Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (42 page)

“That was almost anticlimactic,” I remarked, fighting really hard to keep a giddy grin in. Damn, but this drug cocktail was starting to get on my nerves.

“Why are you always complaining?” Nate, well, complained, before he told me to take a left. Breathing in after taking the turn hurt just a little less than before. I wondered whether that was the adrenaline leaking from my veins now that the chase was over, but when it got hard to take anything but shallow breaths a few minutes later I realized that yep, the numbness was spreading. That sobering thought shut me up for a while. Our radio was still dead but the coms were working again, and Nate got busy coordinating with the others. We were still missing two of our cars, but we’d seen them get away, so chances were that they’d made it.

 
I simply concentrated on driving. The sun was shining, the birds were likely singing—not that I could hear them with the windows up—what was there to complain about?

It became obvious when we breached the range of the jammers as our radio lit up like a Christmas tree from one bump in the road to the next. It was that very same emergency bulletin signal that had warned us about the streaks what felt like a small eternity ago, but was closer to a month. So much could happen in a month. Heck, days, really. Hours. Minutes. While I lost myself in some nostalgic musing, Nate switched on the receiver, but kept his hands away from our transponder. No need to let the world know that we were still alive and kicking. For now.

Tamara’s voice filled the relative silence of the car, as pressed and harassed as I’d never heard her before, not even back then.

“—eryone, listen, if you’re in a settlement, get the fuck out of there! I repeat, the settlements are no longer safe! If you can, get on the road right now, even if you don’t make it to another shelter before nightfall. If you need help coordinating, we can tell you who else is in your area so you can build a convoy. This is a nationwide warning. The settlements are no longer safe. Don’t trust anyone you don’t know personally. Keep off the well-used routes. Come to us. We here at Dispatch and the folks over at the Silo have our gates open for you. I repeat, all sworn government installations are no longer safe—”

I couldn’t help but smirk at Nate. “Think that was us?”

He found that a lot less funny, and I didn’t speak up again as I continued to listen to Tamara continue with her bulletin.

“Today two of our own teams were attacked. Information is sketchy at best, but I’m sure you’ve all heard of people disappearing. Now they hit someone who didn’t go down easily, and as far as we know a good handful of them made it away to warn us. Gussy from the Raiders just called in, telling us that she and her team barely got away, suffering heavy losses.” The name didn’t ring a bell, but considering that the Raiders only had a single female member, I figured that must have been the girl. Good to know that she’d survived after all.
 

I made as if to reach for the radio to call in, but Nate quickly batted away my hand. “We stay off the grid until we know more,” he said. “You just drive.”

Tamara repeated the news twice more, then cut off abruptly. “I just got Chino Torres of the Raiders on the line. Patching him through now. Torres, you’re live.”

Static filled the line but normalized as Tamara must have worked her magic. Torres’s voice was still choppy, but borderline understandable.

“Not exactly sure what they wanted, but the contract we took was definitely a trap,” he explained.

Tamara cleared her throat. “And you can verify that it was government troops that shot at you?”

“Not just shot at us,” Torres spit out. “They had the entire building rigged, and a few hundred undead locked away that they released on us. That’s not just someone having a beef with you, or wanting to gain leverage. That any of us made it out there is a miracle.” He chuckled wryly. “Well, that and what you get when you corner a bunch of absolutely insane fuckers. I know I was ranting earlier this week because you paired us up with them, but shit. I thought we were crazy. We have nothing on them.”

I felt the corner of my mouth quirk up, but my stomach did a rather upsetting roll. Nothing that had happened today was anything I was happy about. And I so wouldn’t miss not being able to beat myself up over it for weeks and weeks on end.

There was some commotion in the background going on, and it wasn’t Tamara who came back on the line, but a different female voice.

“This is Rita, Chief of Security over here. Can you confirm how many of them got away?”

I shot Nate a sidelong glance. “Look, your girlfriend is worried about you!”

His snort was answer enough what he thought about that. “Yeah, like I give a shit.” But he still shut up to listen to Torres’s reply.

“I have no fucking clue,” Torres admitted. “But a few must have. Gussy said the only reason why those of us who got away did was because one of ‘em made himself go full-on zombie in the thick of it, which caused enough confusion for everything to go up in flames.”

“Do you know who?” Rita asked, her tone hard.

“No clue about the names. Scrawny, tall fella? Not sure how many of ‘em survived but none of their cars remained behind when we picked up Gussy. She swears she only got away because their red haired she-devil drove the car straight through the troops. As in full-on collision course. Damn, that bitch is crazy. We need more of that sort out there.”

My stomach did another flip, but now it was impossible not to flash a grin at Nate. “See, I have a fanboy, too. You’re not that special.”

Nate just shook his head in silent bewilderment. “Keep deluding yourself. He wouldn’t be giving you the time of day if you hadn’t gone on a killing spree.”

And that, ladies and gents, shut me up for good.

Torres continued to give what little details he had, ending with a heartfelt, “Please tell those fuckers that if they ever need help, they can count on us. They did us a solid there. We won’t forget.” Tamara went back to sending out the news, calling for everyone who wasn’t hunkered down somewhere secure to come join them at Dispatch. I couldn’t help but wonder what that would mean for the future. Open civil war? Or just a hitch in the road? Another thing I was glad I didn’t have to worry about anymore.

The sun was already setting by the time we got to our rendezvous point. We didn’t have to wait long—or actually stop—as we saw our remaining two cars head our way from the east, quickly catching up with us once we were all on the same road. I could still feel the effects of the booster but they were slowly wearing off. My head hurt and seeing straight was starting to get challenging. I might no longer be feeling the bruises all over my body but deep-seated fatigue set in, making me jittery on a different level than my previous drug-induced high. I still forced myself to go on, following Nate’s directions practically on autopilot. Not that he gave me many directions, or even said much, lost in gloomy thoughts as he was.

And then I just couldn’t go on anymore. I tried to postpone that moment until the very last minute, but when driving down a straight road was getting more than just challenging, I knew that I had to call it quits.

“Mind if we take a break?” I asked, my voice raspy now even though I’d just drunk some water. Water that scorched down my sore throat as if it were acid.

Nate gave me a concerned look. “You crashing?” I replied with a jerky nod. That excuse would have to do, for now. He glanced at his maps briefly. “We have to find a place to camp for the night, anyway. Just pull over, I’ll get out to coordinate with the others. If you want me to drive on, just move over into the passenger seat.”

I brought the car to a halt with a jerk that seemed to jar every muscle in my body, exhaling slowly as I watched Nate undo his harness and get out. Grabbing the wheel hard, I let my forehead sink against my hands as I watched through the side window as Pia joined him, talking and gesticulating wildly. Oh, someone was pissed. And probably would get even more angry a few minutes from now.

Sagging back, I let my head hit the seat. Reaching up, I flipped down the sun visor and stared at my reflection in the mirror for a moment. Bloodshot eyes, sweat on my brow, that weird, feverish look in my eyes—there was no doubt. That I started coughing the next moment, spitting up blood was just one more indicator that I didn’t need, but it helped letting the finality of what was going on settle in.

I barely managed to get the door open before I was violently sick, hurling up water and bile, but also clumps of congealed blood. Shit.

It took me a while to get my bearings, but as soon as the worst of the nausea receded, I undid my belt harness and pushed myself out of the car, never minding my own puke that I inevitably landed in. My left leg felt like a lump of dough, too weak to support my weight any longer. That didn’t matter as I could very well lean against the car as I made my way around it. My poor, shot up Rover, looking like someone had abused it for target practice. Well, that made two of us, I guessed.

Looking around the back of the car, I let my eyes roam over what was left of our merry band. None of us had gotten away unscathed. There was dirt and blood everywhere, Martinez already busy patching up Taylor, his own left arm not quite working as it should. But no further casualties from what I could tell. Even if I might hate myself for what I’d done, it hadn’t been in vain. I’d gotten my people to safety, and that was all that counted now.

A few hopping, dragging steps and I fell into the lush, green grass at the side of the road, the slight slope letting me look not just straight up into the sky overhead but take in the blazing sun as it set over the plains in the distance. Probably the last sunset I would ever see. Even if I was still breathing tomorrow at this time, I knew that my mind would be too far gone to still marvel at the beauty of it. And it was beautiful, same as the endless green fields all around me.

Didn’t matter anymore. I’d done my best, and for once, it had been good enough. I could relax now. Let go. Just breathe in. Breathe out.

“Hey, you needing some help over there?” Martinez called out as he came sauntering over to me. “Nate said you got grazed by a bullet or some shit.”

Exhaling forcefully, I rolled over onto my side—my right, because the left hurt too much. How was this even working with the nerve damage? My fingers closed around my backup gun and I pulled the Glock out, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember if there was even a magazine in the gun. Should be. Didn’t matter. I didn’t actually intend to shoot anyone, but seeing me point it straight at him made Martinez pause and raise his hands placatingly.

“Wow, wow there,” he said, but he was still grinning. “He also mentioned that you’re high as a kite right now. Just be a good girl and drop the gun. If you want to just look at the pretty sunset, that’s okay. I can check on you later.”

A lie, obviously, as he made no attempt to step away. The gun wavered in my hand—and if I’d had to shoot, I wasn’t sure which of the three Martinezes in front of me I should have aimed for—but I forced it to become steady.

“Back the fuck away from me, Martinez. I’m not kidding. The booster was a convenient excuse while it lasted, but I’m serious. I’m not going to lose anyone else today.”

Against the backdrop of the sunset it was impossible to see whether he actually blanched, but I could tell the exact moment when the message sank in. Under different circumstances, the utter look of horror on his face would have probably made me laugh. As it was, hawk up more bloody phlegm was what I did, my gun way off-target now. I should probably have dropped that before that fit hit me.

I didn’t get to remedy that because the next moment, Nate was there, easily prying my weak fingers from the Glock, dropping it in the grass next to me. The look on his features was pinched as he scanned my face, trying to find an answer there that I knew I couldn’t give him. Whatever he saw made his eyes go wide, and he dropped into a crouch by my side, his knife already cutting through the tape I’d secured the bandage with. I reached for his hands to stop him but he just batted mine away. Careful, and with obvious trepidation, he eased the gauze off the wound, the bandage coming away with a sick, sucking sound. It didn’t hurt, though—a small mercy. What lay below looked even worse than when I’d last seen it. The glue might have done a good job staunching the blood loss, but now everything was swollen, pus seeping out around where glue met flesh. My nose was too full of snot to still scent anything but I was sure that it must have started to stink already.

Nate continued to stare at the wound for several seconds straight before his eyes snapped up to my face, confusion and pain shining there. “Why didn’t you say—“

“It doesn’t matter,” I offered, wrapping my fingers around his forearm just above where his knife was all but forgotten. “I didn’t even feel the bleach anymore when I dumped half of that bottle on it. And that was at the most five minutes later. I was bleeding to death, so I patched myself up. I knew there was nothing I could do anymore for myself. But I could still get you out. Get the others out. Make our sacrifices count for something. Do you understand?”

He didn’t move but I could tell from the way he kept looking at me that he understood. That it didn’t matter anymore was a different thing.

“It’s okay,” I assured him, but the next coughing fit probably ruined that. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not—“ he started but had to cut himself off there.

I held his gaze as I smiled, continuing to stroke his arm.

“It’s okay, Nate. But that doesn’t change anything. I know that, and you know that. I’m infected. And there’s nothing in this world that can save me now.”

To be continued in Green Fields #5 - Resurgence

(Coming Early Summer 2016)

Acknowledgement

Ha, a cliffhanger, what a lovely surprise! Makes me wonder if I should apologize to you, gentle reader, for leaving you like that—but depending on when you are reading this, you’ll just have to wait a few weeks or can jump right into the next book. Also, we writers are sadists, only happy when we’ve tormented our characters to the point of breaking them—and, by extension, our readers as well. So rather than saying that I’m sorry I’ll assure you that I’m working hard on book #5!