2
Marty heard the sound of someone falling down the stairs. It had been a scarce 24 hours since the last person fell down those stairs—so there was no mistaking it this time.
Liam had gone up into Angie's apartment to retrieve her car keys, but she hadn't considered whatever made Angie sick could have still been up there—waiting to pounce. Maybe it was something simply floating around in the air as a pathogen. What had she done? What kind of caretaker was she?
The front room's door was wide open into the stairwell. If Liam was now sick he could come right through and it would all be over for her. She was paralyzed with indecision. She could try to close the door. Or do nothing. Such a dumb mistake.
She knew she couldn't just sit and wait to die, so she repeated the previous day's motions—pushing herself out of her chair, grabbing her walker, walking through her house, and then found herself once again near the door to her neighbor's home. She knew Liam was lying just around the corner.
Putting on a brave face, she wanted to see Liam before she shut the door on him forever. And so she looked.
Marty hadn't even considered the possibility he simply fell down the stairs on accident, but that looked like what happened. She could see the blood on the bottom of his sneakers. He was knocked out, but breathing normally in the early morning light within the foyer.
With the realization, all the strength she felt was sucked out of her. Now she was an empty, weak, shell. She needed to sit down immediately. She managed to make one quick detour to grab a comforter from her sofa, walk it back to Liam, and drape it as best she could over him. She didn't want him to catch a draft on the open floor.
Since she was in her front room she scraped her way to the sofa, turned around, and plopped onto the cushion. Her slight frame scarcely made a dent in the fabric. She let go of her walker, and it stood up off to her side.
I'm not even half the woman I used to be.
It was a common refrain in her mind these days. She knew her days were numbered. The number of years left to her were probably less than the fingers on one hand. She no longer played the denial games of her younger self—she only spoke the most brutal and honest truths to herself. This was one of those times.
“Oh Liam. I'm so sorry your mom and dad left you here with me. I'm sure they are thinking the same thing right about now. They thought they were doing me a favor by putting you in my care. Giving me someone to help around the house. Someone to talk to. Someone to care for. Everyone needs that.” She sighed deeply with exhaustion in both body and spirit.
“If you were with your parents right now I would probably just sit in my chair until the end.”
Looking at the crucifix on her wall, she wondered seriously if that was the attitude she should take. Her Christian upbringing taught her to care for those less fortunate, stay strong in body and soul, and enter the Kingdom of Heaven after a life well-lived. Nothing could have prepared her for this situation. Plague. Chaos. Sick people. What does the Bible say about surviving the end of the world? Sure Revelation is replete with end-of-world imagery, but it was no guidebook for how to endure it.
Was it was suicide to knowingly stay put, acknowledging survival in the coming storm was impossible? Just cower in the disintegrating neighborhood until the food and water runs out. Then the end would be quick.
Isn't it also certain death for a woman my age to go into the storm?
Even several minutes of prayer brought her no closer to an answer.
She weighed her chances of staying in the house by herself, sending Liam out without her. She could survive for a week or two under the best of conditions. She had plenty of food thanks to her well-prepared grandson—Liam's father—but she knew it was only a matter of time before hungry and less prepared neighbors began scavenging. And it wouldn't be hard to take from the oldest lady on the block. That says nothing about thieves or brigands from beyond the neighborhood. Sick people like Angie would also ensure she could never leave again. Staying or going, being on her own was certain death.
Thinking of Liam passed out on the floor in the next room also gave her more to worry about. If she went with Liam out into the city, she would be slowing him down to the point she would surely endanger him. She couldn't even manage him in her own house. What would she do when people, plague, and the sick were making life difficult for them? There was absolutely nothing she could contribute.
I can't even shout anymore.
Tired, she stared off into space for an indeterminate amount of time before she heard Liam stirring.
That brought her back into the present, and the question she still couldn't answer.
3
Liam was laying on the floor at the base of Angie's stairs when he came to. Grandma had tossed a little blanket on him, or at least he assumed it was her, though she was nowhere to be seen. From his position on the floor he was looking up the stairs. His headache let him know the full story of his rapid descent.
Yep, I'm THAT GUY.
He slowly sat up, anticipating a pounding headache. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as he feared. He remotely considered everything that could have happened on his way down—broken bones, broken neck, even death—and felt pretty fortunate. He wondered if dialing 911 would reach a live person anymore.
His first tried to make his way to the first riser so he could sit in an upright position and take stock. Next, he stood to test his legs. He felt a little dizzy, a little achy in his noggin and along much of his right side, but overall he was fit for duty.
I got the keys!
He moved back into Grandma's house only to find her sitting on the big sofa. She looked very tired when he first saw her, but she looked up and gave him a big smile. The warmth returned to her demeanor.
“I'm so sorry Liam, I shouldn't have sent you up there. I wasn't thinking about your safety.”
“Don't worry Grandma. It was my fault I slipped on...something, and tumbled down the stairs.” He then looked away from her as he remembered what he saw up there. He wasn't sure if telling her about all the blood was the right thing to do.
“Do you want to know what I found up in Angie's apartment? Besides the car keys?”
“Oh, I guess so, since you made the effort to go up there.”
“Well, there is a LOT of blood. And lots of her clothes were in the middle of her living room. And her cat...was no longer alive. But mainly there was a lot of blood. I couldn't tell if it was her blood or what. It was kind of scary.”
“Were there any clues as to how she got sick?”
“Dunno. How do people normally get a plague like this? Sneezing? Coughing? Sharing germs?” He hesitated here for fear of voicing the one method he hoped would never prove true. The most common fictional method for people to become zombies—biting.
“Ummm, Grandma, did Angie looked like she'd been bitten by anything? Maybe her cat?”
Or maybe a human...
“I'm afraid Angie was so bloody I really didn't see any one place where she might have been bitten. She was just bloody all over.”
Liam wasn't looking for bite marks on his walk home. Now he couldn't even remember the color clothing the Yoga girl was wearing, much less if she had bite marks on her. The adrenaline rush and confusion had clouded his memory. He remembered the bloody look of her eyes, and it matched the blood-drenched stare Angie gave him.
“Grandma do you really think we should leave? This sickness seems real bad.”
She spoke aloud about the message on her answering machine, “It said to seek safer jurisdictions. The message didn't say to hunker down and wait for authorities. It didn't say the army was coming to help. It didn't even suggest order would ever be restored. And then those tornado sirens blasted for an unusually long time, as if to amplify the severity of the warning. The hour-long blast was a big shout to get out Liam.”
She paused to let that sink in.
“The phones are dead. Radio only loops the President's message. I don't think help is coming, a
nd it is going to keep getting worse in the neighborhood if we stay here. Yesterday they were robbing garages. Tomorrow they are going to start robbing people's homes.”
Liam knew she was right, even though he really wanted to stick things out in the safety of the house. Going back out into the growing chaos wasn't something he relished. But his embarrassment on the steps proved even his own home could become a deathtrap. He considered whether just breathing the same air up in Angie's apartment had exposed him to whatever this sickness was.
“Grandma I was packing last night so most everything is ready. I was really hoping we'd wake up and things would be getting back to normal and we wouldn't have to go anywhere, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen.”
The sounds of the neighborhood had begun picking up as the sun rose, and hadn't slowed down once it was well in the air. First it was just distant gunfire and squealing tires, the same as most of the night. Then it started to increase in frequency and volume, as if it were getting closer somehow. Recently he could hear discrete gunshots, some very close. And the screams. Those were picking up as well. Just getting to Angie's car could be a challenge if things got much worse.
“OK Grandma.” He reassured himself, “I feel OK. We have to get our stuff and get out of here.”
Liam grabbed the backpack he prepared last night and staged it by the front door. His most precious items were the two handguns. One he carried in a holster inside the belt and waistband of his pants. The other, along with the ammo, he stuffed into his pack. He would have to carry everything because Grandma wasn't able to lift anything but her walking cane.
Liam took a minute to consider his plan. First he had to find Angie, and make sure he wasn't going to accidentally let the sick nurse back into the flat. Then he would run out of the house, cut across several yards, and emerge on the road where her car was parked—avoiding other sick people or criminals as needed. A quick run to the car, keys in the ignition, and finally a high-speed return to pick up Grandma.
Sounded easy. But he knew any dumb mistake would gain him notoriety as THAT GUY again. It was something that made him double his efforts to think of everything that could go wrong with his plan.
I'm sure I'm missing something.
4
Liam looked out every window in Grandma's flat and Angie was nowhere to be found. He could think of several places she could be hiding, but he hoped she decided to move on to find other humans to attack.
Rather than overthink things, he let Grandma know he was going to run out the back door, and that she should shut the door behind him right away. He would be running for the car.
“Good luck Liam. I'll be praying for you.”
Liam knew she would. “Thanks Grandma. I'll take all the help I can get!”
And with that, he opened the door, took a few steps to clear it, and Grandma closed it. Liam was quickly over the fence into the next yard. And the next. And the next. In a couple minutes he was in the last yard, ready to jump the last fence before the run in the street toward the car. His brain started running a little sideshow in his head. It showed all the ways he could fail. Tripping. Ambushes. Gunfire. Getting run over by other cars. His heartbeat was revving to keep pace with the images in his head. No matter what he did to settle himself, he couldn't push them away.
He knew he had self-doubts about his abilities, just like anyone would, but he was haunted by his recent mishaps as “the guy who blows it.” More images spun up in his mind, no doubt fueled by every zombie book and movie he'd ever consumed. Would he get out onto the street and trip and break his ankle, to be easily hunted down by a sick person? Would he be the guy trying to start the car over and over, only to have a zombie pull him out through the window, or have one of the marauders in the area put a bullet in him just to get his working car?
And PS if I die, Grandma dies too.
He had a vivid vision of Grandma standing in her kitchen where he last saw her. She was still there looking out the back, waiting. His vision faded, but he was glad because his next thought was that Angie was somehow in the house with her.
It was too much to digest, and he had to sit down in a flowerbed to give himself some cover while he kept his heart rate from exploding, and his brain from panicking. Nothing like this had ever happened to him.
So many things can go wrong!
He could see the car, and it didn't look like anything was going on in the immediate area. Now was his chance if he could settle himself down. He tried thinking of something peaceful—the lake where he spent a lot of time as a child—but that only reminded him of another incident where he almost drowned. So he focused on the moment, and studied one of the wild yellow flowers nearby. He ignored everything else for several minutes, until his heart rate was back to normal. When he was ready, he willed himself to stay in the moment. He ran.
He was up and over the final fence, and he felt strong as he cleared it. He landed well and was running hard for the car in just a few seconds. The hundred yard dash took much longer than he remembered in grade school gym class, and his awareness was crystal clear as he sprinted. There were wisps of smoke in the air, drifting from the two burned out houses behind Grandma's. It smelled of wood and synthetic housing materials, giving it on balance a foul smell. There was a very slight breeze. The sun was signaling it was still early morning, but moving closer to late morning. It happened to be fairly quiet in the neighborhood just then, gunshots and screams were ebbing low.
Liam remembered all these things because of what happened next. Angie was there. She had been hanging around in the alleyway and had a good bead on him as he was running down the street. She tumbled around the corner nearby, and began another earnest pursuit.
It was a replay of yesterday, and all Liam could think about again was falling down, twisting an ankle, tripping on his own feet, or some similarly stupid calamity. He slowed down a bit and became hyper-aware of the ground over which he was jogging. Scanning for any sign of distraction which could end him.
He looked at the distance to the car and knew he could outrun the lumbering and injured nurse, but he wasn't sure if he could close the door and start the car before she was upon him, possibly breaking windows to get inside. It was time to use the gun to remove all those hypotheticals.
He pulled out the Ruger from his waistband, toggled the small safety on the grip, and aimed for the center of her mass. He had done this a thousand times before, though he had never shot anything living.
Is Angie alive?
He had mere moments to bobble that thought in his brain, and then he pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He pulled back the slide, thinking he needed to chamber a round, but in doing so he made the horrible realization that the gun was quite empty.
OH MY—
She was on top of him, Liam with his arms extended in front, and Angie with her arms extended toward him. The nurse was slightly taller, and weighed a few pounds more even in her “condition.” Liam did have the advantage in dexterity though. As the blood-covered woman pushed into him he dropped his useless gun and was able to grab both her arms and use her momentum to pull her forward as he sidestepped her and stuck out his foot to give her a trip.
Angie fell to the street, her face absorbing the brunt of the impact, though she let out only the smallest grunt. Liam regained his own balance, wiped the nasty blood off his hands using his jeans, reached down to pick up his gun, and resumed his sprint for the car.
In moments he was in through the open passenger door. He pulled the door closed behind him, pushing the lock down in one smooth motion. He tried to ignore the fact he was sitting in sticky congealed blood. He definitely ignored what was sitting on the floorboard in front of him.
I don't see the foot.
He shuffled over to the driver's seat.
As he put the key into the ignition Angie stumbled up next to the passenger side window. Her forehead was devoid of skin from her latest fall, and the bone and blood gave
her an even more unholy expression. And she was looking directly at Liam through the very thin glass of the car door.
The car engine turned over quickly, but it took Liam a few seconds to orient himself with the gear lever on the console, so he could slap it into “drive” and get moving.
Angie began banging and screaming obnoxiously outside the window. A million thoughts clouded Liam's mind at that moment, but the one that stood out most was how glad he was Angie seemed oblivious to tools. One strong rock would be enough to break the door's glass and end this whole affair.
He solved the shifter, put the car in gear, and smashed the gas pedal. The car lurched ahead, requiring a quick steering adjustment to keep him on the pavement, and then he was pulling away from the scene.
He turned around at the next intersection so he could backtrack to the front of Grandma's house. He sped by Angie who had been loping along the street in pursuit. He briefly thought about swerving to “take her out” but he couldn't quite convince himself it was necessary. He wanted to pick up Grandma and just leave the nurse safely behind.
I did tell her to meet me in the front, didn't I?
As he rounded the corner he was more than a little worried he had left that part out of his plan with Grandma. When he got close, he didn't see Grandma at the front door.
He pulled up to her house, avoiding the few cars still parked on the street, pushed the emergency brake, then jumped out of the still-running car and ran for the front door, hoping against hope she would appear at the entry as he ran toward it.
Please! Please! Please!
5
He wasted no time standing at the front door. If she wasn't there already she wasn't going to get there in a hurry. He moved to the back of the house on the run.
He slammed the rear door after coming through, quite out of breath.
Grandma was indeed still camped out in the kitchen, right where he left her. He decided now wasn't the time to chastise himself.
“OK Grandma, let's move up to the front door and we'll jump in the car. I parked it out front.”
She was very understanding, or maybe just didn't notice the oversight.
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens Page 7
