Plagued: The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment (Plagued States of America Book 3) (9 page)

Fifteen

Penelope followed
Tom as he hurried over his own tracks, stepping into the holes he made earlier, back-tracking his way along the blurry trail leading to the airstrip. Penelope wanted to tell him to slow down, but he refused to look back. The zip and swish of his pant legs rubbing against one another sounded like a trumpet compared to the silence of the falling snow. A few times he turned his head to ensure she was behind him, but otherwise trudged forward blindly. The snow dancing in the wind made everything seem alive, so much so that she imagined a hundred zombies emerging from the surrounding buildings, drawn to the crunching of snow underfoot and the rubbing of Tom’s pant legs.

Tom came to a sudden halt. His head turned to the side. Penelope followed his eyes to see a trail carved in the snow
that intersected their own path right where Tom stood. Penelope came to Tom’s side and looked along the new trail that led to them from somewhere past the edge of their sight.

The tracks ended into their own.

Penelope swallowed hard.

“What the?” Tom asked softly as he crouched down to inspect the foreign trail.
Penelope could tell the new trail came out to join theirs. Where they intersected paths, the new trail appeared to take over Penelope’s toward the snowmobiles, her foot holes now fresh again.

Penelope growled. She knew what did this. Another half-breed, like herself
. But what was it doing out here in the snow? Penelope resisted the urge to follow its original trail back to where it came from, and instead nudged Tom.

“Right,” Tom whispered, standing. “We keep going.”

They crunched through their own tracks for several minutes. Tom looked at the device on his arm repeatedly to gauge their progress, showing her each time. The red pin that represented their position hardly budged from minute to minute, but eventually jumped to the edge of the buildings.

“It figured out our new position,” Tom whispered. He kept moving, but unzipped his jacket. He turned up the volume on his radio and held it to his mouth. “Hank, you there?”

There was a moment’s silence as they kept trudging ahead, the crunch of snow underfoot and the wind beating in Penelope’s ear the only other noise.

“Yeah, kid. I’m still here.”

“I found someone’s cross-tracks over ours.”

“A zombie?”

“No. The tracks ended at ours, then they started using our trail back toward the snowmobiles.”

“Zombies don’t do that,” Hank said with surprise.

Tom didn’t answer. He trudged through the snow with Penelope following him.

“Half-breeds,” O’Farrell’s voice
announced at a whisper over the radio.

O’Farrell’s statement echoed Penelope’s own thoughts on the matter. She remembered using existing tracks to get through the s
now easier when she lived here. It made things easier when hunting.

“Where are you
, kid?” Hank asked softly through the radio.

“On our way to the snowmobiles to get one
and take it to the woods.”

“Good idea. Be careful
, though. Goddamned half-breeds—”

The radio squelched mid-sentence. Tom looked at Penelope, shaking his head to tell her Hank didn’t mean her, but she knew that if she were
still out here alone, still wild, his sentiment would have included her. Yet another reason Penelope had to find Doctor Kennedy.

“You know what I mean,” Hank finally said
, his voice apologetic.

Tom didn’t stop even as he tucked away the radio into his jacket. If anything, his pace quickened, causing him to stumble and fall forward. Penelope crouched beside him to help him up
, then she pushed him forward again. Not enough to cause him to fall over, but enough to get his attention. He looked back at her.

No fast
, she signed to him irritably. She pointed to her head, telling him to
think
. Then she waved all around her.
Look where we are
.

Tom sighed and nodded.
He let Penelope set the pace by taking the lead, but stayed only a step behind her in his own trail. Penelope smelled the crisp air, untainted by the scent of zombie, half-breed, or otherwise. She scanned the sea of white, yet saw nothing but their own trails. The prints in her holes were wider than her own boots, but the snow was no deeper, so Penelope knew this intruder was about her own size, at least by weight. Of the male half-breeds she knew lived here, several were much bigger than her, one so big even the soldier named Jones would have trouble with him. These tracks weren’t his, thankfully.

The thought of running into the half-breed brute made her shiver, just as
the thought of finding any of the bigger, normal zombies—that feeling of helplessness in knowing that her own strength at its fullest was no match for even one of its arms. They were so physically imposing that there was nothing she could do but run and hide.

Dark shapes began to take form ahead of them and Penelope slowed, crouching and squinting to discern what they were. Tom crouched beside her and showed his device on his arm.

“Snowmobiles,” he whispered, pointing at their red dot on the screen, how it indicated they were at the very middle of the runways.

She didn’t think so. The snowmobiles looked taller or wider or something seemed out of place.
Was someone on top of each of them? She shook her head.

Tom
unshouldered his shotgun and aimed it ahead as he took several steps forward. Penelope followed closely, looking in every direction, smelling the air for signs of anything out of the ordinary. The wind gave her nothing except a buffeting in her ears.

They broke through
the falling snow’s shrouding veil to find a different scene than how they left the snowmobiles. All the seats were turned up, which made their shape from a distance more square than sleek, and explained why Penelope didn’t recognize them.

Penelope looked at Tom, her brows scrunched to ask him how the snowmobiles got like this.

“I didn’t leave the seats up,” Tom said softly.

It wasn’t only the snowmobile seats. One of the rescue sleds also had its side compartment wide open. Tom stepped up beside it and looked in, then closed the compartment. He pushed the seat of the snowmobile down before moving to the next vehicle. Penelope walked into the center of the vehicles and counted out what had been taken.
Two packs—the pack in Hank’s snowmobile, and one from the compartment of the rescue sled. Penelope figured that meant only one half-breed came scavenging, but that was enough to make trouble.

Tom shut another snowmobile’s seat and whacked the flag pole behind it to swat the snow from the red triangle at the top.

“Snow’s getting heavy,” Tom whispered. “Go close up O’Farrell’s and get on it.”

Tom
went to close the last seat, struggling to move through the snow as quickly as he could.

Penelope moved to the snowmobile O’Farrell dr
ove. It towed a rescue sled as well, one that hadn’t been ransacked. She pushed the seat closed and sat on it, waiting for Tom to finish. The air still smelled crisp, no hint of zombie, as it gusted one way, then another. The silence was the most unsettling, though. She held her breath and turned her ear until she could hear it. A faint wailing from the children in the woods, so soft the falling snow on her jacket seemed louder.

“No other tracks leading out,” Tom said as he crunched through the snow to Penelope. “It must have followed Hank’s or Jones’ and O’Farrell’s trails.
” Tom reached the snowmobile and climbed onto the seat, putting the shotgun across his legs as he reached to turn on the engine.

Penelope covered her ears.

Tom’s hand stopped. The engine didn’t start. Tom looked the vehicle up and down, then at the snow all around it, before he turned to look at Penelope.

“Do you have the key?”

She shook her head.

“Did O’Farrell take her key?” he asked, getting up again and crunching through the snow toward his own snowmobile. He knelt on
to his snowmobile, then looked at the other snowmobiles.

“Where are the goddamned keys?”

Six
teen

Tom and Penelope marched in the direction the GPS
indicated for the woods. Penelope didn’t need the device anymore, though. The sound of wailing was enough of a direction finder for her. Having the device to tell her she was right simply made her feel better about its accuracy.

“Why take them?” Tom wondered aloud about the keys.

Penelope couldn’t think of a good reason. They were made of metal, and that was useful as a tool, but keys were so small they could hardly be used for anything. Tying them to a sleeve to make bite-proof clothing would be noisy. The keys would jingle together and draw in even more biters. The best defense against biters was simply speed.

The wailing rose in volume as they crunched through the snow. Pretty soon a tree took shape in the haze, then another, and finally a wall of them stood like boney
forearms, frozen as they reached skyward with empty, skeletal hands. Penelope scanned the tree line from end to end and saw only the falling snow. It seemed safe.

Tom unzipped his jacket and took out the radio. Penelope nodded that it was OK to use it.

“We’re in the woods,” Tom whispered into the radio. Jones and O’Farrell went in a few minutes earlier. Tom waited a minute before tucking the radio back into his jacket. He knew as well as Penelope did that no news wasn’t necessarily a bad thing out here. The bad thing was that the last time everyone talked on the radio, the others didn’t have their keys, either.

Tom pointed the shotgun ahead of them and turned it slowly, side to side
, like a windshield wiper running on a dead battery. They crept forward through the barren trees, listening to the wailing shift pitch with the breeze. The deeper they went, the milder the breeze, and the louder the wailing grew. Everywhere around them, large mounds of snow rose like frozen bubbles where shrubs and bushes were buried.

Their path took them through the troughs and deeper into the woods. More trees took shape all around and the mounds grew
to form walls as high as themselves in some places, forcing them to backtrack and go around.

Eventually t
he snow receded, no longer consuming her legs with each step, allowing her to move faster. Tom kept up while watching behind them, sweeping his shotgun side to side.

“Is it me, or is it getting warmer?” Tom asked, blowing
out his mouth and seeing no fog. “It
is
warmer. How the hell?”

Penelope put a finger to her lips.
Even though the snow still fell, it hardly covered the barren trees. Most of the large shrubs and bushes appeared green instead of snow covered. Penelope motioned for Tom to follow her and she pushed through a barrier of foliage to find a diminished, brown-stained snow pack at their feet. The air felt tangibly warmer, and with that warmth came not only a fetid stench, but also an escalation in the volume of the wailing children.

Penelope froze in her tracks, putting an arm out to stop Tom. Ahead of them stood two children clutching one another, swaying slowly inside the protection of a tall
, hollowed out bramble that acted like a sentry post. They wore long-sleeved shirts and two pairs of pants each, their feet covered with old rain boots. These were someone’s warning signals.

Penelope pointed east and took Tom by the hand as she led him away from the children
, giving them a wide berth.

Another post of two children came into sight and Penelope stopped. None of the trees here were tall
enough to be homes for the half-breeds. These children were the outer guards. Penelope felt sorry for them. Their mournful calls haunted her memories, rekindling her most base desire to reassure them and comfort them, to remind them that they weren’t alone. Had she still lived here, she would have been one of the half-breeds that came through occasionally to make sure the children were tended. By the sound of their wails, no one had been through for a while.

The snow gave way to bare earth after they passed
a third clutch of children. The moist ground spread underfoot, letting them sink down a few slippery inches. Penelope examined the tracks. None were fresh.

Tom took off a glove and held his hand above the ground to feel the air. “The ground is warm,” Tom whispered
in amazement. “How?”

Penelope
shrugged. She never knew why, but the snow here melted every year. The zombies didn’t live in these woods because, by day, it was too bright. But nothing stopped them from coming through at night.

The falling snow melted as it landed.
In older tracks, the water pooled until it overflowed the edges of the footprints and spilled into tiny rivulets that meandered through the bushes and trees. Penelope led them along the watery trails toward the bog-like stench. The chorus of children grew louder and the trees grew taller.

Penelope pointed
out a tree with several bushes around its base. Four children were huddled under a canopy of leaves formed by a hollowing of the base of the bush. She pointed up the tree at a set of branches so close to one another that they formed a small platform. Several aged and filthy blankets, pants, shirts, and other articles of clothing were wrapped or tied to the branches to hold up thick cross beams lashed to the tree. Fabric was spread across it to make a narrow tent.

“Half-breed?” Tom whispered
, raising the shotgun to the air.

Penelope nodded, then put her hand on the shotgun to lower the barrel. She shook her head and pointed ahead of them. Tom aimed the shotgun in that direction instead.

The wailing changed. The normal tone of discontent turned to concern, bordering fear.

Danger.

“What is it?” Tom whispered as he sank low beside her.

She held a finger up to keep him quiet. She couldn’t pinpoint where the change came from, but she knew it was somewhere ahead of them.
She turned her head each way to finally hone in on it. She pointed the direction of the sound for Tom, and just as though her finger were a gun, a
pop-snap
cracked through the din.

Gunfire.

Penelope rarely heard the noise, but she knew it well enough.

“Dad?”

Another crack of a pistol firing sang through the trees. The moaning all around them became a chorus of fear all at once.

“Dad
!” Tom shouted and began to run.