Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens (13 page)

“Do you think you can walk to the Arch from here Grandma?”

She was silent for many moments before responding.

“I don't see any other option at this point. I'm going to
need your help, but I think I can do it.”

She held up her cane so she could bring up the feet closer to her
face.

“I'm going to need your help too cane. Don't let me fall!”

She chuckled a little at her own joke, then slammed the cane back
to the ground and started walking—slowly—away from
Angie's wrecked car.

Liam looked at the Arch. The safety of the port was only a couple
miles away. So close yet so far away.

4

After the excitement at Grandma's house, the struggle to escape
Angie, getting beaten up by a criminal, and the stress of actually
driving the car in the chaos, the walk toward the Arch was positively
anticlimactic.

“When we get downtown I hope they're serving hot dogs and
soda, like a baseball game!” A small girl behind them blurted
that statement to everyone in the area.

Liam was holding Grandma's arm as he walked, but turned partway
around to look at the child's parents, seeing a tight-lipped grin as
they gave her affirmation about what she would find down there.
Anything to keep the children happy.

Liam recognized the body language and tone from his own
interactions with his parents. Sometimes it was just easier to go
with a lie than explain an ugly truth. There were almost certainly no
hot dog vendors downtown, and even if there were, the pressed meats
would already be long gone with a group this large.

Would there be any help at all downtown? After what he saw on the
roads of the city, Liam was pretty sure he knew the answer to that,
but still he had hope, and tried hard to listen to the conversations
of his fellow travelers to see if they knew more than he did about
what was ahead.

The friendly crowd of walkers continued to grow. If he didn't know
where he was, Liam would have believed he was in a crowd heading to a
baseball game. He and his father didn't make a habit of it, but
whenever Liam's dad got free tickets to a game he would take Liam for
a father-son adventure at the ballpark. The only differences between
that crowd and this one was the colors—not as much Cardinal red
today—and what people were carrying. He could definitely see
lots of coolers and bags of food, as well as firearms. Open carrying
of guns was something you would NEVER see on any normal day in the
city limits of St. Louis.

He looked carefully now and saw that more than a few men and women
were carrying things slung over their shoulders, covered with fabric
or trash bags. Some just carried their rifles right out in the open,
which made it even more obvious that others were also carrying
rifles, but had chosen to pretend they were something else. Liam
didn't understand what they were trying to prove.

They passed a man standing off to the side of the crowd, holding a
cardboard sign for the walkers to see. “God did this to you.
Repent!” Liam wondered what Grandma would think about such an
insensitive statement, but if she saw it she said nothing. He wasn't
willing to blame God for the plague; he saw God in context with
boring Sunday sermons or with high praise from family members. Never
did either suggest a benevolent being could inflict something like
this on mankind.

The man's sign was getting other people talking about the root
cause of the catastrophe. Liam tried to overhear the conversations of
people as they walked nearby. The first person he could clearly hear
was talking about some clues he received on his shortwave radio.

“...a frequency I don't get. The guy lived in Minnesota or
Wisconsin, he wasn't very forthcoming about that. He sounded like he
had watched too many movies. He called the sick people zombies, as if
they were something real. He then said you can only kill them by
destroying the head. Ha! This isn't
Night of the Living Dead
,
or whatever that movie was called. So we ignored him and went on to
look for other operators. Sadly, the only other one we heard was
farther north in Canada, and all we got out of him was that people
were killing his livestock. He said he had no weapons to get them to
stop. Nothing we could do to help him of course.”

The guy was moving much faster than he and Grandma, so Liam
couldn't hear much more of his conversation, but he noted the man was
walking with a big revolver in a holster on his left side.

As people walked by he heard several other theories. It was now
the de rigueur subject.

“I heard it was a medical experiment gone wrong.”

“No, a friend of a friend said she knew someone in the
police department. This was a terrorist attack.” And then,
speaking so quiet Liam almost didn't catch it, the person said, “It
was the same guys who did nine-eleven.”

“It was our own government.” A half-dozen people had
different iterations of government conspiracies.

“It was the maple-syrup lovin' Canadians.” Liam heard
several people talk about Canadians as if the threat was real, but he
couldn't quite take them seriously. Normally he wouldn't dare insert
himself, but he had to know. “Excuse me, why would the
Canadians cause this plague?” The woman who spoke of it
responded calmly and easily, “They want our stuff of course.”

Liam determined it was best to avoid laughing. Soon the woman and
her entourage had moved far ahead.

He heard a host of other theories, just in the few minutes since
he'd passed that sign. “It was the Republicans. They always
wanted us city people to die.” “It was the Liberals. They
was foolin' around with science and unleashed this Ebola-thing on us
by accident.” “It was the Snowballers.” “It
was the Communists.” “It was the anarchists. They want
government to go away.” And so on and so on. The crowd consumed
each theory, readily adding more and more. The truth was, no one
really knew.

Several people were carrying large hand-printed signs, with
variations of the “Repent! The end is here” motif. One
said “This is the tribulation!” He had no idea what that
meant, but Liam was surprised to see the people carrying such signs
appeared completely normal. Almost calm. There were no crazed-eye
preachers anywhere in sight.

Holding onto Grandma, he realized they were both now floating
along with the crowd, and everyone was equally clueless about why
they were there. It made him feel small and helpless.

People power-walked by them, barely giving them a notice. Liam
reflected on his own mindset. Would he notice an old woman and a
young boy such as himself if he was walking in this mess by himself?
How many people in this procession were going to be dead soon?

Don't panic.

He craned his neck to look around the crowd, which over the last
several minutes had started to thin out. Everyone was moving along
the sidewalks of both sides of the street, as well as on the
grass-covered median. Liam guessed they'd been walking along for an
hour now, which would put them about halfway there. Grandma was
puttering along, but she was slowing down, stopping to rest more than
Liam liked.

He knew she needed her rest, but an odd feeling had been growing
in the pit of his stomach, a sense that it wouldn't be wise to fall
too far behind the main crowd. He was disturbed to see fewer people
behind him than ahead. It wasn't empty by any stretch of the
imagination, but things were thinning out.

“Grandma, I know you're tired, but we have to keep moving.”

“I know Liam. I'm so tired though. I really need to sit
down.” She remained standing—there was no place to sit
other than the curb of the street and Grandma would have to nearly
squat on the ground to sit there.

Gunshots rang out from somewhere behind them. Not close, but not
as far as he'd like either.

Liam gave her a drink of water and a grain bar, hoping to give her
a quick boost. He knew enough about the 104-year-old set though to
know there was no word for “boost” in their lexicon.

He didn't want to scare her, but he wasn't going to lollygag
either. Once she had taken a drink and pulled down a few bites he
practically pushed her along.

“OK, up and at 'em.”

Grandma said nothing, but didn't pick up the pace as he'd hoped.

I refuse to panic!

He looked over his shoulder, afraid of what he'd see.

5

While dragging Grandma along, a middle-aged woman in a business
suit, sans the jacket, came ambling by. She seemed distracted until
she spotted Grandma while walking by.

Without prompting she took Grandma's other arm and together she
and Liam were able to support her much better as they walked along.
Liam gave her his thanks, but Marty said nothing. Liam knew that
could only mean she was REALLY worn out.

“I think she is really tired. Thank you so much for helping
her.”

The woman just said she was glad to help, but volunteered no
additional information. She was looking ahead and into the traffic
jam as if searching for someone. Liam assumed she had lost a friend.

They moved like this for about fifteen minutes or so. Then the
woman abruptly stopped and told Liam to wait against a bridge
abutment just as they went underneath it.

This gave Liam a chance to look behind them again; he was
horrified to see almost no one. There were a few stragglers, mostly
elderly walking without helpers. Some people had just stopped to sit
or lie down, perhaps giving up. And far down the street he thought he
could see a few of the really sick. Really. Sick. It was best left
unsaid as to what disease they had...

He felt like the lone gazelle dropping behind the herd. Ahead of
him he could see the last of the main group walking away. They were
very close now to the park that surrounds the Arch. Maybe a quarter
mile. Gunfire was coming from that direction, though a few shots were
echoing down side streets almost all the time now.

He didn't see the mystery lady. Not ahead. Not behind. Not even in
the nearby cars, which were sprawled everywhere on the street and in
every available parking area in sight.

Oh crap! We're in for it now.

Liam looked at Grandma and considered his options once more. She
appeared to be totally out of hit points. Could he force her to push
on? Should he try?

A deep, dark voice advised him to sit her down under this bridge
and then just walk away.

Another voice argued she was his responsibility no matter how
difficult things became.

Where did his obligation to save her outweigh his obligation to
save himself? Wasn't his life—at 15 years old—more
valuable to save than hers?

Why would the thought even cross my mind?

“Grandma, I'm not going to leave you here. We have to keep
moving. Can you walk a little further?”

“Oh Liam. I think I'm a goner. My head is spinning and it's
very hard to see.” She was hunched over even more than normal,
holding herself up with a combination of her cane and leaning against
the concrete bridge pylon.

“I don't think I can go another step without falling over.”

“Well then I'll carry you!”

Bent over and gasping for air, she cocked her head so she could
look up at her tall grandson and give him a look he knew very well.
It said “Liam you are one crazy boy, but I love you anyway. And
no, we aren't doing that.”

Liam considered pulling a stunt he saw in a movie—just
grabbing the small woman and tossing her over his shoulder and
carrying her no matter what her protests said. He knew he could lift
her and carry her, but couldn't assure himself that he wouldn't break
her ribs.

And then the mystery woman returned. She was running around cars
inside the traffic jam, as if she were trying to find a suitable path
through the obstacles. She was pushing something.

A half minute later she was close enough he could see what it was.
She had a huge wheelchair in front of her, and she brought it right
up onto the sidewalk where Grandma was swaying.

“Did someone order a ride?”

Liam stood incredulous while the woman moved behind Grandma and
then helped her fall backwards, gently, into the chair. The seat
itself was immense, obviously it was designed for an overweight
client, and Grandma's pixie size made her look like a child sitting
there.

But she was sitting.

“Where did you find this?”

“I've been looking for this since I first saw you. I saw it
on one of those lift things that stick out the back of a trailer
hitch. I work with nurses, and travel to hospitals, so this type of
thing sticks out when I see it. You have to hurry with her. She looks
like she needs some medical care.”

The woman looked over her shoulder at the few people wandering
about on the route they just traveled. Some were lying down, but now
it was clear some of those on the ground were being set upon by
others who weren't
normal
. She voiced Liam's fears.

“I think you have to hurry.”

“Will you come with us? We can make good time if we both
push her.”

“You'll be fine. I'm going that way,” she was pointing
west. Not the same way at all.

“Hurry!”

And without a further comment, she dove back into the traffic jam.

“THANK YOU!” He shouted to her as she was nearly
across the street.

She lifted her hand but kept moving.

“Can you believe our luck?”

Liam tossed her cane across the back arms of the chair, then began
pushing her, nearly running when the sidewalk wasn't too bumpy, and
never once looking back.

A faint scream told him every detail about what was happening back
there.

The chaos of the Gateway Arch grounds was unexpected. As Liam
pushed Grandma in the wheelchair, both could see thousands of people
crammed into the verdant landscape under the 630-foot monument. The
Gateway to the West was now the Gateway to the East for these
people—a gateway to safety over in Illinois. But there were so
many people, and they didn't look like they were moving. Going into
that throng was going to be a test for them both.