Liam felt heartbroken for his mom. She had started crying, though she fought it.
His mind was afire with ten different feelings. He'd been betrayed. Friends were still alive, he thought were dead. Grandma was alive. Line after line scrolled through his train of thought until he reached the final one.
“It can't end like this,” he whispered to Victoria.
There had to be a way he could save them all. Had to be.
Throughout much of his journey, he'd felt like he had a guardian angel watching over him. Someone there to pull the trigger to remove threats at just the right time. That angel had used an entire towboat and its barges to run down Duchesne back in St. Louis. That piece of “good luck” actually started the whole process which brought them all to this moment. Maybe it would have been better if they'd perished there. Now, more people were going to die.
Because of him.
“Liam, we have to do something. Fast,” Victoria said out of the side of her mouth. They couldn't be heard by Elsa because of the distance between them, but she seemed to understand their motives.
She cut the tether on his dad.
“God. No. Please.”
3
The zombie that was formerly his dad used his newfound freedom to lunge at the person facing him. Liam found it strange to think first of how his mom's neck had been cleared of all distractions—her shaved hair suddenly made perfect sense. It was the exact spot where the zombie attacked.
The Quantum Virus was about to claim another victim.
He pulled out the knife given to him by Brandyweis. It was a huge military knife with one sharp serrated edge. He judged it to be similar to a Bowie knife, which was one of the weapons in World of Undead Soldiers. Not a very good one, he noted. It could be thrown in the game—something he'd never done before.
Lana, knowing she was doomed, let herself fall backward. The additional weight of the Dad-zombie propelled them across and down the slick, rounded surface of the motorboat.
As they moved, he threw the knife as hard as he could at his father. He used all the hatred he had for Elsa and what she'd done by digging him up and putting him in front of his mom. It sank into his dad's side, but there was no question it would serve no role in stopping him. The knife's only function was to make him feel that he'd tried.
Lana fell into the water with the zombie, beyond his sight.
She didn't want me to see her die.
“You bitch!” he screamed as he lunged at her. Victoria held his arm, which he both fought and relished. The man behind Elsa had a gun trained on him.
Elsa tapped her side, and the gray guard dog lurched so it sat between them as well.
“No more weapons! We're not done,” she said with finality.
Liam was burning with anger—and despair, but as with so many encounters of late, he felt helpless in equal measure. Maybe he could have reached her and pushed her into the water, but then the drone would kill Victoria and everyone else. And he couldn't be sure he'd best the woman in the water.
She held up her wrist and spoke into it. “Janey Fitzhume-Hayes, come on down,” she added a laugh before dropping her arm.
“I know she's not a friend of yours, but I figure killing her will pass the time for us until my consolation prize arrives. Once Marty is here, we can wrap this up and I can get back to the responsibilities of seeking the real prize: Rose Peters.”
“Why? Why are you doing this? None of this makes any sense. What do my grandmas have to do with the world?” he replied with embers of anger flaming high.
The drone moved so they could talk, though the man's gun remained pointed at him.
Elsa looked at her wrist like she was checking the time. “I've got time to kill. Why not.”
She moved to the edge of her boat. Close enough to talk normally.
“The world was doomed, kid. The Spanish Flu was the key. That's how we found the Quantum Virus. Looking at preserved samples, we were able to extrapolate its structure down to the sub-atomic level. A smart immunologist whom you know noticed the base composition had changed over the course of the few years we had good enough microscopes to get down to that level. He deduced the virus embeds itself in a host and needs about a hundred years before it activates. Because our, um, helper virus used the code from the Spanish Flu strain of Influenza, and because that had been building itself for those hundred years, it became much more virulent than we ever imagined. Ironically, those with the most immunity were the people alive during the time of the original epidemic in 1918, although some elderly people also had limited immunity from spending so much time with their older immune family members.”
She laughed, though not as heartily as before.
“Once we started, we had to ride the bucking bronco all the way to the end. We're managing this crisis so that when the Quantum Virus runs its course, we'll be there to pick up the pieces.”
“But you released the virus to kill citizens. Why are you after my family!”
“Settle. Settle,” she said calmly. “If you want to reshape the world as an ideal image, you have to ensure you're the one controlling all the clay. There was too much deadweight in our government. Too many payments to keep people quiet. To keep them in line. Do you know my group has been paying off politicians since the Founding Fathers' time?”
Liam's head wobbled with the foreign-sounding history lesson. As far as he could tell, it had nothing to do with his mom and dad's deaths, or his grandma's.
She sighed tightly. “What I mean, my young Mr. Peters is that it became too expensive to control the world. We're using this as an opportunity to scale back our financial obligations—our bribes if you will—and start over with a smaller, but more powerful, cadre of politicos.”
His blank looks were working.
“Dammit. Don't you see? In order to control a politician, you have to own him. When my predecessors started this game back in the early 1800's, money was plentiful and politicians were few. Today, it's the opposite. Those same families have controlled the levers of power for too long. They've become complacent, even in their bathtubs of money. We're going to start over with fewer politicians.”
“And fewer people,” Victoria spoke with great sadness.
“Yes, the Quantum Virus was unexpected, as I said. But, since I'm now the head of Homeland Security, I'm in line for the Presidency. Lots of room out here for the few left in the line of succession to find themselves in accidents,” she chuckled. “And once I'm President of the United States, none of this will matter. If there are only a handful of people left, we can rebuild the whole world.”
“You are beyond insane,” he finally said.
“Don't use that word!” she shouted, sounding exactly like an insane person. “The United States was an engine that drove the world with money. My peers and I shaped the world using that money. We told politicians what to think. We told them when to fight wars. When to sell. When to buy. And we were very good at it. We took the United States to the pinnacle of civilization.”
He put his hands on his ears. The words drove him mad. It couldn't be something so base as money. Zombies were not created as a debt-eraser for a group of rich people. His mom and dad didn't die for greenbacks.
“So, what, you're like the Illuminati, or whatever? I've seen the movie,” Victoria's voice passed through his hands because she was so close. He loosened them so he could hear the reply.
“We have many names. If anyone hints at revealing our true name, they and their entire family are murdered outright. Sometimes we set nations at war to exterminate those families.”
“Like saying National Internal Security,” he challenged while dropping his hands.
“The NIS is one of our fronts, yes. And you will die for saying the name. Mark my words.”
Her calm demeanor frightened him to the bone. Here was someone willing to kill the people he loved right in front of him, but also kill the entire world around all of them. There was no limit to the level of…
“You're evil,” he said flatly.
“What? You think I'm 'he who must not be named?'” she said dramatically. “Hey, what about this? Have you heard the initials RF?”
He looked at Victoria and saw no recognition.
“Aww, damn. You must not read horror books.”
He took serious issue with the statement but didn't care what she thought about his depth of literary knowledge, positive he'd read many more zombie books than her. Her frustration at not being able to goad him was seemingly tiring her to their conversation.
“Anyway,” she said, “I'm not the devil if that's what you're thinking. God doesn't exist.” She pointed to Victoria's cross on her necklace. “And praying will get you nothing but disappointment.”
“But you are the devil,” Liam replied. “And the only way ultimate evil can exist is if ultimate good is out there, too. If the world were controlled by evil, it would always look like this.” He pointed out into the broken world as he said it. “God may not be a person, but God works through good people. I've seen it. And I know a group of evil men and women like you could not have run the world for so long and not messed it up sooner.”
“Actually, Liam, they did.”
Jane had come up and joined them from the hold.
4
“Tell them I'm not crazy, Jane.”
“Oh, you are. But that doesn't mean you're a liar.” She turned to Liam and Victoria as she came up next to them. “Douglas and I were deep in their ranks before all this happened. I saw firsthand how they could nudge legislation, or pay off a foreign country to keep oil prices low. I've seen how they contract hits on people and prune back family trees. But the thing that turned us off—made us risk death day after day—was their relish for the chaos. I'd been brought up my whole life thinking we were doing a necessary duty to the world—pushing it in the right direction. But the reality was just the opposite. The world was being ruined by what we'd become. The final straw was this virus. We could have easily put out a warning that saved a lot of lives. Instead, we let the world get bitten. Some of us even enjoyed the result.”
When she was done speaking, she faced Jane. “You killed Douglas, didn't you?”
“I picked him up at your family business, where you dropped him off. He's floating somewhere close I'd expect,” she said with a girlish giggle.
Liam expected her to cry or show some kind of emotional distress, but she seemed outwardly serene. She swiped at her brow, then dropped her forearm to her mouth so it blocked it from Elsa's view.
“Good luck,” she said in a low voice. She said something else, in a whisper, which sounded like “I love you Clara,” but it made no sense.
Before Liam could reply she'd reached behind her and pulled out a boxy-looking pistol. The sound was deafening as she fired multiple times at Elsa.
Elsa dodged the first volley and slid across the deck back into the driver's compartment of her boat, along with the man. He watched her skin-tight uniform as she dove, wondering if he'd ever outgrow looking at such things. Jane tried to follow, but the gray drone intercepted her.
He and Victoria both dropped to the deck at the moment the confrontation started, but the women were so fast he was able to watch nearly the whole thing before he thought to get himself flat.
The drone was about thirty feet away, to their right. When she was about halfway to the boat, it oriented on her and unleashed hell. Its twin guns lit up even as Jane tried to knock it out of the sky.
More guns cracked behind them. The Secret Service agents fired their rifles at the drone while poking out the top of the stairs.
Just as it looked like she might survive the open-air crossing, Jane fell heavily to the metal. The gun skittered across the deck, into the water. Blood saturated the back of her shirt as she lay face-down. Where moments before she was vivacious and energetic in her efforts to kill Elsa, now she was wide-eyed and dead.
The drone swung its guns toward the Secret Service agents, firing all the while. But Jane had scored at least one hit. One of its blades was noticeably erratic, and the whole unit tipped as the other three fans compensated. The guns were also firing wild, which gave him no reassurance as he kept low. To his surprise he was on top of Debbie, ensuring she wouldn't be struck by a bullet.
The one time I don't want to be the hero.
But that wasn't necessarily true. He'd protect anyone…
Except, maybe, her.
Once Elsa was out of sight, he was able to eye the drone as it took more damage from Ben and his partner.
The problem was the remaining drones. Even as they beat the junkyard dog into submission—knocking out a second fan motor—the surviving drones closed the distance with the agents. A volley of gunfire sent the two men back down into the hold.
“What do we do?” he wondered.
Victoria's face was blank. When she saw him protecting Debbie, she scooted up next to him to help.
“We pray.”
He heard and then felt the turbine wash of one of the drones as it hovered above them. Its single gun faced the stairwell. If it looked down, he'd be dead.
One of the smaller drones hovered over the steps when it exploded in a shower of sparks. It fell straight into the hold.
He heard a distant pane of glass shatter. That noise was followed a moment later by the whip-smack of a gun shot and ricochet from the chassis of the metal hulk above them. The thing turned and let loose with its gun onto what Liam guessed was the bridge of the barge towboat attached to them.
From such distance, he couldn't see the identity of the shooter.
In the commotion of the firefight, Debbie became animated. In seconds she seemed completely awake. He and Victoria were both on top of her, so she could only turn her head side-to-side.
“Get OFF!” she said as she squirmed.
“Be quiet. You want to get us killed?”
“Us killed? What's happening? Where's my mom? She's supposed to pick me up,” she said in a slightly whiny voice.
“She's in a boat speeding away from here,” Liam replied. The powerful engine of the big watercraft echoed off the barges on the other side of the river.
“You guys win the battle, but not the war.” Elsa's voice came from the little unarmed drone she'd used to communicate with them. “The launch vehicle is already out of the tube. You have to clear out of there. Jump in the water. Swim away. Take my daughter and I may let today slide.”
He looked at Victoria. At Elsa's daughter. Finally, they looked at the metal roofing of the hold below.
“Are you thinking what I am?” he asked her.
“Use this boat to ram this girl's failed mother?”
“No, I hadn't thought of that. But I like where you're going,” he said with a sliver of humor. “We need to move this barge so we can save the people below.”
“Where can we take them to get away from a nuclear missile?” Victoria asked.
Debbie grunted in pain. “Can you please get off? I know where we can go. My mom told me to report if they ever moved this barge. There's only one place she didn't want it. That's where we'll be safe.”
Liam pulled back a little. “And where might that be?”
Chapter 23: Elma Jean
Jasper had used the distractions at the front of his boat to crawl across the barges back to where he'd left his rifle. The lips and lids of the varying types of barges in the flotilla provided the cover he needed. He avoided looking into the cargo box filled with bodies. The smell was enough to keep him moving.
Once Elsa showed up he knew his only chance was to punch through her drones if he was going to have any chance of stopping her. When he finally had the gun in hand back in the captain's perch, he waited until the inevitable gunfire before he was willing to risk his position.
He watched the young woman get felled by the dark drone, then watched the two Secret Service agents pepper it with enough lead to knock it down. The scene was a flurry of flying robots hovering around the deck of the boat,
some with guns, some not. He selectively fired on those he felt were the most threat to the kids lying on the deck and left the SS men to fend for themselves until he knew the others were safe. The Elma Jean had enough surveillance tech he could hear the discussions on the front side of the barge—200 feet away.
He already knew why he didn't like Elsa, but once she explained who she was, he thought about putting a bullet through her brain and ending it. The thing stopping him was the ICBM she claimed to have launched. If he knew his math, they didn't have much time to get to safe ground. The North Dakota to Illinois routes was measured in minutes. And he didn't know when the missile cleared its hatch.
When the firing stopped, he was happy to see the three kids running his way.
“Toss off the lines,” he shouted down to them while pointing to the heavy ropes linking them with the next row of barges. The boy skidded to a stop, turned around, and ran forward again. The girls continued until they reached the cleat at the back.
“Fire her up,” he ordered Bill.
The delay gave him a moment to see where Elsa had gone.
“She's staying close,” he said, mostly to himself.
“Her daughter is still here,” Bill replied.
“Of course,” he thought.
The gunfight was fast, but deadly. One woman was dead at the cost of a few drones. It was some kind of miracle those kids managed to lay right out in the open and not get swept by all the gunfire.
The two girls came in the hatch, followed a second later by the boy.
“This is Debbie,” the boy started before he was inside the room. “A missile is heading for us! She knows where to go.”
“Well, all right then.”
She pointed and Bill nodded gravely.
“There's an ICBM heading for us,” the boy said.
“You're Liam, right? This boat has excellent hearing. I've heard everything spoken down there.”
Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 Page 31