Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) (22 page)

“Definitely the best thing for you, Ash,” he said. “Just don’t overdo it.”

I smiled gratefully.

Jones raised his hand. “If you’re bringing cocoa, I’ll take one.”

Davis nodded. “Me, too.”

“You got it.” I grinned.
Gotta love a couple of eagle-eyed killing machines who want their cups of cocoa.
“You want marshmallows with that?” They grinned back.

Picking up my cup, I took a gulp of coffee before grabbing my knapsack from the pile of gear and heading into the kitchen. Another cement-walled room lit by stark bare bulbs in the ceiling, it boasted a stainless steel double-sided sink, an ancient six-burner stove-and-oven combo, and a large refrigerator and freezer unit that could hide a body or two. Storage cupboards and more boxes lined up along the walls. A closed metal door was dead-bolted shut on the other side of the room.

Aimee and Grace were bustling about, opening cans of soup and dumping them into a couple of mega-sized saucepans on the stove, while Appel pulled plastic bowls out of one of the cupboards and deposited them on the counter with as much clatter as possible.

“Can I help?” I said with as much perk as I could summon.

Appel gave me a sour look before ignoring me in favor of a drawer full of utensils. I shrugged and turned to Aimee.

“We have some requests for hot chocolate,” I said, “so I thought I’d help.”

She offered me the ghost of a smile.

“Boil up some water in the teakettle, and go to it.”

I filled a white enamel teakettle with water from the tap and put it on one of the burners to heat. While I waited for the water to boil, I snagged a few packets of powdered hot chocolate and emptied them into some white mugs lined up on the counter. Then I dug into my knapsack for the stuff Simone said would dissolve easily in liquid. Zocalo or something. How pharmacists and physicians remembered these names was beyond me.

Ah, there we go. Fazaclo.

The pills came in little individual blister packets. I figured one was enough to start, especially since I had no idea of what the side effects might be, and didn’t want to do anything that could hurt Lil. I felt guilty enough sneaking her the meds—totally not something I’d do under normal circumstances. But nothing was normal now, so I pushed one of the pills through the thin foil and dumped it into one of the mugs, on top of the powdered hot chocolate.

“Any spoons?” I asked as I put the meds back in my knapsack and zipped it up.

“Um. Yeah.” Aimee’s flat tone made me look up. She was staring at me as if she’d caught me giving her daughter drugs.

Er… okay, couldn’t quite blame her.

“Look,” I said, “I know what this looks like and—”

She cut me off.

“Is it one of your people?”

“I… well… Yes. It’s—”

“Then it’s none of my business.”

“But—”

Aimee held up a ‘talk to the hand’ hand.

“Seriously. Don’t bother. I really don’t want to know.” She turned away from me, the set of her shoulders managing to imply a door being slammed in my face. Grace continued to stir soup, happily unaware of the subtext in the air.

Well, crap.
I mean, I knew it really didn’t matter what Aimee thought of me, given the big picture. Yet her disapproval still hurt, especially given the circumstances. Then again, she wasn’t interested in hearing my side of things. So, well…

Fuck it.

Tightening my jaw, I grabbed the teapot off the stove, topped off all the mugs with hot water and stirred, being careful to save Lil’s mug for last. I kept the spoon in it so I wouldn’t accidently slip the wrong person a shot of psychotropic meds.

Wouldn’t
that
be fun?

Griff had joined the rest of the team at our table, co-opting my chair. He was talking to Lil, that lazy smile on his face as he said something that made her laugh.

Uh-oh.
I didn’t like the way this looked at all. Lil was too young and too naïve. All of her former distrust seemed to have vanished in the face of his undeniable charisma. I looked to the rest of the team for help.

Tony was too busy scowling at JT, while Gentry looked like he really needed a few hours of sleep. As for Nathan and Simone, they were caught up in staring—or possibly glaring—into each other’s eyes. So I’d just have to play it cool, and hand out hot chocolate.

Plastering a bright smile on my face, I set the mug in front of Lil, plucking the spoon out at the last moment.

“Here ya go!”

She smiled up at me.

“That looks good,” Griff said.

“Here, you can have this one!” Lil started to push her mug in front of him.

Really?

I immediately plucked another mug from the tray and plunked it down in front of Griff, sloshing a little bit of liquid on the table.

“Here ya go.” I nudged Lil’s mug back in front of her. She gave me a look that was half confusion and half irritation, but didn’t argue. I ignored the look and handed out the rest of the hot chocolate. Davis and Jones took theirs with as close to blissful expressions as I’d yet seen on their perpetually stoic faces.

I tried not to watch too obviously as Lil took the first sip of her hot chocolate. She didn’t seem to notice anything wrong—no wrinkle of the nose or anything to indicate it tasted funny. I felt my shoulders relax just a bit as she took a big swallow.

Dumping my knapsack by my feet, I took a seat at the end of the table, refilling my cup with more coffee. Sure, I needed sleep, but at this point the siren song of coffee sang louder than the dubious lullaby from the uncomfortable-looking cots across the room.

Aimee and Appel appeared from the kitchen bearing trays loaded with bowls and cutlery. I jumped to my feet to help, but Aimee shrugged me away when I tried to take the tray from her.

“I’ve got this,” she said.

Right.

Chastened, I sat back down. Appel plonked a bowl of soup in front of me, followed by a spoon and a napkin. I tried not to drool at the fragrance of Campbell’s very best chicken noodle soup.

“Thanks,” I said, not expecting any answer.

“You’re welcome.”

I nearly dropped my spoon, and looked up just in time to see him give me a cranky yet approving nod before he moved onto the next table. After Aimee’s palpable disapproval, it felt pretty good.

Polishing off the soup, I sipped my coffee and shut my eyes, listening to the gentle hum of voices and pretending just for a little while that I was at a coffee house, and that there were no zombies trying to eat us.

“So how did you become a wild card?”

The sudden question—coming from Tony of all people, and in a fairly aggressive tone of voice—cut through any other conversation at the table. I opened my eyes and saw him staring at Griff with an expression that matched his voice.

Griff raised an insolent eyebrow.

“Why does it matter?”

“You’re part of our team now, right?” Tony pressed.

“I’ve been fighting at your side,” Griff responded, and I thought I detected a crack in the veneer. “Fighting for the same things you are.”

“Well, when we formed our team, we had to tell each other how we got bit. How we became wild cards.” Tony paused, his jaw tightening. “I thought it was stupid when we did it.”

And indeed he had been a right little sullen asshat at the time.

“But it makes sense now,” he continued. “We shared our origin stories.” I hid a grin at that. “We all knew where everyone else came from. What we all went through.

“So if you’re part of this team, I wanna know how you got here.”

He was totally right. We’d started out with a team of strangers who shared one commonality—we’d all been through hell and survived. That common ground to start had made up for some major personality conflicts. Griff was a stranger, one we were expected to take on good faith in a world where that meant very little. Points to Tony for the adult insight.

Nathan and Simone both looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.

Griff leaned back in his chair, and then gave a small but decisive nod.

“I was in jail,” he said bluntly. “I was offered a choice between being a guinea pig for a new vaccine, or spending the better part of my glory days behind bars.” He shrugged, and gave me a sideways look. “Would’ve been a waste to have me off the market.”

I snorted.

“What were you in for?” JT gave Griff a guileless smile. “No, wait, let me guess. Sexual assault?”

“Please. Not my style.” Griff actually looked offended. Either he had incredibly selective memory or he was totally full of shit.

“What was it then?” I couldn’t resist jumping in, just to see if he showed any embarrassment.

“Assault and battery, with a little manslaughter tossed in.” Griff shrugged. “Accidents happen.”

JT looked as cynical as I’d ever seen him.

“Which was the accident? The assault, or the battery?”

Griff looked at him with dislike.

“The manslaughter.”

“Do tell.”

“Actually, I thought we were talking about my—” He nodded toward Tony. “—origin story.”

“Fair enough,” JT said. “Although personally I’d like to know if one of my teammates might ‘accidentally’ slaughter me.” A brief flash in Griff’s eyes said that it might be a possibility, but then he smiled and continued.

“Along with a half dozen other ‘volunteers,’ I was given different versions of what they called the Walker’s vaccine, one after the other. The last one made me sick—it felt like white-hot poison running through the veins. I felt my body rotting from the inside out.”

Everyone in the room was silent now, hanging on his every word. Not even JT had anything snarky to add at this point.

“I wanted to die—begged them to kill me.” He paused, then continued. “No such luck. They just kept pumping me full of electrolytes and whatever else was needed to keep my body from shutting down. What they
wouldn’t
give me was anything for the pain.” He took a long drink of hot chocolate as if it were a shot of whiskey. “I went through three days like that. And I was the lucky one.

“My fellow volunteers went through the same hell, and died, their internal organs liquefied and leaking out their bodies.” He gave a small smile. “And then they came back.

“So six of us went in to be tested. Five died horribly, and then proved there’s life after death. I survived.” He finished his hot chocolate. “I’ll never be afraid of death again.”

Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

Tony broke the silence.

“So you never got bit, huh?”

Griff looked at him for a moment. “No. Is that what I need to join your special little club? Get a chunk of me ripped out by one of those things?”

Lil glared at Tony, and shook her head.

“No. You don’t,” she said. “You’re one of us now.”

I forced myself to keep my mouth shut.

Just drink your hot chocolate
, I thought.

Gradually conversations started up again around the room, accompanied by the sound of utensils clinking on dishes.

The headache I’d felt in the bathroom made its presence known again. I rubbed my forehead and massaged my scalp, trying to ease the pressure.

“You too?” Gentry gave me a tired grin from across the table. “I’d kill for a couple of aspirin about now.” He rubbed his neck. “I think I pulled something out there.”

“How about some ibuprofen?”

He eyed me hopefully. “You carrying?”

“Oh, yeah, baby,” I cooed. “I’ve got the good stuff.” I pulled my knapsack out and rummaged around in it, pulling out several bottles and boxes and setting them on the table in search of some of the ibuprofen I’d snagged from Walgreen’s. How much crap did I have in there anyway?

Finally I located some painkillers. I pulled them out and set them down on the table in triumph.

“Here ya go!” Then I noticed the silence as everyone watched Lil examine one of the boxes, pulling out a foil packet with one pill missing. She looked at it, head cocked to one side.

Then she looked at me.

“You drugged my chocolate, didn’t you?” Her voice was eerily calm.

My face said it all.

“Lil—”

“I trusted you.” She picked up her mug, looked at it. “I
trusted
you!”

In a move so sudden no one could have predicted it, she threw the mug at me, the now lukewarm cocoa spraying me in the face right before the mug itself would have hit my nose, had I not gotten a hand up in time to block it.

The impact hurt, but not nearly as much as the blazing hate in Lil’s eyes as she glared at me. Then she shoved back her chair and got to her feet, staring at Nathan and Tony.

“You knew about it too.”

“Lil,” I tried again, “your doctor prescribed this for a reason. You need it.” I looked at her pleadingly. “And we need you.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t need you any more!” She glared around the table at all of us. “None of you!” With that, she grabbed her gear off the pile by the wall and stormed off through the metal door.

The room was dead silent, so to speak. Gentry, JT, Simone, and Nathan all looked sympathetic, while Tony glared into his soup bowl. And Griff? Let’s just say I’d hate to play poker with the man if I had to wager anything important.

Picking up a napkin, I wiped the hot chocolate off my face and neck, closing my eyes and feeling the headache pound in my skull. Then I opened them, picked up the bottle of ibuprofen and dumped four pills into my hand.

“Here,” I said, tossing the bottle to Gentry, who caught it in one deft move. Then I downed the pills with a slug of coffee.

Nathan reached across the table and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Ash, give her some time.” I gave him a tired smile.

“I don’t think that’ll help about now,” I answered. “You saw her face. She hates me.”

“Well, it’s your own damned fault.” Aimee glared at me from across the room.

Oh, gee—thanks for that.

Nathan turned and stared at her. Boy, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the recipient of that look.

Aimee, however, just glared back. Brave soul.

“Lil,” Nathan said, “is bipolar. She is also one of the few people immune to this virus. She’s behaving erratically, and she doesn’t think she needs her meds.” He stood up. “We need her. So why don’t you tell me how you think Ashley was wrong to try and fix this.”