Stop the Sirens: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 3

by Isherwood, E. E.

  That gives me absolutely no comfort.

  Liam had learned to mistrust anything Hayes said. It had served him well the past two weeks, and despite his apparent falling out with Duchesne, he was still part of the team that destroyed the entire world. That alone was enough to engender mistrust. But he was over a barrel, and was about to be outside at 300 feet...

  Liam fumbled his way out the window and steadied himself on the exterior glass as he got his bearings in the shifting perspectives and geometry. He released the control clasp and dropped several quick steps so Victoria could join him.

  “Come on out, the weather's beautiful.”

  “Oh Liam, I think I'm going to throw up.”

  “Then why didn't you go first?” He tried to laugh it off, but he worried she might be serious. He wanted to believe he'd be chivalrous about it, but knew he'd probably be so grossed out he'd toss his cookies as well.

  “If I throw up, I'm sorry in advance.”

  Liam went down a few more paces, willing some distance from her. She came out and gently released her grip enough to drop to the floor below the open window.

  Hayes stuck his head out the gap above them. “This is where we say goodbye, Liam. You've fallen into my trap!” He gave a maniacal laugh and retreated back into the room, out of sight.

  Oh no.

  “If this is the end, I love you, Victoria.”

  “I love you, Liam.”

  Liam closed his eyes, waiting.

  Twenty or thirty seconds went by when Hayes returned to the window. Liam looked up when he heard the voice.

  “You guys are so sweet. I'm just messing with you. A small payback for all the trouble you've caused me. Oh and watch floor twenty. Those are the ones with pheromones that can make you go love crazy. That could be awkward. Ciao!”

  He left with a curt wave.

  “I hate him again. Let's keep moving.”

  “I would, but there's a creepy zombie staring at me inside this room. I can't look away. He's the biggest person I've ever seen—a giant. And his face is—horrible. But his eyes...”

  Victoria was a floor above him, so he couldn't see what had her attention. “We don't have time to sight-see. We have to move down. Now!”

  She loosed the harness grip and slipped down the wire to meet him. “Oh my. This building is horrible. But at least my tummy feels better now that I know we aren't going to die out here.” The breeze picked up, as if daring him to agree.

  They continued down the wire. After several minutes they had passed eight or nine floors. He paused to wait for her to catch up.

  “Hey, I like the view from down here.”

  “Seriously, Liam? That's what you're thinking about?” She laughed, but it was forced.

  He laughed, too, but when he took his eyes from her he saw inside the window next to him. He nearly jumped out of his harness when a zombie dressed in desert camo Army fatigues threw himself at the glass. The pane rattled, and small spidery cracks formed, but it didn't break open. The zombie continued banging on the glass with his head and arms, but it made no further progress besides smearing blood where it impacted.

  “Victoria, there's a zombie in this window. Don't let him scare you.”

  “Don't worry about me. Zombies are nothing when I'm hanging desperately to the side of tall buildings.”

  He continued but she stopped at the window.

  “Oh Liam. You didn't tell me he was cute.” She giggled.

  Cute?

  Hayes' warning echoed in his head.

  Are we on floor twenty?

  He tried to estimate, but from the outside it was impossible. The soldier zombie continued to throw himself at the window, inches from Victoria. She seemed unconcerned, and dangerously so.

  “Just keep moving!”

  There was no obvious way to use the clasp to go up the wire. Pulling her might be required...

  “Oh. Boo.” She sounded pouty, but did move after a long pause.

  Liam only let out his breath when she was a floor below the strange man in the window.

  Victoria seemed to sense the change too. “That was weird. I got all dizzy and...giddy.” She laughed it off.

  He laughed too, but only said, “I know the feeling.” He wasn't going to bring up his own experience with one of the odd zombies. Back near the beginning he had expressed his love for a zombie girl, in front of his grandma.

  On the way down they peeked in all the windows; they saw many odd zombie behaviors. In some rooms the zombies merely watched them go by, as if they were drugged. Some ignored them entirely, which was strange for a lot of reasons. Some ran in and out the open room doors into the interior of the hotel. Some rooms were full of zombies fighting among themselves. The blood in those rooms covered the walls and much of the windows too. One large suite was stuffed with children zombies. One room had either dogs or wolves. It was hard to tell as they had shredded the beds and used the materials to fashion hidey-holes. Lots of zombies threw themselves at the glass, but always in a random fashion and to no effect. They were three or four floors above the roof of the garage when he looked in a window and screamed.

  “Noo!”

  A group of zombie men in green biohazard suits hit the glass at the same time. The glass cracked audibly. He knew he should just keep dropping, but the horror in front of him was unbelievable. His hands wouldn't move him down.

  After the first strike, two of the three fell to the floor at the base of the large pane. The third went to the back of the room. He guessed the man had a chance to break through if he hit it where the spidering was the worst.

  “Victoria, move it. Now!”

  He dropped down the wire, hoping she would follow. However, she was slow to move.

  The glass above exploded outward and the running man fell out the window. His trajectory took him too far above Liam, and Victoria was still too high. He glanced off the wire, and pushed it away from the building. Liam bounced out, then banged hard against the glass of the floor below. The zombie's protective hood flew in a different direction as he flailed at the air on his way down.

  “You have to come down fast. That window's open!”

  He didn't know if he needed to tell her the obvious, but he wasn't taking any chances. Even so, she was still several seconds delayed before she started to move.

  “My harness is grabbing on the wire. I'm coming.”

  Liam looked up to make sure she got by the open window without incident. He was surprised when a hand reached out and pulled her entirely out of his sight. The strength of the zombie was incredible. It managed to pull him up several feet as it pulled Victoria—and the cable—inside the room above.

  Oh God no. This is it.

  One of the green plastic-covered feet near the base of the window popped out the window, then went back inside as if in pursuit of prey. Victoria struggled in the room. She grunted in counterpoint to the moaning gurgles of her zombie captors. She screamed loudly, then shot a gun several times. He recognized the small-caliber pistol.

  Victoria “sprang” back out of the window above. She was pulled through the window by the tension on the wire. He also dropped several feet as the slack returned. She dangled about, then steadied herself.

  “Go! Go!” She descended below the dangerous gaping maw, and kept moving. She caught up to Liam in a few seconds but grabbed herself just before her feet hit the top of his head.

  “There are more!”

  Liam looked up and saw them. Two more faces hung outside the window. Not the green-covered guys. One of them was a bloodied woman in a business suit. She jumped out the window. Another took her place. He watched in horror as the woman was only a foot or two from him as she sped by.

  The next one yelled from above. More faces found the opening too.

  He allowed his clasp to drop him many feet at a time, willing it to get him to the bottom. Several more zombies had either jumped or were pushed out as the number of faces in the window continued to grow. One managed to lay a han
d on Victoria as she dipped below them, eliciting a scream. She made better time as they neared the bottom.

  Thirty seconds later, a zombie wearing a blue football jersey managed to get his arms around the wire as he fell out. His momentum flung him around the wire as he fell. He spun in circles as he came down, causing the wire itself to vibrate and move. Liam watched the man fall toward Victoria at a high rate of speed for twenty or thirty feet, and at the last moment his bloodied arms released as if to grab her. He slammed into the glass of the tower and then deflected away from them both. His body rattled on the pavement of the garage.

  Victoria had been looking down the whole time.

  He looked up with a wan smile and shouted, “Only a few more feet. You're doing great.”

  3

  Liam touched down on the top level of the garage, surrounded by the accumulating bodies of the zombies that continued to fall out the window above. He stepped away from Victoria's path as he undid his harness. When she arrived they made short work of hers.

  “Thank you, Lord, for watching over us.”

  The roof of the garage was more or less empty of zombies, though the rest of the hotel grounds swarmed with them. They jogged a short distance to get out of the path of the jumpers. One fell every couple seconds now, and they made sickly crunches as they impacted.

  “And please help these poor souls,” Victoria added.

  “OK, we go in with our rifles,” he said as he unslung his. “Check to make sure the safety is off. Make sure you can grab extra magazines. Try to keep calm...” Deep breath. “...and kill them.”

  They checked their supplies; each of them had 30-round magazines in their AK's, with two extra mags each. Liam put his in the large front pockets of his jeans, while Victoria—with her women's jeans and their simulated pockets—had to put hers into her waistband.

  He knew this part of Hayes' plan would require lots of gun handling. It wasn't his strong suit, but he prayed he would be good enough. Either that, or he'd soon be a zombie.

  Stay positive.

  On the grounds surrounding the garage, the roar of the crowd of infected was constant and unsettling. They moved toward the stairwell opening they needed off to one side of the parking area. He took a knee and aimed at the two wandering zombies making their way over the pavement in their direction. He dropped the first with his first shot, but it took two for the second.

  “I need to be closer to hit them in the head like that.” Victoria claimed to be the poorer shot of the two, but Liam wasn't so sure.

  “We'll be plenty close soon enough.”

  They dropped into the stairwell, Liam in the lead. The concrete stairs were held together by an open framework of metal in the open-air parking garage. One or two cars were on the fourth floor, but little else. As they hit the landing, he observed only a few zombies on the entire level. Rather than engage, he continued downward. “Hurry!”

  It was dangerous to allow zombies to get behind them as they descended, but if they kept moving fast enough it shouldn't matter. They couldn't kill them all.

  On the third floor they both had to shoot a pair of zombies who were too close to ignore. As if trying to prove herself right, Victoria missed several shots before bringing one of them down.

  “Maybe I need them even closer.”

  Just wait.

  On the second floor, he took a knee and started shooting while he yelled at Victoria to keep moving down. He dropped four or five in just a few seconds. Many more were moving in their direction. Instead of shooting at the rising tide, he followed her down to the ground level.

  Zombies swarmed the level. Victoria had shot her way through a clump of them hovering on the bottom steps, but she had trouble with the zombies in the stairwell to the basement level. The rest of the crowd took a few seconds to notice them coming into their view.

  Liam yelled, “You shoot down into the stairwell, I'll keep them from following you.”

  Working together they fought the horde to a tenuous standstill.

  Victoria cleared enough zombies to begin going down to the basement level. Liam had his back to her as he fired at will at the dead circling the stairwell entrance on the first floor.

  “Go down!”

  He ran out of ammo as he began to follow. “I'm out of ammo. Turn around.”

  She spun around, and he squirted by to a step just below her. He slung his rifle and in one motion pulled out his handgun and pumped a few rounds into a zombie on the steps below. He holstered the pistol, grabbed a full magazine, and rocked it and locked it into Moses. He finished by pulling the charging handle to chamber the first round. The whole action took fifteen seconds, but during that time Victoria continued to bang away at the writhing dead above them. In the small stairwell it was like shooting fish in a barrel, even for a novice like her. But soon she too ran out of ammo.

  “I'm out!” She had panic in her voice.

  Liam turned around and ordered her to get behind him.

  She stumbled down the bodies accumulating on the stairs, but recovered at the landing between floor one and the basement. On her knees she reloaded her own magazine. It took her twice as long to reload. She mishandled the empty magazine and it fell through the crack into the open space of the level below.

  “Leave it. Run!”

  He was nearly deaf from the noise of their guns, so when she didn't move he was forced to yell even louder. “Get to the basement!”

  She heard that, and did as ordered. He ran behind her; the zombies above were free to pursue.

  Only a few zombies were in the basement level, so it was relatively easy for them to clear those nearby. Hayes had told them where the door was to the underground pedestrian tunnel to the Arch; they ran for it. A few dead zombies littered the route to the tunnel—signs Duchesne had come through. The infected excreted from the stairwell behind them. Daylight found its way through several stairwells of the level, so he could see their destination. After a mad sprint they reached the doorway and banged against it. It held fast so he tried to pull it open instead.

  “Of course it's locked. Hayes didn't mention any locks.”

  He was dismayed to see a pair of zombies running. He recalled a snippet from some zombie movie.

  No, they're sprinting.

  They were about three-fourths of the way across the garage while the rest of the zombies were still shambling away from the logjam at the stairs.

  Victoria yelled, “Break the glass.” Then she added, “Maybe Duchesne locked it.”

  Liam took the butt of his gun and tried to slam it against the door, but it had no effect.

  “What is this, bulletproof glass or something?”

  “Shoot it out. They're almost here.” To add to her seriousness, she got down on her knee and tried to shoot at the two zombies running.

  The bang bang bang rhythm was nerve wracking for him. He managed to turn his gun around and aim it at the door.

  I wonder if it will bounce back at me?

  As he thought the thought, he reoriented his gun so any ricochet would deflect away from them both.

  Luckily, it was not bulletproof. It blew out just like normal glass.

  Victoria continued to shoot. Each shot like a hammer on his ears.

  “It's open. Let's go!” Everything was a shout now.

  He tapped Victoria on the shoulder, appreciating her shooting skills. She downed the two runners, but the swelling crowd of zombies bore down on them.

  She got up and followed him through the gap.

  They ran for their lives into the dark tunnel.

  4

  Guided by their lights, they ran as fast as they dared down the tiled hallway. He resolved to thank the St. Louis tourism department for insisting this pedestrian-friendly tunnel was built to link the parking garage with the National Monument. It kept them from having to walk the impossible walk on ground level.

  The moans fell behind, but didn't disappear.

  “Hopefully they'll get stuck in the door like t
he 3 Stooges.” Liam had seen plenty of the bumbling trio. It was a favorite of both he and his father. He could only dream the zombies were that mindless.

  He thought he heard some footfalls from behind, and he slowed just enough to shine his light backward. A blood-covered male soldier zombie hurtled directly at him. He had only a fraction of a second to act, but he guessed the zombie was going for his light, so he tossed it straight up while he sidestepped in the hallway.

  The light smacked the concrete ceiling. The zombie jumped for it, and its speed carried it right by. It tumbled on the slippery tiles, and came to a rest about twenty feet ahead. Victoria still held her light; the beam pierced the bloody eyes of the infected man.

  Liam brought his rifle to bear and fired off a wild series of shots. The close quarters amplified the noise and concussive force, causing him to jump even though he was the one pulling the trigger. Victoria's light was unsteady in the chaos.

  The zombie moved slowly toward them, unconvinced by the missed shots. Liam's light rolled on the floor, throwing light in mad directions. The monster seemed unable to orient on any one light source, or the humans nearby.

  More are coming...

  Panic rose in Liam's stomach.

  He took careful aim, and put one shot into the face.

  Certain he hit it, and with no fanfare, he picked up his own light and they continued down the long hallway.

  “Don't stop, Victoria. Run for it.”

  They never looked back. They reached the Arch museum entrance and encountered two sets of glass doors. The first set was unlocked so they could enter the airlock between the two portals. The interior doors were locked, however.

  “Just shoot it.” She sounded close to panic, too.

  He couldn't see any way to avoid shooting the door. He took some comfort that the outer door was closed, and because it opened outward, the zombies would not be able push it open. But having two intact doors would have made him feel twice as safe.