Officer Down

by E. E. Isherwood

  Officer Down

  A Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse Novella

  © 2016 E.E. Isherwood. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  From E.E. Isherwood

  Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse Series:

  Since the Sirens

  Siren Songs

  Stop the Sirens

  Last Fight of the Valkyries

  Zombies vs Polar Bears

  Zombies Ever After

  Rivers of Blood (2017)

  Revolutions Per Mile Series:

  Post Apocalyptic Ponies

  Post Apocalyptic Mustangs

  Anthologies:

  The Expanding Universe: An Exploration of the Science Fiction Genre

  Inanna's Circle: Flight of Imagination - Thru the Darkness (Inanna's Circle Game Book 5)

  The Tide: The Multiverse Wave

  Dark Humanity (a 21-author scifi/fantasy boxed set)

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  Introducing the Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse world

  As the tornado sirens drone for an hour, it heralds the end of civilization and the start of the Zombie Apocalypse. Those who can, run. Others, like 104-year-old Martinette Peters, figure they'll soon be dead. However, her 15-year-old great-grandson has other ideas. Together they head out into the chaos of the plague-infested city. They'll need a miracle to escape. But when society itself is collapsing, is one miracle going to be enough?

  Since the Sirens is the gripping first installment of E. E. Isherwood’s hit post-apocalyptic series Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse. If you like to watch society collapse, zombie hordes bear down on the heroes, and skin-of-teeth escapes, you won’t be able to put down this awesome read!

  The Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse series.

  Book 1: Since the Sirens (found exclusively in DARK HUMANITY)

  Sample chapter at end of Officer Down

  Book 2: Siren Songs

  Book 3: Stop the Sirens

  Book 4: Last Fight of the Valkyries

  Book 5: Zombies vs Polar Bears

  Book 6: Zombies Ever After

  Reader Feedback for Since the Sirens.

  "Finally a zombie story where the heroes are normal people with integrity, hope and faith"

  "Wonderfully refreshing take on a zombie apocalypse"

  "It was an excellent rendition of a post apocalyptic world"

  Officer Down is a short novella set in the Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse world. Enjoy the descent!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Officer Down Novella (takes place between books 1 and 2)

  Book 1, Since the Sirens, Chapter 1

  Book 1, Since the Sirens, Chapter 2 (partial)

  Book 2, Siren Songs Prologue

  Thank You From EE Isherwood

  About E.E. Isherwood

  Other books by E.E. Isherwood

  Connect with E.E. Isherwood

  No one trains for zombies

  James Jones startled himself awake. He blinked his eyes rapidly, as if to test whether he was going in or out of the real world. Strange alarms wailed while the blinking lights of a dashboard came into focus. He placed himself in a dump truck. And, though it took him a few seconds to fight through the disorientation and disbelief, he accepted the big rig pointed straight up.

  “Wha-what happened?” he asked the driver.

  There was no one in the cab with him.

  “Am I the driver?”

  It was hard to tell, as he lay wedged between the two seats.

  With a painful readjustment, he shimmied to the driver's position. “Crashing was a really stupid thing to do, huh?” he asked his reflection in the side mirror.

  He'd dropped onto a line of parked cars clinging to a narrow road around the inside of a pit mine. Straining his neck, he saw the spiral road continued in several loops to the entrance of the lower mine, far below. He brushed a painful gash on his forehead.

  “Damn, that hurts.”

  He couldn't remember the circumstances of his crash. His most recent memories were wrecked, but he was pretty confident he was a police officer. He was dressed like one, anyway.

  A series of bloody faces poked out of his hazy memories.

  “Zombies!”

  “Steady, Jonesy. You're a police officer. You don't panic,” he calmly reassured himself.

  “A police officer, zombies, and a dump truck? Sounds like I'm in a bad movie.” The words bounced around the cab, without answer. He tried to estimate how long it'd been since he crashed but drew a blank. His head felt like he'd been out for a week, but a quick glance at his watch confirmed the date.

  “Three days since the sirens.” He'd crashed on the third day, so it could only have been hours—maybe minutes—since the accident.

  Another look out the window. He could see people, and many appeared human. A very positive sign. He fell back into his seat, thinking. There were few life choices for a man stuck in the cab of a tipped dump truck during the zombie apocalypse. Go up or go down.

  He pulled out a little ripped photograph and held it close. That memory stayed with him. He put it back into his uniform pants pocket and checked something with a little more utility for his day: his service pistol. The Glock felt good in his hand, like it was an old friend. He tried to peer back into his memory. Before the zombies, he'd never had to use his Beretta or this gun in all his years on the force. He allowed that his large size helped convince more than a few criminals not to test him.

  “Don't mess with an angry 300-pound man!” he chuckled, knowing he was anything but an angry or vicious man, though he could play one when necessary. Sadly, that same heft and “street gravitas” meant nothing to the zombies. For them, he'd need the bullets in his gun or the strength in his arms to bring them down.

  Gunshots echoed outside, both up and down the inclined roadway.

  “Well, Jim Boy, do I go down into the dark pit, or up into the sunshine? Take all the time you need,” he laughed.

  He took a deep breath and struggled with his memory. Presently, his best friend and sole member of his family was locked in his home, dying. Gracie, his faithful, if lazy, Greyhound watched him walk out the door three days ago as the city entered the emergency. Her tongue hung out the side of her mouth while she panted expectantly, as if resetting her countdown clock until his glorious return. He'd been on the job, then on the run, almost every minute since then. Many times he thought about sneaking away to go help her, but the time was never right.

  “Well, I can't think of a better reason to get out of here.” Another deep breath. “I'll jump out of the truck, fight my way up the incline, get clear of the mine, then fight my way back to the north...”

  He remembered the huge battle up in the city. Not only were there tens of thousands of zombies, but the military plastered the place with every type of bomb and explosive from sky and land. It would be very dangerous to go that way.

  “Ok, I'll fight my way west, then north.” He'd go around the battle area and make his way back into his neighborhood on the north side of the city. It would be difficult, but he was trained for that sort of thing.

  Inwardly he guffawed.

  “No one trains for zombies, JJ.”

  He made one
last check of his supplies. He had his gun, which was great, but only one spare mag, which was bad. He had his little flashlight, a ridiculously small can of pepper spray, a collapsible baton, and a useless set of handcuffs. At one time there was a taser attached to his utility belt, but the berth for it was empty. Essentially he had a bunch of worthless crap for dealing with the real and expanding threat out on the streets.

  He adjusted himself so he was kneeling on the back of his seat, intending to open his door and get out. He barely fit in the space, despite the size of the heavy duty rig. The entire truck seemed to move with him.

  When he pulled the lever and lifted the door, the truck didn't just shift—it swayed.

  I'm off the clock

  He pushed through the opening with the door over his head. The truck balanced on the dumping bed. As he moved to one side, the truck leaned. He scanned the area to assess his best course of action. Jump or ride the truck as it tipped.

  A jump from ten feet up onto rocky ground might be doable, but a broken ankle would be a death sentence. On the other hand, falling with the truck—whichever way it went—could also crush him or at the least throw him violently around the interior. And, a dark part of his mind screamed to him: if the dump truck somehow fell backward it could fall over the cliff edge down to the next level of the mine access road. He'd already survived one miraculous descent; he wasn't sure he had two in him.

  He jumped.

  He came off the truck with zero grace, though. The door fell on his arm as he made his escape, and though it wasn't pretty, it was successful. While he was far from a connoisseur of tumbling, he did have self-defense training and knew how to roll. He touched down and let himself fall forward—feeling every jagged rock of the roadway on his injured head and backside—and rolled as far as he dared. He had no idea where he'd end up but felt the relief of survival when he heard the dump truck crash over and come to a rest.

  The tired-looking rock hauler had fallen over backward, confirming his worst fears. However, instead of rolling over the cliff, it was on top of what was once a nice white minivan. It had been nearly swallowed by the hollow shell of the bigger machine.

  “Well, I guess I could have ridden it out.” The cabin of the truck hung almost over the edge. The vehicle seemed to settle, and dared him to say it wouldn't go over. “Or maybe not.”

  Chance was fickle these days.

  The left foot felt battered, but not broken. He struggled to get to a nearby sedan with all its doors open so he could use it to support him as he tested putting weight on it. While doing so, more people ran by from above, like they were giving away free doughnuts down below. Something he felt qualified to speak about.

  He gingerly put some weight on the foot, relieved it bore his weight.

  “Best news of the day.”

  “What about when you survived the first crash? Or didn't get bit. Or didn't get shot.” His subconscious seemed to want to argue.

  “All right, maybe it's the fourth best news of the day. So far,” he laughed heartily but felt tired too. The adrenaline of the jump faded fast.

  He had a goofy “I've lived to fight again” grin on his face when a man ran up.

  “Officer! What do we do?”

  Like a siren song, the call went out, and people started to notice him. A pair of older women supported each other down the road and came to a stop on the far side of the sedan. Then a few more arrived, forming a semi-circle around him.

  This was the part of the job he hated more than anything else. Most of what he did on an average day wasn't more sophisticated than babysitting adults.

  Drunk and disorderly? Take a timeout.

  Domestic dispute? Move to separate corners.

  Assault and battery? Time for a spanking!

  Now he had to tell these people there was nothing he could do for them. They would have to figure it out themselves. He began taking off his outer light blue shirt—he'd long since lost his hat—to emphasize what he was about to say. It was almost a relief.

  “Look, people. I appreciate your questions and believe me when I say I want to survive this thing, same as you, but not only am I not in my jurisdiction, I don't know if that place even exists anymore.”

  One of the two old women started into him. “Well, you have to know something. How do we survive? Where should we go? Where are you going? Can Evelyn and I come along, too?”

  That was the million dollar question. Where to go to get safe. He heard a distant train horn bleating. He wished he could hop a train and be out of this mess...

  James looked up the road. Up toward the top level, which was just one layer above them. “I'm going to walk up this road, out the top, and go back home. I've got a dog waiting for me to let her out.”

  “What? A dog? Sir, you have to help us.”

  “Sorry, ma'am. I'm off the clock.” He felt bad saying it, but if he tied himself to all these random people, he'd never get home. They didn't look the least prepared for zombies. He doubted they could walk much further in the growing heat of the young day.

  The old woman let go with a racially-tinged expletive bomb. The suddenness and volume surprised him, but it was nothing he hadn't heard before. He began his walk, laughing at the jabs. Others cleared out, looking apologetic. His old profession wouldn't let him walk away without offering them all some “official” advice.

  “You guys better find weapons. I think you're gonna have to fight soon.” Gunshots were prominent from every direction on the spiral road below and above. Zombies could be hiding anywhere in and around the vehicles.

  He stopped, aware some were paying attention.

  “Check the cars. They'll have tire irons for the jacks. Look for the ones that are short and pointy on one end. Use that to stab the heads of the bastards. You get it in good, and you'll be good.”

  He made the motion with both hands. Stab. Then he gave the thumbs up. Good.

  “Always keep it simple,” he thought.

  Finally, he left all his police troubles behind.

  I'll let you do the fighting

  Only one of the group followed him. It was the man who ran up to him first. James turned around and found the morning sun in his eyes as it peeked over the far rim of the mine. He was very near the top already, which was another positive to the day.

  With a nod to the man—unarmed, unfortunately—he looked down into the pit. There was a lot of activity at the rocky entrance of the underground mine.

  “That's the last place I want to go,” said the man.

  James turned to face him. A few people ran by at high speed. Without his uniform shirt, he was just a big man with a gun on his waist. No one stopped or gave a second look. “Really? Why were you running down the road? You know that's where it goes.” He pointed down.

  “Yeah...well. After the night I've had...” He faced James. “My name's Kevin.” He reached out to shake hands but hesitated before James could clasp it.

  “I'm not a racist.”

  James did a double take. “Say what?”

  “Those ol' biddies back there. They don't represent my views on African-Americans.” His hand hung out.

  James took it.

  “Yeah, OK. I'm James.” The ladies were out of sight. They were somewhere on the same road, going down. “A couple of women who don't like blacks don't concern me. Getting out of this black hole of death—that concerns me.”

  “So what are we gonna do?”

  The man was middle-aged, same as him. He wore nice khaki pants and a tight-fitting maroon polo shirt. If they weren't in a dirty pit mine, he would be at home in a golf course tee box. The silver watch and wire-framed glasses added pedantic accents.

  “I get a keyboard jockey from the mayor's office. Great.” He thought.

  The walk to the top edge went by fast. The dump truck tipped over the edge onto the first level of the spiral, so it only took a few minutes to weave through the parked cars and running people. James took a moment to look in every car he passed.
>
  “Hey, Kevin, look for something to use as a weapon. To fight off those things.”

  “Oh, I'm not a fighter. I'm a finance guy, see. I'll let you do the fighting.” He forced a laugh.

  James let it go. It was par for the course. For the past few days, he worked shift after shift among the civilians in and around the downtown. Some came armed to the teeth, ready for anything. Those folks did what they wanted and fought to stay alive. Others, many others, came with nothing. Those were the ones that camped out next to the police. They believed everything would be all right if they could just hang out with the boys and girls with the guns.

  Most of those people from downtown were dead. He'd watched them get swallowed up by the encroaching zombies despite all the guns protecting them. Often they'd curse the police for not doing their jobs, even as the mouths tore at their loved ones a few feet away. They just didn't know how to cope. The only people that survived the zombie implosion were those willing to run and fight. James had fought so long and so hard he...apparently wrecked his escape vehicle in a fit of exhaustion.

  No, it would do no good to explain any of that to Kevin.

  “This is all on-the-job training. Learn fast, or die,” he thought as he neared the uppermost edge of the mine.

  The noise of gunfire was louder up top. Without the rock walls to absorb it, the sounds of warfare were everywhere, and closer than he expected. The line of cars from the interstate to the mine was solid and stopped. People had long since abandoned their automobiles, though many still had writhing shapes inside. Someone would have to deal with those bodies. The Coroner's office would be busy for a hundred years.

  “So that's where they're coming from,” Kevin volunteered.

  People shuffled along the line of cars like miserable refugees fleeing a conquering army. They were spread out in small groups, traveling as if the line of cars from the highway was their path to salvation. Some hesitated at the lip of the mine, but many kept going right down the ramp.

  He flagged down a family of four as they approached. They kept their kids in between them like sheep between sheepdogs.