Plague Nation

by Dana Fredsti

  So Nathan and I followed JT to the second story balcony, off of the master bedroom. Still ahead of us, he stepped outside and looked down at the zombies.

  “Over here!” he yelled, and he spread his arms as if he was Evita addressing the masses.

  “He’s crazy,” I muttered to Nathan. We went to the balcony doors, keeping out of sight of the hordes below.

  Then I gasped as he lightly vaulted over the railing, planted his feet against the bars, and leaned out, posing like a ship’s figurehead for a moment before he threw his head back and gave an operatic howl that drove the zombies crazy with hungry expectation. They swarmed the narrow courtyard until there was a thicket of horrid, outstretched arms clamoring below him, all clawing the air in frustration.

  Then he simply let go of his grip.

  The crowd of the dead moaned as he tumbled toward their ravenous mouths. I almost screamed before his tumble turned into an expert backflip and he touched down, feet first—right on top of a solidly built zombie, one that looked like it’d spent most of its time at the gym.

  The walking corpse crumpled under the impact and JT tucked and rolled down the sidewalk, before he popped up again to his feet, all “Ta-Dah!” and none the worse for wear.

  “Come and get me, you undead pussies!” he yelled at the milling horde, waving his arms and jogging backward. The members of the Z cascade jerkily shambled and tripped over one another to get to this new meal-on-the-go. He whistled and pogo’d and smacked his own butt, saying, “Mmm, don’t you want to eat that tender ass?” all to lock in their attention, leading his would-be predators down the street like the Pied Piper of the Dead.

  Nathan gave a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “That,” I said to Nathan, “has got to be the most effectively irritating distraction in the history of the world.”

  “Damn straight.” He nodded. “Now let’s take advantage of it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  * * *

  Nathan and I hit the first floor at about the same time. I gave Gabriel the thumbs up as Nathan barked, “Let’s move!” Obediently we barreled out the front door, Gabriel and Nicks on point and the Gunsy Twins bringing up the rear. Both Lil and Gentry supported Mack, and the rest of us made sure Dr. Albert and G were sandwiched in the middle for protection. I traded my tanto for the katana, chopping off the hands of a female zombie in a blue hospital gown as it reached for G.

  I saw JT rounding the sidewalk onto Frederick so I dashed ahead of Gabriel and Nicks just in time to spot him sprinting towards the Haight, most of the horde swarming after him. The rest of the group joined me, all of us pausing to watch what was an amazing display of athleticism and pure chutzpah.

  Every time it looked as though the zombies had him within reach, he would sprint ahead again, bouncing up and off walls, vaulting over debris and barriers, and swinging around streetlights and traffic sign poles as carefree as Gene Kelly singin’ in the rain.

  Even Tony looked impressed.

  “Dude knows parkour. Total District Thirteen shit.”

  JT waved at us and flashed us thumbs up just before launching into a shoulder roll onto the hood of a burned out car, and then leapfrogging over the top.

  He didn’t come up again.

  We waited as a tide of zombies closed in around the trashed car.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said worriedly.

  Suddenly a hand came up. JT laboriously pulled himself up onto the hood like he was scaling a cliff.

  “Shit! Is he hurt?” I strained my neck trying to see.

  Then he raised his head and looked at us.

  “Fly, you fools!” he yelled, and he dropped again in a dramatic fall before leaping to his feet and hauling ass further down Frederick, leading the horde further and further away from us.

  “The Fellowship of the Ring,” G said in vaguely pleased tones.

  “Oh, my god,” I snapped, “this is not the Bridge of Thulsa Doom and—”

  “Khazad-dûm,” G corrected.

  “Whatever,” I growled. “This is not a movie. Let’s move!” With one last glance at the zombie swarm, I wondered if we really would see him again. There was no time to worry, though—we had problems of our own. There were still plenty of undead stragglers emerging to investigate the ruckus. More than likely, there wasn’t a square block of the city left that wasn’t crawling with enough cadaver power to mount a decent-sized swarm.

  We had to move fast, before the next one could come together.

  So we slipped down Frederick Street, staying close to the residential buildings. Knots of stray ghouls continued to shamble through the maze of dead cars and emerge from the trees of the park. The snipers conserved their shots to clear a path in front. The rest of us dealt with our flank on a case-by-case basis, skewering or crushing the cranium of any zombie that came too close, and leaving the rest behind.

  We rounded the corner of Arguello Boulevard and faced a slight hill. At the top was a multi-story parking structure for the University of California. It looked downright medieval—like a fortress wall. One end was all thick slabs of grey concrete with dark patches of carports. There was a rounded stone wall pierced by a series of narrow windows that looked like arrow slits. A band of crossbowmen could set up shop here and do very well for themselves, I thought. Too bad there weren’t any there now, since this street crawled with the walking dead.

  “Hug the walls and keep up, folks!” Nathan hollered from his position as Tail End Charlie.

  Up ahead Gabriel and Nicks were moving fast, and the Gunsy Twins were staying tight behind them. Nathan, Tony, and I ran interference for the rest. We had to keep our forward momentum now, because another horde was slowly growing larger in our wake. I began opting for quick katana strikes to the knees and thighs— striking at the weakest points—and as a result several of them were downgraded to crawlers, crippled and still moaning. Meanwhile Nathan was using the butt of his rifle to good effect on any undead face that came within striking distance.

  We shot, hacked, and mashed all the way uphill to Carl Street, where Gabriel and Nicks rounded the corner, and immediately began backpedaling. The shock on their faces did not bode well for the immediate future.

  Well, shit.

  “Hold up!” Gabriel called.

  He sank into a crouch, waving me and Nathan up to the front.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said in a low voice.

  I hazarded a look around the corner.

  He wasn’t kidding.

  The block ahead was a complete roadblock. A massive fire truck lay directly across our path—it had smashed right into the apartment building, and its ladder jutted out into the air at a crazy angle.

  Adding to the mayhem was a maze of clusterfucked ambulances, trucks, and cars that had poured out of the UC’s parking structure in a panic to escape, only to become mired like mammoths in a tar pit. Some of them were smoldering, the grimy black twists of smoke making it hard to see a way through, and tingeing the whole scene with an air of wartime and doom.

  Most of the firemen and drivers were still milling around the stranded vehicles in an undead daze, as if trying to swap insurance information.

  “Is there any way through it?” I asked.

  Gabriel and Nathan both scanned the ugly mess. Gabriel then pointed to the fire truck and shot a “what do you think?” look at Nathan.

  “It’s not the best option,” Nathan responded, “but we should be able to go alongside the truck, and then cut through the middle.”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “My thought exactly. I’m just not sure if it’s open all the way through. We may have to do some crawling in order to get to the other side, or climb over the top—but it’s a little Z-heavy for that.”

  “It’s not pretty,” I agreed, “but it’s either that or go back the way we came. And that route’s pretty much fubar’d at this point.”

  As if to prove my point, Nicks abruptly turned to fire off a point-blank hip sho
t that blasted an opportunistic zombie’s face and sent its corpse tumbling backwards.

  “Right.” Gabriel nodded and turned to the rest of the group. “Straight line, single file. Stay low and follow me. Let’s go!” He set off in a crouching run, gunning down a pair of ex-firemen, and disappeared into the smoky maze of gridlock. I let the snipers advance ahead of me, unslinging my M4 in order to help Nathan with the rearguard effort. The others moved swiftly past as he and I opened up on the horde coming up behind us.

  Red was the last to pass. He tapped us on the back, shouting to be heard above the roar of our suppression fire.

  “Everyone’s through!”

  I waved Nathan on, and he ran ahead, with Red and me close on his heels. We made it past a curtain of smoke to the big red wall of the fire engine, slipping into and out of the cab of the ambulance that had crashed into it, and finding ourselves stuck in a cramped triangular space. Another ambulance had crunched into the fire truck alongside the first, walling us in with no visible exit.

  I could hear more zombies coming up behind us.

  “Crawl underneath!” Nathan yelled, dropping and vanishing into the dark.

  Red and I looked dubiously at each other, and then sucked it up and squeezed underneath. It was a tight, uncomfortable fit, and the rough asphalt was slick with something wet and sticky.

  Mud? Oil? Blood?

  Probably all of the above, I thought, suppressing the urge to gag.

  There was barely enough light to see, and we would have to crawl beneath several vehicles before we could emerge again, I was guessing about eighteen yards or so ahead. I could just make out Nathan moving through the gloom ahead of us, and wondered if Red could see anything at all.

  We both scrambled as best we could to catch up, but it was slow, painful going. About a third of the way through, Red suddenly cursed.

  “Shit. I’m stuck!” He struggled to free himself. I tried to inch back to help, but found myself getting snagged when I tried to retrace my way under the vehicle.

  There was nothing I could do to help him but stay by his side, while one agonizing second after another ticked by. Was it just my imagination, or was the smell of gasoline getting stronger?

  “Fuu-uck!” Red growled, trying to free himself. “This was a bad idea.”

  Movement nearby caught my attention even as the stench and hair-raising groans announced the presence of a trio of hungry crawlers, all with wide, toothy grins.

  “Red! We’ve got company!” I tried not to sound panicked, but pretty much failed as I tried to get to any of my weapons while the zombies crept closer. I went for my tanto, but couldn’t get enough space between the ground and my body to unsheathe it.

  The nearest one scuttled up, trying to get a big juicy bite of my face. I could smell rot wafting out of its mouth and choked back bile.

  No more puking, fer crissake.

  I head-butted the thing as hard as I could, my skull slamming into its teeth before it could get a chomp in. Once, and then again. Its rotted gum-line crunched with a sickening sound, and I managed to grab the nearly forgotten Ruger from its holster, jabbing the barrel under its chin and blowing a hole through its head.

  I capped the second zombie point-blank in one eye as it closed in for a face bite of its own. I couldn’t see the third, but I could feel it pulling my leg into its jaws. I fired blindly around the first corpse. One shot went wild, but the next two hit just as I felt its teeth sink into the back of my calf. The fabric of my pants protected me, so it didn’t break the skin, but damn, that hurt!

  “Ash!” Red yelled, flailing to get free.

  “I’m okay!” I called back, trying to ignore the pain lancing up my leg. I was more concerned at the thought of more zombies finding their way under the vehicles, attracted by the ruckus. Moans and gurgles sounded to my right.

  “Come on, move it, Red!”

  He cursed again. There was a ripping sound as something gave way.

  “Okay, I’m loose,” he grunted, careful not to yell again. “Go! Go!” I didn’t need any more encouragement than that.

  We scurried as fast as we could. I paused briefly to look back and put bullets in the skulls of two of the faster zombies crawling after us.

  We passed two cracks of light from the narrow gaps between cars. I could hear shouts from the other team members, calling our names. Where were they? I couldn’t believe we weren’t in the clear yet. Could we have veered in the wrong direction?

  Red had fallen behind.

  “Ash!” he shouted.

  I turned back to him. My wild card vision picked up on his wide-eyed look of fear.

  “Ash? I—”

  He never finished.

  The darkness gave way to the flash and the roar of a blast furnace. Red disappeared in the fireball, his scream abruptly cut off even as I was thrown forward by a deafening wall of sound and heat as fire raged around me. Buffeted by a killer wave that tumbled me around, I watched as the car above me spiraled up and away. I heard the crash as it landed.

  Then I found myself on the ground under open sky, lying in between burning vehicles. I was dazed, deafened, shaken, and my pants were on fire. I rolled and beat at the flames until they were extinguished, then staggered to my feet, realizing how completely and utterly lucky I had just been. If poor Red and the bodies of those zoms hadn’t shielded me from the worst of the blast, I would have been completely barbecued.

  My head spun and ached, and my ears were ringing. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. I’d made it to the other side of the clusterfuck, although apparently I had taken the scenic route. Gabriel and Carl ran over to me from the sidewalk beyond, as Lil called my name in joyful disbelief. Gabriel looked at me in equal parts relief and amazement.

  “You are just frickin’ death-proof, aren’t you?”

  Carl looked beyond me, though.

  “What about Red?”

  I shook my head, and his jaw tightened.

  “Damn.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. Gabriel put a hand on his shoulder.

  “We have to move before the rest of these cars go up.” He looked at me. “Are you good to go?”

  Ignoring the ringing in my ear, I just said, “Which way?”

  Gabriel jerked his head back toward the steep side street ahead of us.

  “Up that hill, and we’re nearly there,” he said. “Let’s move.”

  We reformed our ranks and pushed our way up the hill. The explosion seemed to have stopped up the undead bottleneck behind us, but as always, there were plenty more on the welcoming committee ahead, with still more continuing to trickle out of the woodwork.

  A piercing whistle from somewhere overhead caught my attention. In spite of everything, my face split into a wide grin as I saw JT poking his head out from the top of an apartment building on our left. He gave a shout and leaped to the fire escape, then swung and dropped himself like a pachinko ball down the face of the building, swinging from one precarious leap to another.

  Finally he launched through the air and caught hold of a telephone pole retaining wire, grasping it like a trapeze artist. He lowered himself in a gentle, lazy spiral descent, hitting the ground with bended knees, then sauntered over to the rest of us, grinning from ear to ear.

  “How’d you lose that horde?” I asked him.

  “Noisy and flashy going out, silent and ninja-like coming back. My standard M.O.” He sniffed the air. “Hey, what smells like fried chicken? It’s making me hungry.”

  Carl glared at him.

  “I lost my friend back there, asshole.”

  JT looked at him, grin fading away.

  “I am truly sorry to hear that,” he said.

  Carl turned without a word and walked rapidly up the hill.

  JT turned to me.

  “I really am sorry.”

  “I know,” I said. “Let’s just clear out these damn zombies and get up this friggin’ hill.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  *
* *

  We were a grim-faced bunch as we reached the foot of Medical Center Way. Several large trucks crisscrossed the entrance, one lying on its side, steam still trickling sullenly from the engine, another rammed up against the first, effectively blocking off the road to any automotive traffic. Both trucks bore the logos of pharmaceutical companies—whether by coincidence or design, I didn’t even want to hazard a guess.

  Beyond the trucks, the road curved up a hill into a nature reserve filled with hiking trails. It sprawled behind the medical complex, which lay on the right. On the left was a slope overgrown with ivy and autumnal colored foliage.

  I’ve hiked those trails, I thought, suddenly struck by how surreal it all was. Never knew it was a Men in Black branch office.

  Then again, the same could be said of Redwood Grove.

  The good news for us was that the barrier also limited the number of zombies in our path. We needed all the breaks we could get, after the hell of the last few blocks. Mack was red-faced and laboring with each step, even with Lil and Gentry’s help. His shirt was dark with blood from the bite he’d sustained. I’d lay odds on it being worse than he let on.

  G was struggling valiantly to keep his cool. He stayed with Dr. Albert, checking his pocket watch periodically, muttering to himself like a thickly accented White Rabbit. Dr. Albert was also muttering, punctuated by huffing and puffing as he struggled to keep pace with Tony and Nathan, his two protectors.

  Our progress took us uphill, and I was feeling the burn myself, more than ready to collapse in a heap somewhere, preferably in a place that was free of zombies.

  I’d had enough, thank you.

  JT was the only one who seemed unaffected by Red’s death, and for that matter, the rest of the carnage. It was as if he carried an unlimited source of energy, like an Energizer Bunny on crack. Every wall, building, and object, instead of being an obstacle, provided another opportunity for acrobatics. The world was his trampoline. He would have been a joy to watch if not for the circumstances.