Plague Nation (21 page)

“Then there’s the question of over-penetration. On a really ripe biter, your M4 round won’t find much to slow it down. It’ll punch through and keep right on going. Not a bad thing, unless you have a team member or civilian on the move somewhere behind them. That’s a lot more likely to happen in densely populated territory, and a risk we don’t want to take.”

He reached into his duffle bag again and extracted a toy-like rifle in a jaunty shade of metallic royal blue, something I’d expect a Spy Kid to use.

“This is a Marlin Papoose bolt-action rifle.”

“It’s so cute!” Jamie exclaimed. “Does it come in pink?”

You could practically hear people rolling their eyes— I’m pretty sure mine creaked—but Nathan actually grinned as he replied.

“As a matter of fact, one of my teammates back in the day bought one with a pink stock for his niece’s tenth birthday.”

Jamie beamed.

Tony gave a derisive snort.

“You gotta be kidding,” he said. “You want us to take out zombies with a squirrel rifle?”

Normally his attitude would make me want to slap him, but considering that this was the first voluntary social interaction he’d offered since Kai’s death, I didn’t say a word.

Nathan ignored Tony and shot the other zombie in the head. The rifle made a small pop, nothing near as loud as the M4. Nothing splattered, but the zombie went limp.

Nathan set the rifle down on the table.

“Here’s the point, ladies and gentlemen. The M4 is a superior battlefield weapon under normal circumstances. You’ve proven that. But sometimes you have to tailor the weapon to the war.”

He rummaged in the bag and pulled out a small round.

“This is a .22 Long Rifle cartridge. They are small, underpowered, short range. Mostly good for plinking cans in the back yard. But depending on the circumstances, that may be all you need. A .22 has power to breach the skull, but not enough to exit. The flesh may have deteriorated, but the bone will be intact.”

“So no potentially infected splatter, right?” Jamie said, sounding entirely too perky.

Nathan gave her a nod of approval.

“Exactly.”

Teacher’s pet,
I mouthed to Lil.

“A well-placed round to the frontal cortex will do the job—if in doubt, make it two. There is negligible recoil, so it’s easy to keep on target, and it won’t punish your shoulder over an extended firefight. They’re small, so you can carry several thousand rounds in place of a few hundred for the M4. If you’re stuck in the field and can’t get back to base, chances are you can find reloads at department stores, sporting goods shops, hardware stores. hell, in some towns, even drugstores carry ’em.”

“Not in San Francisco,” I said mildly.

Gentry laughed. “I’m surprised you can buy knives in San Francisco.”

“Only if they’re organic, grass-fed, and sustainable,” Mack said, eliciting a rare guffaw from Tony. That made Mack beam, considering how few and far between any response had been in the last couple of days.

“So,” Tony said, “if we’re really gonna use these pop guns in San Fran, does mine have to be blue?”

“No.” This time Nathan’s magic duffle bag produced a stubby rifle with a thick barrel and an odd drumshaped thingee mounted horizontally on top. “It’ll come in OD Green, and a slightly different model.” He hefted the rifle.

“This is an AM15. Basically your standard-issue full-auto M16, but with an aftermarket receiver that takes pan magazines for an American 180 submachine gun.”

Okay, this was turning into way more info than my brain could process. Nathan’s words were starting to blend into “blah blahblah ammo. Blahblahblahsplooshy blood and gore.” At this point, I was ready to stand up and go all Vasquez with, “Look, man. I only need to know one thing...”

“We’ve added a standard red dot scope, and a full-auto-grade suppressor,” Nathan added.

“A suppressor is like a silencer, right?” Jamie chimed in. Miss Hot Topic was turning out to be a combination Ms. NRA and a Hermione for the Zombocalypse.

“That’s right,” Nathan nodded. “No sense ringing the dinner bell if you don’t have to. With this you can slip in, drop your targets, and get out before they know it.”

“What’s that little drum thingee on top?” I asked, figuring I should at least pretend to show an interest.

“That’s the pan magazine. The .22 rounds are loaded into a spiral, and.”

I tuned out again.
Blahblahblah, Ginger.

“It still looks like a squirrel gun,” Tony muttered.

Nathan raised an eyebrow and gave a little sigh. Then he did something to the gun and fired a round into the closest zombie’s hoodied head. The only sound was a click followed by the tinkle of a casing falling to the ground. The hood moved slightly, but that was it. Nathan fired three more rounds in quick succession, the sound reminiscent of a kid’s pellet gun. Then he did something to make the drum-shaped magazine start to whirl, accompanied by a slight chattering sound.

I wasn’t particularly impressed until I noticed the storm of tiny rounds chewing a fist-sized hole in the zombie’s chest, followed by a steady stitch of ammo fired into one hip to the other. Then he nudged the body with his foot and it separated into two gooey pieces.

“Any questions?” he asked.

Tony stood up and started to raise his hand. Without even glancing in his direction, Nathan continued, “And if anyone asks how they can get out of this chickenshit outfit, rest assured, I will give them an answer they will not enjoy.”

Tony sat back down. Gentry looked over at me, and we both grinned.

Nathan continued.

“Each of you will be issued a rifle and six magazines to supplement your other weaponry. The casings will eject out the empty magazine, but do
not
discard your empties if you can help it; supply is limited for the moment. You’ll also get a Ruger Mark III pistol in the same caliber, also suppressed. Consider it a stocking stuffer.”

Pleasepleaseplease, no more gun talk.

“And—”

Damn.

“—we’ll want a heavy gunner as backup, so—” Nathan nodded at Gentry, who reached down and pulled up a big-ass shotgun. “We’ll be sending out two AA-12 full-auto shotguns.” He gave another nod. Gentry grinned and handed the shotgun to Tony.

“Wow.” Tony lit up like a pinball machine as he hefted the weapon.

“This puppy fires over three hundred rounds a minute, and has minimum recoil,” Gentry told him.

“So we don’t get to see Tony knocked back on his ass every time he fires it?” I smiled sweetly as Tony shot me the finger, no doubt also remembering his epic moment in our first firearms training session.

“Not unless he’s a lot wussier than he looks,” Gentry said with a straight face.

Lil pouted.

“How come Tony gets to use it?”

Nathan grinned.

“Because it fits him. Don’t you think?”

We all looked at Tony as he posed with his new toy, looking more alive than I’d seen him since Kai’s death.

Mack shrugged.

“When you’re right, you’re right.”

“Oh my god, there’s another one...”

Steph pointed across the street to yet another family consisting of Dad in a white short-sleeved dress shirt, slacks and a truly hideous yellow-gold tie, Mom with teased hair, heavy makeup, and a long shapeless skirt, blouse and cardigan, and multiple matching blond rug rats—in this case, six
—
scampering at their side.

Jeff gave a bark of laughter.

“Do they grown them in vats or what around here?” He shook his head. “I swear, this is either total inbreeding, or we’ve seem the same damn family a half dozen times today. It’s like
Children of the Damned,
but all smiling and shit.”

“And without the glowing eyes.”

Steph snickered and pointed again, this time over toward the entrance of the Temple Gardens, where another almost identical family was walking down the sidewalk.

“I’m voting for cloning vats,” she said.

Jeff laughed, the sound merging into a wracking cough. He’d been feeling punk since they’d landed in Salt Lake City for World Horror Con. It seemed like at least half the other attendees were coming down with the same bug. Steph seemed to have avoided it, probably because she carried a bottle of hand sanitizer and used it liberally.

Jeff’s approach involved the judicious internal applications of booze, bought at the State-run liquor store a few blocks from the hotel, but after a while, even that hadn’t helped. He looked almost jaundiced now.

“You okay, hon?”

“I’ll live. But some coffee wouldn’t hurt.”

Steph consulted the little guidebook she’d grabbed from the hotel concierge desk.

“City Creek Mall is right down the street. It’s a mall, so they’ll have to have a Starbucks or something, right?”

Wrong.

After walking up and down the length of a very pretty outdoor mall with an abundance of fountains and a man-made “river” running the length of it, they’d found a specialty tea store, but no coffee shops. They’d gotten a lot of stares from the conservatively dressed crowds, though. Salt Lake City didn’t seem to have a lot of Steampunk fashionistas.

“I guess coffee qualifies as a Big Bad right up there with alcohol, here in Mormon Land.”

“Yeah.” Jeff coughed again, a wave of weakness washing over him. Steph eyed him with concern.

“You look kind of like hammered shit, baby. I think you might have jaundice.”

“No way.”

“Seriously. The whites of your eyes aren’t white. They’re, like, Simpson yellow.”

Jeff laughed.

“And this, Steph, is but one reason why I worship you above all other women.”

Steph smiled smugly. They really were a match made in geek heaven. But she’d known that the night she’d gone to the premiere of
Serenity,
all dolled up in a painstaking recreation of one of Inara’s outfits. She’d seen Jeff standing in line, resplendent in his brown coat, slightly skinny for Mal Reynolds. But then again, Steph herself was on the voluptuous side, especially when compared to Morena Baccarin.

They’d both captured the spirit of the characters, and more importantly, there had been fucking
fantastic
chemistry between them.

Jeff coughed again, spasms wracking his body.

“I need to sit for a sec, okay?”

Steph rubbed the back of his neck as they found a bench across from a fountain. This one was level with the ground, with a dozen or so jets that randomly sent sprays of water straight into the air. A little boy, maybe three years old, was having the time of his life playing chicken with the geysers. When the water missed him, he did a little victory dance. When it hit him, he giggled with delight.

“Isn’t he cute?” Steph smiled.

Jeff didn’t answer.

“You okay, baby?” Steph glanced over at him, then gasped in shock.

Dark fluid ran out of his mouth, while his eyes leaked tears of blood. His body spasmed, and a gout of foul smelling fluid spewed from between his lips.

Steph screamed, leaping to her feet as Jeff collapsed onto the pavement, the fluid running into the fountain area and mixing with the water.

The happy toddler stopped in mid-frolic and stared as Jeff’s body gave one final bone-breaking shudder, and stopped.

“Jeff?” Steph’s voice broke as she fell on her knees next to him. “Jeff?”

A fountain of water erupted next to his body, soaking both of them. The toddler gave a hesitant laugh, but the chuckle died in his throat when Jeff’s eyes snapped open, revealing milky white corneas cradled in blood-streaked yellow. Another spray of water shot up next to him. He sat up, oblivious when it hit him in the face, grasped the toddler by an arm... and bit into it.

The little boy shrieked in pain.

Steph yelled in shock and surprise, leaping up at the same time the kid’s parents did on the other side of the fountain.

She reached Jeff first, grabbing him by the hair to pull him off the now screaming boy, a chunk of the child’s arm caught between his teeth. The parents swooped in, snatching him away, shrieking hysterical threats.

Jeff ignored them, turning toward Steph as he finished munching on the chunk of flesh in his mouth. Steph froze for a millisecond before throwing herself away from him, feet slipping on the slick pavement. She fell, another torrent of water jetting up into her face. Steph sputtered, momentarily blinded, but still possessed of enough self-preservation instinct to continue scrambling away from the spreading puddle of blood.

Poor little guy... he’d been so happy...

Steph choked back a sob as another explosion of water gushed up in front of her. She looked over to see Jeff reach out and grab a man by his ugly yellow tie, pulling the hapless Mormon closer and taking a ravenous bite from his windpipe.

She got to her feet and ran as best she could in her high-heeled boots, colliding with other tourists and locals like a pinball careening off its drop targets. She didn’t even try to apologize. She just wanted to get away, back to the hotel, where the horror was fake and manageable.

Emerging onto West Temple Street, directly across the street from Temple Square, she found a horde of white-shirted men, big-haired women, and blond kids being swarmed by gore-drenched doppelgangers.

That sent her bolting to the left, past a knot of screaming children, and sprinting toward the Radisson, a few short blocks away. The sounds of agonized screams dimmed as she left Temple Square behind.

She hit the revolving doors of the Radisson at a full clip, stumbling into the lobby. Her heels slipped on the tiled floor and she fell again, taking the brunt of the fall on her hands and knees. Winded, she lay there for a moment, then pushed herself up to a sitting position, hair falling into her eyes, wondering why none of the hotel staff had come to help her.

She pushed her hair back and looked up, to find a dozen or so fellow Horror Con attendees—as well as the concierge and hotel bartender—converging on her from all sides, their eyes boasting the same horror movie FX of milky white corneas, yellowed whites shot with red. Black, viscous liquid dribbled out of their mouths.