“Almost to my house. Let's just get this done.”
A few minutes and they were there. Phil's partner switched seats so he could park the cruiser. Phil jumped out, ran to his garage and opened it, and moved his car out. Phil's partner put the police car into the garage and shut the door. Lots of people had to have watched it go in.
After a frantic minute, they were all inside the house, and could breathe again.
“Thanks, guys. I didn't want to freak anyone out, but it was critical we got over here to hide the car. Before I picked you up, I was listening to the reports on the radio. Not only did the refugees get across the river up at the highway, but they've taken a severe disliking to those who tried to keep them bottled up on the wrong side of the water. Many officers and city officials were killed at the roadblock, but I've heard people are attacking cops on the road, shooting their vehicles, and stuff like that. I knew we'd be safer coming here to swap cars rather than try to make it anywhere with a car that attracts violent protesters. We have enough troubles with the infected now.”
“But didn't they see us arrive at your house?” Victoria's concern echoed Liam's.
“Definitely. We'll have to be fast.” While he was talking, he was putting together some foodstuffs from his cupboard, throwing them into a backpack. He also grabbed some bottled waters and passed them around. He ran out of the room saying he needed to change his shirt, ripping off his uniform in the process. “Drink up while you can!”
Phil came back with a light button-down shirt and full-length jeans. He wore his service belt under his untucked shirt, providing a degree of concealment for his arsenal. He quickly went into his garage and came back with two big duffel bags, then excused himself to go downstairs. “Billy, can you come down and help?”
Grandma was sitting at the kitchen table, while Victoria was pacing nervously between the front and rear windows of the house. Liam just bounced around the kitchen aimlessly. Fatigue was his current nemesis. The water was divine.
A few minutes went by and the men were back up the steps. Each had a duffel over his shoulders. Billy carried both out the front door. “We're grabbing some supplies, but we have to go right away. I have most of what's easy to grab but I have to leave so much.”
“I think we're already out of time.” It was Victoria. She was looking out the back window, and speaking with a palpable sense of dread.
They all went to see what had her rattled.
Phil's house didn't have a great view of the town, but it did sit on a small hill in his neighborhood. They could see people running around, and several nearby houses on fire. A few residents were shooting and being shot by the arsonists. They were only a couple blocks over—heading in Phil's direction.
“Yep, because of that. Those are probably the people from the roadblocks. Torching everything in their path now. That fuel is priceless and they're tossing it on a funeral pyre!” Phil seemed more exasperated than scared. “Time to go!”
Phil threw his backpack to Liam. Liam flung it on his own back—
Holy hell this is heavy.
—and he helped Grandma get outside.
Phil's SUV already had its engine running while sitting in the short driveway. The rear lift gate was open so they could throw their gear in the cargo area.
Liam heard a strange whizzing sound. A second later they heard a gunshot report.
“Run!”
They practically threw Grandma in the back seat. Liam and Victoria tumbled in after her.
A loud clang rang through the truck. A couple more followed. Reports were echoing off the garage doors of neighbor's houses.
Phil dashed into the driver's seat, followed swiftly by Billy on the other side. The truck roared out of the driveway, turning right and then a quick left, away from whatever was happening back there. Followed only by three more clangs of metal.
“Everyone OK back there? That was a little too close for comfort. Hoo boy! We got out of there just in time, eh Billy Boy?” He looked over to his partner and was shocked to see he was dead. A bullet must have gone through Billy's door and killed him instantly. Phil seemed to slow down so he could take in what just happened to his friend and partner—to say nothing of his home and livelihood—but there was too much going on to do anything but drive at that moment.
“I'm sorry about your friend.”
“Yeah, so sorry.”
Grandma closed with, “Rest in peace, Billy.”
2
The people of St. Louis fought the much smaller city of Arnold, and spiked the football. They were taking the spoils by looting, pillaging, and then razing the berg as they moved through. Liam hoped he was wrong, but nothing out his window suggested society was going to be back anytime soon. Not here. He had to remind himself the wave of St. Louis zombies hadn't even arrived here yet.
“If I was smart, I would have parked that police car in front of another house, maybe the Mayor's house.” He gave a strained laugh at that. “Maybe driven it into a lake. Once they find it in my garage, they'll definitely burn the house to the ground.”
Liam thought he was being unfairly harsh on himself. “You did the best you could. You got all that stuff out in a few short minutes, giving us some valuable supplies to get to my house.”
“Yeah, well I've been planning for something like this for weeks. Once it started getting bad.”
There was that phrase again. Liam had heard people say things had “been getting bad” for a while before the plague exploded onto the scene, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember anything that would have tipped him off to something as big as the collapse of the world. Was he too self-absorbed to notice? He read about it many times in his zombie books.
“When you don't have a family around, you'd be surprised what seems important to do at three in the morning.”
Grandma gave a slushy “mmmm hmmm” hum in agreement. She probably had some free time herself over the years. It had been decades since Grandpa Al passed on.
“So I used my time to organize my bullets, count my cans of beans, and watch videos on the internet about how to survive after a societal breakdown. The number of websites on survival is, or rather was, nearly infinite. I admit though, I never really tested much of their advice. It never seemed urgent to try to tan a hide or pluck feathers from a chicken—so I'm afraid I didn't train up on much, beyond what I already knew.”
Phil went on to explain he had put his duffel bags of guns in places he could easily grab them, so if he ever needed them in a hurry, he would be able to be in and out. He never dreamed this was how it would end up.
Being a police officer had many perks, but the most relevant to today was being plugged into the firearms community. He not only got all the free training and range time he could ever want, but he also tapped into low cost auctions of firearms—often before the general public knew about them. He explained the various types of rifles, shotguns, and handguns he had—though Liam wasn't really listening.
In spite of all the danger, he was so tired his head was rolling side-to-side with the motion of the car, his eyelids vacillating between open so Liam could stare, and closed so he could drift off.
“A couple AR-15s.”
“A couple hunting rifles with really good scopes.”
“A pump scattergun and one automatic.”
“Lots of handguns.”
“Beaucoup Ammo!”
“Left a ton of older guns back in my safes.”
Liam looked at the two ladies and was surprised to see them both slumped over, asleep. Just that fast. He fought hard against the draw of sleep; a fight he was losing until the car lurched to a stop—he was wide awake again. Phil put the car in park and looked back at the trio, but settled on Liam because he was awake.
“I've got to get Bill out. I'm going to drag him into the woods, well off the roadway, and lay him down. We really don't have time to dig a grave, but I'll try to get back to him if I can.”
“Do you need any help?” Liam loo
ked around and saw no other cars or people in the area, so he figured it was safe to get out.
“No, I'll be quick. I need a moment alone, if you take my drift.”
Liam had seen death more than he cared to admit over the past few days. Angie. Captain Osborne. Officer Jones. Now Officer Billy. To say nothing of the thousands upon thousands of people walking around with a plague that brings the dead back to life.
Phil walked around to Billy's door, opened it, and pulled his friend out. He gently dragged the dead man down a slight hill until he was well into the woods. Liam couldn't see much after that.
Victoria and Grandma slept on.
3
Liam must have drifted off while waiting for Phil to return Soon they were moving again, heading south. The direction Liam needed to go to get home. He could hear voices on a near-silent radio up front with Phil.
When Phil saw Liam's eyes were opened, he started up. “I've got my police scanner. Sorry if it woke you. You said you lived in Barnhart, correct?”
A quick nod in the affirmative.
“A call came over the scanner that all available Arnold and county police are to meet at the interstate overpass in Imperial—near your home—today at 3 p.m. Something big's going down. I think we need to check it out before we take you home.”
Liam really just wanted to get home in the most direct path he could, and avoid further entanglements, but he didn't want to seem selfish when there were so many desperate people outside his window. To be polite, he merely said “sure,” and left it at that.
A few minutes of driving and Phil turned the car abruptly to the left into a small strip mall parking lot. He pulled up to a parked Arnold PD car as if he were going to talk to the occupants. They were facing his direction, so he maneuvered so his window was closest to the other driver. “This is Maple's car. I'll ask him what he knows.”
Phil pulled the car up next to the police cruiser, but quickly let out an “Oh shit!” He reached down and pulled up a semi-automatic pistol. Liam imagined he was going to take the gun and start shooting whoever was inside the police car. Instead, Phil moved the car a few feet ahead and took three shots at the rear tire, blowing it out. He then sped out of the parking lot, continuing southward. Liam's ears were ringing as he looked over his shoulder. He could see several men pour out of the police cruiser—none of them were Arnold PD. A couple tried firing handguns, but they were too far away. Liam had never been so happy to see a police cruiser out of operation.
“Wow. Did you know who was in that car when you pulled up?”
“No. But I should have known. I saw the driver wasn't Maple, and did the only thing I could think of—short of killing them in cold blood. Those boys could have been out for a joy ride and innocently found the car, or maybe they killed Maple to get his car. Maybe the car was abandoned; like I dumped mine. Maybe they thought I was a bad guy trying to jack their ride. There's no way to tell anymore who are the good guys and who are the bad. Even the good guys guarding those bridges became bad in the eyes of those on the other side of the roadblocks. Good and bad are just empty words out here.”
Phil drove on a few blocks and pulled off the road behind a small building. He put the truck in park and looked back at everyone. “I'm sorry guys, but we need to regroup. I've realized we all have to work together on security if we're going to survive. I don't think I'll be dropping you off and heading off on my own like I thought either...”
No one seemed anxious to argue with a police officer about security.
Phil requested Liam sit in the front passenger seat to help be his eyes and, he admitted to everyone, he needed someone checking his work. The other thing he did was place an AR-15 in the front seat with Liam. He threw several loaded mags onto the front floorboard. “If you need to fire it, try to stay lower than the window frame. Bullets will still come through the metal part of the door, but they have a much better chance of deflecting or at least slowing down compared to going through an open window right into your head.”
Liam had fired an AR before, as his dad was something of a “gun nut.” However, he was far from an expert shooter with the long guns like this. Some people had a steady hand and a dead-eye when they used scopes on rifles, but Liam admitted he was kind of “twitchy,” and found it difficult to concentrate and remain perfectly still when he had to shoot long guns, such as hunting rifles. He wondered out loud how twitchy he was going to be when the targets were for real.
“Just take your time and pretend you're firing at paper targets. Aim center of mass, then put three shots right there. Oh, if you encounter any zombies—add one to the head. But I warn you, it ain't like the movies. Getting a headshot from any distance can be very difficult if you don't shoot guns regularly.”
“Victoria and I shot dozens of zombies in the head with our Rugers when we were on the train. It isn't really that hard when you're up close. Zombies don't move fast. But, as I said, we were only a few feet away for most of those kills.”
Phil smiled. “Good. Now listen up. I've spent my whole life on the streets as a police officer. Almost twenty years. Not in the toughest jurisdictions, mind you, but I've still seen and done a lot of ugly crap over the years. But none of that compared to the pain and trauma of losing the two loves of my life. My wife and daughter. And to a senseless car accident.”
He paused as if he'd lost his train of thought for a few moments.
“My point is that life is full of curves. That was always the case. But look at things now. Even when you think you're looking right at something you are 100% sure is what you think it is, you need to look again. Have your buddy double check you. Check your buddy's work. Do it again. Take nothing for granted.”
Another long pause. Liam turned to the back and smiled as he saw Victoria.
“Once law and order is removed from the equation of the street, you're going to see the worst in people. Without those few police officers making it clear the unspoken rule of “civil society” is still in effect, people are going to be quick to throw off the pretenses of lawfulness. That's why looting happens so fast. Once there is a whiff that law and order is AWOL, some kind of message goes out and finds every criminal in the area and invites them to make things worse. Unless I'm calling things really wrong here, I don't see law and order returning anytime soon. Maybe never.”
Phil hunkered down in his seat after a quick check out the front window.
“This is the absolute most important piece of advice I will ever give you: the concept of law and order is just an illusion. In the past, when order existed in our normal lives, the people who broke the law and did terrible crimes were very much like suicide bombers. They made a decision to murder, rape, shoot people in a movie theater, or whatever—knowing that, for a period of time, no police officer could possibly stop them. If you were willing to die in the act, no depravity was beyond reach. As a police officer under orders from politicians with a particular mindset toward guns, I couldn't talk about this in my official duties. But privately I told everyone I knew it was their civic duty to carry a sidearm with them at all times. Movies. Church. The dentist. You are your own security. Police only show up after the suicide bomber has detonated himself.”
“Here's the bad news. Whereas previously only a suicide bomber would go out and test the limits of depravity, in today's world, there is a neon sign on every street corner saying, 'Law and Order has been terminated. You are on the honor system.' That means you no longer have to be a suicide bomber to conduct activities that aren't in harmony with the law—either written law or just plain decency. Murder is easy and has no consequences now. The suicide bomber no longer needs to detonate. And it won't just be the down-on-his-luck guy who fancies a molotov cocktail at the parish church, it will be groups of college-educated men and women throwing bombs through windows of entire neighborhoods simply as a statement against the very system of law and order they simultaneously hate and desperately need. Society itself becomes suicidal in the absence of law and order.”<
br />
“Are you saying it's the law of the jungle now?”
“I'm saying it's worse than that. The law of the jungle allows for continuation of the species. It works well when times are good, and the system is well-oiled, and everyone knows their place, even though it may not be the most advantageous code for individual weak members of the tribe. The strongest warrior and the weakest elder can coexist when times are good, even under the law of the jungle. A system is in place that rewards the strong and penalizes the weak, but it doesn't outright kill the weak for sport. Imagine the law of the jungle with no societal restrictions of any kind. The strongest warrior suddenly has every incentive to kill all the weaklings, including the young—so he can amass his own resources and treasure to survive a little bit longer. Cooperation is gone. Order is non-existent. The only constant is chaos. In that setting, even the law of the jungle would be the height of civility.”
“So what are we looking at if the law of the jungle is beyond reach?”
“What do you call a world where the dead are walking around in broad daylight? What do you call a world where a man would burn your house to the ground because he could? What do you call a world where a man would shoot you dead simply for wearing a certain color uniform? What do you call a world where the police are the bad guys and the criminals run roughshod over the law-abiding?”
Phil paused his monologue dramatically.
“I call it Hell.”
4
After the lecture on security, Phil pulled the SUV back onto the road. Liam was riding shotgun, and was as alert as his tired condition would allow. They were close to the designated bridge over the highway. Very few cars were on the roads in this more rural part of town.
Nothing could have prepared them for the scene when they reached the highway interchange. There were no cars on the highway. Only people. Lots and lots of people. They consumed all six lanes of traffic on both north and south-bound sides. All of them walking south—away from St. Louis.
Victoria was the first to speak up. “How is this possible? That must be the whole city walking out.”
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 32