Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (31 page)

I glanced at the guards, and Burns spoke up when my eyes skipped to him. “Thirty-one bodies. All accounted for.” I nodded my silent thanks to him. It seemed reasonable that the guy was speaking the truth then; there was no way he could have given a good estimate if he was lying. Hell, just looking at all the bodies around made it impossible to guess whether there were twenty or forty dead.

“See, I’m telling the truth!” Scared Guy shouted, panic pitching his voice higher.

I shrugged, letting him know that in the end it was the same to me, although it wasn’t. Not completely.

“Weapons? Food? Gear?” I prodded.

“Just what we have here,” he explained. “There are some tools in the garage over there.” He indicated the larger structure of the barn. “And I guess some canned stuff in the main house. There should still be something left from the last—“ He cut off there, looking guilty as shit.

“From the last convoy that you ambushed and killed?” I proposed, surprised how light my tone was. His slow nod made me want to shoot him right there, but he wasn’t done talking.

“Not all. There’s one girl left, I think. And one of the kids.” I looked at the huddled figures, wondering if they’d belonged to one of the groups that Shayla’s people had lost.

“Anything else?” I asked, not having to work hard on letting emotion drain from my voice.

He shook his head, but when he saw me tense, he started babbling, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You don’t understand! It was either join them or die! And they don’t just slaughter them like animals. They cut them piece by piece, so the meat doesn’t spoil in the meantime! They always do that first to one from a group, as encouragement, you know? They forced me to eat my own brother! They—“

He didn’t get a chance to say more because I shot him in the head from a foot of distance, feeling gore splatter against my lower torso and legs. The body slumped backward, blood continuing to spread where it hit.

Sobbing Guy completely lost it. “You shot him! You fucking shot him! You said that if we’d talk you…” The rest was lost in hysteric hiccups, but I doubted that he had anything qualified to contribute to the conversation.

Leaning closer, I studied him. “I never said that I’d let any of you bastards live. I just promised that the one that talks first will get away easy. Chance is up. Bet you’ll regret not talking any minute now.”

I waited a moment, giving him and the others a chance to spill any more secrets—or last words—before I turned to Nate. “Any suggestions?”

He shrugged, clearly leaving the choice to me. Taking a deep breath—definitely not a good idea—I looked around, my gaze inevitably snagging to the charred remains of what used to be Bates’s leg on the grill, then on to the shed with the cages.

“You do like your barbecues, don’t you?” I taunted the cannibals. “How about this? We lock them in the cages, douse them in gasoline, and then we burn the whole place to the ground? Letting them suffocate sounds too gentle to me.”

I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted to do that, but when I glanced back at Nate, the twist of his mouth looked mighty approving.

“Any objections?” Nate asked around, ignoring the swearing coming from the ground. A chorus of approving murmurs and grim nods answered him. “Done,” he declared.

Before any of the captives got a chance to struggle, they were heaved to their feet, and in the case of the sobbing guy, simply carried toward the shed. They tried to put up a fight, but against the likes of Burns and Andrej they didn’t stand a chance. Nate remained standing next to me, watching me watch the proceedings. I looked at him, catching his gaze for a moment, not sure what he expected of me. I certainly wasn’t going to back down.

Under the increasingly more desperate chorus of the four men gas canisters were filled from the cars in the yard, Burns and Santos doing the honors of dousing the men and parts of the shed structure around them. After making sure that the women and children had been herded far enough away, Burns lit a cigarette—one from Bates’s pack, I realized, using his lighter. Very appropriate, I found—and chucked it at the end of the gasoline trail. It took a second for the flame to catch, but when it did, things went fast.

The straw and dry wood caught flame immediately, as did the gasoline-soaked clothes. I forced myself to watch what happened beyond the wide-open door of the shed; forced myself to listen to the screams.
 

And not a single cell of me felt even an ounce of sympathy or regret.

Chapter 19

The cleanup took a lot longer than the fight had, but in hindsight, I should have expected that we wouldn’t just turn around and leave the scene.

Bodies needed to be burned—with the shed already in flames, it made sense to turn it into one giant pyre. As I helped the others drag the bodies over there, I noticed that two of the men had had strange marks, like a tattoo in the shape of an “X” across their necks. Gang signs, most likely. One of the surviving women bore a similar mark on her right hand, hiding it in the folds of her tattered skirt—a wife maybe? Girlfriend? Innocent who had been branded for life, not just on the inside but also for everyone to see? I didn’t find it in me to ask. It really didn’t seem important at the time.

 
Bad as it was to drag the dead toward the fire—and finish off the wounded, unconscious as most of them were, anyway—picking up the pieces that used to be Bates belonged to a different circle of hell entirely. We built a separate pyre for him, wrapping the remains in a sheet someone had found in the main house first. Before we set fire to it, Nate said a few words, but they didn’t even register with me. All I could do was stare at the blood-soaked bundle, placed in a rough approximation of a complete body, because anything else would have been blasphemy. And I continued watching as the fabric caught on, until there was nothing but charred ash disappearing in the flames.

The guys got busy in the meantime. While not ill-prepared, the cannibals hadn’t exactly lived a life of luxury. Relying mostly on the convoys they managed to overwhelm, their stocks were minimal compared to what we’d gathered on even the shortest loot run—but there were still some things that could be of use, and those were stripped down to the individual parts to be taken with us and put to better use. Nate sent a few people back to pick up the car Martinez had driven close, and several more with the pickup to get our cars. I resented the very idea that anyone was driving my car, but staring at the dying flames was more important than my comfort. The knowledge that we could have overwhelmed them any day without losing one of our own grated. Monsters we might have fought and slain—but in the light of day they proved to have been much less scary than their reputation had made them out to be.

Martinez and Pia, to my surprise, took over taking care of the women and children. Like what I’d seen before, the fact that we were a co-ed group seemed to let them find a little faith in us, and that the guys knew not to behave like complete jackasses helped, too. For the first time ever, I got the reserved, bordering on scared looks that Pia usually drew—but then she hadn’t been the one to execute someone who cooperated, and sentenced the others to a fiery, gruesome death. Another day, that might have maybe made me feel somewhat accomplished, but today all I was capable of was… indifference.

Anger still churned low in my stomach, but except for that latent, deep-seated frustration, I felt cold. Empty. Like a shell, capable of movement and responding to stimuli from the outside world, but not to emotionally process them. Even aware of that, it was impossible to shake myself out of it.

The prospect of spending the night at the farm was nothing anyone wanted to discuss, but the fight had happened in the afternoon, and night fell by the time most of the fires had died down to the degree where they could be extinguished. Being responsible for the outbreak of a massive wild fire was the last thing we needed now.

Just before we left, we used the radio that we found in the makeshift garage to send out a message—the cannibals were dead. Campbell kept sending the same words on all frequencies that he could reach, but we had no way of knowing if it went out, or not. Time would tell.

No one protested when we broke camp at an hour when it was way too dark to be out and about. Putting the bunch of liberated now-refugees into the remaining cars the cannibals had used for their patrols, we travelled a few miles further and camped out in the open. I didn’t even attempt to sleep but took on two watch shifts instead, spending the remainder of the night sitting on the bumper of my car, shotgun in my lap.

The next morning, we had to face the reality of the consequences of our actions—except for, well, losing Bates—which meant that now we were stuck with a group of vulnerable targets who were in no state to defend themselves. We needed to stock up on food and find clothes and other things for them. But most of all, they needed a new home, because staying with us was out of the question—and not just from our side. The light of a new morning revealed that gratitude by far didn’t outweigh distrust, and I could tell from the frustrated looks a few of the guys exchanged that they were just as fed up as I was over the obvious lingering resentment.

It came as a godsend when one of the women—Nadia—finally spoke up, mentioning that she had a sister in one of the settlements, somewhere in Kansas. With her and her niece—the daughter of her other sister—still alive, she was sure that they would find shelter there. With no one else offering other options, it seemed like the way to go.

It took us a good two days to find two vans that were still in working order, so we could ditch the pickup and thus the last obvious reminder of their ordeal. And, just like that, we were on the road again.

I couldn’t exactly say why, but I avoided Nate as much as possible. Anyone, really, but with him always sitting right next to me, it was the most obvious. We barely talked besides discussing routes, our usual banter all but gone. He only tried to approach me once on the day after the massacre, but when I shut him out immediately, he kept his distance. I still noticed the worry in his gaze when I more dragged myself behind the wheel than slid in the next day, but didn’t try to strike up conversation. In a way, he gave me exactly what I needed—space. Only that this time I wasn’t sure if I appreciated it, or resented him for it.

When we made camp the third night and I retreated once again to my place on the hood of the car, Martinez made an attempt to approach me, his usual puppy-dog-eyed “I’m here if you need to talk” look firmly in place. I just kept staring at him until he gave up and went to do something more fruitful. When Burns joined me five minutes later, I was ready to pull my gun on him just to be left alone, but all he did was hold out a bottle of Jack to me that we’d found at the cannibal compound. I hesitated, but then took a deep swig, relishing the sharp burn down my gullet right into my stomach. We finished the booze off as we watched the day come to an end in one of the most spectacular sunsets I’d ever seen in my life—and all it did was make me feel dead inside.

Hours later—or minutes, really; with not enough food in my stomach to cushion the liquor, I felt rather intoxicated—I finally found the courage to say something.

“He was your friend, wasn’t he?”
 

Burns kept staring off into the night, not reacting for a full minute. He couldn’t have been much more sober than me.

“Went through basic training together,” he finally answered, his voice low and gruff. “Used to be my wingman whenever we were on leave. Asshole always stole my pussy with that fucking smile and his baby-blues. Might actually get laid now that he’s gone.”

I’d expected at least a hint of blame in his words, but there was none. Nostalgia, yes, but no blame.

“I can step in for that, if you want. Snatching the ladies right away from you, I mean. Not the other.” The laugh that came out of me then wasn’t anything I could have held back, but it didn’t sound very happy.

Burns snorted, giving me a look that was the opposite of sexual.

“No offense, girl, but you ain’t my type.”

“I’m not?” I scoffed, wishing there was more booze left. “How can you say that? I’m everyone’s type. In a world where there’s, what, like twenty percent women left, my cunt’s golden.”

Burns made a face as he was considering that, but his shit-eating grin won out, destroying the pretense.

“You’re like my lil’ sis to me, Bree. If you ever decide to stop screwing the boss, his replacement will get his ass kicked from me before I let him anywhere near you.”

“And if he’s a she?” I asked, having to pay attention not to slur the words too badly.

He considered for a moment. “Then I’d probably watch.”

“You’re such a misogynist pig!”

A snort. “Hey, someone’s gotta honor the tradition now that Chris is gone, right?”

It didn’t go unnoticed that for what felt like the first time, he actually used Bates’s given name instead. Normally, I was the only one treated to that, if at all.

“Guess so,” I replied, what little humor the booze had incited gone again. Sighing heavily, I pushed myself back up into a sitting position from where I’d been practically lying across the windshield. “Listen, I’m so—“

I didn’t get farther than that before he cut me off, his voice gruff. “Don’t you fucking dare say you’re sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

I vehemently shook my head. “I messed up. I didn’t have his back. I—“