SINCE THE SIRENS:
The Complete Post-Apocalyptic Box Set
BOOK 1: SINCE THE SIRENS
BOOK 2: SIREN SONGS
BOOK 3: STOP THE SIRENS
BOOK 4: LAST FIGHT OF THE VALKYRIES
BOOK 5: ZOMBIES VS POLAR BEARS
BOOK 6: ZOMBIES EVER AFTER
BOOK 7: ZOMBIE ESCAPE
SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 1
Since the Sirens
Since the Sirens
Book 1
Connect With E.E. Isherwood
Website & Newsletter: http://www.sincethesirens.com
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© 2015 E.E. Isherwood. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
When the end came, those left alive found their own religion.
The dead, however, became militant atheists.
Series Introduction
Thank you for checking out my Since the Sirens box set. I hope you have confidence the books are worth your time based on all the fantastic reviews my awesome readers have bestowed upon them. This series isn't just about fighting the zombies, it's about the collapse of society over the first few weeks after the plague has begun. It's about finding the right allies to endure the brutality of a lawless time. It's about the importance of family. And, as some reviewers have noted, it is also about finding a little romance to make all the suffering bearable.
There are currently seven books in the series and all of them follow a small band of main characters (Liam, who will show up in chapter 0, Grandma Marty, who will show up in chapter 1, and Victoria, who shows up a bit down the road). As far as zombie books go, mine tend to veer away from bloody gore (though you can't have zombies without a little of it). I like zombies who behave differently than you might expect. Every city produces zombies a bit different from all the others. I also enjoy having set-piece battles of epic scale, though those scenes don't show up until later books. The zombies need time to spread…
My most cherished reviews are those saying variations of "I don't normally read zombie books, but this one was awesome." The series is more of an apocalyptic survival story that happens to have zombies in it.
If zombies aren't your thing, I have a new 5-book series titled MINUS AMERICA, which is also a post-apocalyptic multi-book epic. It asks the question what would happen if a mystery weapon suddenly annihilated every American in our homeland? The survivors arrive to find nothing but empty piles of clothes where once there were people. Was it the Rapture? Aliens? A high-tech mistake? Like all my books, it focuses on great characters dropped into impossible situations.
What about asteroids falling to earth? My 6-book IMPACT series (co-written with Mike Kraus) is about a trillion-dollar rock brought in from the asteroid belt that accidentally falls to earth. When it shatters, it sprays middle America with dozens of shockwaves and impacts. A young park ranger tries to survive the destruction in Yellowstone while her Kentucky-boy father tries to go out and find her in the apocalyptic heartland.
Finally, I invite you to check out my END DAYS series (co-written with Craig Martelle). That one is about a science experiment gone awry. A father and son are on opposite sides of the USA when the accident takes place, and the trucker must travel dangerous highways while his son tries to survive the chaos of New York City. They have to meet up before time itself comes to the ultimate reset…
All of them can be found on Amazon by clicking above or searching for EE Isherwood.
I hope you enjoy book 1, SINCE THE SIRENS. It was the first book I wrote but is still one of my favorites. There are currently seven books in this box set, and book 7 leaves plenty of room for more in the series, but I think you’ll find the story arc satisfying. More books are planned, so leave an encouraging review on this box set and it will prompt me to keep writing them!
Thank you,
EE Isherwood
Chapter 0: World of Zombies
At fifteen, a young man with Liam’s average size and weight wouldn’t attempt to double-wield shotguns. Most men twice his age, even those in the military, wouldn’t try it in battle. But they weren’t the hero. He was. A wild-haired, lanky, scholar-athlete wannabe who just happened to be good at this one thing.
“Lock and load. I’m going in.”
“Wait up,” JT cried out as he fiddled with his sniper rifle. “I can’t take this thing in there. They’ll be on top of me before I can use it.”
“I’d use the fifty-cal if I were you.” Liam couldn’t heft such a large weapon, but JT was built like a college linebacker, even if he acted more like the fifteen-year-old wimp he’d been before the world went to Hell.
“Nah. Not enough ammo. Used it all on the bridge. I’m going with these.”
Liam chuckled at his friend. The young man wore a get-up more commonly found in a biker bar—all black leather pants and jacket adorned with silver studs. His white t-shirt was as clean as when his mom set it out for him—Liam wasn't going to tell him how he knew that. Somehow, it all worked. The young man also dual-wielded his choice of weapons but with much more practical .357 Colt Pythons.
“I wish some of the other guys were here,” JT huffed as he broke down the rifle and prepped the revolvers.
Liam felt the same way, but Charlie and Jacob both fell in the fight to get them to the end of their mission. He had a few extra seconds to ponder their mistakes, so he could avoid ending up like them. He looked to the sky.
They're dead. Just lousy spectators, now, he thought.
JT finally gave him the go ahead. “I’m ready.”
Liam pulled at the door of the secret government base they’d been searching for, though he stopped to consider his fortune. The cure to the plague was inside, as were the men and women responsible for creating the mess in the first place. With a little luck, they could take care of them both in one glorious battle. He briefly imagined the cheering crowds of survivors. The young women anxious to thank him. Fifteen or not, he'd be heralded for this.
“I said I'm ready,” JT repeated.
“I'm going!”
The expected white lab coats were there, but the people wearing them had already been infected with the Six-Sigma Virus—so named because it killed with ruthless efficiency. He didn’t dwell on the tantalizing beakers and vats of bubbling green liquid. The cure—if it existed—was useless in the moment. If they had it, why didn't the scientists use it? The answer was both grim and obvious, and now those ruined people had to die, just like all the others. The New World demanded blood, not a fabled cure.
“Let ‘em have it,” he shouted.
He selected his first target for the automatic combat shotguns. She was a brunette in the stereotypical white ensemble which reminded him more of a mad scientist than a CDC employee. He avoided looking directly at the smiling face on her ID badge affixed to her chest.
“Die, zombie scum!”
The trigger pulled easily on both his weapons. Together they more or less removed the woman’s rotting head from her shoulders, precisely the way he was supposed to do it. Of all the different types of zombies he’d read about and seen in movies, it was the one consistent piece of knowledge applicable to all of them. Remove the head, and you eliminate the threat.
JT’s .357�
��s began to sing just as something cut the power, throwing everything into total darkness. The flashes of the guns became the only source of illumination. The strobe effect led them both deeper into the dark vault. A fitting effect for the final challenge of their long quest.
“Switching to FLIR,” he said with absolute calm. Despite the sick researchers shambling around—all with sickly gray skin and glowing red eyes—he didn’t lose his cool. He was proud he’d been able to push the fear away and stay glued to his objective. He imagined it was how proper military men might handle the same situation.
“Got it,” JT replied.
The infrared headset worked miracles for him. “Wow. That’s the ticket. I can see ‘em all!”
They fired at will. He and JT stuck together until the middle of the room. The tables of vats and beakers on the far side required them to split up so they could clear the room properly. He marveled at the amazing fidelity of the scene as he watched a shotgun shell forced from the breech of the weapon along with a puff of gas. The infrared mode didn’t strip out any of the detail.
“This is awesome,” he screamed into his headset.
He brought down several more zombies in quick order before reaching the back wall. JT came running up from his side of the room, bragging as usual.
“How many did you get? I killed ten.”
Liam doubted his friend’s count, but he hadn’t been keeping score just then.
“What do we do now?”
JT smiled from under his IR headgear and pointed to an alcove on the back wall. “We’ve made it to the end, my friend. We just have to push that button, and this place will self-destruct.”
“And all this will be over? This whole adventure? That doesn't seem right … ”
“Yep. We win.” JT clapped him on the shoulder.
“This is all too easy,” Liam responded. Easier than the bridge where they’d lost their two friends, no question there.
“Who cares. Just push it, and we can get out of here.”
It probably ran on batteries because it had a little blinking red light under it. Just as you might expect of something designed to blow up the place.
He finally relented and pushed the three-inch button into the wall with a quiet click. A moment later the building began to shake. A massive door along the back wall slowly slid open and revealed hundreds—maybe thousands—more zombies in the next chamber. All of them moved toward them with the same slow zombie shuffle, shouting the word “brains” while holding their arms in front of them. They greatly desired the fresh meat in their midst. Liam had seen it before, though never with this many.
He began to reload his shotguns when a female voice broke his concentration.
“Help me, please!”
JT shared his concerned look.
“Under here,” he yelled while pointing both shotguns at the cabinet door beneath the lab table.
“After you,” JT said dramatically while training his Pythons on the same spot.
Liam lowered the shotguns, ignoring the groans of the horde drawing close. He unlatched the door to see a young blonde-haired woman coiled up inside. She held out her hand, and the boys helped her to her feet.
Moans and groans momentarily forgotten, Liam couldn’t help looking her over.
Blonde. Tight-fitting jeans. Nothing above but a stars-and-stripes bikini top.
“We’re here to rescue you,” Liam declared with his best attempt at bravado.
“No, we’re all going to die,” she replied. “There’s too many.”
Liam was dumbfounded. “Then why did you get out of your hiding spot?”
He watched her blue eyes tear up, and he instantly regretted the words. Her eye sockets were messy puddles of smeared eye liner from previous tears.
“I—I didn’t want to die alone.”
“Oh, hell,” JT droned from behind him.
“We’ll do our best,” he said to cheer her up.
Her smile was weak, but it was there. She had faith.
We can do this.
Zombies came in from the entryway, fell from ceiling tiles, and swarmed from the back until they converged on the trio. Each doomed warrior expended a good chunk of ammo before the zombies trapped them for good.
He had to shout over the noise. “JT, you lied. You said all we had to do was push the button. That’s how we win!”
The horde pressed up against them. The two boys stood with their weapons forward and their backs against the helpless damsel in distress. Thinking it over, it was pretty near to one of the screenshots he remembered from the game’s download page.
His friend sounded beaten. “I’ve never made it this far before. I was just making things up.”
“Well, that figures.”
Liam could do no more than watch as his avatar was brought down in a zombie chomp-fest. The pain was amplified because JT's character died a full second later. That would be one more point against him in their brother-like rivalry in video games.
The girl they were protecting died last.
A female computer voice filled his headphones. “Match ended. Hunter team efficiency 37%. Hunter team losses equal 100%. Player ‘Meat Me in Yonkers’ has maintained the rank of Rookie.”
“Dang it!”
He yanked off his headphones and tossed them onto a pile of books on his desk next to the PC tower. The computer game after action screen glared at him as if to mock his purported expertise. He’d let two of his friends die early on in the simulation and failed to lead the rest of the team to victory. They’d been in a position to rescue one of the valuable non-player characters, but she died in that room same as them. JT even got more kills than him, in addition to capturing that all-important braggy extra second of life.
The distant voices of his friends came out of his discarded headphones. His volume remained turned up well beyond what Mom and Dad would find appropriate. Even great-grandma Marty would probably think it was too loud.
He snickered as he put them back on. The headphone and microphone combination was necessary so he could talk to his three friends. The wintery conditions on the county roads made it impossible for them to meet in person as they all preferred but playing online while chatting was the next best thing.
“Guys, World of Zombies is kinda lame. It’s not nearly as cool as World of Undead Soldiers, which you all know also has zombies.”
Left unsaid was that he’d played the other game for years. He was, in fact, a master at killing all manner of undead. Vampires. Yetis. Even zombies. But a game with only zombies was a different beast entirely, and not one he found very challenging. It took brains to fight those other beasts, as each required a particular kind of weapon or magical talisman to defeat. Zombies just stood there and died with simple bullets. The game designers made no effort to make them interesting or different.
Jacob laughed. “At least you didn’t die in the middle of the game. I slipped off that bridge like a newb lord.”
Liam pushed back in his chair and crossed his arms. If his friends wanted to play again he might indulge them once more, but there was no reason to stop playing his preferred game. Sure the video quality was better, and it was the “latest and greatest” from Saratov Systems—his favorite game company—but new wasn’t always better.
A loud bang rattled the floor beneath his chair. The sound defeated his amplified headphones still blaring the end game credits.
He rolled his eyes.
Dad had been shopping again. He’d watched him unload the car earlier that evening after pulling it into the garage and closing the garage door. Dad proudly called himself a gun nut, and he often proved it. Not even icy streets could stop him from buying guns at auction.
It sounded as if he’d dropped some while taking them to the basement.
Internally he debated helping. He knew he should. His game was a total loss, and nothing required his butt be in his chair, but he was kind of Dadded-out at that particular moment. It rubbed him the wrong way his father would go
to any length to get those stupid guns, but he wouldn’t budge when Liam asked him to drive through those same road conditions to get him to JT’s house for the night.
While he debated that point, his friends started up the next game. A screen asked if he wanted to join.
Sorry, Dad. I'm reeeeal busy.
He clicked the screen. “All right, guys. I’ll give this one more shot. Let’s go find some zombies.”
In six months, the zombies would be looking for him.
Chapter 1: CIV
Martinette Peters leaned against her oven and thought about hunger. She guessed she'd cooked tens of thousands of meals during more than a century of living, but this morning was different. She was off the script.
These days her breakfast was prepared by Angie, the nurse who lived in the upstairs flat of Marty’s two-family red brick home. Bacon. Eggs. Toast. The same things she'd made for her the past two years. Every day. Without fail. But today Angie hadn't come down at her regular time and hadn't answered the intercom or her telephone. Marty waited as long as possible for her chef but soon thought about how to cook those things for herself. What was once second nature now required proper planning.
She studied the cabinets, the pantry, and her cooking dishes. Everything she needed was far above. Either she was getting shorter, or Angie had intentionally placed everything on shelves out of reach.
She walked from the kitchen, leaning on her cane. A bag of bread hung from her free hand. That, mercifully, had been within her grasp on the counter. The phone rang as she guided herself into her comfy chair. Her cane remained nearby.
“This is the Metropolitan Police Department, City of St. Louis, with an emergency alert. Violent disturbances have been reported in multiple locations within St. Louis city limits. There is a risk of injury or death to any participants or bystanders. If you hear this message, we urge immediate evacuation to safer areas. Follow instructions from city or police officials in your neighborhood. Be alert for additional emergency messages. … This is the Metropolitan … ”
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 1