While everyone checked their gear, Liam thought he saw someone in a small deli across the block. A dark face—he was sure of it—popped up in the window, then went back down.
There's zombies all right.
They ran. The alley was empty as far as they could see toward downtown, though they only walked it a block or two. Then they turned right, to the south, and soon found the rails. Everyone kept close, and quiet.
Things started getting weird about a mile in. A familiar smell came in on a light breeze. He couldn't place it. It reminded him of the smell of spilled soda on sticky hot summertime blacktop at Six Flags. Sweet, but with a touch of revulsion.
It dissipated quickly, and they continued on.
The railroad right-of-way was genius. He wished he'd thought of it. Each side the railroad was lined with trees, buildings, or high embankments of dirt. The city people living nearby didn't want to see the trains all day and night, so they did their best to hide them. They did see zombies from time to time, but other than a few knifings—they were trying to stay quiet—it wasn't necessary to engage many.
They'd passed an abandoned grain elevator, a parking lot with an endless sea of yellow school buses, and went under several segments of the raised highways which snaked through the city. They saw more zombies hovering about, but they tended to stay near buildings where presumably they sensed food inside. If they had a clue a gravy train was walking by, they'd have sprinted to the food trough. The railroad kept them off the radar.
There it is again.
The smell was back, stronger.
“Guys, hold up,” he spoke as quietly as he could to stop Jason at the front.
“Mom, do you smell that?”
She crouched, as they all did, and took a moment to consider. With a nod of understanding she admitted she did. “We smelled something like this when we were attacked on the boat. There's an Arizona out there.”
Liam was surprised but pleased his mom used the term he created for the new type of zombie.
“A what?”
Lana indicated he should tell them.
“It's a zombie that has several traits in one package. It can climb like the Chicago zombies. It can swim. It can send off this...smell...that can make you see things. It almost got our group while we were on a river.”
That got everyone alert. They formed a nearly perfect circle as a first line of defense.
“We have to find cover. Head for that railroad shed. We have to be getting close to our destination.”
With great discipline they continued along the tracks until they came to a split in the rails as they entered a switching yard. There were a handful of train cars sitting on the many sidings, but they ran toward a long enclosed building which appeared to house train engines so they could get out of the weather. Or maybe it was used to repair them.
A figure appeared on the other side of the yard, but it disappeared in a grouping of boxcars. At the cusp of the building, Liam stopped to get a better look, but it didn't show up again. As he turned his head toward the door, and his friends, he pretended he was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It was childish, but what would a zombie know about such things. All his movements suggested he was going inside the door, and he did walk through the threshold, but as soon as he was out of sight he turned around and then popped his head back outside. There, near the box cars, he watched as the Arizona ran further along the tracks.
It's following us.
6
The building was exactly as he imagined. It had the volume of two or three high school gymnasiums strung one after the other, with rows of windows near the top to keep the place well lit. Several train engines were parked inside, some with clear signs of malfunction. Panels were opened, with their dirty diesel engines exposed. Some had wheels removed. Mechanic's cranes and rigging filled the voids on the edges of the room.
“Mom. It's the same type of zombie out there. In fact, I think it's the exact one that attacked us before.”
“You mean the one that swam after the captain,” Jason asked.
“Yes. I recognized the zombie's uniform.”
“Is that possible?” the redhead asked. Jason looked at her, but said nothing.
“We keep moving. Stay alert,” he said at last.
They all ran to the opposite end of the building. The sun shone through the door as it rose high in the eastern sky of mid-morning.
One of the men nibbled on something as they waited at the door. The starving Polar Bears had indulged in some of the food Hans had horded as part of their agreement, just as he himself had indulged in the chocolate chip cookies. His memories tried to remind him of Victoria, but he pushed it aside.
Stay in the moment. Get the tank. Be the hero.
There it was. He wasn't going to over-complicate things.
“OK. We have guns. Everyone stay calm. A zombie is a zombie.”
Liam knew Jason didn't really believe that. He was there when the Arizona attacked, but he knew why he said what he did.
“Just a little bit farther and we're there. Let's go.” He quietly slipped out and ran along a parked line of tanker cars. The black containers were linked together as far as he could see them as they curved with the track toward the south, out of the rail yard. The day was still heating up, but the black cars radiated every drop of sunshine and blasted it back at him.
The others followed. Though they didn't discuss it, he decided to let everyone pass so he was the caboose of the expedition. He ran along just behind the two men, but let himself look back every chance he got. The feeling of being followed was overpowering, and the more he ran the more he let his nose believe the odor of the Arizona was getting stronger.
Ahead, the others halted at the last tanker car. One of the men ran into the back of the redhead woman, eliciting a quick exchange of curse words.
“You need to apologize for hitting me.”
“The hell I do, it was an accident.”
“What are you, stupid?” She pointed up. “It's broad daylight. How'd you miss me? You wanted to smack my ass.”
“If I wanted to smack you, I—” He moved quickly and his hand spanked loudly against her butt, leaving her open-mouthed shocked.
With a vicious scream she threw herself at him, clawing at his face.
He felt an anger rising inside him, as well. Anger that they were endangering everyone by making so much noise. Human voices were the dinner bell of the dead.
Look back.
While the two wrestled, the others were slow to react. It seemed to catch everyone so far off guard they didn't know what steps to take to solve the problem.
Look behind you. That's the problem.
He was able to appreciate their tactical situation the more he thought about it. They were exposed on the one side of the train cars. To the north, he could see the skyscrapers tightly huddled in downtown St. Louis. The train tracks here had little cover, but there were no buildings nearby for zombies to hide, either. The only possible way a zombie could get them would be…
He looked at the dirty tanker. Oil gooped off the end of the “hitch” thing that would link this last car with the next one. There was a ladder to the top of the tubular hold. And up there...
The Arizona dropped on the man and woman, sending all three to the ground in a heap. The sight of the zombie broke the spell, and everyone moved as if they'd been released.
Liam's first reaction was to pull the second man backwards. He did it to shake the man out of his stupor, but his face was grim and serious, reassuring Liam he didn't need additional help.
His mom and Jason, in the front of the group, were also alert now. They were moving away from the scrum, but both were bringing their rifles to bear. He did the same, though there was no obvious way to shoot the zombie at that moment.
Screw that, Liam. Be the hero.
In seconds he moved toward the struggling people on the ground. The redhead and man were no longer fighting each other, but were so stunned by the falling zombi
e they hadn't been able to properly defend themselves. There was blood involved…
Liam took the butt of his gun and raised it high, then forced it down on what he thought was the zombie's skull. Things were moving so fast he missed on the first strike. To his amazement the zombie wheeled back and turned on him.
“No,” was all he could say before it separated itself from the two on the ground and lunged at him. But the woman had caught the zombie's foot. How she could see was beyond Liam's understanding. Her face was a bloody mess.
But the zombie surged against its captor and was free with a powerful yank of its leg.
Liam was fumbled with his gun, desperate to get the business end facing the proper direction, but it wasn't going to be fast enough. He'd taken two steps back, the zombie had taken one step forward, when the left side of the Arizona's head popped and a loud metallic bang followed. Something had struck both the zombie and the tanker car. Distant thunder of a gunshot followed. It had come from somewhere toward the city.
The group's paralysis ended. Jason and Lana grabbed the redhead, and he and the remaining man pulled up the injured man.
“Run for it!” Jason yelled.
Liam wanted to argue that whoever saved them was obviously friendly, but he wasn't in charge. Five minutes later they came to a split in the rail. The main rail line continued on, to the south, into the heart of the manufacturing buildings in this part of the city. But the secondary rail of a siding led to an abandoned parking lot.
Two forms sat in one corner of the lot, shielded by the larger buildings nearby. Both were the size of big dump trucks, with long barrels pointing out the front like rulers in the hands of Catholic nuns—he'd seen that in a movie. Bulky and squat, the tanks broke all his preconceptions about what would happen at the end of the world.
A pair of World War II German Tiger tanks—very similar to the ones he saw down in the mine—waited for their new owners.
Chapter 11: V for Victoria
Victoria wasn't happy to see Liam walking away with Lana, but she was relieved she would have some time to herself. Part of her wanted to explore why she felt so upset at seeing her own dorm room, but another part needed Liam to step away for a short time so she wouldn't say something mean she would later regret.
I'm sorry, Liam, I'm trying to hold it all together, too.
The first place she went with her newfound freedom was back to her dorm room. Once her door was secure she pulled out a photo album she had stuffed behind her bed. She slid on top of her blankets and leaned against the wall with it in her arms. The mauve-colored binder held what remained of her life in Colorado. Paging through the photos was something she desperately wanted to do, but feared it so much she couldn't do it when Liam was around.
The first dozen or so pages had been purged of most of their photos. Here or there she saw pictures of herself with her parents, her friends, or her relatives. The white gouges once held pictures of him. She couldn't even say his name, she hated him so much. The name “Darby” was engraved in the soft paper where one of the photos had been removed. She erased the name, but the impression of her own pencil was harder to hide.
Finally, she got to the photo she was searching for.
I miss you, sis. I pray for you every day and ask God to take care of you.
In the photo she had her arm draped over the shoulder of her older sister. They were both dressed like marathon runners. The sports attire and ear-to-ear grins complimented the fancy medals they both held up for the camera. She remembered Mom and Dad being in the stands, cheering for their girls.
Valerie was a few years older, and, she believed, a whole lot prettier. The picture showed them both draped in sweat, but Val seemed to wear it better. Her hair was shorter, for one. Her own long hair looked like hell. Kind of like it did all the time now, with all her zombie escapades.
The tears came out in torrents, and wouldn't stop until she turned the page many minutes later.
The number of missing photos of him decreased the further into the book she got. After the breakup there were none, but by then she was most of the way through the keepsake. Her mom put it together for her before she knew about the breakup and she didn't think to remove the photos herself before giving it to her daughter. Victoria was too forgiving to worry about the oversights. Those photos were either still blowing around the wastelands of western Kansas, or they'd disintegrated in the winds and rain out there.
A photo of her dad caught her eye. They had gone together on a rare father-daughter hike to Mt. Evans. The scene showed her and her father huddled together in the insane winds of the fourteen-thousand foot peak. Her own hair was standing straight out to the side, while her dad's shaggy mop showed almost no sign of being windblown. Whoever they got to take the picture had a steady hand because the quality was incredible.
I'm sorry Daddy. I'm sorry for not telling you and Mom the truth...about Dar—
She didn't want to say the name, even in her own thoughts.
Gee, why would that be?
She'd told her parents about the breakup of course, but being “promised” to someone required a little deeper explanation. That's what she thought, back then. So she did the only thing that made any sense after suffering the indignity he suffered upon her.
She told a lie.
A photo of her mother in her kitchen appeared on the page below her. Images danced in her head of numerous family gatherings where her mom would be in the kitchen and she and her sister were there to help her. It was a piece of her life she cherished deeply. Liam's relationship with his parents had been complicated the last months before the zombies, but hers had been idyllic. In retrospect, it was like the calm before the storm. So many good memories in that kitchen…
It was where she sat her mom down and told her fib. She wasn't brave enough to lie to her dad, so she begged her mom to relay the story to him.
“Mom, D and I have stopped courting. It's not his fault! I like another boy.”
She played it over in her head, and was struck how immature she sounded. But she was a different person those few months ago. The kind of person who mistook heartbreak and embarrassment as it related to a violent crime. Back then she had no idea, at all, how to clearly explain what had happened.
It stung her to admit it, even though she was absolutely certain she hadn't dishonored her mother and father with the tall tale. Two wrongs sometimes make a right. It would have served no one to reveal to them that she'd been ra—
The tears returned.
She knew all the lies she'd used on herself.
We were practically married, so maybe it wasn't really...
I didn't do enough to fight him off, so maybe it was my...
My parents will hate me and think I'm damaged if I tell them…
“Oh Vicky, I want you—blah, blah, blah. Lie, lie, lie,” she voiced with scorn.
She looked at one of the empty white blotches in the book. A missing image of a monster.
She threw the album against the wall over Casey's bed as she screamed, “I didn't want YOU!”
And then, quieter, “Dammit.”
2
An hour later she felt much better. Her soul still carried some rough edges, but she no longer had any misgivings about her own spiritual well-being. She'd asked for forgiveness—though none was needed—for deceiving her parents and prayed for his soul.
He's gonna need it.
Exercise always made her feel better. She took off her loaner sneakers and found her good pair of running shoes. Like the smell of her sheets, the shoes carried a lot of Colorado miles on them. A reminder of her past—good and bad. Mostly good.
She went outside for a short jog. She wasn't dressed for it, and her legs were sore from the run in the floodway, but she needed to feel the rhythm of the road beneath her own shoes. It felt heavenly to coast through the stately university grounds, but the heat forced her back to a walk after only a short time.
There were lots of young people moving abo
ut from place to place. A few seemed to enjoy the day as they sat on park benches or up against trees while they read. The apocalypse suddenly seemed far away.
As she alternately jogged and walked the campus, she figured she might find the people doing medical research. That's why she stayed behind, and it seemed natural to take the bull by the horns. Running gave her the confidence to poke around. It took her several entries into abandoned buildings, but she arrived at the place she figured she'd have the best chance of finding Dr. Yu. The Whitaker Hall of Biomedical Engineering loomed over her.
“If she's not in there, I'll eat my hat,” she said softly.
Inside was twice as busy as she imagined. The halls swarmed with the youth of college students and older people who had to be researchers and faculty. A desk near the front door was crammed with ten people, mostly students. Only one looked up at her as she approached.
“Testing or reporting?”
When Victoria didn't answer right away, the young woman stood up to get a better look at her. Victoria was overwhelmed by all the activity.
“What's all the—”
“You either have to go to testing or report any effects you've had, down that way.” She pointed down a long hallway.
“I'm looking for Doctor Yu.”
“All the docs are in testing, that way, and up.” She pointed to a wide staircase off to one side of the reception area. When Victoria still didn't appear to get it, she huffed a little, then sat down as if she was totally put out.
Victoria knew the type. She didn't want to further interact with the greeter, so she started up the steps. Nearby, more steps went down below the main floor. That flight had even more people running up and down.
As she hovered, a voice spoke out. “That goes to the tunnels. That's how people get around, ya know?”
Victoria stood there while she was passed by a great number of students. The girl that stayed by her side was shorter than she was, but older. Her blonde hair was wrapped in a tight bun. It seemed to be the style as she looked around.
Easy to keep clean.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 131