by Dana Fredsti
The wood and metal clasp penetrated Matt’s chest by about an inch before Heald pulled it back out. There was a squelching sound that I could’ve gone the rest of my life without hearing.
“Do you see that?” He shook the pole at me. “It didn’t feel a thing. It is not human any more, it is the enemy.” He gave a flourish with the pole, like a poor man’s Darth Maul, flipping it so the butt end now faced the cage. “And the sooner you get this through your empty head, the more chance you’ll have of surviving!” He punctuated his last sentence with another vicious thrust of the pole into the cage.
I don’t know if what happened next was an accident or some dim recollection of motor skills past. As the pole stabbed towards its chest, what was left of Matt seized it clumsily with both hands and shoved back. The business end hit Heald’s faceplate, shattering it as the bloodied hook and clasp went through to slice the General’s forehead.
The General yelped in surprise and pain, staggering back at the sudden impact. Bits of plexiglas fell to the floor along with the pole as he reached through the broken faceplate and clasped one hand to the wound.
“Damn it!” He turned to one of the techs hovering nearby. “Get me some antiseptic for this, soldier!” He shot me a venomous look as if his stupidity had been my fault.
“Sir...” The tech just stared at the gash on Heald’s forehead, then at the gore-spattered clasp on the end of the pole.
“Well?” Heald snapped. “Get the lead out!”
The techs exchanged terrified glances through their respective faceplates. The first one spoke up again.
“Sir,” he said slowly, “you’re infected.”
“What?” Heald shook his head. “Nonsense! It’s a scratch from this—” He indicated the shattered plexiglas. But as he did, his face went pale.
The first tech shook his head slowly, almost reluctantly.
“Sir, I saw the pole make contact with your face,” he said. “It has hot blood on it.”
“Bullshit!” Denial rang loud and clear in Heald’s voice. “None of the blood touched me. This—” He gestured furiously at the cut on his forehead. “—is from the faceplate. Now get me that antiseptic!”
Another tech surreptitiously drew his firearm while the first guy continued to speak.
“Sir, we need to take you into quarantine.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Heald blustered, but he seemed to be losing steam.
“No,” Simone said quietly, “it’s protocol.” She turned to the techs. “Get Dr. Albert down here immediately.”
The General whipped his head toward her, nostrils flaring like a panicked horse. This gave the techs the distraction they needed to move in, flanking him on either side as they grabbed his arms before he could reach for his own gun.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said tech number one, “but you need to come with us.”
The expression on Heald’s face, as reality overwhelmed denial, would have been comical if the situation hadn’t been so serious. I almost found it in myself to pity him.
Almost.
As they manhandled him towards the door at the back of the room, he locked eyes with me, upper lip curling back from his teeth like a mad dog.
“This is your fault, you bitch.” If he could have killed me at that moment, I’m certain he would have. “I’ll be back, and I’ll take care of you once and for all.”
All sympathy I might have had for him vanished.
“Yeah, you’ll be back, all right,” I said coldly as a third tech punched in a code to open the back door. “On one of these tables.” Even as I said—and meant it—I couldn’t quite believe that the words were coming out of my mouth. But damm me if the son-of-a-bitch hadn’t asked for everything he’d gotten.
Heald lunged for me, breaking the grip of tech number two. Gabriel immediately swung me around to place himself between us. I’m not sure how he managed it so quickly, but one arm wrapped around my waist while his free hand suddenly held a gun.
“That’s far enough, sir.”
The techs regained their grip and General Heald was dragged from the room, thrashing and fighting his escorts every step of the way, screaming curses at me even after the door shut behind them.
After a long silence, I finally spoke.
“I want a nap,” I said to no one in particular.
Simone gave a little shake of her head, as if clearing her mind.
“I need to check on the General,” she said, and I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. “Will you be all right, Ashley?”
I nodded. “I just want to sleep for awhile.”
“Gabriel, would you take her back to her room? And get Doctor Albert to examine her again. I want to make sure the fever doesn’t spike any further.”
I felt rather than saw Gabriel nod. More than ever, his arm around me was reassuring. I glanced toward Matt in the cage, and tried not to feel guilty.
Simone turned to leave, stopped, and then turned back to me.
“Ashley, you don’t need to make any decisions right now, no matter what the General—”
“I don’t need any more time,” I said, cutting her off.
“You should sleep on it.”
I shook my head.
“I’m in,” I said. “It’s what I want.”
Simone put a hand on my shoulder.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded and took a deep shuddering breath.
“Yeah. I’m sure.” Then I shrugged. “I mean, what else am I gonna do with a Liberal Arts degree?”
It took a few minutes for Gabriel’s coughing fit to subside before he could escort me back to my room.
Jason made his slow relentless way through the trees, up another slope, his Spider-Man pajamas shredded and falling off his emaciated body. Low hanging branches and prickly bushes snagged his flesh, leaving gouges in arms, legs, and torso, but he didn’t notice or care. He was hungry and following the sounds and scent of warm, living flesh from somewhere above.
He was finally rewarded by the sight of a tall, sturdily built man using a pair of long-handled bolt cutters on a chain-link fence at the top of the slope. Lots of meat and muscle to chew on.
Jason moaned, slipping back down a few feet through pine needles and bushes in his eagerness to reach food.
Alerted by the sounds, the man stopped his work.
“Hello?”
Jason moaned again, this time in frustration as he slithered another foot down the slope away from his intended prey.
“Who’s there?”
The words meant nothing—all Jason registered was the sound of food. He tried to stand, but his feet slipped on the damp needles and gravel. He fell forward on his face with a thud, and gave another piteous moan.
“Shit.”
The man came to the edge of the slope and looked down, catching sight of Jason’s struggling form.
“Shit. Kid, are you okay?” He dropped the pliers, but kept hold of the wire-cutters and rapidly descended the slope, maintaining his footing with easy grace.
“Kid?”
Jason moaned again, the only sound in his new vocabulary.
“Jesus...” The man slid to a halt next to him and knelt by his side. “Hang in there, kid,” he said, putting a gentle hand on Jason’s shoulder and turning him over. “You’re gonna be fi—”
He stopped, mouth agape in shock as he saw Jason’s face for the first time.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Before the man could react any further, Jason whipped his head to one side and sunk eager teeth into the man’s forearm, worrying the flesh like a rabid dog, then ripping a piece out.
The man yelled in outraged pain, but instead of trying to get away, he flipped Jason back on his stomach and put a knee on his back, using both hands to open the bolt cutters.
Jason’s face smushed into the dirt, but he kept chewing on the morsel of flesh even as something cold and sharp was placed against his neck and snapped shut.
H
is head, partially separated from his body, listed to one side, but he kept chewing until repeated blows to his skull put the lights out once and for all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
* * *
I slept for almost twenty-four hours after I got back to my room. There could have been a full-scale zombie invasion and it wouldn’t have been able to wake me.
Gabriel had stayed while Dr. Albert gave me a quick exam, leaving only after I’d crawled under the blankets.
When I finally woke up, I felt amazingly well rested. I stretched like a cat. The aches and pains were gone. I checked out the wound on my arm, now just a faint scar.
Sweet.
I was also hungry, the kind of ravenous I used to get after several weeks of banana-and-water dieting. I wanted food, and I wanted it now.
As if on cue, the door opened and I smelled something savory and mouth-watering. Simone came in, immaculately dressed in a black trumpet skirt and hunter green blouse and bearing a tray loaded down with food. I briefly wondered if she used lacquer to keep her hair in that perfect upsweep, or if it just didn’t dare fall out of place.
I sat up expectantly as she set the tray on my lap, sat in the chair next to the bed, and poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the tray.
“How did you sleep?”
“Better than I have in ages,” I said, trying not to drool at the veritable buffet of food and beverages set before me. “How did you know...?” I nodded at the tray.
Simone smiled.
“If my own experience is anything to go by, you’ll be ravenous about now. Eat up.”
And I did. It was one of the best meals I’d ever had. Something struck me, and I paused briefly from devouring strips of bacon.
“Why does this all taste so good?”
“You’ll find that all of your senses have been elevated. Food will taste and smell better.”
I thought about that.
“So does it work the opposite way, too? Like, if someone farts, does that mean I’ll be the first to smell it?”
Simone gave a bark of laughter.
“I’d never thought of it that way,” she said, “but unfortunately, yes. Heightened senses work both ways. On the bright side, you’ll also be alerted to the presence of the living dead, because you’ll smell them long before they’re close enough to attack. There are meditation techniques to help filter things when sounds and smells become too overwhelming, but eventually it becomes second nature.”
“Okay, then.” I attacked a chocolate croissant. Buttery goodness melded with rich, dark chocolate in an almost orgasmic experience. If food tasted this good, the downside would be totally worth it. I’d just avoid chili cook-offs.
When I finished decimating the meal, I settled back, holding a cup of coffee laced with cream and honey.
“So what’s next?”
“Ah,” Simone said. “Training. You and the rest of your team have a lot of work to accomplish in very little time if we’re going to contain this outbreak.”
“Couldn’t we just do a montage, like you get in the movies?” I wondered if I could blame my knee-jerk tendency to be a smartass on the wild card effect. Probably not.
“Unfortunately it’s not that easy.” Simone sipped her coffee. “You’ll have to make do without ‘Eye of the Tiger’ playing in the background.” She took another sip. “When you’re done eating, you can have a quick shower and I’ll take you over to meet the others.”
“Is the... is the outbreak still contained to this area?” I asked. “I mean, it hasn’t gotten to Lake County yet, right?”
“Your parents are still safe,” Simone assured me without actually answering the question.
“And Matt? Is he...?”
Simone nodded.
“Gabriel told me to tell you that he took care of it himself.”
I absorbed that for a few seconds, trying to sort how I felt about Gabriel putting Matt down like a rabid dog. Gratitude warred with a grief I couldn’t even put into perspective, so I gave up trying to work it out and moved on.
“What about General Heald?”
Simone shook her head.
“All signs indicated typical onset of the walking death virus even before he was taken out of the red zone a few hours ago via medivac.”
“In other words, he’s not our problem, one way or the other.” I couldn’t bring myself to have too much sympathy for a sociopath like Heald.
Simone smiled.
“You have a way of cutting to the quick of things, Ashley. I have a feeling it will serve you well in the days to come.”
A half hour later I was clean, clad in yoga pants, red baby-doll T-shirt, and expensive running shoes. And oh, it felt good to be wearing something other than hospital chic. I followed Simone into a large gymnasium-style room under the main floor of Patterson Hall, where five other people—including Gabriel—were seated on folding chairs gathered in a semi-circle.
There were three men and two women, one of the latter barely old enough to be in college. They all stared at me when I walked in and I immediately wondered if I had, like, a hole in my shirt or food stuck between my teeth.
I hate being late to a party.
“This is Ashley,” Simone announced. “Ashley, you already know Gabriel.” I nodded.
“And this is Tony—” She indicated a tall, dark-haired punk-looking kid in his late teens, piercings in uncomfortable places and legs far too long for the chair he sat in. He shot me a bored nod. Simone continued.
“Kai—” A Will-Smith-type-of-cute black guy I recognized from my creative writing course, who waved with a smile that said, Yeah, I know I’m good-looking, and I know you know it.
“Mack—” He was a man in his fifties with a face like a sweet-yet-mournful basset hound. At her words, he smiled sadly.
“Lily—” Her face was mostly covered by a long swath of thick, shiny light-brown hair, and she looked barely out of her teens. Bright green eyes peeked at me from behind the curtain of hair.
“—and Kaitlyn.” A skinny blond woman in her thirties whose appearance screamed “Hollywood trophy wife,” right down to her sun bed tan. She looked at me suspiciously, as if she expected me to sleep with her husband or something.
“That’s Kaitlyn with a ‘K,’” she said brusquely.
Stifling a retort and stiffening my spine, I pasted on a smile and grabbed a folding chair, wincing at the sound of rusty metal as I opened it. Gabriel shifted his own to make room for me between him and Kaitlyn-with-a-K, who shot me a look as if I was something she’d just stepped in.
Jeez, whatever, lady.
I didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever had crawled up her butt.
“Is this all of us?” I tried not to sound disappointed, but five of us against the zombified world seemed like crappy odds.
“For the moment, yes,” Simone answered. “We’re still waiting to see if two other candidates pull through. We should know within the next twenty-four hours.” She took a seat across from us. “And five wild cards, found in such a relatively small radius, is actually rather promising.”
“What’s the usual percentage of wild cards versus the normal population?” Kai asked.
“Point-zero-zero-one percent. Basically, one out of every ten thousand. But that may be because those who actually survive the initial attack are rare. Most victims are either devoured outright or are so badly injured that they die before we can tell if they would have become a zombie or a wild card.”
We all looked at one another nervously.
“So,” Simone continued, “since you will be working together for the foreseeable future, I’m going to ask you to enlighten us with what brought you to this point.”
From the looks on their faces, I could tell everyone in the group was as eager as I was to relive the nightmare.
First he checked the police scanners, until static rendered them useless.
Then, when he went to check the usual online forums, he couldn’t get onto the
‘net. His reliable backdoor entrances into military communications frequencies were locked tight. Always a bad sign. And damned if he hadn’t spotted several military helicopters buzzing overhead on their way toward the college.
Time for reconnaissance.
He took a quick peek under the bandage on his arm as he drove. Still no sign of infection, but it hurt like a motherfucker.
Fucking zombie rugrat.
He took the winding mountain road with the absent-minded ease of familiarity, his mind chewing on the implications of what he’d heard over the scanners. A lot of truly fubar shit was going down in Redwood Grove, enough to convince him there was an outbreak. What he didn’t know was how widespread it was.
Reaching the end of what was essentially a very long private driveway, he turned the truck east onto a paved road heading towards the 101 Freeway. Empty cars were scattered on both sides of the road.
Definitely bad.
The road dipped down, rising back up in a steep grade. He hit the accelerator and roared up the hill at forty miles per hour, getting respectable airtime when he crested the top.
It took him approximately five seconds to realize he was barreling toward a roadblock of military vehicles.
“Shit!”
He hit the brakes and jerked the truck hard to the left, tires squealing as he avoided a collision with an olive-drab Humvee. He pulled over to the side of the road, adrenaline pumping with the near miss.
There were a half-dozen or so abandoned civilian cars on the side of the road. One of them, a Saturn, had two flat tires and several holes puncturing the side. The smell of burnt rubber hit his nostrils as he stepped out of the truck, almost at the same time as he heard a disembodied voice.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to turn your vehicle around and go back the way you came.”
A soldier in combat gear and a bio-chem mask stood in front of the Hummer, firearm pointed in a way that meant business.
“You want to tell me what’s going on, son?” He kept his hands open at his sides, seeking to convey harmlessness.