“Shit!” Matty yelled. Mason spun around to see Matty in front of the cell that the film crew had been interested in. “I need another noose!”
“What’s happening?” Mason shouted back, moving toward Matty’s position. Matty slid his security card over the keypad beside the cell. “What the hell are you doing?!”
The magnetic door buzzed, then clacked as it unlocked.
“Don’t go in there,” Mason shouted. “That’s an order.”
“I’m not losing another one,” Matty growled.
Mason cursed under his breath and moved in on the female he had just captured. He needed the other noose pole to help out. He unhooked the rope on the outer end, and then slid forward to the restraining bar to pull the pins out and press the release. He yanked the two pins and had his hand over the release as the biter grabbed his arm. He fought against her strength to press the release latch. It gave with a loud snap and he shoved the pole into her face several times to break her hold of him. “Let go,” he snarled, stepping back while hauling her arm to its full extent. With her arm wedged between the bars she was forced to let go and Mason grabbed the pole with both hands to free it from her neck.
“I need your pole,” Matty shouted urgently.
Mason flipped the noose off the woman and yanked the pole free. He turned to assess the situation. The door to the cell was sliding open with Matty standing in front of it. Inside, the three biters were hovering over the body of the fourth, the one that had looked sick earlier. Mason knew he couldn’t run faster than he could throw the pole so he hurled it and watched it slide across the ground toward Matty. Matty put a boot on it, reached down to grab it, and boldly strode into the cell before Mason had taken three strides.
Mason ran back to the other cell to grab another pole, but with the floor wet, he slipped while trying to stop. He fell, tumbling into the cleaning cart head first. He toppled the whole thing, spilling its contents across the floor. His hose began to spray into his face. He reached a hand down to block the water, realizing that the cart had fallen onto the nozzle and it was gushing water out of its broken side.
Mason pushed up to his feet again and clamored over the fallen cart. There was little he could do except watch as Matty swept a noose over the head of one of the biters. Mason snatched a pole and rushed forward, trying not to fall again.
“Hold this one,” Matty bellowed as he locked the rope around one of the biters necks. He wrenched the biter off the body and threw the pole like a spear. Mason dropped his pole and groped for the one coming at him through the cell bars. It swung upward due to the biter on the other end falling backwards once Matty let go. Mason jumped into the air and grabbed the pole. The pole lifted the biter by its neck. It flailed and kicked spasmodically.
“Shit,” Mason hissed. He wasn’t sure if hanging a biter would kill it or not so he eased and let the biter slump back down.
Matty looped a second biter and tugged it off as well, throwing the pole through the bars just as he had the first.
“Matty!” Mason reached a hand over to grab the second noose pole. “Matty!”
“Don’t let go,” Matty shouted, pointing a finger at Mason.
“Matty, get the fuck out of there, now,” Mason shouted in as commanding a voice as he could muster. The two biters noosed at the end of the poles began to struggle, reaching and flailing at the noose rope around their neck and the pole itself. Their combined strength made it nearly impossible to control.
Matty kicked the third biter in the head, knocking it off the body of the other. He grabbed the biter by the hair on top of its head, lifting it up as though holding the severed head of Medusa so her eyes wouldn’t turn him to stone. In a way, they were the same. The bite of a zombie was nearly as fatal. It looked like that had been the case for the fourth biter, laying face up in the back of the cell. Blood oozed from several gnarly wounds chewed into its flesh along its arms and neck.
“Curtis,” Mason shouted, hoping that hearing his first name would ring some sense into him. “I can’t hold two of them myself!”
“Grow some nads,” Matty growled as he kicked the back of the knees of the biter he was holding, knocking it down again as it tried to stand. “Pull them back! I need to drag him out.”
“What?!”
“I need another cell!”
Mason leaned back and pulled with all his strength. The noose poles slid outward through the bars of the prison cell, dragging the two biters with him. They still faced Matty, reaching and groping the air in a desperate attempt to grab hold of his warm, edible flesh. The moaning throughout the cell block had grown so loud Mason could hardly hear himself yelling “clear” to let Matty know there was room enough to get out. All the zombies were worked up into a frenzy like sharks smelling blood.
“Pull them back,” Matty yelled.
“Fuck you, they are back! Watch yours, it’s turning.”
“Watch yours, he’s trying to push off.”
Mason swung the poles under his armpit and lifted his feet off the ground. The two zombies lurched into the air as though being hanged. Instead of groping toward Matty, they reached for the ropes digging into their necks.
“Go,” Mason yelled.
Matty backed out of the cell, dragging the third biter by the hair. It flailed and beat at Matty’s forearm with one hand while grabbing at Matty’s hand with the other. Matty hit the biter’s wrist with judo chops each time it latched on. Mason eased the other two biters down once Matty was clear of the cell door, but he still struggled to keep them under control. The noise and the smell of fresh blood smearing their upper lips drove them to savagery. The two shook violently. It took every ounce of Mason’s strength to hang onto the poles.
Matty continued to back away toward the empty cells. There were two on the other side near where they had started the night so he was heading in that direction when he slipped. The ground was soaking wet from the gushing hose and with the upturned bottles of soap leaking out, the area had become slick. Matty fell hard, wrenching the zombie down with him.
Mason only caught a glimpse of the scene as he struggled with the two biters attached to the ends of his poles, but the one thing he saw clearly was Matty’s hand letting go of the biter when they both struck the ground.
“Matty!”
Mason stared in horror for only a brief moment. The pole in his right hand jerked suddenly, throwing his arm up with it, enough so the pole smacked him in the face at full force. Mason’s head snapped back reflexively as he swung the pole down again, turning his attention to the problem he had with these two biters. He needed to keep them inside the cell, but he couldn’t reach the cell door without letting them go. He looked back to see Matty beneath the other biter, his forearm under the thing’s chin and his other arm holding the back of its head. The biter had just as fierce a hold of Matty by the forearm and neck as it tried to pull itself down to his exposed flesh.
Fuck it, Mason thought, letting the two poles go. He started toward Matty, but felt helpless, like a man trying to outrun a bullet. The biter turned its head and sunk his teeth into Matty’s forearm. Mason didn’t stop. He screamed in anger and tackled the biter, hitting it across its back, clasping his arms around its shoulders, and taking it down head-first onto the slippery floor. Mason heard a scream from Matty just before the loud thwack of the biter’s head cracking onto the smooth concrete. Mason slid to a stop before he pushed off the biter and stood in a hand-to-hand fighting crouch.
The biter began pushing itself up as well, but Mason kicked it in the face, knocking it onto its side. It hissed at him, baring human fangs soaked in red blood, both that of Matty’s and its own. It glared at Mason with hateful rage.
Mason chanced a look behind him to where Matty was getting up, a hand over the bloodied wound on his other arm.
“Get to the main door,” Mason yelled over the now thunderous echoes of moaning and wailing all around them. “Sound the alarm.”
“I’m bit!”
; “Fucking move, soldier,” Mason shouted. He wasn’t looking at Matty anymore. He stared down the biter in front of him as it stood and hissed. It took a step toward him. Mason dropped and swept its legs. It flailed and fell sideways, reaching forward as it did, desperately grabbing hold of Mason’s closest arm. Mason stood abruptly, hauling the thing across the floor. It held on like a pendulum. He put his boot to the thing’s throat and stood straighter to break the hold, but the biter simply grabbed his leg with its free hand. It felt like fighting an octopus.
Mason ripped the Velcro off his holster and drew his pistol. The memory his fingers triggered struck as hard as a bat to the chest. Put down your weapon, soldier, Mason heard himself in the recesses of his mind. That’s an order! He shut his eyes in the hopes that he could wrest control over it, but it did no good. He couldn’t forget his past, and the memory stunned him momentarily.
The biter’s hands groping his leg helped keep him in the present situation. As hesitant as he was about using a gun again, he wasn’t about to let himself get bitten. Blam! He shot the biter in the shoulder. Its arm fell limply to the ground. Blam! He shot it in the opposite leg. The biter only grudgingly recognized its own pain, beating on Mason’s leg with its working arm. Mason stepped back to let it flail helplessly. He carefully moved across the slick floor toward where Matty was walking for the main door, head low, his back to the scene. Mason stopped, knelt down, took aim, and fired on one of the biters at the open door of the cell. Blam!
Matty looked back toward Mason, turning half way. He stopped and his eyes showed the despair and anguish of a dying man. Mason didn’t move. He still knelt with his pistol drawn, aiming at the biter as it fell over its shot out-knee, toppling into a heap at the door of the open cell.
“You don’t come back,” Matty said, barely loud enough for Mason to hear.
“Keep moving,” Mason ordered.
“I already feel it.” Matty reached for his own gun, pulling it from his holster.
“Wait,” Mason said, holding a hand up.
It was too late. Matty put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.
Blam!
Ten
“Fourteen months,” Warden Mitchell shouted.
Mason wasn’t sure if he couldn’t hear the warden because he was still in shock, or if the deafening noise of the cell block earlier that night had caused permanent hearing loss.
“We’ve gone fourteen months without so much as a sniffle. No accidents! No nothing! A perfect record until you come along and in two days—two days—you’ve been here two days, and you kill one biter, put two biters into intensive care, and—” Warden Mitchell stared at Mason with a fatigued look of resignation. His voice lowered to a near whisper, and yet Mason could still hear him.
It must be shock, Mason thought.
“I don’t even know what to say about Matty. Do you have any idea how bad this looks?”
Mason said nothing.
“At ease, soldier,” Warden Mitchell finally breathed, his ire seemingly spent.
Mason realized he was still standing rigidly, still holding his salute.
“This again?” the warden asked, waving a half salute toward Mason. Mason lowered his own salute and stood at ease.
The warden sank into his plush leather chair and lit a cigarette. “Want one?” he asked.
Mason shook his head.
The warden took a drag on his cigarette and let the smoke out slowly as he rubbed his temples. “Well, this is going to be one fucked up day. Why couldn’t you have just left the fucking biters in the cage?” he asked, almost pleading.
“I didn’t open the pen, sir,” Mason replied.
Warden Mitchell glared at him, taking another drag from the cigarette, exhaling hard toward Mason. “You could have said something or done something, dipshit. Why didn’t you shoot that fucking biter trying to eat Matty? You’re some kind of marksman, you know that? I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the goddamned video. Bam – right in the knee, from twenty feet away! Dead-on perfect hit. Couldn’t you have done that to the other biter’s head before it bit Matty?”
“The in-processing training videos clearly indicate that lethal force is to be—”
“I know what the fuck the videos say,” the warden shouted. He took another drag from his cigarette to calm himself. “I’d rather be chewing you out over killing a few biters than having to write a letter home to Curtis’ family. Next time, fucking shoot to kill, do you understand?”
“Is that an order, sir?”
“You’re goddamned right it is. Only there better not be a fucking next time. I’ve already got enough scrutiny and congressional oversight to handle. That shit on the Hill made sure of that. And that’s another thing, Jones. How the fuck am I supposed to trust you? I can’t put you back in there to work alone, and I can’t put anyone with you because….” The warden threw his hands in the air and waved them at Mason. “You’re just fucked,” he said while inhaling from the cigarette again.
“I can handle working alone, sir.”
Warden Mitchell raised an eye, breathing out smoke from another drag. The cigarette was almost done. He held it next to his mouth and turned in his chair to look out the window at the morning gray. Another dismal dawn on the island. “Fourteen months gone to hell,” he said softly, taking one last drag as he spun in his chair to mash the cigarette out in his ashtray. “With all those reporters all stirred up over the incident at the Hill, this is worse than the last time.”
Accident Report of September 3rd regarding Little, James, Corporal, US Army, assigned to Rock Island as night shift patrol specialist. Official records indicate he was overcome while attempting to corral and detain two non-infectious inmates. Unofficially, he was found with his pants around his ankles in a cell that previously contained two female inmates, both of whom were freely roaming the cell block after having partially eaten Corporal Little’s exposed neck, arms, and legs. Both female subjects were without clothing and one was still partially restrained at the arms.
“No one works alone on graves,” Warden Mitchell said at last. “I’ll rearrange some other men’s schedules. In the meantime, consider yourself relieved of duty.”
“Sir?”
“Take the day off, but don’t leave the island. And for fuck’s sake, stay away from any reporters if they find you.”
“Sir, should I check in tonight?”
“Just a phone call is sufficient. Call your duty officer at your normal check-in.”
“Yes, sir,” Mason replied.
“Unless there’s anything else, you’re dismissed,” Warden Mitchell said, waving another half intended salute toward Mason.
Mason retreated to the door and left the warden’s office. Outside were four desks for the administrative team, all empty. Another door led to the reception desk where Mason heard a man’s raised voice.
“…I’ve been sitting here fifteen minutes,” the man was complaining loudly. Mason stepped into the reception area and halted. The Sergeant behind the desk looked up at Mason imploringly, expecting the warden. The large man in front of the counter crossed his arms and huffed.
“Are you in charge here?” the man asked.
Mason shook his head, looking the civilian up and down. It was easy to tell the hunters from everyone else on Biter’s Island. After seeing them for a few days, Mason knew the tell-tale signs: the rough and calloused looking hands, the leathery skin of long exposure to the outdoors, the loose, aged t-shirts that rip easily if grabbed hold of, the boots—the kind Matty wore—not military attire, but for the handling of zombies, probably a grade above.
“Well then, what idiot is in charge around here?”
“That would be me, Mr. Opland,” Warden Mitchell said from behind Mason.
Mason stepped aside while turning. The warden had snuck up on him too easily. Mason’s senses were still dulled.
“Hank,” the large man snapped. “Just Hank.”
Opland, Henry, aka “Hank”,
53 years old. Recent survivor of Biter’s Hill disaster and eight-year licensed zombie hunter. He was the fifth person to apply for a license and maintained the record for longest tenure in the trade, all four of his predecessors having died or turned. He and the other survivors from the Biter’s Hill incident had been airlifted to Rock Island for quarantine. All except one survivor was released from quarantine. Of the released survivors, only Hank Opland remained to continue zombie trade activities.
Mason stiffened.
Eleven
Mason waited outside of the warden’s offices out of view, hiding under the canopy of a large tree near the street. Hank came out fuming, swearing audibly as he stomped to the sidewalk. Mason waited until Hank turned east toward the civilian compound before following him. With the sun just rising, there was a great deal of activity. Soldiers of every branch were crossing the streets from the barracks and heading for the mess hall. Weaving through them, Mason took on a certain level of anonymity that allowed him to follow Hank without being noticed, even when the big man stopped to look back, glaring toward the prison complex and uttering more oaths before continuing for the gate house.
A long chain-link fence with a crown of barbed wire spanned the width of the island, separating the civilian population from the military personnel. At both roads there was a guardhouse that served as a checkpoint to limit the hunters, slavers, and vacationers from having unfettered access to the military facilities. Hank stopped at the gatehouse to show his identity, then walked briskly toward the golf course.
They were still on the road when Mason began jogging to catch up to Hank.
“Sir,” Mason called.
Hank stopped and waited for Mason, sizing him up with his eyes. Hank was a much bigger man, a lot like Matty in a way.
“Mr. Opland, can I have a word with you?”
“It’s Hank. Did your boss forget to get my phone number while he was screwing me?”
“Sir?” Mason asked in confusion.
“What do you want, boy?”
“I overheard you talking to the warden,” Mason said. “About Biter’s Hill.”
Plagued States of America (Book 2): Plagued: The Rock Island Zombie Counteractant Experiment Page 4