Plague Nation Read online

  “Sorry, Ash, but I’m staying out of this, for the sake of our friendship and my continued health.”

  Tony snickered. Not surprising since he had a solid case of hero worship for Gentry. The lieutenant wielded a mean flamethrower, and held his own with Tony and Kai when they started batting around movie quotes like the ROTC’s answer to The Big Bang Theory.

  “Wuss,” I muttered. Not that I could really blame him, seeing as Gabriel was his direct superior. Then I turned back to the others.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” I said, “but Gabriel and I, well, we haven’t... er... seen each other since we fought the swarm.”

  Tony nodded sagely. His tongue piercing clicked against a tooth. Tall enough to play for any basketball team, he’d gone from an irritating punked-out teenager to a slightly less irritating zombie-killing teenager—and done it in record time. The metal ball in his tongue was only one of the multiple piercings Tony had sported when I’d first met him. But he’d learned the hard way that dangling pieces of metal didn’t mix well with zombies.

  “Classic case of Pon Farr,” he said. “Get him back to Vulcan, stat!”

  “Damn straight,” Kai said, nodding his head in agreement. “The dude needs to get laid.”

  “Is there anyone here but me who thinks this conversation is totally inappropriate?” I looked entreatingly at Mack. “Come on, man, back me up here.” A fifty-something mailman, Mack wore an expression that reminded me of a mournful hound dog. Unfortunately I could tell by the way his blue eyes shone with mischief that I wasn’t gonna get the support I wanted.

  “Tony has a point, Ashley,” he said. “It’s your job to make sure our fearless leader has an outlet for his stress.”

  That elicited a snort from Lil, an eighteen-year-old Arts major and my roomie during the current quarantine. She giggled, then looked at me guiltily.

  I sputtered in outrage.

  “So what, I’m some kind of human stress ball now?” I demanded. Even as the words escaped my mouth, I knew they were a bad choice.

  “Well, you are his main squeeze,” Mack replied. His straight face lasted all of five seconds until Tony, Kai, and Lil all dissolved into fits of laughter that made me want to smack them. Repeatedly.

  Not wanting to add fuel to the fire, I settled for a mega-watt glare, then stomped off down the sidewalk after Gabriel to find out exactly what his problem was.

  Gabriel and I had been sniping at each other since we’d met as student and teacher at Big Red, before the zombie shit hit the fan. Well, technically he was a teacher’s assistant, a self-righteous vegan, and I was a happy little caffeine and sugar junkie omnivore. The sexual tension had developed somewhere between my surviving being bitten by zombies, and my transformation into a wild card—a person immune to the zombie virus. That tension had culminated in some hot, sweaty sex that hadn’t as yet been repeated—despite what the rest of the team thought.

  I’d hoped all of the sniping was over with, especially after we’d fought together—and almost died—defending the university against a zombie swarm.

  I guess I was wrong.

  In many ways my ex—okay, dead—boyfriend Matt had been a lot easier to deal with. Matt had been uncomplicated. Give him sex and praise on a regular basis and he’d been a happy camper. A far simpler, and definitely more rewarding relationship than I’d had with my ex-husband.

  Gabriel, who I found a lot more compelling, was nowhere as easy to keep satisfied. Hell, I didn’t know if he even wanted me to try.

  I just wanted an adult relationship with mutual respect, intellectual compatibility, and lots of hot sex. Hell, at this point I’d settle for a steamy round of cuddling. Not that I was likely to get any of it, now that Gabriel was back in douche mode.

  * * *

  He was still talking on the radio when I caught up to him, so I leaned against a building next to the alley that separated Licker Up and Partyrama. He was spewing a string of Byzantine military phrases, and I rolled my eyes as I eavesdropped.

  See, being a wild card not only meant enhanced physical abilities and a whole world of super-cool weapons. To my dismay, I’d heard more acronyms, code words, and pompous jargon over the last few weeks of rapid-fire training than in my previous twenty-nine years. That’s even if you included the hours I’d been forced to watch the Military Channel with my ex-husband—it was the only way I could spend any “quality” time with him.

  Gabriel finally signed off with some variant on “Tango Whiskey Foxtrot.” Frowning, he thrust his radio back in its holster and turned to me.

  “Did you need something, Ashley?” he demanded.

  Ouch. Not the friendliest tone I could have asked for, all things considered.

  “Well,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “I was kind of hoping you’d tell me what exactly is the reason for that very large stick you’ve currently got shoved up your ass.”

  Okay, maybe not so carefully.

  Gabriel’s brows lowered over a pair of denim-blue eyes as his frown went—to use meteorological parlance— from an F1 to an F2. Before he could snap my head off, however, I kept talking. I’m good at that.

  “Because the rest of the gang is talking about it, and they’re all blaming me for not helping you relieve your tension on a regular basis.”

  Unfortunately I’m not always so good at filtering what comes out of my mouth. From the look on Gabriel’s face, we just skipped F3 and headed straight to F4, destroying all of the trailer parks in a hundred-mile swath.

  “Oh, that’s just great,” he snapped. “What is this, high school? Am I supposed to give a shit about who’s sleeping with whom?”

  “That’s not exactly the point,” I said carefully.

  Seriously, I really was being careful this time.

  “Then what exactly is the point?” He folded his arms and glared down at me.

  “The point is that you’re acting like an athlete on the verge of ’roid rage and—” I took a deep breath and put a hand on his arm. “And I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, don’t be,” he snapped, jerking his arm away. “I don’t have time for this juvenile shit, okay?”

  He might as well have slapped me across the face. I felt my cheeks flame as hurt and anger duked it out with humiliation for dominance. Anger won.

  “You know that song ‘I Might Like You Better If We Slept Together’?” I shook my head. “Well, not so much.”

  Gabriel glared at me for a split second then turned without another word and stalked back down the sidewalk toward the entrance to the shops. I’d be damned before scurrying after him like some sort of slave girl, so I stayed where I was, fuming silently.

  It didn’t last long, though.

  The unmistakably nasty stench of the walking dead gave me just enough warning to dodge to one side as a zombie lurched out of the alley and lunged at me. It used be a waitress at the local Spanky’s Coffee Shop, her nametag and the tattered remains of what used to be a retro pink uniform tipping me off. Just like Flo used to wear in Alice. Its face looked like it had been pressed onto a hot grill, with strips of blistered flesh peeling off. I was tonight’s special.

  My M4 was still slung across my shoulder and my blades were sheathed, so like an idiot I was caught empty-handed. Luckily there are a bunch of ways to kill a zombie, if you’re creative. I grabbed a trashcan lid and hefted it.

  “Just pick up a lid, Sid,” I sang quietly to myself. “Give it a whack, Jack.” I smashed the edge of the lid against the zombie’s head, the metal leaving a dent in its skull. I swatted it a few more times for good measure, finding it very therapeutic after dealing with Captain Jerk.

  “Do it again. er. Len.”

  Finally Zombie Flo crumpled to the ground.

  “Until it drops dead.”

  So sue me. I’m not a lyricist. But I am a kick-ass zombie killer.

  “Can I take your orwdah?” I intoned in my best Schwarzenegger.

  “Talking to yourself?”

&n
bsp; “Shit!” I yelped. The unexpected sound of Lil’s voice made me jump almost as much as Zombie Flo had. I recovered quickly, though, and pointed to the zombie. “Nope. Talking to her.”

  Lil looked down at the twice-dead corpse and gave a quiet little sigh.

  “I knew her,” she said. “Mom and I used to go to Spanky’s for lunch, and—” She stopped, swallowing hard. I immediately enfolded her in a hug.

  Lil’s mom had been out of town when the whole zombie plague had hit, but she’d evidently made it back before the quarantine had been imposed around Redwood Grove and the surrounding area. Lil and I had found her car outside their apartment building. Not knowing her mom’s fate weighed heavily, and the cracks in Lil’s already fragile emotional state grew a little bigger with every day. The only time she seemed happy was when she was cuddling with her cats, or killing zombies. I understood the cat thing—they were a connection to her old world. But the homicidal tendencies? Those worried me.

  Often I joked that she was like a lethal Care Bear in her combat gear, but it was true. All wide green eyes and cuddly curves, Lil turned into a gleeful slaughter machine when faced with the walking dead. Now, however, she was just an eighteen-year-old who missed her mother.

  I missed mine, too, but at least I knew both my parents were alive and well up north in Lake County. Lil didn’t even have the comfort of closure.

  “Let’s go take care of business before Gabriel comes looking for us,” I suggested. Giving her one last squeeze, I let go and took a step back.

  She nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of one hand. I pretended not to notice.

  “Yeah... I heard him yelling.” Lil snuck a quick peek at me. “Are you okay?”

  It was my turn to nod.

  “Yup,” I said, “just pissed off.” And also worried, but I didn’t want to go into that right now, or even think about it. I’d already been caught by surprise once today because of shit with Gabriel. I didn’t intend to let it happen again. I smacked Lil lightly on the shoulder.

  “Let’s go hunting.”

  That brought a smile to her face. I tried not to worry.

  We joined the rest of the gang in front of Licker Up. Gabriel had returned, but I didn’t bother looking at him.

  “We doing two teams on this?” Mack asked. Gabriel nodded.

  “Mack, Gentry, Lil, you take the office complex across the street,” he said. “Ash, Tony, Kai, check out the stores on this side of the block.”

  “What about you?” Oops... almost forgot we were pissed at each other.

  He hadn’t. He just ignored my question and walked away. My face burned just like the good old days, when he was just a self-righteous jerk, giving me grief when I showed up late to class. I made a face at his retreating back and Lil giggled, then tried to turn it into a fake cough when Gabriel turned and shot a dark glance our way.

  Immature? Yeah, I totally cop to it. But it was better that than throwing a punch at the back of his head— which was my other impulse.

  I turned to the rest of my team, unsheathing my tanto. While my modified katana was shorter than the traditional blade, the even shorter tanto was a better choice for close quarters encounters. Less chance of accidentally slicing one of my fellow wild cards if things got hairy. And the M4? We may have been immune to the zombie virus, but a stray round ricocheting off a hard surface could still kill us.

  Tony had what I referred to as “Thor’s Wee Hammer,” a small but lethal sledgehammer that was his weapon of choice, while Kai hefted his favorite crowbar.

  “Time to pahty,” Tony said, adding his own Ahnold impersonation to the day.

  Kai grinned and the two clanged their respective weapons together. They had bonded early on during training, and were pretty much inseparable. The term “bromance” could have been invented just for them.

  Lucky me. I got to be third wheel on today’s date.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  We entered Licker Up through the front door, which was ajar. I took point, hitting the light switch as I stepped in. Even with the bright sunshine outside, the interior of the store was gloomy—not enough windows to let any real light in. Tony and Kai followed close on my heels.

  Broken bottles lay scattered on the floor, their contents blending together in a brew that smelled like the afterhours of an especially rowdy frat party, thankfully minus the vomit. Still, it made my eyes water.

  “What a waste,” Kai said, kicking a broken bottle of Maker’s Mark.

  “Plenty still left, bro.” Tony hefted a still sealed one and tossed it to Kai.

  I gave them both a look.

  “Later, okay?” Truth to tell, I was tempted to grab one of the many unopened, unbroken bottles of booze myself. And maybe I would, to enjoy it after we were safe back at Patterson Hall. With that thought in my head, I tucked a bottle of a forty-dollar Napa Cabernet into my knapsack. If the owner of the store turned up alive, I’d settle my account later.

  Other than the broken bottles, Licker Up looked clear. No gouts of blood, smears of viscera, or random body parts. It was a refreshing change. We went aisle to aisle, wincing at the smell of way-overripe cheese in a cooler that had long since lost its power.

  “That is ripe, señor,” muttered Tony.

  As soon as he spoke, a creaking noise drew our attention to the back of the store.

  Holding a finger up to my lips, I made my way as quietly as possible to a small hallway that had three doors off it, each bearing a little plastic sign labeling them restroom, office, and stockroom. The three of us stood quietly, and listened.

  All was quiet.

  I cracked open the restroom door, reluctantly taking a deep inhalation. I got a whiff of an ammonia-based cleanser that seared my sinuses, but no Eau de Zombie. Letting the door close, I turned toward the office and gestured to Tony, who smirked and strolled over to the door, opening it with a casual air that made me want to punch him. A familiar urge, that.

  While he checked out the office, I went over to the stockroom door and pressed my ear against it. I didn’t hear anything, but for some reason my Spidey senses were tingling.

  Not satisfied, I knocked.

  “Hello?”

  A moan sounded from behind the door. Suddenly something started scratching and pounding on the other side. Stepping back, I looked at Kai, jerking my chin in the direction of the commotion. I backed further away, giving him room, and he kicked the door inward.

  The smell of rotting flesh immediately assaulted my nostrils. Doing my best to ignore it, I slipped inside, and found a male zombie in a red Licker Up vest sprawled on the floor, knocked there by the door’s impact. Even in the gloom I could see that pieces were missing from its face, neck and arms, and the remaining flesh was a greenish-gray with black goop oozing from the wounds.

  Before it could get to its feet, I stepped in and thrust the tip of my tanto into its left eye socket. It only stopped when it reached the back of the skull. Then, putting my foot against its shoulder, I shoved hard as I pulled the blade out. A lovely sucking sound accompanied my movement.

  Yuck.

  “He’s been chewed on pretty good,” Kai observed.

  I nodded. “Which means he either got bitten and crawled in here to die, or—”

  There was a crash, and three zombies stumbled out from behind the shelves stacked high with cases of hard liquor, beer, and wine—two of them in store uniforms, and a young woman in bloodstained jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming “I’m a Princess,” the words outlined in rhinestones.

  No, you’re a zombie, I thought, giving her a permanent frontal lobotomy. Does it make me a bad person to admit I kind of enjoyed it? I mean, unless you’re Honey Boo-Boo, who the hell would wear something like that?

  While I took care of Princess Z, Kai dispatched the other two zombies with several skull-shattering blows to their craniums, using his crowbar with a casual aplomb that spoke of a lot of repetition. Suddenly a wave of self-consciousness swept over me. It brought my
own callousness close to home.

  “Doesn’t it worry you that we’re getting used to this?” I asked, wiping my blade on the leg of my pants.

  Kai shrugged.

  “I’d rather get used to it,” he said, “than need a therapy session every time we have to put one of these things down. And maybe if one of these people’d known what to do, they’d still be alive, you know?”

  He had a point, but it still bothered me that killing had become so routine. I looked at the floor and shook my head. There was no easy answer to any of this. Maybe normal emotional responses had to be tossed out the window when the dead walked the earth... But it still sucked.

  Kai and I checked out the rest of the stockroom, finding puddles of blood and bits of flesh, but no more bodies, ambulatory or otherwise. Tony was waiting for us in the hallway, flipping through an old Licker Up newsletter. Irritated, I smacked it out of his hands.

  “Hey!” he protested.

  “Did it ever occur to you we might’ve needed your help in there?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t hear any screams.”

  This time I clipped him on the back of his head.

  “By the time you hear them, it might be too late.”

  BELLEVILLE, WISCONSIN

  Bart’s corpse twitched. At first just a finger or two—all that were left on his mangled hands—before a ripple shuddered through his body as though it had been hit by an invisible electric current.

  What was left of his neighbor chewed on a piece of his intestines, causing them to unspool from Bart’s gutted abdomen as he staggered to his feet.

  A gust of wind blew the front door open and the sound of children’s voices and laughter drifted inside, catching his attention. The two zombies made their way outside into the chill November morning, Bart’s intestine linking them together like rotting mountain climbers.

  Laughter turned to screams in no time at all.

  CHAPTER THREE