Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction Read Free Page B

had come from, though—further east of the ditches, we crossed a patch of land that was churned earth only, not even grass surviving. The swath cut across pastures and fields, angling east and south as far as I could see. A massive horde of zombies must have been moving along to destroy so much previously fertile ground. Whether they’d wintered here or come along more recently—likely on the way north after migrating south last fall—I couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter. We’d been damn lucky not to run into them head-on, or all of us would be toast now. Judging from the amount of damage, I didn’t doubt that there were more in the area that we hadn’t seen yet. Perfect.
    Our mood was somewhat subdued on the way back, me clearly not the only one lost in gloomy thoughts. Seeing the cows up, if still staggering around, was good news. The sooner we got away from here, the better.
    Andrej reported our findings, making frowns appear across faces, fingers curling around guns. I got behind the wheel without saying anything, after checking the car over once more. The light had been “fixed” with duct tape, and the gore was gone from both sides. Seeing my aviators on the dashboard, I hesitated for a moment but then put them away in the center console. As much as I loved to laugh in Nate’s face whenever he griped at me for defaulting to them when I didn’t have to shoot, I wasn’t stupid enough to push it when I didn’t have to. I also left the jacket zipped up to my throat, not bothering with taking off my gloves. With the windows cracked to check for stench, I’d survive baking in the car. And, with luck, I’d get a chance to clean up, maybe even soak in a tub, in an hour or so from now when we reached the settlement. After two weeks on the road, simple comforts like that sounded just as appealing as sitting safely behind a fence that someone else guarded—or maybe even more so.
    Oh, what a great new world we were living in.

Chapter 2

    We reached New Town—the most creatively named settlement we’d passed so far—at just after five in the afternoon, or so Nate told me. We could have easily made it there within the hour, but that wasn’t accounting for the cows who, none too happily, trotted along between the middle three cars of our convoy. They were docile enough, making me guess that they hadn’t quite forgotten that earlier in their lives, humans had meant creature comforts for them like fresh hay, or getting milked. Burns and Santos had spent most of the way over debating over the radio whether the cows had been bred for dairy or beef. With a year since anyone had fed them some nice hormone-contaminated chow, it was impossible to tell—at least for someone like me who mistook young bulls for cows. Not my brightest moment, I had to admit—and I was sure that Nate would remind me of it again and again, likely whenever we saw some cattle grazing in the distance. Which was more often than I’d expected after how hard it had been for us to make it across the country without getting eaten by the undead. But either cows had better survival instincts than the likes of me—entirely possible—or there simply had been a damn lot of them, too much to get eradicated within the span of one year. The amount of calves that had been with the main herd made me guess that if they continued to be smart, beef would remain on the menu in years to come.
    I hadn’t expected New Town to look like much, but the three rows of chain-link, barbwire-topped fence with wooden palisades inside that kept the settlement itself out of sight was a lot more impressive than the already good defenses Aurora’d had. They’d even started digging ditches between the fences, making scaling them harder still.  
    As we approached, I saw no one outside, but the two lookouts above the gate box had been eyeing us the entire time of our approach. I’d debated radioing ahead, but the light cloud of dust that our cars raised was different