Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment
The Plagued States of America, Book 4
Better Hero Army
All contents copyright © 2017 by Evan Ramspott. All rights reserved.
This book identifies product names and services known to be trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective holders. Better Hero Army and Evan Ramspott are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned herein.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and locations portrayed herein are fictitious, and any similarity to or identification with the location, name, character, or history of any person, product, or entity is entirely coincidental, except for the character of Matilda Blake (aka Momma), who is secretly Matt Baha. Thanks to Matt for the continued encouragement and support.
For hoarders…and the overly prepared
Of particular note, I would like to point out that I am not a scientist, therefore I am grateful to Audrey Kelleman, Ph.D. for supplying the bioscience behind the hypermax curative research conducted by the character Wendy O’Farrell. I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge Lowell Abalos and Harpriya Singh for being good sports and providing some of their personal stories which inspired a few segments of this book.
One
It looked like any other zombie hunting rig. That's what fooled everyone, including Dr. Wendy O’Farrell. She hurried past, hoping to outrun the cold wind blowing through the parking garage beneath the Elevated Platform Station—everyone who lived here called it the EPS. On a normal day, she may have noticed how the giant truck sat lengthwise in front of the other vehicles instead of being parked properly, or how the man in the driver’s seat ducked low beneath the steering wheel at the sight of her, just the round of his wool hat peeking above the dash to give him away. It might have been enough to save her, but then again, she hadn’t had a normal day in weeks.
At the steel door along the far end of the parking structure, she leaned her upper arm against a black sensor pad. It scanned the RFID capsule beneath her skin, making a beep as the lock clacked to let her through. Without taking her hands out of her jacket pockets, she yanked open the door and ducked into the equally cold man-trap. At least there was no wind. The door wheezed shut behind her.
Reluctantly, she took her hands out of her pockets to push back her upturned hood and tighten the ponytail holding up her thick red hair. This daily ritual gave her a moment to compose herself before scores of cameras recorded her every move. One watched her now. She hid behind her arm, tugging her hair again, even though it wasn’t coming loose. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she let out a sigh that turned into a cough.
Damned cold.
The man-trap had two doors, the one she came in, and the one leading into the kennels—what the EPS guards affectionately dubbed the place where they kept the zombies locked up. She leaned into the second door sensor and a small light on its biometric reader blinked red. When she put her thumb on the pad beside it, the light changed to yellow, flashed twice, and finally lit solid green. The second door clacked, releasing magnetic locks, and she yanked it open, escaping the man-trap and bitter cold.
“Morning, Mike,” Wendy muttered, stifling another cough.
Mike sat behind a huge plate of bulletproof glass consuming most of the far wall of the waiting room. A cluster of monitors showed video footage behind him, each screen displaying a different security checkpoint inside and outside the kennels.
“Morning,” Mike replied, his voice an echo through the speaker. He wore a black military uniform with sewn-in arm, leg, and body armor that was basically lightweight padding, designed to be bite-proof, not bulletproof. His zip-up neck guard hung loosely over his shoulders.
Wendy caught a glimpse of herself in the monitors as she walked to the door beside the glass. She didn’t like what she saw. Sleeplessness had definitely taken its toll, showing every one of her thirty-three years. Couple that with barely eating and she looked a lot like the zombies she cared for. She was so sickly pale these past few days that the only tan was on her freckles, as her mother would put it—when was the last time I talked to mom? She wanted to believe it was just the cameras or the fluorescent lights in here, but the mirror in her apartment reflected the same gaunt husk of a woman.
She coughed again, sniffled, and breathed in deeply to clear her nose. That’s when she smelled the odor of cigarettes, the kind of staleness that followed a smoker into a room. She knew Mike didn’t smoke.
Behind her, hardly more than ten feet away, a rugged man in his fifties leaned low in a chair along the wall.
God, I’m losing it. How did I miss him?
He smiled at her and nodded, sliding his jacket zipper up and down in quick jerks. His eyes grazed on her from head to toe and back again. He winked, smiling broader to show his worn out, yellowing teeth. He typified the kind who inhabited the Quarantine Zone, a rough zombie hunter with dirt-stained hands, fingernails ringed in black, a pair of loosely-tied boots, thick pants, a heavy hunter’s jacket, four days of facial hair, and a greasy salt-and-pepper mop pasted to his scalp from days of his own sweat under a hat that probably should have been thrown away before the zombie war even started.
Wendy sighed in disgust. Just a hunter dropping off his catch, or maybe checking in on his sales records. She didn’t really care. She just wanted to get through the door and away from him.
“Any weapons?” Mike asked through the hollow speaker.
For a second, Wendy thought Mike was asking the hunter sitting in the corner. When she realized he meant her, she raised an eyebrow at him.
“Come on, Doc, you know I’m required—”
“No,” she said, her voice a little raspy. “No weapons.”
“Step onto the yellow pad.”
Wendy coughed into her sleeve before stepping in front of the door. Beneath her feet was a worn, large square of yellow that sagged slightly as she put her weight on it. A bar in the door frame slid out from the top and shot to the floor on a hidden rail. It then rose smoothly and steadily with an electrical moaning, scanning her for several different substances, including metal enough to make a gun or weapon. Given that this was the last barrier of safety between the entirety of the EPS and a horde of infectious zombies, the precautions seemed reasonable even if they were tedious.
“Come on in,” Mike said as the bar retracted into the wall. The door buzzed and Wendy pushed it open.
Simon, the other handler, stood just inside the door in the cramped little nook where they kept the sign-in terminal and filing sheets. They didn’t call themselves guards in the kennels because they were specially trained to handle zombies. In front of Simon stood another stranger. This man didn’t have the hard, weather-worn appearance that the smoker in the waiting room did. He was a lot younger—Wendy’s own age—with a clean-shaven face, blond hair, soft skin, blue eyes that glanced her way, and a curl to his lip that seemed entirely too familiar.
I know him.
But she didn’t know how. It was just a feeling, one that stopped her in her tracks until the door pressed against her. The blond fumbled the clipboard he was holding. Instead of catching it himself, he batted it past Simon, who reached for it as it tumbled by.
By itself it may have been comical. Maybe the blond hunter recognized her, too, and in his surprise, he fumbled with what he was doing like a schoolboy, but the rush of footsteps behind her gave her that sudden realization that something wasn’t right. An arm pressed against her back, shoving her past the door and against the wall.
She knew it was the smoker. There
was no one else in the waiting room, after all. He gave her a little extra shove as he moved past, tossing something gently to the blond man. The dark object flew without tumbling, and Wendy knew by its size and shape exactly what it was. Catching it, the blond turned it on Simon in one quick motion.
“Don’t move,” the blond man said, holding a small, snub-nosed revolver pointed at Simon’s chest.
The smoker stepped into Mike’s booth a second later, pointing another pistol at the handler’s back. “Don’t touch that,” the smoker warned Mike, who was standing to reach for the red alarm button on the wall. “Sit down and slide back nice and slow.”
The door to the waiting room clicked shut, locking them all inside.
Two
Wendy should have called her mother. That’s what went through her head for the briefest of moments. For the past four days, she had been safely here at the EPS after not only escaping the destruction at Rock Island, but also surviving being a part of a harrowing rescue mission in Midamerica. By all rights, her mother deserved to know she was still alive, but picking up the phone meant they had to talk.
“You’re alive! Thank God,” Wendy imagined her mother would say. “Where are you?” Not how are you, but where.
“The EPS,” Wendy would tell her.
“The what? What does that mean?”
“A sanctioned zombie trading station like Rock Island.” Her mother knew what Rock Island was. Wendy had spent the better part of a year stationed there on her research assignment.
“Is that safe?”
Based on the events of this morning, the answer would have been a resounding no. If they had talked yesterday, it still would have been a tough question to answer. The other two sanctioned outposts had been destroyed in “accidents” that triggered their self-destruct mechanisms, but if they had talked, at least her mother wouldn’t be thinking her daughter might be dead. They would have had the chance to speak once more before she really died, which was exactly what Wendy thought was going to happen to her at any minute.
“Now, hold on,” Simon said, lifting his hands in the air.
“No talking,” the blond said. “Doctor O’Farrell, please take these.”
Her eyes widened. He knew her name.
He held several zip ties toward her, shaking them as though beckoning her closer. He didn’t look her way. “Slowly, if you don’t mind. I need you to zip-tie Corporal Stevens’ hands together, then Sergeant Wilsons’, too.”
Wendy gulped. He knew Simon and Mike, too. Was that why she recognized him? Had he been here before?
Her hands trembled as she reached out for the zip ties, but her feet wouldn’t move.
“You’ll have to come closer,” the blond said encouragingly. “We’re on a bit of a schedule.”
“Look, whatever you’re trying—” Simon started.
The blond pulled the hammer back on the revolver. Simon raised his hands higher.
“Doctor, if you please. Time’s a wasting.”
Wendy stepped forward on stiff legs, wrapping her trembling fingers around the zip ties. Several spilled onto the floor and she teetered on the idea of bending down to gather up what she dropped, looking at the pile in shock. Her enfeebled hands tingled. Why was she so afraid? She’d been through worse than this. Of course, she’d been afraid then, too.
“Leave them,” the blond snapped and she jumped. “Into the booth, if you please.”
The few steps it took to get into the booth helped her recover her wits. Mike was still seated. The smoker stood behind him with the pistol pointed toward his back. As Wendy looked at him, the smoker flashed her a lewd smile that showed his yellow teeth.
“Zip his wrists, one each,” the smoker told her.
She put a zip tie around each of Mike’s wrists and cinched them together as the smoker instructed, mouthing “sorry.” As soon as Wendy had Mike’s hands tied, the smoker dove in and pushed her away. She glared at him, angry that he had shoved her around twice now. She wanted to jump on his back and gouge out his eyes, but she felt so helpless. They had guns, and after being shot in Midamerica, she didn’t want to tempt fate without a bulletproof vest this time.
The smoker ripped Mike’s pistol out of the Velcro holster. “There now,” he said, pocketing his own revolver. He pulled back the slide to load Mike’s weapon. Wendy stood, trembling with rage as the smoker held the gun to Mike’s head and stripped him of his radio ear piece and transmitter. He yanked out the radio from Mike’s vest. “Got any smokes?” he asked, patting Mike’s pockets.
“Out here doctor, if you please,” the blond man said, the calm in his voice jarring.
She knew the blond watched her even though he wasn’t looking at her. She came out of the office and zip-tied Simon’s hands together the same way, then backed up. Simon was stripped of his gear quickly: his pistol, radio, access card, and ring of keys.
“Camel tie them,” the blond ordered.
The smoker pushed Mike out of the booth and zip-tied the restraints on his wrist to the back of Simon’s belt. Simon’s hands were zip-tied to a jacket pocket on his own shoulder.
Wendy’s voice wavered. “Whatever it is you want—”
“I want you to be quiet,” the blond said, glaring at her. “Reset me.”
Wendy looked confused.
“Gotcha,” the smoker said, stepping around Wendy while digging out a device from the cargo pocket of his pants. He put what looked like a jury-rigged television remote with exposed wires and a circuit board taped to it over the blond’s arm. He quickly punched in some numbers and the device blinked in quick succession. Something beeped under the blond’s sleeve.
“You’re clear.” The smoker stepped past Wendy and headed back into the control room.
“Let’s go, everyone,” the blond said, waving Simon’s pistol for emphasis. “Down the hall.”
Wendy tried to think of some way to set off an alarm or alert someone that this was happening. She wasn’t allowed to carry a phone—hardly anyone was—and she didn’t have a radio. Just the pager they used to notify her of an emergency.
“Keep walking, doctor,” the blond said. “Open the door to the pens, if you please.”
“Cameras are down,” the smoker called gleefully from the booth. He was enjoying all of this.
It made Wendy angry. “What do you want?”
“The door,” the blond said, waving his gun toward the end of the hall.
They passed a bulletproof, break-resistant glass window overlooking the walled-in pick-up yard. Originally, it was built to house the back-up generators for the EPS building, but they put all the power units on the roof when they converted the area to a huge parking lot for hunting rigs and walled in the kennels to hold the “merchandise” in secured pens until it cleared quarantine. They called them “pens,” but that was just a kind word for “prison cells.” Just like “merchandise” was a kind word for “zombie slaves.”
Wendy leaned against the door sensor and it beeped then clicked to let her through. Maybe, she thought, she could trap the blond inside the kennels, but then she realized he had Simon’s security access card.
The pungent aroma of cheap industrial disinfectant filled the humid air, greeting her as the door swung open. It carried that same acrid odor of moisture and feral beasts that reminded her of when she worked at the Rock Island prison facility. For the first time in days, she recoiled at the stench. It must have been the situation that regurgitated such vivid memories—the door to the cell block swinging open as Sergeant Chavez pointed urgently, the fetid air masked by cleaning agents, her running down the length of cells toward a toppled cleaning cart and the open cell door, a feeling of dread knotting in the pit of her stomach. She hardly remembered the dead zombies around the pen. What stood out was Lieutenant Jones lying against the bed pallet with his blood-drenched left arm—a bite wound. He’d been infected. She summoned the courage to step into the cell and lie to him that he’d be alright. Of all people, she knew better.
“2-A, if you please,” the blond said, tossing Simon’s stolen ring of keys at Wendy. It startled her. She fumbled to catch them. The blond stood in the door frame with his foot holding the door open. He let Wendy go to open the empty pen.
So much for trapping him inside.
Wendy opened the cell door and the blond hunter waved for the handlers to get in. All the temporary pens were empty this early in the morning because no one had come down yet to request processing.
“Not you, doctor. You come with me, and be quick about it. Time’s a wasting.”
Wendy gulped. “Sorry,” she mouthed again and closed the cell on the handlers, locking them inside. At least they were safe.
She handed the blond hunter the keys as she passed him on her way back to the main office. He let the door to the pens close, but as Wendy continued down the hall, she realized he wasn’t following her. She paused, looking over her shoulder. He stared out the window into the kennel pick-up yard.
“Open it up,” the blond said, not looking at her. He sounded weary. The reflection in the glass showed he wasn’t looking outside, but instead at her.
“What do you mean?”
“There are only three badges on station that will open that door.” He pointed at a door between them. It led to one of the laboratory recovery rooms. This particular one had been re-coded to prevent anyone from getting inside because of who was recovering within. Wendy wondered how the blond knew about it.
“It’s biometric,” Wendy tried to counter.
“Which is why we waited for you to get here. Your shift started ten minutes ago. You’re late. The door.” He raised the pistol he had taken from Simon. He didn’t point it at her, but instead at the door.
“It senses other people in the hall.”
The man patted his upper arm with the gun. It made a dull clunking noise of metal on metal. “It won’t detect me. Open the door.”
He knew what was inside. Why else would he care? “If you take her, they’re going to—”
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 1