“It’s a kill chute,” I whispered, not needing to nod at the room before us. If I could tell that, so could he.
“So are most buildings,” he replied, but I didn’t miss the way his eyes kept scanning the gallery in particular.
Considering how at ease the few members of the Raiders were, I couldn’t help but feel stupid. And still…
I was barely twenty feet into the room when the heavy fire security door of the gate came crashing down, making me whip around, then right back as the one over the cargo port came down as well. I took a moment to notice that the Raiders looked just as surprised as us—and at least the blonde girl scared shitless—before I forced myself into a guarding stance, only focusing on the quadrant right in front of my position. The scuffing of boots let me know that Andrej had turned around, guarding my back, and I ended up right next to Nate—not a coincidence, I was sure. Slightly behind and to my right I saw Bailey take up a similar position, leaving me covered from all sides.
My pulse sped up as the sound of boots on concrete was suddenly loud. Doors crashed open, letting soldiers spill into the room like a swarm of bugs. At least I guessed that they were soldiers, judging from their more uniform black and camo patterned gear. Even we had much more mismatched outfits, like all scavengers. They moved with that kind of coordinated purpose that spoke of a well-executed plan—and that didn’t bode well for us, not at all.
I allowed myself a momentary glance behind Nate’s shoulder at the rest of our team. Everyone was accounted for, not a single one left at the other side of that damn fire door. They were all facing outward, trying to give each other cover as much as possible. Not that twelve people—or twenty, if we counted the remaining Raiders—could do anything against the easily hundred soldiers taking up position all around us, the floor and gallery teeming with people. I forced my breaths to remain calm and level, but every fiber of my being screamed to run, thoughts of formations and caution all but forgotten. But I held my place and did my best not to let my shotgun jitter.
Shit.
Nate was like an unwavering statue next to me, but I didn’t miss how his eyes continued to zoom over the ever growing mass in body armor all around us. Only because I was watching him did I notice that he jerked his head to the side once, if only a fraction of an inch. At first I thought he was signaling at me, but then I heard a chuffing sound from behind me as Bailey grunted. With nothing to look at directly, my eyes jerked to him when I caught motion from the corner of my vision. Had he just popped something into his mouth?
Something fluttered to the floor and remained lying there. I couldn’t quite see it over my shotgun, but the flip that my stomach did made it obvious that my subconscious had latched on to something, and that so didn’t bode well.
“This is not going to be pretty,” Nate murmured, his eyes straight ahead now. I had the sinking feeling that he was right.
The mass of soldiers parted to let a single figure through, drawing my attention back to the front. It took me a moment to recognize the soldier, but once I made the connection, it was as if the last thirteen months were just ripped from my memory. I was back in the field of rubble that Nate and his team had reduced the Green Fields Biotech building to, while that very soldier was holding the head of a zombie girl right in my face. That day when it had all begun.
And just like then, Capt. Hamilton, referred to as Bucky by Nate, had a sneer on his face that held all the contempt in the world. Only that now Nate—and we by extension—weren’t just a nuisance to him, it seemed. Unlike his soldiers he had no weapon in his hands, but that didn’t make him any less deadly. And unlike Nate I didn’t see the marks brandished across the back of his neck. Interesting. Although not as interesting as, say, our continuing survival, really.
“So we meet again,” Bucky said, his words so close to a snarl that it didn’t take the look of malice on his face to make it obvious that it wasn’t a joyous moment for him.
Much to my surprise, Nate had to fight for a second to keep his calm, steely mask in place, derision leaking through—and was that a hint of fear that crossed his features? It was hard to judge from looking at him sideways, when I should have kept my attention at the soldiers in front of me.
I’d expected a witty—or at least dry—comeback from Nate, but he just kept staring at his opponent. The last soldier clunked out onto the gallery above us and came to a halt, silence settling over the room. There must have been over a hundred of them around, probably more as I couldn’t get an estimate of what lurked behind us.
Bucky’s lips quirked into a smirk. “What, no taunts? None of your usual grandstanding? I’m disappointed, Miller. And there I’d thought I knew you. Seems like I stand corrected.”
That didn’t sound like the Nate I knew. He might be aware of all the shortcuts to lighting the fuse to my temper, but there was usually a lot to back up his claims and teasing. Now he just looked grim, although paired with a healthy dose of contempt on his side.
“So sorry to disappoint you,” Nate finally offered, his voice even, but with a hint of heat. Oh, he was pissed off. Whether at meeting his old friend here, or at us waltzing into a trap, I couldn’t say, but it didn’t matter. Burns gave a chuffing laugh that made a few soldiers tense, but none of them shot us. Yet.
Torres gave a dismal grunt from where he and three of his people had squeezed themselves together into a similar defensive formation than we were in, his eyes continuing to jump between Bucky and Nate. To our esteemed leader he called, “You know that asshole?”
“‘Fraid so,” Nate replied, his eyes flickering to the right before his gaze landed on Bucky again. What was it with those glances? “Question is whether that was ever a good thing.”
Unperturbed by Nate’s jibe, Bucky turned his head to regard the other scavengers. “You and your men can go. Just drop your weapons, and you will be escorted to your vehicles. After surrendering your radios and transponders you are free to go.”
Torres hesitated for a moment, his eyes skipping over our entire group before they landed on Nate. “This personal?” he asked. Nate gave a hint of a nod. Torres took another second to consider, then gave his guys a nod as he dropped his AK, the clatter of other guns following. At Bucky’s command a few of the soldiers came out of their stance, surrounding the scavengers. After a last, lingering look that seemed surprisingly conflicted Torres turned to go. I might not have trusted him at first, but he definitely didn’t like abandoning us to our fate, which put him squarely in the good guys corner for me. It was only when the girl wanted to follow her people and two of the soldiers pulled her right back that Torres stopped, tension singing in every line of his body. Her eyes were wide as she tried to reach for him, letting out a distressed, “Chino!” that made him speak up.
“What is this shit? You said we could go.”
He got a deadpan stare from Bucky. “You and your men, yes.” He stressed that last part. “Not her.”
Torres seemed ready to try to fight his way through the mass of soldiers right to their commander, but when Nate gave him another jerk of the head he relaxed, exhaling loudly enough that the sound carried. The two men held each other’s gaze for another second, then Torres let himself be pushed toward the gate, underlined by the girl’s wail. A hard punch to the side of her head cut her off, but she remained standing, clutching herself. Anger came up inside of me, hot and consuming, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Torres just gave up on one of his team members like that. Had I missed something when Nate and Torres had discussed their plans to take over the facility? Had they expected this?
A low groan coming from my right jerked my attention back to Bailey. He was still chewing whatever he’d popped into his mouth earlier, making a face when he caught me watching. “This shit’s nasty,” he mouthed, ending with a bright grin. His teeth were stained dark with chocolate.
That was the moment when latent fear turned to instant panic, the urge to turn around and point my shotgun at him so strong that it took
all my willpower not to move. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t need to check the wrapper on the floor anymore to know what exactly Bailey had popped into his mouth the moment it had become obvious that we were gravely outnumbered. Outnumbered enough that no distraction in the world would get us out of here.
A distraction maybe not, but a rampaging super zombie just might.
I’d known that I hung out with a bunch of ruthless guys, but I hadn’t counted on the fact that they were ready to self-activate if worse came to worst. Apparently we were all out of options, and that bothered me a lot less than what I knew would happen in all of, what? Three minutes? Five? How long exactly had it taken Smith to turn in that coffee shop? Just long enough for a pot of coffee to be done.
I’d never claimed to be a good actress, and judging from the way Bucky kept eyeing me now I knew that I was about to blow the cover of our most asinine of asinine escape plans, so I tried to relax again. Not that anyone was actually relaxed. Couldn’t they just take my sudden jumpiness for trepidation over—likely—being in the same boat as the Raiders girl? If I had to take a guess, for whatever reason they wanted to keep her, the same would be true for me also, but not the Ice Queen, with the marks across her neck. No one had ever confirmed to me that Bucky had been part of the super soldier program as well, but I’d bet my life on it that it was true. He certainly knew about it, or else he wouldn’t have brought an overwhelming force with him to… do whatever the fuck he was here to do.
As if he’d read my thoughts, Bucky was only too happy to enlighten us.
“I’m here for her.” He jerked his chin in my direction. “Hand her over and this will all go down a lot more—“
Nate didn’t bother letting him finish that sentence before he cut him off. “No fucking chance.”
That made Bucky snort. “Just because you’re screwing her—“
“Because she’s a member of my team,” Nate spit out, his anger impossible to quench. “I’m not leaving anyone behind.”
This was one of the occasions where I wouldn’t have minded either way, but Nate’s statement made me guess that there was a lot more behind his words than I realized. He looked positively ready to pick a fight, and right now was so not the moment for it, with Bailey about to go batshit monster any minute now. But of course he was stalling, that much I realized. And Bucky was stupid enough to let himself get baited into this, not expecting that he didn’t hold all the cards and had less than all the time in the world.
“Yeah? That’s news to me,” Bucky taunted. Nate gnashed his teeth but didn’t reply, his baleful stare answer enough. “You getting mellow in your old age? Soft?” Bucky went on jeering. “Looks like your little cunt there cut off your balls when she allowed you to stick your dick in her.”
I so didn’t care for that, but the grip panic had around my throat was strong enough that my temper stayed down. Nate briefly looked at me—and this time really me, not checking in with Bailey—and I took the hint, although not without inching just a little closer to him. It only made sense that I would seek refuge with my lover in the face of such verbal abuse, right?
My voice shook as I spoke up, but that could have been because of the situation in general. “What do you want with me? If this is because of Aurora, my answer remains the same. I’m sure that neither Brandon Stone nor Greg Lowe is that broken up over me not trampling all over their little kingdom.”
I really didn’t like the smile I got from Bucky in return.
“Oh, princess, they don’t give a shit about your smarts anymore,” he said, the words almost vicious the way he enunciated them. “They found a much better use for you. And I’m sure that once they’re done with you, my boys will get some use out of you, too.”
No one laughed, or even grinned in my direction, the joke failing its mark by miles. So much for the soldiers not being aware of just how dangerous their quarry was.
Nate took over from me again when he seemed to realize that I wasn’t ready to rail and scream as I usually would have in this situation.
“So how exactly do you think this is going down? Just shoot at us until all but the girls are dead? Fat chance of that happening.”
Bucky opened his mouth to reply, but I would never hear his grand plan. One moment there was silence coming from my right. The next, Bailey—or what used to be Bailey, rather—let out a scream of rage. I was ready to whip around and shoot him, but before I could even think about moving, Andrej crashed into me and pulled me down onto the floor, both annihilating my chances of killing our exit strategy, and pulling me right out of its path. We were still falling, not yet having hit the floor, when Bailey zoomed by, hurling himself straight at the soldiers in front of us, Bucky front and center.
Hell broke loose just as my body crashed into the concrete floor, partly cushioned by Andrej’s. All around me guns were going of, people were screaming. Rather than let go, Andrej rolled over before he gave me a hard push, sending me right toward the fire doors that closed off the room toward the factory. “Run!” he shouted as he came to his feet, a rather useless command if anyone had asked me that very second. I managed to stagger up from the crouch I had landed in, half-hidden between Campbell and Martinez. Someone lobbed a grenade toward the doors but it went wide—or so I thought, until two seconds later it tore a hole into the wall, the resulting shock wave strong enough to press the air right out of my lungs, stunning soldiers everywhere. Burns was running for the wall, dropping his rifle for the battering ram, Cho right behind him. I didn’t hesitate as I followed, and it only took the sight of a rifle veering in my direction for me to pull the trigger. And again, and again as I whipped around and put my back toward Burns, covering him while he reduced the already damaged wall to so much rubble.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder, giving me the “go” to turn around and follow them, but I pumped another two slugs into some unhappy soldier’s face and torso. Part of me, deep down, was horrified at what I was doing, but I was well aware of the fact that Bailey could only buy us so much time with his sacrifice. Chances were slim going on zilch for the rest of us to make it out of here, and there was no room for hesitation. I’d need to survive this first so I could beat myself up later over killing people who should not have been on a different side from us.
I’d clearly waited too long when Burns simply wrapped his arm around my middle and pulled me backward through the hole in the wall, but that gave me the opportunity to empty the last remaining shells into the soldiers who were slowly recovering from the sonic assault. The moment we were through the wall, Burns threw himself to the side, giving me a good shove to send me staggering blindly toward a conveyer belt. I instinctually let myself drop and roll underneath it, coming up in a crouch on the other side. I caught a glimpse of Burns through the heavy machinery, but had to duck when a barrage of shots came down on us both. Glancing up, I saw soldiers running along the gallery. A few more seconds and they would have a clear shot at me. Fuck.
Ducking as low as I could and still run, I found cover behind another block of machinery, warily checking the progress upstairs. From the other room the sounds of screams and shots were getting increasingly louder, but I forced myself to ignore that. Of the remaining Raiders who hadn’t been with Torres there was no sign, but I figured they’d beat it by now. Remembering Nate’s orders from before all too well, I eased myself up into a standing position and tried to get a good look at how to best get out of this fucking nightmare of an obstacle course.
A high-pitched whine right next to me made me jump, and with a rattling groan the conveyer belt started to move. A few seconds later a siren sounded, followed by a series of heavy thumps. Up on the gallery a soldier hollered commands that I didn’t quite catch, only to be cut off by three zombies hurtling out of a door right next to him. He was dead in seconds. All along the wall doors were flung open now, and judging from the crashing sounds coming from below, the same was happening at the ground floor, too. That there was still electricity in this building was suddenl
y the least of my concerns.
“Uh, guys? We’re having another problem here,” I whispered into my mic, hoping that it would pick up my voice even though I was trying hard not to draw any attention to myself. Only static answered me, and even that cut off after a few moments. Were they jamming us? Yup, looked just like it.
Movement to my left made me get my shotgun up, but it was only Cho who’d come rolling underneath the conveyer belt. At my quick gesture he sprinted over to me.
“Signal’s jammed,” he informed me, instantly dropping into a cover stance so I could finish reloading.
“Did you see if the way’s clear toward the exit?”
He shook his head. “I saw movement coming from there. Can’t say what it was, but I bet they got all the locked rooms in the office building crammed with the undead fuckers, too.”
I took that with a stoic nod. Probably not a viable exit for us, but the only windows in the factory were three stories up with no way to get there, so that wasn’t going to help.
“Let’s get a better look,” I suggested, a little surprised when he immediately fell into step behind me.
We only got around the next corner, where a bunch of soldiers was imitating our move, their frantic looks toward the wall proving that they weren’t running scared from us. I had my shotgun up before I could even think about it, but before I could hesitate, Cho started shooting—at the zombies pouring out from underneath the conveyer belt. Even with our shots slowing them down they were on the soldiers before I could decide whether to switch targets. Only one of the soldiers realized his mistake before it was too late, and I took him out before he could remedy it, a zombie already chomping on his leg. I had to swallow convulsively to keep my bile down, but Cho’s quick, “Move out,” reminded me that we were in no position to dawdle. We left the carnage behind as we took off running across a small open space, howling zombies hot on our heels.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 30
