Liam shivered when he looked across at the horde on the wrong side of the river. He fancied himself an expert on zombies. He'd been reading zombie books and watching zombie movies since he was a small child. Probably much earlier than was reasonable if the parenting experts were to be believed. It did give him plenty of reference material to explore the behavior of these plague victims, though he was quick to realize real life was much more random than any book. Sometimes luck played as much of a factor in survival as preparation. It's something you can't appreciate until you've seen death within inches, only to have it pass by harmlessly. Liam resolved to cherish every second he had with Grandma, and make every effort to be a stand-up man for Victoria. He'd seen too many men give up, fade away, or just go crazy over the past few days. He knew just being there for her would be more than most men could provide in this new existence.
So what do we do now, Mr. Expert?
Liam had been working on that problem since Victoria laid down to sleep. Was that an hour ago, maybe two? He looked at his watch and saw it was nearly noon. Noon on the fourth day since the sirens.
He didn't know exactly what they should do, but almost every book he'd ever read on zombies made it clear the only way to truly survive in the long run was to find a strong group of like-minded individuals. Not that he was being choosy back in St. Louis, but he'd dropped in with a group of St. Louis city policemen as they escaped the city last night. It maximized his own odds for sure, though getting out was still a very close affair.
Once on this side of the river, many of the police and other survivors had scattered, in a hurry to get wherever they needed to go. The only officer he really missed was Jones, the beefy black cop who laid down his life saving a large group of survivors. He had nothing against any of the remaining officers, but they all had families and were quick to be moving on. Liam needed to go somewhere specific. Home.
He looked at the roadblock and only saw a handful of local cops, a couple police cars, and a mish-mash of other survivors loitering about, as if unsure where to go next. It was a new day. A new part of the world. A new adventure. It was just like setting out in his online gaming world.
Except in this world you don't get to start over if you die.
2
Marty was asleep. She knew it right away. She was standing in her backyard. The lush green grass contrasted with the fresh white paint of her standalone garage filling the scene before her. She left her real house days ago, and now she was standing in her yard, as it was decades ago when she first moved in.
“Hello again, Marty.”
It was her husband, Aloysius—Al for short. Well, it looked like her husband. An angel? The being had helped her earlier this morning as she lay dying on a bridge being chased by a horde of infected, though she couldn't recall the specifics of that encounter.
“Why can't I remember our last meeting? I know we met in this...dream world...and you gave me something to say to Phil from his dead wife. But what?”
“Ah yes. I told you I'm not really supposed to help one way or the other for it could upset the balance of this world in unexpected ways. I can mitigate that ethical dilemma somewhat if you yourself don't remember the agent of that unbalance. Since I'm in your head already, I can—make adjustments.”
“So you're scrambling my brain? It’s already old and scrambled I'm afraid.” She laughed a little, but it was true.
“I needed to bring you here, Marty. And I'm sorry to do it. But you have to see the world for what it really is if you're going to save it.”
In front of her, where a second before there was nothing, she saw her nurse and friend Angie. Dead with a large hole in her head. She had become infected and was largely responsible for forcing Marty out into the world with Liam.
“I want you to see her. Truly see her, and those like her. These—infected—are the future of the human race. Look closely.”
She only saw the blood. So much of it. Many infected people had blood oozing from their eyes, ears, and noses—as if they had some terrible equatorial disease such as Ebola. But it was so much worse because the victim never fell over and died. They just kept walking around, trying to spread the infection as far and wide as possible. She felt horrible Angie had to be the example for this demonstration.
“Yes, I'm sorry too. But what if I told you that because of an unfortunate series of dangerous coincidences, the trajectory of the human race has been changed so it will now die in obscurity on this planet? Every last human being is destined to stand around staring off into space with nothing of any value inside their brains?”
“I'd say you were describing every new generation of kids that has come along in the previous hundred years. I should know!”
“So right you are Marty. But this would be the last generation, ever. And the members would all look like poor Angie there. Until the sun burned out, the only humans surviving would be those like her. She would have seen the sun die if she wasn't shot.”
“Impossible!”
“In an infinite multiverse, nothing is impossible.”
She looked at Angie again. “Not that it matters in the short run, but surely they'd wither away after a time?”
“No, these terrible creatures are imbued with a power both terrible and wonderful. That same power which allows me to talk to you here is also responsible for—'animating' people like Angie. That energy is practically infinite, which means the sickness will last for eternity.”
“They'll live forever?”
“They'll die forever, Marty. They're dead. But we aren't going to let that happen. There is a cure. You will find it. Of that I'm certain. You're already on the course right here and now. I just need to tweak your memory a little. I can summon a little more of that—energy—to help you collect your third partner.”
Ha. A cure? She had considered that at the start of the outbreak, but it seemed impossible once she realized the condition of the infected. How could a body recover from such trauma? And what of the mind? What was Al saying about energy and such? Marty admitted he often spoke above her.
Al walked closer to her, not in a menacing way, but with purpose. “I'm sorry again, Marty, but I have to show you something. It will be uncomfortable to watch.”
“What is it? Is someone in trouble?”
“There you go again, thinking of others. But this time you're right, someone is in trouble. They're about to die.”
She looked at him and was dismayed to see how uncharacteristically serious he'd become. Something bad was coming. He leaned close. She heard a car engine approaching. It was a sound she recognized. He began to whisper.
“This is how Victoria dies.”
And then she saw it happen.
3
Grandma woke with a start. “OH MY GOD!” She heaved sideways and tumbled into the sleeping figure of Victoria next to her.
“Grandma, that's the second time today you've woken up saying that. What kind of dreams are you having?”
She looked around, initially unsure of her surroundings, but quickly gathered her wits. Last night she'd almost gotten them all killed when she woke up screaming those same words while zombies were lurking around their group. “I think there's a cure to this thing. I think I'm a key part to learning the secret of that cure. I've been told—”
She appeared to force herself to think, but to no avail. “He showed me...things.”
“Grandma, if I didn't know better I'd say you've been reading too many zombie books. Of course that's what they tell you. 'There's a cure' and it’s up to you and your merry band to find it and save mankind. As if there's no one else in the world searching for a cure but two kids and their grandma. Who told you that? Was it the same person who told you about Phil's wife?”
Just this morning she seemed to glean information on a police officer's dead wife and daughter “from beyond,” which helped them negotiate their way to safety over the bridge—but that seemed like a miracle. This seemed more like misinformation. A distraction.
“I don't know. I have these dreams and they're so vivid, but I forget them almost as soon as I wake up. I think it's Al telling me these things.”
“Grandpa?”
Liam remembered great-grandpa Al from when he was a small child, and through pictures and movies his family had taken back then, but he had very little direct recollection of the man, other than he was a kindly person who loved to laugh and joke with anyone who happened to be in the room with him. As with his great-grandma, he referred to him simply as “Grandpa” in normal conversation.
“Grandpa is talking to you in your dreams?”
“That feels correct.”
Liam took a minute to study her. He knew she was quite old, 104 to be exact, but never once had she ever displayed the least bit of dementia. He didn't think she was starting today. “Alright then. I believe you of course. But what does he expect us to do about a cure? He might as well tell us Santa Claus is real.”
Grandma gave him a sideways glance, which Liam took as an invitation.
“Santa is real?”
Victoria hit him on the shoulder, but all three were laughing.
The consensus was that even if there was a cure to this horrible plague, they were in no condition to find it. They were hardly in a position to move beyond the tree. Grandma's cane went MIA back under the Arch, and the big wheelchair given to her by a passerby was lost last night when Liam whiffed tossing it onto a moving train. He and Victoria could help her walk for a short distance, but that wouldn't work for a longer journey. Step one of their master plan to save the world had to begin at the most rudimentary level. They had to find transportation.
Liam studied their group. He was the 15-year-old boy dressed in jeans and a Mountain Dew T-shirt, carrying a small Ruger Mark I .22 caliber pistol inside his waistband. Victoria was his partner, a modestly pretty 17-year-old girl clad in a formerly beautiful black cocktail dress covered almost head to toe in coal dust, and accessorizing with Liam's brown leather belt around her waist so she could use his holster for a duplicate Ruger Mark I. They were both caring for Liam's 104-year-old great-grandmother. She was wearing a light blue pant suit and a head scarf, with the ability to walk unassisted for about ten feet, armed only with a Rosary. They also had Liam's backpack which had some sundries such as off-the-shelf pain medications, a near-full box of 1000 rounds of .22 ammo, food, and a couple remaining bottles of water.
We aren't exactly the stuff of legend.
Liam wasn't convinced there really was a cure. This was the real world, not some book about zombies. In the real world, filled with people with conflicting goals and morals, hiding something as big as the source of this plague and any attendant cure, would be impossible. Somebody would talk. Someone would warn the world. The internet would be filled with anonymous tips from good people who wished to save humanity.
The answer could have been out there all this time, but he was so busy playing World of Undead Soldiers with his friends he would never have noticed if someone was screaming it on every news channel or posting it in every online forum. He lived his life as far from the “real world” as was possible for someone so engrossed within a bubble of modern communications. It would have been a point of pride a week ago. Now it was a major liability.
Still, from a technology standpoint Liam was probably their best chance of finding clues to help them understand the plague, and to discover if there was any hope of a cure. But to do that he'd need access to the internet, and probably weeks of time to study message boards far and wide. If this thing was global it was likely the internet was down everywhere—to say nothing of most of its users either turned to zombies already or fighting for their lives against the walking dead. That made him about as useless in the technology department as Grandma—a woman who prided herself at avoiding anything more technologically advanced than a rotary telephone.
That brought him back to the present. She still seemed comfortable sitting against the tree, but Victoria was crouched in the grass nearby, trying to rub her arms and legs to remove the insidious coal dust. She was having limited success.
Liam took the opportunity to move back toward the blown bridge. Whatever their long-term desire to find the cure might be, everything started right here.
He needed to get the trio to his parents' house. He needed to meet up with mom and dad. He needed to find allies.
The key to all that was sitting in a police cruiser back at the bridge.
4
“Excuse me. Officer, uh, Phil.”
The man who had been instrumental in saving them when they crossed this bridge this morning was the man in charge of the whole operation here. He was a police office with the Arnold PD, the local jurisdiction. They had been manning blockades across all the bridges south of St. Louis with orders to prevent anyone—living or dead—from crossing to the south shore of the Meramec River. The goal was to prevent the infection from getting out of the city, but it also doomed those who were still alive to suffer a horrible death as they were caught from behind by the growing hordes of zombies. Grandma was able to convince Officer Phil to let her band of survivors cross this bridge—and then they used a wrecking ball to drop it in the river.
By Liam's calculation he was actually in Phil's debt, but he was hoping Grandma's “miracle” in letting him talk to his dead wife would have some lasting value for what he was about to ask.
Phil was sitting in his black and white police car with the door open, listening to his radio. When he saw Liam, he rose from his car to meet him. “What can I do for you, son? Is your grandma alright?”
“Yeah, she's fine, thanks for asking. We hate to impose on you, but she has no wheelchair or cane anymore so there's no way we can get her home. I was wondering—well, we all were—if you can help us find a ride home?”
“Where do you live?”
“Not far. My parents have a house in Barnhart.” Liam couldn't help but show excitement.
Phil gave him a long hard look, then sat back down in his car. The radio was cackling loudly with several urgent reports. Lots of them were squelching each other off the air. He turned the radio down significantly. “On any other day I'd give you a ride and be back here in thirty minutes. I know you don't live far, but the world has gone to pot as you can tell.”
Liam didn't know what that meant specifically. But yes, the world was a mess. Phil took a long time, apparently thinking while looking forward inside his cruiser.
“I don't know how your grandma talked to my wife and daughter. It was a miracle by the grace of God. I've been sitting here wondering what I should do next with my life now that I know what I know. The fact that your grandma helped you guys cross the river probably saved our lives too.” He was sweeping his hand toward the few remaining police officers standing around, near the destroyed bridge. “All the other roadblocks have fallen—violently. The interstate was especially brutal. Citizens refused to be turned back. After seeing the walking horror following you guys I can understand why no one would turn back to face it. If I was a smarter man I would have realized that immediately when I saw you, and reported back to HQ that we had no choice but to open the bridges to everyone while there was still time. The dead reached our roadblock first, I guess because they were intent on following your train directly out of the city. But there was never a chance of stopping them.”
He stood up, slamming his door. Liam backed up a few paces, listening intently.
“The citizens refused to be denied the bridges. They began shooting. Then they began swimming. They got behind the police and other city workers who were manning the roadblocks. Lots of good cops died needlessly for a stupid order from the mayor. I can see that now. What it did was turn the citizens against the police, and then against the entire city of Arnold. Right now the angry people from the roadblocks are tearing the town apart. Burning it to the ground. As you might have figured out, being a police officer for this town is now practically suicide.”
“Sir, what if I told you my g
randma discovered there's a cure for this thing? I'm trying to help her so we can organize a mission to find it.” He left off the detail about her learning it in a dream.
“Well I don't know anything about finding a cure. Would be nice of course. But the only thing that matters to me right now is what my wife would want me to do. I believe she'd want me to help you, and I have to admit I want to stay as close to your grandma as possible in case my wife wants to communicate with me again. But I have duties here. People depend on me...”
Liam thought of all the police officers he'd encountered since he left Grandma's house. Duty was always fore in their minds, but they were people, too. They balanced duty with their obligations to their own families, which was why they fought so hard at the Battle for the Arch, but then had to abandon that fight when their families were in mortal danger. As a boy with missing parents, he appreciated how they operated.
“The way I see it, your duties have been fulfilled. If my father were here he would say it much more eloquently than me, but I think he would be critical of continuing to work for an organization that seemed so intent on hurting people.”
“I think I would like your father.” After a thoughtful pause, he said, “Give me some time here. I'll think about getting you and yours home.”
Liam walked back toward his companions, hopeful he had just started them in the right direction.
5
“I think I may have found us a ride home.”
Victoria looked up from what she was doing in the grass. “Does it involve that military truck coming this way?”
Liam hadn't noticed any military truck, but now he saw a Humvee painted in multiple shades of green and brown camouflage. It was alone and heading directly for them on a gravel road parallel to the train tracks.
Siren Songs: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 2 Page 2
