Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel)

by Dana Fredsti

  For her sake.

  I took my tray, balancing it carefully as I threaded my way past the tables and people toward the door. Just before I reached it, I noticed a woman, mid- to late-thirties, with short brown hair, dressed in scrubs and a loose black T-shirt. She was sitting at a table by herself, staring blankly into a bowl of soup. She held her spoon in a loose grip as if she’d forgotten it was there. I glanced down, and caught my breath.

  She had deep indentations, now healing with shiny scar tissue, which went up and down both arms. Jake’s one surviving victim from Redwood Grove. The last time I’d seen her, she was covered with raw, seeping wounds. It was a wonder she was still alive, and a minor miracle that she’d retained even a semblance of sanity.

  I hesitated, then decided to take the plunge. I sat down across from her. She looked at me without interest. I pulled my sleeves up, revealing the divots Jake had sliced out of my forearms.

  “Got a real nice one on my stomach, too.”

  Her face shadowed with understanding and pain. She reached out wordlessly, putting a hand on mine and squeezing gently.

  “You, too?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “Same guy.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I am too,” I said. “No one should have to go through that.”

  “I still dream about it sometimes… about him.” Her face contorted with the memory.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She looked at me for a moment, and then nodded again, slowly.

  “Yes. Yes I do,” she said. “I can talk to you about it. You’ll understand. And if I don’t… if I keep it inside me, it will eat me alive.”

  She took a deep breath, and then continued.

  “When they set up the military barricades, I had to get home, back to Redwood Grove. So I took a back way, to sneak around them.” Her eyes were distant as she remembered. “When I got home, there were bodies everywhere, but they wouldn’t stay dead. I panicked, locked myself out of my car, so I ran—made it to a friend’s house a few blocks away, Janet. We got in her car, tried to drive up to the college, but there were a bunch of those things on the road, and Janet got scared. Turned the car around and drove up into the mountains.

  “We found the house up there, the one where—” She swallowed, the muscles in her face twitching. “That man… Jake was there. He invited us in. Said we’d be safe.” She looked up at me, eyes wide. “He waited until we were sleeping. I think he drugged our food or drinks. We woke up fastened to tables… we couldn’t move. He fed us enough to keep us alive.

  “Sometimes he remembered to stop the bleeding after he’d—” She stopped. Her fingers clutched convulsively.

  “He ate us, you know,” she said simply. “Ate us. Little bits at a time. He’d apologize, even cry a little. Say he was sorry over and over again. But he wouldn’t stop. No matter how much Janet or I screamed.”

  “I know.”

  She shook her head as if to clear it.

  “Yes, I imagine you do.”

  I put my other hand on top of hers.

  “You’ll be glad to know that he’s dead,” I said. “Really dead. He can’t hurt you or anyone else again.”

  She gave a convulsive shudder and shut her eyes.

  “Thank God,” she whispered. She opened them again. “I’m sorry, I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Betty.”

  “I’m Ashley,” I replied. “If you ever want to talk again, just ask for me.” I got to my feet, wanting to get Lil her soup before it got cold. Then suddenly my brain did a somersault, and I turned back.

  Betty’s Beads.

  “Why did you sneak past the quarantine?”

  She looked at me and smiled sadly.

  “I needed to get home to my daughter. But I never did find her.”

  I let my breath out in one long exhale. Put the tray down and took Betty by the hand, practically lifting her out of her chair.

  “Come with me,” I said. “I’ve got someone you’ll want to meet.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  A few minutes later we stood outside Lil’s room. I rapped on the door.

  “Hey,” I said, my pulse racing. “It’s Ash.”

  No answer, so I opened the door and pushed it open, sticking my head inside. Lil was in her usual position on the bed, curled up in a little ball under the covers, with only the top of her head sticking out. Binkey and Doodle were on sentry duty on top of her.

  “Hey,” I said again, “I’ve got someone who wants to see you.”

  “Go away,” she said, voice muffled by the bedclothes.

  Betty stuck her head into the room.

  “What cute cats,” she said. “They remind me of…” And then she stopped.

  “Lily?” She stepped into the room.

  The covers slipped off of Lil’s head and shoulders as she slowly sat up, an expression of almost painful hope on her face.

  “Mom?”

  Betty nodded, her face and throat working convulsively as she stared at her daughter.

  “Mommy?”

  Betty tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. A sob burst forth as she held her arms out. With a wordless cry, Lil catapulted out of bed, causing the cats to scatter as she threw herself into her mother’s arms and began to cry in huge, wrenching sobs that wracked her entire body.

  Tears stung my own eyes as I backed out of the room, shutting the door behind me with a quiet click. I stood in the hallway for a moment, then slowly walked away from her room, trying to ignore the hollow feeling inside as I realized Lil would no longer need me.

  * * *

  I walked aimlessly for a little while, ignoring the people I passed, most of whom I didn’t recognize anyway. Without any forethought, I made my way up to the main level and from there, to the main elevator that went to the glassed-in crosswalk.

  Once up top, I wandered over and up the stairwell that led to the rooftop where the helicopter had taken Gabriel and Dr. Albert away. I sat down in the middle of the makeshift helipad, wrapping my arms around my knees and hugging them close to my body. I stared straight ahead at the cement wall in front of me, my eyes focusing on a zigzagging crack in the cement that looked as if it had been left by Zorro. Then I put my head down on my knees and cried.

  I cried until my head hurt and my throat was raw from the loud, keening sobs that ripped their way out of me. I cried for Kai, for Mack, the Gunsy Twins, Carl, and Red Shirt, whose name I’d never bothered to learn. For Aimee and her daughter. I cried for my old boyfriend Matt and my roommate, for everyone who’d suffered because of misguided altruism, greed, and arrogance.

  Mostly, though, I cried for Gabriel and for myself, and for the chance we’d never have to find out what the two of us could have had together. I cried until my eyes were swollen and my head throbbed. Until the tears finally stopped coming, dissolving into the occasional hitching sob until even those died off, leaving me hollowed out to my very core.

  Then I wiped my eyes and nose as best as I could with my shirtsleeves, then wrapped my arms back around my knees. I don’t know how long I sat there like that. Long enough for the sun to fade down into the horizon, a cold wind picking up and biting through my clothes. I didn’t care, though. I barely even noticed it. If I was lucky, I’d catch a chill and have it turn into pneumonia and die.

  Not fucking likely, thanks to my sturdy immune system. But I could hope.

  I heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs and out onto the rooftop, crunching across the asphalt as they came toward me. I stayed where I was, still hugging my knees and staring at the mark of Zorro. Griff sat down next to me and silently handed me a bottle of water. I took it without saying anything, unscrewed the lid and took a sip.

  We sat in a strangely compatible silence for a while longer. Griff reminded me of a cat, the kind that did exactly what it wanted, when it wanted, its sense of loyalty predicated by its needs from moment to moment. I still wasn’t sure if he should be
considered a hero or a villain in all of this. Arguments could be made on either side, I suppose.

  He’d saved my life, but let the rest of the team get taken without trying to help. He’d gone after Lil and brought her back alive, because he’d promised me he would. And he’d come through for all of us in the end.

  “Thank you for finding Lil.” My voice cracked as I broke the silence between us, throat still raw from the tears. I took another sip of water before continuing. “I really didn’t think I’d see her again.”

  He shrugged.

  “Told you I would.”

  “You told me a lot of things,” I reminded him. “Some of them kind of creepy.”

  His mouth curved in a rueful smile.

  “Just following orders. If it’s worth anything, I regret a lot of it.”

  “Not all of it?”

  He gave me a sideways glance.

  “You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know. Figure you deserved at least some of it.”

  I snorted. “‘Officer, she was asking for it.’ Is that it?”

  “No.” He was silent for a moment, and then he continued. “I like you,” he said simply. “You’re smart, brave, and you don’t give up.”

  I nodded, accepting his words at face value.

  “Plus you’ve got great tits.”

  The outrageousness of that comment startled a little snort of laughter out of me.

  “I’m not going to sleep with you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Not asking you to.”

  “Good.”

  We lapsed back into silence, staring up at the night sky as we listened to the sounds of a dying city rise up to the rooftop. Maybe it could still be saved, once the doctors had perfected the retrovirus, and we got it out to whatever percentage of the population still lived. It would be dangerous, but hell, that’s what wild cards were for, right?

  Maybe I was still needed after all.

  EPILOGUE

  INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

  The whole of the bright blue, cloud-dappled Earth gleamed in the eyes of Commander Jess Lowry as she stood in a ring of windows in the cupola of the International Space Station.

  From their vantage point, circling the globe every hour and a half, days and nights seemed to fly past every forty-five minutes with a burst of sunrise and then a plunge into darkness. Normally she loved the night side—a miniature clockwork wonderland, filled with a glittering, shimmering glaze of electric diamond dust tracing out lattices of firefly pinpoints and luminescent trails stretching across entire continents in bright points of copper, gold, yellow, and white.

  All that was gone now.

  Her eyes darkened as she kept her vigil over the new night sky. The once-bright landforms were dead, and the Earth hung limply in space like a badly bruised corpse, ugly black holes where Rio and New York and Tokyo used to shine. She suppressed a shudder as she remembered the screams coming over the station’s comlink, from Houston’s mission control room.

  There was a sound behind her, as Flight Engineer Nikolai Mironoff zipped down the main tube like an arrow, effortlessly threading through a cluttered gauntlet of laptop stations, instrument panels, plastic tubing, and other bits of random equipment without hitting any of the potential snares. He floated into sight and pulled himself to a halt alongside her.

  “Kakie novosti?” she asked, still staring out the cupola’s borosilicate viewports.

  “Nothing we don’t already know” the Russian replied. “Power levels on both starboard and port arrays are holding steady. I have shut down all non-essential modules and transferred everything on our checklists to Zvezda.”

  She turned to him. “Good. The Soyuz ready to go?”

  The cosmonaut hesitated, and she knew he didn’t trust the obsolescent spacecraft for a re-entry. Yet they had no choice in the matter. It was either risk an orbital drop in the battered old Soviet workhorse, or stay on board while their oxygen and power levels raced to see which was exhausted first.

  “It’s ready to take us straight to hell right now,” he replied. “But maybe—if we are very, very lucky—maybe it will get us through the upper atmosphere before it all falls to pieces.”

  “Thanks, Nikolai.” Jess gave him a weary smile and returned her gaze to the outside.

  “A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam…” she sighed.

  “Shto eta?”

  “Something Carl Sagan said once, about the earth being a pale blue dot. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there, on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” She gave Nikolai a rueful smile. “Now I wonder if there’s anyone left down there at all.”

  “If that chertovskiy Soyuz doesn’t kill us on impact, there will be. We’ll be the new Adám i Jéva. We’ll repopulate the planet, you and I.”

  She played along.

  “Where shall we touch down then? Any ideas where to set up the new Eden?”

  Nikolai peered out at the uninviting ball floating before them, scowling slightly at the slim prospects before making a small flourish with one hand.

  “Ladies choice, of course.”

  “Let me think about that.”

  He nodded, and took watch alongside her.

  She reached for the hi-resolution handheld imager—a combination telescope and camera—and tore it off its velcro tether. The planet continued its slow, relentless turning, cycling through light and dark while she pored over the whole world laid out before them, scanning for possible landing areas.

  There was a spot of shimmering haze at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf. That was the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire.

  In the North Atlantic she could see the wake of a large vessel—an aircraft carrier perhaps, though she had no way to tell if it was American or Russian, or even if it was still under the control of human beings.

  Australia’s east coast glowed from wildfires, raging out of control.

  On the highest settings of her imager, tiny pinpricks of light from various spots on the California coast caught her attention. But what were they? Campfires? Burning rubble? Were they signs of life? Or just more signs of death?

  She kept searching, while the world kept spinning.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I hate writing acknowledgements as much as I love the people I want to thank! There are just so many of ’em, though, and I hate to forget anyone. So apologies in advance if your name is not listed here. It’s not because I don’t love and appreciate you! It’s because the brain… it melts… it melts!!

  First up, those epically awesome Titan folks: Nick Landau, Vivien Cheung, Katy Wild, Alice Nightingale, Natalie Laverick, Miranda Jewess, Charlotte Couldrey, Tim Whale, Selina Juneja, Julia Lloyd, Ella Bowman, Hannah Dennis, Chris McLane, Martin Stiff, and my usual extra helping of love to Tom Green and Katherine Carroll, who make publicity fun for me! Love me the Titan crew, especially my Dark Editorial Overlord, Steve Saffel, who is not just a wonderful editor, but a truly supportive friend.

  Research can be time-consuming and frustrating, but with the help of Facebook and my eclectically knowledgeable friends and family, it was fun and relatively easy this time around. In no particular order but with equal gratitude: Elizabeth Buxton, James Jackson, Aaron Sikes, Eric Bar, Nancy Vandermay, Kate Laity, Aud Fredstie, Maddie Karathanas, Jonathan Stern, Richard Hartman, Jonathan Brett Kennedy, James Jackson, Peter Indiana Allison, Michael Beach, Marcy Meyer, Pamela Cale, Ernie Williams, and oh, I know there are more… You know who you are!

  I am continually blown away by the generosity of my friends. Sending waves of thanks and love to John Hornor Jacobs for the Redneck Legolas art; my cousin Steffan Fredsti for the katanas and cousinly support; Anne Stevenson for Titania; Aimee Hix for Motivational Penguin and Dana’s Delights; and Jane Thorne-Gutierrez for chocolate, band-aids and the Magic Amethyst. Huge thanks to the Veteran’s Allegiance for their will
ingness and enthusiasm to appear in my book!

  Owen and Julie, your time and counseling when my sanity was cracking were invaluable (not to mention the bacon chutney). Further sanity points were awarded to me by Maureen A., Maureen Z., Aldyth, Brad, and James. Thank you. And Jen, you helped keep my world together when it fell apart. Thanks for being the Danny to my Sgt. Angel (or vice versa, if you insist!).

  Endless appreciation to Jess Lourey for her unfailing ‘you can do it’ feedback when I was at my lowest ebb, and heartfelt thanks to Cynthia Gentry for those writing dates! Loren Rhoads, those talks over coffee always inspire. Special thanks to Joe McKinney and Craig DiLouie for taking the time to read (I owes ya drinks!), and a huge hug and thank you to my favorite Perpetual Writing Machine Jonathan Maberry for his encouragement, as well as inspiration by example.

  My family has always supported my writing (thanks, Mom and Bill!), and while my sister Lisa wouldn’t have been caught dead being a cheerleader in high school, she’s been great at cheering me on through my struggles to finish this book. And most of all, thanks and love to Hell Ocho, T. Chris “Cookie” Martindale, and David Fitzgerald… I could not have written this book without the three of you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dana Fredsti is an ex B-movie actress with a background in theatrical combat (a skill she utilized in Army of Darkness as a sword-fighting Deadite and fight captain). She’s addicted to bad movies and any book or film, good or bad, which include zombies. She is the author of the Ashley Parker series, touted as Buffy meets The Walking Dead, as well as the cozy noir mystery Murder for Hire: the Peruvian Pigeon, and co-author of What Women Really Want in Bed. She guest blogs frequently and has made numerous podcast and radio appearances. She lives in San Francisco with her boyfriend, their dog Pogeen, and a small horde of felines.

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  PLAGUE TOWN BY DANA FREDSTI