Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) Read Free Page B

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Sword withdrawn.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