by Dana Fredsti
“What about everyone else?” I gestured around the room at the carnage.
A brief flash of guilt passed over his face, only to be replaced by a stony façade.
“There wasn’t enough room for everyone,” he said quietly. “And not enough time to get them up the ladder. As it was…” He shook his head and gently brushed Grace’s hair back from her forehead. That simple gesture spoke volumes of the person he really was, beneath the bad temper. “One of them managed to take a bite out of Grace,” he said. “Your people started firing on the zombies. Last thing I saw before I closed the hatch were men with guns. They came in from the kitchen, and started firing on your people.”
“Were they wearing black?” I asked.
He thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Yes. Yes, they were.”
Bastards. By itself, what they wore didn’t mean anything—hell, I was wearing black. But there wasn’t any doubt in my mind.
Aimee returned with a large white box, a ubiquitous red cross stamped on the front. She set it on the cot next to the one on which Grace lay, fear for her daughter clearly etched on her face. I wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but I couldn’t. I knew all too well what fate awaited this sweet little girl unless, by some miracle, she was a wild card.
That brief hope died when Grace started coughing—thick, rasping coughs that turned into a liquid choking sound, as if she was drowning from within. Appel immediately lifted her upper body from the cot, just in time for Grace to expel a mouthful of black, foul-smelling fluid. More blood trickled from her nose.
The choking turned into feeble crying.
Aimee moved to comfort her, but Appel shook his head and motioned her back.
“Don’t touch her. She’s infected.”
“Are you crazy?” Aimee once again reached for her daughter, but I grabbed her arm, holding tight when she tried to yank away.
“He’s right,” I said, facing her furious glare without flinching. “If you get any of her blood or vomit in an open wound, even a scrape, you’ll die too.”
Aimee leaned in close.
“My husband is dead,” she said, biting off each word for emphasis. “Ripped to pieces in front of us. So if you think I’m going to let my daughter suffer without the comfort of her mother’s touch, you’re crazy. Now let go of my arm.”
I stared at her for a beat, saw the determination and anguish in her eyes, and slowly let go of her. She immediately pushed past Appel and sat on the cot, cradling Grace in her arms.
Appel dug into the first aid kit, pulling out antiseptic, antibiotic ointment, and bandages. He quickly and deftly cleaned the wound, wincing when Grace thrashed. I knew how much pain she was in. I wished I could take it away from her.
Aimee stroked Grace’s hair, murmuring soothingly to her, tears running unheeded down her face as Appel slathered the wound with ointment before wrapping clean bandages around it. His own willingless to risk infection made me admire him even more.
He then turned to me. “You’ve had more experience with this than I have,” he said. “Is there anything else I can do for her?” His expression told me he already knew the answer, but hoped against hope he was wrong.
“Make her comfortable,” I said softly. “If you have anything that will knock her out, spare her the pain. It—” I stopped and swallowed, unable to continue.
“You said you were looking for a cure,” Aimee said softly.
I nodded. “We’re trying to find it. The people who did this… they’re trying to stop us.”
“If you find it… can you help her?” She stared at me with fierce hope, but my expression told her all she didn’t want to know.
She bowed her head and took a deep breath.
“How long?”
As if in answer, Grace’s body began to convulse and more black fluid gushed out of her mouth. I shook my head wordlessly, unable to speak as tears welled up in my eyes.
Thankfully it didn’t last long. Grace heaved one last shuddering breath before her body went limp. Appel took a blanket from another cot and draped it gently over her body and face.
I hated what I had to say next.
“She’s going to come back.”
Aimee looked at me without comprehension. “What do you mean?”
“This thing… this virus, I mean. It brings you back after it kills you.”
For a brief second, a terrible hope flashed in Aimee’s eyes. Then it dimmed.
“You mean back as one of those things, don’t you?” she said dully. “A zombie.”
I nodded.
“Yeah. And she won’t know who you are. You’ll just—” Oh, I hated this world. “You’ll be food to her. And that’s how it spreads.”
Aimee looked down at her daughter’s corpse.
“How long?” she asked again.
At that moment, Grace’s corpse twitched beneath the blanket.
I looked at Appel. “Take her out of here, now.”
Aimee put her hand on my arm.
“No. I’m staying with her to the end.”
“Are you sure?” I gestured around the room. “Look at them. You’ve seen what I had to do in here. It’s the only way. So if you can’t handle it, you need to leave.”
She nodded.
Another twitch under the blanket as Grace began to wake up.
“I want to be here.” Aimee took a deep breath. “I need to be here.” Appel put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
The blanket slid down as Grace sat up, her beautiful green eyes now milky white in a sea of red-streaked yellow. Her mouth opened and closed, teeth clacking like a malevolent nutcracker.
I took my tanto, and drove it home. Then I bowed my head over Grace’s body, and cried alongside her mother.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Appel set a mug of soup in front of me. I looked up and gave him a shadow of a smile.
“Thanks.”
He nodded and put another one in front of Aimee, who stared at it blankly for a few seconds before reaching out and cradling it between her hands.
We were both sitting at the table where I’d spread out my gear. Grace’s body was covered up with the blanket over on the cot and all the other bodies had been stacked on one side of the room as neatly as possible, with blankets over them as well. They stank—the whole room did—but we didn’t have the strength to move them into one of the rooms down the hall.
I took a sip of the soup—Campbell’s chicken noodle again, which was fine by me.
“I need to get out of here,” I said.
“Won’t be easy,” Appel said, sitting across from me with his own mug of soup. “Those things are all over the place now. Last time I checked up top, they were piled up against the doors and pouring in like army ants from all directions.”
“What about the kitchen exit?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I can hear them against the outer hatch. The assholes that did this got them all riled up.”
“I could try the route Lil took,” I thought out loud. “But that fucker Griff must’ve told them about it.” I looked at Appel. “What about the other back door you mentioned? The one that you said was harder to find?”
“The one at the end of the utility corridors.” Appel nodded. “It’s a bit tricky getting there, and you’ll likely come up in the middle of a bunch of zombies. The entire park is thick with them.”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take,” I said, wondering if I had a hope in hell of making it on my own, and then dismissing the thought as unimportant. I had to try. “I need you to help me. So show me how to get out of here. Can you draw me a map?”
Appel shook his head.
“It won’t work. You’ll be ripped to pieces.”
“Damn it!” I slammed my fist on the table. Appel flinched, but Aimee just stared into her soup. “I don’t have a choice! If I don’t get my people back, this shit’s going to keep spreading until there’s nothing left!”
Aimee slowly raised he
r head and spoke, her words so soft they were almost lost.
“Do you really think a cure is possible?”
“Yes.” I reached over and took her hand in mine. “The people who did this, they know it is. And they don’t want us to find it. Maybe they want to control it, maybe they want everyone to die. I don’t know. But I do know this—that it’s the only chance we have to stop it, or even slow it down.”
“Would it help if we could draw the zombies away from you?” Aimee’s expression sharpened.
“Y-e-es,” I said with hesitation. “But it would take a helluva distraction to take their attention away from live prey.”
She stood up. “The organ,” she said. “I can play the organ, and draw them to the pavilion while you get out the back way.”
I nodded slowly. “That might work.”
Appel shook his head. “That means opening the door.”
“What do you mean?” I looked from one to the other. “What door?”
“The organ console is wheeled out onto the pavilion stage when it’s played,” Appel said. “If it rains, we leave it inside, but we still have to open the door.”
Aimee shrugged. “You can activate the door hydraulics, and then get back into the air chamber. That way you’d be safe.”
“I am not leaving you out there by yourself,” Appel growled.
“What are you people not telling me?” I asked tersely.
“When the door is open, the console is exposed,” he said. “It means she’ll be on stage out in the open and unprotected.”
“Fine,” Aimee snapped. “So I play for a little while and then we shut the door again.”
It was Appel’s turn to slam a hand on the table. This time Aimee jumped, eyes wide.
“No! The hydraulics aren’t working properly!” He turned back to me. “I can open it by myself, but it takes two or more stagehands to get it closed, and it takes a good ten minutes to do so.”
“Those things move slowly—they’ll take a while to get onto the stage.” She gave me a brittle smile. “Long enough for you to get free and clear, right?” “But not long enough for you to get back inside,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
Aimee’s silence and Appel’s glower were answer enough.
“Forget it,” I said. “Not acceptable.”
Aimee stood so quickly that her chair flew back with a crash. She looked me straight in the eye.
“You do not get to decide what is acceptable for me,” she said. Appel started to protest and she rounded on him. “You either. My life is over, do you understand? My husband is gone. My daughter is gone.” Suddenly the anger vanished. “My world is gone,” she finished quietly. “And if doing this will help save a few people, and help you catch the bastards that let those things in here, then I’m going to do it.”
The anger flared back up. She glared at Appel.
“And you’re going to help me.”
He and I looked at each other. I saw the sorrow in his eyes, no doubt reflected in mine, as well. He gave a heavy sigh and nodded.
“Very well.”
I could tell just how much it hurt him to say those words.
“And you.” My turn on the receiving end of that glare. “Make. This. Count.”
“I will.”
And I would. Or I’d die trying.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Appel hadn’t been joking when he told me how cramped the utility corridors were. I had to make my way in a perpetual crouch, with my hair collecting cobwebs from the ductwork overhead.
Who the hell did they get to service this place, Oompa Loompas?
My thigh muscles hated me about now, and my claustrophobia was kicking in big time. Each footstep stirred up clouds of dust and turned my flashlight beam into a temporary whiteout.
Okay, I told myself. The dust means no one’s been this way in a damned long time. One less thing to worry about. So just keep moving and stop being such a baby.
I reached the end of the passageway, checked the hastily scrawled map Appel had given me, then shone the light up and over to the left. And voila! My beam found what I was looking for—a set of rebar ladder rungs like big rusty staples, jutting out from the concrete wall. They led up past the ducts and piping and into the darkness overhead. I tried to follow the rungs with my beam, but it didn’t reach very far; either the batteries were getting weak or the blackness up there was that much thicker.
Thanks for that thought, brain.
I started to climb, moving as quickly as I could. I had to be in position when the organ started.
The rungs led up into a shaft that was even more cramped for space than the corridors I’d just left, and even thicker cobwebs. Ignoring thoughts of Shelob and every spider movie I’d ever seen, I brushed them aside and climbed that much faster, anxious to reach my destination. As the ladder kept going and going, it started to feel as if the “up” was a lot farther than the “down” had been.
The flashlight finally caught something up ahead—a circle of riveted metal and a rusted handle. A hatch like you’d see in those old submarine movies, with the emphasis on “old.” For a moment, as I clung to the ladder in the tiny—and possibly spidery—hole, I wondered if the gears in the handle would even turn, then pushed the thought aside.
It would turn.
It had to.
All I had to do was be patient, and wait for the music to start.
* * *
Empty seconds stretched into empty minutes, and my subconscious tried to fill the time in with whatever it could. It had plenty of fodder to choose from. Rage at Griff, frantic worry for my friends, doubts about what lay ahead. These warred with sorrow for Aimee, about to play the organ for the last time, and the tremendous weight of guilt that I’d agreed to let her do it. She was going to die and so, most likely, was Appel.
The thoughts became too much, worse than the waiting itself, smothering me even faster than the close confines of the shaft. I took a deep breath, tuned it all out, and tried desperately to focus.
Cabrillo Point. That’s all that matters now.
Cabrillo Point… and Gabriel.
How the hell am I going to get there?
I’d found a total of three remotes. All I had to do was push the button and follow the chirp, right? After all, I had super hearing.
Not so much.
Balboa Park had at least a half dozen parking lots spread out over the grounds. If the cars were in any of the lots directly behind the pavilion, I was kind of screwed, because the area was already swarming with the undead. No, I’d have to keep to the underbrush and range out further, keep my fingers crossed that the car owners had parked in one of the auxiliary lots.
Thunder rumbled outside, sounding close by, then changed in tone and pitch and became music. A small involuntary smile curved my lips as I recognized Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, one of the few organ pieces I knew, thanks to many childhood viewings of Fantasia and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo going down with the Nautilus.
Aimee had a flare for the dramatic.
I gripped the hatch’s locking wheel and strained against it. It gave an inch, then more, the grating of metal blending in with the music until it finally broke loose, spinning freely. I felt more than heard the bolts retracting until the wheel finally stopped and I could lift the hatch an inch or two.
Organ music flooded in immediately, almost deafening to my wild card ears. I steeled myself against the auditory assault and peeked out into a small concrete chamber, oblong and utterly plain.
There was a basketball-size opening in the left wall halfway up, and a spillway in the opposite wall at floor level, but my attention was drawn to a metal grate. Beams of sunlight danced on the concrete wall, along with ominous shadows.
There was someone standing on that grate. In fact, several someones. Or possibly somethings.
Well, crap.
If they were some of the crew that raided the facility, my odds of getting out unnoticed were slim to none. If
they were zombies, at least I could put them down without them shooting at me. For the first time in my life I really hoped I was about to have an encounter of the undead kind.
I raised the hatch enough to slip out into the chamber, drew my pistol and crept forward. Halfway across I had my answer—the uber stinky fluids dripping through the grate and pooling beneath.
I edged closer to get a better look. There were three zombies, just standing there with their heads swiveling this way and that, as if not sure what to make of the new sound echoing around them. After a few moments, they staggered away in the direction of the pavilion.
Guess they figured it out.
I didn’t waste any time. I stood up straight and lifted the grating out of its well, sliding it aside just far enough to let me pull myself out before sliding it back into place. Any noise I made was covered by the thundering organ music.
I stayed low to the ground as I surveyed the area, then scuttled over to some shrubbery next to a large lily pond. A few hundred feet away was the Botanical building, similar to the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. On my right was the Timken Museum of Art. There were agitated zombies everywhere, milling around restlessly and bumping into each other. The only positive was that the organ music was doing its job, drawing their communal attention skyward towards the pavilion.
My cover wasn’t great, though, and it was only a matter of time before I was noticed. So I needed to get behind the Botanical building to the access road where I’d have the advantage of lots of trees.
I waited for my moment, unholstering the Ruger. There was a moment when the crowd in front of me thinned out, all of their attention away from me, and I ran, keeping low to the ground with as little excess movement as possible. I made it to the next stand of shrubs and froze, scanning the area to see if I’d been noticed.
So far, so good.
I saw another opening and took it, making it to a small knot of trees right past the little art museum. This time, however, when I did my spot check, there were faces turned my way—a well-gnawed tourist with a camera around his neck, and a young female zombie with way too many tattoos.