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

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