Plagued: The Midamerica Zombie Half-Breed Experiment (Plagued States of America) by Better Hero Army Page A

closet. They pushed things out of the way, but it was still cramped.
    “Pill number seven,” Peske said.
    Hank was wearing leather gloves. He took a tube from his pocket and removed the muzzle that had been on Carrie for the past several hours, as a precaution Hank had said. Behind Hank stood several of the visitors, all watching like shocked voyeurs. Carrie tried to thrash about, more animalistic now than human, growling and hissing spittle. Her eyes were hazed over, weeping puss that looked gray in the dim light. Hank slipped the pill into the tube, shoved it into Carrie’s mouth, and blew. She choked on it, coughed a few times, but managed to swallow the thing.
    “What does that mean, pill number seven?” Tom asked. Hank shut the door to the janitor’s closet and told everyone to disband. The visitors left reluctantly, but Dave stayed. He leaned against the door and watched everyone else, gazing toward Peske and Tom once.
    “There are some things they don’t say even in the fine print, boy. Every box only gives you six inhibitors. The seventh is a kill pack. If you’re zombie, it kills you. But it don’t matter if you already took the sixth. No one comes back from that far down. And don’t go taking it first because it’ll kill you if you’re human too.”
    “So Hank just killed her, didn’t he?” Tom asked dejectedly.
    “Shut the hell up,” Peske glowered. “She was dead this morning at the lake. We tried to bring her back.”
    He didn’t appreciate the recrimination, but there was no point in arguing it by asking why they even tried. He knew the answer. The pills were supposed to be effective on about three-in-ten bite cases. Thirty percent. They had to try to save her, otherwise they would be no different than the zombies , really. It’s why Tom was here after all. He had to try to save Larissa. The hope of a cure. Or was it the hope of atonement?
    “What about her?” Tom asked to change the subject, pointing at the bathroom. “Why lock her in there?”
    “This is her home turf, boy,” Peske replied dismissively. “I already told you that.”
    Tom didn’t feel right sitting with the others so far from Penelope. It felt like he had abandoned her, but sitting by her door would look bad. He needed everyone still, Penelope included. The hunters put up a tent and draped blankets over it to keep the light hidden. Inside they used flashlights to prepare everyone’s meal, but it was dark in the building otherwise. Tom sat near the wall of windows to get moonlight enough to eat.
    Carrie was pronounced dead five minutes after Hank administered the last pill. Tyler, among others, wanted to see the body. Tom had no need to see another dead body. Afterward, everyone had the vacant looks of people touched by horror. Tom could imagine Carrie’s twisted features, her half-turned skin, hazy eyes, bluing lip, and gaunt expression of death. They had locked the door to her body out of safety. She was still contagious, after all, even if she wasn’t alive.
    Tom considered what Peske had told him about the pills. He felt the pack of inhibitors in the cargo pocket of his pants, the telltale bumps of seven spring-loaded injectors, the last one – the kill-pack – much wider than the others.
    The tent lights went out and only the dim light of the moon lit the interior of the terminal building. Everyone spread out into small groups of two or three around the tent. Each hunter kept watch with one of the visitors. Tom earned second shift with Dave. Dave manned the second floor overlooking the airstrip, keeping an eye on the concourse out to the duck. Tom walked from end to end downstairs, stopping every so often to hold his hands up to the glass and look out into the parking lot and overgrown field beyond, searching for movement or those hazy gray zombie eyes that reflected against the moonlight. Nothing stirred thankfully.
    But it was the noise that bothered him the most. A constant wailing in the distance like