Plagued: The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment (Plagued States of America Book 3) (8 page)

Thirteen

Tom let the snowmobile drift to a halt, looking at the GPS device on his arm. He revved the engine again and cruised another thirty or forty feet, his head looking ahead and up, then down at the device before throttling back and coasting to a stop. He killed the engine.

“Hop off, Penny,” he said, getting up stiffly. “We’re here.”

Penelope’s own joints ached
a little. Her knees protested, preventing her from standing on her first try. On her second attempt, her legs revived enough that she lifted a leg over the seat and stood beside the snowmobile as Tom lifted the seat to open it. Hank’s snowmobile coasted to a stop nearby and he killed his engine as well. Tom hoisted out his pack and shotgun, and looked around cautiously.

Jones coasted to a stop ahead of them, standing as the snowmobile dug into the soft, white powder with its engine already dead. Doctor O’Farrell
’s snowmobile ground to a halt next to Tom and she shut off her engine as well.

The world sounded deathly silent all of a sudden.

Tom parked them in the middle of the taxiway that connected the two runways of the Midamerica airport and Scott Air Force Base. Penelope remembered walking along the wide airstrip road only a month ago with Tom, Hank, and the other survivors of the destruction at Biter’s Hill. She knew almost instinctively where to find the terminal building, the control tower, and the woods where she and Tom went to find Larissa.

“No welcoming committee?” Jones asked, his boots crunching through the snow as he walked toward Tom. His legs sank into the snow a foot or more with each step.
“Got any snow shoes in that pack of yours?”

“I wish,” Tom said.
“Bright side is that if you can’t walk in this, neither can any biters.”


Mason, get your med kit,” O’Farrell told Jones as she pulled open a compartment on her rescue sled and took out a backpack. “We might be able fabricate something with the tape.”

Jones nodded, turning around to hike back to his snowmobile.

“And you wanted to leave her on the train,” Hank said with a grin as Jones passed.

“If you like her so much better, I can always go back,” Jones replied.

“Bah,” Hank said with a dismissive wave. He turned toward Tom, and then let his eyes scan the white expanse in every direction. Penelope knew he sensed it as she did, like there was a massing horde of zombies just beyond sight, weighing the very air down. At any moment, she expected a ring of biters to manifest in the haze, their dark shadows lumbering toward them, slowly squeezing off their escape.


Which way?” Hank asked Tom.

“Stick to the plan,” Tom answered.

“Right. You head to the tower, I head to the terminal, and Jones recons the barracks.”

“And stay out of the woods,” they said in unison.

“Got it,” Hank replied. He lifted open Tom’s seat and plucked out the medical kit. “These have inhibitors in them, right?”

“Standard issue,” Tom said.
“Don’t go in the terminal. Just look through the glass.”

The terminal was one of the places Penelope didn’t like thinking about.
The last time they came to Midamerica, Peske put her in the dark bathroom overnight, locking her in alone, surrounded by cold tile that echoed with the sound of even the slightest twitch. Her only comfort was a blanket to fend off the chill and a flashlight, but she remembered Tom’s fingers touching hers through the crack under the door. She remembered his voice keeping her company.

“Kid, it’s not like I haven’t been out here before,” Hank said as he checked the pistol holstered at his thigh.
He opened a cargo pocket of his pants and pulled out two long sticks, and waved them around. “Besides, Houston gave me a couple of these if I should run into anything big.”

“What the hell are those? Flares?”

“He calls them starbursts. Flares on steroids. Don’t worry about me, kid.” Hank stuffed the flares back into his cargo pocket and started lurching through the snow, his legs sinking with each step.

Doctor O’Farrell stepped up next to Penelope and touched her arm.
Penelope turned to face the doctor, startled.

“You don’t need your h
elmet anymore,” O’Farrell said, reaching her hand up under Penelope’s chin to loosen the strap. Penelope didn’t mind letting the woman help her, and even allowed O’Farrell to tug the helmet off her head. “Put this on, though. It’ll keep your head warm.”

Penelope
slipped on the knit hat O’Farrell gave her.

“We go that way?” O’Farrell asked Tom, pointing the opposite direction
Hank had marched off.

“Yeah,” Tom said. “Barracks are over there, and admin offices and the tower are that way.”

“You’re going straight to the tower?”

“Yeah, and then there are hangars
too. We’ll check it all out.”

“Good luck, you two,” O’Farrell said. “Keep him safe,” she added, winking at Penelope.

“You too,” Tom said, looking past O’Farrell and toward the soldier. “Don’t let him get bit again.”

O’Farrell nodded
knowingly. She turned to Penelope and smiled, holding a finger, telling her to wait as she tugged at the strap across her shoulder holding the camera under her armpit. She slid the camera to her eye and aimed it toward Penelope and Tom.
Click, click, click
, the camera shot several photos. O’Farrell smiled as she stowed her camera, then crunched her way through the snow toward Jones.

Jones and O’Farrell faded into
obscurity. Hank had already disappeared.

“Just like old times, huh, Penny?” Tom asked
softly. “I didn’t bring any handcuffs, though.”

Penelope snorted a laugh.
The last time they came to Midamerica, Peske handcuffed them together to make sure she didn’t try to escape. He thought, for some absurd reason, that she might prefer returning to the wild over being cared for and having clothes and food and a place to sleep that was safe from the worry of zombies. Or at any rate, safer than this. The only thing that bothered Penelope about living with Peske was that she always had to be inside a cage.

“Do you want to just hold hands?”

Penelope obliged, taking Tom’s hand. He led her into the snow, sinking to his knees with every step. Her own steps didn’t sink nearly as deep. Memories of the years out here quickly became common knowledge again. Her steps weren’t awkward or unbalanced like Tom’s first few, but even he began to get the hang of it. When she looked back, she barely saw the snowmobiles in the white haze washing across the emptiness. Tom glanced back as well, nodding.

“Don’t get separated,” Tom told her.
“I don’t want to lose you.”

Penelope nodded in
agreement. Not here.

 

Fourteen

The snow
fell in waves that undulated like the tide. Flurries took over whenever the heavier fall abated, making it nearly impossible to see anything more than twenty or thirty feet away. In the rare pockets of calm, Penelope recovered her bearings. She halted abruptly at finding she strayed too close to one of the buildings. Looking up a weeping wall of an old brick three-story building, she expected faces to be leering out at them from inside the shadowy windows. The silence surprised her, too. She expected to hear the haunting moans of starving zombies hiding within, all wailing because they now saw her and Tom outside. Thankfully, the snow half-buried the ground floor and the sills of every window wore thick white brows of fresh powder. Of the windows that were still intact, a thick white ice coated them, making them impossible to see through. Long icicles hanging from the sills and roof lines formed like teeth.

“Can you smell them
?” Tom whispered into Penelope’s ear as they corrected their direction.

She nodded
, taking long steps to get them further away from the building. With the reek in the air, made more intense by the wind itself—redoubling the stench the further it travelled through the gauntlet of buildings—Penelope was sure Tom could smell it too. She looked at him, the question in her eyes.

“Yeah,” Tom
replied softly. “Smells worse than the kennels.”

The tower began to take shape in
the haze of falling snow, eclipsing the sky enough to create a black shadow looming overhead. Tom took the lead with no sign of hesitation.

“My father would go to the tower
, if he could,” he whispered.

Penelope didn’t need Tom’s explanation. She und
erstood his conviction.
You protect the ones you love
, Tom told her when they first moved to Biter’s Bend, to their apartment at the EPS. He said it in response to her questioning gaze after she looked the apartment over, end to end. She understood that. She’d do anything for Tom.

Tom
stopped when they stood beneath the dark windows above. The structure blocked out the falling snow, but flurries danced in the air with the wind gusts that came through unannounced. The door to the main building was partly open, with snow piling up outside. The first floor was half submerged, making the windows nearly level with the snowline.

Tom bent down and scooped up a wad of snow, packing it in his gloved hands. He grunted
as he flung the snowball up at the nearest tower window, where it thumped and burst into clumps that slid down the angled glass. Penelope looked around them, expecting the noise to wake the slumbering horde, but nothing stirred.

Tom threw two more snowballs with
the same, silent effect.

Tom slid the shotgun off of his back and
cocked it with his hand over the ejection port. The weapon clacked twice and a shell fell into the palm of his hand. He slung the shotgun over his back again, then threw the shell up at the window.

Snap!

It hit with such force and noise Penelope ducked with her hands over her head, expecting the glass from the tower window to shatter and rain down over them. The glass remained intact, but this time something did stir.

A moan rose from within the ground floor office, echoing through the partly open doorway. Penelope held her breath. Tom sank low, pulling Penelope down closer to the snow as he quietly and slowly removed the shotgun from his back once more.

The moan came again, not a hunger complaint or the call of the hunt, but a groggy warning. Penelope grabbed Tom’s arm and shook her head, pointing at the gun. He glared at her until she pointed behind them and nodded for him to move. He nodded in agreement, stepping into his own tracks, crouching the whole time, slowly moving away from the building.

Penelope let him get a few paces ahead then did the same into her own tracks. She watched the door warily, but
could see nothing of the darkness inside. She hoped the blinding snow had the same effect on any zombies peering out. Thankfully, it had only been a single moan, a light sleeper.

“Kid, you there?” Hank’s muffled voice erupted out of the radio, startling Penelope and Tom. They both jerked. Her heart froze, throbbed, and began racing all at once.

Tom unzipped his thick jacket and yanked out the radio clipped to his inner jacket. He immediately turned a dial, then pressed a button while holding the device to his mouth.

“Can’t talk,” Tom whispered
.

The moaning in the building beneath the tower came again, an inquisitive, questioning tone.
It wasn’t a warning anymore.

“Can you listen?”
Hank’s voice replied, this time barely audible over the wind and the drum-like beating of Penelope’s own heart.

“Not now,” Tom whispered.

A second moan called out from the shadows behind the partly open door of the building.

“Shit,” Tom hissed.

Penelope closed her eyes and formed a low, throat grating groan. It had been years since she tried anything like it. Her voice faltered, breaking on her first attempt.

“What are you doing?” Tom whispered in her ear, his tone
both frightened and agitated.

Penelope opened her eyes and put a finger to her lips.

Tom gripped the shotgun a little tighter as he looked in every direction. Another moan echoed through the snow from somewhere further off.

“Come on,” he said
softly, putting a hand on her arm.

Penelope shook him off and groaned once
more, her voice coming strong this time, unbroken. Tom reared his head with a look of utter confusion. Penelope’s moan answered the calls. She made a groan of recognition, to tell the things inside that the things outside were their own. Only that wasn’t true. While the sounds were second nature to Penelope, they were mere mimicry. She didn’t know for certain that she spoke the sounds zombies truly understood, but the moans from inside the building faded.

“Penny,” Tom whispered fiercely.

She groaned one more time for good measure, then pushed Tom’s back, making him move again. This was no place to talk, even in sign language.

They walked
until the looming tower was no longer a shadow at their back. Everything around them was a blurry, white haze. If it wasn’t for their own trail, they wouldn’t have known which way to go. Tom looked at the device on his arm repeatedly until it showed them in an intersection between four buildings. The wide expanse of the airstrip was still ahead of them, but the buildings were far from earshot.

Tom unzipped his jacket and lifted the radio to his mouth.

“Hank,” Tom whispered.

They waited in the quiet with the snow falling
in lumps. Penelope looked in every direction, but aside from their own trail, nothing appeared any different than the rest.

“Kid?” Hank whispered.

“Copy.”

“I found three of them.”

Tom looked at Penelope, his face brightening a moment. Then he scowled. There should have been six.

“Which three?”

“The pilot,” Hank whispered. “He’s bad. Real bad. The doctor’s here, and a handler named Hamilton.”

“Where’s my Dad?” Tom asked softly.

“He went out to find the girl,” Hank replied. “Your sister.”

“Shit,” Tom
growled, but not into the radio. From somewhere nearby came another questioning moan. Tom looked at Penelope, who was scanning the edge of her vision in every direction, trying to figure out where the sound came from. “How long ago?” Tom whispered into the radio.

“A few hours,” Hank said.

The moan came again, this time from behind them to their right. Penelope turned to face it, crouching low. Tom crouched with her, his hand covering the radio speaker.

Another voice squelched over the radio
, the words slightly muffled. “Should we head for the woods?” the soldier named Jones asked softly.


Yes,” Tom said. He turned the volume on the radio down and clipped it inside his jacket again before zipping up. “Do you want to do that moaning thing again?”

Penelope shook her head
, pushing Tom to make him start walking. It wasn’t a normal zombie that made the last noise.

 

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