Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  I'm getting sloppy.

  The zombies beat on the door, and looked through the narrow glass window in the middle, but they wouldn't see anything inside unless they could see in the dark.

  Liam knew conceptually what a threat that would be, but he was dealing with his fatigue by not caring about all the wonderful skills these zombies could have.

  “I need a rest.”

  Lana laughed nervously. “I'd love to stop here for a long nap. I can tell you need one.” He saw her face in profile as the light from the lobby reflected through the door's window. “Sheesh. I'm sorry about all this. I had no idea we'd get tangled up with the military so soon.”

  “You mean you expected to get tangled up with them later? Mom, just tell me what this is about. Why did dad's letter say you were some kind of spy? Are you still?”

  “Walk with me. We have to go to the top floor.”

  He sighed, but laughed at the irony. He'd already walked up a flight of stairs to the top of the Arch. No building was taller than the Arch in St. Louis.

  I can do this.

  He bounded to the first landing. Somewhere in the darkness he wondered if there was a plaque with the world-record time for climbing to the top of this building. “I think we can beat seven minutes to the top,” he joked. That was the record to the top of the Arch. This had to be shorter.

  “You go right ahead. Dear old mom is going to take it one step at a time.” She popped on a little flashlight that was very bright and moved slowly up the first flight.

  Victoria didn't get the joke, either, when he'd said it back at the Arch. He'd made the mistake of calling her Vicky, which led to an uncomfortable 1076-step climb. Hoping to head off another bad ascent, he thought of something else.

  “Um, so tell me what we'll find upstairs.”

  “I once told you none of this is what you think. Your father's role. Mine. Yours. I've been trying to figure out a way to explain it without sounding like I'm insane.”

  “Mom, zombies walk the earth. My girlfriend and I run from the infected when we're on our dates. And I've just watched you drive a World War II tank into a skyscraper. I know you're insane. We all are.”

  “You may be right about that. I think your father was the only one who seemed at home in the chaos.” She reached her hand to him as she neared. “Liam. I'm so sorry you lost your dad.”

  In his heart he wanted to open up. He'd kept himself distracted since he'd found out, but the emotions were a turbulent undercurrent which welled to the surface at the worst times. Now would be a particularly bad time.

  “Mom, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be selfish. You lost—”

  “Stop. You're only fifteen—no, you're sixteen, correct?”

  “Well, now I'm seventeen,” he said, seriously. It felt good to distract both of them.

  She was quiet for many seconds. “I knew that. Victoria gave you a kiss, with one to grow on.” She laughed as she said it.

  She began to climb the next flight.

  “Tell me again why you're seventeen. That sounds interesting.”

  OK, she wants the distraction, too.

  They climbed flight after flight, led by the light. His mom asked a lot of questions about his journey over the past several weeks, as he did of her. But always they avoided their shared loss or talk about what his mom and dad were involved with. The entire climb was a mental relief valve after all the stress they'd suffered of late.

  When they got to the highest floor they stood in front of a fire door with a large number 42 on it. That particular number held special meaning for him. Years of reading books brought him to this moment. A joke only he would appreciate.

  “The answer to life, the universe—”

  “And everything,” she added.

  He jerked his head to look at her. She smiled and winked in the glow of her flashlight. The question was what troubled him. There was so much he didn't know about the woman who raised him. How much would be answered on the other side of 42?

  She grabbed for the door handle…

  Chapter 14: Illinois

  John Jasper wasn't sure if he was still a general or not. He hadn't been formally relieved of duty, though being tossed into a ditch full of zombies surely counted as some kind of unofficial paperwork. His uniform had been ruined in the muddy ditch, so his “uniform” today consisted of his black boots, a pair of loaner multicam pants, and a clean white t-shirt, also a loaner. The lack of military decorum troubled him, but he needed to be easily seen by the men and women he'd rounded up to help with defense. He figured when his next paycheck showed up, he'd know if he was still in the service.

  Inwardly he smiled. The thought of a mailman dropping his check off here in this miserable town was a hoot. Seeing his charges on the nearby levee brought his serious face back.

  “Come down here, guys.” He spoke into a hand-held bullhorn.

  A gaggle of citizens had gathered to help with the defense of their town. Without his own men and military hardware guarding the northern approaches to Cairo, it was only a matter of time before the whole thing came crumbling down. Unless he could get these people to do the work of the mixed battalion Elsa had taken away from him.

  He estimated there were a few hundred people. On the left, it was mostly townsfolk. The group was largely black, and consisted of able-bodied men and women dressed in old t-shirts and dirty pants—like they'd come to do some work. On the right, the crowd was more mixed. They were the refugees taking shelter in the town. As Marty Peters had said, many of them were teenagers and young adults. Those who had previously been hunkering down—hiding, he suspected—in the abandoned houses of the town. He'd found volunteers to encourage them to come here today.

  “Listen up. The Army had to go put out other fires. Help other towns.” The truth was the Army abandoned them, but he didn't think that would motivate anyone. “They left me here to help you organize a defense.” As expected, there was rumbling in the crowd. “Listen! Look at what they left you. How many towns in America have a fifty-foot ditch filled with water protecting their front gate? How many towns have huge rivers on the remaining three sides? There is nowhere better, I guarantee it.”

  That was likely true. If Elsa was correct, those with the fancy bunkers had given them up on the East Coast so they could move to St. Louis. That might make St. Louis a safer bet in the long term, but he doubted it was very safe at that exact moment. Getting these people the truth seemed important after all the lies he'd been told. He'd survived politically-motivated career threats, and had done fine navigating the end of the world up until his toss on his ass, so he was ready to fight for this town. He needed them to fight for him, too.

  “They abandoned us! They threw you out. You aren't even a general, now.”

  Damn. It had to be you.

  The mayor had promised not to get involved, but of course he couldn't leave it alone. The sweaty man stood in the middle of his constituents on the left side of the group. Everyone erupted in conversation at that.

  He used the electric megaphone to emit a loud screech, which quieted most people.

  “Your mayor is correct. I was tossed out. I didn't want to abandon your town. I ignored my orders to leave you.”

  The mayor wouldn't know the details of his separation from his own troops.

  “You can ignore my help, but believe me when I say I want you people to live. I want this town to survive.”

  There was some commotion up on the top of the levee. Most of the crowd had moved down so they could stand and sit in the tall grass, though a few were up top. A woman in a wheelchair was speaking, though not very loud.

  “I can't hear you,” he replied.

  “She said she wants to hear your ideas,” a man shouted from the side of the woman. The little woman waved to him and gave him the thumbs up.

  Marty Peters. Thank you.

  Having an ally was important in any battlefield situation, but he'd never imagined it would be a little 104-year-old woman who could help
him through this. The crowd clapped in agreement.

  “The framework is here. Everyone with a gun needs to be on this berm behind me.” He pointed over his shoulder to the big pile of dirt stacked in front of the water feature. “We line the top of that and we can shoot each infected person as they're approaching on the flat farmland just on the other side.” He wanted them dead before they reached the water-filled ditch. When he was swimming down there he noticed there was no current. Every body that fell in there would stay there. Get enough bodies...and the advantage would be gone. It would take an incredible number to fill it, but not an insurmountable number. Not with millions heading his way…

  The biggest problem after manpower was firepower. The idiot mayor had spent years of his term ensuring guns found no place in his town limits. Now, when they needed them most, the mayor insisted the military be trusted with the task, not his people. John wondered what he had to be thinking at that precise moment when he realized he'd screwed himself.

  On the other side, the refugees had come in with pretty much nothing but the clothes on their back. The group from up north that had come in on the Osprey had a few guns, but St. Louis wasn't a bastion of gun culture, either.

  Only the people who got here from nearby farms seemed to have guns, though most of those were shotguns. Suitable for close encounters, but not for headshots from the top of the berm.

  And ammo. He figured anyone that had a gun would have consumed ammo to get to Cairo. And Cairo had no gun stores...

  Bottom line, no matter what these people wanted him to do, he was already missing a key ingredient necessary for their mutual survival.

  2

  John walked up to Marty in her wheelchair, and cordially shushed away the teenagers by her side.

  “Thank you, Marty.”

  After selling his plan to the townspeople and refugees they all separated to return to their homes and prepare. A few men stayed to guard the berm. They were the “Zombie-Killers” the mayor had complained about days earlier, but the truth was they were the only ones already prepared to defend anything. They were too few, however, to truly guard the northern approaches. But the dozen men and women with rifles had become his most effective fighting force.

  Marty shook her head. “I didn't do anything but tell the truth. If a general tells me how to defend my town, I'm going to listen.”

  “You'd be surprised how many times people refuse to listen to reason. Politics. Race. Religion. They all cloud judgment in one way or another. The mayor believed guns would be the death of his town up until this moment. You think he learned his lesson?”

  Another head shake.

  “But thank you, anyway, for backing me up. I think most people now realize where we are. Too many zombies and not enough us.”

  “Thank you for staying. I've seen a lot of brave people lately, but a lot of scared ones as well. You could have left us and no one would have been the wiser. Surely a general could be useful to that convoy out there?”

  He looked at the diminutive woman in the wheelchair. She was wrinkled and aged, but her eyes were sharp. “It crossed my mind. I won't lie to you. But Elsa and her allies scare me.” John looked around to ensure no one was listening. Most people had crested the levee and walked down the hill into town. “If she can commandeer U.S. Army troops and jettison a two-star general with no repercussions, she has more power than I do. Even if I found my way back to friendly troops, I don't think she'd let me enjoy the safety.”

  A little louder, he continued. “No, I'm staying right here. Find out who I can trust. Bide my time until an opportunity presents itself for me to pursue her. But first—”

  “You have to defend little old ladies in wheelchairs.”

  They both laughed as he grabbed the handles of her chair and pushed her toward the Gator. Her teen friends waited there.

  “Do you think they'll be able to fight?” They were both pointed toward the subjects of his question.

  “I'm old, General. I don't know what anyone will do, anymore. People either fight, or they don't. If you'd asked me three weeks ago if Liam would fight, I would have said probably not. Like these kids, I always saw him on his smartphone, computer tablets, and whatnots. It was all he ever talked about. If things had been different, it would have been him sitting in those houses back there, tapping his screen. They all have it in them to fight. He showed me that.”

  “I've seen the kids we get in boot camp, these days.” He sighed. “Maybe I'm getting too old for this. Look at them. They look like children.”

  “I was thinking the same thing about you,” she giggled.

  “Oh, so you do have dementia? I'm old enough to be your son.”

  “Maybe, but don't underestimate these kids today. Every generation looks on the next with fear they will break all that had been built. It's natural to think it.”

  He worried that the time of building was gone.

  “I need them to fight. I need to find weapons.” He spoke softly, as they were getting close.

  “Liam and I found a Boy Scout camp. They used wooden poles to make spears. They called them something, but I can't remember. Every Scout in the camp carried one, and those boys knew how to use them. Or so I was told...”

  “Spears, huh? I think we can do that.”

  “Here you go, Mrs. Peters,” he said in his most formal voice. “Your protectors, as promised.”

  It pleased him to see the kids fly from the Gator to help her board the passenger seat. They broke down her chair and tossed it in the back, then they jumped in with it. A young woman gave him a commendable effort at a salute, then she drove them all away.

  He was left to his thoughts. From his vantage point he could see the entire battlefield to the north of town. That's what it was.

  Far in the distance, the interstate. It ran east and west, from left to right, several miles away. It represented the boundary of the area he'd designated as a killzone for his troops. It was much too large for the civilians to control, however. He had to think smaller now.

  Between the highway and the ditch, there was nothing but ruined farmland. They'd already stripped away all the foliage to make it easier to pick targets, so it took on the appearance of a World War I no-man's land, complete with big craters and ruined bodies. They were fortunate the bodies of the infected didn't seem to decompose. The smell was still bad, but not what he'd expected.

  They're unnatural in every way.

  The farmland had one road splitting it in half. It linked the interstate with the town itself, and provided the only bridge over the trench his team had created in front of the town. It was the first major obstacle they'd created—on the assumption the infected would eventually get that far. With tanks and other fighting vehicles he figured it would be weeks before the dead could get through. Now…

  The ditch ran across the near end of the farmland, from the Ohio on his right to the Mississippi on his left. The berm of dirt blocked his view of the water, but he'd already seen that up close.

  Several of his team sat up on the berm, watching the fields beyond. A few zombies approached, but not many. It was like the tide had come in last night, and now it was out again.

  The very last defensive measure was the thirty foot levee on which he currently stood. If he had proper soldiers he could hold it for a long time—he never used the word indefinitely—but with his current helpers he believed if the infected made it to this point it would already be over.

  Looking behind him, into town, he saw nothing which would provide a suitable fortress. There were no large structures that could fit everyone. He'd already taken a tour of the town with the mayor and there was only one structure of any size, but it had lots of weaknesses. It was an abandoned factory on the Ohio River side of town.

  He looked beyond, to the barges lining the Ohio River beyond the factory. Those were going to be their final destinations. If the town fell, they'd all float downriver and hope they'd find another town to take them in.

  He lamen
ted he was building luck into his military strategy.

  On the berm someone let loose a round across the fields.

  The tide is returning.

  3

  “What's your name, ma'am?”

  “Chloe, sir.”

  John had requested the leader of the “Zombie-Killers” to visit him at the town center, as he wanted to discuss deputizing the group to be his cadre of leadership for everyone else. He couldn't manage the whole defense by himself.

  “You've been defending the town, without support?”

  “Sir, if you mean me, as a woman, then the answer is no. I have a ten-man team backing me up.”

  He scrutinized her. Cropped hair. Serious eyes. Loose-fitting, but smart urban clothing. She'd been splashed with blood…

  “You a soldier?”

  “Ex, sir. Two tours in Iraq with military police. The 414th, sir.”

  “And you organized these guys?”

  “Not exactly. They were part of a website team devoted to zombie killing, sir.”

  “Zombie killing? How did they organize that with a website after the power died?”

  She laughed. “You wouldn't believe this, sir, but they were 'zombie killers' before there were real zombies. They pretended zombies were real, then trained as if they were coming. That included things like gun handling, small unit maneuvers, reconnaissance, and basic first aid.”

  “Sounds like basic training.”

  “Yes, some of them are also ex-military, though most are just people who liked shooting guns. Luckily, that was the one skill they needed in those earliest days. That, and the ability to recognize the danger as it emerged. We were based in St. Louis, but we all hopped a barge with our families the minute things went to shit, uh, sir, and ended up here.”

  “And then you patrolled the shores, in direct conflict with the mayor of Cairo?”

  “With all due respect, that man is an asshole. We do what needs to be done to protect our families.”

  “Agreed. We're going to do what needs to be done to survive.”

  “He's already done the damage, sir. Sent that barge—”