Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak (32 page)

And it wasn’t like he behaved differently toward me now—if anything, I’d gotten even more scorn than usual for fumbling with my shotgun while checking it over than usual. Apparently, the fact that I hadn’t balked during our talk gave him the justification he needed to continue not sugar-coating anything. That didn’t mean that I was any less resentful about getting barked at for pretty much nothing at all, but it was easier to deal with it now. A little. But I would have been lying if I hadn’t been plotting sweet revenge in the few moments where my mind wasn’t full of, “Oh God, oh God, we’re all gonna die!” happy thoughts.

Stopping in front of us, he nodded at Santos first. “Run back and get the others. Even if we run into any opposition now, it can’t be that bad. They should make it here until we’re done getting what we need.” Santos nodded and took off in the direction we’d came from, cutting right through the field bordering the lawn of the last house to the northeast. Not knowing in how much trouble we would get ourselves, we’d left Madeline, the kids, Skip, and Steve with Taylor and Campbell.
 

One thing had changed for me—I now tried to remember all the names of the people I was with. “That guy who loves to kick roadkill we pass,” just didn’t cut it anymore now that I knew in just how deep a shit we really were.
 

“The rest of you, split up and help us search the houses. Take anything that looks worth stowing in the cars. Martinez, Lewis, you go look for meds. And not just first-aid stuff, either. If room and weight isn’t an issue anymore, we can stock up on anything we might possibly need. I have absolutely no patience to listen to someone hack up phlegm for a month just because we missed getting any cough drops.”

I was burning to tell him that if any one of us got bronchitis this winter, cough drops wouldn’t cut it, but I could already imagine his scathing answer, so I refrained. Instead, I tagged after Martinez, and when he ran after Bates and Cho into one house, I took the opposite one, following Nate and Collins.

In the first round, they’d already killed a good twenty zombies, and our more diligent—and much louder—search now rounded up another fifteen, making me guess that not many people had gotten away from this town. We also didn’t find more than four gnawed-to-shreds remains, putting this town at a dangerously high conversion rate. Why they’d remained squatting here rather than roaming the countryside was a mystery, but maybe it was as simple as that they hadn’t seen anything to hunt after and had ended up mostly standing around, not even resorting to cannibalism yet. Or maybe it was something in the water. What did I know?

With so many infected, we were naturally cautious about taking food, but we still ended up with a decent pile of provisions in the middle of the road. It was more than we’d scavenged at any one time on our entire trip so far, and I wasn’t the only one who kept glancing at all that stuff wistfully. Had we made our life deliberately difficult the way we’d been working so far? Or was this town just a one-off exception and we would have all been long dead if we hadn’t stayed clear whenever we could avoid any assortment of buildings?

Madeline and the others finally arrived, while Andrej, Martinez, and Burns were busy rolling cars out of garages and carports, still bickering over which ones to select. Since Martinez could pretty much hotwire any car, we weren’t depending on finding keys, although that wasn’t much of an issue to start with.
 

Madeline had completely ignored me this morning, and now there was more disdain in her gaze as it skipped over me than I felt I deserved. Yes, there might have been some gloating going on—particularly after scoring the beef jerky—but Nate had made it pretty clear that there was no competition, so why bother fighting? Not that I had been fighting in the first place. Sadly, Madeline didn’t get that memo, I was afraid.

Her creepy-eyed kids were trudging docilely behind her, if anything even less lively today. Erica was looking at the houses with a mixture of fright and longing, and it was that which finally kicked me out of my indecision and made me go over to her.

“We’ve found some toys and clothing in most of the houses. If you want to, I’ll go inside with you so you can pick and choose some. For your family, you know?”

The way she taxed me now was more calculating than any thirteen-year-old had a right to be, and she reminded me a lot of her mother there.

“Thank you, but I think we can do without your alms,” she replied before she breezed by me, joining her mother where she was busy sweet-talking Bates into something—likely exactly what I’d just offered them. I couldn’t quell the anger welling up inside of me, and after a moment I stopped trying.

“You know, anything you get from any of us are alms, whether you pretend you’re doing something for that in exchange or just accept that someone wants to help you,” I called after her, loud enough that heads turned up and down the street. I was sure that I would have gotten a glare from Nate, but he was conveniently busy somewhere else. What a shame.

Erica frowned, her lower lip quivering slightly, and that was enough for me to feel at least a little guilty, but her mother didn’t even need that for an excuse to whip around and stalk toward me, looking ridiculous in her leggings and sundress between all the outdoor gear and weapons. Just a little taller, she used every inch that she had on me to glare down her nose, but I didn’t see how that should have had any effect on me. I still had my shotgun casually propped on my left arm, gun and knife strapped to my thighs; it wasn’t like posturing would do anything against that.

“You will not speak like that to my daughter!” she told me heatedly, narrowing her eyes into a sneer. “In fact, you will not speak to any of my children. At all.”

I wondered if this was how I looked to Nate when I was throwing a hissy fit, or what he claimed to be one. I was starting to see why it never did the trick.

“Or what?” I asked, not bothering to tone down the arrogance in my voice. “You’ll bitch me out? You’ll ask Bates to pout at me, too? I don’t care how many cocks you suck. You still won’t get any of them to act up against me.” Not that I was that sure they wouldn’t take her side, but I didn’t need Burns or Nate glowering over my shoulder to know that everyone was well aware of whose support I could count on. And it wasn’t like I’d made some unreasonable request.

I expected her to go off in my face now—might have even counted on it a little—but Madeline proved that she had better self-control, leaving it at a huff.

“You think you’re so clever, huh?”

I shrugged, not denying that I actually did.

“At least I’m not stupid enough to try to get the guy in charge to whore out the woman he’s screwing himself,” I shot back.
 

“Well, we can’t all be perky little soldier dolls,” she replied, leaning close enough that she was pretty much all up in my face.

“I don’t judge you for what you do, so you should at the very least extend that same curtesy to me.”

Her laugh was derisive, and I wouldn’t have put it beyond her to spit at me any moment now. “You don’t judge? Missy, I hate to tell you, but you do nothing but judge. You’re a prude, a stuck-up, judgmental, liberal flaming heart.”

I didn’t even know where to start on that so I didn’t try.

“Same as I’m a lesbian, huh?” I replied, smirking at her. She just glared back, huffing. The wise thing would have been to just walk away, but the needless tension of the past days had me so on edge that I decided that it was better to clear the air now and hopefully be done with it. “I mean, you do realize that all I want to do is help you? No strings attached, not even a ‘thank you’ needed, because I know how much it bugs you whenever you have to rely on me. You don’t like the clothes we picked for you because we thought they were the most suitable for our circumstances rather than what speaks to your fashion sense? Well, here’s your chance to make your own choices.”

“I don’t need your help,” she hissed.

“No, you don’t,” I agreed. “But you also don’t need to whore around to get what you need. I’m not keeping you from contributing what you think you can offer, but don’t you get it? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. We will continue to feed you, protect you, find you new clothes and whatnot you need. For free. Because that’s what you do when there are only a handful of us left and you’re not complete scum.”

Madeline didn’t react for a full five seconds, making it obvious that I was wasting my breath here. Maybe she really thought that I was wrong—or she simply couldn’t live with accepting that truth—but that didn’t mean she had the right to laugh in my face now, pretty much bringing my patience to an end.

“Girly, you still have so much to learn,” she said as she turned around and started walking away, leaving me standing in the middle of the street, fuming. I glared after her for another wasted couple of seconds before I shook my head and walked down the road to where the next car was set up for departure.

We’d been debating over what cars to go for pretty much since we set out this morning, and the majority vote had been for anything with a four-wheel drive, and preferably some decent storage. Speed was less of a criterium than the ability not to get bogged down in the first puddle we hit. And speaking of hitting—it should be sturdy enough to take a pounding if we had to make our own way. So far, most highways had been too clogged up in sections to be of much use, but utility roads might even be clear enough that we wouldn’t have to backtrack much. I’d never gone off-roading before, but the idea to catch up on that didn’t sound too bad.

Oh, and the fact that we wouldn’t be on our feet for fifteen hours a day and had somewhere closed-off to sleep sounded mighty fine to me, too.

Wishful thinking was one thing, what we would actually find to work with quite another. Yet, the selection of five SUVs, lined up in the middle of the road at the other end of town, looked pretty promising. A Land Rover, a Jeep, two Toyotas, and a Nissan—all not completely new, but no old rust buckets that would break down within the first few miles. There had been some heavy debate about whether to go for newer or older cars, but in the end, it was the same—and if this actually worked, we could redistribute packs and people easily if one of the cars had to be discarded, possibly even two or three. And it wasn’t like we had that big a pool to make our selection from in the first place.

To say I was excited was the understatement of the century.

“How are we going to do this now?” I asked Andrej where he was still critically eyeing the Jeep—the oldest of the vehicles, but that didn’t seem to deter him one bit. He looked up and shrugged.

“We’re nineteen people. These are the only five cars that meet our criteria. Do the math.”

“How do we split up?” I asked, pointedly not glaring over my shoulder at Madeline, but I didn’t doubt that everyone was aware of our little talk there, even if they’d missed the details.

“First, we load up the provisions,” Nate cut right through my wannabe bitchfest in the making. “Then we see how much room there’s left in each car. And we still need to decide on whether we do designated drivers or switch on rotation.” That had been one of the things that we hadn’t been able to settle on last night. Which was better—letting someone wear themselves out until they couldn’t be trusted to do any other duties but leave the others rested enough to pick up the slack, or evenly distribute the load. That driving would demand a lot more focus than it had a month ago was a given, even if the cars didn’t draw the attention of every zombie mob in the state—which was just one more open question. We were only about a hundred miles south of Chicago, and there was no guessing how many shamblers had made it across that distance so far. Just because we hadn’t run into a stream of them since the very first week didn’t mean that they weren’t lurking around the next corner.

Our loot was quickly packed up, and I realized that I needn’t have bothered with questioning how we would distribute ourselves between the cars, as within the first ten minutes, packs appeared in front seats as they were claimed without much bickering between the forming teams. The sky blue Range Rover that was parked in the second spot from the front remained suspiciously empty besides the five fuel tanks and bags of flour, rice, and enough preserves to make me want to roll my eyes. Glancing sidelong at Nate, I heaved my pack up onto my right shoulder and made a beeline for the car. “I’m driving.”

He shot me a bemused look but went to the passenger side without a comment.

“Aren’t you going to fight me over this?” I prompted, watching him carefully over the roof of the car.

“Like I’d stand a chance arguing,” came his wry reply as he ducked inside and started loading the center console between the front seats with ammo and snacks for the road.

“It makes the most sense that I’m driving,” I argued, not sure why I was even putting an effort into it, seeing as he didn’t put up a fight. “You’re the much better shot, and you know where we’re going. And you’re still not at a hundred percent peak performance, physically I mean.”

His smile took on a hint of a leer.

“You didn’t complain last night about my performance.”

Burns’s chuckle from somewhere behind me was impossible to ignore, but I didn’t look away from Nate as I held his gaze evenly.

“Do you always congratulate yourself after shell-shocking a girl into compliance?”

“Usually,” he replied, still mighty satisfied with himself.

Shaking my head, I muttered a low, “Asshole,” under my breath, but didn’t try to hide my grin as I continued to stow away my pack. Resurfacing from the car, I looked around, my gaze inadvertently snatching to where Madeline and her kids were slowly approaching, her pulling an honest-to-God small hard case after her. Clearly, she’d taken up someone else on my offer. Glancing back to where Nate was also watching them, I couldn’t help but get the sense that he was about as happy to see them as I was. There were only two cars with free back rows left—our Land Rover and Andrej and Pia’s Jeep—with four people left to seat.

“I’m not riding with her,” I whispered to him, making sure that this time, my voice didn’t carry. Nate’s eyes met mine, but the look in them was unreadable.