Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  The youngest girl was in tears, but the oldest had the same defiant look of her mother. She had a few bruises, too.

  “She's brainwashed, Sam. Her, her friends,” he pointed at the oldest girl, “and her daughters. Look at the anger there. That's why we're all here today. I'm gonna take that anger right out of 'em. Turn it into fear. That's what these women need. A little fear will go a long way to making things right in this new world. They got to know their place.”

  Liam was desperate for something to keep the giant talking while he glided innocent-like toward the gun. “Is Margaret your wife?”

  Wilder turned his bulk to Liam. “Why do you ask? Is she giving you googly-eyes?”

  “No. No, sir.”

  “It doesn't matter. It's safe to say we've both dabbled. And yes, she is my wife, but she started out as my nurse.” His face turned serious like a switch had been thrown. “Now? I think our new business has ruined whatever we had. She only wants to help them, not me.” He pointed out the window again.

  “The zombies?” Liam asked with surprise.

  “Zombies? What the hell, son? No, I'm talking about the women who came to me in droves since the end of the world.”

  Liam had no idea what he was talking about. He was a doctor of some kind, that much was easy to figure out because it said Winter Sage Clinic by the front door, but what doctor would end up hammering nets over their patients in a sick place like the farmhouse? He thought of television shows and the best he could come up with was something he was almost embarrassed to suggest.

  “Are you a plastic surgeon?”

  The oldest girl gave him an incredulous glare-he'd seen it before from Victoria. The one that said he'd managed to break a world record for asking a stupid question.

  Wilder laughed uncontrollably and the girl shook her head like Liam was a lost cause.

  “You are rich, kid. Where did Margaret find you? Did the recruiters nab you but throw you back?”

  He had no response. He was several levels deep in his hole of mass confusion.

  “I don't deal with the outside of women's bodies. I deal with what's inside. With what wants to be got out.”

  He looked around the room again, sweeping Wilder, the resilient brown woman and her heavier than normal young daughter and knew in that moment what he'd stumbled into. What such a gigantic man would be doing with these women out in the middle of nowhere. He spoke just loud enough to be heard over the noises outside the house, but low enough to be respectful.

  “This is some kind of fat-shaming camp, isn't it?”

  The older girl flung her head back, so it thunked on the hollow wall.

  4

  Wilder laughed at Liam so long that he came away with tears and a runny nose. Liam found it disgusting, even ignoring the fact he was the object of such hilarity. He'd been wrong in his guess, but he couldn't figure out what made it so funny.

  “Sam, you might be the dumbest teenager I've ever come across. And trust me when I tell you I've seen some of the dumbest.” He started to laugh more, but held it in. “No, not fat camp. This is more like a-how shall we say it-a baby extraction camp.”

  Liam searched his literature. He tended to skip the sections of his books where babies were involved. There was always a baby born in zombie books-sometimes it was living, others it was a little zombie. He got tired of the trope. But what if babies were zombies? Then having someone pull them out would be a good thing. How would one know?

  Heartbeat, you dummy.

  If the baby had no heartbeat, could it safely be assumed it was a zombie? He didn't know. Did zombies have a heartbeat? Did they have a circulatory system? How did they process the blood they ingested? Suddenly he had a bunch of questions about the creatures he'd been avoiding for weeks.

  Maybe a mother would feel the baby, even if it was a little zombie. In that case, there'd be no way to know if it was alive or dead inside. If it continued to have a heartbeat as a zombie, and continued to move as a living baby, how could anyone know its status?

  Maybe the decision to get it out simply came down to the perception of the person carrying it. If the mother thinks it's a monster, she could have it removed. If she thought it was a regular baby, no problem. But what if a monster came out, after all that waiting? He'd be scared of that result, too. But what would he do in those shoes?

  A pre-emptive removal. An abor--

  “Oh, geez.”

  His lame realization sent Wilder into another fit of laughter. He slapped his thigh a few times like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, but then he got serious. “Of course, since I'm in the biz, the townsfolk and farmers nearby brought me their dead kids to bury. That does something to a man, you know?” He glanced at Liam for a few seconds, then burst out in laughter once more as if remembering Liam's dumb look.

  Liam couldn't contain his anger.

  That's it!

  His fury and embarrassment prodded him as sure as any whip. Dozens of beer cans flew into the air as he fell on the mattress, but he ignored them and grabbed for the gun hidden near the wall. His hand felt around at the spot where he was sure Wilder had placed it, but found nothing. He looked over into the few inches between the mattress and the wall to confirm it was gone.

  “My god, you truly are a dumb kid. You think I'd leave my weapon lying there all stupid-like and just waiting to be took?”

  Liam sprang to his feet, but Wilder had his gun pointed at him from ten feet away.

  “I should just shoot you dead right here and now, but my wife would be upset if I killed one of her helpers-even a very dumb one. So, we gonna have trouble, or not? Why don't you lay down that fancy knife I see sticking out of your pocket?”

  He pulled out the knife, watching carefully as the blood came off the metal when it rubbed against his pants.

  This isn't how it ends.

  For one second, he made like he was going to bend over and set the knife on the bed, but he used his position to wind up a throw and whip the knife side-arm toward the battleship-sized target. It brought back the memory of throwing that other knife into his zombie father's back as he fell off the barge not two hours ago.

  “Whoa!” Wilder screamed as he stepped back to avoid the strike. The knife went under his raised arm and impacted the wall where the girls stood. Wilder recovered and aimed the gun at Liam.

  “Aw crap!” he yelled as he looked at escaping through the door.

  Wilder opened fire with the revolver and the sound of the first shot was a heavy metal eleven on the volume dial.

  Liam ducked out of habit, but before he got off the mattress his foot tore through the worn fabric and he fell face-first onto the wooden floor. His shoe was caught in the bedspring and he had to move backward to untangle himself. He felt his luck had finally, and completely, run out.

  Wilder fired his gun over and over. Liam was close enough to smell the acrid smoke of each shot and he even felt the jet of gas come out with each bullet.

  “Stand still, you little puke.”

  Liam realized his unpredictable motions may have saved his life. He was still attempting to get his shoe free of the springs when he heard the hammer pound metal without a corresponding gun shot. Liam stood hesitantly, with one foot still stuck in the inner workings of the bed, while he took stock. He wondered if the bare-chested hulk of a man had more bullets hidden somewhere.

  Wilder threw the gun at him and the impact actually hurt his collarbone.

  “Sonofa!” Liam blurted out.

  The big man moved toward him and had his hand on his arm before he could think of a counter. The meaty paw swallowed his forearm and pushed him back onto the mattress but his foot remained painfully lodged in the springs as Wilder smashed him down.

  “Take a seat, little man,” he shouted.

  Liam felt like he was in a movie watching it all play out. He guessed the man was every bit of four-hundred pounds. That was painful and pointed to an ill-end, but he was mostly disgusted by his sweaty skin, the nasty chest
hair of his open shirt, and industrial accident level of body odor.

  In moments, he couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe with the deadweight on top of him. He was disappointed in himself for letting Victoria down, but he also felt bad he hadn't been able to save the woman and her family. That would have been a nice addition to his yet-to-be-written book on the end of the world.

  “I'll tell you, little man. I don't care if you are Margaret's long-lost love child. When you try to kill me, I do kill you. It's the new law in the Apocalypse.” He was winded, too. Even the act of falling down had tired him, but his job was far easier than Liam's.

  He tried to work his arms to jab the man, but the best he could manage was the energy of a sad tickle. “Night, night,” the man replied in a dreamy echo.

  Wilder continued. “Ow. What's that?”

  The pressure on Liam let up, just a tiny bit.

  A wet slap noise came from somewhere nearby. Liam heard it despite the ringing in his ears from the gunshots at close quarters.

  “Ugh,” Wilder said as if unsure what was happening.

  A second wet slap followed.

  “Ugh,” the giant man repeated.

  The wet slap sound happened over and over and over. He lost count somewhere around twenty.

  Wilder spoke again while looking at Liam's face, though it made no sense. “You bitch.” He attempted to lift himself off Liam, but his arms wobbled.

  Slap. Slap. Slap.

  Blood came from over Wilder's shoulder and it dripped onto Liam and the mattress.

  Slap. Slap.

  A girl's warped face appeared over Wilder's shoulder. It was the older of the girls from the wall. The flash of a knife appeared, along with a sick grin, then she sank the blade into the shoulder of her tormentor.

  “Margaret, help! Get her off!” Wilder spun to the side and crushed Liam further into the mattress. His big arm caught the girl, so she flew backwards, and Wilder went after her. When he released Liam, he had to lie there and catch his breath in huge.

  “I'm going to kill you, and then your mom, and then your two sisters. You're all dead now.”

  Liam's chest heaved several more times, but he began his effort to free himself. He was in a dire hurry, so he tried yanking his foot right out of the snagged shoe. After the second or third try, it came out with several stinging jabs of the metal, but he got back to his feet and ignored any pain. Like so many scrapes with death in the past, he understood what was at stake, now. The big man was injured but wanted to take someone down with him.

  Wilder stood in front of the fallen girl. His hit must have knocked her out. The fat man seemed unable to decide if he should strike the girl again or go after the others on the wall.

  “I'm gonna kill you all,” Wilder repeated robotically.

  The big man had a dozen bloody holes in the backside of his shirt. He was up on his feet, but Liam wagered the man was really hurt because he swayed a bit as he trudged toward Sabella.

  “Your daughters are just as annoying as you,” he said with tired anger. He slapped her, but it lacked the impact of his previous strike.

  “Let them go and you can have me,” she pleaded in a rushed voice. “I won't make any trouble if you spare them.”

  “Not on your life, bichhh,” he slurred. “Margey, where are you?”

  Liam used the distraction of the conversation to make his move.

  “Don't try it, boy,” Wilder shouted with what passed for authority in his voice. Liam paid him no heed. He scrambled behind the towering man and picked up the knife from where the girl had dropped it. He had a momentary vision of a Bible story about David and Goliath, though he couldn't place odds on the fight inside the room. On his feet, his tiny knife glistened with Wilder's blood.

  He threw himself at the fat man with the knife firmly in his right hand. Wilder came at him, too, but jerked back for a second because Sabella had snared his hand with one of the ropes. It was a minor distraction, but it was just what Liam needed.

  He'd read a lot of books spanning many different genres. Two popped in his head at that moment. The first was about a whole audience from a rock concert who got abducted and had to fight each other to the death for the pleasure of some aliens. One of the fighters had to bite into the other man's artery near his groin to stay alive. He doubted, even here, he could do such a thing. But the other story he recalled from one of his least favorite classes: Classical Literature. He'd learned about Achilles and his one weakness.

  Rather than try to take on the huge man in a fruitless head-to-head matchup, he slid on the floor, lined up his knife with the back of Wilder's ankle, then gave it a sickening jerk into the meaty tendons back there.

  Liam was horrified by the blood that spurted out. It was a geyser spray that shot all over him and Sabella.

  “Margaret. Help me dammit!” His call for assistance wasn't nearly loud enough to be heard downstairs.

  Wilder stepped sideways so he could see Liam.

  “Damn you, Sam,” Wilder declared, finally sounding like defeat was in his voice. “I'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do!” The big guy lined himself up to fall on Liam.

  No way am I dying like a pancake.

  He rolled himself like a hot dog. First, he took a few spins toward the door but then stopped when he guessed Wilder had committed himself. He hopped himself onto the mattress just as the weight of the dying man impacted the floor. The giant's fall rattled the walls.

  Wilder groaned in pain but Liam didn't feel sorry for him. His severed ankle continued to spray haphazardly around the room, but it got weaker in spurts.

  “All I wanted was that bitch to pay for shadowing me all those years. I guess it won't be me, though. Maybe you can get her killed. I know what's outside ... we're all dead anyway. I just wanted to have some fun until ... ”

  He drifted off, leaving Liam to wonder if he was dead.

  Liam sat up on the floor, but he jumped when Wilder continued talking.

  “I said, all I wanted ... some fun.”

  “You won't have any fun where you're going,” Liam replied.

  Wilder whimpered once as if he stood on the bridge between this world and the next and could see what awaited him, but then he stopped breathing and fell still.

  Liam stood up and backed away. Finally, he could look at the woman on the wall with the sympathy she deserved.

  5

  He stood in front of the mother with the knife in his hand.

  “I was never with him,” he said quickly. “I just had to wait for my moment to attack him.”

  “I don't care who you are. You saved us.”

  She looked down at his knife. “Don't worry about me. Help my daughter.”

  Ignoring her, he cut the net, so her hand was free and then he handed her the knife. “Here, cut yourself out. I'll check on her.”

  The fallen girl's gold jewelry lay all over the floor like it had run off when she hit the ground. He kicked away some of the trinkets to clear the floor and pulled her to a sitting position near the back window.

  “Hello? Anyone home?” The girl's eyes were half-open, but they seemed out of focus.

  He looked at the woman, now cutting her little girl out of the net. “What's her name?”

  “Leah.”

  “Oh, hey, Leah. You in there?” He gently held her upright by putting both hands on her shoulders.

  “Is Mom alive?” she said in a groggy voice.

  “Yes,” he replied. “You saved me, too, so thank you.”

  “You threw the knife at my face,” Leah replied like it was no big deal.

  “Uh, sorry about that. I was aiming for the fat man.”

  Leah chuckled. “He was disgusting.”

  “Agreed,” Liam replied.

  The mother freed the little girl and Liam expected her to come over and tend to her injured daughter, but she went knife-in-hand over to Wilder's body and set upon him like a mad woman. The slapping sounds came fast and furious with her grunts as she plun
ged the knife into the corpse repeatedly. Her final act was to madly drive the knife deep into his throat, as if to forever silence his tormenting voice.

  Breathing hard, Sabella came over to him with anger in her eyes. She was also covered by the blood spray from Wilder's ankle and that made her seem absolutely insane. “No one messes with my daughters.”

  Liam shook his head with gusto and held up his hands in surrender. The woman had a look in her eyes that was one part crazy and one part deadly. She'd left the knife in Wilder, but the blood on her hands was evidence enough she really didn't need it.

  “Are you and I going to have trouble?”

  He'd been tending to the older daughter out of a sincere desire to help, but after all they'd been through he could imagine how he might appear.

  “No. I, uh, told you the truth. I don't belong here. These freaks threw me out the front door and I almost got killed by the zombies. I had to climb on the roof to stay alive.”

  Sabella looked at him for a moment, then ripped the jewelry off her body. First the tiaras and other easy stuff. She grabbed the necklaces by the fistful and yanked them over her head. She pulled off rings and bracelets and let them all fall to the wooden floor. She winced as she pulled out the bloody earrings. The young girl helped the older one still sitting on the floor. In the end, Sabella kept on a single simple necklace with a cross hanging from it.

  Much as it did when he met Victoria, he felt comforted.

  “You're Christians?” he asked while pointing to the necklace.

  “Yuh huh,” she replied. “Aren't you?”

  Liam raised his shoulders, honestly unsure what he'd call himself.

  “This necklace is the only religious item I got to take with me when my parents left Egypt for the last time. Our kind weren't welcome there, as you probably know ... ”

  Liam didn't know, but he nodded anyway.

  “All this garbage means nothing to me,” she pointed to the gold, silver, and gems she'd tossed down. “Only my daughters and my Savior matter out here.”

  “Uh huh,” he said to keep her talking.

  “You gotta get right with God before it's too late. I do admit, however, you were the answer to my prayers. You came along at just the right time, so maybe you and the big man have some kind of arrangement?” Her voice was now clear and strong, with a touch of a southern accent.