Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) Read online

  Talk about a mood killer.

  Indiana had seen postings from his American and Canadian pals about the severity of Walker’s Flu over there. He’d also read a recent article and seen some tweets about cases springing up in the UK, along with the usual crap about it being the next Black Death. He didn’t buy it, of course. Look what happened with H1N1 and SARS, after all. He hadn’t even bothered to get one of the flu shots that were being offered for free by Sheffield Hallam University.

  But still, the amount of coughing and hacking going on made him anxious to get Hannah to relatively fresh air.

  “I hope you don’t mind a bit of a walk,” he said, adjusting his pea coat as they reached the main exit. He held the door open for her. “I wanted to show you the glory that is Sheffield.”

  “And your car’s in the garage.” She gave him a playful poke in the ribs. “I can see your Facebook wall.”

  Indiana willed himself not to blush.

  “So you can.”

  “Never mind, I love walking.” She looped her arm through his. “And this is nice.”

  They headed up the slope toward town, passing what Indiana’s mother liked to refer to as a “water feature” on their right, as well as a fountain and a series of waterfalls on their left.

  “This is pretty.” Hannah looked around with a pleased smile, and gave his arm a little squeeze.

  “It gets even prettier when we get into town,” Indiana assured her. Their current surroundings were modern and stark in the gray November weather.

  They kept walking past the station parking lots to Sheaf Street, up the hill toward Sheffield City Centre.

  “On our left,” Indiana intoned in his best poncy tour guide voice, “is the excellent independent Showcase Cinema. And that lovely grassy area contains the Sheffield Hallam University buildings, with the Engineering block in the background, as well as my old stomping grounds, back when I was a student.”

  “Did you do a lot of stomping then?” Hannah asked innocently. “Or did you prefer to be stomped?”

  “I could go either way,” Indiana answered with a straight face.

  “Nice.” She smiled up at him.

  Yeah, this is going to be a stellar weekend. Hell, maybe even more than that. Indiana hoped so. He liked this girl. And while he wasn’t quite ready to settle down, he wasn’t averse to settling in to a relationship that could lead that way.

  As long as the path was decorated with paddles and leather restraints.

  Ahem.

  They continued walking.

  “And here you see the Mansfield, one of the oldest pubs in Sheffield—the oldest being the Old Queens Head.”

  “That almost sounds naughty.”

  Indiana grinned. “Did you want to stop in for a pint?”

  The offer wasn’t entirely altruistic. He could use a break from lugging her overnight bag.

  “Could we?” Hannah’s voice was eager. “I’d kill for a pint.”

  “Your wish, m’lady, is my command.”

  They headed toward the pub’s entrance, only to stop short as the door burst open and two women—a bleached blonde and a redhead—staggered out. Both were in their mid-twenties and dressed for a night out on the town in heels too high to be safe after a pint, let alone as many as they’d probably had. The redhead was bleeding copiously from a wound on her forearm and crying in great gulping sobs, while her friend patted her drunkenly on the shoulder.

  “There there… you’ll be fine.”

  She immediately tripped, clutching her friend on the arm for balance, right on the bleeding wound. The redhead screamed in pain, slapping the blonde’s hand furiously.

  Indiana stepped forward.

  “Do you need some help there?”

  The blonde shook her head, regaining her balance.

  “Thanks, pet, but we’ll be fine. One of our friends had a bit too much and got a bit bitey.” She punctuated her words with a strident belch, then covered her mouth with one hand, smearing blood from her friend’s wound across her lips without realizing it. Between that and her southward-bound eye makeup, she looked like a sad, gory clown.

  “I’m gonna kill the bastard,” the redhead muttered between gulping sobs.

  “There there,” the blonde intoned again. Indiana couldn’t believe anyone actually said “there there.” “Let’s get you home now, and put some hydrogen peroxide on this. You’ll be fine.”

  They staggered off down the road. Hannah looked up at him uncertainly.

  “Do you think we ought to go in?”

  “Depends on how you feel about biting.” Indiana was proud of himself for that. He thought it had just the right amount of nonchalance mixed with innuendo.

  “That depends entirely on the circumstances,” she replied. The slight smile playing around her lips contradicted her prim tone. Muffled shrieks of laughter sounded from inside. “It does sound like they’re having fun.” A particularly strident scream rang out. Her smile grew wider. “Maybe even our type of fun.”

  “Want to risk it then?”

  “Oh yes. Just make sure you don’t let anyone bite me.” She paused. “Except you.” She gave his shoulder-length hair a tug, just hard enough to send a definite message.

  Indiana reached for the door handle, pulling it open and holding it for her, giving a “you go first” gesture with his free hand. Hannah dipped a little curtsey and went inside with a very appealing and deliberate sashay of her hips.

  Before they’d taken more than two steps inside, someone grabbed Hannah and dragged her to the side. Warm liquid sprayed across Indiana’s face, momentarily blinding him. Hands seized his shoulders, so he swung out blindly with Hannah’s overnight bag, connecting solidly and knocking his assailant away from him. Frantically Indiana scrubbed at his face with his coat sleeve, trying to get the viscous fluid out of his eyes so he could see.

  He fell against a nearby table, hand flailing against a pint glass. He couldn’t see if the contents were alcoholic or water. A quick taste test confirmed that it was water, so he dashed the liquid into his eyes, swabbing them with a napkin and clearing his vision enough for him to see the chaos around him.

  At least half the furniture had been overturned, lager and stout spilled over the floor to mix with what looked like blood. The pub was full—nothing unusual for a Friday night—but nothing was normal about the crazy fuckers attacking other pub-goers with their teeth and hands. It looked like at least a quarter of the customers had gone totally mental. They needed to get the hell out of there.

  He looked around for Hannah.

  He wouldn’t have spotted her if he hadn’t caught a glimpse of one black leather motorcycle boot and a swatch of red fabric on the ground. Most of her was covered by a hefty-sized man hunched over her, teeth worrying at her already savaged neck hard enough to spray chunks of flesh about.

  Indiana’s heart broke a little.

  “Oh, Hannah.”

  The man looked up from his snack. Indiana recognized the hulking git as a security guard at the university. The bloke had never been handsome, but now he was downright hideous, yellowed teeth stained with blood. Black slime coated his upper lip and chin, blood drizzled out of his ears, and his eyes had gone wrong, all milky in the middle and red-streaked jaundiced where the whites should be.

  Fucking zombies.

  Indiana looked at the bag still looped over one wrist. Without stopping to think, he swung it around his head, letting momentum do the work for him as he clocked the erstwhile security guard in the side of the face, knocking him off Hannah’s body. She didn’t move. The bloody mess of her throat and her wide, staring eyes told him all he needed to know.

  “I’m sorry, Hannah,” he whispered.

  He ran out of the pub without waiting to see if she came back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I’d kill for a pair of jeans and a colored T-shirt.

  Okay, maybe not kill, but definitely commit a minor felony like, say, jaywalking, if it meant some wardrobe options tha
t didn’t include forest camo or basic black. Would it really be so wrong to kill zombies while wearing some nice jeans and a brightly colored T-shirt?

  I stared with loathing at two pairs of black BDUs and matching black shirts in light thermal or short-sleeved tees. I’d worn the same thing every day for the last month, ever since I’d found out I was a wild card, and I really wanted a change about now. While Kevlar had its uses, and even looked cool, it got old when you had to wear it every day, weeks on end.

  Catholic schoolgirls had more variety in their closets.

  Scrubs were my only other wardrobe option while housed at the Dolofonoitou Zontanous Nekrous lab. So my fashion choices came down to Linda Hamilton’s wardrobe from Terminator 2—mental ward chic, or “gonna kick me some cyborg ass” paramilitary.

  Sigh.

  Well then, BDUs and a black thermal it is.

  As if the clothing wasn’t bad enough, I reeked of the ever-present smell of bleach, a by-product of the disinfection process. All of the vanilla spice body butter in the world wouldn’t cover that stench.

  I consoled myself with a touch of lip gloss and some mascara, trying to pretend I still lived a halfway normal life, and that Gabriel—my sort-of-kind-of-boyfriend—hadn’t been taken away at gunpoint in a textbook example of really shitty timing.

  Seriously, Gabriel and I had just reached a new equilibrium in our relationship, if you could call it that. Sure, the antiserum gave him a bad case of ’roid rage. Without it, though, he faced the irony-laden choice between eating human flesh in order to retain his humanity, or succumbing to the virus and becoming a mindless zombie.

  Then there was his basic personality, which included a certain amount of stubborn self-righteousness that sometimes flipped him into douche mode. Even so, we’d worked through it, and I’d begun to have some hope for our future together.

  And then he was gone. There was a real chance that I wouldn’t see him again.

  No, screw that.

  I couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t even think about it. Instead I focused on my favorite mantra. WWRD or…

  What would Ripley do?

  One, she’d go back for the cat.

  Check.

  Two, she’d kill as many of the monsters as she could.

  In progress.

  Three, kick the ass of a sleazy corporate bastard.

  On my to-do list.

  Four, rescue the hero. Well, crap, Dallas had died. Although she did rescue Hicks.

  But then he died in the third movie.

  Crap.

  Grabbing a black hairband from the utilitarian dresser stacked next to my smaller-than-twin-sized bed, I gathered my mass of tawny brown hair into a thick ponytail, and gave myself a cursory once-over in the mirror to make sure I was fit for public consumption.

  Ha-hah, very funny.

  I shook my head in disgust. There was nothing to laugh about right now, but my mind couldn’t stop its wise-cracking. Then again, without my sense of humor, as inappropriate as it was at times, I think I would have gone quietly around the bend, back when my husband dumped me for one of his eighteen-year-old students, ten years my junior. Nothing busts your self-esteem like being replaced by the younger model.

  With that gloomy—and yes, shallow—thought lodged in my mind, I took a second, closer look in the mirror, noting the circles under my dark green eyes and the hollows beneath the planes of my cheekbones. I wasn’t anywhere near the heroin chic level of gaunt, but I could stand to gain a few pounds, and have at least a week’s worth of sleep uninterrupted by nightmares. I gave a mental shrug.

  It’s not like I was trying to impress anyone.

  Looking around my temporary living quarters, I was amazed how much the place resembled the DZN facility at Big Red. The same sterile white hallways, faux wood doors, and lack of any personality whatsoever in the rooms themselves. Ugh. The place depressed me. I’d seen Motel Sixes with more charm. Plus I was hungry, almost to the point of light-headedness. So I decided to go find food.

  But first, I needed to check in on Lil.

  I’d met her at the beginning of the clusterfuck in Redwood Grove. Since then she’d turned from an incredibly sheltered eighteen-year-old college student into a disturbingly gleeful zombie-killing wild card. Her mother had gone missing during the initial outbreak, and Lil’s already fragile emotional state slipped a little more every day she wasn’t found. The fact Lil was on psychotropic drugs for some sort of bipolar disorder didn’t help.

  Especially since, to my best guess, she’d been off the drugs for several days now. She needed more meds, if I could only remember what it was she’d been taking. Dr. Albert knew, but he wasn’t much good about now. I’d tried to talk to Dr. Arkin, the head physician here at UCSF, to see if she could help, but I’d been stonewalled by her assistant, Josh.

  “Dr. Arkin is busy,” he’d said. “I’ll let her know of your concern.”

  Officious jerk.

  Oh, well, now that we’d cleared the rooftop, Simone would be arriving soon, and she’d know what to do.

  I stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind me without bothering to lock it, and promptly collided with someone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  While I didn’t do anything as girly as shriek with surprise, I did give a little gasp as strong hands gripped my shoulders, steadying me, and I looked up to see Griff smiling down at me.

  There was a hint of smug in his smile. Subtle, but definitely there. I realized our little collision hadn’t entirely been an accident. Which meant he’d been waiting for me to come out of my room. Which could either be construed as flattering or creepy and kind of stalkery.

  I went with creepy and stalkery.

  “You want something?” My tone was less than welcoming, the sort of tone usually reserved for Jehovah’s Witnesses and AT&T salesmen.

  Griff continued to smile.

  “Always.”

  I rolled my eyes, not even trying to hide it.

  “Seriously. Is there a reason you’re lurking outside my room?”

  His smile widened. A very sexy smile… if you liked crocodiles.

  “Just thought I’d see if you wanted company.”

  “No thanks,” I said brusquely.

  Griff raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, leaning casually against the wall.

  “Why not?”

  I thought fast.

  “I’m going to check on Lil, and I don’t think extra company would be a good idea.”

  “Lil.” Griff stared off into the distance as if flipping through a mental Rolodex. “Little round gal with big eyes and lots of hair, right? Slightly off?”

  I glared at him. “You’d be slightly off too if you’d lost—” Then I stopped, not wanting to get into it with this man.

  “Sorry, not trying to offend,” Griff said without a hint of apology in his voice. “But maybe more company is exactly what she needs.”

  What could I say to that that wasn’t totally rude?

  Probably plenty of things, but then I’d have to care about what he thought.

  “Since you just met us two days ago,” I said, “I don’t think you’re the best judge of what Lil needs.” I smiled up at him. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

  I started to move past him, but in a move so subtle I wasn’t entirely sure how he pulled it off, Griff managed to take up enough of the space in front of me to block my path.

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  Why did I suddenly feel as if I’d wandered into a Twilight movie?

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “We can change that.” Griff moved closer, one corner of his mouth going up in a seductive expression that had undoubtedly loosened the thighs of many a female.

  “We could,” I said levelly, staring him straight in the eyes. “But I’m not interested. So let’s just part as—”

  “As friends?” He grinned at me. “We can start with that.”

  He moved in closer, just sh
y of invading my personal space, his body heat palpable, along with a faint scent of something rich and spicy, like Mexican hot chocolate. The man smelled good, but then so did those carnivorous plants that attracted prey with deceptively sweet scents.

  Griff’s internal thermostat appeared to be set perpetually high, to generate pheromones and attract unwary females with his bad boy looks and cocky mien. His confidence smacked a little too much of arrogance, something I didn’t find attractive, not even in Gabriel. And I was kind of sort of in love with him. Griff just came across as arrogant dipped in superiority sauce with a side order of “I’m all that and a bag of chips.”

  It made me want to slap him.

  “On second thought,” I said, “Forget friendship. Let’s just part.”

  Set phasers on sarcasm, Captain.

  I began to step around him when he blocked my path again, quite obviously this time, backing me up against the corridor wall. His body language, while not quite threatening, was definitely meant to intimidate.

  So not in the mood for this shit.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” I glared at him.

  “Just a fellow wild card trying to make…” He paused, stepping in closer until only an inch or two of air space remained between our bodies. “…friends.”

  I’d had enough.

  “You’re not a ‘fellow’ wild card,” I said with real venom. “You didn’t go through fire and hell to get here. You didn’t fight the swarm with us or hack your way through a zombie-infested city, watching your friends die along the way.” Mack’s face flashed through my mind and I immediately clamped down on the memory. I wasn’t going down that path. It was too easy to cry, and I sure as hell didn’t want to show any weakness in front of this guy.