Plagued States of America (Book 3): Plagued: The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment

by Better Hero Army

  Penelope heard the snowmobile engine scream and wail, but they didn’t move except for being turned sideways, and then the whole sled began to topple over toward the snow. Penelope put her arms up to cover her head as she slammed into the soft powder. She thought that might be the end of it, but before she could breathe, the bull struck again, slamming into the sled and pushing her through the snow, burying her one moment, then lifting her into the air the next.

  She hung in the air by the straps at her waist and chest, snow obscuring her vision through the sunglasses that somehow managed to stay on through it all. The bull glared at her, its horns lowering to strike again. Beyond the enormous beast she saw Tom’s snowmobile upturned, its treads still spinning freely. Tom and Hamilton were both nothing more than dark mounds partly buried in the snow themselves.

  The bull charged and Penelope screamed. Another loud thump erupted as the bull’s horns struck the sled just above her. The pilot’s body pressed down on her even harder, squeezing out her last gasp of air. The sled shook again, rattling Penelope’s senses as the shadow of the bull darkened the world around her and the warmth of its mass and heated breath tried to consume her like a waterfall spilling over her.

  Blam!

  The bull jerked its head, lifting the sled and tossing it to the side.

  Blam, blam, blam!

  The pistol fired again and again as though there weren’t enough bullets in the world to stop the bull’s rampage.

  Blam, blam!

  The bull teetered in front of her, swinging its enormous head and body toward the gun.

  Blam!

  Penelope gulped for air, wrenching at the straps furiously, finding her voice again to scream and growl, terrorized by everything happening around her. Shadows, the whirring of snowmobile engines, the sound of urgent and soothing voices—it all charged her with the same ferocity as the bull. She screamed again, her eyes shut as she tugged at the strap.

  “Penny!” she heard Toms voice break through. “Penny, calm down. Let me help.”

  She gulped a sobbing moan, yanking at the strap again, but letting Tom reach in to loosen the clasp. It snapped free and she fell out of the sled into the blood red snow, falling onto her hands and knees next to the hulking mass of the bull.

  “Penny,” Tom said soothingly, reaching a hand to her shoulder, his other hand still holding his pistol.

  She shook him off, scrambling on her hands and knees to the side, trying to get away from the bull in the loose, soft snow, but getting nowhere. Gasping for breath she fell to her side, her eyes wide with terror. Tears rolled down her cheeks and the cold air stung as though her tears were made of acid.

  She took a deep breath to try to settle her nerves, finally having sense enough to take in some of what was around her. Tom stuffed his pistol into its holster and crawled toward her, his body between the bull and hers. Behind him, Jones stood next to the bull, cupping his pistol in both hands. He pointed the gun at the bull as he kicked it in the head. O’Farrell struggled through the snow toward the bent and broken sled.

  “Is the pilot alright?” O’Farrell called out.

  “He’s dead,” Jones replied, not looking toward the sled.

  “How can you—dear God!” O’Farrell blurted as she came around the sled to see the pilot’s body hanging from the loose straps, his one arm dangling. A gaping hole punctured the pilot’s chest allowing what little blood he had left to spill out completely.

  Jones stared over the dead bull toward the herd, now all standing and gathering in the haze of the falling snow. “We need to get moving. Hamilton, get the snowmobile upright.”

  “I think my arm’s broken,” Hamilton complained.

  “Penny, are you hurt?” Tom asked softly.

  Penny shook her head, feeling her own chest and legs to make sure. She shook her head again.

  “You have blood all over you. Wipe your face with snow.”

  Penelope did as she was told, wiping the soft powder against her face. Drops of red water fell into the snow beneath her and stained her gloves. Tom stood up and moved back to the upturned snowmobile.

  “I’m taking Penny. Wendy, can you and Jones take Hamilton?”

  “Yeah,” Jones replied for her. “Wendy, get the rig. We’ll wedge him between us.” Jones rushed over to Tom’s snowmobile and helped him turn it back onto its skis and tracks. “Get it started and let’s go.”

  Tom turned the key and the engine whirred to life again. Penelope half-crawled, half-walked toward it, wanting nothing more than to escape this place, and all of Biter Territory. Jones turned and picked her up, placing her onto the snowmobile behind Tom. Even with her frazzled nerves, she managed to hug Tom tightly. He put a hand over hers and the snowmobile lurched forward, once again cruising into the endless white haze.

  Thirty-Five

  Tom let the snowmobile drift to a halt as he looked at the GPS device on his forearm once more. O’Farrell pulled up beside them.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I think that’s it,” Tom said, pointing at the top of a berm ahead of them.

  “Is this the third or fourth it?” Jones asked, lifting himself off the snowmobile from behind Hamilton. He climbed the berm ahead of them, his feet sinking to his knees with each step. Penelope understood why they kept stopping now. In the white-out, they wouldn’t know if the top of the berm dipped down naturally, or plummeted onto the railroad tracks. Jones climbed up ahead to check.

  He stopped at the top and looked to his left and right, then turned around, taking his helmet off.

  “This is it,” he shouted. “But there’s no train.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Tom said in disgust, only loud enough for Penelope to hear him over the idling snowmobile engine.

  Jones marched back down the berm. “I don’t think it’s been through, either. The tracks look like they’ve been buried a while.”

  “Let’s go find it,” Tom said, turning the snowmobile westerly.

  They cruised along the bottom of the berm while O’Farrell straddled the top every few hundred feet. Jones stood up to look down, shook his head, and they all cruised to the next checkpoint. It went on for half an hour until they finally reached the wye junction.

  The train was parked quietly on the tracks. Just beyond the front of the engine the carved out tracks split, one lane straight ahead, the other curving off to the right almost an equal distance. At the end of the track to the right, a ditch was partially dug out that looked like it would link the other two ends in a triangle. This was the wye, where the train was supposed to be able to do a three point U-turn. The only problem was that the third section of track was still mostly buried under snow.

  “Let’s get everyone aboard and figure out what’s going on,” Tom suggested as he killed the engine of his snowmobile.

  No one argued the idea, but guns were drawn by everyone who had one as they dismounted.

  Tom hopped off the snowmobile as soon as Penelope loosened her grip around his waist. She tried to stand, but found unsteady legs beneath her. She sat back down, feeling helpless.

  “Hank,” Tom said while lifting his helmet off and dropping it next to the snowmobile. “Go let Houston know we’re back. Wendy, can you help Penny? I need to help with my sister.”

  “I’ll help you walk,” O’Farrell said to Penelope, kneeling down beside her. “Throw an arm over my shoulder.”

  Penelope sighed. She wanted Tom’s help, but he strode toward Hank’s snowmobile to help his father with Larissa, ignoring her, not even realizing she couldn’t stand on her own. Her heart ached for his attention.

  “Mason, help Hamilton,” O’Farrell said. “Come on,” she encouraged Penelope. “Let’s go.”

  Penelope put her arm around O’Farrell’s neck and let herself be hoisted onto her weak legs. Together, they crunched through the deep snow, alone except for Hank slogging out a path ahead of them as fast as he could go.

  “Just keep thinking of those warm cabin
s, hot coffee, and Entenmann’s,” O’Farrell whispered.

  Penelope wanted to, but her mind still swam with everything that happened today, and most prominent of all was Kennedy’s death. Why did O’Farrell lie about her? The woman tried to kill them. Shouldn’t she have said something? Anything?

  “Ken-yen-tee,” Penelope rasped. She was getting better at saying it. So good that O’Farrell stopped in her tracks, looked at Penelope, then back over her shoulder with concern.

  “What about her?” she asked, resuming their march through the snow.

  “Kee-ill,” Penelope breathed, remembering the word she wanted to use earlier.

  “We didn’t kill her,” O’Farrell replied under her breath.

  “Kee-ill,” Penelope reiterated, pointing at O’Farrell.

  “You mean she tried to kill me?”

  Penelope nodded.

  “I suppose I’d be dead if Mason hadn’t insisted I wear this under armor get-up, huh?”

  “Kee-ill. Why?” Penelope asked.

  “Half-breeds. More than we imagined. Tell me, when you lived in the wild, were there a lot?”

  Penelope nodded.

  “More than twenty?”

  Penelope nodded.

  “More than fifty?”

  Penelope nodded again.

  “A hundred?”

  Penelope shrugged, then nodded.

  “I think she did a lot more experiments than she should have.”

  They stopped at the edge of the berm and looked down at the quiet wellcars. Penelope sighed in relief. It was over. Hank’s trail left them a slide to use to get down. He jogged ahead, alongside the coaches in the safety of the trough carved out by Houston’s snowblower. He shouted out Houston’s name as he slapped the sides of the coaches. O’Farrell looked back to see Jones and Hamilton struggling in the snow not far behind.

  “It makes me wonder what the hell we were really doing at Rock Island.”

  “Vaa,” Penelope groaned and lowered her voice to try again. “Vax—een.”

  “Vaccine?” O’Farrell asked.

  Penelope nodded eagerly. “Me,” she said throatily.

  “I don’t know. I never heard of the vaccine study until today, but a vaccine is like a cure you take to prevent getting infected in the first place. It makes you immune. Keep quiet now,” O’Farrell said softly, glancing toward Hamilton. “We’ll talk later.”

  Thirty-Six

  Penelope sat on the bed inside the berth with Larissa’s head in her lap. She stroked the girl’s damp hair and wiped at the beads of sweat on her forehead as she hummed softly to help keep her calm. O’Farrell held the girl’s wrist with her fingers, counting the beats of her pulse.

  “Well?” the Senator asked from the doorway. “How is she?”

  “Her pulse is fine,” O’Farrell answered. “Her breathing is a little accelerated. I’d prefer she take longer, deeper breaths, but with the fever she’s running…I just don’t know what I should be doing to treat her without a blood panel. The only thing we can do is keep her cool and get back to the EPS as quickly as we can.”

  Larissa lay stripped down to her tee-shirt and underwear. Band-Aids dotted her legs like they did everywhere else, hiding carved out welts and lesions. Smears of aged mud and filth from where their attempts to clean her had failed broke up her otherwise pale white skin.

  “It’s strange,” the Senator said softly. “I haven’t seen her in ten years, and yet it seems like only yesterday.”

  Penelope dug a twig from Larissa’s hair and dropped it onto the floor. O’Farrell stood and moved away from Larissa, back toward the door where it was safer now that Penelope had removed the gag ball again. Everyone else was outside in the snow, digging out the third line of the wye track.

  M.B. Houston tried to dig it out on his own, but gave up after several hours due to exhaustion. He’d been sleeping when they returned to the train. Now he helped Tom, Hank, Jones, and Carl dig the snow out while Hamilton, due to his broken arm, kept watch.

  “How long did you work with Danielle?” the Senator asked O’Farrell.

  “Almost a year,” O’Farrell replied.

  “I only ask because I’m deeply concerned about my daughter’s health. Were you part of any curative experiments? Do you know what’s going on? I mean, is this normal?”

  “Well, it may be normal for her. I was part of several experiments, but those were controlled environments, and we knew the health of our subjects prior to administering the cure. Even Mason came in with a clean bill of health when he was bitten.”

  “Jones,” the Senator whispered. He sighed, rubbing between his eyes. He looked at his daughter for a moment, then to the doctor, a haggard and sorrow-laden expression dragging down his features.

  “I know you’re fond of Lieutenant Jones, Doctor, and I sincerely hope that it’s not affecting your judgment, because I’m also concerned about what happened to Danielle—Doctor Kennedy.”

  O’Farrell’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  “She wasn’t just a remarkable counsel with respect to the plague. Her research and scientific contributions to America aside, she was a good friend of the family and I’m at a loss as to how I’m going to explain her death.

  “And the thing that gnaws at me right now—”

  The Senator paused, taking in a breath, the pain in his expression deepening. He stubbed his fingers into his belly several times. “The thing that gnaws at me is that I’m responsible. I’m responsible and I don’t even know how she died.”

  O’Farrell didn’t say anything. Penelope wondered if she was considering what to tell him. Continue the lie? That’s what Penelope would be doing simply because she didn’t trust the man. Something about the way the Senator stood bothered Penelope, as though he were growing taller in order to intimidate them, or wrap himself around them like a vulture hiding its meal.

  “What really happened, Doctor?”

  “She fell off the roof. Penelope tried to save her, but that just caused them both to fall.”

  The Senator’s eye raised at this as he turned his gaze in Penelope’s direction. Penelope didn’t like the scrutiny, but she didn’t try to hide or look away. She didn’t want to give the Senator any reason to doubt O’Farrell’s story.

  “So you fell too. Did it hurt?” he asked Penelope.

  She nodded, wincing.

  “I’d like to know exactly what happened,” the Senator asked O’Farrell. “If you don’t mind.”

  “We couldn’t get out on the second floor, so we went to the top and shot off the lock to get out. There was a ladder outside—one of those kinds with the round cage to keep you from climbing up. We had to climb down on the outside of it. I don’t know how, but the doctor slipped and fell into Penelope. She tried to catch her, but they both got knocked off. The doctor tumbled and hit her head. It broke open her—”

  O’Farrell took a deep breath and gulped, appearing to struggle with the words to describe what she had seen.

  “Right here,” O’Farrell said, pointing to the back of her head just above her ear. “It crushed the bone and broke through the skin. There was nothing we could do for her.

  “Penelope was lucky. She landed flat on her back in the snow. It acted like a cushion and absorbed most of the fall, but I think she’s received a concussion.”

  “Where was Jones during all of this?”

  “I don’t know. He showed up while I was climbing the rest of the way down.”

  “Was he alone with Kennedy before you got to the bottom?”

  “Well, yes and no. He checked on both Penelope and Doctor Kennedy before I could reach the bottom.”

  “So he was alone with her,” the Senator said.

  “No,” O’Farrell said, trying to retract what she’d said. “I was there. Penelope was there.”

  “Doctor O’Farrell—Wendy, do you know why Lieutenant Jones was at Rock Island?”

  She shook her head.

  “He came back from Egypt for psychological evaluat
ion after killing a young soldier under his own command. Did you know this?”

  Again, O’Farrell shook her head.

  “The U.S. Army has a policy of rehabilitation through safe-conduct assignments like Rock Island. I know this because someone on the Homeland Security Committee has to sign the orders of every single soldier assigned to duty inside the Quarantine Zone. I was the one who signed Lieutenant Jones’ orders because, at the time, his evaluation led us to believe there was no risk of further incident.

  “So you can imagine why I’m concerned now, can’t you? Here he is, alone with the doctor he’s seeking revenge or retribution against for something that may or may not have even happened to him while he was at Rock Island, and because of his confused state of mind, well…he’s a soldier. He’s been trained to kill and to put aside judgment, and the moral implications of such an act.

  “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you or anyone else aboard this train to become another casualty.”

  He let the notion hang in the air as he stared O’Farrell in the eye, closing his left eye so she could only stare back into his right.

  “Think about what I’m telling you.”

  “Of course,” O’Farrell said with a nod.

  The Senator smiled and looked again at Larissa. “I’ll leave you two to it, then.” He stepped into the hallway beyond the berth and stopped, putting a hand on the door frame. “One more thing,” the Senator said, raising a finger as though he only just remembered. “Where’s that camera you had?”

  “What?”

  “The camera you were taking all those pictures with,” the Senator said innocently. “I didn’t see you with it when we left Midamerica.”

  “Oh, we must have lost it in the snow somewhere. Maybe I left it in the terminal or on the roof,” O’Farrell said, looking distantly as though trying to recall. “Things were happening so quickly.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

  “Well, no matter. I was only hoping for some of those photos of Larissa you took. I think Carl still has his phone’s video. Carry on, you two.”