Plague World E-Book

Dana Fredsti

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 443

Beschreibung

THE ENEMY WITHIN San Francisco has been overrun, and the zombie plague has gone airborne, spreading across the globe at an incredible pace. Wherever people travel, the virus is there, leaving swaths of bloody devastation. Within weeks of becoming a wild card—immune to the deadly virus, possessing enhanced speed, strength, and senses—Ashley Parker faces trials she never could have imagined. For the zombie plague was planned, by unknown enemies who hide in the shadows. They've infiltrated the ranks of the wild cards, and kidnapped the one person who might develop a cure. They've also taken Gabriel, the man who holds Ashley's heart. Now she and her team must locate and take the enemy's stronghold... before the world passes the point of no return.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for Plague Nation

Praise for Plague Town

Also by Dana Fredsti

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Praise for PLAGUE NATION

“Fast, furious, and fun: Plague Nation takes the promise of Plague Town and builds upon it, delivering bigger and better zombie mayhem.”

MIRA GRANT, author of the NEWSFLESH TRILOGY

“If you like your heroines smart and sassy and kick ass capable, Ashley Parker has what you need. And Plague Nation is exactly what the zombie genre needed.”

JOE MCKINNEY, Stoker Award-winning author of FLESH EATERS and INHERITANCE

“Plague Nation is a rollicking zombie thriller packed with action, chills, and biting humor. Brava!”

JONATHAN MABERRY, New York Times bestselling author of PATIENT ZERO, FIRE AND ASH, and DEAD OF NIGHT

“Snarky humor, lots of zombies (gore and all), and plenty of edge-of-your-seat action.”

LONG AND SHORT REVIEWS

Praise for PLAGUE TOWN

One of the Top Ten Zombie Releases of 2012

BARNESANDNOBLE.COM

“A gruesomely good read that has me panting for the next book in the series. As hard to put down as a swarm of zombies.

KAT RICHARDSON, bestselling author of the GREYWALKER novels

“In Plague Town, Dana Fredsti has created something truly unique in the world of horror fiction—a cool, hip zombie apocalypse novel. With crisp writing, a cast of memorable characters, and tons of undead combat action, it’s a zombie lover’s literary dream. When the dead rise, I’ll want the wild cards by my side.”

ROGER MA, author of THE ZOMBIE COMBAT MANUAL

“Fredsti’s writing is razor sharp as her heroes fight off the horde while fighting their attraction for each other.”

STACEY GRAHAM, author of THE ZOMBIE DATING GUIDE

“Plague Town is a fast-moving zombie tale that reads like a blast of energy. If you like zombie apocalypse stories, this is a must read!”

LOIS GRESH, New York Times bestselling author of BLOOD AND ICE and ELDRITCH EVOLUTIONS

“Chills and thrills for that season when you’re looking for—chills and thrills!”

HEATHER GRAHAM, author of HALLOWED GROUND and the FLYNN BROTHERS TRILOGY

“Dana Fredsti has created a world as familiar as our own back yard and populated it with recognizable people we care about… and zombies. Plague Town will have you turning pages fast… and checking the locks on all the doors.”

RAY GARTON, author of LIVE GIRLS and SEX AND VIOLENCE IN HOLLYWOOD

“As adorable an end of the world as you’re liable to get… a brisk, witty ultraviolent romantic gurlventure…”

GINA MCQUEEN, author of OPPOSITE SEX and APOCALYPSE AS FOREPLAY

“More action than season two of The Walking Dead.”

HORROR TALK

“A diverting, entertaining zombie siege novel—complete with all the delicious, bone-crunching, blood-gushing awesomeness a zombie lover could ever want.”

BOOK SMUGGLERS

“While Plague Town is a really fun and action-packed ride, one cannot dismiss the darkness at the center of it all. There are sections laced throughout written from the perspective of the innocent people as they are turning into zombies… an emotional core that grounds the novel and keeps it from being just a shallow action/horror romp.”

STRANGE AMUSEMENTS

“Read it—I zombie dare you. Fun, fast, read.”

AFFAIRS MAGAZINE

“If you love zombies, strong, sarcastic heroines with heart, and fight scenes that will knock your socks off, you’ll devour Plague Town!”

MY BOOKISH WAYS

“Delightfully gruesome.”

NERDS IN BABELAND

“It’s funny, scary, gory, sexy and goes a mile a minute.”

CULTURE BRATS

“If you like butt-kicking heroines with a fair dose of snark and humor, then you’re going to love Ashley.”

GEEK MOM

BOOKS BYDANA FREDSTI

THE ASHLEY PARKER NOVELS

Plague Town

Plague Nation

Plague World

A Man’s Gotta Eat What a Man’s Gotta Eat (e-original novella)

Murder For Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon

PLAGUE WORLDPrint edition ISBN: 9780857686374E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686404

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: July 201310 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Dana Fredsti asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2014 Dana Fredsti

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To my Three MusesBrian Thomas, T.Chris Martindale,and David Fitzgerald

PROLOGUE

“Son of a bitch must pay.”

Jack Burton—Big Trouble in Little China

LONDON, ENGLAND

Stavros tried to tune out the hacking coughs, snuffles, snorts and other unpleasant sounds coming from the four passengers he’d picked up at Chelsea Physic Garden. Two women and two men, all wearing power suits and sharing what seemed to be a nasty cold.

Blow your nose, mate, he thought as one of the men gave a snorting inhalation that sounded like a walrus.

He thought about raising the window that separated the driver and passenger portions of the town car, but it seemed a bit rude. It might be taken the wrong way, and one of these corporate types would no doubt complain. So he contented himself with surreptitiously pressing the pump on his ever-present hand sanitizer, tucked into one of the cup holders under the control panel.

There was something about these wankers in their suits, fresh out of their oh-so-important meetings, and the self-importance that pumped them up. It just set Stavros’s hackles on end. All the little slights and the condescension in their voices when they spoke to him… if they bothered to speak to him at all.

He didn’t regret skipping university. He didn’t have any desire to do more than he was doing, but every now and then he wished he had a degree that would allow him to slap one of these posers across their over-educated faces.

Another twenty minutes on the road and he’d be rid of them at Heathrow, so they could spread their germs in their own countries and not make an honest working man too sick to do his job.

* * *

Danny sat in the furthest seat in the back of the town car, huddled against the door in a ball of misery. He’d been sick before, but nothing compared to this—not even the four-day salmonella marathon he’d had in 2005. His body hurt inside and out; even his eyeballs felt as if they were going to crack in half if he blinked.

A line from the Haunted Mansion ride was stuck in his brain, something about hot and cold running chills… He had those, along with the sensation of boiling poison running through his veins and in his forehead.

“You okay, Danny?”

He opened his eyes to see Jan from Digital Media, Holland Division, eying him with superficial concern. Jan was one of those uber-competitive guys who equated the failure of his peers with personal gain. He also made it more than obvious that he lusted after Nita from R&D Sweden, whom Danny had been seeing on the sly for the last year. Jan had made a few comments at the LP meeting, hinting that he knew about the relationship.

“I’m fine.” A wet cough contradicted Danny’s words almost immediately.

Jan smirked with an unattractive twist of his lips that he imagined made him look wry and sexy.

“Too many late nights sampling Swedish meatballs, eh?”

If he hadn’t felt so shitty, Danny would have flipped the asshole off. He closed his eyes instead, and drifted away on a wave of pain that faded into blackness.

* * *

Jan raised an eyebrow and smirked. Danny looked like shit. And he’d been the first to come down with the flu at the annual LP meeting, spreading it around quickly, judging from the coughs and sniffles of many fellow attendees. This was a flu bug that would get to see the world. Maybe Jan should start calling him Typhoid Danny, so no one forgot where it started.

Oh yes, the kind of thing that could dog a person throughout their career… and perhaps even shorten it.

Jan chuckled to himself, only to have the laugh cut off by a sudden tickling in the back of his throat and nose. He sneezed violently, barely catching it behind one hand. His smugness evaporated at the sight of blood mixed in with the spray of spittle on his palm.

And then Danny went into convulsions.

* * *

Stavros frowned as he heard yet more coughing from the back of the town car. Had they never heard of Hall’s?

“Danny?”

The sharp note of concern in the man’s voice caught Stavros’s attention. He glanced back to see the lanky Dutch fellow in the back shaking his seatmate by one shoulder. Blood dribbled out of the man’s eyes, nose, and mouth, his features slack and lifeless.

Shit. He looked dead. A nasty smell hit Stavros’s nose.

The Dutchman recoiled, coughing as he hunkered back against the other side of the car, as far from his seatmate as possible. The two women in the middle seat, also coughing, turned around to see what the fuss was.

“Jan, what is wrong?” A thick South American accent matched the brunette’s exotic Salma Hayek good looks.

“It’s Danny. I think—” the Dutchman coughed again, a wracking, rattling sound like marbles in a can filled with phlegm.

The pneumatic blonde opened her eyes and Stavros winced as he caught sight of her in the rearview mirror. The whites of her eyes were yellow and streaked with red, a counterpoint for the almost startling blue of her corneas.

“Danny?” Her voice was weak and gravelly after all the coughing.

The man in the back gave a sudden convulsion, more foul-smelling fluid leaking from his eyes, mouth, and nose.

The Dutchman next to him vomited.

“I’ll get to hospital,” Stavros said to no one in particular, hitting the “open” button on the driver’s side window in an attempt to cut the thick smell of sickness—a mixture of blood, shit, and rot—which filled the car. He fought the urge to vomit, concentrating instead on finding an exit off the M4 and to some medical attention.

The nearest exit was for Brentford. Stavros didn’t know if there was a hospital, but at the very least they’d have a police station, someone who could help. He didn’t care. He just wanted these people out of his car so he could take it to a car wash and get it detailed, vacuumed, aired out, fumigated, for Christ’s sake, and maybe snort some bleach to get the smell and possible infection out of his nostrils.

Then the bloke Danny opened his eyes. The corneas were now bluish-white, the color of fat-free milk and all the more eerie set against the red-tinged yellow of the his whites. More black fluid dribbled from his mouth, the smell thick and vile in the enclosed car.

“Danny?” The blonde leaned over the seat, relief obvious in her voice. He reached for her, grabbed her head, and pulled her over the seat back on top of his lap, teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her neck before anyone could react. Blood sprayed over the leather seats, splashing all of the passengers.

The Dutchman recoiled in horror, only to go into his own convulsions, the same black viscous liquid spewing out of his mouth.

Stavros stared in horror as the sick bloke ripped chunks of flesh from the blonde’s neck, the other passengers recoiling in horror, fingers scrabbling for the door handles. His only thought was to get the hell off the road, out of the car, and away from whatever was wrong with his passengers. So he didn’t bother looking in his rearview mirror when he swerved into the right lane over—directly into the path of an oncoming tanker.

CHAPTER ONE

Bad things happen to good people. Never forget that. The world is not always a fair place. And the dead really do walk the earth. And let me tell you—

That part really sucks.

“How many do you think there are?”

I glanced over at Nathan as I tried to count the rotting corpses shambling toward us on the rooftop of a University of California, San Francisco medical building. Most of the figures heading our way had been octogenarians—and some septuagenarians—when they’d died, which wasn’t surprising, since the building held the geriatric ward. But damn, they were spry for their age.

“No idea.” Nathan took a shot with his M4 and one of the zombies collapsed onto the roof. “But now there’s one less rotting geezer.”

I snorted. “You know, that’s like something Tony would say. I expect better of you. I mean, aren’t you too old for that?”

“You’re never too old for sarcasm.” Nathan nailed another zombie in the head with a well-placed shot. “Ah, make that two less.”

Okay, Nathan wasn’t all that old. Somewhere in his late forties, early fifties, with one of those lined faces that made it hard to guess his actual age. He also had a “screw you” attitude toward authority that made me predisposed to like him. Well, that, and the fact he’d pulled my ass out of the fire a couple of weeks back, saving me, Lil, and two cats from becoming zombie chow. So I tended to forgive his “hermit with shitty manners” attitude.

This particular building had the only rooftop in the facility with the room to accommodate a helicopter. There were two access doors, one each on the east and west sides of the building. One of them accessed the glass-covered catwalk that led to the Center for Regenerative Medicine. The catwalk also held the James Bondian elevator that went down to the super-secret lab.

We were there to secure the roof and its makeshift helipad with a sloppy red H painted on the concrete, so incoming helicopters carrying the core personnel from Redwood Grove could land safely.

Besides, when it came time to clear zombie infestations, who you gonna call? That’s right. The few, the proud… complete with enhanced strength, agility and senses.

The wild cards.

Although the enhanced sense of smell wasn’t necessarily a gift when dealing with decomposing cannibals.

“Man, this is boring.”

Tony looked at the incoming zombies with dissatisfaction. A nineteen-year-old punk-ass gamer with multiple piercings—most of them empty now due to a particularly painful close encounter with a handsy zombie—he had an attitude that often screamed “Slap me, I’m a jerk.”

Nathan and I both looked at him.

“Boring?” I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Tony said. “If this were a video game, it’d be all like ‘Plug a Granny’ and totally made for five-year-olds.”

“Plug a Granny?”

Nathan snorted, although whether from disgust or amusement I couldn’t tell.

Me? I had to smother a laugh. I mean, it was funny—kind of, in a sick and twisted kind of way, and these days I needed to take humor where I found it. Considering the truly fucked-up state of pretty much everything.

I mean, the Zombie Apocalypse. Who’da thunk it?

How many survivalist types were creaming their jeans at the chance to put their years of anal-retentive planning into practice, all those zombie preppers who’d had their brief moments of fame on reality TV. Most likely they were cowering in their reinforced bunkers, listening to their loved ones pounding on the door with rotting fists…

Okay, brain, that’s enough of that, thank you very much.

I gave myself a mental shake. The horror show in front of me was more than enough. I didn’t need to create another one in my imagination. Drawing a bead on a target, I pulled the trigger.

At least the movies hadn’t lied about how to permakill zombies. Shoot ’em in the head. Destroy the brain. Or the stem, or the whatever-the-heck portion controlled the reptile functions. It would have totally sucked if that had turned out to be bullshit, while the rest of the zombocalypse proved to be true.

But it did work, and if you were creative, there were many ways and many weapons you could use to put them back in the grave, once and for all. Luckily for us, the more zombies we killed, the more creative we tended to get.

Thus ended the upside to the zombie outbreak.

“Why are there so many of them up here on the roof?” I wondered aloud. As soon as I spoke, I shot Tony a look and said, “If you say ‘because this was once a very important place to them,’ I will hit you.”

Tony smirked, but kept his mouth shut.

“They were probably attracted to the sound of the helicopter when it took off yesterday morning,” Nathan said as he put a round through the head of a Ruth Gordon look-alike. “Guess nothing better came along to distract them.”

My jaw tightened.

We’d survived a chopper crash, fought our way through a zombie-infested San Francisco to UCSF, and found the hidden DZN lab. We’d lost five people along the way, but we’d made it—only to be ambushed upon our arrival. Gabriel had been hustled off at gunpoint by the proverbial men in black, and I was pretty sure they were the same bastards who’d sabotaged our helicopters, plus raided and burned down our lab at Big Red.

Whoever it was, they didn’t see a problem with the spreading plague—and if our suspicions were correct, they were spreading it deliberately.

Why anyone would do that was beyond my comprehension… but then again, I have difficulty with the concept of fracking and GMOs in the food supply, so I probably wasn’t the best person to analyze the motives of psychopaths.

What really bugged me was that someone involved had a personal grudge against yours truly. When someone points a gun at you and says they, “have a present for you from a old friend,” you can bet your ass it’s not a candygram. Plus they knew my name.

That’s never a good sign.

More senior zombies stumbled through the door across the rooftop. I heard shots coming from the interior of the building, the comforting sound of the rest of our team doing their jobs. The bastards who’d ambushed us had wedged as many stairwell doors open as they could on both sides, making sure we’d have plenty of walking dead to play with.

Bastards. Did I mention that?

Luckily we had plenty of ammo. We couldn’t clear the entire medical center—it would be suicide to try—but a few floors? Piece o’ cake.

At least that’s what I kept telling myself, because my spirits couldn’t afford to sink any lower. Losing Kai had been bad enough, but when Mack died, it had ripped the heart out of our team—especially Lil, who was conspicuously absent from the current bout of zombie carnage. It was the sort of thing that typically made her dance with glee.

And Gabriel… it’d been like a punch in the gut when that helicopter took off, and when we were told we weren’t going after him, well, I hadn’t exactly handled it gracefully. Having to cool my heels was a special circle of hell.

Right now, though, I had a job to do. A messy, smelly, and totally cathartic job.

“Um, Ash?”

Tony’s voice brought me back to the present—which included a frail-looking octogenarian in a hospital gown, pieces of flesh caught in its dentures and bite marks oozing black fluid from its arms. I capped it right away, the barrel of my M4 only a foot or so away from its head. It dropped in its tracks, falling forward. The hospital gown flapped open to reveal a naked, withered, greenish zombie butt with a chunk taken out of one cheek.

I could have gone my entire life without seeing that.

Nathan eyed me sternly.

“Keep your head in the game, kiddo,” he said. “We can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

I nodded. “Yeah… sorry.”

He gave me a rare, comforting pat on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry—we’ll get him back,” he said. “Both Gabriel and Dr. Caligari.”

Nathan’s obscure but accurate film reference made me smile, but it only lasted for a moment. The same creeps who’d taken Gabriel also snatched Dr. Albert, our pet mad scientist. His vaccine for Walker’s Flu was supposed to be the next big thing for pharma. Yet because he’d ordered his ego super-sized, he hadn’t bothered with trivial details like clinical trials.

Unfortunately, his vaccine came with one whopper of a side effect. In laboratory lingo, it “reacted to a dormant variant of a retrovirus in about ten percent of the population, causing a mutation in the DNA.” At least that’s how Simone had explained it. In plain English, it turned its victims into the walking dead.

If only Dr. Albert had just stuck with prostate exams and yearly physicals. To think as a kid I’d accepted lollipops from that man. Now, however, he was our best hope for figuring out a cure. Otherwise I’d have been happy letting the megalomaniacal bastard rot wherever he’d been taken.

A new influx of zombies came shuffling through the far door, doing their best Moe, Larry, and Curly.

“What the hell?” I said. “Is Gentry herding them up here on purpose? Does he want us to get eaten?”

“It’s ‘cause you smell so tasty, Ash,” Tony said.

I flipped him the bird.

“Where are Davis and Jones when we need ’em?” I grumbled, even though I already knew the answer.

The Gunsy Twins were two out of the original four snipers who’d survived the trip from Redwood Grove. Their shooting skills bordered on mystical, but they weren’t wild cards, and unsuited to close-quarter encounters with extremely infectious enemy. So they were perched safely above the loading docks, picking off zombies with carefully placed headshots. Once that area was sealed off and we’d finished on the roof, all entrances to the DZN lab would be secured.

While I was a decent shot, thanks to my oxymoron of a liberal gun-nut father, I wasn’t good enough to keep up with the numbers pouring out the roof access. At this point, I’d infinitely prefer close-quarter fighting. I could slice and dice faster than I could aim, fire, and reload.

“Let’s conserve ammo,” Nathan said, as if he was reading my mind.

Tony grinned, slung his M4 over one shoulder, and pulled a small but effective sledgehammer out of the loop on his belt. I followed suit, drawing my modified katana from its scabbard with what was now a fluid motion, almost as if I practiced in front of a mirror.

Okay fine, I totally do.

My faithful tanto—see what I did there?—remained patiently in its crossover sheath over the left side of my chest.

Cool accessories? I haz them.

“Go play, children.” Nathan waved us toward the zombies. “I’ll stay here on cleanup duty.”

Tony and I exchanged a quick fist bump and dove in with enthusiasm. Blood, viscera, brain matter, and black goo flew with abandon as Tony swung Thor’s Wee Hammer into zombie skulls, with deadly results. He might be an annoying punk-ass kid at times, but he was a kick-ass zombie-killing machine.

Myself, I practiced the fine art of decapitation, mixing it up with sweeping cuts and sharp thrusts through the eye sockets. We didn’t have to worry about becoming infected. Hell, Tony, Nathan and I could swallow all manner of zombie crap, and be just fine.

Blerg. Why my brain consistently came up with mental images like that, I knew not.

Oh, well, I’d wait until after I’d finished my job to page Dr. Freud.

Our kills were punctuated with the sound of Nathan’s rifle. He had some sort of fancy-ass firearm from his private collection. It could be dismantled and stored in its own plastic butt. With it he calmly and efficiently took out the incoming zeds without wasting a single round. If anything rattled Nathan, I had yet to see it.

Well, except Simone.

With every cut, every thrust, every kill, I pictured the asshole who had tried to shoot me, the one who “had a present for me.” He’d missed, thanks to Lil’s intervention, but the resulting ricochet damaged our team in a way that could never be repaired. He deserved the business end of my blade far more than the poor blue-rinse elder tottering in front of me.

Snick. Sword point in.

Schlorp. Sword withdrawn.

Sorry, Zombie Granny.

It didn’t take long for Tony and me to respectively smash, slice, and dice our way across the roof. Meanwhile, the number of zombies coming through the door on the far side trickled down to a slow stagger. Tony gave a war-whoop as he put down a zombie in scrubs, half of its face already missing before the rest of it was obliterated.

I took out a male zom wearing blood-crusted jeans and a blood-spattered white shirt that screamed GAP. It had several chunks of flesh missing from its neck and face. Maybe a son, visiting his sick father in the geriatric ward when the shit hit the fan.

I really needed to stop looking at their faces, and just do my job.

With this thought in my head, I heard footsteps behind me and spun around with my katana, using hip torque to generate enough momentum to do the job with one blow, just like any good executioner.

Instead of chopping through flesh and bone, the edge of my blade connected with a barrel of an M4, the impact sending painful shockwaves up my arms.

“Careful now,” an amused voice said. “I like my head where it is now.”

Crap. Normally I would’ve been delighted that it was a living, breathing human being, but in this case, I think I’d have preferred another zombie.

Griffin—or Griff, as he liked to be called—had been one of the people already at the DZN lab when our group had arrived, bloodied and battered. The people at the lab had viewed our struggles on video, like some sort of sick reality show, yet done nothing to help. Including the guy standing in front of me. I resented him, even if he was another wild card. He wasn’t one of our group. And more importantly, he hadn’t helped when we needed it.

If not for the fact we’d been losing wild cards like Spinal Tap drummers, I’d have refused to work with him.

“Sorry,” I said, sounding anything but. “Next time you might want to announce yourself.”

He grinned down at me, his hazel eyes amused under ridiculously long lashes the same dark brown as his hair. He typified the whole gender unfairness bullshit illustrated best by peacocks. The males get the brilliant jewel-toned feathers, while the peahens get the drab brown colors. And for some reason, this particular peacock had been trailing his tail feathers in front of me ever since we’d been introduced.

“No worries,” Griff replied with an indefinable accent that spoke of foreign lands, but was probably just pretentious. “Worth it to see you in action.”

I stifled an undignified snort; so not buying what this dude was selling. Don’t get me wrong. Griff was definitely what most people would consider hot. Angular cheekbones, strong straight nose, and firm lips, the guy looked as if he should be gracing the cover of Esquire or Details.

Then again, Kai had been just as hot, and he knew it, but his hotness had been more… well, innocent, for lack of a better word. Irritating at times, but never predatory.

Griff had a self-awareness that saturated every gesture, every expression. His internal theme song was probably “Magic Man,” throbbing drumbeat and all.

I trusted him as much as I did rattlesnakes and frat boys.

“You actually do anything down there,” I asked, “or did you just watch the action on video?”

Griff held up his M4.

“Barrel’s hot.” He dropped it down low and added, “You’re welcome to touch it and see for yourself.”

“No thanks,” I said. “Not interested.”

“Afraid of getting burned?”

“Oh, please.” I snorted. I couldn’t help it. Then I gave him a quick once-over, noting the lack of gore and goo on his clothes and armor. “Awfully clean for a zombie killer, aren’t you?”

“Hey, I get the job done,” he said with a shrug. “I’m not interested in getting up close and personal with dead people.” Then he repaid my once-over with one of his own, albeit a slow, lingering travel up my body to my face. “Guess you don’t mind getting down and dirty.”

“Not with the zombies.”

Griff’s eyes narrowed just enough to tell me I’d scored. Gotta love a cheap and easy shot, right?

Tony joined me, Thor’s Wee Hammer dripping with zombie goo. I could feel the dislike for Griff emanating from him with the uncomplicated black-and-white emotional range of youth. He started to say something, then paused as what could have been the corpse of the Oldest Confederate Widow emerged from the roof access door. About six feet away, it didn’t moan, and its slipper-clad feet barely made a sound on the cement. Its mouth opened and closed, blackened tongue wriggling in the confines of its toothless gums.

“There’s a zombie behind you,” Tony said casually.

Griff rolled his eyes.

“Sure there is.”

His eyes stopped in mid-roll as a rotting hand clutched at his Kevlar-clad shoulder. The zombie’s gaping maw dripped black drool next to his face. To give him credit, though, Griff didn’t yell or jump in surprise. He just rammed the stock of his weapon into the zombie’s midsection, then spun around and delivered a blow to its head with enough force to smash the skull in.

“Guess you didn’t get the job done as good as you thought,” I observed.

“Better watch it next time, or you might get gummed to death.” Tony delivered the line totally deadpan, something I couldn’t have done if my life had depended on it.

“Funny,” Griff replied, unamused.

“Dude,” Tony said, “I tried to warn you.”

“Dude,” I echoed, “He totally did.”

Tony grinned. Then I jerked a thumb toward the open door as a zombie MD lurched into view, looking like it’d been used as a chew toy.

“Incoming.”

Griff looked at me with an odd little half-smile, and nodded as if reaching a conclusion. Then he turned and dispatched the zom with the same move as before. He made it look easy, almost balletic in its grace.

A blob of decaying brain matter landed on his sleeve. He eyed it with distaste, flicking it off with one finger. I fully expected him to start grooming himself like a cat. Instead he stepped into the roof access shed and peered down the stairs, turning back with a smile of satisfaction.

“Now it’s clear.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs below.

“You sure about that, dude?” Tony asked.

The top of a helmeted head appeared and Gentry—one of our wild cards—appeared at the top of the stairs. He’d originally been a member of the ZTS (Zombie Tactical Squad), one of the more obscure branches of the military’s Special Forces. A lucky reaction to an unlucky encounter with a zombie in Redwood Grove had upgraded his status to that of a wild card.

Gentry grinned and gave us a thumbs up, his babyface making him look like a teenager playing soldier, instead of a sergeant in his twenties. I had to restrain myself from pinching his cheeks like my grandma used to do to me, when I was a dumpling-faced toddler. Somehow I didn’t think he’d appreciate it.

“Looking good, people!”

Griff smirked.

“Like I said… all clear.”

SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND

“So,” Indiana said. “What do you want to do first?” Brushing back his shoulder-length hair, he smiled suggestively at Hannah, who gave him a coy look from heavily lashed brown eyes as they walked away from the platform at Sheffield railway station.

In a red ruffled skirt, cream-colored peasant blouse and thick leather belt, Hannah looked like a fair-skinned steampunk gypsy. The leather belt had bits of brass thingees on it, gears and such. She wore a matching black leather collar similarly embellished, and black motorcycle boots. A cozy fleece shawl in a rich red completed the outfit.

The entire effect was guaranteed to turn him on.

“I thought I’d let you decide,” she said demurely, brushing a heavy lock of black hair out of her face.

“I have some ideas.” He noticed her struggling a bit with her overnight bag, and held out his hand. “Here, let me take that for you.”

She handed it over with a grateful smile. Once he hefted it, he understood why.

“Christ, this is heavy. What do you have in it, barbells?”

“You’ll find out.” She smiled again, only this time there was nothing coy about it.

Oooh, boy.

He’d met her at a mate’s fetish night a few weeks ago—the kind of party where most of the attendees were there to play. Hannah hadn’t played, but she’d watched with avid interest. Upon meeting Indiana, her first question hadn’t been the obvious, “Were your parents fans of the film then?” but rather, “Are you good with a whip?”

“Oh, yes,” he’d replied, and he’d asked for her email. She’d given it to him without hesitation. Over the next few days, as they’d gotten to know one another online, she’d shared her mobile number and several social media handles. Certain photos she’d posted on Facebook and her Twitter ID “kinkykitten1313” prompted him to invite her to Sheffield for the weekend.

He still wasn’t sure if she was a top or a bottom, but while Indiana tended to lean toward the submissive side of things—he did so love to be spanked—he wasn’t averse to administering a good paddling, as well.

Either way, the weekend promised to be a good one.

They reached the covered bridge over the tracks and headed toward the stairs that led from the station itself, sparsely populated at this relatively late hour. The few people who were there all seemed to be hoisting tissues, some of them looking like they’d be better off in hospital than thinking of traveling. A particularly ill-looking fellow about Indiana’s age erupted in a coughing fit as they passed him. Indiana winced as the man spat up a wad of black phlegm onto the station floor. He hoped Hannah hadn’t seen it.

Talk about a mood killer.

Indiana had seen postings from his American and Canadian pals about the severity of Walker’s Flu over there. He’d also read a recent article and seen some tweets about cases springing up in the UK, along with the usual crap about it being the next Black Death. He didn’t buy it, of course. Look what happened with H1N1 and SARS, after all. He hadn’t even bothered to get one of the flu shots that were being offered for free by Sheffield Hallam University.

But still, the amount of coughing and hacking going on made him anxious to get Hannah to relatively fresh air.

“I hope you don’t mind a bit of a walk,” he said, adjusting his pea coat as they reached the main exit. He held the door open for her. “I wanted to show you the glory that is Sheffield.”

“And your car’s in the garage.” She gave him a playful poke in the ribs. “I can see your Facebook wall.”

Indiana willed himself not to blush.

“So you can.”

“Never mind, I love walking.” She looped her arm through his. “And this is nice.”

They headed up the slope toward town, passing what Indiana’s mother liked to refer to as a “water feature” on their right, as well as a fountain and a series of waterfalls on their left.

“This is pretty.” Hannah looked around with a pleased smile, and gave his arm a little squeeze.

“It gets even prettier when we get into town,” Indiana assured her. Their current surroundings were modern and stark in the gray November weather.

They kept walking past the station parking lots to Sheaf Street, up the hill toward Sheffield City Centre.

“On our left,” Indiana intoned in his best poncy tour guide voice, “is the excellent independent Showcase Cinema. And that lovely grassy area contains the Sheffield Hallam University buildings, with the Engineering block in the background, as well as my old stomping grounds, back when I was a student.”

“Did you do a lot of stomping then?” Hannah asked innocently. “Or did you prefer to be stomped?”

“I could go either way,” Indiana answered with a straight face.

“Nice.” She smiled up at him.

Yeah, this is going to be a stellar weekend. Hell, maybe even more than that. Indiana hoped so. He liked this girl. And while he wasn’t quite ready to settle down, he wasn’t averse to settling in to a relationship that could lead that way.

As long as the path was decorated with paddles and leather restraints.

Ahem.

They continued walking.

“And here you see the Mansfield, one of the oldest pubs in Sheffield—the oldest being the Old Queens Head.”

“That almost sounds naughty.”

Indiana grinned. “Did you want to stop in for a pint?”

The offer wasn’t entirely altruistic. He could use a break from lugging her overnight bag.

“Could we?” Hannah’s voice was eager. “I’d kill for a pint.”

“Your wish, m’lady, is my command.”

They headed toward the pub’s entrance, only to stop short as the door burst open and two women—a bleached blonde and a redhead—staggered out. Both were in their mid-twenties and dressed for a night out on the town in heels too high to be safe after a pint, let alone as many as they’d probably had. The redhead was bleeding copiously from a wound on her forearm and crying in great gulping sobs, while her friend patted her drunkenly on the shoulder.

“There there… you’ll be fine.”

She immediately tripped, clutching her friend on the arm for balance, right on the bleeding wound. The redhead screamed in pain, slapping the blonde’s hand furiously.

Indiana stepped forward.

“Do you need some help there?”

The blonde shook her head, regaining her balance.

“Thanks, pet, but we’ll be fine. One of our friends had a bit too much and got a bit bitey.” She punctuated her words with a strident belch, then covered her mouth with one hand, smearing blood from her friend’s wound across her lips without realizing it. Between that and her southward-bound eye makeup, she looked like a sad, gory clown.

“I’m gonna kill the bastard,” the redhead muttered between gulping sobs.

“There there,” the blonde intoned again. Indiana couldn’t believe anyone actually said “there there.” “Let’s get you home now, and put some hydrogen peroxide on this. You’ll be fine.”

They staggered off down the road. Hannah looked up at him uncertainly.

“Do you think we ought to go in?”

“Depends on how you feel about biting.” Indiana was proud of himself for that. He thought it had just the right amount of nonchalance mixed with innuendo.

“That depends entirely on the circumstances,” she replied. The slight smile playing around her lips contradicted her prim tone. Muffled shrieks of laughter sounded from inside. “It does sound like they’re having fun.” A particularly strident scream rang out. Her smile grew wider. “Maybe even our type of fun.”

“Want to risk it then?”

“Oh yes. Just make sure you don’t let anyone bite me.” She paused. “Except you.” She gave his shoulder-length hair a tug, just hard enough to send a definite message.

Indiana reached for the door handle, pulling it open and holding it for her, giving a “you go first” gesture with his free hand. Hannah dipped a little curtsey and went inside with a very appealing and deliberate sashay of her hips.

Before they’d taken more than two steps inside, someone grabbed Hannah and dragged her to the side. Warm liquid sprayed across Indiana’s face, momentarily blinding him. Hands seized his shoulders, so he swung out blindly with Hannah’s overnight bag, connecting solidly and knocking his assailant away from him. Frantically Indiana scrubbed at his face with his coat sleeve, trying to get the viscous fluid out of his eyes so he could see.

He fell against a nearby table, hand flailing against a pint glass. He couldn’t see if the contents were alcoholic or water. A quick taste test confirmed that it was water, so he dashed the liquid into his eyes, swabbing them with a napkin and clearing his vision enough for him to see the chaos around him.

At least half the furniture had been overturned, lager and stout spilled over the floor to mix with what looked like blood. The pub was full—nothing unusual for a Friday night—but nothing was normal about the crazy fuckers attacking other pub-goers with their teeth and hands. It looked like at least a quarter of the customers had gone totally mental. They needed to get the hell out of there.

He looked around for Hannah.

He wouldn’t have spotted her if he hadn’t caught a glimpse of one black leather motorcycle boot and a swatch of red fabric on the ground. Most of her was covered by a hefty-sized man hunched over her, teeth worrying at her already savaged neck hard enough to spray chunks of flesh about.

Indiana’s heart broke a little.

“Oh, Hannah.”

The man looked up from his snack. Indiana recognized the hulking git as a security guard at the university. The bloke had never been handsome, but now he was downright hideous, yellowed teeth stained with blood. Black slime coated his upper lip and chin, blood drizzled out of his ears, and his eyes had gone wrong, all milky in the middle and red-streaked jaundiced where the whites should be.

Fucking zombies.

Indiana looked at the bag still looped over one wrist. Without stopping to think, he swung it around his head, letting momentum do the work for him as he clocked the erstwhile security guard in the side of the face, knocking him off Hannah’s body. She didn’t move. The bloody mess of her throat and her wide, staring eyes told him all he needed to know.

“I’m sorry, Hannah,” he whispered.

He ran out of the pub without waiting to see if she came back.

CHAPTER TWO

I’d kill for a pair of jeans and a colored T-shirt.

Okay, maybe not kill, but definitely commit a minor felony like, say, jaywalking, if it meant some wardrobe options that didn’t include forest camo or basic black. Would it really be so wrong to kill zombies while wearing some nice jeans and a brightly colored T-shirt?

I stared with loathing at two pairs of black BDUs and matching black shirts in light thermal or short-sleeved tees. I’d worn the same thing every day for the last month, ever since I’d found out I was a wild card, and I really wanted a change about now. While Kevlar had its uses, and even looked cool, it got old when you had to wear it every day, weeks on end.

Catholic schoolgirls had more variety in their closets.

Scrubs were my only other wardrobe option while housed at the Dolofonoitou Zontanous Nekrous lab. So my fashion choices came down to Linda Hamilton’s wardrobe from Terminator 2—mental ward chic, or “gonna kick me some cyborg ass” paramilitary.

Sigh.

Well then, BDUs and a black thermal it is.

As if the clothing wasn’t bad enough, I reeked of the ever-present smell of bleach, a by-product of the disinfection process. All of the vanilla spice body butter in the world wouldn’t cover that stench.

I consoled myself with a touch of lip gloss and some mascara, trying to pretend I still lived a halfway normal life, and that Gabriel—my sort-of-kind-of-boyfriend—hadn’t been taken away at gunpoint in a textbook example of really shitty timing.

Seriously, Gabriel and I had just reached a new equilibrium in our relationship, if you could call it that. Sure, the antiserum gave him a bad case of ’roid rage. Without it, though, he faced the irony-laden choice between eating human flesh in order to retain his humanity, or succumbing to the virus and becoming a mindless zombie.

Then there was his basic personality, which included a certain amount of stubborn self-righteousness that sometimes flipped him into douche mode. Even so, we’d worked through it, and I’d begun to have some hope for our future together.

And then he was gone. There was a real chance that I wouldn’t see him again.

No, screw that.

I couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t even think about it. Instead I focused on my favorite mantra. WWRD or…

What would Ripley do?

One, she’d go back for the cat.

Check.

Two, she’d kill as many of the monsters as she could.

In progress.

Three, kick the ass of a sleazy corporate bastard.

On my to-do list.

Four, rescue the hero. Well, crap, Dallas had died. Although she did rescue Hicks.

But then he died in the third movie.

Crap.

Grabbing a black hairband from the utilitarian dresser stacked next to my smaller-than-twin-sized bed, I gathered my mass of tawny brown hair into a thick ponytail, and gave myself a cursory once-over in the mirror to make sure I was fit for public consumption.

Ha-hah, very funny.

I shook my head in disgust. There was nothing to laugh about right now, but my mind couldn’t stop its wise-cracking. Then again, without my sense of humor, as inappropriate as it was at times, I think I would have gone quietly around the bend, back when my husband dumped me for one of his eighteen-year-old students, ten years my junior. Nothing busts your self-esteem like being replaced by the younger model.

With that gloomy—and yes, shallow—thought lodged in my mind, I took a second, closer look in the mirror, noting the circles under my dark green eyes and the hollows beneath the planes of my cheekbones. I wasn’t anywhere near the heroin chic level of gaunt, but I could stand to gain a few pounds, and have at least a week’s worth of sleep uninterrupted by nightmares. I gave a mental shrug.

It’s not like I was trying to impress anyone.

Looking around my temporary living quarters, I was amazed how much the place resembled the DZN facility at Big Red. The same sterile white hallways, faux wood doors, and lack of any personality whatsoever in the rooms themselves. Ugh. The place depressed me. I’d seen Motel Sixes with more charm. Plus I was hungry, almost to the point of light-headedness. So I decided to go find food.

But first, I needed to check in on Lil.

I’d met her at the beginning of the clusterfuck in Redwood Grove. Since then she’d turned from an incredibly sheltered eighteen-year-old college student into a disturbingly gleeful zombie-killing wild card. Her mother had gone missing during the initial outbreak, and Lil’s already fragile emotional state slipped a little more every day she wasn’t found. The fact Lil was on psychotropic drugs for some sort of bipolar disorder didn’t help.

Especially since, to my best guess, she’d been off the drugs for several days now. She needed more meds, if I could only remember what it was she’d been taking. Dr. Albert knew, but he wasn’t much good about now. I’d tried to talk to Dr. Arkin, the head physician here at UCSF, to see if she could help, but I’d been stonewalled by her assistant, Josh.

“Dr. Arkin is busy,” he’d said. “I’ll let her know of your concern.”

Officious jerk.

Oh, well, now that we’d cleared the rooftop, Simone would be arriving soon, and she’d know what to do.

I stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind me without bothering to lock it, and promptly collided with someone.

CHAPTER THREE

While I didn’t do anything as girly as shriek with surprise, I did give a little gasp as strong hands gripped my shoulders, steadying me, and I looked up to see Griff smiling down at me.

There was a hint of smug in his smile. Subtle, but definitely there. I realized our little collision hadn’t entirely been an accident. Which meant he’d been waiting for me to come out of my room. Which could either be construed as flattering or creepy and kind of stalkery.

I went with creepy and stalkery.

“You want something?” My tone was less than welcoming, the sort of tone usually reserved for Jehovah’s Witnesses and AT&T salesmen.

Griff continued to smile.

“Always.”

I rolled my eyes, not even trying to hide it.

“Seriously. Is there a reason you’re lurking outside my room?”

His smile widened. A very sexy smile… if you liked crocodiles.

“Just thought I’d see if you wanted company.”

“No thanks,” I said brusquely.

Griff raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, leaning casually against the wall.

“Why not?”

I thought fast.

“I’m going to check on Lil, and I don’t think extra company would be a good idea.”

“Lil.” Griff stared off into the distance as if flipping through a mental Rolodex. “Little round gal with big eyes and lots of hair, right? Slightly off?”

I glared at him. “You’d be slightly off too if you’d lost—” Then I stopped, not wanting to get into it with this man.

“Sorry, not trying to offend,” Griff said without a hint of apology in his voice. “But maybe more company is exactly what she needs.”

What could I say to that that wasn’t totally rude?

Probably plenty of things, but then I’d have to care about what he thought.

“Since you just met us two days ago,” I said, “I don’t think you’re the best judge of what Lil needs.” I smiled up at him. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

I started to move past him, but in a move so subtle I wasn’t entirely sure how he pulled it off, Griff managed to take up enough of the space in front of me to block my path.

“You don’t like me, do you?”

Why did I suddenly feel as if I’d wandered into a Twilight movie?

“I don’t even know you.”

“We can change that.” Griff moved closer, one corner of his mouth going up in a seductive expression that had undoubtedly loosened the thighs of many a female.

“We could,” I said levelly, staring him straight in the eyes. “But I’m not interested. So let’s just part as—”

“As friends?” He grinned at me. “We can start with that.”

He moved in closer, just shy of invading my personal space, his body heat palpable, along with a faint scent of something rich and spicy, like Mexican hot chocolate. The man smelled good, but then so did those carnivorous plants that attracted prey with deceptively sweet scents.

Griff’s internal thermostat appeared to be set perpetually high, to generate pheromones and attract unwary females with his bad boy looks and cocky mien. His confidence smacked a little too much of arrogance, something I didn’t find attractive, not even in Gabriel. And I was kind of sort of in love with him. Griff just came across as arrogant dipped in superiority sauce with a side order of “I’m all that and a bag of chips.”

It made me want to slap him.

“On second thought,” I said, “Forget friendship. Let’s just part.”

Set phasers on sarcasm, Captain.

I began to step around him when he blocked my path again, quite obviously this time, backing me up against the corridor wall. His body language, while not quite threatening, was definitely meant to intimidate.

So not in the mood for this shit.