“What about the others?” Liam didn't want to leave the whole group inside that truck, though he had to admit he was glad he chose to sit at the back of that thing so they were pulled out first.
“The other Humvees will get them out. If they can push back the looters maybe they can free the MRAP too. A good mine-resistant vehicle like that isn't something we want to abandon.”
“Wait. Those were looters?”
“This whole trip we've been attacked by them. They see us as a threat to their ability to steal and destroy everything in this part of the city.”
Liam had seen looters destroy everything that held together the fragile safety zone in downtown St. Louis at the Arch.
As the Humvee cleared the firefight and smoke, the machine gun up top stopped, the driver slowed to safe cruising speed, and Hayes gave them the all clear to sit up. Finally, Liam would get a look to see the new landscape they'd been trying to reach for so long.
His mouth dropped when he saw where they were.
Is this for real?
6
After a full night and morning of riding in the back of the MRAP, Liam imagined they were somewhere in Texas, or even Maine. Instead, they were on a street Liam recognized as being less than thirty minutes from his house. They were still in a suburb south of St. Louis.
“Are you kidding me? This is all the farther we've gone?”
“I guess I can't blindfold you now while we go to our secret lab, can I?”
Liam gave him a harsh look.
“Oh, lighten up, Francis. We've been avoiding roadblocks, traffic jams, and hordes of zombies since we left your house. It takes time to plan routes, feed more candy to the dragon riding on top, let your friends out to pee, and keep ourselves from getting bogged down in massive throngs of the infected. It would be easy to get trapped forever in one of those groups. Traveling in the apocalypse is not like going to school with the text-and-drive crowd you're used to. It's gotten complicated.”
He hated admitting the guy was making sense, but...
“So then where are we going?”
Hayes was pointing to a nearby park a mile or two up the road, across the interstate. Liam knew where they were now, so he knew the destination, if he was being told the truth. It was a huge wooded park designed around a herd of elk the locals kept penned there as an attraction. Liam had been there once as a young boy and could remember absolutely nothing of the trip. It only stuck in his memory because it was close to the highway and every time the family drove by it, Mom and Dad would reminisce about that earlier trip. They would always ask if he remembered feeding the reindeer, to which he replied many times, he didn't. Then Dad would take his cue to bestow a biology lesson, starting with “did you know they aren't really reindeer?”
I wish you guys were here now.
Before his mind could start warming up for a fight, he tried to coax more information from Hayes, though there was a powerful part of him that couldn't help but respond with snark.
“Are we going to feed the reindeer?”
“Ha! Those elk are probably already dead. People are going to be hungry. And no, we aren't going to feed them.”
The Humvee sped along the road underneath the main interstate highway in the area, wasting no time with any of the desperate hitchhikers running their way. The highway itself looked like it was a bombed out parking lot. Many cars were smoldering, while others had their doors hanging open, abandoned. There were quite a few people walking around, though it was impossible to tell through the dirty and broken windows of the Humvee whether they were alive or dead.
A short drive on a side road brought them to the gate of the park. Nearby was a large wooden sign with faded white letters which informed citizens they were about to enter Lone Elk Park. Unlike most parks in the area, this one was practically unique in that it was surrounded by a ten-foot wire-mesh fence high enough to both keep the elk inside, and keep other species of deer on the outside. It wouldn't keep out a determined human who could easily climb it or cut it down, but it would be ideal for keeping mindless zombies out.
Until they were so numerous they pushed the fence down.
Liam knew that story had already been written. No fence was impenetrable. He surveyed the barrier as they drove through the gate and to his untrained eye it looked pretty solid. Solid enough for today.
They sped along a narrow road until they came to a clearing next to a small man-made lake. Instead of elk they were greeted with several immense olive drab tents and many smaller flanking tents. There were also a few other Humvees parked randomly in the complex, plus a few civilian cars. A gaggle of guards were jaw-jacking near one of the big tents, but that was about it for people. No one was walking around outside, which Liam took as a good sign. No zombies were here. For now, whatever project was taking place here was under human control.
The clock is ticking...
Liam suffered from an overdose of pessimism. The past twenty-four hours had been nothing but down for him. Really everything had been down since he kissed Victoria at the sycamore tree two mornings ago. Would that end up being the high point of his life going forward?
Hayes got out first, then opened the front door for Liam and Grandma.
“It isn't Fantasy Island, but welcome anyway.” He swished his hand in a dramatic gesture as if to show them the entire facility with it. Liam helped Grandma get out of the high-clearance truck and set her upright as he held her next to him. He noticed she was leaning hard.
“Let me show you to your tent. This way please.”
Liam was struck by the silence of the place. After the constant din of the MRAP, and the battle they'd just escaped, his brain was suffering in the absence of loud noise. He could hear birds tweeting softly all around them, and the rustle of nearby tree leaves. It was only disturbed if he listened very hard for a soft hum coming from one of the larger tents.
They walked a short distance to one of the smaller tents. It was still a very large affair for someone used to a four-man tent his family used for camping. It was about twenty feet across and looked like heavy canvas construction. There were full-length flaps on all four sides, allowing a person to walk in from any side. All were open but the one in the very back. It was hot enough they needed the airflow.
As they got closer he noticed there were several cots in the tent, and most of the cots had people lying on them. He tried to get a better look, but when they were at the threshold of the front tent flap Hayes stopped them. “This is going to be your new home for a while. I told you back at the bridge we're going to protect you two. You will be safe here. I'm sorry for all the—ah—unpleasantness getting to this point. From here on out you're home free.”
Liam didn't want to sound too pessimistic in front of Grandma, but he'd read enough zombie books to know how silly that statement sounded. He cranked the sarcasm all the way up. “You realize of course this whole camp is going to be overrun, and we'll probably all end up dead or zombies. You know that right? You brought us here for nothing.”
“And you realize of course I just spent two days, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, precious fuel, and many other toys and manpower to bring your grandma here. Oh, what? You forgot? I didn't bring you here. I brought her here. Now that I have her here do you think for a second I need you and your attitude around?”
He stepped in it now.
Uh oh.
“Sir, I'll do as you ask. Please leave Liam with me. I really do need his help getting around after all the excitement of my travels.”
Hayes had a penchant for the dramatic. He left it hanging for a long time whether he was going to give Marty her wish.
Chapter 8: Elk Meadow
Hayes had kept Marty and Liam in suspense for a long period of time. So long that Liam needed to shift his weight to his other foot while he stood there holding grandma.
He's going to kill me.
Hayes was looking at Liam, studying him. He realized at last what it meant to have your life in
someone else's hands. His mouth may have just gotten him killed. Then how would he avenge Victoria? “I'm sorry. I get mouthy when I'm nervous. It got me kicked out of my house by my parents. Please don't kill me.” He knew he was falling on his sword, but he couldn't stand leaving his fate completely in the hands of this man.
“Kill you? Is that what you think of me? Listen, I hated to have Victoria shot, but you see how the world is now. Everyone wants to kill everyone else. Bullets are flying. These plague victims are chomping. I really didn't have time to argue with you. You see that now, right?”
He didn't wait for any reply. “Anyway, I'm not going to kill you. I just enjoy messing with your head because you are so freaking annoying. But consider this one helpful hint before you settle into your new lives. Grandma, I'm talking to you on this one. If either of you so much as sneezes and I don't like it, I won't kill you for it, but I might have my friends over there kill you for me. A minor detail perhaps, but my job is all about the details.”
He spun around and shouted out, “Enjoy your stay!”
They entered the tent and found their way to a couple of empty cots. Grandma asked to lay down, which was easily accommodated with Liam's arm.
“Thank you, Liam. For all your help on this trip. I just need a little time to rest now. And pray.” She had her Rosary out again, holding it to her chest.
Liam was once again reminded of a dead woman with her arms folded across her chest, dressed in her everyday clothes. It gave him the chills to look at her. He stood there for a few moments to observe. She seemed to drift off to sleep almost as he watched. Satisfied she was still alive, he looked around at the rest of his tent mates.
Well, I'll be.
Everyone in the tent, maybe ten others, was elderly and frail, just like the group he'd left in the MRAP. He was now convinced the common denominator was age. It wasn't background, skills, knowledge, or anything else. The CDC was collecting old people. But why?
“Hello, everyone. I'm Liam and this is Marty.” None of the old folks looked as if they were as old as Grandma, but he didn't feel right asking them to call her “Grandma.”
“We were kidnapped at gunpoint two days ago and brought here in one of their military transports. Is that how you got here too?”
Before anyone could answer a nurse came up to the tent, wearing camouflage scrubs and with a light mask over her mouth and nose. She asked “Ruth” to come with her. Once identified, the nurse moved to help one of the women rise from her cot—it took her some time to do so—and she went off with the nurse.
Once that distraction was over, an elderly man got up and introduced himself. He was thin and dressed in sweat pants and a well-faded Hawaiian shirt, but seemed energetic and alert. Qualities in short supply with the crowds he'd been hanging with lately.
“I'm Zachary Taylor—yes like the President, my parents had high hopes for me—so pleased to meet you Liam. I look forward to meeting your grandmother when she's up to it.”
“She's my great grandmother actually. She's 104.”
The man let out a quiet whistle. “I'm sorry about how you found your way here. Most of us volunteered to be here.”
“Really? Did they promise you anything? Threaten you? Tell you why you're here?”
Zachary looked around to the few others sitting up and alert, as if to take their temperature on this point. “They told us the world was going to hell and that we had a chance to save it. Most of us—”
He looked around the room, scanning each bed.
“—yes, all of us here now were in various nursing homes in the area when they found us. You see, once the power went out things became very—what's the word I'm looking for here? Terminal? Yes, things got terminal at the nursing homes. A few families came to get their loved ones, but many of us were already on our own when we went into the homes, and we had no family or friends left on the outside. No matter how bad things got in there, we had nowhere else to go.”
Zachary went on to explain how the loss of power was followed by a short but tense period on reserve generators at his home, but those failed pretty quickly. Power had been going on and off for a couple weeks before the final shutdown, so the generators had already seen hard use and poor maintenance. The final straw was lack of fuel. “Needless to say, many of the residents required power to live in comfort; some needed power simply to live. It was in the first day after the sirens people started to die—and the stream never stopped until there were only a handful of residents left. Even the help had scattered to the winds as things got progressively worse. Then Hayes showed up. At that point it was myself and another woman—we joked about being the last man and woman on Earth, wouldn’t that be ironic? Hayes offered us a place to stay and explained why he needed our kind of people on his team, including the downsides.”
Liam interrupted. “Why! Why does he need people of your generation?”
“Experiments of course. They are experimenting on us to try to solve the riddle of the cure.”
“And you let them?”
Zachary looked around, suddenly with a sadness about him. “Son, you're a bright-eyed kid—what are you, about 14?—so you can't see things for what they are. The world has collapsed. People are dying in the streets. What hope of survival do any of us old fogies have? What hope of ever contributing again? I can't speak for us all, but I'm doing this so my death means something. I see that look in your eyes. I know I'm going to die soon. We all do. If the Department of Homeland Security says I can help make a difference in finding a cure and protecting my fellow man I feel it is my civic duty to try.”
“You said Homeland Security. Are you sure this isn't a CDC facility?”
“No, Hayes definitely said he was with Homeland Security. Why? Does it matter who he's with? Obviously this is a government operation.”
He couldn't answer that out loud. It mattered he saw a discrepancy. His dad would be shouting from the rooftops this was an ah-ha moment. He would never accept it didn't matter which entity of the government had shown up at his doorstep and asked for his cooperation. He would demand to know whose name was on the letterhead of the warrant. He'd want the address of the judge, in fact.
Hayes represented a group with lots of manpower, lots of military gear, and an apparent inside track on finding the cure to the infection burning through the population of the world. He was willing to tell lies to get them all here, including a lie about who he was with and what he did. Finally, he was willing to have Victoria shot in cold blood just to spank Liam into compliance.
Liam was agreeing with dad on this one.
I think it's pretty important who he's really with.
In front of Zachary, he just shook his head no.
2
The tent settled into a routine after the initial introductions and Liam's encounter with Zachary. Most of them were lying on their cots, resting. His watch displayed 2 p.m.
Two hours until bedtime!
He chuckled internally at the jocularity concerning old people. He knew it wasn't universally true, but Grandma was often in bed at the unnaturally early time of 7 p.m. For a fifteen-year-old, the night was just getting started at seven. Rather than take a nap he pulled out his phone. Looking at it, he felt the sadness creeping back in.
I should have taken her picture with this.
How he missed that trick in all his time with her he'd never know. Before the sirens he was always snapping pictures of friends, pets, and even the odd pile of dog poop. He'd send them to friends as part of the life of a silly teenager. But he never thought to take her picture.
“Maybe I could ask agent Duchesne for a copy of the picture he took of her.” He could only laugh at the multiple layers of futility in that thought.
He was staring at the lock screen and noticed he was getting a Wi-Fi signal. Looking closer, the little display icon showed it was trying to acquire a signal. It hadn't found an open one. When he got past his lock screen he swiped around a few times until he was looking at the availabl
e hotspots.
He was about to scroll through the list when he was aware of the nurse returning to the tent. He put his phone into his pocket just as the nurse arrived. She seemed to pause her eyes on him, but he admitted it could have been his imagination. He wondered if he looked guilty.
“Liam and Marty? Come with me please. You need to meet with the base director.”
Liam moved to the nurse. She was still wearing a mask. “Would it be OK if I let my grandma sleep? Can I come with you now and then tell her what I learned later?”
The nurse nodded in the affirmative and she began walking away without comment.
He waved to Zachary so someone knew he was leaving the tent.
He tried some clumsy small talk, but the nurse was not very friendly. Soon they were at another of the smaller tents, but this one was closed on all sides and they had to go through a small door flap on the front.
Inside was nice and cool, though it had a strong musty smell common to all canvas tents left outside for any length of time. Several dim fluorescent lights were hanging from the tent's roof, their wires all running into a bundle near and under the back tent wall. He also noticed a tube of some kind was blowing air directly onto the man sitting at the lone desk in the middle of the tent. No, not just a man. A soldier. He was an older man with near-total gray hair, including a gray mustachio. He was wearing a camouflage uniform, the eagles visible on his shirt as he looked up at Liam.
“Hello, Liam and...Marty.”
“Uh, hello, sir. I'm Liam. My grandma is sleeping. The nurse said I could take notes for her.”
He turned around but the nurse was already gone.
Siren Songs: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 2 Page 14
