“It’s good to see we both still have our sense of humor intact, despite the insanity down there.”
“Yeah, I just want to get back to Grandma now. I have to get her out of the Arch before those criminals break in.”
“You think they will make it into the Arch museum? What about all the police?”
“I think the police will fight hard to protect their families, but look at the swarm of attackers. There's just too many. And if the northern line falls, we'll have bigger problems than armed criminal gangs.”
Looking at their options, Liam considered.
“Do you think we could open the door and let the ranger back up into the observation area, and then give him the slip as we run back down and shut the door?”
“It’s worth a try. I like that better than exploring the north leg, waiting for a sick person to jump us the whole way down.”
They made their way to the south leg unloading zone only to find their friend was no longer at the door. It had been several hours since they left him, so perhaps it was inevitable he would have moved on. But that meant he was somewhere on the 1076 steps below them.
“Want to change your answer now?”
Liam thought about it and decided he'd rather face the one zombie he knew was down these steps than an unknown number down the other leg.
“Let's just go down this way and deal with him when we find him. We'll just have to move slow.”
“Do you want a drink of water?”
“Do I ever! You have some?”
“No, I was just asking.” Victoria smiled at her joke. Liam couldn't help but laugh too, although he made like he was going to punch her in the arm for saying something so mean.
Then, he started down the dark staircase with the flashlight. Despite multiple layers of danger around him, he felt infinitely better than his walk up the steps earlier. He had his friend back.
Victoria, with the radio, trailed behind.
Chapter 11: Antibodies
Liam was a testosterone-fueled 15-year-old, but he retained enough common sense to know when to be scared. The steep stairwell in the narrow space of the upper Arch was bad enough to do in the dark. Knowing there was a dead man walking somewhere below them—well that just sent the fear right out the window. If there were windows...
He noticed Victoria was trying to stay as close to him as possible now, even though she was a step behind him all the time. His initial optimism as they started the descent had worn off, though he was still glad he wasn't doing this alone. He thought he might go insane if he had to try.
And if the light went out?
He looked down at the light, as if to will it to stay on. It remained bright and steady. The walk down went much faster than up, but it was still very taxing on their legs. It was just a different kind of pain. And they had no food or water since they first started the day's adventure. Liam was parched.
The staircase wound itself in the Arch leg around the machinery of the mechanical tram sharing the space. Rather than one continuous set of stairs, it was broken up with dozens and dozens of landings so it could bend with the curvature of the structure. They expected to find the zombie on each landing as they went down. And each vacant landing heightened their anxiety. Was he on the next one? Was he still in the stairwell at all? Was he attacking Grandma at this very moment?
Liam tried to balance the prudence of a cautious descent with the pressure of escaping the leg of the Arch before the whole structure was overrun with the armed attackers they saw swarming below. He vaguely wondered whether the mindless infected were worse than the men and women preying their vulnerable peers. It was a toss up in his mind.
About twenty minutes later they found themselves in the machine shop at the base of the stairs where they'd started. Liam's stress level was off the charts because the ranger HAD to be somewhere close. They couldn't have missed him on the stairs. The same door was open that lead up the hallway into the main waiting area. The zombie had to have gone through there. It couldn't have been hiding anywhere else.
“How did that thing get past us? Do you think he was hiding?” Liam didn't figure that was a behavior of a normal zombie, but then what was the normal behavior of a dead person? Seeing a real life zombie made him realize "normal" and "zombie" could never be used together.
“No, he couldn't—”
The screams gave away the game.
Lots of screams now from up the hallway.
Liam and Victoria were running to catch up to the park ranger, but when they entered the main waiting area it wasn't him causing all the commotion, it was the criminals. They had already breached the north entrance, breaking all the glass doors, and were yelling and screaming back and forth with the police officers nearby.
Looking again, he did see the park ranger after all. He was making trouble for some of the sick people on the right side of the room, nearer to the candy store. Well away from the police or the looters. Well away from help. While it was a matter of life or death for those closest to the crazed ranger, it had already become a provincial backwater in terms of importance relative to the battle in the rest of the cavernous room.
Liam and Victoria were still in the south hallway where it was very dark. They shut off their light and tried to establish some sense to what was happening in front of them.
The looters came in from the north, across the room from the pair, and controlled that entrance and the tunnel leading to the north leg of the Arch. The police were on their left, holed up in the museum. In between everyone was the large waiting area filled with the elderly and the sick. The sight of sick people laying on the floor, and the screams from those now being assaulted by the park ranger, seemed to give the looters a reason to pause.
“I have to get Grandma.”
Victoria offered no objections.
Grandma was still where Liam left her very early in the morning. It was hard to tell her condition, but she was sitting in her big wheelchair. She was maybe fifty feet away from where he was hiding but only several feet away from the park ranger and his probing teeth.
Liam ran out of the darkened hallway, straight for Grandma. There were a few old people in the middle of the room trundling toward the south exit. He felt bad to use them as distractions, but they gave him the cover he needed from the criminals on the far side of the room.
While he was on the run, one of the invaders yelled, “These people are infected! Kill them all to save yourselves!”
Then the screaming really started. The intense sound of gunfire escalated and quickly squelched the screams. Liam knew he was exposed, but they were shooting the people closest to them first. It gave him some time.
He had covered the ground to Grandma in just a few seconds, suppressing the fact he had just crossed a room full of flying bullets. He could see she was awake and clutching his backpack as a shield of sorts against the maliciousness of the looters. Liam said nothing, but grabbed her chair, spun her in the right direction, and started pushing her for their lives. The park ranger was nearby but not the major threat. Not by a wide margin.
He was now one of the few people on this side of the room still standing. Having to push the wheelchair made him even more of a target. Doing a slalom through the bodies on the floor brought him down to an intolerably slow pace. He didn't dare try to go up the ramp of the south entrance. He could see people being shot in the back as they went toward that exit.
Instead he aimed for the same hallway he'd just left. Victoria would still be there—he hoped—and together they could get Grandma to the safety of the maintenance room. As he pushed the wheelchair he willed himself to be invisible.
A little prayer slipped out as he huffed.
“Please God, help us.”
Grandma surprised him by praying as well. Later she would explain it was her final Act of Contrition. She thought Death was upon her.
2
As Liam was making back across the room, his allies in the police department sprung into action. Th
ey moved out of their space in the museum so they could get a sight picture on the looters who were profiled by the light coming in through the north entrance way. With heavy shotgun slugs and service revolvers they were able to convince the looters to stop shooting the civilians in the middle and focus instead on the deadly blue snake coiled in the dark space.
Liam and Grandma were home free. With one final push around the corner, Liam was able to take a breath. He had escaped the carnage in the main room. Victoria dropped in behind him and together they ran to the relative safety of the machine shop down the hall. None of them could hear very well after the loud exchanges of gunfire in the hollowed out space.
They reached the end of the hallway, descended a short flight of steps—Grandma helped by Liam, and the wheelchair helped by Victoria—and then they were through the final door to the maintenance room. The chair had to be folded down to fit through the door, and they opened it again on the far side so Grandma could sit down. They closed and locked the door, though Liam figured it wouldn't last long against bullets if they were found.
“I think I left my cane back in that room. Liam would you mind?”
Liam looked at her, but she was smiling innocently. She had in fact left it behind, but she was just joshing him about getting it for her. He was thankful they still had the chair, which had replaced the need for the cane anyway.
Once they were safely in the room—as safe as one could be in this situation—Liam opened his backpack and drew out a water bottle and some grain bars for himself and Victoria. For several minutes they consumed what they needed after their arduous climb and descent. Grandma waited for them to finish before asking what was going on.
“Victoria, let her hear what's on the police radio. That will make it clearer than if we tried to explain.”
After fiddling with it to get everything right, the radio started to blurt out the situation with the police department—it was a chaotic blast of yelling and cursing. It wasn't anything like they expected on a police channel. Through the noise, they picked up some fragments.
“They have moved into the Arch's north entrance. My husband and the boys are trying to hold them off, but we are trapped.”
Almost immediately this was followed by; “—the south team has managed to organize citizens, but we have very little cover. Trying to evacuate citizens south.”
A third voice; “North gate. We have a new situation here—” But he was squelched by other voices. There was no discipline.
Liam felt bad for the police, but knew there was next to nothing he could do to help them. He was just a kid trapped in a stainless steel room.
While the chatter continued, he grabbed his gun from his pack and put it back in his waistband holster.
“I'm never taking this off again.”
Liam considered his next sentence carefully.
“Victoria, do you want my other gun?”
She looked at him in the harsh light of the flashlight and seemed to think about it for a few seconds, but ultimately demurred.
“I appreciate the offer, but I think you two should have your own guns. I'll be the plucky comic relief.”
“The what?”
“I just don't think I want a gun Liam, but thanks.”
He tried to give the gun to Grandma, but she said he should just put it back in his backpack for an emergency. She said she wasn't sure she could even pull the trigger anymore since she was getting weak in her old age.
Taken together, Liam was underwhelmed by their appreciation for their chances of surviving this crisis. He couldn't fathom ever being separated from his gun and didn't understand why anyone would choose to be unarmed. Grandma maybe, but Victoria?
And perhaps the most important realization of the whole exchange was that Liam was now wholly responsible for protecting them. One boy with a couple pop guns against a world gone mad.
You said you wanted to be the hero.
3
They continued to listen to the radio for another half hour or so. During that time they came to the understanding the police in the museum had been able to survive against the infringing looters, but neither side could get the upper hand. The radio chatter was a little unclear, but it sounded like a number of the sick and wounded lying in the middle of the waiting area had begun to show signs of reanimation—which was causing havoc on both the police and the looter contingent.
Up top the battle had gotten very serious. The renegade urban gangs had lots of firepower and were able to push well into the park—up to and including the north leg of the Arch. But from there they weren't able to push further because the citizens on the rest of the cordon, organized by the captain and his police volunteers, had been able to hold their positions. The looters and gang members also had problems behind them, as they had infected follow them through the breech and were now nipping at their heels. Unable to push into the Arch and unable to get all their members safely inside the cordon, they now found themselves fighting enemies on multiple sides. It made them desperate and nearly suicidal inside the Arch. Even the police admitted they were in serious trouble inside the museum.
At dusk, chaos was firmly entrenched up top.
Another report from the radio operator called “north gate” changed the trajectory of the battle almost single-handedly. Earlier he had reported he had a situation in the north, but he failed to elucidate. As the radio traffic died to a trickle, he gave his report in-depth.
“This is north gate. I'm in direct line of sight to thousands of infected pouring into the north part of the park. As best I can tell they are being attracted from who-knows-how-far north by all the gunfire. There are a few remaining civilians who are hiding in the parking garage or nearer to the river, but the swarm of dead are overwhelming anyone who stands in the way. The gangs pushed many civilians into the path of the zombies, which in turn has infected lots of people near your interior lines. You guys should be prepared for this.”
The reply was from the captain himself.
“Thank you Ben. We owe you one. Hope to see you again so we can laugh about this over a beer. Over.”
“Me too cap. I'm OK for right now. But I'm not sure how long I can hang under the bridge without being spotted. Maybe I'll fly away like batman.” He let out a nervous laugh, which was reciprocated by the captain as they signed off.
The trio listened to the radio for a while longer, expecting at any time to hear the whole park had been run through by the dead. They never heard from the north gate again, but several other stations kept reporting in. Things were not going well for the good guys.
Then the communications were cleared by someone calling himself Raptor HQ. The radio chatter from the police stopped cold.
“This is Raptor HQ. US Army. We are the blocking force located on the east bank of the Mississippi River. All bridges are under our control. No. I repeat N-O personnel will be allowed to cross the bridges, use boats, or otherwise transit across the water by order of General Hodges, II Corps, United States Army. We've had several, shall we call them volunteers, disobey orders and cross the bridge and river to support you. Those men and women won't be disciplined, but they won't be allowed back either. Be advised I also have orders to terminate the infected now surrounding your position. I'll give you all the time I can. Say 60 minutes. Out.”
It appeared the Army could see what was happening too, and took this delicate moment to remind everyone in St. Louis they still weren't allowed across the river.
It was Osborne who spoke for them all, breaking all kinds of radio protocols.
“This is Captain Osborne with the Missouri Highway Patrol. On behalf of all of us laying down our lives to protect these citizens, let me just convey...”
He went on to teach Liam a whole host of new curse words. His ears were burning because Grandma was right there too, but given the circumstances of what was taking place outside, he didn't think she would be overly upset.
Liam stated what they all had to be thinking.
&nbs
p; “No help is coming.”
Liam's world had been spinning out of control since the sirens turned off two days ago, but now he'd felt as if his rescue parachute was packed with bricks instead of silk.
It can't get much worse.
4
“Well, what do we do now? We can't exactly step out of this room and make a run for it.” Victoria was right, but no one had any better ideas. The stairs up the Arch were open, but going back to the top was pointless, and Grandma would never survive such a climb.
Looking around the room, they found various tools, workbenches, and maintenance equipment for servicing the top-to-bottom tramway. No weapons of any kind—not that anyone expected to find guns stashed away in a public piece of property like this.
It was Liam who found the way out.
“Hey, look at this grate on the wall. It seems to have a tunnel behind it, though I can't see where it might go.”
Looking at it closer, they saw a thick metal grate, about three feet wide by three feet high, with a stout-looking lock on it. It had an inner solid metal door. Next to the grate, in an obvious spot, were a couple of keys hanging on a small hook. It wasn't rocket science from there.
Liam offered to unlock and pull open the grate, push the solid inside hatch—it swung inward, and then crawl in with the flashlight and see where it lead. Victoria insisted she be the one to go, so Liam could stay with Grandma. Liam's first panicked reaction was that Victoria was going to find an exit and then run off and leave them, but he knew that was a crazy thought. He accepted her offer.
A few minutes later, the metal bars were on the floor and Victoria took the small police flashlight down the concrete duct. Soon she disappeared as she made a turn in the tunnel system.
Liam and Grandma were staring into the dark gap when some loud gunshots rang out from up in the museum, reminding them their fates may hang on who won the gun battle there. Finding this tunnel could put their fate back in their own hands.
There was virtually no light in the room, except for that illuminated by the EXIT sign over the one door leading out of the room. Liam was using his own flashlight to root around—he was looking for something that would help Grandma get down the tunnel.
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens Page 15