Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak (18 page)

At closer inspection, the “lump” turned out to be exactly what I’d known it to be—the torn-apart, gnawed-on remains of a human being, the clothes so shredded and stained with fluids that they were virtually unrecognizable.
 

And right under parts of it—remarkably untouched—the bright pink purse the woman had likely been clutching to her chest as she’d tried to run from the zombie that she’d crashed her car into.

Glancing back, I felt disdain at the guys watching me, but then decided that I was not going to let that get me down. Using the bat, I gingerly pushed away what remained of her leg—I thought—until I could pull the purse out. Even through the rain, the stench was strong enough to make me want to retch, but instead I dropped the bat and got out my knife, slicing the purse open so I could sift through the contents, staying away from the part where fluids had leaked into the leather. True to the myth, there was a lot of shit in there that absolutely no one needed, not even before the shit had hit the fan—and two tampons, complete with applicator. More importantly, they were still wrapped, which was a small mercy.

Sliding them into one of my pockets, I couldn’t help but deflate a little. It was better than nothing, but not by much.

The guys had approached in the meantime, studying the contents of the purse that had spilled onto the street with curiosity, which in itself was an annoyance.

“Found what you were looking for?” Burns asked, uncustomarily wary. If that was due to the way I glared at him now, well, served him right.

“About enough to last me, oh, until lunch break.”

“We usually don’t do lunch breaks,” he offered.

“Exactly.”

Looking over to Nate, I half-expected another stupid remark, but he just held my gaze evenly.

“House next?” I suggested cautiously. There were a few more cars around, but at this rate my period would be over by the time I found enough tampons. So far we’d tried to avoid private residences, but, really? I was a little beyond caring.

“Which one?” he asked, again leaving me choice that I didn’t even want to have.

Looking around us, I scanned the few properties bordering the road. There were five—all of them small and quaint, with lawns surrounding them on all sides—almost indistinguishable from each other besides small details. Except—

“That one over there,” I pointed at the second one north of the road.

“Why?” came his simple question.

I couldn’t help the surge of heat into my cheeks. “Because it looks the most promising.”

“Again, why?”

So he was really going to make me spell this out? Bastard.

“See the flowers on the porch? And the curtains are kind of fancy. I could be wrong, but that looks more like someone gave a shit about the small details, and that usually means a woman in the house. The SUV in the driveway doesn’t really scream ‘grandma’ to me, so it’s our best bet. And woman in the house likely also means stocked pantry,” I replied.

Nate’s smile let me know that he was well aware that I’d done the exact same typecasting as Burns with the car before, and that it really didn’t sit right with me. He still started out in that direction without another word, the other two following us along the road.

“You know, it’s about time you got rid of some of your more stupid notions,” he offered under his breath, low enough that I wasn’t sure Burns and Bates would have understood if they’d tried.

“It’s so nice to hear you articulate just how highly you value my opinions,” I shot back, just as softly.

I expected an amused grin, but he looked more annoyed than anything.

“I get it. You get high on your own politically correct supply. Well, guess what—nobody gives a fuck.” He let that sink in before he went on, a little more heat creeping into his words. “Like it or not, this is about survival, not misogyny. Every target we set out toward holds risks—the exactly same risk as every other. The only way we can minimize that risk is if we’re smart and only go for targets that look promising in the first place. So we go for the girly-girl car when we’re looking for a purse, or the family home rather than the fishing cabin when we are hunting down food. I’m not telling you to change the way you look at things, but to simply acknowledge what you already know.”

That didn’t deserve a reply—particularly as I could see that he was right, even if it didn’t sit well with me—so we spent the rest of our walk over to the house in silence.

We stopped in the driveway. While the other two were doing a quick circuit of the house, Nate and I inspected the car. It was locked, and I was damn happy about the absence of a car seat in the back row. The pink sweater I could see through the window looked promising, though.

“There’s a door in the back. Unlocked,” Bates reported. “Looks abandoned.”

Nate nodded, and stepped up the porch to the front door. A little fiddling with the lock, and we were in, Nate and Bates canvasing the rooms while Burns and I followed, my bat at the ready.

The house was eerily quiet. Not just silent, but except for the drone of the rain on the roof and windows there was nothing in here. The air smelled stale, making me guess that since whoever had lived here had vacated the premises, it had stood empty. It felt weird to break into someone’s home like that, but at the same time it didn’t really feel like a home at all.

I waited in the hallway while the guys made sure that the ground floor was empty except for us. Burns and Bates went up the stairs next, while I only waited for Nate’s nod before I ducked into the bathroom right off the foyer.
 

It was clearly just a small one, but there should still have been what I was looking for around. Yet all I found was lots and lots of toilet paper and air freshener bottles—both not that interesting to me now—and the usual trinkets. Frustrated, I stepped back outside, my eyes scanning the rooms for more clues.

It didn’t take me long to realize why the interior of the house looked kind of skewed—it was right there in the hallway, on the pictures. Lots and lots of pictures of a happy family of three—dad, mom, and their sweet little girl. Until it was just the dad and daughter, the light somehow gone from their eyes. Cancer, I guessed, judging from the age of the woman in the pictures, and the slight decline of health that was visible. My heart ached for them, even though I knew that it was a stupid sentiment—likely, both father and daughter were dead now, if they were lucky. But that seriously cut back on the chance for me to find my price.

“Upstairs is clear,” Bates reported as he joined Nate in the kitchen, slinging a tool-belt around his waist. Nate had meanwhile located the food storage in the kitchen, banging cupboards as he scanned them for anything that was either stored away in cans, or would otherwise survive the trip back through the rain. The pantry wasn’t as well-stocked as it should have been—another glaring detail about the previous occupants of the house and their history—but we found several bags of rice and a box full of camping gear, including a couple of small propane burners. I already had some granola bars ready to serve as my next meal but stopped as I scanned the ingredients list. The flickering fear that roared to life the moment my gaze skipped over the “syrup” part rather early in the list made me drop them immediately.

I checked the fridge next, but as expected, that was a dead end. There wasn’t much in there to start with, and it had clearly been cleaned out before the house had been abandoned. But as I closed the door, my eyes skimmed over the schedule pinned to it—the daughter’s class schedule that held way too many AP classes to belong to a middle school kid.

“I’ll go take a look upstairs. Maybe I’ll find something there,” I said, already heading for the stairs. Burns was still up there, so I figured that he’d shoot our way free if we had to flee and something was getting between us and the exit. Nate ignored me, and Bates was too busy chugging down two bottles of light beer to care.

Upstairs, there were only four rooms—the master bedroom, the girl’s room, another bathroom that was a complete dead end, and a hall closet. I was about to give up and head back down but then thought better of it and went back into the daughter’s room. Judging from the pictures downstairs—and a few more in here, with her friends—she’s been shorter and lither than me, but after a week of heavy physical exertion and a clear lack of quality food, the pants I was wearing had already gone from comfortable to requiring the belt they came with, so I wasn’t too discouraged as I started sifting through her clothes. Most of it was completely unusable, but I found some sports gear and swim suits in a bottom drawer that I packed up in a cutesy, pink jute bag that I found hanging on the inside of the door. It wasn’t even summer yet and I was sweating like a pig underneath my jacket every day; wearing tank tops rather than normal shirts sounded like a mighty good idea. And—come what may—I was not going to jump into a lake in my underwear if I could help it.

It was when I straightened and took one last look around when my eyes landed on the door half-hidden behind the open cupboard doors—a private bathroom, just the thing that every teenage girl needed.

“Burns?”

“Need something?” came his voice from the other end of the floor, presumably the bathroom. “I’m busy taking a dump.” More confirmation than I needed—but not the worst idea in the world. Flushing might not be a thing without electricity to get water pressure up, but I doubted that anyone would object.

“No, I’m fine on my own,” I replied, leaving my bag on the floor in favor of having both hands free. Just a precaution. Slowly, I stepped up to the door, then knocked—feeling absolutely ridiculous, but ridicule hadn’t killed anyone yet. Counting to ten in my head, I held my breath, intent on listening to anything move beyond the door.

Nothing, but that didn’t come as a surprise. The house showed signs of having been cleared out.

Reaching for the door handle, I pushed it down—nothing happened. I gave it a push, then pulled—still nothing. Looking down, I saw a key on the floor, right where it must have dropped after whoever had locked the door. Smiling, I bent over and stuck it back in the lock, turning it quickly. Probably not the most rational decision, but I could so see a girl lock her bathroom before leaving, just because the thought that some random stranger might later trespass here made her uncomfortable. A click and the lock disengaged, and with a light push, the door swung inward.

She was on me before I had even time to look around the room, let alone grab my bat with both hands. Or “it,” more precisely, my mind provided as my brain kicked my body into overdrive.

I had no time to react, let alone think, and barely got my arm up in front of my body before the zombie slammed into me, all snapping teeth and reaching hands. An odor so foul that it made me gag hit my nose, but a second later I went down under the sheer onslaught of her momentum, the fall forcing the remaining air out of my lungs. Bony fingers sank into my arm and shoulders, digging in so deep that it hurt, while only my forearm wedged against her windpipe kept her jaws out of reach of my body. She still tried to get closer, and I dropped the useless bat in favor of trying to push her off me. She was only wearing a tank top and shorts—likely her sleeping clothes that she had died in—leaving too much soft, awfully squishy flesh for me to touch. Slamming my hand into her forehead, I tried to get her off me, but she twisted, and I narrowly avoided her sinking her teeth into my fingers.

Gloves, I needed fucking gloves for this!!

Jerking my hand away gave her enough chance to pull herself closer, supernatural strength forcing my arm down and down until she was almost where she could try to tear into my shoulder. Adrenaline and panic made it impossible for me to think, so I blindly groped around with my free hand for something to use, while my legs remained uselessly trapped underneath hers. My fingers skimmed along the soft carpet, my pants leg, the sheath of the knife—

Before I could even properly weigh my option, I was already fiddling with the clasp, wasting precious seconds with trying to get the knife free. The second I could wrap my fingers around the handle, I yanked it out, and sank it into the side of the zombie girl’s neck. And again, when she barely halted in trying to get to my face. A third twist, angled slightly upward, finally severed something vital, and it gave a last jerk when I yanked the knife back out.

Foul liquid poured from the wound and all over my neck and chest, instinctively making me clamp my eyes and lips shut to avoid the worst of it. Now that the zombie was no longer moving, it felt a lot less heavy, but I still had to let go of the knife and grab its shoulder to heave it off my chest. The moment I was free, I scrambled backward until I hit the frame of the bed, coming to unsteady feet.

Burns burst into the room, his rifle ready, but when he saw me panting there, shaking, covered in what couldn’t exactly be described as blood anymore, the dead zombie at my feet, he paused. Looking around the room carefully, he stepped over the body and checked the bathroom first before he eased up, then got a towel from the rack above the toilet. Dunking it in the water of the tank, he handed it to me, and as quickly as I possibly could, I cleaned myself up. Some of the vile fluids had made it through the collar of my jacket and were slowly seeping down my neck, chest, and back, and after a moment of consideration I just tore the jacket off and kept wiping until the worst of it was gone. All the while I kept shaking, fright taking its time to leak out of my tense muscles.

“Told you that you’re good with edged weapons,” Burns noted as he handed me a fresh, clean towel to dry up, and had the grace to turn around when I yanked off the soiled shirt and dropped it to the floor, randomly grabbing a fresh one from the girl’s closet. It was pink and had a “My Little Pony” print on the front, but I really didn’t give a shit. It was a little tight, but would do. Using the fresh towel, I made sure to clean the last residues of the gunk off my jacket before I shrugged it on again, immediately feeling just a little better.

“You okay?”

I looked up, finding Burns eyeing me critically.