Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 Read online

  Nate nodded, again not seeming surprised in the least. “It’s always hard to get used to the silence after spending months living practically on top of each other.” When he saw me frown, he laughed. “Welcome to experiencing what every soldier goes through sooner or later after his deployment ends. For months you can’t wait to finally be on your own again, and the day you get your wish is the day you realize that silence easily becomes your own worst enemy. That, and stupidity. I think I’ll take the silence any day.”

  “Because you have me for the stupid?” I suggested.

  Chuckling, he came to his feet. “Your words, not mine. What about breakfast? Shouldn’t you cook for us, wife?”

  I wasn’t sure if I should have been annoyed or amused by that suggestion. “You really want to leave cooking to the one who has no sense of taste left and has to be reminded to eat so she doesn’t starve? I rescind my previous comment. You have the stupid part covered all right.” He held out his hand to me and I let him pull me to my feet. “Why don’t you provide for us, husband? Isn’t that hunting and gathering your chore? If we ever settle down somewhere, I promise I’ll keep a vegetable patch as a stand-in for tending the fields.”

  Nate gave a theatrical sigh, but rather than grab the fish, he wrapped his hands around my hips, pulling me closer. “Wanna know something really weird? The part about you losing the baby that I regret the most is that I’ll never see you sitting on a porch, huge with swollen, bare feet, yelling at me because you’re annoyed with how I do everything wrong that you believe you could do better, while we both know it isn’t so. I swear, I don’t have a domestic bone inside of me, but somehow that mental image got stuck in my head.”

  My heart skipped a beat as the sudden pain ebbed away once more, but I managed a smile, if a sad one.

  “We could get a dog, if you really want to do that family extension thing. The way the car reeks on a good day, wet dog smell won’t make it worse. And you know that I’ll always be happy to yell at you, for whatever reason. Not that you don’t give me cause aplenty, because you do.”

  He answered with a smile of his own. “And that’s why you love me.”

  I was just about to melt—just a tiny, little bit—when I realized what he was doing. “I’m not cleaning that fish,” I protested. “I may eat it later, but you do the disgusting work. You can cut the crap, mister. I’ve seen right through you.”

  Of course he had to make it all worse by throwing his head back, laughing, but that did wonders to brush away the last tendrils of lingering pain in my chest.

  “It was worth a try,” he protested. “Don’t make such a face. If I’m not getting laid, I might still hope for you to show some kind of affection for me.”

  “I didn’t kill you in your sleep. That has to suffice.”

  Nate made a considering face, then shrugged. “Guess you’re right.”

  “Why do you need to guess? I’m always right. That was in the fine print when you asked me to marry you. Wife equals always right. That’s one of the fundamental laws of nature.” He heaved a long-suffering sigh at my jeering. I figured I should give him something to lessen the sting, so I placed a soft kiss onto his chin. “Next time we get anywhere close to soap and a mirror, get rid of this awful mat of hair. Makes you look old, and I’m not the kind of girl that fucks old geezers. Might increase your chances exponentially, just saying.”

  I loved the devious grin that stole onto his features. “I can do that right now. I mean, you’re not getting hungry and I can prioritize my needs if I have to.”

  Chuckling, I thumped his shoulder hard. “Go clean that fucking fish!”

  He finally let go of me to—surprise!—for once do what I told him to. We continued to banter all through prepping breakfast, with me heating water for tea and him taking care of the solid parts. Half an hour later we were back on the road, heading west—and it was a good hour after that when I realized that I was still smiling, the morose mood from early morning completely forgotten.

  Chapter 9

  We ended up deciding that getting to the Silo as quickly as possible was the way to go. That still included a lot of detours and taking routes that left us the least exposed, but that was a necessity after the stunt with the soldiers and traders. What wasn’t quite that necessary was to stop for food, now that we had a small stock of provisions again. Nate’s estimate was that the last leg of our journey would take us three days, and we could make the food last that long, if we had to. I didn’t object. The sooner it wasn’t just the both of us, the better. He might have done a good job cheering me up that morning at the lake, but my mood remained rather dark as we kept finding our way through the North Dakota wilderness. The heat became more unbearable from day to day, forcing us to add extensive downtimes over noon to keep the car from overheating, and me from going completely blind. Trying to get some rest during those stops was all but impossible, but we still tried to make up for them whenever we could, often driving deep into the night and breaking camp long before morning had dawned. Nate was doing most of the driving while the sun was glaring down on us while I took the night time shifts. Even with that lending both of us some extra downtime, I still felt like I was dipping into my last energy reserves by the time we made it into the western part of Montana. We ended up driving through the last night because I simply didn’t want to spend another day out there if I didn’t have to. It was only when I narrowly avoided falling out of the car when I had to stop for a toilet break that Nate stepped in and enforced a mandatory three-hour stop.

  There was no telling what exactly would be waiting for us once we reached the Silo, and it was not just stupid, but plain fucking idiotic to do it completely exhausted.

  I would have probably slept through half of the day if Nate hadn’t shaken me awake at eight in the morning, where I half sat, half lay in my seat behind the wheel. We were back on the road five minutes later. With the last of our food eaten last night, there was no sense in postponing anything.

  It was only ten minutes later that I stepped on the brakes and brought the Rover to a halt at the side of the road. Nate looked around, alarmed, but relaxed when I shook my head.

  “Something just occurred to me,” I said. “How do we know that the Silo is safe?” I had no clue why it had taken me until now to listen to the nagging voice at the back of my head, but suddenly, I couldn’t ignore it any longer. “We have no clue what is waiting for us there. We don’t know if someone there ratted us out. We don’t know if they are actually a safe haven, or just pretend to be. Or if that also extends to us. To me. We could be walking right into the wide-open jaws of a trap.”

  Nate looked at me with more calm than I could have mustered. Finally, he shrugged.

  “Who else should we trust? Dispatch is a teeming, hot mess. I know you liked it there but for me, it was a nightmare. It’s even more so now with them likely bursting at the seams with people. I guarantee you, whoever is behind the hit on us at that facility will have spies embedded there. Maybe the Silo, too, but you saw what a tight ship Wilkes is running. Yes, someone might have ratted us out, and they will likely do so again the moment we step through their blast doors, but as long as they aren’t turning against us collectively, we will be safe. Or as safe as we need to be.” He paused, and a small smile stole onto his face. “One huge advantage you getting infected has. Once you’re completely back on your feet, you will be about as strong and impervious to shit as I am. I never said this because I didn’t want to make you feel like crap, but I’ve always been scared to lose you because you were the softer target of the two of us. Now? I’m still scared of a lot of things, but that’s no longer one of them.”

  That admission weirded me out, as most of the things did pertaining to the recent events, but his vote of confidence did a thing or two to make me relax.

  “Still. You are counting on them not just locking us—or at least me—away the moment we get there,” I noted.

  He mulled that over for a second, then gave a curt n
od. “I am. Maybe that’s stupid, but I am. Feel free to bitch me out later if I’m wrong.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” Here’s to hoping that I wouldn’t get that chance. But it wasn’t even that aspect that made me hesitate. Nate was still watching me, calm, waiting for me to finally cough up whatever was bothering me. “You know that there’s a good chance that I am still infected?” I pointed out. “The virus… serum… whatever you were inoculated with never left your body. It integrated into your DNA. We know that, otherwise it wouldn’t have been in your sperm. Same is probably true for what almost killed me. Only that what I’m carrying isn’t the dormant, inert form.”

  “And your point is?” he asked, frowning.

  There was no beating around the bush this time. “I’m probably closer to a zombie than a human, if you look at my immunological status.”

  His frown deepened, until something must have occurred to him. “Wait. Is this your circumspect way of saying that you’re still afraid you could infect me? Because I don’t fucking care. It’s bullshit. Days have passed since we’ve shared saliva, and I hate to break this to you, but I don’t even feel a scratch in my throat. You couldn’t catch anything from me before, and the very same is true for me now. Except the obvious, but—“

  “Shut up,” I advised as I snapped open the buckle of the belt harness, and with a push heaved myself onto his lap, straddling him.

  Nate grinned up at me, his hands settling on my ass to pull me against him. “What, that’s all it takes to get you going nowadays? A blind vote of faith?”

  Snorting, I shook my head as I pulled off my shirt, then started getting my pants off. That would have been so much easier if I’d done that before moving over, but who cared?

  “Nate, there’s a good chance that they’ll shoot me either on sight or once they get the blood test results back because they can’t risk me turning into a post-apocalyptic Typhoid Mary. If that happens, I want to say that at the very least I got to have sex one last time before that.”

  “Shit, you know exactly what to say to make a guy feel appreciated,” he jeered, momentarily disrupting my undressing disaster by grabbing my sports bra and pulling it over my head.

  “What, just because we’re married now you think you can get out of this? I’m filing for divorce if that’s the case.”

  “More like annulment,” he interjected, keeping me from replying by shoving his tongue down my throat. His arms came around me, his hands busy getting me out of my pants now. “I should have pushed for a prenup, including a detailed list of mandatory spousal obligations.”

  “Yeah, because that’s always been such a problem with us,” I harped, wrenching his shirt off in turn, but then halted. “I’m not scraping zombie goo off the car only because now there’s a good chance I’m as immune to it as you are. Equality is one thing, but I’m drawing the line at that.”

  He paused and pulled back, giving me a downright hostile stare. “Are you trying to get me to lose my boner, or what? How do you even think of shit like that when we’re about to get it on?”

  “Multitasking,” I offered, unable to hold back a laugh. “You’re probably not doing a good enough job distracting me. Besides, you know that I’m weird. Infected or not doesn’t change anything about that.”

  Nate snorted before he pulled me toward him again, his hands holding the sides of my face. “Trust me, I’m well aware of that. My life would be so incredibly dull without all your idiosyncrasies. What is it they say? Once you go half-zombie, you never go back?”

  His laughter drowned out my grumbled expletives, but thankfully, I knew a way or two to shut him up—and that’s exactly what I did. And wouldn’t you know it—whatever else had changed between us, the important things remained the same.

  It was noon when it became obvious that we were getting close to our destination. Strictly speaking it was too bright out there for me to still be driving, but for today we figured that, should we have to make a quick getaway, Nate was more use shooting than driving. Even squinting perpetually, it was impossible not to see the two separate plumes of dust that rose behind the small rise we were currently navigating. My first reaction was to turn around and find another way—we’d seen several dust clouds in the past days that had all turned out to be convoys that we’d decided were likely hostiles rather than friendlies—but Nate told me to go on. I still left the road and brought the Rover to a halt behind a few trees at the very top of the rise, partly obscuring us from view. In the plains beyond it was easy to make out the closer group of vehicles, and it only took Nate a moment’s glance to check up on them before he relaxed. “Looks promising,” he said as he handed me the binoculars.

  The lead vehicles, the same as the two bringing up the rear, were heavily fortified—and modified—SUVs, some painted black, the others in dull camouflage patterns. The cars wedged between them were smaller, barely fit for off-road duty. They were going at a sedate pace, giving them enough time to react to the obstacles ahead, not unlike the way we, as a group, usually drove. That the heavier vehicles were guarding the smaller was obvious. My guess was that they were a band of scavengers who were helping some traders get where they needed to go. And if they were out and about in this heat, they must have known that they would soon be out of it.

  In the distance, barely visible even with the binoculars, a heavily armed train of cars was going south, away from wherever the others were headed. And as I kept scanning the area in between, I noticed that there were a few more cars scattered all around natural covers like stands of trees or the odd hollow at the foot of a hill. Last time we’d come through here the entire stretch of land up to the tarmac patch right atop the Silo had looked completely uninhabited.

  “What do we do now?” I asked, handing the binoculars back to Nate.

  “Unless you feel like more life-affirming human interaction...” he asked suggestively, making me scoff. Looking back out onto the plains, he shrugged. “Forward.”

  We could have continued our duck-and-run routine of the past days, but I didn’t really see the sense in it any longer. Just how useless it would have been became obvious as soon as we were about a mile away from the trees, when I realized what the weird specs in the air above us were. “Are those drones?”

  Nate, craning his neck, tried to get a better look. “Yes. And I think I just saw a gyrocopter take off from over there, to our ten.”

  My eyes likely looked ready to pop out of my head as I watched the little vehicle circle above where I guessed the main part of the rocket silo compound lay hidden. “You got to be shitting me.”

  “Looks like we got air surveillance back,” Nate offered. “Just keep on driving. I’m sure they’ve seen us by now.”

  Seen us, maybe, but there was a good chance that they hadn’t identified us yet. My side of the Rover especially was so riddled with bullet holes that there was a constant stream of air coming in somewhere, and the door decal was completely destroyed. The one on Nate’s side was mostly obscured by mud and bits of grass, and the splashes of remaining red on the hood could have been anything. Add to that the finger-thick layer of dust, and I wasn’t sure if the car could even be described as “dark” anymore.

  Shifting into a higher gear, I let the Rover pick up speed, soon drawing parallel with the convoy, with about half a mile of distance between us. I was sure that they were eyeing us as critically as we were them, but they seemed to come to a similar conclusion as we had—we were on the same side. Someone from the back row of the lead vehicle waved at us, and a few moments later the driver honked the horn, the sound carrying over well. I was still debating whether I should honk back when Nate slammed his hand on the button in the center console, making me jump just a little. So much for keeping a low profile. Not that we’d intended to.

  Without a convoy slowing us down, we soon drew ahead. The road led by one of the cars parked by some trees, the lookout reporting something into his walkie-talkie as we passed. A few hundred yards down the road, one of the l
arger drones dropped out of the sky until it hovered smack in the middle of the road, low enough that I would have careened right into it if I hadn’t slowed down. There was a cardboard sign hanging from it, spelling in bright red letters, “Turn your radio and transponder on.” It bobbed up and down a few times, then took off again, zooming toward the convoy. I gave Nate a look but he made no move to reach for our radio. They’d seen us—that had to suffice.

  Or not, I realized, when about a mile later the radio suddenly lit up, remotely activated through the emergency bulletin alarm. Nate had reconnected it this morning but made sure that it was off. He gave another shrug but didn’t turn it on. Thirty seconds later, the radio gave a static squawk as it activated itself—so much for us being in control—and a slightly harassed-sounding male voice came blaring out of the speakers.

  “Unidentified vehicle approaching from the northeast, please identify yourself. You’re about to breach our five-mile perimeter. If we haven’t heard from you yet at two miles, we will assume that you’re hostiles and we will take you down. If you need technical assistance, please halt the car now and wait until we can send a drone with a walkie-talkie over to you. Silo actual, out.”

  Clearing my throat, I chuckled. “Gee, someone’s gotten paranoid.”

  “Not necessarily a bad thing,” Nate noted—and made no move to grab the mic.

  “Shouldn’t we call in?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Keep on driving.”

  I did, although I tried to pay better attention to my surroundings. Oh, they were definitely watching us, I was sure, but I could only make out two more lookouts in a tree and up on a larger boulder. Two drones came zooming our way and kept hovering above us, making me just a little uneasy. About ten minutes later, next to a yellow wheat field, the radio came on again.

  “Unidentified vehicle, you are about to breach our two-mile perimeter. Identify yourself stat, or we will take you down.”