“You always have a choice,” he murmured, the words almost drowned out by the barking of the motor.
A few wrecks of what must have been river cruise ships came up ahead, drawing my attention to them. They looked deserted, rusting hulls that they had been reduced to, but I didn’t trust that assessment. My late reply was absentminded at best. “A little sleep deprivation won’t kill me. You’ve put me through worse last year—both incidentally and quite deliberately.” I’d remember that week for the rest of my life where he, Pia, and Andrej had set their minds to not letting me sleep until I fell over from exhaustion, both proving to me that I was stronger than I thought, and exactly how crappy I’d feel when it was about to happen. Ah, fun times that we’d had in that bunker last winter. Considering my current circumstances, I felt a strong pang of homesickness come up inside of me. Things hadn’t been exactly rosy back then, but the company had been much better—and I’d still had all my fingers to try to count the hours I’d already been awake for.
Nate remained silent until we’d passed the wrecks. “That’s not why I’m asking. And you know that.”
True, but if Hamilton’s order for me to turn into a bona fide pathfinder now had one advantage, it was that my mind had something to occupy itself with other than itself. “I’m good.”
“You just killed two people,” he pointed out, still speaking low enough that the din of the engine easily scrambled what his mic would capture.
“Not my people.”
No response followed, and I spent a good five minutes scanning the river before glancing back to Nate. He was watching me in turn, the look on his face a long shot from blank. Yeah, he wasn’t buying that. Mostly to avoid his, I let my gaze skip over to the other boats following us, catching Hamilton staring my way as well—as did a few of the others. Should have cut the coms ahead of that conversation, maybe, but now it was too late. I considered what to say, but nothing came to mind that sounded anything other than apologetic.
“What I did was necessary,” I amended, more to them than myself. “Rodriguez killed Carter in under twenty seconds, and it wasn’t just surprise that got him. Something was wrong with her, and I couldn’t exactly ask her what. We caught a lucky break as it is, because if she’d turned later on one of the boats, our number of casualties would be much higher. Or the shamblers could have overrun us while we were distracted with her. Did I enjoy ending her life? No, but you know since Smith that I have a knack for killing people others care about. Martinez forgave me for that; I’m sure they’ll get over it, too, seeing as none of the big strong men could accomplish what the weak cripple did.” If the last part came out bitter, there was no way around it.
Nate looked tempted to get in my face but refrained when I absentmindedly touched my gear over where the mic was hidden, telling him silently that this wasn’t my first rodeo, and I could play the manipulation card as well. I knew he was burning to berate me for actually feeling worse than I let on, but the damage was done, and crying over spilled beans wasn’t doing anyone any good. It sure made me miss the Ice Queen even more not to get snapped at for throwing myself a pity party.
Leave it to Hamilton to make me feel much better. Try as I might, his muttered, “Freak,” came over the frequency audibly enough not to be an accidental uttering. I still chose to ignore it.
“How much fuel does this thing eat up, anyway?” I asked Ines, not just as a welcome distraction. “Do we need to refuel? Do we have a place where we can? Because that over there doesn’t look too inviting.” I jerked my chin at the riverbank, shamblers still popping up everywhere.
“We have a safe spot two thirds of the way there,” she offered. “We likely won’t need it but if we can stop there, we will. We should be there in about an hour or so.”
“That soon?”
She nodded. “We still need to go farther upriver so they quiet down and forget about us, but we could be at Pont de Neuilly in about two hours from now if we go at maximum speed. That’s the bridge leading to La Défense,” she explained when I just stared at her. “We could go slower but it wouldn’t save much more fuel, and if we float back, it won’t be a problem.”
Again I asked myself why the rush but didn’t bring up the point. I certainly didn’t mind not having to be on the lookout for the entire night. Speaking of lookouts, what I saw up ahead made me frown. “Is that a fork in the river?”
“Islands,” Ines clarified. “The Seine meanders in these parts. We’ve already passed two larger ones.” She paused, looking over her shoulder to Noah. A brief exchange followed before she turned back to me. “Up ahead, after the next, what do you call it? Riverbend? Sling? There’s another lock at Andresy. It’s across one of the smaller islands, forest for the most part. The larger ones, closer to Paris, they have houses on them. We will need to get out of the boats and drag them over the lock, anyway, but with luck the island is empty so we could camp there for the night, or at least a few hours. We can test the theory there that the undead will quiet down if we’re silent. Just upriver of La Défense is also a lock, and while we likely can’t stay at that island, if it’s just a few minutes until they lose interest, we can remain in the water and don’t have to traverse the dams in both directions.”
I wasn’t quite sure whether I understood, but not wasting idle time sounded great—as did catching a break. “Sounds good. How much farther until that first lock?”
“Twenty minutes, if there aren’t any more obstacles here,” Ines explained. “Not too many bridges here, either. But there are plenty in Paris. We should avoid them, going upriver.” Making so much noise, she meant, I was sure.
There were obstacles aplenty ahead, among them what looked like several houses that had been torn away by flooding, but we made good headway as forest replaced towns on the riverbanks. A little later than expected, I saw the river split up ahead of us around a larger island, and then another, with an additional canal on the northern side. Noah steered right for the smaller, left fork, where trees grew right up to the waterline. Tentative moans and the sounds of something moving beyond the trees came from that first island we’d just passed, hinting at more habitation between the few houses that I could see.
“Anyone else wanna take point?” I asked Hamilton and his merry men. “The island looks deserted, and I’m not catching anything landside, either.” What must have been the smaller part of the lock, leading toward the canal, was maybe a hundred yards from where Noah let the boat idle to a halt, the whine of the engine turning into a low rumble.
Hamilton gave the order that his boat would land first, with us keeping lookout on the river. Noah let the boat get dragged along by the currents until we were at the very peak of the island once more and I could see across the larger river fork. “Still got movement over there, but not much,” I reported, not sure anyone was listening. Even over the engine noise, I could hear the soldiers tear into the forest underbrush, sure they’d attract any attention there was to attract. Ten minutes later, Richards and his boat landed, and we followed after that. I didn’t need help to drag myself out of the boat and onto the cement blocks that made up the sides of the lock, but thanks to my limitations I was exempt from boat-dragging duty. From up there I could see the other side of the dam—lock, whatever—where a lot of driftwood had piled up, forever shutting down the mechanisms that had before allowed ships to be lowered and raised to accommodate the artificial elevation level of the river.
Aimes and his fire team returned from their brief scouting mission, reporting that this part of the island was indeed deserted—no wonder, since it was only reachable by boat. I would have loved to just sit down and rest now, but wasn’t really surprised when Richards called Nate, Burns, and me to go ahead and scout the northeastern part while Munez, Davis, and Murdock got the western side. Nate let me take point as it made the most sense, seeing as I had the least trouble finding my way through the trees.
The island was maybe two hundred yards wide but over a mile and a half long, all for
est except for the middle part where we found what looked like some kind of park and an abandoned restaurant. Ines had warned us that there were some houses on the northern, narrower part but since we didn’t encounter any undead in the southern half—and no remains whatsoever—we returned to where the others had in the meantime finished getting the boats over the lock and back into the river.
“The urban sprawl of Paris starts north of here,” Ines explained to Hamilton just as we got back. “If you decide to rest, this is it. You won’t get another chance.”
Hamilton considered, still scanning the adjacent island on the other side of the lock where a few shamblers had found their way to the artificial barrier. “Two-man watch at the boats, the rest on rotation,” he decided. “Lewis is off the rotation because we’ll need her fresh and perky once we set out again, at oh-six-hundred.”
That order made me frown. It sounded like he’d planned this all along, so why make me think I’d have to pull an all-nighter? My consternation must have been rather obvious as when Nate bumped into me to make me turn around, he whispered, “Because he’s winging it.”
While the others got our late dinner started, I did my best to clean myself up. Rodriguez hadn’t managed to inflict any cuts—only some great blunt-force trauma—but she’d done a stellar job bleeding all over my shoulder and torso, and considering what had happened, I really wanted that shit off. I tried to tell myself that it must have been a fluke but didn’t quite buy it. I didn’t want to bring up the point, though, as there was no sense in that besides drawing even more ire from the others. No one was stupid enough to debate whether killing her had been necessary, but the way Aimes glared in my direction had now reached almost the level of balefulness he usually reserved for Nate. I got it—they’d spent a lot of time together, probably had been friends, not just comrades in arms, but it wasn’t like I’d had a choice.
The fact that Gita also eyed me cautiously was weighing way heavier on my mind. I wondered if I should have tried to clear up whatever that was all about, but decided that with what loomed ahead tomorrow, I could take another day for that conversation. Who knew, maybe we’d both be dead by then and that was one uncomfortable talk I didn’t need to have.
I slept like crap, and not just because the howls in the distance never quite died off. Ines had been right in as far as the shamblers who’d directly been drawn by the noise of the engines had lost interest eventually, but on the northern side of the river in particular there was obviously more going on than we’d encountered this far. Not being able to see them didn’t help, although I was glad that the air here, in the middle of the trees and the river, was clear once more. I knew I should also have been bothered by what we would find down in that lab tomorrow, but my mind refused to dwell on that. First, we’d have to get there, anyway. And then, well. Then I would do what these idiots had dragged me along for—if we were still alive.
It was after getting up and fetching some quickly downed breakfast that Cole ambled over to me, still a little bleary-eyed from having had last watch. His mood was somber but a far shot from Aimes and Wu’s open hostility. When he saw me glaring their way before I focused on him, he allowed himself a small smirk. “Didn’t you spend the entire time griping that everyone was doubting your competence? Well, congratulations—that’s cleared up now. Deal with it.”
It was the kind of backhanded compliment that could have come from Nate, and went down about as smoothly as if it had. I found myself staring after Cole as he walked over to his boat, considering, but we were off before I found a conclusion for myself—had it been a blessing in disguise or a colossal mistake on my part to prove to them that their misconceptions about me had been just that? Time would tell.
Chapter 10
The sun didn’t rise as much as the gloom surrounding us lightened gradually, fog hanging like a thick blanket over the Seine. Any advantage my good low-light vision might have conveyed me was instantly nixed. The undead didn’t care that they couldn’t see us or we them—they still made a racket as soon as they heard us. And hear us they did; just under an hour later of slow weaving around partly submerged obstacles found us nearing our refueling point, and it wasn’t as deserted as I would have liked it to be. I’d expected another island, but Ines steered right at where three larger ships—river cruise ships from the looks of them—had collided around the massive pylons of a bridge. And said bridge spanning the river, slowly emerging from the fog as it was, was teeming with zombies.
We weren’t even in shouting distance yet as the first already lunged over the rails and plunged down into the dark depths of the river, or thumped onto one of the ships, only to spin on and disappear into the water. The first time that happened it made me laugh from how comical it looked—but that laugh had a decidedly hysterical note to it.
“No way that we can avoid that, right?” I asked Noah, sitting next to me. The French scout silently shook his head. “Do we have to syphon the fuel from the cruise ships?”
Again, he negated my guess. “We have portable canisters stored on the blue one, just above the waterline,” he explained. “Just need to grab them.”
That sounded easy enough, but considering that another ten shamblers plunged to their wet death while we spoke, I had a certain feeling this was going to be everything but.
“Why choose this point? Wouldn’t one of the islands—or literally any other spot—be better than this?”
Noah gave a shrug that wasn’t exactly disagreement. “Two of our boats sank right there and the ships were close enough to salvage most of the canisters we’d brought. As long as there’s no flash flood that tears the wrecks loose, it’s as good a place to store the fuel as any.”
At least his fatalism was admirable.
“Has anyone ever tried to retrieve fuel from your strategic hidey-hole?”
His smile was more of a grimace, really. “Didn’t need to yet.”
So much for that.
“Do we really need the fuel?” I asked more loudly, addressing our asshole-in-charge. “We might need a few more days if we simply float down the river rather than run the engines, but we’re just over the midway point to our deadline. Do we really need to risk this?”
Hamilton didn’t seem pleased that, yet again, I dared think for myself. “In the field, you never pass up a chance to get resources if you can,” he barked back. “And we have to cross under the bridge either way.”
“But there’s a difference between playing Frogger and zapping through, and halting in the very middle of it to try and get fuel from rusting wrecks.”
Even over the screams of the shamblers, Hamilton’s growl was audible, but he chose to ignore me going forward, instead calling out the order of the boats in which to approach the wrecks. Ours was last. He ended with, “And Miller? Shut that bitch of yours up unless you want me to drown her right this fucking second.”
I sent the brightest smile I could manage across the water toward the other boats. “Gee, you should wait another, oh, twenty-four hours with that. So close to your mission objective, would be a shame if you ruined it all right here and now.”
Nate seemed more annoyed than amused, but for the most part ignored us both. “The canister depot is on the right-most wreck, you said?” he asked Noah.
The scout nodded. “You can climb in through that hole in the hull. Impossible to miss once you’ve made the jump.”
I scowled toward the mangled ships. None of them looked exactly stable, and even ignoring the shamblers on the bridge above, it wasn’t an easy maneuver to get close—and that was ignoring how someone vaulting over, and presumably returning, would upset the balance of the boats. Suddenly, I was overly aware of the fact that my grip strength, both to hold on to something or pull someone back onto the boat, was shit. I hesitated for a moment but then looked at our designated driver. “Move over. I’m taking over the wheel.”
Ines looked at me as if I’d grown a second head—or claimed she had. “Do you even know the first thing about
steering a boat?”
“Can’t be that different from other vehicles,” I shot back, trying not to appear the least bit worried. “Besides, I’ll be the least useful in retrieving the fuel. Let me free up some resources for that.”
I could feel literally all eyes on me as I traded places with her. I took a moment to glare toward Hamilton before I got my crash course in boating, or whatever you wanted to call it. Meanwhile, our boat got caught by the currents and started drifting downriver, giving me a good many yards to familiarize myself with the controls as I caught up to where the others were still idling. Davis and Munez, also in the same boat with us, looked a little green around their noses from my first attempt at a smooth bank which felt a lot more like a weird swerve.
“What could possibly go wrong?” I murmured to myself as I finally got the hang of it, steadying the boat for good. Someone snorted on the coms, making me glance up at the others. “What? I’m a hell of a good driver.”
Burns didn’t disagree with me, but his mirth had a darker tone than usual to it. “Last time I checked, you wrecked two cars in under four months.”
“The Jeep wasn’t my fault,” I grumbled. “None of us saw how unstable that bridge was. And considering how high I was when I sent the Rover down that collapsing mountainside, I’d say that speaks for me, not against me.” I didn’t miss the handful of smirks that last bit drew, making my ire rear its ugly head. “Raise your hand if you had the guts to do something insane like that? No one? Well, too bad.” Looking at the others in my boat, I did my best to put a lid on my ego, focusing on where Nate and Ines got ready. “I’ll do my best to get you as close as I can. Promise.”
“Never doubted you,” my dear husband enthused, then jerked his head toward where the first boat was starting its approach. “Simply avoid any undead dropping down on us. We’ll take care of the rest.”
I still didn’t like the entire concept of this, but having a little more control now that I was behind the wheel helped somewhat—even though I still wasn’t sure about half the controls of this thing. Oh well. What could possibly go wrong?
Green Fields (Book 9): Exodus Page 14
