The situation reminded Wendy of the night Rock Island blew up. Hank had sat in the driver’s seat of his duck, turning the key with such force it seemed he thought the thing was directly linked with the engine. The duck sputtered and wheezed on its first try, growling and knocking as the starter zing, zing, zing, zing, zinged with no effect.
She tried to remember what Hank had said that night. God hates us. That was it. Looking around, seeing nothing but snow, stark trees, and the abandoned airport, she realized how profound his words were. The country had gone to hell.
Shit, I sound like the Senator!
That was his platform. Scare the people into believing the country was in chaos. Everyone in the Rurals and Districts had no idea what was happening over here. Only hunters really had a clue. Men like Hank, who lived in this place and survived here even though every day might be his last.
She wondered what Hank was thinking right now about her abduction. He probably thought it was the Senator’s doing, just as she had before being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with nothing but—
“Biters,” Chico warned as he pulled open the door to the airplane.
The blond sat bolt upright, turning his head the direction Chico pointed.
Outside the plane, Keith raised his head from the engine cowling and looked across the air field. Movement along the tree line on the far side of the runway caught Wendy’s eye. Three shambling figures stood out against the white backdrop and shadowy forest, draped in so many layers of brown and grey clothing that they appeared like hooded wraiths.
“Distance?”
Chico shrugged. “Eight, ten minutes.”
“Shit. Alright. Get in here and be ready to start her up.” The blond hunter scooched out the open door. “Keith?”
“I’m working, I’m working,” Keith growled. “You need ammo?”
“I’m not that bad of a shot.”
Keith shrugged.
Chico slid into the front seat of the plane.
“I’m just saying. There’s going to be a lot more soon.”
“Just fix the engine.”
Chico pulled the door shut. “Jesus, it’s cold,” he said. He spun around to look at Wendy. “Don’t worry. This isn’t our first dance.”
“Could have fooled me,” she breathed.
“Ha!” Chico smiled broadly. “My uncle used to say that.” He spun around in the seat again and yanked off his gloves to breathe into his hands. He rubbed his fingers together before tapping on several of the indicators in the dash. “He said a lot of stupid shit. Always angry about people around him wasting money, then he’d say things like ‘Guess what, Chico. You could walk from here to Texas and not find as much money on the road.’ Like that made sense. Does that make sense?” He turned in the seat again and looked at her.
Wendy shook her head, eyeing him warily.
“Yeah. See? Stupid shit. My family, man. They were fucking nuts.” He turned again to look out the window. The blond had his hand over his brow, scanning the field in every direction. “Like, for instance, when I was a kid I won this statewide contest for some artwork I did. And my mom and dad were so proud of me. There was this big awards ceremony at the state capitol and this big plaque that was going to go up and they framed my art and all that shit. So my mom, she wanted me in good clothes, so we went to the store—K-Mart or some shit place like that—and she put me in some pants and a dress shirt and I was okay with it all, up until mom tried to get me into new shoes.
“They were these boat shoes, you know, the ones with the laces through the leather. Sissy shit. I pitched a fit. I didn’t want sissy shoes. I didn’t want any new shoes. My school shoes were new last month. I remember because I already caught hell for getting them muddy.
“Anyway, I pitch a big fit in the store, screaming ‘no, mom, no mom’ and my mom hauls me out to the car, leaves everything behind, and drives me home. I’m even wailing in the car about it. Soon as I get home, mom tells dad about it and he tells me to go to my room. I talk back, asking what for? He stares at me and I go. Then he follows me to my room and shoves me through the door and takes off his belt.”
Wendy raised an eyebrow. She hoped this story wasn’t going the wrong direction.
Chico sighed and looked out the window, away from where the blond stood. “Fucking more biters. See there?” He knocked on the window several times to get the blond’s attention, then pointed out the opposite window. The blond nodded once, grim and angry.
Wendy squinted to make out the two shambling figures against the backdrop of forest shadows. Not two, three. Then a fourth. She felt anxious seeing them, remembering the wall of bodies back at Rock Island the night Mason helped her escape. He didn’t think twice about stepping in front of her even though hundreds of zombies were descending on them and he couldn’t possibly stop them all. They came achingly slow, shuffling toward them in a vast, flesh-craving wave. With just a pistol, Mason fired at the closest zombie—just once—the blam and ring of the shot still echoed in her head. She heard it in her dreams every night. She flinched now at the memory, touching her chest, remembering the sting of the Taser used against her when the soldiers rushed the complex. She started wiggling her toes to get the blood flowing, worried she might have to move in a hurry if they didn’t get the plane airborne in time.
“Yeah, dad took off his belt and whipped me with it so hard I bet I still have the welts. I remember grabbing at the belt, trying to keep him from whipping me, and him smacking my hand away or hitting me on the head, slapping me on the leg. He cussed and told me don’t never pitch a fit like that or he’d give me a real beating.”
Wendy sighed.
“Next day, mom drives me to the store, puts me in the shirt and pants and shoes and stands me in front of the mirror, adjusts my collars, and we pay for it all just like that. No fuss, no nothing. I wore them shoes the one time and never again. I fucking hate boat shoes.”
Wendy stared at the back of his head. He looked side to side, scanning the distant tree lines, blowing into his hands to keep them warm. Wendy hoped he wouldn’t find more zombies. She leaned to the side and looked past him at the progress the original group was making. They were stumbling in the cold, shuffling through the veneer of snow coating the runway, moving in slow motion, but making progress. She gulped.
“How was the ceremony?” Wendy whispered.
“What?” Chico turned in his seat.
“Your awards ceremony. How was it?”
“I don’t remember. Do you think shit like that can make you a bad person? I mean, like, I’ve done some bad stuff in my time. Did time. But, is it because he made me bad, or was I born bad?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s not my area of study. I’m not a psychologist. I’m…I’m a neurobiologist.”
“Well, fuck, Doc,” he snarled. He pushed the door open with his foot and swiped his gloves off the dash board. “Why didn’t you stop me from telling you all that?” He slid out of the seat and into the snow outside, pushing the door shut to leave her alone with Larissa. The girl didn’t even budge at the jostling or noise. Whatever they had given her still hadn’t worn off.
She put a hand on Larissa’s cold cheek. “He’s nuts,” she whispered.
Fourteen
Wendy sat alone with Larissa for what felt like hours, but looking at her watch she knew it was only five minutes.
“What’s your ETA?” Wendy heard the blond ask.
“Done draining the cylinders. Plugs are in,” Keith replied, his voice echoing eerily through the plane. His head was still buried in the open engine cowl. She wondered if he had been listening to Chico’s story.
“Then what’s the hold up?”
“Changing the timing on the left magneto.”
“Why the fuck are you—?” Chico began.
“To get it to spark sooner. You want this bird in the air?”
“I want it to stay there, too,” Chico snapped.
“Would you two shut up a second?” The
blond pleaded. “Can you beat these biters?”
Keith lifted his head out of the engine well and looked past the propeller. “Doubt it,” he said.
“If you weren’t fucking with the magneto—”
“If you didn’t flood it—”
“I told you I didn’t—”
Blam!
Wendy flinched. Chico and Keith ducked. The blond put his pistol down after having shot it in the air.
“Are you two done?”
“Well, that was fucking stupid,” Keith mumbled.
“Yeah, man,” Chico agreed. “Every biter from here to Texas is gonna—”
“Shut up, both of you. Keith, put this plane back together again. Chico, leave him alone. I’m going to lure these three off the runway.” The blond glared at them both for emphasis before stomping through the snow past the plane.
Keith put his head back into the engine cowling and Wendy listened to the clickety ratcheting of his wrench echo through the body of the plane.
“I told you he’d snap,” Keith said once he thought the blond was out of earshot.
“Yeah, you called that right,” Chico replied. He stepped up onto the wing. “Those other four are getting closer. Think I should pop ‘em?”
Keith didn’t answer. The ratchet of his wrench echoed softly throughout the cabin, pierced only by the sudden sound of clapping. The blond stood in the field off to the side of the airplane, clapping his hands together. The approaching zombies lurched to a stop and turned their attention on him, squinting to see him against the hazy sun’s reflection off the white snow. They were only a nerve-wracking fifty feet away, but neither Keith nor Chico seemed bothered. At that distance, Wendy clearly saw the lead zombie’s face. Deep, sunken hollow eyes roamed listlessly. His skin appeared pock-marked and caked in filth, cracked from exposure, peeling in places with ash-white, dead skin hanging loosely off purple bruising. A living corpse.
This wasn’t as bad as Rock Island. There were only a half dozen or so zombies coming. These men had guns. They could put a stop to it. She wondered why they hadn’t.
Keith reared his head out from the engine well and closed the cowling. “Try it now.” He turned the hand screws on the engine cover.
“About goddamned time,” Chico mumbled, popping open the door and sliding into the pilot’s seat. He put his hand on the throttle control, ready to pump it.
“Don’t give it any gas,” Keith growled, not even looking into the cockpit.
Chico took his hand off the throttle and instead flicked two switches next to it. “I wasn’t gonna—”
“Leave the instruments off, too,” Keith added as he stepped up to the door. “Battery’s low enough. We’ll be lucky to get two tries at this.”
“Why didn’t you switch the battery?”
“Do I look like I’ve got three fucking hands?”
Chico shook his head irritably and took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.”
“It’ll work,” Keith said confidently.
Ka-ching, ching, whir, thump, thump, thump. The starter whined and the propeller spun freely. The blond looked back from where he stood out in the middle of the field, uncertain, but hopeful. The zombies turned toward the new noise as well, frozen in place, unsure of their course of action. Wendy found herself holding her breath. She couldn’t believe she was actually rooting for Keith’s handiwork. The propeller blades spun again and again as the engine sputtered and chugged, coughing out thick smoke.
Come on, come on.
“See,” Keith waved at the smoke blowing over the windshield. “I told you you flooded it.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chico replied, reaching a hand for the throttle.
“Don’t!”
“Come on, it’s dying.”
“It’s barfing. It ain’t dying. Five seconds.”
“It needs more….”
The engine let out a guttural roar and the whole plane began to shake. The propellers spun faster and faster, and a growling noise rose with a gradual rise in RPMs. Keith reached over past Chico and shoved the throttle a little and the engine surged roughly. The plane vibrated with the drone of the propeller.
“Let it idle,” Keith shouted over the plane’s engine.
Blam!
Everyone ducked, then they looked out through the front of the plane, expecting the engine to be on fire, or worse. Instead, through the spinning propeller, they saw the blond hunter leaning forward, his pistol raised in the stance of shooting, a puff of smoke billowing from the end of his gun, and one of the four zombies slumping backwards into the snow. As it fell, the other zombies turned toward it, watching it with stunned interest. They hadn’t yet registered the scent of blood. As the zombie crumpled into a heap of dead flesh, the blond hunter’s head drooped with it and his shoulders sagged, letting the gun fall to his side, held loosely in his hand.
“About goddamned time,” Keith said callously, not even looking toward the zombies or the blond. He turned his back to the blowing wind coming off the engine and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket to tap one out. He grabbed it with his lips and slid the pack back into his pocket. With his hands covering the cigarette, he flicked at his lighter. “Let it idle a few minutes. I’ll go take care of those other biters.”
Fifteen
Everything shook as the aircraft zig-zagged down the runway. The plane labored to gain speed in the snow. Even with the skids mounted to the wheels, it plowed through the snow instead of riding on top.
Chico and Keith sat in the two front seats, bickering about how much throttle to give it, ignoring the world around them as they concentrated instead on adjusting any change the other made to the propeller speed or throttle lever. The plane shuddered, bumping over the uneven snow on a collision course with an oncoming line of a half-dozen shambling zombies. These were a new group, attracted to the noise of the engine when it was warming up…and the sound of gunfire from both the blond hunter’s shots and the two Keith had fired. There were other zombies as well, several off to their left who struggled in the snow along the tree line, and to the right of the runway another gang circled the graveyard of aircraft in front of the hangars, confused by the echoing engine noise off the buildings.
“Just get it off the ground,” Keith snarled, pulling the throttle again. The engine roared.
“Don’t fuck with the blade angle,” Chico countered.
“Well, set it all the way, then.”
“I don’t want to damage the landing gear.”
“The longer you stay on the ground, the more damage you’re doing. Up.” Keith pointed out the front window. “Up, up! Do you even see those bastards?”
They were quickly closing on the zombies ahead. Wendy tensed, pulling Larissa closer to her, hugging her tightly. The girl didn’t respond, still under the influence of whatever sedative they had given her. She breathed fine, but she slept so deeply that none of the rattling or noise managed to stir her in the slightest.
“We’re not getting enough power,” Chico announced. “Thanks to your fucking with it.”
“We’re flying, ain’t we?”
“Barely,” Chico groused.
“Shut up, both of you,” the blond shouted. He leaned forward from the back seat and smacked Keith on the shoulder.
Keith shrugged innocently. “What!?”
The plane bounded into the air and fell back to the ground, bucking under the strain. The impact made such a loud snap it sounded as though the wheels had torn off. Wendy sucked in her breath and held it. Chico got them off the ground again just in front of the line of zombies ahead. He veered the plane, banking suddenly to pass so closely Wendy thought she saw the wing clip one, then he banked the opposite direction and began a slow, steady climb around the hangars. The suddenness of breaking above the tree tops surprised Wendy. A second later, she gazed down on empty countryside again, wondering what kind of hell they were heading for now.
The uncertainty of it was a lot like when they flew her into R
ock Island for the first time. She had no idea what she was getting into when she took the job at Eloran. Doctor Carmichael, her mentor at UCSD, was the one who set it all up. He said she was the perfect candidate. All she really wanted was to have the opportunity to make a difference in finding the cure. She could have worked for any of the smaller research companies, but as Doctor Carmichael pointed out, only Eloran had Rock Island.
The helicopter had circled the town on the uninfected side of the channel, giving her a nice view of Rock Island and the dilapidated town engulfed by an overgrown forest on the quarantined side of the channel. It appeared as though everything was frozen in time, the trees hovering over the rooftops like shaggy hands reaching up out of the ground to drag the abandoned town into the abyss. Past the town, the forest went on without break, and a sense of awe hit her, a realization that nature was in charge here. That was the day she first regretted signing the contract.
The next morning, she met Doctor Danielle Kennedy and regretted her decision even more. Marginalized. That was how Kennedy made her feel from the very start.
“You’ll be one of my assistants until I feel I can trust you,” Kennedy had told Wendy over breakfast. “You may have passed your background checks, but that doesn’t mean you’re kosher.”
Wendy had smiled, trying to fight off her irritation. “Well, I’m just looking forward to the opportunity to learn and follow in your footsteps. Your initial findings have been—”
“I didn’t bring you here to have you playing catch-up. I read your paper on memory manipulation using specific proteins. You were the only candidate to bring something new to the table, which is why you’re here and not someone else. I expect you to keep bringing good ideas, and the research to prove your conclusions.”
“Well, of course I’ll do everything—”
“You start this evening. We work nights.”
Bitch.
Wendy glowered, staring out the window of the plane. Kennedy got hers, but not before shooting Wendy in the chest. In the chest! She meant to kill me. Wendy rubbed the bruises under her left breast. Still sore. Bulletproof, not pain proof. That’s what Mason told her afterward. If he hadn’t insisted she wear a vest, she’d be dead right now, and Kennedy would probably be touting the efficacy of the cure, taking credit for its discovery—my discovery!—and keeping Larissa under careful watch night and day for any signs of remission.
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 6