Free Plague World (Ashley Parker Novel) by Dana Fredsti Page B

vibe cast by his dark sunglasses.
    “I hope it’s all good,” he said, though it sounded more like
Oyhawpeet’s awl gud.
Born in Ireland, raised in Australia. Hell of an accent.
    “Absolutely.” Simone smiled at him, and that’s all she wrote. I heard the crash as G fell hard for Simone.
    “G,” I said conversationally, “have you ever seen
Excalibur
?”
    “Oh, yes.” He didn’t even look at me when he replied.
    Thought so.
    Jamie came back at that moment, carrying a tray with a bowl of soup, a glass of water, and a mug of coffee. She frowned when she saw that her seat had been confiscated. She took the one next to me without saying anything, but from the way she narrowed her eyes, I had the feeling she would have slammed the tray down if it hadn’t held Simone’s precious coffee.
    “G, this is Jamie,” I said brightly. “Jamie, this is G. He saved our asses by letting us stay in his home on our way here.”
    Jamie stared at him. “You’re in my seat.”
    Whoops.
    Suddenly I was really looking forward to the briefing.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
    Chris Anderson—with an “o,” not an “e”—stared in frustration at the novelty pig-shaped clock on his desk, which showed him that a full fifteen minutes had passed since he’d been placed on hold by “Marcy.”
    He frowned, tapping impatient fingers against the wooden desktop as generic “easy listening” music piped out of his speakerphone. His VPN connection had been down for more than two hours, and he was
this
close to finalizing a deal for the Holy Grail. An inverted Jenny, printed in 1918. He’d managed to find it before the seller—a clueless redneck who’d be at home on
American Pickers
—figured out exactly what he had, and took it to an auction house.
    The thought of losing the Jenny after being this close had Chris’s blood pressure shooting sky high.
    He stopped tapping his fingers and reached into an open box of See’s candy. Like the clock, the chocolate had been a gift from his sisters in California. He loved See’s, but barely tasted the chocolate as he waited for the IT rep to take him off “hold” and fix the connection before he lost the deal.
    A sudden commotion outside caught Chris’s attention. He grabbed another piece of chocolate and stood up, wincing as his joints popped. He sat too much—one of the problems of telecommuting—and he was on the downward slope side of fifty. Things popped, crackled, and ached a little more every year.
    He carefully navigated stacks of books, magazines, and boxes to get to the office window. He pushed the heavy green curtains aside and peered out. His jaw dropped, the chocolate half eaten and forgotten in his mouth.
    What the hell?
    His apartment was on the second floor of a five-story brownstone in a nice neighborhood, but his normally quiet street had suddenly erupted into chaos. People ran down the street, some of them bloody and wounded. Many looked terrified and others looked… well, they looked like no one was home anymore. Even through the closed windows he heard screams, moans, the sound of metal smashing into metal as cars careened into one another.
    He recognized one of his neighbors, eighty-year-old Mrs. Seskin, squashed between the bumper and hood of two different cars. Her eyes were open and blood gushed out of her mouth. It seemed impossible, but she was still moving, still alive. The driver of the car that had front-ended her was folded over the wheel, not moving.
    His first thought was to dash out and help Mrs. Seskin, but then he noticed some of the other people, including other neighbors, moving toward her with an odd uncoordinated gait, like they were all learning how to walk. Even from his second-story window, Chris could see that some of them had pieces missing.
    “Oh shit, no way.”
    He watched with morbid fascination as a teenage girl, strips of flesh missing from her face so that the muscles of her jaw were visible, reached over the crumpled metal toward Mrs.