The runner made his way toward the front gate. That became apparent after a few minutes of zigging and zagging through the crowd. The question smoldering in Liam's brain was, why?
The man left the tents and was up on the comparatively clear access road. It led from the front gate, up the valley, and past the admin building. Everything ran next to the creek, making it really hard to get lost. This guy was following the most basic directions.
Soon they were both on the paved road. Not far from the entrance. The man had a fifty-foot lead. He appeared to be giving it all he had to get to the front gate.
Maybe he's from outside?
A touch of panic now. An outsider? Liam actually backed off a little. He chose a nice even pace so he could pursue but not exhaust himself like the other man. He figured he was being pretty smart about it.
The man reached the front gate. None of the guards made any motion to stop him. Liam's anger peaked at the realization. They were trained to stop people going the other direction. Again Liam considered yelling ahead for help, but he had already halved the distance. His adrenaline pumped and he had tunnel vision to close the last twenty feet and catch him. He felt his holster, knowing his gun was there. He was ready to use it if needed.
The man crossed the road and ran into the overflow tents in the field. Liam had confidence he could follow him, no matter what he used as a diversion.
The camp exit was in a heavily wooded area, with poor visibility on the access road going left and right of the gate itself. As Liam ran out the gate and crossed the road, he chanced a look left and right. Even though there was no longer any traffic, the old habits died hard.
Clear left.
Clear—
He came to a dead stop in the middle of the road; the running man opened an insurmountable lead. Anyone looking at Liam would laugh at the sight of his mouth hanging wide open. But no one looked at him. Everyone who could see it was doing the same thing as Liam: gawking.
A convoy of military trucks had parked on the shoulder; they were visible as far as he could see on the windy road. Some around him probably knew what they were, but not why they were there.
Liam knew.
Hayes was back to collect his precious MRAP.
He brought a lot of friends.
Chapter 6: Don't Make Plans
Someone bumped into Liam's dangling right arm as he stood in awe. Liam turned slightly to confirm it was Victoria.
“What are you doing? We have to keep after him.”
She had her back to the military convoy. She watched the escaping man as he headed into the field of tents, but he didn't care.
“We can catch him! He's slowing down.”
He remained frozen. Finally, she turned around and joined Liam in the wide-eyed spectacle. Men and women soldiers stood outside their vehicles. Some had fanned out to the sides, but they didn't act particularly hurried. A small group walked toward the front gate; toward Liam and Victoria.
“This can't be happening,” Liam said quietly.
He grabbed Victoria by the arm. Running was not an option. The troopers were much too close. If they wanted him, they had him.
“Greetings!” said a jovial-looking officer as he walked up. He was flanked by several tough-looking Marines in woodland camouflage uniforms, helmets, and with weapons drawn.
“I'm Lt. Colonel Joseph Brandyweis with the 2nd Battalion 2nd Marines. I've been tasked with investigating this camp for civilians known to have stolen U.S. Government property.”
Here it comes. We're caught!
“Wel-welcome to Camp Hope.” Liam didn't know what else to say.
“Will you two fine folks take me and my friends here to the administrator of this facility?”
It was an order, not a request.
“Sure. We'll take you.” Liam held Victoria's hand—tightly.
The colonel waved to the lead Humvee in his column, then said something into a small radio. In response, the front vehicle and two more behind rolled toward the front gate. As the first one pulled up, he instructed them to get in.
“This will be faster than walking.” He gave them a once-over. Liam figured he looked guilty—he had sweat pouring off his forehead from his pursuit. “Don't worry, my friends. We aren't here to hurt anyone. We're the good guys!”
Liam had heard that before. He was pretty sure the good guys were gone for good.
When they climbed in, Liam was overcome by the smell of cooked meat. He was practically drooling. How long since the last decent meal? Days.
“You guys want some deer meat? I don't have much, but you're welcome to what I have.”
Victoria didn't hesitate. “Oh my, that would be incredible.”
“We've been traveling a lot these last couple weeks. Sometimes we stop and get food from pre-positioned government stockpiles, but more often we dismount and hunt deer. Always in season now, huh?” He gave a hearty laugh.
Liam took the venison, though he hesitated before eating it. He looked at Victoria and saw her enjoying her small serving. He decided if he was going to be captured this easily, he'd at least get a good meal out of it.
He was well into the small serving when the colonel asked about the condition of the camp. Who was in charge? How many people? How big was the valley? Liam and Victoria answered honestly, until he directed his questioning at them.
“So, how did you kids end up here?”
Liam looked at Victoria, her face giving no clues to her thoughts on how to answer.
“My family lived near the interstate. When the zombies chased out all the people from the city, both groups used my street as a battlefield. Our house was destroyed. Our neighbors killed. We decided the one place we'd might find some help was at this Boy Scout camp.” Liam told himself he didn't really lie. He learned his lesson about mentioning his wayward grandmother to anyone in government.
“And what about you?”
Victoria was quick to respond. “I was part of a summer medical internship at Barnes Memorial Hospital downtown. When the plague began spreading, I made a run for it. I escaped, along with many others from downtown, by walking out. I found this place by accident.” After a moment's pause, she added, “My parents are still in Denver, so I'm hoping to make it out there again someday.”
“Denver, eh? Well, I'm sorry to say no urban area is intact these days. I've not seen Denver, but I've seen downtown St. Louis. They can't be that different. I wish you luck in finding your parents.”
Liam felt brave enough to ask a question he knew was borderline self-incriminating. “You said you're looking for thieves here? What did they steal?”
He got a cold stare in return, but nothing further was said.
He knows.
2
Liam guided the Marines to the main building, introduced the newcomers to the guards, and then was told to stay put on the main floor. He and Victoria mingled in the bustle of the crowded room, but he felt very much alone.
“It seems odd they wouldn't take us upstairs. Maybe they aren't here for you. Uh, sorry. They aren't here for us.”
Victoria talked to him, but he had trouble focusing. The volume of chatter in the room had exploded once the Marines came and went. His belly was temporarily sated, but the venison didn't sit very well. Taken together, he felt oddly out of sorts.
He tried to calm himself as he leaned against the rear wall of the large room. Slipping out was an option, though other Marines now patrolled around the building. He could see them through the big ground floor windows.
“I uhh, don't know. Should we try to get away? Where would we go? Won't that look like we're guilty?” After a moment, he said, “I need a minute.”
Victoria pulled up a piece of wall next to him. “Thanks for chasing that guy down. He seemed like an OK guy up until that point.”
Liam reoriented. He'd been absorbed with his own problems, and ignored hers. “You said he pushed you down when you tried to take him to check in. I saw that part. What was he talking abo
ut before he pushed you?”
“He mainly asked about the camp. How long it had been here. How many people we had. Was it safe to bring his kids. Stuff like that.”
“Did he ask about supplies or security?” Liam's ill-feeling was not improving.
“No, but he did ask where the creek water came from. I told him I didn't know. I've never been up the creek.”
“It sounds like he was probing for information. I've read about this many times in my zombie books. Survivor groups will scout each other to find strengths and weaknesses. Many times it's a prelude to an attack if they think they can take the weaker group.” He paused to think for a moment before continuing, “But how big would their group have to be to consider taking on an entire valley of people like this?” He fanned his hand out over the tents sprawled outside the windows of the building.
Neither of them answered for a long time. Liam's stomach still danced, but started to improve. He no longer felt like he was going to embarrass himself by getting sick.
“I guess it's a good thing the Marines showed up when they did. Maybe they chased off the group which sent the scout?” She always searched for the positive.
Liam's nerves were rattled by the appearance of the Marines, he was tired from his brisk run, and he'd generally been in a bad mood since Grandma was taken. As a result, he sought the negative in everything. “I guess that depends. What if the group is strong enough to take the Marines too? Maybe the Marines are the bad guys...”
Victoria pulled herself off the wall, turned, and appeared ready to chastise him. But just then someone called for him from up the stairs.
“Liam Peters! Front and center in the council chambers!”
Victoria's demeanor softened. Instead of the admonishment he thought was coming, she instead just gave a long sigh. She reached in to give him a hug.
“Good luck.”
She held him for a moment before she pulled back. He was relieved that instead of leaving, she took his hand and led him to the stairs.
We're in this together. Thank God.
His stomach, and his will, hardened for what was coming.
3
When they reached the top the stairs, the Lt. Colonel was huddled with a couple of the council members. They motioned him over. Camp security guards and Marines formed two separate cliques on opposing sides of the room, as if wary of each other.
The colonel spoke first. “I don't recall asking for the young lady.”
Liam was ready for that. “Where I go, she goes.”
Liam felt eyes drilling into him. They could, of course, toss her out and there wouldn't be anything he could do about it. His mind spun down a network of possibilities from there. Would he refuse to cooperate? Was he putting her in danger? Could he fight? The small pistol on his hip was rubbing him as if in reminder...
I must be going crazy to even think I have a chance against Marines.
“Then let's get right to it. I'm told you know where to find Douglas Hayes.”
Liam felt his face flush. He may also have felt a dumb look on his face as he stood facing the military man.
“Liam? Do you know where he is, son? It's vital we find him.”
“You want to find him? Why?”
He glanced at Victoria, but she shared the same look.
“As I was telling your camp leaders here, we want to find Mr. Hayes because he's a vital link in solving the mystery of fighting this outbreak of...” The colonel didn't want to use the Z-word, Liam knew authorities believed it trivialized their condition. “...plague victims. Hayes and his team have been conducting their own research the last several weeks and have gone off on their own. They've taken a lot of equipment and personnel from legitimate government researchers. Some would say he stole those resources. We also know he's been rounding up test subjects outside the purview of his bosses. An Army Colonel at a camp near here was asking questions about Hayes' methods.”
Liam felt sick again, but not because of what he ate. This was confirmation of what he already suspected about Hayes and his intentions with Grandma. He didn't know which was worse though; an out-of-control government bent on researching the outbreak no matter how many people they had to kill during trials, or an independent and secretive group of researchers doing the same, beyond the control of the aforementioned all-powerful government. Either way, there was no excuse for the piles of bodies he'd seen at Elk Meadow, or what they did there.
Maybe he could finally get some answers.
“I want to help you, Colonel. I really do. I will if I can. But Marines blew up my parents' house. Didn't Hayes order that?”
The LtCol studied him for a moment and seemed to reach a conclusion.
“The world is chaos now. My area of operations is the entire state of Missouri, but I can only control what's directly in my line-of-sight these days, and even that's getting hard to do. My bosses sent me out with minimal intel and frankly it's a miracle we found you here. What I do know about your house is yes, it was Hayes who ordered the strike. But what we can't figure out is what kind of clearance he had to authorize said strike.”
He closed the distance to Liam and spoke a little quieter.
“We sent another unit to investigate what could have rated a full-blown strike. We should have sent a team to gather information on a target prior to wiping it off the map. Now...” He shrugged. “The official report, brief as it was, stated there were no obvious signs of contagion beyond the uniform standard of infection everywhere else. That's a fancy way of saying there were plague victims, but no research facility or high value target.”
He drilled into Liam's eyes.
“Son, do you know why he'd select your house?”
Where do I begin?
Aware that he'd already told a white lie when they first met, he had to explain why he lied initially, then he laid out their first meeting with Hayes under the Arch, his strange interest in Grandma, and the subsequent kidnappings, escapes, and firefights which summed up their give and take relationship. He also mentioned Victoria's capture and shooting by Hayes. He finished with the bombing of his boyhood home.
“So, the reason Hayes blew up your neighborhood was payback? Can it really be that simple?”
“I don't know, sir. He warned me the planes were coming—said he owed me one because I spared his life earlier—so on the face of it the whole thing seemed like a waste of resources. But he did kill a lot of my neighbors.”
“I'm sorry, son, I really am. You're a better man than me. Someone shoots my girlfriend or wife,” he tossed Liam a wry smile, “they get a dirt nap. Is there anything you can tell me about his whereabouts now that he has taken your grandma? I think we both want to find her.”
Her?
Liam had been pretty forthcoming in his storytelling, but he did leave out one significant detail. He made no mention of the age factor and how Elk Meadow had revealed the link between the virus and very old test subjects. He wondered if the LtCol already knew about that. The answer would reveal whether he was looking for Hayes, or for Grandma.
“He picked her up in an unmarked private helicopter. It could have been from a TV station, a hospital, or maybe some government agency. I can't tell you which.” Liam ran the scene over and over in his head, and those were his best guesses about the origin of the helicopter. In other words, he didn't have a clue.
While waiting to see how he reacted, Liam realized something else. The LtCol was here, looking for him. Somehow his name had been associated with Hayes. Which means Hayes must have put him in his reports. Reports accessible by this Marine. But how did they know he would be here, in this camp? It seemed too convenient. Too lucky.
Liam's natural fear of the government, inherited from his father, was red-lining.
The LtCol wasn't telling him everything.
I really wanted to trust you, too.
4
Liam was relieved he wasn't under arrest, which was where he figured he'd be by this point in their conversation. The LtC
ol continued to ask questions, but none of Liam's answers led to any new revelations about where Hayes and Grandma might have gone. He even told him about the paperwork they'd found referencing “Riverside” downtown, but it was deemed not credible. “I can't go all the way downtown on a hunch.”
Liam willingly shared almost all of what he knew, minus what he witnessed at Elk Meadow. Liam couldn't be sure, even now, whether this man knew about the significance of his grandmother. He intended to keep it that way.
“Don't you have any way to track people?”
Like you tracked me.
The LtCol was hard to read, but he thought the man's eyes might have widened at the suggestion. His response was less helpful.
“If we had a way to track him, we would already have found him. He has to be accessing our network, but we don't know how. I'm in the dark here, and I don't like it. The only clue I have in this whole mess was an early report from Hayes' team from underneath the Arch where he mentioned your name. We followed that lead and found your street blown to hell. We realized Hayes had authorized the strike order and we wanted to know why. We dug into more of his movements and discovered through our signals intelligence Hayes had been at this camp. It was a long shot to find you here, but we ran right into you. Amazing good luck. The trail can't go cold from here. You have to help if you can.”
Liam wondered if there were any leads he overlooked. He'd been thinking about Grandma since she took off in the helicopter, but to no avail. Should he tell him Grandma had his phone? If they could trace his phone to her location, would they immediately go collect her? Would they let him go too? Would they bring her back? Probably none of those things. His mind drifted as he tried to solve the puzzle.
Victoria pulled him toward the big glass windows overlooking the camp. The LtCol made no effort to follow.
“Liam, are you there?”
He snapped awake. “Hi! Yes, I'm just trying to think of what to do next. My mind isn't cooperating though. Do we have any hope of finding her on our own? More importantly, do we trust him?”
For a brief moment, he thought of asking his parents. He'd been on his own long enough in this carnage he'd almost forgotten they were still around to help. Did he think of himself as a son or as a boyfriend these days?
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 66