Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “Dang it, Hayes, are you going to make me be the man, here?”

  “What? What'd I say?”

  “You're planning to let those guards get attacked, just because you don't want to risk yourself?”

  He'd been that way back when they escaped from the Arch, but he seemed to have learned nothing since then.

  “Never get involved, when you don't have to.”

  “But we have to,” she barked. “We have to think of the camp. If just one of those zombies gets into the crowd, what do you think will happen?”

  “They have muzzles on, Vicky, don't sweat it.”

  “Don't call me that.” Her anger was reaching a high simmer. “Don't ever call me that.”

  Hayes looked shocked at her response.

  She went on. “We absolutely cannot risk it.”

  She looked around for the tenth time, searching in vain for anything she could use as a weapon. A small utility shelf yielded a tape measure, some duct tape, and a ten-inch long flat head screwdriver. When she picked it up, it was like she'd struck gold.

  “This!”

  “What are you going to do with that? Unhinge the doors?” he chuckled.

  “I'm going to put those zombies down.”

  “Whoa. You're nuts. Just sit in here and we're golden.”

  If he felt any shame under her glare, he gave no indication.

  “That's how you're gonna play it?” she asked. “Fine. I'll go out and fight them, and you can stay in here and watch TV. All I need to do is get to a window and yell down. It should be easy as cake since we can watch the monitors to avoid the bad guys.”

  On paper, it was cake.

  The cake is a lie.

  She wondered where the thought came from.

  Bennie.

  A boy from her old high school used the saying all the time in the cafeteria when cake was served. She never cared enough to ask him, but his friends always seemed to laugh at the joke. If she ever saw him again, she would tell him that he was right about that. So much of life was a lie, including the cake.

  She hoped he'd argue, but he was soon by the door motioning toward the lock.

  “When you go out, I'll lock this door again and watch you on the monitors.”

  “And if I need help?”

  “I'm sure the guards will hear you. Cake, right?” He laughed a little, which she interpreted as his satisfaction at having caught her in her own saying.

  “Sure.” He wasn't going to be of any help.

  A quick check of the screens placed the zombies in between the floors, on opposite ends of the hallway. The basement zombie was still missing, but it was last seen in the lowest level. Out of her way.

  Without fanfare, she unbolted the door and walked into the hallway. As promised, Hayes locked it behind her. The security bolt was surprisingly loud in the nighttime hallway.

  “Just a stroll to a room with a window,” she whispered to herself.

  The screwdriver felt tiny in her hand. In moments she found an open doorway in a room with a window. It was set up like a classroom. Desks in neat rows.

  She closed the door behind her.

  The windows beckoned her.

  Maybe this will be cake.

  Inwardly she laughed. The whole affair would make a funny story if Bennie survived.

  The window slid upward and the warm air of the night blew in her face. A tinge of the smells of thousands of people in the park nearby accompanied the wind, but it was minimal. In the distance, many small fires danced. Cooking whatever was left to eat.

  Above, the stars were brilliant. Without the light of the city, it was easy to see the stars as if she were in the wilderness of her home state. She enjoyed the feeling and the memories for a few moments before searching the grounds below for evidence of the guards.

  “Hello?” she called down as loud as she dared. “Is anyone there? I need help.”

  The paved walkways of the campus led away from the building to other structures nearby, but there weren't any students cavorting about as she would have expected of a university campus of old. It was dead outside.

  The university was near the park, but the campfires were hundreds of yards away. She considered screaming—they'd surely hear her.

  She jumped as someone beat on the door of the classroom.

  “Holy crap!” The cuss word slipped out.

  A constant, though quiet, pounding continued as she inched forward. A head danced in the tiny slit window on the right side of the wooden door. She'd been caught.

  The screwdriver seemed to cause her hand to become clammy. She moved it to her left hand and wiped the sweat on her jeans. If she was going to use it, she'd put it back in her strong hand. For instance, if the door broke open and a zombie spilled through.

  Maybe all of them are out there?

  She switched hands again.

  The shape continued to move in an agitated fashion as she approached the door. She imagined it getting angrier as she got closer. That forced her to consider hiding behind a desk, out of sight. Maybe it would die down and forget about her.

  Onward she walked. She was close enough to see its face.

  It wasn't a zombie. Somehow it seemed fitting Hayes would screw up something as simple as walking across a hallway.

  She opened the door, and he reached for her.

  “Come. Hurry!” he shouted. His voice echoed in the hall.

  They returned to the security room. Hayes slammed the door and ran to the screens.

  “There! Look! Look!”

  “Oh crap,” she said. This time, she intended to use the word.

  4

  All the people in the research room had been untied and set free. In an almost comical coincidence, a scream echoed in the sealed building. The noise registered on the camera audio and through the doorway behind them.

  “You have to stay in here. We'll wait this out,” Hayes repeated himself from earlier.

  “Are you crazy? We have to warn people. Save those poor test subjects.”

  “No.” Hayes stood up and moved to the door. “We're safe right here.”

  Victoria still held the screwdriver, though she felt she was seeing it for the first time. “Hayes. If you try to stop me, we're both going to regret it. I'll fight you to get out there.”

  He studied her face. “I don't doubt that for a second.” He moved away from the door but pointed to it. “I'm locking this again. I'll watch on the screens.”

  “Really? You're going to let a girl go out there and fight while you stay in this room and hide?”

  “You can't guilt trip me, though I don't blame you for trying. I've already told you; I can't die in a senseless battle with the zombies. The safe play is to wait here and get out when help arrives. Then I can continue my research.”

  “Who do you think let all those people go?”

  “Probably an animal rights group. Some of the students have expressed concerns over the treatment of the test subjects, though they were a tiny minority.”

  She felt a passing nudge of guilt. She felt the injustice when she first arrived. It was only later when she understood the need for the experiment that she let it go. And, once she saw the results, it was clear Hayes had done a true service in the drive for a cure.

  But that didn't feel like what was happening here. Student activists would want everyone to see them. It was just the way they thought. This was something else. The guards were gone. The zombies were released. Then the people were sent out after them.

  She checked the hallway using the monitor. It was still clear, though another scream rose up from below. After taking a deep breath, she moved to the door and held the handle.

  “I won't come back for you,” she said with finality.

  “I'll be here in the morning.”

  Victoria opened the door, then stepped outside. Before she pulled the door shut behind her, she looked at Hayes as he stood watching her. “If I didn't know better, I'd say the NIS has already found you.” The door cl
anged as it shut.

  Dark shapes moved in the moonlight at one end of the hallway.

  She ran back to the classroom, quietly closed the door, then found the open window again.

  Below, it was still, and quiet. The guards remained elusive.

  “Help!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. She cupped her hands to harness her voice and sent it out toward the campers in the park. She continued to scream in other directions, and then waited in silence, hoping for a reply.

  Banging started on the door. This time it was heavy and irregular.

  Muffled cries of help came from the hallway.

  “We saw you! Help us!”

  She hesitated halfway back to the door. Hayes had said some of the people were already infected, though it was latent. If she opened the door, Typhoid Mary could walk right through.

  But you sat with them all day. If they were infected, you'd have gotten sick.

  That had the opposite effect as she would have thought. She did indeed spend the day with them, but if she was sick, she couldn't risk giving them the infection.

  But everyone would have been infected in there.

  She moved closer, but stopped short.

  If everyone was infected in the experiment, no one could leave the building. It would have to be purged. If it prevented the spread to the larger camp, she could accept that.

  Her hand was on the door when someone on the outside banged their head on the small window. The glass shattered but didn't blow out. She watched as blood splashed heavily upon the glass. Screams pierced the stillness of the room.

  “Open the door. Help us, girl!” one of the shapes called to her. She recoiled in horror that it reminded her of Liam. Would she open the door if it was him?

  “I'm so sorry. I can't open the door,” she with grim determination.

  “Victoria, is that you?”

  “Liam?”

  The young man in the darkness could be Liam. She had her hand on the thrown lock, but checked herself.

  “Don't let them in! You have to survive,” the Liam-figure insisted.

  “I know. I'm trying.”

  The voice seemed to come from inside her head. Either the person outside was Liam and he'd just spoken to her, or she was hallucinating from too little sleep.

  It could only be the latter.

  The people outside became a bloody scrum of hand-to-hand combat. Victims would alternatively plead with her to let them in, or lash at her with the look of bloody hatred. Some ran. Others came. In minutes, there was only hatred on the other side of the door, though it was unclear if it was true hatred or the look of death that mimicked hatred on their faces.

  “They're all dead now,” she said to herself.

  “I know. You did the right thing,” the Liam-shape said. Except it wasn't alive now.

  Definitely. I'm seeing things.

  Victoria stepped away from the door.

  Did I let them all die?

  She prayed for forgiveness.

  “Forgive me, Lord, I...couldn't help them.”

  While she prayed, the scratching and pounding on the door sped up. They all wanted in.

  Hayes, safe in his room, was across the hall from all those zombies. No help was coming from that direction.

  She returned to the window.

  As before, there was no one outside. Her screams had gone unheeded.

  “Help!” Her voice broke. She wasn't used to screaming at the top of her lungs.

  The banging on the door was feverish now.

  “Defend yourself,” she said.

  It took her five minutes, but she tipped over the desks and laid them down end-to-end from one side of the classroom to the door. The zombies would have to break the lock, then push the door and the entire row of desks out of the way. She felt a tiny bit safer once that task was done, but it didn't get her any closer to preventing the escape of all the infected.

  Whatever she was going to do, it had to involve the window.

  5

  The night air blew at her again. This time, it wasn't as welcoming. She figured out the breeze was coming in from the park, which meant her voice was fighting against the wind.

  “You have to do this yourself, Victoria.”

  The building was made of oversized bricks. She hung outside the window to get a better look at the wall, thinking she could climb down. Her assessment was that it would be futile to try. Maybe a rock climber could give it a try, but she had no experience with such things. A more likely scenario for her was that she'd try, and fall from the third floor.

  On the other end of the classroom's row of windows, she saw a metal drain spout.

  “Yes!”

  The last window opened easily, and she found she could reach the downspout, too. But climbing out the window and holding onto the pipe was still very dangerous.

  “Help!” This time, she shouted toward the other buildings on the campus. They were fifty or so yards away, but shouldn't be as affected by the wind. Someone had to hear her.

  Minutes ticked by, and still no one came.

  “Maybe those buildings have all been infected, ha ha.”

  She talked to herself to calm her nerves, but wherever she came up with that—it chilled her to the core.

  Wouldn't there be screams?

  “What if someone infected everyone in their sleep?” she whispered in awe of the vileness of it.

  Back at the window by the downspout, she knew what she had to do.

  In moments she had shimmied so she sat on the window sill but faced outside the window. Her feet dangled into the emptiness of the night. Laughter from the park had caught the wind, mocking her.

  She could reach the pipe with her arms, but it would take some athleticism to grasp it and not fall.

  Another deep breath.

  With one quick motion, and without really thinking about it, she jumped to the pipe and gave it a death grip with both arms. It was about ten inches across and felt firm on the side of the building.

  A “sproing” sound from above accompanied movement of the drain. It detached from where it came out of the wall near the roof and swayed a foot away from the building.

  “Oh God.”

  She let herself slip down the tube a few feet. The loose pipe swung out, then flew back against the wall, clanging loudly. After a short drop, she found a bracket holding the drain. It caught her hands—she cried at the pain as she stopped. It put her between floors two and three.

  “OK, steady. You can do this.”

  Her shoes gripped the rough bricks, and she let herself descend a few more feet. It put her next to the window on floor two. Movement caught her eye in the windows near the spout, and she froze.

  A pale face in the dim light bobbed into the center of the closest window, as if sensing she was close by. She assumed the zombie couldn't see her—she couldn't tell if it was a man or woman—because it wasn't trying to break out the glass.

  She held herself still, but the pain quickly became unbearable. The pipe wasn't big enough to hug and hold herself, so most of her grip was coming from her hands. She shifted her feet, looking for something where she could dig in her toes to take some of the weight off, but it was useless.

  “God, give me the strength.”

  The zombie loitered. Another was further down the row of windows.

  Her palms started to slip. The anxiety and adrenaline of the moment betrayed her.

  First, and inch or two. She fought it.

  The zombie was still right there. Searching.

  Another inch slid by. Her feet searched in futility, while her hands continued to loosen.

  “Go away,” she willed it.

  It looked right at her. She closed her eyes, putting all her effort in holding perfectly still. Despite all her prayers and a phenomenal effort, she began to slide. There was no way to stop it. She opened her eyes and was disappointed to see the zombie watch as she slid out of its view.

  Banging started on the glass above as she h
eld on as best she could the rest of the way down. She was going fast enough that the next set of brackets caught her by surprise. It was so painful she let go of the pipe and fell the last ten feet to the decorative shrubs surrounding the building. Though she landed on her feet, she collapsed in a heap when she touched down.

  She froze on the ground. If she blended in with the foliage, maybe the zombies would lose track of her. If they were at the windows on the first floor, she would be mere feet away. She was unwilling to move so she could look in those windows. Instead, she studied the sky and listened.

  More laughter taunted her from the camp, but it was countered by screams from inside the research building. She was certain the zombie she'd seen on floor two was banging away at the glass above her. Would it break the window, then come tumbling down? Would the group on floor three break through the classroom door and do the same? It seemed unlikely, but as Grandma Marty would say, not impossible.

  She thought she heard the chirp of continuous machine gun fire from far away.

  That's what I need here. A machine gun crew to kill everyone inside the building.

  Except for Hayes, right?

  She was mostly sure she didn't want him shot.

  Well, maybe just a little.

  6

  “Get up. Run!”

  The resolve was there, but doubt, too. Where could she run that would have help? Though she was willing to scream bloody murder while up in the building, now she wondered if it was right to go to the camp and rile everyone up in the middle of the night. She needed somewhere that had soldiers, ready to help. She only knew one place where she was absolutely sure she could find such people.

  After a few deep breaths to steady her nerves, she deliberately got up and began to jog directly away from the building. Her desire was to avoid getting too close to the windows so as not to cause zombies to jump out to grab her, but once she was far enough away, she realized she'd done something just as dangerous. She was now visible to every zombie looking out the windows on all three floors.

  The tinkle of glass urged her to run faster.