Beyond Green Fields #5 - Survive: A post-apocalyptic anthology Read online

  “That you will,” I assure her—in more ways than she knows right now, but that’s okay. I will fill her in later.

  I finally get my much-needed status report from Zilinsky. When she tells me that three of our hostages have started coughing blood, I know that we are in deep shit. I can tell that she’s just speculating, but we both know this is not just a fluke.

  But first, we need to get the fuck out of here, and that’s exactly what we are doing.

  The first explosion, underground and far away from our position, is the best signal I could have given to my people, the words I bellow virtually unnecessary. Hamilton’s troops come in handy since them running out as well more than doubles the possible number of targets for whatever is lurking out there. I haven’t forgotten about the mines we’ve carefully placed outside, some of them likely responsible for the damage done to the building during the breach. I ignore the nagging sense of guilt about how many good men and women might have died because of my precaution, and instead focus on getting Bree to safety.

  For a few moments, I think we can make it.

  When it becomes clear that we won’t, I do what I can, which is to push Bree into the crater one of the detonating mines has created—including scientist shrapnel—and cover her body with mine, doing my very best to shield her.

  Something sharp and unyielding hits me, propelled by the shockwave rolling over us. Pain explodes throughout my body, and immediately, I have to fight to retain consciousness. This is bad, I realize—

  And then a second series of explosions makes the ground underneath us heave, and the following shockwave blasts me right off Bree’s hopefully uninjured body. Vertigo, and then the weight of a million tons of cement comes crushing down on my chest. I have to fight hard to keep breathing, my vision going out a few times. I feel a thread of satisfaction when I realize that I’m dying—at least Hamilton wasn’t the one responsible for it. I know it’s petty, but that’s the last straw my mind is able to grasp. I try to push against whatever I’m wedged under, but the concrete doesn’t budge. The pain coming from my side explodes, but that makes it easier to locate. My hand on that side doesn’t work so well anymore, but with the other I’m able to probe and prod for what has impaled me. A rebar, it feels like. I try my luck with the concrete slab again, and while I don’t think it has crushed any parts of me, it’s pinning me to the ground.

  At least I won’t be able to tear myself free when I reanimate, I tell myself. The laugh that makes it over my lips is more of a bloody hack. It’s all I have left in me, so it will have to do. If this is how I die, so be it.

  I allow myself to relax, waiting for the pain to overwhelm me. Any minute now…

  But then I hear a cough coming from close to me, and I snap back into full awareness. Bree—she’s still alive, and from the scrambling sounds that follow, she’s not pinned down like me.

  “Hey,” I call out to her when my eyes find her in the semi darkness. The dust from the explosions still hasn’t settled, obscuring the sun, as is at least one layer of destroyed concrete that we are buried under.

  “Hey,” comes her scratchy but strong response. As she stretches to reach my useless hand, I realize that one of her legs is lodged somewhere, but I’m sure she’ll get free sooner or later.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, hating how weak my voice is. Weak, and wet—perforated lung, sounds like.

  “My leg is trapped, but I think I'm mostly unharmed,” she reports in.

  “Told you I'd get you out of there,” I reply. Before I can say more, I feel my body seize up, blood coming over my lips in a hard cough that I feel down to my toes. At least I think I can still feel my toes.

  “You?” Bree wants to know, her tone full of trepidation. Yeah, I’m fooling no one.

  “Me? Not so much.”

  She stretches, trying to get as close to me as her trapped leg will let her. I can’t really get a good look at myself, the way I’m twisted, but I see the horror on her face when she realizes that I’m not exaggerating. She just stares at me, at a loss for words. Guess that’s my last true accomplishment in this world.

  “It's okay,” I assure her. What else can I do? “I’ve always known I'd die somewhere in horrible pain, alone.” I get rewarded with more blood coming out of my lungs when I try to laugh.

  Bree, horrified, grates out, “You're not alone!” as she grabs my hand harder.

  “No, I’m not,” I reply—and it’s easy to do it with a smile. Fuck, but what I really regret is forcing her to see this. That, and the world of now lost opportunities together we will never get to explore. I try to hold on—the pleading look in her eyes as much an anchor as her hand around mine—but I feel myself losing consciousness again. I try to fight it, but the pull is too strong…

  And yet, death remains a distant threat, I realize, when everything goes white, sunlight blinding me. I hear familiar voices, close, then farther away, and close again. Pain blazes through my body when a hand—gentle but insistingly—probes the area around the rebar still embedded inside of me. My eyes fly open, and I stare right into Martinez’s face. He rears back immediately, checking my face to gauge what kind of reception he’ll get.

  “Still in here,” I croak. Fuck, but inhaling is painful enough to almost make me black out again.

  Martinez gives a tight nod. “Hang in there,” he tells me as he pulls away, presumably to get help. He returns with Bates, the asshole in good spirits, of course, because he’s not the one on death’s doorstep right now. “Shit, that looks painful,” Bates needlessly observes.

  Martinez shoots him a look of disgust. Bates laughs, but dutifully starts pushing his shoulder, then back underneath the concrete slab I’m buried under, until enough weight is off so Martinez can drag me out from there. Inevitably, the end of the rebar beneath me snags on something, increasing the pain a thousand fold—

  Enough so that it drowns out the injection Martinez gives me, straight into my carotid. But only for a second, because then that shit slams into me like a freight train. I’ve never gone into cardiac arrest, but this feels exactly like I’ve always pictured getting resuscitated with paddles must feel. Martinez is quick to push me back down when I try to rear up, readying a second syringe when my body finally stops shaking. That one burns like a motherfucker, making me grit my teeth. “Do I even want to know what’s in this shit?” I croak.

  “Probably not,” he admits. “Listen carefully. One’s an upper, not unlike the boosters they sometimes give you, but more on the metabolic level.” So he does know what I’ve gotten up to since our paths split; he just didn’t know about the promotion. The very fact that I’m still alive and breathing with a fucking iron bar rammed through my body is probably a dead giveaway for that, too.

  “And the other?” I don’t exactly feel it spread through my veins, but it’s easy to imagine. It’s definitely doing something since my heart isn’t trying to come out of my chest anymore.

  “Something that will keep you going—right until it doesn’t anymore.” Martinez makes a face as he explains, making me guess he never wanted to inject anyone with that shit that he even passingly cared for. “You need to be fucking careful,” he stresses. “But trust me when I say, you’ll need it to make it through the next hours out there.”

  At first, I think he’s just being cryptic, but then I recognize that weary look of his for what it is—exhaustion, not just stemming from pushing himself too hard for too long, but from the knowledge that the worst is yet to come.

  What the ever-loving fuck is going on out there?

  “Get that fucking thing out of me,” I grunt as I try to push myself up on my own. Bates is quick to lend a hand, and with Zilinsky’s help, he pulls me out from between the concrete blocks and onto what’s left of the road that once ran alongside the building that came down on us. Huh. I vaguely remember that Bree and I were a good distance away when I threw her to the ground to weather out the first shockwave. I also don’t question how Zilinsky has managed to materialize from out of nowhere. Like all of us, she looks a little banged up, but I’ve by far borne the brunt of it.

  I take a look around as I stagger to an unstable halt, hating how weak I am. Something big is definitely going on—and I should have seen it hours ago, when not a single concerned citizen or first responder showed up as we let the scientists and staff we didn’t need go. I dismissed it because it was easy to do some chest pounding and believe that was due to us setting up our systems well. Now I realize that’s all a lot of bullshit.

  I let Martinez push me down on a boulder so he can rid me of the fucking rebar. “Just pull it out and glue me up,” I tell him. Whatever is in that chemical cocktail he shot me up with is not helping with my usual lack of patience.

  “The wound will get infected,” Martinez offers as a token objection, but he’s already looking for whatever he needs. The thing feels like it has the diameter of a sewage drain. This won’t be pretty.

  “I’ll have to live another day or two to even get an infection, and that won’t happen if I have a fucking iron bar driven right through my abdomen,” I say, more to try to keep myself busy.

  “True. Then let’s hope that no major organs are ruptured, right?” our medic wisecracks—and his hands clamp down on my shoulders. I have only a moment to tense, then Zilinsky grabs the rebar and pulls it out.

  My world disappears in white-hot agony, but whatever was in that shot keeps me wide awake and conscious. I try hard not to scream until my lungs burst. Martinez is ready with the glue, squirting an unholy amount of that shit into me. I know that quantity is meant to put several people back together, not just one miserable asshole. For a second, I amuse myself with the knowledge that he just wasted highly experimental medicine that’s likely worth the economic power of a small third-world country. Then again, judging from the destruction I see all around us that has nothing whatsoever to do with my own deeds, I’m not sure we’re far away from those standards.

  Martinez finishes bandaging me, and after a last warning look steps away, giving me the go-ahead to move once more. My entire torso feels like one exposed, open wound that someone is currently going to town on with steel wool and a sand blaster, but unlike a few minutes ago, my muscles comply, letting me move, the typical restraints in the brain caused by pain completely gone. Shit, but that shot is powerful. I’d have needed something like it a time or ten back in the day…

  But none of that matters now, I realize, when Bree isn’t done being stupid.

  I have no fucking clue where the girl came from that she is talking to, but one look at those dead eyes and the way she moves, it’s obvious that nobody’s home in there anymore. There are plenty of people with guns around, but what does she do? Not only does she keep drawing attention to herself, no—she keeps urging the thing on to come for her. I call out her name, hoping that will tear her out of whatever stupor she has fallen into. The thing stumbles away from the rubble and out into the sunlight, disoriented for a moment—and then hones in on the easiest target it can find.

  “Bree! Get down!” I shout. Zilinsky and Romanoff fell the thing, but just because its legs are out of order doesn’t mean it stops coming for Bree, who’s now scrambling away backward as fast as she can. Martinez joins in, drawing his pistol, but I’m too strung up all of a sudden to wait. My torso lights up with pain as I snatch up a shotgun someone left next to me and down that fucking thing with a slug in the head. My chest is heaving from the exertion—little as it was—and it takes a few seconds for my vision to go from three mirror images to clear sight once more.

  By then, Hamilton has waltzed over, studying the thing on the ground before turning to us. “Everything in the green over here?” I can’t help but feel like he’s smirking at me although his expression is showing none of it. I don’t miss how his scrutiny of my obvious wounds ends with him completely disregarding me. Yeah, I’m dead to him, in more ways than one.

  “A-okay,” I tell him, because things couldn’t be better.

  He briefly glances my way but his attention barely halts there, quickly skipping on. Oh, he’s tense, I can tell—and I doubt I have anything to do with that. “Get ready. We’re moving out in five,” he orders, expecting to be obeyed.

  Bree is having none of that, and doesn’t even realize that she could earn herself a bullet to the face for her behavior. “Care to tell us what the fuck is going on?” Hamilton looks from her to me as if to say, “Really, you had to hit that?” but Bree is thankfully oblivious to our silent exchange. “Don’t bother with any bullshit! Where are the first responders? Why aren’t there even any people? And what the fuck is going on with these maniacs?”

  I’m a little disappointed with her lack of intelligence. Hamilton smirks at her. “Just how long have you been holed up inside that lab?”

  She shrugs, uneasy and I realize—it’s not that she doesn’t realize what is going on. She’s just very slow and reluctant to do away with her ingrained denial. “Since yesterday morning when I went to work. Why?”

  Hamilton snorts. “So you missed the whole fun of when the shit hit the fan?” Obviously. When she doesn’t respond, he asks, “You’re a smarty-pants scientist, right? Just what does this look like to you?” He then goes to pick up the corpse, thrusting it in Bree’s face. “Exactly what does this look like to you?” he repeats, grinning like a maniac. “Like a fucking zombie.” When Bree’s still not done staring at him, eyes wide with fear, he drops the ghastly thing at her feet and spreads his arms, like a circus director at the beginning of a show. “Welcome to the fucking zombie apocalypse!”

  Done, Hamilton walks away. As soon as his focus is on something else, I hunch over in agony, gasping for breath. Fuck, that hurts! I’m not sure I need to be very concerned about infections, considering I can barely stand upright as it is. While I’m trying to get a grip on myself, Zilinsky grabs my shotgun and reloads it, then pulls Bree to her feet. Bree still looks like she’s just seen a ghost—wrong critter, I want to jeer in her face—but she’s fine. Martinez reprimands me for already going about sabotaging his work, but at least his ribbing distracts me enough to finally straighten. I get a T-shirt from someone and check on my Glock, figuring that I can’t shoot for shit with anything larger but I’m not going out there unarmed.

  The first few steps I take make me want to die, but I soon realize that my body is functioning well enough—it’s only my mind that’s protesting. I just need to push through the agony and I will be fine. Much easier said than done, but with no other option, I vow to myself that I will hold on. It doesn’t exactly get easier as our group slowly makes it down the blocked, deserted street, but I can feel the shots continuing to do their thing. Two blocks down the road, and I feel like I’m walking normally. I know I’m not because it’s hard to concentrate on anything except to keep walking, but Zilinsky has already sent out a recon team, so all I need to do is to take care of myself. Martinez is getting chatty with Bree, which is a good thing because she looks absolutely ready to bolt.

  I can’t really fault her for that. Right now, it’s quiet, but even she must realize that this is the calm before the storm. Her intellect may be telling her one thing, but I notice how she jerks and tenses whenever something moves inside one of the houses we pass. She just needs to learn to listen to them, but her instincts are there, working just fine.

  I feel my mind coming out of its stupor as we approach another intersection—and when I see Hamilton directing his scouts to turn east, I know it’s time to split. I can’t say why we’ve been following like lemmings. It’s about time this stops. Zilinsky gives me a nod when I jerk my chin toward the west. I don’t have the mental capacity left to know whether this is a good plan, but if she says west is okay, west we will go.

  Hamilton doesn’t look pleased when he realizes that we’ve stopped. I’m surprised when he mentions an established camp where they are headed, but shouldn’t be. They must have set out from somewhere, cobbled together as they are. I have zero intentions of showing my mug around there. It makes a lot of sense for them to return, seeing as their transportation is likely waiting for them. I don’t need to look at the city around us to know that it’s about time that we leave it.

  I know I should keep my trap shut, but can’t. I don’t know what it is—simple elation to still be alive; resentment that he now had the job that is rightfully mine but I gave up—but if this is goodbye, I can’t just slink off into oblivion like this. “Yeah, thought so. The hound heeling, as he’s supposed to,” I jeer at him.

  Hamilton’s eyes narrow, hatred that I understand and disgust that I don’t heavy in his gaze. “Coming from a traitor, that’s not really much of an insult.” Oh, but it is, and we both know it.

  “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.” Hamilton’s smirk lets me know that my suspicion where I will end up isn’t far from the truth. I’m surprised he doesn’t draw his gun and shoot me right there, with a snide comment about that being the only alternative. Then again, I’m wounded, and very few of my people are left. I know I have more of them lurking in the houses around us, but some of them might already be setting out on their own, figuring that it’s not worth it to them to see how this plays out. Loyalty is a fickle concept when you realize that the world is about to go to hell.

  The soldiers pick up the rising tension, looking at each other with unease. People are starting to pick sides—and I don’t miss a few more that were formerly mine slinking across the intersection to join who used to be their comrades in the first place. Hamilton looks mighty self-important as he notices their change of heart. “So what are you going to do?” he asks. “Strike out on your own? You and what army?”

  “I don’t need an army, just competent people,” I respond—and I’m not even boasting. Strength in numbers is great—until too many people make too much noise and get you killed. But there are a few familiar faces among his people that I’d love to have at my side, Martinez not the only one who’d come in handy. “And everyone’s free to join me.”