Plagued: The Rock Island Zombie Counteractant Experiment (Plagued States of America) by Better Hero Army Page B

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 !
     

Seventeen
    Mason felt the jaw slacken against his arm. His weight sank over the zombie as it went completely limp beneath him. Its arm thumped onto the pallet. When the pistol went off, blood burst out the back of the biter’s head like a water balloon hitting the ground. Small bits of brain and skin and bone lay randomly scattered around the exit wound. Its remaining eye slowly lost its fierceness as the eyelid sagged with the rest of its body.
    “What the fuck?” Chavez shouted from the cell door. “What the fuck happened? Are you all right, man?”
    Mason turned his shoulder to pry his arm free of the teeth. He pushed the jaw open wider to slip his skin out of the dead biter’s top teeth. Pain erupted again like a red hot coal being pushed through his skin. He let out another cry of pain as blood oozed out of the wound and into the biter’s open mouth.
    “Holy shit ,” Chavez said as he knelt down next to Mason. “Hold on, man, I’ll call for help.” In a second Chavez was gone.
    Mason slid the rest of his wounded arm out of the biter’s mouth and rolled onto his back, dropping his pistol onto his chest. He put a hand over the wound and felt the sting of it over the slick heat. He felt light headed, not from the wound so much as the adrenaline and the sudden realization that he was a dead man.
    No wonder Matty pulled the trigger.
    He picked up the pistol off his chest and sat up. He looked at the biter sprawled out on the pallet beside hi m and aimed the pistol at its head again. Blam!
    The biter’s head knocked sideways as another bullet ripped through it.
    Mason fell backwards over the dead biter, leaning his head on the biter’s chest. Keep your head elevated to prevent going into shock , he told himself. He brought his knees up and used one to take aim on the other biter in the cell. Blam! Blam! Two rounds struck the back of its head, splattering blood and gore onto the wall and out onto the floor in front of the cell. The biter sagged in its restraints, but didn’t fall. Mason wanted to kill more of them. He aimed at one of the contained biters across the cell block. It leaned against its bars, arms reaching desperately toward the bloody dead. It could smell the fresh kill, but its wild eyes were empty of understanding. It hungered. Mason hungered too, for revenge.
    He dropped the pistol onto his stomach. He was already one of them. The anguishing thought hovered over him, pressing on his chest. He struggled to breathe, to control his anger. The pain in his arm reminded him where he was. He put his hand over the wound to staunch the blood loss.
    Chavez ran into view, sliding to a halt in front of the open door, staring wide-eyed at the two dead biters and Mason.
    “Someone’s on the way,” Chavez said. “I called for medevac.”
    “Inhibitors,” Mason groaned. The pain on his arm was still like fire , pulsing with each beat of his heart.
    “They’ll bring them,” Chavez said.
    “Get the first aid kit. I