Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens

by E. E. Isherwood

  4

  “Grandma!” He ran over and gave her a hug before he knew what he was doing. Under normal circumstances he liked to keep his distance.

  “I'm happy to see you too Liam. I think we are in a bit of a pickle together.”

  He filed that as understatement of the year. Gunshots nearby accentuated the issue.

  “Help me over to my chair if you would. I'm still a bit wobbly from my—” she clearly hesitated here as if deciding to expand her thought. “—fainting spell. Those tornado sirens nearly made me jump out of my shoes.”

  He helped her to her chair, then sat down nearby and began speaking in the nervous cadence of someone who has been waiting a long time to talk. He told her about the walk home, in all its detail.

  “Whoa! Take a breath. You are saying someone shot at you? Are you OK?”

  Oops, he forgot to edit that part out.

  “How long have I been sleeping? I know it's dark outside. Is this still the same day?”

  “You slept through the afternoon. I've been getting a bunch of stuff together in a backpack so we can escape somewhere. I've just not figured out how to travel or where to go.”

  Grandma was thoughtful for a few moments.

  “OK Liam. I want you to get out of the city. You can get out before it gets too bad.”

  Here it was. Liam recognized she was giving him his out. He could walk away with her blessing, and it would be a logical story when he reached mom and dad's. She told me to go! He turned it over in his head. Looked at it from multiple angles. But always he saw his father shaking his head. Would dad leave her at the most desperate hour like this?

  Hell no!

  “I'm sorry Grandma, but I can't leave you. We have to get out together or stick it out here together.”

  “You know that doesn't make any sense. I'm an old woman. I'll probably be dead before you know it and then you'll be stuck here after things have gotten much worse than they are right this minute. You have to get out while you still can.”

  “Grandma, I'm not leaving you. My dad would never leave you. My grandpa would never have left you. Great-Grandpa sure as heck wouldn't have thought of abandoning you. I'm staying.”

  Grandma merely nodded, giving him a grim look. Studying him.

  Liam wondered for a moment if she was proud of him for making his decision. Or was she disappointed he was putting himself in danger at her expense? Hard to tell with the look she was throwing his way.

  “Well then we have to decide what we're going to do to survive. I'm afraid staying here could be a problem. If there are robbers about we won't have much hope of stopping them from coming in, and the sick people like Angie aren't going to make getting out of the house very easy either. The police were saying we have to evacuate to safer places, but didn't say where to go that was any safer than here. The most obvious place is somewhere out in the country where there aren't as many people. Maybe your mom and dad's place?”

  Liam considered. He had thought along the same lines and was proud he had come up with essentially the same ideas. Getting to mom and dad's did seem the most sensible plan, even if he did have a little fear of showing up at the house after illegally driving across town. Many of the miles he'd logged in pursuit of his learner's permit had been driving dad to Grandma's, so he knew at least one route home fairly well.

  “Can we take Angie's car? I don't think she'll need it. It was parked on the next street over. Not sure why she put it there, but it was covered in lots of blood and had a foot in the front seat.” Liam made a horrible face at the last bit. “I think someone stole it from the garage. Or maybe she was sick while driving home? I don't think we'll ever know for sure.”

  “Also, there are no keys inside it. I checked because I thought about driving it back here.”

  They both looked at each other with the realization.

  “We have to go up into her flat and find a spare set of car keys.” Grandma said it without enthusiasm. Liam guessed she was worse off than she admitted about losing her friend.

  5

  They agreed to spend the night in the flat. For Grandma this gave her time to recuperate after her ordeal. For Liam it gave him a chance to pack up everything he would need to help get them out of the city. This included such valuables as her mostly full bottle of Ibuprofen, some water, her walker, and a few bites of food. Just enough for a long drive through the inevitable traffic.

  After packing the essentials, they sat down to eat a heaping dinner of spaghetti and meatballs—his favorite. If they were leaving, it made sense to try to use any remaining food they could. The electric was out, but the gas for her old stove was still working.

  Packing his backpack was initially exciting—a “real adventure” his friend texted him earlier in the day—but as he realized this was a true emergency, with real bullets being fired, his excitement withered. Now he wasn't relishing going outside one bit. He was quietly moving the long noodles on his plate, but hardly eating them. That seemed to get Grandma's attention.

  “Eat Liam. You will need your strength.”

  He looked up and resumed eating with a little more zest.

  She began talking again, her tone a bit more somber. “Liam I want to talk to you about something important. I know you and your family have your ways, but I want you to seriously consider returning to the church.”

  Inwardly, Liam groaned. He knew Grandma had lamented the choices of his family to stop going to church every Sunday—his mom and dad often talked about it—but he saw that as extra free time he didn't want to give up. Sunday services were a bore he dreaded each time he went. He was unwilling to make promises to her based solely on the mysterious disruptions outside. Surely the government would get things fixed and everything would be back to normal. What then? And was it right to profess faith in God only because you need something? How wrong would it be to tell her he found God, but not really mean it? He saw this as a massively complex question his brain was unable to process with spaghetti hanging off his lips. He felt the shadow of silence growing long. He needed to say something.

  “I'll think about it Grandma. Really. I will.”

  That should do it.

  He went back to eating, hoping to indicate the conversation was over. But he felt Grandma giving him a hard stare.

  He was thankful she dropped it, though it made the rest of the evening a bit awkward.

  Before she finally went off to bed she pointed Liam to one more piece of their survival gear. “I want you to go downstairs, way in the back in the farthest corner and look for a black plastic box up in the rafters. It is something your father put there for me.”

  As instructed Liam made his way into the dark basement, struggling even with his flashlight to weave through the piles of old junk his grandma insisted be kept down there. Not one to let go of old stuff, she had quite a collection of aging rocking chairs, long-since-replaced light fixtures, and many pieces of furniture, tools, and equipment left by her late husband.

  And there in the corner, high above everything else, was the promised black box wedged up into the rafters. Liam had to use an old walking stick to poke it from its perch and make it fall into his waiting hands.

  The box was very heavy. Surprisingly so. But Liam held tight.

  As he walked it up the steps he had a pretty good idea what it was. For years his father had taken him to the local shooting range to practice with a variety of weapons. First it was BB guns, then airsoft guns, and finally the ubiquitous .22 caliber rifle. In fact it was his late great-grandpa who had insisted on giving it to him when he was still a toddler. It was auspicious timing, as he passed away not long after...

  Liam knew the size and shape of firearm cases, and this was clearly a container for handguns. Roughly sixteen by sixteen inches when viewed from the top, it was about eight inches deep, and he knew it would be packed with gray insulating foam inserts to keep the contents from shifting inside.

  He set it up on the coffee table in Grandma's living room. Us
ing a small light, Grandma produced a key which unlocked the safety gun lock which was securing the container. It popped open and just as Liam suspected there was a handgun inside. Two in fact.

  Picking up the first gun with both hands, Grandma placed it on the table.

  “You probably didn't think your old grandma knew anything about guns, eh?” She was smiling as she said it. Liam wore a blank look on his face.

  “This is heavier than I remember. This is a Ruger Mark I Target .22. The other one is identical. Your great-grandpa bought both of these way back before you were born. There had been a break-in on our block and Al told me he wanted me to be ready in case something like that ever happened again.”

  Grandma sat back in her chair as she continued.

  “Oh those were the days. Simple times. We took these guns out to the country a few times, and I even shot them. Can you believe that? Got pretty good too. But like so many things in life, it just became too much trouble to practice, to maintain them, to think about them. Someday I'll tell you about my lasso rope that fell into similar disuse.” She chuckled a little at her own joke.

  “Anyway, a few months ago your dad was here telling me I needed to be prepared for anything that might happen in the city—you probably don't remember all that rioting business last year? I told him I was fine and that I even had two handguns. Well he was not impressed. He had me show him where they were, and then he took them and said he was going to clean, service, and make sure they were working properly for me. The next week he had them both back to me in this case, with this small box of 1000 rounds to go with it. I'm sure he knew I would not be able to use these anymore, but he told me where he was going to put the box and he said it would be there 'in case of emergency.' I guess he was pretty smart about that!”

  Liam sat looking at the shiny black objects sitting there. In the darkness he could only see the harsh lines of the Mark I, but he knew it well. In fact, he was beginning to believe his father was smarter than he ever let on. How else could one explain that Liam had spent considerable time training on a Mark I with his dad? He never thought to ask him where it came from, but it sure seems likely he got it from Great-Grandpa too. And now at this critical moment, he would be carrying the same model he had trained on. Did this make him the gardener with the deadly spade?

  Everyone has a skill.

  Dad always said the .22 was the best training round because it was so cheap and had very little recoil. He said eventually Liam would graduate to more powerful rounds, but if you could master the .22 all the others would fall in line. It was all about stance, awareness, and a steady arm. Plus the danger of breaking any of the cardinal rules of gun handling was minimized during the learning period with the tiny round. He assured Liam it was still quite deadly of course, and assassins had used the small and quiet caliber to good effect for many years.

  Liam never pushed for bigger guns because he absolutely loved going out and “plinking” with the little gun. At least he used to enjoy it. Lately his dad would drag him to the range no matter if Liam wanted to go or not. Looking back, he realized he was acting like a whiny baby each time he complained he didn't want to go shooting.

  Now he looked at them with a silent appreciation for the lessons he'd been taught.

  “I just hope we don't need these Grandma.”

  “Me too.”

  “Why don't you hit the hay and we'll get started at first light. I'll be sleeping right out here on the couch. I hope you don't mind that I don't go sleep downstairs?

  “Not at all. Why don't you keep one of these by your side from now on?”

  Liam picked up the gun. There was no mystery to it. It was just another item in the toolbox pre-positioned by his own father.

  Liam couldn't help but feel a longing to see his dad.

  A distant explosion faintly rocked Grandma's china cabinet.

  “I can't wait to see the sun rise again,” said Liam as much to himself as to Grandma.

  “I'll pray for us before I go to bed Liam.”

  “Thanks Grandma.” He was an agnostic—didn't know what he believed—but was respectful of Grandma's overwhelming faith. “And I meant what I said about considering going back to Church.”

  She gave him a kindly smile, turned around, and was off to her room.

  The last thing he remembered of that night was the sound of a car speeding down the street at high speed, followed by the unmistakable sound of squealing tires under extreme braking. He held his breath waiting for the sound of an impact but it never came. Thirty seconds later he remembered to breathe again.

  He didn't get any quality sleep that night, but it did serve as the deep breath before his own journey. Was it destined to end in extreme braking? Would he and Grandma meet their demise as raw sounds in someone else's bedtime story?

  He drifted to sleep while jumping fences—Angie close behind.

  Chapter 5: Angie

  Liam woke up dreadfully tired. When he did sleep, he had horrible dreams of zombies, lots of running, and pulling the trigger on a gun that would never fire as he was overwhelmed by plague victims.

  The actual gunfire, speeding cars, and screams from nearby houses insured his slumber was sporadic and infrequent all through the night. He also heard a big explosion nearby, but was absolutely unable to pull himself out of his comfy sofa cushions to check it out. He was glad to get things moving at the first sign of light outside.

  He went to Grandma's door and found her already up and sitting in a comfortable chair.

  “I'm an early riser.” No complaining about the noise. “Two houses behind us blew up last night and burned to the ground. I was watching to make sure the fire didn't spread.”

  Liam looked out her back window while asking, “Did you get any sleep at all?”

  “Oh, I got enough. I slept most of yesterday.” It was true enough, but not really a straight answer. Nothing could be done now. “And I made you some eggs and bacon. Have to get rid of it.”

  Liam wasn't a morning person, or a breakfast person, but he took the time to shovel down the home cooked meal.

  “Sorry for eating so fast. I just want to get up there and get it over with.”

  “I understand. I can make you plenty more if you're still hungry.”

  “No Grandma, but thanks. You stay here and I'll be right back. Shouldn't be that hard to find Angie's keys in her small apartment.”

  Grandma gave him a little salute and watched him walk away. She said she would conserve her energy and stay in her chair to wait for him. “And be careful up there.”

  “The zombie from up there has already come down.” As he said it he realized it was in poor taste but he couldn't take it back. Instead he hurried to the front of her flat, through the access door to Angie's stairwell, and then up the steep flight. The door at the top was already open, giving him access to the upstairs living area.

  It was still fairly dark because the drapes were thick and dark. Very little of the early morning light was making it through. He didn't have his flashlight with him. The floor was covered with debris, so he had trouble moving to a window to let in some light. When he finally did pull back the curtains he was stunned at what he saw in the tiny apartment.

  Blood. Lots of blood.

  There were lots of clothes scattered on the floor, along with sofa pillows, what looked like a tablecloth, and smatterings of shoes, purses, and other accessories. It looked as if Angie's entire wardrobe had spilled out onto her floor for some unknown reason. For a further unknown reason, everything got covered in blood.

  It made Liam shudder to think of Angie losing all that blood while knowing she was still walking around somewhere outside. It didn't seem possible any disease process could produce such horrible results.

  Is she really dead?

  He wondered if a zombie could be someone who was still alive? He'd read books with many different definitions of zombies. Some were back-from-the-dead undead. Some were recently dead who reanimated in a fashion, but remain
ed dead. Some were alive, but infected with something that made them as good as dead. Would the people walking around his neighborhood fit into any of those neat boxes?

  He still had a job to do up in the apartment, and he began to hover around the edges of the room where the blood was absent and some semblance of order still remained. He could still detect some of the personality of the woman who, until recently, was someone Liam admired.

  Here was a picture of Angie with her granddaughter—a pretty blonde with her arms slung around her grandma, giving a big hug. Liam picked up the simple desk frame to get a better look in the low light. He purposefully turned away from the main part of the room with all the gore on the floor. He wasn't without feelings, but true empathy didn't come naturally to him. However, the events of the last 24 hours had awakened something urgent inside him—he suddenly, desperately, wanted to know if the girl in the picture was safe somewhere. He knew it wasn't likely he'd ever know.

  He took a deep breath, then resumed his circuit of the main living area. He tried to think where a woman would put her car keys in her own home. His keys were always in his pocket or on his nightstand, so he thought to check the bedroom, but turned up nothing.

  He walked back out the bedroom door and noticed Angie's cat was hiding amongst some of the clothing on the floor. Not in the middle of the room, but near the edge of the cyclone of destruction. The little guy was probably scared to death. He moved to kick off some of the clothes which were on top it—and saw with horror that the cat was not only dead, but lying in a pool of blood with most of it's insides ripped out.

  Liam couldn't help himself—he threw up.

  Disgusting.

  Standing there trying to recover, he noticed the keys were hanging right next to the doorframe on the way out of the apartment. Had he known they were there, he could have avoided this whole mess. If if if.

  He hurriedly grabbed the keys from the hook and rushed out the door toward the stairs.

  It was the last memory he had for a while.