Plague Nation

by Dana Fredsti

  Now that it had been unleashed, however, it was something that could be used.

  He loved his country, still did, and was willing to go to any lengths to protect it. That much hadn’t changed. The difference now was, ideas he used to view as representative of the enemy, something to be defeated, had become tools that could be used to cleanse the nation of those who didn’t show the proper respect for the stars and stripes. Those who were bringing the once grand nation to its knees with apathy and disrespect.

  The true enemy.

  They’d abdicated their right to protection by the military.

  He turned his attention to the screen—reality TV in its purest form. An obscure town in Wisconsin overrun by the walking dead, its population either devoured or turned into yet more ravenous corpses.

  Citizens of Salt Lake City reeling at the sight of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, ripped to pieces mid-performance.

  So much for magic underwear.

  Lansing, Michigan, as the virus spread from the college to the surrounding communities.

  Chaos in the Financial District of San Francisco as the ravenous dead joined the happy hour festivities. He suppressed a chuckle. He’d never liked San Francisco. What kind of city made it legal for grown men to walk around buck-ass naked?

  They all deserved their fate.

  He took a sip of a perfectly blended Manhattan before reaching for a bite-sized cube of red meat, almost rare enough to be considered raw, seasoned with salt and pepper. Thank Christ he’d always been a meat and potatoes man. Made this whole thing much easier.

  “What’s the status on Dr. Albert?”

  A very successful financier, statuesque, blonde, and still impressively sexy in her fifties, checked something on an iPad before replying.

  “On his way to the lab at UCSF, along with the wild cards.”

  He frowned at that.

  “He’s on one of the helicopters?”

  She nodded, looking pleased with herself.

  “Measures have been taken to ensure that neither helicopter reaches the lab.”

  “You do know that we need Dr. Albert and the other—the half-deader—kept alive.” His tone was soft, almost gentle, but something in it caused the financier to take an involuntary step backward.

  “Y... yes,” she replied.

  “So it didn’t occur to anyone to find out which helicopter they would be on?”

  The financier gulped audibly.

  “Our contact was unable to obtain that information so we thought it best to make adjustments to both. We’re not expecting any fatalities.”

  “Well, if there are,” he said, “we’ll... discuss it later.”

  She blanched as he smiled at her.

  “Any word on Typhoid Mary?” His tone was casual as he enjoyed another piece of meat, washed down by more Manhattan. He smiled to himself as his companions averted their eyes.

  “Ah, yes.” The reply came from a well-known media figure, famous for his deliberately over-the-top radio shows. There was no sign of his signature self-righteous bluster as he continued, “He’s in Los Angeles. He’s... been cleaning up after himself.”

  “That’s unexpected. All of them?”

  The talk-show host nodded nervously.

  “He’s been very thorough.”

  He took another sip of his drink and contemplated this turn of events. He’d counted on Typhoid Mary to spread the disease in his own unique way. He hadn’t anticipated the appearance of a social conscience.

  Maybe it was time to bring Mary back into the fold, and have a chat about the rules.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  * * *

  They say that if you expect the worst, that’s what you’re likely to get. I say it’s okay to set one’s expectations at rock bottom, so you can be pleasantly surprised.

  Our descent was reminiscent of the Tea Cups ride at Disneyland. I’d only ridden the Tea Cups once, because it made me violently ill.

  The landing itself was actually anticlimactic—mostly on the “pleasantly surprised” end of the spectrum—with no jarring thuds, fireballs, claxons, or any other clichés.

  Someone opened the helicopter door, and I stumbled toward the fresh air, so dizzy I would have fallen if one of the nice snipers hadn’t caught me and helped me down to the ground, where I immediately collapsed onto my knees, trying my best not to lose my cookies. My best wasn’t good enough, however, and once again I worshipped the porcelain god without any actual porcelain.

  Once I’d finished emptying my poor abused stomach, I folded onto the ground and just breathed in and out for a minute, letting the nausea pass. Lil handed me a bottle of water, which I took gratefully with a strong sense of déjà vu. I swilled some of it, spit it out, and then swallowed some. Someone else offered me an Altoid. The curiously strong mint helped settle my stomach and made my mouth a place I could live with.

  “Why isn’t anyone else puking?” I asked resentfully.

  “I never throw up,” Lil said primly.

  “All those video games I play,” Tony said. “You oughta try some. Maybe your stomach wouldn’t be so wussy.”

  “Thanks loads, Tony.”

  “No prob.”

  I suspect my sarcasm didn’t register.

  Soon I felt well enough to survey my surroundings. Water to the north, benches and buildings to the east and west, lots of trees to the south. Crissy Field used to be an airfield, but it’d been converted to a flat, hard-packed promenade alongside the bay, with some kick-ass views of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. There were plenty of places for picnicking, and some scenic tidal marsh overlooks. A nice spot for biking, windsurfing, hiking, or just to take a gentle stroll.

  Or a nice lurch.

  The smell of sea and salt suddenly mixed with Eau de Necrosis, and the plaintive moans of the undead combined with the sounds of car horns, sirens, and distant screams.

  “Uh, guys?” I pointed eastward toward a little snack place called The Warming Hut, where several fresh-looking zombies were staggering around the corner, looking for food that the Hut didn’t have on its menu.

  The Gunsy Twins unslung their firearms, which looked substantially more high-tech than our “squirrel rifles.” They used them with quiet efficiency, taking out the zombies before they’d made it more than a few steps toward us. I caught Tony eying the snipers with blatant gun envy and clutching his BAS—big ass shotgun— even closer. Some people had security blankets, others preferred teddy bears. And then there was Tony.

  The flight crew joined us on the ground.

  “Any word from Zed Two?” Gabriel asked them.

  The pilot, a solidly built Latino in his twenties, hesitated briefly before answering.

  “I haven’t been able to raise them since we landed, sir. Hal’s an experienced pilot, though, so my bets are that something shook loose in the com system when they hit ground.”

  I winced at the words “hit ground.”

  “Well, what the hell happened?” Gabriel sounded angry. “Why did we go down in the first place?”

  The pilot shook his head.

  “We’re not sure,” he said earnestly. “Fuel tanks started dumping, and the rotor engines went all to hell.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Sounded like the same thing.”

  The mechanic scratched his head thoughtfully, dislodging the non-regulation Giants baseball hat that covered short red hair so bright it was practically fluorescent. Combine that with at least six and a half feet of height, and he’d never get lost in a crowd.

  “Funny thing is,” he said, “both of these birds were serviced less than a month ago.”

  Sounded like sabotage to me. Someone really didn’t want Dr. Albert to find the cure. Or, if he did, they didn’t want the wild cards or the DZN to have access to it. What I couldn’t figure out was what the reasoning could be, although I’d bet it had something to do with money and/or power.

  Doesn’t everything?

  The only consolation was tha
t they hadn’t planted bombs or done some other hinky shit that would have brought us down in fiery pieces. So killing us wasn’t a priority. Or maybe keeping Dr. Albert alive was more important.

  Arrrgh. This sort of Machiavellian shit made my brain hurt. Besides, we didn’t have time to figure out all the whos, wheres, whats, whys, and hows of it. That was someone else’s job. Team A needed to meet up with Team B, get to the laboratory, make more antiserum for Gabriel, and establish a secure location for everyone from Redwood Grove and the survivors of San Francisco.

  Piece of cake.

  Gabriel’s radio squawked from its holster on his belt. He grabbed it, answered, and walked a few feet away.

  “Do you think he’s talking to Colonel Paxton?” Lil asked me.

  “If it’s not, we need to let the colonel know what happened,” I said. “And Simone, too.”

  “I’m sure they’re monitoring things back at Big Red,” Dr. Albert said with irritating assurance. “She undoubtedly already knows.”

  He was probably right, but I still wanted to smack the smug right out of him.

  Gabriel came walking back, radio in its holster.

  “That was Nathan,” he announced.

  “Is everyone okay?” Lil asked. By “everyone” I was pretty sure she meant Mack.

  “Their landing was rougher than ours,” Gabriel answered, “but no fatalities. One of the snipers sustained a bad concussion, and Mack took a hard blow on one of his knees when the bird went down.”

  Lil gasped.

  “Can he walk?” Her tone was anxious.

  Gabriel nodded.

  “They’ve treated it as well as they can.”

  “But what if he has to run?”

  I patted her on the shoulder.

  “He’s a wild card, Lil. He’ll heal up quickly.” She still looked worried, so I added, “C’mon, this is Mack we’re talking. He’s smart, he’s resourceful, and no way Nathan or Gentry would leave him behind. They know you’d kill ’em,” I said with my best grim smile.

  Gabriel continued.

  “Nathan says the biggest issue now is the number of zombies in their immediate vicinity. The one sniper isn’t in any shape to do his job, so the flight crew called for an evacuation. If they can get to Golden Gate Park, they can make it out on one of the Chinooks being sent in for general evac.”

  “How the hell are they gonna control that situation?” I said, thinking of the scene in Titanic where the passengers were trampling everyone in sight. Substitute helicopters for the lifeboats, and zombies for the iceberg, and you had a recipe for total chaos.

  “Lots of weapons,” Gabriel replied without a trace of irony.

  “So what’s the plan then?” I asked. “Are we sticking to redundancy, and seeing who makes it to UCSF first, or are we going to try a rendezvous, and head to the campus together?” Without a doubt, I was for option number two. I preferred the idea of one well-armed team, with plenty of manpower.

  Gabriel hesitated, and before he could form his reply, Dr. Albert jumped in.

  “We don’t have time to rendezvous,” he protested anxiously. “Our primary objective must be to reach the lab, so I can continue my research!”

  “It seems to me,” I said, “that we stand a better chance making it there if there are more of us. I mean, it’s a medical facility, right? So the odds are high that there’s already a hell of a lot of zombies, not to mention infected civilians.”

  “And we don’t abandon our friends,” Lil added.

  “Damned straight,” Tony growled. “No man left behind, right?” He turned to Gabriel. “Because Gentry sure as shit wouldn’t abandon us.”

  Much to my relief, Gabriel nodded in agreement.

  “For now both teams are going to head for Kezar Pavilion, the stadium at the eastern end of Golden Gate Park,” he said, “less than half a mile from UCSF. We’ll head straight there, while Team B will drop the flight crew and the injured at the Bison Paddock, where the evacuations will commence.”

  The pilot stepped forward.

  “What about us, sir? We didn’t sign on for a trip into zombie town on foot. This was supposed to be drop-off on location.”

  “The two of you are welcome to make your way to the evac area on your own,” Gabriel said, “but this team needs to get the doctor to the campus and get that lab up and running as quickly as possible. We can’t afford even the slightest detour.”

  “So the other flight crew gets an armed escort, but we have to take our chances?” The mechanic joined the pilot, ready to argue.

  Gabriel looked at him.

  “The other flight crew sustained some major injuries. They need the help. You don’t. Your other alternative is to accompany us to the target destination, help us achieve our mission, and enjoy the benefits of our additional firepower. It’s up to you.”

  He turned to the rest of us.

  “Our priority is getting Dr. Albert to the campus in one piece. He knows the location of the hidden entrance, at the back of the medical center.” He paused, and then added, “Push comes to shove, nothing else matters.” He tossed me a meaningful look.

  “You’re lucky.” Tony gave Dr. Albert a nasty look. “If you weren’t important, I’d just feed you to those motherfuckers.”

  Guess Tony’d redirected his anger to the point of origin.

  Dr. Albert gave one of his patented outraged sputters.

  “You’d best show more respect, young man,” he said. “I may be your only hope for a cure.”

  Tony just stared at him.

  “Like I said, you’re lucky.”

  “That’s enough, Tony,” Gabriel snapped. “We don’t have time to waste on this shit.”

  As if to prove his point, a discordant chorus of moans rose from behind the buildings that lined the south end of the field. It was hard to tell exactly where they were coming from, though. Maybe they were carried by the wind, which was rising even as we stood there, gusts whipping up frothy whitecaps on the water. The longer we stayed in one place, the more the zombies would hone in on whatever “fresh meat” beacon they followed.

  So it was time for us to get the hell out of Crissy Field.

  I also noticed sweat beading up on Gabriel’s brow and upper lip, a sure sign that his meds were starting to lose their oomph—and it’d only been six hours since he’d taken his last dose. It wasn’t a good sign.

  “So, you in, or out?” I turned and addressed the two-man flight crew. “Because we need to leave. You guys are military, so you stand a good chance of making it to the evac area on your own. But... we could use your help. And it would pretty much be helping all of humanity. But it’s totally up to you.” I smiled cheerfully.

  The pilot raised an eyebrow.

  “Wow. You could teach my Catholic grandmother a thing or two about guilt trips.”

  “My mother instilled the value of a good guilt trip at a very young age.”

  The pilot and mechanic moved away a few feet and conferred quietly, either forgetting or unaware that the wild cards could hear every word. Turned out the guilt trip didn’t carry as much weight as having an armed escort. They also thought their odds would be better at UCSF, rather than with the masses of evacuees in Golden Gate Park.

  They were probably right.

  At any rate, it was no surprise when the pilot turned back.

  “We’ll be going with you,” he said.

  “Good choice.” I smiled, and held out my hand. “I’m Ashley.”

  “Carl.” The pilot shook my hand. “And this is Red.”

  “Seriously?” Oh, crap, that was my outside voice.

  The mechanic just grinned.

  “Seriously, ma’am. I’ve had this—” he patted his very red hair “—from birth.”

  “Okay, then.” I shook his hand too. He had a good, strong grip. “Carl, Red—welcome to the team.”

  Suddenly a couple of shots rang out. The Gunsy Twins took out a couple of zombies that had figured out there was fresh meat in the vicin
ity. In the meantime, Gabriel had pulled out what looked like your basic iPhone and punched a few buttons. I had a feeling it had more apps than Apple had authorized.

  “Okay, so there are three recommended routes from here to Kezar Pavilion. All of them skirt along the edge of the Presidio, and take various surface streets. In theory, an easy hour-and-a-half stroll. In reality, we’ll run into zombies no matter which way we choose.”

  “So why are we wasting time talking about it?” Lil suddenly burst out, green eyes flashing with impatience. “Let’s do this!”

  Gabriel and I exchanged a brief glance. I gave a tiny nod, then gave Lil a quick one-armed hug.

  “You ready, Freddie?”

  She gave a surprised bark of laughter.

  “My mom always says that.”

  “Mine, too,” I said quickly, hoping to head off any angst. “So let’s go find the rest of the gang, and kick some zombie ass, okay?”

  “Okay.” To my relief, Lil returned my hug. Still, it reminded me that Gabriel wasn’t the only person in our group I needed to worry about being off their meds.

  It took about five minutes to offload our gear, stuffing knapsacks and duffel bags full of ammo like over-indulgent parents stuffing Christmas stockings with candy. Our ammo supply wasn’t limitless, but it would last for a while.

  * * *

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Well, crap.

  Mack limped along as best he could, trying to ignore the pain shooting up his left ankle with every step. The medic had wrapped it as best he could before they’d grabbed their gear from the downed helicopter and skedaddled through the golf course, through an ever increasing number of zombies pouring out of the Legion of Honor museum.

  Why there were so many zombies at the exhibit was a mystery. Maybe someone with Walker’s had been on one of the jumbo tour buses parked in the adjacent lot. Whatever the reason, there were a lot of damn zoms inside the museum.

  Maybe they’re culture lovers.

  Mack chuckled at the thought.

  Legion of Honor sure was a pretty spot. He glimpsed the ocean through trees, over the line of cars snaking their way down the back road alongside the top of the cliffs. The air smelled like sea breeze and eucalyptus. Well, and rotted flesh, but he tried to ignore that.