Uprising
Green Fields #10
Adrienne Lecter
Uprising
Green Fields #10
by Adrienne Lecter
Copyright © 2019 by Adrienne Lecter. All rights reserved.
http://adriennelecter.com
First edition: February 2019
Produced and published by Barbara Klein, Vienna, Austria
Edited by Marti Lynch
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
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Dedication
To M
Because, salad.
What happened in the Green Fields Series so far:
Nate Miller is a man on a mission—and that mission is to find out how exactly his brother died, and who is responsible for it. He recruits Bree Lewis, a virologist, to help him, even if she doesn’t know it yet. They end up destroying the virus that killed Nate’s brother—and turned him into a zombie—but it is too late. The zombie apocalypse is already happening.
With Nate’s group of mercenaries and a few others who join along the way, they flee the city, barely escaping a mob of zombies that devours everything in its way. Scared and hungry, they start their trek across the country. Their destination: a shelter in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, half a continent away. With rations and ammunition running low, they soon have to resort to looting the dead to stay ahead of the undead hordes. And the zombies are not the only thing out there ready to end their lives.
After spending the winter in their bunker in Wyoming, it is time for the gang to rediscover the world out there. With a loose trade network emerging, there is always need for someone to go raid a mall. They end up hunting super zombies in Sioux Falls, and take out the cannibal compound in Illinois—but at a cost paid in blood. Bree, grieving for her friend, isn’t sure any longer if the scavenger life is right for her. When they deliver the survivors of the cannibal camp to Aurora, Kansas, she finds out that not only are there efforts being made to find a cure for the zombie virus, but she is also offered to take over as leader of the laboratory. Her enthusiasm takes a hit when she learns just how far the super soldier program went that Nate and some of her friends have been a part of, turning elite soldiers into ticking time bombs. The new world order discriminates against their former hidden weapons, exiling them to a life on the road.
Forever leaving her calling of science and academia behind, after some kicking and screaming Bree embraces her place in the new world—at Nate’s side, as co-leader of the Lucky Thirteen, merry band of misfit scavengers and zombie killers.
Only others have different plans for her.
Ambushed by Nate’s former friend and now head honcho of what remains of the army, Capt. “Bucky” Hamilton, Bree narrowly survives getting savaged by the undead, leaving her with some disadvantages, but also immune to the virus. That unique circumstance puts her on the radar of a rogue faction of soldiers and scientists, who have her kidnapped. Bree survives and escapes her white-tiled prison to swear bloody vengeance on Taggard and his men, but those plans have to be suspended when the better half of what remains of the Lucky Thirteen either die or get severely wounded in an ambush set for them. With no other option, Pia, Burns, Nate, and Bree travel across the country to southern California and the by-now infamous settlement of New Angeles—only to find Gabriel Greene, the very first man to make her kill list, in charge of the city, and in possession of the information they need to plot an end to the headhunt on scavengers all over the country.
People rally to Bree’s call for resistance, and, hundreds strong, they attack the base in the mountains of Colorado where their adversary has settled down. Fighting soldiers and zombies alike, they win—forcing Bucky Hamilton to agree to a truce that puts an end to the civil war raging between the fronts, bringing peace to the shattered nation just before winter is coming.
All actions have consequences, and Bree quickly finds out that hers aren’t the exception. What she thought was immunity to the zombie virus she got from the bites has festered into a systemic infection, turning her life into her worst nightmare—she’s rotting from the inside out. What started as a casual last run to maybe get some information at the Silo turns into a fight for survival against the snow and cold, wolves, the undead—and all that with her own body having morphed into a ticking time bomb. With hours left to live, they make it to the Canadian base where one of the serum project’s lead scientists has set up shop since before the apocalypse—Emily Raynor is her last hope for survival. Yet a nasty surprise is also waiting for them: none other than Bucky Hamilton is in charge of the defense of the base, and he wastes no time putting Bree, too weak to fight anymore, in her place. She gets inoculated with the super soldier serum, and against all odds survives the horrific operation required to rid her body of all its decaying parts. Rather than letting her and Nate go, Raynor forces them to accept her proposition: work for her and her soldiers in turn for her doing her very best to fix Martinez’s grave injuries that left him paralyzed. With “no” not being an acceptable answer, they find themselves agreeing to join the mission led by Hamilton—and they are heading to Europe.
Bree’s road to recovery is a rocky one, particularly as time is as much her enemy as her limiting circumstances. Just as she gets better, Hamilton spills the beans that one of the ghosts of Nate’s past—a recruiter named Decker—is still alive, and might be gunning for his former protégé—whose wife is, of course, an obstacle that needs to be taken care of. While Bree doesn’t trust Hamilton to tell the truth, Nate seems deeply disturbed, forcing them to consider what they will be doing after they return back home.
Sustaining heavy casualties, they reach their mission objective—an abandoned underground laboratory that was part of the serum project. They manage to get what they came for—a possible cure, but also the latest, most deadly weaponized version of the serum. Nate almost dies covering their retreat, leaving Bree worried not just about his recovery but exactly how good the serum is at saving them from infection. She spends the long way back going over the documentation they found in the lab, doing her very best to contribute to what she hopes might be the ultimate cure for both the zombie virus, but also the fatal conversion that awaits everyone inoculated with the serum upon death.
As the others leave the destroyer that brought them back to US soil, Nate and Bree hide, deciding that it’s best for the safety of their friends if they drop off the side of the earth.
Chapter 1
“Initializing pre-flight check in three, two, one, go!”
I flipped the switch, then pushed the button. Music started blaring from the speakers, making me laugh as I sagged into my seat, my pulse racing from the sudden systemic shock. A thread of civilization back in my life—how I have missed thee! Over the com, I could hear Nate mutter under his breath, mostly because I knew he was doing it; the electric guitar solo was too loud to even hear myself think. And because there was no time like after the apocalypse to enjoy life to the fullest, I did a perfect rendition of air drums if there’d ever been one, my imaginary sticks flying inches away from the wheel and console. Anything less than a full minute would have been sacrilegious.
“Do you have to do this every single time
?” Nate complained when I finally took a bow and turned down the volume.
For good measure, I added another fifteen seconds of the chorus. “Yes. Absolutely.”
He was still shaking his head as he powered his own buggy up, the small vehicle giving barely more than a high-pitched tweep as the electric engine engaged. He hadn’t bothered with rigging up a sound system to his, let alone spent months searching for a car stereo that could hold up to five CDs at once… and find and select the perfect albums. And he wasn’t done blaspheming yet. “Can we, just maybe, not do this next time? Just once I want to get the vehicles out and running without every shambler in the state getting alerted to our presence.”
“Just be glad I didn’t choose Bohemian Rhapsody this time or you would have had to wait the entire five minutes and fifty-five seconds,” I told him, but was only half paying attention. The by-far-more-focused part of my mind was checking on the battery status—fully charged, no surprise after five days connected to the solar panels—and whatever else the very minimal cockpit showed me.
I had my music back—right now I didn’t care about much else.
Well, except for zooming across the flats at sixty miles per hour with my music blaring from the speakers. That trumped pretty much everything.
Except for sex, but I really didn’t see how I could have added that to the mix in this beloved but admittedly rickety deathtrap on four wheels.
Still grinning about my observation, I pulled my aviator goggles over my eyes—spectacular find that they had been—and made sure that my com battery was fully charged as well. I’d forgotten about that once and figured Nate’s silence was a sign that he was okay with my idea of going on a long round trip. Alas, that hadn’t been the case, and he’d berated me all of the—admittedly long—way back after he’d caught up with me and managed to make me stop with wild gesticulations. Ah, good times!
“Buggy One, ready for takeoff,” I reported, beaming a dazzling smile over to the hulk of welded-together scrap metal sitting next to mine.
Nate flipped me off blindly; his focus was still on his console. “LSV-2, all systems nominal.”
I’d rather walk than call this deathtrap by what he claimed was the official designation—Light Strike Vehicle. A dune buggy was a dune buggy, whether it could be airdropped out of some fancy helicopter or not. Considering the hundreds of hours that we’d spent remodeling them to make them run on electric motors—not to mention getting all the parts, and the textbooks teaching us to build said motors—I felt vindicated in giving it the designation it deserved. So “buggy” it was, and Nate could suck his dick for all I cared.
“We do the usual perimeter round?” I asked, snapping myself into the harness. Knowing that I’d survive a crash was one thing; facing months of physical therapy because of broken bones, quite another.
Nate’s sigh preceded his response. “Take it easy, bronco. Just the small one today. We need to go check on the southeastern quadrant tomorrow so we can keep to this side of the river.”
I made a face, but rather than tell him that he was a spoilsport, I gunned the engine—which didn’t even give me a satisfying whine because, electric—and took off, turning the dial on the sound system up to maximum volume once more. I may or may not have whooped loud enough to still be heard over the drums. Gravel spewed as the tires found grip and propelled me forward, and down the plain we went. Wind and dust whipped my face and tore at my clothes, making me whoop again as the first heat of day was replaced by a rush of coolness. It had only been five days but, God, I’d missed this!
The track ended just as I shot over the nearby access road, the terrain turning bumpy as the buggy surged into the high grass. I grimaced, and with overwhelming reluctance turned down the volume to where my mind could once more concentrate, aiming for the rock formations a few miles beyond the grassland. Nate fell into formation with me about a hundred yards behind and to my right, closer to where the elevation picked up on this side of the basin. I lost myself in the rocking, irregular motions of the buggy, letting it lull me into an alert state of relaxation until we reached the dirt path that led up onto the rock outcropping that was our westernmost outlook. I may have accelerated a little harder on the first few serpentines up to make Nate eat the dust my buggy churned up. Once I reached the small plateau on top, I put the buggy into idle, grabbing my binoculars as I climbed out. Nate joined me, both of us standing near the ledge, scanning the plains below.
“See anything?” he asked, still studying the way we had come.
I wasn’t entirely sure, squinting because of the glare of the sunlight. “Might be something over by the plantation.” Not an actual plantation, but the building had reminded me of colonial-style architecture enough for the name to stick.
“Movement?”
I shook my head. “Birds circling. Could be a larger cougar kill, or…” I trailed off, grinning at the hopeful tone in my voice.
Nate glanced my way for a second and snorted before he found the spot I’d mentioned. “Worth checking it out. That’s only a mile from where the mother raised her cub last year. If she’s back, I’d rather stay out of her territory for now.”
“Or you’re secretly hoping to get a good workout in,” I teased.
“Nope, that would be you,” he responded succinctly.
Putting the binoculars away in my light pack, I grinned. “Maybe if you’d do a better job meeting my needs—”
“Get in your damn buggy, you bloodlusty minx,” he growled, the look he gave me speaking of very different ideas that might best be executed outside of the buggies. They really weren’t built for anything but transportation—I’d tried in the past, and while ending in laughing fits, those attempts hadn’t been very fruitful.
“You say the sweetest things,” I drawled, already swinging myself back behind the wheel.
It took us a good fifteen minutes to get to our new destination. When it became obvious that those were vultures circling and not other birds, I cut the volume of my music, grumbling under my breath about inconveniences. I slowed the buggy down further so for the last mile near where we’d seen the disturbance, we made almost no sound besides the rustling of grass and crunch of gravel. It soon became obvious that it wasn’t simply a cadaver left by one of the few apex predators in the region, prompting me to bring the buggy to a stop so I could go investigate. Before swinging myself out of the vehicle, I deliberated over my choice of weapons but then went with my favorite and its twin backup, a baseball bat made of oak—heavy enough to be a good stand-in for a much heavier weapon that might have torn itself right out of my grasp in the heat of the moment. I didn’t intend to get up close and personal so I’d have to use one of my knives, or my beloved Beretta. I left the buggy idling, trusting that the ninety percent battery charge wouldn’t be all gone by the time I returned. If whatever was agitating the vultures like this turned out to be more than Nate and I could handle in a pinch, running for a bit so we could regroup and go about things in a more strategic way was always a good idea. Not what I preferred, but I could be smart and calculating if I had to.
I just really didn’t want to—not today.
Humming under my breath, I slowly and deliberately made my way forward, the building a few hundred feet to my right. The front lawn looked undisturbed so it hadn’t just been a group of deer trampling through the vegetable patch I’d painstakingly set up there a few weeks ago—it happened, but they were usually deterred by the fence. The light wind came from behind us, carrying my scent forward to any predator hunting by that—a surefire way of making cougars and the likes decide to go linger elsewhere. It was only the stupid bipeds that didn’t heed warnings like that.
A whiff of decay hit my nose, strong enough to reach me across what used to be a well-manicured lawn from the other side of the house, making me smile. Yup, no cougar cubs to avoid today. Tightening my grip around the black wraps the bat’s handle was covered in, I strode forward with purpose, but made sure to keep my peripheral vision
on high. It had been a while since one of the sneaky fuckers had gotten a jump on me, but you never knew.
As soon as I rounded the building and got a glimpse at the gently sloping meadow behind it, I knew we had some work to do. How they’d gotten the jump on no less than five—no, make that six—deer, I couldn’t say; the resident deer were usually hard enough to track that it still took me two to three attempts with bow and arrow each time we were out for some venison. Even Nate had an even fifty percent chance of startling them. Maybe the small herd had tried to save their fawns? Whatever the cause, the deer had been too stupid to take off, and had become quite the banquet for the undead. I counted eighteen at a preliminary perusal, with maybe a few more hidden further toward the trees by what had been the natural border of the property, back when such things had been of interest to anyone. I waited for Nate to catch up to me, then raised my brows at him. Almost twenty to two—not the best odds. Then again, they were distracted and likely sluggish from decimating their prey to a few tufts of fur and the odd cracked bone; probably a hoof or two, as well.
Nate considered, then shrugged, leaving the choice up to me.
There was no telling from where they had come—except not from the east, toward the river, where our base was; we would have noticed that. Even less certain was what they would do once they recovered from their food coma. The last thing we needed was for them to take up residence in the building, or squat somewhere else in our territory. Those deer would have easily fed us for a month, and their reeking presence would ensure that other prey animals would steer clear of the site of the slaughter at least until the next heavy rainfall. That alone pissed me off enough that I could feel the muscles in my upper back tense with anticipation of all the work they were about to do.
Green Fields (Book 10): Uprising: Page 1
