Ashley Parker (Novella): Pinky Swear

by Dana Fredsti

  JT also had paused ahead, one hand held high in a universal “stop” gesture. He pointed further up the trail where it crested at a high point. Several figures milled about aimlessly, heads canted to one side and arms hanging down at their sides with a limpness that screamed ‘walking dead.’

  We crept as silently as possible through the bushes lining the trail and into the trees beyond, resuming our climb while remaining as parallel to our original path as possible. After a hundred feet or so, we came to a clearing where someone had pitched a small pup tent, perfect for a romantic campout for two.

  The blood-spattered ground in front of the tent’s mouth and a pungent “we’re dead in here” stink told us all we needed to know about how this particular camping expedition ended.

  JT slipped past the tent as silently as ever, Griff right on his heels and just as quiet. Leave it to me to step right on a branch with a loud crack that broke the fog-shrouded stillness of the night.

  I froze as a muffled moan sounded from the tent.

  Shit.

  I so didn’t want to see what was inside there, but I needed to take care of it before the zombies on the trail answered the moaning dinner bell and came looking for us. I drew my katana from its back sheathe and used the tip to flip open the right flap of the tent opening, peering cautiously inside.

  You wouldn’t think one layer of canvas could do much to mask bad smells, but the increased stench of gross that poured out of that little tent nearly knocked me on my ass. I held onto my supper by sheer force of will and cautiously peered inside.

  Ugh.

  What had once been two young men, both clad in rainbow T-shirts and flannel pajama bottoms, looked up at me from a nest of gore stained blankets and pillows. One of them was missing large chunks of flesh and his right arm, while the other was mostly intact except for a bite on one muscular bicep. Both sported matching silver bands on their wedding fingers.

  What a shitty way to end a long-awaited honeymoon.

  Both zombies reached for me with grasping hands and open mouths. I shoved the business end of my katana through both of their brains, one after the other.

  “Ash, you okay?” JT peered at me through the tent flaps.

  “As okay as it’s possible to be under these particular circumstances.”

  I backed out of the tent, letting the flap fall back to cover the sad remains inside.

  JT put a hand on my shoulder. “Have I thanked you yet for coming with me? You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Yeah, I kind of did. If we can bring anyone home alive out of this… it’ll be worth it.”

  “Unless we all die,” Griff said with a derisive snort. “Then I’m not so sure your math adds up.”

  “Shut up,” I growled. “No one forced you to come along.”

  “Actually Paxton and your professor made it very clear that room and board at the beautiful DZN hotel come at a price.”

  I opened my mouth to deliver a scathing retort, but Griff held up a hand and continued, “But that’s not why I tagged along.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You think you’re gonna get laid because of this. Is that it?”

  Griff rounded on me, his expression fierce enough to make me take a step backwards.

  Okay, a half step. I refused to let him intimidate me.

  “It would be nice,” he said softly, “but that’s not why I tagged along either.”

  Before either of us had a chance to say anything else, the sound of unsteady footsteps shuffling through the undergrowth in our direction reminded us that we needed to get our asses in gear.

  * * *

  JT shook his head as he made his way swiftly through the woods, the steep uphill slope as easy as a flat sidewalk as far as he was concerned.

  How could Ash be so savvy in some areas and so clueless in others?

  As much as JT didn’t want to trust Mister Too Sexy for His Swat Gear, he was pretty sure Griff agreed to this little expedition to make sure Ashley made it back alive. Sure, maybe he just wanted to get laid. Unless JT’s intuition was totally off, however, he thought Griff actually cared about her.

  At least as much as someone like Griff could care about anyone or anything.

  Either Mt. Sutro hadn’t been a very popular spot or most zombies didn’t recognize it as a place that was once very important to them, because they reached the hill above Crestwood Drive and Forest Hill without further incident.

  The street below looked quiet as well, but in a bad way, like the aftermath of battle in a war zone. Bits and pieces of former residents were smeared in bloody swaths across lawns and pavement, and the all too familiar tangle of partially smashed vehicles blocked streets and sidewalks alike. JT couldn’t remember seeing a street free of crashed metal since the day the authorities had recommended people evacuate the city.

  That had really not gone well.

  If JT hadn’t sensibly abandoned his car and made his way on foot, he’d most likely be trying to eat people too. He wondered if his free-running skills would have translated into life as a zombie. Probably not.

  “Which way?”

  Ash had reached the crest and now stood next to him, Griff a few paces behind. She kept her voice down, casting cautious glances at the landscape below as Griff joined them.

  JT pointed towards the reservoir. Normally a peaceful pool of blue, it was now a barely visible blot of inky blackness in the nighttime fog.

  “That way. “

  “You really do have good night vision,” Ash remarked.

  “He’s practically a wild card,” Griff said in bored tones.

  “Very true,” JT agreed cheerfully. “Imagine the ass I could kick if it turned out I had disease-ridden, necrosis imbued super powers. Yours, for instance.”

  Griff snorted. “Not on a bad day, Spider Man.”

  “You both should be able to hear the sound of my eyes rolling,” Ash said. “Can we get going now?”

  * * *

  Taking a page from Shaun of the Dead, we took a shortcut over some fences and through a few backyards to get to the path around the reservoir and avoid as many surface streets as possible. Being a wild card may have improved my overall physical abilities, but climbing fences gracefully was not and probably never would be in my skill set. I watched JT bound over fences with the gravity-defying ease of a circus acrobat, while Griff scaled them more conventionally but no less effortlessly.

  I hated them both.

  We reached the path after one real rat bastard of a cement wall. It had concertina wire stretched illegally out along the top, and if it hadn’t been for JT’s warning, I’d have gotten a face full of ouch when I hoisted myself up. I shoved the razor sharp stuff away with one gloved hand, clearing enough space to pull myself up onto my knees. Not a comfortable position.

  “You want a hand with that?” Griff crouched like a large cat on top of the wall a foot or so away. JT was already a short distance down the path, scouting ahead.

  “Thanks,” I said shortly. Accepting help from Griff did not come easily, but this could turn into a literal case of cutting off my nose to spite my face and I didn’t have time to let pride make me stupid.

  Griff helped me shove the rest of the wire off onto the ground below, where it bounced like a deadly slinky and tumbled off into a tangle of blackberry bushes. He leapt easily onto the dirt path a good six feet down, landing with flexed knees and a self-satisfied smirk. I took my time and swung my legs over the edge first to minimize the drop.

  Did I mention I’m not a fan of heights?

  Griff and I hurried along the path, catching up with JT at a point close to the edge of the water. The place stunk and one glance at the corpse-choked reservoir told me why. Some of the waterlogged bodies floated face down, while others moved sluggishly through the reeds lining the edge of the man-made lake.

  So much for the quality of San Francisco tap water.

  “Why the hell are they all in here?” JT said with a puzzled frown.

  “Maybe it seem
ed like the only option.” I shook my head sadly. “Maybe some of them were infected and didn’t realize what they were doing.”

  Something grabbed my right foot. I looked down to see a female zombie suffering from the worst case of water retention ever clutching at my boot with fingers so bloated that the tips were peeling backwards, like sausages splitting their casings. It crawled on its stomach through the mud and reeds, lower half still submerged in the water.

  Ugh!

  Thwork. Katana blade, in and out.

  The sausage fingers relaxed as the thing collapsed face first in the mud.

  “Does this ever get less gross?” I said to no one in particular as we moved on along the path.

  JT shook his head. “Considering that the bodies will continue to putrefy as time goes by, I seriously doubt it.”

  Ugh.

  We reached the end of the path at the base of the reservoir.

  “So I figure if we head across that neighborhood—“ JT pointed west. “—that it’ll be relatively clear.”

  “Why is that?” Griff asked.

  JT pulled out the map. “Look.” He pointed at the neighborhood in question, and a bunch of streets that wound upwards in a terraced series of half circles and dead ends.

  Griff shrugged. “And?”

  “It’s pricey, it’s in the hills, and the houses are likely to be single family homes instead of multiple households full of several generations of Cantonese immigrants.”

  Griff looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t.

  “Once we hit 19th Avenue, the zombie population is gonna increase, I guarantee it,” JT continued. “Figured we might as well cut ourselves a break until then.

  “I concur with my colleague,” I said. He was right. The fewer people who’d lived there, the fewer potential zombies there’d be to slow us down.

  We only needed to get across the river of steel that was Laguna Honda.

  A favorite route of San Francisco commuters, it was now a sea of cars and bodies, impassable unless on foot. And even then, given the number of living corpses staggering through the tightly packed wreckage, it wouldn’t be a walk in the park.

  Griff took his M4 out of its sling.

  “How about I clear our path?”

  “What about the noise?”

  “If they see us, they’ll moan. If I shoot them, they may hear the gunfire, but at least some of them won’t be able to follow us. And the ones that do…”

  JT grinned. “We’ll go for Operation Distraction and clear those out.”

  “Just a mini op, though,” I said. “We should stick together as much as possible until we cross 19th. Then we’ll probably need your crazy twerking skills.”

  Griff snorted. I couldn’t blame him.

  “Fair enough,” JT said. “I’ll make just enough ruckus to give you two a clear shot across Laguna Honda, and then do the stealth ninja routine and meet up with you.”

  “How will you find us?”

  “Those of us who travel the skies have the benefit of a birds eye view.”

  “Was that supposed to sound wise?” I asked. “Because it was seriously bad fortune cookie time.”

  “You wound me deeply.”

  “Uh huh.” I nodded at Griff. “Feel free to clear us that path.”

  Griff’s aim was good. Very good. Almost up to par with Gentry, if not on the same level as the late Gunsy Twins, our team’s snipers who were killed in San Diego.

  I wished I hadn’t thought of them, since Griff had been at least partially responsible for that, even if just by inaction. I glared at him.

  He noticed my glare. “What?”

  I took a deep breath and said nothing.

  “Just shoot, okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  I rolled my eyes at that. Oh well, at least he didn’t do the “W” with his fingers. I turned to JT. “Ready for Mini Operation Distraction?”

  JT grinned. “See you on the other side of this mess.”

  With that he bounded out from the path onto the sidewalk and dashed down towards Laguna Honda, whooping and hollering with the suicidal enthusiasm of a War Boy bound for Valhalla.

  Griff and I watched as he bounced off a chain-link fence and rebounded onto the roof of a supersized SUV; the kind of vehicle that had no business driving around in a city like San Francisco. No sooner did his feet hit the top than hands reached out of the open passenger window, grasping in vain as JT spring -boarded onto the car next to it, an ancient VW Beetle.

  The zombies shambling in between the stalled cars turned in JT’s direction, following the sound of his passage and leaving a relatively clear path for Griff and me provided we avoided the grasping hands of the zombies trapped in the vehicles.

  Griff looked at me. “Ready?”

  “Let’s get it over with.”

  We dashed off the path into the undergrowth and onto the sidewalk, following more sedately in JT’s path over and in between the cars. Hands reached out and grabbed at us as we dodged in and out of the cars. I hacked them off at the wrists as necessary without looking into the cars. I didn’t want to see the faces that went with those hands.

  Most of the zombies not trapped within the crushed metal followed JT’s commotion, leaving Griff and me to make it across Laguna Honda without incident. Insofar as it’s possible to qualify being clutched at by undead hands as ‘without incident.’

  Griff and I dashed uphill into the neighborhood and stopped in the shelter of a carport a couple of blocks up the street to give JT a chance to catch up with us.

  “Looks like Spider Man was right about zombie demographics in this particular neighborhood,” Griff commented as several minutes went by without any undead activity.

  “Of course I’m right.”

  I’d like to say Griff screamed like a girl when JT suddenly appeared next to him, hanging upside down from the carport roof like a maniacal bat, but it was more of a strangled cat noise. Whatever, it brought a smile to my face.

  JT swung his body up in a half arc, spread out his arms and sprung off from the roof, landing on the concrete drive as lightly as a dancer.

  “Shall we?”

  * * *

  Forest Hill was made up of curving, dipping, hill-circling streets, with enough whimsy in the architecture to rival a fairy tale. English hunting lodges faced Dutch cottages, and French palaces with marble pillars adjacent to edifices rivaling Collinwood from Dark Shadows. The entire effect was an idyllic picturesque neighborhood for its residents and a confusing labyrinth of one-way streets and dead ends for motorists.

  I tried not to look at the random gory tableaus that bespoke of recent tragedies. I’d seen enough blood, viscera and body parts over the last month to last me this lifetime and a few reincarnated ones as well. Still, it was impossible not to notice things like a picture window in a faux French farmhouse broken in from the outside, blood still staining the jagged shards, and not imagine the fate of the residents. Or a stroller lying on one side, the formerly cream colored interior now—

  No.

  I turned my gaze resolutely away from that little nightmare and kept moving.

  Keeping an eye out for the dead, our little trio took advantage of the connecting stairs, making our way cautiously but quickly downward towards West Portal, another relatively ritzy neighborhood.

  “Lot of old school San Franciscans in West Portal,” JT informed us as he leapt back and forth from the ledges on either side of the stairway. I could tell he was trying to slow himself down to keep pace with Griff and me. “These stairs, by the way,” he added, “are one of the lesser known stairway walks in the city.”

  “I’ll cross it off my bucket list,” Griff muttered, stepping over a bloodstained Thomas the Tank engine toy on one of the stair landings.

  Dogs howled in the hills above us, the sound augmented by the unmistakable yipping of coyotes. It was a good thing Lil wasn’t with us or we’d have a rag tag army of stray animals trailing us the entire way.

  Unde
terred by the canine racket, cats slinked through the yards adjacent to the stairs, most of them looking well fed.

  “There must be a lot of rats around here,” I commented as a particularly fat tabby strolled in front of us, hopping the fence into a large backyard. I peeked into the yard, where a good dozen felines lolled.

  “How do you know they’re eating rats?” Griff shot me a challenging look over one shoulder as he trotted down the stairs.

  “What else would they be eat—”

  Ewww…

  They’re eating rats.” I glared at Griff. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  We reached the bottom of the last stairway, a couple of streets away from Taravel, one of the main drags stretching between West Portal and the beach. A quick glance in either direction showed a few zombies, but still nothing to worry about.

  Worry set in when we reached Taravel.

  * * *

  “Jeez fuckin’ louise, they’re everywhere.”

  Taravel was shambling with zombies. A very good example of how neighborhood demographics could change one block to the next. Griff and I hunkered down on either side of JT behind an Escalade. JT had the map spread out again.

  “Hmm.” JT looked at the zombies with a clinical eye. “Time for another episode of JT Saves the Day.”

  I stifled a laugh with one hand. Griff didn’t bother covering his snort. It kind of blended in with the zombie ambiance anyway.

  “Fine,” I whispered. “What’s the plan? Where do we meet you?”

  “We are here.” JT pointed at the map. “Here’s Stern Grove. Haul ass across 19th Avenue and then turn hard left at either 20th or 21st, whichever looks better. And by ‘better’, I mean zombie free.”

  “No shit,” Griff muttered.

  “I have to second Griff’s ‘no shit,” I said. “I mean, no offense, but we’re not exactly new at this.”

  “Ah. No, you’re not.” JT folded the map. “Sorry. Since I’m relatively new at this, I suspect I’m projecting.”

  I grinned. “No shit.”

  “There’s a lake at the west end of the park,” JT continued, “and a little picnic area right before it. I’ll see you there. Then we’ll probably have to rinse and repeat to get to the store ‘cause I have a feeling it’s only gonna get more crowded the closer we get to the zoo.”