Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) (11 page)

“So you two are volunteering at the game park?”

Eric nodded. “We’ll be working primarily at the cheetah conservation research center.”

Johan nodded wisely. “Ah, for the Cat Lady.”

“You know her?” Nancy leaned forward between the two front seats.

“Oh, yes,” Johan said. “If you work for her, you will have less trouble with Debswana security. Everyone at the mine knows the Cat Lady.”

“Is the security that strict?”

“Oh, yes,” Johan said again. “Remember that you are dealing with the richest diamond mine in Botswana. There is more than one reason they surround themselves with a game park.”

“Anything else we should know?” Nancy asked.

Johan pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“The phrase ‘just now’ means ‘I will do it later.’ And ‘now now’ means ‘I will get to it right now.’ He fell silent long enough to swerve around a small but fierce dust devil speeding across the road, then continued, “And remember that superstitions are very real to the people here.” He reached out a hand and tapped Eric’s blue-framed sunglasses. “These? They may scare some people. That could be good though. You will keep them off guard.”

Another hour passed in relative silence. Nancy dozed in the back and Eric watched the passing scenery while Johan drove. The landscape was relentlessly flat. Most of the towns they passed seemed to be abandoned.

Nancy woke up long enough to say, “I really need to pee.”

Johan and Eric exchanged looks in a moment of male solidarity.

“Hon, I don’t think we’re gonna find any rest stops along the way.”

Nancy shrugged. “Just find me something I can duck behind so I don’t offend the donkeys.”

“That I can do,” Johan said. “A few more miles and there is another village. It’s one of the dead ones, so no one will bother you.”

One of the dead ones.

There was a phrase made for nightmares.

* * *

True to his word, Johan pulled off the road next to a small village consisting of clay huts topped with cone-shaped thatch roofs. No one stirred as the 4X4 came to a halt next to a cemetery with the same fenced in graves. It stretched back a few hundred feet, the back obscured by a couple of baobab trees.

Nancy hopped out of the back seat, wilting visibly as the full strength of the African sun beat down on her head. She reached back inside and grabbed her Aussie hat, then disappeared between two of the huts to do her business.

Eric opened the passenger door and stepped out to stretch his legs. They still had another hour or so on the road before they reached the game park. As hot as the interior of the car had been, it was nothing compared to the oven-like heat outside. It rose from the ground and blazed down from the sky. Sweat instantly appeared on his back and brow, then dried just as quickly. He drank more water, deeply aware that to be out here without it was almost certainly a death sentence.

Johan joined him, lighting up a cigarette as he leaned against the vehicle, seemingly impervious to the heat. Eric’s gaze meandered over the cemetery. He was fascinated by the structures and wondering how far the natives who’d built it had to go to get the iron bars that walled in the individual plots. Certainly far enough to be a hassle, not to mention expensive.

They must really have wanted to protect their dead or—

Eric put a hand above his eyes to cut down the glare from the sun.

“I thought you said this place was dead.” He pointed past the baobab trees into the back end of the graveyard. Unless he was seeing his first mirage, there were at least two people wandering around back there, maybe more.

Johan glanced in that direction. He frowned, and then shrugged.

“Looks like someone has moved back, perhaps.”

“What are they doing?”

“Tending the graves, perhaps.” He took a drag on his cigarette.

At that moment Nancy screamed.

Eric took off running without a second thought. Nancy
never
screamed. She was the most unflappable woman he’d ever met, dealing with dangerous situations, injury and illness with a calm competence that a battlefield medic would envy.

He reached the first two huts, almost colliding with her as she pelted around the corner, her face chalk-white under its dusting of freckles. Eric grabbed her by the shoulders to steady her.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. We need to go.”

“But—”

“Now,
Eric!” Nancy dislodged his hands from her shoulders, and curled her fingers around one of his wrists in a vice-like grip, pulling him along as she headed for the car.

“What—”

Nancy shook her head. “No time!”

A guttural sound of agony ripped through the air.

Eric and Nancy skidded to a stop.

Johan squirmed on the ground next to the 4X4, three badly emaciated figures in ragged native garb kneeling next to him. They were ripping pieces out of his body with fingers that looked more like bony talons. Talons dripping with blood and pieces of Johan’s flesh.

Johan howled as one of the creatures—they couldn’t be human, could they?—dug a hand deep into his stomach. All Eric could think as he watched their driver’s intestines being pulled out inch by agonizing inch was that special effects had nothing on real life.

A puff of wind brought a rich, foul smell of fecal matter and blood wafting on the air. Eric gagged, trying not to throw up. Then the sound of slow, relentless footsteps behind them made it easier for him to keep his gorge down.

Two more of the rotting figures approached them, eyes filmed over a milky white—corpse eyes, mouths opening and closing with never-ending hunger.

“Run,” Nancy said.

She yanked on his arm and headed straight for the 4X4, evading one of the kneeling corpses as it reached for her, and dodging around the rear of the vehicle to the passenger’s side. Several other walking horrors approached from the opposite side of the road, their gait slow and implacable.

Nancy threw open the front door and scrambled across the passenger’s seat to the driver’s side, slamming the locks shut on the door as one of the corpses, blood and gore dripping from its mouth, staggered to its feet and splatted its hands against the window.

Eric leaped into the shotgun seat, closing the door and hitting the lock as Nancy turned the keys that were dangling in the ignition. She revved the motor, and hit the gas. The 4X4 fishtailed briefly before its tires gripped the road.

“What the fuck!” Eric said. He looked back at the rapidly receding village, where some of the figures still clustered around Johan while others staggered to the road and began following their vehicle.

“We’ll go to the game preserve,” Nancy said with almost unnatural calm. “The diamond mine. They’ll have good security. We can ride this out.”

“Ride
what
out?” Eric slammed his fist against the dashboard in frustration and horror. “What the fuck is going on?”

Nancy just kept driving.

Whupwhupwhupwhup…

Ugh, I hated that noise. It meant I was in the air, enclosed in a small, noisy, flying metal coffin that could malfunction at any moment. Planes were bad enough, but helicopters just sucked. Carl was a good pilot, but being in one made my stomach unhappy, and I so did not wanna barf again this month.

Seriously, right before the zombie plague hit I’d had a horrible case of food poisoning caused by bad sushi, then been hit with Walker’s flu. Got chomped by a couple of zombies, and then topped it off by wading into all manner of blood, viscera, and tragedy. And, oh yeah, a helicopter crash.

Maybe I should buy stock in Dramamine.

I snuck a glance at Lil, sitting quietly next to a window and staring out at the passing landscape as the sun rose. It was a stark contrast to her almost manic excitement on the helicopter trip from Redwood grove to San Francisco. The circles under her eyes weren’t quite as extreme as they’d been yesterday, though. Just being up and active seemed to have helped her.

At least this was a larger helicopter than the one we’d taken coming in. It had to be, in order to hold the ten of us plus the flight crew. A female mechanic had replaced poor Red. I didn’t know her name, and had to stop myself from thinking of her as our token red shirt.

When we got to the roof the sky was clear, and there were two helicopters. But we all crammed into one. Both choppers took off and headed south. All smoke and mirrors.

It’s not paranoia when someone’s trying to kill you.

We were all in our matching SWAT chic of black BDUs, long-sleeved fire-retardant shirts, lace-up boots, and assorted Kevlar pieces to cover our vulnerable bits, although JT had made some modifications to accommodate the mobility he needed for his particular skills. He had shoes with flexible soles and a good grip on the bottom, and nothing that restricted his joints.

We also toted our weapons of choice, the trusty M4s plus the new “squirrel rifles” as Tony called them. The AM15s were stubby green autos similar to the M4, but they fired much smaller rounds—a shitload of ’em, too, courtesy of that big spinning drum thingee on the top. It was an interesting weapon, quiet as a pellet gun, no recoil or over-penetration. Yet if you had it on full auto, a tight string could cut a zombie in half like a laser.

I preferred the M4, probably because it was familiar, but the squirrel rifles were great when you had to worry about infectious splatter, or a round going through a rotting skull and into an innocent bystander.

Tony had his BAS (Big Ass Shotgun), which spent most of its time in a holster slung across his back. It was a special weapon for special occasions. Somewhat surprisingly, Tony used it wisely.

Our helicopter veered southwest toward the ocean and the Outer Sunset neighborhood. I watched through the window as zombies lurched their way up and down the streets. Outer Sunset was laid out pretty much in a grid, with numerical streets running north-south and alphabetical streets running east-west. There were no Victorian Painted Ladies out here. The neighborhood once called the Outside Lands—and didn’t that just smack of Lovecraft—had been one of the last to be built on top of what were mainly sand dunes. The houses and apartments were, for the most part, painted in pastel colors, eschewing the gilt-edged purples, greens, and blues. I remembered reading somewhere that a paint job for one of the Victorians could cost upward of a hundred thousand dollars.

If I lived near the beach I’d opt for pastels too.

We headed toward 40th and Taravel. There was a Walgreen’s on one of the corners that would have Lil’s meds. All part of Simone and Nathan’s plan to further befuddle anyone who might be aiming to sabotage us on our way to San Diego. It was a good plan, other than the fact that we couldn’t let Lil know why we were there.

She’d go ballistic. Luckily we had a need-to-know cover story for our cover story.

Can you say “convoluted,” children?

I thought you could.

* * *

As we flew further west, the clear weather vanished, starting with wisps of flog floating through the air before the helicopter hit a wall of gray mist. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite thick enough to block the view below so I could still see that the streets were crawling with the undead. I saw a few people on rooftops, too, huddled together for warmth.

Some of them saw the helicopter flying above and waved frantically, hoping for rescue. It sucked that we couldn’t help them. But if I thought about all the people we couldn’t save, it would paralyze me.

So I shut my eyes, and tried not to think.

Fingers squeezed my hand. I opened my eyes and looked over at Lil, who’d crept next to me and took my hand in hers. She looked up with a shy smile.

“Hi,” I said softly as she rested her head against my arm.

“Hi.”

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. Are you?”

I thought about the people down below, hoping for help that wouldn’t be forthcoming.

And then I lied.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

Lil shook her head. “No, you’re not. But you will be, once we get Gabriel back.”

I gave her a one-armed hug. “You are wise beyond your years, Padawan.”

She sat quietly for a moment, still leaning against me. I felt like I had a feral kitten curled up next to me—one that wanted affection, but any false move would send it skittering away.

“It’s like the animals,” Lil said. “We can’t save all of them, can we?”

“No,” I said, giving a heartfelt sigh. “We can’t.”

Lil gave me a sudden squeeze and looked up at me, her expression fierce.

“You helped me get Binkey and Doodle back. I’ll help you get Gabriel back.”

“Hopefully he won’t make as much noise as they did,” Nathan commented from two seats over. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sounds of the helicopter.

Damn.
He had good hearing even for a wild card. He was right, though. Binkey and Doodle had howled enough to wake the dead when we’d tried to quietly smuggle them out of Lil’s old apartment.

Lil grinned. “If he does, then it’s a good thing we have you here to help us again.”

“Just no more cats,” Nathan said firmly. He winked at me before shutting his eyes and feigning sleep.

“Do you think G will take good care of them?” Lil bit her bottom lip and frowned. “He seems awfully…” She paused, looking for the right word.

“Anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive, and a neat freak?”

Lil grinned. “Uh-huh.”

“I think he’ll be on the job,” I said, and I meant it. G seemed like a man of his word, and he’d promised Simone he would look after Binkey and Doodle during our absence. That made it even more of a certainty.

“Cats are clean,” he’d said, clutching a bottle of hand sanitizer. “They wash a lot.” I just hoped he could handle cat box duty. Both Binkey and Doodle laid down some major paint-peelers.