Chapter 19
Traversing the locks on the way upriver had been a chore. Now, it was all but impossible. We only had to make it across one barrier before we reached a small, uninhabited island where we moored the boats and crawled on land. I barely managed to drag my own weight up the gentle slope. Helping Cole and Hill get the stretcher out of the boat made me hunch over and dry heave. I found a cozy tree trunk where I dropped my pack and Nate’s, and then settled in next to his prone body. No guards this time, not that they were necessary. Richards made a last round, forcing everyone to eat a few bites from their provisions before he let us crash—and crash hard we did.
I forced myself to remain awake—or at least something resembling that—but my muscles turned to liquid gelatin, not even trembling with the shakes I’d had before. Small things like blinking felt like a tremendous task. Two or three hours in, the idea of simply no longer breathing so I could die felt like a great concept, but my lungs kept expanding whatever I did. The gun in my hand started calling my name loudly, but raising that arm was too much of an effort. Besides, I had to stay alive to make sure Nate did, too. Somehow, that thought kept me going through the night and into early morning. From what I could see of the others, none of them felt much better, but most refused to show it so I very well couldn’t publicly fold in on myself. I’d never done hard drugs, but this felt like the worst kind of withdrawal ever.
And that was just the physical punch to the gut. Only fourteen of us were left, and if I’d miscalculated with the serum I’d grabbed from cold storage, that number would very soon drop to nine. Eight, if Nate didn’t pull through. Eight out of twenty. Except for Tanner, I hadn’t exactly enjoyed the company of those no longer with us, but that number was like a beacon of horror searing into my mind. How could anything warrant casualty numbers like that?
Things didn’t get better as the sun rose, but the strain on my bladder became too much, and the hole where my stomach used to be needed to be filled. On the way back from relieving myself, I checked on Gita and Munez, mostly because they were less than five steps of deviation away. Gita was still burning up but her body seemed to have quieted down—no more violent shaking, and since she hadn’t started vomiting blood, I took that as a good sign. Munez was tired but since he hadn’t received the booster, it was normal exhaustion and he was actually doing better than the rest of us, starting a small fire for warming water for tea and getting some rice and beans going. I left Russell and Parker to be someone else’s problem, instead returning to my comatose patient.
It was still cold as fuck but I forced myself to check on Nate’s wounds. The glue was doing its thing but it was obvious from the swelling and how pliable the barely healed wounds were that yes, there was pus building underneath the fresh scar tissue, and I’d get to go back in soon enough to clean them out. Some of the bites looked slightly infected—which was alarming to a point—but none got worse. His breathing was still slow but sounded clearer now. His eyes were swollen and crusty from tears constantly leaking out of them; nothing I could do about that.
Getting some hot liquid into myself helped; eating, not so much, but I would have had to keep something down for more than a minute at a time to get some sustenance. Mid-morning, Munez made the rounds, distributing bags of what looked like saline solution but must have packed more of a punch than that since I felt immediately better after a third of the infusion had made it into my veins. At first I wondered why they hadn’t hooked us up to those right away, but it was kind of obvious—as long as there were still traces of the booster in our system, it made no sense to try to replenish anything if it would just burn up immediately, anyway. Nate got a bag as well, but I didn’t see any change.
I would have loved to spend the rest of the day—and the coming night—on the island, but Hamilton called for us to break up camp soon after the first soldiers managed to more than simply drag themselves from one spot to the next. It was only after we got the first boat into the water that Russell broke down, hurling up rice, beans, and what looked like a gallon of blood. His eyes were feverish and bruises started forming on his neck and cheek, his wet coughing a dead giveaway that his lungs were filling with phlegm. Nobody said anything—not even Hamilton, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d pulled out a gun and shot Russell at the first sign of infection. What he did do was cold-cock Parker who was about to descend into a panic attack.
Two more locks, and we found another cozy island with only a handful of shamblers on it, but something we absolutely needed—shelter. My body felt weighed down with lead as I helped clear the buildings, tasked with killing the undead so someone else could drag them to the shore and hurl them into the river. My muscles felt frozen stiff even after an hour of heavy work, and it took a good thirty minutes inside for my skin to start itching as it slowly thawed to more normal temperatures. And still no change from Nate.
Gita started getting better during the night, although it wasn’t that noticeable. She remained curled in on herself, staring at the wall of the small hut, not responding to anything going on around her. Which wasn’t much, at first, until Russell slid into the last stage of infection. At his request, Hamilton and Cole helped him up so he could drag himself outside. Richards and a few of the others followed. I didn’t; I really didn’t need to see this, and since we’d barely exchanged ten words since we’d met, it felt right not to intrude on their moment. I still felt my throat seize up as a single shot rang out through the night, answered by fifteen minutes of howls and screams from the riverbanks. Burns cast me a questioning look but I didn’t respond. What was there to say?
I finally slept a couple of hours that night, but never deep enough not to rouse when anyone moved too much somewhere around me. That helped somewhat, but I still didn’t refuse another infusion bag when offered. We got ready in the morning, shortly after the sun rose, to set out on the next step of our journey.
That was, until Parker started to babble maniacally about having a sore throat, and for someone to check his temperature, and oh no! We were all gonna die! Richards tried to reason with him that he was fine—he would have shown signs had he been infected hours ago, but he and Munez both were doing okay. None of the others showed any weird signs, either, but Parker wouldn’t listen. Richards finally forced him to swallow a handful of pills—or rather, had Cole and Hill hold him down and cut his air off until he swallowed them—that left Parker borderline catatonic, but the game was on again once Parker pushed through the effects of the drugs late afternoon. We were past the last stretch of the river that was familiar to us, passing the riverbank by the golf course in somber silence. We still didn’t use the engines, relying on the currents of the Seine alone to sweep us toward the ocean. We still had four days left until our rendezvous on the beach, so why invite trouble?
Not that trouble wasn’t usually quite happy to invite itself.
Two more times Richards filled Parker up with whatever happy pills he had with him—I suspected it was part of what they’d dosed me with at first but I’d never know as I didn’t deign to ask—but Parker wasn’t stupid; or a different kind of stupid, rather. After we made camp the next evening, he appeared calm and docile—or only as hostile as he usually was, letting everyone forget about him. That was, until he jumped up in the middle of dinner and ran screaming from the camp, past the guards, and into the night. That wouldn’t have been such a big issue—at least not for me—if not for the fact that we weren’t camping on an island this time but at the northern river shore, and Parker had a lot of way to run—but chose the one trail that led him straight into a pack of shamblers that must have been sneaking up on us for a while. Bad for him, good for us—if not for the fact that they only managed to kill him, not tear him apart, so we had to do away with over fifteen shamblers and one overcharged fresh one that packed a hell of a punch. My annoyance had long since turned to rage by the time Hamilton finally put Parker down for good, several knocked-out teeth, one broken arm, two sprained shoulders, and a lot
of bruises later. Hill had borne the worst of the brunt, putting one more of our heavy hitters mostly out of commission. After that, we decided to stay on the river until we hit the ocean, which meant another sleepless night with me having the honor of directing three boats through the increasingly broadening Seine.
We arrived at the river delta early in the morning, the thick fog coming in from the ocean hiding most of the towns of Le Havre and Honfleur from sight. Pretty much all we saw besides a few wrecked cruise ships was the huge bridge spanning the harbor, connecting both riverbanks to each other. We finally engaged the engines as we jetted around the town and into the ocean, then down the beach until we found a spot that was deserted enough that drop-off wasn’t a required hurried five-minute job. The French scouts didn’t seem too sad to be rid of us, forced as they’d been to go through the motions with us. I still got an unexpected hug from Ines, too baffled to respond. Then they hopped into their boats and took them back into the fog, never to be seen again.
The racket we’d made didn’t attract much attention but because we were down to six people without major injuries, Hamilton had us scour ten miles of beach and the land behind it for the rest of the day. I absolutely hated spending hours away from where I could check in on Nate, but Gita gave me faithful if uninspired hourly updates. She didn’t attempt to hide that she was heartbroken and grieving, but at least she wasn’t a coward like Parker. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find her gone when I returned that night but she was still there, hanging on tightly. While we’d been out and about, Hill had managed to establish communication with the destroyer, and we got the first good news in what felt like fucking forever: they were cutting short their patrol route to pick us up the next day. Considering that I doubted that said patrol duty had been more than a ruse to hide the real reason for this trip across the world, that didn’t come as that much of a surprise to me.
I spent the night huddled under blankets and sleeping bags, curled around Nate’s unresponsive body, trying to keep him warm. It was in the late hours of the night, when it was darkest and coldest, that I felt that veneer of exhaustion and sheer stoic will to keep going finally cracking.
“You can wake up now, you know?” I whispered into his chest, counting to five on my own heartbeats before I heard his heart beat once. “You did it. The impossible. You’re still alive, and we pulled this fucking mission off. Now come back to me, will you? Because I really, really need you here, with me.”
I didn’t expect a response but that I didn’t get one made me feel sick.
There was no sleep to be caught after that, and once I was sure that I didn’t look like I was about to fall into a million pieces, I got up and walked over to the small fire we had going on, telling Cole to get lost. I half expected a pep talk from him but he beat it without uttering a single word, leaving me to my glum thoughts.
I was still tending the fire by the time everyone else got up and the final guard shift came in. Together, we waited on the beach for the boats to arrive. I heard their even drone long before I saw them, and still, the relief I had been waiting for didn’t flood my mind. All I felt was emptiness, and a dash of wry humor when I realized that all of them were in full hazmat suits—both the sailors driving the boats and the two marines each they had with them for support.
It didn’t take long to load us and what remained of our gear onto the RHIBs. On the way to the shore, they had been so full with people, packs, and weapons that I’d kind of been afraid something—or someone—might fall overboard; now there was empty room aplenty. They might even have crammed us onto a single boat. It was still easier this way. I didn’t look back at the beach disappearing into the fog. As much as I didn’t look forward to hashing out the issues ahead of me, there was nothing for me back there.
It took us maybe twenty minutes to reach the destroyer, and another few to get everyone and the boats back on board. Right there on deck, Sgt. Buehler and her marines were waiting for us, also in hazmat gear, and increasingly tense as they saw the amount of bandages our people were wearing.
“I presume we’ll need a quarantine zone?” she asked while we were still unloading.
“You bet your ass we do,” Hamilton told her, for once sounding more tired than out for a fight. I was sure that Richards would do his best later to smooth any feathers that remark might have ruffled, but for the moment, Buehler herself just gave a nod and pointed down the deck.
“We’ve cleared the gym for you.” Which would be the former helicopter hangar at the stern of the ship. “Our med team is already waiting on standby.”
Quarantine zone had made it sound so fancy, but no one forced us to strip down and scrub ourselves with bleach—at least not yet. Considering that we’d spent weeks in that gear without much chance to clean up, burning it all sounded like the better option, but I could see where nobody felt comfortable with that kind of waste going on. I didn’t give a shit about any of that as the moment the marines brought in Nate on the makeshift stretcher, the doctors and nurses descended on him—until they drew up short after pulling him across onto what looked like the field version of a collapsible operating table.
The senior doctor cast around the room, settling on Richards since Hamilton had gone AWOL. “What’s the status?”
I hadn’t bothered with undressing beyond dropping my pack just inside the door, leaving my M16 for someone else to take to the armory—yet my Beretta I drew, keeping my hand down by my thigh. Burns appeared by my side, still cradling his assault rifle.
Richards looked ready to respond but then ducked away, leaving me to do the talking. “He’s been unresponsive since a pack of supercharged zombies came after him. He’s been inoculated with the serum before—and an updated version that’s supposed to render him immune to anything else he might have caught from the undead fuckers—so his blood should be clear. I’d still try not to cut myself while working on him if I were you.”
The team had obviously been briefed before and I saw two of the nurses relax—one after she noted that Burns and I were armed—but the doc wasn’t that easily satisfied.
“I have been told that this serum should make those inoculated with it impervious to most damage, and what can affect them usually kills them, including the unpleasant side effects of that. Is that not true?”
I shrugged. It really was anyone’s guess. “And still he’s in a coma. The burns are from the UV lights in the lab where we found him. He was smart and must have realized it hurt their eyes, but prolongued exposure has its drawbacks.”
He still didn’t get it. “But—”
“Doc, if I knew what was wrong with him, don’t you think I would have tried to fix it myself already?” I ground out, that anger coming back in an instant. I was tempted to let loose, maybe even physically, but I was sure someone would have put me down for that before I could accomplish anything. “Maybe he has a concussion. Maybe the virus those freaks were carrying mutated and somehow got around the immunoprotective properties of our serum. Maybe he’s just simulating because he didn’t want to walk back. I don’t have a fucking clue! It’s your job to fix him. So, fix him!”
The doctor’s gaze dropped to my gun. “And if I can’t?”
It took me a few seconds to catch on to his meaning. Right, they probably still thought I was a complete nut job because of that blender incident in the mess hall.
“If you can’t, and if he dies and converts, it’s my job to make sure he won’t be able to hurt anyone—you, your team, the sailors, or anyone else on this ship, or off it. I know how much they can physically take once the serum has taken hold; hell, I’m the living, breathing testament to that. But there are limits, and that’s why we take precautions.”
“You’re his wife,” one of the nurses noted.
“That’s why I’ll be the one pulling the trigger,” I told her, evenly holding her gaze. “And I won’t hesitate for a second. I owe him that much.”
And because he was a blessing in disguise, Burns took that oppor
tunity to laugh softly and add, “She’s probably been waiting for a chance like that for fucking forever.”
The doctor finally nodded, still looking less than convinced, yet before he could get started, the door to the hangar banged open, admitting Hamilton with Buehler and two marines in tow, carrying a small case he must have retrieved from somewhere on this ship; it looked way too clean to have come with us. Bucky’s gaze went to me first but he spoke to the doctor as he handed him the case.
“In here are several doses of the paralytic you might need should he wake up before you’re done putting him back together. There’s also a modified version of your run-of-the-mill adrenaline shot in there that might do the trick if cutting him up and sewing him back together doesn’t wake him up. If none of that helps, the red-labelled bottle contains a strong tranquilizer that will ensure that he remains in a comatose state for twenty hours per dose. There’s enough in here to keep him under until we reach the States if the need arises. Your call.”
When the doctor nodded, Hamilton turned back to me, his focus dropping to the gun at my side before he caught my gaze again. I almost laughed when I realized that my impulse to blow out his candle was gone, instead replaced by a much deeper-seated need for vengeance. Oh, the day would come that I made Bucky Hamilton pay for what he’d done—and it wouldn’t come with a quick shot or smooth cut. It might not even come at my hand, I realized—but it would come.
He must have seen that conviction in my eyes because for once, he didn’t smirk or offer a goading remark, but instead gave me a small, simple nod. He knew that he had it coming, and he accepted that. In this moment he was so very much like Nate that it made me want to scream.
“Did you do this?”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 100
