Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 (18 page)

He shook his head, then rubbed his eyes in pure frustration.

“Of course I’m not that stupid. I…“

“You what?” I asked when he didn’t go on.

He sighed. “I didn’t know what exactly to do, so I just… winged it.”

“You… winged it,” I echoed, my voice cracking. My throat closed up, but there were no tears in my eyes—a small mercy.

I could see plainly on his face that he was aware what this was all doing to me right now, and I felt a glimmer of satisfaction when I realized that it was killing him.

“You don’t understand,” he started, then shook his head, beginning from scratch. “You were dying. I was trying so hard not to give up because you were holding out a day longer than should have been possible, but there was no doubt that you wouldn’t just bounce back from this. Then you started bleeding on top of all that, and I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, how to handle this. I’ve never been this desperate and helpless in my entire life. That’s how Burns and Romanoff found me, sitting in the bathtub, rocking you in my arms, blood and… everywhere.” He paused for a moment, trying to gauge my reaction, but I knew that I wasn’t giving him anything. “Pia sent them. They expected that by then you would be dead, I would be done burying you, but not quite ready to leave yet. I think all of us would have preferred that to reality. But you weren’t quite dead yet, and I couldn’t bring myself to do the humane thing and end it for you. What I could do was get fucked-up ideas in my head that you’d want for your death not be completely meaningless. That if there was a possibility that you could contribute one last thing to science, you’d hate me forever if I passed up that chance. It didn’t mean anything to me right then, because all I could think about was that you were dying.”

So much for only him sharing my pain. Try as I might to close myself off, that was always a two-way street with us.

“So you did what exactly?” I asked, barely more than a harsh whisper. Now it was anguish rather than rage that made my voice unsteady.

Nate exhaled, swallowing hard before he replied. “After I cleaned you up as best I could, we packed up everything that had come in contact with your blood, and I told the guys to take it back to the Silo. Even if the heat wasn’t ideal, I figured Sunny could still do something with… that. And if not, I didn’t give a shit, either. They didn’t want to leave me there but they agreed with me that if you’d still been lucid, you would have told them to go.”

That was probably true, as I hated to admit. It was so much easier to ignore his reasoning now, but impossible to forget.

“What did you end up burning?” And burying, by extension.

He shrugged. “The sheets. Towels. Part of a mattress. I would have burned the car seats, too, but I needed at least one for later, so Andrej soaked them in bleach before they left. You can hate me for this now, but back then it felt like I’d done the right thing.”

And he probably had—I just couldn’t admit it now.

“Why the lies?” I asked, clearing my throat to get more than a croak out. “I kind of get why you told me you burned it all at first, but later?”

“I didn’t think—“ he started, looking so helpless that suddenly, my anger roared back to life.

“Damn well you didn’t!” I screamed. “You let me stand over a grave that wasn’t one!” I was surprised that it was only that which angered me now, not the fact that he’d proposed to me over it. Knowing the truth didn’t take the morbidity out of the gesture, but that didn’t matter.

I’d never seen Nate so conflicted with trying to find the right words, likely because there weren’t any. “I know I screwed up,” he admitted. “I just couldn’t. I know it was wrong, but you needed to be there. You needed to grieve. Even if I could turn back time, I would do the same again. Hate me for that if you will, but your sanity is more important to me than what you think of me.”

Now this was where it got easy again. “My sanity?” I asked, my voice going up an entire register. “You fucking betrayed me, Nate! You. Betrayed. Me. You lied to me! You deceived me! There is only one thing in the entire world I can trust, and that is that I can rely on you! Well, la-di-da, not fucking true anymore! You are such a fucking asshole!”

A hint of defiance crept onto his features, but he did his best to remain relaxed. “I did what I did because I was convinced that it was the best thing for you. That you hate it doesn’t change that. Deal with it. It happened. Even if I wanted to, I can’t change it.”

And there it was again, that condescension. That “I know better than you” attitude that, if sometimes warranted, never went down easily. Normally, I would have snapped right back at him, or screamed, flown into a rage—but not today.

I punched him, hard enough that I felt his nose break under the impact of my knuckles.

I was sure that he could have ducked, or at least blocked my swing. He must have seen it coming, but he just remained standing there, taking it. He winced at the pain and his body automatically recoiled, but he only took a step back, likely to steady himself. Discomfort flared up in my knuckles, and I was tempted to punch him again, but instead let myself deflate. There was no sense in this. It didn’t change anything, and this time, violence didn’t lessen the emotional turmoil inside of me. It just made me feel… empty.

Dead.

I stared at him from up close, watching as blood started leaking from his busted nose. No longer did he try to evade my gaze, but what I read in his eyes didn’t make a difference. He knew that he’d deserved that—that, and more—but he really wasn’t sorry. He knew that he’d done what he thought was best, and it was only circumstantial fault that things had turned out differently. I could have died. I could have died on our flight from the motel, or in the days it took us to get from there to the Silo. I could have ignored how exactly Sunny had reached his conclusions. If any of that had happened, he would never have had to ‘fess up. He had gambled, and he had lost. Too bad that I was the one suffering the consequences now.

Or maybe he’d known from the beginning that he’d fucked up and had just been biding his time, waiting for his punishment.

“Never lie to me, ever again,” I said, new heat creeping into my voice. “Not to save me, or to keep me from hurting. I can take it. You say you respect me? Then treat me with the respect I deserve.”

He didn’t protest, but also didn’t agree. That made me want to punch him all over again.

“Say it!” I shouted, putting all my anger and frustration into those words. “Promise me that you will never lie to me again!”

Nate swallowed thickly, and I could see the war going on behind his eyes. It was then that I realized one crucial thing—all the fights we’d had; all the times when he’d driven me insane by either ignoring me not to single me out, or when he’d underhandedly manipulated me into performing to the best of my abilities, he’d always done it all for a single reason: to protect me. It had never been malice, or contemptuous condescension. From the very beginning he’d always seen the very best version of me, and pushed me to become her. Because the world we were living in was harsh and unforgiving, and anything but giving a hundred and ten percent would end in death. He’d done it all for me, even if that meant that I was angry at him, or might even decide that I no longer wanted anything to do with him. As much as that realization rankled, it also hammered down why it hadn’t been a mistake to say “okay,” if not “I do.” But it was about time that he stopped being my coach and my leader, and started being my equal.

I knew that we were on the same page when finally he offered a pressed, “I promise.”

Maybe I should have acknowledged that somehow; said something to let him know that I was aware that he’d never put me down or considered me too weak to face the truth, but I just couldn’t. Maybe later, but not now.

Without another word, I went past him. I just needed to get the fuck out of here.

This time I managed to keep my orientation as I stalked through the tunnels, aiming for the hangar. Most people I passed gave me a wide berth, but just before I made it to the hangar, a bunch of scavengers didn’t. I would have passed right by them if not for one of them giving the other a slight shove that bounced him right into my elbow.

“Watch where you’re going, bitch!” the guy complained.
 

One of the others noticed my sunglasses, still firmly crammed up the bridge of my nose. “If you need sunshine, baby, maybe we can cheer you up?”

I stopped in my tracks, halting before I turned around, giving them all the time in the world that they needed to take me in—including the three marks across the back of my neck. They already seemed less brave when I came to face them, and the one with the “suggestion” looked a little green around the nose when I took a step toward him.

“Who are you calling a bitch?” I sneered. It was easy to follow that up with a mirthless grin as they collectively shied away. A chorus of murmurs answered me, none of them meeting my eyes. Cocking my head to the side, I gave them a dismissive once-over, scoffing at what I saw. “Trust me, you wouldn’t enjoy a single second of me giving you a good time.”

No replay came, so I whipped back around and walked away, fuming inside. The hangar looked just as I remembered, only now it was full of cars. People were lying under or crouched over the vehicles, the hangar echoing with the sounds of mechanic tinkering. I craned my neck, looking for the Rover, but it didn’t seem like anyone had brought it down yet. The Jeep was also missing—the one that Pia and Andrej usually drove; there were several others present—so I decided to go look upstairs. Late in the day as it was, there were only a few vehicles coming in, and three were lined up to leave the hangar through the ramp that led through the heavy blast doors. I ignored them as I went up the ramp, figuring that if anyone was pressed for time, they might as well honk me out of the way. Someone shouted after me, but I ignored that as well.

The sun was not yet setting but low enough in the sky that what remained of the trees around the tarmac outside shielded some of the glare from my eyes. They still watered at the brightness, but less so than before. The Rover stood where I had left it, smack in front of the decontamination shack, but it wasn’t alone. The Jeep stood next to it, and Andrej was busy patching up the rear side window of my car from what I could tell.
 

I slowed down, feeling the heat of the day chase away the last chills the Silo’s much cooler air had left inside of me. It wasn’t just hot out here, but also loud, with people everywhere. Stanton and her guards must have chased away a good number of the loiterers when we’d arrived, because now there were a lot more people standing and sitting around, all in full gear and armed. I stood out like a sore thumb, underdressed and with only my two guns and a knife, making me feel naked.

But that wasn’t what suddenly tightened my chest and made breathing impossible. It was the people—the noise they were making, their motions, their sheer presence—that from one moment to the next triggered my fight-or-flight response. It was as if I was back in that factory, fighting my way through waves and waves of zombies, knowing that there was no chance in hell of escaping—

It was the pain radiating from where my fingers dug into my scar that tore me out of the worst, letting me draw a much needed deep breath into my lungs. The world stopped zeroing in on me, but I still felt crowded, like I could feel the press of bodies against mine. Cursing under my breath, I set out straight for the Rover, trying hard not to focus on anything else. My pulse was still racing and I felt cold sweat on my brow, making me shiver even with the sun beating down mercilessly on us all.

Andrej looked up as I approached, a frown forming on his forehead as he took me in.

“You okay?” he asked. Why did everyone always have to ask that when it was so damn obvious that I wasn’t?

I shook my head and stepped around him, wrenching the front door open so I could grab my hat from the dashboard. That the fabric seemed to have warmed up to a thousand degrees I didn’t care; the additional shade it threw on my face helped my eyes to properly focus, and that was more important.

Andrej appeared by my side, visibly concerned now. “What’s wrong?”

What wasn’t? Yet before I could reply, Nate’s voice came from somewhere behind me. “She’s having a panic attack.”

How the fuck could he know that when even I wasn’t quite sure what was happening? But now that the worst was over, I had to admit, that sounded like an accurate description of what was going on. I did my best to ignore him, not trusting myself yet not to go after him in earnest if he said one more stupid thing.

We were both spared that when the sound of approaching cars grew louder, making the—admittedly not very dense—mass of people pull away. Three SUVs, painted in mute, dark colors and splattered with enough dirt and dust to mostly obscure them, tore across the field, sending gravel and dust everywhere. I remained standing where I was while Andrej hollered, signaling them to come over to us. While I didn’t quite manage a smile, I felt some of my latent anxiety die down as six unwashed figures got out, easily drowning out the sounds that the people all around made.

Burns was right there, not just picking me up but actually swinging me around before he tried to crush me with his tree-trunk arms. “You look so much better than last time I saw you, girl,” he whispered to me, making me snort rather than laugh.

“Yeah, kind of hard to look worse than dead,” I replied, finally squeezing him back. Damn, but I’d missed him.

The others, too, I realized, but thankfully they kept their distance, somewhat. I could tell that Martinez was itching to hug me as well, but I doubted that any of them had forgotten the circumstances under which we’d parted. It was Santos who poked the elephant in the room—or at least the one carrying the blinking neon sign on his back.

“We’re back up to six super freaks, I see,” he said, then had the grace to look away, shrugging awkwardly. “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

Nate replied with a simple, “We are,” but Martinez took that lead to go in for the kill.