Plagued: The Rock Island Zombie Counteractant Experiment (Plagued States of America) (12 page)

“Yeah,” Hank replied distantly. “Yeah, good idea.”

Mason and O’Farrell moved quickly to the back ladder. Against his dizziness, Mason managed to hook his feet and arms from rung to rung as the glow plugs of the diesel engine buzzed beneath the big vehicle.

“Start the engine
,” Mason shouted as he flopped over the rail and onto the deck. Hank was at the driver’s seat flipping switches. O’Farrell shimmied up the ladder and crouched beside Mason.

“Come on,” she whispered, tugging on him. He nodded and allowed her to guide him forward as the starter chugged and whined, but the engine refused to come to life. It clacked and wheezed as Hank let off on the key. Mason fell into the passenger seat, leaving O’Farrell standing between them as another bright flash lit the sky, followed by a rumbling boom.

Hank turned the key again. The starting motor whinnied and whirred as the engine chugged and skipped, grumbling out of tune, refusing to start. Hank let off on the key again.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the doctor said.

Twenty-Four

The duck wouldn’t start.

“Shit
,” Hank growled, hitting the steering wheel.

O’Farrell sank to her knees. She looked at Mason with regret.
“I thought you were just being paranoid,” she said softly. “About blowing the place up.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” Hank hissed in cadence with the sputtering engine as the starter turned over and over. “Come on
, you piece of junk!”

Another round
of bright flashes lit the hemline of horizon on the other side of the island. The echoing boom of several more explosions followed.

“What
was that?” the doctor asked, her eyes turning toward the glow.

“The bridge,” Mason guessed.

The duck growled and chugged to life. A thick fog of black smoke washed over them past the front of the duck, heavy with the fumes of burnt fuel, dissolving as it passed through the still lit headlights of the Jeep. Hank ground the duck into gear and it lurched forward, grazing the front of the Jeep. The doctor fell sideways, losing her balance. Mason grabbed her and pulled her into his lap. The light of the Jeep reflecting up the side of the duck lit her eyes and Mason could plainly see her shock.

Hank cranked the wheel
, and the duck turned abruptly. O’Farrell threw an arm around Mason’s neck for support. The nose of the duck barely missed the rigs parked in front of them as the whole vehicle swung to the right.

“Where are you going?” the doctor asked
frantically.

“Toward the beach,” Mason answered for Hank. “We need to get into the water.”

“What beach?” O’Farrell looked out the windshield ahead of them as Hank turned on the floodlights. The parking lot woke under their beams. A row of orange and red reflectors from the two dozen or so rigs lit their path like a runway, and Hank accelerated with his foot on the floor.

Mason
flinched at the
thump, tizzzz
sound, turning to see a trail of fiery red catapulting skyward. Another
thump, tizzzz
went off, then another, and another. All four trails raced toward the stars.

“What is that?” O’Farrell asked in astonishment
, her head craned back so she could look straight up. Hank didn’t take his eyes off the road ahead. The duck turned again at the end of the lot and bounced up a curb, missing a small tree that scratched and hissed down the side of the vehicle as they raced by.

“Cluster bombs,” Mason told her.

“Why are they going up?”

“
You don’t want to know,” Mason replied grimly. Another
thump, tizzzz
went off. “Hank, step on it!”

“It’s floored!”

The duck fell into and bounded out of a shallow gully meant for water runoff. Mason recognized the wide expanse of grass that they landed on. Another
thump, tizzzz
lit up the sky.

“That way,” Mason said, pointing toward a building he vaguely remembered.

“I know, I know,” Hank cried.

Another
thump, tizzzz
went off, and once more. Mason clenched his teeth and looked up to see the sky littered with red contrails.

The green of the grass in the wash of their floodlights gave way to blackness
.

“There
,” Mason shouted, pointing. O’Farrell turned her attention forward. Mason looked up. A false sun lit the sky, a strobe, like streaks of lightning. It sparkled as one after another the cluster bombs began to erupt. Now instead of only a few missiles falling back toward the island, Mason knew there were likely a hundred smaller, more deadly warheads fanning out to destroy every square inch of land.

Mason
gripped O’Farrell’s waist tighter.

“Hold on,” Hank warned. He didn’t slow down. Mason reached over his shoulder for the seat belt only to find there wasn’t one. He braced his legs against the floorboard and put one arm onto the dashboard.
O’Farrell leaned forward and put her hands on the dash, turning her head to look at Mason with a desperate plea of forgiveness.

Mason only nodded. He couldn’t tell her they would survive. He doubted it himself. Her eyes were grim in the glow of the spotlights mounted above the windshield. She nodded
as well and turned her gaze ahead.

The duck’s nose pitched off the edge of the grass and onto the gravel beach.
Behind him, he heard the
boom
of the first bombs hitting their targets. Stones rattled beneath the wheels of the duck and the vehicle bounced its nose upward again. It felt like the vehicle knew the danger and was trying to leap out onto the water as far as it could fling itself. Mason felt himself coming off his seat as they cruised through the air.

More rockets landed behind them, a rattling and insistent knocking and
booming
sound that shook the very air. The duck slammed to a halt. O’Farrell slumped forward in his grip. His legs burned at the effort of keeping himself from careening forward. His arm gave for a second, but he managed to hold on without crushing O’Farrell against the dashboard.

The vehicle lurched the other way
, and Mason felt himself snapped back into the seat. He hauled the doctor with him. Her elbows dug into his shoulders as she tried to slow herself.

The duck’s bow carved a line of water into the air that fell
over the vehicle as it plunged into the channel, drenching them from head to toe.

More explosions snapped and boomed all around. Fiery heat poured over them in waves, so strong the air itself
grew heavier, driving them further into their seats.

Hank pushed himself off the steering wheel. He coughed as he worked two levers
with his left hand and rubbed his chest with the right.

“You OK?” Mason asked.
More explosions erupted behind them, setting off a chain reaction so loud they each covered their ears. Heat seared over them from a fireball that rolled and toppled out over the channel, rising as it churned and rumbled. More explosions began to strike further inland, blanketing the southern edge in a wave of fire.

Explosions hit so close
, Mason hardly registered the noise from the ringing in his ears. A tree along the shoreline burst into burning fragments that flailed the duck in clanks and clatter, swatting them with twigs and branches and stones that cracked into the slave pens behind them.

The duck growled as the engine revved. Hank turned the wheel
to straighten their course, moving them away from the burning shoreline as quickly as the lumbering vehicle could manage. The current did the rest of the work, ferrying them west along the length of the island. Bombs continued to strike quickly. Some landed in the channel, blowing water and fire into the air.

One burst off their port side
, and the doctor screamed in Mason’s arms as water sprayed over them, dousing the scorching heat from the fires at their backs.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” the doctor screamed.
Even her voice was drowned out by the crack and boom of missile after missile blanketing the island.

Hank didn’t answer.
He couldn’t hear her. His gnashed-tooth grimace and white knuckle grip of the steering wheel said everything, though.

Mason didn’t watch the carpet bombing. He looked ahead and downstream at the broken bridge.

“Hank,” Mason warned, pointing forward. “The bridge!”

Hank hazarded a brief glance, then a double-take. The
2
nd
Street Bridge had been blown, but the collapsed part stuck out of the channel at an angle as though it had only partially collapsed, leaving just a narrow opening to navigate through.

“God hates us,” Hank reasoned aloud as he turned the wheel to steer the duck directly at the bridge.

Twenty-Five

The firestorm had passed, its rumble still shaking the earth. The surface of the surrounding channel vibrated. Mason wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Hank switched the duck to reverse throttle and revved the engine in an effort to slow them down.

O’Farrell eased herself from Mason’s lap, settling down on her knees between the two chairs. The fireball rising above them hissed and roared, its orange glow dimly lighting the world around them.
The obstruction at the bridge was easy to see under the glow. Hank used the extra light to drive the duck against the current as he tried to aim them for the only span that looked wide enough for them to pass.

“Will we even fit?” O’Farrell asked as she looked through the front window at the approaching
blockade.

Mason stood to look over the windshield at the top of the bridge. He thought he had seen movement. A
whit-dit-dit-dit
noise echoed over the
ting-tang-ring
of bullets swatting through the metal cages on the deck of the duck.

Mason pushed O’Farrell down by the back of her head. He collapsed over her while pushing her toward the
foot well of the cockpit. Hank slid out of his seat and onto the floorboard in one motion.

“
They’re shooting at us!” O’Farrell uttered in disbelief.

“At least it’s
not helicopters,” Hank grumbled. “I can’t see where we’re going. We’re sitting ducks.”

Mason crawled out and sat down behind the driver’s seat, turning to face the oncoming bridge. He drew his pistol and held it to his knee as he leaned back against the cage.

“Guide us a little more left,” Mason said. Hank turned the wheel from under the dash. “Give it some gas,” Mason added as he lifted his head a little to see out over the seat back.

Ting-ting-tang
came another spray of bullets just over Mason’s head as the machine gunner on the bridge let out another
whit-dit-dit
burst. Mason ducked and shifted his position, adjusting his aim, anticipating where his target would appear when the bridge platform reached its apex above them.

“Are we going to crash?” Hank asked worriedly.

“Just five more seconds,” Mason replied, blinking hard to drive the sweat from his eyes.

“What’s happening?”

“Five more seconds,” Mason insisted.

Tang-cling-clang-ping
came another spray of bullets over the cages. Mason saw the flash of the other shooter’s gun crest the dashboard.
Pong-ting-ting
came another burst. Mason leaned into the shot.
Blam!
His pistol kicked in his hand and he watched his target retreat.

“Shit,” Mason hissed.

“What!?” Hank asked, starting to climb out.

“I missed,” Mason said hotly.

Hank eased back under the dashboard.

The form appeared again, this time hovering over a slab of concrete giving him
partial cover. The machine gun poured another volley of bullets over them, hammering the deck.
Thump-pap-crack-ting-snap
came the bullets as they gnawed their way toward Mason’s prone position.

Mason took
aim and a deep breath.
Blam!

The machine gun
abruptly stopped firing and Mason let out his breath.

“Did you get him?” Hank asked
wildly.

The duck suddenly lurched, scraping against the pier along its port side before slamming to a halt. It was a jarring impact
that knocked both the doctor and Hank back beneath the dash. Mason careened from his position, rolling and slamming into the driver seatback.

Hank clam
bered out from beneath the dashboard, lifting himself into the seat with the aid of the steering wheel. The duck was aground on the partially collapsed bridge. The vehicle groaned and scraped as the strong current of the channel pushed them higher up the embankment. Hank laid into the throttle. The duck’s engine growled as the whole vehicle shook, even though they hardly moved.

“We need to get off this mess,” Hank growled as loudly as the engine.

O’Farrell crawled out to Mason, who still lay on his back, his legs open in a “V”, his pistol pointing toward the intact portion of bridge on the Rurals side.

“Are you
OK?” O’Farrell asked as she put a hand on his chest, tapping at him as she worked her hands over his body in the quest for blood.

“He’s not alone,” Mason told her and she froze, her head craning to look up at the bridge. Light shined out over the channel from some vehicle far out of sight. Two black shadows carved the light in half for a moment as they crossed the beams.

The duck turned sideways, dipping its port side against the pier as the starboard side lifted to clear the obstruction of the partially toppled bridge. The side of the duck raked the concrete pier as the vehicle’s wheels found traction. The duck surged forward, shaking O’Farrell off her hands and knees. Mason slammed his elbow into the cage beside him to keep from sliding to the port rail. O’Farrell fell onto Mason and he grabbed her with his left hand to keep her from sliding away, too.

“If we get out of this alive,” O’Farrell lamented in his ear
, but let the sentiment trail off.

The grating noise of the duck scraping along the pier grew louder as the engine roared. The nose of the duck dipped awkwardly as a crack and pop noise burst from beneath the deck. The scraping died out and Mason felt the deck fall from beneath his shoulders. For a second
, his stomach turned. He thumped onto the deck again as it lurched side to side.

“We’re free!” Hank yelled.

A
whit-dit-dit-dit
answered his euphoria. Bullets sprayed over the roof of the rig, pinging off and snapping through the overhead lights and supply rack.
Blam!
Mason answered, not aiming at anything in particular. A warning shot to whoever was above, something to ease the attack long enough for Mason to find them.

Mason pushed O’Farrell off as he sat up, the pistol leading the way. The bridge
receded above from the swift current below and the throbbing growl of the duck’s diesel. Hank slid beneath the dashboard again, letting the vehicle find its own course, his hand wedging the gas pedal to the floor.

Another
whit-dit-dit
was quickly answered by a
Blam!
A man screamed in pain, yelling “I’m hit, I’m hit,” repeatedly. More bullets sprayed over them from two machine guns on the bridge. The rounds whacked against the cages filling the back half of the duck.
Tings, tangs,
and
cracks
splattered the vehicle like hailstones.

Blam
!

“Fuck!” a different soldier’s scream was heard.

“I’m hit, I’m hit, Jesus, I’m hit,” the first soldier still cried.

“Stay down, stay down,” Mason heard another yelling.

The duck began to list, leaning to the port side as though trying to help shield its occupants. Hank reached up to turn the wheel, to steer the vehicle into its momentum and keep it straight.

“We’re taking on water,” Hank said over the droning of the engine. “We need to get to land.”

“Stay down,” Mason replied. “We’re still in their range.”

Hank reached up and flicked several switches. The flood lights overhead and the running lights around the duck went out.

“What do we do now?” O’Farrell asked.

“Stay down,” Mason told them, edging to the rail in a crouching position. He began to wonder how many rounds he had left, if any.