Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Phil slowed the truck to take it all in. They were all gawking like schoolkids on their first zoo field trip when a man ran up to Phil's window.

  “Hey! You might want to get that car off the bridge. Some of those people down there might be tempted to come up here and take it from you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I'm going to pull the car well off the road so no one can see it, but, if anyone wants to get out now, I plan on walking back and talking to these people on the bridge.”

  Liam volunteered to get out. He looked at the women.

  “I'll stay in here, dear. I'm comfy.”

  “And I'll stay with her. We'll keep each other company.” Victoria gave Liam a smile as she said it. A bright ray of sunshine after the problems they'd been having.

  Liam looked at Phil before he got out. “You think I should carry the AR?” He was looking at the AR-15 expectantly.

  Phil took a few seconds to consider. “No, it would better to keep your sidearm handy, but hidden. Be ready to defend yourself, but don't make yourself a target. There are desperate people down there. They might see a young man with a rifle over his shoulder as a juicy mark. Don't worry, I'll be back in a couple minutes.”

  Liam stepped out, and the SUV sped off. He was mesmerized by the impressive number of his fellow man down below on the interstate. He looked behind him and saw the wave of mankind pushing well down the highway and over a small rise about a mile away.

  I wonder where they're all going?

  As he was standing there, gawking, the same man was once again giving a warning. “Hey. Howdy there. My name's Mark.” He hung his hand out for Liam to shake.

  As Liam became aware of the hand, he blinked his eyes as if to wake himself up. “Oh, hi. I'm Liam.”

  “I know. We're all exhausted. But I recommend you move over here to where we have our little operation. You don't want to be alone and looking down into the crowd like that. It freaks some of them out. And these folks are already freaked.”

  “No doubt.” Liam followed him from the middle of the bridge to a point a bit further toward the western edge. There were about twenty or thirty people doing various tasks up on the bridge decking, all of it related to water. Some were pulling big water containers on bicycle trailers. Others were pushing some kind of garden cart with more containers. Then there were static containers filled with water sitting directly on the bridge. Several people were either filling them up, or draining water into buckets. Those buckets were being dropped over the side of the bridge. Liam walked over to the edge and could see where the buckets were going. The crowd below was using the water to quench their thirst. They looked road-worn but shouted up thanks with real gusto. He had to admit it was almost festive.

  Mark spoke to Liam as they both looked down. “Get to livin' or get to dyin', eh?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it's a line from a movie. It's how I feel about setting up this water stop for people.”

  “You set all this up?”

  “Well, me and thirty of my closest friends. Yes. We did it together. The fast food joint over there was the key though,” he was pointing off to their left, “they still have running water and the owner got us most of these big containers.”

  Liam was impressed. It had only been four days since the world did its face-plant off the bicycle, but this was the first truly positive thing he'd seen. It lifted his spirits. “Amazing.”

  Phil came running up, and after some introductions, he took in the operation and could only echo Liam.

  Liam looked at Mark. He seemed to be in his 30's or 40's—he was notoriously bad with ages—with short dark hair with bits of grey sprinkled in. He was average build and average height. He was wearing dark sunglasses and an obnoxious deep red Hawaiian shirt with white palm trees. He came across as a naturally happy person, with an infectious smile, even in the midst of this terrible scene.

  He turned his smile on Liam. “So what brings you guys this way? Not many cars on the roads these last couple days. You must be going somewhere—surely not here.”

  “I used to work for the Arnold police. I've heard on the police scanner that some local official from Arnold is rounding up all his remaining officers, and those from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, and are going to try to turn these people back.”

  “Back? That's insane. Where the hell is he going to try this neat trick?”

  “Lucky you. They're coming right to your bridge. 3 p.m. today.”

  Liam looked down at his watch. It was already 2:30.

  Saddle up! We're out of here.

  5

  Liam really wanted to get out of there, but he couldn't force Phil and he didn't want to lose a ride for Grandma.

  “Did you know these folks burned Arnold to the ground?” Phil nodded in the direction of the massive plumes of black smoke to the north. The small town was indeed burning.

  Mark had already heard about the blockades at the bridges, and how they fell. He pointed over to his team and said a couple of them had come directly from the nearest up the highway. Whoever it was probably wouldn't be too happy an Arnold PD cop was standing right here on this bridge, though Phil had nothing to do with the bridges other than the one he managed—and, on that bridge, he let the people across peacefully.

  “But most of these people are just like you and me. Average law-abiding people. Parents. Children. They have no more interest in the violence spinning around them than they did before the collapse. We set up this system with the water to keep them moving down the highway. Initially I thought of the idea to keep them from coming off the highway and overwhelming my neighborhood, but now that I see them—there is nothing that can stop that now. There are just too many.”

  “And they're being pursued by zombies.”

  Both men turned to Liam. Phil had briefly witnessed the zombies in action, but Liam had spent days inside St. Louis trying to fight them and get out.

  “Well I can't say for certain that these people are being pursued by zombies, but my grandma and me lived on the south side of the city and we had to practically fight our way out tooth and nail since the sirens went off. We met Victoria and she helped us get out of the Arch. We met Phil and he helped us get over the last bridge out of St. Louis. The infected—I call them zombies—are real, and they're vicious. They wouldn't stop following us even in the middle of the night while we were on a train.”

  Mark looked back to the crowd. “If they're behind this group, it's going to be an explosive disaster. There's nowhere to run with people packed that tight.” He put his foot up on the concrete barrier that was the side of the bridge, like he was thinking. Liam noticed he was wearing cycling shoes—the kind that locks a rider onto the pedals. An interesting choice for someone with that shirt on.

  “I just don't know what to do. I can't make these people move any faster. I can't warn them without panicking them. I also have an obligation to my wife and family to protect my own house. If these people leave the highway and zombies are rampaging over the countryside, my little water station is going to be a skidmark on the underpants of this disaster. Maybe it would better to just abandon it and spend time fortifying my neighborhood?”

  Phil replied. “There's no clear answer. Once the Arnold people get here, there's going to be a disaster either way. The Mayor is an idiot if he thinks this tiny intersection can be defended against this crowd, when an entire river wasn't enough to stop them. Of course, this is your town now—he's no longer worried about destroying his own, because it's already ash.”

  Stay or go. Door 1 or door 2. The age-old question of gamers lining up for quests in his video game world. Only a few days ago, World of Undead Soldiers was the only thing Liam would think about for days at a time. Now he was living it. Run away or confront the local overlord and try to make a difference. Unlike the game world, Liam had responsibilities. His grandma. Victoria. His parents. It wasn't simply a matter of finding the right weapons and then cutting new trail into the wildern
ess as a loner to find glory. He found himself getting nervous about being on the bridge when the police showed up.

  “Umm, Phil. Maybe we should be going?”

  “Yeah, I want to be gone by the time they get here. Don't worry about that. We have to try to help while we can.”

  With less than thirty minutes, and tens of thousands of refugees on the road below, Liam saw no hope in anything they could do. He looked at Mark, trying to engage in conversation to hide his nervousness. “Do you live around here? I live over hill in that direction, in the Dearborne Acres subdivision. Well, my parents live there. I'm trying to get Grandma back to them.”

  “You got her out of the city, huh? That's pretty impressive for a—,” he hesitated. “Um, did you walk out?”

  “Well, we started out in a car, did a lot of walking, and ended up on a coal train. I left a few things out, but those are the basics,” he laughed.

  “Hmm. No, I live over in the next valley, up Seckman Road.” He was pointing in the direction west of the interchange. It was near his own subdivision, but on the opposite side of a low ridge. “It's a fair piece from here, but we rode our bikes. We—”

  Liam heard groans coming from the people on the bridge nearby. Many of those serving water were looking past Liam and Mark; pointing at something. Liam turned in the same direction and groaned as well.

  Several police cars were turning from a side road, approaching the bridge. Liam saw a dozen different color patterns on the cars as they filed along the road. Several dark vans were part of the same convoy, as well as a rag tag assortment of other vehicles—dump trucks, fire engines, big rigs pulling large container trailers, armored vans, and others. It looked like a parade. A parade of government departments.

  Liam took a few steps back. Phil turned to him and said, “We have to get off this bridge. Go!”

  Liam walked backward, but couldn't take his eyes off the unfurling procession. He couldn't see the end of it from his vantage point—only the ominous beginning. The lead silver police cars were recognizable; they were driven by the Missouri Highway Patrol. He immediately thought of Captain Osborne, a Missouri Highway Patrolman who had led a group of survivors out of the tunnels underneath the Gateway Arch. He wished Osborne was in one of those cars, but knew that was impossible. Osborne died saving him and many others.

  Still, he hoped someone like Osborne would get out of those cars. Otherwise—

  He looked down on the packed highway below. Those people were too low to see the trouble arriving on the road above them yet. The water buckets were being pulled up one last time, as the workers began moving off the bridge. That would get their attention. He imagined himself down there in the throngs. What would he do if someone told him he could go no further?

  He and Mark were the last two off the bridge. They ran to join Phil and the others on a nearby hill. He was happy to see Victoria running up from the far side.

  “Liam! I saw all those police cars in the distance and wanted to warn you before they got here. I was too slow, I had to make sure Grandma was comfortable before I left her back in the car.”

  “That's OK. Thanks for keeping an eye on her. I'm glad you're here though.”

  “You seem to have a knack for getting into trouble.” She was grinning, though her face was bruising badly from her ordeal fighting the gang members up in the Arch.

  “Maybe it's you? My life was smooth sailing until you came along.” He was trying to be funny to dial back his fear at what was about to happen on the interchange below them.

  “Nope, that was the old Victoria. From now on, only good things are going to happen.” She crouched next to him on the reverse slope of the hilltop with all the others. They watched as the police line started to creep onto the deck of the bridge, like gasoline washing toward the spark.

  Chapter 3: Interchange

  “Liam, do you think it's a good idea to stick around and watch this?” Victoria was fidgeting on the ground next to him, as they both watched what was happening on the highway overpass below their hilltop perch. “It looks like things are going to be violent.”

  He couldn't argue with her. She'd been right to be wary back at Phil's house. Things had been “getting” violent for days now. Whatever was going to happen down there wasn't going to surprise him. When he didn't respond in a timely fashion, Victoria seemed to take offense.

  “Liam? We have to do something. Are we going to leave or try to help those people?”

  Liam still hadn't made up his mind when Mark spoke up. “Help the people. We have to try to stop the police from turning these people back.” He paused for a moment and introduced himself to Victoria while Liam continued to ponder.

  Leave or stay?

  Leaving looked pretty good. His loyalties were to Grandma and Victoria and, to a degree, his new friend, Phil. While he felt sympathy for the people down on the highway, he didn't know how he or those around him could possibly interfere with the police presence without getting hurt or even killed. The police had already battled with refugees like this on bridges miles back up the highway—and lost. Were they ready to fight harder here?

  He took another look at those down on the highway. He noticed people carrying mattresses over their heads, looted from one of the ubiquitous mattress stores in town. Two guys were pushing a heavy chipper-shredder in the breakdown lane; it was bathed in the heavy orange of the home improvement store where it was liberated. He could see survivors carrying flat-screen televisions, dragging kiddie pools filled with clothes, and wheelbarrows full of DVDs and video games. He even saw one group of teens rolling a giant metal chicken ahead of them—Liam thought it belonged to one of the chain restaurants up in town.

  The police arrived and fanned out up on the overpass. Would the transients below ever survive if they were still operating in a world where pushing giant chickens passed as a survival instinct? It made him less enthusiastic about the future, both at this bridge and whatever would come later. Ever since he'd walked out his door with Grandma, he'd only seen remnants of humanity, always on the run. Here he was looking at the biggest group of living humans he'd seen in a long time, and the word that popped in his head was “lemmings.” Lemmings that would keep walking down this highway until they dropped dead.

  He imagined himself down there. With Grandma. With his parents. How would he feel if he made it this far only to be turned around by “the authorities.” The same authorities who had done nothing to protect him or advise him how to survive when the sirens first sounded.

  “I'm going out there.” Liam was getting up, brushing off the dust and grass from his pants.

  “What?” He heard several people ask that question.

  “I have to go out there and try to save those people down there. What if it were us? What if Grandma were down there?” He was looking at Victoria, but talking to everyone. “We can't let anything happen to them.”

  Mark was the first to respond, standing up as well. “He's right. We've been trying to help those people. We shouldn't abandon them now.”

  Victoria and Phil joined them. Victoria asked, “I'm with you, but what are we going to do? I don't think they'll be too anxious to listen to a couple kids and an ex-Arnold police officer.”

  Mark came up with a plan on the spot. Liam figured he must be military or something because he was so methodical. Liam didn't like his part in the outline, but he knew it was the best way to help given the resources they had available.

  Mark and Phil ran off to do their thing.

  The kids walked toward the bridge, ready to do theirs.

  2

  Liam felt the eyes of the law enforcement people immediately as he entered their “jurisdiction” up on the overpass. They walked by several dump trucks placed across one of the exit ramps—though no cars were on the road. They had put the heavier equipment out on the edges of their roadblock, and kept their own police cars and supplies closer to the middle. A couple of small surveillance drones were humming high above.

  To
Liam's untrained eye, he saw many tactical faults. They didn't control the high ground adjacent to the interchange. His friends controlled that. Liam noted they had no men on the back side of the bridge. What if someone paid them a visit from their 6 o'clock? Is that where Mark and Phil were going? And finally, being on the bridge now, he could see much of this force was made up of civilian government bureaucrats such as water department officials, park service employees, and some out-and-out civilians.

  “I need to talk to the person in charge!” He was walking hand-in-hand with Victoria, trying to project anything but the fear he felt in his stomach. He didn't know what he expected, but was surprised when they ignored him outright. He could tell who was in charge though. There, in the middle, was a pudgy guy ordering people around. He was standing right by the truck with the huge loudspeakers.

  “Excuse me! I need to talk to the guy in charge.” Liam was walking right up to the man. Amazingly, none of the cops made any move to stop him all across the bridge.

  I'd say that is another pretty big tactical fault!

  After introducing himself in his most polite voice, Liam immediately laid into him, letting him know everything wrong with the proposition of halting this crowd. He was not very eloquent. The stress of everything made his already poor social skills degrade to the equivalent of slipping on a banana peel.

  Fortunately, Victoria jumped in. “I think what my friend here is trying to say is that you can't enforce a blockade if there's no viable escape for those trapped by it. This crowd can't simply turn around and go home. Their homes have been overrun. If you block these good people from continuing down this highway, there's going to be a lot of bloodshed. Even a seventeen-year-old can see that.” Then she turned quiet. “We've been seeing it ever since we left downtown St. Louis.”

  Liam noticed the man was sweating profusely, either suffering because of the heat or was agitated by his obligations here—or both. He seemed to cringe when Victoria held out her hand to shake his.