Plague Nation (7 page)

It was hard to get a handle on him. I thought he was one of the good guys, as far as it went, but the older I got, and the more I paid attention to politics and the news, the less inclined I was to trust anyone to do the right thing for the right reasons. Especially anyone with power.

At the sound of Paxton’s voice, Simone and Nathan looked up and saw me standing in the doorway with a blatantly guilty expression on my face. I knew better than to try for the innocent routine. I haven’t been able to carry that off since I was, oh, five years old.

“Ashley,” Simone said politely. “Won’t you sit down? Given what you’ve likely heard, you might as well join the conversation.” Her tone was hard to read, but I was probably in for a world of hurt, one way or the other.

I gave Paxton a sideways glance. He responded with a little “after you” gesture, so I went in and sat in the front row of seats.

As I usually did in most situations, I decided that the best defense was a good offense.

“So, is there any chance of containing this?” I asked.

Simone gave my question some thought before replying.

“For an organization as secretive as the
Dolofónoitou Zontanóús Nekroús,
it’s quite large and has many members in branches of the military and government worldwide. So we’re doing what we can to stem the outbreaks... quietly.”

“That’s only realistic within one or two small towns and you know it, Simone,” Nathan growled impatiently. “There’ve already been videos on YouTube, and reports from the smaller news outlets.”

“Yes, but the current popularity of zombies in the various media has played to our favor,” Simone argued. “Any doubters are assuming that it’s a gimmick, or hysteria.”

“But only to a point.” Nathan shook his head. “The
Dolofóni
can only blame things on designer drugs like Bath Salts, or play it off as student film projects, for a limited amount of time. Eventually word is going to spread, and some sort of overt action will be needed. Maybe even demanded.”

“They’re not really talking tactical nukes yet, are they?” My voice sounded small in the large room.

“Not yet.” It was Paxton who answered my question. “It’s easier to consider that as a viable option when dealing with a small and relatively isolated community such as Redwood Grove. Collateral damage is limited because of the geography. For larger, more populated areas, however, the sort of public outcry that would result from, say, San Francisco being bombed, would be a PR disaster for the administration.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” Nathan muttered. Paxton ignored him and continued.

“Besides, at what point would that even work? Do it too soon, and you risk outraging the American public— and the rest of the world, for that matter. Who knows how they’ll react. Wait too long, though, and what’s the point? The problem will have spread past the point of containment.”

Well, that just sucks.

“Containment only works when the numbers are relatively small, and the geographical logistics are favorable.” Simone shook her head. “We were lucky with Redwood Grove. If one can call this sort of devastation ‘lucky.’”

Nathan snorted.

“Like you were lucky in Kyrgyzstan?”

That got my attention. The “glare” switch lit up in Simone’s eyes again.

“Not
nearly
as lucky as we were in Kyrgyzstan,” she replied.

“Kyrgyzstan?” I looked expectantly from Nathan to Simone and back again. Colonel Paxton seemed to suddenly find his fingernails very interesting.

Simone gave something that sounded like a cross between a cough and a sigh.

“I suppose there’s no reason not to tell her.”

Nathan shrugged.

“Fine by me,” he said.

Through a sniper scope, Nathan watched the small group of Kyrgyz tribesmen as they made their way up a trail that would make mountain goats think twice. They reached a plateau and the ruins of an ancient fortress, and then headed toward a rocky outcrop. Nathan’s vantage point, a few hundred feet above in another pile of ruins, provided him the perfect cover to watch their progress without fear of being seen.

According to Intel, there were Scythian burial mounds in the area. Most were under the waters of Lake Issyk Kul, but some still lay nestled in the crevices and canyons of the surrounding mountains. So it was possible that these really were tribesmen after valuable artifacts buried in the mounds. Or they could be Mujahideen on their way to a hidden bunker in one of the many caves honeycombing the area.

From the furtiveness of their progress and the well-worn Kalashnikovs slung across their shoulders, along with the odd RPG-7, Nathan was betting on the latter. One of them even had an Enfield, its stock wrapped in fabric, cradled under one arm. Most of them were also lugging long canvas bags on their backs. More weapons, maybe.

Hunkering down behind the cover of a crumbling stone wall, Nathan downed a handful of almonds and dried apricots, followed by a few swigs of bottled water, watching as the tribesmen reached the outcropping of rocks. He adjusted the scope for a better look at their destination, taking in the tangle of brush that hung over what looked like an indentation in the mountain itself, blocked with boulders of various sizes.

It had been a stroke of luck, finding the scope. He’d picked it up off a discarded Dragunov he’d found in the ruins, the barrel burst. Whoever had fired it hadn’t checked for blockages. Given the amount of grit, mud, and sand in this country... not too smart. Although considering the fact that he’d managed to drop his binoculars on the climb up, he wasn’t one to judge.

At least not much.

One of the tribesmen, the one carrying the Enfield, barked out a few words in Kyrgyz. The men carrying the canvas bags unslung them, pulling out what looked like pry bars, and set to work heaving the boulders away from what had to be an entrance to one of the many caves honeycombing the region.

“Gotcha, you bastards,” Nathan muttered. He took another pull of water and continued to watch the activity across from him and below.

One of the men paused in his work, leaning down and picking something off the rocky ground. He held it up for closer inspection, then gave a sharp yell, dropping it as if it’d burned his fingers. Enfield Man snapped at him, his irritation obvious to Nathan even from a distance.

Enfield Man jerked his head at the boulders still obscuring the now obvious cave entrance. The other man shook his head and backed away from whatever he’d dropped to the ground.

Nathan adjusted his focus, honing in on the object.

“Move the fuck to the right, okay?” he muttered. Enfield Man’s dusty shoes were in his line of sight. The fellow obligingly—if obliviously—took a step to the right before hunkering down to examine the discarded
—

What the fuck
?

—
foot.

Nathan shook his head, then looked back through the scope.

A human foot lay in the dirt, bone sticking out of the ragged edges of flesh where an ankle should have been attached. As desiccated as it was, it was clear that something had been chewing on it.

Enfield Man stumbled backward, shouting frantic orders to the men using the pry bars on the boulders blocking the cave entrance. His shouts were clearly audible to Nathan, and from what little Kyrgyz knew, he recognized the word “stop.”

Even as the orders were shouted, one of the men succeeded in toppling the largest boulder out of the rocky jigsaw puzzle, jumping back as the rock smashed to the ground, revealing a gaping black hole. The man turned to his compatriots with a triumphant yell
—

—which cut off abruptly as several pairs of hands, as desiccated as the foot, reached out of the darkness, seized him by his face, throat and chest, and dragged him over the remaining boulders that still partially obscured the cave mouth. He’d vanished into its depths before his compatriots could do more than gape in horror.

A sound, maybe the wind, rose in the air.

Enfield Man’s face contorted in genuine fear as he shouted to his men, gesturing toward the hole and the boulders. Nathan bet that he was saying whatever was Kyrgyz for “close that fucking hole back up again!”

What the hell is in that cave?

Several of the men had actually started to try and hoist the large boulder back into its former place when people started clambering slowly out of the cave. Mostly men, but a few women as well, robes hanging in tattered shreds from emaciated frames, faces something out of a horror film—almost skeletal, dried black fluid outlining their mouths, although several had dark red smears on down their chins. But the eyes were the worst. The corneas were filmed over like those of a cadaver, and the whites were a ghastly yellow, streaked with red.

At any other time Nathan would have appreciated the sharp focus of the scope he’d found. Now he just wondered what the hell these poor bastards had contracted.
Christ,
he thought.
What kind of screwed up government shuts its diseased citizens in a fucking cave?

The tribesmen who were trying to shove the boulder back in place scattered, letting the thing drop onto the ground. It rolled against one of the people crawling out of the cave. Although he couldn’t hear the crunch of bones as the boulder pinned the man against the cliff wall, Nathan had no doubt that pretty much everything in the poor bastard’s body had just been crushed. Only his head and one arm were still visible.

Except—

He was still moving
.

Nathan stared in disbelief as the pinned man opened and closed his mouth, arm reaching out toward the tribesmen as if imploring them to set him free. One of the tribesmen stumbled back against the boulder, and the trapped man immediately seized his robes and yanked the fellow toward him in what seemed like an impossible feat of strength.

The man screamed and pulled away, leaving a swatch of his robe in the trapped man’s hand as he plowed into another one of the cave’s escapees—one of the few women in the group. She grabbed him by the shoulders as if to steady him... and then took a bite out of his right trapezius. His scream rose to an agonized pitch, cut off by the explosive percussion of a shot fired from the Enfield rifle, straight into the woman’s skull.

The bitten tribesman fell to his knees, hands clutching the bleeding wound on his neck as Enfield Man took aim again... and blew a hole in his compatriot’s head.

Things happened fast after that.

Gunfire mixed with the sounds of agonized screaming and the rising moans of the creatures from the cave, blending into a hellish concert that echoed off the mountain walls. Nathan watched as more emaciated people staggered out of the cave, and the tribesmen fired on them. He watched as bullets struck shoulders, guts, arms, and merely staggered the targets back a few steps. before they lurched forward again.

Enfield Man kept shouting something and pointing to his head, lifting his rifle to then put a round through the skull of a man so emaciated, it didn’t seem possible that he was mobile. The man immediately fell on his knees, then did a face plant on the ground.

He didn’t move again.

Still the other tribesmen fired wildly into torsos and limbs, fear overcoming discipline as the cannibals from the cave continued to advance and overwhelm them. Thrashing, screaming bodies were borne to the ground, blood flowing as their attackers tore chunks of flesh with teeth and hands.

Those tribesmen who tried to retreat down the path created their own log jam, effectively trapping them until they found their way blocked by yet more cannibals, who continued to pour out of the cave in a steady flow.

Nathan was frozen, his hands clamped around the scope as he watched the horror unfold. He thought he might be in shock. And wasn’t that a laugh. Jackson would rag on his ass six ways from Sunday if he found out.

Enfield Man was the last tribesman standing, wedged in between the mountain wall and the fallen boulder, making every shot count. When his gun ran out of ammo, he grabbed an AK47 from one of his fallen compatriots and opened fire in full auto, spraying bullets into the advancing horde, still aiming at their heads. Some fell as the projectiles hit their targets, enough that it looked like the guy might have a chance.

Then the man pinned by the boulder snagged Enfield Man’s shoulder with his free hand, taking his attention just long enough for several attackers to reach him. One grasped the AK47’s barrel in a claw-like hand. Another clutched at the tribesman’s robes, while the third grabbed an arm and promptly took a bite out of it. Enfield managed to get off one more round of ammo before he was borne to the ground.

Still unable to move, Nathan watched as the attackers proceeded to devour the fallen men. And as he did so, the partially-devoured tribesmen started moving... and staggered to their feet.

“Jesus...”

It was barely more than a mutter under his breath, so what happened next had to be a coincidence. One of the cannibals suddenly turned away from the body he was eating and looked up at the ruins where Nathan was crouching. Those milky eyes seemed to stare straight at him.

Nathan’s fingers unclenched and the scope dropped to the ground with an impossibly loud clatter. Even without the scope, he could see the figures turn toward the sound and start lurching their way in his general direction.

This is majorly fucked up right here.

Something scuffed up dirt and pebbles behind him. Nathan jerked around fast and hard enough to hurt his neck just as teeth fastened onto his left arm, and the smell of putrefying flesh assaulted his nostrils.

He screamed—the first time in his adult life he’d done so. A chunk of his arm tore away under the teeth of his attacker, and Nathan threw himself to the side, a shoulder scraping hard against a section of crumbling wall. He looked up in time to see an emaciated figure lurching toward him, with the same yellow whites and filmed-over corneas as the cannibals from the cave. Its teeth were coated with fresh blood, a gobbet of flesh and fabric hanging from the mouth.