Plague Nation (36 page)

Gabriel surveyed the situation, and shook his head.

“This isn’t going to work. We need to move.”

Nathan nodded his agreement while coolly dispatching several of the zombies closing in on us from Med Center Way. Then he looked at JT.

“You game, kid?”

“You guys need another distraction?” JT’s eyes gleamed as he studied the struts, supports, and other opportunities all around him.

“It would help.”

“Tell me your heart’s desire,” JT said, “and it shall be yours.”

Nathan actually grinned at that.

“I doubt you could deliver, but how about we settle for you drawing enough of those zoms away to clear the elevator entrance.”

Dr. Albert took a moment to understand, then smiled.

“Ah. We have to go up—” He pointed at the catwalk. “—and then back down again.”

“Secret elevator entrance?”

Dr. Albert nodded.

“Coolio,” JT said, then turned back to Nathan. “I’ll meet you up there in five or so.”

Nathan gave him a thumbs up.

“We’ll wait for you.”

JT grinned at me. “But will
you
wait for me, baby?” He pinched my cheek, dashing off down the drive before I had the chance to swat him.

“If he doesn’t die, I might kill him,” Gabriel muttered. Even so, he looked impressed at JT’s gravity defying progress, as he used trucks, walls, loading dock ramps, and zombies to make his way to the base of the Regenerative Medicine building, hooting and hollering all the way like a drunk at Mardi Gras.

And once again, it worked. The zombies shifted their attention and gravitated toward the noise and motion with a comfortingly Pavlovian response. A few still focused on some tasty treats they’d found at the top of the drive, but most stumbled after JT as he led them away from the elevator shaft entrance and toward the grounds under the Regenerative Medicine building.

Once there, he scaled the first twenty feet of the struts as if his feet and hands were made of particularly sticky adhesive.

“He’s like fucking Spider-Man,” Tony said, reluctant admiration in his voice.

“Well, we don’t have time to enjoy the show,” Gabriel said firmly. “Let’s move, people!”

We ran for the elevator. Nicks stayed in front, clearing any strays that weren’t off chasing JT, while the Gunsy Twins covered our retreat by taking care of the ones closing in on our flanks. I stuck close to G and Dr. Albert, right in front of Lil, Gentry, and Mack, katana once again replacing my M4.

Gabriel reached the elevator first, hitting the call button with his fist. A loud hum reverberated through the air as the car slowly moved from the catwalk down toward ground level.

We’re gonna make it,
I thought, just as I heard a scream of terror. Hands dripping with blood and bits reached out from the front bumper of a truck and seized Dr. Albert by his knapsack. He vanished around the front of the trunk.

Shit!

I rounded the corner in time to see a gore-rimmed mouth bite down on the canvas just below the doctor’s neck.

Dr. Albert shrieked as if his flesh had been pierced, struggling frantically to shrug out of the knapsack even as the zombie—a female in skinny jeans and not much else—tugged on it, trying to reach the more edible parts.

I chopped down on its wrists with the katana just as Dr. Albert wrenched his arms out of the straps. Dead hands and knapsack fell onto the asphalt.

“My knapsack!” he cried.

“Run!” I shouted as he hesitated, reaching for the fallen knapsack even as two more zombies, both in cheerful purple scrubs, staggered toward us. “I’ll get it!”

He ran as I dispatched Skinny Jeans with a merciful decapitation, and then hamstrung the two scrubs zombies. I snatched up the knapsack, turned, and found myself face-to-face with a trucker in jeans and flannel who looked as if he’d eaten everyone of his meals at Big Texan, “home of the free 72-oz. steak.”

Trucker Zombie grabbed me by the shoulders before I could do more than gasp, its grip like a vise as it pulled me towards its gaping, stinking mouth. I tried to swing my katana up and around, but the zombie’s sheer bulk made it impossible to get any sort of angle or leverage.

Shit, shit, shit!

A plug of flesh and blood exploded from the front of its forehead, spraying me with the mess as its hands loosened, letting me slip free. I looked around and saw Nicks across the way, grinning at me. I gave her a grateful thumbs up...

...just as her forehead exploded in a similar manner as that of the zombie she’d just shot. Her expression shifted from the grin to surprise as she crumpled to the ground, rifle falling from suddenly limp hands.

What the fuck?

I hit the ground just as a bullet smacked into the hood of the truck.

“We have enemy fire!” I hollered.

More shots cracked in the air. I heard a hoarse yell and flipped over on my back in time to see someone in fatigues falling from one of the support struts under the Regenerative Medicine building. Whoever it was hit the ground with a fleshy thump and was immediately swarmed by opportunistic zombies. By the sound of the screams, whoever it was hadn’t died on impact.

I just wished I’d been the one to take them down, for Nicks’ sake.

Coming up into a crouch, I hugged the bumper of the truck and did a quick scan of the underside of the building and surroundings. I sheathed my katana in favor of my M4.

Jones took aim, fired, and another body dropped down to the ground from the far end of the building. He waved at me from one side of the elevator shaft. Davis was on the other side as the rest of the team ran for the now open elevator car. Gabriel was using his body to keep the door from closing.

“Come on, Ash!” Gabriel shouted.

Taking a deep breath and mentally chanting “serpentine,” I snatched up Dr. Albert’s knapsack and zigzagged my way across the rest of the open pavement to the elevator. A bullet smacked into the asphalt next to me, and then another hit Davis in the shoulder, spinning him around into the waiting hands of two zombies that had crept up from behind.

I veered away from the elevator door and smashed the front zombie in the face with my rifle butt before it could sink its teeth into Davis’s face. Getting the barrel up, I shot the second in the head. Grabbing Davis, I shoved him toward the elevator door even as another bullet narrowly missed both of us.

Jones was right behind us as Gabriel finally let the doors close.

There was a gentle hum of gears and pulleys as the elevator slowly began ascending. The smell of sweat, blood, and cordite filled the car as we all squashed together, pressed for space. Mack’s face looked almost green in the artificial light that came from the top of the car.

“Why do we have to go up to go down?” I asked. “Is this like
The Poseidon Adventure
where death is down at the top and life is up at the bottom?”

Dr. Albert looked at me, head cocked to one side.

“I think you’re in shock,” he said.

“You may be right,” I agreed. “But seriously, what’s with the up-to-go-down business?”

Dr. Albert pulled a key out of his pocket.

“We wanted to make sure the lab couldn’t be accessed from the ground level,” he explained. “There’s another elevator car, but it can only be accessed from the catwalk level, and then only if you have the key.”

“That’s fucking convoluted,” I said. “Why not just have a secret keypad access at the bottom? Why go up to go down? Why does it all have to be so... so James Bond?”

Underneath my random irritation was a very real and justified fury. Too many good people had died to get us here. And most—if not all—of the deaths had occurred become of some assholes who had a secret agenda that included preventing us from reaching this lab.

Weren’t flesh-eating zombies enough of an obstacle?

Dammit, we’re trying to
save
people.

I shut my eyes and leaned against the elevator wall, trying to ignore the fact that every muscle in my body ached, and that the smell of roasted flesh and gasoline still lingered in my nostrils.

The elevator gave a gentle lurch and came to a halt.

The doors slid open.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

As the doors opened, a rifle stock slammed into Gabriel’s jaw, knocking him back against Nathan before he drooped forward and fell half in, half out of the elevator, unconscious.

Someone else drove another gunstock into Davis’s midsection, doubling him over in time to receive a crack to the head. Before the rest of us could react, we found ourselves looking down the barrels of several nasty-ass, hi-tech looking weapons, the kind Nathan collected. The kind you didn’t want to argue with.

The firearms were held by two men in basic black camo uniforms, large Ray-Ban style sunglasses obscuring the top half of otherwise expressionless faces like bargain basement ninjas. A trio in forest camos stood behind them to our right, similarly armed.

The man who’d just cold-cocked Davis looked in at the rest of us, studying our faces. He nodded at Dr. Albert.

“You. Step out.”

Dr. Albert sputtered with indignant fear, but did as he was instructed. Then the same man jerked his head down toward Gabriel’s prone body.

“That’s the other one,” he said. Two of the men in the background reached down and dragged him the rest of the way out of the elevator. Then he was half-dragged, half carried down the catwalk toward a pair of doors that led into the two buildings a hundred feet or so off to our right.

Dr. Albert was hustled along right after him, led by the third guy in camos.

I started to lunge forward, but someone, probably Nathan, jerked me back before I could move more than an inch or so.

“Don’t,” Nathan whispered into my ear. “Not now.”

The lead guy waved his gun at us.

“Everybody else, drop your weapons,” he said, “and step out of the elevator.
Now.”

We all set our assorted firearms, swords, pickaxes, and such on the elevator floor, then piled slowly out onto the catwalk, where we were herded to the left by the two ninja wannabes. The one in front reached in and hit a button, pulling his arm out as the doors slid shut and the car slowly descended, our weapons inside.

“You two—” The man motioned to Lil and Gentry. “—move away from him. He can stand on his own.”

“And if he can’t, well, too bad,” the other man said with a laugh.

I looked quickly at Lil, hoping she wouldn’t do anything stupid. Amazingly enough, the fury of her glare didn’t burn a hole in the asshole where he stood.

The first guy spoke again.

“Do it or I’ll shoot him,” he said. “I don’t have orders for the rest of you, one way or the other. I’d just as soon not waste bullets, but I will if you piss me off.”

“It’s okay, hon,” Mack said. “I’ve got this.”

Lil growled under her breath, but stepped away from him, as did Gentry. Mack swayed on his feet, but managed to stay upright—most likely out of sheer stubbornness.

G muttered to himself. On total autopilot, he reached into his jacket for his pocket watch.

You idiot!
I thought.
No!

Guns swiveled toward him with a chorus of clicks. G woke up and pulled his hand out as if something had bitten it.

“It’s just a pocket watch, you son of a bitch,” I said softly. No one bothered to answer.

The other men vanished into the front building with Gabriel and Dr. Albert.

“No fucking way. This is
not
going to happen.”

The man in front cocked his head to one side and looked at me.

“You don’t think so?”

Crap, did I say the quiet part loud?

Yeah, I did.

He stepped directly in front of me, looking me up and down. I could see myself reflected in his sunglasses, my face smudged with smoke, blood, and grit.

“You must be Ashley Parker,” he said.

He knew my name. That could not be a good thing.

He smiled. That made it even less of a good thing.

“I have a present for you, from an old friend,” he said, and pointed his rifle at my head.

Lil screamed—the sound reverberating through the enclosed space—and rushed forward, knocking the barrel of his rifle down as he pulled the trigger. There was a metallic ping as the bullet ricocheted off the metal floor of the catwalk. Nathan and Gentry rushed him, wrestling the rifle away before he could fire again.

The second man’s face grew ugly as he raised his weapon, but before he could fire it, something dropped from the metal struts in the roof above, and landed on him like a spider monkey.

Or Spider-Man...
It was JT.

His feet hit the gunman square on the back of his neck, sending the man down on his knees, hard enough to make the entire catwalk shudder. The guy lost his grip on his rifle, and it clattered to the floor.

Should’ve used a sling, asshole.

JT hit the ground in a shoulder roll, popping back up to his feet with a little bow.

“Miss me?” he said with that manic grin.

“Maybe just a little,” I said. “Thanks.” I grabbed the fallen rifle and swung the stock down at the gunman’s head as hard as I could, pulling the blow at the last second so I wouldn’t kill him. Not that I had any ethical issues with killing the asshole, but we might need to get information out of him.

In the meantime, my would-be assassin was on his knees, hands clasped behind his head as Nathan covered the bastard with his own weapon.

“Where are they taking them?” he said in a tone that managed to convey a world of hurt without raising his voice. Before the man could reply, yet another gunshot cracked in the enclosed space. His eyes widened in momentary surprise as the back of his head exploded.

One of the men in forest camos stood by the open door to the right, aiming his rifle. A second shot sounded and the man I’d knocked out twitched once, as a bullet took him in the skull.

“Down!” Nathan yelled.

We all hit the deck—all except JT, who hit the side of the bridge interior, using walls, struts and floor to cover distance between him and the gunman. He was an impossible-to-hit moving target and after two shots, the gunman stopped trying. Instead, he suddenly opened the door to the left.