Liam looked at Jason. “You sure you're a professor? You sound like a military strategist.”
“Ha! Well thanks for that, but no. I studied history in college, and I teach the same at Saint Louis University.” He paused. “Taught.”
“OK, so if they aren't going to St. Louis, where are they going?” his mom asked.
“Or...what if they are coming here and don't care if people know it. What would that get them?” Liam wondered.
They all looked at each other, but no answers were forthcoming.
3
“The convoy isn't our real concern. I'm afraid we've reached a limit here. People are about to start eating each other, and I'm not even joking. My comrades have told me several people have gotten into fights over the smallest scraps, and threats have been made to kill and then eat victims for one reason or another.”
“Is there anything we can do to help,” Lana asked.
Jason looked at them all for a long time, and suddenly appeared as an exhausted shell to Liam. It wasn't apparent when he was animatedly talking about NPR or convoys, but now...he was talking about people in his care.
“Guys, I'm glad you're here. Lana, I sure wish Jerry were here, but I'm truly grateful you showed up when you did. I need some fresh eyes on this.” He swept his arms around him. “I need to know if what I'm planning to do is right.”
Lana replied, “I'll do my best. What's your plan?”
“My team is worried we're going to die in this forest. HQ wants us to wait it out...but that's not going to work for me. A huge convoy led by a corrupted military is coming this way and the only surviving bridge on the river is right next to us. It doesn't take a college professor to know this high ground is going to be the first target to secure when they arrive. We have to move.”
Liam was quick to respond. “Camp Hope. The old Beaumont Boy Scout Reservation. It's where we've been staying. It's in a valley, and is very secure.”
“But do they have food?”
Liam admitted that was the missing puzzle piece almost everywhere he'd been.
“Cairo?” He offered.
“They have food there?”
He couldn't say for absolute sure, though he thought that with all the barges they'd secured, some food had to be in them.
“I think so.” It sounded more like a question than an answer.
Jason sighed deeply, then spoke quietly. “There's a place we've been hearing about on the shorts. It was mentioned once by leadership. They supposedly have food stockpiled, lots of water, even medical care. But it's very hard to get to.”
Liam could think of a lot of places that would be safe, but hard to get to. Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado—the old home of NORAD. Maybe an island in the tropics. A secret base on the polar ice cap where one citizen could watch the Zombie Apocalypse in perfect safety.
But Jason's refuge was much closer. “You guys know Forest Park, right?”
Liam and his mom nodded, but Victoria wasn't sure.
“It's the huge park in what you might consider mid-town St. Louis. It sits behind all those medical buildings. Barnes Hospital and all that.”
Victoria lit up. “Yes! My internship was at Washington University and I crossed a big park to get to the hospitals where they had us, well, helping the infected. I just didn't know what it was called. I never had time for a tour.”
“There you go. It's one of the biggest urban parks in America. Bigger than New York Central Park. But apparently, and this is hearsay remember, the government of St. Louis was able to hold things together in that small part of the city, in and near the park with the help of those medical facilities.”
Liam reflected on the other big refuge set up by the city—the area underneath the Gateway Arch. It collapsed under its own weight, and then it was blown to smithereens by the military. If there were other camps in St. Louis they might also have been blown up.
But if there was a camp.
You can go there and destroy it.
He rolled his mind's eyes. He didn't truly believe he was responsible for destroying all those places. The Arch. The quarry. The bridge out of St. Louis. And on and on and on the list went.
No, not really. I don't believe it.
He had himself mostly convinced when he returned to what Jason and the others were saying.
“Hey Liam, I might finally get back to my dorm room,” Victoria said happily.
“I swore I would never go back into St. Louis. We lost so much the last time—Mel, Phil. We almost lost Grandma Marty. Now, going back in seems a waste of their lives. I don't know if I can do it.”
“Liam, I hear you. But unless you know of somewhere that definitely can feed my people, I think it's our best chance. My map guy already has a route planned. Fifteen miles. Half a day. We can walk it in.”
“Yeah, but those fifteen miles are crawling with zombies. You didn't see how many were in downtown. They were moving outward.”
Jason looked at him for a long time. His face was serious, and he spoke at an even lower tone. Victoria and Lana leaned in. “Look, I appreciate your concern. You guys don't even have to come along. But we have to do something. My team can barely walk. A few more days they'll barely be able to crawl. I can't even send them out to scavenge. The hungrier they get, the more desperate acts they'll attempt. My recovery teams suffer loss after loss out there, and find almost nothing.”
Liam was desperate to think of alternatives.
“Maybe you could wait until the convoy arrives. Then they'll give you some food.” It sounded as stupid as he felt after he said it.
“Yeah, I'm sure they'll feed us on the way to the ovens...”
That brought it all into focus. “But if you go to Forest Park, aren't you getting in bed with the enemy. Aren't they part of the government that's waiting on that convoy?”
“I don't know, Liam. I really don't. But if they'll feed us, we'll at least have the strength to move somewhere else before the real threat arrives. It's not like we have signs on us that say we're enemies of the state. We'll appear like every other refugee with growling stomachs.”
That won't be hard to fake.
4
“You don't want to go into the city again, do you?” Victoria asked.
Victoria and Liam stood off to the side as Jason and his helpers went around to all the campers and explained what they were doing. Jason explained there was only a small cadre of “card carrying Patriots” in his group. Most really were civilians trying to get to other places. They couldn't care less who was guiding them, as long as food was the reward.
“Who does? I'll go, but only because we—and believe me this sounds crazy to say—appear to be the strongest and healthiest of these people. I think we can actually make a difference. I'd much rather walk away. Maybe find some driftwood and sail down to Cairo and wait it all out in a bunker with Grandma. But then I wouldn't be able to write much of a book, and I certainly wouldn't be any closer to finding the cure.” He pulled her closer, and for a moment forgot all his other troubles…
“What?” she said with a wry smile.
“Oh, sorry...you distracted me.”
It was unexpected, but she pulled him in for a kiss. He imagined his mom somewhere nearby scowling at him, but he knew that was unreasonable. By all accounts she really liked Victoria. She even said she loved her.
He was lost in the moment.
A cough interrupted them. “I'm sorry, you two. We're moving out.” His mom continued on, helping others get to their feet.
Victoria continued as if they'd been talking all along. “I think if we go to the city, it's our opportunity to find someone who can help us. Someone who knows the right people working on the cure. If hospitals are still open like Jason said, they would be the best places to start. You'll see.”
He let her go and felt the loss when he lost the contact.
She bent over to grab her rifle. He stood by watching.
“Eyes forward, mister,” she said without looking ba
ck.
How the hell did she know?
Girls always know, you dope.
He was still laughing when they'd both gotten their gear and were on the way.
“What's so funny?” Victoria asked.
“Oh, you. You make me do stupid things, like checking you out when you bend over to get your military rifle during the Zombie Apocalypse. This whole thing—I mean dating—isn't how I imagined it.”
“I'll tell you a secret, my young apprentice...” she nudged his side as she walked. “I wanted you to notice.” She smiled widely. “We're both still alive, Liam. I'm sorry all this happened around us, but I love you dang it, and I'm going to enjoy it until the day we—”
They both knew what word came next.
“We both find a final refuge.”
“Exactly,” she confirmed. With that, she sped up. He realized she was doing it again. She turned around with another devious smile before truly double timing it along the dirt trail.
His mind was tempered by the sick and weak people dropping into the outgoing line, though none of them looked infirm or elderly. They looked exactly as you might imagine friends and neighbors after they'd been camping for two weeks with lots of water, but little food.
None of them were very talkative, which suited Liam fine. His mom volunteered to stay near the front with Jason. She wasn't a soldier but she wasn't wasting away like everyone else. That gave her a great value simply for being alert. For the same reason Victoria offered to stay in the middle of the group. Liam, always a glutton for punishment, offered to be at the back.
He came across a few people who weren't coming. They'd assembled in the central area vacated by the radio operators. One of the older women was tossing her sleeping bag near the others when Liam walked up. Her hair was gray and her clothes were the color of dirt from so much time in the forest.
“What you lookin' at, kid?” said the filth-covered woman.
“You aren't going with us?”
She laughed briefly. “Why should we go with them? We all heard the rumors. Help is coming to us. All we gotta do is wait here and it will roll right over that bridge.”
Others nodded.
“The guys you're following are going to get you killed. We've been safe in these woods because the river and the cliff are on our front, and we have that big pit mine on our north side. It deflects all the zombies in other directions. If we leave, the zombies are going to be all over us.”
That's exactly what Liam feared was going to happen.
“But you'll starve. You don't know when the convoy is going to get here.”
The woman gave him a new look. A darkness in her eyes. Liam couldn't explain the feeling he drew from it.
“Kid, we got plenty of food. Don't you worry about us.”
A few snorts from the others.
He scanned the dozen or so people and thought, perhaps unfairly, they didn't seem quite as starved and weak as the others. Like they fed on evil, rather than food. The weapon slung over his shoulder tugged at him; a reminder.
The last of the others up the trail were in danger of leaving his view. It had to be his imagination, but the strange feeling of darkness hung over him. He didn't want to be left alone with the woman, though she made no motions of overt hostility. As he watched, they seemed to relax and return to normalcy. Maybe his mind wasn't so fresh, after all.
They want me gone, though. I feel it.
“OK then, good luck with that.”
He couldn't help trotting away. If he could have run without looking panicked, he would have done so. It only took several seconds to catch up to the man at the end of the walking line. Far from being left behind, the person—indeed the whole line—had already stopped.
He removed his rifle from his back, just to be prepared.
The group remaining behind was now barely visible through the dense foliage of the forest floor. He could see the shirts and backs of the heads of several, but was disappointed he was in the perfect spot to see the face of the old woman. She watched him just as he watched her.
And she still looked...evil.
“Liam!” He startled and would have dropped his rifle if the sling wasn't wrapped around his hand.
“Oh my God, Victoria, I almost pissed myself.”
“Obviously. What are you doing back here, scaring yourself?” She laughed with the same good humor they'd shared earlier.
“I'm supposed to tell you we've stopped.” She giggled some more.
Liam resisted a look over his shoulder. He recalled a Bible story of a woman turning to salt for looking back. His eyes were glued to Victoria, though not for any romantic reason. She was his foundation in the chaos. She would pull him up the trail, and out of the self-spook zone he was trapped in.
Victoria, suffering no such self-doubts that he could see, looked back down trail. She must have caught sight of the old woman because she waved in her direction.
“Those people are the idiots staying, huh?”
“Yes,” he said with a newfound finality. “Those are the idiots hoping to be rescued by someone three states away.”
“Good luck then.” She laughed and started back up the trail, stepping around the tired-looking survivors waiting for the group to start moving again. She began to jog as the line did start to move.
He watched her as long as he could, until he too moved up the trail.
5
The plan was to walk around the pit mine, up the railroad tracks along the river for a couple miles, then follow a large floodway system into mid-town St. Louis. They'd made it beyond the mine—he'd passed it for the third time since the sirens, happy as could be they weren't going down there again—and were walking the train tracks next to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery before Victoria came back to him.
“Hey, this is where we came out of the cemetery, right?”
Liam looked around. He thought it was, but he wasn't right in the head when they emerged from that grave. The nod he gave her was more for show.
Somewhere over the nearby hill was a military grave with a deep shaft leading down to a huge cavern full of zombies. Those zombies might still be looking up at the tiny gap of light seeping through the hole Liam and Victoria used to crawl out. Or, a nearby hole used by the triplets.
“Do you think Blue, Pink, and Black are out there, somewhere?”
Victoria sidled up to him. There was plenty of room to walk along the wide railroad tracks. Even the zombies seemed thinner here, a fact Liam attributed to the lack of food in the nearby cemetery.
“They have to be somewhere, right. They came out of the grave, same as us.”
That part was true. Liam assumed they ran away because he and his father represented “the enemy.” They believed the Patriot Snowball was the instrument of the world's destruction, just as they were told by “the authorities.” The bureaucrats would do everything in their power to cover up the truth if they were the ones who let the virus go. Since the only media left were the ones directly operated by the remnants of the government, what else would a person expect them to say?
But his mind was in rapid-fire conspiracy mode. It seemed to get that way the more desperate their situation became.
“What if they went back in the grave?” He said it slowly, like he was thinking the thought and pronouncing it at the same time.
Why didn't I think of that while we were there?
Because it's the musing of a crazy person.
He felt his mind argue the details, but there was no reason to throw it out without consideration.
Victoria walked along, her foot crunching on the heavy trap rock supporting the railroad ties. He knew she was thinking. Probably considering whether he'd finally gotten to the point where he'd be asked to put on the mental diapers.
“What if. What if they made the hole on the surface, but were somehow pulled back into the hole. Or fell back into the hole. The first one fell and the others went back down to help her?”
She had manage
d to think of something even worse than him.
“OK, so you and I crawled out of our hole and walked away from theirs without even checking to see if they were still down there. I wonder...” He stopped and looked toward the cemetery. Suddenly it seemed very important to establish if they were near that dark hole.
“No, Liam, you can't. If they were still down there—and I don't think they were—they wouldn't be there this many days later. We have to believe they made it out. I really don't think they reached the surface and fell back in, nor do I really consider it likely they reached the surface and then decided it was smart to jump back in. Those girls were weird, but they were pretty smart, too.”
It was far fetched. Even he could admit that. But they were so odd, he could almost believe they'd go back in.
He walked forward again, and grabbed her hand tightly. “I don't know what made me think that. I think I've been spooked one time too many, or something.”
“You're distracted by your dad. Having your mom around. It's understandable.”
Gunfire from up ahead.
They'd seen very few zombies so far. Liam was beginning to wonder if they'd all cleared out of town. But there were still some here and there. The town wasn't abandoned by the zombie army.
“I better get back to the middle. These people we're with are a lot like zombies. They just walk until you tell them to stop. If you don't—bang! Right into the drink.” She smiled at her joke, obviously trying to cheer him.
“I'll see you soon, sweetie,” she chimed as she turned and ran.
She called me sweetie.
He felt the smile on his face as he walked behind the trailing members of the group. As the cemetery fell behind, and they approached a large, low, warehouse nestled below the cliff along the river, he saw a number of zombies emerge from the inside.
Even from a distance he noted the zombies were dressed in military uniforms. Not the simple BDUs of men and women in combat, but the formal dress uniforms used for ceremonial duties. Events like dances, award's ceremonies, and…burials.
The warehouse sat next to the cemetery. Its function was obvious. It was how fallen soldiers arrived to be processed. And a group of walking humans was just the thing to rouse them.
Since the Sirens: Zombie's 2nd Bite Edition: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Books 4-6 Page 33