Free Plague Nation by Dana Fredsti Page A

pick up again, rattling the empty beer cans.
    “Let’s start at the far end,” I said after a moment’s thought. “When Team B shows up, they can start at the entrance, and we’ll meet in the middle. Kai, let ’em know, okay?” He pulled out his radio and proceeded to do so.
    It would have been safer to work in teams, one person opening the door and staying safely behind it, while the other stood back dispatched the zombie with a bullet to the head, but we had a lot of ground to cover, and I trusted Tony and Kai’s ability to handle whatever they came across. Unless they ran into some more Silly String.
    “Let’s go.” I nodded to Tony. “Kai, we’ll see you back there.”
    Kai nodded as Tony and I unslung our M4s and threaded our way between trailers to the far end of the park.
    I took the one at the furthest point, nestled against redwoods on two sides. Some care had been taken with landscaping around it, planters with herbs and flowers bordering the edge of the trailer. The plants still thrived, even in the face of forced neglect, the damp weather making it easy to be a lazy gardener in Redwood Grove.
    Ascending the steps to the front door, I listened carefully, trying to discern sound above the banshee howl of the wind. It was difficult, even with my enhanced senses, which picked up everything equally. So I cautiously opened the door, the creak of fog-rusted hinges loud enough to wake the dead. I took a step back and waited.
    Nothing.
    Stepping inside, I took a big old sniff. I smelled rotting food mixed with a musty smell of an enclosed space that hadn’t been aired out in over two weeks. Nothing pleasant, but after the crap I’d smelled around the undead, stenches were relative.
    A quick scan of the interior from front to back revealed nothing more than the fact that its inhabitants had enjoyed the fine taste of cheap beer in large quantities, Domino’s pizza, and preferred Big Bob’s banana-flavored condoms as their birth control of choice. The box was sitting out on the bedside table. I hoped they survived to have many more banana splits.
    Okay, just grossed myself out.
    I used my extra-broad black Sharpie on the door, and moved on.
    The next trailer was an eBay seller’s wet dream, with scads of Hummel figurines and Smithsonian collector’s plates displayed on doilies, all against a background of flocked pink wallpaper. It was like being trapped inside a tchotchke-stuffed Pepto-Bismol bottle. But at least there were no signs of body parts.
    I made another black check with satisfaction, and started to relax as I moved to trailer number three. Maybe Trailer Heaven’s residents had made it to a safe house, like the church or the fire station. Maybe the person who’d collected all those precious figurines, and the complete Star Trek: The Next Generation collector’s plate series, was secure at Big Red with the rest of the survivors. I hoped this was the case, even if I thought Hummel figurines were as tacky as velvet paintings of Elvis.
    Smiling at the thought, I opened the door to the third trailer without bothering to listen or knock.
    My bad.
    Rotting hands seized my arm and the front of my vest, yanking me inside before I could do more than yelp with surprise. My eyes watered as a wave of putrid stench rolled over me, and I found myself up close and personal with two zombies—a tall, skinny male wearing nothing but a pair of BVDs that had probably been gross before their occupant had died, and a female with a bouffant of lacquered red hair, skinny jeans on a frame that couldn’t be called skinny even with chunks of flesh missing, and a shredded skin-tight tank top that exposed a major muffin top stomach and one sagging breast. One arm was gone, leaving a mess of blood, gristle, and chewed flesh in its place. There was a hole where the other breast had been.
    Both zombies gripped my arms and torso, pulling me toward them with relentless hunger and threatening to dislocate my shoulders as they