A Plague on All Houses (15 page)

After dinner we had another session of training
vis a vis
watching zombie movies. Tonight's selection included Lucio Fulci's
Zombie
and the rest of the remake of
Dawn of the Dead
, the movie that started the trend of sprinting zombies.

Zombie
was notable both for its zombie-versus-shark action and the propensity of the women to do nothing but throw their heads back and scream when attacked by the zombies.

“This is totally unrealistic,” Lil grumbled. “It's like they
want
to get eaten.”

“Not everyone reacts well under stress,” said Gabriel in his “I am lecturing” tone. “Which is the lesson from this particular film.”

“That, and don't make out in a graveyard,” Lil said with disgust. “I mean, seriously. Who is on the run from zombies and thinks it's a good idea to rest
and
make out in a cemetery?”

“Since only the freshly dead reanimate, it's not as dangerous as it sounds.” That was Simone, sitting in the front row next to Gabriel. Jamie was in her usual place next to the DVD player.

“It would be nice if once in a while it was a
man
who froze,” snapped Kaitlyn. I agreed, but wasn't about to open myself up to another attack from her by saying so.

“Now that
would
be totally unrealistic,” said Kai with what I thought distinct lack of self-preservation considering he was within arms reach of three gun-totin’ women.

We finished
Zombie
and moved on to
Dawn of the Dead
, picking it up from the scene where they first arrive at the mall.

Gabriel paused the movie after the scene in which the young ingénue puts everyone in danger by going after her dog.

“We call this Ripley's Syndrome,” said Gabriel. “If you want to increase your odds of surviving, don't go back for the cat.”

“Well, no shit.” Tony looked scornful. “Who the hell would be that stupid?”

Lots of people,
I thought. I could see myself doing it under the right circumstances. But I didn't say anything.

“And especially this chick,” Tony continued. “I mean, they just proved in the last scene the deadheads aren't interested in eating anything but people, right?”

“It's an emotional reaction,” said Gabriel. “And that sort of emotion-based response can get you and your teammates killed.”

“Heaven forbid anyone have an emotional reaction,” I muttered loudly enough for Gabriel to hear. I had the satisfaction of seeing the muscles in his jaw clench. Score one for me.

Lily raised a tentative hand. Gabriel nodded at her. “Is it true the zombies aren't interested in eating animals, just people?”

“At this juncture the evidence points to a definite preference for humans, but we believe they will eat any warm-blooded creature if nothing else is available.” He resumed the film.

As we watched the very end of the movie while Gabriel lectured us on never assuming the coast is clear without verifying first—as the entire surviving cast gets eaten in the last minute of the film as the end credits roll—I heard a muffled sob. I snuck a sideways glance at Lily as she tried her best to inconspicuously wipe tears from her eyes before they trickled down her face. I didn't have to be a psychic to know what was wrong.

I reached out and squeezed her hand. After a few seconds, she squeezed back.

Lily managed to hold it together for another hour of cinematic intestinal tug-of-war games, but the minute we got back to our room she lost it. Tears came out in loud, gut-wrenching sobs. She cried for so long and so hard, I thought she was going to make herself sick. I sat with her, handing her tissues as needed and pressing a cold washcloth to the back of her neck, until Lil had cried herself out.

“I can't do this, Ashley.” Lil looked at me, eyes puffy, reddened wells of pain. “All I can think about is my babies. They're probably out of food and think I've abandoned them and…” Tears started welling up again.

I took the washcloth and gently blotted Lil's face. “Look. You told me before you'd just bought a bag of food, right? Well, it would take them a while to go through that. And if your roommate left the toilet seat up, they've got water.”

“But what if some of those things got in the apartment?”

I thought about this. “They're cats. Cats are better than any other animal at running and hiding. Zombies are only so smart, right? So even if they
did
get in, odds are your boys are fine.”

“But they're gonna run out of food.” Lil blew her nose again. I handed her a glass of water; she had to be dehydrated about now. “Ashley, I just can't stand thinking about them all alone and wondering where I went. I just can't stand it.”

“So let's go get ‘em.” The words were out of my mouth before I even thought about it.

“You heard Gabriel.” Lil said miserably. “If you want to live, don't go back for the cat.”

I hunkered down in front of Lil's chair and took her hands in mine. “You know what? I think Gabriel's wrong. There's a reason people risk their lives to go after pets in burning houses. Because if they didn't try, they'd never forgive themselves. It's the kind of thing that eats a person alive from the inside out.”

Liy bit her lip. “Do you really believe that?”

“I do.” And I really did, too. “And I see it happening to you. So if you want to go after … Binkey and Noodle?”

“Doodle.”

“If you want to go after Binkey and Doodle, I'm with you.”

For the first time since I met her, Lil's face brightened with something like hope. “Really?”

I nodded. “Yup. The rule should be that if you want to live with yourself, go back for the cat. And if you want to go back for your cat, I'm going with you.”

Lil looked excited and horrified at the same time. “Gabriel's gonna be so pissed if he finds out.”

I laughed. “There are
so
many worse things than Gabriel getting pissed off at us.”
Like getting eaten by zombies,
I thought, but didn't say it out loud. “Besides, if we're careful he won't find out. And if he does find out, what's he gonna do, spank us?”

An unexpectedly mischievous look flashed over Lil's face. “I dunno, that might be kind of fun.”

Yikes. I really hoped Lil was joking, but I was glad I hadn't confided in her. I
tsk'd tsk'd
and shook my head in faux disapproval. “Lil, I am shocked and appalled. Not that I necessarily disagree with you.”

She grinned, but almost immediately resumed her worried expression. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Have you seen
Alien
?”

“No.”

“Once again I am shocked and appalled. Your film education is sadly lacking. But the main point here is that both Ripley and the cat survive.”

* * * *

You'd think it would be difficult to sneak out of an armed and secured facility in the middle of the night, especially armed with a couple of M4s, a pickaxe and several wicked sharp blades. But Lil and I practically walked right out the front door of D. B. Patterson Hall without a peep any sort of armed guards. In fact, we only saw two soldiers walking the perimeter. Guess we'd done a good job of clearing the campus our first time out, which made it
so
much easier to sneak out. It was like breaking curfew, except instead of an overprotective house mother, Lil and I had to worry about trigger-happy soldiers with shoot-to-kill orders and, once we left the safety of Big Red, ravenous zombies.

If we were spotted outright and not mistaken for zoms, I'm sure I could come up with several good cover stories, but why risk the possibility of word getting back to Gabriel and the Powers That Be? Why borrow trouble?

Getting across campus was easy. Once out of sight of DBP we didn't have to worry about questions—any of the few soldiers left would assume we were patrolling. We stuck to the shadows, though, hugging the sides of buildings and using trees and bushes as cover until we reached the Gillette barricade at the point where it butted up against the parking lot in back of the gymnasium. There weren't enough healthy soldiers to patrol the entire perimeter twenty-four/seven so it was just a matter of waiting until the lone soldier making his rounds on this side of campus moved out of sight.

We hunkered down in between the gymnasium and the box-hedge lining the back of the building.

“How are we gonna get over the barricade?” whispered Lil.

I scanned the area, my attention honing in on a big ass SUV near the edge. “There. Easy peasy if we use that Ford Expedition as our launching point.”

“What about the razor wire?”

I shrugged. “How far can you jump?”

Lil nodded. “What about when we come back?”

I pulled a pair of wire cutters out of my belt pouch. “Last resort. I'm hoping we can snag some heavyweight gloves at the hardware store and pull it out of the way, but if not…” I shoved the wire cutters back in the pouch.

“Gabriel's really gonna kill us if we screw with the barricade.”

I couldn't argue with that. “Last resort, I promise.” We waited for a few minutes and watched the soldier patrol the barricade until he vanished out of sight around the other side of the gym. I smacked Lil on the arm. “This is it. Let's go.”

Still keeping low to the ground, we dodged around the parked cars until we made it to the Explorer. I clambered up first, holding out a hand to hoist Lil up next to me. We paused for a minute, crouched low on the hood of the vehicle, making sure the soldier on patrol wasn't coming back any time soon. When the coast was definitely clear, we both clambered up to the roof of the SUV and surveyed the situation.

The foam barricade was about six feet tall and five feet wide at the base, tapering down to three feet at the top. We'd have to jump from the SUV to the top of the foam barricade. Easy enough.

Glancing around once last time to make sure the soldier hadn't doubled back, I took an easy leap from the SUV onto the hardened foam, my boots finding good traction on its rubbery surface. Lil joined me a few seconds later, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet like a kid on a trampoline.

“This stuff is awesome.” She gave another experimental bounce. “Kind of like Silly Putty.”

It
was
kind of awesome, seeing as it started as foam and turned into a relatively sturdy barricade, but we didn't have time to admire it. I shook my head impatiently. “We can imprint comic strips on it later, okay? Let's just do this.”

Lil obediently stopped her bouncing and joined me at the edge of the barrier. We stared at the distance between our current vantage point and the open ground on the other side of the slinky. There looked to be about two feet between the razor wire slinky and the foam. The slinky itself was about four feet tall and maybe three feet in width. So, about five feet between us and safety.

I suppose safe could be deemed relative considering the zombies on the other side. Not as many were swarming the walls—our sharpshooters were good at staying out of sight and inflicting maximum damage on our necrotic enemy—but there were still at least a few dozen staggering through the field towards the parking lot. Nothing Lil and I couldn't easily dodge or dispatch, but we needed to make our jump and get our feet firmly beneath us before any of them reached the barricade.

To do this would require us to vault five feet over the wire from a standing position and land cleanly on the ground. At least we were jumping down and over as opposed to having to clear the wire at equal height or worse. And the ground on the other side of the slinky was soft.

“I've always hated the standing broad jump,” I muttered, trying not to think what would happen if either of us got hung up on the razor wire.

Lil nodded solemnly. “If we miss, it's gonna hurt. A lot.”

I took a deep breath. “Then we won't miss.” I flexed my knees once, twice. Swung my arms back and forth a few times, then positioned myself at the very edge of the wall. “Remember, think forward, not upward. Ready?”

Lil nodded and stood next to me.

“One. Two. Three…” We bent our knees and swung our arms on each count, revving up for the jump. “
Go
!”

We flew through the air together, arms pinwheeling to give us more forward momentum like some sort of half-assed version of Butch and Sundance's famous leap off the cliff. I landed on the ground with a bone-jarring thud, hitting feet first with bent knees. My teeth snapped together and I felt the shock up through my feet and ankles and into my knees. But I cleared the Slinky of Death. So did Lil, who landed right next to me.

Straightening up, I held out a hand and pulled Lil to her feet. “Let's go get those cats of yours.”

Moans began rising from the fields and the woods beyond as wandering zombies noticed free-range humans in the vicinity. “And let's get out of here before we get shot by mistake.”

Lil nodded her agreement and we took off through the field towards the tree line and the road connecting the college to Redwood Grove.

We kept our firearms holstered, not wanting to attract the attention of the soldiers with the sound of gunfire if we could help it. Instead I carried my primary blade and Lil had her pickaxe at the ready. We weren't out to kill every zombie we saw between Big Red and the town, but if we took a few down along the way, we wouldn't have to take them out later, right?

A fleshy female, wearing the tattered remnants of criminally tight jeans and a tank top several sizes too small, staggered towards us, looking like an undead example of the “People of Walmart” website. She stunk. I mean, we're talking ripe, Senior. I realized I'd forgotten my nose plugs.

Well, crap.

I glanced over at Lil, who looked as if she'd just smelled the world's worst fart. Yup, she'd left her nose plugs behind too.

“I won't puke if you won't,” I said.

She nodded, a stoic expression on her face. “Can I kill it?”

“Be my guest.”

Lil raised her pickaxe and slammed the pointy end down into the zombie's head before it could take another step in our direction.

Splat.

Placing one booted foot against the zom's shoulder, Lil gave a heave and extracted her pickaxe with an unpleasant suction sound. Maybe it was just my imagination, but the smell seemed even worse after that.