“What? I'm not just going to sit back there by myself.”
They all had a little laugh and marched up the level driveway of the house. Liam's name loomed large, adding to his displeasure that things seemed to always be about him.
Bo kept things light by saying,“You're famous dude,” as he walked up the few stairs to the front door. He jiggled the handle; it was locked.
“Maybe the back door is open.”
He walked away from the front door as Liam tried to open the garage door. At first he thought it was locked, but it rose a few inches. He called for help. With great effort the three of them were able to get it nearly all the way up. With no electricity for a garage door opener, it took sweat power.
They froze in place. They held the garage door above them, hovering between getting it all the way up and letting it crash back down. In the almost-empty garage was a large 55-gallon drum with the unmistakable outline of a bomb on top, complete with blinking lights.
Thirty seconds passed. They were frozen.
The door of the MRAP opened and Phil yelled from the street, “What do you guys see in there?”
Liam blocked a straight view of the device from Phil's vantage point. He scooted over—still holding the door—so it became clear.
The only response Liam could hear was muffled cussing.
“Do we drop the door?” Bo asked. “Run for it?”
Liam had read enough and watched enough movies to know there were a million ways to make a bomb explode. Trip wires, lasers, sound waves, chemical mixtures, proximity sensors, or even the good old fashioned button. Maybe the door opens and knocks a bowling ball onto the bomb.
Or maybe the door closes and explodes.
Once again Liam faced a life or death choice.
Melissa came running up the driveway at full speed. “Let me see it!”
“What, you're a bomb expert too?” Liam asked while straining to hold the door.
“No, but I played one on TV. Just let me look in there.”
She approached the open door and took her time scanning the garage, including the door itself. With great care she made her way over to the big drum, staying as low as possible. With exaggerated slowness she stood up next to it.
“OK, I don't see any wires connected to it or the garage door. Someone put some heavy weights on the door, but they seem useless. I think you can push the door open and then back away.”
“No way,” Bo said. “We don't really know what's going to happen with this door. If we open it, maybe it explodes. If we close it, maybe it also explodes. Y'all should clear out and I'll close the door. At least we know it has already been closed and didn't explode. We don't know what happens if it goes all the way up.”
Liam couldn't argue with his logic, though he didn't like the idea of leaving him behind even with such a remote chance of the thing exploding.
Victoria was already on her tippy toes holding the door up. She probably couldn't hold that position for much longer.
Melissa accepted Bo's suggestion, telling the rest of them to clear out. She left the garage slowly, but then ran for the MRAP once she was out.
“I'll be ready to move once you two are in!”
It left the three of them holding the door. Victoria was visibly straining.
“You can let it go, Victoria. I got this. You too, Liam.”
They both let go and Bo took the burden. He didn't seem the least bit strained.
“Um, I'm sure this isn't goodbye, but thanks.” Victoria said it almost reverently.
“Yeah, thanks, man. See you in a few.”
Bo turned his head and smiled through his beard. “This is a gravy. Beats the heck out of laying fence. Trust me on that.”
In moments Liam and Victoria were back in the MRAP and it was backing up the block.
Melissa parked it so they were facing the house, about fifty yards away.
They all watched as Bo let down the door as far as he could, but he had to let it go to avoid hurting his fingers and it slammed noisily to the pavement. He appeared to pause after it was done, as if he expected an explosion and braced for it.
“Why didn't he run?” Liam asked.
“Whatever's in that drum would have blown up an area bigger than he could escape.”
“Then why are we so close? Shouldn't we be in the next county?” Liam mused.
“Relax. Nothing can hurt us in here.”
Bo finally stood, gave a thumbs up, and started walking toward the street to meet them. Mel had released the brake and applied the gas.
Seconds later, Bo dropped flat on the driveway. He looked back into the woods from which they'd originally emerged.
“What the—” was all Liam managed to say.
Bo's head lifted up and then ducked quickly back down.
Phil had his weapon in his hand in a flash, “Someone's shooting at him! We have to—” But before he could finish his sentence, and before Melissa could get to him, the world in front of them turned black.
5
The violence of the explosion hit them in a split second, and it rocked the huge truck. It was strong enough to toss debris into the front windshield, and cracked it in several places. Something heavy crushed the passenger-side windshield pillar and spidered the glass in front of Phil. A dark cloud of smoke and dust enveloped them while debris rained down for several minutes.
As the smoke cleared, the evening had almost moved from dusk to night. When it was just a gentle trickle of falling matter, Victoria asked, “What just happened? Where's Bo?” Liam could see nothing was left of the house. Even less than the charred hulks of the burned homes. There wasn't even much of a fire. Nothing was left to burn.
Melissa and Phil both had identical looks of shock as they stared out the front.
Liam wondered why he wasn't in shock.
How would I know?
He answered the question. “Someone was shooting at him from the woods. Maybe they hit the drum behind him and set it off? Or...” Liam's mind was in conspiratorial overdrive these days, so his next statement came quite naturally. “Someone was aiming for the drum to get it to explode on purpose. That...should have been me.”
“Liam, no,” Victoria said softly.
Mel snapped out of her reverie. “Yes, he's right, someone set it off deliberately. That's why there were no wires or timers. They were waiting until we were all there before setting it off from a distance. Not quite as sophisticated as the improvised bombs we saw over in Iraq, but still effective. They had us all pretty much dead to rights when we were inside the garage, but maybe they thought we were all going to get out of the MRAP.”
She seemed to regain her composure the more she spoke. She stepped on the gas and drove with purpose toward the subdivision entrance. “I don't know what this is about, but if it was a trap there may be other ambushers waiting for us.”
Sure enough, as they exited the subdivision they saw a disorganized gaggle of civilian vehicles to their left, parked off the county road. Several men and women ran around as if the explosion had set them in motion. Many of them were armed with big black battle rifles.
“Kill them,” Liam yelled. “They murdered him.”
Mel turned the rig to the right, but she stopped in a few moments. She left it idling in the middle of the road.
Liam had no idea how to fire the chain gun. “Someone shoot the Gatling.” He pointed up at the roof.
“I will, Liam.”
They were in full view of the men behind them, but no one was firing. He didn't know if they had begun chasing them, or if they were innocent bystanders. He didn't really care. Mel was operating the controls for the chaingun. Liam heard it rotate on top, and then rip out shells for a second or two. He was about to cheer when it stopped.
A few moments later Mel returned to her driving position and continued up the road at an almost leisurely pace.
“Did you get them?”
“Those folks won't be bothering us anytime soon.”
“Did you kill them all?”
Mel turned to look at him with a very serious face. “Liam, things are very fluid here. We have no idea who those people are. We can barely see them. We can't just go around shooting men, women, and maybe children—even if I think they were guilty. I put some rounds across their bow.”
At that second Liam felt it would have been a justified killing. But he knew he could never know for sure if those men were with the ones who shot at Bo, or if the ones who shot at Bo were actually trying to blow up the house and kill his friend. There were too many variables to have black and white anger.
“You're such a nice kid Liam. You have to view everyone out there as a potential bad guy now, but you don't have to kill everyone.”
Liam and Victoria returned to the back seats while Mel and Phil drove and rode silently in the front. Bo's hat still sat on the bench. He'd taken if off because it was so hot in the back. It made Liam feel his absence immediately.
The truck rolled on. He was sure something didn't sound right with the engine, but his ears were still buzzing and ringing from the explosion. He was content to sit close to Victoria and simultaneously fume and grieve. It was several minutes before anyone spoke.
“Guys, we have problems up front. Again.”
Liam saw what appeared to be several families with small children walking in the same direction they were driving. It would be possible to drive through their loose formation, but he judged it would be very risky with so many children present.
“In Iraq, I heard of women and children being used as decoys and human shields for hardcore insurgents, but this looks innocent. Still, keep your eyes and ears open.”
An older, thin, gray-haired woman dropped back from the main detachment so as to speak with them. The main group wasn't waiting for her.
Phil cracked open his door so they could communicate. It groaned loudly as it fought the bent support of the windshield. Liam could only hear her from his vantage point, but she spoke loud and clear.
“Hello ma'am. Why are you all out on the road like this?”
“We come from a subdivision back yonder. Some a-holes dressed like deer hunters come through and killed everyone they could find, then started burning our homes. The menfolk did what they could to stop them while we got away. We're supposed to meet them at a school not far up the road.”
“How many men were attacking you? Were they professional soldiers?”
“Naw, they drove regular trucks and wore camo like they was hunters, not soldiers. Don't rightly know the difference, but soldiers don't kill civilians for no reason. My children are old and grown, but my husband stayed and fought with the other men.”
“Do you know why they might have left one house intact? Right in the middle?”
“Nope. I saw them torch my house. After that I didn't care. That's when the men gathered us all up and sent us quick on our way. What was that big boom we heard?”
“Oh, that was a bomb in the last house.”
“I guess the men gave them a good fight and let us escape. Nothing worth dying for in those houses. I should keep moving.”
Phil tried to yell some more questions out the door, but the woman wasn't interested. “Well, that's that. An unknown group of bad guys took down a whole subdivision for no apparent reason. Then they set up a trap specifically designed to draw us in and kill Liam. Sounds like a lot of people died in that effort, too.”
Liam replied in a mechanical tone, “Do we get involved with these people? Isn't it my fault they're on this road? Lost their homes. Lost their...” He bit his tongue to prevent the tears waiting just behind his eyes.
He looked up and saw three faces looking at him with concern.
“How can we help? Won't we put them into even more danger? We have no food or water for such a large group. We can't even protect them for any length of time. And every minute we delay is one less minute to reach and follow the Marines.”
Melissa focused on the tactical situation. “The highway is behind us. It probably isn't safe to go back that way and engage whatever group was back there. If we go forward we can loop around and eventually get back to the highway, but we could just as easily loop around to the south and deposit these folks at the Boy Scout camp. We have plenty of gas, and other than a cracked windshield she seems good to go.” She rubbed the dashboard as if the truck were alive.
Victoria added, “We can't just drive past these poor people and leave them in our dust. Like Liam said, we have to take some responsibility for this. If they knew it was his name on that garage they'd probably want to string us up. We should at least help them to their rendezvous with their men.”
Phil turned dark. “Bo paid in blood for this subdivision. What happened here with the burning and the killing—it's happening everywhere. You guys saw it in my own neighborhood all those days ago. Society is burning up like newspaper in the fireplace. Soon it will just be ashes. Then things are going to go downhill from there. I came on this mission because I made your grandma a promise. I feel sorry for these people, I really do, but my allegiance is to my tribe here in this vehicle, and Liam's grandma wherever she might be. We have to take care of our own before we can hope to save anyone else.”
Liam sat down in the back once again, in thought.
He tried to process all the facts in front of him. Like any number of zombie books he'd read, he was faced with a no-win scenario. He was thankful for the small miracle that this dilemma didn't directly involve fighting off zombies, though fighting with other humans just as disturbing. He was used to making decisions in his online game. Save the princess or save the village. In the game there were always ways to do both if you navigated the decision tree in just the right way. Was there as similar string of decisions that would allow him to save these people and save Grandma? There had to be.
Or I could lose Grandma and watch these people die.
“We help these people to safety, then go get Grandma. At worst she would probably jokingly scold me for trying to rescue her, but I think she would use an honest-to-goodness curse word on me if she knew I abandoned these kids when I had a chance to lend them a hand. If we can't count on anyone to do the right thing anymore, then Phil will be right. The world will be burnt to a crisp.”
After a minute of introspection as the truck rambled along behind the women and children, Phil spoke up. “Liam, the threat of Grandma cursing at me is enough to agree with you. And your idea makes perfect sense. We save these people, then we save her.”
Mel got them busy. “Liam, would you be kind enough to man the rear window and make sure no one is following us. We'll watch on the remotes too. I'll keep us just behind the group and we'll see where the night takes us.”
Liam looked West; the last glint of sunlight dipped below the treeline behind them. Someone out there had just tried to kill him in the most destructive way he could imagine. The Marines were moving toward Grandma, leaving him behind. Hayes had her somewhere out there. Civilization itself was enjoying its last hurrah. Zombies roamed through it all. It seemed there were nothing but insurmountable tasks ahead of him.
Victoria's hand touched his shoulder.
He looked at her in the dim cabin. She smiled a faint smile.
“We'll get through this, Liam. We all want to find Grandma.”
Her eyes were islands of calm on a stormy sea.
He resumed his watch, thinking about the one friend who wouldn't be helping him anymore.
Goodbye Bo.
Chapter 8: Thunderstruck
Only a handful of the subdivision's men made it out. Three men showed up to the rendezvous at the school, and they were in a hurry to keep moving once they found the women and children. The survivalists, as they called them, were behind them the whole way. Phil suggested they return to the Boy Scout camp rather than stay near the school. After some deliberation everyone agreed it made the most sense to join up with a stronger outfit. One man even claimed to be a Boy Scout saying, “Once a Scout always a Scou
t.”
Liam and Victoria got out of the MRAP to walk so they could fill it with the smallest children and the weakest older ladies. Older kids, and a few women to watch them, climbed on the roof. It helped the entire procession move with haste.
Liam learned from the survivors they had been assaulted in a swift strike on their neighborhood by an unknown, but large number of “gun-wielding duck-hunter type characters.” Initially they went from house to house killing any men they found, and capturing women and children. But then they starting using rudimentary catapults to toss bottles of gasoline onto nearby houses, setting them on fire and chasing out the occupants. There was no defense against it once the houses started to burn. The remaining families rallied on the far side of the subdivision, and that's where they enacted the plan to help the women and youngsters escape while the men made an effort to buy them time.
Still, no one could explain why there was only one house left standing, and they had no idea anyone had written anything on the garage door. Liam was content to leave it at that, rather than explain it was his name.
Several times throughout their walk they thought they could see dim lights far behind, but no one could say for sure. Liam was ecstatic to be challenged by someone at the edge of the Scout camp. They'd finally have some friends to help them.
“Halt there! What's your business? This is Boy Scout territory,” cried a small voice in the night.
Liam chatted with the boys manning the forward checkpoint, and word was supposed to be sent to Mr. Lee's team about what had happened. A boy took off up the trail.
Phil and Mel discussed whether the survivalists were trailing them. They suggested the checkpoint be pulled back so none of the boys got hurt, but the boys wouldn't go. They did agree to move deeper into the woods and assured everyone they would observe and report, rather than confront anyone coming up the road during the night.
The MRAP continued up the paved road as fast as the people outside could walk. They headed for the front gate. Liam had a strange desire to see his parents. He assumed it was because he was surrounded by kids who had just lost their fathers.
Stop the Sirens: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 3 Page 13
