“What now?” Tom asked.
Penelope looked around, as though expecting someone to be watching. It made Tom nervous. Penelope leaned down and picked up Larissa as a mother would her child, uncaring about the filthy, muddy stains and fetid odor. Larissa began a muffled moan, although still chewing on the ball, now more like a baby with a rubber nipple. Penelope made a cooing noise that settled Larissa down immediately. Tom walked with Penelope as she navigated her way through the maze of zombie children, his wrist linked to hers, but his hand empty for the first time.
Twenty-Seven
They went back the way they had come, or at least the same direction. Tom couldn’t tell in the shadows of the woods. Every tree hid a zombie child beneath it, like a growth of moss hiding on the shaded side. Every one looked the same. It wasn’t until Tom could see the air strip and the light of day began to break through that Penelope came to a sudden stop. She put Larissa down, growling.
“What?” Tom asked quietly, but had no time to discover the answer. Penelope lurched sidelong taking him with her, jerked by their handcuffed arms. Another figure had tackled Penelope, throwing her into a tree. Tom staggered to the ground, dragged with the force, hitting his head on Penelope’s knees. She toppled over him like a sack of grain, heavy and limp. Tom managed to turn his head and saw another half-breed, this one male. Penelope groaned but didn’t move as the other half-breed barred its fangs, hissing at them, stepping between Tom and Larissa.
His little zombie sister had been knocked to the ground as well. She lay huddled in a ball, arms covering her head. The half-breed looked down on her with a strange affection. The same kind of affection Tom had seen in Penelope earlier. Tom rolled Penelope off his back and twisted around to face her. He propped her against the tree. Unconscious, a bloody welt on her forehead from colliding with the trunk. Tom put a hand over it to help slow the bleeding, realizing that his hand was still chained to hers. Tom looked around for a weapon. Any big stick would do.
The male half-breed was on Tom’s back with amazing speed. Tom crashed to the ground over Penelope’s lap, dragging her down with him under the half-breed’s weight. The half-breed’s hand was on the back of Tom’s neck, pinning him. Tom got the distinct sensation that this was how half-breeds fought with zombies, keeping their mouths – a zombie’s only real weapon – a safe distance. Then the zombie pinned one of Tom’s arms with a knee, the one attached to Penelope. The pain was excruciating.
So this is how I die? Tom wondered briefly.
The half-breed pinned Tom’s other arm too, using his other knee to wedge it against his body. Tom was unable to breathe from the weight of the half-breed on his back. That was what the thing was trying to do, after all. Kill him. Kill him to feed to all those children. The half-breed would feed Penelope to them too.
Tom’s fingers felt the cargo pocket of his pant leg. He dug out the injector and turned the spring loaded needle upward, jamming it against the back of the half-breed’s thigh. The snap of the injector startled the thing, so much so that its legs twitched and it raised itself off of Tom slightly. Enough to breathe. Enough that Tom got his unchained arm under his own body and rolled sideways. The half-breed didn’t give up, though. It began pummeling Tom on the head, striking his ears and neck while again pushing Tom toward the ground. Tom used his free arm like a shield. He’d been in a hundred fights with his older brother through the years, but this thing fought as though its life depended on it. It wanted to kill Tom.
“Get off,” Tom snarled, swinging his elbow into the thing’s leg, just above the kneecap. The half-breed let out a squeal and the leg retreated. Tom rolled away from the half-breed, dragging Penelope’s arm with him, dragging her like a rug on which the other half-breed stood, pitching the half-breed over on its back. Tom hauled Penelope away, pulling her close to him with both hands. The male half-breed stood up, ready to charge again.
Tom tossed the injector to the ground between them. The injectors weren’t like the pills Hank had given Carrie. They went straight into the blood stream, the full potency spreading to every cell of the body in mere seconds.
The half-breed growled at him, leery of the tube on the ground between them. There was no real recognition in its eyes as to what the injector was, but it put a hand on the back of its leg where Tom had hit it. There was a trickle of blood on its fingers. It growled again and started forward. On its first step its leg gave and it half collapsed before catching itself. Tom could see the thing breathing heavily, just like himself. The elevated heart rate was probably only helping the poison along.
Tom backed up, dragging Penelope with him, lifting her into his arms, cradling her. The half-breed stood again and tried to walk but collapsed. It was breathing heavily and glaring at him, but it had a look on its face of fateful recognition. Tom carried Penelope around the fallen half-breed and back toward Larissa. His sister was crawling, moving slowly toward the shadows from where she had been taken.
“Come on, wake up, Penelope,” Tom said, putting her down and tapping her face, watching the other half-breed carefully. The beast was on its hands and knees, crawling forward, gasping. “I can’t carry you both,” Tom told her softly. The other half-breed finally collapsed, panting like a dog, its eyes staring blankly.
“Come on, Penelope,” Tom said again, patting her face again.
Tom didn’t hear the others so much as sense them. He turned around to look back into the woods past Larissa. Several half-breeds stood like sentinels. Ten, fifteen of them, maybe more. Tom reached a hand into his cargo pocket and withdrew another spring loaded injector. It was futile. It wasn’t a kill pack. But they didn’t know it.
It didn’t matter, though. Tom had made up his mind. That animal laying and moaning on the ground wasn’t his sister. Bringing a monster home wouldn’t change anything. She’d be a worse stigma – look at what you caused!
“You know what?” Tom said to the dark shapes watching him. He picked Penelope up over his shoulder and approached Larissa. His legs shook as he crouched down to unclasp the muzzle, watching it fall to the ground beneath the beast that had once been his little sister. “Keep her,” Tom said with disgust. He backed away, holding the injector out as a warning to any of the other half-breeds.
The half-breeds didn’t come after him. As Tom backed into the sunshine, he watched them collect their dead comrade and Larissa. When he turned toward the airstrip, he expected a horde of zombies to start closing in on him. In a way he felt like maybe he deserved it.
“Run, boy,” Tom heard Peske calling from across the air field. He looked up and saw Peske and Tyler hurrying with a man between them, his arms draped around their necks, each of them holding a splinted leg. Behind the three, Tom saw the slow moving forms of several zombies, two dragging poles still lassoed around their necks. The wailing of the children behind him had been drowning out the moaning of the oncoming horde. Now Tom saw the doors near Peske, Tyler, and Mike – yes it was Mike – had several forms emerging. Whether zombies liked bright sun or not, they wouldn’t miss an opportunity to feed.
With Penelope over his shoulder, Tom couldn’t run any faster than Peske and Tyler. They joined at the road leading to the control tower, Tom slightly behind them but catching up. The shambling zombies were far enough away, Tom hoped, that their calls wouldn’t rouse any hiding ahead of them.
“What the hell happened to you?” Peske demanded between breaths.
“Long story,” Tom replied. “What happened?”
“Mike got bit. Rick’s dead. The other two got it too.”
“Have you started inhibitors?” Tom asked.
“Ain’t got none on me. We were hoping the rescue choppers would.”
Tom still held the injector in his hand from earlier. As he reached the other three he smacked it into the top of Mike’s thigh.
“There you go,” Tom puffed. “Best inhibitors money can buy.”
“Come on, come on,” they heard Hank and the others shouting from the open door to
the control tower. Their calls were too loud, Tom thought. They would attract more zombies. Sure enough, zombies began spilling out of buildings alongside them. Carrying Penelope and Mike, they weren’t moving as fast as they needed to outrun all the closing zombies.
“Faster,” Tyler groaned. “We’ve got to run!”
“Don’t drop me,” Mike pleaded as they began running faster, jostling him even more.
Hank came out to help them, taking Peske’s place alongside Tyler. Peske slowed as soon as Hank took over, grimacing.
“Don’t slow down old man, it’s just a few hundred feet,” Hank shouted and Tom grabbed Peske’s arm with his free hand.
“Oh, shit,” Peske said, clutching his chest, falling to the ground, grabbing Tom as he did. Tom stumbled and fell to his knees, doing everything he could to avoid dropping Penelope. His knees felt the hard concrete and the pain burned to his toes.
“Get up,” Tom said urgently.
“I can’t.” Peske grimaced, clenching his teeth, arching his back. “Oh, dear God!”
“Peske, what’s wrong?” Tom asked, taking Peske’s hand. It was limp. “Peske,” Tom shouted, slapping him in the face, gently putting Penelope down so he could look into Peske’s sagged face. Peske’s eyes had a look of shock.
“Come on!” two of the visitors said while running up alongside Peske and lifting him. “Get up!”
Tom looked up to see a hundred zombies coming their way. The funnel of their escape narrowed by the second as more zombies fought with one another on their way out of the buildings ahead. Tom struggled to lift Penelope into both arms again, the weakness in his legs making it difficult to run, the pain in his knees raging against each hobbling step. He followed the others blindly, not paying attention to the ring of zombies closing in on him like a loss of vision. Maybe it was his vision narrowing. The darkness of the door into the control tower building was all he saw. He leapt through, stumbling into several bodies. Disoriented and out of control he fell backwards. He had sense enough to cradle Penelope like a baby, curling her head to his chest as he hit the floor on his back. His head struck the floor. His vision collapsed into blackness.
Twenty-Eight
He heard the tumult around him, the rising and falling of voices, the urgency of their words. He dipped in and out of consciousness. Moaning surrounded him. Dull echoes of hammering on doors soon became a repetitive whump. He felt weightless as though he were in the duck again, its noisy engine groaning beneath him, the heat of it radiating. He felt a body beside his, warm and soft.
“That’s one hell of a way to make sure you get to keep her,” Tom could hear his brother saying. Was it some kind of joke? It wasn’t a memory that he knew of. His brother had never said anything like that before.
Tom opened his eyes to find himself inside a helicopter, his brother sitting in a seat over him with a headset on. Tom was strapped to the floor with a blanket covering him, Penelope by his side, her head completely under the cover, her arm over his chest, her grip fierce.
“You’re awake!” Gary said. “This is the second time I thought you were dead.”
“Where am I?” Tom asked. Gary wore a long cast over his right leg keeping him from getting up, but he managed to unclasp himself and slide to the deck beside Tom. He offered Tom a headset and helped him put it on.
“Relax, little brother, it’s over. We’re heading home.”
Tom looked sidelong. Penelope was shivering under the blanket, her head covered except for her eyes. She was still handcuffed to him, he could feel it. He put his other hand up to her head and stroked her hair beneath the blanket. She wasn’t cold.
“What happened?”
“You were all holed up in the control tower, surrounded by hundreds of zombies trying to get in. When the choppers came, the zombies all ran away into buildings. Well, they shuffled away. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a zombie run. It was eerie though. The rescue team pulled you all out.”
“How many made it?” Tom asked.
“Including you two?” Gary replied, not waiting for an answer. “Eight. One of them was bit.”
“Where are they?”
“The other choppers,” Gary said with a wave. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you alive, little brother,” Gary said with a wide smile.
“Yeah,” Tom replied distantly. He wondered how he would tell Gary and his father what happened. He didn’t want to tell them about Larissa. He hoped those other half-breeds fed her the one he’d killed. He hoped it killed Larissa too. A secret he could take to the grave with him now. He didn’t have to tell his family anything. Besides, he had someone else to look after now. He looked down at Penelope’s frightened eyes. “It’ll be fine,” he told her reassuringly. He wondered if they would let him bring her across the channel. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” She looked deeply into his eyes. “I promise,” he added, stroking her hair again. At least he could save someone. She took in a long, relaxing breath that he could feel against his side. He could feel her grip on his cuffed hand. “I promise.”
The End
Plagued: The Midamerica Zombie Half-Breed Experiment (Plagued States of America) Page 10
