Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak (7 page)

Influenza had a way of hitting highly populated areas like that, but usually it took longer for a wave to start—and those who died of it remained dead. But then I knew all too well that this wasn’t just your average flu strain. Before watching the video of Raleigh’s death and reading his research, I would still have protested vehemently, but there wasn’t really anything left to fuel doubts.

“They’re actually dead? The zombies, I mean. Or whatever they actually are,” I replied.

Martinez shrugged. “Again, you’re the scientist. I just say, if it howls like a zombie and shambles like a zombie—“

“Yeah.”

Looking away, my gaze fell on Nate. I still couldn’t believe that he was up and walking, but he did not only that, but was in deep conversation with the Ice Queen whenever no one was near them to report back on what they saw ahead. Their hushed conversation was animated enough that even without hearing a single word, I could tell that they were arguing between them. On the bridge, I’d been concerned that he wouldn’t be able to keep up with us, but he looked almost normal—if a little winded—now.

“Who is that guy, anyway?” the third soldier—Cho, his tag read—who had joined Martinez and Smith asked, making me wonder just how transparent my frown had been.

“Miller?” Martinez asked, as if anyone else but Nate might have drawn anyone’s attention. Cho gave him just the look that question deserved, but Martinez wasn’t fazed by that. “He was my lieutenant on my first tour in Afghanistan. Hell of a guy.” That explained their banter when they’d met.

Cho clearly didn’t share Martinez’s enthusiasm. “Army kicked him out after that, or what? Hurts to see one of us turn traitor.”

Martinez opened his mouth, clearly in objection, but it was Burns who replied.

“I know what they told us in that briefing, but I’ve been serving long enough with him to know that he’d never turn against his country. There’s more to this than they told us. As usual. And there’s a good reason why they promoted him to captain, too.”

He looked at me then, as if to get confirmation. I just held his gaze but tried not to betray any emotion. As it was, I was soaking up the news same as Cho.

“Yeah, I get that,” Cho grumbled under his breath, and joined the inquisitive staring that Burns and Martinez now both did in my direction. “What’s your place in this, anyway? There was no mention of you in the briefing, but they emailed us your picture just before we got the ‘go,’ telling us to look out for you, and neutralize you if we perceived you as a threat.”

That anyone would perceive me as such with the likes of Nate and his people around was hilarious enough to make me bark a brief, hard laugh, but at their continuous attention I just shook my head.

“I didn’t exactly volunteer for this.” I nodded toward the others who were still conferring.

“You two looked mighty cozy when we ran into you, though,” Cho went on. If I hadn’t been that tired by then, I might have blushed, but I was sure that he was referring to something else than what had actually happened—or so I hoped.

“Let’s say that he can be damn persuasive,” I offered.

“Why was he in that lab, anyway? We only learned on Friday night that we—“ he paused there, but after a second decided that secrecy was kind of overrated now. “That our mission was to get the vaccine out of the facility. Still beats me why you suckers thought it was a good idea to destroy it.”

Now I couldn’t help but get just a little angry—little as in like the Mississippi is a small creek.

“Excuse me? We were trying to prevent this fuck-up”—I nodded at our surroundings—“from happening. And besides, the vaccine wasn’t working. They weren’t even close to getting it done.” Or so I figured. It certainly hadn’t done Nate’s brother any good. Thinking about that, it made even less sense what Nate had told Bucky—why would Thecla have shot him up with the serum and then infected him with the virus? It was a common practice in animal testing, but not something you did with your head researcher. But all that was useless now, leaving a stale taste on my tongue.

When I glanced at Martinez, he shrugged. “Beats me. But when the brass says ‘fetch,’…”

There wasn’t anything any of us had to offer to that.

“Why join Nate, though? You were clearly on the other team,” I asked.

Burns grinned at Martinez in a way that was suggestive enough not to warrant a reaction—and Martinez didn’t give him any—but still replied.

“Miller and I were in the same unit couple years ago. Smith, too. And I think pretty boy here got his feet wet with him in Afghanistan. Let’s just say that of all the shitheads I let order me around, he’s by far the most competent. Hell, if anyone’d invited me to whatever they were up to in that lab I might even have joined up with them instead of re-enlisting.” He glared back at Andrej over his shoulder, who only had a shit-eating grin for him.

“Must have been a reason why you didn’t make the cut,” Andrej jeered back, and I noticed again how almost absent his accent was now that he didn’t lay it on anymore. As much as all that deceit and shit bothered me, I was still happy to have him around now. After all, Nate himself was a much better target for my ire. If he survived that wound, and as things were looking right now, he would.

That left Cho, who looked a little conflicted as he was listening to his comrades. When he caught my gaze, he gave a noncommittal grunt.

“Guess it’s not that different for me. I’ve known Martinez for years. Sewed me up more than once in the middle of shit going down. Figured that if he thought it was a good idea to bail, I’d just run with it.” He paused, sadness seeping into his posture. “Smith, too. We were in basic training together. Damn shame.” Like that, my feeling of guilt was back, but the way Burns now glared at Cho served as a welcome distraction.

“Fucking sucker had it comin’,” he grunted. “Who guzzles syrup straight from the bottle? Someone should have shot him years ago.”

I would have been pissed if anyone had said something like that about my boyfriend, but Martinez took it in stride.

“Just a shame that your ugly mug was the last thing he ever saw,” he joked back.

“Still sucks,” Burns grunted. “No more sweet stuff? Not sure that’s a world I still wanna live in.”

They continued to joke between them—if softly enough not to be heard a few yards away from our group—while I let myself fall behind a little, cherishing my moment of solitude. It was deceptively calm around us, and I couldn’t help the sense of peace that the surrounding forest wanted to lull me in. For now, not running for my life seemed like true luxury.

Chapter 5

It had probably been obvious from the moment we went off the highway and into the woods, but it still came as a rather unpleasant surprise when the woods started to thin out, and before long we ended up standing at the edge of the forest, with nowhere else to go but out into the grassland. There was forest around aplenty, but broken up by just as much meadows and farm land, with roads and settlements in the valleys everywhere. Andrej must have found the longest continuous stretch of wooded area around, but now we were out of trees—and as soon as we stepped out into the afternoon sunshine, the scent of fire and smoke tickled my nostrils.

Everyone seemed reluctant to leave the canopy of the trees, but when the two guys who had been scouting ahead returned and reported that the way was clear, the group started moving forward, and I followed. I wondered for a moment if now was the time to get one of the bats ready, but I was tired enough that just trudging forward was a feat.

Less than a mile later, we reached the edge of a small ridge, and Pia had us spread out lower to the ground as we advanced. At her signal, everyone crouched down, my heart once again jump-starting into high alert. Andrej got out binoculars and inched forward until he could look down into the valley, uttering a low curse under his breath. I didn’t even want to know what caused it, but when he looked back at me, brows raised, I joined him, crawling toward the edge until I could look down.

At first glance, everything seemed quiet—but therein lay the problem. A small road meandered through the valley, and from our vantage point I could just see the two neighboring towns that had grown alongside and around it. We were too far away to hear anything, but even before I brought the binoculars to my eyes I caught movement on the road.

They were out in full force. Hundreds of bodies were moving along the road, most heading west—away from Lexington, if I had to take a guess. A few were crouching on the ground, and I didn’t have to guess hard to come up with the reason for why; most were trudging along the road, swaying to and fro, about as fast as a slow walker. But some of them were much quicker, almost running, and the others more often than not suddenly focused on one of those and increased their speed also. Even those that had been crouching on the ground were up and moving in no time, leaving behind a heap of something that I deliberately looked away from. More and more of them started moving quicker, with still more moving onto the stretch of road behind them. One thing was clear—that road we wouldn’t be crossing, or even getting near to. Of course it could be coincidence, but if a small country lane was enough to draw that much “traffic,” just how bad would the highways be?

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, already pushing myself back until I was securely out of sight. Not that I’d seen any of them glancing up the hill, but I didn’t doubt that, if alerted, the whole mass would come after us.

So much for almost everyone in our group being armed to the teeth.

Handing back the binoculars to Andrej, I rolled partly onto my side, trying to get comfortable for the moment, but with my heart and mind racing, that was easier said than done. It made sense to close my eyes for a minute and try to rest; with danger right now out of reach, I could just enjoy the sunshine and try to conserve energy…

I must have drifted off, because when someone shook me awake gently, the sun was deeper in the sky, heading toward the hills already. For a blissful moment, I was disoriented enough that my mind was happy to dwell on the good things only—the warmth of the sun on my skin, the scent of the grass in my nose—until everything came back like a suckerpunch in the gut. Starting, I likely would have came straight to my feet if Nate hadn’t put a hand on my shoulder and kept me down. With my heart in my throat, I tried to gauge whether his behavior screamed imminent danger, but he relaxed and let go as soon as he was sure that I wouldn’t bolt. He winced as he rearranged himself, making me guess that while he looked moderately okay, he wasn’t really feeling it.

A brief glance around revealed that the entirety of our group was still spread out across the hollow before the ridge, and I wasn’t the only one who had napped, it seemed. At first, remaining out in the open sounded like a hell of a hazardous bet, but then I realized that what made us vulnerable here also served as a good lookout possibility; no one would have managed to approach and surprise whoever had been on watch. But while that might explain the place, it didn’t explain the reason.

“Why stop here? And so long?” I was really bad at judging the passage of time via where the sun was in the sky, but it clearly had been hours. When I’d fallen asleep, the sun had been hot enough to make my jacket stifling; while still balmy, the air had now cooled off to the point where I might have felt chilled in just a shirt.

“We all needed the rest,” Nate replied, his voice barely louder than a whisper. When I opened my mouth to protest, he stalled me by shaking his head. “Not just you. My men have been on their feet the same day and a half. It serves no one if we’re all too tired to take care and end up dead because of negligence. Besides, no one can fight nor run when they’re exhausted enough to keel over.”

That made sense, but I could tell that it wasn’t everything.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He flashed me a wan smile.

“There’s the fact that we were hoping that the roads would clear up a little.”

Craning my neck was useless; from our vantage point, I only saw grass around us, with the ridge still several feet away.

“They’re still out there?” I guessed.

His grim nod was answer enough. “Maybe things will get better with nightfall, but I doubt it.”

And that still wasn’t everything. Staring at him, I could tell that he knew that I knew, but I dropped the point after a few seconds. Really, it wasn’t important. Not in the light of everything else—like survival. Nothing was as important as that.

“So what’s the plan?”

I could tell that he was relieved that I switched to the topic at hand.

“We’ll move out in ten minutes. Eat something, drink some water. Take care of other business, but, seriously, I would get rid of any ideas of modesty right now in favor of not getting eaten alive with my pants tangled around my ankles.” Glancing where he looked at, I had to admit, the deepening shadows of the forest didn’t appear quite as inviting as they had when we’d been trudging through the woods.

I nodded. “Sure. Will do.”

“I mean it,” he stressed, briefly raising his hand as if to touch me, but dropping it instead. “Eat. Drink. Shit. Unless we find a good place to secure and hunker down in, we’ll likely spend the entire night on the move, maybe even the next full day, too. We got out of dodge all right, but I doubt that things will continue to go quite so smoothly.”

While the first part had sounded vaguely amusing, that last part didn’t sit well with me at all.

“We lost, what, five people?”

“Seven,” he supplied after a short pause.

“And you call that going smoothly?”

Nate shrugged. “They were wounded, and all of them knew that they were just slowing us down. Part of being a fighter is to know when you’re out of fight to give. They might have been fine if all that had been waiting out there was the police, but, even so, I think most would have preferred a fighting chance over a life sentence in jail. And they could have gone with Bucky.”

I really didn’t like his fatalistic view, but in that he was right.

“Then why didn’t they? You knew what was coming. I bet that they did, too. So why take that chance?”