Plague Nation (34 page)

JT popped up in front of us.

“Look. I admire your taste in decor and all,” he said to G, “but if you don’t get your shit together, I am going to dickslap you so hard, it’ll leave a mushroom print on your forehead.”

“Right then.” G nodded as if coming to some agreement with himself.

He vanished upstairs.

I glared at JT.

“Really? Did you have to be such a jerk?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”

Before I could argue the point, G loped back down the stairs, wearing a black hooded jacket, and a Bat-satchel slung over one shoulder. He pulled a pocket watch from an inner pocket, checked it, and vanished into the kitchen, where we heard water running.

The water shut off and G reappeared, drying his hands on a hand towel.

JT grinned at me as if to say, “See?”

I ignored him.

G put the hand towel down on the entryway table.

“I’m ready,” he announced.

Our only problem—and it was a big one—was that there wasn’t a back door. There was the sliding door that opened onto the patio, and the front door. Both faced the main courtyard that lay between the townhouses, where a veritable shitload of zombies was now shambling down the stairs.

In the five minutes we’d taken to pack up, dozens had found their way in from the Carl Street entrance, funneling in like cattle in a slaughterhouse chute. JT pointed his thumb to the moaning swarm cascading down toward us.

“Yeah, those are the ones I was telling you about.”

“We need to create a distraction,” Gabriel said. “No way we’re fighting our way through that many without losing someone.”

“I got you covered,” JT said.

Gabriel ignored him, consulting his iPhone maps. Nathan, on the other hand, folded his arms and looked at JT as though he’d discovered an interesting new bug.

“Oh, really?” he said.

“Sure.” JT swung his arms back and forth as if warming up the muscles. “So where are we all headed?”

“A super secret government laboratory up Medical Center Way,” Nathan said. He did it with a straight face too.

JT’s eyes lit up.

“Secret government lab... no shit?”

I nodded solemnly.

“He shits you not.” That elicited an appreciative whistle.

“That is
sooo
cool.” JT frowned for a moment, working out some mental navigation, then said, “Okay, no problem. Tell you what I’m gonna do. I’ll distract this bunch, lead them downstream, towards the Haight. You guys go around the corner the other way, up Arguello to the UC parking garage. Then take a left and a right up Hillway. Got it?”

Gabriel looked up from his iMaps and regarded JT thoughtfully.

“Good route.”

It was my turn to frown.

“Um, yeah, but what about him?” I said, nodding my head in JT’s direction.

“Awww, she worries about me,” he said to Gabriel, then he grinned at me. “I’ll catch up with you on Hillway. Won’t take but a minute.”

“How the hell do you propose to perform this miracle, without becoming zombie chow?” I asked with an admirable lack of sarcasm.

“It’s quite simple,” JT said. “I will compel them with my deliciousness, then confound them with the speed, grace, and power of Urbobatics. Follow... and observe.”

He bounded up the stairs. Nathan and I looked at each other, then at Gabriel.

“Go ahead,” he said. “See what he’s got in mind. I’ll work on plan B, just in case.”

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.”

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 shot 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.