It only took him a few rooms to find one with the drapes pulled. He tried the door, not surprised it was locked.
He knocked. “Ms. Peters? Are you in there?” It seemed a diversion from his primary duties, but the whole tone of Elsa's exposition had infuriated him once he left her orbit. If there was a prisoner who had defied her, he wanted to know why. He didn't believe the nonsense about finding a cure. He saw exactly what was going on. She was trying to get rid of him. In that regard, Mrs. Peters could be a valuable ally.
“I'm locked in,” came a quiet voice from inside the door.
“Do you need help?”
“It is rather hot in here.”
It was enough of a request.
“Stand back, ma'am. I'm going to kick in the door.”
“Give me a minute.” After a literal minute, she continued. “I'm clear.”
“No rush, lady,” he said softly.
He wasn't so old he couldn't kick the door. The paper-thin walls were guarded by ancient wooden doors which should have been replaced back in the 1960's. It gave away easily on the first kick.
The old John Jasper came storming through the door, but when he saw the elderly and very small lady sitting on the edge of the bed...
“What? Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought I was breaking someone out.”
“Well, mercy me. I don't know who you intended to break out, but I'm glad you've let in some fresh air. They were trying to kill me, I think.”
He looked at her with more scrutiny. The little white-haired woman was possibly the oldest person he'd ever seen. She was the last person he expected to constitute a threat to Ms. Cantwell. After the way she'd talked about her, he imagined a woman locked in chains that might not hold her.
“I'm Grandma Marty. I'm 104. Praise God for small miracles.” She smiled at him.
“I, uh. Ms. Cantwell made it sound like you were a threat.”
“Oh, she's a terrible woman. She cut the power cord for my air conditioner.” She pointed down to the severed cord. “Do you have any water?”
He ran to the sink and filled one of the dusty old cups. At least it was clean.
“Bless you—”
“John.”
“Bless you, John. I thought they were going to do what the zombies couldn't—get me to die.”
“She said you survived the plague. That a guy named Hayes did some tests on you and then he scrubbed the results from the system.”
“Oh, he did? That's a surprise.”
“So you don't know about that?”
She shook her head.
“Do you know why Elsa would want me to track down this Hayes character? Does he really have a cure?”
The old woman took her time answering. He felt the weight of time bearing down on him. He needed to get to his men, then he could focus on Elsa from behind his weapons, if need be. Something wasn't right in all this.
“I really don't know. He was a doctor with the CDC, I think. My mind gets fuzzy these days.” She held her hand to the side of her head, as if to emphasize where she was using her brain.
He couldn't see anything important about the old woman. She continued to ramble nonsense, but she ended with something he took as legitimate.
“Are you with Colonel Brandyweis?”
“No.” He'd heard that name before. There was an alphabet soup of senior ranks in the town, but he couldn't place the name. “Who's he with?”
“Who's he with?” she repeated, though a bit weaker than before. Her age was a factor in her ability to answer simple questions, he'd decided.
“I. Don't. Remember.”
He thought it was a lost cause, and was backing to the door, when she stumbled on the answer.
“He said he commanded the bird planes, I think.”
Marines.
“Somebody has to have some damned answers,” he muttered, already thinking how to get a hold of the colonel.
“I've been trying for weeks to get answers, my son.”
“What do you mean?”
“Answers from Al. He's either an angel or a figment of my imagination. No one will tell me. What do you think? Am I crazy?”
John looked at her for a long while. The droopy eyes. The incoherent speech. The woman wasn't just elderly, she suffered from heat exhaustion. Maybe something more.
“Ma'am, I'm going to take you to the medical station. You need some help.”
“That's right Al, I helped Liam. I helped the girl. I did good.”
Her eyes rolled up into her head.
John shouted out the door.
“Tom—come here, I need you!”
4
John stood on the top of the levee, overlooking the entire operation below. He felt the relief of being among his men again, and away from strange women. The pullback of the tanks and men from up north had gone smoothly, and they had redeployed at the base of the levee so he could roll them up and fire over the berm behind the ditch when the time came. Until then, he didn't want to have his best tanks providing high profiles for any would-be hostiles. He wasn't facing Soviet Guards Armored units in World War III, but it was his job to act like he was.
What better time for a surprise attack.
The Paladins were also tucked in below the levee. They'd have to be brought to the very top to get a clean shot down onto the bad guys, which didn't suit his style at all. Firing over the heads of friendly units a hundred meters ahead was dangerous. As long as he didn't have bullets coming in from the other direction, he didn't think it necessary to endanger the men. Especially since there would probably never be a single replacement for one he lost. The machines were irreplaceable.
As dusk fell, he actually felt pretty good about the turn of events. It was a shame to give up so much ground, but now he would have a front seat to command his men, almost as they did back in Revolutionary War days. He'd yell commands, then watch them enacted before his eyes. Killing infected wasn't nearly as complex as killing Redcoats, but ultimately more satisfying because the things were so vile. There was no quarter given, or asked.
Two Humvees came upon him as their headlights cut through the ubiquitous dust his units lifted from the great field to the north.
It's her. What now?
Tom had stood by him while he issues orders via the radio. Other commanders had come and gone over the course of the afternoon, but currently it was just the pair of them.
“Hello, General. I trust you've done as I've asked?”
“Yes, ma'am. All my units are now effectively outside the town, as you requested.”
“Nice work. I would send up a recommendation of a commendation for your efforts, but I don't think anyone is active in your chain of command.”
He pretended to laugh.
By way of a reply, she walked right up to him and got an inch from his body. She was shorter than him, but not by much. Her blue eyes were cold.
“Aww General, we could have been so good together. There are so many zombies, so many types of zombies, it would have taken a lifetime to kill them all. We need good men who can give and follow orders.”
The impulse to step back was overpowering. He fought it.
“We'll stop them here, I assure you.” He was unaccustomed to the feeling of inferiority she instilled in him. His voice didn't carry his usual confidence.
She smiled, looked at him for a long moment, then backed away.
“It really is impressive, is it not? This entire field will be crawling with the dead, soon. The whole state is walking this way.”
John had nothing to say.
She turned around, as if to leave, then halted.
“There is one more thing, General.”
“Yes?”
“What did Ms. Peters tell you?”
The soldiers getting out of the Humvees were not his own.
“I don't suppose you'd listen to my orders if I told you to arrest this woman?”
Their lack of reply was answer enough.
Chapter 6: River of Bl
ood
Liam was at the edge of the ten-foot-wide pedestrian bridge, along with the leaders of the group fleeing toward mid-town. As he crept up to see what was below, he heard the familiar angry moans of the zombies before he saw them. He also smelled them. In large groups they carried the smell of death far and wide. Some even mastered that smell, which gave off some strange vibes to anyone unfortunate enough to smell them. It had happened to him in the railyard. Victoria on the side of that building. And all of them back on that boat.
He wondered what a pack of them would do.
Hundreds of zombies were on the railroad tracks below the walkway. It was perhaps a hundred feet across, made of concrete, but with metal side railings. There was no way to hide someone on the bridge.
“We have to find another way,” he said quietly to those near the front. He thought it was pretty obvious. The original plan was to run through the park to get around the unexpected group of zombies on the tracks, but that group was bigger than anyone expected.
“But what about them?” A young woman pointed to the far end of the bridge. He didn't see them at first because they were lying down and the bridge had a slight arch to it. But now that he knew where to look...
“The scouts?”
She nodded. “They must have gotten over, but don't know how to get back without drawing those crazies in.”
The situation was dangerous. They were far out on the span, very near the far exit on the far side of the tracks. But that exit was exposed. The zombies below would surely see them. And if they came back toward the main group…
He wished he could use his phone to look at a map, but it wasn't linking up with any towers. One of the problems with depending on the internet to always be there. But the group couldn't possibly cross the bridge. They would have to go on city streets for a while until they reached the bike path on another block. Well away from the gaggle of zombies below.
A plan formed in his head, but it was the usual half-baked craziness he told himself he needed to control. He found it disconcerting how many times regular people allowed a sixteen-year-old boy to come up with ways to save their lives. He admitted this time he was probably the most fit, given their head start on starving themselves, but he much preferred other people think of the master plans and he simply help refine them. He was uncomfortable doing all the thinking.
In five minutes he was set up. Victoria decided to join him, because she wouldn't take no for an answer. A fact he appreciated.
Lana and Jason listened as he explained his plan, and their role in it. As expected, his mom said absolutely not, though Jason was more pragmatic. Saving the two men on the far side was going to take some creativity.
“Are you sure about this?” Jason asked.
“Unless you have radios?”
“I do, in fact, but I don't have chargers to run them. That's why my scouts had to come back and talk to me. The good news is those two can run.”
He looked at his own shoes, out of habit, whenever the topic of running came up. They were always ready for the abuse he gave them.
His mental map of the area was simple. The bridge crossed the railroad tracks, and they ran north and south along the big river. He could see the water through the trees beyond the two stranded men. A mile to the north was the floodway which would take them away from the river and into the city. The safest way, they all thought, was to walk along the tracks where the zombies would be light, but that turned out to be false. Now they would have to run through the houses where—he hoped—all those zombies had come from. They'd reach the floodway that way.
Jason led the column at a fast pace into the backyards of the nearby houses. He said he was going to keep them off the streets until they reached the bike path along the floodway, then they were going to follow that to Forest Park. He was going to drive them hard, but most weren't in any condition to run that far, that fast. A few gunshots indicated the homes weren't entirely abandoned. Their progress could be tracked as the gunfire grew more distant.
His mom was the last to leave, taking his backpack with her. He was glad she wasn't going to be around for what he needed to do. It wasn't because it was hero stuff, as he called it, but because he didn't want to have to worry about her as well as himself and Victoria.
Almost before he knew it, Victoria was the only one left. They sat and talked for fifteen minutes, or so. Often they would wave to the two men on the far end of the span, letting them know they hadn't been left behind. He thought about kissing Victoria, but it never felt right with the moaning dead, and the two men hanging on their every move. If he pulled her out of their view, they might think they'd been left for dead. That could lead to desperate acts.
Liam had instructed Jason he would wait an hour and then set his plan in motion, but scarcely twenty minutes had gone by when he knew he was out of time. The horde below had either grown, or moved, because some of them had wondered up the hillside and could nearly see them sitting on the safe end of the bridge.
“If we go now, the main group won't be far enough away,” Liam said with rising panic.
“If you don't go now, those two men won't make it.”
The good of the many. Or the two. A dozen books and movies cascaded upon him with the very same scenario, but he couldn't get it to apply to his moment. The bottom line was he wouldn't leave a man to die if he could help it.
“I'm going for it. You with me?”
She gave him a good luck kiss. “Go get 'em, sport.”
He ran out onto the bridge, attempting to stay low and in the middle so he'd only be seen by zombies far out in the crowd. That worked to an extent, but he was seen. By the time he'd covered the distance to the far end of the bridge, the roar was deafening. He crouched next to the men.
“You guys ready to run? We've got to run to catch the main group!” He had to yell to be heard over the roiling masses below.
“Do you have any water?” one of the men asked. Both of them were in their thirties or forties, well cut, and athletic. They wore the right shoes.
“No, sorry.” That was an obvious mistake in his plan. His own water was in his backpack, walking away.
“We're going to run over the bridge again, then keep going.”
“How far?”
“Just until we catch up to the main group.”
“How long have they been gone?”
“Twenty or so minutes.”
The two men cringed.
“What's wrong?”
It became obvious when they stood up. Despite outward appearances of vigor, both men were thin with sallow looks on their faces. If they'd once been in good shape for running, which Liam imagined was what got them the scout roles in the first place, they were now used up. The gaunt look of weeks of little or no food painted both their bodies.
The maniacal engine of zombie murmurs below accelerated to new levels as the trio came into full view on the decking. Contrary to what he thought, the crowd below didn't wait for him to get back over the bridge before they started up the far side of the embankment below them. They went up immediately.
He was already running as the first shots rang out from Victoria's gun.
2
“Oh God. This isn't a rescue!” said one of the scouts with a blue sport-type shirt. They'd reached the end of the span, toward the supposedly safe side, and it was very nearly engulfed by the sick. Men, women, and children of all ages came up from the crowd under the bridge...toward the food. Besides the generalized dirty appearance of everyone in the crowd, most carried signs of the severe bleeding common with the disease process. Neck wounds. Head wounds. All indicators they had been stricken by the bite of zombies, and then became zombies themselves.
Victoria popped off a few rounds to one woman in a colorful purple dress who had gotten close.
“Run!” she cried.
Liam thought back to the words of Captain Osborne as they escaped the Arch. He'd rallied the troops by saying something like “Run like hell, boys!” Now, w
ith even greater urgency, he didn't think it would endear the two men to him. It was understood they needed to run. Like hell.
Victoria started to run as the trio approached. Together they turned down a nearby street. It was densely packed with small, but tidy brick houses in the blue collar neighborhood. The only clue to what had come through here, probably several times, was a home here or there had been replaced by black piles of ash.
They settled in to the run. Victoria and Liam maintained the lead, ostensibly because they knew where they were going. The two trailing runners, with names Liam didn't know, quickly fell behind.
“We're running too fast,” Victoria said through her own heavy breathing.
“Yeah, we sprinted out of there.” He laughed nervously. Slowing down didn't seem appropriate, but neither would a massive heart attack.
They held up enough for the two men to catch them, and then they all slowed down to what Liam called a fast jog.
“Thanks for waiting,” blue shirt said, we can't keep up with you kids.
The other man ripped off his shirt while they ran. The effort to keep their moderate pace was already intense for him.
He's not going to make it.
The shirtless man stumbled a little.
Beyond the two men, he saw the zombies. He assumed there would be some of the fast zombies in a crowd that large, but he was dismayed to see at least twenty, spread out over a hundred yards. All following them. Worse, zombies came out from among the houses the more they ran. They picked up a runner here or there.
Along the fringes, walking zombies always made an effort to chase, but they couldn't keep pace.
It only took a quarter of a mile to reach the bike path, a relief because he thought it was farther away. He remembered riding his bike and running a few times along the trail. It wound through blocks and blocks of single-family homes on the tight city streets, though it was most notable because it ran parallel to a major storm water drainage channel designed to prevent flooding. The lack of rain the past few weeks meant the “river” was now dry.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 122