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

by Army, Better Hero

  EXCESSIVE REGULATORY OVERSIGHT

  AS A FACTOR IN POSTPONING THE

  RELEASE OF THE CURE—

  “You colossal prick,” Hank whispered. He turned to look back at Penelope. “He shit-canned the cure.”

  Penelope wore a blank stare.

  Hank retreated to the booth and grabbed the check to pay. “That mother fucker’s not trying to cure them. He has the cure in his pocket and instead they’re making an immunization.”

  Penelope put down the ice pack, her interest clearly piqued. “Ihm,” she breathed. “Mune.” She pointed at herself.

  “Yeah,” Hank said, pointing at her as well. “Exactly.”

  Penelope shot him a questioning look.

  Hank pulled out his wad of dwindling cash. “Look, it’s math, or I should say, economics. Money. Let’s say you have a product that 1 million people want to buy from you, but only 1 million people need it. You make a million dollars.” Hank laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “But you also have a product that the other seven billion people on the planet need so long as no one ever gets cured.” Hank started dropping the rest of his money on the table, one bill at a time. “Lots and lots of money.”

  A business card fell from the mess. He watched it drop. Damned reporter’s card. Hank did a double-take and scooped it up, looking at the name: Charlotte Reed, Regional Reporter, WBNX. She had a phone number.

  “Huh,” Hank said. He dropped the card on top of the money.

  Forty-Seven

  The conversation on the phone went something like this:

  “This is Charlotte.” She sounded congenial for it being 4:42 in the morning.

  “This is the janitor,” Hank said.

  Silence.

  “The janitor, from the other day. You gave me your card.”

  “Oh, yeah. High school, right?”

  “Yeah. No. Are you still in town?”

  “Yes.”

  Hank nudged Penelope. She glowered at him. He slid the seatbelt strap off his chest repeatedly, indicating he wanted her to put hers on. The Jeep was warming up, the heater on low so it wouldn’t make a lot of background noise.

  “Look, can you meet me at the hospital?”

  “When?”

  “About fifteen minutes?”

  Silence again. Hank was about to speak up. “Why?”

  “Does the call sign Moby mean anything to you?”

  Forty-Eight

  Hank leaned against the doorframe to Captain Palmer’s—Rebecca’s room. Penelope stood behind him, peeking around his shoulder to see into the room. Rebecca was sound asleep.

  “I can wake her,” the nurse said softly, a male nurse this time, someone he hadn’t run into before.

  “Naw,” Hank whispered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. I’ll be back later.”

  The nurse stared at Penelope with a look of mild shock. “Are you…okay?”

  Hank turned and looked back at Penelope. She looked horrible.

  “She’s fine,” Hank said quietly. “She’s actually been through worse, if you can believe it.”

  “Well, sir, I really think that she should be looked at again. The swelling around her eye—”

  “Kitty, put the ice pack back on your eye like I told you.”

  Penelope growled.

  Hank’s phone rang. He dug it out of this pocket, moving away from Rebecca’s door as he answered it. “This is Hank.” He waved repeatedly for Penelope to follow him.

  “I’m in the lobby.” It was Charlotte, the reporter. “Where are you?”

  “Come up to the third floor.” He held the phone away from his face. “Come on,” he hissed at Penelope, who lingered by Rebecca’s door, staring at her sleeping form. He held the phone back to his ear. “I’ll meet you when you get off.”

  He held the phone in front of him and found the button to hang up. He was getting better at the damned things.

  Charlotte was stepping off the elevator just as Hank and Penelope arrived.

  “Charlotte,” Hank said. “You have a camera?”

  She opened her purse and pulled out a tiny unit that wasn’t much bigger than his phone. “Right here,” she said.

  “That’s a camera?”

  She raised an eyebrow at him as if he were an idiot.

  “Alright, follow me,” he said and started heading for the Step-Down Ward. “The guys we’re going to run into are Breckenrock security. I’ll deal with them. You just go in and get Moby on film or whatever you need to do. Is that thing live?”

  “What?!”

  “Live. On the air?”

  “No, it’s a digital camera. Without a feed—”

  “Okay, so what do we need to get it on the air?”

  “Well, I’ll have to edit it and upload it, or I can replay it in a livestream if it’s good.”

  “It’ll be good,” Hank said, stopping at the intersection leading to the Step-Down Ward he had watched them wheel Moby into earlier that day. He glanced around the corner at a set of double-doors.

  “What the hell happened to you two?” Charlotte asked, holding the camera up and panning between Hank and Penelope. She lingered on Penelope’s face.

  “No, don’t film her,” Hank said, putting a hand in front of the camera.

  Charlotte redirected the camera at Hank. “Why? What happened to you two?”

  “You know that shooting at the hotel a few hours ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “We were involved.” Hank took the zombie survival pack off his shoulder and loosened the draw strings. He put his hand in and felt for the pistol. He didn’t want any trouble, or a shoot-out, but he knew he’d need heat if he wanted to avoid gunfire.

  “What do you mean, ‘involved?’”

  Hank glanced around the corner at the door again. This wasn’t working as he had hoped. He forgot that a nurse had to open the door in the first place, like at the burn ward.

  “Involved, involved,” Hank growled. “Alright, you want to know? You may as well know. My name’s Henry Opland. Three days ago, I was on the other side of the channel at the EPS when it went up.” He sighed. “I don’t think anyone was supposed to survive. I mean, you think about what Tony Reese almost did to Doctor O’Farrell and you start thinking, right?”

  Hank looked up and down the empty hall. Where was everyone?

  “What then?” Charlotte prompted.

  “What do you mean, what then?”

  “You survived. So, what happened?”

  “A little bit of my past came back to haunt me….”

  The door to the Step-Down Unit clacked open. Hank nearly jumped out of his boots. He looked around the corner to see the same nurse from the elevator patient transfer. The door was easing shut behind him.

  “Come on,” Hank said, stepping around the corner directly in the path of the nurse. “Oh, hey,” Hank said, smiling at the nurse. “I’m back.”

  “Um,” the nurse said, eying Hank suspiciously. He glanced past him at Penelope and Charlotte, who were coming around the corner and blocking the hallway as well. “Can I help you?”

  “I have a buddy inside. I was hoping I could talk to him, real quick.”

  “Well, sir, there’s…no one in there except patients.”

  “I’m sure,” Hank said with a smile.

  “Ma’am, can you put that camera down?”

  “Keep filming,” Hank told Charlotte. He looked at the nurse. “I really want to see my pal in there if you don’t mind.”

  “Sir, I already—”

  “Just, open the door,” Hank growled. He wanted to pull his pistol out and hold it to the son-of-a-bitch’s head, but that wouldn’t get him anywhere, and especially not on film. Try explaining that one to the judge. Years in prison for sure, even if it did turn out Moby was in here.

  He also wanted to catch the suits off guard, especially if Bill Tipton was in there. That guy was just too much of a physical concern to also have to worry about guns being involved.


  “Sir, visiting hours for—”

  “That’s great,” Hank snarled. He grabbed the badge around the nurse’s neck and started walking, hauling the young man with him.

  “Sir,” the nurse protested repeatedly, but Hank yanked harder, pulling the badge against the door sensor on the wall. The sensor beeped and the door began to yawn open.

  “Was that so hard?” Hank asked. He stuffed his hand back into the zombie survival pack and marched into the ward’s lobby.

  Aside from a surprised nurse standing at a tall desk at the far end of the room, the place was empty. No suits.

  Forty-Nine

  Hank was glad he hadn’t gone in waving his pistol around. After the hospital security team escorted them from the building, the trio stood in the parking lot by Charlotte’s car. She opened the door and threw her purse in.

  “Well that was fun,” she said as she climbed in and shoved the key in the ignition. The car started.

  “Look, I’m telling you,” Hank said. “That nurse was there yesterday. If you press him, he’ll talk.”

  Charlotte sighed, nodding.

  “And try and find Bill Tipton. He was one of the guys guarding Moby. If you lean on him, he might talk. Same with Paul—damnit, what was his name? Madueno! That asshole from the hotel incident. He knows Moby.”

  “Mr. Opland,” Charlotte said, tugging on her door.

  Hank felt it press against his thigh. He hadn’t noticed he was blocking her from leaving. Damn, he even sounded desperate.

  “Yeah, okay,” he grumbled and backed away so she could shut her door. He walked out of the parking space and nudged Penelope out of the way so Charlotte could back up.

  To her credit, Charlotte stopped beside him, her eyes closed, her hands gripping the steering wheel. She took a deep breath and rolled down the window. “Call me later so we can talk about your story some more.”

  Hank nodded, suppressing a grin as Charlotte drove off.

  Fifty

  Hank drove as though on autopilot, his mind preoccupied with everything that had happened. He was certain Moby had been in that Step-Down Ward. They probably moved him in the middle of the night like they were planning to do with Larissa Jefferson and Doctor O’Farrell.

  Hank looked over at Penelope. She looked exhausted. She looked like hell incarnate.

  “Put the icepack on your eye,” Hank grumbled. “And put on your seatbelt. This isn’t the Quarantine Zone.”

  Penelope sighed heavily and picked up the zombie survival pack from between her legs. She put it beside her and started rummaging around in it, looking for the ice pack.

  Hank shook his head. He should have seen things sooner. He knew Moby was in there, but he didn’t do anything about it. He never even thought to do anything about it, but then again, he never had a reason, either. He didn’t want to be involved in all this crap.

  A blue pickup truck appeared in his side mirror, sweeping out from behind him. It caught him a little off guard. He straightened and looked down at his speed. Forty. He wasn’t too slow, but then again, he wasn’t going all that fast, either. The truck’s engine roared.

  “Yeah, yeah, just pass, jack—”

  Wham!

  The blue truck slammed into the side of the Jeep. The screech of tires and rattling of metal sang out. His seatbelt locked. His head whacked into the door frame. The Jeep rolled off the side of the road. Hank mashed the brake pedal, but the tires merely locked up in the mud as they raced headlong at a dark, wide tree jutting up from the depths of the berm.

  Fifty-One

  Hank woke with a start, gasping as though he had forgotten to breathe for a long time. His head swam. Darkness shrouded his vision. Pins and needles danced across his chest, hammering in small spikes that burned like fire where the seatbelt dug in. The airbag bladder had him pinned against the door of the Jeep, his left arm and shoulder gnawed at by a piercing, unrelenting pain that felt like rows of knife blades.

  Blinking felt like rubbing sand paper over his eyes, but washed away the haze. The front windshield was shattered and caved in where a thick, snapped branch rammed through it and up into the ceiling between him and Penelope. She didn’t move, being mostly crumpled up and wedged under the wide airbag across the dashboard, the zombie survival pack between her knees.

  Hank tried to get his bearings. The blue truck wasn’t anywhere in sight. The side mirrors were bent forward from the impact. The rearview mirror was a mangled mess pressed against the ceiling by the thick branch that could have taken off either his or Penelope’s heads. He tried to turn to look behind them and hissed at the spike of pain running up his spine.

  “Kitty,” Hank rasped. He swallowed. “Kitty, are you okay?”

  “That side,” Hank heard a muffled voice say from somewhere behind them.

  Hank turned his head as much as he could, using his peripheral vision for the rest. A man in a suit cautiously moved in along the rear passenger window.

  “Kitty, wake up. We’ve got trouble.”

  She grunted, lifting her head enough to let it fall on the seat. Her un-swollen eye squinted toward him for a second before closing.

  “Kitty,” he whispered regretfully. This was his fault. She shouldn’t have been here. She should have been with Tom. He just hoped she had a last bit of strength. “Kitty, the gun. I need the gun.”

  The man stepped into view of the passenger window, looking in at Hank. He looked vaguely familiar, one of the suits with Frankie the other day maybe.

  “Henry,” came a more familiar voice from the driver’s side of the vehicle. It was Frankie.

  Hank turned his head to look straight ahead. He couldn’t turn any more from being jammed against the door frame.

  “Hey, buddy. You don’t look so good,” Frankie said, tapping on the glass with his fingers. “Let me see if I can get this door open.”

  Hank didn’t say a thing. He hoped another car would stop to help out, but this early, the roads had been nearly empty. The whole vehicle shifted and creaked as Frankie tugged at the driver’s door. It gave with a pop and a squeal of metal. Hank almost fell out, but the seatbelt and doorframe kept him in. Except his arm, which lolled out and dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  Hank sucked in a deep breath as the pain from it roiled up his arm and into his chest.

  “Oh, shit, Henry, that looks bad. You want me to give you something for the pain?”

  Hank leaned away from the door frame and turned his head slightly so he could see Frankie. The bastard was gloating.

  “You did this?”

  “What, me? No. I just happened along after that good old boy hit you and ran. It’s too bad when I got here you were already dead.”

  Something cold and heavy and familiar pressed against Hank’s right hand. He didn’t look at what it was. He didn’t need to. He grasped the thing, feeling Penelope’s finger covering the trigger guard. He felt her pull away and imagined it might have been her final act. He thumbed the safety and took a deep breath, knowing the pain he was about to endure.

  “This is Vesophetamine, our best-selling sedative,” Frankie went on, flicking at a syringe.

  Hank held his breath. The pain shooting up his spine was worse than anything he’d ever felt, like wolves gnawing on his bare skin, chewing at the muscle and bone.

  “It’s going to knock you out, and you’ll never wake up. I would have rather it been painful, but your little run to my Step-Down Ward this morning didn’t leave me with a lot of time to plan.

  “But, I guess it’s your own damned fault. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of my business, Henry?”

  Hank mumbled.

  “What’s that, Henry?” Frankie asked, leaning forward as though he couldn’t hear him.

  “I said,” Hank breathed. “See you in hell.”

  Blam, blam, blam!

  Hank fired the pistol through the airbag, clipping Frankie, causing him to spin away. He didn’t waste any time watching Frankie go down, or how well he’d hit him. He turned
his attention to the other side of the Jeep, lifting the pistol across the passenger seat.

  Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam!

  He fired at the retreating form of Frankie’s companion.

  The rear passenger window shattered from his blasts. A burst of bloody mist sprayed in the air and the man went down. Whether he was dead or just injured didn’t matter. That son-of-a-bitch was out for now. Hank pressed forward against the sagging airbag, crying out as the pain in his shoulder and back tripled.

  Frankie was on the ground, flat on his back while trying to draw his weapon. Hank had clipped him in the left shoulder, so he couldn’t roll on that side easily. Frankie raised his hips in the air instead to un-holster his weapon. Hank leaned back and shoved his pistol through the gap in front of him.

  Blam!

  Frankie fired his pistol first, through his hip holster.

  The window behind Hank’s head shattered.

  Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam!

  Hank returned fire, emptying the pistol’s magazine. Frankie took one in the chest and one in the belly.

  Blam!

  Frankie’s pistol managed to fire once more. His whole body seized in a single, violent shake that threw his legs out. He lay flat on his back. A last gurgling breath escaped as he stared at Hank in utter surprise.

  Hank didn’t feel like he’d been hit, and he didn’t hear the round swat into the Jeep anywhere, so he hoped Frankie had missed altogether. He looked out the opposite side of the vehicle to see if the other man was getting up, but he couldn’t see him.

  Penelope hadn’t moved through the whole ordeal. Hank dropped the empty weapon into the center console and put his hand out over hers. It was cold, as usual. God, he hoped she was alive.

  Fifty-Two

  The television had been on for hours, a repetitive cycle of news recaps that made it hard to tell what time or day it was. The anchorwoman sat facing Charlotte Reed, the caption indicating she was a senior investigative reporter. Hank was amused by the title. How quickly they made her important simply because she broke the story. The women nodded thoughtfully to one another as they spoke.