They walked a few more paces before he continued.
“But this is the end. I've invested too much time and energy trying to keep a hold of your grandma, and my bosses are getting concerned. Speaking of which...”
Liam was blindsided by the speed of the man. Hayes had turned and swung a fist hard into Liam's kidney, causing him to buckle over in pain. Still on his feet, but just barely.
“That is for your stunt with the tracker. You made me lose my MRAP on that wild goose chase.” He started walking again, unconcerned that Liam was now behind him. “Dammit, Liam. You're a clever boy. I hate that you did it. I should have seen it coming. We chased that fake signal for hours until we realized it was on a wounded deer.”
Mr. Lee and his team. They got it done.
“Once that resolved itself I knew there was only one place you could be heading.” He let out a chuckle. “You need to make some new friends. You're like a fish always going to the same spot to roost.”
Mixed metaphors aside, Liam knew he was right. He was predictable.
When they were beyond earshot of Victoria, Hayes stopped. Liam was close behind, still nursing his sore side. There were no thoughts of fighting back now. Not with Victoria in such an exposed position, and his parents under guard as well. This was all Hayes.
Mostly.
“I'm going to make you a deal. Man to man. You've seen our goals. You know what's happening to the world. You know why your grandmother is important to us. You and I both know I could blow your brains out right here on this street, and no one could stop me. I could then kill Victoria—she is one tough babe—and I could kill all your family just for fun. Then I could take Grandma with me and use her in any way necessary to solve this plague.”
Liam held his breath.
“But. There's always a “but,” huh? The thing is, I'm not a murderer.” He seemed to ponder for a moment, and continued with a disturbing correction, “I'm not a mass murderer. I told you before I only do what I do to get what I need and then move on. Tomorrow my boss may say he wants me to get him the last cheeseburger in America. I'd be equally tenacious with that mission as I am today with your grandma. I—”
Hayes had a small earpiece and a lapel mic. They blended into his clothing and hair, so they went unnoticed until just now. Hayes held up his finger in the universal “I'm on a call, please be quiet” symbol.
“Roger. Five minutes inbound.”
“Ok Liam, sorry about that. Where was I? Telling you my deal?”
He turned to face Liam. “Look kid, you do what I want and no one gets hurt. I'm going to trade you one old lady for one young girlfriend. You two can have a long life together knowing Grandma did her service to her country by helping to stop this plague.”
There it was. Finally. Liam was almost relieved. He knew he would one day have to choose between his grandma and Victoria. It just seemed as if it were written in the stars. Now that it was here he was ready to make the sacrifice. What choice did he have, after all?
“Do you think she'll survive the testing? That old guy back in your camp seemed to be OK for a while. Can you give me your word you'll do your best to keep her alive?”
“I'll do everything I can to keep her alive. I need her alive, you know?”
“I've only got one condition. Let Victoria walk up here to me, leaving Grandma in the trailer. I don't think I can face her knowing I'm giving her up.”
Hayes was happy to get things moving. He yelled down at his assistant to hold Grandma's bike, freeing up Victoria to walk up the street to Liam and Hayes.
When she arrived she could guess what was going on. “No, Liam. You can't trade me. I didn't agree to this!”
“What choice do I have? He said he'd kill you and my whole family if we didn't give her up. Grandma would want it this way.”
Victoria was torn. It showed on her face. Liam tried to look away because he didn't want to break down at the thought of what was happening. He needed to stay on task.
“This is all great. Very touching. But our business here is done.”
Hayes started walking down the street. “Liam, if I see you trying to rescue her again, I will have to do something worse to you than a punch to the gut. Just remember that. No more games.”
“Understood.”
Liam pulled Victoria across his front lawn, toward one of the Humvees parked in between the houses. He raised his hands and pointed to his house, making it clear he was just passing the truck, not attacking it.
Hayes was nearing the driveway, and shouting to his people. “Get her in the truck. We've got dust off in less than five. Move it!”
Liam and Victoria were now behind his house, moving through the detritus which had been blown out the back by the MRAP. He caught some motion in the woods nearby.
Victoria stopped him. “We can't go in the house.”
“Why not?” He was thinking of the activity in the front yard. His maskirovka was about to be revealed. He needed to get in and get his parents. “I need to get my parents out of here, now.”
They were trying to be quiet, as the Humvee was still only a few yards behind them. “Trust me, Liam. We have to wait right here.”
He looked again out into the woods. There was definitely someone out there. Did Hayes have snipers backing him up? If so, his plan was doomed to fail.
To Victoria he whispered, “You have to tell me what's happening. We only have a few more seconds.” He took the opportunity to pull out his small pocket knife and cut her bindings.
She seemed confused, but laid it all out for him in just a couple sentences. Her subterfuge was impressive.
He thought of Grandma's eloquent way of cussing.
“Oh my lands!”
Then he told her his secret.
Her mouth was hanging open in shock as the first expletives arose from the front yard.
4
“VERY FUNNY, LIAM!”
“Liam, listen. Your parents are inside, but they aren't alone. Trust me, you can't go in right now.”
“DIDN'T I JUST TELL YOU I WAS DONE WITH YOUR GAMES!”
“So what do we do? Are we just going to stand here with this Humvee in my yard?”
Victoria didn't have an answer. Everything was in flux for both of them. Planning was impossible in such circumstances. Liam had to improvise.
“I trust you. What do you want to do?”
Victoria looked at him, relaxing slightly. Then a smile appeared on her face, quite incongruous with the situation around them. “Run!” She sprinted like she was in a race.
Liam noticed she was wearing running shoes instead of her broken flats. She ran directly behind the Humvee and behind the next door neighbor's house. Liam stayed close behind. She dropped behind a small patio wall to take stock of things. They were temporarily safe from the soldiers. Even those in the woods wouldn't have a clean shot at them.
The shooting started.
They both dropped their heads instinctively, but Victoria was first to pop back up. “They aren't shooting at us!”
Liam raised his head. He could just see the back of the Humvee from his vantage point.
Some loud pops came from inside Liam's perforated home. There were shots also coming from the woods.
The Humvees immediately moved forward into the front yards. No doubt escaping the firepower coming from the woods behind them.
Over it all he could hear Hayes cussing.
“Serves him right.”
A few moments later Liam was ecstatic to see his mom and dad crawl out of the massive hole in the backside of their house, followed closely by Phil. All three were covered in blood from inside the house. They came to rest low against the foundation, much as he and Victoria were low behind the patio wall.
Just in time, too. A massive barrage of gunfire came through the house. The Humvees had obviously recovered from the surprise and were dishing out the heavy stuff in retaliation.
The slope of the front yard was such that the bullets traveling into
and through the house were going ten or fifteen feet over the heads of the people in the woods behind the home. Liam could see those folks now scrambling to escape any stray bullets or ricochets. A 50 cal deflection to the body would be a death sentence.
Victoria tapped Liam's shoulder. The noise of battle was still loud, but not deafening. “Follow me! Let's see what's happening in the front.”
“But my parents!”
Together they watched as his parents continued to lay low against the concrete foundation. They would be safe there for the time being. They were pinned down. They couldn't run to the woods for fear of getting a round in the back. They couldn't run between the houses because of the open corridor currently being peppered with heavy duty rounds.
Liam wanted to see what was happening. Maybe they could help affect the outcome of the battle, even if they didn't have any guns. Well, besides the mostly empty Ruger he was carrying.
They took off at a run, continuing their race. Victoria ran two houses up, using the backyards to avoid any exposure to Hayes and his team. The Army guys continued to focus their fire on Liam's increasingly rickety house in front of them.
Victoria walked in the back sliding door of the neighbor's house as if she owned the place. He had to struggle to keep up with her.
She brought him to the front room and was impressed to see a crude bulwark of wood below the front window of the house. As he crouched low with her he could see a pair of heavy iron sewer lids, and in front of those was dirt and rock. It seemed like a formidable defensive position, even against machine guns.
“Welcome to Observation Post Victoria. This is where you and I were supposed to run when everything turned to hell. It didn't go down exactly as we had expected, but at least we made it this far. Liam, I'm so happy to see you. There's so much I want to tell you, but there's no time. We have to see what Hayes is doing.”
Looking out the window, they had a beautiful view of the whole situation. There was Poole's burnt out house, complete with dead bodies on the lawn left to rot. In the middle of the street were three Humvees, each with a heavy machine gun dumping all they could into Liam's house. Next to his driveway he could see his bicycle had been tipped over and the trailer dumped out. The fake grandma he had put together with sticks and trash had been thrown out into the street.
Grandma wasn't in his trailer. She was safe with Drew.
“I can't believe it worked.” He said it as much to himself as Victoria.
“Yeah, well you really pissed him off. I hope you weren't planning on getting Christmas cards from him ever again?”
As they watched, Victoria explained what she could. “Mel put most of this together. She was in the military. Did she mention that to you? Well, Phil and your dad helped a lot, too. They got your text message you were coming home as well as your warning about Hayes. They immediately began planning for his next visit. The whole time your mom and dad wanted to go out looking for you, but we all talked them out of it. Instead we worked on getting the basement situated so Phil could hide in the secret room.”
On the street, one of the Humvee's machine guns stopped firing. Its operator slumped in his perch. The other two started swinging their guns wildly around the neighborhood as other sources of gunfire emerged.
“Anyway, their plan was to get you and me and Grandma safe, and then spring this trap on them. There are positions like this one in almost all the houses on your street. A few of your neighbors joined in to help, though most of the houses were empty. We enlisted the help of some guys from a neighborhood over the hill too.”
A few rounds impacted on the front of the house, sending them both to the ground.
“The plan called for surrounding the guys in the trucks, and forcing them to either fight it out or make them leave. It looks like they are sticking around until the end.”
“Suits me fine.”
They risked a look down the street. One of the Humvees had backed itself up directly into Poole's former house. It managed to smash into the former garage space, but it didn't make it very far into the debris. It was out of the action.
From their left they heard an obnoxiously loud gunshot. Loud even for the ongoing gun battle.
Another bang.
Pause.
Another bang.
“That's a sniper rifle. One of the new guys brought it with him.”
Liam was looking to his left to try to see where the noise was coming from, but then he panned to where he figured the shots were going. The remaining two machine gun operators were put down, and the side windows of both surviving Humvees were blown in.
Over the next minute or so it became obvious the battle was over. No one was firing back from the trucks. Soon enough hands could be seen surrendering.
Was the fight to save Grandma finally over? With Hayes dead, maybe they could fade away and live out their lives in peace.
I can dream.
5
It took several minutes before anyone felt confident enough to walk out to the Humvees and tender the surrender of any survivors.
Please let Hayes be dead.
In the relative quiet on the street, Liam heard a helicopter fly over and hover somewhere beyond the entrance to the subdivision.
Phil was somewhere near the military trucks, but out of sight. He yelled for any survivors to exit the vehicles and lay face down on the street. A couple of doors opened. One on each Humvee.
Please let Hayes be dead.
Liam decided he had to be down there.
“Liam, just wait! Let's watch from up here. Safely.”
He paused before leaving the front room of the house. “I have to see if he's dead. I need this to be over.”
With that, he ran out the back door, and toward his answer.
As he ran he saw many of his friends and neighbors emerging from their hiding places. In small groups they emerged from many of the houses on the street. All with rifles of some kind held at the ready. They were there to cover the surrender.
Liam walked next to Phil as he too emerged from Liam's garage. His own SUV was abandoned inside—it looked like Swiss Cheese.
“Heya, Phil.”
“Hi, Liam. Good to see you.”
“You, too. Thanks for helping my parents.”
“It was easy with your dad's secret room. It was our secret weapon.”
They both got serious as they neared the men on the ground. Liam had his tiny gun out.
Please let Hayes be dead.
He wasn't dead.
Of course.
There was Hayes. His leg was bloodied, but seemed in good spirits.
“I salute you, Liam. The fake grandma trick was a well-executed deception. But you've just declared war on the United States of America. You'll never get away with this. I'll make sure this is the last mistake you ever make.”
Liam looked around for his red-headed driver. She wasn't one of the three survivors.
“Sorry about your people Hayes. I never wanted any of this. I just wanted you to leave us alone.”
“Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do to you. Your country is coming for you, Liam. You were already on a kill list. Your whole family was. But I froze it. If you kill me, it will unfreeze. It won't be pretty, I promise you that.”
Liam looked around. Phil was close. Victoria had caught up and was standing nearby too. His parents were walking across their defiled front lawn, covered in the mess from inside the house.
Mom and Dad!
He had finally found them, alive. But the reunion had to wait. Hayes ruined even that.
His “group” of survivors was formidable, he had to admit. But to think of them in a war with their own country was beyond his imagination.
Liam turned around. “I want to make a movie.” He pulled out his phone. He set things up, then gave it to his mom. “Mom, can you record me?”
When all was ready, he spoke into the camera.
“Hello, I'm Liam Peters. My grandma is
Martinnette Peters. Today, which is eight days since the sirens, these men attacked my house with the intention of taking my grandma to do experiments on her relating to the plague. We did not give permission for this to happen, and in return we were viciously attacked in an attempt to take her anyway. My mom is going to sweep the scene so you can see the devastation these men brought to us. Note my house is no longer suitable for habitation thanks to them.”
His mom panned the camera in a 360 degree sweep.
“Where is Grandma? Put her on camera!”
It was Hayes.
“Tell the camera how you fired first!”
Uh oh.
He hesitated. Should he continue filming?
His dad saw what was happening, and softly said “Well done, Liam. We can edit the film. Don't give him a voice.”
Liam figured that would be his only brush with TV stardom.
“Does anyone object if we let these two soldiers go? Take their weapons and let them go on down the street.”
Liam felt it would set a bad precedent to kill them, and they couldn't hold them prisoner indefinitely. Fortunately, no one objected.
The soldiers ran like hell into the woods once released.
The third Humvee was sitting in the ruins of Poole's house. The driver's door was open but when Liam's neighbors investigated they said there were two dead men inside.
Did red-head get away?
Briefly he looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but to no avail.
Now, what to do with Hayes?
Liam felt the press of his gun against his hip. It was reminding him it was there, ready to do its duty for him. One bullet to the temple and the Hayes problem goes away forever.
Forever. It was the word that scared him the most. Killing Hayes would be something that would stay with him forever too. Looking at the bleeding man on the pavement—a place once innocent and pure, where he learned to first ride his bike, where he'd run and play—he couldn't fathom killing a man. Could he allow him to be killed? He had no doubt someone in his group could do it, if asked. Mel had done almost that exact thing to those injured criminals from Poole's house. Would that still put the stain of cold-blooded murder on him?
These are issues he never encountered in any of his video game adventures. The bad guy was always slain. The line between hero and villain was always crisp.
Siren Songs: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 2 Page 26