I would have loved to say something acerbic back, but sadly, nothing came to mind. The sad truth was that he was right—kind of. But not enough to let me keep my trap shut.
“That’s because usually his plans are better than what I can come up with. And he’s smart enough to explain things to me in a way that makes me see reason.” That was more of a concession than I’d been willing to give, but, whatever.
Hill’s laugh made me grip the steering wheel tighter. “That’s because he’s thoroughly brainwashed you.”
I was tempted to send the Humvee off the road to shut him up, but instead chuckled softly. “Hey, if telling yourself that helps you sleep easier, be my guest. I don’t have anything to prove to you, or anyone. We all know that I’m a homicidal bitch, no additional manipulation required.”
Hill and Cole laughed, and even Richards allowed himself a smile. Only Babyface piped up, “I don’t.”
“Shut it, Gallager,” Hill ordered.
Not another sound came from the back, making me snort. “What’s up with Private Numbnuts? No explanation needed why anyone thought I’d favorably react to some familiar faces, but what did he do to deserve this shit job?”
Richards responded right over Cole’s suppressed laughter. “Corporal Gallager is one of our most promising recruits. Leave him alone.”
“Aw, Babyface can’t take the heat yet?”
I would have left it at that—and, really, I’d said worse to Martinez as far as terms of endearments went—but apparently that was a touchy subject. “Can anyone finally tell me who this fucking bitch is? And tell her to shut it before—”
“Before you what?” I challenged. “Put me in my place? Far better men than you have tried. All of them have failed. I’m a lost cause. Get used to it.” The others’ amusement must have annoyed him more than my words. Too bad, really. I decided to play nice, though, since there was no reason to antagonize him besides boredom. Shit, but I really was turning into Burns… “I’m Bree Lewis.”
“Who?” And that wasn’t even feigned ignorance, far as I could tell.
“Ouch,” I muttered, snorting when Richards sent me a grin that was bordering on a smirk. “Co-leader of the Lucky Thirteen? Nate Miller’s wife?” I kind of hated designating myself as that; I’d by far gained enough notoriety on my own not to need a sentiment of attachment. Still nothing. “The bitch that rallied the scavengers in the year after the zombie apocalypse and kicked your collective asses at that base in Colorado, forcing a truce for the coming winter? Any of that ring a bell?” Now he was starting to annoy me for real. “The expert virologist these yahoos here needed to come with so they’d get the damn cure—and who knows what other weaponized versions of the serum—from a hidden laboratory in fucking France? Come on. Now you’re just playing dumb.”
Since nobody threatened my life, I figured the last wasn’t exactly a secret—and, even if it was, I didn’t give a flying fuck about that.
“Wait, are you the one because of whom the assassinations and suicide bombings started?”
That wasn’t what I’d expected. It didn’t help when Richards responded with a succinct, “She is.”
I waited for anyone to elaborate—and react, but Babyface seemed to have lost all interest in communicating. He may even have looked a little pale, but I couldn’t glance back at him long enough to make sure. Eventually, I caved, turning to Richards. “Spill.”
If not reluctant, he didn’t seem happy to oblige me. “Remember that part about where we propagandized you helping us?”
That was one way of putting it. “Let me guess. That backfired?”
“It did.” I was surprised at his admission, but he didn’t give me time to gloat. “Turns out, come spring there were some people who weren’t happy about the news. They threatened actions against us if we didn’t hand you over. Since we couldn’t produce you to do so, we had to call their bluff. Turns out, it wasn’t a bluff. At least nobody thought so anymore when they blew up the docks of New Angeles.”
“They did what?” No need to feign incredulity there. That made absolutely no sense.
Red kept his voice even as he responded, but I could still hear some latent anger in there. “We’d struck a truce with Greene to help us keep the pretense up. He of course knew what had happened, and since we’d in good faith let your people go—as promised—our hands were tied. In exchange for information, he was happy to help establish our false claims by forging evidence. Turns out, his security is less tight than he thinks it is. Those that were already angry and felt betrayed now had a new target to be even angrier at. I don’t have to explain to you that this didn’t help. Greene himself survived but hundreds were killed, and it set back the progress of the city for months. He consequently enforced much tighter rules, and further alienated others. Tales and resentment spread like wildfire, and come fall, things looked worse than the year before.”
“Who would have thought,” I grumbled, but wasn’t sure exactly who to be angry at. Everyone, pretty much.
“Hindsight is always easy,” Richards pointed out. “Be that as it may, some of the larger established settlements like the Silo and Dispatch used the changing socio-political climate to cement their independence, pretty much declaring martial law. Some applauded and flocked there because of it; others left and went elsewhere. A lot of people disappeared. Many of the settlements skipped out of the network we’d tried to establish over the first two years because they felt we didn’t do enough to support them and had caused too much trouble.”
“They weren’t wrong, from what you just told me,” I interjected.
Red ignored me. “Another harsh winter, and heads had cooled off, but as spring turned into summer, things further deteriorated. I know you think we and the settlements that joined the network were fascist assholes to force you scavengers to identify and hold yourselves to an established set of rules, but without that nobody was better off; on the contrary. Those with power now had more people, more food, more resources, and more weapons. Those lacking all those things were pretty much doomed to starve—and starving people never seek the blame by themselves. So they blamed everyone else—the settlements for being greedy; us for forsaking them; you for being a dead figurehead without a cause. You wanted to know what I meant with, ‘we’re your only option’? That’s because we are. I’m sure that more people recognized the name, but nobody in their right mind would be foolish enough to openly offer support to you, should it turn out that you’re not dead yet. We’re making an exception because we have little to lose and a lot to gain. That about satisfy your curiosity?”
I shook my head, mulling what he’d just dropped in my lap over. “Why didn’t you tell us? You could have prevented some, if not all, of it if you would have thrown me to the wolves, from what it sounds like.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Richards confessed. “Besides, I gave your husband my word that I’d only contact you if your people were under attack, or we needed you for the survival of the human race.”
“So things weren’t quite bad enough yet?”
“Not quite,” he agreed.
That still didn’t paint a pretty picture—and it made me regret my last words to Steven at the settlement. He probably wouldn’t believe it, anyway, but still. Had I known about what Richards just told me, I’d have been a little more cautious.
“That’s why you didn’t do anything about that camp,” I mused. “You really didn’t have the resources.”
“And lots of other fires to put out.” Which left the question of where that left us now. When I pointed that out, he shrugged. “Let’s hope your people are the free-thinking, independent folks you always made them out to be. My guess is, your husband still owes enough people favors that you can pull enough strings to get the support you need to spring him. That will take time. By then, we’ll see what new and exciting waves of violence this summer will bring. You’ve established quite the tradition there, I must say.”
“We didn’
t start it,” I pressed out. “You forced our hands. All we did on our own was find out how to better kill the super-juiced zombies, liberate innocents from cannibals, and offer our help. Your people had to up and try to kidnap me. If you’d taken Taggard and his boys out like you should have in the first place, and made sure that whatever that madman kept cooking up inside NORAD never saw the light of day and poisoned hundreds of your soldiers, none of this would have happened.” I waited for reactions from the back row but was only met with stony expressions. “But, let me guess? It’s still all the scavengers’ fault. And my fault, because not being around, or even dead, isn’t enough to not put the blame on me.”
The silence that followed was all kinds of awkward, and I couldn’t help but feel like, maybe, that last part hadn’t needed to be said. I didn’t like how whiny it made me sound. I didn’t like any of it, truth be told, but until I could verify it with someone I trusted—well, trusted more than the prime examples of manhood gathered in this car—I had to assume that it was true. They had no reasons for lying to me, and I even got the sense that Richards had been very forthcoming with dishing out information.
“Why are you helping me?” I figured it was a valid question.
More silence, until Richards cleared his throat noisily. “It’s not my place to say. I’m just the messenger, and the one who had what counts for your contact information these days.”
“That’s not cryptic at all,” I snarked—but not even my tone got him to spill the beans. Too bad, really. I wondered if I should harangue him about it but dropped the point.
“So Greene knows we’re coming?”
Richards inclined his head. “By now he likely knows that we picked you up as well, but I trust that he’ll try to keep it pretty low-key. But it’s vital that we don’t miss our window.”
“What window would that be, exactly?”
He made a big show of checking his watch. “We have exactly six days and three hours to get to the port for pickup. If we miss the boat, we’ll have to wait another week, and by then someone will be on the way to make sure you’ll never reach New Angeles, or your people. They’re still on the coast north of the city, although they’ve upgraded, from what I hear.” He didn’t elaborate, and when I didn’t inquire, he went on. “Provided we make good pace, it shouldn’t be hard to make it. It’s only a little over sixteen hundred miles.”
“Easy peasy,” I muttered, but couldn’t quite quell the flicker of excitement. That was a lot of driving to be done. “Does this thing run in the dark as well?”
Cole snorted behind me. “You do know the definition of solar power, right?”
“I also know the definition of a battery,” I snapped back. “We always kept spares in our buggies. Don’t tell me your amazing engineers didn’t.”
Before things could escalate, Red interjected, “Yes, we have three spare batteries that are sequentially charged after the main one, but we need some extra power for the first hours of the morning as well until we’re recharging more than we’re spending. I hate to break it to you, but we won’t go beyond fourteen-hour days.”
“Slackers,” I muttered. “No wonder things got out of hand with that sort of discipline.”
Red grinned, as did Hill, while Gallager murmured to Cole, “Is she for real?”
Cole guffawed in answer. “Hate to break it to you, but she’s worse. Just this once, I need to give her some credit—it took her two weeks to go from barely being able to hobble down a corridor with support to almost eviscerating our commanding officer in a sparring match, and three more to go toe-to-toe with some really fucked-up zombies. Try not to get on her bad side. Not sure if there’s still room there, and I don’t think you’ve stuck around us long enough to know how you’d go about trying, but it will be easier on you if you just don’t.”
“You know that I can hear you?” I quipped, although I needed to keep my eyes on the road now. We were far enough away from the settlement that here the cars were still obstacles, if easily circumnavigated ones. Apparently, the other roads or directions were the more frequented ones.
Hill laughed from the other side of the back row. “That may have been part of his reasoning.”
“You’re all so fucking funny.”
Nobody protested.
It was only a while later that I realized that talking so much—and with several people—had exhausted me just a little. That was hilarious on so many levels, if mostly compared to what I’d been through recently. I didn’t protest when after around two hours, Richards told me to stop by the side of the road for a quick break, and took over the wheel from me once we moved on again. I busied myself for a bit checking on the paper maps that were stashed under the seat, scanning for the marks of settlement and other points of interest. Some I was already familiar with, but a lot were new to me, even in areas I’d spent some quality time in. Wyoming had two other larger settlements now—good for them, I hoped. The one in Utah was still there as well, if with a large circle that made me guess marked the territory roughly taken over by it. Looked like Minerva had been a busy, busy woman building up her already-flourishing community. I couldn’t help but ask myself if all these were people who’d hate me once they learned I was still alive. Not exactly something to look forward to—but until I had Nate back, it also wasn’t something I felt like concerning myself with. But, damn—if what Red had told me was true, we’d missed out on some deeply fucked-up things.
Maybe my latent paranoia was simple overreaction. Maybe this really didn’t have anything to do with the ghosts of Nate’s past. Maybe it really was coincidence.
I just didn’t buy it.
Chapter 10
We drove until the sun was about to set, when Richards sent the Humvee rocking cross-country toward a small thicket of trees—not really enough to be called a forest—to stop for the night. I couldn’t help but grin when I realized how easily I fell back into the routines of helping set up camp, even if it was just prepping a fire pit and setting everything up for a possible quick exit. I didn’t protest when Cole dropped a mat and well-insolated sleeping bag in my lap, both things I’d dearly missed over the past days but hadn’t bothered with picking up. It got downright domestic when he held up two MRE packs for me to choose from.
“This is getting awfully domestic, you know?” I remarked. “Give me the one you like least.”
“Not used to getting wined and dined?” Cole joked, handing me the pack in his right hand. I didn’t even check what it was before tearing it open. Oh, such abundance of… whatever that stuff was.
Red hunkered down on my other side, getting his own MRE ready. “The least we can do is feed you, considering our ulterior motives. And you are taking over a guard shift, I presume?”
I gave him a quick, fake grin as I nodded. “Graveyard shift, I presume? I doubt you’ve forgotten just how well I see in the dark.”
“It’s also the one no one else wants,” Cole offered jovially. “And we already have our rookie digging latrine pits and having to wait for his chow.”
I ignored him, and instead angled for the hot water steaming away over the fire. “I’m also surprised you haven’t run out of these yet.”
Cole shrugged as he tore into his own meal, setting the bread and other stuff away for later. “Still plenty left, and plenty more to pick up along the way if you just know where to look. But I suppose I don’t have to tell that to the queen of looters.”
They were so fucking funny tonight—and judging from how Hill grinned into his own stew or whatever, they knew it. “I haven’t touched one of these since France. Not before that, either. I know we had some at the bunker but kept them for when absolutely necessary. Never happened, so I was spared.”
“Oh, come on,” Cole offered around a mouthful of food. “They aren’t that bad. And you could have chosen the other one. It’s your own fault if you don’t like the chicken curry.”
That was what this was supposed to be? I briefly considered the texture of my next bite.
Maybe, maybe not. “It smells edible,” I admitted.
“That bad, huh?” Cole still wouldn’t shut up. “What did you eat in the meantime? Obviously, you of all people could subsist on irritation and the steam you blow up your own ass, but you look moderately well-fed for someone who’s been slumming it in the woods for ages.”
“Well-groomed, too,” I offered back. “Venison, for the most part. Boar, if we had to kill some to drive them out of our territory. Rabbits and fowl, if they were stupid enough to end up in the traps or happened to traipse across our path. Lots and lots of fish. You know, all the good stuff that’s high in fat and protein and didn’t make us consider literally eating one another. Can’t really afford to lose another piece of me, you know?”
Richards kept a straight face at that last bit but Cole and Hill laughed. Babyface, set to guard the perimeter, missed out on all the jokes he wouldn’t understand. Too bad.
“So you pretty much went full-on live-off-the-land carnivores?” Cole surmised.
“If we happened on some tubers or other produce growing somewhere, we’d take it with us, of course, but we didn’t stay anywhere long enough to set up our own produce. Although I almost got to where I could have harvested that salad if those idiots hadn’t rained on our parade a few weeks ago,” I explained wistfully.
Hill gave me a curious look. “Really, that’s the part you’re mourning? Salad?”
“It would have been a mighty fine salad,” I pointed out, my beginning smile swallowed up by real grief, because obviously, it wasn’t the salad I needed to be sitting here, beside me, right now.
“Hunting is a good choice,” Hill agreed with me. “Just sucks if you don’t have anything to season the meat with.”
“Salt, pepper, is all you need,” Cole interjected. “You don’t need a fancy gourmet kitchen for that.”
When he looked at me for agreement, all I had was a shrug for him. “I’m the wrong one to ask. Even before that shit happened, I lived an entire summer on kibble and Fancy Feast. The taste of food’s the last thing I’ve been concerned with in the past years. If it’s edible, I’m down for it.”
Green Fields (Book 10): Uprising: Page 12
