The group had pulled back together to discuss the development.
“I know these guys,” Liam began. “I ran into them on my way out here. They were big into camouflage clothing and looked like they'd been hunting since they were in diapers, but they were nice enough to me. We even went to the same school. They said I was welcome to return, but none of this,” he pointed to the words, “was here.”
Melissa replied, “Do we have any options to take a different route? Maybe another way would be safer? I don't like the idea of snipers picking us off in the night. Especially friendly snipers.”
The group searched for an answer acceptable to everyone. Liam had a small light over his county map, but nothing jumped out at them as a slam dunk. A detour was attractive to avoid this particular threat, but Liam had no knowledge of other routes. There could be worse problems on those roads. He argued that he at least knew these people and could talk to them.
Victoria backed him up. “I trust he knows these people.”
The fear of the unknown proved stronger than the fear of the known. No one could make a strong case for backtracking and finding an alternate route.
Melissa remained practical. “OK, so how do we get down this road without getting shot?”
“We sing.” Victoria had their attention. “I grew up in a religious household. We sang all the time. My mom loved to sing when she did her chores. At the time it drove me crazy, but now I'd give anything to hear her silly songs.”
“It seems like a risky proposition, but Liam knows these guys and also the sign mentions religion. In that light, this seems like a good gamble.” Liam was pleasantly surprised his dad was backing him up.
They lined up in a tighter formation and began walking forward, into the moonlit night. They couldn't agree on any religious song they all knew, so they chose one verse that was very simple.
“Michael rowed his boat ashore, hallelujah!”
Melissa refused to sing, but she offered to whistle in harmony. Together they made quite the rolling church choir.
Liam was able to put the words together with volume, but he was enamored by the sweet vocals of his partner. Victoria's voice was stunning to him, even with something so simple. At one point, he nearly tripped on the bike's pedal because he was looking over at her. When she saw him, she knew what he was thinking and softly spoke to him over their mule. “Twelve years of choir practice!”
Wow!
They walked for about ten minutes, constantly repeating the one line of that song. Twice a zombie stumbled up the road embankment to try to ruin the fun, but both times Melissa used a stake to forcefully dispatch the intruders. Liam felt unnaturally buoyant at the energy they were throwing off. Nothing like a happy church song to push back the evil of the world. Even if it was just his imagination, it felt good.
They approached the home where Liam had previously been stopped by the group of young men. From out of the dark came, “Halt! Who goes there!” as if they were knights of old.
Liam took a chance. “Hail ahead Northwest High School! Boy Scout and choir group incoming!”
They were right up on the mailbox when he heard clapping.
“Well met, Boy Scout!”
The boys were practically right in front of them, hidden in a blind inside a nearby hedge. Exactly where you'd expect to find a group of hunters.
If these were his enemies, he'd already be dead.
3
“Don't you guys know any other lines to that song?”
Liam suspected Victoria did, but they all stood there shaking their heads.
“Well, neither do we. Guess we didn't pay attention during Sunday School.”
Some chuckles from inside the bush.
Liam tried to convey their mission succinctly.
“Hey again, guys. I came through here two days ago. I'm hoping you remember me?”
“Oh, sure we do. You're practically the only person who has come through here that hasn't done something stupid like pull a gun on us. I can't understand if we look like idiots or what, but it has happened a few different times. That's why we designed this blind, so we could cover ourselves anytime someone comes through and gets crazy on us.”
“Is that why you guys wrote that stuff on the road back there?”
“That was my momma's idea. She said it would keep the worst people away and only honest people would try to enter with such threatening warnings.”
Liam didn't think that was exactly true. “Not to doubt your mom, but wouldn't the worst threats see your warning as a challenge, and then try to sneak in from a different direction?”
“Yeah, but we're pretty good operating in the woods. My cousins are out in the night right now. A couple neighbors are also out there. We look out for each other. Got to do what you can. Momma's idea has turned some people away. We've watched them during the day.”
“Do any vehicles come through here anymore?”
“A couple of ATVs have been through. Those were neighbors from a few properties down the road. They have family up that way. Oh, a military convoy came through the other day, not long after you did. They didn't even slow down and we didn't make ourselves obvious to them. Don't want them to Third-Amendment us.”
“Third Amendment?”
Liam's dad knew it. “They didn't want the government to quarter troops inside their house. It's difficult to say if we are at peace or at war, and that can determine the rights of the homeowner. I'm inclined to believe this is a state of war, which means the government can pretty much do whatever it wants.”
Liam actually laughed. “You mean like firebomb homes, kidnap teenagers and 100-year-old ladies, and kill anyone who happens to get in the way?”
His dad gave a knowing smile in the glow of various flashlights.
“Anyway, we're going back to the Boy Scout camp so we can find a way to rescue my grandma from the CDC. They want to experiment on her. Kill her, I think.”
That seemed to strike a chord with the young men. A man with a full beard about eight inches below his chin came out of the blind. “My grandpa, God rest his soul, was a spry 90-something before all this happened. He lived with us in our house. We kept him on the main floor because he couldn't do steps very well, but he was on all kinds of medications and oxygen. When the power failed us, we had a small genny, but that didn't last very long. When that gave out, he didn't last very long. I think he just let himself die. I'm sorry they're doing that to your grandma. It ain't right.”
Liam thought of all the old folks he'd seen at the government camp. Each of them likely had family missing them terribly. He remembered how ornery some of them were, and revised it to “some of them had family missing them.” No sense sugar coating it. Old people could be jerks too.
“I'm sorry for your grandpa.”
They all stood there for a few moments, no one really sure how to proceed. Melissa broke the stalemate.
“Do you guys have any intel on what's ahead on this road? Anything we should watch out for?”
It turned out they had spent a lot of time getting to know their road.
“Zombies are everywhere, of course. We haven't seen any evidence of organized resistance or criminals. Everything is clear to the intersection of the highway a couple miles that way.”
Liam remembered that intersection. He was held at gunpoint by a drug abuser while he was riding his bike on his previous trip through there. It was a massive traffic jam of dead vehicles and dead drivers, centered around a cement truck which had plowed into them all, and surrounded by a ring of stripped and useless cars. It would have been very difficult to get a large vehicle through the mess. Bikes would be a snap, relatively speaking.
Liam found himself liking these country folk. He wanted to continue a relationship with them, even if they never came back through here. It would be good to know someone doing good work out here, in case they ever needed a place of last resort. He was saddened by his morbid realization he was already planning ahead for when the Boy Scout c
amp got wiped out.
Grandma would give me a pep talk right about now.
“Excuse me for a moment. I need to talk to my dad.”
Liam pulled his dad aside, and quietly asked, “Dad, I've read a lot of books about zombies and it struck me these people would be good allies. If we make it to the camp, it would be nice to know we have friends down here. If we don't make it to the camp, we'll have some place to retreat.”
“Excellent thinking, Son. Nice to see all those video games and silly books didn't take away your brain.” He smiled at Liam.
Despite the friendly tone, he tried to ignore the insinuation. That was the old Liam.
Jerry offered a proposal. “Our plans are to join up with the Boy Scouts up to the north of here. If we survive this trip and make it there, it would be great to tell them we have allies down here on their south side. In exchange, it would give you somewhere to go if you find yourselves in trouble. You're the only group we've found—besides ourselves—in this part of the county.”
The young man with the beard said he needed to run inside and talk to his mom. To Liam, it was funny the kids acted as liaisons between the parents. Between groups. Maybe this was the first step in an alliance that would last for a thousand years.
Feet on the ground, Liam.
It wasn't long and the bearded guy came trotting back.
“My mom agrees to your terms. She wants me to go with you to scope out the place and establish boundaries. No time to waste, she says.”
Liam looked to the house, wondering about the woman inside. She seemed really adept at this new reality. Some people did better than others “rolling with it.”
The bearded guy was “Bo” though he didn't say what it was short for, if anything. He carried an expensive semi-automatic shotgun and had two pistols in a holster on each side of his waist. He was dressed completely in camouflage—hat, long pants and long shirt—despite the summer heat. It looked like he would disappear in any wooded environment.
He said goodbye to his relatives, though he didn't seem particularly put out. Like he expected to be back in no time. Liam hoped that was true.
He also ran behind his house and came back with a sleek-looking bicycle with skinny tires.
“This is my brother's bike, but he won't mind if I use it.”
“Hell I won't!” retorted the bush.
They were saying their goodbyes when Liam remembered he had one more question.
“What is the 'Church of Owens' that you wrote on the road?”
One of the other boys spoke up. “That was my aunt's idea—Bo's mom—she's a preacher. She said people will have more respect for religious figures in the End Times.”
Liam didn't say it out loud, but he was pretty certain she was exactly wrong on that point. He'd read books on the Tribulation, formally known as End Times in scripture, and religious people were in for a rough ride in that scenario.
But Liam didn't believe this was Biblical End Times. He was certain Grandma would have been taken if the Rapture was real.
No, this was much worse.
4
Bo pushed his bike next to Liam and Victoria, in the middle of the caravan. Liam wondered if the slim bicycle would be able to hold the large man. He had to be every bit of six-foot-four inches and 250 pounds. But he looked very fit.
They shared some small talk while they were still near Bo's house, but things quieted down as they got back out into the wilderness of the road. Almost immediately, they heard Melissa grunting as she dispatched a zombie. A few moments later they had to swerve around the body.
Bo whispered, “Wow, she can really take care of herself.”
“You're telling us. She's a bundle of energy.”
Not long after, they crossed over the outgoing set of spray painted warning signs on their way out of Owens' territory. They approached the intersection Liam had feared. The group tightened up, and they laid the bikes in the nearby tall grass while they tried to observe what was ahead. In the moonlight, the intersection looked positively haunted.
Phil reached into his duffel, pulled out an apparatus, put it on his head, and flipped down what looked like binoculars over his eyes. He whispered, “Night vision, courtesy of a Homeland Security grant to the department.” Then he spent about five minutes scanning the intersection in front of them.
“I see a few patches of smoke, but no movement of people or zombies. As best I can tell, we can cross to the other side. Wait!” He was now looking to their right, which was on the uphill side of the intersection. “I can see a loose group of people walking away, up the road. I can't tell if they're zombies, but it would be my guess.” He then looked in the other direction, slightly downhill. The highway was four lanes wide, but it had a median in the middle to separate the two directions. “It's hard to tell from so far away. There may be more people that way walking in this direction.”
Stay or go. The gamer's dilemma once again.
Like so many decisions of late, the fear of the unknown beat out the fear of the known. They knew one group had just passed. The second group might be heading this way. If it was daytime, both groups would be on them. They decided to chance it.
They walked toward the intersection. Because he had been through here before, Liam explained how the only clear path through the debris and car jam was on their left side. He tried to detail how it wound along the near lane of the highway before crossing the median. On the far side, the path came back to the intersection. The route was basically a large letter U. He'd had the advantage of much more light to pick his way across. Now they had to do it at night, with strangers lurking in the shadows.
The path was confusing to explain, but the only dangerous section was right at the beginning. The intersection itself was along a small ridge line, so the main roadway going north and south was elevated above the surrounding wooded landscape. Liam noted how vehicles trying to get through this choke point were forced to drive on the steep incline next to the highway for a hundred yards or so to the south, before there was enough free space up on the road itself. Even the shoulder was blocked. In the light of day, it looked precarious. Now...
“We have to go to our left along that embankment. Then we'll see the opening up on the roadway where you can get back to level ground. It should be no problem on foot.”
He crossed his fingers.
Mel and Jerry went ahead into the darkness along the incline. Bo followed with his bike. Liam and Victoria with their loaded contraption dropped in line next. Lana and Phil were behind; they worked together with the unwieldy wheelbarrow.
He had to push the bike upright from the lower side as he walked along the hillside. There were deep ruts in the grass from four-wheel drive trucks plowing through here recently. He imagined Hayes and his Humvees had probably been on this same hill the day before. Victoria did her best to steady the bike it fitfully rolled along the uneven ground.
Liam thought of something Grandma had told him about the rhythm of life. She'd said life has a rhythm, and once you get used to it you can see things that don't belong or that aren't right. He got that feeling as they walked. A sort of deja vu mixed with a premonition, signaling a disruption.
He felt his heart beating in his chest as they stepped through the difficult terrain.
Beat.
He stumbles in some loose dirt.
Beat.
He tries to compensate as he grips the bike.
Beat.
Victoria is surprised and the handlebar starts to slip from her.
Beat.
The bike leans heavily in his direction.
Beat.
“I'm losing it!” she shouts.
He didn't want Victoria to tumble with the bike and trailer. It was going to happen no matter what she did. His only option was to spring out of the way so he wasn't hit by it. That's exactly what happened.
The overloaded bike tipped to the left. At first he thought the trailer might keep the bike from going all the way over, but it did
n't. Instead, metal bent and broke. Liam jumped out of the way, Victoria lost her grip completely, and the whole contraption slid and bounced loudly down the hill. It was fifty or so feet to the bottom; enough space for all the cargo to explosively depart the rigging they'd made to hold it all together.
Everyone else watched helplessly as the bulk of their weapons disappeared into the darkness.
He should have been taking things seriously, especially knowing what was up on the roadway heading his way, but his thought at that moment was of something he'd wondered about on day one of the disaster. “Am I that guy who does the stupid stuff and brings ruin to the group?”
He ran scenarios in his head. That guy who gets bit by his girlfriend because he was too stupid to know she was infected. That guy who stops the car to take a leak, only to be attacked at a delicate moment. That guy who can't even manage a simple bicycle and dooms them all to battle zombies in the dark.
He hated the thought, but there was no denying he'd screwed up.
There was no time to decide who he was. He had to run.
“Get to the bottom!” Melissa tried to be quiet about it, but had to be loud enough for everyone to hear at once.
They all started down. There was no way to secure the wheelbarrow on the side of the hill, so Mom and Phil held it tightly as they moved down the incline, but it also got away from them. They had gone about half way so it wasn't such a disaster, but it still tipped the bag of rice and other gear onto the grass and then bounced loudly on a concrete drainage channel at the bottom.
All my fault.
Liam was the first one down to the edge of forest along the highway throughway. Liam found it hard to see what had become of his bike and the cargo. Melissa was down shortly thereafter.
“We can try being quiet down here, but it's probably too late for that. Have your weapons ready. There could be lots of them.” She saw Liam trying to gather random pieces of their gear. “Don't bother picking up yet. There's no time and we can't risk lights.”
Liam readied his weapon instead. Victoria did the same.
“I'm sorry, Liam, I couldn't hold on.”
“Totally my bad. I tripped and couldn't find my balance.” He was more concerned about her rifle. “You said you know how to work an AR-15. Do you have any extra rounds with you?”
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 59