Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (17 page)

Another block, and still no building that was large enough to house what we were looking for.

“You’re uncustomarily silent today,” Nate remarked after ducking out of yet another abandoned house, the busted-open door a dead giveaway that it had been cleared out before.
 

“Complaining, are we?” I grumbled back, carefully stepping around a pile of something that I thought used to be someone’s beloved pet.

“Not exactly,” he replied, grin already in place when I stared at him. “But it usually doesn’t bode well.”

“You didn’t complain when we entered the city.”

“There you were silent because operational security demanded it,” he pointed out.

Kicking what remained of that dog seemed like too childish a gesture, but I was tempted. “I was fuming then, too. It just coincided with trying to survive.”

“That means you’re fuming now?” he guessed.

“No, not at all,” I deadpanned, not trying to sound convincing.

“You haven’t been that fickle about following orders during the winter. Why all the hissy fits now?”

My tongue was burning to point out that this was not a hissy fit, but I swallowed my ire as best as possible. Glancing into yet another empty house gave me a few seconds to formulate my answer better.

“I’m not angry because I’m expected to do something I think is idiotic bordering on suicidal,” I finally offered as I joined him back at the edge of the lawn.

Nate’s brows furrowed, and the mirth that had been swinging in his voice left his eyes.

“You are actually pissed at me because I didn’t involve you in the planning of this mission? Why?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, my anger boiling right under the surface now. “The entire time you treat me, if not like an equal than at least like one of the guys, and suddenly I need to be coddled and protected again? And don’t even dare try to sell me some bullshit about not telling me because dissent would have been bad for morale. Even if you’re our undisputed leader, it has never been a problem if you had to overrule the majority consent, or even just one single voice speaking up.”

He mulled that over, but rather than giving me a reply right away, we continued down the street, him checking the house to the right, me the two to the left. Still nothing. There seemed to be even fewer remains here, away from the city center.

“I wasn’t protecting you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said as we met up again.

“Then what?”

Nate hesitated, ignoring the rustling of a newspaper that got swept across the street although we both followed the motion with our eyes for a few seconds. Jumpiness is a survival trait in the time of zombies.

“I guess I was baiting you. Kind of.”

That admission made me snort, but not in a very amused way. “Baiting me? What for? That I again sound like the yippy dog you all compare me to?”

“More like a Rottweiler off the leash,” he murmured under his breath, his smile too bright at my frown. “You are aware that there wasn’t an unofficial memo going around? The decision was between Zilinsky, Romanoff, and me. The others just fell in line, as usual.”

That still grated, although it wasn’t out of the ordinary that he did all the planning with Pia and Andrej.

“But everyone knew.”

“Because people talk,” he replied.

“Not to me.”

“Guess they assumed that I’d told you,” he mused, having the audacity of actually sounding surprised.

“No shit, Sherlock,” I grunted.

“And you’re angry because I left you in the dark, somewhat deliberately.”

“Obviously all deliberation,” I pointed out. “And yes, I am. And not just because you didn’t tell me after reaching the decision.”

That admission pretty much came out of nowhere, although Nate looked less taken aback than I felt.

“You want to be involved in the decision making process from now on? Be my guest.”

And another, if somewhat more pleasant, surprise.

“Seriously?”

He shrugged. “Why not? This might not be a democracy, but I’m always happy to hear everyone’s opinion if they feel they want to give it.”

“But no one else that isn’t part of your little command circle there does.”

“Not our fault,” Nate pointed out. That left me considering my position for a moment, and he used my silence to go on, as usual trampling any optimistic spark that might have caught on deep inside my mind. “Just because we listen to what you have to say doesn’t mean we’ll do it. You know that.”

“Don’t I ever,” I replied, maybe a little more sarcastic than warranted. Nate, of course, found that incredibly amusing. “I’m not doing this to deliberately antagonize you,” I insisted. “I just feel like sometimes it would benefit us all if you had a counterpoint, is all.”

“And you think you qualify as such?”

I shrugged. “Who if not me? All of you come from a military background, with a good century of active duty between the lot of you. I’m not saying you’re incapable of seeing a civilian point of view, but if we really want to continue to interact with what is left of humanity, we should maybe not approach every single mission as a paramilitary group only.”

“Okay,” Nate agreed, making me instantly suspicious.

“But?”

“No buts. But—“ He paused, flashing me another grin. “What would have been your reply if we’d asked your opinion on venturing into the city to go zombie hunting to find out how to best kill them?”

“I think I gave that abundantly last night,” I replied. When he kept looking at me way too neutrally, I added, “I would have protested, and then I would have fallen in line with what you’d decided. It’s not about me having my way, jackass. It’s about you respecting me enough to let me speak up. I don’t care if that makes me sound like a bleeding heart.”

“It doesn’t,” he assured me. “But you are aware that being part of the decision making also puts you in direct responsibility for everything that happens? Do you really want to carry that weight on your shoulders?”

It was surprisingly easy to find a reply to that.

“Yes.”

He studied my features for a few seconds before he inclined his head. “Very well. From now on I’ll gladly let you shoulder part of the blame for every screwup that we produce. And trust me, there will be plenty of those in our future.”

“Don’t I know that,” I murmured, feeling my heart soar for a second—until the impact of his words settled in. Well, shit. But this was what I wanted, right? My misgivings really hadn’t been about what we did, but how I’d felt completely obsolete. Now I felt like it was only a matter of weeks—probably hours, really—until I would eat my words.

But at least they were taking me seriously. I was sure that this knowledge would help me sleep so easily the next time someone died and we could have avoided that.

The rain let up a little as we continued down the street, until after taking a turn left, the red brick buildings of the university campus loomed ahead. With still no idea where the hordes were sleeping during the day, we might as well check out the next best huge building in the neighborhood. With not one but two campuses so close, it only made sense to hit them before trying elsewhere.

“North is clear,” Cho’s voice piped up in my ear, startling me for a moment.

“West, too,” Taylor confirmed.

“We’re heading in from the South now,” Nate replied, nodding for me to precede him.

I felt dread crawl up my spine as I left the relative safety of the street and angled down the road that ran between the two parking lots that led up to the buildings that made up the southern part of the campus. There were more cars parked here than I’d expected, but then they likely had on-campus housing here, and no one had bothered driving home when they fell ill. Not just the cars were trashed but several of the trees lining the lots, and even from a distance I could see that many of the windows in the buildings hadn’t survived the winter.

“Left or right?” I asked Nate, not taking my eyes off my surroundings.

“Map says that the building to the left is a sports center. I’d start there,” he replied. “Right is the fancy, smancy business center.”

“Gym it is,” I acknowledged as I traversed the small green strip onto the parking lot, aiming for the main entrance of the building.

The receiver in my ear crackled before Burns’s voice sounded hushed in my ear. “Lots of residence halls here, and I think that over there is administration. We’ll sweep the parking areas right down to the back of the south building before we go in.”

“Go for it,” Nate told him.

“Parking looks clear,” Taylor reported for the other group. “We’ll hit the science center first. Let’s see if we can’t round up some geeks,” he said, laughing, until he suddenly paused. “Sorry, Lewis. Capable company excluded, course.”

That of all times he got PC now made me want to crack up. “Shut your hole, Taylor, and get the job done. They’ll probably have tons of computers in the labs there. Maybe even the radio station. At least spare parts that Campbell can loot.”

“We’re not here for looting,” Campbell reminded me.

“No, but honestly? I wouldn’t expect many of the geeks to make it past the first week, if they even survived and holed up in there. So they got eaten, and you should have a clear building.”

Nate was grinning at my observation, making me want to promise violent retribution—but I’d learned that lesson early on. As much as I hated to let prejudice guide my decisions, seven times out of ten I was right. That was too high a ratio to make me comfortable to ignore.

Following that reasoning, Nate and I were most likely the team to hit the building with the greatest chance of squatters inside. Not because I actually thought that the jocks had had that much of a bigger chance of surviving long enough to turn, but simply because we were looking for large enough rooms to house substantial amounts of them. Oh joy.

The entrance area of the building looked ruined enough to have served as a temporary hideout for some zombies, at least, a few rags pointing at where some might have found their end. There were also stains in the corners that I realized must be zombie shit, but they were old and completely desiccated, likely as old as last fall.

“Where do you want to check first? Locker rooms or straight to the courts?” I asked, stopping under the signs that led in both directions.

“Courts. If they’re empty, we can hit another building,” Nate suggested. I really liked that possibility.

Turning toward the courts, I grabbed my shotgun a little more firmly, feeling sweat soak into the fabric of my gloves. I tried to move as stealthily as possible as I went down the hallways, checking smaller rooms we passed only from the door. I could hear something scratching up ahead, but here it was all overturned furniture and debris.

The first larger room we encountered was a smaller basketball court, a cavern of darkness deep inside the building. Pausing at the torn-apart doors, I held my breath as I listened. There was movement in there, but not enough to account for the amounts of zombies that we were looking for. Besides, the stench was bad, but not suffocating—another indicator that it wasn’t worth shining a light into the room and making everything hiding in there come for us. Not for the first time I wished that we’d found enough night vision gear to outfit all of us with it. When I stepped out, Nate took my place, briefly looking over the room through his scope.

“Maybe twenty to thirty of them, on the bleachers,” he whispered to me as he ducked back. “Move on.”

That I did, careful not to let the surge of adrenaline the news kicked up inside of me make me do anything stupid. We passed two more similar rooms—equally uninteresting to us—until we reached the entrance to the main court. Littering was worse here, with several white-and-purple banners proclaiming the halls being home to the Cougars now shredded to bits and pieces, soiled with all manners of liquids. The air was dank and heavy, making breathing hard, but I kept my scarf down below my chin. Fresh zombie feces smelled different enough that I would recognize them if their stench hit my nose, but for that I would have to be able to smell them. The air was bad enough as it was, but not that bad.

I let Nate take the lead as he stepped into the court, using the entrance at one of the corners, between the rows of seats. That scratching sound was coming from somewhere ahead of us, and as we moved closer, it was easy to discern that there was a mass of bodies in there. That thought alone made me want to bolt, but I forced the panic down. As much as I wanted to run with every fiber of my being screaming for it, this still didn’t feel like that much of an overwhelming force as we were looking for. So no reason to bolt whatsoever, right?

I was still trying to convince myself of that, hating how it was now so dark around us that I just knew that turning on the flashlight so I could shoot would blind me almost as much as the zombies. I almost jumped when I felt Nate’s hand on my shoulder, nudging me into turning back. I followed his directions as quickly as possible, sneaking into the hallway that we’d come from.

“Impossible to say how many, at least a hundred. But from the looks of them, half are dead for good, and the others seem to be content living with their pantry right next to them,” he whispered. “Not what we’re looking for.”