Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) (21 page)

There was, at least, a bathroom, third door on the left, as promised. Two stalls, a urinal and a sink. A rusty paper towel dispenser sagged on the wall. The words “cold” and “dank” sprung to mind. Whatever, there was toilet paper and the toilet flushed. If I could get a cup of coffee, I’d declare my life complete.

Dropping my equipment next to the door, I made use of the facilities. Then I gave myself a quick once-over in the bathroom mirror, which was a dinged-up sheet of polished stainless steel. I looked as pathetic as I felt, all hollowed-out eyes, sand and dried blood on my face, tendrils of hair plastered to my forehead.

Ugh.

I took my helmet off and splashed water liberally over my face and hair in an attempt to make myself feel just a little less gross. I also freed my hair from its tight braid, relishing the sensation of my scalp loosening as I shook the heavy mass free and massaged my fingers through the strands. A headache I hadn’t even realized I had started to fade away. I decided to leave my hair down for a while, at least until it was zombie fightin’ time again.

Retrieving my knapsack and firearms, I stepped into the hallway and nearly dropped everything again when I ran smack into Griff. Remembering the last time, I immediately backed away a few steps and braced myself, eying him warily.

He gestured toward my hair.

“Nice look for you.”

“Did you follow me?”

He looked at me, his nose still dripping blood.

“In that you were headed to a bathroom and I needed to take care of this—” He gestured to his nose. “Yes.”

“Ah,” I said. “Sorry about that.” There was a moment of semi-awkward silence, at least on my part. Griff seemed perfectly at ease, and I suddenly felt like I needed to get over myself.

“About the whole life-saving thing…” I said. “Well, thanks.” That felt inadequate, though, so I added, “I guess I owe you one.”

Griff gave me one of his half-smiles.

“And I fully intend to collect.”

So much for the high ground.

“I’ll buy you a drink,” I said.

“Not what I had in mind.” He gave me a look that was at least a 5.0 on the smolder scale, even with blood trickling down his face. Too bad for him I was mostly immune.

Mostly.

I mean, having someone save your life kind of tipped the scales just a little bit in their favor, right?

“Fine,” I said. “Two drinks. Or I’ll save your life. Whichever comes first.”

Griff gave an imperceptible nod combined with a subtle grin.

“Fair enough. And if I save your life again… I get to choose my own reward.” The look he gave me made it clear what his idea of reward would be.

I raised an eyebrow.

“You know, that’s just not going to happen.”

He grinned. “We’ll see.”

“Cold day in hell,” I said.

Griff just smiled. “The dead are walking the earth, love,” he said. “Snowballs in hell can’t be that far behind.”

With that he vanished into the bathroom, taking the last word with him.

Damn.

Back in the main room, I spotted Simone across the room, talking to Appel and Nathan. Lil, Carl, the Gunsy Twins, and Red Shirt were seated around one of the tables while Tony and Gentry stacked their gear on a pile nearby. JT bounced over to me as I added my knapsack and weapons to the pile, keeping my tanto close at hand.

“You okay?” He tilted his head toward the back door. “I saw Griff headed your way.”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “He was a perfect gentleman. More or less.”

“Cool. But just so you know, if you hadn’t come back in the next two minutes I was going after you.”

I laughed. “Good thing I didn’t have stomach issues, or we both would have been embarrassed.”

“I never get embarrassed.”

Somehow I believed him.

I hooked my arm through his and we strolled over to the table the wild cards had appropriated. I sat down on a rickety folding chair next to Lil, who had her pickaxe on the table in front of her, gore and all.

“Um… yuck?”

Lil looked at me, then at her pickaxe. She shrugged.

“Nothing that’ll hurt us.”

I raised an eyebrow. “We’re not the only ones here.”

“So? They’re not sitting at our table.”

My other eyebrow shot up to join its twin. Before I could say anything, however, Tony plunked himself down across from us and gave Lil a look.

“Lil, you’re being a total bitch.”

Then Gentry sat down next to Tony and gave Lil the Hairy Eyeball.

“And unhygienic,” he added.

Lil pouted, but took her pickaxe off the table and tucked it under her chair instead.

“We’re all pretty unhygienic,” I pointed out in the interest of fairness. “Shouldn’t we be hosing ourselves off in some semi-toxic chemicals about now?”

Gentry nodded. “All things being created equal, yeah. But this isn’t a modern DZN facility, so we can’t.” He shook his head and added grimly, “Besides, if this thing is airborne, a little bit of splatter is the least of our worries.”

“Are there at least showers?”

“I think so,” he said.

“I hope so,” I said. “Right now, if I had to choose between food and a hot shower, I think the shower might win.”

“Speaking of eating,” JT said, dragging a chair up next to mine, “is there anything by way of food?”

Gentry nodded. “Professor Fraser is taking care of that right now.”

I glanced across the room where Simone was deep in conversation with an increasingly cranky looking Appel.

“He doesn’t look very happy about it.”

Gentry gave a small shrug. “He’s been pretty much on his own down here for the last ten years. I guess he doesn’t adapt too well to company.”

Once more my eyebrows went up. They were getting quite a workout today.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not sorry at all, “but this isn’t exactly an isolated outpost in deepest Siberia. This is in the middle of one of the most popular tourist destinations in California. You’d think he’d be used to company.”

“Not down here,” Gentry said. “From what I can gather, this facility has been a one-man operation for the last twenty years.”

“It’s only twenty years old?” I looked around, taking in the pitted concrete walls and “been here since the dawn of time” ambience.

“Hardly,” said a voice over my shoulder. I jumped a little as Simone spoke behind me. She put a hand on my shoulder by way of apology, and continued, “This facility was built as a safe house during the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. There were rumors that a small outbreak had occurred in Panama during the building of the Canal, and the DZN feared the possibility of infection during the celebration.”

Everyone in the room focused their attention on her.
Once a teacher, always a teacher.

“Thankfully, nothing came of their fears, and the safe house was expanded into a small research facility. It was fully manned up through the end of the Cold War. When the USSR broke up, that reduced the threat of a Soviet-engineered outbreak, and smaller facilities like this one were deemed redundant. Nevertheless, they were kept as safe houses with minimal staff. In this case—” She gestured across the room, toward Eric Appel. “—just him.”

I glanced around at the civilians.

“He saved these people?”

“Damn straight he did.”

I looked up to find the woman in the blue-green dress standing at the end of the table, glaring at me with eyes the same color as her dress. The young girl stood behind her, arms wrapped around the woman’s waist. She didn’t look so good, but considering what she’d been through, that wasn’t surprising.

“He saved us,” she continued, patting the girl on one hand. “He called out to us, then pulled us in here—as many people as he could when things went to hell.”

I looked at the half dozen or so people scattered around the room.

“I guess not a lot of people listened to him.”

The woman shook her head.

“No. But it happened so fast…” She paused, biting her lip. “Most people thought it was a film shoot or reality show. What else could it be? No one believed they were in danger until—” She stopped, angrily swiping away the tears that welled up. “Until it was too late.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. She had to have lost someone up above who hadn’t believed in time.

“So you’re here to get us out, right?” she continued. “I mean, now that you’ve used the bathroom and all.”

I tried a smile on for size. It didn’t fit very well, and I was just too worn out to come up with a quick and easy answer, especially since I had no idea
why
we were actually here in Balboa Park instead of kicking ass and getting Gabriel back.

“Um, not exactly.”

The woman’s frown grew more pronounced, and several of the nearby civilians began muttering restlessly. The girl, in the meantime, stared at me with large jade-green eyes set deeply into shadowed sockets.

“Then why
are
you here?” she asked.

Luckily for me, Simone was there.

“We’re here to find a cure,” she said calmly.

“A cure for what?” The girl looked at Simone with those big haunted eyes. “Can you bring my dad back? He was eaten, you know.”

Simone knelt down in front of the girl.

“No, sweetheart, we can’t bring your father back,” she said softly. “I’m sorry—truly I am. But we can cure the disease that killed him.”

I looked at the girl’s mother.

“I know that’s not good enough,” I said. “But that’s all that we have right now.”

She was silent for a few moments, and it was impossible to read all of the emotions that passed across her face. Then she seemed to come to a decision.

“Okay.” She nodded. “Let us know what we can do to help.”

I held out my hand. “Ashley.”

She shook it. “Aimee. That’s A-I-M double E.”

I nodded. “One of those weird-ass spellings. I got it.”

Aimee grinned, just a little bit. Not a full-on smile, but enough for the moment. She patted the girl on the head.

“And this is Grace.”

“Amazing Grace, huh?” The girl gave me a shy tip of her head and ducked back behind her mother. “Glad to meet you both,” I said.

Aimee squeezed her daughter’s hand.

“Let’s go help Mr. Appel, doll,” she said, making an obvious effort to keep things together. “Okay?” They went over to Appel, and then the three of them went through the door at the far end of the room.

Simone pulled up a chair at the end of our table.

“Is there coffee?” I asked hopefully.

Simone nodded. “There will be. Appel… Eric, that is, said he’d get some.”

“And food?”

“Lots of freeze-dried things. MREs and such.”

I grimaced. “They really weren’t expecting to use this place, were they?”

She shook her head. “Not really. North Island and Cabrillo Point were both deemed more tactically important, so money and resources were funneled into them, leaving this place and its personnel to make do with scraps. Whoever facilitated the takeover of Cabrillo Point knew what they were doing. And that means there has to be someone from the DZN involved.”

“So why aren’t we at North Island then?” Lil sat up in her seat, looking as ornery as I’d ever seen her. “I mean, if they have all the stuff we need, why are we wasting our time here?”

Simone sighed heavily.

“Whoever burned the lab at Big Red and brought your helicopters down are no doubt privy to the benefits of North Island. It was the logical place for us to go from a tactical standpoint, to gather manpower and firearms. It’s geographically positioned to give us access to Cabrillo Point from the water.”

She paused, looked directly at Lil.

“And North Island is where the other helicopter was headed when it went down.”

Lil flinched, and some of the orneriness evaporated.

“That could have been us,” she said. Simone nodded, sorrow and sympathy in her expression as she continued.

“Now you all understand why we couldn’t go there, and why we had all of the cloak-and-dagger machinations with the helicopters. We don’t know who we can actually trust. Not in the organization, or in the military—not any more. So we’ve had to go elsewhere for help.”

Tony looked thoughtful.

“So if all of the resources are on North Island, then how are we gonna get what we need to deal with the assholes that snatched Gabriel?”

Simone smiled. “There are always options, Tony, if one knows where to find them, how to contact them, and has the wherewithal to pay the price.”

“Cryptic but upbeat.” Nathan appeared at the end of the table. “Very true to form, Simone.” He carried a tray of cups and, if my super sense of smell didn’t fail me, a carafe of coffee. I always knew I liked him for a good reason.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, Nathan,” Simone replied graciously as he set the tray down in the middle of the table. “Coffee? How kind.” She and I both reached for the carafe at the same time. I won, but made up for it by pouring a cup for her before filling one for myself. There was powdered creamer and packets of sugar. Not exactly honey and cream, but I wasn’t about to complain. I stirred in two packets of the sugar and one of the creamer, took a sip, and sighed with bliss.

Lil wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t much of a coffee drinker.

Nathan caught her expression and grinned.

“There’s also tea and hot chocolate on the way out, for those with more sensitive taste buds.”

Lil’s expression immediately brightened. Which by itself was a good thing, but her mercurial mood shifts were not. I needed to start getting her the meds before they got totally out of hand and—

“Maybe I should go help in the kitchen,” I said, pushing back my chair and getting to my feet.

“Um, or maybe you should consider your last ten or so hours, and give it a rest?” JT looked at me askance.

“No,” I said firmly. “I think some gentle movement might do me some good. Help keep the muscles from tightening up. Right?” I gave Simone a significant look, but she was too busy sipping her coffee in closed-eyed bliss to notice.

Nathan cocked his head to one side, glanced from me to Lil, who was thankfully oblivious to it all, and gave a small knowing nod.