Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (9 page)

I held his gaze for another second while he squeezed my hand, then looked toward the settlement again. I was so not cut out for this. But it wasn’t like I had the option to flake out on them. My pride, if nothing else, wouldn’t let me.

Even with conviction riding shotgun, it took me several seconds to pry my fingers off the wheel and reach for the hand brake, and a few more to disengage it and send the car forward. My heart was beating so fast that it drowned out everything else. The Rover handled the slope easily, even with the extra weight in front from the reinforced bumper.

I could do this. I had to do this. There was no other way.

Halfway down the slope was the last time I looked toward the settlement. It seemed miles away now, with the entire space stretching between us and the walls filled with bodies. A last glance in the rearview mirror revealed that the Jeep was right behind me, close enough that if I stepped on the brake now it would probably rear-end us. Taylor was leading the third car onto the slope, with the others waiting another minute. The plan was for half of Jason’s people to follow then, before our remaining two vehicles moved in—or stayed back, should our plan prove to be utter lunacy. At least our medic would make it away, even if we got our entire command staff killed. A sound idea, really.

“Eyes on the road,” Nate said, not quite barking, but with enough authority in his voice that my focus snapped right back to where it belonged. I had to let go of the wheel with my right hand to shift, then again when we reached the bottom of the slope.
 

Where nothing happened. Not completely nothing, but nothing noteworthy. A few zombies turned in our direction and one made a lame attempt to lunge at us, but didn’t even reach the bumper, let alone get on the hood. I angled the car to the left, starting a clockwise circuit. As soon as the car rolled past them, the shamblers turned back to pressing into those in front of them, trying to get closer to the barricades.

“That’s anticlimactic,” I noted, my voice pressed but not as high as I’d expected. “Something’s wrong.”

“Always with the complaining,” Nate grunted. “Speed up. Maybe we’re too slow.”

“We’re never too slow for them to come after us. They’ve often enough climbed the parked cars, too.” But I followed his order, getting the car up to thirty miles an hour, then forty. A few more heads turned, also ahead of us, yet by far not what I’d expected, let alone feared. I steered clear of them, true, but I was a loud, moving target.

“Zilinsky, you getting the same?” Nate asked Pia.

“They are never this sluggish,” she replied, agreeing with my observation. “I don’t like this.”

Burns, still up on the slope, offered a succinct, “You have to get their attention first. Do something funny. That usually works.”

All out of options that included fun, I let go of the wheel for a second to honk the horn. A few zombies whipped around, but only two came for us. The Rover kicked them right down into the ground on impact, the car barely rocking. From where he was still crowding my bumper, I figured that Andrej went right over them, as did the third car. A few seconds later Burns reported. “They’re eating, but not very enthusiastically. Keep looking toward the town. This shit’s screwed up.”

We were reaching the southernmost part of the basin around the settlement, and still had to hit a single zombie full-on.

I cleared my throat, fear from before gradually getting replaced by a different kind of unease. “Never thought I’d say that, but why aren’t they coming after us?” I chanced a glance at Nate. He was frowning.

“Jason, any input from you?” he asked, switching to the main com channel.

A frustrated grunt answered him. “We had trouble enough getting them off our tail a few times while we were observing them. But that was before they went off to go tear down the settlement walls.”

That sounded kind of hinky to me. “Do you think they can smell the people in there? Or their livestock or whatnot?”

“I doubt it,” Nate replied. “We still don’t know what they hunt by, but in this situation, they can’t, not in groups as large as this one. Besides, from what we’ve seen they’re visual predators.” He paused. “Who’s up with a sniper rifle back there?” Bailey gave an affirmative grunt. “If you look at the weak points in the barricades, do any of the fuckers look different to you? Like us different.”
 

That must have been the first time I’d heard him acknowledge things like this. Getting ostracized really had been a game changer.

“Gimme a minute,” Bailey said. Then, “Yup, at least two of them that I can tell. Could be wrong, of course, but they are still banging on the walls like mad while the rest are much less coordinated. Shot’s going to be a little tricky but want me to try and take out one of them?”

“See one close to where we are? Take it down.”

“Affirmative.”

I didn’t hear the shot—or shots, but I doubted that even at the distance Bailey would need more than two, he was that good—but just ahead of us and to the right, toward the barricades, a veritable surge went through the zombies. “Down,” Bailey reported. “Want me to go after another one?”

Nate never got to reply, because Burns cut in that very second.

“Negative, target not down! I repeat, not down! And he’s heading straight for you guys now.”

The ripple in the mass of zombies got stronger, and a second later they parted. I only saw a blur from the very right corner of my eye before something slammed into the car, right behind the front passenger side door. The impact was hard enough to wrench the back of the car to the side, making me curse as I brought it back to where it was supposed to go. That must have created at least a dent. I was going fast enough that the sheer combined force should have killed the super-charged zombie missile, but as soon as I was going straight again I looked back, seeing it slam right into the front bumper of the Jeep as it got back up.

As if the attack had been some kind of signal, the entire portion of zombies we were passing was turning toward us, starting to crowd in. I didn’t need Nate’s shout to veer further south, sending the Rover partly up the much softer slope on this side. I could already see the riverbed up ahead, and when I realized that more and more zombies turned away from the walls, I floored the gas pedal, sending the car flying toward the open flood plains.

While I was busy trying not to total the car, Nate was on the com again. “Bailey, take out as many of the fuckers as you can. Then everyone take the shortcut down the steeper side and head straight for the river. If you go around south you won’t make it.”

A few zombies staggered into my path, and this time there was no way to avoid them. “Brace!” I shouted as I plowed straight into them.

The impact jarred my entire body, making me glad about every bit of padding the seat had, and the jacked-up suspension of the car. The car kept on going, even though it did some swerving until I had the wheel firmly in my grasp again. There was a torn-off arm straight across the windshield and half a torso mashed into the front bumper, but nothing I could do about that. Leaning right, I tried to see around it. The Rover hit a few boulders, jarring us good, which at least took care of the loose appendage. I hit another shambler on the right front, sending it right back into the mass, but that one probably broke the fix job of the lights from before for good.

Something moved on my left side—where no zombies should be—and when I glanced over I saw that it was Andrej, drawing abreast with me. “Need to go faster,” I heard his voice in my ear a second later. “They’re closing in on us.” A quick look back proved that he was right, making me abandon all plans to stick to the agreed-upon speed from before. The Rover quickly accelerated, jumping ahead. And then we were free of the zombies, the mass closing in behind—and not falling back as much as they should have.

Something slammed into the back, making me swerve again. It hit the roof behind me, then right between Nate and me, scaring the shit out of me.
 

“What the—“ I started, the quick glance upward sending me straight through another bunch of zombies.

“Bailey, get that thing off our roof!” Nate barked.

The very idea of having a zombie—and likely not just any one of them, but one of the supercharged ones—above us on the roof made my blood run cold. Suddenly, the steel cage of the car around me seemed like flimsy tinfoil.

“Negative,” Bailey answered. “You’re out of reach, and we’re moving out. Good luck.”

I was just about to offer a less than gracious reply when the Jeep slammed into our left side, the entire car shuddering under the impact. I lost my footing on the pedals, making the car slow down immediately, but at least I didn’t step on the brake. Something flew off the roof to the right, and as soon as that registered, I floored it, sending the car forward as fast as it would go. Nate craned his neck, looking back over his shoulder.

“Getting up again and still coming after us,” he reported, cursing under his breath.
 

I was going thirty miles an hour, which, considering the uneven terrain of last year’s grass, trodden down by thousands of zombies that had churned the earth underneath to mud, was a miracle. We reached the edge of the destruction, and as soon as there was harder ground under my tires, I accelerated further. The other two cars sped up as well, staying a little behind me and to my left, farthest away from the settlement.

“All clear,” Taylor reported from the last car. “And they’re following us.”

“How’s the other group doing?” I asked Nate, keeping my eyes peeled on the ground before us, unable to search for them myself.

“Coming down the slope,” he reported. “They should make it down before the mass reaches them.” He looked back to what was in front of us. “There should be a road somewhere ahead. Slow down once you get there. Not enough for them to catch up to us, but enough to keep them interested.”

That was the last thing I wanted to do, but no one asked my opinion. My pulse was slowly coming down from near-lethal levels, leaving me jumpy as fuck but feeling very much alive.

“That shit was scary as hell,” I mumbled as I tried to find the road between the rubble, grass, and sand dunes that the spring floods had left here. It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks since there had been water everywhere, and now there wasn’t anything left of the stream. The terrain was worse here than before, forcing me to go slower.

“Word,” Nate agreed, then pointed at something slightly to the right of my chosen path. “Over there. That’s a road sign. Road should be left of that.”

I changed course but eyed my rearview mirror uneasily. The mass of zombies was still a good distance behind us, but a core group of front runners was emerging. I really didn’t like how fleshy and healthy they looked—as far as they could, being dead and all that shit. “They’re gaining on us.”

Nate looked back. “Keep that speed,” he told me. “Taylor, any chance you can switch places with Clark?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Taylor cursed right back. “Not if I don’t want to total the car.”

Nate considered for a moment. “Romanoff, take the lead. Taylor, you stay smack behind him.”

That didn’t sound like anything I would like. “Why do we fall back?” I asked.

“Because I’m going to try to shoot them off our tail,” Nate replied, already unbuckling himself.

“Are you crazy? How are you going to hit anything from a moving car going over a less than stellar road?”

“With luck,” he replied as he started squeezing himself between the seats and over the center gun rack to get into the back. My momentary distractedness made me hit the road at a bad angle, jarring the entire car. Nate bit off a curse, but even that didn’t deter him.

“You are aware that if for whatever reason I need to come to a full stop or something sends us rolling, you’ll break all the bones in your body?” I noted. “And then I have, what, thirty seconds to get out of my belt harness before you come chewing through the seat?”

“About,” he agreed as he wrenched open the hatch in the roof, sending a stream of cool air into the car. I was sweating enough that it was some form of relief; knowing that if anything jumped us now it could just reach into the car was not.

The flood had damaged the road severely, forcing me to concentrate on where I was going rather than continue to shout profanities at Nate. It was a little easier to find the best route watching the two cars ahead of me get jostled this way and that, but not much. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have gone more than about thirty miles an hour.

I heard the sniper rifle go off twice, but the group behind us remained intact. The horde that followed wasn’t falling behind much, all of them running full-out now. And damn, they were fast.

“Can you even out the car?” Nate shouted down. “I’m not hitting anything.”

“How is that my fault?” I grumbled, then said louder, “I’ll tell you when I hit a straight stretch.” Ahead, I saw three cars join the road we were speeding along—the first half of Jason’s guys. Looking around, I didn’t see the rest. “Burns, where are you suckers? It’s getting a little tight back here if you still want to join us.”
 

I so deserved the laugh I got in response. “Tight is how we like it,” Burns informed me. “We’ll join up farther ahead, about where the first bridge spans the river. You’re going too slow for us to squeeze in there. But you have a good thing going on. More than half of them are chasing you.”