A Plague on All Houses (11 page)

“Yeah… no. No, I'm not okay. I mean, it's real. This is really happening. We're all going out there to fight an enemy that's trying to eat us and … and we might die. I might die.”

Gabriel listened as I rambled, his expression nonjudgmental, but also noncommittal. I felt like an idiot, but couldn't stop myself from continuing. “I might screw up. Someone could die because I screw up.” I started to hyperventilate. Gabriel took hold of my shoulders and looked me in the eye.

“You're not going to screw up, Ashley.”

“How do you know? We've only been training for, what? Two days? That's not enough time to rehearse for a monologue, let alone to prepare for this.” I gestured towards the zombie-infested quad outside.

“I've seen you in action.” Gabriel spoke quietly and intensely. “You're quick, smart, and you think on your feet.” He put a hand under my chin, lifting it so he could look me in the eyes. “And I'll be out there watching your back.
All
your backs. Okay?”

I searched his gaze for any sign of bullshit, but saw nothing but sincerity in the deep blue of his eyes.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I couldn't resist asking. “I eat meat and sugar, remember?”

Gabriel gave a strange little smile, one side of his mouth lifting up. “Guess I've learned we're not always what we eat.”

“So you're not just a well-built pile of mushy tofu?”

He winced. “Couldn't you at least have said ‘firm?’“

I grinned.” Hey, I gave you ‘well-built.’“

“I guess you did at that.” Shaking his head, Gabriel let go of my chin, his hand brushing the side of my face so quickly and gently it might have been an accident. His touch made my skin tingle—or maybe it was just nerves. That's what I told myself as Gabriel turned back to the rest of the group, all of whom were eyeballing us curiously.

“Okay, everyone. It's time to do this. We're going out in two teams, Team A and Team B—”

“How come we have to be called Team A and B?” grumbled Tony. “It's boring. Can't we be, like, Team Romero and Team Fulci?”

Kai rolled his eyes. “Dude, that is so fucking cliché, I can't believe you suggested it. That's like being a
Star Wars
geek and naming your kid Lucas or Jar Jar.”

“A real
Star Wars
fan would
not
name their kid Jar Jar,” said Tony.

“Whatever, dude. My point remains the same.”

Gabriel cleared his throat, shooting both of them a rather deadly glance. “As I was saying, we'll divide into two teams and do a sweep of the campus. Team A will move out to the perimeter where the barrier construction is taking place, moving inward in a clockwise direction, while Team B is going to move counterclockwise slightly inside the perimeter.”

The Wild Cards stared at him blankly. A diagram would be handy about now.

Gabriel sighed. “Think of Team A as the big hand of a clock, with the team members spread out along the line of the hand. Team B is the little hand, moving the opposite direction.”

“That's one fucked-up clock,” muttered Tony.

Gabriel ignored him. “Each team moves in ever-tightening circles until they arrive back here at DBP Hall, which is basically dead center of campus. Er … no pun intended. The idea is to clean out the zombies from the outside in, not exactly normal procedure when securing a perimeter. Team A will hopefully catch anything Team B misses. We'll start by eradicating the obvious threats while Alpha Teams defend the engineers. We'll eventually need to do a sweep of each and every building on campus, both to check for targets and survivors.”

“A Team will be led by myself and consists of Ashley, Kai, and Lily. B team will be led by Captain Gentry here.”

“They imported me special,” Captain Gentry said with a grin.

Gabriel nodded. “Captain Gentry is also a Wild Card and even better, he's seen plenty of this sort of action overseas.” I had to wonder what Captain G's story was. Maybe we'd live to hear it later. “The rest of the team is Mack, Tony, and Kaitlyn.”

Tony looked less than thrilled by his teammates, a sentiment clearly shared by Kaitlyn. Mack, bless him, smiled at both of them, oblivious.

“First step is making our way through the zoms surrounding DBP Hall.”

Zoms? Cute.

“We have snipers on the roof of DBP and others will move into position on the top of other buildings to help cull the herd. Don't engage in combat at this point unless absolutely necessary. The point is to make it to your starting positions and begin the sweep inwards. Understood?”

We all nodded.

Simone stepped in at this point. “I'd advise using evasive tactics—dodging the zombies—as much as possible. If necessary, use your weapons to keep them off you. If one of your team falls, do your best to rescue them even if they're bitten. Remember, you're immune to infection, but not to being ripped to pieces. We can't afford to lose any of you.”

“Aren't you going with us?” Lily's voice shook as she stared at Simone with huge green eyes.

“No,” Simone said shortly. “The powers that be consider my expertise in zombie physiology more important than my combat ability and immunity to the virus in the field.”

“And quite rightly.” Colonel Paxton stepped forward. “Professor Fraser is not only tracking the source of this outbreak, but working on a cure for the virus itself. Her knowledge is even more invaluable than her Wild Card status. Which is one of the reasons we brought in Captain Gentry.”

Simone didn't look happy, but Jamie did. I imagine Miss Hot Topic would have tackled Simone had she tried to leave the building. And as much as Jamie annoyed me, I pretty much agreed with her and Colonel Paxton on this one.

“What about survivors?” asked Mack. Trust Mack to think of other people when his own life was on the line.

“If they're in a secured location or you can get them to one quickly, leave them and we'll go back for them as soon as the campus is secure. If not, try to get them back here. I trust you to use your judgment.”

From the look on Mack's face I could guarantee he wouldn't be leaving anybody behind.

“What if they're bitten?” We all looked at Kaitlyn, surprised she'd actually volunteered anything.

Gabriel hesitated. “Every infected person is a potential Wild Card. If you can get them back here, do it. But put your own safety first. I repeat, we cannot afford to lose any of you.”

I gave a little shudder, knowing what would happen to any infected victims if they weren't Wild Cards.

“If things go FUBAR, fall back to DBP as quickly as possible. I don't expect they will, but there's always that possibility. Team B, if something happens to Captain Gentry, Mack is in charge.”

Mack's surprised expression mirrored Kaitlyn's and Tony's. His embarrassed pleasure, not so much. “Oh, I…I don't think that's such a good idea,” he stammered. “I'm not—”

“No arguments.” Gabriel stared sternly at all of us. “If I decide one of you is fit to lead, that's final until I'm proven wrong. We don't have time to dick around.”

Mack subsided, looking both pleased and nervous.

“Team A, if anything happens to me, Ashley will take over.”

Huh?

My mouth fell open in total surprise. Kai reached over, put a finger under my chin and closed it. “You heard the man, little girl. You lead, we follow.” Lily nodded her agreement and gave my arm a quick squeeze.

I totally understood Mack's feelings; totally flattered, but scared by the possible responsibility. “But nothing's going to happen to you, right?”

“I'll do my best.” Gabriel slapped my shoulder in a comradely fashion. I resisted the temptation to yell “hooyah!” mainly ‘cause I thought that was a Marine thing and didn't want to offend anyone.

“Any questions?”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “How do I get out of this chicken shit outfit?”

“Look into my eye,” said Captain Gentry, totally deadpan.

Tony and Kai high-fived. “Dude,” Tony said solemnly, “I am totally ready to follow you into battle.”

Kaitlyn shook her head in disgust, trying to mask what I suspected was a massive, and justifiable, case of nerves.

Gabriel nodded at her. “Kaitlyn, you ready?”

“Do I have a choice?” Wow. There was enough bitterness in her tone to sour a bowl of Hawaiian Punch.

“You already made your choice.” Gabriel's voice was gentle but no-nonsense. “But you're either up for this or you're not. If it's any help, I think you've got what it takes.”

“Spare me the rah-rah bullshit.” Kaitlyn stared at all of us with equal dislike. “I'll go because there's nothing else to do.”

“Fine,” Gabriel said neutrally. “Let's go.” He nodded towards the soldier at the door to unlock and open it, then turned back to us. “Everyone got their nose plugs and walkie-talkies?”

We all nodded and pulled out soft plastic nose plugs attached to an elastic band around our necks. While our super-sensitive schnozzes could help us detect the walking dead from a distance, there was no point wallowing in the stench of dozens of the things when we already knew they were out there. Puking up one's guts while fighting zombies could not end well.

Simone opened the interior glass double doors, then unlocked the reinforced steel mesh outer doors. Immediately moans rose through the air as the movement attracted the attention of the walking dead. Heads swiveled on rotting necks, those ghastly eyes turned in our direction. Fresh meat.

“Marines, we are leaving!” Captain Gentry grinned at Tony, and dashed from DBP into the zombie-infested quad.

“I think I love him,” said Tony, and ran out after Gentry, followed by Mack and Kaitlyn.

“Team A, move out!” No clever movie quote quotes for us, but Kai, Lily, and I were right behind Gabriel anyway. It was either that or freeze like a rabbit gone tharn and let the approaching ghouls eat a late lunch.

None of us froze, but I swear that first moment outside relived my worst nightmare. Trees and benches became obstacles along with the lurching corpses, all of which honed in on us as we ran down the stairs of DBP Hall and into the quad itself. My heartbeat accelerated and I broke out in my first bona fide cold sweat. Greenish-gray hands clutched me, gaping mouths opened, snapping for my flesh. Zombie heads exploded in splatters of gore as the snipers did their job. I tried to ignore the indescribably foul goo that spattered across my face and body.
It can't hurt me
, I thought. But it was still totally gross. Utterly gross.

I ran, my gaze focused on Gabriel in front of me. He didn't falter, just kept moving no matter what lay in his path, including hideously dismembered and gutted corpses, some of which still twitched with unnatural life even though there wasn't enough left of them to be ambulatory. I wondered how many students and faculty had died on Big Red's campus over the last few days while I recovered from my wounds.

Gabriel used the butt of his gun to bash encroaching ghouls out of his path, always to the side so they wouldn't fall in the way of the rest of the team. I flashed back on Matt charging through the field as if going for a touchdown, toppling zombies like carnivorous bowling pins right in my path. Nausea rose in my throat; I felt those germ-infested teeth digging into my shoulder and arm, brambles trapping my hair as more fetid corpses closed in for the kill. Things spun in a hellish merry-go-round of memories as I tried to focus on the here and now—which was equally hellish.

A clawed hand clutched my left arm. I jerked away from it as a particularly juicy male zombie in the remnants of a band dork uniform reached for me. Its arms were outstretched in a way that said in life he was one of those types that always wanted to give you a hug. Its arms may have said “you need a hug,” but its mouth said, “you need an infectious bite.”

“Motherfucker!” I screamed the word like a war cry as I bashed zombie jock nerd in the forehead with the butt of my M4 just as someone up above blew the fucker's head off. With the nose plugs, I sounded like a profane munchkin. I started giggling and once started, couldn't stop. Yeah, I know. Not exactly the most optimal response to the situation. Then again, on the other hand, wasn't it better to laugh in the face of putrid undeath than freeze into a fetal ball and get ripped to pieces?

Lily caught up with me. “Are you okay?”

I giggled, the sound of her pinched nasal tone setting me off even more. She looked at me like I was crazy. I guess I was, just a little bit.

“We sound like we're on helium,” I finally choked out as we ran side by side in the path Gabriel cleared through the quad before us.

Lily smacked a putrefying cheerleader in the face as it lurched out of the shadows of what used to be my favorite coffee kiosk. “Take that, stuck-up zombie bitch!” She heard her own voice and burst into laughter. “OMG, we so do!”

Kai caught up with us, grinning ear to ear as he sang, “We represent… the Wild Card League… the Wild Card League…”

I joined him. “We represent … the Wild Card League…”

“And now we welcome you to zom-bie land!” All three of us sang out the last line in a raucous, off-key chorus, our equivalent of laughing in the face of death.

I'm not saying we suddenly lost all fear. Not even close. But the absurdity of it all gave us something to focus on aside from the possibility of a really nasty death and just sheer horror of seeing Big Red overrun by dozens upon dozens of shambling corpses. And for me, at least, it sharpened my focus by keeping the debilitating fear at bay. Sure, I still felt like throwing up, but the bad acid flashback, spinning kaleidoscope of carnage, ambulatory corpses and bad movie-style flashbacks had stopped. The horror was still there, but real and something I could deal with instead of the kind of nightmare where you can't run fast enough, like your feet are mired in quicksand.

I could run, I could fight, and I could kill. Fuck you, zombie hordes.

Gabriel reached the far side of the quad, pausing on a ghoul-free patch of grass to make sure we were behind him before setting off in between the Student Union and Fine Arts building. Trees and bushes lined the sidewalk in between the two buildings, ideal cover for opportunistic zombies if they had the brains to stage an ambush. But they didn't, so the few that tried to grab at us just shambled, grabbed, and tried to bite without subterfuge.

It wasn't too hard to dodge them; they were slow and uncoordinated. I wonder if zombies felt frustration when their would-be meals evaded their clutching fingers so easily. I thought about how I'd feel if my dinner jumped off the plate whenever I reached for it. It would suck.

And there went my brain again, wandering down a weird path when it should be focusing on the here and now, specifically the now being a really disgusting male zom lurching directly in front of me. We're talking a face not even a mother zombie could love, and one I recognized from my creative writing class. He'd asked me out and I'd turned him down, not so much because of his looks (although his resemblance to Cletus the slack-jawed yokel did not go unnoticed), but because his certainty in his own superior intellect and unaccountable chauvinism added up to an impossibly pompous asshole.

He'd also suffered from mega acne when alive, and. Let's just say zombification did nothing to clear it up. Talk about insult on top of injury, you know? Its skin was covered with little volcanic eruptions. The word “juicy” sprang to mind. I wish it hadn't. It reached for me as I skidded to a halt. Lily banged into me and Kai completed the Three Stooges moment by barreling into her. The impact sent me stumbling forward, right into Acne Boy's eager arms. In what had to be luck, its fingers clutched my arms at the elbows, right in between the padding. Bloodstained teeth gnashed in anticipation of its first bite, graying tongue lolling out between its blubbery lips.

“No way, pal,” I growled. “I wouldn't date you and I sure as hell won't let you eat me.” Jamming the M4 between us, barrel pointing down, I drove the stock up and into its chin. Its mouth snapped shut and a piece of tongue plopped onto the sidewalk. Okay, eeww on top of gross.

“Oh, that is just so wrong,” said Kai.

Fighting the urge to throw up, I used the length of the gun to shove against the zombie's chest, trying as I tried to pry its fingers off my arms. Amazing how much strength there was in those rotting hands.

As a young and stupid five-year-old, I'd had my finger pinched by a pissed-off crab. I still remember how much it hurt until I'd stopped screaming and hopping around so my dad could pry it off me. The zombie's grip felt a lot like that.

Lily and Kai, recovering from the collision, each grabbed one of Acne Zom's hands and yanked the fingers backwards. I could hear the snap of its bones breaking as my fellow teammates forced it to let go. I gave my ex-classmate one more shove with the gun, then hip-checked it off the sidewalk into a bush.

Kai swatted me on the butt. “Nice hip action, girl!”

“Stop playing around and move your asses!” Gabriel glared at us from next intersecting sidewalk, the Sciences and Administration buildings behind him.

I rolled my eyes, but moved my ass. Rising moans from behind told us the zombies we'd bypassed in the quad were headed our way. Their numbers thinned out when we reached the dorms, but I saw lurching silhouettes through some of the windows. Was anyone alive in there, maybe cowering in a barricaded closet, hoping against hope to go undetected? Maybe Zara was one of them. Or maybe she stalked the halls of our dormitory looking for flesh instead of face scrub.

No time to think about that now. Time for a search, destroy, and rescue mission (and didn't I sound all military and official?) in all the buildings after we cleared the open areas of the walking dead.

The number of zombies thinned out a bit as we passed the dorms. We jogged easily through their decreasing numbers until we reached the gymnasium, athletic fields, and parking lots, the last part of campus before the blackberry-bush-strewn fields and old growth redwoods.

There was lots of activity. Large, sturdy military-looking vehicles (kind of cute the way they even dressed their trucks in woodlands camo), klieg lights set up on temporary wooden platforms casting their glow over the parking lot as dozens of men and women in protective suits hustled around like large sterile ants.

Some were unrolling coils of razor wire (it looked like the world's nastiest Slinky), while others fiddled with the nozzles of hoses attached to small tanker trucks. Gabriel stopped by one of the trucks and we all gathered round him.

“What are they gonna do?” I said out loud. “Hose the zombies down? Challenge them to a water fight?”

Gabriel snorted, a surprisingly inelegant noise coming from him. “Those tanks contain an experimental foam designed to harden on contact with air to create effective barricades in wartime situations as quickly as possible. In this case, it'll be a secondary barrier.”

“Wow, that's totally James Bondian,” I said, impressed. “Does it work?”

He nodded towards one of the trucks. “Watch.”

One of the suited engineers aimed a hose nozzle at the ground in back of the wall of razor-wire Slinky and flicked a lever. Immediately a flood of white foam poured out of the nozzle. The man moved the nozzle slowly back and forth, building a wall of what looked like shaving cream butted up against the razor wire, except shaving cream wouldn't immediately start to solidify. I could see the stuff go from snowy white to a dinghy grayish-white as it hardened.

“How much of that stuff do they have?”

“We have twenty of those trucks on campus,” said Gabriel. “They each hold enough foam to put up a hundred yards. So if we use the buildings as part of the overall barrier, we should be in good shape.”

I watched in fascination while the engineers continued to put up what looked like a Gillette ad for a giant. Rollout razor wire ran along the front of the white foam. Hard to believe something that looked like shaving cream could possibly stop a crowd of hungry zombies.

“It won't hold them forever,” said Gabriel, as if he'd read my mind. “But it should do the trick long enough for us to clear the campus and erect something more permanent to keep everyone behind the barricade safe.”

“You think it's going to have to be permanent?” The thought horrified me.

“Just a figure of speech. If we handle this right, this outbreak will be just another file for the archives.”

“And if we don't?”

Gabriel put a hand on my shoulder. I felt its warmth even through the body armor. “The end of the world as we know it.”

“I so didn't need to hear that,” I said.

“Don't worry.” He looked at me intently, those gorgeous blue eyes serious and concerned at the same time. “We can do this.”

“I know we can,” I said just as seriously. “It's just now I'm gonna have that damn song running through my head all night.”

Gabriel laughed, an honest-to god-real sound of mirth. That's right, out and out laughed, as if I'd startled it out of him.

Absurdly happy with the accomplishment, I grinned up at him, noticing how the corners of his eyes crinkled up when he smiled. Meanwhile, another part of my brain wondered why the hell I noticed something so irrelevant to the current situation. A third part of my brain told me it didn't matter; the way Gabriel looked back at me made such questions unimportant. I'd never seen such warmth in Gabriel's expression before, at least not directed towards me. All the lustful thoughts I'd had about him when I'd first met him—before he opened his mouth, that is—came rushing back in seconds. Talk about lousy timing.

I don't know if he could actually read my mind, but even in the weird illumination thrown off by the klieg lights I could see his eyes darken from their usual denim blue to indigo as his pupils dilated. I caught my breath as his hand tightened on my shoulder and something sparked between us, something so primordial it went straight to my groin and spread like lustful wildfire through the rest of me.

Holy shit.

Gabriel felt it too; I could tell by the way his eyes widened with surprise as an almost visible layer of heat and desire flowed between us. The warmth of his hand felt almost radioactive. I wanted him so badly I almost forgot what we were doing outside in the first place. I was a millimeter away from making a total fool of myself.

“Incoming!”

The shout came from one of the lookouts. Both Gabriel and I immediately looked out beyond the half-finished barrier to see shambling, staggering corpses making their way out of redwoods and into the fields. A few had already reached the parking lot and headed towards the engineers with a frightening single-mindedness of purpose.

The dull pop of gunfire intertwined with the ululating moans of the undead as the Alpha Team sharpshooters went to work. None of the zombies made it closer than twenty feet to the men and women erecting the barrier.

Thank you, ravenous zombies.

Gabriel's hand dropped off my shoulder and his expression morphed back into dead-serious business mode before I could blink. “Wild Cards, listen up! You know the plan. Follow the perimeter and start closing the circle. Kill every zombie you see, rescue survivors if you can without compromising the mission and meet back at DBP Hall. Watch each other's backs. You've got walkie-talkies if you get separated from the rest of the team. Let's go.”

With one last unreadable look at me, Gabriel took off, following the line of the trucks, razor wire, and super-duper shaving cream. Lust superceded by adrenaline, I unsheathed my tanto and short katana and nodded to Lily and Kai. “Ready to kick some zombie butt?”

Lily grinned and nodded back.

Kai slapped us both on our butts. “Let's do it!”

Lily and I exchanged looks. We'd get him back for the butt slaps later.