Read Online Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation by Adrienne Lecter - Free Book Online Page B

zombies had gnawed on all manners of things, also getting into the cereals and flour for whatever reason, but the cans had been left pretty much unscathed. We spent an ungodly amount of time with reading labels to make sure not to grab anything that might be contaminated, and didn’t pass up the animal chow section, either. While the guys were busy lugging palette after palette of what had been marked as good for consumption into the cars, I went through the other aisles, looking for more things to check off our lists. Cleaning supplies and tools were right up there, just below food, weapons, and ammo. With the first taken care of and the other two lacking completely, that left me lugging out soap and other knickknacks until my arms felt ready to fall off. Just before we left, we packed another two boxes off the book and magazine racks, cramming those into the last remaining space still left in our cargo holds. Turned out, spending a long winter locked in where you could do nothing whatsoever and most people had no electricity, that paperbacks and games were suddenly all the rage again. Oh, the irony.
    There was no sense in looking anywhere else with no more place to stash anything, so we just drove around town twice until we’d found all the police cruisers and got the weapons, ammo, and usable gear—if available—from them while the other half of our people hit the bars to do the same—and stock up on hard liquor. Somehow, there was always room for another bottle of vodka.  
    Then we were off again, driving back to the meeting point in Meeteetse, reaching it just after nightfall now that we were a little more cocky because nothing had jumped us on the road. We’d agreed with Emma’s plan to use the bar as a headquarter to redistribute food and items—a safe place to gather, but far enough from our own bunker not to invite trouble.  
    Over the course of the following two weeks, we did five more runs like that, until we had gathered what felt like half a hardware store and enough cans to last the entirety of Wyoming until civilization was back on its feet, ready to relaunch the space program. By then, my ass had become accustomed to the car again, if not to Nate’s constant backseat driving gripes. After a long debate with the still forming neighborhood watch, we decided that we needed to hit a larger town, because weapons, ammo, and medical supplies were still lacking. Riverton was one option, but we decided to go for Douglas instead. So I had another chance to maybe see the jackalope statue, after all. My excitement dulled somewhat with the prospect of how many zombies six thousand people could have yielded, or at least fed over the winter. They still preferred fresh meat to carrion, but Douglas sounded a little above our pay grade. Yet with demand strong, there wasn’t much else we could do—unless we wanted to leave half our own supplies behind, which was out of the question. So Operation Douglas was launched on what Emma insisted was the first Thursday in April, but could really have been just any day of spring.
    Unlike with our previous loot runs, we planned this one a lot better. We even got a map and had people tell us where exactly we’d find any prospective targets like gun shops, pharmacies, the hospital, or the police station. This one we wouldn’t hit by car but on foot, trying to keep as low a profile as possible. I would have proposed to invite anyone to join us who was up for the challenge, but Nate didn’t even broach the subject. That made me wonder if he didn’t trust the others enough, but that sounded a little paranoid even for him. Then again, I had spent the entire winter learning how to shoot, sneak, and how best to react in dangerous situations; it made sense that we—as a team—had a much better chance of surviving this than a ragtag band of people who knew barely enough about guns to know which end to point where—Andrej’s assessment, not mine.
    We spent the night before the hit