Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (15 page)

“Well,” he started, giving me a sheepish grin. “I do expect that once we leave, we take what we need with us.”

“But that’s not why we came into this city,” I insisted. He hesitated, but then shook his head.

“Not the main reason,” he admitted.

“Exactly why are we building a reinforced base here?” The hospital wasn’t exactly the most easily defendable compound I could imagine, but it made for a decent hideout for a couple of days. The many different exits would help with not getting overrun, and the fact that—even with no electricity—there were still amenities here that could be restored with the help of a generator, it was worth staking out. But so would any larger store, and we wouldn’t have to go a good four to five miles into the city for that.

Martinez looked ready to spill his guts, but then shook his head, making my anger return. “Seriously? He told you not to tell me?” Except for Nate, Pia was the only one who had the kind of authority in our group to get someone to shut up about anything, and I couldn’t think of a single reason why she’d keep anything from me. Then again, I’d thought the same was true for Nate.

“He probably has a very good reason why he’s keeping you in the dark,” Martinez pointed out.

Snorting, I handed him another pack to fill, briefly checking what he was reaching for next.

“You know, the fact that you’re packing coagulating agents and surgical equipment rather than stuff we can barter for is giving me a very good idea already,” I pointed out. Martinez looked up at me for a second, but then just continued in silence. “This is not for the cannibals, right?” I tried one last time.

“Let’s continue outside,” he told me rather than answering my question. “We’ll probably find more in one of the crashed ambulances.”

We’d barely gone through one completely trashed vehicle when an eerie howling and shouting coming from deeper in the city made us fall back inside the building, and withdraw to the upper floors after making sure that we hadn’t missed any of our assembled gear. By the time we made it back to the sixth floor, the sun was setting, and more and more voices were joining in outside. Stepping up to one of the windows, I looked out, trying to see anything in the lengthening shadows.

“It seems like they’ve turned nocturnal,” Nate observed from behind me, coming close enough that he could look over my shoulder.

I still couldn’t see anything, but that was probably a good thing.

“What makes you think that?”

“Douglas,” he said, confirming my guess. At my raised brows, he explained. “The mob that was chasing us? They weren’t out and about in the streets. They were hiding inside the buildings, large rooms in particular. We got stupid and ran right into the city hall where a good few hundred had been squatting. Their howls woke the others, and within minutes we had the whole horde chasing us. If we’d just stayed outside, we wouldn’t have been the wiser.”

That made no sense—but at the same time, it did.

“So the few squatters we found in the houses. The nests that they’d built there—“

“Just outliers,” Nate said. “Temporary shelters if they get caught outside of their real lairs.”

“The hospital?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Small rooms, many corridors—my guess was that they would avoid that. They like easy access where they can’t get lost. Gymnasiums, supermarkets, structures like that. Where hundreds of them can move in and out quickly and they find enough shelter not to freeze. Most small towns we hit before either lacked the buildings, or the overall population numbers for enough of them to congregate. Remember that town where you pulled your hero stunt?” I’d forgotten the name, but not that it had been Madeline’s idiotic attempt to get rid of her zombified children that had almost cost me my life, and had come with other painful consequences.

“Why?”

“The mob that you ran into? I think they were squatting in the streets of that quarter of the town. Already they’d been congregating together, forming a larger mass. Winter must have driven the smart ones inside, and the others followed. We still don’t know how many remained behind that didn’t migrate south, but my guess is that they’re hunting together now, scouring the city at night.”

I really didn’t like that idea, for so many reasons.

“Why have they switched to a nocturnal rhythm? They seem to be able to tolerate the sun just as we do.”

The way his lips pressed into a thin line didn’t bode well. “That’s one of the things we hope to find out.”

“What else?” He shrugged, clearly intending that to be the only answer he was giving me, but I about had enough of that treatment. “Want me to make an educated guess?”

“Be my guest,” he replied, his eyes studying my face intently.

“We’re going to dissect some of them. See what keeps them alive. Or at least, how much you need to cut away before they stay dead. That’s why the hospital—you have all the gear you need for that here, and you can even keep a few spare ones locked away for later use. Very convenient.”

Nate considered me for a few moments, before he turned back toward the door.

“See? You don’t even need me to tell you shit that you can figure out all by yourself.”

That answer was less a surprise than it probably should have been. Gnashing my teeth, I pushed away from the window, following him outside into the corridor.

“Seriously? Are you insane? Do you really want some of us to get infected and die?”

The glare I got was rather unfriendly, but not for the accusation in my words.

“Don’t be stupid. You—or Martinez, or Santos, or Cho—aren’t getting anywhere near them. Only those of us who don’t mind the odd bite will do the cutting. I’m not stupid enough to risk anyone I don’t need to risk.”

“You’re putting all of us at risk by going into a city that’s full of nocturnal zombie mobs!” I pointed out heatedly. Clark looked up from where he was cleaning his shotgun, but only for a second. Nate continued marching down the corridor as if I wasn’t yapping at him like an annoying dog. That this was likely an accurate guess of how he saw me right now just grated more. “Are you even listening to me?”

Stopping in his tracks, Nate whipped around, glaring in my face from up close as he leaned toward me.

“I always listen to you. Even when you make no sense at all, or are just rehashing what everyone else already knows. But what exactly would you have me do? Cut our chances of survival in half by leaving most of us outside, just so no one will get a boo boo? We all know the risks, and anyone not willing to take them should have remained behind with Bert and Emma.” He paused for a second, clearly waiting for me to speak up, but I kept my trap shut. “I don’t know what you think I intend to do here, but sooner or later we need to know exactly how they work. How they stay alive, as they are, and what it takes to kill them. Disposing of them one at a time is no problem, but as you very well know, the moment they outnumber us, things get ugly. I hate risking my own life, and yours, and those of all the others, but this needs to be done. Avoidance is just one strategy; but what if we cannot apply it any longer? We need to know how to take them out fast and effectively, once and for all.”

He glared at me until he figured the message had sunk in, but I wasn’t finished yet.

“Why here? Why not return to Douglas and nab a few of the suckers there?”

I could tell that he was still hesitant, but when I narrowed my eyes at him, he sighed and resigned himself to his fate. Or me to mine, rather.

“By now you’ve realized that not all of them are created equal?”

“Very Orwellian of you,” I grunted.

“But true. You must have realized that some barely possess the coordination to attack, going down within seconds if you just know where to hit them, while others are sneaky, smart bastards. And others still are almost impossible to kill, unless you shoot them point-blank in the face.”

The very idea made me want to hug myself, but I forced my arms to remain at my sides.

“Maybe we should try getting katanas somewhere?” I proposed, but his blank look made me drop that point again. “You mean the ones who’re like you. Who got dosed with the serum, and ate something that triggered their instant conversion to zombiehood.”

The line of his jaw stood out more prominent as he gnashed his teeth, but after a second, he nodded.

“Exactly. I’m not sure we had more than five of them in all of Wyoming, but we encountered enough on the way there that were faster, smarter, and harder to kill. Two more on the road this week. I may be wrong, but my guess is that the others flock to them because they realize that they are the ones that hold out the longest and hunt down the best prey. The migrating swarms are probably full of them, but there likely are a few more in every larger remaining mob. If the numbers I remember are accurate, there were likely one to every hundred thousand, probably a lot more in every major city, and a few may have remained behind and wintered in here. So what we will do now is study the hordes, draw them out, hunt them down, and see just how much tougher they are to kill than the other ones. Happy now?”

I shook my head.

“Why didn’t you tell me from the start?”

“Would you have followed me into a city where in all likelihood there are super zombies leading their undead hordes around, scouring whatever they can find to feed themselves?”

“Would I have wanted to? No. But it’s not like I have much of an alternative.”

“There you have your answer,” he replied, the expression on his face grim.
 

That answered one of my questions, but not the other. “Why now? I thought we were going after the cannibals?”

Nate studied me for a few seconds, as if to judge what to tell me. “Because we lack the equipment to be able to take them on.”

“We do?” I didn’t have to feign surprise. “We have weapons, ammo, gear, not to forget the skills. What else could we possibly need?”

“Communication,” he ground out, sighing when he realized that I didn’t get it. “Want to know what their success numbers tell me? That they’re dug in good, and know how to defend their compound. Yes, we have the weapons, and we sure have the skills, but everyone else who came before us had that, too. And still they ended up on the spit. What we need is reliable com gear, and a chance to train how to use it. I’ve set Campbell to assemble something for us since we ran into the group in the Badlands, but there’s simply not enough tech out there to build a reliable system.”

“But here in the city, there is,” I stated, finishing his sentence for him.

Nate nodded. “Might as well kill two birds with one stone. Any other objections?”

When I had nothing more to say, he just turned around and walked away, leaving me standing in the middle of the corridor.

Chapter 10

I spent a few more minutes loitering in the corridor, looking at what the others were building from the scavenged equipment—one contraption looked morbidly like an electric chair, and it didn’t take much guesswork what they’d intend that bathtub for that they’d liberated somewhere—before I decided that I could very well do with the results only and didn’t have to stay for how they obtained them. I wasn’t really tired yet, so I picked up my sniper rifle and climbed the access ladder up onto the roof, joining Bates, Santos, and Bailey there.
 

The howls were much louder out here, whenever the wind brought them up to us, that was. Shuddering, I stepped up to the sniper perch that Bailey must have crafted—a bunch of sand sacks and pillows with a separate crate to prop the rifle on—close to the edge, but far enough away not to silhouette sniper nor weapon for curious eyes looking up. As the guys were quietly chatting between them, I took the spot and started scanning the streets below. My M24 didn’t have a night vision scope, but in the dim moonlight, it still picked up movement well enough.

The streets had been far from empty before, but now there was no mistaking that we weren’t the only thing up and about in the city. I didn’t even want to count the individual figures in the large groups that kept moving through the streets, filling them up from house to house, moving in that typical uneven gait most of the shamblers had adopted due to not-quite-perfectly working limbs. Some were running, but most just walking along, with stragglers following them. Nate’s theory about them preferring large, open spaces seemed to hold up here, too; while most small alleys and side streets were clear, the five lanes of the larger street I could just see to the east of us were packed, zombies everywhere between what used to be fast food joints and car dealerships. Watching them made me wonder if they did the same circuits every night, or had other patterns. Or none at all.

Nate was right. We barely knew enough about them to deal with a scant few if we had to. Even if we never actively planned on engaging them, that wasn’t enough to guarantee our survival. Didn’t mean that I had to like his plan, though.

“Smoke?” Bates offered as he lay down beside me, Campbell’s super scope pressed to his eyes.

“No, thanks. Just like the last hundred times you offered,” I replied, not even trying to hide a smile.

“Picked up some sweet loot on the way here. So if you just took offense to my rolled ones—“

“Answer is still no,” I clarified. “It’s not just the idea of putting something in my mouth that you’ve been licking that revolts me.”