Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens (20 page)

“It’s worth a try. I like that better than exploring
the north leg, waiting for a sick person to jump us the whole way
down.”

They made their way to the south leg unloading zone only to find
their friend was no longer at the door. It had been several hours
since they left him, so perhaps it was inevitable he would have moved
on. But that meant he was somewhere on the 1076 steps below them.

“Want to change your answer now?”

Liam thought about it and decided he'd rather face the one zombie
he knew was down these steps than an unknown number down the other
leg.

“Let's just go down this way and deal with him when we find
him. We'll just have to move slow.”

“Do you want a drink of water?”

“Do I ever! You have some?”

“No, I was just asking.” Victoria smiled at her joke.
Liam couldn't help but laugh too, although he made like he was going
to punch her in the arm for saying something so mean.

Then, he started down the dark staircase with the flashlight.
Despite multiple layers of danger around him, he felt infinitely
better than his walk up the steps earlier. He had his friend back.

Victoria, with the radio, trailed behind.

Liam was a testosterone-fueled 15-year-old, but he retained enough
common sense to know when to be scared. The steep stairwell in the
narrow space of the upper Arch was bad enough to do in the dark.
Knowing there was a dead man walking somewhere below them—well
that just sent the fear right out the window. If there were
windows...

He noticed Victoria was trying to stay as close to him as possible
now, even though she was a step behind him all the time. His initial
optimism as they started the descent had worn off, though he was
still glad he wasn't doing this alone. He thought he might go insane
if he had to try.

And if the light went out?

He looked down at the light, as if to will it to stay on. It
remained bright and steady. The walk down went much faster than up,
but it was still very taxing on their legs. It was just a different
kind of pain. And they had no food or water since they first started
the day's adventure. Liam was parched.

The staircase wound itself in the Arch leg around the machinery of
the mechanical tram sharing the space. Rather than one continuous set
of stairs, it was broken up with dozens and dozens of landings so it
could bend with the curvature of the structure. They expected to find
the zombie on each landing as they went down. And each vacant landing
heightened their anxiety. Was he on the next one? Was he still in the
stairwell at all? Was he attacking Grandma at this very moment?

Liam tried to balance the prudence of a cautious descent with the
pressure of escaping the leg of the Arch before the whole structure
was overrun with the armed attackers they saw swarming below. He
vaguely wondered whether the mindless infected were worse than the
men and women preying their vulnerable peers. It was a toss up in his
mind.

About twenty minutes later they found themselves in the machine
shop at the base of the stairs where they'd started. Liam's stress
level was off the charts because the ranger HAD to be somewhere
close. They couldn't have missed him on the stairs. The same door was
open that lead up the hallway into the main waiting area. The zombie
had to have gone through there. It couldn't have been hiding anywhere
else.

“How did that thing get past us? Do you think he was
hiding?” Liam didn't figure that was a behavior of a normal
zombie, but then what was the normal behavior of a dead person?
Seeing a real life zombie made him realize "normal" and
"zombie" could never be used together.

“No, he couldn't—”

The screams gave away the game.

Lots of screams now from up the hallway.

Liam and Victoria were running to catch up to the park ranger, but
when they entered the main waiting area it wasn't him causing all the
commotion, it was the criminals. They had already breached the north
entrance, breaking all the glass doors, and were yelling and
screaming back and forth with the police officers nearby.

Looking again, he did see the park ranger after all. He was making
trouble for some of the sick people on the right side of the room,
nearer to the candy store. Well away from the police or the looters.
Well away from help. While it was a matter of life or death for those
closest to the crazed ranger, it had already become a provincial
backwater in terms of importance relative to the battle in the rest
of the cavernous room.

Liam and Victoria were still in the south hallway where it was
very dark. They shut off their light and tried to establish some
sense to what was happening in front of them.

The looters came in from the north, across the room from the pair,
and controlled that entrance and the tunnel leading to the north leg
of the Arch. The police were on their left, holed up in the museum.
In between everyone was the large waiting area filled with the
elderly and the sick. The sight of sick people laying on the floor,
and the screams from those now being assaulted by the park ranger,
seemed to give the looters a reason to pause.

“I have to get Grandma.”

Victoria offered no objections.

Grandma was still where Liam left her very early in the morning.
It was hard to tell her condition, but she was sitting in her big
wheelchair. She was maybe fifty feet away from where he was hiding
but only several feet away from the park ranger and his probing
teeth.

Liam ran out of the darkened hallway, straight for Grandma. There
were a few old people in the middle of the room trundling toward the
south exit. He felt bad to use them as distractions, but they gave
him the cover he needed from the criminals on the far side of the
room.

While he was on the run, one of the invaders yelled, “These
people are infected! Kill them all to save yourselves!”

Then the screaming really started. The intense sound of gunfire
escalated and quickly squelched the screams. Liam knew he was
exposed, but they were shooting the people closest to them first. It
gave him some time.

He had covered the ground to Grandma in just a few seconds,
suppressing the fact he had just crossed a room full of flying
bullets. He could see she was awake and clutching his backpack as a
shield of sorts against the maliciousness of the looters. Liam said
nothing, but grabbed her chair, spun her in the right direction, and
started pushing her for their lives. The park ranger was nearby but
not the major threat. Not by a wide margin.

He was now one of the few people on this side of the room still
standing. Having to push the wheelchair made him even more of a
target. Doing a slalom through the bodies on the floor brought him
down to an intolerably slow pace. He didn't dare try to go up the
ramp of the south entrance. He could see people being shot in the
back as they went toward that exit.

Instead he aimed for the same hallway he'd just left. Victoria
would still be there—he hoped—and together they could get
Grandma to the safety of the maintenance room. As he pushed the
wheelchair he willed himself to be invisible.

A little prayer slipped out as he huffed.

“Please God, help us.”

Grandma surprised him by praying as well. Later she would explain
it was her final Act of Contrition. She thought Death was upon her.

2

As Liam was making back across the room, his allies in the police
department sprung into action. They moved out of their space in the
museum so they could get a sight picture on the looters who were
profiled by the light coming in through the north entrance way. With
heavy shotgun slugs and service revolvers they were able to convince
the looters to stop shooting the civilians in the middle and focus
instead on the deadly blue snake coiled in the dark space.

Liam and Grandma were home free. With one final push around the
corner, Liam was able to take a breath. He had escaped the carnage in
the main room. Victoria dropped in behind him and together they ran
to the relative safety of the machine shop down the hall. None of
them could hear very well after the loud exchanges of gunfire in the
hollowed out space.

They reached the end of the hallway, descended a short flight of
steps—Grandma helped by Liam, and the wheelchair helped by
Victoria—and then they were through the final door to the
maintenance room. The chair had to be folded down to fit through the
door, and they opened it again on the far side so Grandma could sit
down. They closed and locked the door, though Liam figured it
wouldn't last long against bullets if they were found.

“I think I left my cane back in that room. Liam would you
mind?”

Liam looked at her, but she was smiling innocently. She had in
fact left it behind, but she was just joshing him about getting it
for her. He was thankful they still had the chair, which had replaced
the need for the cane anyway.

Once they were safely in the room—as safe as one could be in
this situation—Liam opened his backpack and drew out a water
bottle and some grain bars for himself and Victoria. For several
minutes they consumed what they needed after their arduous climb and
descent. Grandma waited for them to finish before asking what was
going on.

“Victoria, let her hear what's on the police radio. That
will make it clearer than if we tried to explain.”

After fiddling with it to get everything right, the radio started
to blurt out the situation with the police department—it was a
chaotic blast of yelling and cursing. It wasn't anything like they
expected on a police channel. Through the noise, they picked up some
fragments.

“They have moved into the Arch's north entrance. My husband
and the boys are trying to hold them off, but we are trapped.”

Almost immediately this was followed by; “—the south
team has managed to organize citizens, but we have very little cover.
Trying to evacuate citizens south.”

A third voice; “North gate. We have a new situation here—”
But he was squelched by other voices. There was no discipline.

Liam felt bad for the police, but knew there was next to nothing
he could do to help them. He was just a kid trapped in a stainless
steel room.

While the chatter continued, he grabbed his gun from his pack and
put it back in his waistband holster.

“I'm never taking this off again.”

Liam considered his next sentence carefully.

“Victoria, do you want my other gun?”

She looked at him in the harsh light of the flashlight and seemed
to think about it for a few seconds, but ultimately demurred.

“I appreciate the offer, but I think you two should have
your own guns. I'll be the plucky comic relief.”

“The what?”

“I just don't think I want a gun Liam, but thanks.”

He tried to give the gun to Grandma, but she said he should just
put it back in his backpack for an emergency. She said she wasn't
sure she could even pull the trigger anymore since she was getting
weak in her old age.

Taken together, Liam was underwhelmed by their appreciation for
their chances of surviving this crisis. He couldn't fathom ever being
separated from his gun and didn't understand why anyone would choose
to be unarmed. Grandma maybe, but Victoria?

And perhaps the most important realization of the whole exchange
was that Liam was now wholly responsible for protecting them. One boy
with a couple pop guns against a world gone mad.

You said you wanted to be the hero.

3

They continued to listen to the radio for another half hour or so.
During that time they came to the understanding the police in the
museum had been able to survive against the infringing looters, but
neither side could get the upper hand. The radio chatter was a little
unclear, but it sounded like a number of the sick and wounded lying
in the middle of the waiting area had begun to show signs of
reanimation—which was causing havoc on both the police and the
looter contingent.

Up top the battle had gotten very serious. The renegade urban
gangs had lots of firepower and were able to push well into the
park—up to and including the north leg of the Arch. But from
there they weren't able to push further because the citizens on the
rest of the cordon, organized by the captain and his police
volunteers, had been able to hold their positions. The looters and
gang members also had problems behind them, as they had infected
follow them through the breech and were now nipping at their heels.
Unable to push into the Arch and unable to get all their members
safely inside the cordon, they now found themselves fighting enemies
on multiple sides. It made them desperate and nearly suicidal inside
the Arch. Even the police admitted they were in serious trouble
inside the museum.

At dusk, chaos was firmly entrenched up top.

Another report from the radio operator called “north gate”
changed the trajectory of the battle almost single-handedly. Earlier
he had reported he had a situation in the north, but he failed to
elucidate. As the radio traffic died to a trickle, he gave his report
in-depth.

“This is north gate. I'm in direct line of sight to
thousands of infected pouring into the north part of the park. As
best I can tell they are being attracted from who-knows-how-far north
by all the gunfire. There are a few remaining civilians who are
hiding in the parking garage or nearer to the river, but the swarm of
dead are overwhelming anyone who stands in the way. The gangs pushed
many civilians into the path of the zombies, which in turn has
infected lots of people near your interior lines. You guys should be
prepared for this.”

The reply was from the captain himself.

“Thank you Ben. We owe you one. Hope to see you again so we
can laugh about this over a beer. Over.”