Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) (26 page)

I nodded slowly. “That might work.”

Appel shook his head. “That means opening the door.”

“What do you mean?” I looked from one to the other. “What door?”

“The organ console is wheeled out onto the pavilion stage when it’s played,” Appel said. “If it rains, we leave it inside, but we still have to open the door.”

Aimee shrugged. “You can activate the door hydraulics, and then get back into the air chamber. That way you’d be safe.”

“I am not leaving you out there by yourself,” Appel growled.

“What are you people not telling me?” I asked tersely.

“When the door is open, the console is exposed,” he said. “It means she’ll be on stage out in the open and unprotected.”

“Fine,” Aimee snapped. “So I play for a little while and then we shut the door again.”

It was Appel’s turn to slam a hand on the table. This time Aimee jumped, eyes wide.

“No! The hydraulics aren’t working properly!” He turned back to me. “I can open it by myself, but it takes two or more stagehands to get it closed, and it takes a good ten minutes to do so.”

“Those things move slowly—they’ll take a while to get onto the stage.” She gave me a brittle smile. “Long enough for you to get free and clear, right?” “But not long enough for
you
to get back inside,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

Aimee’s silence and Appel’s glower were answer enough.

“Forget it,” I said. “Not acceptable.”

Aimee stood so quickly that her chair flew back with a crash. She looked me straight in the eye.

“You do
not
get to decide what is acceptable for me,” she said. Appel started to protest and she rounded on him. “
You either
. My life is over, do you understand? My husband is gone. My daughter is gone.” Suddenly the anger vanished. “My world is gone,” she finished quietly. “And if doing this will help save a few people, and help you catch the bastards that let those things in here, then I’m going to do it.”

The anger flared back up. She glared at Appel.

“And you’re going to help me.”

He and I looked at each other. I saw the sorrow in his eyes, no doubt reflected in mine, as well. He gave a heavy sigh and nodded.

“Very well.”

I could tell just how much it hurt him to say those words.

“And you.” My turn on the receiving end of that glare. “Make. This. Count.”

“I will.”

And I would. Or I’d die trying.

Appel hadn’t been joking when he told me how cramped the utility corridors were. I had to make my way in a perpetual crouch, with my hair collecting cobwebs from the ductwork overhead.

Who the hell did they get to service this place, Oompa Loompas?

My thigh muscles hated me about now, and my claustrophobia was kicking in big time. Each footstep stirred up clouds of dust and turned my flashlight beam into a temporary whiteout.

Okay
, I told myself.
The dust means no one’s been this way in a damned long time. One less thing to worry about. So just keep moving and stop being such a baby.

I reached the end of the passageway, checked the hastily scrawled map Appel had given me, then shone the light up and over to the left. And
voila
! My beam found what I was looking for—a set of rebar ladder rungs like big rusty staples, jutting out from the concrete wall. They led up past the ducts and piping and into the darkness overhead. I tried to follow the rungs with my beam, but it didn’t reach very far; either the batteries were getting weak or the blackness up there was that much thicker.

Thanks for that thought, brain.

I started to climb, moving as quickly as I could. I had to be in position when the organ started.

The rungs led up into a shaft that was even more cramped for space than the corridors I’d just left, and even thicker cobwebs. Ignoring thoughts of Shelob and every spider movie I’d ever seen, I brushed them aside and climbed that much faster, anxious to reach my destination. As the ladder kept going and going, it started to feel as if the “up” was a lot farther than the “down” had been.

The flashlight finally caught something up ahead—a circle of riveted metal and a rusted handle. A hatch like you’d see in those old submarine movies, with the emphasis on “old.” For a moment, as I clung to the ladder in the tiny—and possibly spidery—hole, I wondered if the gears in the handle would even turn, then pushed the thought aside.

It
would
turn.

It had to.

All I had to do was be patient, and wait for the music to start.

* * *

Empty seconds stretched into empty minutes, and my subconscious tried to fill the time in with whatever it could. It had plenty of fodder to choose from. Rage at Griff, frantic worry for my friends, doubts about what lay ahead. These warred with sorrow for Aimee, about to play the organ for the last time, and the tremendous weight of guilt that I’d agreed to let her do it. She was going to die and so, most likely, was Appel.

The thoughts became too much, worse than the waiting itself, smothering me even faster than the close confines of the shaft. I took a deep breath, tuned it all out, and tried desperately to focus.

Cabrillo Point. That’s all that matters now.

Cabrillo Point… and Gabriel.

How the hell am I going to get there?

I’d found a total of three remotes. All I had to do was push the button and follow the chirp, right? After all, I had super hearing.

Not so much.

Balboa Park had at least a half dozen parking lots spread out over the grounds. If the cars were in any of the lots directly behind the pavilion, I was kind of screwed, because the area was already swarming with the undead. No, I’d have to keep to the underbrush and range out further, keep my fingers crossed that the car owners had parked in one of the auxiliary lots.

Thunder rumbled outside, sounding close by, then changed in tone and pitch and became music. A small involuntary smile curved my lips as I recognized
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
, one of the few organ pieces I knew, thanks to many childhood viewings of
Fantasia
and
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Captain Nemo going down with the
Nautilus
.

Aimee had a flare for the dramatic.

I gripped the hatch’s locking wheel and strained against it. It gave an inch, then more, the grating of metal blending in with the music until it finally broke loose, spinning freely. I felt more than heard the bolts retracting until the wheel finally stopped and I could lift the hatch an inch or two.

Organ music flooded in immediately, almost deafening to my wild card ears. I steeled myself against the auditory assault and peeked out into a small concrete chamber, oblong and utterly plain.

There was a basketball-size opening in the left wall halfway up, and a spillway in the opposite wall at floor level, but my attention was drawn to a metal grate. Beams of sunlight danced on the concrete wall, along with ominous shadows.

There was someone standing on that grate. In fact, several someones. Or possibly somethings.

Well, crap.

If they were some of the crew that raided the facility, my odds of getting out unnoticed were slim to none. If they were zombies, at least I could put them down without them shooting at me. For the first time in my life I really hoped I was about to have an encounter of the undead kind.

I raised the hatch enough to slip out into the chamber, drew my pistol and crept forward. Halfway across I had my answer—the uber stinky fluids dripping through the grate and pooling beneath.

I edged closer to get a better look. There were three zombies, just standing there with their heads swiveling this way and that, as if not sure what to make of the new sound echoing around them. After a few moments, they staggered away in the direction of the pavilion.

Guess they figured it out.

I didn’t waste any time. I stood up straight and lifted the grating out of its well, sliding it aside just far enough to let me pull myself out before sliding it back into place. Any noise I made was covered by the thundering organ music.

I stayed low to the ground as I surveyed the area, then scuttled over to some shrubbery next to a large lily pond. A few hundred feet away was the Botanical building, similar to the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. On my right was the Timken Museum of Art. There were agitated zombies everywhere, milling around restlessly and bumping into each other. The only positive was that the organ music was doing its job, drawing their communal attention skyward towards the pavilion.

My cover wasn’t great, though, and it was only a matter of time before I was noticed. So I needed to get behind the Botanical building to the access road where I’d have the advantage of lots of trees.

I waited for my moment, unholstering the Ruger. There was a moment when the crowd in front of me thinned out, all of their attention away from me, and I ran, keeping low to the ground with as little excess movement as possible. I made it to the next stand of shrubs and froze, scanning the area to see if I’d been noticed.

So far, so good.

I saw another opening and took it, making it to a small knot of trees right past the little art museum. This time, however, when I did my spot check, there were faces turned my way—a well-gnawed tourist with a camera around his neck, and a young female zombie with way too many tattoos.

Someone should’ve told her how bad those tats would look when she was dead.

Their mouths gaped open and I could only imagine the hungry moans that would’ve started up had the soaring music not drowned it out. I drew a bead and fired two quick shots. There was no report at all—just the sight of Tourist Zombie’s left eye popping as it dropped like a sack of potatoes. Tats, sporting a perforated forehead, swayed for a few seconds before slowly crumpling to the ground.

I held my breath to see if their fall would alert the others, but the rest of the zoms just picked their way around the bodies, still fixated on the pavilion.

I repeated this strategy several times—run and hide, run and hide—dropping enough zombies to warrant a change of magazines. Before long I was much closer to the access road. One more quick sprint and I’d be into the trees and hopefully out of sight.

A figure stepped into the open directly ahead, taking me by surprise. I slid to a stop and brought the pistol up, focusing on the front sight, centered on the forehead… only to pull the shot when recognition suddenly sank in.

“JT?”

The figure was gone as quickly as it appeared, melting back into the greenery. But it had been him… hadn’t it?

A coldness gripped the back of my mind as I ran even faster and burst into the grove of trees.

It was gloomy in the grove, shaded from the sunlight, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. But then I saw him standing a few yards away, head slightly bowed.

“JT!”

My heart leapt as he lifted his head to look straight at me, and I saw that his skin color was normal. My relief quickly turned into concern, and then I went on high alert as I noticed the shiner over one eye, the swollen lip, and the fact that he wasn’t bouncing around like a Super Ball. He stood there, arms behind his back.

Damn.

I brought the Ruger up again, trained it, not on JT but on the murky shadow behind him.

“Hey, Ash,” JT said in his normal voice. Distance had rendered the organ music a little less deafening. “Met some assholes when I was looking for Lil.”

“Let him go,” I said, half surprised to hear my own voice.

The shadow stepped closer to JT, transmogrifying into a man in black paramilitary gear.

I knew it. Fucking men in black.

“I knew Griff was blowing smoke.” The man smirked. “She’s dead, my ass. Figured we should stick around and make sure.” He looked me up and down in a way that made me long for a hot shower. “And here you are.”

The Ruger made a spitting sound and a round grazed the man’s cheek. “The next one’s in your eye,” I growled. “I said, let him go.”

The man gritted his teeth, reached up to touch the wound in his cheek.

“Do it,” he said.

Do it?

JT’s eyes widened.

“Ash, watch—”

Not until that first blow caught me just behind the left ear did it even occur to me I’d been outflanked. The world erupted in colors.

I staggered forward, somehow staying on my feet, only to be hit twice more in approximately the same place and driven to my knees. I rolled with it and came up in a fighting stance, trying to get my senses in order, focus my eyes back to single instead of double vision, and stop the ringing in my ears. I’d dropped the pistol somewhere so I went for my tanto, but it was gone as well, leaving me with an empty sheath.

My vision cleared enough to see someone new standing in front of me, also decked out in tactical black, only this guy was stockier and bald, with a truly scruffy-looking beard that looked like a plant in desperate need of watering. He was holding my blade, appraising it.

“Fucking wild cards,” he said in a raspy voice somewhere between Aldo Ray and Harvey Fierstein. “You think you’re all that, dontcha?”

He tossed the knife away to one side, then motioned me up.

“C’mon, girly. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

I bunched myself and lunged at him with furious intent, but it became quickly obvious I was screwed. Most of my practical experience was with weapons, not hand-to-hand, and against opponents that were slow, erratic and more than a little dead.

None of which described this guy at all.

He was fast—really fast, despite his size. He slipped my attack with just a sidestep and a twist of his shoulders. And where that next punch came from I still have no idea. It stopped me in my tracks, splitting both lips at the same time, and then a roundhouse kick dug into my side and I felt a couple of ribs crack. The bastard bobbed and weaved, dancing like a butterfly and stinging like a fucking bee, hitting me three more times from three different directions before blasting me with another kick that left me sprawled in the dirt and spitting blood.