Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5

by E. E. Isherwood

  The kids ran into the room where Marty had a few private things, such as her clothes, a hairbrush, and a tiny jar of makeup brought to her by Victoria. In the end, only Debbie walked across the front lawn while she balanced between Mrs. Cantwell's solider-helpers. It reminded her of walking across Liam's lawn into the MRAP.

  “Take care, Grandma,” Debbie said once she was settled into the back of the Humvee. “Maybe I'll come visit you.”

  “I'd like that.”

  But Debbie ran off, leaving her to doubt whether the young girl would ever make good on that offer. She doubted it.

  The drive only took a few minutes. Cairo wasn't that large, and there were few vehicles moving around, although there were lots of refugees walking the streets or sitting under the large shady trees common throughout the town. Some of the homes had air conditioning units, but the town leadership strenuously urged power consumption be limited to absolute essentials so as to extend the life of their generators. The moving air in the truck felt wonderful.

  The woman turned around to speak, and she wore a more pleasant facade this time. “I hope you've been able to stay comfortable. It looked pretty tight in that house. We'd like to put you up in a more private apartment, suitable for someone of your age.”

  There it was. She was to be treated like an invalid.

  But you aren't exactly doing the Jitterbug these days.

  She couldn't argue with the logic, though she would fight the notion she was “invalid” until her dying day. As long as she could walk on her own—for a few feet anyway—she wasn't truly done. She had Angie's help back at home for all those years mainly to handle the routine chores around the house. She felt it was overkill to pay all that money for a nurse, when clearly she had no medical conditions requiring medical supervision. It was one of the few rules her family asked of her so she could live by herself, and she only relented because the family had split the cost to pay for the full-time nurse. No one was unduly burdened. The ultimate irony was Angie herself succumbed to a sickness requiring immediate and expert medical treatment…

  “I don't mind. My great-grandson might wonder where I've gone when he gets back.”

  “Your grandson? Where did he go?”

  “The Marine checked on me this morning. I assume you came because he told you about me and Liam?”

  There was a fraction of a second too-long a pause. “Of course.” She spun around. Marty could hear her softly tapping on a phone or tablet. She'd been listening to the sound for days.

  They reached a dumpy-looking hotel. It was a single level and shaped like the letter U. There was an ancient pool with black water and a roped-off slide in the center of the complex. Elsa's driver pulled the truck right up to the end of the walkway.

  “This is it. I'm afraid it isn't home or very sweet, but we've tried to make it as comfortable as possible for our elderly guests.”

  The woman stayed in the front seat as one of her assistants helped her out. The other grabbed her things and together they walked a few doors down. She appreciated the two strong men holding her arms until she was through the doorway and sitting in a wooden chair next to the bed.

  “You good?” one of the men asked.

  She gave them a thumbs up, and they left after closing the door.

  The Humvee sped away and silence filled the room. After the exertion of the move and the noisy interior of the truck, it took her a couple minutes to calm down and appreciate a new noise carried by the wind from points unknown.

  Gunfire.

  4

  The room was dank and dirty, but it did have one small air conditioning unit on the front window. It was off when she arrived, but she took a chance and clicked it on. It immediately blew air in her face.

  “Oh, thank you for small miracles.”

  The sound of the blower fan masked the sounds coming from over the nearby levee. She'd figured out the sound of guns came from what Liam had called “the ditch” area north of the town. It was supposedly a formidable defensive line put there by the military to hold off the infected hordes forever. Liam was sure enough it would do the task that he left her here behind it. Of course she saw he was wracked with guilt about whether it was the right thing to do, but what else was he going to do: let her come with him? No, her running days were over, she was happy to admit. Cairo was as nice a place as any to spend the end times.

  In her new home—or jail cell, as she accepted she hadn't been given a key—an hour or two slipped by as she basked in the cool air. The insufferable heat and humidity of the town almost made her understand why it had been falling into ruin even before the zombies came.

  She was still sitting in the exhaust of the air conditioner when someone keyed the door—it was locked!—and stepped inside.

  Marty wasn't surprised.

  “Ms. Cantwell.”

  “I'm glad to see you're enjoying your new digs. It was hard getting you a working air conditioner.” She laughed, though Marty sensed it carried some additional context than innocent banter.

  “Oh yes, it's really wonderful. Thank you.”

  “I suppose you'd rather be at the other end of town, where it's a bit quieter.” It was understood what noise she was talking about. The cracks and snaps were loud enough they could be heard over the air conditioner, once you knew they were there.

  “I don't mind. It's nice to know there are men and women working over the hill to keep us safe.”

  “Yes, that's why I'm here.” She sat on the nearby queen bed, though she stayed on the very edge as if it were too filthy to sit on more than that tiny sliver. “To explain the situation to town elders.”

  “Oh, dear. I'm not a town elder. I'm from St. Louis.”

  “I know.” She looked at her phone, and scrolled through some screens while Marty watched.

  “It says here you arrived with two others. A Liam Peters and Victoria Hennessey. This is the grandson you mentioned?”

  Marty nodded.

  “Is there anything you want to tell me about Liam and Victoria? I want to corroborate some information from Lieutenant Colonel Brandyweis. Where are they at this minute?”

  She had told the colonel all she knew. Why didn't he tell her where they'd gone? She couldn't guess.

  “I told the colonel the kids left Cairo.”

  She appeared to wince at the news.

  “Why in the hell would they leave this place?” She appeared exasperated, sounding a lot like the colonel, but calmed in moments. “Would you mind telling me how they escaped?”

  “Escaped? No, they just left.”

  Were they prisoners. Be careful Marty.

  She tried to reassure herself, but deception didn't come naturally to her.

  “Of course. And how did they leave, if I may ask?”

  There was no lie that made sense. No one could walk out the front because it was a huge floodwall door that only opened for the military. The bridges were also guarded. The only way out was the water. She would never believe he swam, would she?

  “Ma'am? This is very important.”

  “Is Liam in trouble?”

  “Trouble?” She smiled, but it was humorless. “No, of course not. We have a list of guests that we have to balance with all the refugees in our town. If people don't check in, we have no idea how much food we need, or if there are infected among us. My job is to organize the survivors according to their abilities. Having a strong young man, or young woman, would be very valuable to the people manning the ditch.” She pointed toward the north.

  “So, let me ask you again. How did they leave?”

  Marty's glib response surprised both of them.

  “They swam!”

  “Swam? Are you sure?”

  “They said there were so many barges they could almost walk across to Kentucky. But that they had to swim a little ways, too.”

  She commended herself for putting them in the wrong state.

  Elsa stared at her for many seconds. Like the colonel, she bore into her eyes, but
she was able to resist the woman a little better than the angry man. The colonel showed pain and sadness, but also determination. In the woman she only saw hatred. It's what made it so easy to read her.

  “Swimming, huh?” She thumbed her phone again. Marty absently wondered if the young woman's generation would survive without technology, because that's where they were heading. Except for this little enclave of Cairo, the whole world was probably going dark.

  Elsa held up an image on her phone; Marty knew she was caught.

  The one time I try my hand at lying…

  It was a grainy photo of her in a hospital bed with Liam, Victoria, Hayes, and Duchesne standing around her.

  “This photo was taken from a low-level surveillance drone over St. Louis five days ago. Here you can clearly see you. We've identified Liam and Ms. Hennessey, and of course we already know Mr. Hayes and Mr. Duchesne. The bodyguard and Mrs. Hayes are unimportant to this little sit-down. What's relevant is that I need you to think hard about what you tell me. I didn't bring you here to sit in this cool air without a reason.”

  “No, I didn't think you looked like a kind woman.”

  “Kind woman? Really? Kind?” She stood up and tossed her phone on the bed, but grabbed it quickly and wiped it on her pants with a huff.

  “This town is disgusting, you know that?” She didn't wait for Marty's response. “I have a whole state to run. This town is under siege. The sick are getting sicker. And you think I care about being kind to a couple of runaway kids. Kids, who I might add, somehow escaped from these men?” She pointed to Hayes and Duchesne on her phone, though Marty knew who she meant. She wondered if the drone was able to record sound through the windows as that would probably be of interest to her. Hayes and Duchesne didn't exactly see eye to eye.

  “No, I'm going to ask you again and you're going to tell me what this is all about. Why are you on a government watch list and why are these two kids running around the tri-state area showing up on drone footage and security checkpoints?” She slid her screen and showed Marty another pair of photos—shots of Liam and Victoria's torsos on a highway bridge from the earliest days. She recognized his shirt. And Victoria wore a confused half-smile.

  Marty decided it was time to play her ace card. While Elsa was working through her diatribe she slowly let her eyelids droop. Her head tilted, just a little, indicating a growing weariness. She perfected the skill over many years of talking to otherwise well-meaning friends and family who—for all their goodness—couldn't take a hint that it was time for them to go.

  It worked as expected. Marty was throwing herself some mental high fives when Elsa moved to the door. Her parting shot almost made her wish she'd tried the “I've got a touch of dementia” ploy first.

  “Duchesne radioed in before you killed him. He told me exactly who and what you are. I watched you three push him into the water on the drone feed. If I find Liam, I'm going to kill him.”

  The door slammed loudly, but opened an instant later.

  Marty felt someone nearby, but she didn't dare open her eyes.

  Lord, forgive me my trespasses...

  The air conditioner turned off. The cool air evaporated in moments, like it was a marionette connected to the unit and only danced when the unit was powered. There was no residual cool.

  The door slammed a second time, louder than the first. A key locked the deadbolt from the outside.

  She waited a minute, in case she came back in. Already the sweat beaded on her forehead. A vehicle sped away from the parking lot.

  When she opened her eyes she saw the cord for the cooling unit had been severed clean. The detached plug and a short few inches of stout black cord lay on the floor—testament to the death of the machine.

  “Liam, I'm so sorry. I think I made things worse.”

  Marty felt the temperature rise, though she felt maybe she deserved to suffer a little.

  Chapter 3: Arizona

  The boat was right where Liam had left it on the Meramec River. As he approached, he felt a little of the old nervousness about being on the water. But his childhood fears of water paled when compared to the things he had to fear now. Somehow he held it together back when he swam under the downed bridge with a zombie poking him in the gut. Water, alone, was no longer a fear of his.

  He and Victoria showed his mom to the covered cab while he started the twin outboard motors. The sense of deja vu overwhelmed him as he and Victoria once more took to the river to go find Grandma. Last time they were going to St. Louis. Now, to Cairo. The patterns of the Zombie Apocalypse were hard to explain.

  “Liam, are you sure you can use this boat?”

  He shared a knowing look with Victoria as she rooted around inside the cabin. “Yeah mom, we know the owner.” He placed his gun and his backpack next to the captain's chair.

  “And this owner said it was OK to use his boat?” She gave him a motherly scowl.

  “Ehh. It's kind of a gray area.”

  The gruff captain didn't abandon his boat precisely, but Liam wasn't thinking straight after surviving his time underground. He hadn't lost any sleep over it, though he felt just a tinge of guilt now that his mom was shining a light on the issue.

  His mom gave both kids a disapproving look.

  “What? I promise once we get to Grandma I'll make sure it gets back to him.” He felt confident because his plan was to drop his mom in Cairo. He and Victoria would need the boat to get back to St. Louis.

  “Ah ha!” Victoria pulled out a bag from a compartment next to the passenger's seat. “He was holding out on us.” With a flourish she dumped about a dozen energy bars on the floor. They were the same ones he'd seen on many of the people arriving at Camp Hope. They were given to them at another distribution center for refugees. Somewhere there were probably pallets of them.

  Maybe they are in a storage room next to those tanks.

  Like so much of the collapse, things happened so fast there was no time for proper planning. Wherever the energy bars came from, they were probably limited to the stocks they had on hand. In the weeks before the sirens the transportation network had ground to a halt, and getting that many bars to a refugee camp once the sirens went off was impossible. The highways had become parking lots.

  He wolfed one down without a further thought about its origin. The women did the same. They gulped water from the bottles they'd brought and for a few minutes he was perfectly content with the modern equivalent of a full belly. The soft lap of water under the hull of the boat, the early morning air, and the shade of the trees above, made him think of taking a nap. Someday...

  The boat coughed noisily before he throttled up and got them moving downriver. It was going to be at least an hour before they reached the Mississippi River, where they'd turn right and go south to the southern tip of Illinois. He hoped the fuel would last that long, but if it didn't, they could continue downriver with the current. It should be a pleasant journey compared to the disastrous ride upriver.

  He scanned the shore for threats. First one side, then the other, until he felt his mom's eyes on him.

  “You know, your dad constantly told me it should have been him out there rescuing Grandma and doing these things you've been doing. I told him his biggest contribution was giving you the common sense training you needed to survive. In that regard, your father was out there doing those things with you. He'll always be with you as long as you remember his lessons.” She squirmed on the uncomfortable chair. “But that didn't make him feel much better about you being out here while he was in that building.”

  “Believe me, there were lots of times I wanted to find you and dad and just hand over Grandma and be done with it. But the longer I stayed out there—out here—the more I realized there was nowhere safe for anyone. The safest place we've seen is Cairo, Illinois, and I predicted it would only last two weeks.” Cairo jogged his memory.

  “Oh, if anyone asks, I'm seventeen now.”

  His mom gave Victoria a sideways smile. “They grow up so fast
.” She looked back to Liam. “But that doesn't change who you are. People are still going to see you as a young boy. I can't help but see you as my little boy. I'll probably see you that way when you have gray hair,” she added with a friendly giggle.

  “Well, people have to stop. None of the books I've read on zombies have survivors complaining about a person's age. As long as they can kill zombies, who cares?”

  “You'll understand someday. Parents care. We always want what comes next to be better than what we had. When people see kids today, they know that's no longer possible. I saw it in the eyes of parents every day back at camp. My parents worried about getting me a college education. For you, and you Victoria, I worry that I can find a strong wall and some fresh ammo. That won't change whether you are seventeen or sixteen. Me? I just want to enjoy our time together, no matter what age you pretend to be. Happy birthday by the way.”

  “Thanks. Victoria already gave me my birthday surprise.”

  “Oh, she did?” Her tone was haughty, with just a touch of mirth.

  He looked at Victoria to see her cheeks blush, and he wondered what he'd said wrong.

  His mom continued to watch him with a surprised look on her face.

  “What?” he asked.

  “A surprise, Liam? Is that what young people call it today?”

  He put it all together. He'd insinuated something more affectionate between himself and Victoria.

  “Oh man, no. I meant she gave me a birthday kiss with one to grow on. It was a real surprise after weeks of terrorizing scares. I really appreciated it.”

  “Ohh.” His mom and Victoria both burst out in laughter, though he couldn't quite muster his own laugh. Sure it was a wonderful kiss, but it was from an earlier era. A time before he knew his dad was dead.

  Once again, he focused on the journey. Scanning the shore and managing the boat distracted him from the loss.

  Twenty minutes later, they passed below a big highway bridge. On a prior journey he'd felt threatened by the hanging nets under the nearby railroad bridge but now the powerful boat sped right under the bridges. When he turned around to check his progress, he saw another boat bouncing on the waves just behind him.