Page 125

Jaykob

No amount of flowers can cover up the stink of shit.

One week after leaving Bristlebrook

I sneeze for the fifth fucking time in five fucking minutes.

There are flowers everywhere, and pollen is choking out the air like mustard gas.

The flowers crawl over the Reapers’ farmlands, stalking us on both sides of the wide, winding road through the forest that leads to their main compound.

They skulk over the pastures surrounding it and burst out of the road like land mines.

The Reapers’ compound has one tall, corrugated tin gate “protecting” the entrance—a wall thin enough that a can opener could saw through it—and even the gate is being eaten away by vines and those shitty, throat-swelling little buds.

The gate swings open, and we pass the Reaper sentries standing up on their outposts. They stare at the civs like they’re seeing Victoria’s secret instead of thirty-plus tired, pissy soldiers walking right through their front door.

Sawyer’s mustache twitches as he points.

“The radio room is next to the machinery shed. We’ve got the henhouse there, greenhouses over to the left, pigsty around here.

Slaughterhouse is over by the forest past the corn, next to the smokehouse.

We usually keep a nice stock of meat right in there, so I’m thinking we should make a big ole welcome home feast tonight.

Tower silo is over past the wheat fields—don’t know if you can see it in the distance there, but over them hills, we’ve got. ..”

Sawyer keeps pointing shit out, but I don’t know who he’s talking to. The Reapers who came to Bristlebrook with us have mostly fucked off by now, and the civs are ignoring Sawyer, their rifles cautiously in hand as we get shown around.

Eden is walking next to him, but she pauses every few minutes to frown at a building like she’s shooting for a building inspector license, not paying any attention to him, either. Dom and Lucky are right on her heels, so I pause to blow my nose.

Again.

I run to catch up, gripping my pistol at my hip as more men line up to watch Eden and the civs walk through the compound.

“... and there’s the mess hall. We converted one of the old cowsheds so we could all have meals together. New ones are over there. We’ve got most of us sleeping in the big barn beside the henhouse, but me and Cole and a few of the others stay in the big house up front.”

Sawyer can’t shut the fuck up.

I sneeze, hacking at the shit coating my throat, and hang back. We’ve been traveling with the Reapers for a week to get here, and it’s a week more than my patience is willing to handle.

My temper’s already frayed, and I’m ready to shoot the fuckhead.

I don’t want to be here. I want to be home. I want Eden and my guys and all the fucking civs back at Bristlebrook, and for none of us to have to deal with any of this shit. I don’t care that the Reapers are all sleeping in a barn because they’re scared . Boo fucking hoo.

They should be scared.

Alastair’s coming for them.

We head toward the fields and pastures beyond the compound, and the flowers are choking out the buildings. The little shits are vomiting out of garden beds and window pots, colorful and reeking, on every corner.

I sneeze again.

Who the hell plants this many flowers? It’s creepy . Get some fucking potatoes or something.

Beau tosses me a packet of pills as he walks beside me, and I almost miss it because my damn eyes are watering like a bitch.

Sniffing back my runny nose, I squint down at the packet.

Antihistamines.

“Thanks,” I mutter, popping one.

Beau slides me a wry, sympathetic grimace, but his eyes don’t leave Eden for long. We’re all watching her, trailing after her like a pack of guard dogs, and these days, it feels like a relief.

It means it’s not just me who’ll rip shit apart to keep her trouble-attracting ass safe.

We finally finish the stupid two-dollar tour of the flower factory compound and reach the first fence. The civs spread out along the fence line, staring out at the view like they’re about to film an infomercial.

The rolling pasture beyond the fence is milling with cows and sheep, but there are fields on all sides, stretching on and on into the distance—fields overflowing with wheat and corn and a bunch of other shit I couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

Dirt roads run between them and along the outer fences that hug the edges of the forest.

Other buildings sit on the outskirts. Stables and machine sheds and barns, and that smokehouse is practically sprawling into the woods.

The Reapers haven’t done anything to secure their boundaries from attack.

It doesn’t look like they have anyone watching the woods at all.

I can’t help but track along the enormous, rolling expanse of fields and buildings again. From just looking at this shit now, I can see this place would be a fucking nightmare to defend.

In the far distance, there’s a big, burned-out barn that reminds me too much of my old workshop, and thick, sludgy rage tightens my gut at the sight of it.

Alastair has a hard-on for fire.

There’s a lot here to burn.

Dom’s jaw sets, his eyes travelling over the fields, too.

Beside him, Eden turns, looking back at the buildings, then turns around again to scan the fences and the animals in the pasture, her face grim. Finally, her eyes linger on the burned barn, sitting like a skeleton on the edge of an empty pasture, and her lips tighten.

I wonder if she can even see it.

She’s blind as shit. She needs new glasses.

“... we’ll harvest the wheat come winter, if nothin’ else slows us down. That’ll get us?—”

“That was your livestock barn?” Eden asks Sawyer softly, still looking at it.

He blinks at her, then slowly, reluctantly, he looks at the barn.

Sawyer grimaces. “It was. It’s a shame to lose it.

I... that’s... that’s where Clayton said Alastair killed them all.

Easton and Miles and Tanner and...” He pales, looking all queasy again as he trails off.

When he speaks again, his voice is low. “We have to stop him. They don’t hear reason.

Clayton tried everything, offered him all of it, like we did, but.

.. Alastair just wants to kill .” Sawyer looks at Dom, his face soft and guilty.

“You know. As good as anyone, you know. When that shot went off... I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I should have been.”

I stare at Sawyer, and my rage settles deep. It burns hot enough to bite. The flowers everywhere are fucking sickly in my nose, and it makes me want to burn them away, too.

Sawyer’s a fucking coward.

To his bones, he’s a fucking coward .

Eden’s eyes are blazing, too, glistening with filthy hot tears, and the sadist tugs her in for a hug, murmuring to her softly. It doesn’t even piss me off.

She needs it, and right now, I ain’t the one to handle the quiet cuddling shit.

I’m gritting my teeth, debating whether I can get away with slugging him at least when Dom steps in front of me, cutting me off.

“Get your men together, Sawyer. We need sentries as a bare minimum—two each, every fifty meters around the entire perimeter. Your guys take left, front, and back, our civs will take the right. Me and the Rangers will coordinate.” Dom nods back at the civs.

“On our kits, we have PTTs—our push-to-talks that connect into our radios—and we can use those to direct teams where they’re needed. We need to get you?—”

“Whoa. Whoa, Dom. Slow... slow down.” Sawyer lets out a short, panicky laugh that makes my eyes roll.

He shoves a hand behind his neck, rubbing it awkwardly.

“We can’t do all that. We have work to do, on the farm, the fields, and we lost people.

.. I thought... Look, maybe you and the women have this handled.

They’re so good with those rifles. We could hardly believe our eyes. We can be backup, maybe...”

I’ve just about decided on the punch when the circus rat links his arm with mine. Clenching my fists, I breathe out heavily through my nose, and Lucky pats my arm like he’s keeping tabs on a toddler.

Dom just crosses his arms over his chest, looking down at Sawyer with cold judgment.

At least one of us can keep his fucking head.

Sawyer swallows, his gaze darting between all of us. “Please, we don’t know how to... Maybe if all the women had come, we would have had enough help to?—”

Dom stiffens, his eyes flashing as he bites out, “We’re not doing everything for you, Sawyer.”

Casually, Beau steps in on Sawyer’s other side, boxing him in with a friendly smile that packs about as much punch as my fists.

Sawyer’s mustache twitches like rat whiskers.

“You’re sitting on a gold mine,” Dom tells him, dangerously soft. “If you want to keep this place, then you need to learn to defend it—or you need to leave and stop hurting people trying to keep it.”

Behind him, the rolling crops and fields full of livestock stretch out under the sunshine.

I remember killing one of the fucking rats in the moat, watching when it fell off the corpse it was getting fat on. I remember my stomach cramping, thinking of Kasey’s stomach, and Eden’s ribs, and Ethel in her bed, the old bat not able to get up.

I remember spending two hours of my watch trying to work out how I could get that rat without getting my brains blown out.

Those fields look like pure fucking gluttony.

Sawyer’s hands shake as he stares back at Dom, but slowly, finally, he nods.

“Okay. We’ll... we’ll do that. You all.. . come back, and we’ll get you set up in the barracks. I’ll get the men out here, and...” He nods again. “We’ll do it.”

“Not the barracks.” Eden finally steps out of Jasper’s arms, clear and firm and bossy as fuck. “Our people will camp together in the empty pasture.”

Shaking his head, Sawyer opens his mouth to argue when Dom’s expression seems to change his mind.

Ignoring them, Eden looks back out toward the empty pasture. The barn’s blackened corpse sits on its edge, and her face turns to ice.

“We’ll camp in that one. That one right there.”