Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Several soldiers trained their weapons on him. Very close. He could see inside the muzzles of the guns, they were so near to his face. Liam remembered the temper tantrum Hayes threw when the police told him he couldn't cross the bridge out of St. Louis, despite telling them he was with the CDC. But he never once advocated murder in the days he'd been with Liam's group. This was something new.

  He knew enough not to do anything stupid. Despite his rage, Grandma kept a tight hold on his hand—even for her age she had a tight grip—and moving in the right direction. There was no arguing with this man, at least not here under the aegis of all these guns.

  “You shot Victoria. You shot Victoria. You shot Victoria.” It was a mantra that got him across the grass and up to the big truck.

  Was it really my fault?

  A guard searched him for weapons, taking his pistol and a pocket knife. They also did a cursory search of Marty. She carried nothing.

  As they were climbing through the rear entrance of the big military truck, Liam looked at his house one last time. It was a disaster. All the glass was gone. There were large holes where the windows once were, and many smaller holes all along the length of the structure at about man height. The Gatling really did terrible damage.

  He tried to look for Victoria one last time too, but she was inside and the bright glare of sunshine prevented him from seeing her lying on the floor. Wisps of smoky debris also poured out the front.

  “Goodbye, Victoria. I love you.” He said it only loud enough for Grandma to hear. It was the first thing that tumbled out when he thought of the girl he had come to know during this calamity, and began to have strong feelings for her—love perhaps—because of those shared experiences. He had thought he'd found something worth living for. Someone to help get him through to the light on the other side of this disaster. Someone to share the load.

  Then the door to the outside world was closed. He wasn't surprised to see two long empty bench seats in the rear of the transport.

  No space, my ass!

  All Liam could do was break down and cry.

  Grandma put her hand on his back to comfort him as he was hunched over in his seat.

  No words passed between them for a long time.

  There was nothing to say after such a loss.

  Chapter 7: Breakfast in Afghanistan

  Jerry sat at Marty's kitchen table. Lana was sitting next to him, absently leafing through the kill list with the familiar names on it. They'd spent the previous few hours scouring the house for any definitive clue as to where Liam and Marty had gone, but could find none. They knew Liam was armed and had taken her and many of her essentials—the walker, her pain meds, etc.—but they had no idea which way they went, how they were getting around, or even where they were going. Angie's car was gone, but the garage was ransacked, so it was unclear who had it. Their best guess was Liam was going back to his own house, but they wanted to be certain before giving up on Marty's home.

  “We know the highway is a solid brick of cars south of here. If they got stuck in that they would certainly have had to walk out. You don't think Liam would have been dumb enough to get himself caught in that traffic, do you?”

  “I think all we know for sure is they made it far enough away from this house they didn't feel the need to return. That may be a good sign they are making progress.”

  “Or they were unable to return.”

  “That's always going to be a possibility until we see them safe and sound.”

  “So what do we do next? Wait here and hope they show up? Go back home? We're worried about Liam getting out with Grandma. We have to get out too at some point.”

  They had caught a quick nap in the waning hours of the night, as their long journey into the city, and the disappointment of not finding Liam, had sapped them of all their strength. They woke up on the fourth morning since the sirens had gone off.

  They couldn't leave and risk Liam showing up at Marty's again. But they couldn't stay forever either. If Liam somehow made it home, he'd be looking for them.

  “I wish the phones were working. We could just call him.”

  “Actually, maybe we can. If we can find the internet somewhere. If it's still up. We just have to find something which can send out a text in that fashion.” Jerry was the family's IT guy. He stood up, excited at the implications. He and Lana both shared a cell phone plan with Liam, but neither had gotten a signal—Wi-Fi or otherwise—since the crisis began. They'd more or less given up on them. Their phones were older and cheaper than Liam's. They had voice and texting plans, but no data and no ability to get onto a hotspot.

  “I won't bother asking about Grandma, but doesn't Angie have a tablet of some kind we could use for this?”

  They both remembered her with some kind of tablet on at least one occasion recently. It was enough of a hope they both sprinted up the steps to her flat to search for it. The horrid smell and large piles of blood-soaked clothes on the floor slowed them down. They'd been in the room in the darkness; somehow the light made it scarier.

  “What the hell happened up here?”

  “I have no idea, but let's find that thing and clear out of here pronto. All this blood gives me the creeps.” Like Liam, Jerry suffered a queasiness around blood. He was mostly able to control it after years of careful practice, but this place tested his resolve.

  The tablet was sitting on the floor of Angie's bedroom. It had probably been sitting on the nightstand, but the furniture had been rearranged, to put it charitably. They grabbed the tablet and its charger—power had to be on somewhere.

  A few minutes later, they were back at the kitchen table, hovering over the tablet as it was turning on. They were both relieved to see it had at least half its juice left. But they were greeted with disappointment as Angie's device had essentially one application on it—the app that let her read her stories. They had no way to easily determine if Angie had the internet in her apartment, but it was clear there were no hotspots active anywhere in range at the moment.

  “OK, so what we need to do is find a working Wi-Fi hotspot, then hope we can connect to the internet, then hope the app store is still open, then hope the messaging app we need is free, then we have to hope Liam still has his phone with him and that at some point he will also find a Wi-Fi hotspot so this texting program can get a message to him.” Jerry tried to remain optimistic. “Should be a piece of cake!”

  “Don't you mean it's impossible? Even I can see that.”

  He moved closer and put his arm around her. “I understand your frustration. I really do. But look at it this way. A few minutes ago, we had absolutely no hope of finding our son without walking out that door and searching each structure and car from here to our home. With this tablet, we at least have a chance of contacting him.”

  “But not a great chance.”

  “Any chance is better than no chance, in my book. We'll find him, I promise you that. Even if it takes my whole life, I will find our son. I say we head back home. We have to do something besides sit here and hope he comes back. If there are people out there targeting him, we need to protect him. I want to be make sure our home doesn't have any of these men waiting for him.”

  “That's good enough for me.”

  The tablet was tossed in a backpack along with the list of names. Lana found some paper and wrote a note and taped it to the surface of the kitchen table. On a whim, she peeled off two more identical notes and taped them to the floor just inside the front and back doors. “Just in case they come back, I want Liam to know we were here and went back home.”

  “Smart.”

  Jerry did think it was smart, but also lamented it could tip off anyone coming to check up on the hit men lying dead in the house. There was chance in everything now.

  2

  Liam was shocked awake by the sound of the Gatling gun. He also heard the sound of banging on the outside of the truck. Not the banging of hands, but the unmistakable banging of gunfire hitting the exterior.

&nbs
p; “Are we under attack?”

  He addressed the question to Grandma, but immediately noticed the truck was no longer empty. Almost all the space was taken by a cadre of octogenarians. They looked sprightly and youthful next to his 104-year-old grandmother.

  “Umm, I think we took the wrong bus, Grandma.” He was trying to be funny, but mostly he needed to boost his own morale. He remembered what happened to Victoria and his good humor faded.

  More loud bangs on the exterior. More buzzing from the chain gun on the roof. The clinking of spent ammo casings could be heard bouncing wildly on the top of the rig.

  Marty had to speak up to be heard. “It's been going on like this for a couple hours now. How have you been able to sleep through it? You must be exhausted.”

  Liam felt exhausted. After days without real sleep, then losing Victoria...

  “I got a little sleep. Do you know where we're going?”

  “Can't say for sure. Maybe the old folks home. We've been picking up all these passengers since we left your house. They all get in with the same look of surprise. No one has been told anything.”

  Liam counted five fellow travelers on the opposite bench seat, and two more on his bench. There was nothing else in the rear compartment beyond the spartan seats, and there was a stout net separating the driver's cockpit. There were two crewmen up front, working the controls. Neither seemed too concerned about the passengers.

  I guess a real hero would be taking over this beast.

  He just sighed. He felt no energy for rebellion. Instead, he fell back asleep.

  The truck rolled on.

  3

  Liam next woke when the truck was stopping. The back doors swung open and Hayes was there, looking as cheery as ever. “Potty break! Liam, would you help all these guests out of the MRAP please?”

  Liam wasn't happy to be put to service, but he did as he was told—for now.

  He must have slept for a long time because it was now completely dark outside. He could see they were on a narrow paved road in some woods, but he had no idea where they were. He considered getting out his phone to look at a map, but remembered he could no longer get reception “in the wild” as it were. What was once second nature—using his phone to answer questions—was gone. Maybe the old-fashioned approach would work.

  “Hayes, can you at least tell us where we are going? My Grandma can't sit like this for much longer.”

  Hayes laughed. “Nice try, Liam. I watched her walk and ride a wheelchair out of the collapsing city. She isn't as weak as you portray. And I'm still mad at you for making me kill Victoria, so no, I'm not going to tell you anything.”

  I made you kill her?

  There were no chairs provided, so elderly men and women simply stood against the trees, or held onto a fellow human being. Everyone did what they needed to do, stretched for a few minutes, and then were marshaled back into the MRAP.

  Hayes did surrender one tidbit of information before he closed the rear doors. “I'm sorry we can't stay and chat for a while longer, but we are on a tight schedule. We have one more pickup to make and then we'll be going to a makeshift medical facility, where you will all be attended to.”

  Liam silently wondered what all this was about. He knew Hayes couldn't be a good guy, not after what he pulled with Victoria, but how could a government agency let a guy like this run any kind of program? His first inclination was to say he would never cooperate, no matter what agency he worked for, or what method of coercion he used—but the reality was much different. Would he refuse to cooperate if he harmed the woman sitting next to him? What if he threatened his parents? Liam had no doubt Hayes had the ability to reach out to anyone if he wanted to do so.

  As he sat in the truck and it rumbled down the road, he wanted nothing more than to see Victoria again—but she was dead.

  Why do I keep forgetting that?

  He slumped in his seat and tried to go back to sleep. Right now it was the only thing that kept him going. Sleeping let him forget, just for a little while, the pain of the waking world. He fell asleep while listening to barely-audible music coming from the front compartment. It sounded exotic. Foreign.

  A few moments later, at least in his mind, the truck ground to a halt. After an insufferably long wait in the increasingly warm compartment, the doors finally opened. Liam looked out into the darkness and could see small fires burning in two parallel rows, far out into the distance. It reminded him of an airstrip.

  A couple camouflage-clad men were lifting a stretcher into the back of the truck, pushing it into the space between the inward-facing benches. All nine of the passengers would be facing the tenth rider laying on the floor.

  The tenth man was ancient. For once, even Grandma looked young and healthy by comparison. The men had loaded an oxygen tank which was connected to a breathing tube draped below the man's nose. His eyes were sunken and he had distinct dark circles around his eyes, but he was very alert. He had almost no hair, but huge bushy eyebrows. His face was narrow, and deeply pockmarked—with a most unhealthy pallor about him. Liam guessed he was pulled out of bed because he still had on his plaid pajamas. He even had the slippers although he didn't look fit to stand.

  Liam sat in the last spot on his bench, so he was furthest from the man's head up toward the front of the compartment. Once the doors were sealed, he felt compelled to talk to the old gentleman. “Hello, sir. My name is Liam. Do you know why they brought you here? Do you know where we're going?”

  After some initial confusion, the man pointed to his ear with his tiny arm and made a cup with his hand, as if to say he couldn't hear very well.

  Now louder, Liam asked him the same question.

  The man could barely be heard over the road noise of the now-moving truck. “My name's Bart. They took me without letting me say goodbye to my granddaughter. She takes care of me. He said he needed me to come with him because I was going to help with a cure for the sickness. But they made me leave Janey!”

  Thinking of a doting granddaughter keeping this man alive, even after the collapse, hurt Liam's heart. He pictured her coming home and finding her grandpa had up and left. What would she think? Who would steal an elderly man from his own home?

  Thinking of what they did to Victoria, he wondered if there was more to the story. “Did they harm Janey?” He practically shouted at the man so he could be heard.

  His eyes looked at Liam a moment, and in his wisp of a voice said, “No. She was out looking for more oxygen for me. She hadn't come back. Can someone call her? I have her number on my bracelet.”

  Obviously someone had taken care of him all this time, but how could he not know the situation with the world? Unless Janey was trying to shield him from it. He'd read about that scenario many times.

  “Sir, do you know what's happening with the zombies?”

  The man seemed to look around at his overseers, trying to absorb what was happening to him. If he heard Liam, he chose not to respond. Instead, he repeated that his Janey was going to be looking for him.

  Damn. He's not all there.

  As they continued down the road, Liam still had no idea where he was going or why the CDC would be collecting this odd menagerie of people. All he knew was these folks were going somewhere that was run, either in part or in total, by the man who shot his girlfriend.

  There, I said it.

  If there was an indicator on Liam's heart, it would be moving slightly from the depressed zone to the “I'm going to sabotage this whole project and make that son-of-a-bitch wish he had never met me” zone. Was Hayes really working on a cure? If so, would sabotaging him doom them all? Even revenge was overly complicated at the end of the world. For all he knew, it always was. Nonetheless, his heart would give the man no quarter.

  He would play the rest by ear.

  Bart chose that moment to finally blurt out a response to Liam's query. He yelled it because Liam had leaned back in his seat against the rear door.

  “Zombies? I saw a zombie once. It was in a
movie.”

  4

  The journey continued in the back of the MRAP for several more hours. They could see the early morning light coming in through the small side windows and the large front windows. Liam still couldn't see where they were, and he didn't know where they were going. He did know they'd spent the entire night traveling in the cramped compartment and no one was happy.

  “Someone please tell Janey where to find me.”

  Bart on the floor would alternate between sleeping and shouting out for his granddaughter. He would listen to none of his fellow passengers, most of whom insisted they would tell Janey as soon as they could. He either ignored them or didn't believe them. He was confused, that much was evident. Many were visibly frustrated at the futility of interacting with him.

  Grandma seemed the least affected by his ramblings. Liam asked why.

  “I've spent plenty of time in the nursing homes. You recall when I fell down and broke my arms—I spent six weeks in the crazy house that time—and a multitude of visits to friends and relatives who suffered their last years there. I've seen plenty of men and women like this gentleman. It really is sad how we end up when we reach the end of our lives.”

  Liam noticed she had her Rosary in her hands, passing the beads through her frail fingers. It may have been there the whole time they were riding.

  “Grandma, would you say a prayer for Victoria?”

  She turned to him with a soft look. “Sweet Liam. I've been praying for her since we left.”

  He didn't know what to say. He was afraid just thinking about her now would move him to tears, so he tried to focus instead on other things—anything. He stood up to address everyone. Time to do something.

  “Does anyone in here know why you've all been, uh, collected?”

  He looked around. The obvious reason was their age. But that was just stupid. What other things did they have in common? He was saddened to see he wasn't getting any response beyond blank looks. The long journey made everyone bristle at the merest interaction with their neighbors. Liam was breaking an uneasy truce among these survivors.