Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction Read Online Free PDF

shotgun was ready in the rack between the seats. The sun was still a good two handspans over the horizon, giving us another hour or so before it would set on us. Without another word, I started the car and threw it into reverse, spewing gravel in my wake as I sent it down the road, away from the settlement.
    “Any idea where you’re going?” Nate asked, a hint of teasing in his tone.
    “Anywhere but here. Got any complaints?”
    “None whatsoever.”
    So we headed roughly south, as far west-bound as the Missouri River would allow us. With luck, we’d make it to a nice hiding place in Missouri tonight. I’d had enough of Iowa for a while.

Chapter 3

    We found ourselves a cozy hollow by some trees growing on a soft slope—ideal to let us see anything coming for miles, but leaving the cars without being silhouetted against the sky. There was a small pond there, fed by a gurgling creek, all very idyllic. I didn’t give a shit, although water was always nice. After spending the last day longing for a bath, I was sorely tempted to brave the pond, but it didn’t look deep enough to submerge me fully, and it was cold as fuck. No, thank you. Nate would have to live with my reek for another couple of days. I’d tried going with deodorants for a while last summer, but with no real chance to wash beyond what my hands could scoop up and some bars of soap, just sweat was a lot more bearable. Maybe we would stay somewhere like this for a while so I could thoroughly wash my things. That would help.
    After the last mouthful of stew was gone and all the dishes cleaned up, a few of the guys started on their daily exercises, but I used our little scouting excursion over noon for an excuse to remain sitting by the fire that was slowly dying down. After today’s events no one felt like keeping it roaring into the night where anything that was vaguely nocturnal would see the gleam for miles, even with a dug pit and erected screen. Too worked up to do nothing, I got out the notes I’d taken with me from Aurora—most of them my own, but a few of the diagrams were Ethan and Megan’s. There was also that stack of printouts that had originally been Raleigh Miller’s—the genius virologist who should have become my mentor after my PhD thesis, and, not quite coincidentally, Nate’s brother. Not for the first time I wondered if, had things happened differently, he and I could have prevented the apocalypse. On my vainest days I liked to believe that we might have stood a chance, if a small one. Tonight I was rocking a mood that was a lot more realistic, which made me abandon the science shit after twenty minutes.
    “Still can’t leave your old glory days behind, doc?” Burns teased as I trotted back and let myself fall into a crouch next to him. I glanced up and gave him a pointed look, but that went ignored of course.
    “Could you just leave your soldiering behind if suddenly there were no wars and no one to fight anymore?” I asked.
    “There’ll always be heads that need bashing in,” he provided, ever the voice of reason.
    I stared at the flames for a while, watching the last of them die down until there were only glowing embers left behind.
    Martinez dropped down on my other side, leaning back against a fallen log the guys had dragged over to use for a makeshift bench. “You had those notes from your old workplace with you all year long and you never glanced at them once,” he pointed out. “Why the change now?”
    I shrugged, not sure I knew the answer myself, let alone if it was one I wanted to share.
    “We barely have the resources to investigate anything,” I said. “There’s a chance that I can find something that’s in there that they’re overlooking.”
    Nate, sitting next to the Ice Queen across from us, scoffed. “To what end? What does it matter if you drag up one more useless detail? They spent a year on hunting down the activator that flips the switch in us, and it changed exactly nothing. Why bother? You