Plague Town Read online

  BOOKS BY

  DANA FREDSTI

  * * *

  THE ASHLEY PARKER NOVELS

  Plague Town

  Plague Nation (forthcoming)

  Plague World (forthcoming)

  Murder For Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon

  AN ASHLEY PARKER NOVEL

  PLAGUE

  TOWN

  * * *

  DANA FREDSTI

  TITAN BOOKS

  PLAGUE TOWN

  Print edition ISBN: 9780857686350

  E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686381

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: April 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Dana Fredsti asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2012 Dana Fredsti

  Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

  * * *

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  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Printed and bound in the United States.

  To Jack Young and

  Norman David Morris

  * * *

  Jack, you taught me to lock and load... and always reach for the sky.

  David, you were a wonderful friend and the best “big brother” a girl could want.

  I wish you were both here to read this.

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  “That’s how it always begins. Very small.”

  Egg Shen, Big Trouble in Little China

  “Just the flu,” Maggie murmured, stirring a large pot of homemade chicken soup. “That’s all it is.”

  Nothing to worry about, Dr. Albert had explained. Unless you’re very young or very old.

  He called it Walker’s flu, said that like any virus, it exploited weaknesses in the immune system. But Josh and their son Jason were perfectly healthy—they could fight off anything Mother Nature threw their way. Just in case, though, the doctor had given them both the usual anti-virals. He’d also insisted that she have a shot, although considering how much vomit and Kleenex she’d waded through in the last few days, it was pretty much a case of shutting the barn door after the horse was long gone.

  Everything will be fine, she told herself silently.

  Not that you could tell from the way Josh was acting. This was the first serious illness her husband had experienced since he’d contracted the mumps as a child. It was all she could do not to laugh when her usually stoic spouse reverted to a childish whiner in his sick bed. Though Jason was only seven, he was soldiering though it better than his father.

  Still, her hands were full nursing them and she was exhausted.

  Their fevers had to break soon. They’d both had brief periods of relief where their temperatures had dropped and their appetites had returned, but the respite had been short-lived—an hour or so at most.

  Maggie didn’t like the way the whites of their eyes had gone yellow, either—a sickly color shot through with red lines. She worried that it was a sign of jaundice. Didn’t that mean the liver was infected?

  No, if they weren’t on the mend by the morning, she’d have to load them into the car and make the long, winding drive down the mountain into Redwood Grove for another visit with the doctor. In the meantime, she’d continue to bring them chicken soup, saltines, and ginger ale, even if the food just sat on the nightstand, untouched.

  If only they would eat.

  “Mom?” Jason’s voice, a thin echo of its usual healthy tone, came through the baby monitor she’d placed next to his bed. “Mom, my throat hurts. I’m so thirsty.”

  Maggie hit the speaker button.

  “Be right there, baby,” she said. “I’ll bring you some water.”

  Jason coughed in reply, issuing a wet, phlegmy sound that would have alarmed her if she hadn’t heard it so many times the last few days. Still, it seemed as if he was coughing up a lung.

  Stirring the soup a few more times, Maggie turned down the burner under the pot, tightened her robe, grabbed a glass, and filled it with tap water. Then she headed up the stairs in what must have been her fiftieth trip of the day.

  She sighed.

  Who needs the gym?

  Walking down the hallway to Jason’s room, she sniffed and wrinkled her nose. The smell of stale, sweat-soaked linens hung in the air, tinged with urine. Hopefully she’d be able to wash the sheets in the next day or two.

  Pushing Jason’s door open with her free hand, Maggie stepped into her seven-year-old son’s room... and stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Dear Jesus...”

  Jason lay in his bed in his Spider-Man pajamas, eyes wide open, unnaturally dark blood trickling out from his tear ducts, nostrils, ears, and mouth. His skin was cyanotic blue and the corneas of his eyes were fish-belly white.

  The glass slipped from Maggie’s hand, shattering on the hardwood floor, sending wat
er and shards flying everywhere. She didn’t notice, her attention entirely on her son.

  “J... Jason?” She took another step into the room, glass crunching beneath her shoes. “Baby?”

  No response. Her little boy lay there unmoving, the blood seeping out onto the pillow, creating a dark halo around his corn-silk blond hair.

  A deep primal wail stuck in Maggie’s throat, a hair’s breadth from emerging and shattering the silence with its pain. Part of her refused to accept the evidence of her eyes, and she shoved the cry back, somehow knowing that voicing her loss would make it real.

  Josh, she thought instinctively. I have to get Josh. He’ll know what to do.

  She backed out of Jason’s room and spun, sprinting to the master bedroom where Josh had spent the last four days lying in misery. The door was ajar, and she stumbled past it.

  “Josh,” she choked. “It’s Jason, I think he’s... he’s not breathing, and—” The words caught in her throat.

  Josh lay on his back, his head turned toward the sound of Maggie’s voice, but there was nothing but pain in his gaze. He coughed, and blood sprayed out of his mouth. More dribbled from his nostrils, ears, and eyes. It was as if his insides were dissolving.

  Before Maggie could do more than gasp in horror, her husband’s jaw fell open and a rattling noise emerged—a wheezing, liquid vibration coming from deep in his throat.

  He’s choking, she realized. Suffocating on his own blood. She flew across the room, grabbing him by the shoulders and lifting him in an attempt to raise his head and clear out his esophagus. She could feel the fever radiating from his body like heat rising from asphalt on a summer day.

  “C’mon honey, breathe!” she said, shifting into emergency mode. “Breathe, god dammit!” But Josh’s head just lolled to one side, his eyes quickly glazing over with the same milky film as Jason’s.

  “Ohjesusohjesusohjesus...”

  Maggie’s head shook back and forth in denial even as she lowered Josh back onto the bed and reached for the phone on the bedside table. This isn’t happening, she told herself as her fingers stabbed out 9-1-1. Dr. Albert said it was just the flu. Where’s all the blood coming from? There had to be an answer, a cure, something that would bring back her husband and son.

  She listened to the ringing on the other end of the line, waiting for a calm, soothing voice to pick up and tell her what to do.

  “Hurryhurryhurry,” she chanted, averting her eyes from Josh’s body. Five, six, seven times, and no one answered. She raised her arm, ready to hurl the phone across the room, when a thumping noise in the doorway stopped her short.

  Her little boy, her Jason, lurched into the room, one hand slamming unheedingly against the doorframe.

  Maggie gave a choked sob of joy. She dropped the phone and reached for his small form as he staggered toward her. His arms stretched out pleadingly, his mouth agape.

  Maggie’s eyes widened as she saw her son with sudden clarity. The still-bluish tint of his skin... his milky eyes, like those of a blind man. Her skin crawled, and instinctively she started to draw back.

  No! He needs me.

  She reached for him again with the age-old reflexes of a mother.

  By the time her heart caught up with her brain and Jason had sunk his teeth into her arm, it was too late.

  Because Josh was awake now, too. And so was his appetite.

  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  I slapped the head of my giant panda alarm clock, sending a metal spike into its adorable panda skull. Normally I’d feel guilty about assaulting an endangered species, but anything to stop the hideous ringing.

  I hate getting up.

  I mean, really hate it. I’d sleep until noon if I had my way, but someone thought it was a good idea to start the day in the morning.

  I’m too old for this, I thought through the cobwebs. Try as I might to schedule my first class at a reasonable hour, there was an asshole out there who’d decided that “Pandemics in History” were best studied at 8 a.m.

  Sadist. Like I really needed to read about the Black Death, or debate love during the time of cholera, with just a single cappuccino under my belt.

  One... two... three!

  I threw off the down comforter and rolled out of bed, taking my time standing up. I’m never particularly perky before 10 a.m. In fact, I’m the anti-perk. But I was especially slow to start these days.

  Bad enough that I was at least ten years older than anyone else in the class. Who would have thought a decade could make such a difference? On top of that, I’d already missed the first week of my sophomore year thanks to a case of genuine, bona fide Walker’s flu; named, by the way, after the first guy to catch the disease. I could think of better ways to be immortalized.

  Damn, it had kicked my butt. It left me weak and cranky. Really cranky.

  I hardly ever get sick, but it’d slipped in right after a nasty case of food poisoning. Dr. Albert—our family GP since I was in diapers—said I probably caught it because of my weakened immune system.

  That didn’t make me feel any better about it. Weirdly enough, the doc had seemed almost cheerful at the thought, until I’d refused a shot of flu vaccine.

  Dr. Albert was a big believer in flu shots. Kind of like an evangelistic drug pusher... except legit. I’d missed the free flu vaccine clinic while I’d been puking up my guts due to some bad sushi—I should have known eating at a fast food place called Sushirama was a bad idea.

  So he’d tried to shoot me up when I crawled into his office, but I’d said no way. I mean, I was already sick, so putting more nasties into my system seemed like a bad idea.

  Now, as I stood up on unsteady legs, I wondered if maybe I should have listened to him.

  My roommate Zara was already gone for the day, leaving the bathroom free and clear, thank goodness. I mean, I liked her, but honestly, the girl took an hour to put on make-up, and that was after all the scrubbing, exfoliating, creaming, and toning. And the vegetable and fruit drawers in our little fridge were stuffed full of leaking jars of face goo. Our apples and carrots may have smelled funny, but they had the best skin in town.

  I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror.

  Euwww.

  At least I wouldn’t get carded if I wanted to buy booze. I looked old enough to be my mother. My skin had this kind of pale olivey cast, the same color as those scary babies in Italian Renaissance paintings. And my eyes looked dull—more gray than green, like brackish swamp water.

  Okay, maybe not that bad, but points for using “brackish” in a sentence before my first cup of coffee.

  Glancing guiltily at Zara’s magic potions, I pried one open and used it to try and hide the dark circles under my eyes. Applied something called “Sun-Kissed Beige Glow” to try to change the sickly tone of my skin to an artificially natural tint. The result surprised me.

  Definitely better.

  A little mascara and some lip-gloss brightened my face enough to pass inspection. That left the thick, tawny mess I call hair. I pulled it back and used an industrial strength metal clip made in the shape of a butterfly. The violet and red crystals set in the wings caught the sunlight shining through the bathroom window. At least part of me sparkled. Although not in a Twilight way.

  Personally I thought Edward was kinda... well... gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I prefered my vamps like Christopher Lee or the cute Billy Idol clone in Buffy. Not bothering with all the torturey-angst, just happy to sip blood from some sexy women.

  Uh-oh. Couldn’t let Matt know about that. Just a hint of encouragement, and he’d be trying for a threesome.

  Which made me smile, in spite of myself. After all, my boy toy was wicked cute in a button-down collar kind of way. He was on the swim team, which made him all toned and tan in the right places. If only he was just a little bit older...

  Then again, that was part of the appeal, wasn’t it? Proving I could attract someone as hunky as Matt at twenty-nine, after my ex had dumped me
for an eighteen-year-old.

  Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.

  I finally pulled on some jeans, a long pink tank top, baby-doll T-shirt in a darker pink, and a violet hoodie. Like most Nor-Cal coastal communities, Redwood Grove was cool and foggy the majority of the time, but you never knew when the sun was going to burn through the fog. Layering was usually the safest bet.

  I didn’t have too far to walk to my first class—the apartment was just a couple blocks away from the campus proper—but today it felt like miles. I’d lost some weight during my double-whammy, and while, sure, it was great to have my clothes comfortably loose, I felt as if a strong gust of wind would blow me away. Every once in a while I’d still get hit with a hot flash that made me want to turn around and crawl back in bed.

  I hate being sick.

  Fog shrouded the campus this morning, condensation dripping from roof eaves and plants. The tops of the redwoods vanished into the mist. I inhaled deeply, loving the smell of leaves, mulch, and a hint of salt air. Then a coughing fit hit me, reminding me that I’d have to enjoy nature a little less enthusiastically for a while.

  I walked past the two-story Victorian house I’d shared with my ex-husband, a former professor at Big Red, and flipped it off.

  I smiled. While I was sick, I’d had to forego my daily ritual. I’d missed it.

  Next I stopped at one of Big Red’s many coffee kiosks for an extra-hot, wet double cappuccino and a blueberry muffin. It cost me an extra five minutes, but if I didn’t eat something I’d spend the next hour clutching my stomach every time it growled, pretending it wasn’t me. And if I didn’t have my caffeine, I might as well have stayed in bed.

  By the time I reached D. B. Patterson Hall, the corridors were pretty much cleared out, which meant I was definitely in the late zone. At room 217 I opened the door as quietly as possible, hoping to sneak into the auditorium and find a seat in the back row.