Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5
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Authors: E.E. Isherwood
Zombies vs Polar
Bears:
Sirens
of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5
© 2016 E.E. Isherwood. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
businesses, companies, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in
any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
From E.E.
Isherwood
Since the Sirens
Siren Songs
Stop the
Sirens
Last Fight of the Valkyries
Zombies vs Polar
Bears
Zombies Ever After (Sept '16)
Post Apocalyptic
Ponies
Post Apocalyptic Mustangs
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of Contents
Chapter 13: Warthogs, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!
Chapter 16: Clarisse McClellan
Bonus: Prologue of Book 6
Zombies Ever After
“General. Please. Go on.”
General John Jasper sat in a room full of idiots. The town of
Cairo, Illinois had become the centerpiece of middle America's
efforts to protect the populace from the roving masses of infected
citizens plaguing the countryside, but his ability to get town
leaders to do anything useful for him had been spiraling downward
almost as fast as the country's healthy population.
“As I was saying, the only way we're going to keep the sick
people out of this town is if your civilians constantly watch the
riverbanks. It doesn't take a degree from the War College to know
that sick people are going to float down the rivers and end up on
your shores.”
It had already happened, many times. The town had been lucky
because there were a handful of go-getters who patrolled the levees
and the graveyards of barges surrounding the peninsular town, looking
for infiltrators. They fancied themselves “Zombie-Killers,”
though he refused to utter that word in serious meetings like this
one. Whatever they were, they weren't officially classified as
zombies...
“But my people aren't soldiers. I can't have this town
filled with guns. We'd have mass murder!”
John physically pushed back the sneer fighting for airtime on his
face. The mayor of Cairo was an elderly and chronically sweat-soaked
black man who insisted on dressing like a preacher—black pants,
white shirt, and a ridiculous black suit jacket. It was 100 degrees
outside, the humidity was an eternal 100 percent, and the meeting
room doubled both. Yet he never took off his suit coat.
“And he gets everything wrong,” John thought. He wore
his multicam field uniform and was sweating buckets too, but he was
proud he didn't sweat like the other man. It was one small victory
that reinforced the superiority he felt over all the men in the room,
especially the mayor who seemed to not understand guns were the only
things that kept them all alive.
“General, can you re-deploy some of your men to work inside
the town with those volunteers?”
And then there was
her
.
He looked down at his notepad. Ms. Elsa Cantwell. Homeland
Security.
Homeland my ass.
Generals have access to some of the best intelligence in the
military. He knew the oxymoron was there, but he wasn't talking about
satellites and spy planes. Most of his “intelligence”
came from what would once have been called the water cooler. These
days everything was done over water bottles. The government seemed to
have an endless supply of them. Everywhere he went, people were
anxious to share what they knew with him. No matter the branch. No
matter the government bureaucracy. Everyone was searching for
answers. He was just better at coaxing information from people as
opposed to giving it.
And everyone said Homeland Security had been compromised. The
problem was the department was so massive no one could pin down quite
what part of it was broken. But he knew; it was
all
corrupted.
If the woman sitting across the table from him was a drone from some
backwater government department, he'd eat his Iraqi-sand-filled
boots.
“As I've said over and over, I only have enough men and
women to defend construction of the trench up north of town. I've had
problems with...” Though his face was a mask, he had to work
twice as hard as he finished his thought. “...soldiers walking
off their posts.”
“General, I'm showing,” she looked down at her own
notes, “approximately sixty five of your men have abandoned us.
Do you have any means to acquire replacements?”
Though people on the ground were more than willing to sink ships
with their loose lips, it drove him insane at how secretive everyone
up his chain of command had become once the disaster broke out in
America. He couldn't get a straight answer from his superiors—when
they answered the phones—nor could any of his peers in the
other branches. Cairo was swimming with one-stars right now,
including an admiral of all the crazy things. And here was this
civilian telling him how many men
he'd
lost.
The part that slaughtered his goat was that she was right. Dammit,
he wasn't going to admit it.
“Ma'am, we shouldn't be talking about numbers here. The
point is I don't have enough men to dig the trench, man the AFV's,
and
go beating the bushes with sticks. The mayor,” he
pointed to the man, “has to do his part.”
“General, I understand your situation, what with your
armored fighting vehicles and other toys. But maybe I can give you
some news that will help with your allocation choices.” She
pushed her chair and stood up. She had the attention of the ten men
at the table, plus the numerous aides and hangers-on hovering on the
fringes of the ancient conference room.
He took a mental snapshot of her. Not because she was an
attractive blonde—though she was a model of a woman—but
because she was a threat. He watched as she moved from her chair to
the whiteboard on the wall. She moved with the grace of a lioness.
She wore dark business slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt, both
well-fitting and clean. Most people wore ill-fitting and dirty
clothes they had to pull from the piles of refugee clothing. It had
been two weeks since the emergency started—only someone with
lots of resources could get clean clothes these days. Or she knew
this was coming, and was prepared.
With a black marker, she drew on the white board. In moments she
had lined a map of the states of Illinois and Missouri, along with
the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
“This is us.” She drew a circle at Cairo. Which sat at
the very southern tip of her rendition of Illinois. “Up the
river is St. Louis.” She drew another dot on the left side of
her map. “And up here is Chicago.” A third dot went in
the northern part of Illinois. She then drew some other dots in
various parts of the map, followed by some arrows from those dots
down to Cairo, which sat at the bottom of a V bracketed by the two
big rivers.
“Does anyone know what this means?”
The mayor had been preaching about this since they'd met. “Yeah.
The zombies are coming
here
,” he repeated from his
previous warnings. The general saw this not as keen foresight, but
outright panic. Unlike the mayor, he had used his time to bolster
their chances, not hide in his office. Now the sweaty old timer was
trying to cover his ass by pulling his soldiers back into town to
protect him.
Elsa nodded. “Yes, Mayor Cartright, our cartographers have
determined that as these, uh, zombies, leave the cities they
naturally follow the contours of the land and the boundaries of the
rivers. Since most of the big bridges over both these waterways have
been blown, they will gravitate southward to this point.” Her
pen made an emphatic squeal on their position.
“The zombies are coming here,” she reaffirmed. “But
that's the bad news. The good news is this: the government is
re-establishing itself in St. Louis.”
She seemed to wait for a reaction.
“Why St. Louis?” John probed.
“An excellent question, General. For the same reason this
little town has kept you safe—St. Louis is surrounded on three
sides by major rivers. The zombies have been migrating out of that
city into the open countryside beyond. What's left is safe to reclaim
and re-use. The fact that it's in the middle of the country was also
valued by government planners.”
He wanted to ask why he wasn't informed of such plans by his own
chain of command. As one of the ranking military men defending the
civilian population in the Midwest, he should have been the first to
know about a potential new base of operations. He also wanted to ask
what would become of Cairo. Currently it was as safe a place as any
for hundreds of miles. But he hated appearing out of the loop.
No one said anything.
“This is good news, people. The government is coming to
rebuild and restore some semblance of peace after these weeks of
chaos and uncertainty. The worst is over.”
Her eyes met his. She was unflinching. Challenging him to say
something contrary. He held hers until they were both interrupted by
a man standing along the wall behind him. When he spun around to see
who was talking he was truly surprised.
“Miss. I don't believe we've met. I'm Rear Admiral Ray. I
was on special assignment with the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon
before things got bad. My sources say that St. Louis is not clear of
infected, and in fact it has a higher than normal concentration of
them. Also, are you aware of the activities of the Patriot Snowball
group in that city?”
He had newfound respect for the navy man. He actually asked some
salient questions. He was unaware of the patriot threat.
“Yes. My advance team is there right now. I should have a
report soon on the precise status on the ground. We are aware of the
threats.” She put down her marker and looked around at
everyone. “This is going to happen, folks. The government in
Washington is gone. Washington D.C. is gone. Most of what's left has
to set up shop somewhere, and St. Louis is it. Your job is to support
that effort.”
She looked at John. “Can I count on you, sir, to help these
people survive until we can all get safely to St. Louis when the time
is right?” She turned to the mayor. “You and your people
are encouraged to join us, of course.”
The mayor nodded, but held a wide-eyed look of fear.
The general's head swam with competing directives. Dig the trench.
Properly position the tanks. Plan the killboxes. And now, be ready to
abandon it all, cross hostile territory, and end up in a bigger town
with bigger problems. Though he swore an oath to protect the country,
he wavered on what that actually meant here on the ground.
For now, he would play along.
“I can provide five Humvees, each with two-man crews to
patrol on top of the levees.” Keeping them on the levees would
give them instant access back to the main effort in the north, should
they be needed.
“All right. See guys, we're getting somewhere now.”
She smiled a fake smile. “We just have to play nice and help
each other until the government gets back on its feet. You take care
of it, and it will take care of you.”
The poison in her eyes reinforced his doubts about her motives.
Cairo was safe. It was on a peninsula and was easily defensible
thanks to his efforts digging fortifications on the landward-facing
side. Only an idiot would abandon prime defensive real estate like
this.
He wasn't going to let her, or anyone, ruin all that he had built.
Homeland Security may be in charge, but he controlled the
firepower.
1: Convoy
Sixteen days since the sirens.
Liam stared at the ripped envelope for a long time. His mother had
given it to him yesterday and hinted that his father asked her not to
read it until Liam saw it. He spent a long night trying to sleep in
the noisy campground or—when sleep eluded him—trying to
remember the words his father had said the past six months which
might have given him clues as to what he knew and when he knew it.
