Beyond Green Fields | Book 6 | Red's Diary [ A Post-Apocalyptic Story] Page 9

  “See, there’s a woman who’s entirely available,” Hill observed.

  Cole nodded sagely. “Too bad she doesn’t check the ‘complete psycho bitch’ box, thus taking her out of the race.”

  I didn’t reward that with a reaction, but the sad fact was, it was true. Did I still manage to rekindle some of the not-quite romance with the feisty marine? Yes, but my heart wasn’t in it. The circumstances certainly explained why… until we finally reached the agreed-upon destination where already, discontent was lurking in the form of two groups, one from Dispatch, the other more marines who immediately decided that Buehler and Blake should better fall in line and keep their traps shut. Apparently, we weren’t the only branch of the military that had fractured more than they were willing to admit. I was almost glad when, a day later that had almost led to bloodshed five times, scouts reported in that the last of the participants of this not-quite clandestine meeting were headed toward us—Lewis and her people had arrived. With some of the bona-fide insane scavengers in tow, as it turned out, which immediately made everyone who’d already arrived bury their well-honed hatchets in favor of focusing on the new common threat.

  Trust it to Lewis to need a single if quite heated thirty-minute rally speech to not only assume command but sell her plan as the only reasonable one to the assembled crowd, with the Dispatch crowd being the only exception. From what I could tell, Zilinsky—who had been the real driving force behind this—had never expected to get any support from them beyond weapons, ammo, and food, which they were glad to leave behind, with some words of warning that didn’t seem to get through to Lewis, let alone faze her.

  While the others debated hotly, I watched her, Pirate Queen in everything but name. Lewis had no right to command the presence she commanded, and yet, she did. There was no reason why her people should have followed her, and yet Zilinsky looked ready to personally slice anyone up who’d dare not immediately fall in line as well. As expected, the marines—Scott more so than Buehler and Blake, but the people from the Silo as well—were somewhat skeptical but the effect wasn’t lost on them, either. Having the rowdy bunch of savages perfectly salivating all over the ground she tread on certainly helped, particularly as we’d all gotten only too used to having them as terrible—and sometimes terrifying—opponents for the past two years. It took me until the end of the meeting to recognize two of the younger scavengers as those we’d encountered on the transfer to New Angeles, previously sneering at her and now perfectly enchanted. What seemed to count for the leader of their faction was one of the scavenger group leaders who’d stood with Lewis at the Colorado truce negotiations; Harris, I thought was his name. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought he’d been one of the few who’d gone with them when Hamilton had afterward sent them down to NORAD to do away with yet another thorn in our side, killing a useless lead. What I was sure of was that he was in the top ten most-wanted, definitively-dead-on-sight listed in every army base in the country, having earned that status ten times over. And yet, here he stood, ready to go wherever Bree Lewis pointed.

  No, it wasn’t her ass or tits that inadvertently kept drawing me toward Bree Lewis; it might not even have been her brain, although that was one puzzle I would have loved to spend some quality time solving. It was something else… something I still couldn’t put a finger on. And, unlike what I was sure Hill and Cole would soon be joking about again, it wasn’t even the psycho bitch part, because there was more than one woman commandeering that attribute in attendance, yet she stood out like a shining beacon.

  Damn, but it really would have been so convenient for Miller to be dead for good.

  It only made sense for me to volunteer to pair up with Lewis once she explained the plan she—or, more likely, Zilinsky—had hatched: to infiltrate the slaver camp under the disguise of the scavengers. Like Lewis herself, my body and mind could easily withstand a few hits of the drugs the scavengers used with abandon without our performance taking a nosedive, and I’d proven in the past that I was happy to help her get out of a tight spot. I knew the mission came with certain risks, but considering that woman was a walking, talking shit magnet, at least I wouldn’t get bored.

  What I hadn’t counted on was the fact that the damn drugs mellowed me out worse than the weed I’d sometimes partaken in back in my glorious college days, and made me a million times hornier than under normal circumstances. Strictly speaking, they probably only dropped my inhibitions and screwed with my self-control, but that amounted to the same. Lewis, meanwhile—not unexpectedly from what I’d seen firsthand in France and what she’d explained herself of previous encounters with the booster shots—turned into her aggressive, war-mongering self, using the first chance she could to get into a fight… and win. Did I enjoy watching her half-naked body gear up into fight mode as she wiped the floor with an opponent who not only had inches but quite a lot of weight on her as well? You bet. Her crowing victory dance also reminded me of a certain instance that had happened in the headquarters of the French Resistance that still haunted me to this day whenever I let it… and drugged out of my rational mind, I certainly was happy to let memory merge with imagination.

  It made me almost stupid enough to make a move on her, but thankfully, whatever else the drugs did to her, Lewis remained her usual oblivious-to-innuendo self. Either that, or she regarded me so far outside of her zone of interest that she didn’t take me seriously. I wasn’t quite sure which of the two options I preferred, but found myself insanely glad of the circumstances half an hour later when, indeed, her husband turned out to be very much alive if likely not exactly at the height of his sanity. Lewis certainly didn’t seem to give a flying fuck about that.

  The moment her gaze fell on the savage creature Miller had turned into, her face lit up with a depth of animation that only now that it was back I realized it had been gone both when we’d picked her up a month ago and when our many factions had united to fight the good fight. It wasn’t like she’d been a mere shadow of herself, but now she was shining twice as brightly as before. She toned it down quickly enough but I knew that if anyone had been watching her, we were made, no doubt about that.

  As I watched Miller go from pretending to be civil to all-out savage monster—and embracing it, much to the frenetic cheering of the crowd—I tried to clear my head and analyze the situation critically, only that analysis wasn’t anything my brain was quite as fond of as wondering what I would have to do to get Lewis to look at me like this. Rationally, I was very much aware that it wasn’t a competition, but my lizard brain, decidedly in the driver’s seat today, had better ideas. I tried to distract myself by wondering how we could possibly get Miller out of there, but my heart truly wasn’t in it. It stood to reason that if they had managed to subdue him enough to keep him from breaking out, it would be equally as hard to break him out as well. Bribery might be the only way, but how did one bribe guards who were quite possibly thinking of themselves as living the dream? Oddly enough, it reminded me of the first strategy meetings we’d had when the scavengers started showing up on the roads, back when the undead had seemed our only problem. How could you make someone who was clearly living the life see reason that they should be doing the polar opposite of what they’d freely chosen and were obviously excelling at?

  My thoughts stuttered to a halt as I watched Miller not just kill his opponent but perfectly slay him by ripping out his heart and consequently eating it.

  Lewis went perfectly wild, which didn’t set her apart at all from thousands of other scavengers around us—and yes, there was definitively something sexual to her morbid fascination. It was that moment that I had to ask myself: did I really want to fuck a woman who got off on rampant cannibalism? The answer should have been a resounding no. The actual answer was, if not exactly sobering, of the kind that helped pull my rambling thoughts back down to earth and into more well-trodden tracks. Right—that was not the important question I should have been asking myself right that second, hence the answer wasn’t important, eith
er. It also helped direct my blood flow back up to get my primary brain working properly again, but that could have been a good shot of adrenaline finally churning through the drugs as well. Lewis seemed to be suffering the adverse effects, but then I could understand her sudden euphoria… to a point. She certainly didn’t look ready for a strategy briefing.

  I could do with a beer—or something much stronger—so making our way back to the bar we’d stumbled into earlier sounded like a great idea.

  Sadly—or maybe for the best—we didn’t get very far.

  At least getting clubbed over the head, beaten into submission, then dragged off to God knew where saved me from personally embarrassing myself should the alcohol addle my brain once more.

  Or so I thought, until they shot us up with a way higher dose—and possibly different drugs—than before, making me seriously afraid of what my fucked-up brain would get up to next.

  Thankfully, finding myself tied up and stripped down naked opposite of Miller took care of that, never mind that Lewis ended up equally as naked next to me.

  Did Miller intimidate me under normal circumstances? Yes. After just having watched him go full-on savage and eat another man’s heart? Yes. Was it none of that but instead the badly suppressed and thus quite obvious fear that was coming off him in waves, try as he might have to appear unimpressed? Also yes. And it sure wasn’t pride that kept him from freely showing his emotions, because that term had so obviously been struck clean from his vocabulary.

  To be honest, that assessment wasn’t quite fair to him. It was only because I had seen that very same fear in him before that I recognized it for what it was… and that had been when he’d spent endless hours pacing up and down in his cell, waiting and quietly praying that his wife wouldn’t die on the operating room table. Back then, it must have been pride that kept him from showing much emotion openly, but studying the tapes later had been a nice respite after watching his wife get cut apart. After that, I’d had a little over two months to observe him go through the entire range of not showing emotions over and over again—no blinding rage, no deep-seated worry, no anger, no panic… except for Hamilton’s great monologue about the ghost that I was getting more and more convinced was still haunting Miller to this day.

  He didn’t even glance at me once—or at Lewis, for that matter—but that look on his face was enough to paralyze me. Either that, or it was the drugs coursing through my veins. It wasn’t like there was anything I could have done. These people clearly knew what we were capable of—or potentially capable of, if we were the people they were looking for. Lewis didn’t seem to have that problem, though, gushing and rambling on exactly as one might have expected from a drugged-up raving lunatic. I idly wondered just how much she was acting, or just trying very hard not to reveal that, yes, indeed, she knew her husband and would very much like to kill every motherfucking idiot who’d ever dared to lay a hand on him. How exactly she managed to be both convincing and not get us killed on the spot was a mystery to me… until I realized that killing us would have been merciful, and “mercy” wasn’t anything that was happening around here at all. They were stupid and completely underestimated us, which was something that puzzled me enough that by the time my mind had come to grips with the concept, Lewis was already out of the bonds and working on freeing us. Well, Miller first, and them being them, they had to prioritize their reunion over freeing me, if only very briefly.

  Lewis’s mouth was still running a mile a minute, making me twice as happy when Miller revealed that he’d somehow managed to weaken the bars set into the window of his prison. Did I like the very idea of our human pyramid, with Lewis directly underneath me? No, but I finally had a task, and with panic and unease lapping at the baser regions of my mind, it was only a matter of time until I managed to pry the loosened bar free.

  I listened mostly in silence as Lewis kept yammering on about this still being a joint, united rescue effort before Miller finally had her convinced to squeeze herself through the opening I’d helped create. It was quite the peculiar feeling to remain standing down there in that wet, dark, stinking cell and watch the last of her legs disappear from sight—elation, mixed with a hint of melancholy. I was very much aware that this was likely the last good deed of my life, if what I’d seen of the arena was any indication. Even more so, Miller’s urging that he “needed her to be free” did not bode well. Not at all.

  Turning to him, I gave him what I hoped was a shrewd look, but since I could barely make out his outline, I doubted he could see it. “We’re in some deep shit, right?” I more acknowledged than said.

  “No kidding,” came his gruff, hoarse answer.

  “Exactly how bad?” I didn’t know why I was asking. I sure as hell didn’t want an honest response.

  Miller didn’t even bother with snorting at my curiosity. “You’re not stupid, right?” I was shaking my head before I could cut down on the impulse and respond verbally instead. He obviously had no problem seeing it since he went on with perfect timing. “Take your worst expectations and multiply them by a billion.” He let that sink in for a moment. I felt some displacement of air, figuring he had turned around. There was hardly enough room for us to stand next to each other without touching; pacing was out of the question. “Don’t think for a second that me trying to get her out of this was an act of gallantry. I can take a lot, but I can’t take her going through the same.”

  There wasn’t much I could have said in response to that so I kept my thoughts to myself, instead staring listlessly up at the window as more and more rain kept sloshing in. Part of me idly wondered if I had the guts to ask Miller to kill me before our grace period in here was considered over. It was a coward’s request in many ways. There was no way our captors would miss the fact that only two prisoners remained when they’d thrown three in here, and I had gotten the feeling that they were big on retribution. If I asked him to kill me, I’d also asked him to take all the blame himself, and maybe more for killing me in the first place.

  Simply considering this made me feel like shit. Besides, how bad could things get until the others broke us out in, what? A week from now, two tops? I was careful not to ask that question aloud.

  Yet before I could continue to beat myself up over my own cowardice, rescue arrived, leaving me almost resentful as I pushed myself up from the muck outside the cell. Of course Lewis had pulled it off. Why was I even surprised? Just because she was too drugged up to stand straight, a maniacal grin on her face, didn’t mean that she couldn’t accomplish shit that men larger and stronger than her with more experience and a hell of a lot more resilience failed? Sure, coincidence had—once again—played heavily into her achievement but that didn’t seem to count for her. And yes, I was very much aware of my own hypocrisy and downright callous idiocy. The words I wanted to hurl in her face could have come straight from Hamilton himself, and she deserved none of them. In the end, all that mattered was that we were free.

  Three hours and the mother of all mad dashes of an escape later, I finally allowed myself to ease up as we drove right into the midst of the alarmed camp where the rest of our troops were waiting. I was drenched to the bone, cold as fuck, hungry enough to devour an entire cow, and on top of that in the first dredges of drug withdrawal while their effects were still raging on. My intellect knew that we had made it and were, indeed, safe; should someone have managed to follow us, they would get gunned down by the others. Yet my lizard brain was still on high alert, freaked out by what I’d seen, done, and knew I had barely escaped. It was all a very human reaction, and I mentally gave myself a pat on the back for keeping it together while I wrapped myself into an offered blanket someone was handing me, ready to accept some chow.

  But then I saw Miller and Lewis slink off together, and the repressed resentment of the ages came roaring to the forefront of my mind. At the very back of my mind—where that very thin remaining thread of my rationality now dwelled—I realized my reaction had nothing to do with them, their behavior, or the f
act that nobody here was even pretending to follow some kind of sensical procedure of debriefing… and yet, they were not just still standing but I gave them a damn good chance to succeed with whatever they set their minds to next. I had a feeling Miller wasn’t going to go all “turn the other cheek” on the slavers and slink off to lick his wounds elsewhere. Hell, I’d barely endured anything except my dignity getting slightly besmirched, and I was hungering for blood. But those assholes weren’t what my ire centered on. No, it was this insufferable woman who had no right to still be alive, many times over, let alone be the heroine in any story, not even her own—

  I hadn’t realized I’d shaken off the blanket and started walking deeper into the ruin the camp had commandeered as their headquarters when a strong arm slammed into my chest, bringing me to a sudden halt.

  “Don’t make me punch you, Richards,” came Zilinsky’s low drawl from my right, close enough to kick my brain into fight-or-flight mode. I tensed, ready to… I didn’t know what, yet before I could move a muscle, her grip on me tightened, strong fingers digging into my shoulder. “Soldier, get a fucking grip on yourself!”

  Her voice was pressed yet low, showing remarkable restraint. My anger, flailing around blindly, was only too ready to latch onto her as its new target, making me sneer in her face. If anything, she looked unimpressed going on bored. We stared at each other for several seconds, and she only withdrew her arm after feeling me back down somewhat.

  “You’re drugged,” she told me, her voice getting slightly warmer now. “And you’re scared. Nobody will hold your actions against you while you’re not quite in control of yourself, but I can’t let you get yourself killed.”