Across the parking lot their entire lives burned to cinders in the aftermath of the bombing.
Laughter took the edge off.
2
The group crawled out of the water, but stayed along the slope of the creek bank so they could observe the fires. It had been twenty minutes since the big one went off, and no more A-10's flew by. The attack appeared to be over.
Liam's dad wondered, “Who are we missing?”
Everyone scanned the area to take stock of any survivors. Liam saw all the people in his core group, including his parents. He could see Phil, the ex-police officer way down on the end. He was next to Melissa, a shoe saleswoman and apparently a military veteran of some kind. Liam didn't really know her yet.
The only person he didn't see was Drew, the boy who helped him get Grandma from the Boy Scout camp to Liam's house. He was last seen lying on the street after Hayes had punched him to commandeer his bicycle—with Grandma trapped in the bike trailer behind. The street corner where Drew was last seen was well within the impact zone.
In the end they accepted many of their neighbors were undoubtedly dead. When Liam's crew chased after Hayes in the direction of his waiting helicopter, they all escaped the potential blast zone. The neighbors remained in their homes or on their lawns, celebrating the fact they had defeated a small contingent of Hayes' soldiers in their Humvees. That celebration lead to their deaths.
The humor of the situation ebbed away as everyone realized the gravity of the loss.
“What do we do now, Dad?”
Liam had been waiting eight hellish days to ask that question. Ever since he and Grandma left her house in the city, he'd been trying to get home and find his parents. Yes, he wanted to be sure they were safe, but he also wanted to effectively hand over the responsibility of caring for Grandma so he didn't have to worry about her. Mom and Dad were always there when he needed them, even if he didn't agree with all their methods—such as sending him to Grandma's for the summer after a particularly trying period of family conflict. Now, his question rang hollow. Mom and Dad, he realized, didn't have all the answers. They couldn't wrap up all his problems into neat solutions for him. Grandma had been taken by Hayes to do medical testing, despite his best efforts to protect her. Even his father wasn't going to have an answer to counterbalance that loss. His excitement at seeing them was quashed by the circumstances of the reunion.
His dad was lying face down in the weeds. His arms were spread out in front of him, and his hands were tucked back so they were on his face, as if he were using them as pillows. His mom was lying next to him, on her back, looking straight up at the sky. They had just lost their house. It was effectively destroyed days ago when a big military truck tore the whole thing to shreds with its top-mounted Gatling gun, but Liam wasn't bothering with the details. That was a previous run-in with Hayes. But now even the perforated frame of the house was gone; wiped off the Earth forever.
But it was more than that. Liam's dad had spent years diligently stockpiling supplies he would need in the event there were catastrophes—man-made or natural. He knew about the secret room in their basement where Dad stored all his goodies, including lots of guns. Liam suspected that was what really had him upset, above and beyond the loss of friends and neighbors. That was supposed to be their life raft in these chaotic times.
Jerry popped his head up to look at him. “I don't know Liam. I guess we wait for the fires to die out and then see if there's anything we can salvage. I'm sure our house is wrecked, but from here I can't see if it's a crater. We'll see.”
Liam knew it was their only viable option. Wait and see. So they waited. The morning dragged by. As noon approached everyone was getting antsy. Melissa and Phil had been talking, and Melissa came over to Liam's parents.
“I know we all want to check it out, but we should wait a little longer. I have a bad feeling about going back to the scene of a crime, if you catch my drift. What if they're watching for us to return? There could be drones high above. It's what I'd do if I were running this operation.”
Melissa was a forty-something woman Liam met several nights before as she walked up the street toward his house as a refugee. By almost any definition Liam figured she would be described as physically pretty. A little taller than most women, but shapely and well-proportioned. She kept her long blond hair in a ponytail, though now her hair was a mess, just like Victoria's. Though initially reluctant to accept the hospitality of Phil and Liam, Victoria convinced her to give up some of her fears. By her own account she had been sexually assaulted by her former boss, then harassed by the sickos of the refugee crowds as they all fled the city. She was in no mood to accept the hospitality of a couple men, until Victoria brought her in.
She then went on to organize some men and women around Liam's house, and together they got the drop on a group of hostile men intent on taking the house by force. The ensuing firefight was brief but intense. She proved her worth, though she ended up killing some of the wounded hostile men. She said it was to prevent them from coming back to harm them when they healed up. In his brief interludes of quiet thought of late, he'd wondered how Phil and his parents had agreed to keep her around after what were essentially battlefield executions. She was still with them, and going strong it seemed. Victoria said she helped organize the resistance on his whole street earlier today. She was probably very familiar with the people now dead up there. Liam was inclined to listen to her. Apparently everyone else agreed. They waited.
They were rewarded for their patience less than twenty minutes later when the sound of propeller-driven aircraft approached from south of them.
“Everyone down!” Mel cried.
The trees near the creek offered some protection from above, as did the mute color of all their clothes after being in the muddy water, but they didn't want to take any chances of being seen.
The two big planes drifted menacingly over their heads and tilted their wings so their propellers faced straight up. The ungainly-looking planes descended like helicopters to touch down on the large parking lot where Hayes' copter had departed hours earlier. Liam was so enamored with the planes he almost forgot why they were there. The back ramps dropped and Army men poured out. He could see about twenty per plane.
“What are Army men doing here?” Liam asked.
Melissa watched the drama with everyone else. “Not Army. The planes are V-22 Ospreys. Troop carriers. Those are US Marines.”
Marines. Great.
“Liam, you must have made quite an impression on someone,” Mel quipped.
He could only wonder. Were they sent by Hayes to clean up his mess? If he had them on speed-dial, why not send them first if he really wanted to capture Grandma without incident?
The Marines spread out in careful formations, alternating with each other to various positions until they were up in the ruins. It became difficult to see what they were doing; there was a lot of smoke wafting around from smoldering fires. They didn't appear to be searching any specific piece of the street.
“We should leave. They have to be looking for us.” As his dad would say, sometimes they really are trying to get you. His instinct said run.
Phil was quick to agree. “Any competent police sweep we ever did would investigate any nearby hiding areas for survivors. This ditch will be high on their lists once they start fanning out.”
Liam's parents seemed most reluctant to leave, but they were pragmatic about it in the end. They slid away with everyone else.
The creek provided an easy way to stay hidden. They followed it to a wider branch which went underneath a nearby roadway. Soon they had the entire road between them and the Marines. They kept going into a thick woodland beyond, then took stock.
Melissa gave her assessment. “We're probably safe over here, but I'd vote we go deeper into these woods just to be sure.”
Jerry agreed but added one important request. “Once those guys leave, we have to go back and grab our stuff.”
Liam looked at
him like he was crazy. “Dad, our house is gone. There's no way your supplies survived that inferno. I'm sorry but it's true. We should never go back if we think all is lost. It would be a big risk. Right?”
Phil and Melissa glanced sideways at each other, each with big smiles on their faces. Melissa seemed to be bursting to share her secret. “Liam, I know your house is a smoldering ruin. I'm sorry about the loss of your friends and neighbors, and sorry your grandmother got captured by Hayes. But we've been busy beavers while you've been away.”
Dad added, “We have a prepper, a US Army veteran, a police officer, and two whip-smart women on our team. Do you really think we'd leave our most important treasures sitting in our basement for anyone to take if we thought government agents were coming to our house to capture you?”
Liam thought about it for a few seconds, and grasped the implications. “No, I guess I don't think that at all.”
For a brief time, the laughter returned.
3
The Marines weren't there long. The lumbering Ospreys were impossible to miss as they left. The group waited a suitable time and then returned to observe their street from a different vantage point.
“You think they would keep someone behind as a lookout?” Liam asked as he crouched behind a tree.
“Doubtful, I don't think any agency has the resources to fly aircraft in and out more than the absolute minimum. Marines are used when they want to kill someone or lots of someones. Special Forces are used when they want to observe undetected. Or assassinate you.”
“Thanks, you're a real pick-me-up!” he responded.
The spirits of the group had simmered back to a disheartened baseline after the rush of dodging bombs, dragging themselves through creeks, and hiding in forests. Now they headed home—to see if anything more than splinters was left of the Peters' residence. Liam wasn't hopeful.
The remains of the street itself could be seen here or there, sometimes in remarkably undisturbed stretches of flat surface, but several bombs found purchase smack dab on the road. The resultant craters were impressive. Those big bombs had flattened all the houses in their immediate area, and the follow-up fire bombing had burned everything in the area to ash. Even the cars and trucks were empty hulks of fire-bathed steel. No one knew what kind of explosives had been used; Melissa said many of the most destructive types of ordnance had been outlawed against civilians, though there was no consensus on what constituted “civilians” when half the population was technically dead.
Liam's father tried to be pragmatic. “All we know for certain is that this street was considered such a high value target the military was able to task several planes, unload a significant amount of bombs, and send a couple platoons of Marines to make sure it was erased. All those resources would probably have been more useful fighting the zombies right now.”
Liam and his father hadn't had time to catch up on all that had happened to them both since the sirens, but Liam took the opportunity to share the most salient bits of his struggle. “Hayes gave me a warning as he was taking Grandma away in the helicopter. He told me the planes were coming, which gave me time to escape. He said it was a detail he couldn't overlook, since I'd spared his life and the lives of his men. But he said nothing about why he needed to bomb us clean off the map. A colonel I met in the government medical camp said he was responsible for deploying the strikes on other camps when containment failed. The planes were designed to erase all threats posed by the plague.”
All threats.
Liam's memory was jogged by his own statement. Several days ago he stood on a riverbank and wondered if his father knew the collapse was coming. He sent Liam to live with Grandma a few weeks prior to the outbreak of the plague, and she turned out to be an important objective to the CDC. Just a coincidence?
Liam pulled his father aside as they sifted through the ruins. “Dad, did you know the outbreak was coming? Is that why you sent me to live with Grandma when you did?”
His dad looked at him like he had grown a second head. “I sent you to live with Grandma because your attitude this spring was getting so bad both mom and I were arguing over which one of us would get to kick you out of the house when you turned eighteen. Your mom won that argument by the way.” He gave a slight smile, continuing. “We decided we couldn't take a full summer of the yelling and screaming, so we asked Grandma if she'd mind having an extra helper around. We figured if nothing else she wouldn't be as affected by your attitude, and because she couldn't hear well we didn't have to worry about you being too loud around her with all your yelling.”
That made a lot of sense. It was exactly the kind of statement he'd expect from his father. He also appreciated his dad hadn't exactly said no. Instead of pushing the issue, he moved on to a pain he knew they both shared. “I'm sorry I let Grandma get away. She said to tell you and Mom she loved you.”
His father put his arm over Liam's shoulders. “I'm sorry you both got you mixed up in all this intrigue. It's bad enough escaping from the infected, but you were tough enough to get Grandma to safety even with all these other people trying to catch her. I'm real proud of you. In the end it was just bad luck that ruined your plan.”
Liam had no doubt in his mind his father was on the up and up about loving him and wanting him to be safe, but there was something in his tone of voice that told him something more was on his mind.
“Here it is!” Liam's mother found the stake in the ground, signifying the location of the cache of weapons and material they had stashed in the woods. It was near a small fir tree which still had a lot of branches on fire.
“Behold, the burning bush.”
Victoria's exclamation startled him. The small fir was the only such tree burning in the entire area. Other trees were smoldering, but this one still had flames on it. He watched it with rapt attention.
Victoria continued, in a distant voice. “The burning bush from the Bible was where Moses was given the task of leading the Israelites out of Egypt.”
“OK, so who is Moses here? And where is the promised land?” Liam wondered.
They all stopped what they were doing and looked around at each other. It suddenly felt like a legitimate question. Was it Liam? He seemed most likely after leading Grandma and the others to this place. But at fifteen he had a long way to grow. Was it Jerry? Liam's father was capable and had also made a trip into and out of the fallen city. Or was it Grandma? She seemed to be a solid candidate given her age and her devotion to religion—if she were there to lead. Liam would be happy if it were anyone but him. He didn't judge himself a capable leader.
Nothing was clear cut in the real Apocalypse.
Phil finally spoke up. He pointed straight down.
“Right now these weapons are our Moses. They're going to lead us out of this wretched place, maybe not to the promised land, but to somewhere safer than this.”
Almost in unison, they all replied with a hearty “Amen!”
4
The day ended with everyone huddled in the woods for protection. A small pile of supplies had been exhumed, including guns, ammo, and even Liam's backpack.
The bombing did its job and cleansed a wide area around the neighborhood of everything—including zombies—but more had stumbled in after the fact. It upset him they took their sweet time and didn't come until after the Marines departed.
He shared what he'd learned in the Boy Scout Camp, especially how they whittled stout sticks into nasty spears and how they used them to puncture the skulls of the zombies. “The key is to kill them with the minimal amount of noise so we don't keep bringing in more. A spear isn't as sexy as a gun, but it's free, it's plentiful, and it works. It also keeps the zombies at arms-length while you do your thing.”
As they all tried their hands at making adequate spears, and dispatch the odd wandering zombie, they were pleased to learn a few neighbors did survive the assault. One of them was a man who lived several houses up the hill from Liam. He was old and gray, and had a serious demeanor almost
all the time. Liam remembered him from his youth as the guy you never wanted to tangle with.
His name was Paul.
“Me and the Wright's from across the way were standing on my lawn when those birds first came through with their cannons. It was a sound of pure evil. We got lucky they was shooting right up the middle of the street instead of in the lawns and houses. Well I guess unlucky if you were in the street. I saw one man—I didn't recognize him—standing in the street one second, and then he evaporated. Just poof!”
The stern man almost showed emotion at that, but continued. “Well you can bet your ass we started running. Everyone scattered into the woods. My old legs wouldn't carry me faster n' a wounded dog but I never looked back. Them bombs hit the bottom of the street and worked their way up, so I had a little extra time. Others were in the woods too, running much faster. Most haven't come back. Maybe they ran into the dead walking toward the sounds of destruction...”
Paul explained he came back because he had nowhere else to go. No family. No friends. Nothing. Not even a pet.
No wonder he's a sour man.
It made Liam feel slightly better to know there were some survivors. Even crusty ones. He felt bad enough for being responsible for Drew's death. He'd given up hoping his friend survived once he saw the area he'd last been standing. There wasn't even a body to bury.
They didn't light a campfire for fear of being seen. They salvaged some stout patio chairs which had survived everything, and used those as a base camp of sorts. It at least gave them some place to sit besides the ground. For the first time in a long while Liam could relax in the company of his family. The whole group was engaged in hushed conversation around him.
Victoria sat in the chair next to his. Perhaps it was coincidence, but they were given extra room by the others. When she noticed him looking her way, she leaned forward to quietly talk, “We have to do something to get Grandma back. I feel horrible all this happened because of me.”
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 57