Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak by Adrienne Lecter Page A

briefly wondered where Nate had found these guys. Had they all signed a suicide pact or something? But considering Andrej’s grim nod, followed by a very guy-like brief hug and fist bump, the answer was probably obvious.
    At Pia’s whistle, people got up all around me and started shouldering their packs, leaving a still-stunned Brad behind.
    “Wait! You can’t do this to me!” he cried, loud enough to scare away a couple of birds and make everyone look around cautiously. Thompson made his way back to him and put one large hand on his comparatively scrawny shoulder—clearly more a restraining than supporting gesture.
    “Don’t you worry, bud. I’ll stick with you until the end. And if you’re too scared to do it yourself, one of these bullets carries your name,” he said, tapping his gun lightly against Brad’s knee.  
    I waited for guilt to come up inside of me, but all I felt was a spreading numbness. It didn’t matter, really—Brad was already dead. He just hadn’t accepted it yet.
    Instead of continuing to scream, Brad sunk in on himself, a child-like whimper coming from deep within his chest. His friends were still lingering, offering murmured excuses, but he didn’t seem to hear them anymore.
    Andrej lightly nudged my shoulder, making me look at him, and at the jerk of his chin toward where the group was already leaving our impromptu campsite, I started walking after them, without looking back.

Chapter 7

    The mood didn’t get much better over the next couple of hours. I doubted that anyone thought that it had been the wrong decision to leave Brad and Thompson behind, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t weighing heavily on all of us, even if it had been Nate’s order. If I’d had any doubts about anyone not accepting his claim for leadership, they were disbanded now. It was obvious that no one thought that this was a walk in the park, and I didn’t even want to consider how bad it would have made me feel if it had been my call. Being in charge had never been less desirable. And I was sure that Nate had known exactly what burden he was about to shoulder the moment he’d gotten up and started that speech.
    That our route wasn’t smooth going didn’t help, either.
    At first, staying to the mostly wooded areas had sounded like the better choice than getting anywhere close to the roads in the valleys, but I hadn’t considered just how much elevation would factor into that equation. Yesterday, running half-crazed and with adrenaline pumping like crazy hadn’t been that bad—or likely it had, but I’d already forgotten most of that. Now, every time the trail we followed turned toward a rise, I had to bite back a groan. Two hours in, I was sure that the path Andrej had plotted included topping every single hill between us and wherever we were heading; by the time we took a break for half an hour in the early afternoon, I was certain that he was secretly plotting to kill me. Or turn me into a mountain goat, whichever came first. But while Skip and his buddy were huffing and puffing as much as me, neither of them complained, so I couldn’t very well turn into a crybaby now. The beauty of the forest around us was certainly lost on me.
    We crossed a few roads, but most of them were completely abandoned, and the few lonely zombies we encountered we either hid from, or bludgeoned into their eternal rest. Encountering them one at a time was somewhat less stressful than the full horde, but whenever I saw one, I was immediately scared of where the others must be hiding. I also couldn’t quite quell a certain curiosity that made me want to get a closer look, but I refrained from going as far as poking them with a stick—which was what Burns did with the second shambler that he offed in the early afternoon. But one thing I noticed even from afar—most of the zombies we now encountered looked a lot more… healthy, for lack of a different term. Unlike the little girl just outside the rabble field back in