Free Green Fields (Book 4): Extinction by Adrienne Lecter Page B

staring toward the settlement. “That’s days quicker than everyone estimated.”
    “With a sample size of what, zero and wishful thinking, that’s not really a surprise,” I offered, then swallowed the rest of my remark. Oh great, I was getting as bad as Nate. “Are those the only barriers they have?”
    Jason shrugged. “They seem to have an inner wall, too, right around the buildings, but if the outer barricades fall, our plan won’t work.”
    When I just eyed him curiously, Nate explained. “Jason’s plan is to try to draw as many of them away as possible before we kill the rest. It won’t be as effective as a direct attack, but it has much greater chances of success. Or at least not getting us killed trying. There will still be the remainder of the streak to deal with, but with luck they’ll find a new target if we decimate them enough. Our priority isn’t to wipe them all out, but to get them to stop threatening the settlement. The rest will have to remain a problem for another day.”
    That plan was a lot sounder than what I’d expected—feared, really—but it couldn’t be as simple as that.
    “You think they will just follow us? They seem to be quite happy with tearing down the walls.”
    Jason grinned. “We’ll have to give them some incentives, of course. They have a thing for noisy, moving targets so that’s in our favor. They also don’t like getting killed. I think we can take it from there easily.”
    That much was true. Nate seemed to agree, but still looked skeptical. “We shouldn’t kill too many of them close to the settlement, or they’ll just hunker down and eat.”
    Jason’s second in command got out a hand-drawn map that crudely depicted the village and most of the surroundings. “A little further up the valley there’s a lot of space. A small river delta to the east where another river joins that one over there. Scouted it yesterday. I say we draw ‘em up there, then heap up enough of ‘em to keep the others coming. The terrain doesn’t work for a kill zone, but it’s flat enough that we can speed away once we’re done. There are two bridges over the river. I say we stop them around there. Once there are enough bodies piling up, we circle back around east and west and clear up the barricades. Easy peasy.”
    I severely doubted that, but Nate’s nod after he looked over the maps again instilled some confidence in me.
    “How far up the river is that from the town?” he asked.
    Jason took over again. “About ten miles, give or take. Should take about one hour to get them up there, then another two to stall them and to get back. Even if some try to follow, we’re quicker in the cars over open terrain. They’ll be tired from chasing us, and they have enough fodder for days piled up there if we do our job. Should give us enough time to clear things up here before nightfall. If you say they’re hunting by night, we have to start now. Otherwise we’re just burning daylight.”
    Some murmuring ensued but no one spoke up in protest. Unease continued to hang over our entire group, but then I doubted that would change until we got going. Nate confirmed that guess when he leaned closer and whispered a brief, “It will get better once you’re in the thick of things. Waiting’s always the worst.”
    “I thought getting killed was the worst?” I shot back.
    He shook his head. “Maimed is more like it, but even so, it’s always anticipation that has your nerves all bunched up and overloaded. Inactivity, uncertainty. Once you're out there and doing something, you have a concrete task to focus on. That helps. Trust me. It’s not my first rodeo.”
    Technically speaking, neither was it mine, but this was different. Maybe it was the scale of the undertaking. Maybe it was the fact that with the cannibals, I hadn’t felt quite so helpless and small. They hadn’t been so many. And while I hadn’t doubted that they would have killed me just the same, there’d been a good