He looked down the line for his parents, his friends, and his recently-mistaken-for-dead girlfriend. He saw most of them from his patch of mud. He definitely saw her. Victoria! She was—he was 99% sure—his girlfriend. An older woman too! She was seventeen.
They'd met less than a week ago, but they'd been through a lifetime's worth of adventures in that time. They'd been up in the Gateway Arch to watch for looters below and help the St. Louis City Police Department spy on them. She went back up alone a second time as a diversion to save him and his grandmother. That was the first time he thought she was as good as dead. After that they teamed up for the impossible task of helping Liam's 104-year-old grandma escape the collapsing city of St. Louis and get her to Liam's home in the suburbs. They pushed her in a wheelchair to escape zombies. They rode a freight train through hordes of the undead. They broke a blockade across a river set up by the Arnold, Missouri police department. Then they teamed up with an officer of the same department as they all watched the little town implode with the arrival of the refugees from the metropolis next door. And if that wasn't enough excitement, they reached Liam's home only to find his parents had left to go to retrieve Liam at grandma's house. He had made it all the way home only to find out they had switched houses. It was enough stress to drive anyone crazy.
But Victoria was there. She provided a quality he couldn't describe. A stability. A peace. Liam knew he tried harder when she was around, and because she was as smart as any girl he'd ever known, she was able to see things from a different perspective and give him ideas he otherwise would never have considered. He was actually beginning to feel things were going to be OK, even with a zombie plague unloading itself all over the world.
But then she was shot.
Throughout all their adventures they were being watched, and then pursued by a guy named Douglas Hayes. He said he was a truck driver for the CDC—a man with no job once the medical unit effectively ceased to exist—but it became clear he was more than that. He actually showed up at Liam's parents' house to collect Grandma. He requested Liam bring her to his military truck, but when he refused—well, Victoria got shot. That was the second time Liam thought she was as good as dead. By all rights she probably would have been, but the single gunshot hit the small but durable travel Bible Liam had procured for her earlier in their travels. The force of the bullet knocked her back and she hit her head on the ground when she fell, but she emerged relatively unscathed. Liam and Grandma were whisked away before they knew her fate, so Liam had several days to lament her passing.
Now, in this brackish creek, she was very much alive. Minutes earlier she had been wearing a clean and bright white shirt and blue jeans, with her brown hair tight in a ponytail. She reminded him of a perfect angel, returned from the dead. That angel was now covered in muddy slime. Her shirt was ruined. Her hair soaked and sprinkled with debris. And her face...
Her face was a wreck. In the last week she'd been beat up violently at the top of the Arch. Her face was graced with two black eyes, and more abrasions than Liam could count. Her nose might have been broken, though he couldn't say. Neither would she. In short, her face had seen some rough treatment of late. The water had washed off the heavy makeup she'd applied to hide her wounds, and now he could see her face as it really was. He could only think of how much pain she suffered, and how it made him angry someone would have done that to her. It made his thoughts turn dark.
Until he saw her emerald green eyes looking at him with a twinkle of mirth. Her demeanor suggested she was happy. He guessed she had a big smile on her face too, though her hand was over her mouth. Was she laughing?
“What's so funny?”
She moved—sloshed—to be closer to him before she answered. “I think I broke a tooth jumping in here.” She removed her hand, and sure enough blood was dribbling down her lower lip. Mixing with the muddy water already there. A large cut was on her top lip. She removed her hand completely and gave Liam a genuine smile, a big one. She had lost one of the sharp top teeth. The visage was both horrible and comical. Liam couldn't help but laugh.
“Good Lord Victoria, you need to start wearing a face mask.”
His parents chose that moment to slither along into the conversation. Victoria took the opportunity to smile for them as well. Their faces reflected a more serious analysis than Liam's. But Liam's sense of humor tended to activate under high stress situations. He'd had an irrational fear of how he would bring this girl home to his parents. He had no experience introducing new girlfriends.
“Mom, Dad, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my wonderful and elegant girlfriend, Victoria. Victoria, this is my mom Lana, and my dad Jerry.”
She played along, even though she'd already spent time with them. “Very pleased to meet you. Forgive me for not curtseying.” They looked at her like she was crazy, but noticed Liam was laughing hysterically and decided it was just too silly not to laugh.
Above them and across the parking lot, their entire lives were burning to cinders in the aftermath of the bombing.
Laughing helped take the edge off.
2
The group crawled out of the water, but stayed along the slope of the creek bank so they could observe the fires in front of them, and remain protected if more bombs fell. It had been twenty minutes since the big one went off, and no more A-10's had been by since the beginning. It was looking as if it was over.
Liam's dad called out, “Who are we missing?”
Everyone looked around, taking stock of the survivors. Liam saw all the people in his core group, including his parents. He saw Phil, the ex-police officer way down on the end. There was Melissa, a shoe saleswoman and apparently a military veteran of some kind. Liam didn't really know her at all.
The only person he didn't see was Drew, the boy who helped him get Grandma from the Boy Scout camp to his house. He was last seen laying on the street after Hayes had punched him to commandeer his bike—with Grandma trapped in the bike trailer behind. Liam looked at where Drew was last seen, and was disappointed to see it was well within the impact zone.
In the end they accepted many of their neighbors were undoubtedly dead. When this group ran after Hayes and Grandma as the thief took her to his waiting helicopter, they all took themselves out of the blast zone. The neighbors had remained in their homes or on their lawns, celebrating the fact they had defeated a small contingent of Hayes' soldiers in their Humvee's. That celebration lead to their deaths.
The humor of the situation ebbed away as everyone realized the gravity of the loss.
“What do we do now Dad?”
Liam had been waiting eight hellish days to ask that question. Ever since he and Grandma left her house in the city, he'd been trying to get home and find his parents. Yes, he wanted to be sure they were safe, but he also wanted to effectively hand over the responsibility of caring for Grandma so he didn't have to worry about her. Mom and Dad were always there when he needed them, even if he didn't agree with all their methods—such as sending him to Grandma's for the summer after a particularly trying period of conflict with them. Now, his question rang hollow. Mom and Dad, he realized, didn't have all the answers. They couldn't wrap up all his problems into neat solutions for him. Grandma had been taken by Hayes to do medical testing on her, despite his best efforts to protect her. Even his father wasn't going to have an answer to counterbalance that loss.
His dad was laying face down in the weeds. His arms were spread out in front of him, and his hands were tucked back so they were on his face, as if he were using them as pillows. His mom was laying next to him, on her back, looking straight up at the sky. They had just lost their house—well it was lost days ago when the big military truck tore the whole thing to shreds with its top-mounted Gatling gun—but Liam wasn't bothering with the details. That was a previous run-in with Hayes. But now even the perforated frame of the house was gone. Every possession, every memory, wiped off the Earth forever.
But it was more than that. Li
am's dad had spent years diligently stockpiling supplies he would need in the event there were catastrophes—man-made or natural. Liam knew about the secret room in their basement where Dad stored all his goodies, including lots of guns. Liam suspected that was what really had him upset, above and beyond the loss of friends and neighbors. That was supposed to be their life raft in these chaotic times.
Jerry popped his head up to look at him. “I don't know Liam. I guess we wait for the fires to die out and then see if there is anything we can salvage. I'm sure our house is wrecked, but from here I can't see if our house is now a crater. We'll see.”
Liam knew it was their only viable option right now. Wait and see. So they waited. The morning slid by. By about noon everyone was getting antsy. Melissa and Phil had been talking, and now Melissa came over to Liam's group.
“We should wait a little longer. I have a bad feeling about going back to the scene of a crime, if you catch my drift. What if they are watching for us to return? It's what I'd do if I were running this operation.”
Melissa was a forty-something woman Liam had met several nights before as she walked up the street toward Liam's house as a refugee. By almost any definition Liam figured she would be described as physically pretty. A little taller than most women, but shapely and well-proportioned. She kept her long blond hair in a ponytail, though now her hair was a mess, just like Victoria's. Initially reluctant to accept the hospitality of Phil and Liam, she was convinced by Victoria to give up some of her fears. By her own account she had been sexually assaulted by her former boss, then harassed by the sickos of the refugee crowds as they all fled the city. She was in no mood to accept the hospitality of a couple men.
She then went on to organize some men and women around Liam's house, and together they got the drop on a group of hostile men intent on taking Liam's house from him. The ensuing firefight was brief but intense. She proved her worth, though she ended up killing some of the wounded hostile men. She said it was to prevent them from coming back to harm them when they healed up. In his brief interludes of quiet thought of late, he'd wondered how Phil and his parents had agreed to keep her around after what were essentially battlefield executions. She was still with them, and going strong it seemed. Victoria said she helped organize the resistance on his whole street earlier today. She was probably very familiar with the people now dead up there. Bottom line, Liam was inclined to listen to her. Apparently everyone else agreed. So they waited.
They were rewarded for their patience less than twenty minutes later, when the sound of propeller-driven aircraft could be heard approaching from south of them.
“Everyone down!”
The trees near the creek offered some protection from above, as did the mute color of all their clothes after being in the muddy water, but they didn't want to take any chances of being seen.
They were impressed when two big planes slowly flew over their positions, and began tilting their wings so their propellers were facing straight up. The ungainly looking planes descended like helicopters to land on the large parking lot where Hayes' copter had departed hours earlier. The back ramps dropped and Army men poured out. He could see about twenty per plane.
“What are Army men doing here?” Liam asked.
Melissa was watching the drama with everyone else. “Not Army. The planes are V-22 Ospreys. Troop carriers. Those are US Marines.”
Marines. Great.
“Liam you must have made quite an impression on someone,” Mel quipped.
He could only wonder. Were they sent by Hayes to clean up his mess? If he had them on speed-dial, why not send them first if he really wanted to capture Grandma without incident?
The Marines spread out in careful formations, alternating with each other to various positions until they were up in the ruins. It became difficult to see what they were doing, there was a lot of smoke wafting around from smoldering fires, but they didn't appear to be searching any specific piece of the street.
“We should leave this place. They have to be looking for us.” As his dad would say, sometimes they really are trying to get you. His instinct said run.
Phil was quick to agree. “Any competent police sweep we ever did would investigate any nearby hiding areas for survivors. This ditch will be high on their lists once they start fanning out.”
Liam's parents seemed most reluctant to leave, but they were pragmatic about it in the end. Maybe it was shock. They slid away with everyone else.
The creek provided an easy route to slip away unseen. They followed it to a wider branch which went underneath a nearby roadway. Soon they had the entire road between them and the Marines. Next to the road was a thick woodland. They stayed low, got into the woods, and took stock of things.
Melissa gave her assessment. “We're probably safe over here, but I'd vote we go deeper into these woods just to be sure.”
Jerry agreed but added one important request. “Once those guys leave, we have to go back and grab our stuff.”
Liam looked at him like he was crazy. “Dad, our house is gone. There is no way your supplies survived that inferno. I'm sorry but its true. We should never go back if we think all is lost. It would be a big risk. Right?”
Phil and Melissa looked at each other, each with big smiles on their faces. Melissa seemed to be bursting to share her secret. “Liam, I know your house is a smoldering ruin. I'm sorry about the loss of your friends and neighbors, and your grandmother to that ass Hayes. But we've been busy beavers while you've been away.”
Dad added, “We have a survivalist/prepper, a US Army veteran, a police officer, and two whip-smart women on staff. Do you really think we'd leave our most important treasures sitting in our basement for anyone to take if we thought government agents were coming to our house to capture you?”
Liam thought about it for a few seconds, realizing the implications. “No, I guess I don't think that at all.”
For a brief time, everyone was laughing again.
3
The Marines weren't there long. The lumbering Ospreys were impossible to miss as they left. The group waited a suitable time and then returned to observe their street from a different vantage point.
“You think they would keep someone behind as a lookout?”
“Doubtful Liam, I don't think any agency has the resources to fly aircraft in and out more than the absolute minimum. Marines are used when they want to kill or capture someone. Special Forces are used when they want to observe undetected. Or assassinate someone.”
“Thanks Melissa, you are a real pick-me-up!”
The spirits of the group had simmered back to a disheartened baseline after the rush of dodging bombs, dragging themselves through creeks, and hiding in forests. Now they were heading home—to see if anything more than splinters was left of the Peters' residence. Looking at the neighborhood, Liam wasn't hopeful.
The remains of the street itself could be seen here or there, sometimes in remarkably undisturbed stretches of flat surface, but several bombs found purchase smack dab on the road. The resultant craters were impressive. Those big bombs had flattened all the houses in their immediate area, and the follow-up fire bombing had burned everything in the area to ash. Even the cars and trucks were empty hulks of fire-bathed steel. No one knew what kind of explosives had been used; Melissa said Napalm had been outlawed against civilians though there was no consensus of what constituted “civilians” when half the population was technically dead.
Liam's father tried to be pragmatic. “All we know for certain is that this street was considered such a high value target the military was able to task several planes, unload significant amounts of ordnance, and send a couple platoons of Marines to make sure it was erased. All those resources would probably have been more useful fighting the zombies right now.”
Liam and his father hadn't had time to catch up on all that had happened to them both since the sirens, but Liam took the opportunity to share the most salient bits of his struggle. “Hayes gave me a warning
as he was taking Grandma away in the helicopter. He told me the planes were coming, giving me time to escape. He said it was a detail he couldn't overlook, since I'd spared his life and the lives of his men. But he said nothing about why he needed to bomb us clean off the map. A Colonel I met in the government medical camp said he was responsible for deploying the strikes on other camps when containment failed. The planes were designed to erase all threats posed by the plague.”
All threats.
Liam's memory was jogged by his own statement. Several days ago he stood on a riverbank and wondered if his father knew the collapse was coming. He sent Liam to live with Grandma a few weeks prior to the outbreak of the plague, and she turned out to be an important objective to the CDC. Just a coincidence?
Liam pulled his father aside as they were walking through the ruins. “Dad, did you know the outbreak was coming? Is that why you sent me to live with Grandma when you did?”
His dad looked at him like he had grown a second head. “I sent you to live with Grandma because your attitude this spring was getting so bad both mom and I were arguing over which one of us would get to kick you out of the house when you turned eighteen. Your mom won that argument by the way.” He gave a slight smile, continuing. “We decided we couldn't take a full summer of the yelling and screaming, so we asked Grandma if she minded having an extra helper around. We figured if nothing else she wouldn't be as affected by your attitude, and because she couldn't hear well we didn't have to worry about you being too loud around her.”
That made a lot of sense. It was exactly the kind of statement he'd expect from his father. he also realized his dad hadn't exactly said no. Instead of pushing the issue, he moved on to a pain he knew they both shared. “I'm sorry I let Grandma get away. She said to tell you and Mom she loved you.”
His father put his arm over Liam's shoulders. “I'm sorry you both got you mixed up in all this intrigue. It's bad enough escaping from the zombies, but you were tough enough to get Grandma to safety even with all these other people trying to catch her. I'm real proud of you. In the end it was just bad luck that ruined your plan.”
Siren Songs: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 2 Page 28
