“Hello Liam? You in there?”
He snapped to. “Oh sorry. I'll take two.” He smiled a guilty smile.
“Two what? Are you even in there?”
She tossed the filthy piece of her shirt; it landed right on his face.
“I left you a little clean area, so you can wipe that silly expression off your face.” But she was laughing. “Sometimes you act like you've never seen a girl before.”
“Well, I, uhh.”
Don't say something stupid.
“Never saw a girl as pretty as you.”
Smooth.
“No, I mean—”
“Liam, it's OK. Really.”
He took a deep breath. “No, I should tell you that you are literally my first girlfriend. I don't know how to act around you. I don't know what's polite and what's not. I know there aren't a lot of options for either of us right now, but if I'm going to lose you I don't want it to be over something stupid like ogling you too much. I guess what I'm trying to say is being around you when you're not in zombie-fighting mode—when you're just a girl—makes me more nervous than being in the middle of a horde of the undead.” He tried to end it with a little laugh.
“Well, first of all, you aren't going to lose—”
They both heard it. The familiar drone of zombies. It came from the nearby shore. Liam knew they were safe on the boat. He told himself it was a foolproof hideout.
And how many books have “foolproof” hideouts?
They popped their heads over the edge of the barge's hold.
All right. A “nearly foolproof” hideout.
Hundreds of zombies walked on the shore, all of them walking up the river. Gaggles of them were far down the bank, and more were far up the other way. It was like an undead funeral procession, marching slowly to some unknown beat.
They dropped back into the hold. In a whisper Victoria asked, “Are we safe here? Can they get over to us from the shore?”
The barge was anchored away from shore, but it had a large cable running from the front to an anchor point somewhere on shore. A skilled person might be able to cross the wire by going hand-over-hand as they hung down from it. Liam had seen it done by some of his friends back when they used to spend time along the river.
“There's no way they can get over here using the cable, but I don't know if zombies can swim.”
“Well, we have to get on our boat and keep moving. There's no end in sight to that line.” The shoreline was straight for a few miles. She was right.
“I know.”
He knew some zombies could climb. He saw two such climbers at Elk Meadow. Colonel McMurphy said there were many different flavors of zombie out there, though they were tied more or less to the city where they were spawned. The climbing zombies seemed to be a specialty of Chicago. Perhaps swimming zombies had come down from a city up the Mississippi river, and these zombies were walking back upstream now?
They briefly wondered if they could unhook the barge so it would float away from shore, but the size of the tie-down cable made it clear they would need tools to detach it. They cursed themselves for tying up the rowboat on the shore-side of the barge. If it was on the other side they'd be free and clear before they were noticed.
“It will probably take us sixty seconds to get on the ladder and step down to the boat and get clear. We'll just have to take our chances.”
Victoria didn't argue with him as she grabbed her gun and other belongings from their campsite.
“Let's do this nice and safe. Don't panic when you climb down and we should both be fine.”
“Don't panic in the face of a horde of zombies. Got it.”
Victoria went first. She climbed onto the rim of the barge and casually began her descent down the ladder. Liam followed and stood on the rim above her for a few moments. In that time he could see her business-like approach was working. She went over nice and easy and made no noise and didn't appear nervous. In no time she was below him in the boat, ready to go.
But she was noticed. A cry went up. One of the zombies sprinted toward the barge at a high rate of speed.
Zombies can't run that fast!
It plowed into the water, as if unaware it would sink. It pushed into deeper water with purpose. Worse, other zombies moved his way too, though most walked like “normal” plague victims. Liam began his descent.
The fast zombie managed to get surprisingly far into the water before it was too deep for him. He continued under the surface; Liam lost sight of him. In the strong current he guessed the zombie was going to be swept behind the barge. A few other runners had their sights on the boat.
He set foot on the wooden plank. Victoria tried to untie the knot which kept them in place, but the old rope of the rowboat was well-frayed and looked confusing to untangle.
Something made a thud sound on the bottom of the boat.
Impossible!
Liam resolved not to look over the side. The rattle on the floor was the knock of panic.
“Victoria, hurry!”
She made a humpf sound, as if she couldn't be bothered to respond.
Another vibration on the bottom of the boat. Zombies poured into the water, screaming, clawing and flailing at the sight of two living people in a land of the dead. He knew they could stack up and get themselves to high places.
“Victoria?”
“I'm trying. This knot is really stuck.”
“The knife! Use the knife!”
Don't panic.
Liam couldn't tell if Victoria cursed. She seldom did, but he allowed this was one time when it was appropriate.
She fumbled with his pocketknife as he looked to the shore and the waters between it and their boat. It boiled with arms and legs of the many zombies who managed to walk and run here from earshot of the boat. More streamed out from the trees along the shore. It wasn't hard to see what would happen.
Tons of zombies. One arm comes over the edge. We tip and die.
The boat jerked, and they were floating free. Victoria made the cut.
Liam grabbed the oars and paddled for their lives. His shore-side oar hit the head of one of the zombies wading in the water. The swimmer made a clumsy grab for it. His far-side oar sank in the water for a weak stroke. He couldn't swing them properly.
“No, push us away from shore!”
He saw the problem. If he could only use his far oar, it would push them into shore. Zombies desperately tried to grab the other oar, as if they knew it was attached to the food they wanted inside the craft.
Don't panic.
Victoria turned around. “Let the current take us backwards.”
Liam sat with a blank look on his face, until it dawned on him. He gave one firm reverse tug on the far side oar, hoping it would push them both backwards and up against the barge as they drifted. He then secured both oars so they were out of the water.
Victoria readied her rifle, and even aimed at a few zombies that almost reached them, but none managed the full distance. The boat drifted downriver for more than a hundred feet until it cleared the back of the barge. He dropped both oars and paddled with gusto to go around the barge and continue up the river. He guessed the zombies in the water just kept going until they were caught by the undertow and pulled downstream. Not many zombies came back out of the water.
Will they walk the bottom to get us?
Shaken, Liam paddled like a fiend in the deeper water for an hour as they put the incident behind them. They could see zombies on the shoreline walking north with them. Sometimes one would notice them and turn to walk into the water, but mostly they faced forward and kept to themselves. A rare few of the “different” zombies loped by the others with fleet feet.
Many hours later, exhausted, they reached downtown St. Louis. The closer they came, the fewer zombies they saw near the shore. They grounded the boat on the cobblestones of the famous riverfront landing of the city of St. Louis. They couldn't have gone any further upriver if they wished. Someone had blown the interstat
e highway bridge; the deck had fallen straight down into the water and the wreckage blocked the entire river from Missouri to Illinois. A colossal jumble of barges, tugboats, and huge pieces of driftwood hugged the upriver side of the mess. The tangle presented a formidable barrier to river traffic, had there been any.
They pulled the rowboat high up out of the water. It slid easily over the stonework. They wanted to park it under the edge of the downed bridge as it provided some cover on the otherwise open landing. They froze when they got close. Under big neutral-colored tarps were two fancy rubber boats with small but powerful-looking outboard motors. They too had been dragged up the cobblestone and left there. A nearly-dry trail of water went all the way back down to the river behind them.
The rubber boats were still dripping wet.
Chapter 11: Going in Circles
“Well, we're back in St. Louis. So glad we escaped aren't you?”
Victoria responded with a small growl.
With rifles slung, they started up a long piece of collapsed highway. It had fallen along with the main bridge, but it formed a ramp so they were able to walk up onto the raised highway into downtown St. Louis. A car coming the other way would drive from the highway, down the ramp, and into the river.
When they reached the top of the ramp and crossed the tangle of broken concrete and rebar at the joint, they were relieved to see the elevated highway passed next to the Riverside Hotel and Casino—Grandma's prison. They walked the mostly empty interstate—the Army had blocked the approaches to this bridge early in the disaster—they talked about the boats.
“It can't be coincidence the zombies on the shoreline were heading this way, as well as two strange boats, Ospreys of Marines, and of course us. Is Grandma that important do you think?”
Before he could answer, he became distracted by the spectacle of destruction below them. The once-beautiful St. Louis Arch parkland had devolved into a hellish landscape of stripped and burned trees, huge craters, and an untold amount of trash and debris, including lots of bodies and body parts. There were countless buzzards picking at the remains. The smell...
“I didn't think the birds would touch a zombie.”
Liam wondered. “I don't think they're all infected down there.”
“It looks like the Army and Air Force really did a number on them.”
“Yeah, we were there, remember?”
“In my wildest imagination,” she spoke wistfully, “I wouldn't have thought the bombs could wreck the place so thoroughly. It almost looks like the moon down there.”
There were black scorch marks on the lower portions of both legs of the Arch, but otherwise it looked intact. Liam took some measure of comfort from that. He knew the Arch would one day succumb to the forces of nature, but it didn't happen in the recent conflagration. Something survived. Something beautiful in a world of ugliness.
“In answer to your question, yes. I think Grandma is more important than we think. This can't all be coincidence.”
Victoria looked over the ruin of the Arch grounds. “It's like a siren song. We were beckoned to this horrible place, where we'll be smashed on the rocks.” She continued on a different track.“I really hate Hayes. I think I could kill him for all the grief he's caused us. I owe him one for shooting me, at the very least. I mean here we are at the end of the world, zombies and plague swirling around us, and this jackass has to spend his time kidnapping and shooting people. How messed up is that? He told us he was looking for a cure. I call bull shnikes on that. Doctors trying to find cures are not running around town shooting little girls and kidnapping old women and bombing innocent people in their neighborhoods. And now look at him in his fancy tower! We have to waste our time going to save Grandma because of him. I have a hundred things I'd rather be doing right now—including finding my parents thankyouverymuch—but this turd requires more of my time than a three-year-old. I'm sick of it!”
“Wow, your cursing is really coming along,” he said with mirth.
She glared at him in a way he recognized as something near pouting.
Liam didn't know how to respond, so he grabbed her hand and started them toward the hotel. No use delaying. But it turned out to be a mistake, at least at that moment. They saw the base of the building.
“Oh God, no,” she said.
Liam fell to one knee as he used the railing on the side of the bridge to steady himself.
“See? This is what I'm talking about! Why in the name of all that's holy did Hayes need to lock himself up in the one tower that has a million gazillion zombies swarming around it? Oh, Liam, how are we going to get into that mess?”
She sat down hard next to the guard rail of the bridge, so the hotel was out of her field of view. Liam sat down next to her. The smell was horrific, but he was disturbed to realize it didn't affect him as much as it did a week ago.
“I know this is hard, but we can do hard things. Together. Grandma is at the top of that tower, and I can see now this has all been pre-planned by Hayes: Grandma, the massive swarm of zombies, and now us. It all ties together. We just have to figure out how. I need you, Victoria. I really need you.”
Deep down he felt something he couldn't describe; it was both new, and familiar. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was just affection. He felt a powerful, almost subliminal, emotion toward Victoria. He would kill every zombie down there with his bare hands if he had to. He would kill anyone to protect this girl. It was partially a protective instinct, in the same vein of protecting his family, but it was so much more…
“Victoria, I—I know this sounds absolutely crazy. You're my first girlfriend, I know that. But everything we've been through. Everything I know about you. I want to always be by your side. I want to fight by your side. Die by your side if I have to. I can't explain the emotion I'm feeling. I—”
“I feel it too, Liam. It's like a wave that just came over me.”
She looked at him, and he realized they were both crying in happiness as the emotion wrapped around them. The both embraced as they sat on the pavement, enjoying the feeling of loving and longing for each other.
Liam, unsure of himself in matters like this, blurted out, “Is this what love feels like?”
She seemed to remember something unpleasant, and pulled away. “Um. Yes. I mean I guess so. I uh—” she looked down at the roadway, “Oh, Liam. All I know is that I can't walk into that swarm without you by my side. Really, truly, by my side. If that is what love is, then yes, I love you.”
Liam, prone to gaffes when he was nervous, let slip a doozie. “Well, we should get married if we survive the Apocalypse.” Knowing he was likely making a huge mistake, he ended it with his telltale laugh.
To his surprise, she simply said “Deal.”
His smarmy mind, usually quick with a retort, was dumbfounded into silence.
2
They both recovered from the emotional outburst as the sensation receded, like a broken wave dragging itself back out to sea. But the core of the emotion still remained. He felt it was like a strong trunk of a tree had been planted in his mind. One that would forever tie him to the girl sitting next to him.
“Shall we try to find our way into the hotel? I'm kind of anxious to get this thing over with now.” He wiped away his tears and gave her a starry-eyed wink. He was relieved to see she smiled back with a big natural smile.
They followed the highway overpass for a couple hundred yards, always staying away from the edge so as not to attract attention from the zombies below them. The hotel had a large flat platform on the roof, with a “Riverside Hotel and Casino” sign hanging off the side near the top. The hotel was mostly made of glass but was accented by beige stonework at the top and bottom.
“I think we just found the Riverside Operations Center.” She referenced the paperwork they'd found back at the Elk Meadow camp. “This has to be the place.”
They heard muffled gunshots coming from inside the building.
“Sounds like a real battle is going on in there.
You think it's the people from the boats?”
“Your guess is as good as mine on this. But it makes me uncomfortable with all that shooting going on while your grandma is over there.” They both looked up and saw small drones in the sky above, and a larger one looping high above. Whatever was happening inside had lots of onlookers.
A few more minutes and they were almost parallel with the hotel. The rounded building was about thirty feet north of the elevated highway. Someone parked a huge green garbage truck nearby, among a handful of smaller abandoned cars. A stout metal wire was attached to a handle on the side of the truck, then it went over the side of the bridge and through a window of the hotel on a floor just below.
“I think this is how they got over there,” he said, proud of the patently obvious use for the wire.
“Yeah, it looks really dangerous, too.”
“We have our way in, though. Dangerous or not, it has to be safer than what's below.” Liam risked a look over the side and saw the crowd of zombies. There were thousands of them, probably tens of thousands. Liam didn't know and didn't really care.
“So how do we get from here, to over there?”
“In the movies they make it look easy. You just swing something over the wire, hang on, and slide in through the window.”
“And what if you aren't in the movies? How do those people do this?”
He knew he had to answer her question sufficiently for this to work. Just a cursory search of the area proved to him there would probably be no easier way of getting in than this crazy scary over-the-zombie-crowd rope ride. His probe led him to the truck, and his answer.
“We can use pieces of this truck to make handles for sliding. Piece of cake!”
“You sure like cake.” She smiled, but warmed to his suggestion.
In short order Liam was able to put his pocketknife to work cutting carpet and pieces of plastic to make something to throw over the wire which would allow them to slide down and into the hotel without burning their hands. He wasn't prepared to say it would be as easy as in the movies, but he felt more confident than he did walking up to the garbage truck in the first place. Victoria didn't look worried, though he thought she looked about as wary as anyone would be who was about to ride a thin wire over a deadly horde of zombies into a hotel which had the welcoming aura of a hive of hornets.
Stop the Sirens: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 3 Page 20