Plague Nation by Dana Fredsti

Author:Dana Fredsti
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2013-01-24T19:16:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

* * *

As it turned out, I’d just left Simone’s room when I ran into one of Paxton’s ZT squad members. The same guy I’d whomped the shit out of, point of fact. He still had a healthy shiner on his left eye.

“Jeeter, right?” I said.

He stepped back at least a foot. Ooh, points for flinching. I tried not to smile, but damn me if he hadn’t deserved everything he’d gotten.

“Colonel Paxton has asked all of you wild things—”

“Wild cards.”

He nodded energetically. “Yeah, that’s it. Wild cards. He wants you to report to the quad, ASAP.”

“Thanks.”

He turned to go, stopped, then turned back again.

“I heard about what you did, going down to the lab.” He hesitated, then added, “That took some real balls.”

“Um... thank you?”

“And I’m sorry for being a dick the other night, ma’am.”

Wow. Had anyone bet me this guy would apologize, it was a bet I would have taken in an instant, and lost.

“Er... apology accepted.”

He gave me a sharp salute and limped off down the hallway. I almost felt bad about his injuries.

Almost.

Changing course, I headed outside and toward the quad, walking through a quiet, not quite deserted campus. There were some soldiers out and about when I reached my destination, but few civilians. Most of those preferred to stay indoors. I wistfully remembered what it was like during normal times: dozens of students strolling about, clutching lattes and snacks from one of the campus coffee kiosks, or lounging on the grass or perched on cement benches scattered across the large rectangle, the inevitable hacky sack players showing off their skills or lack thereof.

I missed it all.

The last time I’d seen it crowded was on our first mission as wild cards, when the quad had been seething with the walking dead. I preferred the hacky sack players.

The rest of the gang was already assembled on the far side of the quad, next to the library. Nathan, Gabriel, and Paxton were deep in conversation. The rest were sitting, Tony a few feet apart from everyone else, still obviously determined to isolate himself.

There were also two zombies, an adolescent male in a hoodie and a nearly nude older female, shoved up against the wall of the library, each with a collar hooked to a capture pole being manned by a couple of Hazmat-geared soldiers. Both looked as if they’d been turned at the beginning of the outbreak. The smell was horrific, even from a distance, and the stench only got worse with every step I took in their direction.

“Where did these come from?” I asked Gentry, just because he was the closest person to me, and because Gabriel was still in the kaffeeklatsch with the big boys.

“They were brought in a little while ago by one of the ZTS teams.” Gentry waved a hand in front of his nose. “They were locked in the basement of a house near the edge of the quarantine zone, probably a few weeks ago. So they’re pretty ripe.”

“What’s up with the poles and shit?”

He shrugged.

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