Beyond Green Fields #2 - Regrets: A post-apocalyptic anthology Page 4
Bree’s state hasn’t changed much, but by now I see that as a positive. I wish they’d taken Martinez with them but there was no reason to risk exposure for him—and there still isn’t. Far as I know, she’s contagious as hell, and the only reason why none of us has caught anything from her is the serum. But there’s one last thing I may need their help with before I chase them away.
“Can you fetch the first-aid kit from the Jeep? I’m through most of the bandages from ours.”
What Romanoff ends up dumping on the bed is a medium-sized backpack but I only need the essentials—a scalpel, alcohol to sterilize it, iodine solution to ruin yet another set of sheets, and a pack of sutures that better still be clean. Considering what caused the wound on her thigh and the fact that she didn’t properly clean it before sealing it with the glue makes it a moot point, but it’s easier to obsess about details than consider what I need to do.
“Want me to do it?” Burns offers as I get ready to cut away the glue and all necrotic tissue I can get to.
I shake my head, again swallowing my scorn for a more meek reply. “If anyone is going to scar her for life, it’s me.”
She may be comatose and most of the nerves in her leg and hip are likely fried, but the longer I work, the deeper I cut, the more feedback I get, and I’m not even referring to the pus and blood that’s leaking—freely at times—from the wound that I have to cut open almost to the bone. I hate myself for every jerk and whimper I elicit. Romanoff gets her legs as he does his best to hand me what I need and wipe away the blood, while Burns pulls her upper body into a mix between an embrace and a choke-hold. I force myself to abandon all hesitation and work as quickly and precisely as possible. She never wakes up, but I know that her body will remember the pain I inflict on her, and that, too, kills me.
The result isn’t pretty but by then, I feel triumphant that there are no leaks, and the swelling seems to be going down already. There will be more later, and some bruising, from my work and I doubt that will be the end of it, but she’s still breathing, and that’s all I care about.
After making sure to get one more hot meal into me, Romanoff and Burns take off, and it’s just the two of us again. I do some pacing to keep my muscles from atrophying for good before I settle back into the chair next to the bed and rummage around in my pack until I find what I’ve been looking for.
“Kipling or Tennyson?” I ask, mulling over the options. Both paperbacks have seen better days but as long as they hold up—even in parts—I’m keeping them. I know it’s stupid, but we all have some trinkets and odds and ends that remind us of civilization with us. Just because morals have quickly eroded to pre-Stone-Age lows doesn’t mean we can’t pretend like there’s hope for a better tomorrow.
“I think you told me a story about some poser in college who got all manly man on you because of a Kipling book he read,” I muse as I watch her face, hoping for a twitch that might morph into a smirk. Nothing, but I’m not giving up hope yet. “But might have been Nietzsche instead. Fuck it, Tennyson it is. You’ll never let me read that to you if you’re conscious so might as well make the best of this unique chance, right?”
I leaf through the book until I find what I’ve been looking for, take a swig from a water bottle, and settle in to continue the longest vigil of my life.
Gone
Gone
Nate POV
“She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?!”
This can’t be happening.
My life has turned into my worst nightmare; why am I still surprised it can—and does—get worse? I’m tempted to ask Zilinsky to punch me in the face—maybe I am dreaming? More like a psychotic break. That’s what the panic rising inside of me feels like.
Zilinsky catches and holds my gaze, the same panic I feel reflected in her expression, but it smooths out after a few seconds as she turns to Taylor, who looks absolutely miserable at having had to deliver the message. “She can’t be gone. We’re in a settlement. People don’t simply disappear.”
Taylor shrugs, looking both guilty and frustrated. “Turns out, they do. I saw her enter that building, but when I checked a few minutes later, she wasn’t there anymore. Nobody saw her leave, and I haven’t been able to find her anywhere since.”
My mind jumps to the weirdest of conclusions. It’s not entirely unreasonable for Bree to go snooping on her own—and she has a history of using settlement visits to get some time on her own. But we’re not here for some R&R, and she knows that. She wouldn’t have traipsed off without telling either me or Zilinsky.
“When was that?” I bark, hard-pressed not to grab his shoulders and shake Taylor like a dog.
He looks even more uncomfortable as he wrings his hands. “Half an hour ago?”
“Half an—” I have to cut myself off there. Half the settlement probably heard me shout. Frustration—and fear that’s suddenly licking up my spine, whispering dark possibilities—makes it impossible for me to breathe for a few moments but I finally get a grip on myself. “Half an hour? And you only tell me that now?”
We’re standing in the middle of the town square, by the cars, a few yards away from the gates. People are watching us—most curious what the fuss is about, a few in expectation of violence—but I don’t give a shit.
Bree is gone.
Just—gone.
This can’t be happening.
“Show me that building,” I hiss, already striding in the direction I know she disappeared in. I saw her leave, chatting with townspeople. Goddammit! Why did I let her go on her own?
Because she’s a competent woman, I have to remind myself. Because she hates it when I practically sit on top of her like a mother hen. Because I’m not her favorite person in the world right now, and part of me has been hoping that if I just give her some space, she’ll bounce right back.
Taylor is quick to sprint ahead, weaving through small side streets between houses that are more hovels than proper buildings—a small shantytown that has sprung up around what used to be a mere cluster of buildings before people built a settlement here. It’s easy to get lost in this maze, and for a moment I entertain myself with the idea of Bree simply having gotten turned around. Any second now she will step out of a doorway, right in my path, annoyed that she couldn’t find her way back. But it’s not that many buildings, and there are plenty of people around who she could have asked for directions. Tayler comes to a halt beside what once might have been someone’s shed a long time ago, pulling what serves for a door aside so I can storm inside.
I know something is wrong as soon as I lock gazes with the woman—girl, really, because she can’t be much past twenty, if that—who huddles in the back of what little free space there is. Not just in contrast to the colorful fabrics all around, her face is white, her eyes swollen and red from crying.
“Please! You have to understand! I tried to warn her, I tried… but I couldn’t say more or they—”
Her stutter cuts off when my hand closes around her throat without my brain actively giving the order. She cuts off with a squeak as her back hits the rickety wall behind her, her eyes wide as she gasps for air.
Zilinsky is right there, her fingers strong on my wrist as she grabs it and forced me to either grapple with her, or let go. I let go, because I have no reason to go for the girl, except that she obviously knows what happened to my wife—and let it happen. My vision goes red with anger, and for a second I imagine smashing her face in, just to relieve some of the stress.
I get a grip on myself before that can happen. That’s not the man I am—and it wouldn’t help me find out what happened in the first place. I’m still warring with my self-restraint as I grind out a rough, “What the fuck happened to her?!”
The girl shrinks back further, the human equivalent of a frightened, cornered animal. Only now I notice Zilinsky’s arm across my chest, a bruise starting to bloom where she must have elbowed me. She shoots me a warning glare—back off!—and I force myself to phy
sically take a step back. The girl remains huddled in on herself, shaking, tears streaming down her face. I did this—and I don’t find it in myself to care. But I have to, or else I won’t get the information I need.
It’s mostly Zilinsky’s urging that gets the girl talking, not my glowering in the background. What she knows is not much—but I stop listening after I get what few snippets of information she can deliver: soldiers forced her to set traps for trader and scavenger women, or else they will take her little sister. They already have her mother and older sister, and it’s when I hear the sister’s name—Gussy—that the pieces fall into place.
I really don’t like the picture that’s developing in my mind. Not. One. Fucking. Bit.
We leave the girl behind, scared and sniffling, but she won’t accept Zilinsky’s offer to get her somewhere safe; I don’t bother telling her that she’s probably already the only surviving member of her family, since her baby sis is at a different settlement. I can tell from how the people are avoiding my gaze that a few of them know something, or know someone who does, but not enough to be worthwhile information. As soon as we’re back at the cars, I accost one of the guards at the gate, but what he has to say only makes things worse.
“Man, we have three gates. We’re one of the busiest settlements in the entire region! I don’t know the exact number but something between twenty and fifty vehicles left since you got here. It’s the busiest time of the day. All traders, like yourself. We’d pay special attention to anything else.”
I refrain from punching him in the face and instead storm back to the cars, while Zilinsky pulls the gate guard aside to make sure that the girl will leave on the trader caravan that’s heading for Dispatch in an hour, and for someone to get her little sister as well. He looks scared enough of her that I doubt the girl will even have a chance to pack her things before she gets bundled up and locked inside one of the caravan cars. There are plenty of other women with that caravan, so I hope to hell she’s safe with them. Not that I care much about anything other than Bree right now.
Martinez already told Romanoff and the others, so once we rendezvous with them, I get an update—that is just as useless as what I already know.
“We didn’t see any military vehicles come or go,” Romanoff reports, sounding apologetic and distressed. “Boss, you know that I would have called you—”
“Yes, I know,” I grind out, not interested in his response. And I do know; I know how hard almost losing her hit every single one of us, and all of them would have laid down their lives to preserve hers.
But she’s gone, and we have absolutely no clue where she is now.
We drive back the way we came, making sure to turn off all signals the cars could be sending still. Once Clark is sure that we’re outside of the range of anyone from the settlement—or close by—being able to spy on us, we stop, and I switch on the supposedly secure radio. As soon as I get someone from Dispatch on the line, I bark at them to fetch their goddamned chief of security—on a secure line.
Rita is already exasperated when she comes on. “Miller, what the fu—”
“Connel, I swear to God, if you give me your usual senseless drama, I will drive the fuck over to that shithole you built up and blast it into the Stone Age.” Maybe not the most diplomatic—and not a good approach to start any conversation, I have to admit—but it’s effective. Other women—including my wife—would have gotten in my face for that, but Rita is silent for several seconds straight as she considers.
“What happened? What’s your sit-rep?” Sure, her tone is cool but professional.
I consider for a second, but my diplomacy has gone out the window. “A bunch of assholes kidnapped my wife.” I give her the details of the Yuma settlement, including coordinates. I hear her murmur to someone, likely whoever is keeping an eye out on troop movements. I know that they are tracking whatever they can, but I have no clue how effective they are.
Not very, I figure, when she comes on the line once more. “We don’t have any presence reported in that area.”
“Bullshit.”
She doesn’t sigh dramatically, but her voice gets tight with vexation. “There is nobody operating in that area. We actually caught a report explicitly keeping personnel out of that quadrant of the state. Whoever grabbed your girl, they’re not the people you try so very hard to avoid.”
Now I know she’s lying, because there’s no way she can be sure about that.
“Any idea who else might be behind this?” I also mention what the girl told us about her mother and sister. “Her sister is the girl from the scavenger group that hit the factory with us,” I add, not sure if Rita has kept up with this. “Could be coincidence, but Hamilton didn’t want to let her go back then, either.” I don’t like what that implies at all, and not just for the most obvious reasons. It was easy to explain it away as a distraction for why they tried to grab Bree the first time—but what if it wasn’t?
Rita gives that some thought but sounds as dismissive as I’ve been in the past. “Doesn’t really sound like anything he’d get up to. You may not like hearing this, but it bears repeating: they have done a lot of good over the past months, too, in particular for the settlements.”
“I don’t give a shit about any of that.” Which isn’t quite true, but right now I don’t. “You have to know something. Rumors, gossip—I don’t care. Anything you have, any lead, I’m game.” I’m desperate, and I sound like it, which makes me hate the entire situation even more.
“There are always rumors spreading,” she explains, trying hard to rein in her temper. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
I’m about to end the connection but pause with my hand halfway to the radio. “Where are the closest bases operational in the area?”
This time, her pause is pregnant. I’m starting to believe that she won’t give me a response, but then she caves and prattles off the coordinates. There is nothing on the maps anywhere close to these places, which makes me guess they must be new, likely just checkpoints that are easily erected within a few hours of hard work. I thank her and almost add that I owe her one, but swallow the words before I can utter them. I owe her a lot more than this, and we both know it. Rita is one of the people who I’ll always owe something. I ruined her career—and as it was all she had at the time, very likely her entire life; there’s nothing I can do to compensate for that.
Zilinsky has been listening through all this from the passenger seat of the Rover, already marking up the maps with the information we received. There’s no question that with Bree gone, she’s riding shotgun. I’d let her drive but I’m afraid of what I will do if I don’t have the road to concentrate on.
“Where to first?” I ask, glancing at the maps in her lap.
“This one.” She points at the square to the south. “If we burn daylight, we can make it there late tomorrow evening.”
I feel like swearing up a storm. That’s thirty hours from now that Bree doesn’t have—and we have no idea if they went in that direction. But it is a direction we can head in, so I make sure I memorize the general route before I let the others know where we’re headed.
We’re a good ten miles into the wild when I step on the brakes hard, making Zilinsky curse as she slams into the belt harness. I ignore her as I make a grab for the radio, quickly jumping frequencies until I find the right one. “Silo actual, I need whoever is in control of your drones and monitoring on the line.”
While I wait, Zilinsky gets out and has Santos and Taylor do a quick perimeter sweep while the others take a break. It takes fucking forever until a squeaky-voiced tech gets back to me. “What do you need?”
I give him the coordinates of the damned settlement and the time between the time we got there and when they must have left. I also tell him to coordinate with Dispatch to identify known trader and scavenger caravans to rule out potential targets. He protests that they don’t have any surveillance data of anything outside their ten-mile perimeter, but it only takes two di
sparaging comments about the marine corps and one vexed response later to get confirmation. Of course they are keeping track of who is moving out there that isn’t a trader or scavenger—and a little more weaseling gets me a promise that he will check their logs. I tell him to hail me as soon as he has anything for me, or I will come to his damned rocket silo and burn it all to the ground as well. I think he believes me more than Rita did, promising to get right to it.
That leaves me with a difficult—no, impossible—decision to make: stay or go. I considered stopping for the day, although it is still light, to cut down on possible travel time tomorrow if I get intel that sends me in a different direction. Or, we can try to cross as many miles as possible now to be at our current destination sooner. Glancing at my watch, I curse.
Four hours. Four fucking hours since Bree has been gone. A lot can happen in four hours—a lot that I absolutely don’t want to think about.
I’m just about to ask Zilinsky when she offers up her opinion, knowing my thought patterns well enough to guess what my dilemma is. “You heard what Romanoff said, and the guard at the gate—nobody saw anything or anyone suspicious leave. You know that the chance is very slim that the Silo will find out differently.” She pauses, giving me a chance to weigh in. I don’t since I fully agree with her, even though I don’t like it one bit. “The base is something that actually exists. There will be people there who we can talk to; people who might know more than Dispatch or the Silo combined. You know how it goes—even if they aren’t involved directly, they likely know what’s going on in their backyard. It’s the best lead we have. And should I be wrong and the Silo tech does find you a new target, we can always turn around. She’s strong; she got through being bitten and infected.” She gives a brief laugh. “She married you—that’s the biggest dare there is in the world. She will hold out, whatever happens in the meantime. Just as you know that you won’t rest until she’s safe, the same goes for her. But not doing anything now guarantees that you won’t be anywhere in time to get her out.”