Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak by Adrienne Lecter

pictures away that came with that. Nate had been right—there was a time and place to dwell on what I’d done, but now wasn’t it.
    While my legs felt weighed down with tons of lead, I was back on my feet as soon as the Ice Queen gave the—muted—order to break camp. It still came as a relief when we didn’t resume our previous lumbering running speed, but settled on a somewhat more sedate walk. I still jumped at every crackle of leaves around us, but within minutes of the more monotone pace I felt myself fall back into a mindless lull.  
    I was alive. I was walking. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t on the fast-track to joining the shambling undead.
    Life should have been good. It just didn’t feel like it right now.
    We must have been walking for about twenty minutes or so when Martinez caught up with me. Andrej was still behind me but he’d stopped watching my every move like a hawk, ready to pull me up before I could even fall when I stumbled. My arm was probably more bruised from him than when Smith had come after me.
    Martinez kept glancing at me sideways, until he cleared his throat. Turning my head, I looked at him for a moment, then said what I figured was on all our minds.
    “So, zombies, huh?”
    He shrugged, grimacing in what I belatedly realized was an attempt at a smile.
    “Looks like it, yeah.”
    Just saying that word pulled up another flash of snapping teeth and reaching fingers, closing around my arm, making me shudder. But with that came a different thought that I’d been trying to ignore the entire time, but that pushed itself to the forefront of my mind. Martinez was avoiding glancing at me, that was obvious, and I had a very good idea why.
    “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, just as he opened his mouth and offered the same. We stared at each other for a moment, and he made a gesture toward me.
    “Ladies first.”
    “Didn’t chivalry die like a couple hours ago?” Just saying that made me feel a little bad as Andrej was diligently acting the protector and gentleman toward me, but I had a feeling that he wouldn’t have done so in the first place if I’d been just some random woman.
    Martinez shrugged, but inclined his head with my silent push.
    “I’m sorry that I froze like that. In the coffee shop. I mean—“ he broke off there, but he didn’t really need to finish that sentence for me to get what he meant.
    “I’m sorry that I killed your comrade. Friend,” I guessed.
    Martinez gave something that was supposed to be a grin, I thought. “Rob was a little more than that,” he admitted, managing to smile sheepishly. “And I can’t be sure, but I think he’d prefer getting his throat slashed and his head caved in rather than eat people.”
    I couldn’t suppress another shudder.
    “Still—“
    “Thank you,” he said, interrupting me. Silence fell, and it wasn’t the comfortable kind. “First time that you—“
    “Yes,” I replied, cutting him off now. He nodded, and the sympathetic look he gave me spoke volumes.
    “The woman you were talking about,” he started, pausing until I looked at him. “Your sister?”
    I couldn’t help but give him the blandest fake smile in my repertoire.
    “My girlfriend.” He blinked, and I couldn’t keep an acerbic, “You got a problem with that?” back. Fucking hypocrite.
    “Absolutely not,” he assured me, the ghost of a smile appearing for a moment. Considering the topic at hand, I was relieved that he didn’t grin outright, but he did seem like someone used to smiling. Some guys had the weirdest reactions to news like that—and considering that now I had to hope that she was actually dead—and stayed dead—I didn’t really feel like bitching at anyone.
    Mostly to distract myself—but also to satisfy my curiosity—I changed the topic.
    “So what exactly is going on? I mean, except for the obvious.” Being chased by a mob of cannibalistic madmen was kind of a dead giveaway, pun intended.
    Martinez shrugged, looking