Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Deveraux held the button, evidently processing the possibilities with his alcohol-fueled brain.

  3

  Hayes didn't wait. “Come on.” He grabbed her by the arm.

  “I'm coming.”

  She expected Deveraux to say something, but he stayed silent at his desk. She gave him one last look before she was out the door, and he never stopped staring at the phone on his desk.

  Outside the office, they saw the two security men in front of the elevators. They were looking outside the windows, but when the elevator dinged they turned to face the visitors.

  “I guess she let them come up,” he whispered. “Follow me.”

  The sign for the stairs was nearby, but they had to walk toward the elevators for a few yards. One of the men spotted them but returned his gaze to the elevator in front of him.

  “They saw us,” she whispered.

  Hayes opened the fire door as quietly as he could. He proceeded through and held the door for her. The moment before she walked through, she caught sight of a person coming out of the elevator. She couldn't be sure, but it looked like a woman.

  The door snapped shut while they stood just inside. Hayes started up the steps.

  “Shouldn't we go down?” she asked incredulously.

  “Trust me. We have to go up.” He didn't wait for her.

  Left with two bad options, she decided to follow. Not because she trusted him, but…

  Why am I following him?

  In a few short moments, they were at the top door. She didn't have time to answer her own question.

  “Hayes!” a man called from below them. “We know it's you.”

  Hayes froze against the door, then put his head against it. Victoria began to say something, and he raised his finger for her to wait one moment. He'd shifted, so his ear was against the solid metal.

  “I'm armed,” he shouted while apparently hugging the door.

  Victoria leaned over the side, but Hayes yanked her back. In the instant she could see below, a man had shot up at her from a floor down. She looked at the ceiling and saw the impact.

  “Whoa!” was all she could say.

  “I swear to God, I'm going to shoot anyone who comes up this stairwell,” Hayes shouted.

  Victoria looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Trust me. Do as I say,” he said quietly.

  “Come on now. We don't want no trouble.” Laughter from below. The footfalls on the concrete stairs were quiet but distinct. They were on the way up.

  She mouthed “What are you doing?” while she hunched her shoulders.

  He smiled in return.

  Seconds rattled by like a freight train bearing down on a blown bridge. She saw nothing that would make any kind of weapon. The only thing besides the door was an inset bulb in the ceiling. Things were moving too fast to a bad end.

  “Get down,” Hayes whispered. He showed her by laying flat on his stomach. “Stay down, no matter what.”

  “This is your plan? Lie down and die?” She briefly considered jumping down the stairs and attacking the two men, but she knew where that would end.

  “Trust me!”

  She did as instructed, resigned to whatever fate Hayes had steered her into.

  Liam wouldn't have let us get caught so easily.

  He had a knack for getting them out of tight situations. She left him for one day, and she'd been snared in several traps. Hayes would have her killed, after all.

  “Well, well. She said you were the most dangerous man alive. But I think she made a mistake.” Victoria kept her head down, as if to ignore what unfolded around her.

  Another man laughed. Their feet clomped on the final steps. She felt the shift in the air. They were on the landing with her and Hayes.

  “Elsa is right about a lot of things, but I'm not sure she'd be fired up by your incompetence.”

  A malicious laugh. “I think she'll be just fine when I show her your body. You just gonna lay there? After all the trouble we went through to find you?”

  “You knew I was here. How hard could it have been? She could have had me fired.”

  “Hmm. I guess that's true. She's been, eh, busy. I guess she just had some free time for you today.”

  “Maybe. You know what they say, though?”

  “No, what?”

  “Fire the gun. Fire it!”

  A brief laugh. “All right, if you ins—”

  The stairwell became a deafening shooting gallery of gunfire. A combination of metallic clinks, ricochets off the cement, and the wet impacts of bullets on flesh intermingled in Victoria's ears. It only lasted for a few seconds, and when it stopped the only sounds remaining were those of bodies sliding down the steps. When they descended to the next landing, it became unnaturally silent.

  “Well, that worked out. Thank you, overwatch.”

  “Who?”

  On his knees, Hayes tapped his ear and turned to her. He wore a tiny ear piece. Whoever was on the other end had helped him. The disturbing thing was that he had to have prepared for this. Who could have anticipated he'd need help in this spot?

  “How?”

  He shushed her. “I plan ahead,” he said quietly.

  On her knees, she got a look at the door. It had been perforated by gunfire from the other side.

  Hayes was up and pushing through to the outside before she could ask another of her many questions. She caught sight of several floating drones.

  When she followed him through, it took great effort to follow him onto the rooftop. Three big, black drones hovered in formation about twenty feet from the door. All of them had guns which hung from the lower portion of their frames. Those guns still pointed at her and Hayes.

  “Uhh, Hayes?”

  “Don't sweat it. These are mine.”

  “One of these attacked me. Are you sure?” She didn't plan it consciously, but she had placed herself behind Hayes, relative to the drones.

  “I can see you don't trust me. We'd both be dead if these hadn't come along when they did. They're friendly.”

  “Yeah, real friendly.” Then, she made an association. “You were telling them to fire, weren't you.”

  “Smart girl. I was wondering if my feed was working,” he said with mock anger, she supposed he was talking to whoever was listening to him.

  “So what do we do now?” They still didn't have any weapons… “Hey, we can grab their rifles!”

  She turned to go back.

  “No, there will be more of them in the stairwell. These things will keep us safe until our white knight arrives.”

  She made it to the door before admitting he was right. If she went down the steps, she'd be outside the protection of the drones. As much as she wanted a gun, she would have to trust he knew what he was talking about.

  From twenty floors up, she could see for miles in the clear air of the early morning. Despite the whir of the mechanized copters nearby, she could hear the drone of a large plane somewhere above. Another aircraft—possibly a helicopter—whined out there, too.

  When the drone fired a shot into the stairwell, her heart ricocheted off both lungs.

  4

  She'd crouched down on the hard asphalt surface when the drone fired its gun, which turned out to be the right thing to do. Hayes was down with her, though he was faced the opposite way, still looking at the sky.

  “What are we doing here?” she shouted, afraid another shot was coming.

  “I told you. Rescue.”

  The three drones hovered nearby.

  “Those things rescued us, but what now?”

  Hayes spun around while crouched so he faced her. He wore a smile. His thatched shirt was damp with sweat.

  “We're going to jump.”

  Her expression was blank. She'd known him long enough to know he could seldom be trusted to tell the truth. Especially under stress.

  “That way.” He pointed to the next building, the top of which was just visible at about the same level as their rooftop. “Foll
ow me.”

  They ran from the drones and made it to the gap between the two buildings. It was about ten feet wide, though the roof edge was a few feet lower than theirs. The surface was covered in small brown pebbles.

  “There. That's where we're going.” He pointed to the far side of the next building, beyond a large bank of idle air conditioner fans. A series of steps led up to a flat platform big enough for a helicopter to land. There was a nearby pole with an orange sock-flag hanging limply from the top. The blinking lights were harder to see in the bright morning sun, but there was no doubt it was a rooftop landing pad.

  She demanded evidence as such because of what she had to do to get there. They were twenty floors up, and the narrow space between the buildings below was filled with overflowing garbage dumpsters. The trash had not been collected in weeks.

  “I could land in the trash,” she mused to herself.

  “No, you'd die,” Hayes responded with finality.

  She looked at him anew. “We have to jump this? Are you sure this is the only way?”

  “Yep. I know it doesn't look it, but I've got this planned out.”

  “How?”

  He tapped his ear again.

  While they conversed a small black drone floated up from the gap. “Hello, Douglas. Nice to see you,” a mechanical-sounding woman's voice belted out.

  “I wish I could say the same. Sorry about your men.”

  “Ha. Spare me the false sentiments. I've got prisons full of good help. You're not sorry about anything you've done in your whole life.”

  “Would you believe me if I said I was sorry that Dutch died?”

  The drone hovered. The thought process of the person on the other end was conveyed by the machine.

  “I'm going to get payback for what you and your friends took from me,” she said slowly and with clear enunciation.

  “I didn't kill him, though. You want the girl and her boyfriend,” he pleaded.

  Victoria found it distasteful, but very Hayes.

  “You let them go!” she screamed. Then, with a burning anger, she spoke quickly. “Don't think for a second you can get out of this. You let those kids go, then your dear wifey shot his team, leaving my guy outnumbered on that river crossing. Those kids were the bullet, but you pulled the trigger. It's how you do everything.”

  Hayes looked at Victoria. “Well, I had to try, right?” He still maintained his smile, but he was using his hands to wave her backward.

  She took a few steps back, which put some separation between herself, the drone, and Hayes.

  This is the part where he shoots me like a bullet…

  Her fears were confirmed when he motioned for her to jump the gap. He used his hands to signify a running person making a very obvious leap over something. As he did so, he moved the opposite direction on the roof, so they were both on opposite sides of the drone. She mimicked him by moving many yards beyond the edge. There was a small lip they'd have to clear as part of their effort.

  “Go!”

  Victoria froze. Hayes ran for it. With surprising speed he jumped the lip of the building, flew across the gap, then landed in a heap on the far side. She could just see his upper body because of her positioning.

  It was her turn. But before she could move one foot, a spinning drone blade whirred up from below where Hayes had just jumped. The white carapace had a menacing device underneath—a gun.

  “Now or never, Vicky!”

  The drone's gun had turned on Hayes, but he was watching her. Waving her on.

  She ran for it. As she neared the edge she had the inspiration to change directions. A slight course correction toward the smaller voice drone.

  She cleared the lip. Time ground to halt as she sailed the gap, and it appeared to give her enough time to both float and turn her head to see another drone rising at the exact spot where she'd been aiming. It would have been a mirror image of what happened to Hayes, but her drone had the advantage of coming into view the instant she jumped. If she'd gone with Hayes, they'd have both barely cleared it. If she'd gone late…

  She crashed on the rocky surface of the roof. The pea gravel forced her off her feet with a painful slide. Hayes grabbed her arm before she settled to a stop and she was back on her feet and on the run. Time was still running funny, and in her heightened awareness, she noticed the strange dart lodged in his right arm.

  “Run, girl, run!” she thought.

  5

  They'd gotten between the industrial air conditioners. The galvanized steel sheets of the outer skins of the units made it easy to slide between them. They were arranged in rows and columns, so they could hide from view of the two drones while they planned their next move.

  “What were those things?”

  “Part of the plan, my dear. I told you I like to plan ahead. Well, that's kind of a motto of these people.”

  “Like, they have special drones that try to catch people jumping buildings?” she asked with mock wonder.

  He ignored her tone. “They have drones to help them get control of a city filled with zombies. I don't know what their functions are, exactly, but it fits their modus operandi. Why spend manpower killing zombies, spreading the infection, etcetera, when you can build a bunch of drones to go out—night and day—killing the plague victims.”

  “And potential plague victims,” she said with understanding.

  “Yes.” He paused, breathing hard from their exertion. “I guess that's what they'd do. Kill everyone.” His smile was gone. “They're thinking far ahead.”

  “Hans said his family had been planning for something since the second World War,” she volunteered. Hans' secret was out of the bag.

  “The NIS is a government agency, but it is also a way of life for these people. They watched over the levers of state while privately planning for its collapse. My wife's, uh, family, hinted as much. But my interest was in medicine and immunology. I didn't care about stockpiling berets in secret mines. I always thought that was kind of crazy.”

  It was Victoria's turn to laugh. “We're in the Zombie Apocalypse, now. I think every kind of crazy is back on the table. And Hans was proof they knew how to stockpile.”

  “So what do we do now? What was that spiky thing in your arm?”

  “It was either a poison dart, or a mixed drink swizzle stick,” he snickered.

  She looked at him with a suitable frown. And a touch of fear. Of all the rotten luck, she figured if Hayes died here on this rooftop, she'd follow soon after.

  “Don't worry. If it was poison, we'd be short one man already.”

  Always a joke.

  A rush of air washed over them. A drone was nearby. A big one.

  “Who was talking on the little drone? Elsa, I assume?”

  “In the flesh. Though I have no idea where she is. She could control that drone from Afghanistan if she wanted.”

  By a coincidence of timing, the small talkie drone appeared just overhead. The space between the air conditioners was wide enough for the small thing to drop in, if it wanted. For now, it hung a few feet above the units.

  “You can't hide in there forever. I'll get control of those drones you hacked, and my men will be along shortly to collect you. I was going to make your death simple and fast, but you're costing me time and men. I think I'm going to have to change my plans and make your death a little more...painful.” The drone laughed.

  “I got us painful death. Sorry about that,” Hayes joked.

  Liam! I need you.

  She willed her thoughts to reach out to him, hoping by some miracle he would ride to her rescue. She didn't believe for a second that he'd fallen into a trap or had been killed or captured. Even if she couldn't hear his thoughts, she felt his presence.

  “You have to get us out of here, Hayes. Tell me you have a plan?”

  “Oh, I do.”

  “He always has a plan,” said the drone. “This time, his plan has failed. I'm almost through to those drones.”

  Hayes whispered. “S
he wouldn't say that unless she was having trouble,” he said with a wink.

  “Get ready to run,” he said, almost too quiet to hear.

  Louder, he said, “Vicky has a hidden gun. It's going to cost you some more men to come in and get us.”

  “Oh, Douglas. You're such a terrible liar. As a man, you wouldn't understand how absurd that statement was. She was patted down. Her clothing wouldn't allow a pocket knife to be hidden, much less a big bad gun. Care to try again?”

  Hayes counted off with his fingers.

  Three.

  Two.

  One finger, up to the drone.

  He ran. She followed him along the central column between the long rows of A/C units. They were going toward the far end and the landing platform.

  “It's going to be close,” Hayes shouted back to her.

  “What is? What are we doing?”

  “Just run!”

  As if I have a choice.

  They cleared the last unit and were in the open. For the moment the air was clear of any air traffic. They hit the steps up to the flat landing platform, hopping a small gate on the top step which said: “Danger: Spinning Rotors” in mean lettering.

  Hayes crouched just inside the gate. When she settled next to him, they both looked back. The three drones on the other building were still hovering in front of the exit doorway.

  “One of the drones is down,” he said plainly.

  Looking again, she'd been mistaken. The third drone was over there, but it had landed, and its rotor was slowly spinning down.

  “If she can't take control, all she has to do is turn them off.”

  A second drone was descending, too.

  The two white drones still hovered high above. Hayes nodded to them.

  “They'll come down when given the orders. There's no way they didn't see us run up here.”

  Moments went by. She knew they'd be swooping in, and they had no defenses up on the flat surface of the helipad.

  6

  The two drones above began moving their way. The little black “talkie” joined them like a cattle dog driving the sheep.

  A gust of air caught them from behind, nearly pushing Victoria into the protective gate. A white helicopter had come in at high speed from somewhere behind them, and it was angled up steeply as it tried to rid itself of speed.