“Wouldn't that help them if there are zombies around? Where in the world can you go where people aren't armed and ready to help each other?”
He could think of a lot of places outside of America, but here in the heartland almost no one could go ten feet without meeting someone carrying a weapon anymore. The rules prohibiting guns might have worked while security ringed the gas station, but not once the contractors bugged out.
“If those were Elsa's people and they figured out who we are, they may have decided to pull their old tricks on us.”
“What,” she said, suddenly very serious. “Are they going to drop a rocket on us? Use big bombs? Send in the Marines?”
“We have survived a lot,” he said in agreement.
“And we'll survive this. We'll get everyone on the road and out of here as soon as we find Dave.”
Liam tried to quell his anxiety, but he felt that old sense of impending doom. He was used to it, now, and wasn't willing to ignore it for much longer. If they couldn't find Dave, and none of the other drivers would help, he was ready to start running again into the nearby farmlands. Safety had to be somewhere out there.
“Awe, hell,” Sabella groaned. “Why is he leaving?”
Dave's truck had already made most of a U-turn on its way out of the front entrance.
“He must have doubled back while we were inside,” Victoria said with sadness, “but why?”
Liam stood and watched the truck pull away and could imagine him furiously recounting his story to his followers as he spoke into the camera. Did he scare the guy too much with his warnings about drones and attacks on his audience? Sabella wanted to be clear of him and Victoria, too, so maybe that was just the sentiment going around.
The utensils and plates of the restaurant rattled as something powerful shook the whole building.
Liam scanned the front parking lot and saw nothing but normal activity. He jogged toward the back and made his way into a clump of other drivers looking toward the gas pumps and parking area in the rear.
Victoria came up next to him.
“Someone blew a lock,” he said with caution so only she heard him.
She pointed to smoke rising from behind the front row of trucks at the pumps.
“Idiot,” Liam murmured. “I shouldn't have said anything until we figured this out. Now security is gone, and people want to know if I, the young boy who can't possibly have a clue, was telling the truth.”
“You can't blame yourself,” she replied while watching with rapt attention to the parking lot. Several drivers ran toward the sound of the blast, a few with red fire extinguishers in their hands.
“I know. But--” He stopped cold.
It escaped his notice until now, but as he watched the drivers running toward the flames he happened to see a unique vehicle parked at the far-left pump. Several people stood near the front tires as if they were about to walk toward the restaurant when the explosion interrupted their plans.
That looks exactly like Mom and Dad.
He really missed them. It was painful to think of those last moments when Mom fell off the boat as she was chased by her zombie husband. And he felt horrible that his final act with either of them was to throw a knife into his dad's back.
He blinked to clear the hallucination generated by stress and wishful thinking.
And the pair was still there.
“Hey, isn't that Grandma Marty?” Victoria exclaimed. “And Mel?” Her voice rose with excitement.
It was her turn to take a pause as if she'd seen a ghost.
“And your mom and dad. How is that possible?” She put her arm on his shoulder and pointed to where he was already gazing.
“No, that can't be,” he said with great doubt.
“And that's Phil! Praise the Lord it's really them.”
They were a hundred feet away standing on the dirty pavement of the well-used truck stop. His parents. His grandma. Lost friends.
He turned to Victoria. “Is this real?”
“Huh?”
“I mean are we in that waterfall place again? Is all this a dream?”
After the ICBM landed, he felt as if he'd died and gone to Heaven. Even after his great-grandpa Al told him it was a real place, he harbored a suspicion that it was actually a complicated after-life experience. Maybe Heaven wasn't all about sitting in clouds with angels but was actually more like a high school service project where you had to do good deeds to earn your wings.
“Are we dead?” he blurted out.
Sabella and her daughters had followed and stood next to Victoria as they all looked outside. She leaned over to him.
“Kid, you've got to hold it together,” she hissed. “My daughters don't need to hear that.”
Liam robotically pulled the AK-47 off his shoulder. “I have to go out there and see.”
Victoria's green eyes were pools of calm in the increasingly chaotic restaurant. Some people ran in shouting for help while others ran outside with weapons drawn. Other than the people huddled at the rear window watching the action unfold, everyone was in motion.
His family was going back toward their multi-colored camouflage MRAP.
“I'm sure it was them. We have to go.” He spoke to Victoria while locking his eyes with hers and pleading his case.
“What? You think I'd let you go out there alone?”
Screams rose up from somewhere beyond his field of vision.
“We've got to get out there,” he repeated.
She unfurled her rifle and pulled the charging handle like it was second nature.
The image of his girlfriend holding that gun and standing at the ready to go do battle with him made his heart soar. The little metal cross on her chest reminded him that if this was all some kind of test from a higher power, he was going to be playing for the side represented by Light.
God or Heaven or whatever that waterfall represented, he at least knew the zombies were the bad guys, and he didn't fear them near as much as he once did. Even some of the good guys weren't that good, and he hated that he felt mad that Dave turned out the way he did.
Another explosion tore through one of the trucks parked in the front row of the fuel terminal. A secondary explosion lit up one of the gas islands and that seemed to trigger an electrical shut down because all the lights in the restaurant flickered off. He suddenly and inexplicably missed the loud music.
Two more explosions created a one-two tremor which shook the tables and silverware behind him.
Grandma and his parents were gone. He plainly saw Mel climb through the driver's door of the MRAP like she'd done a hundred times while he was with her.
“We're out of time,” he declared.
“What's happening?” Sabella said, finally sounding worried.
Liam held onto Victoria with one hand and held his rifle and the window frame with his other. The shaking continued and grew at an alarming pace.
Blast after blast ripped open trailers out on the parking lot.
A nearby truck with big orange lettering exploded and the debris shattered the windows in the front of the eatery.
“Shit!” Sabella cried out. “We have to run!”
Liam wasn't so sure. As more of the trailers exploded he had an idea what was really happening. None of them were accidental or caused by nosy drivers.
“They want us all dead,” he said in a droning voice during a pause in the sequence of explosions.
“What? Who?” Sabella yelled.
Victoria was quiet as all the action took place around them and Liam knew why: she was thinking the same thing as him. They were on the same wavelength now.
Liam, we have to get to Grandma.
Victoria's voice was clear and inside his head. Their telepathy had returned.
“Victoria, I hear you,” he said aloud.
I mean, I hear you, he said in his mind.
Liam, is that you?
Grandma Marty? Liam replied. It was exactly as they had done before when they were clos
e to each other. It confirmed what he had trouble believing with his own eyes.
It's me, Liam. And hello Victoria, she continued. Are you at this truck stop?
Yes. Is that Mom and Dad? Are they really alive? He was afraid to know the answer because he thought it was impossible.
They are alive, yes, but you have to run, Liam. There are zombies everywhere.
Liam didn't need that piece of intel because he saw them all spilling out of the big trailers from one end of the lot to the other, but if his parents were alive he wasn't going to stop until he saw them. After seeing Mom go over the side of that barge, he thought it was a death sentence. And Dad was a zombie. How could he survive that?
I'm inside. I'm coming for you.
A piercing static noise filled Liam's head and he was unable to speak for a few moments until it faded.
What was that? He asked his grandma.
She didn't reply. Instead the wave of static returned. It was like music played so loud it was impossible to hear any of the instruments or lyrics.
“God, what is that?” he asked Victoria. “You hear it?” Her brow was furrowed so her quick nod was all the confirmation he needed.
The static seemed to adjust and get a bit quieter.
Grandma? He called to her.
Still the interruption continued but the volume kept getting lower.
Another explosion rocked the truck stop, but Liam was hardly paying attention.
A creepy voice called out from the static.
Mother?
It hit Liam like a freight train with no brakes. He didn't know the voice, but he did know inside his soul, inside his blood, it was family. It was as if the telepathic wavelength also gave key data about the speaker.
Mother? The man's voice repeated.
Something in his brain recognized where the man was located, as if the telepathic voice was throwing real sound waves.
Liam looked out the window to the edge of the parking lot where he'd seen the lone man standing. He was a mud-covered mess, but Liam recognized the shirtless man as the zombie he'd seen back at the farmhouse. It had somehow run across the fields and arrived here just as the place fell apart. It was exactly like what happened as the farm fell to pieces.
He had no idea how it was in his head or why it called for “mother.”
I hear you, Grandma's voice replied in a timid fashion.
Liam was torn with indecision. He had to warn her about the danger of the guy, but he desperately had to know who it was.
Mother, the voice repeated.
I am here, Robbie Grandma replied.
Together, the strange voice said.
Liam watched as the lone zombie took a step down the dirt pile toward the parking lot. A hundred other zombies swirled around on the tarmac like leaves caught in a dervish, with more pouring out of the trucks each moment.
The small black drone continued to hover over the action. Hamilton was probably laughing at how he'd neatly disposed of Liam the troublemaker. A second or so later, two fighter jets cracked the sound barrier as they shot across the sky just above the great cloud of smoke rising from the remote truck stop.
The noise sent the patrons into further panic.
He mentally hiked up his big boy pants because there was a lot of work to do.
Victoria, you with me? He asked inside his head.
Always.
We each have thirty rounds. Let's kill sixty zombies.
Don't save the last one for me this time, she replied with a forced laugh.
I won't. The last one is for that loner zombie who keeps ruining our lives.
He released the safety and put the first round into the chamber.
I'm coming for you Grandma, he said.
Yes, I come get you, the creepy voice replied.
###
Epilogue. Escape in progress
Day 21. Noon. Missouri Correctional Center in Pacific, MO.
“You were supposed to report any abnormal activity to the block captain,” Drew said in a nasally tone.
“Yeah, well, what is he going to do? Put me in prison?”
Vince laughed at his own joke but not for very long. He'd used that one a hundred times the past few weeks.
Drew, the pencil-thin white dude doing time for wire fraud, was his runner. The warden tried to pair up tech-savvy runners with drone chasers that had the best reflexes. Vince was beginning to wonder about that, however, because Drew knew very little about all the computer crap now stacked in the open cell.
“Dammit, just let me figure this out before you go calling in the boss,” Vince said without taking his eyes off the computer screen.
“You think you can figure out where he's going?”
Vince was pinched almost a dozen years ago for gunning down a rival gang member at a seedy nightclub. The warden must have looked up his whole rap sheet, because he mentioned very specific things from his past. Like the fact he drew his weapon at the same time as his target and killed the guy while dodging the return bullet.
He always had quick fingers.
The club might have swept it all under the carpet and let him dump the body as one of the many unsolved murders in the city, but the bullet meant for him went through the skull of a young lady with powerful parents.
He'd been touring the Missouri corrections and hospitality system ever since.
The computer screen was a lot like a video game and showed a perspective as if Vince was looking through the eyes of a man running across a farm field in the morning sun.
“The controls have been flaky as hell since that fall off the Osprey, but it is mostly back to normal. I've been running him where he wants to go and we keep seeing the same targets. Somehow it knows what it's doing.”
“Dude, it's a zombie. How can it know anything?”
Vince shrugged. It wasn't his job to train his helper. The runner's job was to collect the block captain, or, god forbid, the warden, if the remote zombie experienced anything out of the ordinary. So far, he'd only called for help twice. Once when it got lost in the quarry and seemed unable to get out of a deep pit. He also called for help when it fell off the military plane. The zombie grabbed the landing gear before takeoff like it was in a spy thriller, but it fell just before the plane landed in Cairo. That time the warden had to bring in specialists dressed in black uniforms to deal with something they called telemetry.
Vince didn't care about all that. His motivation was to do a good job, so he could continue getting food and free living space behind a high fence. Whatever they wanted him to do, he was Johnny Agreeable. The prison population was cut in half two weeks ago, and rumors were all over the place on what happened to them. Everyone saw them get on the busses, but after that it was a mystery. Some said they were killed off. Others thought they were on beaches in Mexico. The warden simply said they'd been given their freedom.
He didn't care to know the details, but he'd seen more than a few orange jumpsuits attack the fences and get put down by the guards. At first, he imagined they were prisoners who desperately wanted to get back in to safety, but now that he'd been given a firsthand view of the outside world through the eyes of a dead man, he realized those were dead men, too.
It was all intentional. A sick reminder from the guards that however you got released from prison, it was now a death sentence.
“I'm going to run this a little longer, D-man. You can just chill in the corner and stay out of my face.”
“I don't want to watch dirt, anyway,” the young man pouted.
Vince didn't mind watching. Even boring shit on the screen was better than anything he could do or see on the inside of the prison. When he really focused on the screen, it felt like he was free and on the run. Other than the tiny loop of track in the prison yard, he'd not felt the wind on his face in over a decade.
He watched as the running man approached a building at the edge of some fields. It was obviously a truck stop based on the tall billboard-sized logo and the size of the trai
lers moving back and forth from the nearby interstate.
“What do you see there?” he asked the screen.
“Anything?” Drew inquired as if anxious to do something, too.
“Nope. Nothing but field.”
The zombie ran full speed across the last few hundred yards of open ground until it stood on a small mound of dirt just outside the bustle of the Flyin' J truck stop.
Vince would literally kill someone if he could have a 64-ounce fountain Coke from that place. While his remote signal waited in front of the carbonated promised land, he wondered what the zombie was thinking. Could it think? Nothing he'd seen over the past few weeks suggested these things could string two thoughts together, but something in their brains had to be working, right?
The last zombie he controlled died in a rail yard a week ago. Analysts in black suits took him to a special room they called a skiff and asked him a bunch of questions about those last moments. What was the zombie doing? Was there any warning of impending attack? Did he push the zombie into a situation where it resisted his directives?
He answered as best he could and figured no matter what he said they were going to throw him over the fence for losing one of their “assets,” but they didn't.
They took a buttload of notes and advised him to be more careful, and then they returned him to his cell with a new zombie to control. He'd been driving this one for a week, so he figured he'd worked out the kinks.
The main thing was keeping the zombie out of situations where it was certain to die. He had to creep around on the edges of the apocalypse to avoid the bullets of survivors. What little they told him suggested their goal was preserving these special zombies until they were needed later on.
He didn't ask questions. As long as the food kept coming, he was going to do whatever they asked and keep his guy out of trouble.
“Whoa, mister zombie. We need to back off this one.” Vince used the joystick to move the zombie back off the small hill overlooking the truck stop, but it was reluctant to do as it was told.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 214
