Stop the Sirens: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 3

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Stop the Sirens:

  Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 3

  Copyright 2016 and Published by E.E. Isherwood

  A world built on the certainty God exists would be indistinguishable from a world built on the certainty God did not.

  Without doubt, there is no faith. Without faith, there is no humanity.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Shush!

  Chapter 1: Exodus

  Chapter 2: Apocalypse Pyramid

  Chapter 3: Trojan Horse

  Chapter 4: Key Insights

  Chapter 5: Riverside

  Chapter 6: Don't Make Plans

  Chapter 7: Trajectories

  Chapter 8: Thunderstruck

  Chapter 9: Migrations

  Chapter 10: Green Water

  Chapter 11: Going in Circles

  Chapter 12: Old Friends

  Chapter 13: Patriot Snowball

  Chapter 14: Since The Sirens

  Chapter 15: End Times

  Chapter 16: Tribulation

  Chapter 17: Looking Up

  Sneak Peek: The Next Trilogy

  Last Fight of the Valkyries Sample

  Acknowledgments

  About E.E. Isherwood

  Other books by E.E. Isherwood

  Connect with E.E. Isherwood

  Prologue: Shush!

  Marty awakened lying in a clean bed, inside a well-lit room. She was on her back, and felt rested for the first time in a long time. She crawled out without her usual fear of falling. A clean change of clothes waited for her; a fuchsia pantsuit. What she really needed was a bath, but she wasn't going to turn anything down.

  The outside sky caught her attention as she considered changing; she was high up in a skyscraper. The room seemed clinical, like a hospital, but she couldn't be sure. She wasn't even sure what city was outside. The “North Star” of her hometown of St. Louis was the Gateway Arch. The famous landmark would at least give away the city, though it was nowhere to be seen.

  She only saw the upper portions of other buildings and lots of smoke near the ground below. A blur of light remained on the western horizon. Whatever clues she could find outside might help her identify her location. She spent twenty minutes looking, but saw absolutely nothing which gave her the all-important answer.

  Where am I?

  Resigned to her ignorance, she took a seat in a little chair next to her bed. While rubbing her legs she happened to look down at the bed's foundation. The words “Riverside Hotel and Casino” were stamped on the side. That made it much easier. Not a hospital after all.

  She laughed despite her fear.

  So I'm still in St. Louis.

  She had no idea what day it was. How long she'd been there. If any tests had been done. The last thing she remembered was getting on the helicopter after Liam said goodbye, waving to him, and then—

  —nothing.

  I'm old. I must have zoned out.

  She stood up again. She felt good. Getting up from a chair was normally a laborious process. Even her back wasn't bothering her at the moment.

  “Al, am I dreaming right now?”

  Her late husband/guardian angel did not respond.

  “OK, I'm not dreaming.”

  She found a mirror over the sink in her room, and was happy to see herself for a change. Rather than the usual drooping eye sockets, her eyes looked bright. Even her skin seemed a little more firm on her face.

  Maybe it was all that exercise.

  She laughed out loud at the notion. She hadn't had so much exertion in decades.

  “Hmm, exercise really is the best medicine.”

  She winked at herself in the mirror, then returned to the large window. The world outside was as dark as pitch on the ground and in the sky. No other lights were visible. The entire city appeared devoid of it. She had an inspiration to turn off the lights in her room so she could get a better look at the stars. She allowed some time for her eyes to adjust and beamed when she finally saw the stars.

  She put her hand into the pockets of her pants, fighting a chill. Her hand brushed against something foreign. It was small, boxy, smooth, and about the length of her hand. She pulled it out to get a good look at it in the glow of the stars.

  She inadvertently hit a button which turned it on.

  Marty didn't know what a lock screen was, but she could appreciate the picture on it. Staring up at her, with a conspiratorial grin on his face—and a few tears in his eyes—was her great-grandson Liam. He had one hand in front of his mouth, with one finger up in the traditional “shush” symbol. Behind him she could just make out part of her own head, and the rotors of the helicopter. After a few seconds the screen went blank and she pocketed the device without audible comment.

  He must have snapped the picture while giving me that big hug. Clever boy indeed.

  Marty lay back down in her bed. Content for the time being. Somewhere out there people were thinking about her. Trying to get to her. Drawn by her siren song. A song she continually tried to mute.

  Normally she prayed for others. Health for the sick. Luck for the out-of-work. Help passing a school test. Some prayers were epic in scale, others a simple show of affection. Always for someone else. But in a rare moment of spiritual weakness she requested something for herself.

  Lord, if they come to save me—

  Liam couldn't help himself. He would find a way. It was already written.

  —please, I don't want anyone to die.

  She admitted that wasn't how siren songs end...

  Chapter 1: Exodus

  8 days since the sirens.

  Fifteen-year-old Liam Peters looked up from the muddy water. He and several of his companions had escaped the bombs dropped on his neighborhood by jumping into a shallow creek at the far end of the shopping center parking lot they'd just sprinted across. First the A-10's swept his block of modest ranch-style homes—their deadly Gatling guns announced themselves like the horns of the Four Horsemen the Apocalypse. They were spot on for the actual apocalypse. And then something came down from high in the sky—the colonel he'd met at the government medical camp called them bunker busters—and moved the Earth just as they reached the creek for protection. Smaller bombs chased their big brother. He wasn't brave enough to look up over the bank of the creek to see the remains of his neighborhood yet. For now it was enough to be alive.

  He studied the line of survivors, searching for his parents, his friends, and his recently-mistaken-for-dead girlfriend. He saw most of them from his patch of mud. He definitely saw her. Victoria! She was his apocalyptic girlfriend. A girl he met during the zombie plague. An older woman too. She was seventeen.

  They'd met less than a week ago, but they'd been through a lifetime's worth of adventures in that time. They walked up the Gateway Arch together to help the St. Louis police department defend the park below from zombies and from waves of desperate looters. She went back up alone a second time as a diversion to save Grandma. That was the first time he thought she was as good as dead. After that, they teamed up for the impossible task of helping 104-year-old Grandma Marty escape the collapsing city of St. Louis to reach Liam's home in the suburbs. They pushed her in a wheelchair to escape zombies. They rode a freight train through hordes of the undead. They broke a blockade across a river set up by the Arnold, Missouri police department. Then they teamed up with an officer of the same department as they all watched the little town implode with the arrival of the refugees from the metropolis next door. And if that wasn't enough excitement, they reached Liam's home only to find his parents had left to go to retrieve Liam from Grandma's house. H
e had made it all the way home only to find he had switched houses with Mom and Dad. It was enough stress to drive anyone crazy.

  But Victoria was there. She provided a quality he couldn't describe. A stability. A peace. Liam knew he tried harder when she was around, and because she was as smart as any girl he'd ever known, she was able to see things from a different perspective and give him ideas he otherwise would never have considered. He had actually started to believe things were going to be OK, even with a zombie plague unloading itself all over the world.

  But then she was shot.

  Throughout all their adventures they were being watched, and then pursued, by a guy named Douglas Hayes. He said he was a truck driver for the CDC—a man with no job once the medical unit effectively ceased to exist—but it became clear he was more than that. He eventually showed up at Liam's parents' house to collect Grandma. He requested Liam bring her to his military truck, but when he refused—well, Victoria got shot. That was the second time Liam thought she was as good as dead. By all rights she probably would have been, but the single gunshot hit the small but durable travel Bible Liam had procured for her earlier in their travels. The force of the bullet knocked her back and she hit her head on the ground when she fell, but she emerged relatively unscathed. Liam and Grandma were whisked away before they knew her fate, so Liam had several days to lament her passing.

  Now, in the brackish creek, she was very much alive. Minutes earlier she had been wearing a clean and bright white shirt and blue jeans, with her brown hair tight in a ponytail. She reminded him of a perfect angel, returned from the dead. That angel was now covered in mud and filth. Her top was ruined. Her hair was soaked and sprinkled with debris. And her face...

  Her face was a wreck. In the last week she'd been beat up violently by looters at the top of the Arch. Her face was graced with two black eyes, and more abrasions than Liam could count. Her nose might have been broken, though he couldn't say. Neither would she. In short, her face had seen some rough treatment of late. The water washed off the heavy makeup she'd applied to hide her wounds; he could see her face as it really was. He could only think of how much pain she suffered, and how it made him angry someone would have done that to her. It made his thoughts turn dark.

  That is, until he saw her emerald green eyes look at him with a twinkle of mirth. Her demeanor suggested she was happy. He guessed she had a big smile on her face too, though her hand was over her mouth.

  “What's so funny?”

  She moved—sloshed—to be closer before she answered. “I think I broke a tooth jumping in here.” She removed her hand, and sure enough blood was dribbling down her lower lip, mixing with the muddy water already there. A large cut graced her top lip. She removed her hand completely and gave Liam a genuine smile, a big one. She had lost one of the sharp top teeth. The visage was both horrible and comical. Liam couldn't help but laugh.

  “Good Lord, Victoria, you need to start wearing a face mask.”

  His parents chose that moment to slither along into the conversation. Victoria smiled for them as well. Their faces reflected a more serious analysis than Liam's, but his sense of humor tended to activate under high-stress situations.

  “Mom, Dad, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my wonderful and elegant girlfriend, Victoria. Victoria, this is my mom, Lana, and my dad, Jerry.”

  She played along, even though she'd already spent time with them. “Very pleased to meet you. Forgive me for not curtseying.” They looked at her like she was crazy, but noticed Liam was laughing hysterically and decided it was just too silly not to laugh.

  Across the parking lot their entire lives burned to cinders in the aftermath of the bombing.

  Laughter took the edge off.

  2

  The group crawled out of the water, but stayed along the slope of the creek bank so they could observe the fires. It had been twenty minutes since the big one went off, and no more A-10's flew by. The attack appeared to be over.

  Liam's dad wondered, “Who are we missing?”

  Everyone scanned the area to take stock of any survivors. Liam saw all the people in his core group, including his parents. He could see Phil, the ex-police officer way down on the end. He was next to Melissa, a shoe saleswoman and apparently a military veteran of some kind. Liam didn't really know her yet.

  The only person he didn't see was Drew, the boy who helped him get Grandma from the Boy Scout camp to Liam's house. He was last seen lying on the street after Hayes had punched him to commandeer his bicycle—with Grandma trapped in the bike trailer behind. The street corner where Drew was last seen was well within the impact zone.

  In the end they accepted many of their neighbors were undoubtedly dead. When Liam's crew chased after Hayes in the direction of his waiting helicopter, they all escaped the potential blast zone. The neighbors remained in their homes or on their lawns, celebrating the fact they had defeated a small contingent of Hayes' soldiers in their Humvees. That celebration lead to their deaths.

  The humor of the situation ebbed away as everyone realized the gravity of the loss.

  “What do we do now, Dad?”

  Liam had been waiting eight hellish days to ask that question. Ever since he and Grandma left her house in the city, he'd been trying to get home and find his parents. Yes, he wanted to be sure they were safe, but he also wanted to effectively hand over the responsibility of caring for Grandma so he didn't have to worry about her. Mom and Dad were always there when he needed them, even if he didn't agree with all their methods—such as sending him to Grandma's for the summer after a particularly trying period of family conflict. Now, his question rang hollow. Mom and Dad, he realized, didn't have all the answers. They couldn't wrap up all his problems into neat solutions for him. Grandma had been taken by Hayes to do medical testing, despite his best efforts to protect her. Even his father wasn't going to have an answer to counterbalance that loss. His excitement at seeing them was quashed by the circumstances of the reunion.

  His dad was lying face down in the weeds. His arms were spread out in front of him, and his hands were tucked back so they were on his face, as if he were using them as pillows. His mom was lying next to him, on her back, looking straight up at the sky. They had just lost their house. It was effectively destroyed days ago when a big military truck tore the whole thing to shreds with its top-mounted Gatling gun, but Liam wasn't bothering with the details. That was a previous run-in with Hayes. But now even the perforated frame of the house was gone; wiped off the Earth forever.

  But it was more than that. Liam's dad had spent years diligently stockpiling supplies he would need in the event there were catastrophes—man-made or natural. He knew about the secret room in their basement where Dad stored all his goodies, including lots of guns. Liam suspected that was what really had him upset, above and beyond the loss of friends and neighbors. That was supposed to be their life raft in these chaotic times.

  Jerry popped his head up to look at him. “I don't know Liam. I guess we wait for the fires to die out and then see if there's anything we can salvage. I'm sure our house is wrecked, but from here I can't see if it's a crater. We'll see.”

  Liam knew it was their only viable option. Wait and see. So they waited. The morning dragged by. As noon approached everyone was getting antsy. Melissa and Phil had been talking, and Melissa came over to Liam's parents.

  “I know we all want to check it out, but we should wait a little longer. I have a bad feeling about going back to the scene of a crime, if you catch my drift. What if they're watching for us to return? There could be drones high above. It's what I'd do if I were running this operation.”

  Melissa was a forty-something woman Liam met several nights before as she walked up the street toward his house as a refugee. By almost any definition Liam figured she would be described as physically pretty. A little taller than most women, but shapely and well-proportioned. She kept her long blond hair in a ponytail, though now her hair was a mess, just like Victoria'
s. Though initially reluctant to accept the hospitality of Phil and Liam, Victoria convinced her to give up some of her fears. By her own account she had been sexually assaulted by her former boss, then harassed by the sickos of the refugee crowds as they all fled the city. She was in no mood to accept the hospitality of a couple men, until Victoria brought her in.

  She then went on to organize some men and women around Liam's house, and together they got the drop on a group of hostile men intent on taking the house by force. The ensuing firefight was brief but intense. She proved her worth, though she ended up killing some of the wounded hostile men. She said it was to prevent them from coming back to harm them when they healed up. In his brief interludes of quiet thought of late, he'd wondered how Phil and his parents had agreed to keep her around after what were essentially battlefield executions. She was still with them, and going strong it seemed. Victoria said she helped organize the resistance on his whole street earlier today. She was probably very familiar with the people now dead up there. Liam was inclined to listen to her. Apparently everyone else agreed. They waited.

  They were rewarded for their patience less than twenty minutes later when the sound of propeller-driven aircraft approached from south of them.

  “Everyone down!” Mel cried.

  The trees near the creek offered some protection from above, as did the mute color of all their clothes after being in the muddy water, but they didn't want to take any chances of being seen.

  The two big planes drifted menacingly over their heads and tilted their wings so their propellers faced straight up. The ungainly-looking planes descended like helicopters to touch down on the large parking lot where Hayes' copter had departed hours earlier. Liam was so enamored with the planes he almost forgot why they were there. The back ramps dropped and Army men poured out. He could see about twenty per plane.

  “What are Army men doing here?” Liam asked.

  Melissa watched the drama with everyone else. “Not Army. The planes are V-22 Ospreys. Troop carriers. Those are US Marines.”