Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (35 page)

Like a herd of trained monkeys, the lab workers nodded, a sea of bright, hopeful eyes fixating on me. That made me feel vaguely uncomfortable, but Ethan’s attention span deficit saved me.

“Anyway, moving on. In your notes there were much better diagrams of the virus already, but we’ve managed to isolate all the proteins that are part of the virion and the expression machinery. Here.” He handed me another stack of papers, this one showing both a rough drawing of what looked like a genome sequence in pictogram form, and another sheet of thicker paper with a dried electrophoresis gel, the customary blue bands bright on the white underground. It had been too long since I’d seen Raleigh Miller’s notes to be sure, but this looked similar to what I remembered.

“You keep saying my notes,” I replied absentmindedly.

“From the package the video came with,” Ethan said. “We didn’t manage to get the whole package downloaded by the time the internet went out, but thankfully Dr. Lowe and his people brought the rest with them.”
 

And that was the moment I remembered that—all science stuff aside—there was a very good reason why I’d exchanged my lab coat for my trusty shotgun. Glancing beyond the horde of scientists, I caught Stone’s gaze, easily deciphering the warning it held. What exactly that should have told me, I didn’t know, but it served as a much-needed reminder.

“Right,” I agreed with Ethan. “Well, looks like you’re doing good work here,” I went on, handing the papers back to him. “I’d love to take a closer look, but I think for now I’d really like something to eat first.”

Ethan looked a little taken aback, but the woman who kept inserting herself into our conversation took that opportunity to do so again. “I’m Megan, by the way. I can fill you in on the other things while we get you some food. There’s plenty more…”

And, just like that, I was swept up in her gushing with Ethan following us as she herded me back outside and over to one of the adjacent houses. I had to admit that I felt instantly better with the open sky above me, and when I saw the small but varied buffet that Amy and another woman were setting up while part of my group was already digging in, I couldn’t help but feel a little stupid about my latent unease and resentment. I was likely just being paranoid. It made sense that with years more data and research, Stone—and whoever was behind him, because it was obvious that he wasn’t the mastermind there—had given the scientists as much fodder as possible, without explaining where exactly the data had come from. I probably would have done the same in his place. The more I thought about it, the pettier I felt. I probably just needed to talk to him in private to clear up a few things—or forget about it all and just leave. It was a little distressing to realize that this second option only came after a noticeable pause in my thoughts.

Delicious, hot, fresh food did its own to distract me, to the point where I completely zoned out on Megan and Ethan for a few minutes as I dug in. That was real milk that the oatmeal had been prepared with. Eggs and bacon, likely coming from the animals I’d seen between the fields on the way to the town center. Butter to scrape on bread that was still slightly warm. Coffee that tasted a tiny bit burned, but that made it all the better because it came from an actual coffee maker. Tasting all that made me realize just how sick I’d become of subsisting on canned food and jerky for my protein, with rarely a chance to load up on fat. I didn’t even feel bad about licking my fingers clean, somewhat less dirty that they were now after a good scrubbing.

Megan was just about to launch into another idea for a new assay she wanted to do but didn’t have all the reagents and buffers for when I saw Martinez and Cho come into the house, both animatedly talking to a guy who looked like he was one of the guards. They definitely seemed like they were old friends—and after a momentary brainfart I realized that they probably were. It was so easy to forget sometimes that not all of us had been Nate’s people—at least not that day when the world had gone to hell. And with Stone and Lowe here, it made sense that they’d brought a few of the soldiers with them as well. Suddenly, the fact that I was still carrying both my guns didn’t sound half as crazy as it had a minute ago.

Martinez caught my gaze across the room, stopping in mid-sentence where he’d been busy recounting what sounded like a rather chaotic chase, likely from Sioux Falls. Grinning, he sauntered over to me, his gaze briefly flickering to the papers strewn across the entire table between the dishes from my breakfast.

“I see you’ve already found out that they have a lab here,” he said.

“I see you’ve already found out that a few of your old comrades are guards here,” I shot back. Why was I feeling like he had been chiding me, if softly?

His grin didn’t waver, but the way he rolled his shoulders spoke of residual tension that told me that he hadn’t completely let his guard down. “Yeah. Mac’s been catching us up on what they’ve been up to while we were digging in for the winter. Can’t say I regret my decision.”
 

“Well, then have fun catching up,” I replied, remaining about as circumspect as he himself. He nodded and joined the others, succumbing to the lure of the buttered bread, too.

Megan cleared her throat, drawing my attention back to her. “I don’t even want to think how you spent the winter. With no food, no shelter…”

“It wasn’t quite that bad,” I explained, picking up one of the oat cookies I’d snagged before. They tasted a little strange, sweetened with honey rather than sugar, but not that I was complaining. “The lack of intellectual stimuli was probably the worst.”

Just as I said that, Nate walked in, of course catching my barb. Much to my malcontent, he completely ignored me, instead joining Andrej where he sat alone at another table. Before I could consider whether I wanted to excuse myself from my two new best friends, Amy took a seat on the bench opposite from me, a warm smile on her face.

“I see that you’re already digging into heavy stuff,” she surmised.

I shrugged. “Might as well make myself useful.” I was actually glad that her presence shut the others up. “You seem to have quite the settlement here, at least compared to others that we’ve seen.”

Her smile became a little self-deprecating but no less proud. “We’ve been working hard to maintain what was here and build on it. When I came here, there were only five people, hiding, trying not to get eaten. Now we are over three hundred, and it’s been months since we had a more serious accident than a sprained ankle or a few bruises.”

“Doesn’t the presence of the soldiers disturb you?” I asked, nodding toward Martinez and Cho’s friend. “Or ours, for that matter.”

Amy shook her head. “Just because I personally try to lead a less violent life doesn’t mean that I don’t see that it now has a place in this world, sadly. I didn’t get out of Kansas City by the power of my faith alone.”

“You’re a very spiritual person?” I asked cautiously, my conversation with Nadia from a few days ago having made me wary of this topic.

She inclined her head, but also pulled her shoulders up in a shrug. “I’d like to say yes, but I can’t in good faith say that my beliefs haven’t been shaken up. We’ve all lost friends and loved ones.” Looking around, her easy smile from before resurfaced. “But we’ve endured, and we’ve all found new people we care about. It is often in times of crisis and despair that we find out who we really are, and while I wouldn’t presume to say that we’ve all been tested, I think that a few people thrived after getting a much-needed reality check.”

I didn’t know what to make of that statement, and that it left me vaguely uncomfortable only contributed to that. When I didn’t reply, Amy got up, an apologetic smile on her face now.
 

“Never mind an old, rambling woman. I’ve kept you from your discussion too long. But should you, for whatever reason, want to talk to someone who doesn’t know the person you’ve been before, nor the person you are now, come find me. Sometimes outsiders see things more clearly than those mired in the details.”

She left us then, Megan and Ethan dragging me right back into their conversation—which I was glad for. I’d spent way too much time inside my head during the last week. It was time to change something about that.

I finally got my bath later that day, and although it was more lukewarm than hot, it was that kind of luxury that almost made me forget about the world outside the small chamber in the back of the bathhouse. I could have spent the time just soaking, letting my thoughts drift, but instead I kept reading up on Megan’s notes. She was definitely up to something there, but it showed that she simply hadn’t had time enough yet to sink deep into the material. I felt insanely arrogant about that assessment, but it was the truth. I didn’t know what the others besides her and Ethan had been up to, but even just spending a few hours checking their approaches, I already had two sheets of paper scrawled with alternatives that might actually yield results.

Wearing fresh clothes, really clean for the first time in forever, I couldn’t help but feel like a new person—or like the woman I’d been before that fateful day when a jogger in a park had asked me out for coffee. The past months had forced me to learn one lesson quickly—that woman was dead, because she could never have survived out there. Now, for probably the first time ever, I started to consider if maybe she still had a chance to exist.

The sun was setting outside as I left the bathhouse to rejoin the others. It was pretty obvious that no one wanted to leave yet, and when I asked Nate if he had any plans, he left it at a shrug that could have meant anything.
 

Amy and the other people of the village were trying their hardest to make the refugees feel welcome, but that still looked a long way from happening. Back on the road, I’d felt like I’d be happy to be rid of them, if only to forget about the circumstances of how they’d come to be with us. Now, I didn’t feel much different about the entire thing, making me wonder if that was one wound that just wouldn’t heal. But the general atmosphere was a good one—people laughed and smiled and told silly stories while food was passed around, seemingly not discriminating between farmer, guard, scientist, refugee, or us. It was hard to hold on to the cloud of darkness permanently lurking in the back of my mind. And if a few of the guys dipped a little too deep into the bottle of moonshine that followed dinner, so be it. I felt the rest of my tension drain away, leaving a strange sense of warmth inside of me. When I caught Nate’s gaze across the campfire that had been lit in the middle of the village square, I couldn’t help but smile—a sentiment that he returned, with just enough of a twinkle in his eye to let me know that if I slinked away now, I would very soon have company. More to spite him than because I still felt like I needed my space, I looked away, laughing over a crude remark Burns offered.

Maybe, that wound was scabbing over already, and I just didn’t know it.

I could tell that something was changing in the atmosphere when Stone joined us with two of his flunkies in tow, still in their lab coats. They were wearing them like a uniform. I would have ignored them, but Amy got up and walked over to him, shaking her head.

“Not tonight, Brandon. They only just got here, and we don’t even know if most of them won’t depart with first light.”

She probably meant us. She’d been talking in low tones, if not exactly hushed, but I saw Nate and Martinez look at her with that similar sense of foreboding that suddenly gripped me. Hell, but I was really getting jumpy.

“One more reason not to dawdle,” he insisted. “You know the regulations. The regulations you swore to uphold as mayor.”

That sounded ominous enough, but none of the other people from the village seemed alarmed.

“What is this all about?” I asked, mostly not to feed my paranoia even more. So far, no one here had done anything to incite my suspicious side—at least not during the last twelve hours or so.

Amy opened her mouth to reply, but let Stone talk when he stepped forward.

“You’ve probably not heard about this program yet, but our government has decreed that we should start a new census round, trying to get at least an estimate of how many people are left.”

That didn’t sound too bad. “Easy enough, I’d say.”
 

“Didn’t know that we still have a government,” Nate interjected, sounding way too bland not to make my hackles rise. I glanced at him, but he focused on Stone when he replied.

“That doesn’t come as much of a surprise from what I’ve heard about your group. You seem to have kept remarkably under the radar during the past months.”

“Staying to scarcely populated areas works well when you’re trying to avoid the undead masses,” Nate noted, completely unfazed by the condescension in Stone’s words.

“That may be one strategy,” Stone admitted. “But as you see, people are doing well together. Our future lies in rebuilding civilization, not hunkering down and ignoring what the rest of the world is up to.”

“So count us,” I said before this could escalate. “Twelve, to make it easy for you.”

Now I got that same non-smile, but he toned it down a little. Clearly, he realized that if he wanted something from me, he’d have to not act like the bigger asshole than his competition. That thought in itself made me want to laugh, and not in a good way.

“It’s not just a headcount,” Stone explained. “People far more intelligent than me have devised this plan. Scientists, like you yourself.” He turned toward where the bulk of our group was sitting. “As Dr. Lewis can likely explain to you, even with a virus of this magnitude, there’s a good chance that some people have natural immunity. Our duty is now to collect the data of everyone still alive, in this case their DNA. We don’t have a sequencer on site, but a few gene loci have already been identified that look promising. So we’re testing everyone, hoping that one day that data will help us find a cure.”