A Plague on All Houses (17 page)

“Mom?” A little louder this time. And still no answer.

Lil glanced back at me, hefting her pickaxe with one hand, flashlight with the other. I nodded and she opened the door all the way and went inside. I followed, unsheathing my blade. Stupid of me not to have done so before she'd even turned the key in the deadbolt. Lame, Ashley. Really lame.

The shop was quiet. It looked as though it had remained undisturbed during the outbreak. Zombies milled about in the courtyard, visible through two picture windows on either side of the wooden front door.

Lil shone her flashlight around the store. Rows and rows of bins held beads separated by shape, size and color; a magpie's paradise, all bright and shiny under Lil's LCD beam. I was hit by sudden bead lust even though I had no idea what to do with them. Pretty.

“This is really cool,” I whispered.

“Yeah, it's a great place to work,” Lil whispered back. “Mom used her divorce settlement from Dad to start the shop when we moved here.”

She shone her light around. “Doesn't look like anyone's been in here at all since I closed it the night before … well, before Casey got eaten. I guess Anna didn't make it in to open the store. Anna was Mom's other part-time salesperson.” She looked around the store again, eyes bright with unshed tears, and an expression way too bleak for someone so young. “Ashley, do you think my mom is dead?”

“I…” I stopped, unsure of what to say. I guess I thought the odds of her mom being alive were pretty slim, but there was still a chance. I didn't want to raise her hopes, but I also didn't want to dash them. I finally went for middle-of-the-road honesty. “I bet she went looking for you when she didn't find you here. She might be dead, yes. But she could have also holed up with another survivor. Right now you should just hope for the best and we should get back to Big Red. The sooner they send us here to clear out the town, the sooner we might find her.”

A sudden loud thump from the front of the store made us both jump. A female zombie pressed up against the picture window on the right side of the front door, maybe attracted by the light or the movement inside. Long black hair worn in a single braid, flowing, gauzy ethnic skirt and top in purples and browns. I bet it wore Birkenstocks. Dead white pupils stared in at us with unnatural hunger. “Oh no.” Horror and sorrow mixed equally in Lil's voice. “Anna.”

I don't know if it could hear us or it was just coincidence, but it looked up at its name, smacking the window with its hands as it moaned its hunger to the rest of its kind. Its hands left dark smears on the glass. Within a few seconds it was joined by another zombie, and another.

“We'd better get out of here now.” Lil shut of her flashlight, her face suddenly blank as if she'd shut off her emotions at the same time.

“Give it a minute,” I said thoughtfully. “If their attention is here at the front, we'll have an easier time sneaking out the back without being spotted.” I grinned at her. “The old okey-doke, remember?”

I was relieved to see her grin back. A little shaky, maybe, but better than that blank, almost robotic look she'd worn a minute earlier.

“Should we make some noise?” asked Lil.

I tapped on the window and shouted, “Hey, you!” by way of answering.

If I'd been Tony, I'd have yelled something along the lines of “Hey, pus bags!” or “Yo, dumb fucks!” like the soldiers and assorted mercs in all the movies. But it's not like any of these things chose their fate and honestly, it seemed a little rude to insult them just because they happened to be dead. Besides, Lil knew and liked poor Anna, now stuck in perpetual zombie hippiedom. “Hey, you,” would do just fine.

Lil joined me and banged on the front door, probably a better choice than smacking the windows. We watched as zombies peeled off the steady stream wandering past and stagger to join the ever-increasing crowd in front of the store. I had a feeling from her set expression that she was scanning the crowd for a particular familiar face, one I hoped she didn't see.

“Maybe we should—” I stopped short as the zombie that used to be Anna suddenly let go of the gate and veered off to its left, pushing through the crowd with what almost seemed like a sense of purpose. “Okay, now that's just weird.”

“Do you think she remembers there's a back door?”

A chill ran up my spine. Or down it. I can never tell which way the damn things are going. “If you're right, we'd better get out of here now.”

Lil looked worried. “Yeah. It looks like some of the others are following her.”

We didn't waste any more time, just hightailed it to the back of the building where Binkey and Doodle started howling again in their carrier, paws emerging through the bars of the door. All they needed were tin cups and a sign reading, “Dirty screws!”

“Shush, babies,” Lil crooned. “We need you to be quiet now.”

I snorted. Like logic ever worked on a cat.

I put my left hand on the doorknob, the right holding my sword. “You handle the cart and I'll handle the zoms, ‘kay? If we both need to fight, we'll make sure the cart is between us so they can't get to the cats. Ready?”

Lil nodded, gripping the handle of the shopping cart with both hands.

I shoved the door open hard and felt it connect with something on the other side. The smell and accompanying moan told me at least one zom had figured out there were snacks behind Door Number One. The moon was out from behind the cloud cover, giving me enough light to see several zoms already approaching the open door, with more rounding the mouth of the alley and heading our way. The smell of putrefying flesh was just nasty.

The zombie I'd knocked down reached around the door and grabbed at my ankle. I jerked away from its clawed fingers, stepped around the open door and plunged the end of the katana into the back of its skull. Sploosh. Dead zombie.

The moans to our left grew louder and the smell grew stinkier as at least a dozen zombies staggered towards us, one of them Anna. We could try to muscle past them with the cart, but more filled the mouth of the alley to our left.

I glanced to the right; that end of the alley was still zombie free and I didn't see any zombies on the street beyond it. “We're gonna go right, then left out of the alley, then double back a few blocks down.”

The first few zombies reached us, clutching at Lil as she pushed the cart out the door. I side-kicked the closest, a good ol’ boy type who'd drunk a few too many beers when he was alive, in its substantial gut. The impact of foot to stomach caused a farting sound as gas escaped through who knows where in the zombie's rotting belly. The accompanying smell was horrific, but the kick knocked it back into the other two zombies, both previously borderline anorexic teenage girls. Beer Belly bowled them over like nine pins. We now had some space between us and the rest of the zoms pouring into the alley entrance to our left.

“Get the cats out of here,” I yelled as Lil paused with the cart. “I'll cover you.”

Lil sprinted towards the other end of the alley, the rattle of the shopping-cart wheels painfully loud. No way we were sneaking out of town or into Big Red with that thing.

I noticed some of the fresher zombies moved faster than others. Not running, but their shamble still covered more ground than I liked. Trading my blade for the M4, I took aim for the closest one and fired. My shot grazed the zombie's ear, but didn't take it out.

Damn.

I wasn't nearly as good as Gabriel and right about now we needed his precision shooting. Well, it wasn't gonna happen.

Fuck it.

I switched over to semi-auto and sent a spray of bullets at their legs, aiming for the knees. It may not kill them, but at least they couldn't get to us as quickly.

More zombies appeared at the alleyway, blocking my view of Aspen Street beyond. Lucky for us they all seemed to be coming in from that direction. I sent one more spray into the oncoming crowd, sending enough zombies to their knees and the ground to create a very temporary roadblock for those behind them, then took off after Lil, who had reached the end of the alley coming out on Beech Street.

As Lil pushed the cart out of the alley, hands reached for her from the right. She yelled in surprise as a skinny male zom wrapped his arms around her shoulders, yanking her off balance towards its gaping mouth. The cart wobbled as Lil lost her grip on it, but stayed upright. I hauled ass the remaining stretch of alley, shoving my forearm under the thing's chin and slamming its jaw shut before it could take a bite out of Lil's neck. She wriggled away from its grasp, grabbed her pickaxe from the cart and sent the business end into the zom's skull, splattering me with all sorts of nasty brain goo.

“Oooh, sorry,” said Lil, yanking the pickaxe out again.

“I ain't got time to barf,” I muttered, trying not to puke. If I had time, I would have spewed all over the damn place, but the moans now came from all directions as the undead residents of Redwood Grove honed in on those first few hungry wails. They came from both directions on Beech Street, dozens filtering down from Main Street and enough coming from the opposite direction to make an easy escape and double-back far more dangerous than I'd anticipated. The alley in back of us was impassable, seething with zombies. The alley entrance across Beech was blocked by one of those huge trucks with wheels the size of Smart Cars, what I call “small penis compensation” trucks. Lil and I could climb over or around it, sure, but we'd have to leave the cart behind.

Shit.

“Okay. Let's clear a path through Beech and find a street that's not clogged with these things.”

“There's so many of them.” Lil looked as scared as I felt, so I tried to hide my own fear from her. One of us had to be strong. And this whole thing had been my idea and I was going to get her and her cats back to Big Red or die trying. Although I'd really rather do it without the dying part.

“We can still move faster then they can,” I said. “We just need to clear a few out of our way. You take the ones coming from Main Street and the alley. I'll clear us a path down Beech. Don't worry about head shots, just slow them down!”

Lil hesitated, eyes wide with panic as the reeking corpses closed in on us, the stench nearly unbearable (unless you've had zombie brains splattered on your face, which gave me some perspective when it came to relative yuck factor).

I smacked her on the arm, hard. “Remember! Ripley doesn't die!”

This snapped Lil out of Deer in the Headlights land. She dropped the pickaxe into the cart and unholstered her M4 as I sprayed the last few shots in my magazine at the zombies coming at us from the south side of Beech Street, ejected it, and slammed another magazine home as quickly as possible. I had one more full magazine in my belt pouch and plenty of ammo, but no time to reload the empties. So I had better make the shots I had count. I went for the same tactic I had in the alley: shoot their legs out from under them while Lil did the same with the zoms to our right and behind us. More took their place almost immediately. It was like trying to dig a hole in the sand near the tide line before the water filled it in again. There were still way more zombies than I'd like coming at us from the south side of Beech Street, and those I'd mowed down were crawling towards us, trailing bits and pieces of themselves as they did so.

“Shit, this is so not good.” Lil changed out magazines, keeping herself between the oncoming zombies and the shopping cart. The cats were thankfully quiet, probably near catatonic from the moans and the gunfire.

“We need to make a break for it.” I shook my head. “It's not going to get any better and if we don't go now, we're gonna get ripped to pieces. And then Gabriel's gonna be really pissed at us.”

Lil gave a shout of surprised laughter that turned into a yell as one of the kneecapped zombies grabbed her foot, pulling her off balance. She fell on top of it, her M4 skittering a few feet away as the thing rolled so that it was on top, gore-drenched teeth inches from Lil's face. Several others reached the cart, hands grabbing for the carrier as if they knew something tasty was inside.

“Shit!” I slammed the stock of my M4 into the side of Lil's attacker's head, giving Lil a chance to throw it off her while I then dealt with the ones trying to get at the cats, again using the M4 stock as a bludgeon to back them off before flipping the weapon forward and firing point blank into their heads. Lil, in the meantime, got to her feet and did a mean stomp on her attacker's skull before retrieving her firearm and dispatching it.

More came at us, the moans nearly deafening in volume and the smell overwhelming. The gap I'd made had now closed again, zombies crawling and staggering from all directions. We were so screwed.

We both backed up against the cart, seconds away from being eaten alive. “I'm sorry, babies,” Lil whispered. She grabbed her pickaxe and swung at the nearest zombie as it reached for her.

Before she made contact, however, a shot rang out, or more accurately, made a loud bang and the top of the zombie's head vanished in a spray of blood and brain matter.

WTF?

Another shot and the head sheared off of what was once maybe a five-year-old. The little ankle-biter had been practically on top of me and I hadn't even noticed.

“Over here!”

More shots were fired, each one resulting in a dead zombie. Lil and I looked around for the source of the masculine voice we'd just heard.

“Here!”

It came from the monster truck blocking the alley. A man dressed in what Matt would have called “weekend warrior” style—army fatigues tucked into combat boots, black T-shirt under a matching jacket—stood on the cab of the truck, aiming a really big rifle with cool precision, anther firearm slung over his shoulder. He had a bandanna pulled up over his nose, covering the lower half of his face like an old-time robber. He looked tall and imposing standing up there, in fact downright heroic, but honestly I think I would have viewed a midget the same way had he appeared out of nowhere to pull our asses out of the fire.

“Get in the truck!”

No time to decide whether or not we could trust him; it was either take our chances with Mr. Marksman or get torn to pieces. We didn't hesitate. Lil swung her pickaxe like a melee weapon, whirling and swinging like an armed Tasmanian Devil while I grabbed the cart by the handle and sprinted across the street, using the cart as a battering ram to knock a thankfully skinny male zombie out of the way as it lurched into my path.

The man on the truck kept taking carefully aimed shots, taking out the zombies that posed the most threat. Between his precision shooting and Lil's whirling dervish pickaxe of death, I made it to the truck with the cats in one piece. Lil dashed after me, zombies trailing closely behind.

“Get in!”

“We're getting!” I wrenched open the passenger door, flipped the seat forward, tossed my M4 inside, and wrestled with the cat carrier, jammed in between the bag of litter and food.

“Leave it,” shouted the man, capping two more zombies.

“Are you crazy? This is what we came for!” I yanked hard and the carrier jerked upwards. Binkey and/or Doodle chose that moment to resume howling.

The man's eyebrows shot up. “I'm not the one who's crazy here.” But he didn't say anything else about leaving the carrier behind.

I muscled the carrier into the back of the cab and climbed in as Lil tossed the litter, food, and pan in after me. She then shoved the cart into a knot of zoms, knocking them off balance long enough to jump into the front of the cab and slam the door shut and locking it. Zombies immediately swarmed the windows, bloody hands slapping and clawing against the windows, green faces pressing up to stare in at us hungrily.

The roof of the cab creaked, the sound of metal giving a little as our rescuer jumped off the roof onto the ground on the driver's side of the truck. The door opened and he climbed in, slamming the door shut as several enterprising zoms pulled themselves into the bed of the track and began hammering on the back window.

Our rescuer's bulk seemed to fill the cab as he turned the keys hanging from the ignition. “Hold on or fasten your seatbelts!”

I did both, holding onto the “Oh shit!” handle with one hand and stabilizing the carrier with the other. He floored the accelerator and the truck surged forward with an almost animalistic growl of its engine. The momentum jolted us all backwards, including the zombies. They flew out of the truck bed to land on the asphalt. The zombies clutching the sides of the truck quickly either lost their grip or their hands as the vehicle sped north on Beech Street across Main.

Our rescuer didn't slow down or try to avoid the undead, and zombies thumped off the bumper like bugs hitting the windshield. They continued to trail after us even as the truck picked up speed, quickly vanishing out of their sightline. When that happened, I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding while Binkey and Doodle kept up their own chorus of the damned as the zombies’ moans faded into the distance. My stomach rolled with motion sickness, but I didn't care.

The driver slowed down once the zombies were safely behind us. He looked at us in the rear view mirror. “You risked your lives for a couple of cats?” The bandanna wafted out as he spoke. His eyes looked black in the almost nonexistent light, brown hair cropped close to his skull in almost military style.

“Um … yeah,” I said. “That's pretty much right.”

“They're my cats,” Lil explained.

“But it was my idea,” I added, not wanting her to take the heat.

The man nodded slowly as if considering our answers. There were a few beats of silence. Then, “I like cats.” His gaze went back to the road ahead.

Lil glanced at me over the backseat and mouthed, “Is he crazy?”

I shrugged. At least he liked cats.

“I'm Ashley,” I said. “And this is Lil. Thanks for saving our butts.”

“No problem.”

“You gonna tell us your name?”

“Nope.”

I sat back and shut up.

We drove along in oddly comfortable silence—well, if you didn't count the cats’ mournful chorus—for a few minutes, reaching the outskirts of town before he spoke again. “You two with the military up at the college?”

“Not exactly,” I answered. “I mean, we're with them, but we're not military.”

His eyebrows shot up again. “You want to be more specific?”

I shrugged again. “We're both college students who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“We're Wild Cards,” Lil chimed in.

“Well, you're something if you're willing to risk your lives for a couple of cats,” he observed dryly. He may or may not have been smiling under the bandanna.

“It means we're immune to the zombie virus,” I explained. “We were bit and survived.”

“Is that so?” Oddly enough, he didn't sound particularly surprised and I had to wonder why. Before I could pursue that thought, he continued, “How many of you Wild Cards are there?”

I did a quick mental count. “Seven.” Then I remembered Simone. “No, eight.”

“So you're not military, but you're working with the military.” His tone was neutral.

“You don't like them?”

“Not much of a fan of any branch of the government, military or civilian, especially when they've got me behind quarantine and threaten to terminate with extreme prejudice when I go too near the border.”

“Wow.” Not much else to say to that.

Lil stared at him, shocked. “They told us the military had the infected zone quarantined, but there's no way they'd kill someone trying to get out, right? I mean, not if the person were alive.”

He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Guess you haven't spent a lot of time around government agencies. So tell me why you two are all tricked out like two baby mercs in a SyFy Original movie.”

Okay, I had to like the guy a little for that crack alone. “Like Lil said, we're Wild Cards. That's the name the people who've studied the zombie virus give to people who are immune to it. And not that you could tell from what happened back in town, but they've been training us so we can clear the college and then the rest of the quarantine area because a lot of the soldiers on the inside are getting the virus and they're not sure why.”

“Were you drafted into this?”

I shook my head. “No. At least I wasn't. It was my choice.” I didn't see any point in bringing up General Heald's attempts to bully and blackmail me into it. “Anyway, since we can't get the virus or whatever it is that turns people into zombies, we can take risks other people can't.”

“Like rescuing cats in the middle of a dead town?” Definitely some humor behind that remark.

“Actually we'll be in some deep shit if they find out we did this,” I confessed.

“So we need to get you back into campus quietly.”

“That would be nice,” I said. “Any ideas?”

“Old logging trail on the other side of Big Red. Leads up pretty close to the Administration building in between the north and east parking lots. Should give you some cover to sneak back in. They put the barrier smack up against either side of the building, so you could break in through a window or door … although you'll have to deal with the razor wire.”

“How do you know all this?”

He shrugged. “I made it my business to find out.”

“What's with the bandanna?” asked Lil.

“Filters the smell out a little. Not a lot, but enough to stop from puking up dinner when I have to deal with the dead heads. You girls might try it next time you're out for a stroll.”

“We normally use nose plugs,” muttered Lil.

“So why are you still wearing it?” I stared at him in challenge. “I know we're not exactly fresh out of the shower, but we don't smell
that
bad.”

He raised one eyebrow this time. “You don't need to see my face. And either you smell worse than you think or those cats are farting.”

“They do that when they're stressed.” Lil looked embarrassed.

“Don't you want to stay at Big Red?” I asked. “It's safe … well, safer in there than it is out here.”

“I have my reasons for staying where I am.”

“Good reasons?”

“As good as yours for sneaking out in the first place.”

I couldn't argue with that.

He turned onto a narrow road overgrown with hanging branches. Even the truck's suspension and shocks couldn't ease the jolting as the wheels hit numerous ruts and potholes.

I winced after we hit a particularly deep pothole. I felt the jolt up through my tailbone. “Jeez Louise, guess our tax dollars haven't made it this far.”

“This road hasn't been used for logging since they built Big Red,” said our rescuer. “No need to keep up repairs.”

“Glad you knew about it.”

“It always pays to know how to get in and out of places.”

“Paranoid much?” Okay, it just slipped out.

Surprisingly he laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. Now let's see if my paranoia can get you back into the college without getting caught.”