Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (5 page)

Everyone thinks my hearing is gone.

“Help is coming, Liam.”

3

Later in the day she had another visitor. She saw the woman hop
out of a Humvee parked at the curb, but she wasn't dressed in a
uniform. Absently she wondered if the blonde woman was the mother of
someone in the house, but she knew that would be a miracle given
where everyone had come from.

“Everyone wants to talk to Grandma,” she giggled.

Nearby, Debbie laughed, too. She'd gotten closer as she spread out
on the floor and was now only a few feet away. Marty could tell the
girl was happy to have an adult nearby, even if she wasn't much of
one these days.

The woman didn't bother knocking, or closing the door behind her.
She walked directly up to Marty.

“Mrs. Martinette Peters. I need you to come with me.
We're...uh...relocating you to a more secure home up near the main
road.”

She caught herself.

“Oh, where are my manners. I'm Elsa Cantwell, Homeland
Security. Basically my job is to ensure you all stay safe.” She
talked at the room, though only Grandma appeared to listen. And maybe
Debbie.

“I'm at your service. I can't very well run out on my own,”
she said in good humor.

“I wouldn't imagine.” But her face held doubt.

“I need some volunteers. Hey!” A couple of the teens
snapped to attention, at that. “I need you, you, and you to
grab Mrs. Peters' things and put them in the truck. Go!”

The kids ran into the room where Marty had a few private things,
such as her clothes, a hairbrush, and a tiny jar of makeup brought to
her by Victoria. In the end, only Debbie walked across the front lawn
while she balanced between Mrs. Cantwell's solider-helpers. It
reminded her of walking across Liam's lawn into the MRAP.

“Take care, Grandma,” Debbie said once she was settled
into the back of the Humvee. “Maybe I'll come visit you.”

“I'd like that.”

But Debbie ran off, leaving her to doubt whether the young girl
would ever make good on that offer. She doubted it.

The drive only took a few minutes. Cairo wasn't that large, and
there were few vehicles moving around, although there were lots of
refugees walking the streets or sitting under the large shady trees
common throughout the town. Some of the homes had air conditioning
units, but the town leadership strenuously urged power consumption be
limited to absolute essentials so as to extend the life of their
generators. The moving air in the truck felt wonderful.

The woman turned around to speak, and she wore a more pleasant
facade this time. “I hope you've been able to stay comfortable.
It looked pretty tight in that house. We'd like to put you up in a
more private apartment, suitable for someone of your age.”

There it was. She was to be treated like an invalid.

But you aren't exactly doing the Jitterbug these days.

She couldn't argue with the logic, though she would fight the
notion she was “invalid” until her dying day. As long as
she could walk on her own—for a few feet anyway—she
wasn't truly done. She had Angie's help back at home for all those
years mainly to handle the routine chores around the house. She felt
it was overkill to pay all that money for a nurse, when clearly she
had no medical conditions requiring medical supervision. It was one
of the few rules her family asked of her so she could live by
herself, and she only relented because the family had split the cost
to pay for the full-time nurse. No one was unduly burdened. The
ultimate irony was Angie herself succumbed to a sickness requiring
immediate and expert medical treatment…

“I don't mind. My great-grandson might wonder where I've
gone when he gets back.”

“Your grandson? Where did he go?”

“The Marine checked on me this morning. I assume you came
because he told you about me and Liam?”

There was a fraction of a second too-long a pause. “Of
course.” She spun around. Marty could hear her softly tapping
on a phone or tablet. She'd been listening to the sound for days.

They reached a dumpy-looking hotel. It was a single level and
shaped like the letter U. There was an ancient pool with black water
and a roped-off slide in the center of the complex. Elsa's driver
pulled the truck right up to the end of the walkway.

“This is it. I'm afraid it isn't home or very sweet, but
we've tried to make it as comfortable as possible for our elderly
guests.”

The woman stayed in the front seat as one of her assistants helped
her out. The other grabbed her things and together they walked a few
doors down. She appreciated the two strong men holding her arms until
she was through the doorway and sitting in a wooden chair next to the
bed.

“You good?” one of the men asked.

She gave them a thumbs up, and they left after closing the door.

The Humvee sped away and silence filled the room. After the
exertion of the move and the noisy interior of the truck, it took her
a couple minutes to calm down and appreciate a new noise carried by
the wind from points unknown.

Gunfire.

4

The room was dank and dirty, but it did have one small air
conditioning unit on the front window. It was off when she arrived,
but she took a chance and clicked it on. It immediately blew air in
her face.

“Oh, thank you for small miracles.”

The sound of the blower fan masked the sounds coming from over the
nearby levee. She'd figured out the sound of guns came from what Liam
had called “the ditch” area north of the town. It was
supposedly a formidable defensive line put there by the military to
hold off the infected hordes forever. Liam was sure enough it would
do the task that he left her here behind it. Of course she saw he was
wracked with guilt about whether it was the right thing to do, but
what else was he going to do: let her come with him? No, her running
days were over, she was happy to admit. Cairo was as nice a place as
any to spend the end times.

In her new home—or jail cell, as she accepted she hadn't
been given a key—an hour or two slipped by as she basked in the
cool air. The insufferable heat and humidity of the town almost made
her understand why it had been falling into ruin even before the
zombies came.

She was still sitting in the exhaust of the air conditioner when
someone keyed the door—it was locked!—and stepped inside.

Marty wasn't surprised.

“Ms. Cantwell.”

“I'm glad to see you're enjoying your new digs. It was hard
getting you a working air conditioner.” She laughed, though
Marty sensed it carried some additional context than innocent banter.

“Oh yes, it's really wonderful. Thank you.”

“I suppose you'd rather be at the other end of town, where
it's a bit quieter.” It was understood what noise she was
talking about. The cracks and snaps were loud enough they could be
heard over the air conditioner, once you knew they were there.

“I don't mind. It's nice to know there are men and women
working over the hill to keep us safe.”

“Yes, that's why I'm here.” She sat on the nearby
queen bed, though she stayed on the very edge as if it were too
filthy to sit on more than that tiny sliver. “To explain the
situation to town elders.”

“Oh, dear. I'm not a town elder. I'm from St. Louis.”

“I know.” She looked at her phone, and scrolled
through some screens while Marty watched.

“It says here you arrived with two others. A Liam Peters and
Victoria Hennessey. This is the grandson you mentioned?”

Marty nodded.

“Is there anything you want to tell me about Liam and
Victoria? I want to corroborate some information from Lieutenant
Colonel Brandyweis. Where are they at this minute?”

She had told the colonel all she knew. Why didn't he tell her
where they'd gone? She couldn't guess.

“I told the colonel the kids left Cairo.”

She appeared to wince at the news.

“Why in the hell would they leave this place?” She
appeared exasperated, sounding a lot like the colonel, but calmed in
moments. “Would you mind telling me how they escaped?”

“Escaped? No, they just left.”

Were they prisoners. Be careful Marty.

She tried to reassure herself, but deception didn't come naturally
to her.

“Of course. And how did they
leave
, if I may ask?”

There was no lie that made sense. No one could walk out the front
because it was a huge floodwall door that only opened for the
military. The bridges were also guarded. The only way out was the
water. She would never believe he swam, would she?

“Ma'am? This is very important.”

“Is Liam in trouble?”

“Trouble?” She smiled, but it was humorless. “No,
of course not. We have a list of guests that we have to balance with
all the refugees in our town. If people don't check in, we have no
idea how much food we need, or if there are infected among us. My job
is to organize the survivors according to their abilities. Having a
strong young man, or young woman, would be very valuable to the
people manning the ditch.” She pointed toward the north.

“So, let me ask you again. How did they leave?”

Marty's glib response surprised both of them.

“They swam!”

“Swam? Are you sure?”

“They said there were so many barges they could almost walk
across to Kentucky. But that they had to swim a little ways, too.”

She commended herself for putting them in the wrong state.

Elsa stared at her for many seconds. Like the colonel, she bore
into her eyes, but she was able to resist the woman a little better
than the angry man. The colonel showed pain and sadness, but also
determination. In the woman she only saw hatred. It's what made it so
easy to read her.

“Swimming, huh?” She thumbed her phone again. Marty
absently wondered if the young woman's generation would survive
without technology, because that's where they were heading. Except
for this little enclave of Cairo, the whole world was probably going
dark.

Elsa held up an image on her phone; Marty knew she was caught.

The one time I try my hand at lying…

It was a grainy photo of her in a hospital bed with Liam,
Victoria, Hayes, and Duchesne standing around her.

“This photo was taken from a low-level surveillance drone
over St. Louis five days ago. Here you can clearly see you. We've
identified Liam and Ms. Hennessey, and of course we already know Mr.
Hayes and Mr. Duchesne. The bodyguard and Mrs. Hayes are unimportant
to this little sit-down. What's relevant is that I need you to think
hard about what you tell me. I didn't bring you here to sit in this
cool air without a reason.”

“No, I didn't think you looked like a kind woman.”

“Kind woman? Really? Kind?” She stood up and tossed
her phone on the bed, but grabbed it quickly and wiped it on her
pants with a huff.

“This town is disgusting, you know that?” She didn't
wait for Marty's response. “I have a whole state to run. This
town is under siege. The sick are getting sicker. And you think I
care about being kind to a couple of runaway kids. Kids, who I might
add, somehow escaped from these men?” She pointed to Hayes and
Duchesne on her phone, though Marty knew who she meant. She wondered
if the drone was able to record sound through the windows as that
would probably be of interest to her. Hayes and Duchesne didn't
exactly see eye to eye.

“No, I'm going to ask you again and you're going to tell me
what this is all about. Why are you on a government watch list and
why are these two kids running around the tri-state area showing up
on drone footage and security checkpoints?” She slid her screen
and showed Marty another pair of photos—shots of Liam and
Victoria's torsos on a highway bridge from the earliest days. She
recognized his shirt. And Victoria wore a confused half-smile.

Marty decided it was time to play her ace card. While Elsa was
working through her diatribe she slowly let her eyelids droop. Her
head tilted, just a little, indicating a growing weariness. She
perfected the skill over many years of talking to otherwise
well-meaning friends and family who—for all their
goodness—couldn't take a hint that it was time for them to go.

It worked as expected. Marty was throwing herself some mental high
fives when Elsa moved to the door. Her parting shot almost made her
wish she'd tried the “I've got a touch of dementia” ploy
first.

“Duchesne radioed in before you killed him. He told me
exactly who and what you are. I watched you three push him into the
water on the drone feed. If I find Liam, I'm going to kill him.”

The door slammed loudly, but opened an instant later.

Marty felt someone nearby, but she didn't dare open her eyes.

Lord, forgive me my trespasses...

The air conditioner turned off. The cool air evaporated in
moments, like it was a marionette connected to the unit and only
danced when the unit was powered. There was no residual cool.

The door slammed a second time, louder than the first. A key
locked the deadbolt from the outside.

She waited a minute, in case she came back in. Already the sweat
beaded on her forehead. A vehicle sped away from the parking lot.

When she opened her eyes she saw the cord for the cooling unit had
been severed clean. The detached plug and a short few inches of stout
black cord lay on the floor—testament to the death of the
machine.

“Liam, I'm so sorry. I think I made things worse.”

Marty felt the temperature rise, though she felt maybe she
deserved to suffer a little.

The boat was right where Liam had left it on the Meramec River. As
he approached, he felt a little of the old nervousness about being on
the water. But his childhood fears of water paled when compared to
the things he had to fear now. Somehow he held it together back when
he swam under the downed bridge with a zombie poking him in the gut.
Water, alone, was no longer a fear of his.