Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens (17 page)

Father Cahill helped the older man sit in the same area, though he
made no effort to talk to them, or even look at them. He merely
slumped against the wall clutching himself as if he was very cold.
Liam did not like the thoughts swirling in his head with regard to
all the sick people in his field of view. Did all these people have
the plague?

Though he didn't voice the question, the Priest seemed to sense
the reticence of both Liam and Victoria as they looked around the
room.

“I'm afraid we don't know who has the sickness, if that's
what you're thinking. It was the first thing I thought of when I
started bringing people in here. Heck, when I saw the growing crowds
up top I was thinking it. What is the disease process? Is it
airborne? Passed by direct contact? By fluids? My best guess based on
hearsay is people either get bitten by another infected person, or
they just seem to get the flu which becomes the
Excelerated-Ebola—a.k.a. E-Ebola. Don't ask me why it is
spelled like that. Without proper medical facilities we aren't able
to make even the most basic medical checks of these people. We can't
even take someone's temperature. However, they wouldn't survive for
very long up top in the heat of the day—so on balance myself
and the other clergy decided it was worth the risk. I guess if we all
have it we'll all die together down here.”

Liam wasn't reassured.

“There is a preemie baby somewhere in this room that we had
to get out of the heat, and that's why we brought in several very
young children in addition to those who are clearly sick, or the
infirm like your grandma.”

“Who you calling infirm? I'm only 104.”

Liam gave Grandma a big smile, as she was returning to her feisty
self again.

“Of course. I meant these
other
infirm people,”
he said in a very quiet voice.

Grandma and the Priest obviously have known each other for a long
time, and could joke about her age, even in the worst of conditions.

He motioned to the far side of the room, near the entrance to the
main museum.

“Those folks over there are the families of the police
officers up top. The only condition given by the police who
volunteered to protect the crowd was that their families be given
refuge in a defensible position on the Arch grounds.”

“Oh man. You mean the police aren't actually on the job?”

“Technically no. The entire St. Louis city police department
is working today, but that is only on paper. The Archdiocese had
contact with the brass over at City Hall as we tried to coordinate
some kind of refuge here at the Arch, but they made it clear they
couldn't order their officers to do anything as of the President's
speech yesterday. City government has come undone. We were able to
work out a compromise of sorts with some of the officers who were
willing to bring their families here. The department supported the
effort because they knew there wasn't much else they could do.”

“But what about the rest of the city?”

“I'm not sure. You'd have to ask one of the officers.”

Liam considered that as advice for later. He felt compelled to
understand the wider world, as it could offer clues as to how they
could escape the city.

Father had continued while Liam was thinking.

“—and finally there are a few Red Cross and CDC folks
back in the candy shop. They are using the tables back there as a
kind of command center, although they are just the managers and not
the field personnel—so they have no medical supplies to go with
the medical people.”

“Well that's just great.” Liam wasn't in the mood to
cut anyone any slack when it came to protecting his family from the
plague. He saw the people back there standing around talking.

“How can they fight the disease if they have no resources?”

“Liam my young friend, I think it is safe to say no one here
is fighting much of any disease.”

Yep, that's just wonderful.

4

Since they carried very little, there wasn't much effort required
to settle in for the night. Victoria was still very protective of
Grandma's food and water, but risked doling out more to her in the
near-darkness of the interior. Liam was watching Victoria and noticed
she took none for herself.

Liam had a short nap sitting under the tree earlier in the day so
he wasn't yet ready to settle in for the night. He asked Victoria to
keep an eye on Grandma while he went to look for answers.

The first stop was the candy shop.

There was just enough light that he could get around all the
people on the floor of the open room. There were many more people
crowded in there than he initially thought. Other than a few coughs
and a baby crying, most people had chosen to remain silent as they
waited for...who knows. It was unnatural. But Liam figured nothing
like this had ever happened before, not even close, so no one really
knew how to act or what to expect next.

The medical folks were still standing where he'd seen them
earlier. Others were sitting around a couple of small tables, but
Liam was shocked to see what they were doing.

Getting drunk.

“Hey. Excuse me. Can I come in?”

A young looking man with suit pants, a white shirt, and a horrible
tie was among those standing at the door and motioned him in.

“Come on in friend.” He saluted Liam with a bottle of
beer. Others in the group did the same. It did not inspire
confidence.

“Ummm. Thank you.”

They pushed out a chair for him to sit, which he did. He felt very
uncomfortable with all the eyes on him, and the room fell suddenly
quiet. He decided to get it over with.

“I just arrived here with my grandma and a friend. I'm tired
as hell but I'm trying to find someone with answers.”

“Grandma huh? Was that the old lady you were pushing in that
wheelchair earlier? I saw you guys come in.”

“Yeah, that's her. She's been through a lot but we're safe
for now.”

“I don't know how safe we are.” A slight chuckle, “How
old is she? She looks to be about a hundred!”

“One hundred and four to be exact!” Liam was very
proud of the fact, though he really couldn't explain why, once it had
come out of his mouth. If she was a lot younger their escape would
probably have gone a lot smoother.

“I was wondering if you could tell me what's going on? I
mean with the plague.”

Everyone at the tables looked around at each other, as if deciding
who would answer him. It was the man with ugly tie who spoke up
first, and Liam noticed he downed a good portion of his beer before
starting his reply.

“I'm Douglas Hayes from the CDC.” He waited for a few
seconds to let that sink in, then he continued, “and you are?”

“Liam Peters.”

“OK Liam, I know what you're thinking right now—'big
shot CDC guy who has all the answers' but I'm sorry to disappoint
you. I know very little about what's happening outside this
room...I'm more of a middle manager,” he waved his hand as if
presenting his colleagues and said, “we are all more or less
middle managers.”

He pointed to a plain-looking red-headed woman and said her role
was to scout out locations for constructing tents and generators as
part of the advanced team dedicated to St. Louis. Another person was
responsible for shipping the equipment from Atlanta. He went around
the room, assigning roles to them all—roles which definitely
were more logistical in nature than medical.

The only person even remotely connected to information turned out
to be a middle-aged Indian-looking “IT support person.”
She called herself April.

Mr. Hayes gave her the floor.

She had a British accent which Liam found fascinating, “I'm
afraid I know absolutely nothing for sure, as I've been telling my
friends all day. But the CDC isn't very tight with email or internal
file security—I know that probably sounds crazy—and I've
been able to glean some information by looking—accidentally—at
some critical correspondence inside the agency.” She gave a
nervous laugh as she drained the final portion of her beer.

“The main lesson I learned is that this plague has caught
everyone off guard, including the CDC. I've hacked into the accounts
for people all across the chain of command, and it is always the
same—emails full of confusion, anger, and impotence.”

Douglas continued, “anyway, we were sent here as part of an
advanced team that was supposed to get the jump on the plague in a
city that hadn't already succumbed. Most of the East Coast is already
gone. St. Louis was deemed far enough west that our bosses thought it
would provide good intel on how it spreads, and hopefully offer help
in mitigating that spread. They were able to get us out here, but
with the breakdown of transportation networks they weren't able to
get our gear here, and no one knows whether the medical teams ever
departed Atlanta.”

“We got here late yesterday afternoon and have been waiting
ever since. None of our cell phones work reliably anymore, but
earlier today they were working well enough, and we got no response
from anyone in our chain of command back east.”

“So now we are sitting here drinking beer, waiting for the
double-E train Doomsday Bug to roll through the city and make our
jobs obsolete—”

Victoria walked in the door just as the words were said. Her
response, standing next to Liam, was to make the sign of the
cross—signifying she was praying in the face of such bad news.

Hayes, seeing this, went on, “—and that won't help I'm
afraid. You won't find god, religion, whatever, in the cities
anymore. At least those on the East Coast. This is it folks, the end
of mankind.”

Victoria was unperturbed. “Then we need prayer more than
ever.”

Hayes chortled, then seemed to recompose himself. “We'll
see, won't we?”

In the face of such bad news, Liam didn't know what to say. He'd
read enough to appreciate the moral dilemma of whether God was
present when such evil was consuming the world, but that was only in
books or in the movies. In the real world it was a lot more
ambiguous. He admitted to himself he couldn't visualize entire cities
of zombies. What of all those people? Did these intoxicated people
really represent the final, best efforts of the government? His dad
always mocked government ineptitude, but these guys were caricatures
of the theme. Everyone might die because they did nothing.

Did they have any answers at all?

“So do you know anything about the plague itself? What
caused it?”

“Dunno.”

“Where is it from?”

“Dunno.”

“Can anyone survive it?”

“Dunno. Hey kid, don't you get it? We don't know anything.”

“But you said you had access to secret network files and all
that. Surely there has to be something valuable in there?”

The IT woman spoke up, “That's just it. There
were
no
files. Lots of emails looking for guidance, but very little
actionable intelligence and almost no files relating to this outbreak
anywhere in the system. Absolutely nothing about patient zero—the
source of the whole thing.”

“I don't get it. What are you saying?”

“I'm saying—we're saying—the CDC not only
doesn't have any clues about the origin of this disease, but as best
we can tell it didn't have any idea it existed until it had already
scoured through most of the East Coast. We were caught totally and
utterly flat footed.”

Liam felt mad more than anything else. He expected to glean some
clues on how to save Grandma and instead he was told that the one
group in charge of solving this hadn't even deployed their
researchers to start researching.

“So you guys are essentially worthless?” Liam couldn't
help himself.

Hayes' eyes went cold. He glared at Liam for just a second before
laughing it off, “Whoa there partner! We did the best we
could.”

Liam didn't want to let them off the hook, but knew he was being
unfair.

“So did any of your teams get out to study the disease?”

“Oh yeah, lots of teams went to the East Coast. Some teams
even went out the front door of the CDC headquarters into Atlanta as
it succumbed. But everything happened so fast there was no time to
make any headway against it.”

“There are no reports in the system. I've looked. Teams go
out and never report back in.” April looked disappointed, as if
she had spent a lot of energy on this task.

Liam turned around to leave, as he obviously wasn't going to learn
anything from this group. But something occurred to him as he was
saying goodbye.

“Oh one more thing. This is my conspiracy theory father
talking, but is there any way someone could have deleted all the
files in your system? Could that be why there is no data on this?”
He laughed a little, indicating his belief it was a crazy thing to
suggest.

The room became very quiet. Liam sensed the change in attitude.
Did he say the wrong thing?

Douglas stood up, pulled at his tie, and looked around at his
colleagues.

“Congratulations my smart-ass friend. It took us 24 hours to
figure that out.”

The implications were obvious and stunning.

“So you're saying that not only is the CDC not fixing this
disease, but it may have had a hand in causing it?

Hayes answered as he walked deeper into the room, away from Liam,
“Why do you think we're just sitting around drinking?”

Looking at Victoria, he saw her once again making the sign of the
cross.

He thought about mimicking her, but the moment passed.

5

Liam and Victoria returned to Grandma and told her what they had
learned in his discussion with the “experts” on the
disease. Grandma was nearly asleep so she didn't say much. Victoria
shared her thoughts too, though they both were talking in whispers so
as not to wake anyone else – or scare them.

“They said the entire East Coast was gone. Wow. Wouldn't we
have heard something on the news about massive plagues in all those
cities? Did they mention Denver before I came in?”