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

Then we reached another intersection and Bucky directed his troops to turn left—toward the river, if I wasn’t completely turned around—yet stopped when Nate and his people didn’t follow along. Orders were given to halt, and Capt. Hamilton himself came swaggering back to our huddle, his soldiers gravitating to the sides to open a space around him. His eyes were fixed on Nate, who still looked deathly pale but had no problem oozing his own kind of self-assurance all over the place.

“What’s the holdup?” Bucky wanted to know.

“Where exactly are you leading your merry little group here?” Nate asked instead of answering.

Bucky hesitated for a moment, but it looked more like he considered whether he should reply at all—not what exactly to say.

“We have a camp south of town. Our orders are to fall back there now that our objective has been pulverized.”

Nate’s return grin held just a hint of mocking satisfaction, but it was enough to make Bucky gnash his teeth.

“Yeah, thought so,” Nate replied. “The hound heeling, as he’s supposed to.”

“Coming from a traitor, that’s not really much of an insult,” Bucky shot back.

Nate considered for a moment, then looked around as if he was actively surveilling the intersection.
 

“Yeah, I think I’ll not join you. I haven’t spent the last fifteen years busting my ass to end up as someone’s pet lab project.” I knew that there was a lot more to that statement than I understood right now, but the message was loud and clear, even for me.

At Nate’s exclamation, people tensed all around him—his people readying their weapons, while the soldiers seemed to back away and into a more defensive position. Suddenly, the before tense but mostly neutral air seemed to have turned hostile, making me want to run for cover. It didn’t escape my notice that Martinez had stepped closer to me, but he was eyeing the soldiers critically, not the former terrorists. Only Nate and Bucky remained relaxed, facing each other across the widening open space between the two groups.

“So what are you going to do?” Bucky asked, his words dripping with scorn. “Strike out on your own? You and what army?” He looked after two more people who were silently disappearing down the road we’d come.

“I don’t need an army, just competent people,” Nate replied, then looked around at the gathered soldiers. “And everyone’s free to join me.”

It wasn’t like a murmur ran through the soldiers, but I could see a few stealthily glancing at the people standing beside them.

“Join you?” Bucky jeered, doing a wide sweep with his arms. “Look around. The city is lost, and out there it’s a fucking battlefield. There’s strength in numbers, and guess who has them? The army. We already have a camp established that is right now starting a well-coordinated evacuation. Everyone’s best bets are with us.” He looked to the huddle of civilians with his soldiers, but they didn’t seem to need convincing in the first place, so it was no surprise that instead he focused on me. “You’re a scientist, right?” Defiance—born of what exactly I didn’t know—made me want to remain stoically unresponsive, but instead I gave a jerky nod. “You helped them?” He indicated Nate, but his eyes didn’t leave my face. Now I chose not to reply, which in itself was an answer. Yet Bucky didn’t wait much longer than a few seconds before he went on. “I don’t care, and neither do my superiors. That’s all water under the bridge. Right now it is important to secure as many important people as possible. You know shit? You’re important. Come with us, miss, and we’ll make sure that you get to safety unharmed. Our secondary objective is to bring everyone with scientific background to the camp, too. You will be most useful there.”

I didn’t need to glance at Nate to know what he thought of that, but the look on his face was closed off enough that it made me hesitate for a moment, doubt sweeping through my mind, the sour taste of betrayal riding shotgun. I was aware that he’d only ever chatted me up because he knew who I was, where I worked, and could potentially be useful to him, which should have nullified everything that had happened between us since. But at the same time I knew that what he’d said down in the hot lab—when he’d asked me to join him in continuing his crusade against the people who had led to his brother’s murder—was still true. I realized that he tried not to influence me now, but when I caught his gaze again, I could see that he was itching to open his mouth—likely to tell me not to be stupid and fall for Bucky’s bullshit.

“Same goes for everyone else,” Bucky went on meanwhile. “We’ll need everyone who knows how to handle a gun in the coming weeks. And you all know that there’s strength in numbers.”

I was surprised to see a few of Nate’s people hesitate before they crossed the intersection, while a couple did so with confidence, even. The Ice Queen made a face but remained mute; otherwise stoic at Nate’s side, it was obvious why she was his second in command.
 

By then Bucky must have realized that I wasn’t buying what he was selling, but he still tried again.

“No offense, but do you really want to stay with the people who gave you that nice temporary makeup?”

He was referring to the bruises on my face—and wouldn’t you know it, it just took that mention to make my cheekbone and nose twinge uncomfortably, but I did my best to ignore it. It was impossible not to single out Gabriel Greene in between the scientists, and I felt my face twist into a sneer.

“Thanks so much for your concern, but I think I’ll stay with the people who didn’t try to bash my head in,” I said, taking a step back which brought me right up to Andrej. Greene didn’t try to avoid my gaze although he did glare back, and the way his right hand twitched I wondered if he was itching to protect his junk from my knee. It was then that I realized that he still looked scared shitless, his previous sleazy demeanor crumbling under the emotional turmoil. But then, he must have known exactly that he’d been sitting on a ticking time bomb all along, and now that the shit had hit the fan, he likely had a much better grasp on what was going on than I could imagine. And I had a very vivid imagination.

Bucky seemed confused, but he took it in stride.

“You really sure that you want to hang with a bunch of second-rate criminals and army rejects? Because, let me assure you, they’ll sell you out as soon as they find something worth bartering for.”

“And you won’t?” I asked. “I mean, you’re working for the people who built this fucking plague. Why should I trust you?”

It was a wild guess at best, but the fact that all I got out of him was him gnashing his teeth was the kind of confirmation I really hadn’t needed. What was equally disturbing was that neither of the scientists spoke up, but then it made sense that—as group leaders—they’d been in the know of what their company had actually been working on. In fact, Greene was still eyeing the intersection as if he was thinking about bailing, too, but one look at Nate and he remained firmly rooted in his spot.

Maybe it had been that exclamation, or they had just been biding their time, but four of the soldiers joined us, pointedly not looking at their comrades. One of them, a six-foot-and-then-some bear of a man with skin so dark that even in the direct sunlight it looked black nodded at Nate and Pia, and received a similar nod back. Clearly, Martinez hadn’t been the only one who’d met Nate before. Another I recognized as one of the soldiers who had run into Nate and me when we’d hightailed it out of the hot lab, and he joined Martinez, the two of them briefly bumping fists. It looked like that was all, until another soldier joined those two, who I guessed was their commanding officer. He looked about as confused and frightened as I felt, and he kept eyeing Nate with a similar kind of distrust he reserved for the bodies lying dead on the sidewalk, but he had switched sides, and that counted for something.

Nate took a brief look over his assembled people before he turned to Bucky again.

“Looks like we’re done here.”

“You actually have a plan?” Bucky grunted, his tone derisive.
 

“I always have a plan,” Nate shot back. “And if Plan B goes up in flames, there’s still the entire rest of the alphabet.”

Bucky seemed to consider, but then simply turned around, facing his people. “Move out!” Clearly, we were dismissed.

Nate allowed himself the hint of a smile—or a wince that he only showed now that the other guy wasn’t looking at him anymore—but it froze when Dolores gave him an apologetic look and started walking toward the soldiers.

“You know that I can’t shoot for shit, and I’m not exactly the survivalist type,” she said, sounding like she knew how hollow that came out. I was sure that I would have gotten a glare for that, but Nate just seemed sad.

“If you say so.”

“If this really is the end of the world, I’m sure I’ll be much more useful with the guys who still have electricity, and likely a working internet connection,” she offered, but had to look away. “I’m sorry. I did what I could, right? I helped you avenge Raleigh.”

Nate just kept looking at her blankly now, but a muscle jumped in the Ice Queen’s cheek. Contrary to Nate, she looked the opposite of broken up with losing their tech wizard.

“You did,” Nate finally replied. “And I thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome. And good luck.”

Her goodbye sounded final, and once the mumbled words had left her lips, she quickly turned around and ran after the soldiers, joining the huddle of scientists in their midst. Nate looked after her for a moment longer before he tore his gaze away and addressed the group around him. Altogether, I counted nineteen heads now—a bare fraction of the people who had made it out of the collapsing building.

“I think on one thing I can agree with that asshole—let’s get out of here.”

He looked at Pia, who immediately started calling out names, the designated people swarming out to build a loose guard team around the core group of the rest of us. Andrej was busy typing away on his phone, but after a moment he put it away, cursing.

“Signal’s down. Paper maps it is from here on out.”

Nate acknowledged that with a quick nod.

“We need maps then. Provisions, and gear.” Looking around, he absentmindedly pressed the hand that wasn’t carrying the gun against the wound in his side. “But most of all, we need to get the hell out of here before things get worse.”

That this was even possible seemed like a stretch to me, but judging from the grim faces all around me I was still too optimistic, even with doom and gloom whipping each other into a panic attack at the back of my mind. Nate looked at Pia and Andrej, then to Martinez, but when he just got shrugs back, his eyes found me.
 

“Do you know where the next mall is? Sport or camping supplies stores is what we’re needing to hit first.”

I was surprised that he asked, but then it made sense. Just because I’d run into him in a park a few weeks ago didn’t mean that he or his people had been living in the city for long—or had time for shopping when they were busy infiltrating the corporation and plotting their mission. Not that my knowledge of this side of town was much better, but my addled brain finally came up with something.

“There’s a kind of mall by the interstate close to the edge of town,” I offered. “I think they have a sports supplies store there.” I certainly knew that they had no less than three coffee shops, one right next to the makeup store Sam always dragged me through—

And that was when my mind snagged on a detail that I had successfully ignored for the past estimated half hour, but now that I’d thought of it, there was nothing else that I could think about. Grief so visceral that it made my chest hurt gripped me, but I just couldn’t quench the small flicker of hope that came with it. Looking in the opposite direction from where the mall lay, I stared sightlessly back toward the city center, and the part of town around the university campus beyond it.

“Sam…”

I hadn’t realized that I’d fully turned around until Nate suddenly stepped into my field of vision, reaching up to grab my arms and still me, his gun now holstered. The look on his face was unreadable, but he didn’t put effort into chasing emotion out of his gaze, looking at me with understanding.

“Bree, listen to me,” he started, squeezing just a little harder until my eyes focused on his face rather than continue to stare off into nothing. “When was the last time you saw her?”

The girlfriend I hadn’t thought about for a second although the world seemed to be about to go down the drain? Sure, I had been running for my life, and then almost got buried underneath tons of concrete and steel, but shouldn’t any decent person have thought about what happened to their loved ones the moment they were in relative safety again? But I had the sinking feeling that therein lay the real issue.

“Bree, answer me,” Nate repeated. “When did you last see her?”

Swallowing thickly, I forced myself to reply to his question, my stomach sinking further.

“Thursday night, just before I went to bed. She fell asleep on the couch, watching TV. I didn’t even kiss her good night because I didn’t want to catch—“

A sob wrenched itself from deep inside my chest, and I quickly stifled it with my right hand, barely feeling my teeth as they sank into my knuckles. Knuckles of the hand that was barely scabbed over from the cuts that I’d sustained while I’d crawled through the destroyed bottles in the hot room where I’d been hiding; the hand that still had the angry red burn across the back of it from where the coffee had spilled when the first round of explosions had gone off that had turned a usual Friday afternoon into a nightmare that I would likely never forget—