The colonel regained his feet, hand covering the bloody marks on the side of his face. Any other day it would be an unremarkable wound needing minor treatment, but here in this context it meant he was already a dead man. He looked over the scene from end-to-end. The anxious staffers. The dead patient. Liam moving slowly backward. He spoke to Liam first.
“Dammit, kid. Maybe I should have tossed you into the corral after all. Huh?” He gave a weak laugh. “I've got to take care of one thing. I think you know what it is.”
He stood up to his full height and saluted his staff. “Good luck and godspeed everyone.” He pulled out his gun. Liam expected him to kill himself right on the spot, but instead he aimed the gun at Bart and put a round through the man's head. He took off through the backdoor of the tent's main room.
Liam was paralyzed with fear.
He heard several gun shots.
An air raid siren began to wail.
Liam put two and two together and remembered the jets above. But they couldn't get here that quickly, could they?
“Are we about to be bombed?”
He said it to the remaining staff members, who shared his sense of uncertainty at the moment. The doctor answered.
“Protocol dictates when a base is compromised it will be terminated by the Air Force. But that siren is just the alarm for the camp to evacuate. The colonel must be giving us a chance to get out while we can. He's the only one outside this room who knows the plague is here. In fact, we probably could have contained it if we had killed him immediately.”
Liam didn't like the look in her eye. Was she somehow blaming him? No sense waiting around, Liam spun around and ran out of the tent.
And into chaos once more.
4
It had literally been ninety seconds since the sirens cranked up in the camp. Already all the Humvees were speeding away, toward the front gate of the park. Only the MRAP was lagging behind because of its size and weight. The doctor and medical staff from the tent he just left had mounted a Humvee and were on their way out.
Standing there marveling at the speed everything had happened, Liam figured the camp staff must have already had one foot in their vehicles the whole time. There was no other explanation for how fast they evacuated. He had no doubt Hayes was in the lead.
He ran hard to Grandma's tent. The air raid siren spun down as he closed the distance.
When he arrived, all the survivors were sitting up and alert, including the one he wanted. “Grandma! You won't believe my story, but we have to get out of here. The Air Force is going to bomb this place out of existence.”
“That didn't take long.”
Liam wasn't surprised these people had been left behind. Not after he saw how they were treated and where they were all destined to end up. But he did begin to fret about getting everyone safely out. He couldn't very well take off with Grandma and say “best wishes” to everyone else.
While he was in the midst of thinking through his options, he saw the colonel walking his way. When they saw each other, he motioned for Liam to come to him. There was no point in refusing.
“Hello, sir.”
“Listen, son, I don't have much time. I've seen this plague take root more times than I want to remember.”
He gave Liam a photograph. It was folded and torn, as if it had come from a broken picture frame. “This is my wife and son. I know you'll probably never meet them, but if this ship ever rights itself and you get to Denver please tell them my last words were my love for them. I wrote their address on the back. This photo is my most prized possession in life Liam. Guard it well and get it to them if you can.”
The photo showed two people on a mountaintop. The wife was pretty with wind-blown red hair down to her shoulders. Seeing the son, he understood why the colonel had been treating him as a human being. The boy standing in the photo looked to be about Liam's age. He even had the same shaggy haircut common in his generation.
“I'm actually honored, sir.”
“The other thing I want to give you is your pistol and pocket knife back. I'd give you mine too but I just emptied the mag firing in the air. Spurring my people to get the hell out of here. We all have to be armed in today's—,” a pause while he searched his lexicon, “society.”
“Thank you.”
“I still can't trust you completely, but you're the closest thing I have left to a confidant. Everyone else has run off.” He tried to laugh, but it was more of a sad cough. “First things first. I showed you two kinds of zombies in the back forty. There is a facility in downtown St. Louis housing dozens of different types of zombies. They bring them in from other cities. I was there. I know what this infection eventually does to a person. It's why I've worked to the bitter end to find a cure. You might find someone with answers there. Secondly, I—”
He contorted in a fit of pain.
“—I ensured all the data from our work here was uploaded to our central servers so other doctors can see what happened. We have some big ass data connections so I have no doubt it will make it out before any unpleasantness from the sky. What you saw today was an incredible deviation from every other infected patient. It was his age. I know it. That man was 106! Your grandmother is a precious resource. The data will confirm it. You—”
More contortions.
“—Oh shit, I'm in trouble.”
He stumbled to one knee. Straining to resist, or at least give the appearance of resistance. Maybe the old soldier just wanted a heroic exit.
“Keep your grandma alive. Help us find the connection between age and the virus. Help us find the cure. Get her to another camp. Humanity depends—”
He dropped his other knee, and screamed.
“God forgive me!”
Then, almost in a whimper, “I won't end up like...”
“I love you, Susan.”
Unceremoniously, he pulled out his sidearm, looked at Liam with real sadness, and put a round into his own head.
He had saved at least one bullet for himself.
The colonel turned out to be a decent guy, at least by the standards of the apocalypse. Liam would have enjoyed giving him a witty rejoinder that he would never in a million years take Grandma to another facility like this one, but he didn't feel the need to dump on the man's last words. However, he did glean one significant piece of information potentially useful in reuniting his own family.
Big ass data connections.
5
He ran back to Grandma and her friends. He wished he knew how long he had. The colonel seemed satisfied there was enough time for the data to upload, so maybe they had some leeway.
“Grandma, you and the others have to start walking out of here! I'll be right back!” He didn't even wait for a response. He felt he had to move as fast as possible to get what he wanted to do, done.
He ran to the other big canvas tent, the mirror image of the one where Bart died. He wasn't surprised to see it was a duplicate on the inside too, probably so they could run two tests at the same time. He flew out of that tent and started exploring the remaining smaller tents. What he needed had to be in one of them.
The fear was creeping up on him, but he forced it back down. He made himself take a few deep breaths and think. That's how he saw the data cables. Those wires would inevitably end up in the tent with the connections to the outside.
It was a tent very near the colonel's. It made sense he'd want to be near the expensive equipment. Liam ran in and was rewarded with a blast of cold air. They spared no effort to keep the servers and other equipment properly cooled, even inside a leaky canvas tent.
He whipped out his phone, and tried to acquire a signal. Even though there were a dozen wireless access points, he was unable to find any that didn't require a password to let him link up. He was not a tech guy per se; most of his knowledge had to do with keying in passwords, not how the internet was built or functioned. His dad was the tech guy, and even he had to write his password—
That's it!
; He ran out of the tent and popped directly into the colonel's. He went to the bank of computers off to the side. Even though they were off, he was able to locate the wireless router for this tent. It was still blinking happily. He flipped it over and was rewarded with a hand-written note, providing the password to access this device.
“1 2 3 4 5”
“Hey, I use that on my luggage!” Liam shouted the joke from an old movie his dad loved to watch.
It was the combination a leader would use who didn't want to be bothered with the minutia of ever having to remember a complex password to access his own network.
Not as security-minded as you thought, herr colonel.
In a few seconds he had entered the pass code and found a connection. He scrolled into his chat history and found a discussion between himself, mom, dad, and a few other family members. He didn't want to engage in a lengthy conversation, but it was the easiest way of blanketing as many people as possible with a short message.
***This is Liam. At Lone Elk Park at a gov camp. Just broke free. Beware Hayes. Heading for home. Have grandma. 7d since sirens.***
He entered the time in case there were delays. He hit send and was thankful to see the message went out the door, figuratively speaking. He waited a few moments for a reply, wondering if anyone happened to be looking at their phones. Were the networks even working? A couple minutes of nervous pacing and he decided he could wait no longer. He had spent maybe five minutes running around the camp looking for the data connections, and it felt like an eternity. If a message went out to the Air Force when the alarm first sounded, how long before they were here? He felt the crush of urgency.
No answer came through. But no “network not found” messages either. He opened his email and banged out the same message. He only sent to mom as she had an easy-to-remember email address. He hit send and was pleased again to see it go out.
That's when the first bombs exploded. He nearly dropped his precious phone out of fright.
He hung his head out of the tent, afraid he would see his own death falling from above, but the big explosions were coming from inside the woods. A good ways into the woods. They were blowing up the corral and destroying evidence of the grave. Had to mean the camp itself was next.
Run!
Liam made it to Grandma's tent in time to find many—but not all—the residents standing around out front. There were actually three other tents in the compound used for test subjects, so the total number of elderly was quite a bit more than he imagined.
“Is this everyone? Where's Zachary Taylor? Why aren't you already moving?”
“Not everyone is coming, dear.” Grandma sounded nonchalant about what should be a very serious claim.
“Not coming? We have to get them out of here. They are going to bomb us any second!”
“Liam. Look at me.”
He was near-panicked.
“You and I are going to walk out of here together. Will you help me down the road?”
He felt like he was going to piss himself, but his tension eased as he took her hand. They were leaving, finally.
“And now, we start walking.”
With that, Liam and Marty started along the road. The others were spread in front and behind, moving as fast as their legs would carry them. Most actually moved at a good clip. Being in the 80's wasn't always synonymous with lack of mobility, and these folks were the survivors from wherever they'd been rescued. A tough lot, given their age.
Grandma and Liam quickly fell toward the back of the pack, then the very last in the line. “Liam, will you leave me here and save yourself? I really can't go any faster. I think they took too much of my blood.”
Uh oh.
Alarm bells were cracking from overuse inside his head, but he didn't want to worry his walking partner. He could guess who took blood samples while he was off with the colonel. He'd cross that bridge with her when the time was right. Walking out from under the shadow of a massive explosion was not the right time. Instead, he kept it light.
“No. It's you and me together, remember? I made that promise when we left your house. We are one wheelchair ride away from home!”
At the last possible point they could see the camp, Liam turned around while Grandma took a short rest. Looking that direction, Liam could see two large plumes of smoke snaking up from deep in the woods. The remains of the corral and the pit grave were wafting to the sky. Were they far enough from the camp to be safe now?
Leave nothing to chance.
If there was one thing Liam understood it was that the military, for all their technology, was prone to making mistakes. It wasn't a slight against the modern military; it had been happening for millennia. They could just as easily bomb this empty road as destroy the camp itself. Call it operator error. Call it a computer glitch. Call it Murphy's Law. Whatever it was, it happened.
The high cloud ceiling and dense tree cover made it hard to know if planes were lurking high above, but he thought he could hear aircraft noise coming from somewhere.
“Grandma, keep moving!”
Another ten minutes and they could see the park exit. The geriatric brigade they'd been following were a short ways out of the gate, as if they had reached the finish line and were now catching their breath. Everyone had spent what they had pushing the limits to get here.
For his part, Liam was practically dragging Grandma over the line. The steel gate was smashed outward. Useless. A vehicle had run it down.
He doubted anyone was listening, or cared, but he risked a moment to stop and talk out loud. He was looking off to the side, as if giving color commentary to an imaginary camera crew. It was a thing he did.
“And this is why containment always fails. Right here. This gate. One hundred zombie books out of a hundred will have this gate, or something like it. Those jerks could have just as easily unlocked the gate and driven out so this place could be used by future survivors. Instead they tossed it like a disposable diaper. This park would have been a great refuge to hide from the zombies until the world cleaned itself up, but now it's just going to get infected like everywhere else.”
Almost as if in a script, the bombs fell on the camp. The explosions were loud and on target. Or close enough by Liam's reckoning because they didn't fall on their heads.
“And those planes. Were those really necessary? The whole damned world is already infected.”
The howl of several aircraft ripped overhead. He looked up to watch the dusky gray fighter jets scream up into the clouds like playful cats hiding on a high shelf, their bad deed already forgotten.
“I bet those pilots are hootin' and hollerin' like they just sank the Bismarck. Idiots.”
It tempered Liam immediately when he remembered who had been left at the camp.
“Grandma, will you pray for Zachary and all those left behind? I feel like someone needs to remember them.”
And then, for the first time in his life, he prayed with her.
6
After a few moments of prayer Liam looked up, taking stock of where they were. It was mid-afternoon on the seventh day since the sirens. He'd spent much of the past few days holed up in his home, hidden in the back of a military truck, or at the secluded military camp. He'd only glimpsed the decay of the world briefly as they drove into the park this morning. He was shocked now that he could clearly see what the breakdown had wrought.
He was gazing down at the interstate, not fifty yards away. Most of the fires and smoldering cars had been reduced to cold charred ghosts dotting the landscape. Other intact cars were scattered haphazardly up and down the highway, in both directions. Probably sitting where the gas gave out. Every household item you could imagine was strewn on the pavement, as if people had tried to escape the city with their personal effects, only to toss them down once they were separated from their cars.
And bodies. They too dotted the landscape, providing a horrible tableau of what happened here the past week. Now they were bloated mannikins left to lie where they f
ell. Wretched and smelly, even from a distance. Liam couldn't see them with any detail, but so many bodies suggested they were either humans shot by other men, they were bodies ravaged by zombies, or zombies put down by survivors. It was all due to chaos. He'd seen the start of this on his own earlier journeys. Now he was seeing the result of the full bore zombie plague. The dirty horde of infected who exploded out of the city—in pursuit of the refugees—had created this mess.
The final pieces of this horrible scene were the broken people. Living humans, not zombies, were trudging along the highway. A thin stream of survivors moving from the city, out to the wooded and rural lands. Their slow and deliberate pace made them seem like sleepwalkers out on a midnight stroll. Some picked through the treasures strewn everywhere, but most kept moving.
A couple of survivors were on bicycles, but no one was in a moving car now. A car probably couldn't fit through all the obstacles on this stretch of highway.
Liam looked at his fellow escapees. They needed a mini-bus to come along and take them back to their respective homes, where they could resume dying in the manner of their choice.
The task was daunting. Perhaps insurmountable. Getting Grandma out of the city was luck more than anything else. Things were still running. Law and order still reported for duty. Now, he had to get her across miles of suburbia without the help of trains or cars. It had taken Hayes and a convoy of military almost a day to travel the twenty miles, and they had a freaking chain gun to win arguments with the natives.
Plus, I had Victoria.
It was amazing how her presence had made the previous journey seem almost pleasant. Now he had no help at all. In fact he was now carrying more baggage. He looked at the other survivors from the camp. Did he owe them anything? Could he and Grandma head for home and leave these people to their fates? Could he realistically do anything for them?
She was surveying the highway too. “Too bad we never saw any elk in the park.”
Siren Songs: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 2 Page 17