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

by Army, Better Hero

  “Both.”

  “Well, that’s not okay,” Hank said, leaning forward to point out the front windshield. “Is there even any firefighting equipment on station?” Hank leaned back in his seat as Tom let the Subaru glide to a stop just outside the main gate. “I mean, what’s the point, right? When it gets this bad, their plan’s just to blow the place up anyway.”

  “Come on, Hank,” Tom said as he pushed open his door. “Penny, you stay here.”

  “No,” Penelope groaned, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward her. “Staaaye!”

  There was a call for help. Tom turned toward it, but Penelope wouldn’t let go.

  “Son-of-a—,” Hank grumbled, pushing open his door. The chain-link fence near the gatehouse had toppled onto the guard station, breaking out the windows and partly crushing the building. The man’s voice Hank heard came from inside. The outer fence was likewise partially toppled, sagging toward the Subaru. Hank reached up and grabbed the top of the outer fence and hoisted himself up and over, rolling down the other side. It put him between the two gates used by the EPS as a man-trap for cars and trucks. Crouching to get to the gatehouse, he called to the guard trapped inside, “I’m coming. Where are you?”

  “Here!”

  Hank couldn’t see inside. The fence had smashed the building like an empty can, crumpling the roof and the top half of the structure. Through the cracks in the frame Hank saw what he thought was part of the guard’s black uniform, pinned beneath one of the broken beams.

  “What’s your name?” Hank asked.

  “Johnson,” the soldier replied. “I’m stuck.”

  “You bleeding?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Anyone else in there with you?”

  “Timms, but I can’t see him.”

  “Okay, I’m going to get you out of there. Just hang on.” Hank looked around, wondering what he could use for leverage to pry the fence off, or lift it. No good, though. The whole north side was down, lending its weight.

  Tom rolled over the first gate’s fence the same way Hank did, with Penelope following suit. That was going to get old in a hurry trying to come and go. Someone needed to cut a hole…dumbass, Hank thought. He could cut the fence around the building. That would free up those soldiers.

  “Hey, kid, there’s two in here, but we need something to cut this fence apart.”

  “Bolt cutters in the hatchback,” Tom said. He was about to turn around, but his eyes narrowed on something ahead. “There’re people coming out.”

  Hank glanced back toward the fallen train cars. Between two of the cars someone was shuffling toward them, draped in a filthy, soot covered, wet blanket.

  Penelope growled.

  “I’ll get the cutters,” Hank said. “Make sure that ain’t a biter. Kitty, you help him.”

  Hank rolled back over the fence and popped open the hatchback of the Subaru. Tom kept several duffle bags in the back, ready to bug out on a moment’s notice. The closest one had a shotgun, an AR-15, two pistols, and several zip-locked bags of ammo.

  “Damn, kid,” Hank said and whistled. Tom had more weapons than Hank ever did. Even when he was in the business of needing them, Hank didn’t pack this kind of fire power. Just a .45 gauge automatic pistol was all he carried. He pat at the holster at his side to make sure it was still there. Damned shame losing his favorite one back at Biters Hill, but better the gun than his life.

  The second bag had food and medical supplies. They would probably need some of that.

  In the third bag, Hank found the bolt cutters with a bunch of other tools. He tossed them up onto the fence and hauled himself up once more. Pull ups weren’t his strong suit. If he had to do that again, he might not make it. He lay on his back for a second to catch his breath, looking up at the black cloud of smoke rising into the dull gray sky.

  “Is anyone there?” the trapped soldier called out.

  “I’m here, buddy,” Hank said, rolling to his side to grab the bolt cutters. “Just hang on.”

  Seven

  Hank leaned against the toppled train car, swigging from a water bottle as he slid down beside Tom. Penelope’s legs dangled over the top just above them, relaxed for the first time in hours even though one last news drone still hovered at the edge of the fence line, watching everyone. Things had been hectic since the blast, to say the least. Three rescue choppers had been sent over with more soldiers, triage medics, and several crates of supplies. No one was allowed to go back, of course. Not even the soldiers who had been returning from their search for Larissa—Hank didn’t fool himself into believing they were looking for Wendy. He knew they would have let her disappearance go without so much as a footnote on the evening news, but for the Senator’s daughter, the whole world was watching.

  Tom didn’t acknowledge Hank. His attention was held by the small screen of his phone, his thumbs tapping words into text bubbles on the screen.

  “Your brother?”

  “Yup,” Tom said.

  “Any word from your dad?”

  “Nope.”

  “Still think he took your sister to the other side?”

  Tom put his phone on his thigh and picked up the water bottle between his legs. He nodded and took a swig from the bottle like it was a beer.

  “Wendy got a raw deal,” Hank said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tom replied. He took another sip. “Not now anyways.”

  “Grim way of looking at things.”

  “She’s better off.”

  Hank waved toward the tree line. “Well, not if she’s out there.”

  “If they’re out there, then my dad will have to deal with it. I’m sure with him being the Chair of the Armed Services Committee he’s got a private army stashed away somewhere that can get her back. I did what I could for Wendy. I stayed away.”

  “Yeah, well….” Hank couldn’t really argue the point. Tom and his father weren’t on the best of terms on a good day. This whole thing with Larissa only made matters worse.

  “I stayed away. Wendy’s better off on the other side with my sister. As long as I don’t raise a stink, maybe my dad won’t think I care.”

  Hank didn’t want to point out Tom had a hand in building the rift between himself and his father in the first place, especially since the kid had enough to deal with right now. And his dad was kind of a prick, so in a way it was probably better that Tom didn’t have much of a relationship with his old man. Still….

  Hank looked Tom up and down. The kid could be his own son if he had done things differently in his life. He could have had a boy or two. At times like this he might even have been pressed to give his son some kind of good advice, or some nugget of wisdom that might make a difference or soothe the pains of a wounded heart.

  Maybe if Hank had been a parent he’d know how to do it.

  They sat quietly sipping water, both watching the rescue team and the soldiers who had returned from the field all working to help the nearly eighty survivors from the blast. Tom turned his phone on its side and took a photo of the area, tapping on his screen and telling Hank he was sending it to his brother to prove he was here.

  There were a lot of cots and tents out now, and the soldiers had managed to get some order to the whole place. They even lined up the Jeeps to form a defensive barrier around most of the site so they could hold off any zombies that might show up.

  Tom held the phone up so Hank could see it.

  “What’s that?”

  “A text message.”

  “I can see that, but what does it mean, ‘tug coming, strike team here’?”

  “They’re sending the tug over with a group of soldiers. They’re going to evacuate some of the wounded.”

  “That would be good news if he’d said it like that. Sounds like they’re coming over here to wipe us out.”

  Tom scrolled the screen up and showed Hank the text thread.

  Hank read it aloud. “’Evac team stuck waiting.’ ‘Waiting 4 wat?’ ‘Ne
w crew’ ‘wats wrong w/ old crew’ ‘not authorized.’” Hank shook his head. He didn’t understand the stilted way they wrote their messages. “Never mind.”

  “I want you on it.”

  “On what?” Hank stared at Tom as though he had just asked him to jump off the top of the building.

  “You’ll pass the screen. I can make sure you get on the tug.”

  “What for?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “Are you kidding me? They’ll bring a chopper over for you. Son of Senator Jefferson?”

  “No, I mean,” Tom said and nodded his head toward the sky. Hank looked up. Penelope sat on the top of the rail car with her feet dangling over the side, sipping a water bottle, watching the tree line like a hawk, but kicking her feet like a bored child.

  Hank nodded his understanding. “Why don’t we cross that bridge when we get there. We’re going to have enough trouble getting through the night, don’t you think?”

  Tom snorted a laugh. “Are you kidding? We’re sleeping in the train engine. Nothing’s getting in there.”

  Hank grinned. He hadn’t thought of that.

  Tom’s face fell. “When you get on the other side, though, I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Who said I’m going over?”

  “When you get over, do me the favor, okay?”

  Hank sipped from the bottle and looked up at Penelope again. Tom couldn’t cross over with her. No one would let her into the Rurals with her eyes, or her blood showing positive for hypermax. Not without removing her salivary glands, and even that probably wouldn’t work on her. It made Hank wonder what Tom had in mind.

  Eight

  It was dark when the tug cruised up to the moorings of the stone quay. The soldiers had been clearing away as much debris from the area as possible before its arrival, and now that it was here, Hank stared at it with wary caution. He still didn’t trust anyone on the other side. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about crossing, but then again, he wasn’t thinking about leaving biter territory back then. The Rurals and Districts were foreign places to him these days, and if he was being honest with himself, crossing over scared him a little. The world changed while he was over here, or maybe he did and the world didn’t fit like it used to.

  “You’re sure they’re on the up-and-up?”

  Tom nodded. “I called over. There’s going to be a lot of quarantine restrictions, but my guy Adam is going to try to get you through. He said they’re making two queues, one for the badly wounded, the other to accommodate the lesser injured and friends and family of the seriously injured.”

  “It feels weird leaving my piece over here,” Hank said. He held the holstered weapon in his hand. His belt felt light because of it.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of it.”

  “It just seems wrong. I mean, my inalienable right to bear arms—”

  “Jesus, you sound like the NRA,” Tom said. “It isn’t being taken away. They just need to do a background check on it to make sure it’s legal.”

  “I know,” Hank grumbled. It took three days to wait for them to release any weapons brought back over from the Quarantine Zone if they were legit. Hank wasn’t about to wait around town that long, though. Not with all the news coverage for the EPS going on over there. He already imagined wading through a sea of cameras, the news crews trying to get an interview with him over what happened here. How did you survive? Now that it’s nightfall, is there a concern over zombies?

  Of course, there was concern. There were always concerns. That’s why you needed a place like the EPS in the first place, to protect you from the world at large.

  Hank looked back at the sagging building. The fires had gone out hours ago, taking the smoke with it. Only a charred, burnt-out husk remained. It already looked like the rest of the Quarantine Zone, one more crumbling, decaying building. Well, to be fair, it was more the exception than the rule, but seeing this sort of thing was so commonplace here that it made things seem worse than they really were. Even the EPS could probably be rebuilt, if someone had a need for it. Hank had the feeling its days were over, though, just like he had been recently coming to grips with the notion there was no place left for him, either.

  At least the soldiers who were stationed on this side of the channel would still be soldiers when it was all over. Soldiers had it good, or at least better than hunters like Hank. And some soldiers had it really good, like Captain Palmer, the current ranking officer of the EPS. He only thought of her because she was walking toward them, her scowl apparent. He liked her, but worried she might be here to scuttle their little escape operation.

  “So, here’s the key to Gary’s Jeep,” Tom was saying. He hadn’t seen her marching at them.

  Hank pocketed the key. “Hey, your lady captain friend is coming this way,” he said, slapping Tom’s arm.

  Tom turned around and nodded toward Captain Palmer.

  “You three need to come see this,” she called from fifty feet away and turned around.

  Tom and Hank exchanged looks and followed her with Penelope in tow all the way back to the makeshift operations tent. Now that it was nightfall, the tops of each of the toppled train cars had at least one soldier, each with a rifle and night scope. From their positions, they had most of the perimeter covered. Everything except the EPS itself, and the river, but Hank didn’t think they were worried about zombies swimming up behind them.

  “What’s going on?” Tom asked as they caught up with the captain at the tent. She held the flap aside with her left arm while nodding for them to go inside. Her right arm was in a temporary sling and bandaged from her shoulder to her fingers, the sleeve of her uniform cut off—no, not her uniform top. Someone else’s. A sergeant or something. By the looks of her arm, they had probably had to cut her out of her other top. Black soot marred her neck and face even though she had made an attempt to wash it away.

  Tom took Penelope’s hand and led her in. Hank nodded to the captain and slid his arm behind hers to take hold of the tent flap, saying, “Please,” while offering for her to go in ahead of him.

  She nodded curtly, shooting Hank a grim smile before ducking in herself. He felt flush being so close to her. Damn fine-looking woman that Captain Palmer.

  Everything was cramped inside the tent. There were two folding tables with a couple of folding chairs each. On top of one table was a steel-encased radio system, and pads of paper and pens. On the other was a rugged-looking encased laptop computer with a soldier sitting in front of it.

  “We’ve been monitoring the news outlets, to see what their drones are seeing and what they’re saying,” Captain Palmer said as she stepped beside the table with the laptop. She pointed at the screen. “Bring it up,” she ordered the soldier sitting in front of it.

  She had a certain swagger that Hank liked, a take-no-shit attitude, and looked great in a pair of military pants, especially for a woman in her forties. She had short, dark brown hair, a stubby little nose, a sturdy jawline, and a squared chin that just seemed sexy. She was the kind of woman Hank could see himself spending time with, but for as often as he ran into her, he probably hadn’t said more than a dozen words to her. No point, really. That’s what he told himself every time he let a moment to talk with her slip away. He never planned on making the EPS his home. He never planned on staying.

  Still, he should have at least said something more than a sarcastic comment about the weather here or a how-do-you-do there. He could have bought her a beer for Christ’s sake, just to have a drink with a woman again. Just to be normal.

  “Put it on the other channel,” Captain Palmer said to the soldier operating the laptop.

  Hank realized he was staring at her even though everyone else was bent over the table, eyes on the little computer screen. “What are we looking at?” he asked, unzipping his jacket. It was a lot warmer in here than outside, and he felt uncomfortably hot for some reason.

  “News footage,” Captain Palmer said, tilti
ng her head toward him. Damn she had beautiful eyes. “Of Doctor O’Farrell and Larissa Jefferson.”

  Hank stiffened. “What?”

  Captain Palmer turned her attention back to the screen. Hank leaned forward to get a closer view. In the cramped space, her left arm pressed against him. He hadn’t mean to touch her, but there wasn’t much room in the tent, and the damned screen was so small. He looked out the corner of his eye and caught her looking back, a smirk curling her lips. His heart pounded from the exhilaration of flirting for the first time in years. He should have bought her a beer a long time ago.

  He was about to give her a wink, but she pointed at the screen, saying, “There. That’s it again.”

  A picture of Doctor Wendy O’Farrell appeared on the television feed as an anchorwoman with a grave expression spoke. The volume was too low to hear what she was saying, though. The soldier in front of the laptop tapped the volume control up, but Hank didn’t need to hear her. The words “MISSING DOCTOR NEARLY KILLED” appeared on the headline beneath the anchorwoman.

  “Shit,” Hank breathed.

  Nine

  “Turn it up,” Tom insisted even as the soldier tapped the volume control button on the keyboard.

  “…live-streamed by the Skywatch Blog only twenty minutes ago. We must warn you that this video contains disturbing scenes and the probable death of two as yet unidentified men…”

  Tom’s phone beeped the way it did when he received one of those messages from his brother. He pulled the phone from his pocket, but didn’t look at it. Like Hank, he was too interested in what was on the screen.

  The video was askance, like a camera on its side. Penelope tilted her head as she watched. Hank thought to do the same, but he adjusted to the orientation the moment he saw a soldier wearing white winter camouflage appear in the doorway. The soldier checked his sides and moved in with his rifle at the ready, a red laser sweeping from one side of the room to the next.

  “…what appears to be military personnel. A Pentagon spokesperson has denied the involvement of U.S. personnel in…”