Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Brains!

  The man fell in a heap to the patio pavers without making a sound. The zombie took the cleaver with him, because it was stuck in the bone. The second zombie raised the alarm, however, as it came for him. In those few seconds Liam had to decide if he should mess with the big blade, pull out his smaller knife, or run for the grill and just get it over with. He selected the grill, which sat about the same distance between him and the zombie.

  It was no contest because this wasn't one of the fast zombies. Liam made it to the stainless-steel barbecue grill a couple of seconds before the walking zombie was going to reach him. The cooker was on rollers, which made it easy to get it going.

  A howl went up from the infected on the other side of the row of shrubs. He was now on borrowed time because they'd definitely come for him.

  “Run, the white elephants are loose!” he said as he remembered something random his dad used to say.

  The pursuing zombie man was shorter and heavier than the first. It walked surprisingly slow, giving Liam the time he needed to make it to the door. The grill would roll in just ahead of the zombie-if he was lucky.

  But when he got close to the door, Sabella remained parked behind the glass. She pointed off to the side. He let the unit slam into the closed door, then pulled out his knife. His anger swelled as he turned to meet the ashen-faced man.

  The swirl of colors beyond the hedge wasn't his concern. The red-shirted man was.

  They met right behind the grill, and the man's momentum carried them both into the cooker's lid, nearly tipping the whole thing over. In seconds he had two hands attached to his arms as he fell sideways. The knife remained in his hand, but he couldn't get it to a position where it would do any good.

  He slammed to the stonework of the patio and tried to keep the zombie from getting directly on top of him. They rolled back and forth as he tried to maintain the upper hand. Whatever the zombie thought about the strategy of the fight, his main concern appeared to be getting his jaw closer to Liam's neck. That's when he pulled up his knee to the man's stomach, attempting to use it as a wedge to maintain some distance. When he forced his knee upward, it induced the rotting man to unload the contents of his stomach right on Liam's chest.

  He didn't look at it. Whatever it was, the stuff was cold and smelled exactly like a dead animal on the side of the road. It took all of his strength to hold the sicko at bay, but his real surprise came as the grill chassis rolled away-into the house.

  “Help!” he called out.

  The zombie used its own stomach contents to grease the skids and get his face ever closer to Liam's. For the first time since the sirens, he got a good look at the diseased gray skin, the pockmarks of broken blood vessels everywhere possible, and eyes that were bright red from so much blood running from them. The man wasn't breathing on him, which was a relief, but the proximity of his horrible mouth was enough to make him queasy.

  “Don't leave me out here,” he said with declining strength. The fight with the zombie was at a stalemate, but he knew only one of them had unlimited energy.

  “Help me!” he squawked.

  3

  The knife was still in his hand, but there was nowhere to stick it that would hurt the creature. At best he might inconvenience him with a poke in the side of his rib cage. Maybe that's the way he was meant to go out. Always fighting until the very last moment.

  “No,” he screamed. Then, he pushed with all he had left ... and did get the man to budge an inch. It was like he was superhuman. The only thing keeping the game alive was his leg and knee because it kept the zombie off balance.

  “Victoria!” he shouted with all the breath he had left. He knew she wouldn't come in to rescue him, but it felt right to say her name. The feeling of defiance grew inside of him and Liam looked right in the man's vacant eyes. The hungry orbs looked back at him for a moment but then they opened wide-almost like the zombie man was surprised.

  Black fluid leaked from behind the zombie's ears and fell in a stream onto Liam's face. The smell was even worse than the man's corpse-tacular breath, and he screamed in horror like a little kid.

  “Oh, shut up, Liam. I wasn't going to leave you.”

  “Sabella,” he exhaled in relief.

  She pushed the zombie from his chest, then grabbed his shirt behind his shoulders and dragged him on his back all the way inside the house. He had a front row seat to watch as bodies poured over the hedge in all directions. The knife felt feather-light and useless in his hand. The door shut just as they closed in on their downed prey.

  “Block the door, hurry.”

  He didn't need to be told twice. He pushed the large wooden kitchen table, so it was in front of the door. The very next instant, he wiped furiously at the goo plastered to his neck and face. Fists and arms came through the glass of the door, but he remained a bit hidden by the drapes. Still, the zombies had a clear shot at living flesh and were excited at the prospect of capturing one.

  While he moved more furniture in front of the door, making it harder and harder to force the door open for those on the other side, the glass started to break on several nearby windows. He yelped at the noise but remained on task. Sabella was doing something with the rescued grill, though he had no idea what could be so important.

  “Girls, back upstairs. We're going outside. Go!” She ran into the kitchen and began rifling through drawers and cabinets.

  “You're coming, right?” he asked her. For some reason he thought of Victoria and her heroics weeks ago at the Arch. She willingly sacrificed herself to save others-something he should have thought of doing-and now Sabella appeared to be preparing for a similar action.

  “Ah ha!” She came running out with a bottle of liquor, which made him sad. This wasn't heroism-she appeared to be giving up. Drinking oneself to death was pretty common these days. While he was thinking it over, she threw the bottle to him and instructed him to hold onto it. Then she gripped the propane tank she'd yanked from underneath the grill. It had a black tube attached to the top that was several feet long.

  When they went up the steps, windows on the ground floor started shattering all over the house. It was as if someone had alerted the zombies to the fact someone was inside the house. Suddenly, everyone wanted in.

  Sabella made it a few steps up and started to drag the canister. He was unsure if he should help her because he didn't want to be sexist, or anything like that.

  “What are you waiting for? Help me get this damned thing up the steps, will ya?”

  The paper-white cylinder of propane was heavy. The two of them were able to carry it side-by-side, but it took extra time to get it all the way to the second floor. They then ran into Wilder's room because it was closest to the stairs. They made it to the window facing the outbuilding.

  “Crap.” Sabella pointed up. “There's no access to the roof, here. You said you climbed in from the roof?”

  “Yep, but I came in from the front. Follow me.” He almost kicked Wilder on the way out but had to focus on holding the heavy canister. They went past the body of the reverend in the hallway and went into the room where he first came into the house. He closed the door when they were all in, not sure if the zombies were inside the house. Wherever they were, putting an extra door in their way was always the right thing to do.

  “Through here, then climb to the top. We should be able to see the other building.” Quieter, and to Sabella alone, he mentioned a minor detail he'd thought of while looking out the window, earlier. “If those guys are as bad as you say, they may shoot us for being out there.”

  The girls were already out and standing on the front side of the roof. She put her foot out the window but stopped to address his concern. “I need you to stay with them on this side-out of sight. Once I do my thing I'll come back over the peak. If they do shoot me ... ”

  She looked at him, suggesting with her eyes that he was being given a responsibility.

  With a head nod he added, “What are you going to do?”
>
  “Ha, they won't know what hit them.” Her smile was grim, but her eyes lit up like she'd just had a brilliant idea.

  4

  They worked the propane out the window and together set it upright on the flat area above the porch. Sabella pulled out a knife and tinkered with the tank's hardware along with the liquor bottle. By all appearances, she was going to make it blow up, but standing outside gave him a lot more to worry about.

  Her daughters sat on the roof near the window where the pitch wasn't as steep. They watched in silence as the zombies stood around in their massive dust-swept herd. He whistled a bit because he was awestruck by the size of the horde but otherwise kept his fascination to himself.

  If he pretended the zombies were normal humans, he could imagine the field was one big block party with revelers standing around talking. Some areas were thick with people, while others were less crowded. They clumped together like high school cliques at the prom. Only the zombies closest to the house were agitated and mobile. Those beyond that inner ring were largely motionless, like they were waiting for something.

  It was tempting to think of the farmstead as the center of the crowd, but he was convinced they were more tightly packed toward the river. That was the core, and somewhere in that direction Grandma Marty was in danger. He thought back to talking to her by that big waterfall. His directive was to get her and Victoria to Colorado where they would somehow find the physical version of the Quantum computer.

  He focused hard and tried to reach out his mind to Grandma but didn't hear her reply. Victoria had to be closer, so he tried to talk to her in his head, too, but that also failed. As best he could figure out, it only worked when the three of them were relatively close by. The last time they used the telepathic whatever-it-was-called, they had one river separating them. Now they had the river and miles of zombies between them, assuming Grandma was still somewhere near Cairo.

  “This is what's going to happen.” Sabella interrupted his thoughts, but he was glad to stop thinking about the impossible odds of finding one old woman in the broken-down world.

  “He and I will pull this up to the top, then he'll come back down. You will all wait right here.” She looked at Leah and Susan with a tight-lipped smile for each, but she stopped on him. “Your job is to keep my girls safe.”

  What about my girl?

  He wondered how he'd gotten caught up with such responsibility, but she did save his life, just as he had saved hers. As far as responsibility went during the end times, they were practically family.

  “Let's do this,” she said.

  “Good luck, mom,” Leah added. She pointedly avoided looking at Liam.

  “I love you,” Sabella replied.

  “Come back down soon,” Susan peeped. She was constantly on the verge of tears. He guessed both girls felt that way, but the older one hid it better.

  She smiled widely, then turned from them. He grabbed the handle of the canister with her and they started up the twenty or so feet to the top. Just short of the summit they paused and crouched down as if they'd planned it. He used his shoulder to brace the propane tank while they sorted out their next moves.

  “I think I have a problem, Liam. I won't be able to throw this like I thought.”

  Sabella was a shapely woman of about average height and weight, but unless she was made of muscles like Elsa, there was no way she could toss the tank far enough out into the crowd to make a difference.

  “You want it between the house and the other building, don't you?”

  “Yeah, I let myself get caught up in the excitement. I really wanted to blow the crap out of those zombies and storm over there and get Elise. But that's kinda stupid.”

  He peeked over the crest. Nothing had changed. The men and women appeared to have settled in on the roof of the metal building, and zombies banged on the base of it just as they were doing to the farmhouse. By his reckoning there was no rescue possible for anyone.

  “I think it can work. If we make it, at least you can be with your daughter. They have guns to protect her.”

  If they don't shoot us, first.

  He squinted because he thought he saw Victoria on the roof over there. She had a black top similar to Victoria's, but her hair wasn't as dark. Most of the women sat in a circle surrounded by the people with guns, so he couldn't see everyone, but he was pretty sure she had to be up there.

  “So how do you want to do this?” he asked.

  Sabella shifted and took a knee. “I'm sorry, Liam, but this is hard for me. My husband left me years ago and I've been kind of pissed at men since then. We got caught up in this place and my opinion hasn't gotten any better, except for you.”

  It was Liam's turn to shift uncomfortably on the slope of the roof.

  “But with you, my biggest problem is that you're just a kid-I mean a young man. Younger than my Leah. It's, uh, hard to look at you as help out here.” She didn't sound embarrassed.

  He took a deep breath. “I get that a lot. If you think it's hard for you, imagine what it's like for me. I read a ton of zombie books and a lot of those stories have actually helped me figure things out in this apocalypse, but it is pretty routine that people don't trust me. I once had access to a whole truckload of guns being given away, but they passed over me because of my age. I really could have used one, too, to protect my grandma.”

  “I'm sorry for your loss,” Sabella replied.

  “No, she's not dead,” he said with a quiet laugh. “She's out there, somewhere.” He pointed east over the endless horde.

  “Oh, well, I'm sorry she's out there,” she said.

  “Me too,” he replied.

  “I'll try to look at you as a young man, but please don't take it personally if I mess up.”

  “I promise I won't.”

  “Well, I was hoping you'd have some ideas on how to do this,” she replied while biting her lip with an anxious smile.

  He looked over the top again. He could throw a baseball and hit the other building with no problem. The flat gravel lot below would make any explosion more effective at knocking down the zombies in the open space, so maybe they didn't have to throw it that far. On the other hand, getting it to the middle would ensure both ends would get equal destruction.

  “The girls should be inside, ready to run across,” he suggested.

  “Are you kidding me? Run out there with those things? They aren't leaving this roof.” She turned and looked at the girls sitting on the roof below.

  “It will just be us?” he asked.

  “No, just me,” she replied. “I'll grab Elise and be back before the zombies recover.”

  He was torn between competing directives. Staying there and protecting the girls appealed to his sheepdog sensibilities, but he also wanted to go and find Victoria in equal measure.

  Liam decided to let her call the shots, for now. If, by some miracle, he spotted Victoria, he was pretty sure he'd cross the parking lot no matter what the motherly Sabella told him to do.

  5

  Sabella was ready to go but he hesitated. There had to be something else they could do to prepare for the crossing. Search the house for guns. Craft spears and clubs from the wood furniture. See if there was a basement where they could fall back. Use the phone.

  The phone!

  “Hold on. I might be able to call someone.” He shifted on his feet, still propping up the cylinder with Sabella's help, and got the phone out of his pocket. The plastic bag he'd used as waterproofing came out with big rips. The phone was soaked from his swim in the river and it finally had enough of his abuse.

  She commented when she saw his disappointment. “Unless you have someone flying a helicopter nearby, there is no one that could have helped you.”

  He knew she was right. Hours ago, he had a V-22 Osprey which might have saved him, not to mention what resources Grandma Rose could have given him. Sabella had no idea what he'd been through to end up on the farmhouse roof, and he doubted she would believe him even if he was utterly
honest.

  “You talk to your girlfriend and your grandma in your head? Yeah, right, kid,” she'd laugh. “You fought off assassins, used a dummy of your grandma in a bicycle trailer, rappelled down a skyscraper hotel, went up all the stairs in the Arch, drove a tank, were attacked by drones ... ” and on she would go. He couldn't prove any of it. Maybe if Victoria was around to back him up.

  “No, I don't have a copter, but I figured dialing 9-1-1 was worth a try,” he said. Not the truth, but not really a lie, either.

  “Look, I know this doesn't have much of a chance, but I can't do nothing, because my baby girl is over there.”

  “No, not much of a chance,” he echoed.

  Sabella huffed with impatience.

  “All right,” he said quickly. “We'll give it a try. It can't hurt.”

  He outlined what he would do, and though he never expressed faith it would work, they were at least going to give it an honest effort. In the back of his head he wondered how big of an explosion would result. If it was big enough, it might get some attention from the military back toward Cairo. Eventually they might be rescued, but someone had to know they were there.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Your mother would be so proud of you. I hope to tell her someday how you saved my family.”

  That stung, but he didn't sour the moment by telling her that was an impossible request.

  What would he say? “Sorry, my mom was tossed into the river tied to my zombie father. Thanks for mentioning it.”

  Instead, he kept his mouth shut and got a firm grip on the propane tank. Sabella nodded, then cranked open the top valve.

  “Let's just get this over with,” he said while trying to sound positive.

  “Together?” she asked. They stood and lifted the tank between them and walked over the ridge of the roof and went down the steep slope. They were in clear view of the men and women on the far side. He knew because they started pointing and waving.