Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak (28 page)

Ducking low, I didn’t really see much, except that the lead car was a red pickup. They didn’t cut the engine but still took their time before I heard a door open and slam shut again.

“Looks like corn husks,” a male voice observed. Screwing my eyes shut, it took a lot for me to hold in my groan. I’d become so accustomed to not giving a shit about littering that I hadn’t considered that we left a pretty obvious trail behind. Glancing at Burns, I saw similar concern plain on his face.

“Have the fuckers learned to eat that now, too?” a second voice replied, that one darker with a light rasp.

“I doubt they would have peeled the ear,” the first guy observed. “Plus this one looks like it’s been cut. Nope, this looks exactly like someone was having lunch over here.” Boots scraped over dirt, and I could see someone in jeans and a flannel shirt move around the pickup. “Anyone out here?” he hollered, loud enough to make me hunch my shoulders and glance around us, just waiting for a shambler to break through the foliage.

“We come in peace,” a third guy shouted, making all of them snicker. If I hadn’t been suspicious already, that would have sent my teeth on edge.

“We have beer. And food. Prime rib or haunch, your choice,” the first caller added.

“At least if you’re stupid enough to show yourself,” guy two mumbled just loud enough for me to catch, making my blood run cold. The way Burns stiffened, I could tell that he heard it, too.

Oh great. The forth time we run into someone out here, and they’ve turned into fucking cannibals.
 

Endless moments crept by until footsteps retreated back to the cars, doors slammed, and the pickup started rolling, still slow enough that it could stop any time. When the second truck rolled by, I caught a glimpse of someone leaning out of the window, gazing out over the corn field. I’d seldom been happier about my drab clothes that disappeared seamlessly in the shadows between the plants. So much for my failure of a fashion sense.

We remained hunkered down for a while longer even after the noise from the cars had completely died down. Burns gingerly picked one of the ears from a plant and munched it, making me want to slap him.

Even though I was sure that we were alone again, I left the trash bag on the ground and crept to the road on near silent feet, taking my time to look around for traps or stragglers. But the road was as empty as when we’d come here what felt like forever ago. Glaring down at the offending corn husks, I wrinkled my nose at the acrid scent coming from the puddle they were resting in now. Not just cannibals, but road-side pissers, too. Just when I was starting to feel like we were the only people left on the road, a reason had to come up for me to wish for that to be true.

Paranoia made us cut through the field to the other end before we emerged from it, each with a bag of corn slung over a shoulder. I would have loved to grab more, but it would have weighed me down too much. We didn’t speak a single word on the way back, although I was sure I could guess what was on Burns’s mind.

Two hours later, we reunited with the rest of the group for our lunch break, not even waiting to put down our loot before Burns launched into a recount of our near encounter. Nate and Pia listened with stony expressions, and the lack of surprise they showed made me just a little more uncomfortable. It was probably stupid, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that for every little triumph that we wrenched from the apocalypse, fate slammed two more obstacles into our way.

Cho and Taylor arrived shortly after us, agitated enough to make me even more paranoid. Ignoring me, they went straight up to Nate and reported.

“We saw some idiots driving around in pickups. They seem to have made up their camp in one of the nearby farms. And they were having a barbecue, from the smell of it,” Taylor said.

My gorge rose, making me taste bile and baby corn in the back of my mouth.

“Probably not cow,” Pia supplied, mirth dripping from every word as she eyed me. Cho and Taylor shrugged, but Burns was only too happy to delight them.

“Almost ran into them, too,” he explained. “And sounded mighty like they wanted to throw us on the grill, in neat little bits and pieces.”

Cho’s eyes got as huge as saucers. “Seriously, dude?”

“It’s only been a month, for God’s sake!” I groaned, making everyone look at me again. “Even if they had nothing to eat they’d still be around, kicking. Who does shit like that?”

“Someone we don’t want to meet if we can avoid it,” Nate replied. Looking around, he seemed to do a quick headcount, as if making sure that everyone was accounted for. “We have enough supplies to just beat it, so that’s what we’re going to do. We march until complete darkness today, and break camp as soon as first light. Romanoff, Burns, Lewis,” his eyes lingered a little longer on me than the others, I thought, “you take point.” Back to Taylor, he asked, “Where exactly is that farm?”

Getting out his own map, Taylor quickly showed us. It was about five miles south of where they’d run into us at the corn field.

“I don’t want to risk heading further north, so we cut straight south until here,” he pointed at an intersection just shy of the next population center, “and head south-west from there. If you see any further signs of them, we head back east. I really don’t want to veer off too far south, but taking a week longer beats getting eaten, if you ask me.”

He then turned to the others, continuing to break them up into small groups of up to five people. The only exception were Madeline and her kids, who he had come with him, Pia, and Martinez. Even in the light of the potentially gruesome news—I still had problems digesting the premise that people could sink that low in such a short time—Madeline’s eyes lit up at the prospect of spending the rest of the day glued to Nate’s side. Let’s just say that this didn’t exactly improve my mood.

Mostly to get rid of the extra weight of the sacks, we quickly distributed the corn ears between the others, then set out when Pia gave us the “go.” Andrej took the lead, setting a sharp clip that forced me to run rather than walk, and within minutes we couldn’t even see where the others were still gathered. While my legs protested and my lungs burned, I wasn’t too unhappy about the physical exertion. At least it shut up my mind.

We stopped whenever we found some good cover or topped a hill, but didn’t see or hear a moving car anywhere for the first hour. I thought I smelled burned rubber when the wind changed, but that was probably my imagination. It was just us, fields, and endless straight roads everywhere.

Then we came over another rise, and I saw the plume of smoke even before Andrej signaled me to lie low. Sinking to my knees, I pushed myself forward the last few yards until I could see what lay beyond it. It couldn’t have been the farm that the other scout team had run into, but it was definitely a farm, with a huge bonfire going on in the yard by the barn. I didn’t see anyone out and about, but the red pickup left right in the middle of the road looked very familiar. The other two cars were smaller, but I didn’t dispute their drivers’ association. Andrej jerked his chin in the direction we’d come from and we backtracked until we were at the foot of the rise, heading straight south.

Eventually, the Interstate appeared on our right side, and I felt a little safer when we’d crossed it. With just the three of us, it was easy to sneak across between the few broken-down cars, with barely a zombie in sight. Looking back, I realized that our last two days had been relatively zombie free, likely due to the nice men in their lovely trucks. In my mind that vague idea formed that they’d spent the entire time that we’d been trekking across the country clearing up their little ten-mile square around their new—or not so new—home. And maybe that had been pork after all. I just didn’t want to risk it if that wasn’t the case.

Another two hours and Andrej decided to slow down a little. We must have had a hell of a head start considering that—even if they didn’t fuss around—Madeline and her kids couldn’t move at this pace for as long as we had. I was actually proud of myself for managing just fine, but kept my trap shut lest no one disabuse me of my notion of my own prowess.

We saw the next group follow us about ten minutes later and waited for them before we continued somewhat slower. Andrej sent out Burns and Cho to do some more scouting ahead, but when I offered to follow them, he shook his head. We continued walking west on the road that Nate had designated the second northern-most route of the possible escape routes he’d marked on the map. After weeks of feeling just fine out in the open, I felt terribly exposed, hating that suddenly the shamblers weren’t the thing that made me the most afraid anymore.
 

Around six in the afternoon we were all reunited again, Madeline and the kids trudging after the main group with the odd grumble and whine coming from them. I could understand that they were hungry and tired, but considering the alternative, it didn’t sound like such a concession to go on until we were all worn out—and hopefully far, far away from where the cannibals could possibly look for us. That went well for another hour or so, until Madeline stopped in the middle of the road, put her hands on her hips, and declared, “I’m not going to take another step unless I know that it’s to settle in for the night.”

Still at the forefront of the group, I took another couple of steps until I realized that there was a holdup, my mind sluggish with exhaustion. Looking at the others behind me, I saw similar enthusiasm on their faces—and no one seemed particularly sympathetic with Madeline.

“You do realize that we have a very good reason for why we are pushing on, right?” Nate asked, his tone stating clearly that it was a rhetorical question.

Madeline straightened to her considerable height, which incidentally—or rather, not—pushed her cleavage out more.

“We don’t even know what their motives were,” she pointed out. “Maybe those men just wanted to trade.”

A muscle jumped in Nate’s cheek, but after a moment he visibly relaxed into his stance—a man at ease. I didn’t really buy it.

“From what I was told it didn’t sound like that.”

“And you trust them?” she asked, vaguely looking around the group, before her eyes snagged on to me. “You trust her?”

Nate shrugged.

“Who else am I going to trust if not my people?”
 

That was the kind of reply I hated getting, but for once not being on the receiving end of it, I felt a little less prickly about it. Madeline wasn’t mollified, though.

“You didn’t even make an effort to find out what was really going on.”

“I didn’t want to risk the group for nothing,” he pointed out.

“Risk? You’re all armed to the teeth. What would you have risked talking to a handful of strangers? Who had cars. And a base at that farm. Food enough to eat, from what it sounded like.”

Martinez snorted next to me. “Depends on what you define as food,” he murmured, clearly agreeing with me.

Nate’s eyes never left her face, but I didn’t doubt that he’d caught that remark, too.

“I doubt that they would have just given us some of that out of the goodness of their hearts. Even less so if it had been edible.”

“You don’t know that,” she said. “Besides, you could have offered to trade.”

“We don’t have anything to trade,” Nate replied, his voice soft but picking up a certain sharp edge toward the end. “We barely have food for everyone for the next two days, and I’m not giving away a single bullet from our ammo stash, or else we wouldn’t have any food, stat. We only carry what we desperately need, and considering that food and ammo are the most important items in this world, we’re clear out of options.”

I really didn’t care for how Madeline’s eyes skipped to me again. “You could have tried trading for favors.”

Stepping close to her, Nate raised his hand, using two fingers to gently stroke away a lock of her hair. Just seeing that gesture of tenderness made my stomach knot up, but I forced myself not to react.

“You’re free to do whatever you think you need to do to survive,” he told her, speaking almost too softly for me to catch it. “But I’m not anyone’s pimp.”

With that, he turned around, the look on his face neutral, and pointed down the road. “Move it.”

I hesitated, but when Martinez bumped his arm into my elbow as he walked by me, I let that push me into motion. Then again, I didn’t really have to see how Nate remained walking next to her, apparently ready to chat a little longer. As if I needed another reason to dislike that woman with a vengeance.

We ended up walking until nightfall, even if that meant that Burns and Santos each carried one of the kids, almost staggering under the combined weight of pack and additional baggage. Just as it got too dark to continue, we reached a thicket—barely large enough to be the state park it proclaimed to be—where we walked away from the road and found a place under the trees to make camp. We’d already eaten on the road—not stopping, much to Madeline’s distress—and the moment the first pack hit the ground, she was at it again, doing that weird mix between nagging and begging, as if that would change Nate’s plan for tomorrow.

Doing my best to ignore her, I got out my sleeping bag and more fell than sat on it, happy to shrug out of my jacket. Even with the sun gone underneath the trees, I felt like I was still burning up after the entire day out in the heat, with no respite and not enough to drink.

“Maybe they’re on to something,” I grumbled as I got out one of my bottles, greedily chugging down the tepid water.

“Not sure I care much for human meat,” Martinez supplied, while Burns looked ready to offer me a taste of his meat, but thought better of it. I wasn’t even certain it was for my benefit; he usually wasn’t that circumspect with bad innuendo.

Sighing, I glared at Martinez, but was sure that the deepening dusk swallowed it all up.

“No. I mean the cars. Why don’t we just grab a bunch and drive? Can’t be that hard to find opportunities to refuel.”

“Fuel is the least of the problems,” Andrej offered as he crouched down next to me, a considering look on his face. “It’s more a problem of what happens when you drive into a zombie.”