Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) Read online

  “And when you say a ‘cure,’ what exactly do you mean? Are we talking something that can change a zombie back into a human?”

  Simone shook her head.

  “We can’t bring the dead back to life and—” She stopped as I raised an eyebrow. “Let me rephrase that.”

  “Please do,” I said.

  “Once someone has died and reanimated, they’re beyond any cure. What we’re looking at is something that will provide a resistance to the infection itself.”

  “Making everyone wild cards?”

  Simone nodded. “Granting the immunity, if not the enhancements.”

  “What about someone like Gabriel?” My voice cracked when I said his name, making me sound small and vulnerable. Simone reached out, took my hands in hers, and looked me directly in the eye.

  “If we can immunize people against the virus itself, I’m certain we can cure him, Ashley.” She paused, and added, “We just need to get him back.”

  I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath as a wave of relief washed over me. Then I opened them, and sat up straight.

  “What are we waiting for, then?”

  “Well, first we have to—”

  “Do you mind if I sit here?”

  At least that’s what I think he said. His accent was so thick, I couldn’t be sure.

  G. Funk was standing by our table holding a tray of food. Tall, lanky, clad in jeans and the same Dr. Who T-shirt he’d been wearing when I’d first found him hiding in his closet. Funk’s townhouse had been decorated in early American geek, boasting a bedroom that combined the Bat Cave with a bachelor pad worthy of King of the Nerds.

  “How are you doing, G?” I smiled and gestured for him to sit down. He took the chair Jamie had just vacated, and as far as I was concerned, he had earned the right to sit wherever the hell he wanted. OCD in his fastidiousness, he’d still let a bunch of dirty, tired, and desperate wild cards crash in his townhouse, and hadn’t even complained when we’d tracked all sorts of dirt and gore on his carpet. His hospitality had saved our hides.

  Simone smiled. “I’ve heard much about you, Mr. Funk.”

  G gave Simone a shy smile, destroying the cool hipster vibe cast by his dark sunglasses.

  “I hope it’s all good,” he said, though it sounded more like Oyhawpeet’s awl gud. Born in Ireland, raised in Australia. Hell of an accent.

  “Absolutely.” Simone smiled at him, and that’s all she wrote. I heard the crash as G fell hard for Simone.

  “G,” I said conversationally, “have you ever seen Excalibur?”

  “Oh, yes.” He didn’t even look at me when he replied.

  Thought so.

  Jamie came back at that moment, carrying a tray with a bowl of soup, a glass of water, and a mug of coffee. She frowned when she saw that her seat had been confiscated. She took the one next to me without saying anything, but from the way she narrowed her eyes, I had the feeling she would have slammed the tray down if it hadn’t held Simone’s precious coffee.

  “G, this is Jamie,” I said brightly. “Jamie, this is G. He saved our asses by letting us stay in his home on our way here.”

  Jamie stared at him. “You’re in my seat.”

  Whoops.

  Suddenly I was really looking forward to the briefing.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  Chris Anderson—with an “o,” not an “e”—stared in frustration at the novelty pig-shaped clock on his desk, which showed him that a full fifteen minutes had passed since he’d been placed on hold by “Marcy.”

  He frowned, tapping impatient fingers against the wooden desktop as generic “easy listening” music piped out of his speakerphone. His VPN connection had been down for more than two hours, and he was this close to finalizing a deal for the Holy Grail. An inverted Jenny, printed in 1918. He’d managed to find it before the seller—a clueless redneck who’d be at home on American Pickers—figured out exactly what he had, and took it to an auction house.

  The thought of losing the Jenny after being this close had Chris’s blood pressure shooting sky high.

  He stopped tapping his fingers and reached into an open box of See’s candy. Like the clock, the chocolate had been a gift from his sisters in California. He loved See’s, but barely tasted the chocolate as he waited for the IT rep to take him off “hold” and fix the connection before he lost the deal.

  A sudden commotion outside caught Chris’s attention. He grabbed another piece of chocolate and stood up, wincing as his joints popped. He sat too much—one of the problems of telecommuting—and he was on the downward slope side of fifty. Things popped, crackled, and ached a little more every year.

  He carefully navigated stacks of books, magazines, and boxes to get to the office window. He pushed the heavy green curtains aside and peered out. His jaw dropped, the chocolate half eaten and forgotten in his mouth.

  What the hell?

  His apartment was on the second floor of a five-story brownstone in a nice neighborhood, but his normally quiet street had suddenly erupted into chaos. People ran down the street, some of them bloody and wounded. Many looked terrified and others looked… well, they looked like no one was home anymore. Even through the closed windows he heard screams, moans, the sound of metal smashing into metal as cars careened into one another.

  He recognized one of his neighbors, eighty-year-old Mrs. Seskin, squashed between the bumper and hood of two different cars. Her eyes were open and blood gushed out of her mouth. It seemed impossible, but she was still moving, still alive. The driver of the car that had front-ended her was folded over the wheel, not moving.

  His first thought was to dash out and help Mrs. Seskin, but then he noticed some of the other people, including other neighbors, moving toward her with an odd uncoordinated gait, like they were all learning how to walk. Even from his second-story window, Chris could see that some of them had pieces missing.

  “Oh shit, no way.”

  He watched with morbid fascination as a teenage girl, strips of flesh missing from her face so that the muscles of her jaw were visible, reached over the crumpled metal toward Mrs. Seskin, grabbed one of the old woman’s outstretched hands, and sank her teeth into it.

  Chris let the curtains fall back in front of the window.

  Zombies.

  Straight out of Dawn of the Dead.

  Except they weren’t blue and all “here’s the Hare Krishna zombie” or “here’s the NRA gun nut.” They were real-life normal people.

  Black, vomitous, fucked-up. Ripped-apart real-life people.

  Chris sat back down at his desk, putting the lid back on the box of See’s. If he was right about what was happening outside, he’d want to ration it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The briefing was held in a large room on the first floor that looked like your generic corporate conference room, big rectangular table and all. I fully expected someone to pull down a screen and show us a PowerPoint presentation on the digital marketing potential of zombies.

  The only constant was Colonel Paxton, holding the authority position at the far end of the table, much the same way he’d dominated the podium in Room 217, our old briefing room at Big Red. He’d arrived on the same helicopter as Simone. His commedia dell’arte tragedy mask of a face was set in neutral as he waited for everyone to shuffle in and sit.

  Tony, Gentry, Lil, and I sat clustered at the end of the table nearest the door. Lil didn’t say much to anyone, but the fact she’d actually gotten dressed and left her room was a good sign. Her hair hung in damp hanks down her back, which meant she’d also taken the effort to shower.

  Nathan and Simone sat side by side, each making an effort not to look at the other, but still obviously connected. The two had a past—she’d been there when he’d been bitten by a zombie, had nursed him through his transition, and hadn’t been strictly honest when he’d demanded explanations. Given Nathan’s zero tolerance for bullshit, he hadn’t taken it well. Still, if the sexual tension between the two of them was any in
dication, they might have a future together, if they didn’t kill each other first.

  Watching the drama unfold between them was almost like having access to a live zombie-themed soap opera channel. Jamie sitting on Simone’s other side only added to the drama, although for some inexplicable reason she didn’t find Nathan at all threatening.

  Go figure.

  The Gunsy Twins—Jones and Davis—leaned against the far wall, while Carl, the helicopter, sat glumly next to JT. I was surprised to see them both. After all, Carl had only signed up for dropping us off at UCSF. Then Red, his friend and fellow crew member, had died on our trek across San Francisco. I’d been with Red when he died and still wondered if there was something I could have done to save him.

  I gave Carl a tentative smile, and was heartened when he smiled back.

  As for JT, he wasn’t a wild card or military. Even if his physical skills were off the charts compared to your average person, he was still a civilian, and I’d have thought he’d earned the right to hang out in safety, while the rest of us tried to sort out all this zombie shit.

  That being said, I was happy to see him.

  Dr. Arkin and Josh were there, along with my current least favorite person. Arkin and Josh sat next to each other, while Griff lounged in a chair he’d pulled away from the table, distancing himself from everyone else in the room. He stared at me from under hooded lids. I studiously ignored him.

  Much the way Simone and Dr. Arkin were ignoring each other. They were an interesting contrast—Simone with her classic icy blonde film noir style, and Dr. Arkin, tall, thin, and coldly brunette. I’d once compared Simone to a Vulcan, but even if that were the case, at least she had some human ancestry mixed in there. Dr. Arkin was full on emotionless, and possibly sociopathic—too cold-blooded even to be cast as Saavik. Granted, I hadn’t spent a lot of time in her company, but I was pretty sure that peeling off part of her skull would reveal a cyborg underneath.

  Colonel Paxton cleared his throat, and the room fell silent.

  “As you all know, the Walker’s virus has breached quarantine,” he said. “The flu vaccines were sent around the United States to locations conveniently close to established DZN facilities.”

  He picked up what looked like a remote control device and clicked it. A screen scrolled down on the wall behind him.

  Okay, I was joking about the PowerPoint.

  He aimed the control at the ceiling and pressed another button. Immediately the screen lit up with a photograph showing a building complex, several stories tall and all rectangles and hard edges, with lots of window banks. Those buildings were currently besieged by what looked like a shitload of zombies.

  “This is the West Virginia University Medical Center, as seen from Chestnut Ridge Road.” A pause. “Professor Fraser’s alma mater, and home to one of the DZN’s top research facilities.”

  He smiled ruefully, then clicked another button. The feed changed to show a several-story red-brick complex with the American flag flying out front. Smoke billowed out of several of the buildings, and the scene in front could only be described as carnage. Ambulances, fire trucks, and other emergency vehicles lay smashed in an inadvertent piece of modern sculpture.

  “This is the nearby Monongalia County General Hospital, where many people suffering from Walker’s sought medical care. We tried to ferry as many patients as possible to our facility, but the situation rapidly fell out of our control.”

  Another quick click switched us to yet another building complex, this one high-tech, with curved blue-glass frontage, the type of structure used to convey “Hey, this is the future!” in movies like Gattaca and Lookers.

  “And this is a high-profile pharmaceuticals company down the road that offered free Walker’s flu vaccines over the last month.”

  He hit another switch and the static photography switched to a live video feed of about a half dozen people in lab coats running full pelt up a grassy slope toward the university. A mini-swarm of zombies followed them, with several other groups of the walking dead converging from all other directions. I shuddered as a woman was culled from the human herd and ripped to pieces as we watched. Her screams seemed tinny and unreal over the speakers, but horrific nonetheless.

  “Oh god… Julia…”

  I looked over at Simone, whose face had gone white. Silent tears slipped down her face. Nathan covered her hand with his, and she moved closer to him.

  Colonel Paxton hit the remote again. The screen now showed the interior of a room that looked much like the one we occupied, except front and center were a man and a woman, both in gore-spattered lab coats. The woman, a thirty-something brunette with petite features, looked directly up at the camera.

  “Someone set off the fire alarm and most everyone evacuated. When we got outside… they were everywhere. We are certain that the Walker’s virus has mutated… gone airborne.” The man tried unsuccessfully to hold back tears in the background. The woman kept talking.

  “We were screwed. They’re slow, but there were so many…” She took a deep breath. “I’m Dr. Allison Hayward. Ben, Dr. Hodgson and I are the only doctors who made it back here. The only other survivors are Jeff Lucas and Jay Bachar, both ROTC, and three lab techs. I—” She pressed her hands against her head for a second, then looked back at the camera. “I can’t remember their names. I’m sorry, I should know them, but I can’t remember.” Another pause.

  “We have a lab full of sick people. Jeff and Jay are—” She shut her eyes for a moment. “They’re putting them down. The infected. We don’t have the manpower to take care of them before or after they die. So it’s… it’s better this way. For them and for us. They—”

  The door behind her burst inward and two blood-splashed young men, both looking like they’d just started shaving that year, dove into the room, slamming the door behind them. One fumbled for the lock while the other started piling any available and movable piece of furniture in front of the door.

  “Jay, Jeff… What?—” The woman, Dr. Hayward, shot them a startled glance that quickly turned to terror when the one at the door spoke.

  “Someone let the lab rats loose.”

  Dr. Hodgson lifted his head.

  “All of them?”

  The other kid nodded. “All of them,” he said, knocking notebooks off a bookshelf before dragging it toward the door.

  “Oh, crap.”

  The looks of hopeless terror were clear even over the grainy video feed as another sound resonated through the speakers—the sound of meaty thuds hitting the door. Then the screen went blank.

  Colonel Paxton set the remote down on the table and stared at all of us.

  “That’s the last transmission we had from this particular facility. It’s just one example of what is happening all over the country… and is now spreading globally. In a world with jet aircraft, it only takes hours.”

  Simone hadn’t been kidding when she said things were bad. And Paxton wasn’t done spreading the bad news.

  “We’ve had reports of sightings in the United Kingdom ranging from London to Sheffield, with the infection originating at a board meeting for a multinational company that sent representatives from India, Japan, China, South America, Romania, Poland, France, Norway… well, you get the picture.”

  The silence in the room testified that everyone got the picture.

  Someone had to break it. Since no one else was speaking up, I jumped in.

  “So we have to find the cure, right?” I said.

  Colonel Paxton nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “Which means we have to find Gabriel. And Dr. Albert,” I added quickly.

  “Again, that’s correct, Ashley.” Colonel Paxton smiled approvingly. I suppressed the urge to ask if I got a gold star.

  Simone cleared her throat, dashing a quick hand across her eyes.

  “We’ve tracked the signal in Gabriel’s microchip, and it points to San Diego,” she said. “Specifically at a location we thought had been shut down years ago.
”

  “Is this a DZN lab?” I asked.

  “No,” Simone said with assurance. “It’s an old naval base, now a national park. The underground portions were used during World War II, and the DZN was aware of it. It was part of a contingency scenario, but there were several other locations established in San Diego, all more strategically placed, that served our needs.

  “So what’s the plan?” Tony leaned forward, ready to rock and roll.

  “We go in and extract Dr. Albert and Gabriel.”

  “How?” I pressed.

  Colonel Paxton smiled, a scary expression on his face.

  “That information will be given to you at the appropriate time, and on a need-to-know basis. Right now, considering the sabotage that was performed on the two helicopters that brought you into San Francisco, the details of our plans are considered highly confidential.”

  Tony frowned.

  “You mean we’re gonna go risk our lives, without even knowing what the fuck we’re doing?”

  I nudged him. “We’ll know when we need to know.” I dropped my voice and added, “Would you rather deal with another whirlybird crash somewhere between here and San Diego, just because the wrong person had the right information?”

  Tony shut up, taking my point.

  “When are we leaving?” Lil asked. She’d been silent up to now.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Paxton said.

  “What about my cats?”

  Colonel Paxton’s expression didn’t change, but his mental eye-roll was obvious.

  “There are more important things at stake here than your pets.”

  Uh-oh, I thought. Someone’s IQ points just dropped sharply.

  Simone stepped forward before Lil could explode, putting a hand on Lil’s shoulder as she spoke.

  “Someone will look after your cats while we’re gone,” she said soothingly. Lil visibly relaxed under the combo of her touch and voice. Paxton started to say something, but a look from Simone shut him up.

  We? I thought. Is Simone going with us?

  Nathan frowned, coming to the same conclusion.

  “You’re not going,” he said firmly.