The road was clear ahead, but in the side mirror I saw the cow carcass already swarming with movement, zombies coming at it from every direction. I didn’t stick around to see if any of them got a craving for canned food today and was stupid enough to come after us.
From the corner of my eye I saw Nate reach for his neck, turning on his throat mic. The car radios had better reach but required someone to have at least one hand free to operate them. Fumbling with my earpiece, I got it back where it belonged and switched my mic on, too. Burns’s voice hollered right into my brain, giving me a jump-scare that I so didn’t need.
“Fuckers are all over the ditches! Keep off the roads!”
Easier said than done, seeing as there were ditches left and right of me now, and yes, they were inhabited, too. Maybe twenty yards ahead another access road branched off, but instead of chancing it, I floored the gas pedal and sent the Rover charging ahead. Only a quarter mile and we’d be back in the flat, the rise the road was cutting through leveling out.
A particularly enterprising shambler thought he could just jump us, but I plowed right through it, the resulting jolt enough to almost wrench the wheel out of my hands, but not enough to make me slow down. The crunch of metal and glass made me guess that I’d just killed another front light, but except for a little swerving I managed to keep the car steady. Two more zombies I avoided by sending the car to the right-most part of the road. Then we were in the clear and I went straight into the next pasture, letting the grass slow me as I tried to get my bearings.
“Two, four, and ten,” Nate barked, letting me know that the rest of our team was spread out to our right mostly, with one car apparently making a run on the other side of the road.
“Cows are getting away south,” Pia grated into her throat mic, grumpy as she got. I was just glad to be free of decaying limbs reaching toward me.
Nate looked around us, then told me to follow Clark just streaking ahead of us. We quickly closed up to Taylor, with Burns angling after the Ice Queen, already giving purchase. As we crossed the road once more, I quickly looked back the way we had come. The entire road between the ditches was full of zombies, the cow carcass long out of sight, probably already picked clean.
Exhaling slowly, I forced my galloping pulse to slow back down. Fear still clogged my throat, but my muscles responded, easing up. I’d probably be on high alert for another hour, but not ready to climb the walls any time soon.
“Did anyone see any of them hiding before?” I asked. The zombies should have stirred when they heard us approach, or at the very latest when I’d honked.
“Negative,” Taylor reported.
Cho agreed with him. “Sneaky fuckers. Just what we need, them outsmarting us.”
The Jeep was finally coming into my field of vision again, several of the cows running ahead. Just as I was about to ask what we were about to do next, Andrej leaned out of the passenger side window, rifle at his shoulder. Two of the cows jerked, then a third, all three animals going down by the time we caught up.
“You fucking suckers shot them? But we need them alive!” I shouted as I brought the car to a halt, cautiously looking around. No ditches, not even some underbrush anywhere in sight—we were smack in the middle of another pasture.
“Tranquilizer gun,” the Ice Queen drawled succinctly. “Enough to knock out an elephant, but not keep anything down for long.”
That made me pause. While I still debated with myself what to reply, I watched as Clark, Bailey, and Pia scrambled out of the cars, ropes at the ready. One of the cows looked out cold but the other two were still trying to rise, lowing softly, but none of the screaming that the dying cow I’d felled had done.
Glancing at Nate, I raised my brows. “We have tranq guns?”
He shrugged, as if that shouldn’t have been news to me. It probably shouldn’t have.
“Picked up some in that mall we raided three days ago,” Pia told me. “Putting that ketamine from the pharmacy hit to good use.”
I didn’t ask how they’d gotten the pills into a form useable to down cows.
“That was for human use only! For surgical operations, or as a heavy painkiller. Can you imagine how many people could have found relief for what you just shot up into those fucking animals?”
Looking up from where she was done tying the end of the lead rope of one cow to the Jeep, she gave me a dazzling grin.
“Zero. Would all have ended up on the black market for someone to get high on it. This way people eat. You can always tough out setting a broken bone without painkillers, but you can’t heal if you’re starving.”
She had a point there, but I was still miffed that no one had told me this was an option. I filed that away for later, likely when one of them had a sore tooth again and complained about it.
“So what’s the plan now?” I asked, staring at the cows lying between the cars. If the shamblers decided to come after us, we’d have to cut them loose, because dragging a tranqued-up cow would slow us down too much—besides killing the animal and subjecting it to needless torment. I was realistic enough that I wasn’t weeping for the animal that I’d killed—and without that carcass drawing the zombies’ attention, we likely wouldn’t have gotten away clean—but there was a difference between making a sacrifice and torture.
Rather than answer me, Nate unbuckled himself and got out to check the right front of the car. I hesitated, then did the same, if only after making sure that my jacket was properly zipped up. Shotgun in hand, I walked to the rear, grimacing at the new dent in our armor plates and blood smears, complete with little tufts of fur dangling from them. Someone would have to clean that up. That someone would likely be me.
“Light’s busted but nothing grave,” Nate declared as he came around the back to stand beside me.
“Cosmetic damage only,” I reported, nudging the plates with my foot. No give whatsoever. Everything was still firmly in place.
We looked at each other. I knew a sarcastic remark was coming, but interestingly enough, Nate swallowed it in favor of turning away to look in the direction that we’d come from. We were too far away to see the rise clearly, but that tree close to where the cow had found its end was still visible.
“We should go investigate,” he said—not a proposition, clearly. “Romanoff, take Cho, Martinez, Taylor, and Lewis with you. No need to rouse any more of the undead fuckers, but find out how many of them are hiding there. Swing by the farm house, too. Maybe we can find a couple of batteries and tools. If it’s crawling with zombies, ignore it and report back. You have two hours. By then, the cows should be up and running.” He paused. “If they come for us, we’ll take the cars to New Town. Meet us there.”
Glancing longingly at the cow blood, I sighed and ducked back into the car to get the rest of my gear—pack, more ammo, baseball bat for a more silent melee option. Last, I switched my beloved aviators for the wrap-around shooting glasses, leaving the others on the dashboard. I was already sweating under my baseball cap as it was, and on second thought decided that I didn’t need full-face protection. I had no intention whatsoever to get close enough to any of the shamblers for them to bleed into my mouth.
With our mission being a run-of-the-mill recon job, we left the cars behind, silence more important than comfort. Andrej took off across the field in the direction of the farm at a moderate pace, meaning that I would have to flat-out run to keep up. A year ago, the very idea of running three miles, playing hide and seek with the undead, and returning the long way around would have been out of the question—and not just because it included zombies. Now I didn’t exactly look forward to doing my daily workout session in the noon heat, dressed for a climate easily thirty degrees below what was beating down on us, but it wasn’t an automatic death sentence from cardiac arrest anymore.
We made good ground, reaching the farm about thirty minutes later. From afar, it had looked abandoned, but the reek of shit and decay made it apparent that the ditches weren’t the only stretch of land that the
zombies had claimed as their own. Using the scope of my sniper rifle, I scanned the buildings. There was movement—if not much—inside, making us abandon our plan to search the premises. Instead Andrej had us fan out to sneak around and check a few other hiding places—a small copse of trees to the south, a few more hollows, the large combine rusting away in the field. I got the trees, but didn’t need to go closer than half a mile to see that they were well-inhabited, too. Wherever there was shade to be found and some protection from the elements, shamblers seemed to be squatting. And if most of them had apparently been trudging toward the road, judging from the tracks in the dirt they had left, there were still plenty more around. More than there should have been in a stretch of land that had never had that many inhabitants when they’d still been alive.
With results the same everywhere, we beat it to find a good position to surveil what was happening at the road. Andrej and Taylor ended up climbing an oak tree that was standing at the border between a pasture and a wheat field, the two zombies squatting there quickly and silently dispatched. I waited in the shade, alert but allowing myself to relax a little. The stench was bad here as well, impossible to keep out of my nose even when I pulled up the scarf that doubled as a face mask for that very purpose. It was usually as much of a dead giveaway—pun intended—as picked-clean remains out in the open, but because we’d had the windows closed up after the cows took off, we’d missed it. I filed that info away for later, too.
About ten minutes later, Taylor dropped out of the tree, shaking his head at us when Martinez eyed him askance. “At least five hundred of them, maybe more. If we go any closer, we’ll just draw their attention.”
Andrej followed, brushing oak leaves from his gear. “We go around east, then cut around them to the north and return to the cars from there. That should let us avoid those that ran after you when you fled.”
I stared blankly back at him when he added the last, looking at me, but I didn’t respond. Making a run for it had been my only option, and I’d learned months ago that it never ended well if I tried to defend myself. Why I still couldn’t shut up when Nate was annoying me was a different thing entirely.
It took us about an hour to return to the cars, but we barely met any resistance on the way back. We did find out where all the zombies had come from, though—further east of the ditches, we crossed a patch of land that was churned earth only, not even grass surviving. The swath cut across pastures and fields, angling east and south as far as I could see. A massive horde of zombies must have been moving along to destroy so much previously fertile ground. Whether they’d wintered here or come along more recently—likely on the way north after migrating south last fall—I couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter. We’d been damn lucky not to run into them head-on, or all of us would be toast now. Judging from the amount of damage, I didn’t doubt that there were more in the area that we hadn’t seen yet. Perfect.
Our mood was somewhat subdued on the way back, me clearly not the only one lost in gloomy thoughts. Seeing the cows up, if still staggering around, was good news. The sooner we got away from here, the better.
Andrej reported our findings, making frowns appear across faces, fingers curling around guns. I got behind the wheel without saying anything, after checking the car over once more. The light had been “fixed” with duct tape, and the gore was gone from both sides. Seeing my aviators on the dashboard, I hesitated for a moment but then put them away in the center console. As much as I loved to laugh in Nate’s face whenever he griped at me for defaulting to them when I didn’t have to shoot, I wasn’t stupid enough to push it when I didn’t have to. I also left the jacket zipped up to my throat, not bothering with taking off my gloves. With the windows cracked to check for stench, I’d survive baking in the car. And, with luck, I’d get a chance to clean up, maybe even soak in a tub, in an hour or so from now when we reached the settlement. After two weeks on the road, simple comforts like that sounded just as appealing as sitting safely behind a fence that someone else guarded—or maybe even more so.
Oh, what a great new world we were living in.
Chapter 2
We reached New Town—the most creatively named settlement we’d passed so far—at just after five in the afternoon, or so Nate told me. We could have easily made it there within the hour, but that wasn’t accounting for the cows who, none too happily, trotted along between the middle three cars of our convoy. They were docile enough, making me guess that they hadn’t quite forgotten that earlier in their lives, humans had meant creature comforts for them like fresh hay, or getting milked. Burns and Santos had spent most of the way over debating over the radio whether the cows had been bred for dairy or beef. With a year since anyone had fed them some nice hormone-contaminated chow, it was impossible to tell—at least for someone like me who mistook young bulls for cows. Not my brightest moment, I had to admit—and I was sure that Nate would remind me of it again and again, likely whenever we saw some cattle grazing in the distance. Which was more often than I’d expected after how hard it had been for us to make it across the country without getting eaten by the undead. But either cows had better survival instincts than the likes of me—entirely possible—or there simply had been a damn lot of them, too much to get eradicated within the span of one year. The amount of calves that had been with the main herd made me guess that if they continued to be smart, beef would remain on the menu in years to come.
I hadn’t expected New Town to look like much, but the three rows of chain-link, barbwire-topped fence with wooden palisades inside that kept the settlement itself out of sight was a lot more impressive than the already good defenses Aurora’d had. They’d even started digging ditches between the fences, making scaling them harder still.
As we approached, I saw no one outside, but the two lookouts above the gate box had been eyeing us the entire time of our approach. I’d debated radioing ahead, but the light cloud of dust that our cars raised was different from anything else moving out there, and the cows were kind of a dead giveaway, too. I still switched on the transponder on our radio when we were about a mile out, the red light coming on a distraction I didn’t need. A sidelong glance at Nate revealed that he had that same stony look on his face that I’d last seen as we’d left Aurora, Kansas, two weeks ago. We’d hit several targets in the meantime, but this was the first settlement that we approached. There were seven between Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri that we knew of, and until the cattle job none of them had given us any incentive to come any closer, hygiene-related wish-fulfillment aside.
Static cracked over the radio before an unfamiliar voice came on, laced with a soft mid-western accent.
“Convoy approaching, please identify yourself, and state your business.”
I found that oddly formal, but what did I know? Reaching for the mic, I pushed the button to engage it and rattled off the details. “Lucky Thirteen, code three-nine-seven-five-zulu. Thirteen Alpha pilot speaking, Bree Lewis. Heard you were looking for cows?”
There was some movement going on up at the palisade, but no one made a move to open the outer gate of what I expected was a similar two-tier mechanism as they’d had in Aurora—letting one vehicle in at a time, creating a kill chute between the two gates to make sure that no shamblers could gain access alongside.
The radio gave another squeak that made me grimace. “Can you repeat that?” the voice asked.
“Which part? That we’re the five cars right outside your gate? Or that we have your cows, tied to said cars?”
More silence followed. “Your code.”
I looked at Nate, but he gave me nothing. Apparently, he was still deadly serious about that part where I was dealing with all civilian matters. I really didn’t like where this was going, but still rattled off the number again. When after another pause that I guessed was several people debating the voice came on and wanted to know, “How many?” I figured he wasn’t asking about the cows. Nate’s knuckles went white for a second as he cracked them.
&nbs
p; “Six.”
As expected, the following silence was even longer now, making me gnash my teeth. So much for this glorious new civilization acting civilized.
“We can’t let you in,” the voice replied, sounding small now.
“Come again?” Even if I’d tried, I couldn’t have kept the sharpness out of my voice. “You know, those papers that your settlement signed to belong to this fucking great new alliance? We signed them, too. You’re obliged to let us in.” That, and more, but with my dream of bathing slipping away like water through fingers scooping it up, I wasn’t going to haggle about the details.
The voice sounded sincerely apologetic but not exactly sad as it came on again. “We would, normally. But we already have two groups in here. They brought cows, too. We don’t need any more.”
This was getting better and better. “When did they get here?”
“Yesterday,” the guy admitted.
Screwing my eyes shut, I debated screaming, but seeing as that would get me nowhere…
“Are you fucking kidding me? We signed in with Dispatch this morning. You were still looking for cows then. And now you tell me that we risked our lives for nothing, because you were too fucking stupid to cancel your order?”
Nate gave me a smile that was as sweet as they got. “I love it when you get all diplomatic.”
I didn’t know who to be more angry at, him or these idiots, but after hitting the steering wheel twice, I forced myself to assume a semblance of calm.
“Will you at least take the cows? You can have them if you give us something to eat.” Somehow I got the feeling that I was doing this bartering thing wrong. Next I would be begging them to let us play fetch for everyone.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 2
