When he arrived in the technology area, the computers were still turned off. He turned on the PC where he had taken a seat. While he waited for it to spin up, the woman came along and turned on the half-dozen or so other computers. He could see she had a frown on her face, but Liam kept his nose in his phone, trying to begin text conversations with his other friends who should be coming online. Normally there would be three or four of his friends from school—a cabal that would meet in one of their homes during the summer. Liam was the exile, since he was staying with his grandma in the city this summer.
“Where is everyone?” he wrote to the lone avatar sitting on his screen.
“Dunno. You have the game loaded yet?”
Liam wasn't in a rush to get things started, since he knew he'd be at the library all day. As the computer came online, he logged into the server for World of Undead Soldiers, and leisurely prepared his soldiers while he was waiting. His friends should be crawling out of bed and joining up soon.
He sat there fiddling with things for another fifteen minutes. He and his lone friend wanted to give the other guys a chance to link up before they headed into the wilderness. It was always harder to jump in on the run.
At last they made the call. The other guys weren't going to make it.
He thought it was highly unusual all three were missing, but it was no reason to cancel the engagement.
All thoughts turned to the battlefield as he and his friend were immediately “in it” fighting for their lives with their reduced group of players.
Liam's sense of time went away as the game consumed him.
An hour went by when he got some texts from JT, one of his AWOL buddies.
***
“I got the guns. Where u want them?”
“Dad?”
“Oh srry Liam. That was 4 dad. Hope you guys are running 2. Like a real adventure!”
“cya”
***
Is this a joke?
The texts showed up on his phone in one blast, as if they were delayed.
He tried to reply but got a 'network busy' message.
He thought about asking his in-game friend what he thought of those texts, but the computer game screen was frozen. Forced to observe the real world, he felt a sudden and powerful vibration. Some of the computer monitors rattled and a couple flashed off and back on. But the important thing was the connection...
Losing connection to the internet happened rarely with modern technology and infrastructure, but when it did it always happened at the worst possible time. Looking at his screen he could see a host of undead and supernaturals just coming into view. The game world would continue running while his character just stood there and died.
“Crap!”
He knew he'd said it too loudly in the library, but looking around he saw no one else who might have gotten offended. There were no other patrons besides himself.
Even the woman behind the desk was out of view.
Suddenly, and to his great delight, the screen unfroze. His character was still alive! He re-joined the battle, to the relief of his friend who was getting his butt handed to him in the storm of creatures. Together they stood a chance.
His attention was once again focused on the screen. The cause of the outage already a distant memory.
2
Another hour had gone by before he came back into awareness of what was happening in the real world. The lights were flashing, as if the library was closing.
Did I play all day already?
He knew it was impossible, but the flashing lights always meant the day was over. He looked for a window to confirm the presence of daylight.
The day was going off the script.
Without haste, he messaged his friend in-game to let him know he had to drop out. The library was apparently shutting down early today. His friend responded with an expletive-laden tirade suggesting Liam tell the library to stick something illicit in a dark orifice.
With a chuckle he stood up and stretched.
Then the power went off, killing the dull fluorescents on the ceiling of the entire building.
His only thought was he was glad he exited the game cleanly. His character was safe in his stronghold until he returned to the game tomorrow, next week, or next year. If the power went out while he was in battle, he would have lost all his loot and would have returned to his stronghold with nothing. It was a major downer to have to start from scratch after such an event.
Instead of moving toward the exit, he texted his friend a long message about a portion of the adventure they'd just experienced. He looked forwarding to getting back together so he could check out some new weapons he'd picked up while they were fighting the beasts.
But when he hit send he got another 'network busy' message. He slammed his phone on the laminate table a bit harder than he wanted.
This blows.
That's when he stood up, finally getting frustrated at the intrusions of the world upon his game time. He grabbed his backpack—containing his extra laptop he kept for those times when the library computers were filled with other patrons—and moved toward the exit.
When he arrived at the glass doors he saw the librarian standing, looking outward in silence.
“Ma'am, what happened to the power? Is the library going to be open tomorrow?”
Turning around, she looked at him like he was crazy. Liam could see she'd been crying. It was an unmistakable puffiness combined with smeared makeup.
“Don't you know what's going on?”
“Yeah, the power went out.”
“Not that. I mean with the city. With Ebola. With zombies.”
Liam looked past her. Everything appeared normal; he really couldn't identify anything unusual in his field of view. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary when he walked in this morning, so he had no help there. And zombies? That was the craziest thing he'd ever heard. What would some librarian know about zombies?
“I don't see anything unusual.”
“Don't you listen to the news? NPR? Anything?”
“My dad says NPR is run by the government so you can't trust anything they say.” Liam was content to believe his dad on this point, because the few times he did listen to NPR he was bored to tears. His conclusion was anything that boring had to be propaganda.
“Does your dad also think the cable news, nightly news, and radio news is also propaganda.”
“Well actually—”
“It doesn't matter. Do you have anyone taking care of you? Where are your parents? Can you get home from here?”
Liam considered the many possible answers to those questions. He decided to keep his response as simple as he could.
“I live with my grandma about thirty minutes from here.” He pointed in the direction he was going to walk.
“You should take care of your grandma. Keep her from getting sick.”
Liam looked again out the window and saw nothing to support this woman's claims. He saw the crazy look in her eyes, the smeared makeup, and her position in front of the door and absently wondered if she presented a threat to him.
“My grandma is 104. She is probably sitting in her comfy chair right now knitting or crocheting or whatever it is old ladies do. I'm sure she is safe and sound—”
And then to placate his strange captor, “—but I'll go check on her to be sure, thanks for the advice.”
He stepped back as if waiting for her to open the door.
She took the invitation, unlocked the door, and then held it open for him to exit. Once he was through, she stepped out as well, locked it and then raced to the lone car on the lot. Liam heard her lament coming into work at all today. In moments she jumped in her car and went speeding down the street, opposite of where he was heading.
Liam was left scratching his head.
He began walking, but was in no particular hurry. Even with the freakishly distraught woman egging him home, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary in the neighborhood; she was plainly crazy
. He put in his ear buds and was comforted by a rock song almost as old as his father—Supertramp's Take The Long Way Home.
Long way home indeed. Too bad I can't go home.
Before letting the music further distract him, he thought of Grandma. He had told the librarian the truth. He was absolutely certain he knew what she was doing. The same thing she was always doing. The same thing she'd probably be doing until the day she died. Sitting in that dang chair knitting, quilting, or whatever the heck she called it.
In Liam's mind, if she wasn't plugged into technology, even if she was technically doing something—she might as well be doing absolutely nothing.
3
Walking back to Grandma's was a downer for Liam. He knew it meant the day would be spent in his dreary basement living quarters playing on his laptop or just listening to music. By no means would he spend the day on the same floor as Grandma, and risk having to come up with things to say the whole time. Too much energy required. Just because he was on loan to her this summer didn't mean he had to be in her pocket the whole time.
Ha! On loan. That's what his father called it. More like a prison sentence. A 15-year-old boy and his 104-year-old great-grandma had nothing in common as far as he could tell. Computers. The internet. Wi-Fi. Texting. Liam tried to explain all this to his technology-challenged grandma—he dispensed with the “great” in casual conversation—but she never seemed interested. Even showing her videos of fuzzy bunnies and cute little kittens evoked a “that's nice” but not much else in the way of conversation. He ran out of ideas.
He returned again to “Where’s Liam?” She was a breath of fresh air compared to the inquisitions of his mom and dad. Where are you going? Who are you meeting there? Will there be girls? Drinking? Drugs? And on and on and on. The constant nagging was part of what drove him insane, and helped contribute to the massive fights he'd been having with them. No doubt it helped expedite his banishment to Grandma's for the summer. A cooling off period for everyone involved. It had already been a few weeks and he still hadn't communicated with the ‘rents. It was fine with him. His biggest worry was that he'd have to see them both on his birthday in a few weeks.
One day at a time.
His parents stopped paying for his monthly cell phone service as punishment for one of his latest exploits—he couldn't remember which—and they wouldn't even turn it back on for his time at Grandma's. Talk about cruel and unusual. But once there, his grandma insisted his phone be turned back on so she could communicate with him using her standard telephone. Liam had to grudgingly thank her for helping him regain such an important piece of his technological repertoire. It linked him with Grandma, but more importantly it linked him back up with his friends.
When they weren't discussing their games, he and his friends were constantly talking about horror movies, TV series about zombies, and similar supernatural thrillers. They all read the same kind of books too. Liam was interested in lots of genres of horror, but capitalized most of his non-game time reading the classics on the end of the world; The Stand, Earth Abides, Alas Babylon, and countless zombie thrillers. Of course he and his friends visualized themselves as the heroes who saved the world. They even played video games where they could be those heroes. When they talked theoretically about what would happen if the world did end, most of Liam's friends believed they would meet the fall of the civilization standing up, facing the harsh new realm with a cool and detached form of heroism. They would be the guys taking out the zeds, zacks, or whatever. Chasing away the corrupt government. Exterminating the barbarian cannibals. And they'd naturally be coveted by buxom women!
Liam was filled with bravado in front of his friends, but privately wasn't so sure he was ever destined to be more than an extra when the movie version of the demise of society was filmed. Most books packed in characters who defied all the odds to survive. Some had quirky skills that just happened to be what was needed at that particular moment—sort of like the old gardener who had used a spade for fifty years and could miraculously detach zombies from their heads with it. He knew that just didn't happen.
Liam recognized he would probably be an infected loser when the end came. Books only show the heroes. Everyone else gets sketched into the background as mindless automatons, though each one has a story as rich and detailed as the hero. As humans succumb to infection, either by malfeasance, poor clothing choices, or just dumb luck, they instantly transferred from the “important” column to the “afterthought” column in book after book.
The guy who thinks he can shoot a crowd of infected at point-blank range.
The girl who tries to run away only to stereotypically trip and fall.
The unsupervised child who innocently lets the undead into the house.
THOSE guys.
I don't want to be THOSE GUYS!
At that moment Liam heard gunshots from somewhere to his right. He yanked off his ear buds. He knew the sound from his time at the gun range with his mom and dad. You just can't mistake the sound of someone banging out round after round from a gun. Then a second and third chain of rat-tat-tats started to hammer. Must be a bank robbery or something, he thought.
At least I’d recognize the zombie uprising before some librarian.
Then a tornado siren began to howl – coming from the direction of home. He could also hear another one starting up somewhere behind him. Clear skies overhead. The morning kept getting more and more weird.
Unperturbed, he decided to drop into the little corner market for his daily infusion of whatever energy drink was on sale. It helped him survive the tedium of living at Grandma's. He'd need an extra or three if he'd have to hole up until tomorrow.
Walking in he could see a few patrons up near the checkout counter. They were all huddled around a small radio. Liam immediately recognized the voice of the President of the United States.
“—you must stay in your homes to survive this crisis. I have authorized all governors to deploy the National Guard in their home states for the duration of this event. Please listen to local officials, who will follow this broadcast with instructions specific to your area...”
Liam wasn't fully listening. He tended to ignore politics and political “stuff” such as messages from the President. His takeaway was that some disaster was happening somewhere and that those people should be doing something.
He walked to the refrigerated section to grab the drinks he needed. The lights were off—all power was off in the store—but the large front windows helped him see well enough. As he was staring at the selection of beverages in the darkened coolers, he heard two people arguing in the next aisle, a man and a woman.
“I told you the President was going to ruin this country! But did you listen? Noooooo.”
In response, the woman made a sound with her mouth very much like she was throwing up. She then said, “You never did like him. Everyone hates him, that's why he can't get anything done for this country. You'd probably like to see this country in ruins if it meant he got the blame for it.”
He heard the words, but he wasn't really listening to what they were saying. More political nonsense he didn't need to absorb. Of more importance at the moment—what flavor energy drinks to grab. He pulled out what he needed, and headed for the register.
He started to pay but the attendant would not peel herself away from the radio. He held up a five to cover his drinks and slapped it on the counter and walked away. It wasn't something he'd do any other time, but he was getting frustrated at people acting so abnormal this morning.
I don't have time for all this BS.
When he returned to the light of the day, he stood near the front door as his eyes adjusted. He could see a man sitting in the passenger seat of a car parked almost in front of the store, drinking out of some kind of hard liquor bottle. The man turned and looked at Liam with half-closed eyes, then went back to looking straight ahead as if he were on a long drive. Liam felt embarrassed for the man, but otherwise had no desire to engage or even acknowl
edge him. He began walking toward home.
He hadn't gone a hundred feet when he heard, and then saw, an orange sports car—a Barracuda he guessed—roaring down the narrow two-lane street from behind him as if it were on the open highway. The vehicle thundered by with enough force he was buffeted by the strong turbulence.
What the hell?
It was going the same direction he was walking, so he jumped into the street to see where it went. Several blocks down it hit its breaks hard, squealing maniacally, then banked left down a side street out of sight.
As he was standing there, he could feel the hair begin standing up on the back of his neck. He had a strange feeling that car was running from something evil, and that “something” was very close behind him right this very second...
He turned around fully expecting to see something horrific, but was pleasantly surprised to see nothing out of the ordinary, not even other moving cars—as long as he ignored the tornado sirens. And the drunk man in the front seat of the car at ten-something in the morning...
His momentary feeling of panic faded, but he had a spring in his step as he made for home. He downed one of his drinks almost without taking a breath. He considered going back to the shop and getting one to replace it, but he had a sudden desire to get home. Something was very weird about the morning.
Chapter 3: The Long Way
It took another twenty minutes of walking to finally reach his own block. Several other cars had passed, though none as fast as that orange one. Several times he saw people running out of their houses to jump in cars or load junk into vehicles parked out on the street. Clearly something big was going on, but he couldn't figure out if it was a big tornado—thus the sirens—or what. He couldn't even guess based on what he'd seen. He'd get it all sorted at Grandma's. Sure she didn't have internet or even a cell phone, but she seemed pretty well-informed most of the time. She would probably be sitting in her sewing chair listening to a radio right now, probably with Angie close by.
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens Page 3