Beyond Green Fields | Book 6 | Red's Diary [ A Post-Apocalyptic Story] Read online

  Then, of course, Hamilton had to put her down when they did some field-stripping exercise in the armory—and it was only a matter of time until she hit back, serving him a spoonful of his own medicine when she turned what he must have thought was the ultimate easy humiliation around on him. I had to admit, I got a certain grim satisfaction out of watching their farce of a sparring match—that was, once he thought he had her pinned down on her back underneath him, only to realize she was about to gut him with his own knife. A few of the men—and our one female soldier, SST Rodriguez—were frowning throughout the proceedings, but Hill and Cole were hard-pressed not to hunch over with suppressed laughter. I was sure they would have jumped between them had things escalated further, but as it was, only Hamilton’s pride took a chink, and a much deserved one.

  That she was mentally fit enough to play dirty—successfully—boded well. That she clearly had no inhibitions to go for a move like that shouldn’t have been a surprise, come to think of it. It was the only way she could win against a physically dominating opponent, and if even a percentage was true of what people said about Zilinsky, it made sense she’d taught Lewis all the tricks in the book. What took me aback was the amount of hatred that shone clear in Lewis’s eyes as she separated from Hamilton and left—only to be accosted by two of the marines, who had nothing better to do than piss on turf they should have known to leave well enough alone.

  Well, at least it looked like Lewis would be able to take care of herself. And, at worst, she would be Miller’s problem.

  As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered to be concerned. As soon as we set out on the beach, split up in our usual fireteams and letting the scavengers do their thing, I had to realize that I might as well have considered them our fourth full team. It was obvious that the other two weren’t part of their group, but Lewis, Miller, and Burns moved out as one, clearly knowing they could trust the others to have each other’s backs. Miller spent maybe five minutes being extra watchful around his wife but then left the babysitting to Burns, not that much being required. By the time they were out of sight, I’d stopped worrying.

  Considering we ran into an undead ambush within the first hour after landfall, things went moderately well. Although the town turned out to be overrun, we managed to make it to the drop point where our intel package was waiting for us. Hamilton still refused to tell the others what was going on so I had to keep my mouth shut. Just our luck that it was who should have been the least useful member of the group—the girl, Gita—who was able to read French and thus deciphered the clues to where we might find still-alive support on the way. I didn’t miss the nasty smirk Miller gave me when he saw me frown. I was ready to tell him I so didn’t care as long as it meant better survival chances for us, but swallowed the remark. Somehow, in the mental struggle between Miller, Hamilton, and Lewis, I got the sense that my intervention wouldn’t end well… for me.

  So far, so good—except that it was only hours later that I noticed that Lewis was starting to flag. Her first day back in the field, it was easily explained away as exhaustion, but two days later, there was no excuse for it any longer. I was aware that she was still taking the metabolic blockers so I didn’t expect her to outperform the rest of us, but her recovery should have continued to make steady progress, not a slightly more noticeably regress with every day that went by. I would have ignored it if I hadn’t noticed Miller noticing it as well, being quite incapable of not letting his worry show. She continued to be lucid, but it was obvious that once we got closer to Paris, things would get hairy. I tried telling myself that we would be fine—and would have gone on this mission even without any of them tagging along—but I didn’t like the way my gut was twisting around itself as I watched her lumber laboriously after the others.

  Watching them during meals was a welcome distraction. The five of them didn’t exactly keep themselves apart, but it mostly happened nevertheless. I had to admit, her utter refusal to accept anyone’s authority was growing on me. Sure, it grated along my sense of what was right like nails on a chalkboard, but the sheer irreverence of her reactions sometimes made it hard not to laugh inside. Like when my people uniformly chose to snub Miller and hand out his rations first—making it quite obvious that they didn’t give a fuck about his former rank, and maybe even figured Lewis more important than him—and after moments of sheer confusion, she made fun of her husband rather than take offense in his stead. That more than anything else hammered home just how little she saw him as her commanding officer—but the same was true for Hamilton. Oh, she followed any “suggestions” thrown her way all right, but with the clear disdain of a hostage being forced by her captor, and not very impressed at his overall antics.

  I knew things were about to tank when, a few days after we’d made landfall, Miller pulled me aside discreetly after almost everyone had tucked in and muttered in a low voice, “We need to talk.”

  Actually, he needed me to listen, and if I had been uncomfortable with how my people had been treating her before, things got a lot worse. I guessed that could be expected in any situation that boiled down to a bunch of strong men doing their very best to hold down a weak, struggling woman, even if it was to save her life while our medic cut her open to check on and consequently remove a last festering herd of infection inside of her. That she didn’t so much as blink when it became obvious that she was also going to lose another inch of one of her fingers, I felt like hurling.

  But, damn, that woman had guts of steel.

  Realistically speaking, it made sense that she was able to put survival above all else, but her actions—and utter lack of fear—still impressed the hell out of me. I’d seen older, tougher men fold like dry grass in the wind at medical interventions that, by far, didn’t range to what had been necessary to save her life. The upside of the serum was ultimately that what didn’t kill us ensured our survival—but, at times, that also meant that wounds that made other soldiers bleed to death had to be taken care of in the most drastic way, including amputations. It went without saying that some of her relatively calm exterior must have been a mix of having gotten excellent at not portraying what was going on inside of her and shock, but that didn’t diminish the feat.

  I felt relief wash through me when, come morning, she was moving exceptionally better than she had a right to with a new abdominal scar only hours old, getting lost staring into space at times. There was no longer that spaced-out scary-as-fuck mental shutdown I’d seen her fall into more than once on the journey over. I still remembered the moment when my own body had first kicked into the higher gears the serum let it transcend into. That feeling when time slows down and you’re invincible, and every single physical feat is suddenly possible. About time. Seeing her transition for good took a weight off my chest I hadn’t realized had been there.

  The same counted for Miller, who spent half the day smirking to himself whenever she couldn’t see it.

  Hamilton noticed, too—and when Lewis drew the right conclusions about the metabolic blockers that the serum had now churned through for good, he chose that opportunity to kick Miller in the balls, harder than as if he’d done so physically.

  I had to admit, I had no idea what he was talking about half of the time. Of course I knew who Decker was—or had been. You didn’t get into the serum program without hearing rumors. And there had been a few remarks in Miller’s files, yet most of that had been redacted. I was surprised to hear that he was still alive, but it was Miller’s reaction—or lack thereof—that confused me. He stood there, looking like he’d seen a ghost, all previous will to fight—and quite potent quiet resistance—draining from him. It was easy to disregard it all as Hamilton pulling another grandstanding move, but I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it. It was a warning, and a well-delivered one. I could tell that Lewis realized that as well, probably going by the same clues from Miller as I was. Something fundamentally changed that night, even more so than the previous morning when it had become apparent that Lewis was going to make it
for good. Something I didn’t understand, but I knew that it would come to bite us in the ass eventually.

  Then we ran into the French Resistance—or what sorry huddle of people counted for that grand term—and it was easy to forget about possible doom and gloom lurking on the other side of the road. We had undead to kill and the living to rescue. Between the gore and exertion, I didn’t miss that Lewis was doing a great job flawlessly integrating herself with our force again, proving just how well Miller’s people had trained her. For once, a pleasant surprise waited for us when the French turned out to know her, or at least of her, her name enough to let them roll out what counted for a red carpet nowadays. Hamilton seemed less than pleased as he should have been at the prospect of a dry, warm place to sleep, safe—and hot—freshly cooked food, but I got that. I still had a hard time not laughing my ass off when Lewis seamlessly wrenched the leadership role out of his hand, letting the French tout her as their uncanny savior. Again, food, safety, warmth—there was no room in my priorities for anyone’s ego or a care in the world what infighting was going on. We’d made it so far without losing anyone, we were on track hunting down the clues, and establishing contact with the natives went without a hitch.

  Everything was going perfectly—until I came face to, well, face with what I could only describe as Lewis’s freshly-fucked face.

  The French insisted on splitting us up for decontamination, which made sense to a point. It left us vulnerable, but I expected that the worst that would happen was Lewis explaining to them what assholes she was convinced the lot of us were… which couldn’t have been much of a surprise to anyone, and not necessarily something I myself would have felt the need to correct. Once the first half of our people were done—including me but not Hamilton, who had decided to stick with the rest—I realized that Miller and Lewis were missing. Judging from the grins on some of the French soldiers’ faces, I figured they’d taken the chance for an impromptu plotting session under the guise of much-required marital obligations. It made sense, and it was an easy sell.

  What I didn’t expect was that they actually got it on and likely cut down the talking parts to the bare minimum, judging from exactly how bright her eyes and how flushed her cheeks were when they practically fell out of the door Hamilton had been doing his very best to pound right off its hinges.

  I really didn’t need to see that.

  Not then; not every time I closed my eyes after that; not when I was wide awake and thinking about something and got lost in thought.

  Fuck.

  It wasn’t even a baser-nature kind of thing since it hadn’t been that long since I’d gotten laid, and more than one of the French women made it quite plain that she was up for a quick—or not-so-quick—distraction. It wasn’t that I’d suddenly realized that Bree Lewis was, in fact, a woman, and a sexually active one at that. On a physical level, she still wasn’t exactly pushing my buttons, and the memory of her naked, mutilated body on that operating table was vivid and fresh in my mind. It wasn’t an intellectual boner, although I could have understood that to a point. I wasn’t even sure if it was actually sexual in nature. It was something about that boldness of hers, the way she not only held on to her sexuality but embraced it and wore it like a mantle of defiance, ready to be shoved into anyone’s face who was stupid enough to provoke that reaction.

  Since we were stuck in the French bunker for a few days to recharge and give Lewis a chance to make sense of the data that Hamilton—finally!—shared with her, I had nothing better to do than try to figure out the confusing puzzle that Bree Lewis was… yet again.

  I was highly convinced that she had a history of sexual violence. I had no confirmation for my suspicion, but I would have been surprised if Taggard and his men hadn’t raped her when they abducted her. I wasn’t even sure that had been the first or only occurrence. What I was certain about was that neither Miller nor any of his men had ever even looked at her in a weird way. She also showed none of the physical or mental clues many victims of abuse portrayed, but that could have been due to a mix of willpower and adaptation—or, having gotten to know her much better in the meantime, sheer stubbornness and the refusal to show any kind of weakness. Then again, of the five of them—and including most of our men—she was the most likely to make a lewd joke or remark, and while she could be defiant as hell, most of her triggers weren’t hairline ones. That Hamilton set her off like he did looked more and more like a coping mechanism she used to vent the frustration borne of not having been able to avoid coming with us on this mission. If anything, that could be explained as her taking offense to how Hamilton had screwed with her husband, not that he needed defending. I tried to remember if I’d read any clues in the old files we’d had on her, or what little information had been gathered on their entire group since they had resurfaced after the apocalypse, but came up blank.

  I even considered asking her, but I wasn’t stupid enough to actually try.

  I was close to relieved that, almost as soon as we left the safety of the French bastion, led by a handful of their scouts, we were mired in undead, giving me something else to concentrate on than that momentous memory my mind refused to forget. Hampered by her physical limitations, Lewis didn’t exactly become a burden, but she was much easier to ignore, not standing out in the crowd.

  Which lasted exactly until she killed not one but two of my men—one man and one woman, to be precise—upon their reanimation. How she pulled that off was beyond me, but her quick—and efficient—reaction likely saved all our hides. As horrific as the incident on the golf course was—including the fact that they shouldn’t have died that quickly and easily, and even less reanimated as they did—I couldn’t ignore the fact that Lewis had shown zero hesitation, even less than the trained and highly proficient soldiers around her. That was not something I had expected—and I didn’t think it was something Miller had been able to drill into her, let alone wanted to aim for. It pulled up a new facet in the mental puzzle of who the fuck Bree Lewis even was—a former scientist, a fighter, a team player, a leader, the woman who had willingly bound herself by oath and quite possibly feelings to Nate Miller… and a ruthless, efficient, quite possibly cold-hearted killer.

  I couldn’t say exactly why, but somehow that ended up throwing a wrench into my model of what had shaped her in what capacity.

  The puzzle got even more complicated when us hitting the lab led to yet more unexpected discoveries about what made up the unique mystery that was her: altruism and loyalty.

  I would never get why Hamilton thought it was a good idea to pull a gun on her when she hesitated to get the weaponized versions of the serum. Standing in a lab, sweating my balls off in the worst kind of hazmat suit ever invented, was no place for shit like this. Confusion quickly turned into derision when the shit hit the fan and he not only locked her in the lab, outside of the decontamination shower to possibly perish in there, but turned on me as soon as I opened my mouth to protest, reminding me that it was my sole purpose on this mission to assure that the material we had been sent to fetch would be retrieved—at the possible cost of everyone’s life, including my own, that of our men, but also hers. I had my orders, and the way he looked at me made it rather obvious that a single breath of dissent would get me a bullet between the eyes, possibly turning me into the monster that would kill her as soon as she tried to get out of the lab. That was the moment I realized that it was rather easy to understand her hatred for Hamilton—and when getting out of the complex itself meant throwing our men to the predators whose lair this had become, I learned it was equally easy to share it. The only emotion that surpassed it was the utter disgust I felt at my own actions.

  As soon as the others caught up with us outside of the lab—those that were still alive—I knew I was done playing by the rules.

  It was impossible to miss that Miller wasn’t among them.

  I expected some kind of explosion from Lewis—and wasn’t exactly disappointed—but rather than get incessantly emotional, she act
ed calm and rational in taking care of the injured and possibly infected, right up to the point where she got ready to head back into hell itself to retrieve what could only be her husband’s corpse. I had to admit, I admired that level of loyalty and blind faith, even though I should have forced her to see reason.

  Turned out, I was wrong, she was right, and Miller lived to tell the tale.

  Once we were outside and crashing rather than making camp, I realized that she had changed yet again, from the moment she had realized she was on her own but couldn’t abandon hope until proven otherwise. Exertion and the aftereffects of the booster could have been the reason for how she emotionally shut down, but I didn’t buy it. The change got more pronounced later, as we made it back to our ship. Throughout, she kept up a mostly silent, attentive vigil at Miller’s side, resigned and equally ready to be his savior or the one to send him over the River Styx. She stopped pretending to socialize, yet once we had settled in and Miller and a few others ended up quarantined to the former gym, she took up her post there and dug into the research notes we had recovered, poring over them as if they held the key to life itself. Nobody forced her, or even expected that level of cooperation and effort from her. She had more than done her share of what she had been forced to agree to, and yet, she persisted.

  It was those actions—and listening in to her brief conversation with Emily as they both threw science and accusations at each other’s heads—that made me realize that, yet again, I had been wrong about her and, quite plainly, too ignorant to see the truth. Her brash behavior made it so very easy to see her only as the loud, extroverted troublemaker. While neither fake nor pretense, I had to realize that was a persona she had assumed, but not necessarily her true self, or even the predominant part of her personality. There was something quiet and calculating lurking underneath. Something very akin to what I sometimes caught from Miller when he had been staring at me, pretending to be meek and reasonable but very likely just biding his time and using the chance to get information to even more efficiently kill every single one of us if necessary. Getting that very same vibe from Lewis now was deeply disconcerting, and should have taken care of my persistent issue with banishing the raging hard-on for her that I still had going on.