Plagued: The Rock Island Zombie Counteractant Experiment (Plagued States of America) (6 page)

Thir
teen

Mason had no intelligence information on
Doctor Danielle Kennedy. Aside from seeing her briefly in the cell block the night before, he had no idea where he would even look for her. Hearing Hank say her name gave him hope that maybe he could find a way off this miserable island sooner than his tour would end. He suspected they would stop-loss him into another two years on the island if he didn’t at least make contact with her. That’s the kind of corner he was being backed into. They probably even tipped off the warden, if he wasn’t in on the whole thing. Why else would he ride his ass like he was? But that only raised a bigger question: what did the warden have to be afraid of?

“You want another beer?” Hank asked as he stood up from the booth in the small tavern next to the
Meat Market. “I’m gonna take a leak and get another round for myself.”

“Sure,” Mason replied, brooding over the half-
empty bottle he was milking. It was getting warm.

“Let’s take ‘
em with us,” Hank suggested. “I need to set up for the day.”

Mason walked beside Hank as they wove through the lot full of vehicles the hunters used for collecting their merchandise. Every vehicle was raised higher than what seemed practical, mobile platforms with bars and rails that could be used to repel an assault from the ground. Chains and cables secured all manner of tool, weapon, and supply that wasn’t welded or bolted to the vehicle. Each truck was unique in some way, as thoug
h each had been built in a junkyard by lunatics who believed the world was coming to an end. The vehicle they stopped at made all the rest seem like cookie-cutter copies by comparison.

“What the hell is this?” Mason asked Hank as
the big man began climbing a metal ladder affixed to the back of the craft.

“It’s a duck,” Hank replied
, sounding offended by Mason’s tone. “An amphibious vehicle. I know it don’t look like much, but it saved our asses at the Hill.”

“Are you telling me this thing floats?”

“Mostly. It rides pretty low when the gas tanks are full, but otherwise she’ll power across the channel.”

“And you hunt in this thing?” Mason asked, tugging at the ladder to make sure it was sturdy before climbing up after Hank.

“Don’t be an idiot. Nobody hunts in their truck. You do it on foot.”

Mason
reached the top and stood on a flat deck ringed by waist-high railings. The center half of the vehicle was under a canopy supported by a row of cells made of sheet metal with only narrow slits that allowed air flow and some light in, but no more than a finger could get through otherwise. All the cells were the same except the last one closest to the cockpit. It was a larger open cage made of vertical bars on all four sides with a locking cage door and a bunk bed.

“The luxury suite?” Mason asked
jokingly as he peered into the last cell.

“
Peske used to keep Kitty in there.”

“Who kept what?”

“This was Peske’s rig back on the Hill. When the shit hit the fan, he drove us all to safety. All the way to Midamerica. That’s where the rescue choppers came for us, so we left the duck there. After they let us out of quarantine, I hired on with another group of hunters, traded them my catch for a ride. I got the duck and I’m back in business.”

“
What about Peske?”

“
He’s dead. He had a heart attack just when we were getting saved.”

“So was this cat of his some kind of lion?”

“Kitty?” Hank guffawed. “She was his half-breed.”

“Half-breed?”

“Half woman, half zombie,” Hank said, and the thought of it struck Mason as hard as a bullet. “Partly cured. Non-infectious. Some kind of experiment they did on her early on when they were working on the cure. Like a feral cat, that girl, but she was Peske’s draw. She kept people coming to his pens first. He was the number one dealer on the Hill because of her.”

Mason thought of the notes about the research facility here on the island, beneath the prison. He hadn’t been inside it yet, but he knew there were cells
inside the lab. Cells meant to hold and control up to ten test subjects. Nothing in the notes said any test subjects had ever escaped, though. And he knew nothing about the events at Biter’s Hill except what was on television, which was very little.

“So what happened to her?”

“You know, you ask a lot of questions, kid. Why don’t you start answering some of mine, like what happened to Mike?”

“I think they cured him
, after all,” Mason replied, took a deep breath, and recounted everything that had happened the night before, omitting their encounter with Doctor Kennedy. He didn’t think that would help him at the moment, and it might have incited Hank more than anything.

“Huh,” Hank said when Mason was
finished. “Well, that settles it, then. Thanks for telling me.”

“Settles what?”

“I’m getting the fuck off the Island, that’s what. I’ve got one body left, thanks to you, so I’m going to go sell him to another trader and head for the Bend in the morning. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

“You and me both,” Mason said. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Depends on the favor.”

“Can you get me in contact with Doctor Kennedy?”

“How about I give you her phone number and you call her yourself. I don’t trust that bitch, and the last thing I want is her knowing you and me talked. You got me, kid?”

Four
teen

Mason woke to his alarm clock buzzing
, the red LED glow showing 6:00 PM. He put on his uniform and left for his meeting with Kennedy. As he walked toward the Meat Market, several flatbed trucks passed him going the opposite direction. They were hauling caged biters to the prison for the night. Civilians left the market going in one of three directions: the parking lot, the hotel casino, or the same tavern Mason had been in with Hank that very morning. Mason followed two hunters into the tavern and found an empty booth near the back next to the pool tables. A group of hunters were playing a game, glaring at him suspiciously, eyeing him with an almost malicious intent. Mason took off his uniform top so that only his tight brown t-shirt covered his upper body. He flexed his hard muscles and glared back at them. Mason may not have been as big as Matty, but his arms and chest had the solid look of a prize fighter. It was enough to get his point across. The hunters didn’t bother him as he sat waiting for Kennedy to arrive.

When she
showed, she strode in proudly on a pair of high heel shoes, with her lab coat over her shoulder. She sauntered toward the bar in a tight black skirt and even tighter red top. She turned heads looking like that.

“Set me up the usual, Mac,” she announced. “What’s the special? I’m stuck working all night again.”

An amber liquid spilled over cubes of ice in a short glass and was placed on the bar in front of her. She took it and turned around to face the room, planting her elbows behind her, her eyes scanning the room from one end to the other. The way she was standing, Mason saw the square outline of her smartphone zipped up in a pocket against her hip. The bartender was telling her what they had on special to eat. She took a slow sip from the glass as she listened. When her eyes reached Mason’s corner of the room, she smiled and turned to the bartender.

“
The Cobb. Send it over there, will you, Mac? I see an old friend.”

“Sure thing
, Danni.”

She
boldly strode toward Mason, her lips curling upward in a sassy smirk.

“I thought I recognized you,” she said as she stopped in front of his table. “Jones, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What are you having?”

“Nothing yet,” Mason replied.

She looked over her shoulder toward the bar, throwing a hand up to catch the bartender’s attention.
“Get me a beer for my friend,” she called out. The bartender nodded and she turned her attention back to Mason, smiling. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” Mason said, sliding out of the booth to stand.
His courtesy made her smile.

She was a tall woman, his own height in her heels. She slid into the bench seat opposite him and put her drink down out of the way, tossing her lab coat onto the seat beside her. Mason sat down again, settling one arm on the table, turning his shoulder toward the hunters who were now all watching him with veiled interest.

“Ignore them,” she said. “Tell me, Mason Jones, are you in or out?”

“I don’t know what I’d be in if I answered that question.”

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully, taking a deep breath and sighing before saying, “So are you really stupid pretending to be smart, or really smart pretending to be stupid?”

“How about a little ignorant pretending to be both.”

“All right, I think I can work with that.” She smiled again, tapping her glass with a finger as she considered his stoicism. “I was told you are particularly observant, that you don’t miss anything. Some kind of photographic memory?”

“Eidetic memory,” Mason told her. “
I was diagnosed with it in high school. Why does everyone keep asking me about it?”

“It’s useful for this…let’s say
, position. You are hyper-observant, which sets you apart. It’s one of the things that got you into Benning.”

“Yeah, well,
after five years Army, I think being a truck driver like my guidance counselor suggested might have been a smarter move.”

She held
an accommodating smile, the kind that showed her ire. “You’re good at insubordination, Jones. You pissed off Jefferson, and you’re pissing me off, too. He told me your fate was in my hands, so, unless you like this hell-hole, how about you try making some productive conversation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jones said evenly.

She didn’t seem satisfied with his response. She continued to glare at him, picking up her drink again to take a sip. “So tell me what you know.”

“I was hoping you could clue me in on what I
should
know. I got taken out of the hospital, put on a plane, driven to a restaurant in the Districts in Denver—and I don’t even have a District Pass—met with a Senator who wants to save America by stopping zombies—as if that’s possible—given an envelope with thirty pages of intelligence on this facility that I was told to commit to memory, given your name to contact, and then they put me into two weeks of training for zombie hand-to-hand and close quarters combat before shipping me here to scrub cells on the graveyard shift. That’s the sum total of my last two weeks.”

“Nobody told you what we’re doing here?”

“All I know is there’s a research lab below the prison.”

“You’ve seen the rest of the island, I presume. I mean, you have eyes, don’t you?”

Mason nodded, but instead of answering, he sat up straight, not taking his eyes off hers as the bartender put a beer down in front of him. She smiled, saying, “Thanks, Mac. Where’s the salad?”

“It’s coming, it’s coming,” the bartender said over his shoulder as he retreated.

“Do you come here often?” Mason asked. She laughed heartily. For as much as he thought he should hate her, he was having trouble putting the description others had painted of her to the woman sitting across from him.

“Al
l right, I’ll let that one pass,” she said with a demure smile. “Unless you’re trying to come on to me.”

“No, I just figure you know the bartender,” Mason shrugged.

“Yeah, well, sometimes you need a little help forgetting what you’ve seen, you know?” She held up her glass to him. He held up his beer and they touched the two in a toast before taking a drink.

Mason
had no trouble agreeing with her, thinking of his own past and what he wished he could forget, but drinking never helped. It only emboldened the memories. He shook off such thoughts and took a deep breath. “So what is it I’m getting into?”

She gauged him a second,
not pressing him on what he’d said. “I want to test your eyes. Can you tell me what kind of tattoo those two men playing pool have without looking?”

“The one with black hair and a beard doesn’t have any tattoos,” Mason said. “The other one, the guy thin as rails, has sleeves
of tats covering both arms. I only really made out a skull on his left arm and a lot of fire on the right. You, on the other hand, have a dove on your right ankle.”

“You noticed?” she asked with a wry smile
, raising her eyebrows. “What else about me did you notice?”

“Does this count as productive? I
mean, this place is a real hell-hole, like you said.”

“Humor me,” she went on
, still smiling.

Mason considered a moment before opening his mouth. Was she leading him just to disarm him, to worm her way through his defenses? He still couldn’t trust her. For as long as they had been sitting together, she had yet to say anything substantive.

“You don’t have a badge or wallet anywhere on you, not even the pockets of your lab coat.”

“You can see in my coat?” she asked in surprise, looking at herself.

“When you put it down. The pockets, I can see them from here,” Mason said while pointing.

“Oh, well
, that’s good. For a second I thought maybe you could see down my shirt too,” she said and laughed.

Mason smiled and picked u
p his beer to have another sip. “Your phone has a pink frame,” he told her. “The one in the pocket of your skirt.”

“How the hell did you see that?” she asked, looking down at her lap.

“Last night. You were carrying it in your hand.”

“Damn, you
are
observant.”

Mason shrugged and took another sip of his beer.
She unzipped her pocket and withdrew her pink phone. “You don’t see many of these on the island,” she said while swiping the screen to login. “Signals are jammed over here, at least the public band. This one, though,” she said, shaking it for emphasis. “This one is on a private frequency. Do you know why I’m allowed to have this?”

Mason shook his head.

“Because I’m in charge,” she said. “Can you work with that?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Great, then why don’t you tell me why you’re here tonight?”

“Your salad,” Mason said, leaning back in his seat. She shot him a questioning glare for a split second. The bartender stepped up next to the table and put a salad down in front of her. She began to laugh again, an intoxicatingly real, hearty laugh that
worried Mason. This was all a game to her.

“Get me another, would you
, Mac?” she asked the retreating bartender, pointing at her glass as she raised it to take another sip. “So why are you here?” she asked Mason.

“I was assigned.”

“No, here, tonight. You called me. This number. That means you want in. If you didn’t want to play ball, you would have just served your six months and gone home like the others.”

“Others?”

“Oh, do you think you’re the only person we’ve assigned here?”

“I still don’t understand.”

“You don’t mind if I eat, do you?” she asked. She took a bite of salad and looked as if she were lost in thought a moment as she chewed. “Answers. All right. Well, before last night’s brilliant zombie killing of yours, we wanted your help in closing this place down once and for all.”

“Close it down?”

“In the military, you’d say it’s no longer of strategic importance.”

“But close it?”

“Look, don’t you think America has had enough of the zombie plague?” she asked.

Mason had heard nearly those exact words
from the Senator’s mouth. It made him feel like he was listening to talking points. The difference between hearing it from her as opposed to Senator Jefferson was that he was beginning to like the sound of
her
voice.

“What can you do about it?”

“Well, cure it, of course.”

“How? It would take twenty years to round them all up.”

“This isn’t the time to get into a discussion about logistics, Lieutenant,” she said, taking another bite of her salad. She turned her head to chew, watching him from the corner of her eyes. “You can help us put a stop to the zombie infection once and for all. Entire
states
can be restored. Think of all the jobs and the livelihoods that would affect. The biggest land rush since Oklahoma. Over three states restored, with new cities built by new investors creating new jobs and stimulating our economy to bring us back on top where we belong. Your own home state is a split-state, right? Ohio?”

Mason nodded, sipping his beer.

She took another bite of her salad to let her words sink in. As much as Mason would have liked to believe it didn’t mean anything to him, he was, after only two days, sick as hell of this place and willing to listen.

“We can’t restore the union the way things are. This place, this continuation of the slave trade
—
of
slaves
, lieutenant. They’re using innocent people as
slaves
—all because they cling to a way of life that was thrust upon them by accident. I can fix it. I can put an end to the consumption pathogen, but not if these drunk, tattooed, inbred, retards playing pool on a remote island in the worst hellhole on planet Earth continue to exist. As long as they keep bringing in more slaves, businesses won’t put a stop to their acquisitions. Did you know it’s cheaper to manufacture trucks in America now than it is in Mexico? The Chinese care more about the CAC, FTSE, and DAX than they do the NASDAQ or NYSE. As a nation, we’re becoming a second-world economy.

“This virus has ruined America, and I’m sick of it.”

Kennedy stabbed her salad and took another bite, chewing slowly and watching Mason closely.

“It’s
only my second day and I’m pretty damned sick of it too,” Mason said and took another sip of beer.

“Well, then, what’s it going to be?” she asked.

“What do you need me to do?” Mason asked. She smirked, stabbing her salad again to take another bite.