Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (14 page)

Anger welled up inside of me, hot and familiar, and for a moment it was hard not to straight out punch him in the face. Instead, I reached up and opened the clasp of my helmet so I could wrench it off, followed by the goggles that, thankfully, didn’t get caught in my sweaty hair. The breathing mask followed, and it felt so good to have the sweat-drenched, disgusting material off my face, air hitting skin for the first time in forever. A few gasps went up from the growing crowd of onlookers when they finally made the connection that I wasn’t just a particularly short guy. Glaring at the mayor, I crossed my arms over my chest—maybe thrusting out my rack somewhat, not that it was noticeable under the jacket—and stepped forward, bringing me close enough that I could properly snarl at him.

“Why don’t you tell me that to my face again?”

I had to give him that, he looked taken aback, but caught himself too quickly for me to glean much satisfaction from that. And, of course, he had to look at Nate as he asked, scandalized, “You have a woman out there with you?”

Nate didn’t bother replying, knowing well enough how the conversation would resume from here.

“Two, actually,” I offered. “Not that it’s any of your business. And, just so you know, my name is right in front of his on our unit identification form, so you better talk to me directly if you want to address me. I deserve your respect.”

I could see from the way he looked down at me that he didn’t agree, and it didn’t come as a surprise that his answer remained the same.

“No one is allowed to enter our town without inspection first. You can either follow through with it willingly, or we will make you.”

I could practically sense Nate tense behind me, but after continuing the staring match for another second, I forced myself to back down. It so wasn’t worth it. And it wasn’t like I was objecting to the requirements in general—just how they did it. But after me going off in his face like that I couldn’t expect the mayor to make an exception for me. So much for diplomacy.

It was still incredibly hard to look away first, and I turned the motion into a jerk of my head toward the cleaning station. “Come on,” I told Nate. “The sooner I’m out of this stinking shit, the better.” He followed me in silence, but not without giving the mayor another look that would have made a smarter man pale.

Things turned out to be exactly as uncomfortable as I’d expected. If I hadn’t been so livid, I would have laughed at how incredibly awkward thirty grown man, deadly to the last one, could get when they were trying to look at everything at once except for my bare ass and tits. I didn’t bother with being shy about my nakedness, either, but my jaws hurt from how hard I was clenching them. Nate did a great job staring everyone down who happened to glance in my direction, which caused some more uncomfortable shifting and looking away quickly. We showered together, if you could call it that, him trying to block the view at my body wherever possible. As much as I’d looked forward to washing up, this didn’t get anywhere close to how good it should have felt—and that was before they made us scrub ourselves down with bleach. By the time I was done and wearing my backup set of gear—leaving the jacket in the car, because even in the afternoon sun, it was too hot for that if I could avoid it—I wasn’t convinced anymore that it had been worth coming to this town’s rescue.

Martinez was already waiting for us, the way he kept glancing at the townfolk telling me that he didn’t have good news. He waited until Jason and Charlie had joined us, then talked quickly in hushed tones. “I’ve done what I could. Ahmed’s banged up but he’ll recover in a week or two. But Phil…”

Jason’s shoulders slumped, but he didn’t make Martinez say what we all knew was coming.

“How long does he have?”

“Wound’s not grave enough to kill him, so up to two days from what we know. He’s not in pain, but he’s showing first signs of sickness. They didn’t get anywhere near the cars so I’ve been hiding him in ours. Ahmed helped pretend like he was the only patient. He’s staying in there with him, now that he’s washed up. But it’s only a matter of time until someone notices, and I’m not sure how they’ll react to that.”

Jason scratched his head, looking around before his gaze focused on Nate and me. “Not sure about you, but I don’t really want to stay here long. Particularly after how they treated you.” He nodded at me.

“Don’t bother on my account. I can deal with stupidity,” I remarked. Still, the entire situation had been less bad than I’d expected, seeing as Jason’s men had also done their very best to ignore my state of undress. Unlike the townfolk, they hadn’t made a difference in a negative way.

“It does bother me,” Jason offered, and the way he looked at Nate made it plain that he knew that Nate was with him there. “We lost so much. The least we can do is uphold a modicum of respect. Not sure if I want to sleep inside those walls anymore. If you come with us, we’ll have enough people that some won’t even have to stand watch. I’d feel much safer out there than in here. Unless you think your people will disagree?”

Nate didn’t hesitate to shake his head. “Don’t think so. There might be some complaining, but nothing serious.” Looking up at the sky, he went on. “We have about five hours of daylight left. If we leave by six, we can get a good distance away from here and find a place to hunker down for the night. Tomorrow morning we can decide if we want to check up on the remaining horde, or just leave them to their own devices and head toward Dispatch. If we scout, the others can remain in camp until we’re done.” What he didn’t say—and didn’t need to—was that this option would give Jason’s people time to say their goodbyes to their dying comrade.

“Sounds like a plan,” Jason agreed. “You guys got any provisions you want to stock up on? Not sure what they have in this town, but asking won’t hurt.”

Nate clapped his hand hard enough on my shoulder to make me stagger, earning himself a glare from me. “That’s all up to her,” he told Jason. “I’m just here for the fighting. Bree manages our stocks and provisions.” With that, he walked away, aiming for the Rover. I looked after him for a moment before I turned back to Jason.

“I’m still not sure why I let him rope me into accepting the short end of the deal,” I said, smiling when Jason gave me a bright grin. “Guess I should talk to the dear mayor about that now. Wanna come with?”

“Wouldn’t want to miss it for the life of me,” he offered, falling into step beside me.

The mayor was easy to track down, not having vacated the premises. I was sure that he’d been one of those who’d been staring at me the entire time I’d been naked, but I did my best to ignore the residual blush that made my cheeks burn. The last two of our bunch—Martinez and Burns, making stupid jokes the entire time they slathered and rinsed, creating quite the spectacle—were just about done with getting doused after the bleach bath, so there was no reason for the guards to continue glaring at us. Of course they didn’t disappear, but they seemed to relax somewhat. The fact that the entire spiel had been completely pointless, seeing as we actually had one infected hiding in the cars, just made the situation all the more bizarre.

The mayor saw us coming and donned his grand smile again, but I didn’t miss how tense he still was. I didn’t delude myself into thinking that I was the one intimidating him, but it didn’t hurt to have a ginger-haired giant with me. With his easy smile, Jason was likely a more effective companion than Nate, who would have just continued to murder everyone with his gaze.

“Wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” the mayor asked, his smile brightening. Under different circumstances I would have made a crude joke now, but joking? Not really on my agenda. “The food will be done any minute. If you require anything else—“

“Actually, you owe us,” I said, cutting right through what sounded like an empty offer. “We saved your hides, and we even did the cleanup for you. You’re getting off easy because the sappers didn’t want any part in this, but we have no reason not to ask for what is ours. We’ll even make you a great deal. Rather than you having to put up with us for the five days you’re required to harbor us, we’ll just take the approximate amount of food and preserves that you’d have to feed us, and we’ll leave today. And each of our units gets a tenth of the weapons and ammo you have. That’s twenty percent, ten each, before you get any ideas of calculating the second tenth from the new total after the first due. And that’s non-negotiable.”

It was rather satisfying to see the mayor’s smile die for good.

“You can’t do that to us!” he protested, a few of his flunkies quickly echoing that sentiment with their murmurs. “You saw what we went through! Do you know how much ammo we spent defending our walls?”

“You certainly did a shit job of it,” I noted. “And I don’t care. It’s obvious just how short-lived your gratitude is, so why should we back down from what is rightly our due? You didn’t protest when we showed up to do what we promised we would. Now it’s your turn to pay up.”

The mayor gave Jason a pleading look, but Jason remained in his relaxed stance that let him flex his biceps and pecs alike. “What she said,” was all he had to offer.

Gnashing his teeth, the mayor turned around and murmured something to what I presumed was his assistant, who took off running toward the town center within moments.
 

“We’re leaving in three hours,” I added. “The sooner you get us our stuff, the sooner you’re rid of us. Deal?”

He glared at my offered hand but shook it. If he thought that he was hurting me with how hard he squeezed, he’d never tried to arm-wrestle with someone like Burns. Or Bailey for that matter. He really had a mean grip for a somewhat scrawny guy. Jason noticed and made a point of repaying the favor, leaving the mayor flexing the fingers afterward. I was really starting to like our fellow scavenger leader.

While we waited for the food to arrive, there was still plenty to do for us. We might have cleaned up, but the cars were still covered in gore, and I didn’t feel bad about seeing all that gunk end up in the grass inside of the walls as the guys set to washing them. There were also a handful of repairs to do and our extra armor plates and reinforced grilles to stow away, and someone had to inspect whatever the townfolk tried to push at us where ammo and weapons were concerned. Nate and Pia took that task, and I spent a few minutes just listening to her bitch out the offerings. I was convinced that, all misgivings aside, Nate would make sure that we didn’t actually rob them but just took what was our due.

Then the promised food arrived, and I felt like slapping myself again. Why was I still so naive to think that the people we’d just saved would show even a hint of gratitude? Staring down at several crates full of onions and potatoes—and nothing else—that were dumped in front of our feet, I about had enough of this. Rather than go off in the mayor’s face again, I hopped onto the hood of the next car, turning to the by now considerable crowd of people who’d come to gawk at us.

“People of Harristown, lend me your ears.” No one laughed, but judging from Burns’s grin, he got the movie reference. A hard crowd to work with, really. Sighing, I forced myself to appear more levelheaded than I felt right now. I was tired, hungry as hell, still embarrassed, and increasingly fed up with this shit. It was hard to make my voice sound even, maybe just a tad humble.

“I don’t know what you think of us, but things are not going to work the way you want them to.” I pointed at the onion crates. “This is your understanding of a fair trade? You were one night away from being dead. All of you. Slaughtered and eaten to the last man, woman, and child. Don’t believe me? Just look closely at how damaged your outer defenses are. If we hadn’t arrived when we did, you would have been toast come tomorrow morning. We are not asking for your thanks. We did what we believe is our duty. We are out there, fighting, so you can live in relative safety in here. Not all of us might have chosen this life entirely without pressure, but we all believe in this. We all are what’s left of humanity. We believe in not giving up yet. We believe in putting up a fight. Not everyone can fight, we all know that. That’s why we pick up the slack for everyone who is too young, old, or frail to defend themselves. All we ask in return is for you to uphold what you promised us—shelter, food, weapons and ammo so we can keep on fighting our fight. This here? This is a joke.”

I felt kind of stupid, standing up there and yelling at the people, but it got better the longer I went on. At first, only a few looked at me and listened, but when I paused, I realized that I held the attention of the entire crowd. Swallowing to work moisture back into my mouth, I went on.

“I get that you don’t like having someone in your town that you don’t know. We’re strangers. We’re armed. And I’m not kidding when I’m saying that we’re dangerous. I’m not saying that you should welcome everyone who has an X-shaped mark on their neck with open arms. Be cautious. Be smart. Be on your guard. But if you continue to be assholes, you’ll just provoke getting exactly what you give us back.” So much for diplomacy, but I went on before anyone could start throwing cabbage at me. Although, steamed cabbage would have been nice, but I doubted that it was done growing yet. “Just two days ago, we were barred entry to another settlement. They kept an open call for cows out, and when we brought them some, they didn’t even want to take them. They knew that there was a streak warning active, and they left us out here to die. Good thing for you guys because that got us coming over here, but we likely would have done that anyway, after getting some rest and eating the first proper, hot meal in two weeks. Do you know how that made me feel? Used. And do you know what people do who feel used? They try to avoid that. What does that mean for you? That fewer and fewer scavengers will come to your settlement. Right now you might think that’s a good thing, seeing as we eat your food and take your ammo. But who will bring your mail? Who will bring seeds for you to plant? Who will bring you generators when yours eventually break? Tools, everyday items, batteries—the list is endless. Even weapons and ammo, if you ask for them. The entire world out there is full of things that can still be used and repurposed, even if erosion is wearing them down fast. You can’t just go out there and collect them. But you don’t need to, because that’s what we are here for. You treat us well, you’ll see that a lot of us are ready to risk our lives to help you live a better life. You want that, do you? So stop being fucking assholes and bring us food that we can actually eat, right now and on the road.”