“Look, I don't want anything to happen to this place. In fact, I want to bring my family here when its safe. If Hayes is coming back tomorrow, I want to be gone before he gets here. If you can get me two bikes with child trailers I can pull my grandma and leave you in peace.”
“Why do you need two of each?”
“The second bike is so I can bring back a crapload of guns.”
4
The council seemed to consider his offer. He didn't really expect much in the way of resistance. He wasn't asking for much, and getting him out the door would do more for them than it would for him.
The oldest member of the council turned to Liam. “Why don't you just take a car? I'm sure we could get one for you. Can you drive?”
“I don't have too far to go. A few hours on a bike. I want to ride in the very early morning, hopefully when most people are asleep. If we took a car we would be heard for miles and would be a target. I saw cars ransacked on the highway, and was in a military convoy that ran into lots of roadblocks out there.”
“Hmm. Smart kid.”
The deliberation didn't take long. Liam could hear them discussing other options he hadn't even thought about. Horses? The camp did have horses, but they agreed they were too valuable to give up. A boat? There were a few canoes in the chaos of the camp. People brought all sorts of gear. The Meramec River wasn't far away, and a casual float down the river would take the boat very near Liam's house. But not close enough. Grandma would still have a long walk from wherever the boat ride ended. ATV's were too loud. Liam couldn't operate a Motorcycle. Someone even brought a small plane, an ultralight, but that was wrong for all sorts of reasons. In the end, the bikes seemed to offer the safest method of travel for Liam and his fragile passenger.
As expected they allowed him to go, and provided the bikes and trailers. They scared up a map of the area, which Liam realized was critical to his plan because there were so many twists and turns in the hilly country. He would never have thought of that.
They seemed hesitant to allow him to return with weapons, but Liam explained how the two young boys could have been saved if only they had real weapons, and not just sticks. He bent the truth just a little, they really died because they let themselves be surprised by the zombies...
It all happens so fast in real life.
Liam had two items on his agenda for the evening. The first was to talk to Drew about an idea he had for getting both bikes safely on the road. The second was to get a few hours of sleep.
He caught up with Drew back at Grandma's tent.
“Hey, Liam. I kind of lied to you about my parents. I'm here by myself.”
“Are your parents outside the camp?”
Drew had a look of embarrassment. And sadness.
Oh crap.
“They're dead, aren't they?”
The other boy nodded.
“I'm so sorry. But why didn't you just tell me that when we met?”
“It feels better to pretend they're alive.”
Liam considered whether that was true. Was he pretending Victoria was still alive? Even thinking about her now made him wince with pain, but what about all the other hours of the day when he wasn't directly thinking of her? “I lost my friend, too. I don't know what to say about your parents, but you can hang with me however long you want.”
Drew lit up slightly at that. He was clearly trying to put on a brave face.
“OK, wingman. I want to go over my plan with you. Step into my office.”
The two boys sat on the ground in front of Grandma's tent, talking in the hushed voices of a palace coup. It was dark by the time they had everything fleshed out. When they were finished, Drew seemed impressed. “Where did you think of such a complicated plan?”
“It's called maskirovka. A Russian word for deception. It's one of the odd things about history my dad taught me. I'll tell you about it when we reach my house and we're high-fiving.” He laughed at the thought. Willing it to be true.
“For the next part of my plan, I'm going to sleep.”
He crawled into the tent next to Grandma, sprawling on the open floor since he had no sleeping bag. It didn't matter to him in the least. He set the alarm on his watch for 3 a.m., and immediately dozed off. It felt as if a moment later his alarm was ringing. He turned it off, but lay there for a few minutes in a dreamy fog. He'd been having a dream about Victoria. He was stepping on her hand over and over and he couldn't make himself stop.
He sat up in the tent, and asked Grandma if she was awake. She started in, like she had also been thinking in the darkness. “Liam, I heard some of your plan while you and Drew were discussing it. Even if it doesn't work, I'm proud of you for trying it. Getting us all the way home on bikes would be an amazing feat. Hayes would never expect you to do such a thing.”
Inwardly he smiled. He knew Hayes would be tracking some dead zombie up on the north side of the camp boundary. They'd slip out the south. Dad would call the deception a force multiplier.
See dad, I DID listen.
“Well Grandma, should we get to it?”
It wasn't long before they were organized and moving. Liam walked Grandma down the path to the main road, where the bikes were waiting. Two of the council members were there as well. Making sure they really left perhaps.
Drew was a few minutes late, but he arrived in good order. He was carrying a small rifle on his back. He saw Liam eying it. “It was my dad's. I only have a couple rounds, so it isn't much use.” He started that statement happy, and ended sad. Liam figured it was because he couldn't pretend his father was alive while he said that.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” was Liam's reply. He wanted to keep things positive with Drew.
Liam carefully loaded Grandma into one of the trailers. It was built to hold two children sitting side by side and facing backward, but the diminutive lady fit in the same space rather well.
“You kids don't have a pillow handy do you?” She said it as a joke, but the female council person ran back inside the administration building and retrieved a small camp pillow. It wasn't much, but Grandma was grateful. “I'll make sure it makes its way back to you when I'm done.”
“No, you keep it. I don't do much sleeping here anyway.”
There were no crowds to see them off. As they pulled away, Liam looked back and only saw the two leaders waving goodbye. Mr. Lee hadn't returned from his task.
Liam whispered over to Drew as they glided down the gently grade of the valley road. “I guess I expected more people. I don't know why.”
Drew nodded, but focused on his driving.
They passed tent after tent, weaving in and out of parked campers, only stopping once to adjust their bikes. Soon enough they were at the front entrance and heading for open road. Lots of cars were parked in the fields nearby. There was no room inside the camp anymore. If there were guards at the front gate, Liam didn't see them.
Fifteen minutes later they were huffing up and down the hilly back road. The moon was bright enough, but still low on the horizon. It would give them enough light to ride the paved roads with nice yellow lines down the middle.
They pedaled without incident to the first intersection. It was a Y-split giving them two options in the proper direction toward home. Liam's plan kicked in. “OK guys,” he was talking loud enough so Grandma could hear as well. “This is where we go in different directions. Drew and I have been over the routes and we're both taking a different way to my house. If anyone is following us, they won’t be able to get us both.”
“I trust you Liam. Lead on.”
“Me too, Liam. I'll reach your house. I promise.”
“You know what to tell my parents if you find them?”
“Don't sweat it. I'll tell them what you told me.”
I trust you too, Drew.
Liam reached out to shake Drew's hand. He didn't know why he did it, but it just felt proper given the gravity of the situation. Drew reciprocated with a big smile. “We got this!”
Like Grandma said, we all have to take chances in this new world. Liam knew he was taking a big chance now.
5
Riding on the back roads was uneventful for the first hour. It had been a long time since he'd ridden a bicycle and the trailer added some heft on the hilly terrain. It also tended to sway if he got going too fast and he was worried about having an accident on the dark roadways.
He arrived at the first major cross street he'd face on his way home. It was a four-lane highway with two lanes in each direction separated by a grassy median. The intersection was something out of a war zone. He paused while he took in the scene in the low pre-dawn light.
None of the stoplights were working, nor were any of the tall light posts. The intersection itself was crammed with cars, as if people decided they were going to ram themselves through with or without the aid of the signals. Cars had stacked up in all directions with several wrecked vehicles surrounding the whole mess. Some were charred hulls, scoured clean down to bare metal.
One large concrete mixer had hit the whole congregation at high speed and plowed into the middle of the intersection before it lost all its kinetic energy. Its engine bay was a blackened, burnt-out mess. The cars it had hit were much worse off. Very hard to see if anyone had been in those cars.
To his right was a place he knew from his younger days—the county library. It was a small building as libraries go, but it was relatively new and Liam remembered it with sarcastic wit as the place that never had anything he wanted to read. Apparently this area had no interest in zombie or horror books.
Y'all should have read those books!
Now no one would ever get the chance. It had been burned to the ground, along with a fast food place and a gas station. Maybe the gas station caught fire and torched the other two nearby buildings? Maybe some angry residents took out their frustrations on these places? Maybe it was a freak lightning strike? Any number of scenarios could have happened here.
There were no people around. So he began pedaling. He had to ride well up the cross street to find a gap in the traffic. He then had to walk his bike through the pile up of cars and follow the far side of the road back to the intersection. While walking he saw some of the cars had moving creatures inside. The windows, much like the car exteriors, were blackened from soot from the nearby fire. He kept as silent and as low as possible as he rolled by them.
There were several grooves in the grass off the side of the raised highway. Vehicles were still getting through this intersection, but had to be a daredevil to drive along the canted hillside—the only route clear of debris. A bicycle could still fit on the flatter portion of the road grade. A good thing too as the hill looked very dangerous.
Once on the other side of the intersection he could look back on the devastation. The mangled traffic. The hulks of cars. The hollowed out buildings. Nothing of value was left in sight.
God help us all if this is happening everywhere.
As he was standing there a man ran up behind him. He had been hiding behind some nearby clutter. He had a gun trained on Liam before he could even consider riding away.
“What's your business here?” The look in the man's eyes was not right. No doubt some things happened here which would affect anyone.
“I mean you no harm. Me and my grandma are just passing through.”
“Grandma, eh? Mind if I take a look?”
Liam hesitated. Unsure. He thought of the last man who held a gun to his head to rob him. Someone had shot that guy at the last possible second. He didn't think anyone was going to save him this time, assuming this guy had the same bad intentions.
“Umm, she's asleep. We have nothing of value.”
The man wouldn't take no for an answer. He moved to the back of the trailer, looking at Liam as if daring him to stop him. When he reached the side of the trailer he peeked into a gap in the canvas outer shell. He started to giggle.
He then tore off the canvas flap so he could see the rear compartment.
He was bawling in laughter.
“You are more messed up than me, carrying a woman like this around. I salute you!”
He threw down the flap again and took a bow.
“Please sir. You and your grandma are welcome to proceed.”
He was bent low. Liam needed no second invitation.
The laughter receded as he rolled away.
He felt better once back into the isolated country road network. The trees provided cover from the living and the dead.
The light of the morning was growing. It had taken him fifteen minutes to get around the blockage, and now the sun was blaring bright just beneath the horizon. Soon it would be visible.
Pedaling along he would often see zombies standing in stream beds, open fields, and in the woods. Alone they weren't much to look at. He could probably walk up to any one of them and spear them out of their misery. Were they standing out here waiting for a human to happen by? Did they pause in the night, as a type of sleep period? What made them surge in larger groups? And what special skills, if any, did the zombies around here possess? The colonel said there were many different flavors of zombies in America now. What were they like in Alaska? So much he didn't understand about these new creatures.
As he coasted on the bike, he reached over his shoulder to reassure himself the small spear was still strapped to his back. What he did know was that anytime he was spotted, the zombies would react with anger and begin moving in his direction, even if they had no hope of catching him. Much like his journey on the train, he seriously wondered if every zombie he was now passing would show up at his doorstep at some point in the future like a bloodhound finding its way home. They were able to follow the train. Could they follow something smaller and quieter?
He picked up his pace.
On one long straight stretch of road Liam was distressed to see people standing in the middle of the pavement in the distance. He stopped his bike and tried to ascertain if they were living or dead, but he couldn't see them clearly.
Push through or find an alternate route? The age-old gamer's dilemma.
He looked at his map and decided a detour would take him in a wide arc that he simply didn't want to add to his day. With the rising sun he'd undoubtedly encounter more people, and the sooner he could get home the less friction he'd have with the natives.
He pushed.
As he got closer he knew they were humans. It was a group of about six men. It was a roadblock. He could turn around, but they'd already seen him. Plus, they had a truck nearby.
He decided he'd have to go through.
Playing it cool, he rode right up to the men with a purpose, stopping about twenty feet short and then raising his hands.
The men looked rough. The type of country boys with overalls and filthy ball caps. Liam felt the knock of panic.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
The men laughed at their own—probably well-worn—roadblock joke.
“I'm Liam Peters. Boy Scout. I'm on a mission for the Boy Scout camp out by Interstate 44.”
“Boy Scout, eh? What you got in the back?”
He didn't want any snoopers if he could help it, but that seemed nearly impossible to avoid. “I'm trying to get my 104-year-old grandma to my home about ten miles thataway.” He was pointing straight ahead.
“You live around here?”
“Yes, sir. I live at Hwy M and Interstate 55.”
Liam knew how to work the odd cultural phenomenon shared by residents of the St. Louis area. Everyone in the metro area gets judged by where they went to high school. You say your school, and a stranger says theirs. In that instant both parties know quite a bit about the other. Social status. Geographic location. Whether they were religious. Whether they were good at sports. By a lucky coincidence, most of these young men went to the very same high school where Liam
was soon going to be entering his senior year—assuming school ever started again. None of them had been on the track team, but most had been football and baseball players. They asked about coaches, teachers, and the condition of their old playing fields.
One of the men, named Ty Owens, seemed to be the leader of this motley outfit. He had a mouth full of chaw and an International Harvester hat beaten all to hell. But Liam realized he was just as scared as he was about what was happening.
“I hear ya. Yeah, once things started falling apart my buddies and I all made for the biggest farm in the group,” he pointed over his shoulder, “which turned out to be my daddy's place. We brought our families here and have been stopping people trying to get any news of the outside world for the past week now. Can you tell us anything?”
Liam actually laughed. “Where do I begin!”
He told them about his journey out of the city with Grandma. He breezed over his encounters with zombies—they'd dealt with a few during the initial wave—and focused on Grandma and Victoria. He then told them of the fall of the city of Arnold. The collapse of St. Louis. The mess on the highways, and of strange military convoys. He specifically told them to avoid Hayes if he came through with his MRAP. He also took a chance by revealing more about the Boy Scout redoubt.
“The camp where I'm coming from is filled to the brim with industrious people who survived the initial collapse and zombie hordes, but they have no food. I'd suggest you go there to find refuge, but I don't know how long they will survive there.” He made as if nodding at their guns. “They could also use help with security.”
“But no food, eh?”
“No, they are in the woods without much chance for agriculture. It's a good place to hide from the zombies, but longer term they are going to have to rethink their position.”
“Once I get Grandma home and get my parents, I'm planning on going back there. Unlike most of the world I've seen, they are the only ones actually working together to survive. Well, and now you guys.”
“You're welcome to stop here on your way back. We'll help you in any way we can. Just be careful out there. We've seen some real characters go through here. Some with guns blazing.”
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Siren Songs Page 24