Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (8 page)

As soon as we were crawling up the meadow behind the hollow where we’d camped for the night, Nate hailed Jason on the radio, affirming that we were en route and would meet up with them within the hour. That happened closer to thirty minutes later, most of which we spent traversing a small creek. The Chargers had set up their camp well—the only natural barrier that worked against zombies so far was water, and the spot between the creek and the ridge overlooking the valley was perfect.

It also gave me and idea of what we were up against as soon as I got out of the car and looked out over the riverbed and the settlement below. The view was so unreal that it took my mind a few seconds to process it.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen that many people in one place in my entire life before the zombie apocalypse turned everything to shit—and they hadn’t all been out to eat us.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” I asked Nate who’d come to a halt beside me.

“I know why I’m doing it,” he said, his voice about as flat as my own. “I have no idea whatsoever why you’re doing it.”

I looked at him sharply, expecting a smirk, but he just held my gaze evenly. When I didn’t reply, he turned away, walking over to the man who was clearly in charge. They all had that certain look to them. Or maybe it was easy to single him out because he was looking at each of us rather than staring at my ass. It happened.

Nate and Jason shook hands. A quick round of introductions followed. Jason Luke wasn’t quite how I’d pictured him—nothing could account for that shock of ginger hair at the crown of his head, set in even more stark relief as he kept the sides and back shaved to buzz-cut length—but he was tall, he was built, just as most of his guys were. I didn’t quite manage a smile when Jason asked, nodding toward me, “Your wife?” to which Nate replied, completely without deflection, “My pilot.” No one made a stupid remark, and there was a definite air of respect between our groups. I hadn’t expected any lascivious remarks—not with a fuck-ton of zombies just a mile below us—but it was good to know that once the novelty of having women among them wore off, the other mercs mostly ignored me. I still wished I could command that air of calm and confidence that Pia was emanating. She never got those looks that I did.

Jason and his second in command, Charlie, held a brief meeting with Nate, Pia, and Andrej, while the rest of us grunts remained with the cars. The Chargers had similar equipment as we did, an eclectic mix of military gear and outdoor wear, with the odd motorcycle leathers thrown in just for fun. Also like us, they were armed to the teeth, and it took Burns exactly five minutes to start complaining why we didn’t have car-mounted machine guns yet. I had a certain feeling that his car would soon see some upgrades—provided we made it out of this. Probably not the worst of ideas.

Wherever I tried to look, whatever I tried to focus on, my gaze kept snagging on the moving mass of bodies down there. I had no idea whatsoever how many there were. Two to three thousand, likely, but that seemed too small a number to describe what was going on there. And they didn’t just stand around like people in a concert hall, with the odd swaying and shuffling going on. They were moving, constantly pressing forward, then changing places when a weaker individual got shoved to the side by a stronger one. From a distance, they all looked the same, but if the stragglers of the horde had been any indication, they had one thing in common: they were all well-fed, which meant that we had to be on top of our game to stand a chance—and that wasn’t even counting what I knew must be hiding in that mass.

“Recognize anyone down there?” I asked Bailey as he kept scanning the zombies through the scope of his sniper rifle. Like with our command group, there were three X-shaped marks across his neck underneath the black face mask he’d already pulled up that only left his eyes free. That was enough for me to catch the scorn on his face at my teasing, but he didn’t respond.

Until we went up against them, we had no chance of telling the super-juiced zombies apart from the normal ones. The ones that, like Nate and the others, had gotten shot up with the serum that had turned them into what Burns jokingly referred to as super soldiers. Only that unlike our six, they’d caught the activated version of the virus when they’d consumed contaminated food—and the rest was history. Just thinking back to our little field trip into Sioux Falls made me shiver. I wondered if any of the knowledge we’d gleaned then would help us now. Against a pack with one or two of those, maybe. But this many? The sheer ration of us versus them was so skewered in their direction that even if they’d all been uncoordinated, starved, barely dangerous shamblers they could easily overwhelm us.

It was then that something occurred to me. Looking toward the east, I guessed that we were only minutes from sunrise now, and except for the natural shadow our ridge threw down into the valley, it would soon be flooded with light.

Making my way over to where the others were holding their meeting, I nudged Nate softly. “Do we have a time of attack yet?”

He gave me one of those looks that wasn’t exactly hostile, but let me know plainly that he didn’t appreciate the interruption. If I’d wanted to join, I should have done so from the start. I knew that very well myself, but until now I hadn’t figured I could contribute anything.

“Why?” Jason asked before Nate could send me off, fuming mad at whatever acerbic remark was about to offer.

Looking at Jason and his man, I jerked my chin toward the settlement. “Because the zombies are nocturnal. They can function in daylight, but they hunt at night. Did you notice any different patterns in their behavior over the last twenty-four hours?”

I felt a flicker of triumph when Jason’s eyes widened, and the other guy was quick to ask around their people. I beamed a smile at Nate, but he shut me up with that same look as before. My, someone was grumpy this fine morning.

“Several of our men thought they were more sluggish during the day,” Charlie reported back a little later. “We didn’t really pay that much attention during the night, except to make sure that they didn’t see us up here. They haven’t torn down the palisades yet, so they can’t have been that active.”

“Wrong,” Bailey reported from right behind us. “Just looking now, I’ve easily identified four to seven points where the wood is already weakening. Whatever we plan to do, we have to do it quickly, or else they’ll break through.”

“Shit,” Jason replied for all of us, instinctively staring toward the settlement. “That’s days quicker than everyone estimated.”

“With a sample size of what, zero and wishful thinking, that’s not really a surprise,” I offered, then swallowed the rest of my remark. Oh great, I was getting as bad as Nate. “Are those the only barriers they have?”

Jason shrugged. “They seem to have an inner wall, too, right around the buildings, but if the outer barricades fall, our plan won’t work.”

When I just eyed him curiously, Nate explained. “Jason’s plan is to try to draw as many of them away as possible before we kill the rest. It won’t be as effective as a direct attack, but it has much greater chances of success. Or at least not getting us killed trying. There will still be the remainder of the streak to deal with, but with luck they’ll find a new target if we decimate them enough. Our priority isn’t to wipe them all out, but to get them to stop threatening the settlement. The rest will have to remain a problem for another day.”

That plan was a lot sounder than what I’d expected—feared, really—but it couldn’t be as simple as that.

“You think they will just follow us? They seem to be quite happy with tearing down the walls.”

Jason grinned. “We’ll have to give them some incentives, of course. They have a thing for noisy, moving targets so that’s in our favor. They also don’t like getting killed. I think we can take it from there easily.”

That much was true. Nate seemed to agree, but still looked skeptical. “We shouldn’t kill too many of them close to the settlement, or they’ll just hunker down and eat.”

Jason’s second in command got out a hand-drawn map that crudely depicted the village and most of the surroundings. “A little further up the valley there’s a lot of space. A small river delta to the east where another river joins that one over there. Scouted it yesterday. I say we draw ‘em up there, then heap up enough of ‘em to keep the others coming. The terrain doesn’t work for a kill zone, but it’s flat enough that we can speed away once we’re done. There are two bridges over the river. I say we stop them around there. Once there are enough bodies piling up, we circle back around east and west and clear up the barricades. Easy peasy.”

I severely doubted that, but Nate’s nod after he looked over the maps again instilled some confidence in me.

“How far up the river is that from the town?” he asked.

Jason took over again. “About ten miles, give or take. Should take about one hour to get them up there, then another two to stall them and to get back. Even if some try to follow, we’re quicker in the cars over open terrain. They’ll be tired from chasing us, and they have enough fodder for days piled up there if we do our job. Should give us enough time to clear things up here before nightfall. If you say they’re hunting by night, we have to start now. Otherwise we’re just burning daylight.”

Some murmuring ensued but no one spoke up in protest. Unease continued to hang over our entire group, but then I doubted that would change until we got going. Nate confirmed that guess when he leaned closer and whispered a brief, “It will get better once you’re in the thick of things. Waiting’s always the worst.”

“I thought getting killed was the worst?” I shot back.

He shook his head. “Maimed is more like it, but even so, it’s always anticipation that has your nerves all bunched up and overloaded. Inactivity, uncertainty. Once you're out there and doing something, you have a concrete task to focus on. That helps. Trust me. It’s not my first rodeo.”

Technically speaking, neither was it mine, but this was different. Maybe it was the scale of the undertaking. Maybe it was the fact that with the cannibals, I hadn’t felt quite so helpless and small. They hadn’t been so many. And while I hadn’t doubted that they would have killed me just the same, there’d been a good chance they wouldn’t have done it straight away. As much as considering alternatives like that was not anything I was comfortable with, there was no second chance with zombies. They came at you. They ate you. The end.
 

I really didn’t want to die today.

A few things had to be coordinated, like com frequencies, signals for when the coms went down, alternate exit strategies, but within twenty minutes we were all set and there was nothing left to do but to get in the car, strap myself in, and wait for the signal.

Nate had been right—as soon as I got the “go” over my earpiece and started the engine, some of the jitters quieted down. We shared a last, lingering look and he gave me a hint of a smile. I hadn’t thought it possible, but I managed to reciprocate, even if mine was likely more of a grimace. We could do this. No, we would do this. And, if not, tonight we were going to dine in hell.

The plan was simple enough: go down the slope leading into the flood plains the settlement was in. Drive around the zombies until enough of them were agitated—or more agitated than they were already by the prospect of food beyond the wooden walls—then take off toward the riverbed and follow it up north, drawing as many of them away as possible. Stop after the first bridge, start killing them, reverse, and clean up those that hadn’t followed us on our merry chase. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, my mind screamed at me, as I brought the car to a halt at the very top of the slope and all I could see in front of me was a moving, crawling mass of the undead. Had I thought those were two thousand before? No way. That had to be more. This plan was absolutely insane. The only reason why we’d survived so far was because we hadn’t done shit like this. Sure, twenty zombies were no match for us. But several thousand?

“Bree,” Nate said—maybe not even for the first time, I realized. It took me forever to force my gaze from what lay beyond the windshield to his face beside me. He was looking way too calm to be human. When he caught my stare, he reached over, wrapping his gloved hand over mine on the wheel. “Just do it. You know that you’re a hell of a driver. You know that the Rover is a moving fortress. You know that you could probably plow straight through that mass and we’d still make it out at the other end. But that’s not what we’re going to do,” he reminded me. “We are just going to drive by them in a semi circle before we take off toward the river. Maybe add another round if we haven’t caught their attention yet. There’s a good chance we’ll have to do that second round. So the descent now, and the first half round, are just like driving through the fields. You’ve done that hundreds of times. You know you can do this. And, if all else fails, we’re armed to the teeth. We can shoot ourselves out of this if the car breaks down. Andrej will be right behind you until the last zombie is flat down on the ground. Just let go of the hand brake, ease your foot onto the accelerator, and let the car roll down into the plain. Trust me.”

That all sounded so easy. “But—“ I protested. Nate cut me off right there.

“Trust. Me. Can you do that? Just trust me. This one’s entirely on me. See, perfect opportunity to gloat if things go wrong.”

“If things go wrong, we’re dead,” I pointed out.

“I’m sure that won’t stop you,” he confided, a grin appearing on his face. “Trust me. Do it. Now.”