Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “Liam, you of all people should know better after hanging with your great grandma all that time. We women can take care of ourselves. I think your mom is tougher than you give her credit for.”

  The letter spoke of such things, though he wasn't ready to accept it.

  He watched as his mom talked among the various radio operators. She was a model of poise and conservation of energy. She didn't spend time yacking over trifles. She was asking pointed questions and writing notes in a tiny notebook she kept in her back pocket. The same pocket normally reserved for her phone...which she no longer had. He accepted she was coming.

  They gathered guns, packs, and a few supplies and walked out of the busy camp. Liam suffered from extreme guilt that he was endangering his mother for no good reason. If she was important to some political movement, going into the wilderness wasn't very smart. Was he being stupid for taking her? Did he have a choice?

  As they walked, he bumped hips with Victoria, evoking a smile. Always looking ahead, his best case scenario was to get his mom to Cairo and let her take care of Grandma Marty. They would both be safe there. Then he and Victoria would give them the slip and go back out to find the cure. Victoria was right in suggesting the women in his life could more than take care of themselves, but it made it easier when they weren't all in the same foxhole as him.

  Victoria, on the flipside, was the one person he couldn't be without when facing the zombies.

  His dreams kept him busy all the way until they boarded the boat.

  Chapter 2: Visitors

  Martinette Peters knew the dream immediately. Her ability to stay lucid during her increasingly complex dreams improved each time she drifted off. Sadly, that was becoming more and more frequent these days.

  “Al, I know you're here.”

  In the very first dream she had after the sirens, Al had met her in this place—a representation of the tiny backyard of the flat she lived in for all of her adult life. Only now, instead of the pristine lawn and flower beds, she only saw ruins. The quaint birdbath had been tipped over, and if she wasn't mistaken, someone had taken the time to lift the basin and carry it to the sidewalk so they could shatter it.

  “Who would do such a thing? Al, come out!” Her 104-year-old voice box was strong in her dreams.

  The neighbors' houses were in various states of disrepair. Every day of the zombie epidemic took the lives of more people, but it also consumed their belongings and property. Several houses had been burned to cinders. The house to her left was a pile of red bricks. Dusty ribbons of smoke escaped from the wreckage deep below. It was almost enough to make her cry—she knew Mrs. Anderson for fifty years.

  “Lord, give me the strength to endure...”

  Her prayers to God had gone unheeded of late. She once thought Al, her late husband, was an angel sent from God to visit her in these dreams. He gave her information to help her and Liam escape several life-or-death encounters. Or, he explained in a more recent dream, she constructed those answers on her own. She didn't want to believe it. She had felt God's hand guiding her.

  “Hiya Marty.”

  “Al!” She spun around—something impossible to do on her old legs outside of this place—and smiled broadly at the man. She knew he wasn't really her husband, but the reaction to his face was automatic.

  “Still not sure what you did, huh? Is it really so hard to believe God would give you the tools to save yourself, and then stand back and enjoy watching you succeed?”

  “But what if I'd failed?”

  “Ah, yes. What if?”

  She waited for more, but remembered that was his way.

  “So you knew I wouldn't fail.”

  Al laughed. It was identical to the laugh of her husband. But this wasn't her husband, and she could see the subtle differences the more she studied him. A slightly different way of holding his lips as he smiled. A little deeper furrow between his brows. The tiniest difference in how he held her eyes.

  “I told you. Random chance, and the execution thereof, is often the most sought after state for any all-knowing being.”

  “You aren't going to tell me, are you?” Now it was her turn to laugh.

  “I'm either an agent of God sent to give you all the answers, or your own mind constructing the answers from that marvelous storehouse of memories inside your brain. Which would give you more comfort?”

  Her faith in God was absolute. She'd seen too much in her lifetime to doubt that there was a higher power. But Al had often given her good, if sideways, advice about her own relationship with the Almighty. In this case, she would prefer to use her God-given talents to the best of her ability to solve her own problems. She admitted this made her feel proud, but at the same time she wanted to believe it would in some tiny way allow God to focus time on people who needed it more.

  “That's the old Marty I love!”

  Al could read her mind.

  “No, I'm in your mind. Remember?”

  “Of course I do. You never let me forget. Now, what are we doing here?” The question she most wanted to ask was why he'd been gone. But if he was in her mind, he never could have left. While she was dwelling on that conundrum, Al broke in.

  “You've got a special gift, Marty. You can access your memories in a way most people can only dream about.” He paused for a few seconds. “Hey, I just made a joke.”

  Inwardly she groaned. That was another difference between this Al and the real one. His sense of humor.

  “Oh give me a break, Marty, my dear. There isn't much to laugh about out there. I don't have much material.”

  She shifted in the tall grass. “You were saying?”

  “Yes, the dreams of the dark girl.” He reached out for her hand and pulled her to the back of the yard as he spoke. “The young girl with the fancy braids and the overflow of weapons.”

  “I saw her in different places. Like she got around. I'm quite certain I've never seen her before. You can't tell me she was something I thought up. I'd never conjure such a violent creature.”

  They approached the freestanding one-car garage at the back of the yard. A long two weeks ago she found her lasso in this same structure. It was step one of her escape from Angie, and from the city itself. Without that rope, she'd probably be dead. Yet, the sad-looking little building didn't bring her the comfort of that incident. It brought her the only one that really mattered: it was the place where she accidentally killed her own daughter. It took the threat of death from Angie to make her forget that incident just one time so she could walk in and get that rope. Now it tumbled back with a tangible punch to her midsection. Her heart broke.

  She leaned against the open side door. It had been kicked open. The wood of the door jam was splintered. Al stood in the doorway.

  “Marty. My love. You have a wonderful gift. The infection didn't affect you the same way it did for almost everyone else. I want to show it to you. But you have to come inside.” He walked into the ransacked garage.

  On the precipice, she heard something behind her. A rumbling of motors. And a powerful whine.

  She looked over her shoulder. An impossible shape tore through the small alleyway. It pushed over fencing and the outer edges of other garages. The cracks and claps of wood got steadily louder in the few moments she watched.

  Al's voice became distant. The whine from the big tank dominated her awareness. It pushed a wave of garbage and infected in front of it. It was horrible, but she couldn't look away.

  “My God. What's coming?”

  2

  Marty woke up in the tiny family room she'd been staying in since she arrived in Cairo.

  “Are you OK, ma'am?” One of the teens on the floor nearby had a serious look on her face. “You jumped.” Her smile showed concern.

  “Oh yes—” Her look conveyed a question.

  “Debbie.”

  “Yes, Debbie. I'm fine. Just bad dreams.”

  The girl went back to her tablet. She was keying in letters with her fingertips at the same f
rantic pace as she had before Marty fell asleep. Other teens were strewn about the room engaged in similar pursuits. They did keep one wall clear, though, and Marty was disturbed to see the television sitting there was playing a news broadcast about a great convoy cutting across West Virginia. The same type of tank she'd seen in her dream was slowly driving over a parking lot through a group of dead people.

  “...and this was the scene in Charleston yesterday as the Operation Renew America pushed through the downtown. As you can see from this footage, the infected put up a good fight.”

  More imagery showed large groups of sick people converging on the tanks and other vehicles of the convoy, but weapons tore into them. She was relieved they blurred the video, rather than show the gruesome details. The tanks moved through a narrow downtown street firing their canons and letting loose with their machine guns. It terrified Marty to watch, but the TV reporter seemed to revel in it.

  “You wouldn't believe it,” the male reporter screamed, “the sick are walling up against the tanks but they are being raked by the bullets from the coaxials. Rock and Roll!” He then went on a series of hoots and whoops while his cameraman panned up ahead to watch the action unfold. Buildings were blown apart, trees were cut in half, and derelict cars were pushed out of the way by a tank with a big plow leading them all.

  “Is this what you wanted me to see, Al,” she said to herself. None of the kids looked at her, which was good. She was just the crazy old lady sitting in the teen game room. Suited her just fine.

  She followed news of the convoy for a few more minutes, but grew bored. It was getting on toward lunch time when someone knocked once and then opened the front door.

  A tired-looking soldier strode through. A couple others stayed outside, and, after weeks of being around people with guns, she noticed their rifles were in hand.

  “Excuse me. I'm looking for Liam Peters,” he announced to the room.

  Several of the teens looked up with a fast head shake, but returned to their distractions with nary a second glance.

  “Hi. I'm Liam's great-grandmother.” As she said it, she wondered if she should say it. Liam would probably yell at her for being too open. She needed to work on not trusting people.

  The soldier held his canvas cap in his hand as he crossed the room.

  “Please excuse me if I don't get up,” she twittered. Anyone looking at her would probably assume she would never get up again. Little did they know what she'd seen and done the past two weeks…

  “No, please don't. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brandyweis. I met Mr. Peters on a reconnaissance mission through Beaumont Scout Reservation a week or so ago. He came up on my radar as having stowed aboard a Marine O-22 Osprey evacuating my boys out of St. Louis. I've been a little busy here, but I've been meaning to find him and have a few words. Do you know where he is, ma'am?”

  The man was tall and grim-faced. He had small cuts on his chin, like he'd shaved with a rusty razor. The stains of blood permeated his uniform, though he'd made a noble effort to get it clean.

  “Sir, you've just asked the right question.” She was quoting Al. “Where is he.” After a long pause, she continued. “He is out there.” She pointed to the window.

  “In the town?”

  “No, beyond the town. He took a boat to the north.”

  “He left the safety of the town? That's crazy.” He seemed to think on it. “Then again...he left the safety of Beaumont to escape me. And then he shows up inside a stadium full of infected where I lost one of my irreplaceable birds. Does he have a deathwish? Is he some kind of disaster tourist?”

  “Tourist?” She laughed heartily at that. The thought he would have taken her out of her house just to tour the landscape was as hilarious as it was insane. “No, no. Nothing like that. He's trying to save the world.”

  It was the officer's turn to laugh. “I suppose you're going to tell me he's looking for the cure? He said something to that effect when we met last. And let me tell you, my world since then has been a major shitstorm—oh, sorry. It has been a major string of disasters, one after the next. I lost men fighting outside the camp. I lost men getting downtown. I lost men downtown. I lost men evacuating downtown. Are you seeing a pattern here?”

  “Yes, I'm afraid I do.”

  “And here is this boy. Liam. He seems to show up everywhere I'm having my disasters. Do you think that's a coincidence, ma'am?”

  He seemed to get a little taller as his anger increased. She figured he'd earned the right to be upset, but it had to be misplaced. Liam and Victoria couldn't be responsible for killing his men.

  “And now you tell me he went back out for more.” He punched his hat. Marty snuck a look around the room and saw many of the teens were surreptitiously listening. It was a long minute before the colonel spoke again.

  “Ma'am. Do you have any idea why anyone would leave this place and go looking for trouble. Is he working for someone?”

  Her smile was real. “Lieutenant Colonel, you won't believe me if I told you...but I'm going to tell you anyway. Liam has it in his head he's going to find out who released the plague and he's going to nail them to the wall. Also, while he's out there, he's going to find the cure so we can all live to read the book he's going to write about what really happened here. He says it's all tied around some group called the National Internal Security.”

  He looked down at her with penetrating blue eyes. She held his gaze as long as she could, but eventually she relented. She prayed it didn't weaken her message, since it was completely true.

  “Thank you for your time.” He spun around to leave.

  “Wait! Are you going to go find him?”

  “Ma'am. I've got about twenty percent of my original battalion. Between deserters trying to get home to save their families and attacks by infected, I may soon have unit on paper only. I've got almost nothing left of my heavy equipment and my access to my own air assets is being threatened by some damned Army two-star running the show in Cairo. If I wanted to find him, I would have to walk out the front gate myself and do it.”

  “He would be worth it, sir. Liam has survived out there alone. I believe he'll find the cure and save us all.”

  “I wish him the best. I really do. Good day to you.”

  He stepped out the front door, but before he shut the door he spoke to his companions.

  “Get me in touch with St. Louis recon.”

  Everyone thinks my hearing is gone.

  “Help is coming, Liam.”

  3

  Later in the day she had another visitor. She saw the woman hop out of a Humvee parked at the curb, but she wasn't dressed in a uniform. Absently she wondered if the blonde woman was the mother of someone in the house, but she knew that would be a miracle given where everyone had come from.

  “Everyone wants to talk to Grandma,” she giggled.

  Nearby, Debbie laughed, too. She'd gotten closer as she spread out on the floor and was now only a few feet away. Marty could tell the girl was happy to have an adult nearby, even if she wasn't much of one these days.

  The woman didn't bother knocking, or closing the door behind her. She walked directly up to Marty.

  “Mrs. Martinette Peters. I need you to come with me. We're...uh...relocating you to a more secure home up near the main road.”

  She caught herself.

  “Oh, where are my manners. I'm Elsa Cantwell, Homeland Security. Basically my job is to ensure you all stay safe.” She talked at the room, though only Grandma appeared to listen. And maybe Debbie.

  “I'm at your service. I can't very well run out on my own,” she said in good humor.

  “I wouldn't imagine.” But her face held doubt.

  “I need some volunteers. Hey!” A couple of the teens snapped to attention, at that. “I need you, you, and you to grab Mrs. Peters' things and put them in the truck. Go!”

  The kids ran into the room where Marty had a few private things, such as her clothes, a hairbrush, and a tiny jar of makeup brought to her by Vi
ctoria. In the end, only Debbie walked across the front lawn while she balanced between Mrs. Cantwell's solider-helpers. It reminded her of walking across Liam's lawn into the MRAP.

  “Take care, Grandma,” Debbie said once she was settled into the back of the Humvee. “Maybe I'll come visit you.”

  “I'd like that.”

  But Debbie ran off, leaving her to doubt whether the young girl would ever make good on that offer. She doubted it.

  The drive only took a few minutes. Cairo wasn't that large, and there were few vehicles moving around, although there were lots of refugees walking the streets or sitting under the large shady trees common throughout the town. Some of the homes had air conditioning units, but the town leadership strenuously urged power consumption be limited to absolute essentials so as to extend the life of their generators. The moving air in the truck felt wonderful.

  The woman turned around to speak, and she wore a more pleasant facade this time. “I hope you've been able to stay comfortable. It looked pretty tight in that house. We'd like to put you up in a more private apartment, suitable for someone of your age.”

  There it was. She was to be treated like an invalid.

  But you aren't exactly doing the Jitterbug these days.

  She couldn't argue with the logic, though she would fight the notion she was “invalid” until her dying day. As long as she could walk on her own—for a few feet anyway—she wasn't truly done. She had Angie's help back at home for all those years mainly to handle the routine chores around the house. She felt it was overkill to pay all that money for a nurse, when clearly she had no medical conditions requiring medical supervision. It was one of the few rules her family asked of her so she could live by herself, and she only relented because the family had split the cost to pay for the full-time nurse. No one was unduly burdened. The ultimate irony was Angie herself succumbed to a sickness requiring immediate and expert medical treatment…