Plague Nation

by Dana Fredsti

“What happens if he does flip, before we can make more antiserum? Is there any coming back from this?”

  Simone was quiet for a minute.

  “Oh, Ashley, I just don’t know. We tried treating Jake with the same serum that’s kept Gabriel’s condition from worsening, but he didn’t respond to it. Whether or not that’s because of his specific physiology, or because his condition is too far gone...” She squeezed my hand and repeated, “I just don’t know.”

  “Then we’d better get going about now.” I stood up, leaned over, and gave her a quick hug. “I’ll make sure this happens.”

  Simone hugged me back.

  “I know you will. And I’ll help you as best I can, every step of the way.”

  “Slightly better at the reassuring part there.” I turned to leave, then something else occurred to me.

  “Did Jake die in the fire?”

  “We don’t know. We had him confined in a separate room off the lab. The door was closed and locked at the start of the evening. When they checked after the fire was out, the door was open. His remains haven’t been positively identified as of yet.”

  I shut my eyes. Okay, there was a good chance he’d either died in the fire, or was part of the “samples” that were stolen. The latter was bad, but better than if he’d escaped. We already had zombies—the last thing we needed was a Dahmer Mini-Me loose on campus like some sort of eighties horror villain.

  Before I could say anything else, the door opened and Jamie came back in, bearing a tray with a carafe of coffee. Simone’s expression transformed into pure bliss as Jamie poured her a cup, the aroma wafting through the air.

  Who was I to interfere with this moment? I left, determined to get things moving as soon as possible.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  * * *

  As it turned out, I’d just left Simone’s room when I ran into one of Paxton’s ZT squad members. The same guy I’d whomped the shit out of, point of fact. He still had a healthy shiner on his left eye.

  “Jeeter, right?” I said.

  He stepped back at least a foot. Ooh, points for flinching. I tried not to smile, but damn me if he hadn’t deserved everything he’d gotten.

  “Colonel Paxton has asked all of you wild things—”

  “Wild cards.”

  He nodded energetically. “Yeah, that’s it. Wild cards. He wants you to report to the quad, ASAP.”

  “Thanks.”

  He turned to go, stopped, then turned back again.

  “I heard about what you did, going down to the lab.” He hesitated, then added, “That took some real balls.”

  “Um... thank you?”

  “And I’m sorry for being a dick the other night, ma’am.”

  Wow. Had anyone bet me this guy would apologize, it was a bet I would have taken in an instant, and lost.

  “Er... apology accepted.”

  He gave me a sharp salute and limped off down the hallway. I almost felt bad about his injuries.

  Almost.

  Changing course, I headed outside and toward the quad, walking through a quiet, not quite deserted campus. There were some soldiers out and about when I reached my destination, but few civilians. Most of those preferred to stay indoors. I wistfully remembered what it was like during normal times: dozens of students strolling about, clutching lattes and snacks from one of the campus coffee kiosks, or lounging on the grass or perched on cement benches scattered across the large rectangle, the inevitable hacky sack players showing off their skills or lack thereof.

  I missed it all.

  The last time I’d seen it crowded was on our first mission as wild cards, when the quad had been seething with the walking dead. I preferred the hacky sack players.

  The rest of the gang was already assembled on the far side of the quad, next to the library. Nathan, Gabriel, and Paxton were deep in conversation. The rest were sitting, Tony a few feet apart from everyone else, still obviously determined to isolate himself.

  There were also two zombies, an adolescent male in a hoodie and a nearly nude older female, shoved up against the wall of the library, each with a collar hooked to a capture pole being manned by a couple of Hazmat-geared soldiers. Both looked as if they’d been turned at the beginning of the outbreak. The smell was horrific, even from a distance, and the stench only got worse with every step I took in their direction.

  “Where did these come from?” I asked Gentry, just because he was the closest person to me, and because Gabriel was still in the kaffeeklatsch with the big boys.

  “They were brought in a little while ago by one of the ZTS teams.” Gentry waved a hand in front of his nose. “They were locked in the basement of a house near the edge of the quarantine zone, probably a few weeks ago. So they’re pretty ripe.”

  “What’s up with the poles and shit?”

  He shrugged.

  “Nathan’s idea.”

  “That could be a good or a bad thing,” I commented to no one in particular.

  “Attention, people!” Colonel Paxton’s resonate voice caught all of our attention. He was one man who would never need a microphone. He didn’t need to say it more than once, either—everyone gave him their full attention. Even Tony.

  Gabriel looked up and saw me. He looked good, without the sallow skin tone I’d come to recognize when the zombie bug was coursing though his system without the antiserum to combat it. I smiled and in return got a partial lift of the corners of his mouth. That was good enough for me, under the circumstances.

  “I’m not going to waste any time,” Paxton said. “You know our lab was destroyed, and most of the materials either burned or stolen by the same people who set the fire.”

  Last week on Zombocalypse...

  “Dr. Albert and Professor Fraser were working on a cure for the plague, as well as making an antiserum to keep Captain Drake’s condition from worsening.” He nodded toward Gabriel. “We have a limited supply of this serum. And more importantly, we need to secure a new base of operations—one with the materials and equipment necessary to continue this work.”

  Mack raised his hand, and Paxton nodded in his direction.

  “Why can’t the military just fly in more equipment and supplies to Redwood Grove?”

  Paxton nodded again, this time in acknowledgment.

  “Good question. Under normal circumstances this is exactly what we would do. But there is nothing normal about the current events. Every hour brings more news of infection, and each new outbreak requires that more of our resources be deployed to put out these fires. We simply don’t have the time to rebuild the lab facilities. And we don’t have the luxury of moving our operations without first securing the new location.

  “We are on our own,” he said flatly. Then he paused, looking around at all of us for what looked like maximum dramatic effect. Or maybe I was just being bitchy. His next words, however, drove all snarky thoughts out of my head.

  “San Francisco is our best bet—perhaps our only one, given the urgency of our situation—but it has been badly compromised,” he announced. “Under the guise of flu shots, the vaccine was introduced into drugstores in the city proper, and possibly on the Peninsula and in the East Bay. While the number of actual zombies reported has so far been minimal, the number of potentially infected persons is high.”

  “How bad is it?” Mack asked.

  “Few enough cases and enough media damage control that any national news is still reporting it as a potentially lethal flu outbreak.”

  “What, no Ebola this time?” I muttered.

  Paxton gave me a fairly lethal Hairy Eyeball. I shut up.

  “This situation can’t hold,” he continued. “Already the hospitals are overwhelmed with Walker’s patients and people with bite wounds. It’s only a matter of time before the zombie population explodes. If we’re lucky, you’ll reach your target before that happens. More than ever, it’s absolutely essential that the lab there is fully functional as soon as possible.”

  He paced back and forth as
he continued.

  “The military is setting up a quarantine zone, blocking access to all the bridges in the area, and shutting down the 280, 101, 580, 80, 24 and 1 freeways. You will be transported in by helicopter, along with backup teams of ZTS marksmen.

  “They are not immune to the disease, so their main function will be clearing hostiles from a distance. That leaves the up close and personal to you.”

  “Are they letting anyone out?” I asked, trying to imagine the panic of such a densely populated city.

  “Evacuation procedures have been implemented, with clearing points at the checkpoints on each bridge and on the freeways. Plans are in motion to deploy Chinooks to airlift healthy citizens out, once we establish a secure perimeter in Golden Gate Park.” Paxton stared directly at me. “But we know from experience that there will be a certain percentage of healthy civilians within the quarantine zone when you arrive. We will do our best to make sure these people have a sanctuary within the city, until such time evacuation can be completed or the contagion contained. And to that end...”

  He gave a nod to Nathan, who stepped up front and center, pulled out an M4 from a nearby duffle bag and casually shot the female zombie in the head, splattering the wall behind it.

  I winced, and Lil gave me an odd look.

  “What?” she said. “It’s just a zombie. You’ve killed dozens of them.”

  I hesitated, trying to find the right words to describe the discomfort I felt. I finally found them.

  “Killing them when they’re trying to eat me seems a lot more ethical than using them as demo dummies.”

  Or lab specimens, I thought, remembering the gut-crawling horror I’d felt when Colonel Paxton’s predecessor, General Heald, had forced me to go to the labs under Patterson Hall. There I’d seen zombies strapped to operating tables, slices taken out of their flesh like turkeys being carved at Thanksgiving. Heald wanted to persuade me to join the wild cards by showing me what would happen to Matt, my boyfriend-turned-zombie, if I refused.

  My reward for being a good soldier? Matt got a swift and final bullet to the head, instead of being used as a lab rat.

  “They’re dead,” Lil said. “It’s not like they’re human any more.”

  “I know.” I saw Matt’s face in my mind’s eye. “But they used to be.”

  Nathan cleared his throat, and we turned our attention back to him.

  “See that crap on the wall? Should be a familiar sight by now. Blood, brain matter, lots of gore. To a wild card it’s no threat.” He paused for effect, and the theatrics began to bug me. “But to uninfected civilians, it’s another story. Any of this gets into an open wound or mixes with mucus membrane, the virus spreads, and we have another zombie on our hands. The lesson, my children, is that splatter is bad.”

  No one argued the point, so he continued.

  “Then there’s the question of over-penetration. On a really ripe biter, your M4 round won’t find much to slow it down. It’ll punch through and keep right on going. Not a bad thing, unless you have a team member or civilian on the move somewhere behind them. That’s a lot more likely to happen in densely populated territory, and a risk we don’t want to take.”

  He reached into his duffle bag again and extracted a toy-like rifle in a jaunty shade of metallic royal blue, something I’d expect a Spy Kid to use.

  “This is a Marlin Papoose bolt-action rifle.”

  “It’s so cute!” Jamie exclaimed. “Does it come in pink?”

  You could practically hear people rolling their eyes— I’m pretty sure mine creaked—but Nathan actually grinned as he replied.

  “As a matter of fact, one of my teammates back in the day bought one with a pink stock for his niece’s tenth birthday.”

  Jamie beamed.

  Tony gave a derisive snort.

  “You gotta be kidding,” he said. “You want us to take out zombies with a squirrel rifle?”

  Normally his attitude would make me want to slap him, but considering that this was the first voluntary social interaction he’d offered since Kai’s death, I didn’t say a word.

  Nathan ignored Tony and shot the other zombie in the head. The rifle made a small pop, nothing near as loud as the M4. Nothing splattered, but the zombie went limp.

  Nathan set the rifle down on the table.

  “Here’s the point, ladies and gentlemen. The M4 is a superior battlefield weapon under normal circumstances. You’ve proven that. But sometimes you have to tailor the weapon to the war.”

  He rummaged in the bag and pulled out a small round.

  “This is a .22 Long Rifle cartridge. They are small, underpowered, short range. Mostly good for plinking cans in the back yard. But depending on the circumstances, that may be all you need. A .22 has power to breach the skull, but not enough to exit. The flesh may have deteriorated, but the bone will be intact.”

  “So no potentially infected splatter, right?” Jamie said, sounding entirely too perky.

  Nathan gave her a nod of approval.

  “Exactly.”

  Teacher’s pet, I mouthed to Lil.

  “A well-placed round to the frontal cortex will do the job—if in doubt, make it two. There is negligible recoil, so it’s easy to keep on target, and it won’t punish your shoulder over an extended firefight. They’re small, so you can carry several thousand rounds in place of a few hundred for the M4. If you’re stuck in the field and can’t get back to base, chances are you can find reloads at department stores, sporting goods shops, hardware stores. hell, in some towns, even drugstores carry ’em.”

  “Not in San Francisco,” I said mildly.

  Gentry laughed. “I’m surprised you can buy knives in San Francisco.”

  “Only if they’re organic, grass-fed, and sustainable,” Mack said, eliciting a rare guffaw from Tony. That made Mack beam, considering how few and far between any response had been in the last couple of days.

  “So,” Tony said, “if we’re really gonna use these pop guns in San Fran, does mine have to be blue?”

  “No.” This time Nathan’s magic duffle bag produced a stubby rifle with a thick barrel and an odd drumshaped thingee mounted horizontally on top. “It’ll come in OD Green, and a slightly different model.” He hefted the rifle.

  “This is an AM15. Basically your standard-issue full-auto M16, but with an aftermarket receiver that takes pan magazines for an American 180 submachine gun.”

  Okay, this was turning into way more info than my brain could process. Nathan’s words were starting to blend into “blah blahblah ammo. Blahblahblahsplooshy blood and gore.” At this point, I was ready to stand up and go all Vasquez with, “Look, man. I only need to know one thing...”

  “We’ve added a standard red dot scope, and a full-auto-grade suppressor,” Nathan added.

  “A suppressor is like a silencer, right?” Jamie chimed in. Miss Hot Topic was turning out to be a combination Ms. NRA and a Hermione for the Zombocalypse.

  “That’s right,” Nathan nodded. “No sense ringing the dinner bell if you don’t have to. With this you can slip in, drop your targets, and get out before they know it.”

  “What’s that little drum thingee on top?” I asked, figuring I should at least pretend to show an interest.

  “That’s the pan magazine. The .22 rounds are loaded into a spiral, and.”

  I tuned out again. Blahblahblah, Ginger.

  “It still looks like a squirrel gun,” Tony muttered.

  Nathan raised an eyebrow and gave a little sigh. Then he did something to the gun and fired a round into the closest zombie’s hoodied head. The only sound was a click followed by the tinkle of a casing falling to the ground. The hood moved slightly, but that was it. Nathan fired three more rounds in quick succession, the sound reminiscent of a kid’s pellet gun. Then he did something to make the drum-shaped magazine start to whirl, accompanied by a slight chattering sound.

  I wasn’t particularly impressed until I noticed the storm of tiny rounds chewing a fist-sized hole in
the zombie’s chest, followed by a steady stitch of ammo fired into one hip to the other. Then he nudged the body with his foot and it separated into two gooey pieces.

  “Any questions?” he asked.

  Tony stood up and started to raise his hand. Without even glancing in his direction, Nathan continued, “And if anyone asks how they can get out of this chickenshit outfit, rest assured, I will give them an answer they will not enjoy.”

  Tony sat back down. Gentry looked over at me, and we both grinned.

  Nathan continued.

  “Each of you will be issued a rifle and six magazines to supplement your other weaponry. The casings will eject out the empty magazine, but do not discard your empties if you can help it; supply is limited for the moment. You’ll also get a Ruger Mark III pistol in the same caliber, also suppressed. Consider it a stocking stuffer.”

  Pleasepleaseplease, no more gun talk.

  “And—”

  Damn.

  “—we’ll want a heavy gunner as backup, so—” Nathan nodded at Gentry, who reached down and pulled up a big-ass shotgun. “We’ll be sending out two AA-12 full-auto shotguns.” He gave another nod. Gentry grinned and handed the shotgun to Tony.

  “Wow.” Tony lit up like a pinball machine as he hefted the weapon.

  “This puppy fires over three hundred rounds a minute, and has minimum recoil,” Gentry told him.

  “So we don’t get to see Tony knocked back on his ass every time he fires it?” I smiled sweetly as Tony shot me the finger, no doubt also remembering his epic moment in our first firearms training session.

  “Not unless he’s a lot wussier than he looks,” Gentry said with a straight face.

  Lil pouted.

  “How come Tony gets to use it?”

  Nathan grinned.

  “Because it fits him. Don’t you think?”

  We all looked at Tony as he posed with his new toy, looking more alive than I’d seen him since Kai’s death.

  Mack shrugged.

  “When you’re right, you’re right.”

  SALT LAKE CITY

  “Oh my god, there’s another one...”

  Steph pointed across the street to yet another family consisting of Dad in a white short-sleeved dress shirt, slacks and a truly hideous yellow-gold tie, Mom with teased hair, heavy makeup, and a long shapeless skirt, blouse and cardigan, and multiple matching blond rug rats—in this case, six— scampering at their side.