Plagued: The Rock Island Zombie Counteractant Experiment (Plagued States of America) (7 page)

Fifteen

M
emories only haunted Mason when he closed his eyes. They used to invade his waking thoughts too, whenever he slowed down enough that his mind had time to travel wherever it wanted. And it always went to the same place: Egypt.

The rattling of the RPG going off along the wall hardly shook him. In his dream
, it flew across the street as haphazardly as a butterfly, bouncing and weaving on unseen eddies and currents, leaving behind a contrail of white smoke. No hiss or high-pitch whistle. Even the explosion pounded with an eerie quiet. The only sound was the familiar
whit-dit-dit
of an M-14 rifle as it burst clusters of rounds down over the crowd.

Put down your weapon, soldier
, Mason shouted over the gunfire.
That’s an order!
The young soldier, hardly more than a boy, lifted his eye from his M-14 and turned his head to see Mason aiming at him. How many times had Mason already told him to cease fire?
There was a fierceness in the young man’s eyes
, Mason would later report to his superior officer, but that didn’t describe the wild fury that had taken utter control of Corporal Smith. The Egyptian mob beneath the wall scattered, receding like startled rats. Smith ignored Mason once again, pulling the trigger to fire another burst of rounds at the crowd. Mason held one hand on another soldier’s wounded arm in an effort to staunch the gushing blood, leaning his weight on the wound.
Soldier,
Mason shouted again. Smith turned to glare at Mason again as he switched magazines.
Don’t do it
, Mason heard himself pleading.
Screw you
, Smith snarled as he turned the M-14 on Mason, shooting a stream of bullets.

Buzz, buzz,
buzz
. He heard the bullets whip by his head.
Buzz, buzz, buzz
.

“Wake up, asshole!”
Lieutenant Thompson groaned.

Mason
jerked, suddenly wide awake. He slapped the alarm clock. He could hear himself breathing hard even though he knew his heart hardly took a beat.

“Sorry,” Mason said, rubbing his eyes.

“Why’d I get stuck with someone on graves?” his roommate moaned and covered his head with his pillow.

Mason stared at the dark floor beneath his feet and tried to wren
ch the memory from his thoughts, but it was like cement. He could still see the accident report clearly.

Smith, William A., Corporal
, 2
nd
Ranger Battalion, 75
th
Regiment, assigned to U.S. Embassy Defensive Controls duty after completion of Ranger training. Became a father two months after deployment. Killed three and wounded sixteen Egyptian civilians during a protest march on the U.S. Embassy after a rocket propelled grenade was fired from the crowd that wounded two soldiers. When ordered to cease fire, he refused, and eventually turned his weapon on himself.

That was the official report
, the one he had signed. Sometimes he regretted that as much as killing the poor kid.

Mason used the hall phone to punch in the extension of the duty officer and waited for an answer.
He stood in the darkness of the bay of rooms, alone under the dim light of the exit sign posted above the door.

“What do you need me to do?” he had asked Kennedy. She hadn’t given him an answer, at least not a good one. She smiled and finished her drink before telling him she would be in touch,
that she had to talk it over with the Senator, and that he should just keep doing what he was doing.

“What
am
I doing?” Mason asked.

“Blending in
,” she had told him.

“Phillips,” the night duty officer said as he picked up the other line.

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Jones. The warden—”

“Oh, yeah, he called me a few hours ago,” Sergeant Phillips interrupted.
He sounded agitated, like he had been dreading this phone call since he heard the news. “Look, we still need you to come in, if you’re feeling up to it.”

“
That’s fine,” Mason replied. “I’m not tired anyway. I’ll put in my shift.”

“Oh, good. Good. That’s the Ranger spirit. I’ll see you as soon as you get here.”

Mason dressed and went to the prison complex in a fog of thought. He hardly noticed the blacklight glow to the cement walls of the man-trap gate. Mason waved at the soldier peering down at him from atop the gate tower as he made his way to the side door of the complex. Unlike during the day shift, it was so quiet at night it felt like death hovered over the island.

There was no one in the munitions room when Mason arrived. He swiped his card and punched a code to open one of the inventory control doors that showed a pistol and belt holster through the glass. The door unlocked and Mason withdrew the weapon, checked it for rounds in the chamber,
and then tested the trigger. It was in working order. Ammunition and clips were openly available. Mason took a loaded clip and slid it into the butt of the gun. Fifteen rounds should be enough for any contingency, but after his first night, he wished they issued high-capacity magazines.

“Ah, Jones,” Sergeant Phillips said when Mason knocked on his open door.
Phillips sat rubbing his temples when Mason first saw him, staring at his computer screen. He stood and saluted as Mason entered the room.

Mason returned the salute.

“Have a seat,” he offered. “How are you getting along?”

“Fine, sir,” Mason said as he settled into the square, wooden framed chair.

“I’m sorry to have to call you in like this, but we’re running below MPO tonight without you and Matty.”

Minimal Personnel Occupancy, or MPO, for Rock Island Prison Defense Facility consisted of two roof guards, two tower guards, and
six patrol guards who doubled at station post details. Technically, that made Mason part of the prison defense guard even though his primary job was janitorial services.

“Can’t afford any point reductions right now
, given the circumstances,” Phillips said and looked up behind Mason.

Mason turn
ed at hearing someone entering.

“Ah, Chavez, you know Lieutenant Jones
, I trust?”

Sergeant Chavez leaned against the door frame with a cup of coffee in one hand and his hat in the other. He nodded toward Mason.

“Evening, sir,” Chavez said with a bleary smile.

Mason nodded and smiled back.
“How did you get roped into this?” Mason asked.

“I was volunteered,” Chavez replied. “You ready?” he asked, nodding his head as if to say
let’s go
.

They made their way down to the second floor where i
t looked like a slaughterhouse again in the operating room. Brown blood stains smeared the floor everywhere, bits of smashed flesh ringed the ground beneath the head of the operating table, and lines of dried blood meandered like streams toward the drains. The biters in the cells moaned hollowly, as though they were confused instead of desperate. It was quieter than down in the main cell block, their chorus didn’t excite one another as it would normally.

“I vote we leave the ones in the cells alone and just
—” Chavez said, waving a hand toward the operating table with a look of disgust. He poured his coffee onto the floor. “I don’t even know what to say about that.”

Sixteen

Mason sat on the
folding chair in the janitor closet pulling on the waders. He and Chavez had hosed down and cleaned the operating table and floors around it, but left the biters in their cages as Chavez had suggested. Mason wasn’t too concerned with doing a good job in light of the circumstances. And besides that, he had been told to
blend in
. Chavez sat down next to him, yawning widely.

“I hope they get a replacement for
Matty in a hurry,” Chavez said. “I don’t want to get stuck on this duty again…no offense.”

“
None taken,” Mason replied. “What do you mean again? You’ve had to do this before?”

“I’m one
of the four alternates. Last time there was an accident I was on this assignment for a month!”

“Well, I can do it alone if—
”

“No one works alone on the floor,” Chavez
said.

Mason
stood up and took the four hoses off the wall. “Well then, let’s go clean up. Do you want to push the cart or lug the hoses?”

“I’m fine
looking like housecleaning. Go plug in the hoses,” he said with another yawn and wave toward the door.

Mason carried the hoses out to the bibs and dropped them. Even the roar of hundreds of moaning biters hardly registered as he knelt down to attach the hoses.
He thought it strange that he was beginning to ignore them as though they were just background noise. Even with his earplugs in, he could still make out the squeaking of the cart wheels over their drone.

“I’ll catch, you clean the first five, then we switch,” Chavez suggested. “It goes faster that way.”

“Matty had me catching my own, then cleaning.”

“I’m sure he did, but
Matty was an asshole. Catching and cleaning yourself takes forever. Matty liked taking his time. It meant he could be down here longer. Personally, I hate it in here.”

Blend in
.

Chavez started catching the zombies in the first cell as Mason added the spray nozzles to the hose and got out the cleaning solvents.

“So why do we have to clean them at night like this?” Mason asked. It bothered him since he arrived, but he had never asked Matty. He hardly had the chance to get a word in edgewise with Matty. “Why not clean the cells by day when they’re at the Meat Market?”

“
They do. They clean them the minute the damned things are taken out, but there are two kinds of biters in here, you know. Those bastards there,” he said, pointing the noose toward the line of cells Mason had worked the night before, the ones that had been operated on and had been through recovery—the ones for sale. “Those ones are taken out every day. The only shit in there is what they’ve done since coming back and getting fed. These ones, though,” Chavez said, turning with the noose and driving it through the bars of a cage, catching one of the zombies. He grabbed the thing with expert precision, just like Matty. No chasing the thing or missing, or having to try twice. Just a sweep and the loop was over the back of its head, and a second later he was hauling it to the front of the cell, pinning it as he swung the restrainer down the pole where it clanged into place against the cell bars. Chavez pointed at the biter he had captured and wagged a finger at it. “These sons of bitches have been in here all goddamned day, sleeping and crapping at their leisure.”

Chavez grabbed the next noose off the cart.

“We can skip that group tonight,” Chavez added, pointing at the sterilized biters. “Let the day crew deal with it. You can’t tell the difference half the time anyway.”

Half-assed work
, Mason thought, but didn’t say anything. Mason was beginning to get the impression Chavez was one of the lazy ones he would have had to keep an eye on in his command over in Egypt. He wondered if Chavez was like that in Egypt too, if maybe the reason his team was compromised in an ambush was his fault. Maybe that’s why he was here. Everyone on the island that he’d met so far had something in their past that earned them some kind of punishment. Mason wondered if he was actually an inmate being deceived into thinking he was free. It would make sense, in a horribly sinister kind of way.

“There you go,” Chavez said to the second biter, patting its head after checking the restraint
. “Gentle as a kitten,” he added, and the zombie thrashed. “Whoa!” Chavez laughed, stepping back. “That one’s hungry. Let me double check the restraint before you go in there.”

Chavez kept his distance as he tugged on the wrist straps binding the biter to the cell bars. It shook again and its moan became more of a growl, deep like a lion.

“No, he’s good. It’s all yours.”

Mason didn’t move right away. He stared at the two zombies restrained against the cell bars, their faces wedged against them, their pale skin pulled tight, their hazy eyes wide with rage. It reminded him of the
soldier in Egypt, the one he had shot. The eyes were what haunted him, so absent of reason, so filled with malice. Mason couldn’t fathom what would drive someone to such an extreme.

Chavez picked up a noose from the cart and stepped up next to Mason.

“Don’t worry, man,” he said. “I’ve never had an accident and I’ve been here years.”

“Well you know my record, don’t you?” Mason said, looking at him sidelong.

Chavez laughed and slapped Mason on the shoulder. “You want me to do it, pussy?”

“No, I’ve got it,” Mason told him and walked up to the cell door card reader. He swiped his card and heard the buzzing. The moaning throughout the cell block redoubled, the
Pavlovian response to the sound of freedom or feeding, or something Mason hadn’t yet figured out. A door was a door to these things and it could have meant all of that and none of it. Mason stuffed his card into his cargo pocket as he pulled the cell door open.

Mason began hosing out the feces on t
he ground, dragging the hose all the way into the cell so he could spray at it and push it along the cinderblock wall. Normal prisons had beds and plumbing and a toilet, but not here. The pallet was six feet long by six feet wide and had a pile of blankets that the zombies somehow turned into a nest-like roost. Mason put down the hose and dragged out the blankets to replace them.

Chavez had noosed the first of three biters in the next cell and was coming back for another noose pole and restraining bar. Mason threw the old blankets to the ground and grabbed three new folded ones from the cart.

“You know, you can just leave the bedding too,” Chavez said as he followed Mason to the cell door. The aggressive biter snarled and shook at his restraints again and Chavez stopped, letting Mason walk through the cell alone. “We’re not the Hilton,” Chavez said and started for the other cell.

Mason
turned his back on Chavez. Doing the job right didn’t take that much more effort. As his father would have said, it takes more effort avoiding work. It made Chavez’s laziness even more irritating.

There was a sudden and loud clank behind him. Mason tensed, nearly jumping in fright.
Then he took a deep breath and said “funny” over his shoulder as he turned, expecting to see Chavez laughing and asking something like “jittery?” as he dragged a noose pole along a cell bar, clanking it once just for effect.

Mason’s
heart clenched tight like a fist. A gaunt face stared at him, plump eyes bulging with need. The noose stretched the loose skin around its neck toward the pole raking through the cell bars as the zombie lurched one more step closer. Mason’s surprise and disbelief shed at the sight of the unlatched restraint. It still trapped one of the zombie’s arms against its chest, latched to the turned pole. The other arm was free.

The blankets in Mason’s arms fell to the ground. The hand latched onto Mason’s shoulder. Mason threw his left arm in the air to knock it free, but the biter’s cold, boney fingers held as though
stitched to his shirt. Mason reached his other hand for his pistol too late. The biter took one more step and pulled at Mason. Decaying breath moaned over him, a soupy blend of rotten fish and curdled milk assailing Mason through its bared teeth that seemed determined to find flesh. Mason tried to step back but his foot caught on the lip of the bed pallet.

The zombie
pushed forward and they both plummeted to the pallet. Mason wedged his arms between them a split second before striking the ground. The impact jarred his senses. The zombie’s body sagged over Mason with the unwieldiness of an enormous sack of flour. The zombie’s head gave a hollow whack against Mason’s forehead before bouncing off. Mason’s arms were the only thing keeping its teeth at bay. He drove the zombie up to elbow’s length, leaving it perched above him, dripping its saliva and hissing.

Mason turned his head. The biter let go of Mason’s shoulder and instead grabbed the back of his neck, pulling itself closer. With the zombie’s weight over him he couldn’t reach his pistol. Mason kicked his legs to turn his lower body sideways.

“Help!” Mason yelled between his struggling grunts.

The zombie pitched slightly
to Mason’s left. Mason’s forearm slipped across its chest. In a second it would slide off him, he realized. He extended his forearm to help it along, rolling to his right and pushing the thing away. It fell on its side, its hand still hooked to Mason’s neck.

“Hang on a second,” Mason thought he heard Chavez calling, his tone one of annoyance.

Mason started to roll. The biter’s hand slid from Mason’s neck. Mason pushed against the biter’s chest with his left arm to lift himself free. The biter grabbed his wrist with its other hand. Instead of turning and rolling away from the biter, it yanked Mason back like a dog on the end of a leash.

The bite landed square on Mason’s
upper arm, digging into the exposed flesh of the bicep.

“No!” he screamed and rolled toward
the zombie to keep it from ripping the flesh with its teeth. The pain seared the length of his arm. With his other arm he grabbed the thing by the back of its head and pulled it closer, jamming its face into his arm, driving its nose flat. He knew he couldn’t wrench the thing off without tearing loose a hole in his arm. He knew that it wouldn’t be able to bite through if he could push against its mouth. He also knew he wanted to kill the thing by ripping its head off and beating the skull on the ground until he, himself, died.

He’d been bitten.

He pulled harder, crushing the biter’s head in a hug as he continued to roll over on top of it. He felt the teeth gnashing the muscle and bone of his arm and the pain shot through him like bullets.

Mason let go of the head once his weight was over
it and he hastily reached for his pistol. The biter tried to thrash free. The sudden tearing in Mason’s arm caused him to cry out in pain. The biter’s eyes were still wide with rage as it began to reach a hand to Mason’s neck. Whether it meant to push him off or pull him closer, it didn’t matter. The rage was still within those eyes, the rage of a man no longer capable of rational behavior, no longer able to think beyond wild necessity. Mason stuffed the barrel of his pistol into the eye socket of the biter.

In Egypt, Lieutenant Mason Jones closed his eyes when he pulled the trigger on his fellow soldier. He had already taken aim. He already knew where the bullet would strike. There was no need to watch the young man die.

“Go to hell,” Mason snarled as he stared wide-eyed with hate at his victim now.

Blam
!