by Dana Fredsti
“You say one of them is still alive?”
“Yeah. If you can call it that.” Nathan swallowed, hard. “The medics had to sedate her before she’d stop screaming.”
“He needs to die!” The soldier with the itchy trigger finger stepped forward, only to be straight-armed by Gabriel.
“We have to take him back to Big Red,” he said sternly. These were the first words Gabriel had spoken since he’d asked me to identify Jake. I almost didn’t recognize his voice, it sounded so. dead.
Nathan nodded, but he didn’t look happy.
“Agreed. They’ll want to run tests. Simone always wants to run tests.”
I looked down at Jake, who sat there giggling, rocking back and forth.
“If we’re lucky,” Nathan added, “they won’t use any anesthetic.”
The medics brought out the other victim on a stretcher, a woman in her early forties with short brown hair plastered to her skull by sweat and blood. The medics had draped a sheet over her body; it settled in unnatural divots and indentations already soaking through with blood and other fluids. Even in repose, her expression showed the nightmare she’d just survived. I wondered if there were enough sedatives in the world to give her a dream-free sleep.
“Did he do anything else to them?”
“No,” Nathan replied. “Our friend here isn’t interested in sex. Just food.”
“I’m hungry,” Jake chimed in. “Is it tea time? I already had elevenses.” He giggled again and the soldier standing in back of the chair suddenly reversed his firearm and slammed the butt into the back of his skull. Jake’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped forward, falling face first onto the floor.
No one moved to pick him up.
“I’m sorry, sir.” The soldier, who didn’t look old enough to order a beer in public, stared straight ahead, barely holding it together. I could see him starting to crack open at the seams. I didn’t blame him. No way any kind of training could prepare someone for this.
“If you hadn’t done it, I would have,” I said.
Nathan gave the soldier a sympathetic look.
“Just don’t do it again. We need him alive.”
A muscle twitched in Gabriel’s jaw as he stared at Jake’s prone body. I could only imagine what he was thinking. That—but for Dr. Albert’s antiserum—would be his fate.
I wanted to sit down, but couldn’t find a chair or section of couch that wasn’t liberally soaked in blood, so I settled for perching gingerly on the edge of the stone hearth. I almost instantly regretted my decision when I looked in the fireplace and saw charred bones mixed in with the ashes and half-burned chunks of wood.
“We’re done here,” Nathan said, sitting down next to me.
“What next?” I didn’t really want an answer.
“We take this son-of-a-bitch back to Big Red and find out what the common denominator is between him and Gabriel. Then we try and figure out what, if anything, they both share with the wild cards.” He slung an arm around my shoulder and gave me a rough hug. I didn’t know what to do with it.
“And if we’re lucky,” he continued, “maybe Dr. Albert and Simone can actually figure out a cure for this whole shitstorm.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
* * *
The sun was setting as we drove up the access road to Big Red. The last of the day’s light reflected off the windows of the outer buildings of the campus just beyond the defensive perimeter of Mount Gillette and the Slinky of Doom, nicknames I’d come up with during a more frivolous moment.
The former was a mini Great Wall of China made out of some military grade shaving cream that hardened to the consistency of Silly Putty when exposed to air. It could be employed quickly, and made for an effective barrier against the walking dead as long as their numbers weren’t too great.
The Slinky of Doom was my nickname for the accordion-style razor wire set in front of Mount Gillette, loops of the stuff meant to entangle rotting limbs long enough for the perimeter guards and snipers to dispatch them with clean shots to the head.
A gap had been made in the perimeter during the swarm attack, designed to funnel the zombies into a killing chute of flames and gunfire. That gap now provided access into and out of the campus, and was guarded 24/7, two trucks parked on either side of it. Guess we were safe unless a rogue biker gang came along and wanted to get into the mall.
Jake sat in the back of the Humvee, handcuffed and flanked on either side by two soldiers, neither of whom looked happy to be near him. He was still groggy from the blow to the head, and thankfully quiet as we drove through the gap. The setting sun cast eerie shadows on his bloodstained face.
As we rolled through the quad toward Patterson Hall, I thought of the first time the wild cards had faced the zombies as separate teams. It had been Gabriel, Lil, Kai, and me on our team. and we had kicked zombie ass.
I shut my eyes, forcibly willing the tears to stay back a little while longer, taking comfort in the warmth of Gabriel and Nathan on either side of me. No way I wanted to cry with Psycho Jake there.
We pulled up outside of Patterson Hall, next to the military ambulance that was already parked in front. The soldiers quickly dragged Jake out of the back, none too gently, supporting most of his weight between them.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Disneyland,” I said without a hint of humor.
“Good. I like Disneyland. Shanna and I took Tyce there last year. Good times.” He smiled at me, a genuinely sweet smile even more disturbing than the psycho cannibal he’d become. “I’m going to see them now, right?”
God, this is so fucked up. Chalk up another war crime to lay at Dr. Albert’s doorstep.
“Right,” I said, forcing myself not to choke on the word as the two soldiers led Jake up the stairs, and from there to the lab facilities below.
Gabriel put a hand on my shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked yet again. I started to nod, but then lurched away from his hand, making it as far as the bushes before losing the contents of my stomach.
Tears streamed down my face as my stomach heaved again and again, until there was nothing left. I fell onto my knees, light-headed, dry-heaving and sobbing until I thought I’d pass out.
“Just breathe, Ash.” Gentle hands pulled my hair back from my face, and rubbed my back until the spasms passed. A water bottle appeared in front of me. I gratefully took a swallow, then another. I wanted to brush my teeth. I focused on breathing some more, had another sip of water and looked up.
“Thanks.”
Gabriel helped me to my feet, keeping an arm around me when I staggered, still dizzy from all the vomiting.
“They’ll be waiting for us, after we clean up,” he said. By “they” I knew he meant Simone and Colonel Paxton.
“Is... are... will the other wild cards be there?” My voice rasped. It hurt to talk.
“Yes.” Gabriel handed me the water bottle. This time I drank deeply, pretty sure it would stay down. “They’ll need to be debriefed.”
I sighed, a great shuddering sigh. That was something I was not looking forward to.
“What’s going to happen to Jake?” I asked.
“Quarantine, and tests. Maybe his blood will give us another key to figuring out how to stop this thing.”
“What about that poor woman he... the one that’s still alive?” I shuddered again, this time from the sheer horror of what Jake’s victims must have suffered.
Nathan spoke up from nearby. I hadn’t realized that he was there.
“Simone will take care of her,” he said.
“They won’t take her to the labs, though, will they?” The last thing that poor woman needed was to wake up in the midst of Eli Roth’s vision of a mad doctor’s laboratory. If she weren’t already totally crazy, that would drive her over the edge for sure. As far as Jake went, I didn’t think he could go any further on the road to Crazy Town. Clearly, he was already there.
“No,” Gabriel said. “I�
�m sure Professor Fraser will see to it that she has a private room, as soon as it’s certain she’s not infected.”
Whether or not she would ever be completely sane again was another question.
I swallowed some more water, rolled my shoulders a couple of times to get the kinks out, nodded, and headed inside. I wanted to get the debriefing over with so I could go find a quiet corner and grieve for Kai in private. Then maybe I’d have the emotional fortitude to go find Lil and be strong for her. But first I’d need some time to be weak, all by myself.
* * *
The rest of the wild cards were already seated at the front of the auditorium. They seemed diminished, sunken into themselves with grief. Mack sat next to Lil, a comforting arm around her shoulders, while Tony huddled by himself in a seat by the wall halfway to the back of the room. Gentry sat a few seats away from him, close enough to be there if needed, but leaving enough room to give him his own space.
I’d liked Gentry from day one, and his emotional intelligence continually impressed me. He burst any preconceived stereotypes I’d ever had of your average military grunt.
Nathan and Gabriel went up to sit at the “command central” table with Simone and Colonel Paxton. I sat on the other side of Lil, giving her hand a brief squeeze to let her know I was there. She didn’t respond. Mack’s resemblance to a mournful hound dog was more marked than ever, his eyes red with unashamed tears, everything sagging with grief.
Tony didn’t even look up at our entrance, just stared straight ahead at nothing. I wanted to hug him, but knew better than to try.
We all sat there in silence for a minute. I looked at Simone, surprised and disturbed to see her looking as if she’d aged ten years. She was dressed and groomed as impeccably as ever, but her eyes were swollen. The contrast between her grass-green irises and bloodshot whites was startling.
After all the things she’s seen—must have seen over the years, it still gets to her, I realized. Somehow, that made me afraid—maybe for all of us.
Even Paxton looked... well, he always looked sad, given his weird-ass mask of a face, but if that wasn’t genuine sorrow I saw in his eyes, he was a damned fine actor. Somehow, though, he also looked pissed off. And when he finally spoke, his voice thrummed with barely suppressed anger.
“So, what happened out there?”
Gentry started to speak, but Paxton raised a hand to cut him off.
“I’ve already received your report, Sergeant Gentry. I’m interested in hearing from the rest of the wild cards.” He looked around the room, his gaze landing on each of us, as penetrating as a laser beam. I felt judged as his gaze hit me. Tried, judged, and convicted before I’d said a word.
“Ashley?”
Shit.
“What happened?”
I took a few seconds to think about it, trying to figure out if there was any sort of “right answer” to explain what had happened. We’d all fucked up, dropped our guard. Even though Mack and I had worried about their behavior, when Tony, Kai, and Lil had dashed off to check that last trailer, we hadn’t done anything to stop them. Our passiveness was as much at fault as their cocky carelessness. Even Gabriel had been operating at less than his best, especially given his irrational behavior of late.
“Well, Ms. Parker?” Paxton stared at me, waiting for my response.
I gulped, so not wanting to be the one to say what needed to be said.
“We got careless.” I felt rather than saw Tony flinch at my words. “All of us. We didn’t stop to think about the fact there might be something or someone other than zombies that could hurt us.” I paused, unable to think of anything to add that might mitigate our part in Kai’s death.
The room was quiet.
“Anyone else have anything to add?” he asked. The quiet turned into a dead silence—the difference between an attentive classroom and a tomb.
“No?” Paxton stood up and paced back and forth in front of the table a couple times before coming to a stop in front of it. “Then I have something to say. Everyone dies. We are in the equivalent of a wartime situation. Unexpected variables come into play. Shit, as they say, happens.”
Okay, so maybe he was going to cut us some slack after all.
“But what happened to Kai?” He shook his head, and I knew we were about to get hammered. “His death should not have happened.” His gaze swept across the room again, the disappointment and anger in it like shards of white-hot shrapnel. “It was pure carelessness. Horseplay instead of professional behavior.” Lil gave a choked sob next to me. I didn’t dare look at Tony.
“And if even one of you had been paying attention, this might have been prevented.” His Shakespearean voice added extra weight—and guilt—to his words. He paused again, and then continued. “Might have been prevented. Perhaps, and perhaps not. We have no way of knowing how else this situation might have unfolded had you all been at the top of your game, instead of playing games.”
Ouch.
“I want all of you to think about this.” His voice softened marginally. “You are wild cards. You’re not invulnerable, but you’ve been given enhanced senses, and an immunity to whatever causes the dead to resurrect. You can fight in situations no one else can survive, without fear of infection. And your blood holds at least part of the answer to what could be the ultimate cure to what is arguably the greatest threat our civilization has ever faced.” Then the softness disappeared, making me wonder if it ever was there.
“To squander these advantages is inexcusable. You are among our greatest assets.”
“Kai wasn’t a fucking asset.”
We all looked up as Tony uncurled from his ball of misery and stared at Paxton with real hate.
“He was a person, and he was my friend.”
I looked at Paxton, wondering how he’d respond.
“You’re right, Tony. Kai wasn’t just a wild card, and I don’t just mourn his death as if he was a lost weapon. But in my position, I’m forced to think of these things on the most basic and practical levels, because that’s my job. It doesn’t mean I don’t respect—and feel—your loss.”
I had to give him credit. What he said made sense.
Tony didn’t reply.
“So think about this tomorrow when you go back out,” Paxton added. “This isn’t just about you. It’s not even about the survival of Redwood Grove. This is about the survival of the human race.” He stopped, and looked around the room. “Any questions?”
There weren’t any.
“Well, then.” Paxton sat back down behind the table. “I am truly sorry for your loss. I know you lost not only a teammate, but also a friend. Do his memory proud, and don’t let this happen again.”
Now don’t do it again.
I had to stifle a majorly inappropriate giggle as the line from Life of Brian made an unfortunately timed hit-and-run through my brain. Paxton shot me a look and I turned the sound into a cough, then dug my nails into my thighs.
* * *
“Sir, are you ready to order?”
Griffin looked up at the hip, twenty-something waitress who was standing in front of him. She looked somewhere past his left ear, avoiding eye contact. Typical waitress-slash-whatever-the-fuck, perfectly suited to work at a trendy wine bar in Santa Monica.
Too cool for school, this one. So he turned on the charm.
“What do you recommend, love?” The endearment could have been offensive, but just a little hint of an accent turned it into something acceptable.
“Um... what do you like?” she asked.
Griff smiled more broadly.
“Now that is an open question.”
He looked directly into her eyes before giving her body a slow up-and-down, briefly admiring the long—and thankfully not too skinny—legs displayed by her short black skirt, and breasts that were either fake or cleverly displayed in Victoria’s Secret’s most miraculous of bras. Her face was generic Hollywood starlet—collagen trout pout, perfect little nose, and a deliberately casual mane of t
he best blonde dye job her salary could buy.
Her most attractive—and genuine—features were her eyes, dark brown and framed with thick lashes. So he focused on those, giving her the full benefit of his own undeniably seductive hazel ones. Those eyes, combined with the kind of accessible bad boy looks that women loved, had yet to let him down.
He could sense both her discomfort, and her arousal.
Both reactions turned him on.
“But let’s just start with wine...” He looked at her nametag. “Mandy, is it?”
He settled on a Zinfandel from Paso Robles, flirting with Mandy enough to ensure an extra large pour. Then he settled back to enjoy people-watching from his patio seating.
It’d been a long time since he’d had the luxury of watching anyone who wasn’t wearing standard prison orange.
* * *
Mandy’s shift ended at 10 p.m., and there was no question that Griff would “walk her home.” He did just that, to a little mother-in-law cottage behind a Craftsman-style bungalow on Fourth Avenue. He walked her all the way into her bedroom, where their clothes went flying and they killed several bottles of wine in between bouts of ferociously kinky sex. Mandy had a seemingly bottomless chest of sex toys, and Griff took it as a point of pride to test out every one of them.
Hours later, both lay exhausted on Mandy’s bed, its memory foam mattress abused into amnesia. Griff reached out and poured the last dregs of very expensive Pinot Noir, savoring the aroma before drinking. He could swear his senses were more... well... sensitive since he’d rejoined the real world.
“Mmmm...” Mandy gave a little purr of satisfaction, her eyes glazed with wine, satiated lust, and exhaustion. “You are something, you—” A sharp cough cut off the rest of her sentence.
Sitting up, she reached for a bottle of Perrier on the bedside table, but another coughing fit hit before she could grab it. Griff stretched a lazy arm over her and snagged the Perrier, waiting until her coughing subsided before offering it to her.
“Thanks.” She took a sip, then another.
“You okay?” he asked.
