There was a ghostly howl coming from the current rushing through the hollow metal dipped in the water. As they slid underneath the good side of the remaining structure, Liam reflected on everything they'd seen and done since passing across this bridge on the third day after the sirens. He looked at Victoria and guessed she was lost in similar thoughts.
“We've come a long way since that day. Lost a lot of good people.”
This time it was Victoria who wouldn't let him get himself down. “Yes, but look at us. We're still alive and happily boating underneath this very bridge where we thought we were going to die. As far as I'm concerned, given the alternatives, I'd say our prayers were answered that day.”
“True. We got across the bridge. The bridge was blown. We were saved. But when will it end?”
“God doesn't give us any more than we can handle.”
“That sounds like a motivational poster.” Liam gave her a friendly chuckle.
“Well,” she said while echoing his laugh, “maybe it is. But that doesn't make it any less true. God is watching out for us.”
In his former life, Liam would have argued about the presence or absence of an all-powerful God. He wanted to argue it. But what came out was tempered by all that had happened since the bridge.
“I hope someone is watching over us. Watching over Grandma. But we still have to do this ourselves.”
They shared a moment of silence as they watched the bridge behind them. Then it was back to business as they approached the end of the river.
“I can see the Mississippi ahead. We'll have to stay close to the left bank so we can turn upriver when we get there. Why don't you sit in the back again so I can paddle us around the corner?”
As they glided for the turbulent waters of the confluence, Liam saw a familiar, if unwelcome, sight. Far across the big river, he saw two of the Marine Corps V-22 Ospreys flying fast and low near the water—heading upriver toward downtown St. Louis. Momentarily frozen by the sight, the boat drifted further out into the watery chaos of the junction than he intended.
“Hang on” was all he could say. The boat was very small and there was no way for Victoria to hang on to much of anything. Her only job was to sit in the rear and keep watch in front of Liam to see where he was rowing.
“I think the current is weaker along the shore. Let's aim that way.”
Liam wasn't about to argue as he heaved the oars with all his strength. A few tense minutes was all it took to ensure they'd not be drawn further down the river, instead of going the direction they intended. He brought it as close to shore as he dared. He settled in and they made slow but steady progress upriver.
“Let me know when you want to switch.”
Um. Now?
The small boat served them well on the small river, but it became a challenge in the faster water of the large river. It helped a great deal to stay close to the shore where the current was weakest, but Liam felt himself losing steam.
“I'd be happy to switch, but paddling in this stuff is going to exhaust us both in no time flat.”
He pulled the oars for a while longer then handed them off to Victoria so he could rest. He suspected her slighter frame and weaker upper body wouldn't be able to dig the paddles as fast and hard as the river required. Still, she wouldn't take no for an answer and managed to find a rhythm that worked for her. She pulled her weight. The boat moved upstream.
At dusk, after many shifts at the oars for each of them, they were done. They happened upon an empty container barge anchored near shore. In the old days, this river was a superhighway of barge traffic. Today, nothing else moved on the water but debris—including lots of bodies.
“Let's tie up to that thing and climb aboard if we can. As long as there are no zombies inside the hull we should have a truly safe place to rest tonight. Help guide me in.”
Liam pulled the oars with soft grunts as they approached the long, flat barge moored thirty feet offshore. It looked like it was sitting low in the water; it was loaded with something.
Please let it be food!
In short order, they'd tied up and found a ladder up the side. No zombies jumped on top of them, and no human defenders waved them off, either. Liam was so tired he didn't really care what was inside the hold. Even the thought of a zombie didn't scare him. He was willing to shoot just about anything to lay his head down.
He struggled up the ladder with his sore arms and raw hands and was relieved to see neither humans nor zombies. He turned down to Victoria as she climbed the final rungs of the ladder behind him.
“You're never gonna guess what we get to sleep in tonight.”
She got to the top, and paused. “You know, I don't even care.”
6
When they escaped St. Louis, he and Victoria spent a lot of time riding a train. They were forced to hop rail cars so they could reach the engineer in the front. Unfortunately, many of the gondola cars were empty, requiring them to slide down into them so they could run up the other side. The bane of their existence during those jaunts were the empty coal haulers, which were filthy with black dust on their insides. In the end, they were covered head-to-toe in black soot, and they carried it with them long afterward. The undersides of his fingernails were still black.
Neither of them protested as they settled down on the coal pile. After weeks of cat naps and fitful nights tossing and turning, deep sleep came fast. The soft rhythm of the river, the crickets and other bugs squawking in the nearby trees, and the facade of safety helped Liam achieve his best sleep since the disaster started. The dreary cloudy morning came fast on the heels of the night.
When he woke, Victoria was already up and moving. She sat nearby, patiently trying to clean off some of the smudges and grime caked on her arms and face. She had nowhere to wipe but on her shirt. She had somehow gotten his pocket knife and had cut a swath of her shirt so it was about four inches shorter all around, exposing her midriff. With the long strip of cloth, she managed to do a decent job of cleaning up.
She noticed him. “Oh, hello. Good morning.” Her words were accompanied by a big smile, though her eyes were still travel-worn.
He responded, or so he thought, but his eyes were glued to her exposed belly. He knew he shouldn't stare, but…
“Hello Liam? You in there?”
He snapped to. “Oh sorry. I'll take two.” He smiled a guilty smile.
“Two what? Are you even in there?”
She tossed the filthy piece of her shirt; it landed right on his face.
“I left you a little clean area, so you can wipe that silly expression off your face.” But she was laughing. “Sometimes you act like you've never seen a girl before.”
“Well, I, uhh…”
Don't say something stupid.
“Never saw a girl as pretty as you.”
Smooth.
“No, I mean—”
“Liam, it's OK. Really.”
He took a deep breath. “No, I should tell you that you are literally my first girlfriend. I don't know how to act around you. I don't know what's polite and what's not. I know there aren't a lot of options for either of us right now, but if I'm going to lose you, I don't want it to be over something stupid like ogling you too much. I guess what I'm trying to say is, being around you when you're not in zombie-fighting mode—when you're just a girl—makes me more nervous than being in the middle of a horde of the undead.” He tried to end it with a little laugh.
“Well, first of all, you aren't going to lose—”
They both heard it. The familiar drone of zombies. It came from the nearby shore. Liam knew they were safe on the boat. He told himself it was a foolproof hideout.
And how many books have “foolproof” hideouts?
They popped their heads over the edge of the barge's hold.
All right. A “nearly foolproof” hideout.
Hundreds of zombies walked on the shore, all of them walking up the river. Gaggles of them were far down the bank, and more were far up the o
ther way. It was like an undead funeral procession, marching slowly to some unknown beat.
They dropped back into the hold. In a whisper, Victoria asked, “Are we safe here? Can they get over to us from the shore?”
The barge was anchored away from shore, but it had a large cable running from the front to an anchor point somewhere on shore. A skilled person might be able to cross the wire by going hand-over-hand as they hung down from it. Liam had seen it done by some of his friends back when they used to spend time along the river.
“There's no way they can get over here using the cable, but I don't know if zombies can swim.”
“Well, we have to get on our boat and keep moving. There's no end in sight to that line.” The shoreline was straight for a few miles. She was right.
“I know.”
He knew some zombies could climb. He saw two such climbers at Elk Meadow. Colonel McMurphy said there were many different flavors of zombie out there, though they were tied more or less to the city where they were spawned. The climbing zombies seemed to be a specialty of Chicago. Perhaps swimming zombies had come down from a city up the Mississippi river, and these zombies were walking back upstream now?
They briefly wondered if they could unhook the barge so it would float away from shore, but the size of the tie-down cable made it clear they would need tools to detach it. They cursed themselves for tying up the rowboat on the shore-side of the barge. If it was on the other side, they'd be free and clear before they were noticed.
“It will probably take us sixty seconds to get on the ladder and step down to the boat and get clear. We'll just have to take our chances.”
Victoria didn't argue with him as she grabbed her gun and other belongings from their campsite.
“Let's do this nice and safe. Don't panic when you climb down and we should both be fine.”
“Don't panic in the face of a horde of zombies. Got it.”
Victoria went first. She climbed onto the rim of the barge and casually began her descent down the ladder. Liam followed and stood on the rim above her for a few moments. In that time, he could see her business-like approach was working. She went over nice and easy and made no noise and didn't appear nervous. In no time, she was below him in the boat, ready to go.
But she was noticed. A cry went up. One of the zombies sprinted toward the barge at a high rate of speed.
Zombies can't run that fast!
It plowed into the water, as if unaware it would sink. It pushed into deeper water with purpose. Worse, other zombies moved his way too, though most walked like “normal” plague victims. Liam began his descent.
The fast zombie managed to get surprisingly far into the water before it was too deep for him. He continued under the surface; Liam lost sight of him. In the strong current, he guessed the zombie was going to be swept behind the barge. A few other runners had their sights on the boat.
He set foot on the wooden plank. Victoria tried to untie the knot which kept them in place, but the old rope of the rowboat was well-frayed and looked confusing to untangle.
Something made a thud sound on the bottom of the boat.
Impossible!
Liam resolved not to look over the side. The rattle on the floor was the knock of panic.
“Victoria, hurry!”
She made a humpf sound, as if she couldn't be bothered to respond.
Another vibration on the bottom of the boat. Zombies poured into the water, screaming, clawing and flailing at the sight of two living people in a land of the dead. He knew they could stack up and get themselves to high places.
“Victoria?”
“I'm trying. This knot is really stuck.”
“The knife! Use the knife!”
Don't panic.
Liam couldn't tell if Victoria cursed. She seldom did, but he allowed this was one time when it was appropriate.
She fumbled with his pocketknife as he looked to the shore and the waters between it and their boat. It boiled with arms and legs of the many zombies who managed to walk and run here from earshot of the boat. More streamed out from the trees along the shore. It wasn't hard to see what would happen.
Tons of zombies. One arm comes over the edge. We tip and die.
The boat jerked, and they were floating free. Victoria made the cut.
Liam grabbed the oars and paddled for their lives. His shore-side oar hit the head of one of the zombies wading in the water. The swimmer made a clumsy grab for it. His far-side oar sank in the water for a weak stroke. He couldn't swing them properly.
“No, push us away from shore!”
He saw the problem. If he could only use his far oar, it would push them into shore. Zombies desperately tried to grab the other oar, as if they knew it was attached to the food they wanted inside the craft.
Don't panic.
Victoria turned around. “Let the current take us backwards.”
Liam sat with a blank look on his face, until it dawned on him. He gave one firm reverse tug on the far side oar, hoping it would push them both backwards and up against the barge as they drifted. He then secured both oars so they were out of the water.
Victoria readied her rifle, and even aimed at a few zombies that almost reached them, but none managed the full distance. The boat drifted downriver for more than a hundred feet until it cleared the back of the barge. He dropped both oars and paddled with gusto to go around the barge and continue up the river. He guessed the zombies in the water just kept going until they were caught by the undertow and pulled downstream. Not many zombies came back out of the water.
Will they walk the bottom to get us?
Shaken, Liam paddled like a fiend in the deeper water for an hour as they put the incident behind them. They could see zombies on the shoreline walking north with them. Sometimes one would notice them and turn to walk into the water, but mostly they faced forward and kept to themselves. A rare few of the “different” zombies loped by the others with fleet feet.
Many hours later, exhausted, they reached downtown St. Louis. The closer they came, the fewer zombies they saw near the shore. They grounded the boat on the cobblestones of the famous riverfront landing of the city of St. Louis. They couldn't have gone any further upriver if they wished. Someone had blown the interstate highway bridge; the deck had fallen straight down into the water and the wreckage blocked the entire river from Missouri to Illinois. A colossal jumble of barges, towboats, and huge pieces of driftwood hugged the upriver side of the mess. The tangle presented a formidable barrier to river traffic, had there been any.
They pulled the rowboat high up out of the water. It slid easily over the stonework. They wanted to park it under the edge of the downed bridge as it provided some cover on the otherwise open landing. They froze when they got close. Under big neutral-colored tarps were two fancy rubber boats with small but powerful-looking outboard motors. They too had been dragged up the cobblestone and left there. A nearly-dry trail of water went all the way back down to the river behind them.
The rubber boats were still dripping wet.
Chapter 11: Going in Circles
“Well, we're back in St. Louis. So glad we escaped, aren't you?”
Victoria responded with a small growl.
With rifles slung, they started up a long piece of collapsed highway. It had fallen along with the main bridge, but it formed a ramp so they were able to walk up onto the raised highway into downtown St. Louis. A car coming the other way would drive from the highway, down the ramp, and into the river.
When they reached the top of the ramp and crossed the tangle of broken concrete and rebar at the joint, they were relieved to see the elevated highway passed next to the Riverside Hotel and Casino—Grandma's prison. They walked the mostly empty interstate—the Army had blocked the approaches to this bridge early in the disaster—they talked about the boats.
“It can't be coincidence the zombies on the shoreline were heading this way, as well as two strange boats, Ospreys of Marines, and of course, us. Is Gra
ndma that important, do you think?”
Before he could answer, he became distracted by the spectacle of destruction below them. The once-beautiful St. Louis Arch parkland had devolved into a hellish landscape of stripped and burned trees, huge craters, and an untold amount of trash and debris, including lots of bodies and body parts. There were countless buzzards picking at the remains. The smell...
“I didn't think the birds would touch a zombie.”
Liam wondered. “I don't think they're all infected down there.”
“It looks like the Army and Air Force really did a number on them.”
“Yeah, we were there, remember?”
“In my wildest imagination,” she spoke wistfully, “I wouldn't have thought the bombs could wreck the place so thoroughly. It almost looks like the moon down there.”
There were black scorch marks on the lower portions of both legs of the Arch, but otherwise it looked intact. Liam took some measure of comfort from that. He knew the Arch would one day succumb to the forces of nature, but it didn't happen in the recent conflagration. Something survived. Something beautiful in a world of ugliness.
“In answer to your question, yes. I think Grandma is more important than we think. This can't all be coincidence.”
Victoria looked over the ruin of the Arch grounds. “It's like a siren song. We were beckoned to this horrible place, where we'll be smashed on the rocks.” She continued on a different track. “I really hate Hayes. I think I could kill him for all the grief he's caused us. I owe him one for shooting me, at the very least. I mean, here we are at the end of the world, zombies and plague swirling around us, and this jackass has to spend his time kidnapping and shooting people. How messed up is that? He told us he was looking for a cure. I call bull shnikes on that. Doctors trying to find cures are not running around town shooting little girls and kidnapping old women and bombing innocent people in their neighborhoods. And now look at him in his fancy tower! We have to waste our time going to save Grandma because of him. I have a hundred things I'd rather be doing right now—including finding my parents thankyouverymuch—but this turd requires more of my time than a three-year-old. I'm sick of it!”
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 75
