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

by Army, Better Hero

  Plagued: The Angel Rise Zombie Retribution Experiment

  The Plagued States of America, Book 5

  Better Hero Army

  All contents copyright © 2018 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 Sayad, who is secretly Matt Baha. Thanks to Matt for the continued encouragement and support.

  For mountain men and the ones who keep the home fires burning.

  One

  It seemed like a good idea at the time, getting a zombie hunting permit. How many people could say they were authorized to hunt and capture other people, after all? Four hundred and sixty-two applicants per year was all the regulations allowed, though, and where they came up with an absurd number like that, God only knew. The one thing Hank Opland did know was that time was running out on the Reusability Law that authorized him to hunt. Pretty soon, things were going to change, which was fine by him. Things needed to change.

  A knocking stirred him. Hank rolled on his side.

  “Hank,” Tom said through the steel door of the apartment, his voice hollow and muffled. “You want to go out to the duck?”

  “Yeah,” Hank replied. It sounded more like the reluctant groaning of a tired old man than how he really felt. “Yeah,” he called a little louder.

  “Meet me downstairs in ten.”

  “Okay.” Hank took a deep breath, nodding even though Tom couldn’t see him. “Be right down.”

  He should have been up and raring to go, but after the station’s blaring alarm system startled him awake earlier this morning, he still didn’t feel right. He looked at the digital clock on the nightstand: 10:22. Another eight minutes and the alarm would have gone off anyway.

  One of the luxuries of being in the Elevated Platform Station, what everyone called the EPS, instead of somewhere out in the Quarantine Zone was that he could sleep as long as he wanted, and not worry about zombies.

  Well, except for today. Those goddamned horns wailing at the crack of dawn woke up the entire station. It meant zombies were roaming inside the fence, and after the last two safe zones went up in a blaze of glory because some of the zombies got out, Hank didn’t even waste time putting on his pants when he jumped out of bed. He grabbed them and ran into the hall, passing stupid people leaning out their doors with looks of utter confusion. He slammed open the emergency door at a full run, felt the freezing cold air hit his bare legs, and rushed down the three flights of stairs to ground level before anyone else in the whole building.

  Ground floor at the EPS was basically a covered parking area for about twenty hunting rigs—large trucks with plenty of cargo space and off-road capabilities built to survive in the Quarantine Zone for weeks, even months at a time. He used to own one himself. The Jubilee, named after the whiskey. He would have liked having her right about that moment, or a whiskey for that matter. Seeing five zombies in the parking area shambling after two of the soldiers who guarded the facility didn’t bode well for the station. At first, he wondered how they got in, or how they got out. The EPS kept several hundred zombies on premises, after all.

  From inside the caged gate of the stairwell, Hank pulled on his pants, holding his pistol with his armpit as he jumped a couple times to get his legs all the way through.

  “Get a noose off one of the rigs,” Hank called to the soldiers. They weren’t handlers—soldiers trained to manage biters. These were garden variety gate guards, giving ground to the zombies to keep them formed up, but not engaging, nor using their weapons to kill or incapacitate any of them. Stupid orders. Hank knew that if they opened fire it meant that the level of threat was automatically escalated to imminent, and that meant the whole facility could be labelled as compromised, and remotely destroyed.

  It’s what happened at Biter’s Hill and Biter’s Island. Some off-site dipshit blew the sentry rings at the sites without even fully assessing the situation, but that was the rule. Back when zombies first appeared, and law enforcement and the military didn’t act with swift and deadly force, the damned biters overran everything.

  Hank checked his pistol’s safety and shoved the weapon into his holster. He didn’t want it going off and him being the reason that they blew up the EPS, too. Or, more importantly, he didn’t want to be blown up. He pushed the gate door open and winced as he walked barefoot across the gravel to the nearest hunting rig. He had forgotten his boots. Dumbass.

  The Velcro strap took a few tugs to rip away before releasing long poles with rope nooses on the end. He took one in each hand and hobbled toward the zombies as though walking on hot coals. Good nooses had good springs on the release. These were lousy, making him stop to prime one.

  A group of four soldiers came thundering down the stairs. None of them were handlers, either.

  “Get nooses off the rigs,” Hank growled. He was angrier at not having boots than seeing reinforcements. If anything, he was glad they were here.

  Two of the zombies turned toward Hank after hearing his voice. They groaned in unison and pushed against one another, jockeying for position out front. Typical biter response. Reduced to animal instinct. He’d seen it a hundred times, but it still bothered him. He used to hate them, now he pitied them, and every other zombie in the world.

  Hank threw the primed noose pole beyond the other two soldiers so they could pick it up. The two zombies focusing on Hank continued their slow approach as he primed his noose. As they got within striking distance, Hank lunged in with the noose, throwing the loop around the neck of the smaller of the two zombies. He made it look easy, but the truth was he had done it a thousand times, if not more. With a quick tug on the strap, the noose cinched around the zombie’s neck, effectively restraining it from moving closer, locked to the far end of the pole. It grabbed at the pole, struggling with it rather than continuing for Hank.

  With a quick side-step, he forced his captive zombie into the other, pushing them both back and knocking the second to the ground. If the first had gone down with his clumsy friend, Hank knew to let go. It was one of umpteen rules about subduing a zombie you just had to know or your days as a hunter were numbered. Let the damned biter walk around with the pole. He wasn’t going to sneak up on anyone that way, and he certainly wasn’t going to figure out how to get the thing off on his own.

  Hank looked over his shoulder. More soldiers were coming down the stairs, their footfalls echoing as their boots pounded on the steps. Boots. The bottom of his feet stung from the cold and sharp edges of the gravel.

  The zombie on the ground crawled forward, reaching for Hank’s feet. He backed up to avoid the fallen biter’s reach. Never take your eyes off a fallen zombie.

  Giving his captured zombie another shove to keep it off balance, Hank started dragging it away from the group. Keep them isolated.

  Too damned many rules. Too easy to make mistakes.

  Thankfully, none were made during the morning roundup, and none of the soldiers were injured, or worse, bitten, but it had been one hell of a way to start the day.

  Hank yawned and rubbed his face. He sat up in bed and
threw his legs over the edge. His feet still felt cold, and bruised.

  Maybe it was a good thing Tom wanted to go out and work on the duck, to get away from everyone while things settled down. There was going to be way too much drama and excitement in the EPS today for Hank’s taste.

  He reached a hand under the pillow and slid the pistol out, checking the safety before dropping it on the mattress at the foot of the bed. He had it loaded with slug ammo, just in case of zombies. After this morning, he wasn’t about to get caught without a gun within arm’s reach. Or his boots.

  Two

  Penelope shot Hank that same look she always did: the haughty, confident, “you can’t sneak up on me even if you tried” one. He liked it. He liked her—a lot more now that she was out of the cage and acting half-human instead of half-zombie. The way Peske kept her caged up on Biter’s Hill all those years for show just didn’t seem right now that he saw the way she was, especially around Tom. There was someone inside her. She wasn’t merchandise. She wasn’t a lost cause.

  None of them were, really, but the way Hank reasoned things, catching zombified people and selling them meant they weren’t being left out in the Quarantine Zone to fend for themselves, where they would suffer and ultimately die. Somebody, somewhere, had to do something about them.

  Letting them die had been the plan back when they created the channel project. Isolation. Keep the zombies on one side and let nature run its course. Give up. Only, that’s not what happened. Damned zombies never died, never gave up.

  Hank zipped his parka all the way to his neck and pushed open the gate to the stairwell. He looked around the parking area, thinking it odd zombies had been roaming free down here earlier. Of course, biters didn’t care about the cold. Damned things could walk around in this weather without a shirt for hours, maybe even days. Hank didn’t even want to walk the twenty feet to get into Tom’s idling Subaru with a parka.

  He opened the back door and slid in behind Penelope.

  “So, what’s the scoop, kid?”

  Tom glanced at him through the rearview mirror. His eyes seemed darker than usual. He was getting that hardened look of someone who spent too much time in the Quarantine Zone. This wasn’t the place for him. He belonged on the other side of the channel. He belonged in the Districts—the protected cities where the threat of zombies was a more serious concern than the actual thing.

  The Subaru crept forward.

  “Nothing yet,” Tom said. “Thanks again for helping round up those—.” He deliberately avoided the word zombie.

  He didn’t belong here.

  “Eh.” Hank shrugged. “They had them under control.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve seen a controlled situation turn ugly before.”

  Hank nodded. Biter’s Hill. They had both been there when it got overrun with zombies and the soldiers couldn’t control them. The order had been given to destroy the place. Level it, which is exactly what they did, without prejudice.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking,” Hank said, leaning forward between the front seats. “And Kitty, you can stop me if you think I’m off base here, but what say you? How about we go on up to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods and have that guy I know forge us up some—”

  “No thanks,” Tom interrupted.

  The Subaru jostled over the first train tie, shaking everyone inside. The rails were normally even with the ground, but for a week now, old Houston’s train cars had been parked on the tracks between the EPS building and the front gate, blocking the way. Vehicles had to drive around and over the exposed rails, which were so tall here it was like driving over a sidewalk curb.

  Penelope stared at Hank with eyes that laid bare her feelings on the matter. Are you an idiot? She had beautiful blue eyes, even if there was a hint of zombie haze in there. Hell, there wasn’t much about her that wasn’t beautiful. Hair the color of summer wheat, full lips, a soft, narrow chin, and high cheek bones. She looked back to Tom and made two gestures at him.

  Tom laughed.

  Damned sign language. “What did she say?”

  “She said we’ve had enough trips into the Quarantine Zone.”

  “She did not say all that,” Hank groused, leaning back in his seat. “She only made a couple of those….” He waved his fingers in the air for Tom to see in the rearview mirror. “Signs.”

  The last back wheel lurched over the exposed train rails and Tom drove them up onto the gravel road again.

  “When are they going to move the trains back out?”

  “When I let them,” Tom said grimly. He coasted to a stop at the main gate.

  “You’re holding up the works? What for?”

  “So they can’t dispose of the evidence.”

  “Well, hell, at least move the snow-blower out so we don’t have to keep going over the damned ties.”

  Tom rolled his window down as the gate guard approached.

  “You heading out to help with the search, sir?”

  “No,” Tom replied, hooking his arm over the windowsill. “Just going out to the duck again. We’ll only be a few hours.”

  The guard swiped a wand-like scanner over Tom’s arm. The wand beeped and the guard looked at a tablet he held in the other hand. He tapped on the screen and bent over to look into the car. Tom was about to say something, but the young soldier smiled, saying, “No chip,” as he pointed the wand at Penelope. “How you doing today, ma’am?”

  Penelope shrugged, smirking.

  “No chip,” Hank said. It was a lie, but his RFID chip wasn’t one of the new, fancy kinds with long range. If the guard wanted to call him on it, he would have to get into the back seat with him and run the wand up and down his arm until it sent enough juice through to his chip to get a return signal.

  “Just scan me out,” Tom said.

  “Yes, sir. You three have a good day.”

  Tom nodded and rolled up the window.

  A good day? Hank shook his head at the notion. A good day in the Quarantine Zone was one you lived through. Nothing more.

  Three

  Hundreds of snow-covered tree stumps besieged the field between the EPS and the thick forest surrounding it. During the winter months, they looked more like mounds of snow than anything else, but in the summer, guards had to drive between the stumps with riding mowers to chew up the underbrush while snipers on the roof kept an eye on the tree line.

  Hank eyed the shadows beneath the remaining snow-covered trees, expecting a zombie to shuffle out now that they were cruising into their territory. It was a stupid, irrational fear—a secret belief that they were lying in wait for him, to hunt him, and not the other way around. The feeling eased as the Subaru cut into the shade under the forest canopy and nothing closed in to start pummeling the windows.

  They cruised slowly along the overgrown access road, tires following the troughs other vehicles had plowed in the snow from their coming and going all morning since Doctor Wendy O’Farrell and Larissa had been abducted. The guys who abducted them had let the zombies out earlier that morning to cover their escape. Damned good tactic. Worked like a charm. Had everyone looking the wrong way while they drove off with none-the-wiser.

  Hank didn’t like doing nothing about it, though. He liked Wendy. “So, has your dad called since—?”

  “No,” Tom said. “I called him. It went through to Kelly.”

  “Kelly? Who’s Kelly?”

  “Dad’s assistant. She said nothing new.”

  Dad, in this case, was Tom’s father, Senator Jefferson. The guy was an ass, but most big wigs were.

  “Look, kid, I know you think this is all a big hoax, but what if it isn’t? I mean, we’re talking about Wendy here, and your sister.”

  “Hank,” Tom said, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “They have two choppers involved in the search now, an AWACs skirting the no-fly zone, all of Captain Palmer’s Search and Rescue group, and about a dozen other teams out here, not to mention the three or four private hunters out here after the bounty. No one knows wh
ere they are. It’s like they vanished.”

  “Well, yeah, you said they used some kind of airlift. They found the rig down the highway a couple miles, right?”

  “Yeah, Dad probably had a helicopter pick them up. You don’t just vanish like that without help.”

  Hank frowned. He didn’t like sitting on his keister while others were busy trying to figure things out. He was about to say something on the matter when the old, abandoned town came into view. Sighing, he leaned back in his seat and shook his head.

  Every spark of civilization in the Quarantine Zone looked the same. Remnants of cities and towns, mostly decomposing, with their toppled walls and shattered-out windows that fronted cracked, uneven roads which toured the ruins, complete with deserted vehicles strewn about, lying dead where they sighed their last breaths. He stopped looking in them a long time ago. There was nothing of value left in any of it anymore.

  The screen on the dashboard lit up with the words “INCOMING TEXT” as a woman’s voice chimed, “You’ve got a text from…Gary Jefferson. Would you like to read it, or ignore?”

  “Ignore,” Tom said before Hank could argue.

  “No, read it,” Hank complained, leaning forward excitedly, but the car simply said, “Okay,” and the dashboard screen went dark again.

  Tom shrugged, looking back in the rearview mirror as he drove up on the curb of the sidewalk to avoid several rusted-out vehicles parked in the middle of the road.

  “Damn,” Hank added, sighing. “I love how you’ve got her with that British accent. Makes your brother sound like less of a cock-weasel when she reads his emails.”

  Tom snorted.

  Penelope turned her head and glanced at Tom with a curious expression.

  “Cock-weasel?” Tom asked. Penelope nodded. “A cross between an asshole and a jerk.”

  She nodded, and breathed, “aahhsssss.”