Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) (12 page)

My stomach gave a lurch as the helicopter suddenly dipped down toward the ground. I looked out the window and saw the Walgreen’s sign. We’d reached our destination.

Like the rest of the city, the streets below were clogged with unmoving vehicles, some of them smashed in an interlocking metal mess, and others abandoned all helter-skelter. Two Muni streetcars had become jammed at opposite ends of Taravel in the block between 40th and 41st. Cars had sheared into them, creating a roadblock at either end while leaving a sizable clear space in the middle—large enough for our whirlybird to set down.

“Why are we landing?” Griff sat up from his seat in the back.

“I have an errand to run,” I said coolly, ignoring the churning in my gut as the helicopter swooped in to land.

“What errand?” Lil asked. She hadn’t been in on it either, for obvious reasons.

“Simone needs some… er… stuff for Gabriel’s antiserum.”
Stuff. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
“We didn’t want the bad guys to know. We’ll meet you at a rendezvous point up the road.”

Someday I’d get a vocabulary worthy of the situations I now found myself in. Even so, it worked. Lil nodded, and Griff shut up, at least for the moment. He kept on staring at me suspiciously, though, right up to the moment the pilot set the helicopter down.

Whatever, I didn’t care what he thought.

Once we hit ground and stabilized, I scrambled for the door, determined not to spew. My stomach thought about it for a brief moment, but thankfully everything stayed put. Tony leaped out after me, hefting Thor’s Wee Hammer. Nathan and JT followed swiftly. I saw Lil staring at me in confusion through one of the windows, so I gave her a reassuring wave and blew a kiss.

She grinned and waved back.

Zombies appeared from both ends of the street and began stumbling toward the helicopter, drawn by the noise. I heard cries for help from a building across the street and my heart dropped. I looked up to see a middle-aged man leaning out of a second-story window, waving frantically. Zombies in the street below immediately zeroed in on him, moving toward the entrance to the building and fresh meat. The man’s eyes widened and he vanished inside, hopefully to fortify the front door of his apartment.

Sorry, dude.
And I really was. I wanted to charge in and save the day, the Mighty Mouse of zombie killing. But… I couldn’t. Instead I dashed over to the entrance of the Walgreen’s, along with Nathan, Tony, and JT.

Whupwhupwhupwhup…

The helicopter, in the meantime took off again, ascending to just above the grasping hands of the hungry crowd gathering below. Our ride headed off to its next destination and it was up to the four of us to accomplish our respective goals and meet them there.

Nathan looked at us. “You all clear on the plan?”

“I go get the supplies,” I said.

“And I back her up.” Tony gave Thor’s Wee Hammer a swing.

JT grinned. “I create a distraction and lead as many zombies away from here as I can so you three have a semi-clear shot to the beach when you’re finished.”

“Excellent.” Nathan nodded approvingly. “I’ll clear whatever stragglers don’t follow JT.” He clapped a hand on JT’s shoulder. “We’ll see you at the Great Highway and Vicente when you’re finished.”

“That you will,” JT said. He grinned at me. “I’ll race you.”

Then, with a whoop and a holler and no sign of fear whatsoever, he took off at a run, east on Taravel, using any and every available surface to keep his momentum going and avoid the clutching hands of hungry undead pedestrians.

“He really is crazy,” I observed, watching in bemused admiration as he leapt without pause up a brick wall and onto the roof of a residential garage. He stopped there, hunkering down on the edge, and gave another ear-splitting rebel yell to attract the attention of the neighborhood zombies.

“Come on dowwwwn,” he hollered gleefully. “Get your share of the tastiest piece of ass in San Francisco!” He turned and twerked with a dexterity that would have made Miley Cyrus jealous. And the crowd loved it, judging from the increased volume of moans and the outstretched hands.

Ever the showman, JT turned to one side in a classic “The Thinker” pose, flexing his biceps.

“Is there a vet around here,” he yelled, “because these pythons are
sick!
”

“Dude needs help,” Tony agreed.

“Or not,” I commented as JT bounded across the length of the garage rooftop, where he nimbly scaled a balcony and hoisted himself up a trellis to gain access to the second story of the house. He vanished from our eyesight shortly after that, his war whoops still clearly audible.

I really hoped he’d be okay. He was on the lighter side of nuts, for sure, but he was risking his life even more than the rest of us because one scratch or bite, and he’d be screwed. I couldn’t remember the exact percentage of people immune to the zombie pathogen, but the odds of becoming a wild card were only slightly more favorable than winning the lottery.

There was a muffled pop as Nathan put a round in the skull of an Asian teenage boy who hadn’t been entranced by JT’s award-worthy performance. It reminded me that we needed to get our asses in gear.

Minus the twerking.

The door to the Walgreen’s was ajar. A body clad in baggy khakis and a flannel shirt lay face down and prevented it from closing. I think it was a man, but the amount of flesh that had been ripped away, coupled with a neutral short haircut, made it hard to tell.

The smell was horrific, rot and blood and shit blended together in a rich bouquet of gross. Moaning sounded from inside the store, and I could hear more approaching from the streets all around. I pushed the door open and went inside.

Oh, shit.

The Walgreen’s was full of the walking dead. There were at least two-dozen lurching up and down the aisles, still finishing up whatever last-minute shopping had been important enough to convince them to go out in a crisis. There were Chinese grandmas and grandpas, surfers in their flip-flops, and an assortment of the diverse population of the neighborhood. Whatever they had come here looking for, now they all craved the same meal.

In that moment, I was it.

I pulled out my swords and waded in, relatively secure in the knowledge that Tony was right behind me. Several employees wearing blue staff shirts stumbled toward me. I carved up one and left Tony to finish the cleanup in aisle two as I dashed down the cosmetics aisle toward the back of the store, heading for the sign that said “PHARMACY.”

A slender female zombie in yoga pants and a form-fitting black top lurched into my path. I cut into its head with my katana, feeling the reverberation through my arms as the blade sliced through bone and brains. As I pulled the blade from its skull, hands grasped my shoulders from behind, the smell announcing another zombie looking for an easy meal. I whirled around and drove my tanto into its skull, taking out a teenage boy in a Giants hoodie, its face shredded by equal parts teeth, nails, and acne.

I hated this.

I was sick of putting down these poor dead things. They had no more control over their actions than sharks, turned into relentless eating machines. Still, I hacked, slashed, and thrust my way past the vitamin and sleep-aid aisle to the consultation window of the pharmacy. A sleepy-eyed zombie pharmacist stood at the window, reaching out for me as an older male zombie with a shock of steel gray hair lurched toward me from the cold medication aisle.

Hopping up onto the shelf of the window, I kicked the pharmacist backward, then jumped down into the pharmacy proper where I landed on my feet with flexed knees, tanto in hand. It would have been a perfect landing if I hadn’t hit a patch of something nasty and slippery on the Formica floor. My right foot slid out from under me, depositing me on my ass and pulling muscles in my thigh and groin at the same time.

“Shit!” I didn’t bother lowering my voice.

“You okay, Ash?” Tony poked his head over the counter.

I got to my feet, wincing as the pulled muscle let it be known it did not approve.

“Kindasorta,” I said. I glanced down to see what I’d slipped in.

Blood and black vomit. Lovely. And it also meant I probably wasn’t alone back there. And sure enough…

A low moan sounded from the other side of the nearest row of shelves. I sheathed my katana, transferring my tanto to my right hand as I slowly and cautiously moved toward the sound.

Something dragged along the floor, a nasty squishing noise followed by a thumping sound.

I thought of an old slumber party standard, a story called “Thump Squish,” where the heroine hears something coming closer, a thump followed by a squish and drag… and it turns out to be her friend who’s had her legs and arms chopped off by the psycho from the nearby insane asylum… and she’s dragging herself along, the thump being the stumps of her arms as they hit the ground and the squish being the sound of her legs dragging behind.

The story creeped the hell out of me every time.

A mangled hand reached around the end of the shelf, several fingers missing. An arm clad in a blood-spattered white coat followed the preview, to reveal what had once been a pretty young Asian pharmacist. As it slowly rounded the corner, I saw that one of its feet had been gnawed off, leaving only a bloody stump. There was a thump when the good foot hit the ground, followed by a dragging swish from the stump.

Its mouth opened as its dead gaze focused on me. Black bile drooled out. It reached for me with those mutilated hands and moaned again.

“Need a hand?” Tony poked his head over the top of the counter again, like a wild card jack-in-the-box.

“Nope. Got it covered.” I thrust the point of my tanto into one of those milky eyes, bracing my heel against its forehead to withdraw the blade. It crumpled to the ground and I heaved a sigh of both relief and disgust.

A hand grabbed my ankle and I gave a yelp of surprise as a
Return of the Living Dead
-type torso zombie, entrails and spine trailing out from beneath its white coat, started chewing on my boot.

“Gah!”

This one had been male, and I fully expected it to say “Bra-a-a-ains!” I jerked my foot out of its mouth and stomped down on its head with the heel of my boot. As cinematic as it would have been to have my heel crunch through its skull and splatter brain matter across the floor, I only succeeded in denting it a little bit. So I dispatched it with a quick thrust through the skull.

Gross. It had left tooth marks and zombie drool on my boot.

I stayed still for a moment and listened for any more pharmaceutically inclined zombies. Tony was happily dispatching the former customers across the store, but I couldn’t detect any more signs of… er… life in the pharmacy itself.

Keeping my tanto in one hand, I pulled a slip of paper out of my pants pocket and took a quick look at the list of medications. Thank goodness Simone’s handwriting was more legible than mine.

* * *

It took me about five minutes to find what I needed. The medications were shelved in alphabetical order, which made things refreshingly easy for once. I’d been afraid they’d be stored by type or classification, never daring to hope it would be as easy as ABC. Opening the main compartment of my knapsack, I dumped in plenty of the meds, insuring we’d have enough psychotropics to keep Lil’s problem in check, even if we got stranded somewhere.

I also tossed in a couple of bottles of ibuprofen, just ‘cause I foresaw a lot of headaches and body aches in the near future. We each already carried a mini-first aid kit in our gear, but it never hurt to be prepared.

The muffled pop of rifle fire sounded from the front of the store.

“Ash, Tony, we need to move out.” Nathan’s strong voice carried into the pharmacy itself. I fastened my knapsack securely and leaped back over the counter, wincing at the pain in my thigh and groin muscles.

Tony caught my expression, and pointed at the connecting door. “It’s only locked from the inside,” he said.

I shrugged, not willing to admit I hadn’t noticed it. Instead I shot him a cocky look.

“Haven’t you ever heard of a shortcut?”

To my surprise, I was rewarded with a grin. It was a faint shadow of his old one, when he’d be exchanging movie quotes with Kai, but a grin nonetheless.

It’ll do, zombie pig. It’ll do.

We made our way back through gore-splattered aisles, taking down the few strays that’d escaped Tony’s attention while I shopped for drugs. Nathan waited at the front entrance, fancy firearm at the ready, all “poised for Action Man” as he coolly took aim and eliminated zombies coming in from all sides.

“I thought the plan was for you to lure them away,” I said when Tony and I joined him outside the store. There were still a hell of a lot of zombies honing in on us—at least twenty or so. More corpses littered the streets, bullet holes in their heads a testament to Nathan’s marksmanship.

“Oh, a lot of them followed JT,” he said, targeting a young male zombie in sweat pants, a tie-dyed shirt, and those hideous white man’s dreadlocks that always seemed to end up on skinny, pasty blonds with an aversion to bathing.

Bap.

One shot and down it went.

“There were a hell of a lot more before he took off,” Nathan continued. “And some of them followed the helicopter.” He took out what had been a cute little Cantonese girl in flowered pajamas drenched in blood. I winced as she… it went down.

“Ready to make a run for it?” Nathan slung his firearm over one shoulder and unhooked a Halligan bar from a loop on his belt. Without waiting for an answer, he took off at a run down 40th Avenue, heading south, leaving Tony and me to follow. He straight-armed an older male zombie with mad scientist hair bristling out in all directions, straggly soup-strainer beard and mustache holding bits of its last gory meal.

We caught up and jogged at a steady clip down a block, turning right toward the ocean on Ulloa Avenue. It was a gentle downhill slope to the sea. The houses were, for the most part, well tended, big wheels and basketball hoops in the driveways proclaiming them family homes with kids. Unlike Taravel, this street was entirely residential. The only business was an elementary school on our left. There was no sign of life in the schoolyard, and thankfully no zombies or corpses either.