Plagued: The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment (Plagued States of America Book 3) (4 page)

“And a gun,” the doctor added
, ignoring the soldier. “I want my own gun.”

“No gun, no nothing.”

“Alright, you two. Can it,” Hank interrupted.

“We’ll talk about this
later,” Jones told her.

“I’m going,” she replied defiantly.

“Can it!” Hank grumbled before Jones could speak. He turned toward Tom. “Can you imagine being on the duck with these two for four days?”

“I’m sure I’m going to find out,” Tom replied. “Are you coming?”

“I want the same deal you made with Peske,” Hank said, squinting one eye toward Tom.

“You don’t even know what that was.”

“It was good enough for Peske. Are you still good for it?”

“Deal,” Tom said, holding out a hand. Hank shook it firmly, nodding.

“Great,” M.B. Houston said as he clapped his hands together loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Now, who’s going to drive me out to my engine so we can get this show on the road?”

Five

Tom and Penelope sat in the Subaru
with the engine running, waiting for M.B. Houston to come out of the coach. Houston said he wanted to get the soldier to sign a contract before leaving. Tom decided it would speed things along if he went and got the car. They sat idling, waiting for Houston to come out of the coach. Penelope sat behind the passenger seat, hunched as low as she could get, her chin inside her coat, glaring at Tom’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tom said softly.

“No go,” Penelope huffed. She managed to make the sign of
danger
while fending off the cold with one hand tucked under her armpit. There was no warming button on the back seats.

“I know it’s dangerous,” Tom replied.

Penelope didn’t stop her signing, talking over his words.
Woman watching me
.

“Who? The doctor?”

Penelope nodded.

“She
is
a little too interested in half-breeds, huh?” Tom said, turning in his seat to look back at Penelope directly. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on her. Anything else?”

“Hess,” she hissed, signing
zombie, smell, man
.

“
Yuh,” Tom told her, trying to correct her pronunciation. “Yuh-ess. Say it again.”

“Man,” she replied obstinately, pointing out the front window.

M.B. Houston, the man who smelled like zombies, was coming. Tom turned around to see Houston zipping up a jacket as he walked toward the car. Houston waved in at Penelope as he passed by the hood, a big grin on his face.

“This is going to be no fun at all,” Tom told Penelope under his breath.

“What are you driving this thing for?” Houston asked as he climbed into the passenger seat. “Shouldn’t you have a Jeep or something bigger? You’re Chief Registrar. Go grab a Hummer.”

“This has better ground clearance,
and better gas mileage,” Tom replied as he backed the vehicle up to turn it toward the main gate.

“We’re not going very far,” Houston told him.

Tom drove them across the gravel field from the rail cars to the main gate and stopped next to a guard house. The door opened and a uniformed soldier in solid black stepped out. Tom rolled down his window with his arm hanging out.

“Afternoon, sir,” the soldier said as he scanned Tom’s arm through his jacket. “
Heading out again, huh? Going anyplace special?”

“Actually,” Tom
replied. “We’re going to go get a train engine. Can you call Chuck and have him move the cargo I asked for onto one of the well-cars?”

“I’ll give him a call,” the soldier said
, looking up at the crane operator cockpit eighty feet above the EPS. The crane was used for moving goods onto the EPS, including the zombies held in the kennels down here on the ground. ‘Yup, he’s in there,” the soldier said, nodding.

The soldier
walked around to the other side of the vehicle and scanned both Houston’s and Penelope’s arms. “Are you sure you want to take your lady friend out there, sir?” He leaned down to look at Tom through the passenger window.

“We’ll be fine
,” Tom assured him with a smile.

The guard checked outside the fence in all
directions before opening the gate. The moment there was enough room, Tom drove through. Penelope watched the gate close behind them, cutting them off from safety. The second gate began to roll open and Tom drove them into biter territory.

Penelope watched the road ahead, learning as quickly as she could the route back. Tom drove up the road and veered onto another street that followed the overgrown train tracks and the river beyond. She hardly
saw the tracks through the trees. Tall grass and weeds grew up from cracks in the pavement, slapping the underside of the vehicle.

“This thing’s got heated seats,” Houston exclaimed as he pressed a button on the center console. “Just stay on this road for six miles,” he added, waving a hand ahead.

It was hardly a road. More like a seldom used, raised trail. The encroaching trees drooped over the straight lane of blackened earth. The Subaru pushed through low hanging branches that clanked into the headlights, snapped at the windshield, and swatted the roof. Some branches raked their nails the length of the car when Tom slowed to drive around a maze of their groping arms.

“This is why you want a bigger rig out here,” Houston said. “Push your way right through this crap and not even slow down.”

“But like you said, my rig has heated seats,” Tom replied. “And satellite radio.”

The road noise was too l
oud for listening to the radio. Penelope listened to the rise and fall of the revving engine as she let herself sway with the vehicle each time Tom maneuvered to avoid obstacles. A loud
whump
from beneath the car startled her at one point, but Tom said it was just a fallen branch. It sounded more like something trying to get in. The heavy aroma of Houston’s zombie stench inside the car only made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end the rest of the way.

“That’s the turn off,” Houston said, pointing to a break in the trees. Tom slowed and turned off, veering down the hillside and onto another obscured road that led through
the wall of trees. How Houston recognized the place was beyond her.

“
Welcome to Ironville,” Houston said. There were several rusted, metal buildings ahead and numerous rusted-out, decaying box cars littering what looked like an enormous open field. Small trees grew sporadically. Several tall cylinders that may have been ground-level water towers or fuel tanks stood off to one side of the complex. Two menacing looking engines blocked their way, each etched with the weeping stains of years of exposure to the elements.

“What is this place? A graveyard?”

“Of sorts. Ironville was the biggest train yard and shopcraft in Louisville history. Fifty-seven acres, six sheds, three turntables, you name it, you’ll find it here.”

“How about a working train
? These things look like relics.”

“Perfect hiding place, huh?” Houston asked.

“Those can’t possibly run,” Tom said.

“Those
? No,” Houston concurred. “We’re going inside.”

Tom brought the car to a halt and started looking in every direction
for zombies. Houston and Penelope did as well. Penelope looked out the back and watched the tree line. She wished she were outside, away from Houston, so she could smell the air. This was the kind of place zombies liked to hunt.

“No biters seem to be around,” Tom said.

Houston opened his door and stepped out. “Let’s get this show on the road, then.”

Tom turned off the engine and climbed out. Penelope slid across the car and got out on Tom’s side, trying to avoid Houston.
It was still bitter cold, a strong, steady breeze blowing easterly over the trees and bending the dry grass all around them with a hiss of warning.

Tom opened the back
hatch and unzipped a pack. He pulled out a flashlight to give to Penelope and another for himself, and a shotgun.

“You want anything?”
Tom asked as he slung the shotgun over his shoulder

“Just a light,” Houston replied. Tom tossed him one and
zipped up the pack. He winced as he hoisted it to his shoulder.

“You OK?”

“Fine,” Tom said irritably, closing the hatch on the car. “I hurt it a month ago, but it’s fine. Lead the way.”

Penelope let
Tom and Houston get a head start, smelling the air until Houston’s scent evaporated in the cold breeze. He was slightly upwind of her, so she took a course that arced around them, moving to where she knew fresh air would reach her.

“
Those buildings are the old shopcraft,” Houston explained, pointing out the large steel structures ahead. “There are four rail lines cutting through here, so watch your step. They used to park coaches and engines that needed maintenance out here, and do the work in one of those two buildings. Paint jobs, engine overhauls, you name it.”

Penelope stood
to take in a deep breath. As she suspected, there was a hint of zombie in the air. Too far off to be within ear shot, but if the wind changed, she knew any biters out there would smell the car or her or Tom and come looking. Houston smelled too much like a zombie himself.

“Keep up, honey,” Houston said. He stood at the nose of one of the two menacing
engines. “I really wish I could have fixed this engine up, let me tell you,” he said, slapping the enormous steel giant. “I’ve had to cannibalize it to keep my own clunker in good order. A shame. She would have made the run a few hours faster than mine.”

Penelope caught up
to Tom, but didn’t take his hand. She knew the rules out here.

“
Let’s do a quick walk-around to make sure all the doors and windows are still nice and locked shut before we go in,” Houston added, pointing toward the second building.

They walked around it, looking the building over for signs of entry while checking the area for scat and other signs of recent zombie activity. When they came around and could see the Subaru again, Houston seemed relieved. He took out a ring of keys and unlocked a huge padlock
locked to an enormous sliding gate.

“Help me out with this,” he told Tom and they started pushing the gate open. It groaned loudly, the metal chirping and grinding, echoing into the huge building and wailing into the surroundings. Birds fell silent, an ominous
stillness swept over the field. Penelope held her ears against the piercing screeches. She turned her back to the building, intent on watching the tree line, expecting a horde of hungry zombies to emerge at any moment. When the groaning ceased, Tom and Houston both stood, breathing hard, staring into the building. Penelope turned around as well, looking inside in case there may be zombies there, too. She sucked in her breath at the sight of the engine.

“Say hello to the
Great Lakes Rotary Number 12,” Houston said, his chest swollen with pride.

Penelope stood directly in front of the massive train car and could see only what looked like an enormous open mouth with huge, jutting fangs meant to crush anything in its path.
Inside the mouth were rows of fan blades behind bars, caged but fierce.

“
She’s a rotary snow plow used for clearing drifts up to ten feet. Behind her is the Amtrak Alaska 2318, a light haul passenger engine. We’ll be using her as snail to the rotary and to pull the cars.”

Houston walked into the darkness, flicking on his flashlight. He swung the beam toward the shadows a few times to make sure nothing was hiding under the engine or back in the
corners.

“I made a few modifications to her myself,” Houston said as he
approached the first engine. He pat the series of long steel slabs protruding far ahead of the giant square box fan. The teeth were mounted in a cross-hatch manner, and wedged between each were strips of old, dried bark and remnants of branches.

“The nobs are overgrown as all get out,” Houston said while yanking a chunk of wood from between one of the teeth. “These’ll push the big stuff out of the way so the rotors can do their job on the snow. I’ve got a tree trimmer in the other shed, but we can’t push both at the same time.”

Penelope sniffed at the air and turned her ears toward the tree line.

“Don’t worry, miss,” Houston told her. “This thing’s a tank. Once we’re inside, nothing’s
gonna get to us.”

Penelope huffed, unimpressed.
Nothing kept out the horde forever.

Six

Getting the train ready h
ad been uneventful, albeit time-consuming and stressful. There was so much noise and it took so long to turn the train and snowplow around that Penelope expected hundreds of zombies would find them.

Houston used a portable generator to power the train’s starter.
There was a hallway inside the train, behind the cockpit, where the engine was hidden. “Watch the blow,” Houston called from within, loud enough to attract any zombies in the field surrounding the building. Then the engine thumped, a deep whump that rose from the floor, through her legs, and rattled the entire cockpit of the engine where she and Tom waited. For a few seconds, the thumps struck slowly, each with a loud
hiss
erupting from the passageway behind them. The engine thumped in time with a
hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss
, and finally a long, sighing gasp. There were no more thumps after that and the engine went still once again.

Houston let the hallway air out
, standing by the door as he inhaled deeply and commented on how nothing in the world smelled like the unspent diesel fuel of a train engine’s blow. When the air cleared a little he walked through the cloudy haze of the engine bay, tightening the blow holes by hand. He cranked the engine a second time and let it rattle to life. With so much noise, Penelope was prepared for a thousand zombies to be outside the shed, waiting for them to pull out.

“They usually keep a respectful distance,” Houston said, pointing at the tree line past Tom’s Subaru
. The train engine inched out of the shed under Houston’s command to reveal at least a dozen zombies sprinkled amidst the shadows. Penelope tensed, but Houston seemed unconcerned. “They come to investigate the noise, but once they see what it is, they stay back. The only ones who don’t have sense enough to run are the kids.”

Houston used a turntable
and switchback to spin each of the engines around, powering the massive device from the electrical output of the engine itself. Turning both around took several maneuvers, first to park the snowblower past the turntable, then to turn the engine around, then to move the snowblower onto the turntable to turn it around, and finally to hook it up in front again. Each time, Houston climbed out of the train without fear, or a gun. Penelope thought he was crazy, but like he said, the zombies kept their distance from the train.

They drove backwards
all the way to the EPS.

T
he storage container Tom had wanted moved onto the first well-car was there when they returned. Penelope had only ever seen the empty well-cars, which looked like the backs of flatbed trucks. With the storage container on its back, the well-car looked like a normal train car. Seeing it like this reminded Penelope that she still knew so little about the world.

T
he crane lifted a section of fence out of the way for the engine to drive through. In a matter of minutes, Houston was able to back the engine into the coach cars, lock them together with the well-cars, and pull the whole thing out again.

Now that they were underway, Penelope sat in a chair
inside the main coach car beside Tom, tired from what felt like a full day’s activity, and it wasn’t even dark yet. Tom’s hand covered his closed eyes, the other held out to her. His warmth, and the reassurance it provided, radiated from the palm of his hand into hers. She needed it, too, because since they returned, the doctor kept looking Penelope over, head to toe, marveling at her, assessing her, inspecting her like the buyers once did on Biter’s Hill. Hank had left them, going to the engine cockpit with Houston to be a “spotter,” as Houston called it, and the soldier, Mason Jones, lay on his back with an arm over his eyes. Penelope could tell he was awake by his posture and the way he breathed. It wasn’t the relaxed, calm breathing of true slumber, but it left Penelope alone with the doctor’s scrutiny, and it unnerved her.

“I have to ask,” Doctor O’Farrell said from her seat across the coach
. “Can I see your tattoos?” She pointed a finger toward Penelope’s ankles.

Penelope’s heart stopped.

“What for?” Tom replied without opening his eyes. Penelope breathed easier hearing his voice.

“
Nothing, really. It’s just that, well, they look familiar.”

“How can a tattoo look familiar? Did you go to the same parlor, or something?”

“No, it’s silly, but, when I worked at the facility, people always talked, you know?” The doctor shrugged and looked away, out the window of the coach at the passing trees. “The ones who had been there the longest. They would say things.”

“About tattoos?” Tom asked, opening his eyes and sitting up. “What are you talking about?”

“The first forty,” she said reverently.

Tom and Penelope stared at her.
Even the soldier stirred, turning his head and eyeing the doctor.

“When the facility on Rock Island was first opened, the government allowed
Eloran to trap and test up to forty specimens. The test subjects that were used to find the cure.”

“So what are you implying? Penelope
’s one of your test subjects?” Tom asked. By his tone he sounded offended. “That she’s a zombie? Does she look like a zombie?”

“No,” Doctor O’Farrell gasped.

The soldier turned his head to stare at Penelope, his gaze cold and unwavering.

“No, not…I just
,” the doctor stuttered. “I’ve never seen the tattoos, and they say they just put them back out there. To find one, it would be like touching history.”

“Keep looking,” Tom told her. “Penelope’s human.”

“Of course,” the doctor replied, offering an awkward smirk in his direction. “Even zombies are still humans, right?”

“Whatever,” Tom replied, standing abruptly. He pulled Penelope from her seat and started directing her toward the back of the coach. “Come on, Penny. Let’s go see what Houston has in that kitchen car of his.”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, also standing. “I didn’t mean to offend her. I was just so caught up in the idea. Can you imagine what it would be like meeting a fully functioning half-breed, in our society?”

Tom stopped at the end of the coach next to the door. He looked back at the doctor, then at the soldier.

“You were right, Jones. She shouldn’t have come along. This isn’t a science expedition, lady. The half-breeds at Midamerica will kill you, just like any biter. The only difference is that with normal zombies, you’ll hear them coming.”

The soldier smirked and the doctor glared at Tom. Tom shook his head and slid past Penelope to open the door between the coach cars. Penelope followed him into the loud and much colder space between the cars. A wide platform and a flexible ring kept the outside at bay, allowing Tom to step over to the other door and push it open.

The harsh, pungent smell of zombies poured out with the warmth of the next car. Penelope froze, tugging on Tom’s hand.

“What? Come on, we can’t stay out here. It isn’t safe.”

Penelope shook her head and made the sign for zombie.

“The whole train smells of zombies,” Tom complained, but put his hand to his holster as he kept the door propped open with his foot. He looked into a hall that turned abruptly around a wall directly in front of them. A sign that Penelope knew meant bathroom was on the door facing them. Tom pulled Penelope closer and stepped into the hallway, looking cautiously around the corner. Penelope growled, but the sound of the train rattling over the rails beneath them drowned out her voice. If there were zombies inside, she couldn’t hear them. Tom gave Penelope one more tug and pulled her past the door, letting it
close behind them. He let her hand go and drew his pistol, yanking open the bathroom door. The bathroom was empty.

Tom let the door close
and moved to the corner to look down the long hallway, Penelope on his heels. Eleven evenly spaced doors lined one side of the corridor, spanning the entire length of the coach car. The other side held windows overlooking the Nobs they passed through outside. At the far end, the hall ended in another bathroom and turned again. Tom pulled open the second bathroom door on this end of the hallway, but again nothing was there.

Penelope growled again. The smell of zombies was so thick she knew at least one of them could have been standing right next to them.

“There’s nothing,” Tom said, although he didn’t holster his pistol. He moved slowly down the hallway, reaching a hand behind him to gather Penelope’s hand. She hadn’t budged, still wary and expectant. “Penny,” Tom hissed, looking back at her and waving for her to come. Tom began to look forward again and leapt in fright, slamming his back into the outside wall and window of the train.

“Jesus,” he gasped, raising his pistol at the door in front of him. Penelope ran to his side and
leaned against the outside window with the same surprise. The door opposite was half glass and half metal. Standing behind the door, staring through the glass, was a milky white-skinned and hazy-eyed woman, a zombie for sure. She didn’t moan or groan or dig at the door the way zombies in the kennels typically reacted when humans were around. She was, in fact, quite sedate by comparison. She simply stared out at them with a vacancy that typified all zombies that were not actively trying to find their next meal.

As the shock
of seeing a zombie so close wore off, Penelope recognized the woman’s face. It was soft and clean with the beautiful shape of a V, full lips, and a narrow, straight nose. Her brown hair was trimmed to her shoulder and pulled back. Penelope saw her face a hundred times a day since arriving at the EPS.

“I know her,” Tom uttered.

So did Penelope. It was one of the zombie women that was always on the cover of Houston’s ZQ Magazine. She stood inside one of the first class berths, which had its own bed, a small sink and toilet, and a fold-out table, on which was a slab of partially eaten meat. When they had returned to the EPS, Houston had gone into the kitchen car to grab a bite to eat for himself. He must have fed his zombie at the same time, Penelope thought. That, at least, explained why it wasn’t trying to dig its way out to get them. It didn’t even moan or wail. It seemed…civil.

“Look,” Tom said, nudging Penelope with his elbow and pointing his pistol at the next two doors. Tall, ashen figures stood at the glass of each, their heads turned, leaning against the glass, staring at Tom and Penelope like dogs in a kennel.

“These are definitely zombies,” Tom added. “You were right, and I’m not all that hungry after all.” Tom nudged Penelope back toward the first coach. “I hope their doors are locked.”

Penelope only growled in agreement.