He silently thanked his people for not trying to follow him.
Elsa would expect me to roll in with my tanks and machine guns. She’ll never expect a lowly old general to sneak up on her.
Getting to the Missouri bridge was harder than it looked. The ground to the south and west of town was wide open and flat, which was perfect terrain to be seen by the fastest zombies devouring the rest of Cairo. Several times he had to line up his shots and put down runners as they approached him.
He breathed in deep heaves when he reached the rough shoreline next to the procession of barges floating in the Mississippi. The Blackhawk still drifted near where it had been, and now he could see ropes being tossed down from the open rear compartment.
There was no thought of taking things slow and reconnoitering the site from the safety of the woods. The zombies saw him on the open fields, and there were too many behind him.
Whatever was going to happen, he’d lost the element of surprise.
The helicopter seemed to settle over one of the outermost barges still attached to a small towboat. There was a primitive walkway over all the barges between the shore and that outer barge. He got to the top of the first ramp. He kicked the plank so he couldn't be followed by the zombies. There was about a five-foot differential any zombie would have to climb if they wanted to follow him. He'd prefer fifty feet, but it was better than zero.
Far ahead, a pair of young kids each escorted a hunched-over old lady. They walked the decks of the barges tethered together, but he guessed they were going to the same destination as him, under the helicopter. Like magic, they all moved toward the same spot.
“What the hell?” He ducked down behind some maritime equipment on the front of one of the barges.
The kids looked up at the helicopter, but went down, out of his sight.
He wanted to run toward the action, but a direct charge against a Blackhawk was folly.
He stayed low and moved in a different direction.
Chapter 19: Uptalk
The drones kept their station near the exit of the barge. Victoria and Jane had just enough time to chat with the small number of awake elderly in the boat before another disturbance drew everyone's attention to the stairs again.
Two sets of feet started down. She somewhat recognized the teen girl holding a senior citizen companion.
Victoria watched as the young woman reached the metal floor of the makeshift hospital barge. The old woman on her arm wasn’t Marty. She had mixed feelings. Wouldn't Grandma be in a boat full of people her age? But if they were collecting the elderly, wouldn't it be better she wasn't there?
A second couple came down the steps behind her, and her roller coaster emotions headed upward again. It wasn't her. A teenaged boy with sloppy hair helped the elderly woman to the base of the steps. She moved a step in that direction, then stopped when she confirmed who he was.
“Liam!”
He looked up at her, then made sure the two little old ladies helped each other stand, and finally ran to her.
They closed thirty or so feet of distance and were seemingly about to throw themselves into an embrace when Victoria pulled up short and pushed out her arm to him.
“Wait, Liam. Just wait.”
“What?”
“I, uh. Need a moment.”
She wanted to tell him she was infected, but with all her soul she wanted to experience the comfort of his arms. Though it had only been a couple days, it felt like they’d been separated for a lifetime. Now was the time to indulge in expressions of love and assurances such a time apart would never happen again.
But what if I’m infected?
Her mind was very confused at the lengthy chain of questions she now had for herself.
Was she infected? That was the foundation for all the rest. If she was infected, when did she get the virus? Or, more properly, did she already expose Liam to its effects. What if he was immune, like Marty? Then it would be OK to hug him.
We haven’t shared everything, but we’ve shared enough.
They’d breathed the same air. Shared the same food. Even kissed.
She had to hug him. Her body screamed for her to do it.
“I think...I think I’m infected,” she said with deep sadness. “I don’t want you to get it,” she tossed the words like a dead fish onto the cutting board.
Liam took some time to interpret her words and the emotions behind them. She saw his mind working by reading his face. The rest of the room could have been on fire, but her attention was on him.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure I’m actually infected. Hayes told me,” she said flatly.
“Hayes?” He looked around, finally noticing her traveling partner, Jane.
“What’s she doing here?”
“Hi,” Jane said, “I saved your girlfriend’s life, so you’re welcome.” She wasn’t mean about it, but wasn’t exactly friendly, either.
Liam’s head was on a swivel.
“He’s not here, Liam. Hayes.”
“Where'd he go?”
“He got out of the helicopter somewhere on the way. A big concrete factory.”
She noted he was unarmed. Debbie carried a double-barreled shotgun, though. It stoked her curiosity, but first, she had to resolve the present crisis.
“Liam, listen. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think we—Jane and Doug included—are being hunted.”
“I came here because you have a tracking device on you. Maybe, in you.” He pointed to her chest.
“Liam, I’m scared,” she said it quietly, hoping only he would hear.
“Me too. I have so much I want to tell you.”
“I do, too. But you can’t touch me.” She stepped back once, to emphasize her point. Her voice cracked at the final two words.
Liam stepped forward one step. “I don’t know what to say. You don’t look like a zombie,” he said with a smile.
“No, it’s not like that. Hayes said there are carriers of the disease who don’t know they have it. They go out and infect others...”
“Hayes,” he said angrily. “How did he find you? What's his deal?”
“I don’t know how to explain it. Hayes saved my life, the same as Jane did.”
She saw the conflict on his face.
“You can’t trust him. I don’t trust him. I don’t think you can possibly be infected. You’ve been with me...”
She assumed he meant to end that with “the whole time,” but both knew that wasn’t true. Even when they were together on their adventures, there were periods when they were separated. Like when she was shot.
He changed his line of reasoning. “Victoria. I love you. We’ve been together, uh, in close proximity, that if you had any sickness, I’m sure I would have caught it.” He winked at her.
She wanted to believe his words. But if he was wrong, she’d kill him just as surely as if she was a zombie.
“I can’t be certain. I would never want to risk your life. Not like this.”
Before she knew what was happening, he had rushed in and wrapped his arms around her. She melted into him with an emotional sob.
“Liam, no…”
“Silly girl,” he whispered, “where you go, I go. There’s no way you can be infected.”
“You can touch me, but we shouldn’t—”
He kissed her. She tasted the salt of her own tears, and she embraced him. In front of the sick in the beds, Jane, Debbie, and numerous drone operators sitting who-knows-where, she finally allowed herself to risk her feelings, and her life, with Liam.
Her belief that she was infected receded into an inconsequential corner of her mind. The incident with the zombie girl in the red dress was just a coincidence. Hayes was the liar he'd always been.
The rest of her brain embraced the soul of her Zombie Apocalypse partner.
Thank you, Liam, for accepting me.
2
“We’re in this together, and I don’t believe fo
r a second you’re infected,” Liam assured her.
The teen girl interrupted. “Excuse me, um, Liam. Hi, Victoria. Can you help me get these women to their beds?”
His face looked as confused as her own. “I don’t know, Debbie,” he said in a whisper.
Debbie walked a few feet away, then turned back when she saw Liam hadn't moved. “Liam. Help me,” she said with a touch of anger.
“OK, right.” He smiled at Victoria, gripped her arms tightly as a reassurance, then walked off. He eyed her rifle with a deliberate glance.
The instant he was gone, Jane sidled up to her. “I can’t figure out what this place is supposed to be. There are no doctors or nurses.”
Victoria scanned the room—it was like the experiment back at Washington University in some ways—but she couldn’t solve it, either. Debbie guided Liam and the two women to the closest beds.
“We should go,” Jane whispered, almost in her ear, “while we still can.”
“Those drones could shoot us if they wanted us dead. I’ve seen them,” she whispered back.
“We have to try. I can’t...we can’t get trapped, like this.”
She looked at Jane anew. Her red hair had become messed up from her headphones, and windblown from the air whipping through their helicopter. Her face remained unemotional, even as she sounded scared. It was impossible to read her.
“Did you know this would happen? That we would get trapped?” Victoria had learned enough over the weeks to never underestimate anyone.
“No. You were supposed to take us to Marty, remember? Now we're in some laboratory from Hell.”
Victoria looked around. “It doesn't look that bad.”
Jane firmly gripped her arm. “Haven't you been paying attention? Someone wants us dead. They want Douglas and me to die—”
“Because of Duchesne.”
“Bah. That's the easy answer. Revenge. You've been part of this almost since the beginning. This can't be a coincidence. It just can't be.” She ran her hand through her sweaty hair, apparently not pretending at being worried. “Duchesne came for Marty. He could have killed us on the spot. You were there.”
The NIS agent had them dead to rights. That was true. But he left Hayes and Jane in what might be billed as an overly elaborate plan to kill them later. Why not just put bullets in their heads?
“And how is this girl involved?” she indicated Debbie, now helping settle in one of the old ladies. The woman wore a light green pantsuit, reminding her of Grandma Marty when they'd first met. She seemed docile in the face of so many guns.
Liam's charge, perhaps because he had no gun, was much more vocal. She yelled for a nurse over and over as he guided her to a bed.
“Nurse, I don't want to be here!”
Liam said something, but Victoria was out of earshot. He was probably trying to say something funny to her, though it wasn't working. Debbie put an end to her complaints when she came over brandishing her shotgun. Liam stepped back from the bed, surely thinking of whether to overpower the girl.
“I think I recognize her from the house where Grandma and I waited for Liam to get better after our escape from...Duchesne. There were lots of other teens in the house, and I'm pretty sure she was there.” She couldn't be positive as it was hard to identify people from always seeing the tops of their heads as they leaned down to their tablets and smartphones. She wished she would have taken the time to get to know them. Make allies. Identify enemies.
Debbie and Liam returned, and the four of them formed a tight knot in between two rows of beds, about twenty or thirty feet from the wide stairwell—and the hovering drones.
“Debbie. Why are you bringing people to this boat?” Jane asked with innocence.
The girl stood very close to Liam, and her gun was pointed directly at the floor. Any one of them could overpower her in a second, yet no one did. Behind Debbie, the drones remaining menacingly stationary.
“I'm, like, an assistant to the Mayor of the town. He asked me to keep watch on any elderly people I could find while things were nice. But, um, when the town, like, um, got zombie-fied, and stuff, he told me I could be a big help by evacuating these—” she waved around the room “—million-year-old people.”
Victoria was about to reply, but Debbie continued.
“He said that, um...I could, like, have any car I wanted. I could get away,” she said with seriousness. “It was easy, until, like, now. Most people wanted to get out of the town before those, um, things, ate them.”
“But what happened to these people?” Jane interjected.
“What do you mean?”
Jane huffed in frustration. “They aren't awake! Can't you see that? This whole thing—it isn't normal.”
“How am I supposed to know? I'm, like, just the delivery girl.”
She spoke with an annoying uptalk. Victoria thought she sounded like she'd spent her life watching her tablet, instead of paying attention in school.
“But, like, the owner of this boat is almost here,” she said evenly.
Liam, this might be it.
She tried to talk to him using her mind. Willing him to know how she felt.
I love you, no matter how this ends.
Chapter 20: John Wayne
John watched as the Blackhawk maneuvered over the river. He was positive it didn't belong. Whatever it was doing, he had to know. Though not a gambling man, he'd bet Elsa was in that chopper. The ropes hung down, and someone at the top had come to the door...waiting.
From where he was, it might be possible to walk to hundreds of the interlocking barges sitting on the waterway. But the one under the helicopter was his destination.
He hunched over and pretended he was forty years older.
This is nuts.
He figured he had two cards to play. Either he could charge in, bullets flying, or he could labor in as if he were a disoriented old man. And what better way to play the old man than to wander the barges as if he were lost? To him, it made sense.
It pained him to do it, but he placed the rifle in a cranny behind some spools of metallic wire. No old timer would wander around with a gun slung over his shoulder. He still had his pistol and had no intention of throwing that down.
He rubbed his sunburned head. His scalp and thinning hair yelled at him for losing his hat. If he'd been forty years younger, the prospect of sneaking up on a mysterious situation might even have thrilled him. Now, his legs felt heavy as he jumped the short way from the first boat to the second. No one bothered to put ramps between them other than the direct route to the helicopter.
For many minutes he bounced from barge to barge, but always he moved closer to the one he wanted. There was some concern he would be mistaken for a zombie—he could see scores of them on the shore—so he stopped frequently to rub his back or tie his shoes. Things no zombie would do.
“I need some luck,” he said to his shoes on one stoppage.
Luck isn't a tactic, John.
As he neared the action, he lost faith in himself. Any second he would get noticed. Or shot. Or worse—captured.
His zig-zag path took him to an open-topped barge parked diagonally upriver from his target. The pile of bodies inside made him stop. The container was mostly empty, but near one corner a hundred bodies lay in a heap like they'd been tossed down from the top deck.
He'd seen plenty of corpses the last few weeks. Enough to last a lifetime. But these made him consider stopping his charade and run back to his tanks and forget this little side trip. They were all elderly. Most he recognized by their skin color as local townsfolk—a good portion were ancient black women. They were dressed in a colorful, but macabre heap—hands, heads, and shoes poked out the edges. One mixed group of gray-haired men was dressed in orange jumpsuits like they'd been taken from a prison. In fact…
He looked closer. They were chained together.
My God. What is this?
The ship stank. The bodies had been in the hot sun for too long.
Unw
illing to give up on his mission, he closed the distance to the towboat. The tinted windows of the bridge wrapped around the superstructure, and he assumed he was being watched. Surely, the men in the helicopter had seen him, though somewhere along the line the people up there had roped down. His situational awareness was a disaster.
He pressed forward and got onto the deck of the all-white towboat. It was designed to push the flat cargo containers up and down the river and was the width of one barge. It happened to be paired to just one of those vessels. The helicopter hung above it, with two long ropes hanging down to the deck of the barge, confirming he had gone about this the right way.
The door into the crew space was marked with a series of imposing warnings stenciled onto the paint.
“Property of Ste. Genevieve Cement Fabrika.”
“MOPP 4 required beyond this point.”
A pair of logos—one for nuclear and one for biohazard—rounded out the advertising on the door.
No, at the very bottom, a comparatively gentle warning advised that hardhats are also required.
“I don't even have that,” he said to himself.
He went for the handle, but it was locked.
Sensing he was running out of time, he followed some steps up to a narrow deck which ran along the outside window of the bridge on the second level. From up there he could see the length of the barge. A satellite dish was on the near end. At the far end, there was a hole in the outer covering and some steps going down.
He put his face up against the window of the bridge—right at the corner. He hoped he could get some intel on who was running the boat, but he was disappointed. He could see nothing. Next to the window, a nearby door had a small porthole window, but he didn't see anything through there, either.
“OK, we'll do it the hard way,” he said in a normal voice as he pulled out his pistol.
He raised his arm, intending to strike at the window where he'd just been peeking in.
That's when the mechanical lock of the door cycled, and it swung open a few inches.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 169