Liam thought back to the words of Captain Osborne as they escaped the Arch. He'd rallied the troops by saying something like “Run like hell, boys!” Now, with even greater urgency, he didn't think it would endear the two men to him. It was understood they needed to run. Like hell.
Victoria started to run as the trio approached. Together they turned down a nearby street. It was densely packed with small, but tidy brick houses in the blue collar neighborhood. The only clue to what had come through here, probably several times, was a home here or there had been replaced by black piles of ash.
They settled in to the run. Victoria and Liam maintained the lead, ostensibly because they knew where they were going. The two trailing runners, with names Liam didn't know, quickly fell behind.
“We're running too fast,” Victoria said through her own heavy breathing.
“Yeah, we sprinted out of there.” He laughed nervously. Slowing down didn't seem appropriate, but neither would a massive heart attack.
They held up enough for the two men to catch them, and then they all slowed down to what Liam called a fast jog.
“Thanks for waiting,” blue shirt said, we can't keep up with you kids.
The other man ripped off his shirt while they ran. The effort to keep their moderate pace was already intense for him.
He's not going to make it.
The shirtless man stumbled a little.
Beyond the two men, he saw the zombies. He assumed there would be some of the fast zombies in a crowd that large, but he was dismayed to see at least twenty, spread out over a hundred yards. All following them. Worse, zombies came out from among the houses the more they ran. They picked up a runner here or there.
Along the fringes, walking zombies always made an effort to chase, but they couldn't keep pace.
It only took a quarter of a mile to reach the bike path, a relief because he thought it was farther away. He remembered riding his bike and running a few times along the trail. It wound through blocks and blocks of single-family homes on the tight city streets, though it was most notable because it ran parallel to a major storm water drainage channel designed to prevent flooding. The lack of rain the past few weeks meant the “river” was now dry.
“That way,” he pointed along the bike path toward the heart of the city.
They found their rhythm on the urban trail. Houses on the left. Dried waterway on the right, below them. Somewhere up ahead, the rest of the group was trying to stay out in front of them.
This is a simple math problem. The result is you ruining it for them...
If they kept running, it wouldn't be long before Group B caught up with the slower people in Group A. A twenty-minute lead wasn't very long, especially if Group A wasn't moving very fast. On any other run he would be clear of mind and able to think of pretty much anything he wanted, including math puzzles. It was one of the benefits of running he loved. However, the screams of the zombies, and the fear of being caught, canceled any and all benefits of this effort, save staying alive.
“Guys, we're going to catch up with the main group too fast. We have to delay. Draw them off.”
“Screw that, kid. We're going right up this path before we kill ourselves.”
“They aren't going to make it,” Victoria said as she leaned into him.
“Shit.”
She smiled, sharing his sentiment, if not his language.
Behind, the same fast zombies from under the bridge galloped along in uneven bounds but they made consistent time. Their numbers had doubled, he estimated, and more runners came out from each block they passed. Soon they'd have hundreds of followers.
“Let's go down there,” he shouted. Without waiting, he pushed Victoria's arm in the direction he wanted to go. If the two men needed to get to the main group quickly, the companion water channel was the way to do it while drawing the least attention.
The drainage system was named River des Peres, though most times it was a dry riverbed about two hundred feet across. It only flowed after heavy rains, or if the Mississippi River was running high enough to push its water up the channel. Currently it had the equivalent of a small creek meandering roughly down the middle. When he descended the gently sloped stone-packed bank, he found it slightly easier to run on the flat gravel-strewn bottom.
The zombies weren't fooled. They also came down the bank, though several of them fell on the uneven terrain.
“We're losing a couple!”
He was proud of himself for thinking of going down into the river bed. With any luck they'd run right up the river and pop out at Forest Park. The bike path above had numerous signs explaining the history and geography of this river. He'd stopped and read them on prior visits. The floodway went exactly where they wanted to go.
The two men will finally see me as a hero.
The four runners clumped up again so they could communicate.
“Nice job, kid. Now the zombies on the streets can't see us. We might make this after all.”
The other man, without the shirt, nodded agreement, but still looked like he was close to throwing up from the exertion.
“Yeah, nice work, kid,” Victoria said as she gave him a pat on the shoulder.
Ten minutes later he was riding high on his success when they rounded a bend in the channel and came face to face with the last thing he expected to see down there.
In fact, it surprised him so much he stopped running. Belatedly, Victoria came to a stop as well. She looked over his shoulder to the zombies running behind. They'd found the pace needed to keep the infected far enough back they weren't a threat, but didn't tax the two men to the point they'd give up.
Liam thought he had it all down to a science. Ten easy miles to rescue.
That was before he saw Jason and his mom and the rest of the motley group of survivors.
They were in the channel, too.
3
The shirtless man came to a stop next to Liam.
“It was a good try. But we're done for.”
The insinuation was there. Liam had failed. His rescue only delayed the attack that started back on the railroad tracks. And though there were fewer zombies, they were fast. In a group, they were the worst type he knew about. The Arizona still didn't fit neatly in his zombie classification manual. He hoped that was a one-off aberration.
Science class: who knew it would be this useful?
Victoria tugged at his arm. She was panting like him, but he didn't think she looked as scared as he felt inside. She pointed to the top of the opposite shore. “We can draw them off that way.”
He saw it right away, once he was looking for it. The far bank would make them highly visible to the trailing zombies. The stonework was near-pristine white, as if it were painted that way. The people down in the main part of the riverway would be difficult to spot, by comparison.
“You. Are. A genius.” He didn't wait. She paced him.
They ran through the shallow water and started up the bank. He assumed the two men would follow, but they either saw them and decided it was suicide, or didn't see them and weren't stopping for anything.
“Hey, up here,” he yelled back.
They definitely saw him, but continued on.
“What do we do?” he asked Victoria. It took less than a minute and they stood at the top edge of the drainage. The zombies were almost directly below. Some had followed them, but most continued toward the two men in front of them, and the main group beyond.
“Do what I do,” she said.
While he watched, she jumped a small chain link fence, pulled her rifle off her shoulder, and set it on the top bar. He stepped back when she squeezed off a round down into the runners below.
“Duh.”
He jumped the fence and mimicked her actions. Together they both knocked a few down and got their attention. The loud noise raised heads and got many of them running across the small rivulet and up the bank to them.
He giggled maniacally as they felled one after the other. “This
is fun!”
Deep down he knew it was wrong, but they'd run so far, so fast, he was in a euphoric “runner's high” and was happy to make good on his earlier mistakes. Their feat would be even better if the two men had followed them, but that couldn't be helped.
The infected didn't line up in neat rows for him to count, but he guessed there were fifty or so coming up the embankment for them, and about half that number running for Jason and his mom. The pops of guns down there had already started. The long, flat bottom of the riverway gave perfect fields of fire to the defenders.
Things got complicated when the first runners arrived at the fence. He pulled back as the first crashed into and shook the metal links. It was about ten feet down the line from Victoria.
“I've got it.” Liam stepped back from the fence, walked directly behind Victoria, and put one into the brainpan of the young man—now infected—and put him down.
In those few seconds, several more assaulted the fence. Victoria fired off a few shots, but had to pull off the fence to avoid getting grabbed. His fight or flight response hovered between the two options while he determined if the zombies were going to hop the fence. Certain kinds of zombies could do it, he was absolutely sure of that.
It unfolded as he watched, but as was so typical with these life-or-death encounters, it didn't go at all how he anticipated.
First, one running zombie came up to the fence and got across. It was more of a forward dive over the fence, and the skinny woman smacked the rock hard as she landed. Victoria and Liam both had their guns in their hands, but they stepped backwards a few more paces before they remembered that fact. In Liam's case, he leaned toward running. If they could all do that, they were in real trouble.
Victoria kept her head and fired at the female zombie. It took her several shots—the woman was fast and moved unpredictably—but she put her down.
“Did you see that? These zombies can run and jump,” she screamed into his ringing ears.
Seconds later, they realized that wasn't true. The lady had made it over the fence by getting lucky, but the others hit the fence and stood there grasping at air, like a “typical” zombie would do when faced with a simple challenge outside of its skillset. Things like doorknobs, elevator buttons, and tool usage were beyond the ability of most zombies.
So far.
He tried to stay focused on the moment. The leading zombies on the fence continued their fruitless grabbing, but the bulk of the runners behind them ran against their fellows and seemed to make a conscious decision to slide by and then run back down the rocks toward the exposed people at the bottom. If there was any thought to it, Liam couldn't say. If the choice was between people behind a fence or people standing out in the open, he didn't think even the most IQ-deprived zombie could mess that up.
The runners picked up speed as they aimed themselves for the victims below.
Liam shifted again, hoping to shoot some as they ran away, but a second before he pulled the trigger he remembered one important rule of shooting guns. His dad drilled in the “four rules” of firearms with the tenacity of a bulldog. And now it all paid off.
Through his sights he had a dream shot lined up on the backs of the heads of the infected, but slightly to the right of his red dot, down at the bottom, he saw his mother.
“Always know what's behind your target, son.”
4
Lana crouched as she fired. Jason was nearby, as were several other shooters from the survivors down in the riverbed.
Liam pulled up from his scope to get a better look at what was happening.
The initial group of zombies followed the two men toward his mom. Those two men never stopped running. They were rounding the next bend of the waterway, out of the picture. Many others were jogging, limping, or walking away, too. Those that remained at the bottom were trying to give the others the time they needed to get away.
A big part of him wanted to dispatch the runners that were still trying to figure out why they were being prevented from reaching their victims only a few feet away. The chain link fence was wobbling, but he didn't think it would collapse, yet. Eventually every fence falls…
“Victoria, we have to help my mom.”
“I know, but how?”
“Follow me,” he shouted.
He trotted to the right, in the direction the survivors were moving. Thinking on the run, he didn't let the closest zombies obscure his view of those below. His mom was playing a simple game of leapfrog with the men and women below. A few would shoot, then scurry backward and find another place to stop. They'd wait for the next few shooters to run by, then they would shoot their guns a couple times before doing the same. How they managed to organize such a thing was a mystery.
The zombies running down the side were the real threat because they were coming from a new direction. He only had a few seconds to do something.
He jumped the fence, heading upriver along the bank.
“Liam!”
“Follow me!”
He heard her rush the fence and hop over it, but he didn't look back. He found his place and ran down the embankment, roughly parallel to the zombies doing the same behind him. The leaders had already reached the bottom, but he could still affect the trajectory of those following.
He settled in and brought his AK to bear, wondering how many rounds he'd already fired. “Always count your shots,” he dad had counseled. Back at the range it seemed a waste of time and effort, but now it made sense.
For a few glorious seconds he shot at the zombies in profile, from the side. He was firing away from his own mother now. Initially he thought this was was going to be a massacre, but after several misses he came to the belated conclusion that firing at running zombies from the side was much harder than it looked.
The next few seconds were good and bad news. He soon had much better views of the zombies because those at the top were now running directly for him. From the front, their heads didn't move as much. The bad news was they were now running directly for him.
“Remind me again why I don't plan military tactics, oh yeah, this,” he said to himself.
Victoria was at his side, and soon they both were able to get a few shots off. But it was a hopeless position. It wasn't that there were too many zombies, but they were closing distance too quickly and there was no way to get them all.
“Now we run, boyfriend!”
“Good call, girlfriend.”
He suspected she was trying to keep him calm with humor. It usually worked, though he felt his bladder wobble as he stood up in front of the closing runners. It was a confusing mixture of zombies and humans running in many different directions. The end result, if this was the end, was that not all the zombies from above went down to his mom's position. Many had made it halfway down, only to be diverted again by the targets closest to them—Liam and Victoria.
But running over the sloped rocks was not as easy as running the bike path or the bottom of the riverbed. There were large holes in many places, as some of the fill rocks had broken or been removed over the decades.
Fancy a broken ankle?
He thought back to his first encounters with Angie, back on day one. He was terrified of breaking an ankle and being overwhelmed by the sick nurse. Now he had the equivalent of twenty sick nurses thirsty for him to twist his ankle in the uneven rocks.
Of course the zombies were far less concerned with the ground below them. One loud crack made Liam look back. A large male zombie put a foot into a hole and showed Liam what he could expect if he did the same. The man tumbled down the slope. His exposed lower leg had snapped and the bone protruded ominously from inside…
The shooters on the bottom had kept moving. The threat from above was real, but Liam's ploy had made it possible for the people down there to line up their shots and make them count. The crackle of gunfire was even and disciplined. Something about the whole thing made Liam think, once again, that Jason's group had some training for this.
Victoria was i
n the lead, and she angled them down toward the bottom at the bend in the river.
“Watch these rocks. Lots of loose ones.”
He was impressed at her dexterity as she cleared a large section of oblong rocks that didn't fit at all with the even shapes of the stones lining the rest of the slope. He held his rifle in both hands in front of him and used it as a counterweight to balance himself as he hopped from rock to rock on the move.
Don't fall.
He bounced left and right, and downward.
Falling is dying.
Victoria cleared the obstacle and landed on the river's bottom. It was, in fact, paved in concrete there. All he had to do was get off the rocks…
You aren't going to make it.
He didn't close his eyes, but he turned off his mind as he willed his feet to be light as he sailed over the last of the rocks. When his foot hit the concrete bottom he let out a whoop completely out of line with what any observer might think appropriate. The field of rocks wouldn't get a second look in the Old World. But here, with zombies behind, the unknown ahead, and most importantly his girlfriend already through the obstacle—it was the most important task of his life.
He turned around. “Suck it, rocks!”
The zombies hit the uneven rocks and fell like trees. Their numbers had decreased considerably, so he could appreciate the irony without endangering his life. With his mom nearby, and Victoria behind him, he crouched and brought his rifle to bear.
Time to end this race.
The sad click of his gun was the last thing he expected.
5
“Come on, Liam. Run!” It was his mom with a perfectly reasonable request. He couldn't believe he was out of ammo, when the zombies were in such a prime exposed position. It was always easier to hit them when they were down. He'd done it numerous times, especially back at the watchtower at Camp Hope. But now running seemed like the best idea in the world.
Victoria helped him up. “Follow your mom.”
He slung his useless rifle and started running, again. On any other day before the sirens he could have run five miles without breaking a sweat. Ten miles would be a challenge. Fifteen miles would be difficult, but doable with proper hydration and all that. He ran track in high school, as it was the only sport he really enjoyed. His parents insisted he “do something” and not just be a “2:40 student” that cut out everyday with the final bell. He put in his time, rode the public bus home on track nights, and suffered along with everyone else. But it did get him in great shape.
Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 Page 10