The Girl Who Punched Back (Death Fields 2)

He doesn’t smile, more like a smug smirk. It takes everything not to smack it off his face, but that seems like an extreme emotion for losing a game. The expression slips and he nods at the next house we pass.

“Hiding,” he states.

“Shut up, both of you,” Walker says from the driver’s seat. “I can’t believe you made a game out of this God-forsaken situation.”

Wyatt and I both shrug. Dead, Hiding, or Infected is how we pass the time on patrol. We have to do something while we sweep the streets for survivors and wait for my megalomaniac sister, Jane, to unveil the entirety of whatever delusional plan she’s cooked up.

The truck bounces in a large pot hole and I brace myself against the seat against the impact. There’s certainly no government left to repair the roads now, and it’s increasingly obvious how fast everything has eroded. I don’t just mean the road conditions.

It’s been three months since Wyatt, Cole, Chloe, and I arrived at my sister’s lair, the southern headquarters for PharmaCorp. We came in a blaze of gunfire, after unknowingly traveling with a mercenary for five hundred miles, fighting off the remaining vestiges of the US government, and hand-delivering information my father needed to create a vaccine for the E-TR virus. Unfortunately, I still haven’t decided if my father, the renowned Dr. Ramsey, and sister, Jane Ramsey (or as she likes to be called, “The Director”) have clear motives. I know my sister doesn’t. The problem is I’m not sure how nefarious her plans actually are.

Sure, that may sound overly-dramatic, but in a post-apocalyptic world who’s going to stop me?

“Walker,” Wyatt says, nodding to a house at the end of the street. The windows are boarded over, the garage marked with a huge black X. Everything about the home screams abandoned. But not to Wyatt. He’s got some sort of spidey-sense.

“What?” I ask.

“Let’s check it out.” She stops the Humvee with a lurch and we exit the vehicle. I try not to stare at the blood stains in the driveway next door.

“Alex, stay with me,” he instructs, giving me an annoyed-but-knowing look. He feels like he’s babysitting me, I know. I heard him shout those very words, “I’m not The Director’s freaking babysitter!” back at the fort. Except he didn’t say “freaking.” I was assigned to go with him anyway, and when he’s not off on super-top-secret Freedom Fighter missions we do this, patrol the suburbs of Augusta, Georgia for signs of life and death.

The weird thing is that it’s mostly a dead-zone. Little life and not even that much “death.” Either everyone scattered months ago, or this segment of the city has already been cleaned up by an earlier team, or the people here are really good at hiding.

“Exactly what are we stopping for?” I’m not arguing. I just want to understand.

He puts his finger to his lips and he and Walker exchange complicated hand gestures. They split up and I stick to his side like a shadow. After the fight earlier today I have little desire to be on my own again.

I notice the difference in this house from the others as soon as I get closer. The plywood tacked over the windows has holes drilled through it like Swiss cheese. My first thought is that they’re to allow in light, but then I notice the short spikes poking through each one.

“What good is that?” I ask, because the spikes are too short to do any real damage. I reach my glove-covered finger up and touch the tip. A coil winds and I cock my head just before I hear a loud click.

“Oh shit!” I cry, flying through the air, landing hard on my back. I stare up at the sky, my lungs gasping for air, after mentally assessing that I was not injured. Wyatt saved my butt with his quick reflexes. “Jesus, dude.”

He stands over me, weapon drawn, the spike elongated and inches from his face.

“Clever,” he says, touching the tip of one of the spikes with his own gloved hand.

I scramble to my feet, hatchet secure in my hand. I haven’t quite caught my breath. “Who the heck are these people?”

“I don’t know, Alex” he says with a flash in his eyes. “But I plan on finding out.”

r /> *

There are eleven of them, the youngest only seven years old. The oldest is their leader—a woman named Caroline—who explains they are a group of neighbors from the subdivision that banded together several months ago to ride out the E-TR virus and its aftermath. They’ve been waiting for help.

“You’ve found it,” Walker says. Her firearm is in the holster strapped to her hip, but that doesn’t keep Caroline and a guy introduced as Jude from staring at her nervously. I’m sure the fact we’re covered in fresh Eater guts isn’t helping.

Nothing about the world today is the same as it was before the virus spread. Even eleven people holed up should know that.

“We’ve got food, medicine, and shelter,” Walker explains. “It’s a secure fort in Augusta, and we’re looking for strong men and women to help us get back on track.”

Jude looks over at the boy playing on the ground with a small train. “And the kids? We won’t leave them.” When he speaks, it’s clear he’s not much older than Wyatt—so I’m guessing early twenties. His accent is southern—thick like honey. He’s got on camo pants, a matching shirt, and a trucker-style baseball cap with the image of a deer leaping stitched on the bill.

“Kids are an automatic in,” Wyatt says. All eyes shift to him. It’s the first time he’s spoken since Walker convinced them to open the door. That move alone proves their naiveté. Walker may technically be in charge, but Wyatt is the Alpha here. “It’s the adults that have to qualify.”

He says this in an aloof voice, like he doesn’t care if they come or not. Wyatt probably doesn’t give a crap. That’s one thing I learned about him on our journey from Durham. He cares about two things: 1. Himself, and 2. His job. Unfortunately for him, my sister has given him the task of bringing back able-bodied survivors, so he needs to sound a little more convincing.

I sigh, getting Caroline’s attention. She’s in her forties and if I had to guess, one of the Volvo drivers. She also looks tired and thin. “Look, there’s a stronghold at the PharmaCorp facility downtown. The president was something of a doomsday prepper—to the extreme—with millions of dollars to support her paranoia. The building is secure, fully functional, and has an entire lab working on a vaccine. As you’ve probably seen, not everyone is handling the current world situation well, and PharmaCorp needs people to maintain and defend the facility.”