Read an Exclusive Excerpt from Plague World

The air they breathe could kill them and bring them back. Conditions have gotten worse for the survivors of a zombie uprising in Plague World, the third Ashley Parker novel from author Dana Fredsti, but that isn't stopping Ashley and the wild cards from seeking revenge on their enemy in San Diego. Titan Books will release Plague World next month, and they've provided us with an exclusive excerpt.

"Having been ambushed in San Francisco, which is now fully engulfed in the zombie plague, Ashley and the wild cards must pursue the enemy to San Diego. There they will discover a splinter of their own organization, the Dolofónoi tou Zontanoús Nekroús, which seeks to weaponize the plague. But that isn’t the worst news. The plague has gone airborne, making it transferable without physical contact. It cannot be controlled by anyone, so reports of the zombie swarm are coming in from across the United States—and across the world."

Prologue

“Son of a bitch must pay.”

Jack Burton—Big Trouble in Little China

London, England

Stavros tried to tune out the hacking coughs, snuffles, snorts and other unpleasant sounds coming from the four passengers he‘d picked up at Chelsea Physic Garden. Two women and two men, all wearing power suits and sharing what seemed to be a nasty cold.

Blow your nose, mate, he thought as one of the men gave a snorting inhalation that sounded like a walrus.

He thought about raising the window that separated the driver and passenger portions of the town car, but it seemed a bit rude. It might be taken the wrong way, and one of these corporate types would no doubt complain. So he contented himself with surreptitiously pressing the pump on his ever-present hand sanitizer, tucked into one of the cup holders under the control panel.

There was something about these wankers in their suits, fresh out of their oh-so-important meetings, and the self-importance that pumped them up. It just set Stavros‘s hackles on end. All the little slights and the condescension in their voices when they spoke to him... if they bothered to speak to him at all.

He didn’t regret skipping University. He didn‘t have any desire to do more than he was doing, but every now and then he wished he had a degree that would allow him to slap one of these posers across their over-educated faces.

Another twenty minutes on the road and he‘d be rid of them at Heathrow, so they could spread their germs in their own countries and not make an honest working man too sick to do his job.

***

Danny sat in the furthest seat in the back of the town car, huddled against the door in a ball of misery. He‘d been sick before, but nothing compared to this—not even the four-day salmonella marathon he‘d had in 2005. His body hurt inside and out; even his eyeballs felt as if they were going to crack in half if he blinked.

A line from the Haunted Mansion ride was stuck in his brain, something about hot and cold running chills... He had those, along with the sensation of boiling poison running through his veins and in his forehead.

“You okay, Danny?”

He opened his eyes to see Jan from Digital Media, Holland Division, eying him with superficial concern. Jan was one of those uber-competitive guys who equated the failure of his peers with personal gain. He also made it more than obvious that he lusted after Nita from R&D Sweden, whom Danny had been seeing on the sly for the last year. Jan had made a few comments at the LP meeting, hinting that he knew about the relationship.

“I‘m fine.” A wet cough contradicted Danny‘s words almost immediately.

Jan smirked with an unattractive twist of his lips that he imagined made him look wry and sexy.

“Too many late nights sampling Swedish meatballs, eh?”

If he hadn‘t felt so shitty, Danny would have flipped the asshole off. He closed his eyes instead, and drifted away on a wave of pain that faded into blackness.

***

Jan raised an eyebrow and smirked. Danny looked like shit. And he‘d been the first to come down with the flu at the annual LP meeting, spreading it around quickly, judging from the coughs and sniffles of many fellow attendees. This was a flu bug that would get to see the world. Maybe Jan should start calling him Typhoid Danny, so no one forgot where it started.

Oh yes, the kind of thing that could dog a person throughout their career... and perhaps even shorten it.

Jan chuckled to himself, only to have the laugh cut off by a sudden tickling in the back of his throat and nose. He sneezed violently, barely catching it behind one hand. His smugness evaporated at the sight of blood mixed in with the spray of spittle on his palm.

And then Danny went into convulsions.

***

Stavros frowned as he heard yet more coughing from the back of the town car. Had they never heard of Hall‘s?

“Danny?

The sharp note of concern in man‘s voice caught Stavros‘s attention. He glanced back to see the lanky Dutch fellow in the back shaking his seatmate by one shoulder. Blood dribbled out of the man‘s eyes, nose, and mouth, his features slack and lifeless.

Shit. He looked dead. A nasty smell hit Stavros’s nose.

The Dutchman recoiled, coughing as he hunkered back against the other side of the car, as far from his seatmate as possible. The two women in the middle seat, also coughing, turned around to see what the fuss was.

“Jan, what is wrong?” A thick South American accent matched the brunette‘s exotic Selma Hayek good looks.

“It‘s Danny. I think—” the Dutchman coughed again, a wracking, rattling sound like marbles in a can filled with phlegm.

The pneumatic blonde opened her eyes and Stavros winced as he caught sight of her in the rear view mirror. The whites of her eyes were yellow and streaked with red, a counterpoint for the almost startling blue of her corneas.

“Danny?” Her voice was weak and gravelly after all the coughing.

The man in the back gave a sudden convulsion, more foul-smelling fluid leaking from his eyes, mouth, and nose.

The Dutchman next to him vomited.

“I‘ll get to hospital,” Stavros said to no one in particular, hitting the “open” button on the driver‘s side window in an attempt to cut the thick smell of sickness—a mixture of blood, shit, and rot—which filled the car. He fought the urge to vomit, concentrating instead on finding an exit off the M4 and to some medical attention.

The nearest exit was for Brentford. Stavros didn‘t know if there was a hospital, but at the very least they‘d have a police station, someone who could help. He didn‘t care. He just wanted these people out of his car so he could take it to a car wash and get it detailed, vacuumed, aired out, fumigated, for Christ sake, and maybe snort some bleach to get the smell and possible infection out of his nostrils.

Then the bloke Danny opened his eyes. The corneas were now bluish-white, the color of fat-free milk and all the more eerie set against the red-tinged yellow of the his whites. More black fluid dribbled from his mouth, the smell thick and vile in the enclosed car.

“Danny?” The blonde leaned over the seat, relief obvious in her voice. He reached for her, grabbed her head, and pulled her over the seat back on top of his lap, teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her neck before anyone could react. Blood sprayed over the leather seats, splashing all of the passengers.

The Dutchman recoiled in horror, only to go into his own convulsions, the same black viscous liquid spewing out of his mouth.

Stavros stared in horror as the sick bloke ripped chunks of flesh from the blonde‘s neck, the other passengers recoiling I horror, fingers scrabbling for the door handles. His only thought was to get the hell off the road, out of the car, and away from whatever was wrong with his passengers. So he didn‘t bother looking in his rearview mirror when he swerved into the right lane over—directly into the path of an oncoming tanker.