Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak (31 page)

“Because of you?” I just had to ask. The way annoyance was tickling my thoughts, I knew that I likely wouldn’t want to hear that answer.

But Nate surprised me. “No. I think that’s entirely your doing by now. Won’t say it didn’t help that you’re sleeping with the boss, but they’re not that stupid.”

I just had to know. “Why?”

He considered for a moment, as if he was weighing whether to tell me the truth or not, but my decision from the beginning of our conversation seemed to count still.

“It doesn’t take years of experience to be a leader, Bree. And those who want to follow and have no ambition to put up a fight usually pick up on that quality in people rather quickly.”

Of all the things he’d shared with me tonight, that was the one thing that hit me out of the left field.

“Seriously?”

“Don’t sound so damn perplexed. Doesn’t suit you,” he offered.

“I am not a leader. Just look at my life so far. Before. Stuck in a dead-end side street of the career I really wanted? Too chickenshit to finally break it off with the girlfriend who was, for all intents and purposes, only a friend for the last couple of years? And I’m not saying that to put me down. I really don’t see it.”

Nate looked at me for several seconds straight, waiting for me to change my mind, I thought. His voice was soft, almost coaxing, when he finally gave his answer.

“The only thing I asked of you to help me with, back in the lab, was to get the raw data that I needed. Needed because I had to watch that video. Had to watch how my brother died, to find closure. Words on a piece of paper just didn’t cut it. You didn’t need to sift through his data, or make that video, or agree to go in a second time to help me plant the explosives. And you sure as hell didn’t need to go back to eliminate every trace left of that virus. That didn’t just take guts. That takes the will to make an executive decision and stick with it.” He turned his head, staring into the direction of our camp. “I’m sure that if I die tomorrow, a couple of them would stand up and take my job, fully knowing what it entails. The same as you now know, the good and the bad. They’d even do a good job, I think. But if you stepped up, every single one of them would yield to you, with pleasure.”

“Bullshit. They’ve only known me for four weeks—”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Would they butt heads with you any chance they got? Sure. Would they try to advise and support you to the point of sabotaging you? Likely. But what makes you a leader is the will to lead, not the knowledge how to do it best. You just have to be bright enough to listen to those who do know, and make the decisions that they don’t want to be responsible for. That’s how a team works. That’s how we work. And that’s how we’ll make it through this shit, whatever fate throws at us.”

I didn’t know why, but that made me smile.

“You actually believe in fate?” I couldn’t help but tease him a little.

“What’s the alternative?” he questioned. “The sure knowledge that somewhere some fucker engineered the plague that eradicated the human race and left us last few survivors with odds stacked against us that are impossible to surmount?”

And, just like that, he brought me right back to the bottom of reality.

“You couldn’t just let me be carefree and happy for five minutes, eh?”

He shook his head, but before he turned away, he leaned in to steal one last kiss.

“I respect you too much to lie to you. If you don’t like that, well, boo hoo.”

There were still a million things that we could have discussed, but I didn’t hold him back as he started walking back to the others and quickly caught up with him. It didn’t really take long to reach the clearing, leaving me just a little apprehensive to step out of the cover of the trees.

“Think they heard us?”

He shrugged, completely nonplussed. “Does it matter?”

“Well. No. But I’m still wondering.”

Nate paused, glancing back over his shoulder at me.

“You know how tight the perimeter is set up with conditions like this?” No time to really case the landscape, or make sure that there wasn’t anything lurking out there, he meant.

“Yup.”

“Then you know that whoever was on guard duty half an hour ago didn’t just hear us.”

I really hadn’t needed to be reminded of that, but in the end, it was the same. Nate was still grinning as I stepped around him and walked the remainder of the distance on my own, feeling slightly chilled now that the sweat had dried on my body and my jacket was still where I’d dropped it, right on my sleeping bag. But then considering all the things that really made me grow cold as my mind skipped over them again, I doubted that even a night spent in a sauna would have changed that.

Not that much time had passed—even if it felt like a small eternity to me, as such things go that turn your world upside down and leave it all helter-skelter. Everyone was still up and talking quietly, the plan how and where to acquire cars partly formed, I was sure. Madeline had joined the others—and, oh wonder, we’d apparently remained the only two screwing in the woods tonight—and she was the first to notice my approach, the hopeful look on her face making my rather low aggression levels shoot up again. It would have been too much to ask to spend another couple of minutes not ready to jump at anyone’s throat. Then I remembered Nate’s explanation for why she was still around, and my anger deflated all on its own.

Doing my best to ignore her, I angled for my sleeping bag, but barely made it another two steps before Andrej spoke up.

“You know, you’re doing it wrong if you’re more worked up afterward than before.”

Even with the emotional impact of what Nate had told me weighing down my soul, it was impossible not to snort.

“Shut up,” I said in passing, unable to keep at least the hint of a smile off my face.

“Yeah, it’s not her fault,” Martinez came to my rescue—or did he? Grinning up at me, he winked. “Seriously. It’s only been four weeks since he got impaled by a rebar. Not sure I could get it up so soon after that.”

Snickers and the beginning of raucous laughter answered him, and the confused look on Madeline’s face made it almost worth being at the butt-end of a joke. I still sent Martinez a glare that let him know that he was on my shit list now, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Dropping down onto my sleeping bag, I shrugged my jacket on, but before I could even come up with a good reply, Nate materialized out of the darkness, hulking over Martinez in what could only be described as a menacing way.

“I find it quite endearing that you worry about my ability to get and maintain an erection in a professional way, but let me assure you—that’s not an issue.” He briefly looked over to me and graced me with a smile—that special smile that did weird things to me that I felt I wasn’t responsible for anymore. That smile that had made me accept his invitation for coffee. That smile that made me follow him through hell and back. And here we were, a month later, and everything around us had changed—except that. I found that strangely reassuring.

The moment passed—although not without Burns snickering, because that would have been too perfect otherwise—and Nate shot a look around that was anything but alluring. “Anyone else got anything to say on the matter of my sex life? Or can we cut right to the actually important things, like how and where we can get some cars? I for one wouldn’t mind not having to sleep out in the open one night longer if I can get away from potential cannibals at the same time. And returning to the age-old tradition of screwing in the backseat of a car rather than in the woods would be a nice benefit, too.”

So much for that.

But at least Madeline closed her mouth with an audible snap, and when she caught my gaze across the circle of our group, she looked away first. Guess that matter was resolved, too.

Chapter 20

Exhaling slowly, I forced my hands to stop shaking. Sweat was trickling down my temples, and it didn’t just come from the ever-present heat. My entire body was tense as hell, and for once that was a good thing. If I could just keep the jitters down, my aim would be steady enough.

A loud bang from up ahead made me jump, but I forced my stance to remain as it was, shutgun at the ready. Just a door kicked in. Staring down main street, I waited for zombies to pour forth from some hiding place that hadn’t been obvious to us before—but the street remained empty. Figures moved forward, near silent in the singing heat of noon. Another bang sounded as yet another door gave way to a well-aimed boot kick. Another house cleared. They’d been at it for hours, it seemed, although I knew that rationally, maybe twenty minutes had passed. Fifteen houses ticked off already, with only five more to go. And I hadn’t even come close to a shambler yet.

Martinez chuckled as he saw me tense yet again, his own rifle at the ready—and a lot more steady than my shotgun.

“It gets easier with time,” he observed, my annoyance apparently quite obvious.

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” I griped back, hiding a smile.

Grinning, he looked at me for a second before bringing his focus back on the main road that we were supposed to be guarding. “That’s what she said.”

That got a snort from me. “Exactly how long are you guys going to keep this up? Because it’s getting old fast.”

“It got old the first time Burns said it when he kicked me awake,” Martinez replied. “Doesn’t mean any of us will shut up until long after we don’t get a rise out of you anymore.”

I was tempted to roll my eyes at him—not that he’d see, but that was kind of the point—but motion to my right made me snap to attention immediately. It was just a curtain moving in the wind from where someone had shoved a window open—likely to air out the house because it dearly needed that—but better safe than sorry. I doubted anyone had expected this part of the operation to be this easy, and I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Then again, I was exceptionally jumpy today, and no guessing how long it would take for my nerves to even out again.

I hadn’t slept particularly well last night, and not just because we’d been up another hour, discussing how to best proceed. Even before it was time to move out just after sunrise I’d been staring at the lightening sky above me, my mind caught in an endless loop of… not even anything concrete, but the fist of fear that had closed around my heart and kept squeezing made it impossible to find anything to distract myself for long. Sure, my body had been more relaxed than in weeks—endorphin rushes will do that to you—but that had easily been counteracted by the steadily rising level of anxiety as Nate’s words kept sinking deeper and deeper into my subconscious.
 

No place was safe. We had nowhere left to run. But giving up was not an option.

Pretty much the only thing I wasn’t worrying about was the change in how the guys treated me—and that had, surprise, surprise, nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it was out in the open now that Nate and I were a thing. There was plenty of ribbing going on—and not just centered on me—but that didn’t bother me. In the morning, as an astonishing amount of cans and dried food changed hands I realized that they’d actually had a betting pool going on that Bates had lost catastrophically. As Burns had informed me while munching his way through a bag of salted peanuts, the top bet had been that I would come after Madeline with either my knife or gun and beat her to a bloody pulp. I didn’t know how I felt about that. The losing bet—the reason for why Bates now had a pretty empty pack—had been that Nate would ditch me for her. I certainly knew how I felt about that, and didn’t even try to tone down my glares at him whenever Bates slinked through my field of vision. No one had actually hit the jackpot, mainly because there had been no screaming and drama involved—what that said about how they saw me I didn’t even want to consider—so I’d claimed the prize myself, daring anyone with death glares to protest as I chewed myself through the two bags of home-made beef jerky, feeling completely entitled to them. But even with all the teasing, it was pretty much the usual, with a slightly different topic.

No, the real change was that my anxiety coupled with what Martinez had classified as your typical shell-shocked traumatized look in my eyes made it obvious that Nate and I’d had “the talk,” and apparently, the fact that I wasn’t sitting in a corner, rocking myself to sleep, or having hysterics elevated me to the status of worth being regarded as an equal. I might still be the rookie where shooting, sneaking, and tactics were involved, but now I was in the know of what was really going on, and that deserved some recognition.
 

What it actually meant was more straight talk and a lot less coddling, both things I only realized had been different when suddenly there wasn’t anyone there to help me heave my pack up, and it was expected that I could follow orders and directions at a glance only. Not that I felt like complaining about that. At all.

So when we’d finally made it to our destination—skipping two other small towns before because they were either overrun or looked a little too dingy for what we had in mind—there’d been no debate about me joining the mission to clear the village and get a couple of cars on the road and moving. That I wasn’t part of the clean-up crew made sense—even with learning the ropes, I was still the rookie, and it was safer for everyone if I was part of the backup, waiting to run in if the situation got hot, rather than creating a potential problem if I messed up and the others had to both abandon their posts and get me out of there, further endangering everyone. It rankled a little, but Cho and Santos were also waiting with us, not chomping at the bit, so I took it for what it was—someone needed to be backup. Might as well be me.
 

I was still tense as hell as the last house was declared clear, and Nate came sauntering back to us, still warily glancing at his surroundings. At the other end of the street—and there really wasn’t anything to this town expect that one street, not even an intersection in the middle or something—I could make out Burns and Andrej disappearing into a carport, while Pia walked back into the last house she’d done. I still wasn’t quite sure about how I felt about that part of the big reveal—but knowing that we had at least four people in our midst who were de facto immune to zombie bites was oddly relieving. It only made sense to let them hurl themselves into the thick of things when they knew that they had much better chances of surviving. It was hard to make myself stop to guess who else might be affected, but Nate had been pretty final about his denial to give up more than I had to know—again proving that he could be trusted.