Plagued: The Midamerica Zombie Half-Breed Experiment (Plagued States of America) (10 page)

Twenty-Five

The four of them crossed the air field under the watch of the control tower. Tom felt as though a thousand other eyes were on them as they wove their way through hideous piles of bones hidden by the knee high grass. Crows and ravens were everywhere, fighting with seagulls and other birds over a couple carcasses with a little meat still on them. The birds barely moved out of the way at their passing.

“Do you remember that old bird movie?” Tyler said nervously, glancing around.

“Shut up,” Peske hissed.

They reached the buildings on the other side and Peske stopped. “Alright,” he said. “You two go that way, you come with me.”

“Why are we splitting up?” Tyler asked.

“Because we don’t know which way they ran,” Peske said irritably. “She’ll keep you safe,” Peske told Tom reassuringly. “She knows the area. Here, take this ball and muzzle. Shut her up if she starts wailing or moaning
.” Tom knew the old slaver meant if they found Larissa, and not Penelope. “Sorry about the handcuffs. I didn’t figure it this way.”

“It’s alright,” Tom said, looking down at his hand still holding Penelope’s. Had he even let her hand go since being handcuffed to her? Had she let him go? Being linked like this gave him a little more assurance. “
I’d rather be cuffed to her than you.”

“I think she agrees,” Peske said with a
lecherous wink. Tom sighed in disgust. “Come on,” Peske told Tyler and started off toward the buildings.

“I thought we needed her,” Tyler was arguing quietly.

Tom looked sideways at Penelope. She turned to face him, staring up into his eyes. She must have sensed his reluctance, his mounting fear now that they were alone and he had to actually do what he had come here to do. She cocked her head toward the forest but didn’t move.

“Alright,” Tom said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Penelope led them down a side road that followed the length of the air strip. It showed signs of zombie occupation. Skeletal remains of every kind were strewn about haphazardly. Scat littered the road and sidewalks as though the zombies simply defecated while ambling along. The overgrown grass was trampled around every open doorway, an indication that something had come or gone recently. Penelope moved quickly, almost dragging him by their cuffed arms, her hand clutching his tightly.

Looking back
, Tom saw movement and he gave Penelope’s hand a tug, pointing behind him when she looked his way. She grunted and pointed urgently for him to keep going. They could outrun a zombie on foot, but their moans brought others in the same way dogs called to one another on the hunt. Tom was aware she wanted to stay far enough ahead of whatever it was to avoid being trapped. Peske and Tyler were the only ones who had any weapons. That wasn’t true, he thought. Tom felt his cargo pocket for the bump of the killing injector. He had one weapon.

They turned a corner and jogged along another street straight for the tree line. Tom didn’t dare look back anymore. He expected to see hundreds of zombies shuffling after them. When they reached the shade of the trees, Penelope spun Tom around. She hissed, baring her teeth again, and Tom didn’t know why until suddenly another figure darted out from a line of shade at an angle, running from the last building and into the trees further south of them.

“A half-breed?” Tom asked breathlessly. Penelope nodded. “Do we have to worry about him?” Again Penelope nodded. Penelope pointed, this time north toward the air strip. Another half-breed was darting into the tree line. They were fast. A lot faster than any zombie. “What are they doing here?” Tom asked. Penelope made the sign Tom had learned she used for children. At the mention of the word he began to notice that the bird-like wails he had been hearing since arriving on the airstrip had grown much louder. He turned around to look deeper into the shadows. The underbrush was trampled everywhere, leaving it easy to walk through. Penelope gave his hand a soft tug and led the way into the shadows.

Twenty-Six

The sight of the first zombie child startled him. He jumped in place and tried to back away, but Penelope gripped his hand tighter, glaring at him. The little girl, no more than seven or eight years old, was standing facing a tree, her moonglow eyes flittering open and shut. Penelope raised a finger to her mouth to tell him to be quiet and nodded for him to follow. As they waded deeper into the forest, more and more zombie children began to appear everywhere. They stood unmoving, their eyes mostly shut, some wide open and staring toward the sky, wailing, rocking back and forth. Not one of them was older than twelve years of age, and in a few minutes Tom lost count of how many they passed. A hundred at least. Penelope kept them moving, crisscrossing through the woods, her head turning every direction as she found each one and looked at the face a moment to see if it was Larissa. Every so often Penelope opened her other hand to look at Larissa’s photo.

The children were all sleeping, Tom realized. Those that weren’t sleeping were crying – the wailing. Peske had said they cried because they were hungry. He wondered how they were fed, worried that Penelope was about to show him by offering him up. That was ridiculous, he forced himself to think. She was looking at every child, looking for Larissa. He should be helping. He started looking at all their blank faces, their lost expressions. He felt their sorrow. They cried out of abandonment, or at least that’s what he perceived.

Penelope came to a rigid stop. Tom turned to see what she looked at. It was a girl some distance off. It had been so long he didn’t recognize his own sister. She didn’t even look the same. Her hair was a mottled mess of twigs, leaves, knots, and filth draping down her back like broom quills. Her head looked upward, her mouth open, wailing. Her face appeared gaunt, almost sunken, her skin cracked and broken, blood welts everywhere, lesions from mosquitos and other insect bites covering her exposed skin. Penelope drew them closer, holding out the picture of Larissa, holding it against the zombie child’s face. It was her, but Tom couldn’t bring himself to admit it.

Penelope chuffed, nodding toward Larissa.

“That’s her,” Tom whispered. This was what he had done to his sister. A mindless adolescent zombie, begging for scraps, wailing day and night. He knew how she got here from St. Louis. Ever since Peske mentioned the airstrip, Tom remembered that this was where all the infected were taken out of St. Louis when the outbreak first occurred. When the soldiers took Larissa from him, this is where she must have been brought, but how had she survived ten years? Inhuman.

Tom fingered for the inhibitor in his pocket, unbuttoning his cargo pouch and then peeling open the kit. If
Larissa bit him, he wanted to be ready. He shoved the ball Peske had given him into Larissa’s mouth and she stopped wailing immediately, biting down hard on the thing. Tom covered her mouth and nose with the muzzle, reaching around behind her head to secure it. The filthy, moss-like tendrils that sprouted out of her head like some surrogate for hair was disgusting. It felt like a mop dipped in cold tar. He held up the hair on the back of her head and took another steadying breath. The back of her neck at her left shoulder. The birthmark. He wiped at the skin but it was smeared with dark, greasy mud. He spat on it and wiped again and again, scraping away years of crud coating her pale, cold skin. It was there. It was her. This doppelganger was Larissa.

“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.