Plague Nation (35 page)

No more puking, fer crissake.

I head-butted the thing as hard as I could, my skull slamming into its teeth before it could get a chomp in. Once, and then again. Its rotted gum-line crunched with a sickening sound, and I managed to grab the nearly forgotten Ruger from its holster, jabbing the barrel under its chin and blowing a hole through its head.

I capped the second zombie point-blank in one eye as it closed in for a face bite of its own. I couldn’t see the third, but I could feel it pulling my leg into its jaws. I fired blindly around the first corpse. One shot went wild, but the next two hit just as I felt its teeth sink into the back of my calf. The fabric of my pants protected me, so it didn’t break the skin, but damn, that hurt!

“Ash!” Red yelled, flailing to get free.

“I’m okay!” I called back, trying to ignore the pain lancing up my leg. I was more concerned at the thought of more zombies finding their way under the vehicles, attracted by the ruckus. Moans and gurgles sounded to my right.

“Come on, move it, Red!”

He cursed again. There was a ripping sound as something gave way.

“Okay, I’m loose,” he grunted, careful not to yell again. “Go! Go!” I didn’t need any more encouragement than that.

We scurried as fast as we could. I paused briefly to look back and put bullets in the skulls of two of the faster zombies crawling after us.

We passed two cracks of light from the narrow gaps between cars. I could hear shouts from the other team members, calling our names. Where were they? I couldn’t believe we weren’t in the clear yet. Could we have veered in the wrong direction?

Red had fallen behind.

“Ash!” he shouted.

I turned back to him. My wild card vision picked up on his wide-eyed look of fear.

“Ash? I—”

He never finished.

The darkness gave way to the flash and the roar of a blast furnace. Red disappeared in the fireball, his scream abruptly cut off even as I was thrown forward by a deafening wall of sound and heat as fire raged around me. Buffeted by a killer wave that tumbled me around, I watched as the car above me spiraled up and away. I heard the crash as it landed.

Then I found myself on the ground under open sky, lying in between burning vehicles. I was dazed, deafened, shaken, and my pants were on fire. I rolled and beat at the flames until they were extinguished, then staggered to my feet, realizing how completely and utterly lucky I had just been. If poor Red and the bodies of those zoms hadn’t shielded me from the worst of the blast, I would have been completely barbecued.

My head spun and ached, and my ears were ringing. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. I’d made it to the other side of the clusterfuck, although apparently I had taken the scenic route. Gabriel and Carl ran over to me from the sidewalk beyond, as Lil called my name in joyful disbelief. Gabriel looked at me in equal parts relief and amazement.

“You are just frickin’ death-proof, aren’t you?”

Carl looked beyond me, though.

“What about Red?”

I shook my head, and his jaw tightened.

“Damn.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. Gabriel put a hand on his shoulder.

“We have to move before the rest of these cars go up.” He looked at me. “Are you good to go?”

Ignoring the ringing in my ear, I just said, “Which way?”

Gabriel jerked his head back toward the steep side street ahead of us.

“Up that hill, and we’re nearly there,” he said. “Let’s move.”

We reformed our ranks and pushed our way up the hill. The explosion seemed to have stopped up the undead bottleneck behind us, but as always, there were plenty more on the welcoming committee ahead, with still more continuing to trickle out of the woodwork.

A piercing whistle from somewhere overhead caught my attention. In spite of everything, my face split into a wide grin as I saw JT poking his head out from the top of an apartment building on our left. He gave a shout and leaped to the fire escape, then swung and dropped himself like a pachinko ball down the face of the building, swinging from one precarious leap to another.

Finally he launched through the air and caught hold of a telephone pole retaining wire, grasping it like a trapeze artist. He lowered himself in a gentle, lazy spiral descent, hitting the ground with bended knees, then sauntered over to the rest of us, grinning from ear to ear.

“How’d you lose that horde?” I asked him.

“Noisy and flashy going out, silent and ninja-like coming back. My standard M.O.” He sniffed the air. “Hey, what smells like fried chicken? It’s making me hungry.”

Carl glared at him.

“I lost my friend back there, asshole.”

JT looked at him, grin fading away.

“I am truly sorry to hear that,” he said.

Carl turned without a word and walked rapidly up the hill.

JT turned to me.

“I really am sorry.”

“I know,” I said. “Let’s just clear out these damn zombies and get up this friggin’ hill.”

We were a grim-faced bunch as we reached the foot of Medical Center Way. Several large trucks crisscrossed the entrance, one lying on its side, steam still trickling sullenly from the engine, another rammed up against the first, effectively blocking off the road to any automotive traffic. Both trucks bore the logos of pharmaceutical companies—whether by coincidence or design, I didn’t even want to hazard a guess.

Beyond the trucks, the road curved up a hill into a nature reserve filled with hiking trails. It sprawled behind the medical complex, which lay on the right. On the left was a slope overgrown with ivy and autumnal colored foliage.

I’ve hiked those trails,
I thought, suddenly struck by how surreal it all was.
Never knew it was a Men in Black branch office.

Then again, the same could be said of Redwood Grove.

The good news for us was that the barrier also limited the number of zombies in our path. We needed all the breaks we could get, after the hell of the last few blocks. Mack was red-faced and laboring with each step, even with Lil and Gentry’s help. His shirt was dark with blood from the bite he’d sustained. I’d lay odds on it being worse than he let on.

G was struggling valiantly to keep his cool. He stayed with Dr. Albert, checking his pocket watch periodically, muttering to himself like a thickly accented White Rabbit. Dr. Albert was also muttering, punctuated by huffing and puffing as he struggled to keep pace with Tony and Nathan, his two protectors.

Our progress took us uphill, and I was feeling the burn myself, more than ready to collapse in a heap somewhere, preferably in a place that was free of zombies.

I’d had enough, thank you.

JT was the only one who seemed unaffected by Red’s death, and for that matter, the rest of the carnage. It was as if he carried an unlimited source of energy, like an Energizer Bunny on crack. Every wall, building, and object, instead of being an obstacle, provided another opportunity for acrobatics. The world was his trampoline. He would have been a joy to watch if not for the circumstances.

Right now it seemed too much like dancing on a giant grave.

Speaking of the acrobatic devil, JT suddenly dropped his speed and settled next to me.

“So what’s the deal with the older dude with the bite?” He spoke in a normal tone. I held up a finger and turned down an imaginary dial.

“Do you mean Mack?” I lowered my own voice accordingly.

He shrugged.

“I mean the older dude with the bite,” he said, nodding in Mack’s direction. “I haven’t been formally introduced to anyone yet, you know.”

He had a point. I tried not to let that fact irritate me.

“What about him?” I said as we hurried past a driveway that sloped down to some loading docks. They butted up against three different buildings, and the area was crawling with zombies—so many they looked like a cluster of cockroaches.

“I’ve seen people get bitten,” he responded. “They die. Then they come back, unless someone with triple-digit IQ points takes out their brain, right?” We moved past a phalanx of electrical transformers. “He’s obviously not feeling great, but he’s not sick. What gives?”

What the hell,
I thought. He’d risked his life for us, and we’d gone way past the point of a cover story involving Ebola and an escaped lab monkey.

“He’s a wild card,” I said. “He’s immune to the virus. So are Lil, and Tony and Nathan and Gentry.” I pointed to each person as I named them. “And so am I.”

JT looked intrigued, but not particularly surprised.

“So basically, you’re saying that you guys could get chomped on like a turkey leg at the Renaissance Faire, and you’d be fine.”

I gave him a look.

“As long as we don’t bleed out or lose a vital organ, yeah, pretty much.”

JT considered this.

“How do you know if you’re immune?”

“It’s simple,” I said. “You get bit the first time, and you don’t die.” I shivered as I remembered the feverish, agonizing pain of the zombie virus coursing through my body as my immune system fought it. “It hurts,” I added. “A lot.”

“Huh.” JT thought about that. Then without a word he bounded ahead, springing up onto a metal railing and rebounding off the side of another phalanx of transformers with no apparent effort. Pausing briefly, he eyeballed a series of progressively taller aluminum storage sheds, and his muscles tensed.

“No
,” I hissed. He looked at me like a cat getting yelled at for planning to jump on the counter—you know, fully prepared to ignore the yelling and do it anyway. I could just imagine the hollow metallic booming his feet would make on the aluminum siding.

“Noise!” I added in the same frantic hiss, pointing at the sheds.

That got through to him. Instead he veered to the side and leapt onto the top of the low raised wall that bordered the foliage on the left.

If he’s this hyper normally, I’d hate to see him on a sugar rush.

The ground sloped upward on our left, toward the hospital building. Thankfully the hillside was clear. I dropped back next to Lil, Mack, and Gentry.

“You hanging in there, Postman?” I asked Mack, trying not to sound too concerned. He gave me a wan smile.

“Hanging in there, Ash.”

“How about you, Lil?” I asked. “You need a break?”

“No!” she snapped. “I’ve got him.”

Over her head, Gentry and I exchanged looks.

“Yeah, Lil and I can handle the mail,” Gentry said.

“Hah, hah,” Mack huffed.

Suddenly shots cracked off to our left as Nicks took out several zombies, all wearing scrubs, wandering down the bottom flight of a wooden staircase that zigzagged up into the hill above. Pretty staircase, beautiful scenery... ugly zombies.

More came trickling down the road—these looked like hikers who’d been in the nature reserve when the shit hit the fan.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Three headshots from Jones, three dropped zoms.

Moans rose from behind us. I looked back, and saw the zombies that had been milling around the cargo bays. Alerted by the gunfire, they’d found their way up to the road and were gravitating toward our group. There were a lot of them, and more kept pouring sluggishly from around the corner of the driveway.

“Lots of incoming behind us,” I yelled. No point being quiet any more.

“Double-time, people,” Gabriel hollered. Sweat poured down his face, whether from the exertion or his condition, I wasn’t certain. How long had it been since he’d had his last injection? An hour? Two?

Ahead on our right was a blue sign with white lettering. Dr. Albert saw it and brightened visibly.

“We’re almost there,” he panted, trying to hurry up his pace.

The sign identified the “Center for Regenerative Medicine.”

Now
that’s
subtle.

Nicks and Nathan dropped back, turning to face the hungry mob heading up the hill, taking out those in the lead and creating stumbling blocks for those behind. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would slow them down a little bit. The sound of branches breaking and the crunch of leaves underfoot alerted me to several wobbling down the hill with an unsteady but determined gait. I started to swivel my M4 around.

Pop, pop, pop.

Jones beat me to it.

Alrighty then.

We reached a point in the road where it began curving around and up further into the nature reserve. A glass-and-metal-enclosed platform stretched ribbon-like across the hillside, improbably balanced on steel trusses and supports, framed by eucalyptus trees and fog. Suspended from the north facade were exterior ramps and staircases. The result was a building that was a work of practical art.

A steel-and-glass bridge—sort of an enclosed catwalk—ran from the new hi-tech structure to a pair of bland and much older multi-story buildings, hitting about the ninth floor. The catwalk itself was bisected by a giant metal shaft resembling a square grain elevator, rising in between the old and new buildings. A sign proclaimed it to be “Elevator 35,” which made me wonder where elevators one through thirty-four were located.

“There.” Dr. Albert pointed at the elevator. “We go in there.”

You’ve got to be kidding.

“That’s the super secret lab?” I said. “That thing out of
Architectural Digest?”

“Seriously,” JT chimed in. “That’s about as conspicuous as a secret lab could be.”

Dr. Albert tapped one side of his face and smiled mysteriously.

“Much like Patterson Hall, there is more than meets the eye. The elevator is just the entrance.”

Unfortunately the entrance to the elevator lay at the base of a long wide drive that dipped down a steep hill. Between us and said entrance were more loading docks, trucks parked at odd, inconvenient angles, and dozens of zombies.

Nathan turned to Tony.

“Now’s the time for that big-ass shotgun of yours, kid.”

Tony’s eyes lit up so you would’ve thought it was Christmas.

“Cool,” he said.

Well, as long as someone’s happy...

Nicks and the Gunsy Twins spread out along the top of the hill next to the drive and started picking their shots. In the meantime, the group following us up Medical Center Way grew closer—too close for comfort—so Tony made use of his BAS, blasting away as enthusiastically as a kid playing a first-person shooter.