Plague Town (26 page)

We slipped back out. The halls were quiet, most people sensibly asleep, at least on this level. We had to
go down one floor for the decontamination area. It was quiet down there, too.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get away with this.

Decon was a revamped bathroom with several portable shower stalls hooked up to tanks full of Super Lysol or whatever the hell they used to spray us off. We could do it ourselves, so ten minutes and we were both hosed down and wrapped in white towels. We wiped our weapons down with bleach and slung them over our shoulders.

We padded in bare feet back to the elevator, breathing a mutual sigh of relief when the doors slid shut and the car began its one-floor journey upward.

“Shit,” I said for the umpteenth time that night. “We forgot to bring bleach with us to clean this stuff off.” I heaved another huge sigh, this one in frustration, as the doors slid open. “You take your shower, and I’ll go back down to get the bleach.”

“Are you sure?” Lil asked. Clearly she hoped I was.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound sincere. “Can you take these?” I handed her my M-4 and swords. “I’ll be right back.”

I jogged back to Decon, grabbed a bottle of bleach and some paper towels, and hightailed it back to the elevator. Feeling a bit like a human yo-yo, I rode it up yet again and stepped out into the hallway...

Right into Gabriel.

I yelped in surprise and dropped the bottle of bleach. It bounced painfully off of my bare foot and rolled against the far wall, lid still in place.

Gabriel stared at me as I clutched my suddenly way-too-small towel to my bosom like a Victorian maiden. He wore nothing but a pair of sweat pants, six pack abs and well-defined chest bare to the world.

My face flushed with heat.

“Ashley, what are you doing?”

How to answer that
? I thought quickly, if not wisely.

“I wanted to clean our bathroom.”

As soon as I said it, it sounded lame. Nothing to do but brazen it out, though.

“So I... I got some bleach. From downstairs where the bleach is.” Going on the old adage that the best defense is a good offense I added, “What are
you
doing here?”

“I heard someone in the hallway,” he replied. “Guess it was you.” He looked me up and down. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

“I didn’t want to get bleach on my uniform.”
Lamer and lamer.
“So if you’ll excuse me—” I tried to step around him to retrieve the bleach, but he blocked my end run with his arm. There wasn’t a lot of space between our bodies.

He sniffed the air.

“You smell like disinfectant.”

“One of the hazards of being a wild card, right?” I made another attempt to scoot to the other side, but he boxed me in with his other arm, not quite touching me. I could feel the heat rise between us and wished I had my body armor back on.

“Ashley, what the hell have you been up to?”

“Nothing!” I snapped, fed up with his interrogation. “At least nothing that’s any of your business. So you can stop the strong arm tactics and let me go back to my room.”

“To clean your bathroom.” You could cut the sarcasm in his voice with a tanto.

“Yeah, and clean my bathroom.” My towel slipped down an inch and his gaze dropped. His eyes darkened and the heat ramped up a notch.

“It’s cold,” I said. “Get out of my way, and I’ll get some clothes.

“Besides,” I added with deliberate nastiness, “we’ve been here before and it didn’t end well, remember?”

Ooh, score one for me.
Gabriel looked like I’d slapped him. He dropped his arms and stepped backwards, letting me move past him to pick up the bottle of bleach.

I might have brazened my way out of it had Lil not chosen that moment to open the door to our room.

“Ashley?” she said, rubbing a towel over her head. “I let the cats out of the carrier, so watch the—” She saw Gabriel, gave a gasp of horror and slammed the door shut.

“Cats?” he repeated.

“Er...” Nope. I had nothing.

Comprehension dawned on his face, along with slow-burning anger.

“You two went into town, didn’t you?”

“I...”

“You two
idiots
risked your lives, and the security of this campus, by going after a couple of
cats
?” He grabbed my arm and shook me. So much for slow-burning anger. His voice rose as he went straight to full-on rage.

A door opened down the hall and Tony stuck his head out.

“Sleeping down here. Or
trying
to.” He vanished back inside his room, then poked his head back out. “Will you two get a room?” He disappeared again, and slammed the door shut.

Gabriel hauled me by my arm to a nearby stairwell door, causing me to drop the bleach again. He pushed me into the stairwell and shut the door behind us. He dropped his voice, but the level of fury was still there in his eyes.

“Do you have any idea of how stupid you are?” he gritted.

“We didn’t compromise the security,” I protested, wincing as his fingers pressed deep into the flesh of my bicep. “We jumped over the barrier and the razor wire to get out, then crawled under the wire and got in through an unlocked window in the Admin building.” I paused and added, “We locked the window.”

He grabbed my other arm and dragged me close, face glaring down into mine.

“This is a military operation,” he said, his voice flat. “You’re a civilian member of a military team.”

I glared back.

“A civilian
volunteer
, remember?”

“Volunteer or not, you do
not
do
anything
without a direct order from your team leader.” Every word was clipped as if bitten off between clenched teeth.

“Look,” I said, determined not to let him intimidate me, “Lily has been miserable. Her boyfriend was ripped to pieces in front of her, and her mom might be dead. As far as she knows, all she has left are those two cats.

“She’s been crying herself to sleep, worrying that they might have starved to death—or worse,” I continued. “Sooner or later her concentration would’ve gone wonky at the wrong moment. Then she would have gotten herself or someone else killed.”

Gabriel’s grip didn’t change.

“That was
not
your decision to make! “Why the hell can’t you follow orders?”

Something snapped in me.

“If I’d wanted to be a mindless drone,” I growled, “I’d have stayed with my control-freak husband. But I didn’t, because I do
not
need that kind of shit in my life any more!”

I tried to knock his hands off my arms, but he shook me again, eyes blazing hot blue fury, as he spoke.

“You. Could. Have. Been. Killed!” He emphasized each word with another shake. On “killed” he threw me away from him, the back of my head smacking into the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth.

I barely managed to catch my towel before it slipped all the way off my body. Gabriel couldn’t stop his gaze from tracking it, which pissed me off even more.

I’d had enough.

I wrapped the towel around my upper chest, tucking it securely in place as I stared defiantly at him, silently daring him to touch me again. I was angry enough to hit him if he tried.

“Maybe it’s not enough for all of us just to survive,” I hissed. “Who the hell are you to place a value judgment on the worth of Lil’s cats? She has to be able to live with herself, and if she’d left them to die, she might not have been able to do that.

“You’ve seen how close she is to the edge. She needs something to love and something she thinks is worth fighting for. And if you don’t get that, you can just go to hell!”

“Ashley—” He took a step toward me. I held a hand up in warning.

“Don’t. Just...
don’t
.”

He stopped and sucked in a deep breath.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes.

“Because you would have said no.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end.

“Jesus, Ashley...” He started to reach for me, then dropped his hand by his side, shook his head and repeated, “You could have been killed.”

“But we weren’t.” I swayed on my feet as this latest adrenaline rush subsided and left me even more drained than the first. Gabriel reached out to steady me. I stepped back.

Uh-uh. You
so
don’t get to touch me right now.

“Is your head okay?” The anger had left his voice.

“No problem,” I lied. I actually had the beginnings of a headache. “I still have to scour the elevator, and I really just want to shower and get the smell of disinfectant out of my skin. So let’s just call it a night, okay?”

He took another deep breath.

“Okay.”

I turned away from him toward the door.

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

“Just... just don’t yell at Lil,” I warned him. “She’s been through enough tonight. And—” Might as well get this out of the way. “—the whole escapade was my idea.”

Gabriel gave a sharp laugh.

“Why does this not surprise me?”

We left the stairwell and headed back to my room. Gabriel picked up the bottle of bleach from where I’d dropped it the second time.

“I’ll go first,” I whispered. “She’s probably hiding in the bathroom about now.”

I opened the door.

“Lil?” No answer.
She wouldn’t have bolted, would she?
Worried, I stepped inside, stopping short.

Gabriel came in behind me.

“What is it?” he asked. “Is she okay?”

I pointed to the bed where Lily had collapsed, giving in to exhaustion. Binkey was draped around the top of
her head like a furry halo, Doodle curled in the crook of one arm. Lambiepie’s threadbare head stuck out from the crook of the other. Both cats purred loudly and the contented smile on Lil’s face—even in her sleep—brought tears to my eyes.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “She’s okay.”

The next day we finished clearing the rest of the buildings on campus. Gabriel and I seemed to have come to an understanding. It made for a much more positive search-and-destroy experience.

There weren’t a lot of military personnel left—maybe a quarter of the original Alpha and Beta teams. We still had sharpshooters to cover us, but the soldiers on the ground had been dropping like sexually active teens in a slasher film. Each time it was the same. They developed flu-like symptoms, and then things went downhill from there.

We’d rescued thirty or so survivors so far—not a lot when you consider that Big Red’s average daily population is two thousand students, plus teachers and staff. Still, we’d rescued people, and had high hopes for finding pockets of survivors in Redwood Grove itself. There were several tourist stops in the quarantine zone, and a bunch of isolated homes, gas stations, and random businesses just off of the highway.

Every now and then I wondered about our mystery man. I hadn’t mentioned him—didn’t see any reason to do so.

A lot of borderline survivalist types lived in the area. If they hadn’t succumbed to the virus, odds seemed reasonable that they could hang in there. And our dude
seemed like the kind of guy who’d’ve sussed out the whole ‘shoot ’em in the head’ thing, too.

The military did regular aerial supply drops, so we were good for food and other basic supplies. Too bad they couldn’t drop in additional personnel, but each new soldier would become a potential zombie time bomb. So they couldn’t risk it.

To my surprise, nothing was said about the previous night’s clandestine mission. It didn’t seem like Gabriel to play with the rules, though, so I found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Good job today, everyone,” Colonel Paxton said as we returned to Patterson. “After you clean up and get some dinner, we’ll go over tomorrow’s tactics.”

Dinner! Hoo-ha!
I was starving.

“Ashley?” the Colonel said. “Would you and Lily please come see me and Professor Fraser in room 217, as soon as you’ve showered?”

Shit.
Should’ve known it would hit the fan sooner or later. I shot a dirty glance in Gabriel’s direction.

All I got back was an unapologetic shrug.

Clean but hungry, Lil and I reported to the lecture hall in record time. No sense putting off unpleasant business, and the sooner we finished, the sooner we got dinner.

“This sucks,” Lil said, and she frowned nervously as we neared the door to room 217. “Couldn’t they have let us eat first?”

“Nah. They want us weak and hungry so we’ll crack and spill the beans.”

“Spill
what
beans?” Lil turned her frown on me. “I mean, at this point, what beans would we
not
spill? It’s not like we have anything to hide.”

“Good point,” I admitted. “But it sounded good.”

Lil gave a little snort and we went inside. Simone and Colonel Paxton waited for us at the front of the hall,
seated at a table. Lil and I approached with the air of two prisoners waiting to be sentenced.

Colonel Paxton came to his feet with a chivalrous—and theatrical—little bow. He was a strange one.

“Have a seat, ladies.”

We sat across the table from our interrogators.

“It’s come to my attention that you went on a little spur-of-the-moment excursion last night,” he said, and I couldn’t read his tone. “Is that correct?”

We both nodded. No use denying it.

“Where to begin?” he said. He looked down, then up. “Tell me, how did you get off campus?” There was no way to tell where this was going. All I could read in his expression was friendly interest. Maybe he was just biding his time before opening up a Colonel-sized can of whup-ass.

Lil hid behind her hair, letting me do most of the talking. I described our route out of Big Red, including our leap over the Slinky of Doom and subsequent trek into town through the woods.

“We did our best to stay out of sight,” I explained. “Figured we didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves going in or out.”

Both Paxton and Simone nodded.

“Go on,” Simone said. I couldn’t read her, either.

I described our adventure, keeping it as short and succinct as possible. I felt like I was narrating a History Channel show. “
Zombies were a way of life in the twenty-first century...”
But when I described how many zombies had converged on downtown, Colonel Paxton frowned.