The doctor’s question pulled my attention back from Hamilton, and when I looked at him again, he’d joined Richards at the other end of the gym, working on getting everyone settled and eventually moved out of the quarantine zone and back into proper quarters. Nothing I felt I should concern myself with any time soon.
“You mean the glue?” The doctor nodded while his team continued cutting the pieces of bandages and fabric from Nate’s body. “I patched him up as well as I could. I checked on the necrosis going on around the wounds but since it hasn’t progressed as quickly as I expected, I left everything as is. You know way better what to do than me.”
That had been another one of my many concerns—and one of the nurses, after checking on a few of the superficial bite wounds, summed it up perfectly. “He’s healing, but not as quickly as he should, given his circumstances.”
For the first time, I got a good look at Nate’s body, my heart seizing up at how extensive his injuries were—and continued to be. Yet all I could do was keep to the side and watch as the medical professionals set to work. I didn’t understand half of what they talked about, but then I didn’t need to—nor did I care when, seconds after they gave him that amped-up adrenaline shot, a violent shiver ran through his body and his eyes flew open.
I was leaning over him before my brainstem could scream a warning at me, the medical personnel retreating to what they thought was a safe distance. It really wasn’t, but one look into his eyes and I knew I could tell them to stand down—that was definitely my husband staring up at me, eyes wide and full of pain and confusion, both of which receded the moment he recognized me.
Holstering my gun, I took his face in my hands and leaned close, feeling a world of relief wash over me. “I’m right here,” I told him. “Right here with you.”
I could have offered a million platitudes but that wasn’t what we did—neither of us. So I let the people who knew how to fix him do their job instead. We’d have plenty of time to talk later. For me to yell at him for being so stupid to try to sacrifice himself. To tell him that, except for Tanner and Davis, his plan had worked. To make him swear that he’d never ever deceive me like that—even though I knew that oath meant absolutely nothing because he’d always break it if he thought he could get away with it.
The moment I stepped away, the doctor swarmed in, trying to ask Nate a few questions, starting with his name and whether he knew where he was, but he remained barely responsive, so they went ahead and shot him up with the paralytic as well so they could get to work. They went after the wounds that I’d sealed that needed to be properly cleaned first, which took a good hour. By then, someone else had brought in a portable X-ray unit to check how his broken bones were healing—and which needed to be rebroken and realigned. I felt every cut and break as if it was happening to my own body—and vowed that I’d send a fruit basket to Emily Raynor for having been smart enough to keep Nate locked up while she took me apart. Knowing that something was necessary was only helping so much.
During the several hours that they worked on Nate, a few people tried to bring me food or take over watch for me, but I refused to focus on anything else but him. Even after the doctors had left and the last nurse gave me brief instructions on when to switch infusions, I didn’t move from his side, although being able to sit down on the floor next to the cot they’d prepped for him was a lot more comfortable than standing guard. Burns eventually left, if only to take a long shower. When he returned with a tray laden with food, I finally relented on that front. The doctors had decided to let the paralytic wear off on its own, arguing that the less Nate moved, the better his body would heal. It was still a long, long night with way too much silence and self-reflection for me until he started to stir.
“Welcome back,” I told him as I checked that he hadn’t dislodged the infusion needle from his arm and that he was as comfortable as I could make him.
His eyes took an awfully long time until they focused on me. The swelling had gone down a day after we’d fled the labs but the nurse had told me that only time would tell how much damage had turned permanent. That had been the answer in an awful lot of instances concerning his state.
I let him drink a few sips of water when he tried to speak, but even so his voice was raspy as hell. “On a scale of one to Bucky, how mad are you about the stunt I pulled?”
I may have exaggerated the smile coming to my face. No one got hurt with that white lie. “Let’s discuss that once you’re well enough that I can properly kick some sense into you. Does that answer your question?”
“Sufficiently,” he responded, making me smile for real. His eyes drooped closed and for a moment I thought he was gone once more but he forced himself to rouse further. “Casualties?”
Part of me was angry, bordering on insulted, that he’d care more about the others than ask about his own condition, but I made sure not to show any of that. It didn’t take a mind reader to understand that the mission had ended up pulling a side of him back into the light that, in this sense, I hadn’t seen before. Sure, he’d been our undisputed leader from the moment we’d set out together, even wounded and convalescing when Pia had taken over the day-to-day herding of us lemmings, but the power dynamics had been different. Everyone had been out for themselves, and we’d better play by the rules if we wanted to keep running with said illustrious group. Or maybe that had just been my assessment. Come to think of it, that seemed the likely conclusion. Maybe it had just been a thing of circumstance. Before, he’d always had to make sure he survived to keep those alive who managed as well, who might not continue to do so without a leader. Now he’d been expendable.
I really didn’t like Nate being expendable.
“They got Davis in the exit corridor,” I responded after shutting my anger away where it belonged. “And Tanner you probably know.”
Nate’s eyes drifted closed for a moment in what was obviously regret. “He pushed me forward. Insisted I could do more damage if I lured more of them further away from all of you.”
I bit the inside of my cheek until the impulse passed to comment on that assessment, and instead continued my list. “The serum variant I grabbed from cold storage worked with Gita and Munez, but Russell still got infected. He took his own life before it was too late. And Parker...” I trailed off there, wondering how to put this in words. “Parker is a fucking asshole. Well, was. The serum took with him but he got even weirder about it than before, and then ran off screaming into the night when no one was looking. Just his luck that the shamblers got him, and then we had to put him down a second time.”
Nate listened in silence, but the hint of annoyance crossing his face was balm on my tormented soul. Some things never change. “I’d love to say that the serum is known to exacerbate some psychological traits that are less than desirable, but I think in this case your assessment is spot on. He was an asshole.”
I allowed myself a satisfied nod but the sentiment didn’t take. “And that’s about it. That leaves you and some of the usual. Broken bones, sprained joints. I should probably get my leg checked but there’s enough time for that tomorrow.” Nate didn’t respond, and from how his eyes started drifting shut I could tell that now that his curiosity was sated—and he had two more names to, deep down, feel guilty about—he could get some rest. “Sleep. We got plenty of time for talking later.”
He made a face as if to protest, but he was out cold a few moments later. I gently took his hand and squeezed it, a brief, silent show of support, yet when he squeezed right back, strongly, I kept mine right there. Leaning against the cot, I kept staring at him but didn’t really see the bruised, patched up body. That had been close—way too close for my comfort. “Are you done yet playing the hero?” I asked him—but just as much myself. I got no response from either of us, but none was necessary.
Chapter 20
Nate woke up a few times during the night, clearly in pain and with nothing I could offer working to alleviate any of that. Just like I’d had to tough it out
, so did he. He was healing and getting better but at a much slower rate than I was comfortable with. There was no biochemical equipment on board to speak of so I couldn’t exactly investigate, and I sure as hell didn’t want anyone else to get nosy as well. None of the nurses or doctors seemed to want anything to do with us beyond what common courtesy between the branches dictated, and both Richards and Hamilton made themselves scarce.
The gym remained in its current setup for the first week of our trek back home, if only with a handful of occupants. Nate was the most pressing concern, obviously, but Hill and Murdock also decided to stay there as their major injuries healed, claiming that it was easier to hobble around, trying to keep weight off a sprained ankle or mending femur if one didn’t have to drag one’s sorry ass into a bunk bed, particularly since the other half of the gym was used for physiotherapeutic purposes right now. It seemed much more likely that they were happy to occupy as much open space here as they wanted, not having to live, crammed on top of each other, with the rest.
Gita would have loved some crammed space, I was sure, but before she could take possession of our old quarters, all on her own now and even more prone to wallowing in it, I set Burns to bring our stuff into the gym to us. I got a few baleful glares from her for that, but once Hill started roping her into playing poker for the high stakes of snack food, her mood picked up decidedly. A few of the other soldiers joined in before long, making the quarantine space what it really shouldn’t have been—crowded and loud at most times of the day—but since none of us was strictly contagious, it was all the same.
Hamilton came through on his promise for upgrade shots for everyone. Cole—and much to my surprise, Burns—hesitated before accepting theirs but the unspoken horror of what we’d left behind us was still breathing down their necks, so they eventually caved. I tried haranguing Burns into explaining why he’d had his concerns but he shot me down with a bright smile, and a reminder to mind my own bullshit.
I pretty much only left the hangar to hit the head, trusting that someone would see to keeping me fed. Two days after waking up, Nate was mobile enough not to need my assistance for everything anymore, but that was just as well—I had a different task to tend to. In that very first endless night on the destroyer, while I watched over his sleeping body still half afraid I’d need to use my Beretta that I didn’t dare put away for long yet, Richards dropped back into the hangar, carrying a spare laptop they’d kept on the ship, the one we’d liberated from Dr. Andrada’s office, and stacks of notes and printouts. I mutely stared at it all, part of me tempted to accept it, and as soon as he turned his back on me, throw it all into the ocean to be lost forever. But whatever he had gotten right or wrong about me in his psych eval, he knew that, regardless of my spitefulness, I’d never do that, so he left me to it. “It” of course being my last chance to prove that I was something more than a cripple and a knuckle-dragger.
Very soon, Nate was back to harassing me with food—excuse me, of course he was reminding me, nicely, to take better care of myself—because I couldn’t be bothered to come out of my heap of notes for mere things like sandwiches and coffee. Although, for coffee I would have made an exception.
I couldn’t exactly say what fueled that need to put my mark on a project that, as far as I was concerned, I’d dodged a bullet for never being directly involved in. It certainly wasn’t idealism about thinking that anyone would use it for the greater good of humanity. I was hoping that Richards would deliver it to Raynor and no one else, but it wasn’t like I would be there to make sure he did. Maybe it was the last dregs of my vanity and nostalgia that made me do it.
Maybe I did it because I was the only one that could—and that thought, at least, gave me a sick sense of satisfaction.
One week exactly after the RHIBs had brought us back to the destroyer, all of us gathered once more at the stern of the ship, up on the deck outside of the hangar, to say a last, formal goodbye to those that hadn’t returned with us. Hamilton held a brief speech—for once not trying to be an asshole, and sadly succeeding at it—but I barely heard a word in five, and those that I did made me want to barf over the railing. Except for Tanner, I hadn’t known any of them well, and if I was honest, I’d never tried befriending him, either. It was easy to blame past grief for that and call it a mechanism of self-preservation, but I knew that wasn’t it. That sense of detachment sure made me feel like a shit head. Was this really who I’d become? Again, it was easy to blame circumstances—like the fact that I hadn’t chosen any of this, and being forced to follow orders from one of the handful of people I’d never forgive for what they did to me didn’t make it easier. But deep down I knew it was just that—an excuse. And it was time that, at least in one instance, I stopped pushing everyone away who hadn’t made it his mission in life to stick it out with me until the bitter end.
Gita lingered until most others had gone back inside, and when Burns saw that I took over suicide watch from him, he beat it as well, leaving the two of us alone on the spray-slick deck. Now that I saw her in daylight—even if it was wan, the sun hidden by clouds that promised more snow—I could see that she was well on the road to recovery, her cheeks rosy not just from the cold but actually having lost that sallow tint of sickness.
I was running through the tenth line of platitudes in my head, still at a loss for what to say, when she saved me, looking at me for a second before focusing on the waves at the ship’s wake again. “He always had a chip on his shoulder, you know? Tanner, I mean.”
I nodded my silent assent that I’d understood. “Most of the good ones do.”
That made her crack a smile, even if it was a sad one. “I guess. I certainly did a good job collecting mine.” Another sidelong glance at me before she sighed. “I don’t know why he was in prison when the shit hit the fan. He never told me, you know? I don’t think he told anyone. But he told me something else: that he felt that he deserved it. And that he deserved to rot in there until the end of his days. Only that the zombie apocalypse had other plans for him, and he took that hint.”
Silence fell, me waiting, Gita lost in memories, without a doubt.
“Did you know that he was one of the people who helped Rita build up Dispatch?”
That was news to me. “I didn’t know they knew each other?”
Gita inclined her head. “He didn’t stick around for long, but he helped her organize what people she’d gathered by then, and the story goes that the surviving prisoners only threw their lot in with her because he made them.”
Another nugget I hadn’t been aware of. “So Dispatch is literally the hub of rejects and criminals? I knew I liked it there for a reason.”
That made her laugh. “Yeah, I hear it’s a great place.”
“You’ve never been there?”
“Nope. Just chatted with people who were. The story is, Tanner and a few others decided to set out looking for adventure, and that’s how New Angeles was founded. That’s how he fell in with Gabriel Greene, too,” she explained. “But it was never enough to redeem himself, you know? I think Greene knew; that’s why he tried to bind him to the city as best he could, but we did a damn good job settling in there like ticks. We didn’t need another man fighting for a cause.”
“So that’s why he was doing duty catching caravans of new arrivals?” I hazarded a guess. “To find a new cause?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she admitted. “But he sure got excited when you blew into town with all that talk of vengeance and your fight for freedom.”
“And when I got sick—”
“Another adventure,” she responded. This time, her pause was a pregnant one, as if she was considering what to let me in on. “Greene didn’t know about Hamilton’s mission, but he knew they were planning something. I doubt he had any clue that’s where you’d end up, but, how shall I put this…”
“I’m a shit magnet?” I proposed.
She smiled. “You really are. And if you connect the dots, it makes sense, right? Your hu
sband’s not just one of them, he was literally one of their officers, on track to become one of the movers and shakers. That’s someone you want back in the fold, even if under any other circumstances than the end of the world you’d never trust him again. They were holed up in a lab, and whatever you insist on being now, you were a scientist once. As for a cause, what’s the one constant in all our lives? That damn virus. It was an easy guess to take all that into consideration and expect that something interesting would happen.”
Viewed like that, I didn’t need my rampant paranoia to come up with conspiracy theories. But since that wasn’t a part of me that would ever change, I was sure she was seeing things a little too idealistically. I’d trust Greene not to have ulterior motives the day after I’d made sure he was dead and gone for good—but I didn’t tell her that. It didn’t matter, really.
“So Greene sent you with us because your knowledge would come in handy, and Tanner wanted another chance to redeem his unredeemable conscience.”
She nodded. “Pretty much.” Her next inhale was a shaky one. “I tried to talk sense into him. I really did. Told him that he deserved a better life. That no one ever needed to pay the ultimate price, that a long, long life of small chances would make a much bigger impact in the long run.” A shaky exhale followed. “I tried telling him that I loved him but he shut me up before I got the words out. He told me that I shouldn’t waste my life on a piece of crap like him, but who else would ever—”
The rest got lost in hiccups and sobs, all that pain and grief that was pouring out of her becoming too much to contain. And because I wasn’t a complete dip shit, I hugged her, pulling her head against my shoulder, and held her while she cried, my own throat tight with emotion.
“It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay,” I murmured, knowing that, given our track record, nope, nothing would be okay, but that wasn’t what she’d need to hear now. But at least that pain she was feeling right now would fade over time—and maybe, just maybe, I was wrong this time and fate would surprise me? Who knew.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 101
