Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction (39 page)

That was the moment when latent fear turned to instant panic, the urge to turn around and point my shotgun at him so strong that it took all my willpower not to move. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t need to check the wrapper on the floor anymore to know what exactly Bailey had popped into his mouth the moment it had become obvious that we were gravely outnumbered. Outnumbered enough that no distraction in the world would get us out of here.

A distraction maybe not, but a rampaging super zombie just might.

I’d known that I hung out with a bunch of ruthless guys, but I hadn’t counted on the fact that they were ready to self-activate if worse came to worst. Apparently we were all out of options, and that bothered me a lot less than what I knew would happen in all of, what? Three minutes? Five? How long exactly had it taken Smith to turn in that coffee shop? Just long enough for a pot of coffee to be done.

I’d never claimed to be a good actress, and judging from the way Bucky kept eyeing me now I knew that I was about to blow the cover of our most asinine of asinine escape plans, so I tried to relax again. Not that anyone was actually relaxed. Couldn’t they just take my sudden jumpiness for trepidation over—likely—being in the same boat as the Raiders girl? If I had to take a guess, for whatever reason they wanted to keep her, the same would be true for me also, but not the Ice Queen, with the marks across her neck. No one had ever confirmed to me that Bucky had been part of the super soldier program as well, but I’d bet my life on it that it was true. He certainly knew about it, or else he wouldn’t have brought an overwhelming force with him to… do whatever the fuck he was here to do.

As if he’d read my thoughts, Bucky was only too happy to enlighten us.

“I’m here for her.” He jerked his chin in my direction. “Hand her over and this will all go down a lot more—“

Nate didn’t bother letting him finish that sentence before he cut him off. “No fucking chance.”

That made Bucky snort. “Just because you’re screwing her—“

“Because she’s a member of my team,” Nate spit out, his anger impossible to quench. “I’m not leaving anyone behind.”

This was one of the occasions where I wouldn’t have minded either way, but Nate’s statement made me guess that there was a lot more behind his words than I realized. He looked positively ready to pick a fight, and right now was so not the moment for it, with Bailey about to go batshit monster any minute now. But of course he was stalling, that much I realized. And Bucky was stupid enough to let himself get baited into this, not expecting that he didn’t hold all the cards and had less than all the time in the world.

“Yeah? That’s news to me,” Bucky taunted. Nate gnashed his teeth but didn’t reply, his baleful stare answer enough. “You getting mellow in your old age? Soft?” Bucky went on jeering. “Looks like your little cunt there cut off your balls when she allowed you to stick your dick in her.”

I so didn’t care for that, but the grip panic had around my throat was strong enough that my temper stayed down. Nate briefly looked at me—and this time really me, not checking in with Bailey—and I took the hint, although not without inching just a little closer to him. It only made sense that I would seek refuge with my lover in the face of such verbal abuse, right?

My voice shook as I spoke up, but that could have been because of the situation in general. “What do you want with me? If this is because of Aurora, my answer remains the same. I’m sure that neither Brandon Stone nor Greg Lowe is that broken up over me not trampling all over their little kingdom.”

I really didn’t like the smile I got from Bucky in return.

“Oh, princess, they don’t give a shit about your smarts anymore,” he said, the words almost vicious the way he enunciated them. “They found a much better use for you. And I’m sure that once they’re done with you, my boys will get some use out of you, too.”
 

No one laughed, or even grinned in my direction, the joke failing its mark by miles. So much for the soldiers not being aware of just how dangerous their query was.

Nate took over from me again when he seemed to realize that I wasn’t ready to rail and scream as I usually would have in this situation.
 

“So how exactly do you think this is going down? Just shoot at us until all but the girls are dead? Fat chance of that happening.”

Bucky opened his mouth to reply, but I would never hear his grand plan. One moment there was silence coming from my right. The next, Bailey—or what used to be Bailey, rather—let out a scream of rage. I was ready to whip around and shoot him, but before I could even think about moving, Andrej crashed into me and pulled me down onto the floor, both annihilating my chances of killing our exit strategy, and pulling me right out of its path. We were still falling, not yet having hit the floor, when Bailey zoomed by, hurling himself straight at the soldiers in front of us, Bucky front and center.

Hell broke loose just as my body crashed into the concrete floor, partly cushioned by Andrej’s. All around me guns were going of, people were screaming. Rather than let go, Andrej rolled over before he gave me a hard push, sending me right toward the fire doors that closed off the room toward the factory. “Run!” he shouted as he came to his feet, a rather useless command if anyone had asked me that very second. I managed to stagger up from the crouch I had landed in, half-hidden between Campbell and Martinez. Someone lobbed a grenade toward the doors but it went wide—or so I thought, until two seconds later it tore a hole into the wall, the resulting shock wave strong enough to press the air right out of my lungs, stunning soldiers everywhere. Burns was running for the wall, dropping his rifle for the battering ram, Cho right behind him. I didn’t hesitate as I followed, and it only took the sight of a rifle veering in my direction for me to pull the trigger. And again, and again as I whipped around and put my back toward Burns, covering him while he reduced the already damaged wall to so much rubble.

A hand clamped down on my shoulder, giving me the “go” to turn around and follow them, but I pumped another two slugs into some unhappy soldier’s face and torso. Part of me, deep down, was horrified at what I was doing, but I was well aware of the fact that Bailey could only buy us so much time with his sacrifice. Chances were slim going on zilch for the rest of us to make it out of here, and there was no room for hesitation. I’d need to survive this first so I could beat myself up later over killing people who should not have been on a different side from us.

I’d clearly waited too long when Burns simply wrapped his arm around my middle and pulled me backward through the hole in the wall, but that gave me the opportunity to empty the last remaining shells into the soldiers who were slowly recovering from the sonic assault. The moment we were through the wall, Burns threw himself to the side, giving me a good shove to send me staggering blindly toward a conveyer belt. I instinctually let myself drop and roll underneath it, coming up in a crouch on the other side. I caught a glimpse of Burns through the heavy machinery, but had to duck when a barrage of shots came down on us both. Glancing up, I saw soldiers running along the gallery. A few more seconds and they would have a clear shot at me. Fuck.

Ducking as low as I could and still run, I found cover behind another block of machinery, warily checking the progress upstairs. From the other room the sounds of screams and shots were getting increasingly louder, but I forced myself to ignore that. Of the remaining Raiders who hadn’t been with Torres there was no sign, but I figured they’d beat it by now. Remembering Nate’s orders from before all too well, I eased myself up into a standing position and tried to get a good look at how to best get out of this fucking nightmare of an obstacle course.

A high-pitched whine right next to me made me jump, and with a rattling groan the conveyer belt started to move. A few seconds later a siren sounded, followed by a series of heavy thumps. Up on the gallery a soldier hollered commands that I didn’t quite catch, only to be cut off by three zombies hurtling out of a door right next to him. He was dead in seconds. All along the wall doors were flung open now, and judging from the crashing sounds coming from below, the same was happening at the ground floor, too. That there was still electricity in this building was suddenly the least of my concerns.

“Uh, guys? We’re having another problem here,” I whispered into my mic, hoping that it would pick up my voice even though I was trying hard not to draw any attention to myself. Only static answered me, and even that cut off after a few moments. Were they jamming us? Yup, looked just like it.

Movement to my left made me get my shotgun up, but it was only Cho who’d come rolling underneath the conveyer belt. At my quick gesture he sprinted over to me.

“Signal’s jammed,” he informed me, instantly dropping into a cover stance so I could finish reloading.

“Did you see if the way’s clear toward the exit?”

He shook his head. “I saw movement coming from there. Can’t say what it was, but I bet they got all the locked rooms in the office building crammed with the undead fuckers, too.”

I took that with a stoic nod. Probably not a viable exit for us, but the only windows in the factory were three stories up with no way to get there, so that wasn’t going to help.

“Let’s get a better look,” I suggested, a little surprised when he immediately fell into step behind me.
 

We only got around the next corner, where a bunch of soldiers was imitating our move, their frantic looks toward the wall proving that they weren’t running scared from us. I had my shotgun up before I could even think about it, but before I could hesitate, Cho started shooting—at the zombies pouring out from underneath the conveyer belt. Even with our shots slowing them down they were on the soldiers before I could decide whether to switch targets. Only one of the soldiers realized his mistake before it was too late, and I took him out before he could remedy it, a zombie already chomping on his leg. I had to swallow convulsively to keep my bile down, but Cho’s quick, “Move out,” reminded me that we were in no position to dawdle. We left the carnage behind as we took off running across a small open space, howling zombies hot on our heels.

I hadn’t planned on splitting up but as I ran around the next corner, there was another belt right in front of me—only that Cho didn’t follow me as I dropped to the floor and rolled right underneath it. Biting off a curse I continued on my own, weaving my way through the production line. Several times I ended in a one-way impasse, and more than once I had to shoot my way back out of it moments later. Trying to steer toward the wall with the windows where no rooms had released any hidden shamblers helped, but only so much. The soldiers seemed to follow that same pattern, and having to shoot at still-alive humans was no inch better than at dead ones. The order to take me alive only made them hesitate so much, and a few times it was sheer luck that no one shot my head off before I could do them the same courtesy, making me question whether they hadn’t abandoned their objective yet.

And then it was just one more conveyer belt between me and the open stretch that led right into the office building. I allowed myself a moment of rest to catch my breath as I tried to get a better grip on the situation at large. The continuous screaming had stopped a few minutes ago, but there was a lot of shooting going on all over the room, the drone of the machinery doing nothing to wipe that out. There was no telling who was shooting at whom, and where the rest of my people were. I didn’t even strictly know whether any of them were still alive as the zombies were rather indiscriminate about who they came after, but I counted on it. What else was there to do? I couldn’t just give up on them.
 

A new bout of assault rifle fire came from my right, just beyond the belt, making me drop onto my stomach so I could look underneath and try to gage who was responsible for it. A bunch of zombies and soldiers were already on the floor, what remained of the former decimating the latter into so much gore. But there was also a pair of combat boots remaining upright. I debated what to do, but then forced myself to inch forward until I got a better look at who they might belong to. Much to my elation it was Andrej.

A low whistle from me was all it took for him to drop into a crouch, our eyes meeting briefly. He cast around before he gave me the signal to come over to his side. The carnage was even worse in the part I hadn’t seen, a good thirty bodies on the floor. I didn’t want to know if Andrej had been responsible for that on his own, or whether he’d just cleaned up whoever had remained standing. The sheer senselessness of the bloodbath made me want to scream, but I suppressed that just like any other emotion that wanted to come up inside of me.

There was no time for hesitation, a fact that got even clearer when just as I came to my full height, a new slew of zombies came staggering around the corner of the conveyer belt that had so far hidden us from view. The moment they saw us they started running, their howls further contributing to the din. My gun was already trained at them but Andrej gave me a shove toward the door instead. “The farther you get, the more attention you’ll draw away from the stragglers,” he hissed before his focus turned back to the zombies. So much for thinking that trying to get me to safety was a gentlemanly act—but I actually preferred to think about it this way. Which was likely the reason why Andrej had said it, and not told me to just save my ass and leave them all to their own devices.

I wasn’t the first to make it through that door, I realized, when I was met with yet more corpses unmoving on the floor. Cho and Santos were pressed against the wall right next to an overturned desk, busy reloading, so I quickly joined them. Back here there was more light than in the gloom of the factory, but still not enough to see beyond the room. As soon as my back hit the wall, Santos started forward, not giving me any respite. Cho waited for my nod before he followed ten seconds later, and I left cover about that much after him in turn. I should probably have taken point with my shotgun but was happy I didn’t about half a minute later when Santos opened fire, mowing through a veritable wall of zombies that had started to crowd around the half-cracked door at the other end of the room. Cho picked off those that Santos didn’t hit, making the resulting heap of rotting corpses on the floor just a little higher. Behind me more shots followed, and I wasted a second to check. Andrej was following us, shooting at what remained of the crowd of zombies. As soon as the first of them was below thirty yards, I shot at it, helping to stem the flow. Andrej closed up to me and together we retreated, firing in tandem whenever we weren’t reloading. The fact that Santos and Cho were still shooting but not decimating anything that was behind us was making me nervous.