Plague Town (18 page)

I’d heard the words before, but just among many clichés uttered by macho characters in any one of dozens of movies, good and bad. Pretty straightforward.

But until you’ve actually spent time actively seeking out an enemy for the express purpose of killing them, you cant really understand what they mean. After an hour of splattering brains and the vile black sludge over an ever-shrinking spiral around Big Red campus, the true meaning of
search and destroy
was embedded in my soul.

And as I was putting a bullet through the brain of a guy who used to sit next to me in History 109A—“Race Gender, and Power in the Antebellum South”—it hit me.

I’m not afraid!

Terror had vanished in a mind-numbing routine of violence. I kept telling myself our targets were no longer human, that their souls or whatever gave them humanity were long gone. Every time more than one of the things converged on a member of the team, the rest were there to take it down. I’m not saying it was a walk in the park—in fact, it was totally gross. But the fear of dying evaporated as the hunt continued, and the zom body count rose.

“To your right!”

Kai’s shout alerted me to a female zombie lurching out
from the shadows of the Fine Arts building. Remnants of a bubblegum pink “Juicy” tracksuit hung from its rotting body.

The zombie was juicy, all right, but not in a good way. Its pink-tipped nails raked harmlessly across my armor-protected bicep and I promptly kicked its legs out from underneath it, sending it to the ground. Before I could deliver the killing thrust, something swooshed by me in a rush of air and crunched into the zombie’s skull with lethal impact.

Lily grinned at me, a wild light in her eyes, turning a wholesome prettiness into kind of a scary beauty. Like, imagine Melanie Wilkes from
Gone With the Wind
, but possessed by Kali.

“I’ve always hated those stupid Juicy clothes,” she said, an edge to her voice. “I mean, who wants to have ‘Juicy’ stamped across their butt? That’s just kind of gross. I mean, right?”

“Totally,” I agreed, conveniently forgetting the fact I had a favorite pair of teal Juicy sweats in my closet.

A yell brought our attention back as Kai was attacked by three ex-jock zombies that must have come staggering around the corner of the gymnasium, football uniforms still intact.

Shit.
The helmets were going to make it hard to take out their brains.

All three of them piled on him as if he were about to score a touchdown for the opposing team. Kai went down with another yell and a bone-jarring thud, his crowbar falling uselessly to the sidewalk.

Gabriel was already out of sight. Lily and I glanced at each other, shrugged, and dove in, each of us grabbing one of the jock zombies and peeling him off. My zombie snapped at me, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t still have a mouth guard in there. Between that and the facemask, no way this dude was taking a bite out of anyone.

Its grip, however, still showed some of the strength it
had possessed in life—enough to rip off one of my arms if I didn’t take it down quickly.

Fine.

At such close quarters, I had to use my shortened katana to whack my opponent. As I did so, I discovered that it takes a lot of
oomph
to decapitate a human, even for a wild card.

Lily, in the meantime, used the sharp edge of her pickaxe to crack her jock-zom’s helmet open like a hard-boiled egg. As it fell away, she flipped the weapon over in her hand and brought the pick down to penetrate the brain. The blow took the zombie to the ground, and Lily braced a foot against its shoulder, pulling the point out. She used it again on the still-wriggling corpse to make sure she’d finished the job.

This left a beefy zombie still pinning Kai to the ground, its face buried in his neck. Kai was hollering at the top of his lungs. Lily and I each grabbed the zom by a shoulder and hauled it backward. Shoulder pads make for great leverage.

Between the two of us, we threw it on its back where it thrashed like an upended turtle. I reached down and gave Kai an arm up while Lily dispatched what I think was once Big Red’s star fullback.

“Thanks, Ash.” Kai looked a little shaken. He ran a hand over his neck and grimaced. “Zombie drool. Ah, that’s just nasty.”

“Big wuss,” Lily said as she pulled her weapon out of the latest kill.

So much for my shy roomy
, I thought.

Kai looked offended.

“
You
say that after one of these pus bags macks down all over
your
neck, Miss Thing.”

Lily wrinkled her nose at him, wiping the business end of her weapon on the zombie’s team jersey.

“Couldn’t be any grosser than my first boyfriend,” she replied.

Kai shook his head and patted her on the back.

“Girl, that is just sad.”

The walkie-talkie at my belt gave a sudden squawk.

“
Ashley?”

Gabriel. I grabbed the walkie-talkie and hit the relay button.

“Here, Red Leader!” Was I supposed to say
over
, or something official like that?

“Where the hell are you and the rest of the squad?”

“Peeling what’s left of Big Red’s forward offense off of Kai.”

“He okay?”

I nodded, then realized he wouldn’t see it.

“Yeah,” I replied. “We’re all fine.”

“Good. Then get your asses over to the Biology building,
stat
.”

I couldn’t resist it.

“Just our asses?”

I heard a snort, or maybe just a burst of static. Turning, I smirked at the rest of Team A.

“Our fearless leader wants us to join him.
Stat
, he says.”

Kai shrugged.

“Gabriel wants stat, we give him stat.”

The three of us took off at a run, rounding the corner to spot Gabriel waiting under a light at the entrance to the Biology building, M-4 in hand. As we drew closer, he nodded toward the doors.

“I heard screams inside.”

“Survivors?” I looked up at the building, its featureless institutional windows dark and foreboding.

“We can hope so,” he replied. “It would be much safer to tackle this in the daytime, but if we wait that long—”

“It might be too late,” Lily broke in.

Gabriel nodded again.

“You guys up for this?”

A muffled cry came from inside, frantic and hopeless at the same time.

“Let’s go,” I said, and I ran through the doors almost before Gabriel pushed them open. He grabbed my shoulder as I moved past, jerking me to a halt.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he growled. “Use your flashlight until your eyes adjust to the dark.”

I stopped and pulled a small olive-drab LED flashlight out of my belt pouch. I hit the ‘on’ switch and a surprisingly bright blue light emanated from the head. What it revealed wasn’t good.

Blood, lots of it, smeared the floor and the walls of the main hallway. Bits and pieces of stuff I didn’t even want to think about.

“Oh, god, please help me!” A female voice with the same notes of frantic despair as the previous cry carried down a flight of stairs off the main hallway.

“We’re coming!” I screamed the words at the top of my lungs, hoping the zombies would be drawn by the sound of fresh meat. Moans answered me.

Hot diggity,
I thought.
It worked.

I took off toward the stairs seconds before Gabriel’s “GO!” echoed through the hall. I’d probably catch hell for it later, but, oh well.

Skidding on a patch of blood or something even worse, I nearly slid past the stairs. Catching myself on the polished brass banister, I took the steps two at a time.
The reassuring thuds of footsteps clattered close behind.

The moans increased in volume. I saw why as soon as I hit the second floor hall. If not quite seething with zombies it was, at the very least, crawling with them. In some cases quite literally—there were a few partials with entrails and shattered limbs trailing behind them as they dragged themselves along the tiled floor. Looking at what oozed out, I was profoundly grateful for my nose plugs.

They were gathered at the far end of the hallway. At least half of the things focused on me, already following the sound of my voice. The other half gathered around a closed door, scratching, pounding, clawing in a frenzied yet single-minded effort to get to their prey.

Even at that distance, I could hear sobbing coming from behind the door—uncontrollable wrenching sobs from someone fully expecting the worst.

Time to improve her expectations.
Waving my flashlight I shouted.

“Hey! Dead things!” Okay, so my witty repartee was kind of lame. “Over here! Free dinner this way!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Kai reached the top of the stairs just in time to hear my attempts at zombie whispering.

“Drawing them away from that room so we can kill them and rescue whoever’s inside.”

“How about we kill them while their attention’s on the door?”

Oh. Yeah.

Lily and Gabriel joined us.

“He has a point,” Gabriel said neutrally.

Lily snorted, almost dislodging her nose plugs.

“What fun is that?” she countered. I couldn’t decide if I should be proud of her, or worry about her. I chalked it up to the adrenaline rush.

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

“I can see that I’ll have to keep you two separated.”

Lil and I grinned at each other.

“Fine,” he continued. “Let’s clear the hall.”

We started to charge forward, but Gabriel stepped in front of us.

“Let me begin.” Raising his M-4, he opened fire with a precision I could only admire. There were no wasted shots; each bullet hit its target. When he finally ceased fire, the hall was littered with twice-dead corpses.

We stared silently at the carnage.

“Wow,” Kai said.

Lily pouted.

“You didn’t save any for us.”

Okay, maybe a little too much adrenaline.

Gabriel shot her a look.

“There’ll be plenty more.” He turned to me. “Ashley, you and I will see who’s behind the door. Lily, Kai, check the unlocked rooms. We might as well clear the entire floor while we’re here.”

Lily ran down the far end of the hall with a little war whoop while Kai made his way in the opposite direction with a bit more stealth. Gabriel and I approached the door that had been under siege, shoving corpses out of the way to clear a path.

I tried not to look at any of the faces of the fallen zombies. Seeing former classmates or teachers would make it that much harder. Maybe I was just tired, but I could feel myself losing my much-needed detachment.

“Thanks,” I said to Gabriel as we muscled aside a particularly hefty male zombie wearing a
Simpsons
T-shirt.

“For what?”

“Taking care of this batch. I think I’m on overload here.”

Gabriel nodded.

“I understand,” he said. “But we’re not finished yet. I mean tonight.”

“I get that.” I broke eye contact. The intensity in his
gaze flustered me, and that was the last thing I needed in this situation. Getting back to the business at hand, I rapped on the door.

“Hello?”

Silence, then a muffled whimper.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s safe now. You can open the door.”

Another pause.

“They’ll get me.” The voice was feminine, barely above a whisper.

I shook my head, then stopped. Not like the person could see me.

“No, they won’t,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “We killed them.”

“But—” There was infinite horror in her next words. “But they’re
already
dead.”

I shivered despite the warmth of my armor and the adrenaline coursing through my system. She was right. These things went against all known laws of nature.

I shook my head again—this time mentally.

Enough of that shit
, I told myself.
Job to do, right?

“I know,” I said. “But now they’re
really
dead. We shot them in the head.” I hoped that was reassuring, but as soon as I said it, I wasn’t so sure. “And we’ll protect you,” I added.

“Promise?”

“You bet.”

I heard the rasp of metal on metal, and then the door slowly opened outward. I moved one of the bodies to allow it to do so, then angled my flashlight so the beam wouldn’t shine directly on the face of the person timidly emerging from what looked like a large storage closet.

Our rescue-ee appeared to be middle-aged, probably a teacher, dressed in the remnants of what was once a sensible dark jacket with matching skirt and a light-colored blouse, now ripped in places and spattered with blood.

She took a tentative step outside of the closet, legs so
wobbly she nearly fell. I shouldered my M-4 and held out an arm to give her support.

“Thank you.” Her voice was raspy, probably ripped raw from screaming, but the depth of her gratitude came through loud and clear. I don’t think she was just thanking me for the arm to lean on.

“Are you all right?”
Okay, stupid question.
“I mean, did any of them bite or scratch you?”

She shook her head.

“No... at least, I don’t think so.”

“Ashley, check her for open wounds.” Gabriel stepped toward the woman, and spoke directly to her. “You don’t want to get any blood near your mouth, nose, or eyes, either. It’s infected with a virus.”

I did a quick scan of all exposed flesh. Given the circumstances, I wasn’t going to ask her to strip.

“She looks clean.” I said, then I looked her in the eye. “How long have you been up here?” I asked gently.

“Two... no, three days.”

“In this closet?” That triggered my borderline claustrophobia, and the thought horrified me.

She shook her head.

“I was hiding in one of the classrooms with a fellow teacher, Professor Gough,” she said. “We found a couple of energy bars and a bottle of water in the podium, but it wasn’t enough. They—” She made a vague gesture toward the bodies. “They’d stopped moaning and clawing at the classroom door. Something else had caught their attention.”

Her voice became almost eerily calm.

“We thought it would be safe to try and reach one of the bathrooms, get some water. We were so thirsty...” She swallowed. It looked like it hurt. “We made it to the men’s room, but there were more of those things inside. They grabbed Professor Gough before he could even scream.