Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation by Adrienne Lecter Page B

stupid enough to take him up on that, instead getting into the car again.
    Over the course of the next three hours, we didn’t see any—absolutely any—sign that anyone was here. No tracks, no broken-down cars, no parts, and also no corpses. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was so different from Before , but figured that a region that relied so heavily on tourism would never have been that deserted. Now it felt like we were the first humans to walk this moon landscape.  
    We made camp at one of the parking lots, watching the sun set over the plains. Exposed as we were—and waiting to be found, as Nate had explained it—it only made sense to sleep in the cars. It seemed hilariously paranoid, but so were many things that we did on a regular basis. So far the fact that we were still around and kicking boded well for our strategies.
    By morning, we were still completely alone in the mountains, and I spent my part of the watch detail sitting on the hood of the car, watching the sun rise one inch at a time. With the scenery quiet bordering on idyllic, minimal wildlife scurrying around—a sure sign that there were no zombies nesting here anywhere—it was easy to forget that there were places out there that were very different. I knew that this couldn’t go on much longer, but it was nice to let my guard down for once.
    Which consequently bit me in the ass—figuratively—as I was caught with my pants down—literally—twenty minutes later as I went behind a rock mound to take care of my morning business.
    I had about a second to realize that the gravel sliding down behind me wasn’t caused by the wind before I heard the telltale sound of a shotgun round getting pumped into the barrel. Part of me wanted to laugh because it was such an amateur move—really, if you wanted to shoot something, you should have a round ready. Months of weapon drills took care of that, while the much greater part of me was scared shitless. Also literally, because they’d given me enough time to finish that part at least.
    “Do you mind if I wipe first? Because this is kind of awkward,” I called out over my shoulder, for a second almost expecting Burns or Bates to start laughing at me—but it had been months since they’d even tried to sneak up on me, and it made no sense to do it here, with my own gun close enough that I could grab it and shoot before asking questions. Only that it was just far enough away that I couldn’t grab it. Shit. Nate was so going to have my ass for this.
    Staring at my own shadow painted on the grayish-brown ground while I waited for a reply, my hair whipping into my face, I realized that I could actually see my would-be attacker, or at least the shadow he threw. Even huddled down as I was, the shadow was closer to the ground than mine, making me guess that he must be lying up on one of the hills, pointing the shotgun down at me.
    I was quite surprised—and feeling kind of stupid for jumping to conclusions—when the voice that answered me was clearly female, and sounded decidedly younger than me.
    “Do it. But don’t try anything funky.”
    I wondered briefly why it made me feel relieved that I’d gotten caught by a girl rather than some grizzled old guy, but chose not to dwell on it. I was evidence enough that she could be just as deadly as any guy, and considering that she couldn’t be more than twenty feet behind me, I was so much dead meat if she chose to pull the trigger.
    Moving with slow, deliberate motions, I sacrilegiously littered the rugged, untouched landscape before I rose. After pulling up my pants I raised my arms to beside my head, trying not to scare her, feeling kind of ridiculous for thinking that. The girl had survived not just the zombie apocalypse but the ten months after—I couldn’t fathom what about me should scare her.
    “Turn around. Slowly. And leave your shotgun there.”
    I did as she told me, squinting up the hill to get a good look at her. Or what I could see of her,