To Be A Warrior

Chapter 40: Down at the Farm

Sam sighs heavily, but his voice coming through my headset is nearly drowned out by the rumble of a motorcycle.

"I still think the two of you should have taken a burn cube, Nads. Just in case."

Nadia rolls her eyes sending me a sideways glance in annoyance at my husband's words. I simply shrug.

"Janine went over this before we left, Sam. Twice," She replies.

"I know. I know! But we do have burn cubes from Sigrid's island. And I know we don't have loads, but we did get them specifically to use on V-Types. And now you and Five are running towards the biggest horde of V-Types in the country!"

I shift, trying not to appear too worried. I suppose it's kind of funny. I've been spending the last week or so resting since I "collapsed from exhaustion" and now that I'm presumed to be better again I'm sent out to the one thing that can actually kill me.

"We have to do something. The horde is moving through the UK's most fertile farmland," I say. "I know it's winter now, but this is where high yielding wheat grows. If we use a burn cube, it could poison the soil for generations. And we can't do nothing. The country's relying on us." I pause, biting the inside of my cheek. "Have we lost any more colonies since yesterday?"

"Two, wasn't it?" Nadia asks.

"Well.... did you hear about South Roughhead?" Sam asks, and I raise a brow. It's vaguely familiar. We often traded with them because they had a lot of scavenged videogame consoles. Helped a lot with morale.

"I loved that place," Nadia says.

"Yeah... The horde got them overnight."

My eyes widen. "All of them?"

"A few managed to escape. But this horde-well, it's not like normal zom hordes. Normal hordes are straggling, disorganized. But the V-Types... it's like it waits and the strikes all at once. And the Ministry used to do zombie horde reports so people could know what's coming, but we can't even work together enough to do that anymore!"

The amount of frustration and tension in his voice surprises me. When I open my mouth, no words come. It takes me a good minute to think of something to say that might make things better.

"Well, that's not the fault of Abel, is it? I mean, we're willing to communicate. We want to! It's just everyone else is so distrusting because of the Minister..." I shrug.

"Those early warnings," Nadia pauses to force a laugh. "South Roughhead used to think it was funny. They used to prank it, remember?"

"Yeah, those reports of zombies with the bodies of horses got them out of the warning network," He replies. "So they had no idea that horde was coming."

Completely unaware. It's kind of like my dream of Catherine. No one else knew what was happening. I still don't know everything. Sleep has been nothing but an abyss lately, but maybe that's a good thing. There's so much to think on at once I can't remember everything. Things get left behind and forgotten, only to be remembered when I'm not busy working on everything else.

"All the more reason to work together now," Nadia says, pulling me from my thoughts. "Valmont says he's got an anti-V-Type weapon that won't leave environmental fallout. That's got to be worth trying." Her brows knit together in thought. "I keep thinking some of the Riders would be happy about this. The bad ones, I mean. They're causing more chaos dead than alive."

"I mean, did they really like that? The chaos?"

She nods. "Some of them were almost religious about it. 'You have to choose-order or chaos. No middle ground.'"