Plague Town Read Online Free

of the way as Matt rolled onto his back and then jumped to his feet, fists clenched. I quickly stepped in-between them just in case Matt decided to take another swing.
    I needn’t have worried.
    Evidently Matt’s surge of protective testosterone had faded as quickly as it’d come. What he said next floored me.
    “Damn, that was fast !” He peered at Gabriel, and his fists uncurled. “Judo?”
    Gabriel shook his head.
    “Aikido.” His expression was almost sheepish. “Are you okay?”
    Matt nodded.
    “Just a little embarrassed,” he said. “It’s not cool being taken down in front of my girlfriend.”
    “Don’t be,” Gabriel said. “It wasn’t a fair match. I’ve been training for fifteen years.”
    I couldn’t resist.
    “Training at what? Being a black-belt pain in the ass?”
    Gabriel’s lip twitched in what might have been a smile if it’d had a chance to grow a little.
    “Perhaps I owe you an apology.”
    I waited.
    “I’m... sorry.” The words didn’t quite stick in his throat, but they tried. “I’m working on five hours sleep over the last three days, and it’s made me short-tempered.” He faced Matt when he spoke, so I didn’t think I was meant to be the recipient of his mea culpa .
    “Oh, dude, that sucks,” Matt said. “I did a couple of all nighters for mid-terms last year. Totally screwed with my head. I’m sorry I swung at you.”
    I rolled my eyes. Enough with the male bonding already.
    “Um, Matt ?” I said, maybe a little too sharply. “Can we get some food please?”
    Matt stared at me blankly for a second.
    “Huh? Oh, sure.” He moved back toward the counter, paused, and then looked at me again.
    “What did you want?”
    The testosterone-drenched fun fest didn’t end there. Gabriel ended up sitting with us during lunch. Normally I’d be totally jazzed to be sitting with two guys that hunky—especially considering the envious stares of coeds much younger than me—but I’d had enough crap for one day. And there was something really irritating about how fast Matt went from protective boyfriend to total man-crush.
    I stared at Gabriel and openly savored a juicy bite of my buffalo burger, but he seemed to be out of self-righteous snark for the time being.
    “So you don’t eat any meat?” Matt took a big bite of his burger, oblivious to the irony of his question.
    “No meat, no poultry, no dairy.”
    “No fun,” I muttered, dipping an onion ring in ketchup.
    “Not true,” Gabriel replied. “You’d be amazed.”
    “I bet I would,” I said. “What about onion rings? There are no animal products in onion rings, are there?” I waved one at him.
    “Vegan diets are free of cholesterol, and are generally low in saturated fat.” He sounded as if he were reciting from the Vegan Bible or something. “So no, no onion rings.”
    I shook my head. “Like I said,” I replied, “no fun.”

    Maggie made slow but steady headway toward Redwood Grove. Some instinct kept her moving in the right direction even when she left the winding road, taking a more direct path through the woods.
    She fell often, the lack of connective tissue around her left knee making balance a problem. Her feet were bare and the flesh was torn, but she felt no pain, not even when she landed face first in a bush and a broken branch punctured an eyeball. It snapped off with the force of her fall, leaving Maggie with a stick jutting out of her ruined eye socket, vitreous egg-white oozing from the puncture and sliding down her cheek like thickened tears.
    Inexorably pulling herself to her feet, she began movingagain. Not far away there was the sound of an automobile pulling to a stop, the engine shutting off. Maggie shifted direction abruptly, following the echoing slam of a car door. The trees thinned out, revealing a small building, carved redwood bears and other items lined up on its raised porch. Several cars were parked in front.
    There were splotches of blood leading up the stairs and into