Dammit. I'm gonna cry right in front of the leader of the Polar Bears.
He focused all his energy—and his eyes—down to Chief as he listened to his mom talk to Travis.
“I'm glad you made it all right. Who the hell ordered you to strike at the Bailey bridge? You'd have to get incredibly lucky to knock it out. And they'll just keep building it, no matter what happened.”
“Jason Hawkes and I decided it had to be done. We met a guy—Hans Grubmeyer—who turned us on to those tanks. Gave us the manuals which explained all the computer upgrades that had been done to them. They were easier to operate than a forklift. We decided to go for it.”
“I'm glad you're OK. I never thought I'd see the day tanks were rolling around in St. Louis. And Tigers. That's next to impossible!” He laughed.
That sent Chief onto his hind legs and further into Liam's arms. He struggled to keep the dog from tipping him over.
“But you shouldn't have risked yourself like that. You're too important to be driving around in tanks. That's a profession with a short lifespan these days, and I'm not talking about the walkers either. Once we saw the A-10s in action we figured it was game over.”
“We got lucky. And I had some help from my son.”
He felt their eyes on him, but he continued with the dog because it made the most sense to him in that moment. His mom talking to a military commander about driving tanks in the Zombie Apocalypse was anything but…
“We lost Jason's tank. He's still out there as best we can tell. You guys are lucky in one regard. The military is over at Scott Air Force Base with a fleet of OV-10 Broncos. Basically they're the Vietnam War version of the A-10. Instead of jet engines, they're propeller-driven. They're slower, but far more maneuverable. Much better for work inside a city like this. Instead of two A-10s you would have had ten Bronco's sniffing for you. We aren't sure why they weren't called up, but we think there are a lot of problems between them and the convoy.”
“You mean zombies?”
Travis laughed. “Zombies? Yeah, the dead are like zombies, I guess. They are thick to the east where the convoy is coming through. Plus there's been a lot of noise from a garrison down in Cairo, Illinois. They've been—”
“Cairo?” Liam stood up. “What about Cairo? That's where my Grandma is.”
Travis looked at him for a long moment. “Rose is in Cairo?”
It was a common misunderstanding. He seldom called Grandma Marty by her proper name, which was Great-Grandma Marty. It was just easier and shorter to leave off the “Great.” Though now that it had come up again, he'd have to start considering how he can be clear about his relatives in the future.
“No, my Great-Grandma Marty.”
“Ah, of course.” Travis looked at his mom and then back to him. “As best I know, Cairo itself is still intact. The convoy from the East Coast is cutting through the Midwest along two interstates. One group is going through Indiana and Ohio, while the other is a bit further south, going through Kentucky. Makes sense with that many vehicles. But every military unit between Washington D.C. and Denver is being called together to support the main effort—they really want to get the seat of government to St. Louis. The units in Cairo were ordered to head north two days ago.”
“Leaving the town undefended,” Liam murmured.
He imagined the big ditch filled with water, and filled with zombies. He'd given the town extra time because of the defenses they'd built, but if the Army had abandoned them, it shortened their lifespan by a couple orders of magnitude.
And Grandma's to almost nothing.
While he didn't say it, he wondered how he could get to Cairo again. He would never leave without Victoria, however, and while it was childish to think it, he felt great regret he allowed himself to be separated from her.
“We'll figure something out,” Lana said in her comforting tone, “but we have so many problems right now I don't know where to start. Convoys. Refugee camps. Those strange new zombies...”
The word hung on the air like fresh-cut fish bait until Travis bit.
“What, exactly, does that mean?”
3
“You haven't seen anything odd in the zombies, down there?” Lana pointed out the window.
Before Travis could answer, Liam added, “Didn't you send those three men to the Koch Hospital Quarry to find the dead soldiers?” Someone sent them in. Someone, perhaps the same person, sent him in. Even though the text came from an area code in Utah, it felt right that a control center here in St. Louis would be the one to send them to the local mine.
Travis focused his attention on Liam. “What do you know about my men? I did send them into that mine, based on a tip. I sent a six-man team. Did they make it out?”
Liam explained his own journey at a very top level of simplification. He saved the details for when he met the three Polar Bears inside the cavern full of tanks.
“There were only three when I met them. They said they were looking for a chamber where soldiers bodies were stolen from the military cemetery, from below. We didn't really have time for a detailed talk. Those dead soldiers attacked us, along with hundreds of other zombies, down in that mine. The last time I saw your men they were trapped on the wrong side of a crowd of biters, but at least two of them—Dave and Travis, I think—were alive. The third one, Clarence, we thought had taken refuge in a tank.”
He went on to explain how he'd escaped.
“Wow, that's hardcore, son. The infection can bring the dead to life. Shit. And crawling out through that grave. That was really smart. Did you figure that out?”
Liam left out most of the story, including the role of the three young girls. Mostly because it sounded implausible that a set of triplets had met up with him through random circumstance, but also because he didn't know how to explain their contribution, or where they'd gone after they, too, escaped.
“My girlfriend helped.”
“Hmm. My information was similarly vague, but we deemed it important enough to investigate.”
Travis looked at Lana. “He knows about our true enemy, right?”
She nodded.
“I was told the NIS had a research team working in that mine, and that they stumbled onto one vector for the spread of the disease. Anyone who sees these sick people—these zombies—senses that the human souls of those poor bastards are gone. The people are, in fact, dead.”
He paused. Liam thought the man looked a little shaken. That's about the same time Chief nuzzled up against his right hip. Travis dropped his hand and absently stroked the dog on the head and behind his ears.
“And,” he continued, “that some dead people carried the disease long before the outbreak happened here in the States.”
“That's exactly what they found. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to drill up to the bottom of those soldiers' coffins and pull them into the mine below. We didn't see it happen, but I saw video of a soldier inside a coffin. He was practically a skeleton.”
Travis looked at Lana. “This is all as you said. This has gone on for a long time...”
Lana nodded. Liam once again wondered whether the woman standing there was the same mom who baked him pancakes, or helped him with his homework, or hugged his father after one of his tirades against the ignorant American electorate. She was always the voice of reason. His father was always the rebel.
“Liam has also found out a key piece of the NIS research. They're investigating centenarians as possibly immune to the E-squared.”
“Centenarians? We'd heard something similar. Walk with me.”
The two guards had remained on the far edge of the room, but Travis whisked them away. The trio, plus Chief, left the dining area, returned to the great hall, and then entered the darkness of the computer room.
“This is where we do our listening. This whole building is a listening post. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on out there. Lots of shortwave chatter. Some intercepts on DOD frequencies. We have some talented people
here, and some loyal followers inside the government still feed us intel. We can piece things together pretty well.”
Travis walked up to an older man with a pure-white beard. He had a kindly face that reminded Liam of Santa Claus. He wore a Hawaiian shirt with Orange surf boards and green palm trees. He had headphones around his neck, but he wasn't listening to them. He was leaning far back in his chair, stretching.
“Donnie.” He got the man's attention. “You'll never guess who I've got here.”
The man stood.
“This is Polar Princess.”
“Well, I'll be...” He raised his hand to shake hers. “I'm your biggest fan.”
“Oh, it's nothing. Really. We all do what we can.” She smiled as she shook his hand, and once more Liam was left with questions.
“Donnie listens to most everything out there. He keeps us in tune with the pulse of the enemy.”
“He's busy as shit—oh excuse me ma'am.”
“It's all right,” Lana laughed.
“He's damned busy. The convoy is sucking up most of the air time, but the military is cutting through the highways with their plows and tractors—clearing it for the second wave of units who sweep for the infected so the civilians can pass. Recon elements of the first military units are getting close to East St. Louis. That's how spread out they are.”
“But aren't they still in West Virginia?” Liam blurted.
“You got that right, kid, a big group of them are bogged down with traffic jams, damaged infrastructure, and citizens who get angry once they realize the military is leaving them behind. When a whole infantry division drives by your home without clearing out the undead, well, it makes people do stupid things.”
“You mean they're fighting the Army?”
“Army. Navy. Marines. They're all making the trek across the nation right now. Coming right here to this little berg.” He laughed. St. Louis was small compared to cities on the East Coast, but few would call it little. It was just about the right size to start over…
“Tell them about the hundred-year-olds, Donnie.”
“Oh, that.”
4
“We've been hearing these weird directives within departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and the CDC. Some of them mention research ongoing with people described as centaur-, centur—”
“Centenarians,” Travis added. He smiled. “My girlfriend is a school teacher.”
“Right. That. These elderly people are being rounded up as a possible source of the cure.”
Liam nodded, having seen it firsthand.
“But other directives seem to say just the opposite. That the infected search out old people. Are drawn to them. And the order says to turn them away and avoid them at all cost.”
Liam searched his memory. Were the zombies tracking him, or Grandma? Did they follow her out of the city? Follow her downtown to Riverside? Follow her to Cairo? Could it be that simple?
“My great-grandma is in Cairo, Illinois. Have you heard anything from there?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. There are a lot of complicated military operations down in southern Illinois. The dead from Chicago have swarmed in that direction, as have the dead from other cities in the region. But there was an encrypted NIS transmission we cracked specifically mentioning the termination of one of the oldest people in that part of the state, like it was some kind of achievement.”
Liam jumped on that statement. “Did they say a name?”
Donnie looked at Travis, though Liam didn't detect any non-verbal communication. “No. No names were mentioned. As best I can remember the military was abandoning the town, something about the dismissal of a rogue general, and the termination of a hundred-and-something old lady. But no name, that I recall.”
“Oh, God. That has to be Grandma.” He turned to his mom.
“We don't know that for sure. There have to be other elderly survivors,” she replied.
“Yeah, kid. This was one transmission. We can't read too much into it,” Donnie added.
He read everything into it. His heart wanted to flee the building and jump in the river and go find out.
I'd have to get Victoria, first.
“Tell her about the mine.”
“OK. Yeah. There's a lot of traffic centered on a mine to the south of here—”
“Koch Hospital Quarry,” Liam interjected.
“Yeah, so you already know it. We're still trying to crack the encryption on those messages, but we know the traffic is from an antenna near there. We also have a sloppy station broadcasting from a hand-held radio across the Mississippi from the mine. He mentioned a recovery operation underway, but that the mine had filled with infected and they were going nowhere fast.”
Inwardly he laughed. It was absolutely full of them.
“That mine is crammed with tanks. Hundreds of them. Most were pretty old, like the Tiger tanks we snagged, but there are Abrams tanks down there, too. And...”
He wondered if he should hold anything back. His mom already knew what he'd found down there, but if he couldn't trust the leaders of her movement, who could he trust?
“And there's a big vault door with a video camera watching outside. I think there are people hiding down there. People from before the Zombie Apocalypse.”
Travis turned to Lana. “Whose side are they on?”
“I have no idea. Whatever Liam stumbled on down there, it isn't something I know about.”
“They didn't open the door for us when it could have made a difference. They might have been able to save your three people.”
Travis stepped away and paced in a small back and forth pattern. Chief was with him the whole time. He knelt down to pet his dog while he appeared to think.
“I've got too many irons in the fire,” he said to Chief. “What do I do now?”
He stood up once again, and looked at Liam. “Can you get a team back into that place? If we can get those tanks before their owners, we might be able to win this war before it begins.”
“You want me to go back into that mine?”
“You'd be perfect to do it. You could save us a lot of time by leading us right to the tanks. I'd send your team with plenty of weapons to handle the undead. We've already seen those tanks are operational. We can send fifty people and bring back fifty tanks.”
“There's no way to drive the tanks out. The tunnels are filled with abandoned cars and trucks.”
“Where did the two Tiger's come from?”
“The NIS guy said they came from a different place. They were equally upset that the zombies had taken over that mine.”
“Nonetheless, we have a convoy bearing down on us and not enough weapons to do much about it. We never imagined we'd have to fight the full weight of the U.S. Military, did we?”
Lana shook her head. “We thought we'd march into D.C. and end everything without firing a shot.”
“Well, the march was not without its good days. I met the girl of my dreams, I had my faithful service dog the whole way, and I was only shot at on odd-numbered days. Thanks to you, we made it almost the entire way without any true violence.”
“I'm sorry we couldn't get you to the finish line.”
“Ah, such heady days,” Travis laughed. “The time we thought we could actually make a difference to the flow of history.”
“When?” Liam asked. He was notorious for not paying attention to the news, and he knew the Patriot Snowball movement had marched on Washington D.C. to protest the recent presidential elections, but he still wasn't sure of the details. He wasn't sure he could trust what he'd been told by Hayes or Duchesne.
Travis gave his mom “the look.” The raised eyebrows and accompanying mouth-ajar posture.
“You mean you didn't tell your own son the story?”
She shook her head, a little sadness cradled her face.
“Then I think its time for him to meet the source of the Patriot Snowball movement, don't you?”
Lana waved her ha
nd, deferring the decision to him.
Chapter 16: Clarisse McClellan
Travis led Chief to another wing of the top floor of the skyscraper. Instead of tables or radios, the space had dozens of couches, some with sheets draped around them for nominal privacy.
“This is where the crew can catch some shut eye. She'll be by the windows. Maybe we can find you a shirt, too,” he said as he looked at Liam.
Liam walked through the couches without looking around. He wondered if anyone could sleep in such conditions, but there were several men and women doing a fine job of it. In the far corner, near the windows, was a small roped-off area where some young children noisily played. Opposite that area, a young black woman sat on a folding chair as she looked out the large windows. They were facing south, toward the ball stadium. The wreck of the Osprey was still there, he was sure, though it was hidden by the stands from where he was.
When the woman saw Travis, her face lit up, then she jumped up to hug him.
“I just woke up, baby.”
“I'm glad. I didn't want to disturb you after all the trouble last night.”
Liam was left to wonder what had happened.
“Honey, I want you to meet someone—in person—we've talked to for months.” He smiled and extended his hand toward Lana. “I give you, Polar Princess. And this,” he pointed to the twenty-something young woman, “is Clarisse McClellan.”
“Naw, my real name is Haylee. You don't have to call me by my literary handle.” She stuck her hand out.
“And I'm Lana Peters. Please don't call me princess.” Both women laughed while they shook hands.
“Travis here had talked you up.”
Travis had his arms tightly wrapped around Haylee.
“Yeah, he does that. He likes to pretend the whole thing was my idea, but he was a big part of it, too.”
Liam had a chance to compare the two leaders of the Patriot Snowball. He was a tall man with a red beard, the demeanor of a soldier, and the look of an auto mechanic. She was about average height for a woman, very pretty, with no hard edges or mannerisms. Almost dainty. Far from the look of a leader or a fighter.
“You're too modest, dear.” Travis looked down at her. “Liam is Lana's son. She never told him your story,” he said mischievously.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 139