Plagued States of America (Book 5): Plagued [The Angel Rise Zombie Retribution Experiment]

by Army, Better Hero

  They reached their battered and bent frame. Hank let his flashlight run the length of it slowly, inventorying the problems. A weld joint was broken, leaving the center rail unstable. Several of the pneumatic guns and ammo belts were broken off or dangling. The hoses looked to have snapped off at the connectors in several places.

  “Forget it,” Butch said as he looked over the device.

  “Help me carry it back to the wall,” Hank said as he walked around to the far side.

  “The thing’s broken,” Butch complained.

  “Yeah,” Hank replied, testing the weight on his side. The frame of the Tenderizer was long and lopsided, but no more than a few hundred pounds. “We’re going to haul this one back in and get a new one.”

  “Let ‘em do it in the morning,” Butch countered. “It’s not like—”

  An alarm bell rang.

  Both Hank and Butch spun their flashlights toward the tree line. The bell had been tolled off to their left, but the men at every Tenderizer had their flashlights facing their own section of the woods. As the bell chime faded, a moan took its place, then another.

  “Section three,” a man called from the wall.

  His words were answered by numerous and distant groans and moans from the shadows.

  Another bell rang, closer to Hank’s station.

  “Section four,” its lookout called.

  Butch cursed under his breath. “That’s Sam’s—”

  Their own bell rang.

  “Would you stop talking,” Hank snapped at a whisper. “You’re jinxing everything.”

  “Section five,” their lookout man, Marcus, shouted, his voice echoing across the field. Moans rose at the tree line in response. Hank looked back at their lookout, hoping Marcus was pointing the way so he could get an idea of how many biters they were facing.

  It wasn’t their job to kill any. Watchmen and hunters, and pretty much anyone in the Quarantine Zone who wasn’t under military command, still had to follow civil law, which had yet to rule on whether a zombie was a person or not. The idea of using zombies as slaves didn’t set in overnight, after all. It took time for it to make sense, for people to realize that the problem wasn’t going away on its own and that something else had to be done, and for businesses to make a case for cheap labor.

  Marcus wasn’t being any help. He just stood there staring through his binoculars, his attention sweeping from one spot along the tree line to the next, and not even in their zone. Hank swung around and shined his flashlight at the far end of the field.

  “Dear God,” Butch gasped, waving his flashlight toward the other sections. “They’re…everywhere.”

  Hank sucked in his breath at the sight. Glowing eyes danced in their muted beams like fireflies, an enormous swarm at that. With their heads swaying back and forth, their collective shadows cut one another off so that their rhythmic undulations were almost mesmerizing.

  “Back to the wall,” the watch captain’s voice echoed through a megaphone. Hank was just about to suggest it himself.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Butch said, stumbling over the uneven ground as he beat a hasty retreat.

  Hank’s flashlight still washed over the growing wall of biters emerging from the shadows. The sight reminded him of early news footage, when the hordes marched down Main Street USA, straight at small teams of police and soldiers trying to hold their ground while the uninfected ran past. Guns would fire eventually, once the streets seemed clear of innocents. The zombies wouldn’t fall, though. That’s what shocked the nation.

  Something about zombies Hank had to learn like everyone else was that they didn’t know when they were dead. If they got hit in a major artery or the heart or the lungs or throat or pretty much anywhere that would drop a normal person, they just kept coming until their ticker couldn’t pump anymore. Scary as hell. That could be a good minute and a half, depending on where you got them.

  “Back to the wall,” the watch captain repeated, shaking Hank from his awed stupor.

  Hank turned to see Butch’s light shining erratically as the big man swung his arms for balance, his steps clumsy over the uneven ground. The guy looked like he was walking a tightrope. Hank started to follow, keeping an eye on the ground at the same time he looked ahead to where Butch staggered this way and that.

  “Watch where you’re going,” Hank called ahead, but Butch kept his haphazard stride, leaping and running as though the zombies were hot on his tail. Hank swung his flashlight behind him, a little unnerved by Butch’s mad flight.

  He didn’t need his flashlight to see them, though. One of the spotlights on the wall cruised along the ranks of the oncoming horde, trapping hundreds of the things in its light. Their arms rose high to cover their eyes, some swinging wildly, others ducking, but every one of them still marching ahead.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” Butch cried out.

  Hank spun, reaching for his sidearm as he turned his flashlight toward his companion.

  Butch was on his side, clutching his leg. “Mother fucker!”

  “Butch?” Hank started jogging, hopping from rut to rut in the turned soil. “You okay?”

  “Fucking rock,” Butch cried out. “Goddamn, my leg. Fucking stupid rock!”

  Hank stumbled over the plowed field toward Butch as the big man yelled out a stream of obscenities, clutching his leg the whole time, rocking back and forth. The boulder was huge. Even the plows had gone around it. It looked like Butch had tried to go over it but mis-stepped and fell right on it. Hank put the flashlight to Butch’s knee and knew right away the thing was dislocated, or the shin bone was broken.

  “Alright,” Hank said, trying to catch his breath.

  “You ain’t gonna leave me, right?” Butch asked hysterically.

  “No,” Hank replied, angry at the implication. “No, but I can’t carry you. You’re going to have to hobble.”

  “What?!”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Help how?”

  “Help you to your feet. I’m going to be your crutch, okay?”

  Butch nodded, licking his lips, his eyes wide with worry and pain. Hank pulled Butch to a sitting position, and the guy immediately rolled back and grabbed his flashlight.

  “Would you leave it? You aren’t going to need it,” Hank snapped.

  “The hell I won’t,” Butch replied and shoved it into his pocket. He waved for Hank to help him up again.

  Hank sighed, but pulled the sorry son-of-a-bitch back up and got under his arm, taking the brunt of Butch’s weight as they rose up onto their feet.

  “I step, you step,” Hank said, slapping Butch in the chest. “You got it?”

  “I got it,” Butch said, nodding excitedly. “Get stepping. Come on.”

  “Calm down,” Hank growled. He put one foot over the first rise of dirt and planted it there. No sooner had he done so Butch tried to jump over the rim and land in the trough. The whole move pulled them both back to the ground and Hank nearly fell over Butch.

  “You idiot!”

  “Fuck you,” Butch snapped. “You gotta hold me up.”

  Hank straightened and shined his flashlight on the dirt. “Hop up on top. On the top. Jump from top to top. My feet go in the troughs to steady you.”

  Butch didn’t apologize. He glanced over his shoulder toward the wall of zombies slowly gaining ground. “Alright. Come on, help me up.”

  “Are you going to do what I tell you?”

  Butch winced in pain. “Yeah, fuck yeah. Come on, help me up.”

  Hank leaned down again and struggled to get Butch back up to his feet. For a second, he wondered if Butch would have been as patient, or if he would have even helped. That was the problem with the Old West feel of the Hill, every man really was looking out for himself, and that was about it.

  They staggered together over the uneven dirt. Hank used his flashlight to find areas that the cattle had trampled down so they could move easier.

  “Why you going this way?” Butch asked.
“Ladder’s over there.”

  “Just hop,” Hank grumbled, pointing the light where he wanted Butch to put his foot down next.

  Craig Garvey stumbled toward them from section four. “Hey, what happened?”

  “Fucking broke my leg—” Butch blurted.

  “He can’t walk,” Hank interrupted. “Give a hand?”

  “Yeah,” Craig said, sliding in on the other side of Butch to help take some of the weight. “We’ve got to move, though.” He didn’t say why. There was no reason to. Everyone on the Hill knew the threat, but Hank made the mistake of looking over his shoulder anyway, just as Butch did.

  The biters were a lot closer than he expected. The front wave was already at the remains of his section’s Tenderizer. The spotlight washed across the field. Ashen skin covered in filth, stringy, greasy hair, bodies draped in worn and tattered clothes, their ranks seemed unified in only their ragged state. Their gait and shambling mass was an uncoordinated jerky dance. Even their fetid odor blanketed the field now, carried on the air as though their ravenous moans made a breeze.

  “Jesus,” Butch cried out. “They’re getting closer!”

  “You don’t worry about them,” Hank snapped.

  “The fuck! They’re right on our asses.”

  “All the more reason to move. There,” Hank said, pointing the beam of his flashlight on the next rise. “Hop there.”

  Butch hopped between Craig and Hank. All three men were breathing hard a dozen steps later. Butch kept looking over his shoulder at the oncoming horde, bemoaning and wailing as much as the feral beasts, only his complaints were tiring.

  “Would you shut the—”

  Hank’s words were cut off by the voice of Colonel Sanders over a megaphone up on the wall, calling “Ready!” Most of the watchmen called the captain of the watch Colonel Sanders because of his white hair and beard and because he looked a lot like the guy from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sanders wasn’t his real name.

  The three men looked up in unison.

  “…aim…”

  It was an unsettling feeling, for sure. Five armed riflemen stood above them, pointing their weapons in their direction. The silver-haired, retired officer commanding them marched behind them, bullhorn to his lips.

  “Fire!”

  A chorus of tings, tangs, and rat-a-tat-tats rose above the moaning and groaning of the hundreds of zombies in the field, drowning out the megaphone’s last word.

  The weapons only fired one burst and went silent. That was all they needed, but the effects would be a minute in coming.

  “Keep moving,” Hank growled, giving Butch a shove. “Come on, hop.”

  Butch jumped to the next mound of uneven dirt. Hank looked back. The first of the zombies dropped to the ground only ten yards away. It was immediately ringed by others, who sank to their knees, their hungry groans leading the way.

  “We ain’t gonna make it,” Butch said, so calm it was jarring.

  “Keep moving,” Hank growled. “Step!” He shined the flashlight again. The wall was close. A ladder dangling. Men at the top all calling out, urging them to keep moving.

  “Ready,” the bullhorn called again. “Aim…fire!” Another volley of rifle shots split the air. More zombies fell, a mound of other hungry biters toppling over each to devour their expired comrades.

  And yet, they still came. From the sides as much as directly behind them. The riflemen had concentrated their fire on the wall closing in, but as that slowed, the sides poured around them.

  “Aim for their flanks,” the megaphone called. “Fire at will!”

  Hank instinctively ducked with each snap and crack of rifle fire. Round after round sang out as body after body fell. A wall of flesh rose around them, holding back the remaining horde still trying to press in on them.

  They reached the ladder, out of breath.

  “Leg,” Hank said, pointing his light at the rope ladder. “Stuff your good leg through.”

  “I can’t climb!”

  “No shit!” Hank wanted to hit Butch with his flashlight. “They’re going to pull you up.”

  Butch nodded, realizing what Hank meant, and shoved his good leg through while Hank and Craig propped him up.

  “Pull him up!” Craig shouted. “Go!”

  “We need another ladder,” Hank added, cupping his hands to his mouth as Butch let go of his neck to hold the rope ladder.

  Men from above started hauling Butch up. He rose in the herky-jerky, lockstep fashion as the zombies shambling at them. Hank turned around and drew his pistol, resting the butt of his weapon on his flashlight as he used it to light up and pick a target.

  Blam!

  One of the zombies that had managed to squirm through the wall of gorging creatures fell backwards, head snapped back from the impact of Hank’s .45 round through its nose.

  A rope ladder reached the ground. Craig stood beside Hank, weapon drawn as well.

  “Go,” Hank said.

  “You go,” Craig said.

  “You already did your good deed for the day,” Hank replied, taking aim on another biter. Blam! He only caught it in the shoulder, but it spun around and fell into the writhing forms consuming their already dead brethren.

  Craig didn’t argue, holstering his weapon as he turned and jumped up onto the rope ladder. Hank checked Craig’s progress as he eyed the slowly closing ring of zombies surrounding him. The riflemen firing from above weren’t able to keep them back, and the pop-shots Hank was taking hardly dented the wall. Frustrated, Hank fired three rounds rapidly—blam, blam, blam—and turned to the rope ladder. He didn’t look to see what he had hit. He knew he had hit something. It was like throwing a handful of rice at the side of a barn, for Christ’s sake.

  Rope ladders are not stable like regular ladders. The rungs sagged and he dipped lower than he climbed with each step—at least that’s how it felt—but he managed to catch up to Craig’s ass in short order. Looking down, biters had filled in the small circle of defense he had stood inside only a minute ago.

  The men above held Craig as they pulled him over the top, and Hank went next, falling onto the safety of the platform at their feet, looking up into the night sky, breathing hard even though his heart had stopped, realizing that he had just shot half a dozen people. He closed his eyes, struggling with the idea, trying to hold back the raw emotions pumping through his veins, the tears that were building behind his eyes.

  “Damn,” he breathed.

  Water under the bridge now. He’d hardened to the daily sight and smell of zombies, to handling them, to hunting them. He hoped he wouldn’t get as accustomed to seeing drones.

  Twenty-One

  The drone cruised around the bend in the river and out of both earshot and eyesight. Hank sighed and walked out onto the berm at the banks of the channel—hundreds of miles of raised river just waiting for bad weather or a chink in the armor so it could overflow and flood thousands of farms and towns throughout the Rurals. A lot of money and manpower got dumped into keeping the thing stable.

  The wail of a motorboat engine echoed softly from somewhere around the bend. Hank honed in on the spot just as the thing appeared. The sound of its engine surged in volume a second later. It was a sleek, camouflaged ten-footer that followed the same course the drone had taken, powering through the choppy water with a lurching, slapping cadence, hurling white-water in its wake.

  Hank waved a few times to try to get the driver’s attention. The driver waved back after a second, and Hank started uncoiling several feet of rope in preparation for the drop. He weighed the piece of wood a few times, getting a feel for how heavy it was, and how hard he’d have to throw it.

  As the boat drew closer, it turned out that Sayad stood at the helm, leaning toward the side of the boat to see over the prow. Hank was a little impressed. He never would have figured the book worm had it in him to be such a ballsy son-of-a-bitch.

  This part of the channel wasn’t very wide, only about an eighth of a mile even though the tug m
ade it feel like a hundred. Of course, the tug didn’t cross in a straight line. Angel Rise was two miles upriver from the EPS, after all. The motorboat, however, made a beeline straight for Hank at incredible speed, crossing the channel in less than a minute, making Hank wonder what Sayad had under the hood.

  The speedboat blew past Hank’s position. Two passengers crouched low on the back deck, a man in a bright orange life vest hunched over someone smaller—Penelope. Hank could tell by the way she was hunkered down, curled in a ball with her hands covering her ears. She hated loud engines. Helicopters were the worst, but since she had never been on a boat—a real boat, that is, not that barely buoyant hole in the water Peske drove her around in—he recognized the way her fear gripped her, making her wish she could hide, or wish she was only three inches tall so no one would notice her. He’d seen her retreat like that before.

  Strange that for a girl as fearless in the face of danger as Penelope, something as simple as a loud noise nearly crippled her.

  The boat swerved hard, cutting back on the throttle to turn straight at the shoreline. Sayad had been right. Trying to land a boat here was suicide, and Hank began to jog upriver before he realized how fast the current was. The motorboat was already coming back at him even though it gurgled at an idle.

  Sayad leaned back, his head looking over his shoulder as he yelled something Hank couldn’t quite make out. Instructions for Tom, most likely. He pumped the throttle a few times to move the boat closer to shore, getting almost twenty feet off before he turned his nose downriver.

  “Now!” Sayad’s shout rose over the wind, rumbling engine, and choppy water lapping against the rocks.

  Tom stood, tugging on Penelope. Her reluctance made her a big ball of weight. It could have stemmed from an uncertainty about what was happening, or maybe she was just scared shitless by the idea of swimming. Either way, she didn’t budge. Then it hit Hank. If she lost all her memories to the zombie plague, she very well didn’t know if she could swim. The water probably frightened her as much as the boat engine. And maybe it wasn’t the boat engines or helicopter engines that frightened her in the first place. Maybe it was not being on solid ground.