Plague Nation (17 page)

I scanned the room, trying to breathe through the increasing smoke and heat. The evac hood had pretty much done its job—and then some—but I couldn’t expect it to do any more.

Another section of ceiling tile, larger than any before, fell right in front of the exit. Fire and smoke billowed up, obscuring the rest of the room. I laughed, and then started coughing, then choking as my fire-evac hood gave up the ghost and started letting the toxins in.

The coughing continued, leading into full on hacking as I tried to bring up the crap that was infiltrating my system before it could kill me. But the shit poured in faster than I could void it.

Sorry, Lil,
I thought, remembering the promise I’d made to her.

My head throbbed as I slumped to the floor. I closed my eyes.

Damn. I really hadn’t expected to die today.

Tiffany made her way carefully out of the ladies’ room at the Royal Bank, trying to ignore the fact that each step on her Steve Madden heels felt like she was navigating a tightrope. She’d only had three... or maybe four gin and tonics. Hard to keep track during happy hour.

Hell, who wants to keep track during happy hour, right?
Especially with a hot date like Geo.

Tiffany stifled a laugh. Okay, that had to be a fake name, ’cause who would, like, name their kid after a car, right? At least they hadn’t named him Mini. That thought set her giggling again as she rounded the corner to the stairs that led back up to the restaurant.

Fucking stairs.
There should be a law against having the restrooms up or down stairs from the bar. It was a liability issue, a lawsuit waiting to happen—booze and stairs, especially when combined with high heels. Seriously, like, how many women her age going out on hot dates were going to wear flats, right?

Someday she’d be able to afford Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks. Full price, no more remnant sales. Until then, eBay and the less expensive designers were a girl’s best friend.

As she wobbled her way up the wooden stairs, Tiffany thought she heard... was that screaming? Usually Tuesday nights in the Financial District weren’t that rowdy, even during happy hour.

She neared the top of the stairs and almost ran right into an attractive brunette, with two men right behind her. One of them was one of the waiters, a real hottie. Tiffany had flirted with him during many a happy hour. He’d always been friendly, but disinterested. Now he couldn’t follow this other woman fast enough.

What the hell did a brunette have that she didn’t? Tiffany glanced down and sneered. The other woman was wearing flat-heeled boots with her black skirt and red sweater. Heels would have
made
the outfit.

“Turn around and go back down.”

It took a few seconds for her to realize the woman was speaking to her.

“Huh?” Tiffany said. “My date’s waiting for me.”

“Don’t go in there
—
it’s not worth it,” the woman snapped. “You don’t want to see
—”

Ri-ight...
Tiffany shook her head, making herself a little dizzy, and shoved past the trio. Going back into the restaurant, she left them to run down the stairwell and disappear from sight.

“Whatever.”
If they want to get all kinky, that’s their problem.

She tottered her way toward the front of the restaurant, where Geo waited for her at her table. Some sort of ruckus was happening at the bar, a fight maybe. She heard shouts and swearing in Irish accents. Definitely a bar brawl.

What the fuck?

As
Tiffany neared the table, she saw another sitting woman on the bench seat next to Geo, looking like she was giving him the King Kong of hickeys.

Oh, bring it on, bitch.

She didn’t stop to think—just marched over to the table, grabbed the woman by the shoulder and snarled at them.

“What the fuck? I’m gone for five minutes and you think you can just
—”

The woman turned around, chunks of red meat falling from her gaping mouth. Her eyes looked blind or something, yellowed whites shot through with veins of blood, the corneas milky white and just wrong.

For a heartbeat, Tiffany wondered if Geo had spiked her G&Ts.
This has gotta be a hallucination.
Then the nightmare bitch who’d stolen her seat grabbed her wrist and bit into it, and the agonizing pain convinced her it was all too real.

Something wet and cool dripped onto my arm.

First just a few drops, and then a steady stream.

My head throbbed as I forced my eyelids open to see water pouring down from a sprinkler head right above me.

I sat up, pushing the nausea and pain back so I could pick myself up off the supply closet floor. Bleary-eyed, I looked across the lab and saw a path to the doors, water pouring down from a few operating sprinkler heads around the room. Flames still licked across the floor and walls, but the water held them back from taking over the entire lab, and even extinguished the fire in spots.

Okay. Time to go.

I staggered out of the closet and into the room, still carrying Simone’s precious bag and breathing as shallowly as possible. I tried to stay under the working sprinklers until I made it past the antechamber, back into the stairwell leading up to the med ward.

The smoke was still thick and toxic when I hit the stairs and with every step it felt like I was weighed down with lead. My eyes watered from the acrid fumes, making it almost impossible to see. Even with the protective hood, each breath seared my lungs as I pulled myself up the stairs by the railing, vaguely aware that the heated metal was crisping my hand. I did my best to ignore the corpses that Nathan and I had dispatched, and which now were draped on the stairs.

Crunch.

Ugh. Kind of hard to ignore it when you step into the middle of a flash-fried rotted corpse.

Just when you think things couldn’t get any grosser.

Fuckin’ zombies.

Why couldn’t it have been an outbreak of, say, bunnies or French bulldogs? Then we’d just have to deal with lots of inoffensive pellets, or drool.

“Zombies... zombies, it must be zombie-e-ees,” I sang softly and off-key, as I neared the landing.

More water poured down onto my head, as if I had my own little rainstorm following me wherever I went. Sort of like Pig Pen and his perpetual cloud of dirt.

Oh god, I need oxygen...

When I reached the top of the stairs, I quickly retraced my steps down the hallway and back to the med ward. Most of the fire damage had been sustained at the far end, where the smoldering zombies had staggered through the door. As they’d collapsed onto the nearest cots, the flames had ignited the bedding and created more charred corpses. ones with bullet holes in their heads.

It was just wrong.

Even more wrong was the merrily burning fire and thick cloud of smoke that now danced through the med ward. I was just too damn tired to fight my way through another gauntlet of flame and smoke, so I headed down the hallway away from it. Smoke had spread down this way, but the flames hadn’t, making it a friendlier option even if I had no clue where it went.

It had to go somewhere, right? I mean, who would build a hallway that dead-ended? Well, aside from Jigsaw or some other psycho killer.

Luckily for me the hallway led to a door with a nice big green exit sign above it. That led to another staircase, one that deposited me on the ground floor of Patterson Hall, outside at the rear of the building. Stumbling past a few startled looking people, I fell to my knees on the grass next to the sidewalk. Dropping Simone’s bag to the accompaniment of the sound of bits of glass clinking together, I ripped the hood off and coughed up no end of black gunk, with deep wracking coughs that felt like my internal organs were passing through my throat.

“Ashley?”

A familiar voice said my name, and hands fell on my hunched shoulders, firmly patting my back until the coughing spasm had passed.

“Here, have some water.”

A plastic water bottle touched my lips, and I gratefully took a swallow, rinsing out my mouth—which tasted like the granddaddy of all ashtrays. I spit before taking another mouthful and swallowing. The cool water hurt going down, but it also tasted like smoky ambrosia.

“How are you feeling, Ashley?”

I looked up to find none other than Dr. Albert peering down at me with what looked like genuine concern on his rodent-like face.

“I’m just swell,” I said, then started giggling again, the smoke inhalation and near-death experience making me giddy.

“Yes, have some more water.” The doctor held the water bottle up again. “Your enhanced metabolism should kick out the effects of the smoke very quickly.”

Oh, goody.
I shut my eyes as the world spun around me.

“Dizzy,” I muttered, and my eyelids felt like lead, coated with concrete.

“Just sit still for a few minutes and—what?”

The “what”—uttered on a rising note—was followed by a dull thump. The sound of flesh hitting flesh.

I forced my eyes open in time to see two male figures dressed in black, their faces covered with dark balaclava masks, dragging Dr. Albert’s prone body off into the darkness. I heard another one just in time to stop him from smacking my head with what looked like a policeman’s baton.

Fuck you
, I thought, and grabbed the asshole’s forearm as he brought the baton down toward my unprotected noggin. Lurching to my feet, I reversed the path of the baton, so that it landed on my attacker’s head with a solid
thunk
on his skull.

He collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

I grabbed the baton and staggered after the two assailants who were dragging Dr. Albert off toward a dark-colored van parked in between Patterson Hall and the adjacent building. I heard the sound of an engine revving, and did my best to hurry up my pace, trying to ignore my pounding head and lurching stomach.

A sliding door opened on the passenger side of the van and someone inside reached out to help drag the doctor into the vehicle. I threw myself forward, smashing one of his abductors on the head with the leading end of the baton, then whipping it around to clock the other man solidly on the chin with the butt end.

The guy in the van gave a shout of surprise, letting go of Dr. Albert and grabbing for a gun on the floor. I kicked out as hard as I could, knocking the firearm out of his grasp, sending it spinning onto the ground just as Dr. Albert collapsed onto the concrete sidewalk, oblivious to the battle being fought over his prone body.

Another totally inconvenient coughing fit wracked my body, doubling me over as the man in the van stumbled out. He swung a fist, catching me with a glancing blow to my chin, followed by another blow to the back of my head. That one sent me down to the ground again, still coughing.

Fuck you
, I thought again, exhaustion making me repetitive. I lashed out with a roundhouse kick as the man reached for the fallen firearm, catching him squarely in the back of the knees, sending him sprawling to the ground on top of Dr. Albert’s unconscious body. I waited until he tried to stand up, then thrust one heel into his head in a fairly lazy yet effective side kick, knocking him out.

One of the would-be kidnappers I’d thumped with the baton leapt into the van as the motor roared. It surged forward, careening into a bush before slamming into reverse, the right back tire running over the guy I’d put down with my side kick. I grabbed Dr. Albert’s limp body and yanked him clear as the van accelerated forward, then careened back again.

This time right in my direction.

I threw us both into the bushes, pulling Dr. Albert underneath the low hanging branches and off to the side. The van barely missed us, its rear bumper smashing through the bushes right next to us and into the brick wall of the building behind. The driver once again accelerated, the van’s tires squealing as it shot forward, veered to the left, and took off down the narrow path.

Guess whoever was driving decided it was better to get the hell out. Fine by me—I was pretty much done for the evening.

As I sunk back to the ground, I heard footsteps pounding in my direction, voices shouting. My head pounded, sinuses totally clogged. I would have killed for a Neti pot about now.

“Ashley?”

I opened my eyes and looked up to see Mack hovering over me. Good. If Mack was there, I knew I could rest.

“You okay, hon?”

I nodded.

“Yup. But make sure these assholes don’t go anywhere.” I gave a general wave I hoped was in the right direction.

“It’s okay,” Mack said in that soothing storyteller voice of his. “They’re not going anywhere.”

“Good,” I said. “Then they can tell us what the hell is going on.”

“Well, no, they can’t.” Mack helped me back to my feet, supporting me as I swayed back and forth unsteadily. “One’s dead, and the other doesn’t look like he’ll be waking up any time soon.”

“Dead?”

“Yup.”

“Did I do it?” I didn’t think I’d hit
that
hard. Not that I was sorry.

“Only if you were driving whatever ran over his face.”

Euwww.

“Ashley!”

Lil came barreling around the corner of Patterson Hall, with Gentry and Gabriel close behind. Gabriel’s face looked garishly white beneath a coating of soot. Lil reached me first, the impact of her hug nearly knocking me back to the ground. She hung onto me with the strength of a very determined limpet.

“You’re okay,” she said, her tone fierce, almost angry.

“Told you I would be, didn’t I?” I gave her a feeble hug back.

Gabriel put an arm around me.

“You alright, Ash?”

“I got the black lung, Pop.” I gave a weak but genuine cough.

Gentry snorted, even as he was helping Dr. Albert to his feet. I gave him a weak smile, wishing Kai and Tony were there to share the
Zoolander
moment. The grin slid from my face as I remembered that Kai would never share another quote.