Plague Nation

by Dana Fredsti

  The first guy spoke again.

  “Do it or I’ll shoot him,” he said. “I don’t have orders for the rest of you, one way or the other. I’d just as soon not waste bullets, but I will if you piss me off.”

  “It’s okay, hon,” Mack said. “I’ve got this.”

  Lil growled under her breath, but stepped away from him, as did Gentry. Mack swayed on his feet, but managed to stay upright—most likely out of sheer stubbornness.

  G muttered to himself. On total autopilot, he reached into his jacket for his pocket watch.

  You idiot! I thought. No!

  Guns swiveled toward him with a chorus of clicks. G woke up and pulled his hand out as if something had bitten it.

  “It’s just a pocket watch, you son of a bitch,” I said softly. No one bothered to answer.

  The other men vanished into the front building with Gabriel and Dr. Albert.

  “No fucking way. This is not going to happen.”

  The man in front cocked his head to one side and looked at me.

  “You don’t think so?”

  Crap, did I say the quiet part loud?

  Yeah, I did.

  He stepped directly in front of me, looking me up and down. I could see myself reflected in his sunglasses, my face smudged with smoke, blood, and grit.

  “You must be Ashley Parker,” he said.

  He knew my name. That could not be a good thing.

  He smiled. That made it even less of a good thing.

  “I have a present for you, from an old friend,” he said, and pointed his rifle at my head.

  Lil screamed—the sound reverberating through the enclosed space—and rushed forward, knocking the barrel of his rifle down as he pulled the trigger. There was a metallic ping as the bullet ricocheted off the metal floor of the catwalk. Nathan and Gentry rushed him, wrestling the rifle away before he could fire again.

  The second man’s face grew ugly as he raised his weapon, but before he could fire it, something dropped from the metal struts in the roof above, and landed on him like a spider monkey.

  Or Spider-Man... It was JT.

  His feet hit the gunman square on the back of his neck, sending the man down on his knees, hard enough to make the entire catwalk shudder. The guy lost his grip on his rifle, and it clattered to the floor.

  Should’ve used a sling, asshole.

  JT hit the ground in a shoulder roll, popping back up to his feet with a little bow.

  “Miss me?” he said with that manic grin.

  “Maybe just a little,” I said. “Thanks.” I grabbed the fallen rifle and swung the stock down at the gunman’s head as hard as I could, pulling the blow at the last second so I wouldn’t kill him. Not that I had any ethical issues with killing the asshole, but we might need to get information out of him.

  In the meantime, my would-be assassin was on his knees, hands clasped behind his head as Nathan covered the bastard with his own weapon.

  “Where are they taking them?” he said in a tone that managed to convey a world of hurt without raising his voice. Before the man could reply, yet another gunshot cracked in the enclosed space. His eyes widened in momentary surprise as the back of his head exploded.

  One of the men in forest camos stood by the open door to the right, aiming his rifle. A second shot sounded and the man I’d knocked out twitched once, as a bullet took him in the skull.

  “Down!” Nathan yelled.

  We all hit the deck—all except JT, who hit the side of the bridge interior, using walls, struts and floor to cover distance between him and the gunman. He was an impossible-to-hit moving target and after two shots, the gunman stopped trying. Instead, he suddenly opened the door to the left.

  Then he vanished through the one on the right, closing it after him. JT dropped to the ground with a puzzled expression.

  Almost immediately zombies started pouring out of the door on the left.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  * * *

  JT immediately took to the ceiling as undead hands reached for him, swinging his way back toward us and dropping back down in front of the elevator.

  “Son of a bitch!” Nathan tossed Jones the rifle in his hands and slammed his hand on the elevator call button. “Ash, give your weapon to Gentry—he’s a better shot.” I didn’t argue, doing as he said. “Everyone else, get ready to grab our gear as soon as that car gets up here.”

  He immediately turned to a panel next to the elevator doors and pulled a key out of one of his vest pockets.

  “Is that—”

  He nodded.

  “We had copies of the key made before we left Redwood Grove.” Flipping the panel cover up, he fit the key into a little slot and rotated it. Another little panel popped open, revealing a dark blue button. Nathan pushed it, then retrieved and pocketed the key.

  Jones and Gentry aimed carefully, taking out the zoms in the front of the hungry queue, trying to create a barrier of corpses to slow down the ones behind. They were all dressed in hospital gowns, and I wondered if they were spryer in death than they had been in life.

  As before, it worked to some degree, but determined zombies kept pushing their way through much in the way little old ladies with shopping carts managed to negotiate the local Wal-Mart on Black Friday—with total disregard for anyone or anything in their path.

  I dropped down beside the dead gunmen and dug through their pockets. Nathan gave me an approving nod as I triumphantly held up a half dozen spare cartridges, handing them to Jones and Gentry as they ejected the empties.

  Meanwhile the first elevator car slowly groaned its way back up to the catwalk. From somewhere deeper in the shaft, another car also begin its ascent toward us.

  Zombies continued pouring out the door, their corpses piling up, but a few were making it through despite Jones and Gentry’s best efforts. And they were on the last two cartridges.

  Jones ran dry first. I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m immune,” I said, “and you’re not.” He handed me the rifle, which I flipped over to use as a bludgeon just as Gentry ejected his last cartridge. Looking at each other, we gave a simultaneous battle cry and charged, cracking little old undead skulls for all we were worth.

  A rush of adrenaline hit me in a wave. Suddenly this was for every time I’d had my foot run over and knees bashed by one of those aforementioned psychoseptuagenarians. Did it make me a bad person that I enjoyed it?

  At that moment, I didn’t care.

  The first elevator car reached the catwalk. Tony and Jones were inside even before the doors finished opening, tossing out bags and weapons until the car was empty. Lil shouted my name, and I turned as she tossed me my sheathed katana.

  I dropped the rifle, caught the katana by the hilt, and unsheathed it in one smooth movement I probably couldn’t replicate if I practiced it for hours. Lil dashed up beside me, pickaxe a blur of movement as she scythed through zombies like Death through a battlefield. Between the three of us, we built up quite the pile of corpses, and the zombies still emerging from the open door slowed to a trickle.

  “Having fun yet?” I said to Lil as she paused to wipe blood off her cheek.

  “You bet,” she said, face alight with the glee of battle.

  “Sorry to interrupt, ladies,” Nathan said, “but it’s time to go.”

  A cheerful “ding” sounded as the second elevator car arrived, doors parting smoothly. Lil and I backed slowly away from the zombies that were still reaching for us, weapons ready as the rest of the group tossed the gear in.

  “What about them?” Jones nodded at the dead gunmen.

  “Leave ’em for the zoms,” Nathan said coldly.

  The whupwhupwhup of rotary blades sounded overhead. We looked up to see a helicopter—much like the one we’d crash-landed—taking off from a helipad somewhere in the med center complex.

  Gabriel, I thought. For a moment, time froze.

  Then G cleared his throat, and we looked over to where he and JT knelt. Mack was sp
rawled against the catwalk wall, face gray with shock. Blood soaked the right side of his uniform under his armpit and into his shirt.

  Lil cried out and ran over to him.

  “Get him into the elevator,” Nathan barked.

  With G and JT’s help, Lil got Mack into the car. Blood trailed behind him on the walkway as they dragged him in. I followed, chopping down one last persistent zombie.

  There were only two buttons on the control panel: up and down. Nathan hit DOWN with enough force to shake the walls of the car. The doors slid shut. The car descended with a gentle hum.

  Nathan immediately dropped down next to Mack.

  “What happened?” he asked gently.

  Unbelievably, Mack smiled.

  “When that jerk tried to shoot Ash. When Lil. I think... I think the bullet...” He nodded toward his right side.

  Oh Christ, I thought. The ricochet.

  Nathan gently lifted up Mack’s right arm, exposing a bullet hole in the armpit of his shirt, where he was totally unprotected by our Kevlar armor. The entire right side of his shirt was now soaked, bright red arterial blood still pumping out of the wound.

  “Oh, Mack.” I said.

  “Do something!” Lil demanded, and she turned to Nathan.

  Nathan shook his head.

  “It’s the brachial artery,” he answered. “He’s lost too much blood.”

  “No! That’s not right.” She turned to me, her eyes asking for a miracle I couldn’t supply. “He’s a wild card, right?”

  Mack gave her a gentle smile.

  “Even wild cards can die, hon.”

  “Not you!”

  “Even me.” Mack smiled again, reached out and touched her face softly. Then his hand slipped down and fell to his side.

  Lil’s cries of grief started as she buried her head against Mack’s chest, then rose into a keening wail when she lifted her head, looking at me with incomprehensible pain. I wrapped my arms around her, my tears mingling with hers as she rocked back and forth with sobs so violent I thought they’d break her in half.

  The elevator doors opened, revealing white walls and metal furniture. Lil continued to sob inconsolably, unaware that we’d reached our destination. A tall— very tall—woman in her thirties, chestnut brown hair neatly skimming the shoulders of her white lab coat, stood a few feet away, looking at us. A Hispanic man in his twenties, also wearing a lab coat, stood behind her, flanked by several armed men and women in fatigues, weapons leveled at us.

  “Who are you?” the woman said sharply.

  “We’re from Redwood Grove.” Nathan stepped forward, mindful of the weapons trained at his head. “Simone Fraser sent us. We’re with the DZN.”

  The woman scanned all of our faces with a look as precise as a laser. She frowned.

  “Where’s Phineas?”

  Around the world in eighty days? I thought, about to drop where I stood.

  “Phineas,” she repeated. Seeing our blank faces, she elaborated, “Dr. Phineas Albert.”

  “Someone took him,” Nathan said, tension radiating off his body. “Along with another member of our team.”

  “That would match what we saw on the monitors, Dr. Arkin.” The man in the lab coat nodded. “Two men were taken away at gunpoint.”

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  “You mean you people saw what was going on up top—” My voice rose with an anger I couldn’t begin to quantify “—and didn’t do jack shit to help us?”

  He looked at me quizzically, as if truly confused by my anger.

  “We couldn’t risk compromising the security of this facility.” He offered the explanation as if it would make everything clear.

  “Whatever,” I snapped. “We have injured people here.” And dead. “We need help.”

  The woman gave a nod to the armed personnel.

  “Come in,” she said as they lowered their weapons.

  We all stumbled out of the elevator, our blood-spattered clothing and gear standing out in sharp contrast to the sterility of this new environment.

  G pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time.

  “Is there a bathroom?”

  The woman pointed to a door.

  “Down that hallway to your left, second door.” She nodded to the man standing behind her. “Josh, make sure he doesn’t get lost.”

  G nodded his thanks and hastily beelined towards the door. As Josh followed him, his coat snagged on one of the uncomfortable looking chairs lining the wall. He yanked it free, but not before I noticed the butt of a handgun sticking out from his waistband.

  I got to my feet, one hand still resting on Lil’s shoulder.

  “So you know Dr. Albert?”

  She looked at me as if I’d wasted her time by stating the obvious.

  “I should say so.”

  “Who, exactly, are you?” Nathan asked, sounding as weary as I’d ever heard him.

  “Dr. Marianne Arkin,” she replied in precise tones. “Dr. Albert and I developed the Walker’s vaccine together.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  * * *

  I sat on a chair next to Lil, who lay sleeping on a cot in a small, utilitarian room, much like the ones hidden away under Patterson Hall, as if all DZN labs were thought up by the same boring interior designer.

  I found the similarity both reassuring and creepy.

  I’d had a quick shower in a gym locker-style facility and been given some clean clothes—more fatigues—by Josh, who introduced himself as Dr. Arkin’s assistant. If there were any other people in the facility, I hadn’t seen them, and I hadn’t asked. I had far more pressing issues on my mind, the first being Lil.

  Dr. Arkin had slipped her some sort of sedative in a glass of water that had effectively knocked her out. I tucked the green wool blanket around her shoulders, brushing a stray lock of hair back from her pale forehead. Her eyelids were red and swollen, even in sleep.

  I desperately needed some rest myself, but was afraid to leave Lil’s side, in case she woke up. I didn’t know what she’d do if left by herself. So I sat there, forcing my eyes to stay open even though they drooped with exhaustion.

  There was a knock on the doorframe and Nathan entered, two steaming mugs in his hands. He handed one to me and I smelled the ambrosial scent of hot coffee.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a restorative sip.

  “I spoke to Simone,” he said without preamble. “As soon as we clear out enough hostiles and secure a perimeter, they’ll be moving the rest of our operations here.” He reached out unexpectedly to touch Lil’s face. “All of them. Including Binkey and Doodle.”

  I gave a wan smile.

  “Someone’s been monitoring our communications,” he continued, “so it’ll be a few days until we can guarantee secure channels.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out,” I said. “Why did they take Gabriel?” I inhaled the steam rising off the coffee, trying to make sense of things.

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said. “Probably for whatever fucked up reason they screwed with the ’copters and ambushed us here. Whoever it is has been one step ahead of us. But we have an advantage they don’t know about.”

  “What?”

  “Microchip.” He grinned at me. “Implanted in Gabriel’s arm.”

  “Seriously?”

  He nodded.

  “You’ve got one too. All the wild cards do. Except me,” he added almost as an afterthought. “I dug mine out years ago.” He raised his arm so I could see underneath, and there was a strange, misshapen scar I hadn’t noticed before.

  I stared at him. That was just creepy, no matter how you looked at it.

  “So are we going after them?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer. Because I knew that, no matter what he said, I’d have to go.

  He nodded, and I exhaled.

  “Simone is convinced that the answer to a cure for this whole fucked up zombie virus is somewhere in our blood—all of the wild cards—and in Gabriel’s as well. Dr. Albert may
be a megalomaniacal narcissist, but he’s come closer than anyone else to understanding how the thing works.”

  He took a sip of coffee and continued.

  “The good news is that Dr. Arkin is indeed familiar with Dr. Albert’s research and assures us she can continue his work. What’s more, Dr. Albert’s laptop and samples of the antiserum and the vaccine were left behind with his knapsack, and that’s a major stroke of luck for us—not to mention a real kick to the balls for the assholes who kidnapped him.”

  “Them,” I corrected, then I sighed. “We made it here. That’s something, right?”

  “More than something,” Nathan said. “We’ve got another chance to stop this.”

  There was another knock at the open door. I looked up and into a pair of hazel eyes framed with dark lashes. Feminine eyes set into an undeniably masculine face, with thick, wavy chocolate brown hair that begged to be touched. He wore jeans and a dark green T-shirt almost this side of too tight, showing off subtly sculpted muscles.

  The guy was a walking case of bad-boy sex appeal, and I’d bet my last cup of coffee that he knew it.

  “Can we help you?” I said coolly.

  “Dr. Arkin told me to introduce myself to my fellow wild cards.” He stepped into the room and held out his hand to Nathan, saying, “I’m Griffin.” Nathan gave his hand a cursory shake before dropping it.

  Mr. Too-Sexy-For-His-Pants then turned his attention on me. Looking me up and down, he flashed me a smile I instinctively distrusted.

  “But you can call me Griff,” he said.

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  Danny coughed, a deep wracking cough that shook his entire body. It pissed him off, but also struck him as a just punishment for abandoning his wife and three kids in Boston, three days earlier than his trip to London actually required.

  He’d told Grace he’d had prep work to do before the big annual LP meeting, so he needed to leave sooner than expected. He’d neglected to clarify that the prep work would involve the pneumatic body of one of his colleagues, a Swedish VP of Research and Development who was also attending the meeting. They both worked for the same multinational corporation, though in different sectors.