The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment

by Better Hero Army

  Plagued: The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment

  The Plagued States of America, Book 3

  Better Hero Army

  For my sister…wherever she is

  All contents copyright © 2014 by Evan Ramspott. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  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 characters named after Andres Calderon III, Danielle Kennedy, Lowell Abalos, and M.B. Houston – who is secretly Matt Baha. Thanks for their encouragement and support.

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Evan Ramspott.

  One

  It didn’t matter whether or not she was a zombie, but…it always did. Being a zombie half-breed put Penelope partly in the world of men, but mostly in the world of zombies. It felt a lot like being stuck in the middle of the enormous river that separated the Plagued States from the Rurals, afraid to swim to either side because of what she might find. Then again, on days like this, she wished the channel were endlessly wide and she could keep swimming away from both sides.

  The television kept showing the same footage of the helicopter crash. It was near the end of it now, with smoke swirling inside the chopper, making everything dark, obscuring the frenzied activity as one man after the next climbed up through the side door, which faced skyward. Penelope watched the television with her head turned sideways, enthralled by the fact that she knew everyone in there, all of them frantically climbing from the burning wreckage. First went the Senator’s bodyguard, flinging himself up and out of camera shot. Then the woman—the tall, thin black doctor named Kennedy. She kept saying she could cure Penelope, an obsession that made Penelope’s skin crawl. Next went the Senator, struggling to lift himself over his own head. The two men still in the chopper pushed him up by his legs.

  Tom groaned in frustration as he paced in front of the television, his hands clutching tufts of his own hair. “Dad,” Tom groused at the TV and the image of the Senator…Tom’s father.

  Penelope sat rigidly, afraid to draw Tom’s attention. His anger surprised her because it was the first time she had ever seen it. She didn’t know what to do for him, or how to cope with the idea that the one person in the world she relied on for everything might lash out against her. She wanted to hide, but there was no place in their cramped apartment.

  In the past, Peske put her in her cage each night where she curled up in a blanket and hid her head beneath a pillow. Even though the only real barrier between her and the horrors of the world were those bars, it felt solid enough to repel anything.

  The apartment she and Tom shared was supposed to be the same thing, a safe haven from the intrusive eyes of the world of men. This new cage was much larger and more comfortable, but today she shared it with a pacing lion.

  “This is bad,” Tom said repeatedly.

  The scene on the television restarted, taking them back to the beginning, before the crash. A suddenly upright camera showed no sign of smoke, the passengers all sitting orderly in their seats. The camera panned from passenger to passenger.

  “Once again,” the television said with a woman’s voice. “If you are just tuning in, this is breaking news. Senator Jefferson’s helicopter has crash landed somewhere over Scott Air Force Base, near St. Louis, which is inside the boundaries of the Quarantine Zone.”

  The Quarantine Zone was what outside people called it. Inside the zone, even here in a safe region like the Elevated Platform Station (EPS), everyone called it biter territory or the Plagued States. In the years since her rescue, Penelope learned it all meant the same thing. She also knew there was a different world across the big river, a land without the constant threat of zombies. A place she wasn’t allowed because she was still part zombie herself.

  The television showed the interior of a large helicopter, with three plush seats facing the camera. The Senator sat in the center, wearing a dark red jacket with its high neck zipped up. Beside him sat a man in a black military uniform, like the men who guarded the station. To his other side sat the doctor—the woman named Kennedy whom Penelope was so afraid of. Kennedy wore a blue jacket similar to the Senator’s, likewise zipped up. Her hands were in her pockets, and her head was beneath a knit hat. Her eyes glared across the cabin of the helicopter toward the camera, as if she were looking right at Penelope.

  “There’s the Senator before the crash,” the television said, “sitting with Eloran chief scientist Danielle Kennedy. The man to their left we believe is one of the security guards from the Elevated Platform Station, which is where the chopper took off from earlier this afternoon.

  “These images were intercepted by the Skywatch blog and are being re-broadcast unedited, in their entirety. These shots came from an eyeglass-mounted video feed worn by Lowell Abalos, a reporter who was with the Senator at the time of the crash. Mr. Abalos was transmitting the feed using a portable, two-way satellite wireless hub.”

  The camera swung to the side, looking at the Senator’s bodyguard, the one who never talked. He was just as unsavory as Kennedy, except that he was always eerily silent by comparison. He wore a thick gray jacket and dark sunglasses to hide his eyes. The camera swung the other way to show another man in a black uniform. This one ran a hand over his shaven head, then pulled on a black, knit hat that fit tightly to his skull.

  “The Senator had flown to the EPS two days ago in response to the devastating events at Rock Island. He was at the EPS to review security policies and to revise the self-destruct initiatives which claimed so many lives at both Rock Island and previously at the Hill. At this time, we are uncertain as to the reason for his unscheduled flight plan.”

  The bald soldier looked out the window and the camera leaned closer. There was only gray-white haze outside, an obscuring cloud filling the sky. Penelope knew it was snow. For years she had endured it without the benefit of jackets. She scavenged whatever clothes she could find, stealing off other zombies if that’s what it took. Killing the dumb zombies, the shambling moaners, was easy. Half-breeds like herself had no trouble making traps, stealing their food, or hiding from their hunting packs. But unlike the full zombies, she felt pain, and the stinging cold dug through no matter how many layers she put on. Penelope shivered thinking about the cold months out there.

  “That’s the first sudden jolt, there,” the television said. The image began to vibrate as it panned toward the other window, the passengers a blur. “The entire helicopter appears to be shaking at this point.” The image of the other window rattled, but still only a gray haze could be seen. The image on the television panned to face the Senator. He sat upright, rigid, a hand on Kennedy’s leg to steady her. One of her hands hooked his arm.

  “Twenty-two,” Kennedy had said when Tom first introduced her to Penelope. The look of shock and surprise on Kennedy’s face in the television was exactly the same, then as now. Kennedy had been looking down at Penelope’s mostly turned ankles and saw the two number twos tattooed on her shin just above her feet. “You don’t wear heels, much, do you, honey?” Kennedy had laughed, donning a false smile, b
ut she knew. They both remembered each other.

  Kennedy didn’t smile on the television. She wore a look of terror. She knew something bad was about to happen, and it made Penelope warm inside to see the woman suffering.

  “The camera is visibly shaking now, as it appears something is already wrong with the helicopter. The second jolt is coming in just a moment. There. And now you can see the camera is leaning one way and the passengers across are leaning in the opposite direction.”

  Penelope leaned her head sideways a little to straighten the image. The Senator’s grimace was apparent, even with the grainy resolution of the video. Kennedy’s mouth was wide open as though she were screaming, but no sound except for the woman’s voice on the television could be heard.

  “Our experts believe the helicopter’s tail rotor was somehow damaged, or the rotor engine broke down.”

  The video stopped showing the scene inside the helicopter and Penelope straightened her head to look at a digital drawing of a helicopter.

  “A helicopter’s tail rotor spins perpendicularly instead of horizontally, as the main rotor—”

  “Ah, geez,” Tom growled. “This again?”

  “—resistance in the form of drag,” the television continued, unhindered by Tom’s outburst. “When the tail rotor slows or stops, the body of the helicopter begins to spin because of the torque of the main engine—”

  “We know how helicopters work,” Tom snapped and turned off the television. Tom dropped the remote control on the chair next to Penelope and continued pacing, still clutching his own hair. “This can’t be happening.”

  His words confused her. He told her the television shows things that are far away, and sometimes things that aren’t real. But this seemed real, because just a few hours ago she saw them all climb into that helicopter and fly away.

  “Penny, see if you can find a different station,” Tom said, pointing at the remote control. Tom unplugged the satellite phone from its charger and started pressing buttons on it. The phone beeped different tones each time he pushed his thumb against it.

  Penelope turned on the television, turning down the volume instead of changing the channel. The on-screen image captivated her. It showed a wash of black and gray smoke that played a disappearing and reappearing act of the action behind it. Everything was sideways, nearly upside down, so Penelope turned her head to watch.

  There were two figures standing within the swirling smoke, hoisting the Senator by the legs in their hands. The helicopter seats were sideways, which Penelope realized meant that the helicopter was on its side and the men were climbing up to the door. Where the video came from appeared to be the same place as before, and Penelope imagined the dangling, limp head of the reporter who always wore those strange looking glasses.

  “God damn it,” Tom shouted at the phone. “The number I’m trying to reach is in service, you assholes.” He shook the phone in his hand furiously, threatening to pound it onto the counter. “Argh!” Tom put the phone down and walked away, resuming his pacing, this time up and down the hall of their apartment.

  Penelope sat quietly, unmoving. The world felt scarier now that the one man she relied on for comfort was near hysterics. Before Tom, she had Peske, and even when he got drunk or angry, she still had the bars between her and the rest of the world. Peske never came into her cage. Tom didn’t let her have a cage at all. He plucked her out of her slave pen on Biter’s Hill and didn’t let her back in because she asked him to make her human. Now she lived in civilization, or as close as anyone could get in biter territory, and it frightened her more than living on Peske’s duck—his amphibious truck—and travelling the Plagued States in search of zombies.

  In the video, the bald handler took a step closer to Penelope, leaning to look her in the eyes. He shook his head in disgust as smoke again consumed the image, washing him away. A moment later he climbed up and out of sight.

  Two

  Penelope turned the volume up again in an effort to break the silence. A still image of the Senator being helped out of the helicopter after the crash filled the screen as the woman’s voice continued describing the events.

  “—losing the signal shortly after the fire, which appears to have consumed the camera. Several of the survivors had cell phones, but Midamerica is too far from the nearest working tower to be of any use.”

  “Yup,” Tom said to the television. “And that’s just great, Dad. You left your goddamned pack in the chopper,” he added, stabbing the television screen with his finger, pointing at a black sack hanging above the crooked seats behind where the two men had helped the Senator up.

  Tom looked at Penelope and held up his phone. “Dad’s satellite phone was in the pack,” Tom explained irritably. “Probably his inhibitors, too.”

  Penelope knew the word. Inhibitors were the pills or injections that kept people from becoming a zombie after being bitten. The pills didn’t always work. She had seen a woman turn even though they gave her inhibitors. Penelope didn’t need inhibitors, though, because she was immune, or more precisely, she was already one of them.

  It was after the helicopters left her for the last time that she learned what she had become. After running from the chopper, she felt so tired. It was easy to fall asleep, and when she woke, it was to the sudden pain of a zombie’s mouth clamping down on her forearm. She fought it off, beating it with a bone she found while rolling over the mangy thing as it tried to suck the life out of her, drinking her blood like some vampire. It gurgled its pleasure even as she hacked at its skull, pounding it fiercely until its soft brains oozed from the fissure she crushed into it. Her wound took months to heal, but she didn’t turn. She couldn’t be turned twice.

  The others saved her, cared for her, taught her. Half-breeds like herself, left to die by the helicopters that sometimes came in the early hours just after the sun rose. Men—real men—came and hunted whole zombies to take away. From time to time, they left the ones that had been changed into half-breeds.

  Penelope hated helicopters.

  The television still droned in the background.

  “—guards who were with the Senator are believed to be what’s known as ‘handlers’. Their job is to manage hyper-max subjects as part of the routine operations on the EPS, so they’re experts in survival inside the Quarantine Zone.”

  Hyper-max. Penelope knew that word too. It meant zombies. Tom explained maxillofacial pathology to her once, and how it became the buzz word when the Consumption Pathogen first reared its ugly head ten years ago. Back then, the spread of the disease was linked to plaque on the teeth. It took nearly a year for scientists to realize the plaque absorbed the pathogen, which was why it was found there in such abundance. In the meantime, hyper-max came to mean anyone infected with the Consumption Pathogen, and more recently, it meant zombies that still had salivary glands. As it turned out, salivary glands were what produced the disease. Catching zombies to remove their glands had become a lucrative business.

  “—and gives the Senator and the others an excellent chance of finding safety to wait out the storm. Normally, rescue crews would be dispatched by air, but visibility in the area, as well as high winds, are preventing an aerial search. Making matters worse, quarantine laws forbid ground crews from entering the region, but even if they were permitted, being as close to such high-concentrations of hyper-max colonies as they are, ground crews wouldn’t be very effective, either. To help explain all this, we’ve invited retired hunter Marcus Holden to join us, whose book, ‘I Sold Your Son’, is a New York Times Bestseller. Mr. Holden is most well-known for his appearance in the Academy Award Nominated documentary Bitten Twice: Hyper-Max in Everyday America. Mr. Holden, welcome.”

  “Thank you for having—”

  “Can you turn that shit down?” Tom asked, waving his hand toward the television.

  Penelope pressed the remote control button and the voices went away.

  Tom fell into the chair beside her, letting his breath out slowly. He dropped the pho
ne into his lap and closed his eyes, letting his whole body go limp. He looked exhausted.

  Penelope touched his arm with her hand. He flinched, his eyes widened, and his head snapped in her direction. She had seen his unguarded side before, the softness with which his eyes treated her when they were alone, or his touch when he held her after one of her nightmares. The fierceness, however, only started to manifest when his father came to the EPS two days ago. For a second, she didn’t recognize him.

  “Why?” she huffed, clenching her fist and making a circle around her chin. Why are you so angry, she asked with her rudimentary sign language?

  “I don’t know,” Tom said with a resigned sigh, closing his eyes while leaning his head back. “He’s my father.” He let the silence hang in the air a moment, then placed his other hand over hers.

  The phone in his lap chirped loudly, then rang a pulsing, irritating noise. Tom and Penelope both leapt in their seats.

  Tom swore as he fished for the phone from between his legs. He held it to look at the indicator as it annoyingly sang its pulsing chime. His brow furrowed as he pressed the answer button, silencing the alarming tone. “Hello?” he answered. “Gary? Why isn’t your number listed?”

  Penelope remembered Gary, Tom’s older brother. He had been there on the day they were rescued. Of the two brothers, Gary looked most like the Senator. Penelope hardly noticed a resemblance between Tom and his father.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Tom said into the phone. “I already tried to get through to him. No. Gary, hang on. Gary, would you listen to me? His phone was in the chopper.”

  Tom shook his head as his brother’s muffled voice came through the receiver.

  “He doesn’t have it on him,” Tom explained tiredly. “No, there are no choppers here. I can’t get anything. I can’t even get the ferry to come over until tomorrow. I’m stuck here. No! They don’t know who the hell I am. My ID is under Mom’s last name, remember? Look, I can’t do shit. I tried that. I tried that, too. Gary, I tried everything. No one here’s qualified to—”