She imagined it was probably purposefully quiet because it went through the loudspeaker system. Big noises might attract zombies. Small noises didn’t carry quite as far.
Click, click, click, click, click, and the room was silent. Wendy looked around. Everyone stared up expectantly. She looked up again. Click.
“Ah, good evening, everyone,” Momma’s voice said, coming through the speakers. She sounded cordial and orderly, less abrasive than when Wendy met her earlier. “As you are all by now aware, we have a visitor.”
Wendy expected everyone in the room to turn their gaze toward her. She swallowed the lump in her throat, but continued to look up. In her periphery, she saw Chico and Doctor Jacobs still looking up. Troy was busy gnawing on a chicken leg.
“And for now, I want you to leave her alone. Go about your normal days. I know she’s special and different, but it’s because of that you need to give her her space.
“I’ve spent the better part of the day with her now and—”
Not me. Larissa.
“—that Miss Doctor has a lot of the right of it.”
Now Wendy felt the eyes in the room fall on her. When she thought Momma meant her before, and no one looked her way, it was eerie. Now it felt worse, like she sat in a room full of hungry zombies who only just realized she was food.
“When she cures our here Egan, we may have some work ahead still, but we knew it would be hard all along. That’s why we’re here. Our here Egan is just the start. You help Miss Doctor along the way and we’ll bring ‘em all home. Every last one of ‘em, I swear.”
The speakers hissed as Momma paused. No one spoke. Wendy chanced a look around the room. Eyes were shut everywhere, mostly. A few of the people had vacant stares out the window or at the ceiling, and there was Troy who looked down at his empty plate, but for the most part they all waited with their heads raised and eyes shut.
“Amen,” Momma said, and the room droned an echo.
Click.
Twenty-Nine
Wendy felt even more concerned about her situation after witnessing the kind of power Momma held over everyone, including Troy. Did they believe she planned on somehow finding their loved ones out in the wrecked wasteland of the Plagued States, and then miraculously curing them? Or worse, were they holding them all someplace inside the zoo?
Everyone remained silent. Half of the people in the room got up and turned around to face the television. Wendy turned with them. The man who had opened the windows earlier brought out a clicker and pressed the power button. The television woke to a hockey game. There were groans and cat calls. “Come on,” someone called out. The man waved his hands at them and tapped buttons, bringing up a menu of channels. He scrolled through it and pressed one.
The hockey game was replaced with an unfamiliar news channel. There were two scrolls along the bottom, a big call-out with BREAKING NEWS in bold lettering, a small video-in-video window showing some chaotic scene with smoke rising, and a larger than life anchorwoman babbling in French so quickly Wendy hardly recognized it. The closed caption in English began to scroll and she read it to the tune of gasps all around her.
CONFIRMATION THAT THE
NUMBER OF DEAD IN THIS
INCIDENT HAS GROWN TO
OVER TWENTY AMERICAN
SERVICE-MEN AND WOMEN
WHILE POLICE DON’T KNOW
WHAT CAUSED THE EXPLOSION
MANY SOURCES INDICATE THE
SAME TERRORIST ORGANIZATION
RESPONSIBLE FOR THE
DESTRUCTION AT ROCK ISLAND
AND THE OUTPOST GRIMLY KNOWN
AS BITER’S HILL NEAR CHARLESTON
MISSOURI—
“What the fuck,” Troy breathed in astonishment.
The picture-in-picture switched, bringing forward the footage of a drone flying over a smoky, partly collapsed five-story building where fire raged unhindered on one side, spilling out the shattered windows and leaping high into the air.
—ICONIC BUILDING WAS THE LAST
OF THREE STATE SANCTIONED
HUNTING OUTPOSTS INSIDE THE
QUARANTINE ZONE ON THE
AMERICAN SIDE PERMITTING—
The drone circled toward the channel—the wide river separating the Quarantine Zone from the safer parts of the United States—capturing an image of the partially collapsed building, the rubble that had tumbled and splashed into the water at the river’s edge, partly consuming the docks and burying all the hunting rigs that normally parked beneath it.
—RESCUE CREWS HAVE BEEN UNABLE
TO LAND EXCEPT BY AIR, BUT
SURVIVORS OF THE BLAST HAVE
BEEN WORKING CEASELESSLY
FOR HOURS TO REACH THOSE—
The drone circled the building, showing its collapsed roof and the toppled crane laying across the field, partially trapped in the trees hundreds of feet away. Then she saw the train cars, all knocked on their sides. Only the massive iron engines still stood, their massive weight somehow absorbing the shockwave of the explosion that had hit the building.
—NO WORD YET ON WHETHER
THE DAUGHTER OF AMERICAN
SENATOR WILLIAM JEFFERSON
WAS STILL AT THE STATION AFTER
HER RECENT RESCUE FROM—
The drone cruised over the length of the train, slowing to focus on a lone woman standing on top of one of the toppled cars, a hand cupped above her eyes as she looked up curiously at the camera. Wendy gasped.
Penelope!
She was sure of it. Even as distant and distorted as the fish-eye camera of the drone made things appear, Wendy knew Penelope’s cat-like stance, and that curious look of bewilderment as she watched the drone glide past her. Wendy breathed a little easier at the sight. It gave her hope that Tom and Hank had made it out safely as well, but where could they be if not with Penelope?
“Holy…shit,” Chico said.
“Quiet,” the woman beside Wendy snapped.
“Did she just call us out?” It was Keith’s voice, harsh and angered. He stood and pointed at the television. Wendy hadn’t been paying attention to the words scrolling by, too interested in finding her friends in the chaos of the drone footage. She read the top two rows of words just as they scrolled away.
—IN CONNECTION WITH THE
INCIDENT. LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT—
Keith stabbed his finger at the television accusingly. “She just said it was us!”
“Get out of the way,” the man with the remote said. “And keep quiet.”
“Why?” Keith growled. “Ain’t none of us can speak French. And you all saw it, didn’t you? She just blamed us.”
“She didn’t blame you,” the man with the remote said. “Sit down.”
“She just said ‘three men are wanted in connection with the incident.’ How much more of an accusation do you want?”
“They’re just fishing,” an older man said over the din of groans.
“It’s not a conspiracy,” a woman hollered into her cupped hands.
Another woman stood up in the front row. “They don’t know who you are, otherwise they’d be showing it on TV.” The room seemed to agree, the thunder of comments leaning in her direction.
Wendy tried to look around the woman, to see if any of the footage would show Tom or Hank, but between her and Keith, the television was completely blocked.
“Yeah?” Keith asked, eyeing her. “It’s easy for you to say, Carol, but you’re not one of those ‘three men’.” Keith made air quotes. “I am, and I…didn’t…do…that.” Keith stabbed his finger at the television with each word. “Chico, did you do that? Did you have some bombs in that rig of ours none of us knew about?”
“Fuck no,” Chico called out. “You’d know it if I blew that shithole up.”
Keith shook his head, obviously disappointed with Chico’s answer. It wasn’t helping his cause any. “T? What about you?”
Troy didn’t answer. He only glowered.
“Yeah, see?” Keith asked and
brushed past the woman named Carol as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “The rest of you are gonna get to go home someday, but the three of us?” He stopped in the middle of the room and pointed at Chico and Troy, then at himself. “We’re wanted fugitives.”
“Hey, man, my status is unchanged,” Chico put in.
“Whatever.” Keith tapped a cigarette out and continued toward the door. “Fucking bullshit, that’s what this is. Fuck all of you!
“And you can kiss my ass if you think I’m volunteering for jack shit from now on.” He pushed the door hard, slamming it out of his way as he stomped through the easement and out into the dark snow.
Wendy’s eyes darted, looking at everyone around her for their reactions. Most were in the same kind of awed shock she was herself. Keith’s outburst aside, he was right about one thing: the destruction of the EPS was entirely too coincidental not to have something to do with Larissa’s and her own abduction. She hoped Tom was safe. She hoped Hank had pulled off another amazing rescue.
“Have a seat, Carol,” the man with the remote said softly.
Carol nodded, but didn’t budge.
“Well, you know what I say,” Chico said to no one in particular. “Let them come.”
Troy suddenly lurched to his feet and walked away. Still shocked by what she had seen on the television, Wendy hardly registered him getting up. It was only as the cold air left by his absence began to crawl up her arm that she looked around to find him retreating for the door. The cold felt as unwelcome as loneliness. She shifted, looked at the rude woman next to her, then stood. These people were all strangers. At least Troy was somebody.
She jogged across the dining hall to catch up with him just as he pushed the door out of his way. Right on his heels, she plunged headlong into the darkening world.
Thirty
Wendy passed through the lingering scent of cigarette smoke, but didn’t see Keith anywhere. He must have gone off around the building. She didn’t really care, though. She concentrated on keeping pace with Troy, who made frustrated kicks at the icy snow in front of him as he stomped down one of the worn paths into the woods.
“Troy,” Wendy said softly.
He stopped and glowered at her, the same irritation from earlier today when she used his name in front of Momma.
“Sorry,” she said, slowing. “T. What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer, resuming his hard, angry pace. She tried to match it, but had to follow behind him rather than walk beside him in the unfamiliar, broken terrain. Pockets of ice made the ground both slippery and uneven.
“T?”
He shoved a hand into a glove as he walked.
Wendy did the same, trying not to drop her gloves in the dark as she stuffed her shivering fingers in each.
“T, will you slow down?”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t slow down, either.
“At least tell me where we’re going.”
He stopped and turned to face her. Even in the shadows of the low hanging trees she could see the war that waged inside his head. He wanted to shout, to yell at her, to say something hurtful or vicious. He sighed instead. “That way,” he said and turned away, walking slower, but continuing into the darkness.
They passed old animal pens with low walls and tiny shelters covered in snow and ice. A circular, boarded up building in candy-stripe colors stood alone in an open meadow—an old carousel. She wondered if they pulled down the boards and opened it up in the spring. Or maybe during Christmas.
She stumbled over uneven ground. Looking back at what tripped her, she saw metal bars…and wood ties. Train tracks. Small, comical even. She followed them with her eyes into a shadow where a building sat huddled under a stand of trees, a little station with a small train engine no taller than herself. A kid’s section within the zoo. At least the children who grew up here had something, as eerie as it all was.
The only sound out here was the crunching of their feet in the hard, packed snow. Shadows played tricks with her eyes and for a moment she thought she saw a dinosaur.
Wendy stopped. “Holy shit!” It was a dinosaur, it’s huge front legs like tree trunks, an elephant-like body, and a stretched-out lizard tail. A massive statue of a brachiosaurus, with its long neck reaching up into the stark trees surrounding her.
“That’s Susan,” Troy said, not stopping. “She’s not real.”
“Obviously,” Wendy replied. I’m not dumb. “Why Susan?”
“Named after Ginormica. From the movie.”
“What movie?”
“It was a kid’s movie. Never mind.”
Wendy stumbled over the uneven ground as she stared up at the massive, lifelike statue instead of the path ahead. “Where are we going?”
Troy didn’t answer. He trudged ahead, dipping into the shadows in the path made by a huge wall of trees.
“T. Where are we—?”
“To check on the herd.” Only his voice and the crunching of his boots in the snow could be heard in the ghostly darkness.
Wendy jogged toward the noise, worried she might lose him in the shadows. Against the hazy blue of interspersed snow on the ground she was able to detect movement, a man moving away from her on the same path. She kept up with the silhouette, wondering what he meant by the herd. Did they actually have more zombies? Were all their loved ones kept in some giant pen, all waiting to be cured? The thought of it made her nervous. She strained to listen over their crunching footsteps, waiting for the telltale moaning, but the world around them made no such noise. It hardly made a sound at all.
They passed in and out of stands of trees, moving from one abandoned animal exhibit to the next. They walked through a village of huts and shops that had been converted into housing, every window boarded up, doors shut, letting out only slivers of electric light that made the blue of night casting over the snow seem even spookier. Down a slope they went until they emerged onto a wooden deck with a broad, tall railing. The deck stood twenty feet above a wide open snow-covered field. It was meant as some kind of overlook, a place to watch wild animals back when the zoo housed such things.
Troy walked straight to the edge and leaned his elbows on the rail, lifting a foot onto a lower crossbeam. Wendy approached with a little more caution, expecting to hear the call of zombies at any minute. Instead she heard the groan of a cow, a soft warning moo that turned the heads of at least forty shaggy beasts laying in a cluster along the bank of a steaming lake.
That’s strange.
It wasn’t frozen. Just like the pond and soggy mud at Midamerica where they found Larissa and the Senator after the helicopter crash. It seemed so long ago, but it hadn’t even been a week.
Two bulls with blunted horns turned their heads toward Troy and Wendy. The sight of them sent a shiver down Wendy’s spine, unearthing the memory of the bulls buried under the heavy snowfall up in Midamerica. A vivid flashback of that poor helicopter pilot being gored to death…she turned her head.
“That’s our herd,” Troy said, waving a hand in the direction of the cattle near the lake.
Wendy nodded, but didn’t look.
“The fence is right over there,” he said, pointing to her right.
She was willing to look that direction, squinting to see the end of the field through the gloom.
“See the steel risers where the two overgrown areas come together?”
It took a second for her eyes to adjust, but she saw it and nodded.
“That’s where they come, when the wind’s just right and they smell the herd. I come down here most nights to check the way the breeze is blowing. We’ll be fine tonight. Even the cows know it. Look at them lounging down here, sleeping comfortably. They’d be heading to the opposite end of the field if the wind was blowing north-west. Bulls sense it, get all agitated.
“Then they come. A few at first, maybe a handful for a little while, all moaning and pacing up and down the fence line, reaching in and shaking the bars. Then a dozen, and pretty
soon we’re worried about the fence holding. Hitting them with skunk powder doesn’t do much good. Shooting them, well, Momma doesn’t like us killing family. So eventually someone has to go out there and lure them away. Remember what Keith was saying earlier? About that big group of biters?”
Wendy nodded again.
“That was Egan’s job. You know, we’ve all been called out. We’ve all had a go at least once. Anyone over the age of twelve. Momma’s law. Egan’s the first of us to ever….” Troy sighed.
“I’m sorry,” Wendy whispered. She knew words didn’t make a difference at times like these. She knew from her own loss that pity from others was the last thing she wanted, and yet she couldn’t help but to try to offer it. She tucked her chin into her pink jacket to fend off the chill. It felt surreal standing here, in a zoo in the middle of the Quarantine Zone at night, knowing that beyond the fence there were zombies roaming about.
Troy’s words cut the silence. “Can you cure him?”
Wendy wanted to say yes. She had the curative in her pocket, but she needed it for other reasons. Curing Egan wouldn’t change him or bring him back. The damage was done. Egan was gone. “I told you I can’t.”
“I told Momma you could.”
“Well, maybe you should have asked me before you abducted me and—”
“Rescued you,” Troy interrupted.
“Before you brought me here. I would have been just as happy sitting in the pens with—” She sucked in her breath. “Crap. That explosion! Do you think Mike and Simon are okay?”
“Who?”
“The two handlers you locked up this morning at the EPS.”
“Fuck, I don’t know. Do you think anybody is?”
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 12
