Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (28 page)

Bates didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Someone else must have left that there? Never found any weird caches anywhere? And they’re way too small to be mine, if that’s what you’re getting at. I may be weird, but not that kind of weird.”

One of the guys who’d found the foxhole shook his head. “It’s been raining last week, and there’s not a sign of moisture on these. Doesn’t even look like that’s been out long enough to collect dew overnight. I think we have caught us a liar here.”

Agreeing murmurs rose from all around. Bates continued to deny that, but cut off when the leader drew the heavy-looking revolver from the holster on his hip. Looking around, he pitched his voice loud enough that I would have understood him even if I’d been a lot farther away from them as I was.

“We just want to talk. You can come out now, girl. But if you don’t, I’m going to use this beauty here on your guy, and I don’t think either of us wants that to happen.”

I held my breath, but didn’t move a muscle. If they knew where I was, I didn’t doubt that they’d already have dragged me out of hiding. So they were just guessing. And that meant I had a good chance of not being found if I just stayed hunkered down and waited. So I waited.

I clearly wasn’t the only one getting increasingly nervous, judging from how Bates fidgeted with his fingers. The leader noticed, making him stop instantly, but the damage was done. “Hey, listen, man. I’m not a liar. I told you I was—“

“Kind of sick of your tales, you know that?” the leader said—and shot Bates in the right knee from less than a two-foot distance.

Even with the drawn weapon, that hit me so out of the blue that I didn’t even jump at the racket, but just continued to stare. Bates let out a strangled scream as he went down, the grass preventing me from getting a better look at him. None of the other men looked surprised, making me guess that it hadn’t been the first time something like that happened.

“You fucking asshole!” Bates ground out once he had air back in his lungs, and I saw him sit up, his hands down where he was clutching his leg. “Do you have any fucking idea—“

For a second I was afraid they’d just shoot him in the face next, but the leader used the revolver to club Bates over the head, effectively shutting him up. His diabolic grin was visible plainly even across the distance. “Don’t worry, bud. You won’t be using these legs for walking anymore.”

At his nod, two of the other men hoisted their half-stunned prisoner up and started dragging him toward the cars, making slow progress as Bates wasn’t moving a muscle to help them.

I knew that if I wanted to act, this was the last possibility I’d get. Nate’s order rang clear through my mind, but he wasn’t here. He didn’t know the details of the situation, so he could, at best, make an educated guess.

The smart thing would have been to just stay put. Even as half of the guys continued to look around, I was out of their direct line of sight, and it would take dumb luck for them to find me. But I just couldn’t leave Bates to his fate, not like that.

I also couldn’t just try to kill them all; even if every shot with my shotgun would have been a clean, fast kill, they’d gun me down way before I got half of them. And I had one more option besides shooting Bates myself, thus giving my position away.

Using the distraction that Bates provided, I eased myself up into a crouch before I ran toward the cars, sacrificing security for speed. The ATV was useless, that much was obvious. That left the electric hatchback and the pickup. I chose the pickup, simply because it was closer, and that tarp looked like it was thick enough to cover me well. Now all I could do was hope that they wouldn’t throw Bates right on top of me, and I should be good for the next few minutes.

And what came after that, I didn’t want to consider.

Chapter 17

My plan—insane as it was—seemed to be working well, as far as I could tell. It took them another ten minutes to stow everything away, the bed of the pickup truck remaining undisturbed. I didn’t want to know what the stuff was that I was laying on below that tarp, but as it didn’t reek as bad as most of the zombies I’d encountered in my life, I figured they mostly used the truck to transport firewood and loot. I still couldn’t help but exhale forcefully as I felt the engine come to life before the truck lurched forward. The higher whine of the ATV engine fell away to the side but remained somewhere behind at a steady distance, making me guess that they were driving as a convoy. That only left the hatchback unaccounted for, but I bet that it was the lead vehicle. Only one way to find out.

Physics helped a lot to get me to the very back of the truck bed, if I didn’t mind the bruises from getting jostled around. Trying to raise the tarp as little as possible, I looked back the way we had come. Yup, the ATV was riding behind, the driver and his co-pilot looking rather relaxed, although I did see their heads turn left and right from time to time. The hatchback was nowhere in sight, and I couldn’t exactly get up and look to the front, so guessing it would be.

Sagging back down, I tried to get my frazzled nerves under control.

“Nate? Anybody copy?” I asked, speaking low enough that I was sure that it didn’t filter up to the passenger cabin. Considering how loud the truck was, I could possibly have screamed and still they wouldn’t have noticed. That wasn’t a very comforting thought, though.

“Where the fuck are you?” Nate’s voice answered me immediately. “That’s a lot of background noise for someone who’s supposedly hiding under some bushes somewhere.”

I didn’t even try to fight the sardonic grin spreading on my face.

“Yeah, feel free to punch me later. If we survive this. I’m hiding under the tarp of the pickup truck. Catching a ride.”

“Are you fucking insane?” he asked, his voice rising to uncustomary heights.

“It’s my fault that they got him,” I said, quickly explaining what had happened. “I don’t plan on staying for the entire trip. But they took the packs and I don’t have a map. I likely wouldn’t get back to camp before tomorrow. Besides, didn’t you yourself tell me that for this you’d need everyone? Well, I’m no use to you clicks away from the target.”

I heard him curse under his breath, and when he replied, his voice still wasn’t quite steady.

“So what’s your plan? Because I really fucking hope that you have one.”

I might as well go on, seeing as it couldn’t really get much worse, unless I was discovered.

“I thought I’d drop off the truck bed about a mile or two outside of their base. You mentioned yesterday that you think you found it?”

“And how will you know where two miles outside of that is?” he wanted to know. A good question.

“Whoever’s watching it will tell me,” I replied. “You are watching it, right?”

A longer pause followed, and this time it was Burns who replied. “Have eyes on the farm. What am I looking out for?”

“Three vehicles. A light grey hatchback, a red pickup, and an ATV. I’m hoping that the ATV will drop away once they get closer to their base so the road behind me will be clear.”

Burns grunted. “Don’t see nothing yet, but you were about ten miles away from there, if you didn’t stray from your quadrant.”

“We didn’t,” I confirmed. At least the coms were working better than expected—small relief that was now.

Nate wasn’t quite that convinced of said plan. “You do realize that jumping off a moving vehicle isn’t as easy as in the movies?”

That had occurred to me already, but there wasn’t much I could do about that now. “No, jumping—or falling—is easy. Not breaking my neck or any other vital parts will be hard. Want me to do the calculations for you? Because I think I still remember all that shit Newton defined back from AP physics in high school.”

Nate’s answering grunt told me quite effectively what he thought of my answer, but it was Pia who interjected with some actual advice.

“Try not to land feet first, and keep your chin and arms tucked in. The best place of impact is the back of your shoulder. And you need to roll, to disperse the energy of your momentum. Your gear is steady enough that it won’t tear to shreds so you might even walk away without any road rash. Try to land on soft ground if possible. Likely, the greatest danger is that they see you in the mirror and simply shoot you the moment you get up, happy to still be alive.”

Now that was a glum outlook, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it. Remaining underneath the tarp to use the truck as a Trojan horse was an option, but not one I was ready to take. It would be just my luck that they’d check there first, and then I’d be truly and utterly fucked. No sense about debating whether that meant figuratively or literally.

Pia’s voice speaking up again dragged my attention back to the here and now. “I have eyes on the convoy. They’re roughly four clicks out, moving at maybe thirty miles per hour. In a minute they should pass the inner perimeter checkpoint. Hope that the ATV will get lost there.” The last was probably for me.

“Confirming four clicks out,” Campbell piped up. I could only guess that they were lying in hiding in their different spots and mapping the progress of the truck now.

“There’s some commotion at the farm,” Andrej reported back. “They likely called ahead. Lewis, whatever you do, do it before you get there. You don’t stand a chance on your own.” I didn’t need confirmation of my guess, but there was nothing I could do about that now.

More jostling in silence followed, my pulse unwilling to slow down even a little. Just because I was committed to my plan didn’t mean I felt secure about it.

“You’re passing the checkpoint now,” Pia let me know. I tried to strain my ears, listening, but the sound of the ATV remained steady—until it turned into a high-pitched whine before it tapered off, somewhere to the left. “Road is clearing up,” Pia confirmed. “You’re three clicks out. I have to move position but Burns should spot you any moment now. Campbell, you and Santos rendezvous with me on the south ridge.”

I tried to do a quick conversion of clicks—kilometers—to miles in my head, but there was simply not enough brain power left for minor tasks like that.

“Burns? Can you give me a drop point?”

“Not yet seeing you—“ he started, then cut off. “Got visual on the convoy. You planning on going over the side or straight out the back?”

“Back,” I replied.

“There’s a bend in the road ahead that’s closer to the north ridge. I’d jump there if I were you,” he advised.

“Just tell me when. If I go splat, someone collect the bag of jerky from Burns that he still owes me.”

Burns laughed, but the humor drained from him as he replied. “Get ready, girl. Keep your guns in front of your body. That way you won’t be tempted to stick anything out and break it.”

Closing my eyes for a second, I tried to center myself before I crawled back to the rear part of the truck bed. It wasn’t too hard to disengage the clamps that held the tailgate up, and I figured that, as rocky as the dirt track was on which they were driving, it might make sense for the partition to just drop down on its own. And if not, I wouldn’t be around to see what happened.
 

But Bates would be, yet there was nothing I could do about that now. Exhaling forcefully, I grabbed both my sniper rifle and shotgun to my chest, trying not to roll off the truck too soon.

“Brace for impact in five, four—“

I felt the truck shift as it went into the bend, and as soon as my body lurched forward, I closed my eyes and pulled myself into a ball. There wasn’t really a sensation of being airborne. One moment I was on the truck. The next, I hit the side of the road hard with my right shoulder, letting my body roll as Pia had told me to. My teeth snapped together hard and I felt the impact in my entire body, my freshly healed ribs going up in agony, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. I ended up on my back, staring up at the blue sky above me, needing a few seconds to force air back into my lungs. My blood rushed in my ears loud enough to drown out everything else, but I thought I heard the crunching of tires disappear in the distance.

“Status!” Nate’s voice barked in my ear, forcing me to focus on something beyond the general feeling of getting the beating of my life.

Clearing my throat, I spit out grit from between my teeth. “I think I’m alive,” I replied, doing a first check. “Don’t think anything is broken.” The side of my head felt a little sore, and when I touched my gloved hand to it, there was something sticky there, but it couldn’t be bad. Sitting up, I looked around me, then immediately rolled over onto my stomach to remain under as much cover as the grass would lend me. Above the road I could just see the cloud of dust stirred up by the cars dissipate.

“Did they see you?” Nate asked, a little less gruff now.

“Vehicles still moving,” Burns affirmed. “Hardly saw anything and I knew what I was looking for. You sure that you didn’t take a couple stunt classes, Lewis?”

“Positive,” I replied, wincing as I forced my body up on my hands and knees. I could just hope that I hadn’t damaged my weapons, but at a first glance they were okay.

“Can you move?” Nate again.

Looking around to make sure that I wasn’t about to run into any further obstacles, I went up into a crouch and took a few experimental steps. My ribs were definitely not liking the continuing abuse, but except for that, I was remarkably unscathed. “Positive.”