Plague Nation

by Dana Fredsti

  He felt sorry for the people in the cars. Traffic hadn’t moved since they’d crash-landed in the golf course next to the museum parking lot—which was jammed. People were trying to drive over the green, which left a lot of cars parked haphazardly where they shouldn’t be.

  One of the reasons they’d landed so badly was because the pilot had been forced to jerk the control hard to the left to avoid hitting a car that suddenly zipped right into the helicopter’s trajectory. They’d overshot the smooth stretch of green and hit a rough patch, sliding into bushes. The rotors clipped a tree trunk, flipping the helicopter onto its side. For a few minutes there Mack had felt like a die in a Yahtzee cup.

  They’d barely managed to get everyone out of the downed whirlybird before the zombies had started pouring through the museum doors and down the steps toward them. Some had been diverted by people heading toward the museum, presumably for shelter. Others went for motorists still in the cars, slapping bloody, rotted hands against the windows, trying to gain entry.

  One driver veered his or her car off into the trees in an attempt to get away from the madness. The car bounced across the hiking path and beyond. Mack had heard the distant splash as it hit the water.

  He winced as his good foot slipped on some damp turf and he landed hard on the injured one. He could do this, though. For the last ten years he’d walked miles on his mail route in lousy weather with a bad back and a gimp knee, and neither sleet nor snow nor zombies would stop him from doing his job.

  He glanced over at the injured sniper hanging between Gentry and the medic. He was hurt bad, broken leg at least, compound fracture, and a concussion on top of it. They’d splinted the leg as best they could, but it was a rush job. Sweat poured off the poor guy’s face, which was pasty white with shock. The movement had to hurt like hell, but it was either that or abandon him to a grisly fate.

  Seeing the sniper’s stoicism in the face of such a rotten injury made Mack more determined than ever to ignore his own pain.

  “How ya doing there, Postman?” Gentry tossed a glance back over his shoulder.

  “Fine,” Mack said as another bolt of pain shot through his knee. “Just fine.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  The Presidio, a former army outpost turned national park, was a mixture of residences and businesses set amid a mini forest. The buildings were less densely packed than the areas in the adjacent neighborhoods to the east, and therefore likely to have fewer people, dead or undead.

  Our route would skirt the edges of the Exploratorium and the edge of the park until we emerged somewhere in between the neighborhoods of Presidio Heights and Pacific Heights. Then we would make our way south into the upper Haight—since the sixties the home of hippies, tie-dye, and disenfranchised youth.

  First, however, we had to get from Crissy Field across Marina Boulevard, one of the main conduits to the Golden Gate Bridge. Normally this would be a quick ten-minute walk. Now, all four lanes—the ones heading to the 101 on-ramp, and the opposite lanes heading into the Marina District—were a Dante-esque river of metal and humanity, clogged with stalled vehicles and foot traffic, all of it northbound.

  Some of the cars were empty, left behind as their owners realized they weren’t going to be moving any time soon. Others still had occupants who seemed to think laying on their horns would miraculously clear the jam. Police officers and SWAT types moved among the cars, trying unsuccessfully to persuade people to leave them and return to their homes.

  The cacophony of horns and shouting shredded away at the nerve endings, making an already panicked situation even worse. A car alarm went off nearby, adding the final craptastic touch. It was one of those alarms with four alternating sounds, and if its inventor had been within arm’s reach, I would happily have fed him to the nearest zombie.

  We approached the pandemonium slowly, using the cover of the trees that dotted the south end of Crissy Fields to keep out of sight.

  “Okay,” Gabriel said as we reached the edge of the tree line. “We need to get to the other side of this clusterfuck, and into the Presidio as quickly and quietly as possible. If any of the local authorities get a good look at our toys, it could get ugly.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “What, there isn’t a secret handshake or get-out-ofjail-free card you guys use in these situations?” I was only partly joking. “I mean, it seems like the DZN would have connections up their super-secret wazoo.”

  Red snickered. Guess he thought I was funny, which was good, because Gabriel didn’t look amused.

  “We don’t have time to deal with any delays, period. So quick and quiet, got it?” He shot Lil and me a look. “Emphasis on the ‘quiet’ part.”

  I almost gave him a one-fingered salute, but maturity won out, and I nodded instead. Besides, he was right. As it was, we would already stick out in our pseudo-SWAT gear. We looked—and were—tough, but we didn’t look like we belonged to any official branch of law enforcement.

  The A-Team looked more official than we did.

  We all had our “squirrel rifles” out—even Tony who had reluctantly holstered the BAS across his back for the time being. I kind of liked the lighter rifle, even though I definitely had a soft spot for my M4—which was likewise secured in a three-point Kevlar sling across my back. I felt overly accessorized.

  Paramilitary Barbie at your service.

  We reached the edge of the trees, and paused at the daunting sight before us. There was barely space between the tightly packed cars, and most of that space was filled with people. “Bumper to bumper” didn’t begin to describe it. More like one continuous fender bender.

  Some drivers on either edge of the asphalt had pulled onto the shoulder, trying to edge their way around the jam, but they found themselves stuck as the on-ramp merged onto the 101 and they ran out of room. Others pulled off onto the side streets, trying to turn themselves around, but there was no joy there either.

  A couple of cars barreled off onto the grass in front of us, trying to find another way onto the bridge. I wished them luck as they sped off down Old Mason Street in hopes of finding a back route. Like lemmings, other motorists followed them.

  San Francisco had never been a traffic-friendly city, and now it looked like it was well on its way to becoming a forty-nine square mile parking lot. And a buffet for the hungry dead. It was only a matter of time before zombies found their way to all these meals on wheels.

  This scenario never played out well in any of the books or movies.

  “We’re going to have to go over the cars,” Gabriel said quietly, his expression grim. “I’m on point. Ash, you’re Tail End Charlie.”

  “Rear-guard, got it.”

  “Dr. Albert, you need to stay in the middle and Lil, you and Tony stick with him. Jones, Davis—” he nodded at the Gunsy Twins “—you know what to do.”

  They nodded back, vanishing into the crowd like two ghostly commandos.

  “Stealth is no longer an option,” Gabriel continued, “so go for quick. Once you’re across, follow the edge of Lyon Street and keep moving until we get to the back of the Exploratorium. Go.”

  He dashed out onto the open grass toward the street, followed closely by the flight crew—they both seemed to be in good physical shape. Tony and Lil—Dr. Albert sandwiched between them—were next, with yours truly bringing up the rear. Gabriel vaulted over the hood of an empty Prius which was kissing the back of a Mini Cooper. He slid off the far side of it into an unoccupied patch of asphalt with a grace I couldn’t help but admire, even under the circumstances.

  Red and Carl were next, following in his footsteps as best they could. Lil practically bounced over the car, while Dr. Albert fussed and stalled, unwilling or unable to climb over the hood. Tony pushed him to the front end of the Prius, making him clamber over the bumpers, then followed him.

  As soon as they’d cleared the first lane of traffic, I went for the hood slide, landing heavily on the asphalt just in time to see Gabriel v
ault over the sloping front of a shiny new pink and silver Smart Car with Hello Kitty stenciled on the side. The driver, a dark-haired girl in her teens, was still in the car and gave a shriek of surprised outrage, audible even over the rest of the chaos.

  I shook my head. She had scarier things to worry about than a marred paint job.

  Some of the panicking people barely noticed us, while others, seeing our gear, turned to us with varying degrees of anger, fear, and hope. A generically good-looking couple in their twenties stopped me as I pushed my way through the foot traffic—he was dark-haired and tall, she was petite and blonde. They looked like they should be in an ad for a tropical resort.

  “What’s going on?” the man asked, reaching out and grabbing my arm. “Can you help us?”

  Well, hell. I guess I did look kind of official.

  “The news said there’s some sort of outbreak making people crazy,” the blonde chimed in. “We just want to get to my parents’ place in Mill Valley.”

  “You know there’s a quarantine blockade, right?” I said.

  “Yeah, and on the Bay Bridge and all the main arteries leading out of the city.” The man frowned. “But we’ve been stuck here for at least an hour. Do you have any idea when we can expect traffic to start moving again?”

  “Look, I can’t help you,” I said, trying to keep sight of the rest of the team as they made it over the next row of cars. I saw Lil vanish on the far side of a massive yellow Humvee. “I’ve got to go,” I said, shaking off the man’s hand. “The best thing for you and your girlfriend—”

  “Fiancée,” she said, flashing a ring at me with a shy smile.

  “Fiancée,” I amended, wondering why I was wasting the time, but unable to help myself. “The best thing you both can do is get off this road. If you live anywhere close, go home. Listen to your local news—they’ll be airlifting people out when they can from the Bison Paddock in Golden Gate Park. If you can’t get home, find shelter, wait until daylight, and get there as best you can.” I glanced down at her feet, encased in a pair of gorgeous yet impractical Sex in the City heels. “And trade those shoes for something you can run in.”

  “Can’t you go with us?” the woman asked. “You’ve got a gun, you could protect us.”

  “I’m. I’m on a special mission,” I said, wincing at how lame that sounded, even as the words came out of my mouth. “I have to catch up with the rest of my team.”

  Lame or not, it worked. The man nodded as he grabbed his fiancée’s hand and started helping her across the road toward the Presidio. I mentally wished them luck, and took off at a fast jog, circumnavigating the Humvee in favor of a more easily negotiated Acura.

  Where the hell are they?

  I scanned the lines of cars and people, getting jostled on all sides as I tried to hold ground instead of getting swept up in the migration toward the bridge.

  Sudden screams ripped through the air from the Marina District to the east, sounds of pure terror that cut through the rest of the noise, even rising above the car alarms.

  Shit. I knew what that meant.

  I clambered back on top of the Acura and looked east, where I immediately spotted the all-too-familiar disjointed movements of the walking dead, at least twenty of them, converging on Marina Boulevard from all directions. More were sure to follow, honing in on their fellow zombies ringing the dinner bell with their plaintive moaning. People were going to die, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do about it.

  Even as I watched, two zombies reached the edge of the road, latching on to the nearest living person and bearing them to the ground like rotting lions taking down a gazelle. The screams of the victim were horrifying, and the people nearby started screaming, too, trying to get away from the carnage by scrambling over cars and other pedestrians.

  Several zombies honed in on an occupied vehicle. One of them reached into the open back window on the passenger side and hauled out a shrieking child, a little girl who couldn’t have been more than five years old.

  I couldn’t stand it.

  Bringing my rifle to bear, I quickly targeted the head of the zombie and fired three shots in succession before it could sink its teeth into the little girl. Its knees buckled and someone pulled the girl back into the car.

  The other zombie pushed its fallen buddy out of the way and reached in after the prize. Doors on the driver’s side opened and the occupants scrambled out onto the street, a teenage boy holding the little girl in a protective hug despite the terrified look on his face. He followed his parents to the other side of the road, where they vanished amidst the general chaos.

  More screams rang out. I turned, looking in all directions. Zombies were coming out of the woodwork.

  “Get out of here!” I yelled. “Get inside, lock yourselves in! Get the hell out of here!” No one paid me any attention. I thought about firing a few shots into the air, but the whole point of the squirrel rifles was stealth. Oh, for Tony’s BAS.

  “Ash!”

  My head snapped to one side as I heard someone call my name. Relief washed over me when I saw Lil waving frantically from the far side of Marina Boulevard, the rest of the team behind her in the tree line. I waved back, letting her know I saw her, and leapt back on to the asphalt.

  “Hey, this bitch has a gun!”

  Someone slammed into me—hard—causing me to fall backward against the Acura. My head hit the upper doorframe just hard enough to rattle my teeth and make me see stars, but not hard enough to get me to let go of my rifle as the person tried to yank it out of my hands.

  I shook my head, told the stars to fuck off, and focused.

  “Let go of it and I won’t hurt you.” But a beefy man in a Giants T-shirt and matching baseball cap shoved his bulk up against me, exhaling beer breath into my face. Guess it’d been Miller time before he’d hit the road.

  “You really didn’t have to call me a bitch,” I growled, putting the side of the rifle against his chest and giving a push that sent him flying back into two similarly reeky guys right behind him. All three stumbled back against the tide of people trying to fight their way onto the bridge. I took advantage of the moment to level the business end of the rifle at them.

  “If you’re smart, you’ll get the hell off this road and find shelter until the military can get you out of here,” I said. “If you’re stupid, you’ll keep trying to fuck with me, and you won’t have to worry about what’s coming up that road.”

  All three of them lunged forward.

  Did no one pay attention to the Darwin Awards any more?

  I slammed the butt of the rifle into the first guy’s jaw. He collapsed, poleaxed. His two friends caught him before he hit the ground.

  Now will you give me some fighting room?

  A mob of people surged into the space between the Acura and the adjacent line of vehicles, shoving the two jerks forward, right into me. I ended up squashed against the Acura again. One of the beer-infused males took advantage of the crush to grab the stock of my rifle, wrenching it out of my hands. The sling yanked my arm out and up, the sturdy nylon strap wrapped tightly around my wrist. It hurt like hell, but stopped the guy from taking off with my weapon.

  He swore and yanked again, trying to get the rifle free and giving me a nice rope burn as the nylon dragged around my wrist. Grabbing a length of the strap with both hands, I yanked back.

  As we wrestled for possession of the rifle, I became aware of a new sound—a weird rhythmic crunching thud, as if someone was jumping on a metal trampoline. Both the man and I paused in our tug-of-war as the sound grew closer.

  Crunch.

  Five cars ahead of the Acura, someone was running on top of the stopped vehicles, barely pausing as he went from car top to trunk to hood, as if each surface was just a springboard for the next point of contact. If Gabriel had made it look easy, this guy made it appear effortless, going from SUV to Smart to Honda without any apparent trouble—despite the difference in shapes and sizes.

  “What the hell?�
�� The man trying to wrestle my rifle away from me just stopped and stared.

  Almost as if he was aware he had an audience, the guy looked over in our direction as he leapt—graceful as a cat—from the back of a Prius onto the hood of a Toyota. He paused long enough for me to get a good look at him, almost as if he was posing for a picture.

  Brown hair flopped over a red bandana knotted behind his head, fair-colored skin flushed red with the exercise. Brown eyes with a crazy gleam in them. Not psycho crazy, but “boy, isn’t this just the best fun ever” type crazy, with an exhilarated grin to top it off. Kind of like Lil’s “isn’t it fun to kill zombies!” expression.

  And then he was moving again, hitting three or four more cars before landing on the ground on the Presidio side, and vanishing into the deepening shadows of the trees.

  “Who was that masked man?” I said to myself. Shaking my head, I turned back to business at hand. I gave my opponent what a Scottish friend of mine called “a mou’ful o’ headies” by way of bashing him in the nose with my forehead. He howled in pain and let go of the rifle.

  I followed up with the butt of the weapon to his stomach and turned to the remaining man, who was smart enough to keep his hands to himself.

  “Take your friends and get the hell off the streets,” I warned him. Without waiting to see if he listened, I pushed past, shoving my way through a totally panicked river of people, scrambling over a Saturn, and finally making my way to the far side of the road, where Lil bounced up and down like Tigger on speed. The rest had already gone.

  “Being Tail End Charlie sucks,” I said.

  “Or maybe you just suck at being Tail End Charlie.” Lil’s tone was caustic, and I looked at her with surprised hurt. “You’re not supposed to stop and help people right now,” she snapped. “We can’t help them. We have to keep moving, or you could die!”