Plague Nation

by Dana Fredsti

  Another totally inconvenient coughing fit wracked my body, doubling me over as the man in the van stumbled out. He swung a fist, catching me with a glancing blow to my chin, followed by another blow to the back of my head. That one sent me down to the ground again, still coughing.

  Fuck you, I thought again, exhaustion making me repetitive. I lashed out with a roundhouse kick as the man reached for the fallen firearm, catching him squarely in the back of the knees, sending him sprawling to the ground on top of Dr. Albert’s unconscious body. I waited until he tried to stand up, then thrust one heel into his head in a fairly lazy yet effective side kick, knocking him out.

  One of the would-be kidnappers I’d thumped with the baton leapt into the van as the motor roared. It surged forward, careening into a bush before slamming into reverse, the right back tire running over the guy I’d put down with my side kick. I grabbed Dr. Albert’s limp body and yanked him clear as the van accelerated forward, then careened back again.

  This time right in my direction.

  I threw us both into the bushes, pulling Dr. Albert underneath the low hanging branches and off to the side. The van barely missed us, its rear bumper smashing through the bushes right next to us and into the brick wall of the building behind. The driver once again accelerated, the van’s tires squealing as it shot forward, veered to the left, and took off down the narrow path.

  Guess whoever was driving decided it was better to get the hell out. Fine by me—I was pretty much done for the evening.

  As I sunk back to the ground, I heard footsteps pounding in my direction, voices shouting. My head pounded, sinuses totally clogged. I would have killed for a Neti pot about now.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  * * *

  “Ashley?”

  I opened my eyes and looked up to see Mack hovering over me. Good. If Mack was there, I knew I could rest.

  “You okay, hon?”

  I nodded.

  “Yup. But make sure these assholes don’t go anywhere.” I gave a general wave I hoped was in the right direction.

  “It’s okay,” Mack said in that soothing storyteller voice of his. “They’re not going anywhere.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then they can tell us what the hell is going on.”

  “Well, no, they can’t.” Mack helped me back to my feet, supporting me as I swayed back and forth unsteadily. “One’s dead, and the other doesn’t look like he’ll be waking up any time soon.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did I do it?” I didn’t think I’d hit that hard. Not that I was sorry.

  “Only if you were driving whatever ran over his face.”

  Euwww.

  “Ashley!”

  Lil came barreling around the corner of Patterson Hall, with Gentry and Gabriel close behind. Gabriel’s face looked garishly white beneath a coating of soot. Lil reached me first, the impact of her hug nearly knocking me back to the ground. She hung onto me with the strength of a very determined limpet.

  “You’re okay,” she said, her tone fierce, almost angry.

  “Told you I would be, didn’t I?” I gave her a feeble hug back.

  Gabriel put an arm around me.

  “You alright, Ash?”

  “I got the black lung, Pop.” I gave a weak but genuine cough.

  Gentry snorted, even as he was helping Dr. Albert to his feet. I gave him a weak smile, wishing Kai and Tony were there to share the Zoolander moment. The grin slid from my face as I remembered that Kai would never share another quote.

  “Those men!” The doctor had regained consciousness, and was struggling to sit up. “They were trying to kidnap me!”

  “They would have gotten away with it, if not for us darn kids.” I started giggling again, which led to another coughing fit. Gabriel offered me a bottle of water, keeping a firm arm around my shoulders. I leaned against him and sipped from the plastic bottle.

  “Why would anyone want to kidnap you?” Lil looked at Dr. Albert as if he were a particularly stinky turd.

  “Probably for the same reason they set fire to the lab, and tried to kill Simone.” We all looked up to see Nathan striding toward us, face and clothes coated with soot. Damn, but that man had a knack for dramatic entrances.

  “They—” Dr. Albert swallowed hard. “Someone tried to kill Professor Fraser?”

  Nathan looked at him impassively.

  “They shot her then locked her in a closet to burn to death,” he said. “If that qualifies as attempted homicide, then yes.”

  “Is she okay?” I managed to get out three words without coughing again. Yay for me.

  “She’s a wild card.” Nathan patted me on the shoulder. “The bullet wound will heal, and she’ll have a sore throat for a day or so—like you and me—but she’ll be fine.”

  “That’s good news.” Dr. Albert’s tone sounded strained. “Did she say anything? See who did it?” I looked at him and his gaze skittered away from mine. If he wasn’t hiding something, he was doing a good job of disguising his lack of guilt.

  Something in Nathan’s expression told me he wasn’t entirely convinced of Dr. Albert’s sincerity either, but he chose to answer the question anyway.

  “Yeah. About a half-dozen guys in fire-retardant gear stormed the lab, killed everyone they could. Simone was shot, but made it to the supply closet. They rigged the exits so that even if she got out, the fire would take care of her. Then they either destroyed or stole all of the vaccine supplies, tissue samples, and data that has been assembled to date.

  “With Simone dead and the doctor MIA, our chances of stopping the plague would be crippled.”

  “But why would anyone do that?” Lil asked, the look on her face genuinely confused.

  Nathan’s expression softened when he looked at her.

  “I’m going to take a wild guess that they want what Simone and the good doctor have been working on and don’t want anyone else to have it,” he said. “It would take months—maybe years—for us to catch up again. Even with backup, we’d have lost everything that was in their heads.”

  “‘So who did this?” I had to ask.

  Nathan walked over to one of the sprawled bodies and pulled off the balaclava that covered the head and face to reveal a young man.

  “Recognize him?”

  It’s Old Man Johnson, I thought, and giggled quietly.

  “That’s Rollins.” Gentry stared down at the body. “He joined the Zed Tactical Squad last month. I trained him.”

  “So it was an inside job,” Mack said.

  Lil narrowed her eyes and glared at Dr. Albert.

  “Maybe you planned it,” she said.

  “M-m-me?” Dr. Albert stuttered with outrage, either real or well contrived. “Why would I destroy my own work?”

  I thought about it, then answered for her.

  “Maybe to hide your major-league fuck-up of setting loose the zombie bug in the first place? Seems like decent motivation to me.”

  “Ridiculous!” Dr. Albert snapped. “All of my notes, all of my research.” He swallowed hard, his voice bleak as he continued, “I would never destroy it. It’s my life’s work.”

  Strangely enough, I believed him, simply because his ego was so huge that I couldn’t imagine him allowing his work to be burned. But then, on the other hand, if the information and samples had been stolen, secreted away to another location.

  “But it wasn’t all destroyed, right?” My voice was hard as I left the shelter of Gabriel’s arm and walked over until I was face-to-face with my childhood doctor. More or less, considering I was at least six inches taller.

  “So who’s to say the whole kidnapping scenario wasn’t faked to spirit you out of here, so you could work on, say, a new improved super-zombie bug somewhere else?”

  Dr. Albert looked at me with what I could swear was genuine hurt.

  “Ashley Parker, I’ve been your doctor since you were an infant,” he said, his voice faltering. “How you could believe I’d do someth
ing so heinous—”

  “Um... Walker’s vaccine without any real testing?” I stared at him, refusing to feel guilty for his tender feelings.

  “Fine!” His face reddened as hurt evaporated in a wave of self-righteous indignation. “Yes, I knew the results of the tests for Walker’s vaccine were falsified, and I did it to speed up distribution, but only in select, controlled environments, and only because Walker’s had the potential to cause a pandemic that would surpass the Spanish Flu as a global disaster.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing we only have the walking dead to worry about now,” I shot back.

  “Yes, we do, and I am committed to finding a cure!” He looked around at all of us, not finding a sympathetic face among the group. “You must believe me!”

  He was genuinely distressed—even frightened, that much was certain. But I couldn’t shake the feeling he knew or suspected more about the fire than he was letting on.

  “Everything is gone?” I could tell Gabriel was working hard to keep his voice carefully neutral.

  Nathan nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “They were thorough.”

  Gabriel stood frozen in place, and it was as if he’d stared into the face of Medusa. I hurried back to his side.

  “Gabriel, what—”

  Then it hit me.

  His antidote. The magic potion that kept him stable. He looked at me, naked despair breaking through his carefully guarded expression.

  “Ash, without the antiserum...” His voice trailed off. We both knew what would happen without it, and so did everyone else in the immediate vicinity.

  “Can you make more?” I rounded on Dr. Albert, jarring him from his own little world of self pity. He blinked, looking like a cross between a startled owl and a confused rodent.

  “More of the Walker’s vaccine?”

  I wanted to smack him across the head for being so obtuse.

  “More of the antiserum that’s keeping Gabriel human.”

  “With the proper ingredients and equipment, of course.” He sounded indignant that I’d even had to ask. The man went from defensive to arrogant with amazing rapidity. “Although without my notes, or a sample of the serum, it will require time.”

  “How much time?”

  “A week, maybe two. I don’t know, precisely.”

  I looked at Gabriel again. His expression made it clear that he didn’t have that much time.

  I shook my head in denial.

  “There’s got to be something you can do, right?” I glared at Dr. Albert, the urge to whack him a good one increasing by the minute. “You made the stuff, you can make more.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Dr. Albert snapped back impatiently. “If I had a sample of the antiserum, it would cut the time down substantially, but I’d still need the proper equipment, and supplies to synthesize more. Those no longer exist on this campus!”

  Frustrated, I stomped away from him and nearly tripped over the insulated tote I’d rescued from the lab, my right foot catching in the strap. I stumbled, but kept my balance even as my forward momentum dragged the tote forward about a foot.

  Glass clinked inside of it.

  My anger was suddenly replaced with a flare of wild hope. Hardly daring to breathe, I pulled my foot away from the strap, dropped to my knees, and unzipped the top of the bag with trembling fingers. Jumbled inside were maybe a few dozen little liquid-filled glass vials, sealed with colored metal caps. Broken bits of glass testified that there’d been more of them before my mad dash out of the lab.

  Instantly Nathan covered the ground between us. Gabriel was just a step behind.

  “Is that the bag Simone had with her?” Nathan demanded.

  I nodded mutely, my throat constricted by an overwhelming combination of hope and fear as I handed him one of the vials. I looked over to see the same emotions mirrored on Gabriel’s face. I wanted to give him a reassuring smile, but couldn’t make my facial muscles cooperate. I was too damned scared.

  “Dr. Albert, would you please take a look at this and tell us what it is?” Nathan said.

  Coming out of his self-centered fog, Dr. Albert approached somewhat cautiously, as if expecting me to bite him or something, but as soon as he saw what Nathan held, he had eyes for nothing but the vial.

  “Did this come from the lab?” he asked as Nathan dropped the vial into the doctor’s outstretched hand.

  “It did.”

  “Are there more?”

  Nathan pointed at the bag, and Dr. Albert’s eyes lit up.

  “Marvelous!” he said. “Simply marvelous!”

  I couldn’t take it any more.

  “Is it Gabriel’s antiserum?” I said.

  “No, no, it’s a sample of the last version of the cure we synthesized. This is a real stroke of luck!”

  My hope plummeted faster and harder than Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff.

  “Are you sure?”

  “This one has a red cap, see?” He held up the vial to show me. “Gabriel’s serum has blue caps.”

  I scrabbled in the bag and pulled out one of the vials with a blue lid. “Like this?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s right.” Dr. Albert smiled. “Blue lid.”

  I let a Matrix joke go unsaid as I shut my eyes for a brief second, clutching the vial tightly in my hand.

  “So now you need...”

  “A laboratory with the proper equipment,” he replied, “and ingredients to make more.”

  “Is there anything suitable nearby?”

  “Professor Fraser would have a better idea of location than I would,” he said, “but I expect there’s something within a few hundred miles, yes.” He reached for the insulated tote, but I was faster and snatched it up. I wanted to personally make sure it was delivered to Simone.

  Not that I didn’t trust Dr. Albert or anything.

  Oh, wait, I didn’t trust him. Silly me.

  I stood up and handed the bag to Nathan.

  “Can you make sure this gets to Simone?”

  “I can take it to her,” Dr. Albert huffed.

  “No need,” Nathan said, throwing the strap over his shoulder.

  “But I’d like to see exactly what’s in there,” Dr. Albert responded. “It is my work, after all!”

  Nathan raised an eyebrow.

  “I thought you and Simone were working on this stuff together.”

  “Well, yes, technically, but it’s still based on my original work.”

  I’m sure your mother would be very proud, I thought, and gave the doctor a false smile.

  “Well, she trusted Nathan and me to get it safely out of the lab, and I’d personally feel better if one of us handed it back to her.” I turned. “Right, Nathan?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Dr. Albert sputtered indignantly, but even his ego wasn’t strong enough to go face-to-face with Nathan.

  I went to Gabriel, who still seemed to be in a state of paralysis. Taking one of his hands, I pressed the vial against his palm.

  “There are at least a dozen of these in that bag, maybe more,” I said softly. “How much time does that buy us?” I used “us” deliberately, looking him in the eye and silently daring him to contradict me.

  He held onto the vial for a few seconds, as if he had to convince himself it was real. Then he swallowed, gave a long exhale and answered.

  “I’m up to two a day.” He paused. “I can do one, if I have to, but it’s not optimal.”

  “So two a day, if we want you bearable, and one if we don’t mind dealing with you in jerk mode.”

  Gabriel gave a short laugh.

  “Something like that.”

  “Then we have around a week to find what we need.” I nodded to myself. “We can totally do this.”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  I shrugged.

  “What’s the point? You wouldn’t let me give up when the swarm had us surrounded, and here we are, still alive. Besides—” I grinned up at him “—you know I’ll stil
l like you, even if you aren’t vegan, right?”

  He laughed again, this time more genuinely, then drew me to him in a hug as fierce as Lil’s had been. I clung to him as sirens sounded in the distance, growing closer by the moment.

  GRAND LEDGE, MICHIGAN

  “Shit.”

  Gage stared fixedly towards the northeast side of the Grand Ledge Railroad Bridge, trying to penetrate the gloom. The November skies had been gray with the threat of rain, even before the sun started to fade. Now shadows merged together, making it impossible to tell how many figures lurked on the tracks.

  “Why won’t they go away?” Stacy’s voice rose in a shrill pitch that matched the whistling of the wind above the Grand River.

  “Shh!” Gage held up a hand, dropping his voice to a whisper. “They’re there... but so far they don’t seem too interested. Chris, what about the other side?”

  “They’re still there.” Chris’s voice was hoarse from coughing, his mild cold of the past two days now settled deep into his chest. “And they definitely are interested.” He fell silent, then added, “We are so fucked.”

  The three of them had been at the theater’s fundraising dinner. Chris and Stacy, both bit players at the Spotlight Theater, were currying favor with the management by filling in as wait-staff while Gage, who currently had a sweet fight choreography gig, fulfilled his duty by looking dashing in full-on cavalier costume and flirting with the wealthy patrons.

  Gage also had been flirting outrageously with Stacy as she served “ale and foin wine, good sair” at the big oak bar. She looked hot in her peasant wench get-up, with one of those vest thingees that made her boobs pop up on display. Chris, on the other hand—in obligatory doublet, tights, puffy shirt and breeches, while carting around platters of roast chicken and prime rib—had flirted pretty heavily with Gage.

  Gage didn’t mind. He was an equal opportunity horndog.

  When the initial attack occurred, people thought it was part of the entertainment. Gage had recognized some of them as fellow actors, others as patrons of the Spotlight Theater and residents of Grand Ledge. He knew a lot of them, and assumed they wouldn’t hurt anyone. He truly believed that until the moment the theater’s resident leading lady and diva bitch tore a chunk out of her leading man.