Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (38 page)

I wondered if I should tell him that his behavior set me off, but then swallowed the remark. We’d made it out of the insanity of Harristown without getting more than an emotional black eye and the odd scrapes on our cars. What could possibly go wrong?

The moment we were out of the cars, Nate silently grouped us into four fire teams, using our own hand-gesture code that we’d worked out over the winter. If my nerves hadn’t been strung tight before that, now they were, but I had to admit, being teamed up with Burns and Andrej alleviated some of that unease. There was something to be said about having two of the heavy hitters at my back as I took point of the second group.

After a brief sweep of the parking lot, we entered the facility through what must have been your garden variety security checkpoint at the office building. Half of the doors were busted now, the glass crunching under our boots, mingled with leaves and debris. Something scuttled away from one particularly massive heap in the corner, but the foyer was in remarkably good condition, except for what the wind and small animals had dragged in here. No signs of shamblers anywhere, not even a whiff of decay in the air except for the stench of animal excrements and mildew. Beyond the tables and gear that had been used to scan the employees’ bags even that receded, until there was barely a crumbled, brown leaf on the floor where the building proper began.

The hallway beyond the foyer was empty except for the usual office detritus. This was the first office building we’d raided, I realized. But in a world where only a handful of towns had electricity, let alone might need computers, there was no sense in scavenging for office supplies. Maybe they all looked like this—as if the staff would be returning tomorrow, only to find that the cleaning lady had been rather lax, and the windows needed a good cleaning. It made me feel oddly sentimental to bust open doors and find the room beyond looking so pristine that it could have served as a time capsule. As much as I didn’t mind not getting a face full of corpse, this wasn’t what we’d come here for, and even made me feel like I was defiling the place somehow.

I made a brief stop in the office kitchen on the first floor to raid their small medicine cabinet, but that was about the extent of our looting for the first thirty minutes. We met up again at the door that led to the production facility, and that’s where things were starting to get interesting. The Raiders had had some time now to case the place, but as soon as I stepped into the huge, hangar-like room I realized that we could easily spend days in here checking every nook and cranny, and weeks to lug everything useable away. All around the walls I could see smaller rooms leading off to who knew where, likely labs and smaller storage rooms. To the right and front there was a railed gallery running along what would have been the second floor otherwise, with a few more doors. The entire room was packed with the production line machinery, and I guessed that the huge doors opposite our entrance were leading to the loading dock.

We all took a moment to orient ourselves before Nate sent us off again. It didn’t come as much of a surprise that my team got to hug the walls and investigate the doors. A few were locked, the keypads making me guess that those must be leading to storage. Behind the others were either normal maintenance rooms, or labs small enough that they could only have served to test a batch taken directly from the line outside. Burns made short work of one of the locked doors—one that becomingly displayed huge biohazard signs—breaching it with the heavy battering ram he’d brought. The beam of my flashlight revealed shelves upon shelves inside, full of orange and red labelled plastic containers. Chemical storage. Bingo.

Sunny hadn’t been wrong about me being the perfect personal shopper for what they needed to replenish their stocks, although I’d refrained from noting that if they were actually as good as they claimed to be, they could have likely synthesized half of the chemicals in here. But why bother when you could just pick them off the shelf rather than spend hours, if not days, producing them in much smaller quantities, and likely with a much lesser grade of purity? I quickly scanned what was available and then pointed at almost random to the other two to store this and that away in their packs. Unlike me, they hadn’t brought the light, small packs, and I felt almost relieved when I saw that, while armed to the teeth of course, their packs weren’t bristling with explosives and ammo. There was way more in here to be salvaged to take with us now, but if we had to leave early, at least our loot run wouldn’t turn out as a complete bust.

With already tons of loot that we had to leave behind in that one room, we didn’t bother with breaching the others, but ever the careful one, I made sure to knock hard on any door that we passed, listening for a resounding answer. None came, making me feel even more stupid about my paranoia. Why should there have been zombies locked up in storage rooms? The facility didn’t look like it had been invaded, so anyone who might have turned would have done it the slow way, after fighting infection for at least a day, if not two. If anything, they would have ended up locked in the infirmary, wherever that was in these rabbit warrens—or, much more likely, in their own home or the nearby hospital. The Raiders seemed to think along similar lines as they investigated the store room we’d opened up, but left the others as they were. The really interesting stuff was likely stored closer to the loading dock, and that was where we headed next.

The moment I stepped through the doors, I felt my unease spike. Not because I was psychic or some shit, but because of the layout of the room. They really seemed to be fond of doors and small rooms here as the entire left side of the longish hall was lined with them. The gallery from the production room went on here, straight across those doors, with yet more rooms leading away downstairs. At the other end light streamed in through the open dock, barely filtered by the heavy plastic partly obscuring the parking lot beyond. Palettes stacked with wrapped and partly unwrapped boxes lined the walls where no doors were obscured, and Torres was busy looking them over one at a time. That wasn’t what made me halt just inside the gate, warily scanning the room. Andrej stopped at my left shoulder, giving me a blank look.

“It’s a kill chute,” I whispered, not needing to nod at the room before us. If I could tell that, so could he.

“So are most buildings,” he replied, but I didn’t miss the way his eyes kept scanning the gallery in particular.

Considering how at ease the few members of the Raiders were, I couldn’t help but feel stupid. And still…

I was barely twenty feet into the room when the heavy fire security door of the gate came crashing down, making me whip around, then right back as the one over the cargo port came down as well. I took a moment to notice that the Raiders looked just as surprised as us—and at least the blonde girl scared shitless—before I forced myself into a guarding stance, only focusing on the quadrant right in front of my position. The scuffing of boots let me know that Andrej had turned around, guarding my back, and I ended up right next to Nate—not a coincidence, I was sure. Slightly behind and to my right I saw Bailey take up a similar position, leaving me covered from all sides.

My pulse sped up as the sound of boots on concrete was suddenly loud. Doors crashed open, letting soldiers spill into the room like a swarm of bugs. At least I guessed that they were soldiers, judging from their more uniform black and camo patterned gear. Even we had much more mismatched outfits, like all scavengers. They moved with that kind of coordinated purpose that spoke of a well-executed plan—and that didn’t bode well for us, not at all.

I allowed myself a momentary glance behind Nate’s shoulder at the rest of our team. Everyone was accounted for, not a single one left at the other side of that damn fire door. They were all facing outward, trying to give each other cover as much as possible. Not that twelve people—or twenty, if we counted the remaining Raiders—could do anything against the easily hundred soldiers taking up position all around us, the floor and gallery teeming with people. I forced my breaths to remain calm and level, but every fiber of my being screamed to run, thoughts of formations and caution all but forgotten. But I held my place and did my best not to let my shotgun jitter.
 

Shit.

Nate was like an unwavering statue next to me, but I didn’t miss how his eyes continued to zoom over the ever growing mass in body armor all around us. Only because I was watching him did I notice that he jerked his head to the side once, if only a fraction of an inch. At first I thought he was signaling at me, but then I heard a chuffing sound from behind me as Bailey grunted. With nothing to look at directly, my eyes jerked to him when I caught motion from the corner of my vision. Had he just popped something into his mouth?

Something fluttered to the floor and remained lying there. I couldn’t quite see it over my shotgun, but the flip that my stomach did made it obvious that my subconscious had latched on to something, and that so didn’t bode well.

“This is not going to be pretty,” Nate murmured, his eyes straight ahead now. I had the sinking feeling that he was right.

The mass of soldiers parted to let a single figure through, drawing my attention back to the front. It took me a moment to recognize the soldier, but once I made the connection, it was as if the last thirteen months were just ripped from my memory. I was back in the field of rubble that Nate and his team had reduced the Green Fields Biotech building to, while that very soldier was holding the head of a zombie girl right in my face. That day when it had all begun.

And just like then, Capt. Hamilton, referred to as Bucky by Nate, had a sneer on his face that held all the contempt in the world. Only that now Nate—and we by extension—weren’t just a nuisance to him, it seemed. Unlike his soldiers he had no weapon in his hands, but that didn’t make him any less deadly. And unlike Nate I didn’t see the marks brandished across the back of his neck. Interesting. Although not as interesting as, say, our continuing survival, really.

“So we meet again,” Bucky said, his words so close to a snarl that it didn’t take the look of malice on his face to make it obvious that it wasn’t a joyous moment for him.

Much to my surprise, Nate had to fight for a second to keep his calm, steely mask in place, derision leaking through—and was that a hint of fear that crossed his features? It was hard to judge from looking at him sideways, when I should have kept my attention at the soldiers in front of me.

I’d expected a witty—or at least dry—comeback from Nate, but he just kept staring at his opponent. The last soldier clunked out onto the gallery above us and came to a halt, silence settling over the room. There must have been over a hundred of them around, probably more as I couldn’t get an estimate of what lurked behind us.
 

Bucky’s lips quirked into a smirk. “What, no taunts? None of your usual grandstanding? I’m disappointed, Miller. And there I’d thought I knew you. Seems like I stand corrected.”

That didn’t sound like the Nate I knew. He might be aware of all the shortcuts to lighting the fuse to my temper, but there was usually a lot to back up his claims and teasing. Now he just looked grim, although paired with a healthy dose of contempt on his side.

“So sorry to disappoint you,” Nate finally offered, his voice even, but with a hint of heat. Oh, he was pissed off. Whether at meeting his old friend here, or at us waltzing into a trap, I couldn’t say, but it didn’t matter. Burns gave a chuffing laugh that made a few soldiers tense, but none of them shot us. Yet.

Torres gave a dismal grunt from where he and three of his people had squeezed themselves together into a similar defensive formation than we were in, his eyes continuing to jump between Bucky and Nate. To our esteemed leader he called, “You know that asshole?”

“‘Fraid so,” Nate replied, his eyes flickering to the right before his gaze landed on Bucky again. What was it with those glances? “Question is whether that was ever a good thing.”

Unperturbed by Nate’s jibe, Bucky turned his head to regard the other scavengers. “You and your men can go. Just drop your weapons, and you will be escorted to your vehicles. After surrendering your radios and transponders you are free to go.”

Torres hesitated for a moment, his eyes skipping over our entire group before they landed on Nate. “This personal?” he asked. Nate gave a hint of a nod. Torres took another second to consider, then gave his guys a nod as he dropped his AK, the clatter of other guns following. At Bucky’s command a few of the soldiers came out of their stance, surrounding the scavengers. After a last, lingering look that seemed surprisingly conflicted Torres turned to go. I might not have trusted him at first, but he definitely didn’t like abandoning us to our fate, which put him squarely in the good guys corner for me. It was only when the girl wanted to follow her people and two of the soldiers pulled her right back that Torres stopped, tension singing in every line of his body. Her eyes were wide as she tried to reach for him, letting out a distressed, “Chino!” that made him speak up.

“What is this shit? You said we could go.”

He got a deadpan stare from Bucky. “You and your men, yes.” He stressed that last part. “Not her.”

Torres seemed ready to try to fight his way through the mass of soldiers right to their commander, but when Nate gave him another jerk of the head he relaxed, exhaling loudly enough that the sound carried. The two men held each other’s gaze for another second, then Torres let himself be pushed toward the gate, underlined by the girl’s wail. A hard punch to the side of her head cut her off, but she remained standing, clutching herself. Anger came up inside of me, hot and consuming, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Torres just gave up on one of his team members like that. Had I missed something when Nate and Torres had discussed their plans to take over the facility? Had they expected this?

A low groan coming from my right jerked my attention back to Bailey. He was still chewing whatever he’d popped into his mouth earlier, making a face when he caught me watching. “This shit’s nasty,” he mouthed, ending with a bright grin. His teeth were stained dark with chocolate.