Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens (9 page)

It made Liam shudder to think of Angie losing all that blood while
knowing she was still walking around somewhere outside. It didn't
seem possible any disease process could produce such horrible
results.

Is she really dead?

He wondered if a zombie could be someone who was still alive? He'd
read books with many different definitions of zombies. Some were
back-from-the-dead undead. Some were recently dead who reanimated in
a fashion, but remained dead. Some were alive, but infected with
something that made them as good as dead. Would the people walking
around his neighborhood fit into any of those neat boxes?

He still had a job to do up in the apartment, and he began to
hover around the edges of the room where the blood was absent and
some semblance of order still remained. He could still detect some of
the personality of the woman who, until recently, was someone Liam
admired.

Here was a picture of Angie with her granddaughter—a pretty
blonde with her arms slung around her grandma, giving a big hug. Liam
picked up the simple desk frame to get a better look in the low
light. He purposefully turned away from the main part of the room
with all the gore on the floor. He wasn't without feelings, but true
empathy didn't come naturally to him. However, the events of the last
24 hours had awakened something urgent inside him—he suddenly,
desperately, wanted to know if the girl in the picture was safe
somewhere. He knew it wasn't likely he'd ever know.

He took a deep breath, then resumed his circuit of the main living
area. He tried to think where a woman would put her car keys in her
own home. His keys were always in his pocket or on his nightstand, so
he thought to check the bedroom, but turned up nothing.

He walked back out the bedroom door and noticed Angie's cat was
hiding amongst some of the clothing on the floor. Not in the middle
of the room, but near the edge of the cyclone of destruction. The
little guy was probably scared to death. He moved to kick off some of
the clothes which were on top it—and saw with horror that the
cat was not only dead, but lying in a pool of blood with most of it's
insides ripped out.

Liam couldn't help himself—he threw up.

Disgusting.

Standing there trying to recover, he noticed the keys were hanging
right next to the doorframe on the way
out
of the apartment.
Had he known they were there, he could have avoided this whole mess.
If if if.

He hurriedly grabbed the keys from the hook and rushed out the
door toward the stairs.

It was the last memory he had for a while.

2

Marty heard the sound of someone falling down the stairs. It had
been a scarce 24 hours since the last person fell down those
stairs—so there was no mistaking it this time.

Liam had gone up into Angie's apartment to retrieve her car keys,
but she hadn't considered whatever made Angie sick could have still
been up there—waiting to pounce. Maybe it was something simply
floating around in the air as a pathogen. What had she done? What
kind of caretaker was she?

The front room's door was wide open into the stairwell. If Liam
was now sick he could come right through and it would all be over for
her. She was paralyzed with indecision. She could try to close the
door. Or do nothing. Such a dumb mistake.

She knew she couldn't just sit and wait to die, so she repeated
the previous day's motions—pushing herself out of her chair,
grabbing her walker, walking through her house, and then found
herself once again near the door to her neighbor's home. She knew
Liam was lying just around the corner.

Putting on a brave face, she wanted to see Liam before she shut
the door on him forever. And so she looked.

Marty hadn't even considered the possibility he simply fell down
the stairs on accident, but that looked like what happened. She could
see the blood on the bottom of his sneakers. He was knocked out, but
breathing normally in the early morning light within the foyer.

With the realization, all the strength she felt was sucked out of
her. Now she was an empty, weak, shell. She needed to sit down
immediately. She managed to make one quick detour to grab a comforter
from her sofa, walk it back to Liam, and drape it as best she could
over him. She didn't want him to catch a draft on the open floor.

Since she was in her front room she scraped her way to the sofa,
turned around, and plopped onto the cushion. Her slight frame
scarcely made a dent in the fabric. She let go of her walker, and it
stood up off to her side.

I'm not even half the woman I used to be.

It was a common refrain in her mind these days. She knew her days
were numbered. The number of years left to her were probably less
than the fingers on one hand. She no longer played the denial games
of her younger self—she only spoke the most brutal and honest
truths to herself. This was one of those times.

“Oh Liam. I'm so sorry your mom and dad left you here with
me. I'm sure they are thinking the same thing right about now. They
thought they were doing me a favor by putting you in my care. Giving
me someone to help around the house. Someone to talk to. Someone to
care for. Everyone needs that.” She sighed deeply with
exhaustion in both body and spirit.

“If you were with your parents right now I would probably
just sit in my chair until the end.”

Looking at the crucifix on her wall, she wondered seriously if
that was the attitude she should take. Her Christian upbringing
taught her to care for those less fortunate, stay strong in body and
soul, and enter the Kingdom of Heaven after a life well-lived.
Nothing could have prepared her for this situation. Plague. Chaos.
Sick people. What does the Bible say about surviving the end of the
world? Sure Revelation is replete with end-of-world imagery, but it
was no guidebook for how to endure it.

Was it was suicide to knowingly stay put, acknowledging survival
in the coming storm was impossible? Just cower in the disintegrating
neighborhood until the food and water runs out. Then the end would be
quick.

Isn't it also certain death for a woman my age to go
into
the storm?

Even several minutes of prayer brought her no closer to an answer.

She weighed her chances of staying in the house by herself,
sending Liam out without her. She could survive for a week or two
under the best of conditions. She had plenty of food thanks to her
well-prepared grandson—Liam's father—but she knew it was
only a matter of time before hungry and less prepared neighbors began
scavenging. And it wouldn't be hard to take from the oldest lady on
the block. That says nothing about thieves or brigands from beyond
the neighborhood. Sick people like Angie would also ensure she could
never leave again. Staying or going, being on her own was certain
death.

Thinking of Liam passed out on the floor in the next room also
gave her more to worry about. If she went with Liam out into the
city, she would be slowing him down to the point she would surely
endanger him. She couldn't even manage him in her own house. What
would she do when people, plague, and the sick were making life
difficult for them? There was absolutely nothing she could
contribute.

I can't even shout anymore.

Tired, she stared off into space for an indeterminate amount of
time before she heard Liam stirring.

That brought her back into the present, and the question she still
couldn't answer.

3

Liam was laying on the floor at the base of Angie's stairs when he
came to. Grandma had tossed a little blanket on him, or at least he
assumed it was her, though she was nowhere to be seen. From his
position on the floor he was looking up the stairs. His headache let
him know the full story of his rapid descent.

Yep, I'm THAT GUY.

He slowly sat up, anticipating a pounding headache. Fortunately,
it wasn't as bad as he feared. He remotely considered everything that
could have happened on his way down—broken bones, broken neck,
even death—and felt pretty fortunate. He wondered if dialing
911 would reach a live person anymore.

His first tried to make his way to the first riser so he could sit
in an upright position and take stock. Next, he stood to test his
legs. He felt a little dizzy, a little achy in his noggin and along
much of his right side, but overall he was fit for duty.

I got the keys!

He moved back into Grandma's house only to find her sitting on the
big sofa. She looked very tired when he first saw her, but she looked
up and gave him a big smile. The warmth returned to her demeanor.

“I'm so sorry Liam, I shouldn't have sent you up there. I
wasn't thinking about your safety.”

“Don't worry Grandma. It was my fault I slipped
on...something, and tumbled down the stairs.” He then looked
away from her as he remembered what he saw up there. He wasn't sure
if telling her about all the blood was the right thing to do.

“Do you want to know what I found up in Angie's apartment?
Besides the car keys?”

“Oh, I guess so, since you made the effort to go up there.”

“Well, there is a LOT of blood. And lots of her clothes were
in the middle of her living room. And her cat...was no longer alive.
But mainly there was a lot of blood. I couldn't tell if it was her
blood or what. It was kind of scary.”

“Were there any clues as to how she got sick?”

“Dunno. How do people normally get a plague like this?
Sneezing? Coughing? Sharing germs?” He hesitated here for fear
of voicing the one method he hoped would never prove true. The most
common
fictional
method for people to become zombies—biting.

“Ummm, Grandma, did Angie looked like she'd been bitten by
anything? Maybe her cat?”

Or maybe a human...

“I'm afraid Angie was so bloody I really didn't see any one
place where she might have been bitten. She was just bloody all
over.”

Liam wasn't looking for bite marks on his walk home. Now he
couldn't even remember the color clothing the Yoga girl was wearing,
much less if she had bite marks on her. The adrenaline rush and
confusion had clouded his memory. He remembered the bloody look of
her eyes, and it matched the blood-drenched stare Angie gave him.

“Grandma do you really think we should leave? This sickness
seems real bad.”

She spoke aloud about the message on her answering machine, “It
said to seek safer jurisdictions. The message didn't say to hunker
down and wait for authorities. It didn't say the army was coming to
help. It didn't even suggest order would ever be restored. And then
those tornado sirens blasted for an unusually long time, as if to
amplify the severity of the warning. The hour-long blast was a big
shout to get out Liam.”

She paused to let that sink in.

“The phones are dead. Radio only loops the President's
message. I don't think help is coming, and it is going to keep
getting worse in the neighborhood if we stay here. Yesterday they
were robbing garages. Tomorrow they are going to start robbing
people's homes.”

Liam knew she was right, even though he really wanted to stick
things out in the safety of the house. Going back out into the
growing chaos wasn't something he relished. But his embarrassment on
the steps proved even his own home could become a deathtrap. He
considered whether just breathing the same air up in Angie's
apartment had exposed him to whatever this sickness was.

“Grandma I was packing last night so most everything is
ready. I was really hoping we'd wake up and things would be getting
back to normal and we wouldn't have to go anywhere, but it doesn't
seem like that's going to happen.”

The sounds of the neighborhood had begun picking up as the sun
rose, and hadn't slowed down once it was well in the air. First it
was just distant gunfire and squealing tires, the same as most of the
night. Then it started to increase in frequency and volume, as if it
were getting closer somehow. Recently he could hear discrete
gunshots, some very close. And the screams. Those were picking up as
well. Just getting to Angie's car could be a challenge if things got
much worse.

“OK Grandma.” He reassured himself, “I feel OK.
We have to get our stuff and get out of here.”

Liam grabbed the backpack he prepared last night and staged it by
the front door. His most precious items were the two handguns. One he
carried in a holster inside the belt and waistband of his pants. The
other, along with the ammo, he stuffed into his pack. He would have
to carry everything because Grandma wasn't able to lift anything but
her walking cane.

Liam took a minute to consider his plan. First he had to find
Angie, and make sure he wasn't going to accidentally let the sick
nurse back into the flat. Then he would run out of the house, cut
across several yards, and emerge on the road where her car was
parked—avoiding other sick people or criminals as needed. A
quick run to the car, keys in the ignition, and finally a high-speed
return to pick up Grandma.

Sounded easy. But he knew any dumb mistake would gain him
notoriety as THAT GUY again. It was something that made him double
his efforts to think of everything that could go wrong with his plan.

I'm sure I'm missing something.

4

Liam looked out every window in Grandma's flat and Angie was
nowhere to be found. He could think of several places she could be
hiding, but he hoped she decided to move on to find other humans to
attack.

Rather than overthink things, he let Grandma know he was going to
run out the back door, and that she should shut the door behind him
right away. He would be running for the car.

“Good luck Liam. I'll be praying for you.”

Liam knew she would. “Thanks Grandma. I'll take all the help
I can get!”