Plague Town

by Dana Fredsti

  “If they’re in a safe location, or you can get them to one quickly, leave them and we’ll go back for them as soon as the campus is secure. If not, try to get them back here.”

  From the look on Mack’s face, I could guarantee that he wouldn’t be leaving anybody behind.

  “What if they’re bitten?” We all looked at Kaitlyn, surprised that she’d actually volunteered something.

  Gabriel hesitated.

  “Every infected person is a potential wild card,” he said. “If you can get them back here, do it. But put your own safety first. I repeat, we cannot afford to lose any of you.”

  I gave a little shudder, knowing what would happen to any infected victims if they weren’t wild cards.

  “If things go fubar,” he continued, “fall back to Patterson as quickly as possible. I don’t expect they will, but there’s always that possibility. Team B, if something happens to Captain Gentry, Mack is in charge.”

  Mack’s surprised expression mirrored Kaitlyn’s and Tony’s.

  “Oh, I... I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he stammered. “I’m not—”

  “No arguments.” Gabriel stared sternly. “We don’t have time to dick around.” Mack subsided, looking both nervous and a little pleased.

  “Team A, if anything happens to me, Ashley will take the lead.”

  Huh?

  My mouth fell open in surprise. Kai reached over, put a finger under my chin and pushed upward.

  “You heard the man, little girl,” he said. “You lead, we follow.” Lily nodded her agreement.

  “But nothing’s going to happen to you, right?” I said.

  “I’ll do my best.” Gabriel slapped my shoulder, and I resisted the temptation to yell hooyah! mainly ’cause I thought that was a Marine thing, and didn’t want to offend anyone.

  “Any questions?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Tony said. “How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?”

  Gentry looked at him, completely deadpan.

  “Look into my eye,” he said, scratching his cheek with one finger.

  After a moment of stunned silence, Tony answered.

  “Dude,” he said solemnly, “I’m totally ready to follow you into battle.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  * * *

  Kaitlyn shook her head in disgust, trying to mask what I suspected was a massive—and justifiable—case of nerves.

  Gabriel nodded at her.

  “Kaitlyn, you ready?”

  “Do I have a choice?” she replied. Wow. There was enough bitterness in her tone to sour a bowl of Hawaiian punch.

  “You already made your choice.” Gabriel’s voice was no-nonsense. “But you’re either up for this, or you’re not.”

  “Spare me the rah-rah bullshit.” Kaitlyn stared at all of us. “I’ll go because there’s nothing else to do.”

  “Good enough for me,” Gabriel said. “Let’s go.” He nodded, and a soldier standing at the door moved to unlock it. Then Gabriel turned back. “Everyone got their nose plugs and walkie-talkies?”

  We all nodded and pulled out soft plastic nose plugs that attached to elastic bands hung around our necks. While our super-sensitive schnozzes would help us when we needed to detect the walking dead, there was no point wallowing in the stench.

  Simone opened the interior glass double doors, and then unlocked the reinforced steel mesh outer doors. Immediately moans rose through the air as our movement attracted attention. Heads swiveled on rotting necks, and ghastly eyes turned in our direction.

  Fresh meat.

  “Marines, we are leaving!” Captain Gentry grinned at Tony, and dashed onto the zombie-infested quad.

  “I think I love him,” Tony said, and he ran out after Gentry, followed by Mack and Kaitlyn.

  “Let’s go!” Gabriel said grimly. No clever movie quotes for us, but Kai, Lily and I were right behind him anyway. It was either that or freeze like a rabbit gone tharn.

  Lurching corpses honed in on us as we ran down the stairs and onto the quad itself. My heartbeat accelerated and I broke out in a bona fide cold sweat.

  Trees and benches became obstacles as greenish-gray hands clutched at me, gaping mouths opened, snapping for my flesh. Zombie heads exploded in splatters of gore as the snipers did their job. I tried to ignore the indescribably foul goo that spattered across my face and body.

  It can’t hurt me, I thought. But it was still totally gross.

  As I ran, my gaze focused on Gabriel in front of me. He didn’t falter, just kept moving no matter what lay in his path. There were hideously dismembered and gutted corpses, some of which still twitched with unnatural life even though there wasn’t enough left of them to be ambulatory. I wondered how many students and faculty had died on Big Red’s campus while I had been recovering from my wounds.

  One of the ghouls stepped into Gabriel’s path, then another. He used the butt of his gun to knock them to the side so they wouldn’t fall in the way of the rest of the team. I flashed back on Matt charging through the field as if he’d been going for a touchdown, toppling zombies that landed right in my path.

  Nausea rose in my throat. I felt those germ-infested teeth digging into my shoulder and arm, brambles trapping my hair as more fetid corpses closed in for the kill. Things spun in a hellish merry-go-round of memories as I tried to focus on the here and now.

  A clawed hand clutched my left arm. I jerked away from it as a particularly ripe male zombie in the remnants of a band uniform reached for me. Its arms may have said you need a hug, but its gaping, hungry mouth sent a different message.

  “Motherfucker!”

  I screamed the word like a war cry as I bashed zombie nerd in the forehead with the butt of my M-4. Except with the nose plugs I sounded like a profane munchkin. I started giggling, and once started, couldn’t stop.

  Lily caught up with me.

  “Are you okay? she asked in a pinched, nasal tone.

  The sound set me off even more. She looked at me like I was insane. I guess I was, just a little bit.

  “We sound like we’re on helium,” I choked as we ran side by side in the path Gabriel had cleared through the quad.

  Lily smacked a putrefying cheerleader in the face as it lurched out of the shadows of what used to be my favorite coffee kiosk.

  “Take that, you stuck up zombie bitch!” Then she burst into laughter. “Omigod, we do!”

  I’m not saying we suddenly lost all fear. Not even close. I still felt like throwing up, but the spinning flashback had stopped. The horror was still there, but it was real, and it was something I could deal with.

  I could run, I could fight, and I could kill.

  Fuck you, zombie hordes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  * * *

  Gabriel reached the far side of the quad, pausing on a ghoul-free patch of grass to make sure we were behind him, then set off in-between the student union and Fine Arts building. Trees and bushes lined the sidewalk between the two buildings, ideal cover for opportunistic zombies if they had the brains to stage an ambush.

  But they didn’t.

  The few that tried to grab at us just shambled, grabbed, and tried to bite. It wasn’t too hard to dodge them; they were slow and uncoordinated, especially when faced with our wild card reflexes.

  I wondered if zombies felt frustration when their would-be meals evaded their clutching fingers. I thought about how I’d feel if my dinner jumped off the plate whenever I reached for it.

  That would suck.

  A really disgusting male zom lurched directly in front of me. We’re talking a face not even a mother zombie could love, and one I recognized from my creative writing class. He’d asked me out and I’d turned him down, not so much because of his looks, but because he’d been an impossibly pompous asshole.

  He’d also suffered from mega acne, and zombification had done nothing to clear it up. His skin was covered with little volcanic eruptions. The word ‘juicy’ sprang to mind.

  I wished
it hadn’t.

  I skidded to a halt. Lily slammed into me and Kai completed our Three Stooges moment by barreling into her. The impact sent me stumbling forward, right into Acne Boy’s eager arms. In what had to be luck, its fingers clutched my arms at the elbows, slipping in-between the padding. Bloodstained teeth gnashed in anticipation of its first bite, graying tongue lolling out between its blubbery lips.

  “No way, pal,” I growled. “I wouldn’t date you, and I sure as hell won’t let you eat me.” Jamming the M-4 between us, barrel pointing down, I drove the stock up and into its chin. Its mouth snapped shut and a piece of tongue plopped onto the sidewalk.

  Okay, eeuww.

  “Oh, that is just so wrong,” Kai choked.

  Fighting the urge to throw up, I used the length of the gun to shove against the zombie’s chest, trying to pry its fingers off my arms. Amazing how much strength there was in those rotting hands.

  As a young and stupid five year old, I’d had my finger pinched by a pissed-off crab. I’d screamed and hopped around until my dad pried it off. The zombie’s grip felt a lot like that.

  Lily and Kai, recovering from the collision, each grabbed one of Acne Boy’s hands and yanked the fingers backward. I could hear the snap of its bones breaking as they forced it to let go. I gave one more shove with the gun, then hip-checked it off the sidewalk into a bush.

  Kai swatted me on the butt.

  “Nice hip action, girl!”

  I considered clipping him with my gun, but then Gabriel spoke up. He was already at the next intersection, the Science and Administration buildings behind him.

  “Stop playing around and move your asses!” He glared at us. I rolled my eyes, but moved my ass. Rising moans from behind told us that the zombies we’d bypassed were headed our way.

  Up ahead, their numbers thinned out when we reached the dorms, but I saw lurching silhouettes through some of the windows. Was anyone alive in there, maybe cowering behind their doors, hoping against hope to go undetected? Maybe Zara was one of them. Or maybe she stalked the campus, looking for flesh instead of face scrub.

  No time to think about that now. The search and rescue mission would have to wait until after we’d cleared the open areas.

  Don’t I sound all military and shit.

  The number of zombies thinned further as we passed the dorms. We jogged easily through their decreasing numbers until we reached the gymnasium, athletic fields, and parking lots, the last part of campus before the surrounding fields and old growth redwoods.

  Suddenly there was lots of activity. Large, sturdy military looking vehicles, klieg lights set up on temporary wooden platforms casting their glow over the parking lot as dozens of men and women in protective suits hustled around like large, sterile ants.

  Some were unrolling coils of razor wire that looked like the world’s nastiest Slinkies, while others fiddled with the nozzles of hoses attached to small tanker trucks. Gabriel stopped by one of the trucks and we all gathered around him.

  “What are they gonna do?” I said. “Zombie wet T-shirt contest?”

  Gabriel snorted.

  “Those tanks contain an experimental foam designed to harden on contact with air, in order to create effective barricades as quickly as possible. In this case, it’ll be the secondary barrier. The razor wire will be the first.”

  “Wow, that’s totally James Bond,” I said, impressed. “Does it work?”

  He nodded toward one of the trucks.

  “Watch.”

  One of the suited engineers aimed a nozzle at the ground behind a Slinky and flicked a lever. Immediately a flood of white foam poured out. The man moved the nozzle slowly back and forth, bisecting the parking lot with a wall of what looked like shaving cream. As we watched the stuff went from snowy white to a dingy gray as it hardened.

  “How much of that stuff do they have?”

  “We have twenty of those trucks,” Gabriel said. “They each hold enough foam to put up a hundred yards. So if we use the outermost buildings—like the gym and dorms—as part of the overall barrier, we should have enough to protect the entire campus.”

  “Why bother with the razor wire?” I asked. “It’s not like they’re gonna go ‘ouch, sharp’ or anything.”

  Gabriel gave a half smile.

  “They may not feel pain, but they can still get snagged in it. And even a few moments’ delay can be the time we need.”

  I watched in fascination while the engineers continued to position razor wire and back it up with foam. Hard to believe it could stop a crowd of hungry zombies.

  “It won’t hold them forever,” Gabriel added, as if he’d read my mind. “But it should do the trick long enough for us to clear the campus and erect something more permanent.”

  “You think we’re going to need something permanent?” The thought horrified me.

  “Just a figure of speech. If we handle this right, the outbreak soon will be just another file for the archives.”

  Somehow, I wasn’t reassured.

  “And if we don’t?”

  Gabriel put a hand on my shoulder. I felt its warmth, even through the body armor.

  “Then it’s end of the world as we know it.”

  “I so didn’t need to hear that,” I said.

  “Don’t worry.” He looked at me intently. “We can do this.”

  “I know we can,” I said just as seriously. “But now I’m gonna have that damn song running through my head all night.”

  Gabriel laughed, as if I’d startled it out of him.

  I grinned up at him, noticing how the corners of his eyes crinkled up when he smiled. I suddenly remembered all the lustful thoughts I’d had about him when I’d first met him—before he’d opened his mouth, that is.

  I don’t think he could read my mind, but even in the weird illumination thrown off by the klieg lights I saw his eyes darken from denim to indigo. I caught my breath as his hand tightened on my shoulder and something sparked between us.

  “Incoming!”

  Thank you, ravenous zombies. Talk about lousy timing.

  The shout came from one of the lookouts. Beyond the half-finished barrier, shambling, staggering corpses were making their way out of the redwoods and into the fields. A few had already reached the parking lot and headed toward the engineers with a frightening single-mindedness.

  The dull pop of gunfire intertwined with the ululating moans of the undead as the sharpshooters went to work. None of the zombies made it closer than twenty feet to the men and women who were erecting the barrier.

  Gabriel’s hand dropped off my shoulder and his expression morphed back into dead serious mode.

  “Wild cards, listen up!” he said. “You know the plan. Follow the perimeter and start closing the circle. Kill every zombie you see, rescue survivors if you can without compromising the mission, and meet back at Patterson Hall. Watch each other’s backs. You’ve got walkie-talkies if you get separated from the rest of the team.

  “Let’s go.”

  With one last unreadable look in my direction, he took off, following the line of the trucks, razor wire, and super-duper shaving cream. Adrenaline kicked in. I unsheathed my tanto and katana and nodded to Lily and Kai.

  “Ready to kick some zombie butt?”

  Lily grinned and nodded back.

  Kai slapped us both on our behinds.

  “Let’s do it!”

  Lily and I exchanged looks.

  He’s gonna pay for that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  Search and destroy.

  I’d heard the words before, but just among many clichés uttered by macho characters in any one of dozens of movies, good and bad. Pretty straightforward.

  But until you’ve actually spent time actively seeking out an enemy for the express purpose of killing them, you cant really understand what they mean. After an hour of splattering brains and the vile black sludge over an ever-shrinking spiral around Big Red campus, the true meaning of search and des
troy was embedded in my soul.

  And as I was putting a bullet through the brain of a guy who used to sit next to me in History 109A—“Race Gender, and Power in the Antebellum South”—it hit me.

  I’m not afraid!

  Terror had vanished in a mind-numbing routine of violence. I kept telling myself our targets were no longer human, that their souls or whatever gave them humanity were long gone. Every time more than one of the things converged on a member of the team, the rest were there to take it down. I’m not saying it was a walk in the park—in fact, it was totally gross. But the fear of dying evaporated as the hunt continued, and the zom body count rose.

  “To your right!”

  Kai’s shout alerted me to a female zombie lurching out from the shadows of the Fine Arts building. Remnants of a bubblegum pink “Juicy” tracksuit hung from its rotting body.

  The zombie was juicy, all right, but not in a good way. Its pink-tipped nails raked harmlessly across my armor-protected bicep and I promptly kicked its legs out from underneath it, sending it to the ground. Before I could deliver the killing thrust, something swooshed by me in a rush of air and crunched into the zombie’s skull with lethal impact.

  Lily grinned at me, a wild light in her eyes, turning a wholesome prettiness into kind of a scary beauty. Like, imagine Melanie Wilkes from Gone With the Wind, but possessed by Kali.

  “I’ve always hated those stupid Juicy clothes,” she said, an edge to her voice. “I mean, who wants to have ‘Juicy’ stamped across their butt? That’s just kind of gross. I mean, right?”

  “Totally,” I agreed, conveniently forgetting the fact I had a favorite pair of teal Juicy sweats in my closet.

  A yell brought our attention back as Kai was attacked by three ex-jock zombies that must have come staggering around the corner of the gymnasium, football uniforms still intact.

  Shit. The helmets were going to make it hard to take out their brains.

  All three of them piled on him as if he were about to score a touchdown for the opposing team. Kai went down with another yell and a bone-jarring thud, his crowbar falling uselessly to the sidewalk.