought about that. “Yeah, like I give a shit.” But he still shut up to listen to Torres’s reply.

  “I have no fucking clue,” Torres admitted. “But a few must have. Gussy said the only reason why those of us who got away did was because one of ‘em made himself go full-on zombie in the thick of it, which caused enough confusion for everything to go up in flames.”

  “Do you know who?” Rita asked, her tone hard.

  “No clue about the names. Scrawny, tall fella? Not sure how many of ‘em survived but none of their cars remained behind when we picked up Gussy. She sw
ears she only got away because their red haired she-devil drove the car straight through the troops. As in full-on collision course. Damn, that bitch is crazy. We need more of that sort out there.”

  My stomach did another flip, but now it was impossible not to flash a grin at Nate. “See, I have a fanboy, too. You’re not that special.”

  Nate just shook his head in silent bewilderment. “Keep deluding yourself. He wouldn’t be giving you the time of day if you hadn’t gone on a killing spree.”

  And that, ladies and gents, shut me up for good.

  Torres continued to give what little details he had, ending with a heartfelt, “Please tell those fuckers that if they ever need help, they can count on us. They did us a solid there. We won’t forget.” Tamara went back to sending out the news, calling for everyone who wasn’t hunkered down somewhere secure to come join them at Dispatch. I couldn’t help but wonder what that would mean for the future. Open civil war? Or just a hitch in the road? Another thing I was glad I didn’t have to worry about anymore.

  Chapter 24

  The sun was already setting by the time we got to our rendezvous point. We didn’t have to wait long—or actually stop—as we saw our remaining two cars head our way from the east, quickly catching up with us once we were all on the same road. I could still feel the effects of the booster but they were slowly wearing off. My head hurt and seeing straight was starting to get challenging. I might no longer be feeling the bruises all over my body but deep-seated fatigue set in, making me jittery on a different level than my previous drug-induced high. I still forced myself to go on, following Nate’s directions practically on autopilot. Not that he gave me many directions, or even said much, lost in gloomy thoughts as he was.

  And then I just couldn’t go on anymore. I tried to postpone that moment until the very last minute, but when driving down a straight road was getting more than just challenging, I knew that I had to call it quits.