Plague Nation

by Dana Fredsti

  “Well, I’m not dead, and I moved as fast as I could.” I kept my voice level. “They were pulling a little girl out of a car, Lil. I had to do something.” She turned away from me and I reached out, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You would have done the same thing, and you know it. And I’d be where you are, ripping you a new one for scaring the shit out of me.”

  “Well... yeah!” Lil glared back at me.

  “So we’d better catch up with the rest of the gang, or Gabriel’s gonna chew my ass, too. And yours, for letting Dr. Crazy Pants out of your sight.”

  “Oh, crap.” Lil looked guiltily over her shoulder. “You’re right. Let’s go!”

  We darted into the trees. I silently hoped for the best for everyone stuck in the traffic jam, knowing that I could have stayed there and used all my ammo, and people would still die. We had to set up the lab and find the cure if we wanted to make a real difference.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  AMARILLO; TEXAS

  “Ohmygod, I am sta-a-arving!”

  Ted’s stomach rumbled, as if to punctuate his words. Kim’s growled by way of reply. They’d been on the road for hours, with only a brief bathroom break at a truck stop somewhere between Albuquerque and the Texas border.

  The twins grinned at each other.

  “Calico County?” they said in unison.

  Calico County in Amarillo, Texas, was a traditional way station on their yearly cross-country drive from Los Angeles to Michigan to visit their folks. Right off the highway, Calico County served home-style southern food including catfish, fried okra, and baskets of miniature sweet and savory rolls. Kim always stole the cinnamon rolls right away, but Ted didn’t mind, because the waitress brought refills every time she came to the table. Hometown cooking, smiling staff, and cheap prices. It almost made the twins reconsider their attitude toward Texas.

  Almost.

  “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we—”

  Kim reached out and thwacked Ted on the back of his head, keeping her other hand firmly on the wheel.

  “You’re dealing with a woman with low blood sugar, who’s running on five hours’ sleep, max. Do you really want to piss me off?”

  As if in accordance with her mood, the threatening thunderclouds overhead made good their promise and started dumping a shitload of rain, accompanied by cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning.

  Ted laughed and shook his head.

  “Sorry, sis, I—”

  “What the hell?”

  His reply was cut off by Kim’s sudden expletive. She jerked the wheel and the car swerved across the I-40, which was luckily empty behind them.

  She brought the Corolla under control, knuckles white on the wheel as she pulled back over to the right side of the highway.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Huh?” he said. “See what?”

  “That thing on the road!” Kim stabbed her finger in an indeterminate direction. “Didn’t you see it?”

  Ted looked back and saw a lot of rain, and very little else.

  “Jeez, Kim, your blood sugar is for shit.”

  “I’m serious! There was someone in the road. Right in the middle of the fucking highway!”

  Ted rolled his eyes.

  “Are you going all Jeepers Creepers on me? ’Cause I do not want to have my eyes removed by an underwear-sniffing monster.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I didn’t say that,” he replied, choosing his words carefully. “I just didn’t see anything.”

  “Which automatically means I’m imagining things?”

  Ted considered his options. If he said “No,” she’d ream him for the next hour or two. If he said “yes,” he’d have to listen to whatever bullshit she thought she’d seen.

  “What exactly did you see?”

  Better to humor her than put up with her hostile sulking for the next few hours. No one could sulk with more hostility than his sister. She had refined it to an art.

  “A woman crossing the freeway,” she said. “Looked like a crack whore.”

  “So where did she go?”

  Kim shrugged, the motion not needing the middle finger to convey the “fuck you” that lay behind it.

  “How the hell should I know? I was busy trying to keep the car on the road!”

  Ted chose to keep quiet until he saw a sign for Julian Blvd-Paramount Blvd exit, a quarter mile up the road.

  “There’s the exit,” he said.

  “Thank god.” Kim merged over onto the frontage road, turning right onto Paramount. “Almost there.” The restaurant was up ahead on the right a few hundred yards distant, almost impossible to miss because of the two huge signs shaped like canning jars, towering in the middle of the parking lot. The sign on the right depicted canned peaches, the words “Calico County Restaurant” stamped across it, while the second showed canned green beans, proclaiming “Home Cookin’ Good!”

  No lies there. Ted looked up as they neared the parking lot. One of the two quaint old-fashioned streetlamps on either side of the entrance flickered on and off, and the other was completely out. The restaurant itself looked dark inside.

  Ted frowned.

  “Well, shit, are they even open?”

  “They have to be!” Kim scowled as she pulled into the lot. “It’s only eight thirty.”

  “Maybe the electricity went out,” Ted said as another jagged bolt of lighting arced through the sky, followed by a window-rattling thunderclap.

  “God, I hope not! Because I would seriously kill for some fried okra.”

  The man who lurched in front of the car came out of nowhere. The bumper of the Corolla smashed into him before Kim could react. She shrieked in shock as blood splattered onto the windshield. Then she slammed on the brakes hard enough to knock the air out of both of them as their seatbelts did the job of stopping them from going through the windshield.

  The car screeched to a halt. Kim turned the key as soon as she’d recovered her breath, cutting the engine off in mid-sputter. The sound of rain splattering on the roof was suddenly deafening, thousands of leaden fingers tapping the metal above their heads.

  Kim unfastened her seatbelt, and Ted grabbed her arm as she fumbled for the door latch.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I just hit someone,” she said. She jerked her arm away and glared at her brother. “I need to see if he’s still alive.” She opened the car door and jumped out, rain sluicing down and flattening her curls.

  Even with the driving rain, Ted got a good look at the man staggering to his feet in front of the car, as the headlights illuminated his torn, blood-stained jeans and Western-style shirt, light reflecting off the shiny buttons. Ted could see how many pieces were missing from his body, and the vacantly hungry look in his milky eyes as he honed in on Kim.

  “Oh god...”

  Ted shoved the passenger door open and started to jump out, but was halted by his seatbelt.

  “Shit!” He fumbled with the clasp, fingers clumsy with fear as raindrops splattered against him. What took a few seconds seemed like the work of hours as he finally disengaged the locking mechanism and stumbled out of the car, still woozy from the jolting stop. Rounding the front of the car, he saw Kim reaching for the man—thing—she’d hit, as it in turn reached greedy hands toward her.

  “Kim, no! Get away from him!”

  Even as Ted cried out his warning, Kim grasped the man by his shoulders to help him up. The man wrapped his hands around one of her wrists, hoisting himself up even as he sunk his teeth into her forearm.

  Kim shrieked in surprise and pain as she tried to pull away from her attacker. Ted wrapped his arms around his twin’s torso and yanked backward. He heard an audible ripping sound as a chunk of Kim’s flesh tore out, eliciting an agonized wail from his sister.

  A low moaning from the far end of the parking lot caught Ted’s attention as he half-dragged Kim away from her attacker, who chewed mindlessly on the bl
oody hunk of meat left between his teeth.

  “You mother-fucking bastard!” Ted slammed a closed fist into the man’s nose, feeling the bones shatter beneath his hand. The man toppled over onto the ground, still chewing.

  “Ted, it hurts, it really hurts...”

  He turned back to his sister as blood spurted from the wound on her arm.

  “We’ve got to get you to a doctor, okay?”

  More moans sounded from the edge of the parking lot, spread around the entire perimeter. Ted looked up and saw indistinct figures lurching and staggering out of the shadows as the one light flickered on and off.

  “What the fuck?”

  He started to half-carry Kim back to the car when a flicker of movement in one of the restaurant windows caught his eye. There was someone in there. And they’d have a phone and could call 911 and get an ambulance out here a lot quicker than he could find a hospital in the torrential downpour.

  Changing direction, Ted dragged Kim over to the red double doors under the shelter of the overhanging awning, trying to ignore the fucked up druggies slowly heading toward them. Reaching the doors, he grabbed one of the handles and tugged.

  Nothing.

  He tried pushing, but no success there either. The doors were locked from the inside.

  “Shit!” Ted turned back to the parking lot. Their path to the car was now blocked by at least a half dozen of the slowly shambling figures, backlit by the glow of the headlights. Even so, they all looked totally fucked up, some of them looked like they had. pieces missing.

  They were moving slowly. Ted thought he could maybe get back to the car, but one quick glance at his sister told him she would never make it. She was losing more blood by the minute, and barely able to stand on her own. The bastard had really done a number on her.

  Ted used his free hand and pounded on the doors.

  “Help!” He slammed his open palm against the wood. “Let us in! For God’s sake, we need help!”

  Lightning flashed, the ensuing thunder right on its heels. The figures staggered closer. The storm was right on top of them.

  Kim moaned, sagging against Ted’s supporting arm. He cursed and smashed his fist against the doors.

  “We are going to fucking die out here if you don’t let us in!”

  The figures were ten feet away and closing.

  Ted shook his head, unable to believe how quickly their yearly road trip had turned into this fucked up house of horrors, his sister bleeding her life out as nightmare things slowly and inexorably closed in on them. They would die in Amarillo, Texas, which was just wrong on so many levels.

  “Kimmy, we’re gonna have to try to make it back to the car,” he said. “Okay?”

  “I can’t... it hurts... it hurts so much.”

  Kim went limp against Ted’s arm, sliding to the ground as his muscles gave out against the sudden dead weight of her body. He staggered and fell back against the doors... and inside the foyer of the restaurant, as both doors suddenly opened behind him. Hands dragged him inside, out of the rain and away from Kim.

  His last glimpse of his sister was her prone body as the shambling nightmares in the parking lot closed in on her. Then the doors slammed shut, and locks clicked back into place.

  Ted stared up at a half dozen or so terrified people ringed around him, including a family with three stunned looking kids. An older woman with a sagging beehive upsweep, wearing a waitress uniform, stepped forward as Ted got to his feet. His first thought was for Kim, and he lunged for the door.

  Two burly trucker types grabbed him before he could touch the handles and dragged him back into the restaurant. They smelled of sweat and fear.

  “Dammit, let me go! My sister’s out there!”

  The woman with the beehive spoke.

  “Were you bit?” Her accent was pure Texas.

  “Are you people crazy? Didn’t you hear me? My sister is still out there!” He fought against the men who restrained him, but they collectively outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds.

  “Were you bit?” she repeated.

  “No!” Ted shook his head. “No, but my sister—”

  “If she was bit, she’s dead. And she’ll be one of them soon enough.” Her grim tone left no room for doubt.

  “One of what?” he demanded. “What the fuck is going on out there?” Ted’s voice broke, all the fight leaving him. He knew in his gut that his twin was dead.

  “Fuckin’ freaks,” one of the truckers said.

  The waitress nodded.

  “They’re dead, but they get up. And they’re hungry.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Crazy?” She nodded again. “Sure is. But it’s happening.”

  “What about the police? Have you—”

  She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.

  “Bunch of them out there, hon,” she said, nodding toward the window. “And they’re as hungry as the rest.”

  “And it’s not just here,” one of the men added. “Sounds like all of Amarillo is in deep shit.”

  “Maybe the rest of Texas, too,” the other man added. “We’ve been holed up in here for two days now.”

  “We’ve got plenty of food,” the waitress said. “We figure we can ride this out until someone gets this shit under control.”

  Something thudded against the front doors. The men let Ted go and scrambled further back into the restaurant as a face pressed up against one of the little windows. The outside light flashed on and off, on and off, allowing Ted to see his sister’s face, the muscles now slack, mouth opening and closing in mindless hunger, eyes milky white.

  “Kim?”

  The waitress put a hand on his shoulder.

  “That ain’t your sister no more, hon. There ain’t nothing left in there. Now come on and sit. I’ll get you some food.” She patted him again. “We’re safe.”

  Ted looked at her.

  “But for how long?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  * * *

  Once we left the madness of Marina Boulevard, things got quiet. Maybe too quiet. The screams faded into the distance, the thick canopy of trees and increasing fog swallowing up sounds. Except for the occasional buildings, it was a lot like being in the forest around Redwood Grove.

  The air had the crispness of autumn interlaced with a slightly deeper chill that heralded winter. Wisps of mist blew between the trees, and if there was any sunshine hiding in the overcast skies, it wasn’t showing itself. Our feet crunched softly on damp pine needles and eucalyptus leaves. I inhaled deeply, my nose wrinkling in distaste as I caught a whiff of decay underneath the fragrance of evergreen and rich, loamy soil.

  The deepening shadows and our dark clothing made it easier to move without being observed by the few people we encountered. We slipped through the trees along the back of a parking lot, and then went deeper into the cover of the Presidio woods.

  There was a lot of activity at the Exploratorium itself, most likely folks from Marina Boulevard seeking a refuge from the “crazy people.” Not a bad place to hole up if you didn’t want to be bored—lots of cool science-based games and toys.

  I wished them well.

  We kept moving, staying as far away from buildings as possible. People moved around in the distance—some running in panic, others as quiet as we were. Others moved slowly and stiffly, not the lurching gait of the undead, but the “kicked-in-the-gut” walk of someone in shock.

  I heard muffled sobs as one man supported another, younger man, passing nearby. Had they seen their loved ones die from Walker’s, and then resurrect? Or maybe their loved ones had been torn apart and devoured, making them the lucky ones.

  It was hard to tell.

  We were still dealing with relatively few zombies, but the lethal combo of Walker’s and Dr. Albert’s flu vaccine were doing their thing. And once those zombies started biting, that population explosion Paxton had mentioned would begin.

  “Thank you, Uncle George.”

  I turn
ed to see Tony standing in front of a sign. I took a quick look—directional arrows pointed the way toward a group of buildings where a statue of Yoda stood out front.

  The sign read, “Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic.”

  Of course.

  Lights were on there, as well, the silhouettes of people moving around inside clearly visible. If anyone would be prepared for something like this, it seemed like it would be Lucas. Then again, their zombies would probably be CGI and cutesy.

  “We’re not here to eat you; we just want to be lo-o-ved!”

  Suddenly Gabriel stumbled on something on the ground. He was passing between two close-set trees, the path sloping sharply downward. He swore under his breath, recovering his balance and shaking something off his foot before raising the butt end of his rifle and smashing it down. The crunching sound was all too familiar, so when it was my turn to pass by, I wasn’t surprised to see the remains of a very fresh female zombie lying face up across the path, one hand still outstretched.

  Even with the damage to her forehead, I could tell she’d been young and pretty, thick red hair splayed out around what was left of her head.

  Leave it to Gabriel to get attacked by a hot young zombie.

  We kept moving. I decided to retire my squirrel rifle in favor of my katana, figuring I wasn’t going to be doing much shooting, for fear of mistaking living humans for zombies. The .22 joined the M4, both snug in their respective slings.

  Maybe if I’d accessorized with firearms back in the day, my jerk ex-husband would have treated me with more respect. Or maybe I’d be in jail for homicide.

  Justifiable, of course.

  Our speed picked up, fewer buildings and fewer people making it easier to glide through the trees in appropriate ninja-like fashion. Red and Carl both seemed at home with the whole stealth thing, and I assumed the Gunsy Twins were still ghosting their way ahead of us. Even Tony—for all his height—managed to navigate the terrain with relative ease.

  The only exception was no real surprise. Dr. Albert seemed incapable of taking a step without finding a crackling branch, or of moving more than a few feet without going into a muttering monologue. Didn’t matter how many times Lil or Tony told him to put a lid on it, he couldn’t seem to stop. Luckily there was enough ambient noise coming from all directions to mask his lack of ninja skills.