by Dana Fredsti
Things had gone to shit after that—a total chaos of screams, ripping flesh, and blood.
Somehow Gage had ended up behind the old barn that housed the theater. He was there with Chris and Stacy, the three of them hiding from the carnage taking place a few hundred yards away, blocking their escape route to the parking lot. Gage had grabbed a spare awning pole and Chris had done the same, while Stacy had bundled up a table’s worth of food and drink in one of the damask tablecloths. Whatever the impulse that inspired her to do so, it at least partially made up for her whining.
Moving as quietly as they could, they’d ended up on the abandoned railroad bridge halfway over the river, thinking that if they crossed it, the other side would somehow be miraculously free of carnage. Their hopes had been dashed, however, when they’d reached the halfway point, only to see a slender figure stumbling onto the trestle from the northeast side. What looked like a teenage boy was pulled back by a half dozen or so shambling freaks. They ripped him to pieces, devouring him in front of their eyes.
They were thankful for the darkness, which hid the details.
When they’d turned to retrace their steps to the southwest side, a cluster of ghouls from the Spotlight Theater stood there waiting for them. At least a dozen had followed the three in their flight along the riverside path.
If the dead had been more agile, they’d have been fucked right from the start. But the first few that tried to cross didn’t have the coordination to navigate the railroad ties and fell partway through, legs dangling through the gaps, unable to go any further. Beyond that point, many of the ties were missing altogether, and their ghoulish pursuers were completely incapable of balancing on the narrow rails.
That didn’t stop the zombies from trying to reach their potential meal, however. Some fell into the river sixty feet below, and were carried off by the current. A couple even managed to make it past their trapped compatriots, to shamble and crawl toward the trio.
Gage and Chris used the awning supports to shove them off the side. It wasn’t hard to do, but there seemed to be a never-ending stream of them on either side of the river, all wanting to try their luck. There were too many clustered together for the three of them to try and make a break for it. Gage considered climbing down the trestle and dropping into the river, but this time of year the water level was only about four feet deep and the likelihood was too great that he would break a leg or an arm on the rocky riverbed.
So they stayed on the bridge, hoping the things would go in search of easier prey.
They didn’t.
Periodically some of the creatures would wander off, distracted by something in the darkness. But they were replaced by others, and the way to safety was never entirely clear.
Sleep was impossible except in short shifts. After nearly forty-five hours, the three were exhausted and in real danger of hypothermia. Gage knew they wouldn’t last another night.
They’d run out of the fruit, cheese, and crackers Stacy had scavenged. They used the threadbare tablecloth to cover their bodies in an attempt to stave off the deadly effects of the cold fall weather. There were still two bottles left of Three Buck Chuck Syrah, but the water was gone, so dehydration was a real danger.
It was mightily tempting to just drink the wine, get shitfaced, and forget about the flesh-eating ghouls.
Stacy shivered again. The peasant blouse, bodice, and full skirt were made of cheap cotton and gauze, and not nearly warm enough. She’d wrapped the extra material from the skirt around her shoulders, but that left her legs susceptible to the icy drafts coming off the river below.
“Mom told me to wear my thermal underwear, you know,” she said as the sun started to go down, and the wind kicked up even more. “I swear, I’d give up all of my Victoria’s Secret G-strings for my long johns right now.” Her teeth started chattering.
Gage grinned at her.
“Keep talking about your G-strings,” he said. “That’ll keep me warm. Won’t do much for poor Chris there, though. Chris, you want me to talk about my Calvin Kleins?”
“At this point, I think I’d get more excited over a bag of apple cider donuts and hot coffee from the Dairy Mart.” Chris broke into a coughing fit that sounded as if it was ripping his chest apart. The sound carried across the river to either side of the bridge and moans filled the air, blending with the wind.
“Christ, that hurts.” He thumped his chest, face flushed with the heat of fever.
“Not as much as it’ll hurt if those things get a hold of you.” Gage pointed as yet more creatures began moving across the bridge from the northeast.
“Fuck.” Chris shifted into position, pole held at the ready. His arms trembled with the effort. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”
Stacy began to sob, the sound exhausted and hopeless.
“Me, either.” Gage turned as more moans sounded from the southwest. He decided that, if they survived the night, he would risk the drop into the river. A cider donut sounded really good about now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
The sirens heralded fire trucks from Santa Rosa, about an hour or so south of us. They’d been passed through the quarantine barricades, and DZN and ZTS personnel were on hand as the firefighters put out the flames. Then our guys moved in immediately to remove all traces of bodies—zombies and human alike—before they could be too closely examined.
Nevertheless, some of the firefighters likely spotted more than they should have. I’d have bet a month’s pay they were under some sort of über-secret federal gag order to prevent them from talking about what horrors they might have seen. And I knew firsthand the kind of nightmares they’d be having.
The laboratory was totally destroyed. The med ward, while not as badly devastated, had suffered major smoke damage. The rest of Patterson Hall, while relatively unscathed on the upper floors, stunk of smoke and chemical residue. So we had to move.
We’d need living quarters, a mess hall, and lab facilities. None of the other academic buildings were equipped with all that shit in one building, so everyone was moved to the nearest on-campus dormitory, one of the buildings we’d cleared out when the swarm had hit.
All potential sources of infection—blood-soaked linens and clothing, body parts, and so on—had been incinerated along with the corpses, both dead and undead. The walls and furnishings were scrubbed with disinfectant, so the pungent aroma of bleach still hung in the air of the second-story room Lil and I commandeered. In fact, it was a bit of a relief when Binkey and Doodle put their own distinctive olfactory marks on it.
The dorm had its own kitchen, so supplies scavenged from Patterson Hall could be stored and refrigerated. A lot of the foodstuffs were still kept in the student union, so we weren’t in danger of running out of food or drink any time soon, with or without provisions brought in from outside the quarantine zone. We even had medical supplies, thanks to quick-thinking personnel and their evacuation of the med ward.
What were missing were any patients or test subjects. They had been incinerated, along with whatever bits and pieces of zombies and other corpses were left after the fire. We’d also lost half a dozen innocent people, most of them lab techs unfortunate enough to be working late hours the night of the assault. It was sheer luck that we hadn’t lost Simone. Or Jamie, for that matter, who’d left the lab to get some sleep an hour before the fire was set.
I found this out from Simone herself when I went to visit her first thing the next morning.
“There are fifteen doses of Gabriel’s vaccine in the bag,” Simone said, looking elegant as ever despite the bandage covering her upper torso, and the fact she was wearing a hospital gown. We were in the new and distinctly unimproved med ward, set up in the common room of the dorm building. Her hair hung unaccustomedly loose past her shoulders, and she wore minimal makeup, but somehow still managed to convey the same cool composure she always had.
“So we have about a week to do this, right?” I said, sitting in a chair
by Simone’s bedside. Jamie was perched in a chair on the other side of the bed.
“You might have a few days more,” she replied, taking a sip from a mug of hot tea and grimacing. “I don’t know why Dr. Albert insists on giving me tea instead of coffee. I don’t really like tea.” She eyed the mug with distaste. “Herbal, no less.”
“Would you like me to get you something stronger?” Jamie jumped to her feet.
“That would be lovely.” Simone smiled up at her assistant, the kind of smile that could move mountains. She was always so composed that the sudden sincere smile was as unexpected as the sun coming out after a week-long storm. Jamie was up and out of the room in seconds. I tried to hide my own smile.
“Finally.” Simone heaved a contented sigh. “That girl is convinced that I won’t heal unless she’s by my side for every step of the process.”
“She’s, ah... very devoted,” I said diplomatically. I wondered if Simone had any idea just how devoted Jamie really was, but now wasn’t the time or place to ask. “So you were saying...”
“Erm, yes. Ideally Gabriel should have one dose of vaccine in the morning, and one at night. He can get by on one per day, but we’ll see a definite deterioration in his impulse control, cognitive ability, and judgment.”
“In other words, ’roid rage.” I said.
“An accurate description.” Simone took another grudging sip of tea, looking as dissatisfied as she had with the first.
“Dr. Albert said you’d know where the closest lab facility would be,” I noted.
“That would be UCSF in San Francisco. There’s also a smaller one in Arcata, but we received word that Humboldt County was severely compromised within the last twenty-four hours, and they’re having trouble holding the quarantine. Besides, it’s not nearly as well equipped as I’d like.”
I had to ask.
“I’m not surprised that UCSF is better equipped than Arcata, but... why were you here at Big Red? I mean, why not set up the main DZN shop in a bigger facility, in the first place?”
She gave me a wan smile.
“Because if things go badly south with our research, it’s better to have it happen in a controlled environment with a relatively small population. We use the larger, more centrally located facilities for research with a lower risk potential.”
“How many of these facilities are there?”
Simone looked at her teacup, as if reading the future in the bottom.
“A minimum of one in every state,” she admitted. “At least there were.”
“And the rest of the world?”
“Depending on size, geography, and cooperation of the government in question, there’s at least one per country.”
I was silent for a moment, taking in just how fucking global the DZN was.
Kind of like the Scientologists.
Aloud I asked, “Are all the locations where the vaccine was sent places where the DZN has facilities?”
“No.” Simone looked pensive. “Not all of them, but enough to convince me it’s not coincidence. But other towns chosen to receive the vaccine seem to have been picked at random. Whoever chose the locations to test the Walker’s vaccine...” She stopped, looking distinctly troubled. “Well, they were either very short-sighted, or have an agenda I can’t even begin to fathom.”
Something about her tone told me she had indeed started to fathom it, but didn’t want to discuss the matter. Fine with me. I was more interested in the immediate problem of keeping Gabriel human. That would also keep me distracted from the fact my parents were in Lake County, less than two hundred miles from Humboldt.
At least the mountains acted as a natural barrier.
“So we’re looking at a trip over the Golden Gate Bridge,” I said.
“Colonel Paxton and I believe it’s the best option at this point, yes,” Simone agreed.
“Then we should get going, right?”
Simone looked up at me.
“I realize you have a personal stake in this, Ashley.”
“I—”
She held up a hand, and I fell silent.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me or to anyone else. Just be aware that you may have to make choices down the road that will be made much more difficult by your relationship with Gabriel.” She looked down again at her teacup. “Trust me when I say I know of that of which I speak.”
“You still have the hots for Nathan, don’t you?”
“I don’t—” she began. “That is...”
I just looked at her, not even bothering to raise an eyebrow. Didn’t need to.
“Is it that obvious?” she asked.
I couldn’t help it—I laughed.
“Jeez, Simone, you guys are like something out of—” the first thought that occurred to me was Ron and Hermione in Harry Potter, but I thought better of it and said “—out of a Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy flick.”
“Bless you for using that comparison, and not something like Twilight...” Simone gulped down the rest of her tea, cheeks flushed with what I could only assume was embarrassment. “But yes, you are correct in your assumption. And because of that attachment, I don’t always trust my instincts. The urge to protect can override common sense and the ability to make the best decisions for everyone involved. The big picture gets lost amidst the personal details. And in this case, the big picture is all we dare consider,” she added. “While other labs possess backup files based on our research, I don’t believe there is anyone else who is as close to an answer as Dr. Albert. and me.” She looked down, sipped at the nearly empty cup of tea, and set it down with a grimace.
“Unless we can replicate our laboratory conditions, and quickly, the point may become moot,” she said. “We daren’t allow the plague to spread beyond the point of no return. The results—well, they’re entirely too easy to envision.”
I eyed her narrowly.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
“And I used to have such a good poker face.” She studied her hands before looking me in the eyes. “We’ve had reports of Walker’s in several neighborhoods of San Francisco, including the Financial District, North Beach, and SoMa. I have every reason to believe Dr. Albert’s vaccine was introduced into the city.”
“But that’s—” I stopped, unwilling to even consider the ramifications.
“Insanity? Yes.” She stopped for a moment, and then continued. “If our intelligence is correct, San Francisco is the first major urban center to have been infected.”
“You think it was done deliberately?”
“We don’t know.”
“But there’s no way they can keep an outbreak in San Francisco a secret,” I said. “All it’ll take is one person with an iPhone and a YouTube account.”
“One person wouldn’t present a problem,” Simone replied. “It would be dismissed as a joke. They’re trying for a quarantine, but in reality, I think evacuation procedures are already being put into place.”
Evacuate to where? I wondered. Sausalito?
I didn’t pursue that line of thought, though, because something in Simone’s attitude hinted at yet more bad news. “There’s something else, right?”
She sighed.
“Ashley, every day that passes reduces Gabriel’s resistance to the virus in his body. He’s gone from needing half a dose of the antiserum every twenty-four hours to one dose, then to two, all within the space of the last two weeks. There’s no telling how quickly the twice-a-day dosage will become ineffective. So every second counts at this point.”
“I get that,” I said.
“I’m not sure that you do.” Simone reached out and took one of my hands in hers. “The way the zombie virus works is insidious. It’s essentially a retrovirus that sets off the zombification process. In Gabriel’s case, there’s a... a glitch in the process that stops him from turning completely. The antiserum Dr. Albert has developed from Gabriel’s blood—and that of the wild cards—has factors that a
ttach to the enzymes that cause the subject to change. The problem in Gabriel is that, although the enzymes are being rendered ineffective, the virus itself is replicating at an exponentially increased rate.”
I kept silent, hoping she was leading up to something I could understand more completely.
“The virus is determined to win,” she said. “It’s aggressive and doing its best to overwhelm the positive effects of the antiserum. He will continue to need increased dosages until it stops being efficacious. Gabriel might have a week, or he might have less. We just don’t know.”
“So we need to leave right away,” I replied. “No sense in waiting.”
“Pretty much, yes. But you also need to be aware of the possibility that he could become dangerous. And you’ll need to be ready to deal with that eventuality, if it happens.”
“We could restrain him, if it comes to that.”
“And you’ll need to take Dr. Albert with you.”
Great, I thought.
Not.
“Can we trust him?” I asked.
“I hope so,” she answered. “I truly hope so.”
I looked at her.
“Wow, you sure know how to reassure a person, don’t you?”
“I’m not trying to reassure you, Ashley,” she said without a hint of humor. “I’m trying to prepare you.”
“Couldn’t you reassure me just a little bit?” I asked wistfully.
She smiled at that.
“Would it help you to know that I have full confidence in your ability to deal with any situation you might encounter?”
“Um, kind of not really.”
Simone laughed, and then started coughing. It looked like it hurt. I handed her a bottle of water from the bedside table, waiting until she swallowed some and the coughing fit subsided before asking the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question preying on my mind.