Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  A jet screeched overhead.

  Choppers whomped in the distance.

  Always gunfire.

  Amidst all the confusion, he felt something sting him on the back of his shoulder. He reached back and froze.

  A little helicopter drone hummed by, well overhead. It moved with silent grace over the intersection, and he could hear the little wisps of air as the drone tagged other zombies standing out there. It didn't hurt to remove the little tag, and in the darkness he had no way to know what color his was. All he could think about was that he was now targeted for death.

  A methodical cadence of gunfire erupted nearby. Four shots in a row. He searched the intersection as it sounded as if it were coming from that direction.

  He saw it. It was on the next block. The little drone tank came out through the glass frontage of a fast food chain store. With a quick turn, it engaged some zombies on the parking lot, then headed for the road.

  He threw down the drone's tag. He briefly considered throwing it into the flat, but couldn't say for sure if anyone still lived there. It would be a terrible way to die—some kid throwing a killer drone tracking device into your living room. One country music star was enough responsibility for him…

  He crawled along the base of the brick home, looking for a way inside. It pained him to do it, but he needed a place to hole up until the light of day. He'd never get across the intersection, or the road, or the barrier, if he had to run out of the black of night to do it.

  But he wasn't going to sleep in the streets, either.

  There was a tiny side window to the basement, as he hoped. The home was very similar to Grandma Marty's. He had to push firmly with the bottom of his shoes, but the lock was weak. He pushed the window open and then slithered feet-first into the basement.

  If there were survivors waiting down there—or zombies—he'd take his chances with them, rather than deal with that tank drone again. It continued to shoot at will in the night.

  Please, just one night of safety.

  It was rare for him to pray outright, but he was so tired he pretty much forgot Grandma's rule never to pray for himself.

  6

  He fell asleep and dropped into a dream. It was a vividly bright day in Grandma Marty's backyard. The grass was a lush green, and the flower gardens were in full bloom. While he walked, he studied the larger neighborhood. It took some time to process.

  I know I'm dreaming. That's odd.

  The small garage at the end of the lot was flattened. Every garage and fence on the near side of the alleyway had been similarly smashed. Several houses, including the one next to Grandma, had been burnt to the ground. He made sure her home was OK, and to his relief, it stood with resilience as it looked down on him.

  The top level was Angie's apartment inside the two-story brick building. So many memories flooded his mind, but he kept grounded by remembering he was inside his dream. Being in this house, so much like hers, probably jogged something in his memory.

  “I'll avoid Angie's room like the plague,” he said with laughter. He figured if he was dreaming, he might as well enjoy it.

  From inside Grandma's house, he heard screams. In fact, they were coming from the basement—his old bunk space. Much as he'd done in real life, he went to the side of the house and found the narrow basement windows. He kicked one in, then slid through.

  His bed was still there. It hadn't been touched. His gaming laptop was on the bedspread, just as he'd left it. While fighting the deep longing for the computer, he looked at the rear doorway. It was just as well he didn't try the basement door, the dryer he'd placed in front of that door was still there.

  It was as if he'd just stepped out. Minus the fact the other houses were in ruins. That wasn't something he'd witnessed.

  Am I seeing the house as it is now?

  Another scream. He recognized Victoria. It came from deeper in the basement, which looked like a hoarder's stash, once he walked beyond his little living space. He inched through the junk and noted with some pride the gap in the rafters where his dad had left him the small-caliber guns. Those had saved his life, and Grandma's life. He was positive of that.

  “Liam, please hurry,” Victoria's voice was soft and wistful.

  He became driven. Deeper he went. The dream basement was different in one major way. It was much larger. The piles of junk continued for minutes while he struggled through, and then over them. He ignored the changing scenery below him.

  Here, piles of garbage bags.

  Next, piles of bodies, stacked neatly.

  He had to crawl over a pyramid of beer cans.

  Stacks of large bags of dog food.

  What the hell?

  Finally, he reached the end of the basement. His Grandpa had kept several shelves of old shortwave radios. Liam always assumed it was because of his time back in the war, but he'd never thought to ask. His Grandpa Al had long since passed away, and it seemed a waste of effort to ask Grandma Marty—a woman famous for not touching a piece of technology her whole life.

  “Open the door. Help us, girl!”

  A voice was on one of the radios. Or, more accurately, was coming out of the radio.

  He studied the old-school frequency dial. It was circular with a little arrow that pointed to the various frequencies listed on the slider as it spun past. It looked like something from his Grandpa's days in the service.

  Ancient.

  When he got close, he could read the tiny lettering. The word “Victoria” sat between numeric frequencies. As if Victoria was a frequency.

  He touched nothing but got close to the speaker so he could hear what was happening.

  “I'm so sorry. I can't open the door,” a girl said with a forceful tone.

  “Victoria, is that you?” He was in a dream, why not call out?

  There were clear sounds of zombies. Groaning. Moaning. A distant call-to-arms zombie—he was still working on what to call that one. It sounded like a major infestation of them. Though the language was animalistic, he got the gist of it. They wanted to kill his girlfriend.

  “Liam?”

  It was her. She was in trouble, but he could help.

  “Don't let them in! You have to survive,” he shouted.

  “I know. I'm trying,” she replied, sounding tired.

  He waited while the noises of the infected peaked on the broadcast dial. Whereas it started with lots of people cussing and screaming, it ended with only the sounds of zombies.

  Victoria's voice was distant when she finally returned. “They're all dead now.”

  “I know. You did the right thing,” he said softly. His voice betrayed the happiness he felt she was still alive. He'd helped protect her.

  Liam woke up to see the treads of the tank outside his window. It was daylight, now. And he'd been found.

  “You have to survive,” he whispered to himself, “because I'm pretty much dead.”

  Chapter 4: Homecoming

  Liam had no clue what to make the treads at the window. Was it just passing by? Looking for him?

  His priority was staying quiet, but with the dream he'd just had it made him wonder if he shouted out in his sleep. Grandma had woken up screaming many times on their adventures, which called to question whether her dreams were as bad as his...or his were as bad as hers. She had said she visited Grandpa Al.

  It can't be coincidence.

  He focused on the window above.

  The miniature tank plodded forward, to the left of the window as he looked at it. When it was gone, he ran to the short staircase to the main level of the house. The layout was all different, but the piles of old junk reminded him once again that his dream of Grandma's house was probably prompted by the similarity to this one. Even the wooden stairs were old and rickety, like hers.

  At the upstairs door, he took it slow. The scissors were pointed toward trouble. When the door opened, he was struck in the face by the stench of the dead. He'd grown accustomed to the distinctive odor, though here in the stuff
y house it was heavy enough to coat his nostrils.

  He put the sleeve of his jacket over his mouth and nose to defend against the stench. One foot was backing down the stairs when he caught motion outside the window of the well-worn kitchen in front of him. The black drone hovered nearby. Behind it, another type of drone was treading air.

  Slowly, he sank to the floor.

  I'm not going to die in some random basement.

  He drug himself over the linoleum of the kitchen, then onto the wooden floor of the home's central hallway. The front room was darker with 1970's shag carpet and thick drapes pulled closed. As he approached, the smell got worse. His eyes began to water.

  He had no choice. The open windows of the kitchen wouldn't allow him to stay there, and the lack of exits in the basement was a deal breaker. The darker living room was the best of a bunch of crappy options.

  When he got in the room...

  He'd seen a lot the past many weeks. Broken bodies. Horrible images of death. The captives in the cages. Zombies destroyed in the worst possible ways. But here he saw something that took his breath away...

  An ancient man sat in a big cushy recliner. Compared to the chair, he was tiny. If Liam had to guess an age, he'd put the man right at one hundred.

  Next to him, in a smaller chair, was a younger-looking elderly man—also dead.

  “Why are you showing me this?” he whispered through his jacket sleeve. After he'd said it, he wondered who he was asking.

  His belief in God had waxed and waned over the last few weeks. It was strongest in the presence of Grandma Marty but had flagged as he was exposed to more and more degradation in the Zombie Apocalypse. Victoria helped bolster his belief, but now she wasn't around, either. It was disconcerting to think his belief ultimately came down to whether or not those around him believed.

  However, the sight of the two dead men in the otherwise normal-looking living room did nothing to inspire belief in a higher power. Just the opposite, in fact. These two men had given up...

  He wanted to look away, but he was drawn to them. Made himself look at them. It couldn't be coincidence he'd seen three suicides in a row...

  Don't let this be you, Liam.

  It reassured him. He would never allow himself to reach that low that he'd take his own life.

  “Fight!” the triplets had told him.

  Hey, at least you don't have to climb out of a grave today.

  He silently laughed, but the day was young. Anything could happen.

  Finally, as he was on the verge of looking away, he saw something important. It was the cause of such devastation on the bodies of the dead men.

  The double-barreled shotgun had fallen between the two chairs. And there on an end table was a box of twenty-five shells. It was worth the smell and the fright to get a real weapon.

  He was already on his knees, so he crawled to the gun and pulled it from its cranny. He tried to watch both men, assuming they were going to wake up and attack him—even without a good portion of their heads. Neither moved a dead muscle.

  When he had the gun, he got the shells, then moved across the room and sat up against the wall. The smell was ripe, the drones were somewhere outside, and he felt his day was looking up.

  The shotgun had been chopped. Rather than the stereotypical hunting shotgun, it had been made to look like a rap gangster's weapon. The chamber broke open so he could feed in two side-by-side shells, then he snapped it shut with force. He set it over his legs, using it as a substitute comfort blanket.

  Then, he waited.

  A shadow passed over the front windows.

  If a round came through the glass, he tried to imagine where he would run. Maybe he would jump in the chair with the old man and use him as a meat shield. He was positive something like that had been done in the zombie books he'd read. He got lost in thought, asking himself if he had it in him to pull the decaying corpse on top of him...and the drone was soon out of sight.

  I have to get out of here.

  2

  Armed as he was, he risked getting closer to the windows to see what was happening outside.

  On the front side, the house abutted the main street which was now the outer perimeter of the Forest Park refugee camp. On the far side, there were a string of urban flats with the taller medical buildings behind them. In the daylight, he saw the line of cars and buses blocking the intersection, but also the amount of work that went into boarding up each house along the street. Cars had been wedged in the narrow corridors between each house, further reinforcing the defenses.

  After establishing his bearings, it was clear he'd run too far and was now on the north edge of the park. He was closer to the west side, but it was a beneficial error because it put him nearer to Victoria's campus and dorm.

  He crept back to the kitchen so he could see the backyard, but he was pretty sure one of the drones was still back there. The ominous hum kept him on edge.

  The glass door shattered, and something slammed into the wall near his shoulder.

  Though he was already on high alert, it caused him to freeze in panic.

  While he watched, a mini tank crumpled the aluminum storm door and drove itself right into the kitchen.

  The black drone was behind it.

  Run!

  He spun around and ran for the front room. Another gunshot hit a lamp next to him as he ran. He felt the splash of glass on his right arm.

  The door to the outside was ahead of him. An array of possibilities scrolled across his eyes.

  Fight the drone with the shotgun. Not likely.

  Run parallel to the Forest Park perimeter. Get caught by the air drones.

  Run toward the perimeter across the street. Get shot by the defenders.

  The door took a few seconds to unlock and open. The front screen door was also locked—the owners must have bolted the place down—giving the tank drone extra time to crunch through the kitchen table and chairs. He could hear it breaking those things apart.

  When he made it onto the front stoop, he had to make his choice.

  It wasn't a hard decision. He ran across the street.

  It was the only scenario that didn't directly involve mindless drones.

  Liam waved his arms in a regular pattern as he fled into the street. His shotgun was in one hand, but he didn't point it at the defenders. The hope was the humans over there would see him and, most importantly, not shoot him as a zombie.

  “Help,” he shouted as he ran.

  The gunfire background noise of the city was ebbing low at the moment, giving him a chance to be heard. The street was several lanes wide.

  Much to his surprise, the defenders didn't welcome him. Gunfire came in his direction.

  “I'm not a threat,” he shouted. But he also turned, and got very low. Now he was running down the middle of the street, in full view of the defenders and the drones.

  Smooth move, Liam.

  He looked back to the house. Two drones had come over the top of the house and were in pursuit. The tank drone was probably still inside, though he imagined it storming out of the front part of the house like some kind of mechanical Kool-Aid Man.

  Ahead, he saw an incongruity in the pavement. A chance at escape. Already running, he ran as fast as his feet could carry him.

  When he reached the sewer lid, he slid down and got to work lifting the circular piece of iron. As any number of books and movies would attest, all he had to do was lift it and start his climb down. There was no way the drones could follow, nor could they remove the lid if he shut it behind him.

  But, he was betrayed by TV. The lid was heavier than he imagined, but it also didn't have any hand holds for him to grab. Instead, it had a series of small holes. He would need a big hook to lift it.

  Torn between running some more and struggling to get a couple more fingers in so he could keep trying—he never even budged it—he felt the blast of air currents from a drone. It was the black one. The white one was nearby but seemed to be satisfied to stan
d off from the action.

  Liam put up his hands, then stood. If he couldn't sneak down the drain, and he couldn't make it to the living people in the blockade, he wasn't going take a bullet while lying down. The drone didn't seem vulnerable to a shotgun blast, which was just as well since he left the gun lying on the ground. A part of him hoped whoever was controlling the drone would see him surrender, and not order it to kill him. The gun on the bottom was only five feet away, pointed at his neck.

  Right where I got hit with the tag from the other drone.

  While he marveled at the ruthless efficiency of whoever was controlling the drones, he didn't immediately hear the nearby gunfire. Only when bullets started to snap off the outer shell of the drone did the threat present itself.

  He ducked back to the ground.

  The drone rotated, so it faced the park defenders back at the intersection. They were only a hundred yards away. A bullet whizzed by—missing both him and the drone. Danger was everywhere.

  In his haste he forgot to grab the box of ammo for the shotgun, so he only had the two shells he'd loaded earlier. Unsure if he was doing the right thing, but unwilling to do nothing, he picked up the shotgun.

  More pings hit the drone; it returned fire with a few quick shots.

  Liam did the only thing he could think of that might help. He aimed for the drone.

  The white helicopter shot one of its tagging arrows at him as if to defend its black mate. It hit him in the meat of his shoulder and hurt much more than the last one.

  Now angry and scared, he focused on putting the two rounds in the most vulnerable part of the floating menace next to him. He couldn't identify a definitive weak spot in the workings, so he just aimed for what he figured was the backside.

  He pulled the first trigger and felt the powerful recoil. The target erupted in a flurry of sparks.

  When he pulled the second trigger, he was a little bit off target, but it tore into the upper mantle of the drone and also probably struck the rotors. It was hard to tell because he was hesitant to look directly at it as he fired in such proximity.

  The black drone dipped a couple of feet after the second shot, then recovered. A smell of burnt electrical components washed over him. It also stopped firing.