Stone seemed annoyed at that. “We’re not barbarians. Anyone testing positive for viral proteins in their body will be marked, yes. As will the people who have no permanent settlement and choose to continually associate with the former. But this isn’t without benefits for you, too.”
“Like what? A bullet in the back of the head as soon as I put down my weapons? But, no—you’ve already divested us of those, so we can blindly trust everything you claim,” Nate said.
“I understand your distress—“
“Oh you haven’t seen me distressed yet,” Nate ground out, but Stone continued to talk right over him.
“But this is not my decision. It is an official decree. Every town is obligated to give you shelter and food for up to five days at a time, and up to a tenth of the ammunition they have stored. It is up to the people to choose whether they want to deal with you or not. The program is quite successful so far, and many who prefer to take to a nomadic lifestyle have embraced it.”
Not without pressure, I was sure.
Nate continued to glare at Stone. “That’s your grand master plan? Just keep us out there, safely away from your precious little towns? As what, your beck-and-call trained monkey soldiers?”
He might have managed to get Stone riled up, but Amy ran interference once again.
“I understand that this may seem harsh to you now, but you have to see the benefits, too. Your life won’t change, much, and certainly not for the worst.” Nate seemed ready to contradict her, but Amy pressed on, her eyes pleading with him to understand. “I’ve talked to your people. They’ve all been wanting to move on, now that they’ve had some time to rest and recuperate. Already you are spending your time away from conventional settlements, raiding stores to gather the equipment and expertise that you’re lacking to survive in this world out there. Just think how many of us would die to get a few things from a supermarket. You lost a single man, and that in a situation that already claimed over a hundred people that we know of. And there are many more like you out there. We need you, but you don’t necessarily need us—maybe that will take some of the sting out of it. We can only continue to exist because of what you do, for us. And in return we can offer you a home away from home. Fresh food, mended clothes, a place where you don’t constantly have to watch yourself.”
Nate let her fall silent before he replied, his voice surprisingly soft, but that didn’t take the edge out of his words. “What you’re describing is a utopian vision that couldn’t be further from reality. Just look at how your guards are afraid of us. Do you think that anyone who bears that mark you’re so fond of will be treated with anything but suspicion? All you do is create a new lower class of society. Tell yourself whatever you like so you can stomach sentencing the people who are your only hope to a life outside of the comforts you find so very precious for yourself.”
He let that sink in, and the fact that Amy didn’t reply spoke plainly of her agreement. To Stone, he went on. “Exactly how do you think this is going to go down now?”
“The afflicted will be sequestered, under guard, until the morning, when you’ll get your marks. The rest of your men are free to do as they wish, but won’t get access to their weapons until after whoever opts to join you has left. At least I presume that you will leave as soon as you can?” Nate just continued to stare at him, making Stone clear his throat. “Of course you will. Everyone who is showing negative is free to remain here, but as soon as they leave, they will be marked as well, unless it’s to join part of the state forces, or to leave with a sanctioned convoy to any of the other registered settlements. We won’t force anyone to become a nomad, but so far, most have preferred that option. If you don’t have any other questions now…?”
“None you’re ready to deal with,” Nate ground out.
Stone ignored him. “Take these six away. The rest of you are free to leave, but we would welcome it if you didn’t cause trouble. We know how to protect our own, and until you’ve declared your allegiance, the guards will presume that you’re hostile.”
At his nod, the guards left their places along the walls of the room, looking uneasy as hell as they approached the core group in the middle. They’d clearly been briefed who to watch out for. Pia looked ready to drop-kick anyone who dared come too close, but relaxed at a shake of the head from Nate. I could tell that he knew that this was not a battle they could win—or didn’t see a reason to fight in the first place. I was well aware that if they’d wanted to, they could have overwhelmed the guards, grabbed their weapons, and shot their way free to the cars—but that would have led to an even bigger massacre than with the cannibals, involving innocents rather than those who had it coming. Campbell and Bailey were the remaining two who were taken into custody, making me stare after them as they disappeared outside.
The air in the room didn’t improve after that, with still more than ten guards remaining, more than enough to handle the remaining five guys. I went ignored in my lab-coat camouflage, but maybe I simply didn’t notice any wary looks, the blue-white image of the protein gel taking up my entire attention now. Approaching slowly, I stared down at the original, the gel held loosely inside a clear plastic folder. Without the magnification, most of the bands—like that of the marker lane—looked sharp, while that blotch on top of mine was even worse. On the desk I saw a black-and-white copy of the gel, with the samples penciled in, making me snatch it up and scan that instead. My guess had been right—that lane was mine, and the single other one that showed a haze of that cloud was from Martinez.
“You have nothing to worry about. We’ve seen artifacts like that in other samples, too,” Lowe explained, his tone dripping with condescension. That seemed about the only emotion he had in his repertoire. When I eyed him askance, I saw contempt in his eyes, too. Obviously, because I was a woman, I was prone to worry over nothing, that look said. I’d dealt with enough assholes like him in my life to read him well.
“Artifacts?” I echoed. That was one way to describe it.
He nodded, clearly sunning himself in the triumph of his vast wealth of knowledge.
“Mostly in women. We suspect that the innate ability might be linked to the X chromosome somehow.”
That theory was so much bullshit that I wanted to laugh loudly in his face—hysterically, likely—but I forced myself to swallow that down. If he was that stupid, I so wasn’t going to spell out to him what was so obvious to me. But then again, I knew one little detail that somehow none of them seemed to have caught on to yet, not even Stone.
“Makes sense,” I offered instead, forcing my voice to remain even. Lowe raised his brows, as if he was surprised that I could speak. “If you consider it,” I went on, thinking quickly to pull another idiotic theory out of my ass. Years in academia had honed that skill quite well, and I hadn’t forgotten all about it yet, it seemed. “From conception on, I mean. We all only get the DNA from the sperm, while the entirety of the egg cell is used. Same like all our mitochondria are from our mothers, and their mothers in turn, and so on. There might be a connection to look into there.”
Lowe looked skeptical at first, but then he smiled—likely because he had no clue what I was talking about but wasn’t ready to admit that. “You were right, Brandon. Already she is a true enrichment to our cause. If you will excuse me now, some of us still have jobs to do.” Which clearly didn’t include him, but I held my tongue.
Glancing around, I realized that only Stone and I remained, with one lingering guard that beat it at Stone’s nod. The fingers of my right hand itched to reach for my Glock, but I forced them to uncurl and flatten against the side of my thigh. It was probably just luck that they didn’t have an immunologist or virologist in here—they’d have called my bluff as quickly as it had taken me to correctly assess the situation.
What that knowledge left me with now, I couldn’t say. Hiding somewhere and screaming with frustration and fear sounded like a damn fine idea.
“You probably don’t believe me, but I’m sorry I
had to ambush you like this,” Stone admitted, actually sounding sincere—although there was that manner of satisfaction swinging in his voice.
“I get it. You were afraid I’d warn them if I’d known ahead of time,” I said, my voice scratchy with emotion.
“You really didn’t know. About the terminal effects of the serum,” Stone observed. I shook my head, then couldn’t help a rough chuckle when I remembered something that Nate had told me what felt like a million years ago. Plausible deniability. The asshole had actually thought he was protecting me.
I just couldn’t help staring at the gel, even when Stone switched off the projector and deposited the original back in the folder Stace had handed him earlier. I still had the copy, now crumbled in my fingers.
“Either way, I understand that you’re upset,” he told me. “But maybe this made your decision finding easier.”
Hardly, but I wasn’t ready to admit that.
“I think I need some time on my own now,” I said, barely above a whisper.
“Of course. Shall I send someone over to your room with dinner? I’m sure that Amy is ready to talk to you, if you need it.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but I just…”
“Need to be alone right now. Of course,” he finished for me.
I waited until he was out of the room—and likely down in his office—before I exhaled loudly, turned around, and left.
Chapter 25
“Being alone” was not what I needed right then, but lacking the punching bag my entire body was screaming for, I remained stretched out on my bed until after full dark, watching the sky blacken through my little window. The room was stifling, and more than once I contemplated just getting up and going for a run. But tonight, there would be guards posted everywhere, and the last thing I needed was for anyone to start noticing me after they’d only just learned not to. Acid was churning in my stomach, doubt wrecking my mind. Dealing with the fallout of Sioux Falls had been hard. Losing Bates had almost broken my neck. But this? This felt like the last straw. Only rather than the catatonia that had spread through me back in that meeting room, flames of anger were now licking up my spine, making me want to watch the world burn.
It was shy of eleven when I pulled on a dark sweater over my shirt, gathered my hair in a bun so it wouldn’t escape the hood that I pulled up over it, and climbed out of the window, making barely a sound.
My room wasn’t watched, but there were more torches lit tonight than before, and I could see guards patrolling the streets. The general air was somewhat less cheerful than the evenings before, but there were still people around, chatting. Over by the house that served as a cantina, I saw a group of five huddled together, closely watched by yet more guards, but at a distance—the rest of the guys. I could only guess how Santos and Cho must be feeling, both never having been part of this craziness that had obviously been going on for a much longer time than I’d thought. I still didn’t expect them to remain behind—Cho had found true friends in Martinez and Burns, the difference in rank long forgotten, and while I could see Santos maybe considering staying if one of the girls had managed to get under his skin, he wasn’t a quitter. I would bet my life on the fact that Martinez had always known all the details, and he would never leave Nate—a medic would not abandon his platoon. And while I didn’t know Taylor and Clark quite that well, they didn’t look like they were ready to jump ship now. Come to think of it, it was even a surprise that Taylor wasn’t one of those now securely stashed away; from what I remembered him telling me, he’d known Nate since sniper school—almost as long as Burns—and had a somewhat similar military history. But maybe I would know more about that in a few minutes from now.
I wasn’t even tempted to join the guys—which would have made my cat burglar exit obsolete in the first place—but instead snuck along the shadows of the houses until I got to the fence that ran along the circumference of the inner town. After climbing half-frozen cliffs with zombies howling after me, it was child’s play to scale the fence, and I dropped down into the grass on the other side. There weren’t many places where they could have locked up the remainder of our party, and it only took me ten minutes to narrow it down to the sheep pens and a fenced-off part closer to the guard station that I’d noticed before as strangely abandoned. I bet that it hadn’t remained that way tonight.
I’d barely reached that fence when the sound of soft, muted laughter let me know that my guess had been right.
“I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to show up,” Nate whispered, getting up from where he’d been sitting against one of the posts the fence was wrapped around. It was too dark to see much else than his silhouette, but the soft moonlight briefly made his teeth glint as he grinned.
“Yeah? Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t just let you rot in there,” I hissed, trying to pitch my voice low but likely failing. I didn’t even know if anyone would have stopped me if I’d just waltzed in and demanded to talk to him. It just seemed like the pertinent thing to do to keep our conversation between the two of us only.
“You’re not here to spring me,” Nate observed. “You’re here to ream me good.”
“Like you don’t deserve it!” I grunted. “You, asshole, knew exactly that your spunk was teeming with virus, and still you fucked me without a condom!”
Of course that made him laugh. If not for the barb-wire on top of this fence, I would have come right over it so I could punch him in the face.
“Inert virus that can’t infect you,” he pointed out. “And get off your high horse. You’re a fucking virologist. If you’d ever stopped for a second and thought about it, you’d have realized this yourself. What do you think it is that rendered me sterile? I think you even knew it, but you didn’t give a fuck, because you know that it’s not important.”
“Not important?” I shot back, hard pressed to keep my voice low now. “My blood is swimming with fucking antibodies, and if they weren’t so damn incompetent they would have realized that at a first glance! Martinez makes for a damn good control there.”
Nate mulled that over, and when he replied, the teasing quality had left his voice. “Why do you think I kept my distance over the past days? Wouldn’t have made you any new friends if they’d seen me bounce you up and down on my knee.”
That made me pause and, as I considered his words, frown. “Why didn’t you? You’re usually not that circumspect if you can rub it into someone’s face that you don’t rely on whores to get your fix.” That was probably uncalled for, but that he’d pretty much abandoned me made it easy to succumb to a new bout of bitterness.
I heard him sigh softly. “Bree, I’m sorry. I know that you’re hurting. And now you’re pissed at me on top of everything else. Maybe it was the wrong decision to keep my distance. I thought it was what you wanted after not even talking to me since we lost Bates. Hell, I didn’t feel much like talking, either. And it wouldn’t be the first time that I screwed up royally.”
Hearing the regret in his voice doused the flames of outrage inside of me, leaving me feeling empty. No, not empty… sad. And hurt. Raw. But less so than a week ago.
“Must be pretty bad for you to admit that,” I said, feeling my cheek twitch with the start of a smile.
He snorted. “You have no idea.” Another sigh followed and he stepped up to the fence, putting his hand on the cool links. I reached up to put mine on the other side, lacing our fingers as much as possible. He squeezed softly.
“It should have been me,” he whispered, his breath hitting my forehead as I leaned closer.
“Where?”
“With the cannibals. I should have been out with you, and I should have taken the fall. Not him.”
Protest clawed its way up my throat, but I swallowed it. “Why?”
Nate’s laugh was harsh, if barely audible. “He sacrificed himself for you. Actually, literally—whatever you’d like to call it. I can’t be a hundred percent certain, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.” I tri
ed to speak up, but he continued to talk right over me. “He was too good a soldier to get caught like that on active duty. My guess is that he realized that they were on your tail, and he must have seen this as a last resort. To lay down his life for you, so you’d get to live another day. Maybe he thought they’d take longer so he’d get a chance to get away, or he simply knew that it would have been worse for everyone if they’d caught you instead. He did it to protect you.”
That pretty much stunned me into silence, and it took me about a minute to find my voice again.
“But why didn’t he tell me anything? We could have worked together, tried to get away. It was only seven of them. We could have eliminated them one by one.”
Nate took a moment to formulate his reply. “Because Bates was a stupid fuck who thought that heroics trumped trust. I’m not saying he thought you were too incompetent, but that idea likely swayed his decision.”
“That’s so screwed up,” I murmured, feeling my heart hurt anew, although I realized that I should have been angry instead. “Would you have done the same? Been that stupid?”
Even in the dark, I saw him shake his head. “Never. If it had come to that, I would have tried to get you out and let them capture me, but I agree with you. If it had been us, we would have picked them off one by one. And it should have been me with you, because we make a damn fine team. Or at least sent you out with Burns or Romanoff. But I didn’t because I made a bad judgment call, and you know exactly what that led to.”
“Then why did you tell me that—“
“It was your fault that Bates died?” Nate finished my sentence. I nodded. “You know why.”
Gritting my teeth, I looked away, pulling my hand back to break the contact between us. “Seriously? Again, this? Because I needed to hear it? Needed to learn a lesson?”
His hand dropped away from the fence, but his voice remained as even as before. “One day it will be your fault. Now you know how that feels. Was it unfair of me? Yes, but you know that I put your survival over your sense of what is right or wrong. Always did, always will.”
The Green Fields Series Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 90
