Since the Sirens
Author: E.E. Isherwood
Date: 2015-12-13 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Horror; Apocalyptic; Post Apocalyptic; Science Fiction; Paranormal; Fiction
Description: The world is ending. Who will save Grandma?What would you do if a mysterious plague began to devour your city and the dead started banging on your door?Fifteen-year-old Liam Peters is spending the summer with his great-grandmother (not by choice) when the authorities of St. Louis spin up the tornado sirens to announce a civic emergency. Police robocalls declare mass disturbances throughout the city, suggesting citizens try to escape to safer jurisdictions. Radio offers contradictory instructions: stay inside, hunker down, ride it out. The President tries to convey a message of hope to calm a s

SINCE THE SIRENS:
The Complete Post-Apocalyptic Box Set

BOOK 1: SINCE THE SIRENS
BOOK 2: SIREN SONGS
BOOK 3: STOP THE SIRENS

BOOK 4: LAST FIGHT OF THE VALKYRIES
BOOK 5: ZOMBIES VS POLAR BEARS

BOOK 6: ZOMBIES EVER AFTER

BOOK 7: ZOMBIE ESCAPE

SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 1

Since the Sirens
Since the Sirens
Book 1

Connect With E.E. Isherwood
Website & Newsletter: http://www.sincethesirens.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SinceTheSirens/

© 2015 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.

When the end came, those left alive found their own religion.

The dead, however, became militant atheists.

Series Introduction

Thank you for checking out my Since the Sirens box set. I hope you have confidence the books are worth your time based on all the fantastic reviews my awesome readers have bestowed upon them. This series isn't just about fighting the zombies, it's about the collapse of society over the first few weeks after the plague has begun. It's about finding the right allies to endure the brutality of a lawless time. It's about the importance of family. And, as some reviewers have noted, it is also about finding a little romance to make all the suffering bearable.

There are currently seven books in the series and all of them follow a small band of main characters (Liam, who will show up in chapter 0, Grandma Marty, who will show up in chapter 1, and Victoria, who shows up a bit down the road). As far as zombie books go, mine tend to veer away from bloody gore (though you can't have zombies without a little of it). I like zombies who behave differently than you might expect. Every city produces zombies a bit different from all the others. I also enjoy having set-piece battles of epic scale, though those scenes don't show up until later books. The zombies need time to spread…

My most cherished reviews are those saying variations of "I don't normally read zombie books, but this one was awesome." The series is more of an apocalyptic survival story that happens to have zombies in it.

If zombies aren't your thing, I have a new 5-book series titled MINUS AMERICA, which is also a post-apocalyptic multi-book epic. It asks the question what would happen if a mystery weapon suddenly annihilated every American in our homeland? The survivors arrive to find nothing but empty piles of clothes where once there were people. Was it the Rapture? Aliens? A high-tech mistake? Like all my books, it focuses on great characters dropped into impossible situations.

What about asteroids falling to earth? My 6-book IMPACT series (co-written with Mike Kraus) is about a trillion-dollar rock brought in from the asteroid belt that accidentally falls to earth. When it shatters, it sprays middle America with dozens of shockwaves and impacts. A young park ranger tries to survive the destruction in Yellowstone while her Kentucky-boy father tries to go out and find her in the apocalyptic heartland.

Finally, I invite you to check out my END DAYS series (co-written with Craig Martelle). That one is about a science experiment gone awry. A father and son are on opposite sides of the USA when the accident takes place, and the trucker must travel dangerous highways while his son tries to survive the chaos of New York City. They have to meet up before time itself comes to the ultimate reset…

All of them can be found on Amazon by clicking above or searching for EE Isherwood.

I hope you enjoy book 1, SINCE THE SIRENS. It was the first book I wrote but is still one of my favorites. There are currently seven books in this box set, and book 7 leaves plenty of room for more in the series, but I think you’ll find the story arc satisfying. More books are planned, so leave an encouraging review on this box set and it will prompt me to keep writing them!

Thank you,

EE Isherwood

Chapter 0: World of Zombies

At fifteen, a young man with Liam’s average size and weight wouldn’t attempt to double-wield shotguns. Most men twice his age, even those in the military, wouldn’t try it in battle. But they weren’t the hero. He was. A wild-haired, lanky, scholar-athlete wannabe who just happened to be good at this one thing.

“Lock and load. I’m going in.”

“Wait up,” JT cried out as he fiddled with his sniper rifle. “I can’t take this thing in there. They’ll be on top of me before I can use it.”

“I’d use the fifty-cal if I were you.” Liam couldn’t heft such a large weapon, but JT was built like a college linebacker, even if he acted more like the fifteen-year-old wimp he’d been before the world went to Hell.

“Nah. Not enough ammo. Used it all on the bridge. I’m going with these.”

Liam chuckled at his friend. The young man wore a get-up more commonly found in a biker bar—all black leather pants and jacket adorned with silver studs. His white t-shirt was as clean as when his mom set it out for him—Liam wasn't going to tell him how he knew that. Somehow, it all worked. The young man also dual-wielded his choice of weapons but with much more practical .357 Colt Pythons.

“I wish some of the other guys were here,” JT huffed as he broke down the rifle and prepped the revolvers.

Liam felt the same way, but Charlie and Jacob both fell in the fight to get them to the end of their mission. He had a few extra seconds to ponder their mistakes, so he could avoid ending up like them. He looked to the sky.

They're dead. Just lousy spectators, now, he thought.

JT finally gave him the go ahead. “I’m ready.”

Liam pulled at the door of the secret government base they’d been searching for, though he stopped to consider his fortune. The cure to the plague was inside, as were the men and women responsible for creating the mess in the first place. With a little luck, they could take care of them both in one glorious battle. He briefly imagined the cheering crowds of survivors. The young women anxious to thank him. Fifteen or not, he'd be heralded for this.

“I said I'm ready,” JT repeated.

“I'm going!”

The expected white lab coats were there, but the people wearing them had already been infected with the Six-Sigma Virus—so named because it killed with ruthless efficiency. He didn’t dwell on the tantalizing beakers and vats of bubbling green liquid. The cure—if it existed—was useless in the moment. If they had it, why didn't the scientists use it? The answer was both grim and obvious, and now those ruined people had to die, just like all the others. The New World demanded blood, not a fabled cure.

“Let ‘em have it,” he shouted.

He selected his first target for the automatic combat shotguns. She was a brunette in the stereotypical white ensemble which reminded him more of a mad scientist than a CDC employee. He avoided looking directly at the smiling face on her ID badge affixed to her chest.

“Die, zombie scum!”

The trigger pulled easily on both his weapons. Together they more or less removed the woman’s rotting head from her shoulders, precisely the way he was supposed to do it. Of all the different types of zombies he’d read about and seen in movies, it was the one consistent piece of knowledge applicable to all of them. Remove the head, and you eliminate the threat.

JT’s .357’s began to sing just as something cut the power, throwing everything into total darkness. The flashes of the guns became the only source of illumination. The strobe effect led them both deeper into the dark vault. A fitting effect for the final challenge of their long quest.

“Switching to FLIR,” he said with absolute calm. Despite the sick researchers shambling around—all with sickly gray skin and glowing red eyes—he didn’t lose his cool. He was proud he’d been able to push the fear away and stay glued to his objective. He imagined it was how proper military men might handle the same situation.

“Got it,” JT replied.

The infrared headset worked miracles for him. “Wow. That’s the ticket. I can see ‘em all!”

They fired at will. He and JT stuck together until the middle of the room. The tables of vats and beakers on the far side required them to split up so they could clear the room properly. He marveled at the amazing fidelity of the scene as he watched a shotgun shell forced from the breech of the weapon along with a puff of gas. The infrared mode didn’t strip out any of the detail.

“This is awesome,” he screamed into his headset.

He brought down several more zombies in quick order before reaching the back wall. JT came running up from his side of the room, bragging as usual.

“How many did you get? I killed ten.”

Liam doubted his friend’s count, but he hadn’t been keeping score just then.

“What do we do now?”

JT smiled from under his IR headgear and pointed to an alcove on the back wall. “We’ve made it to the end, my friend. We just have to push that button, and this place will self-destruct.”

“And all this will be over? This whole adventure? That doesn't seem right … ”

“Yep. We win.” JT clapped him on the shoulder.

“This is all too easy,” Liam responded. Easier than the bridge where they’d lost their two friends, no question there.

“Who cares. Just push it, and we can get out of here.”

It probably ran on batteries because it had a little blinking red light under it. Just as you might expect of something designed to blow up the place.

He finally relented and pushed the three-inch button into the wall with a quiet click. A moment later the building began to shake. A massive door along the back wall slowly slid open and revealed hundreds—maybe thousands—more zombies in the next chamber. All of them moved toward them with the same slow zombie shuffle, shouting the word “brains” while holding their arms in front of them. They greatly desired the fresh meat in their midst. Liam had seen it before, though never with this many.

He began to reload his shotguns when a female voice broke his concentration.

“Help me, please!”

JT shared his concerned look.

“Under here,” he yelled while pointing both shotguns at the cabinet door beneath the lab table.

“After you,” JT said dramatically while training his Pythons on the same spot.

Liam lowered the shotguns, ignoring the groans of the horde drawing close. He unlatched the door to see a young blonde-haired woman coiled up inside. She held out her hand, and the boys helped her to her feet.

Moans and groans momentarily forgotten, Liam couldn’t help looking her over.

Blonde. Tight-fitting jeans. Nothing above but a stars-and-stripes bikini top.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Liam declared with his best attempt at bravado.

“No, we’re all going to die,” she replied. “There’s too many.”

Liam was dumbfounded. “Then why did you get out of your hiding spot?”

He watched her blue eyes tear up, and he instantly regretted the words. Her eye sockets were messy puddles of smeared eye liner from previous tears.

“I—I didn’t want to die alone.”

“Oh, hell,” JT droned from behind him.

“We’ll do our best,” he said to cheer her up.

Her smile was weak, but it was there. She had faith.

We can do this.

Zombies came in from the entryway, fell from ceiling tiles, and swarmed from the back until they converged on the trio. Each doomed warrior expended a good chunk of ammo before the zombies trapped them for good.

He had to shout over the noise. “JT, you lied. You said all we had to do was push the button. That’s how we win!”

The horde pressed up against them. The two boys stood with their weapons forward and their backs against the helpless damsel in distress. Thinking it over, it was pretty near to one of the screenshots he remembered from the game’s download page.

His friend sounded beaten. “I’ve never made it this far before. I was just making things up.”

“Well, that figures.”

Liam could do no more than watch as his avatar was brought down in a zombie chomp-fest. The pain was amplified because JT's character died a full second later. That would be one more point against him in their brother-like rivalry in video games.

The girl they were protecting died last.

A female computer voice filled his headphones. “Match ended. Hunter team efficiency 37%. Hunter team losses equal 100%. Player ‘Meat Me in Yonkers’ has maintained the rank of Rookie.”

“Dang it!”

He yanked off his headphones and tossed them onto a pile of books on his desk next to the PC tower. The computer game after action screen glared at him as if to mock his purported expertise. He’d let two of his friends die early on in the simulation and failed to lead the rest of the team to victory. They’d been in a position to rescue one of the valuable non-player characters, but she died in that room same as them. JT even got more kills than him, in addition to capturing that all-important braggy extra second of life.

The distant voices of his friends came out of his discarded headphones. His volume remained turned up well beyond what Mom and Dad would find appropriate. Even great-grandma Marty would probably think it was too loud.

He snickered as he put them back on. The headphone and microphone combination was necessary so he could talk to his three friends. The wintery conditions on the county roads made it impossible for them to meet in person as they all preferred but playing online while chatting was the next best thing.

“Guys, World of Zombies is kinda lame. It’s not nearly as cool as World of Undead Soldiers, which you all know also has zombies.”

Left unsaid was that he’d played the other game for years. He was, in fact, a master at killing all manner of undead. Vampires. Yetis. Even zombies. But a game with only zombies was a different beast entirely, and not one he found very challenging. It took brains to fight those other beasts, as each required a particular kind of weapon or magical talisman to defeat. Zombies just stood there and died with simple bullets. The game designers made no effort to make them interesting or different.

Jacob laughed. “At least you didn’t die in the middle of the game. I slipped off that bridge like a newb lord.”

Liam pushed back in his chair and crossed his arms. If his friends wanted to play again he might indulge them once more, but there was no reason to stop playing his preferred game. Sure the video quality was better, and it was the “latest and greatest” from Saratov Systems—his favorite game company—but new wasn’t always better.

A loud bang rattled the floor beneath his chair. The sound defeated his amplified headphones still blaring the end game credits.

He rolled his eyes.

Dad had been shopping again. He’d watched him unload the car earlier that evening after pulling it into the garage and closing the garage door. Dad proudly called himself a gun nut, and he often proved it. Not even icy streets could stop him from buying guns at auction.

It sounded as if he’d dropped some while taking them to the basement.

Internally he debated helping. He knew he should. His game was a total loss, and nothing required his butt be in his chair, but he was kind of Dadded-out at that particular moment. It rubbed him the wrong way his father would go to any length to get those stupid guns, but he wouldn’t budge when Liam asked him to drive through those same road conditions to get him to JT’s house for the night.

While he debated that point, his friends started up the next game. A screen asked if he wanted to join.

Sorry, Dad. I'm reeeeal busy.

He clicked the screen. “All right, guys. I’ll give this one more shot. Let’s go find some zombies.”

In six months, the zombies would be looking for him.

Chapter 1: CIV

Martinette Peters leaned against her oven and thought about hunger. She guessed she'd cooked tens of thousands of meals during more than a century of living, but this morning was different. She was off the script.

These days her breakfast was prepared by Angie, the nurse who lived in the upstairs flat of Marty’s two-family red brick home. Bacon. Eggs. Toast. The same things she'd made for her the past two years. Every day. Without fail. But today Angie hadn't come down at her regular time and hadn't answered the intercom or her telephone. Marty waited as long as possible for her chef but soon thought about how to cook those things for herself. What was once second nature now required proper planning.

She studied the cabinets, the pantry, and her cooking dishes. Everything she needed was far above. Either she was getting shorter, or Angie had intentionally placed everything on shelves out of reach.

She walked from the kitchen, leaning on her cane. A bag of bread hung from her free hand. That, mercifully, had been within her grasp on the counter. The phone rang as she guided herself into her comfy chair. Her cane remained nearby.

“This is the Metropolitan Police Department, City of St. Louis, with an emergency alert. Violent disturbances have been reported in multiple locations within St. Louis city limits. There is a risk of injury or death to any participants or bystanders. If you hear this message, we urge immediate evacuation to safer areas. Follow instructions from city or police officials in your neighborhood. Be alert for additional emergency messages. … This is the Metropolitan … ”

Shifting in her seat, she listened as the robocall repeated through the answering machine. She screened everything these days, responding at her leisure, if at all. Despite having many friends and relatives, she seldom had energy for chit-chatting. At 104 years of age, she assured herself it was okay to be picky.

The announcement finally ended with a beep, leaving her to her thoughts.

Well, I'm not going to run for the hills!

She glanced at the two-wheeled walker in the corner, tennis ball-swathed feet fresh and yellow—she hated using that big device. If she were going to chance an escape, which she certainly was not, she'd use the smaller, quad-footed cane sitting by her side. She despised that thing too, but grudgingly admitted it helped her get around more effectively than grasping at walls and furniture while patrolling the cozy single-level flat.

Ignoring the robocall’s instructions, she resumed cross-stitching under the timeless rhythm of the wall clock. Angie would call sooner or later, and then the day would start properly.

It wasn't long after the phone alert when she heard a great banging sound from the front of the apartment. To her hearing-amplified ears, it sounded like someone had fallen down the stairs leading to the upstairs flat. Over the years, she'd heard many things dropped down those stairs, including many by her grandchildren who just loved playing on them despite her stern warnings. She had also come to know the sound of someone tripping up the stairs or falling down the steep flight. This was a case of the latter.

“Angie, is that you?” she asked, though she knew her raised voice was still too weak to be heard in the front of the house, through a wooden door.

Getting up, she patiently grasped her cane, pushing up on the armchair with her free hand. Normally it was Angie who would come down to help her when she had trouble getting out of her chair after being comfortable for too long. A quick buzz on the intercom was all it took. This time, she was able to make the transition from sit to stand unaided.

She lamented that if someone up front was counting on her to help them quickly, they were in trouble. With her hunched back and sub-five-foot stature her gait was a slow shuffle at best—foot, foot, cane. It was, however, very steady most of the time. That, at least, would give the desperately injured some modicum of hope of eventual rescue.

She hurried—in her own way—to the potential fall victim. At a snail's pace, she passed her curio cabinet and shelves of fine china in her dining room and emerged in her front living room. She steadied herself on a big armchair, then pushed off to the last stop, the interior door in the front foyer of her home.

Lord help me move.

Soft moans and scratching indicated this was indeed an emergency. She steeled herself to see the fallen victim as she opened the door inward.

“Oh my, Angie. Are you all right?”

Angie had bounced down the stairs sure enough, but a mere fall was the least of her problems. Her skin was ashen, and her eyes were bloodshot—or bloody, it was hard to tell—and her usual perfectly manicured hair was sitting in greasy knots. Her light-colored nightgown was soaked with sweat and stained with many red streaks and blotches from top to bottom. The fifty-something nurse looked almost skeletal, and her emotional state wasn't the expected embarrassment or agony from the crash, but instead...anger? Her right foot was unquestionably broken—it was pointing in the wrong direction.

Why isn't she screaming?

While Marty had scoffed at the warning on the phone, she was aware of the panic sweeping the nation and was certainly aware of the mystery Ebola-like sickness which so troubled many of her family members. They were at her flat just last night urging her to stay with them until it all blew over. She demurred, declaring she felt perfectly safe for the time being. She assured them if things got really bad she'd oblige them on their offer. Secretly she felt it couldn't possibly get rotten enough for her to leave. For someone who had lived through the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror, she did not panic or scare easily.

She wasn't panicking now, but she was hasty about shutting the door.

“I'm sorry, Angie. You aren't looking right. I'll call 911 and get you some help.”

Before she could get the door fully closed, Angie stuck her arm and shoulder into the void to reach for her, preventing a good seal.

“My lands!” It was as close as she came to cussing.

2

A woman of 104 wasn’t going to kick or shove a person lying on the floor hard enough to get them back through an open door. It would be difficult for someone half her age, so she released the door and did the only sensible thing she could at that moment—she walked away.

Perhaps it was habit, or maybe just a little bit of panic creeping in, but she went back into her flat rather than step out the front door to the relative safety of her front porch. After several seconds, she realized her mistake and partially turned around to see if she could still slip out—and saw Angie slithering into her flat, blocking escape in that direction. Angie had an evil look she had never seen on her friend's face before, and she was struggling to get off the floor.

“Angie, you're hurt badly and aren't yourself. Please wait where you are, and I'll call a doctor.”

She considered her options as she pushed herself through her home, understanding that she was likely in mortal danger. Angie was probably infected with heaven-knows-what, though it was beyond her reckoning how anyone sick or healthy could lay there with a broken ankle and not make a peep. Working her cane with her left hand, her free hand was in her pocket holding her rosary. At her age, death was never far away, and the rosary was an important reminder of the faith she always kept close, but this was not how she wanted her story to end. She needed a plan.

She could easily lock herself in any room of the house—a bathroom would be the best choice for now—but she didn't know how strong Angie might be. If she could survive a broken ankle and not complain, what if she could put her head through the thin wooden doors? The growling sounds of the sick woman behind her spurred her to continue without stopping to consider potential side routes.

“I'll just be a moment, Angie.”

She walked into the kitchen at the back of the house, looking around frantically for something to help her. Her heart was beating hard at the effort to simply walk at such a brisk pace. She scanned the kitchen table, the oven area, and the open door to the basement—her great-grandson Liam lived down there, but he was gone for the day to the library. She would never be able to get down all those steps. Her eyes finally fell on her impressive collection of kitchen cutlery, and she chuckled to herself at a funny thought.

Maybe I could fight her with a knife? Ha!

Her painfully slow progress brought her near the back door, the only real alternative left. Going into the backyard was a definite option, but that would put her outside her house for who-knows-how-long. What about food, water, her pain medications, the telephone? Could she survive until Liam returned? The shuffling noises entering the kitchen made up her mind.

She slid out the stout back door, pulling it shut behind her. The exterior screen door slowly followed suit. The concrete porch was a flat, open space with a small awning overhead, providing limited shade for a few chairs and one large freestanding porch swing she kept around mainly for the grandchildren. She liked this flat for a lot of reasons, but the biggest was how few stairs she had to use. The bright-eyed Marty who moved in all those years ago never imagined she'd still be here at 104 with a disdain for steps.

She hobbled, her back starting to flare up in pain, to the closed window near the back door so she could get a look inside at her friend. She had to put her face up against the glass to see through the glare of the morning sunshine. Her cane, with its four small feet, waited patiently at her side.

Angie was right up in the window looking back at her.

Oh, my. Poor Angie.

She could see Angie had to be standing on her broken foot, banging herself against the window quite forcefully. The interior screen frame was already ripped and bent, but her greatest concern was how much pain the woman must be suffering from that injury.

She moved away from the window to consider what to do next. She ran through a Hail Mary prayer, not for herself but for the more endangered soul inside. She sat down in the sturdy armchair. She knew she'd have trouble getting back up, but there was no choice but to take a quick rest. And think.

A hedge separated her immaculate yard and well-tended flower beds from her less tidy neighbors on both sides. She saw none of them outside, which wasn't terribly unusual. Most of the kids and many of the young adults were probably inside playing with their video games or whatever newfangled technology was out these days. Or they could all be inside suffering like Angie. That image hung on the air.

“Those police called a few hours too late. I let Liam go out today without a care in the world. I need to get back inside, so he has a safe place when he returns.”

It was time to save her own bacon and prevent her from becoming someone else's problem. She hated asking for help for tasks she could do for herself. Even worse was depending on others for things she had done herself but was physically incapable of doing now. A rescue, for instance.

I'm starting to feel old. Finally.

The tiny yard offered nothing regarding weapons—not that she had any desire to hurt Angie. If she could still hold one, a gun might be a useful deterrent. The concept of a cowgirl granny lifting a shotgun, heroically reentering the house, and chasing off the bad guy would have given her a laughing fit on any other day. Today it just made her mad.

If she were ten years younger she might be able to sneak to the front door, open it, and lure Angie out—then move around the house and through the back door. Today, just walking to the front would probably give her a heart attack and running from the angry nurse on the return trip would kill her, one way or the other.

Her eyes fell on the garage.

Can I get there?

3

She had mild difficulty getting out of her chair, but the banging on the window kept her motivated. At the far end of her small yard was her one-car garage. A small wooden structure she seldom visited these days. It had been painted a tidy white, had a sloping black asphalt shingle roof, a tiny window on the rear wall, as well as small portals on each of the sides. The walkway led down the center of the yard but snaked to the right side of the garage. When she reached the service door she made a horrible realization—the key was hanging on a wall inside her house! She had never cussed her whole life; it just wasn't her style. Instead of cursing, she prayed.

She looked into the garage through the tiny window of the door and saw sunlight. The main bay door was already open. As she made her way into the alley and through the front of the garage, she noticed almost all the garages on her block had their fronts open, many with detritus tossed on the ground as if sneezed out. She and many of her neighbors had been robbed.

Looking in, she saw the previously pristine space was a tornadic blast of her belongings. She hadn't driven in twenty-five years and didn't own a car, but Angie's should have been sitting in front of her—it had been taken. So had anything else of value. The boxes of power tools. A couple of the grandkids' fancy bikes. The snowblower.

It's June, for heaven's sake.

Looking at what was left, she had to find something which would help her get back in her house. Trash cans. Old lumber scraps. Bags of soil. All manner of car-cleaning products, lawn-care accessories, and pre–World War II shovels, spades, and other old equipment she was unable to categorize. Her late husband never gave up on a good tool.

At that moment, the emergency tornado sirens began to howl their deep and unmistakable wail. It couldn't be weather—it was a clear day. They were supposed to warn of a tornado, but mostly the trumpets sounded only during their monthly readiness tests. Even with bad hearing, the eardrum-splitting decibels from the siren tower located just around the corner were painful as they continued to wail like the devil’s version of Gabriel’s trumpet.

Her eye came across something the thieves had overlooked or hadn’t wanted that gave her hope. Thirty feet of her past lay coiled on the floor, in the guise of a stout, braided rope with one end tied in a loop with the famous Honda Knot cowboys used to make their lariats. It was a souvenir from her honeymoon at Marvel Cave—eons ago. She and Al got the lariat from the aged proprietor of the small river cabin they rented. He liked to pretend he was a cowboy and talked about his time roping steer over in Kansas City. He wanted to give it to “youngin's” like them.

She used a rake to hook it, so she didn't have to bend down to pick it up. The braids felt good in her hands, and she savored the memories of its origin. She drew strength in the notion her husband was helping her from above. She leaned against the wall of the garage, considering how to advance her cause.

“I'll only have one chance. I'm already pooped,” she said to herself. Sweat beaded profusely under her snow-white hair.

She looked around for the one other tool she thought she might need and found the long handle of a broom without the brush attached. Easily done.

Slowly, she started making her way to the back porch again. The infernal siren continued to blare, adding anxiety to her already desperate plan. At the halfway point, she paused for a rest and wondered whether she shouldn't just go out the front gate, down the narrow path between her flat and the neighboring home, and just keep walking until she found help. Forget about Angie for now and just find assistance. Lots of risks either way.

“Lord give me strength to make the right choice,” she said to anyone listening. She seldom prayed for herself, but now she allowed herself to ask for help. After a minute's pause, she decided her best chance to see this day to the end was to take charge of her own problems and recapture her home. Even if she didn't live through the night, she wasn't about to spend her final hours on earth sitting on a deck chair listening to Angie claw away at her kitchen window.

“And, please, Lord, turn off those trumpets!”

4

She closed the distance to the back of her house, the rope heavy across her thin shoulders; the broom handle held tightly under the arm not working the cane. She saw herself reflected in the glass of her back window, stooped over and hobbling up the path like some elderly, deranged Calamity Jane.

She admitted she did not look very intimidating, but she was a survivor in the truest sense. She lost her first daughter in a freak car accident. A son lost to war in Korea. Financial ruin after Al died. And the coup de grace was breaking her hip when she was 99. This, she told herself, was a minor speed bump in comparison.

So, on she went, pulling up to the door and window. She tied off her rope and took a seat in the same chair she'd used a few minutes before. She was winded now, and her back was fast becoming a major distraction. She almost never consumed pain meds but using them after such exertion would be justified.

The plan was simple, as it had to be for a woman of her rapidly declining abilities. She would tap the window with her broom handle to get Angie’s attention and draw her over there one more time. She hoped that would give her an opportunity to open the screen door long enough to push the main door, so it would open wide. From there, things would get interesting.

As with most major events in her life, this one began with a prayer.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

She tried to stand up and realized her back was nearing its limits. With great effort, she did manage to stand, but this would likely be her last unassisted “up” of the day.

“As if I don't have enough problems.”

Standing and wobbling a bit, she righted herself and made for the small segment of brickwork between the door and the rear window. She had the rope looped over her head, the broomstick in her left hand, and the cane in her right. Her best guess was she could just reach the window with the stick and still be close enough to the door to open it. She considered whether Angie would even hear her banging on the window over the din of the emergency klaxons.

I’ll have to trust God on this one.

She let go of her cane and stood unassisted as best she could. With all her strength, she swung the broom handle with both hands. She had feeble arm strength, and her whole body was already taxed to its breaking point—but she did manage to make a satisfying bang on the window glass before the stick slipped out of her hands and rolled into the grass just off the concrete porch. It was now or never. Was it enough?

She maneuvered herself to the screen door and was dismayed to see how far open she needed it, so she could gain enough leverage to push the heavier inside door. It was taking too much time! She gave the door a push and was relieved to see it slowly swing open into the kitchen. Now all she had to do was move out of the screen door's path and close it before Angie returned from her attack on the window. It disturbed her deeply to hear such anger and pain, but it also scared her half to death, knowing she didn't have anything between her and the inside of the house but a slowly closing, flimsy aluminum screen door.

It latched shut with a satisfying click, but she felt the panic rising as Angie appeared in her blood-stained nightclothes and began flailing at the door.

My stars!

She nearly forgot what she was supposed to be doing but regained her wits enough to pull the rope from around her neck and get it into position. She had no idea what to expect of this plan, as she had absolutely no experience breaking screen doors. Would the whole thing collapse outward? Would Angie kick it open or accidentally hit the latch to open the door like a normal person? So many variables ran through her head as she stood inches away from danger.

The lining abruptly ripped near the top, and Angie leaned through the broken screen. As Angie's head poked out, Marty—city slicker or not—pulled a simple rope trick that the old proprietor would applaud unabashedly. She circled the lasso over Angie's head and pulled the loop, so it cinched around her neck. If Angie noticed it, she gave no indication as she continued trying to push through the door. She grabbed her cane and started walking as fast as her orthopedic shoes would carry her, knowing Angie was going to make it outside—if her plan continued to work.

The other end of the rope was tied to the only thing of any weight close enough to her back door—her porch swing. It was an awkwardly shaped freestanding model, and she'd seen it moved enough times over the years to know it took pretty good effort on the part of a couple of people to drag it around. If she were really lucky, it would hold Angie long enough, so she could walk around front and backtrack through her house to shut the rear door again.

Lots of ifs.

5

Angie came screaming and flailing out the door. She nearly grabbed her before being pulled up short by the rope. Angie stumbled, stood up, and lunged at her again, but Marty was silently lifting and pushing her cane, trundling forward just out of reach. She risked a glance back over her shoulder and was dismayed to see the plague-driven nurse was dragging the swing behind her, a few inches with every lunge. Angie was slightly above average height and weight for a woman her age, but the sickness seemed to give her some added oomph even as it took away some of her mass.

She made it through the front gate and started making her way along the forty-foot corridor between her house and her neighbor’s. The effort made her very dizzy, and she had to lean against the brick wall while she regained her bearings and settled her vision. She wasn't very far up the path, and Angie had made it through the gate—Forgot to close it behind me!—dragging the swing behind her. She could hear it slide off the concrete into the grass.

The fog lifted just enough, and she was able to take one step at a time, constantly leaning against the wall to steady herself. The relentless fury of the sirens was clashing with the angry screams from Angie, making her ears ring. She was definitely panicking now, aware of the danger of falling over and knowing if she did it would be for the last time.

Angie had made more progress down the narrow corridor, with twenty feet of rope behind her linked to the swing. She realized she was going to lose this slow-motion race and fall prey to whatever it was Angie intended to do to her.

A “thunk” sound accompanied a wild scream from Angie.

The porch swing ran up against the gateposts. It wouldn't fit through. Not even close.

Marty couldn't manage even a little smile at her good luck. She could only focus on her feet below her and her hand on the wall to her right. One foot. Other foot. One hand. Repeat. She seemed to be walking through molasses.

“Lord, I don't mind if you call me to you today, but please let me make it inside, so Liam doesn't go outside again to look for me,” she said softly, half to herself, half to her Redeemer.

With enormous effort, she reached the front corner of her house. She leaned to her right to view the yard, also positioning herself so that over her shoulder she could see Angie furiously thrashing against the rope and the jammed swing. No time to delay. She turned her head back to the front and began her final push to the front entrance, up the small ramp her grandson had built for her, so she could avoid the two steps up to her front porch and entryway.

The ramp had been constructed with sturdy hand railings, which provided a solid purchase on the incline, but even so, she saw stars when she finally had the door handle in her grasp. She swayed dangerously. The handle was on the left side of the door. This was it. She grabbed the latch and pushed.

It was locked!

Of course. Angie did most of the door-locking these days. The keys were inside....

Maybe I could sit a spell?

No, you old fool.

Steeling herself for one more task, she grabbed her cane—no, her cane had fallen somewhere during her escape. She looked down. She was holding her rosary with her free hand, rather than the cane.

“Now when did that happen?”

When she thought she was going to die back there, she must have made the switch from the worldly cane to the spiritual talisman to prepare to meet her Maker. She now assumed her time had not yet come and, though she devoutly depended on her faith, she depended on that cane, too.

“Looks like I'll have to do it the hard way.”

She propped herself up, then dragged her body leftward along a few feet of the brick facade, leaning hard the whole way. Then she was in front of Angie's place. The entry doors for the upstairs and downstairs flats were next to one another. The handle for the upper flat was on the right side of the door. If Angie's place was unlocked, she knew the interior door was open, and she could reach her own flat. If...

She pushed the latch and pushed.

Locked.

Have mercy!

She considered sitting down and letting the end come. It wasn't suicide—forbidden by her faith—rather an honest end to a hard day.

Looking at her hands, she saw she'd scraped them good and hard in the last few minutes though she hadn’t felt anything. She was really out of it. Teetering between sitting and standing, she remembered something through the dizzying haze. Angie had often complained about her front door sticking when she tried to push it open. Several handymen had been through over the years trying to fix it, but none of them seemed willing to replace the whole doorframe. They were confident each time they had loosened it for good. Later, it would stick again. Sometimes you had to push really hard on the door and depress the latch at the same time to get it to dislodge. It was no problem for the relatively young Angie, but for her... If Angie's door was unlocked, she would still have to find strength to get in.

She looked to her right—no sound was coming from the corridor. Was that good or bad? She tried the latch, giving it a half-spirited second attempt and a little shove. It would not budge. The stars were swimming dreamily in her eyes. She took a moment to lean her head directly against the wooden door and rest.

Her vision came into focus just in time to see Angie standing at the corner of the house; the rope looped around her neck, the other end hidden somewhere around the bend. The swing chair could not have fit through the gate; Angie was free of it. The sick nurse reoriented on her quarry and began closing in.

Marty had no time for a prayer. Pure instinct and perseverance drove her at that moment. She knew in her heart that door was unlocked—Angie was a trusting soul, unafraid of the outside world, going in and out with great frequency to do her chores. She grasped the latch with both her tiny, wrinkled hands while pushing with everything she had against the door. It would only work if the door was really unlocked. If if if …

She spilled through the entryway as the sound of rage from Angie grew louder, even eclipsing the incessant scream of the sirens. Only by the grace of God did she manage to hang on to the handle, so the heavy door didn't throw her to the wood floor as it opened. Now all she had to do was close it again, but this time, physics was on her side. The door was heavy enough that as she pushed it, it also forced back the blood-stained hands that had arrived a second too late to affect its trajectory. Angie was unable to make the sharp right turn at the door jamb to put her hand into the diminishing gap. The heavy thing slammed, and she quickly double-locked it.

She didn't remember the stumbling walk from the front of her house to the rear. Couldn't remember if Angie stayed in the front or moved to the back, observing her through the side windows. She had no recollection of closing the back door and pulling the curtains shut on the kitchen window. She didn't know how she reached her bed and fell in fully clothed, shoes and all. Rosary in hand, she would barely recall the little prayer she said before finally losing consciousness.

Dear Lord. Please help Liam find his way home safely.

She fell asleep to the sound of trumpets.

Chapter 2: The Library

“Where's Liam? Where's Liam?”

That was the sound of his worst nightmare the past few months. Mom and Dad and their incessant, demanding, infuriating repetition of that question. It was almost like they were afraid to let him out of their sight. As if he were still a five-year-old. In a mad stroke of irony, it was the one thing that made staying at his great-grandma Marty's house bearable. She didn't ask stupid questions.

He’d run out of her house this morning as soon as possible, just as he'd done most of the previous three weeks, to find refuge among his kind online and do important things, like slaying the undead and e-chatting with his friends back in civilization. His home away from home away from home was the public library.

“I'm going to the lye-bury, Grandma. See ya tonight!” He reveled in mispronouncing the word library, though not to antagonize his sweet old great-grandmother. He butchered it on purpose because his dad said his mispronunciation was a special broken word that was “more obnoxious than bloody fingernails on a chalkboard.”

Shouldn't tell me your weakness, Dad!

He knew his father's second most-hated word was nu-cue-lar power—but it was harder to fit into everyday conversation. So, as a sarcastic homage to his father, he continued the tradition. Today, Grandma only answered him with an affirmative nod as he walked out the door to relative freedom.

Though it broke the unwritten teenage rule of time management—awake all night and sleep all day, like vampires—today he reached the library just as it opened at eight o' clock. He wasn't interested in small talk, or chatting up strangers, so he didn't care to know the name of the well-dressed, somewhat older woman who unlocked the doors and sat behind the counter every day, but she at least recognized him with a wave. He figured it was the blue jeans and soft-drink-logo shirts he liked to wear.

“Good morning and welcome back. I didn't expect anyone today.”

He didn't think to ask her why. He was anxious to avoid her and get to the computer area, so he could set up shop. He passed by with a hurried wave in her direction.

When he arrived in the technology area, the computers were still off. He turned on the PC where he had taken a seat. While he waited for it to spin up, the woman came along and turned on the half-dozen or so other computers. He could see she had a frown on her face, but he kept his nose in his phone, trying to begin text conversations with his other friends who should be coming online. Normally there would be three or four of his friends from school—a cabal that would meet in one of their homes during the summer. He was now the outsider since he was staying with his grandma in the city.

“Where is everyone?” he wrote to the lone avatar sitting on his screen. It belonged to Terrance, who had for some reason named his character “Share the Spirit” and used skins in-game with Olympic themes. Funny because Terrance never lifted a muscle to exercise a day in his life, though he was overly competitive inside the game world.

“Dunno. You have the game loaded yet?”

He wasn't in a rush to get things started since he knew he'd be at the library all day. As the computer came online, he logged into the server for World of Undead Soldiers, and leisurely prepared his units while he waited. His friends should be crawling out of bed and joining up soon.

He sat there fiddling with things for another fifteen minutes. He and Terrance wanted to give the other guys a chance to link up before they headed into the wilderness. It was always harder to jump in on the run.

At last, they made the call. The other guys weren't going to make it.

He thought it was highly unusual all three were missing, but it was no reason to cancel the engagement. He'd go out by himself—lone hero style—rather than sit back at Grandma's.

All thoughts turned to the battlefield as he and “Share the Spirit” were immediately “in it,” fighting for their lives with their reduced group of soldiers.

His sense of time melted away as the game consumed him.

An hour went by when he got some texts from JT, one of his AWOL buddies.

***

“I got the guns. Where u want them?”

“Dad?”

“Oh srry Liam. That was 4 dad. Hope you guys are running 2. Like a real adventure!”

“cya”

***

Is this a joke?

The texts showed up on his phone in one blast, as if they were delayed.

He tried to reply but got a “network busy” message.

He thought about asking Terrance for his opinion of those messages, but the computer game screen was frozen. Forced to observe the real world, he felt a sudden and powerful vibration. Some of the computer monitors rattled and a couple flashed off and back on. But the important thing was the connection...

Losing the link to the internet rarely happened with modern technology and infrastructure, but when it did, it always happened at the worst possible time. A host of undead and supernaturals were arriving on his screen and the game world would continue running while his character stood there and died.

“Crap!”

He knew he'd said it too loudly in the library but looking around he saw no one he might have offended. There were no other patrons besides himself.

Even the woman behind the desk was out of view.

Suddenly, to his great delight, the screen unfroze. His character was still alive! He re-joined the battle, to the relief of “Spirit” who was getting his butt handed to him in the storm of creatures. Together, they stood a chance.

His attention was once again focused on the screen, the outage already a distant memory.

2

Another hour went by before he came back into awareness of what was happening in the real world. The lights began flashing as if the library was closing.

Not how things were supposed to go.

Without haste, he messaged Terrance in-game to let him know he had to drop out. The library was apparently shutting down early today. An expletive-laden tirade came back at him, suggesting he tell the library to stick something illicit in a dark orifice.

With a chuckle, he stood up and stretched.

Then the power went off, killing the dull fluorescents on the ceiling of the entire building along with everything else.

His primary concern was that he was glad he exited the match cleanly. His character was safe in his stronghold until he returned to the game world tomorrow, next week, or next year. If the power went out while he was in battle, he would have lost all his loot and would have returned to his stronghold with nothing. It was a major downer to have to start from scratch.

Instead of moving toward the exit, he texted Terrance an extended analysis of a portion of the adventure they'd just experienced. He looked forward to getting back together so he could check out some new weapons he'd picked up while they were fighting the beasts.

When he hit send, he got another “network busy” message. He slammed his phone on the laminate table a bit harder than he wanted.

This totally blows.

Frustrated at the intrusions of the real world upon his game time, he stood up, grabbed his backpack containing the extra laptop he kept for those times when the library computers were filled with other patrons, and headed for the exit.

When he arrived at the glass doors, he found the librarian on her feet, looking outward in silence.

“Ma'am, what happened to the power? Is the libary—I mean library going to be open tomorrow?” he said with a chuckle.

Turning around, she looked at him like he was crazy. Liam could see she'd been crying, an unmistakable puffiness combined with smeared makeup.

“Don't you know what's going on?”

“Yeah, the power went out,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Not that. I mean with the city. With Ebola. With zombies.”

He looked past her and her drama. Everything appeared normal; he really couldn't identify anything unusual in his field of view. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary when he walked in this morning, so he had no help there. And zombies? That was the craziest thing he'd ever heard. What would some random librarian know about zombies?

“I don't see anything unusual.”

“Don't you listen to the news? NPR? Anything?”

“My dad says NPR is run by the government, so you can't trust anything they say.” He was content to believe his father on this point because the few times he did listen to NPR, he was bored to tears. His conclusion was anything that mind-numbing had to be propaganda.

“Does your dad think the cable news, nightly news, and radio news is also propaganda?”

“Well, actually—”

“It doesn't matter. Do you have anyone taking care of you? Where are your parents? Can you get home from here?”

He considered the many possible answers to those questions. He decided to keep his response as simple as he could.

“I live with my grandma about thirty minutes from here.” He pointed in the direction he was going to walk.

“You should take care of your grandma. Keep her from getting sick.”

He looked again out the window and saw nothing to support the woman's claims. He saw the crazy look in her eyes, the smeared makeup, and her position in front of the door and absently wondered if she presented a threat to him.

“My grandma is 104. She's probably sitting in her comfy chair right now knitting or crocheting or whatever it is old ladies do. I'm sure she's safe and sound—”

And then to reassure his strange captor, “—but I'll go check on her to be sure, thanks for the advice.”

He stepped back as if waiting for her to let him out.

She took the invitation, unlocked the door, and held it open. Once he was through, she stepped out as well, locked it, and then raced to the lone car on the lot. He heard her complain to herself about how she wasn’t supposed to come into work at all today. In moments, she jumped in her car and went speeding down the street, opposite of where he was heading.

He was left scratching his head.

In no particular hurry, he began his walk. Even with the freakishly distraught woman egging him home, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary in the neighborhood; as his dad would say, she was a plain nut. He put in his ear buds and was comforted by a rock song almost as old as his father—Supertramp's “Take The Long Way Home.”

Too bad I can't go to my real home.

He thought of Grandma. He had told the librarian the truth. He was absolutely certain he knew what she was doing. The same thing she was always doing. The same thing she'd probably be doing until the day she died. Sitting in that stupid chair knitting, quilting, or whatever the heck she called it.

Even though he loved the old woman, she was the most boring person he’d ever met.

3

Walking back to Grandma's was a downer. He knew it meant the day would be spent in his dreary basement living quarters playing solo games on his laptop, reading, or listening to music. By no means would he spend the day on the same floor as Grandma and risk having to come up with things to say the whole time. Too much energy required. Just because he was on loan to her this summer didn't mean he had to be in her pocket the whole time.

Ha! On loan. That's what his father called it. More like a prison sentence. A fifteen-year-old boy and his 104-year-old great-grandma had nothing in common as far as he could tell. Computers. The internet. Wi-Fi. Texting. He tried to explain all this to his technology-challenged grandma—he dispensed with the “great” in casual conversation—but she never seemed interested. Even showing her videos of fuzzy bunnies and cute little kittens evoked a “That's nice” but not much else in the way of conversation. He’d run out of ideas.

He returned again to “Where's Liam?” She was a breath of fresh air compared to the inquisitions of his mom and dad. Where are you going? Who are you meeting there? Will there be girls? Drinking? Drugs? And on and on and on. The constant nagging was part of what drove him insane and helped contribute to the massive fights he'd been having with them. No doubt it helped expedite his banishment to Grandma's. A cooling off period for everyone involved. It had already been a few weeks, and he still hadn't communicated with the ‘rents. It was fine with him. His biggest worry was that he'd have to see them both on his birthday in a few weeks.

One day at a time.

His parents stopped paying for his monthly cell phone service as punishment for one of his exploits—he couldn't remember which—and they wouldn't even turn it back on as he left for Grandma's. Talk about cruel and unusual. But once there, his grandma insisted his phone be turned back on, so she could communicate with him using her standard telephone. He had to grudgingly thank her for helping him regain such an important piece of his technological repertoire. It linked him with Grandma, but more importantly, it linked him back up with his friends.

When they weren't discussing their games, he and his friends were constantly talking about horror movies, TV series about zombies and similar supernatural thrillers. They all read the same kind of books too. He was interested in lots of genres of horror but capitalized most of his non-game time by reading the classics on the end of the world: The Stand, Earth Abides, Alas Babylon, and countless zombie stories. Of course, he and his friends visualized themselves as the heroes who saved the world. They even played video games where they could be those heroes. When they talked theoretically about what would happen if the world did end, most of his friends believed they would meet the fall of civilization standing up, facing the harsh new realm with a cool and detached form of heroism. They would be the guys taking out the zeds, zacks, or whatever. Chasing away the corrupt government. Exterminating the barbarian cannibals. And they'd naturally be coveted by buxom women.

He was filled with bravado in front of his friends but privately wasn't so sure he was ever destined to be more than an extra when the movie version of the demise of society was filmed. Most books packed-in characters who defied all the odds to survive. Some had quirky skills that just happened to be what was needed at that particular moment—sort of like the old gardener who had used a spade for fifty years and could miraculously detach zombies from their heads with it. He knew that just didn't happen.

He accepted he would probably be an infected loser when the end came. Books only show the heroes. Everyone else gets sketched into the background as mindless extras, though each one has a story as rich and detailed as the hero. As humans succumb to infection, either by malfeasance, poor clothing choices, or just dumb luck, they instantly transferred from the “important” column to the “afterthought” column in book after book.

The guy who thinks he can shoot a crowd of infected at point-blank range.

The girl who tries to run away only to stereotypically trip and fall.

The unsupervised child who innocently lets the undead into the house. Those guys.

I don't want to be those guys!

At that moment, he heard gunshots from somewhere to his right. He yanked off his ear buds. He knew the sound from his time at the gun range with his mom and dad. You can't mistake the sound of someone banging out round after round from a gun. Then a second and third chain of rat-tat-tats started to hammer. Like it was a bank robbery or something.

At least I'd recognize the zombie uprising before some librarian.

Then a tornado siren began to howl—coming from the direction of Grandma’s street. He could also hear another one starting up somewhere behind him. Clear skies were overhead. The morning kept getting weirder.

Unperturbed, he decided to drop into the little corner market for his daily infusion of whatever energy drink was on sale. It helped him survive the tedium of living at Grandma's. He'd need an extra or three if he'd have to hole up until tomorrow.

Walking in, he could see a few patrons up near the checkout counter. They were all huddled around a small radio. He immediately recognized the grating voice of the President of the United States.

“—you must stay in your homes to survive this crisis. I have authorized all governors to deploy the National Guard to their home states for the duration of this event. Local officials will follow this broadcast with instructions specific to your area...”

He wasn't entirely listening. He tended to ignore politics and political “stuff,” such as messages from the president. His takeaway was that some disaster was happening somewhere and that those people should be doing something.

He walked to the refrigerated section to grab the drinks he needed. The display lights were off—all power was off in the store—but the large front windows helped him see into the cooler well enough. As he was staring at the selection of beverages, he heard two people arguing in the next aisle, a man and a woman.

“I told you the president was going to ruin this country! But did you listen? Noooooo.”

In response, the woman made a sound with her mouth very much like she was throwing up. She then said, “You never did like him. Everyone hates the Socialists; that's why he can't get anything done for this country. You'd probably like to see this nation in ruins if it meant he got the blame for it.”

He heard the words, amused at the couple's tone, but had no interest otherwise. More political nonsense he didn't need to absorb. Of more importance at the moment—what flavor energy drinks to grab. He pulled out what he needed and headed for the register.

The attendant would not peel herself away from the radio. He held up a five to cover the two cans in his other hand and slapped it on the counter, then walked away. It wasn't something he'd do any other time, but he was getting frustrated at people acting so abnormal this morning.

I don't have time for all this BS.

When he returned to the light of the day, he stood near the front door as his eyes adjusted. He watched a man sitting in the passenger seat of a car parked almost in front of the store, drinking out of some kind of hard liquor bottle. He turned and looked at Liam with sleep-filled half-closed eyes, then faced forward again as if he were on a long drive. He felt embarrassed for the dreamer but had no desire to engage or even acknowledge him. He began walking toward home.

He hadn't gone a hundred feet when he heard, and then saw, an orange sports car—a Barracuda he guessed—roaring down the narrow two-lane street from behind him as if it were on the open highway. The vehicle thundered by with enough force he was buffeted by the strong turbulence.

What the hell?

It was going the same direction he was walking, so he jumped into the street to see where it went. Several blocks down it hit its breaks hard, squealing maniacally, then banked left down a side street out of sight.

As he stood there, he felt the hair begin standing up on the back of his neck. He had a strange feeling the car was running from something evil, and the “something” was close behind him that very second...

He turned around expecting to see something horrific but was pleasantly surprised to see nothing out of the ordinary, not even other moving cars—as long as he ignored the tornado sirens. And the drunk man in the front seat of the car at ten-something in the morning. His momentary feeling of panic faded, but he quickened his step as he made for home. He downed one of his drinks almost without taking a breath and considered going back to the shop and getting one to replace it, but he had a sudden desire to get back to Grandma’s. Something was different this morning.

Chapter 3: The Long Way

During his twenty-minute walk to the block where Grandma lived several other cars passed him, though none were going as fast as that orange one. A few times, he saw people running out of their houses to jump in cars or load junk into vehicles parked on the street. Clearly, something big was going on, but was it a tornado—thus the sirens—or what. He'd get it all sorted at Grandma's. Sure, she didn't have the internet or even a cell phone, but she seemed pretty well-informed most of the time. He imagined her sitting in her sewing chair listening to a radio right now, probably with Angie close by.

In fact, he had this image so firmly in his mind's eye it took him several moments to digest what was going on when he finally saw his grandma's house. There on the front porch was Grandma Marty. She didn't have her cane or anything—just looked like she was dragging herself along the wall near the front doors.

First, she fiddled around with her door and then slowly moved to Angie's.

He stood on the sidewalk a couple of houses away, on the opposite side of the tree-lined avenue. Several cars were parked along the curb, making it difficult to get an unobstructed view. He began moving with haste—not quite a run yet as he wasn't sure what was happening—but, he was going to help if she needed it.

Grandma stood at Angie's door, leaning her head against the wood. Was she trying to get into the wrong residence? He had never known her to have even an ounce of dementia, but this certainly seemed like a start.

He almost tried shouting over the sirens to get her attention but then Angie groped her way out from between the two houses. She had a rope or something trailing behind her, and the nurse screamed demonically when she saw Grandma.

Then things happened so fast it forced him to stop in his tracks. Grandma looked over, saw her pursuit, and then threw herself hard against that door. Somehow it opened for her, and she seemed to tumble out of view. Angie lunged for his grandma, but inertia took her wide of the target. The door slammed just in time.

He stopped and pulled up behind one of the large trees.

OK. This is Twilight Zone material.

He leaned out to look at Angie, making a positive identification that the crazed person was the same gentle woman he knew as Grandma’s nurse. She was slamming her fists on the heavy wooden door, making no attempt to use her keys to get in or use the door's handle. What the hell was she doing in her bathrobe? He'd never seen her come down from her apartment less than fully dressed, with makeup to boot.

The tornado sirens made it difficult to hear distinct sounds, but he knew Angie was not throwing out words. She wasn't cussing or yelling insults; she was merely pumping out a guttural scream, something horrible and inhuman.

In a flash, she seemed to tone it down. Instead of beating the door, she appeared to sniff the air and move sideways along the front of the house—heading back the way she'd come. It looked like she was trying to peer inside, but the drapes were drawn over the windows. In a few minutes, she went back around the side of the house out of his view.

He was armed with one empty and one full beverage can, a laptop, and a cell phone. He tried to call Grandma to find out what just happened, but the number he dialed rang and rang, then the tone changed to a raw squeak. Either the network was down again, or she couldn't get to her phone. Or both. He'd have to go in to find out.

He wasn't a weakling, despite being just fifteen years old, but he knew he could never subdue such an angry person as the odd nurse who almost snagged his grandma. Up and down the street he could see people running, walking, or scrambling into cars to speed away, and the truth hit him: the president had been describing this disaster, not one far away. For once in his life, he wished he'd paid attention to the news.

The librarian—she mentioned Ebola. Did Ebola make people go crazy?

He took stock in his surroundings, trying to put things together. Gunshots had been a curious anomaly twenty minutes ago but were now constant as they mixed with the blare of the sirens. The specific threat wasn't clear, but he knew he needed to hunker down. Like Grandma minutes before, he had to figure out how to get into her house.

2

He was fairly confident he could outrun the nurse in a foot race, but he ruled out going right to the front door. Angie could be on the side of the house waiting to pounce, and he suspected both doors were now firmly locked. He wasn't sure why, but he felt an almost primal fear of Angie, based on her erratic behavior. She was ill, that much was clear, and he wasn't going to get anywhere near her and risk getting infected. He needed to find another way in that didn't involve Grandma opening those heavy doors again. He didn't want her infected by Angie either.

On the backside of her house, there was a small cellar door that led to the lower level, his living area. If he could reach the backyard, evade Angie, and have enough time to use his cellar key, he could get in and help Grandma do...whatever it is she's doing.

He had just stepped into the street when another car approached at high speed. He didn't know the make or model, but it was a modern-looking and sleek reddish sports car going much too fast for the small street. The driver spotted him but made no effort to slow down. He veered dangerously close as Liam lunged between two parked cars. Without thinking, he raised his middle finger, an act of defiance he knew the driver witnessed.

That's for trying to kill me!

The car sped down the street, broke hard, and turned crisply to the left at the first cross street.

He spent several long seconds checking both directions to ensure no more moving cars were heading his way. It was becoming deadly to spend any time at all out on the roads. He moved across and down the street, using the parked cars as cover to shield him from Angie. It was only a minute or so before he heard squealing tires once more. Another car was coming from behind him.

No, the same car. It was the same red sports car making another pass.

He panicked. He knew why the driver had come back.

He threw himself between two parked cars, though he figured he'd already been spotted. He had about ten seconds to think up a plan. Hiding was the best he could do; he moved off the pavement, so he was shielded from the street side. He wanted some steel between himself and the road-raging driver.

The rumbling vehicle approached and decelerated with the telltale sound of disc brakes grinding and tire rubber grabbing the asphalt.

“Where you at, boy? I've got something to show you.” The man’s deep voice was clear even with the siren noise.

The tone was obviously malicious. He had to know how near the car had stopped in case anyone got out and he needed to run.

He popped up slowly and tried to look through the lightly-tinted window of a four-door foreign car. He knew right away he'd made another mistake. It would have made more sense to look underneath the car. Too late. He was spotted. The car was directly on the other side. And the passenger-side door was opening.

He went instantly from squatting fright to explosive flight. He ran on the grass up the row of cars, behind the stalking red menace.

The passenger door slammed shut, and the car squealed as it backed up the street. There were at least two men inside, both cackling like hyenas.

“You can't run, boy!”

Gunshots followed. The passenger shot a handgun in his direction, sometimes hitting and breaking glass on nearby cars. Laughter followed each shot.

He ran as fast as he could but couldn't outrun a car. He was unwilling to run toward any houses, or he'd become an easy target out in the open front yards. Instead, he let the car reverse on by, and then crossed the street in front of it.

The maneuver had the intended effect of surprising the driver and shooter. The car had to stop before it could move forward again. The angry driver popped the transmission into drive, the wheels spinning forward even as the car continued moving backward. It gave him enough time to cross the street and run in the other direction. This put the shooter on the wrong side … as long as he didn't move to the back seat.

The car readjusted, moved forward again, and caught up to him in seconds. However, the driver merely yelled obscenities at him and then accelerated down the street. The passenger continued to fire his gun randomly out his window. They'd evidently gotten bored of the game. A relief, too, as he had sprinted himself to exhaustion.

I could have been killed. On my own street!

He crouched between two cars for a few moments, recovering his wits and breath. He peeked out from behind a small truck to see if more vehicles were coming, or if the two lunatics were trying to trick him by returning on foot. But all looked safe. He moved fast to the far side of the street, watching for Angie, but she must have gone into the back again. She was not in the narrow corridor between the two buildings. He ran farther down the street, his brain in overdrive, processing the broken pieces of his day.

Internet shutting down was unfortunate, but probably not unheard of. Library shutting down in the early morning was definitely abnormal, though. President giving a speech wasn't weird, or even interesting, but taken together with everything else his speech was clearly a piece of it. Finally, his boring old street had gone bonkers with speeding cars, dangerous gunmen, and a nurse in a nightgown trying to claw at Grandma. And what was the deal with those sirens?

The tornado sirens were on a tall pole at the end of his block. He would have to walk practically underneath them to go around the corner and then back up the alleyway to the rear of Grandma's flat. He could cut between one of the many houses and save himself the longer trip around them all, but he wasn't sure if they each held hidden hazards. Now was not the time to anger a neighbor. He was freaking himself out just thinking about the possibilities. He paused by one of the large trees and took a look around.

He saw people moving as he peered through the windows of several homes on the other side of the street. They didn't appear to be sick or crazy like Angie, but he really couldn't say with certainty.

One of the big brick flats did have someone that wasn't right. The front screen door was closed, but the inner door was open. A small woman, with a pale face, cropped hair, and a light blue t-shirt was standing in the doorway behind the thin screen. From his vantage point, he couldn't hear her over the sirens, but she appeared to be howling or yelling or something of that nature.

He had to take his chance in the open and keep moving.

As soon as he stepped from behind the tree, the woman animated and began clawing and banging at the screen door. He stopped again, his mind screaming, “Go! Go!” but he couldn't look away. The woman viciously tore away the screen and pummeled her way through the wooden frame as the door’s tiny latch tore off. In moments, she cleared the debris and was walking quickly, directly at him. A small grassy yard and twenty-four feet of roadway separated them. His brain was still screaming for him to run, but he felt like he had detached himself from his body and could only watch.

The woman, barefoot and with black stretch pants—had she just come from a yoga class?—entered the street. No cars blew through to run her over.

That would have been nice.

Her shirt was sweat-drenched and stained with large blotches of red. Blood had exploded all over one side of her head and shoulders from an ugly wound on her neck. And yet she was up and moving.

She was well across the street when he finally had enough control of his body to take a step sideways, preparing to begin running for real—

A gunshot rang out with a thunderous clap, and the woman's chest exploded outward. It didn't even slow her down.

I can see right through her! He froze again, staring. A second shot ravaged the uninjured side of her head, but she was dangerously close. Reaching for him. Another couple of steps . . .

Yoga lady tripped on the curb and slammed into the large maple tree beside him. She collapsed into a bloody pile of flesh and bones at its base.

He could only stand there, staring, completely locked up.

Another shot. Bits of wood and bark sprayed from the tree several feet above his head. That finally woke him up.

The shooter was in a house across the street. Rather than aiming at him again, the man waved out of an open window, motioning Liam to keep moving.

Are these things in every house?

He waved his thanks to the good Samaritan, then—pretending he wasn't already exhausted—ran as fast as he could.

3

He finally reached the corner of the street. He crossed to the other side and paused to look back in the direction he had come, half expecting to see a wave of crazies pouring out of the houses. Even the people fleeing to their cars had diminished for the moment. As before, if he didn't know anything was wrong, the block would look pretty much normal.

His ears throbbed from the shrill screaming of the emergency sirens above. He walked down the street with his hands over his ears, until he realized he could pop his ear buds back in. That brought it down to a constant—though still overwhelming—hum in his head.

He arrived at the alleyway. Like most streets in this part of town, the flats lined the main streets, and each block was cut lengthwise down the middle with a small, paved alley where each house had a detached garage and homeowners parked one of their vehicles. He would go up the alley to a point behind Grandma's house, see what he could see of Angie, and plan from there.

But before he could even step into the alleyway, he noticed Angie's car parked at an odd angle in the middle of the street, fifty or so feet beyond the alley. The car might be necessary for any kind of escape. It would also simplify the Angie problem. It would be nice just to run her over and be done with it.

Wow. Seriously, dude? Murder?

As he walked toward the car, he wondered if it was murder? Did the gunman who saved his life murder that crazed woman? Was she a person? He had read so many zombie books he thought he knew the difference between a living, breathing person, and the walking, infected zombies—but had he just seen one? Was that woman already dead when she attacked? Or just really sick? Either way, she meant to harm him. The gunman killing her had saved him. But what of Angie? Was she sick or dead? It wasn't so simple in real life.

The car looked abandoned, parked as it was in the middle of the street with both front doors open wide. The passenger side was closest. He approached carefully and was shocked to see the seat on that side was covered with more blood than he’d ever seen in his life. Lots of blood. Something nasty was in the space in front of the seat, but he couldn't get himself to look at it directly.

That is not a foot.

He looked over to the driver's side; it was mercifully clear of most of the blood. However, there were no keys in the ignition. He scanned around the outside of the car but saw no clues as to what went down there. He backed away, turned around, and slowly jogged back toward the alley.

Not a foot. Not a foot. Not a ...

4

He imagined the discussion he'd have when he finally saw Grandma. Rather than their usual rehash of the weather, he'd be able to tell her about being shot at, being assaulted by a yoga student, almost getting run over by a speeding car, seeing something disgusting in Angie's disturbingly abandoned car, and he could even toss in the bit about the librarian's freakout. Oh yeah, and he could share how he saw his 104-year-old grandma escaping the clutches of an insane nurse on the front porch of his house. “And how was your day Grandma?” he'd say with a cheery grin.

It only took the collapse of civilization to give us something interesting to discuss.

Soon he'd have that conversation. Right now, he needed to focus on how to get past Angie. He didn't have any weapons, but he would need something creative. She didn't seem to be in the mood for talking.

If it came to it, he wondered if he could kill her, or anyone. As much as he detested the idea of being forcibly assigned to Grandma for the summer, he had to admit he liked the friendly nurse from upstairs. She had a knack for talking to him—she said she had a granddaughter about his age, so that gave them a shared frame of teen reference. While they never sat down over coffee and chit-chatted, he didn't mind running into her at the house. That made it all the harder to contemplate harming her.

Glad I don't have to put Grandma down.

That thought heaved his stomach and made him light-headed for a few seconds. He had to stop walking and lean against a nearby fence pole. He forced those feelings aside; there were more pressing matters at hand. He was coming up to the correct house. The sirens made it impossible for him to hear if Angie was rooting around out back, but for once, he thanked the sirens for covering his approach as he tried to get a look into the backyard of Grandma's house. He couldn't see Angie, so he passed Grandma's garage and went to the next house, hoping to catch a glimpse of her from that angle.

Before he could get his bearings, he noticed a couple of men at the far end of the alleyway come out of a garage carrying some yellow power tools. A third man riding an ATV pulled out of the same garage. It was piled with stuff. None of them looked like they lived in the area. None of them appeared happy to see him. They dropped what they were carrying and swung rifles, so he could see them. They weren't pointing them at him, but their message was clear—beat it!

He rushed into the neighbor's yard, forgetting for a second they might not appreciate his intrusion. The men might come searching for him, but he doubted it. They appeared to be cleaning out garages, not looking for young boys to murder. The thought—and its normalcy in this situation—blew him away.

This isn't at all how I thought the world would end.

5

He spotted movement ahead. Angie was randomly walking around in Grandma's backyard, not thirty feet away. She was hidden from the alley because she was almost directly in front of the garage. Fortunately, Grandma had fences lined with many flowers and bushes, making it nearly impossible for anyone to see through without effort. It was unlikely Angie would notice him sneaking around the yard next to her. But he didn't know what to do next.

There were probably many kinds of weapons in the garages behind any number of the houses, but the thieves in the alleyway put the fear of God in him. He'd rather face Angie bare-handed than face three men with guns and an angry look in their eyes.

His only real option was to get her attention somehow, then get her to follow him out of her yard, giving him time to swoop in, unlock the cellar door, and then seal the door to keep her out. He formed a plan quickly, not wanting to delay to the point new elements wander in—such as the men in the alley, the zombies in the houses, or just trigger-happy neighbors who might think he was infected. A common scenario in the stories ...

Each corridor between the flats met the backyards at a gate. He opened the neighbors’ gate on the far side of the house, intending to guide Angie around the home, down the corridor, and lock her in the wrong back yard.

But Angie had her own plans. She’d gotten over the fence somehow and was now in the yard with him. She must have noticed him after all. The noise of the sirens covered her approach as he was looking around the far side of the house, waiting to begin his great plan.

His heart bungeed into his stomach as fear gripped him. She was ten feet away before his brain kicked in—much faster than the yoga girl incident—and he began to run up the corridor toward the front of the neighbor's house. Angie was fast, not running, but sauntering at a good clip on long legs.

How did Grandma outrun her?

He rounded the corner of the front of the house, not bothering to look behind him. He knew she was coming.

Liam dashed across the neighboring front yard. If he slipped and twisted an ankle now, he would likely die twenty seconds later. Even a minor mistake would be unforgiving. He didn’t want to turn down the first corridor toward the open gate of Grandma’s back yard, so he ran across her front yard toward the corridor on the far side of her house. When he was safely at the corner, he finally chanced a look back to see Angie plowing across the yards with that rope around her neck.

He plunged into the final corridor, pushing his hand into his front pocket to retrieve the key he would need to open the back door. He made good time to the back fence blocking this side of the house and took a leap, hoping to clear it in one bound like a stunt man. He grazed the top and fell into the yard, dropping the key in the process—it squirted backward onto the walkway. It was now on the wrong side.

Unbelievable, he thought. He was that guy from every horror movie ever made. The idiot who gets killed because he couldn't handle himself well enough to make good on his easy escape.

He stood up just as Angie was rounding the front corner. She paused ever so slightly as if she had to reacquire him now that he'd been out of sight for a few seconds. Then she came for him.

His brain was finally, thankfully, firing on all cylinders. He jumped the fence in one clean bound, stooped down to pick up the key, dropped it in his pocket, and turned around to repeat the process. His feet felt like they were one-hundred-pound weights, but he managed to get off the ground. As he leaped, a hand on his back shoved him hard into the fence's top bar. His strength and momentum carried the day, and he made it across, though he had some serious scrapes on his thighs and bruised his shoulder on his second landing.

He was on his feet, not trusting Angie couldn't climb, and ran for his back door. He noticed Grandma's porch swing lying against the gate on the other side of the yard. It provided a ladder-like way to get over the neighbor's fence.

Was Angie a sly zombie?

The key opened the basement door. Without a second glance, he shut it behind him and locked it quickly. For the first time since he moved in, he was glad to be greeted by the aroma of mold mixed with mothballs. He unplugged the clothes dryer, yanked off the venting, and pushed the whole appliance, walking it across the floor until it was directly in front of the small door.

He collapsed in front of the dryer to collect his thoughts. He was scared to death outside, but now, strangely, he felt nothing. No fear. No sadness. Nothing. It was just a series of episodes culminating in him sitting here on this basement floor, alive. For now, that was all that mattered. He assumed his feelings would catch up eventually.

It wasn't long before the sirens spun down. He estimated they'd been going for an hour.

About the time it takes a dumb teenager to figure out his world is broken.

As the shock morphed into quiet exhaustion, he drifted off into thoughts of what he'd just survived. He played the morning over and over in his head as if to confirm it actually happened. In time he returned to the present and stood on his shaky legs. He had to get upstairs to check on Grandma. He angled his forearm to see his watch; it had already been twenty minutes since the sirens stopped ...

Chapter 4: Quantum Decisions

Marty found herself in her backyard, barefoot.

It was summer. It was sunrise. It was breathtaking.

A bluebird had landed in the birdbath not five feet in front of her and was busy primping as if it didn't have a care in the world. Certainly, an old lady presented no threat. Soon other birds joined the pool party, and she just stood there like a giddy schoolgirl watching the magic of Mother Nature within those tiny creatures.

“Welcome aboard, Marty.”

A man's voice. Standing right there beside her was Al—short for Aloysius, a name he hated. Her deceased husband was with her once again—or she was with him. It didn't matter which it was. It felt as if he had always been there, just like the old days. In a sense, that never changed, even after he was gone. To be with him again was wonderful, she thought.

And Al was young again! She drank in his blond hair, the deep blue eyes, and the smile that charmed her from the moment they met. He looked no older than the young man she met seventy-five years ago. He was dressed smartly in his Army uniform—just like the day he packed off to war. He knew how much she loved a man in uniform. And he was standing right next to her again.

“Pinch me, Al. I think I'm in Heaven.”

“Hiya, Marty. How ya doin'?” The Jersey drawl was exaggerated as he did when he was trying to impress her. And he called her by her nickname too. She really hated her full name just as much as Al hated his.

“You aren't in Heaven, but I know how you feel. It's great to see you again.”

She looked around. Everything was so perfect; it had to be Heaven. But if it wasn't—she had a sudden fear that if this wasn't Heaven, it might be ... somewhere else.

“You aren't anywhere bad. We're merely taking a stroll in your mind. Your recent trauma has...opened new doorways. This is a way to reunite and look ahead. Are you ready for what comes next?”

“What in Heaven's name are you going on about?”

“The plague. The infected dead. The chaos. Are you ready to help your family survive this thing or not?”

“Al, my love, you might not have noticed, but I'm 104. My days of doing much of anything important are well behind me.”

“Said the lady who single-handedly fought off a horrifically infected woman who was once her nurse. Not many people would have been able to survive that. You're a fighter. Have been since the day we met. That was amazing how you remembered that old rope.”

“I felt your presence helping me figure it out.”

“My dear, you figured that out all by yourself.”

Her mind had to be playing tricks on her. Her religious beliefs were very strong, and she didn't believe in ghosts or spirits or anything supernatural walking the earth. But she desperately wanted to believe this was real. That he was real.

“What of poor Angie? Is she still alive?”

“I don't think so. I think her soul has moved on. Her, and many like her, are succumbing to this sickness.”

They prayed together. She and Al. Just like the old days. Somehow, she was on her knees, and they both prayed to the Creator for guidance. When they were finished, Al took her hand and helped her back up, and they walked over to the patio to sit together as if it were just an average day. It could have been any day from among the 70-plus years they shared together. If it wasn't Heaven, it sure felt like it to her. But it also made her sad to sit there with him, knowing he couldn't be real.

“But I'm real enough, my dear. I'm here to help you face this challenge. People out there are going to need you. Liam is out there right now. He's young and reckless, but you know, deep in his heart, he would stop at nothing to protect you. He's probably riding a fire truck on his way here right now.”

They laughed together.

“But why would anyone risk their life for an old woman? It doesn't make any sense.”

Al had a twinkle in his eye when he looked at her but said nothing else on the matter.

They sat there for a long time, chair next to chair, hand in hand. She didn't want it ever to end but knew it would.

“I have to go, and so do you, my sweet Marty. I wish I could tell you everything is going to be all right and that everyone you love is going to survive this catastrophe. But you've seen outside your window. Things will get worse. Then they will get much worse. The sick will get sicker, and the survivors will become more and more desperate as their reality crashes. You have to look deep in your heart to help your family get through this. You're very special—that I'm here talking to you tells me that. You can help them. You can help everyone.”

“I'm an unlikely hero. I can barely stand up on my own anymore. Someone is going to be saddled with taking care of me ... ”

“You don't give yourself enough credit. In another universe, you passed away peacefully in your sleep today. The opportunities for you in this one are still endless. You could live to be 120!”

She was full of questions, but at that moment, a wounded raven dropped out of the sky and landed hard right in the birdbath, chasing the songbirds away. Its head was covered in blood as if it had been digging inside something … fresh. The dripping blood turned the pristine water red.

“That's curious. I'm so sorry you must endure this filth.”

“What caused this disease?” She asked him, as he got up and pulled her out of her chair.

“My love, you were always whip-smart. That was one of the things I adored about you, and still do. That's the right question but the wrong time. The really important question right now is how can you survive the disease?”

“OK, how do we—”

2

“Grandma!” Liam was not quite shouting, but loudly whispering, if such a thing was possible.

He ran up next to her bed and was comforted to see she was alive. She had been mumbling in her sleep as he approached. He tried not to think again of the possibility she might have been dead. Being alone scared him more than the plague right now.

“I'm so glad you're safe, Grandma. Things aren't right outside.”

He briefly considered mentioning he saw her out front struggling to get away from Angie, but something made him avoid the subject and instead focus on his tense encounter with the impaired nurse.

“I ran into Angie, and she chased me around the house, but I managed to jump the fence and get inside the cellar door before she could touch me. She has some kind of sickness.”

She gave him a clear-eyed look but continued to lay on her bed in silence. She was still fully clothed, shoes and all. She was holding her prized rosary, which wasn't unusual, but both her hands were on her chest grasping the string of beads and its crucifix as if she had lain down and never expected to wake up. It was very disconcerting.

He watched her for a moment, expecting some sort of reaction, but she remained silent.

He didn't push the issue.

“Well, I walked back from the library, and it's just as crazy everywhere else as it is in your yard. There are speeding cars, people shooting guns”—he left out the bit where they were shooting at him—“and sick people running through the neighborhood. Oh, and there are thieves rifling through garages in the alleyway.”

No response.

“Grandma, do you know what's going on?”

She had dozed off again.

He removed her shoes, considered trying to get her under the covers, but instead found a comforter and threw it over her. She must be really bushed to nap when so much was going on outside, he thought, but understood her advanced age gave her the right to sleep whenever she dang well pleased.

I'll just wait until she wakes up, and then we'll figure this out together.

The hours ticked away.

He listened at the windows. The city outside was in full-on collapse the whole time.

3

He spent much of the afternoon resting from his ordeal getting home. If he wasn't checking in on Grandma, he was fidgeting with the radio, trying to get news about what was happening. Other than the emergency alert message—playing on all stations—there was no useful information forthcoming anywhere on the dial, other than “Find safety.”

As the sun set over the city, he checked the rechargeable flashlight he found in Grandma's cupboard. His father was a bit of a type-A and had insisted she had a fully stocked larder at all times, as well as a stash of survival gear such as flashlights, sewing kits, fishing kits, and all manner of camping supplies. He also made sure she had a high-quality toolbox with an appropriate quantity of quality hand tools. He told Liam he knew Grandma would never use any of them, but anyone who was watching over her or helping her out would have everything necessary. Dad often dug into the tools while fixing things up in the house.

As he was looking things over with his bright flashlight, he wondered if he himself was a piece of equipment in Dad's toolbox for Grandma? Did he send him here to protect her? Was he that smart, or just lucky? He always seemed to have a way about him that said he was looking ahead to what may come. Like buying insane amounts of ammo when it went on sale. Mom always said he was crazy but never made a serious effort to dissuade him from purchasing his “life insurance,” as he called it. It felt unnatural to ascribe any positive qualities to his father, given their recent falling out, but he knew Dad did right by Grandma at least, giving her these supplies. Now he had a fighting chance to help her.

So, what was he going to do? Hunker down with Grandma inside her house? It seemed the most obvious solution, given her advanced age, and the hostility he’d found on a simple neighborhood walk. He heard the gunfire outside, and the men ransacking garages didn't inspire much hope in things staying friendly on the block. No wonder that man who shot yoga lady was perched in his window with a hunting rifle. Staying home and riding things out was a plan, but probably not a good one.

The other option was getting Grandma out of the city or at least somewhere safer than this house. Where could they go? He was just a kid during Hurricane Katrina, but he had a vivid recollection of the people stuck in the New Orleans Superdome. Were St. Louisans lining up downtown at their football stadium this very minute? It didn't seem like a good idea to have so many people in one place with a disease going around.

Unless the radio broadcasts started passing along useful instructions, the window for timely help was closing quickly.

He glared at the radio. “Enough with the 'waiting for instructions.' Just tell us what to do,” he muttered.

He considered getting her out to Mom and Dad's house. Would they be pissed he took Grandma on an underage car ride? She hadn't driven since the 1980s, and probably couldn't even reach the pedals anymore. If they did drive out of the city, it would have to be him behind the wheel. On the other hand, maybe Dad would drive into the city. That would solve his problems by handing the responsibility to his father, but something about that notion didn't sit well.

Was there somewhere better to drive her? Maybe over to Illinois? It was a shorter distance in terms of time spent in the crowded city compared to driving south toward home. Once over the Mississippi River, it was open country. At least they could avoid the plague victims over there. The big problem was Grandma couldn't just live in a car or tent somewhere eating baked beans until things got back to normal. Of course, he could—

He hesitated to finish his thought but knew he had to look at all options.

I could just leave her.

It sounded harsh as he thought it. Could he leave Grandma on her own? What if he told himself he was going to get help and then come back to rescue her? Even as the thought entered his mind, he knew he would probably never come back once he was out, especially if things were worse out in the wider world. Maybe if the military settled things down ...

Leaving Grandma would free him to travel light and fast, but the idea of ditching her simply for expediency was disgusting.

Oddly, he thought of his father at that moment. He knew his dad would do everything in his power to save the woman, and he knew it would let his dad down tremendously if Liam walked in the door saying he left Grandma to fend for herself because “she was inconvenient.”

Oh, great. I'm now my father.

But, he had to admit that sometimes—just sometimes—Dad got things right.

He was startled from his reverie by a presence in the doorway. She was awake at last.

4

“Grandma!” He ran over and gave her a hug before he knew he was doing it.

“I'm happy to see you too, Liam. I think we're in a bit of a pickle together.”

He filed that away as the understatement of the year. Gunshots nearby accentuated the issue.

“Help me over to my chair, if you would. I'm still a bit wobbly from my—” she hesitated as if deciding to expand her thought. “—fainting spell. Those tornado sirens nearly made me jump out of my shoes.”

He helped her, then sat down nearby and began speaking in the nervous cadence of someone who has been waiting a long time to talk. He told her about the walk home, in all its detail.

“Whoa! Take a breath. Are you saying someone shot at you? Are you OK?”

He forgot to edit that part out.

“How long have I been sleeping? It's dark outside. Is this still the same day?”

“You slept through the afternoon. I've been getting a bunch of stuff together in a backpack, so we can escape. I've just not figured out how to travel or where to go.”

She was thoughtful for a few moments.

“OK, Liam. I want you to get out of the city. You can escape before it gets too bad.”

Here it was. He recognized she was giving him his out. He could walk away with her blessing, and it would be a logical story when he reached Mom and Dad's. “She ordered me to go!” He turned it over in his head. Looked at it from multiple angles. But always, he saw his father shaking his head. Would Dad leave her at the most desperate hour like this? Would any man?

Hell, no!

“I'm sorry, but I can't leave you. We have to get out together or stick it out here until it’s safe again.”

“You know that doesn't make any sense. I'm an old woman. I'll probably be dead before you know it, and then you'll be stuck here after things have gotten so bad you can't think of leaving. You have to get out while you still can.”

“Grandma, I'm not leaving you. My dad would never leave you. My grandpa would never have left you. Great-Grandpa sure as heck wouldn't have thought of abandoning you. I'm staying.”

Grandma nodded, giving him a grim look.

He wondered if she was proud of him for making his decision. Or was she disappointed he was putting himself in danger at her expense? She offered no clues.

“Well, then,” she said, “we have to decide what we're going to do to survive. I'm afraid staying here could be a problem. If there are robbers about, we won't have much hope of stopping them from coming in, and the sick people like Angie aren't going to make getting out of the house very easy either. The police said we have to evacuate to safer places but didn't say where to go that was any safer than here. The most obvious is somewhere out in the country where there aren't as many people. Maybe your mom and dad's place?”

He was proud he had come up with virtually the same ideas. Getting to his house outside the city did seem the most sensible plan, even if he did have a little fear of showing up after illegally driving across town. Many of the miles he'd logged in pursuit of his learner's permit had been driving Dad to Grandma's, so he knew at least one route home fairly well.

“Can we take Angie's car? I don't think she'll need it. It was parked on the next street over. Not sure why she put it there, but it was covered in lots of blood and had a—” he grimaced—“a foot on the floor. I think someone stole it from the garage—the car, not the foot. Or maybe she was sick while driving home.”

He paused as they both sat in thought, then continued, “Also, there are no keys inside it. I checked because I thought about driving it back here.”

They looked at each other with sudden realization.

“We have to go up into her flat and find a spare set of car keys,” Grandma said without enthusiasm. He guessed she was worse off than she admitted about losing her friend.

5

They agreed to spend the night in the flat. For Grandma, this gave her time to recuperate after her “scare” with the sirens. For Liam, it was a chance to pack up everything he would need to help get them out of the city, such as her bottle of ibuprofen, some water, her walker, and a few bites of food. Just enough for a long drive through the inevitable traffic.

After packing the essentials, they sat down to eat a heaping dinner of spaghetti and meatballs—his favorite. If they were leaving, it made sense to try to use some of the remaining food. The electric was out, but the gas for her old stove still worked.

Preparing his backpack was initially exciting—a “real adventure” his friend had texted him earlier in the day—but as he realized they were in a true emergency, with real bullets, his enthusiasm withered. Now he wasn't relishing going outside one bit. He was quietly moving the long strands of pasta on his plate, hardly eating them. That seemed to get Grandma's attention.

“Eat, Liam. You'll need your strength.”

He looked up and resumed eating with a little more zest.

She began talking again, her tone more somber. “Liam, I want to talk to you about something important. I know you and your family get set in your ways, but I'm afraid for your soul. You need to think about going back to church.”

Inwardly, he groaned. He knew she lamented the choices of his family to stop going to church every Sunday—his mom and dad often talked about it—but he saw that as extra free time he didn't want to give up. Sunday services were a bore that he dreaded each time he went. He was unwilling to make promises to her based solely on the mysterious disruptions outside. Surely the government would get things fixed, and everything would soon be back to normal. What then? And was it right to profess faith in God only because you need something? How wrong would it be to tell her he found God, but not really mean it? He saw this as a massively complex question his brain was unable to process with spaghetti hanging off his lips. He felt the shadow of silence growing longer. Something needed to be said.

“I'll think about it, Grandma. Really. I will.”

That should do it.

Shoveling the last of the noodles into his mouth, he focused on eating, hoping to indicate the conversation was over. He felt her hard stare, but she passed some toasted ravioli rather than push him on his vague response.

He was thankful she dropped it, though it made the rest of the evening a bit awkward.

Before she finally went off to bed, she summoned him to the living room. “I want you to go downstairs, way in the back in the farthest corner and look for a black plastic box up in the rafters. It's something your father put there for me.”

As instructed, he made his way into the dark basement, struggling even with his flashlight to weave through the piles of old junk his grandma insisted be kept down there. Not one to let go of old stuff, she had quite a collection of aging rocking chairs, long-since-replaced light fixtures, and many pieces of furniture, tools, and equipment hoarded by her and great-grandpa Al.

And there in the corner, high above everything else, was the promised black box wedged up into the rafters. He had to use an old walking stick to poke it from its perch and make it fall into his waiting hands. The box was surprisingly heavy. He caught it one-handed, dropped the walking stick, and wrapped his other arm around the box as he balanced himself to keep from dropping it.

Pass completed, touchdown! And the crowd goes wild!

As he walked up the steps with the box, he had a pretty good idea what it was. For years, his father had taken him to the local shooting range to practice with a variety of weapons. First, it was BB guns, then airsoft guns, and finally the famous .22-caliber rifle. From the box’s size and shape, this was clearly a container for handguns: roughly sixteen by sixteen inches and eight inches thick.

He set it up on the coffee table in Grandma's living room. Using a small light, she produced a key that undid the safety lock securing the container. It popped open and, just as he had suspected, there was a handgun inside. Two, in fact, packed with gray insulating foam inserts to keep the contents from shifting inside.

Picking up the first gun with both hands, Grandma placed it on the table.

“You probably didn't think your old grandma knew anything about guns, eh?” She was smiling as she said it.

“This is heavier than I remember. This is a Ruger Mark I Target .22. The other one is identical. Your great-grandpa bought both of these way back before you were born. There had been a break-in on our block, and Al told me he wanted me to be ready in case something like that ever happened again.”

She sat back in her chair as she continued.

“Oh, those were the days. Simple times. We took these guns out to the country a few times, and I even shot one. Can you believe that? Got pretty good too. But, like so many things in life, it just became too much trouble to practice, to maintain them, to think about them. Someday I'll tell you about my lasso rope that fell into similar disuse.” She chuckled a little at her own joke.

“Anyway, a few months ago your dad was here telling me I needed to be prepared for anything that might happen in the city—you probably don't remember all that rioting business last year? I told him I was fine and that I even had two handguns. Well, he was not impressed. He had me show him where they were, then he took them and said he was going to clean and service them to make sure they were working properly for me. The next week he had them both back in this case, with this box of 1,000 rounds to go with it. I'm sure he knew I would not be able to use these anymore, but he told me where he was going to put the box, and he said it would be there ‘in case of emergency.’ I guess he was pretty smart about that.”

He eyed the shiny black objects sitting there. In the darkness, he could only see the harsh lines of the Mark I, but he knew it well. In fact, he was beginning to believe his father was smarter than he ever let on. How else could one explain that Liam had spent considerable time training on a Mark I with his dad? He never thought to ask him where it came from, but it sure seemed likely he got it from Great-Grandpa too. And now, at this critical moment, he would be carrying the same model. Did this make him the gardener with the deadly spade?

Dad always said the .22 was the best training round because it was so cheap and had very little recoil. He said Liam would eventually graduate to more powerful rounds, but if a person could master the .22, all the others would fall in line. It was all about stance, awareness, and a steady arm. Plus, the consequences of breaking any of the cardinal rules of gun handling was minimized during the learning period with the tiny round. He assured Liam it was still quite deadly, of course; assassins had used the small and quiet caliber to good effect for many years.

He never pushed for bigger guns because he loved going out and “plinking” with the little one. At least, he used to enjoy it. Lately, his dad would drag him to the range whether he wanted to go or not. Looking back, he realized he was acting like a whiny baby each time he complained he didn't want to go shooting.

I didn't want to go with him.

Now he looked at them with a silent appreciation for the lessons he'd been taught.

“I hope we don't need these, Grandma.”

“Me too.”

“Why don't you hit the hay, and we'll get started at first light. I'll be sleeping right out here on the couch. I hope you don't mind that I don't sleep downstairs?”

“Not at all. Why don't you keep one of these by your side from now on?”

He picked up the gun. Felt the weight. There was no mystery to it. It was just another item in the toolbox pre-positioned by his father.

He couldn't help but feel a longing to see his dad.

A distant explosion faintly rocked the items in Grandma's china cabinet.

“I can't wait to see the sun rise again,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

“I'll pray for us before I go to bed.”

“Thanks Grandma.” He was an agnostic—didn't know what he believed—but was respectful of Grandma's overwhelming faith. “And I meant what I said about considering going back to church.”

She gave him a kindly smile, turned around, and was slowly off to her room.

The last thing he remembered of that night was the sound of a car speeding down the street at high speed, followed by the unmistakable sound of squealing tires under extreme braking. He held his breath waiting for the sound of an impact, but it never came. Thirty seconds later, he remembered to breathe again.

He didn't get any quality sleep, but it did serve as a deep breath before his upcoming journey. He wondered if it was destined to end in extreme braking? Would he and Grandma meet their demise as raw sounds in someone else's bedtime story?

He drifted to sleep while jumping fences—Angie close behind.

Chapter 5: Angie

Liam woke up exhausted. When he did sleep, he’d had horrible dreams of zombies, lots of running, and pulling the trigger on a gun that would never fire as he was overwhelmed by plague victims.

The actual gunfire, speeding cars, and screams from nearby houses insured his slumber was sporadic all through the night. He also heard a big explosion nearby but was unable to pull himself out of his comfy sofa cushions to check it out. He was glad to get things moving at the first sign of light outside.

He went to Grandma's door and found her already up and sitting in a comfortable chair.

“I'm an early riser.” She never complained. “Two houses behind us blew up last night and burned to the ground. I watched to make sure the fire didn't spread.”

“Did you get any sleep?” he asked while peeking out her window.

“Oh, I got enough. I slept most of yesterday.” It was true enough, but not really a straight answer. Nothing could be done now. “I made you some eggs and bacon. Have to get rid of it.”

He wasn't a morning person or a breakfast person, but he took the time to shovel down the home-cooked meal.

“Sorry for eating so fast. I just want to get up there and get it over with.”

“I understand. I can make you plenty more if you're still hungry.”

“No, Grandma, but thanks. You stay here, and I'll be right back. Shouldn't be that hard to find Angie's keys up there.”

She gave him a little salute and watched him walk away. She said she would conserve her energy and stay in her chair to wait for him. “Be careful,” she added.

“The zombie from up there has already come down,” he replied, then paused. He looked back and said, “Sorry, I meant no disrespect.” He hurried to the front of her flat, through the access door to Angie's stairwell, and up the steep flight. The door at the top was already open, giving him access to the upstairs living area. He stepped around a puddle on the dim landing.

The room was shadowy because the drapes were thick and dark. He didn't have his flashlight with him. The floor was covered with debris, so he had trouble moving to a window to let in some light. When he finally did pull back the curtains, he was stunned.

Blood. Lots of blood.

There were piles of clothes scattered on the floor, along with sofa pillows, a tablecloth, and smatterings of shoes, purses, and other accessories. It appeared as if Angie's entire wardrobe had spilled out onto her floor and got drenched with blood.

He shuddered to think of Angie bleeding so bad, 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'd read books with many different definitions of zombies. Some were back-from-the-dead “undead.” Some were the recently deceased; they reanimated while still warm but remained clinically 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 in the apartment, and he began working his way around the edges of the room where the blood was absent, and some semblance of order remained. He could still detect some of the personality of the woman who, until recently, was someone he admired.

He found a picture of Angie with her granddaughter—a bubbly blonde with her arms slung around her grandma, giving her a big hug. He picked up the simple desk frame to get a better look in the low light, deliberately turning away from the central 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 twenty-four hours had awakened something urgent inside him—he suddenly, desperately, wanted to know if the girl in the picture was safe.

After a deep breath, he resumed his circuit of the main living area. He tried to think where the normally organized woman would put her car keys in her 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 that were on top of it—and saw with horror that the cat was not only dead but lying in a pool of blood with most of its insides ripped out.

Liam threw up.

Standing there trying to recover, he noticed the keys hung on a hook right next to the doorframe on the way out of the apartment. If he’d thought to look when he came through the door, he could have avoided this whole mess.

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

2

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

Liam had gone up into Angie's apartment to retrieve the 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 to the stairwell. If Liam was now sick, he could come right through, and it would all be over for her. She felt paralyzed with indecision. Try to close the door? Do nothing? She hated that it was 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, and trundling through her house until she found herself once again near the door to her neighbor's home. She was certain Liam was lying just around the corner.

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

She hadn't even considered the possibility he simply fell down the stairs by accident, but that appeared to be 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 that realization, all the strength she felt drained out of her. It was a profound relief to be sure, but now she was an empty, weak shell, as all that nervous energy dissipated. She needed to sit down. 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 cold from a draft on the open floor.

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, letting it stand by her feet.

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

It was a common refrain in her mind lately. She knew her days were numbered. The 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.

“Oh, Liam. I'm so sorry your mom and dad left you here with me. I'm sure they're thinking the same thing right about now. They thought they were doing me a favor by putting you in my care. Giving me someone extra 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 was replete with end-of-world imagery, but it was no guidebook for how to endure it.

Was it suicide to knowingly stay put, acknowledging survival in the coming storm was impossible? Just cower in the disintegrating neighborhood until the food and water run 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. 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 they went out into the city, she would be slowing him down to the point she would surely endanger him. She couldn't even manage him here in the house. What would she do when people, plague, and the sick made 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 to the present and the question she still couldn't answer.

3

Liam was lying 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.

He 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 to find her sitting on the big sofa. She looked very tired when he first saw her, but when she saw him, she flashed 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 looked away from her as he remembered what he saw upstairs.

“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.”

“Well, there's a lot of blood. And tons of her clothes were in the middle of her living room. And her cat ... was no longer alive. But mainly … blood. I couldn't tell if it was hers. It was kind of gross, which is why I ran out and fell.”

She nodded solemnly, “Were there any clues as to how she got sick?”

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

“Um, Grandma, did Angie look 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 covered all over.”

He hadn’t been 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 think we should leave? This disease seems real bad.”

She told him about the message on her answering machine, “It said to seek safer areas. 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's going to keep getting worse in the neighborhood if we stay here. Yesterday they were robbing garages. Tomorrow they're going to start robbing homes.”

He 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 made her sick.

“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. Some gunshots seemed 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. “We have to get our stuff and get out of here.”

He grabbed the backpack he prepared 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.

He 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 street where her car was parked—avoiding other sick people or criminals as needed. A quick run to the front seat, shove the keys in the ignition, and then a high-speed return to pick up his fare.

Sounded easy. But he knew any dumb mistake would put him in the role of 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. A twinge of guilt followed the thought.

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. He would be running for the car.

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

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

And with that, he opened the door, walked out, and Grandma closed it. He was quickly over the fence into the next yard. And the next. And the next. In a couple of minutes, he was in the last yard, ready to jump the final fence before the run down the street toward the car. His brain started running a little slideshow in his head, showing all the ways he could fail. Tripping. Ambushes. Gunfire. Getting run over. His heartbeat was revving to keep pace with the images in his head. No matter what he did to settle himself, he couldn't push them away.

He knew he had self-doubts about his abilities, just like anyone would, but he was haunted by his recent mishaps as “the guy who blows it.” More images spun up in his mind, fueled by every zombie book and movie he'd ever consumed. Would he get out onto the street and trip and break his ankle, to be easily hunted down by a sick person? Would he be the guy trying to start the car over and over, only to have a zombie pull him out through the window, or have one of the marauders in the area put a bullet in him just to get his working car?

And P.S., if I die, Grandma dies, too.

He had a vivid vision of Grandma standing in her kitchen where he last saw her. She was still there looking out the back, waiting. The vision faded, and he was glad because his next thought was that Angie was somehow in the house with her.

It was too much to digest, and he had to sit down in a bed of flowers to give himself some cover while he kept his heart rate from exploding, and his brain from panicking. Nothing like this had ever happened to him.

So many things can go wrong!

He could see the car, and it didn't look like anything was going on in the immediate area. Now was his chance, if he could settle himself. He tried thinking of something peaceful—the lake where he spent a lot of time as a child—but that only reminded him of another incident where he almost drowned. So, he focused on the moment and studied one of the yellow wildflowers nearby. He ignored everything else for several minutes until his heart rate was back to normal. When he was ready, he willed himself to stay in the moment.

He was up and over the final fence, and he felt strong as he topped it. He landed well and sprinted for the car. The hundred-yard dash took much longer than he remembered in grade school gym class, and his awareness was crystal clear as he sprinted. There were wisps of smoke drifting from the two burned-out houses behind Grandma's, and the air was foul with the smell of burnt wood and synthetic housing materials. There was a very slight breeze. The position of the sun indicated time was moving closer to late morning. The neighborhood was fairly quiet just then; gunshots and screams were ebbing low.

And then Angie was there. She must have been hanging around in the alleyway and had a good bead on him as he ran down the street. She stumbled around a corner and began another earnest pursuit.

It was a replay of yesterday, and all he could think about was falling down, twisting an ankle, tripping on his own feet, or some similarly stupid calamity. He slowed down a bit and became hyper-aware of the ground over which he was jogging, scanning for any sign of potholes that could end him.

He looked at the distance to the car and knew he could outrun the lumbering and broken-footed nurse, but he wasn't sure if he could close the door and start the car before she was upon him, possibly breaking windows to get inside. It was time to use the gun and remove all those hypotheticals.

He pulled the Ruger from his waistband, toggled the small safety on the grip, and aimed for the center of her mass. He had done the routine a thousand times before, though he had never shot anything living.

Is Angie alive?

He had mere moments to bobble that thought before he pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

He pulled back the slide, thinking he needed to chamber a round, but in doing so, he made the horrible realization that the gun was empty.

OH MY—

She caught up with him then, with his arms extended in front and her arms reaching toward him. The nurse was slightly taller and weighed a few pounds more even in her “condition.” He did have the advantage in dexterity, though. As the blood-covered woman pushed into him, he dropped his useless gun, grabbed both her arms and used her momentum to pull her forward as he sidestepped and stuck out his foot to trip her.

Angie fell to the street, her face absorbing the brunt of the impact, though she let out only the smallest grunt. He regained his own balance, wiped the nasty blood off his hands onto his jeans, reached down to pick up his gun, and sprinted for the car.

In moments, he was in through the passenger side. He pulled the door closed behind him, pushing the lock down in one smooth motion. He tried to ignore the fact he was sitting in sticky congealed blood. He definitely ignored what was sitting on the floorboard in front of him.

I don't see the foot.

He shuffled over to the driver's seat.

As he put the key into the ignition, Angie stumbled up next to the passenger side window. The fall had scraped all the skin from her forehead, and the exposed bone and blood gave her an even more unholy expression. She was looking directly at him through the very thin glass of the car door.

The car engine turned over, but it took him a few seconds to orient himself with the gear lever on the console, so he could slap it into drive and get moving.

Angie was banging and screaming obnoxiously outside the window. A million thoughts clouded his mind at that moment, but the one that stood out most was how glad he was Angie seemed oblivious to tools. One strong rock would be enough to break the door's glass and end this whole affair.

He solved the shifter question, put the car in gear, and smashed the gas pedal. The car lurched ahead, requiring a quick steering adjustment to keep him on the pavement, and he pulled away from the scene.

He turned around at the next intersection, so he could backtrack to the front of Grandma's house. He sped by Angie who had been loping along the street in pursuit. He briefly thought about swerving to “take her out” but he couldn't quite convince himself it was necessary. He wanted to pick up Grandma and just leave the nurse safely behind.

I did tell her to meet me in the front, didn't I?

As he turned left around the corner, he was more than a little worried he forgot to mention that part of his plan to Grandma. When he got close, he didn't see her at the front door.

He pulled up to her house, avoiding the few cars still parked on the street, pushed the emergency brake, then jumped out of the still-running car and ran for the front door, hoping against hope she would appear at the entry.

Please! Please! Please!

5

He wasted no time at the front door. If she wasn't there already, she wasn't going to get there in a hurry. He moved to the back of the house on the run.

He slammed the rear door after coming through, quite out of breath.

Grandma was indeed still camped out in the kitchen, right where he left her. He decided now wasn't the time to chastise himself.

“OK, Grandma, let's move up to the front door and we'll jump in the car. I parked it out front.”

She was very understanding, or maybe just didn't notice the oversight.

The trek to the front of the house felt like it took ten minutes. The entire time, he could think of nothing else but someone walking along the street, seeing the open car door, jumping in and driving off. He also imagined zombies seeing the open door, stumbling in, and hiding in the back seat like in a bad movie. He did everything he could to push these thoughts away, but it only added to his anxiety. He worried he was on the verge of having another panic attack caused by—worry.

Out of habit, he patted his pocket to ensure his phone was there. Each time he left the house he repeated the ritual, even under such pressure. Content he had it, he hung on to Grandma's arm as they both moved slowly forward. She used her cane, so moved fine for her age, but he had to resist the urge to physically pull her.

He opened the front door and held it wide while he helped her out onto her front stoop. He reached down to grab his backpack and slung it over one of his shoulders.

He took an opportunity to look around but saw no one in the immediate vicinity.

They both inched down Grandma's ramp and then along the walkway to the street curb. He reached over to open the door to gain access to the back seat. He was careful not to push her in, though his brain was begging him to do just that.

Once she was inside, he threw his backpack in the space next to her, slammed her door, and jumped into the driver's seat.

He dropped it into gear, stomped the gas pedal, and they were accelerating up the street, away from Grandma's house. He realized why every car that went through here seemed to be speeding. He eased up to allow himself to catch his breath.

I did pretty good.

“Liam, I left my cane on the curb.”

Oh sh—

He slammed on the brakes and looked over his shoulder.

“Do we need to go back for it?”

He wasn't about to admit it, but he was scared to return. He wasn't sure why given that her home was the one place in the entire world he knew was safe at that moment.

“I think I'll be in a lot of trouble if I don't have something to help me walk. I don't think either of us wants me to have to hold onto you for the rest of my life.”

He couldn't argue with that. A better driver could probably have turned around in the narrow street, but he decided to proceed forward until he came to an intersection where he'd have plenty of room to reverse course. When he found the right spot, he needed every bit of that wide space.

After turning around, he kept the speed low enough to be safe. They arrived in front of her house without incident. Both could see the four-legged cane out the right side, sitting on the grass next to the curb, right where she had left it. He pulled up next to it, got out, ran around the car, grabbed the cane, then ran around the car again and hopped back inside. He tossed it into the front passenger seat and saw it promptly tilt off, so its base sat on top of the bloody foot.

He had no time to consider that horrible image. He pulled away from the curb heading in the wrong direction. Up ahead, he saw a lone figure standing in the street and knew who it was.

He slammed on the brakes.

“Grandma, Angie's up ahead. What should I do?”

He secretly hoped she would let him plow her over and just be done with it, but he knew that wasn't Grandma's style.

“I'm so sorry, Angie.” She hesitated for a few moments, though he never doubted for a second what her recommendation would be.

“Let's carefully go around her, and we can leave her forever.”

He drove the car slowly toward Angie, who gravitated to the side of the car to try to gain access to the people she could see inside. Once she moved away from the front of the car, he hit the gas. She bounced lightly on the side mirror.

Blood had poured from the wound on her forehead to cover her eyes and cheeks, and totally drench the front side of her already blood-stained nightgown. Where she was getting so much blood was beyond his reckoning, but he and Grandma both gasped when they saw her up close.

Grandma said a short prayer for her friend.

He couldn't even muster the requisite “Amen” when she was done. He couldn't help but feel their problems were only getting started.

His free-associating brain summoned a line from an old Rolling Stones song named, appropriately enough, Angie.

In his rearview mirror, the nurse shrank as he sped away.

Goodbye, Angie.

Chapter 6: Coagulation

After avoiding Angie in the road and leaving her behind them, Liam and Marty were dismayed to see several other sick people wandering the formerly peaceful neighborhoods of south St. Louis. He still wasn't ready to run anyone over, as long as he had a choice. He would use other means if he had to dispatch one of them.

“Oh crap!” he blurted, remembering something critical.

He looked in the mirror at Grandma, afraid she would chastise his language, but she said nothing.

“I need to pull over and load my gun. I pulled it out when Angie attacked me—did I mention that?—on my way to her car, but, of all the stupid things, I forgot to put rounds in the magazine before I walked out the door. I'm such an idiot.”

He pulled over into a parking lot for a large supermarket. He let the car run while he grabbed his backpack, pulled out the box of ammo, loaded nine small rounds into the thin metal magazine, then slid the assembly into the bottom of the pistol grip. He chambered a round, and after some consideration put the safety on so he couldn't accidentally fire the gun while sticking it in his holster. That was one accident he was determined not to suffer.

He reloaded the other pistol as well. If he ended up needing it, he was fairly sure he wouldn't have time to load it at that point. Then, to be complete, he loaded the two spare magazines. Be prepared! That's what years of Boy Scouts taught him. He returned the backpack to the rear seat next to Grandma, so she could grab water or snacks.

He knew there was only one highway that ran directly from downtown to the south, Interstate 55; that made things easy for someone new to driving.

As they approached the on-ramp for the highway, he discovered the direct route also made things simple for everyone else. A massive traffic entanglement greeted them at the bridge interchange where the surface road went under the highway. Cars up-top and cars going up the access ramp were all stopped, and people everywhere were out of their cars, standing around. A few seemingly sick citizens lingered in the grass next to the highway or stood behind chain link fences.

Some cars made it off the highway and they drove into the network of side streets. Everyone pointed south. Without the use of the highway he needed an alternative, so he pulled over to consider his options.

The radio. He turned it on while mentally slapping himself for not doing it sooner.

Only one station on the AM dial was live as far as he could tell. Every other station, AM or FM, was repeating the same emergency response warning along with the president's radio message. Apparently, the stations were ordered to play that nonsense rather than something that could actually help people on the ground. Or maybe the radio people were on the run too?

They'd be some of the first to see the big picture.

The one station still live was headquartered in downtown St. Louis and apparently had a reporter on a high-rise roof somewhere because they were describing traffic in the downtown area:

“And we're looking at southbound 55 and can tell you it's snarled as badly as all the other highways we can see from our vantage point. Southbound is completely stopped. Northbound is also a mess coming into St. Louis, but everyone should be aware once you reach downtown, there is nowhere to go. The bridges to Illinois are all blocked now by the state police and what appears to be National Guard units. They are turning people back to the Missouri side of the bridges. As we've said before, you should try to get out of St. Louis while you still can. Just don't try to escape through downtown.”

The reporter began talking about the north side of the city, and he said, as much to himself as to Grandma, “I bet the entire interstate is a parking lot from here all the way out to Mom and Dad's.”

Grandma didn't respond. She was alert but casually looking out the window.

The radio continued, “We have reports from some people talking to our roving reporter that there is a Red Cross station down by the Arch. From here we can't confirm that, but there could be medical help. If you can't make it out of the city, that might be a good place to rest. And we've heard a rumor there is a big FEMA camp at the Gateway Speedway just over the river in Illinois. If you are in the Illinois listening area, you might find help there.”

The two announcers then began some banter between themselves about troubles in their respective neighborhoods, which he found annoying. He needed something that would help him right now.

He was beginning to understand the sickness was a regional problem.

The chaos had spread everywhere in the bi-state area. He had hoped—with the same sense of futility he felt upon reaching Grandma's—that once he reached home-home, he'd find safety.

What if it's everywhere in the world?

2

He drew a mental map of the city. The most famous edge of the metropolis was the Mississippi River as it passed downtown St. Louis and its crown jewel, the Gateway Arch. That was roughly the eastern border. To the north, he was less clear of the geography but was pretty sure the Missouri River was up that way. The south was his neighborhood. He knew that to get out of the urban and suburban sprawl, they'd have to cross the Meramec River—a relatively small waterway compared to the giant Mississippi below it. Rivers bracketed three sides of St. Louis. He aimed for the southern one.

Grandma's home was a couple of miles south of downtown St. Louis; even so, they’d found the highway south was already choked to death going outbound from the city's center. Was every car in the city already out and parked on this stretch of road? Or was it the same going north or west? If so, it meant almost no one had actually escaped from the city. Everyone was on the road, but still within the gravity well of the collapsing star.

What's keeping everyone bottled up?

The radio had no answers. He decided to push through some of the comparatively empty side streets and see if Interstate 55 was more accessible farther south. He knew it was a long shot, and the farther south he went, the more cars he found on the roads with him. He’d sat in enough traffic jams as a passenger to know that when traffic stopped, drivers would try just about anything to find alternate routes. At every exit and entrance for I-55 that he approached he saw many more cars use the exit ramps and drive into side streets. Always south.

Without working electricity and streetlights, gridlock increased with every block. There were just too many cars. He had to keep rolling over to smaller and smaller streets. He was considering using one-lane alleys if he had to.

While driving on a side street through one of the old neighborhoods, he noticed the flashing lights of a police car behind him. He panicked; this was not the time to get in trouble with the law.

“Oh, no! Grandma, I got pulled over by a cop.”

“Were you speeding?”

“I don't think so. I was just kind of driving around looking for clear streets.”

“Mmm huh.” She seemed to understand, but she said nothing further. She rolled down her window, directly behind his seat. Liam assumed it was so she could talk to the officer herself.

Let her deal with it.

Always respectful of law and order, he pulled over as quickly as he could. He had his seatbelt on, so he felt confident he had covered all his bases. He looked in the back seat to see if anything was out of the ordinary. The guns might cause trouble. He took his out of his waistband and stuffed it next to the seat by the middle console. The other was safely hidden in his backpack next to Grandma.

A doubt nagged at him—a lesson from his books—but he admitted that feeling always seemed to be in his head now. He'd never been pulled over, so he had no frame of reference of how it should go.

He didn't expect the gun in his face, followed by a calm voice asking for his money.

“I'll take your wallet, thank you very much.”

The dark man wasn't a police officer—the gold chains and multiple watches were big clues, if the gun in the face wasn't hint enough.

Liam held his hands up to signify compliance. He said his wallet was in his right front pocket.

“Well get it, I don't have all day.” The man gave a little giggle at his statement; then he seemed to notice the blood on the passenger seat and the foot sitting prominently on the floorboard.

Why did I leave that there?

“Looks like you had a passenger. What happened to him?”

“I don't know, sir. It was there before we jumped in the car.”

“We?” The man noticed the small woman sitting quietly in the back seat. He moved a step closer to the back, so he could see directly into the interior.

“Well, well. I'll take that fancy necklace, Miss Daisy. And that backpack looks quite juicy.” It was lying open at that moment, the snacks and drinks clearly visible. Liam silently cursed himself again for being so dumb.

“No, Grandma needs her meds. Please don't take it.”

“When I need your opinion, I'll ask for it, boy.” He slapped Liam's head by reaching inside the back window.

Liam knew it was stupid to think it, but he didn't want to be taken advantage of like this. Instead of being scared, it made him angry.

Grandma, meanwhile, was gathering the pack by forcing in all the contents that had spilled out.

“Sir, please leave her medications. You can have the rest.” He thought he was being smart. She didn't take any irreplaceable prescription meds, but maybe the guy would feel sympathy.

The man moved back to the front, directly outside Liam's window.

“You don't get it. I'm taking it all! If you say another word … ” He jiggled the pistol menacingly.

Grandma piped up, “I'm getting it all together for you.”

Liam sat stewing in his impotence. Can I start the car and speed off without getting shot? Probably not. But maybe if I push him back first … I've been lucky so far.

He shoved the door open to push the guy backward. It didn't surprise the thief at all. The man was so agile that he helped pull the door open, side-stepped, knocked Liam dizzy with a stiff punch, then dragged him out of the car onto the street.

Liam heard the soft murmur of Grandma's voice saying, “I have your backpack ready, sir.” Then he blacked out.

3

Liam woke up lying face down on warm asphalt. One side of his face was in excruciating pain, but he could move his jaw and didn't feel anything crunchy in his mouth.

Still dazed, he staggered to his feet and saw Grandma sitting in the back seat, her head lolling to one side. She'd put on a flowery head scarf, but it had come undone and sat flatly over her head.

Oh, God, don’t let her be dead!

He ran to her window and heard a soft, nasal sound coming from her. She was asleep.

Relieved, he leaned against her door. His head was throbbing, and the flashing blue lights from the police car parked behind them made it worse.

Then everything came rushing back. He looked around for the man with the gun, sending another wave of pain through his aching head, but he steadied himself against the car and noticed the backpack was still resting beside Grandma on the car seat.

Then, he saw feet sticking out from behind the car.

Carefully, he moved back toward the rear. The thief was lying on his back between both vehicles; his eye was a bloody mess, but otherwise his face and the rest of his body looked normal. He wasn't infected or anything. But he was very dead.

How did I miss seeing him before? Too scared about Grandma, I guess.

He looked around for a Good Samaritan in a high window but didn’t see anyone who might have saved them by killing their assailant. Cars moved on distant streets, but no one seemed interested in him. He thought about saying a prayer of thanks for his good fortune, but like so many false starts in his recent past, he didn't know if he believed his prayer would be heard by anyone. He secretly hoped there was someone listening. Perhaps even the same God Grandma believed in.

For now, he said a quick “thank you” to anyone who would listen and jumped back into Angie's car to start it up.

He thought about going back to check out the cop car but didn't like the idea of stealing from anyone. Plus, if he was caught ransacking a police car ...

Instead, he put his ride in gear and drove quickly away from the scene. It had all happened so fast he hadn’t had time to be afraid. He saw himself in the rearview mirror as he drove and realized … he was looking at a survivor. He just survived an encounter with a hardened criminal. He survived multiple encounters with Angie, the plague victim. He even survived falling down a flight of stairs.

But it all seemed so random. He knew any of those incidents could have ended his life, making this whole survival schtick the mockery he knew it to be. He saw the survivors of this thing as big, hulking men carrying large guns, sharp swords, and wearing full police riot gear. How else could anyone truly survive such crazy times?

He wore jeans and a lime-green Mountain Dew t-shirt, and his 104-year-old partner in survival was dressed in a light blue pantsuit, complemented by a plain metal cane. Hardly the stuff of legend.

Whoop de do. We've survived the twenty-four hours since the sirens.

He tried to get back into the important task of driving. He found the highway again and was disappointed to see the traffic remained stopped. The memory of the gun barrel between his eyes buzzed as he observed cars continuing to pour off the exit ramp, into the streets of this part of the city. Streets that were nearly clogged. It wouldn't be long before everything was in total gridlock. Before he was trapped.

He turned the car around to give himself some open space because he needed a chance to think through his next move. They weren't going to make it driving south on the highway or any of the side roads. He pulled over into an empty parking lot, far from anyone or anything that could harm them. He again remembered the gun in his face but ignored it. He aggressively scanned for threats as he tried to concentrate.

Could they walk out of the city? He'd seen many people walking along the highway, but how far could Grandma go on foot? She could walk pretty well for her age, and he'd seen her walk for short distances without any cane at all. But those were rare instances when she was at 100% health and rest. Now, she could barely stay awake while sitting in his back seat.

He thought again about the gun in his face but pushed it back with a few calming breaths.

“How far could we both get on foot?” he whispered.

Not far.

As he sat there, he found himself unable to further ignore the incident with the thief. Of having the business end of a gun touch his nose. Of being punched. Of being yanked out of the car and tossed to the ground. His hands started shaking, so he gripped the wheel.

How close to death did I come?

He imagined himself being shot dead. Oddly, he thought of his parents, and how they'd never know how he died. He imagined Grandma getting pulled out next. He imagined ...

NO! I will not let that happen!

He silently wept. He couldn't help himself. He was slightly embarrassed Grandma might hear him, but once it started, he was unable to check it. His head collapsed on the steering wheel as he let the emotions of the past day consume him.

In the back, Grandma slept on.

For the first time in his life, he envied her.

Chapter 7: Maple Syrup

Liam sat, exhausted, in the front seat of the car. His tears had dried, and he found himself staring out the front window. It hadn't been long since he'd pulled over. Glancing back, Grandma was still asleep.

He attempted to move beyond the botched robbery. He needed to look forward. Time for the “big guy pants,” as his dad would say.

He turned on the radio again.

Did they say all the bridges to Illinois were closed? Surely not.

All stations were now playing the emergency announcement loops, including the one previously broadcasting freely. They advised listeners to evacuate the city but were stingy with clues about how to do it or where to go. A week ago, he wouldn't have listened to a government broadcast to save his life. Now his life did depend on a government announcement, and he was dismayed to discover they had no answers.

Going south didn't seem possible, given the traffic situation. Going west might work in a pinch, but that would take him into the bulk of the population of the city—enough reason to avoid that way. North would take him directly away from his goal, so that made no sense at all. Finally, he figured his best bet was to drive east into Illinois, where it was less crowded, then turn south and try to return over a bridge into Missouri somewhere. It would require going through downtown, which made him anxious just thinking about it, but it was the only place to cross.

With no help from the radio, he had to make a choice soon. He gently woke up Grandma.

She opened her eyes, looked out her window, then into his backpack.

“He's gone, Grandma. He didn't get our stuff either, but I'm not sure what happened. I was lying on the ground, and when I woke up, the crook was already dead. He got shot. I jumped in the car and sped us out of there.”

“I must have passed out from all the excitement. I'm so glad you're OK. I'm not doing a very good job taking care of you, am I?”

“We're both alive. That's all that matters now. Someone shot the yoga woman for me, too. I think I have a guardian angel. I've learned an important lesson; the rules are changing. I'm going to be smarter from now on, so I can protect you and me both.”

Grandma leaned forward just enough to touch his shoulder with reassurance.

“We make a good team,” she said.

“Well, teammate, we need a new plan now. Traffic on the highway to the south is completely stopped. All the main roads next to the interstate going that way are also filled with people trying to escape. It didn't look like any of those vehicles were going to be moving anytime soon, so I pulled into this parking lot to think. The radio has nothing useful on where to go. I figured we'd try to get across a bridge downtown and then drive south on the Illinois side of the river.”

“Sounds like a good plan, Liam.”

“Will you help me navigate? I'm afraid I don't know where to go.” The extent of his driver's education with Dad ended at Grandma's house. The rest of the city was a blank space as far as roads went.

“I'll do what I can,” she said from behind.

He pulled back onto the road, in the direction of downtown. Unlike the lanes going south, the northbound side of the road was virtually devoid of traffic. He wasn't willing to use the term “good luck” just yet. He knew how fast luck could go down the toilet.

He felt a trace of a smile on his face as he sped through the dying city heading for freedom.

Looking in the rearview, Grandma's face was far more stoic.

2

The street was a major thoroughfare in this part of the city. It had two lanes of traffic in each direction, with a breakdown lane in the middle. Very few cars were going either way. The massive backup of south-bound traffic hadn't reached this far north yet.

Several cars burned on the roadway in front of a row of apartments. Strangely, other cars were moving among the burned-out hulks, seemingly unconcerned with the danger.

He was gaining his sea legs on this terrible ocean. He immediately stopped the car and looked for alternate routes where he could turn down a side street and avoid even being close to such destruction. Grandma was in the back seat, watching ahead as well.

“Grandma, I'm turning. I don't think we should go anywhere near those burning cars.”

“Watch those cars on fire,” she yelled a little too loud at almost the same time, as she sometimes did when her hearing aids acted up.

He smiled as he made a left, then a quick right turn onto a narrow avenue running parallel to the main road. They entered a more residential area. A few cars lined both sides of the street, but there were also a lot of trash and debris blowing around, as if many of the houses had simply thrown their contents right out their doors.

More ominously, he saw odd characters walking aimlessly. Sick? Infected? Lost? Stealing?

He wasn't stopping to find out. He hit the gas, quickly pushing fifty miles per hour down the narrow street. Not bad for a fifteen-year-old with a learner's permit.

The passenger window shattered as several gunshots exploded from the houses lining the right side of the street. He instinctively jerked his head as low as he could even as his heart rate started to outpace his car.

“Grandma! Get down!”

The rear passenger-side window blew out next, followed by the one on his side. The shots were either coming from both sides or going completely through the interior.

The rear window blew out a second later, and the headrest on his seat crumpled.

That was close!

He glanced in the mirror. Grandma had fallen over sideways in the back, covered with tiny pieces of safety glass.

“Oh, my lands,” she exclaimed.

He risked a sideways peek, but the shooters were well hidden. He was going much too fast. Shots continued behind them, and he could see in the side mirror a couple of men had run into the street to shoot, even as he drove away.

Only a few seconds more ...

He took a right turn too fast, scraped against a car on his side, but was just able to maintain control on the new street. The sedan lost some paint, but they escaped the flying bullets.

Rather than being scared, he was mad as hell again. People were using this disaster as an excuse to—do what exactly? Were these bad people showing their true colors or good people gone wrong due to the chaos? It had scarcely been one lousy day since law and order was put on hold. Things were going downhill fast if this was how it was going to be.

He slowed enough to take a left turn back onto the main street safely and was pleased to see they had traveled beyond the burned-out wrecks. Were the men on the previous street the same ones who burned the cars on this one? Why would anyone randomly destroy cars and shoot at people they didn't know? Were they trying to kill him? He had no explanation that fit the circumstances, and he sure wasn't going back to interview them.

Pardon me. Would you refrain from killing me while I ask you a few questions?

They quickly overtook another vehicle—a cramped, blue coupe—with a family inside who looked over at him as he matched their speed for a second before accelerating past them.

The open road was just as dangerous as everywhere else. Even a friendly-looking family couldn't be trusted. He could trust no one but himself and Grandma.

In the distance, he got his first glimpse of the Gateway Arch as it twinkled in the mid-day sun. He had many memories seeing it as a kid—how many times had his parents excitedly pointed it out as they were driving? It was a source of fascination and pride for locals like him. A snarl of traffic came into view on the street ahead, interrupting his pleasant memories.

Will anything be easy ever again?

3

The traffic wasn't as bad as it appeared at first glance. A major intersection in this part of the city was catching traffic from the nearby highway, as well as the growing procession heading downtown. Several other drivers must have gotten the same idea to head that way once they realized the highway out of town was toast.

After several minutes snaking through the busy intersection, they found open roads before once again coming upon a jammed cross street. It was much worse than the previous delay.

They were only a couple of miles from downtown. They could now see the big Anheuser-Busch brewery that was a cultural icon in this city. As they came through the big intersection, they could see the traffic ahead had stopped completely. As cars came up on the tail of the northbound traffic jam, they shut off engines, and passengers got out and joined the people ahead of them on foot. He could already see a few cars coming in behind him, which would make sure he never got out of this entanglement.

He turned the wheel hard to his right. Angie's severely damaged car jumped the curb and came to a stop in a tiny parking lot for a fast-food joint. He heard a loud pop. He backed his car sloppily into a spot up against the building, allowing himself a clear shot to drive in any direction he chose—except into the traffic jam itself—should he change his mind about joining the sea of walkers going downtown.

Several other cars took his lead. Soon the little parking lot was full, as were several other open spaces on this side of the road. He was silently impressed with himself for thinking of something that was so useful to his fellow travelers. It felt nice to lead, even if it was just a bit of luck on his part for thinking of it.

His pleasure faded once he exited the vehicle and saw its condition. Angie had some pride in her vehicle and took care to keep it washed and waxed at a local hands-on car wash. If she saw her car now, she would fall over dead.

Not funny, Liam!

Four windows were blown out. Several bullet holes peppered the passenger side, including a couple up near the engine. It was a miracle nothing got permanently damaged under the hood. He walked around and inspected as much as he dared. One bullet had mangled the locking assembly of the passenger-side rear door, making it impossible to open. He reached in through the broken glass and grabbed his backpack. As he pulled away, he noticed the front tire had gone all the way flat and it made the car look sad.

“So much for getting to Illinois.” He said it out loud, but mostly to himself. They were now committed to the only place anywhere that seemed to offer some help—the area down by the Gateway Arch.

Grandma exited on the driver's side and shook herself free of the bits of glass. She reached back in to grab her cane and then casually leaned against the exterior to wait for Liam to gather his stuff.

She quipped, “I guess we don't have to worry about locking the doors,” and let out a little giggle. He had to laugh too.

One of the people nearby gave a little whistle when he took in Liam's damaged ride.

“Whoa! You a stunt driver, kid?”

Liam wasn't really in the mood to deal with strangers but couldn't resist bragging about it.

“Not really. A couple of dip-wads a few miles back were shooting up cars. They got the drop on us, but I just put the hammer down and blew through their trap.” He said it with the same emotion he would if he were talking about the weather.

He looked at Grandma to see if she would scold him, but she was looking the other way.

The man seemed unimpressed. “Yeah, we had to drive through someone's lawn to get around some fellas holding up cars about three miles to the south. I guess we're all lucky to make it here. Good luck wherever you end up,” he said as he walked away.

So much for basking in the glory.

With his pack slung over his shoulders, he walked around to Grandma. She was looking at the crush of abandoned cars and beyond, toward the shining landmark.

“Do you think you can walk to the Arch from here?”

She was silent for many moments before responding.

“I don't see any other option at this point. I'm going to need your help, but I think I can do it.”

She held up her cane, so she could bring it closer to her face.

“I'm going to need your help, too, Mr. Cane. Don't let me fall!”

She chuckled a little, then slammed the cane back to the ground and started walking—slowly—away from Angie's wrecked car.

An obscure quote from one of his dad's old movies hit him as he left the sad-looking car that had gotten them this far.

I'm not parking it; I'm abandoning it.

He had a feeling they'd never be back. The car would probably rust in that spot until it blew away on the wind.

Wow. I'm a real downer.

Or, everything would be back to normal tomorrow and he’d have to pay for all the damage. Even if it sapped all his savings, he much preferred that ending than the other one.

Finally, it fell too far behind to see, and he resolved to only look to the future. At that moment, the Arch towered into view miles down the street. The safety of the port was so close, yet so far away.

4

After the excitement at Grandma's house, the struggle to escape Angie, getting beaten up by a criminal, and the stress of driving the car in the chaos, the walk toward the Arch was anticlimactic.

A small girl behind them blurted out to no one in particular, “When we get downtown, I hope they're serving hot dogs and soda, like at a baseball game!”

He was holding Grandma's arm as he walked but turned partway around to look at the child's parents. They wore tight-lipped grins as they shared the good things she would find ahead. Anything to keep the children happy and unafraid.

Would there be any help at all downtown? After what he saw on the roads of the city, he was pretty sure of the answer to that, but still, he had hope and tried hard to listen to the conversations of his fellow travelers to see if they knew more than he did about what was ahead.

The friendly crowd of walkers continued to grow. It was a lot like heading to a baseball game. He and his father didn't make a habit of it, but whenever his dad got free tickets to a game, they would go for a father-son adventure at the ballpark. The only differences between that crowd and this one was the colors—not as much Cardinal red today—and what people carried. He saw lots of coolers and bags of food, as well as firearms. Open carrying of guns was something you would never see on any typical day within the city limits of St. Louis.

He looked carefully now and saw that more than a few men and women were carrying things slung over their shoulders, covered with fabric or trash bags. Some had their rifles right out in the open, which made it even more obvious that others were hiding theirs. He didn't understand what they were trying to prove, but he wasn't going to call attention to them.

A man standing off to the side of the crowd held a cardboard sign for the walkers to see, “God did this to you. Repent!” Liam wondered what Grandma would think about such an insensitive statement, but if she saw it, she said nothing. He wasn't willing to blame God for the plague; he saw God in context with boring Sunday sermons or with high praise from family members. Never did either suggest a benevolent being could inflict something like this on the human race.

The man's sign was getting other people talking about the root cause of the catastrophe. Liam tried to overhear conversations as they walked. The first person he could hear clearly was talking about some clues he received on his shortwave radio.

“... a frequency I don't get. The guy lived in Minnesota or Wisconsin; he wasn't very forthcoming about that. He sounded like he had watched too many movies. He called the sick people zombies as if they were something real. He then said you can only kill them by destroying the head. Ha! This isn't Night of the Living Dead or whatever that movie was called. So, we ignored him and went on to look for more operators, but the only other one we heard with new information was farther north in Canada, and all we got out of him was that people were chewing on his livestock. He said he had no weapons to get them to stop. Nothing we could do to help him, of course.”

The guy was moving much faster than he and Grandma so he couldn't hear much more of his conversation, but he noted the man carried a big revolver in a holster on his left side.

As more people passed, he heard several of their theories. It was now on everyone's mind, it seemed.

“I heard it was a medical experiment gone wrong.”

“A friend of a friend said she knew someone in the police department. This was a terrorist attack.” And then, speaking so quiet Liam almost didn't catch it, the person said, “It was the same guys who did nine-eleven.”

“It was our own government.” A half-dozen people had different iterations of government conspiracies.

“It was the maple-syrup-lovin' Canadians.” He heard several people talk about Canadians as if the threat was real, but he couldn't quite take them seriously. Normally he wouldn't dare insert himself, but he had to know. “Excuse me, why would the Canadians cause this plague?” The woman who spoke of it responded calmly and easily, “They want our stuff, of course.”

He determined it was best to avoid laughing. Soon the woman and her entourage had moved far ahead.

He heard a host of other theories, just in the few minutes since he'd passed that sign. “It was the Republicans. They always wanted us city people to die.” “It was the Liberals. They was foolin' around with science and unleashed this Ebola-thing on us by accident.” “It was the Snowballers.” “It was the Communists.” “It was the anarchists. They want government to go away.” And so on and so on. The crowd consumed each theory, readily adding more and more.

Several people toted large, hand-printed signs, with variations of the “Repent! The end is here!” motif. One said, “This is the tribulation!” He knew that had something to do with religion, but he was surprised to see the people carrying such signs appeared completely normal. Almost serene. There were no crazed-eye preachers anywhere in sight.

Holding onto Grandma, he realized they were both now floating along with the crowd, and everyone was equally clueless about why they were there. It made him feel small and helpless.

People power-walked by them, barely giving them a glance. He wondered, would he notice an old woman and a young boy if he was walking in this mess by himself? How many people in this procession were going to be dead soon? That made his stomach wobble.

Don't panic, Liam.

“Panic is the real killer in many emergencies,” his dad's voice said with reassuring calmness from a memory.

He kept those words in mind as he steadied his breathing.

He craned his neck to look around the crowd, which over the last several minutes, had started to thin out. Everyone moved along the sidewalks on both sides of the street, as well as on the grass-covered median. He guessed they'd been walking along for an hour, which would put them about halfway there. Grandma was puttering along, but she was slowing down, stopping to rest more than he liked.

He knew she needed her rest, but an odd feeling had been growing in the pit of his stomach—a sense it wouldn't be wise to fall too far behind the main crowd. He was disturbed to see fewer people behind him than ahead. It wasn't empty, but things were thinning out.

“Grandma, I know you're tired, but we have to keep moving.”

“I know, Liam. I'm so tired, though. I must sit down.” She remained standing—there was no place to sit other than the curb of the street, and Grandma would have trouble getting down and back up.

Gunshots cracked from somewhere behind. Not close, but not as far as he'd like either.

He gave her a drink of water and a grain bar, hoping to give her a quick boost. He knew enough about the 104-year-old set to know there was no word for “boost” in their lexicon.

Liam didn't want to scare her, but he wasn't going to lollygag, either. Once she had taken a drink and pulled down a few bites, he practically pushed her.

“OK, we have to push on.”

Grandma didn't fight him but didn't pick up the pace as he'd hoped. Even a fury of gunshots and some nearby screaming didn't get her moving.

I refuse to panic!

He looked over his shoulder, afraid of what he'd see.

5

While dragging her along, a middle-aged woman in a business suit, sans the jacket, came ambling along. She seemed distracted until she spotted Grandma.

Without prompting, she took Grandma's other arm, and together she and Liam were able to support her much better as they walked along. He gave her his thanks, but Grandma remained silent. That could only mean she was super worn out.

“I think she's bushed. Thank you so much for helping her.”

“Anytime,” was the woman’s only response. She was looking ahead and into the traffic jam as if searching for someone. He assumed she had lost a friend.

After fifteen minutes or so the woman abruptly stopped and told him to wait against a bridge abutment just as they went underneath it.

This gave him a chance to look behind again; he was horrified to see almost no one. There were a few stragglers, mostly elderly walking without helpers. Some people had just stopped to sit or lie down, perhaps giving up. And, far down the street, he thought he could see a few of the really sick. Still, there had to be a whole city of people south of him. He couldn't imagine where they'd all gone.

He felt like the lone gazelle dropping behind the herd. Ahead of him, he could see the last of the main group walking away. They were very close now to the park that surrounds the Arch. Maybe a quarter of a mile. Gunfire was coming from that direction, though a few shots were echoing down side streets almost all the time now.

He didn't see the mystery lady. Not ahead. Not behind. Not even in the nearby cars, which were sprawled everywhere on the street and in every available parking area in sight.

Oh, crap! We're in for it now.

He looked at Grandma and considered his options once more. She appeared to be totally out of hit points. Could he force her to go faster? Should he try?

A deep, dark voice advised him to sit her down under this bridge and then just walk away.

Another voice argued she was his responsibility no matter how difficult things became.

Where did his obligation to save her outweigh his obligation to save himself? Wasn't his life—at fifteen years old—more valuable to save than hers?

Why would that thought even cross my mind?

“Grandma, I'm not going to leave you here. We have to keep moving. Can you walk a little farther?”

“Oh, Liam. I think I'm a goner. My head is spinning, and it's very hard to see.” She hunched over even more than normal, holding herself up with a combination of her cane and the concrete bridge pylon. “I don't think I can go another step without falling over.”

“Well, then, I'll carry you!”

Bent over and gasping for air, she cocked her head so she could look up at her tall grandson and give him a look he knew very well. It said, “Liam, you are one crazy boy, but I love you anyway. And no, we aren't doing that.”

He debated pulling a stunt he saw in a movie—just grabbing the small woman, tossing her over his shoulder, and carrying her, no matter what her protests were. He knew he could lift her and carry her but couldn't assure himself that he wouldn't break her ribs.

As he argued with himself, the mystery woman returned, running around cars inside the traffic jam, as if she were trying to find a suitable path through the obstacles. She was pushing something.

A half minute later, she was close enough for him to see the huge wheelchair in front of her, and she brought it right up onto the sidewalk where Grandma was swaying.

“Did someone order a ride?”

He stood incredulous while the woman moved behind Grandma and helped her fall backward, gently, into the chair. The seat itself was immense, apparently designed for a client of considerable girth, and Grandma's pixie size made her look like a child sitting there.

But she was sitting.

“Where did you find this?”

“I've been looking for this since I first saw you. It was on one of those lifts that stick out the back of a trailer hitch. I work with nurses, and travel to hospitals, so this type of thing jumps out when I see it. You have to hurry. She looks like she needs some medical care.”

The woman looked over her shoulder at the few people wandering about on the route they just traveled. Some were lying down, but some of those on the ground were being set upon by others who weren't … normal.

“Anyone healthy behind us must have gone to other streets. Nothing but sick back there,” she said.

“Will you come with us? We can make good time if we both push her.”

“No. You'll be fine. I'm going that way,” she said, pointing west.

“Hurry,” she repeated.

Without a further comment, she dove back into the traffic jam.

“Thank you!” he shouted as she was nearly across the street.

She lifted her hand but kept moving.

“Can you believe our luck?”

He tossed Grandma’s cane across the arms of the chair, then began pushing her, nearly running when the sidewalk wasn't too bumpy, and never once looked back.

A blood-freezing scream told him every detail about the sharks in pursuit.

Chapter 8: Victoria

The Gateway Arch grounds were chaos, thousands of people crammed into the greenspace under the 630-foot monument. The Gateway to the West was now the Gateway to the East for these people—a passage to safety over in Illinois. But there were so many people, and they didn't look like they were moving.

“Grandma, are you ready to dive into all this? That's where we need to go.” He was glad to be off the streets, crowd or not.

“I'll go where you push me, Liam. I'm too tired to arm wrestle you over it.”

They caught up with the many other new arrivals queuing up, and soon entered the perimeter of the park. A row of armed citizens and police officers watched from the outside rim of the greenspace, each holding their weapons toward the ground, at the low ready position. A handful of officers and civilians on horseback also wandered around. Where they found horses downtown was another of the mysteries of the day.

He remembered reading somewhere that the Arch’s park is “a patch of greenery next to the concrete jungle of the urban center of St. Louis, about a mile long and a quarter of a mile across.” Outside the park, dead bodies littered the streets. Any schoolchild could piece together what happened. People like Angie attacked the police and were put down like rabid dogs. Seeing that many corpses—and their blood—in the light of day was unsettling, but he gripped the wheelchair handles with determination and pushed through.

The police presence reassured him, but not because they had guns—lots of people he'd seen today had weapons, including him. These men and women represented authority, a hope that society was holding it together despite all the chaos. He gave the nearest officer a wave and got a nod in return. He felt as if he had returned to humanity with that little acknowledgment.

His faith didn't last long. Once inside the outer ring of armed order the interior of the park was anarchy. People huddled in small groups all along the path and well out into the grass on each side. Kids played in the reflecting ponds, something forbidden under normal conditions. He remembered being yanked out of one and scolded during one of his visits as a child.

They rolled up to a little parking lot filled with police cars and trucks, as well as several civilian vehicles. A large box truck sat almost directly in the path ahead. The back door was open, and a man stood back there, yelling at the crowd, “Guns! Ammo! On loan! We need you armed!”

It was perhaps the most unusual thing he had seen today, and that was saying a lot. The thought of police allowing this man to toss guns out the back of his truck—it just wasn't done. Ever. And yet—

“Grandma, let's check this out.” She didn't reply, so he took that as an affirmative.

It carried the logo of a local sporting goods store. Lots of police and civilians congregated near the back, and the man worked with a partner to take down some information from each person and then hand them a rifle or shotgun. No money changed hands. There were stacks of ammo and a cornucopia of firearms in the cargo area. If he were in a cartoon, his eyes would be swirling with longing and desire. He moved the chair, so he could drift into the line.

It can't hurt to try.

In a few minutes, it was his turn with the man holding the guns.

“Can I get a rifle? I want to protect my Grandma.” It was completely true, but boy, did he want a big gun.

The man wore a black button-down shirt from his store and he took a few seconds to size him up. Liam knew at that moment what he was going to say. His own eyes flashed behind the man, spotting a large—no, huge—tan rifle sitting on its end, up against the wall of the truck. He doubted he could even lift the thing ...

“Look, kid, I appreciate your situation, but we need men on this line. Police. Ex-military. You and your grandma don't belong anywhere near guns. You need to be inside the park staying safe.”

And there it was. He was “just a kid.”

His emotions welled up inside as the man moved to another customer. An older woman got a gun after giving her name and address. No other questions asked. So much for needing men, he thought.

He wanted to stay and argue but knew it was useless. He tried to move out of the line while avoiding the concerned looks of the men and women still there. Soon he was lost in the crowd, moving ever deeper into the park. Anonymity brought relief.

He tried to keep the wheelchair on the straight and narrow of the path but couldn't help looking from side to side at the many strange people who had washed up in this tidal basin of humanity. A large black family sat to one side; it looked like multiple generations made it here together. Old ladies. Several middle-aged men and women. A playground's worth of children. Many appeared very scared. He couldn't understand the fear here amongst all the armed police. To his left, among the hundreds of people, he spotted a young boy much like himself—only he was with his mother and father. Liam felt a little jealous because that youngster had found his family. He tried to be happy for him, but his heart wasn't really in it.

He rolled Grandma past an old cathedral, though it was clear the place was full and not taking in new tenants. Hundreds of people gathered around the front doors, hoping to get in. He kept moving toward the Arch itself.

Dozens of other vignettes emerged from the crowd. Wounded men. Coughing and hacking women—danger! Small children walking rudderless. The aged. The feeble. The mentally challenged. And pets of every stripe. No one wanted to leave without their pets. Dogs were the most visible, but small pet carriers were prolific as well—probably holding back the cats. There were even some big birds on people's shoulders. He couldn't identify many, though he did recognize a Macaw when he saw one.

“I wonder where all these pets go to the bathroom?”

Grandma might have heard the question, but if she did, she kept the answer to herself.

It wasn't far before the path revealed the larger scene beyond the park and well beyond the Arch. The Mississippi River, 2,000 feet across, was a disgusting brown that churned wildly as it flowed under the downtown bridges at high speed. Small boats flitted about in all directions like water bugs, their purpose unclear. Several aircraft buzzed above. Most were military, though some helicopters were probably reporting traffic—an easy job when no cars moved throughout the city.

The spectacle distracted him for a full minute until a weak voice pulled him back.

“I need to get in the shade, Liam.”

He obliged and hastened back from the crest of the sunny hill toward one of the many tree-lined and shady paths through the park. All the benches were full, but some space remained on the concrete; most people chose to sit under trees in the grass off the walkway. He scanned the trees to find one best suited to Grandma's needs. Some had large groups of scary-looking men under them as if entire biker gangs agreed to meet there. Some had distinct family groups. One had a score of priests and nuns below it. He searched for one with enough free space, so Grandma could get the shade she needed without asking people to move. He knew it was a tall order given the size of the crowd, but he was patient.

He settled on an ash tree that shaded a couple of young families, one with a baby stroller, as well as a woman sprawled in the grass near the path. She appeared to be sleeping, which was just fine. She wouldn't give them any trouble.

“Here you go. Shade as promised!”

Grandma didn't say anything.

She has to be exhausted.

As he situated her under the tree, he couldn't help but notice the sleeping woman was closer to his age than he first thought. She wore an elegant black dress, completely out of place in the sweltering heat and humidity of this park-turned-refugee-camp. The knee-length skirt had hiked high up her thigh as she lay on the grass, revealing more than his grandma would consider appropriate for a fifteen-year-old boy to see, for sure. Embarrassed and feeling like a voyeur, he tried to focus on pushing the chair into position, but with the distraction, he drove the wheelchair off the pavement. He felt it drop off the small edge and immediately knew what he'd done wrong.

So did the girl.

2

“What. The. HELL?”

The girl sat up while waving her pinched hand wildly. She looked like she'd been sleeping for days. Her long, brown hair was a ratty mess, managed only by the grace of a black headband. Her face, as pretty as it might be, was covered on one side with misplaced locks of hair, dirt, and grass. Her makeup had been smeared, giving her the appearance of sunken cheeks. The green eyes were striking—he had to look away, a decision reinforced by her yelling.

“That was my hand! Who the he—” She broke off, noticing a little old lady in a wheelchair.

“Oh, sorry, ma'am. I meant no disrespect. This wasn't how I expected to wake up.” Looking around, she continued, “Though seeing all these people now, I don't know what I was expecting.”

Grandma waved tiredly in her direction. “Please, child, Liam just lost control of my chair—it was an accident. We've been on the road all morning, and we're just looking for some shade.”

“I'm very sorry for running you over.” He pretended to attend to Grandma as he apologized.

As the young woman stood up, he could see she was about his height, maybe a little less than his five-foot, eight inches, and she had an athletic look about her. Her calves had real definition—not that he was looking at them. Her profile reminded him of any number of girls on his high school track team. Something about how they carried themselves gave it away. It was an intangible quality, but he had seen it many times in runners. Was she short or long distance? He'd have to—

“Hey, Crash Cart. You finished?”

Just shoot me now.

“Yeah, I'm uh, just wondering why you're dressed up like that?”

Good save.

She gave him a disapproving scowl but asked a question rather than address his.

“Do you have spare water or anything? I've got nothing but what you see here.” She held out her arms and swished them down and in front of her, as if presenting her clothes as her only possession.

“Grandma has the only water, and we're saving that.”

“Nonsense. Here you go, dear—please take a little.” She pulled a water bottle out of his backpack, which she kept next to her on the ample seat of the wheelchair.

He wasn't surprised. Grandma would try to help anyone she met. She couldn't help the thousands of other people in this park, but she could help this girl.

“Thank you. My name is Victoria.”

“Victoria, huh?” Grandma paused, just for a couple of extra seconds. “My name is Marty, but you can call me Grandma like everyone else seems to do. I'm 104, by the way. You were going to ask. This is my rescuer and great-grandson, Liam.”

He gave her a nod, trying to stay relaxed, but he was deathly afraid he'd say something stupid, or check out her minimal but sufficiently curvy chest—

Oh, crap!

He found it impossible not to look. The dress wasn't even low cut, but it was a dress, after all, and it complimented her figure. She adjusted a mobile phone inside her bra. It was too much. He sat down on the pavement next to the wheelchair, kept his eyes forward, and looked at people walking the wide path next to him. He gave his phone one of his many quick glances to confirm it still wasn't connecting to the network, but turned as she spoke again.

“Thanks for the water. Hope neither of us has the plague.” She followed that with some nervous laughter. She used just a splash of water on her face, and made a half effort to untangle her hair, then took a seat opposite him on the far side of the wheelchair. It took everything he had to avoid looking at the legs now stretched on the grass.

3

“You asked about the dress.”

She breathed a long sigh.

“I'm from Colorado; I came here a month ago. I just graduated from high school and got picked for a pre-med summer internship at a local medical school. I felt lucky they took me, you know, because things have been getting bad for the past several weeks. Fuel shortages. Food shortages. Stuff we all know.”

“But when I arrived, they put me right to work. The hospitals are worse than you can imagine ... ” She paused, as if seeing it in her memory. “They're just awful.”

“Anyway, after weeks of things getting worse and worse I had to get away. So, two nights ago, when some of my new friends said they were going out to a place downtown, I invited myself along. I'm not twenty-one, but nobody cares anymore.”

He noted she just graduated from high school, so she couldn't be much older than he was.

“We ended up in a place down here,” she pointed north of the city center nearby, “and inside was wall-to-wall packed. I hung with my colleagues and spent a couple of hours dancing, talking, yelling—you know, stuff girls do out on the town. At least in normal times ... ”

Her voice was clear but distant.

“There were tons of drugs and alcohol right out in the open, but that wasn't for me—I don't do either. But the fun and loud music took my mind off things for a while, and when I came up for air it was already two in the morning. I was done.”

Victoria stood up and stepped a few paces away from the tree, then turned around to face them both. She conveyed a nervous energy and seemed to brace herself for the next part.

He got a better look at her, almost daring himself to gaze in her direction. He had next to no experience around girls in a social setting. He steered clear of them in school. There weren't many girl gamers who enjoyed the types of video games he played, and none of his friends had girlfriends, either. He had too many other things to keep himself occupied.

With Victoria, he willed himself to play it cool and actively listen and nod, wondering if his embarrassment showed. However, he was struck by her silver chain with a small cross hanging around her bare neck. He couldn't define the reaction to it, but he found himself less intimidated, and could look at her without most of the usual awkwardness. He tried to understand where the feeling had come from as she continued her story.

“So, several of us were preparing to leave when we heard a 'pop pop pop' over the blare of the music. We saw the front security guy stagger-step our way, his gun still in his hand. He was being chased by ... some very sick people. Then things got out of control.”

Victoria seemed shaken as she recalled her tale, but it was already familiar to him after his morning. The plague victims had gone insane—become zombies, if you fancy that term—and had found a nice cache of fresh meat inside the noisy nightclub.

“I saw those sick people come in, so I ran the other way—out the back door. No way I was going to touch those bat-stuff-crazy infected; they had the double-Ebola already.” She hesitated. Her voice was a broken whisper. “I didn't tell anyone. I just bolted. I left them.”

She spoke with real sadness. “And outside was no better. A few people stood around smoking as the first of us tumbled into the alleyway. I got there just in time to see a couple of infected harass them, too. So, I kept on running.”

She pointed to the north again, then motioned toward the central part of downtown. “I headed that way. I broke the kitten heels off these shoes, so I could run even faster.” She looked down to her black shoes, now covered in scratches and road grime from her escape.

“Nearly all the lights were off here in downtown at two in the morning. It was eerie, to say the least. The lights of the Arch were still on, so I joined a small group also trying to get here. Along the way, plague victims continually seeped out of the darkness to attack us. Guys tried to fight them—to protect us girls, I suppose—but they always ended up getting brought down. Since we had no weapons, all we could do was run.”

She got quiet once more. “God help me, I ran. I left all my friends behind. I kept running. I betrayed everything I believed about being a good Christian. A good person. I didn't try to save anyone but myself. How selfish am I?”

He didn't know how to respond. He wasn't religious, but he could respect the devout of any faith. She had taken her desperate running as a sign of weakness in her religion, while most people—including him—would see her actions as just the opposite. It wasn't like she could carry the slower people on her shoulders.

He looked up at Grandma, suddenly aware of the implications. Would he be forced to run and leave her behind? Could he leave her behind? The thought had crossed his mind a few times, but now Victoria's story made it all the more real.

“I'm not sure how long I kept going. It felt like a bad dream. I ran all the way to the river's edge before I stopped. I wanted to jump in and just float away, but after what I'd seen in the shadows, the black water scared me too much. I began to wish I would have made even a token effort to save someone else.”

She shook her head, as if tossing out the bad thoughts.

“I was so amped up that first night, I was scared to be alone. I got away from the water and walked around aimlessly in the small crowds under the Arch until dawn. Eventually, I found myself staying close to the police officers near the edge of the city. At least I knew they had guns and could protect me. Several times they did.”

“In the late morning, tornado sirens began to wail. The panic they caused down here was incredible. People scattered in all directions. I watched as some jumped in the river only to get washed away. Many people left the park; others came in. I was one of those who left. I tried to get back to my dorm, but it only took a few close encounters to realize I'd have to wait under the protection of the police down here, or I'd end up dead. By the time it got dark last night, I was safely back inside the park. I tried to find someone in charge, so I could ask what to do next—but that person doesn't exist, apparently.”

A soft laugh.

“The last thing I remember was collapsing next to this tree, right here. I sat down to lean myself against the trunk and fell asleep instantly. I woke up when you ran me over.” She pointed at him, but without much hostility this time. Maybe even a wisp of a smile.

“I'm sorry. I'm unloading on you. I just needed someone to talk to. A confession, I guess.”

“That's OK, dear. Liam and I are good listeners.”

Victoria looked around again, as if getting her bearings. “How did all these people get here? Where are they going? Is anyone helping the sick? Is anyone rescuing those still trapped in the buildings downtown? Where are the medical teams?”

Grandma answered, “Sweetie, I think you know more than we do.”

Victoria crossed herself, “Then God help us all.”

Grandma responded with a similarly solemn, “Amen.”

4

They settled in after Victoria gave them a little more backstory. He also told her of their adventures, up to the point where they reached the Arch. She seemed impressed he was able to get his great-grandmother safely to this point, which made him feel proud, despite all the doubts he'd had along the way.

Grandma fell asleep as they traded details of their stories, and the afternoon crept on. He and Victoria sat in the grass, a bit away from Grandma so she could rest and recover in relative peace. The crowd was thick everywhere now but was very subdued, given the situation. From time to time, they heard gunshots on the periphery of the grounds. He assumed it was the police cordon being tested by the infected. He couldn't see anything nearby to suggest zombies were in the park … yet.

“So, what are you guys going to do next? Are you going to try to get over to Illinois?”

He looked out through the line of trees and could barely make out the two bridges that bracketed the Gateway Arch grounds. He didn't see traffic moving in either direction. He was pretty sure they were closed. He hadn’t mentioned that to Grandma as he didn't want to worry her with all the other problems they were wrangling.

“I don't think the bridges are open anymore. That could make getting to Illinois difficult, especially for her. I don't think she's ready to swim across.” He laughed a bit at his joke, but the truth was he did wonder how they could sneak over there. He didn't want to admit he may have come downtown for nothing.

Victoria gave a wan smile. “I had hoped to get back to my dorm room to change these clothes, but then I want to go to the airport and see if there are flights to Colorado.”

He hadn't even thought about airplanes since this whole disaster started, but he had a feeling getting a flight wouldn't be that easy. One recent news event broke through his gaming-fueled information isolation; the Ebola crisis from the previous summer. He remembered how they stopped all flights from the affected countries to prevent the disease from spreading to the United States. It worked, or so they were told. The disease never broke out in America, despite a few isolated cases. “No cordon is ever 100% effective,” the news had said.

But was there some parallel with this new disease? He'd heard it described as both flu and “Ebola-like” by people over the last couple of days. Did it simmer somewhere overseas only to explode at some point because the proper protocols weren't in place? Something to chew on, though he knew it was unlikely he'd ever get the truth.

The talk of Colorado jogged a memory of another family member, his dad's mom. Liam's minor claim to fame—actually he was more embarrassed than anything—was being related to a politician. Grandma Rose ran for, and won, a seat in the US House of Representatives the year before. She wasn't around much—she lived in Colorado—so he knew very little about her other than she sent $100 bills for birthdays for as long as he could remember. His dad mentioned her once recently, while talking to Grandma Marty on the phone.

I wonder if she'll survive in the Rocky Mountains?

Liam imagined Colorado would be safer than most places, with its remote mountain ranges and sparse population. He doubted Grandma Rose—a rich politician—would be out in a tent in the mountains staying safe, but if Victoria ever made it home, he might at least ask her to look her up.

Although he had his doubts about Victoria's travel chances, he opted to say nothing to dampen her spirits. As with the boy earlier, he felt the pang of jealousy, because he didn't want her to find refuge while he labored in the chaos of this city. The ill-feeling passed faster this time. He knew he would be happy for anyone who escaped, especially this pretty girl conversing with him.

She continued to talk about the details of her life, but he found himself increasingly distracted with worry. His mind was in overdrive to answer the only question of consequence.

What are we going to do next?

5

He snapped back to the present as a priest hovered over Grandma, mumbled a prayer, and put ointment of some kind on the backs of her hands. Her head was slumped over.

With a bolt, he was back by her side. “Excuse me; my grandma's not dead.”

I'm 99% sure.

The priest was an old black man, with white hair and sad eyes. He was in black pants with a black shirt, with only a white collar to give his profession away.

“Hello, my son. This is just a precaution. She doesn't have long with this plague going around.”

There was an anger building inside Liam he didn't quite understand. No matter how well-intentioned, he didn't like the idea of this priest essentially giving up on Grandma.

He stood there and watched the ritual, not knowing what to say or do.

The commotion must have jostled Grandma awake, and she took things in stride. “Father, please. I'm not dying!”

Thank God!

The priest looked at her for a moment, finished his prayer, and departed with a final, “Go with God.”

Grandma crossed herself. She looked at Liam and Victoria. “Don't let them bury me while I’m napping.”

She winked at them and began rooting around in the backpack by her side.

“I wish I could go back to sleep,” Victoria said.

He thought for a second before replying, “Well, it seems like you had a good night's sleep under this tree. At least until we found you and ruined it.”

Both of them gave an honest laugh at that.

“I tell you what I really wish for today—my Bible. I know it probably seems silly and puritanical, but, you know, I like to feel the presence of God watching over me. It always helps me find peace to read through the challenges of all those men and women during ancient times, especially the Old Testament. It makes me feel part of something larger, and not just one woman alone in all this trouble.”

His mind raced. He wondered if he should say something suave like, “You're not alone anymore,” or if he should just play it chill and say something neutral along the lines of “I wish I could find comfort in a book.”

Instead, he said, “I'll find a Bible for you.”

“Oh, no, you really don't have to. I'll grab mine when I go back to my dorm.”

“Of course.” He felt a little stupid for having made the comment. Anxious to move on, he asked her more about Colorado. He envisioned following her back to her dorm and teaming up with her to get to the airport. Grandma could come along, and they would all get out of the city by way of Colorado.

What am I thinking?

Many times over the last couple days he had incidents where his brain betrayed him, either making him too slow, too cocky, or too scared. Sitting here with Victoria, he explored new territory when it came to his mind going off the reservation. It wasn't just that he found her attractive—he found lots of girls attractive, though he was normally deathly scared of making that fact known to them—but with all the tension and stress of the last twenty-four hours, he saw this girl as someone worth his time, and possibly his life. He knew he would do almost anything to save Grandma—but he knew, and she knew, some things would just be the end of her. She wasn't going to magically get out of her chair and run away from a horde of zombies. In many ways, she lived on borrowed time. In contrast, Victoria represented a new-found willingness to lay down his life to ensure such a vivacious girl goes on living, no matter what the personal cost.

But I've only known her for a couple of hours!

He admitted that was all the time he needed.

Chapter 9: Last Rites

Liam and Victoria had both settled down next to Grandma, as he needed to catch a little shut-eye after his long day. Victoria seemed in no hurry to leave and even offered to watch over them while they slept, which made him very happy.

It felt like only minutes later when Victoria shook him awake.

“Liam. Check this out.”

He opened his eyes to find another priest with Grandma. This time, she was awake and talking animatedly to the theologian. He listened as the man spoke in hushed tones.

“We must be very careful. The park is filling up too fast.” He looked at Liam and Victoria crouching next to him, “Do either of you know where the Arch service dock is located?”

“I've jogged by there a couple of times,” Victoria whispered back. “I know it.”

A runner! I was right.

Whispering now, the priest gave them instructions to move to the dock after it got dark, and he would be there to meet them.

Liam heard his message but didn't really understand it until he had a chance to speak with Grandma.

“That was Father Cahill. I've known him since he was ordained—about the same time your father was born. He was administering last rites on me,” she giggled. “I think he was the third one today! Look at all this oil on my hands. When he saw who I was and realized he knew me, we started talking. That's when he told me he has something he wants to show us. I'm not sure what this is all about, but I trust him with my life. I trust him with my soul.”

“Did he say I could come too?” Victoria asked, with just a touch of anxiety.

“Of course, dear. As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to stay with us as long as you need.”

He kept quiet, though he felt a faint glow in his heart get just a bit brighter.

“OK, I'll stick with you guys until they get this all sorted out, and I can walk back to my dorm.”

They settled back down as the evening wore on. Realizing the danger of showing food or drink in the nervous crowd, they snuck a little food and drank just enough to feel something in their stomachs. So many others clearly didn't even think far enough ahead to have one afternoon's worth of provisions. Many were walking around begging, or just shouting to whoever would listen that they needed this or that. The crowd had been calm for most of the day, at least the several hours since they arrived, but the atmosphere was slowly changing as the “pleasant afternoon” of waiting evolved into the “long night with no food or water.” Or sanitation.

A crowd this big normally would have banks of port-o-potties and scores of support staff to keep them operational. This crowd had now ballooned to the tens of thousands, and there was nowhere for anyone to privately do their business. Naturally, this meant everyone just did it wherever they felt like it. Without any leadership to tell the crowd what to do, people just did whatever they wanted.

When Liam, Victoria, and Grandma got up in the fading light of dusk, they found the thirty-foot wide paved path filled with people who were sitting on every square inch of pavement, save one small channel of walkers right down the middle. It made it very difficult to move the huge wheelchair without begging sitting or sleeping people to move just a few feet farther out of her way.

It took half an hour to go the short distance to the dock. It sat in a depression that was hard to see from the main path, although there were a few people loitering about the area. There was simply no way to hide anything in the park with such a crowd.

They could see a small doorframe next to a closed garage door at the end of a small paved service lane on a downward ramp.

Once again, the trio pulled to a stop and began waiting.

Even if the doors opened, there would be no way to get in without being seen.

“Grandma, how are we going to get in?”

“The Lord will provide.”

He and Victoria both said “Amen,” although he had his doubts.

2

Their prayers were answered in short order—just as dusk fell.

“Hello, my friends.”

Father Cahill had been waiting in the crowd and came to see the lady in the huge wheelchair. Liam noticed he had removed his white collar.

“All through the day, I've been collecting the aged and the infirm and bringing them through this door, but earlier there weren't as many people. Now you can see they've flooded all over, including right here at this dock. I can get you in, but this might be the last time we're able to get anyone inside without there being some trouble. I doubt we're going back out, either. Are you sure you guys want to ride this thing out inside the Arch museum? That's where I want to take you.”

The three looked at each other and nodded their heads in the affirmative. Whatever was inside had to be better than sitting under a tree with an increasingly desperate crowd. Victoria said things were worse at night. Plus, Liam believed there might be someone in charge who knew the situation. He might be able to figure out how he could get Grandma to safety if he could get some time with that person. It was a long shot, but currently the only shot.

“All right. I have one other person I'm going to try to get inside. He's that older gentleman sitting near the door. My plan is to go help him up, tap on the door and hope they open it for me. When you hear me knock, move quickly over there. I'll try to get them to hold the door open for you. The closer you are to me, the better, if you catch my drift.”

He scuttled off.

Liam and Victoria situated Grandma in her chair while all three faced the door fifty feet away. Father Cahill seemed to have trouble getting the old man to stand up, and some men and women sitting in the vicinity volunteered to help.

He could see what was going to happen now that several more people were paying attention.

“Let's make our way in that direction,” he whispered. “Victoria, will you push the chair? I want you to push it inside, no matter what happens to me. Can you do that?”

“Yes. But let's all get inside.”

That's the plan.

They changed positions while keeping one eye on Father Cahill and the old man, who was now up and standing, but the priest seemed hesitant to do what he needed to do next. He was holding the old man, the gentleman's arm slung around his neck. Father Cahill noticed Liam had moved his group closer, nodded to Liam, pivoted to the door and gave it a loud knock in an apparent secret cadence.

“Pick it up, guys, and don't stop.”

The knock attracted the attention of several men near the door, already alerted by the commotion with the old guy. Some who were sitting were now standing, and some who had been standing were now moving toward the door. Everyone in earshot of the knocking was curious.

The door opened with a flourish, and two chiseled men with sleek black rifles popped out. They pushed past Father and his ill friend to let them in and held their guns in a menacing fashion for anyone who fancied a peek inside.

Victoria pushed Grandma right up to the closest man and yelled, “We're with Father Cahill!”

The man with the gun made no movement to open a path for the wheelchair. He stood his ground. His friend was looking in another direction, gun trained on some of the men who were closest.

One of those men yelled, “We're with Father Cahill!” Then it was a chorus.

How did this happen so quickly?

Victoria looked deflated at the turn of events. There was no way to prove who they were. No way to prove they were with the clergyman, unless he came back out.

The two gunmen began stepping backward as if to retreat into the small door. However, just as they were starting their motion, Father Cahill was there. He yelled in the ear of the nearest man and pointed to Victoria and Liam. The two men once again moved out from the door and pointed to Liam's group.

Victoria plowed ahead. The wide chair was just able to fit into the door, though the wheels scraped as it went through.

Liam punched through too, though he felt the crowd surge behind him. He was glad he didn't have to sacrifice himself to get the three of them in; he wasn't even sure he would have been able to sacrifice himself. Not against two guys with that kind of hardware or a hundred scared civilians.

In the dark, it was hard to gauge numbers, but he guessed there were maybe thirty or forty people near the door by the time they got in, meaning there was a sizable crowd angrily looking at a closed door right about now. Would it take them long to figure out they could break it down?

Every disaster book he'd ever read was now screaming the answer to him. The death clock had started ticking—how long would it take for this stronghold to fall?

3

“Thank you, Father. You could have easily left us out there.”

“No problem, my son. I'd do anything for your grandmother and anyone important to her. I'm just sorry I don't have more to offer you than a dark cavern for sanctuary.”

“Are those people going to break through that door?”

The two security guys were moving some heavy equipment from the garage area over to the door they'd just come through. The biggest item was a riding lawn mower; apparently, this was an area where they stored equipment for maintaining the Arch grounds.

The five of them left the guards to their task and started walking up the hallway to the main museum.

Between the two legs of the monument was an underground area dedicated to ticket sales, two tram-loading areas to get up and down the legs of the Arch, a large museum devoted to frontier living, and a little gift shop and candy store. In the middle of it all was a large waiting area with plenty of seats around the walls, so people had a place to sit while waiting their turn to go up in the structure. It was now filled with sick people, along with lots of elderly folks, and even a few young parents with infant children. It was a group where Grandma would fit in perfectly. Victoria rolled her into the vaulted space, and they found an area along the outer wall where they could park the wheelchair and have a little room to sit next to it. The dull light of some dim bulbs hanging from the walls provided light in the subterranean refuge.

Father Cahill helped the older guy sit in the same area, though the man made no effort to talk to them, or even look at them. He merely slumped against the wall, clutching himself as if he was freezing. Liam didn't like the thoughts swirling in his head about all the sick people in his field of view. Did they all have the plague?

Do I? Would I know it?

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. How does the disease move around? 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 seem to get a type of flu which leads eventually to the Extra-Ebola—a.k.a. E-Ebola. 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's 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 are you calling infirm? I'm only 104.”

He gave Grandma a big smile. She was returning to her feisty self again.

“Of course. I meant these other infirm people,” the priest said in a very quiet voice. Everyone chuckled along.

Father Cahill then motioned to the far side of the room, near the entrance to the main museum. “Those folks over there are the families of the 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?” he replied.

“Technically no. The entire St. Louis police department is working today, but that's 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.”

He 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, and where they could go.

Father Cahill was saying, “—and finally there are a few Red Cross and CDC folks in the candy shop. They're using the tables back there as a kind of command center, although they're just the managers and not the field personnel—so they have no medical supplies or trained medical people. I'm afraid their presence, and the rumors they brought medical help, are what attracted many people here.”

“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 in the shop 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. He was watching Victoria and appreciated she took none for herself.

He 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.

He went right to the candy shop.

There was just enough light he could get around everyone sitting on the floor. There were many more people crowded in the vault-like room 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. He figured nothing like this had ever happened before, not even close, so no one really knew how to act or what to expect.

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

Drinking.

“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; he motioned him in.

“Come on in, friend.” He saluted with a bottle of beer. Others in the group did the same.

“Umm. Thank you.”

They pushed out a chair for him, and he sat. 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? 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.” Tie-guy said with a slight chuckle, “How old is she? She looks to be about a hundred!”

“One hundred and four, to be exact.” He was proud of the fact, though he really couldn't explain why once it had come out of his mouth. If she were 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 the ugly tie who spoke up first, and Liam noticed he downed a good portion of his beer before starting.

“I'm Douglas Hayes from the CDC.” He waited for a few seconds to let that sink in. “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're all more or less middle managers.”

“The priest said you guys might at least know what’s happening,” Liam continued.

“We’re not going to tell some random kid,” Hayes replied with a stern face before laughing a second later. “I’m joking! But seriously, we don’t know much,” Hayes said with a laugh. He then 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. Hayes went around the room, assigning roles to every fourth person or so—and as the Father said they were more logistical in nature than medical.

The only person even remotely connected to medical information turned out to be a middle-aged, Indian-looking “IT support person.”

“You want to tell this kid anything?” Hayes asked her.

“Hello, Liam. Sure, what the hell. I’ve already told the police over there. I'm April.” 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. 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 before going on. “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's always the same—emails full of confusion, anger, and impotence.”

Hayes 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 the disease 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. The US military seems to have commandeered everything that flies.”

Hayes tilted his bottle to drain it in his mouth.

“We got here late yesterday afternoon and have been waiting ever since. None of our cell phones work reliably anymore, but when they do we get no response from anyone in our chain of command. Glad you asked, huh?”

Hayes slammed his beer bottle on the table.

“So now we're sitting here drinking beer, spilling our guts to whoever asks, waiting for the double-E Doomsday Bug to roll through the city and make our jobs obsolete.”

Victoria walked in the door just in time to hear Hayes’ last sentence. Her response, standing next to Liam, was to make the sign of the cross.

Hayes, seeing this, went on, “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 humanity.”

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. All of it gone? Did the intoxicated people in this room 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.

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

“Dunno.”

“Where it's 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 the bug existed until it had already scoured through most of the East Coast. We were caught totally and utterly flat-footed.”

He 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 pretty much useless now?” he said with more sarcasm than he intended.

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. We made it here. We did our jobs. Everyone else dropped the ball.”

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

“Sorry. I meant did anyone get out to study the disease?”

“Oh yeah, lots of teams went to the East Coast. Some even went out the front door of the CDC headquarters into greater 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.

He turned around to leave. Obviously, he 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's no data?” He laughed a little, indicating his belief it was a crazy thing to suggest.

The room became very quiet. He sensed the change in attitude.

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

“Congratulations, my smart-ass friend. It took us twenty-four 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. “Maybe they didn't cause it, but if anyone there knew who did, it's been purged. Why do you think we're just sitting around drinking and chatting up the locals?”

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

He thought about mimicking her, but the moment passed.

5

He 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. They both talked 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?”

“I should have asked them about Denver. Sorry.”

“It's OK,” she replied in an upbeat manner.

“So. Would we have heard about all the sick people on the East Coast? I don't know. I don't watch the news, so I can't say whether there were clues about what was really going on or when this started. Maybe they thought it was just the flu—not E-Ebola? A bad run of the generic flu wouldn't be big news, would it?”

“Probably not. But that reminds me of a story,” Victoria said as she looked around. “I thought this was a tall tale when I heard it, but after what you just told me, it may hold some truth. Back at Washington University where I started my internship, we heard this rumor.”

She again looked around, like it was going to sound crazy.

“One dark and stormy night,” she said with a scary-sounding voice, followed by a laugh. “Isn't that how all horror tales start?”

“Just tell me!” he whisper-shouted.

“Eesh. Where's your sense of drama?” she stuck her tongue out at him. “Any-hoo, these two policemen were stationed outside the morgue of the research department at my school. They said no one was allowed to go in or come out. They supposedly got called in with a report of mischief inside the morgue. They figured it was students pranking the nurse on duty with the old 'he ain't really dead bit' but when they got there, they found several corpses really were 'alive' and there were no interns yanking the strings. They pulled back the sheets and found each of them thrashing around in their restraints, despite having the most grievous wounds you can imagine. The rumor said the cops ran out of the morgue, shut the door, and gave the order to seal it. Everyone else was pushed off the floor. The next day the morgue was completely vacant, but otherwise open for business. That's why nobody believed it could have been true.”

Victoria finished her story, and the pair sat in the darkness of the cavernous chamber in silence.

“How long ago do you think that happened?” he eventually asked.

“I heard that well before the sirens. A week, maybe?”

“So, in that period, the plague must have exploded on the East Coast, it may have been starting here in Missouri, and it was all hidden from view. That doesn't seem possible to me.”

“Me, either. But seeing infected people walking around has changed my perspective on a lot of things.” Victoria laughed quietly. “I still don't believe the morgue story, though. Sick? yes. Look like they're dead? Maybe. Morgue dead? No way.”

Despite her attempts at humor, her story scared him.

“Let's get some sleep and maybe tomorrow things will look a little better,” he added.

Both settled uncomfortably onto the concrete floor, leaning against the hard wall. He offered his backpack to Victoria as a makeshift pillow. She accepted his gift readily and returned the favor by suggesting they lay near each other so they could each share the cushion—on opposite sides. It still wasn't much more comfortable, but it made him infinitely happier.

Thirty minutes later, as he was nearly asleep, a “crump” sound from outside jolted him awake. Several cops snoozing on the far side of the room jumped up, ran to the exit doors, and shot out into the main crowd under the Arch. He intended to stay awake and discover what they found out there, but the day caught up with him, and he drifted to sleep.

His final thought was of the CDC folks.

“Why do you think we're drinking?” Hayes had said. He thought he understood his meaning, but it jumped out at him in his half-sleep. Maybe they weren't drinking because they were afraid their bosses had scrubbed the records. Maybe they were drinking because they knew what was in the records that had been scrubbed?

He couldn't decide which scenario was worse.

Chapter 10: Touristy Stuff

“ATTENTION PLEASE! ATTENTION!”

A police officer’s booming voice cried out from the other side of the subterranean room, and it shocked Liam, Victoria, and Grandma awake. The man yelled a few more times and waited until he was sure everyone in the place was awake, with eyes on him.

Liam stole a glance back at the candy store and wasn't surprised to see it was pitch black inside, and none of the CDC people were stirring. He wasn't familiar with the concept of a hangover but did know that rough mornings followed late-night partying.

Or they just up and ran.

He tried to laugh that off, but it had struck a chord of truth.

The officer began his announcement.

“Thank you, everyone. Good morning. I'm Captain Osborne of the Missouri Highway Patrol. I'll get right to it. Last night, we almost lost the entire park. The cordon many of you saw coming in has been pulled back. We were able to stabilize the lines as we made them shorter, and we were also assisted by a few military units, including one tank and several Marine Corps Amphibious Assault Vehicles. As of this morning, the lines are holding. That's the good news.”

Many voices shouted questions.

“I'm not done!”

That checked the anarchy. He paced as he continued.

“The bad news will take me much longer, I'm afraid. First, there are more infected than we ever imagined. Since we still don't know how this thing is spreading or why these infected citizens keep attacking the healthy, we can't take chances. We have no choice but to keep killing them. I'm sorry if that bothers some of you. It's our reality. That said, it's entirely possible we'll all run out of ammo before we can kill the whole city.”

He inserted a laugh to soften the horror.

“Second, even though a few military units showed up, they came of their own volition and are probably classified as deserters from the main force sitting over in Illinois. They may have saved our bacon last night, but no one is coming to save theirs. Third, the military guys said they had orders to prevent anyone from crossing the river. They intend to keep the disease on this side and will use lethal force on anyone trying to cross to them—not even their own men can go back.”

The small crowd started to pepper him with questions, but he took a deep breath, and bellowed, “So. Where does that leave us?”

The gallery quieted.

“I'm sure you know that my fellow law enforcement officers, my brothers and sisters you all passed as you came into the park, have been trying to keep this place secure from the infected victims, so we all have a chance of getting help and get the hell out of this mess. Our families are here, same as yours, and same as those people up top we're trying to protect. But now it looks as though no help will be coming.”

Rather than noise, the captain got perfect silence.

“We lost many men and women last night. Even though we held them off, and improved our lines, the endgame is that unless we fight our way out of here we're going to be trapped.”

Osborne paused a little too long, and the crowd finally exploded with questions, thinking he was done.

“Hold up! Let me finish. Our plan is to start organizing civilians for a breakout. We know there are plenty of men and women with weapons up top, and we think our only chance of escape with some sort of organization is to make those citizens aware of the impending collapse. To that end, I need some healthy volunteers. We are woefully short on manpower. You'd really be critical to helping the police, but you are ultimately helping yourself get clear of the infected assailants out there. We're gonna get out of here. Just give us time.”

He and Victoria looked at each other, then at Grandma. She nodded.

They ran without looking back, wanting to make a difference.

2

They waited in a line of eight or nine others. There were a couple of young people besides themselves, but most volunteers were quite a bit older, and few looked overly athletic. Everyone could carry and use a radio, however, which was the only condition for volunteering. Some more people dropped in behind them as the captain gave assignments to those in front.

The volunteers ahead were given radios and moved off individually with officers waiting in the wings.

When it was their turn, he and Victoria stood shoulder-to-shoulder.

“Ah, finally someone who looks like they can handle some touristy stuff. I take it you two are together?”

“We aren't together-together, but we are together,” Victoria said at the same time as he replied, “Oh, it's not like that.” They looked at each other in a bemused fashion, to which the no-nonsense captain said, “Fair enough. I think it would be best to have you both go together for this task, though. Would that be OK?”

Both gave a too-quick affirmation.

“Step over to Officer Jenkins to my left,” he said with humor, “and she'll get you squared away. Thanks in advance for doing a tough job.”

As they stepped out of line, he overheard the captain say, “They're a cute couple. Reminds me of my daughter,” to one of his aides. He wasn't about to ask if Victoria heard him.

He had no chance to think about what just happened because Jenkins took them deeper into the area dedicated to the police force and their families. She talked at an insane rate as if she were on caffeine or speed or something.

“Thank you both for doing this. I’ve got your radio. You'll need that to report back. I see you don't have the most comfortable shoes on. We'll try to find you a pair of sneakers. And ... ”

She babbled on for a full minute and he didn't understand nine words out of ten. He caught some points about guns and tactical deployments and one or two lines about the failed power situation. He wanted to stop her for clarification, but one look at her eyes told him she probably didn't remember what she'd just said. They walked along next to her as she led them down a long hallway to a metal door that was propped open. She handed Victoria a radio, which she said was on the proper frequency. After a quick lesson on how to use it, she tossed a flashlight to him, saying they would definitely need it. She said goodbye and started running back up the hallway.

“But what are we supposed to be doing?” Victoria asked to her backside.

Jenkins stopped in her tracks but didn't come back. She paused and took a deep breath as if trying to steady herself in a whirlwind.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I thought I already told you. You have to climb the stairs of the Arch to the top, then look down into the park and report what you see. You two are our secret weapons. Go quick! Good luck.”

She was off.

They cautiously entered the space behind the metal door, which was some kind of maintenance area. A stairwell led up. He held the flashlight, so he went first.

The long climb up the dark stairwell gave him plenty of time to wonder if the girl behind him was thinking about their mutually confusing interaction with the police captain. He knew his mind should be focused on survival, and getting Grandma to safety, and being smart about reporting from the top of the Arch—but he couldn't stop thinking of the big distraction behind him. They had both disavowed anything more serious between them. He didn't even realize something could be serious with her until he was saying there wasn't.

Why does she mean that much to me?

Behind him, the distraction gave no clues.

3

There are 1,076 stairs leading to the top of the Arch. A world-record holder could climb them in less than seven minutes. He had read that information on a metal plaque commemorating the event at the base of the stairs.

“I think we can beat seven minutes, don't you, Vicky?”

“Oh, don't call me Vicky. I hate that name. And yes, let's go for the record. I need a real challenge these days.” She sounded drained, as if heading up the dark tower had crushed her spirit.

He wasn't sure how to interpret her tone or what she had said.

What am I doing wrong?

Silence followed him up the steps for the bulk of the climb.

To pass the time, he tried to visualize the arch-shaped building they were climbing. He'd been up in the Arch many times but had never gone up or down the metal-framed maintenance stairs. They were off limits to the public. Instead, the monument was designed to allow patrons to reach the apex using small trams—a sort of sideways subway with egg-shaped cars so small only five people could squeeze into each one. The builders installed a set of metal steps up each leg that could serve as an escape route if the trams broke down. It was closed to the public because it wasn't easy to climb all the steps, nor was it particularly safe—with steep ascents and harrowing descents going the other way. Today there was no power to run the trams, so the only way up was the lung-busting stairs.

As they neared the top, they found themselves frequently stopping to catch their breath. It became obvious why the captain chose the two most athletic youngsters. After minutes of silence, he delicately offered, “I'm sorry I called you Vicky.”

“No… you're fine. I'm sorry. I had no right to get snarky.” She paused while she took a few steps. “The way you said it brought back ugly memories for me. You can call me anything you want, really, as long as you don't call me by that particular nickname. Fair?”

“Totally. I'll just stick with Victoria. I really like your name.”

Try not to sound like an apple polisher!

Finally, they came to a door with a small window centered about two-thirds of the way to the top. A low light filtered through the glass, indicating daylight ahead. He turned off his flashlight as he peered into the tram unloading zone near the topmost observation area.

He took so long that Victoria tapped him on his back.

“What's wrong?” she said in a soft voice.

He turned around and put his finger over his lips, pointed to the window, and sat down heavily on the topmost step. Victoria took her turn.

A zombie park ranger blocked their way.

She slumped down next to him.

He was fast becoming an emotional mess. The whole climb up he clung desperately to the flashlight, unusually afraid of the crush of pure blackness around them. He kept thinking about the gun in his face. His misstep with Victoria made him feel distinctly alone. He thought reaching the top would be a relief but instead he felt lower than ever. This new problem, along with his lack of weapon to dispatch it, weighed heavily on him. He felt a tear slide down his face and tried to wipe it away quickly. He didn't know if Victoria had been looking at his face, but the motion was unmistakable. The sniffle didn't help. She took his hand and they sat in silence for a few minutes. Her touch gave him strength, though he couldn't explain what exactly he felt at that moment. Protective of her? Was she protecting him? Were they helping each other cope?

“You want to know something funny? I left my gun downstairs. I put it in my backpack last night because I didn't want to sleep with it tucked into my pants. I figured it would keep waking me up as I rolled around on the hard floor. Everything happened so fast with the police request, I didn't think about grabbing my pistol again. I thought I was going to be the hero and protect you and Grandma, but I'm turning out to be anything but.”

She squeezed his hand and let go.

“Do you want to know something funnier?” she asked. “I never got my replacement shoes from our fast-talking teacher. I was hoping she'd find sneakers to go with my cocktail dress!” She pointed down to her dress pumps with the heels broken off. “I tried walking the steps in bare feet, but the metal grating made it unbearable. I'm surprised you didn't hear me yelping while I was trying it out.”

They both had a quiet laugh, breaking the tension.

“OK,” she continued, “we can't go back down without trying to get in there. I don't think I could climb these stairs again. I say we think of a plan to deal with this guy, so we can do what we came here to do for the police.”

“I agree, but what? Once that thing sees us, it's going to pursue us forever.”

They discussed their limited options and settled on what appeared to be the only viable plan.

Liam took up a position next to the door while Victoria opened it and yelled loudly at the dead park ranger. The man kept his feet but stumbled down the steep stairs of the tram loading area. He came through the door moving fast; Victoria crouched behind the door and held it open. Liam, standing behind the door and above Victoria, saw the ranger arrive. It really didn't take much of a push to keep his momentum moving toward the steep staircase beyond. He tumbled face-first down the flight while he and Victoria continued through the door and slammed it shut. It took about thirty seconds for the ranger to regain his footing, climb back up the stairs, and wail at his missed meal through the small window.

“Well,” Victoria said triumphantly, “we did it. We successfully switched places with a dead man.” They laughed harder than the joke deserved, letting go of some of their pent-up anxiety.

“At least we aren't in his grave!” he added, to more snickers.

They could now see the apex of the Arch with all its windows for the observation ports. They could not see the companion tram-unloading area over the top and down toward the beginning of the other leg.

“I wonder if there are more undead on the other side?”

“All we can do is move forward and deal with things as they come. You ready to reach the top of this bitch?”

He mentally beat his head, realizing he probably shouldn't have used that word in front of a girl, but Victoria didn't seem to mind.

“I'm not one for cussing, but yes, let's climb this female dog!”

Together they went over the top.

4

There were no more zombies on the other side. They assumed the ranger had attacked someone in the observation area, and the injured party or parties dragged themselves to the steps going down the north leg, leaving the ranger to wander around in this confined space until fresh meat showed up.

“My god, there is a lot of blood up here,” Victoria said while stepping around blotches of blood stained into the carpet.

His stomach turned at the sight; remembering Angie's cat didn't help. Or the foot. But he was able to, as his father would say, “keep his proverbial lunch down,” for which he was very grateful while in the presence of Victoria.

“Let's stay away from that tram station for now; it could be slippery.”

He agreed but added, “We have to go down one of the sides. We know at least one zombie is waiting for us in the south leg. I wonder if there are any in the north leg?”

“We'll save that as a delightful surprise for when we're done up here.”

They moved to the topmost section of the monument; a marker informed them they were 630 feet above the ground.

The interior of the observation area is about the width of a typical subway car or municipal bus. The floor has the same curvature as the top section of the Arch as seen from outside, but the windows are slanted at about 45-degree angles away from the interior and sit on a low shelf, so when you look out the narrow portal, you're practically lying on your belly. Small children often lay down on the windows, usually with a concerned parent holding their legs as if the glass was about to blow out. He always found that a riot.

The slanted windows gave them a glorious view of the entire Arch grounds, as well as magnificent views in all directions with the exception of directly north or south, as those were blocked by the legs of the structure itself. To the west was the sprawl of downtown St. Louis. To the east were the river and numerous bridges linking Missouri with Illinois. One massive bridge to the north was new and modern-looking with twin piers rising high above, providing anchor points for hundreds of bundles of suspension cables. Always thinking of his books, he remembered a similar bridge from one of his zombie stories. The name Steubenville stuck out. Many heroes died blowing it up. He shuddered at having to do such a thing and wondered if he would ever have to resort to such desperation.

They got their bearings and focused their attention on the western half of the park, nearest the city. There were people on the riverfront side, but the captain had said the infected were coming almost entirely from the city side. Looking down, they both realized how hard it was to see individual people.

“Binoculars would have been helpful.”

Victoria responded, “And a catered lunch would have really made this climb worthwhile.”

She gave him a big smile as she pulled out the radio and called down. He was relieved when a man answered and not the fast-talking woman who sent them.

“This is Victoria and Liam. We're in position up in the Arch.”

After ensuring she wasn't still on the air, she said to him, “I'm not sure what the protocol is, do I say 'over' when I'm done?”

He shrugged.

The radio crackled, “This is Arch base. We want you to report if you see large groups of ... crazies. Over.”

Oh, I see plenty of those.

They looked out again. The muzzle flashes on the exterior lines of defense made it easy to see that outline. Everyone seemed to be holding the plague at bay. He was happy to see a lone tank moving back and forth along a frontage street, using its mass to crush the undead in front of it. Three Marine vehicles were parked between buildings. They sent round after round down the long streets whenever small threads of plague victims appeared, evaporating them.

“No, sir. We don't see any large groups. Over,” she let go of the button to wait for a reply.

“Roger that. Please report in if anything changes. Out.”

“So how long do wait up here?” she said while placing the radio on one of the window frames.

He had no answer. He wouldn’t complain if he could spend all day up here with her—until he remembered Grandma was still downstairs, alone.

They settled in and waited. Each took turns moving to different windows to try to see if anything happened that would be of interest to the police below. It wasn't long before they made their first call.

“Hello, Arch base. This is Arch—” Victoria keyed off the mic. “What are we calling ourselves?”

“Arch summit?”

“This is Arch summit. There's a big mess of zombies to the north, pushing the line up that way. It looks pretty serious.”

“Zombies? Good a term as any. Thank you, Arch summit. Understood. Out.”

They watched a small group of men and women move through the crowd to a point on the northern line. Neither could see what happened in any great detail, but soon the line returned to where it had been and appeared stable.

“It's like white blood cells going to fight a virus,” Victoria said. “We're in charge of sending the white blood cells where they're needed. They attack and push back the deadly virus.”

He appreciated her analogy but looking down on the entire scene he thought she had it backward. Infected were stumbling down roadways as far as he could see. The little clump of cells below—mankind—was resisting the endless white blood cells being sent by the zombie host now controlling the rest of the city. It made him feel the futility of the thin ring of defense upon which they depended for their survival.

We should run.

He thought about it seriously. Blowing up a bridge wouldn't be so bad if it killed all of them. By comparison, all he could do was run for his life. For now, his job was to hold the line. Give the police the time needed to get them all out.

A little later, they noticed a single barge floating free in the river. They watched it collide with the pylons of several upstream bridges, pausing on each leg as it scraped by until it resumed meandering downriver. At the point closest to them on the water, they could see directly into the sunken hold. Even from such distance, the mass of infected inside was easily recognizable, all moving without purpose in their open-topped prison. The boat avoided the last two bridges out of downtown and was soon drawn away by the current.

“Well, that's one way to get rid of them,” he said.

Hours went by without anything else of interest happening until Liam noticed movement on some of the streets.

“Victoria? Do you see this?” Liam’s stomach was a fist of tension while she walked over to his window.

When she saw it, Victoria struggled to key the radio and make her call.

5

“Hello, Arch base. Come in. This is Arch summit.” Victoria’s voice was shaky and fast.

It required a few repeated calls, but someone finally answered. A woman—it wasn't clear if it was Jenkins—requested Victoria's report.

“We're seeing a huge mass of people on the north side moving toward the south. We think they're living people. They're shooting into our line. We can see flashes of guns, aimed at each other. I say again; these are people shooting other people—not zombies.”

“Holy crap. Hold on a second. Over.”

Looking down, the renegades had come in near the water of the riverfront, where the cordon was thin. They headed directly for the Arch. For them.

As if learning the fact at the same time, the radio crackled, “We see 'em. They're here. Looks like several gangs and other criminals. No Boy Scouts out there. You guys better come down. Out.”

“That's it?” Liam didn't know what to expect of their mission. Did they give the police the information fast enough to make a difference?

They took a last look down. The cordon held firm most of the way around the park, but in the north, it took confusing twists and turns. It was destabilizing. He had read this scenario a hundred times in his books.

“OK, Victoria, which side are we going to go down? Do we choose door A and go back the way we came, with a raging sick ranger to deal with? Do we choose door B and go down the blood-filled stairwell with an unknown number of zombies below? Oh, and as a special bonus, we can come out at the base of the north side where even now a gun-toting crowd of criminals is closing in.”

“Can I choose door C and jump out a window, please?”

“They gave me a parachute, so, yeah.” He gave her a big smile.

She was also smiling. “It's good to see we both still have our sense of humor intact, despite the insanity down there.”

“All that shooting has me scared sh—, uh, to death, but yeah, I just want to get back to Grandma now. I have to get her out.”

“You think they'll make it into the Arch museum? What about all the police?”

“I think the police will fight hard to protect their families but look at the swarm of attackers. There's just too many. And if the northern line falls, we'll have bigger problems than armed gangs.” He watched the buckling lines and imagined two white blood cells fighting each other as the deadly virus paced nearby with a menacing grin.

The host is committing suicide.

“Do you think we could open the door, let the ranger back up into the observation area, and give him the slip as we run back down and shut the door?” Victoria asked.

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

They made their way to the south leg’s unloading zone only to find their friend was no longer at the door. It had been several hours since they left him; he moved on. That meant he was somewhere on the 1,076 steps below.

“Want to change your answer now?”

He thought about it and decided he'd rather face the one zombie he knew was down these steps than an unknown number in the other leg. “Let's 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 found some?” he said excitedly.

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

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.

Chapter 11: Antibodies

Liam was stoked to be on good terms with Victoria again, but on the way down neither made a peep. The steep stairwell in the narrow space of the upper Arch was bad enough to do in the dark, but knowing a dead man was walking somewhere below sent his fear factor right out the window. If there were windows ...

Victoria tried to stay as close as possible; her quiet footfalls echoed his from the step behind. She kept a hand on his shoulder, so they would not get separated. His initial optimism as they started the descent had worn off, though he was overjoyed he wasn't doing it alone. He thought he might go insane if he had to try.

And if the light went out?

He looked down at the flashlight, as if to will it to stay on. It was bright and steady. The walk down was nearly as taxing on their legs as the climb up had been, though it was a different kind of pain. Adding to their suffering, they’d had no food or water since the start of the day's adventure.

The staircase wound itself 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 missing 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's imagination ran wild.

He tried to balance the prudence of a cautious descent with the pressure of escaping the Arch before the whole structure was overrun with the armed attackers swarming below. He wondered whether the mindless infected were worse than the men and women preying on their vulnerable peers.

About twenty minutes later, they reached the machine shop where they'd started. His 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 led up the hallway into the main waiting area. The zombie must have gone through there because it couldn't have been hiding anywhere else.

“How did that thing get past us? Do you think he was hiding?” He 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—”

They jumped when screaming began. Someone had found him.

But when they entered the main waiting area, they discovered it wasn't a zombie causing all the commotion; it was the criminals. They had already breached the north entrance by breaking all the glass doors and were now yelling and screaming back and forth with the police officers nearby.

He scanned the room and did see the ranger, after all, just making his way to some of the elderly and infirm people on the right side of the room, nearest 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, the zombie was a sideshow relative to the shouting battle in the rest of the cavernous room.

The looters wanted safety inside the Arch. The police replied that they would have to leave. Weapons of all kinds pointed at each other.

Liam and Victoria watched from the south hallway where it was very dark. He shut off the light and tried to establish some sense to what was happening.

The looters came in from the north, across the room from them, 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. The large waiting area, filled with the elderly and the sick, was between them and both the police and criminals on the far side.

The sight of sick people lying on the floor, and the screams from those now being assaulted by the park ranger seemed to give the looters a reason to pause before they burst in with their greater numbers.

“There's Grandma. I have to get her out.” He finally caught sight of her in the chaos. Grandma was right where they left her very early in the morning. He couldn’t tell her condition, but she was still in her big wheelchair. She was maybe fifty feet from them, but only several feet away from the park ranger and his probing teeth.

“Wait here,” he whispered.

“Be safe,” she replied.

He ran out of the darkened hallway, straight for his guardian. A few senior citizens in the middle of the room were making for 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.

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

Screams of fear erupted around him, overlaid with the intense sound of escalating gunfire.

He sprinted the remainder of the room while bullets whizzed by to reach Grandma. She was awake and clutching his backpack as a shield. He said nothing, just grabbed her chair, spun her in the right direction, and intended to push to save their lives.

The park ranger was nearby but wasn’t the major threat. Not by a wide margin. But he was the only threat to the old man who had come in with them and Father Cahill. For a split second he locked eyes with the old guy as the ranger chewed on his neck.

“I'm so sorry,” Liam said to the man, even as his dying eyes glassed over.

Liam took a deep breath and pushed off. He was already covered in sweat from mastering those stairs in both directions, but now his forehead dripped with beads of fear. Running into the field of fire only made sense compared to sitting in it.

With no hope of outrunning the bullets, many citizens on this side of the room stayed where they were and simply huddled in fear. He and Grandma sped by more than a few people doing nothing to save themselves, but the congestion made him an intolerably slow-moving target.

“Run!” he shouted at them. Mostly he screamed to keep his own feet moving.

He didn't dare try to go up the ramp to the south entrance because people who made it that far were being shot in the back as they neared 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. Despite the chaotic noise, a little prayer slipped out as he huffed.

“Please, God, help us.”

Somehow Grandma heard him.

“Lord, let us fly.”

Bullets sang “Amen” as they cut through the air.

2

While he rolled the chair back across the room, the police moved out of their space in the museum. Light came in through the north entranceway and it profiled the looters, giving targets to heavy shotgun slugs and bullets from service revolvers. That forced the bad guys to stop shooting the civilians and focus instead on the police.

With one final push around the corner, he was able to take a breath. They 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. His ears rang after the loud exchanges of gunfire in the hollowed-out space.

At the final door to the maintenance room they had to help Grandma from the chair, so it could be folded to fit through the doorway then opened on the far side. They closed and locked the door, but he figured it wouldn't last long against bullets if they were discovered.

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

He was about to ask if she was out of her mind when he realized she was smiling innocently at him. Who knew Grandma had such a dry sense of humor? She had, in fact, left the cane behind, however. He was thankful they still had the chair.

Once they were safely in the room, he opened his backpack and drew out a water bottle and some grain bars for himself and Victoria. After the climb and adrenaline bursts caused by gunfire, he was famished. His chest heaved up and down while he caught his breath.

Grandma waited for them to dig in. “Thank you, Liam. What in the world is going on?”

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

After some fiddling with the radio for better reception in its new location, they were shocked to hear a chaotic blast of yelling and cursing coming from it, unlike anything 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're trapped.”

“—the South team has managed to organize citizens, but we have very little cover. Trying to arrange transport to Carondelet.”

“This is North Gate. We have a new situation here—” a man said, but the other callers soon squelched him.

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

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

“I'm never taking this off again.”

He paused before looking at his companion. “Victoria, do you want my other gun?”

She peered at him in the harsh glare of the flashlight and seemed to think about it for a few seconds but shook her head.

“I appreciate the offer, but 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 Mark I to Grandma.

“No, I’m too weak. I couldn’t even pull the trigger.” She chuckled.

Their appreciation of their chances of surviving this crisis underwhelmed him. He couldn't fathom ever being separated from his gun and didn't understand why anyone would choose to be unarmed. Grandma maybe if she couldn't hold it, but Victoria?

And perhaps the most important realization of the exchange was that he, Liam, was now wholly responsible for protecting them. One boy with a couple of 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. 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 some of the sick and wounded lying in the middle of the waiting area had begun to show signs of reanimation—which caused havoc on both the police and the looters.

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 they couldn’t go farther because the defenders 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 the infected had followed them through the breech and were now nipping at their heels. Unable to get into the Arch and unable to get all their members safely inside the cordon, they now found themselves fighting enemies on multiple fronts. It made the ones inside the Arch desperate and nearly suicidal. The police admitted they were in serious trouble in the museum.

By late afternoon, another report from the radio operator called “North Gate” caught their attention.

“This is North Gate again. I'm in direct line-of-sight to thousands of infected pouring into the northern side of the park. As best I can tell, they're being attracted 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 captain himself replied.

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

“Me too, Cap. I'm OK for right now. But I'm not sure how long I can hang under the bridge without being spotted. Maybe I'll fly away like a bat.” He let out a nervous laugh, which was reciprocated by the captain as they signed off.

The trio listened to the radio for a while longer, expecting at any time to hear the whole park had been run through by the dead. They never heard from the north gate again, but several other stations kept reporting in. Things were not going well for the good guys.

Comms were cleared by a gruff new voice.

“Break, break. This is Raptor HQ actual.”

The radio chatter from the police stopped cold.

“We are the blocking force located on the east bank of the Mississippi River. All bridges are under our control. No. I repeat N-O personnel will be allowed to cross the bridges, use boats, or otherwise transit across the water, by order of General Hodges, II Corps, United States Army. We've had several—Shall we call them volunteers?—disobey orders and cross the river to support you. Those men and women won't be allowed back, either. Be advised, I also have orders to terminate the infected now converging on your position. I'll give you all the time I can. Say sixty minutes. Out.”

It appeared the Army could see what was happening too and took this delicate moment to remind everyone in St. Louis they still weren't allowed across the river.

The angry voice of the man who had called for volunteers from the group inside the Arch that morning blared from the radio.

“This is Captain Osborne with the Missouri Highway Patrol. On behalf of all of us laying down our lives to protect these citizens, let me just convey—” and went on to teach Liam a whole host of new curse words and make his ears burn with embarrassment because Grandma was right there listening, too. A glance at her showed no emotion on her face.

His world had been spinning out of control since the sirens turned off two days ago, but now he'd felt as if his rescue parachute was packed with bricks instead of silk.

“No help is coming,” he said, as much to himself as to the others.

It can't get much worse.

4

“Well, what do we do now? We can't exactly step out of this room and make a run for it.” Victoria was right, but no one had any better ideas. The stairs up the Arch were open, but going back to the top was pointless, and Grandma would never survive such a climb.

Looking around the room, they found various tools, workbenches, and maintenance equipment for servicing the top-to-bottom tramway. No weapons of any kind—not that anyone expected to find guns stashed away in a public piece of property like this.

He was probing the edges of the room when he said, “Hey, look at this grate on the wall. It seems to have a tunnel behind it. I can't see where it might go, though.”

The thick metal grate, about three feet wide by three feet high, had a stout-looking lock on it. The wide latticework made it easy to see down the tunnel. A couple of keys hung on a small hook next to the opening. It wasn't rocket science from there.

He unlocked the grate, swung it sideways on hinges, and dropped the lock nearby. He started to follow the flashlight’s beam into the darkness, but Victoria stopped him.

“I’ll go,” she said. “You need to stay here and protect your grandma.” For a moment he feared Victoria was going to find an exit and run off and leave them. That’s crazy. But so is letting her go in there by herself.

She cut off his protests quickly. “You’re the one with the gun. You’ve got to protect your grandma.” She took the small police flashlight from him and crawled down the concrete duct. After a few feet she disappeared around a turn, and he felt his heart drop. Grandma, as if reading his mind, reached over to squeeze his arm.

There was virtually no light in the room, except the illuminated EXIT sign over the door. He turned on his flashlight and started rooting around, looking for something that might help Grandma get down the tunnel if Victoria came back to tell them they could escape through it.

When she comes back. Not “if.” When.

Grandma, in her chair near the door, said, “I think the shooting is getting closer.”

“I have to find something to get you through this tunnel.”

“Oh, no, I can't possibly go through there. Just leave me, Liam. Get yourself and Victoria to safety.”

He knew she would say something like that, which is why he was determined to find just the right thing to get her to go with him. Absorbed in his search, he jumped like a scared cat when someone banged on the door. A disheveled man with a horrible tie peered in through the window: Mister Hayes from the group of CDC people.

“Do we let him in?” Grandma asked.

“If we don’t, he's going to alert the whole place to this room.”

He opened the door. As Hayes ran in, they heard a volley of gunshots. He pushed the door shut hurriedly but took care not to let it slam.

Hayes stood hunched over his knees, shaking.

“Shot ... us ... all,” he wheezed.

Just then a small beam of light brightened the darkness in the room. Victoria crawled out of the tunnel. He had to fight down the urge to run and hug her.

“This tunnel leads out. It has another gate on the other end. Hopefully, one of these keys is for its lock. I think the exit is in a railroad tunnel. I could see the tracks with my light.”

“Please help me find something to get Grandma through there.” With Victoria’s help he continued searching the room until he found the “something” he was looking for, hanging on a wall in a far corner. He grabbed it, adjusted it, and slapped it down in front of her wheelchair.

“It's your lucky day, Grandma. Just lay down on this mechanic's creeper, and I'll pull you to safety.”

She looked at him, then at the creeper, and finally at the hole in the wall. Whether she was calculating her odds of making it through there or maybe just deciding if she really wanted to die in the Gateway to the West, he didn't care. He wasn't going to give her a choice. The building sound of gunfire seemed to make up her mind. She stood up, and with Liam and Victoria on each arm she was able to settle onto the creeper.

“Victoria, check the window. Mister Hayes, grab those other keys off the wall and hold Grandma here while I break down her chair.”

Hayes had recovered control of himself, but his hands still shook as he got the keys, and his voice sounded ragged. “Thanks for letting me in. I never thought it would come to this. Why did those men start shooting us? Don't they know we're the government?”

Loud cracks of gunshots, seemingly outside the door, cut off the conversation. Everyone made for the tunnel.

He took charge. He finished breaking down the chair and ordered Hayes to go first with the keys and the chair.

“Victoria, do we need two flashlights down there?”

“It'll be fine, there are a few turns, but it's very flat and uniform all the way to the end. It isn't that far.”

Hayes was already working his way into the darkness.

“OK,” he said, “I guess you're going next, Grandma. You ready to roll?”

“I'm not getting any younger!” She loved that one.

As he began pushing her on the creeper, he heard banging on the door again and saw a shadow at the window. Victoria, closest to the entry, dashed for the tunnel just as a face exploded against the glass. Bullets tore through the upper part of the door and ricocheted off the metal of the machinery in the room. He hastened his pushing to give her room to jump in behind him.

“Turn off your light, Victoria,” he called back over his shoulder. “Hurry! Let's go!”

Her light remained on. He looked back, shocked that she wasn't in the tunnel. She stood in front of the entrance, the grate in her hands and her watery eyes reflecting her light.

“It was nice meeting you, Marty. Take care of her, Liam.”

She slammed the grate back into place, clicked the lock shut, and tossed the key into the tunnel. She gave him a determined look. “I have to do this,” she said in a broken voice. Finally, she removed herself from his sight, the light from her flashlight bobbed toward the stairwell.

“Victoria!” He blurted it out without thinking who might hear. The echoes hurt his ears.

She had locked herself out and locked them in with no way for anyone to follow them.

He sat there, turning over options. In the end, he knew there was only one. He started to push the creeper again, to get as far down the tunnel as he could before anyone else came in the room. He was glad it was too dark for Grandma to see the tears on his face.

I wish I’d kissed her. He hated himself for thinking that selfish thought, but it was true. He wished he had gotten to kiss her before she left him like they do in the movies.

Heroes kiss the girl, then push them to safety. Not the other way around.

He looked back again, saw the merest hint of glow from her flashlight. It wasn’t moving. She must have paused on the steps. Drawing the shooters away, at mortal risk to herself. She was the hero.

The shooting at the door continued for a minute or so. Apparently, the gunmen weren't very good at destroying door handles, or the steel was bulletproof. By the time he neared the end of the tunnel, men’s voices echoed down the pipe behind him. They yelled to each other about a light going up the metal staircase.

He and Grandma found Hayes waiting for them in the strange sideways light of a hazy railroad tunnel.

The key had worked.

Thank you, Victoria.

Chapter 12: Heroes

Liam and Grandma slid out the end of the service duct into a train tunnel with a double line of tracks running through it. Several people were already sitting inside. If they were surprised to see three people fall out of the dark hole in the wall, no one bothered to ask questions. They just went back to whatever they were doing.

That was fine with him. He wasn't in the mood to jaw-jack, as Grandma would say. He and Hayes helped her into her wheelchair. The loose rock under the railroad tracks made it difficult to roll her around, but they weren't going anywhere for now, so she was content to be parked and given time to relax. Lying on the creeper for the trip and getting back up had sapped her strength.

He slammed his backpack on the dirty rocks and took a seat next to it. He was getting more and more upset at the turn of events leading to the sudden loss of his new friend. He recognized the muffled sounds of gunfire coming from outside the rail tunnel but wasn't ready to think about what was going on out there. For now, it was more important to rest and formulate some kind of plan. Maybe a plan to save Victoria.

He was just turning to thoughts of going back in when Hayes sat down and began rambling.

“I can't believe those hoodlums shot us. We tried to tell them we were with the CDC and we were there to help, but that seemed to enrage them. The hell of it is, we aren't even really with the CDC, more like glorified roadies who move the gear for the pinheads with the lab coats.”

He seemed to consider what he was going to say next.

“I did learn something from the pinheads, though ... ”

He looked around like he was participating in a conspiracy. Seemingly satisfied he wasn't being overheard, he continued.

“The virus causing all this was made in a lab.”

Despite being crushed about losing Victoria, he appreciated this distraction. Having read many books on zombies, he had an immediate retort: “Isn't that kind of obvious? A natural virus doesn't just explode across the world, kill people, and then bring them back to life, does it?”

Hayes looked at him with newfound respect. “You don't seem to be fazed by all this. I'm sorry you lost your friend, by the way. She saved me, too.”

“Well, I'm not fazed anymore. Two days ago, when I was attacked by a berserk yoga lady, I was pretty 'fazed.' After the next several zombies attacked me, I started to get used to it. Now I guess I'm immune to the weirdness of it, even if I'm not used to all the blood. Not sure I'll ever get over that.” He patted his stomach. “I have issues with the sight of blood.”

“So, you call them zombies too? I hear that more and more, but I don't really get it. Aren't zombies things that come out of caskets and walk around slowly, moaning about brains?”

Liam had similar reflections on this very topic, but he was convinced the things he'd seen would be classified as zombies by almost anyone.

“You're talking about old-school zombies. Originally, I think that's what people thought zombies were—the dead who climb out of the ground and chomp brains of those too slow to run away.” He scratched his head, then watched as dust fell like rain from his mop. “I think there was an old movie that started people thinking like that. Later, the slowpoke zombies were laughed away as not threatening enough. Today, zombies can be almost any speed, but most are fast.”

Hayes seemed hard to convince. “But don't these people seem more like vampires to you? The sick seem to go for a person's blood, not their brains.”

His fear of blood was strong, but the more he thought about it, the more it made some sense. Angie especially was a bloody mess, and her apartment was a nightmare of blood. The park ranger up in the Arch was covered in blood, as was the Arch observation deck. Unless he consumed an entire person up there, it meant whatever he attacked had bled profusely, but was still able to get away. Was blood the key?

Still, vampires? He wasn't ready to believe such supernatural nonsense.

“I think these people are dead, but some kind of infection is keeping them from turning off and staying down. But I haven't seen anyone actually die and then come back to life ... ” He realized how little he knew about the infected people now causing so many problems for him.

“Last night, you guys knew nothing useful about the sick people. Do you know anything about how the infection spreads?”

“Just what I've heard secondhand. Nothing from official channels. I've not seen any zombies up close yet, so I can't confirm anything for myself. They say the plague infects the victims and makes them crave blood. One consistent data point seems to be the biting by the infected, and their desire to consume as much blood as they can, but no one’s sure why. The drained victim then gets up and looks for more blood. Possibly to replace their own.”

“Mmm. That doesn't really tell me anything I don't already know. I've seen infected people attacking helpless victims since this all began. You don't know anything useful that could help us fight back or stop the plague?”

Hayes gave a good laugh.

“Look at me, kid. I'm just a driver. I know about as much as you do.” Hayes turned to the tunnel opening as a loud explosion echoed from somewhere out there.

Despite feeling bad for the thought, he wished it had been Hayes who had gone up those steps to save them.

No, it should have been me.

2

He and Hayes sat in silence for several more minutes. He thought the whole time about Victoria, unable to solve how to get back and save her. Grandma nodded in the coolness of the tunnel, but he considered waking her up to move her further south, out of the area surrounding the Arch. With so many people fighting, it was no place for an aged grandmother to be hanging about. It wasn't a great place for a kid, either.

Get her to safety, then go back for Victoria.

Liam fumbled for his phone, feeling a sudden urge to text his parents, but there was no signal. He put it back in his pocket, but already thought of when he would check it again.

He noticed a police officer crouching about 100 feet down the railway tunnel, keeping an eye on the southern exit. The northern entrance was a tiny point of light in the opposite direction. There was no way to know who was up there, though he could see lots of people in the tunnel between himself and that pinpoint. The dark tunnel made a great shelter against the gunfire of the larger battle. That much was certain.

He moved Grandma further toward the southern exit, as that was the direction they needed to go. It wasn't easy to push the chair on the rocks, but he got help from Hayes, and they made pretty good time. Grandma woke up but seemed to nod back off fairly quickly with the rocking action of her ride.

The officer held a shotgun and radio as he crouched and kept watch.

He parked the wheelchair about thirty feet from the exit and let Hayes know he'd be right back. He approached the officer from his side, so as not to appear threatening.

“Excuse me. I'm Liam. My friend Victoria and I were the lookouts who went up into the Arch to watch for the gangs.”

“Nice to meet you. I guess we both missed the action in the park.”

“What do you mean?”

“The captain put me down here to guard this tunnel exit, but nothing has happened. I could do more good up where the action is. What did you see from up top?”

He traded some basic information with the officer, whose name was Jones. He was a large black man with maybe too much gut poking out. Still, he was quite impressive. Liam didn't say anything to offend him, but he suspected he was put down here because he would make such a large target. Not the best attribute to have in a gun battle.

Officer Jones’ radio gave him an idea.

“Can you call the captain inside the Arch?”

“Sure, but my orders are to hold here. I don't have anything to report.”

“Actually, you do. My friends and I just came from inside the Arch museum. There's a service entrance that comes out inside this railroad tunnel. When we left the captain, he and his people were trapped by a group of looters who came in the north entrance. I think we can help get them out of there.”

The officer gave him “the look.” He'd seen it many times over the years. It was the look an adult gave him to decide whether a kid could know what he was talking about when something important happened.

“Dad, there's a car flipped over on our street.” The look.

“Mom, your phone needs a critical software update.” The look.

“Officer, I know how we can save your leader and all those family members.” The look.

To his credit, Officer Jones got on the radio.

“Yeah, this kid—What's your name?—this Liam kid said the captain sent him up to the top of the Arch, and now he says he can help our guys get out of the museum.”

The officer went over some details with the man on the other end. Liam was grateful to be helping the officers in their sticky situation, but his motives were anything but pure. He was hoping, somehow, he could save Victoria. He was worried his last memory of her would be as a bouncing light going up to the sky.

I'm not going to leave her to die.

3

Officer Jones went back and forth with the person on the other end for many minutes. When he was finished, he shared what he knew with Liam.

“We don’t normally liaison with teenagers, but this is a screwed-up day,” Jones said with an anxious laugh. The man was sweating profusely through his light blue uniform shirt because the tunnel was sweltering. “Things are pretty bad topside. There are gang members and looters at both of the main entrances to the Arch, as well as at a third entrance on the city-side. Our boys are trapped in the museum. For your plan to work, they would have to cross the waiting area in full view of the armed criminals.”

Jones churned on that for a few seconds before continuing.

“But it gets worse. There's a big group of infected really chopping up the remaining citizens on the north side of the park. Our intel says they will be at the Arch sooner rather than later. The gang members aren't very good at killing zombies; apparently, zombies don't die as easily as our guys and gals in blue.”

He was visibly angry at what had been done.

“So, our plan is to get any officers still available on this side of the park, sneak through the tunnel you found, and attempt to rescue the remaining officers and families inside the museum.”

“But the metal gate-thing is now locked. How are we going to get into the maintenance room?”

Officer Jones smiled. “Leave that to me.”

Liam wasn't content to leave anything to chance. He'd seen everything fall apart the past couple of days and trusted nothing to work as it should. But he couldn't exactly tell the police how to do their jobs, so all he could realistically do was tag along and hope they got the job done. And, if he was really lucky, he would emerge from the dark hallway just in time to save Victoria.

It took about fifteen minutes to gather four police officers, including Jones. He was disappointed that was the best they could do, and the hulking black policeman seemed to sense his feeling.

“Don't worry kid, these bad boys are Mobile Reserve,” Jones said while patting the combat-looking helmet of one of the new guys. “A super S.W.A.T. team,” he said with a little laugh. “This is more than enough firepower to fend off the garbage shooting at our people in there. See these?” He held out his weapon, which Liam thought looked like a sleeker, deadlier version of the rifles his dad let him shoot. “These are highly modified AR-15s. Since the rules of war have been turned off, we're using silencers and fancy bullets today. We should make short work of those bastards. We have some other toys we're bringing to the party, too. It also helps that we'll have the drop on them, thanks to you and your secret entrance.”

One of the new guys, who carried a massive shotgun with a drum magazine, gave him a chuck on the shoulder, then handed a battering ram to his larger compatriot. Jones slung the ram over his shoulder next to his shotgun. Apparently, they were going to use that to bash in the metal grate. He didn't doubt they could do it, especially given the large man's bulk. He might be able to punch the thing apart.

While the officers were readying the plan amongst themselves, he stood off to the side, not sure if he should listen in or look busy doing something else. He decided there was one item he definitely wanted to pass on to these guys.

“Um, excuse me. If you happen to see my friend in there, please help her get out. She's about my age. Wearing a black dress. She ran up into the Arch to save me and the rest of our group.”

“If we see your girlfriend, we'll grab her.”

He didn't correct her designation as his girlfriend, even though it wasn't true. He liked how it sounded, but it made him even more depressed at how things had transpired.

After a few more minutes of preparation, the police officers gathered near the small tunnel entrance and were working the radio. Presumably coordinating with the group inside.

“Liam, do you have any weapons?”

He wasn't sure if he should tell the cops that he was packing a gun but decided now was not the time to be worried about getting himself thrown in jail for concealed carry of a weapon without a permit.

“I have a small pistol, yes.”

“OK, listen. Your job is to guard this exit, so when we come back out we find your friendly face and not anyone else. Do you understand?”

“I'd rather go with you guys.”

Officer Jones grabbed a radio from one of his mates and tried to give it to him. He pulled the police radio he'd been using earlier out of his backpack, showing he was already plugged into their radio net. “I'm ready to go,” he said lamely.

Jones continued, “I understand, son. But trust me. We'll get it done. We need someone here to keep this door open, or we'll be cut down when we come out. Make sense?”

He couldn't argue with the logic, though his heart still envisioned saving Victoria. That wasn't going to happen if he was parked here at this entrance as a glorified greeter.

“Don't use your radio unless absolutely necessary, but you can listen, so you know when we're coming back. We won’t sightsee because the Army is going to bake this place, soon.”

“Understood.” Liam felt a chill run through his spine.

Through it all, Hayes had kept his distance from Liam and the police. He figured the man would want to help protect this exit, but he made no effort to move much past where they had placed Grandma near the end of the railroad tunnel.

He's probably thinking about making a run for it.

The air outside the train tunnel was thick with gunfire, though the odd angles of the sound waves on the interior made it hard to know where it was all coming from.

He also thought he could hear an increase in gunfire coming from the other end of the railroad tunnel. That is, from the spooky and dark section north of where he stood.

Why did I even suggest this?

Hero stuff. Remember?

4

Jones went in first. He had to go in on his knees and elbows since the space was too low for him to crouch and walk. He dragged the battering ram with him. The other three men entered the same way; one of them pulled a large black bag. Liam imagined it was a satchel of weapons.

He checked the pistol on his hip, then stood against the wall next to the opening, holding the radio close to his ear so he could listen in without blaring it to the whole tunnel. There were other people about, but none were anxious to interfere with this operation.

The radio chatter began almost immediately.

“Jones here. We are through the grating and are in the maintenance room. No sign of trouble. Moving to hallway. Out.”

A few minutes later a much shorter transmission, in a whisper.

“Jones here. In position. Be ready in five minutes. Out.”

He knew the basics of the plan but had no idea of the tactics they would use to extricate those inside the museum. He tried to be patient and wait the five minutes. The radio chatter had completely stopped.

The void gave him time to think of how he could do something stupid, like going up the tunnel himself, then ascending the stairs to try to catch up with Victoria and see if he could help. But he knew that, by now, she was probably down the other leg of the Arch if she kept running once she got to the top. If she got to the top.

Ugh. Why did I think that?

Where could she have come down? Was there a room on the north side of the Arch that was a maintenance shed like the one in the south? If so, was there a grate and a tunnel over there too? Did that duct come out on the other end of this same railroad tunnel? He almost started running right then and there, but he looked the other way toward Grandma. She was silhouetted in the evening light of the tunnel exit, now talking to Hayes. Would it be smart to leave her alone and try to force his way into danger?

He couldn't make up his mind.

The radio exploded, “Go! Go! Go!”

The net became unintelligible with all the calls. He listened until there was nothing but a long series of beeps and boops like the frequency just stopped trying.

From inside the duct leading back to the Arch, there was a lot of gunfire, then a lull.

“Infected have overrun both entrances.”

What the hell?

The screaming started getting uncomfortably loud in the railway tunnel. The tiny speck of light to the north was nearly extinguished by smoke and haze. He couldn't make out any details, but the sound of gunfire was rolling in waves down the tunnel, as were the screams.

Zombies were already in the railroad tunnel, though not very close as yet. Would he be called to defend this exit from a tide of the undead? It seemed unlikely he could make much difference given the small caliber of his gun. He suddenly felt very inadequate and laughed at the foolishness of thinking he could get Victoria through the other exit—if it existed.

“This is Osborne. We have all our people clear of the museum. We are heading for the train tunnel now. Out.” He sounded like a man on the run.

Someone should be coming out soon.

More gunshots up the tunnel. To his dismay, a bullet ricocheted by. He took one step into the smaller tunnel, mainly to shield himself from stray bullets. He worried Grandma had no such shielding.

Someone tapped him on the back, startling him near to death. It was a teenage girl, but not Victoria.

“I was told to come this way. Where do I go now?”

He didn't want to send her out into the railroad tunnel because of the stray bullets, but she was the first of many people who would be coming through this exit, so he had no choice.

“Just come out and sit on the far wall. Keep your head down.”

She did as instructed. He vacated the small tunnel, so he wasn't in the way. Soon there was a stream of kids, young adults, and the elderly coming through. Everyone who survived up in the museum was now pouring down. Everyone but the cops. He assumed they'd bring up the rear.

About fifty people eventually made their way into the railroad tunnel, and most took up positions crouched down along the far wall. The screaming and gunfire in the north end had become feverish and was inching closer. He was on the cusp of praying for the appearance of some of the police officers to help stop the tide rolling down the railroad line.

A long ten minutes later, a group of officers poured out, including Jones—now only carrying his shotty. His group did not include any of the three men who had joined him going in. He found Liam and asked for an update on what was happening in the tunnel. The sound of screaming was very close from up north, and many people had run by and were congregating near the south entrance, as if unwilling to expose themselves to the outside—yet.

“There are infected up that way. I've been hearing gunshots and screaming almost this whole time you've been inside. It's too dark to see what’s going on for sure.”

A few minutes later, several more officers streamed out. This group included at least two of the guys that went in initially with Jones.

There were now about ten officers in the railroad tunnel. They split up to provide a line of defense inside the tunnel as well as a lookout or two near the exit to the south.

More officers trickled out of the small crawlspace, but he had yet to see the captain. Some of them grabbed people who were against the wall—probably family—and made a run for it out the tunnel exit. For some reason, that simple act of desperation chilled him to the bone.

Several female officers emerged, including the one who was hopped up on speed earlier in the day. She didn't even notice him. She immediately headed to the civilians along the wall, apparently searching for someone.

Not long after, some injured officers came out, dragging a couple of other guys who couldn't walk on their own. It looked like they had gunshot wounds.

Then no one came out for a long time. Besides wondering when the bombs would fall, it gave him plenty of time to think about all the grisly ways Victoria could have died at the hands of her pursuers. He also had the time to wonder about the far side of the main tunnel, where he was positive a wave of infected people was coming for him. The gunshots and screams indicated there were still survivors in that direction, though he couldn't tell how close they were.

“We have her. We're coming out.” It was Osborne.

Minutes later, a gaggle of officers came out, including one who had no shirt on and looked like he'd just run a marathon. Coming out behind them, was—Victoria! Her black dress hugged her body because she was covered in sweat.

He ran to her the second she cleared the roof of the low tunnel and wrapped his arms around her. He couldn't help it. She didn't fight him and even seemed relieved to be in his arms. Or maybe just to have escaped. She looked exhausted. Well, of course she is, dummy, if she went all the way to the top again. She had several abrasions on her face and dried blood below her nose—like she'd been punched hard a couple of times.

The captain crawled out with a few soft grunts. He looked terrible, was covered with blood, had a bandage around his bicep, and he seemed to have trouble getting one of his legs out of the tunnel. Once clear, he limped over to Liam.

“We meet again. Thank you for what you did here today. Your plan saved my people from certain death in there. Officer Jones told me of your situation, and that of your friend, so I sent up my best runner here”—he pointed to the guy with no shirt on—“to see if he could find your girlfriend. He found her at the very top. Somehow, she managed to incapacitate one of the bad guys on the steps, but the other one beat her up pretty good, I'm afraid. He was so distracted hitting her; he never saw my man coming. We brought her back down. It was the least we could do to return the favor. You're a real hero, Liam.”

Being called a hero by the imposing police leader was nice, but it paled to what they did for him.

Liam walked over to shirtless guy to shake his hand. He wanted to go back and hug Victoria again—She's alive, thank God—but gunfire outside was intense and constant, and his survival senses overrode everything else. People outside ran madly toward the water of the river, and the screaming and gunfire inside the north part of the tunnel kept getting closer.

We've run out of time.

As if to prove his point, the park ranger zombie slithered out of the tunnel and bit hard into the back of the captain’s ankle.

5

Osborne turned around, yanked out his sidearm, and shot the bloody creature several times in the back and neck. The bullets got the attention of the thing attached to his foot, and when it let go, the captain put a final series of shots into its head. Liam could only stare in horror as the head exploded, the debris plastering the insides of the small tunnel. Then a sudden thought struck him hard.

The captain’s been bitten.

Osborne looked down at his leg and yanked up the cuff of his pants to reveal a very tall tactical boot with shallow bite marks on it. He gave a relieved chuckle, then noticed the look of horror on Liam’s face.

“Don't worry, son. I've been fighting zombies my whole life.”

Fighting zombies—how is that possible?

Before he could ask, Captain Osborne gave him a stern pat on his shoulder and went on to the next crisis, giving orders to his men, shouting above the cacophony of the engulfing disaster. Liam's ears rang from the sound of the captain's point-blank shots, so he simply grabbed Victoria's hand and pulled her up the tunnel to where Grandma sat. She and Hayes looked like they were waiting for the bus, but she clutched Liam's backpack in a way he recognized as fear. Then she saw Victoria standing next to him, swaying unsteadily.

“Nice to see you again, dear.” As if Victoria had just dropped in for tea and cookies. “Liam, why don’t you help Victoria sit down? She looks rather tired.”

He did as she suggested, and offered her some water, then looked around. He guessed there were about twenty officers still in the fight. Most of them were facing the dark of the tunnel, pointing their lights toward the clamor coming from that direction. Sometimes people would run by screaming, but more often now it was a zombie that came slinking out of the confusion only to have its head blown off. The far exit had become obscured by darkness, dust and the smoke from multiple weapons. More than a few times, bullets ricocheted to his end of the tunnel, sending citizens flat onto the rocks.

Once the captain had his men where he wanted them in the tunnel, he moved to the opening on the south end. He put two of his female officers in charge of using zip ties to secure the exterior gate of the small service tunnel and told them to shoot anyone attempting to come out.

He saw Liam’s group and stopped to ask how they were doing. He also let them know they were going to need to help out when the time came to run—which he said was going to be soon.

“This tunnel is about to get dangerous.”

Get dangerous? Liam thought. As opposed to the quiet Sunday afternoon at the park it is now?

“We have to move somewhere more secure,” the captain continued. “Get ourselves room to breathe. Can you both shoot?” he asked, glancing in turn at Liam and Victoria.

He nodded yes. Victoria was silent, then turned to him. “I'll take that second pistol if you aren't using it. I don't want to ever be unarmed again.”

He looked at Osborne. “We'll both be ready, sir.”

Osborne gave him a small salute and began walking away. He caught himself when he saw Hayes.

“You have any kind of weapon?”

“I'm not a warrior. I'm a...doctor. I'm too important to fight them with guns.”

Osborne responded. “So important you and your friends were willing to spend your time getting drunk in the candy store? I don't think you're as important as you think you are. Neither the zombies nor the gang members will be stopping to ask for your credentials—you can bank on that.”

He moved away quickly, meeting up with the remaining officers now guarding the large opening at the head of the tunnel.

Hayes looked back at Liam, but he avoided the man’s gaze by pretending to talk to Victoria.

A doctor? Was that the truth? Did he lie to me earlier?

He realized he had just picked up a valuable life lesson. In a world where no one knows your past, anyone can be anyone.

6

The final plan was kept simple. About a quarter of a mile to the south, the train tracks entered another short tunnel before they left the Arch grounds via a long above-ground trestle. The captain figured if they could reach that tunnel, it would put them in good shape to keep moving to the south, out of the worst of the massive scrum taking place all around them. It would also get them clear of the impending military assault. He mentioned that as a casual addendum, as if unconcerned they were nearly out of time.

Some of the officers expressed concern at leaving so many people to their fates up top.

“I know you all took an oath to serve and protect your communities. I did as well. But our communities are gone. What we have now, pretty much everywhere except this little bubble containing our families and us, is anarchy. Our community is now down to our families and the friends we pick up along the way.” He nodded in Liam's direction.

“Our only hope of seeing another day is to get out of this fighting so we can take a breath and figure out what comes next.” He cinched a bloody rag around his upper arm, gave a grimace in doing so, and continued with his pep talk.

“I want us all to move as fast as we can over to that next tunnel. This one is about to push us out anyway, judging from all the shooting and screaming behind us. I'm sure we can hold them off for a while, but we only have the ammo in our pockets, so if we're going to make a move, we have to do it now.”

“Grab your families and line them up here. We leave in five.”

Liam checked his weapon, ensured the safety was still on, and practiced thumbing it on and off.

Victoria held her Mark I but was still in a daze.

He leaned over to her.

“Hey, you OK? Have you ever fired a pistol before?”

She fought back a sniffle before speaking. “Yes. My dad took my sister and me to some indoor shooting range back in Colorado several times. We didn't shoot a gun like this one, but we did shoot pistols with magazines.”

“That's good. That means you'll have no problem with this. In fact, this is probably much easier to shoot than anything you used with your dad. The trigger is very soft. My dad did something to modify it so “even an old lady could fire it,” as he would say. You just point it in the direction you want to shoot and gently squeeze the trigger. I'll warn you though that the ammo we're using is very light duty. It will do fine against any petty criminal, but I don't think the infected will even feel this unless you pop them through the eye or nose. Or, if you're at point blank, it should go through their skull. My dad and I talked about these guns last summer, and he said they were deadly in the proper hands, but you have to know what you're doing. I wish now he had just given me a bigger gun.”

“Wow. My parents gave me Bibles for my birthdays. Yours gave you guns. Kinda cool, actually.”

He felt a rush of pride, then remembered he was mad at his parents. Sort of.

She continued, “Where do I put it? I don't exactly have pockets in this dress.”

He took off his belt and handed it to her.

“I don't need it,” he said. “Trust me.”

He gave her his holster, which fit the belt and the Mark I perfectly. She wrapped the belt around her waist, so it sat just above her hips, then dropped her gun into the snug holster. A little snap could hold it in place, but he suggested she leave it open as she'd likely need the gun soon.

“It ain't pretty, I'm afraid, but it will keep you in the fight.”

She looked up at him with wet eyes.

“I'm so sorry. I just left you guys in there. I thought I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't outrun those two. They caught me at the top. I fought, but... ” She gave him a tired smile, but her swollen lip and bruised cheek made it visibly painful for her to do so.

He was about to respond, but she kept going.

“I was so sorry to leave you guys. But I had to save you. I needed to save someone after what I'd done in the city.”

She leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder and began to weep. He put his hand on her back to comfort her and further appreciated how soaked with sweat she’d gotten on her escape. It forced him to wonder if he had the same stamina to run those steps again if he’d been asked to save her. It left him in awe at her conditioning, or simply her drive to live.

“I don't want to die in this horrible place. I want to see open sky again. I want to run to the next tunnel. Then never stop. I want to survive. I want you to survive. I want Grandma to survive.”

He didn't know what to say. He'd never had a girl cry on his shoulder, and his emotions were in upheaval for so many reasons.

Then the earth rumbled. Everyone looked around like frightened deer in headlights, and they got serious about moving closer to the exit.

The police had nearly gathered everyone.

Osborne yelled at the top of his lungs.

“ONE MINUTE!”

He gently pushed Victoria off his shoulder and held her in front of him. Despite the madness and noise, he looked in her eyes.

“I know this sounds crazy, but I'm not going to let you go. We're going to get through this together. I promise.”

Should I kiss her? Would I be taking advantage of her?

His mind was unable to process the flux of emotions swirling around his head and heart at that moment. His face turned to stone.

Victoria gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Wiping the tears from her eyes with her free hand, she yelled to him over the tumult, “Together?”

Released from his indecision, he echoed, “Together!” and tucked his Mark I in his waistband. His pants were tight enough it would stay there pretty well. With a pretty girl by his side, he felt he could take on the world.

Grandma looked anxious, with her hands on her lap. When she saw him she tapped her ear, a symbol he recognized meant she couldn't hear because there was too much noise. They exchanged a smile as he got her ready.

He and Victoria each took hold of one handle on the back of her wheelchair and pushed her into position along the side of the tracks, facing south out the entrance. The rear guard of officers had closed the distance to be with the bigger group. Children hung on to their parents; the youngest were carried by those with the strength to hold them. Most kids were crying amidst all the commotion and noise. Many adults were brushing tears as well. Behind them, a seething mass of plague victims emerged from the dark, smoky tunnel.

Liam took in a deep breath and sucked in the acrid smell from all the gunfire.

The captain and a vanguard of cops with shotguns stood right at the cusp of the portal. With a flourish, Osborne turned around to everyone and gave his most rousing and succinct speech of the day.

“RUN LIKE HELL, BOYS AND GIRLS!”

They all plunged into the chaos.

Chapter 13: The Hole Nightmares Fall Out Of

Liam was under the wide-open sky for the first time in nearly a full day and was a little disoriented by the setting sun, heat, and fresh air. The noise of gunfire and panicked screaming came from every direction, accompanied by the angry howls of military aircraft above them. He stumbled a little as he pushed one side of Grandma's wheelchair along the rocky railroad grade while Victoria pushed the other. Grandma did her best to hang on with one hand while she gripped his backpack with the other. They were surrounded by a few dozen men, women, and children making a break from one tunnel to another.

Even while on the run he couldn’t help noticing odd details. A couple pulling along a young teen girl, who was, in turn, dragging along a small border collie that wanted nothing to do with her. A nun, black habit and all, easily outpacing almost everyone in her orange running shoes. A young police officer, barely older than him it seemed, pausing to fire at nearby threats with his sidearm—liberally cussing the entire time.

The railroad tracks paralleled the length of the Arch grounds and ran along a shallow trench. He couldn't remember seeing the railroad tracks from the park above, so he figured they were designed to be well camouflaged. A gigantic stone staircase wrapped around and over the tunnel ahead. It helped people get from the park, over the tracks, and down to the nearby riverfront. The tunnel was a couple of football-field lengths ahead.

The remnants of the civilian and military cordon around the Arch, as well as many of the people they were protecting, ran down the hill from up top and either turned into the tunnel ahead or continued forward toward the river. He couldn't see much in the direction of the water. His worry focused on what was behind the survivors as they came off the hill.

Fewer and fewer healthy people exited the park. Some stragglers were caught by the rising tide of blood-drenched infected behind them. The slow. The weak. The injured. Those out of ammo. The overly brave. They fought hand-to-hand with the front edge of the approaching zombies. They either got away quickly or fell to the horde. Most, he was sorry to admit, succumbed.

His heart stuttered as a large vehicle tore through some of the small trees on the hill above. It was the heavy M1A2 Abrams tank he'd seen from up in the Arch—he recognized the make from seeing them in video games—but it had completely morphed into something out of a horror flick. It was belching out great clouds of white smoke, making it impossible to see behind it. Its color had changed from desert tan to Hell's red.

As it plowed over the hill, it crushed several feeding zombies and readjusted its path to avoid the rear of Liam's group. It popped off a small ledge and perched itself directly on the railroad tracks, close enough to him that he could see the sheen of blood covering its entire lower half. The tracks and road wheels were caked solid with—he couldn't even describe the horrors. One detached foot in Angie's car had been enough to terrorize him. The tank’s deck was covered with body parts and torn clothing. It was hard to tell, but there appeared to be injured zombies riding along—groping for the living inside the steel beast. He could imagine all the death the tank crew had witnessed—the results were riding with them.

He thought it was just going to continue onward toward the river, along with all the people running in that direction, but instead, it seemed to dig in as it sat on the ruined train tracks. The massive smoke screen wafted along the hillside behind the tank, temporarily providing cover for those—like him—running from the walking plague up there.

He continued to move Grandma down the tracks but looked over his shoulder to see what the tank was going to do. Just as it seemed the billowing smoke would obscure the vehicle completely, the wind shifted slightly, so he could still see most of the action.

The turret swiveled left to face the large tunnel they'd just evacuated. Zombies poured forth from it like filth from a broken sewer pipe.

Shoot them!

The tank's machine gun barked above all the other gunfire in the area and ripped viciously into the mass of lost humanity near and inside the tunnel. The crew had positioned their vehicle perfectly to shoot inside the dark space. He wondered how many sick people each shell would pass through. Would a bullet reach the other end of the long tunnel, passing through zombie after zombie the whole length? The gun pounded in short bursts for maybe thirty seconds.

For its final act, the tank fired one shell from its main gun into the tunnel. The concussion of the shot caused incredible turbulence of smoke and debris around the hull of the tank as if the whole thing was trying to shake off the blood and wreckage coating it. A hundred-yard swath of zombies evaporated in a line drawn from the gun to the tunnel, and he realized the tank had fired a type of shotgun round that inflicted horrible results on flesh. Who says you don’t learn anything from video games?

The turret turned back to the forward position. He watched as the hatch on top was opened briefly; a tanker poked his head out. He looked in Liam's direction and gave a thumbs-up sign. Then the tank jerked forward, the hatch dropped, and it moved away. It pulled the smoke screen like a curtain behind it. For just a moment, he couldn't see any movement in that direction.

The Abrams tank had bought them a little time, plugging the hole and confusing the pursuit. However, the wave of undead was still there. And it wouldn't be long before the dead would be emerging as the smoke dissipated. He saw what he guessed were the final survivors of the rear guard coming down from above. A rare few were police officers. Most were civilians with weapons. Some appeared to be hunters with long guns or shotguns. Others were dressed in black tactical gear as if trying to be stealthy. And still others were flamboyantly dressed like they might have been going to church—he imagined them as drug dealers, pimps, and the like. But, with zombies not far behind, they were all working together to escape the park, just like everyone left alive.

The captain stopped and turned around as he neared the tunnel, urging his party to run harder. Liam was encouraged by his presence, but the look on Osborne’s face as he peered back to where they came from made him once again feel a wobble in the pit of his stomach. He chanced a look back, too; the smokescreen had almost evaporated.

He saw scores of infected pouring out from the railroad tunnel behind them. Even after the terrible damage inflicted by the tank, more took the place of the fallen. The soft tones of the evening light made the blood on their faces, arms, and chests stand out. The confines of the railroad grade ensured they would all funnel in the one direction they could see food—right to him and his fellow survivors.

He pushed the wheelchair faster.

2

Osborne ran into the short tunnel ahead. There were already a good number of people holed up inside, including some with weapons. Liam saw how, after some quick words, the captain arranged those with rifles along the two sides of the opening, so they could protect the flanks of the group running in. It wasn't long before the shooting began. He wasn't willing to turn around to see if anything was hit. He was too close to the goal.

Hayes beat him, Victoria and Grandma to the tunnel entrance by a full minute. Apparently, he wanted nothing to do with the slowpokes.

They wheeled Grandma in among the very rear of the group, just a few women and children behind them. Once inside, he turned to watch and see if his help was needed. At the very back, a few policemen were pulling rear guard duty, preceded by the grievously wounded officers from the museum who were being carried slowly by two of the biggest officers, including Jones.

They moved too slowly.

Any fool could see there would be too many zombies for the group to hold off, but still they kept shooting and reloading. Perhaps if they backed everyone into the tunnel and stood shoulder to shoulder?

He felt for his gun and considered helping but knew he was woefully under-prepared for the battle. He was happy to see the police give the thumbs-up sign to someone above them on the outside of the tunnel. Osborne motioned for them to come down while his men continued to pour lead into the infected crowd closing the distance.

The first guy to come down from just above the tunnel exit looked like a gang member. He hung off the ten-foot wall holding back the soil at the entrance and then dropped down. Dressed in jeans with his underwear showing in a silly fashion, he carried an AK-47 rifle. He took up a position at the front of the tunnel with the remaining police officers and added his firepower to the defense of those inside. In small clumps, other gang members dropped in from above, as well as other civilians, the ones with hunting rifles and other guns that he'd seen moments before, running like hell on the hill above them. The group was gaining fighters like a snowball picks up snow. The tunnel was the only piece of cover in this part of the park. Everyone who saw it ran that way.

The original fight between the rogue gangs and the police was pushed aside as life and death for everyone depended on getting as many guns as possible aiming in the same direction.

Soon there was parity between firepower and incoming zombies inside the channel of the railway culvert. It wouldn't last unless the sick stopped coming. Looking out the tunnel entrance, he saw them swarming like locusts on the hill above. The tunnel was just a place to give the living breathing room while planning their next escape.

He made sure he was close to the captain so that he could listen in. Whatever the plan was, it was important to hear it first, so he could prepare right away. He would give Grandma every chance he could.

One of the gang guys hung by the captain, as did several of the new “good ol' boys” with their camo hunting outfits and long-distance rifles. Like Liam, they all wanted to know what their leader was going to say next.

“Thanks, guys. You saved our asses, but this can't last. We have to keep running to the south. There are too many of these things.”

The firing and crowd noise was so loud he couldn't hear many of the details discussed, but he did catch their intention to push further south down the railroad tracks. Several volunteered to stay behind at this rail tunnel to hold off the pack of zombies, while the others got away.

He was impressed that both the gang members and the hunters volunteered to join the police in making that happen. He assumed their families were also heading south, which appeared to be the only real route of escape left to anyone.

He tried to convey what was happening to Grandma, but she tapped her ear again. Her smile told him she was fine. In fact, she seemed almost calm given their grim situation.

“I'm glad you found Victoria again,” she mouthed with a wry smile.

“You have no idea,” he wanted to say. He flashed a thumbs-up sign and a big grin. He felt as if the weight of the world had fallen off, now that she was back safe with him—with them, he corrected himself.

There were a few minutes left before Osborne was going to push them all out, so he grabbed his backpack, dropped it on the rocks, and checked his gun. He pulled out the magazine from his pistol and ensured it was fully loaded. Victoria stood close by, so he motioned for her gun. He pulled out its magazine to double check it. He knew it was full, but even so—

He was shocked to realize it was not full. He had just given it to her and was right next to her while they pushed from tunnel to tunnel. She hadn't had time to fire it.

When did I fire this gun?

He couldn't remember if he switched guns somewhere along the way. In fact, he didn't remember firing any gun since they left Grandma's house. He tried to think of what might have happened, though the constant noise of the guns around him made it difficult to process data and think.

I didn’t load it correctly in the first place, he decided. He resolved to be better about checking and rechecking his guns.

He slammed in three rounds, seated the magazine back into the frame, and handed it—with the safety on—back to her. He showed her the safety again and had to yell to remind her to toggle it off when she was ready to shoot.

The sound of gunfire reached epic levels in the tunnel. The time to move on was at hand. But all the while, men and women continued trickling in from above, some joining the shooters in the front, and others adding to the pack of civilians in the back.

“We're moving soon!” he shouted to Grandma, hoping she heard him.

3

He happened to be looking directly north out the mouth of the tunnel when he saw a massive fireball inside the park. Not quite on the central staircase directly under the Arch, but a little north of it. The resulting shock wave pushed a warm current through the tunnel. He had no idea what caused the explosion until the captain yelled, “HERE COMES THE AIR FORCE!”

The promised attack by the military had begun. Some of the people cheered, but he noticed not many of the police joined in. They undoubtedly remembered the radio message both telling them to clear out and to forget about getting across the river to safety. He felt excited to see so many of the sick get destroyed, but that was tempered by the vibe coming from the police.

The initial bomb must have been a signal to fire freely at the massive gathering of infected. He dared to move closer to the exit and watched as the hillside above them erupted in all manner of explosions. The captain ordered everyone to retreat as far back into the tunnel as they could. The gunners at the mouth blasted the zombies in the railroad culvert even as they continued their inexorable march forward into the hail of bullets.

“I don't know if the Air Force knows we're here,” Captain Osborne shouted, “but if they drop one of those big boys in this area, we're all going to get free haircuts and cough up our lungs. I don't want to be collateral damage, and you don't either. We're moving out!”

He pointed to the back of the tunnel, which opened to a railroad bridge over some streets and then went south into an industrial area along the Mississippi River. From there, Liam guessed they ran along the river practically forever.

The captain organized a spearhead of his men and sent them out the south exit to clear the way. He then had all the women and children, along with Grandma and the wounded, head out and follow those men. This time, there was no speech. He wanted everyone out of the area, pronto.

One last look and he witnessed the flash of another large fireball under the Arch. Liam guessed they were starting up north and working their way down south. Surely, they knew any survivors would be down here, right? Were others up north?

His father's voice popped in his head, giving one of his “life lessons” on government. “Always keep in mind the only thing you can count on in government is that they make things worse.”

Confidence is low.

He loved the military because his dad taught him to love it. It was one of the few exceptions to his father's otherwise total mistrust of government. Together they were fond of playing military video games, reading books about military history, and they both celebrated their ancestors who had fought for the United States. However, on this day, the military made it clear they weren't going to let him or his family across the river to find safety from the vile shroud being draped over the city.

Still, he took pride in what the army and air force were doing up the hill right now. As Dad might say, “We paid for those bombs, so they might as well be put to good use.”

The volume of sound continued to ebb and flow in the tunnel as he and Victoria pushed the wheelchair southward and out the back. He looked around for Hayes but didn't see him and figured the CDC man was up in the spearhead moving away as fast as he could. The guy wasn't his concern anymore.

As they rolled Grandma out onto the trestle, he got an unobstructed view across the river and above it. He was stunned to a halt. Victoria didn't see him pause, so she continued pushing the chair for a few paces before she also stopped. The wheelchair slowed and shifted to the left, allowing Grandma to see the same thing as Liam. He imagined he was in a movie about a global war. Dozens of aircraft swirled above, like an angry swarm of wasps.

Several huge planes droned by at very low altitude. Each had four propellers and the outer shells were painted dark gray. Two of them flew to the north, one behind the other, while a “crump crump crump” sound came from the guns hanging out their left sides. Liam had read about those big gunships, the Spookys, and recognized the sound was them throwing shell after shell into the horde under the Arch. Two similar planes flew in the other direction just a bit higher.

Far above the jumbos, several formations of sleek fighter planes flew in tight formations. As he watched, a plane would split off and descend toward the Arch grounds and release its payload on the zombies. Those were the big explosions he’d seen from inside the tunnel and they shook the ground whenever they dealt their death blows.

In intervals, a few ugly planes—A10 Warthogs—swooped in low and slow from over on the Illinois side and use their distinctive chain guns mounted in their noses. He couldn’t see the zombies behind him, but those planes surely tore apart infected people by the hundreds every time they went by.

The scene was spectacular to observe because so many planes moved in such symmetry. The coordination required to keep them all from colliding was amazing. And they all worked together to kill the infected; that made him very happy, despite the danger to himself.

“Liam, we have to move,” Victoria screamed.

He was about to turn until he noticed a formation of M1A2 Abrams tanks at a high point above the riverbank on the Illinois side. While he gawked, they fired in unison over the river into Missouri. The smoke from their guns was the only indication they were adding to the destruction, as the explosions in the park were constant and deafening.

Several little Coast Guard boats were on the water, but they weren't armed as far as he could see. He had no doubt armed soldiers were on board, however. No hope of swimming to safety, even if he had a way to get Grandma across the water.

High up in the sky, above everything, several B-2 Stealth bombers moved in lazy circles. Their black, triangular shapes reminded him of deadly raptors waiting to feast on the dead. He knew nothing good would fall out of those things. That, more than Victoria's sensible pleas, got him moving again.

“Since the zombies can't shoot back, they can put all these planes in one spot, but nightmares are about to fall out of those dark shapes way up there.” He finally spoke at an almost reasonable level, though he still felt the urge to yell because his ears rang like crazy, “so we have to move fast!”

“That's what I've been saying,” she shouted.

As he straightened Grandma's chair, he looked to his right—back into the city—toward a massive new hotel a couple of hundred yards away. It sat in the front row of buildings lining the western edge of the Gateway Arch grounds, and it caught his eye because it was circular rather than the typical rectangular skyscraper. Its base was thick with zombies, meaning the dead streamed in from both the north and the south now, heading toward the survivors and their loud friends in the sky.

We're drawing them out. Like bait.

He pushed Grandma with renewed enthusiasm.

They were several hundred feet farther down the trestle when a massive bomb blew up close behind their group. Once again, the shockwave hit them, warmer and with much more force than before. He turned around to see what had been hit.

“Oh, crap,” he said, not knowing if anyone heard him. “I hope everyone got out of there.”

A large plume of smoke churned upward like a black glove reaching out from above the tunnel they'd recently vacated. A few large rocks flew through the air nearby and broke windows in nearby warehouses. As curious as he was about survivors, time was critical in getting Grandma as far away from the action as he could.

He and Victoria did the only sensible thing left. They ran like their lives depended on it.

Behind them, the nightmares kept falling.

4

The explosions never let up, but after several more minutes of escape, he was pretty sure the military wasn't walking their barrage farther to the south. Though safe was a strong word to use, he felt they’d made it away from the bombs. The group they were moving with had become spread out, but all were on the tracks heading in the same direction.

They traveled on a narrow railroad trestle, well above street level. The sick thinned out the further south they walked, coinciding with the increasingly complicated street patterns in the warehouse district below them.

While he walked on the high trestle, he had time to watch zombies catch their human prey below. It pained him to see it, and he was helpless to interfere, but he had to know what they were dealing with. It also gave him something new to focus on, so his shaking arms and legs had a chance to settle down before his companions could see how scared he’d been.

A pair of zombies had caught up to a man walking with a leg injury. He had a pistol, but he unloaded the last few rounds killing the first of his attackers. Liam paid special attention to how that played out, thinking of the pistol in his own waistband. The man tried to parry the second zombie, which he was able to do pretty effectively for several minutes, but with his injury, he could never get away before it was back on him.

The man appeared to look for a weapon to use, but he was on a wide-open street, with only paper and other debris around. He screamed for help from some other survivors running by, but no one stopped. Many had their own pursuit behind them.

The man finally ran out of energy. He was so close to a fence, he might have been able to jump it and get away, but it looked like he just gave up. Death descended upon him and made short work. Unlike most movie zombies, this one wasn't eating brains or pulling out intestines. Instead, blood sprayed profusely, and the man screamed terribly as the thing chomped on his neck. Then, to Liam's shock, the zombie seemed to spend time preening itself, lapping up the fresh blood on the pavement and on its clothes as best it could.

“Don't waste food, there are starving kids in Africa,” his mom's voice warned from a dark place in his brain.

A hundred yards more down the trestle he finally looked back at the victim. He expected to see him reanimating, but the man still lay where he fell. His blood-soaked attacker had gotten up and walked quite a way toward the spectacle near the Arch.

After speeding Grandma along the rail line for a few more minutes, the trestle came to an end near a parking lot filled with old trucks and rusted metal debris. Many of the other people had stopped there to rest, giving them a sense of a little security. It was also his last chance to observe any changes.

He asked Victoria to stop. He studied the dead man for several minutes while his companions drank some water. He was about to give up when the dead man shifted and propped himself up to a sitting position.

Liam froze in fascination and also realized his diversion did nothing to stop the shaking of his arm and leg muscles from the fear and adrenaline.

The new zombie looked around, and Liam became like a stone, so he wouldn’t attract attention. Something caught the zombie’s eye, but Liam didn't see any people near it. Soon it got to its feet and stumbled off in a seemingly random direction. A few moments later, it disappeared in the buildings.

“I just saw a zombie wake up,” he said clinically as he continued to grip the chair. “It took him about five minutes to change. They drink blood, I think.”

“Blood?” Victoria asked. “You said they were zombies. That means brains, right?”

“It would appear all the books and movies were just fiction, though some zombies do seem to eat parts of the victim.” He thought about a certain foot sitting in a certain car. “No one had actually seen a zombie until this plague came along in real life. I think it helps people to think of these sickos as something less than human. 'Zombie' has become synonymous with brainless—hopelessly ruined—humans. It’s only natural we would think they would also eat brains, as a subconscious way of reinforcing what they already lack. That's why I wanted to see what happened in sequence and how long it took. I think these things are more like vampires than zombies. They are clearly drinking blood while spreading the infection.”

“So, they're more like Vombies or Zampires?” Victoria grinned at him despite the morbid topic, then winced from stretching her bruised mouth.

“Hmm, I hadn't thought about it. Vampire-Zombies. VZ's? Like Veee-Zeee's. Does that sound good?”

“Sounds kind of like another word for poop,” she said with disgust.

“Yeah, let's forget that. VZ could stand for Venezuela. Maybe we call them ... zuellas?”

Victoria said it, testing it out. “Zuellas. Yeah, I like it.”

“Grandma, what do you think of calling these things zuellas?”

“I think you two should have more respect for the dead.”

Properly chided, Liam resumed pushing the chair, and Victoria followed his lead. Eventually, she added an addendum to their musings. “Whatever you call it, you should have tried shooting it to save the man. It was the least you could've done.”

“Believe me, I would've, but my little pop gun couldn't hit a barn at such a long range. My odds of hitting it and hurting it were effectively zero. Remember I told you only a direct shot to the head at close range will kill a zombie?” He didn’t reveal that if he let go of grandma’s chair his hand and arm shook like a wet noodle. She didn’t need to know that.

“Yeah.”

“Besides, Liam has to protect you, my girl,” Grandma said while trying to look over her shoulder. “You each must stay focused on what's important now. Don't get distracted by things you can't change. Know when to help your fellow man, but don't do anything that could endanger each other.”

She was essentially telling him not to be that guy and do something they'd all regret. He knew it was good advice, even if he was prone to such regrettable actions. He held his tongue.

Victoria was similarly silent.

“Why are you two looking at me like that? I know I'm just the old lady along for the ride, but I'm also an observant woman. I see the way you two look at and worry about each other. Even new friends can share strong feelings, especially in times of danger. It's OK. I get it, even if you don't.”

Grandma shifted in her chair as if getting ready for a long speech.

“I've been watching things carefully since Liam and I left my house. Sure, I've slept a lot, but I've also seen my share. I listen more than you know, even when my eyes are closed,” she chuckled. “But you kids have to be aware of the new reality here. Society is going to break down. It is breaking down. The only thing we can do—you, me, Victoria—is go on surviving day after day. We should try to stick with these good men and women, but that won't last unless we all get well outside the city. There are just too many infected people here.”

She paused for just a moment. “You two have to care for each other. Avoid distractions. It won't be easy, but it's easier if you can tolerate being around each other. I think you do,” she completed her statement with a denture-filled grin.

Liam blushed. Victoria's face was bruised and swollen already, so it was difficult to read her, but he noticed a hint of a smile breaking through her distorted facial muscles.

“Just promise me one thing,” Grandma continued. “When my time comes, don't either of you risk yourselves for me. I won't become your distraction! Please promise me.”

Victoria only said, “uh huh,” without enthusiasm. He also tried to remain vague, only committing to, “I'll try.”

Would he leave Grandma to such a horrible fate?

He was ready to tell himself he would never, ever abandon her. But for the first time, his life or death equation was more complicated. What if he had to choose between Grandma and Victoria? Sure, she was a girl he'd just met, but he liked her and liked being around her. He figured that was enough of a foundation for mutual survival, and—? He pictured himself having to choose. It hurt even to think of it.

He resolved that he was going to ensure Victoria and Grandma got out of this together, and if possible, himself. He could not pick one life over another.

Yeah, I can live with that equation.

5

The group of survivors who had escaped from the Arch came back together near sunset about a mile or two south of the tunnel. The trestle had gently brought them back to street level, but they were a good distance from any pursuit. Human stragglers kept coming down the trestle, but precious few were from his group.

Liam was dismayed to learn the captain wasn't among the survivors. Repeated radio calls came up empty. Officer Jones was there, as was Hayes. Most of the families and children appeared to have made it, but the number of officers was much reduced. There were a few of the gang members still left, as well as a healthy grouping of regular citizens with firearms.

Left leaderless, the group was suddenly faced with competing interests. Many of the families of the lost officers were understandably distraught. The surviving police were embedded with their loved ones.

The yuppie-looking guy, with his wife and daughter and her spastic border collie, spoke first. “I live pretty close to here and have seen nothing but destruction since I left the house this morning. We should try to swim across to Illinois. There's no way we can escape the number of plague victims we saw back at the Arch. They're going to get through the warehouse district, then swarm this direction and eat us. Even if the Army kills every last one of them at the Arch, there's still a whole city of them to the west of us. We can't outrun them all.”

Liam could empathize. He'd thought about swimming every time he looked at the river.

“O fa-show. We ain't getting' wet, yo,” said one of the pistol-packing gang men. Liam noticed a couple of young children were attached to him, as well as a woman who appeared to be their mother; an even older woman held her arm, making three generations.

The big police officer, Jones, said Osborne intended for them to keep moving south until they got clear of the city. He was going to uphold that course of action.

Another guy, one of the hunters, seemed anxious to travel into the city. If he didn't know better he'd say the man had lost it—he wanted to hunt the zombies to help clean them out of the town. No one seemed anxious to link up with him.

The discussion went on, occasionally punctuated by a snap of a rifle. Infected wandered everywhere now, though not in force. The bombs to the north acted as a zombie-magnet of sorts.

Victoria moved him off to the side. “Well partner, what are you thinking?”

He folded his hands across his Mountain Dew shirt as a way of steadying his shakes, but he was happy to see they were almost gone.

“I'd vote to stay with the largest group going south. It's where we need to go, for one thing, and I trust the captain knew what he was talking about. I can't imagine he'd have wanted us to swim to Illinois or head back into the depths of the city. What do you think, partner?”

“I agree with you. Our best bet is to stick with a group and move south. As much as I want to go back to my dorm and grab my Bible and a fresh pair of clothes, there's no way I'm going back into that mess.”

He couldn't deny he was secretly happy she had decided to throw her fate in with his, but he also suffered some serious guilt about feeling anything good while the city itself was being consumed by a tenacious disease. He was unsure if that made him a good person for feeling bad or a bad person for having thought it in the first place.

This, Grandma, is why I'm unsure about religion. It makes you feel guilty about everything!

“Sounds like we're in agreement, then,” he replied. “Let's see who we're going with. Looks like a decision has been made.”

The main group was splintering. The majority, including the core unit of police officers and their families along with a few of the pickup gang members and armed civilians, were heading south as planned.

A few men and women threw in with the local who wanted to swim to Illinois. A couple of families were going, but mostly it was single people, many without weapons. They decided they were going to give the river a shot when it turned dark. They said the only hope was to get out of the city as fast as possible, and the water was the quickest way. None of them believed the Coast Guard would shoot them.

The last little group was with the crazy hunter. He somehow recruited a young family and a second hunter to go with him. They stood clear of the main group already, gathering their things. The husband was a bit on the heavy side like exertion was foreign to him. The wife was very attractive and in much better shape. Their two young kids—one girl and one boy—looked to both be about kindergarten age.

Seems fishy they would want to go back into the city, Liam thought. He couldn't help but get involved, even though he hated having to interact with the hunter guy.

“Are you sure you guys want to go into the city? My girl—uh, my friend here—came out of the city and she said she'd never go back because it is so incredibly dangerous. What are you hoping to do in that direction?”

The hunter had his shotgun over his shoulder with his finger on the trigger, like safety was a dirty word to him.

“Easy. We're gonna find a nice warehouse full of food to barricade ourselves in. Then live like kings until help arrives.” He looked sideways at the young mother as he said it.

“I thought you said you were going to hunt zombies?” Liam said with skepticism.

The man looked at him like he'd just thrown down a personal challenge.

“What's it matter to you, boy? I changed my mind. Big people can do that.” He had a kind of leer to him that exuded ill intent. His facial hair was filthy, as were his teeth.

Liam couldn't let it go, but he looked around to ensure some police were still nearby.

He spoke directly to the couple with their two young kids, “It would be better to stay with the largest group. Maximize your odds by sticking together. Stay with people who will protect you as long as they can.”

The crazy guy laughed and started walking away. Over his shoulder, he said, “Come on my friends, let's go find our fortress. He's just a dumb kid. We'll protect you fine folks.”

He didn't know what he said that was so funny, but he noticed the young family drifted back toward the main group. It was a small victory.

The other hunter seemed OK leaving with the crazy man; he started to follow. The mad hunter did stop when he noticed the family wasn't dropping in behind. He pulled his shotgun off his shoulder and held it at a much more dangerous angle. Liam suddenly realized how exposed he'd become. He could get shot by an insane guy just for existing.

The hunter looked at him intently for many seconds, then hocked up a loogie and spit in Liam's direction. To his relief, the man turned around, laughing as he walked away.

“Better hope our paths don't cross again, boy.” The hunter said it quietly enough not to be heard by the police, but Liam knew exactly what he meant.

Victoria grabbed his elbow and drew him back into the main group.

His mind raced. How many more stupid people were being taken advantage of by opportunists? Did chaos and disorder cloud people's judgment? Were people so far out of their comfort zone now they no longer knew how to function? Even at his age, he knew enough not to pair up with a seedy guy with a powerful gun. Not when the police are in your own stupid group! He realized he was talking about that guy again. Only this time it was that family, and they were trying desperately to get themselves removed from the script.

He was getting angry, so he tried to temper it.

I saved the lives of that family.

Too bad they don't even know it.

He had very little time to celebrate.

The swimmers started walking away, and the main group resumed its trek south. Officers and gang members alike took point or covered the rear. He and Victoria each grabbed a handle and pushed the wheelchair between them. He saw the metaphor now that he viewed Victoria as his partner. They were all in this together, joined by fate through an elderly woman who, until recently, he couldn't stand to be around.

A massive industrial rail yard lay ahead, draped in the deep shadows of twilight. It had already been three days since the sirens, and they’d escaped the worst of the horde downtown. Now that they were heading south, he hoped they were nearing safety.

Liam was surrounded by predators and there was no time for fear. Friends and family depended on him and that knowledge fortified his spirit. He lifted one of his hands, thankful the shaking had stopped.

Chapter 14: Intermodal

Marty woke up lying on the bridge, near a lone green sports car parked on the deck with her. As she stood up to gain her bearings, she realized she was in San Francisco. The distinctive Golden Gate Bridge was far out over the bay. She was on another large bridge, braced by metal girders high above, though she had no idea what it was called. It was a bright and sunny day, and the crisp blue water was beautiful.

“I'm dead, and I've gone to...San Francisco?” she said with confusion.

Her husband's avatar was next to her.

“Hello again, Marty. No, not dead, yet. You're on the Bay Bridge, by the way.”

“You can read my mind?”

“Read? No, I'm in your mind. I'm with you, inside your head. I hear your thoughts as you think them in this place.”

“Where are we?”

“That's a very interesting question, my dear. San Francisco, California.”

“Al, even I know that. I can see the Golden Gate right there; you know what I meant.”

“I suppose I do. You should ask Liam. He knows this place. You and he are developing a special bond which I'm happy to encourage.”

She searched her feelings. Of course, she shared a special bond with her great-grandson, though their relationship of the past few days was turning out to be quite different than the previous years of Liam's life all put together. Maybe something was changing.

“This is a dream, right?”

With a gleam in his eye, Al gave her a big smile. “Are you sure?”

“I remember going to sleep in the rail yard after the kids wheeled me down the railroad tracks away from that horrible battle at the Arch. Unless I'm mistaken, I'm still sitting in my wheelchair, asleep. That means I've got to be dreaming, or sleepwalking, or something like that, right?”

“You are asleep, but not walking. Let's leave it at that for now—we can't afford to get into the weeds. Some things you have to take on faith, I'm afraid. While we're together, I want to show you this car.”

He walked over to the little green sports car, and she followed. The car itself was ancient. It wasn't as old as her, but she remembered seeing the model back in the 1950s and 60s. It was a coupe with a white vinyl top and open windows; the insides were covered with bird droppings and nesting materials. The green paint was well faded on the top, though it was still evident on the sides—bird filth notwithstanding. It appeared to have been on the bridge for decades, maybe much longer.

“This could be the most important car you ever see. Do you know why?”

“I can't think of any reason. I've never seen it.”

“I'm sure you haven't. It's OK you don't understand the connection yet. That it's here tells me you are very close to realizing your full potential in this world. I can't say much more than that, or I could upset the delicate balancing act that is leading you down this path. But you should take great comfort at seeing this particular car, in this particular place.”

She looked at the car, then at Al.

“You look like Al, and my Lord, how I wish you were Al. But you can't be. Who are you, really?”

“You are very perceptive indeed. No, having conversations with the dearly departed is generally frowned upon by ... the system. In this place, I can look like anyone you have in your memory, put you in any situation you can imagine, and if I'm really lucky, I can guide you on your journey through this troubling time.”

She suddenly felt exhausted.

“Mister whoever-you-are, will you please tell me why you've been masquerading as my husband in these dreams?”

“Dearest Martinette, I never intended any harm to you. The closest approximation to my true nature is what you would call an Angel. I serve the Light.”

She looked intently at him.

“You're an Angel of God?”

“You won’t find me in any Bible, and I make no claim to understand my Creator, though, like you, I hope to see His true face someday. In many ways, I'm just as real and fallible as you.”

She crossed herself, knowing she would have to ask the next question.

“I mean no disrespect, but how do I know you aren't lying to me again by saying that? Who you serve.”

Al considered and then snapped his fingers. As far as she could see over the bridge row after row of infected stood in lines. An impossible number. Most were missing limbs or had large chunks torn from their bodies. All were ruined in form and substance. Somehow, they were standing there, unmoving, all the way to the other shore.

Al called out to them, “I serve the One True God. You shall bow in His name.”

And then ... impossibly ... they all bent to one knee.

And then ... predictably ... she fainted and fell back to the ground.

Falling. Falling. Falling.

2

“OH, MY GOD!”

Grandma woke up with a yell. It must have been a nightmare, because she practically exploded awake, tipping dangerously forward in her wheelchair. Victoria sat the closest and had the good sense to grab her as she leaned over the edge. It was a near-run thing. Would Grandma survive falling flat on her face? After surviving so much, that would be a horrible way to go.

Liam moved closer and spoke softly.

“Grandma, are you OK? You were having a bad dream.”

“No. Yes.” She looked around and reoriented herself on the rail yard. They'd found it after much walking and just as it became too dark to safely continue.

“No, I wasn't having a bad dream exactly. Yes, I'm fine now that I know where I am.”

“Sorry. It's just that you made a lot of noise. We're kind of hiding here from ... them.” He didn't know how to say it any more plainly without making her feel bad.

He and Victoria now crouched together next to her, listening to see if any zombies had become alerted by her nightmare. In the vast rail yard, it didn't seem likely, but he took no chances—made no assumptions—anymore.

After several minutes, he breathed out a silent sigh of relief. Nothing seemed to have been attracted to them. The group hid in the narrow corridor between two lines of train cars. The train yard offered many such hidey holes, and most of the police group was in between the same two trains. Hiding and staying quiet. Resting after their run down the railroad from the Arch.

By virtue of their slow movement with the wheelchair, he, Victoria, and Grandma found themselves at the very back of the line, though the biggest cop—Jones—was also there with a shotgun. He was the rear guard.

Liam was near the final car of one of the parallel trains. As things settled back down, a face popped around that last car, looking into the dark corridor between both sets of tracks. Liam could clearly see the black man's eyes—along with his red ball cap. He was a living, breathing person. Jones happened to be facing his way, so Liam made a motion for him to turn around. Jones did and casually moved the shotgun resting against his shoulder to a more actionable position in front of him, though he kept it pointed down.

The visitor paused for a second before walking into the gap between the two lines of cars, with his hands and arms reaching outward to show he was unarmed. He wore a white t-shirt, and even in the low moonlight it was apparent he had a lot of bloodstains on it. He did have a weapon: an ornate gold-plated pistol stuck in the waistband of his jeans.

Liam felt his pocket for his pistol but made no effort to draw until he saw where this was going. Jones would be far more intimidating if weapons were required.

The man looked over his shoulder, back around the train car, before turning his attention once again to Liam and his friends. He appeared to study the situation with great care. Jones stood quietly, making no threatening gestures; just holding his shotgun in a position where he could swing it forward in an instant.

Seemingly satisfied, the man motioned with his arm, signaling someone out of sight to come to him.

Liam unlatched the safety on the gun inside his pocket. If there were more than a couple of men, he knew he'd probably be outgunned in this narrow space, but he was going to help Jones, no matter how futile.

Ten seconds later, a black teenage girl trotted around the corner, toward the group. She was followed quickly by a younger girl holding the hand of a third small girl. Then a couple of very young black boys came around. They were followed by a string of about ten black children of varying ages. A couple of grown women followed the procession. Impossibly, another handful of small kids followed them, including one or two small white children. Finally, another grown black man rounded the corner. The only difference in attire and appearance with his mate was the large number of gold chains draped around his neck. Liam couldn't help but remember a different encounter with a man wearing so many gold chains …

Jones never raised his gun and waved at the last man as he went by.

The men followed their charges. They ran by Liam with grim smiles, unaware of his internal confusion, and soon disappeared down the line. No words were exchanged.

Liam's hand left his pistol as his blood pressure slowly came back down from the stratosphere. For several minutes, he wondered if anyone else in the large group of survivors would be surprised by this unlikely mix of people running by, but thankfully, no gunfights erupted. Well, not anywhere close. Gunshots were so common as background noise in the distance he didn't even notice it.

He and Victoria were both exhausted beyond words. They settled in next to Grandma, using his backpack as their mutual pillow. Jones hunkered down several paces toward the back of the line.

“Get some sleep, guys,” Jones whispered as they tried to get comfortable. “I've got this.”

“I'll make sure he stays awake,” Grandma said sweetly. “I've been asleep in my chair most of the past few days.”

“No arguments here.” Looking over at Victoria, her eyes were already shut.

He felt the world owed him a nice night of sleep.

It wasn't long before he was out.

3

Seemingly seconds later, he woke up when Jones gave him a manly chuck on the shoulder as he held a hand over his mouth. Jones was in his face giving the “quiet” symbol. Next, he did the same for Victoria, but she woke with a little squeak.

Jones pointed underneath the last train car and made a motion suggesting they look below to see what was on the far side.

There were lots of undead meandering around an open section of the rail yard, visible because of the low light of the moon. They moved without a unified purpose but more or less faced south. It was impossible to know how many were out there.

Completely exhausted, he didn’t feel like he was awake. Probably, this was some kind of nightmare in which he was sitting in a train yard with fifty other people, hoping everyone could be quiet so as not to alert the insatiable, bloodthirsty zombies. Going along with the dream, he calculated the odds of warning everyone.

He soon edged back toward a deeper sleep, his mind aimless. The shambling dead still hadn't noticed anyone. Were they able to see in the dark? Did they have hearing or smell that was better than a live human? No one really knew the capabilities of these creatures, other than their one apparent skill—finding blood.

He questioned if they did have superpowers, like in any number of books he'd read on zombies. Some were fast. Some were strong. Some couldn't be killed except by complete decapitation. Some were supernatural spirits. Some …

Zombies aren't real. They're just sick humans, right? Hayes had laughed at that word.

In real life, the sick are just sick. Rather than the archetypical zombie running around shouting, “Brains!” these were just housewives, bankers, and students who got sick with a disease that seemed to cause them to wander around aimlessly. But they had a plague so bad it kept killing even after the host dies. If they knew healthy humans were hiding so close, they'd be swarming to the buffet table.

All we need to make this scene uber-surreal is the idiot priest who tries to reason with them because he believes they are still the children of God and gets eaten, dying with that look of shocked surprise on his face. He looked down the path to see if a priest was coming.

“Hello, Father Cahill!” he called out. Wasn’t he the one who had saved them? Why was he doing such a dumb thing, now?

A shove woke him up.

“Stay awake! You're mumbling,” Victoria whispered into his ear.

He looked around for the priest and realized he’d been dreaming. Or hallucinating. Either way, he could put everyone in danger if he let his exhaustion get the better of him. He smiled at her and tried to stay focused on the figures moving around on the other side of the tracks.

They seemed to float gently in the cool evening air. The moonlight gave them a ghostly pallor. A dreamy look—

He fought to keep his eyes from closing again. For some reason, he thought of flapjacks.

Minutes went by, and a new stimulus arrived. There, not fifteen feet away, was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. She was dressed in a sheer pink nightgown that absorbed the light of the moon and made her seem to glow.

He stood to get a better view, like a Peeping Tom at the girl's summer camp, but felt no embarrassment as he memorized her curves.

“Aw yeah. Victoria, you look amazing tonight.”

She smiled broadly at him and slowly removed one of the straps of her gown, letting it fall off her shoulder. It revealed just a little more of her ... He was pleased to see the shimmer of her gown now drifted in his direction.

He panted like a dog. It was wrong to behave like an—an animal—but he reveled in it. He shouted, “Victoria, kiss me!”

“Seriously, Liam?” a girl whispered forcefully in his ear while pinching his upper arm. “Wake up!”

He opened his eyes and turned.

Victoria seemed pretty angry, but she put a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet.

He glanced around. She wasn't in a revealing pink gown. Instead, to his utter horror, he saw a similarly shaped blood-drenched teenage girl. It appeared as if someone threw buckets of the stuff on her.

Oh, God, no!

The zombie wore a pink nightgown.

“It's not possible.” He whispered it to himself. What was he going to tell Victoria—“I was dreaming, and you were wearing a slinky nightgown, but you turned out to be a blood-soaked zombie”?

The blood-covered teenager moved in his direction. Lots of her friends on the far side of the train car followed.

Oh, crap! What have I done?

A train horn blasted, and he covered his ears. An engine turned over somewhere in the yard. A few moments later, a repetitive “bang bang bang” drew closer and closer to them. When the train car behind them banged, he knew what it was. A train was starting to move, and the noise came from each car catching and pulling the one behind it. The final “bang” sounded seconds later, and the whole train was in motion.

The train between them and the zombies remained still, but the dead people could walk right around the last car. The moving train behind him would catch the attention of every zombie in sight.

We have to get out of here.

He looked at the moving train, and a plan occurred to him. He immediately hated it, but a good plan now was better than a perfect plan tomorrow. That was a piece of wisdom his dad taught him about General Patton!

4

Jones was still with them, a few feet away.

“Jones, we need your help.” He spoke at a normal volume.

“What are you gonna do, kid? We’ve got to roll.”

He moved over to Jones and hurriedly shared his plan. The big man made a whistling sound as if impressed, then looked at Grandma. Liam figured he was sizing up his idea.

“I don't think I could do a better job. Let's do it.”

He and his shotgun moved to block the corridor, so Liam and the girls could get in position.

Liam yelled, “Victoria. Help Grandma out of the chair, please.” He ran to his backpack, put it on, then folded the wheelchair down in several fluid motions; he was getting good at it. Then he quickly explained his plan to Victoria and Grandma.

As best he could tell from his position the moving train was about twenty cars long, with at least one engine pulling it. Most of the cars were empty coal tenders, along with a few liquid-haulers and two flatbed cars, both with tractor-trailers on their backs. One of the flatbeds had already passed. The other was the very last car. That was their target. Grandma couldn't very well run and catch the first one. She wasn't going to be climbing ladders to get up on the coal cars, either.

The rest of the group of police and gang members jumped onto whatever cars were closest. He couldn't see the entire group in the black of the night, but he suspected they all had the same idea. To make sure, he yelled, “Everyone jump the train!”

The lead zombies rounded the corner of the parked train. The departing train rolled slowly like it was taking its time feeling through the gloom ahead. He began to wonder if it would be too slow, and whether those dead people might also climb on board.

Victoria supported Grandma while he grabbed the big wheelchair. He'd been handling it for a couple of days now and knew it had some heft to it, but he was surprised to find he could barely lift it. As Jones let loose with the first shell, he tried to heft the chair up onto the passing flatcar.

He got it into the air, but it was a horribly placed toss; the chair careened off the side of the car and fell into the rocks next to the tracks. He decided to let it go. With a quick jog, he jumped onto the small ladder near the front of the flatcar and climbed aboard.

Several zombies closed in on Jones, but he shot several of them in quick order. There were lots more. He needed Jones more than anyone right now.

“Walk with the train!” he shouted to the women as he ran to the back of the flatcar, which was also the end of the train.

Jones backpedaled rapidly, fired a couple of shots, and then reached into his pants pocket to grab more shells.

Liam pulled out his gun. He threw off the safety and kept the gun low while he looked for easy targets. He could hit just about any of the zombies in his immediate vicinity, but to be effective with the little gun he needed a clean shot to the head. That made things tricky. It was dark. He was moving. The zombies didn't want to be shot ...

“Jones, you have to run; Grandma is walking up the line!”

Jones was in the middle of a reload when one zombie got too close to ignore. In one smooth motion, the big man bashed in the infected woman’s face with the butt of his shotgun.

“Stay down!” Jones yelled.

A half a dozen others were close behind her. He finished putting in a last shell, racked it, but then used the sling to throw the gun over his shoulder, and started running back up the line.

Liam was left alone for the moment on the tail of the train. He could have started shooting but held off. Instead, he screamed at them.

“I'm right here, you stupid zombies! Molon labe!” He held up his gun knowing it was ridiculous to think of the zombies wanting his weapon.

“Come and take it,” the defiant words of the Spartans at Thermopylae; thanks for teaching me that one, Dad!

He screamed and whistled and made as much noise as he could. It had the intended effect. Much of the pursuit moved in his direction, rather than try to follow Jones between the trains. Soon he was a pied piper with fifteen or twenty infected in the wake of the train. He turned around to watch the front of the flatcar.

Victoria and Jones swapped positions, so he could help Grandma walk along. Victoria ran ahead and climbed the moving ladder and sat on the edge of the car, facing Jones. The big man picked up tiny Grandma between both arms and fast-walked until he was a few paces ahead of Victoria.

“Oh dear!” Grandma yelped.

Jones planted his feet and started swinging her backward, then forward, backward again, and then he swung her forward with just enough force to gingerly pass her off onto Victoria's lap.

“No, I can't,” Grandma wailed, much too late. Victoria wrapped her arms around her.

It appeared to be as smooth a transfer as anyone could expect at 104—if they were inclined to hitch rides on random trains in the middle of the night. Jones was tall enough and strong enough to get her up on the flat car, but he had to make sure his feet weren't caught under the train. Once Grandma was safe, he jumped back.

“Oh, mercy me,” Grandma continued to complain. Liam hoped she hadn't been hurt but was glad it wasn't him passing her up … he thought of the wheelchair far behind.

Jones ran ahead again and jumped up on the ladder himself, easily mounting the flat surface. From there, he was able to help a few stragglers who were unable to get on the coal car ahead of them. Several times, he leaned over and grabbed their arms and pulled them up.

As they solidified their position on the back of the train, they rolled by the body of one of the police officers who was injured earlier in the day. As far as Liam could tell, he was the only person from their group who didn't survive this hasty exit.

Looking backward, he had a wave of inexplicable sadness for the sick people behind them. They were normal, healthy humans only a few days ago. Each had a family and many stories to tell about who they were and what they wanted out of life. This disease, plague, whatever it was called, had brought ruin to them and made it necessary for good people to engage in horrific acts of violence. He felt sorry to be a part of that violence, sorry they were dead, but if he was true to himself, he was also very glad to have the tools and the friends to stay alive in this dark time.

He looked at his sports watch. The glow function allowed him to see the time was 4:15 a.m.

We survived for one more night.

Or do I have to see the sunrise for it to count?

Chapter 15: Slow Grind

Liam only saw a small portion of the rail yard when they arrived from the north. Now, sitting on the train rolling through, he was able to get a sense of how big the place was. He estimated there were hundreds of cars sitting on dozens of rail lines, in a confusing jumble of single cars, strings of cars, and scattered engines.

Many of the stationary train cars had frightened people hiding in them. As his train moved by, people sprang out and tried to jump on the one train that appeared to be going somewhere. It was still moving slowly enough that the jump wasn't excessively dangerous, but with zombies in the wake, you didn't want to blow your chances. Most made it on the first attempt, but a few people tried and failed on cars ahead of Liam and thus ended up on the final one with him. One man—possibly a little tipsy from drugs or alcohol—blew his chance on every ladder he encountered and was only saved because Jones pulled him up at the very end of the last car while arms from the dark reached for him.

By the time they'd left the yard, they had perhaps twenty new people on the last car.

Once the excitement was over, he checked on Grandma. She sat with her back against a tire of one of the tractor-trailers parked with them. Victoria sat next to her. There was just enough light to identify them.

“You two look comfortable,” he said with a smile. “I'm sorry I lost your chair. It was a lot heavier than I predicted.”

“I'm thankful you thought to get me up here with Jones' help. That was worse than Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.” She giggled a bit. “I can't believe I did that! The ladies in my quilting group would think I’ve gone mad.”

Victoria smiled at him, as best she could, given the state of her facial injuries.

“Why are you so happy?” Liam inquired.

“Well it isn't because of what you screamed back there,” she said with humorous sarcasm. “No, if I'm smiling it's because you got us out of another tough spot. By my count, that makes, ohhh, about 100 times you've saved my life in the past two days. Thank you.”

“Well, I got us into the mess, so I had to get us out, too.” He tried to laugh it off.

“So where do you think we're going?” she replied, more seriously.

“There are tracks down this bank of the Mississippi River all the way through the suburbs of St. Louis. I think they even go close to my house. Wouldn't that make things simple?”

“But we aren't moving very fast.”

“True. It beats walking, though!” There were a couple of disturbing things toward the front of the train. First, something up there was throwing sparks in all directions on the train tracks. Second, whatever caused those sparks also caused a horrific grinding and screeching sound. Taken together, it appeared the train was pushing a rolling lightning-and-thunder show.

Still, they were moving. They were safe for the moment. He cautiously imagined things finally looked brighter.

Jones came up next to him. “Thanks for drawing those zombies off me,” Jones said. “That was some quick thinking.”

“Call it even for your help getting my Grandma to safety. Where do you think this train will take us?”

“Dunno. I live and patrol north of here, so I'm not familiar with the part of town we're in now, or where we might go. I've always heard it was a safer beat down here south of St. Louis, but looking at it now, I'm not so sure.”

Liam didn't know the big man well enough to judge if he was joshing him. “I do wish we could communicate with the engineer. We could ask him,” he suggested.

Jones smiled in the moonlight, then pulled out his radio. “Jones here. Anyone have any idea where this engine is pulling us? Over.”

They waited for a few minutes and only heard one curt response of “No idea.”

“Not very talkative tonight,” Liam offered.

“No, we got beat up pretty bad. Losing the captain like that. Losing all the others. Rough day.”

The conversation died, and Liam had nothing to add, so he excused himself to be alone for a little bit. He took a seat well away from the car's edge and watched the world go by. In the dark, it was difficult to see landmarks or guess where they were, but he had no illusions they had gone very far. In fact, they were going so slow, many of the zombies trailed behind them now. Others came out of the darkness from the city-side of the tracks and often tried to grab for the train only to find themselves bounced along until it went by. A few fell between the train cars, and one or two got sliced in half when they were run over.

They kept coming out of the darkness.

There may have been the faintest hint of the approaching dawn, but it could have been his mind playing tricks on him; he wanted the night to end so badly. The train ride was nice but being surrounded by moaning terrors was enough to drive a person mad. Not knowing where he was going was similarly stressful. He imagined it was safer to the south, but what did he know? Maybe it was way worse.

For a few more minutes, he was lost in thought, wondering how much longer he could stay awake under such conditions. He felt himself nodding and wasn't going to fight it. He vaguely wondered if he'd have another vision of Victoria, but he quickly shut that out. The adrenaline of the jump up to the train had all but worn off.

Without warning, the train lurched to a complete stop. The adrenaline flooded back. It started to overflow as the train reversed—into the horde emerging from the blackness.

It's just not fair.

2

He was awake now.

The rear car backed into a mass of zombies, though not fast enough to do any real damage. A few might have been pushed down and gotten caught under the car, but most bounced harmlessly to one side or the other. They weren't tall enough to grab anyone up on the flat car—the men and women all moved to the middle, underneath the two trailers.

The backward movement didn't go on for too long. The train came to a halt. That's when the shooting started.

Based on the flashes of light reflecting off the glass of the industrial buildings in the area, he was confident the trouble came from up by the engine. Many of the undead headed for the commotion, although the bulk of those surrounding the last car remained at their post because food was right there.

Jones' radio crackled.

“The train started up a dead-end siding. The engineer had to back up, so we can change the track switch by hand. We're also pushing and pulling another engine with its brakes locked. That's the fireworks show. We need time up here. Out.”

Jones glanced at him, then at the rest of the people on the last car, and finally on the horde of zombies congregating nearby. “Everyone with a gun start shooting at these things. Especially the ones moving that way!” He pointed toward the engine.

He looked at Liam and said he only had a few more rounds for his shotgun, so he was going to save those. He pulled out his service pistol, a Glock 22, and checked the mag. There was no safety on that model, so he got right to it.

Liam yanked out his Mark I, threw off the safety, and took careful aim at the nearest target.

Bang!

He hit right in the center of the side of the zombie's head. It collapsed on the spot, like a good zombie.

Yippee Kai Yay! You're dead!

Victoria was at his side with her gun. Together, they took aim at the next nearest pair of zombies and shot.

“Yes!” Liam was quite proud of his shooting. It had been a while since he'd last been at the range to practice, but the little pistol was very stable and easy to shoot.

Victoria's didn't go off as planned—she'd forgotten the safety. She quickly disengaged it and got in on the second shot with him.

They both missed.

From there, they fired at will, always at the closest zombies moving forward, which meant they had to avoid shooting some of the others who were still hounding them at the side of the rail car. It was distracting to leave them alive.

Why not kill them?

He took aim at one of the zombies standing in the front row and put a bullet through his eye. He did that for four others in quick succession, amazed at how good he was at shooting. In moments it was reload time.

Victoria hit some but missed many of those on the move.

She was soon out and had to reload, too.

He got his brick-sized box of 1,000 rounds out of the backpack, and together they huddled over it, like kids over their first gross of bottle rockets.

When he was done, he banged out all nine rounds on the zombies level with him as he knelt on the deck. He was nearly finished when Victoria got busy with her next nine rounds. She again aimed for those who were walking.

He reloaded.

Nine hammers slammed.

He reloaded.

Nine more hammers slammed.

It was the first time he got to use his gun the entire trip. He indulged in a kind of bloodlust. He was mad as hell at the zombies for ruining—everything. He couldn't even enjoy a proper time with this girl because they sullied that, too.

A couple of the other men with guns had taken the massive bloodletting—like Liam—as an invitation to shoot any of the bloody targets they wanted. They aimed at the easy pickins' right in front of them, which added to the stack of undead below. Several zombies struggled onto the pile of their mates and could almost shimmy their way onto the deck.

Liam reloaded for the fourth time when Jones tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Liam. What the hell are you doing?” He pointed to the dead standing right up against the side.

“I'm killing zombies?” he replied with real innocence.

“Well, for one you're supposed to be aiming at the walking ones like your girlfriend over here is doing. But also, you're making a pile of bodies below this side of the car. These freaks are almost up to the deck. They're standing on each other!”

I'm so lethal I made a pile of them?

He snapped himself out of it and saw what he was doing wrong.

“Hey, we have to stop firing at the closest ones!” He tried to order his fellow shooters to halt what they were doing, but it didn't stop the two men right away. The noise was intense. The strobe effect of light from each gun’s discharge was mesmerizing. When they paused to reload, he was able to point out what they had done.

“We can't shoot them if they're close to getting up,” he shouted, “because that would only make it easier for the next ones.”

He was pissed at himself for getting carried away, but he was also inwardly proud he was able to dispatch so many of them. It felt good to deliver some payback.

While he was sorting his feelings, Victoria and Jones went back to work on the forward-moving zombies. There were too many lurking in the dark to effectively target them all, but they still tried.

He was left to tend to the growing problem he had created.

One of the zombies made it partially onto the deck by grabbing one of the chains securing the tractor-trailer. Another then used his friend as a crude stepping-stone. He was just starting to right himself to stand up when Liam shot him in the head. He rolled back off the train car, onto the pile.

If I can't shoot them, what can I do? Yell at them?

The zombie holding the chain seemed—somehow—to know he was providing a service to his fellows. Either by design or by accident, the zombie man shifted while holding the chain but couldn't haul himself up completely. That left him half up and half down—the others used his body to shimmy up like he was a piece of climbing gear.

Liam shot the chain-holder in the face and the man slithered back down, but not very far.

The reports of gunshots remained loud in his ears. One of the men previously shooting the front row was doing it again. Liam looked at him in the flashes of gunfire—and was distraught to see the man's eyes had a glint in them. Was he suicidal? Was he purposefully making the pile larger?

“Hey! Stop shooting those standing by the car!”

The man did not stop until he was out of ammo again. He racked his shotgun, pulled the trigger without discharging a round, then gave the weapon a funny look.

Liam walked in front of him as he reloaded. “Hey, remember, you can't shoot the close ones. You're making a pile of bodies for the others to use.”

“I don't care. We have to kill them all!”

The man pushed him out of the way and took a step forward. Liam nearly lost his balance as he danced precariously along the edge but grabbed the chain and steadied himself. Hands smacked his shoes. They were too close.

He could have easily pushed me to my death just now.

He flopped on the ground under the trailer to take stock of himself. His panic rose and for a moment the shakes returned.

Two seconds is all it would have taken. Bam! Dead.

Liam inhaled deeply a few times to regain his composure.

The loud, regular banging sound began at the front of the train again, making its way to the back.

He watched the nutter who had almost killed him. The man dodged reaching hands to line up more shots on the nearby zombies, but two hands snagged his legs and he screamed in surprise. Using the legs for leverage, a zombie pulled himself up and took a bloody bite of bare calf. Liam hesitated for a few moments, then realized he had to help, but barely made it to his feet before disaster struck.

The man shot wildly, hitting the one that bit him but not much else. He kicked to shake its teeth off his leg, and he lost his balance just as the banging sound reached the last flatcar. The sudden jerk of the now-moving train was too much. The doomed man tipped sideways and fell directly on top of the unbalanced pile of infected still working their way up. The whole stack crumpled under his weight as the flatcar rolled away. He screamed for many minutes as the train clanked up the tracks.

Each desperate shout reminded Liam, It could have been me. Lose yourself for a second and it could get people killed. Just that fast.

I won't forget that lesson, sir.

3

As the train rambled along again, the zombies dropped back into the night. Marty remained at her station, perched near the wheel of the trailer—leaning back to get as comfortable as the situation would allow.

She saw everything that happened with Liam and the pile up of dead, and she saw what happened to the poor man who fell over the side. She grasped her rosary—currently it was around her neck for safekeeping—and said a prayer for the man. His screams had been heartbreaking as they pulled away.

Liam had gone to the back of the train and sat away from everyone else, his head down as if he was lost in thought—or praying.

Victoria used the opportunity to reload and then she sat down next to her.

“I thought we were goners there. Those zombies were almost up here with us.”

“You are right, my dear. I think that surprised us all.”

“I saw Liam go to the back. Do you think he's OK?”

She chewed on that question. How well was Liam taking the end of the world? She'd always seen him as a bright boy, but somewhat socially awkward. Perhaps not unusual for a kid his age and certainly reminiscent of his dad—her grandson. He was also a shy young man, who only blossomed after some time in college. Maybe her progeny needed to get a broader perspective on life before they began to understand their role in it? Or maybe it just took the right woman.

She gave Victoria an approving look.

“Liam will be fine. He just has a lot to process. We all do. So many things have changed, even in this short time. I think his biggest problem is that he feels responsible for me. Not that I blame him, I'm just a frail old lady after all—”

Victoria tried to interrupt and beg her off that line of thinking, but she allowed none of it.

“No, no, it's OK. I can be honest about myself. He feels like he has to take care of me now that his father isn't around, and my nurse was taken by this plague. It's natural that a young man with his character would feel that way.”

Victoria nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but she still wouldn’t allow it.

Marty continued. “I want to share something with you. Woman to woman. I hope this isn’t too forward. Liam is the type of young man that would do anything to save someone he loves. He may not be able to distinguish between real love and infatuation as well as an older man, but you've surely seen flashes of his selflessness already. I'm asking you to ensure Liam doesn't do anything too heroic if it looks like I'm not going to make it. Again, I'm honest with myself—I don't have that long left, no matter how this whole affair plays out. He does. You do.”

Victoria’s lips were pressed tight.

“Liam thinks I'm pretty helpless these days, and I guess I can only blame myself. I've come to rely heavily on my nurse for many things I once could do on my own. Maybe I let her do more than I should, merely because I've gotten lazy in my recent years. But I'm going to tell you a little secret that I haven't told anyone.”

Victoria leaned in. Marty wore a conspiratorial smile on her face as if she were enjoying the moment.

“The other day, Liam got beat up by a bad man trying to rob us. Liam and his impatience to save me led him to a bad decision. The man pulled Liam out of our car and was getting ready to hurt him. Kill him, I think.”

“He told me something about that. He said some good Samaritan must have come along just in time, shot the man who was assaulting the two of you and then left while Liam was still unconscious.”

She laughed. “Well, I didn't tell him what really happened. I used his other gun—the one you have now—to shoot that man. I fired three times. The robber never knew what hit him. It was the first time I ever murdered someone—” She knew that wasn't an accurate statement. She smacked her lips as she thought of the right phrase. It wasn't murder to kill in self-defense. “It was the first time I killed someone. It was very disturbing to take a life.”

Forgive me Lord. I was happy to save Liam, not happy to kill that man.

Victoria let out a quiet whistle; she was impressed.

“I don't have much strength left in me, but Liam's dad fixed those guns so even a weakling like me could fire them. I just set the barrel on the frame of the car door, aimed, and let 'er rip like I did all those years ago. It wasn't hard at all.”

Her voice turned serious. “The crook fell down but crawled behind the car. Even with the gun, I was scared. The hardest part was that I had no strength to get out and tend to Liam. I let him lay there on the ground. Out cold. Time went by and I couldn't hold the gun anymore, and I figured the crook was dead, so I put it back in the backpack, and fell asleep. I have no idea how long we were both out. He came to at some point. Climbed back in. And away we went. Liam was none the wiser about what I'd done.”

“Why didn't you tell him? Wouldn't he be proud of you?”

“I go back and forth. I guess I feel, at this point, I'm old enough I don't want him to get ideas about doing crazy things to save me because he sees me as some heroic granny.”

“Well, you are pretty heroic!”

“This,” she swept her arms to signify she was talking about the world at large, “isn't about heroics. It's about carefully thinking how to survive. Nothing is going to be easy ever again. Security. Food. Shelter. You can't just run around the world shooting guns and being heroic. Eventually, it's going to catch you. They,” she pointed off into the distance behind the train, “will catch you.”

She waited a long time again before sharing her last piece of advice. “I didn't tell him I shot that man because Liam won't survive this world if he thinks there will always be someone there to take care of him.” She said it in a most serious tone but ended on a lighter note. “Even if there is.” She turned and gave Victoria her trademark wink.

As the train continued along the tracks, the sun started to make its presence known, though it was still below the horizon. They were able to see the graffiti-covered factories and industrial barge facilities on the right-of-way down the west bank of the Mississippi River.

Both of them saw Liam sitting at the very rear of the platform, looking back toward downtown.

“I hope this isn't too much of an intrusion, but I'm old and don't have time for subtlety anymore.” She chuckled at that.

“Liam is quite taken with you. I imagine you’ve figured that out. You are very pretty, of course, and you have a good heart. I have my reasons for liking you.” She reached out and touched Victoria’s arm. “Any boy his age would find you quite the catch. Usually, I wouldn't even think of saying this, but times are not normal by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Amen,” Victoria replied in a soft voice.

“I sincerely hope you and Liam become good friends, and that you'll be in his life a long time. But, while I'm still around, please know that if Liam is ever forced to make a choice between saving you or saving me, I'm going to make sure he picks you. Do you understand what I'm saying, my dear?”

Victoria paused, slowly nodded, then added, “Thank you. Truly. We have been through so much already. Romance isn't really on my mind right now. Maybe if we get somewhere safe where I can think about more than zombies, looters, or the plague, we can talk about the future. We just have to make sure Liam never gets put into that position where he has to choose. I want us all to survive and be happy.”

“So do I, dear. So do I.”

But Marty had laid it down. And now that she had, she couldn't help but wonder if she had the strength to make good on the implications of her statement. She always came back to suicide. Her religion forbade killing oneself; it was considered a major sin. But if the choice came down to saving herself or saving Liam and Victoria by sacrificing herself, she believed God would understand her motives.

Dear Lord. Please help Liam and Victoria survive this plague.

She studied Liam and wondered what he was thinking. Far behind, shapes shambled in the morning shadows.

Will the zombies follow us?

Sunrise on day four was minutes away.

Chapter 16: The Tenth Circle of Hell

Liam sat and stared behind the train over the next few miles of track as the sun edged up to the horizon. They departed the warehouse district and moved into a more residential area of apartment buildings and small houses. It was still urban St. Louis, but there were now more trees and less human presence, including zombies, along the rail route next to the river.

Almost without thinking, he slid his phone out to check network status. The soft glow of the screen gave him no comfort because it was still unable to get a signal, so he shoved it away again.

Deep and serious thoughts crowded his mind and he was heavy with worry about what would happen next, but when the first rays of the sunshine hit the train, a female voice cried out in song.

“Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light … ”

The woman’s voice was beautiful, but Liam wasn’t able to see her because she was on a different train car. Her voice resonated over the noisy engine and echoed off a low, rocky cliff on his left, and the sleepy, brown river on his right.

“…bombs bursting in air … ”

A few others joined in, and soon there was a chorus fitting of a baseball game.

The song reached it’s crescendo and he joined in for the last line: “… land of the free and home of the brave!”

“Play ball!” someone shouted from nearby.

Almost immediately after his spirits rose with that taste of normalcy, the train lurched in deceleration. He hoped to enjoy the sunrise while riding the train to safety, but they weren’t out of the city, yet, so they couldn’t be anywhere good.

They'd been moving at ten or fifteen miles per hour, still pushing the dead engine in front, but thankfully it was much too fast for the zombies to keep up. They sometimes came stumbling out of the buildings on his left as they walked for the train, but they fell behind, screaming when they missed the rolling stock of humans rumbling by.

I wonder if they'll follow us, even if they can't see us?

Another mystery of the Zombie Apocalypse.

He stood up and moved around the tractor-trailer to see why the train was stopping. It slowed as it approached the underside of the Jefferson Barracks Bridge, which carried a major interstate across the Mississippi River. It was also the most southern bridge in the St. Louis area and was the last bridge over the river for many miles to the south, as far as he could recall. No cars crossed it now, though some soldiers sat on the span; a few looked over the side down to him. Not too far above the bridge, two small, thin aircraft—drones?—flew in circles.

He walked over to Victoria and Grandma, both still sitting near the wheels of the front trailer.

The early morning ambient light put Victoria in a soft glow that was almost magical. Sure, she was pretty in any light, but right now, covered in lots of dust and dirt from yesterday’s ordeals, she made Liam's heart level up. The light even took the harsh swelling of her lip and cheek and evened them out.

He wondered if she liked him, or merely tolerated being there because she had no better prospects in this catastrophe. The insecure side of his heart said she wouldn't have given him the time of day in any other situation, but the pragmatist said she's had plenty of opportunities to ditch him and Grandma and traipse off with people and groups more prepared than them.

On balance, he accepted that she probably stuck with him because she liked him, at least as a friend. A “fall-of-civilization friend.” They made a good team so far, and there was no reason to doubt she was going to stick with him for as long as it took to reach a safe destination—assuming one could ever be found. What would she do if they never found a safe landing spot? What if they had to be together for much longer?

All right, Liam. Stay focused on the here and now.

He finished his thought by agreeing with himself that indeed, she was pretty.

“You two look like you're conspiring,” he said as he approached Victoria and Grandma.

They had been conversing in low tones, but he was unable to glean any sense of what was said because they clammed up before he was close enough.

“Hey, Liam. Grandma and I were just talking about when you were a little baby. How you'd wear your diapers. That sort of thing.” She gave Grandma a smile and turned and flashed Liam a big grin and a wink.

He was near to feigning embarrassment when he saw her face had become black and blue in many spots. She had two black eyes to go with her cheek and swollen lips.

He still thought she was beautiful, but he was serious when he knelt down to look at her. “My god, your face. Are you doing OK?”

“Thanks. Yeah, I'm fine. It still hurts a bunch, but I have both my eyes, and my face will return to normal soon enough. I'll take it if it's the worst that happens to me this trip.”

He had a dark vision of that man punching this girl's face, and a wave of violent rage swept over him, a burning desire to track the man down and … When he realized that man was probably dead, the violence ebbed. A little.

“I don't have any serious meds to help you. Just some ibuprofen. Can't hurt, right?” He dug in his pack, pulled out some rust-colored caplets and passed them to her. She put them in her mouth one at a time and swallowed each one without water.

“Do you know why they're stopping the train?” she asked after downing the last one.

“I think the Army is involved. I can see them up on the bridge. What would they want with a train full of refugees?”

Victoria looked at Grandma and made sure she was comfortable, then stood next to him so she could see, too. She gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder. “Let's go check it out.”

“Shouldn’t we wait?” he said with surprise.

“You want to know what’s happening, right?” Victoria replied.

“Of course.”

“The answer is that way,” she added as she stepped down the nearest ladder.

Liam passed a bemused look to Grandma and she waved him to go follow the girl in the black dress.

There were no undead in the immediate area. This piece of railroad throughway was mostly muddy riverbank on one side, and a steep escarpment covered in trees on the other. He knew, by the location of the bridge, the area up the hill was the massive Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. As a fan of zombie books and movies, he noted the irony that the one place you don't find them in real life is the cemetery. Zombies don't rise from the dead, nor do they find living people hanging out there. Maybe that's where they should hide?

There were a few walkers well behind the train, but otherwise, it looked pretty safe to step off. A few men and women ran back to provide security for everyone.

He jumped down to be next to Victoria.

Jones called down to the pair to ask where they were going, but once they told him, he laughed. “I'll stay back here. Someone has to keep your Grandma from running off, too!”

“Nobody's tossing Grandma,” she said from behind the tire with a good deal of humor.

People up the line of train cars had the same idea. They took the opportunity to stretch their legs and get out of the cramped cars. Many had climbed into empty coal cars for last night’s escape and now tried to trade up to options with more room. A good number found the middle flatcar, while others chose to sit on the highest points of the graffiti-covered boxcars.

Liam noticed a man drift further outside the orbit of the crowd, then continue into the woods. He was apparently going to climb the escarpment to gain access to the bridge above them.

“Is that your friend Hayes?” Victoria asked, pointing to the same loner.

“It kind of looks like him.”

They walked up to the front of the train, where the passengers were thickest. Liam pointed to a small trail leading up the fifty-foot hillside. Whoever they’d spotted going up this hill would be easy to follow on such an obvious pathway. The man was already very near the top.

“That's got to be Hayes.” He was sure of it now that he could see the man's clothing. The same suit pants and shirt. He couldn't see it from this direction, but he could visualize his ugly tie.

“Do you think he stopped the train?” Victoria asked.

“No idea, but what if he knows how we can get out of the city. Maybe he arranged for us to cross here to safety?”

“I told you answers were this way,” she said with assurance before starting up the trail.

2

It wasn’t easy for Victoria to scale the steep path in her broken-heeled shoes, but they still made good time. As they reached the top of the hillside, level with the decking of the bridge, they moved cautiously so as not to be seen by the military. Liam didn't think Hayes ever turned around to check if anyone was following, but they couldn't make any assumptions.

“I guess we can't hide from them,” Liam pointed to the drones above. They shared a nervous laugh.

Hayes had walked about 100 yards onto the northern span of the bridge, into the bright orange rays of the sunrise. This put him about a quarter of the way over the river. The near side of the bridge roadway was completely empty, so there was no possible way to avoid detection if they tried to pursue him.

They crouched at the very end of the decking, partially behind the concrete side railing. Unable to follow Hayes onto the bridge, he examined the highway as it approached the bridge complex. A massive barricade had been set up with tractor-trailers, concrete road barriers, orange construction barrels, and some shipping containers tossed off to the sides of each lane and median to block the approach to the bridge. Cars remained parked on the highway as far as he could see back into this part of St. Louis.

“Odd that there aren't people swarming this bridge.”

Victoria looked around before replying. “Maybe the zombies swarmed through here and chased them all off?”

“If the people were run off because of the zombies, where'd they go?”

They both turned their attention back to the man they were following.

Hayes stood in front of a line of Army Humvees in the middle of the span, but they were not letting him get very close. A lone person had come out to meet him, and he or she wore a yellow biohazard suit.

“It doesn't look like they want to get close to him,” Liam observed. “Does that mean they think he has the plague? He didn't look sick.”

“If he has it, we all have it,” Victoria suggested in a reverent tone. “He's been with us for two whole days, now.”

Victoria's answer troubled Liam in all sorts of ways. The most tragic was the thought of his friend having the plague. Someone so vibrant and young should never have to suffer from this disease. He remembered his very first encounter with the yoga lady. She also typified the young and the vibrant, and it still took her. That encounter horrified him, but just the idea of Victoria turning into a zombie made him ill. Could he … kill … his new friend?

If he turned into a zombie, was Victoria strong enough to put him out of his misery?

He considered all the angles as they watched Hayes talk with the roadblock representative. He was very animated in his gestures and paced back and forth while he spoke. They heard fragments of what he said, even at this distance, because he often yelled in anger, but Liam couldn't make out anything useful.

After about five minutes, Hayes got super agitated. He continued his ranting and arm flailing, but he tried to move around the person with the hazmat suit and walk toward the checkpoint in the middle of the bridge. Immediately, the soldiers leveled their rifles at him. Liam clearly heard the rounds being loaded into the chambers of weapons. He also heard one of the soldiers shout, “STAND DOWN, SIR, OR WE WILL KILL YOU.”

Victoria let out a little whistle. “I guess they think he's a serious threat.”

“Yeah, if they won't let him over, they'll never allow the rest of us.”

For a few tense moments, he didn't know if Hayes was going to back down. Any normal person would immediately back off, but Hayes seemed to stand there for a very long time as he apparently thought about it.

“Is he trying to kill himself?” Liam wondered. Everyone handled the stress of the Z-poc differently. His books reinforced that.

Hayes raised his hands and slowly backed away.

Victoria had been leaning forward as if willing herself to see and hear the action, but now she relaxed. Liam also let out a little extra breath he'd been holding. The tension on the bridge returned to normal. Hayes chatted again to the person in the hazmat get-up, but even from 100 yards away, Liam identified Hayes as crestfallen.

Ten minutes later Hayes started walking back toward the end of the bridge where he and Victoria were holed up.

“Do we stay here or try to get back to the train?” Victoria asked.

Is everything we do life or death now?

He looked at Hayes walking back, head down with a brisk stride. He glanced to the soldiers at the roadblock. They still hadn't moved from their menacing positions. He surveyed the train down below the bridge and judged whether they could make it back without being seen.

“I don't think we can avoid him at this point,” he said. “We might as well force his hand and see what he'll tell us.”

“Sounds good. But let's meet up with him over on the hill so that the train passengers can see us. We don't want to meet him by ourselves. Remember … dark and scary night,” she said, ending in her spooky voice from her earlier tall tale.

“You win Ms. Scary. Just go!”

They got away from the end of the bridge and sat on a rock out in the open, so Hayes wouldn't be surprised. He felt the best approach was to be friendly, even if he didn't feel friendly toward this man who was clearly lying to them about who he was and what he knew.

It wasn't long before Hayes came around the corner. “You dumb kids almost got me killed,” he said without preamble.

Neither he nor Victoria had any response.

“Ah, cat got your tongues?”

He came over and got directly in front of Liam, though he glared back and forth at both of them as he spoke. “I knew you guys followed me, but I thought you'd have better sense than to be seen by the Army up on the bridge. Especially you,” he pointed to Victoria, “since you seem to have the brains in this outfit.”

“Hey!” Liam tried to interject.

Hayes kept talking. “You guys might not have realized this, but while you were out on your nature walk, you were under the watchful eye of snipers. See the drones up there? These people are deadly serious about not letting anyone, and I mean anyone, cross this river.”

“Is that why they threatened to shoot you?” he replied with a bit of attitude.

Hayes looked at him and seemed to rethink his whole approach. He sighed heavily and sat down next to them on the rocks, with the train below partially obscured by the trees on the hillside.

“I can't help but respect you kids. You've done a better job than most in staying alive. But you have to realize this is much bigger than you are. I’ve done deliveries for government-types like those guys on the bridge for a long time. These Army boys are under orders—very stupid orders if you ask me—but orders nonetheless. You can't just go sneaking around under the watchful eye of those people like you're on some kind of high school field trip. They will shoot you, shoot me, shoot your Grandma, shoot the smallest babe on that train—just on the off chance they can stop the disease from crossing this river.”

Victoria jumped in, upset. “First of all,” she said, “I'm not in high school anymore. I doubt Liam will ever go back, either. Second of all, with all the zombies walking around and all the infected people, there is no way to prevent the disease from crossing a simple river. Even a couple of dumb kids know that.”

“You're absolutely right. You share the opinion of most of us roadies at the CDC. But you do not share the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and with the president off doing god-knows-what, the military is pretty much in charge of managing the pieces of the nation that are still answering their phones.”

“But we saw the military killing zombies downtown,” Liam responded. “They helped us escape.”

“Well, it may be true they were killing zombies. That's their job. But I was there. Did you see any evidence they were helping us escape?”

He thought back to the battle. Except for a few volunteers from the Army and Marines, there were no troops on the St. Louis side of the river during the battle. Only the Abrams tank seemed to help them directly, and that was only for a few minutes. Then the Air Force came in and started the shock and awe. The bombs did drop to the north at first, but later they dropped them further south, including right on top of Captain Osborne. Maybe that was just a mistake in the chaos of war?

“So, it was just a coincidence the bombs, artillery, and tank fire helped us escape?” Liam sniped back.

“You always like to argue, don't you? Why do you think I was running so close to the lead guys trying to get out of there?”

Because you're a coward.

Hayes went on. “Those bombs would have killed us just as sure as the sun rises. We're all collateral now to the primary mission—which is to prevent the spread of the plague.”

He reflected on that while Hayes stood back up and brushed himself off.

“Right now, our only avenue of escape is to the south. The Army told me they're patrolling the eastern shore of the river, but they have no presence anymore in the entire state of Missouri. We have to get that train moving and on down the line before the Army changes their mind about letting this unauthorized transport continue out of the hot zone.”

“Hot zone?” Victoria asked.

“Yeah,” Hayes replied, “the middle of each metro area is now a bright red spot on some general’s map. They are letting people escape, for now, but there is going to come a time when they’ll try to close the whole thing down. It is pretty standard protocol in viral outbreaks, or so we’ve been told by our bosses.”

He started down the trail, leaving him and Victoria alone with the news.

“Pretty amazing a truck driver can get a meeting with soldiers up on some random bridge, huh?”

Liam thought about that for a second before replying, “Yeah, whatever he does for the CDC, I’ll be shocked if it involves driving a truck.”

3

He and Victoria hung back on the way down, giving themselves some distance from Hayes so they could talk. This time, he was in front of her.

“Do you think we can trust him?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Absolutely not. We know he lied to us about what he does for the CDC. He stopped an escaping train—with a hundred living people on it—so he could talk to his friends on this bridge. At this point, the only thing we know for sure about him is that he has poor taste in clothing.”

That gave him a laugh. He hadn't dwelled on the man's fashion sense but had to agree it was pretty bad.

Liam went on. “He told us to head south because the Army was on the Illinois side and wouldn't let us cross, but what if they ordered him to go south? Maybe the only reason he needs us is to help him complete his mission that way?”

“That doesn't make sense, either,” Victoria answered. “If he was important, the Army could have tossed him a boat or helicopter, and he could get downriver with no problem. Why would they force him back on this train?”

He considered her question for a few moments as they continued downhill. “You're going to think I'm wearing a tinfoil hat for saying this, but what if Hayes is a big shot at the CDC, trying to get out of town. Maybe he got left behind. Maybe his friends needed to talk to him in person, but they weren't willing to risk infecting themselves by letting him across the bridge? We don't know anything about the disease, the source of the infection, or how the government is responding to this emergency.”

Victoria seemed to thrive on the conspiracy. “Yes! That's why he told us the Joint Chiefs are in charge. If the president is AWOL, maybe he's dead? Maybe the CDC—and guys like Hayes—are as confused as the rest of us. He just can't tell us he's trapped because that would mean the government wasn't in control!”

This girl was someone after his own heart. He realized his father's penchant for conspiracy theories had a lot to do with that, but he wasn't going to nitpick.

“If you say anything about a 'shadow government,' I'm going to kiss you on the lips!”

Victoria chuckled behind him.

“Well, right now, I'm fairly certain there is a 'dark-shrouded government' out there. Maybe someday we'll discover the other.”

Liam walked in silence as they reached the bottom of the trail. He was unsure of what just transpired between them. Before he could follow up with her, she walked quickly toward the engine at the front.

“I'm going to get some answers from the engineer. At the very least, I want to know where this train is going,” she yelled back.

He ran to catch up, impressed at the forthrightness of his lovely partner.

Hayes climbed into the engine compartment, so they figured they'd follow him up the ladder and into the engineer's area as well. As he walked along the side of the engine, he noted it had a name. Valkyrie. It was stenciled in large black type, which made it obvious on the orange paint of the engine. He rubbed his hand on the letters as he walked by.

Liam's imagination had drawn the man driving the train as a portly dude with a blue and white striped uniform and a funny little hat that said “engineer” on it. He'd spent too much of his youth watching a TV show about toy trains.

He followed Victoria into the compartment and was shocked to see the engineer was a woman. Her hair had a touch of gray—he had a hard time guessing the age of women—and she wore blue jeans with a filthy white t-shirt. She looked more like a mechanic than an engineer, woman or no.

“Who the hell are you two?” she said with a slightly exotic accent. He guessed she was from Eastern Europe if his dad's war movies were accurate.

“Oh, they're friends of mine,” Hayes replied immediately. “They helped me get out of the Arch.”

“I see. Well, pardon me for not talking, but I need to get this train going again, and I don't exactly know what I'm doing.”

“You did great getting us here,” Victoria said. “Thank you sincerely from all of us in the back.”

She let her compliment soak in before continuing.

“We're just wondering where you're going? You know, since we're kind of a captive audience.”

“Listen. I'm getting this train as far away from those things as I'm able. Going south as far as she'll go. But I have one stop to make—besides this stop for your persuasive friend.” She gave a nod to Hayes. “I have to pick up my husband. He's the real engineer. Over the phone, he walked me through some of the basics of getting his engine started, and I was able to get the machine moving, though not very fast. His engine was linked to a mate that has a malfunction, so we all get to watch the light show as we push the wretched thing.”

She turned dials and pushed buttons as she spoke.

“Bottom line is I don't know where I'm going besides picking up my family. From there, the track points south. Now go. I'm getting ready to blow the horn, so people know we're moving again.”

“Thank you, ma'am. I hope you find your family,” Victoria said softly while touching the woman's elbow.

“Yeah, thanks,” Liam added.

The engineer stopped what she was doing. “Thank you.” Liam thought she looked even more tired and worn down than everyone else. She had the stress of saving lots of folks.

And I thought saving Grandma was stressful.

As he walked out the door, he saw something jammed in a nook where the engine crew kept their gear. He wasn't positive what it was, but he kept it in mind for later reference. It might be the answer to someone's prayers ...

One last look at Hayes—he stayed in the engine—and he and Victoria went out and climbed off the Valkyrie. As they did, the engineer—they forgot to get her name—blew two long bursts on the horns to indicate the train was about to start moving.

Liam and Victoria ran together.

Everywhere, people scrambled to get back on their respective freight cars. When he and Victoria finally reached the last car, they were shocked to see a lot more people on it. Many of them were utterly filthy with coal dust. Those citizens smartly opted for the wide-open flatcar rather than the confining filth of the tenders.

The clanging sound of cars grabbing began in the front of the train, signaling departure right as they reached the car with Grandma on it. Liam had a panicked moment that they wouldn't even fit on the crowded car anymore, but Jones stood by the ladder and made space for them to climb aboard.

The police officer gave them a friendly greeting. “Smoking on the left, non- on the right. We have beverages in the front and VIP room in the back. Welcome to the High Rollers Club.”

They both laughed.

“And where's the women's powder room?”

“I'm sorry ma'am, but you just walked out of the restroom,” Jones said with a broad smile while pointing to the trees on the hillside.

She responded with a horrified “ugh,” but Liam found no humor in it. Not because it wasn't funny—he smiled to the big guy to show his appreciation—but because it was true. Nothing was ever going to be the same. Even the most basic things such as plumbing were going to be hard to find unless civilization kept hold somewhere else. St. Louis seemed to be a lost cause.

Right now, the High Rollers Club was the best they had.

Liam stood on the wooden slats of the flat car as it lurched forward. Glad to be moving again. Glad to make it back from his spy mission. But mostly he was glad to have his feet out of the toilet.

4

They moved with no time to spare. A crowd of zombies approached from the trackway behind them. The answer to an earlier thought of Liam's was that yes, the plague victims were going to follow the train regardless if they could see it or not. It seemed impossible, but zombies themselves were “impossible” a week ago, too. Who knew what they were capable of? Then again, maybe they just kept walking in the direction they were already pointed?

The train reached speed once more. Now that he knew the engineer wasn't a professional, he understood why they weren’t breaking any speed records. With the crowd packed tightly on the flatcar, it was probably a good thing they weren't going too fast. Falling off the final car would be terminal.

He and Victoria snaked through the crowd and made their way to where Grandma sat against the truck tire. They squeezed in next to her and spoke of what they saw up on the bridge. She took it in with her usual calm demeanor, which agitated him.

“Grandma, why aren't you more concerned about him? We think he’s trouble.”

“Ah, Liam, when you get to be my age, it takes a lot to concern yourself with every detail of what's going on. It doesn't matter who he is to me, as long as this train keeps moving south and gets you and Victoria out of harm's way. That's where we'll find your house, your parents, and hopefully some law enforcement to control these sick people. You two should stay away from him, though, if you think he’s dangerous.”

“Well, that’s easy enough. We just avoid the train engine because that’s where he is.”

“Yeah,” Victoria added, “he likes to be closest to escape.”

Victoria laughed, but he wasn’t sure how to take that. If the CDC guy knew more than they did, perhaps being in the front of the train was the smart play.

Unsure of himself, Liam sat back to think. He immediately drifted off as the car rattled along, but it wasn't sixty seconds before lots of gunfire from up in the front jerked him awake. People who stood near the edges of the car began screaming and almost as one they recoiled from the edges. Several tried to wedge themselves under the big trailer into the space where Grandma sat and forced him and Victoria to move Grandma almost directly underneath the axle of the big trailer.

“We have to see this,” Liam said before he was trapped by everyone. “Let’s go,” he said to Victoria.

“Quick! Go. I’ll be fine.” Grandma would say that if she were falling over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel, but he had to leave her.

The pair managed to get out from under the tractor-trailer.

Oh, crap.

The train entered some kind of quarry complex. On their left, next to the muddy brown river, were huge conveyor belts and machines that dumped the white rock onto barges and trucks. On the right was a maze of roadways where oversized dump trucks—had they been operating—hauled rocks from the deep tunnels of the mine.

Hundreds of parked civilian cars and trucks created a line of traffic along the rock path around and down into the big hole in the ground, to some point below his field of vision. It seemed suicidal to drive a car into a hole in the earth with everything else going on. Sort of like driving into your own grave.

Zombies by the thousands surrounded most of the top edge of the pit quarry. He noted this facility was next door to the bridge they were just on, and the mystery of the big blockade with no people was now solved. The cars had been diverted off the highway, away from the closed bridges, and seemingly directed here.

“Why would they drive down into a quarry?” Victoria asked. “Couldn't they figure out the zombies would follow them in?”

“I think you can read my mind,” he said weakly.

He could only imagine what drove them on. When zombies are crawling all over your car, and the interstate is permanently closed, maybe the quarry looked like somewhere they could hole up—literally—and defend themselves. The train continued ahead, running over some of the wandering zombies. People in the forward cars fired guns at the infected orienting on the train. Many of the zombies, at least on the topmost level, were willing to turn away from their quarry inside the quarry and focus on the much closer blood factories rolling up to them on the train.

As he got closer, he got a better impression of what was going on inside the pit. The cars were parked around a spiral road, which descended until it reached the bottom. He still couldn't see that bottom, but he could guess people were down there trying to hold off the zombies who were following the spiral behind them. The jam went back toward the highway. It seemed everyone mistook this for a road to safety. Once inside the gravity well of the pit, they had no choice but to continue down because the rim was already awash in zombies and there was no backing up. How far could they drive into the rocky tunnels?

So many mysteries here.

The second-level loop around the mine had a second access ramp that allowed some people to escape on foot back to ground level before they got too far down the hole. He saw people using that ramp, running out both directions around the rim of the mine. Some were coming toward the train. Others were heading into the woods or back toward the highway.

The largest group headed for the train—toward rescue. They were up against an area thick with zombies waiting on the edge. Some members of their group were using weapons to try to clear a path. He judged there was no way those people could get through so many undead without help from this side.

The engineer gave a long blast on the air horn. The train slowed down to an even slower crawl, but not a full stop.

“What the hell? Is she going to try to save those people?” Victoria wondered.

“It sure looks like it. But who is going to save us?”

As they watched, the right side of the train was engulfed front to back by plague victims, each trying to gain purchase on a car. He looked back—and wasn't surprised to see a large group of zombies coming from the direction of the train tracks behind them. The followers had never stopped following ...

They only had a few minutes before zombies would be surrounding them from almost every angle. There was essentially nothing he could do to change the outcome of this battle against so many attackers.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to try.

5

Liam looked at his options, briefly hoping someone else would suggest a plan.

“I think we should do something,” he told her. “No one else is helping.”

“If you've got a plan, let's hear it,” she countered.

He could try to organize some kind of rescue mission with police and gang members forging out into the crowd of zombies to try to meet up with the incoming group of people—but he was pretty sure that would fail based on the sheer size of the rising horde. And they'd waste a lot of ammo; ammo had to be running low for most of the police.

He looked over his shoulder to the river side of the complex. Several big dump trucks sat there. His first thought upon seeing them came from one of his zombie books. He couldn't remember the name, but in it, huge dump trucks were used by evil men to deposit large buckets of zombies on the good guys. He doubted that could happen here in real life. No evil men were lurking by the trucks.

“I think if we get into one of those dump trucks, we can use it to push through the thickest part of this crowd of zombies and help those people cross over to the train.”

She looked at where the trucks were parked, how fast the train was crawling along, and the status of the people in the group moving in their direction.

“It's going to be close.”

“Good enough for me.”

Though the quarry side was clogged with infected, the other side of the train was almost free of them. The massive crowd behind was uncomfortably close, but still a few minutes back. Once they caught up to the train, all sides would be consumed. There was little time.

He felt stupid saying it, but he yelled to Jones and Victoria as he went down the short ladder.

“Cover me!”

Jones said something he couldn't hear, but Victoria yelled, “Go for it!” as if he were part of a sporting event.

He dodged around a couple of walkers who happened to be in his way as he ran the fifty yards to the trucks. He had his pistol, but speed was more important than killing any one or two random z's.

It was large, but he was glad to see it wasn't the truly enormous dump truck he’d seen on National Geographic specials. It was just a normal-sized dump truck.

He had no trouble scaling the side but was stymied at the door. It was locked. He hadn't even considered what he'd do once he got into the cab. Now he wasn't even going to make it inside.

He took out his pistol and readied it to shoot out the glass. At the last second, he realized he was about to do something stupid. He engaged the safety and then used the gun as a hammer to break the window. In seconds he was inside. He found a lone key in the ignition. He figured these trucks never left the premises and thus never needed their keys removed. If someone got in at night they could joyride around the quarry—the teen boy in him imagined what a fun night that would be—, but the big gates in the front would keep anyone from leaving the property.

With a turn of the key, the big rig started to turn over, then sputtered to a stop. He steadied himself as he looked out the window, ready to try again.

This is going to be a piece of cake!

The train was moving slowly down the track from his right to his left. The engine was now coming in line with the southernmost part of the open pit and was at a point closest to the people trying to get out of the mine. The back of the train was starting to be enveloped by those infected already lurking at the mine, while the group of trailing zombies was still a couple of hundred yards behind but closing quickly.

It's now or never.

A second turn of the key did no better. The truck started for a moment, then died. Only then did he look down and realize it was a stick shift.

Are you kidding me?

He looked down at the extra foot pedal on the floor. Purpose unknown. He had never learned to drive a stick. His parents had two cars with automatic transmissions.

On an ordinary day with plenty of time, he knew he could figure it out. When zombies were pushing in from multiple directions and people's lives depended on the results—he decided not to risk it.

He kicked open the door, scampered down the side, and ran back toward the train. On his right, the zombies were uncomfortably close. Again he dodged the few random infected between the trucks and the train. He would only have time to return to the truck one more time before the larger group was upon him. It all depended on finding someone who could drive a stick.

Fortunately, he had a large fan base watching him, including Victoria and Jones—both had moved to the front ladder of the flatcar.

“Can anyone drive a stick?” he yelled, out of breath.

He looked at Victoria—it just seemed like that was how it would go—but he was surprised when Jones jumped down.

“Let's go, man.”

He gave Victoria a smile, then turned around with his big friend and started back.

The man was big indeed, but fit for his size. After all, he was a police officer. But even with their combined speed, they made it to the truck just ahead of the leading zombies in the rear. Jones had to push one of them over to give himself room to climb.

Once in the cab, Jones started the truck like a pro and pulled forward.

“Look, kid, I got this. When we get up to the train, I'm going to pull up next to the rear car, and you're going to jump back on.”

“I can help you!”

“No doubt. But those people are going to need all the firepower they can get on the train. You have to hold them off,” he said while pointing to the arriving crowd of undead. “Once you do that, maybe you can clear as many of the zombies as possible between the survivors and the train. Wow, I can see the whole thing now that I'm in this seat.”

Liam shared his perspective. It was obvious what had to be done. It involved running over a lot of sick, bloody, ruined people to save the healthy ones beyond.

He wanted to stay with Jones because he felt it was his idea to use the truck, but he quashed his ego and acquiesced to the request to return to the train.

Jones pulled out his radio as they neared the train.

“This is Jonesy. I need you guys to coordinate some shooters to help clear a path for those people—and kill any zombies I miss when I drive through. Good luck. Out.

“Good luck, kid. Get ready to jump.” Jones expertly maneuvered the truck alongside the flatcar, and he was able to step out of the cab while holding the door, and jump the couple feet over to the crowded platform. Many hands helped pull him in.

Once he was safe, Jones slowed so the train would pass him on his right, then he turned to cross the tracks and accelerated along the right side of the train. It was all physics from that point.

The train was about halfway off the property of the pit mine. The engineer stopped the train just as Jones turned toward the mine. She sounded the horn over and over for extra emphasis, drawing in friend and foe.

Jones also laid into his horn as he started crushing zombies. The dump bed was empty, but the vehicle was so massive it had no problem handling the ever-greater number of infected it was pushing aside—and under. It was making a path as Liam had intended.

The big dump truck started turning along the outermost ring of the spiral around the top of the mine. It moved almost directly away from the rail line and directly toward the mass of people pushing for the salvation of the train.

He couldn't see exactly what was happening with the truck once it started moving away, but the bloody trail of downed zombies behind it told him enough.

“Aw, man. We should have gotten several of those dump trucks working, and we could have cleaned up this mess!” Victoria said, as if realizing something important.

He looked at the remaining bank of trucks with longing, but the trailing zombies were catching up to his car.

He and Victoria moved as best they could through all the people huddled in the middle. Grandma was safely ensconced under the truck's axle, so they didn't have to worry about her. That was the only good news.

Did they all follow us?

With so many zombies converging on the back of the train, they would have to shoot to stay alive, no doubt about that. But all that shooting would lead to the dead stacking up under foot—which was how they almost climbed onto the flatcar the last time.

What they needed was for the train to start moving again. That would have to wait until the people were rescued. In the meantime, everyone was in danger.

The zombies arrived like the pull of a blanket over their heads.

The shooting arrived with them.

6

As he suspected, there were a lot of new guns on the back of the train. Many of the people who came out of the coal cars had weapons, and they were anxious to get in on the action. As soon as the zombies shambled up to the back of the train, they plugged away at them. Before he could shout any warnings, it became impossibly noisy.

He and Victoria tried to use their weapons from where they stood, but they were dismayed to realize there were too many bodies standing in front of them to even consider using a gun. The outside row recoiled inward from the tide of plague-driven zombies washing up at their feet. It was mere moments before the first victims were snatched off the car and into the sea of hands, inciting panic among the remaining passengers as they pushed, pulled, punched, and clawed their way into the middle of the train car. Some tossed strangers off the edge to stay alive—it was a stampede smothered inside a murder-suicide.

What was once going to be a heroic defense of the rear car, turned swiftly into a debacle of fratricide. Fearing they'd be tossed out, he grabbed Victoria's hand and pulled her back on top of him as he fell beneath the tractor-trailer near Grandma. She was packed in like a sardine in her section. He wondered if she was being hurt by all the struggling people.

The most effective shooters, the ones inflicting the most damage, were at the rear. They had the most room, and because they grouped together in anticipation of the trailing zombies, they had plenty of time to prepare.

In under a minute—much faster than his smaller group had done earlier—they had created enough carnage to stack the dead directly behind them. Like before, the zombies used their fallen comrades as a biological ramp to crawl up to the survivors. Hands grabbed at passengers’ legs. One shooter fell, then another. Then more.

Within minutes, and despite the withering gunfire, the zombies were up on the flatcar, tearing through the rear contingent and moving forward. He looked at Victoria and saw the fear in her eyes.

The tractor-trailer was parked so the legs holding it up were near the back of the rail car. That put about 80 feet, and 50 or so adults—only some with weapons—between them and the incoming wave.

He caught sight of Grandma who was watching the whole thing unfold. She gave him a weak smile as she huddled with everyone else under the truck. Escape was impossible for her.

“Liam,” Victoria shouted over the gunshots and screams, “can you call the engineer? We have to move this train, or we're going to be swamped.”

“I don't know if she has a police radio up there. But I'll try.” He repeatedly tried to raise someone up in the front of the train. No one answered.

He tried to get a look over to Jones and his effort with the dump truck, but there were too many faces staring back at him, blocking most of his view.

“Liam, we have to do it ourselves. We can jump on the car in front of us and keep going until we reach the engine.”

He thought it sounded crazy, but he couldn't think of a better plan. Grandma was in some serious trouble if they didn't make something happen for her. He could stay and fire round after round from his gun, but more zombies were surrounding the train than he could realistically dispatch, even if he used all 1,000 rounds from his backpack.

He trusted Victoria.

“Grandma, Victoria and I—”

“Yes, dear. Please hurry!”

He did something he had never done in his entire life. He gave Grandma a kiss on the cheek.

“I'll save you. I promise,” he shouted, hoping her hearing aid would pick it up.

He and Victoria slithered through the mass of people and made their way to the front of the rear car so they could jump the small gap to the next car—an open-topped coal hopper. A couple of zombies milled about in the gap, but it was an easy jump for both. A quick climb and then over the lip of the car.

There were several people in that coal car, but only a pair of men were hanging over the edges to shoot at the zombies. The walls of the hopper were too high to effectively wield a weapon. The high, metal walls made the people inside very secure—unless there was an impossibly large pile of zombies outside—but it took them out of the fight as well.

They ran along the interior, avoiding women and children sitting inside. With a quick jump and pull to the top of the far wall, he was able to straddle it. He planted his foot on the ladder up the outside of the car and extended his hand to help Victoria up and out. He could tell she wanted to do it on her own, but she was still wearing a black dress and flats with broken heels. Not exactly the best outfit for running, jumping, and climbing.

The next car was a big, enclosed, freight car. They hurriedly clambered on top and ran forward among a few of the people who sat up there. The engine was about twenty cars ahead.

From the high vantage point, he turned to his right and was able to take in the action playing out as Jones reached the group of survivors next to the mine. He had forced the truck through to the cheering men and women. The number of zombies had been reduced, perhaps by as much as half along the roadway. It might be enough.

It looked like Jones was going to turn the truck around and push more dead out of the way on his way back, but Liam had to keep moving and wasn’t able to watch any more.

They worked their way up the train cars. Some were simple up-and-overs like the freight car. Many were challenging, such as dropping into and climbing out of the coal cars. One unique coal car was particularly difficult because it had sloped panels in the front and rear, making it slippery as grease to get out. Victoria's shoes were incredibly slick on the coal dust, and when she finally dragged herself high enough where he could grab her, it looked like she had black stockings on her legs. Her arms and face weren't much better, but he did enjoy holding her hands, however briefly.

They passed many of the remaining cops and gang members, both frantically firing into the core of the zombies swarming between them and the arriving survivors. He hoped they wouldn't accidentally hit anyone that wasn't already infected.

They were only a few cars from the front when they heard desperate wailing coming from the group of survivors out in the action. He didn't see the dump truck anywhere. There was nowhere it could have gone in that short of time. Except—

“Oh, no.” He could guess what had happened. Jones had driven off the edge of the pit mine. How far down was the next level? He couldn't see below the lip of the mine.

Victoria was speechless. She gave him a slight nudge in the back as if to say they had to keep moving.

There was no time for mourning. The group from the pit seemed enraged at the loss. They kept coming, killing zombies as they got in their way.

A few minutes later, and he and Victoria boarded the walking platform surrounding the engine. They ran inside the side door and found the engineer on the right side of the compartment, watching the action unfold from her window.

“You have to move the train! Even a hundred feet will help,” he shouted at her.

The engineer jumped, obviously startled. “Good god, you scared me!”

“Oh, sorry,” he said in a less frightening voice.

She pointed outside. “Shouldn't we wait for them to get here? They aren't far now. I stopped so we could save those poor people.”

“They can still reach the train even if we move a few feet. The rear car is piled high with infected. That pile will fall if we move the train. We have to do it now!”

She looked at him, then at Victoria, who was vigorously nodding.

“OK, just give me a second, and I'll push us a few feet.”

He looked out the window as the train started to move and could see the panic in the faces of those running toward him, so he moved out onto the walkway of the engine and starting waving them in. He noticed Hayes was already out on the platform, toward the back, watching the action. Still without a gun.

Liam had no intention of doing nothing. He started carefully aiming at the zombies down below, each hit making a little more room for those who were so close to sanctuary. He ran through his nine rounds and was left with an empty gun in his hands. He hoped he helped. There seemed to be large gaps in the crowd of dead closest to the side of the train. Enough space for the runners to make it through.

Thank you, Jones. I won't forget you. Maybe I'll write a book about you.

Soon the panting survivors arrived and scrambled up to whatever car they happened to reach first. Several children were being dragged on the ground by older children, probably their siblings. He tried not to dwell on what had happened to their parents. There were many fewer survivors than when he first saw them on the far rim of the mine. They had suffered horrible casualties.

Once they were safely on board, the train began to roll faster. The survivors at the bottom of the mine were left to their own version of Dante's Inferno. But then, so were hundreds of thousands of others behind them, back in the city. Each a potential vector for the deadly plague.

And there's one less hero in this crappy world.

Chapter 17: Valkyrie

Liam only had a few minutes to think about what just happened while he rode on the outer railing of the engine. They had saved a lot of people—maybe forty or fifty by his estimate. But he had lost his new friend, and he was unsure of the status of Grandma, or how many had died defending the rear car. They had to put some room between themselves and the frenzy of zombies behind them, but—

He went back inside.

“I need to check on my Grandma. She's on the last car.”

“Not to worry. We have one more stop ahead. There's a road and a little park a mile ahead where I'm meeting my family. You can run back when I stop for them.”

“Won't that give the zombies a chance to catch us again?” Victoria asked. “They seem to be able to follow us pretty well.”

“I'm not just going to drive the train right by my family, am I? We're stopping for as long as it takes to pick them up.”

He and Victoria moved out onto the platform around the engine. He gave her a devilish smile. “You know, you did pretty good coming over the train. We could run back on top of all the cars while we're still moving.”

“Are you nuts? One fall and you'd be dead. The zombies would catch you before you could climb back on. Assuming you don't get yourself cut in half by the wheels.”

“Well, it works in the movies, but I guess you're right. We'll wait until the train stops and then run back on the ground.”

“'Bout time you listened to me,” Victoria said cheerfully.

They had a few moments to wait while the train ground its way through the beginnings of the wooded park. A high cliff rose above the right side of the tracks, so they watched out over the river on the left side.

Things happened so fast today; he tried to process it. Speaking loudly over the dragging created by the disabled engine, he asked: “Do you think Jones made it?” He didn't know what answer he wanted to hear. That he was still alive but surrounded by endless zombies or that he died quickly and heroically.

“I don't know. But I worry we're all gonna die out here. Maybe not on this train, but out in this new horrible world. We joke about calling them zombies, but we ignore the truth. They are Death. I know I shouldn't say it. I don't want to say it. But it's how I feel after everything we've seen. Even my prayers feel hopeless.”

She took a deep breath. “A few days ago, before the plague, before we met, I almost wanted to die. Now I've found I want to live, but we may all die anyway. Funny, huh?”

He didn't know how to answer because his head was foggy. The exhaustion caught up with him in the lull.

The pitch of the motor changed. The engineer had begun to throttle back.

With great effort he focused on what needed to be done in the moment. “Well, I think we're going to make it. And I'll tell you something else; Grandma is going to make it, too. You and I will make sure of that!”

“Amen!”

He turned to her and got serious again. “I want you to stay here because I'm coming right back as soon as I know Grandma is still OK. You and I have to stay up here, so we know what's going on.”

“Liam,” she said with a bit of rejection.

“I promise I’ll be right back. Make sure no one moves the train before I return.” Liam secretly nodded to Hayes, still standing toward the back of the railing.

“I guess that makes sense, but I bet I’m faster than you,” she said. A moment later she looked at her dirty dress shoes. “But not in these.”

“I’ll be fast enough, but I want to race you someday,” he said, knowing it was a bit awkward to suggest. That did, however, end the conversation.

He didn't mention part of his request was so he wouldn't have to worry about her and Grandma in the dangerous rear car. He wanted Victoria to stay in the engine where she'd at least have some protection. In a perfect world, he'd get Grandma up into the engine as well, but without her wheelchair or walker to move her, he didn't want to risk having her on the ground if the train started moving again.

Liam prepared himself to jump. When the train had nearly stopped, he was off and running.

“I'll be right back!”

Victoria, watching behind him, shouted, “Give her my best!”

2

He approached the rear car to the sound of guns. A few shooters were still alive on the flatcar, and they shot up the remaining zombies as best they could. Many of the other survivors climbed off that last car, making for the safety of the high gondola cars, or the tops of boxcars.

“Grandma,” he shouted when he spotted her, still under the truck axle.

“Hi, Liam,” she replied, pointing up at the sky. “What a beautiful morning.”

“Yeah, sure. Glad you're in such good spirits. I was worried sick!”

“You left me in good hands. Though we lost a lot of good people.”

He climbed up, then shimmied under the trailer so he could be next to her. He gave her a hug. Despite saying she was on a pleasant morning train excursion, her hands trembled just like his had done after he was almost shot by that fake policeman. It scared him to see her in such a state. He grabbed some water and small grain bars from his backpack and shared them with her. He also reloaded his gun and dumped a ton of the small shells into his pockets, so he'd have some with him.

They watched as the last of the injured zombies got cleared from their rail car by the few remaining gun handlers. Everyone that hadn't moved to other cars stood or sat in a small area near the front of the flatcar. The back half was now tainted with lots of blood, though the bodies themselves had been pushed off.

“They're picking someone up, and then the train will be moving again.”

He looked over his shoulder to see if they were followed. The front of the zombie wave from their engagement at the quarry was slowly coming around the corner. They were still several minutes behind but closing the distance with the inevitability of a sunrise.

Liam lifted the radio from his backpack, knowing it didn’t work the last time.

“This is Liam. We have to move the train. The horde will be here in minutes. Over.”

There was no reply.

Is this thing on?

He tried a few more times and still got no response. The train hadn't moved, either. He thought angrily of every movie he'd ever seen where the radio goes out at the most inopportune time. He couldn't fathom how his radio would similarly fail at his most desperate hour.

“Grandma, will you be OK back here? I have to run up front and tell them what's coming.”

“I'm not going anywhere. I'm a little sore from that big man throwing me. Did he save those people, dear?”

“He saved 'em, yep.” He avoided his eventual fate.

“Oh, that's wonderful,” she replied, appearing satisfied.

“I'll be back for you!” He grabbed his backpack this time, slid out from under the trailer, then off the flat deck. She appeared tiny under the huge trailer. He gave her one last wave and dashed away.

The zombie pursuit slowly approached.

At least they can't run.

He wondered how far he'd run today because he was doing it again. Briefly, he tried to guess how long the 20-car train was, so he could figure out the distance, but that only lasted a few paces because he spotted his friend.

She stood on the edge of the engine and his first impression was that she was a mess. Bruised face. Hair as wild as a cave girl. Black evening dress torn in several places. Legs and arms coal-covered and sweat-soaked from exertion. But she was also striking in her poise and strength, though that illusion was ruined when she spoke.

“Get your buns up here!” she cried out.

He ran the rest of the way, and she gave him a warm hug as he climbed aboard.

“I thought you'd been taken,” she said with emotion.

“I've only been gone a couple of minutes.”

“Seemed like you were gone for a half hour. I'm sorry, I have a horrible sense of time.”

“Let's get inside. The train has to move, now.” Together they entered the engine cab, but the driver wasn't there.

They found her unloading an SUV on the other side of the train along with several kids, a man who must have been her husband, and an older woman. They carried flats of bottled water, pillows and things for the kids, and several guns. They piled everything on the end of the platform where he stood to watch. He and Victoria helped put the gear inside the engine where it would be protected.

“We have to hurry! There are zombies near the back of the train again,” he called down, unsure who might be listening.

He didn't hear the guns yet, which would be the telltale sign trouble had arrived.

To his relief, the man climbed onto the engine and ran past him into the compartment. To no one in particular, the guy yelled out, “I snapped the brake lines on the dead engine. We can open her up now.” His accent was similar to the woman engineer, if not a little stronger.

Once inside the compartment, the man went to work spinning up the engine. Liam assumed he must be the engineer husband of the woman who had been driving. The horn rang out multiple times, each one a long three-second blast. No mistaking it was time to leave, though he only passed a couple of people loitering off the train itself.

The kids came up next. Two young boys, about nine or ten years old, both dressed in jeans and sweatshirts—like they were trying to wear some protection from the biters. Liam thought it might backfire given the heat of the days of June, but he commended them for thinking ahead.

Last up was the woman engineer and her older friend. Once aboard, she ran into the compartment and shouted, “Aboard!”

Shooting started in the rear of the train as it lurched forward.

The man was, indeed, the actual engineer of this train. The engine hummed at fever pitch as he tried to get them up to a fast cruising speed. After many hours of running along at a near-to-walking pace, it seemed like they were on a bullet train. They still pushed the dead engine, but it was no longer sparking and thundering. They were free of that problem, and the powerful engine hit its stride quickly.

“This is amazing!” he shouted to Victoria. He pulled her out to the walkway where his wild hair started blowing around. The breeze caught her hair, too, and she stood like a puppy dog in the car window as they cruised along. They shared a smile and he once again noted how bruised and banged up her face was, even under such wonderful circumstances.

“We’re going to make it,” he mouthed to her.

He had just enough time to celebrate feeling kinship with Victoria when the train came around a bend and screeched in deceleration.

She lost her balance and bumped into him. He was happy to be on the receiving end of that impact, but it didn't soften what he saw ahead.

They were so close to freedom now. The bridge over the Meramec River, and to the suburbs, was a quarter-mile in front of them.

But there was one more roadblock.

3

The engineer eased off the brakes and let the engine continue the last quarter of a mile toward the end of the line. Some kind of factory or building was on their right—it had four large smokestacks and a huge pile of coal next to it. They went under another conveyor belt that seemed to feed coal from a depot near the river. The train finally went under a large metal pipe of some kind and then skidded to a stop about fifty feet from a bridge.

Several emergency services vehicles—including a green fire engine—were parked on the other side. A number of police cars and highway department trucks also flanked the far edge of the bridge. All of them had their blue and red lights flashing, giving the whole thing a nervous energy. But the real showstopper—a large construction crane—dangled a massive wrecking ball over the middle of the tracks.

The superhero part of his brain tried to run the numbers on whether the train could plow through all that stuff and survive, but it came up with bad news. The engineer seemed to find the same answer as well because he applied more brake, rather than gas.

Several men stood in the middle of the bridge, near the wrecking ball, guns in hand. The message was clear: this was the end of the line.

The engineer spoke up. “These guys again! The City of Arnold is on the other side of that river. They closed all the road bridges into their jurisdiction, including Interstate 55, which is where we tried to cross two days ago. That's when I called Tatia and told her to try to reach my train and bring it south, so I could meet her. I was hopeful they hadn't blocked this route, though I should have known better.”

A few handfuls of people huddled in the bushes and trees on the approach to the bridge. Other survivors emerged from near the big pile of coal. No one came out to greet the train. He figured they were watching this new development at the blockade. If those people weren't being allowed to cross, what hope did the passengers on the train have?

The engineer paced around a bit, then spoke to his wife. “Is there any way we can back up the train and cross downtown? Is it still open?”

She shook her head no.

“We came from downtown,” Liam interjected. “The military bombed it to a pulp.”

The engineer continued. “There are some routes through the city we might be able to use, but I bet they all end just like this one. No one wants to let any of us city folk come into their turf.”

Minutes went by as the engineers deliberated other routes through St. Louis. They found an ancient railroad map tucked under a seat, but none of the routes offered a path to safety. Nothing was as sure as the safety one river away from them.

He looked at Victoria, sensing he needed to do something to help. “While you guys think about other routes, Victoria and I will go talk to the people guarding the bridge. We'll see if they're letting anyone across. Maybe they just don't want the train to go through, but the people are fine?”

It was a lame excuse, but he wasn't running on much sleep. He very much wanted to talk to the authorities on the bridge, so he could figure out what he should do next to protect Grandma and Victoria. He thought of finding a boat or swimming across. Maybe he could find something floaty to put Grandma on. Maybe the little river was shallow enough to wade across at some point. There had to be a solution.

Hayes, who had been in the background during most of the recent action and discussions, jumped in. “As a CDC employee, maybe they'll talk to me.” Without waiting for approval, he stepped out of the cab and started down.

Liam and Victoria ran out to follow him.

The engineers and their family were content to wait in the safety of the engine. He suspected they were delaying a decision on backing out until they saw what would happen next.

A couple of the St. Louis police officers dismounted from the train and wanted to meet on the bridge as well, but Hayes was very persuasive, arguing he was their most senior government official and could get them across. Too many in the group approaching the bridge would constitute a threat to those on the far side of the river. Better to take it slow ...

Liam said nothing to that. It could very well be true.

The trio walked out onto the bridge, careful to not put a foot through the open railroad ties.

“We meet again,” Hayes said. “I guess you two never leave each other's sides, huh?”

“So what. What's it to you?” Victoria snapped, as she raised her hands high in the face of the police ahead.

“No need to get defensive. Just making small talk.” His bemused tone suggested he knew he pushed her buttons.

“That's far enough!” an officer in a black uniform shouted from ahead. “By order of the Mayor of Arnold, Missouri, you are ordered to turn around and return to the safety of your homes.”

“Safety of our homes?” Victoria muttered.

Liam softly spoke to Hayes. “I'm from Imperial. It's just south of Arnold. They might let a local through.”

“It's OK, kid. I got this.”

“I'm Doctor Hayes, and I work for the CDC. I'm under the direct command of the President of the United States. He orders you to allow me to proceed on foot to complete my duties relating to this pandemic!”

The officers laughed.

“Congratulations! You just won me fifty bucks. I bet Billy here one of you would pull that 'I'm with the government' bull.”

“I can prove it. I have ID!” Hayes pulled out his wallet and waved it in the air.

“No, thanks. We aren't taking any chances with that Ebola-crap flying around.”

“Don't you idiots know the plague is everywhere?” Hayes shouted. “It's already on your side of the river. I guarantee it.”

Liam gave him a nudge. “Be nice!”

“Our orders are to stop everyone. We have family here and aren't taking any chances.”

Hayes thought for a moment. “What about locals? My friend here lives in Imperious, to the south of here.”

“Imperial!” Liam shouted to correct him.

“Ha, ha, nice try! Look, I don't care who you are. I had to send a sweet little group of nuns packing, so my sympathy meter is in the crapper. You people aren't getting across this bridge.”

“Just allow me to come over. I'm perfectly healthy. These others aren't important. I'll make sure you're rewarded by the Federal Government.” Hayes took a step to be away from Liam and Victoria.

The lead officer also stepped forward. He was in the black uniform of the local constabulary. Liam respected his AR-style tactical rifle. The big scope was impressive. He seemed to take it personally. “Are you bribing us?” His rifle pointed to the rail ties below, though there was a warning, too.

Hayes huffed as if he wasn't used to being turned away from anywhere he wanted to go. He spun around and started walking back.

Maybe he is a nobody. That's the second time today he's been turned back on a bridge.

Inwardly, he snickered at how Hayes talked himself up but wondered if he was laughing at his own misfortune. If the guy was the important dude he claimed, they might all be getting to safety right now.

Victoria asked the lead cop, “Is there any hope? We have a whole train of families, kids, old seniors. Can you at least give us an idea how to survive? Their homes aren't safe. Nothing back that way is,” she said while pointing over her shoulder.

Victoria's plea, and Hayes' retreat, seemed to temper the lead man. He slung his rifle back over his shoulder and took several steps in their direction. Still a good distance away.

“Look. There's nothing we can do. Our orders are very clear to hold this bridge and prevent the plague from reaching our neighborhoods. Reach our families. I feel for you. I really do. But if I let you across, and the plague kills my best friend's baby girl, I'd never forgive myself.”

He took another couple of steps.

“You guys can hole up in that power plant. It has strong doors. Lots of room. Good for defending yourselves. It has a chance. We might even be able to get some food to you.”

It sounded like the most reasonable thing he'd heard all day.

Not ten seconds later, shots echoed from the back of the train. Fate always seemed to catch up to him.

“Thank you for your offer,” Liam said. “But that noise means the walking plague has caught up with us. My Grandma is on the train and we’re going back to fight. We have to do something.”

He took Victoria’s hand and together they jogged off the bridge.

4

After they got off the railroad ties of the bridge, he let go of her hand and sprinted ahead of Victoria.

“I’m going ahead to get her ready!” he said as he let go.

She may have been a runner, but her shoes slowed her down. He ran full speed to rescue Grandma and wasn't stopping or slowing for anything.

“I’ll be right behind you,” she replied.

He ran past Hayes, who looked lost near the front of the dead train.

Liam ran past the two engineers and their family, standing at the door of the Valkyrie's engine room. One of the little ones waved down and he gave a sideways wave while on the run.

He yelled to the other passengers as he went by, “Zombies are here! The train is blocked ahead.”

As he ran by all the cars of the train, he repeated his message. He saw the confusion of those left alive. Stay on the train and fight until overwhelmed or get off the train and hope to escape. He didn't look back to learn which choices they made, nor did he offer his teenaged gamer advice, which would have been to fight it out. His only concern was Grandma.

The tracks were bullet-straight here, so he could already see the last car. The zombies were widely spread out behind the train, but they were coming in great numbers a bit further down the right-of-way. Some of them were faster than the others. Those advance zombies were picked off by the remaining shooters, but guns would be useless in a matter of minutes.

This is it.

He had never really appreciated the concept of death. Not even in any of the many situations he'd survived the past several days. He knew he'd been in a bad spot with that robber, but he didn't have time to think about death until after it happened. Now he was staring at Death as it walked toward him. It felt like walking along the edge of a high cliff over a bottomless pit. The anxiety tried to blossom in his midsection and he sensed his arms were in danger of getting the shakes again. Would it force him to cower in a clump of flowers like he did on that first day?

Man up, Liam! Think and plan.

His father's voice was stern, and he tried to think ahead, but Grandma was his only concern at that moment.

He scrambled up onto the flatcar in one fluid jump. Unlike his fiasco hopping the fence in Grandma's yard, he wasn't doing it to look cool. He was doing it to save lives. He pulled her out from under the trailer and apologized profusely for being rough. She didn’t complain at all; he was glad of that.

She was the only living person left on the trailing car. She'd been aware of that, too, because she held her rosary, and she had a speech of sorts worked up.

“I've been very proud of you, Liam. You've certainly grown into a man the last few days. Now you have to let me go. We can't both survive this. You need to protect Victoria. I told her you two would look out for each other when the time came.”

She pointed behind them. “This is that time.”

Liam didn't even acknowledge the statement. He slid off the side and pulled her over the deck and into his arms. He was surprised how light she was. Light, yes, but still too heavy to carry her all the way back to the bridge as the hero part of his mind suggested.

He set her down, put his arm around her waist, and walked her away from the encroaching horde. Something in him solidified. He was adamant he was not going to abandon her and run. He couldn't explain the sentiment. It certainly wasn't logical, but it wasn't baseless emotionalism either. He was compelled to save her. Like everything would be OK if he could get her to safety.

In seconds, Victoria arrived. She grabbed Grandma on the other side, and they made even better time. Not quite a jog, but a decent-paced walk.

Don't look back.

As they passed each car, he realized some people chose to stay and fight. Others ran like mad to all points on the map. Some headed to the nearby Mississippi river—perhaps hoping to swim to safety. The fastest ran the open ground over to the coal plant. Some scrambled up the steep wooded slope nearest the back of the train. Trying to outclimb the pursuit. None of those was realistic for Grandma. Her only option was the bridge ahead.

The surviving shooters made short work of the isolated lead zombies, but the rest of the tide started enveloping the train.

As Liam, Grandma, and Victoria walk-ran along the tracks, so did the noise. Screams of people who got caught. Curses of men and women. The frantic cries of children. The excited drone of a surging pack of angry, feral, zombies. The shooting also intensified, staying very close behind them.

Some who jumped off the train to escape jumped right back on as they realized what headed their way, but many people who had abandoned the train had the same idea as Liam. They gambled their lives on being able to cross the smaller river to their front. They were all much faster than he was with Grandma, even the children.

Don't look back.

He was shocked to realize there were fewer and fewer shooters behind them. They finally ran out of ammo. They'd been in a shooting gallery all morning.

Several officers and a few of the remaining gang members and their families stayed in a tight group and ran for the bridge. The engineers and their family also ran forward. Everyone left alive from the train made for the only direction suitable for the very young, the very old, or the slow.

Most of the train cars were empty, save the scattered few who chose to stay put. For the most part, those people ducked out of sight when he saw them as if they were unwilling to call attention to themselves.

They walked as fast as Grandma could go with two people to help her along. A half-carry, half-drag arrangement. Even so, as he approached the Valkyrie, Liam dropped Grandma's weight onto Victoria and told them to continue without him for a minute, and he climbed the side of the diesel. He was happy neither asked questions. Victoria kept the pace, moving Grandma toward the bridge.

He rushed to where the engineers and crew stowed their gear. The item he spotted earlier was still there, so he grabbed it, tucked it into his waistband, and ran back outside and along the railing. He ran forward to the nose of the Valkyrie, then hopped to the dead train engine at the very front. He ran the railing again until he reached the absolute front of the entire train. He barely slowed as he flew over the handrail, hanging on just long enough so he could deftly drop the last few feet to the ground. He willed himself to ignore the noise of the infected wave approaching.

He pumped hard as he ran to catch up to the two women. Victoria and Grandma entered the group standing on the near side of the bridge. He knew what he did was reckless, but it felt right and necessary. It helped that it didn’t endanger anyone but himself.

Liam closed the final distance. A good number of the surviving police officers and gang members from the train fanned out with guns at the ready. One man stood out from the whole group: a shirtless guy with a pair of bandoliers filled with vibrant red shotgun shells slung over both his shoulders, forming a distinctive “X” on his chest. He cradled the shotgun against his shoulder, and he waved Liam in while puffing on a fat cigar.

Never look back!

He sped across the last fifty feet of track leading up to the bridge.

When he entered the group, a thunderous boom almost made him lose his bowels because it was so shockingly loud. As if on cue, the group unleashed an explosion of gunfire into whatever was right behind him. Some of the zombies were much closer than he thought possible, given his speed.

The fusillade bought some breathing room, but the end was already written unless they could all get over to the other side. He wasn't about to suggest both sides start shooting each other, but that would be one scenario for sure if they were in a video game.

He caught up with Victoria and Grandma and they dragged her over the bridge, passing by all the survivors left from the train. There were several he recognized as the “new people” from the pit mine. Kids saved from the Arch grounds and elsewhere along the way were now universally in tears. A few older people had made it, but no one was even close to Grandma's age. A group of nuns was also mixed in. Where did they come from?

The trio neared the midpoint before the Arnold Police screamed over the noise and waved their guns in warning. He and Victoria had started carrying Grandma without realizing it. They set her on her feet, but her body had gone slack, so he eased her down to lie on the wooden bridge.

“Grandma … ” he began. Her eyes were closed. A light seemed to have gone out of her face.

“Grandma! Wake up!” He flopped down next to her, completely at a loss what to do.

Victoria knelt on her other side, reaching for her wrist and neck—searching for a pulse.

“I can't tell if she's breathing,” she announced in a steady voice.

Liam sat useless as she tried CPR under the press of the nearby battle. He held Grandma's hand, willing her to come back. Time seemed to fizzle as his vision clouded with tears.

Finally, when he found his focus, Victoria sat next to him covered in sweat from exertion and tears from crying. She gave him a sad, stunned look. “I'm so sorry. I think she's gone.”

“What? No! No! No!” He didn't know who to blame. The police blocking them? The zombies? Himself? He was a fool to take her into the Zombie Apocalypse ...

Victoria's demeanor changed like the Missouri weather. She wiped the tears, cleared her forehead of sweat and grime, and got a serious look in her eyes. Her sadness turned to anger, and unlike him, she had a target already picked out.

“They. Are going. To pay!” she said tersely to him as she got to her feet.

She shouted above all the other noise, surprising and encouraging him at the same time.

“You stupid bastards! She's dead because of you! You could have saved her! Can't you see that? We're all going to die for your worthless rules. The plague can't be stopped. Look!” She swept her arm back toward the train and the advancing undead. “It's here right now, and you're standing there with your hands in your pockets! D—” She paused for an awkward moment as if thinking if she should say something more.

“Damn you all!” she finally blurted out.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she collapsed beside Grandma. Obviously spent.

He had tears in his eyes, too, but inside Liam felt … empty. Much like after his first encounter with Angie. At that moment all he could do was hold Grandma's hand one last time and appreciate everything she’d done for him. The screams of men, the concussion of guns, and the deathly buzz of the zombie horde were all distant background noises.

“Liam, don't fuss over me. Save Victoria,” is what Grandma would say to him.

He looked up and saw the lead police officer walking a few steps closer toward where he and Victoria comforted Grandma. His men called out to him, warning him not to get too close. Liam found that ironic. Grandma would have laughed at that too.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you, Grandma. We were so close.” Still holding her hand, he experienced a million memories of his time with her like a fast-forwarding movie. Some were from when he was a child playing at her home. Many were more recent, including a nice home-cooked dinner the two of them shared in her kitchen. At the time, he tried to pretend he didn’t enjoy it, but afterward he admitted he did. He couldn’t remember why he’d been so scared of being with her back then.

“Thank you for all you did for me,” was all he could say. His emotions shifted like the autumn wind and his apathy turned to a deep sadness. It all made sense why he’d started crying and once he realized what he’d lost, his tears were impossible to control. Like his wobbly legs and arms so long ago, his insides were now hopelessly out of sorts.

Grandma was gone forever.

What do I do now?

For the first time in a long while, even his gamer’s brain was out of creative ideas.

Chapter 18: Shadow Government

Marty woke up in soft green grass while lying on her back next to a large frozen waterfall. Not frozen in ice. Frozen without motion. Several trees and bushes grew in the vicinity, but the waterfall tumbling into a crystal clear natural pool was the attention-getter. A strange, inky darkness surrounded the scene.

Her amazement multiplied when she looked up. A nearly infinite number of stars beamed down from the heavens. To her eyes, they had to be part of an elaborate illusion because each one seemed to have planets spinning around them. The number of visible points of light was beyond reckoning.

Her husband or angel—she wasn't sure which—sat cross-legged, not far from her. “Hello, Marty. You've made it to the end of the line.”

“I'm dead?”

“Why do you always think you're dead? No. I'm pleased to say you still aren't dead. I meant you made it to the end of the rail line.” He chuckled a little and continued. “You passed out while you ran with your two young friends. I don't think they realized you had surpassed your limits. They now believe you're gone.”

“I get mistaken for dead a lot these days,” she said, recalling the incidents with the priests back at the Arch. “I'd hate for poor Liam to get that impression.”

“It's no wonder you're so loved. You never think of yourself.”

She couldn't help but think of her deceptions of not telling Liam about Angie or about shooting the robber. She was feeling guilty for her sins of omission.

“Don't trouble yourself with minor things like that. You made legitimate decisions to protect your great-grandson. Though, looking at how hard he tried to save you just now, I think your plan backfired.”

“I think he wants to prove to Victoria he can protect me.”

“Perhaps. But maybe he wants to prove to you that he can protect you.”

“I guess we all lose. We're all going to die, aren't we?”

“You mean eventually? Yes, I'm afraid you're all going to die. But are you going to die today? That's less clear.”

He stood up, offering a hand. Her body was strong in this place, so she was able to take it and be on her feet in a flash. He guided her to the clear pond.

“What is this place? Is this Liam’s memory from a book, too?” she asked as the shock faded a bit.

He walked slightly ahead of her and answered while looking up at the majestic waterfall. “Do you know what makes you so important?”

“No, I've been kinda busy lately to be introspective.” She gave a tired laugh. Her body might be refreshed in this place, but her mind was still saddled with the death and destruction of the last four days.

“Ha! I love your sense of humor.” He pointed to a section of froth on the frozen waterfall, very near the bottom. The area didn’t light up, but she had no trouble focusing on the one tiny dot he indicated. “You see that drop there? Right there! That's Earth.”

“I think I'm hallucinating. Planet Earth is in a waterfall?”

“Actually, it would be most accurate to say you're looking at a type of chart of all the planets in the universe. Not to scale, of course.”

“Now, let's get a little closer.” As he said it, the “waterfall” seemed to magnify, so the Earth was about the size of a marble among an untold number of similar marbles. She watched him move his fingers over a very faint ghost keypad, manipulating the waterfall. “Ah, there we go. Now, do you notice anything unusual about your planet?”

She looked at the multitude of worlds, distracted by the beauty and wonder of it all. Some looked very much like Earth, verdant and cloud-filled. Others were desert worlds. Some appeared to be gas worlds, shown with slightly larger marbles. Looking up, the planets seemed to stretch to infinity. But most of the orbs had a bright light around them; an artificial background glow which seemed to make them pop out from the waterfall itself.

“The Earth doesn't have that white glow behind it. Many of the others do.”

“Most excellent! Yes. Yes. That cosmic glow represents many wonderful things. The underpinning science would take me a human lifetime to explain with mathematics—and perhaps some philosophy.”

“Oh dear. I don't have that much time left in my life.”

“Au contraire, my Martinette. You are just now reaching an age where you can appreciate what I'm about to tell you. A younger person doesn't have the maturity to reach this place unassisted. That maturity is what makes you so special.”

“Is that a polite way of saying I'm an old and worn-out woman? That's what I feel like when I come here.”

“No! Not at all. I wish I had more time with you, but demands have been placed on both of us. Your attention is needed out on the bridge. I have a whole universe to manage.” He pointed to the waterfall as if that explained everything.

Seeming satisfied, he touched his floating keypad and swiped the waterfall away and replaced it with an overhead view of herself lying on the bridge, surrounded by a stunned Liam and a distraught Victoria as she "spoke in tongues" with foul language. An officer in black moved a bit closer as his men yelled at him. Panning out, the scene showed the police on one side of the bridge, armed but not shooting, and the infected attacking mercilessly toward the survivors of the train on the other end.

“You have much to do. The first baby step you must take is to carry a tool with you out into the world. That aid will help you get off this bridge. Your next steps must be to establish a connection with the two most important people in your life. I'm impressed how fast you developed the link with Liam—the green car on the bridge was his memory, probably from one of his books, if I had to guess. And the last cosmic leap you will take is establishing the light behind your planet on the waterfall I showed you.”

“I want to believe I'm important to whatever,” she looked around her, “this incredible place is, but you can see what's going to happen just as I can. There's no way, short of a miracle, I'm going to survive the day.”

Al smiled. “My dearest Martinette, have I got a surprise for you. I'm not only going to get you across that bridge, but I'm going to change the course of your entire life in the process.”

“You're talking in riddles. What exactly is the tool you're going to give me?”

“It's something, my gregarious friend, for which you are well-suited,” he said in a friendly voice. “A message.”

He whispered something in her ear. Then he whispered it again. “Your planet's future depends on your ability to recall this information.” He gave her a tooth-filled smile and winked exactly as she would have done.

No pressure.

2

Grandma started to cough.

He and Victoria screamed in unison. “She's alive!”

“We’re so glad! We—” Liam said through his tears before Grandma cut him off with a wave of her hand.

Grandma tried to speak, so they sat her up and leaned in close.

“Call out for Beth Ramos,” she instructed.

“Beth Ramos? Who’s?” he started to ask, but didn’t finish the question. He would have done anything she asked of him just then.

“Beth Ramos!” Liam shouted. “I’m looking for Beth Ramos!”

She whispered again, “Louder.”

“Where's Beth Ramos! We need her over here!” He yelled as loud as he was able into the din of the chaos. He faced the group from the train, assuming Beth was one of the women she'd been talking to back on the flatcar.

The lead officer of the police blocking the bridge, who looked to be about forty, well-tanned and muscular, walked the remaining distance to where Grandma was lying. Another officer from the vanguard ran up to be by his side, asking, “What are you doing, Sarge? You can't mingle with them. You might get sick.”

Liam spun around to face them. Victoria angled that way as well.

“She's calling out for Beth Ramos.” Sarge said to his officer.

“You're kidding me,” the second officer said with surprise.

The leader went down on one knee beside Grandma. “Why do you want Beth Ramos?”

He leaned closer to hear her weak voice over the volume of gunfire in the battle nearby.

“I don't know what this means, sir, but I was told to ask for Beth Ramos, and then give a message to the person who answered the call. I guess that's you?”

The officer nodded.

“Well, the message I'm supposed to give you makes no sense to me, but maybe it will to you. 'Darcy and Jokie Bunny want you to save these people'.”

“WHAT? How—” he choked up. “What's going on here?”

Liam, bewilderment on his face, looked from Grandma to the confused sergeant and then to the other officer, who put his hand on the sergeant’s shoulder.

“Beth was Phil's wife. Darcy was his daughter. Jokie Bunny—I don't know.”

“Jokie—” The sergeant struggled to control his voice while a lone tear hugged the side of his nose. “Jokie Bunny was Darcy's lovey, a stuffed toy rabbit. No one could possibly know about that rabbit. Darcy slept with it every night. We figured she couldn't live without it and made her keep it in her bed because we didn't want it to get lost. But we did let her take it out one time. She went with Darcy when my wife took her to stay overnight at a friend's house. It was going to be the first time we let her sleep away from home.”

A deep breath as the sounds of battle continued to ride high.

“My girls never made it.” He fought the tears, but without much success.

The other officer jumped in. “Phil's wife and daughter were in a terrible traffic accident this past winter. We all went to the funeral in support. Is that how you knew their names?”

“I was told by,” she took a deep breath, “what I believe was an angel.”

Phil lifted his tear-stained face and stared at Grandma for several long moments. Perhaps deciding if she was crazy.

“No one could have known about Jokie Bunny. No one. I believe you, ma'am.”

“Billy, bring up the men. We're going to fight at the front of this group. Let's help them across. To hell with orders. Those sick things won’t be stopped by a little water. We can't let these people die while we watch and do nothing.”

“You got it, Sarge.”

Billy ran back to his mates to round them up.

Phil used his radio to instruct those on the far shore. He called out certain leaders, requested certain weapons, and finished with “—and enact our plan Badrovik as soon as we're all across. Out.”

Phil stood up, brushed the tears from his eyes and said, “Get your grandma across the bridge. I'd like to talk to her when we're all safe on the other side. If my wife and daughter—however it's possible—want me to let you guys across, by God, you're going to own this bridge.”

Billy's group arrived, ready for the evacuation effort. As they reached Phil, he yelled, “OK, guys, let's spray those sickos with a lead shower—Go! Go! Go!”

They all took off into the crowd of people clumped on the dangerous side of the bridge. Cheers went up with the survivors when they realized what was happening. The zombies had made it into the front edge of the train passengers. The burn line between the living and dead hovered at the bridge's edge.

He and Victoria lifted Grandma to her feet one more time. “Glad to see you are OK,” he said.

“Me, too,” Victoria added without hesitation.

“That makes three,” Grandma said, barely loud enough to be heard over the battle.

With the deck clear, they walked toward the safe side of the span.

The Arnold Police funneled the survivors back, putting themselves nearest the fighting to fend off the blood-slick attackers as they continued to swarm toward the officers and remaining armed men from the train.

When the fresh officers made it to the tip of the spear, they began retreating as a unit back across the bridge, expending ammo at a horrible rate. They were experts at the head shot—the only shot that seemed to down the infection instantly. Of course, any good student of zombie literature knows that. These guys didn't disappoint. Only a precious few officers got snatched during the murderous onslaught. Some accidentally fell through the railway ties, or off the side, to the water below. Zombies often followed them down.

He and Victoria got Grandma to the safe side, then stood behind a police car to watch the approaching storm. The organized police line fell back in good order, ensuring nearly all of the train survivors made it. As each rank of officers crossed to the near side, they fanned out to cover their brothers and sisters still out on the span. It was a rare thing of beauty in the chaotic escape.

The last of the men filed onto the near shore, but now the bridge itself was crammed solid with plague victims. Some slipped off the sides as their numbers swelled. The constricting crush of infected funneling onto the narrow railway bridge insured bullets couldn’t miss. He again thought of the Greeks at Thermopylae, wondering if he accidentally paid too much attention in Social Studies class. The horde advancing on them were not flesh-and-blood Persians, however, and the infected continued to swarm, undeterred at any losses, willing to climb over piles of their peers collecting on the near end of the bridge. An endless procession of zombies arrived on the far side and there wasn't enough ammo here to kill them all.

“I have to help,” he said as if realizing his fate.

Victoria grabbed his arm, and he was prepared to argue with her, but she merely said, “Wait up.”

She needed a moment to pull out her gun and get it ready. He used the time to grab his box of shells. “We’ll keep this with us.”

He looked at Grandma as she stood leaning against the car. For a moment he wondered if leaving her was the right thing to do, but if the zombies made it across because he stood by and did nothing, there would barely be time to say goodbye to each other. Better to play it safe and make sure that didn’t come to pass.

“We’ll be right over here,” he shouted to Grandma.

The couple got right up to the edge of the upper part of the river bank, a little to the right of the main force of the police.

“We’re kind of far, but we’ll hit them in the side of the head. That will give us the best chance of downing them.”

“I trust you, Liam. Let’s give them hell.”

The range was about thirty or forty feet, he guessed. Not close enough to guarantee a hit with each shot, but it was the best he could do without interfering with the bigger and more effective guns closer to the bridge.

Together, he and Victoria aimed and fired at the swelling mass creeping along the railway decking toward the untainted southern shore. It was an incredible kill box, and the dead fell in waves, but the overhead trusses of the bridge served as brackets that kept many of the zombies from tumbling over the sides. As more bodies fell, the rest of the zombies climbed the steel girders to get over their friends.

And they kept coming.

Liam rattled off nine shots and dipped into the box to reload. He focused completely on shoving them into the little metal magazine as fast as possible. When finished, he held his hand flat in mid-air to ensure it wasn’t shaking. His insides were wobbly with fear, but it wasn’t affecting his exterior.

“Be scared later,” he said to himself.

Victoria finished her shots and began her reload, too.

“I got one, I think,” she said.

“Yeah, hard to tell with all the bullets flying,” he admitted. His main concern was contributing however he could. If they put enough lead on the bridge, he was certain they’d kill something. So many of his books reinforced the idea that even one less zombie could make the difference.

While he was on his third trip to the ammo box, the large crane came to life and moved the giant wrecking ball first backward a considerable distance, and then forward, then backward again. It reminded him of Jones preparing to hand off Grandma. It appeared to be the final piece of Officer Phil's plan. The crane had huge black letters with the name of the construction company: Badrovik.

The wrecking ball slammed into the side of the bridge, directly over the concrete support pier jutting up from the muddy water below, knocking many of the zombies over the side while ripping up a good portion of the decking and rails.

“Run!” Liam shouted.

Pieces of the bridge shattered from the impact and flew all over the place. Many of the police had to run, too.

From behind a police car, he watched as the second hit sheared off the rest of the top deck and left a gaping hole where scores of the mindless horde tumbled in. The final few blows hit the pier on the near shore, and the middle of the bridge sagged into the water. The monsters could walk onto the span, but it was now a crude ramp guiding them down into the water. It was ugly, but it worked.

“Let’s go back,” he said as he tapped Victoria’s arm.

A few zombies remained on the shortened near piece of the bridge but were quickly eliminated by the guys returning to the middle.

The remaining zombies on the far shore were visibly agitated at being denied the most direct route to their victims. Liam silently gave them all the finger as he returned to the river bank. Victoria copied him. That small act of mutual defiance made him feel much better. Tons better than when he did the same thing to that sports car driver back on Grandma's street.

Some of the zombies that tumbled down into the mud tried to climb the bank right below Liam and Victoria. Each of them managed to down a mud-covered man, but Liam had to dispatch the final woman because Victoria had to go reload. The young woman scampered up the steep riverbank and looked almost normal because the blood and gore was momentarily washed clean. His final thought was that she looked familiar—he’d seen her chasing the train somewhere along the way.

Or she reminded him of Victoria.

Whatever her origin, he lined up a shot and put one into her face. The zombie fell over backward and slid into the murky water.

“Last one is gone,” he said when Victoria got back on the line.

“Thank God,” she replied as she keyed the safety and then holstered her weapon.

He picked up the ammo and headed over to Grandma. She greeted them with a weak smile as they approached.

Zombies kept coming over the broken bridge for a bit, and some fell off the end and got swept downstream or sank to the bottom. Eventually, they seemed to know the battle had ended and that food was now far away, and they stopped trying to cross. Perhaps they sensed easier pickings at the power plant.

Dust and debris floated everywhere, and the remains of the bridge jutted out of the rushing water below. The current danced through the wreckage and made a metallic howl through the hollow girders wrapped around the pier. It almost drowned out the sounds of moaning—and screams—coming from the far side of the river.

He took the opportunity to speak to his two lady friends in a normal voice.

“I say we take a five-minute break before we try to move on to my house.”

“That sounds heavenly,” Grandma said. “I need to sit down again. Maybe a little longer than five minutes, I’m afraid.” She motioned away from the police car.

After a short walk, they placed her on the ground up against the trunk of a large sycamore tree, then each took a seat flanking her. She held her rosary tightly to her chest, much as she had when he first saw her in bed several days ago.

Phil came up to join them.

Liam stood right back up. “Officer Phil, this is Mrs. Martinette Peters, my great-grandmother.”

“Oh Liam, my mother was 'Mrs. Peters.' Please call me Marty,” she said to Phil with returning good humor.

“Do you mind if I sit down and talk to your great-grandma alone for a few minutes?”

“Grandma, you OK with that?”

She gave him a silent thumbs-up sign.

Victoria got up to join him, and they walked off.

Liam looked back in the direction they'd come for a few minutes. Small groups of living people ran down the far bank and tried to swim across the river, sometimes trailed by zombies. Many swimmers made it into the arms of the waiting police rescuers, but some were unlucky and got snatched from below. Shooters on the police side picked off the zombies as best they could.

“I can’t watch this,” Victoria said with sadness.

“Me, either,” he admitted. “And just to be clear, I'm never going to St. Louis again.”

“Deal,” she said as they walked away.

3

He strolled side by side with Victoria further down the railroad tracks, out of the immediate vicinity of all the police still around the bridge. It gave them some time to talk in peace. As they walked in the open, they each noticed the other with their hands on their guns.

“I guess we're veteran survivors now,” she said. “We’re tending our weapons like our lives depend on them, huh?”

Liam knew she was right, although he still didn't feel like a survivor. More like a lottery winner after seeing all the people who didn't make it. Where did that huge crowd at the Arch end up? He couldn't even imagine.

“So, what's next, partner?” She had a broad smile as she said it.

He gave her an exaggerated inspection from her feet up to her head. “Nope. You aren't the same girl I found lying on the grass. You've gotten over your guilt and have gone out of your way repeatedly to save me, Grandma, and who knows how many others. I think you've made up for any shortcomings you may have imagined for yourself when this whole plague-thing started.”

Victoria winced at the word guilt but was quick to respond, “And you aren't the awkward boy who ran me over and practically hid behind your grandma. I've seen you do some amazing things the last couple of days that would have made most guys wet their pants in fear.”

“Well, it may surprise you to know one thing that still makes me whiz in my drawers is asking a pretty girl out on a date.”

She gave him a sideways glance but hid her reaction and kept walking and talking. “What are we planning to do next? Do we stay with the police we met at the Arch or strike out on our own with Grandma?”

He slowed down as he formulated a response. “I have to get to my parents’ house. They don't live far from here. My dad is kind of an expert at survival and stuff, so finding him will help us a lot. Besides, I can show you all my dorky rock n' roll posters, my retainer, and my pocket protector.”

They both laughed.

“My parents are in Denver. I don't know that I'll ever see them again.” She said wistfully. “Maybe someday I'll try to get out there if things ever get back to normal. I don't think they ever will, though. I'm going to be stuck in your home state of Mizzer-y. No offense.”

Her body language conveyed a sense of deep despair. Not that he blamed her, because she obviously missed her family. That would be a blow to just about anyone. He admitted to himself he would follow her to Denver if she asked him to go. He found himself suddenly unwilling to part from her, so he figured now was the time to cheer her up.

“I got you a present,” he said with renewed energy.

It immediately brightened her face, bruises and all. “Really? When did you have time to go shopping? The stores are all closed.” She gave him a painful-looking grin, but her smile didn't diminish.

“Well, I didn't buy it, but I didn't steal it. I think it was abandoned when I acquired it.”

“I'm intrigued.”

“Close your eyes and hold out your hands and I'll give it to you.”

Her green eyes peered into his for a long moment, but she did as he asked, smiling happily. He pulled the item from under his untucked shirt on the non-gun side of his waistband. He gently put it in her hands and invited her to look at it.

It was a small, travel-size Bible.

“You were looking for one when we met, so naturally, I've been trying to find one every minute of the day since then.” He smiled to be funny but admitted it was pretty near the truth.

Victoria was tongue-tied for several moments. He knew that was not an easy thing to do.

“Thank you, Liam.” She said it in an almost reverent tone.

“It's only the New Testament. I'm working on getting you an Old Testament. I've got scouts roving the countryside as we speak.” Again, he laughed at his joke to make himself feel less self-conscious that he was trying to do something nice for a girl. He also did his best to keep it casual and avoid any hint he wanted something from her in return. He just wanted to do a good deed for her that didn't involve shooting sick people in the head.

“Liam, it's absolutely perfect. Truly, this is the most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me.”

Whoa!

“Where did you get it?”

He hesitated for a moment, wondering if it would get him in trouble.

“I saw it in the train engine when we were up in there the first time, and I ran up there—”

Here comes full disclosure.

“—I ran up there that last time we were running from the zombies with Grandma. I figured it was the final chance I'd have to get it for you. I didn't know we'd live past the bridge. I felt it was worth the risk.”

“Well, your feelings on this matter were completely wrong. Nothing is worth risking your life like that. Consider this a slap on the wrist.” She took his hand and tapped it playfully. “But I do 100% appreciate this, and I'll treasure it.” Her smile was infectious.

They strolled on the gravel road for another couple of minutes then turned around and walked back. They both agreed was unsafe to be so far from Grandma or lots of people with guns.

On the return trip, Victoria surprised him by holding his hand.

Totally worth it.

4

When they reached Grandma, she was done talking to Phil. He was giving her a big hug and let go as they got close. His face was flushed red; he'd been crying some more.

“I don't know how your grandma did it, but she answered my prayers. She really did. Thank you both. I, uh, need some time alone to process this. Please excuse me.” He walked off, avoiding eye contact as he went away.

“Grandma, what did you tell Phil about his wife?”

“I don't know if I understand myself. Somehow, I knew to call out her name and the name of his daughter and share their desire to get us across. I had one more message, but that was just for Phil. I'm having trouble remembering how I knew it, though. I'm old, you understand,” she said with an expression that conveyed “And that's all I'll say about it.”

“Grandma, I think we just witnessed a miracle. There's no other way to explain how that happened.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

She said it with a big sigh, then settled herself against the tree as best she could.

He had to admit it was nearly providential the way he found Victoria from out of the tens of thousands of people in the Arch grounds. That she would turn out to be such a critical person in helping him and Grandma get out of the city. And the one big favor he did in return was helping her find a Bible, and that a Bible turned up where it did, when it did. Was it all a divine mystery, or just a lot of amazing coincidences?

He still had trouble believing in God, but he desperately wanted to believe in something. He craved the same fearless faith as these two women, though it struck him that even if he chose to go back to church, there might not be any churches left.

Maybe Victoria was put here to help me find my way spiritually?

His anger at being “dumped” at Grandma's house by his father had long since dissipated. If anything, his parents had done him a favor by putting the two of them together at precisely the same time the world fell apart. It almost seemed his dad anticipated what was going to happen. Almost like he knew.

Wait. What?

He dismissed it as absolute rubbish. His father was always spouting off—he would claim he was “discussing intelligently”—things like government conspiracies, media collusion, and military-industrial scheming. But those were just silly theories.

Right?

He was 99% sure it was all bunk. But the last 1% was elusive. His whole worldview fell apart if that rounding error couldn't be sorted. But his dad saw the government as the bad guy. Always. That mindset might be believable if he were reading one of his books on zombies, but in the real world it seemed completely insane. All his book learnin' did nothing to help him recognize real zombies until they got up in his face and tried to bite him—so he couldn't necessarily trust those books as his guide anymore. He looked over to the police back at the bridge—the people who just saved them—and realized they were the government. He wanted to believe they represented help, not some massive internet-fueled conspiracy. He resolved to keep his eyes open; to prove his father wrong. He wanted to toss out that last percent of doubt.

For now, he was 100% sure he had to come up with a plan for their next move. He still had a deep fear he'd end up being that guy and step on a rake at the worst possible time, but after all he'd just seen and done—and survived—that irrational fear was receding. He had to be smart in looking ahead.

He'd been guiding Grandma the past four days, and he admitted it would be nice to hand her off to Mom and Dad—the “professional” caretakers. But even if they arrived at his home this afternoon, he wanted to spend as much time as he could with her. After all, she wouldn't be around for much longer. Would she? He recalled a phrase she'd once said in her sleep. Something about living to be 120. Rather than fear of spending more time with her, he found anticipation. If things got back to normal and she lived that long, he'd celebrate each birthday with real zest. If things got back to normal ...

Thinking of his parents, he checked his phone for the millionth time to see if it had a signal. He tried not to get too bummed when he confirmed it was still offline. It appeared as if he'd have to physically walk to his house to talk to them.

Victoria bumped him with her hip to get his attention.

“Do you see our friend Hayes anywhere?” she asked.

He looked around. “I can't say that I have. I don't remember him being in the group crossing the bridge either, though I wasn't taking a head count. He could have made it across and then run off. Maybe he swam across. Or he could have made a run for it when we were on the other side. He seemed pissed these police officers wouldn't let him pass.”

“If he made it, he'd probably still be yelling at the cops,” she said with sarcasm.

“Hayes was an idiot trying to be something he wasn't. He would have been pretty stupid to run off alone just because he felt slighted. No one can survive this thing alone. Look at us. We just barely made it with a whole army helping us.”

They let that percolate for a while. Grandma was fast asleep again, up against the tree. She had one arm over Liam's backpack, always protecting it.

Victoria reached for his hand and pulled him gently from the orbit of Grandma. She set down her new Bible next to Liam's pack, where it would be safe.

“Grandma's sleeping against a tree, just like you were when we met.”

Victoria laughed, “Does that mean I have to smash her fingers, or are you the expert?”

“I still feel horrible I did that to you. I don't think she would like me if I let that happen to her.”

Victoria smiled broadly; a lovely look, even if she wore too much coal dust and bruises for makeup. “I think she would forgive you, just like I did.” She kept pulling him around the bulk of the massive tree trunk. “There's a question I want to ask you, now that it looks like we might live beyond this conversation.”

The police and survivors near the bridge were blocked from their view. She let herself lean back against the bark, arms at her sides, and put her right foot partway up the trunk, so her leg was bent at an angle, pointing directly at him. Her dress hiked up a little, revealing her knee, and he saw it was jet black with coal residue. A testament to all they'd survived. Her posture, positioning, and proximity had him thoroughly confused.

Victoria compounded his confusion by asking, “I was wondering if you could tell me more about the shadow government?” Her effusive smile was contradictory to the serious question.

What in the hell does she mean?

Liam remembered their discussion earlier—it seemed like weeks ago—thousands of zombies ago—dozens of departed acquaintances ago—a train ride from hell ago. He told her if she said the code phrase, “shadow government,” he would kiss her on the lips.

Clueless Liam from four days ago would never have figured it out.

Survivor Liam of today returned the wide smile and kissed the girl.

Maybe the Zombie Apocalypse won't be so bad.

In the moment, he felt alive. Energized. Steady in mind and body. Unafraid of going into the suburbs.

What's to fear, when you're traveling with two bad-ass heroines?

###

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

Since the Sirens (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2015 by E.E. Isherwood

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of E.E. Isherwood

Version 2.0

Since the Sirens Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to recognize my own 104-year-old grandmother for being the inspiration for the character of Marty. Her passing was also the driving force behind my desire to write this book. I had over 40 years to benefit from her presence in my life, and she became my archetype for the strengths and weaknesses of someone so advanced in age. I regret to say she passed away in 2014 after living an incredibly long and healthy life. I give my real grandma a single mention in this book, when Al tells Marty that in a parallel universe she “passed away peacefully in her sleep today.” That is my homage to her. The rest of the book is written in the character of Marty, who only shares broad strokes with my late grandmother. I couldn't hope to write faithfully in the voice of a real person.

However, I tried to write Marty with my grandmother's physical abilities as I remember them, because I didn't want a superhero character that didn't ring true. Could she have walked a couple miles in the June heat, with a young man helping her? Could she have survived stumbling away from Angie? Could she endure lying on the bed of a flatcar for several hours? On a normal day, the answer might be no. No woman of 104 goes out and tries these things. Yet, if the world was ending, and she had to do those things to protect her family—absolutely she would have tried. In that light, Marty shares many of the best qualities of my real grandma, though I'm pretty certain mine never lassoed anything.

Because of who she was and how she influenced the character of Marty—and my own upbringing—the trajectory of the entire Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse series has a more positive and uplifting direction than it might have otherwise. Liam must remain guarded with so much evil in the zombie world, but he learns to search for the positive in mankind, and in himself. In that sense, I can relate to his character, having existed in a world containing such an upbeat person as my own “Grandma Marty.” His spiritual growth throughout these books would have made my real grandma very happy.

On reflection, it seems almost sacrilegious to put the idea of my sweet grandma into what is essentially a piece of horror fiction, but I would find it hard to write her into any other genre. If she had her druthers, she'd probably say I shouldn't use her as the basis for anything at all, and instead write about someone more interesting. Others in our family might suggest a grandmotherly character should only exist in a friendly story akin to Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, in which the grandparents are presented in a much more mundane setting. But that wouldn't be me. I think people become extraordinary when faced with great challenges. Perhaps it means I just don't have a developed sense of drama, as it appears I need the entire world to collapse and zombies to pour forth before I can take a snapshot of a person and characterize them inside that world. I'm okay with that. I think she would be as well.

Most of my research for this book consisted of me walking around St. Louis city and county, where I live. I spent some of my youth pounding pavement through the red brick flats of South City. I've spent countless hours on the highways of this metropolis. I've visited the Gateway Arch numerous times, though I've never been invited to walk the steps to the top. However, if you take the trams up and down the Arch there are windows inside those cars so you can see the metal staircase from time-to-time. Other locations throughout my books are places I've been, though some of the details were edited to keep the story moving along. The area underneath the Arch is surprisingly complex in real life, so I had to simplify. There are air vents for the underground museum up on the surface, though I admit I have no idea if any go into the railroad tunnels. I'd like to think they do. You never know when one might come in handy.

General Patton is one of my personal heroes. You may see his influence in several of my novels. In this book Liam loosely quotes him. “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” This is very apropos for writing a novel. I started writing this story in the summer of 2014. The first draft was done in December 2014. And the edits...oh my. To let my beta readers off the hook, any errors remaining in the manuscript are completely and utterly my own.

Finally, I want to thank my family for believing in this project. It took just over a year to turn this glimmer of an idea into a nice-sized novel, and it wouldn't have been possible without a supportive family.

E.E. Isherwood

E.E. Isherwood’s other books

Minus America – After an event sweeps from coast to coast, nearly everyone in mainland USA disappears. Only piles of clothes remain. Can the last Americans survive long enough to learn how it happened? Five books.

Impact
(co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books.

Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood
Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens
My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!

SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 2

Siren Songs
Since the Sirens
Book 2

E.E. Isherwood

© 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.

In a multiverse of infinite possibilities,
divine intervention is indistinguishable from dumb luck.
What if that's intentional?

Prologue: Parents

Three days since the sirens.

Jerry huffed with fatigue as the green street sign caught a glint of light from the explosive nighttime sky up ahead. Another fuel tank. Another gas station. Another block. The whole city was on fire. Just like his lungs.

“I'm going to throw up if we don't get there in the next few minutes.”

Lana, his wife, responded in the ear bud. “You're the runner, dear husband, so quit yer' whining."

They walked a few seconds more before she could read the sign. "It's your lucky day, this is her street." She tacked on a relieved laugh.

He was tempted to thank God for getting them there, but this trip had taken what little faith he had and buried it under a pile of bodies. At that moment it was just him and Lana, and a whole lot of luck. Knock on wood, his son Liam would be where he was told to stay earlier in the summer. Otherwise, the past twenty-four hours of nightmare would have been for nothing.

Grandma Marty would NEVER let him go out. And she wouldn't go out, either.

The thought comforted him.

Without planning it, they'd stopped near the street sign. A last pause before the push to the summit. The climb had been long and depressing. They'd left home with rifles, plenty of ammo, and all the skills and knowledge of years of surfing internet websites devoted to precisely the situation in which they were now mired. It was grid down. It was societal collapse. It was the end of everything. They'd run with crowds of refugees. They'd fought alongside groups of survivors when the undead massed in opposing little armies. Inevitably those battles ended with death, or lots more running.

Dirty warehouses. Nasty sewers. Dark alleys.

The clawing up the mountain of the apocalypse was live or die every step of the way.

“You think he's there?” He knew it was impossible to answer. But the question had to be asked.

“Of course he's there,” and though she didn't say it, her tone suggested she wanted to add, “and don't dare tell me otherwise.”

It was one of the few things they could agree on when it came to Liam, at least lately.

“Let's go get him,” he whispered. Then, to echo her sentiment, he added, “dear wife.”

She couldn't see the tight smile he wore. Yes, the plague that brought on the apocalypse was much worse than he imagined, but the one bright spot was how well they worked together at this critical time to get across the ruined city over the past two days.

The payoff was in sight.

He resumed his trot behind his sleeker partner, the heavy ballistic armor on his chest and back reminding him of the two times it had saved his life. He patted the one on his front, to bolster his spirits at this last moment.

No, Liam stayed put like a good kid. No one could survive outside without gear like this.

2

He approached the back door of the house first. The partial moon teased his vision. The outlines of the old brick home were familiar and alien at the same time. The rear screen door had been ripped off its hinges and tossed to the ground. The wooden door it was supposed to protect remained sealed.

Lana joined him as both focused their lights on the door in front of them. “What happened?”

“Doesn't look good. Maybe an infected tried to get in?”

Before either could make an effort to turn the handle, a plague victim fell out of the darkness. Clad in a light-colored nightgown, she was easy to see once she was out of the deepest shadows. The sick woman launched herself on him, and together they tumbled to the deep turf with all the grace of a sacked quarterback.

“Lana," he yelled. Loud enough for her to hear, but not loud enough to call in more sickos.

Lana was quick. She managed to hold onto the nightgown of the woman and ensure she couldn't get a solid purchase. At the same time, he was able to keep his chest armor facing the teeth of the zombie. The combined weight of both on top of him made it difficult to exhale fully. He'd never really caught his breath since that street sign.

The plague victim might as well been a starving dog sniffing a bacon-wrapped ham hock for all the energy she expended to get to his neck. Her hair was matted and wet, but some locks flailed wildly, too. It was almost distraction enough to make him loose focus on the big picture, but when she inadvertently kicked him in the groin, he remembered there were only two ways for it to end.

With effort, he passed on instructions. Timing was crucial. “I'm going to roll her on three. You know what to do!” It wasn't the first time on this trip they'd had this exercise. A fact for which he was supremely grateful since he couldn't do much more than point after he'd said that little bit.

“One...” he was going to count in an even cadence, but he had no voice left. “Two-three!” he wheezed.

“Now,” Lana shouted.

He used all his strength to push the thrashing woman over to his side and rolled himself the other way. Lana raised her rifle, intending to skewer the zombie as they planned—but she hesitated as he came up in a crouch, sucking in gulps of air.

“My god. This is Angie.” Lana's flashlight shone on the sick form on the ground, but her back was to him; he only saw her shadow. He reestablished contact with his rifle and used the tactical light to get a better look.

The nurse was an absolute wreck of her former self. Once a well-manicured sixty-something-year-old friend and nurse for Grandma Marty inside this house, she was now covered almost head to toe in the sheen of blood. Her nightgown was filthy with blood, dirt, and god knows what else. Caught between two living people and their bright beams, Angie's head whipped back and forth as if to decide which of them was closer. Her eyes were blood-red in their sockets, and her hair was gray, brown, and red in streaks. Her skin was ashen gray, where exposed. It was amazing they could recognize her at all, even though they had known her for decades.

The shock and surprise and resulting delay gave Angie the chance she needed to pull herself off the ground, spring to a crouching position, and make her move.

She must have decided on Lana.

Lana moved with a quickness he didn't know she had. In the pit of his stomach, he knew she was going to get herself killed in this disease-ridden disaster, maybe now at the hands of the ex-nurse. It was the same fear he'd felt innumerable times the past twenty-four hours. Each time Lana was forced to take a life. That's the moment fate would decide if it was going to be her or the other person in the proverbial pine box.

I should have called Angie to me.

While he wrestled with his guilt, and to his great relief, the bayonet sunk deep into Angie's head. Lana out-grunted any professional tennis diva. The blade sunk until the tip of the barrel was inside her skull. Both stared at the dead body in stunned silence as it settled back onto the grass.

In a shaky voice, Lana got out “Angie. I'm so sorry.”

Jerry said nothing. It went down so fast he could barely compute all the variables.

Lana broke the trance, pulling her blade out with effort. “Let's get inside." The wet sucking sound turned his stomach, but she got him moving.

He had a key. As he rifled through his many deep pockets, he happened to notice a flash of light inside the house.

Liam, he thought.

Hope swelled, but caution nagged him. He stood still, indicating Lana should also be quiet. Though it had been there the whole time, the noise of gunfire around the city reminded him of the worldwide pandemic beyond this yard and how nothing should be trusted. This was life or death, again.

His heart yammered in his chest, warning that the forties were not the new twenties. Not out here.

“What is it?” she whispered to his back side.

He turned off his light, and she followed suit. Instead of pushing the door open, he backed away, drawing her with him. They rejoined in the narrow walkway between the two red brick structures. At the first window, he paused and peeked into the glass frame. A light bobbed up and down inside. It had a dreamy quality. Not too fast, not too slow. Just a drift here and there.

“I'm not sure. Someone might be drunk in there.”

Lana took a turn at the window.

“Or dead,” she muttered with a sour tone.

“Let's get this over with,” he said while stepping gingerly toward the front.

3

By the time they reached the front door, they'd not learned anything beyond what they already knew. The drunk or dead person stayed in the back of the house while they scanned the front half as best they could.

“The person has to be sick. We made all kinds of noise fighting Angie.”

Lana nodded in silence.

They whispered back and forth until they had the right plan.

Before walking away from her, he reminded her of the most important point, “Don't forget to come back and watch my behind.”

She gave him a wry smile at the innuendo, despite the seriousness of the hour. That loving smile instilled confidence as he ran in the darkness to the back door of the house. Something he admitted he needed at that moment.

He waited until there was a series of jarring bangs in the night. That was Lana at the front door. As he'd hoped, the noise coaxed the floating light into the front of the home. Jerry snuck in and stood near the back window as soon as it was gone.

Moments later, Lana returned and walked in the open back door. Once she had his location, she kept going forward, to the kitchen table. A noisy shoe squeal and a surprised squeak accompanied Lana's flailing arms. He flicked his light down and saw the blood. By some miracle, she slid into the table instead of under it. The look on her face conveyed a wild-eyed relief at what just happened. There may have been a hint of a smile.

You're one lucky lady.

“Don't I know it,” is what she'd say.

He ensured she was stable and in possession of her wits, then sought their target. The mystery figure was somewhere inside the flat. Even their clumsy entrance didn't bring the lost soul to them.

“I'm going to call out,” he whispered.

His earbud answered. “I'm good.”

He pointed the flashlight attached to his gun barrel and yelled into the darkness beyond. “This is Jerry Peters. Identify yourself!”

There was a flash of light in the front room. A sign the trespasser was on the move.

Liam? Grandma?

“Stop. Identify yourself!”

Every gun safety video he'd ever seen flashed before his eyes. Would Liam come stumbling out of the darkness? Was he sleepwalking? It would be a first, but if the last twenty-four hours had taught him one lousy thing it was that they were now in crazy times. The dead were walking. Neighbors were fighting neighbors. Law and order had gone out for an extended smoke break.

This was the end of the world as we know it.

His finger tensed on the trigger; then he forced himself to place it on the side of the housing of the AR-15. If he had to lose a second in his decision loop before he shot this target, so be it. He was going to give his only son the benefit of the doubt, no matter the cost to himself.

The form came waddling down the hallway in a leisurely fashion. Nothing like the vicious attack dog Angie had become. The small flashlight revealed all the blood on the man's face and neck. It was an unmistakable indicator he was already a lost cause from the Ebola-like plague ravaging the city.

Satisfied it wasn't Liam or Grandma, he put his finger back on the trigger and resisted the urge to crush it. With one gentle squeeze, he lit up the hallway for an instant. The thud a moment later indicated he'd scored a direct headshot.

The acrid smoke dissipated as he stood in awe at what he'd just done. He'd had to put many of these strange dead people down, but doing it in Grandma Marty's kitchen made him appreciate just what the end of the world meant.

The infected man slid a short way on the slick floor. He came to rest not far from Jerry's feet. The light revealed a wrecked skull, heavy bulletproof vest, and the same type of black tactical clothing he had on. Sort of a cross between a policeman and a soldier. The flashlight linked to the man's shoulder with a thin rope, as if he wanted to ensure he never got separated from it. He clutched his gun, and the light attached to it, a little bit tighter as if in sympathy.

The glow reflected into a nearby bedroom. His breath caught in his chest. A leg and shoe of someone lying on the floor looked familiar. Then his heart choked and fluttered; the shoe reminded him of the style Liam wore.

“Lana, I—” He couldn't say the words. Instead, he moved rapidly to the bedroom. “Cover the hallway, dear, while I check out this first bedroom.”

He entered a morgue. A dozen bodies were in a messy pile, all with bullets to the head. They'd been murdered—as healthy people—because none of them were as bloody and messed up as the infected. He scanned the bodies, but didn't see his son—that was his only focus. The person on the floor with shoes like Liam's was...someone else. Memories of his childhood clouded his vision—he denied they were tears—before he completely shut it all off. He closed the door to the bedroom and took several deep breaths.

He'd taken a little too long. Lana was beside him.

"Everything okay?"

Their two flashlights reflected off the hardwood floor and the numerous picture frames on the wall. Liam's face caught his eye in one of the tendrils of light. His boy smiled at him from a fancy golden frame.

“Lana, that room's clear. We have to keep looking for Liam.” He pointed down the hallway, intending to distract her.

The stereotypical “phew” sound slipped out without him knowing it.

“Yeah, I'm glad it wasn't him, too.” She walked where he pointed. He was torn between sending her first into the darkness or running the risk of her trying that door handle. Falling in behind, his finger was once again well away from the trigger.

They went upstairs to Angie's apartment and found another dead guy inside a pile of bloody clothes in the middle of her apartment. It was hard to know how he died because he was in pieces. Only his black clothing tied him to the other man.

Still, no Liam.

They finally went into the basement. Liam had his room down there, but other than the dryer sitting in front of the rear basement door, the entire level seemed pretty much undisturbed. They both returned to the main floor, stopping at the body on the kitchen floor.

Jerry searched it but found no identification of any kind. He had numerous pockets in his tactical vest and pants filled with rifle magazines and various types of knives, batons, and handcuffs. He figured he was more policeman than soldier. But that didn't feel entirely right, either.

He did find one clue. At the bottom of a small pocket up near the shoulder, he found several sheets of paper stapled together and folded multiple times—beyond what any normal person would do. He unraveled them and spread them out on top of the dead man's chest. Using his light, both he and Lana were able to scan the names typed in three neat columns. A few were crossed out with a pencil.

“What the hell? This list has most of our family on it. Maybe all of it.” He scanned the names and found one with a line through it. “No. No. No. This is a list of people someone is trying to kill.” He scrunched up the paper with his hands and crushed it into a ball with primal grunts.

“Why? How do you know that?” she replied with skepticism.

He had anger in his eyes while pointing to the sealed room. “Because my brother's in there—dead. And his name's crossed off.”

He held it out to her. She unfolded the paper and spread it on the table where she could get a better look.

While she studied it, he felt that deep-seated fear once again. Something was going to reach out from the darkness and pull Lana away from him. He was powerless to stop it. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure something bad was going to get her. Again, his heart reminded him it was capricious—it pounded like a freight train as he got to his feet and stood next to her. His arm found her waist and sought the comfort of the contact.

He was supposed to be the strong one.

Lost in his emotions, he was well and truly startled by her voice. “There's my name. Yours! We aren't crossed out. Nice to know we're still alive.” She let out a nervous chuckle and leaned into him. She read the names under her breath—mostly family he recognized—from time to time she lamented this or that cousin or aunt with their names crossed off. “And here's Marty's name. She's alive, thank you, God! At least she hasn't been, what? Assassinated?”

He grunted an affirmation, though he had no idea. If this was an assassin's list, he didn't want to know who else was on it, and yet he had to know.

She turned the page. Then she turned once more. On the third page, she pointed with excitement.

“No line! Liam has no line over his name.” She set the flashlight on the table, exhaled deeply, and turned to hug him. “I'm so sorry about Craig.”

She sobbed deeply, as if she'd held it in until she knew whether to cry happy or sad. What came out was hard to read with so many dead, but he and she shared the happy knowledge Liam wasn't already dead by whatever hand had made such a horrible list.

He wanted to cry in relief, but they were hardly a step closer to finding Liam. He had to hold it together.

“Thanks. Me too.” Jerry gently separated himself and looked around. “Looks to me like these men were hiding in Marty's place, waiting for our family members to come collect her. When my brother arrived, they must have killed him and tossed him into that room—he pointed to the one he'd steered her from—with some others I didn't recognize. If they were targeting our family, maybe these other people just wondered in?”

“That's horrible. Were they Marty's neighbors?”

“Yeah, that would make sense. Everyone checks on Grandma.”

“I hate to say this, but I don't care about anyone else. I just can't. Not yet. I need my Liam. Where the hell is he, Jer?”

He took a moment to gather his thoughts. He'd been formulating a positive-thinking reply since they walked into the empty house. Originally he'd built his answer on a fiction that would convince her Liam was still alive, but the more he considered the facts, the more he felt maybe things weren't as bad as he feared. Not if Liam remembered half of what he'd tried to teach him over the past few years.

This is the same kid that lives inside those dumb video games.

He swallowed hard and tried to think of how Liam was pretty good at some real-life things. Shooting, for instance. A key point for what he was going to tell Lana.

“If I had to guess, I'd say Liam took Grandma and tried to escape the city.”

Lana raised her head. The question on her face was evident.

“Because her guns are gone. I noticed, when we searched downstairs, they'd been moved.” He pointed his light at the black box sitting on the stove top. “I left her two guns in that box, hidden in her rafters downstairs. Because they were so high, there's no way she got them herself. Since the house isn't otherwise looted, it means someone pulled them down who knew they were there and what was inside. That means she told Liam and he has them. I'd bet anything they're armed and attempting to escape this town.”

“Grandma and Liam, out in the city? I'm not sure if I should be jumping with joy or screaming in fear.”

“Me either, my love. Me either. But at least we know these creeps didn't get him. We just have to think where he'd go.”

He didn't want to appear pessimistic, though he certainly felt it. Whoever made the list was still out there. That suggested Liam wasn't safe at all. But that wasn't even the dangerous part. Liam had gone off into the urban decay of St. Louis with 104-year-old Marty. At best, he had a couple of little handguns to defend himself. The dead were walking, killing everyone left alive, and the police, fire, and other civilian infrastructure lay in ruins. If Liam could get out of the dying city, and if he avoided getting himself scratched off this list, and if he survived the other million dangers, where would he go with an old woman?

They only needed a few seconds to read the other's thoughts.

“We have to get back home.”

Chapter 1: Somewhere in Suburbia

Fifteen-year-old Liam Peters had just survived the worst four days of his life. He'd killed zombies. Been shot at. Was nearly run over. Ran from gangs. Ascended one of the longest flights of stairs west of the Mississippi. Rode a train through swarms of zombies. Saw friends die. Dodged falling bombs. And, if he had to stretch things even a little to mimic World of Undead Soldiers—his favorite online game, he'd say he slayed the undead and other supernaturals to rescue a buxom maiden.

Looking at her now, Liam admitted Victoria wasn't very buxom, and strictly speaking, they rescued each other, but he allowed some liberties in retelling his own story. She was also a filthy mess. When he'd found her, she was wearing an elegant black cocktail dress she'd worn since her survivor story began, and over the course of their escape from the city, she'd gotten filthier and filthier. Now she was covered in black coal dust from their stint on the train, and it was nearly baked on from all the running and sweating they'd done to get away from the horde of zombies this morning. She wasn't much to look at right then as far as a damsel to be rescued. If he had a mirror, he assumed he looked just as bad.

Fortunately, he could overlook all those things and simply see the pretty young woman who captured his heart over the few days they'd been together. She was sleeping peacefully next to Grandma, both lying at the foot of a large sycamore tree on the near the bank of the river they'd just crossed. A large mass of zombies could still be seen on the other side, although a majority of them had wandered away since there were no easy pickings anymore.

Liam shivered when he looked across at the horde on the wrong side of the river. He fancied himself an expert on zombies. He'd been reading zombie books and watching zombie movies since he was a small child. Probably much earlier than was reasonable if the parenting experts were to be believed. It did give him plenty of reference material to explore the behavior of these plague victims, though he was quick to realize real life was much more random than any book. Sometimes luck played as much of a factor in survival as preparation. It's something you can't appreciate until you've seen death within inches, only to have it pass by harmlessly. Liam resolved to cherish every second he had with Grandma, and make every effort to be a stand-up man for Victoria. He'd seen too many men give up, fade away, or just go crazy over the past few days. He knew just being there for her would be more than most men could provide in this new existence.

So what do we do now, Mr. Expert?

Liam had been working on that problem since Victoria laid down to sleep. Was that an hour ago, maybe two? He looked at his watch and saw it was nearly noon. Noon on the fourth day since the sirens.

He didn't know exactly what they should do, but almost every book he'd ever read on zombies made it clear the only way to truly survive in the long run was to find a strong group of like-minded individuals. Not that he was being choosy back in St. Louis, but he'd dropped in with a group of St. Louis city policemen as they escaped the city last night. It maximized his own odds for sure, though getting out was still a very close affair.

Once on this side of the river, many of the police and other survivors had scattered, in a hurry to get wherever they needed to go. The only officer he really missed was Jones, the beefy black cop who laid down his life saving a large group of survivors. He had nothing against any of the remaining officers, but they all had families and were quick to be moving on. Liam needed to go somewhere specific. Home.

He looked at the roadblock and only saw a handful of local cops, a couple police cars, and a mish-mash of other survivors loitering about, as if unsure where to go next. It was a new day. A new part of the world. A new adventure. It was just like setting out in his online gaming world.

Except in this world you don't get to start over if you die.

2

Marty was asleep. She knew it right away. She was standing in her backyard. The lush green grass contrasted with the fresh white paint of her standalone garage filling the scene before her. She left her real house days ago, and now she was standing in her yard, as it was decades ago when she first moved in.

“Hello again, Marty.”

It was her husband, Aloysius—Al for short. Well, it looked like her husband. An angel? The being had helped her earlier this morning as she lay dying on a bridge being chased by a horde of infected, though she couldn't recall the specifics of that encounter.

“Why can't I remember our last meeting? I know we met in this...dream world...and you gave me something to say to Phil from his dead wife. But what?”

“Ah yes. I told you I'm not really supposed to help one way or the other for it could upset the balance of this world in unexpected ways. I can mitigate that ethical dilemma somewhat if you yourself don't remember the agent of that unbalance. Since I'm in your head already, I can—make adjustments.”

“So you're scrambling my brain? It's already old and scrambled, I'm afraid.” She laughed a little, but it was true.

“I needed to bring you here, Marty. And I'm sorry to do it. But you have to see the world for what it really is if you're going to save it.”

In front of her, where a second before there was nothing, she saw her nurse and friend, Angie. Dead with a large hole in her head. She had become infected and was largely responsible for forcing Marty out into the world with Liam.

“I want you to see her. Truly see her, and those like her. These—infected—are the future of the human race. Look closely.”

She only saw the blood. So much of it. Many infected people had blood oozing from their eyes, ears, and noses—as if they had some terrible equatorial disease such as Ebola. But it was so much worse because the victim never fell over and died. They just kept walking around, trying to spread the infection as far and wide as possible. She felt horrible Angie had to be the example for this demonstration.

“Yes, I'm sorry too. But what if I told you that, because of an unfortunate series of dangerous coincidences, the trajectory of the human race has been changed so it will now die in obscurity on this planet? Every last human being is destined to stand around staring off into space with nothing of any value inside their brains?”

“I'd say you were describing every new generation of kids that has come along in the previous hundred years. I should know!”

“So right you are, Marty. But this would be the last generation, ever. And the members would all look like poor Angie there. Until the sun burned out, the only humans surviving would be those like her. She would have seen the sun die if she wasn't shot.”

“Impossible!”

“In an infinite multiverse, nothing is impossible.”

She looked at Angie again. “Not that it matters in the short run, but surely they'd wither away after a time?”

“No, these terrible creatures are imbued with a power both terrible and wonderful. That same power which allows me to talk to you here is also responsible for—'animating' people like Angie. That energy is practically infinite, which means the sickness will last for eternity.”

“They'll live forever?”

“They'll die forever, Marty. They're dead. But we aren't going to let that happen. There is a cure. You will find it. Of that, I'm certain. You're already on the course right here and now. I just need to tweak your memory a little. I can summon a little more of that—energy—to help you collect your third partner.”

Ha. A cure? She had considered that at the start of the outbreak, but it seemed impossible once she realized the condition of the infected. How could a body recover from such trauma? And what of the mind? What was Al saying about energy and such? Marty admitted he often spoke above her.

Al walked closer to her, not in a menacing way, but with purpose. “I'm sorry again, Marty, but I have to show you something. It will be uncomfortable to watch.”

“What is it? Is someone in trouble?”

“There you go again, thinking of others. But this time you're right, someone is in trouble. They're about to die.”

She looked at him and was dismayed to see how uncharacteristically serious he'd become. Something bad was coming. He leaned close. She heard a car engine approaching. It was a sound she recognized. He began to whisper.

“This is how Victoria dies.”

And then she saw it happen.

3

Grandma woke with a start. “OH MY GOD!” She heaved sideways and tumbled into the sleeping figure of Victoria next to her.

“Grandma, that's the second time today you've woken up saying that. What kind of dreams are you having?”

She looked around, initially unsure of her surroundings, but quickly gathered her wits. Last night, she'd almost gotten them all killed when she woke up screaming those same words while zombies were lurking around their group. “I think there's a cure to this thing. I think I'm a key part to learning the secret of that cure. I've been told—”

She appeared to force herself to think, but to no avail. “He showed me...things.”

“Grandma, if I didn't know better, I'd say you've been reading too many zombie books. Of course, that's what they tell you. 'There's a cure' and it's up to you and your merry band to find it and save mankind. As if there's no one else in the world searching for a cure but two kids and their grandma. Who told you that? Was it the same person who told you about Phil's wife?”

Just this morning, she seemed to glean information on a police officer's dead wife and daughter “from beyond,” which helped them negotiate their way to safety over the bridge—but that seemed like a miracle. This seemed more like misinformation. A distraction.

“I don't know. I have these dreams and they're so vivid, but I forget them almost as soon as I wake up. I think it's Al telling me these things.”

“Grandpa?”

Liam remembered great-grandpa Al from when he was a small child, and through pictures and movies his family had taken back then, but he had very little direct recollection of the man, other than he was a kindly person who loved to laugh and joke with anyone who happened to be in the room with him. As with his great-grandma, he referred to him simply as “Grandpa” in normal conversation.

“Grandpa is talking to you in your dreams?”

“That feels correct.”

Liam took a minute to study her. He knew she was quite old, 104 to be exact, but never once had she ever displayed the least bit of dementia. He didn't think she was starting today. “Alright then. I believe you, of course. But what does he expect us to do about a cure? He might as well tell us Santa Claus is real.”

Grandma gave him a sideways glance, which Liam took as an invitation.

“Santa is real?”

Victoria hit him on the shoulder, but all three were laughing.

The consensus was that even if there was a cure to this horrible plague, they were in no condition to find it. They were hardly in a position to move beyond the tree. Grandma's cane went MIA back under the Arch, and the big wheelchair given to her by a passerby was lost last night when Liam whiffed tossing it onto a moving train. He and Victoria could help her walk for a short distance, but that wouldn't work for a longer journey. Step one of their master plan to save the world had to begin at the most rudimentary level. They had to find transportation.

Liam studied their group. He was the fifteen-year-old boy dressed in jeans and a Mountain Dew T-shirt, carrying a small Ruger Mark I .22 caliber pistol inside his waistband. Victoria was his partner, a modestly pretty 17-year-old girl clad in a formerly beautiful black cocktail dress, covered almost head to toe in coal dust, and accessorizing with Liam's brown leather belt around her waist so she could use his holster for a duplicate Ruger Mark I. They were both caring for Liam's 104-year-old great-grandmother. She was wearing a light blue pant suit and a head scarf, with the ability to walk unassisted for about ten feet, armed only with a Rosary. They also had Liam's backpack which had some sundries such as off-the-shelf pain medications, a near-full box of 1,000 rounds of .22 ammo, food, and a couple remaining bottles of water.

We aren't exactly the stuff of legend.

Liam wasn't convinced there really was a cure. This was the real world, not some book about zombies. In the real world, filled with people with conflicting goals and morals, hiding something as big as the source of this plague and any attendant cure, would be impossible. Somebody would talk. Someone would warn the world. The internet would be filled with anonymous tips from good people who wished to save humanity.

The answer could have been out there all this time, but he was so busy playing World of Undead Soldiers with his friends, he would never have noticed if someone was screaming it on every news channel or posting it in every online forum. He lived his life as far from the “real world” as was possible for someone so engrossed within a bubble of modern communications. It would have been a point of pride a week ago. Now it was a major liability.

Still, from a technology standpoint, Liam was probably their best chance of finding clues to help them understand the plague, and to discover if there was any hope of a cure. But to do that, he'd need access to the internet, and probably weeks of time to study message boards far and wide. If this thing was global, it was likely the internet was down everywhere—to say nothing of most of its users either turned to zombies already or fighting for their lives against the walking dead. That made him about as useless in the technology department as Grandma—a woman who prided herself at avoiding anything more technologically advanced than a rotary telephone.

That brought him back to the present. She still seemed comfortable sitting against the tree, but Victoria was crouched in the grass nearby, trying to rub her arms and legs to remove the insidious coal dust. She was having limited success.

Liam took the opportunity to move back toward the blown bridge. Whatever their long-term desire to find the cure might be, everything started right here.

He needed to get the trio to his parents' house. He needed to meet up with mom and dad. He needed to find allies.

The key to all that was sitting in a police cruiser back at the bridge.

4

“Excuse me. Officer, uh, Phil.”

The man who had been instrumental in saving them when they crossed this bridge this morning was the man in charge of the whole operation here. He was a police officer with the Arnold PD, the local jurisdiction. They had been manning blockades across all the bridges south of St. Louis with orders to prevent anyone—living or dead—from crossing to the south shore of the Meramec River. The goal was to prevent the infection from getting out of the city, but it also doomed those who were still alive to suffer a horrible death as they were caught from behind by the growing hordes of zombies. Grandma was able to convince Officer Phil to let her band of survivors cross this bridge—and then they used a wrecking ball to drop it in the river.

By Liam's calculation, he was actually in Phil's debt, but he was hoping Grandma's “miracle” in letting him talk to his dead wife would have some lasting value for what he was about to ask.

Phil was sitting in his black and white police car with the door open, listening to his radio. When he saw Liam, he rose from his car to meet him. “What can I do for you, son? Is your grandma alright?”

“Yeah, she's fine, thanks for asking. We hate to impose on you, but she has no wheelchair or cane anymore, so there's no way we can get her home. I was wondering—well, we all were—if you can help us find a ride home?”

“Where do you live?”

“Not far. My parents have a house in Imperial.” Liam couldn't help but show excitement.

Phil gave him a long hard look, then sat back down in his car. The radio was cackling loudly with several urgent reports. Lots of them were squelching each other off the air. He turned the radio down significantly. “On any other day, I'd give you a ride and be back here in thirty minutes. I know you don't live far, but the world has gone to pot as you can tell.”

Liam didn't know what that meant specifically. But yes, the world was a mess. Phil took a long time, apparently thinking while looking forward inside his cruiser.

“I don't know how your grandma talked to my wife and daughter. It was a miracle, by the grace of God. I've been sitting here wondering what I should do next with my life now that I know what I know. The fact that your grandma helped you guys cross the river probably saved our lives too.” He was sweeping his hand toward the few remaining police officers standing around, near the destroyed bridge. “All the other roadblocks have fallen—violently. The interstate was especially brutal. Citizens refused to be turned back. After seeing the walking horror following you guys, I can understand why no one would turn back to face it. If I was a smarter man, I would have realized that immediately when I saw you, and reported back to HQ that we had no choice but to open the bridges to everyone while there was still time. The dead reached our roadblock first, I guess because they were intent on following your train directly out of the city. But there was never a chance of stopping them.”

He stood up, slamming his door. Liam backed up a few paces, listening intently.

“The citizens refused to be denied the bridges. They began shooting. Then they began swimming. They got behind the police and other city workers who were manning the roadblocks. Lots of good cops died needlessly for a stupid order from the mayor. I can see that now. What it did was turn the citizens against the police, and then against the entire city of Arnold. Right now, the angry people from the roadblocks are tearing the town apart. Burning it to the ground. As you might have figured out, being a police officer for this town is now practically suicide.”

“Sir, what if I told you my grandma discovered there's a cure for this thing? I'm trying to help her so we can organize a mission to find it.” He left off the detail about her learning it in a dream.

“Well, I don't know anything about finding a cure. Would be nice, of course. But the only thing that matters to me right now is what my wife would want me to do. I believe she'd want me to help you, and I have to admit I want to stay as close to your grandma as possible in case my wife wants to communicate with me again. But I have duties here. People depend on me...”

Liam thought of all the police officers he'd encountered since he left Grandma's house. Duty was always fore in their minds, but they were people, too. They balanced duty with their obligations to their own families, which was why they fought so hard at the Battle for the Arch, but then had to abandon that fight when their families were in mortal danger. As a boy with missing parents, he appreciated how they operated.

“The way I see it, your duties have been fulfilled. If my father were here he would say it much more eloquently than me, but I think he would be critical of continuing to work for an organization that seemed so intent on hurting people.”

“I think I would like your father.” After a thoughtful pause, he said, “Give me some time here. I'll think about getting you and yours home.”

Liam walked back toward his companions, hopeful he had just started them in the right direction.

5

“I think I may have found us a ride home.”

Victoria looked up from what she was doing in the grass. “Does it involve that military truck coming this way?”

Liam hadn't noticed any military truck, but now he saw a Humvee painted in multiple shades of green and brown camouflage. It was alone and heading directly for them on a gravel road parallel to the train tracks.

Victoria stood up, looking somewhat cleaner, and they moved over to Grandma to help her stand. Liam didn't know what to expect, but he'd learned over the past few days to always plan for the worst. The last time he'd seen the military, they were pointing rifles at him from up on a bridge. The time before that they'd been dropping bombs on his head.

The Humvee pulled right up in front of them. Liam wasn't surprised to see the passenger was their secretive friend, Douglas Hayes, from the CDC. He was still dressed in his white shirt, but without his hideous tie. He was now wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and an ostentatious CDC baseball cap. He had a big smile for them all.

“Hey guys. So glad to see you made it across the bridge!”

Grandma made a motion across Liam's chest, as if holding him back. “And we're glad you made it across as well.”

Liam wondered if Grandma said that to prevent him from unloading what he really felt—which would include a lot of cuss words. Hayes had antagonized the roadblock officers when they first tried to cross the now-destroyed bridge, and then angrily stormed off when they wouldn't recognize his authority with the federal government. Where he went after that was a mystery.

“I found a friend here who was more than happy to pick me up and drive me around. I can pretty much go wherever I want now. Fortunately, there are still some law enforcement agencies willing to help the CDC track down this plague.”

Liam took this as a slam on the police officers who would not let him across earlier today, although none of them were close enough to hear the disparaging remarks. He noticed Phil's cruiser had started to move. Hayes started to speak again, keeping him in the conversation.

“Liam, what do you say we take a ride with your grandma and your girlfriend? We can go back to your house, find your parents, get you all safe, and then I can protect you all.”

Liam couldn't help himself from replying. “Hayes, you told us the Army wasn't in Missouri anymore. This looks military to me. Was that a lie you told us?”

Liam saw the driver was the same plain looking redhead woman he'd seen with Hayes way back in the St. Louis Arch candy shop. She was wearing a ball cap as well, and she tried to face the other way, but it wasn't hard to figure out. Her red locks were very distinctive. That would mean more people than Hayes survived the attack from the looters underneath the Arch. He'd said looters shot all his coworkers under the Arch. Was that a lie too?

“This isn't US Army.” He didn't elaborate. Hayes lifted his phone, and appeared to take a snapshot of Liam. Then he looked down in his lap. The Humvee windows were very small, so it was difficult to say for sure what he was doing. “Come on. We can have you home for a late lunch. Just give me an address.”

“Give us a minute. I want to talk this over with Liam and Victoria.”

“Sure, take all the time you need. We're going to turn the rig around.” The Humvee moved fifty feet down the gravel road to the turnaround at the roadblock.

“Grandma, what do we do? I don't trust him, but it would be nice if we could agree with him enough that he'd take us home.”

“If I've heard you correctly, almost everything this man has told you has been a half truth. I don't feel right getting in a car with him.”

“Liam might be right. He was talking to soldiers on the Jefferson Barracks Bridge yesterday, and they wouldn't let him across. But they didn't shoot him either. Now he's with soldiers again. He's had plenty of opportunities to hurt us. Maybe it's worth the risk to get you to Liam's parents where you'll be safe. Surely he has some pity for our situation?”

They all agreed Hayes wasn't truthful, and they mostly agreed he'd not put them in any actual danger since they'd met him. He even claimed to have helped Liam and Victoria avoid getting shot by snipers at one point. The lure of a quick ride home was powerful; Liam wanted to see Grandma get to safety. If his parents were there, they'd take care of Hayes for him.

As the military truck was turning around, an Arnold PD cruiser rolled up. Phil and a partner were in the front. “Liam, I thought about your offer and I'm in. Let's get you guys home.”

Liam looked at the Humvee, now pulling behind his car, and he walked up to Phil's window. “We were just offered a ride by the guys behind you. They are from the CDC, or so they say. But we'd all feel much better riding home with you.”

“Well, then jump in.”

Liam walked back to Grandma and together with Victoria, they moved her over to the rear door of the police cruiser. As they opened the door, Hayes jumped out and walked around to where she was being loaded.

“Hey, I thought you guys were coming with us?”

Phil opened his door and stood up.

The women were safely inside the car. Liam was left to face Hayes. “Thank you. We really do appreciate your offer, but Phil was there to help us cross the bridge, so we feel we owe him. We want to try to repay him, so we are going to let him take us home.”

Hayes had never expressed any negative emotions. He acted as if he was above most of the fighting and excitement of the last few days. He never shot a weapon or even held a weapon in Liam's recollection. He claimed he was a middle manager for the CDC, more of a “transportation roadie” than anything to do with fighting diseases, but Liam was pretty certain he was less than truthful about his job description. Taken together, Hayes projected an aura of scientific detachment, which was why Liam was surprised when he got right up in his face. He spoke so only Liam could hear him.

“Liam, please. You don't understand. Your grandmother could hold an important key to solving this riddle. She needs to be protected, and I want to make sure she stays safe. Come with me, and I'll take you all somewhere I can guarantee your safety for the duration of this disaster.”

There were a number of books swirling through Liam's brain at that moment. There was always someone who enticed the unsuspecting victims with safety, but then inevitably put them into even more danger...or killed them outright. On the other hand, the real world was much more fluid. Perhaps Hayes just had poor communication skills and his mission really was to study the plague, and he really believed Grandma could help with that cause. In that scenario, going with Hayes would probably benefit everyone involved.

His father was the tiebreaker. His dad took pride in his anti-government leanings, and he even kept his favorite quote in a small frame near his home-office desk. Liam had read the quote his whole life, but he never understood it until just this minute. He could only paraphrase it, but it went something like, “The nine most dangerous words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” It was spoken by a US President from before Liam was born.

Now, the government was literally offering its hand to him. Though not on the best of terms with him lately, he was going to trust his father on this one. “Thank you, Mr. Hayes. Seriously. We will be perfectly safe with the officers here. Good luck finding the cure. Stay safe out there.”

He moved to get in the back seat, but Hayes grabbed his arm. His voice was bordering on stern. “I urge you to reconsider. There are so few...people...left, we have to husband them carefully.”

That's just what a government egghead would say.

“No thanks. See ya!” He yanked his arm and jumped in the back seat, slamming the door.

Hayes and Phil were left outside facing each other. Liam wasn't sure what to expect, but nothing dramatic happened. The two men may have nodded slightly, and each returned to their respective vehicles. No threats. No nothing.

Liam acknowledged either way he went he was getting into the vehicle of the government. But he decided he'd rather get into the car of a man regretful of his role in government debauchery than one proud of it.

As they drove away, he looked through the rear windshield to see Hayes sitting inside his armored car, talking animatedly on his phone.

This was his first big choice of the new day. Had he made the correct one?

I'm thinking yes.

Chapter 2: Phil

Liam felt relieved at getting away from Hayes, but all his enthusiasm drained away once they got out of the woods along the river and back into something approaching civilization. Almost immediately, he saw signs of conflict—burned houses, cars tipped over, dead rotting in the streets. He realized crossing the bridge out of St. Louis wasn't leaving the plague behind, it was merely changing one set of problems for another.

They pulled to the end of the gravel lane and stopped just before the major two-lane blacktop road. He saw no traffic in either direction.

“So, how are we getting to your house, Liam? Do you know how to get there from here?”

Liam knew where he was, and how to get home. But what was the best way home?

“On second thought, I have to do something first. If I'm going to quit my job, I want to do the right thing and ditch this car. You mind if we swing by my house so I can get my personal vehicle?”

No one objected, so Phil put the metal down to the floor, and forced everyone back into their seats with the acceleration. He was heading into the town that dreamed up the roadblocks, which Phil said would be dangerous. Getting it done as fast as possible seemed sensible.

The car ride was torturous for the trio in the back seat. Phil was driving at high speeds through narrow streets and along country roads. He knew them well, but the back and forth and up and down motions were tossing the rear passengers all over. Liam worried about crushing Grandma between Victoria and himself.

As they approached the town of Arnold, more people were walking the roads, more cars were mobile, and there were more signs of the devastation of the ongoing societal collapse. Houses on fire. Dead people in the streets. Gunshots.

At one point, on a nice suburban neighborhood street, someone threw a rock at Phil's police car. It hit the passenger side rear door just below the glass. Victoria let out a small scream. She then shrank noticeably into her seat.

“I don't think these people like you, Phil. These your neighbors?” Liam was hoping to keep the mood light, but...

“These people aren't from my neighborhood. These are people who broke through the Arnold blockade up on the highway. They are none too happy to see Arnold PD. Crap. This may have been a mistake.” Another rock clanged off the hood and chipped the glass on the front windshield.

“Almost to my house. Let's just get this done.”

A few minutes and they were there. Phil's partner switched seats so he could park the cruiser. Phil jumped out, ran to his garage and opened it, and moved his car out. Phil's partner put the police car into the garage and shut the door. Lots of people had to have watched it go in.

After a frantic minute, they were all inside the house, and could breathe again.

“Thanks, guys. I didn't want to freak anyone out, but it was critical we got over here to hide the car. Before I picked you up, I was listening to the reports on the radio. Not only did the refugees get across the river up at the highway, but they've taken a severe disliking to those who tried to keep them bottled up on the wrong side of the water. Many officers and city officials were killed at the roadblock, but I've heard people are attacking cops on the road, shooting their vehicles, and stuff like that. I knew we'd be safer coming here to swap cars rather than try to make it anywhere with a car that attracts violent protesters. We have enough troubles with the infected now.”

“But didn't they see us arrive at your house?” Victoria's concern echoed Liam's.

“Definitely. We'll have to be fast.” While he was talking, he was putting together some foodstuffs from his cupboard, throwing them into a backpack. He also grabbed some bottled waters and passed them around. He ran out of the room saying he needed to change his shirt, ripping off his uniform in the process. “Drink up while you can!”

Phil came back with a light button-down shirt and full-length jeans. He wore his service belt under his untucked shirt, providing a degree of concealment for his arsenal. He quickly went into his garage and came back with two big duffel bags, then excused himself to go downstairs. “Billy, can you come down and help?”

Grandma was sitting at the kitchen table, while Victoria was pacing nervously between the front and rear windows of the house. Liam just bounced around the kitchen aimlessly. Fatigue was his current nemesis. The water was divine.

A few minutes went by and the men were back up the steps. Each had a duffel over his shoulders. Billy carried both out the front door. “We're grabbing some supplies, but we have to go right away. I have most of what's easy to grab but I have to leave so much.”

“I think we're already out of time.” It was Victoria. She was looking out the back window, and speaking with a palpable sense of dread.

They all went to see what had her rattled.

Phil's house didn't have a great view of the town, but it did sit on a small hill in his neighborhood. They could see people running around, and several nearby houses on fire. A few residents were shooting and being shot by the arsonists. They were only a couple blocks over—heading in Phil's direction.

“Yep, because of that. Those are probably the people from the roadblocks. Torching everything in their path now. That fuel is priceless and they're tossing it on a funeral pyre!” Phil seemed more exasperated than scared. “Time to go!”

Phil threw his backpack to Liam. Liam flung it on his own back—

Holy hell this is heavy.

—and he helped Grandma get outside.

Phil's SUV already had its engine running while sitting in the short driveway. The rear lift gate was open so they could throw their gear in the cargo area.

Liam heard a strange whizzing sound. A second later they heard a gunshot report.

“Run!”

They practically threw Grandma in the back seat. Liam and Victoria tumbled in after her.

A loud clang rang through the truck. A couple more followed. Reports were echoing off the garage doors of neighbor's houses.

Phil dashed into the driver's seat, followed swiftly by Billy on the other side. The truck roared out of the driveway, turning right and then a quick left, away from whatever was happening back there. Followed only by three more clangs of metal.

“Everyone OK back there? That was a little too close for comfort. Hoo boy! We got out of there just in time, eh Billy Boy?” He looked over to his partner and was shocked to see he was dead. A bullet must have gone through Billy's door and killed him instantly. Phil seemed to slow down so he could take in what just happened to his friend and partner—to say nothing of his home and livelihood—but there was too much going on to do anything but drive at that moment.

“I'm sorry about your friend.”

“Yeah, so sorry.”

Grandma closed with, “Rest in peace, Billy.”

2

The people of St. Louis fought the much smaller city of Arnold, and spiked the football. They were taking the spoils by looting, pillaging, and then razing the berg as they moved through. Liam hoped he was wrong, but nothing out his window suggested society was going to be back anytime soon. Not here. He had to remind himself the wave of St. Louis zombies hadn't even arrived here yet.

“If I was smart, I would have parked that police car in front of another house, maybe the Mayor's house.” He gave a strained laugh at that. “Maybe driven it into a lake. Once they find it in my garage, they'll definitely burn the house to the ground.”

Liam thought he was being unfairly harsh on himself. “You did the best you could. You got all that stuff out in a few short minutes, giving us some valuable supplies to get to my house.”

“Yeah, well I've been planning for something like this for weeks. Once it started getting bad.”

There was that phrase again. Liam had heard people say things had “been getting bad” for a while before the plague exploded onto the scene, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember anything that would have tipped him off to something as big as the collapse of the world. Was he too self-absorbed to notice? He read about it many times in his zombie books.

“When you don't have a family around, you'd be surprised what seems important to do at three in the morning.”

Grandma gave a slushy “mmmm hmmm” hum in agreement. She probably had some free time herself over the years. It had been decades since Grandpa Al passed on.

“So I used my time to organize my bullets, count my cans of beans, and watch videos on the internet about how to survive after a societal breakdown. The number of websites on survival is, or rather was, nearly infinite. I admit though, I never really tested much of their advice. It never seemed urgent to try to tan a hide or pluck feathers from a chicken—so I'm afraid I didn't train up on much, beyond what I already knew.”

Phil went on to explain he had put his duffel bags of guns in places he could easily grab them, so if he ever needed them in a hurry, he would be able to be in and out. He never dreamed this was how it would end up.

Being a police officer had many perks, but the most relevant to today was being plugged into the firearms community. He not only got all the free training and range time he could ever want, but he also tapped into low cost auctions of firearms—often before the general public knew about them. He explained the various types of rifles, shotguns, and handguns he had—though Liam wasn't really listening.

In spite of all the danger, he was so tired his head was rolling side-to-side with the motion of the car, his eyelids vacillating between open so Liam could stare, and closed so he could drift off.

“A couple AR-15s.”

“A couple hunting rifles with really good scopes.”

“A pump scattergun and one automatic.”

“Lots of handguns.”

“Beaucoup Ammo!”

“Left a ton of older guns back in my safes.”

Liam looked at the two ladies and was surprised to see them both slumped over, asleep. Just that fast. He fought hard against the draw of sleep; a fight he was losing until the car lurched to a stop—he was wide awake again. Phil put the car in park and looked back at the trio, but settled on Liam because he was awake.

“I've got to get Bill out. I'm going to drag him into the woods, well off the roadway, and lay him down. We really don't have time to dig a grave, but I'll try to get back to him if I can.”

“Do you need any help?” Liam looked around and saw no other cars or people in the area, so he figured it was safe to get out.

“No, I'll be quick. I need a moment alone, if you take my drift.”

Liam had seen death more than he cared to admit over the past few days. Angie. Captain Osborne. Officer Jones. Now Officer Billy. To say nothing of the thousands upon thousands of people walking around with a plague that brings the dead back to life.

Phil walked around to Billy's door, opened it, and pulled his friend out. He gently dragged the dead man down a slight hill until he was well into the woods. Liam couldn't see much after that.

Victoria and Grandma slept on.

3

Liam must have drifted off while waiting for Phil to return Soon they were moving again, heading south. The direction Liam needed to go to get home. He could hear voices on a near-silent radio up front with Phil.

When Phil saw Liam's eyes were opened, he started up. “I've got my police scanner. Sorry if it woke you. You said you lived in Barnhart, correct?”

A quick nod in the affirmative.

“A call came over the scanner that all available Arnold and county police are to meet at the interstate overpass in Imperial—near your home—today at 3 p.m. Something big's going down. I think we need to check it out before we take you home.”

Liam really just wanted to get home in the most direct path he could, and avoid further entanglements, but he didn't want to seem selfish when there were so many desperate people outside his window. To be polite, he merely said “sure,” and left it at that.

A few minutes of driving and Phil turned the car abruptly to the left into a small strip mall parking lot. He pulled up to a parked Arnold PD car as if he were going to talk to the occupants. They were facing his direction, so he maneuvered so his window was closest to the other driver. “This is Maple's car. I'll ask him what he knows.”

Phil pulled the car up next to the police cruiser, but quickly let out an “Oh shit!” He reached down and pulled up a semi-automatic pistol. Liam imagined he was going to take the gun and start shooting whoever was inside the police car. Instead, Phil moved the car a few feet ahead and took three shots at the rear tire, blowing it out. He then sped out of the parking lot, continuing southward. Liam's ears were ringing as he looked over his shoulder. He could see several men pour out of the police cruiser—none of them were Arnold PD. A couple tried firing handguns, but they were too far away. Liam had never been so happy to see a police cruiser out of operation.

“Wow. Did you know who was in that car when you pulled up?”

“No. But I should have known. I saw the driver wasn't Maple, and did the only thing I could think of—short of killing them in cold blood. Those boys could have been out for a joy ride and innocently found the car, or maybe they killed Maple to get his car. Maybe the car was abandoned; like I dumped mine. Maybe they thought I was a bad guy trying to jack their ride. There's no way to tell anymore who are the good guys and who are the bad. Even the good guys guarding those bridges became bad in the eyes of those on the other side of the roadblocks. Good and bad are just empty words out here.”

Phil drove on a few blocks and pulled off the road behind a small building. He put the truck in park and looked back at everyone. “I'm sorry guys, but we need to regroup. I've realized we all have to work together on security if we're going to survive. I don't think I'll be dropping you off and heading off on my own like I thought either...”

No one seemed anxious to argue with a police officer about security.

Phil requested Liam sit in the front passenger seat to help be his eyes and, he admitted to everyone, he needed someone checking his work. The other thing he did was place an AR-15 in the front seat with Liam. He threw several loaded mags onto the front floorboard. “If you need to fire it, try to stay lower than the window frame. Bullets will still come through the metal part of the door, but they have a much better chance of deflecting or at least slowing down compared to going through an open window right into your head.”

Liam had fired an AR before, as his dad was something of a “gun nut.” However, he was far from an expert shooter with the long guns like this. Some people had a steady hand and a dead-eye when they used scopes on rifles, but Liam admitted he was kind of “twitchy,” and found it difficult to concentrate and remain perfectly still when he had to shoot long guns, such as hunting rifles. He wondered out loud how twitchy he was going to be when the targets were for real.

“Just take your time and pretend you're firing at paper targets. Aim center of mass, then put three shots right there. Oh, if you encounter any zombies—add one to the head. But I warn you, it ain't like the movies. Getting a headshot from any distance can be very difficult if you don't shoot guns regularly.”

“Victoria and I shot dozens of zombies in the head with our Rugers when we were on the train. It isn't really that hard when you're up close. Zombies don't move fast. But, as I said, we were only a few feet away for most of those kills.”

Phil smiled. “Good. Now listen up. I've spent my whole life on the streets as a police officer. Almost twenty years. Not in the toughest jurisdictions, mind you, but I've still seen and done a lot of ugly crap over the years. But none of that compared to the pain and trauma of losing the two loves of my life. My wife and daughter. And to a senseless car accident.”

He paused as if he'd lost his train of thought for a few moments.

“My point is that life is full of curves. That was always the case. But look at things now. Even when you think you're looking right at something you are 100% sure is what you think it is, you need to look again. Have your buddy double check you. Check your buddy's work. Do it again. Take nothing for granted.”

Another long pause. Liam turned to the back and smiled as he saw Victoria.

“Once law and order is removed from the equation of the street, you're going to see the worst in people. Without those few police officers making it clear the unspoken rule of “civil society” is still in effect, people are going to be quick to throw off the pretenses of lawfulness. That's why looting happens so fast. Once there is a whiff that law and order is AWOL, some kind of message goes out and finds every criminal in the area and invites them to make things worse. Unless I'm calling things really wrong here, I don't see law and order returning anytime soon. Maybe never.”

Phil hunkered down in his seat after a quick check out the front window.

“This is the absolute most important piece of advice I will ever give you: the concept of law and order is just an illusion. In the past, when order existed in our normal lives, the people who broke the law and did terrible crimes were very much like suicide bombers. They made a decision to murder, rape, shoot people in a movie theater, or whatever—knowing that, for a period of time, no police officer could possibly stop them. If you were willing to die in the act, no depravity was beyond reach. As a police officer under orders from politicians with a particular mindset toward guns, I couldn't talk about this in my official duties. But privately I told everyone I knew it was their civic duty to carry a sidearm with them at all times. Movies. Church. The dentist. You are your own security. Police only show up after the suicide bomber has detonated himself.”

“Here's the bad news. Whereas previously only a suicide bomber would go out and test the limits of depravity, in today's world, there is a neon sign on every street corner saying, 'Law and Order has been terminated. You are on the honor system.' That means you no longer have to be a suicide bomber to conduct activities that aren't in harmony with the law—either written law or just plain decency. Murder is easy and has no consequences now. The suicide bomber no longer needs to detonate. And it won't just be the down-on-his-luck guy who fancies a molotov cocktail at the parish church, it will be groups of college-educated men and women throwing bombs through windows of entire neighborhoods simply as a statement against the very system of law and order they simultaneously hate and desperately need. Society itself becomes suicidal in the absence of law and order.”

“Are you saying it's the law of the jungle now?”

“I'm saying it's worse than that. The law of the jungle allows for continuation of the species. It works well when times are good, and the system is well-oiled, and everyone knows their place, even though it may not be the most advantageous code for individual weak members of the tribe. The strongest warrior and the weakest elder can coexist when times are good, even under the law of the jungle. A system is in place that rewards the strong and penalizes the weak, but it doesn't outright kill the weak for sport. Imagine the law of the jungle with no societal restrictions of any kind. The strongest warrior suddenly has every incentive to kill all the weaklings, including the young—so he can amass his own resources and treasure to survive a little bit longer. Cooperation is gone. Order is non-existent. The only constant is chaos. In that setting, even the law of the jungle would be the height of civility.”

“So what are we looking at if the law of the jungle is beyond reach?”

“What do you call a world where the dead are walking around in broad daylight? What do you call a world where a man would burn your house to the ground because he could? What do you call a world where a man would shoot you dead simply for wearing a certain color uniform? What do you call a world where the police are the bad guys and the criminals run roughshod over the law-abiding?”

Phil paused his monologue dramatically.

“I call it Hell.”

4

After the lecture on security, Phil pulled the SUV back onto the road. Liam was riding shotgun, and was as alert as his tired condition would allow. They were close to the designated bridge over the highway. Very few cars were on the roads in this more rural part of town.

Nothing could have prepared them for the scene when they reached the highway interchange. There were no cars on the highway. Only people. Lots and lots of people. They consumed all six lanes of traffic on both north and south-bound sides. All of them walking south—away from St. Louis.

Victoria was the first to speak up. “How is this possible? That must be the whole city walking out.”

Phil slowed the truck to take it all in. They were all gawking like schoolkids on their first zoo field trip when a man ran up to Phil's window.

“Hey! You might want to get that car off the bridge. Some of those people down there might be tempted to come up here and take it from you.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm going to pull the car well off the road so no one can see it, but, if anyone wants to get out now, I plan on walking back and talking to these people on the bridge.”

Liam volunteered to get out. He looked at the women.

“I'll stay in here, dear. I'm comfy.”

“And I'll stay with her. We'll keep each other company.” Victoria gave Liam a smile as she said it. A bright ray of sunshine after the problems they'd been having.

Liam looked at Phil before he got out. “You think I should carry the AR?” He was looking at the AR-15 expectantly.

Phil took a few seconds to consider. “No, it would better to keep your sidearm handy, but hidden. Be ready to defend yourself, but don't make yourself a target. There are desperate people down there. They might see a young man with a rifle over his shoulder as a juicy mark. Don't worry, I'll be back in a couple minutes.”

Liam stepped out, and the SUV sped off. He was mesmerized by the impressive number of his fellow man down below on the interstate. He looked behind him and saw the wave of mankind pushing well down the highway and over a small rise about a mile away.

I wonder where they're all going?

As he was standing there, gawking, the same man was once again giving a warning. “Hey. Howdy there. My name's Mark.” He hung his hand out for Liam to shake.

As Liam became aware of the hand, he blinked his eyes as if to wake himself up. “Oh, hi. I'm Liam.”

“I know. We're all exhausted. But I recommend you move over here to where we have our little operation. You don't want to be alone and looking down into the crowd like that. It freaks some of them out. And these folks are already freaked.”

“No doubt.” Liam followed him from the middle of the bridge to a point a bit further toward the western edge. There were about twenty or thirty people doing various tasks up on the bridge decking, all of it related to water. Some were pulling big water containers on bicycle trailers. Others were pushing some kind of garden cart with more containers. Then there were static containers filled with water sitting directly on the bridge. Several people were either filling them up, or draining water into buckets. Those buckets were being dropped over the side of the bridge. Liam walked over to the edge and could see where the buckets were going. The crowd below was using the water to quench their thirst. They looked road-worn but shouted up thanks with real gusto. He had to admit it was almost festive.

Mark spoke to Liam as they both looked down. “Get to livin' or get to dyin', eh?”

“What?”

“Oh, it's a line from a movie. It's how I feel about setting up this water stop for people.”

“You set all this up?”

“Well, me and thirty of my closest friends. Yes. We did it together. The fast food joint over there was the key though,” he was pointing off to their left, “they still have running water and the owner got us most of these big containers.”

Liam was impressed. It had only been four days since the world did its face-plant off the bicycle, but this was the first truly positive thing he'd seen. It lifted his spirits. “Amazing.”

Phil came running up, and after some introductions, he took in the operation and could only echo Liam.

Liam looked at Mark. He seemed to be in his 30's or 40's—he was notoriously bad with ages—with short dark hair with bits of grey sprinkled in. He was average build and average height. He was wearing dark sunglasses and an obnoxious deep red Hawaiian shirt with white palm trees. He came across as a naturally happy person, with an infectious smile, even in the midst of this terrible scene.

He turned his smile on Liam. “So what brings you guys this way? Not many cars on the roads these last couple days. You must be going somewhere—surely not here.”

“I used to work for the Arnold police. I've heard on the police scanner that some local official from Arnold is rounding up all his remaining officers, and those from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, and are going to try to turn these people back.”

“Back? That's insane. Where the hell is he going to try this neat trick?”

“Lucky you. They're coming right to your bridge. 3 p.m. today.”

Liam looked down at his watch. It was already 2:30.

Saddle up! We're out of here.

5

Liam really wanted to get out of there, but he couldn't force Phil and he didn't want to lose a ride for Grandma.

“Did you know these folks burned Arnold to the ground?” Phil nodded in the direction of the massive plumes of black smoke to the north. The small town was indeed burning.

Mark had already heard about the blockades at the bridges, and how they fell. He pointed over to his team and said a couple of them had come directly from the nearest up the highway. Whoever it was probably wouldn't be too happy an Arnold PD cop was standing right here on this bridge, though Phil had nothing to do with the bridges other than the one he managed—and, on that bridge, he let the people across peacefully.

“But most of these people are just like you and me. Average law-abiding people. Parents. Children. They have no more interest in the violence spinning around them than they did before the collapse. We set up this system with the water to keep them moving down the highway. Initially I thought of the idea to keep them from coming off the highway and overwhelming my neighborhood, but now that I see them—there is nothing that can stop that now. There are just too many.”

“And they're being pursued by zombies.”

Both men turned to Liam. Phil had briefly witnessed the zombies in action, but Liam had spent days inside St. Louis trying to fight them and get out.

“Well I can't say for certain that these people are being pursued by zombies, but my grandma and me lived on the south side of the city and we had to practically fight our way out tooth and nail since the sirens went off. We met Victoria and she helped us get out of the Arch. We met Phil and he helped us get over the last bridge out of St. Louis. The infected—I call them zombies—are real, and they're vicious. They wouldn't stop following us even in the middle of the night while we were on a train.”

Mark looked back to the crowd. “If they're behind this group, it's going to be an explosive disaster. There's nowhere to run with people packed that tight.” He put his foot up on the concrete barrier that was the side of the bridge, like he was thinking. Liam noticed he was wearing cycling shoes—the kind that locks a rider onto the pedals. An interesting choice for someone with that shirt on.

“I just don't know what to do. I can't make these people move any faster. I can't warn them without panicking them. I also have an obligation to my wife and family to protect my own house. If these people leave the highway and zombies are rampaging over the countryside, my little water station is going to be a skidmark on the underpants of this disaster. Maybe it would better to just abandon it and spend time fortifying my neighborhood?”

Phil replied. “There's no clear answer. Once the Arnold people get here, there's going to be a disaster either way. The Mayor is an idiot if he thinks this tiny intersection can be defended against this crowd, when an entire river wasn't enough to stop them. Of course, this is your town now—he's no longer worried about destroying his own, because it's already ash.”

Stay or go. Door 1 or door 2. The age-old question of gamers lining up for quests in his video game world. Only a few days ago, World of Undead Soldiers was the only thing Liam would think about for days at a time. Now he was living it. Run away or confront the local overlord and try to make a difference. Unlike the game world, Liam had responsibilities. His grandma. Victoria. His parents. It wasn't simply a matter of finding the right weapons and then cutting new trail into the wilderness as a loner to find glory. He found himself getting nervous about being on the bridge when the police showed up.

“Umm, Phil. Maybe we should be going?”

“Yeah, I want to be gone by the time they get here. Don't worry about that. We have to try to help while we can.”

With less than thirty minutes, and tens of thousands of refugees on the road below, Liam saw no hope in anything they could do. He looked at Mark, trying to engage in conversation to hide his nervousness. “Do you live around here? I live over hill in that direction, in the Dearborne Acres subdivision. Well, my parents live there. I'm trying to get Grandma back to them.”

“You got her out of the city, huh? That's pretty impressive for a—,” he hesitated. “Um, did you walk out?”

“Well, we started out in a car, did a lot of walking, and ended up on a coal train. I left a few things out, but those are the basics,” he laughed.

“Hmm. No, I live over in the next valley, up Seckman Road.” He was pointing in the direction west of the interchange. It was near his own subdivision, but on the opposite side of a low ridge. “It's a fair piece from here, but we rode our bikes. We—”

Liam heard groans coming from the people on the bridge nearby. Many of those serving water were looking past Liam and Mark; pointing at something. Liam turned in the same direction and groaned as well.

Several police cars were turning from a side road, approaching the bridge. Liam saw a dozen different color patterns on the cars as they filed along the road. Several dark vans were part of the same convoy, as well as a rag tag assortment of other vehicles—dump trucks, fire engines, big rigs pulling large container trailers, armored vans, and others. It looked like a parade. A parade of government departments.

Liam took a few steps back. Phil turned to him and said, “We have to get off this bridge. Go!”

Liam walked backward, but couldn't take his eyes off the unfurling procession. He couldn't see the end of it from his vantage point—only the ominous beginning. The lead silver police cars were recognizable; they were driven by the Missouri Highway Patrol. He immediately thought of Captain Osborne, a Missouri Highway Patrolman who had led a group of survivors out of the tunnels underneath the Gateway Arch. He wished Osborne was in one of those cars, but knew that was impossible. Osborne died saving him and many others.

Still, he hoped someone like Osborne would get out of those cars. Otherwise—

He looked down on the packed highway below. Those people were too low to see the trouble arriving on the road above them yet. The water buckets were being pulled up one last time, as the workers began moving off the bridge. That would get their attention. He imagined himself down there in the throngs. What would he do if someone told him he could go no further?

He and Mark were the last two off the bridge. They ran to join Phil and the others on a nearby hill. He was happy to see Victoria running up from the far side.

“Liam! I saw all those police cars in the distance and wanted to warn you before they got here. I was too slow, I had to make sure Grandma was comfortable before I left her back in the car.”

“That's OK. Thanks for keeping an eye on her. I'm glad you're here though.”

“You seem to have a knack for getting into trouble.” She was grinning, though her face was bruising badly from her ordeal fighting the gang members up in the Arch.

“Maybe it's you? My life was smooth sailing until you came along.” He was trying to be funny to dial back his fear at what was about to happen on the interchange below them.

“Nope, that was the old Victoria. From now on, only good things are going to happen.” She crouched next to him on the reverse slope of the hilltop with all the others. They watched as the police line started to creep onto the deck of the bridge, like gasoline washing toward the spark.

Chapter 3: Interchange

“Liam, do you think it's a good idea to stick around and watch this?” Victoria was fidgeting on the ground next to him, as they both watched what was happening on the highway overpass below their hilltop perch. “It looks like things are going to be violent.”

He couldn't argue with her. She'd been right to be wary back at Phil's house. Things had been “getting” violent for days now. Whatever was going to happen down there wasn't going to surprise him. When he didn't respond in a timely fashion, Victoria seemed to take offense.

“Liam? We have to do something. Are we going to leave or try to help those people?”

Liam still hadn't made up his mind when Mark spoke up. “Help the people. We have to try to stop the police from turning these people back.” He paused for a moment and introduced himself to Victoria while Liam continued to ponder.

Leave or stay?

Leaving looked pretty good. His loyalties were to Grandma and Victoria and, to a degree, his new friend, Phil. While he felt sympathy for the people down on the highway, he didn't know how he or those around him could possibly interfere with the police presence without getting hurt or even killed. The police had already battled with refugees like this on bridges miles back up the highway—and lost. Were they ready to fight harder here?

He took another look at those down on the highway. He noticed people carrying mattresses over their heads, looted from one of the ubiquitous mattress stores in town. Two guys were pushing a heavy chipper-shredder in the breakdown lane; it was bathed in the heavy orange of the home improvement store where it was liberated. He could see survivors carrying flat-screen televisions, dragging kiddie pools filled with clothes, and wheelbarrows full of DVDs and video games. He even saw one group of teens rolling a giant metal chicken ahead of them—Liam thought it belonged to one of the chain restaurants up in town.

The police arrived and fanned out up on the overpass. Would the transients below ever survive if they were still operating in a world where pushing giant chickens passed as a survival instinct? It made him less enthusiastic about the future, both at this bridge and whatever would come later. Ever since he'd walked out his door with Grandma, he'd only seen remnants of humanity, always on the run. Here he was looking at the biggest group of living humans he'd seen in a long time, and the word that popped in his head was “lemmings.” Lemmings that would keep walking down this highway until they dropped dead.

He imagined himself down there. With Grandma. With his parents. How would he feel if he made it this far only to be turned around by “the authorities.” The same authorities who had done nothing to protect him or advise him how to survive when the sirens first sounded.

“I'm going out there.” Liam was getting up, brushing off the dust and grass from his pants.

“What?” He heard several people ask that question.

“I have to go out there and try to save those people down there. What if it were us? What if Grandma were down there?” He was looking at Victoria, but talking to everyone. “We can't let anything happen to them.”

Mark was the first to respond, standing up as well. “He's right. We've been trying to help those people. We shouldn't abandon them now.”

Victoria and Phil joined them. Victoria asked, “I'm with you, but what are we going to do? I don't think they'll be too anxious to listen to a couple kids and an ex-Arnold police officer.”

Mark came up with a plan on the spot. Liam figured he must be military or something because he was so methodical. Liam didn't like his part in the outline, but he knew it was the best way to help given the resources they had available.

Mark and Phil ran off to do their thing.

The kids walked toward the bridge, ready to do theirs.

2

Liam felt the eyes of the law enforcement people immediately as he entered their “jurisdiction” up on the overpass. They walked by several dump trucks placed across one of the exit ramps—though no cars were on the road. They had put the heavier equipment out on the edges of their roadblock, and kept their own police cars and supplies closer to the middle. A couple of small surveillance drones were humming high above.

To Liam's untrained eye, he saw many tactical faults. They didn't control the high ground adjacent to the interchange. His friends controlled that. Liam noted they had no men on the back side of the bridge. What if someone paid them a visit from their 6 o'clock? Is that where Mark and Phil were going? And finally, being on the bridge now, he could see much of this force was made up of civilian government bureaucrats such as water department officials, park service employees, and some out-and-out civilians.

“I need to talk to the person in charge!” He was walking hand-in-hand with Victoria, trying to project anything but the fear he felt in his stomach. He didn't know what he expected, but was surprised when they ignored him outright. He could tell who was in charge though. There, in the middle, was a pudgy guy ordering people around. He was standing right by the truck with the huge loudspeakers.

“Excuse me! I need to talk to the guy in charge.” Liam was walking right up to the man. Amazingly, none of the cops made any move to stop him all across the bridge.

I'd say that is another pretty big tactical fault!

After introducing himself in his most polite voice, Liam immediately laid into him, letting him know everything wrong with the proposition of halting this crowd. He was not very eloquent. The stress of everything made his already poor social skills degrade to the equivalent of slipping on a banana peel.

Fortunately, Victoria jumped in. “I think what my friend here is trying to say is that you can't enforce a blockade if there's no viable escape for those trapped by it. This crowd can't simply turn around and go home. Their homes have been overrun. If you block these good people from continuing down this highway, there's going to be a lot of bloodshed. Even a seventeen-year-old can see that.” Then she turned quiet. “We've been seeing it ever since we left downtown St. Louis.”

Liam noticed the man was sweating profusely, either suffering because of the heat or was agitated by his obligations here—or both. He seemed to cringe when Victoria held out her hand to shake his.

“You two are from St. Louis? You shouldn't even be here.” He seemed to make an effort to put part of the truck between himself and the two kids so as to avoid shaking hands. “My name is Jack Crosby. I'm a councilman up in Arnold, but you're right—we have to prevent further bloodshed.” His hand was twitching intensely.

Whoa, this guy is baked!

Liam asked, “Why this bridge?”

Jack explained. “After the crowds swept over the bridges into Arnold and tore the place apart, people down south got scared. They made calls for help. Then I got a phone call from...” he paused for a long time. “I got my orders from...” He seemed unable to decide. “They gave me a hundred reasons why this roadblock made sense. Why the rioters couldn't be allowed to pass into the rest of the state of Missouri. Now, if you'll excuse me—”

Liam could see the sweat beading up on his forehead.

Victoria continued. “Sir, you realize what you're doing here is completely without hope, don't you? Just look at all the people who have already walked under this bridge.” She pointed further down the highway. “A thousand men with machine guns couldn't turn this entire crowd around. Not without killing them all. That's not what you want to do here today, is it?”

His pause was a heartbeat too long for Liam's taste, but the man conceded cold-blooded murder was not why he was there.

“I do have orders though. I have to try.”

“Orders from whom?”

Jack ignored Liam, fidgeting with the controls of the sound system.

“Orders from whom!”

The speakers went live as Jack turned toward the crowd.

3

“ATTENTION FELLOW CITIZENS!”

Liam and many nearby officers flinched. Jack reduced the volume to a more tolerable level. Still loud enough to hear it well down the highway. The crowd was standing still and quieting down. A minor miracle.

“My name is Jack Crosby. I work for the city government. I know y'all are tired and thirsty and are looking for help—”

Victoria whispered to Liam, remarking that ol' Jack neglected to say which city he was from. She gave Liam a wink. An Arnold city official would not be popular right now.

“—but by decree from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, I order you to return to your homes and await further instructions.”

No surprise that the crowd erupted in screaming and shouting. He was still talking, but no one was listening. If there had been cars on the highway the crowd would have already turned them over and set them alight. They were in riot mode, though still not willing to give the roadblock a go head-on. Liam looked around at the men and women on the bridge, and saw them eying their rifles.

Jack dropped the microphone and walked away. He appeared to be rubbing his hands—was he literally washing his hands of this? Liam and Victoria were left standing there.

Should I pick up the microphone and say something to these people? What would I say?

The question hung heavy on Liam. Could he insert himself between these people and a government politely requesting they go home and die? What would he be authorized to say? Come to my place. I have chips? The responsibility of touching that microphone was huge. He had a new respect—sort of—for the sweaty politician currently fading into the background of this scene.

His answer would have to wait. A black van slowly moved from the assembly area and glided into position just behind the speaker-truck. It had no markings of any kind, not even manufacturer badges. Three men emerged from the back door.

Government men.

It was obvious two of the men were working security for the third. The two large men on the flanks wore equally large black rifles with oversized scopes, slings of ammo, bulky vests, dark sunglasses, and ear pieces. Liam saw their type in numerous action movies. They moved with that cat-like grace big men carry when they are true professionals at their craft. Probably ex-military. The guy they were protecting was dressed exactly as you'd expect from a G-man type. Black slacks. White shirt. Sport jacket over the shoulder. Smart tie around his neck. Mirror shades. The only incongruity was the brown cowboy boots. Maybe that's how they did it in the corn fields of Missouri?

Mirror man walked directly up to the microphone, picked it up, and pinged it one time for a mic check. He had slicked back jet-black hair, was clean shaven, and looked to be about fifty. His face was otherwise average, but he came across as a man who was supremely focused on his task. Not once did he look at Liam, Victoria, or anyone else on the bridge.

“Hello.” He spoke into the microphone. “Hello,” he calmly repeated.

If he didn't see it happen, Liam wouldn't have believed the crowd could actually be “talked down” from the foam-in-the-mouth fury they expressed minutes earlier. Slowly, the crowd stepped back from the edge of chaos. Merciful silence was returned.

“I'm Special Agent in Charge Duchesne. I'm with the Department of Homeland Security.”

The two security men happened to be standing precisely where Liam could see both of them at the same time. He thought he noticed the slightest glance to their leader from both of them.

“My job here today is to help protect you citizens in this time of crisis. I know you're scared.” He paused to let that sink in. “I know many of you have walked through some ugly situations—including roadblocks set up by idiots like Jack back there.” He was pointing over his shoulder. Jack was probably running for his life now. “I'm here as part of the Federal effort to ensure our citizens get the best care their federal family can provide. We're all in this together.”

The agent went on; a very accomplished speaker taking control of the situation. The crowd heard what they wanted to hear. Someone in charge who was going to tell them what to do. Agent Duchesne began listing facts and figures about survival rates in the city, locations of FEMA hospitals, and even said the US Army had a brigade of troops moving up this very highway from their base in Arkansas to help protect them. He then began listing resources they had set up for food disbursement throughout Jefferson County. Liam wanted to believe it. The government was here to help, right?

“And we're working on the vaccine for the sickness. That will be given out at the FEMA centers. You just have to turn around.”

Victoria looked at Liam, apparently studying what she saw on his face. “You don't believe him, do you? What he's saying is horse hockey. You know that, right? We didn't pass any food distribution centers and we've been all over the place. Have you heard of a vaccine?”

No, but I want to believe.

Liam looked down at the crowd while he was digesting. Something amazing had happened. They were all standing there talking to each other, as if they were discussing the weather. Did they believe what the agent had told them? Stuck between false hope and hopelessness, they seemed to be selecting false hope. They had to know it was all a long shot. An impossible shot.

Don't get involved. This is for the adults to handle.

He found himself wishing his dad was there. He'd know just what to say to make this situation resolve itself satisfactorily. He desperately wanted to avoid being the one making the decisions.

Get involved. You can't let this happen.

He thought of the teens pushing the chicken. Who would speak for them? He looked down into the crowd and saw women, children, the elderly. Would they really turn around because this guy said it was the right thing to do?

Yes, but don't get involved. Someone else will save the day.

The agent carried on with more soothing words. All lies.

Why is no one stepping up? I can't be the only one seeing this? Where is Mark? Phil?

He knew they were somewhere below, but he had no idea what they were actually doing down there. He was supposed to be the diversion for them, but they didn't seem to be doing anything to divert.

Don't do it. Don't get involved.

Do it. These people need someone giving them the honest truth.

BUT IT COULD GET YOU KILLED!

Worse. You could get them killed.

Liam squeezed Victoria's hand, stepping forward.

If I do nothing now, I kill them. I know that in my heart.

To his relief, Victoria didn't let go.

4

Liam wasn't that far from the man speaking, so he didn't have much time to think what he was going to do. He realized he probably should have thought of that before he committed himself. Was he going to push the man aside and heroically begin a speech as if he were George Washington? Maybe organize the police to hurl the man over the side of the bridge so the crowd could “have at him.” That's how they do it in the movies.

Reality was less structured. There were two guards with guns standing right there. Not to mention the other fifty police officers. He took a few steps forward toward the side rail of the bridge—it was a wall of concrete about three feet tall. The police had set up some steel cases at various points on the bridge—ammo crates?—and he hopped up to the one nearest him. People down below could clearly see what he was doing. Victoria stood next to and underneath him, but still held his hand.

He did the first thing that came to his mind and began wildly flailing his arms as if trying to get the attention of someone way back in the crowd. He thought he might start screaming “This man is a liar!” but he thought it might only antagonize the agent. Better to be seen as a confused kid than a man with a plan.

“Dad! Dad! Can you see me?” he shouted.

Where am I going with this?

The agent halted his speechifying, unable to ignore the young man to his left gesticulating and yelling in a crazed fashion. It gave Liam the opening he didn't know he was looking for. “Hey! Can I use that microphone? I see my sick dad over there!”

Not too thick, you fool.

The agent was clearly processing this new information, and was reaching a conclusion Liam wasn't going to like. He turned around from the crowd and gestured to one of his guards using the “finger across the throat” motion. Then he pointed to Liam.

He looked twenty feet below to those closest to him on the roadway. In that instant, he saw a family of four and knew what to say. “I have information that could save your lives, but this man won't let me speak. Help me!” Liam was yanked off the crate and was subdued forcefully to the ground by one of the guards. He could no longer be seen by the crowd, but Victoria began shouting at the security guy to let him up, insisting they were hurting Liam. She was putting on a show for those below.

With a knee in his back, he was unable to continue watching her. He was looking at the cigarette butts, chewing gum, and other debris on the pavement of the bridge near his face when he heard the chanting from below.

“Let him speak!”

“Let him speak!”

“Let him speak!”

Liam knew as soon as he'd heard it he'd won the first round of this battle. The people down below would not stop until they knew the kid on the bridge was safe and was allowed to speak. The chant went on for another sixty seconds before the agent finally relented.

The security agent simply removed himself from Liam's back. He was left lying there to collect himself. Victoria pulled him up. She had a nervous look on her face, but also the makings of a smile. “You better go talk to your dad,” she said with a wink.

That's it. Victoria was a genius.

Liam resumed his story when he got up, this time speaking to the agent in charge as he moved his way. “I just need to get a hold of my dad and I'll be out of your hair. I have information that could save his life.” It was a thin transition from what he had told the people down below, but it was all he had.

Liam could see Agent Duchesne was a smart guy, and that they were both walking a precarious line with the mass of frightened humanity below. If Duchesne wanted this crowd to turn around, he'd have to allow Liam “the frightened kid” time to call for his dad. Similarly, Liam would have to speak in a way that wouldn't be threatening to the very driven agent.

“You have sixty seconds to hail your dad,” the agent said, in a very quiet voice, as he passed him the microphone for the large speakers. “Thank you, sir. Thank you!”

Just a dumb kid here, uhh yep.

Liam pinged the mic once as he stood right up against the guard railing again. No crates to stand on this time. “Hello! I'm talking to my dad out there in the crowd. I saw him just a moment ago way back there,” he pointed over the crowd emphatically, as if the father were real.

“Dad, if you can hear me, I want you to know these are some good men and women up here. These police officers are here to help you survive this crisis. They have taken an oath to serve and protect you. You can count on them to be good and true to their oath. A good man, Captain Osborne of the Missouri Highway Patrol, sacrificed his life to save me and many others as we escaped the infected in downtown St. Louis.” Liam didn't know what he was doing, but he wanted to let the police officers know he was on their side and that they should be on the side of the crowd. It would matter because of what he was going to say next.

“But even good men can make bad decisions. You can't turn around. Not ever! I'll tell you why if you give me a chance!”

Liam knew the agent would be fuming, and looking back at him, he wasn't disappointed. Would the agent decide to cut him off now? Shoot him in the back? Seemed a bit too dramatic. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. He continued—

“Here's what you need to know, dad. This roadblock was set up to turn you all back, but there's no help back there. None. No army units coming to help. No FEMA hospitals. No—” He felt himself drifting, unsure.

Hey look, you're talking to all these people. Not scared, are you?

Liam recovered with a quote. Ironically it was one taught to him by his real father, not the fictional one standing out in the great crowd below him. “A great President once said, we shouldn't ask what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country. I say we need to get back to basics and simply ask, what can we do for ourselves!” The crowd seemed to be warming. “We're Americans, dammit! We do what's right even when the chips are down. Even when society itself is collapsing. That's what you always taught me, dad.”

Some cheers and affirmation from the crowd now.

“Look around you. Look what you've been through. Do you know where you're going? We're all lost right now. The people on this bridge are lost, same as you. Which is why we have to stick together if we have any chance to ride this thing out.”

For the life of him, Liam couldn't think of what to say next. He wasn't a speechwriter. He could see the crowd was reacting positively to his message, but what was actionable? Platitudes were nice, but if they couldn't go home, where could they go? He had new appreciation for why the councilman was running from this problem at top speed.

So, he once again said the best thing he could, hoping it was enough.

“Dad, four days ago I walked out my front door with Grandma Marty—she's 104 years old, by the way, for all you who don't know her—and we went downtown because traffic was stopped on the highways heading south. The situation at the Arch was...horrible.” Liam noticed the crowd was listening in utter silence. “Tens of thousands of people were protected by the desperate acts of heroism by soldiers and police. But there were also people like you, just average everyday people, manning the barricades against the—infected.” Liam hesitated to use the Z-word, as it tended to scare people. “We survived for a time. But then the bad people came. No, not the infected. I'm talking about bad humans. Looters. Criminals. Hoodlums. They tried to take over the Arch, killing anyone in their way. They beat up my girlfriend. They would have killed us all if not for the St. Louis police department. I mentioned Captain Osborne. He led us all out of that disaster and made sure we were safely moving south before he was killed by one of the bombs from the Air Force.” Liam looked down and could see most people were still listening. Certainly there was there some kind of message here?

“You, my friends, have to take charge of your own lives or people like this,” Liam was pointing over his shoulder at the silent G-man, “are going to herd you around like sheep until you fall down dead.”

How do I end this?

“Dad, look in the crowd. There are leaders among you. There are police officers. Farmers. School teachers. Every ingredient you need to survive. It can't be done by killing, stealing, or other lawlessness. It can't be done by killing the men on this bridge, nor can it be done by killing the people under this bridge.”

Will the police understand I'm talking to them?

Was that a good ending? Only one thing left to do. Liam made a theatrical turn to the people on the bridge. He had spent days with the police. He didn't fear them. “My friends up on this bridge, your oath is to serve and protect these people. I ask you now, will you let these folks pass so they have a chance at living another day, or will you force them to go back to certain death in St. Louis?”

Much like on TV, there was a long dramatic pause.

5

Liam held his breath. Really. He fully expected the agent to sic his two guard dogs on him, then pull him screaming and kicking into their van, and “disappear” him. The law enforcement people would start shooting at the crowd to make them disappear as well. End of problem.

The police did exactly what he hoped. They removed their officers from the highway below. The refugees started to pass under the bridge once again. It was the only thing they could do with a clear conscience, just as Liam had gambled.

Instead of shooting him in the back, the agent came up to Liam and began talking. He had regained his composure and was using a low voice, as if they were sharing a moment between old friends. “I commend you for your methods. You were able to win the crowd with your deceptions. I underestimated you, kid. I assure you that will never happen again.”

“Thank you, sir. The only reason I had to step up and mimic your methods was because they believed your lies. There's no help coming is there?”

He made no effort to answer.

“Can you at least tell me if this crisis is all over the country?”

The agent looked directly at Liam's face as if he was going to say something, but instead he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small camera, and snapped his picture. After capturing his quarry in digital format, he relaxed and continued. “Yes, the crisis is everywhere. The whole world is fighting the Double-E Virus in addition to the other problems of good governance.”

Liam's reply was unusually quick “Oh, you mean like blocking escape routes and sending people back to be eaten by the zombies?” Victoria reached for Liam's arm, as if giving him strength. Or maybe holding him back.

“Zombies? Is that what you're calling them, kid? Seems suitably juvenile. They aren't zombies from the movies. They're living people with a terrible disease. My—” He paused while seeming to think it over, “—superiors assure me a vaccine is being rushed through FDA approval even now. So relax. No one is going to be eating these people's brains. Though now they're going to be walking out into the countryside with no food, no water, and no medical supplies. Thanks to you.”

What if he had sent them to their deaths to the south? Even without zombies to worry about, feeding this many people in a survival situation would probably be difficult. But some problems were bigger than others. “I came from the north. I've seen the infected, the zomb-eeeeeeees, killing people by the hundreds. I know it has to be safer outside the city than back up this highway with those things.”

“Mr.—what's your name?”

“This is my friend, Sam Stevens,” said Victoria, “he's my neighbor from over there,” she was pointing in a random direction, which luckily wasn't where Liam lived.

“Sam, huh?” Agent Duchesne gave a tight-lipped grin. He made an expressive show of holding his camera in front of him, to let Liam know his photo would soon be plugged into the proper database and he'd then know everything about him, including his real name.

“Shouldn't you guys be shredding hard drives or something right now?”

The agent's response was predictable. He took a snapshot of her.

“Give me a warning next time and I'll smile!” Victoria seemed to be enjoying herself.

Without fanfare, the agent spun around, gathered his protection, and got back in his van. Liam wondered if he just made an enemy. He seemed suitably creepy and power-hungry, but in the light of day, it seemed ridiculous. “Making enemies” sounded like a Spy vs. Spy cartoon.

I only wanted to help my fellow man. That can't be a crime, can it?

Rather than being a cartoonish evil man shaking his fist at Liam, the agent was simply driving away. He gave no clues about what he would do next. In many ways, it was worse not knowing. He had no doubt that was by design.

As the police blockade pulled back, Phil and Mark came up to meet Liam and Victoria once again. After explaining what they had done up on the bridge, Phil briefly explained what they'd been doing. “Liam, you're a genius. My solution was to gather everyone with a gun and move under the bridge in small groups, and then we were going to storm the backside of the roadblock with guns blazing.”

Liam didn't know how to respond. The energy drained out of him after so much mental effort. He put his foot up on the side rail of the bridge, and looked down. Victoria had her hand on his arm, and leaned against him. Under the bridge, the mass of humanity continued to walk out of the city, many of nearest waved up as they slid out of view. He felt a sense of pride he helped make that happen. Then he saw that metal chicken again. It was lying off to the side, abandoned in a drainage ditch.

Well, maybe someone learned something here today.

Chapter 4: Home

Marty watched as Liam bolted out of the SUV, bounded up to the front door, and rang the doorbell. She knew his keys were confiscated when he came to live with her.

She took a hand from Victoria as she got out of the back seat. She'd spent a lot of time swishing back and forth over the vinyl seat, and her stomach was a little out of whack. She'd have to get something to eat fairly soon to keep up her strength. She wondered if she'd be able to keep it down.

“Here Grandma, hold on to me and I'll walk you in.”

“Thank you, dear. Give me a minute to stand here and rest before we walk up there.”

The two women were separated by 87 years and a lifetime of experiences, but they did have one thing in common—a fondness for the young boy eagerly waiting to see his parents.

“I haven't had a chance to thank you for helping me get Liam out of the city.”

“Well, he handled himself pretty well. I didn't have to do too much.”

Marty turned to give her a look. “My dear, you did the most important thing. You played it smart. That meant Liam didn't have to do anything stupid to try to rescue you. I tried to do the same, so he wouldn't have to get hurt rescuing me either. It was easier for me since all I could do was sit and hang on.” She chuckled at the image of her in that big wheelchair.

She had an agreement with Victoria that, should Liam ever have to make a choice to save only one of them, it would be Victoria. Liam didn't know about it, and Marty wondered if Victoria would renege when things got down to it. She had already shown a willingness to lay down her own life—saving the rest of their lives back at the Arch—but in the future, such heroics could spur Liam to do just about anything to rescue her, no matter how dangerous. She knew Liam was becoming romantically interested, and Marty admitted she handled herself very responsibly in some pretty dangerous situations the past few days.

I've met 100 young women that would be worse for Liam. Few better.

“Do you really think there's a cure out there?”

Marty cleared her throat. “Hmm, well, I feel like there's a cure. Someone made this virus. Someone must know how to fix it. Right?”

Victoria seemed surprised. “How do you know someone made it? Did they say that on the news?”

“When you get to be my age you just get a sense of things. There's a natural rhythm to life. I guess if this was a natural plague, the rhythm would be there. Deadly, yes, but part of nature. It wouldn't feel so overwhelming. But this. Walking dead? Does that sound like Mother Nature to you?”

“I guess not. But why? Even if this was man-made, who would benefit from killing off the human race?”

Marty actually laughed. For most of her life, she had avoided politics. Avoided conflict with family members sporting political views contrary to her own. But she read the papers. Watched the news channels. The world was full of bad people. Some were religious. Some were fiery political scions. Some were nations that just oozed evil. She formed opinions. Had thoughts on why bad things happened in the world. She could list a dozen groups that would benefit from throwing the world into chaos. Just as Jim Jones convinced his followers to drink poison, so too would many organizations willingly kill almost everyone on Earth to advance their sick goals. But she wasn't ready to unload all this onto Victoria. Wild speculation would do no one any good.

“Oh, I could think of a few groups that wouldn't hesitate to kill off mankind, but the real question isn't who would do this. Instead, the question is, who could do this. A few grumpy men sitting in a bunker somewhere probably couldn't come up with a virus this destructive.”

While they were talking, Liam had found a hidden key near the front door, and was walking in.

“It looks like Liam made it in. Let's start up there, if that's OK?”

“Sure, Grandma.” And then, “Do you think God would allow us to kill ourselves? Kill off the whole species homo sapiens?”

They'd only been walking a few steps, but Marty stopped her at that question. “Oh dear. God gave us free will. Free will includes allowing us to do stupid things. Even stupid things that kill off the entire race. But God gave good women and men like you and Liam the ability to stop that from happening.” She pointed to the cross on Victoria's necklace. “You have to stay strong in your belief God is watching over you. He is helping you when you need helping. Never lose faith, no matter how dark the world gets. Those bad people—whoever they are—must be stopped.”

Victoria gave a little laugh as they started walking again. “You talk like Liam and I are going to save the world. We're just a couple of random kids. We aren't important. We can't be.”

“That's where you're wrong. To some people, you two are the most important people in this world. They are counting on you—like I'm counting on you—to take it upon yourselves to take action. Stand with the light. Fight the dark. Save the world.”

“What makes you so sure we can?”

“Because if everyone waits for the perfect heroes to come along, the world dies waiting.”

To underscore her point, Liam walked out the front door with a monotone announcement. “Mom and Dad have gone to your house, Grandma. If you can believe it, they went to rescue me.”

Marty was looking at Victoria to see how she would handle the news, and was pleased to see a new look on her face. Resolve.

Am I a bad person for manipulating her?

Deep in her subconscious, Al was probably smiling.

2

Liam, Victoria, Phil, and Marty were all sitting comfortably in Liam's family room. The house itself was a modest ranch-style dwelling with a small floor plan. Therefore, the family room was quite cozy with all four sitting together. Grandma had found the recliner she favored. Liam and Victoria were sitting next to each other on a small loveseat, though they remained separated by a few throw pillows. Phil sat by himself on the large couch. They all shared a visible weariness after their days of being on the move. The problem of Liam's missing parents had been the subject of much discussion the last several minutes.

Phil summed up the situation. “We know your parents left two days ago in your mom's car and headed into the city. We have no way of knowing whether they made it to Grandma's house and thus we have no way of knowing if they are on their way back. The only practical question is whether they would wait there for you to return or if they would assume this is where you'd go. Did you leave a note at her house saying where you were going?”

It seemed so obvious now, but he admitted he never thought of leaving a note because he never dreamed anyone would go looking for him. He was only thinking of Grandma and himself.

“Well, is there anywhere else they might look for you?”

Liam wondered about other members of his extended family, some of whom lived near Grandma's neighborhood in the city. Were they still alive? Did they also go looking for her? Maybe there were a dozen family members in her house right now, all asking the same question about where Liam would have taken her. Would it be obvious? Liam admitted it never crossed his mind to take her to see other family members—even those who lived relatively close to her.

“Any family member who knows me would probably agree the only place I would go is back home. My friends might be under the impression I would try to get to their houses—we kind of all discussed how we'd band together if zombies came—but if they knew I was with Grandma...they'd probably assume we died on the way.”

“OK, so for now we have to assume your parents are going to come back here. Which means we have to decide what we're going to do in the meantime.” The question hung on the air for a long time.

As they all sat together, the only sound to be heard was the soft tick tock of the analogue wall clock hanging near the kitchen. It reminded Liam of Grandma's clock hanging on her wall, and how it used to make him nervous to sit in the same room with her and always be aware of that clock ticking. Mocking his inability to interact with his oldest living relative. Fighting zombies and running from gunmen weren't nearly as hard as finding a common frame of reference with the old woman, at least before the collapse. Now they had plenty to talk about, and all of it was as important as life and death.

“Grandma, what do you think we should do?”

She let out a quick puff of air, like she'd been holding her breath waiting for his question. “Well, I think we have to stick to the basics. Take things one day at a time. We need some food. We need to rest. We need to get cleaned up. We're all covered in filth—look at poor Victoria—and we're all exhausted. The day is getting on. We should use the time to rest and look at things anew tomorrow morning.”

Phil was in agreement. “I'm going to bring our gear into the house and pull the truck into the garage. No use making it known we have goodies for people to take. After we get some grub, I recommend we discuss security of the house overnight, go over some safety protocols, and have a basic plan of escape.”

He did a double-take when he saw everyone was eying him like he was nuts. “What? I'm a police officer. It's in my blood.” He gave a little laugh at that, but then was serious. “Look, I know it sounds crazy, but this is dangerous. If a bad guy comes through that door, you can't call the police anymore to take care of it—OK, you folks can because I'm in your house—but you get what I'm saying, don't you? The only way to stay alive now is to be prepared, all the time. I told you earlier the bonds of civilization are coming off. Bad people are going to be coming out of the woodwork looking to capitalize. Our only hope is to—”

He stopped to consider his next words. Liam figured he was going to say something like “stick together” or “stay positive” or some other platitude.

“—kill potential threats as they present themselves.”

Everyone remained silent for a few moments, the reality sinking in.

Victoria said, “Are you saying we have to go around killing people? I have no problem killing zombies, but people?”

“Imagine yourself captured by a registered sex offender who lives down the street. He knows the police will never come around again so he decides to have some fun. If you don't have a gun on you, and you can't run or get away, you're probably in big trouble. But if you have your gun on you, and you know how to use it, you can defend yourself. But here's the problem now. If you point your gun at him and tell him to get lost, what do you think he'll do next? Go home and cry in his pillow? If he didn't have a gun the first time, you can bet he will be armed the second time he goes out. I'm a sworn officer of the law—well I was—but, the way I see it, we have to accept the law is gone. The only thing that matters is survival. You have to kill threats immediately once they are clearly identified.”

Victoria got up and left the room. She wasn't crying, but Liam knew why she was upset. “You couldn't have known, but looters did capture her in the Arch. She was unarmed. She ran up all the steps, all the way to the top, to keep them from nabbing Grandma and me. It was dumb luck she was rescued by the police. I told them where she was so they could keep their eyes open for her.”

“Oh hell. I'm sorry. I need to go apologize.”

“No. I'll go. Thank you, Phil. She won't hold it against you. But I'll go talk to her.”

Phil leaned hard back into the sofa, looking even more tired.

As Liam got up to find Victoria, he let the words tumble through his mind.

Kill threats immediately.

This dilemma is addressed in many different ways in a plethora of zombie books and movies, but there is no consensus. Letting bad people escape to fight another day almost always results in a more dangerous fight down the road. Killing bad guys without a trial never sits well with people of good conscience, but it does eliminate the short-term threats. One method keeps people safe. The other defers the danger. Liam thought he knew which was which, but as he walked in the hallway of his boyhood home he realized the choice wasn't so simple.

There's no blueprint for the apocalypse.

3

He found Victoria in his room, poking around at all the little tchotchkes he had on his desk and shelves. She even found his messy nightstand, with a few personal effects littered about.

“You know I was just joking when I said I'd show you my retainer!”

She looked back at him and smiled weakly.

She's exhausted.

“Phil feels terrible about his example. He said to say he was sorry for causing you any pain.”

“It's OK. He's right, of course. That's what's so troubling to me. If I’d had a gun up in the Arch, I would have killed those guys with it. I'd have had a choice. But I never dreamed I'd become a murderer. Is that what we must become to survive? Murderers?”

“You wouldn't have been murdering those thugs. It would have been self-defense. That is not murder. Big difference.”

Victoria moved to sit on his bed. “Love the superheroes bedspread.”

“Uggg. I'm so glad I put away all my dolls. Oops! Did I say that out loud?” He noticed his books near his bed and had an idea to change the subject. “You know, I'm sure we have a Bible somewhere around here. I could probably get you one that has the Old Testament, as well as the New, if you'd like?”

Her reply surprised him. “No, I think I prefer the one you gave me. It's just perfect, Liam.”

Liam sat down next to her. He still wasn't bold enough to put his hands on her, even though they'd briefly kissed earlier that day. It warmed his heart she wanted to keep the Bible he had found for her, but he felt compelled to revisit the murder question because it was so important for both of them.

“Seriously Victoria, murder is completely different than self-defense. You can't hesitate if someone is truly intent to do you harm. Please don't ever hesitate to save yourself if you can.”

Liam thought back to the early days of this crisis, when he froze several times, unable to adjust to the threats right in front of him. It almost cost him his life more than once.

“But if all we do is go around killing bad people, doesn't that make us bad people too?”

That was the ethical dilemma. If you kill out of necessity to prevent evil from doing harm to you and your loved ones, does it eventually catch up to you—make you evil? Does it depend on how many people you kill? For what reasons? Does it become easier the more you kill? That was his real fear. That killing would become routine and expected. That's why he preferred to think of zombies as a distinct species—no longer human. Deep down, he knew that wasn't true though. And if what Grandma said about a cure was true, it meant maybe even the zombies could be brought back. That could present some moral problems.

“I think we have to watch each other and support each other to make sure that doesn't happen. You and I have both looked deep into the gaping maw of the zombie world. I think we both know we are going to have to do more killing. We have to be ready for it. I'd kill anyone without hesitation who tried to do harm to you.”

He didn't say it to impress Victoria with his bravado, so he was surprised she took his hand in hers and said “thank you.”

As they sat there, Liam tried to think of something to change the subject to something a little less heavy. Victoria beat him to it. “Phil seems like a nice guy. Kind of intense, but I guess that's the kind of attitude we need to survive this mess. He seems to have a connection with Grandma now, which is also good. I hope he stays with us.”

“Me too. He's definitely better than teaming up with a juggler or a writer. Someone who can't protect us.”

They laughed a little at the thought.

“If the world really is going to hell, as Phil says, the next few weeks are going to be really important to our long-term survival. Phil would be a great addition to our team, but we're going to need many more Phil's on our side to survive. When I wasn't playing computer games I was reading books on zombies, and most of those had good information on how the world would be changed forever if zombies swarmed the Earth. Single people and small groups had the most trouble surviving. Evil people are using the chaos to build their own teams of bad guys. Like finds like. It's the same in nearly every book I've ever read on the subject. No one survives on their own for very long. We have to stick with larger groups of people who—and this is the key to the whole thing—know what the hell they're doing.”

“You should lead our group, Liam.”

“Uh, no. In case you didn't notice I'm only sixteen. And I—”

“Wait a minute! Grandma said you were fifteen!” She was smiling broadly as she said it.

“Well, my birthday is in a couple weeks...” He realized again that without records to back him up, he could say anything about his own past, including his age. But he wasn't a chronic liar. Intentionally deceiving Victoria wasn't something he wanted to do with any regularity.

Apparently, she was just enjoying a little good-natured ribbing at his expense.

“OK, let me re-phrase that. In case you didn't notice, I'm only fifteen.”

“Then you are much too young to be a leader.” She turned on him and pushed him backward on his bed, then she threw her arm across his chest and pulled herself near his face. She gave him a quick kiss on the lips, a big smile, and then laid her head down on top of his chest. She held him tight as she asked another question. “Liam, do you think the world will ever get back to normal? Will we always be fighting zombies and each other? Was there anything true about that agent's speech?”

Liam's instinct was to say no. The world would never be the same again. If St. Louis was any indication, humanity had crossed a threshold from which it could never return. The zombies alone were bad enough, but the real destruction was from men and women who were scared and angry at the changes taking place around them. If people had unified in the face of the zombies it would have been easy to dispatch them, contain the spread, and maintain a semblance of the old world. Instead, gripped by fear, humanity embraced the chaos, worked against each other, and only looked out for themselves. The zombies were merely feeding on the already dead flesh of society.

He lost himself in thought for a few minutes, but when he was getting ready to answer her, he realized she had fallen asleep. He couldn't see her face, but he could hear her breathing and knew she was out. He was content to let her lay there, enjoying the faint scent of her hair. He could also smell coal dust—she was still covered in it.

After several minutes, he decided to try to roll her over and turn her so she was laying correctly on top of his bed. She stirred, but allowed him to reposition her. He wished he could lay down next to her and drift off to sleep as well—sleeping next to a girl was high on his bucket list—but he still had some things he wanted to do in his house.

He was successful getting her where he wanted, and took a light blanket from under his bed and gently covered her. She was still in her cocktail dress, and he didn't want her exposed legs and arms to get chilly. As he did it, he remembered it had only been four days since he found Grandma lying asleep on her bed, and he performed a similar service. When she woke up the following day, it began a series of adventures which ended on that bridge across the river this morning. What adventures awaited them when Victoria woke up from her slumber?

Please world, let her sleep through the night.

4

Liam grabbed some clean clothes, and on a whim decided to pull his favorite book—Earth Abides—off the shelf and carry it with him. He'd read a hundred books on zombies and the end of the world; Ish was still the survivor that impressed him the most. He didn't face zombies, but he walked into a world gone mad, just like the current real world was losing its mind. Life imitating art?

I can think of worse books to be in.

With one last look at Victoria, he closed the door and returned to the family room. He found Grandma and Phil talking about the house and the surrounding neighborhood. She didn't live at the house, but had visited many times, so she knew the basics. They were currently discussing geography of the area.

“This subdivision is pretty old, so most of the houses are small ranches with plenty of room between them. I have no idea how many houses are in the neighborhood. Maybe fifty? I usually only drive to this point on the street so I can't tell you what's up the hill. Liam, can you help describe the area to Phil?”

“Sure, Grandma. Well, the rest of the block is a lot like what you see out our window. Small houses with lots of trees, and forest surrounding the whole neighborhood. I guess we are a pretty poor neighborhood, with lots of pickup trucks and fishing boats parked in the driveways. What more do you want to know?”

Phil explained the most important factor was the proximity to and access from the interstate. On that point, the area was a mixed bag as far as Liam could explain. His subdivision dumped residents onto a main east-west controlled access highway called “M.” Highway M went east for less than a mile and hooked into Interstate 55. It was the next exit south of Imperial, where they'd met Mark with his water station. Driving west on M took the driver through a lot of woodsy areas on the way to a couple small towns as well as the county seat. It was decidedly rural, though there were some modern developments along the route—mostly single-family homes in large subdivisions for people who commute to St. Louis proper.

“So your subdivision is right off a major transit corridor that ties into the same highway where half of St. Louis is now escaping?”

“That's bad, huh?”

“Well my house was inside a town being burned by the same crowd, so yeah, that does give me some concern. But thanks to guys like Mark helping people up the highway, these folks might not be as hostile to us as they were to those closer to the roadblocks across the river.”

“Or maybe the looters and pillagers are still in Arnold and are stripping it of value before moving on?”

“Pillagers?”

“It's from a game I play. You can rob and destroy cities, just like real life, it turns out.”

“Sounds like a fun game.” But Phil wasn't laughing.

Grandma took the opportunity to speak up. “Those people are going to be desperate, no matter where they've come from. They're going to be looking for food and water especially. Maybe a place to stay once it gets dark outside. They're going to be looking for houses with lots to offer. Liam, do you want to show Phil here what your dad has been doing downstairs?”

“How do you know about that?” He was pretty sure she had not been in their basement in the past decade.

“Your dad told me on one of his many visits. I don't think he was too worried I'd tell the world about it.”

Liam took Phil down into their cramped basement. The biggest room contained a small television set and a few chairs on a red shaggy carpet. It looked like it had been designed in the 1970's and hadn't been updated since. There was a small room off one side which Liam explained had the HVAC equipment for the house. And he told him there was another room hidden from view. Phil was unable to locate it by just looking around.

The entire back wall was decorated with vertical wood paneling. But there was one section of paneling that broke away from the rest when Liam adjusted a small shelf on the slab. It allowed the section to fall forward so he could set it to the side. It revealed a normal-sized doorway leading into a small twelve-foot by twelve-foot room. It wasn't a secret room per se, but Liam's dad had apparently removed the door and put the wood paneling over the entire wall to hide what was behind it. Someone would have to be very observant to realize the footprint of the basement didn't match that of the upstairs. Liam's father had explained it would help hide the room from casual thieves which, at the time, was his main concern. He wondered what his dad would say about looters?

Phil pulled a flashlight off his utility belt, then stepped inside and whistled in amazement. It was part-food store, part-sporting goods store, and part-armory.

“I love your dad's flag collection.”

The first thing inside the door was a tie-down holding several flag poles with flags attached. Liam recognized most of the flags because Dad loved to fly them when the weather was nice—American flags, the POW-MIA flag, and a variety of other colorful flags. He also saw some historical flags he suspected were affiliated with one political movement or another, though his Dad never flew those as far as he could recall. One had a snake, another had a polar bear, and a third had what looked like a porcupine.

Beyond the flags, the most attention-grabbing things were the guns.

“Wow, you know under Federal guidelines your dad would probably be classified as a domestic terrorist. I know a lot of people who wouldn't appreciate all that ammo your dad owns.” He was pointing to shelves and shelves of ammo. “It would no doubt give those type of people conniption fits. All those guns sitting over there would cause them to fill their drawers.” He gave out a hearty laugh, “Me? I'm just jealous.”

Liam knew his dad had been stockpiling food, but he'd no idea he had also been stockpiling guns and ammo. His dad had always had guns, and shooting was practically the only activity they could all do as a family, but even Liam was surprised at the numbers of guns he was looking at now. He recognized a dozen or so AK-47s, a couple AR-15s, and maybe five or six tactical shotguns of various makes. There were other rifles and handguns he couldn't identify.

It reminded him of a thought he had earlier that same day.

Did my dad know this collapse was coming?

His first instinct said he was being insane. His dad was prone to go on tirades against the government, especially the two-party political system—he often joked it was really a single party with two faces. But he never even hinted he would ever take up arms against the government or was otherwise involved in anything related to survivalism or...rebellion. Was that what this stash represented? Conspiracies and secrets were the stuff of fiction. Though, how many other parents had secret rooms stuffed with guns? Liam recalled one book he read about a man who defends his neighborhood somewhere in Chicago. His brother lived with him and had an arsenal just like this one. At the time, he thought that book was a flight of fancy—but it turned out it was frighteningly realistic. Looking at all the guns put a lot of things in proper context in many books...

“Well, that settles it. We have to defend this house. This cache is too valuable to surrender to looters. Your dad was a genius to hide it like he did.” He reoriented on Liam as he spoke. “Liam, I'd like to stick around with you and help you and your family defend this. I can't imagine anywhere safer right now, and I feel my fate lies with you after what happened this morning on the bridge.”

Liam didn't have to think about it. They all agreed on the need to work together. The guns and ammo nearby were going to be keys to everyone's survival. Liam knew his father would like Phil.

The molecules are starting to gather.

They sealed up the room again, making sure it was tightly shut and they placed a chair in front of the wall so it all looked completely mundane before they went back up the steps.

The only thing that didn't make sense, if his dad did know the collapse was coming, is why his he sent him to live with Grandma. If he knew how bad things were going to get, why didn't he have her come to live at his house?

As his dad was fond of saying, “You'll need a tinfoil hat to solve that mystery.”

5

Marty, Phil and Liam had some near-stale bread, a few bags of potato chips, and other consumables from the pantry. Everything had been emptied out of the freezer and refrigerator. Probably because the power had been out for so long. Mom and Dad must have done that before they left.

It was near dusk when a loud banging noise came from the front door.

Phil pulled out his service pistol and Liam did the same. Liam whispered he was going to look out the peephole in the door, but Phil advised against it.

“No! If they're bad guys, they might shoot you through the door. You need to go to the front window and look out from behind the drapes. Do it slowly so they don't notice you.”

Liam was able to move to the front window by crawling along the floor. A shadow passed in front of the window for a few moments, as if the person who had rung the bell was now looking inside the house.

“Hey, Jerry! You in there?”

Liam recognized it as his neighbor across the street.

“You still want to look out the front. Study the scene. Make sure he's alone.”

He was slow to pull back the curtain, and spent several moments watching the big man standing on his front porch. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

Phil seemed satisfied, though he didn't put his gun away. He merely held it at his side, slightly behind his leg so it wouldn't be seen by anyone walking through the front door. “Tell him you've unlocked the door and that he should walk through slowly, and then shut it behind him.”

Liam did as instructed, and the neighbor did the same. Soon he was standing in Liam's foyer with a bunch of questions.

“Hello, Mr. Poole, sorry for the trouble, but we aren't sure what's going on around here. We didn't want to take any chances someone was forcing you to knock on our door.”

“Hmmm, well I guess I can understand. The world has gone sour, that's for sure. But where's your dad? Who's this guy?” He was pointing to Phil.

“This is Phil. He helped us get out of St. Louis—Grandma and I.” He had the good sense to not mention Phil was a police officer from the area's least favorite town. Maybe Mr. Poole wouldn't even know about Arnold.

“Got out, did ya? Me and Virginia tried to get out, too. We'd been staying at our son's house up in Oakville and decided to try to return here. I don't know why we didn't just stay with him. Ginny and I were stuck at that hellish blockade on the interstate. We hit traffic, stopped, our car got blocked in, and that was that. We sat in our car, even though the jam was never going to move again. We had nowhere else to go, you see. I guess we were there for maybe twelve hours. Ran out of gas to run the air conditioner just a few hours in. More and more people kept showing up. Soon there were so many people at that roadblock, and so many of them were panicked from the dead folks walking behind them, they started shooting at the police on the other end of the highway bridge. So much shooting. Then the sick showed up. Not a lot mind you, not at first, but everyone with a gun was shooting at them—and none of them with a whiff of sense about how to properly shoot firearms.”

He paused for a moment, as if steeling himself.

“Anyway, one of those idiots put a round into my car and it struck Ginny in the back of the head. Poor girl died on the spot. Once that happened, I just got out and started walking around. I guess I was hoping I'd catch a bullet too. It was so loud. So many guns. I don't even remember how long that went on. Hours maybe. As luck would have it, I couldn't get myself shot. I did, however, see one of the infected with his face attached to the neck of a dead woman about the age of Ginny. It was horrible; it was chewing through her neck… Let me tell you, that woke me up. I found a gun that had been dropped by someone—dead perhaps—and was more determined to get myself offed. I couldn't figure out how to turn the rifle on myself so I did the next best thing. I began walking toward the roadblock.”

Mr. Poole pointed to a chair in the front room. “Mind if I sit down?”

They all moved into the front room and sat where they could. Grandma had been sitting in the kitchen, listening, but as they settled in, Liam helped her sit down with them.

“As I was saying, I had that rifle in my hands—not even sure if it had any ammo—and I began walking over the bridge, heading for the big blue water tower beyond the river. I had to weave around many of the cars parked on the first half, but the police had ensured no one could drive past some concrete barriers they'd placed smack in the middle of that thing. I just helped myself across those barriers and began walking across the empty side of the bridge—pointing my gun in the direction of the police. I hoped it was only a matter of time before they cut me down.”

“Ha! Those bastards tried. They shot around me. In front of me. Maybe they intended to miss. But soon there were other men next to me. First just a few, but then dozens. They'd been sitting amongst those first cars, probably waiting for a sign to try to cross the bridge and get up close and personal with the people on the roadblock. I was the idiot who got the whole thing rolling.” He gave a hearty but tired-sounding laugh at the thought. “I don't think those police really wanted to shoot us. I'm so large and long in the tooth, I didn't even make it to the roadblock itself before everything was over. Some of the police fought and died there. Most jumped in cars and fled. Some surrendered—but that didn't turn out well.”

Poole took a deep breath.

“I've spent the rest of today walking home on the interstate. I've been asking myself whether I wanted to live the whole time. I thought I could just walk into a ditch, lay down, and wait to die. Some people were already doing that, especially people my age. It was so depressing. They looked so pathetic. In the end, I understood Ginny wouldn't want me to die that way. I struggled down the highway, and just when I thought I was going to die anyway of exhaustion, I was getting water from a bucket dropped from an overpass. That helped me get through the last miles to make it home. I wanted to talk to your dad to see how he was faring. He always struck me as a guy with a plan.”

Yes, he struck me that way too.

“I guess you all should know the refugees are just outside the subdivision now. They're spreading out on every side road they can find. Some followed me in. Probably trying to find shelter for the night. I'd expect they'll be thick on our street before nightfall.”

“After spending the whole day with them, I might let a few stay with me tonight. I really don't think I should be alone.”

Liam didn't know what to say. Losing his wife must have been traumatic, but Liam couldn't think of any scenario where he'd invite random people to stay in his house overnight.

Does that make me a bad person?

After a few minutes of small talk, Mr. Poole stepped back out the front door to head home. He refused an offer from Phil to stay with them. Liam was glad, but felt guilty for the feeling. He looked down the street in the direction of the main road, disappointed to see the first refugees were entering the subdivision and had already begun knocking on doors.

Liam watched Mr. Poole walk away and found himself intensely disliking the man. He knew he was being unfair. Poole himself said he was leading a procession of refugees—and now they were walking up this street. Liam felt he deserved a break after reaching his own home.

It's just not fair.

Chapter 5: Melissa

The sun was getting ready to tuck in for the night, but Liam's group was busy. Grandma had been able to catch a nap, as had Victoria. Liam felt like a zombie; he hadn't gotten any quality sleep since he was inside the Arch. There was no time now. Refugees had been trickling up the street for a couple hours, but the flow had become steady as dusk approached.

They were going to hunker down in the house and ride out the wave of refugees. The main dilemma was whether to interact with them or lay low and only get involved if the situation called for it. Mr. Poole had said he wanted to be with them directly, so they knew the house across the street would have refugees inside.

“It would be dangerous to invite people into the house; even people we knew were harmless. Once it's known we are a safe harbor for these people, it will never let up until we are overrun.”

Liam wasn't about to argue with Phil and his years of experience dealing with the public, but he had a hard time wrapping his arms around the notion they couldn't help anyone. After all, they'd seen Mark help people up on the bridge a few hours earlier. “Can't we help a few of them like Mark up on that bridge? It seems un-neighborly to ignore them.”

“The difference is that Mark was helping them so they'd continue down the highway. Because there weren't many options for the crowd, it worked out well for Mark. He said he was doing it for all the right reasons, and I respect his efforts, but the net effect is that he pushed a few more people into this neighborhood rather than his own. Now these folks are at the end of the line for the day. They've been out in the open and running. They've finally reached relative peace and quiet. There is no way to encourage them to keep moving. Amongst all those sheep you see, there are wolves. Those wolves burned Arnold to the ground. Those wolves are hungry. I'd bet my pension they are out there. We have to be ready to meet them.”

Victoria was probably the least likely to want to interact with dangerous people, after her close call with two of them back in the Arch, but even she seemed unwilling to completely turn her back on the families and kids now walking up their street. “Can't we help a few of them—maybe out on the grass so they don't have to come inside—so we can show the rest of the refugees that we're good people? It seems like that would be better than constantly slamming our door on them.”

And that was the crux of the problem. It all came down to appearances. Should the group present a house that appeared antagonistic to the desperate people walking by, or should they show a softer side, appearing friendly to them. Phil was unwilling to interact with the refugees at all. Liam and Victoria indicated they wanted to at least acknowledge them so as to be seen as friendly.

That left Grandma. “Phil, I trust your judgment. I really do. But I've been among those people for several days. If I was walking—or being dragged—up this street after a long journey on a dangerous highway, I think even I would be angry at any house that purposely ignored our plight. Won't you reconsider? I really think we should be unanimous in whatever we do here tonight.”

Phil looked outside for a long moment. Weighing the options.

“You guys aren't going to let me say no on this, are you? Look, I hear what you're saying. I wasn't out among those people so I'm probably not the best person to judge them. However, I'm a safety guy. Can we agree on helping them without allowing them to come inside the house? Once they're inside, we may never be able to get them out again.”

Phil paused for a long time again, maybe wondering if anyone would argue with his request. When no one did, he offered, “So what do you guys want to do?”

Liam wasn't ashamed to say it; Mark from the bridge had rubbed off on him. “Why don't we provide a safe patch of grass and some clean water for them? Surely we can spare water to help them out? Mom and Dad filled our bathtubs with water before they left. They were really thinking ahead—and planning for a long outage.”

Everything came together quickly once they had the framework sketched out. They were unified in their plan of trying to help the refugees out in the front yard—outside the house—by providing water and a place to lay down. Phil suggested they make it clear they would also provide security for those folks to further reinforce the notion Liam's group was “the good guys.” They all agreed the plan made the most sense given the circumstances.

“I think even my dad would like this plan.”

The final piece depended on finding the right kind of refugees. It reminded Liam of his own selection process days ago where he scanned the crowd at the Arch to find the least intimidating people so he could get Grandma under a shade tree. He selected a tree with a couple families and one harmless looking sleeping woman on the ground. That young woman turned out to be Victoria.

I chose pretty well.

He was beginning to believe reading all those zombie books had given him an edge in decision making under the stresses of the Zombie Apocalypse.

2

It wasn't quite dark, but the shadows were long on the street and it was getting hard to see the characters walking their way. They decided they had to make a decision soon or they'd have trouble determining good from bad.

“Right there! Those folks walking with those kids.” Liam pointed to a group of about twenty moving together.

Phil looked out the front window, then he and Liam walked out the front door and across the grass of the front yard. Liam noticed refugees were sitting in many yards already. They were staying close to the street, as if unwilling to impose on the owners while simultaneously staking out the patch of ground they needed to survive the night. Liam's front yard had no trees, so it was one of the only yards not occupied. They were about to change that.

Phil did the talking. He stayed in the yard so as to give them some space from the people in the street. “Excuse me. Would you folks like a place to rest for the night? We have a safe yard here.”

The small group of people directly in front of Phil stopped, and a pretty woman with expensive hiking boots and large backpack seemed to speak for them all. He noticed the woman had a small rifle tucked inconspicuously behind her back.

“What do we need protection from? Rapists like you two?”

Liam mentally slapped his forehead.

I look like a rapist?

Phil, probably used to such charming banter from the public while on patrol, was nonplussed. He looked at the others in the group as he addressed them. “It's up to you guys. My friends and I live in this house and we're willing to provide you guys a place to crash for the night. On the lawn. We can give you some clean water and we'll defend you as best we can.”

“Why can't we come inside? Why are you going to make us lay out on the grass, exposed to everything?”

Phil still wasn't letting her get to him. “It's your call. We're going back inside. You are welcome to our front yard. If not, there are plenty behind you and we'll invite them.”

Phil motioned to Liam and they turned around to walk back in the house. Liam expected the group to call them back but no one made a peep. They were inside the house before Phil spoke. “It'll be fine. Even if that woman doesn't plop down, the others were eying our yard with longing eyes. They'll override her if she's their leader.”

Liam was less sure. He peeked through the curtains to see what would happen. They were already sprawled on the grass of the yard. “Wow, that was fast. It looks like you were right. They're already in our yard. Except the woman. She's standing in the middle of the street, looking lost.”

“I pantsed her pretty hard; she was being unreasonable. She actually thought we were going to rape her.”

Liam stood watching the woman for several minutes. Several other refugees had walked by her in the street, but she didn't drift off with them.

“She still isn't doing anything.”

Victoria moved into the room and looked out the window too. She had ditched her cocktail dress and was wearing a pair of jeans and a black tank top. He knew they were his mom's clothes but was surprised they fit. He was about to ask her where she'd gotten them, but she walked away just as quickly as she'd arrived.

Phil still wasn't cutting the woman on the street any slack. “She's probably crying because she lost her group. Serves her right.”

Liam watched for several more minutes, and tried to get a better look at the people sitting in his front yard. There were several older children—pre-teens—and two couples who looked like parents. There were a few older men and women, maybe in their fifties. None of them looked prepared to be out hiking. None save the woman.

He focused his attention back on her and saw she was talking to Victoria.

What the hell?

Liam looked around the room. “Victoria is out there.”

Phil returned his attention to the window. “What's she doing?”

Grandma was sitting on the sofa listening to everything happening. “Liam, you should go out to her.”

Liam looked at Phil, who was peering out the window. “I guess it would be better than me going out. I'll cover you in case anything happens.”

He was out the front door in moments, and moved fast across the yard, avoiding the people now encamped there. He felt the pistol against his hip, aware he may need it but wondering if he could pull it in such a pathetic crowd.

Liam couldn't hear what they were talking about as he walked up, but he got an earful as he found Victoria's side. “Let me guess. This is your boyfriend? You both look like you're thirteen. How are you in charge?”

“In charge? I'm not—”

Before Liam could get defensive, Victoria put her finger on her lips, indicating he should be silent.

“This is my good friend Liam. He found me the day after the sirens sleeping under a tree down by the Arch. I was wearing a cocktail dress and he never touched me. He and his grandma helped me get out of the city. I'd be dead without them, several times over. Phil was the guy who talked to you earlier. He helped us get over a bridge and out of the city. We went to his house to get some weapons and ammo. He had plenty of opportunity to do us harm, but he never did. In fact, he lost his house to arsonists as he helped rescue us. These are good people.”

“As I told you. I don't trust anyone. Maybe you guys don't realize it, but the world is full of bad people now. Maybe all of them. I worked at a shoe store in Arnold. When the sirens went off, everyone raced for home, but I figured I'd stay at the store because it was next to a large supermarket and I'd have the place to myself. Much safer than my apartment complex with all those rednecks. I purchased a lot of food and gear and tucked it away in my store, content I could survive there a long time. My manager showed up the next day and decided to hole up with me. I couldn't tell him to get lost, but I should have realized right away where things would go. It wasn't even a day before he was putting moves on me—eventually overpowering me...”

She looked around for a few moments. “I think he had dreams of being a big shot in the chaos. He thought I'd actually be grateful to end up with him. It didn't work out like he hoped.”

The implication was clear to Liam. Victoria merely nodded.

“I pulled him out the back door and left him in the alley like so much trash. He had this rifle and backpack, so I added them to my stockpile. For about ten minutes, I felt I was back on easy street. It wasn't long before angry refugees started showing up at the strip mall—further ruining it for me. They smashed my windows and stormed the store, taking everything of value. Fortunately, I saw what was happening and grabbed the rifle and backpack and blended in with the looters, even as I ransacked my own store. There was no hope of stopping them.”

“I fell in with them as they moved through the town, and eventually found my way onto the highway where an even larger group was already walking. I can't tell you how many times horrible men came up to me with a malicious look in their eyes. I ran ahead in the crowd. A couple times I had to threaten them with my rifle—but that's been less and less effective. Now I just have bloody blisters in these piss-pour boots to show for my efforts. I'm unwilling to risk ever putting myself into that situation again.”

Victoria stood looking at the woman for some time. “My name is Victoria. The only one you haven't met is Liam's grandma. She's a 104-year-old ball of energy. What's your name?”

The woman was probably in her thirties or early forties. Fairly tall for a woman, and shapely. By almost any definition she was physically pretty. She had her long blonde hair in a tight pony tail. In addition to her boots, she was wearing khaki shorts and a too-large denim button-down short-sleeve shirt. Liam's first impression was “soccer mom.” Liam could understand why she'd be a target to unsavory characters.

The woman thought on it for a short while. She was looking back and forth at Liam and Victoria, then the house and the people lying on the grass. Her last look was up and down the street at the many people wandering around.

“My name is Melissa, but you can call me Mel. I still don't trust you,” then, with less hostility than anything she'd said so far, “maybe I'll never trust anyone again—but I'll accept your hospitality for the night. Thanks, I guess.”

“You're welcome.” Victoria said that as she grabbed Liam's arm to move him back to the house.

When they were well away from Mel, she whispered to Liam. “I couldn't let her walk away without trying to help. I'm not sure why, but it just felt like the right thing to do. Like I was helping myself.”

“You did great. Next time, just let me know what you are doing before you run out alone. You scared the hell out of me.”

“Deal. That was pretty dumb of me.”

No harm done. This time.

3

The sun was nearly down. Liam and Victoria came inside the house and made for the kitchen to round up some water. Grandma and Phil were still in the front room.

“The new clothes look good on you. I take it those are my mom's?”

“Yes, I hope she doesn't mind, but I needed to get out of that filthy dress or I was going to die. I ran a brush through my hair, but it didn't help much. After I woke up from my nap, I was nosing around in your parents’ room, hoping I could find some of your mom's clothes and praying they would fit me. When it looked like we were in for more trouble tonight, I decided to go ahead and change clothes. The only thing left is to burn my dress. I never want to touch that thing again!”

Liam would never forget that dress, as it was what attracted his attention to her in the massive crowd at the Arch, but he had to admit after days of hard wear, it had gotten quite the beating. He also lamented there may never be an opportunity for women to wear dresses like that again.

At least not voluntarily.

That shook him to his core. He thought of Melissa and how quickly things had deteriorated for her. He took a fresh look at Victoria and knew she would undoubtedly catch the same eyes that had been after Mel. Many of the end-of-the-world books he'd read painted a hard life for women, though he never truly appreciated why until now. Slavers. Religious nuts. Men who want to rebuild the world with their babies. He knew he would need to be vigilant in protecting his female friends. They all would.

“I don't want to scare you, but Mel's story has me worried about you. You know—because you are pretty and stuff.” Liam tried not to sound like a shy schoolboy when he said it, but knew he'd failed.

“Thank you, Liam. Her story scared me too. But I have something she didn't have, which helps me sleep at night—friends. She plays tough and all that, but she has to know how futile it is to trust absolutely no one. We all need friends. People we can count on to watch our back and stand by our side when things go to pot. That's a lesson you taught me by the way.”

Ha! Liam had read enough stories to know the only way to survive the Zombie Apocalypse was to stick together in strong groups. It took him a while to realize he had done exactly that over the past several days, though he felt his core group consisting of himself and his 104-year-old guardian would be laughed out of any of the great zombie stories. Somehow they did though, and they picked up Victoria, several St. Louis city police officers, and even a few “gang bangers” as they all joined Liam's group while escaping the city. Or he joined theirs. It didn't really matter which.

Maybe I'm passing on the lessons of those stories without realizing it?

Victoria had joked about leading a group of survivors, but his age precluded that reality no matter how many books he'd read on the subject. He was content to let others lead because it took the burden of making mistakes and or causing deaths and made them someone else's problems. He'd almost lost Victoria in the Arch and that made him panic. He saw Jones die at the quarry—and that made him depressed just thinking about it again. He thought Grandma died on the bridge, and they were all going to follow her, until a last-minute rescue. Those were just in the past three days! How much stress would he have to endure leading a group in this cruel new world for years into the future? No, he'd resolved to contribute as best he could to any group he, Grandma, and Victoria might find, but leading just wasn't something he wanted to do.

“Thank you. I wish I could say I was doing it on purpose, but I wasn't. I just think about what characters in the books I'd read had done and tried to learn their lessons—both good and bad. But I'm learning reality is much different than anything in a book.”

“Well, you did pretty good in my book.”

She gave him a broad smile—even though she'd cleaned herself up pretty well, she still carried the nasty bruises and black eyes from her fight with the looters—as she walked away with water for the people on the lawn. “You might consider freshening up. Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?”

“Hey!”

But she was already out the door. Looking down at himself, he saw he was covered in the same coal dust and road grime he'd seen on Victoria. His own jeans and t-shirt were pretty much ruined, just like her dress. Out on the road he'd not noticed the dirt, but in the spotless kitchen, his condition was amplified.

Suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion, he took a moment at the kitchen counter. He put both hands on the counter top, as if steadying himself. What would his parents say to this motley foursome now occupying their house? He hadn't exactly recruited people to his group, more like they wandered in, but he felt in his heart they were good people—and he believed that would please his parents more than bringing home a random squad of soldiers.

And what of Victoria?

Other than a few awkward chaperoned trips to the mall with girls set up by his mom and her friends, Liam had never brought home a real girlfriend to be vetted. His time was spent with his guy-friends playing World of Undead Soldiers for the most part. The World of Girls just wasn't on his radar. The thought of how his parents would react to a new girlfriend had never crossed his mind. Conceptually he assumed they'd approve, but it still scared the crap out of him to even consider it.

But Grandma likes her. That has to count for something.

He picked up the water bottles and began to follow Victoria out onto the lawn. He resolved to keep building his little group with people of the highest quality. Men who would help defend the women, and women who could defend themselves. Doubt was plaguing him though. Could it be as simple as his video game missions? Men and women adventurers, each with strengths and weaknesses, all working and fighting together. Could he find a group of people all rowing in the same direction?

Could anyone?

4

The group of people on the lawn had grown. After Victoria and Liam provided some water, they retreated to the living room of the house to provide overwatch for those outside. Phil and Grandma were still there. Phil was keeping watch out the big front window, using the curtains to shield his presence as best he could. This meant they were at the ready should any trouble flare up, but no one expected the people to keep flooding in.

Phil broached the topic. “There are too many people out there. If they decide they want in this house, I don't think we can stop them.”

“Should we let some of them inside?”

Phil looked at Victoria as he considered. “I don't know. Once they're inside, we may never get them to leave. But if we don't invite them in, they may force their way inside anyway and push us out. I couldn't see what happened exactly because there are no lights out there, but a group of some kind did go into your neighbor's house across the street. Poole's house.”

“He said he was going to let some of them in.”

“They're in, all right. The question is whether he is a willing host or a captive to the whims of the crowd.”

They discussed the problem, unable to come to a definitive conclusion. They noticed people were going into Liam's backyard and the woods beyond—sneaking around to do their business. But more than a few faces appeared in the rear windows of his house before going back to the front. It helped solidify the need for a plan.

Marty summarized the issue. “We need more friends. Right now we're too small of a group to resist the will of the mass of people outside. We need allies.”

Phil responded. “I hate to admit it, but she's right. Not because I don't want to listen to her,” he tipped his head toward her, “but because I didn't foresee this earlier. I had no idea there would be this many people. I still hate the idea of opening our doors to strangers, but I guess we have to take chances to avoid potential disasters.”

“So how do we get the people we want to come inside, and leave the rest outside?” Victoria asked. “And if we have a house full of people, will it still be enough to resist all those still outside?”

Victoria's questions got Liam thinking. They had made the effort to befriend the people outside by giving them something to drink, but he had to admit they were approaching this crowd in the same way Mark said he approached the crowd on the highway when he first saw them. Anything to keep them moving down the line. But what if this was the end of the line? Were these locusts waiting to destroy everything in front of them, or were they human beings to be cared for? Maybe a mixture of both?

Victoria answered her own question.

“I have an idea. I'm going to talk to Mel again.”

Phil gave an audible groan but otherwise said nothing.

“OK then. Liam, will you come with me? I need to go out through the garage.”

Together they were able to lift the double garage door. His mom's minivan was gone, but there was a small four-door sedan in one space. Phil's SUV was in the other. When the door was open, Victoria softly called for Melissa. She was conspicuous in the middle of the lawn where she'd sat down earlier. She got up and moved purposefully to Victoria standing at the garage threshold.

“Hello again.” Victoria tried to be polite.

“Hi.”

“We need your help. We have a big problem.”

“I'm listening.”

Victoria had only just begun her studies in her nursing program, but one of the most basic concepts was triage. When faced with a large number of sick or injured, you had to take care of those who could be saved, and let some of the others go. She explained to Mel they needed to find people in the crowd who could be counted on to protect the house in the event problems started happening on the street.

“I know this seems silly to ask, but we're worried there are too many people coming up this street. We don't want to lose the house. We need some people we can trust to help hold it in case things get—” She left it hanging, but the implications were understood.

“Why should I care about your house? Tomorrow I'll be moving on. Right? That's what you said.”

Victoria and Liam stood there looking at each other, unable to voice a suitable explanation.

“Because the world falls apart if we don't take care of each other.”

It was Grandma. She was standing inside the house, but talking out the open door into the garage. She was steadying herself by holding onto the doorframe.

Mel walked into the garage to get a better look. She used a small flashlight to illuminate the entryway.

“My name is Marty, but everyone calls me Grandma. Pleased to meet you.”

Mel was reticent to respond for a long while. “I'm sorry. You remind me of my own grandma. She passed away a few years ago. No offense to you or her, but I'm glad she isn't around to suffer through this.”

“Oh, you'd be surprised what we old people can survive. But sorry for your loss.” She followed quickly with, “Will you help my grandson protect our home?”

“Why me? I want to know why you picked me out of all those people on your lawn.”

Grandma indicated it was Victoria's choice.

Victoria explained how she was attacked by the looters as she ascended the Arch stairwell to save Grandma and Liam, ending her story with how they rearranged her face and undoubtedly had further plans. Liam had the foresight to tell the police to try to help rescue her, even as he was rescuing the police officers trapped in the base of the Arch. She said she empathized with Melissa's story and felt compelled to help her. “You seemed like a survivor. And you remind me of what could have easily happened to me. I hope I'm as strong as you when I get older.”

Liam didn't know if he would help the situation, but he felt he had to say something. “Plus you showed concern for those people when we first met you. You were right to be skeptical of people you'd just met. There are plenty of wolves in sheep's clothing out there.” He thought of his own journey out of the city. How many times had he been shot at? A week ago, weren't those people law-abiding citizens, content to watch football on the weekend or have BBQ's in their backyards? How quickly the world can go to crap, and good people go bad.

Assuming they were ever good.

Looking at Mel anew, he could see parallels with Victoria. They were both fighters. Stubborn. Driven. Mel was just a couple decades older. Would that be Victoria someday?

Mel surprised them all by walking over to Marty, and then shaking her hand right there in the door. “My name is Melissa Perkins. Pleased to meet you, Marty. I'll do my best to protect your home.”

Melissa was a take-charge kind of gal. She asked if she could vet the survivors out front and bring in those she felt had the greatest chance of contributing. No one objected, though Liam wondered what Phil would say had he been there.

She was off. For better or worse, Mel was probationary member of Team Liam. He joked internally about the name, especially since he didn't want to lead it. But he could at least recognize when potential members entered their orbit. He knew it was critical only the “best and brightest” join up with his group. So many books he'd read showed there was almost nothing more important than the quality of people brought in. But real life was always more delicate than a book. That didn't change the result one bit though. Either his group would grow with people who would help, or the group would collapse under the dead weight of useless people. And always the question of leadership. As groups grow, someone has to be in charge.

Liam had no idea who was leading his group.

5

As with so many other plans set in motion during this crazy time, things went pear-shaped almost immediately. Mel was able to get a few people into the garage, notably parents with children, as she explained they'd be the most likely to defend their ground to the death. She gathered a few older men who were carrying firearms. She explained how she talked to each one to ensure they'd be team players. The few she gathered were anxious to move on to find loved ones, so she felt they'd likely defend the house tonight, but would be on their way tomorrow. She was really thinking ahead.

However, flames began pouring out of Mr. Poole's garage across the street—lighting up the entire area in the process. A gaggle of men and women began a hasty egress from the main part of his house, and stood around gawking at the conflagration from the front yard.

Several minutes later, Poole was knocking on the back door. Once in the kitchen, Liam, Marty, and Victoria listened to his story. Phil remained in the front room, though he could hear from there.

“Ehhhh, those bastards thought they could take over my house! I showed them.”

He took a seat at the kitchen table, looking dreamy and distant. “I let them in, thinking I was doing them a favor. Little did I know, they were a club of some kind—all bad fellas—and they just kept coming and coming. Soon there was no room for me, and they were stomping all around the house tearing things up. They got into poor Ginny's keepsakes and I couldn't take it no more. I asked them to leave, but all they did was toss me out into the garage—laughing.”

He looked around the room, seeming to come to. “You remember our discussion earlier? I told you I tried to kill myself up on the roadblock. Well, I tried again tonight. I lit that fire in my own garage, and I intended to burn the place and all those people with it...but I heard them standing in the front yard and knew they'd gotten out. I guess I didn't think it through. Well, I wasn't about to die if they were just gonna laugh at the whole thing. I walked out the back door of the garage and snuck over here.”

Liam was struck by how crazy this man seemed. It wasn't just the suicide attempts, but his demeanor. Inviting strangers into his house. The way he talked about it. He did just lose his wife, so maybe that broke something in the man?

“I had lots of gasoline for my mowers in that garage. It will help burn the house to the ground.”

From the front room, Liam thought he heard a groan from Phil.

No one knew what to say. Liam was tempted to say a sarcastic “good job, buddy,” but he knew the men in that house wouldn't be gawking for very long. Mr. Poole had just made their own lives a lot more complicated. Plus, if they knew Mr. Poole was in this house—it could make things very difficult for them.

Grandma finally broke the uncomfortable silence, but she said something that came as a complete surprise to Liam. “Mr. Poole, I'm very sorry for your loss. But you have to leave our house this instant.”

Liam was floored. Victoria's mouth was agape. Only Mr. Poole seemed unsurprised. He sat there for a minute, then looked up as if peering at the clock on the wall. In the low light, it was very hard to tell. Liam caught a glimpse of Phil in the hallway, past the clock. From where he was sitting, only he and Poole could see Phil. In the shadows, Liam saw he was aiming a rifle into the kitchen—at Poole.

Is he going to try to suicide in my kitchen?

Poole, getting the message, got up and retreated out the back door. His final words were aimed at Liam as he stood on the threshold, “I'm sorry if I caused you any trouble. Good luck finding your parents. You won't see me again.”

The group let out a collective breath, though Liam's was a bit heavier since he knew what Phil had done. The girls expressed relief at getting the trouble out of their house.

Phil had returned to the front window without saying a word.

The fire across the street was so large it was throwing light into Liam's house. Liam thought it was a pretty light, if you ignored all the memories and resources going up in smoke. If the world really was ending, most of the things now aflame would be irreplaceable. A few minutes passed when Mel ran in through the garage entry.

“Hey guys. We have trouble out here!” She was pushing a gaggle of children inside.

Phil, at the front window, underscored the urgency, “Oh crap! Those guys are armed!”

The men forced out of the burning house were looking for a new place to stay. They must have found Liam's house the next-easiest target. They were grouped together, maybe twenty burly motorcycle-gang-ish guys with weapons out, all moving up the fifty-foot driveway in the direction of Liam's open garage.

Thank you for screwing us, Mr. Poole!

Chapter 6: Checkmate

Liam and Victoria moved past the children already inside, and went to the door of the garage to see what was happening. Both had their pistols in hand, pointing them safely at the ground.

When Liam looked into the garage, he was just in time to see Mr. Poole throw himself on the crowd of angry men. He moved silently from the darkness of the space next to the garage and was on the front man before he had a chance to raise his weapon. Poole had a stout wooden-handled shovel which he was able to swing hard into the face of that man. “Serves you bastards right for stealing my house!” It was the last thing he ever said.

As Liam stood there in disbelief, he heard Mel inside the garage yelling too.

“Fire!”

Liam was blown away by the concussion in the confined space. Several rifles cracked from the dark spaces at the deepest part of his garage, from the back of Phil's truck, and even underneath his dad's car—he didn't notice the men and women hiding until they revealed themselves with gunfire. The dark garage became a lightning storm of flashes as more and more shots were fired. It exposed their positions, but it must have been fearful to the men out on the open ground only a handful of yards down the driveway.

After a few moments, more cracks were coming from the front yard and from inside the house. Phil's rifle was adding to the cacophony. Liam could see innocent bystanders scrambling away from the erupting gunfire. He hoped no innocents would get hit in the crossfire.

The men on the driveway were surprisingly agile in reacting to the fluid situation. The guns in the garage made short work of several of the men in the front of the group, but those in the back began running to their left, taking them out of the field of fire of the shooters inside the garage. It still left them exposed to the guns in the front yard—Liam had no idea who was shooting from there—and Phil had the best view of all. The light from Mr. Poole's house helped keep the men lit even as they tried to shoot back.

An explosion of wood in the doorframe next to Liam's head made him realize he'd just been standing there gaping at the action. He turned and saw Victoria was similarly mesmerized. He pulled her back into the house.

It wasn't long before the gunfire died down. Soon it was gone completely. Liam was nearly deaf and was choking on the smell of gunpowder, but he could hear cries of the injured men out front, as well as very loud calls of surrender.

Phil, from inside the house, yelled, “Everyone stay put on my team! You, out on the driveway, put your hands up and walk into the light!”

Liam grabbed Victoria's hand and pulled her into the front room to be with Phil and Grandma. She was lying on the floor, but gave both kids the thumbs up sign. He wanted to help her but needed to see what was happening out in his yard. He went to the front window where Phil was still stationed. The entire window had been broken out. In fact, all the windows in the front room had been broken out; Liam realized bullets had been coming this direction too.

He saw two men standing in the driveway with their hands up. Between them was the man initially struck by Mr. Poole. He was trying to sit up after having been knocked out cold. Lots of blood was on his face, visible in the fire light. Liam thought he heard men crying out on the lawn. He imagined there were some grievously injured attackers unable to surrender properly.

“Get on your knees, keep your hands up!” Phil was yelling out the front window. He had a serious look on his face as he studied the lawn.

“What do we do with these men? They obviously meant to do us harm,” Phil asked.

Victoria had helped Grandma back to her spot on the couch. Liam looked in her direction to confirm she was OK. He silently thought if she had been killed by these men, he'd have no mercy on them. As it was...

Liam responded. “I'm not sure we can just outright kill them. Maybe we could tie them up somehow and save them for the police when they come back?”

Victoria suggested they mark them with a branding iron and tell them they were being released, but they'd kill them if they ever turned up again. She'd seen that on television, but couldn't remember the show.

Phil was turned into the room at the moment more gunfire erupted from the front yard. Several quick pops went off. Liam turned around just in time to see Mel down the injured man. She then hurriedly went around to the remaining attackers and shot each one in the head as they tried to scramble away.

Phil just stood there, staring out.

Liam considered yelling for her to stop, but found it wouldn't come out. It was already over. The pair of women were down on the floor again, unaware who was shooting.

Phil recovered just as Mel finished the grisly business. “Mel just solved the problem for us. It looks like we take no prisoners.”

Liam couldn't tell if he was saying it with regret or pride.

Grandma was laying on her back, but in the dim light of the ever increasing conflagration across the street, Liam saw her make the sign of the cross. He wondered if she was praying for the deceased on the lawn, the soul of the executioner, or those in this room who now lived in an increasingly desperate world.

While looking out the window, Liam noticed movement near Poole's place across the street. A couple of men were standing in the shadows, looking toward Liam's house. Studying what went down? He couldn't really tell. Together they ran off into the dark of the woods over there.

Liam wondered if they just set the tone for the days ahead?

Out loud, he said, “Pray for us all, Grandma.”

2

While they were still alone in the living room, Liam, Victoria, Marty, and Phil were trying to answer the question whether what they just witnessed was necessary or wrong. In the few minutes they'd been hashing it over, no consensus emerged.

Grandma had the only answer they could all agree upon. “Maybe nothing is as simple as good and evil anymore. There is simply life or death.”

Liam recalled an earlier conversation with Victoria about living in a world where good people were forced to do bad things, but now he was less sure he could identify what those bad things might be. Staying alive and not worrying about those men searching them out to kill them later seemed pretty “good” in his book.

They were just about to join Melissa out on the driveway when they saw people running down the street, from their left to their right as they looked out the front window. A few were screaming wildly.

“What now?” Phil looked out the wide open window to see if he could see anything to explain the commotion. A few more people were running by, but nothing obvious was behind them.

“We better collect our people.” He yelled for Melissa to come inside.

Liam noticed there were fewer people in his yard now. No surprise there. The shootout had sent people scattering for safer areas. Several refugee bodies were left lying in the yard, none of them moving. Maybe a dozen or so people were still milling around, mostly on the side of the yard away from the driveway.

Liam moved back into the kitchen and was reminded of all the kids that had come through his door.

Melissa came in quickly from the garage, trailed by several of her shooters. She spoke to the parents in the kitchen, most of whom were carrying rifles slung over their shoulders. “Thank you for defending this house. I had no idea we'd be attacked so soon after approaching you guys, but I'm so glad we were able to work together.” Many of the parents stood quietly with their children, looking at Mel.

She sensed the uncomfortable atmosphere and guessed at their reasoning. “I know it seems harsh to kill those men, but trust me, there was no other way. The police aren't coming. We can't keep them prisoner forever. If we turned them loose today, they'd be back after us tomorrow to kill me; to kill your children. You saw how they killed that man. They were coming here to do that to all of us. I did what I had to do to protect these kids.” She motioned with her hands, sweeping across all the kids in the room. “Things are different now. You have to recognize that if you want to keep you and your families alive in this chaos.”

It seemed to settle the room somewhat, though Liam was troubled that he was adjusting to what she did, almost without question. His brain had gone too long without sleep so he attributed his newfound acceptance of the changing moral climate to exhaustion.

He spoke up. “We have a new problem. People are running down the street as if something is chasing them. It could mean more bad guys are up the hill, but they aren't stopping to ask for help, so it's more likely they are running from zomb—the infected.”

He didn't like to use that word in the company of kids.

“But we don't know anything for sure.”

He knew these folks had just saved his house, and they did it to protect their own kids. He couldn't very well ask them to go back out on the lawn. “Please make yourselves comfortable. This is my home, but you're welcome to plop your kids down anywhere you feel safe. I recommend the basement, in case there's more shooting, but we don't have any doors down there so if you want to get out of the house in a hurry, you may want to stay on this floor.”

Always think of escape.

“Just be ready with your guns.”

He had put his own pistol back in his waistband. He'd have to see if he could scare up another proper holster for it. Victoria had the one his dad gave him. He also considered getting one of his dad's guns.

When he went back into the front room, the situation on the street had already snowballed. Now there were tons of people running, and the source of their fright was evident by the shambling infected moving quickly down the street. Many of the zombies reached Poole's house and halted. They seemed agitated—or entertained—by the fire, even as they moved themselves too close to it. Some were catching their clothes and hair on fire as their numbers increased. More were coming.

No one was left on the front lawn. A few of the last people had come into Liam's house, along with most of the kids and their parents, but most of the survivors on his lawn had taken off running during the gunfight and never returned. The wave of fleeing people from up the street swept away any stragglers.

“Should we be running?” Liam really wanted to know.

In a quiet voice, Phil replied, “I think we're better off here for now. We have lots of ammo and a good defensive position. We can't all get in a car and drive off and leave our—your house—with all its belongings. We have too many young and old. I think, as long as we're quiet, they may focus on the people running down the street and that fire over there.”

“What happens at daybreak?” Victoria had a good point. Sunrise was only a couple hours away.

“I guess we'll burn one bridge at a time.”

It was really all they could do. Liam felt bad for the people running outside, but there was nothing anyone inside the house could do for them. The fire was giving survivors some time to escape, though he knew the zombies were relentless.

They had almost begun to relax. Then, BANG! A gunshot from the kitchen.

Liam ran to the kitchen, and was dismayed to see his sliding glass back door had been blown to smithereens. A man with a rifle was still pointing it out the open space. Many of the kids had begun crying and the parents were herding them in various directions away from the blown door.

Another zombie poked around the corner and the man expended another round in it. The shock sent the kids further into hysteria, and even Liam felt his legs quiver a little. There was nothing to stop the zombies from walking in his wide-open back door.

3

After the second zombie was put down, no others showed up, so Liam chanced a look out back. It was difficult to see much with the weird shadows being thrown by the fire across the street, but his backyard appeared empty of any infected.

“We're good for now. We need to secure this door.”

The kitchen table was a rectangle, so they turned it sideways and set it against space where they back door had previously been. They laid it longways, so they could shoot over the top. But he'd seen what happens when too many dead stack up. If they swarmed his back door, he knew they'd eventually create so many fallen bodies the others would simply climb over them and into the kitchen. It all depended on how much ammo they had.

Lots.

Victoria came into the kitchen.

“Victoria, would you mind taking Grandma downstairs, along with all the kids? Then come back up. We'll guard this door together.”

Marty was standing in the hallway, so she heard her name. “Liam, don't you do anything silly now. I'm just an old woman. If things get bad, you get all these people to safety.”

“I'll be safe. I promise. We're going to protect you all.”

Now Phil and Melissa were in the kitchen. It wasn't long before Victoria returned from her chores. They were standing in the open space where the table had been.

Phil was the first to speak. “I think we can defend this house against almost any number of zombies, at least in the short term. If we kill enough of them at the entrances, they won't be able to get in the house at all. But, if we kill a massive quantity of zombies we may have other problems with so many decaying bodies so close to us. While shooting an infinite number of them appeals to my baser side, we have to consider the long-term implications of killing indiscriminately.”

Liam sensed something between Melissa and Phil in that statement, but he wasn't sure what it might be.

“For now, all we can do is lay low and hope the gunshots didn't attract more of those things. There are so many guns going off right now, it might not have been noticed.”

Though his ears were ringing madly, Liam could hear guns up and down the street. How many of the infected were out in the darkness?

The plan was to keep the kids and the older folks down in the basement, and those with guns would stay on the main floor. They decided the best course of action was to be silent and hope the zombies passed them by. Killing zombies is easy, but cleaning up the dead would probably ruin the small house forever. They needed the infected to keep on moving down the street.

For the couple hours until dawn, the fire across the street kept most of the zombies occupied. Liam was able clean up, get some food, and get some sleep in the front room while Phil kept watch out the front, and Victoria and the others kept watch out back. He felt far from refreshed, but any sleep was better than none.

“The infected are beginning to break up across the street.”

When Liam looked out the front, he was shocked to see so many standing there. He estimated there were hundreds of them surrounding the much-reduced fire in Poole's former house. The periphery of the zombie horde was peeling off to search for new distractions. Liam knew what that meant.

There were a few zombies wandering around his own yard. He suspected they were around back too. Even though it was a warm June morning, he shivered at the sight of so many horribly disfigured and bloody people standing so close to his home. In all the books he'd read on zombies, he never once pictured them here on his street.

What did I think would happen?

Liam felt he should have anticipated they would eventually find his sanctuary. Just from what he could see, there were a couple dozen wandering his way. Could they sense there were people close to them? Could they smell them? Were they hearing something inside the house?

Trouble always seems to find me.

4

Once again, Marty was asleep. Had she known she would return to her dream world and see her husband's doppelganger, she probably would have tried to stay awake. He always brought portents of trouble. Or maybe everything which happened to them now was bad; it wasn't just him.

This dream found Marty and Al on a dark forest road, walking together. The great pines on each side blocked out the stars, though one or two winked at her from between the big branches.

“Hello, Marty. After our last meeting, I was afraid what I showed you was too much for you to endure. I know it was one of your darkest emotions. I'm sorry for that. But I'm pleased to see we are here now. This is just as important to witness as was Liam's green car on the bridge. We're coming to it up ahead.”

Rather than argue, Marty simply looked where he told her to look and walked where he told her to walk.

“Nothing to say, my dear?”

Marty was tempted to give him the silent treatment. It was something she rarely did with her real husband, so it didn't feel right doing it to this simulation of him, but his riddles and ill-tidings were wearing on her. The last vision he showed her of Victoria was madness. In the end, it was her indecision which passed for her silence.

“Fair enough. For now, we'll just walk. We have only a short way to go. But I want you to know you are far exceeding my hopes for you. When I first became aware of you, I admit I had my reservations—even knowing your potential—because of your age. But it wasn't long before I saw you in action with your Liam to know you have more depth than even I could see. Your perseverance after seeing Victoria die was the clincher. Now I'm confident you'll be able to do what I'd hoped.”

She couldn't resist such a juicy statement.

“And what exactly did you hope I'd do?”

“Find the cure, of course! As I've said before, your first task is to assemble your team in this place to properly wage the kind of sustained battle you must endure to see this to the end. We are doing this in a series of small steps, much like a computer program, if I might use but one allusion, to achieve the desired result.”

“You know, don't you? You speak of computers. Of all the people on Earth you could have selected—” She walked while inhaling deeply, “I'm probably the only person on Earth who has never touched a computer. There have to be lots of people with computers near the source of the plague who could do a better job than me at stopping it? Soldiers. Scientists. Heck, even someone a little younger. Why didn't you take your magic show to one of them?”

“All I can say is there aren't many people left alive who know where the plague came from or who made it. I didn't have a long list of candidates, and very, very few of them could survive...this place. Even my best guesswork—and I hate guessing—suggests there are only a handful of those candidates left alive. Call them 'source vectors.' As heroes go, you are actually one of the people closest to one of those source vectors.”

“Hayes.”

“Yes, Hayes. As a contact in the CDC, I believe he's important in finding clues to how the virus was made, how it replicates, and how it can be stopped. My research is incomplete because he is a remarkably secretive person.”

“Can't you just ask him? You seem to have a lot of powers. Go into his dreams and Scrooge the buh-jeezus out of him like you do to me.”

“I have access to a lot of information about the infection, but even I don't know everything, nor can I directly reach out to someone like Hayes. I do believe a solution is out there, a cure, but it is against my directive to give you any information that could change the natural course of events. I can't draw you a map, for instance, and say go find the X.”

“That would save us all a lot of time, and probably save a lot of lives.”

“Always thinking of others. I respect that. I really do. But if I interfered now, I would become too much a part of this event. And my directives forbid such interference. Liam would describe this as something akin to my prime directive. That is why you are my champion in this crisis!”

“Oh my. Lord help us all if I'm the best champion you could find.”

“You'll do just fine, Marty.”

They rounded a bend to find a truck parked just off the road inside the coal-black canopy. Marty could hear screams from inside, muffled by the closed windows. She paused when she heard the noise, unsure what she should do. She wanted to help, but she had no weapons. Little strength. Not even a walker. Al took her hand and walked them both closer.

“As before, I'm truly sorry you have to bear witness to such evil, but this is one facet of your—” Al walked for a long time, saying nothing to finish that sentence. Marty was just about to remind him he was talking…

“—calibration.”

They were next to the truck. Some kind of SUV. Dark color. Lights off. The screams were diminishing, but crying could now be heard. Marty could imagine the victim having her blood drained from her, weeping helplessly as it happened.

“Why are you showing me someone getting assaulted by a zombie? As horrific as that may be, I've seen more than my fair share already.” She tried to pretend she was being brave, but she knew Al could read her mind. She was terrified.

“Brace yourself, Marty. You aren't going to like this.”

“I never do. Let's get on with it.” The crying was growing louder. But also—something else.

“I'm sorry for having to lay this on you but this is very much like a chess game. Good vs. evil. Dark vs. light. That sort of thing. You are my white queen, and you should know the truth of your adversaries. But first you should know the absolute truth of your allies. Their souls. It is this truth which will bind you, fortify you against evil.”

Still, she hesitated. “Al, you know I've been praying my whole life. That is what fortifies me against evil. Is this really necessary?”

“You can pray if you choose. But God didn't hear the cries of this poor soul.” He was nodding casually to the inside of the truck. “How you respond to this girl's—situation—will define your relationship with her from this moment forward.”

In a flash, Marty knew who was inside the truck. She'd heard the crying before.

Al walked next to the back window, inviting Marty to join him there.

She walked as if in a trance. She heard the crying, but the other sound was too incongruous to imagine if an infected person was feeding on another. It was laughter.

“My dearest Martinette. Behold the final piece of your triad. You three are going to find the cure.”

She looked inside the window. Al did something to illuminate the scene, or maybe it was her imagination. No way to tell in this place. But she could clearly see the two people struggling in the back seat.

She was right. She already knew the girl.

5

“OH MY HEAVENS! OH MY! NO!”

Marty's voice was not outstandingly loud anymore, but more and more often she awoke from sleep as if she had fallen off a cliff in a nightmare and woke up with a jarring SPLAT! Upstairs, Liam and Phil both went rigid with the loud yelling in the basement. Liam knew immediately who was making such a racket.

He whispered to Phil, “Grandma had another nightmare. She's convinced her husband is talking to her in her dreams, but it seems more like she gets beat up.”

“Well, she did talk to my wife and daughter—both dead—and she told me something else...” Phil paused, and Liam leaned in, willing Phil to reveal his secret. “She told me I had to help the trinity of dark angels. They were the only ones who could stop the sirens. Maybe your grandma is seeing those angels?”

“She never mentioned any trinity. And the sirens did stop, didn't they? They stopped that first day.”

“It makes no sense, Liam. I've been trying to figure it out since she told me. I really want to know what it means. How I can help. Who I can help. You know?”

“Well, someone is scaring Grandma in her dreams. I'd like to get in there and give them a piece of my mind.”

Phil was peeking outside. “Oh man. The sound has definitely caught the attention of our friends. Look at them moving this way. We should probably—”

Muffled but terse discussion from the kitchen. They could hear what amounted to an argument in progress. It escalated quickly and then they heard Melissa practically yell. “NOOOOOO!”

Gunshots went off. Very loud. Inside the house.

“Stop shooting!” This time it was Victoria.

Phil tapped Liam to go see what was happening. He said he needed to stay in the front.

One of the dads from the previous night—the same guy who shot out the rear window—had once again rattled off some shots into the back yard. Liam's look must have contained a question because the man responded.

“That zombie was almost at the back door again. I didn't want to take any chances.”

Liam didn't feel he had the authority to tell him he may have just killed them all. Shouldn't that have been obvious to the guy?

Melissa suffered no such doubts. “You probably just attracted every zombie from across the street. You should have just ducked down and let the zombie walk by.”

“Who put you in charge, little lady?”

Liam could see where this was going.

Phil ran into the kitchen. “We have to get everyone downstairs. The zombies are coming.”

“How many?” Liam was afraid of the coming answer. A movie quote echoed in his mind.

“All of them.”

Crap.

It didn't take long before they were secure in the basement. The basement door on the main floor wasn't reinforced, but it was nondescript. It's not like it had a sign on it saying “fresh meat, this way!” Still, Liam couldn't help but feel they'd reached their last move on the chessboard. Once they were discovered, there was literally no way out of this basement for such a large group. There were some small windows, but it would take a long time to get all these people out through them. And then what of the zombies standing right there in the backyard? They were in real trouble, same as those people he saw days ago going down the spiral of the pit quarry. Once they reached the bottom, there was nowhere else to go.

Looking around, Liam could see about a dozen or so children of varying ages. Thankfully no babies who might cry out and reveal them all. Some of the school-age children were silently crying, however. It couldn't be helped under such circumstances. He counted three sets of parents, plus Phil, Victoria, Mel, and Grandma. About twenty people against a horde. Was it even possible to resist such numbers?

Minutes went by.

Then ten.

Then they started hearing thuds on the floor above.

“They're coming in through the broken front windows. I'd bet anything.”

Thuds continued. Then shuffling of feet across broken glass and the linoleum of the kitchen. The table against the rear door could be heard scraping the floor. It was being pushed inside by zombies coming in from the back yard. The entire floor was crawling with zombies; the floorboards were creaking above his head.

For a long time, they waited, unable to do anything but listen to the noises above and cringe whenever they heard unnecessary noises from the kids.

Just how good was their hearing anyway?

Minutes continued ticking by.

Then an hour. The sun was coming up, trickling through the small windows of the basement.

Kids were getting antsy with the new day. They were unable to appreciate exactly what was happening above, or why so many playmates had to be quiet for so long.

Another hour went by.

Giggles from two young girls in the corner.

A shush from a parent.

More giggles.

My god. We're doomed.

Another shush.

Then a clear pounding on the basement door.

Everyone froze.

More banging.

Phil moved first, steadying his rifle in front of him, pointing up the steps. The others with guns did the same.

Phil's instructions were hurried and very quiet. “We want to try to get as many as we can in the doorway. If we can stack them up in front of the entrance to the stairwell, we might be able to block it so none of them can fit through. It's our only hope.”

More banging. More shuffling. More angry moans.

Liam was considering backing them all into the secret room. It would put them out of reach of the windows, but it would give them a little more safety in a fallback room. Though it might be the last fallback they'd ever have...

A new sound overtook them.

From up above they heard something that sounded like a helicopter, but it was starting and stopping in odd sequences.

Buzzzzzzz. Buzzz. Buzzzzzz.

They listened some more, unable to pin it down.

Buzzzzzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzzzzzz.

It was getting closer.

Buzz.

Then silence for almost a full minute.

Buzzzzzzzzzz. Buzzzzzzzzzzz. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The door above was perforated by powerful gunfire.

They all dove to the ground. A few ricochets sent stray rounds in odd directions inside the house, including some that blew big holes in the cross beams supporting the floor above their heads.

The buzzing continued for another minute or so, along with the crunching of wood, plaster, glass, and the breakage of all the minutia of life now being destroyed on the main floor above.

The noise was deafening, but Liam was also screaming. The rear windows of the basement were starting to drip with blood. The gun was ripping apart the zombies and sending them out the back of the house into the yard. Some were falling directly below the back of the house, smearing and splashing those windows with blood.

The gun would sweep one side of the house, then stop. It would start up again on the other side of the house. The basement door was near the center of the house, so it was perforated on almost every pass. The final straw for the door happened when a zombie was pushed through the frame by the kinetic force of the bullets. It came tumbling down the stairs like a rag doll, and crumpled at the base of the steps.

And then silence from the guns. Silence continued for seconds, then minutes. All the while, the children were screaming at the top of their lungs. Irreconcilable. Liam had stopped screaming at some point.

Victoria was stacked on top of Grandma, who was on the floor against the back wall. They both seemed all right. They were stirring as the silence from the weapon above continued.

He wiped away the tears from his face, and made his way to the two women. He was dismayed to see blood was dripping into the room from the ruined floor above them. The shaggy carpet was soaking in it. He was deathly afraid to look up for fear of being dripped on. He imagined he was in a zombie movie he'd seen, where a drop of infected blood fell into the eye of one of the heroes—ruining him. He wondered if that was his fate.

“Don't look up! Don't get the blood on your face!”

He didn't know if he could be heard over the screaming kids, or if it was necessary advice.

It was a long time before things got quiet enough for Liam to be sure he was heard.

Victoria managed to get to her feet. She was wiping her face with one hand and holding Grandma steady on her feet with the other. She looked at Liam as she asked the twenty-dollar question.

“What. The. Hell. Was that?”

6

“That, my friends, was a high-powered machine gun. If I had to guess, I'd say there are Army units on your street, Liam.” Phil never mentioned experience with military gear, but Liam wasn't about to doubt him on something so obvious.

A loudspeaker began booming. “This is Douglas Hayes of the CDC. Liam Peters! You and your grandma need to exit the house immediately. Bring nothing with you. Please leave your other friends inside. They will not be harmed.”

“What do we do, Grandma?”

Marty was already up and moving to the steps. “If they just cleared all those zombies, we have to get out of here while we can. Let's go before they hurt any of these good people.” Grandma turned to Phil. “Thank you for driving us here. Best of luck to you. Mel, you too. Good luck.”

Liam looked at Phil. He nodded. “We'll run like hell as soon as we can. Don't worry.”

He looked at Victoria, planning to say goodbye, but she had already found her place on Grandma's arm and was helping her up the steps.

I guess that's that.

“I'll go see what they want. You folks should lay low down here. I know this guy.”

None of them made any move to go up the stairs. Only Melissa made as if she might try. In the end, she only wanted to say “good luck” to them. Liam gave her a smile and caught up with the women on the stairs.

The door was pulverized and opened as much by falling outward as by its hinges. It was impossible to believe the whole floor had been stuffed with zombies moments before. The fury of the guns out front had turned the zombies into more or less a fine paste drilled into the walls, ceiling, and floor of Liam's house. Much of the larger remains had been pushed out the back side of the house and into the woods behind his dwelling. The amount of blood and...bits...was legion however, and Liam's stomach went into immediate critical mass. He saw a lot of lower legs wearing shoes. Some heads. Remnants of what the guns missed.

Settle down stomach.

The smell...

By the time they reached the front of the house, both Liam and Victoria had stopped to deposit their stomachs. Grandma seemed unaffected.

The front door was gone. They emerged from a large hole in the front facade of his house.

A large military truck was parked in the middle of the street. Liam recognized it from videos of Iraq and Afghanistan—it was some kind of six-wheeled anti-mine vehicle used to carry troops. Instead of being painted the characteristic desert tan, it was painted in multiple greens and browns more in line with the foliage of this part of the world. It had a nasty-looking Gatling gun on the top.

There were four Humvees parked nearby, each with a machine gun on top, pointing away from his place. They were sweeping the street for remaining zombies. The area around his house was clear now, but beyond the safety of that space, the infected were coming in from all directions.

Hayes and two flanking escorts were coming up the front yard. Liam noted they were trying to avoid stepping in the mess they created when the Gatling sliced through the crowd of infected on the lawn and in a wide arc into the neighbors' yards.

“Ahoy, Liam!” He appeared happy as a lark. As if a massacre of sorts did not just take place. He was dressed in Army fatigues that were a size too big for him. Liam thought it made him look ridiculous.

“Hayes. How did you find us?” Liam tried not to sound as deflated as he felt.

“I work for Big Brother, don't ya know? You were on a list.”

“A terrorist list or something?”

“Nope, something much more sinister. Your parents are on the list. Grandma is on the list. Probably your whole family.”

Liam began to panic he really was on some kind of terrorist watch list. He'd killed enough of the infected in front of Hayes to qualify for some kind of special status. But the rest of his family?

Hayes started to laugh. “It's called a phone book, Liam. Your parents are listed in that magical tome.”

Liam inwardly groaned. He should have seen that coming.

“I need you and Marty to come with me. I told you I could protect you and I must insist you let me do so.”

“What about my friends? There are women and children down in my basement.”

Hayes left his two escorts several paces behind him. He came right up to Liam and began speaking in a tone that sounded an awful lot like sincerity. “I'm sorry, Liam. I really am. But there just isn't enough space to transport everyone. My orders are to bring you and your grandma back.” He then looked around the yard as if satisfied. “I think we helped your friends out quite a bit though.” Pointing to a lone leg nearby, “We gave them a leg up, eh?” He laughed heartily at his joke.

“As I said earlier, I appreciate the offer but we aren't going anywhere with you.”

Marty became uncharacteristically agitated. “Liam, I really think you should listen to the man. He's offering safety.”

“Grandma, you know we can't trust him.”

Though he was standing right there, Hayes didn't seem offended.

Victoria said, “I'm with Liam. We can't trust him and you shouldn't go with him.”

“Really? I just roll up and kill a couple hundred zombies with my cool toys and you don't recognize the situation? I can understand these kids, but what about you?” He looked at Marty.

“Liam, you and I should go with this man.” She tried pulling Liam along, but Liam was firm.

“Grandma we can't!”

Hayes was smiling up until that point.

“You must come with me. Now. Look around, the zombies will be back.” He said it very close to them—waiting for a reply.

Liam wondered if he could get Grandma back inside. Just kind of slide backward into the wreckage of the place. Maybe the folks downstairs could help? Then he thought about the fake police officer who tried to rob him. His mind drifted to thoughts of a guardian angel. Someone—or some thing—had saved them both that day, and they'd been very lucky this entire trip. Surely this injustice could not be tolerated by any guardian angel. So many thoughts, they became a jumble inflicting a paralysis on his decision-making.

Hayes gave a disgusted snort, turned around, and walked back to his escort. Liam relaxed ever so slightly, thinking he was leaving. But Liam saw him say something to one of the guards, though he couldn't hear it. The escort was carrying a fancy military-style rifle with a big telescopic sight on top.

That is a big friggin' gun.

Without turning around, Hayes spoke in a very loud voice, “Last warning. Liam. Walk with me now or things are going to get ugly.”

Grandma was trying to move. Victoria and he were holding her back. “Liam, please,” she was imploring him.

He faltered. Unsure. But Victoria was strong. Holding her ground. Setting the example for him.

“Hayes, you wouldn't dare do—” Victoria began.

Hayes gave a nod.

The soldier raised his weapon. The scope was huge, but he didn't look through it. No need for it at ten feet. He aimed. He pulled the trigger. The bang wasn't as loud as Liam expected. He wasn't sure why that was his first thought, but it was.

His next thought was that he hadn't been shot.

Neither had Grandma.

That means...

“You will either step forward and walk to my truck right now or I kill Liam too. I'd rather not so I don't have to waste one of my men supporting an old lady, but I will if it means we can move on to other business.”

Several of the Humvee's machine guns were rattling in anger at the encroaching zombies.

Liam had just enough time to look back and see Victoria lying face down inside the remains of the front room. The force of the bullet must have pushed her back even as it brought her down. Marty had grabbed his hand and pulled Liam forward. In the shock, he was unable to resist. He knew he wasn't supposed to resist.

What just happened here?

They were complying with Hayes' request. They were halfway down the desecrated front lawn before Liam's mind caught up with the confused rage in his heart.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE! YOU SHOT HER, YOU BASTARD!”

“Ha! That's where you're wrong. You killed her, Liam. You've got to learn you either comply with me immediately, or people get hurt. I let you go at the roadblock because I didn't have my proper team with me. It was very rushed and I don't do rushed. That's how mistakes happen. But I don't like anyone telling me no. You saw that back when the police wouldn't let us across that bridge. I found my own way. I had a backup plan. I always do. I'm trying to save the world, so give me a little respect.”

Several soldiers trained their weapons on him. Very close. He could see inside the muzzles of the guns, they were so near to his face. Liam remembered the temper tantrum Hayes threw when the police told him he couldn't cross the bridge out of St. Louis, despite telling them he was with the CDC. But he never once advocated murder in the days he'd been with Liam's group. This was something new.

He knew enough not to do anything stupid. Despite his rage, Grandma kept a tight hold on his hand—even for her age she had a tight grip—and moving in the right direction. There was no arguing with this man, at least not here under the aegis of all these guns.

“You shot Victoria. You shot Victoria. You shot Victoria.” It was a mantra that got him across the grass and up to the big truck.

Was it really my fault?

A guard searched him for weapons, taking his pistol and a pocket knife. They also did a cursory search of Marty. She carried nothing.

As they were climbing through the rear entrance of the big military truck, Liam looked at his house one last time. It was a disaster. All the glass was gone. There were large holes where the windows once were, and many smaller holes all along the length of the structure at about man height. The Gatling really did terrible damage.

He tried to look for Victoria one last time too, but she was inside and the bright glare of sunshine prevented him from seeing her lying on the floor. Wisps of smoky debris also poured out the front.

“Goodbye, Victoria. I love you.” He said it only loud enough for Grandma to hear. It was the first thing that tumbled out when he thought of the girl he had come to know during this calamity, and began to have strong feelings for her—love perhaps—because of those shared experiences. He had thought he'd found something worth living for. Someone to help get him through to the light on the other side of this disaster. Someone to share the load.

Then the door to the outside world was closed. He wasn't surprised to see two long empty bench seats in the rear of the transport.

No space, my ass!

All Liam could do was break down and cry.

Grandma put her hand on his back to comfort him as he was hunched over in his seat.

No words passed between them for a long time.

There was nothing to say after such a loss.

Chapter 7: Breakfast in Afghanistan

Jerry sat at Marty's kitchen table. Lana was sitting next to him, absently leafing through the kill list with the familiar names on it. They'd spent the previous few hours scouring the house for any definitive clue as to where Liam and Marty had gone, but could find none. They knew Liam was armed and had taken her and many of her essentials—the walker, her pain meds, etc.—but they had no idea which way they went, how they were getting around, or even where they were going. Angie's car was gone, but the garage was ransacked, so it was unclear who had it. Their best guess was Liam was going back to his own house, but they wanted to be certain before giving up on Marty's home.

“We know the highway is a solid brick of cars south of here. If they got stuck in that they would certainly have had to walk out. You don't think Liam would have been dumb enough to get himself caught in that traffic, do you?”

“I think all we know for sure is they made it far enough away from this house they didn't feel the need to return. That may be a good sign they are making progress.”

“Or they were unable to return.”

“That's always going to be a possibility until we see them safe and sound.”

“So what do we do next? Wait here and hope they show up? Go back home? We're worried about Liam getting out with Grandma. We have to get out too at some point.”

They had caught a quick nap in the waning hours of the night, as their long journey into the city, and the disappointment of not finding Liam, had sapped them of all their strength. They woke up on the fourth morning since the sirens had gone off.

They couldn't leave and risk Liam showing up at Marty's again. But they couldn't stay forever either. If Liam somehow made it home, he'd be looking for them.

“I wish the phones were working. We could just call him.”

“Actually, maybe we can. If we can find the internet somewhere. If it's still up. We just have to find something which can send out a text in that fashion.” Jerry was the family's IT guy. He stood up, excited at the implications. He and Lana both shared a cell phone plan with Liam, but neither had gotten a signal—Wi-Fi or otherwise—since the crisis began. They'd more or less given up on them. Their phones were older and cheaper than Liam's. They had voice and texting plans, but no data and no ability to get onto a hotspot.

“I won't bother asking about Grandma, but doesn't Angie have a tablet of some kind we could use for this?”

They both remembered her with some kind of tablet on at least one occasion recently. It was enough of a hope they both sprinted up the steps to her flat to search for it. The horrid smell and large piles of blood-soaked clothes on the floor slowed them down. They'd been in the room in the darkness; somehow the light made it scarier.

“What the hell happened up here?”

“I have no idea, but let's find that thing and clear out of here pronto. All this blood gives me the creeps.” Like Liam, Jerry suffered a queasiness around blood. He was mostly able to control it after years of careful practice, but this place tested his resolve.

The tablet was sitting on the floor of Angie's bedroom. It had probably been sitting on the nightstand, but the furniture had been rearranged, to put it charitably. They grabbed the tablet and its charger—power had to be on somewhere.

A few minutes later, they were back at the kitchen table, hovering over the tablet as it was turning on. They were both relieved to see it had at least half its juice left. But they were greeted with disappointment as Angie's device had essentially one application on it—the app that let her read her stories. They had no way to easily determine if Angie had the internet in her apartment, but it was clear there were no hotspots active anywhere in range at the moment.

“OK, so what we need to do is find a working Wi-Fi hotspot, then hope we can connect to the internet, then hope the app store is still open, then hope the messaging app we need is free, then we have to hope Liam still has his phone with him and that at some point he will also find a Wi-Fi hotspot so this texting program can get a message to him.” Jerry tried to remain optimistic. “Should be a piece of cake!”

“Don't you mean it's impossible? Even I can see that.”

He moved closer and put his arm around her. “I understand your frustration. I really do. But look at it this way. A few minutes ago, we had absolutely no hope of finding our son without walking out that door and searching each structure and car from here to our home. With this tablet, we at least have a chance of contacting him.”

“But not a great chance.”

“Any chance is better than no chance, in my book. We'll find him, I promise you that. Even if it takes my whole life, I will find our son. I say we head back home. We have to do something besides sit here and hope he comes back. If there are people out there targeting him, we need to protect him. I want to be make sure our home doesn't have any of these men waiting for him.”

“That's good enough for me.”

The tablet was tossed in a backpack along with the list of names. Lana found some paper and wrote a note and taped it to the surface of the kitchen table. On a whim, she peeled off two more identical notes and taped them to the floor just inside the front and back doors. “Just in case they come back, I want Liam to know we were here and went back home.”

“Smart.”

Jerry did think it was smart, but also lamented it could tip off anyone coming to check up on the hit men lying dead in the house. There was chance in everything now.

2

Liam was shocked awake by the sound of the Gatling gun. He also heard the sound of banging on the outside of the truck. Not the banging of hands, but the unmistakable banging of gunfire hitting the exterior.

“Are we under attack?”

He addressed the question to Grandma, but immediately noticed the truck was no longer empty. Almost all the space was taken by a cadre of octogenarians. They looked sprightly and youthful next to his 104-year-old grandmother.

“Umm, I think we took the wrong bus, Grandma.” He was trying to be funny, but mostly he needed to boost his own morale. He remembered what happened to Victoria and his good humor faded.

More loud bangs on the exterior. More buzzing from the chain gun on the roof. The clinking of spent ammo casings could be heard bouncing wildly on the top of the rig.

Marty had to speak up to be heard. “It's been going on like this for a couple hours now. How have you been able to sleep through it? You must be exhausted.”

Liam felt exhausted. After days without real sleep, then losing Victoria...

“I got a little sleep. Do you know where we're going?”

“Can't say for sure. Maybe the old folks home. We've been picking up all these passengers since we left your house. They all get in with the same look of surprise. No one has been told anything.”

Liam counted five fellow travelers on the opposite bench seat, and two more on his bench. There was nothing else in the rear compartment beyond the spartan seats, and there was a stout net separating the driver's cockpit. There were two crewmen up front, working the controls. Neither seemed too concerned about the passengers.

I guess a real hero would be taking over this beast.

He just sighed. He felt no energy for rebellion. Instead, he fell back asleep.

The truck rolled on.

3

Liam next woke when the truck was stopping. The back doors swung open and Hayes was there, looking as cheery as ever. “Potty break! Liam, would you help all these guests out of the MRAP please?”

Liam wasn't happy to be put to service, but he did as he was told—for now.

He must have slept for a long time because it was now completely dark outside. He could see they were on a narrow paved road in some woods, but he had no idea where they were. He considered getting out his phone to look at a map, but remembered he could no longer get reception “in the wild” as it were. What was once second nature—using his phone to answer questions—was gone. Maybe the old-fashioned approach would work.

“Hayes, can you at least tell us where we are going? My Grandma can't sit like this for much longer.”

Hayes laughed. “Nice try, Liam. I watched her walk and ride a wheelchair out of the collapsing city. She isn't as weak as you portray. And I'm still mad at you for making me kill Victoria, so no, I'm not going to tell you anything.”

I made you kill her?

There were no chairs provided, so elderly men and women simply stood against the trees, or held onto a fellow human being. Everyone did what they needed to do, stretched for a few minutes, and then were marshaled back into the MRAP.

Hayes did surrender one tidbit of information before he closed the rear doors. “I'm sorry we can't stay and chat for a while longer, but we are on a tight schedule. We have one more pickup to make and then we'll be going to a makeshift medical facility, where you will all be attended to.”

Liam silently wondered what all this was about. He knew Hayes couldn't be a good guy, not after what he pulled with Victoria, but how could a government agency let a guy like this run any kind of program? His first inclination was to say he would never cooperate, no matter what agency he worked for, or what method of coercion he used—but the reality was much different. Would he refuse to cooperate if he harmed the woman sitting next to him? What if he threatened his parents? Liam had no doubt Hayes had the ability to reach out to anyone if he wanted to do so.

As he sat in the truck and it rumbled down the road, he wanted nothing more than to see Victoria again—but she was dead.

Why do I keep forgetting that?

He slumped in his seat and tried to go back to sleep. Right now it was the only thing that kept him going. Sleeping let him forget, just for a little while, the pain of the waking world. He fell asleep while listening to barely-audible music coming from the front compartment. It sounded exotic. Foreign.

A few moments later, at least in his mind, the truck ground to a halt. After an insufferably long wait in the increasingly warm compartment, the doors finally opened. Liam looked out into the darkness and could see small fires burning in two parallel rows, far out into the distance. It reminded him of an airstrip.

A couple camouflage-clad men were lifting a stretcher into the back of the truck, pushing it into the space between the inward-facing benches. All nine of the passengers would be facing the tenth rider laying on the floor.

The tenth man was ancient. For once, even Grandma looked young and healthy by comparison. The men had loaded an oxygen tank which was connected to a breathing tube draped below the man's nose. His eyes were sunken and he had distinct dark circles around his eyes, but he was very alert. He had almost no hair, but huge bushy eyebrows. His face was narrow, and deeply pockmarked—with a most unhealthy pallor about him. Liam guessed he was pulled out of bed because he still had on his plaid pajamas. He even had the slippers although he didn't look fit to stand.

Liam sat in the last spot on his bench, so he was furthest from the man's head up toward the front of the compartment. Once the doors were sealed, he felt compelled to talk to the old gentleman. “Hello, sir. My name is Liam. Do you know why they brought you here? Do you know where we're going?”

After some initial confusion, the man pointed to his ear with his tiny arm and made a cup with his hand, as if to say he couldn't hear very well.

Now louder, Liam asked him the same question.

The man could barely be heard over the road noise of the now-moving truck. “My name's Bart. They took me without letting me say goodbye to my granddaughter. She takes care of me. He said he needed me to come with him because I was going to help with a cure for the sickness. But they made me leave Janey!”

Thinking of a doting granddaughter keeping this man alive, even after the collapse, hurt Liam's heart. He pictured her coming home and finding her grandpa had up and left. What would she think? Who would steal an elderly man from his own home?

Thinking of what they did to Victoria, he wondered if there was more to the story. “Did they harm Janey?” He practically shouted at the man so he could be heard.

His eyes looked at Liam a moment, and in his wisp of a voice said, “No. She was out looking for more oxygen for me. She hadn't come back. Can someone call her? I have her number on my bracelet.”

Obviously someone had taken care of him all this time, but how could he not know the situation with the world? Unless Janey was trying to shield him from it. He'd read about that scenario many times.

“Sir, do you know what's happening with the zombies?”

The man seemed to look around at his overseers, trying to absorb what was happening to him. If he heard Liam, he chose not to respond. Instead, he repeated that his Janey was going to be looking for him.

Damn. He's not all there.

As they continued down the road, Liam still had no idea where he was going or why the CDC would be collecting this odd menagerie of people. All he knew was these folks were going somewhere that was run, either in part or in total, by the man who shot his girlfriend.

There, I said it.

If there was an indicator on Liam's heart, it would be moving slightly from the depressed zone to the “I'm going to sabotage this whole project and make that son-of-a-bitch wish he had never met me” zone. Was Hayes really working on a cure? If so, would sabotaging him doom them all? Even revenge was overly complicated at the end of the world. For all he knew, it always was. Nonetheless, his heart would give the man no quarter.

He would play the rest by ear.

Bart chose that moment to finally blurt out a response to Liam's query. He yelled it because Liam had leaned back in his seat against the rear door.

“Zombies? I saw a zombie once. It was in a movie.”

4

The journey continued in the back of the MRAP for several more hours. They could see the early morning light coming in through the small side windows and the large front windows. Liam still couldn't see where they were, and he didn't know where they were going. He did know they'd spent the entire night traveling in the cramped compartment and no one was happy.

“Someone please tell Janey where to find me.”

Bart on the floor would alternate between sleeping and shouting out for his granddaughter. He would listen to none of his fellow passengers, most of whom insisted they would tell Janey as soon as they could. He either ignored them or didn't believe them. He was confused, that much was evident. Many were visibly frustrated at the futility of interacting with him.

Grandma seemed the least affected by his ramblings. Liam asked why.

“I've spent plenty of time in the nursing homes. You recall when I fell down and broke my arms—I spent six weeks in the crazy house that time—and a multitude of visits to friends and relatives who suffered their last years there. I've seen plenty of men and women like this gentleman. It really is sad how we end up when we reach the end of our lives.”

Liam noticed she had her Rosary in her hands, passing the beads through her frail fingers. It may have been there the whole time they were riding.

“Grandma, would you say a prayer for Victoria?”

She turned to him with a soft look. “Sweet Liam. I've been praying for her since we left.”

He didn't know what to say. He was afraid just thinking about her now would move him to tears, so he tried to focus instead on other things—anything. He stood up to address everyone. Time to do something.

“Does anyone in here know why you've all been, uh, collected?”

He looked around. The obvious reason was their age. But that was just stupid. What other things did they have in common? He was saddened to see he wasn't getting any response beyond blank looks. The long journey made everyone bristle at the merest interaction with their neighbors. Liam was breaking an uneasy truce among these survivors.

“Don't you want to know why you're all here? I can't be the only one curious.”

An old woman—they were all old—further up his bench spoke up at last. “I can't think of any reason anyone would want me. My name's Petunia Hemma. I spent my life raising my family—they're all moved out and on their own, of course—and my husband passed away a few years ago.” She crossed herself at that statement, as did many of the others. “I don't have any special skills or knowledge. I'm just a housewife.”

Others spoke up in turn, some explaining they had jobs in the past which could have been construed as “interesting.” One even worked for the CIA in Langley as a receptionist. But Liam was unable to deduce anything both interesting and common among them all.

He was left with the only thing even remotely common—their age. It was also the least intriguing to him. “Why would the government need a group of old people?”

He looked around and noticed the stink eyes.

“Oh sorry. I meant no disrespect. My grandma told me I could call her an old person after she reached 100.”

That seemed to mollify everyone. Several began talking to Grandma once they learned she was a centenarian. An unwritten rule of silence was broken, and the group became much more animated. Checking where they went to high school. Piecing together the circles they'd run in during their youth. Finding out if they dated the same people. Old people stuff.

Oops.

Just people stuff.

Liam was back in his seat, listening to the group chatting like they were sitting at a coffee shop hopped up on the caffeine. He was vigilant for clues tying them all to this journey, but few were forthcoming. He settled in and absorbed the life stories of his fellow passengers.

All the excitement made him forget something important for just a little while.

Victoria is gone...

That was it.

Another hour ticked by. The truck was never going very fast, and sometimes it would stop for a long time while the gun was in operation or was being reloaded by the men up front. They were let out one more time in the early morning, greeted by a light drizzle. It seemed to refresh the passengers and their conversations exploded as the journey continued.

Liam absorbed as much as he could, but those folks could really talk when they wanted to. He still had nothing to go on in his effort to solve the mystery, even after a couple hours enduring waves of information. They were starting to repeat themselves as they shared their same stories with other companions. Even Grandma seemed to revel in the data dump.

For a fifteen-year-old boy, it moved quickly from exciting to boring beyond belief.

He turned inward. Sitting in the back of the truck reminded him of his zombie books. Survivors were rounded up in the hot zone and brought to the safety of the “compound” where they could find safety and comfort. When the rear doors of this MRAP opened, would they be greeted by a friendly face welcoming them to their new home?

He didn't think for a second this was an altruistic mission.

He then thought of his military history. He'd seen a dramatic recreation of another group of men sitting in the back of a military truck in the old days. They were traveling as prisoners of war in wintertime during the Battle of the Bulge, fought near the end of World War II. When the back flap opened, they were greeted by German special forces, and they were anything but friendly faces. They dragged the men into a clearing and shot them all—a massacre.

Did he believe they were heading for a massacre? Part of him did. But they could have been killed at any point in this journey. They could have been killed in their homes. Why bother with the elaborate transport? Maybe they have to keep it secret?

He felt panic somewhere deep inside him trying to get his attention. Were these cold-blooded killers? They'd killed Victoria in cold blood.

Was it really cold blood? What does that even mean?

They killed her because of me.

He felt his emotions going haywire. Panic. Regret. Anger. Confusion.

He tried to force himself to go to sleep. End the fistfight taking place in his head.

Sleep remained elusive. Much blood was spilled in the long mental battle.

The truck rolled on.

5

Liam's thoughts were interrupted as the world slanted.

The truck dipped its nose down a little and slammed into something. It wasn't going very fast, but the mass of the large truck and the flat bench seats worked together to send all the passengers toward the front of the vehicle in a brief but violent jerk.

Those in the front of the truck had it the worst. They were pushed against the webbing separating the front compartment while simultaneously absorbing the weight of the passengers behind them. Because Liam and Marty were closest to the doors, they suffered almost no ill-effects.

The Gatling gun on top came to life. It seemed pissed, spinning up in long pulls.

The men in the front of the truck were yelling. The radio was squelch city. The MRAP seemed stuck on something. The engine was roaring, the tires were spinning, but the thing wasn't moving.

The plinks of shell casings rattled on the roof while the clangs of rounds bouncing off the exterior were plainly evident.

Where the hell are we? Afghanistan?

The Gatling continued making long sweeps with short intervals of downtime. The operators up front were yelling about overheating, ammo consumption, and target selection. The noise was dizzying. He tried to help some of the others get back in their seats.

Impossibly, a few minutes into the firefight, the back doors popped open. Hayes was hunched down just outside the truck, as if trying to avoid the rain. “Liam, you and Grandma will come with me. Now! Bart, you will be picked up next.”

He considered the wisdom of that statement, but Grandma was already on her feet. She made the decision for him. After several long seconds of helping her out, they were standing at the back of the MRAP, surrounded by a thick blanket of white smoke. Smoke canisters were laying on the ground in all directions, belching out the smothering layer of safety. The MRAP itself was also cranking out smoke. Liam wasn't sure if that was due to the crash or a protective feature of the vehicle itself.

Standing out in the open, he was assaulted by the sights and sounds of battle. The buzz saw sound coming from the top of the MRAP was the most distinctive, but he could hear other machine guns from the Humvee's, as well as the sounds of guns being fired from a distance. Those were the attackers—whoever they were.

Hayes had a Humvee pulled up almost to the back of the MRAP. He hurried the pair toward his ride.

Liam didn't know how to process all that was happening.

In one moment, he heard the whipping sound of a bullet streaking through the air nearby.

Then two more. Close.

He heard several rounds smack the outside of the MRAP.

The Gatling was freakishly loud.

In another moment, he heard and saw a bullet sink into the tire of the Humvee he was approaching. His mind recalled some television show which explained how these vehicles had special tires which would run even if flat. So much time to think in those few seconds of running...

Hayes made no effort to slow down as they moved toward the space where the bullet just passed. There were several cracks already on the windshield. “Get her in the front seat! I'll be in the back!”

Once inside, with the doors safely closed, the Humvee began moving. Liam and Grandma were crammed together in the front seat, staying as low as possible. Hayes was in the back, along with a person they couldn't see fully. He was standing upright and was poking out the top, operating the machine gun mounted on the roof. It was hammering away, dropping shells both inside and over the outer surface of the truck. The driver was the redhead woman. She didn't have her hat on this time, her wavy red locks were down to her shoulder. After looking over to ensure everyone was in, she ripped out of there—as fast as the Humvee could accelerate.

“What about the others?” Liam didn't want to leave the whole group inside that truck, though he had to admit, he was glad he chose to sit at the back of that thing so they were pulled out first.

“The other Humvees will get them out. If they can push back the looters, maybe they can free the MRAP too. A good mine-resistant vehicle like that isn't something we want to abandon.”

“Wait. Those were looters?”

“This whole trip we've been attacked by them. They see us as a threat to their ability to steal and destroy everything in this part of the city.”

Liam had seen looters destroy everything that held together the fragile safety zone in downtown St. Louis at the Arch.

As the Humvee cleared the firefight and smoke, the machine gun up top stopped, the driver slowed to safe cruising speed, and Hayes gave them the all clear to sit up. Finally, Liam would get a look to see the new landscape they'd been trying to reach for so long.

His mouth dropped when he saw where they were.

Is this for real?

6

After a full night and morning of riding in the back of the MRAP, Liam imagined they were somewhere in Texas, or even Maine. Instead, they were on a street Liam recognized as being less than thirty minutes from his house. They were still in a suburb south of St. Louis.

“Are you kidding me? This is all the farther we've gone?”

“I guess I can't blindfold you now while we go to our secret lab, can I?”

Liam gave him a harsh look.

“Oh, lighten up, Francis. We've been avoiding roadblocks, traffic jams, and hordes of zombies since we left your house. It takes time to plan routes, feed more candy to the dragon riding on top, let your friends out to pee, and keep ourselves from getting bogged down in massive throngs of the infected. It would be easy to get trapped forever in one of those groups. Traveling in the apocalypse is not like going to school with the text-and-drive crowd you're used to. It's gotten complicated.”

He hated admitting the guy was making sense, but...

“So then, where are we going?”

Hayes was pointing to a nearby park a mile or two up the road, across the interstate. Liam knew where they were now, so he knew the destination, if he was being told the truth. It was a huge wooded park designed around a herd of elk the locals kept penned there as an attraction. Liam had been there once as a young boy and could remember absolutely nothing of the trip. It only stuck in his memory because it was close to the highway and every time the family drove by it, Mom and Dad would reminisce about that earlier trip. They would always ask if he remembered feeding the reindeer, to which he replied many times, he didn't. Then Dad would take his cue to bestow a biology lesson, starting with, “did you know they aren't really reindeer?”

I wish you guys were here now.

Before his mind could start warming up for a fight, he tried to coax more information from Hayes, though there was a powerful part of him that couldn't help but respond with snark.

“Are we going to feed the reindeer?”

“Ha! Those elk are probably already dead. People are going to be hungry. And no, we aren't going to feed them.”

The Humvee sped along the road underneath the main interstate highway in the area, wasting no time with any of the desperate hitchhikers running their way. The highway itself looked like it was a bombed out parking lot. Many cars were smoldering, while others had their doors hanging open, abandoned. There were quite a few people walking around, though it was impossible to tell through the dirty and broken windows of the Humvee whether they were alive or dead.

A short drive on a side road brought them to the gate of the park. Nearby was a large wooden sign with faded white letters which informed citizens they were about to enter Lone Elk Park. Unlike most parks in the area, this one was practically unique in that it was surrounded by a ten-foot wire-mesh fence high enough to both keep the elk inside, and keep other species of deer on the outside. It wouldn't keep out a determined human who could easily climb it or cut it down, but it would be ideal for keeping mindless zombies out.

Until they were so numerous they pushed the fence down.

Liam knew that story had already been written. No fence was impenetrable. He surveyed the barrier as they drove through the gate and, to his untrained eye, it looked pretty solid. Solid enough for today.

They sped along a narrow road until they came to a clearing next to a small man-made lake. Instead of elk, they were greeted with several immense olive drab tents and many smaller flanking tents. There were also a few other Humvees parked randomly in the complex, plus a few civilian cars. A gaggle of guards was jaw-jacking near one of the big tents, but that was about it for people. No one was walking around outside, which Liam took as a good sign. No zombies were here. For now, whatever project was taking place here was under human control.

The clock is ticking...

Liam suffered from an overdose of pessimism. The past twenty-four hours had been nothing but down for him. Really everything had been down since he kissed Victoria at the sycamore tree two mornings ago. Would that end up being the high point of his life going forward?

Hayes got out first, then opened the front door for Liam and Grandma.

“It isn't Fantasy Island, but welcome anyway.” He swished his hand in a dramatic gesture, as if to show them the entire facility with it. Liam helped Grandma get out of the high-clearance truck and set her upright as he held her next to him. He noticed she was leaning hard.

“Let me show you to your tent. This way please.”

Liam was struck by the silence of the place. After the constant din of the MRAP, and the battle they'd just escaped, his brain was suffering in the absence of loud noise. He could hear birds tweeting softly all around them, and the rustle of nearby tree leaves. It was only disturbed if he listened very hard for a soft hum coming from one of the larger tents.

They walked a short distance to one of the smaller tents. It was still a very large affair for someone used to a four-man tent his family used for camping. It was about twenty feet across and looked like heavy canvas construction. There were full-length flaps on all four sides, allowing a person to walk in from any side. All were open but the one in the very back. It was hot enough they needed the airflow.

As they got closer, he noticed there were several cots in the tent, and most of the cots had people lying on them. He tried to get a better look, but when they were at the threshold of the front tent flap, Hayes stopped them. “This is going to be your new home for a while. I told you back at the bridge we're going to protect you two. You will be safe here. I'm sorry for all the—ah—unpleasantness getting to this point. From here on out, you're home free.”

Liam didn't want to sound too pessimistic in front of Grandma, but he'd read enough zombie books to know how silly that statement sounded. He cranked the sarcasm all the way up. “You realize, of course, this whole camp is going to be overrun, and we'll probably all end up dead or zombies. You know that, right? You brought us here for nothing.”

“And you realize, of course, I just spent two days, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, precious fuel, and many other toys and manpower to bring your grandma here. Oh, what? You forgot? I didn't bring you here. I brought her here. Now that I have her here, do you think for a second I need you and your attitude around?”

He stepped in it now.

Uh oh.

“Sir, I'll do as you ask. Please leave Liam with me. I really do need his help getting around after all the excitement of my travels.”

Hayes had a penchant for the dramatic. He left it hanging for a long time whether he was going to give Marty her wish.

Chapter 8: Elk Meadow

Hayes had kept Marty and Liam in suspense for a long period of time. So long that Liam needed to shift his weight to his other foot while he stood there holding grandma.

He's going to kill me.

Hayes was looking at Liam, studying him. He realized at last what it meant to have your life in someone else's hands. His mouth may have just gotten him killed. Then how would he avenge Victoria? “I'm sorry. I get mouthy when I'm nervous. It got me kicked out of my house by my parents. Please don't kill me.” He knew he was falling on his sword, but he couldn't stand leaving his fate completely in the hands of this man.

“Kill you? Is that what you think of me? Listen, I hated to have Victoria shot, but you see how the world is now. Everyone wants to kill everyone else. Bullets are flying. These plague victims are chomping. I really didn't have time to argue with you. You see that now, right?”

He didn't wait for any reply. “Anyway, I'm not going to kill you. I just enjoy messing with your head because you are so freaking annoying. But consider this one helpful hint before you settle into your new lives. Grandma, I'm talking to you on this one. If either of you so much as sneezes and I don't like it, I won't kill you for it, but I might have my friends over there kill you for me. A minor detail perhaps, but my job is all about the details.”

He spun around and shouted out, “Enjoy your stay!”

They entered the tent and found their way to a couple of empty cots. Grandma asked to lay down, which was easily accommodated with Liam's arm.

“Thank you, Liam. For all your help on this trip. I just need a little time to rest now. And pray.” She had her Rosary out again, holding it to her chest.

Liam was once again reminded of a dead woman with her arms folded across her chest, dressed in her everyday clothes. It gave him the chills to look at her. He stood there for a few moments to observe. She seemed to drift off to sleep almost as he watched. Satisfied she was still alive, he looked around at the rest of his tent mates.

Well, I'll be.

Everyone in the tent, maybe ten others, was elderly and frail, just like the group he'd left in the MRAP. He was now convinced the common denominator was age. It wasn't background, skills, knowledge, or anything else. The CDC was collecting old people. But why?

“Hello, everyone. I'm Liam and this is Marty.” None of the old folks looked as if they were as old as Grandma, but he didn't feel right asking them to call her “Grandma.”

“We were kidnapped at gunpoint two days ago and brought here in one of their military transports. Is that how you got here too?”

Before anyone could answer, a nurse came up to the tent, wearing camouflage scrubs, with a light mask over her mouth and nose. She asked “Ruth” to come with her. Once identified, the nurse moved to help one of the women rise from her cot—it took her some time to do so—and she went off with the nurse.

Once that distraction was over, an elderly man got up and introduced himself. He was thin and dressed in sweat pants and a well-faded Hawaiian shirt, but seemed energetic and alert. Qualities in short supply with the crowds he'd been hanging with lately.

“I'm Zachary Taylor—yes, like the President, my parents had high hopes for me—so pleased to meet you Liam. I look forward to meeting your grandmother when she's up to it.”

“She's my great grandmother actually. She's 104.”

The man let out a quiet whistle. “I'm sorry about how you found your way here. Most of us volunteered to be here.”

“Really? Did they promise you anything? Threaten you? Tell you why you're here?”

Zachary looked around to the few others sitting up and alert, as if to take their temperature on this point. “They told us the world was going to hell and that we had a chance to save it. Most of us—”

He looked around the room, scanning each bed.

“—yes, all of us here now were in various nursing homes in the area when they found us. You see, once the power went out, things became very—what's the word I'm looking for here? Terminal? Yes, things got terminal at the nursing homes. A few families came to get their loved ones, but many of us were already on our own when we went into the homes, and we had no family or friends left on the outside. No matter how bad things got in there, we had nowhere else to go.”

Zachary went on to explain how the loss of power was followed by a short but tense period on reserve generators at his home, but those failed pretty quickly. Power had been going on and off for a couple weeks before the final shutdown, so the generators had already seen hard use and poor maintenance. The final straw was lack of fuel. “Needless to say, many of the residents required power to live in comfort; some needed power simply to live. It was in the first day after the sirens people started to die—and the stream never stopped until there were only a handful of residents left. Even the help had scattered to the winds as things got progressively worse. Then Hayes showed up. At that point, it was myself and another woman—we joked about being the last man and woman on Earth, wouldn’t that be ironic? Hayes offered us a place to stay and explained why he needed our kind of people on his team, including the downsides.”

Liam interrupted. “Why! Why does he need people of your generation?”

“Experiments, of course. They are experimenting on us to try to solve the riddle of the cure.”

“And you let them?”

Zachary looked around, suddenly with a sadness about him. “Son, you're a bright-eyed kid—what are you, about 14?—so you can't see things for what they are. The world has collapsed. People are dying in the streets. What hope of survival do any of us old fogies have? What hope of ever contributing again? I can't speak for us all, but I'm doing this so my death means something. I see that look in your eyes. I know I'm going to die soon. We all do. If the Department of Homeland Security says I can help make a difference in finding a cure and protecting my fellow man, I feel it is my civic duty to try.”

“You said Homeland Security. Are you sure this isn't a CDC facility?”

“No, Hayes definitely said he was with Homeland Security. Why? Does it matter who he's with? Obviously this is a government operation.”

He couldn't answer that out loud. It mattered he saw a discrepancy. His dad would be shouting from the rooftops this was an ah-ha moment. He would never accept it didn't matter which entity of the government had shown up at his doorstep and asked for his cooperation. He would demand to know whose name was on the letterhead of the warrant. He'd want the address of the judge, in fact.

Hayes represented a group with lots of manpower, lots of military gear, and an apparent inside track on finding the cure to the infection burning through the population of the world. He was willing to tell lies to get them all here, including a lie about who he was with and what he did. Finally, he was willing to have Victoria shot in cold blood just to spank Liam into compliance.

Liam was agreeing with dad on this one.

I think it's pretty important who he's really with.

In front of Zachary, he just shook his head no.

2

The tent settled into a routine after the initial introductions and Liam's encounter with Zachary. Most of them were lying on their cots, resting. His watch displayed 2 p.m.

Two hours until bedtime!

He chuckled internally at the jocularity concerning old people. He knew it wasn't universally true, but Grandma was often in bed at the unnaturally early time of 7 p.m. For a fifteen-year-old, the night was just getting started at seven. Rather than take a nap, he pulled out his phone. Looking at it, he felt the sadness creeping back in.

I should have taken her picture with this.

How he missed that trick in all his time with her, he'd never know. Before the sirens, he was always snapping pictures of friends, pets, and even the odd pile of dog poop. He'd send them to friends as part of the life of a silly teenager. But he never thought to take her picture.

“Maybe I could ask agent Duchesne for a copy of the picture he took of her.” He could only laugh at the multiple layers of futility in that thought.

He was staring at the lock screen and noticed he was getting a Wi-Fi signal. Looking closer, the little display icon showed it was trying to acquire a signal. It hadn't found an open one. When he got past his lock screen, he swiped around a few times until he was looking at the available hotspots.

He was about to scroll through the list when he was aware of the nurse returning to the tent. He put his phone into his pocket just as the nurse arrived. She seemed to pause her eyes on him, but he admitted it could have been his imagination. He wondered if he looked guilty.

“Liam and Marty? Come with me, please. You need to meet with the base director.”

Liam moved to the nurse. She was still wearing a mask. “Would it be OK if I let my grandma sleep? Can I come with you now and then tell her what I learned later?”

The nurse nodded in the affirmative and she began walking away without comment.

He waved to Zachary so someone knew he was leaving the tent.

He tried some clumsy small talk, but the nurse was not very friendly. Soon they were at another of the smaller tents, but this one was closed on all sides and they had to go through a small door flap on the front.

Inside was nice and cool, though it had a strong musty smell common to all canvas tents left outside for any length of time. Several dim fluorescent lights were hanging from the tent's roof, their wires all running into a bundle near and under the back tent wall. He also noticed a tube of some kind was blowing air directly onto the man sitting at the lone desk in the middle of the tent. No, not just a man. A soldier. He was an older man with near-total gray hair, including a gray mustachio. He was wearing a camouflage uniform, the eagles visible on his shirt as he looked up at Liam.

“Hello, Liam and...Marty.”

“Uh, hello, sir. I'm Liam. My grandma is sleeping. The nurse said I could take notes for her.”

He turned around but the nurse was already gone.

Dang it!

“Welcome, Liam. I'm Colonel McMurphy. I run this place. I've asked you and your grandmother here so I could explain what it is we do here and why you two are so important to our cause. I would have preferred to tell her directly, but we'll roll with it. I expect thorough notes for her.”

Liam couldn't tell if that was a joke.

The colonel stood up and moved to a row of silent computers against a side wall. Instead of taking a seat at one of them, he grabbed a few sheets of paper from a printer tray and handed them to Liam. The topmost appeared to be a satellite photograph of the city of St. Louis. There were a few red blotches in the middle of the photo, and some near the top.

“This is unclassified, by the way. I think everyone knows what you're about to see, even if they can't visualize the world from space. The first sheet shows the areas of the initial outbreaks in your city as best we can tell. Things moved so quickly we may never know for sure how the disease spread in those first few days. The second sheet is more in line with what we all know today.”

The second printout was the same view of the city, but the coverage of red was absolute.

“A bit dramatic perhaps, but true. The disease is now everywhere. If I had a globe, it would pretty much be a red orb. There are holdouts of course, places like this, but anywhere man can walk, the disease will be walking there.”

Liam handed the papers back, and looked at the colonel as if ready for more impressive information.

“You know, most people see that second sheet and practically wet their pants. You seem unconcerned by what I'm telling you.”

“I escaped the city with my grandma—no thanks to you military jerks who killed a lot of my friends when you bombed the Arch—and I've seen the zombies up close for six days now. I'm scared as hell around them, but I'm more scared around Hayes—he killed my girlfriend thankyouverymuch—and I'm scared silly standing here in your office waiting to learn what you are going to do to my grandma.”

The colonel walked back to his chair and sat heavily in it. He motioned for Liam to sit in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “You call them zombies, huh? I'm hearing that more and more, and from unexpected places. I've seen what these things become, so I guess I could see why you'd use that word.” He seemed to chew on his lip as he thought about something, but he continued on a different tact, “Normally I'd give a dog and pony show about saving the world, and my audience would be willing to step into an acid bath if they thought it would help further the research of this disease. I don't think you or your grandma will be so easily swayed.”

“Thanks?”

He studied the boy intently while sitting behind his desk. Liam felt very uncomfortable, as if he was under a bright light in front of a large audience. He couldn't help but squirm in his chair. The man's gaze was iron, but he looked down to his desk and seemed to dwell on some picture frames sitting off to the side.

In a quiet voice, the colonel began speaking again. “I'm very sorry about your girlfriend. I won't try to give you any excuses, but Hayes does what needs to be done in this crisis. There just isn't any time for pleasantries such as inquiries, criminal investigations, and so on. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.” He was looking down at his desk as he spoke, suggesting he might really be sorry. Or maybe he was pushing a red button somewhere to have the guards take him away?

“Let's go for a walk.” He stood up, motioning Liam to follow. They exited through a gap in the back flap. The day was overcast, but it was still a bright shock after the dim tent. Liam followed the soldier as he waved to a guard and then headed down a wide, well-worn double track path into the woods. When they were clear of the camp, he continued talking. “I’m glad to be with a young person again. I've seen a lot of old timers come through here, and frankly, I'm sick of them. They all seem resigned to die. Welcome it. It's not natural. Very much a downer.”

Liam could only agree. Many of the old people he'd seen were very morose in their outlook. Zachary summed it up nicely by stating most of the elderly had already died because they had no one to care for them, or they lost power, ran out of meds, or whatever. It shouldn't surprise anyone when the surviving oldsters resign themselves to die. His grandma had largely avoided such talk because he was there to take care of her. While the other survivors were arriving here with boosted spirits at doing something useful with their remaining time, she would undoubtedly view this camp as the complete downer it really was. She wasn't plucked from a sinking ship either. She was kidnapped at gunpoint.

“I couldn't help but notice you rescued a lot of these folks from their failing nursing homes, but you kidnapped my grandma.”

They were walking at a good clip, deeper into the woods, but the colonel slowed at that. “That was Hayes' call. He said he met your grandma days ago on the run out of St. Louis and he said she was a prime candidate for our research. She's a survivor of a remarkable age, and we need her.”

“So you can kill her?”

“So we can study her.”

“But you're going to kill her eventually, right?” Liam was leafing his books in his mind. He was hard-pressed to think of any stories where the experiments were happy and friendly, leaving the patient in better shape than when they walked in. He was disinclined to believe an organization run by people like Hayes would have the best interest of the test subjects, no matter how much they plead otherwise.

“Damn kid, you're a downer, too. I brought you out here to show you why we need your grandma, but now I'm wishing I hadn't.”

“Sorry, sir. My mouth runs away when I'm nervous.”

He looked around and saw nothing but woods in all directions, getting an inspiration. And a genuine chill. “And I'm being walked into the woods by a man with a gun on his hip. There are no witnesses. Hayes said he could have me killed at any time.”

The colonel gave a tart laugh. “Well, maybe you have cause to be a boat anchor. Look, I promise you I'm not here to kill you. I'll go ahead and show you what I came out here to show you.”

They walked for another five minutes or so, almost entirely in silence. There was no break in the woods along the trail until they reached the destination. The trail split at a junction. To the left was some kind of wooden enclosure. To the right, the path went up a sharp little hill, and then over. Liam couldn't see over the hill, but he could see a lack of trees in that direction. There was some kind of clearing, or maybe a lake.

The colonel walked toward the enclosure, indicating Liam should follow.

“We call this place 'the back forty.'” He thought it was funny, but Liam had no idea why. “This enclosure was originally a round corral built to hold animals, but we've modified it to hold some of our infected friends. Then we built this walkway over the top. It allows us to study them up close, and this particular pen is useful for one important experiment I'd like to show you.”

“You're not going to toss me in, are you?”

The colonel didn't even reply. He just walked up the flight of steps to the platform above the corral. Liam couldn't see any of the infected inside because large sheets of plywood had been strung around the outside of the pen. It made it look like a wooden coliseum, with a large wooden arch built across the middle. Exactly the kind of place victims would be tossed to the lions.

Liam climbed the stairs. He couldn't make a run for it and risk leaving Grandma to her fate, and he admitted he could have already been killed a hundred times by this man. And he was terminally curious.

I'm going to regret this.

3

When he reached the top, he could hear the moans and cries of the zombies below. One side of the walkway had a railing and a very fine metallic mesh wiring between the top rail and the floor, but was otherwise open to zombies 10 feet below. The other side of the walkway was lined with more of the plywood sheeting, so Liam couldn't see what was on that side of the pen.

“On this side, we have infected taken from the vicinity of St. Louis. These are the fellas you've been avoiding since the sirens went off almost a week ago. On the other side, behind these sheets, are infected from the Chicagoland area.”

He pointed straight down.

“You see this wire mesh hanging down from this walkway? Not the stuff up top, but the stuff below the walk and down to the ground. There's an identical one hanging on the other side of this walkway. We did that so the two sides couldn't touch each other beneath us.”

Liam was looking straight down. A handful of zombies were in the pen, and they were all grasping for him while pressed up against the wire mesh. Fortunately, they were well below the walkway and no immediate threat.

“Do you think you could climb up that mesh?”

Liam suddenly panicked. He took a quick step back from the railing.

“I'm not going to push you in! I'm just asking a question. Move away from me. Stay away from me. I don't care.”

Nervous laughter. “Sorry. Now I have you and zombies to worry about.” After stepping back to the rail, he conceded the mesh was spaced so a man could climb out of the pen easily, much like climbing a chain link fence.

“You'll notice in a moment what makes this experiment so interesting. I want you to look on this side.”

As he pointed Liam to the closed-off side, he slid a piece of plywood along the walkway so they could both get a look at the subjects below. There were only two. They were both middle-aged men dressed in business suits. Well-bloodied with horribly mutilated necks. Liam wondered how their heads didn’t just fall off. They immediately became agitated. With visible targets, they moved directly below Liam and the colonel, much as the ones on the other side had done.

The zombies seemed to notice the wire mesh in front of them. They saw it going up to their prey. So they grabbed on. After some initial fumbling, one of the zombies started to climb the fence.

“Oh shit!”

The other zombie took a cue from his friend. Soon both were on the wire mesh, climbing directly below Liam.

The colonel slammed his hand on Liam's back, not violently, but in a sportsmanlike-manner. “Oh shit indeed!”

Liam froze again. How easy would it be to toss him in now? He tried to push back at the fear, but he was frozen solid in anticipation of what would happen next. If he had to pee, he might have had wet drawers just then.

The colonel continued while keeping his arm draped over his neck. “These two saps had just come from Chicago, probably on some kind of business trip, dontcha think? Or maybe they just liked to dress nice? Maybe they knew they had the disease. Doesn't matter now. We tracked their route back to Chicago using credit card data from the plastic in their wallets. We know they arrived here just after the bridges were closed across the Mississippi. Not many people were driving into St. Louis. My team found them at the baseball stadium downtown, of all places. They were caught up in the nets above home plate. Hayes' team was instrumental in bringing these samples to us.”

Is that why Hayes was downtown when I met him?

The two zombies had been climbing steadily to the top of the wire mesh below the walkway. Out of instinct, Liam took a step back, breaking the loose hold of the colonel's arm. He made no effort to force Liam to stand there.

When the first zombie reached the transition between the wide mesh and the narrow mesh above it, he was stymied. With no means of putting its fingers into the tiny wire mesh, it was unable to climb all the way to the top. It simply pawed away at its prey, unable to continue. Someone had really thought through this contraption.

“I don't get it. Why are these guys climbing? What's different about them?”

“BINGO! That's what we're trying to figure out. Normally the sick are dumber than a box of hammers, but these guys seem to have the intelligence of very stupid apes. That doesn’t do justice to apes because apes could outsmart these two in a hundred different ways.”

Liam knew the climbers were important. Different, at the very least. He’d seen hundreds, probably thousands, of individual zombies of late up close and personal, and none of them were climbing like this. But the zombies he did see must have also had a special skill, unless they were just the plain old average zombie—as if such a beast could exist.

“So, does that mean the rest of the zombies around here also have a special skill?”

“That’s a good question, son. Maybe their skill is being effective killers. That's something we know for certain, right?” He laughed just a little too readily for Liam.

“You mean you really don't know?” His dad was the conspiracy theorist, but those stories about government cover-ups, government corruption, and government incompetence did wear off just a little bit on the son. “Didn't you guys cause this plague in the first place?”

The colonel looked at Liam with real surprise. “Why would you say that? You think your government is so evil it would create a plague that would condemn every man, woman, and child on Earth to a horrible and endless death? That would include my own wife and son, by the by.”

Liam kept a blank look on his face.

“As God as my witness, I have no knowledge of anyone in our government being a part of the creation of this plague. Imagine how far ahead we'd be if we knew how it was created.”

“OK, so who made it? Where did it come from?”

But the colonel seemed put out. He slid the plywood back in place on the walkway so the climbers were out of view. Then he walked back down the stairway and off the corral. He stood not far away and lit a cigarette.

Liam looked back into the pit where the terrestrial zombies were still pawing uselessly up at him. He'd seen plenty of these over the past six days, but up close and from the safety of this platform he realized how unnatural they appeared. The area around their eyes was caked with blood, as was their noses, ears, and mouths. Their necks had malicious wounds, with that side of their body coated with dried blood. They must have had torrents of the stuff pouring out. What was it that made them bleed profusely—beyond the obvious chunk of flesh missing where they were initially infected. His stomach was always unsettled at the sight of blood, and now was no exception.

He looked up to give himself a break. From his perch, he could see over the small rise he'd seen earlier. He could now see the small cart path go over the top and into a small clearing. A small yellow construction tractor was next to a big pile of dirt. He could see something else. Something unmistakable.

I think I know why he brought me out here.

He began walking toward the steps, but paused just before he reached them. He did something spur-of-the-moment he couldn't remember doing since he was a small child. He took a knee, made the sign of the cross, and said a quick prayer asking forgiveness for any wrongs he may have done in his life. He admitted he wasn't sure if he really believed in God, but he needed the help of someone now, and Grandma's God was good enough for him. Prayer always seemed to work for her.

“Really, Liam? You still think I'm going to kill you out here?”

“I know what's over the hill, sir.”

“Ah. That.” He took a heavy drag on his cigarette, then tossed it down.

Liam's most pressing thought was that he felt the colonel should know better than to drop a lit cigarette in a forest. He'd been programmed by society since birth to “help prevent forest fires.”

“Let's go take a look, son.”

He began walking back to the path, then turned left on the mysterious spur, leaving Liam to follow or not.

Liam considered making a run for it once again, but he was still afraid what they'd do to Grandma without him as her advocate. Paralyzed with many conflicting options and emotions, he defaulted to the easiest. He followed him over the rise.

4

The bodies were tossed into a shallow hole. The attendant tractor was too small to excavate a proper burial plot, but it made a noble effort to gather dirt and pile it nearby. Many bodies were still exposed, awaiting proper covering.

The colonel began talking as Liam caught up. “We've been out here for weeks. Testing. Examining. Hoping. These brave people gave their lives so my team could try to make headway against this thing. It pains me to say this, but there's no other way to do what we've been doing. I just wish it didn't always end up with the subject laying out here in this grave.”

They both stood there for a long time. Many of the bodies were partially covered by dirt, or had a white powder covering them, but the pit still stank. The bloody signature of the infection was present on the bodies lying in front of them. They'd been infected.

Then it hit him. Weeks! They'd been researching the plague even before the sirens went off. He filed it away...

“Even the animals won't touch them. We think it’s because the sickness scares them off, but we can't be sure. Maybe we should run some tests.” But he said it without heart.

The colonel got out another cigarette.

“These are all old people? Is this what you mean by 'experiment' on them? What in God's name are you doing with them?”

“Liam, you have no idea how lucky you are. Do you think I give tours to every doe-eyed teen who comes through here? The answer you're looking for is no, this isn't the outcome we hope for. I brought you back here so you'd know the riddles we're trying to solve. You weren't supposed to see this, but I respect your inquisitiveness. We believe your grandma has qualities that will advance our research a long way toward answering those riddles.”

“And then she ends up on the pile?”

The man took a long drag before answering. “I don't want anyone to end up on this pile. Really, I don't. I won't tell you it could never happen, but I will tell you your grandma is different. If the medical team's theory is correct, she may in fact be practically unique. That uniqueness is why I'm even talking to you. It's vital she be protected and comforted until we can get her to a proper medical facility. I want you to help me with that.”

“And then you are going to kill me when I've served my purpose?”

The colonel looked at Liam with a hard gaze. “Son, are you trying to get me to off you? You seem awful anxious to remind me I should be out here killing you.”

That sent him reeling. Death was all he could think about since this crisis started, but thoughts of death exploded after Victoria was shot. Spending a day riding with a group no younger than eighty also turned him inward and downward. He admitted he was scraping rock bottom on the zest-for-life scale, but he didn't consciously want to die. Far from it.

What answer did he expect? “I don't want to die. I don't know why I keep asking about it. I guess I'm nervous about my grandma. About my girlfriend being shot. About the death of our whole world.”

“That's a fair answer. None of us are having a good day. Not anymore.”

“It also doesn't help that I don't know what's going on. I see the pen with the two types of zombies, and I understand there are costs with the experiments you're running—even if I don't agree with your methods. But none of this tells me anything important about the disease, its origin, or how it can be stopped. I hear you about needing Grandma, but I want to make a difference too. I want to help save the world. I know that sounds corny coming from a fifteen-year-old...”

“I wish I could tell you more. I trust you more than I probably should. But I don't trust you enough to tell you anything that might jeopardize our project here. We know someone started this plague. Whether it was a single person, a small group, or a major government—we don't know. I can't take even the most minute chance you found your way here with the intention of helping them. Even accidentally.”

The colonel let that sit for a few minutes. Liam couldn't take his eyes off the pile of bodies in front of him. He imagined Victoria on the pile. Jones on the pile. Phil on the pile. His mom and dad.

Snap out of it!

With great effort, he made himself look away. “Can we go back now?”

“Yeah, this place isn't my favorite place to relax.”

They hadn't been on the return trail long when the sound of jets went screaming over their heads, very low. With all the foliage on the trees, it was impossible to see them, but the colonel seemed to know who they were and what they were doing. “Before I met with you today, I was managing a crisis at another of our camps out in the sticks of Missouri. Those planes are going to eradicate the problem. Those Air Force boys and girls just love playing with their toys.”

“You mean they're going to destroy a camp just like this one?”

“Containment failed.”

And there it is.

Liam knew containment always failed. Always. Every book he could remember reading about zombies had some element that ended with “and the zombies broke through.” He knew this camp was safe only as long as it took for chance and the human condition to break things apart so the zombies could exploit the weakness and overwhelm them all. It was a well-worn theme in zombie literature. Exceptions were exceptionally rare. Even space stations and off-world colonies couldn't escape zombies. This pitiful little camp surrounded by a flimsy fence would definitely fall. The only question was when.

“Don't think I don't know our fate. I think every camp is going to end up with bunker busters raining down on them, but it pains me every time I hear of another one falling to the infection. If we had proper medical facilities, we might have been able to solve this thing in short order. Working in tents, with unreliable generators and with second rate Doctors, has set us back as a species, perhaps forever.”

“Why don't you use a hospital?”

“I guess you didn't happen upon one in your travels, eh? Where do you think all those sick people went when they first came down with this disease? Hospital is just another name for morgue today.”

They were getting close to the main camp once again. As the tents came back into view, the colonel made one last plea. “I feel for you, Liam. This is all depressing stuff. I hope you see what we're all about here, and that you'll consider how badly we need your grandma to help us. I can't change anything that happened up to this point, but I promise to do what I can to provide the very best future for her. For you. The cure is out there.”

A short pause.

“It has to be.”

Oh hell.

Liam was shocked he had no idea if there even was a cure. Everything he told him up to that point was contingent upon the belief there was a cure. All those people in the pit grave had contributed everything they had to the cause of finding it. This guy was saying all those deaths have so far yielded nothing. He was still unsure of the existence of that cure. He just said a companion camp was being erased from memory by the screaming death above. How many camps were there? How many graves? How many dead grandmas and grandpas? What if there was no cure?

No way Grandma is going to end up in a pit.

Privately, Liam was making plans to break her out of this place. Sadly, even with the most lax security one could imagine, escape for the both of them was a long shot, at best. Grandma couldn't run off into the woods and scale the fence. Steal a vehicle? Enlist help from inmates who actually want to be here? Roll her out the front gate into the chaos of the world? Liam could only find headwinds against his route to freedom.

He would have to bide his time.

Then an image popped in his head; a logical conclusion to this whole affair. Fire and death.

Were the planes destined to bomb this camp already in the air?

Paradoxically he was shaken to the core to realize the thought actually comforted him.

Chapter 9: Containment Failure

As the pair re-entered the complex of tents, a soldier ran up to the colonel with a message.

“Sir, I uh—”

He looked at Liam, then back to his boss.

“Speak freely unless you're reporting a state secret.”

“Yessir. The MRAP has arrived and we have one of the subjects in the research suite. He didn't look like he'd survive for much longer.”

“I'll be right there.”

The soldier tore off and they resumed walking the short distance to the tents.

“Liam, I'm going to do something that is completely outside protocol and invite you to watch this procedure. I want you to understand what both sides of the equation look like, not just that pit back there.”

Would seeing the experiment happen in real time change his mind about anything? Doubtful. But it would tell him more than if he was warming a cot back in the tent with Grandma. Better to know as much as possible.

“Is it going to be bloody?”

The colonel looked at Liam with a sideways glance, not in a flattering way.

“This is the apocalypse, son, and you're afraid of blood? Suck it up!”

In the end, Liam knew he would follow, blood or no blood. He was suddenly very committed to understanding what was going on in this place and, as much as possible, learn how he could eventually get Grandma out of there.

Step 1 was watching this procedure. Step 40 was walking her into his own home.

The colonel took him to one of the largest tents. He expected a throng of orderlies and doctors to be running about, spinning centrifuges or whatever they did in zombie movies. Instead, the first chamber contained a few folding chairs, as if it were a waiting area of some sort. The second, main, chamber was slightly cooler and marginally better lit, but was similarly sparse. A couple of people looked like medical staff, and the patient was laying on a fancy metal table underneath some lights in the middle of the room, but there was very little else in the large space.

“Where are all your people? ER doctors. The researchers.”

“You expected a hospital? This is it, kid. Now be quiet or I'll have to kill you.”

Even in his fragile mental condition, he recognized the joke. But he resolved to hold his tongue.

He took a seat off to the side of the central equipment, next to the colonel. There were a dozen other chairs in two neat rows of six, but there were no other observers. He thought about asking where Hayes might be, but he didn't want to accidentally get him invited.

The patient was lying down and secured with leather straps. There was a doughnut-shaped apparatus near his head. It looked ultra-modern in the tent, with wires and stuff running across the grassy floor and under the canvas wall—presumably to computers, generators, or whatever. Liam was unable to see who was on the table, though it appeared to be an elderly gentleman. Only his restrained arms were visible, as a large, heavy blanket covered the lower half of his body.

The doctor, or at least the lead medical person, as it was difficult to deduce rank or responsibility from this lot, was spending most of her time tinkering with the doughnut contraption. He figured she had to be in charge because she was the only one who looked to be doing anything important. The two other staff were bringing things to and fro from a room at the back of the tent.

That left the colonel to tell him what was going to happen. “I'm afraid it isn't very interesting. They are getting something sorted with the CT scanner. When ready, the staff here injects infected blood into the patient, and then we use our sensors to track the physiological changes as well as brainwave activity. I don't think I'm giving away any secrets telling you that. We've tried taking the blood of newly infected, and from zombies we knew had been infected for a long time. We've tried giving just a little, and an entire transfusion. We've found none of that matters—the result is always the same. Death. But for some reason, elderly people hold the infection at bay much longer than the young.”

“OK, guys. Let's get this over with.”

The woman woke up the old man laying on the table. He was groggy for a long while, as if he'd been in a deep slumber. “Where am I? Who are you?” He looked confused, unsure where he was.

The staff tried to comfort the man, but to no avail. He strained against the restraints.

The woman had a syringe she was keeping low and out of sight of the volunteer, Liam didn't see it until the last moment before injection. It went quick.

The man calmed down immediately, like he knew he was done for.

“Please find my Janey.”

2

Liam wanted to jump up and throw off the shackles holding Bart to the table, but he remembered Bart was a volunteer. He suffered from dementia, but never gave any indication he was refusing to help. Maybe the dementia was worse than anyone realized.

Or maybe they didn't care.

Liam promised not to interfere; he was already on very thin ice. Sadly, he knew once the syringe went in, Bart's fate was sealed.

Now standing, Liam could clearly see the man's face and the look of fear there.

Eventually Bart seemed to relax.

Then he seemed to fall asleep.

Several minutes went by before the colonel spoke up. “It seems to be the common disease process when injected like this. First the patient falls quiet, and the transformation begins. It is very much like when a person is bitten, but not quite as fast, or violent. You are going to see it momentarily.”

But time went by and nothing happened.

Minutes. Then fifteen.

The staff became more antsy the longer the experiment went down this unexpected path. The doctor was still standing near the CT equipment, studying a small panel on its side. Other equipment with heartbeat and vitals were pinging along, telling everyone the man was not yet dead.

“Is he fighting it?” The colonel said it with incredulity.

“Sir, we don't know. This telemetry data is all out of sync. I need more time to tell you what I'm looking at.”

The colonel moved closer to the action, leaving Liam standing in front of the observation chairs. It did occur to him he was witnessing, nay, participating, in the first act of the last chapter of the camp itself.

This is where we all get infected.

But his curiosity would not be sated so easily, even against such fears.

“I don't believe it!”

Everyone stopped at the exclamation from the doctor. She was standing at her station, but pointing to the patient. She moved around the scanner so she could look at Bart's face. She needed the visual confirmation before she would add, “He's awake.”

No one was moving but the colonel. He moved to the near side of table, where he could see Bart's face too. Now Liam moved closer, if only so he could observe the whole spectacle. He was standing toward Bart's feet, but could still get a serviceable look at the man's face. And his eyes.

“Hello, sir. Can you hear me? Do you know what's happening?”

“Janey? I hear you.”

“Sir. Do you know where you are?”

“I hear you better now. What is this place?”

“Sir, you are in the Elk Meadow Research Facility. You are here as a volunteer. You are helping us with our research.”

“It really is beautiful here. It's so good to see you again.”

“Um, it's good to see you too, sir. How do you feel? Are you in pain?”

Bart was now looking straight up, not at anyone inside the room, but up into the scanner shroud around his head. He kept talking. “Am I dead? I don't feel dead. This seems so real.”

“No, sir, you aren't dead. We see your vitals and you're doing just fine. Can you tell us if you're in any pain?”

“You know I'm not a praying man, but I think this calls for a prayer. Janey has been found! And who's that? Clara my ahn-gyel! How are you still alive? Where are we?” He looked around as if he was seeing more than the metal contraption above him. And then began a prayer, first in English, but as he went along it digressed into gibberish, or maybe a foreign language.

For several minutes, Bart talked in fits and starts.

While the room was focused on the man on the table, Liam sat back in a rickety metal chair. He conducted a drill involving his cell phone and his fast hands. While the phone was in his pocket he was able to swipe through the lock screen. When he felt safe no one was looking, he turned away from Bart and his observers and whipped out his phone, found the recording feature, started to record, noted the Wi-Fi signal indicator once again, and then dropped it back in his pocket.

He knew it was dangerous, but something unusual was happening here, and he wasn't going to let the opportunity go to waste. If he got out of here, someone might be able to decipher this nonsense.

He stayed in his chair for ten minutes, wondering the whole time if he had a guilty look on his face. No one bothered him as Bart rambled on and on.

Until Bart called for Liam.

In crystal clear English.

Then, all eyes were on him.

3

Liam looked up with genuine surprise. He pointed to himself as if to say “Did he say me?”

Everyone nodded in unison. The colonel punctuated it by beckoning him to come to the table.

They all huddled around Bart as Liam closed ranks. He was looking at Liam from under the device. “Hello, Liam. Thank you for the kind words back in the truck. Give my regards to Marty.”

Liam was struggling to find an appropriate answer.

From his left side, the colonel was nudging him. The unsaid words were, “Keep him talking.”

What do you ask a man with dementia, infected with zombie blood, who is under observation from a government agency of indeterminate nature? People always love talking about themselves. “Did you find Janey? How's she doing?”

“I found Janey here in Heaven. Yes. She looks marvelous. I'll be joining her soon. Her husband is here, too. He and Janey were by my side every day until the world ended. And my angel, Clara, too.”

Was dementia creeping back into his words?

“Mr. Bart, do you know where you are right now?”

“I'm under observation at the Elk Meadow Research Facility. I am a volunteer. I am helping with research.”

If Liam didn't know better, that was snark from the old guy.

Now Bart was talking in a hushed voice. “But I've learned something in this place, inside your machine. Something they didn't want me to find out. A secret.”

His next words were a whisper. Everyone leaned in to hear. “They can read my mind, but I can read theirs too. Clara, my little angel, showed me the truth about what they did to her.”

Bart began looking left and right in the chamber as if he was seeing something and reacting. “Damn you! You've given me no choice. Let me tell them the truth.”

He was yelling, causing everyone at the operating table to jump back in surprise. But then he resumed speaking very softly, inviting everyone to get closer once more to listen. “They killed Clara because there can only be three. I want you to know that much. They've threatened to do much worse to me. I have to do what they want. God forgive me. Forgive me, my Clara. For what comes next, I can only say...I'm sorry.”

Everyone had leaned in to listen to the wisp of a man. The medical team was on one side, and Liam and the colonel were on the other—Bart's left. The colonel remained closest to Bart's head, determined to not miss anything spoken between Bart and Liam.

While everyone was focused on the words coming out of his mouth, Bart had somehow worked his left arm out of its restraint. He didn't even have to be quick about his next deed. He grabbed a very surprised colonel and, with uncanny strength, was able to pull him the last foot or so to his face. In doing so, the colonel's head slammed into the CT device. Bart sunk his teeth into the side of his face.

Liam sputtered backward, as did the medical team.

Almost before their eyes Bart's vitals spiked and then flatlined. He was dead.

Liam took a few more steps back. To their credit, the medical team rebounded from their initial horror and were back in action. One was securing the hand of Bart and was working on reattaching it to the operating table while the other two attended to their leader.

Liam kept moving back. One small step at a time.

This is it. I'm living THAT moment when it all goes to Hell.

His mind was exploring the breadth and depth of the collapse of mankind. Did it all start in some government lab just like this? An experiment gone wrong spawns the undead to march on their nefarious journey? Or was the original virus released intentionally and methodically by a malicious purveyor of death? A cult? A secret organization? A foreign government? Terrorists? The colonel swore he knew nothing about its origin, but maybe it was above his pay grade?

The colonel regained his feet, hand covering the bloody marks on the side of his face. Any other day, it would be an unremarkable wound needing minor treatment, but here, in this context, it meant he was already a dead man. He looked over the scene from end-to-end. The anxious staffers. The dead patient. Liam moving slowly backward. He spoke to Liam first.

“Dammit, kid. Maybe I should have tossed you into the corral after all. Huh?” He gave a weak laugh. “I've got to take care of one thing. I think you know what it is.”

He stood up to his full height and saluted his staff. “Good luck and godspeed, everyone.” He pulled out his gun. Liam expected him to kill himself right on the spot, but instead he aimed the gun at Bart and put a round through the man's head. He took off through the backdoor of the tent's main room.

Liam was paralyzed with fear.

He heard several gun shots.

An air raid siren began to wail.

Liam put two and two together and remembered the jets above. But they couldn't get here that quickly, could they?

“Are we about to be bombed?”

He said it to the remaining staff members, who shared his sense of uncertainty at the moment. The doctor answered.

“Protocol dictates when a base is compromised, it will be terminated by the Air Force. But that siren is just the alarm for the camp to evacuate. The colonel must be giving us a chance to get out while we can. He's the only one outside this room who knows the plague is here. In fact, we probably could have contained it if we had killed him immediately.”

Liam didn't like the look in her eye. Was she somehow blaming him? No sense waiting around. Liam spun around and ran out of the tent.

And into chaos once more.

4

It had literally been ninety seconds since the sirens cranked up in the camp. Already, all the Humvees were speeding away, toward the front gate of the park. Only the MRAP was lagging behind because of its size and weight. The doctor and medical staff from the tent he just left had mounted a Humvee and were on their way out.

Standing there marveling at the speed everything had happened, Liam figured the camp staff must have already had one foot in their vehicles the whole time. There was no other explanation for how fast they evacuated. He had no doubt Hayes was in the lead.

He ran hard to Grandma's tent. The air raid siren spun down as he closed the distance.

When he arrived, all the survivors were sitting up and alert, including the one he wanted. “Grandma! You won't believe my story, but we have to get out of here. The Air Force is going to bomb this place out of existence.”

“That didn't take long.”

Liam wasn't surprised these people had been left behind. Not after he saw how they were treated and where they were all destined to end up. But he did begin to fret about getting everyone safely out. He couldn't very well take off with Grandma and say “best wishes” to everyone else.

While he was in the midst of thinking through his options, he saw the colonel walking his way. When they saw each other, he motioned for Liam to come to him. There was no point in refusing.

“Hello, sir.”

“Listen, son, I don't have much time. I've seen this plague take root more times than I want to remember.”

He gave Liam a photograph. It was folded and torn, as if it had come from a broken picture frame. “This is my wife and son. I know you'll probably never meet them, but if this ship ever rights itself and you get to Denver, please tell them my last words were my love for them. I wrote their address on the back. This photo is my most prized possession in life, Liam. Guard it well and get it to them if you can.”

The photo showed two people on a mountaintop. The wife was pretty, with wind-blown red hair down to her shoulders. Seeing the son, he understood why the colonel had been treating him as a human being. The boy standing in the photo looked to be about Liam's age. He even had the same shaggy haircut common in his generation.

“I'm actually honored, sir.”

“The other thing I want to give you is your pistol and pocket knife back. I'd give you mine too, but I just emptied the mag firing in the air. Spurring my people to get the hell out of here. We all have to be armed in today's—,” a pause while he searched his lexicon, “society.”

“Thank you.”

“I still can't trust you completely, but you're the closest thing I have left to a confidant. Everyone else has run off.” He tried to laugh, but it was more of a sad cough. “First things first. I showed you two kinds of zombies in the back forty. There is a facility in downtown St. Louis housing dozens of different types of zombies. They bring them in from other cities. I was there. I know what this infection eventually does to a person. It's why I've worked to the bitter end to find a cure. You might find someone with answers there. Secondly, I—”

He contorted in a fit of pain.

“—I ensured all the data from our work here was uploaded to our central servers so other doctors can see what happened. We have some big ass data connections, so I have no doubt it will make it out before any unpleasantness from the sky. What you saw today was an incredible deviation from every other infected patient. It was his age. I know it. That man was 106! Your grandmother is a precious resource. The data will confirm it. You—”

More contortions.

“—Oh shit, I'm in trouble.”

He stumbled to one knee. Straining to resist, or at least give the appearance of resistance. Maybe the old soldier just wanted a heroic exit.

“Keep your grandma alive. Help us find the connection between age and the virus. Help us find the cure. Get her to another camp. Humanity depends—”

He dropped his other knee, and screamed.

“God forgive me!”

Then, almost in a whimper, “I won't end up like...”

“I love you, Susan.”

Unceremoniously, he pulled out his sidearm, looked at Liam with real sadness, and put a round into his own head.

He had saved at least one bullet for himself.

The colonel turned out to be a decent guy, at least by the standards of the apocalypse. Liam would have enjoyed giving him a witty rejoinder that he would never in a million years take Grandma to another facility like this one, but he didn't feel the need to dump on the man's last words. However, he did glean one significant piece of information potentially useful in reuniting his own family.

Big ass data connections.

5

He ran back to Grandma and her friends. He wished he knew how long he had. The colonel seemed satisfied there was enough time for the data to upload, so maybe they had some leeway.

“Grandma, you and the others have to start walking out of here! I'll be right back!” He didn't even wait for a response. He felt he had to move as fast as possible to get what he wanted to do, done.

He ran to the other big canvas tent, the mirror image of the one where Bart died. He wasn't surprised to see it was a duplicate on the inside too, probably so they could run two tests at the same time. He flew out of that tent and started exploring the remaining smaller tents. What he needed had to be in one of them.

The fear was creeping up on him, but he forced it back down. He made himself take a few deep breaths and think. That's how he saw the data cables. Those wires would inevitably end up in the tent with the connections to the outside.

It was a tent very near the colonel's. It made sense he'd want to be near the expensive equipment. Liam ran in and was rewarded with a blast of cold air. They spared no effort to keep the servers and other equipment properly cooled, even inside a leaky canvas tent.

He whipped out his phone, and tried to acquire a signal. Even though there were a dozen wireless access points, he was unable to find any that didn't require a password to let him link up. He was not a tech guy per se; most of his knowledge had to do with keying in passwords, not how the internet was built or functioned. His dad was the tech guy, and even he had to write his password—

That's it!

He ran out of the tent and popped directly into the colonel's. He went to the bank of computers off to the side. Even though they were off, he was able to locate the wireless router for this tent. It was still blinking happily. He flipped it over and was rewarded with a hand-written note, providing the password to access this device.

“1 2 3 4 5”

“Hey, I use that on my luggage!” Liam shouted the joke from an old movie his dad loved to watch.

It was the combination a leader would use who didn't want to be bothered with the minutia of ever having to remember a complex password to access his own network.

Not as security-minded as you thought, herr colonel.

In a few seconds, he had entered the pass code and found a connection. He scrolled into his chat history and found a discussion between himself, mom, dad, and a few other family members. He didn't want to engage in a lengthy conversation, but it was the easiest way of blanketing as many people as possible with a short message.

***This is Liam. At Lone Elk Park at a gov camp. Just broke free. Beware Hayes. Heading for home. Have grandma. 7d since sirens.***

He entered the time in case there were delays. He hit send and was thankful to see the message went out the door, figuratively speaking. He waited a few moments for a reply, wondering if anyone happened to be looking at their phones. Were the networks even working? A couple minutes of nervous pacing and he decided he could wait no longer. He had spent maybe five minutes running around the camp looking for the data connections, and it felt like an eternity. If a message went out to the Air Force when the alarm first sounded, how long before they were here? He felt the crush of urgency.

No answer came through. But no “network not found” messages either. He opened his email and banged out the same message. He only sent to mom as she had an easy-to-remember email address. He hit send and was pleased again to see it go out.

That's when the first bombs exploded. He nearly dropped his precious phone out of fright.

He hung his head out of the tent, afraid he would see his own death falling from above, but the big explosions were coming from inside the woods. A good ways into the woods. They were blowing up the corral and destroying evidence of the grave. Had to mean the camp itself was next.

Run!

Liam made it to Grandma's tent in time to find many—but not all—the residents standing around out front. There were actually three other tents in the compound used for test subjects, so the total number of elderly was quite a bit more than he imagined.

“Is this everyone? Where's Zachary Taylor? Why aren't you already moving?”

“Not everyone is coming, dear.” Grandma sounded nonchalant about what should be a very serious claim.

“Not coming? We have to get them out of here. They are going to bomb us any second!”

“Liam. Look at me.”

He was near-panicked.

“You and I are going to walk out of here together. Will you help me down the road?”

He felt like he was going to piss himself, but his tension eased as he took her hand. They were leaving, finally.

“And now, we start walking.”

With that, Liam and Marty started along the road. The others were spread in front and behind, moving as fast as their legs would carry them. Most actually moved at a good clip. Being in their 80's wasn't always synonymous with lack of mobility, and these folks were the survivors from wherever they'd been rescued. A tough lot, given their age.

Grandma and Liam quickly fell toward the back of the pack, then the very last in the line. “Liam, will you leave me here and save yourself? I really can't go any faster. I think they took too much of my blood.”

Uh oh.

Alarm bells were cracking from overuse inside his head, but he didn't want to worry his walking partner. He could guess who took blood samples while he was off with the colonel. He'd cross that bridge with her when the time was right. Walking out from under the shadow of a massive explosion was not the right time. Instead, he kept it light.

“No. It's you and me together, remember? I made that promise when we left your house. We are one wheelchair ride away from home!”

At the last possible point they could see the camp, Liam turned around while Grandma took a short rest. Looking that direction, Liam could see two large plumes of smoke snaking up from deep in the woods. The remains of the corral and the pit grave were wafting to the sky. Were they far enough from the camp to be safe now?

Leave nothing to chance.

If there was one thing Liam understood, it was that the military, for all their technology, was prone to making mistakes. It wasn't a slight against the modern military; it had been happening for millennia. They could just as easily bomb this empty road as destroy the camp itself. Call it operator error. Call it a computer glitch. Call it Murphy's Law. Whatever it was, it happened.

The high cloud ceiling and dense tree cover made it hard to know if planes were lurking high above, but he thought he could hear aircraft noise coming from somewhere.

“Grandma, keep moving!”

Another ten minutes and they could see the park exit. The geriatric brigade they'd been following were a short ways out of the gate, as if they had reached the finish line and were now catching their breath. Everyone had spent what they had pushing the limits to get here.

For his part, Liam was practically dragging Grandma over the line. The steel gate was smashed outward. Useless. A vehicle had run it down.

He doubted anyone was listening, or cared, but he risked a moment to stop and talk out loud. He was looking off to the side, as if giving color commentary to an imaginary camera crew. It was a thing he did.

“And this is why containment always fails. Right here. This gate. One hundred zombie books out of a hundred will have this gate, or something like it. Those jerks could have just as easily unlocked the gate and driven out so this place could be used by future survivors. Instead they tossed it like a disposable diaper. This park would have been a great refuge to hide from the zombies until the world cleaned itself up, but now it's just going to get infected like everywhere else.”

Almost as if in a script, the bombs fell on the camp. The explosions were loud and on target. Or close enough by Liam's reckoning because they didn't fall on their heads.

“And those planes. Were those really necessary? The whole damned world is already infected.”

The howl of several aircraft ripped overhead. He looked up to watch the dusky gray fighter jets scream up into the clouds like playful cats hiding on a high shelf, their bad deed already forgotten.

“I bet those pilots are hootin' and hollerin' like they just sank the Bismarck. Idiots.”

It tempered Liam immediately when he remembered who had been left at the camp.

“Grandma, will you pray for Zachary and all those left behind? I feel like someone needs to remember them.”

And then, for the first time in his life, he prayed with her.

6

After a few moments of prayer, Liam looked up, taking stock of where they were. It was mid-afternoon on the seventh day since the sirens. He'd spent much of the past few days holed up in his home, hidden in the back of a military truck, or at the secluded military camp. He'd only glimpsed the decay of the world briefly as they drove into the park this morning. He was shocked now that he could clearly see what the breakdown had wrought.

He was gazing down at the interstate, not fifty yards away. Most of the fires and smoldering cars had been reduced to cold charred ghosts dotting the landscape. Other intact cars were scattered haphazardly up and down the highway, in both directions. Probably sitting where the gas gave out. Every household item you could imagine was strewn on the pavement, as if people had tried to escape the city with their personal effects, only to toss them down once they were separated from their cars.

And bodies. They too dotted the landscape, providing a horrible tableau of what happened here the past week. Now they were bloated manikins left to lie where they fell. Wretched and smelly, even from a distance. Liam couldn't see them with any detail, but so many bodies suggested they were either humans shot by other men, they were bodies ravaged by zombies, or zombies put down by survivors. It was all due to chaos. He'd seen the start of this on his own earlier journeys. Now he was seeing the result of the full bore zombie plague. The dirty horde of infected who exploded out of the city—in pursuit of the refugees—had created this mess.

The final pieces of this horrible scene were the broken people. Living humans, not zombies, were trudging along the highway. A thin stream of survivors moving from the city, out to the wooded and rural lands. Their slow and deliberate pace made them seem like sleepwalkers out on a midnight stroll. Some picked through the treasures strewn everywhere, but most kept moving.

A couple of survivors were on bicycles, but no one was in a moving car now. A car probably couldn't fit through all the obstacles on this stretch of highway.

Liam looked at his fellow escapees. They needed a mini-bus to come along and take them back to their respective homes, where they could resume dying in the manner of their choice.

The task was daunting. Perhaps insurmountable. Getting Grandma out of the city was luck more than anything else. Things were still running. Law and order still reported for duty. Now, he had to get her across miles of suburbia without the help of trains or cars. It had taken Hayes and a convoy of military almost a day to travel the twenty miles, and they had a freaking chain gun to win arguments with the natives.

Plus, I had Victoria.

It was amazing how her presence had made the previous journey seem almost pleasant. Now he had no help at all. In fact, he was now carrying more baggage. He looked at the other survivors from the camp. Did he owe them anything? Could he and Grandma head for home and leave these people to their fates? Could he realistically do anything for them?

She was surveying the highway too. “Too bad we never saw any elk in the park.”

He looked at her as if she'd just said the funniest joke he'd ever heard. “Grandma, do you ever get depressed? How do you do it?”

“Oh, Liam. I have been down. Many times. Once you get to be my age, you take each day as a gift. Sure this looks bad, but it looked bad back at the Arch. It looked bad in your basement. It looked bad when the truck crashed. It looked bad running from this camp.” She used her thumb to point back over her shoulder. “But, through it all, I still have you by my side, and we're still alive. We've gotten this far together. We just need to work a little harder to get back home this time. The Lord will provide.”

It was an echo of the speech she gave as they left her home the day after the sirens.

The planes screamed overhead, more bombs fell on the camp behind them.

It's the only way to be sure.

That movie quote was more true now than ever.

Here and there gunshots could be heard in the distance. A portent of the challenges ahead.

That very day, Liam had witnessed strange zombies, horrible experiments, and the erasure of an entire government camp with heavy ordnance. He was stuck on a highway with his 104-year-old great-grandmother again, and the path to home and family looked more complicated than ever. But holding her at his side gave him a new strength. He suddenly had a premonition he would make it home with her and that everything was going to be OK.

Together, they took their first steps.

Toward home.

Chapter 10: Interludes

Five days since the sirens.

Jerry and Lana were exhausted. They'd been on the road for almost five days, including one short visit to Marty's now-abandoned flat. They mostly traveled at night, and stuck to routes as least traveled as possible. That included parks, greenways, drainage ditches, creeks, and sewers. Anything to keep them off the radar of the multitude of human opportunists who were out to cause trouble in the absence of law and order. It also kept them off the radar of desperate men and women suffering in normal, everyday desperation. Those who ran out of food. Those who were injured, with nowhere to go for help. Those who ran out of their psych meds. Those who had caught any number of secondary diseases, once the dead started stacking up in their neighborhoods. Finally, their most loathsome enemy was the infected. The zombies weren't as thick as they were at the beginning of the collapse, but they were well-ensconced in the landscape, and much harder to see or anticipate.

Taken together, there was hardly a minute in the journey that the couple was able to let their guard down. It took a toll on their constitutions that could only be replenished with healthy sleep. The nightmares kept pleasant dreams and healthy slumber at arms-length for both of them. But now, on the fifth day since the sirens, they could see their destination. Their own home.

“What in the name of God happened to our house?” Jerry was looking down his street from the hidden safety of the woods surrounding his neighborhood. The house looked like it was used for target practice by a platoon of infantry. “And Poole's house has been burnt to the ground.”

“What did we miss while we were gone?” Lana replied.

Thoughts turned serious once they realized Liam could have been inside when it was attacked. Or in Poole's. No other people were on the street, if they ignored the many dead bodies.

Jerry advised, “Let's use the woods to get behind the house, then see what we can see.”

They moved through the foliage until they arrived at their own property. From this vantage point, they were horrified to see the trees were gnarly and mangled from the effects of shots going through the wooden structure. The backyard was littered with the remains of the zombies who had been blown out the back. One grisly figure was clawing himself around the yard with his single good arm. Everything below his rib cage was...somewhere else. Scores of others on the grass were much worse off. Here and there they could see lone heads with mouths opening and closing, as if they were fish out of water.

“I hope those were zombies before they were shot, and not anyone we know.”

They discussed their options and decided to move between their home and the next, so they could enter through the front. The gore on the back side was just too much. They weren't ready to learn the identities of those—things.

They snuck to the side of their house. There were no windows on that wall, so they kept moving to the front corner. Jerry studied the scene. On the far side of the street, Poole's place lay in ruin. The fire had destroyed everything, and the house collapsed upon itself. It was now a smoldering pile of roof shingles. Bodies were thick between their home and Poole's. The front yard was as gruesome as the back, though the pieces were smaller in the front. Lots of blood, and relatively fresh because it still glistened on the grass. Jerry's fought his unsettled stomach.

“Do you think this was an assassination attempt on us? Is this what happens to people on the hit list?”

Lana couldn't or wouldn't answer.

“Cover me.” Jerry ran to the front door and waited. Lana followed after he made it and turned around to watch her. They didn't have to worry about knocking, or even swinging a door. It was totally gone. Jerry moved into the house, incredulous at the destruction. There was no doubt guns did this, but he'd never expected his own house to absorb such abuse.

He whispered, “Who would use such firepower on our house? None of the other houses have been attacked like this.” Poole's house was an unknown. It could have been arson or something as mundane as a cooking mistake. They'd seen lots of fires the past few days.

Lana was unable to provide any answers. She went right into the living room while Jerry stood near the door and covered her. The front window had sprayed glass all over the inside, and the remains of the television and numerous pieces of artwork had been shredded. Body parts and blood had splashed everywhere—even the ceiling. It was the stuff of nightmares.

Jerry took a step farther into the entryway, and heard the squeal of a girl.

“Ouch!”

Jerry nearly jumped out of his skin. He did jump as he realized he was standing on someone's hand. Lana swung around in surprise too. The hand was sticking out from some debris. A piece of the wall had fallen on top of her, knocking her flat on the floor. Lana had missed her as she came through the front wall.

Jerry began uncovering the victim while Lana moved back to cover the operation with her rifle. The load wasn't heavy; mostly drywall. The victim was a young girl. A teenager.

As the debris came off, she didn't immediately stand up. Unencumbered, she grasped her bloody hip as she tried to right herself against the remains of the wall behind her. “I've been shot!” She adjusted for a second, appearing to get comfortable. Then she paused, despite her own obvious pain. “Wait. I might have been hallucinating, but did you say this was your house?”

“Yes, I'm Lana and this is Jerry. We live here. What the hell happened?”

“My name is Victoria. Liam and Grandma and I escaped the city together.” She winced as she grasped her hip tighter. There wasn't a lot of blood from the wound, but enough.

“Grandma? Liam! Where's Liam?” Lana looked around, searching.

“If there aren't a bunch of Army trucks still on your front lawn, he's gone. Grandma's gone, too. Taken.”

Jerry remained kneeling. Lana came over, slinging her rifle behind her back so it was out of the way. She squatted next to Victoria to look directly in her eyes. “Victoria, who took our boy? Did they mention anything about a hit list? Was he taken because he was on that list?”

“The CDC took him. Some guy named Hayes. But they didn't take Liam specifically. They took Grandma. Liam went with her to look after her. I'm sorry, but I don't know anything about a list.”

“That doesn't sound like Liam.” Jerry asked. “So he did take her guns. He's protecting her?”

“After what he's been through, I don't think you'll recognize your son.”

Thinking of their own journey in and out of the city, Jerry couldn't argue. “No, I don't imagine we would.”

Lana began reaching for her backpack medical kit. “Let's get you patched up. Then, tell us everything.”

2

14 hours before the sirens.

Angie Jacobi was Marty Peters' live-in nurse. She finished her chores for her 104-year-old friend tonight so she could go pick up her granddaughter, Mary Beth, from work. The girl's mom had called and begged Angie for this favor. She knew better than to even think about arguing with her daughter-in-law.

“Thanks for picking me up, Grandma. There were some creepy people coming into the store today.”

“I don't know why Cheryl kept the place open. Everyone should be staying home, now.”

“Well, they sold out of shovels, hoes, machetes and all kinds of other yard junk. You should have seen how many chainsaws we moved. It would be great if they weren't using them for the wrong purpose. People said they needed them for fighting. How crazy is that?”

Angie took a moment to consider. “I'm sure they're just scared. We all are.”

“You're scared? I've never seen you scared about anything.”

“This isn't anything. This is something.”

“You believe all that internet stuff about zombies and the undead? I've seen videos from overseas on my phone, but it looks fake to me. Not half as real as those zombie TV shows.”

Angie steered the car through the evening traffic. Mary Beth lived in the county with her family, but worked in a small corner hardware store near the double flat she shared with Marty. She spoke with her mother and they agreed to let the young woman stay in the city for the night. Tomorrow, Mary Beth would get a ride back home—and Angie resolved to put her foot down about her still working in the dangerous metropolis. She couldn't imagine why her mom insisted she go to work, and normally knew better than to question her about it, but this was different.

The young girl had access to the internet and what was happening overseas, but Angie had spent time volunteering in a local clinic. She held her tongue about the things she'd seen “disposed of” by social services, but she was sure the sickness wasn't just overseas.

“Once we get to Marty's, I want you to stay inside, do ya' hear? I have a bad feeling about the direction things are heading. There are even fewer cars than normal out tonight. Something is wrong.”

Emergency vehicles skittered back and forth the entire journey, giving added weight to her belief something wasn't right. Several times during their trip through the city blocks, she had to pull over to allow the howling cars and trucks to get by. They came and went like angry bees.

“We're almost home, thank God.” Angie was back to familiar territory. She drove in front of Marty's house on her way to park the car around back. “Do you want to get out here, dear? You can run in the front.”

“Nah, I'll go around back, walk you in,” Mary Beth said without looking up from her phone. “We have to stick together, ya' know?”

Angie nodded and continued down the block, turned right at the corner, and was just about to turn right into the alleyway when her car was bumped from behind.

“Oh dear!”

The collision was just a strong nudge, but it frightened her and she put on the gas rather than the brake, sending the car past the alley. She finally stomped the brakes and parked in the middle of the street, but then a black van pulled around her, so it blocked the front of her car. She put the car in park a few feet from the side of the van, bemused that they probably thought she was going to run from the scene. Next she wondered if she even had her registration and insurance information where she could get it.

With a tired sigh, she said, “Of all the things happening in this world. Now this. Can you check the glove box? My car registration should be in there.”

The accident caused Mary Beth to drop her phone next to the seat, and she spent a moment trying to retrieve it before turning her attention to the glove box.

“They are getting out,” Angie said.

Mary Beth stopped her search to check it out.

The door of the van slid open in front of them. It was near-dark outside, so it was difficult to see the other party. The van parked so she had a view of the driver's seat through the opening created by the sliding door, but she couldn't make out the driver. Her headlights shone into the van but revealed nothing.

Angie reached for her glove box to help Mary Beth but got goosebumps for a reason she couldn't explain. The van wasn't just a normal van. There was a partition behind the front seat. It was a lattice of metalwork, like a dog catcher would use. No one got out of the van to exchange paperwork and the longer she waited, the more uneasy she felt.

“Grandma? Everything OK?” There was just a touch of heightened concern in the girl's voice. “Should we maybe leave?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Before she could finish her thought, the front window of the van descended. A few seconds later, the passenger threw something at them. The heavy object banged against the glass of the windshield, though it didn't break.

“What the? Is that...”

“OH MY GOD!” Mary Beth shrieked.. “That's a person's foot!”

Something pushed the car from behind. Another van had come up to block them in.

Time stood still for Angie. A shape emerged from the emptiness of the cargo van. An arm appeared first. Then a head. The creature was large. The size of a very big man. In fact, as it emerged, she could see it was a very large man. He came out on all fours. Sniffing the air.

He jumped onto the hood of the car, apparently attracted to the bloody foot. He was a hulking thing, wearing nothing but bloody cargo pants and boots. His upper body was lacerated in many places, though the blood had long since dried. He was gaunt, but the muscles stuck out like some kind of sick medical dummy. The side of his neck was a festering explosion of veins and arteries, as if he had been assaulted by a ravaging wolf. His head was skeletal, with very little hair.

And the eyes...

Her granddaughter screamed.

Angie reached over to Mary Beth and covered the girl's mouth. “Shush. He's probably on drugs, or something. He looks crazy.”

Mary Beth nodded, but had to put her own hands over her mouth to control her involuntary sobs.

“Listen. I need you to run to Marty's. I'm going to run the opposite direction and draw it away.”

“It's looking—at me,” Mary Beth whimpered.

“No, it's looking at the foot. You have to do as I say.”

The girl shook her head vigorously in the negative. “I ... I don't know where she lives. These houses all look the same from the back.”

“Run that way,” Angie said while pointing backward. “Find her house from the front.”

It was the best plan she could summon. She'd been in other confrontations with belligerent patients over the years, and distraction was the order of the day until help could arrive. All she had to do was keep it away from Mary Beth, so she could call the cops. With a final look at her granddaughter, she pulled her keys from the ignition.

The man on the hood slid a bit but didn't fall off.

“I love you,” she said with despair. “You'll be fine, OK? Just run when the man leaves.”

“I-I love you, too,” the girl replied.

Angie opened her door and ran like hell. As fast as a woman of 58 years in decent shape could run in a pair of cheap tennis shoes. She left her car door open, assuming the thing would follow her. It did jump to the street as if to pursue, but it stood up and turned to Mary Beth instead. Angie realized her plan was doomed.

“RUN!” Angie screamed.

The guy turned back to her, unleashed an open-mouthed howl, but then jumped in the car. Mary Beth opened her door but didn't get out, so the sick guy crawled in next to her. Not knowing what to do, Angie ran around the rear van, and up to Mary Beth's open door. The girl screamed in mortal terror the entire time.

Angie had heard stories of exotic drugs making people do crazy things like cutting off their own noses or hands, but this was beyond her imagination.

So much blood.

Angie tried to pull the girl from the blood-splashed face of the man, but her seat belt was still hooked.

“Mary Beth, your seatbelt!”

“Grandma, help,” Mary Beth wheezed, like she was out of breath.

Angie moved to get a better look at the man. He was now in full sight, tearing into the soft flesh of the teen's side with a bloody mouth. To get to the seatbelt release she'd have to reach between the man and her granddaughter's body. It was impossible.

“Oh God, please help me,” Angie cried out.

She needed a weapon and checked the backseat for anything useful, but it was empty. She turned forward and saw the severed foot on her windshield, nearest the passenger side. She reached for it and brought it back to the gap of the door, ignoring the disgusting feel in her hands. Angie swung it as an awkward club against the man's head. He looked up and snapped several times at her. She tried to swing the foot again, but it was too slippery. It fell uselessly to the floorboard in front of her dying granddaughter.

The girl stopped moving.

This drugged out monster of a man had just killed her lovely Mary Beth. Angie looked at her through the tears in her eyes as the man continued to press his face into her bloody side. Angie took a step back and saw the big picture. The person or persons in the van were making no effort to help. They had done this intentionally.

When she looked back inside, the unnatural man was already facing her. She took a few more steps backward and tried to close the door. The man more or less slithered over Mary Beth and fell out of the doorway so he could crouch on the pavement. He looked at her with empty eye sockets. Angie felt a wave of despair envelope her. She stumbled and fell to her backside. She had to resort to crawling backward with her elbows ...

The sicko jumped on top of her, covering her with Mary Beth's blood.

“Oh God, no! HELP!” She screamed as loud as she could—as if finally realizing there was a need for it—willing someone in the neighborhood to rescue her.

Pinned to the ground, her last thought was of the girl in the front seat. How she failed her so completely. How quickly this all happened.

She felt the teeth go into her neck. She struggled as best she could, but the fear was absolute. She went from panicked resistance to abject surrender in moments. Her vision floundered, and her breathing became labored. She closed her eyes, asking God for forgiveness.

An eternity later, a man with a red baseball cap came into her field of vision. He shot something at the drugged-out man on top of her, and he ran away.

“Are you OK?” the rescuer said in slow motion.

“I don't know,” she tried to respond. “Where is Mary Beth?” Her voice was just a whisper because she couldn't catch her breath.

“She went to your house,” red hat said. “Run to her!”

Then he was gone.

Angie got up, teetering on the edge of awareness. Mary Beth wasn't in her front seat.

She's at my house?

Angie walked up the alley; compelled to reach the safety of her home. She looked down at her feet, but the sight of those shoes plodding ahead, one after the other, made her stomach churn. She tried to keep her head up, but that was painful. Her neck burned on the left side, so she pressed her hand to stop potential bleeding like a good nurse.

Angie went through the rear gate, and stumbled up the walkway through her backyard, and into the narrow channel between her home and the next. She held her arms out and could almost touch both brick walls, which for some reason made her giggle uncontrollably.

She rounded the corner of the house and moved up the ramp to the pair of front doors. Marty's entry was on the right. She looked at it for a long time. Marty could call for help. Marty could—

The cloudiness in her brain wouldn't allow her to complete the thought.

“I must get home to Mary Beth.” Returning home was important. She desired it the most.

She shuffled over to her own front door, to the left of Marty's. It was unlocked but was stuck—as usual. She gave it a good shove and it pivoted inward for her. She swung it shut. The steep wooden stairway loomed above. The bright lights in the entryway and on the stairwell hardly registered.

“I'm coming, Mary Beth.”

She held on to the banister as she took each step one at a time. She pulled herself with her hands as much as she used her legs. Several times, she became so dizzy she nearly let herself go. She giggled again, this time at the irony of surviving a grievous neck wound, only to die falling down some lousy steps. A pause was necessary at the top. She fell to her knees, depositing blood on the floor.

“I'll clean that up later, don't worry, Marty.”

Angie dragged herself to her door a few feet from the steps. The handle was a convenience to help her regain her feet. It was unlocked, and she tumbled through.

“I'm home, Mary Beth. I'm just going to lie down for a bit, OK?”

She wobbled in the direction of her bedroom.

I'll just put myself to bed. I'll feel better in the morning.

3

“You sure this worked?”

“Yeah, why wouldn't it? We saw she was bitten, then she went inside her house. I'd say that's a job well done.”

“Yeah, though we both know HQ won't like it if we don't get this thing correct. Using infected victims to kill people isn't exactly a tried and true method of assassination.”

“That's why it's so perfect. We can take care of this list and no one will suspect a thing. That will make the boss very happy, don't you think?”

“Yeah, I guess. This test scenario did go better than I thought. Shame about the girl, though. She wasn't on our list.”

“Let's not mention that in our report, huh? We'll just tell them the package was delivered to Marty Peters. She'll be dead by morning.”

“Who's next?”

The man pulled out a smartphone and scrolled through his text messages.

“Looks like they want us down south. A couple of high-priority targets. Jerry and Lana Peters. The grandson of the soon-to-be-deceased Ms. Marty Peters. They live down in Jeffco.”

“Aw hell. The sticks? Let's do that in the morning. We only have a couple more days before the world goes to shit. I want to enjoy some R&R in the city, ya' catch my drift?”

The van's driver stared out his window at the house across the street. He wondered if Angie would do as she was supposed to. Surely the old woman in the lower level couldn't escape her own sick nurse. It was truly the perfect crime. But he knew the world was ending. His organization was helping it along. All the more reason to enjoy one more night of normal.

“OK, but you're buying the first round. Tomorrow, we hunt some more.”

Chapter 11: Camp Hope

Liam was embedded with a gaggle of elderly survivors from the government camp run by the CDC, Homeland Security, or whatever. It didn't matter now because the camp was just a smudge on the landscape after the aerial incineration. His concern was how to get both himself and Grandma home, while doing right by the others who had escaped with them.

They had walked out from the camp, maybe a mile at most on the road, and everyone seemed beat. Many had taken a seat on the metal guardrail. Grandma was leaning heavily against his side, indicating she was also spent.

There was nothing hospitable where an unusual group like this could find safety for a night. The highway ran in both directions to their right and left, the camp they'd just left was behind them, and across the roadway was an even larger piece of woodland preserve, though Liam couldn't remember what it was called. He did know it tied in with a large Boy Scout reservation just down the interstate.

Hmm. That's an idea.

The safest call was to hole up inside the fence of the camp from which they'd just emerged. At least they knew there were no zombies inside the fence yet, unless the Chicagoans climbed out prior to the fireworks. However, Liam was worried Hayes and the military men would come back to check the status of the trashed camp, and they'd be recaptured. He wanted to be far away.

By his estimation, the most sensible course of action then was to cross the highway and get into the woods. Spend the night in the forest resting so they can move again tomorrow.

But the old folks didn't like the idea of spending time traipsing around in the woods. “We have to find a police station or fire department. They can call us an ambulance or something.”

Another older woman agreed, adding, “Surely we aren't a threat to anyone. Perhaps someone on the road there will give us some food and water?”

A third person said, “I ain't goin' into no woods.”

The conversation was subdued—none of them wanted to follow Liam's path. They were convinced they would find help by going toward “civilization.” Liam didn't know about help, but he knew the chaos would be stronger if they went toward the urban core. Better to lay low out in the sticks. He did worry about finding food and water.

“Grandma. What do you want to do?” He was speaking quietly so the nearby group wouldn't hear their discussion.

“I know I sound like a broken record, but I'll do what you tell me to do. I trust you to find us the safest and best way home. You're the one who has to carry me.” She chuckled at that.

“But maybe it's safer to stick with the group and go back into town?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Besides you, no one has any weapons. No one at all has food or water. I think this group is going to be a burden on anyone they cross. I'd not expect much sympathy, either. None of those people down on the highway look anxious to have more mouths to feed.”

Liam watched the sad lot moving down the highway. None seemed very healthy. “I want to get you to safety across the highway before we're captured again. I think Hayes will be back.”

“I'm really tired, Liam. My legs are shaking as we stand here. But I'll try to get across that highway with you.”

Liam thought one or two would go with him, but there was a kind of groupthink and once they'd convinced themselves help was just a little ways back into town, they were unshakable in their desire to go that way.

As everyone stood up, one man near the middle of the pack seemed to sway heavily as if he had a head rush. He fell backward—and slammed hard to the tarmac. He was one of the men who shared the ride in the MRAP earlier that same day, though Liam couldn't remember his name.

He was holding Grandma so he couldn't run over to check on him, but another man bent down and confirmed he had passed. A couple of the men made the effort to drag the man off the pavement and into the tall weeds. It was what passed for burial these days.

Grandma softly prayed for the man as they walked toward the highway. “Goodbye, Ralph. Rest in peace.”

“Amen.”

The bulk of the main group was already moving up the side street, heading back to the suburban sprawl. Their fates diverging, Liam was ready to focus on the task at hand.

As was his custom, he tried to find a gap in the people walking down the highway so he'd have the least chance of interacting with anyone. In the old days, he did this out of habit because he didn't like talking to people, but now it could be considered a matter of survival. He had to time things right because Grandma only had one speed: slow.

A man passed on a bicycle. Rifle slung over his shoulder. He gave one quick glance in their direction; he kept pedaling.

Suits me fine.

He made his move after the biker was well away. They emerged from the weedy shoulder area and began moving across the first two lanes of traffic. There were people far to the left, but even with Grandma inching along, they'd clear the road before they made contact.

This area had very few cars, and was mercifully clear of dead bodies. They stumbled into the middle, which was a grassy depression between both directions of the interstate. It was lined with a strong cable to prevent vehicles from crossing between the lanes. The wire was about three feet high.

“Grandma, can you step over this?” He asked the question, but was positive she would find it hard to step over a shoebox given her condition.

He had an inspiration. “Here, let me step over first, and I'll lift you over with me. When I pick you up, try to put your feet behind you, like you're praying.”

He was able to hold her while he stepped across, then he turned around and bear-hugged his 104-year-old companion, gently lifting her over at the same time. She cooperated as best she could, and together they crossed the barrier.

“Liam, I'm very dizzy.”

He looked both ways. People were getting closer. He considered carrying her, but knew that was dangerous for a lot of reasons. “Let's just get over there and then we can rest. One more set of lanes.”

He didn't wait for her. He held her as she walked next to him, and he tried to provide as much support as possible. Even so, they ran into a few dirty travelers walking by, though again, when they saw the young boy and old woman, they made no effort to bother them.

Liam's paranoia was telling him the reason they weren't interested was because they carried nothing of value—except for his gun, which was hidden from view. If they were carrying a bucket of chicken, the entire highway would no doubt be his friend.

Or my worst enemy.

They found their way into the weeds on the far side of the highway and Grandma practically collapsed. Liam felt they needed to be further into the woods, so no one could see them from the road.

“I've got to sit down, Liam.”

He geared up for something he would have never considered doing a week ago, no matter how much he wanted to. He was going to tell her no.

“Keep moving. Our lives depend on it.”

“I can't. I just can't.”

“You can. You have to.”

They made it a dozen yards when Grandma slumped over in his arms. He had to stop and turn to her as she fell over like a fainting damsel. He kept her on her feet, and began dragging her as he walked backward. Her oversized orthopedic shoes were secure to her feet, so they provided good cushion while he pulled her over the rough ground. They were at the threshold of the woods and there was no stopping.

In the previous world, the sight of anyone dragging a body would be enough to require a call to the police. Today, if anyone happened to notice them, it favored no extra attention. People ignored him and went on their way.

Liam finally had her far enough into the woods where the highway was no longer visible. He was running out of energy, too. His poor diet and bad sleep habits the last few days were grinding him down.

“Here you go, Grandma. I'm so sorry I had to drag you like that.”

He set her up against a stout oak tree.

She was out cold. She was also suffering from the poor food being served in the Zombie Apocalypse. He didn't have a crumb to give her.

He sat down next to her, intending to keep silent vigil.

2

Marty woke in a dream. She was a veteran of these vivid episodes.

She looked around but didn't see her husband. He was a mainstay on all her previous dreams—or nightmares, depending on which ones she was thinking about.

Maybe I'm not dreaming.

She was in the woods where Liam had dragged her. In fact, Liam was still at her feet. Asleep against the tree. He was translucent, like a ghost. She looked at her own hands and arms, but couldn't see through herself. She was real. Or he was.

“Liam. Are you awake?” She reached down to shake him, but he wasn't just transparent, he was hollow, like a projection. “OK Al, where are you?”

Again she raised her arms. Instead of the thin and wrinkled skin she was used to seeing, her arms were a little more full. A little more...young. Not teenager young, but she had been in her body for 104 years and knew its wear marks. Perhaps a spritely 90.

Her body wasn't tired, and she felt fine in this place. She started walking the little ways back to the highway. It was the same mess it had been when they crossed it. Cars. Luggage. Junk. No one was visibly walking in the night air, though the moon was helping illuminate the scene.

There was a campfire, with several men and women—all translucent like Liam—sitting around it. She felt compelled to go check it out.

They were some of the well-worn travelers she had seen passing this way earlier in the day. She couldn't hear what they were saying, and she was quickly distracted by a young girl walking from the other side of the group. She was the only person who noticed her walking up to the fire; she was also the only one solid like her.

“I saw you come out of the trees. Are you my guardian angel? Momma says we have angels looking out for us, even in the bad times.”

The girl was saying the word “angel” in a funny way. She said ahn-gyel, as if the word was foreign to her. She cringed at the condition of the poor thing; she appeared to have been having rotten luck. It's enough to be traveling at the collapse of mankind, but the girl had a bald head and a sallow look. Cancer? Something serious to be sure.

“No, dear. I'm no one's guardian angel. I'm just an old woman out for a walk. Who are you?”

“I'm Clara. I've been walking all day looking for my mom and grampa. Do you know where they are?”

“No, I don't. I'm sorry. How old are you, Clara?”

“I'm this many.” She held out her hand with four fingers. “But I'm almost this many!” Again, the fingers came up, five on display this go-round.

“That is very nice, Miss Clara.” Marty knelt down in front of the child, an act impossible to do at her age.

Dreaming or really sleepwalking this time?

“Can you tell me, what are you doing out of bed?”

The little girl appeared to think about it. “I get up sometimes when I'm asleep. My mommy made me go to sleep and I saw her and grampa in my dream. Grampa was OK. I was OK. But then the bad man came in and pushed me down. I had to go away. Why did he do that? Where's my mommy now?”

The tone of her questions made her appear every bit as scared and weak as she probably felt. Her sickness only added to her misfortune. Marty couldn't make herself ask the child what disease had made her sick. She didn't want to make her feel bad. She figured they would both be disappointed when they got back to their bodies after being in this place.

“Oh Al, why did you show me this poor girl?”

“Who are you talking to, lady? Can I talk to them, too? Are you talking to Grampa Bart?”

She held her pose, expecting Al would make himself known. When nothing happened, she let out a soft sigh. “I sometimes have a friend—” Something about the name jogged her synapses. “Grandpa Bart? Is your mom by chance named Janey?”

“My mommy's name is...mommy. I think Grampa calls her Janey. Do you know where to find my grampa? He said he was going bye bye.”

She had her answer. It had to be the same man. Marty last saw Bart laying on the floor in the back of the MRAP. He'd been asking for his granddaughter, Janey, the whole miserable trip. Now this little girl was looking for her too, as well as Grandpa Bart. Liam told her about Bart's fate as they escaped the camp, but she wasn't about to tell this sweet little girl her beloved grandpa was gone forever. But she was troubled by the need to lie to her.

“I'm not exactly sure where your grampa is right now, my child. Do you know where your mommy is? Maybe she can help you?”

“My mommy comes to my dreams too. And Grampa Bart. We play together. Grampa is so silly. But where are they? I'm scared.” She was talking quietly while using her right hand to pull at her right ear. It was a nervous affectation.

“Come, my dear. Sit with me a while. We'll—”

As she stood there talking, her little friend winked out of existence.

“—be just fine.”

Marty didn't wake with a scream. She simply opened her eyes and was sitting on the ground against the tree. Most uncomfortable. Liam was next to her, just as he'd been in her dream.

Her mind was swirling with questions about what she just witnessed. But there were no answers to be found in the dark and buggy forest that night.

3

They woke early on the morning of the eighth day since the sirens. The late June air was already heavy in this wooded area, and heating up. With nothing to eat or drink, they were immediately prepared for the continuation of their journey.

“We need food and water.” Marty was standing against the tree, looking marginally more stable than she did last night.

“Can you walk if I hold you?”

“I guess we have to try. Don't want to die in this forest.”

Ain't that the truth.

But where should they go? Liam knew this area to a degree because of his time in Boy Scouts. Beaumont Scout Reservation was over the hill and in the valley beyond. He'd been there many times growing up, as his dad was a Boy Scout leader and had insisted Liam participate. It gave him an opportunity to do things “in the real world,” as Dad would say. Tie knots. Fish. Camp. Survive.

“If we can make it over this hill, I think I know where we can find clean water. The Boy Scout camp has an artesian well that should still be pumping out water. After that, we can work on finding some food.”

The only tools Liam had to work with were his pistol and his pocketknife. He used the knife to fashion a crude wooden cane for Grandma. He would hold her on one side, and she could use the cane on the other. That way they might be able to minimize the strain on her leg muscles while they went over the hill. He briefly toyed with the idea of making a stretcher to pull her behind him, but he knew it would take him a long time to fashion anything of that scale. Better to get as far into the woods as possible while she could still perambulate.

The woods were rough on Grandma. Many times, Liam asked her to sit down on a rock or log, and she never rejected him. He knew he was pushing her hard going this way, but they had no better options.

To keep her mind off her struggles, Liam tried to keep her talking. He laughed at the irony after all the years of avoiding speaking to her. She recalled many things Liam classified as minutia from her life, but she also recounted her experience from the previous night.

“I had a strange dream last night. A lot like the ones with your grandpa, but he wasn't in this one.” She described the little girl and everything they discussed.

“I don't know what to say, Grandma. Maybe the sick girl means the world is sick? Or that you are sick?” It almost made him choke up to say it. “I sure hope you aren't...”

She laughed. “I may not be sick, but if you keep pushing me like this, I might die of exhaustion.”

They took another rest while they talked. “I've been having a lot of these dreams lately. I never had anything like them before the plague started. I have to believe the two are related. Al—I mean your Grandpa—told me this has to do with good and evil, though I can't quite fathom how.”

Alarms rang in his mind. He'd done too much reading about how the world ends in zombie bloodshed. Maybe this was more of a supernatural battle, played out with the spirits of the undead walking the Earth? “You mean like God and the Devil fight it out in the streets? Tribulation? That sort of Biblical stuff?”

Marty was standing there, deep in thought.

“Grandma?”

“Oh, sorry. I really don't know. Everything your grandpa has shown me has pointed to Biblical stuff as you call it, but my heart isn't sure. Why did he pretend to be your grandpa? Why not just approach me as an Angel? Why would God be concerned with finding a cure for a plague? What does the little girl have to do with anything?”

Her statement was left hanging in the woodland breeze.

Liam made as if to start walking again, before saying, “Well I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a cool refreshing drink of spring water.”

“That would hit the spot!”

Grandma was being cheery, but was suffering horribly. Her bottle of Ibuprofin was sitting in his backpack in his parents' basement. He took comfort she had no medications she absolutely required each day. When she broke her arms several years ago, her doctors were amazed to learn she had never been on any long-term medications throughout her entire life. No cholesterol meds. No high blood pressure meds. No blood thinners. No nothing. She did need the rare pain relief for her back, but that usually only flared up when she overdid herself. Like walking-through-the-woods level of overdoing it.

Liam and Marty walked out of the woods a couple hours later looking much as they had when they collapsed the previous night. Exhausted beyond words. The only difference; it was only 10 a.m.

They were standing at the edge of the woods, overlooking a narrow and flat valley where the Boy Scouts conducted a great deal of camping trips, hiking, horseback riding, and big gatherings they called jamborees. The camping area was about a mile long, two hundred yards across, and very flat the entire length. It was hard to see from one end to the other because of small curves and undulations in the landscape, but they could see a good portion.

“Grandma, we found the mother of all jamborees.”

Below them, tents of all shapes, sizes, and colors were packed into every possible space. Nearest the road were a large number of pop-up campers, buses, and recreational vehicles. It was a spectacle of mankind that caught Liam completely by surprise.

They'd been standing there gawking for a few minutes when he noticed they weren't alone. From behind them, and from the sides, several young boys with long spear-shaped poles made themselves known. An extra boy, trailing the others, was carrying a rifle.

Marty was quick in setting the tone for this encounter. “We surrender!”

Liam added, “Take us to your leader.”

4

Fortunately, being a Boy Scout had its advantages. Liam was able to remember the secret handshake and recite the Scout Oath and Scout Promise. The others were impressed. They didn't say what would have happened if he wasn't a Scout. The crew that “captured” Liam and Marty elected to send one of the younger boys as an escort so they wouldn't get lost.

The encampment was loosely centered around the administrative building in the midpoint of the length of the valley. A small wooded creek ran through the campground, and the building was set just to the west of the waterway. Even so, the large building was hard to see among all the colors and variety of living quarters erected around it. The first camper arrived, set up shop next to the main building, and everyone else spread out from there.

Contrary to expectations, they did not bring them in to see “the leader.” The place was packed, as you might expect when thousands of your closest friends are camping in confined quarters, with hostiles on the perimeter, and food a scarce resource. The only thing they had in spades was water. Boys of all ages could be seen carrying water from the creek to fires on both banks—likely purifying it.

A young Scout about Liam's age was walking by and saw Liam trying to help Grandma along the pathway near the creek. He immediately jumped in to help. The young boy leading them appeared distraught, as if he should have volunteered to help first. He kept walking.

“Hello. I'm Drew. How old are you, ma'am?”

“I'm 104! Can you believe it?”

“Wow!”

“And how old are you, Scout?”

“I'm almost 15, ma'am.”

“And what brings you here?”

“We just got here yesterday. We were trying to hide in our house, but Mom and Dad said it would be safer for us here. We didn't know so many other Scout families had the same idea.” He laughed a bit, but it sounded forced.

They crossed a small bridge over the creek and the young guide told them to wait by a pirate ship. Liam thought he misheard him, but sure enough they rounded a bend and saw a fifty-foot wooden pirate ship. It was made out of lumber and was intended as a place for young Scouts to play. The mock pirate ship appeared to have run aground next to the water, and it actually made Liam laugh out loud. It wasn't here when he frequented this place. The Scouts probably built the ship as part of one of their many service projects.

Their young guide asked Drew if he could leave them with him, and he gave the boy a thumbs up sign. He then hauled butt out of there, presumably to return to the woods to find his mates.

“They organize new people at this boat. I started out here, too. I guess it gives a well-known landmark for orientation and other meetings.”

There were dozens of people sitting at various places on the structure. Most were families with young boys, but there were older people and young girls scattered around as well.

The Boy Scouts were nothing, if not organized. As they approached the meeting area, two Scouts ran up with cups of water, each trying to be as courteous and kind as they possibly could. Marty gingerly downed what she could while Liam drank his in a few rude gulps, followed by a gratuitous belch.

“That was the best drink of my life!”

Grandma didn't chide him. After what they'd been through, she might even have laughed. Sadly, they had no food to offer, and they retreated back to their drink preparation station a bit sheepishly. It must be a common question.

There were no chairs or benches on or near the boat, so Grandma took a seat on the steps leading from the main deck up to the poop deck. A large wooden wheel for steering the fake ship was up there. Several young kids were already spinning it, their spirits undaunted, even in such a bleak world.

She seemed to relax amongst the youngsters.

Liam took a moment to pull Drew aside. “What can you tell me about this place? Is it safe? Do you have zombies here?”

“Ooh, you call them zombies? We've been calling them plaguers, but zombies sounds better, even though they aren't true zombies that come out of graves and stuff. I haven't seen any of them since I got here. Plenty on the way, though.”

He visibly shuddered.

“Once I got here and set up my tent, they told us everyone was responsible for security. They send us out in small groups, so we can help each other if there are plag—zombies. That little guy who brought you here was carrying what most of us are—basically a sharp stick. But we have an infinite supply of them around here. Anyway, to answer your question, we haven't had any zombies in camp, but from time to time you will hear some shooting or young boys coming out of the woods crying after their team had to put one down.”

Liam was reminded that he wasn't so far removed from these boys. If things had been a little different, perhaps he would be here at a campsite with Mom and Dad. But would that mean Grandma would be dead in her house right now? Would Victoria still be alive if she hadn't met him?

Ugg.

Using that expression, even inside his own head, reminded him of Victoria's absence. A dark cloud passed over his heart, putting a damper on his otherwise pleasant demeanor in front of Drew. The other boy took this as an invitation to continue talking.

“Yeah, I know how you feel. We all have that look in our eyes. Like we're lost. I know I did for all those days sitting inside our house waiting for things to improve. Of course, they only got worse. Some of our neighbors left early in the plague, but most stuck it out until the end. We fought off looters, zombies, and even a huge pack of wild dogs. But in the end, it was the stench that drove us to abandon our house. Do you know what dead bodies smell like? Our street was covered with them. The smell sticks to you. Reminds you constantly not to forget it. Nothing would block it either. My mom tried everything. We packed up what we could and drove our car as far as we were able. That turned out to be about 100 yards. Once we got out of our neighborhood, we realized this was far bigger and worse than we imagined sitting inside the safety of our home. We almost turned around, but the smell was with us even then. So we got out and walked, trying to get to this place.”

“How did you do it? What route did you take? I need to get Grandma to our house after we leave here.”

“Ahh, that's the thing. It was mostly at night. Mom and Dad both had guns. Several times we stumbled on zombies doing their thing...shot them of course. It took us a whole night to get here. We don't live far. I guess we just got lucky.”

“Sounds like your dad knew what he was doing.”

“If you say so. You can ask him why Grandma and Grandpa couldn't come with us.”

Liam was afraid to ask, as he had just left a group of grandmas and grandpas...

“You mean he wouldn't let them come?”

“They said it was their decision, but I know he talked to them. He never liked them.”

Liam had sympathy. There were plenty of people he would like to leave behind if he ever got the chance. His algebra teacher. That asshat, Jeff Tuttle, who gave him grief in study hall. He had a list from his various track teams too. But when the carnage was absolute and unforgiving, Liam didn't think he had it in him to turn anyone away to their deaths. He just didn't think he would be able to make that call.

What if it would save someone I loved?

He resolved to try to be strong if that situation ever came up. So far, he'd avoided any complicated life-or-death choices. For a moment, he had forgotten many of the choices he'd made since leaving Grandma's house nearly a week ago. So many of those choices were probably life or death, though they may not have seemed like it at the time. Certainly Victoria was dead because of decisions he'd made.

Neither of the boys was particularly happy, but Drew seemed to be a glass-half-full sort of kid. He raised both their spirits by admitting, “With Grandma and Grandpa on their own, I figured it would only be right to help you with your grandma. At least someone of their generation made it here to safety.”

Safety.

Liam didn't think that word meant what it used to.

5

Liam and Drew were chatting happily within eyesight of Marty. They realized they both played the same video game, so they had a lot of things to discuss about the adventures they shared from inside that fictional universe. It helped distract them from their own seemingly fictional woes.

They didn't see a uniformed Scout leader walk up to the boat and extend his middle three fingers, which is a Scout sign to “shut the hell up.” The two boys also failed to notice everyone else had dropped to silence while they continued talk and laugh. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the man watching them with his arm over his head.

Red-faced, they turned to give him their full attention. The leader was tall with a solid build. His short black beard and Scout regalia gave him the appearance of the consummate outdoorsman. His powerful voice was perfect for the outdoor setting.

“Hello, ladies and gents. Welcome to Camp Hope. Yes, we've renamed this place for the duration of this event. I hope you'll find it appropriate for what we've got going on here. Oh yeah, my name is Troop Leader Lee. Like the general.”

A few snickers.

“You can call me Mr. Lee. My role is to introduce you to this place and help you find a place to stay. I'll assume many of you have camping equipment and supplies. Raise your hands if you don't have a tent or any supplies.”

Several hands went up, maybe a third of the group, including Liam's.

“We've noticed fewer and fewer people are making it here with supplies. Don't worry. We know things are rough on the outside, so just be thankful you made it here in one piece.” Lee went through some checklists relating to the area, much of which was important to Boy Scouts in general—preparedness, sanitation, security, hygiene, hydration, and calorie counts. Liam was interested in all of them, but the last was foremost on his mind. He raised his hand.

He was soon called on by Lee. “Hello. I'm Liam. Sorry about earlier. My grandma is over there, and she's 104 and could use a bite to eat. We've been in the woods all night.”

“That's a tough one, my friend.” He looked at Marty as he spoke. “Ma'am, I'm sorry to say we don't have much food here. Only what was brought by folks such as yourselves. We're trying to organize some raiding parties to go out and look for food and supplies, but it's been so dangerous none of the leaders have been willing to let any of the kids go back out of the valley.”

Marty merely nodded.

“For the rest of you, please assemble over on the path there. I'll be with you once you're all together.”

Liam and Drew both got up to help Grandma again. “Thanks, Drew. I can get her if you have places to be?”

“No sweat. I'm not doing anything important right now. I want to see where they stick you. Otherwise, I'll never find you in this crowd.”

Liam was pleased to have a friend here.

He noticed Mr. Lee was stopping to talk to stragglers while they were lifting Grandma. A couple with a small baby. Another elderly woman. And then he arrived just as they were moving Grandma off the boat. He was purposefully facing away from the larger group.

“Hi, guys. Look, I couldn't give this out in front of all those people, but I have a grain bar for your grandma.”

Marty tried to demur, but Liam accepted it for her and promised she would get it.

“Scout's honor.”

“Good enough for me.”

Mr. Lee walked away, toward the group of new recruits.

They didn't have to travel far.

“Y'all are the first group to get spots inside the woods. We've run out of space on the flat, grassy part of the valley, so we had some of the boys clear this flattish section of woods so people could use it. We'll be placing new people in similar redoubts around the outside of the whole camp. I guess we'll just keep on spreading until we have a city again.” He laughed at the joke, though no one appeared in the mood to laugh with him.

After spending the rest of the afternoon with Mr. Lee and several of his assistants, the group was settled into a small enclave of clear space among the large trees. They were joined on one side with the main encampment—in fact, they could still see the central administration building. The other three sides were empty woodlands as far as they could see in the hilly terrain. By pooling resources, and shoving too many people into too few tents, they were able to get everyone in the group into a tent they could call home. Someone even volunteered a sleeping bag for Grandma, which prompted her to immediately plop down in a small tent to rest.

“Don't leave without me,” she joked as Liam zipped her tent flap to keep the bugs out.

Liam was standing right next to the tent, marveling at their luck at having such a fine place to stay, at least until they sorted how they were going to get home—when he heard a familiar and terrifying sound far in the distance.

Buzz. Buzzzzz. Buzz.

Mr. Lee was banging in a tent stake for a nearby tent when he stopped to listen. Soon everyone was stopped, cocking their heads like a herd of nervous deer.

Buzzzzzzzz.

“It sounds kind of like a chainsaw.”

“No, it sounds like a bunch of hammers hitting over and over.”

Liam could only admire the Scouts for being problem solvers. One part of him felt he shouldn't make it known he knew what the sound was, but another part was anxious to earn the respect and trust of Mr. Lee. Deep down, he also wanted to impress the younger kids within earshot. So he spoke up.

“No, my friends. You're all wrong. It's a gun. A lot like a fire-breathing dragon.”

Everyone was laughing, except Liam.

Almost everyone.

Mr. Lee wasn't laughing, either.

Chapter 12: The Watchtower

“Liam, can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”

The buzzing of the Gatling gun had been going on and off for the past couple minutes. It was still far away, but definitely getting closer. The road from the highway to this camp lay on the other side of the hill where Liam had come from, and it intersected the beginning of this small valley system. The gun would be heard while the MRAP was driving on that entrance road.

When the two were away from everyone else, Mr. Lee spoke first. “I did some time in the military—sandbox stuff—so I know the sound of guns like that. I just didn't place it because it sounded so unusual stateside. Never thought I'd live to see the day military rigs are here shooting stuff up.”

“Well, they're probably shooting zombies, but I can't say for sure. I rode in one of those things yesterday and they were shooting tons as we drove, and unless they were just killing men and women at random, I'd say they were shooting zombies. But from time to time, we could hear gunshots pinging off the exterior. So someone was shooting us, though I can't think of any reason why. We eventually got trapped at a roadblock and we had to get out while under fire—”

Liam felt himself tense up at the thought of all the chaos and bullets flying by.

“—I managed to help Grandma out of the MRAP and into a Humvee so we could escape, but I'll admit, I've never been as scared in my whole life. That includes riding a train in the dark with zombies lurking all around us.”

“Hmm. Sounds really dangerous for us if that thing decides to come up this way. You were inside it, you say? How'd you manage that?”

“The people in that convoy might be CDC, or they might be Homeland Security. They also might be some kind of military unit. They captured my grandma—they brought me along so I could support her. They took us to a medical camp over in Lone Elk Park across the highway. They were running weird experiments, and told me the camp was set up to help find a cure to the zombie plague.”

“And you believed them?”

“No, sir. I didn't believe a word... Well, there was one man, a colonel, who seemed to tell me the truth. Oh yeah, back up, I almost forgot the most important part. They killed my girlfriend in cold blood to convince us to go with them in the first place.”

That thought forced his shoulders to slump noticeably.

In return, Mr. Lee briefly put his hand on Liam's shoulder. “OK, so they are super dangerous. Sounds like you did everything you could to keep your grandma alive. Don't beat yourself up.”

“Thanks, but there's something else.”

It made Liam feel marginally better to share his story with the Scout leader, but he turned inward while considering his next statement. Was Hayes looking specifically for his grandma? Hayes and his buddies hightailed it out of there the second the warning sirens went off. But where did they go? Another camp? Back to some central base? Did they go somewhere nearby and watch all the old people walk right out the front gate? Would they know he and Grandma survived at all?

Maybe the old folks told them.

It wasn't something he wanted to admit, but the escapees weren't exactly friendly, in the end. They had volunteered to be there—maybe they resented a young boy coming along and tipping the apple cart? It was plausible Hayes caught up with them, and maybe gave them all a cold beverage while he interrogated them to learn where he and Grandma had gone. They could at least confirm Grandma was alive. That part rang true.

“Mr. Lee, I would feel bad if something happened and you didn't know this. They might be coming for my grandma and me. If they thought we were still alive, it's possible they're once again trying to track us down. I honestly don't know why we're so important to them. We've been tangling with Hayes almost back to when the sirens went off. Unfortunately, some of our fellow escapees know we crossed the highway in this direction. It's only natural we would end up here. We should leave.”

“I appreciate the offer. I really do. You show a lot of bravery in saying that, and I'm honored to meet someone who would go to such lengths to take care of his family. You're exactly the kind of young man we need here. You've done the Boy Scouts proud. Now, I hope you have comfortable shoes. We have to do some running.”

Liam was wearing his old running shoes—he saved his better pairs for track meets and long runs—but they were still serviceable. Of course they were covered with dried blood and their original color was hidden underneath the road grime of the last week.

“Where are we going? How will we move Grandma?”

“Just you and I. We'll leave her here for now, but I promise we'll be back in time to take care of her. Right now, I want to take you to the camp leaders so you can share your story with them, and they can make the decision on what to do next. Since these people present a threat to us all, we have to make sure the leaders are involved.”

“What do you think should happen?”

“We should hide you guys, of course. We aren't just going to hand you over.”

He seemed to dwell on that for a moment.

“I have to inform the leaders. But if, for some reason, they decide to do something silly—like turn you guys in—I promise I will personally help get you guys out of camp before that happens.”

“Are you saying you don't trust the leaders?”

“I trust them. But they're a team of civilian leaders working under extreme conditions. Not all of them are cut out for the tough decisions necessary to run a camp of this size, with these plaguers lurking all around us. Some of them might see the arrival of military units as a return of authority. Look, I'm not trying to scare you. I want you to have the lay of the land. I'm in this to help you.” Mr. Lee turned around and started jogging, giving a wave for Liam to follow.

He didn't know what to say. So he started after him. They ran back through their new little cluster of tents, informed Drew and the others where they were going and that they'd be right back, and then began a fast jog over to the administration building.

2

The camp headquarters was bustling with activity. People were running in and out in droves, presumably to get advice and instructions from the camp leaders. Mr. Lee explained the Scouts had divided up several tasks to different committees, and each committee was located in this central building. It made it easy to find answers, and it kept a lot of runners busy zipping all over the camp, but it seemed to work efficiently.

They walked in on the ground floor and Liam was disappointed to see how many people were inside.

“The leaders are against the far wall. Follow me.” Mr. Lee snaked through the crowd, unconcerned about queue protocols. Even though there were dozens of people lined up in front of the table where the leaders positioned themselves, he walked Liam right up to it. He got the attention of one of the leaders—an older gray-haired man with a Boy Scout hat but no other uniform pieces—and motioned for him to lean over the table. He whispered something, and the man then went to each of the others on the committee with a quiet message. They all left the table to go up some steps to the second level of the small building.

The last leader to leave spoke up. “Sorry, folks. We had something come up and need to put our heads together. We'll be back as soon as we can.” He then pointed to Mr. Lee and Liam. “You two, please come upstairs.”

Everyone in line seemed disappointed at the delay, but no one made any snide comments at this turn of events.

The upstairs was the complete opposite of the lower level. Peaceful. Calm. Unoccupied.

There were four men and two women on the leadership team. Most were retirement age, and appeared healthy and active. One man appeared to be old enough to have been an escapee from Elk Meadow, but he still looked fit. A couple had full uniforms. Most had pieces of their uniforms, as if they arrived here and had to borrow them.

“Lee, what's happening out there?” It was one of the women, though it was unclear if anyone outranked the others.

“Everyone, meet Liam. He's a Boy Scout who found his way here with his 104-year-old grandma this morning. They came across the north hill...”

He took five minutes to explain everything he knew about Liam's journey, the reason he was in the government camp, and why Hayes and his team might be looking for them. Liam filled in any gaps, and answered whatever questions he could.

Just as Mr. Lee predicted, their first reaction was of hope. They thought the government was coming to restore order. A younger leader explained, “I appreciate your situation, Liam, but I have a hard time believing these government people would hurt any of us. Maybe we could get them to provide some food and water once they know we're here. Surely there can't be bigger groups of survivors in the area. They have to help us, right?”

The oldest man seemed to support his reasoning. “Back when I lived in California, we'd get those earthquakes and it would tear things up something awful. Lots of people were turned out of their homes, and we'd all go to shelters and get our three squares a day until our neighborhoods were re-opened. They did that after Hurricane Katrina too. Wind and water knocks everything down. Government picks it all back up. The scale of this is bigger, but they'll be along to help us. They always come through in the end.”

This wasn't going the way Liam had hoped. He had made it clear the government had killed his girlfriend, kidnapped his grandma, and forced him into a glorified prison camp.

Another of the male leaders seemed to hedge. “I'm willing to believe you, Liam. No one would make up a story like that. But I just can't believe the entire government is in on it. Maybe the trucks heading our way are a different group—the good guys—come here to help?”

Liam was exasperated, and wanted to snap back, but held his tongue. His whole life was based on the reinforcement of the idea the government could always be counted on to make things worse. They always brought problems, and never solutions. His dad even had a plaque to commemorate government incompetence! Why were these people not seeing it? Even the plague itself was testament to the inability of those in charge to protect its citizens. That right there should be proof enough.

“We'll have to talk it over, but my recommendation would be to wait and see what they want and then reconvene once we have more information.” That was from the guy with only his Scout hat as his uniform.

Liam took it as his cue. “Look. You guys have no reason to believe me, but everything I've seen over the past week suggests the government as we knew it is gone. Down at the Arch, I saw pretty much the entire St. Louis PD destroyed. On our way south, we witnessed the destruction of the Arnold Police Department, along with the pillaging of the whole town of Arnold. If the police from those two jurisdictions are gone forever, how many other police units have suffered similar fates? Every book I've ever read about the Zombie Apocalypse says law and order will never come back after something this big.”

He'd said the wrong thing. He knew it the moment it left his tongue.

The chuckles spelled it out for him, but hat-guy put the exclamation on it.

“Kid, this isn't one of your stories. This isn't the Apocalypse, zombie or otherwise. There are just a lot of sick people out there and it has overwhelmed social services. Everything will come back, just give it time. All we have to do is sit tight and hope the plague doesn't overrun this camp, too.”

Liam felt his hackles rising.

“Do you even know what a zombie looks like? 'Cause I've been hip deep in their ranks. I've seen them up close and I've killed scores of them.” Maybe a slight exaggeration. “They aren't people with a cold. They aren't people with Ebola, Extra Ebola, or whatever. They're people who have died and gotten back up. Call them plaguers, zombies, sickos—it doesn't matter. Things are much more serious than you seem to understand.”

Mr. Lee put his hand on his shoulder, signifying he'd said enough. “Thank you, Liam.” Then, to the others, he said, “I move we help Liam and his grandma hide in the woods while these strangers are at our front gate. If they want to search the place, let them. This will protect the camp from being accused of harboring anyone, and it will help a boy and his grandmother from being taken again as captives. I think we all win.”

The others considered the motion; the old-timer brought it to a vote.

“Everyone who wishes to protect these folks by helping them hide, raise your hands.”

It was unanimous. Even Mr. Lee had his hand up.

Liam was surprised to see he'd been talking to a member of the council the whole time.

3

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was on the council before we went in there. I felt it had to appear authentic and I didn't want you to think it was a slam dunk. They needed to hear from you instead of just from me.”

“No problem. I'm glad they're helping, but I really do think they have some wrong impressions about what's going on in the wider world. Your valley here is a nice place, but if they don't prepare for the worst, it's going to come in and bite them hard. All books aside, it's a lesson I've learned myself walking from the city out to the suburbs.”

“You might be surprised if I told you what my role is here in the camp. Security. I've walked the perimeter with my patrols. I've seen plaguers and zombies. I know what you say is true.”

“Then why didn't you tell them?”

“I've been telling them for days. But you saw them. Old. Soft. Civilians. They're good Scout leaders, but they aren't good Scouts, if that makes any sense? They arrived here at the beginning, before it got really bad. I won't say they've been hiding, but none of them have been out in the woods to see what's been going on. They look out their windows and see us all cooperating, singing songs, and figure we've done just fine for ourselves in holding things together. They're waiting for the outside to return to normal.”

“So, they have their heads in the sand?”

Mr. Lee only smiled.

They stopped in one of the rooms which contained medical supplies. Stacked against one wall were a few dozen poles with canvas wrapped around them. Liam had no idea what they were until Mr. Lee pulled one out and opened it. “We'll use this stretcher to get your grandma out into the woods. You remember the tower from your time here? That will be the perfect place to wait this out.”

Liam was surprised by his statement.

“You're going with us?”

“Me and several of my friends. We Scouts have to stick together. Plus, it will be a good training exercise for one of the perimeter teams I'm building. Unlike council, I'm preparing for the worst.”

“Zombies?”

“They're bad, no doubt about it, but they're far from the worst. Unless they start running, they're easy to catch and kill with the right tools and with the right people defending us. No, my fears are the thieves, murderers, looters, and other humans up to no good.”

“You aren't going to stop them with pointy sticks.”

“No. I'd love to get some more guns, but until then, we do what we can.”

They started jogging back to the camp. Mr. Lee was big enough to carry the stretcher over one shoulder.

As they ran, Liam realized the Gatling had gone silent. Had they run out of ammo? Were they even now at the front gate? He knew it wasn't logical, but he was worried Hayes was already taking Grandma from her tent.

When they arrived, Grandma was safely where he'd left her. “Grandma, wake up!”

It took a few minutes to rouse her and get her ready for their walk. Mr. Lee went back out to gather his team. He also sent runners to find people and items he needed. They were going to meet at Liam's tent as fast as they could organize. The efficiency impressed Liam greatly.

If the whole world was made of Boy Scouts, would we be in this mess at all?

He wanted to give the boys their due, but he remembered the leaders were less than he'd hoped. Maybe leaders were just normal people, doing average work. A select few rose to any challenge, making them shine, like Mr. Lee. If Liam had run into any of the other six on the committee when they'd first arrived, he thought—perhaps a bit unfairly—he and Grandma would already be moving on to somewhere new. Once again, luck was his friend.

They were standing around with Drew and a few younger boys, explaining what it was they were about to do.

“Can I come with you, Liam?” Drew was one Scout Liam would be happy to have along. Liam wondered what he was like in a fight. That was quickly becoming the gold standard for making friends in the world of zombies. Can this person help me survive or will he or she get me killed? Every book on zombies—movies too—showed how the wrong mix of people would be the death of any group. Liam called the phenomenon “Being that guy.” The guy that falls asleep while on watch. The girl that refuses to believe her boyfriend has really changed. The man who loses his mind and shoots people instead of zombies. “That guy” was always the first chink in the armor leading to the downfall of any group of survivors.

His science teacher would call that a conundrum. Humanity needs groups of survivors of a sufficient size to hold off the zombies and work together to rebuild. But if the group gets too large, the capacity for “that guy” to manifest himself and ruin the whole thing grows, too.

Drew didn't seem like the weak link. “It's fine with me, but we should see what Mr. Lee says. He's building a specific group for this adventure.”

That seemed to mollify him, but events were moving fast. From his vantage point on the wooded hillside, Liam could see the trucks moving along the valley road. One MRAP and two Humvees. “Drew, will you help me with this stretcher? We have to move now. Those trucks are nearly here. They might spot us.”

Unless they were very unlucky, the odds of being spotted with so many other campers around seemed pretty low. They also had some additional cover from the trees. Still, Liam felt moving out was better than waiting around to see if Hayes got out and walked right to them by random chance.

Leave nothing to chance. Thanks for drilling that into me, Dad.

“Grandma, I need you to lay down on this stretcher. Drew and I are going to carry you into the woods to hide. Mr. Lee should be back soon and he'll join us.”

Marty had done enough things the past week well out of her routine; she was able to roll with anything, it seemed. In just a couple of minutes, they were moving into the woods out of the camp.

A very young Scout was selected to tell Mr. Lee they'd started up the trail.

They were joined by four pre-teen boys who insisted on coming along as security. Their sharp sticks seemed menacing enough, though Liam had serious reservations they would be able to hold off a significant number of zombies. Or a single bad guy with a gun.

Still, you go with the army you have. Not the one you wish you had.

That sounds like a dad quote too.

He began walking up the trail with his mates, the fate of his parents foremost in his mind.

4

The Boy Scout reservation was an island of undisturbed forest nestled in the suburbs of St. Louis. It was bounded on the north by the interstate Liam and Grandma had crossed. In the west, it was bounded by a small blacktop road. On the east and south sides, it was bounded by suburban homes. Because it was ringed by fairly sizable hills, the valley was shielded against easy access by the zombie waves coming out of the city. They stuck to the highways and main roads, where prey was more accessible. Still, the miles of forest on the reservation was an excellent place to get lost—or hide.

On a nearby tree-covered hilltop, the Scouts had constructed a three-story wooden watchtower with stairs leading from one level to the next. Each twelve-foot by twelve-foot level was empty but bounded by a slatted railing, like you'd find on a backyard deck. It provided a convenient destination as it was essentially the only structure built outside the main valley. But it was a bit of a joke as a watchtower because it was built inside the canopy of trees, making it useless for any function but walking up and down stairs for exercise. Nothing beyond the hilltop itself could be seen through the full foliage of the trees.

The path leading up to the summit was steep but well-traveled, making it easy to keep a steady pace the whole way for the boys. They only needed to set Marty down a few times on the mile-long ascent. When they reached the tower, they helped her walk up the three steps to the first level and then sat her down on the top step.

“How are you, Grandma? How do you feel?”

“Oh I'm fine, Liam. Our walk over the hills earlier today took a lot out of me, but I'm doing OK. This time, going up the hill was much easier, thanks you strong young men.”

The younger boys immediately went to the top level of the tower, as every Scout before them had done—laughing and hollering the whole way up. It wasn't long before they came back down, in complete silence. “There are plaguers over the hill!” They were quiet, but forceful in the statement.

Liam and Drew went to the top level to confirm the report. Indeed, there was another wooded valley on the far side of the hill, narrower but otherwise similar to the one they'd just escaped. Zombies had found their way into the woods and were meandering around the open spaces down the hill.

“Yep, zombies are here.”

Most of them were in the valley. But some were moving up the hill, directly toward them. Did they see the kids running and laughing as they went up the tower?

Why can't I just have a nice relaxing afternoon?

He and Drew moved back down to the bottom level. For now, the zombies were out of sight.

“Grandma, we might have some company.”

“Oh dear.”

Drew and Liam hashed through their options. They could continue to carry Grandma around the woods, hoping to elude the zombies, but other than the trail back down the hill toward Hayes, there were no others. If they went off the trail, it would make carrying her difficult in the sloping terrain and dense underbrush.

“We could go back down to camp and try hiding.” Drew presented this as a question.

The only other option was to stick it out at the tower, hoping if any zombies made it up the hill, it wouldn't take much to put them down. His concern was for the safety of the boys he'd brought along. If the zombies trapped them on the tower, or if there were more zombies in the woods than they could immediately see, it could be the end of them all. Liam didn't want that responsibility.

One of the boys tapped Liam on the shoulder. “Liam, look over there. A plague—I mean, a zombie!”

The creature was walking along the path they'd just come up, cutting them off from the relative safety of the tent city. It was just one, but there could be more. Almost certainly were.

“OK, we'll stay put. If we're quiet, they may leave us alone. That will give Mr. Lee time to get here and then we'll see whether we need to fight or not.”

Ten minutes later, he knew things were not going to be peaceful and quiet. Several zombies came up the hill, almost invisible in the underbrush until they were a stone's throw away. They made for the group sitting on the first level of the tower. He watched as the first wave of them made enough noise to pull in those behind them.

Liam had his little hand gun, with a few rounds in the magazine, but he knew it was only useful as a last resort. It wasn't a loud gun by any definition, but it did make a distinctive crack that would be unmistakable if anyone within earshot was listening for it. If they were going to do this, he didn't want to survive only to see Hayes coming up the other side of the hill.

“OK, Drew and I will be the first line of defense. We'll stand here at the top of these steps and use our sticks to...impale...any zombies that come up to us.” He blanched at the thought of all the blood it would create. He knew it had to be done. “Can two of you guys give us your sticks?”

After taking the sticks of the two volunteers, he asked them to pull the two wooden poles out of the stretcher canvas and sharpen one end of each. They would make perfect spears. Each boy whipped out a pocket knife and set upon the stretcher as if their lives depended on it. The remaining two boys with their sharp sticks were to patrol the first floor behind Liam and Drew, ensuring none got over the railing around the platform. Marty was moved to the second level. Liam didn't think they would create a stack of dead zombies on this hilltop, but he knew better than to assume.

As he watched the handful of zombies appear out of the brush, he thought back to the experiment he'd seen with the zombies from Chicago. Those could climb. What kind of trouble would they be in here if these zombies happened to have come from a bus full of Chicago natives? He gripped his small spear a little tighter.

“Hey guys, if you see anything unusual, like they start climbing over the railing, let us know. Expect the unexpected!” There were five visible zombies now, all within about twenty yards of the tower.

What am I forgetting?

Drew drew first blood.

He was closest to the lead zombie. He braced himself, watched the pacing of the plainly dressed man, and plunged his light spear directly into its eye. He almost fell forward as the zombie tumbled backward. His stick was stuck inside the brain pan. Liam had to turn sideways to hold Drew, and Drew held tight to his weapon as it slid out with a wet slurping sound. He fell backward and pulled himself up the steps on his backside.

Liam couldn't help himself. His stomach was empty, but he threw up anyway.

The next zombie pulled up as his mate thudded to the ground.

Since Liam was the most prepared, he called out he would take it. He too braced his feet and readied himself for the impact, but when the zombie arrived his head moved higher than Liam anticipated, and the point of his stick went through the left side of his throat and neck. The profuse bloodletting caused him to throw up again, even as he wrestled with the stick to pull it out for another thrust. The zombie was not cooperating.

He's going to pull me.

Liam was about to release his stick and let the zombie take it when Drew launched his own spear for his second kill. His aim was true, and another eye puncture ended the conflict abruptly. Together, they were able to pull their weapons out and return to the top of the three-step flight.

Looking at what they'd just done with the spears, he imagined them as stakes, and the zombies as vampires—he'd just put a stake through the proverbial heart of these creatures. He and Victoria had wondered whether it was more appropriate to call these things vampires. They consumed blood like a vamp, and they could be killed with one swift blow to the head with a stake. The only difference he could see was that he didn't have to aim for its heart. Of course, he'd never had the time to experiment with where else a stake might kill a zombie—he'd just assumed, based on the literature, to aim for the head. Perhaps it was all academic anyway. As far as he knew, he was pretty much the only person who cared what the things were called. Most people simply called them infected or sick or plaguers.

He was desperately tired after his first encounter. The adrenaline was pumping hard, but his exertion at holding the spear while the zombie thrashed left him exhausted. He wasn't going to complain. Three other zombies were making their plays, and as one of the older boys, he had to do his duty.

The most distant zombie appeared to be going for the far side of the tower, where one of the younger boys would have to deal with it from behind the relative safety of the railing. The other two were closer, and heading for the same opening as the pair before.

The two dead zombies were sprawled on the ground just below the steps, the beginnings of the inevitable pile. Currently, they served as tripwires for the walking horrors now approaching. Rather than step around the bodies, the zombies tried to step on them. It was as if they couldn't be bothered to take a slightly longer route to the humans directly in front of them. It was their literal and figurative downfall.

As the first zombie fell over its friend, it landed clumsily on the first step. It then tried to claw its way up the steps, again as if standing would add too much time. This allowed Drew to push in his stick once again, just as the pining creature looked up at him.

Liam did nearly the same thing when the other zombie was on the step looking up. Liam's stick got stuck in the zombie, and broke.

Liam was embarrassed to be the one with a broken spear, but the feeling only lasted a second. He turned around in time to see one of the young boys lunge with his own little spear, but he missed the head of zombie poking over the side rail. Instead, he sunk it a little way into its shoulder. As his arms were extended, the zombie grabbed him and pulled him whole hog over the railing.

Liam looked up, trees all around were rustling with new arrivals.

That guy.

Liam threw down his useless stick and jumped down the small flight of steps to solid ground. He was on the run while pulling the gun out of his waistband. He only had his original nine rounds.

Five seconds and he was running full speed.

Seven seconds and he was around the corner.

Eight seconds and he was decelerating to a stop, thumbing the safety.

Ten seconds, he was taking aim at the zombie now wrestling the Scout.

Eleven seconds and he pulled the trigger.

Twelve and thirteen, he pulled two more times. At least one of those went through the zombie's head.

It tumbled over.

Next to him, the boy was still holding firm to his unbroken spear.

Liam grabbed him, pulled out the spear, and they both climbed over the railing closest to them—putting themselves into the safety of the little wooden platform once again. There was no time for celebrating. Drew was screaming for Liam to get back to the steps.

The forest was alive with the sound of rustling leaves.

5

As Liam ran back next to Drew, he recognized he had just saved the life of his young companion. Even if Hayes somehow heard the shots and knew where to look, it was worth it to save a life. It felt pretty good.

He was still carrying the spear he pulled from the zombie he'd shot, and he decided he would stick with it unless it broke again. He needed it more than the young boy, for now. Using the gun would be easier, but the sound and lack of ammo made it a tool of very last resort.

The two kids working the stretcher poles were still at it. The ends of their poles were just starting to get rounded with the blades of their knives. They were still out of the game, and the group was already a spear short.

Still no sign of Mr. Lee.

As he resumed his position next to Drew on the steps, Drew gave him a chuck on the shoulder. “Nice work, man. That was some fast thinking!”

“Thanks.” It was all he could muster amidst the rising and falling adrenaline bursts.

More zombies were coming into view. Several were indeed coming up from the open valley below them, but more were coming along the ridgeline.

“It's like they've been waiting out here for something to do.”

Liam couldn't disagree. Could they have all been alerted by the sounds they'd made earlier on the tower? Did they all get lost in the woods, only to awaken at the sounds of the small battle? None of it made any sense.

As the forest continued to spit out the dead, Liam took stock of their situation. The six of them could easily run down the mountain and be safe within a few minutes. But Grandma was on the second floor. He wasn't going to leave her. “Guys, things don't look too good here. If any of you want to escape down the hill, I wouldn't blame you. This may be your last chance.”

The two kids working on spears never looked up. They reaffirmed they were staying. Liam wondered if they just wanted to try out their new weapons.

Kids!

The young boy who was pulled over the railing looked much more hesitant, but he also said he'd stay and fight with everyone else. The last boy, still with his spear in hand, said he would fight until the zombies got him.

He decided to give the frightened boy something to do. “You—what's your name?”

“Bobby.”

“OK Bobby, I want you to sneak up to the third level and tell me what you see. Look down into the valley on this side. Also, if you see Mr. Lee, yell like your life depends on it. Sound like a plan?”

He nodded and started up the steps.

Preston was the other boy with a small spear. Liam told him he was responsible for the three other sides while he and Drew took care of the side with the steps. He also advised him to allow the zombies to come up to the railing and stand there, rather than kill them. When the boys were done with the long spears, they could use those to dispatch any that remained.

He didn't want to risk another boy getting pulled over the sides.

The first of the second wave of zombies was now up to the steps. The time for running had passed.

Drew and Liam became adept at slaying the zombies at the stairway. Since they had to crawl over their predecessors, the zombies became easy prey to pounce on with the little spears. They realized they didn't have to sink the weapons very far into the zombie heads, making it easier to pull them back out. They were able to dispatch another four or five in a row before things started to get serious again.

The recommendation to allow the zombies to park themselves outside the railing seemed like a good one, but the agitation of being so close to their prey drove the zombies mad with rage. Four of them began thrashing themselves against the railing. A slat broke inward, making a sound that caused all the boys to look where it came from.

“Uh oh!”

To Drew, he said, “One of us is going to have to go push those zombies off the railing.”

“I'm on it.” Drew left the steps, leaving Liam alone in the breach.

“Spear ready!”

One of the kids with the pole from the stretcher was ready with his crude weapon. He stood up with it and realized how unwieldy an eight-foot spear could be. Instead of heroic slaying, he was more likely to knock down one of the other boys.

“Two boys to each big spear! Little guy in back to hold it, bigger guy in front to guide it and lunge it in. Go!”

He thought about taking the big spear for himself, but he was finally getting adept at using the smaller spear. No sense messing with a good thing.

Soon the second big spear was done, Bobby came back down, and the four younger boys were learning on the job how to properly execute an attack with the crude weapons.

The stronger kid in the front would call out what zombie he was aiming for, and then the pair would run a few paces while the spear was guided home by the person in front. Because the spears were large and smooth, they seemed to go in and come out with relative ease. It was also more forgiving on where it impacted, as it would severely damage the zombie's head wherever it hit.

Back. Forth. Zombie skewered.

Back. Forth. Zombie mushed.

Some cheers.

Back. Forth. Zombie drilled.

Hooting and hollering.

Back. Forth. Zombie hollowed out.

Trash-talking and high-fiving.

The kids were starting to enjoy the task. This did not make Liam feel good. In all his reading, he couldn't remember too many instances of bloodlust in young kids, but he had to believe it was better to be overzealous in battle than crying in the corner. Right?

He wondered if anything was going to be “normal” again in these turbulent times? Certainly growing up wasn't going to be the same anymore. Victoria had wondered if killing was going to be a requirement in the new era of zombies. Before she herself was killed...

That's irony right there.

He looked around and was pleased to see they'd done away with all the zombies trying to attack them over the past ten or fifteen minutes. Most lay dead or incapacitated in the close semi-circle around the tower. Some had stumbled off to expire deeper in the woods.

They were taking it all in, celebrating amongst themselves, when Mr. Lee coughed from a little ways down the hill behind them. He was trying to get their attention without scaring them, or getting shot.

He was with six older Boy Scouts and two adult men, all carrying rifles.

More irony. The battle had just ended.

Chapter 13: Maskirovka

After arriving at the watch tower, Mr. Lee and his team set up a perimeter to wait for more zombies. There were still many lurkers in the next valley, but none were on their way up. For now, the group had some time to think.

“I'm sorry it took us so long to get up here. Your friend Hayes caught me while I was in the administration building getting a couple of extra guns. He wanted to talk to the whole committee, and since I was in the building...”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“So, this is what I know. Obviously, it was the guy you thought it was. By coming up the road, he showed us he has the MRAP and at least two Humvees under his command. And that MRAP has that sophisticated Gatling gun up top. Wow. He seemed positive you were in the camp, Liam. He didn't come out and say it, but he might as well. For instance, he knew the approximate time you arrived. He said you were a Boy Scout. He knew, or at least assumed, you'd find friends here. I think he suspects someone was hiding you, but he never accused us directly.”

Lee sat down on a step to the second level so Grandma could hear.

“The odd thing is, he said he didn't have enough manpower to sweep the camp, but he would be back tomorrow with the force he needed. He was very friendly about it, but there was a threat there too. The rest of the committee was thankfully tight-lipped, but I'm not sure how long they'll mind their tongues if a serious military force arrives and starts ripping up tents looking for you. He didn't stay long, and he seemed unnaturally happy. He bade his farewell for the day, and then got back in his Humvee and took off. Once he left, I was able to collect my guns, grab a few boys, and head into the woods.”

Liam knew Hayes had a plan. Could he know for sure they were in the camp? Was he using a drone? A tracking device of some sort? He had visions of tiny homing beacons being placed on their clothing, or in a pocket, but when could they have done it? It seemed very unlikely. Unless...

Liam ran upstairs to find Grandma lying prone on the hard wooden planks, in tears.

“Grandma, what happened, are you OK?”

He had to be quiet as he didn't want to alert the zombies.

“I'm fine, Liam. My back was in such pain while I was sitting. I just had to roll over and take the weight off. I didn't want to call down for fear of bringing more of those things here. I could hear what you did down there though. Good work getting your friends through the worst of it. I'm very proud of you.”

Here she was lying in pain, and she was thinking of him. He was humbled by her perseverance. He helped her sit up again while he continued. “Thanks, Grandma. I have to ask you a question. Back at the camp when they took your blood. Did they give you anything? Something to hold, maybe. Or put in your pocket?”

Then, Liam saw it. How did he miss it before? A thin clear elastic band was around her ankle, and on that band was something that appeared as a flattish-round metallic object. About the size of a dime, but a little thicker.

The oldest trick in the book. The Trojan Horse.

“I don't remember them giving me anything, Liam. I was already lying down and they drew my blood right there on the spot.”

Liam got out his pocket knife, quickly cut the band and pocketed the beacon. She didn't seem to notice. “Will you be OK for a couple minutes? We're going to leave soon. I'm going to get you somewhere more comfortable.”

“I'll survive.”

Liam ran downstairs and showed the tiny object to Mr. Lee. “We have to get rid of this thing, but where do we put it? They could be using this right now to surround us.”

How long had it been since Hayes left the camp? Half an hour? Plenty of time to get men up on this hill.

“We could do like the cartoons and put the homing device on a rabbit or something.”

“Or on a zombie.”

“We could put it on a snake so he'll take it underground.”

“What about a bird?”

All the kids seemed to want to offer better and better suggestions.

Mr. Lee considered, and came up with the only rock-solid course of action.

“We'll break into two groups. Liam, you and Drew and your brave team can take Grandma back down the hill to your campsite. It's getting late in the day and you two need to get some rest. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to bring some hard challenges for us all.

“As for the second group, I'll carry this thing with my team to a point bordering our forest and try to put it on a zombie or something so it continues to move. That will keep Hayes busy tonight.”

“Tomorrow, we have to get you two out of this area—at least for a while—so Hayes no longer can claim this camp is harboring a fugitive. Even if he tears the place up looking for you, we'll be safe. If the committee spills the beans, they won't be able to give you away, either.”

Liam looked around at Mr. Lee and the dozen or so boys trying to help him. He was suddenly caught up in an emotional moment. He had to look down when he said it. “Why are you guys helping us like this? We're just a couple of nobodies passing through your turf.”

Mr. Lee didn't miss a beat, “Everybody is somebody when the big D—Death—is chomping at all our heels. I'd help anyone who stumbled out of this forest like you did, although it helps that you're a Scout yourself and that your grandmother is such a sweet lady.”

The other boys piled on, explaining in a dozen different ways why they found helping people to be its own reward. But one of the new, older, boys had a response which stuck with Liam for a long time.

“Because doing good things for living people beats killing the dead again and again.”

Liam was overcome. He refused to tear up, but he nearly drew his own blood biting his tongue to keep from doing so. After accepting he and Grandma had to leave, he knew this was exactly the type of place he wanted to end up.

If anything good and decent could survive the new type of world skulking around its borders.

That was very much up in the air.

2

Grandma perked up after she was off the floor and they started back down the hill.

Two boys led the procession, toting their little spears. Liam was carrying Grandma with Drew; He was on the high side, closest to her head. Two more boys were behind him, protecting the back.

“Liam, you can leave me here with these good people and you can go back home to find your mom and dad. I hate slowing you down so much. Promise me you'll think about it.”

“I told you, it's you and me the whole way.” As it came out of his mouth, he knew the time was coming when that couldn't hold true. He couldn't take her everywhere with him. Eventually she'd need a home. A place where she could be comfortable. Reasonably safe.

“Now Liam, you know Hayes is going to find us. There are fewer people and more zombies every day. It won't take him long since we can't get very far on foot.”

She was right. But he wasn't ready to leave her. If Hayes did come back, she'd be a sitting duck. No, he needed a way to get her home where Mom and Dad could help him make the right decisions for her. His mind was searching for the elusive solution as they descended the hill.

As they rounded a corner of the trail, the two boys in the lead practically skidded to a halt. One of them had enough time to raise his spear, but the other did not. That boy was knocked over by a zombie who had been standing in a particularly dense section of trees. Two more zombies poured out after their leader.

Fight or flight? His Biology teacher would be proud he remembered that.

“Grandma, Drew and I are going to set you down here on the path. We need the poles again to use as spears.”

They didn't wait for an answer. Grandma was on the ground and they were sliding out the poles.

Their task completed, they looked ahead again. Both boys were dead. Just like that.

I should have just shot them.

He remembered he didn't have to be silent anymore.

“Drew, hold up.” He pulled out his pistol and made short work of two zombies, but the third was lucky. He did get a shot off, but it glanced the side of the zombie's skull rather than pierce it. Drew was off balance from complying with Liam's commands. The zombie was able to take him down, sending them both tumbling off the trail and into the brush. Liam looked at Grandma and ordered the other two boys to look after her while he jumped into the bushes to help his friend.

“Liammm!”

Drew and the zombie had rolled together for ten or fifteen yards. They landed up against a large pine tree. The zombie was on top, but in a weird angle. He was sideways, but was regaining his bearings and moving for the head.

Liam was running full speed down the hill and he found himself looking down on the two fighters. He realized he couldn't shoot the zombie in the head because it was right over the top of Drew. He used precious seconds to get a better angle.

“Hold him off for just a second, Drew!”

The zombie was an average-sized man, though larger than its prey. Drew was fighting, trying to keep the man's head away from his. He was able to lock his elbow on his own chest and hold his opponent's neck, but he cried out in pain as the man's weight started to bear down.

Liam was right there. He only needed a few more seconds.

Drew let out a painful scream just as Liam loosed his first shot. He hit the zombie square in the temple. For once, there was very little blood. The zombie just stopped moving.

Together they were able to push the dead—deader—zombie off to the side, and it careened a few more yards down the leaf-covered hillside. It came to rest in some thick undergrowth.

Drew showed he was all right and un-bitten, but he seemed to have strained something in his arm and he could no longer bend it properly. They both reacted to more screams from up the hill, where they'd left Grandma.

Liam pulled Drew to his feet, put his gun back in his waistband, and together they began struggling back up the slope.

I wonder if any of this is poison ivy?

He was deathly allergic to the stuff. His mind was doing its own thing again. It liked to go on walkabout when Liam's body was under a lot of stress.

“Bobby!”

The child's scream was a panicked one.

They were nearly back up to the trail, when the young boy Bobby, went running full speed by them, further down the hill. He had dropped his spear and never looked at Liam or Drew as he went by. He tumbled but got back up and continued until he was out of sight into more dense foliage.

“Grandma!”

As Liam arrived back on the scene, he was shocked to see Preston locked in a struggle with a zombie girl—about the same age and size as Preston—who seemed particularly angry and bloody.

“Hang on, Preston!”

Liam covered the distance to his young friend in just a few seconds and gave the girl a powerful kick to her side. The momentum of the kick broke a few ribs in the zombie, that much was plain to hear, and the girl rolled off her victim. Liam noticed his shoe was slopped with the girl's blood. It evoked anger for reasons he couldn't explain.

He knelt on one knee over Preston, pulled out his pistol, and put two shots directly into the face of the menacing threat. She had regained her feet and thus fell backward and down the hill when Liam's shots ended her attack.

Preston, now lying motionless below him, started to quietly cry.

His anger for Bobby was boiling over. He shouted, “Bobby! You left Preston to die!” He followed up with some expletives, which weren't normally in his vocabulary.

Liam wasn't blessed with a loud voice, but his anger amplified what he had. They probably heard him in the camp.

Good for them.

“If I ever see Bobby...”

He felt a hand on his arm. “Liam. It’s OK. I'm OK. He's just a little boy.”

His anger went from boil to a medium simmer.

“Are there more zombies up here?”

He scanned the wooded hillside, but none were visible.

Drew and Preston checked each other for bruises and broken bones while Liam and Grandma continued their conversation. “Liam, things are going to continue to get dangerous no matter where we are. You should leave me here in camp so I'm not a liability weighing down every decision you have to make to get home.”

“I can't give up on you that easily. We've come so far. What would I do if I left you here today and the camp was overrun and destroyed tomorrow? I'd never forgive myself for leaving you.”

She chuckled at his statement. “Oh, Liam. There isn't any place on Earth you could put me where there isn't a chance of zombies overrunning it. It's just the gamble we all have to take now. At least until we see who comes out the other side of this thing and can begin to pick up the pieces. Then maybe we can rest a little easier.”

“No! I'm not leaving you.” And then to leave himself some wiggle room for the day he knew would arrive eventually, “At least not here. Not today.”

Grandma seemed to relent.

The older boys put the spears back into the stretcher and resumed carrying Grandma off the hill. Preston wouldn't walk in the front, so Drew took the lead while holding the stretcher. It seemed to be the only workable solution.

They all passed the two dead boys off to the side of the trail, but no one seemed to have the energy or desire to look at them. Two more souls claimed by the zombies.

3

The journey down the hill was slow. Several times, Drew and Liam nearly lost their grip of Grandma's stretcher as they slipped on dirt and gravel on the steep trail. A few times, they had to stop for breaks to rest their hands.

At long last, they could see the colorful tents in the valley through the trees.

“We should put Grandma in her tent and let her get some sleep. You and I should go see the council so we can figure out what she and I will do next. We need to leave the camp. Maybe they'll have advice on the best way to do it. Preston, you can go to your parents, if you want.”

The younger boy said nothing. Liam didn't know if that was good or bad, but after what he'd just gone through, he was inclined to cut him some slack.

They were almost at the clearing of the valley when they heard movement in the woods to their right. Liam judged they should keep moving no matter what came out of the trees. Preston started to run ahead of them, and was quickly into the tents. The two litter carriers made the safety of the valley just in time to see the tall weeds separate right behind them.

A small female deer squeezed through.

Liam nearly fainted. Drew never looked back.

“It's OK. Just a deer!”

But just as he said it, he heard more rustling.

This time Liam looked behind him in time to see—another doe pop out.

“Hold up!”

He nearly pulled the stretcher out of Drew's hands he slowed down.

“Sorry about that. Look behind us.”

As they paused on the edge of the tent city, several more deer popped out, heading toward the campers. He noticed a few more deer further down the line had also come out of the woods. One savvy hunter must have had a bow at the ready. He downed one of the females; it would be a nice meal for someone.

He actually scanned the ground for mice and rats. Those were what he expected to see fleeing a sinking ship.

“OK, let's get moving again. I've got a bad feeling here.”

They returned to the loaner tent without incident. Marty was more than happy to have a place to lay down in relative comfort, even though the late afternoon heat was pretty intense. More so for those who were fighting and carrying burdens. Not that anyone was complaining.

After explaining to Grandma where he was going, and after shaking off a dozen questions from other Scouts in nearby tents, Liam and Drew headed to the administration building at a slow jog.

“How do you think you guys will get home from here? How far do you have to go?”

Liam had to think about it. He'd been in a car several times on the windy county roads between here and his home, but he never had to be concerned about mileage. Surely not more than twenty or twenty-five miles as the crow flies. In better times, that would be a long day's hike, or a couple hours on a bike.

On a bike.

That would work, wouldn't it? He recalled something from one of his favorite zombie books—the hero used a bike and trailer to pull his infant son to safety. If he could find a bike and a kid's trailer, he thought he'd be able to get Grandma into the small seat so he could pull her along behind him. A book might just save their lives. With any luck, they'd be home in just a few hours...assuming the streets in the county weren't as bad as those in the city.

“I live due east of here, near the Mississippi River. Say thirty minutes by car, however far that is.”

“If things work out, I'd like to volunteer to come with you guys. We make a good team.”

“No doubt!”

Liam was pleased to have someone volunteer, but he had to wonder what would drive a boy to leave his mom and dad here to go back out into the world. Risk it all for someone you didn't really know. Was that good or bad on balance? Was he suicidal? On a vendetta? Mad at mom and dad? He realized how complicated relationships had become now that every decision was colored by the lens of the end of the world.

He had an inspiration. He paused from his run to speak with Drew. “Will you do me a favor? While I'm at the admin building, go make sure your parents are OK with you leaving the camp with me. I'm not sure when we'd return, though I'd like to come back. You might be out for a long time.”

“Cool, Liam. I'm on it!” He took off into the maze of tents, lost immediately from view.

Liam resumed the short run to see the council, and he let himself in and walked right up to the crowded table. The line of people waiting was shorter in the late afternoon than it was in the morning, but there were enough people to intimidate him on any normal day. Today was not a normal day.

“I need to talk to the council. Now!”

He took the steps to the second floor two at a time.

Near-death battles give me courage.

He had a few moments to himself to look out upon the tent city from the second floor. He was looking south down the valley, the shadows of the late afternoon were well formed by the surrounding hills, and he was amazed again how many people were there. They had plenty of water, but food—

“Hello, young man. You and your grandma have caused quite a commotion.”

Liam watched as the council made its way up the steps. The oldest gentleman had to be helped up by one of his younger comrades. The sight made him think of Grandma, and his bravado drained away.

“Hello. I'm sorry for barging in, but it's really important I see you.”

“Of course.”

“We sent Lee up to find you. I assume he arrived in good order? Did he tell you what happened down here?”

Oh my. Where do I begin?

“Well, yes. Mr. Lee found us and told me Mr. Hayes said he'd be back tomorrow.”

Liam kept the part about the tracking device to himself. He had a vision pop into his head, and he saw his dad doing one of his silly skits where he pretended to be a conspiracy theorist—tinfoil hat and all. It was his subconscious informing him of the need for OPSEC. Operational Security. Only tell them the bare minimum of facts to get what you need.

“Mr. Lee is still out in the woods. We found a large group of zombies in the next valley and he said he wanted to try to lead them in a different direction to protect the camp. His team went with him. You all should know that we saw some zombies on our way into camp, not far up the hill. We killed three of them, but they killed two youngsters before we could get them.”

The council woman looked like she was going to say something, but Liam pushed on.

“Look, I don't want anything to happen to this place. In fact, I want to bring my family here when its safe. If Hayes is coming back tomorrow, I want to be gone before he gets here. If you can get me two bikes with child trailers, I can pull my grandma and leave you in peace.”

“Why do you need two of each?”

“The second bike is so I can bring back a crapload of guns.”

4

The council seemed to consider his offer. He didn't really expect much in the way of resistance. He wasn't asking for much, and getting him out the door would do more for them than it would for him.

The oldest member of the council turned to Liam. “Why don't you just take a car? I'm sure we could get one for you. Can you drive?”

“I don't have too far to go. A few hours on a bike. I want to ride in the very early morning, hopefully when most people are asleep. If we took a car, we would be heard for miles and would be a target. I saw cars ransacked on the highway, and was in a military convoy that ran into lots of roadblocks out there.”

“Hmm. Smart kid.”

The deliberation didn't take long. Liam could hear them discussing other options he hadn't even thought about. Horses? The camp did have horses, but they agreed they were too valuable to give up. A boat? There were a few canoes in the chaos of the camp. People brought all sorts of gear. The Meramec River wasn't far away, and a casual float down the river would take the boat very near Liam's house. But not close enough. Grandma would still have a long walk from wherever the boat ride ended. ATV's were too loud. Liam couldn't operate a motorcycle. Someone even brought a small plane, an ultralight, but that was wrong for all sorts of reasons. In the end, the bikes seemed to offer the safest method of travel for Liam and his fragile passenger.

As expected, they allowed him to go, and provided the bikes and trailers. They scared up a map of the area, which Liam realized was critical to his plan because there were so many twists and turns in the hilly country. He would never have thought of that.

They seemed hesitant to allow him to return with weapons, but Liam explained how the two young boys could have been saved if only they had real weapons, and not just sticks. He bent the truth just a little, they really died because they let themselves be surprised by the zombies...

It all happens so fast in real life.

Liam had two items on his agenda for the evening. The first was to talk to Drew about an idea he had for getting both bikes safely on the road. The second was to get a few hours of sleep.

He caught up with Drew back at Grandma's tent.

“Hey, Liam. I kind of lied to you about my parents. I'm here by myself.”

“Are your parents outside the camp?”

Drew had a look of embarrassment. And sadness.

Oh crap.

“They're dead, aren't they?”

The other boy nodded.

“I'm so sorry. But why didn't you just tell me that when we met?”

“It feels better to pretend they're alive.”

Liam considered whether that was true. Was he pretending Victoria was still alive? Even thinking about her now made him wince with pain, but what about all the other hours of the day when he wasn't directly thinking of her? “I lost my friend, too. I don't know what to say about your parents, but you can hang with me however long you want.”

Drew lit up slightly at that. He was clearly trying to put on a brave face.

“OK, wingman. I want to go over my plan with you. Step into my office.”

The two boys sat on the ground in front of Grandma's tent, talking in the hushed voices of a palace coup. It was dark by the time they had everything fleshed out. When they were finished, Drew seemed impressed. “Where did you think of such a complicated plan?”

“It's called maskirovka. A Russian word for deception. It's one of the odd things about history my dad taught me. I'll tell you about it when we reach my house and we're high-fiving.” He laughed at the thought. Willing it to be true.

“For the next part of my plan, I'm going to sleep.”

He crawled into the tent next to Grandma, sprawling on the open floor since he had no sleeping bag. It didn't matter to him in the least. He set the alarm on his watch for 3 a.m., and immediately dozed off. It felt as if a moment later his alarm was ringing. He turned it off, but lay there for a few minutes in a dreamy fog. He'd been having a dream about Victoria. He was stepping on her hand over and over and he couldn't make himself stop.

He sat up in the tent, and asked Grandma if she was awake. She started in, like she had also been thinking in the darkness. “Liam, I heard some of your plan while you and Drew were discussing it. Even if it doesn't work, I'm proud of you for trying it. Getting us all the way home on bikes would be an amazing feat. Hayes would never expect you to do such a thing.”

Inwardly, he smiled. He knew Hayes would be tracking some dead zombie up on the north side of the camp boundary. They'd slip out the south. Dad would call the deception a force multiplier.

See dad, I did listen.

“Well Grandma, should we get to it?”

It wasn't long before they were organized and moving. Liam walked Grandma down the path to the main road, where the bikes were waiting. Two of the council members were there as well. Making sure they really left, perhaps.

Drew was a few minutes late, but he arrived in good order. He was carrying a small rifle on his back. He saw Liam eyeing it. “It was my dad's. I only have a couple rounds, so it isn't much use.” He started that statement happy, and ended sad. Liam figured it was because he couldn't pretend his father was alive while he said that.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” was Liam's reply. He wanted to keep things positive with Drew.

Liam carefully loaded Grandma into one of the trailers. It was built to hold two children sitting side by side and facing backward, but the diminutive lady fit in the same space rather well.

“You kids don't have a pillow handy, do you?” She said it as a joke, but the female council person ran back inside the administration building and retrieved a small camp pillow. It wasn't much, but Grandma was grateful. “I'll make sure it makes its way back to you when I'm done.”

“No, you keep it. I don't do much sleeping here anyway.”

There were no crowds to see them off. As they pulled away, Liam looked back and only saw the two leaders waving goodbye. Mr. Lee hadn't returned from his task.

Liam whispered over to Drew as they glided down the gently grade of the valley road. “I guess I expected more people. I don't know why.”

Drew nodded, but focused on his driving.

They passed tent after tent, weaving in and out of parked campers, only stopping once to adjust their bikes. Soon enough, they were at the front entrance and heading for open road. Lots of cars were parked in the fields nearby. There was no room inside the camp anymore. If there were guards at the front gate, Liam didn't see them.

Fifteen minutes later, they were huffing up and down the hilly back road. The moon was bright enough, but still low on the horizon. It would give them enough light to ride the paved roads with nice yellow lines down the middle.

They pedaled without incident to the first intersection. It was a Y-split giving them two options in the proper direction toward home. Liam's plan kicked in. “OK guys,” he was talking loud enough so Grandma could hear as well. “This is where we go in different directions. Drew and I have been over the routes and we're both taking a different way to my house. If anyone is following us, they won’t be able to get us both.”

“I trust you Liam. Lead on.”

“Me too, Liam. I'll reach your house. I promise.”

“You know what to tell my parents if you find them?”

“Don't sweat it. I'll tell them what you told me.”

I trust you too, Drew.

Liam reached out to shake Drew's hand. He didn't know why he did it, but it just felt proper given the gravity of the situation. Drew reciprocated with a big smile. “We got this!”

Liam watched as he pedaled away to the left. Looking right, he knew his journey would take him on the alternate path. Hayes couldn't be on both.

Like Grandma said, everyone had to take chances in the new world. Liam knew he was taking a big chance now.

5

Riding on the back roads was uneventful for the first hour. It had been a long time since he'd ridden a bicycle and the trailer added some heft on the hilly terrain. It also tended to sway if he got going too fast and he was worried about having an accident on the dark roadways.

He arrived at the first major cross street he'd face on his way home. It was a four-lane highway with two lanes in each direction separated by a grassy median. The intersection was something out of a war zone. He paused while he took in the scene in the low pre-dawn light.

None of the stoplights were working, nor were any of the tall light posts. The intersection itself was crammed with cars, as if people decided they were going to ram themselves through with or without the aid of the signals. Cars had stacked up in all directions with several wrecked vehicles surrounding the whole mess. Some were charred hulls, scoured clean down to bare metal.

One large concrete mixer had hit the whole congregation at high speed and plowed into the middle of the intersection before it lost all its kinetic energy. Its engine bay was a blackened, burnt-out mess. The cars it had hit were much worse off. Very hard to see if anyone had been in those cars.

To his right was a place he knew from his younger days—the county library. It was a small building as libraries go, but it was relatively new and Liam remembered it with sarcastic wit as the place that never had anything he wanted to read. Apparently, this area had no interest in zombie or horror books.

Y'all should have read those books!

Now no one would ever get the chance. It had been burned to the ground, along with a fast food place and a gas station. Maybe the gas station caught fire and torched the other two nearby buildings? Maybe some angry residents took out their frustrations on these places? Maybe it was a freak lightning strike? Any number of scenarios could have happened here.

There were no people around. So he began pedaling. He had to ride well up the cross street to find a gap in the traffic. He then had to walk his bike through the pile up of cars and follow the far side of the road back to the intersection. While walking, he saw some of the cars had moving creatures inside. The windows, much like the car exteriors, were blackened from soot from the nearby fire. He kept as silent and as low as possible as he rolled by them.

There were several grooves in the grass off the side of the raised highway. Vehicles were still getting through this intersection, but had to be a daredevil to drive along the canted hillside—the only route clear of debris. A bicycle could still fit on the flatter portion of the road grade. A good thing too, as the hill looked very dangerous.

Once on the other side of the intersection, he could look back on the devastation. The mangled traffic. The hulks of cars. The hollowed out buildings. Nothing of value was left in sight.

God help us all if this is happening everywhere.

As he was standing there, a man ran up behind him. He had been hiding behind some nearby clutter. He had a gun trained on Liam before he could even consider riding away.

“What's your business here?” The look in the man's eyes was not right. No doubt some things happened here which would affect anyone.

“I mean you no harm. Me and my grandma are just passing through.”

“Grandma, eh? Mind if I take a look?”

Liam hesitated. Unsure. He thought of the last man who held a gun to his head to rob him. Someone had shot that guy at the last possible second. He didn't think anyone was going to save him this time, assuming this guy had the same bad intentions.

“Umm, she's asleep. We have nothing of value.”

The man wouldn't take no for an answer. He moved to the back of the trailer, looking at Liam as if daring him to stop him. When he reached the side of the trailer, he peeked into a gap in the canvas’ outer shell. He started to giggle.

He then tore off the canvas flap so he could see the rear compartment.

He was bawling in laughter.

“You are more messed up than me, carrying a woman like this around. I salute you!”

He threw down the flap again and took a bow.

“Please, sir. You and your grandma are welcome to proceed.”

He was bent low. Liam needed no second invitation.

The laughter receded as he rolled away.

He felt better once back into the isolated country road network. The trees provided cover from the living and the dead.

The light of the morning was growing. It had taken him fifteen minutes to get around the blockage, and now the sun was blaring bright just beneath the horizon. Soon it would be visible.

Pedaling along, he would often see zombies standing in stream beds, open fields, and in the woods. Alone, they weren't much to look at. He could probably walk up to any one of them and spear them out of their misery. Were they standing out here waiting for a human to happen by? Did they pause in the night, as a type of sleep period? What made them surge in larger groups? And what special skills, if any, did the zombies around here possess? The colonel said there were many different flavors of zombies in America now. What were they like in Alaska? So much he didn't understand about these new creatures.

As he coasted on the bike, he reached over his shoulder to reassure himself the small spear was still strapped to his back. What he did know was that anytime he was spotted, the zombies would react with anger and begin moving in his direction, even if they had no hope of catching him. Much like his journey on the train, he seriously wondered if every zombie he was now passing would show up at his doorstep at some point in the future like a bloodhound finding its way home. They were able to follow the train. Could they follow something smaller and quieter?

He picked up his pace.

On one long straight stretch of road, Liam was distressed to see people standing in the middle of the pavement in the distance. He stopped his bike and tried to ascertain if they were living or dead, but he couldn't see them clearly.

Push through or find an alternate route? The age-old gamer's dilemma.

He looked at his map and decided a detour would take him in a wide arc that he simply didn't want to add to his day. With the rising sun, he'd undoubtedly encounter more people, and the sooner he could get home, the less friction he'd have with the natives.

He pushed.

As he got closer, he knew they were humans. It was a group of about six men. It was a roadblock. He could turn around, but they'd already seen him. Plus, they had a truck nearby.

He decided he'd have to go through.

Playing it cool, he rode right up to the men with a purpose, stopping about twenty feet short and then raising his hands.

The men looked rough. The type of country boys with overalls and filthy ball caps. Liam felt the knock of panic.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

The men laughed at their own—probably well-worn—roadblock joke.

“I'm Liam Peters. Boy Scout. I'm on a mission for the Boy Scout camp out by Interstate 44.”

“Boy Scout, eh? What you got in the back?”

He didn't want any snoopers if he could help it, but that seemed nearly impossible to avoid. “I'm trying to get my 104-year-old grandma to my home about ten miles thataway.” He was pointing straight ahead.

“You live around here?”

“Yes, sir. I live at Hwy M and Interstate 55.”

Liam knew how to work the odd cultural phenomenon shared by residents of the St. Louis area. Everyone in the metro area gets judged by where they went to high school. You say your school, and a stranger says theirs. In that instant, both parties know quite a bit about the other. Social status. Geographic location. Whether they were religious. Whether they were good at sports. By a lucky coincidence, most of these young men went to the very same high school where Liam was soon going to be entering his senior year—assuming school ever started again. None of them had been on the track team, but most had been football and baseball players. They asked about coaches, teachers, and the condition of their old playing fields.

One of the men, named Ty Owens, seemed to be the leader of this motley outfit. He had a mouth full of chaw and an International Harvester hat beaten all to hell. But Liam realized he was just as scared as he was about what was happening.

“I hear ya. Yeah, once things started falling apart, my buddies and I all made for the biggest farm in the group,” he pointed over his shoulder, “which turned out to be my daddy's place. We brought our families here and have been stopping people, trying to get any news of the outside world for the past week now. Can you tell us anything?”

Liam actually laughed. “Where do I begin!”

He told them about his journey out of the city with Grandma. He breezed over his encounters with zombies—they'd dealt with a few during the initial wave—and focused on Grandma and Victoria. He then told them of the fall of the city of Arnold. The collapse of St. Louis. The mess on the highways, and of strange military convoys. He specifically told them to avoid Hayes if he came through with his MRAP. He also took a chance by revealing more about the Boy Scout redoubt.

“The camp where I'm coming from is filled to the brim with industrious people who survived the initial collapse and zombie hordes, but they have no food. I'd suggest you go there to find refuge, but I don't know how long they will survive there.” He made as if nodding at their guns. “They could also use help with security.”

“But no food, eh?”

“No, they are in the woods without much chance for agriculture. It's a good place to hide from the zombies, but longer term, they are going to have to rethink their position.”

“Once I get Grandma home and get my parents, I'm planning on going back there. Unlike most of the world I've seen, they are the only ones actually working together to survive. Well, and now you guys.”

“You're welcome to stop here on your way back. We'll help you in any way we can. Just be careful out there. We've seen some real characters go through here. Some with guns blazing.”

They gave him a few freshly picked strawberries and allowed him to go on his way.

They allowed Grandma her privacy, and for that, Liam was most appreciative. “Goodbye, Grandma,” they said while they waved him through, “nice to meet y'all.”

For the first time in his life, he thanked his father for moving them so far out into the suburbs they were bordering on rural.

I need to start keeping a list of things to thank Mom and Dad for when I see them.

6

Marty fell asleep as soon as she was positioned inside the tiny trailer. She wasn't entirely comfortable, but it beat that miserable ride in the back of the military truck.

Soon she was dreaming.

Marty's vision focused as she became aware of her altered state, but it was very dark. She waited while her eyes adjusted to the low light. As if on cue, she heard the clops of running feet heading in her direction. A small group of young people were in a narrow corridor between two tall buildings.

“Help!” One of the young women cried out from the back. Four or five people ran by Marty as she stood there. Only one stopped to look back. As her brown hair swished away from her face, it was evident to Marty she was watching Victoria.

“I'm so sorry,” was all that Victoria could get out for her beleaguered fellow-runner before she resumed her own escape. Even in the darkness, Marty could see the girl on the ground had been brought down by one of her pursuers.

Before she could get moving again, one of the infected pounced on Victoria from the shadows, pushing her to the ground, both tumbling—Victoria screaming in surprise while the attacker merely snarled. They came to a rest at Marty's feet, causing her to stumble backward into some trash cans.

The plague victim was on top of Victoria—he was much larger and quite aggressive. She screamed wildly for a few seconds, but then seemed to reconsider. She quieted down, to just a quiet whisper of crying. Her eyes were closed.

“Victoria, don't give up.”

A final yelp was soon lost to the victory bark of the dead man pawing away at her. The man's teeth were hovering over Victoria's jugular. It was only a matter of time…

Marty looked away—and was grabbed and pulled into a dark doorway.

It was Al. Finally, he was back.

“I was beginning to think you'd left me. After seeing Clara, but not you, I thought I was on my own.”

They were inside the building. Al was leading her through dark hallways, but appeared to know where he was going. “There are many layers to this battle. Clara represents a difficult one for me to solve. This memory is far more important to you. The clues it provides are manifold, if you're willing to see them.”

“This is a memory? But Victoria didn't die in a dark alley. She was killed in Liam's home.”

“Are you sure? About either?”

Al wasn't known for speaking directly about anything. Was Victoria attacked in a dark alley? It seemed impossible or she would never have survived that night. No one gets up and walks away from an attack like that. Could that memory be real? She knew for certain Victoria was killed by Hayes. She'd seen it with her own eyes.

“Al, stop. Where are we going?” Marty realized with some genuine shock she was being pulled through the darkness of the structure and was running the whole way. Was it magic?

“Not magic. That's ridiculous, Marty. We're in your head, remember? Anything is possible. But right now, we have somewhere we need to be. There's something I must show you as it happens.”

They ran for several minutes. While scary on the face of it, Marty was reveling in the feeling of the wind at her face. She'd not run with any speed in probably 60 years, and seldom any further than the length of her backyard with her children.

They came out in a large space, outdoors. It was the same celestial waterfall she'd seen back on that railroad bridge as they escaped St. Louis. She remembered the whole event with clarity now that she had returned. The waterfall, she knew, represented all the known planets in existence—each drop was in fact a tiny representation of a planet. Marty couldn't even guess at the number she was seeing. The waterfall began high up; she couldn't see the top. It descended into a small pool of water surrounded by vibrant green grass and several types of strange flowers. The pool drained down off a cliff, out of sight. It was much as she remembered it, but there were some changes.

Next to the waterfall she noticed a large glass window centered on a dark metal door set into a rock face. Al was walking directly to the window. When he looked in he put both arms up on the door frame as if catching his breath.

“We aren't too late.”

Marty walked to the door, trying to look in. Al, noticing this, moved out of the way. Inside, Marty could see a well-lit room with a small wooden table in the middle. She thought she recognized the table, but she had no frame of reference for what was sitting on it.

“No, you wouldn't, Marty. That is one of the very first personal computers. My oh my, Marty, you really haven't touched a computer, have you? You're seeing what your mind projects when you think of a computer. Wow. That is an original 8088, I think.”

“But what does it mean?”

“I'm sorry, Marty; I don't have time to explain it all, but I'll show you what I can. First, I want you to notice all the other windows in this room. Do you see them?”

She looked through her window and could see several other doorways with their own portals. They were all darkened and she couldn't see anyone standing as she was, looking in.

“But they're there. Each window you see is a representation of someone trying to access—what's inside that room. I know you want to know what it is. But I cannot influence you at this critical juncture. I can only tell you that the key to getting into the room is held by you, and it is tied to the memory you just processed back in that alley.”

“Victoria? But she's dead, right?”

“Then how did you see her memory?” He had a bit of his old smile as he said it, though he was much more serious than he'd been in their past meetings.

“She's still alive? She wasn't attacked in that alley? But she was definitely shot in Liam's house.”

It was par for the course for Al. He never gave her a straight answer. She was left grasping at straws.

Looking away from the old computer and focusing on Al once more, she took a stab at piecing together his cryptic hints.

“So, Victoria is still alive. I saw her in that truck on that dark road being attacked. I saw her in that alley being attacked. I'm seeing her real memories, just as I saw Liam's in an earlier vision. This is incredible. It means Victoria didn't die when she was shot.”

She perked up as she said it.

“You got it, Marty. You already know Liam's heart. You are seeing the truth of Victoria. You are creating a triad of heroes. Focus on that. Don't let go of that thought. Ever.”

“Yeah, but what good will that do? An old woman and two youngsters. How are we heroes? What the heck are you not telling me?”

“Oh, Marty, my dear. There is an entire universe of information I'm not sharing with you right now. I wish I had the time. All I can say is that everything you're doing, everything you're seeing, these memories, your real life existence, and the people you're fighting—will help you understand how to get into that room,” as he said it, he was pointing his thumb through the glass window, “before anyone beats you to it. You three are the key. Only you three.”

With that she woke up. She found herself in the bike trailer once more.

“Victoria is still alive.”

Ahead, her chauffeur responded by putting more effort into cranking the pedals.

We're coming Victoria.

Chapter 14: Goodbye, Eurydice

The last hour of Liam's bike ride brought him into territory that was more and more familiar. Houses he recognized. Potholes to avoid. There was very little activity, alive or otherwise, on the roads winding though the wooded properties of the area. It gave him plenty of time to think, while keeping his eyes open for trouble.

He tried to summarize the crazy chain of events which brought him here.

Victoria's death.

Getting kidnapped and imprisoned by Hayes.

Seeing behind the curtain at the CDC Camp.

Spending the night in the woods with Grandma.

Surviving the day with the Boy Scouts.

And now, an early morning bike ride home to avoid Hayes and his search party.

Seems so simple when you draw out a list. But the first was the most painful. Liam felt like he'd been spinning wildly these past few days without Victoria at his side. He'd only just met her, but she had given him a glimpse of the future. Someone strong to help find the light in these dark times.

Why am I remembering this now?

The quiet countryside reminded him of jogging along these roadways in peaceful times. Before the end. Back then his biggest fear was a careless driver. Now, the men and women lurking in the creeks and cornfields were constant reminders that even a simple relief stop could turn fatal. He looked down to watch his feet turn the cranks. When he coasted, he could hear the whine of the tires on the asphalt.

If he wasn't pulling such precious cargo, he could almost coast and ignore everything wrong since sunrise. Just him, the bike, and the sky.

But not her.

His mind was a turbulent mix of emotions and scheming when he caught sight of his own street. His house was up the hill a ways, and hidden by trees of the secluded neighborhood, but he was home.

Out loud he said, “We made it.”

He took a moment to collect his thoughts as he rolled to the stop sign at the end of Riverside Drive.

So much had happened since he'd last seen his parents. Were they home waiting for him? What if they weren't? How would they greet him? What would he do if they were still away? If they were home, what would they think of the dead girl in their foyer? Maybe Phil took care of the body. What if she changed?

He couldn't settle himself down. Each question produced two more.

Deep breath.

He had done so much since the sirens. He even felt a satisfying pride peeking out from his psyche. Not many people would have been able to rescue Grandma twice amidst the backdrop of the Apocalypse. Liam practically did it on his own.

Well, he did have help from time to time.

Of course, his helpers often ended up dead.

His thoughts turned inward and dark. No matter what else happened, no matter how proud he was of himself, no matter how proud his parents might be, he would never forget those who laid down their lives to make this reunion possible. It was the least he could do for the dead.

Thank you, Victoria.

He bit his tongue.

2

Liam turned his bike and trailer onto his own street, and climbed the gentle hill past the few houses between the entrance and his. It was about the length of a football field.

As he approached his own house, his heart felt crushing despair. One Humvee sat right up against his garage. Another sat between his house and the neighbor's nearest him. It wasn't unreasonable to think there were others hiding in the area. Whatever else was going to happen, Liam had allowed himself to walk right into this trap.

Hayes popped out the Humvee on the driveway, giving Liam a big wave. “Hey, bud. Good to see you!”

He had changed clothes. He was wearing the same style Hawaiian button-down shirt his dad favored. Dad was either inside as a captive, or dead. Or Hayes just found his stash of ugly shirts and decided to help himself. Of all the things to survive the destruction of the whole house...

Liam's mind was dancing wildly at the unfolding scene.

Two people got out from the other side of the Humvee and were walking around the backside of the truck. First in view was the red-headed driver Liam had seen a few times already. Behind her was a young girl about Victoria's age, dressed in jeans and a brilliant white cotton t-shirt. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She was as clean as if she had just walked out of the shower. Liam's vision was blurry from the admittedly emotional sloshing going on in his mind. He refused to cry at the desperation of it all.

But, wow, she looked just like Victoria.

He stopped his bike a couple dozen yards down the street. Unsure what to do. He put his head on the handlebars as he straddled the top tube.

“Hiya, Liam. Why don't you and Grandma come on up the way. We have a lot to discuss. I promise I won't shoot anyone this time.”

This time. Ha!

He was preoccupied with all his options. He could turn around and try to escape. He could hide his gun and try to kill Hayes when he got up close. Maybe he could find some help.

None of them seemed to offer real hope. Killing him was probably the closest he could come to a plan with any chance of success, but he had never killed anyone—alive—and didn't think he had it in him to gun the man down in cold blood. Even if he deserved it.

The only option was to take his medicine and see where the windy road ended.

“Grandma, I have to stop here for a minute. We'll get you out soon. I promise.”

He hailed Hayes, got off his bike, and began walking it in. As he closed the distance, he regained his composure and was able to study the girl standing on his driveway in better detail. She was very pretty, that much was obvious. She seemed to be part of their team. No—

Her hands were bound in front of her, held low. The zip ties were hard to see, but they were there. She was standing patiently, unmoving. Looking down at her feet.

Liam was now at the edge of his front lawn. Stopped. Mind jumping all around. “Why won't you let me and Grandma go? Why are we so damned important to you?”

“I thought you figured it out back at the medical camp. I've seen the tape of the old man who spoke to you while undergoing treatment. You know what this whole thing is about.”

He didn't know how to respond without making himself look dumb. Was he missing something obvious? He knew the experiments were done specifically on older people, but the volunteers made it sound like they were donating their bodies to science so they would make a difference in finding the cure. They were the most viable test subjects available.

Liam felt in his pants pocket for the photo. He knew it had the address of the colonel's family. His last words were pointedly about Bart's age. He had said, “It was his age. I know it. That man was 106!” Was there something specific about a person's age that made them important? Grandma was 104. Did that make her more worthy than someone 94? It might explain Hayes' obsession with her.

“The colonel's last words to me were that the old man was 106. He said the reason he was such a good test subject was his age. You want Grandma because she's almost the same age.”

“Can you come up here where we can talk without shouting? I'm surprised you haven't said anything to my pretty friend here.”

Hayes walked over to the young girl but she shirked away when he got close. The mannerism was recognizable as something Victoria had done during their journey.

He froze in disbelief. Seeing the girl for who she was at last. “Victoria?”

She bobbed her head up and down, over and over. Tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Ah, yes. I told her I would shoot you dead if she said a peep. I had to be sure you wouldn't try anything heroic. Nor would she. Can you two agree not to do anything stupid for the next five minutes while we all get reacquainted?”

They both nodded with enthusiasm. Victoria in silence, and Liam in sympathy silence so as not to get her in trouble.

“Alright then. You can go down and meet your boyfriend, but just be aware of these machine guns and who's inside the house.”

Victoria ran down the driveway, bound hands and all. Liam had to keep his hand on the bike, but he dismounted just in time to catch her in a one-armed hug. They held each other tight, but Victoria was using the opportunity to pass information.

“Your parents are captive inside. Hayes wants to trade me for Grandma and he says they'll leave the rest of us alone. I missed you!”

They kissed briefly, but the moment was ruined by their tormentor. “Alright! That's enough of that. You kids need to separate or I start shooting. Yuck!”

Victoria and Liam separated, but Liam kept his hand on her back as they both looked up at Hayes. A small token of defiance.

Liam's emotions were splashing over the rim. He felt the joy of the reunion. Happiness she was alive. Anger at Hayes. Fear for his parents. Love for Victoria.

Whoa. Say what?

Maybe not romantic love exactly, but at that moment he would have laid down his life for the girl he thought was already dead.

That was as good a definition of love as any.

3

“Victoria, you can hold Liam's bike. He and I have some things to discuss.”

Liam didn't want to let her go, but he saw no alternatives.

“It'll be OK. Just stand here with Grandma. I think she's sleeping.”

They traded spots and Liam turned his back to Hayes so he could look at Victoria.

“I can't tell you how good it is to see you.”

She gave him a big smile as she wiped the tears still on her face. All she could say was “be safe.”

As he turned back toward Hayes, he knew where things were going. Hayes held all the cards. He would have to give up Grandma.

“Liam. Let's take a little walk. Not too far of course, those zombies are everywhere.”

They walked down the driveway, around several large patches of blood and gore on the ground, and began walking up the street, away from Victoria.

“I'm impressed, Liam. I don't think I've ever seen such dedication by a young man your age for an old lady like your grandma. I thought it was an act back at the Arch when we first met, and then I thought you were trying to impress your gal, but seeing you get dear old Marty out of the camp and across all this hostile terrain alone... Well, I guess I have to give credit where it's due.”

They walked a few more paces before he continued.

“But this is the end. I've invested too much time and energy trying to keep ahold of your grandma, and my bosses are getting concerned. Speaking of which...”

Liam was blindsided by the speed of the man. Hayes had turned and swung a fist hard into Liam's kidney, causing him to buckle over in pain. Still on his feet, but just barely.

“That is for your stunt with the tracker. You made me lose my MRAP on that wild goose chase.” He started walking again, unconcerned that Liam was now behind him. “Dammit, Liam. You're a clever boy. I hate that you did it. I should have seen it coming. We chased that fake signal for hours until we realized it was on a wounded deer.”

Mr. Lee and his team. They got it done.

“Once that resolved itself, I knew there was only one place you could be heading.” He let out a chuckle. “You need to make some new friends. You're like a fish, always going to the same spot to roost.”

Mixed metaphors aside, Liam knew he was right. He was predictable.

When they were beyond earshot of Victoria, Hayes stopped. Liam was close behind, still nursing his sore side. There were no thoughts of fighting back now. Not with Victoria in such an exposed position, and his parents under guard as well. This was all Hayes.

Mostly.

“I'm going to make you a deal. Man to man. You've seen our goals. You know what's happening to the world. You know why your grandmother is important to us. You and I both know I could blow your brains out right here on this street, and no one could stop me. I could then kill Victoria—she is one tough babe—and I could kill all your family just for fun. Then I could take Grandma with me and use her in any way necessary to solve this plague.”

Liam held his breath.

“But. There's always a “but,” huh? The thing is, I'm not a murderer.” He seemed to ponder for a moment, and continued with a disturbing correction, “I'm not a mass murderer. I told you before, I only do what I do to get what I need and then move on. Tomorrow, my boss may say he wants me to get him the last cheeseburger in America. I'd be equally tenacious with that mission as I am today with your grandma. I—”

Hayes had a small earpiece and a lapel mic. They blended into his clothing and hair, so they went unnoticed until just now. Hayes held up his finger in the universal “I'm on a call, please be quiet” symbol.

“Roger. Five minutes inbound.”

“Ok Liam, sorry about that. Where was I? Telling you my deal?”

He turned to face Liam. “Look kid, you do what I want and no one gets hurt. I'm going to trade you one old lady for one young girlfriend. You two can have a long life together knowing Grandma did her service to her country by helping to stop this plague.”

There it was. Finally. Liam was almost relieved. He knew he would one day have to choose between his grandma and Victoria. It just seemed as if it were written in the stars. Now that it was here, he was ready to make the sacrifice. What choice did he have, after all?

“Do you think she'll survive the testing? That old guy back in your camp seemed to be OK for a while. Can you give me your word you'll do your best to keep her alive?”

“I'll do everything I can to keep her alive. I need her alive, you know?”

“I've only got one condition. Let Victoria walk up here to me, leaving Grandma in the trailer. I don't think I can face her knowing I'm giving her up.”

Hayes was happy to get things moving. He yelled down at his assistant to hold Grandma's bike, freeing up Victoria to walk up the street to Liam and Hayes.

When she arrived, she could guess what was going on. “No, Liam. You can't trade me. I didn't agree to this!”

“What choice do I have? He said he'd kill you and my whole family if we didn't give her up. Grandma would want it this way.”

Victoria was torn. It showed on her face. Liam tried to look away because he didn't want to break down at the thought of what was happening. He needed to stay on task.

“This is all great. Very touching. But our business here is done.”

Hayes started walking down the street. “Liam, if I see you trying to rescue her again, I will have to do something worse to you than a punch to the gut. Just remember that. No more games.”

“Understood.”

Liam pulled Victoria across his front lawn, toward one of the Humvees parked in between the houses. He raised his hands and pointed to his house, making it clear he was just passing the truck, not attacking it.

Hayes was nearing the driveway, and shouting to his people. “Get her in the truck. We've got dust off in less than five. Move it!”

Liam and Victoria were now behind his house, moving through the detritus which had been blown out the back by the MRAP. He caught some motion in the woods nearby.

Victoria stopped him. “We can't go in the house.”

“Why not?” He was thinking of the activity in the front yard. His maskirovka was about to be revealed. He needed to get in and get his parents. “I need to get my parents out of here, now.”

They were trying to be quiet, as the Humvee was still only a few yards behind them. “Trust me, Liam. We have to wait right here.”

He looked again out into the woods. There was definitely someone out there. Did Hayes have snipers backing him up? If so, his plan was doomed to fail.

To Victoria, he whispered, “You have to tell me what's happening. We only have a few more seconds.” He took the opportunity to pull out his small pocket knife and cut her bindings.

She seemed confused, but laid it all out for him in just a couple sentences. Her subterfuge was impressive.

He thought of Grandma's eloquent way of cussing.

“Oh my lands!”

Then he told her his secret.

Her mouth was hanging open in shock as the first expletives arose from the front yard.

4

“VERY FUNNY, LIAM!”

“Liam, listen. Your parents are inside, but they aren't alone. Trust me, you can't go in right now.”

“DIDN'T I JUST TELL YOU I WAS DONE WITH YOUR GAMES!”

“So what do we do? Are we just going to stand here with this Humvee in my yard?”

Victoria didn't have an answer. Everything was in flux for both of them. Planning was impossible in such circumstances. Liam had to improvise.

“I trust you. What do you want to do?”

Victoria looked at him, relaxing slightly. Then a smile appeared on her face, quite incongruous with the situation around them. “Run!” She sprinted like she was in a race.

Liam noticed she was wearing running shoes instead of her broken flats. She ran directly behind the Humvee and behind the next door neighbor's house. Liam stayed close behind. She dropped behind a small patio wall to take stock of things. They were temporarily safe from the soldiers. Even those in the woods wouldn't have a clean shot at them.

The shooting started.

They both dropped their heads instinctively, but Victoria was first to pop back up. “They aren't shooting at us!”

Liam raised his head. He could just see the back of the Humvee from his vantage point.

Some loud pops came from inside Liam's perforated home. There were shots also coming from the woods.

The Humvees immediately moved forward into the front yards. No doubt escaping the firepower coming from the woods behind them.

Over it all, he could hear Hayes cussing.

“Serves him right.”

A few moments later, Liam was ecstatic to see his mom and dad crawl out of the massive hole in the backside of their house, followed closely by Phil. All three were covered in blood from inside the house. They came to rest low against the foundation, much as he and Victoria were low behind the patio wall.

Just in time, too. A massive barrage of gunfire came through the house. The Humvees had obviously recovered from the surprise and were dishing out the heavy stuff in retaliation.

The slope of the front yard was such that the bullets traveling into and through the house were going ten or fifteen feet over the heads of the people in the woods behind the home. Liam could see those folks now scrambling to escape any stray bullets or ricochets. A 50 cal deflection to the body would be a death sentence.

Victoria tapped Liam's shoulder. The noise of battle was still loud, but not deafening. “Follow me! Let's see what's happening in the front.”

“But my parents!”

Together, they watched as his parents continued to lay low against the concrete foundation. They would be safe there for the time being. They were pinned down. They couldn't run to the woods for fear of getting a round in the back. They couldn't run between the houses because of the open corridor currently being peppered with heavy duty rounds.

Liam wanted to see what was happening. Maybe they could help affect the outcome of the battle, even if they didn't have any guns. Well, besides the mostly empty Ruger he was carrying.

They took off at a run, continuing their race. Victoria ran two houses up, using the backyards to avoid any exposure to Hayes and his team. The Army guys continued to focus their fire on Liam's increasingly rickety house in front of them.

Victoria walked in the back sliding door of the neighbor's house as if she owned the place. He had to struggle to keep up with her.

She brought him to the front room and was impressed to see a crude bulwark of wood below the front window of the house. As he crouched low with her, he could see a pair of heavy iron sewer lids, and in front of those was dirt and rock. It seemed like a formidable defensive position, even against machine guns.

“Welcome to Observation Post Victoria. This is where you and I were supposed to run when everything turned to hell. It didn't go down exactly as we had expected, but at least we made it this far. Liam, I'm so happy to see you. There's so much I want to tell you, but there's no time. We have to see what Hayes is doing.”

Looking out the window, they had a beautiful view of the whole situation. There was Poole's burnt out house, complete with dead bodies on the lawn left to rot. In the middle of the street were three Humvees, each with a heavy machine gun dumping all they could into Liam's house. Next to his driveway, he could see his bicycle had been tipped over and the trailer dumped out. The fake grandma he had put together with sticks and trash had been thrown out into the street.

Grandma wasn't in his trailer. She was safe with Drew.

“I can't believe it worked.” He said it as much to himself as Victoria.

“Yeah, well you really pissed him off. I hope you weren't planning on getting Christmas cards from him ever again?”

As they watched, Victoria explained what she could. “Mel put most of this together. She was in the military. Did she mention that to you? Well, Phil and your dad helped a lot, too. They got your text message you were coming home, as well as your warning about Hayes. They immediately began planning for his next visit. The whole time, your mom and dad wanted to go out looking for you, but we all talked them out of it. Instead, we worked on getting the basement situated so Phil could hide in the secret room.”

On the street, one of the Humvee's machine guns stopped firing, its operator slumped in his perch. The other two started swinging their guns wildly around the neighborhood as other sources of gunfire emerged.

“Anyway, their plan was to get you and me and Grandma safe, and then spring this trap on them. There are positions like this one in almost all the houses on your street. A few of your neighbors joined in to help, though most of the houses were empty. We enlisted the help of some guys from a neighborhood over the hill too.”

A few rounds impacted on the front of the house, sending them both to the ground.

“The plan called for surrounding the guys in the trucks, and forcing them to either fight it out or make them leave. It looks like they are sticking around until the end.”

“Suits me fine.”

They risked a look down the street. One of the Humvees had backed itself up directly into Poole's former house. It managed to smash into the former garage space, but it didn't make it very far into the debris. It was out of the action.

From their left, they heard an obnoxiously loud gunshot. Loud even for the ongoing gun battle.

Another bang.

Pause.

Another bang.

“That's a sniper rifle. One of the new guys brought it with him.”

Liam was looking to his left to try to see where the noise was coming from, but then he panned to where he figured the shots were going. The remaining two machine gun operators were put down, and the side windows of both surviving Humvees were blown in.

Over the next minute or so, it became obvious the battle was over. No one was firing back from the trucks. Soon enough hands could be seen surrendering.

Was the fight to save Grandma finally over? With Hayes dead, maybe they could fade away and live out their lives in peace.

I can dream.

5

It took several minutes before anyone felt confident enough to walk out to the Humvees and tender the surrender of any survivors.

Please let Hayes be dead.

In the relative quiet on the street, Liam heard a helicopter fly over and hover somewhere beyond the entrance to the subdivision.

Phil was somewhere near the military trucks, but out of sight. He yelled for any survivors to exit the vehicles and lay face down on the street. A couple of doors opened. One on each Humvee.

Please let Hayes be dead.

Liam decided he had to be down there.

“Liam, just wait! Let's watch from up here. Safely.”

He paused before leaving the front room of the house. “I have to see if he's dead. I need this to be over.”

With that, he ran out the back door, and toward his answer.

As he ran, he saw many of his friends and neighbors emerging from their hiding places. In small groups, they emerged from many of the houses on the street. All with rifles of some kind held at the ready. They were there to cover the surrender.

Liam walked next to Phil as he too emerged from Liam's garage. His own SUV was abandoned inside—it looked like Swiss Cheese.

“Heya, Phil.”

“Hi, Liam. Good to see you.”

“You, too. Thanks for helping my parents.”

“It was easy with your dad's secret room. It was our secret weapon.”

They both got serious as they neared the men on the ground. Liam had his tiny gun out.

Please let Hayes be dead.

He wasn't dead.

Of course.

There was Hayes. His leg was bloodied, but seemed in good spirits.

“I salute you, Liam. The fake grandma trick was a well-executed deception. But you've just declared war on the United States of America. You'll never get away with this. I'll make sure this is the last mistake you ever make.”

Liam looked around for his red-headed driver. She wasn't one of the three survivors.

“Sorry about your people, Hayes. I never wanted any of this. I just wanted you to leave us alone.”

“Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do to you. Your country is coming for you, Liam. You were already on a kill list. Your whole family was. But I froze it. If you kill me, it will unfreeze. It won't be pretty; I promise you that.”

Liam looked around. Phil was close. Victoria had caught up and was standing nearby too. His parents were walking across their defiled front lawn, covered in the mess from inside the house.

Mom and Dad!

He had finally found them, alive. But the reunion had to wait. Hayes ruined even that.

His “group” of survivors was formidable, he had to admit. But to think of them in a war with their own country was beyond his imagination.

Liam turned around. “I want to make a movie.” He pulled out his phone. He set things up, then gave it to his mom. “Mom, can you record me?”

When all was ready, he spoke into the camera.

“Hello, I'm Liam Peters. My grandma is Martinette Peters. Today, which is eight days since the sirens, these men attacked my house with the intention of taking my grandma to do experiments on her relating to the plague. We did not give permission for this to happen, and in return, we were viciously attacked in an attempt to take her anyway. My mom is going to sweep the scene so you can see the devastation these men brought to us. Note my house is no longer suitable for habitation, thanks to them.”

His mom panned the camera in a 360-degree sweep.

“Where is Grandma? Put her on camera!”

It was Hayes.

“Tell the camera how you fired first!”

Uh oh.

He hesitated. Should he continue filming?

His dad saw what was happening, and softly said, “Well done, Liam. We can edit the film. Don't give him a voice.”

Liam figured that would be his only brush with TV stardom.

“Does anyone object if we let these two soldiers go? Take their weapons and let them go on down the street.”

Liam felt it would set a bad precedent to kill them, and they couldn't hold them prisoner indefinitely. Fortunately, no one objected.

The soldiers ran like hell into the woods once released.

The third Humvee was sitting in the ruins of Poole's house. The driver's door was open but, when Liam's neighbors investigated, they said there were two dead men inside.

Did red-head get away?

Briefly he looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but to no avail.

Now, what to do with Hayes?

Liam felt the press of his gun against his hip. It was reminding him it was there, ready to do its duty for him. One bullet to the temple and the Hayes problem goes away forever.

Forever. It was the word that scared him the most. Killing Hayes would be something that would stay with him forever too. Looking at the bleeding man on the pavement—a place once innocent and pure, where he learned to first ride his bike, where he'd run and play—he couldn't fathom killing a man. Could he allow him to be killed? He had no doubt someone in his group could do it, if asked. Mel had done almost that exact thing to those injured criminals from Poole's house. Would that still put the stain of cold-blooded murder on him?

These are issues he never encountered in any of his video game adventures. The bad guy was always slain. The line between hero and villain was always crisp.

Real life was much more of a mess. He'd been learning that lesson since he'd walked out his grandma's door, into the apocalypse. Each lesson stacked on the next, guiding him and his friends to this point in time. The next ethical puzzle to be solved amidst the rotation of true moral north during the societal implosion. Many had done it in his books. A simple trigger pull and all those future problems go away...

As if sensing his internal dissension, Victoria stood next to him and took his hand. It was warm. Comforting. Alive. Would his decision have been easier if she had really died at the hands of this man?

It would certainly change the equation, though he couldn't say whether he would still be able to pull the trigger. Probably? Maybe?

“Would anyone object if we let Hayes go?” He said it quietly.

He secretly hoped someone would object and jump in to do what he couldn't, but everyone was following his lead. Mel had run up late, but even she assented to his release.

“Just go then.”

“You know what this means, Liam. I can't stop what happens next, even if I wanted to.”

Liam spun around. “I know the feeling. Do what you have to, and I'll do what I know is right.”

Hayes began walking away, as Liam found the comfort of family and friends.

6

Liam imagined Hayes was walking out of his life for good, and that everything would turn out OK. He allowed himself to come off high alert. Back into simple exhaustion. He was standing around with family and new friends. Hayes had limped almost all the way down the street when Liam's complicated masquerade finally came unraveled.

A bicycle and trailer turned the corner, and practically ran into Hayes.

Things moved in slow motion. Liam's entire existence was focused on the end of his block. He could see each action as it happened, though he could hear nothing from such distance. He couldn't change the outcome from so far away.

A friendly wave from Hayes to the rider.

A smile in return. Hayes may have said something like, “So pleased to see you made it, Grandma!” Drew would have no idea he was a bad man.

The bicycle stopped. A short chat.

Then a vicious punch. The rider fell.

“NO! NO! NO!” Liam was yelling, angry at his own impotence. Angry at how slow he was moving.

Hayes struggled to mount the bike, turned it around, and cranked away. Injuries and all.

Everyone in the yard snapped awake.

Liam was the first to start running. He ran for his own tipped bicycle.

Everyone else was on foot, but heading in the same direction. Soon he had control of his bicycle and overtook them all. He flew by Drew, who was sitting up and getting his bearings. His target was up ahead, but couldn't be far. The helicopter was loudly chopping air nearby.

Liam pedaled like a maniac, but he only had to go a couple of hundred yards. The helicopter was in the middle of a grocery store parking lot, as he imagined. It was on the ground but its rotors were spinning hard, like it wanted to take off. He risked a look back and could see his group running furiously, some faster than others. Victoria near the front. He kept pedaling.

Hayes was having issues. His leg injuries were slowing him down, but he managed to keep turning the pedals and he kept steering more or less in the right direction. Liam was closing the distance.

Liam saw his opportunity as he caught up with the struggling man. He whipped his bike to his left and in front of the other, intending to cause a wreck. Hayes made no effort to correct his path as they collided.

Liam tumbled hard to his right while Hayes just crumpled with his bike as it impacted. His speed wasn't that great, so Liam ended up getting the worst of it. Even so, he was on his feet quickly, road rash be damned.

Hayes was straddling his bike's top tube, talking into his headset. His eyes firmly on Liam.

A shot rang out.

Liam turned around to see a civilian man with a high-powered rifle in the back of the helicopter. It was now pointed at him.

“You lose, Liam! I'm taking Marty and we're getting on this bird. I'm cutting you a break just like you cut me one back there at your house. Details, you see. But we're even now. I'm a little injured. This is what you're going to do. You're going to get Grandma out of her trailer—the real trailer, you sneaky bastard—and help her board. Then I'm going to fly away with her and you will never look for her. Do you understand?”

He understood. He looked back to see several people arriving behind him.

“I'll agree to your terms if you also agree not to harm any of the others.”

“Fine. Just get her in, quick!”

Liam made a motion for everyone to halt well behind him. Only Victoria disobeyed and continued to run up to him with a hug. She then helped Liam get Grandma out of the trailer as requested.

Grandma came out with a smile. “Oh, Victoria! I'm so glad to see you're alive. Such a happy day for Liam.”

“Grandma, they're going to take you away. To a medical facility again. I'm really sorry, but I couldn't save you. They were going to kill us all to get you.”

Liam could feel the tears welling in his eyes. He found a free spot on his tongue and bit hard.

“Liam, you made the right decision. You have to see that. Don't you worry about me. I'll be fine. I'm old, you see. I've got my Rosary at the ready.”

Victoria seemed to take a cue from seeing the religious object.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the travel Bible Liam had given to her. She showed it to Liam, opened it wide, and held it up to her eye. It had a bullet hole near the top left corner, though it didn't go all the way through.

“This Bible saved my life. I had it tucked in Liam's belt because it wouldn't fit in my pants pockets. The bullet hit this and sent me flying. I had a bloody bruise on my hip, and I hit my head, but was otherwise unharmed. It was a miracle. I want you to have it so you can have a miracle, too, Grandma.”

“Oh, child, thank you. Seeing you alive is my miracle. I'll take it for now, but I'll give it back when we meet again. Deal?”

Victoria was unable to do more than nod. She was crying openly.

“Oh, and please do return that pillow to the Boy Scouts, if you can.” Liam couldn't tell if she was joking until she gave both of them her trademark wink.

Liam took his opportunity to give Grandma a big bear hug. He held her for a very long time. Finally, he spoke.

“Grandma, I'll find you. I have a whole group here to help me. Together, we can get to you wherever they take you.”

“Liam, don't you go fretting about me. I don't want anyone else to be put in harm's way because of me. Just live a good life with Victoria and your folks, and remember me from the time we've shared on our adventures. I'm happy to have gotten to know you better and I'm proud of the man you're becoming. But maybe you could pray for me once in a while?” She flashed him a huge smile as she said it.

“I love you, Grandma. I'm going to miss you while you're gone.”

“I love you too, Liam. Tell your dad I love him, will you? Your mom too!”

She gave her son and daughter-in-law a wave and together she and Liam moved into the wash of the spinning blades. Hayes had struggled his way into a back seat, though he was still yelling into his microphone.

With the assistance of one of the crew, Liam was able to help Grandma up and into the helicopter. She was put in a seat across from Hayes. Liam waved once more to her and then ran out of the wash from the rotors. He was watching with Victoria by his side.

From inside the helicopter, he could see Hayes was now wearing a larger pair of headphones and had a boom mic across his face. A loudspeaker on the bottom of the copter kicked on.

“I have one last gift for you, Liam.”

Liam looked around, looked at the helicopter, looked at the man with the gun riding in the back. He had become hypersensitive to traps. He found himself taking a step in front of Victoria—shielding her. But from what?

“Consider this your air raid warning.”

Maybe he did it to imitate Grandma, but he winked at Liam as the door slid shut.

With that, the helicopter pushed up, then tilted forward and escaped the area in a hurry.

Escape.

“Everyone run!”

Another race.

As the helicopter rotor noise faded, a different roar got louder by the second.

An ugly-looking plane came in low and slow over the trees in front of them. Liam knew it was an A-10, nicknamed the Warthog. He'd seen them days earlier, at the Arch. It was a squat-looking plane with twin-turbofan engines hugging tightly against the rear fuselage, in front of its dual vertical stabilizers. It was best known for its deadly accurate rotating 30mm Gatling gun. There was nothing like it.

Liam and his companions were running away from Liam's street, but they were on the same axis. The planes were coming in directly in front of them, heading lengthwise directly above his street. They heard the chain gun rounds smashing into the neighborhood an instant before the sound of the gun itself reached their ears from above. The first jet screamed overhead, passed the street, then peeled away, direction unknown. Liam knew the Gatling on the MRAP was a toy compared to the power of the lethal aircraft.

Two more were coming in similarly low and slow. Lining up the houses behind them and then letting rip with multiple rapid strings of gunfire.

“Keep running!”

The small group of his friends and family were running across the open parking lot toward more trees and a drainage ditch. A stray Gatling round or one well-placed bomb could have eliminated them all forever.

Forever.

That word continued to scare him.

His mind was trying to crack the code as to why.

So much going on.

He found himself running hard, though Victoria was staying just in front of him. She was fast.

Wow. She's beautiful, like an angel. Why can't I catch her?

Seeing her spurred a desire to pray. He recalled the first time they met, and the comfort he took from the cross hanging from the chain around her neck. He recalled openly praying on the corral back at the Elk Meadow facility. He wanted to tell Victoria all about his burgeoning faith. He realized he never told Grandma about it either. She would have been so proud.

Am I about to learn what happens after death? Will I learn about “forever,” or will I simply wink out of existence? Never know that I existed at all?

He expected to die. So much left unsaid. Undone.

More planes were screeching above him. His mind was racing as fast as his feet. The stress was wreaking havoc on his thought process. The important mingled with the irrelevant. The eternal chased the ephemeral. He couldn't control it.

He resolved to ask Victoria out on a date if they survived. That seemed very important to him as he trailed her. What would dating look like when there were no restaurants or movie theaters? What did they do back in the old days? And he would have to formally introduce her to his parents. That scared him almost as much as the barking guns above.

I need to apologize to my parents. I'm sorry I was such an ass.

Behind and above, a sound was growing. If he didn't know any better, he would say it was the stereotypical sound of a bomb falling from high in the sky, like a cartoon. Or his mind was playing tricks. Fear could do that.

It couldn't end like this. He wasn't ready.

He wanted to tell everyone about the experiments he'd seen. Reveal the different types of zombies wandering America. Share news about the safety of Camp Hope. Warn them of the presence of more government camps, including a big one downtown. He'd just escaped the city and had no desire to ever go back—maybe he could skip telling them about that one.

And what of Grandma? He tried to imagine where the helicopter would take her. To another camp out in the woods? Would she soon be tied to a gurney inside some dank tent? Would Hayes be there rubbing his hands in glee, after finally bagging the old woman he'd been chasing? She wasn't as old as Bart, but there had to be something special about her to demand so much attention. He needed to solve that mystery.

If he lived. He sprinted until his heart nearly gave out. He even caught Victoria. They were in it together.

His mental gymnastics were finally shut off when he was knocked into the muddy ditch by the massive explosion behind him.

Did I win the race?

###

Acknowledgments

The research for this second book was done on location here in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. Most of the places Liam visits I've known and frequented all my life. I chose to set the story here because I could go walkabout to these locations and be back in an hour.

Arnold, MO is near my boyhood home; its distinctive green water tower was the final landmark on northbound Interstate 55 which, as a child, let me know I was getting close to home after many a long journey. Today, that tower is a different color, but still pulling duty for children on long rides north. I should also mention my books portray the government of Arnold as, how shall I put it gently? Shady? Xenophobic? I don't show them in their best light. But fear not. Arnold, MO is a nice town and not at all likely to block people escaping from St. Louis. Right? Seriously, it's a nice town.

Liam's street and neighborhood are mostly fictional. The area where he lives in the story does have houses, and it does have parking lots large enough to land a helicopter, but Riverside Drive isn't found on any map of the city. The interchange where he meets Mark and talks to agent Duchesne is real. It is exit 186 on Interstate 55, if you ever come round. I warn you, it isn't very exciting.

Elk Meadow, or more specifically Lone Elk Park, is real. The county park is in the suburbs of St. Louis off Interstate 44 just south of the town of Valley Park. Much like Liam and his family, my parents took me there once when I was a kid, but we never went back. That reminds me, I should go check it out with my own family...

Beaumont Boy Scout Reservation is real. I'm very familiar with the cozy valley in the woods, including the surrounding terrain. Boy Scout culture is also portrayed realistically—at least as best I can describe it from going on numerous campouts and jamborees with my own Scout and when I was a young Scout many years ago. I did generalize the terrain a bit for the sake of storytelling, including the addition of a north-south dirt track cutting through the woodlands beyond the watchtower. As far as I know, there is no such route for vehicles. But there could be.

Thank you once more to my family. It takes a lot of work to produce a book, and my family has been tolerant of my late nights and sleepy-eyed mornings for several months while I finished this one. With this book out the door, it's time to look ahead.

E.E. Isherwood

E.E. Isherwood’s other books

Minus America – After an event sweeps from coast to coast, nearly everyone in mainland USA disappears. Only piles of clothes remain. Can the last Americans survive long enough to learn how it happened? Five books.

Impact
(co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books.

Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood
Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens
My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!

SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 3

Stop the Sirens
Since the Sirens

Book 3

© 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.

A world built on the certainty God exists would be indistinguishable from a world built on the certainty God did not.

Without doubt, there is no faith. Without faith, there is no humanity.

Prologue: Shush!

Marty awakened lying in a clean bed, inside a well-lit room. She was on her back, and felt rested for the first time in a long time. She crawled out without her usual fear of falling. A clean change of clothes waited for her; a fuchsia pantsuit. What she really needed was a bath, but she wasn't going to turn anything down.

The outside sky caught her attention as she considered changing; she was high up in a skyscraper. The room seemed clinical, like a hospital, but she couldn't be sure. She wasn't even sure what city was outside. The “North Star” of her hometown of St. Louis was the Gateway Arch. The famous landmark would at least give away the city, though it was nowhere to be seen.

She only saw the upper portions of other buildings and lots of smoke near the ground below. A blur of light remained on the western horizon. Whatever clues she could find outside might help her identify her location. She spent twenty minutes looking, but saw absolutely nothing which gave her the all-important answer.

Where am I?

Resigned to her ignorance, she took a seat in a little chair next to her bed. While rubbing her legs she happened to look down at the bed's foundation. The words “Riverside Hotel and Casino” were stamped on the side. That made it much easier. Not a hospital after all.

She laughed despite her fear.

So I'm still in St. Louis.

She had no idea what day it was. How long she'd been there. If any tests had been done. The last thing she remembered was getting on the helicopter after Liam said goodbye, waving to him, and then—

—nothing.

I'm old. I must have zoned out.

She stood up again. She felt good. Getting up from a chair was normally a laborious process. Even her back wasn't bothering her at the moment.

“Al, am I dreaming right now?”

Her late husband/guardian angel did not respond.

“OK, I'm not dreaming.”

She found a mirror over the sink in her room, and was happy to see herself for a change. Rather than the usual drooping eye sockets, her eyes looked bright. Even her skin seemed a little more firm on her face.

Maybe it was all that exercise.

She laughed out loud at the notion. She hadn't had so much exertion in decades.

“Hmm, exercise really is the best medicine.”

She winked at herself in the mirror, then returned to the large window. The world outside was as dark as pitch on the ground and in the sky. No other lights were visible. The entire city appeared devoid of it. She had an inspiration to turn off the lights in her room so she could get a better look at the stars. She allowed some time for her eyes to adjust and beamed when she finally saw the stars.

She put her hand into the pockets of her pants, fighting a chill. Her hand brushed against something foreign. It was small, boxy, smooth, and about the length of her hand. She pulled it out to get a good look at it in the glow of the stars.

She inadvertently hit a button which turned it on.

Marty didn't know what a lock screen was, but she could appreciate the picture on it. Staring up at her, with a conspiratorial grin on his face—and a few tears in his eyes—was her great-grandson Liam. He had one hand in front of his mouth, with one finger up in the traditional “shush” symbol. Behind him she could just make out part of her own head, and the rotors of the helicopter. After a few seconds the screen went blank and she pocketed the device without audible comment.

He must have snapped the picture while giving me that big hug. Clever boy indeed.

Marty lay back down in her bed. Content for the time being. Somewhere out there people were thinking about her. Trying to get to her. Drawn by her siren song. A song she continually tried to mute.

Normally she prayed for others. Health for the sick. Luck for the out-of-work. Help passing a school test. Some prayers were epic in scale, others a simple show of affection. Always for someone else. But in a rare moment of spiritual weakness she requested something for herself.

Lord, if they come to save me—

Liam couldn't help himself. He would find a way. It was already written.

—please, I don't want anyone to die.

She admitted that wasn't how siren songs end...

Chapter 1: Exodus

Eight days since the sirens.

Fifteen-year-old Liam Peters looked up from the muddy water. He and several of his companions had escaped the bombs dropped on his neighborhood by jumping into a shallow creek at the far end of the shopping center parking lot they'd just sprinted across. First the A-10's swept his block of modest ranch-style homes—their deadly Gatling guns announced themselves like the horns of the Four Horsemen the Apocalypse. They were spot on for the actual apocalypse. And then something came down from high in the sky—the colonel he'd met at the government medical camp called them bunker busters—and moved the Earth just as they reached the creek for protection. Smaller bombs chased their big brother. He wasn't brave enough to look up over the bank of the creek to see the remains of his neighborhood yet. For now it was enough to be alive.

He studied the line of survivors, searching for his parents, his friends, and his recently-mistaken-for-dead girlfriend. He saw most of them from his patch of mud. He definitely saw her. Victoria! She was his apocalyptic girlfriend. A girl he met during the zombie plague. An older woman too. She was seventeen.

They'd met less than a week ago, but they'd been through a lifetime's worth of adventures in that time. They walked up the Gateway Arch together to help the St. Louis police department defend the park below from zombies and from waves of desperate looters. She went back up alone a second time as a diversion to save Grandma. That was the first time he thought she was as good as dead. After that, they teamed up for the impossible task of helping 104-year-old Grandma Marty escape the collapsing city of St. Louis to reach Liam's home in the suburbs. They pushed her in a wheelchair to escape zombies. They rode a freight train through hordes of the undead. They broke a blockade across a river set up by the Arnold, Missouri police department. Then they teamed up with an officer of the same department as they all watched the little town implode with the arrival of the refugees from the metropolis next door. And if that wasn't enough excitement, they reached Liam's home only to find his parents had left to go to retrieve Liam from Grandma's house. He had made it all the way home only to find he had switched houses with Mom and Dad. It was enough stress to drive anyone crazy.

But Victoria was there. She provided a quality he couldn't describe. A stability. A peace. Liam knew he tried harder when she was around, and because she was as smart as any girl he'd ever known, she was able to see things from a different perspective and give him ideas he otherwise would never have considered. He had actually started to believe things were going to be OK, even with a zombie plague unloading itself all over the world.

But then she was shot.

Throughout all their adventures they were being watched, and then pursued, by a guy named Douglas Hayes. He said he was a truck driver for the CDC—a man with no job once the medical unit effectively ceased to exist—but it became clear he was more than that. He eventually showed up at Liam's parents' house to collect Grandma. He requested Liam bring her to his military truck, but when he refused—well, Victoria got shot. That was the second time Liam thought she was as good as dead. By all rights she probably would have been, but the single gunshot hit the small but durable travel Bible Liam had procured for her earlier in their travels. The force of the bullet knocked her back and she hit her head on the ground when she fell, but she emerged relatively unscathed. Liam and Grandma were whisked away before they knew her fate, so Liam had several days to lament her passing.

Now, in the brackish creek, she was very much alive. Minutes earlier she had been wearing a clean and bright white shirt and blue jeans, with her brown hair tight in a ponytail. She reminded him of a perfect angel, returned from the dead. That angel was now covered in mud and filth. Her top was ruined. Her hair was soaked and sprinkled with debris. And her face...

Her face was a wreck. In the last week she'd been beat up violently by looters at the top of the Arch. Her face was graced with two black eyes, and more abrasions than Liam could count. Her nose might have been broken, though he couldn't say. Neither would she. In short, her face had seen some rough treatment of late. The water washed off the heavy makeup she'd applied to hide her wounds; he could see her face as it really was. He could only think of how much pain she suffered, and how it made him angry someone would have done that to her. It made his thoughts turn dark.

That is, until he saw her emerald green eyes look at him with a twinkle of mirth. Her demeanor suggested she was happy. He guessed she had a big smile on her face too, though her hand was over her mouth.

“What's so funny?”

She moved—sloshed—to be closer before she answered. “I think I broke a tooth jumping in here.” She removed her hand, and sure enough blood was dribbling down her lower lip, mixing with the muddy water already there. A large cut graced her top lip. She removed her hand completely and gave Liam a genuine smile, a big one. She had lost one of the sharp top teeth. The visage was both horrible and comical. Liam couldn't help but laugh.

“Good Lord, Victoria, you need to start wearing a face mask.”

His parents chose that moment to slither along into the conversation. Victoria smiled for them as well. Their faces reflected a more serious analysis than Liam's, but his sense of humor tended to activate under high-stress situations.

“Mom, Dad, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my wonderful and elegant girlfriend, Victoria. Victoria, this is my mom, Lana, and my dad, Jerry.”

She played along, even though she'd already spent time with them. “Very pleased to meet you. Forgive me for not curtseying.” They looked at her like she was crazy, but noticed Liam was laughing hysterically and decided it was just too silly not to laugh.

Across the parking lot their entire lives burned to cinders in the aftermath of the bombing.

Laughter took the edge off.

2

The group crawled out of the water, but stayed along the slope of the creek bank so they could observe the fires. It had been twenty minutes since the big one went off, and no more A-10's flew by. The attack appeared to be over.

Liam's dad wondered, “Who are we missing?”

Everyone scanned the area to take stock of any survivors. Liam saw all the people in his core group, including his parents. He could see Phil, the ex-police officer way down on the end. He was next to Melissa, a shoe saleswoman and apparently a military veteran of some kind. Liam didn't really know her yet.

The only person he didn't see was Drew, the boy who helped him get Grandma from the Boy Scout camp to Liam's house. He was last seen lying on the street after Hayes had punched him to commandeer his bicycle—with Grandma trapped in the bike trailer behind. The street corner where Drew was last seen was well within the impact zone.

In the end they accepted many of their neighbors were undoubtedly dead. When Liam's crew chased after Hayes in the direction of his waiting helicopter, they all escaped the potential blast zone. The neighbors remained in their homes or on their lawns, celebrating the fact they had defeated a small contingent of Hayes' soldiers in their Humvees. That celebration lead to their deaths.

The humor of the situation ebbed away as everyone realized the gravity of the loss.

“What do we do now, Dad?”

Liam had been waiting eight hellish days to ask that question. Ever since he and Grandma left her house in the city, he'd been trying to get home and find his parents. Yes, he wanted to be sure they were safe, but he also wanted to effectively hand over the responsibility of caring for Grandma so he didn't have to worry about her. Mom and Dad were always there when he needed them, even if he didn't agree with all their methods—such as sending him to Grandma's for the summer after a particularly trying period of family conflict. Now, his question rang hollow. Mom and Dad, he realized, didn't have all the answers. They couldn't wrap up all his problems into neat solutions for him. Grandma had been taken by Hayes to do medical testing, despite his best efforts to protect her. Even his father wasn't going to have an answer to counterbalance that loss. His excitement at seeing them was quashed by the circumstances of the reunion.

His dad was lying face down in the weeds. His arms were spread out in front of him, and his hands were tucked back so they were on his face, as if he were using them as pillows. His mom was lying next to him, on her back, looking straight up at the sky. They had just lost their house. It was effectively destroyed days ago when a big military truck tore the whole thing to shreds with its top-mounted Gatling gun, but Liam wasn't bothering with the details. That was a previous run-in with Hayes. But now even the perforated frame of the house was gone; wiped off the Earth forever.

But it was more than that. Liam's dad had spent years diligently stockpiling supplies he would need in the event there were catastrophes—man-made or natural. He knew about the secret room in their basement where Dad stored all his goodies, including lots of guns. Liam suspected that was what really had him upset, above and beyond the loss of friends and neighbors. That was supposed to be their life raft in these chaotic times.

Jerry popped his head up to look at him. “I don't know Liam. I guess we wait for the fires to die out and then see if there's anything we can salvage. I'm sure our house is wrecked, but from here I can't see if it's a crater. We'll see.”

Liam knew it was their only viable option. Wait and see. So they waited. The morning dragged by. As noon approached everyone was getting antsy. Melissa and Phil had been talking, and Melissa came over to Liam's parents.

“I know we all want to check it out, but we should wait a little longer. I have a bad feeling about going back to the scene of a crime, if you catch my drift. What if they're watching for us to return? There could be drones high above. It's what I'd do if I were running this operation.”

Melissa was a forty-something woman Liam met several nights before as she walked up the street toward his house as a refugee. By almost any definition Liam figured she would be described as physically pretty. A little taller than most women, but shapely and well-proportioned. She kept her long blond hair in a ponytail, though now her hair was a mess, just like Victoria's. Though initially reluctant to accept the hospitality of Phil and Liam, Victoria convinced her to give up some of her fears. By her own account she had been sexually assaulted by her former boss, then harassed by the sickos of the refugee crowds as they all fled the city. She was in no mood to accept the hospitality of a couple men, until Victoria brought her in.

She then went on to organize some men and women around Liam's house, and together they got the drop on a group of hostile men intent on taking the house by force. The ensuing firefight was brief but intense. She proved her worth, though she ended up killing some of the wounded hostile men. She said it was to prevent them from coming back to harm them when they healed up. In his brief interludes of quiet thought of late, he'd wondered how Phil and his parents had agreed to keep her around after what were essentially battlefield executions. She was still with them, and going strong it seemed. Victoria said she helped organize the resistance on his whole street earlier today. She was probably very familiar with the people now dead up there. Liam was inclined to listen to her. Apparently everyone else agreed. They waited.

They were rewarded for their patience less than twenty minutes later when the sound of propeller-driven aircraft approached from south of them.

“Everyone down!” Mel cried.

The trees near the creek offered some protection from above, as did the mute color of all their clothes after being in the muddy water, but they didn't want to take any chances of being seen.

The two big planes drifted menacingly over their heads and tilted their wings so their propellers faced straight up. The ungainly-looking planes descended like helicopters to touch down on the large parking lot where Hayes' copter had departed hours earlier. Liam was so enamored with the planes he almost forgot why they were there. The back ramps dropped and Army men poured out. He could see about twenty per plane.

“What are Army men doing here?” Liam asked.

Melissa watched the drama with everyone else. “Not Army. The planes are V-22 Ospreys. Troop carriers. Those are US Marines.”

Marines. Great.

“Liam, you must have made quite an impression on someone,” Mel quipped.

He could only wonder. Were they sent by Hayes to clean up his mess? If he had them on speed-dial, why not send them first if he really wanted to capture Grandma without incident?

The Marines spread out in careful formations, alternating with each other to various positions until they were up in the ruins. It became difficult to see what they were doing; there was a lot of smoke wafting around from smoldering fires. They didn't appear to be searching any specific piece of the street.

“We should leave. They have to be looking for us.” As his dad would say, sometimes they really are trying to get you. His instinct said run.

Phil was quick to agree. “Any competent police sweep we ever did would investigate any nearby hiding areas for survivors. This ditch will be high on their lists once they start fanning out.”

Liam's parents seemed most reluctant to leave, but they were pragmatic about it in the end. They slid away with everyone else.

The creek provided an easy way to stay hidden. They followed it to a wider branch which went underneath a nearby roadway. Soon they had the entire road between them and the Marines. They kept going into a thick woodland beyond, then took stock.

Melissa gave her assessment. “We're probably safe over here, but I'd vote we go deeper into these woods just to be sure.”

Jerry agreed but added one important request. “Once those guys leave, we have to go back and grab our stuff.”

Liam looked at him like he was crazy. “Dad, our house is gone. There's no way your supplies survived that inferno. I'm sorry but it's true. We should never go back if we think all is lost. It would be a big risk. Right?”

Phil and Melissa glanced sideways at each other, each with big smiles on their faces. Melissa seemed to be bursting to share her secret. “Liam, I know your house is a smoldering ruin. I'm sorry about the loss of your friends and neighbors, and sorry your grandmother got captured by Hayes. But we've been busy beavers while you've been away.”

Dad added, “We have a prepper, a US Army veteran, a police officer, and two whip-smart women on our team. Do you really think we'd leave our most important treasures sitting in our basement for anyone to take if we thought government agents were coming to our house to capture you?”

Liam thought about it for a few seconds, and grasped the implications. “No, I guess I don't think that at all.”

For a brief time, the laughter returned.

3

The Marines weren't there long. The lumbering Ospreys were impossible to miss as they left. The group waited a suitable time and then returned to observe their street from a different vantage point.

“You think they would keep someone behind as a lookout?” Liam asked as he crouched behind a tree.

“Doubtful, I don't think any agency has the resources to fly aircraft in and out more than the absolute minimum. Marines are used when they want to kill someone or lots of someones. Special Forces are used when they want to observe undetected. Or assassinate you.”

“Thanks, you're a real pick-me-up!” he responded.

The spirits of the group had simmered back to a disheartened baseline after the rush of dodging bombs, dragging themselves through creeks, and hiding in forests. Now they headed home—to see if anything more than splinters was left of the Peters' residence. Liam wasn't hopeful.

The remains of the street itself could be seen here or there, sometimes in remarkably undisturbed stretches of flat surface, but several bombs found purchase smack dab on the road. The resultant craters were impressive. Those big bombs had flattened all the houses in their immediate area, and the follow-up fire bombing had burned everything in the area to ash. Even the cars and trucks were empty hulks of fire-bathed steel. No one knew what kind of explosives had been used; Melissa said many of the most destructive types of ordnance had been outlawed against civilians, though there was no consensus on what constituted “civilians” when half the population was technically dead.

Liam's father tried to be pragmatic. “All we know for certain is that this street was considered such a high value target the military was able to task several planes, unload a significant amount of bombs, and send a couple platoons of Marines to make sure it was erased. All those resources would probably have been more useful fighting the zombies right now.”

Liam and his father hadn't had time to catch up on all that had happened to them both since the sirens, but Liam took the opportunity to share the most salient bits of his struggle. “Hayes gave me a warning as he was taking Grandma away in the helicopter. He told me the planes were coming, which gave me time to escape. He said it was a detail he couldn't overlook, since I'd spared his life and the lives of his men. But he said nothing about why he needed to bomb us clean off the map. A colonel I met in the government medical camp said he was responsible for deploying the strikes on other camps when containment failed. The planes were designed to erase all threats posed by the plague.”

All threats.

Liam's memory was jogged by his own statement. Several days ago he stood on a riverbank and wondered if his father knew the collapse was coming. He sent Liam to live with Grandma a few weeks prior to the outbreak of the plague, and she turned out to be an important objective to the CDC. Just a coincidence?

Liam pulled his father aside as they sifted through the ruins. “Dad, did you know the outbreak was coming? Is that why you sent me to live with Grandma when you did?”

His dad looked at him like he had grown a second head. “I sent you to live with Grandma because your attitude this spring was getting so bad both mom and I were arguing over which one of us would get to kick you out of the house when you turned eighteen. Your mom won that argument by the way.” He gave a slight smile, continuing. “We decided we couldn't take a full summer of the yelling and screaming, so we asked Grandma if she'd mind having an extra helper around. We figured if nothing else she wouldn't be as affected by your attitude, and because she couldn't hear well we didn't have to worry about you being too loud around her with all your yelling.”

That made a lot of sense. It was exactly the kind of statement he'd expect from his father. He also appreciated his dad hadn't exactly said no. Instead of pushing the issue, he moved on to a pain he knew they both shared. “I'm sorry I let Grandma get away. She said to tell you and Mom she loved you.”

His father put his arm over Liam's shoulders. “I'm sorry you both got you mixed up in all this intrigue. It's bad enough escaping from the infected, but you were tough enough to get Grandma to safety even with all these other people trying to catch her. I'm real proud of you. In the end it was just bad luck that ruined your plan.”

Liam had no doubt in his mind his father was on the up and up about loving him and wanting him to be safe, but there was something in his tone of voice that told him something more was on his mind.

“Here it is!” Liam's mother found the stake in the ground, signifying the location of the cache of weapons and material they had stashed in the woods. It was near a small fir tree which still had a lot of branches on fire.

“Behold, the burning bush.”

Victoria's exclamation startled him. The small fir was the only such tree burning in the entire area. Other trees were smoldering, but this one still had flames on it. He watched it with rapt attention.

Victoria continued, in a distant voice. “The burning bush from the Bible was where Moses was given the task of leading the Israelites out of Egypt.”

“OK, so who is Moses here? And where is the promised land?” Liam wondered.

They all stopped what they were doing and looked around at each other. It suddenly felt like a legitimate question. Was it Liam? He seemed most likely after leading Grandma and the others to this place. But at fifteen he had a long way to grow. Was it Jerry? Liam's father was capable and had also made a trip into and out of the fallen city. Or was it Grandma? She seemed to be a solid candidate given her age and her devotion to religion—if she were there to lead. Liam would be happy if it were anyone but him. He didn't judge himself a capable leader.

Nothing was clear cut in the real Apocalypse.

Phil finally spoke up. He pointed straight down.

“Right now these weapons are our Moses. They're going to lead us out of this wretched place, maybe not to the promised land, but to somewhere safer than this.”

Almost in unison, they all replied with a hearty “Amen!”

4

The day ended with everyone huddled in the woods for protection. A small pile of supplies had been exhumed, including guns, ammo, and even Liam's backpack.

The bombing did its job and cleansed a wide area around the neighborhood of everything—including zombies—but more had stumbled in after the fact. It upset him they took their sweet time and didn't come until after the Marines departed.

He shared what he'd learned in the Boy Scout Camp, especially how they whittled stout sticks into nasty spears and how they used them to puncture the skulls of the zombies. “The key is to kill them with the minimal amount of noise so we don't keep bringing in more. A spear isn't as sexy as a gun, but it's free, it's plentiful, and it works. It also keeps the zombies at arms-length while you do your thing.”

As they all tried their hands at making adequate spears, and dispatch the odd wandering zombie, they were pleased to learn a few neighbors did survive the assault. One of them was a man who lived several houses up the hill from Liam. He was old and gray, and had a serious demeanor almost all the time. Liam remembered him from his youth as the guy you never wanted to tangle with.

His name was Paul.

“Me and the Wright's from across the way were standing on my lawn when those birds first came through with their cannons. It was a sound of pure evil. We got lucky they was shooting right up the middle of the street instead of in the lawns and houses. Well I guess unlucky if you were in the street. I saw one man—I didn't recognize him—standing in the street one second, and then he evaporated. Just poof!”

The stern man almost showed emotion at that, but continued. “Well you can bet your ass we started running. Everyone scattered into the woods. My old legs wouldn't carry me faster n' a wounded dog but I never looked back. Them bombs hit the bottom of the street and worked their way up, so I had a little extra time. Others were in the woods too, running much faster. Most haven't come back. Maybe they ran into the dead walking toward the sounds of destruction...”

Paul explained he came back because he had nowhere else to go. No family. No friends. Nothing. Not even a pet.

No wonder he's a sour man.

It made Liam feel slightly better to know there were some survivors. Even crusty ones. He felt bad enough for being responsible for Drew's death. He'd given up hoping his friend survived once he saw the area he'd last been standing. There wasn't even a body to bury.

They didn't light a campfire for fear of being seen. They salvaged some stout patio chairs which had survived everything, and used those as a base camp of sorts. It at least gave them some place to sit besides the ground. For the first time in a long while Liam could relax in the company of his family. The whole group was engaged in hushed conversation around him.

Victoria sat in the chair next to his. Perhaps it was coincidence, but they were given extra room by the others. When she noticed him looking her way, she leaned forward to quietly talk, “We have to do something to get Grandma back. I feel horrible all this happened because of me.”

“Because of you? This all happened because I brought her back here. If I would have kept her away she might still be with me.” He knew that wasn't exactly true. Hayes had been looking for them the whole time. It was bound to happen sooner or later. He had a lot of resources apparently. But he wasn't going to let her take the blame for the end result. It was bad luck, as Dad said.

She was about to argue, but Liam moved on. “We can't worry about what's happened. We have to worry about what's next. Where do we even start looking for her? How can we rescue her? Is it even possible?”

Victoria sat back in her chair, thinking. The soft light from the moon made her bruises and abrasions disappear. Even her swollen lip was difficult to see. He was happy to be in her presence again, despite all the destruction it had brought. He was happy Victoria wanted to find Grandma too. It would be so easy to write her off as a loss and instead tackle the not inconsequential matter of survival day-to-day.

“You're always talking about the end-of-the-world books you loved to read. Did any of them give any clues on how we can get through this? Do you and I storm the city ourselves to rescue her, like they do in the movies?” She laughed.

He was put on the spot. He was always drawing parallels to the stories he'd read. Books about zombies were all over the place in subject matter, and of varying usefulness to the real life zombie apocalypse as he'd found out many times. Fictional stories always had clues. That was the big difference from reality. When it mattered in his own ongoing life saga, he saw no such convenient clues.

He felt in his pockets, thinking he was overlooking something. His pocketknife was in one, and the family picture given to him by Colonel McMurphy was in the other. He pulled it out and thought about the man he watched shoot himself in the head back at Elk Meadow—after he was bitten by a zombie test subject. In the dim light he could only see the outline of the man's wife and teenaged son. He had asked Liam to find them and tell them he loved them. It was his final request. Liam felt a lump in his throat as he relived those last moments. He turned the photograph over to see the address on the back. It was some town in Colorado.

Some clue!

He didn't think it likely they'd be going to Colorado anytime soon. Although...

“Didn't you say you are from Colorado?”

“Uh huh. Denver. Why?”

“The colonel. He gave me this picture of his family and said if I should ever be in their neighborhood, I should stop in and give them his last words. But the address is in Colorado. Some place called Grand Junction.”

“I see the city name all the time on the interstate signs driving around Denver, but I've never actually been there that I know.”

“It doesn't matter. We aren't going out-of-state anytime soon. We'd never make it.” Liam recognized he was in delicate territory now. He didn't want to discount ever going to Colorado. Her parents were there. But clue or no clue, there was no way to safely cross 1,000 miles of the unknown. Certainly not for a flimsy clue. Not even for her parents.

Uh oh. Bad Liam!

He realized the irony pouring off his declaration. He'd travel any distance to find his own parents, but hers, not so much. At least, he was afraid that was how he sounded to her.

Victoria made a sound Liam couldn't interpret.

“I didn't mean anything by it. Someday we'll try to get there after this is over. I'd like to meet your parents.” He tried to be cheery, and she even reached over and touched him on the arm, but he knew it was perilous to hope anyone could survive whatever this was. The end of the world. The Zombie Apocalypse. End Times. Take your pick. “Let's focus on one rescue at a time. Grandma first because we owe her. Then let's talk about getting you home to your parents. Deal?”

She was silent for a long time. He tried to play it cool. Did he say the wrong thing? The right thing? He chanced a look in her direction. She was silently crying.

He stood up, then drew her out of her chair. They held each other in the soft ambiance of moonlight.

Later they slept the sleep of the dead.

5

The night wore on. Hunkered down as they were, they only had a couple encounters with interloper zombies. Liam's spears were put to good, silent use. As the sun started coming up, the group came together to discuss the day.

Liam could tell they'd all been thinking about what came next.

Phil made the case they should try to get further out into the countryside. Find an abandoned farm or piece of land where they could regroup and ride out the worst. Melissa wanted to scout out from Liam's ruined neighborhood to find like-minded souls to join their group. She argued the bigger the group, the better chance they had to survive. Liam's parents had agreed they wanted to find Marty, but they had no suggestions on where to even begin. It left Liam and Victoria to answer that question.

“Victoria and I feel responsible for Grandma getting captured and taken away. I know what you'll say—that it wasn't our fault—but nothing can change our minds short of having her back with us. We've been trying to put our heads together to think of where she might have been taken but we're very short on clues. What I do know is this: I gave Grandma my phone just before she left on that helicopter. My hope is that somehow we can get a text through to her and—God willing—she'll figure out how to use my phone to send a message back telling us where she is.”

Everyone seemed to perk up at Liam's revelation.

“There are a lot of assumptions, but if we can find out where she is we still have to figure out what we can do to get her out. We aren't exactly a crack commando squad.” He looked around, thinking of the calamity they had just survived, and knew he could have been tossed in with worse survivors. In fact he'd spent some time with a group of twenty or so eighty-somethings. They were probably all dead by now.

“So Victoria came up with a short-term plan, a type of triage she called it, whereby we'll go back to the Boy Scout camp I left the other day, and use that as our base camp for future efforts. At least we know we'll have friends there, and we'll have a secure base from which to operate. Once there, maybe we'll be inspired to pick up clues to find Grandma.”

He looked at Melissa. “They're going to need help with security, that much I can promise you. Also, I told them if I ever returned I would bring back weapons to help them fight off zombies and other threats. That might be the price of our admission.”

He turned to Phil. “The other thing they're lacking over there is food. There are thousands of people and lots of water, but no food. If we can provide them some opportunities to get food—say from abandoned farms—it might further reinforce our value to them.”

One thread was consistent through almost all the books he'd read on zombies. If you couldn't contribute to whatever survival group you happened to end up with, you were no good to anyone. Doctors would be near the top in terms of value. Soldiers would be important. Insurance salesmen or data entry clerks with no other skills would soon find themselves hungry. The wild card was pretty women. Many books placed high value on pretty women no matter what other skills they had. He knew deep down what that meant. As he looked at Victoria, Mel, and even his mother he felt an involuntary shiver at what awaited them if he and the other men failed. It was why he was adamant they go right to the camp.

He intended to present his group as being a valuable addition to the Boy Scout leaders. He knew Mr. Lee would have no problems accepting him. It was selfish to say, but he needed a good solid base so he could dedicate his time to solving the mystery of where Grandma had been taken. He couldn't do that if he was running around hiding from zombies, trading bullets with criminals, or zigging and zagging to avoid falling Air Force bombs.

There really wasn't much argument from the core family and friends. Old man Paul was adamant he wasn't leaving his home, even if it was lying flat. He insisted he still owned the land and was going to protect it until his dying breath. To Liam it seemed foolhardy, but his older companions seemed to admire his dedication. A few other neighbors came and went, none of them eager to move on to parts unknown based on the word of a kid.

Liam was used to it. He often thought he could be Jesus himself, citing his own scripture and working miracles, and someone in the crowd would criticize his age. But his reasoning was sound in this instance. There was nowhere else to anyone's knowledge that had been picking up the pieces and providing some hope. Most people were content to salvage from the dying world, or take from those left alive. Neither of those activities had any long-term prospects. Maybe it was too early to talk about rebuilding, but certainly now was the time to organize the people who would eventually do the heavy lifting of repairing the world.

Liam's dad summed up their mission plan. “So all we have to do is get our guns and ammo, walk through the back roads of the county, and then knock on the door of the Boy Scout camp to see if they'll let us in? That sound about right?”

Liam nodded.

His dad finished with words he'd almost forgotten. It was something he said often when he was letting Liam practice driving this past spring.

“Liam, you're driving!”

Let the exodus begin.

Chapter 2: Apocalypse Pyramid

As much as they wanted to rush out and get to the Scout camp, they had to find suitable transportation for everything they had to carry. Finding a working car on Liam's street was impossible. There were no salvageable vehicles of any kind left in the wreckage. It was unlikely they could find a car by going to other neighborhoods either. Scavengers looking for gas had taken care of most cars abandoned on the roads—their open gas caps hung out like dry tea bags—and anyone still holding on to a working car would protect it with their lives. No one felt like assaulting neighbors to steal their ride.

They decided to use Liam's remaining bike and trailer as a type of pack mule to carry a good portion of the guns, ammo, and other goodies. Liam was disappointed to see his dad had only saved one big bag of rice. He knew he had many more in the basement.

“Yeah, sucks about the rice, but I only had the time and energy to bury one of them. If I had access to a tractor I might have been able to get them all. It certainly would have helped our situation to have a nearly limitless supply of food.”

Melissa seemed impressed. “What were you saving all that food for? If you don't mind me asking.”

“Not at all. Well, it all started with Mormons. You wouldn't know it by looking at them, but one of their church's guidelines is to always be prepared for the end of the world—true story! Their church instructs them to have at least one year of food per person per household, and even has recommendations on what you need in terms of the food itself. I think they call it an Apocalypse Pyramid. The foundation for the whole thing was dried rice. For the three of us, I probably had 1,200 pounds of rice stored in my basement and garage. Most of it was in 30 or so airtight five gallon buckets, but this last bag was a recent purchase and I didn't have time to put it in the proper bins yet. Since I knew it was fresh, I grabbed this one.”

“So you figured the end of the world would come and you and your family would ride out the storm on top of your Apocalypse Pyramid and everything would turn out fine?”

Liam knew his dad was serious about preparing for any emergency, but he had never come out and said specifically what his plans were. Looking around the wreckage of his neighborhood, and comparing it with the rest of the world he'd seen in his travels, he judged it was unlikely anyone could survive sitting alone in their basement.

“Well, I admit I seriously underestimated the swath of destruction generated by a worldwide collapse due to a plague. I thought maybe we'd have an EMP or terrorist attack in America. It would be bad, but eventually things would get back to normal because the rest of the world would be there to help. But this,” he waved his arm at his street, “this plague is everywhere. Every street in the whole world probably has zombies pounding down doors. I've seen fires. Looting. Vandalism. It's everywhere. My preparations were never going to be enough for something like this. Maybe if I'd built a castle in the middle of nowhere and invited a small city's worth of people to help me defend it...”

He seemed to stare off into space for a few moments.

“...but I made a mistake. And I made it worse by breaking up my family at the worst possible time.”

Phil, being a policeman, had made preparations too. Liam watched him grab big duffel bags of supplies before they fled his house. Was he also a closet survivalist?

“Phil, you seemed pretty prepared when we were at your house. Was your basement loaded with rice too?”

He started with a laugh. “No, I wasn't as prepared as your dad. My concern was keeping the peace in my neighborhood in the face of urban unrest. Have a shotgun and an AR-15 over my shoulder and man a roadblock to check who came up my street, that sort of thing. In my wildest imagination, I never envisioned a worldwide collapse, an EMP, or a devastating plague. We didn't even deal with those in our training scenarios. Mostly we trained for toxic spills on the highway, riots of shoppers on Black Fridays, and laying down spike strips to stop a high-speed car chase. My bags of goodies won't do anything to keep us fed.”

And that was going to be the problem of the world. Getting fed. One half of the population was trying to eat the other, and the other half was dodging those biters to find food of their own. And no one was being charitable when finding a can of Spaghetti-O’s was an extra few days of life.

It would only get worse. Liam's wide reading of end-of-world books said all roads lead to cannibalism. Not the dead eating the living...he wasn't sure if that was really cannibalism. Instead, the living eating the dead would proliferate as other food sources dried up. There was no way around that dark destination if society couldn't hold itself together.

Rather than continue down that line of thinking, he brought himself to the present to help the final loading of their “vehicles” for their trip.

They found a serviceable wheelbarrow and tossed the bag of rice in that. Between the bike and the wheelbarrow and everyone's backs, they were able to get all the important stuff. Not nearly enough once it was consolidated into the small caravan.

“It felt like we had more than what we have here.”

“Don't look so beat down, Liam. The most important resource you will ever have is the one on your shoulders. We can scavenge food, eventually we can grow it. The weapons are important so we don't get robbed, or overrun by the undead, but even guns aren't the end-all of survival. Your work with the spears illustrates that perfectly.”

Dad always knows just what to say.

2

They departed as the sun went down on the ninth day since the sirens. At the bottom of their street, close to where his friend Drew was last seen alive, Liam stopped to say a few words.

“Goodbye, Drew. Thank you for getting my Grandma safely to my street. You kept your promise to do that for me. Your parents would be very proud of you. I'm sure you're with them now—they can tell you themselves.” He gave a weak chuckle, but couldn't say anything else.

His mom stepped up. She'd been unusually quiet of late. Liam noticed right away, but attributed it to all the excitement she'd seen the last few days.

“Dear Drew. I can't thank you enough for helping my Liam get home, along with his grandma. You were the answer to my prayers of the past week. I've never wanted to see anyone so much in my whole life, and you brought him to me. I'm so sorry you couldn't join us in this celebration. We will never forget your name and what you did for us. Rest in peace now.”

“Amen,” they all said in unison.

The group left the neighborhood for the sparsely populated county road. Liam and Victoria were on each side of the bicycle as it pulled the heavy bike trailer. Each held one side of the handlebar to propel it forward. The bike itself was loaded down with guns hanging off each side. There was no way to ride it anymore, but it was perfect for this task. They were able to wrap the guns in some old carpeting so it wasn't obvious what they were. No use making it easy for potential brigands to select them. They were playing the part of dirty carpet salesmen.

Liam's mother pushed the wheelbarrow. She wasn't a physically strong woman, but she was in good shape—she, like her husband and son, was a runner—and she preferred to push it rather than be part of the security detail. She said she wanted to leave that to the professionals.

Liam's dad and Melissa walked about fifty yards in front of the cargo haulers. She was in the lead, and Jerry was about ten yards behind her. Their function was to keep watch for possible problems ahead and prevent the rest of the team from getting ambushed. Melissa had a curious knack for whistling like a bird, which they agreed would be the sign to halt. Once it got dark, it would practically be their only safe method of communication.

Phil was the final piece of the parade. He had a black duffel slung over his shoulder. He was about twenty-five yards behind the cargo, and kept watch for surprises from behind.

They followed the same route Liam had traveled the previous morning. He ran into so few problems they all agreed that was the right path for the return trip.

Liam wanted to chat with Victoria to see if she was doing OK, but he didn't want to risk the operation with distracting gabbing.

I'm learning patience. Grandma would be so proud!

They were on the road for less than an hour when the first curveball appeared. Someone had spray painted white words on the dark street surface. They weren't there on his previous passage. The letters were huge and the words consumed the entire two-lane road from one side to the other.

“WARNING. LOOTERS SHOT. SNIPERS AHEAD. HIGH RISK. REPENT! CHURCH OF OWENS.”

Liam remembered the name Owens. Those were the guys he'd met on his last trip who went to his high school. He knew their house was coming up, but in the dark he had a hard time judging distances. A mile ahead? He recalled it was on a long straightaway. Perfect for a sniper. And those good ol' boys looked like avid hunters.

The group had pulled back together to discuss the development.

“I know these guys,” Liam began. “I ran into them on my way out here. They were big into camouflage clothing and looked like they'd been hunting since they were in diapers, but they were nice enough to me. We even went to the same school. They said I was welcome to return, but none of this,” he pointed to the words, “was here.”

Melissa replied, “Do we have any options to take a different route? Maybe another way would be safer? I don't like the idea of snipers picking us off in the night. Especially friendly snipers.”

The group searched for an answer acceptable to everyone. Liam had a small light over his county map, but nothing jumped out at them as a slam dunk. A detour was attractive to avoid this particular threat, but Liam had no knowledge of other routes. There could be worse problems on those roads. He argued that he at least knew these people and could talk to them.

Victoria backed him up. “I trust he knows these people.”

The fear of the unknown proved stronger than the fear of the known. No one could make a strong case for backtracking and finding an alternate route.

Melissa remained practical. “OK, so how do we get down this road without getting shot?”

“We sing.” Victoria had their attention. “I grew up in a religious household. We sang all the time. My mom loved to sing when she did her chores. At the time it drove me crazy, but now I'd give anything to hear her silly songs.”

“It seems like a risky proposition, but Liam knows these guys and also the sign mentions religion. In that light, this seems like a good gamble.” Liam was pleasantly surprised his dad was backing him up.

They lined up in a tighter formation and began walking forward, into the moonlit night. They couldn't agree on any religious song they all knew, so they chose one verse that was very simple.

“Michael rowed his boat ashore, hallelujah!”

Melissa refused to sing, but she offered to whistle in harmony. Together they made quite the rolling church choir.

Liam was able to put the words together with volume, but he was enamored by the sweet vocals of his partner. Victoria's voice was stunning to him, even with something so simple. At one point, he nearly tripped on the bike's pedal because he was looking over at her. When she saw him, she knew what he was thinking and softly spoke to him over their mule. “Twelve years of choir practice!”

Wow!

They walked for about ten minutes, constantly repeating the one line of that song. Twice a zombie stumbled up the road embankment to try to ruin the fun, but both times Melissa used a stake to forcefully dispatch the intruders. Liam felt unnaturally buoyant at the energy they were throwing off. Nothing like a happy church song to push back the evil of the world. Even if it was just his imagination, it felt good.

They approached the home where Liam had previously been stopped by the group of young men. From out of the dark came, “Halt! Who goes there!” as if they were knights of old.

Liam took a chance. “Hail ahead Northwest High School! Boy Scout and choir group incoming!”

They were right up on the mailbox when he heard clapping.

“Well met, Boy Scout!”

The boys were practically right in front of them, hidden in a blind inside a nearby hedge. Exactly where you'd expect to find a group of hunters.

If these were his enemies, he'd already be dead.

3

“Don't you guys know any other lines to that song?”

Liam suspected Victoria did, but they all stood there shaking their heads.

“Well, neither do we. Guess we didn't pay attention during Sunday School.”

Some chuckles from inside the bush.

Liam tried to convey their mission succinctly.

“Hey again, guys. I came through here two days ago. I'm hoping you remember me?”

“Oh, sure we do. You're practically the only person who has come through here that hasn't done something stupid like pull a gun on us. I can't understand if we look like idiots or what, but it has happened a few different times. That's why we designed this blind, so we could cover ourselves anytime someone comes through and gets crazy on us.”

“Is that why you guys wrote that stuff on the road back there?”

“That was my momma's idea. She said it would keep the worst people away and only honest people would try to enter with such threatening warnings.”

Liam didn't think that was exactly true. “Not to doubt your mom, but wouldn't the worst threats see your warning as a challenge, and then try to sneak in from a different direction?”

“Yeah, but we're pretty good operating in the woods. My cousins are out in the night right now. A couple neighbors are also out there. We look out for each other. Got to do what you can. Momma's idea has turned some people away. We've watched them during the day.”

“Do any vehicles come through here anymore?”

“A couple of ATVs have been through. Those were neighbors from a few properties down the road. They have family up that way. Oh, a military convoy came through the other day, not long after you did. They didn't even slow down and we didn't make ourselves obvious to them. Don't want them to Third-Amendment us.”

“Third Amendment?”

Liam's dad knew it. “They didn't want the government to quarter troops inside their house. It's difficult to say if we are at peace or at war, and that can determine the rights of the homeowner. I'm inclined to believe this is a state of war, which means the government can pretty much do whatever it wants.”

Liam actually laughed. “You mean like firebomb homes, kidnap teenagers and 100-year-old ladies, and kill anyone who happens to get in the way?”

His dad gave a knowing smile in the glow of various flashlights.

“Anyway, we're going back to the Boy Scout camp so we can find a way to rescue my grandma from the CDC. They want to experiment on her. Kill her, I think.”

That seemed to strike a chord with the young men. A man with a full beard about eight inches below his chin came out of the blind. “My grandpa, God rest his soul, was a spry 90-something before all this happened. He lived with us in our house. We kept him on the main floor because he couldn't do steps very well, but he was on all kinds of medications and oxygen. When the power failed us, we had a small genny, but that didn't last very long. When that gave out, he didn't last very long. I think he just let himself die. I'm sorry they're doing that to your grandma. It ain't right.”

Liam thought of all the old folks he'd seen at the government camp. Each of them likely had family missing them terribly. He remembered how ornery some of them were, and revised it to “some of them had family missing them.” No sense sugar coating it. Old people could be jerks too.

“I'm sorry for your grandpa.”

They all stood there for a few moments, no one really sure how to proceed. Melissa broke the stalemate.

“Do you guys have any intel on what's ahead on this road? Anything we should watch out for?”

It turned out they had spent a lot of time getting to know their road.

“Zombies are everywhere, of course. We haven't seen any evidence of organized resistance or criminals. Everything is clear to the intersection of the highway a couple miles that way.”

Liam remembered that intersection. He was held at gunpoint by a drug abuser while he was riding his bike on his previous trip through there. It was a massive traffic jam of dead vehicles and dead drivers, centered around a cement truck which had plowed into them all, and surrounded by a ring of stripped and useless cars. It would have been very difficult to get a large vehicle through the mess. Bikes would be a snap, relatively speaking.

Liam found himself liking these country folk. He wanted to continue a relationship with them, even if they never came back through here. It would be good to know someone doing good work out here, in case they ever needed a place of last resort. He was saddened by his morbid realization he was already planning ahead for when the Boy Scout camp got wiped out.

Grandma would give me a pep talk right about now.

“Excuse me for a moment. I need to talk to my dad.”

Liam pulled his dad aside, and quietly asked, “Dad, I've read a lot of books about zombies and it struck me these people would be good allies. If we make it to the camp, it would be nice to know we have friends down here. If we don't make it to the camp, we'll have some place to retreat.”

“Excellent thinking, Son. Nice to see all those video games and silly books didn't take away your brain.” He smiled at Liam.

Despite the friendly tone, he tried to ignore the insinuation. That was the old Liam.

Jerry offered a proposal. “Our plans are to join up with the Boy Scouts up to the north of here. If we survive this trip and make it there, it would be great to tell them we have allies down here on their south side. In exchange, it would give you somewhere to go if you find yourselves in trouble. You're the only group we've found—besides ourselves—in this part of the county.”

The young man with the beard said he needed to run inside and talk to his mom. To Liam, it was funny the kids acted as liaisons between the parents. Between groups. Maybe this was the first step in an alliance that would last for a thousand years.

Feet on the ground, Liam.

It wasn't long and the bearded guy came trotting back.

“My mom agrees to your terms. She wants me to go with you to scope out the place and establish boundaries. No time to waste, she says.”

Liam looked to the house, wondering about the woman inside. She seemed really adept at this new reality. Some people did better than others “rolling with it.”

The bearded guy was “Bo” though he didn't say what it was short for, if anything. He carried an expensive semi-automatic shotgun and had two pistols in a holster on each side of his waist. He was dressed completely in camouflage—hat, long pants and long shirt—despite the summer heat. It looked like he would disappear in any wooded environment.

He said goodbye to his relatives, though he didn't seem particularly put out. Like he expected to be back in no time. Liam hoped that was true.

He also ran behind his house and came back with a sleek-looking bicycle with skinny tires.

“This is my brother's bike, but he won't mind if I use it.”

“Hell I won't!” retorted the bush.

They were saying their goodbyes when Liam remembered he had one more question.

“What is the 'Church of Owens' that you wrote on the road?”

One of the other boys spoke up. “That was my aunt's idea—Bo's mom—she's a preacher. She said people will have more respect for religious figures in the End Times.”

Liam didn't say it out loud, but he was pretty certain she was exactly wrong on that point. He'd read books on the Tribulation, formally known as End Times in scripture, and religious people were in for a rough ride in that scenario.

But Liam didn't believe this was Biblical End Times. He was certain Grandma would have been taken if the Rapture was real.

No, this was much worse.

4

Bo pushed his bike next to Liam and Victoria, in the middle of the caravan. Liam wondered if the slim bicycle would be able to hold the large man. He had to be every bit of six-foot-four inches and 250 pounds. But he looked very fit.

They shared some small talk while they were still near Bo's house, but things quieted down as they got back out into the wilderness of the road. Almost immediately, they heard Melissa grunting as she dispatched a zombie. A few moments later they had to swerve around the body.

Bo whispered, “Wow, she can really take care of herself.”

“You're telling us. She's a bundle of energy.”

Not long after, they crossed over the outgoing set of spray painted warning signs on their way out of Owens' territory. They approached the intersection Liam had feared. The group tightened up, and they laid the bikes in the nearby tall grass while they tried to observe what was ahead. In the moonlight, the intersection looked positively haunted.

Phil reached into his duffel, pulled out an apparatus, put it on his head, and flipped down what looked like binoculars over his eyes. He whispered, “Night vision, courtesy of a Homeland Security grant to the department.” Then he spent about five minutes scanning the intersection in front of them.

“I see a few patches of smoke, but no movement of people or zombies. As best I can tell, we can cross to the other side. Wait!” He was now looking to their right, which was on the uphill side of the intersection. “I can see a loose group of people walking away, up the road. I can't tell if they're zombies, but it would be my guess.” He then looked in the other direction, slightly downhill. The highway was four lanes wide, but it had a median in the middle to separate the two directions. “It's hard to tell from so far away. There may be more people that way walking in this direction.”

Stay or go. The gamer's dilemma once again.

Like so many decisions of late, the fear of the unknown beat out the fear of the known. They knew one group had just passed. The second group might be heading this way. If it was daytime, both groups would be on them. They decided to chance it.

They walked toward the intersection. Because he had been through here before, Liam explained how the only clear path through the debris and car jam was on their left side. He tried to detail how it wound along the near lane of the highway before crossing the median. On the far side, the path came back to the intersection. The route was basically a large letter U. He'd had the advantage of much more light to pick his way across. Now they had to do it at night, with strangers lurking in the shadows.

The path was confusing to explain, but the only dangerous section was right at the beginning. The intersection itself was along a small ridge line, so the main roadway going north and south was elevated above the surrounding wooded landscape. Liam noted how vehicles trying to get through this choke point were forced to drive on the steep incline next to the highway for a hundred yards or so to the south, before there was enough free space up on the road itself. Even the shoulder was blocked. In the light of day, it looked precarious. Now...

“We have to go to our left along that embankment. Then we'll see the opening up on the roadway where you can get back to level ground. It should be no problem on foot.”

He crossed his fingers.

Mel and Jerry went ahead into the darkness along the incline. Bo followed with his bike. Liam and Victoria with their loaded contraption dropped in line next. Lana and Phil were behind; they worked together with the unwieldy wheelbarrow.

He had to push the bike upright from the lower side as he walked along the hillside. There were deep ruts in the grass from four-wheel drive trucks plowing through here recently. He imagined Hayes and his Humvees had probably been on this same hill the day before. Victoria did her best to steady the bike it fitfully rolled along the uneven ground.

Liam thought of something Grandma had told him about the rhythm of life. She'd said life has a rhythm, and once you get used to it you can see things that don't belong or that aren't right. He got that feeling as they walked. A sort of deja vu mixed with a premonition, signaling a disruption.

He felt his heart beating in his chest as they stepped through the difficult terrain.

Beat.

He stumbles in some loose dirt.

Beat.

He tries to compensate as he grips the bike.

Beat.

Victoria is surprised and the handlebar starts to slip from her.

Beat.

The bike leans heavily in his direction.

Beat.

“I'm losing it!” she shouts.

He didn't want Victoria to tumble with the bike and trailer. It was going to happen no matter what she did. His only option was to spring out of the way so he wasn't hit by it. That's exactly what happened.

The overloaded bike tipped to the left. At first he thought the trailer might keep the bike from going all the way over, but it didn't. Instead, metal bent and broke. Liam jumped out of the way, Victoria lost her grip completely, and the whole contraption slid and bounced loudly down the hill. It was fifty or so feet to the bottom; enough space for all the cargo to explosively depart the rigging they'd made to hold it all together.

Everyone else watched helplessly as the bulk of their weapons disappeared into the darkness.

He should have been taking things seriously, especially knowing what was up on the roadway heading his way, but his thought at that moment was of something he'd wondered about on day one of the disaster. “Am I that guy who does the stupid stuff and brings ruin to the group?”

He ran scenarios in his head. That guy who gets bit by his girlfriend because he was too stupid to know she was infected. That guy who stops the car to take a leak, only to be attacked at a delicate moment. That guy who can't even manage a simple bicycle and dooms them all to battle zombies in the dark.

He hated the thought, but there was no denying he'd screwed up.

There was no time to decide who he was. He had to run.

“Get to the bottom!” Melissa tried to be quiet about it, but had to be loud enough for everyone to hear at once.

They all started down. There was no way to secure the wheelbarrow on the side of the hill, so Mom and Phil held it tightly as they moved down the incline, but it also got away from them. They had gone about half way so it wasn't such a disaster, but it still tipped the bag of rice and other gear onto the grass and then bounced loudly on a concrete drainage channel at the bottom.

All my fault.

Liam was the first one down to the edge of forest along the highway throughway. Liam found it hard to see what had become of his bike and the cargo. Melissa was down shortly thereafter.

“We can try being quiet down here, but it's probably too late for that. Have your weapons ready. There could be lots of them.” She saw Liam trying to gather random pieces of their gear. “Don't bother picking up yet. There's no time and we can't risk lights.”

Liam readied his weapon instead. Victoria did the same.

“I'm sorry, Liam, I couldn't hold on.”

“Totally my bad. I tripped and couldn't find my balance.” He was more concerned about her rifle. “You said you know how to work an AR-15. Do you have any extra rounds with you?”

“No, I just have what's in the clip. Thirty rounds, I think.”

He didn't think the cusp of battle was the right time to correct her terminology. “Me too. I didn't anticipate the need to carry more mags since we had a wheelbarrow full of ammo with us.”

Never take anything for granted. Never.

“There are 1,000's of rounds of ammo within fifty feet of us, spread out after they tumbled down the hill,” she said with a wisp of regret.

All of them took positions at the bottom of the steep hill. Mel and Phil were on the left. Lana and Jerry were on the right. The three young adults were in the middle.

In a couple minutes the first head popped over the edge of the highway above them. Looking for the sounds and tastes of fresh human meat.

She brought friends.

5

Liam carried four weapons. The least useful was his pocket knife. It would barely be classified as a weapon under most circumstances, but certainly not for this one. The next least useful weapon was probably his small .22 caliber Ruger Mark I. It had a nine-round mag, and Liam actually had a few extra rounds in his pockets, but it was difficult to aim in the dark, and there was no margin of error when shooting zombies in the face. Reloading in the dark while in close combat would be impossible. Next was the spear he kept lashed together with his rifle. The stout stick was useful for piercing the brains of zombies and could be reused many times. The primary downsides were you had to be strong to use to more than a few times, and it was ineffective against multiple close enemies. His most useful weapon was his AK-47 from his dad's stockpile. Practically a collector's item, the distinctive rifle found its way into Liam's house because it was so cheap to buy. His dad had ten of them. It could put a deadly round into the brain of a zombie from a reasonable distance, though in the dark, its usefulness was reduced greatly. Still, of them all, the AK was his go-to first line of defense. With careful husbanding of ammo, he and Victoria alone could take down sixty zombies. The thought of needing more was enough to make his knees wobble.

The others had similar rifles or shotguns at the ready. Liam stuck his spear into the hard-packed soil of the weedy grass so he could grab it if he ran out of ammo. Victoria did the same next to Bo. They agreed whoever ran out of ammo first would use those backup weapons. Victoria also had one of Liam's Mark I's in her holster, but she only had nine rounds for it.

The filthy robed woman up top screamed and began her descent. Almost immediately, she tripped on the same ruts responsible for Liam's accident moments earlier. It was almost comical as she fell forward and tumbled down the hill in a raggedy ball of arms and legs. She came to rest directly in front of Bo—right in the middle. Liam hadn't seen a zombie get disoriented, but this one had trouble getting back up. Rather than take the easy shot with his shotgun, Bo slung the gun over his shoulder, grabbed the spear at his side, and slammed it home. The woman was hard to see in the low light, but the gruesome sounds of the spear plus the pangs of death were horrible. Liam braced for things to get worse.

More came over the top. Almost all of them arrived from their left. A few were walking along the embankment from that direction, though most were coming straight over the top as if they were in the jumble of cars to begin with.

About half the zombies met the rut and tumbled down the hill. Most were out of control as they seemed to lack any sense of balance once they went from flat to hillside. In moments, there were a dozen falling down the hill.

Then it got loud. Liam had been around firearms his whole life, but always with the approved safety goggles and ear protection. These days, people did away with such frivolities. It was just explosion after explosion from the barrels of their guns. He almost longed for OSHA to come write them a ticket for having an unsafe work environment.

Most dropped to a knee to steady their aim. Hitting things in the dark was already difficult. Hitting tumbling things in the dark, while aiming for their heads, was a whole new level of crazy.

Those who rolled down were comparatively easy to dispatch. Once they reached the bottom, they were exposed on the ground while they tried to recover. The moonlight was enough to find their heads. The real problem were the random zombies who stayed on their feet as they sped down the hill—not quite a run, more of an ungainly bounding. They closed the distance with the shooters dangerously fast.

The first person to go down was Jerry. He was hit at full speed by a lanky man and together they fell over into the wooded fringe behind them all. Lana was experienced pulling zombies off her husband, but her action took them both off the firing line while they contested the outcome. It left a lot of territory for Liam to cover.

He was already on his knee and lined up his shots as carefully as he could, but he still missed a lot. Even when a zombie was hit in the head, its momentum kept it going down the hill—adding to the chaos.

In less than a minute, Liam's rifle was out of ammo.

How did I go through thirty rounds that fast?

He threw it down and pulled out his Mark I. It gave him nine more shots before things would get personal with the spear.

Meanwhile, Phil and Mel dealt with the same problems. They had to take a few steps backward so they had some level ground in front of them where the descending ghouls could come to rest and be dispatched. They were much more disciplined than Liam and Victoria, so the hammers of their guns kept things even on that side.

In the middle, Bo, Liam, and Victoria took a step or two back from the hill to make room for the stack of undead developing there. Bo was still using the spear. Despite his heft, he darted among the injured or disoriented zombies lying at their feet and put them out of their misery. He dodged and ducked between Victoria and Liam with athletic grace as they all sought targets.

“I'm out!” Victoria threw down her rifle, just as Liam had done. She went right for her spear, rather than her pistol. She tried to help Bo.

Liam couldn't get a read on the chaos around him. To his left, he heard his parents yelling and screaming as they rolled around in weeds. To his right, he only heard the regimented banging sounds of the expert shooters. The middle?

We're screwed.

More zombies came over the top.

“We need a new plan!” Liam yelled it, but didn't know to whom it was directed.

His mom answered.

“We have to pull back. Jerry's injured.”

Jerry was howling in pain, but managed to shout over all the noise, “No! We can't leave the supplies!”

“Dad, just leave it. We can come back for it. Let's move!”

He didn't know if anyone would listen to him, but he grabbed Victoria and she readily followed. Soon they were all following Liam into the dark woods.

Ahead he had trouble seeing anything. The bright flashes of the guns had ruined his night vision, and the moon was unable to penetrate the thick canopy of leaves above them. He had forced a decision for them all—and it could be a decision that killed them all. What if they ran into another group of infected in this direction? He'd remembered how zombies seemed to end up in pockets in the woods around the Boy Scout camp, like they'd gotten lost and were waiting for something to guide them out. Something alive.

He didn't know how badly his father was injured. Maybe he couldn't keep up?

He stopped in a small dry rocky creek bed; the others came up behind him. Several small flashlights bobbed his way. Phil and Mel were last, constantly picking off the fastest pursuit.

“Where's my dad?” Looking around, he added, “and where's my mom?”

“Dad! Mom!”

“We're coming!”

They weren't far behind; his dad leaned heavily on his mom. In the darkness it was impossible to see his condition, but his heavy grunting painted a dire picture. He had no time for a checkup. Other grunts and moans weren't far behind his parents.

“Keep moving.”

It was as intelligent a plan as he could come up with at that moment. Everyone followed.

In a few moments, Liam found a small rocky outcrop blocking his path. He could tell they were facing the start of an incline up the next hill, and this formation provided the perfect defensive position. If he could get them all up onto the top of the rocks.

“Everyone up on these rocks. We're going to fight them from here.”

He kept it simple. Everyone in the group grasped his plan as soon as they saw the rocks. Find a way up, wait until the zombies show up, then fight them from a raised position.

“Just don't let them grab your feet. That will be the end.”

He didn't need to spell it out. He'd seen men and women pulled from the flat railcar he'd rode out of St. Louis. It had also provided an elevated fighting position. But there were untold zombies pursuing them a week ago. Enough that they stacked up and made unholy ramps for others to climb.

Surely there couldn't be that many? Unlike the rail car, they could move along the rocks if there were too many. They could start running up the next hill if things deteriorated. That is, if his dad could move. He tried to get a read on his father.

Jerry made it up, but was lying on a rock, behind Lana. Liam could just see him in the darkness. Condition unknown, but not looking good.

They'd had just enough time to arrange themselves in a loose line, facing the direction from which the zombies hurtled out of the darkness. The risk of shooting each other was minimal.

Liam wondered if he would be that guy that gets shot by friendly fire.

Or worse, shoots my own friends?

So much to worry about in the seconds before contact.

The zombies weren't fooled by the retreating humans or by the darkness. They weren't as fast, but they stayed on track as they approached the rocky area.

They had also thinned out. The trees and uneven terrain of the woods ensured the mass of zombies was staggered. They attacked the group in ones and twos, rather than all at once.

The height of the rocks made using the spears kind of awkward. To be effective, Liam had to drop to one knee to get the leverage he needed to thrust downward into the heads of the zombies. He also found himself constantly worried about tipping or being dragged over the side of his perch. A few times, he had to jump the rocky terrain to find new perches.

After some initial gun fire, the entire group reverted to their spears. Even Bo had borrowed Jerry's, and joined the horrible melee. Soon all he heard was the sickening slurps of spears finding their homes in the skulls of the plague victims, followed by a dull crunch as the bodies fell onto the forest floor. The huffing and puffing of the men and women thrusting the spears played counterpoint to the death they handed out.

Liam found the rhythm both horrible and beautiful. In one of the increasingly longer lulls between zombies, he debated if Grandma would call this the rhythm of life? Personally, Liam felt the sounds of life's harmonies were gone forever. The laughter of children. The patter of rain. The rustle of leaves. Those songs were for the living with a bright future. Hearing them now only reminded the listener of what was lost.

All that remained was the cacophony of a dead and dying world.

The horrible music played for a long time, but went silent with the dawn.

They survived to see the tenth sunrise since the sirens.

Chapter 3: Trojan Horse

The dawn brought a new perspective on the destruction they'd wrought overnight. Liam looked around the rocky outcropping where they'd found sanctuary; bloody, discarded bodies were strewn everywhere. They were stacked two or three deep, but nothing like he'd seen on the railroad journey. They were too spread out here.

His dad was fortunate. He wasn't bitten.

“Your mother says I broke my fibula. It was that very first zombie that ran me down. It pushed me back and I fell over a tree root and he landed hard on top of my leg. The force fractured my bone. It hurts like hell.” He laughed a little to show he wasn't giving up.

Bo and Phil helped him walk back through the woods toward the road. The others provided security with their spears. There didn't appear to be any additional zombies afoot, at least not in the woods.

When they arrived back at the bottom of the roadside hill, they were amazed at how many infected they'd killed there. The use of firearms knocked down a lot of zombies in a short period of time, probably giving them the edge they needed to retreat and survive the night. Without the spears, they'd probably all be dead.

“We need to give those Boy Scouts a medal or something.” Liam was being serious. Boy Scouts loved awards and commendations. It was part of their DNA.

They started to clean up the mess of the fallen bicycle and wheelbarrow. Guns had been flung everywhere, the bag of rice had been partially damaged, and boxes of ammo were spread among the dead bodies in their little combat zone. It was like a sick Easter egg hunt.

Liam focused on the bike. He was positive it would be ruined, but it looked remarkably intact upon closer inspection. The fabric of the trailer had several big rips, but the frame was fine. In the end, the only major structural issue was the arm that hooked up to the rear frame of the bike. It had been bent pretty bad, and didn't seem likely to survive being bent back into proper shape. It was only a hollow aluminum tube.

They decided to collect the guns and put them on the bike again, just as they had before. They put most of the ammo into the wheelbarrow. It was so heavy Phil was put in charge rather than Lana. Since the trailer arm was broken, Bo had an idea to use a stout log to pull it by hand. Liam found the proper piece of wood for the job. It was about a ten-foot straight section of a young sapling. It took some time with his pocketknife and some larger knives carried by the others, but they were able to get it down. The key feature was a notch in the bottom where a second shoot was growing upward. It provided a kind of hook at the end.

By the time he was done, most of the debris was cleaned up and waiting for him up on the highway. They put things together in between several cars so as not to be easily seen by anyone or anything else. Liam used his hook and slid it underneath the two-wheeled trailer, anchoring it to the frame by pulling it forward. Now, they could pull the little trailer by hand. The last thing he needed to do was put his dad back there.

The trailer was built to seat two small children side by side, facing backward. A full-sized man like Jerry was hard pressed to fit in there, but it was up to the task. The makeshift ambulance was completed when they found an empty suitcase in the traffic jam. They put the extendable handle under the frame of the trailer, wrapped up with the wooden hook. This allowed Jerry to put his broken leg into the suitcase as its small wheels rolled behind the trailer. It was ugly, but it worked. Liam and Victoria both pulled the trailer. Lana walked behind Jerry. Bo was in the lead with his shotgun at the low ready. They used his bike for a few guns and some equipment they stuffed into Phil's duffel.

They grabbed another empty suitcase and put the mostly full bag of rice in it. Lana pulled that behind her.

Finally, they cleared the big intersection. On several occasions, Bo used his spear to repulse aggressive straggler zombies. Once he fell to the ground after badly misjudging the speed of an oncoming walker. The two tumbled together. It happened with lightning speed. One second Bo was fighting like a pro. The next minute he was in mortal danger.

Lana had made a living out of saving her husband the past ten days.

“Keep him off you. I'm here!”

She used her spear as a baseball bat first, and got the attention of the blood-slick and sick-looking male zombie dressed in short pants and a tank top as it squirmed on top of Bo. He had the good sense to pull up his knees to keep the thing off balance and off his skin. It allowed Lana's “bat” to hit him solidly in the head; the momentum carried him to Bo's side. It was off to his side, so he could roll away. By the time he was up, Lana stood over a still corpse.

“Thanks. That was close!”

He wiped sweat from his brow in the early morning sun.

“Don't mention it. I'm glad I could get to you in time.” Then, as she looked back at the group, she doled out a piece of advice. “If they ever get you down, keep moving. Keep them off balance. Keep something between its mouth and your skin. As long as we stay in a group, you should only need to keep them at bay for a few seconds and we'll be along to help you. We have to look out for each other. Always.”

Liam knew it made all the sense in the world. What he never expected was to hear his mother giving him advice on how to survive in a world filled with zombies.

I assumed it would be the other way around.

2

The second half of their journey was anticlimactic. They struggled along with the bike and trailers, and made terrible time. They discussed resting in the trees but everyone was anxious to get to the safety of the Boy Scout camp. So they pushed on.

They had nearly reached the last intersection before the camp when Lana's phone beeped as if it received a text message. Everyone stopped, shocked at the unfamiliar noise. The beeps and rings of technology had already faded from their memories.

***This is Liam. At Lone Elk Park at a gov camp. Just broke free. Beware Hayes. Heading for home. Have grandma. 7d since sirens.***

“You sent this three days ago; I already got it. It's how we knew you were coming home and had Hayes to worry about. But now it's showing up again.”

“I wonder if this is intentional? Maybe someone is controlling the cell towers. Someone we may have met before?”

“Hayes? He already has Grandma; why would he want you too?”

“Us. Why would he want us?” Liam reminded his dad.

“OK, so maybe not Hayes. Then who?”

Melissa was a little less paranoid. “Maybe this is just a coincidence. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Liam scratched his head at the reference, but had no ideas. Maybe he was getting too paranoid.

“OK, the question is, do we try to contact Grandma while we can?”

The group huddled together. They stood in front of Jerry in the trailer, since he couldn't get out. “We may never get another chance to do this. If we can find out where she is, it's worth the risk.” Liam was ready to jump on the chance.

Victoria was uncharacteristically hesitant. “Maybe we should think this through, Liam. If someone is tracking your family, they'll be watching for your message. That might lead them right to us. They'll surely realize we're heading for the Scout camp. That could put everyone there in danger.”

Melissa agreed. “Whoever is out there, they have sophisticated intelligence assets, not to mention the use of the US Military. For all we know there's a B-2 bomber up in the stratosphere just waiting to plug in coordinates to deliver its payload.”

Liam had recently seen a B-2 bomber doing just that. It was part of the bombing done on the zombie horde back at the St. Louis Arch. Day three of the collapse. That seemed like months ago.

The group argued the pros and cons for a couple minutes. All the while, Liam felt the sands of time slipping away. What if the network shut down for all eternity?

His father sat quietly. Listening. “I feel like there is something afoot here. The network came up for a purpose. Whoever did it probably has the resources, like Melissa says, but we need the network to contact Liam's phone so we have a clue where she's being held. I think we all know the risk, but I vote to try. Better now than trying it inside the camp where there are people to worry about.”

Liam felt relieved. Mainly for his dad's confidence in his plan, but also—he admitted to himself—he was glad his dad was there to make decisions again.

Everyone else agreed, or at least didn't argue. Victoria was quietly kicking a stick on the ground.

Liam got to making his call on his mom's phone, but was disappointed to find he couldn't make a voice call. He went right to text. “Grandma may not know anything about texting, but she's a smart cookie. She'll figure out how my phone works. If she has the phone on her and can access it, she can even tap to reply directly to this message.”

He sent a simple message asking her to tell him where she was. He pushed send and watched it as it left his phone. The network didn't give him any indication his message had been lost, so he took it to mean it actually went through.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for the big reply.

A few minutes went by before the group started to fidget. Liam had time to look at the low battery indicator. They'd need a way to recharge it soon. He'd probably passed a dozen car chargers back at the intersection.

Eventually they all went to doing other things. Even Liam was ready to admit they should get back to their task at hand.

“Hey, I wonder if I can text anyone else? Let me try JT.” Just before the world went to hell, JT text messaged him by accident. He alluded to the fact he and his family were evacuating the city because of the exploding crisis, but Liam was too thick-headed to appreciate what was happening until it was too late. Now he wondered where his friend had gone.

The message he tried to send stalled in his phone; it was unable to connect to the network.

“It's down again.”

His dad spoke quietly. “Convenient.” With a dramatic sigh he made as if he were looking up at the sky. “We should keep moving.”

They all returned to their walking formation. Soon they traveled the last little way to the camp. Liam kept his mother's phone in his own pocket, determined to be ready for any replies. He imagined the infrastructure of the world: the cell towers, the network operation centers, and the lines themselves. Everything had to work just right for any signals to go out or get back. And with everyone left alive running from zombies, there would be no one around to fix even the most minimal problems.

Figuring out where Grandma was located was a race against the entropy of civilization itself.

3

“Halt!” The voice came from the woods to their right.

“What's your business on this road? This is Boy Scout territory.”

The group looked at each other, then at Liam.

“My name is Liam Peters. I left here the other day with my grandma and another Scout named Drew. I said I would come back with my parents. Mr. Lee knows who we are.”

Some voices were evident, closer in the woods than they would have expected. They seemed to be arguing over what to do. Many seconds later, a young boy tumbled out of a bush. He was covered head to toe in mud and leaves, which made him blend perfectly into the landscape.

“Liam!” The boy ran up and gave him a big hug.

Liam knew he should recognize him, but with all the debris on his face it was impossible. Perhaps sensing his confusion, he let him off the hook. “I'm Preston. Remember me?”

“Of course! You don't look the same with all that camouflage. You look awesome.”

“Thanks, Liam. I've been on guard duty at this gate since you left. I just knew you'd come back.”

Preston had fought zombies with Liam in the woods of the Boy Scout camp days earlier. They lost several friends in a gruesome battle with the undead. Liam had assumed it ruined the boy, but he seemed to have bounced back.

“You guys have a gate out here now?”

“Yep, we have gun guys up in the woods. I'm more of a greeter guy down here.”

Liam suddenly felt the weight of eyes on him.

“Preston, these are my parents and my friends. Can you take us to Mr. Lee?”

“Sure thing, Liam.” Then to his mates in the woods, “I'm heading to Endor. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

Liam could see two other boys in the weeds, near the bush Preston used for cover. They gave him the OK, asked him to bring food, then went back to whatever they were doing.

When they got a few paces further down the road, Liam couldn't resist asking about Endor—the mythical forest moon in one of the Star Wars movies he'd grown up watching.

“Oh, Mr. Lee wanted to name everything in our camp after things we kids would know. He selected his main security base and called it Endor. I guess he thought we were all Star Wars fans. I would have called it Hogwarts myself.”

He wasn't a big Harry Potter fan, but the naming convention made sense. He asked about other names in the camp, wanting to become familiar with them.

“Well, after that he tried to get us to vote on the names, but we couldn't all agree on anything.” He gave Liam a knowing laugh, as if kids couldn't agree on the color of the sky. “What else? Oh, there are some groups of tents that have given themselves names unofficially, mostly silly stuff. The only one that stands out is the Umbrella Corporation. They've been going out of the camp to abandoned houses nearby and taking any patio umbrellas they find. I don't get it, but they all think it’s hilarious.”

Liam got it. The Umbrella Corporation was the name of an evil company that built a plague in a series of zombie movies and games. But he couldn't quite get himself to laugh at the joke. For all he knew, there really was an evil corporation behind all this.

“So, you guys are scavenging nearby houses for food and stuff? How are people holding up?”

Liam realized he was hogging the conversation, but no one else seemed interested in talking right now. The tension and disappointment of the text message seemed to have taken the wind out of their sails.

“Yeah, we have to. There's no more food left in the valley. There have even been a few riots from hungry campers who thought other areas were hording food. Mr. Lee set up the foraging teams to try to keep everyone fed, but they aren't coming back with much. 'Cept maybe zombies.”

“Have you had any more attacks?”

“Lots, actually. Remember those two kids who died when we were carrying your grandma off that hill? They ended up in camp that same night you left, and did a lot of damage before they were put down. After that, we had to get serious about security everywhere. No one has really slept well since then.”

They arrived at a dirt two-track path off the main road to their right, into the property owned by the Boy Scouts. Preston indicated that was the way they needed to go.

Liam's father was rolled carefully off the smooth road onto the dirt and the jostling seemed to cause him a lot of pain. He insisted they continue. He wanted it to be over with.

“This dirt road cuts north and south across the whole property on this side of the camp. Out here where there's nothing but trees...and zombies.” He laughed less excitedly this time. “You can avoid the main valley out here. That's why we moved our roadblock out past this road. We didn't want people sneaking in our back door.”

After many minutes of walking, Preston indicated they needed to take a smaller spur heading up a steep rise. He said it would take them directly to Endor, and that it wasn't far.

They had a lot of trouble with Jerry on the hill. It got very steep near the top. They had to walk up the wheelbarrow first, with three people pushing. Then the bicycle with all the guns. That took four people. Finally, Jerry. That took everyone.

When they reached the top, Liam recognized where he was. The three-story wooden tower where he and the other Scouts had fought and protected Grandma against an onslaught of the undead. It was not a pleasant memory then, or now. The boys had dragged scores of the dead into a big pile and burned them. The ash pile was nearby.

“Liam!”

Mr. Lee waved at them from the top. He was a tall middle-aged man with a short black beard, and wore the typical dress uniform of a Scout leader: tan short-sleeved shirt loaded with patches and awards, khaki short-pants, and hiking boots. He descended to meet them. Several nights ago, Liam had left this camp with an agreement he would try to return with his family and friends, and with a little luck, with weapons. Liam stood proudly by the bicycle with more than a dozen long guns hanging off its frame. He had kept his part of the bargain.

Mr. Lee, upon seeing Liam and his caravan of goodies, offered only one statement.

“Well done, Scout.”

4

There was no time for pleasantries, and almost no time for proper introductions. After their initial small talk, Mr. Lee got right to business.

“Liam, your family is here in the nick of time. We have several problems happening all at once. Where do I begin?”

He seemed to think it over while he paced back and forth, focusing on the ground the whole time.

“OK, our main problem is food. Most of the boys are going out in foraging parties to bring back food from abandoned houses. We team them up with adults, but it's still very dangerous work for these boys, and the yields have been meager, to say the least. A lot of people are still in those houses.”

Liam wasn't surprised. Everything he'd heard about this disaster indicated it had been taking place for weeks before the final collapse. That meant people were consuming food, supplies, and fuel during a time where those items were all getting scarce, but before most people realized those things were never coming back in stock. This was most acute in gasoline, which was how most people's cars ended up stranded on the highways. They left the house with whatever remained in their gas tanks—often it wasn't much.

“Close behind food is security. We aren't sure why, but more and more zombies are penetrating our defensive ring and making it into the camp. Needless to say, we're all on edge here. Your weapons will help us reach out to cover more area out here. In the meantime, we've started on a wooden fence but haven't made much progress.”

“Have you had any additional visits from the military?” Liam was responsible for bringing the military to their doorstep three days ago when he was here. He was holding his breath for the response.

“No, thankfully that's one problem we haven't had.” He seemed to consider that statement.

“Actually, scratch that. The military hasn't been back at our front gate, but it has been on the property. I was saving the job for a proper fighting team, but as I said, things have been thin here. Do you guys want to help me bring back an MRAP?” He wore a devious smirk.

“Say what?” Melissa's ears perked up.

“Yeah, we found the vehicle stuck in the mud further along on the dirt road you just left. There's a marshy section toward the north boundary, and it looks like they were trying to get a convoy up that path when they ran into some soft ground.” He chuckled openly.

“But I need some adults with guns to go with me to help get it out of the mud and provide security from any...un-friendlies.”

Melissa jumped at the opportunity. “I'm all for getting it, but if it's stuck in the mud how are we going to get it out? Those things must weigh as much as a small tank.”

“That's what's so funny. It's down to the axles, that's for sure. But the thing is 6-wheel-drive. It's almost like they didn't try. They just left it there to rot.”

“Maybe they were off taking a leak and got overrun?”

“Or they left it there as a trap.”

Victoria hadn't been very talkative since she was out-voted in contacting Grandma.

“Victoria's right. Mr. Lee, you know we were being pursued the last time I was here, and this MRAP is probably the same one Hayes used when he came through here—actually now that I think about it, he did mention he lost an MRAP looking for the tracking beacon we took off Grandma. You put it on a deer, didn't you?”

Mr. Lee smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

Liam smiled too at the thought of that small victory. Not only did it divert his attention while Liam escaped the camp with Grandma, but it helped deprive Hayes of his main offensive asset. If he'd had it when he showed up at Liam's house, things might have ended much differently.

“If Hayes had to leave his prized pony in the woods, I'd bet anything he left some nasty surprises for anyone who happens along. He's sneaky like that. He'd call it tending the details. Victoria's right. It will be trapped.”

She gave him a casual smile.

Well, it's something.

Melissa was undeterred. “I think we should check it out. Trap or no, having that vehicle would give us a tactical edge over any intruders. We have to think about our long-term survival. It's worth the risk.”

The group talked it through, and in the end, only Victoria and Liam were against the risk of springing the trap.

Liam sensed the mood of the team; he pulled Victoria aside.

“I don't like this any more than you do, but I think we have to go to provide help for these guys. We can't split up now or we're going to die.”

“We could wait with your dad. Surely he isn't going?”

He hadn't considered that. Of course he wasn't going.

“No, I'm sure Mom won't go either now that you mention it.”

Victoria continued to look apprehensive.

Liam took a chance and grabbed her hands in front of him and looked directly in her eyes.

“I'm sorry we overruled you about calling Grandma.”

She seemed to soften. “I'm sorry too. I'm so tired of all this death and destruction. I was hoping we would get to this camp and we'd have some time to rest before we went looking for trouble again. That's why I didn't want to call your Grandma at that exact time. I do want to rescue her. I do. And now we get here, and even before we see the camp itself, we are already pursuing another dangerous goal. I'm scared, Liam. Scared of Hayes.”

He didn't blame her. She'd been shot by the man.

“Victoria, I'll back you up on this. I'll always have your back, even if we don't always agree on details of our planning and...stuff.” Not his best speech. “But you have to understand, I thought you were dead. Now that you're alive, I feel I can conquer anything. No challenge scares me. I can face anything with you by my side.”

He felt her squeeze his hands. She pulled him in and gave him a hug. With everyone else around, he was kind of glad she didn't want to kiss him.

She spoke quietly, “Liam, I'll follow you anywhere. Just don't leave me alone. I kinda like having you around.” She gave him a burgeoning smile.

That was the old Victoria talking.

“Deal.”

They broke the hug, but as they stood there, Liam found his own bravery and leaned in for a quick kiss. He was afraid of zombies, government agents, bombers, and breaking a leg—but he refused to fear his own girlfriend.

He ignored anyone who might be watching, and was very pleased to notice she met him halfway.

It was decided. They were going for the MRAP.

5

It felt like a repeat of his last foray into these woods. He joined up with a team, this time without Grandma, and was out in the wilderness in no time. He traveled with what he considered the “A” team. Mr. Lee. Phil. Melissa. Bo. Himself and Victoria. Mom and Dad were back at Endor, tending to Dad's leg. He felt OK with that, knowing they were safe. The group also had several older Scouts and a couple of adults Liam learned were the dads of those same kids.

Everyone had spears—there were plenty in the tower—and everyone had some kind of semi-automatic rifle along with extra mags and ammo. By agreement, Liam's dad shared his armory with Mr. Lee and the Scouts. The AK-47s found good homes with several of the men, though Liam kept two for he and Victoria.

The group also grabbed several of the dozen different backpacks in the tower. “We collected the things we thought we might need up here from the folks down in the valley. Nothing fancy, mind you, but we always need packs when we head out for patrols so that was one thing people were willing to provide. Calls for food never resulted in donations.”

Liam knew the problem with this whole valley was food. They had plenty of fresh water thanks to an artesian well on the property, but the forest had little in the way of foodstuffs for so many people. Even the handful of deer culled from the nearby woods fed a few people out of thousands.

The Scouts were carrying two long wooden structures that looked like ladders. Mr. Lee explained they were going to drop them in the mud under the tires and use them as grips for the tires so they could back out. He said it was the best they could fashion given their supplies.

They were also pushing the wheelbarrow with some tools and equipment Mr. Lee had assembled from the cars in the valley.

“Anyway, enough about me. Who's your new girlfriend here? Didn't you lose...uhh.” He hesitated as if he'd just driven into the wrong neighborhood.

“Yeah, it's OK. I told you the military killed my girlfriend. This is her.” He let the paradox sink in for a few moments before he continued. “Well, actually I thought she was dead, but thankfully I was way wrong on that score. After I left here with Grandma and Drew, we rode our bikes across the county until we reached my house. Hayes was holding Victoria as a hostage, then he blew away my house, and finally he took Grandma away in a helicopter.” He knew he was leaving a ton out of that story, but he didn't want to relive all the bad parts in the middle. One thing he did need to share: “Drew is dead.”

“Oh man. I'm so sorry. Did he have family here?”

“No, he was alone. That's why he went with me.”

Mr. Lee looked at Victoria, perhaps to change the subject. “Well, I'm glad you made it alive. Liam was distraught at your loss.”

She smiled and nodded. Evidently she didn't want to share any more of her story.

Mr. Lee took the hint and continued speaking to Liam as they walked. “In the few days you've been gone, the place has grown quite a bit, but fewer and fewer of the new people are Boy Scouts. It's caused problems with those who have been here from the beginning. I'm afraid we're in for rough times as food gets harder to find. Part of my desire to secure that MRAP is to have some security inside the wire, if you get my meaning.”

They talked about trivial things for the remaining few minutes until they reached the stranded truck. It wasn't all that far from the watchtower, which was itself about a mile or so into the woods outside the main valley. Mr. Lee pulled them into a circle before they got too close.

“From where we are now the dirt road goes to the left and right of us. If we go straight down this hill the MRAP will be visible. Half of us are going to sweep around to the other side so we have eyes over there. We'll all stay behind the truck as it sits now, so if we need to shoot anything near it, we aren't firing across the road directly into each other. Always keep that in mind.”

Lee looked at Melissa and suggested she lead the team going across the road. She and Phil took off with Bo, and three or four of the Scouts. They took one of the ladders too. That left Mr. Lee, Victoria, and himself on this side, along with a contingent of two Scouts, plus their fathers.

They agreed to start moving toward the truck in twenty minutes, which went by quickly. Soon enough, they descended the last small hill and could see the MRAP as promised.

It was a beast of a vehicle, designed to protect its occupants from being blown up by large explosions set beneath it. Liam recognized it from one of his books. This one had six big tires and was painted in the light and dark colors of the local woodlands, instead of the sandblasted tan common in the desert. The primary weapon was a high-powered Gatling gun on the roof. Liam saw what it could do to his own house. It would be an awesome weapon to control.

The rear doors hung open, as if they were flung wide in a hasty retreat. If this was a trap, it seemed a dumb thing to do. All six wheels were up to the axles in mud, but much of the mud pit had dried since it became trapped. Someone could easily walk up to the rear doors at least.

They studied the area for other people, or zombies, but the only movement was their own group in the woods across the road. They moved closer to the truck from their respective sides. Their weapons were hot, but were pointed down at the ground as they walked. In a few minutes, they peeked into the back of the truck; there was no one inside.

Mr. Lee held them up about twenty yards from the open doors. He told everyone to hold where they were and fan out to keep an eye away from the truck. The real threat now was zombies sneaking up behind them as they focused on the extraction.

“Liam, I want you and Victoria to come with me.”

The three of them moved closer. At the same time, Phil and Mel were doing the same on the other side of the road. They met at the truck. Liam and Victoria climbed inside the open back door.

Once inside, Liam couldn't help think it. “Wouldn't it be funny if this was an elaborate trap to capture the two of us?”

What if?

Victoria chuckled uneasily.

Liam recognized this as his MRAP. The very same one he had survived riding in for nearly a day. It had been abandoned in haste on his last ride when it was disabled at a roadblock by an unknown group of attackers. Hayes said they were looters, but he lied about everything.

Liam hunched his way into the front compartment. The security netting which had kept he and his elderly friends packed in the back was now pulled to one side. He could freely access the driver's position. He plopped in the seat, while Victoria did the same on the passenger side.

“Where should we go?”

“Denver?”

“I hope your credit card still works. We're going to need a ton of gas!”

They both laughed at the thought. Liam kicked open his door slightly so he could talk to Mr. Lee now walking up the driver's side exterior, on the other side of the muddy section of the trail.

“How's it look down there?”

“The mud doesn't look that bad. I think they just didn't want to put in the effort to get it out. We should have no problem with the tools we brought. The ladders should help.”

Liam felt relieved. The whole operation was going surprisingly well.

He looked around the dashboard, wondering how to start the big vehicle. Surely Mel or Mr. Lee knew. He noticed the key was still in the ignition down and to his right. It also had a piece of paper attached to it. Someone had taken a sheet, folded it over several times, then skewered it with the key so it hung in place. The message was obvious: “Read this note!”

He motioned to Victoria, and invited her to open the note.

“Things are going so well. I just know that note is bad news.”

She looked at him like he was crazy, then grabbed the paper and began unfolding. Quickly she skimmed it.

“Dang it. Liam, you win the award for smelling bad news.”

6

“To whom it may concern. If you find this MRAP and can get it out of the mud feel free to take it for a spin. Just be aware we're coming to take it back. Thank you for your attention.—DH.”

“Douglas Hayes. It has to be.”

“PS. Please return with a full tank of diesel. That's all it says.”

Liam was crestfallen. “I wonder if anything has changed now that we killed most of his team and sent him running? You think he'll still have the resources to come get this thing?”

“I don't know. I think we have to assume he'll be back. We can't underestimate him,” she replied.

Mr. Lee stood outside the open back door.

“What's going on in there? You two getting comfy?”

They showed him the note, removing all the humor from his face.

Liam expected Mr. Lee to make a decision immediately, but he surprised him by asking for his opinion.

“You've dealt with this guy before. What do you think we should do?”

Liam looked over at Victoria before answering. She gave him a slight nod, reinforcing his own notions.

“I...uh, we think we have to take it. If Hayes is coming back, he probably won't just leave us alone in Camp Hope. It would be better to have this on our side. Maybe it will be a bargaining chip.”

Victoria finished his thought. “Plus, we can use it in the interim. No sense letting it sit out here doing nothing.”

And that set in motion the extraction process. The Boy Scouts were professionals at organized tasks, and under Mr. Lee's leadership, they had the MRAP back on solid ground in under an hour. The ladders proved to be too fragile for the huge truck, but they were able to drag some nearby logs and wedge them under the tires. Mr. Lee and one of the dads had also brought a winch in the wheelbarrow—he pulled it off a Jeep—and bolted it on the front bumper. They needed every advantage to get it out of the deep, muddy ruts.

The whole group packed in the vehicle and returned south on the dirt path. Melissa intimated she had driven one before, so she was the designated driver.

“This will come out on the blacktop road, and then we can re-enter the camp at the main gate.” Mr. Lee's tone hinted at saying something more.

Liam gave him a look in response.

“Well, it's just—”

He sat on the rear bench seat with everyone else. He looked down when he resumed talking. “I hate to complicate things. We really need this thing. But I should tell you the council instructed me not to try to salvage it.”

That shut everyone up.

“Is that why you had us go get this before letting us go to the camp? Liam's father really needs medical attention,” Victoria wondered.

Mr. Lee ran his hand through his hair. “Look, I'm sorry. You'll see when we get there why I needed to do this. The council never leaves their fortress. They don't know what's happening out here. The whole place is going to collapse if we don't defend ourselves.”

A few minutes later, Mr. Lee spoke as if he forgot something important. “Don't worry about your parents, I had them sent to the infirmary as we were leaving.”

It made Liam feel a little better.

The ride was short. The only excitement was running over a couple zombies wandering the wooded path at exactly the time the truck was passing through. They finished the short ride on the paved road before they were at the front gate area. Mr. Lee invited Liam to stand up with him so they could both look forward and watch as they arrived at the camp.

Liam saw how much the atmosphere had changed.

The field near the front gate had a few cars parked in it when he left. Now the field was completely full and dotted with tents, campers, and canopies of every shape and size. It was hard to tell how many people were there. Hundreds at least. They were technically outside the formal property of the Scout camp, but adjacent to it.

They pulled up to the front gate. The last time he'd been through here, the entrance was called a gate, but it was really just a road intersection. Now there was a line of cars parked lengthwise to keep any vehicles from turning in and driving up the valley into Camp Hope.

Mr. Lee moved to the front so he could wave at the boys manning the front gate, and then he opened the door slightly to yell down at the them. The car blocking their path was promptly moved.

As they wound through the campers on the mile-long drive up the valley, Liam saw a whole new camp. Every possible open space had either a tent, a tarp, a camper, or a vehicle of some kind. There were even some plywood lean-to's. Whereas previously the campers concentrated on the narrow but flat bottom of the valley, now he could see tents and tarps well up into the woods on each hill flanking the valley. He thought there were a lot of people on his last visit. Now it seemed to be double that. A huge jump in just a few days.

His mind turned to one of the many traumatic events of the last ten days—the bombing of the zombies at the Gateway Arch. It was early in the crisis and the refugee camp at the Arch was at least as big as this one, minus the tents. Few people in the city thought they needed to bring living accommodations with them at that early juncture. Still, as the zombies overran the camp, the Air Force unleashed hell by bombing anything alive or dead in the vicinity. This valley would present a similar target, especially if someone in the military got wind zombies had infiltrated the place.

Is that what we're doing here?

He ran the scenario in his head. Liam's friends find a mysterious MRAP in the woods, conveniently left close to camp by Hayes—a man who has made Liam's life an increasingly depressing version of Hell. Somewhere between the third and sixth circles. So they bring it into the camp where it sits like a giant bull's eye. Maybe it has a tracking device? Maybe it gives them legal authority to come retrieve it?

Bottom line—Liam and friends become responsible for the fall of the camp.

He didn't share any of this with Mr. Lee or bounce it off any of his partners. He felt there had to be a time when paranoia was just paranoia. Hayes couldn't have known he was going to almost get killed trying to trade Victoria for Grandma. He couldn't have known his force of Humvees would be annihilated by Liam's parents and their neighbors. He couldn't have known it would be Liam who would be in the MRAP, even if it was found and recovered. There were too many variables.

But something nagged him like a lone flea in the small of his back.

“My job is all about the details.” Hayes had said something to that effect several times.

Was the MRAP just another of those details? Insurance if his plan to capture Grandma failed back at Liam's house? It nearly did. He admitted it did make sense, if one believed Hayes always stayed a step or two in front of his opposition.

As they moved slowly up the camp's main road, Victoria's voice echoed in his head. “Liam, you win the award for bad news.”

He glanced back at her, seated with the others. She had been watching him because he caught her attention right away. They shared a big smile, and he gave her a wink.

He turned again to the outside world and had an epiphany of sorts. He was with loved ones. He had powerful allies in camp. He had access to a devastating military vehicle and a cache of high-powered weapons. The folks in the tents he was driving by had far less.

I'm one lucky kid.

He rode that smile until the MRAP came to a stop.

Chapter 4: Key Insights

As they rolled up the road, more and more people became interested and kids began to follow along. Mr. Lee decided he needed to stand on the outside step and wave, so it was clear the truck was not a threat. Thus by the time they came to a stop, a considerable crowd surged around it.

“So, what do we do now? Go hand it over to the council?”

Mel was joking, but as soon as she said it, they all looked at each other with serious faces.

It seemed obvious to Liam once it was said. Of course the leaders would want control of the biggest, baddest piece of military hardware in the area.

She continued, “Okay, it appears we all believe the council will take this off our hands. Do we want that to happen?”

Just then Mr. Lee stepped back in the front door. He seemed to sense the tension. “What?”

“Mel here thinks the council is going to take the MRAP for themselves.” Liam wanted Mr. Lee's unfiltered feedback before they were inside the building.

“Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. I assumed I'd be in charge of it since I'm the head of security. I can't imagine what they'd do with it otherwise. Drive it themselves?” He laughed, but with hesitation.

They shot around ideas for a couple minutes, but in the end they knew they had to at least report the vehicle was on the premises. They decided Mel and Phil should stay inside the MRAP, ostensibly to move it to its next location.

Liam and Victoria got out with Mr. Lee and Bo and together they walked through the energized crowd toward the administration building front door. He heard more than a few people exclaim they were being saved. It left him unsettled as he walked into the headquarters for the valley.

He was hit by the contrast from his last visit. Instead of the organization inherent in the Boy Scout community, everything was in disarray. The new batch of arrivals changed the nature of the camp, and not for the better. At least not where hierarchical order was concerned. People sat everywhere inside the main open space on the ground floor of the building. Gone were the tables representing various branches of the Boy Scout order—food, shelter, and the camp leadership. Now it was just one big jumble of people.

Mr. Lee conducted them directly to the stairs. Liam remembered how the leaders retreated up the stairs to have a quiet place to discuss real business. They were interdicted at the foot of the stairs by two men with serious-looking black rifles. Liam couldn't identify the makes. Not AR-15s or AK-47s. His knowledge of rifles was not very robust. The men were not professional-looking military men, but they didn't seem like inept guards either.

One of them knew Mr. Lee. “Hey, Lee. You bring back that tank? The council is shaking in their boots up there.”

Mr. Lee took it in stride. “What? Do they think I'm Julius Caesar coming to Rome?”

The guard shook his head and smiled. “I don't know about Caesar, but they are scared. The front gate radioed ahead you were coming. Sent this place into a tizzy.”

“Well, it's not like we shot up the place coming in. We okay to go upstairs, Brian?”

“Yep.”

Liam was nervous as he followed Mr. Lee up, though he couldn't explain it. The council had given him no reason for concern the last time he'd been through here, and he appreciated their situation with so many people in the valley looking to them for answers. He'd felt the same back on the bridge with the Arnold councilman. That man withered away under the burden of leadership, and gave Agent Duchesne his opening. Liam really hoped he wasn't on the verge of creating more enemies.

When they were halfway up the stairwell, Mr. Lee stopped. He turned to them and spoke quietly. “I don't know what to expect, but let me do the talking.”

No one argued.

The last time he was up on this level, Liam met with the council in an empty conference room. Now, the entire level was swimming with tables manned by Boy Scout leaders. Apparently all the organization that had once been downstairs had been moved upstairs. But the order and efficiency was much reduced.

They walked over to an area of the big room where the council was sitting in folding chairs, talking quietly with some of the other leaders. Mr. Lee took them right into the discussion.

“Mr. Lee! Great to see you.” It was an old, frazzled-looking man on council.

Liam wondered if he really was glad to see him. Not all the leaders were there. Only four of the original six were present.

“Jason. Thanks for seeing us on such short notice.”

“Well, we couldn't exactly ignore the fact you brought that military truck into the camp, could we? And after we all agreed we would not bring it into our valley.”

“I know. I know. But everything has changed. I ran into my friends here, and the man who owns this truck held this girl hostage, then shot up his house, then kidnapped his grandma, and then blew up his entire neighborhood—”

“This is why we mustn't get involved!”

“They're coming back.” Mr. Lee said it matter-of-factly, and with quiet certainty. It had the intended effect; it got their attention.

Liam shifted in place, uncomfortable in the extended silence. He bumped into Victoria, and they traded terse smiles.

Everyone in the council's corner spoke quietly now.

“How do you know?”

“They left a note, it said 'we're coming back.' It's the same guy hunting Liam. If we don't have the MRAP, they're going to come in here and we will have no way to defend ourselves.”

“Lee. We don't want a war. We just want to survive. We want the government to come back and help us, not kill us.”

“Then shouldn't we have the baddest war machine in the neighborhood on our side? To keep the peace? What if it's not the government, but instead a rogue motorcycle gang? What if a horde of infected walked up your child-lined street out there? There are a million reasons we should have this truck. Only one why we shouldn't. I don't know about you all, but I like to be prepared.”

He'd thrown the Boy Scout motto in their faces. Liam wanted to say more, but held his tongue out of respect for Mr. Lee. He'd seen nothing but open warfare with zombies and bad guys since he'd left the library so many days ago. Surely the council had to see the logic?

2

The council's decision was bureaucratically inspired. They wanted the MRAP placed outside the valley so they couldn't be blamed for taking it. They didn't care where, or how, and they put Mr. Lee in charge of getting it done.

The tone of the previous conversation made Liam's segue clumsy. “Before we go, I want to introduce a friend of mine from not far up the road. This is Bo, and he and his friends provided aid in getting me home and back. They would make good allies to have on your southern border.”

The council seemed put out, and briefly claimed they had bigger problems dealing with all the new arrivals, but relented and invited Bo to converse with them. They let Liam know he was no longer needed.

When he caught up with Victoria and Mr. Lee on the stairs, he was fuming. “Don't these guys have a clue what's happening around here? They don't care about defense, and they hardly seem to care about anything I say.”

“Liam, not everyone thinks like you do. Hell, most people don't. These guys are used to rules and regulations dictating society as well as their little place here in this valley. You've been out of the valley and know it ain't pretty. I've been out on the border of this place and I've seen enough of it.”

Liam had a spark of inspiration. Something that would put Mr. Lee firmly in the realm in which he was now operating: high paranoia. He started to grin at the thought, which Victoria noticed right away.

“You have a plan?” she asked.

“Let's get back to the MRAP. We have to go park the thing, don't we?”

Mr. Lee nodded. He was smart enough not to press for details while standing in the same room as the people trying to chase them out.

As Liam climbed the steps up the back of the truck, he watched Bo cut through the diminishing crowd. He walked with a tight grin and a feint head shake as he pulled on his deep brown beard. He climbed up and joined Liam as they sat in their seats.

Mel and Phil were in the front seats, watching. “How'd it go? You all seem to be in a hurry.”

Mr. Lee instructed them to slowly return to the front gate.

“The council wants this vehicle out of their sight. They can't imagine a scenario where it would be good to have a badass weapon parked on their front lawn as a deterrent to any would-be attackers. We have to think of a place to park it. We want it to be close in case we need it, but it has to be out of sight. Out of mind for these wimps.”

Bo added, “And they weren't interested in any kind of partnership with my family either. They invited us to come here and stay to help with security, but they saw no use in working out any kind of cooperation. They're more worried about finding tents for the new people, including me.” His tone was doused with sarcasm. He picked up his shotgun and began breaking it down to clean it.

“Wow, it's the definition of a no-brainer to shore up your defenses by allying with groups nearby.” Liam didn't know if it was true in real life as much as he knew it was true in the online games he used to play with his friends.

Victoria saw the emerging picture. “So, they want the truck out of the camp, but we know we have to stay close because we're going to need this thing at some point. Where should we go?”

Mr. Lee was about to say something, but Liam jumped ahead. “We should take the MRAP and go check out the Elk Meadow facility. It's just over the hill and across the highway. If the place isn't ash, it may have some supplies we can use. If we have to keep the truck outside the valley, we might as well use it for something that can actually help the campers. We may not have much time.”

He paused with an epiphany, “And it's not just Hayes. This place is falling apart. The council is losing their grip. Returning after the few days I've been on the road has put the whole place in contrast from the last time I was through here.”

Mr. Lee, sitting on the bench opposite him seemed to chew on that. “Hmm. As head of security, I suppose I should be defending the camp from such accusations, but my job has mainly been to help defend against the infected moving through these woods. I don't do water cooler gossip or politics. But now that Liam said it, it would explain the heavy security inside the administration building. I was surprised they let you guys in with your weapons. Maybe my authority got you in, or maybe they were just sloppy. I wonder if they're asking themselves the same question right now? Maybe Liam is right. While we have it, we should put it to good use. As far as I know, none of our scouting parties have gone up that way. Most residences we've been searching are to the east and south because they're closer.”

From up front, Mel and Phil shouted agreement.

The MRAP waddled down the valley on the tight crowd-choked road, exited through the front gate, then turned right toward the highway rather than left back to the dirt road to Endor. They began the short drive toward the highway and their destination.

Victoria leaned over to Liam. “Are you worried about going back? Didn't you say that's where they ran experiments on the old folks?”

“Nah, I'm not worried. It's probably bombed to smithereens, but there were some odds and ends on the ground after my subdivision was blown up, so maybe there's something worth salvaging up there.” He looked to see if Mr. Lee or Bo were listening. When it appeared they were talking to each other, Liam continued as quietly as possible in the noisy space. “My real fear is finding the group of eighty-something's we left after we all walked out of the destroyed front gate of that place. At the time, I didn't think they would make it a mile by themselves, but later I wondered if Hayes found them, and they told him where Grandma and I had gone. Maybe they're all dead.”

“Well, if they're dead, it wasn't because of you. If Hayes collected all those people, and killed them, that's on him.” She turned so she could look directly at him. Her pretty green eyes were the usual distractions. “You've had a lot of things go wrong since we met up. Believe me, I know. But you have to stay focused on what you can control. You can't take responsibility for what other people are doing in a world gone insane...I need you...to stay strong, so I can be strong with you. That's how we're going to survive this thing. And besides, you've had a lot of things go right, too...”

She gave him a wide smile, missing tooth and all.

They held hands throughout the rest of the fifteen-minute ride. The big truck easily punched through the wrecks and debris littering the highway, had no issues avoiding any of the pedestrians—some living, some dead. A short distance from the front gate of the elk preserve the MRAP pulled over and stopped.

From up front, Mel said, “You guys might want to see this. I think we found some of your friends, Liam.”

He moved to the front of the cab. Just off the side of the road, a dozen or so elderly people were piled in a ditch. Even from this vantage point it was clear many had been shot, several had clothes stripped from them as if they'd been the victims of looters. As best he could tell, none of them had become zombies.

Everyone in the cab observed the scene in silence for a minute or so. Liam made sure Mr. Lee got a good look.

Victoria took a peek too. “Do you think Hayes did this?”

“I thought he was capable of anything, but this?” He felt his emotions welling up. “There could be no legitimate reason to kill innocent men and women like this. They may not have had much of a chance given their age and supplies, but they hardly made it a hundred yards from where I'd last seen them. I don't know. Maybe.”

“Could someone have been waiting for them to walk away from you?” Phil asked.

Ahead, the gate to St. Louis County Lone Elk Park beckoned them to search for answers.

3

The front gate to the elk preserve was exactly as Liam remembered it. When the military evacuated after the containment failure siren went off, they rammed through the closed metal gate. They couldn't be bothered to open it so it could be re-used later if needed. Liam figured if he was in the military and had every available resource, a simple elk pen would seem pretty expendable. To civilians like him though, having a strong fence around your survival camp would be a godsend. Maybe it would be worth fixing at some point.

The MRAP proceeded in. The pavement was narrow for the big truck, but with no traffic, people, or zombies, it wound through the park for only a few minutes. On a low hill overlooking a small lake they observed the remains of the huge olive green tents of the government research facility.

Everyone gathered near the front while Mel narrated, “The planes did a number on the place to be sure, but they weren't very thorough. Most of the tents are down, but not all of them. Even those on the ground look like they were blown down by the compression of the bombs, rather than direct hits. We might actually find something here.”

They did a better job bombing my house. How nice of them.

“OK everyone. Be careful out there. Might be unexploded bombs laying around.” Mel said it, saw everyone looking at her, and continued, “Really, I have no idea. Bombs aren't my area of expertise. Just seems like prudent advice.”

She and Phil shared a knowing laugh.

They all exited through the front of the truck, and spread out in their search. Victoria and Liam went in the direction of the remaining big tent. He told her it was the tent where he'd seen the experiment, and where the colonel became infected. Essentially it was ground zero for the destruction of the whole place.

“What do you expect to find here? Are you looking for something in particular?”

“I'm not sure myself. All the medical testing that went on here had to have generated some paperwork. Some clues as to what this virus is all about. What caused it. Why it spawns zombies. But the troubling thing to me—besides the government bombing my neighborhood and stealing my grandma—

“—and shooting your girlfriend!” she interjected with a smile.

“—and shooting my girlfriend, is the fact there didn't appear to be any answers here. The colonel may have known more than he let on, but I was there when he died. His last words weren't about the virus, they were about how much he loved his family. He gave me the photograph so I'd know them if I ever met them. If he had any clue how to stop this thing, wouldn't he have given it to me?”

“That makes sense.” She was a little bit ahead when she stopped and turned around. She looked like she was about to say something when she swayed like the world was tipping. Liam would have rushed to help her but he felt the same effect. Liam's mind raced through a series of images, settling on a view over a city as if he were high up, looking out a window. Then, nothing.

They were both were on the ground when they came to. None of the others were in sight, meaning no one likely saw what had happened. Victoria sat up as Liam pushed himself off the ground and dusted his creek-stained jeans and his dark “Vote Roland” t-shirt.

“What the hell just happened? Did we both fall down at the same time?”

“It looks that way. And I had the strangest visions as I stood there—”

“A city?”

“How'd you know that? Was that some kind of shared vision?”

Liam looked around; imaginary sensors scanning for solutions. Nothing was obviously out of place. No projectors. No mind-control orbs. His mind searched for science fiction explanations, but there was nothing there but the semi-perforated tent and lots of debris.

He helped her up, noticing once again how her pretty eyes offset the bruises, black eyes, broken nose, and missing tooth. He was momentarily happy to be with her, no matter how much destruction was around him.

“What?”

“I'm smiling because you make me happy. But also, I don't know, that vision made me feel happy, too. Reassured in some way. I can't explain it.”

“Hmm. I see what you mean.” She smiled as she held his hand. “Like we can do anything when we're together. Like we have to do something together.”

I wonder if she is talking about...

Liam stood there with a dumb look on his face. Not sure what to say next.

“No, dummy. Get the dirty thoughts out of your head.” She smiled broadly as she continued, “I'm talking about something really important. Like saving Grandma. Saving the world.”

That brought him back down to reality.

“Of course! Yes, that's why we're here. I was totally thinking the same thing.” They laughed, and Liam admitted it gave him the strength he needed to lead her into the tent. She stayed close.

He acknowledged again how much better he felt to have her by his side.

The zombie apocalypse would be so much worse if I was on my own.

He knew how it felt; he went a long time thinking she was shot dead. Now it was like she was reborn.

4

The tent was dark, but not a consuming darkness. The bright of the day seeped in at various points, including the many holes from the shrapnel; they provided enough light to see most of the interior. Liam tied off the flap so the door would provide light even as they went deeper inside.

He knew the front room was the reception area, devoid of anything interesting. He jumped when he saw what looked like a hand reaching under the tent in the corner, but it was his overactive imagination. He pushed the flap into the middle chamber—where he expected to find the table where the old man was strapped down. But when he entered the space, he could tell the man was no longer in the operating theater. Even in the reduced light he could see there were no bodies nearby. He'd just vanished.

Impossible. He was shot in the head.

He searched his memories. The last time he'd been here, the colonel took him into the woods to show him the secret of this camp. The special flavor of zombie they'd found. Was there something special about the man he knew was 106 years old? A man who had died in front of his eyes several days ago?

He spoke to lessen his anxiety. “Did I ever tell you what they kept hidden out in the woods of this camp?”

“You said the Air Force bombed the camp itself and a pit where they dumped all the bodies.”

“Ah, that's true. There was a big pit. They dumped a bunch of old folks after they pumped them full of zombie blood to see what happened to them. But the other thing in the woods was a corral with two zombies the colonel said were from Chicago. They had a special skill, I guess you'd call it. They could climb.”

“Wow. That's huge. It means even a fenced in place like this wouldn't be safe.”

Crap! I hadn't thought of that.

“Um, true. But also it implies there are even more kinds of zombies out there. The man they had in this operating suite was 106, but he acted strange when he was infected. He spoke in a strange language. The last thing he said was that he was sorry and—” Liam tried to remember the sequence of events, “And then he purposely and calmly bit the colonel. The colonel then calmly shot the old man and walked out the door.”

“It sounds like it was scripted, Liam, now that you say it like that.”

“The only thing the medical team could say about that was they could have saved the camp if they had immediately killed the colonel. Like it happened every day with them. Looking back, it seemed an odd thing to say.”

“But if the colonel wanted to destroy the camp, why the complexity? He could have just let any old zombie loose, run the siren, and then he'd still be alive.”

“I don't know. All I know is he set things in motion when he left the tent, then the camp cleared out surprisingly fast—minus the test subjects. They left them for dead. It was just me, the colonel until he shot himself, and the elderly test subjects in the end...”

Liam stood there for a few moments, lost in thought. Victoria paced around, thinking out loud. “So the camp cleared out, including the people who wanted the colonel dead. Didn't you say he gave you a picture of his family? Did it have any clues on it? Can I see it?”

Liam kept it in his front pocket, though he didn't readily know how long he expected to carry it around. It was a five-by-seven inch photograph showing the man's wife and son. The boy was about Liam's age, at least at the time the photo was taken. On the back, written on a white mailing label, was an address. He said it was the address of his wife. He handed it to Victoria.

“I don't see any clues on this, other than the address of his family. Maybe they know something, but it will be a while before we go to Colorado to ask them.”

Victoria held the photo in her hand. She moved closer to a notch in the canvas so she'd have more light. She ran her fingers over the paper. She looked at it from multiple directions. Then, she held it up to the daylight, as if looking at an x-ray.

“Hey! There's something under this label. It's a tiny square of some kind.”

She handed it back, and sure enough he saw it too. He had completely overlooked the label, as it was white and appeared to be a convenient way to write on the back of the glossy photo paper. The square wasn't any bigger than his pinky fingernail, and it was hard to see with the writing on the paper and the fact the whole thing had been folded several times.

“Now that I see it, I know what it is. This is a micro memory card. With the proper adapter it fits into a computer port so it appears like a small hard drive. I use these a lot to transport files to and from school. If we were at Grandma's, I'd even be able to put this in my computer. Currently, I have no way to read it.”

“OK, this is something. He knew it was important but he didn't tell you about it. Was he hoping you were just a nice guy and you'd travel across three states to deliver an old photo to his family? Are they expecting this to show up one day?”

“At this point, I don't even know what I know. He did mention he couldn't trust me.” After a brief pause, he continued his line of thought. “This changes my whole interaction with him. I need some time to figure it out. Let's keep this between us for now. He entrusted this to me, and I entrust it to you, but I don't want anyone else to feel obligated to keep this secret. At least not until we know more. He said there were other groups out there...one of which caused the whole thing. I wish I could ask him.”

5

“Liam! Victoria!” They looked at each other, then moved for the door out of the tent. Mel, Phil, and Bo jogged their way.

“We found something you should see.”

Mel and Phil each carried a messy stack of papers, as if they'd been laying on the ground. Bo was carrying just one. “Here you go, Liam. You should read this.”

Liam took the paper, scanned it, then said, “I knew it. This is it.” He began reading, “To Colonel McMurphy. From CDC Mobile Headquarters, Black Mountain, NC. In response to your request for information on the mission of our Forward Operating Group in St. Louis, I can only express my utmost confusion at your insinuation our team is lying to test subjects about the survivability of their experiments. Kidnapping subjects would never be a procedure we could condone. Furthermore, we currently have no teams within 250 miles of St. Louis. Our nearest teams are in Minneapolis and Denver. We have no record of anyone named Douglas Hayes on staff, though I admit HR has been hit or miss since this outbreak began six weeks ago. I'm sure you understand. Good luck out there. —Felicia Iminez, Deputy Director, CDC Operations.”

Mel added, “This was actually sitting in the tray of a fax machine lying on the ground. It must have arrived very near the end of this place. We picked up as many documents as we could find, though we have no way of knowing if any of them are of any use.”

“We also pocketed some bottled waters and a handful of fruit that survived the bombing. It was a cruel joke, but the tent closest to the bombs was the camp's kitchen and food storage. Almost nothing of value survived.”

Liam looked up at Mel. “Thank you. Thank you guys for coming with me to find this. At least we know something more about Hayes.”

She replied, “He may not be with any agency, or maybe he is. Hard to say. There are literally hundreds of agencies involved in health these days. Maybe he figured it was easier to just say he was with the CDC, since everyone recognizes that.”

Phil carried on, “But what agency could it have been? We know he had access to air power, helicopters, soldiers or men pretending to be soldiers, and he fit into this camp as if he owned it. That sound about right, Liam?”

“I guess—”

Bo racked a round into his shotgun. He looked into the nearby woods. Liam's eyes followed. Things were moving there.

“Time to go folks!” Phil took off for the MRAP. Mel kept pace.

Liam surveyed the camp, wondering what they were leaving behind. He noticed a zombie as it clawed out from under a part of the tent they'd just vacated. It was badly burned, with tattered medical clothing, and it was bathed in dirt and mud as if it had been buried. Not hard to imagine with all the craters near the tents. He ran with Victoria as other infected emerged from around the edges of the forest.

Bo trailed, but stopped a few times to check the pursuit.

Liam jogged past the small tent where he and Grandma spent a little time on their last visit. It was blown over, but not destroyed. He knew the place where the colonel had shot himself was nearby, but his body was nowhere to be seen. It was gone, just like the older man's body on the operating table. The force of the blasts must have been powerful.

Everyone made it safely to the truck. Once inside, they could see the zombies wandering into the camp. Liam took a hard look at them, concluding they could only have come from the big pit in the woods where bodies were dumped after the experiments. He struggled to remember if the bodies had all been shot in the head before they were placed in their grave, but at the time he wasn't curious about the pathology of their deaths.

The MRAP growled to life and weaved through wreckage on the way out of the destroyed camp.

Colonel. If you're out there, I'll try to find your wife and son. I renew my promise to you.

6

The trip back to camp was mostly uneventful. They retraced their route, and knew what to expect. They did see a single motorcycle pass them, going the other direction on the highway. Mel called them up from the back compartment when she saw it coming their way. It was the first motorized vehicle they'd seen—aside from their own—in a long time. The rider made no effort to stop or slow down or otherwise acknowledge them. Liam didn't blame anyone for not stopping for the military.

Liam, Victoria, and Bo returned to the back and tried to look through the remaining stack of papers. They hoped to find something useful before they arrived back at the Boy Scout Camp.

After several minutes, Victoria found a short note directed to the camp from a Homeland Security department. It was an authorization for Douglas Hayes to continue his research at the camp, including his methods for subject acquisition. Furthermore, it listed him as Doctor Hayes.

“Well, don't that beat all. He said he was just a truck driver for the CDC.”

“Liam, he still might not be a doctor. Nothing about the man should be taken as fact. Maybe he sent this himself?”

One of Liam's earlier self-revelations was that once the zombie apocalypse befell mankind, a person looking to reinvent himself would have no problems doing so. You could erase your past and become practically anything, as long as you had the practical skill to fake it. You couldn't say you were a doctor and expect to get away with it. The first time you had to make a diagnosis it would become obvious. But a doctor would have no problem pretending to be a truck driver, especially in a world where trucks were scarce. The only question was why.

It made more sense if Hayes was a doctor. It would explain his keen interest in Grandma. His command of resources, including Army personnel. An Army doctor?

“Mel, could an Army doctor command troops in the field?”

“Yes, though it would be unusual. Maybe less so now, but they do have rank and could command troops.”

“But aren't doctors supposed to help people? Doesn't shooting my girlfriend disqualify him from the academy or something?” Still, “doctor” felt right. He hated to use the term, but he thought it anyway. An evil doctor. Maybe a step down; a sinister doctor. Just the kind of person who would thrive in an environment of plague, death, and zombies. It was a bit cartoonish, but he couldn't think of a more reasonable explanation.

His question turned out to be rhetorical. No one volunteered an answer.

The remainder of the documents provided a few additional snippets of data, but little in the way of information. Protocols for destruction of camps. Composition of security details. Numbers of infected tested at the camp—224. Very little in the way of clues.

One tantalizing piece of data was in the header of an email sent to the colonel. The hardcopy didn't give an address, but listed “Riverside Operations Center, St. Louis, Missouri.” The message referenced medicines and other supplies they had on hand for shipment to various research facilities, including Elk Meadow. Someone had used a highlighter throughout.

He leaned over to show Victoria. “Check this out. It seems to imply this place is some kind of supply hub. Colonel McMurphy mentioned a base of operations in downtown St. Louis. Maybe this is where they'd take Grandma? But why doesn't it list an address?”

“Maybe they didn't want anyone to know where the stuff was coming from?” she volunteered.

“Or maybe they all knew where it was, so putting an address was silly. No one on Earth probably knows the postal address of the St. Louis Arch. You don't need it to find it.”

“So, all we have to do is find someone from this camp and ask them for the address of their secret headquarters in the middle of the collapsed city we just spent days escaping?”

Liam laughed at the thought. “Yeah, and while we're at it, we'll ask them for a ride to get there. Save us all the effort!” He thought about it for a second. “OK, it's a working theory for where she is.”

Chapter 5: Riverside

Marty knew she wasn't awake as soon as she saw the birdbath. Almost two weeks ago, her very first encounter with a man purporting to be her late husband, Aloysius, had been at this very spot—her backyard. The man wasn't really her husband, and she wasn't really in her backyard, but she couldn't say for sure who he was or where she was. It was more real than a dream, but she wasn't really awake either.

“Hello, Marty.”

“You aren't really Al. You don't have to pretend.”

“I'm sorry. I have to say it helps me relate to you better. May I continue the charade, if you will?”

She hated to admit he was right. She feared what other form he might take.

“Oh, alright. I guess it helps me, too.”

The avatar of her husband walked over the bright green grass of her backyard, and stopped at her favorite birdbath. It was a gift from her family for one of her big birthdays; the eightieth, she guessed. Before the infected came, she loved to sit on her back porch and watch the birds playing there. It brought her peace. As close to Heaven as she could get in this world.

“Heaven. An interesting concept. In a universe defined by the cold of absolute zero across the infinite depths of space and time, your warm rock called Earth would be Heaven by almost any definition you could conjure.”

“Even with infected walking all over it?”

“Hmm. I guess that depends on if you're still alive or one of the living dead. But do you recall what I told you in an earlier meeting? The infected are still human, and they'll be walking the planet when it's finally engulfed by the Sun if they aren't stopped here and now. That's why I chose you to fulfill your mission with your two young friends.”

“Liam and Victoria. Yeah, you said we were a trio of heroes. I fear they're trying to get themselves killed by rescuing me from these people. I encouraged them to be heroes, but they don't appreciate the danger they're in.”

“On the contrary, my dear Martinette, you don't understand the danger you are in. They understand it better than you do, I think. They don't know it as intimately as you do because they aren't here with us now. You know you must survive or all of humanity could be lost.”

“What if I don't?”

“Then the cure dies with you. Eventually everyone will succumb to the plague, or die resisting it. Even those who survive the next few years will die off soon enough. The thought of having kids in a world ruled by the undead will eventually decline the pool of survivors to a point the human race can no longer endure as a species. If you had a supercomputer you could run the numbers. I've seen it in other...worlds/simulations/archives.” He chuckled to himself. “Actually, I do have a supercomputer. As part of my research, I've found the pool of surviving humans is dwindling far faster than expected. Though most humans survived the initial crisis, time is indeed growing short for them as the number of zombies rise.”

They stood near each other in the simulated backyard of her house and watched the bird bath. It had water in it, but there were no birds to be seen.

“It doesn't make sense. Why am I responsible for saving humanity from this plague? You said before it was because I was close to Hayes. Now that we know Hayes is deeply involved, why not send in the Army? Give the President a visit with this information. Why put three—nobodies—at the center of this fight for all of mankind?”

Al took a full minute to consider. He walked slowly and deliberately around the birdbath several times.

“Do you have any doubt that what you see here is actually how you see it with your own eyes? The complexity of translating the reality of this—place—into something you can process is beyond reckoning. Yet it gets done. Would it surprise you to learn there may be other Marty's talking to other Al's in backyards very similar to this one? I once called myself a close approximation to an angel. You may believe I am infallible—truly an angel in the 'wings, harps, and white clothes' tradition. Those may yet exist. I've not seen a fraction of existence, though it would not be braggadocio to say I've seen a near-infinity's worth of it more than you. Suffice it to say, I am not infallible. I'm not even the best at what I do. But I do serve the Light. I do serve the one true God.”

He stopped at the birdbath and looked directly at Marty. “But I do make mistakes.” The being pretending to be Al actually managed to look sheepish.

“So, I was your mistake? That explains a lot, though it doesn't make me feel any better.”

Al laughed out loud. “No, my dear. Let me finish. You are the exact person I wanted for this crisis. It was your age—along with a few complimentary parameters—which enabled you to hear/decipher/recognize our call.”

“There! Why did you say it like that? This/this/that? Who are you, really? I think I need to know.”

“I told you who I represent. Isn't that enough?”

“You said this universe was at a tipping point between good and evil. Why don't you just cut with the mystery, tell me what I need to do, and we can get it done together?”

“A delightfully human response. I've admired you from the beginning. But as I imagine you already know, if a creator interferes with his creation to the point he dictates what happens, it really isn't a creation at all. A creator could just snap his fingers and arrive on the final day of the simulation, everything neatly wrapped up. But what purpose would that serve? Why start it at all?”

Al continued to pace around the birdbath while he moved his hands over the reflective water in a kind of pattern. “Instead, imagine a creation of wonderful chaos. If there was an omnipotent being behind it all, wouldn't absolute chaos and uncertainty ensure He wasn't dictating everything that happened? And perhaps that being would ensure general chaos by allowing his agents to continually introduce new stimuli, even to the point one might think it was 'evil.' That would be the last thing you'd expect from an omnipotent being, would it not? Agents of the Light. Agents of the Dark. Agents of order. Agents of chaos. All designed to complicate the universe to the point of infinite unpredictability. That would achieve a near-impossible result for an omnipotent being, wouldn't you think?”

“It has a certain logic to it, but to what end? Why put humans through the ringer like this? Does that mean God has no involvement whatsoever in His creation?”

“Ah, my dear Marty, I love your spirit. All I can tell you is that if God didn't care at all, He wouldn't allow me to be here, either. But there are more pressing and important questions you should be asking. Like how to work that phone you've been hiding in your pocket.” Al pointed to her fuchsia-colored pants pocket where Liam's phone rested.

“You must summon Liam and Victoria. They will come to you. Together, unified by your shared experiences and emotional interconnections, you have the best chance of anyone to access the 8088 room.” In a prior visit, he showed her a locked room behind a window containing an old 8088 model computer sitting on a wooden table. It was part of an elaborate construct which included a seemingly magic waterfall nearby. “I assure you what you will find in there is much more powerful than your nominal recreation of a personal computer. Inside lies salvation for you and for your planet.”

She reached for her pocket, but instead found herself back in her bed. It was dark once again. She didn't think she screamed when she woke up. Another small victory.

2

The MRAP idled outside the front gate of the camp. Liam and his friends were trying to agree on where to secure it. They couldn't park it inside the camp because the council was dead set against it, but leaving it outside the camp left it open to theft from anyone who stumbled upon it.

Mr. Lee came up with the only viable solution. “We'll hide it in the woods near the watchtower south of here. Technically it'll still be on Boy Scout land, but as per the council, it will be outside the camp itself. It will allow us to access it when we need it, prevent it from being easily stolen, and keep it close enough to the main camp to be useful in case we're attacked.”

Phil and Mel nodded vigorously. Victoria and Bo also seemed to agree. Liam couldn't think of a better idea, so he too lent his support.

“Wow, we all agreed on something,” Mr. Lee laughed. “If only dealing with the council was this easy!”

As the truck rolled down the pavement and headed for the dirt track leading to the watchtower, Liam moved closer to Victoria so he could talk to her in private near the back of the truck. She was looking in his direction with a smile on her face.

He returned a smile and asked, “What do you think happened to us back at Elk Meadow? Why did we both pass out at exactly the same time?”

He expected Victoria to have an answer prepared. She was planning for a career in medicine, so certainly had to have been thinking about the incident since it happened. But she surprised him. “I can't explain it. I don't even have a guess. Shared vision isn't something I've ever studied or even read about. Maybe it was some kind of suggestion put in our head by the stress of the bombed out camp? Something there, but beyond our comprehension.”

“Something that made us both think about a city when we were in a bombed camp in the woods? That's your answer?” Liam smiled, but he was also serious.

“I know it makes no sense whatsoever. Neither do zombies. Strange things happen at the end of the world.”

Liam couldn't argue with that. In fact, many of the books he'd read on zombies resorted to magic or the supernatural to explain the goings-on of zombies. It seemed too far-fetched, even as he was immersed in the same zombie world he'd read about so many times. But his were just people infected with a disease. They weren't animated by the supernatural. It could not have been magic.

While thinking, he looked at her surreptitiously as the truck plodded down the bumpy road, and was amazed once more how attractive she was and—

“Your arm!”

She looked down, not surprised. “Yeah, when we passed out, I fell to this side and my arm must have landed on something in a weird way.” A large and ugly purple bruise the size of a small apple was present on her upper arm just above the elbow.

“Well, it complements your face.” He gave a taut laugh, not sure if she found it a laughing matter.

“Ha! Very funny, pretty boy. How is it you have no bruises at all? You don't have a scratch on you. Are we on the same adventure?”

Liam shrugged his shoulders with great exaggeration, but let it drop. He continued their conversation at a slightly lower volume. “I've been thinking about that vision and trying to recall my feeling while looking at the city I was seeing. I felt something—not an emotion exactly—but something close. I felt old.”

A knowing look swam across Victoria's face. “Yes! And I think I know who the old person was, too.”

They didn't bother saying the name out loud. They both arrived at the only logical conclusion given all the evidence.

It was Grandma.

3

After parking the MRAP, everyone walked the short distance to the watchtower. They passed through a woodland construction zone as men and boys worked on a makeshift fence using downed trees. They hadn't built very far from the watchtower yet, but Liam was glad to see progress.

He and Victoria decided to continue down into the valley to find his parents. The boys at the Endor tower felt confident they would have been taken to the makeshift infirmary in the same building where he met the council earlier.

Phil and Mel offered to stay close to the MRAP, which Mr. Lee agreed was a great idea given the circumstances. He asked them to join their security rotations.

Mr. Lee said he was going to stick around the watchtower and catch up on the fence progress. “Thanks for the tour, Liam. You've shown me how far we have to go on making this place safe.” He went off to his troop.

Bo also stayed to help out the Scouts on the hilltop. “I have lots of experience helping my daddy build fences around our pastures. At the time it wasn't much fun, but it looks like these guys need the help. Not doing much anyway. Not like I'm going to walk back home on my own.” He smiled as he shouldered his gun and headed off to the tower.

After they all broke up, Liam felt guilty for acknowledging he was glad to finally be alone with Victoria. They walked down the long singletrack trail toward camp, Victoria in the lead, when she stopped, turned around, and moved purposely back up the trail to meet him.

His heart smashed the gas pedal as she approached.

Yes!

She talked in a conspiratorial tone, “Do you think Mel and Phil like each other?”

No! Not at all what I was thinking.

He humored her as he pretended to think about it, then found himself drawn into the question.

“Well, I do know they hated each other that first night they met on my street. I think she used the word 'rapists' to describe me and Phil.” He was uncomfortable even saying that word. “Phil seemed to genuinely dislike her when they first met, too. But they fought together that night and have been fighting together in close quarters all the time you and I have been off doing our thing with Hayes and friends. Maybe they've reached an understanding?”

“But didn't he just lose his wife last winter? Didn't his wife even say something through Grandma on that bridge when we escaped on that train?”

It was true. Phil's deceased wife spoke through Grandma that day, though no one—herself included—could understand how it happened. His wife had been gone for six months. He had no frame of reference to know if that was enough time to move on.

“I dunno. I'm uhh—” He wanted to say he was inexperienced talking about women, but he didn't want to paint himself too heavily into that corner. “—not sure what adults might think after losing a spouse.” Then he thought of himself and his realization earlier in the day. “I wouldn't blame him if he needed to share this with Mel. I think this whole disaster would be ten times worse if I didn't have someone to care for and worry about.”

“Yeah, I wish my Grandma were still alive. Heck, I wish my parents were with me so I could take care of and worry about them too.”

“I, uh, actually meant you.”

Victoria gave him a big, gap-tooth smile. “I know, you big dummy. I'm just being silly. But I really appreciate it, and I'm also glad I have someone to care for and who cares about me. I'd probably still be sitting back at the Arch waiting for help to arrive if you hadn't come along.”

Left unsaid was that she'd more likely be dead, since the Arch had been overrun with gangs, then zombies, then was bombed extensively by the United States Air Force.

They stood there in close proximity for many seconds before Liam was brave enough to wrap his arms around her and pull her in for a hug.

“Would it hurt your mouth if I kissed you?”

He was halfway serious, since she had banged her mouth and lost a tooth during their explosive reunion, but he was also looking for an excuse to suggest he wanted to smooch. His instincts still weren't honed in interacting with her on a romantic level. Hell, the whole world of zombies was the exact opposite of romance, so being romantic was even more cumbersome. At least, that's how he justified his ineptness.

By way of an answer, she stood on her toes so she could reach his face from lower on the trail, and for the first time since they'd met, they engaged in a long passionate kiss. By the time it was over, Liam's head spun in delight and his initial nervousness seemed a remote distraction.

It ended much sooner than Liam would have liked, but Victoria apparently couldn't stay on her toes any longer. She dropped down to her normal height, then quickly spun and resumed walking down the trail.

With her back to him, she spoke to no one in particular. “So, there's this boy I met at the end of the world. A handsome young lad. He's very shy for some reason. But I think that makes him very sexy. I'll have to tell you about him someday.”

Liam was somewhat embarrassed to be described as shy, but she looked back with that same big broken smile and it dawned on him she was playing with him. He followed her down the trail, unconcerned with any of his perceived shortcomings. He knew he wasn't perfect, but with his charming feminine friend by his side, he felt invincible.

Despite the hormones flushing through his system, he was able to hold on to an important piece of his brain during their walk down.

This is where you were attacked the last time you went down this trail. Danger!

Rather than catch up to Victoria and swoop her up and profess his love—

Do I love her?

—he pulled out his pistol and was at the ready. They carried their rifles over their shoulders, along with several magazines each, but somehow the little pistol gave him more confidence.

He wasn't going to let anything happen to his girl again.

A vow he knew was impossible to keep.

4

Nothing happened on the way down. He holstered his gun as they approached the outer ring of tents and people. He didn't think it would be out of place to be carrying a gun there, but he didn't want to cause any commotion. Guns often scared people, even after everything they'd seen.

“Let's head for the admin building and find my dad.”

In a few minutes they had wound their way through the tent city and stood at the front doors.

“Liam, I'm going to hang out here and wait for you. I need some time to clear my head from the past few days of chaos and going in that crowd is just too much for me right now. I'll be right over there by the creek. Come get me when you're done?”

A strange emotion zipped across his mind as he wondered if she wanted to be away from him, but he tried to remain pragmatic and understand her needs, too. He pushed the doubt aside. “Sure thing! I'll find you when I'm done.”

They traded smiles and she walked off; he pushed through the doors of the stuffy building.

It was still a chaotic mess, but it was late in the day and it wasn't nearly as crowded as it was earlier. He had no problem finding the infirmary, as a pathway of sick and injured pointed the way down a small hallway to a set of double doors. His dad was among those in the hallway, sitting with his bound leg out in front of him.

“Hey, Dad. How you doing?”

He expected a warm greeting after being separated for so many hours, but he only got a weary nod. “Tired as hell. They set my leg and got me squared away, but they don't have much in the way of painkillers.”

His leg was wrapped in a decidedly makeshift-looking cast. More like a couple sticks bound together with some belts. Better than most people had it “out there.” Jerry had the look of a man in a lot of pain, including the beads of sweat and the taut facial features.

He sat down next to him. “I'm sorry you're in so much pain. If it makes you feel any better, I'm also sorry for causing so many problems the past few months. Getting myself kicked out and all that. If I'd known this was coming, I think I would have done a few things differently in how I handled myself with you and Mom.”

Jerry strained a laugh. “Thanks, Son. I think if any of us really knew what was coming, the last few months would have been entirely different for us all. Weapons training. Stockpiling food. Defensive plans. Bugout locations. Backups of backups. I can think of a hundred things I planned on doing but never got around to because they never seemed urgent. Now we're well into it and here I am doing nothing at all to help you or your mom.”

Liam was hoping for some sort of reciprocal apology, but took it in stride. It was better than any discussion they'd had this year. Instead, he moved back to a subject he had asked his dad days earlier. A subject he pointedly avoided answering straight.

“Dad, how did you know to stockpile all those guns? You knew something was coming, didn't you?”

Jerry leaned his head back against the wall behind him as he sat on the floor, apparently thinking. Liam waited patiently. Several moments later, he popped his head back up, looked both ways in the hallway at the other injured folks, and then returned, “I've always done all I could to protect you and your mother. The less you knew about my sources the safer I thought you'd be. But now that everything has gone to hell, I really don't think government agents are lurking about listening in on conversations like this one.”

Liam looked around, suddenly self-conscious that he could be the subject of surveillance by one of Hayes' men. But no one nearby played the part. Most looked positively sick or dying.

His dad noticed him looking intently at those nearby. “What?”

“It's just you said something about government agents. I've been dealing with them a lot lately. They took Grandma. They shot Victoria. They destroyed your house. They took my picture on a bridge. I'd say the odds are pretty good we are being spied upon right now.”

His dad managed a real laugh. “Congratulations, Jerry. You've raised a son even more paranoid than you are.”

Both smiled at the joke. “No offense, but if you'd seen that medical camp over in Lone Elk Park when it was in operation, you'd have no doubt what the government was capable of doing. Paranoia is a survival trait nowadays.”

“Well, suffice it to say that yes, I did know something was coming. Someone in our family called me—don't ask because I swore to not tell anyone, save your mother—and gave me information that something big was coming and that I needed to be prepared to leave home on a moment's notice.”

He looked around before continuing in a quieter voice, “So when the sirens went off, your mom and I were totally prepared to hop in a car, go to Marty's where we knew you were safe and sound without access to a car, and we'd all be on our way to somewhere out in the country to safely watch it all blow over. What I didn't count on was that the world would fall apart everywhere at exactly the same moment. I counted on being the first guy out the door. Instead, I was the one millionth person out the door. Your mom and I barely made it onto the highway before things broke down. Crashes. Gunshots. Running people. We knew where you were, but it was days before we could get there...and by then it was too late.”

Liam had so many questions, but for some reason he was most troubled by one of the most mundane. “So can you tell me if you sent me to live with Grandma because of TEOTWAWKI?”

“Tea ought what key? What are you saying?”

“Sorry, I figured you'd know that one. It means the end of the world as we know it. Did you know the world was ending? Is that why you sent me to Grandma's?”

A more strained laugh.

“No, Liam. I really did send you to Grandma's so your mother and I wouldn't kill you.”

He paused to reflect on the past six months leading up to his exile at Grandma's. The arguments over responsibility. About time management. About doing what you said you were going to do. All the little details he so often got wrong in the eyes of his parents. All the things that seemed to drive his parents crazy. All the things he always felt were unimportant. He had to admit he often made things worse by yelling, slamming doors, and generally being an unreasonable punk.

Why was I acting young and stupid?

“Young and stupid” and “just being a kid” were allowable two weeks ago, just before the sirens took down the world. He'd been forced to mature or die. Maybe he'd have done it no matter what, but he was thankful once again Victoria had come along and helped him man up during those early difficulties. Sure, he thought, he did cry in front of her a couple times, but to be fair all of society had come unraveled. Everyone was crying at some point; she cried and talked in her sleep and he thought no less of her.

Somewhat satisfied at his answer, and wanting to give his dad some time to rest, he excused himself.

“Where's mom?”

Jerry had leaned his head back against the wall again. This time he answered without opening his eyes.

“She took that bag of rice to the council as payment for my medical services. I tried to stop her, but she's as stubborn as you are sometimes. Or you're as stubborn as her. I get them confused.”

In the Old World, this might have been a jumping off point for some sort of argument. In the New World, it was just taken as the joke it was meant to be.

5

He left his dad to rest. He thought about trying to find his mother, but didn't want to tangle with the leaders again. He wasn't even sure he could get up there by himself with all that security. Instead, he hovered near a window facing the creek where Victoria had gone to rest.

Should I give her more time?

He easily spied her a hundred feet away. She sat on the bank of the creek, and was talking to someone—a young man—a bit further away. He seemed filthy, even from this distance. His first instinct was to run out there, but he knew that was stupid. They were just talking. So, he waited.

He quickly bored of watching them. He surveyed the huge camp and saw only tents as far as he could see from his window. The narrow valley was filled to capacity.

One area where the Boy Scouts were able to keep control was the judicious use of the water from the creek. With so many people living so close to the waterway, boys patrolled up and down the bank to make sure no one poured chemicals into the water or tried to use it as a latrine. Liam saw the boys actively walking up and down both sides of the creek even now. Water was a precious resource, though he knew the real key to this valley was the large artesian well further up the creek. They didn't have much food to spread around, but with clean water, it gave them an edge most people probably didn't have in the wider world.

A few minutes later, he returned his gaze to his girlfriend—he loved saying that—and saw her arguing with the guy.

What the!

She tried to grab him by the arm, and he shook free immediately, took a few seconds to observe the vicinity, and then pushed Victoria hard enough she fell down the steep creek bank out of Liam's view. He ran from the building in a flash.

The young man ran away from him along the creek, but his first concern was Victoria. He dashed to her in time to see her struggling to climb back out of the creek bed. She appeared dry and in one piece, though her clothes were still soiled from the previous creek she'd been in.

“That new guy needed to check in to camp but refused. I tried to pull him over there as a joke, and he pushed me down here. I guess he ran away?”

She peered up from the rocky slope, trying to see left and right. “I didn't see which way he went.”

“I did.” Liam took off, knowing she would be fine.

He was sure someone else had to have seen the incident, but no one joined the pursuit. He felt a surge of anger that no one helped and it doubled with his burning desire to have words with the fleeing suspect. Liam, a natural runner and the slightly-above-mediocre star of his below-mediocre track team, kicked into overdrive running in pursuit.

It didn't take long and he could see the man ahead. He wore a filthy white t-shirt and brown cargo pants with white sneakers. He wasn't a very large man, so his stride was about equal to Liam's.

The man realized he was being followed, which both sped him up and changed his trajectory. Instead of moving down the creek corridor, he made his way into the thick of the tents on the valley floor. The advantage of speed was lost immediately. Instead, with ducking and weaving in random directions through the myriad of tents and tarps, Liam steadily fell behind.

He considered calling for help, but didn't want to cause a commotion over a situation he still didn't understand.

The runner made his way toward the front gate. That became apparent after a few minutes of zigging and zagging through the crowd. The question smoldering in Liam's brain was, why?

The man left the tents and was up on the comparatively clear access road. It led from the front gate, up the valley, and past the admin building. Everything ran next to the creek, making it really hard to get lost. This guy was following the most basic directions.

Soon they were both on the paved road. Not far from the entrance. The man had a fifty-foot lead. He appeared to be giving it all he had to get to the front gate.

Maybe he's from outside?

A touch of panic now. An outsider? Liam actually backed off a little. He chose a nice even pace so he could pursue but not exhaust himself like the other man. He figured he was being pretty smart about it.

The man reached the front gate. None of the guards made any motion to stop him. Liam's anger peaked at the realization. They were trained to stop people going the other direction. Again Liam considered yelling ahead for help, but he had already halved the distance. His adrenaline pumped and he had tunnel vision to close the last twenty feet and catch him. He felt his holster, knowing his gun was there. He was ready to use it if needed.

The man crossed the road and ran into the overflow tents in the field. Liam had confidence he could follow him, no matter what he used as a diversion.

The camp exit was in a heavily wooded area, with poor visibility on the access road going left and right of the gate itself. As Liam ran out the gate and crossed the road, he chanced a look left and right. Even though there was no longer any traffic, the old habits died hard.

Clear left.

Clear—

He came to a dead stop in the middle of the road; the running man opened an insurmountable lead. Anyone looking at Liam would laugh at the sight of his mouth hanging wide open. But no one looked at him. Everyone who could see it was doing the same thing as Liam: gawking.

A convoy of military trucks had parked on the shoulder; they were visible as far as he could see on the windy road. Some around him probably knew what they were, but not why they were there.

Liam knew.

Hayes was back to collect his precious MRAP.

He brought a lot of friends.

Chapter 6: Don't Make Plans

Someone bumped into Liam's dangling right arm as he stood in awe. Liam turned slightly to confirm it was Victoria.

“What are you doing? We have to keep after him.”

She had her back to the military convoy. She watched the escaping man as he headed into the field of tents, but he didn't care.

“We can catch him! He's slowing down.”

He remained frozen. Finally, she turned around and joined Liam in the wide-eyed spectacle. Men and women soldiers stood outside their vehicles. Some had fanned out to the sides, but they didn't act particularly hurried. A small group walked toward the front gate; toward Liam and Victoria.

“This can't be happening,” Liam said quietly.

He grabbed Victoria by the arm. Running was not an option. The troopers were much too close. If they wanted him, they had him.

“Greetings!” said a jovial-looking officer as he walked up. He was flanked by several tough-looking Marines in woodland camouflage uniforms, helmets, and with weapons drawn.

“I'm Lt. Colonel Joseph Brandyweis with the 2nd Battalion 2nd Marines. I've been tasked with investigating this camp for civilians known to have stolen U.S. Government property.”

Here it comes. We're caught!

“Wel-welcome to Camp Hope.” Liam didn't know what else to say.

“Will you two fine folks take me and my friends here to the administrator of this facility?”

It was an order, not a request.

“Sure. We'll take you.” Liam held Victoria's hand—tightly.

The colonel waved to the lead Humvee in his column, then said something into a small radio. In response, the front vehicle and two more behind rolled toward the front gate. As the first one pulled up, he instructed them to get in.

“This will be faster than walking.” He gave them a once-over. Liam figured he looked guilty—he had sweat pouring off his forehead from his pursuit. “Don't worry, my friends. We aren't here to hurt anyone. We're the good guys!”

Liam had heard that before. He was pretty sure the good guys were gone for good.

When they climbed in, Liam was overcome by the smell of cooked meat. He was practically drooling. How long since the last decent meal? Days.

“You guys want some deer meat? I don't have much, but you're welcome to what I have.”

Victoria didn't hesitate. “Oh my, that would be incredible.”

“We've been traveling a lot these last couple weeks. Sometimes we stop and get food from pre-positioned government stockpiles, but more often we dismount and hunt deer. Always in season now, huh?” He gave a hearty laugh.

Liam took the venison, though he hesitated before eating it. He looked at Victoria and saw her enjoying her small serving. He decided if he was going to be captured this easily, he'd at least get a good meal out of it.

He was well into the small serving when the colonel asked about the condition of the camp. Who was in charge? How many people? How big was the valley? Liam and Victoria answered honestly, until he directed his questioning at them.

“So, how did you kids end up here?”

Liam looked at Victoria, her face giving no clues to her thoughts on how to answer.

“My family lived near the interstate. When the zombies chased out all the people from the city, both groups used my street as a battlefield. Our house was destroyed. Our neighbors killed. We decided the one place we'd might find some help was at this Boy Scout camp.” Liam told himself he didn't really lie. He learned his lesson about mentioning his wayward grandmother to anyone in government.

“And what about you?”

Victoria was quick to respond. “I was part of a summer medical internship at Barnes Memorial Hospital downtown. When the plague began spreading, I made a run for it. I escaped, along with many others from downtown, by walking out. I found this place by accident.” After a moment's pause, she added, “My parents are still in Denver, so I'm hoping to make it out there again someday.”

“Denver, eh? Well, I'm sorry to say no urban area is intact these days. I've not seen Denver, but I've seen downtown St. Louis. They can't be that different. I wish you luck in finding your parents.”

Liam felt brave enough to ask a question he knew was borderline self-incriminating. “You said you're looking for thieves here? What did they steal?”

He got a cold stare in return, but nothing further was said.

He knows.

2

Liam guided the Marines to the main building, introduced the newcomers to the guards, and then was told to stay put on the main floor. He and Victoria mingled in the bustle of the crowded room, but he felt very much alone.

“It seems odd they wouldn't take us upstairs. Maybe they aren't here for you. Uh, sorry. They aren't here for us.”

Victoria talked to him, but he had trouble focusing. The volume of chatter in the room had exploded once the Marines came and went. His belly was temporarily sated, but the venison didn't sit very well. Taken together, he felt oddly out of sorts.

He tried to calm himself as he leaned against the rear wall of the large room. Slipping out was an option, though other Marines now patrolled around the building. He could see them through the big ground floor windows.

“I uhh, don't know. Should we try to get away? Where would we go? Won't that look like we're guilty?” After a moment, he said, “I need a minute.”

Victoria pulled up a piece of wall next to him. “Thanks for chasing that guy down. He seemed like an OK guy up until that point.”

Liam reoriented. He'd been absorbed with his own problems, and ignored hers. “You said he pushed you down when you tried to take him to check in. I saw that part. What was he talking about before he pushed you?”

“He mainly asked about the camp. How long it had been here. How many people we had. Was it safe to bring his kids. Stuff like that.”

“Did he ask about supplies or security?” Liam's ill-feeling was not improving.

“No, but he did ask where the creek water came from. I told him I didn't know. I've never been up the creek.”

“It sounds like he was probing for information. I've read about this many times in my zombie books. Survivor groups will scout each other to find strengths and weaknesses. Many times it's a prelude to an attack if they think they can take the weaker group.” He paused to think for a moment before continuing, “But how big would their group have to be to consider taking on an entire valley of people like this?” He fanned his hand out over the tents sprawled outside the windows of the building.

Neither of them answered for a long time. Liam's stomach still danced, but started to improve. He no longer felt like he was going to embarrass himself by getting sick.

“I guess it's a good thing the Marines showed up when they did. Maybe they chased off the group which sent the scout?” She always searched for the positive.

Liam's nerves were rattled by the appearance of the Marines, he was tired from his brisk run, and he'd generally been in a bad mood since Grandma was taken. As a result, he sought the negative in everything. “I guess that depends. What if the group is strong enough to take the Marines too? Maybe the Marines are the bad guys...”

Victoria pulled herself off the wall, turned, and appeared ready to chastise him. But just then someone called for him from up the stairs.

“Liam Peters! Front and center in the council chambers!”

Victoria's demeanor softened. Instead of the admonishment he thought was coming, she instead just gave a long sigh. She reached in to give him a hug.

“Good luck.”

She held him for a moment before she pulled back. He was relieved that instead of leaving, she took his hand and led him to the stairs.

We're in this together. Thank God.

His stomach, and his will, hardened for what was coming.

3

When they reached the top the stairs, the Lt. Colonel was huddled with a couple of the council members. They motioned him over. Camp security guards and Marines formed two separate cliques on opposing sides of the room, as if wary of each other.

The colonel spoke first. “I don't recall asking for the young lady.”

Liam was ready for that. “Where I go, she goes.”

Liam felt eyes drilling into him. They could, of course, toss her out and there wouldn't be anything he could do about it. His mind spun down a network of possibilities from there. Would he refuse to cooperate? Was he putting her in danger? Could he fight? The small pistol on his hip was rubbing him as if in reminder...

I must be going crazy to even think I have a chance against Marines.

“Then let's get right to it. I'm told you know where to find Douglas Hayes.”

Liam felt his face flush. He may also have felt a dumb look on his face as he stood facing the military man.

“Liam? Do you know where he is, son? It's vital we find him.”

“You want to find him? Why?”

He glanced at Victoria, but she shared the same look.

“As I was telling your camp leaders here, we want to find Mr. Hayes because he's a vital link in solving the mystery of fighting this outbreak of...” The colonel didn't want to use the Z-word, Liam knew authorities believed it trivialized their condition. “...plague victims. Hayes and his team have been conducting their own research the last several weeks and have gone off on their own. They've taken a lot of equipment and personnel from legitimate government researchers. Some would say he stole those resources. We also know he's been rounding up test subjects outside the purview of his bosses. An Army Colonel at a camp near here was asking questions about Hayes' methods.”

Liam felt sick again, but not because of what he ate. This was confirmation of what he already suspected about Hayes and his intentions with Grandma. He didn't know which was worse though; an out-of-control government bent on researching the outbreak no matter how many people they had to kill during trials, or an independent and secretive group of researchers doing the same, beyond the control of the aforementioned all-powerful government. Either way, there was no excuse for the piles of bodies he'd seen at Elk Meadow, or what they did there.

Maybe he could finally get some answers.

“I want to help you, Colonel. I really do. I will if I can. But Marines blew up my parents' house. Didn't Hayes order that?”

The LtCol studied him for a moment and seemed to reach a conclusion.

“The world is chaos now. My area of operations is the entire state of Missouri, but I can only control what's directly in my line-of-sight these days, and even that's getting hard to do. My bosses sent me out with minimal intel and frankly it's a miracle we found you here. What I do know about your house is yes, it was Hayes who ordered the strike. But what we can't figure out is what kind of clearance he had to authorize said strike.”

He closed the distance to Liam and spoke a little quieter.

“We sent another unit to investigate what could have rated a full-blown strike. We should have sent a team to gather information on a target prior to wiping it off the map. Now...” He shrugged. “The official report, brief as it was, stated there were no obvious signs of contagion beyond the uniform standard of infection everywhere else. That's a fancy way of saying there were plague victims, but no research facility or high value target.”

He drilled into Liam's eyes.

“Son, do you know why he'd select your house?”

Where do I begin?

Aware that he'd already told a white lie when they first met, he had to explain why he lied initially, then he laid out their first meeting with Hayes under the Arch, his strange interest in Grandma, and the subsequent kidnappings, escapes, and firefights which summed up their give and take relationship. He also mentioned Victoria's capture and shooting by Hayes. He finished with the bombing of his boyhood home.

“So, the reason Hayes blew up your neighborhood was payback? Can it really be that simple?”

“I don't know, sir. He warned me the planes were coming—said he owed me one because I spared his life earlier—so on the face of it the whole thing seemed like a waste of resources. But he did kill a lot of my neighbors.”

“I'm sorry, son, I really am. You're a better man than me. Someone shoots my girlfriend or wife,” he tossed Liam a wry smile, “they get a dirt nap. Is there anything you can tell me about his whereabouts now that he has taken your grandma? I think we both want to find her.”

Her?

Liam had been pretty forthcoming in his storytelling, but he did leave out one significant detail. He made no mention of the age factor and how Elk Meadow had revealed the link between the virus and very old test subjects. He wondered if the LtCol already knew about that. The answer would reveal whether he was looking for Hayes, or for Grandma.

“He picked her up in an unmarked private helicopter. It could have been from a TV station, a hospital, or maybe some government agency. I can't tell you which.” Liam ran the scene over and over in his head, and those were his best guesses about the origin of the helicopter. In other words, he didn't have a clue.

While waiting to see how he reacted, Liam realized something else. The LtCol was here, looking for him. Somehow his name had been associated with Hayes. Which means Hayes must have put him in his reports. Reports accessible by this Marine. But how did they know he would be here, in this camp? It seemed too convenient. Too lucky.

Liam's natural fear of the government, inherited from his father, was red-lining.

The LtCol wasn't telling him everything.

I really wanted to trust you, too.

4

Liam was relieved he wasn't under arrest, which was where he figured he'd be by this point in their conversation. The LtCol continued to ask questions, but none of Liam's answers led to any new revelations about where Hayes and Grandma might have gone. He even told him about the paperwork they'd found referencing “Riverside” downtown, but it was deemed not credible. “I can't go all the way downtown on a hunch.”

Liam willingly shared almost all of what he knew, minus what he witnessed at Elk Meadow. Liam couldn't be sure, even now, whether this man knew about the significance of his grandmother. He intended to keep it that way.

“Don't you have any way to track people?”

Like you tracked me.

The LtCol was hard to read, but he thought the man's eyes might have widened at the suggestion. His response was less helpful.

“If we had a way to track him, we would already have found him. He has to be accessing our network, but we don't know how. I'm in the dark here, and I don't like it. The only clue I have in this whole mess was an early report from Hayes' team from underneath the Arch where he mentioned your name. We followed that lead and found your street blown to hell. We realized Hayes had authorized the strike order and we wanted to know why. We dug into more of his movements and discovered through our signals intelligence Hayes had been at this camp. It was a long shot to find you here, but we ran right into you. Amazing good luck. The trail can't go cold from here. You have to help if you can.”

Liam wondered if there were any leads he overlooked. He'd been thinking about Grandma since she took off in the helicopter, but to no avail. Should he tell him Grandma had his phone? If they could trace his phone to her location, would they immediately go collect her? Would they let him go too? Would they bring her back? Probably none of those things. His mind drifted as he tried to solve the puzzle.

Victoria pulled him toward the big glass windows overlooking the camp. The LtCol made no effort to follow.

“Liam, are you there?”

He snapped awake. “Hi! Yes, I'm just trying to think of what to do next. My mind isn't cooperating though. Do we have any hope of finding her on our own? More importantly, do we trust him?”

For a brief moment, he thought of asking his parents. He'd been on his own long enough in this carnage he'd almost forgotten they were still around to help. Did he think of himself as a son or as a boyfriend these days?

No. I'm a survivor first.

The word sounded harsh, like metal on a grindstone. But better to be harsh than dead. So many others had given up, succumbed to the plague, or were caught by the zombies. Others were captured by their own government and used as guinea pigs. The man in the room with them was part of that government, no matter how well-meaning he might be.

He didn't need to ask his dad. He already knew what he'd say.

Trust no one from the Federal Family.

Easy enough. But where do you go from there?

Victoria looked at him, patiently waiting for him to make up his mind. In turn, he focused on her emerald greens. He hardly noticed the bruises and blemishes around them. Did she know what he was thinking now? Liam knew she did. He saw an almost imperceptible head shake.

Things were only going to get more complicated. It was no longer possible to offload the problems of being a kid onto the adults in the room. The new world had no respect for age, and it mercilessly penalized stupid people of all ages. Liam resolved not to be stupid.

He looked to make sure no one could overhear them. “We can't stay here with these people. If these Marines know we're here, it won't be long before Hayes knows. He may decide to decimate the valley simply because he can. We can't be responsible for that...” His thought trailed off as he looked out at the camp he'd begun to consider his new home. His parents were here somewhere, too. He suddenly had a deep resentment for Hayes, the government, the military—and whoever started this zombie plague. It was an inconvenience of the highest order.

He inwardly chuckled at the lunacy.

Victoria picked up where he left off. “OK, so we need a plan. We need to walk out of this camp where no one will find us. Do you and I run off? I was joking before, but this seems like the time to try it. We need to regroup and figure out how to find Grandma.”

Can we do it without the Marines?

Liam honestly couldn't answer that. He couldn't trust them. But could he use them just as readily as they would use him? He looked over at the LtCol, now engaged in quiet conversation with members of the Boy Scout council.

Liam knew what had to be done, though he didn't have a clue how to make it happen. “How can we get out of this room, get out of this camp without being seen, and have enough gear to survive?”

It was somewhat rhetorical, but Victoria answered him. “Getting out of this room is easy. We just tell them we need to collect our gear. Then we head back to our tent, grab some supplies, and disappear.”

“Just like that?” Liam knew there was nothing “just like that,” anymore.

“We'll, I admit there are bound to be some kinks. Let's hear your plan, Mr. Smarty.”

They both shared a conspiratorial giggle, a little louder than intended. It caught the attention of the LtCol.

“Have you two thought of anything that may help my search? I really need to be moving on.”

The council members became visibly agitated. “Moving on? We thought you were here to protect us.”

Soon the LtCol was overwhelmed with questions.

He tolerated none of it. “Listen! I'll only say this once. We are U.S. Marines. Not your personal security guards. We're here on a mission to save humanity. We need to be Charlie Mike as soon as possible. We're leaving.”

Their mission is my mission: saving people.

And then the way forward presented itself.

He was going to help the Marine Corps after all.

5

The chaos in the room grew as more people came from downstairs. The guards on the stairs either heard the LtCol say he wasn't staying, or other Marines on the lower floor had spread the message they weren't sticking around. However it happened, the result was madness.

Liam briefly considered trying to sneak out right then and there, but knew that was stupid. Better to play it safe.

They returned to the main discussion.

“Colonel, I think I have a way to help you find Hayes and my Grandma but you have to take us along. Victoria and I are going to grab our gear and go with you in your vehicle, if that's all right?”

The LtCol appeared distracted by the raised voices in the room, but he had the sense to detach one of his Marines—a burly-looking man with several stripes on his arm.

“Jax, keep an eye on our young friends and make sure they aren't harmed as they gather their gear.”

With that, he redirected his attention to the council. The message was clear. Get lost. But not too lost.

Victoria gave him a troubled look as they walked out of the room. The trio moved down the stairs and out into the tent city. Word was spreading almost before their eyes.

Cries of “The Marines are leaving!,” “They aren't here to help us!,” and “Make them stay!” permeated the desperate campers.

He walked hand-in-hand with Victoria, hands clasped very tightly as the energy built around them. Jax, who wore the name Jackson on his uniform, seemed unconcerned with all the fuss, but he had deftly moved his weapon from his back to a place under his left arm. Not openly hostile, but easily accessible.

Why'd we get the bad-ass professional?

Closer to their own tent, Liam checked the distance between them and their overseer and decided to share his plan in a quiet voice. “I'm going to get in our tent first. Then you tell him,” he nudged his head backward to Jax, “that you want to join me in the tent before we leave.” I'll take it from there.

Victoria nodded.

Several people watched Liam and his two friends walk into their section of the camp. Some nodded. Some were openly hostile to the Marine. Apparently word had spread well ahead of them that the Marines were abandoning them. Many probably didn't know the Marines had even arrived.

Liam didn't wait for an invitation from Jax to go into his tent. He just whipped open the zipper and plunged in.

He got right to work with his pocketknife on the back nylon wall; he ripped it partially open so he and Victoria could sneak out the back and get a head start on a run. He knew they would be seen eventually, but the woods were thick not far from their tent—so they'd have a chance to lose any pursuit. No way Jax would shoot them.

Liam reflexively gulped.

No time for doubts. Victoria said her part and climbed in. She zipped the front zipper, then saw what he'd done to the back panel. The course of action became obvious at that point.

Liam whispered, “Follow me out the back and run like hell. We're going for the MRAP over the hill.”

Victoria nodded.

Liam cut the last little bit of fabric off the back of the tent and it fell to the ground, giving him a perfect view of the woods.

Unfortunately, the view was blocked by the imposing presence of Jax. “Do you kids think I was born yesterday? I know five-year-olds with better plans than you.”

He had his weapon out, but pointed at the ground. “Get your stuff and let's go.”

Liam smiled innocently as he retreated back into the tent. “Well, that didn't go as planned.”

“You tried, Liam. Now it's my turn.”

She partially unzipped the front zipper, turned around at him with a big grin and a wink. She did something that quite literally shocked him. She screamed at the top of her lungs, finished opening the zipper, and spilled out the front.

Liam was left in stunned silence. He turned around and looked through the rough cut of the rear of the tent and saw Jax as he moved toward the front again. He looked all business.

“That soldier tried to pull off my shirt!” Victoria screamed while forcing herself to sob.

Oh, shit.

Liam came out of the tent to see a dozen armed men and women running up from the scores of tents in earshot. None looked too happy to have to deal with a Marine, though the screams of the girl could not be ignored.

Jax came around the tent with his weapon drawn.

“STAND DOWN” he yelled in his most commanding voice.

The arriving civilians stopped in their place, but not for long. More followed.

“I SAID STAND DOWN!”

Fewer people were affected.

The plan worked too well. Liam worried someone might get hurt. He stood up next to Victoria as if to comfort her. He made an exaggerated effort to speak so everyone could hear him. “Victoria, would you like me to talk to this Marine to get his side of the story?”

The crowd of men and women were twenty feet away, but spreading around him. He had to know his chances of surviving the flash mob was dwindling.

“Yes, please speak to him!”

Victoria was acting scared, but Liam thought he could detect real fear in her eyes.

“Everyone, give me a minute to talk to him. Please.”

No one seemed overly anxious to escalate beyond coming to a rescue.

Liam moved over to Jax, and directed him to the rear of the tent. He spoke quietly. “Do you have a pencil?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“A pencil? You know, to write with? I want to get you out of this alive. Victoria and I only want to be left alone, but if you give me a pencil, I'll write down how to find my grandma. That should soften your return to your unit.”

He didn't look happy, but he pulled out a stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper. Liam noticed it had some words printed on the side, in tiny gold script. It said, “Trust in God.”

He looked at it for a long moment, then wrote something. “You were right. My plan was as sophisticated as a five-year-old's. Hers...” He made a swooshing sound with his mouth.

He handed the paper and pencil back.

“That's the phone number to my cell phone. Currently my grandma has it wherever she is. Maybe you guys can do some fancy tracking on it or something. You have a better chance of finding her with it than I do and I have to believe you are less hostile to her than Hayes.”

Jax seemed to consider this new information. “Then why are you running away?”

He had a point. Maybe going with the Marines would be the fastest way.

Trust no one.

His dad's maxim on life.

He looked into Jax's eyes and felt himself wanting to believe this man, this U.S. Marine, was honorable.

“The government took my grandma. The government shot my girlfriend. The government bombed my house into scrap. I wish I could trust you and the colonel. I really do. But I have to go my own way, away from any agent of that government.”

With that, Liam spun around before he could be talked out of anything. The desire to trust the Marines was overwhelming.

He spoke to the crowd.

“I think there's been a slight misunderstanding. Victoria and I were merely wanting to go our own way, and this Marine accidentally tried to stop us. Would you good people make sure he gets back to his unit at the council's HQ? It's very important he not be harmed. Scout's Honor.”

Liam thought about whether he could really make this request of these people, but he was surprised to see several step up as if to provide escort.

For his part, Jax played along. He made no effort to talk the crowd down or reason with them. He simply fell in with them and led them back through the tents. No final words to Liam. No threats. Just business-like in his demeanor. He'd come to appreciate that in the real world there were seldom big speeches.

Once they were sure he was gone, they ran into the woods like cross country stars.

Chapter 7: Trajectories

“We have to find Mr. Lee. I just hope he's up in his watchtower where we left him.”

Victoria struggled to keep up with Liam as they ascended the steep wooded path. As she arrived, he asked, “You OK?”

“Yeah, just worn out. First running after you, then the excitement of the Marines, now more running. I think I'm exhausted because lying down in those bushes and calling it a day seems like a really good idea right now.”

She nodded and he followed her gaze.

“Well, you don't want to lay in those bushes. That's a tangle of poison ivy. My Boy Scout plant identification badge is still paying dividends.”

Victoria scrunched her face in a “thanks Mr. Know-it-all” gesture, but they both laughed.

They resumed the trek the rest of the way up the hill and arrived at the watchtower they had left earlier in the day. It was a bustle of young Scouts running to and fro. Some worked on the fence. Others ran off into the woods. It was part of the communication system Mr. Lee had rigged up to talk to other checkpoints and keep the perimeter free of zombies and other intruders.

Liam saw Mr. Lee on the lowest level. He waved at them, though he looked very busy.

She grabbed his arm. “Wait, Liam. We have to discuss what we're going to do next. We need a plan so we don't look like a couple of kids just running away from our problems.”

“That sounds like an after-school special.” He was smiling, but she wasn't.

“OK, I guess now isn't the time for humor. I think we should all get in the MRAP and go follow the Marines and see where they go. I gave them Grandma's phone number and I bet they have access to the cellular network and can get a message to her so they can find out where she's being held.”

“What if she doesn't have the phone anymore? What if it was taken from her?”

Liam felt his face turn serious. “She still has it. I have to believe she does.”

“What about your parents? Are we going to leave them in the camp?”

Liam could feel his stomach turn over. “I should have tried to get them out. I didn't even think of it.”

“Do you want to go back?”

Liam took a long minute to think. “We can't. We'd never make it back under the nose of the Marines, and even if we did somehow manage to get dad out, his leg is busted. He would have to stay in the truck the whole time. My mom has to stay with him too. They'll be fine in camp, for now.”

Victoria nodded.

“So the next question is, who do we get to go with us? You and I can't drive that thing on our own. We really need Melissa.”

Liam looked around, but didn't see Mel. “Yeah, and having Mr. Lee, Phil and Bo along wouldn't hurt either. We could assemble our A-team again.”

Privately, Liam worried he had asked too much of his new friends already. Going out on another excursion for “the young kid”—with a low probability of success to boot—was asking a lot. Especially when they were somewhere relatively safe already. Victoria was right. They had to come to this with a coherent plan.

My plan sounds childish; save my grandma.

Liam turned the pages of his mind, searching through the books he'd read about zombies to try to arrive at his own solution, but he had to admit most scenarios like this started with noble intentions and ended in death for at least some of the noble warriors. Asking people to risk their lives for him was not the trivial request he thought it was just a few short minutes ago. It made going off on their own seem more palatable, even if it meant it would be much more difficult. Still, he wanted to give it an honest shot to enlist the others.

With suitable embarrassment, he managed to ask her how she would present his plan so it didn't sound juvenile.

“I think the answer is Hayes,” Victoria was deliberate in her response, “and his seeming inability to just leave you alone. We already know he has Grandma, so getting help to rescue her can't be ignored. But the bigger picture is the protection of this camp. We have a reasonable expectation that if Hayes knows we're here, he could attack the camp just like he did for your house and street. By leaving to rescue Grandma and stop Hayes, we are protecting the camp from further harm.”

Victoria snapped her fingers as if surprised. “That's it! We aren't going to rescue Grandma 'just because.' We're going to stop this once and for all so both the camp and Grandma can be safe. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?”

“Actually, that sounds very reasonable.”

Except for the part where two kids take on a secretive military-biological Army unit.

They approached the Endor watchtower hand in hand.

2

“Guys, I wish I could go with you, but this camp needs me here. The Marines have really stirred things up in our happy valley. I think people saw their arrival as the end of their time out in the wilderness—the sheepdogs were back to protect them. But as word got out the Marines were just visiting, they...well they didn't take the news too good.”

“We saw that coming up.” Liam left out the part where they escaped from their Marine overseer.

“We also saw firsthand what the Marines are looking for. Rather, who they're looking for. You won't be surprised to know they're looking for Hayes, same as me—us.”

“That figures. How did they end up looking for him here?”

Liam looked at Victoria. She shrugged her shoulders in the universal “I have no idea” answer.

“He didn't say precisely, other than to tell us he got really lucky. Hayes put my name in a database, and he followed the bombs. That's how he put it.”

“Hmm, sounds like we could be in real danger now that the Marines know you're here. Hayes knows, too. You can take that to the bank.”

Victoria gave Liam a knowing look.

After a thoughtful pause, Mr. Lee continued, “I still can't come with you. As head of security, this is when the camp needs me the most. As you can see, my runners are working hard to keep our ring of security positions in contact. Liam, people are trying to leave already. What's that saying? Rumors have traveled to the next county before truth has laced up its shoes.”

He must have understood the dejected looks on their faces, so he continued. “I do think Melissa and Phil will be back soon. They're doing some running for me, too. I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to go out and explore again. I don't think they like what I've got them doing.” He laughed, but had a distant look in his eyes. “If only we had some more radios.”

Mr. Lee excused himself so he could get back to managing his runners.

Victoria pulled Liam away and they sat up against a nearby tree while they waited.

Several hours later, he woke up to find Victoria sleeping next to him, still with her back up against the tree.

The sun was low and the shadows of the forest were long.

He stood up, unsteady as he rose.

Victoria was jostled awake. “How long was I out?”

“No idea. I'm just waking up, too. I guess we really needed a nap.”

Mr. Lee was still in the tower, as were Phil, Melissa, and Bo. They were sitting and standing on the first floor.

He pulled Victoria off the ground and together they made their way back to the structure.

“Ah, you're awake! I have good news for you. Melissa has agreed to drive for you, and Phil and Bo are joining you too.” He paused and looked at Melissa before continuing, “We discussed how useful the truck could be in defense of the camp, but I understand why you want to find your grandma and stop Hayes from doing whatever he's going to do to her, and to us. I think that mission is more important than killing any random zombie. Just promise me you'll bring the truck back?”

Liam didn't know what to say.

“We promise.” Victoria responded for him.

“I do have one request. Can you tell my parents I went out looking for my grandma? I don't want them to think I fell off the planet.”

Mr. Lee assured him he would send a runner immediately.

They descended the back side of the hill to the wooded hollow where they hid the MRAP. They clambered in, sealed the doors, and Mel fired up the diesel.

“We got word from our runners the Marines spent a little time looking for you, but bugged out about an hour ago. There was some ugliness as they left, but nobody got hurt, thank the Lord. They haven't gone far however; the convoy is parked not far from the entrance to the valley, though we don't know why they haven't moved from there.” She turned in her seat to face everyone in the back of the vehicle. “So we have to decide how we're going to track these guys.”

No one was quick to offer suggestions. Liam literally had no ideas.

She continued after a suitable pause for feedback, “OK, I vote we head north out of the woods and find a position overlooking the highway so we can observe the convoy as it passes. There's an old water slide on a bluff I know. We can probably follow them using the path they have to cut through all the detritus on the highway. We can't get close, but we should have no problem tracking them wherever they go. Right to your grandma, Liam.”

It was a plan. Better than anything he would have thought up.

Nice to have friends.

3

The little dirt track through the woods was not much wider than the military truck. The dwindling light of the day made it seem narrower than it was as he looked out the front window. He heard the branches drag across the side plates as they passed clumps of trees. Sometimes branches would make a loud snap as they got caught on the apparatus of the chain gun up on top. They'd been through here before, so had confidence they'd come out where they needed.

It was only a fifteen minute trek to the edge of the property, even at such slow speeds. They emerged from the woods on the back side of a dusty open space adjoining a small neighborhood. Melissa stopped the MRAP as they were in the last of the trees.

“You guys want to look at this.”

They gathered as best they could near the cramped space of the driver's compartment. Liam looked out on a whole subdivision of smoldering homes. It was hard to tell how many houses were once there. Maybe thirty or forty. He shuddered as it reminded him of his own ruined neighborhood.

Victoria asked, “Did Hayes do this?”

“No, this is something different. Not a bombing anyway. Each house was torched. There are no craters and—” Melissa hesitated as she looked out, “there's one house still standing smack in the middle.”

Liam noticed it, too.

Phil, in the navigator's seat, asked the question they were all thinking. “Do we proceed?”

Liam sensed they were asking him. “The gamer's dilemma?” He smiled, trying to make light of the situation, but he felt they had no idea what he was talking about. “I guess we have to go on,” he finished more seriously.

Melissa cautiously rolled the MRAP across the field and toward the remaining house. It looked lonely among the dozens of ruined frame houses on the empty streets. Liam didn't know why she would head for it. After all, they could just as easily skirt the whole subdivision by driving through the backyards of a few houses to reach the access road.

“Wait,” he shouted.

The truck slammed to a stop. Liam almost fell over.

“Uh, sorry. How do we know that house isn't some kind of trap?” After he said it, he felt guilty for thinking himself important enough to warrant a trap, but in his defense he did have his home bombed.

Melissa and Phil studied the house carefully.

“They really made sure you'd see this, Liam.”

Liam looked at Bo. “Well I see it. I vote we just get out of here.”

Melissa offered her suggestion. “Let's at least drive around to the front of the house and evaluate from there. The road looks intact and unless they have a rocket propelled grenade there's nothing that can harm us.” She looked back at them with a wry smile.

They all agreed to at least get close and check it out.

Melissa sped up as they approached. She turned the last corner so they could all see the front facade of the last house still standing.

Liam heard a few gasps. He merely put his hand on his forehead.

I told them we should have just left.

A word had been spray-painted in big block letters on the white double garage door.

“LIAM.”

4

For the second time in the last several minutes, Victoria asked if this was Hayes' handiwork. This time no one offered an answer. He felt the eyes of his friends on him.

“I don't know anymore. Before I met those Marines I thought only Hayes knew my relationship to Grandma. Certainly he was the only one who could possibly know Grandma had my cell phone. But I told Jax about it before we left camp, so I guess the Marines could have written this, too, if they were fast about it. Maybe they announced it on an open frequency so all levels of government know who I am. I just can't say.”

“We can't just sit in here talking about it. This ain't just Liam's problem. We can see for a mile around us. No people. No Z's. Let's check it out.” Bo shuffled to the back doors. When no one made an effort to stop him, he opened them.

“I'll go with you.” Liam really wanted to stay in the truck, but he couldn't let Bo take all the risk while he was safe and snug.

When Liam jumped out, Victoria came out after him. He gave her a look.

“What? I'm not just going to sit back there by myself.”

They all had a little laugh and marched up the level driveway of the house. Liam's name loomed large, adding to his displeasure that things seemed to always be about him.

Bo kept things light by saying, “You're famous, dude,” as he walked up the few stairs to the front door. He jiggled the handle; it was locked.

“Maybe the back door is open.”

He walked away from the front door as Liam tried to open the garage door. At first he thought it was locked, but it rose a few inches. He called for help. With great effort, the three of them were able to get it nearly all the way up. With no electricity for a garage door opener, it took sweat power.

They froze in place. They held the garage door above them, hovering between getting it all the way up and letting it crash back down. In the almost-empty garage was a large 55-gallon drum with the unmistakable outline of a bomb on top, complete with blinking lights.

Thirty seconds passed. They were frozen.

The door of the MRAP opened and Phil yelled from the street, “What do you guys see in there?”

Liam blocked a straight view of the device from Phil's vantage point. He scooted over—still holding the door—so it became clear.

The only response Liam could hear was muffled cussing.

“Do we drop the door?” Bo asked. “Run for it?”

Liam had read enough and watched enough movies to know there were a million ways to make a bomb explode. Trip wires, lasers, sound waves, chemical mixtures, proximity sensors, or even the good old fashioned button. Maybe the door opens and knocks a bowling ball onto the bomb.

Or maybe the door closes and explodes.

Once again, Liam faced a life or death choice.

Melissa came running up the driveway at full speed. “Let me see it!”

“What, you're a bomb expert too?” Liam asked, while straining to hold the door.

“No, but I played one on TV. Just let me look in there.”

She approached the open door and took her time scanning the garage, including the door itself. With great care, she made her way over to the big drum, staying as low as possible. With exaggerated slowness, she stood up next to it.

“OK, I don't see any wires connected to it or the garage door. Someone put some heavy weights on the door, but they seem useless. I think you can push the door open and then back away.”

“No way,” Bo said. “We don't really know what's going to happen with this door. If we open it, maybe it explodes. If we close it, maybe it also explodes. Y'all should clear out and I'll close the door. At least we know it has already been closed and didn't explode. We don't know what happens if it goes all the way up.”

Liam couldn't argue with his logic, though he didn't like the idea of leaving him behind even with such a remote chance of the thing exploding.

Victoria was already on her tippy toes holding the door up. She probably couldn't hold that position for much longer.

Melissa accepted Bo's suggestion, telling the rest of them to clear out. She left the garage slowly, but then ran for the MRAP once she was out.

“I'll be ready to move once you two are in!”

It left the three of them holding the door. Victoria was visibly straining.

“You can let it go, Victoria. I got this. You too, Liam.”

They both let go and Bo took the burden. He didn't seem the least bit strained.

“Um, I'm sure this isn't goodbye, but thanks.” Victoria said it almost reverently.

“Yeah, thanks, man. See you in a few.”

Bo turned his head and smiled through his beard. “This is gravy. Beats the heck out of laying fence. Trust me on that.”

In moments, Liam and Victoria were back in the MRAP and it was backing up the block.

Melissa parked it so they were facing the house, about fifty yards away.

They all watched as Bo let down the door as far as he could, but he had to let it go to avoid hurting his fingers and it slammed noisily to the pavement. He appeared to pause after it was done, as if he expected an explosion and braced for it.

“Why didn't he run?” Liam asked.

“Whatever's in that drum would have blown up an area bigger than he could escape.”

“Then why are we so close? Shouldn't we be in the next county?” Liam mused.

“Relax. Nothing can hurt us in here.”

Bo finally stood, gave a thumbs up, and started walking toward the street to meet them. Mel had released the brake and applied the gas.

Seconds later, Bo dropped flat on the driveway. He looked back into the woods from which they'd originally emerged.

“What the—” was all Liam managed to say.

Bo's head lifted up and then ducked quickly back down.

Phil had his weapon in his hand in a flash, “Someone's shooting at him! We have to—” But before he could finish his sentence, and before Melissa could get to him, the world in front of them turned black.

5

The violence of the explosion hit them in a split second, and it rocked the huge truck. It was strong enough to toss debris into the front windshield, and cracked it in several places. Something heavy crushed the passenger-side windshield pillar and spidered the glass in front of Phil. A dark cloud of smoke and dust enveloped them while debris rained down for several minutes.

As the smoke cleared, the evening had almost moved from dusk to night. When it was just a gentle trickle of falling matter, Victoria asked, “What just happened? Where's Bo?” Liam could see nothing was left of the house. Even less than the charred hulks of the burned homes. There wasn't even much of a fire. Nothing was left to burn.

Melissa and Phil both had identical looks of shock as they stared out the front.

Liam wondered why he wasn't in shock.

How would I know?

He answered the question. “Someone was shooting at him from the woods. Maybe they hit the drum behind him and set it off? Or...” Liam's mind was in conspiratorial overdrive these days, so his next statement came quite naturally. “Someone was aiming for the drum to get it to explode on purpose. That...should have been me.”

“Liam, no,” Victoria said softly.

Mel snapped out of her reverie. “Yes, he's right, someone set it off deliberately. That's why there were no wires or timers. They were waiting until we were all there before setting it off from a distance. Not quite as sophisticated as the improvised bombs we saw over in Iraq, but still effective. They had us all pretty much dead to rights when we were inside the garage, but maybe they thought we were all going to get out of the MRAP.”

She seemed to regain her composure the more she spoke. She stepped on the gas and drove with purpose toward the subdivision entrance. “I don't know what this is about, but if it was a trap, there may be other ambushers waiting for us.”

Sure enough, as they exited the subdivision they saw a disorganized gaggle of civilian vehicles to their left, parked off the county road. Several men and women ran around as if the explosion had set them in motion. Many of them were armed with big black battle rifles.

“Kill them,” Liam yelled. “They murdered him.”

Mel turned the rig to the right, but she stopped in a few moments. She left it idling in the middle of the road.

Liam had no idea how to fire the chain gun. “Someone shoot the Gatling.” He pointed up at the roof.

“I will, Liam.”

They were in full view of the men behind them, but no one was firing. He didn't know if they had begun chasing them, or if they were innocent bystanders. He didn't really care. Mel was operating the controls for the chaingun. Liam heard it rotate on top, and then rip out shells for a second or two. He was about to cheer when it stopped.

A few moments later, Mel returned to her driving position and continued up the road at an almost leisurely pace.

“Did you get them?”

“Those folks won't be bothering us anytime soon.”

“Did you kill them all?”

Mel turned to look at him with a very serious face. “Liam, things are very fluid here. We have no idea who those people are. We can barely see them. We can't just go around shooting men, women, and maybe children—even if I think they were guilty. I put some rounds across their bow.”

At that second, Liam felt it would have been a justified killing. But he knew he could never know for sure if those men were with the ones who shot at Bo, or if the ones who shot at Bo were actually trying to blow up the house and kill his friend. There were too many variables to have black and white anger.

“You're such a nice kid, Liam. You have to view everyone out there as a potential bad guy now, but you don't have to kill everyone.”

Liam and Victoria returned to the back seats while Mel and Phil drove and rode silently in the front. Bo's hat still sat on the bench. He'd taken if off because it was so hot in the back. It made Liam feel his absence immediately.

The truck rolled on. He was sure something didn't sound right with the engine, but his ears were still buzzing and ringing from the explosion. He was content to sit close to Victoria and simultaneously fume and grieve. It was several minutes before anyone spoke.

“Guys, we have problems up front. Again.”

Liam saw what appeared to be several families with small children walking in the same direction they were driving. It would be possible to drive through their loose formation, but he judged it would be very risky with so many children present.

“In Iraq, I heard of women and children being used as decoys and human shields for hardcore insurgents, but this looks innocent. Still, keep your eyes and ears open.”

An older, thin, gray-haired woman dropped back from the main detachment so as to speak with them. The main group wasn't waiting for her.

Phil cracked open his door so they could communicate. It groaned loudly as it fought the bent support of the windshield. Liam could only hear her from his vantage point, but she spoke loud and clear.

“Hello ma'am. Why are you all out on the road like this?”

“We come from a subdivision back yonder. Some a-holes dressed like deer hunters come through and killed everyone they could find, then started burning our homes. The menfolk did what they could to stop them while we got away. We're supposed to meet them at a school not far up the road.”

“How many men were attacking you? Were they professional soldiers?”

“Naw, they drove regular trucks and wore camo like they was hunters, not soldiers. Don't rightly know the difference, but soldiers don't kill civilians for no reason. My children are old and grown, but my husband stayed and fought with the other men.”

“Do you know why they might have left one house intact? Right in the middle?”

“Nope. I saw them torch my house. After that, I didn't care. That's when the men gathered us all up and sent us quick on our way. What was that big boom we heard?”

“Oh, that was a bomb in the last house.”

“I guess the men gave them a good fight and let us escape. Nothing worth dying for in those houses. I should keep moving.”

Phil tried to yell some more questions out the door, but the woman wasn't interested. “Well, that's that. An unknown group of bad guys took down a whole subdivision for no apparent reason. Then they set up a trap specifically designed to draw us in and kill Liam. Sounds like a lot of people died in that effort, too.”

Liam replied in a mechanical tone, “Do we get involved with these people? Isn't it my fault they're on this road? Lost their homes. Lost their...” He bit his tongue to prevent the tears waiting just behind his eyes.

He looked up and saw three faces looking at him with concern.

“How can we help? Won't we put them into even more danger? We have no food or water for such a large group. We can't even protect them for any length of time. And every minute we delay is one less minute to reach and follow the Marines.”

Melissa focused on the tactical situation. “The highway is behind us. It probably isn't safe to go back that way and engage whatever group was back there. If we go forward we can loop around and eventually get back to the highway, but we could just as easily loop around to the south and deposit these folks at the Boy Scout camp. We have plenty of gas, and other than a cracked windshield, she seems good to go.” She rubbed the dashboard as if the truck were alive.

Victoria added, “We can't just drive past these poor people and leave them in our dust. Like Liam said, we have to take some responsibility for this. If they knew it was his name on that garage, they'd probably want to string us up. We should at least help them to their rendezvous with their men.”

Phil turned dark. “Bo paid in blood for this subdivision. What happened here with the burning and the killing—it's happening everywhere. You guys saw it in my own neighborhood all those days ago. Society is burning up like newspaper in the fireplace. Soon it will just be ashes. Then things are going to go downhill from there. I came on this mission because I made your grandma a promise. I feel sorry for these people, I really do, but my allegiance is to my tribe here in this vehicle, and Liam's grandma, wherever she might be. We have to take care of our own before we can hope to save anyone else.”

Liam sat down in the back once again, in thought.

He tried to process all the facts in front of him. Like any number of zombie books he'd read, he was faced with a no-win scenario. He was thankful for the small miracle that this dilemma didn't directly involve fighting off zombies, though fighting with other humans was just as disturbing. He was used to making decisions in his online game. Save the princess or save the village. In the game, there were always ways to do both if you navigated the decision tree in just the right way. Was there a similar string of decisions that would allow him to save these people and save Grandma? There had to be.

Or I could lose Grandma and watch these people die.

“We help these people to safety, then go get Grandma. At worst, she would probably jokingly scold me for trying to rescue her, but I think she would use an honest-to-goodness curse word on me if she knew I abandoned these kids when I had a chance to lend them a hand. If we can't count on anyone to do the right thing anymore, then Phil will be right. The world will be burnt to a crisp.”

After a minute of introspection as the truck rambled along behind the women and children, Phil spoke up. “Liam, the threat of Grandma cursing at me is enough to agree with you. And your idea makes perfect sense. We save these people, then we save her.”

Mel got them busy. “Liam, would you be kind enough to man the rear window and make sure no one is following us. We'll watch on the remotes too. I'll keep us just behind the group and we'll see where the night takes us.”

Liam looked West; the last glint of sunlight dipped below the treeline behind them. Someone out there had just tried to kill him in the most destructive way he could imagine. The Marines were moving toward Grandma, leaving him behind. Hayes had her somewhere out there. Civilization itself was enjoying its last hurrah. Zombies roamed through it all. It seemed there were nothing but insurmountable tasks ahead of him.

Victoria's hand touched his shoulder.

He looked at her in the dim cabin. She smiled a faint smile.

“We'll get through this, Liam. We all want to find Grandma.”

Her eyes were islands of calm on a stormy sea.

He resumed his watch, thinking about the one friend who wouldn't be helping him anymore.

Goodbye Bo.

Chapter 8: Thunderstruck

Only a handful of the subdivision's men made it out. Three men showed up to the rendezvous at the school, and they were in a hurry to keep moving once they found the women and children. The survivalists, as they called them, were behind them the whole way. Phil suggested they return to the Boy Scout camp rather than stay near the school. After some deliberation, everyone agreed it made the most sense to join up with a stronger outfit. One man even claimed to be a Boy Scout, saying, “Once a Scout always a Scout.”

Liam and Victoria got out of the MRAP to walk so they could fill it with the smallest children and the weakest older ladies. Older kids, and a few women to watch them, climbed on the roof. It helped the entire procession move with haste.

Liam learned from the survivors they had been assaulted in a swift strike on their neighborhood by an unknown, but large number of “gun-wielding duck-hunter type characters.” Initially they went from house to house killing any men they found, and capturing women and children. But then they started using rudimentary catapults to toss bottles of gasoline onto nearby houses, setting them on fire and chasing out the occupants. There was no defense against it once the houses started to burn. The remaining families rallied on the far side of the subdivision, and that's where they enacted the plan to help the women and youngsters escape while the men made an effort to buy them time.

Still, no one could explain why there was only one house left standing, and they had no idea anyone had written anything on the garage door. Liam was content to leave it at that, rather than explain it was his name.

Several times throughout their walk they thought they could see dim lights far behind, but no one could say for sure. Liam was ecstatic to be challenged by someone at the edge of the Scout camp. They'd finally have some friends to help them.

“Halt there! What's your business? This is Boy Scout territory,” cried a small voice in the night.

Liam chatted with the boys manning the forward checkpoint, and word was supposed to be sent to Mr. Lee's team about what had happened. A boy took off up the trail.

Phil and Mel discussed whether the survivalists were trailing them. They suggested the checkpoint be pulled back so none of the boys got hurt, but the boys wouldn't go. They did agree to move deeper into the woods and assured everyone they would observe and report, rather than confront anyone coming up the road during the night.

The MRAP continued up the paved road as fast as the people outside could walk. They headed for the front gate. Liam had a strange desire to see his parents. He assumed it was because he was surrounded by kids who had just lost their fathers.

They were almost at the gate when shots rang out far up the valley. First, just a few. Liam and Victoria stopped in their tracks, looking at each other in a frozen pose of surprise.

A few more shots rang out. Then nothing.

He felt himself leaning forward as if to continue walking, and another shot rang out.

“We better hurry to the council.”

They left the newcomers and the MRAP at the front gate. They jogged up the small road. Just yesterday they had both run the opposite direction as they chased the young man who pushed Victoria into the creek.

Liam spoke as they jogged. “It can't be a coincidence that guy who pushed you was probing our camp at the same time the survivalists were attacking the subdivision on our northern boundary.”

“I was beginning to think the same thing. The only thing worse would be if he worked for a different group that was going to hit us from a different direction.”

They both got a nervous laugh out of that as they reached the administration building. Liam figured it would be shut down and everyone would be asleep, so he was surprised to see it was a hub of activity even in the pre-dawn hours.

And there, just inside the doors, were his parents.

2

Liam's father still nursed his broken leg; he sat on an ancient metal folding chair. When Liam walked in, they were all over him.

“Liam! Thank God you're OK.” His mom ran and hugged him as she said it.

“Yeah, good to see you, son. Forgive me for not standing.” He tried to laugh, but Liam saw he was still in a lot of pain.

“We can't get out of here. The doctor wanted to make sure it wasn't going to get infected since we have so few medical supplies available. He said it was cleaner in here than in those dirty tents.”

“Yeah, we saw you and Victoria run out with that Marine, and we saw him come back without you. We knew it was crazy, but we couldn't help but imagine he offed you in the woods. We didn't know what to think until we heard the MRAP was back at the front gate. They said you'd spoken with the guards along the road so we lined up here to give you a welcome home.”

His mom still didn't let him go. Instead, she grabbed Victoria and pulled her into the embrace as well.

“Just so happy to see you both.”

Liam would have been embarrassed in the Old World to have his mother show such affection in front of his girlfriend, but in this new one, he was perfectly fine. He knew she might be gone tomorrow, or he himself might be a fine mist after a massive fireball explodes out of some nondescript garage.

“I'm glad to see you guys too.” He wasn't necessarily going to tell them every scary thing out there, but he had to tell them something. “Things are getting worse out there.”

“We heard there was a doomsday cult making trouble north of here?”

“A cult? No, they were survivalists—or so we've been told. We didn't actually see them up close. They burned a whole subdivision to the ground. We found a big group of women and children on the open road and we brought them back here before they could be rounded up by the bad guys. Most of the men didn't make it.”

Liam looked at his dad as he said it, knowing his father would understand what he was saying.

They were still in the doorway, so it was easy to hear renewed shots in the distance. His mom finally released the two kids. It gave Liam a chance to see how much activity was going on inside the building. Scores of flashlights bounced back and forth between the lantern-glow of the various rooms. He saw head-lamps and hand-held flashlights heading out into the distance and coming toward them in streams from the tents. Liam thought it was kind of magical. The moment was broken when several men and women charged through the doorway. One of them was Mr. Lee.

“We need to talk to the council! We're under attack!”

Mr. Lee shouted, but noticed Liam and his family and diverted to them.

“Liam! Thank you for the warning. The runner from the checkpoint got to us in time to warn us, which I can tell you probably saved a lot of lives. At this hour, it's easy to be lax, but with the prompt of possible trouble our boys were on high alert. I really don't have time to explain everything going on. I need help out there.”

“We're in.” It fell out of his mouth before he even thought about it. Night fighting in the woods wasn't really something he was proficient at doing.

Are any of these Boy Scouts any more prepared?

His conscience reminded him of the reality of where they were. They were all in this together no matter how much experience they had on paper. Fifteen-years-old or fifty, it made no difference now. He'd seen some of those same Boy Scouts fight like lions in hand-to-hand combat against the zombies.

As Mr. Lee moved away, Liam faced his parents again.

“I know you two have to go back out there. I wouldn't expect you to cower here like children. Even though I can't help but think of you as my little baby boy.” She began to tear up. She still clutched his filthy shirt, as if unwilling to separate.

Liam couldn't remember his mother ever being this emotional. It was affecting him as well. He didn't want to start sobbing like that little boy she envisioned. To compensate, he looked at his dad. “See ya, dad. You guys have weapons in here?”

He nodded in the affirmative. He then held out his hand for a handshake. After all their difficulties the past several months, he'd forgotten the last time they'd shaken hands or hugged. Maybe New Years.

Liam took it with a firm grip. The unusual displays of affection from both his parents were making him dangerously close to losing it.

“OK, we have to go. We'll be back as soon as we can.” He turned around and was hasty walking out the door. Victoria followed.

When they were into the tents, he stepped off the main path. He felt the tears forming in his eyes. “I'm sorry, I didn't want to get emotional in there. I've never seen my parents like that.” He wiped his eyes, only making a cursory effort to keep her from seeing him.

“Well, they did think you were dead. Gunshots are ringing out in the night, getting closer. They don't want to lose you for real. Frankly, I feel the same way. We're heading into a dangerous situation again. We can't be kids anymore, just sitting on the sidelines while the adults take care of things for us. They've known that for a long time, as have we.”

Is this what it feels like to be 25? 55? 105?

Liam briefly considered telling Victoria to stay with his parents, to keep her safe. But he knew how that conversation would end.

3

Liam and Victoria stood outside the building waiting for Mr. Lee to organize things on the inside with the council. He took the time to check their rifles, organize their magazines, and lighten their loads. His backpack had nothing but the brick-sized 1000-round box of .22 caliber ammo, still mostly full. He had nothing else extra to toss out. They each had one of his dad's surplus AK-47 rifles with one thirty round mag in the body of each weapon, and three spares. No water. No food. No medical supplies. Liam also had one pocket knife and one mysterious photograph.

They looked each other over to ensure they had no loose clothing or other obstructions that could get them killed. Shoelaces were tied.

“Your clothes stink.”

“Oh really? And what do your mud-soaked clothes smell like?”

“I'm a lady. They smell like roses.”

They had no opportunity to change since they survived the bombing of his street and jumped in the muddy creek. They both reeked, but so did the rest of his friends and family.

She had tried to buoy his spirits, but all he had in him was a polite chuckle.

He pushed out the thoughts of the dead, and tried to regain his focus on the moment. They each had their little Ruger .22 pistols, though his felt insignificant next to the larger semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. As he found back at the dead intersection, it would only be useful as a last resort.

The faintest light of the morning appeared as Mel and Phil jogged up. They both looked like death warmed over. None of them got any sleep on the journey in, but driving and navigating while watching for bad guys all night clearly took a toll.

“Hey, guys. What's the plan here?”

“We're waiting for Mr. Lee. He's talking with the council and getting a plan together for how to defend the valley. Once he comes out, we're going to link up with him and see what he needs from us.”

“Does he know we have the MRAP here? Surely he does.”

“He didn't tell me anything. He was in a hurry.” Liam looked at Mel. “How would you defend this place, Mel?” She'd surprised him several times the past weeks with her quick understanding of tactical situations. In all that time, he still didn't think to ask her about her military background, or how she ended up selling shoes.

She had already formulated a plan.

“This valley is impossible to defend from all directions. We aren't professionals, and this isn't a movie where stupid heroism wins the day. We have thousands of innocents, most without weapons or any means of protecting themselves from flying bullets. The survival guys will already control all the hills, or at least the hills they need to assault this valley. Our only good options now that we've lost the initiative are to either get everyone out and use our shooters to facilitate that escape, or try to draw in the enemy to the place and time of our choosing and strike them hard. I doubt we could evacuate anyone before the place was overrun. That leaves only one realistic option.”

Liam tried to think of what he'd do with the MRAP. “Maybe we could wait until we see them down here in the valley and then shoot them with the chaingun on the MRAP?”

“How would we avoid slicing and dicing unarmed civilians? That gun isn't exactly a precision instrument. Even less so in the low light.”

“What about the Marines? Are they still close by?”

“No!” Mr. Lee had just emerged from the building as Victoria spoke. “We've kept our eye on the Marines, but they cleared out just before dark last night. We have no idea where they went, other than north up the interstate. We can only depend on ourselves in this fight.”

Several armed adult men ran out of the administration building. They were the core of Mr. Lee's defense force for the valley. He explained they were a mix of ex-military, law enforcement, and competent listeners who could also shoot. There were only a precious couple dozen of them gathered now.

Melissa pulled Mr. Lee aside toward Liam. “Where are your men heading? What's your plan?”

They discussed the plan cooked up between Mr. Lee and the military guys. They were going to launch an immediate counterattack by taking a long route down the valley and then work their way around the back of the attacking force to catch them off guard.

“We don't have time for a counterattack. Your boys don't have the discipline to pull it off. It would be tough for regular army under these conditions and with such bad intelligence. You need to put your men where you know the enemy is going to be—here in the valley bottom. Put a token force in the administration building and along the creek bed, draw in the enemy, and then give them the building. They will then stack their troops in there because it's the only hard cover around. Then we hit them hard with the MRAP when they're grouped up. Kill the stragglers.”

Mr. Lee seemed to waver.

“Lee, you can't leave the valley in the hope you run into them. By the time you've made contact, they will already be here killing your people.” Melissa spoke to him softly, almost pleading with him.

“You're right. God, I just need five quiet minutes to think.” He ran his hand through his thinning hair. “We talked about that very thing inside, but some of these military guys want things their way or the highway.”

“You trust 'em? Sounds like a blue falcon trying to take himself off the field of battle...”

They discussed the plan for about five minutes. It wasn't enough time to cover every eventuality, but it was enough time to address the fundamentals. Melissa was very keen to convey that the plan must be as simple as possible. Mr. Lee rounded up some of his lieutenants and together they established a new plan. Liam listened in, but offered no opinions. He knew he was out of his league, and for once he was glad. He would be worried if he knew more about tactical matters than the people supposedly in charge of security.

The only divergence from Melissa's plan was that a few of the ex-military men insisted on going around the hills to hit them from behind as originally planned. No one argued with those guys, and Liam had to admit it would be sweet to have someone taking the fight to the enemy. If they got there in time. A team of four took off at a run down the road.

Liam risked injecting a question into the planning session. “Mr. Lee, who's defending us up on the hills right now?”

Mr. Lee smiled. “Liam, I asked the kids in my pack to call me 'Mr. Lee' to teach them respect. I guess it kind of caught on for everyone. But I want you to know, I'd prefer it if you just used my first name. Call me Lee.”

Liam was honored.

Lee continued with a sadness in his voice. “I sent several two-man teams of older Boy Scouts and their fathers to harass the invaders from random positions. I instructed them to shoot from afar and run—stay alive—but I fear many of them are dying too. But we desperately needed the time to organize a defense down here. My assumption was that any attacker would need to secure their flanks before advancing. Needless to say, I don't want to blow their sacrifice.”

Liam had no idea if it was a good or bad plan. The crack of gunfire intensified in the hills; Scouts were in peril out there.

Mel was right. This is nothing like the movies.

His hands were shaking.

4

Everyone was put to work to execute the plan. Mel and Phil ran back to the MRAP, while Liam and Victoria split up so they could each get people moving out of their tents and toward the far hillside—away from the attackers. He felt something unsettling as she ran from him. He watched until she was consumed by the stirring campers and he could no longer see her...

Liam had to yell at people and get them moving. Most needed little encouragement since the shooting was loud and clear on the hill above them. But there were holdouts. Some men and women refused to abandon what little they had in their tents, and were willing to fight and die for it, no matter how long the odds. Nothing Liam could say would change their minds, and he didn't waste time arguing.

Maybe they'll delay the enemy, giving the rest of us a chance.

Thousands of people running across the valley in the dim twilight was a sight to behold. The area closest to the administration building where Liam operated was also the area with the highest percentage of Boy Scouts. They coordinated and executed the evacuation in a remarkably short period of time, given the pressure of the situation. But even the best of the best weren't fast enough for the worst of the worst.

“Come on! Run!”

He ran toward the administration building with a lagging group of men and women when he heard some gunshots close by. In the low light, he couldn't tell if the shots were coming his way or going the other. His fears were confirmed when a large man in a white t-shirt crumpled in front of him. The red splotch grew on his backside.

Shots from behind.

Rather than push his luck to keep pace with the stragglers, he ducked down between a couple of large tents and found his way inside the smaller of the two. He took off his backpack because the box of ammunition rattled obnoxiously as he ran, and stashed it under a blanket to hide it. His hands shook almost to the point of uselessness. He couldn't help himself. He unslung his rifle so both hands had something to do while he readied himself for any encounter. A round was in the chamber, so all he had to do was drop the safety to get it ready for action.

Footfalls outside ran by, but he was pretty certain they weren't from campers. They were quiet and disciplined. His suspicions were confirmed when they conversed in hushed, winded, voices.

“We've got them all on the run, sir.”

“Understood. Push through these people and continue until you find the primary target. We have—”

Liam took a step back in the tent, and stepped on something which made a large pop. He didn't have time to curse himself. He pulled out his pocket knife and got to work on the orange rear wall of the tent. In ten seconds, he was out and running; he stayed low while putting distance between himself and the infiltrators.

He expected yelling and orders to pursue him, but the men were either too disciplined or—worse—pursued him silently. The thought got him running.

He went perpendicular to the survivalists coming off the hill, but in the darkness and confusing tent city they couldn't see him before they were on top of him—if at all. Several times he crossed paths with a survivalist just as he ran by. They skipped civilians and kept pushing in. He thought it was pretty risky to leave anyone behind your main attack, but now that he was there...

I can make a difference.

He tried to be as quiet as he could and snuck his way into another of the abandoned tents. He grabbed what turned out to be a shoe and briefly stuck his arm out the tent flap and tossed the shoe as hard as he could on the path where he was heading. It was the oldest trick in the book, but people kept trying it because it seemed to work.

He heard several people run by, but there was no way to check which direction they were going. He no longer heard voices or foot traffic nearby. If he had pursuers, he felt he'd lost them. Still, it was several minutes before he considered leaving the relative safety of his tent.

As he huddled there, his heart rate kept going up. He could hear his blood beating through his eardrums. His mind fed him suggestions of delusions of grandeur. He knew if he was in a movie, this would be the time he could sneak behind the lines and kill the enemy general, and single-handedly win the battle for the good guys.

“Listen, this is not a movie. The golden rule is to not do something dumb.”

He was deliberately talking to himself inside his head. He felt it had to be done to keep himself straight under such pressures. A big part of him really was drawn to being a hero at that moment, but he was tempered by a vision of Victoria chastising him for even thinking it.

While he deliberated, the volume of gunfire increased from the area near the administration building. The plan was to draw the enemy fighters in that direction—

Something tore through his tent; it whirred as it went by. Suddenly his position behind the enemy became a liability.

This is why I don't devise military strategy.

5

The night should have given way to the light of dawn, but when a few drops hit the tent, he understood the delay. A flash of lightning lit up the inside of his hideout. The immediate burst of thunder made the gunshots sound quiet by comparison. The sound rumbled up the valley.

He had to give them credit, they couldn't have picked a better time to attack.

Almost like they knew.

He was on his stomach to minimize the risk of any stray bullets heading his way. He thought of his next move as the pitter patter of rain slowly increased. How long had he been out here? The battle seemed to reach a crescendo near the administration building.

Lightning. Thunder. Gunfire. Death.

The cycle repeated many times over the next few minutes as the rain increased to a torrent. He loathed going out in the dark rain, but knew staying in the tent wouldn't serve anyone. Thinking of Grandma, he said a short prayer for protection, and slowly made his way to the front flap. He could see nothing beyond the next tent. Even flashes of lightning seemed to be subdued by the darkness of the heavy rain and dense cloud cover.

The gunfire, and the screaming, finally got him moving.

His plan was to swing wide of the battle and move down the valley. That would ensure he wasn't in the main line of fire behind the survivalists, and give him the best chance of linking up with someone on his own side.

He ran like hell. Instantly soaked, he held his rifle down, hoping to avoid getting water in the barrel, though he wasn't sure if that really mattered. He passed no one, though at times he thought he heard crying in tents as he ran by.

Music and lyrics from a childhood movie popped in his head.

Just keep running!

In ten minutes, he had looped around the entire epicenter of the battle, and went back up the creek bed running down the middle of the valley. He stopped when he guessed he was about 100 yards south of the administration building. He could see the flashes of gunfire everywhere up there.

As scheduled, the MRAP rolled up the tiny road toward the building. Liam braced for what it was about to do—end the battle. He cautiously made his way a few yards up the creek to see if he could find a better vantage point. He noted, but ignored, several campers hiding their families around him. He had to see how this ended.

Lightning. Thunder. Buzzzzzz. Buzzzzzzz. It looked like dragon's breath, and it was pointed at the administration building.

The MRAP sank its teeth into the building for several short bursts; the enemy was getting a taste of their own medicine.

“That's for Bo, you duck mounting bastards!”

No one could hear him over the rain, thunder, and constant gunfire.

The intensity of gunfire flared as the MRAP poured thousands of rounds into the infrastructure of the building.

Then it died down considerably.

Within moments, it stopped completely.

The MRAP advanced into the grassy field next to the road. It paid no heed to the tents it crushed.

He slung his rifle and climbed up the soggy incline of the creek—he gripped small tree trunks to steady himself in the mud—and ran across the ten or fifteen yards of ruined tents to get behind the MRAP. It would be the epicenter of the surrender.

When it stopped, Liam ran up and banged hard on the back with the butt of his pistol. He took a few steps back so Phil could see him on the remote camera or out a rear window if he was up.

One of the rear doors began to open. He still held his pistol, but it was pointed down; an afterthought. His rifle was on his back, forgotten. The door opened fully.

Intense gunfire flared at point blank range, both in front of him and behind him. The person who opened the door was thrown back into the compartment. Liam threw himself to the ground and tried to claw his way under the truck for cover. Gunfire continued, though the MRAP moved ahead and began to turn to the right—directly for the nearby creek.

More gunfire from behind him on the hill. Directed at the MRAP.

How did the enemy get up on the hill?

While low in the wet grass, and among the tents smashed down by the truck tires, he watched in horror as the MRAP drove over the lip of the creek bank, and disappeared.

He was too terrified to move.

Gunfire ceased once again.

He lay in the grass for another fifteen minutes.

The storm ebbed. It became a light drizzle.

It was lighter now. Liam spied the area. The administration building was chewed up. All the windows were broken out. Smoke poured out from points inside.

He feared the increasing light would give him away, but he was petrified. He admitted he couldn't force his muscles to move due to fright. If the MRAP was destroyed and his friends were in it, then who was shooting from up on the hill behind him? Would they shoot him in the back if he ran to the creek?

Finally, after an eternity, he heard a voice from far away.

“Give Liam Peters to us and we'll let everyone else walk out of there.”

He heard the director of the movie yell “That's a wrap!”

6

Minutes went by. He still couldn't move himself from his position in the tall grass. As the daylight increased he could tell he was exposed, but not by as much as he feared. No one was mowing grass these days and it was particularly tall where he had fallen. There were also the many downed tents in the area.

He sensed a couple people walking nearby. He chanced a slight turn of his head to see what they were doing, and was rewarded with a good clear look at two people from the camp waving a white sheet of some kind. One of them was Lee. The other he didn't recognize. They walked toward the administration building.

He was unable to turn his head to see where they went, but he heard them perfectly.

“That's far enough,” said one of the survival guys. “We're sending someone over.”

In moments, a pair of voices were close to Lee and his partner.

“Hello. I'm...Red. Y'all fought bravely, but it's over. You've lost. We can either kill everyone right here, right now, or you can turn over Liam and a few others, and walk out of here alive. It makes no difference to me, although it would be nice to save the ammo if you'd just hand him over.”

“Liam is a member of this camp. What has he done that would warrant this type of assault on innocent women and children?”

He heard soggy footsteps move closer. He could imagine the two parties closing together to discuss terms. When they resumed speaking, it was in a much quieter tone.

“Listen, friend, I don't have to tell you jack. We have enough men to sack this entire valley, but we only get paid if we take Liam off your hands. That's what we intend to do. Having the rest of you dead or alive is a non-factor here.”

“We'll give him to you.”

“Charles, what the hell?” Lee asked. Hushed voices continued.

“We can't risk the whole valley for one kid. If they want him, they can have him.”

“Smart man, maybe we'll deal with you, huh?”

“No, we can't give him up just like that. For all we know, they're going to kill the boy for no reason if we give him up.”

“We just need to capture him. Bring him back alive. We'll be super gentle with him.”

Lee knew some of his travails with Hayes, but not all of them. Still, Liam was pleased to hear him defend him.

“Why Liam? He seems like a pretty solid kid. Not someone who would warrant such an attack. He do something bad?”

There was a long delay. “What the hell, it doesn't matter to me. The kid blew up a research facility that was close to unraveling the mystery of this plague, and then killed a bunch of old folks for sport. If we bring him in, we get two MRAPs in the deal, though I would have really liked to have the third one you guys shot up and sent over the edge of the creek.”

“That was our MRAP.”

The man laughed out loud at that. “Ha! You let our specialists walk right into your camp and steal it from under you. You don't deserve it.”

“I guess you don't either, seeing as you drove it off the ledge.”

There was no talking for a long period of time. Liam could imagine them staring each other down. The survivalist finally broke the silence.

“You have thirty minutes. Give us Liam or we burn your people alive inside that building. We'll be watching from the creek. We'll shoot anyone who leaves the building, so you might want to let 'em know.”

It wasn't the survivalists inside the administration building. It was his people. The campers from the valley. Were his parents still in there?

It almost made him raise his head to look. But something told him to keep still. Play dead.

He was so confused, and staring at the grass didn't help.

He was prone for several moments before he heard a low voice.

“Liam, don't you dare move.”

Lee.

A long silence followed.

Chapter 9: Migrations

Liam couldn't tell what was going on around him as he lay in the tall grass near the site of the recent battle. He didn't know who was in charge, who had been killed, or whether he was going to be turned over to the enemy. The drizzle had become a mist and the night had given way to morning.

He nearly fell asleep in the wet grass as the adrenaline of the battle was subsumed by the exhaustion which never seemed to go away. But he jolted awake when he heard a commotion from up on the hill behind him. It started with gun shots.

More survivalists? He wondered if they surrounded the whole camp now.

Someone screamed, “Infected!”

He heard the familiar sounds of loading weapons, checking ammo, and racking slides. Those around him were redoubling their efforts at preparing for war.

A deep voice shouted from up the hill, “Marines inbound!” In moments, footfalls through the wet leaves approached.

The survivalist negotiator was still somewhere close by. “This better not be a trick.” Then, louder, “My guys, hold your ground.”

Liam heard men, women, and children running. Muffled chatter was all around. Impossible to tell who were friends and who were enemies without looking up. He really wanted to look.

A Marine spoke between great gulps of air.

“Unbelievable. Look at all these children,” he sounded frustrated as he said children. “I don't know what you all have got going on here, but trust me when I tell you your only hope is to stop the horde of zombies behind us. They wiped out our unit and are coming over the hill behind us. They're relentless in their pursuit.”

“They wiped out your MRAPs? How's that possible?”

The Marine seemed to hesitate before responding. “Well, I don't know about the main column but our detached team was keeping an eye on the highway over this hill. The zombies massed up along the roadway like they were returning to the city. They stumbled on our position and we've been running ever since.”

They were spying on us too, no doubt.

Liam didn't blame them. It made perfect military sense.

Men, women, and children started running back across the valley—sloshing like so much bathwater in the basin—now going in the opposite direction they'd fled this morning.

Liam heard his signal.

“Liam. Start crawling back toward us. Stay low.” It was Lee.

He used his arms to push himself backward in the wet grass. He had no way of knowing how far he had to go, but it couldn't be further than fifty or sixty feet until he reached the small road. He knew there was a shallow ditch for drainage on each side. He could use that to make better time away from the admin building.

All the people who cleared out for the survivalists were running off the hill behind him, across the field, and into the creek and beyond. A couple kids tripped over him while on the run. Parents picked them up and dragged them away without a second look at him.

Gunfire increased on the hillside.

Do I keep going backward?

“Liam. We're out of time. You need to run for it!”

He stood up. Lee ran toward him. Zombies were messily draining out of the woods, even as shouts and shots continued to ring out from up on the hillside. Many people were almost certainly surrounded by the thousands of zombies in his field of view.

His feet refused to run. It was a flashback to his first zombie on the first day—yoga girl—and his inability to do more than watch his death approaching. Only Lee's firm grasp of his arm brought him back into the moment and got him on the move.

A handful of Marines were nearby. They had knocked over a couple picnic tables, tipped them on their sides to form a V-shaped wedge—the pointy part faced the arriving zombies. The open part was just enough room for the three survivors to protect two additional wounded Marines lying high up in the V, both with combat shotguns on their legs. Liam thought it was both brave and impossible. He immediately felt compelled to go help them, but Mr. Lee's grip was insistent—as if he knew Liam's thoughts.

In seconds, they stumbled down into the creek bed, and turned south to run away from the administration building and the survivalists still holed up somewhere nearby.

“We have to make a run for it until we meet some more shooters. We can't hold them off with so few of us left, but maybe the duck guys can take it in the face.” He laughed sarcastically as they splashed down the shallow creek.

Liam looked back at the building. A few campers with rifles were at the ready in the shattered and broken second floor windows, anticipating the wave of death heading for them. He saw a few survivalists, mostly in the creek bed. Some were backing away. Some were sticking it out.

Everyone wore a mask of fear.

With one last peek at the zombies, he understood.

They're endless.

2

Marty went for another test. The windows on the penthouse level of the hotel faced the main part of St. Louis, not toward the Arch. In the daytime, she recognized lots of landmarks, especially the stadium where the St. Louis Cardinals played baseball. If she could ever figure out Liam's phone, she could lead him right to her. She felt it in her right hip pocket as she walked down the hall, reassuring herself she still had it.

The “nurse” wore a bio-hazard suit. Because she was so short, Marty couldn't even look into the face of her captor. The person moved like a woman, but she admitted she was guessing. Most of the nurses she'd ever met were women, so it seemed reasonable.

As expected, they guided her to a plush seat, and helped her sit down. The cushion sank so far down she didn't know if she could get out on her own. She laughed at the notion it was intentional to keep her from running away.

Soon they wheeled in a gurney with another elderly person up top.

No one had talked to her since she arrived. At first she was thankful for the privacy, since she spent time trying to manipulate Liam's phone, but eventually she tired of that and just wanted someone to talk to. She tried to engage with the nurse helping her, but they were adamant about not saying anything.

It left her with nothing but the screams of other patients.

Each time she was brought here, the elderly victim was carted in, and many minutes later, the screams would start. First it was intermittent, but eventually the screams would become so intense she would watch the door for fear something horrible would spill out. Angie had made those same horrible sounds back at the beginning.

Liam mentioned they deliberately infected test subjects back at Elk Meadow, though part of her wondered if it was really possible. It sounded like something a conspiracy nut would say. She didn't think Liam was a conspiracy nut. But intentional infections? She'd seen dozens of people go in, sometimes two or three at a time. They couldn't all be dead.

As expected, the screams began on today's subject.

It was dangerous, but she decided to pull out Liam's phone. They never came for her until the screaming was long over with. This would be a prime time to see if she could finally get a connection to Liam.

The screen of the phone showed her a picture of Liam's face giving her a “shush” symbol over his mouth. She knew that was the last picture he took of himself before he slipped his phone into her pocket when they parted last. She knew how to “open” the phone because it said “slide open” right on the cover. What she didn't know was how to contact Liam. When he gave the phone to her, he probably didn't realize she could no longer call him because she had his phone! He didn't leave a number, and she hadn't had to memorize a phone number in decades.

Through trial and error, she poked and thumbed her way into the address book for the phone. Who would be the most logical person to call now, she wondered? Probably her grand-daughter-in-law; Liam's mom. Her number was in the system, but when she tapped the digits it always said the phone was unable to connect to the network. No real surprise given the state of things. She tried it a few more times as she ignored the screams.

To her surprise, it rang.

3

Liam kept running.

Plagued with exhaustion, he stumbled and landed face down on the smooth rocks lining the creek bed, even before he knew it was happening.

Lee picked him up and practically tossed him further down the creek—away from the zombie hordes spilling over the bank behind them.

“Run, Liam!”

He almost missed the scream from Lee over all the other campers yelling and cursing at their own stragglers, as well as the constant chatter of gunfire. Without ear protection, the sound of guns was painful. But it was the only sound keeping him alive.

“Come on, we aren't going to die in this creek!”

Lee pulled him through the shallow water. Here and there, a zombie crashed over the edge of the creek to their right. Sometimes Lee would put it down with his rifle. Other times another camper would do the necessary task. Liam still had a hard time making his feet move.

The smell of gunpowder fought with the stench of the walking corpses approaching them.

They reached a point in the creek where the bank seemed low and flat to their left, allowing them an easy egress into the main part of the valley. Something seemed to satisfy Mr. Lee when he saw it because he pushed Liam hard to get out of the creek.

As they gained the top of the bank, he could see the zombies flooding out of the same woods he and Grandma traversed that first day they arrived.

Many of his fellow campers were unable to escape and were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers pouring forth. Those in the creek were faring a little better because the barrier slowed the onslaught enough to fight or escape. But too many armed campers vacated the creek and made a run for it. Fewer guns meant fewer zombies put down.

Lee paused.

“What are we waiting for?” Liam's breathing, and his feet, were getting back to normal. The initial shock and frenzy inside the creek was wearing off.

“We need to figure out what's happening here. Running around without a plan is going to get us killed.”

The creek was a mass of confusion. Upstream, scores of zombies lurched for people in every direction. Nearest to him, and downstream, hundreds of campers also ran in every direction. Some fought with guns. Some fought with spears. Some carried small children to safety. Others appeared to be panicked to the point of helplessness. A few tried to hide...

After all the planning. It ends like this?

“I want to save this place, Lee.”

“I do too. Trust me. OK, I see our goal. You see that clump of trees up on the hillside?” Lee pointed it out as they crouched in their position. “We're going to run like hell over there and then see if we can find anyone with a gun. We have to pull things together or everyone is going to die in this valley.”

Liam couldn't argue with the logic. “Do you see Victoria anywhere?”

Liam received no answer. Instead, he was pulled forward again and they began to run across the relatively flat, tent-covered field between the creek and the beginning of the hill forming the south side of the valley.

Several times he saw other runners fall down after being shot.

“Who's shooting at us?” He yelled to the crouch-running leader, but it was more for his own sanity.

“Everyone!”

Liam saw handfuls of campers holed up in small clumps, as if they paused from running to defend their patch of ground. He'd seen the same thing when the survivalists attacked. Some were firing wildly into the crowds, uncaring if they were zombies or not. Others were picking their targets with more care.

He looked over his shoulder to see the zombies coming out of the creek behind him.

He then heard the unearthly Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz sound from the MRAP. Then another, longer buzz. Someone was still alive in there, and taking it to the zombies. The sound of the chain gun sounded louder somehow in the confines of the creek. The rattling went on for several more long bursts, but ended with a short one. He waited for more, but none were forthcoming. It wasn't because all the zombies were dead...

They arrived at the treeline moments later. He was surprised to see Lee had collected two of his guys as they ran. Now they were a team of four, though none of the men looked particularly soldierly in the face of what was behind them.

“All right, guys. We have to do two things fast. One, we have to get more shooters. Two, we need to shoot the zombies in the face as they come through these tents. Once they're in the woods, it's going to be too late. Many people can't even stay ahead of the zombies on open ground. Climbing hills will be the death of them. I want the three of you to organize firing lines up and down the valley along this treeline, do you understand? I'll be right here in the middle.”

Liam felt the butterflies in his stomach in response. Lee was putting him in charge of something major. Something that would save lives. He wanted to put on a brave face, being the youngster.

“Understood.” He gave Lee a quick Boy Scout salute, then took off at a fast jog.

He didn't really know what to do or say, but he began shouting to the throngs of people ahead of him. “All shooters to me! Form a line! Protect the kids!”

He ran up the valley. He could have easily run the other way. The way with fewer zombies! The way with fewer survivalists! He remembered Mel's words about those soldiers running off when they were needed the most. He was proud he was doing right by her. He also thought of his grandma and how she would be praying for him as he headed into the maelstrom.

As he ran he imagined he heard his mom's ring tone.

But that's impossible.

He shouted louder.

4

His first obstacle was the huge wave of frightened campers as they ran for the literal hills. The area nearest the administration building had the biggest crowd. After the initial battle between the survivalists and camp defenders, most people had huddled in the creek bed since they had nowhere else to go. Now, they ran for their lives right past the survivalists.

Liam jumped into the crowd, shouting the whole time.

“I need shooters! Follow me! Protect the kids!”

Another sixty seconds and he was through the central stream of people. He managed to pull six or seven men and women with guns out of the crowd. One was from the survivalist group, but appeared anxious to help quell the zombies.

Do I say something to him?

“OK, we're setting up a line of guns along the treeline up and down the valley. We need to hold the zombies in this valley or they're going to tear up the women and children as they go up the hill to safety.” He paused for many seconds while he tried to catch his breath.

He must have drifted because one of the men coughed to get his attention.

“Yeah, so try to grab other people with guns and stand your ground here. I'm going to continue up the valley to do the same.”

A woman he recognized, but didn't know, said, “No problem, Liam.”

As he walked off, the survivalist sidled next to him. He looked like he'd been flopping in a mud pit. He wore full camouflage gear and had attached some branches to himself for additional visual deception. But his mud had streaked in the downpour earlier. He came across as the kind of guy not happy to have his stuff ruined.

“Mind if I go with you and help?”

He wanted to say no, but he didn't have time for an argument. Killing zombies had to take priority over everything else.

“Sure, we have to hurry.”

As they ran, Liam shouted his message. From time to time, he'd stop to arrange small groups of gun owners. The whole time the survivalist shadowed him, offering no commentary or assistance.

Get lost, buddy!

If only he could order the guy away using his mind.

After another ten minutes of running Liam knew he was out of time. The sound of gunfire behind him intensified. The zombies had finished consuming survivors on the other side of the creek and were all coming across to his side.

He turned around to head back. He found a last little group of men and told them to gather more support from further up the valley, where there were no zombies. Mel's words echoed again. He could leave the battle and just go gather men in safety up that way. If he was that type of guy.

He took a deep breath. “You know what to do. Someone has to keep going up the valley to warn them and organize resistance. I'm going back to join the fight. My family is back there.”

The men nodded and were off.

I wish survival guy would volunteer to go up the valley by himself.

He began jogging back to the main fight. After running only a few moments, the man grabbed his arm and asked him to stop. Liam's rifle was slung over his shoulder while he ran; it was useless in an emergency of this sort. He knew he'd have a better chance with his pistol on his hip. He tried to be casual.

“Hold up—Liam. I want to ask you a question.”

The man was slightly taller and bulkier than him, but had a sallow and wet look about him—like he'd been suffering in a malarial jungle for a long time. He looked unnatural.

“Umm, OK.”

He tried to separate himself from him, but he wouldn't allow Liam to leave his personal space. It was intentional, but made to look innocent.

“Hey, bud. I don't mean no trouble here, but you're the Liam we're here to find, right?”

A million things swirled through his head at that moment. But the most prominent thought was how stupid he'd been the past few minutes. The survivalist stood right next to him with his rifle drawn and pointed in his direction. Not an overt threat, but the threat of a threat. It took away his own options.

“We have to keep moving,” was all he could think to say. He turned around and took a step down the valley when he heard the unmistakable sound of a reload and a bolt release on an AR15. A round was in the chamber of the gun behind him, no doubt facing right at his back.

“I don't think so.”

Liam put his arms up. He thought someone might see him and come to help, but was distraught to realize they were mostly hidden from view by dense foliage in their vicinity. The man chose this spot for a reason.

“Are you going to kill me?” He still faced away from the man.

“That depends. I was given very specific orders to kill you if I could. I'm also cleared to kill your parents if I find them. But my associate also said I could take you alive if you were with your grandma—he was going to give me a little something extra for you both. Don't see no grandma, though. Don't matter to me anymore. This whole valley will be dead by the end of the day. I could kill you, take that sweet antique gun you have, along with your ammo, and be a relatively rich man in the wild. Who's to say you didn't die in this zombie attack?”

Liam didn't think there was anything special about his rifle, but he considered all the men and women now running for dear life who would give anything to be able to defend themselves.

Anything.

Liam was back in the movie. His next line was scripted.

“So, who is it that wants me captured alive?”

Who is the mastermind behind all this?

“Mmm-hmm. I bet you'd like to know that. Why don't you drop that gun slowly and take a few steps away huh?”

He did as he was told, but kept talking.

“Was it Hayes? Did he send you out here?”

His gun rattled to the muddy ground. Next he dropped his magazines. Here and there he could see campers scurrying, but none were coming directly for him. No help out there.

He was violently grabbed by the man, then forced backward. He fell. Rather than slam down to the rocky soil, he got wedged between two tree trunks. He was turned so he looked up at the man. A man with his weapon pointing directly at his eyes.

“He said you were dangerous, but not very photogenic. That means ugly, kid.” He laughed. “And smart. Said you were a real weasel.” The man spat at the ground, as if in emphasis of his disdain having to say those words. “Frankly, you remind me of the little punk kids that used to make fun of my boy.” He pushed the barrel closer, “A BOY KILLED BY THIS PLAGUE! You think it's funny to destroy our only hope of a cure?”

“But I didn't do any of those things they told you.”

“SHUT UP!”

The anger was evident on the man's face. The malicious tone to his voice was no better.

“The world has gone to hell, my family's dead, and my orders are to kill some jerk kid in Missouri. Do you know what it's like to kill women and children? It changes you. It changed me—that much I know. We had to kill them and burn that whole subdivision to the ground because of you.”

He moved his rifle so it was up against Liam's sternum. Liam tried to move his body so he could grab his pistol in his hip holster, but he had sunk further between the two trunks and his arms were wedged at his side. It would be comical if it wasn't going to be the cause of his death.

Liam struggled hard, almost getting one of his arms free. He reached for his holstered gun, which was in clear view of the man. Liam didn't care. He wasn't going to die without trying to defend himself.

“Nice try, kid. I guess I'll just take the gun.”

The man pulled his rifle backward off his chest and took careful aim at Liam's face again.

An inane thought sputtered out of Liam's head.

Did he back up so he wouldn't get blood on the muzzle?

Liam's closed his eyes.

Crack! A gunshot from very close by.

On reflex, his eyes opened. The man had not fired.

A second shot.

His chest opened up. A loud gunshot clap immediately followed.

The man looked up to someone behind Liam, surprised.

“You? Nawww.”

Then eight or ten continuous cracks of gunfire.

The survivalist sprouted several more holes in his chest. All Liam could see was the big hole of the barrel of his gun wobbling over his chest. Was something deadly going to reach out and zap his own life? Finally, with no fanfare, the man tipped over backward.

Liam was well and truly stuck. Even with one arm free, he was wedged so completely in the uneven space he couldn't get leverage to move himself. He was so tired. All he could do was wait.

He was shocked when a woman came into view.

“Liam, thank God!”

Victoria! Thank God indeed.

His exhaustion conspired with the release of adrenaline and he teared up involuntarily. He couldn't help himself. His mythical hero status was very much in doubt.

5

Victoria pushed and pulled Liam so he could shimmy out of his prison, and held him close.

“I saw you back down the valley when you came across with Mr. Lee—I mean Lee. I tried to catch up to you. I almost caught you when you met up with this loser,” she gave the man on the ground a little kick “and something told me to hold back. So, instead of running up to you, I ran up a little higher on the hillside here so I could watch. I saw you for a while but lost you in this clump of trees. When you didn't come out, I knew something was wrong. I made my way closer just as he threw you down. I wanted to run in screaming and shooting, but he was pointing his gun right at your chest. I don't know how I held my fire now that I think about it. But he pulled back for some reason and I took that as my cue. I remembered what you taught me, and I aimed for the biggest part of his body. I missed him the first shot, but I hit him with the second. When he didn't fall down, I opened up. I think I missed half of the shots, but I got him with the other half.” She laughed nervously.

“I was so scared, Liam.” She was in tears too.

“I wish we could curl up together in one of these empty tents...but we have to get into the fight. Can you believe this is really happening?”

“I know; this doesn't seem real. These duck hunters. The zombies. That freak storm. Everything seems fake.”

Liam picked up his rifle and the ammo he dropped, and he also grabbed the gun from the survivalist and slung that one over his shoulder. He searched the man for extra ammo or other supplies, but he had none. Just what was in the magazine he was carrying.

Has a human's worth really been reduced to the number of bullets he can carry?

As an afterthought, Liam searched the man's pockets.

“This guy talked like he was important. He might have something on him which would help us figure out who he worked for.”

But other than minimalist survivalist gear—a fork/spoon combo, waterproof matches, and so on—he had nothing of importance in terms of intel on his upper body. Liam did find a sheet of paper tucked into a cargo pocket on one of his pant legs. His pants were covered in mud and filth, but the pocket itself was clean.

He pulled it out and unfurled it. “Well, that makes perfect sense.” He read the names on the sheet. “Liam Peters. Lana Peters. Jerry Peters. This must be the list my parents mentioned. They said their names were on it, but they didn't mention mine.”

They were the only remaining names on a list consisting of three neat computer-printed columns. The other names had deep black lines through them, as if they'd been redacted. They were unable to read any of them. Next to Liam's name someone wrote in “kill or capture,” while it only said “kill” next to his parents’ names. At the end of the list, one name was hand-written in the margin. It was Victoria's. Rather than kill or capture, it simply said “known accomplice.”

They both crouched in silence. He wasn't sure what to say, though after having a gun pointed at his face, he felt better than he imagined he should. He folded the sheet and put it in his pocket.

“We have to keep moving. We'll look at this later.”

They were off and running once again. As exhausted as he was, Liam felt that extra “something” he always felt when Victoria was around. It pushed him to keep going.

“Thanks for saving me, by the way. It's almost old hat now, huh?” They both laughed at the dark humor as they reached the first group of fighters on their journey back down the valley.

This was a group of about ten men and women, all with rifles. Most of the civilian campers had been cleared of this part of the valley, so they were free to shoot at will at any of the zombies coming out of the creek. The creek was a bit steeper here though, so not many zombies made it out. They were going elsewhere...

Liam made a command decision.

“Hey guys, can a couple of you come with me further down the valley? I'm sure there are more zombies down that way.”

Several of them looked at each other with the “stay here where it's quiet or go to where it’s dangerous” expression, but in the end, three volunteers stepped forth.

More running.

They reached the next strong point. This time there were about twenty shooters in a rough line fifty yards long. Liam spotted the survivalist immediately; he was hiding behind a large tree and shooting at the approaching wall of zombies.

He turned to Victoria, and spoke quietly. “What do we do with that survivalist? I can't just go over there and kill him, though that seems to be what they want to do to me. I don't know how to deal with this.”

Victoria seemed to ponder the situation, but Liam was disappointed she didn't provide a solution.

He settled on, “We should keep going down the valley.”

The sound of gunfire was overpowering now. Liam yelled but Victoria signaled she couldn't hear him, so he grabbed her and pulled her along, much as Lee had done for him.

He kept an eye on the survivalist character as he ran behind him in the cover of the woods, but the man made no effort to follow him or even look at him.

I guess it would be too much to expect him to leer at me like a hungry wolf as I ran by.

In his mind's eye, he saw that very image. He ran a little bit faster until they were clear of the whole group. Victoria stuck close behind.

They stopped about a hundred yards down the valley to rest and evaluate. He saw a couple zombies amongst the mélange of tents and tarps out in the valley. Surely there were more lurking out there, but it was hard to see all the way across the littered field.

He dropped to one knee, lined up his shot, and missed the closest zombie. Even with the small red-dot scope he was unable to make a second or third shot. He was shaking too badly.

Soon the two zombies moved in their direction.

“How is it I'm scared to death of these two zombies after seeing hundreds pour out of the woods earlier?”

Victoria responded by shooting the two zombies at twenty-five yards. It took her several shots for each one, but she got the job done.

“Liam, you were just in a traumatic situation back there. It's OK to be scared. Let's go find our friends.”

They slung their rifles, she took his hand, and they jogged together toward the main fight taking place further down the valley. In a few minutes, they found it.

Liam's shaking wasn't getting much better so they decided to use tree branches on the edge of the woods to steady his aim.

Zombies were much thicker here, but so were the shooters. Liam and Victoria were able to contribute as part of a group of about two dozen men and women lined up along the edge of the woods. Behind the line, women, children, and unarmed men made their way up the steep hillside out of the valley. The recent rain showers made the leaf-covered slope a slippery mess. Lots of people sat on the ground at various points, apparently unable to go further. Others helped as best they could. Several elderly people waited right at the bottom.

Liam had a vision of Grandma sitting there. It helped him refocus his energy on protecting them by shooting zombies in the valley.

Zombies scared Liam to death, there was no doubt about that. But under concerted fire by dozens of semi-skilled shooters in fixed positions, the zombies couldn't make much progress. It was no more than 100 yards from the creek to the woods, which was nothing for a scoped rifle and a skilled marksman.

Liam needed them to get in a lot closer before he was able to half-reliably shoot a zombie in the head to put him down for good. After several shots, he noticed his scope had come loose and clanged loudly on the AK's top cover with each shot. That was part of his aiming problem.

Minutes went by. Liam squeezed off his first magazine of thirty rounds. He'd already used a few rounds earlier. The second mag went quickly because a small clump of zombies had found its way directly in front of Victoria and himself. The third magazine was depleted a couple minutes later. He soon had only one magazine left.

And our pistols. Ha!

He studied the number of zombies; they weren't going to have enough ammo. Even with his pistol and whatever was in the extra rifle on his back, he wouldn't have enough. A few other shooters had stopped too. Things would snowball quickly if fewer and fewer guns were fired.

In the space of a minute, he un-slung the survivalist’s rifle he salvaged, fired off twenty or so rounds, and it was empty. He had no more ammo for it so he set it down next to him.

“We aren't going to make it. Look up the hill at all those people. We're running out of ammo down here. We need a movie rescue to happen. Marines. An air strike. Something!”

Close by, one of the shooters shouldered his rifle and lifted a piece of wood off the ground.

The spears!

The spears were a Boy Scout specialty.

“We have to find some spears!”

There were lots of spears not far from their position. Up the hill behind them, all along the ridgeline, Lee had put checkpoints for the outer perimeter of the camp. One of those points had to be close by. Lee mentioned they stored lots of spears in each checkpoint as part of their overall defense against the infected.

“We have to get to the top of this hill and get spears from the nearest checkpoint.”

His throat ached as he yelled into the pandemonium of the gunfire, but he had to tell the men and women fighting down here they had to get up the hill to swap their gunpowder for spear power in order to survive this onslaught. Even knives would require getting in biting range of the monsters.

They seemed to understand the word “spears” while he was pointing up the hill and pointing at the man nearby holding his wooden weapon. In return, he got various thumbs-up signs and they began to peel off the firing line to go up.

Liam and Victoria retreated toward the muddy hill.

6

They were met by a dour gaggle of elderly loitering at the base of the incline. There were ten or twelve people, mostly women, who had apparently decided not to climb to the summit. Many of the fleeing shooters saw them, hesitated, then ran on when the women shook their heads vigorously in the negative. As Liam arrived, he had to stop.

“You have to try to get to the top.” He shouted it as loud as he could. The moans and yells of the zombie horde was all-encompassing.

The closest old woman calmly shook her head no. She made no effort to move, or speak. He realized they were all praying. Several had Rosaries in their hands. A couple grasped the crosses on their necklaces. One ancient man wore a yarmulke.

It was too much for Liam. His emotions churned like the battle around him. He was distraught to see these people were destined to die in this dirty forest.

“Liam. We—” Victoria choked on her own words, “we have to go. We can't save them.”

A firm hand pulled him away to follow the other young people. He hated himself for thinking the deaths of the elderly would give him a head-start on his own escape.

The muddy leaves were much worse than they appeared from the bottom. He imagined himself in a movie scene where the monsters pursue an ever-slowing hero in a bladder-loosening chase. Without any path up the hill, they had to lunge from sapling to sapling to keep from slipping back down.

“Victoria, don't look back. Just climb.”

The gunfire fizzled out behind and around them.

The screams at the bottom began.

I'm so sorry. I really am.

“Don't look back. I'm serious!”

He made sure she was ahead of him. Any other time, he would be happy to have such a nice view, but not today. He wanted to catch her if she fell. If he missed, she might end up dead. That meant they both would die...

Liam didn't take his own advice. When he had the chance, he looked back. Some of the last gunslingers struggled up the hill, the same as him. There were only a few. Thirty or forty dirty zombies at the vanguard of the horde started their way up, too. They were clumsy, but indefatigable.

The race was on.

“Victoria—”

“Let me guess! Don't look back?” She laughed, but Liam recognized it as her nervous and slightly fatalistic laugh. Perfectly appropriate for this situation. But she was also stubborn. She grabbed a stout tree and turned herself around.

Did her knees just buckle? I thought that was just a cliché?

She said nothing, but climbed again. Liam followed. Several times they helped struggling campers stuck on the slope, but there were fewer and fewer living humans around them.

The slope grew less steep up top, and they were able to run. To their dismay, they passed more and more campers who reached the top ahead of them, but stood around doing nothing. They looked exhausted. It would take no time at all for the zombies to chase down these people.

They reached the small Scout checkpoint and finally had a piece of good luck. Scouts were already there, working on getting spears into hands of those who could fight. Many boys were on the ground, frantically whittling more spears.

“Can we make a stand?”

“We have to try,” Victoria answered.

Liam yelled, “We need spears. There are still people stuck on the hill, and the zombies are right behind them.”

A boy nodded, then tossed him two spears from his dwindling stockpile.

“Make them count.”

He returned the nod.

“Gather your spears and come with us!” Liam yelled it to no one in particular, but was pleased to see a dozen or so men and Boy Scouts joined up.

“We're going back down this hillside to try to engage the zombies before they can get a footing on solid ground. If we can get them while they're still climbing, we might have a chance.” He wasn't sure if he learned that in one of his books, or through real world experience. Things were starting to blend together.

No one argued, though a couple of the men instead ran with their spears down the backside of the hill, away from the zombies, to points unknown.

Liam couldn't bring himself to curse them. Part of him envied them.

Instead, he and his compatriots ran toward the battle, hurtling themselves into the transition zone between the muddy hillside and the more stable hilltop. They didn't have to wait long.

A few of the last survivors from the shooting line made it up mere feet ahead of the pursuing zombies. They looked wrecked as they crawled by. No one was going to make them stay and fight.

They spread out as best they could, found comfortable fighting positions, and waited for a few moments before the first climber arrived. It came up under one of the grown men. With one skilled poke, he skewered the face of the assailant.

Then a few more reached the line. Liam still didn't have one in his area, but Victoria did. She tried to reach out to the zombie, but she unceremoniously lost hold of her spear and it fell down the hill.

Liam thought he caught her cussing, but he wasn't sure.

She began climbing out again, but the zombie she missed lunged and grabbed her leg, causing her to fall and start backsliding.

Liam didn't hesitate. He was doing it almost before he thought it.

Un-sling rifle.

Bring to bear.

Aim.

Shoot.

Miss.

Shoot.

Miss.

Aim center of mass on the zombie.

Hit.

It didn't kill the zombie, but if a zombie could be surprised—this one acted surprised. He let go of Victoria and she climbed once again. Another woman piked the zombie.

He re-slung his rifle, glad he didn't expend all his ammo down at the bottom.

He then got to business on the zombies closing in on his fighting position.

The next hour was a mental fog.

He remembered seeing Victoria come back into the fray with a fresh spear.

He remembered seeing several of his allies get grabbed as Victoria did. Each time he would un-sling his rifle and try to help the victims. A few times he got lucky, but he had to admit hitting moving targets was not as easy as they made it seem in the movies. Several people were bitten and pulled down the hill. Eventually he did run out of ammo. He wanted to save some in case Victoria needed help again, but he knew he couldn't sit doing nothing if someone else was in similar trouble. His last bullet saved the life of one of the other women fighting on the line with them.

And seemingly all at once, they ran out of zombies. No more were coming up their hill. A hundred or more lay sprawled on the hillside below. Some he recognized as campers.

7

Victoria and Liam studied the Boy Scout spear builders as they continued to work after the fight was all but over. The boys cranked out as many as they could, and showed no sign of slowing down.

“We can't ever be unarmed, even for a second, can we?”

Liam knew she was right, but it seemed an impossible proposition.

“Do we carry spears into the shower with us now? In bed? How can we be armed all the time?”

“I'll guard you when you take your shower.” Victoria flashed a wry smile as she said it, taking the edge off a dour morning.

As a topper it was drizzling again, making everything extra slippery and messy.

“I guess we should go help clean up the straggler zombies and see if we can locate my parents. We need to find some ammo, too.” Liam patted his shoulder strap, indicating he was talking about the rifle on his back.

They could hear very sporadic gunfire from down in the valley and throughout the woods around them. Liam wondered if it meant everyone was fighting hand-to-hand with the zombies, or they were truly gone. People around him started to relax. There were no zombies anywhere in their field of view on the wooded hilltop.

They found a group of young men who wanted to go down into the valley. No one said it, but Liam guessed they were a lot like him—they wanted to find their families. As they all walked away from the checkpoint along the ridge, Liam was surprised by two teenage girls who dropped in behind them all. They were covered head-to-toe in blood, like they'd been crawling in dead bodies. Liam thought they might be blondes, but couldn't really say for sure. They each had a spear, similarly slathered in blood.

Liam shared a look of concern with Victoria but otherwise kept walking. They followed the ridge for a while, then turned right and descended on a main trail, rather than going down the slippery slope on the side of the hill. Even so, they had to move slow. Several times on the way down, they had to stop while someone in the group dispatched a wandering zombie. More often than not, it was the two girls who would rush in with gusto to kill the prey.

I'm not sure if I'm impressed or horrified.

He didn't want to risk antagonizing them by saying anything to Victoria they might overhear, but he thought she had the same wary look on her face as he did.

As they came to the valley floor, they saw the killing floor where most of the survivors had made their final firing line at the edge of the woods. The valley looked like a tornado came through and knocked all the tents and tarps over; a second tornado came through and dumped blood over everything. It was only missing the Four Horsemen, though many dogs rooted through the abandoned tents searching for lost masters, or food.

Liam recognized several of Lee's men standing off to one side, near a group of trees on the edge of the valley. He pulled Victoria away from the others. As they approached, he saw the military men who had left on the long, circuitous route around the entire battle. They appeared clean and fresh, though winded. He had no energy to state the obvious to them: they were useless.

None of the crowd disbursed as he walked up so he pushed his way through. What he saw broke him.

Lee was dead. He'd been brought down by a zombie, then changed into a zombie, and was put down by a Boy Scout spear. His uniform was a bloody mess as he lay on the unnaturally green grass in this spot. They'd arrived just in time to hear a witness.

“...so Lee and the other guy made it most of the way back to the trees when they got surrounded by them things. They were able to fight with their guns for a little while, but it was too much. They were overwhelmed. Killed.”

Liam looked at his friend one last time, and noticed something odd. “Why does he have those belts on him?”

It was obvious once he saw the whole picture. Lee had removed his belt and wrapped it around his arm; it was lashed to the leg of his partner. The other man had a belt wrapped around his own arm, attached to Lee's leg. Lee knew he was a dead man after getting infected. They both did. They tied themselves to each other so they couldn't get up and walk away and hurt anyone. It was the best they could do in the time they had left.

“My God. He prevented his zombie self from harming anyone in the camp.”

Victoria leaned against his back, as if unwilling to view Lee's body in all its horror. “He was a hero.” She started to cry into his shoulder blade.

He stared at the bodies as people came in and out of the circle to see the fate of one of the camp leaders. He tried to summon the sadness, but his own ups and downs had drained him. He just wanted to move on…

He melted back into the crowd, and Victoria was next to him. They crossed the field, avoiding several badly wounded zombies who somehow still managed to grab, claw, and bite with whatever appendages still functioned. He thought of the two girls. They were fifty yards away going to town on the doomed zombies up that way.

They're going to need counseling.

The mangled bodies were thickest near the administration building. Lots of living people were hovering around outside the confines of the shredded structure, many with the thousand-yard stare common in survivors of a desperate battle.

He was intent on finding his parents to ensure they were OK, but he couldn't help but notice the area around the small contingent of Marines was hopping with activity. A dozen men were pulling zombie bodies from a huge pile around the wedge of picnic tables. He and Victoria investigated.

Incredibly, the scrum of zombies revealed survivors. The two wounded Marines who were furthest inside the wedge had managed to survive. Somehow, under the massive pile of bodies, they managed to hold them off. A small cheer went up as the two men were pulled from the makeshift fortress. They also found two tiny children inside the wedge. The Marines weren't content to just save themselves.

As they watched it unfold, a woman walked up next to them.

“Mom!” Liam gave her a quick look for injuries, then gave her a fierce hug.

He pulled back and looked for his already-injured dad.

“Where's dad?” He felt his stomach turn over at the depth of that question.

“He's fine. Still in the administration building. We were told we would be evacuated before the battle started, but I guess the memo got lost. It's really a miracle we weren't all killed by the big machine gun. I pulled your dad into that hallway, and into the basement as soon as shots started punching through all the glass windows on the outside. He wanted to fight of course, but he could barely hop the few feet down the steps.”

Liam looked around at the horror. “Mr. Lee's dead. Zombies.” He said it, but it was really the fault of the survivalists for starting the whole thing. Or his fault for getting the survivalists involved. Or… He saw there was no end to that thought.

“I'm so sorry. I know you two had a connection. Are you going to be OK?”

That's the million dollar question.

“Yeah, I'm good. Just going to take some time. You know?”

Nothing further was said as they all looked over the ruined campground. The administration building might be salvageable, but it was littered with holes and broken windows. The MRAP pumped thousands of rounds into the structure. He was afraid to ask how many people died inside. He knew it must be a lot. There were dead bodies on this side of the valley, just like on the far side. The zombies rampaged through here, but got chewed up by the mass of gunfire and the concentration of good shooters. The Marines took more than their fair share of the horde.

“OK, Liam. I have to get back to your dad. Be safe out here.”

Ha! As if that's possible.

“I will, mom.” He almost let her go, but he shouted, “I love you, Mom,” before she had gone too far. She turned around and expressed her love for him and for Victoria.

“See you guys in a bit,” she said as she continued her departure.

After she was gone, he looked at Victoria. He pulled her into a private space on the edge of the woods, checking for lingering zombies the whole time.

“We have to go find Grandma now, or we may never get the chance. I really don't want to know who else is dead. You and me have to go out on our own. No fanfare. No nothing. Just walk out unnoticed and get it done. If we wait and try to gather more help, we may never get out of here. Zombies could swarm again. The survivalists could shoot me on sight. Anything could happen. It's you and me on this list.” He patted his pocket where the list of names was hiding. “We can't stop until we find out who put our names there. I think we both know his name. Find him, and we find Grandma.”

Victoria wore a serious face. Liam had learned to read her facial expressions and knew she was in. Before she could answer verbally, he gave her the key piece of information he knew would guarantee her assent.

He held up his mom's phone. There on the screen was a text message from Grandma. It said exactly where she was.

Victoria nodded. While looking at the phone, she solemnly pledged, “Grandma, we're coming.”

Chapter 10: Green Water

Getting away was easier than Liam had thought possible. They walked out with hundreds of others. On their way, they grabbed whatever ammo they could scrounge from the dead, as well as a few tidbits of food and bottled waters. Liam found the orange tent where he'd stashed his backpack so they had something to carry the supplies. Several of the zombies had energy bars in their pockets, like they'd all come from the same place.

“Why is everyone leaving camp? Didn't we win this morning?”

He wondered the same thing. “You and I have been outside this valley several times. We know how much worse it is out there. I bet lots of these people have no idea how far everything has sunk. They won't get far probably. If we ever make it back here with Grandma, I bet most of these people will be back. Unless…”

Liam paused, not really knowing if what he was about to say could possibly be true.

“...there's somewhere safe out there now. Maybe set up by the government? Someone's handing out energy bars. Or was. If there's nowhere around safer than this valley, we're all in for a letdown.”

The Marines still functioned, so the government had to be operating. But even the Marines were chewed up—literally, he was sad to admit—so the thought of any government agency being able to save them was remote.

“In the books, the government always tries to shore up humanity, but it always involves setting up camps behind fences of some kind. But the problems, at least in the books, are that the population of the camps always get out of hand, the plague always gets in, and the government is always too rigid and unable to adapt to rapid changes as the disaster unfolds. They can deliver pallets of water and energy bars, but if they run out of ammo, the whole thing falls apart. Maybe we just live in a backwater and aren't seeing some serious firepower being applied to the zombies, but it looks to me like this war is lost.”

He looked at Victoria, expecting a reply, but he could see the stooped shoulders and hangdog head.

“Look, I'm sorry. Yeah, things are bad. But we've survived this long. Look at what we just did! We survived those duckers and a whole field full of zombies—at the same time. I'd say we're pretty well able to take care of ourselves, better than most of these—”

He realized he was talking a bit loud around the other people walking out the front gate.

“—most of those people who didn't survive out there.”

He stopped and grabbed her arm, pulling her close.

“We're going to get through this. When I was looking at the map back in the MRAP I saw we aren't far from the Meramec River. If we can find a boat, we can float the river downstream until it hits the Mississippi. From there, we can make our way up that river until we end up downtown. We'll be right next to the hotel where they're keeping Grandma.”

He tried to keep his face bright and smiley as he said this next part. “It'll be a piece of cake.”

She smiled at him through misty eyes. “We're not warriors. This isn't natural human behavior.” She paused. “I know we'll save her. I'm just tired of always fighting. Being on the run. Being hurt. Being hungry. You don't have to lie to me. I know it won't be easy—nothing has been easy since...”

Her eyes were unfocused and distant, looking beyond him. It worried him on a level he couldn't vocalize. In the two weeks he'd known her, she always had direction. Always had the look of someone with a plan, even in those early dark days. But not now.

Time drifted on and she showed no sign of returning. Liam tried to finish her sentence. “Nothing has been easy since we met, that's for sure.”

Come back to me.

She blinked.

“Ha! You got that right. Nothing has been easy since you rolled Grandma's wheelchair over my hand. How many weeks ago was that? How many weeks since the sirens?”

The big tornado sirens may have signaled the end of civilization, and he recalled how scared he felt as they were going off, but now he craved their sound, if only as a reminder of the more civilized time just prior to them.

“Not even two weeks. Can you believe it?”

Liam worried she was going to drift off again, but instead she focused hard on his own eyes. He thought she was going to say something, but after a few moments, she merely pulled him in for a long, firm, embrace. He could sense people shuffling by on both sides, though he felt he was frozen inside an impenetrable bubble. He held on tighter.

2

Later, as they walked down the highway toward the river, he tried to steer the conversation toward something that didn't involve death, zombies, or the collapse of everything around them. It was no small task.

“Did I ever tell you about my childhood trips to the lake with my grandparents?”

“I don't think you've ever told me anything about your childhood.”

She laughed, which he took as a good sign. The dark cloud hanging over her trailed behind them instead of directly above.

“Ah well, that's why we're heading to the river right now. I spent a good portion of my childhood on small fishing boats and canoes. In fact, the very first thing I can remember as a child was being in a boat. Actually, under it. My grandparents liked to take me to one of their favorite lakes down in Kentucky. We'd load up their canoe with camping gear and then they'd take me out onto the lake, to a remote cove where we could have some peace and quiet. We'd find a nice sandy beach and make it our home for a week. My favorite activity was playing in the water, of course. And my favorite water activity was to flip over the canoe with Grandpa and play underneath. It felt spooky to see the dark water below us.”

He paused to prepare for the punchline.

“Well, Kentucky Lake is massive. Barges use the lake to transport stuff up and down the riverway. They make huge waves because they are so powerful. One day, while playing under the canoe, I heard loud screams from Grandma just as some unusually large waves slammed into us. I banged my head on the floor of the canoe and took in some huge gulps of water. I panicked. I kicked and flailed, all the while my grandpa tried to steady the canoe above us. Fortunately, the waves were big but few. As they passed, Grandpa pushed it off. Grandma was there in a flash, dragging me out of the water with a strength that sticks with me to this day. I remember being thrown to the ground and the water escaped my lungs. She saved my life.”

“Wow. Grandma Marty has always been a hero.”

“What? No! I'm talking about my grandparents...on my mom's side.” He laughed heartily. “Can you imagine my 94-year-old great-grandma rescuing me from the water?” He immediately stopped laughing. “Oh wait. I guess she did save me a few times recently.”

More seriously, he continued. “Yeah, the funny thing is, at the time it didn't bother me. It didn't prevent me from swimming again as a child. I probably swam under the boat that same day again, if they let me. Today however...”

He hesitated again, unsure how he felt about this part of the story.

“The thing I remember most is how green that water was. When those waves rolled through, and I was in over my head in water, I just saw a deep, almost bottomless...green. You imagine water is black, but not there. Not that day. I regained my mind smelling that faint hint of dead fish on the shoreline. I can't go near water without recalling that incident. Even walking near water makes me a bit nervous.”

Victoria held his hand as she gave him a sideways glance.

“So, you want us to take a boat ride, yet you're deathly afraid of the water?” Her tone was sarcastic, but she asked a serious question.

In his head, he saw that green water. He tried to push it aside.

“I know. I probably shouldn't have even brought it up. But, well, I guess I feel like I can tell you anything now. And besides, once you've had zombies trying rip you apart, a boat ride seems positively quaint—even if it does scare me to death.”

He laughed to wallpaper over his fear, but was relieved when Victoria squeezed his hand.

“Don't worry. I've never been on open water. Not many places to sail in Colorado. We'll make a great boating team!”

She made like she was pulling him, trying to get him to the water faster, but then settled back down with a snicker.

“What's so funny?”

“I was just thinking that this plague has blown away even the thing that scared me the most prior to its arrival. My nightmares back then seem trivial now.”

She seemed to drift off a while. Liam let her go this time. It only lasted ten or fifteen seconds.

“I guess the plague did me that one favor. Now, my scariest memory is that first night on the run when the zombies came. It's like a dark window that blocks everything that happened to me in my life before it. Both good and bad. Every bad thing that's happened since then—going up in the pitch black Arch, riding that train, getting shot, the mess back in the valley—is each its own black box of emotions, but nothing has exceeded the level of fear and despair of that first night. Maybe I'm broken?”

“No!”

No more than me, at least.

“No.” He repeated in a calmer tone. “We've all seen lots of things that should scare us to death, but I think we're getting used to the fear. Once you've seen the dead walking, is there really anything else that's gonna make you poop your pants in fright?”

“You're disgusting!” He could see she wanted to laugh.

“Well, I won't tell if you don't.” He gave her a wink, to which she gave him a withering look with a scrunched-up face. She was finally healing from all her bruises. Even the fake disdain on her face was a welcome sight.

“I'll tell you one thing though: my biggest fear right now is that we haven't seen the worst yet. I feel like we're heading right for it...”

The words hung in the air as they detached from the scattered group of refugees on the highway. A small river was just ahead. They made their way down a short hill next to the roadway, and arrived at the waterfront of the Meramec River.

His palms began to sweat.

3

There were no boats in view. They were along a part of the river far from any boat ramps or other places where a boat might be tied up. Up and down the river they saw nothing but the highway overpass and foliage-draped shorelines.

“It's beautiful down here.”

Many birds chirped happily, adding to the illusion of peace. Liam just wished he could have presented her with a boat, to make himself feel better about bringing her along on this journey. She volunteered, but he felt he had to keep her safe and show some intelligence. In the old days, it might be described as hot-dogging to impress a girlfriend. Today it was survival. He had to improvise.

“I guess we should start walking.” A small muddy path along the high-water mark of the river snaked away. It was empty of any foot traffic, alive or dead. That made it promising as a next step.

“Onward. Let's see if there are any boats downstream.”

Be confident!

They followed the path for an hour before it began to change into something more substantial. The dirt changed to gravel, though today it was all still muddy and wet after the hard morning rain. Several sections were eroded by wide gulleys, as if maintenance had been neglected for a long time.

The gravel path changed into a blacktop trail of about the same size. They walked together onto a large golf course nestled along the river. Today it was wild and untended.

“Wow. A golf course sure goes to pot quickly if the maintenance crew becomes zombies.” He wasn't a golfer, but he knew what a golf course should look like.

They kept moving along the river while they enjoyed the better quality path of the country club.

“I wonder if we could steal a golf cart?”

While pondering what he thought was a really good idea, Victoria spoke again. “Or what about that boat? Bingo!”

She pointed to a small white rowboat that was next to a small pond on the golf course. Its purpose was likely decorative, but it seemed functional.

“No, you're supposed to say 'fore' here.”

They laughed as they walked to get a better look. With little effort, they slid it into the water, jumped in, and paddled around the surface of the tiny pond. It was painted white, and it did show off a lot of wear and tear, but they made it work for them.

“Let's get this to the river,” she said as they hopped out.

They strained to pull the rowboat up the shore of the pond and get it going through the hundred yards of rough toward the river.

“You know this is the part of the movie where the zombies come at us just as we're close to putting this in the water?”

“Liam! Why would you even say that? I'd come over there and slap you if I weren't exhausted.”

“Yeah, sorry. My filter turns off when I'm scared. Oh. I didn't mean that. I'm not scared at all.”

But he looked over his shoulder, fully expecting that by thinking it, the zombie horde would spring the trap. She picked up on his nervous behavior.

“Hey! Zombie boy! Stop thinking that. Focus on what's ahead. Getting Grandma.”

She's probably dead.

After he thought it, he thanked his lucky stars he didn't let that one out.

But seriously, she is.

Stop it!

“OK, Miss Smarty Pants. What would you like to talk about?”

“Tell me more about Grandma. Why did you go to live with her? I mean, you've told me the general stuff. I want to know the details.”

She said the word “details” as if it were a tawdry tabloid story. Liam knew she was just teasing him, but he momentarily took offense that his past life could be in any way considered a tawdry tale.

“Well, I told you that my parents and I fought a lot this year, though I can't tell you the one thing that started all our problems. My dad and I used to be really close, but this year has just been a challenge. It's like he became a different person. And—”

Do I tell her all the details?

“—I guess there was that one time I punched him.”

“Ooh. Do tell.” She sounded like the town gossip.

“We were in our living room. He and I had been yelling at each other for ten minutes about my behavior. He said I was out of control because I went out with my friends the night before without telling him exactly where I was going and when I'd be home. He wanted to ground me for a month. A whole month! I guess I was losing it already, but then the phone rang. Of all the times to take a call, my dad actually shushed me while he answered it. I stood there seething, my anger growing at his attitude toward me.”

He chuckled.

“Anyway, when he was done I went nutso. Lots of things were said. He got up in my face. I got up in his. I...threw a dumb punch that landed on the side of his head. It was embarrassing how weak I was—I'm not much of a fighter—but after that, everything changed. My dad's anger turned to raw shock. I knew I had crossed a line. I felt so bad, my anger drained away. But it was too late.”

A long sigh.

“Instead of punching me, he walked away. He can be an ass, but he's not violent. My mom was in another room, and he went to retrieve her. It took a few minutes, but they both came into the room and informed me I would have to go live with Grandma because it just wasn't safe for me to be there. I was gone the next day.”

Liam's blood thumped in his ears with the tension of reliving the event. They were nearing the river. His relief loosened his tongue some more.

“Dad drove me to Grandma Marty's the next day, saying nothing the whole way. He could really pour on the silent treatment like nobody's business. Grandma let me in and said I could stay in the basement. I was embarrassed by the whole thing beyond words—kicked out of my own home—so I said nothing as I trudged on by with my suitcase and backpack. I spent the next couple of weeks getting over my anger for the most part, wondering why I was so mad in the first place.”

They took a short break to catch their breath.

“I recently asked my dad if he knew this plague was coming. Was that why he sent me to Grandma's. He said no, it was just a lucky coincidence. But once you've seen men and women dying in droves with a horrific plague, you get a new perspective. On what you've done in the past to people you love. On the very concept of coincidence. Something happened between my dad and I at the start of this year, and I don't think any of what followed was coincidence. On the other hand, I can't figure out why, if he knew this was coming, he didn't stockpile food at Grandma's? Why not arm me with a real rifle for survival, rather than counting on the small guns you and I had to use? Why not send me and Grandma to Montana or some huge bunker where we'd be safer than this mess?”

He nodded his head, as if pointing to everything around them.

“And if I'm honest with myself, it makes me mad to think that if my dad did know all this would happen, he deliberately sent me to Grandma's knowing I'd be unprepared. I know deep down he would never put me in harm's way, but I can't stop thinking that thought. Crazy, huh?”

“Not at all. I'm with you—your dad would never intentionally hurt you. To me, that means he didn't really know all this would happen. Maybe he's telling the truth about coincidence. We'll just have to ask him when we get back. Deal?”

“Yeah, sure. If—when we get back, we'll get to the bottom of this little conspiracy theory. Keep an eye out for some tinfoil for me. I'm going to make a tinfoil hat when the time comes. He likes that sort of stuff.”

Liam couldn't decide if he would be happier knowing his dad was just lucky in sending him to live with Grandma or that he sent him into the hot zone knowing he was going to be in danger. He was long past the age of believing his dad was an all-knowing hero, but he wasn't too old to believe his dad wouldn't do everything between Heaven and Hell to protect his son.

The splash of water brought him back to the moment.

They didn't waste a second. Victoria jumped into the boat and Liam pushed off as he jumped in. They both turned around and were relieved to see an empty fairway all along the river. They weren't being chased.

Not by the dead anyway.

Shut up!

4

It was nearly lunch time as they settled into their boat ride. They had lifted a couple candy bars off a dead survivalist as they left the valley—a theft for which they had no regret. They shared part of one after the exhaustion of launching the boat.

“Mmm, this is so good.”

Liam answered with a similar non-verbal vocalization.

Victoria was in the rear of the little boat, laying up against the back while looking toward him. He faced her while sitting on the single plank in the middle which doubled as a seat for pulling the oars. They could continue talking to each other while they slowly, so slowly, deconstructed the chocolate bars into tiny pieces.

They drifted down the small river without the need to paddle. This gave them the opportunity to rest, as well as observe the world passing them by. The tree-lined banks on each side were well shrouded by foliage, though they saw nothing but more trees through the gaps.

Liam pulled out his pocket knife and began to etch into the wooden stock of his AK-47.

“That's vandalism.”

“Not if I own it.” He looked up. “You remember when Phil said the guns were our Moses? At the time I thought it was just a clever saying, but he was spot on. Without guns, we'd be helpless victims back in that camp, waiting for some imaginary government to come rescue us.” He went back to carving. “Not this boy. I'm giving this thing a name. I shall call him Moses.”

He finished his carving and showed it to her. She rolled her eyes, but humored him.

“Very nice.”

“Yeah, well. It is.” He couldn't think of anything more intelligent to say about the gun, so he continued with navigation. “I think we have a long way to go on this river before we reach the Mississippi. On the map, it seemed to wind all over the place. This may take a while.”

They agreed that while things were quiet one of them would nap while the other paddled. Victoria glanced up and joked that since he was already in the seat, she would let him paddle first.

Liam was so tired he wanted to lay down next to her, no matter how cramped the space, and just let the boat go where it may. But he was disavowed of that bad idea after the first small set of rapids they approached. Not rapids exactly, but faster water as the river narrowed next to a gravel bar. He had to paddle a few times to avoid running into a large rock in the water. An easy maneuver if you're sitting at the oars, but it would be a rude awakening if they were just drifting along while sleeping.

She was out in moments. Not surprising, given the circumstances. It gave him a chance to admire her without his usual awkwardness. Her brown hair was a nasty mess, pasted with dried brown blobs of mud from their struggle up the hillside. He figured they'd all have shaved heads soon enough.

Victoria's face was angelic, despite the fading bruises and cuts he saw there. While she slept, the taut seriousness of her face drained away too, restoring her teenage beauty.

Is this what she would look like dead?

His mind just wouldn't keep quiet, but he figured it was an honest question. With so much death in the air, thinking about it nearly all the time was the new reality. She did indeed look different as she slept.

This is what she looks like in another universe, where zombies don't exist.

She wore a simple black t-shirt with blue jeans. She picked jeans, she said, from his mom's wardrobe because she had a knack for being tasty to mosquitoes. So, even though it was deathly hot—there's that word again—she opted for the long pants simply to avoid bugs. She was very down-to-earth in that way. He could only imagine what some girls he'd known from school were going through. No makeup. No hairdryers. No nothing. Of course the boys were no doubt complaining about the lack of video games or sporting events on the tube.

Continuing his overview, he smiled at the sight of her holster with his little .22 pistol on her right hip. She had laid down the AK-47 on her left side. It rode in the boat next to her like her best friend.

He turned around to check his course and held the oars up while he studied a new set of problems. Bridges were ahead.

He continued rowing, but remained alert.

The first bridge was for a four-lane highway. It was all concrete with two large piers pushing down into the dirty green water. While it would have been busy with four lanes of vehicle traffic in the old days, there was little chance of anyone being on the deck just now. Unless they were up to no good…

He propped up Moses next him. There was a round in the chamber, though he kept the safety on so he wouldn't accidentally shoot himself or anyone else. The air naturally cooled as he went under the large structure, temporarily escaping the glare of the sun. He had an urge to yell something as he went under, knowing it would be amplified in the semi-confined space, but he checked that irrational childish impulse as soon as he thought it. Having fun was the anti-survival skill these days.

He was more concerned about the next span. It was a lower railroad bridge and even though it was a hundred yards or more downriver, he could see nets and wires had been strung below—as if to ensnare boats traveling this very path.

He thought of rowing back upriver to avoid it altogether, but he ran things over in his head. If this was a trap, going backward would only get him killed. He knew he couldn't paddle against the current fast enough to escape anyone running along the shore. He'd have to try to push through using the momentum of the current.

As he approached, he noticed the nets had significant amounts of debris down where they touched the water. It gave the appearance a neglect on the part of the would-be trappers.

Closer now, he saw gaps in the nets on the far right, between the shoreline and the concrete pier holding up the rusty metal framework of the bridge twenty feet out.

He paddled furiously to that side. As he approached the nets, he had to nearly paddle backwards so he could avoid the big pier, but the current caught him and tossed him cleanly to the inside and through the gap. A small lean-to made of tarps was under the bridge, with a large opening facing the river. As he floated by, he looked directly into the hole, and saw the bottoms of a pair of boots. But he also thought he saw—

Eyes in the darkness.

He waited to see if anyone would run after him or start shooting. Or start moaning. All the while, he paddled downriver like his life depended on it.

After about a minute of hard paddling he saw—nothing. Just like the golf course, his mind constructed pursuers, but the world would not provide them.

Did I really see eyes?

He knew there were still people left alive. The river would be a natural focal point for those looking for food. And that would bring in the zombies, searching for the same.

As the boat rounded a sweeping turn and the bridges fell from view, it struck a large piece of driftwood. Victoria woke up with a jolt.

“Holy moly, Liam. You're soaked with sweat! You look like you've been paddling in a competition.”

“Nah, just a hot day.”

“Oh, well do you want to switch? I don't mind paddling for a while.”

He thought about telling her to go back to sleep, but the nets spooked him. The eyes terrified him. His fear of water was a minor quibble now.

“Maybe we should both keep our eyes open, you know, for security.”

She glared at him for a few seconds, clearly seeing through him—he knew her facial expressions—but she didn't complain.

Since there was only one sitting plank, she sat next to him and worked the left oar. It was less efficient but they still made decent forward progress.

Together they continued down the river.

Come zombies or high water.

5

Working in tandem, they paddled down the river for most of the afternoon without incident. Liam felt the stress of each moment, as he expected trouble at each bridge, each sandbar, and each revealing curve in the meandering stream. Many times, he saw men and women wandering aimlessly on and near the river banks, but by staying low in the boat they managed to avoid being seen by the infected.

They also saw scores of dead bodies in the water. They were heaviest near the bridges linking Arnold with St. Louis, where the effort to contain the plague in those early days was fierce. People had fought, and died, for those bridges. Clouds of flies greeted them as they went under each span.

“We're only seeing the undead. I figured there would be a lot of people down here fishing and stuff. Is it possible no one's left alive out here but us?” He chanced a look over the side, not sure what made him think to do so.

Maybe zombies are walking on the bottom, below us?

He knew he was being irrational, but he ensured he was sitting as close to Victoria as possible in the middle of the boat just the same.

Ahead, he saw a landmark he recognized. “There's the bridge we crossed all those days ago with Grandma.” He laughed a dark laugh. “The bridge we helped destroy.”

The trussed railway bridge was partially collapsed on the south side, thanks to the big wrecking ball the police had used to prevent the zombies from getting to their side of the river. The large crane and ball were the only sentinels left to guard this wreckage, though the bodies of a few zombies wrapped in the bent girders still writhed and grabbed for them.

There was a ghostly howl coming from the current rushing through the hollow metal dipped in the water. As they slid underneath the good side of the remaining structure, Liam reflected on everything they'd seen and done since passing across this bridge on the third day after the sirens. He looked at Victoria and guessed she was lost in similar thoughts.

“We've come a long way since that day. Lost a lot of good people.”

This time it was Victoria who wouldn't let him get himself down. “Yes, but look at us. We're still alive and happily boating underneath this very bridge where we thought we were going to die. As far as I'm concerned, given the alternatives, I'd say our prayers were answered that day.”

“True. We got across the bridge. The bridge was blown. We were saved. But when will it end?”

“God doesn't give us any more than we can handle.”

“That sounds like a motivational poster.” Liam gave her a friendly chuckle.

“Well,” she said while echoing his laugh, “maybe it is. But that doesn't make it any less true. God is watching out for us.”

In his former life, Liam would have argued about the presence or absence of an all-powerful God. He wanted to argue it. But what came out was tempered by all that had happened since the bridge.

“I hope someone is watching over us. Watching over Grandma. But we still have to do this ourselves.”

They shared a moment of silence as they watched the bridge behind them. Then it was back to business as they approached the end of the river.

“I can see the Mississippi ahead. We'll have to stay close to the left bank so we can turn upriver when we get there. Why don't you sit in the back again so I can paddle us around the corner?”

As they glided for the turbulent waters of the confluence, Liam saw a familiar, if unwelcome, sight. Far across the big river, he saw two of the Marine Corps V-22 Ospreys flying fast and low near the water—heading upriver toward downtown St. Louis. Momentarily frozen by the sight, the boat drifted further out into the watery chaos of the junction than he intended.

“Hang on” was all he could say. The boat was very small and there was no way for Victoria to hang on to much of anything. Her only job was to sit in the rear and keep watch in front of Liam to see where he was rowing.

“I think the current is weaker along the shore. Let's aim that way.”

Liam wasn't about to argue as he heaved the oars with all his strength. A few tense minutes was all it took to ensure they'd not be drawn further down the river, instead of going the direction they intended. He brought it as close to shore as he dared. He settled in and they made slow but steady progress upriver.

“Let me know when you want to switch.”

Um. Now?

The small boat served them well on the small river, but it became a challenge in the faster water of the large river. It helped a great deal to stay close to the shore where the current was weakest, but Liam felt himself losing steam.

“I'd be happy to switch, but paddling in this stuff is going to exhaust us both in no time flat.”

He pulled the oars for a while longer then handed them off to Victoria so he could rest. He suspected her slighter frame and weaker upper body wouldn't be able to dig the paddles as fast and hard as the river required. Still, she wouldn't take no for an answer and managed to find a rhythm that worked for her. She pulled her weight. The boat moved upstream.

At dusk, after many shifts at the oars for each of them, they were done. They happened upon an empty container barge anchored near shore. In the old days, this river was a superhighway of barge traffic. Today, nothing else moved on the water but debris—including lots of bodies.

“Let's tie up to that thing and climb aboard if we can. As long as there are no zombies inside the hull we should have a truly safe place to rest tonight. Help guide me in.”

Liam pulled the oars with soft grunts as they approached the long, flat barge moored thirty feet offshore. It looked like it was sitting low in the water; it was loaded with something.

Please let it be food!

In short order, they'd tied up and found a ladder up the side. No zombies jumped on top of them, and no human defenders waved them off, either. Liam was so tired he didn't really care what was inside the hold. Even the thought of a zombie didn't scare him. He was willing to shoot just about anything to lay his head down.

He struggled up the ladder with his sore arms and raw hands and was relieved to see neither humans nor zombies. He turned down to Victoria as she climbed the final rungs of the ladder behind him.

“You're never gonna guess what we get to sleep in tonight.”

She got to the top, and paused. “You know, I don't even care.”

6

When they escaped St. Louis, he and Victoria spent a lot of time riding a train. They were forced to hop rail cars so they could reach the engineer in the front. Unfortunately, many of the gondola cars were empty, requiring them to slide down into them so they could run up the other side. The bane of their existence during those jaunts were the empty coal haulers, which were filthy with black dust on their insides. In the end, they were covered head-to-toe in black soot, and they carried it with them long afterward. The undersides of his fingernails were still black.

Neither of them protested as they settled down on the coal pile. After weeks of cat naps and fitful nights tossing and turning, deep sleep came fast. The soft rhythm of the river, the crickets and other bugs squawking in the nearby trees, and the facade of safety helped Liam achieve his best sleep since the disaster started. The dreary cloudy morning came fast on the heels of the night.

When he woke, Victoria was already up and moving. She sat nearby, patiently trying to clean off some of the smudges and grime caked on her arms and face. She had nowhere to wipe but on her shirt. She had somehow gotten his pocket knife and had cut a swath of her shirt so it was about four inches shorter all around, exposing her midriff. With the long strip of cloth, she managed to do a decent job of cleaning up.

She noticed him. “Oh, hello. Good morning.” Her words were accompanied by a big smile, though her eyes were still travel-worn.

He responded, or so he thought, but his eyes were glued to her exposed belly. He knew he shouldn't stare, but…

“Hello Liam? You in there?”

He snapped to. “Oh sorry. I'll take two.” He smiled a guilty smile.

“Two what? Are you even in there?”

She tossed the filthy piece of her shirt; it landed right on his face.

“I left you a little clean area, so you can wipe that silly expression off your face.” But she was laughing. “Sometimes you act like you've never seen a girl before.”

“Well, I, uhh…”

Don't say something stupid.

“Never saw a girl as pretty as you.”

Smooth.

“No, I mean—”

“Liam, it's OK. Really.”

He took a deep breath. “No, I should tell you that you are literally my first girlfriend. I don't know how to act around you. I don't know what's polite and what's not. I know there aren't a lot of options for either of us right now, but if I'm going to lose you, I don't want it to be over something stupid like ogling you too much. I guess what I'm trying to say is, being around you when you're not in zombie-fighting mode—when you're just a girl—makes me more nervous than being in the middle of a horde of the undead.” He tried to end it with a little laugh.

“Well, first of all, you aren't going to lose—”

They both heard it. The familiar drone of zombies. It came from the nearby shore. Liam knew they were safe on the boat. He told himself it was a foolproof hideout.

And how many books have “foolproof” hideouts?

They popped their heads over the edge of the barge's hold.

All right. A “nearly foolproof” hideout.

Hundreds of zombies walked on the shore, all of them walking up the river. Gaggles of them were far down the bank, and more were far up the other way. It was like an undead funeral procession, marching slowly to some unknown beat.

They dropped back into the hold. In a whisper, Victoria asked, “Are we safe here? Can they get over to us from the shore?”

The barge was anchored away from shore, but it had a large cable running from the front to an anchor point somewhere on shore. A skilled person might be able to cross the wire by going hand-over-hand as they hung down from it. Liam had seen it done by some of his friends back when they used to spend time along the river.

“There's no way they can get over here using the cable, but I don't know if zombies can swim.”

“Well, we have to get on our boat and keep moving. There's no end in sight to that line.” The shoreline was straight for a few miles. She was right.

“I know.”

He knew some zombies could climb. He saw two such climbers at Elk Meadow. Colonel McMurphy said there were many different flavors of zombie out there, though they were tied more or less to the city where they were spawned. The climbing zombies seemed to be a specialty of Chicago. Perhaps swimming zombies had come down from a city up the Mississippi river, and these zombies were walking back upstream now?

They briefly wondered if they could unhook the barge so it would float away from shore, but the size of the tie-down cable made it clear they would need tools to detach it. They cursed themselves for tying up the rowboat on the shore-side of the barge. If it was on the other side, they'd be free and clear before they were noticed.

“It will probably take us sixty seconds to get on the ladder and step down to the boat and get clear. We'll just have to take our chances.”

Victoria didn't argue with him as she grabbed her gun and other belongings from their campsite.

“Let's do this nice and safe. Don't panic when you climb down and we should both be fine.”

“Don't panic in the face of a horde of zombies. Got it.”

Victoria went first. She climbed onto the rim of the barge and casually began her descent down the ladder. Liam followed and stood on the rim above her for a few moments. In that time, he could see her business-like approach was working. She went over nice and easy and made no noise and didn't appear nervous. In no time, she was below him in the boat, ready to go.

But she was noticed. A cry went up. One of the zombies sprinted toward the barge at a high rate of speed.

Zombies can't run that fast!

It plowed into the water, as if unaware it would sink. It pushed into deeper water with purpose. Worse, other zombies moved his way too, though most walked like “normal” plague victims. Liam began his descent.

The fast zombie managed to get surprisingly far into the water before it was too deep for him. He continued under the surface; Liam lost sight of him. In the strong current, he guessed the zombie was going to be swept behind the barge. A few other runners had their sights on the boat.

He set foot on the wooden plank. Victoria tried to untie the knot which kept them in place, but the old rope of the rowboat was well-frayed and looked confusing to untangle.

Something made a thud sound on the bottom of the boat.

Impossible!

Liam resolved not to look over the side. The rattle on the floor was the knock of panic.

“Victoria, hurry!”

She made a humpf sound, as if she couldn't be bothered to respond.

Another vibration on the bottom of the boat. Zombies poured into the water, screaming, clawing and flailing at the sight of two living people in a land of the dead. He knew they could stack up and get themselves to high places.

“Victoria?”

“I'm trying. This knot is really stuck.”

“The knife! Use the knife!”

Don't panic.

Liam couldn't tell if Victoria cursed. She seldom did, but he allowed this was one time when it was appropriate.

She fumbled with his pocketknife as he looked to the shore and the waters between it and their boat. It boiled with arms and legs of the many zombies who managed to walk and run here from earshot of the boat. More streamed out from the trees along the shore. It wasn't hard to see what would happen.

Tons of zombies. One arm comes over the edge. We tip and die.

The boat jerked, and they were floating free. Victoria made the cut.

Liam grabbed the oars and paddled for their lives. His shore-side oar hit the head of one of the zombies wading in the water. The swimmer made a clumsy grab for it. His far-side oar sank in the water for a weak stroke. He couldn't swing them properly.

“No, push us away from shore!”

He saw the problem. If he could only use his far oar, it would push them into shore. Zombies desperately tried to grab the other oar, as if they knew it was attached to the food they wanted inside the craft.

Don't panic.

Victoria turned around. “Let the current take us backwards.”

Liam sat with a blank look on his face, until it dawned on him. He gave one firm reverse tug on the far side oar, hoping it would push them both backwards and up against the barge as they drifted. He then secured both oars so they were out of the water.

Victoria readied her rifle, and even aimed at a few zombies that almost reached them, but none managed the full distance. The boat drifted downriver for more than a hundred feet until it cleared the back of the barge. He dropped both oars and paddled with gusto to go around the barge and continue up the river. He guessed the zombies in the water just kept going until they were caught by the undertow and pulled downstream. Not many zombies came back out of the water.

Will they walk the bottom to get us?

Shaken, Liam paddled like a fiend in the deeper water for an hour as they put the incident behind them. They could see zombies on the shoreline walking north with them. Sometimes one would notice them and turn to walk into the water, but mostly they faced forward and kept to themselves. A rare few of the “different” zombies loped by the others with fleet feet.

Many hours later, exhausted, they reached downtown St. Louis. The closer they came, the fewer zombies they saw near the shore. They grounded the boat on the cobblestones of the famous riverfront landing of the city of St. Louis. They couldn't have gone any further upriver if they wished. Someone had blown the interstate highway bridge; the deck had fallen straight down into the water and the wreckage blocked the entire river from Missouri to Illinois. A colossal jumble of barges, towboats, and huge pieces of driftwood hugged the upriver side of the mess. The tangle presented a formidable barrier to river traffic, had there been any.

They pulled the rowboat high up out of the water. It slid easily over the stonework. They wanted to park it under the edge of the downed bridge as it provided some cover on the otherwise open landing. They froze when they got close. Under big neutral-colored tarps were two fancy rubber boats with small but powerful-looking outboard motors. They too had been dragged up the cobblestone and left there. A nearly-dry trail of water went all the way back down to the river behind them.

The rubber boats were still dripping wet.

Chapter 11: Going in Circles

“Well, we're back in St. Louis. So glad we escaped, aren't you?”

Victoria responded with a small growl.

With rifles slung, they started up a long piece of collapsed highway. It had fallen along with the main bridge, but it formed a ramp so they were able to walk up onto the raised highway into downtown St. Louis. A car coming the other way would drive from the highway, down the ramp, and into the river.

When they reached the top of the ramp and crossed the tangle of broken concrete and rebar at the joint, they were relieved to see the elevated highway passed next to the Riverside Hotel and Casino—Grandma's prison. They walked the mostly empty interstate—the Army had blocked the approaches to this bridge early in the disaster—they talked about the boats.

“It can't be coincidence the zombies on the shoreline were heading this way, as well as two strange boats, Ospreys of Marines, and of course, us. Is Grandma that important, do you think?”

Before he could answer, he became distracted by the spectacle of destruction below them. The once-beautiful St. Louis Arch parkland had devolved into a hellish landscape of stripped and burned trees, huge craters, and an untold amount of trash and debris, including lots of bodies and body parts. There were countless buzzards picking at the remains. The smell...

“I didn't think the birds would touch a zombie.”

Liam wondered. “I don't think they're all infected down there.”

“It looks like the Army and Air Force really did a number on them.”

“Yeah, we were there, remember?”

“In my wildest imagination,” she spoke wistfully, “I wouldn't have thought the bombs could wreck the place so thoroughly. It almost looks like the moon down there.”

There were black scorch marks on the lower portions of both legs of the Arch, but otherwise it looked intact. Liam took some measure of comfort from that. He knew the Arch would one day succumb to the forces of nature, but it didn't happen in the recent conflagration. Something survived. Something beautiful in a world of ugliness.

“In answer to your question, yes. I think Grandma is more important than we think. This can't all be coincidence.”

Victoria looked over the ruin of the Arch grounds. “It's like a siren song. We were beckoned to this horrible place, where we'll be smashed on the rocks.” She continued on a different track. “I really hate Hayes. I think I could kill him for all the grief he's caused us. I owe him one for shooting me, at the very least. I mean, here we are at the end of the world, zombies and plague swirling around us, and this jackass has to spend his time kidnapping and shooting people. How messed up is that? He told us he was looking for a cure. I call bull shnikes on that. Doctors trying to find cures are not running around town shooting little girls and kidnapping old women and bombing innocent people in their neighborhoods. And now look at him in his fancy tower! We have to waste our time going to save Grandma because of him. I have a hundred things I'd rather be doing right now—including finding my parents thankyouverymuch—but this turd requires more of my time than a three-year-old. I'm sick of it!”

“Wow, your cursing is really coming along,” he said with mirth.

She glared at him in a way he recognized as something near pouting.

Liam didn't know how to respond, so he grabbed her hand and started them toward the hotel. No use delaying. But it turned out to be a mistake, at least at that moment. They saw the base of the building.

“Oh God, no,” she said.

Liam fell to one knee as he used the railing on the side of the bridge to steady himself.

“See? This is what I'm talking about! Why in the name of all that's holy did Hayes need to lock himself up in the one tower that has a million gazillion zombies swarming around it? Oh, Liam, how are we going to get into that mess?”

She sat down hard next to the guard rail of the bridge, so the hotel was out of her field of view. Liam sat down next to her. The smell was horrific, but he was disturbed to realize it didn't affect him as much as it did a week ago.

“I know this is hard, but we can do hard things. Together. Grandma is at the top of that tower, and I can see now this has all been pre-planned by Hayes: Grandma, the massive swarm of zombies, and now us. It all ties together. We just have to figure out how. I need you, Victoria. I really need you.”

Deep down he felt something he couldn't describe; it was both new, and familiar. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was just affection. He felt a powerful, almost subliminal, emotion toward Victoria. He would kill every zombie down there with his bare hands if he had to. He would kill anyone to protect this girl. It was partially a protective instinct, in the same vein of protecting his family, but it was so much more…

“Victoria, I—I know this sounds absolutely crazy. You're my first girlfriend, I know that. But everything we've been through. Everything I know about you. I want to always be by your side. I want to fight by your side. Die by your side if I have to. I can't explain the emotion I'm feeling. I—”

“I feel it too, Liam. It's like a wave that just came over me.”

She looked at him, and he realized they were both crying in happiness as the emotion wrapped around them. The both embraced as they sat on the pavement, enjoying the feeling of loving and longing for each other.

Liam, unsure of himself in matters like this, blurted out, “Is this what love feels like?”

She seemed to remember something unpleasant, and pulled away. “Um. Yes. I mean I guess so. I uh—” she looked down at the roadway. “Oh, Liam. All I know is that I can't walk into that swarm without you by my side. Really, truly, by my side. If that is what love is, then yes, I love you.”

Liam, prone to gaffes when he was nervous, let slip a doozie. “Well, we should get married if we survive the Apocalypse.” Knowing he was likely making a huge mistake, he ended it with his telltale laugh.

To his surprise, she simply said, “Deal.”

His smarmy mind, usually quick with a retort, was dumbfounded into silence.

2

They both recovered from the emotional outburst as the sensation receded, like a broken wave dragging itself back out to sea. But the core of the emotion still remained. He felt it was like a strong trunk of a tree had been planted in his mind. One that would forever tie him to the girl sitting next to him.

“Shall we try to find our way into the hotel? I'm kind of anxious to get this thing over with now.” He wiped away his tears and gave her a starry-eyed wink. He was relieved to see she smiled back with a big natural smile.

They followed the highway overpass for a couple hundred yards, always staying away from the edge so as not to attract attention from the zombies below them. The hotel had a large flat platform on the roof, with a “Riverside Hotel and Casino” sign hanging off the side near the top. The hotel was mostly made of glass but was accented by beige stonework at the top and bottom.

“I think we just found the Riverside Operations Center.” She referenced the paperwork they'd found back at the Elk Meadow camp. “This has to be the place.”

They heard muffled gunshots coming from inside the building.

“Sounds like a real battle is going on in there. You think it's the people from the boats?”

“Your guess is as good as mine on this. But it makes me uncomfortable with all that shooting going on while your grandma is over there.” They both looked up and saw small drones in the sky above, and a larger one looping high above. Whatever was happening inside had lots of onlookers.

A few more minutes and they were almost parallel with the hotel. The rounded building was about thirty feet north of the elevated highway. Someone parked a huge green garbage truck nearby, among a handful of smaller abandoned cars. A stout metal wire was attached to a handle on the side of the truck, then it went over the side of the bridge and through a window of the hotel on a floor just below.

“I think this is how they got over there,” he said, proud of the patently obvious use for the wire.

“Yeah, it looks really dangerous, too.”

“We have our way in, though. Dangerous or not, it has to be safer than what's below.” Liam risked a look over the side and saw the crowd of zombies. There were thousands of them, probably tens of thousands. Liam didn't know and didn't really care.

“So how do we get from here, to over there?”

“In the movies they make it look easy. You just swing something over the wire, hang on, and slide in through the window.”

“And what if you aren't in the movies? How do those people do this?”

He knew he had to answer her question sufficiently for this to work. Just a cursory search of the area proved to him there would probably be no easier way of getting in than this crazy scary over-the-zombie-crowd rope ride. His probe led him to the truck, and his answer.

“We can use pieces of this truck to make handles for sliding. Piece of cake!”

“You sure like cake.” She smiled, but warmed to his suggestion.

In short order, Liam was able to put his pocketknife to work cutting carpet and pieces of plastic to make something to throw over the wire which would allow them to slide down and into the hotel without burning their hands. He wasn't prepared to say it would be as easy as in the movies, but he felt more confident than he did walking up to the garbage truck in the first place. Victoria didn't look worried, though he thought she looked about as wary as anyone would be who was about to ride a thin wire over a deadly horde of zombies into a hotel which had the welcoming aura of a hive of hornets.

He discovered her worry was placed somewhere else entirely.

“Liam, what we said back there, I don't know if it was real or some weird side effect of the plague or the end of the world or what. But—”

“No, I get it. It did seem too good to be true. I understand—”

“Let me finish!” She stomped her foot. “I was going to say that even if what happened to us was fake, my feelings for you are real. I know we are young and all, and that we are in the fight for our lives every day now, but I truly do love you. I've seen your love this whole time we've been together. The way you treat your grandma, the way you treat your parents, and the way you treat me. I've watched you searching for answers about God, which is also very important to me. With a sniffle, she continued. I've realized that things are never going to be the same. Big weddings, the white picket fences and the apple pies—those are things of a past era. We've embarked on a new journey, in a new world, with new rules. I believe in my heart you are the person with whom I want to share this journey. My consideration was complete before we had that—whatever it was—back there. It just amplified that feeling, is all. But I want you to know my true heart was already made up. That this is real.”

Liam had never felt happier in his entire life.

“I love you, too!”

He then grabbed his makeshift handle, slung it over the wire, gave her a big smile, pushed himself over the bridge, and whooped it up as he slid over the horde and into the dark broken window of the hotel like he owned the place.

Only after he was inside did he comprehend how dangerous it was and that he'd left his wonderful girlfriend out on the overpass without so much as a lick of instruction.

“And the winner of boyfriend of the year is...”

3

Liam ran back to the third floor window and was relieved to see Victoria toss her handle over the wire. Like him, she sat on the bridge railing, held onto the crude handle made from the truck's gutted interior, then pushed off. In moments, she was heading for him at a slow but steady pace.

He looked down.

What the—

He didn't appreciate the size of the zombie horde while they were walking on the raised highway. From his new vantage point he could see the zombies took up every bit of space around the base of the circular hotel, and they packed every street leading up to the hotel. They were unnaturally quiet for such a large crowd of zombies.

Victoria gave an exclamatory yell as she arrived. He wasn't able to tear himself away from the zombies to help her.

“You could have at least helped catch me, though I'm glad someone put that mattress there,” she said as she came up behind him. She too saw the endless sea of the dead.

“I'm glad I didn't look down.”

“Why do you think they're so quiet? Are they all looking at us?”

“They probably heard you whooping like a teenager at the amusement park,” she giggled.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Let's keep moving.” She tried to pull him away from the window. He resisted at first, but then relented.

After he vacated the window, the distinct moans and yelling of the zombies went back up to level 11. He had an inspiration to pop back to the window to see if they fell silent again, but when he did so, they just continued moaning. Some did look up at him and appeared to reach for him, but it seemed random. He thought he was seeing “normal” zombie behavior now, though he still couldn't identify what that might be.

He followed Victoria out the hotel room door, and finally noticed the ripe stench in the confined space. It made the background nausea of the horde outside—and the Arch bird feast—seem almost pleasant.

“Wow!” His quiet exclamation mimicked the look of shock on Victoria's face.

They ran back into the room with the open window and went to work ripping up the bed sheets, trying to fashion makeshift masks they could use to fight the deathly fumes.

Victoria came out of the bathroom with a little bottle of hotel shampoo. “We can rub this on the sheets we put on our face. Maybe it will hide the smell. Even a tiny bit can make a difference.”

In a few minutes, they were back out the door with their olfactory defenses bolstered. It did help, but didn't come close to completely hiding the smell. Liam's eyes wanted to water.

All the rooms of the tower were on an outer ring on each floor. The interior of the hotel was hollow, with about fifty yards from one side to the other, giving the appearance of the inside of a smokestack. They were on a circular walkway ringing the entire floor. From the railing, they could peer down to the ground floor. Normally it would have been an enchanting garden. Many plants, shrubs, and small trees tastefully decorated the atrium. They were being trampled by hundreds of zombies milling about down there. Yet, the truly disturbing feature of the lobby was the large pile of bodies.

“May God forgive us.” Victoria's voice was muffled by her scarf, but Liam concurred. Only humans could have created the huge pile of bodies.

“Those are all elderly people—” Liam's voice cracked as he tried to voice the obvious. “Do you think?”

“No. I'm absolutely sure Grandma isn't down there.”

Liam searched his feelings. He, too, felt she was still alive, though he wasn't sure why he had such faith. Looking at the pile of people just like Grandma, he realized he felt anger more than anything else.

“Let's keep moving.” He swung Moses off his back and showed Victoria that he was clicking the safety off. She did the same.

Time to get serious.

A few steps later, they found the first zombie. The bath-robed woman had been shot in the head and lay sprawled on the otherwise cheery carpet. Looking ahead, they saw many more zombies had been killed on the walkway.

“Someone has been through here. Well-armed. But why don't we hear shooting anymore?”

The shooting had been constant as they walked up to the hotel, but somewhere along the way it stopped. Liam laughed inwardly that gunshots were so common now he thought nothing of them.

He observed the design of the hotel. Each level of suites was ringed on the inside by the large walkway with a metal railing. He put himself on the six o'clock position of the hotel. At three o'clock and nine o'clock, he could see dim EXIT signs above doors, suggesting stairwells. At the twelve o'clock position, almost directly across the void, he could see a pair of clear shafts; they were for elevators. The elevator cars were nowhere to be seen. Looking up, he guessed they were at the top. Studying the other levels, he was dismayed to see dark figures lurking on several floors.

“This doesn't make any sense. How could zombies get inside the hotel and up onto these levels? One closed door at the bottom and it would prevent them from reaching all these levels. Surely some of the stairwell doors would have been barricaded? Was the place abandoned and left totally open?”

Victoria drank in the view as she responded, “I think someone had to have let them in. I can see doors down in the lobby, and all the glass looks broken. Even if that were an accident, I can see at least one of the stairwell doors down there, and it has a bar or something propping it open. It's that one over there.”

She was pointing to three o'clock.

“We should go over there, to the other stairwell. See if we can go up.” He was pointing to the nine o'clock stairwell.

Victoria didn't argue. They quietly and deliberately moved that direction, staying as close to the inner wall as possible. Liam didn't want to chance being spotted by any of those dark shadows on other floors.

A couple minutes was all it took to reach the large metal fire door at the stairwell. It hung wide open. In the low light it was hard to tell why. He gripped his rifle tightly. His finger wasn't on the trigger, but it smashed the side of it just above the trigger guard.

When they reached the door, they found the blockage: a body.

It said “hello.”

4

“You kids shouldn't be here.”

The bald man wore a nondescript black uniform. He had a rifle, though it was lying haphazardly next to him. He had gore covering his leg below his knee. A nearby female zombie clad in rhinestone-lined jeans and a bloody tank top—with a detached head—was possibly the culprit.

The man followed Liam's gaze. “Yeah, that's the bitch that got me. They can chew faster than you can believe. She was searching for an artery so she could drain me. I was so mad I removed her head and threw it over the railing before I took my seat here to wait for the end...”

Then, to himself, he said, “I was planning to take at least one more.”

Victoria said, “We heard shooting in here. Did you shoot all these zombies?” She motioned back over her shoulder the way they'd come.

He didn't answer directly. “Is there a door open? How'd you get in? I thought we sealed all the doors on this level.”

Liam searched for an answer that didn't involve the truth, but he couldn't think of anything. He was just about to respond with his best effort when Victoria spoke up.

“Not sure about the doors. We came in through the window. Me and my boyfriend were driving on the highway until we found the bridge was out. We got out of our car and got chased. We were lucky to find a wire to this hotel and we had just enough time to slide down before we were eaten by the infected.”

“And the guns?”

Victoria was nonplussed. “Who doesn't have guns anymore?”

It was true enough, but given where they were, he felt he had to add some veracity to her story.

“Cost us twelve chickens for the pair of them. We coulda used the chickens, but we're trying to get across to Illinois so we needed the artillery more.”

“Well, you can look around at this place. I think you'd have had a better chance out in the open. This hotel is crawling with these bloodsuckers. I'm gonna be one soon, too. Not for long, I hope.”

As if in emphasis, he coughed up a large wad of—something—and spit it on the floor next to him. Liam knew he was close to turning. He'd seen it before, notably when he saw the colonel from Elk Meadow change. McMurphy had the courage to kill himself when the time came. Would this man?

Seeing the bloody mess he'd coughed up, the man began cursing. Not at Liam or Victoria, but just in general.

Liam felt it was worth risking an innocent question. “How did you get here? Did you come across that dangerous wire, too?”

The man stared at the floor as he spoke. His words were slow and deliberate.

“I started my day in a warm bed with a warm woman if you can believe that. Phone rings and it's mission time. Jump in a truck. Drive. Jump in a boat to cross a river. Then we have a brilliant plan to get into this place...” He faded out for a half a minute before returning “...shoot a wire across the gap. Then seal the doors. Always running from infected. Ha! I wasn't fast enough as you can see.”

“Where were you going? Is there safety in this building?” Liam tried to paint a look of innocent hopefulness on his face, though the dim light may not have helped.

The man seemed to be fading fast. “Only the Army's fortresses are safe. Never leave a fortress if you're lucky enough to get in one. They're the only thing that went right in this bag of dicks called Doomsday.”

Liam had to risk a more direct question before the man left and the zombie arrived. He'd seen the transition happen many times, and was seldom the same from person to person. The bald man's head was now resting on his chest.

“Sir, were you sent by Douglas Hayes?”

At the mention of the name, the man sprang to a semblance of awareness. He grabbed his rifle and pointed it—somewhat randomly—at Liam.

“Tell me right now who you work for.”

Liam froze. In moments, the gun swayed dangerously. The man was on the edge and having trouble holding the weapon in the air with his waning strength.

“Hayes has my grandma. We think he's going to kill her.”

The gun dropped completely to the floor. Whether it was because of what he said, or just fatigue, Liam couldn't tell.

“Son, look over the rails. They've been killing grandmas and grandpas up there by the pound. Your meemaw's dead. Get out of here.”

Victoria spoke directly to Liam, as quietly as she could. “Liam, I'm sure she's fine.”

The man coughed several times, loudly. Then, with his head on his chest, “Liam? Can't be many Liams out there. Liam Peters, by chance? Grandma is Martinnette Peters?” He ended with a wet cough.

Liam hadn't recovered from having the man's rifle pointed at him, but now pointed his own gun. “What do you want with Martinnette Peters?”

The man was trembling. He looked into the distance. “Sorry, sir. I almost killed them both. Yes, sir. It's been an honor, sir. I'm—” He heaved himself sideways into the doorway.

Victoria pushed Liam into the doorway as well. They both fell to the hard cement floor on the far side of the man as an explosion erupted. Liam was stunned by the noise and concussion, but was otherwise unharmed. He got to his feet with ringing ears and his normal headache. He pulled Victoria off the ground and they moved out of the smoky stairwell while they recovered.

“Are you OK?” Victoria shouted.

Liam nodded in the affirmative.

They both sat down on the floor nearby. It took a couple minutes before they could resume normal conversation.

“You saved our lives. Thanks. How did you know he would explode?”

Victoria talked at a higher volume than normal. “I saw it in a movie. I didn't want him to raise his gun at you again, so I watched him like a hawk. When he rolled over, I heard a click, and saw the grenade clear as day fall behind him. I guessed that his body would shield most of the explosion, so that's where I pushed you.”

“I'm lucky I brought you along. I just stood there like an idiot.”

“Well, you didn't bring me along for my girlishly good looks, did you?” Even behind her shampoo-laced scarf, he could tell she was smiling.

“Well, actually...”

The humor belied the stark raving fear he felt at that moment.

We almost died. Again.

5

“So, what do we do next? Go into the super-scary pitch-black stairwell?” He tried to be funny, which was the only antidote to the dread clawing at his insides.

“The elevators haven't come down for us yet, so I guess we have to.”

Liam inwardly smiled that she had a sense of humor. He didn't think he could have survived with someone who was a constant dark cloud.

They got up and searched the man for any clues about who he was or what his mission might have been, but he had no ID and very little else on what was left of his body. He had a small flashlight latched to a black utility belt. Also attached was a holster with a handgun in it. Liam recognized it as a Glock. He tossed it in his backpack. The man wore a piece of steel on his chest—a bulletproof chest plate. Liam imagined wearing the chest plate, getting shot by the bad guys, but then jumping back up to kill them all after they thought he was dead. However, after pulling it off the man's ruined body, he felt the weight.

“I wish I could have carried this bulletproof armor.” He held it up to his chest, struggling to keep it there. He never thought of himself as a weakling, but the dead man was larger than he appeared. The armor was oversized for a man of his girth.

“Just do what I do,” said Victoria, “don't get shot.”

“Now, wait just a minute,” Liam retorted. Of the two of them, she was the only one who had actually had a bullet land on her.

“You're so funny. I'd kiss you if I wasn't wearing protection from the stink around us, and we didn't have a headless zombie full of bullet holes and a dead man missing a large chunk of his body right by us. Kinda takes the mood away.”

Liam turned to the dark doorway, flicked on his own battle-worn flashlight, and said a quasi prayer. “I will fear no evil.”

“Amen.” Victoria gripped the dead man's small light and together they headed up the steps.

Almost immediately, Liam said, “Are we there yet?”

“Don't make me turn this stairwell around. I will, so help me!”

“No seriously, are we there? How much longer?”

“For the one-millionth time, I'll tell you when we get there!”

They both giggled in the confined space, trying to push back against the darkness.

At the next landing, they checked the door. It was closed, which was a relief since no zombies could stumble in, but it was also welded shut with the word “Phoenix” stenciled on it with white paint.

The next level was also welded shut. Its door said “Chicago.” A few twice-deceased zombies were lying in the stairwell—all shot in the head. They were dressed in hospital scrubs, though it was unclear if they were the doctors or the patients.

“Why do you think someone would seal these doors?”

Liam could think of a few reasons. The most obvious was to keep out the zombies, but zombies were already in the building, on every floor, if his earlier surveillance was correct.

“I don't know,” was all he felt like committing to at that moment.

At the fifteen floor, they found the bodies of two U.S. Marines. The area around them was scorched and blackened, as if an explosion ripped through there. The bodies were badly mangled, though Liam avoided studying them in any detail.

“So now we have Marines, a guy dressed in black wearing body armor, and a hotel full of zombies. Was this a popular nightclub or something?”

Liam responded, “This hotel is so new I don't know if it was even open before the sirens went off. Dad drove me by here a couple times and I saw it going up, but I don't have a clue why it's so popular now.”

After many tiring minutes, they reached the final door in the stairwell. It had the number thirty on a placard next to it. Unlike the floors below, each with a different city or region stenciled on it, this door was unmarked.

Liam ascended the last few steps and put his ear to the door. He heard nothing obvious from the other side but did notice there was one small hole in the metal next to his head. He noticed more holes in various locations on the door.

He shut off his light and Victoria did the same.

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the door revealed many more punctures.

With a whisper, Victoria stated the obvious.

“Bullet holes.”

Chapter 12: Old Friends

“OK, I'm outta here.”

Liam made like he was going to walk back down the steps, trying to pass it off as humor. He looked longingly into the darkness below him, knowing it was safer than whatever was on the other side of the door.

Still whispering, Victoria retorted, “Har har, Mr. Funny Guy.”

“Yeah, I know. I'm just trying to enjoy the day before I get shot up.”

He tried to look through some of the bullet holes to see what was on the other side, but they revealed nothing.

He prepared himself to open the door, but paused as he touched it. He turned to Victoria and embraced her. Nothing was said, but it made him feel better. After a few wonderful moments, he broke free, and pulled the large fire door.

A big machine gun was on the floor. It had been sitting on a tripod at one time, but was now lying on its side in an alcove to his left. A massive hole was in the wall of the hotel room directly in front of him. A spacious circular room with a glass ceiling was to his right. The top level of the hotel was a posh lounge with many small tables and chairs and lots of planters. Rows of slot machines were parked in a central area, though they were still wrapped in shipping plastic. Most of the furniture was overturned, and bodies were everywhere on the floor.

The circular central lounge was flanked by the penthouse suites on one side, and by some kind of Japanese restaurant on the other. The Kanji letters were listed below the English name Kyushu View. On the far side—in the 3 o'clock stairwell alcove—he saw another machine gun on a tripod, still upright. It had a flashing red light on top, and if his eyes were true, the machine gun was swiveling in his direction.

“Run!”

He plunged ahead into the breach in the wall, tripping on the debris as he did so. Victoria tumbled in after him. Together they hugged the floor awaiting the sounds of the big gun. Its silence almost disappointed him.

“Sorry, I thought that other machine gun was going to start shooting us.”

Victoria took it in stride as she sized up the new room.

The construction plaster of the wall had blanketed the floor and was extremely slippery. They both crawled away from the downed wall and regained their footing on a shaggy carpet. The penthouse was huge.

“So this is where the rich people stay.” Victoria whistled in amazement.

Everything you'd imagine in a million-dollar suite of an expensive hotel was in front of them: large kitchen, a massive en suite hot tub, stainless steel decor, several bedrooms, and big comfy sofas overlooking a million-dollar view of downtown St. Louis and the entire cityscape beyond.

It would have been perfect if it didn't also contain a handful of dead Marines.

Liam dragged himself to the closest man and was dismayed to see he was shot, not bitten.

“The day has come where I actually prefer dead bodies to be killed by zombies, rather than other men. What does that say about me?”

Victoria put her hand on his back as she spoke. “I think it's normal. I'm scared to death of anyone who's willing get into a fight and kill Marines. It looks like they succeeded, at least in killing these men. It can't be for any good purpose. Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless the Marines are the bad guys.” Liam considered himself to be the conspiracy theorist, with his conspiracy theorist father to thank for that, but Victoria now gave him a run for his money.

“Think about it, Liam. Someone blows your neighborhood to hell, and the Marines are there. Marines show up at Camp Hope, and out of the blue survivalists attack the camp. Maybe they were working together? Now, in a creepy tower filled with zombies, where we know your grandma is being held, we find more Marines. That seems like a lot of odd coincidences if they aren't really the enemy here.”

“Yeah, I guess I see your point.” He didn't want to believe it. “But let's keep moving. Grandma's probably in worse danger than we thought. As long as she's up here and not...”

“Just keep going. She's here.”

He stood up and she led him to the far wall. It was also breached wide enough for soldiers to pass through.

The next room was similar to the first. They managed to avoid slipping and falling as they came through. More Marines were dead in this room, but there were also dead soldiers with different uniforms too. It was apparently a swirl of fighting—the room was a disaster area of broken furniture and scorched walls. All the glass of the outer windows was shattered or blown out. It made him feel as if he were going to be sucked out the opening, though he knew it was just his mind being overprotective.

He reached the first of the non-Marine soldiers to check him out. He didn't need to be an expert to identify the stitched tag on his shirt.

U.S. Army.

2

They were surrounded by both dead Marines and dead U.S. Army soldiers.

“Were they together?”

Victoria checked out the bodies, too. “Why do they all have bullet holes in their heads?”

Nothing? No shock at that statement?

He looked straight at the dead men, all shot in the head, some with their brains spilled out, and he felt no revulsion at the spectacle.

He tried to block out the question by focusing on solving the mystery.

“Hard to tell. We know there are at least three factions involved now. Marines. Army. And the black uniform guy and his friends.”

“Hayes could be his own faction, don't you think?”

“Dunno. This is getting out of hand though. Is there any hope of finding Grandma if all these men fought and died around her? There's no way she could have survived fighting this bad...”

She grabbed his shirt and pulled him along. “Don't give up. Just keep moving. Remember, we are her faction.” She tapped her rifle with her free hand.

She brought them both to the door to go out. There was no breach in the next wall, meaning whoever left the room had to have gone out into the main lounge area.

Maybe they're watching us now?

There was no way to hide their approach in the well-lit lounge area, so Liam poked his head out the door to see if it drew any response.

Nothing happened. He could see the alcove on the far side of the room where the machine gun sat, but from this vantage point he couldn't see the gun. He supposed the Marines were trying to flank the heavy gun. Now he was taking advantage of their tactics.

“At least the Marines did us the favor of getting us around that machine gun. No matter if they're the good guys or bad.”

Victoria said nothing, but squeezed his back to let him know she heard him.

“Wait here and cover me. I'm going to run past the elevators to the next room. The door is open, so that might be where the fight continued.”

They both double-checked their weapons before he stole a quick kiss and ran across the open space. He eyed all the tables and planters where he could take cover in the lounge if a bad guy saw him, but he made it all the way to the planned doorway without seeing anything. Except—

About twenty feet from the doorway, he saw someone had cut a large hole the translucent floor. The whole lounge was floored with a thick glass-like material designed to let light filter down into the main atrium of the lower hotel. The floor was intact except the five-foot wide hole nearby. Someone had surrounded it with chairs from the lounge. Victoria ran up after him, patting him on the back again to acknowledge her presence.

He judged the distance between the open door and the hole in the floor, as well as whether anyone inside the room could see him if he walked to the hole.

“Liam!” Victoria whispered; she wanted him to stop.

He ignored her and walked to the edge of gap.

I have to know.

Victoria chose to stick by him rather than hold up the wall, though he noticed she was turned sideways with her rifle swinging to and fro. She was protecting him from any threats.

Cautiously, he bent over the 300-foot drop so he could look straight down into the hotel and the lobby floor. He knew what he'd see. The pile of bodies they'd seen while on the third floor was straight down. Whatever took place up here was responsible for the nightmare down there. The bodies had been tossed from this hole to fall unceremoniously onto the macabre funeral pyre.

Victoria peeked into the hole, too. It didn't take her long to come to the same conclusion.

“Why would they toss them down there like so much trash?” She looked back toward the open door, then continued while facing Liam. “Look at me. Grandma isn't down there. I know it in my heart. She's not.”

“I hope you're right. My heart feels it, too. But my brain can almost see her down there.”

“Liam, no—”

A new voice spoke loudly from behind them, “She's not down there. I promise you that.”

Liam didn't have to turn around to know who it was. Since the second day of the collapse, this voice had been haunting him. Its owner had followed them out of the city, only to run and hide at the very last moment when he could have been useful. He tracked Liam and Grandma, kidnapped them, and shot Victoria. He tried to experiment on Grandma, then lost her, then kidnapped her one last time, presumably to bring her to this building. He was the person Liam had grown to hate more than anyone else in the entire apocalypse.

“Hayes.”

3

Liam and Victoria spun around, weapons drawn.

“Don't worry, kids. You don't need the guns. I'm unarmed.”

He held his arms up as he stood in the doorway of one of the uncleared rooms. He wore a hideous yellow Hawaiian shirt, bulky khaki short pants which mostly covered the bandages on his thigh, and penny loafers. He looked like an older man playing at being young while going to the beach, but then he'd always had a questionable dress code.

He looked them over, then dropped his arms and limped back into his room. “Come on in.”

Liam wasn't willing to shoulder his weapon, so he left it hanging at his side—ready if he needed it. Victoria kept hers in her hands, pointed at the floor as she walked. He didn't think she was willing to trust the man who shot her. He didn't either.

They entered the room where Hayes had disappeared. It was laid out just like the other two rooms, but in the front living space there were several blood-soaked gurneys with lots of medical equipment nearby. The rest of the room was shot to hell. Liam shut the door and locked it with the chain and deadbolt.

Hayes walked over to one of the remaining chairs—a large leather armchair—and took a seat. He motioned for them to come sit on a nearby couch with fist-sized holes in the sides. Liam was happy to put the bloody gurneys to his back, though he stayed on his feet rather than sit down.

“Where's my Grandma, if not down in that hole?”

He tore off his makeshift bandana; Victoria followed. The smell was still bad, but not overpowering, on this floor.

“Be careful, Liam. She's in the bedroom resting. But she isn't alone. Please put your weapon down before you go in. I don't want anyone else getting shot.”

He looked at Hayes for a long second, then turned and walked toward the bedroom, gun in hand. Victoria followed.

“Grandma!” He yelled it, even though she had her eyes closed. There were also several other people in the bedroom suite.

“Hello, Sam. Or should I say Liam Peters? And welcome, Miss Victoria Hennessey.”

A man in dark tactical clothing sat on a chair next to the bed. He was the same agent he'd seen days ago on a bridge overpass over the interstate out of St. Louis. A wave of refugees was on the highway underneath, and Special Agent Duchesne wanted to turn them all back. Liam outsmarted him and convinced his police allies to let everyone escape. He'd used the alias “Sam Stevens” to avoid giving his identity, but the agent took their photographs, and figured out the truth.

“You? What are you doing with my Grandma?”

Another man stood next to Duchesne. He was large and well-armed. Liam remembered him, too. He was on the bridge as the agent's bodyguard. He pointed a huge military rifle directly at Liam's chest.

“Why don't you drop the weapons and then we'll talk?” His bodyguard put the emphasis on “drop.”

Liam and Victoria both stacked their weapons on the floor at their feet. Liam didn't want anyone shooting with Grandma sprawled out on the bed in the middle of them all.

At the far end of the room, near the exterior window, the red-headed woman sat on the long window sill. She was dressed in camo fatigues, including the same cap he'd seen her wear before. She was also unarmed.

“Just don't hurt my Grandma and we won't have any problems.”

Duchesne stood up, kicking the guns closer to his assistant. “And what if I did hurt your Grandma? What kind of problems would you make for me?”

Liam looked at the bed, then at the man. Then back to the bed.

“Just please don't.”

Louder, he called out of the room. “Hayes, why don't you come in and stand over there by your secretary.”

The woman glared, but remained silent. Hayes did as instructed, and Liam noted she put her hand on his back when he joined her.

Duchesne slowly wound his way around the room, speaking softly. “Liam, do you have any idea the lengths I've gone...” He came to a stop right behind Liam, then spoke to Hayes instead. “Actually, I think Douglas would be a much better person to explain the length's we've gone through to get you. Don't you?”

For the first time since he'd known him, Hayes appeared tired.

“You serious? You want me to tell him everything?”

“At least tell him your role. I think he'd love to know why you've been following this old lady,” he thumbed in Grandma's direction, “like a little lost puppy dog.” He laughed, though Hayes did not. “Tell him about your delightful experiments here. Go on!”

Grandma was still asleep. Or passed out.

Or dead.

He studied her chest and was relieved to see it rising and falling in slow, even turns.

Hayes didn't respond. Liam didn't know who was in charge here, but he wanted answers.

“Hayes lies about everything. Why would you trust him?”

That got a response.

“I've always told you the truth. Your grandma is very important to our research into the origins of plague—”

“Because of her age, right?”

“Yes, we know that men and women of extreme age seem to react to the infection in a way that is very different than the younger people who get it. You saw that back at Elk Meadow. That was where I put it together for the first time. Unfortunately, that buffoon in charge of the camp let the virus escape and he set us back in our research. Who knows how many people died because of that, eh?”

His glib attitude constantly grated at Liam.

“OK, so the old people have something to do with the plague. Why is there a pile of them on the ground floor of this place?”

He knew the answer, but had to ask it anyway. He saw a similar killing field back at Elk Meadow, though McMurphy assured him everyone was there as a volunteer. In a quieter voice, he preempted his own question.

“Were they volunteers?”

“You can't be that naïve, can you? The elderly are this planet's most important resource. Do you know how fast they're dying now that electricity is gone? Medicine is gone? Medical services are gone? So many of our age-challenged friends were literally living on borrowed time back in the Old World. They never had a chance of living in this new one. Volunteers? No. But they gave their lives doing something that could save everyone they love, so I tend to think they gave their lives happily once I explained what they were doing for us.”

“You think all these people were already going to die, so you killed them?”

“No! I'm not a monster. Killing them is such an unfair depiction of what we're doing to them. When we inject the virus, there is a very real chance each and every time they will live. Some of them live for a long time. I admit some of them convert right away. Those are unfortunate, but necessary. You see, the key to this whole thing is that some of them are almost able to resist the virus completely. If we can find out why, it may give us the clue we need to cure the whole population. We draw blood, do tests, send it to—”

“But why just toss them down the hole? Don't they deserve more?”

“I share your concern. I really do. In the camps out in the country, we could bury people with a little dignity, but that takes resources. Fuel for tractors. Manpower. Things that are in diminishing supply. We chose this place because it allowed us to operate up here and easily dispose of the unfortunate volunteers by putting them in the hotel lobby below. We felt it was more humane than tossing them out the window into the crowd of zombies below us.”

Liam couldn't argue the point, but it didn't make it right.

“So Grandma is important to you because she's so old. I get it. I hate that this question has popped in my head, but what's so special about her that has made you chase her so many times and keep her alive while so many other old folks are tossed aside like trash?”

Duchesne was back by his chair. He seemed to be enjoying things. His bodyguard hadn't moved. He hadn't even lowered his weapon.

Hayes paced in front of the window.

“Before I tell you that, let me ask you a question. Let me ask you both a question: what kinds of medications are you on?”

Liam looked at Hayes like he'd just stepped in a cow pie.

“This is a serious question, kids. Let me ask you this another way. To protect medical privacy and all that. Have you ever been on medications, for any reason, longer than a week or two?”

Liam searched his memory. For a long time, as a child, he took medication for his attention deficit disorder. He took it for years before he grew out of that particular need.

Victoria looked down, but said nothing.

“I'll take that to mean you both have taken some kind of medication. Now, think about your parents. Do you see them popping pills every day? I'd wager they probably do, or have in the past, or will in the future—well maybe not in our current future, but they would have. Everyone takes medications these days like it is perfectly normal and expected. Even Duchesne over there is on something, I'm sure.”

If he was, the agent gave no indication. Liam was less hostile now that he understood the direction this was going.

“The thing that makes your Grandma special is that she has never taken medication a day in her life. No high blood pressure pills. No cholesterol meds. Not even vitamins as best we can tell.”

“What about pain pills? She broke her arms a few years ago. Surely she had pain pills?”

“Undoubtedly she did, but the effects fade quickly. She only took them very short term. The main thing is that she has no cellular damage or mutation which is indicative of longer term medications so common in the world today. And, even more peculiar is that at her advanced age she has taken no medications that are so common with her peers. She's almost unique in that regard. I should know, I've examined her blood several times.”

“So, you aren't a truck driver, are you?”

Eons ago it seemed, Liam and Hayes discussed his job function at the CDC. He said he was in logistics, and Liam believed this to mean he was a truck driver.

“What? No. I'm sorry I had to bend the truth on that, but my cover is more important than just tricking a couple of kids like you. I'm an immunologist in a world swarming with viruses. I'm too valuable to die in some futile battle against the undead.”

“We get it. You're so important you didn't want to fight with us to get out of the city and you study the virus that destroyed the world.”

“Yes, but I've come to understand something that my—uh, colleagues—have missed. This business with viruses started at the end of flu season in the United States. This spring, we noticed the flu wasn't petering out like it normally would as the weather warmed up and people started getting out of confined spaces with each other. The CDC, along with the World Health Organization, began doing extensive research on the phenomenon. I won't bore you with the details, but the bottom line is that we realized there were two versions of a nearly-identical strain of flu. They were identical on the surface and in behavior but the resistance of the clone was enhanced—making preventative health measures ineffective. We thought this deadly pairing could be solved before a real emergency evolved. Many nations quietly fought the flu internally, though most publicly wrote it off as a last hurrah of flu season. No one wanted to cause a panic.”

Liam couldn't remember anything about a flu epidemic, but was a self-proclaimed news-avoider.

“But that isn't what ended the world,” Hayes continued.

“You aren't making any sense. What could be worse than two flu viruses working together?” Victoria inquired.

“Because approximately a month ago, just as the flu problem was at its height, we became aware of a mystery virus already present in every man, woman and child on the planet. That virus was custom-made and it worked together with the already deadly pair to form a mutating triad. Actually, we don't know how many versions are out there now.”

Liam finally understood. “I'm going to take a wild guess. You had something to do with the mystery virus, didn't you?”

“I understand why you hate me, Liam. And Victoria; I shot you, after all. But you see now the stakes I was dealing with. Why nothing can get in the way of understanding this unholy trinity of viruses ravaging the planet. I assure you I had nothing to do with the mystery virus.”

He hesitated as he finished his sentence.

Victoria spoke up, “But?”

Hayes looked at her as he spoke. “But, I know who created the cloned flu virus.”

Finally. We're getting somewhere.

“So who ended the world?” she asked.

“The people who released the mystery virus.”

“You mean flu virus.”

“No, the virus we can't identify.”

“I'm not following you, Hayes,” Victoria lamented.

“The thing my colleagues don't realize is that the second version of the flu was actually a human-created clone. It was designed very cleverly to be more effective at delivering its payload. Very nearly 100% effective, I'm afraid. Almost impossible to detect the human signature. If nature had been left to take its course, the clone flu would have compounded flu season and become a deadly, but manageable, plague upon mankind. It wouldn't have led to...what we have now.”

“Are you saying there are two man-made viruses working together out there?” Liam started to understand the problem. Humans always seemed to be scarier in their actions than Mother Nature. Even the zombies eventually paled next to the potential for trouble from other men and women.

“No, I'm not.”

“But you just said—”

“No! I said there's a man-made clone flu virus and a mystery virus. We can't figure out how the mystery virus was made.”

Oh. Crap.

4

“A great story, Hayes. But as usual, you leave out the highlights.”

Hayes glared at him, but refused to be baited.

“OK, I'll fill in the blanks if you're going to be shy.” He stood up again, but stayed close to his tall friend. “We'll start with all the dead bodies in this building. Hayes' little petting zoo.” He pointed to the floor. “Riverside? You want to tell them why I had to fight to get into Riverside?”

Duchesne gave a withering look at Hayes, and that seemed to do it.

Hayes laughed tightly.

“Riverside. That's this place. I was assigned to an Army unit when things began to fall apart. I guess the thinking was the military would protect me while I did my work. In the beginning, they were annoyingly strict on following protocol—even refusing to let me cross that bridge when you two saw me talking with them over the Mississippi River. But in a world of fewer and fewer resources, the Army pulled more and more of my protectors away until I was left with only a fraction of what was necessary to guard an operation of the scale I needed. Rules got lax. Orders were lost. I guarded those remaining resources jealously. As communications became sporadic, I explained what I was doing to cure the plague and the remaining men and women agreed to follow my orders until the end. Today, they met that end.”

“Killed by the Marines?” Liam asked.

“Nope. The Marines were collateral damage. Most of them died down below, fighting to get in. They came up here and didn't know friend from foe—killed everyone they could—but there weren't enough of them. Most of the killing was by the NIS guys. National Internal Security. One of the labyrinthine layers of government contractors and security. Sort of the Secret Service for the Secret Service. Even talking about them can get me killed, but seeing as one of them is sitting right in this room, I'm not going to worry about it.” He nodded at Duchesne. “These boys came in to stop my research. They're the ones who killed both the Marines and the Army remnant protecting me—my research.”

Duchesne made a clicking noise with his tongue. “No, that's not it at all. Tell them who you really are.” The two men stared at each other for a long few seconds before Hayes looked away.

“I'm NIS, too. At least I started out with them.” He turned to Liam, “I told you back at your house I was able to pause the hit put out on your family. I could do that because I was originally part of the team that put the list together. But the virus was the priority. Killing one family on the whims of some politician held no interest for me. So I stopped it.”

“You tried to stop it. You should know better than anyone, a top-level directive can't be stopped,” Duchesne mused.

Liam was naturally suspicious of government functionaries, and he couldn't tell who was telling the truth here. He had several questions he wanted to ask, but had to stay focused on what was happening in the room. “So you're saying that government contractors came in and killed government soldiers and Marines, just so they could take my grandma?”

“No, you fool. I'm saying they were here to kill the 'rogue unit' and usurp my research. Bring it back on the reservation. The only reason they're still here is your Grandma. They couldn't have known she'd be here.”

“Yes, she's a peculiar piece of research. A real coup. After all the killing and dying getting in here, I'm trying to make this trip worthwhile to my bosses. My colleagues and I were discussing her fate when you two wandered in.”

Victoria addressed Hayes, “But would it kill you to go back to doing research with the government? Surely you'd have more resources than you do out here by yourself?”

He seemed reluctant to answer.

“Hayes?”

Liam was about to ask him, too, but Duchesne beat him. “Why don't you tell these fine kids what this is really all about?”

The red-headed woman hopped off the sill, and stood next to Hayes. She wrapped her arm around his waist, bolstering him. Then she said, “Those men are trying to destroy all of humanity. We are trying to save what's left of it.”

“This is Jane. She's absolutely right.” He let out a pained sigh. “There are three viruses out there. By a mad piece of luck, the flu this year was a particularly nasty strain. It was similar, in many respects, to the Spanish Flu of 1918. That killed millions, though today, with better medicine and heath care, it wasn't on track to even be noticed—a few extra sick here or there. But someone cloned that virus; made it an even more efficient killer. If things had gone as planned, it would have killed or sickened hundreds of millions worldwide. A terrible plague, yes, but one we could have survived.”

After too long a delay, Duchesne prodded him, “But?”

“But we realized, too late I'm afraid, there was a third virus floating around. It was several orders of magnitude smaller than any living organism we knew about. We weren't looking for it. We really only know of it second-hand, even now. We can see its effects, but it's beyond our ability to see it with our equipment.”

His brow furrowed. “And...unfortunately for you and me and billions of others...the clone virus was adversely affected by the theoretical one—we dubbed it the Quantum Virus because of its size. Our research teams watched as the flu virus was modified in various ways, depending on geography. We've studied dozens of zombies from around the world, each with their own adaptations based on where they originated.”

Hayes let out another long sigh.

Liam was horrified, even though he'd seen the Chicago climbing zombies.

“In the end, instead of a manageable disease sickening hundreds of millions, it became a global extinction threat. It could kill every single person on the planet. Only dumb luck saved us. It was released so late in flu season it didn't have time to spread around to everyone through the typical coughing and sneezing.”

Victoria's interest was medicine, so she pressed for answers. “But the virus is everywhere. Look around. Look out your window. There's nowhere the virus hasn't spread. So how can we have been saved?”

“What you see now is the vector of transmission for the Quantum Virus—the one they dubbed Extra-Ebola. It's spread primarily through saliva—biting. Anyone infected with it dies, but becomes desperate to continue ingesting more of the virus in the bloodstream. It wants to be spread into every living human and it uses the human host as the most efficient means of that transmission. It wants to spread into other animals, too, but fortunately there aren't many animals the stupid things can catch.”

He looked directly at Victoria. “Our best guess is that just as the clone flu was affected by the Quantum Virus, the clone flu also affected the Quantum. They work together.” With a fake laugh he said, “When flu season comes around again, we're going to have a doozie.”

Victoria shook her head in disbelief.

Liam listened in rapt silence. He was finally getting his answers. He was dismayed to realize they weren't what he expected. No secret cures were out there. These are the men who would know. And Hayes had been fighting the virus all along. He had difficulty squaring that with the sight of him trying to kill Victoria. Was he himself responsible for hindering Hayes in the discovery of a cure? Something more was going on. One phrase was festooned with neon lights in his head from Hayes' explanation.

“Our virus.” He spoke it out loud, quietly. “You said, it was 'our virus', didn't you? You made the clone.” He pointed at him.

Hayes was good at pretending to be sheepish. Liam had seen it before. This time, his embarrassed look was completely authentic.

“I'm afraid that's true. I helped make it.”

Chapter 13: Patriot Snowball

“Now we're getting somewhere.” Duchesne seemed to enjoy Hayes' forced admissions. Liam's questions stacked up in his head.

Before he could ask, another NIS contractor walked in the room.

“The charges are set, sir.”

Liam turned, thinking the voice was familiar, but he didn't recognize her.

“Excellent. Grab these guns,” he pointed to Liam and Victoria's guns on the floor, “put them somewhere safe. Then just wait outside. We're almost ready.” He turned to Hayes. “I'm in a hurry. Tell these kids about their Snowballer Grandma and we'll move on to the next order of business.”

Liam involuntarily gulped. He knew this wasn't going to end well. But, he was also terminally curious.

“Liam, surely you've heard of the Patriot Snowball, right?”

“No, why?”

Both men looked at him like he was telling a lie.

“Seriously? That's impossible. Don't you read the news? Watch the news? Anything?”

He was reminded of a similar conversation on the day of the sirens. The librarian seemed incredulous he didn't follow the news in any form or fashion.

“Look guys, I don't read the news, I don't watch the news, I don't do squat with news. Just tell me already!”

Hayes laughed despite himself. “Well, you continue to amaze. I thought you of all people might have guessed what this was all about. Your Grandma Rose never told you?”

“Intel said she never contacted any of the family. She went completely off the grid,” Duchesne stated matter-of-factly.

“Well there you have it. Your Grandma started the whole snowball rolling toward Washington D.C. and she was never heard from again. Still not ringing any bells?”

Liam searched his memory. Surely he'd remember his own Grandma Rose—she was Great-Grandma Marty's daughter-in-law—doing something to bring down the government. But he drew blanks. His only interactions with her in the past six months were getting a Christmas card with a crisp hundred-dollar bill as per usual, and then hearing his dad and Grandma Marty talking on the phone and mentioning Rose's name. That was once.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” He looked at Victoria, but she also had no sign of recognition on her face.

“Neither of you kids know what's happening in your own world? Wow.”

Hayes sounded condescending, and Liam felt his hackles rising.

“Are you going to tell us or not?”

Duchesne laughed.

Hayes was a little more measured. “OK, after the President was sworn in back in January a movement of malcontents popped up out in Colorado—surely you know your Grandma was a congressperson from Colorado?” He waited to see Liam nod in the affirmative. “The movement started as a highway blockage, holding signs and complaining about crooked politics. They wrecked traffic in the entire city for a full day. When they broke up, a small cadre of people—they called themselves patriots—began walking toward D.C. with the express intent of overthrowing what they called the illegitimate government. They refused to follow an anti-American President.”

Hayes watched for signs of recognition on Liam's face, but Liam had none to give. He shook his head and continued his story.

“The protesters regrouped at Liberty, Missouri, stating their cause was Liberty itself. Many more joined up. They continued walking east through the winter and into the spring. They got into Ohio and Rose herself appeared at the head of the column. She made a plea, or threat depending on your point of view, stating that any of her fellow congresspeople who abandoned the corrupt government and joined her would not be run out on a rail when she arrived. No one joined her, but the people loved her. More and more patriots began to follow her as the spring arrived and the weather got better. The joke in the news was that her cause was growing like a snowball. They named their march the Patriot Snowball. And it was rolling right for the seat of the most powerful government in human history.”

“Dutch, you want to take it from your end?”

“Sure, partner.” He laughed. “I take my orders directly from...the top. Sometimes things need to be done outside the law, you know? My bosses wanted the problem—gone. I warned Rose privately what was heading her way, but she never took me seriously. One day—poof—she disappeared. She escaped us.” He let out a fake sigh. “Still, a warning without consequences is worth nothing, so we expanded the order. We jobbed up a list of Rose's family members—every...single...one—and got to work eliminating them. A small price to pay for threatening Uncle Sam, don't you think?”

Liam finally found his bad guy. He was too exhausted to summon the anger he knew he deserved.

“The Snowballers marched on to Washington and actually made it into the White House, can you believe it? The damned secret service wouldn't protect him against his own constituents. But he got the last laugh. He unleashed the plague on them—he thought it would be cleaner than nuking them. Hayes was busy in his government lab building his Frankenstein when the call from the President came in, and to his credit, he did his duty and released it upon the world. The President put a bullet in his mouth when the dolt realized it was much more destructive than Doc H and his friends said it would be. I guess the old Socialist won in the end. We're all equal in the eyes of the infected.”

Another laugh.

“For my part, I had teams out sweeping for your family when the balloon went up. We never found Rose, bless her heart, but we did manage to get a team on your Marty here. Funny thing, too, my report said the agents released a zombie which attacked her private nurse, Angie I believe, who then went in and killed Martinnette Peters. The report said she was dead. That might have been the end of the story, and we'd have never known, but her name showed up as 'alive' when Hayes entered her information into his reports from under the Arch. Can you imagine the good luck? I sent two agents to check her house to find out why the paperwork was falsified, and they reported her body was gone. Somehow she escaped an infected right in her own home. I wish she were awake so I could congratulate her.”

He bent over Grandma and shouted at her, “Are you awake?” She didn't stir.

Liam knew she had survived because she ran outside her house to escape the sick nurse.

Seemingly satisfied, the agent continued. “Hayes said he was keeping an eye on her for his research, but we were keeping an eye on her, too. It was only after your name came up when I took your picture on the bridge overpass—Mr. Sam Stevens—we put it all together how she got away and where she was going. From there, we tried bombing her, we asked the Marines to grab her, and we even embedded some Special Forces guys into a small group of troublemakers straight out of Mad Max to liquidate her in her Boy Scout tent. In the end, it was Doug who brought her to us.”

“Not to you.”

“Well, it's the same thing.”

“If the President's dead, why are you still following his orders?”

Duchesne looked at Victoria. “You really think the President is the only one in charge? There are over 500 representatives in the halls of power, not to mention scores of judges, generals, and powerful executives in the defense industry all willing to do anything to protect their way of life. They're probably all sitting in their bunkers somewhere, just waiting for their fresh start. The government is going to go on, plague or no plague. My mission doesn't stop just because a few of them are dead, or because things are bitey out in the world. We each have our parts to play. Mine is to terminate troublemakers with professional efficiency. Hayes' is to ensure the plague wipes out the malcontent citizenry. I think he's done a fine job, don't you?”

Yes, bully for him.

2

Grandma was with Al. She was also asleep in the room with everyone standing around her—she could hear them if she focused on their voices—but she was in a dark space, standing outside the door she'd seen before in this place.

“Hello, Marty. Are you ready to open this door?”

She looked inside. The huge ugly computer was still sitting on the wooden table, just as it was on a prior visit. Al called it an 8088.

“What's changed? Why will I be able to open it now?”

“Ah, an excellent question. And one for which you deserve an answer. Walk with me a minute.”

Al turned from the door and strolled away. The darkness fell back as if it were smoke, and she could see a whole universe of stars above her, just as she had before. He took her out into the open space near the foot of the waterfall.

“Yes, prior visits I showed you what I needed to show you. This time, you will see it all. Or as much as human eyes can see.”

As she came out of the darkness she was overcome with emotion at the scale and beauty of this “Heaven” as she understood it. Where once there was one bright waterfall pouring into a pool ensconced in a picturesque patch of grass and flowers, now there were separate and distinct waterfalls of all sizes and shapes stretching off to the horizon in on either side of her. They glowed like beacons in the night. It was hard to see the darkened land behind the waterfalls, but each had a middle landing like the one on which she was standing. From there, a second shorter waterfall spilled from the landing down to a choppy sea—which also stretched in both directions as well as directly away from them to the horizons. Above it all were stars. An impossible number of stars. So many that the whole scene was well lit by them.

It took Marty's breath away. She stumbled and felt the desire to sit. A rocky bench was off to one side, and she sat heavily and faced the waterfalls along the coast to her left, away from her own. Away from Al.

“Is this really Heaven?”

“This isn't your Heaven, I'm sorry to say. This is the multiverse. Mind you, this is still an internalized representation your mind can accept. But it's a grand reflection of reality I must admit. Your brain truly is a wonderful place.”

“This—is real? Not just in my head?”

“Yes my dear. Each waterfall is a completely separate universe. Each waterfall has its own rules. Is run by its own caretaker. Some are young and fresh. Others are more mature. We meet at homeowners’ meetings and have tea.”

She turned around and gave him her best stink eye.

With a curt laugh, he said, “I'm sorry, Marty. I don't want you to get too taken with what you see here. Some people can't handle it.”

“Others come here?”

He smiled. “Let's talk about you coming here.”

“All right,” she said as she looked back to the coastline, “do all the waterfalls drain into this ocean?”

“Yes, all roads lead to the ocean, if you will allow me to mix metaphors. And this ocean gives back to all the waterfalls in ways that are hard to describe with simple words. The ocean is the engine which drives the universes. Perhaps if you observe for a while, you will see.”

Marty sat there for a time. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she became aware of flashes of light under the water of the ocean. At times, bright and moving, as if lightning was striking under the surface. Sometimes a dim explosion of brightness seemed to encompass the entire ocean at once. It was impossible to see any patterns, but she was content to say she saw the lights. The energy flashes made the water appear as a deep translucent green color.

“It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, Al. Or whoever you are. Thank you for showing this to me.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, as it became too much to take in. Between the infinity of stars above, and depth of the sea below, it defied description.

“Please Marty, don't be upset by what I'm showing you. Take solace that you are only seeing a tiny fraction of this shoreline. It goes on in each direction, pretty much forever. Your mind couldn't handle seeing more of it at one time.”

He sat next to her and changed tact. “You've succeeded, Marty. You, Liam, and Victoria were able to work together to get you here. To talk to me. The final piece is to get inside that door back there.”

“It isn't really a door, is it?”

“You're catching on. The door represents something blocking you from doing what you need to do. The computer is the answer to your problem. A problem that should be fixed as soon as possible.”

“What problem? And why the delay? Why not tell me this two weeks ago?”

“The balance is delicate, my dear. Zombies roam your world with impunity. Bad men are hastening your collective destruction. Each minute lost is irreplaceable. But as I've said before, the answer must come from you, not me.”

Marty sighed. Every visit to this place was more frustrating than the last. She'd seen Liam's memory from one of his books—”

“The book was Earth Abides. It's one of Liam's favorites. You'll have to ask him why it's so important to him.”

“And why show me Victoria's death?”

“I think you already know that. Your memory of your own daughter's death those many years ago is a big reason why you and Victoria bonded. That, and Liam liked her.” He laughed. “All right, that was probably a big part of why you all bonded.”

Marty searched her feelings. The dream she'd seen had indeed shown her a memory from her own deep past—one she'd like to forget. When she was a young girl, freshly married, she got into a car accident in which her young daughter died. It was something she had tried to forget for over eighty years, though every day she thought about her. Of course meeting a young girl named Victoria would affect her judgment.

“Did you put her there, Al? Victoria, I mean. Put her under that tree that day?”

He smiled, but said nothing.

“And when I saw her in the backseat of that SUV. I saw—”

“Yes, you carry your painful memory and she carries hers. She was assaulted by her fiancé—a real dirtbag as she discovered—just after they were engaged to be married. That's what drove her to leave Colorado and go to St. Louis. But the pain was fresh when you first met her. I think you and Liam saved her in more ways than one.”

So many questions.

“What about when I saw her in that dark alley? She left a friend behind. She was about to be bitten.”

Al took a long time to reply. “Not every vision is an exact representation of reality. She may not have been bitten when she ran that night, but she wishes she was. That's what she sees when she dreams of her escape.”

“Oh my. Poor girl.”

Victoria had told her and Liam she ran all night to escape the zombies in downtown St. Louis. It made sense if she imagined herself getting caught, it would be while leaving a friend behind.

“Al, please tell me. How will this help any of us in curing the plague?”

Al smiled. “That, my dear Martinette, is the right question, at the right time, for the right person. Come with me and I'll show you.”

They stood up, striding for the window.

3

“That's not true. Liam, I admit I released the original virus, but you have to believe me when I say I never intended for it to be this effective. I'm really trying to reverse it.”

“You're doing a piss poor job of it. That's why I'm here to clean up your mess. Get this research,” Duchesne nodded to the bed, “to the fortress over in Illinois where some real scientists can look at the data.”

Hayes seemed beaten. It was a look Liam had never seen, for real anyway. He feigned it several times.

“Is there rescue over in Illinois? Can we all go to the fortress?”

“Well, little lady, what do you think? Do you think the government is just sitting out there somewhere in a bunker just waiting for its citizens to show up so it can feed and clothe them in this time of need? Is that really your view of what the Federal government is for?”

“I always just thought...you know, they'd want to help out.”

“There's a fortress all right. And the US of A Army is parked there right now with its tanks and Humvees and every weapon you can think of pointed outside their walls at all the fine citizens that stumble their direction. Living or dead, it don't matter in the least. The whole city of Chicago must have gotten a memo because the dead are stacked ten-deep in the fields north of the fort. They built it too close to population if you ask me.”

He turned to face her. “And no, you can't go there. They don't let in just anyone.”

Duchesne leaned over Grandma, checking to see if she was awake.

Or alive.

The thought prompted him to ask. “Is she doing OK? Why isn't she waking up?” He felt his heartbeat downshift and start to spin wildly.

“Liam, that's an excellent question. But before I tell you, I need to give you something.”

It happened so fast Liam could only reconstruct it after the fact. In one fluid motion, Duchesne sidestepped along the bed and swung his fist. He connected with his stomach, sending him to the floor. When he was down, the agent kicked him hard in the face. He missed connecting with his nose by a couple inches, but the sole of his foot scraped painfully across his cheek. He stayed down, hoping that was all.

Victoria and Hayes both moved in his direction, but the bodyguard yelled something and everyone froze. He couldn't remember because he'd hit the floor pretty hard and his ears rang like mad.

His mind came back into focus as Victoria lifted him. Duchesne had gone back to his chair, but was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together. He spoke in a low voice.

“That's for making me look like an ass back on the bridge. I've been wanting to do that since the minute you left my sight. I never dreamed I'd have this chance. I have to say, that felt pretty good.”

He sat back up, talking to the room.

“This is what's going to happen. My team and I are going to take Ms. Peters here down to our boat. We're going to get into said boat, motor to the far shore where our chopper is waiting, and live happily ever after in the cornfields of Illinois.” He paused with a little drama before continuing. “Well, most of us will live happily.”

“Will you try to take care of her? Keep her alive?” Liam had asked the same question of Hayes not long ago.

“Are you kidding me? I don't care what happens to your dear old grammy. They can rip her apart as far as I'm concerned. As long as someone who knows what the hell they're doing is analyzing the results—and not this goof—she'll have proven her worth. If she has to suffer so the rest of us can live, so be it.”

The pain in his stomach was intense. He wondered if he ruptured his stomach or other internal organs. It felt that bad. While hunched over and being supported by Victoria, he continued to press Duchesne. “Take us with you. We'll help you take care of Grandma and go to your fortress, or whatever, and not cause any problems.”

“Ha! Not cause problems, you say? Like you didn't cause any problems when two of my agents died in your Grandma's house? Like not cause any problems when you sent a whole army of refugees into the quiet hinterlands of southern Missouri? Like not cause any problems when you skillfully avoided the U.S. Marines and the bombing of your neighborhood? Is that what you mean by not cause problems, because if that's not causing problems, I think I'm genuinely afraid of you if you are trying to cause problems. You're a lone boy, and you've cost this country millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars, in terms of lives lost, damage to property, and long-term financial ruin of a significant portion of the population of St. Louis. That's all you and your 'not causing problems'.”

“Liam also helped destroy a perfectly good railroad bridge over a river when we came out of St. Louis. You might want to charge him for that.” Victoria seemed to revel in goading Duchesne. She did the same back on the bridge.

“Very funny, young lady. I'd punch you, too, if you didn't already have two black eyes.”

On his feet, Duchesne said something to the bodyguard and the big man left the room. He then turned to Hayes. “I'm outta time. Do you want to tell them, or shall I?”

Hayes had a downtrodden look. He was either still sulking from his earlier embarrassment or this was something new. When he looked up, he wasn't looking at Liam. He was looking at Grandma. He moved in her direction, reached behind her pillow, and pulled something into view.

“Liam, I'm real sorry to have to tell you this...”

Liam didn't hear the rest of the statement. He knew. Grandma had already been infected with the deadly virus. The reason she was so quiet was that her body was absorbing it into her blood, just as Bart had done back at Elk Meadow. When Bart woke up, he was sentient for a while, but devolved into a zombie not long after.

Grandma had minutes to live…

4

Marty walked with Al for a few moments, then she entered her own memory.

“Al, no. Not again. I can't bear it.”

“You must, my dear. You must face your darkest fear before you can look ahead.”

“But...”

She fell into the dream.

“I'm so happy! Al just bought me a new car. Well, he bought it for us. Mr. and Mrs. Aloysius Peters. I just love saying the name.” She twirled in the grass of her backyard like a giddy schoolgirl. She wasn't much older than one.

“I can't wait to drive it. Al showed me the controls. I'm sure I can. But he said not to.”

She ran on tiptoes from the yard and into her garage. It was fresh and new. She was looking at a polished black Model T Ford. Her mind registered it as a 1926 Runabout—they had just bought it used from Al's father.

She eyed the driver's door of the vehicle. “What would it hurt to drive it? I could take a quick ride around the block. Al would never know I was gone.”

“I shouldn't.”

“Should I?”

Her emotions became confusing here. Marty recognized both restraint and abandon in her younger self. The straight-laced young lady had never done anything so illicit.

“I'm an adventurer!”

She jumped in and looked at the spartan controls. She walked through the starting process Al showed her, ending with stepping on the starter on the floor. Her happiness was through the roof.

She proceeded to back out of the garage, deftly working the three pedals on the floor while adjusting the spark and throttle on the steering column.

“I can do this.”

She rolled the car forward down the narrow alleyway and paused at the edge of the cross street.

Her elation fused with dread as she wondered if anyone would recognize her, and if they did, would they tell Al his wayward wife was on a joyride in their prized new Ford.

The confusion and danger thrilled her. She released the brake and turned right with a little boost to the throttle. Youthful Martinette's long blonde hair began to flow wildly behind her. She was now in second gear and loving life.

“I'm doing it. I'm so proud of myself.”

While the car never really got going too fast, it felt like riding a bolting stallion to her young self. She controlled all that power.

She could see into the backyards of houses as she passed. More often than not, a woman was tending laundry on the drying lines, or holding a baby or two. Those women were securely tied down just as surely as those laundry cables.

“I am, too.”

“But in this moment I'm free.”

Marty recognized the struggle of her younger self.

Her mind was aflutter. Unfiltered joy rode with abject fear. The mixture was intoxicating.

She drove for several minutes. A flash of disappointment as she turned the car around.

“I must get back. Things to do. I've had my fun. I wish Al could be proud of me.”

Her feelings fluctuated between desire and regret now. Telling her husband she had taken a joyride would be a minor scandal. Better to just park it and ignore it happened at all. She felt sorry for feeling that way, but sometimes a white lie helped keep the peace in marriage. She at least believed what she thought.

Hair blowing, she spun the iron horse back into the alley, slowing slightly, heading for the wooden corral behind her home.

“I can turn into the garage at this speed. I know I can. I'm doing great.”

She made the turn quickly and deftly, ecstatic she could do it, and then slammed on the brake. She felt a bump as the car decelerated, but she knew she didn't hit the front wall because she still had a couple feet to spare.

“That would be a disaster.”

“Mercy. What a ride that was.”

Car off. Door open. Step down.

And she saw it. The shoe.

Confusion.

“Impossible. It can't be.”

Slowly, Grandma moved to the front of the car. What young Marty saw was so emotionally powerful she still couldn't see it now. Grandma had completely blocked it.

It was her first baby. Barely 18 months. A girl. Martinette had left her sound asleep in her crib in the backyard when she snuck off for her joy ride. When it happened for real, she had run away screaming. She stole one quick glance at her daughter lying on the cold concrete. Al came and took baby Victoria away, leaving her with nothing but an empty hole in her soul.

Her emotions became a storm of pain and depression.

A voice in her head said, “Marty, you must look.”

“Al, Victoria is dead. I killed her. I killed my little girl.”

“I know, my love. I beg you. Please look at her.”

The grief of nearly ninety years spilled out, and Marty was racked with sobs.

“I just can't, Al. Please don't make me.”

She felt Al's hand on her shoulder. Far away and yet so immediate in this dream. “I trust you to do this. You are my fighter. Always were.”

Young Martinette opened her eyes. She used her hand on the side of the car to pull herself toward the front. Toward what she knew was a tiny ruined body.

Her hands were soaked from perspiration. Her heart was overtaxed from anxiety. She pushed on, rounding the front bumper.

She looked.

On the floor, there was no evidence of her baby. Instead, she saw Liam's phone.

She fainted, but did not wake up.

5

“Hayes. Why? Why now?”

“Liam, listen to me. They were going to take her away. This was my last chance to test my theory. I think your Grandma can survive it. I need to see it happen.”

Liam didn't know what he should be feeling. He felt like he did when he first escaped from Angie, nearly two weeks ago. When he evaded her and reached his home, he sat down and felt empty. He felt nothing. This moment was a mirror of that one. He felt absolutely nothing at all.

Grandma was dead. It was all for nothing. He was—

Victoria chirped. The whole room looked at her.

A second chirp.

She steadied Liam so he could stand on his own, then with a slightly red face, she pulled her phone out of her bra. When he saw it, he recalled she pulled it one other time. It was within the first few minutes they'd been together back when they'd met at the Arch. She hadn't used it or mentioned it since then.

“I usually keep it off. I've been trying to save the power and only check it once a day to see if my parents tried to contact me. I must have left it on.”

She looked at the face of the phone first with shock, then sadness.

“This has to be some kind of joke. Look at this.” She handed the phone to Liam.

Reading from the text log, Liam said, “Need to kill the power to building. Stop the sirens.” He looked up with confusion. “It says it's from my phone.”

“Well, where's your phone?” Victoria asked. “I thought you gave it to Grandma.”

“I did. Someone must have taken it from her.”

Duchesne seemed only half-interested. His tall associate pressed his ear bud, then whispered something to his boss.

“OK, we're ready to go. I like your friend's thinking. We were going to blow the stairwell doors for this building so you'd be trapped in here, but we'll go ahead and place a charge on the power generator on our way out. Yeah, that's a great idea actually. That ought to make things interesting for the whole city, eh?”

“No! If you cut the power all the doors will...unlock.”

“And how is that my problem?”

Hayes looked at everyone before making the realization. “You're leaving us all here, aren't you?”

“Smart man! I don't think we'll be needing your services anymore. I'd just as soon kill you all where you stand, but I think it's fitting you die at the hands of your own menagerie, don't you? Once we blow all the doors, and the power, this place will be zombie headquarters for St. Louis. With a little luck, the old people you tossed to the ground will come back up and have words for you.”

Duchesne whistled and the woman came in with her weapon drawn. She stood by the other bodyguard, their message clear: “Stay back.”

“I assume we're all adults here. You know enough not to try anything tricky with my two friends pointing rifles at you all and zombie grandma. No one needs to get hurt. Now, back against the window if you don't mind.”

Liam was leafing through every book he'd ever read, looking for the answer to this riddle. How to stop a madman from taking his grandma away from him forever. He didn't think he could take the agent in a fight, nor did he consider even for the briefest second he could eliminate the two guards pointing harm in his direction. Unlike his books, there was no opportunity for him to be the hero.

“Nice and easy, everyone.”

The big bodyguard slung his rifle, then picked up the frail form of Grandma from the bed. He was surprisingly gentle, and due to his size, she appeared as if she was a small child over his shoulder. He carried her out of the room, making for the stairwell.

Duchesne walked out next, followed by the woman. She slowly walked backward, keeping them in check. Liam wondered how often it happened to her that her prisoners sprung for her with their bare hands. When she was at the threshold of the door, she pulled it shut. Just before it closed completely, she said, “If we see you come out before we're on the stairs...” She didn't finish it but she raised her rifle in Liam's direction.

When the door clicked shut, Liam flung himself at Hayes. He was partially deflected by Jane, but he made contact with the man's jaw. Liam winced as his knuckles felt broken. Hayes reacted in an instant, twisting himself and Liam to the ground. The battle was over in moments.

“Liam, you have to listen to me. We can still save Grandma. I didn't inject her with zombie blood.”

He had him in a headlock so Liam couldn't respond except with gasps of air. After many seconds, he stopped struggling and gave a thumbs up sign. At that, Hayes relented enough so he could talk. He didn't know what to say. He was used to hating Hayes. The new Hayes was confusing him.

“This may be the first time you don't have a witty retort for me.”

With a groan, Liam could only say, “Yeah, this may be the first time since we met that I sort of like you. It feels weird. Especially since I just punched you.”

They both got up and dusted themselves off. The two women also stepped apart, though they hadn't been fighting.

Liam tried to be nonchalant about the whole affair. “So, about that rescue...”

Chapter 14: Since The Sirens

Jane was Hayes' assistant, or friend, or girlfriend. Liam couldn't figure it out, and didn't ask. She was at the big window of the main room in the suite, scanning the wreckage below the Arch. “I've found them. They're leaving the railroad tunnel.”

Liam and Victoria jumped off the couch so they could see. Jane was trying to locate Grandma and her three captors.

“You found her?” Liam asked.

Duchesne said they had boats.

“You might be able to see her. South leg, heading south on the tracks.”

Jane gave him the binos and pointed to the bomb-cratered landscape that was once the lush grounds under the Arch. The dead bodies, downed trees, ruined walkways, and the massive flocks of scavenger birds had turned the parkland into an ugly slice of hell. The Mississippi River was the same ribbon of muddy and ugly it had always been, but now it deposited the world's litter into the large pile of wreckage entangled in the piers of the Poplar Street Bridge.

It took a few seconds to orient on the position and adjust the binoculars, but he saw her. A tiny figure carried by a giant and followed by two normal sized people. He was at such a height he could see them, but so far away he couldn't make out much detail. He dropped the binoculars and looked closer to the hotel. The zombies below the building were a throbbing froth of death.

“How did they get by all of the zombies?” He no longer cared about using that word. He had to know how to catch up with Grandma.

Hayes knew. “I'm sure they took the pedestrian tunnel. It goes from the parking garage into the Arch museum. It's all underground.”

Hayes had returned their weapons and ammo, and even shared a little food.

“Liam, there's something else in this building. Something you should know if you're going to go out there to get her.”

Liam wolfed down a grain bar as he listened.

“This building is designed as a crude prison for the zombie samples we've been bringing in for months from around the world. But it also became the focal point for other pieces of research. One of the key discoveries the long-gone research team made was in brainwave manipulation. The brains of the infected retain a very narrow band of electrical activity—usually core functions such as muscle control, motor functions, and the most rudimentary cognitive functions related to...we assume...sating hunger. They don't run on evil spirits, like the movies.” He guffawed, trying to be funny, but he had an unreceptive audience.

“Anyway, we were able to modify all 200-something tornado sirens in the St. Louis area with special equipment which could broadcast on that frequency. When the sirens went off, the message went out to the infected: Run!”

“Hayes, I hate you again.”

“I deserve that. But don't you see, it was perfect. The sirens go off and the small number of infected in their homes or sitting in backyards run out to spread their cough. Before all this happened, we actually thought we'd have trouble getting our virus to spread. We worried the flu victims would curl up in bed and we'd miss our opportunity.”

“And are they working now? We saw tons of zombies walking back toward downtown when we were in our boat. Is that why they're all packed against this building?”

Hayes laughed, but not in a funny way this time.

“We have digital sirens on the roof of this building. Sort of massive dog whistles designed to be subsonic for humans, but the sound is like a dinner bell for the infected. We were field testing a way to bring them all down here so we could dispose of them. Imagine how easy it would be if we could gather them in one place.”

“So we have to get down on the ground, run through the crowd of dinner bell zombies, get into the tunnel, and then deal with the mercenaries before they can get her across the river to their impenetrable base. Sound about right?”

“Yes. That's right. But I do have a plan.”

After hearing it, Liam really wanted to devise an alternate plan and dazzle everyone. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of any alternative that didn't involve fighting the thousands of zombies at the base of the hotel in close combat. He'd have to work with Hayes' plan.

“I'm a big fan of George S. Patton. Studied his books. He always had his staff prepare three contingencies for every situation, the assumption being he would never be caught with his pants down. At the Battle of the Bulge, he was able to march his soldiers in the dead of winter to help repulse the Germans a hundred miles away. This was because of his excellent foresight. A detail man. I like to think I'm a worthy student of his ways.”

He paused to watch Liam smack his lips. Liam smiled nervously after noisily inhaling the food.

“Sorry.”

“All right. Escape route number one was the stairwell you came up—and Dutch went down. I had all the doors of the south stairwell welded shut so the staff could descend without fear of zombies stumbling in during those early days. But that's ruined now.”

Liam interrupted. “Why did you put city names on all those doors?”

“Isn't it obvious? It's where we got all the zombies on each floor. Try to keep up.”

Hayes walked back and forth in the kitchen area while he explained his thought process. “So, escape route number two is the one I'm giving to you, and escape route number three is one I'm saving for Jane and myself.”

“Why do we get this one? It seems really dangerous.”

“Because I'm afraid of heights.”

Liam couldn't tell if he was serious, but he wasn't smiling which was unusual for the terminally jovial man.

Victoria asked about the third route, but Hayes didn't think Patton would reveal his strategy in detail until it was absolutely necessary. He emulated the dead general.

They hashed over some details while they stood in the kitchen and all of them jumped at the loud banging on the hotel stairwell door.

“I think the infected have come up the stairs now that Dutch has gone back down. He probably wedged open all the interior doors if I know him. We couldn't go down the stairs if we wanted to.”

He was resigned to Hayes' plan. He and Victoria let Hayes and Jane lead them through a door to an adjacent penthouse suite where the scope of Hayes' study of Patton was on full display. One of the windows had all its glass removed and was covered with heavy plastic sheeting. A large spool of metal cable was bolted to the concrete floor. Several pieces of rigging and safety harnesses were lying nearby.

“How did you guys know to build this thing? This is amazing.”

“You must not read as many zombie and global infection books as your boyfriend. Always assume things are going to go to hell. Always.”

Liam wasn't going to agree, no matter how right he was.

“OK then. So you unwind the spool of wire out the window, then Liam and me latch on and scoot ourselves down to the roof of the garage. Just like that?”

Hayes responded in the affirmative, though he seemed to enjoy her obvious discomfort.

“I should mention there may be zombies at the windows as you scale down the exterior. I don't think they'll give you any problems—the glass is pretty thick—but I wouldn't window shop on your descent if I were you.”

Liam was still deeply disturbed. “Is there anything else you aren't telling us?”

He brought back his normal joviality. “Oh, plenty. I don't have a week to tell you all my secrets. You'll just have to trust me on this one.”

Trust you? Over my dead body. Wait—

Minutes later, they were ready to go. Jane peeled back the heavy plastic with a flourish so the room was open to the outside. The effect was dizzying. Liam held on to the spool of wire with a death grip. Victoria, he noticed, clenched his arm with both her hands.

Hayes pulled at the cable so it began to unspool. He attached a heavy piece of steel to the end of the wire and placed it just outside the window.

“We'll let this thing go down to the bottom, then you guys can start your journey.” He threw a switch and the spool began to unwind automatically. A small motor hummed as the wire drained out the window. They all watched the wire go.

Moments later, from somewhere in the building below, they heard a loud bang. It was chased by a slight vibration, and then the power went out. The spool ceased rotating.

Hayes' only statement was, “Uh oh.” He wore real panic in his eyes.

I wonder if we just lost plan number two?

2

“What happened?”

“Well, my dear Liam, the power went out. He put the explosives on a timer. Dutch was true to his word.” He fiddled with the spool as he spoke. “This means we have to get this thing spinning manually. I don't think it will affect your journey, or mine, you'll be happy to know. However, if the power is out below us, the doors are all unlocked now. It won't take the infected very long to push them open and get up here in greater numbers.”

“Why didn't you secure them inside the rooms?”

“Must you criticize everything I do?” He looked at Liam with no humor.

“Is this a big deal for us? I mean we aren't going back down on the inside.” Victoria asked Hayes, but she looked at Liam.

“Until a couple dozen types of zombies run outside and tear apart St. Louis...” He said it to be funny, but Hayes must have seen the looks on their faces. Instead, he said, “No, you'll be just fine. Let me worry about them. Get into those harnesses before something else goes wrong.”

Liam had no intention of ignoring them, but at the moment he had no alternatives. He and Victoria suited up in the climbing gear.

The spool spun freely as more wire fired out the window—pulled by gravity and the heavy weight on the end. It wasn't long before the spool locked up once all the wire was depleted.

“There will be extra slack at the bottom. You have to go now. We need to be going our separate ways.”

Not one to argue, Liam maneuvered himself so he was attached to the wire, and then worked his way to the edge. Victoria attached herself to the wire as well, then stood behind him.

Liam couldn't shake the feeling he was about to be betrayed.

“Hayes, if this is how you intend to kill us, can you just shoot us instead. I can't stand the suspense.” He was being smarmy as part of his bravado, but deep down he was being honest.

Hayes laughed. “Come on, you said you were starting to like me. I prefer you alive. We've had our differences, and you drive me crazy with your persistence, but we want the same thing now. Plus, as I've said so many times, if I wanted you dead, I would have just killed you with my sentry gun or a hundred other ways and been done with you. I'm not going to murder you for sport.”

That gives me absolutely no comfort.

Liam had learned to mistrust anything Hayes said. It had served him well the past two weeks, and despite his apparent falling out with Duchesne, he was still part of the team that destroyed the entire world. That alone was enough to engender mistrust. But he was over a barrel, and was about to be outside at 300 feet...

Liam fumbled his way out the window and steadied himself on the exterior glass as he got his bearings in the shifting perspectives and geometry. He released the control clasp and dropped several quick steps so Victoria could join him.

“Come on out, the weather's beautiful.”

“Oh Liam, I think I'm going to throw up.”

“Then why didn't you go first?” He tried to laugh it off, but he worried she might be serious. He wanted to believe he'd be chivalrous about it, but knew he'd probably be so grossed out he'd toss his cookies as well.

“If I throw up, I'm sorry in advance.”

Liam went down a few more paces, willing some distance from her. She came out and gently released her grip enough to drop to the floor below the open window.

Hayes stuck his head out the gap above them. “This is where we say goodbye, Liam. You've fallen into my trap!” He gave a maniacal laugh and retreated back into the room, out of sight.

Oh no.

“If this is the end, I love you, Victoria.”

“I love you, Liam.”

Liam closed his eyes, waiting.

Twenty or thirty seconds went by when Hayes returned to the window. Liam looked up when he heard the voice.

“You guys are so sweet. I'm just messing with you. A small payback for all the trouble you've caused me. Oh, and watch floor twenty. Those are the ones with pheromones that can make you go love crazy. That could be awkward. Ciao!”

He left with a curt wave.

“I hate him again. Let's keep moving.”

“I would, but there's a creepy zombie staring at me inside this room. I can't look away. He's the biggest person I've ever seen—a giant. And his face is—horrible. But his eyes...”

Victoria was a floor above him, so he couldn't see what had her attention. “We don't have time to sight-see. We have to move down. Now!”

She loosed the harness grip and slipped down the wire to meet him. “Oh my. This building is horrible. But at least my tummy feels better now that I know we aren't going to die out here.” The breeze picked up, as if daring him to agree.

They continued down the wire. After several minutes, they had passed eight or nine floors. He paused to wait for her to catch up.

“Hey, I like the view from down here.”

“Seriously, Liam? That's what you're thinking about?” She laughed, but it was forced.

He laughed, too, but when he took his eyes from her he saw inside the window next to him. He nearly jumped out of his harness when a zombie dressed in desert camo army fatigues threw himself at the glass. The pane rattled, and small spidery cracks formed, but it didn't break open. The zombie continued banging on the glass with his head and arms, but it made no further progress besides smearing blood where it impacted.

“Victoria, there's a zombie in this window. Don't let him scare you.”

“Don't worry about me. Zombies are nothing when I'm hanging desperately to the side of tall buildings.”

He continued but she stopped at the window.

“Oh Liam. You didn't tell me he was cute.” She giggled.

Cute?

Hayes' warning echoed in his head.

Are we on floor twenty?

He tried to estimate, but from the outside it was impossible. The soldier zombie continued to throw himself at the window, inches from Victoria. She seemed unconcerned, and dangerously so.

“Just keep moving!”

There was no obvious way to use the clasp to go up the wire. Pulling her might be required...

“Oh. Boo.” She sounded pouty, but did move after a long pause.

Liam only let out his breath when she was a floor below the strange man in the window.

Victoria seemed to sense the change too. “That was weird. I got all dizzy and...giddy.” She laughed it off.

He laughed too, but only said, “I know the feeling.” He wasn't going to bring up his own experience with one of the odd zombies. Back near the beginning, he had expressed his love for a zombie girl, in front of his grandma.

On the way down, they peeked in all the windows; they saw many odd zombie behaviors. In some rooms, the zombies merely watched them go by, as if they were drugged. Some ignored them entirely, which was strange for a lot of reasons. Some ran in and out the open room doors into the interior of the hotel. Some rooms were full of zombies fighting among themselves. The blood in those rooms covered the walls and much of the windows too. One large suite was stuffed with children zombies. One room had either dogs or wolves. It was hard to tell as they had shredded the beds and used the materials to fashion hidey-holes. Lots of zombies threw themselves at the glass, but always in a random fashion and to no effect. They were three or four floors above the roof of the garage when he looked in a window and screamed.

“Nooo!”

A group of zombie men in green biohazard suits hit the glass at the same time. The glass cracked audibly. He knew he should just keep dropping, but the horror in front of him was unbelievable. His hands wouldn't move him down.

After the first strike, two of the three fell to the floor at the base of the large pane. The third went to the back of the room. He guessed the man had a chance to break through if he hit it where the spidering was the worst.

“Victoria, move it. Now!”

He dropped down the wire, hoping she would follow. However, she was slow to move.

The glass above exploded outward and the running man fell out the window. His trajectory took him too far above Liam, and Victoria was still too high. He glanced off the wire, and pushed it away from the building. Liam bounced out, then banged hard against the glass of the floor below. The zombie's protective hood flew in a different direction as he flailed at the air on his way down.

“You have to come down fast. That window's open!”

He didn't know if he needed to tell her the obvious, but he wasn't taking any chances. Even so, she was still several seconds delayed before she started to move.

“My harness is grabbing on the wire. I'm coming.”

Liam looked up to make sure she got by the open window without incident. He was surprised when a hand reached out and pulled her entirely out of his sight. The strength of the zombie was incredible. It managed to pull him up several feet as it pulled Victoria—and the cable—inside the room above.

Oh God, no. This is it.

One of the green plastic-covered feet near the base of the window popped out the window, then went back inside as if in pursuit of prey. Victoria struggled in the room. She grunted in counterpoint to the moaning gurgles of her zombie captors. She screamed loudly, then shot a gun several times. He recognized the small-caliber pistol.

Victoria “sprang” back out of the window above. She was pulled through the window by the tension on the wire. He also dropped several feet as the slack returned. She dangled about, then steadied herself.

“Go! Go!” She descended below the dangerous gaping maw, and kept moving. She caught up to Liam in a few seconds but grabbed herself just before her feet hit the top of his head.

“There are more!”

Liam looked up and saw them. Two more faces hung outside the window. Not the green-covered guys. One of them was a bloodied woman in a business suit. She jumped out the window. Another took her place. He watched in horror as the woman was only a foot or two from him as she sped by.

The next one yelled from above. More faces found the opening too.

He allowed his clasp to drop him many feet at a time, willing it to get him to the bottom. Several more zombies had either jumped or were pushed out as the number of faces in the window continued to grow. One managed to lay a hand on Victoria as she dipped below them, eliciting a scream. She made better time as they neared the bottom.

Thirty seconds later, a zombie wearing a blue football jersey managed to get his arms around the wire as he fell out. His momentum flung him around the wire as he fell. He spun in circles as he came down, causing the wire itself to vibrate and move. Liam watched the man fall toward Victoria at a high rate of speed for twenty or thirty feet, and at the last moment, his bloodied arms released as if to grab her. He slammed into the glass of the tower and then deflected away from them both. His body rattled on the pavement of the garage.

Victoria had been looking down the whole time.

He looked up with a wan smile and shouted, “Only a few more feet. You're doing great.”

3

Liam touched down on the top level of the garage, surrounded by the accumulating bodies of the zombies that continued to fall out the window above. He stepped away from Victoria's path as he undid his harness. When she arrived, they made short work of hers.

“Thank you, Lord, for watching over us.”

The roof of the garage was more or less empty of zombies, though the rest of the hotel grounds swarmed with them. They jogged a short distance to get out of the path of the jumpers. One fell every couple seconds now, and they made sickly crunches as they impacted.

“And please help these poor souls,” Victoria added.

“OK, we go in with our rifles,” he said as he unslung his. “Check to make sure the safety is off. Make sure you can grab extra magazines. Try to keep calm...” Deep breath. “...and kill them.”

They checked their supplies; each of them had 30-round magazines in their AK's, with two extra mags each. Liam put his in the large front pockets of his jeans, while Victoria—with her women's jeans and their simulated pockets—had to put hers into her waistband.

He knew this part of Hayes' plan would require lots of gun handling. It wasn't his strong suit, but he hoped he would be good enough. Either that, or he'd soon be a zombie.

Stay positive.

On the grounds surrounding the garage, the roar of the crowd of infected was constant and unsettling. They moved toward the stairwell opening they needed off to one side of the parking area. He took a knee and aimed at the two wandering zombies making their way over the pavement in their direction. He dropped the first with his first shot, but it took two for the second.

“I need to be closer to hit them in the head like that.” Victoria claimed to be the poorer shot of the two, but Liam wasn't so sure.

“We'll be plenty close soon enough.”

They dropped into the stairwell, Liam in the lead. The concrete stairs were held together by an open framework of metal in the open-air parking garage. One or two cars were on the fourth floor, but little else. As they hit the landing, he observed only a few zombies on the entire level. Rather than engage, he continued downward. “Hurry!”

It was dangerous to allow zombies to get behind them as they descended, but if they kept moving fast enough it shouldn't matter. They couldn't kill them all.

On the third floor, they both had to shoot a pair of zombies who were too close to ignore. As if trying to prove herself right, Victoria missed several shots before bringing one of them down.

“Maybe I need them even closer.”

Just wait.

On the second floor, he took a knee and started shooting while he yelled at Victoria to keep moving down. He dropped four or five in just a few seconds. Many more were moving in their direction. Instead of shooting at the rising tide, he followed her down to the ground level.

Zombies swarmed the level. Victoria had shot her way through a clump of them hovering on the bottom steps, but she had trouble with the zombies in the stairwell to the basement level. The rest of the crowd took a few seconds to notice them coming into their view.

Liam yelled, “You shoot down into the stairwell, I'll keep them from following you.”

Working together, they fought the horde to a tenuous standstill.

Victoria cleared enough zombies to begin going down to the basement level. Liam had his back to her as he fired at will at the dead circling the stairwell entrance on the first floor.

“Go down!”

He ran out of ammo as he began to follow. “I'm out of ammo. Turn around.”

She spun around, and he squirted by to a step just below her. He slung his rifle and in one motion pulled out his handgun and pumped a few rounds into a zombie on the steps below. He holstered the pistol, grabbed a full magazine, and rocked it and locked it into Moses. He finished by pulling the charging handle to chamber the first round. The whole action took fifteen seconds, but during that time, Victoria continued to bang away at the writhing dead above them. In the small stairwell, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, even for a novice like her. But soon she too ran out of ammo.

“I'm out!” She had panic in her voice.

Liam turned around and ordered her to get behind him.

She stumbled down the bodies accumulating on the stairs, but recovered at the landing between floor one and the basement. On her knees, she reloaded her own magazine. It took her twice as long to reload. She mishandled the empty magazine and it fell through the crack into the open space of the level below.

“Leave it. Run!”

He was nearly deaf from the noise of their guns, so when she didn't move he was forced to yell even louder. “Get to the basement!”

She heard that, and did as ordered. He ran behind her; the zombies above were free to pursue.

Only a few zombies were in the basement level, so it was relatively easy for them to clear those nearby. Hayes had told them where the door was to the underground pedestrian tunnel to the Arch; they ran for it. A few dead zombies littered the route to the tunnel—signs Duchesne had come through. The infected excreted from the stairwell behind them. Daylight found its way through several stairwells of the level, so he could see their destination. After a mad sprint, they reached the doorway and banged against it. It held fast so he tried to pull it open instead.

“Of course it's locked. Hayes didn't mention any locks.”

He was dismayed to see a pair of zombies running. He recalled a snippet from some zombie movie.

No, they're sprinting.

They were about three-fourths of the way across the garage while the rest of the zombies were still shambling away from the logjam at the stairs.

Victoria yelled, “Break the glass!” Then she added, “Maybe Duchesne locked it.”

Liam took the butt of his gun and tried to slam it against the door, but it had no effect.

“What is this, bulletproof glass or something?”

“Shoot it out. They're almost here.” To add to her seriousness, she got down on her knee and tried to shoot at the two zombies running.

The bang bang bang rhythm was nerve wracking for him. He managed to turn his gun around and aim it at the door.

I wonder if it will bounce back at me?

As he thought the thought, he reoriented his gun so any ricochet would deflect away from them both.

Luckily, it was not bulletproof. It blew out just like normal glass.

Victoria continued to shoot. Each shot like a hammer on his ears.

“It's open. Let's go!” Everything was a shout now.

He tapped Victoria on the shoulder, appreciating her shooting skills. She downed the two runners, but the swelling crowd of zombies bore down on them.

She got up and followed him through the gap.

They ran for their lives into the dark tunnel.

4

Guided by their lights, they ran as fast as they dared down the tiled hallway. He resolved to thank the St. Louis tourism department for insisting this pedestrian-friendly tunnel was built to link the parking garage with the National Monument. It kept them from having to walk the impossible walk on ground level.

The moans fell behind, but didn't disappear.

“Hopefully they'll get stuck in the door like the 3 Stooges.” Liam had seen plenty of the bumbling trio. It was a favorite of both he and his father. He could only dream the zombies were that mindless.

He thought he heard some footfalls from behind, and he slowed just enough to shine his light backward. A blood-covered male soldier zombie hurtled directly at him. He had only a fraction of a second to act, but he guessed the zombie was going for his light, so he tossed it straight up while he sidestepped in the hallway.

The light smacked the concrete ceiling. The zombie jumped for it, and its speed carried it right by. It tumbled on the slippery tiles, and came to a rest about twenty feet ahead. Victoria still held her light; the beam pierced the bloody eyes of the infected man.

Liam brought his rifle to bear and fired off a wild series of shots. The close quarters amplified the noise and concussive force, causing him to jump even though he was the one pulling the trigger. Victoria's light was unsteady in the chaos.

The zombie moved slowly toward them, unconvinced by the missed shots. Liam's light rolled on the floor, throwing light in mad directions. The monster seemed unable to orient on any one light source, or the humans nearby.

More are coming...

Panic rose in Liam's stomach.

He took careful aim, and put one shot into the face.

Certain he hit it, and with no fanfare, he picked up his own light and they continued down the long hallway.

“Don't stop, Victoria. Run for it.”

They never looked back. They reached the Arch museum entrance and encountered two sets of glass doors. The first set was unlocked so they could enter the airlock between the two portals. The interior doors were locked, however.

“Just shoot it.” She sounded close to panic, too.

He couldn't see any way to avoid shooting the door. He took some comfort that the outer door was closed, and because it opened outward, the zombies would not be able push it open. But having two intact doors would have made him feel twice as safe.

He shot the glass. They carefully made their way through the broken glass frame and were inside the Arch museum. It was the same place where he and Victoria and Grandma had sought shelter on the second night of the disaster.

“Follow me,” he yelled.

The whole complex was underground, underneath the Gateway Arch. The pedestrian tunnel dumped into the large museum about westward expansion—a quaint notion now—which in turned linked with the cavernous ticketing areas. Tunnels led north and south to the legs of the Arch where, in better times, visitors could board the trams to the top of the structure. Two other tunnels led to more glass doors and the outside.

As they ran through the museum, several holes in the ceiling suggested the military's bombs had done their work here. Everything inside the museum had been rearranged, or burnt to a cinder. They could easily climb out any of the many holes they passed, but Liam had a specific place he was trying to reach.

“Why don't we go up, Liam? I want to get out of the dark.”

“When I was looking at Grandma through the binoculars, I saw lots of zombies, pretty much everywhere up top. We're going to try to get into the railroad tunnel. That will keep us off the surface and drop us pretty close to the boats.”

Behind them, they could hear zombies once more.

“They broke through the glass!”

Liam picked up the pace, which was still pretty slow because he had to weave through the wreckage. Girders from the ceiling were on the floor, along with dirt and other matter from up above. The body of the large stuffed buffalo, which had always stood sentinel at the entrance, had been ripped apart. They passed out of the museum and into the ticketing area where the police and gangs had fought. He finally made his way into the side tunnel leading down to the loading area for the south leg of the Arch. That's where they'd find the final duct work into the railroad tunnel.

They arrived at the open door to the maintenance room; the lock had been blown open.

“Through here.”

He ran into the room where they had taken refuge weeks ago, and he briefly looked at the stairwell Victoria had climbed with her flashlight while he was locked behind the grate of the small crawlspace with Grandma. It might have been the death of her if his police friends hadn't gone up and saved her later. With no further reminiscing, he went into the crawlspace with Victoria safely behind him this time.

“Almost there,” he shouted. His ears still pounded.

He happened to look ahead at the exit and saw the faint glimmer of a wire directly across his path. A wire that shouldn't be there. He stopped his crawl and peered at it with his light for a short time.

“Whoa!”

Victoria bumped into him.

“What is it? We can't stop. We just can't.”

“Uh. I think it might be a booby trap. There's a wire across the tunnel just ahead.”

He showed her with his light.

“Oh man. What do we do now?”

“Maybe we could trick a zombie into going down there for us?” Liam was laughing as he said it, but he looked at Victoria's face and saw it light up with an idea, just as his did.

“We can push something through there.”

With great reluctance, they moved back into the maintenance area. Many days ago, they found a rolling creeper, which they used to get Grandma through the tunnel. Something like that would have been perfect, but they had discarded it just outside the tunnel when they were done with it. The next best thing they found was a metal trash can.

“What if the explosion causes the tunnel to collapse?”

As if to mock the question, they heard moans outside the door. There was nothing with enough heft to block the door.

“All we can do now is pray.”

Liam used a broom handle to push the trash can ahead of him in the tunnel. He gave himself maximum distance from the wire, then pushed the trash can as hard as he could with the broom handle. It slid down the slight incline into the wire and he was nearly blinded by the light of the explosion. The concussion roared up the tunnel; though it wasn't powerful enough to injure him, it did cause his ears to go numb.

I guess I didn't think that through.

Victoria said something, but he couldn't hear her. She pushed him firmly to go ahead. She held her light to her face, and though his vision was filled with stars and tears, he could see her mouthing the word.

“Zombies!”

5

The railroad tunnel was shorter than he remembered. Instead of being a hundred feet to daylight, there were but a handful. The bombs had wrecked it. In the place of the covered rails, there was a long gully filled with debris. It was pure luck the collapse didn't block their secret exit.

Victoria pulled him along. He was fully aware of what was going on, but the loud ringing in his ears was very disconcerting, though slowly dissipating. He took that as a good sign. His blurred vision started to return to normal too, the longer he ran in the daylight.

He stole a look behind. No zombies came out of the black hole in the wall.

They will.

The more he ran, the better he felt. Soon they were at the end of the tunnel—where the end would have been—and recognized it as the same spot he had seen Grandma and her captors almost a half hour before. He wondered if there was any chance they were even around anymore.

The cracked landscape made it hard to see much beyond the next hill, but they moved in the direction of the collapsed bridge to the south where the boats were stationed.

“Can you hear me?” she shouted.

He gave her the thumbs up sign as affirmation.

She smiled, but kept moving. She held his hand, guiding him. He felt like he was getting back to normal, but he liked holding her hand so he didn't let go.

He was fully distracted by the soft feel of her skin when they came over a crater lip, directly in front of a rubber boat with four people standing near it.

“Oh sh—”

The soldiers in black were professionals. Duchesne and the big bodyguard carrying Grandma were on the other side of the boat, walking slowly. The woman and a new guy dragged the boat over the cobblestones, but they stopped when Liam appeared. The man in the back pointed his black rifle at them before he could even think about raising his own. He was holding hands, making it virtually impossible to lift a rifle even if he wanted to.

Super-soldier Liam, reporting for duty.

He groaned to himself.

“Drop those weapons.”

They complied. Liam pointed to his pistol, indicating he had it and didn't want to be shot for having it.

“Slowly drop the pistols. And the backpack.”

The Glock was still in the backpack, though he doubted he'd be brave enough to use it against guys like these.

“Come on down, you two. We could hear you yelling for a mile over there.”

Liam felt so stupid. Of course they were yelling. They probably heard the booby trap go off too. Mentally he was smacking his own forehead.

The man ran up and collected their rifles while Duchesne invited them to come to him. The woman had her rifle out, daring him to argue.

Chapter 15: End Times

The NIS team had dragged their boat through the debris so they could launch in the water north of the downed bridge. Duchesne indicated they wanted to get Grandma right to the helicopter, which was across from the Arch on the Illinois side.

They had brought it through the debris on the near end of the downed bridge, but spent a lot of time dealing with zombies. They appeared tired to Liam, but they were close to their goal.

Just before the boat reached the water, the head of the woman next to Liam exploded.

“What—” Liam blurted out.

Two seconds went by. Enough time for him to wonder if any of the blood and gore had gotten on his clothes. He reflexively looked down.

The man who had been carrying the boat with her lost a good chunk of his right shoulder. The force of the gunshot flung him toward the water; he skidded across the wet cobblestones, into the shallow water.

Hayes and the bodyguard with Grandma flung themselves on the ground in front of the boat.

“It's Hayes. Or his floozy. It has to be,” Duchesne yelled to his team.

Liam was paralyzed with fear. He could run away if he chose. His captors were pinned down. But without his weapons he appreciated how much danger they'd be in. He saw the same look in Victoria's eyes.

“We have to stick with them or we're dead,” he said to her as quietly as he could manage between the ringing ears and the crunching noise coming off the water. The big jumble of debris at the Poplar Street Bridge had a leading chaotic edge which splashed and spun as the water brought in more junk. Several loose barges bounced in the swell as well, providing the only hint of stability out there.

“Don't you two think of leaving us. We'll shoot you before you get ten yards. We'll need your services to get over the river.”

Another shot went over their heads, landing in the water just offshore.

Liam looked back to the tower and could just barely make out two small dots on the roof. Hayes and Jane were trying to help him.

“I need you and your gal pal to push the boat in the water for us. We're going to slide along with it. We don't want your Grandma getting hurt now, do we?”

The implicit threat got him moving, but he looked back to Hayes. Would he shoot him for helping Duchesne? Would he know he had no choice?

“OK, let's do this,” he said to Victoria. Together they were able to push the rubber boat the short way down the cobblestones and into the water. As promised, the two agents kept themselves hidden the whole time.

Once in the water, the big man carrying Grandma pulled himself up the far side of the boat and attempted to place Grandma on the floor. He had her most of the way in when a hole appeared in his neck. This time they all heard the crack of the gun up on the tower.

“Dammit, Hayes. You're going to pay for these men!”

“Liam, you and Victoria need to do me a solid. Stand in the water just in front of the boat. I need you to hold it for me, then I'm going to climb in behind you. Remember your Grandma is right at the end of my gun barrel, just in case you were thinking of doing anything heroic.”

With great effort, they managed to form a wall and get Duchesne into his precious boat. Liam was mentally prepared for him to simply drive away, but he ordered them in as well. Once they were all aboard, he explained his plan.

“You two are going to be my meat shields. Just sit by me and we'll all make it safely to the other shore. And you, Great-great-great old lady, get up here, too.”

“But she's...” Liam assumed she was still sleeping, or in a coma, or whatever she was in back in the hotel room. “Alive?”

Liam knew she was alive because Hayes explained he didn't use zombie blood on her, but he couldn't figure out why or how she could sleep through all the excitement back in the room. His incredulity passed as legitimate surprise. Duchesne fed off that while he tried to start the motor.

“Yeah, we're going to have to figure out what superpowers your grandma has. She survived the zombie plague. She's the most important person in the world right now and that idiot Hayes—the man who claims he's trying to stop the disease—is the one attempting to prevent me from getting her to safety. Isn't that ironic?”

So many things flew through his head as he watched Grandma struggle to sit up on the small seat. Both he and Victoria gave her a hand, though Duchesne was careful to ensure they never opened a gap between himself and the big sniper rifle bearing down on him.

“I can't believe you're OK, Grandma. You survived...”

“Oh, my body is just too old and decrepit to get infected, I guess.”

He couldn't tell her she hadn't really been infected. It would decrease his value. As it was, Duchesne gave no indication he was going to take he and Victoria to his base, though he was beginning to think that might be an opportunity.

Unless we end this now.

2

Marty found her seat in the boat. She'd been out cold for most of her fireman's carry ride through the Arch. She woke up just as they left the railroad tunnel. Now she was safely in the boat with the man who wanted her to die as a zombie.

Duchesne fiddled with the engine for a few minutes as they sat in the shallow water. Long enough for Marty to get concerned about the increasing number of zombies walking their direction. She took it as a good sign none of them were runners.

As he worked on the motor, he seemed to talk to calm his nerves. “Every two-bit berg and city upriver is dumping their garbage into the river. Even the end of the world hasn't put an end to human stupidity. Good riddance, I say.”

Finally, the boat engine cranked over.

“Suck it, Hayes.” He reversed the boat from shore, then spun it around. Once they were out on the water, Duchesne allowed them to sit in front of him, since he could sit in front of the motor. Victoria sat next to Marty, while Duchesne made Liam sit next to him.

The water was really moving. It had lots of churn and it tossed small bits of debris among the larger hazards such as rogue boats, loose barges, and driftwood fields. Two bridges upriver had been destroyed, though their decking wasn't visible in the water. Downriver, it appeared that every scrap of debris from all points north had found its way here and smashed itself against the mother lode of detritus.

The blockage started when the deck of the eight-lane highway was blown. She could only speculate on how the blockage grew so large. There must have been long lines of barges that came loose and collided with the downed bridge, and they formed the core holding it all together. As more things arrived at the stoppage, they either threw themselves against immovable objects and were crushed, or they bounced haphazardly in the mad surf until they were thrown on the debris pile out of the water for good.

Big blades of water cut all along the leading edge of the logjam as the fast-moving Mississippi made contact with it. She watched as an empty aluminum canoe twirled and spun in circles as it drew upon the deadly stoppage. It found its way between two 200-foot-long flat-deck barges—also bouncing and banging—and crumpled up as the water caught it and mashed it between the two larger boats.

She made the sign of the cross and said a little prayer.

She was terrified of what would happen if their boat sputtered and died, but she tried not to dwell on that. Instead, she tried to focus on an echo in her head.

It said, “Murderer.”

Oh great. I'm hearing voices.

Trying to find distraction, she looked at Victoria; she was staring off into the distance—at nothing in particular.

Before she could engage her to find out how she was holding up, the boat arrived at a long concrete pier, which previously housed a large floating casino directly across the river from the Gateway Arch. Only the faded name was left on the mud-stained wall. Their tiny rubber boat was dwarfed by tie-downs and boat bumpers against the wall of the pier, but Marty's concern remained with Victoria. She had a pained look on her face. Marty began to think the voice in her head was...

“Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.”

That's impossible.

Somehow she could sense what Victoria was thinking. Not just words, but also a strong new emotion. Grandma had to really focus on the word as it flitted in her mind's eye.

“Revenge.”

The boat neared the wall, but the churn of the river made it very dangerous to try to get close to the ladder going up. Another of Duchesne's dark-clad friends appeared next to the ladder fifteen feet above. He was bent over with his arms out like he wanted something thrown up to him. Duchesne brought the boat around so it was facing upriver, the motor set to go just fast enough to cancel the effect of the current. She turned so she could see him trying to grapple with a tangle of rope. Something snapped against the wall.

“Not a chance, Hayes. You can't hit me from this far out. You're going to kill your precious Grandma first.”

Suddenly Marty had a brilliant flash of insight, through Victoria's eyes. She immediately knew what was going to happen, and what she must do to stop it.

She pulled her legs over the bench so she faced backward.

Victoria, she sensed, was doing the same.

As Duchesne made a large heave with the rope, Marty looked at her great-grandson. He wasn't looking at her. Instead, he was watching Duchesne as the rope he threw came back down on his head.

He wound up to make another toss.

That gave Marty exactly what she needed.

Just a little push.

3

I am Victoria.

She played it over and over in her head as she crossed the ugly river in the floppy rubber boat. The anger she shared when she thought Hayes and Duchesne had murdered Grandma. That's how she saw it at least. They were willing to murder anyone and everyone to advance their plan. The death of Grandma was bad enough, but they had both willingly tried to kill millions. Such evil could not stand. Evil was the one thing she'd been taught since preschool to fear, and resist.

Now she sat next to Marty wondering where their future would take them. She was glad the blood wasn't infected—she owed Hayes a modicum of respect for that—but there were millions, probably billions, of people's blood on the hands of the man sitting not three feet away. He was part of the organization that set all this evil in motion.

She gave a quick glance toward Grandma and could see she was in her own thoughts while doing her best to hold on as the boat bounced and swerved on the choppy water.

And Liam? He was sitting with him.

Victoria actually hated Duchesne. He was a man who reveled in killing Liam's entire family—her boyfriend's family. That made it personal. He also was pretty happy to see the whole world engulfed in zombies because it forced the collapse of the United States. Even her Christian upbringing wouldn't allow her to forgive the man. He sealed his fate when he tried to infect Grandma deliberately just so he could see what happened. Transporting them across this river as meat shields against the sniper rifle was just piling on. She resolved this all would end before they left the boat.

Payback time.

Her faith prohibited any thought of suicide, which was funny to her because two weeks ago that's exactly what she wanted. The first night on the run back in the city there were many times she thought about stopping and letting the nightmares in the darkness slither out and steal her away.

Back then I had nothing to live for.

But she ran, tangentially aware of the magnitude of the sin of killing oneself, but also deeply afraid of dying in such a horrible and gruesome manner. She'd seen it over and over...

Then she found Liam and Marty. They seemed like such down-to-Earth people—and Liam was attractive to her in that scruffy-dorky kind of way. He had beautiful blue eyes and was always smiling—the perfect remedy to her life's problems.

She felt herself smile inwardly at that highpoint of emotions during those early days.

But soon after meeting them, she was presented with the opportunity to act as a decoy against the gang members, allowing Marty and Liam—and Hayes, unfortunately—time to escape the Arch. Was it a sin to commit suicide if you were doing it to help someone else live? She'd have to ask Pastor Beth if she ever made it back to Colorado. She was willing to lay down her life, not just for the new friends she'd found in the faceless crowds downtown, but also to sate her own guilt at running away from her mates on that first night. Finally, she was shot by Hayes, and in her mind, she was sure she was going to die. Ironically, it was to be in Liam's house where she'd find salvation. She was shot in his front door as he and Grandma were taken away. Her last thought was a begging for forgiveness. She was done running.

But she was saved—literally—by her Bible. The very one given to her by Liam as an act of friendship; of love. It had to be a sign from God. She prayed around the clock in those dark days, waiting and hoping Liam would find his way back to her. When he did, she resolved to never lose him again.

Now she saw her chance to make things right—to give Liam and Grandma a hope at freedom. As the small boat pitched and yawed in the water, Duchesne was trying to throw a rope to his minion up top. And—

Grandma!

Victoria could sense it. It was an incredible rush of awareness. A sudden urge by Grandma to push Duchesne into the water.

I love you, Grandma. Let me take this burden.

She only had a moment to decide, but she was a girl of action.

Just a little push.

4

Liam bounced in the boat during the river crossing. He sat next to Duchesne who kept himself crouched low as he piloted them all using the small outboard motor. He was left to wonder what fate awaited them on the far bank. If they made it to the far bank. He tried to ignore the maelstrom of debris thrashing about a hundred yards downriver from their tiny, fragile, air balloon-ish little dingy. Though the motor had already proven temperamental, he resigned his trust to it. He'd go crazy with stress thinking of all the ways they could die down in that wreckage if the boat lost power. There weren't even paddles...

Just ignore it.

They bounced wildly toward some kind of docking facility on the Illinois side. He wondered if he should try to make small talk with Duchesne as they crossed, perhaps to beg for their lives, but the loud motor made that impossible.

He was a few feet from the two most important women in his life right now. He felt a little guilty he didn't feel quite the same about his own mother, but there was something about his great-grandmother and the adventures they shared that drove him to be a man, to be stronger and more resourceful, to be a loving partner. Being around his father caused him to want to offload responsibility, while being around his mother made him feel he had to more carefully manage his emotions. In short, his parents reminded him he was their child. Grandma's needs required the child to be a man. He knew it was unfair, but he was resolute Grandma made him a better person in her own special way.

And Victoria. He had nothing but good things to say about how she'd helped him these many days as well. She was his partner. His equal, if not his better.

He sighed a contented sigh, knowing they would be fine.

As the boat neared the large seawall port, Liam felt a weird emotion swirling through his head. Was it betrayal? Maybe. The word was there, but it had nuance. He focused hard on what he was thinking and feeling. He thought he heard words, but wrote off the impossibility. He couldn't hear thoughts. But still...the emotions formed into words.

Betrayal.

But not exactly.

Betrayal. And Payback.

He worked through it. The word became obvious as the boat bounced near the seawall.

Revenge.

Liam knew he was a bit slower than the women with emotions. Spending days on end with Victoria taught him a lot about the differences. It took him extra time to ruminate on the meaning of emotional words, and try to understand how Victoria saw the same things in entirely different ways. But that's what made things interesting, even in the most mundane settings.

Now he sensed some kind of powerful emotional link with Victoria.

And Grandma?

The boat tossed on the nasty water, sloshing waves back and forth between the boat and seawall. All the while, Duchesne was tossing ropes around. And—

Whoa!

The emotion was overpowering. Both women were broadcasting a message—was it body language—that Liam understood. He assembled the message in an amazingly brief time; he knew what was going to happen and what he had to do. He wasn't about to let either of those women do what they were planning, but he couldn't give away their plan to Duchesne.

Victoria. I've got your back.

Grandma. Thank you for teaching me to be a better man.

He stood up, catching Duchesne at the perfect moment of vulnerability. The man was tossing the rope in a ridiculous way, trying to get it high enough so his friend up on the top of the seawall could catch it and tie it off. The opportunity was golden.

Liam figured he was going to give him—

Just a little push.

Yeah, just a little one.

When the moment came, he threw himself at the distracted Duchesne. He was joined in perfect unison by the other two. Liam watched in horror as the rear of the boat pitched downward at the worst possible time.

In one confused mass, all four of them tumbled over the edge.

5

Liam's first thought, after popping out of the water after their big splash, was how bad the water smelled. On a good day, the Mississippi might smell like diesel fumes and dead fish, but today it smelled like diesel fuel, dead fish and, well, just death.

When they hit the water, he was able to grab Grandma's top so when he popped out, she popped out as well.

Victoria was further away, but thrashing hard to push Duchesne away from Grandma. He broke away from her and attempted to make for the seawall. The problem for him, and for them all, was the current. It pushed them all back out into the main channel because of the swirling eddies along the debris-strewn shore. The seawall gave no purchase to someone swimming below, and in no time, they all drifted in the main channel, a quarter mile from the end of the line.

Victoria made it to Liam and Grandma. She immediately took some of the load from him as Grandma was unable to swim on her own.

“I should tell you both,” she said as she spat out some nasty water, “I can't swim.”

“No, Grandma, you shouldn't have told us that.” He laughed, despite it all.

They were into the strong current twenty-five yards offshore. It drove them in the direction of the massive disaster wrapped around the gigantic catastrophe. They tried to paddle and swim toward shore, but with Grandma in tow they just couldn't break free of the main current. They were in the event horizon.

Victoria responded in a weak voice, “My God. Look!”

From their vantage point, the wreck became more imposing as they neared. There were well over fifty barges wedged into the side of the bridge; some of them canted dangerously as they bobbed up onto the debris. The tips of others pointed up out of the water while the bulks of their hulls remained hidden beneath the waves. They watched as an open-topped 200-foot barge ran into the pile ahead of them. It came to rest nearly sideways, and listed toward the surface as it was absorbed by the massive frontal wave. The powerful current reached inside—it was empty—and simultaneously held it in place as it began to fill up.

No, not empty. Oh no.

As the runaway barge tipped further and further in their direction, Liam could see into the hold. It contained a large number of bodies. He scanned other barges on the pile for signs they too were holding similar cargo. He assumed it was illegal to fill barges with dead people and send them downriver.

I'm going to blast those towns upstream when I write my book.

They were going to drift into the blockade. The only variable was where. Even that wasn't much of a question since they had very little ability to alter course.

All along the front edge of the debris field, large pieces of driftwood smashed into heavier objects such as concrete or barges—and they broke apart with sickening cracks. Wooden and fiberglass boats shared a similar fate. The only things that seemed to survive the impacts were the barges themselves. Most went in front-to-back, which made swimming near them suicide. There was no possible way to climb on either end in the tumult. If they could approach from the side, they still didn't have a great chance, but it wasn't exactly impossible either.

“Guys, we have to swim hard for that sinking barge with all the bodies in it,” Liam shouted.

They didn't have time debate it. The women made no protests, and paddled with Liam in the direction he wanted to go. It was a tough swim, and it took them further out into the channel, but there were no similar pieces of safety between them and either shore.

He gave one cursory head spin, searching for Duchesne. He hoped he'd drowned, but figured they'd not get that lucky. He did see rope guy running downriver along the shore. He wondered if he would try his luck out on the flotsam and jetsam to save his boss.

He thrashed his legs under the water, and drove the triad into the current heading straight for the sinking barge. He hoped their timing would be right to suck them directly into its hold, and they would have a little time to climb out before it tipped over or sank.

Risky. Very risky.

His mind fought against the illogical notion of heading for the grand disaster before them.

Please God, help me get Victoria to safety. Please God, help me to get Grandma to safety. And please God, if it's your will, help me find safe harbor as well.

The noise from the blockade increased as they approached. The cracks of wood. The groan of the metal hulls. The chaotic splashing of water and debris out front.

25 yards.

15 yards.

They were on the glide path he wanted, but he continued to kick as hard as his tired body allowed.

“Swim as hard as you can as far as you can into the barge. We need to get in and find a ladder before it capsizes.” Already the barge had a severe list. Liam hoped for a little luck, or a little help from God.

5 yards. They were in the spray of the leading waves.

The barge had filled most of the way with water and had settled down as the heavy load stabilized. It continued to fill, but they were able to get across the upriver lip of the barge's hold without too much trouble. The cargo sent panicked shivers down Liam's spine. Up close, the stiff dead were terrible.

Victoria screamed, “Oh God, no. No!”

If this was a normal sinking boat, Liam would be scared enough. Getting across the thirty feet of the hold as it filled with water would be a major challenge. But this barge was filled with dead bodies, and as it filled with water, it shifted and rearranged them. All of them seemed to have bullet holes in their heads adding to their grotesque appearance. They were once zombies...

“God almighty. Poor souls.” Marty wailed as she too succumbed to the horror. She recoiled as she touched them.

“Don’t stop. Just get through them,” Liam shouted with fear in his voice. He pulled Grandma across.

He had no choice. Without guns, knives, or spears, the only weapon they could wield was speed. There were easily a thousand dead bodies floating in the eight feet of red-tinged water inside the barge hold. The darkness at the bottom, and the movement he imagined there, nearly caused him to “break and run” as they said in his computer game. He wanted more than anything to just swim ahead and leave his friends behind. Wanted more than anything to be out of this deathly sick water forever. It was completely irrational and was the last thing he would do at any other time. But now, he was ashamed he even thought it.

The middle of the barge wall did have a ladder leading out of the hold up to the narrow deck around the hull. But the strong currents flowing into and around the hold made getting there difficult and slow.

He felt his legs and lower body being pushed, pulled, and punched by whatever was below. Taken with the cracking sounds from crushed debris and the noise and spray of the filthy water, he found himself overwhelmed with stimuli. It took everything he had to reach the ladder, and it took every ounce of his being to let Victoria go first so she could help get Grandma up the ladder. Meanwhile, he left himself exposed to the lurking evil below the waves.

The barge started to tilt more severely. Victoria was at the top, but Grandma was still on the ladder. She was unable to lift her leg from rung to rung and hang on at the same time. Victoria had to come back down and lift her slowly and deliberately up each rung. It was slow going.

“You have to hurry. Pull her up!” he said with something approaching anger. Lower, he said, “Please.” He felt a lump in his throat as he couldn't shake the thought something was going to grab him from below. So many bodies, some of them almost had to be reanimated zombies. It was how it happened in the movies.

He gripped the ladder as the whole barge shifted. He stepped up a rung as Grandma started to move up. The water inside the hold met with a new influx of water from over the side, and the wave action shifted the horrible cargo, bringing corpses to the surface again and exposing him to the stench of the recently deceased. It was a powerful and disgusting miasma of rot and death.

And they are moving down there.

He was paralyzed with fear for several long moments as his imagination reveled in the drama. Finally, he checked on the women. He was shocked to see the ladder was empty. They had made it up and moved out of his sight on the top deck. He had to assume they were safely on firmer ground—well, as safe as anyone could be in the middle of the river on a great shipwreck wrapped around a highway bridge.

The barge continued to tip upward, and the water pulled him down as the boat shifted. The cargo hold was nearly topped off with water. Some was rushing back out. Would it sink by tipping straight up and down as he had seen with other barges? He didn't have time to wonder. It tipped back down to a shallow angle, and was held there by the rush of incoming water. Amidst the sloshing cadavers, he turned around to try the ladder again. It wasn't as steep now though the boat was starting to shift downward once more. He'd have to hold on carefully to each rung so as to not slip off, and he'd have trouble getting over the lip at the top, but it wouldn't be impossible.

He had just found purchase on the rungs with his feet when something grabbed his leg and pulled.

The shock forced him to slip from the rung he'd been holding for support. As he dipped below the waves, he reminded himself to thank God.

You saved two out of three of us. Thank you.

He waited for the bite, too exhausted to fight it.

6

The expected bite never came. As he regained the surface, a living person used Liam's body to pull himself up and over to grab the ladder. In a moment of resignation, he could only watch as Duchesne ascended right over him. He held the ladder and kicked at Liam to get him to float out into the dead bodies. An effort which worked. He went underwater as he slid backward through the frozen arms.

When Liam came back up, he saw Duchesne made it to the top of the ladder. Liam struggled to stay afloat; he pushed off the bodies as they shifted in the current.

Don't look at them.

He ignored the rotting faces and focused on Duchesne as he crested the top. He waited while the boat tried to settle again. The lower it got, the easier it would be to gain footing on the deck. This gave Liam the opportunity to catch up. He pulled himself through the bodies, grabbed the ladder, and hauled himself up. A few rungs were all it took to reach the man's lower pant leg.

Liam wrapped his arm around Duchesne's ankle and flung himself outward. Whatever Duchesne had been doing, he lost his grip and fell roughly into the pool of undead. Liam held on the whole way down. It wasn't a soft landing for either of them. Duchesne was beyond angry.

“Liam, you just signed your own death warrant.”

He had fallen more or less straight down, but the barge itself constantly shifted as it slid up and down on its perch on the front edge of the blockage. Duchesne and Liam and their dead friends sloshed around as if in a bathtub.

“All you do is kill people. Why can't you just let us go? We just want to be left alone.”

Liam let himself be pulled with the water away from the ladder, while Duchesne had pushed his way through the dead to be closer to it. Liam was willing to let him climb again because he didn't think he had the energy to stop him. He knew he couldn't win a physical altercation.

Duchesne drew up the first few rungs of the ladder and turned back to Liam. “You're just a little kid. You have no concept what it means to control the fate of billions, so pardon me if I don't care about you or your opinion. I really wanted to keep the three of you together—see how valuable you are to HQ—but I think I've had enough of you and your girlfriend. All I need is your Grandma. You're going to die on this wreck.”

The whole barge shifted considerably as he digested the words. Duchesne held on to the ladder while he went sloshing twenty or thirty feet sideways. He tried to see out of the hold to get a better sense of the wider disaster, but he could only see the tops of the pylons of the nearby bridge.

Duchesne reached the top lip despite all the movement.

“Liam, on second thought, I think I'll do some experimenting with Victoria, just for fun. Consider it a parting gift to for your antics back on the interstate.”

He was so tired, he could only fight back with words. “You already paid me back for that one. Remember? You punched me!”

Instead of a witty rejoinder, Duchesne simply smiled and extended his middle finger.

Liam dug deep. If he was goading him to action—and Liam didn't care—it worked. He began pushing through the dead. He wished he'd been able to get some payback on the thugs who beat up Victoria back at the Arch. Now Duchesne claimed he was going to hurt her, too.

I can't allow that.

**

I am Victoria.

After jumping out of the barge to the nearby roof of a house, Victoria helped Grandma come down off the side of the barge as it dipped low. The wave action helped, though she still slammed down hard.

“Gotcha, Grandma,” she said just after an “oomph” sound escaped.

“Thank you. Sorry for that.”

Unlike the inside of the barge, the world out in the open of the massive river stoppage was in a deadly flux. They sat on the remains of a shingled rooftop. It had been pushed up and onto the debris pile. She had no clue how it held together.

“Grandma, I have to help Liam. He hasn't come over the top yet.”

“Yes, dear. I'll be fine down here. Go!”

In the time it took for her to get Grandma settled on the roof, the barge had pushed up and then fallen back down. She could see a large group of loose barges heading their way from up the river. It looked like someone had deliberately let them all go at the same time. She estimated they had a couple minutes before the wave of iron came slamming in. She intended to use that time well.

First, she ran over some broken wooden beams that separated from the roof and grabbed a rope hanging over the edge of Liam's barge. It took incredible effort, as her upper body wasn't as strong as her leg muscles, but she gained purchase on the tilting top deck of the flat barge. She could see down into the hold. Duchesne hung from the top rung of the ladder, yelling back to Liam. Liam appeared tiny in the morass of bodies sloshing inside the gigantic hold.

She sized up her options and ran along the edge as she lined Duchesne up for a powerful body slam. He gave Liam the finger as she left her feet. She didn't believe it when he started to turn her way.

7

He was already on his way to try to stop Duchesne when he saw Victoria run up the deck from behind and push him so he fell backward off the ladder. She performed magnificently as she both grabbed him and pushed herself off the side of the deck. They went tumbling into the middle of the barge, and sloshing water carried them all the way out to the edge. He paddled toward them, beat down but not quite out.

Duchesne recovered quickly. He pulled himself onto the upriver side of the deck, which sat near the surface of the water, and kept himself steady. Liam watched as all kinds of small boats, shipping containers, and a million kinds of floating debris moved to and fro not far out in the river. Every last piece headed for the glorified beaver dam.

“Nice try, Victoria. I was hoping we'd get a chance to meet up close and personal, for Liam's sake, but I think I may just leave you both here.” He wiped blood from under his nose, and angrily spit it from his mouth.

“You will never touch me, you sick sonofabitch. I'll hold you down and drown you myself before I ever let you take us again.”

Liam reached her side, unsure on how she planned to execute that threat, but ready to help.

“Too funny. What are you two kids going to do from down there in all those dead bodies? You going to make them come back to life and jump out and kill me?”

Could we?

Liam looked around, wondering if any of these bodies were still alive. Zombie “alive” anyway.

“Maybe I'll just run around this vessel, grab Grandma, and leave you two here? Let the river take care of you.” After a brief pause, he reconsidered. “No, that makes me sound inept. Maybe I'll come back and shoot you both from my helicopter. Hmm, how's that sound?”

Liam saw something approaching on the river. Heading his way, fast.

“Duchesne, what will it take for you to help us get out of here alive if we promise to help you with your experiments? I hate your guts, but the safety of that fortress sounds pretty good from where we sit.”

“Liam, no! What are you saying? I'm not going with him, safety or not. You said we'd take our chances out in the world, together.”

“Aww, how sweet. You two can argue about it all you want. I've already decided I can do this without you two.” He pulled out a handgun from a holster just behind his hip. “Maybe a helicopter is too dramatic. Maybe I'll make sure it's done right and shoot you both myself, right now.”

He knelt on lip of the barge, unable to stand up. He brought the gun to bear, even as the ups and downs of the wave action intensified. Only Liam knew why.

Liam watched the barge towboat—basically a huge tugboat designed to be the engine for dozens of linked floating cargo carriers—pushed a handful of barges directly for them. He heard a dull roar, suggesting great violence was approaching from out on the water.

He threw his last die.

“You lose, Duchesne. Hayes used fake blood on Grandma. She wasn't infected. She isn't the cure. Your men died for nothing. Now you'll die for nothing, too.”

He looked at Liam for a long couple of seconds, calculating. He lowered his gun, just a little.

“So young and naive. I'd almost rather keep you alive just to watch your expressions over and over.”

He seemed to think on it.

“Try this one for size. Are you ready? Hayes and I agreed to tell you that so you'd be inclined to leave him up in his ivory tower.”

He found that very funny, giving a hearty laugh.

“So you see, she was infected. Checkmate, you little punk.”

Liam didn't know how to respond. It was one of his rare moments where his reservoir of snark just spit out blanks. The boat began to lean upward, forcing Duchesne to grab on tighter to the lip of the hold. It didn't stop him from continuing to prod Liam.

“The best part is, you'll never know. You're going to die in there. So long.” He laughed, and tried to raise his weapon, but he became distracted as the tipping accelerated. He managed to fire once before the end.

“What the…!”

The leading barge was on course to t-bone them. It pushed a rush of water in front of it. When the wave arrived, it first dropped the barge down in a great trough, and then raised the entire barge up and then down as the crest arrived. Duchesne fell backward over the side; he got sucked between both boats. The incoming barge hit the blockade almost exactly where Duchesne had been standing, and the violence of it warped the heavy steel frame of their hull. Liam and Victoria sloshed hard against the incoming wave and were thrown again toward the opposite side of their boat. The whole thing shifted under them as the captain of the towboat plowed his cargo into the blockage. It went right over the top of them.

Liam's final act was to pull Victoria directly in front of him, so that he had his arms and legs around her. She did the same in response. He had no time for words, but he looked directly into her beautiful emerald eyes and gave her a wink. It was the kind of thing Grandma liked to do when she was up to mischief. Now it felt like an appropriate remembrance of her.

She has no fear. I wonder if my eyes appear as strong to her?

The driving force of the rogue barge pushed theirs down into the undertow, and drained all the bodies, their own included, into the river, and then under the debris field.

He had just enough time to thank God for letting him die with his friend.

It never occurred to him to pray for a miracle. He'd long since assumed he'd used them all up.

Chapter 16: Tribulation

Marty felt Victoria set her down on the smelly surface of the roof. She encouraged Victoria to run off and help Liam. After a short rest and a short crawl to somewhere a little safer, she felt a head rush as she passed out.

“Hello, Martinette.” The entity using her late husband's identity was back. He stood in front of the open door of the strange room with the computer sitting on the table. “You've done it.”

Marty stepped slowly toward the portal.

“What is all this? What will I find inside?”

“The end. And the beginning.”

Marty reached her limit with his doublespeak. “I will not go in that room until you give me a straight answer.”

Al smiled. “I have no doubt you'd stand here for eternity, my dear.” He stepped into the room, and went to the other side of the 8088 computer sitting on the table. “This really is the end of the line for you, Marty. No one can get you across the river,” he spoke faster, “but you can still save the kids. That's worth coming in here, isn't it?”

“I'm...dead?” She looked over her shoulder to see the stars above. “Oh dear Lord, the stars are going out.” She struggled to keep her composure.

“Yes. I told you before, we're together inside that marvelous head of yours. But, this place is real. You can really save them. All you have to do is come to me.”

She didn't want to surrender the vision of the starfield, though it darkened at an alarming rate.

“So you can help me save them?”

“Together, I think we can, though you may not like my methods.”

That gave her pause. An image popped in her head of a pitchfork-wielding devil. A smooth-talking, dangerous being, full of seemingly good ideas that are actually traps for mankind. She was raised believing the Devil was real. Lately she'd seen the dead walking, the innocent die, and a too-good-to-be-true mirage of her husband whispering ideas to her in her mind. It wasn't a far reach to see evil at play.

“Marty, you know I'm not the Devil. Why do you think such horrible thoughts of me?”

“Because you've done nothing to help me all the times you've visited.” But she halted again. That wasn't exactly true. “Well, I suppose some of what you said was useful. I just don't know who or what you are. That makes it hard to trust you.”

“Fair statement. But your friends are out there now. Do you want to know who I really am, or would you prefer to save their lives?”

It wasn't a difficult choice, put in the starkest terms.

“Alright. As long as I don't have to sell my soul. I won't do that for any price.”

“That's a deal. For now, let's see what your computer terminal will let us do.” He motioned for her to come through the door.

Marty took a tentative step forward, and stood at the threshold. Many things swirled through her head, including thoughts of God, death, and the destruction she'd witnessed. But she also saw Al, the real Al, in her mind. She pictured him back at home, sitting on the couch reading his newspaper. He looked up and smiled at her. A small but significant symbol of his undying love, even as he neared his own passing. She also thought of Liam and Victoria…

“I see them. They fell in the water.”

Trap or not, she charged through the doorway to be near the computer. “What do we do?”

“That's my girl,” he said with the thick Jersey drawl he turned on when he wanted to impress her.

A spark of energy coursed through her and reached out to Al and to the ancient computer console. Rather than make any effort at working the ugly gray keyboard, “Al” just put data on the screen using a mix of voice commands and complex hand motions. An incredible amount of data displayed at first, but he pared it down at an impressive speed. What was left on the screen was a series of dots. Two blue dots marked Liam and Victoria—very close together but underneath the collapsed bridge. Beyond them was another blue light—her. She was almost directly above the other two. Appropriate, as they were even now slipping below her under the wreck. Elsewhere the screen was filled with red dots. Some were very close. Since she didn't see other people walking around the debris, she assumed they were zombies.

Now most of the red dots disappeared, leaving only a handful of yellow dots.

“OK, these are the ones we want. The swimmers. One is nearby.”

“Are you saying this computer can control the zombies?”

“Wouldn't that be great? No, Martinette, I'm saying this terminal will allow us to project emotion to one particular zombie, much like you could sense the thoughts and emotions of Victoria and Liam on the rubber boat. Only this time, the link isn't with someone close to you, which is why we need this computer to focus it.”

“But the zombies are dead. Right?”

“Unfortunately, yes. But they still have primitive functions requiring low-level activity in their brains. Motor control. Hand-eye coordination. Hunger. That sort of thing. They may look evil, but they're not possessed demons. They're more akin to rabid animals. Those animals are filled with primal needs. All we're going to do is give a nudge toward one of those needs.”

He began entering a long sequence of characters, much too fast for Marty's tired eyes to follow. It took several minutes, leaving her itching to ask what was taking so long.

“I sense your concern, but time doesn't flow the same when the brain is near death. Trust me. Rest assured this little computer is merely symbolic. Your brain is the real engine I'm manipulating. I'm working as fast as your brain can process data.”

“Oh dear. I'm afraid my old brain isn't much good for that. This is the first time I've used a computer.” She gave a little chuckle despite the circumstances.

“Don't worry about that. Your brain is already a supercomputer, even if you don't use physical computers.”

“OK, I think I've got everything lined up. Sadly, the element of chance cannot be factored out of my equations. This is, as you would say, a best guess.”

“I guess you can't be a Devil or an Angel if you aren't all-powerful. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.”

“Not even God would want to eliminate random chance. If that were true, nothing would be able to happen without His express consent. Why would a supreme being would want that kind of minutia to tend? To say nothing of free will.”

“So you could still be a Devil. Oh my lands.”

“I guess you'll just have to find out when you find out, Martinette. Are you ready to roll the dice?”

“I don't gamble.”

“Fair enough. I'll do it.”

He simulated a cup of dice being tossed. To Marty's dismay, more and more dice spilled from the cup. It was a never-ending stream of six-sided chance cubes coming out of an impossibly deep cup.

All she could do was pray.

2

Liam was in a dream world. He opened his eyes during his underwater journey, and was dismayed to look down into the greenest water he had ever seen. Light filtered down through holes in the pile up above, into the murky water, and it stretched down below them. His eyes burned in the dirty water, but he didn't figure he'd be needing them if he was dead.

From below, he saw something impossible.

I say that word a lot these days.

An impossible hand reached up to him.

The hand was attached to an arm, which was connected to a body. The thing's face was death itself. Black eyes. White skin. Nondescript black clothes.

Drowning and death by zombie. What a way to go.

He hoped Victoria had her eyes closed so she didn't have to meet her fate like this.

The zombie swam directly at them, even as the current pushed them downriver underneath the monstrous wreck. Liam imagined himself kicking it, but the current was too strong to move his legs.

The zombie rammed them. Instead of chomping a leg or hanging on to get a better place to bite them, it kept kicking upward. It changed their trajectory in the current. Instead of going down or sideways in the turbulence, they went up.

His head popped up in a cave of sorts. The zombie still pushed upward, even though they were now half out of the water.

“Victoria!”

“How did you do that?”

He had no time to respond. He wondered what he should do to the zombie swimming against him like a robot. They were all intertwined in some metal supports from the downed bridge. He grabbed on as best he could. The concrete deck was in pieces but the flat surface was just behind them.

Should I kick him away or say thanks?

It felt horrible but he kicked the zombie away. It lost contact with his body, squirted by Victoria—giving her a terrible fright—and fell under the surface going toward the back of the small cave. It kicked the whole way.

I'm so sorry. And thank you.

“We're still alive, Liam. This is a miracle.”

Thinking of the mysterious zombie, he wanted to agree. It did seem like a miracle, or else really good luck.

Victoria responded, “Thank you, God!”

He didn't have time to solve it. Liam used the support beams to work himself around the tangled mess of crumpled superstructure, toward the opening up to the surface of the wreck. Victoria followed.

“You saw Duchesne die, right? That wasn't just a dream, was it?”

Liam replied to her. “He was—”

He paused. Duchesne definitely fell directly into the path of the incoming juggernaut, but he'd read enough books to know that didn't mean anything.

“He's most likely dead. Though I'd have told you we were most likely dead, too, if you had asked a minute ago. I think we're safe for the moment.”

Inwardly, Liam knew that last bit was a stretch. None of them were safe in the post-collapse world, but more immediately, they were in mortal danger just for being on the shifting river wreck. They still needed to find a way off.

He reached the sunlit hole in the broken bridge deck above them. There was plenty of room for him to crawl through and slide onto the surface. He landed on the side of a flipped barge, floating as part of the mass of junk. More free-floating barges were crashing into the blockade. They needed to get off the drift.

He could see a way through to the nearby roof where he hoped Grandma was still waiting for them. “Come on, girlfriend.” He was momentarily giddy at being alive; at being with her.

The grinding sound of all the shifting pieces of the bridge was unnaturally loud. He gained some height as he climbed the ribbing of a shipping container to get a better view of the whole wreck. He reached the top and figured out he was almost precisely at the point where he'd fallen in. The boat that saved him from Duchesne was directly ahead of him. It consisted of three barges in a row pushed by a burly tug that threw up huge rooster tails of propeller churn behind it. Like an icebreaker, it was intentionally pushing itself into the immovable object...

“Victoria, we don't have much time. Look!” He pointed to the ship as she joined him on the container's top, though it was impossible to miss.

Victoria took in the scene for a few moments, and seemed more concerned than Liam about the location of the roof—now in line to be run over. She didn't see Grandma where she'd left her.

For a panicked moment, he thought she was also sucked under by the big wave. Nothing could have survived the impact.

He took another quick look upriver. There were dozens of loose barges coming in their direction. They bounced off the piers of the bridges upriver like billiard balls redirecting after a powerful break. The huge logjam on which they stood couldn't last forever with such overwhelming weight bearing down on it.

“There she is!” Victoria screamed in joy. Grandma had moved from her roof to the inside of a partially crumpled shipping container. She was out of the direct path of the towboat. A zombie was sprawled on the debris nearby, though it wasn't moving very much. Victoria started to climb down. Liam took a few more seconds to get his bearings on Grandma before following. He also looked toward the Missouri side, hoping for an obvious escape route. The Illinois side was not an option because of the efforts of the powerful ship trying to cut open the blockade.

Back to St. Louis we go.

3

Victoria reached Grandma a few moments before him. They hugged each other like long lost friends. Liam was tempted to try to make it a three-person hug, but opted to save the celebration for terra firma.

“I saw you kids in a dream. You were swimming.” She let out a weak laugh. “I thought I finally bought the farm.”

Liam and Victoria traded concerned looks.

“Yeah, we did go for a dip.” Liam wasn't ready to tell her how they were saved, though at some point he wanted to sit down with her and have a long, peaceful chat about everything he'd seen and done the past couple weeks. For now, the threats of the moment overshadowed any deeper discussion.

Liam let slip a bad curse word. He couldn't help himself once recognized the identity of the zombie on the ground at his feet. With a closer look, he determined he wasn't infected.

Duchesne wasn't a zombie, but his body was ruined and bloody like one. Apparently he'd been tossed up onto the wreckage by the same giant wave which sucked them under. Instructing Grandma to stay put, he and Victoria moved closer to the injured man; he was on his back staring at the sky very near the water's edge. As they arrived over him, his eyes focused. One of his hands was nearly severed and he had many lacerations along that side of his body. The wooden planks beneath him were stained red.

“Liam. Help me. You must. I can save your Grandma.”

Liam was horrified to realize he wanted to help the broken man. Despite everything Duchesne had done. Despite the fact he had to be lying. He tore off his t-shirt and tried to staunch the bleeding.

He spoke to him in a strained voice. “Did you infect my Grandma? I have to know.”

His only reply was a bloody-lipped smile. One of his eyes was swelled shut and he looked pale.

“Liam, no. You can't help him. We have to get Grandma to safety. You have to let him go. There is no cure.”

Turning up to look at Victoria, he said, “But he'll die if I don't help him.” Turning back, he continued, “He has to save her.” He felt the tears welling up behind the anger.

“He's dead already. As much as I hate him, I wouldn't let him die if I could save him. Out here, on this floating nightmare, nobody can.”

“She's right, Liam. She's honest. I like that about her.” He tilted his head slightly in her direction, “And because you were honest, I'll be honest with you. Hayes put a tracking device in your phone and we've been tracking your movements all this time. Cool trick, huh?”

“I already told you it was always off. I was saving it for the day phone service returned so I could call my parents.” She had a defiant look as she stood above him.

“We tracked you whether it was on or off.”

“But when did you put it in? I never let it out of my sight.”

Duchesne gave a wet laugh. “You'll have to ask Hayes. Not my concern.”

He kept talking, with increasing difficulty. “Liam, listen. I need you.”

Liam warily moved closer, still holding his bloody shirt on the man's side in a futile attempt to prolong his life.

“History will look unkindly on what we did for our country.” He was glassy-eyed as he spoke. “It's up to you to set the record straight. We were building a better country so we could lead the world as we were meant to do. This was your country. Your tribe. Tell everyone the truth of it.”

Liam was shocked at the audacity. His reply reflected his anger.

“You mean the truth about how you unleashed a plague so you could eliminate your political enemies? You did all this to kill women like my Grandma Rose. Are you nuts?”

Another wet giggle. “No, listen. We were making something better out of the world. People like your dad were the ones ruining it. You have to see that now…”

“Wait. What? My dad?”

“Oh.” He coughed for twenty or thirty seconds, then tried to catch his breath for an equal amount of time. “I may have left that part out.” Blood drained from the side of his mouth and he smacked his lips to clear it.

Liam felt himself walking the razor's edge between sobbing and stabbing the man in the heart. He did everything he could to stay in between the lines.

“Please. Tell me what my dad has to do with all this. Was he—”

The conspiracy gene activated.

“—NIS?”

Duchesne coughed out a spray of blood with his laugh, forcing Liam and Victoria to recoil. The bottom half of his face was splattered with it. Still, he motioned with one finger for Liam to get closer. He drew him in all the way to his face.

His voice became a whisper, “The NIS would never...take a traitor like your dad.” He made a weak effort to spit on Liam, but he saw it coming. He moved back to safety.

“Traitor? You're the traitor. You betrayed the whole human race!” Liam pulled back his shirt, causing a slight whimper from the dying man.

“But I never betrayed the United States of...” He trailed off. His eyes rolled up into his head.

The situation reminded Liam of another death he'd witnessed back at Elk Meadow. Colonel McMurphy came to him after he was infected and just before his death asked him to consider finding another camp so they could test Grandma. He'd already resolved never to go near a government camp again—a decision which proved correct. At the time, Liam said nothing, not wanting to take a dump on the man's last words. This time however, he was ready to unload.

“Not only am I going to do everything I can to get the history books correct, I'm going to write my own book and tell mankind about your plague. I'm going to do everything I can to expose you to the world as the piece of filth you are. I'll kill all your NIS people for causing this. I'll destroy your fortresses. I'll raise an army. Your name will be synonymous with coward. Mankind will spit at the mere mention of the name Duchesne. I will—”

He went on for many seconds before Victoria interrupted him.

“Liam. He's gone.”

He just stared. He had so much more to say. So much to unload on the man who, on the face of it, was directly responsible for every piece of this broken bridge, every zombie walking the Earth, and every dead person now fading from life's story. He could hardly accept the impossibility that his life would intersect with the one man responsible for bringing the fictional world of zombies to his own doorstep. It gave him some comfort to know whatever else happened today, at least this man was dead. He really was going to write a book someday. He willed himself to remember Duchesne's last words for the final chapter.

Grandma broke his introspection. “Liam, he's dead. You've got to go.”

Liam looked up at Grandma and his eye caught sight of a small black drone many feet above her. He didn't linger on it.

“OK. We have to keep moving. This whole dam is about to collapse.” He pointed over his back at the barge still assaulting the debris and the multitude of loose barges coming down the river behind it.

“I'm exhausted. I can't even move. Doctor would probably say I had a stroke.” She laughed, but not convincingly. “I don't think I can make it to the shore from here.” She pointed to the Illinois side.

“Sorry, Grandma. We have to go that way.” He thumbed toward the Missouri side, which was twice as far.

“Oh dear. You two should go. Get to safety and I'll take my chances here.”

He experienced deja vu. Almost two weeks ago, he was faced with a similar dilemma as he and Grandma talked about leaving the city or staying in her home. At the time, Liam had thought about leaving her, if only so he could run and get his dad to take care of her. Now, the notion of leaving her never crossed his mind. He wasn't going to sacrifice all the miracles that helped her survive this long.

“No, Grandma. You're always coming with us.”

Rather than discuss it, he grabbed Grandma around the back, and motioned for Victoria to do the same. With a helper under each arm, she hobbled along the shifting debris. He couldn't help but feel the weight of the decision, once made. Looking ahead, it was daunting. He couldn't look behind now, but the chugging engines of the towboat, the overarching aroma of death, and the creaking and crunching sounds and vibrations of the garbage and debris under them was overpowering. As emphasis, the towboat captain began to lay on his air horns.

“My heavens, more sirens.”

Liam was encouraged to make something happen. “Move up there. That beam looks like it reaches that other flipped barge. We can run along that if we can get up there.”

They moved up, slowed to a crawl when they had to balance along the shaky beam. Some of the loose barges slammed into the blockage directly in front of them. Without a powerful tug behind them, they didn't have enough force to break the blockade, but as they piled up one after the other, they pushed the existing debris further and further upward toward them. It also increased the vibrations throughout the wreckage.

Victoria slipped as she reached the hull of the flipped barge. She stabilized herself and had a look of dismay at how close she'd come to falling over the side. The slimy bottom of the overturned barge was a considerable obstacle. They paused while trying to determine what to do.

Victoria asked, “Can we slide down it?”

It was canted slightly toward the downstream side of the mountain. Falling off the backside would put them back into the core of the wreckage, but there was no way to see what they'd be falling into. Victoria and Liam might get lucky, but Grandma probably couldn't handle such a ride.

“I have an idea. Grandma, I'm going to lay down and you're going to lay on my back. Hold onto my neck like a piggy back ride, OK?”

He figured she would argue as she was wont to do, but this time she said nothing. It took a minute to situate herself, but they got it worked out. Liam moved along the edge of the barge, using the angle of the bottom and side of the hull as a way to hang on as he moved from the front to the back end. Since his head and arms were higher than his feet as he slithered along, he was able to prevent himself from sliding down what was essentially a slimy piece of playground equipment. His bare chest and pants were a disaster, covered with slime and who-knows-what from the river, but at least they made progress. Victoria did the same, using her ruined white shirt and jeans to slide along.

When they reached the end of the barge, they saw what was beyond the hull. A large gap to the water below. There were a couple of zombies splashing down there. If they'd rushed their plan, they'd have slid off the edge and fallen twenty or more feet into the water.

Liam re-adjusted Grandma so she was next to him. Victoria dropped the ten feet over the side, to the deck of a small commercial fishing boat jammed in among the empty barges. It was covered in mud, as if it had been dredged from a mud bank before floating here.

“I'm sorry, Grandma, you're going to get messy.”

“It's OK, I'm due for a washing anyway.” She gave him her patented wink as she dropped over the side with his help. Victoria was on the bottom to grab her and make sure she reached the bottom safely. Together, they slipped on the muddy planks.

Liam was about to drop down himself when he saw the powerful tug start to push through the debris. In slow motion, he watched the towboat move faster and faster into the wreck, as if drilling inward. It broke through. The far pylon that once supported the bridge above fell over as everything broke loose. It made a huge splash downriver and threw water so high in the air he could see it over the wreckage pile.

The blockade runner blared his horn in triumph as he chugged through.

Knowing it was impossible for Grandma, he still said it.

“Run!”

4

They were very close to Missouri-side pier of the fallen bridge. Liam took some comfort the pier was still there, as it would hold some of the wreckage in place even if the rest of the dam cut loose. However, as more and more pieces of debris peeled off the blockage to follow the towboat, the middle would continue to get smaller. They wouldn't be safe until they were off the water.

There was no obvious path to get to solid ground. Most of what remained were various sizes and shapes of barges jammed together, but they shifted dangerously up and down with the wave action and impacts from arriving debris.

“Liam, I'm done. I can't cross that. Al said I wouldn't make it to safety.”

“Moses is already ashore. You'll make it to the promised land of Missouri.” He knew she wouldn't know he was talking about his rifle, which was laying somewhere near where they launched the motorboat.

Scanning the debris, he wondered if they could cross the variously spaced decks while they bumped and separated in the turbulence.

I'll die trying.

“All right, Grandma. No way Grandpa would tell you not to try. I need you to get on my back again. We're going to give it everything we've got.”

“Oh Liam. You can't. It's too much.”

“We have no choice.” Victoria spoke quietly given the noises around them, but they heard her. “Liam has to try to run you across. I'll try to help where I can. I'll go first and be there when he has to jump with you. Please, just try?”

Liam looked back one more time. The barges spilled through the gap like curious cows heading for an open gate. It wouldn't be long before the barges on their part of the wreckage started to draw backward to seek their own freedom. Then he'd literally be stuck in the middle with no way out.

Grandma wasn't finished; she tried to use every option she had. “Maybe we could just get in one of these barges and ride out of here?”

Liam spoke as fast as he could. “Well, Grandma, I guess if we have no choice we can drop into one of them, but we have no assurance the barge won't flip or otherwise get damaged as it goes through the gap in the wreck. Also—,” he surveyed the sky as if to add emphasis, “Duchesne's helpers are still out there. We'd be sitting ducks in a barge.”

Victoria added, “We could also float all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico before we came ashore, if at all.”

Grandma let herself be put on Liam's back.

“Hold on tight. Don't let go!”

His dad had often said that when he was on the swing set, the climbing wall at the playground, or learning to ride his bicycle. It seemed appropriate.

Victoria went ahead. The first jump was a difficult one. It was from a lower barge to a higher one. She had a rough landing as she hit her knees on the side, but she scrambled up and over. Liam used a similar running jump technique and also hit his knees as he tried to clear the deck. Victoria steadied Grandma at the very edge and helped them both up.

“I think she passed out on your back. Hold her tight.”

They ran lengthwise down the next barge. They were 200 feet closer to shore. The next jump was onto a barge that was alternating between too high and too low. It was sideways relative to the one they were on.

“We have to time this just right.”

It was easy for Victoria. She planted the landing perfectly, then crouched down to keep stable on the bouncing boat. She faced the hold for a long time before spinning back around with a chipper plea.

“OK, Liam. Come on over.”

The gap widened as he ran with Grandma. The barge under him started heading backward to the hole in the debris field. He didn't dare stop. He landed as the other boat moved lower, but he was just a bit short again. He landed hard, tipping to his left side. Grandma somehow managed to hang on, even though her left side took some of the brunt of the fall.

The entire debris field was disintegrating. The barge they'd just left was already fifty feet away.

“Now or never, Liam!”

Victoria got up and ran a short way lengthwise along the walkway of the deck, then she turned and dashed across the front. Liam looked into the hold as he caught his breath—it was full of living zombies. They were packed in like sardines but someone tried to hide them by throwing a huge black tarp over them. The canvas moved up and down everywhere, and where it was torn there were heads and arms sticking out.

“You could have told me what was down there!” He shouted to Victoria, though he knew what she would say. They had no choice in any of it.

“I didn't want to scare you!”

He huffed while carrying Grandma, but made it to the far corner of the deck with Victoria. She lined up to jump to the last barge next to the shore. It pointed into the debris but began to turn as it and the barge they were on were called out into the river. Liam thought she'd jump to the final barge, then to shore, but she changed her angle to make a much longer jump to a section of fallen roadway that linked directly to shore. Victoria fell hard on the pavement with a loud grunt, but recovered quickly and looked up at Liam, beckoning him to follow.

Liam walked back a few steps to get in position to make his jump. His boat continued to drift.

Holding Grandma tightly, he ran with purpose toward the edge. As the boat moved, it settled in the front. Liam kept his footing as the nose dipped—it allowed him to make the jump at a much lower altitude relative to the pavement. He was going much faster than he intended—falling as much as jumping.

Hang on Grandma. This is going to be messy.

Chapter 17: Looking Up

Liam landed on firm ground and immediately fell forward. Grandma lost her grip and slid right over the top of him. But Victoria was there. She anticipated the glide path and put herself in position to catch Grandma or, at the very least, absorb her fall.

Liam looked up to see Grandma on top of Victoria, who was on her back. They were hugging. Still alive.

Grandma blinked her eyes as if waking up. For many minutes, he thought she had passed out on his back. He even allowed that he was carrying a dead body…

But she made it. He helped them from the cobblestones.

Grandma came out of her daze, and recovered her faculties quickly. “Lord, watch over us and protect us as we try to restore the Light to this world. And Lord, if it's your will, please look after my angel Aloysius, too. Amen.”

Liam and Victoria responded in kind. Grandma's only complaint after all that had happened may have been a joke. “I think I broke some ribs.”

Liam's shirtless upper body was covered in abrasions, scratches, and other filth after surviving the crossing. Some blood trickled off his head, down the side of his face. He could see blood on his knees; they were raw under his jeans.

“You and I finally look like we're on the same adventure. You're almost as bruised and hurt as me!” Victoria giggled as she helped steady Grandma on her feet.

“And Grandma. You've done more than both of us combined and you still look as clean as the day we met.”

Grandma laughed at the obvious falsehood, but countered, “Oh, you two never take things seriously. I may not look it, but I'm beat, bushed, kaput. And my clothes—they need to be burned.”

“We'll get cleaned up as soon as we can, guys. For now, we have to get as far away from here as possible.”

Liam urged the two women to get completely clear of the pavement of the bridge. They all limped as they exited the last bit of the collapsed bridge deck and returned to the cobblestone of the river landing. They were below the partially collapsed highway that formed a ramp up to the solid roadway above. It was where Liam and Victoria started their downtown adventure, much earlier in the day.

Victoria and Marty collapsed to the ground, stating they were content for the time being to simply be alive. Liam watched the amazing breakup. The last of the nearby barges slid out the ever-widening gap in the river blockage. A great portion of the middle section was gone, and most of the floating debris near shore was gone too. Portions of the highway were still wrapped around the near pier, but the disintegration of the blockage took nearly everything else away. The debris from upriver once again had a free and clear path to head south. Somewhere in that floating mess, heading downriver, was the man who destroyed the world.

Don't let the door hit ya!

Liam began to think about what came next, but was drawn back into the present. A helicopter made its way low from the north, veering in their direction as if they'd just been spotted.

He almost couldn't say the words, he was so beat down. “Up up! We have trouble heading this way.”

Victoria turned her head to see if Liam was serious, and when he pointed to the helicopter, she slowly got up and helped pull Grandma off the ground. They trudged to the side of the ramp, where the debris of the fallen span provided some cover. Liam wanted to keep something solid between them and the helicopter.

The pilot was very good. The copter came in low and tight next to the downed highway. The craft rotated so the rear cargo door faced them. As it slid open, Liam saw Hayes with a large pair of headphones and a mic. His voice called out from a loudspeaker under the helicopter, “Liam, thank you for helping me get rid of him. You've taken the heat off me so I can continue my research.”

“Not again.” He had no energy for a fight, but knew he was once again going to be forced to surrender Grandma. It couldn't go on like this forever. He looked around for any kind of weapon. He might be able to use some rebar from the collapsed bridge, but against bullets it would be useless. They could run for it. They could swim for it. They could—

“Liam, Victoria, you two have to run now. You've really done an unbelievable job of saving me out on that wreckage. You've spent every last ounce of energy to get me to this shore. But now there is no chance against guns. Once they land and come down here, it's all over. Now is the time to let me go—no matter what implications that may entail.”

Liam could see it all going down. Grandma captured once again. He and Victoria would plan another caper to save her. It had a certain symmetry to it.

Does our story just go on like this forever?

Victoria spoke up. “I don't want to. But...” She looked at him expectantly. He knew she was right. There was a point when even the best men had to sound the retreat, and leave their wounded on the field of battle. But he didn't want it to be like this. Not when they were so close to victory.

“Maybe we could make it to the Arch tunnel and hide there?”

“Maybe we could get back on the wreckage of the dam and hide there?”

“Maybe—”

“No, Liam. You've done all you can do. Your jobs now are to protect each other.”

He hated to admit she was right, but he knew how this would end if he didn't listen to her. They would either all die in futile battle, or all be taken—and Grandma would be killed in testing. He had to choose the only path where they all had some hope. Live to fight another day, and all that.

He gave Grandma a long hug.

“I'm so sorry, Grandma. I'll never stop looking for you.”

“I know. I know. And I'll never stop praying for you two out here. Now go.”

Victoria gave her a quick hug and left without saying anything. The tears spoke volumes.

One last call from the underside of the highway, “Liam, you did great saving me. Never forget that.”

He waved as the noise of the helicopter made it impossible to talk. It had floated closer.

Hayes' voice blared out on the speakers. “You don't have to run. I'm not going to take Grandma. I don't need her. I have what I require from her already.”

Frozen in his spot, Liam searched for a trap. There was always a “but” in these situations.

When none were forthcoming, he looked up at Hayes and tried to yell something to him.

“I can't hear you. I'm sorry.” And, after a hesitation, “I'm sorry for everything.”

Liam had an inspiration. He made a very dramatic impression of someone injecting a shot into his arm. Then he pointed to Grandma. “Did you inject her?” he shouted.

The helicopter hung for a long time. Hayes keyed his mic, but didn't speak right away.

“Liam, your grandma is very special. You have to keep her alive. Find somewhere safe. I wish I could help, but you are looking at the extent of my resources now. It's just me and my wife against the world. If we look for you again, it will be as friends. Deal?”

Not knowing what else he could do, he gave Hayes a thumbs up sign. Better to have him go away than do anything more traditional like a shooting or a kidnapping.

Jane piloted the copter north up the river, then she banked left and went under the Arch and into the city, to points unknown.

“Good riddance!” Grandma's shout was surprisingly loud.

“Amen, Grandma. I hope we never see them again.”

“Me too. Me—”

They both rushed to help as her head slumped to her chest.

2

“You did it, Marty. I knew you were a fighter.”

“What did I do? I feel drained. Empty.”

“That's to be expected. You operated the computer. You affected things in the real world using just your mind. You reached out and touched someone using nothing but thought.”

“Hmm. Sounds like an ad for a phone book.”

Al chuckled. He stood with her next to the closed door to the computer room.

“Well, take heart you are the only person who has figured it out as it relates to zombies, though many special people can sense this connection in each other. You've managed to weaponize it.” He stopped himself. “Oh, such an ugly word. How about, harness it?”

“I forget everything you tell me once I leave here. Can you just explain it to me so I can understand what this place is, really. And do it so I'll remember it?”

He laughed heartily. “Ah, Martinette, that's what I love about you. Always seeking the answers to the important questions.”

He walked her out to the bench overlooking the dark ocean. The stars in the sky had returned to their former brightness. As before, she was swept off her feet at the beauty and grandeur. “Please, sit down.”

“I regret I can never reveal everything to you. I know you want answers. Trust me, I want to give them. But there are things even I'm not sure about.”

He took a seat next to her, and spoke as they both looked out toward the green waters of the infinite sea. “We are in your mind. This place, all you see, is how your mind interprets the raw data.”

“You said you were going to talk straight.”

“I am talking straight. Listen, this is both in your head and real. You've developed a link with this place, and the only reason you have is because of the pathogen Hayes calls the Quantum Virus. He did inject you with it, yes. But Marty, you've carried the Quantum Virus since birth. You all have.”

“We've all been infected? Who could do such a thing?”

“My dear, you haven't been infected. It was a gift. A wonderful gift.” He paused for a long time.

“A gift? From whom?”

“Remember when I showed you the lights behind the planets?”

“Of course.”

“Would it surprise you if I told you Earth now has a light behind it? Would you be surprised if I said it was by your hand the light came on?”

“Yes, I didn't know I was doing anything that magnificent. I mostly just rolled around in a wheelchair, rode in a bike trailer, or slept.”

“Ah, Marty. Here's where you're wrong. You did much more than that. You drove your two young partners to do great things. You were there to inspire them. Advise them. Lead them to God, the Light, whatever you want to call the aura of goodness. But, they aren't the reasons the light was restored. That was all you.”

He rubbed his hands in anticipation.

“Can you guess what it was? What made you special among the millions of Doris's, Agnes's and Ezra's now perishing in the Zombie Apocalypse, as Liam likes to call it? Do you think it was your strength, or your speed, or the fact you once ran over your own daughter?”

Marty winced at the painful memory, but Al was relentless. “Marty, none of that matters now. You established the link. When you walked into that computer room—that goofy 8088 computer—it was just a representation of what it really is. A link between your mind, and the minds of countless others. The Quantum Virus is very unusual in that it must...” He appeared to search for a word. “It must compile, for just over 100 earth-years. Only then can it start to interact directly with the mind of its host. Only then can it fight the abomination that is the zombie plague. Only then can that host begin to see the gift it was meant to see. A guidepost on the way to infinity. To God.”

She froze at the word “God,” unable to formulate her reply. She felt the warmth of her Savior all around her, and she truly and absolutely believed He was sitting on the bench with her. If this was God's work, then she had the revelation she'd been seeking her whole life.

“Or...” He paused for a few seconds.

“Such a curious word. Or.” He stood from the bench and turned to look down at her. “Or this is all just in your head. A clever construction from the mind of a very clever woman as a way to process all the horrible things you've witnessed since Angie fell down those stairs two weeks ago.”

“What? No.” She shook her head emphatically to make her point. “I had visions. I saw memories from Victoria and Liam. From Phil's wife. I couldn't have made that up. That's impossible!”

She saw him smiling down at her. The light from the stars above was distracting. “My dear Marty. You're right of course, it is impossible. Or maybe you overheard Victoria on one of your nights together. You spend a lot of time awake when others are sleeping. What if you heard her dreaming and talking in her sleep about her terrible encounter with her fiancé in that dark forest? Who's to say Liam didn't leave his very favorite book lying out one day, and who's to say you didn't leaf through and read a few pages? Perhaps you read about a little green coupe on a bridge? He carries one of his copies with him everywhere these days.”

“No. This had to be divine. You said you were an angel.”

“I said I was like an angel. I never claimed to be a biblical angel.”

“But Phil. I spoke to his wife. Gave him a message.”

“Ah yes. A true miracle.” He paused with drama once more.

“Or...” A smile to her.

“Is it possible you ran into someone at one of your weekly quilting groups up at the church? A certain grandmother who may have recently lost a granddaughter and a great-granddaughter? Maybe private words were shared? A photograph of the family was passed around. When you heard his men call his name, you remembered that innocent secret under high stress, and that helped you bond with Phil on that bridge in your darkest hour.”

“Absolutely not! I would remember that.”

“Would you? Is your memory that good? Have you forgotten nothing your whole life?”

Marty looked down at her hands. Often when she came here, or when she left here, her skin would appear rejuvenated and refreshed. She believed she was getting healthier somehow; that Al was making her younger. Now, she saw the same hands and arms she had back in her flat before the sirens.

“So none of this was real? I'm just an old worn out woman making up crazy scenes in my mind to help me cope?”

“No, not at all. Give yourself some credit. You played out those scenes in your head as a way to cope, yes. But you did cope. In fact, you used your imagination to strengthen yourself. You renewed your faith in God, you bolstered your faith in your great-grandson when he needed it most. Your beautiful mind created this place so you could contribute in a world where so many of your peers were tossed like trash. You came here so you could fight. Isn't that exactly what I—I mean, the real Aloysius—would have wanted?”

Her gaze fell to the ground just in front of the bench, content to accept what he was saying, but hating it nonetheless. She resigned herself to the notion she wasn't special. Al wasn't here. She had no miracle gifts to fight and survive in the zombie plague.

A bright light flared above her. She looked up. An illuminating pulse was directly behind Al, falling from the stars above. Then his world began to dim, and Marty felt herself returning to hers. Everything disappeared except Al. He wore a happy smile.

“Or...”

3

“Who do you think was driving that boat?”

Liam sat with Victoria in the shade of the remaining jumble of wreckage while Grandma indulged in a nap. They thought she died by the way she slumped over, but she'd only exhausted herself. She'd been swimming, running, jumping, and falling today. She earned a rest.

“I have no idea, but they sure arrived at the perfect time to take care of Duchesne for us.”

“Do you think it was providence? The hand of God?”

Victoria gazed out over the water while she thought of an answer. “If it was God, He had to have set everything in motion hours or days ahead of time. That barge had to have come from somewhere upstream. Someone had to fire it up. They would have had to gather up the proper amount of barges so it could break through. Someone had to fuel it. Someone had to drive it down the river—through all the other junk floating by. And they had to arrive at the exact second Duchesne was getting ready to shoot us.”

Liam followed her train of thought. “And He would have had to work in the other direction too. He would have had to put you and me together at the perfect time. He would have had to keep us walking around, hiding and fighting zombies in the county, and bring us back to the city at precisely the time needed to get us in front of that boat. There were an infinite number of variables along the way. I have a renewed belief in the divine, but that's impossible.”

Grandma surprised them. She was awake. “Not impossible. Just improbable. It was all improbable.”

They helped her sit up while she continued. “This disaster has awakened something in me. Al is in my head; he speaks to me. He's shown me incredible things. He's shown me my own memories I had forgotten. I see memories of those closest to me.” She paused, thinking. “Painful memories.” She regrouped with more energy, “But if there's one thing I've come to appreciate through these weeks of—challenge—is that you two have been truly heroic. No matter if it was God, random chance, or some spaghetti monster floating in the sky, you two were responsible for getting me safely to this point. I honestly believe no one could have done it better.”

A little book was in Grandma's hands. The travel Bible Liam had given to Victoria. She had given it to Grandma in turn. Now she handed it back to her. "I'm sorry dear, I couldn't keep it dry." They all laughed at the understatement of the year. "But it did bring me the comfort I needed during my stay."

Victoria took it and bent over to hug her. "I'm just so glad to get you out of that horrible place."

Liam watched. Grandma was a filthy mess. She was covered in mud and green slime from being in the water and out on the wreckage. But Liam only saw her bright eyes as his chest swelled with pride at taking care of her for so long. He and Victoria got her out. They were a great team.

“Well Grandma, we do have one more journey to make. And wouldn't you know it, we're back in St. Louis.” He laughed, and he put on a brave face talking to Victoria, but he felt so tired and worn out he didn't think he had it in him to face more challenges like he'd just endured. Not only were they totally alone in the city filled with zombies, they were out of food, out of water, and most critically, they had no weapons. They were sitting in a little bowl of safety near the collapsed bridge, but once they went up the ramp and into the city—it would be hand-to-hand for thirty miles. Even the boats were swept away when the bridge pier tumbled in as the dam broke apart.

They rose to their feet and gathered themselves together for the climb up the ramp of the fallen bridge. It was the same path he and Victoria had taken hours earlier. Maybe one of them could slide into the hotel and find some weapons. Going down to the waterfront by the Arch to get Moses would be suicide with all the zombies walking down there. He tried to think like a survivor. He was a survivor.

They crossed the threshold of rock and rebar at the bottom and began walking up the slope of the collapsed highway. Grandma was between them. She looked up and called for a halt. “Look up there.”

A lone zombie stood at the top of the incline. He was on the flat surface of the raised highway. His clothes could have come from Liam's closet: blue jeans, a black t-shirt with a college logo, a red baseball cap. A few others drifted up from behind the first. In moments, there were a dozen.

Liam had been shielding himself from the truth. Something he'd ignored as best he could every minute of every day since he'd left with Grandma out her front door. He was never going to be able to avoid the zombies forever. He'd finally reached the moment he knew was coming. It eventually caught everyone.

I can't save her.

“Children, put me down,” she whispered.

As one, they all got on their knees, willing the infected not to look down, but knowing it was inevitable.

“I'm so sorry, Grandma,” was all that Victoria could get out while she teared up.

Liam gave her a quick hug. “Is this right? I don't want to leave you.”

“Liam. Go. I love you. Go!” she shouted, forcing his hand.

The cries of the zombies above rose as they acquired their prey.

“It can't happen like this.” But Liam had stepped away from her, resolved to run. Knowing this painful moment had finally caught up to him. The tiny form of his Grandma remained on her knees, though she hunched forward to hold herself up with her hands. Her knees were too frail to support her body.

Victoria grabbed his hand as he heard a familiar sound.

Buzzzzzzzzz.

He looked up the ramp to see several zombies get sliced in half.

Buzzzz. Buzzzz. Buzzzzzzzzz.

Arms exploded. Heads were severed. Large holes appeared in the torsos of others. When nipped in the leg, they tipped over. Some tried to turn around to the new threat. Most never had the chance.

A final sweep eliminated the remaining infected. Body pieces were pushed by the powerful impacts of the chain gun; some went flying over their heads. Others rolled down the incline. A leg tumbled the fifty feet down the yellow dashed line on the pavement; it skidded sloppily to a stop just in front of Grandma. Liam spent a long minute soaking in the impossibility of it all.

Not impossible. Just improbable.

Grandma remained pragmatic, “I guess we should go up and thank our saviors. Whoever they are, they can't be worse than Duchesne and his people. We don't have much chance on our own with nothing but wet clothes on our backs.”

Her words made sense. They had no weapons. No tools. No nothing. But he could think of people who would give Duchesne a run for his money on the evil scale. Gang bangers. Looters. Camo-clad predators. All those working to snuff civilization. They all made impressions on him these past weeks, though if one were to only compare death tolls, Duchesne won that contest hands-down. He directed people like Hayes to do great evil. No one person in history had caused as many deaths by their actions as him.

But, a leg just slid up to her.

“Grandma, does anything phase you? You didn't blink at the sight of that bloody leg.”

From her knees, she turned around with a big smile. “Neither did you.”

That was all they could say about another in a long line of miracles they'd experienced today.

Together they walked up the angled section of roadway. Liam had his hand behind Grandma's back, as did Victoria. He could feel his girlfriend as their arms rubbed together behind the frail little old lady between them. Their fates were now intertwined, symbolically as well as literally.

Liam laughed as they walked. He thought about being back in the city. Back where they started. “What have we accomplished so far? We're now heading back into the collapsed city we spent two weeks escaping. A hotel with thirty floors of mutant zombies is emptying nearby. We have the bosses of Duchesne to worry about. And who knows whether Hayes was telling the truth. Grandma may have been infected, but she appears OK. What does that mean? We have more problems now than we did back in the simple days of just running from zombies.”

“Life is messy, Liam. It doesn't fit into neat compartments like those books you read. When you get to be my age you'll realize that. You just do the best you can when it splatters all over you. God never gives you more than you can handle. In your case, this all helped you find this pretty girl here. You found each other. I'd say that balances things out. Love is a precious resource.”

He looked at Victoria and smiled. She gave a big smile back to him. Her necklace hung outside her stained, cropped, and soaked t-shirt. The cross was wet, but crisp and clean. It gave him comfort as it did when he first met her.

Grandma continued as they neared the top, “This bridge reminds me of a question for you, Liam. Your grandpa showed me a memory and he said it was from your favorite book. In it, I was standing on another bridge looking out over the water to the Golden Gate Bridge. I forget what he called it. There was a little green coupe sitting alone on the huge span, but it had been destroyed by nesting birds and other animals. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

“Of course. That's from one of my favorite books of all time—Earth Abides. The story ends when a plague survivor grows so old he gets a little senile, and during a big fire that burned the abandoned city of San Francisco, the younger generations in his tribe—his descendants—carry him across that bridge and by that car. He'd seen it many years earlier when it, and the bridge, were new. When he saw it again in his old age, it helped him come to the realization that though man and the works of man are destined to fall into the ocean, the Earth itself would survive. Thus the title, Earth abides.”

“Thank you. That sounds like a wonderful story. Maybe I'd like to read it.”

Though he wasn't yet an old man with a tribe of survivors to his credit like his hero in that book, he realized they'd done better than most during the present, real-life crisis now consuming his world. He'd heard about old people giving up and letting death take them because they were afraid of the unknown ahead of them. He'd seen parents abandon children. He'd seen the undead walk, and countless deaths by their teeth. It was more horrific than any book. Where so many had fallen, his group survived. If Grandma had been infected, and something in her had cured it, she could hold the key to the whole thing. It would help them retake the world from the darkness enveloping it. Not many people on Earth could claim to be doing so much. There were still many challenges ahead of them—including whatever was over the next rise.

All around him, the works of man were broken and defiled. This bridge had already tumbled into the water, though it was brought down by man, not nature. The Arch was scorched. The city was a husk. The river was coughing up hulls full of bodies. The worst of man was being purged.

It was true, the Earth would abide. But so would mankind. He was going to do everything in his power to make sure his own book didn't end with humans ceding all the advances of modern civilization to the zombies and to oblivion. If he was lucky enough to survive the day and live a long life, he was going to fight the zombies until his dying breath. He would also fight the Duchesne's of the world—all those men and women sitting in their comfy bunkers. They were waiting to restart society in their own perverted image. They would find him instead.

Grandma said, “If everyone waits for the perfect heroes to come along, the world dies waiting.” Liam knew they were imperfect heroes extraordinaire, but he was willing to fight for the world. He would read every book on the apocalypse he could find. He would study military tactics. He would lead tribes of people from the Old World. The old would mentor the young. Anything it takes to rebuild. The pieces were all there for anyone willing to do the work.

He had faith they could pull it off.

Liam remembered his own memory. Something from that Old World he'd been dying to do since he first thought of it.

“Hold up guys. Victoria, will you hold Grandma? Grandma, can I have my phone back?”

“Of course dear.” She pulled the phone out of her pants pocket. A small miracle it hadn't been lost.

Liam excitedly took a few steps back down the incline. When he turned around, he had his camera ready to go. “I've been wanting to take your pictures for days now.” He gave them a big smile and then tried to slide his phone open. He stared at it for a long moment.

“Is it working, Liam? It did get very wet in Grandma's pocket.” She laughed, letting him know it was OK.

“Yeah, I can't tell if it's broken or just needs to be recharged.”

“Isn't that the way of the world?”

Grandma's response soothed him. He wore a real smile as he rejoined them. “I'll get your picture yet. Just you wait.”

As they crested the collapsed highway, he could see the familiar outline of an MRAP parked fifty yards down the littered highway.

“Thank you, God, for helping us win one.”

###

Acknowledgments

The Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse series has been a labor of love in so many ways. When I sat down at my keyboard and started the first book, I had no idea if I could even get through the first chapter, much less the whole book. Writing a novel was a difficult endeavor only “professional” authors could master. Or so I thought.

In the summer of 2014, on the day of the funeral for my 104-year-old grandmother, my sister mentioned she was writing a book. We discussed a few points about her challenges, when she planned to publish, and other details that at the time seemed innocuous. However, I was inspired by that conversation to spin up a short story based on an elderly woman living in a house with her nurse. I called it “104” because of the age of the protagonist. The story was a celebration of the spirit of my grandma and it helped me find something positive in that dark day.

But I wasn't done yet. I was so inspired I just kept writing. “104” became chapter one of book one. I dubbed it “CIV,” which coincidentally was the Roman numeral for 104. It was the first of many coincidences I found while writing the stories, and the nature of coincidence fascinated me throughout the series. I didn't notice until well into book 2 that Aloysius used his nickname “Al” while inside Marty's head. His role with computers seems appropriate for a computer program, or AI if you prefer. Did that realization guide my writing down different pathways? You see, even an author doesn't always know where his creation will take him...

This series of books did take me into the publishing world, and for that I'm thankful my sister nudged me in the right direction. I'm also grateful for my grandmother and all the things she did to encourage generations of our family to seek the light. Maybe she is in a room somewhere with a rickety 8088 computer, making things happen in this corner of the multiverse? How many coincidences had to happen for me to be sitting there on that exact day, having a discussion about writing books with the exact person I needed, and then finding inspiration to write three books with a central character based loosely on her? Was it providence? Luck? Or was it always going to happen?

I want to thank every reader who came through the series, or just read this third book. As a writer there is no greater honor than knowing someone thought enough of my idea to take time out of their busy lives to step into my imagination for so many hours. It doesn't escape my notice that an author can get the near-undivided attention of a reader for periods far longer than many TV personalities and entertainers, including most politicians. This is what drives me to become a better writer, build more creative stories, and make my worlds as interesting and thought-provoking as possible. There are so many great authors out there—a multiverse of them! I'm eternally grateful you chose to visit my tiny waterfall.

Finally, a special thank you to my wife. As an indie author, you would think the pressures of writing and publishing would be reduced—I'm my own boss after all. But the opposite is true. I've spent a lot of late nights at the computer. She has never complained, has always been helpful with reading and correcting my drafts, and always encourages me to pursue my passion. I could not have done it without her.

E.E. Isherwood, Feb. 2016

E.E. Isherwood’s other books

Minus America – After an event sweeps from coast to coast, nearly everyone in mainland USA disappears. Only piles of clothes remain. Can the last Americans survive long enough to learn how it happened? Five books.

Impact
(co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books.

Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood
Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens
My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!

SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 4

Last Fight of the Valkyries
Since the Sirens
Book 4

© 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.

History has all the excitement of a haunted jack-in-the-box.
A few turn the handle. A few try to stop it. Most just look away.
And sometimes, what comes out surprises us all.

Prologue: Grandma

Six months before the sirens.

The phone rang.

Marty woke with the feel of electricity coursing through her body. She wrote it off to how she fell asleep in her soft chair—her neck was tilted to the side a little too far. She let the call go to her answering machine as she always did.

“Would you like me to pick up?” Angie yelled from the kitchen.

“Oh no, dear, let it go to the computer.”

Marty knew it wasn't really a computer with a keyboard and a fancy monitor, but she thought anything “hi tech” was a computer of some sort. The little box had buttons and a screen and blinking lights—a lot like a computer.

It beeped as the announcement played, “Hello, this is the residence of Mrs. Marty Peters, please leave a message and she'll try to call you back.” That was Angie's voice—the woman in the kitchen and also Marty's full-time live-in nurse who stayed in the flat above her. She agreed to do the greeting message for Marty because her voice was getting so weak. Marty had recently turned 104 years old, and was starting to feel her age catching up. Last year, she might have tried to get out of her comfortable chair and pick up the telephone, but now—it was just easier to let the computer do all the heavy lifting.

Normally she'd have the handset of her cordless phone sitting next to her, but it was still early in the morning and Angie hadn't been able to get all her morning chores done down here yet. Getting Marty set up with all her sewing equipment, reading glasses, and even the telephone, were still on her to-do list. She was currently making breakfast.

As the answering machine clicked over, Marty listened in, “Hello Grandma. Uh, listen, I need to talk to you when you get a chance. I got a call from my mom and she has some things going on in Colorado that concern all of us. I don't really want to talk about it on the phone.” The voice hesitated for several seconds. “Just being safe is all. I'll be over this afternoon. Love to Angie. Talk soon.”

A beep closed out the transaction.

Marty stared thoughtfully across the room to the machine now flashing a little number one at her. Her eyesight was still quite good. The man on the call was her grandson, and he was referring to her daughter-in-law, Rose, who had just won an election to a congressional seat in her home state of Colorado. Marty had about as much interest in politics as she did computers, but something in the tone of Jerry's voice told her this would be no ordinary meeting.

Just being safe.

She pulled out her rosary and began to pray for guidance, but before she got into it, she had a premonition of a sort. A deja vu? No, it felt like the start of something, but it made no sense though it continued for a minute like a daydream.

I saw Liam and three young girls. All with guns!

“Will Jerry be stopping by, Grandma?” Even Angie, her 54-year-old nurse, called her Grandma. Everyone did, and she was OK with that.

The question startled her out of her reverie.

“Oh. Yes. Jerry will be stopping by after lunch.”

“Will he have his tools? My door is sticky again.” It was a running joke between them. That door would never be straight.

Marty couldn't reply right away. She felt that surge of energy leaving her. She gripped the beads a little tighter, worried her time had finally come. The vision of her great-grandson and those girls was unlike anything she'd experienced in her many years. It was like a waking dream. Her thoughts turned dark as she recalled horrible scenes of kids with swords, guns, and lots of dead people. She was a spiritual woman to the core. How such evil scenes could come from inside her was a mystery.

The end is coming for me.

“He's always prepared, Anj.”

“He sure is,” she shouted, “you're lucky to have him around.”

Angie cooking. A call from her grandson. A vision of her great-grandson.

She couldn't imagine a busier morning.

Chapter 1: A Day at the Ballpark

Liam Peters was shirtless and soaked. He'd just survived a perilous swim in the Mississippi, followed by a harrowing escape from a massive pile of wreckage floating in that river. By his estimation, they consumed quite a few miracles as they made it from a boat on one side of the river, into the water, onto the wreckage, then to the safety of shore. For most of the journey he'd hauled his 104-year-old great-grandmother Martinette (Marty) Peters on his back. He was assisted by Victoria Hennessey, his girlfriend. In fact, they'd all been running, dodging, and escaping one problem after another for the past couple weeks. Pretty much every moment since the sirens ended the world and the zombies poured forth.

But that was all in the past. They'd reached this moment when rescue was finally at hand. As part of their recent tribulations, their friends had come into the possession of a military truck called an MRAP. Built for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was a large six-wheeled vehicle structurally designed to deflect improvised explosive devices left by insurgents over in those hellholes. Here in America, it was nearly invincible. And it was waiting for them half a football field away.

“Grandma, we're saved.”

As he said it, a sheet of newspaper drifted up and over the edge of the bridge when a stiff breeze caught it and blew it directly toward him—along with the stench of death from the city below. He swatted it with his free hand, but missed. It planted itself on his chest.

The newspaper was a single sheet—the front page—and it was filled with headlines, but almost no descriptive text underneath. The only photo was a black and white snapshot of the Gateway Arch, from a time that had to be before it was overrun with refugees and zombies. The edition was obviously rushed.

The biggest words were at the top. The headline caught his attention, as intended. “CURE FOUND!” It was one of the few articles that had any text. “CDC promises vaccine. Stay indoors. Stay calm.”

He laughed. He had the inside track on that imaginary vaccine.

A cursory look at the other articles gave him similarly curt titles. “Domestic Terrorists Blamed.” “Stocks Fall.” “Pols point fingers over failed response.” “Pope says not Rapture.”

“I guess the zombies won.” He tossed the paper away. The wind carried it down the highway. Too late, he wondered what date was on the paper. It seemed trivial, but he was curious how long the papers still managed to print.

The sheet floated over the MRAP to points beyond. It drew his eye as it fluttered.

“Liam, look ahead,” Victoria said with a quiver in her voice.

It didn't need to be said. All three of them could see the mass of zombies coming onto the raised highway, not too far beyond the MRAP. The infected were coming up from the city, which had been swarming with them. Now, as if released, they began fleeing the downtown—heading anywhere but there.

Liam and Victoria held Grandma Marty between them as they walk-ran her toward the truck. Ahead, the rear doors opened and a few men piled out. And a few boys.

Liam smiled broadly when he saw the Boy Scout uniforms. He'd recently spent a lot of time in a camp built around a Boy Scout property in the southern suburbs of St. Louis, and the fact they came to rescue him warmed his heart. He half-expected his mother and father to appear, but he couldn't see them.

The chatter of gunfire prompted him to move faster. The big chaingun on top of the truck remained silent. It should be easily chewing up zombies.

Like so many times of the past few weeks since the zombie plague began, he ran for his life. He turned to look at his tiny grandma and her hideous pinkish-red pantsuit. Her white hair was a stark contrast to her lower body—which was soaked and muddy like his own. Victoria ran along on her far side. He admired her long brown hair, also filthy with mud, and her normally pretty face. It would have been much prettier had it not been covered with bruises from some earlier mishaps, and soaked with dirty river water. Her white shirt was torn at the midriff and stained with both coal soot and river water. None of them was a model of hygiene at that moment.

The passenger door of the MRAP opened and Phil Ramos, ex-police officer, popped out.

“Come on, Liam. What are you waiting for?” he shouted as he ran to the front bumper, knelt down, and began shooting the increasing numbers of infected coming their way.

They reached the rear doors, and he helped Grandma climb the stairs to get inside. He had no weapons to assist in the defense of the vehicle, so all he could do was watch the battle. Given all that he'd been through of late, he was content to sit this one out. He climbed into the passenger area and took a seat on the long bench next to Grandma. Victoria remained on her other side, as if to prevent her from sliding too far in either direction.

For half a minute, the shooting continued, until a command was given and the rescue team all clambered back into the relative safety of the metal beast.

“Go!” one of the Scouts screamed.

An older man, likely his dad, put his hand on the kid's knee as he sat next to him. “We're good. We'll be OK,” he told the boy.

The engine was already running, so the driver threw it into gear as soon as the last door shut. The vehicle lumbered down the road in a direction Liam knew was wrong. They were all pointed toward the river, but the bridge was out. It was lying in the river.

He shouted, “The bridge is out,” just as the truck began to decelerate and turn. The driver expertly rounded four lanes of traffic on the empty highway and then gunned the engine as it headed back toward the zombies.

“Grandma, will you be OK? I have to see this.”

“I'm fine, dear. Sitting is...heavenly.” Her head was already nodding in the hot and stuffy truck.

He'd gotten up, but noticed she snapped right back awake as if she caught herself dozing in class. Something about the look on her face gave him pause.

“You sure?” he asked in a tentative voice.

She looked at him, but was already tipping over again. Her head fell to Victoria's shoulder, who held her steady.

Must be the exhaustion.

He tilted his head to Victoria with a weak smile, then held on to the tie-downs and moved forward. As he arrived in the space between the driver's area and the rear seats, he saw who was driving the truck.

“Mel!”

Melissa was a fellow survivor—a shoe saleswoman by her account—he'd met a week ago in front of his own house. She and Phil were a tag team of sorts when it came to driving the MRAP.

“Yep. Good to see you too. Now hold on.”

She aimed the truck into the crowd of zombies on the pavement ahead. Beyond the first loose cadre of zombies were an endless sea of them. They used the entrance ramp to flood onto the interstate from the city's center.

The hull shook a little as they ran over the first few. Liam saw men and women of every shape, color, and dress shambling up the ramp. Most had bloody messes on their faces and necks. They diverged east and west on the highway as they came up onto the bridge, ignoring all rules of the road.

He thought Mel was going to punch through the initial clump of them to try to continue on the raised bridge, but there was a big roadblock less than a quarter mile away. This segment was mostly free of dead vehicles because cars couldn't pass the distant barricade. She veered directly into the exit ramp going faster than Liam thought prudent.

“Hang on!” Mel shouted, just as they got into the thick of the undead.

Liam, unprepared for a collision, fell into the space between Phil and Mel. The truck shuddered and swerved as it pounded the pedestrians. The engine roared as Mel kept their speed just above reckless.

“This ramp was empty when we came up. They must have followed us,” Phil offered.

By the time Liam got to one knee so he could look out the front, she had them most of the way around the sweeping left turn of the ramp. The end was in sight.

Mel had the steering wheel in a death grip. It was vibrating badly as more of the plague victims fell under the high front cross bar of a bumper. Blood splashed all over the hood and was beginning to reach their windshield.

Still she kept her foot on the gas, taking them to the bottom of the ramp. Liam almost relaxed, until he saw the new roadway. They'd left the raised highway of the east-west interstate and entered the north-south highway below which should have taken them out of St. Louis. Except it was a parking lot.

When the city collapsed, people got in their cars and tried to head out into the country—anywhere but a city awash in a growing problem of neighbors biting neighbors. In hours, the interstates were traffic jams of Biblical proportions. It was entirely appropriate for the Apocalypse. Even the burly MRAP couldn't push its way down an endless highway of parked cars.

Mel turned hard to the right. Dangerously so. The MRAP jumped a high curb while simultaneously slipping on the...remains...of the crowd of people outside. More blood shot onto the hood. Liam tried to hold on, but fell to the left and bounced off Mel's seat. He knew she wanted to say something to him about getting back in his seat, but she was unable to take her focus from the road.

“I have—”

She turned hard to the right again, and put them on a north south road going into downtown.

“—to find somewhere without so many infected.”

Like most adults, Mel was reticent to use the term “zombie” to describe the people outside. He'd had philosophical debates several times over the past few weeks with people who shared her view. Zombies were from the movies. These things couldn't be categorized so easily. So people used what terms they could. “Infected” was most common. “Plaguers” also gained favor, mostly because the source of the infection was a disease sort of like Ebola. It was officially called Extra-Ebola, an understated and simplistic name for a very complicated disease process which made the victim bleed like they'd caught the worst equatorial disease imaginable. The joke was: twice the Ebola and one-half the life expectancy. In fact, it killed people—though the resulting dead bodies just kept walking around like they didn't get the memo. And they sought the blood of the living.

After Hayes and his research team had drawn in all the zombies, the roads nearest the center of the urban core were now thinning out. It was the direction Mel had them going. As the engine continued to strain against the still considerable crowd, she tried to plan her next move.

“We can't afford to stop. If we do, we're dead. We'll never get this thing moving again against such numbers. I'm going to head north, then turn west as soon as a street looks passable.”

It took her many blocks in the urban grid before she took a chance and turned left. The rear end drifted as she made the corner. In seconds, she had her foot back on the gas and they continued into the dead.

“My God. It's impossible.” She spoke just loud enough to be heard over the road noise.

Ahead, the road she'd chosen was arrow-straight for a mile. In the distance, the number of zombies only grew. To plow through, they'd need a locomotive. Even that might not be enough. Maybe a tank could do it. Liam had seen a tank on these streets weeks ago doing that very thing.

“Oh no.” Mel pointed ahead. Liam followed her finger to some people on the roof of a small building ahead. It had big numbers and letters, as if it was the home of a TV station.

Phil replied with equal measure. “We can't help them.”

The people desperately waved their shirts, large sheets that looked like something a photographer would use for a backdrop, and many flailing arms. They needed rescue.

“What do we do? There are too many.” Mel seemed to be considering a rescue, despite Phil's statement against it. Liam wondered if they were asking him.

This is what he often called the gamer's dilemma. Fight or flight? To fight is to invite trouble for their group. Any rescue would be dangerous. Flight...sometimes it was better to survive another day without getting “involved.” He'd just rescued Grandma with the help of Victoria. He'd felt he'd risked enough for one day.

He said nothing.

Mel made up her own mind in the absence of input. The MRAP crushed more bodies while it crossed the median. It fell down into the next set of lanes and then bounced up on the sidewalk. Mel ran over several parking meters, a blue mailbox, and sheared off her rearview mirror while slamming the truck against the concrete wall below the balcony. She had pulled up directly under the waving people.

“It's up to them if they want to get on. It's the least we can do for them.”

Liam understood the risks. “But you said we couldn't stop. Won't we get overrun?”

She looked back at him while taking a pull from a water bottle. Then she spoke quickly to them all. “I'm giving these guys a chance. We aren't going to let them in. They can ride on top. We'll be moving before we get surrounded.”

Liam guessed that would be in about ten seconds.

Far from being a rescue, the pit stop became a horror show. The people up top were desperate. Their footfalls from jumping the ten feet from the low balcony were constant. Then people started to fall off...

While they listened, a pair of men in dress pants and white shirts fell over the windshield, onto the hood. They threw punches at each other. The look in their eyes was pure malice even as they slid together over the blood-soaked metal, then it turned to abject panic as they slid off the side, out of view. The stomping on the roof continued as Liam sat frozen on the inside. One of the men who slipped off the front tried to hop back up near Phil's door, but the swarming zombies pulled him back down.

“What was I thinking?” Mel asked guiltily.

They'd been parked for thirty seconds. More people fell from the top. Anyone who slid down the windshield ended up sliding off the hood too. Then someone figured out they could hold onto the edge of the roof and fling themselves over the windshield. Mel's view was about to be obscured. Sure enough, others jumped down and held onto the legs of those above.

“Lord, forgive me.” Mel stomped on the gas. A few of the people on the front, those hanging on for their lives, lost them. One woman lost her grip above them, and she and several people holding onto her legs went tumbling off the side. It opened up enough space so Mel could at least see where the truck was going. Her hands were white with pressure on the wheel. Liam imagined others continued to fall from the top, but he refused to look out the little side windows or those on the rear doors. He'd seen enough of the bad side of humanity to know the desperate survivors would do anything to secure their place on the roof.

Mel ran down a few more parking meters, a score of walking sick, got off the sidewalk, and turned the truck sharply to the right. Instead of continuing west, she headed back to the east. To downtown.

“We can't make it guys. There's just too many that way. We need to find somewhere we can wait while all these things clear out.”

If they clear out, Liam thought.

He knew the zombies had been manipulated during the outbreak so that when the big tornado sirens all over the city went off, the sick left their homes to try to escape the noise and the signal within. It was part of the plan of those responsible for the infection. They claimed they were worried the sick needed to be motivated to spread the infection, and the best way to do that was to get them moving. But those same people also conducted research in a secretive facility in downtown St. Louis which used that same technology to bring them back. This was why, weeks into the catastrophe, the city was full once again with those same infected souls.

“Any ideas where we could go would be great, guys.” Mel's tension was infectious.

Liam turned around to the audience in the back part of the MRAP. Grandma was still lying against Victoria's shoulder, though he wondered how she was sleeping through all the bouncing and...the screams. He could still hear people up on the top arguing and shouting obscenities at each other. He guessed none of the group had firearms, primarily because no one had used one yet.

There were three older Boy Scouts, and three Scout dads—or at least men old enough to be fathers. He didn't have the time or inclination to assign dads to each of the boys in the back. Right now they needed everyone to be focused on the only thing that would keep them alive: somewhere to hide.

One man suggested the Arch, as it had a large park surrounding it, as well as a subterranean museum which seemed to offer ample protection from the undead, but Liam reminded him that the Arch grounds had been bombed heavily during the early days of the plague. It was now more hellish-looking than Hell's Half Acre. The remains of the zombies, and the real humans who were caught up in the attack, littered the place. There was no way Liam would go back there.

They settled on trying to get into Busch Stadium. Liam suggested it because it was obviously a large flat area that, if empty, would provide a good way to ensure no zombies were anywhere close to them if they stopped.

No one could think of anything better. All the roads and highways out of town would be crawling with the outward bound zombies, as well as the derelict cars facing into town—relics of that last wave of refugees trying to find safe harbor at the Arch.

That didn't turn out so good.

2

Mel continued to knock over the zombies as she drove around trying to find the stadium. Everyone knew it was close, but the city looked different when sick and bloodied people were on every street corner. She drove until she found the stadium and then the service entrance, when a decision needed to be made.

“How do we get in? I can ram through the gate, but then we're vulnerable inside.”

Phil seemed ready to offer a reply, but shook his head in the negative as he peered out his window.

When he didn't offer up any ideas, Liam turned around to those in the back.

“Just ram it,” was the consensus. In various ways, and with different reasons, many in the back waved off the idea of any of them getting out to open any doors. Liam could see outside. They were right to be afraid. Though that gave him an idea.

“Hey, why don't we use the gun,” he pointed at the roof, indicating the big chaingun mounted on the roof the MRAP, “and eliminate these zom—infected—before we open the gate by hand?”

Phil answered, while Mel drove. “We only had a few rounds. We ran out of ammo shooting zombies back on the raised highway just before you came into our view. It's basically a big decoration now, unless we can somehow get some replacement rounds for it.” He laughed, knowing it was impossible.

Unless they could find an armory. Liam searched his memory for one of the zombie books he'd read in the past. He recalled a scene where the heroes found an armory in Denver and liberated some ammunition. It would be like gold in a world where it was required reading to kill innumerable infected to stay alive. Maybe someone he knew had a line on an armory in St. Louis. Now wasn't the time to ask.

The only way for a vehicle to get into the stadium was to ram the big gate which linked the road with the deep outfield. It was the entrance used regularly by the Clydesdale's—a huge horse team that pulled a wagon full of beer around the ballpark to fire up the fans.

Mel had been driving in circles on the streets near the ballpark. “OK, I'm going to push us through the gate and hope I can break the lock without ruining the gate itself. If we can get through, and if the gate can be closed again, we'll need someone to jump out and swing the gate shut and then I'll park just on the other side of the gate so that nothing can get through.” She shouted her plan so everyone in the back could hear her.

Liam heard some low groans. He knew no one had any desire to open those back doors. Even if it meant they'd be making themselves safer—eventually.

Short of getting out first and trying to open the gate by hand, it was their best option among a precious few.

Phil craned his neck to look out the window up into the walkways and balconies of the stadium above. “I don't think the stadium is empty. Not that we can stop now.”

Mel had been keeping the speed steady, but hit something that made the whole truck bounce a foot or two off the ground and sway dangerously side to side. Several more people slid off the top and windshield.

“Dammit! I don't know what that was. Maybe a motorcycle on the ground. I keep killing them...” Liam could tell how hard it was to see anything now with zombies thick in the streets, people hanging on the windshield, and splatters of blood drying and smearing on the glass. There weren't as many zombies on the street as they'd seen at the TV station, but it was still suicide to stop or consider getting out. Except someone had to do just that if they were going to reach a safe harbor.

“That's it. I'm going for it. Hold on guys, I'm hitting the gate.”

Liam held on while looking back at Grandma to be sure Victoria had her. Victoria looked in his direction with a tight-lipped smile. She gripped Grandma as best she could. He returned the smile and focused on the action up front.

Mel did as she said. The MRAP sped down the street next to the ballpark, but as she approached the gate, she braked until she was moving at walking speed. When she hit the big metal gate, she gave it some gas to push on through. The gate made a loud plinking sound as the padlock shattered, and it seemed to be slightly off kilter, but it did open.

She proceeded beyond the gate and then stopped.

“OK, guys. You have to get out and shut that gate.”

Liam looked back. He could see the reluctance. But one of the older men braced his rifle and held his hand on the rear doors.

“You guys ready?” the man asked.

The response was tepid, but they too readied their weapons and leaned toward the back gate.

With a flourish he opened the double doors; they swung outward. Zombies were everywhere beyond the open gate, but the very first thing that came inside was a living person.

The man looked like a professional acrobat. He must have been hanging on the rear portion of the roof. When the door opened, he flung himself downward and shot inside the compartment. The man who opened the door got a shot off, maybe thinking it was a zombie.

“Holy crap!” he cried as he fell under the weight of the other man.

The zombies outside were unable to laugh at the improbability of the scenario. Instead, they advanced.

“Zombies. Shoot them!” cried one of the Boy Scouts. He too was armed. But he wasn't at the back of the truck. Another man was at the end of the bench seat opposite Victoria and Grandma. That man had been watching the tumbler on the floor, and he took his eye off the outside world.

Liam saw it all happen in slow motion, unable to shout or otherwise warn the victim. First, the zombie closed the distance to the truck, like he'd been watching the man on the top and was ready for the doors to open. Next, he mounted the rear steps—there were three of them below the back doors. Finally, he flung himself onto the man sitting by the door.

These zombies defied classification. Liam had been trying for weeks to put them into the pantheon of zombie types. They seemed to crave blood, rather than the stereotypical “brains” so preferred by zombies of old. If they had their druthers, they always struck for the neck. Somehow they knew it was the easiest way to tap into the blood supply of the victim. Liam imagined it was an ingrained superstition in humanity about Vampires. However, if an open carotid artery wasn't immediately available, the zombies would gnaw on any open flesh they could find. The one thing they didn't do—and something Liam never understood when he saw it in the movies—was tear out the insides or destroy the literal brains of their victims. How could the virus spread if the primary means of transmission was eating the victim? As with so many things the past few weeks, reality was much more mundane than the movies.

The zombie bit into the final man's wrist. He screamed in pain, and tried to pull away, but the zombie had gripped onto his forearm with both hands—staking his claim on the prized flesh.

The man underneath the guy from up top saw what was happening and made an effort to kick the zombie back out the door, but the weight on him made him ineffective in that task.

The tumbler, an unkempt twenty-something man dressed in long gray suit slacks and a filthy white t-shirt, realized the situation and he too began kicking—but instead of kicking the zombie, he kicked the man who was bitten. He too was tangled with the guy below him, but he supported himself with one arm and one leg and executed a powerful kick to the victim's face. The Scout dad didn't see it coming. With a dazed look, he let himself be pulled out the back by the zombie on his arm.

That was bad, but one of the Scouts—probably the man's son—tumbled out after him, shotgun in hand. The rest of the people in the back were momentarily stunned to silence. They heard five or six shotgun blasts before there were too many zombies for the boy to fight. Liam started moving at about shot four.

He was still unarmed, but he pushed himself against the tumbler man. He used his own modest girth and the element of surprise to catch the man in an awkward position. Liam couldn't lift him on his own, but the man underneath used the relief to grab the killer's neck and push him backward.

Liam kept going. His anger at what the man had done, fused with the fear he felt at being so exposed, gave him the strength to shove the guy right through the rear door. The man fell to the pavement, very near the dying boy and his dead father. There were about ten zombies hovering over their finds, and a hundred or more within a stone's throw. Liam just hung onto the latch of the back door, trying to comprehend it all. Closing the gate was not possible now.

Someone pulled him back in. One of the dads. Another man was on the other side, bringing his rifle to bear on the moving targets just yards away. Everyone was screaming now.

Liam focused on the most important voice in the confusion: Mel's.

“Hang on!”

3

Mel put her foot on the gas and the MRAP lurched ahead. If Liam hadn't been paying attention to her voice, he might have taken a dive when it happened. He looked at the bodies on the ground behind them, thinking how easily it could have been for him to get pulled out.

The truck ran right through a second wooden outfield wall gate. Mel didn't wait to see if they could close it. She went through much too fast. It shattered. There were too many zombies behind them to contemplate a fast fix.

“We'll do a loop and—”

Liam struggled to get over the legs of those sitting in the rear, aware the rear doors were swaying back and forth in the open position. He gave Grandma—finally awake—and Victoria a quick look and a thumbs up as he got to the front of the compartment.

Ahead, barely visible through the blood stains on the glass and the last two survivors clinging to the hood, Liam recognized the two U.S. Marine Corps V-22 Ospreys. But it was difficult to ascertain what was happening until Mel turned to the right, toward left field, when they got a better look through the clear window on her side.

The Ospreys had their propellers spinning, but the rear doors hung open like the tongues of two tired hound dogs. They were near first base and third base, respectively but turned so they unloaded toward each other. He saw no movement inside the cargo areas. Outside, on the dirt of the infield, a handful of Marines pointed weapons at a large group of survivors near the dugouts.

“What the hell is going on here,” he asked anyone who could see the action.

“It looks like the Marines aren't here to rescue these people,” was Phil's answer.

Liam knew where at least some of the Marines had gone. They died in the cavernous circular hotel near the Arch. It was the same place he, Grandma, and Victoria had escaped that very morning. He began responding to Phil when Mel veered sharply toward the planes.

“We have no choice. Our only hope is to get on one of those and get out of here.”

Phil gave a quick sigh. “I doubt they'll welcome us with open arms.” He thumbed toward the crowds ahead. “Doesn't look like they're letting anyone in, and I'm not sure I want to fight the U.S. military. In fact, I know I don't.”

That gave Liam an idea. Was he listed as a fugitive from his brief visit—and evasion—from the Marines? He could turn himself in. It was a smarter play than fighting.

“Get me close. I think I can get us in.”

Mel and Phil looked at him with the “he's just a crazy kid” eyes, but didn't second guess him.

Liam met the commander of one unit of Marines back at Camp Hope—the base of operations for the Boy Scouts in the south suburbs of St. Louis. The commander had been looking for the man who was responsible for kidnapping his great-grandma, so Liam was inclined to help him. However, Liam couldn't absolutely trust him, so he and Victoria slipped away and rescued Grandma on their own. Liam hoped they'd also welcome him because of the information he carried about the fate of the Marines in the Riverside Hotel: all dead.

“OK, Liam, I'm going to park us just beyond that one on the left. Since the doors are already open in the back, we can practically jump right onto their ramp.” She was gracious enough not to mention they might be shot on sight as a threat to the Marines guarding the planes.

There were so many things going on at once Liam could hardly keep up. A Scout in the back shouted a warning that the infected now poured through the ballpark gate—they were following the MRAP like hungry Piranha to a ham hock. Phil said he saw people in the stands surging for the aircraft too. Ahead, the Marines holding back the crowd turned uncertainly as they had threats in every direction. Getting surrounded wasn't what it used to be...

Liam thought, “At least no one is shooting,” just as a shot rang out.

The ballpark exploded in gunfire.

In the rear of his truck, men and boys shot at the zombies as they approached. Mel had swerved right as she drove into the stadium, but many of the zombies made a z-line for the noisy Ospreys rather than follow her. The MRAP and the fastest zombies arrived at the first base Osprey at almost the same time. The Marines defended their patch of dirt, but diluted themselves to absurdity in the face of so many hostiles.

“What do we do now?” Liam asked the crew cabin.

Mel turned off the engine and looked to him with a grim smile and a raised eyebrow. “We pray.”

He took that as his cue to backtrack to Grandma and get her out the rear door along with everyone else. He hunched over as he made his way to her. The men and Scouts needed no invitation; they charged out the back. The four of them formed a loose firing line just behind the truck so they could shoot the incoming zombies. They looked tiny in the face of the ever growing crowd of infected coming through the broken rear gate of the ballpark.

We did this. Phil warned us. We brought down this sanctuary.

There's always someone around who ruins it for everyone else or for themselves. Liam assigned the name that guy to the bumbling character from all the zombie books he'd read over the years.

That guy who bungles holding a key to get him into his sanctuary.

That guy who shoots so many zombies he creates a stack of them, allowing them to walk onto his otherwise safe railway car.

That guy who needlessly brags to CDC employees that his Grandma is 104 so they spend the next week hunting her down.

The examples were legion, yet the three he'd just imagined were from his own experience in the Zombie Apocalypse to date.

Yep, that's all me. My streak continues.

Liam watched the handful of Scouts and men outside and recognized he had to move fast. He grabbed Grandma's arm, thankful that for once she didn't argue with him. She had a penchant for asking him to leave her behind and save himself, but she likely had heard Liam demur so many times she knew not to ask again.

The gunfire outside was incessant. When he and Victoria had Grandma on the dirt, he could see the fighting was more serious than he'd imagined. The crowd of civilians converged on the thin line of—at best, a dozen—Marines, and weren't stopping, even in the face of gunfire. In fact, they were firing back. Several of the Marines fell as he guided Grandma to the Osprey. There was no one standing on the ramp so they just kept going. Several of the people they rescued from the TV station had jumped off the roof and ran in. They moved with grim determination as far into the plane as they could, as if nothing was going to stop them from reaching safety. He doubted even the Marines could dislodge them.

He put Grandma on one of the jump seats near the middle of the plane and motioned for Victoria to strap her in. Someone in charge had to be on the plane. He walked by the eight or ten men and women who had taken refuge in the leading seats and stepped from the cargo area into the cockpit. Two Marine aviators sat in front of a dizzying array of buttons, switches, and display panels. The man on the right had a pistol pointed at his chest.

“I'm unarmed!” he shouted.

“What do you want? How'd you get on board?”

Liam thought it was obvious. “Your door was wide open,” is what he could have said. Now wasn't the time for jokes. Instead, he played his only card in this rigged poker game called the Apocalypse.

“I'm here to see Colonel Brandyweis. He's the commander of 2nd Marines...or something.” He'd met the colonel, but he couldn't recall the man's unit. He was only half-sure of his rank. He continued, talking fast. “I'm here with some Boy Scouts and my elderly grandmother. The colonel was looking for her.” That was mostly true.

The co-pilot looked at him for a long moment, then lowered his weapon.

“The lieutenant colonel isn't here. Go back and take a seat and I'll contact him. If you're lying, I'll throw you off myself. Clear?”

Liam had seen enough war movies to know the proper response: “Crystal, sir.” He thought about throwing him a salute, but opted for restraint. He trotted back to the large cargo hold. Grandma and Victoria were secure and belted, but the other men and boys were still at the bottom of the ramp, firing and reloading as fast as they could.

He proceeded to the top of the ramp, and squatted down so he could see through the side gap in the bay door. Hundreds of infected plodded on the green turf, walking and speed-walking toward the planes. On the other side, Marines were falling back to the planes, downing civilians who were doing their best to get themselves shot. Liam recognized the desperation in their eyes.

The Marines were doomed if they didn't fight back. Opportunities for cooperation, and survival, had passed. The civilians would overrun the plane and make it so overburdened it wouldn't be able to take off. That's how the story ends...

He was in the process of turning around to go back to Grandma when something caught his attention on the top of the MRAP. A child was still alive up there, but wasn't coming down.

“Ugh, that just figures,” he thought. Once he saw the person, he couldn't look away. He judged his chances, ignored them, and ran toward danger. It reminded him of “rescuing” that travel Bible for Victoria, but that was different. That was something he did to impress a girl. Now he was only thinking of saving a life.

Victoria screamed his name behind him, overpowering the engine noise, but he couldn't listen to her. He plowed through the small cordon of rifle-wielding Boy Scouts, unaware until it was much too late he didn't inform them he was coming through. He waited to be shot in the back, but was pleasantly surprised when he wasn't.

He judged his distance, speed, and destination and timed his jump perfectly. Getting on top of his MRAP wasn't that difficult because the thing had numerous appendages, grills, and guards on the side which facilitated his climb. He mounted the rig just in front of the driver's side door, pulled himself onto the top part of the hood—away from all the blood—then hopped over the windshield to the somewhat flat surface on top. He got around the automated chaingun, disheartened by all the blood—that was from survivors hurting each other to get their ride on his truck. He took two seconds to see the crowds on both sides of him eating away the Marines by sheer force of numbers. He didn't have long.

It wasn't child, but she was a very small older teenaged black girl. She was prone on the metal surface. Her white blouse carried the typical apocalyptic grime of someone who had worn it for too long. Her long black slacks were shredded below the knees and similarly filthy. Her exposed lower legs were lacerated with what looked like a thousand scratches. Her arms were also smeared with blood from numerous injuries. When he bent down to let her know he was there, she turned her face toward him and it too was blood-strewn. But she was alive.

He said nothing, but grabbed her hand and pulled her from the deck. She let him lead her, though she was in a daze. The smell of gunfire was powerful. Clouds of it were everywhere below him, adding to his own wooziness within the chaos.

Still saying nothing, he pulled her forward, and motioned where he wanted her to go. She gave a weak smile and drug herself toward him as he stood on the hood and beckoned her.

“That's right. Just follow me down. We're going to get on the plane.”

She looked terrified. A perfectly natural emotion given what she'd just been through. He corrected himself. She was still going through it. He took another look around, felt the crush of time, but knew he couldn't show it to her.

He tried to convey hope instead. “The Marines are here to save us.”

A thousand thoughts swirled through his head. His mind landed on a sour one. He expected her to respond with, “And who will save the Marines?” but she remained quiet.

He held her hand as she shimmied down the windshield, and he turned to put his foot on the fender so he could step there. He let himself get distracted by the action below and he slipped on the blood covering the lower half of the hood.

His vision accelerated as he spun.

He became aware of himself sometime later. He opened his eyes while lying in the dirt. Victoria was in his field of vision, running to him. Another woman ran the other way. He recognized her from somewhere.

“Victoria, sweet Victoria,” he thought. “Are we going for a plane ride?”

A zombie jumped into his field of view. It ran up the ramp, but was shot by a soldier at the top.

“Not a soldier. That's a U.S. Marine,” he heard from deep in his memories.

Screams everywhere. Some Boy Scouts turned and ran into the plane. One looked back at him with terror in his eyes.

“How nice to have them here,” he thought.

“I wonder what game they're playing?” His mind was adrift.

He next became aware of himself sitting in one of the Osprey's seats. More gunfire. A deep hum of an engine. He was surrounded by many desperate-looking people. “Wow, they look like they're late for work,” he joked with himself.

The already whining engines pitched faster. The plane lurched.

From his left, he heard a swell of gunfire and watched with placid calmness as the Marines shot everyone they could from the ramp of their plane. Most were blood-covered zombies. Some weren't. The noise was deafening, but Liam wasn't bothered.

“EVERYONE GET DOWN!” shouted one of the Marines over the roar of the accelerating engines. Most complied. He physically encouraged the few holdouts.

With everyone off their feet, Liam had a clear view of the other Osprey. It still had its ramp open too, but no one was shooting, and a massive crowd tried to get in from the infield side of the baseball diamond. Another group was on the outfield side of the ramp and they pressed in too.

Isn't this nice. I love coming to the ballpark with Dad.

In slow motion, the other Osprey lifted off, ramp open and all, and tilted dangerously to the left. People clung to the ramp even as it lifted several feet above the crowd. It was too much.

The Osprey continued to tilt and move forward at the same time. It snapped the wires behind third base and tried to correct itself, but it was too unwieldy. It drifted into the lowest seats, and seemed to settle itself onto the incline filled with terrorized and fleeing people. Liam waited for an explosion that never came.

“Nothing is ever like the movies,” he complained.

The Marines continued to shoot both the living and the dead at the end of his bird's ramp. It began to close. Before it got too high, Liam had the misfortune to see a man throw his tiny daughter in the air toward the Marines, only to have her pulled down by an incredibly lucky zombie who had his arm above his head as he too reached for the ramp.

“He whiffed it,” was his in-game analysis. “I feel ya' buddy.”

The whole plane rattled maniacally, then seemed to settle as it rose. In sixty seconds, Liam appreciated they were alive, and hovering. His head cleared, though his confused ramblings were gradually replaced by a similarly disconcerting din of screaming, shouting, and wailing from inside the now-cramped cargo hold.

A grim-faced Marine covered in red blotches on his gray camo walked by. He looked at everyone in the seats as he picked his way through those sitting on the floor. Liam couldn't read his face, but thought he saw anger in his eyes.

He turned to Victoria in the seat to his right and was surprised to see the shock on her face as she looked at him.

“Liam! You fell and hit your head!”

“I fell and hit my head?” he mouthed back.

She nodded vigorously.

“Just rest!” she screamed.

“I lost my shirt,” he said with less enthusiasm. But she was no longer looking at him.

He reclined his head on the seat. The Marines shouted at the civilians. The civilians shouted at the Marines and each other. Children—many parentless—wailed relentlessly, as was their right. No one showed the least inclination to heed to sanity.

He leaned forward and over to Grandma. “Hey Grandma, you forgot your cane. You want me to turn the plane around to go get it?” He smiled as he said it, unsure if she even heard him. Ignoring the shaking hand, he used two fingers to wipe at the blood dripping into his eye, then he crushed himself into the back of his seat to steady his body. He'd said it as a joke. He forgot her cane back when they first left her house. He turned around to retrieve it for her; it was among the first of their many trials together. At the time, he had no idea how many adventures they'd have together. Now he was safe inside a military plane, above a city filled with zombies, while thousands of abandoned survivors below cursed him for being so damned lucky.

Grandma smiled, though her eyes were closed—like she had a fear of flying. He let it go.

The ballpark, home to so many friendly competitions over the years, was now witness to the ultimate struggle between the diminishing number of healthy humans and the increasing number of infected. He saw it as a microcosm of what was happening in the whole city, the whole country, and the whole world.

“Ms. Bunting would be so happy to know I remembered what a microcosm is.” He giggled to himself as his head swooned. His science teacher was probably de—

“No! She made it. They all made it,” he thought. “Everyone I ever knew made it to safety, until I'm proven wrong.” He didn't want to go crazy thinking of all the people who potentially didn't make it. Someone had to make it.

Somehow, he won the lottery again and was one of the survivors.

He agreed with those below: at that moment, he really was the luckiest boy in the world.

Chapter 2: Grandma Dreams of Blue

While riding in the back of the MRAP, Marty felt light-headed as energy surged in her head and throughout her body. The incidents increased over the past few months, but they usually happened when she was waking up from a bad dream. It had become more pronounced as she dreamed of Al these past weeks, but this “jolt” felt stronger than ever before. And she hadn't dreamed yet.

She still had all her memories of Al and what he told her a short time ago about the mundane nature of all the “miracles” she'd witnessed. Her faith in God was unwavering, but her faith in miracles and Al's role as an angel had been dowsed as sure as her swim in the muddy Mississippi today. The notion she could hear the thoughts of the kids, or could control any zombies was just... She put two and two together now: Al wasn't real. Couldn't be. He was part of the breakdown of her mind under all the stress. Maybe an aneurism was responsible for her mental issues…

Or the infection they put in my veins.

The rocking in the back of the big truck was lulling her to sleep. Her last thought was that she was so glad Victoria had allowed her to rest her head on her shoulder. She'd nap, just for a little while…

She recognized the girl as she entered her dream.

2

The girl came back to life, or it felt like it anyway. Air rushed into her chest. She sucked in the stench of death, and was tempted to cough it back out. But not yet.

“Am I safe?” she wondered.

Her eyes were open, but the darkness was absolute. Her imagination placed her inside a shipping container, or an old walk-in freezer, or maybe on top of her Catholic school church altar. Those were places constructed from her memories, though she'd never woken up in or on any of them.

Careful to listen for clues, her body remained rigid—willing itself not to give away its master.

“Scare much?” She tried to recall the time before, but drew a blank. Only her long-term memories were intact. “My name is...Azure, but I go by Blue now. I came here... Then the zombies...” She lamented her memory failed her on the most important questions.

What she did know was that zombies ruled the darkness. It was time for action.

Below her, something was wet. Viscous.

“Why blood? Why can't I wake up in ice cream or ketchup? That way I'd know this was all fake.”

Sitting up was difficult in the confined space. Things were stacked on her feet and legs. Bodies. Not one. Not two. Many. She felt the tangled hair wrapped around one hand. She slid herself from underneath the dead weight and got into a crouching position.

“I bet I'm covered in blood.”

Her ears were attuned to the dark. The muffled silence indicated an interior room, but she also detected a wisp of distant gunfire.

Testing her body, she rose and made contact with an object leaning against the nearby wall. It slid and rattled to the floor with a muffled clang. The sound was unfortunate, but oddly comforting. She reached down and lifted the cold combat shotgun. She ran her hand along the stock, taking note of the shells affixed to the side. She came up with six plus whatever's in the barrel.

“Someone was very thoughtful to leave this with me,” she thought.

Feeling the front of her shirt, it was covered in the red stuff. She just knew it. Her pants were similarly smeared. The only question now was whether any part of her was free of it. She tried to wipe her hands clean when she heard a sound she recognized—the stutter-shuffle of zombies.

“No. Not happening.” Her brain tried to establish an action plan. Fighting zombies in the dark was lose-lose. That she ended up in this room under a bunch of bodies proved that.

Crouching, she searched the corpses near her feet for a flashlight, lighter, or pack of matches. Surely one of the dead had been a smoker.

“Don't call me Shirley!”

“Why did I just think that?” Her mind dug deep for a second and an echo of a man speaking popped into her mind's eye. “When you start your new life, echoes of the old will bounce around like the embers of a fire, burning one final time.”

The first body she searched was a man. He had nothing in his pockets. The second body was a woman. She wore a pleated skirt. She had massive trauma on her left side. Blue put her hand in the mess before she realized what it was. She stifled the shock of revulsion as if her life depended on it. The third body was intertwined with and below the other two. It was also a man, but it was jittery.

She pushed off the two people stacked above him, and found a small throwaway lighter. Working fast, she struck the tab and the thing sparked, providing a snapshot of the wider room—like a bat using sound.

“No. I didn't just see...”

For the first time, she lost hold of her fear response. She gulped air.

Flick. The entire space was lit, for half a second.

Men and women stood nearby, inside—whatever it was she was in.

Flick. She looked at the wall closest to her. It was a good-sized room, not the confined closet her mind constructed. She was in the corner of the larger space, so it felt tighter than it really was. Glad she wasn't in a tiny coffin, but distraught the room could hold an undead football team, she tried to stay positive—she was alive.

“Am I? If I was still dead, would I know it?” It seemed too fantastic to contemplate, but she took inventory and was comforted by her breathing. “Of course I'm alive.” It was the kind of thing someone says when they wake up in a room full of dead people. The kind of dead people that want you dead.

“Not this girl.”

Flick. She could see a door handle—five feet to the left.

She ran the numbers on a) getting to the door and b) getting through the door. These were very important because c) was getting eaten by zombies. Her goal was to do everything possible to avoid option Charlie.

“Charlie Mike. Continue Mission.” It was another ember.

Flick. Shuffle.

Flick. Movement. A groan.

She was almost within reach of the handle, standing among bodies in varying states of death. Some were writhing on the floor. Others were already on their feet. She tried to stay on task. The metal hook looked industrial. The kind you'd find in a hospital, an office building...or a hotel.

“Yep, there's the little hanging sign. 'Do not disturb.' That's irony right there.” The only remaining question was whether the door was locked. Then it would be an easy out.

Long experience told her nothing was ever that simple when Death was standing behind you.

Flick.

The door had a deadbolt sixteen inches above the main handle. It would have to be tossed before the wooden door would swing inward.

She chanced one last look over her shoulder.

Flick.

They were only a couple feet from her now.

“Screw this!” she shouted while tossing the lighter; she'd either escape or die trying.

She lunged, turning the deadbolt—though it wasn't locked—while swinging the handle in a fluid motion. It swung inward, and hit a body on the floor, but her adrenaline gave her the strength to slip through. An attempt to shut the door behind her was thwarted by her slippery hands and the arms of the undead already grasping for her. She tumbled out of the cavity into natural light. The checkered carpeting of a hotel walkway rose up to meet her face—along with scores of dead zombies scattered about. A massacre had taken place here.

On her feet like lightning, she ran the numbers. What were her chances of survival?

“Hello computer?” An ember of a man talking into a computer mouse.

Her vision blurred for just a moment. She became aware of something near her face—inside her goggles—just outside her field of vision. It was fast-moving green text on a translucent background. Her first impression was of a computer interface. Just thinking the word “computer” brought the interface directly into her field of view. It was distracting as she ran in the hallway.

“So I went crazy in that room. Wonderful.”

The multitasking began.

“I'm in a silo? No, a hotel.” She was inside a circular hotel with a hollowed out atrium from top to bottom. Must be thirty floors. An elevator shaft on the far side went all the way up. The walkway ran all the way around the hotel with a railing to prevent accidents on the inner side, and the doors to the rooms on the outer side.

“Of course I'm at the top.”

She looked back at her pursuit. There were six of them. They weren't as fast as her, but she knew they were relentless. The closest zombie—a woman dressed as a nurse—had a shimmer around her. It tripped something inside her brain, and the computer interface identified the runner for her.

>>Subject: A. Beckitswith. Nurse. Last known residence: Atlanta, GA. Employer: Center for Disease Control. Deceased.

The interface threw gigs of data at her—online photos, data streams, social media feeds. None of it relevant to this moment.

“Turn off!” She willed the computer to stop. It merely paused, and moved to the side of her awareness. She almost pulled off the computer goggles, they were already very loose, but she didn't want to lose them.

Her confusion allowed A. Beckitswith to catch up. Blue stopped and planted her feet. She maneuvered the gun in her hands, gripped the barrel like a baseball bat, and swung as hard as her pixie-frame would allow. The synthetic stock made contact with A's temple, splitting the skull with a satisfying crack. Blood splashed everywhere from the wound, dousing her front side and a wide swath of the brand new carpet.

A. Beckitswith fizzled to the floor as zombie number two approached. Another four were closing behind their leader. Fighting was in her veins, but “better part of valor” was an ember from deep inside; it insisted she run.

While fast-jogging, she reached down to the stock of the Mossberg A590A1 shotgun—a model she knew just by looking at it—and pulled shells off the ammo attachment and pushed them into the feeder port. She only needed two because it was already carrying four shells. She put the extra back into the strap and racked the slide in one powerful up and down motion. Since it was already primed with a round in the barrel, the unspent shell popped out, bounced off the wall, and Blue deftly caught it and fed it back in.

“Seven shots ready to go.”

The pursuing zombie had the shimmer as the interface displayed stats.

>>Subject: N. Dawes. Nurse. Last known residence: Chicago, IL. Employer: Center for Disease Control. Deceased.

“I think I see a pattern here.”

The four other zombies were quite a bit behind on the walkway, but they were also dressed like the two nurses. They were far enough back she could ignore them, for now. The lone chaser, Ms. Dawes from Chicagoland, was hopelessly outclassed in a footrace. Seeming to realize this, she flung herself over the edge of the balcony.

Still moving, Blue veered to the interior edge and looked over. The zombie was there, propelling herself—itself—along the edge of the stout steelwork of the railing. She wasn't going faster than Blue, but it was a new variable that troubled her.

“What other tricks do you have?”

The red glow of the EXIT sign blazed away ahead. She could leave this whole episode behind her. Blue plowed into the steel door of the stairwell with her shoulder—and bounced backward with her head bobbling. Even the computer interface wandered haphazardly.

Blue stumbled around, yelling loudly at the pain—and her stupidity—as she tried to regain her senses. It was only a few moments of delay, but it was a delay.

Ms. Dawes came over the top of the railing, five feet from her. She didn't perch on the top like a cat, but she very nearly did. Blue could see the ruined skin of the dead nurse. If she were in a cartoon, her neck would have a very distinct chomp outline. The carotid artery was messily severed, and the resultant blood splatter had covered the nurse in brackish liquid, now dried. Her eyes carried the tell-tale sign of the Double-E. Bloody eyes with gobs of it pouring out the bulging sockets.

They collided, and both careened off the hard metal door. On second glance, she knew why it hadn't opened. Some wanker had welded the damned thing shut.

The shotgun squirted out of Blue's hands. The nurse had a hundred pounds on her and pushed her to the floor. Blood bonded with blood as the pair splashed across the carpet. Blue was smaller and faster, and infinitely smarter. She played her hand at just the right time, pushing herself off the slippery nurse before she could take a cartoon-sized bite from her own neck.

She tumbled to her gun and grabbed it as she sprang to her feet. Moving fast, she eluded the sprawling zombie and resumed jogging around the loop. Another EXIT sign was on the far side. It was the only obvious course of action.

Chancing a look over the side again, she was dismayed to see movement on many of the lower levels. Zombies made the most noise when they knew victims were around, and the z-cophony of undead was unnerving inside the large structure.

“Makes me want to toss myself over the edge.”

She stopped running at the thought. She did feel as if throwing herself from the ledge was a viable plan. “I can't be more than two hundred feet up. I could land on a tree down in the lobby.” It made perfect sense. “I'm superhuman, after all.”

Blue smiled as she imagined herself getting up on the railing, leaning over...and then she'd just keep going. The feeling was palpable. The desire to escape. Escape downward. It was the fastest way.

She looked straight down and caught movement on the walkway below hers. A teenage girl in a bloody blue raincoat looked straight up with her blood-drenched face. She had a shimmer around her. It was both horrible and beautiful. She wanted Blue to jump...

The computer spun up, providing real-time analysis.

>>Subject: T. Lowry. Offspring of Z. Lowry. Last known residence: Kansas City, KS. Employer: State of Kansas. Deceased.

“Deceased? A zombie?” Looking at the data brought her out of her glamour. Jumping from the 29th floor was now the last thing she wanted to do.

Ms. Dawes nipped her heels, but was a fraction of a second too late. Blue knew she was coming and had time to push herself off the railing. She vacated the space even while the zombie filled it. Recovering, Blue planted her feet, lowered her head, and threw herself into the bloodied woman.

Caught mid-turn, the zombie was off-balance. It was Blue's opportunity to push her over the edge. She watched her fall for a moment, but was distracted again by the girl below. She was now screaming bloody murder in Blue's direction. All that was missing was the shaking fist of rage.

“Why I outta!” An image of a Stooge. An ember.

She resumed her run and finished with a sprint as she reached the door under the EXIT sign. She didn't need to look back to know the chase would be close.

This one wasn't welded shut. In seconds, she was through. The door opened inward and there wasn't a chance to get it blocked. She ran up to the next floor, pulled open the final fire door, and forced it shut once she was through. The powerful hydraulic compressor resisted her, almost as if it wanted her to get caught. The zombies nipping her heels reached the door a tense second after the satisfying click. As far as she knew, zombies weren't smart enough to turn handles or pull open a heavy door. “God help us if they do.”

Sun beat down on her from above. The penthouse level was a restaurant or lounge of some kind, with a glass ceiling and a glass-like floor. She took a few tentative steps and devoured the horrible scene below her.

Each of the levels had at least a few zombies meandering around. Some levels had many.

“Let's look up top, shall we?”

The access door for the roof was nearby. There was no drama walking up a single flight of stairs to the glass door at the top. It was designed to allow visitors to explore the roof of the hotel. She should have breathing room up there.

“Again, as long as zombies can't open doors.”

To Blue it was a joke, but something deep in her memory told her to be careful. It was often fatal to underestimate an adversary. No matter how ridiculous the notion.

The sunny skies and warm breeze greeted her with cheer. On any other day, a tour of a hotel observation platform like this one would be filled with smiling faces and running children. The clicks of photography equipment would be complemented by the know-it-alls providing the names and history of the buildings in the St. Louis skyline.

“Here's Busch Stadium. That's where the Cardinals play.”

“That one there, that's One Metropolitan Square. It's the tallest in St. Louis.”

“And if you look the other way, you can't miss the Gateway Arch. Tallest structure around, topping out at 630 feet. Robed in shimmering stainless steel so it will last forever.”

“Pffft. None of that matters anymore. A structure's value is only measured in how well it can keep out zombies. And nothing lasts forever.”

Her computer interface activated, as if knowing she would need it here.

The roof and platform were unfinished. Construction equipment—including a huge crane anchored to the building—and various types of building materials were scattered everywhere. The hotel was brand new, and sat at the southwest corner of the verdant parkland underneath the Gateway Arch. The vibrant green of the grass and trees met the dull brown of the Mississippi on the far side of the park. The main area of downtown was to her left—the west. A brand new football stadium was north of the Arch, providing a stark contrast to the ancient brownstone buildings nearby. East, across the river, were factory smokestacks, railyards, and dilapidated buildings as far as she could see.

Normally the view would be rated as “spectacular,” or “must see,” but Blue leaned in despair against the retaining wall of the viewing platform. Below her, as far as she could see in the park, people huddled together, well behind a line of armed men and women protecting them in the park.

Her memory flooded back as the scene before her helped jog some of her missing memories. She fought her way through that swarm, into the hotel, and up to the top level. She couldn't quite recall the circumstances that got her shut into that dark room, but it was trying to come back.

>>Subject: Battle of St. Louis. Computing...

Unlike the data on individual zombies back inside, the interface took a long time to call up the information requested. Blue could sense the mainframe accessing exabytes of data. Geo-locations of tens of thousands of phones. Police radio frequencies. The Arch website. Shipping manifests of barge towboats plowing the Mississippi river. Automotive maintenance schedules of the cars in her field of view. Construction blueprints of the buildings facing the park to her left, and of the Arch directly in front of her. The number of cups delivered to the coffee shop in the lobby of a nearby building. Ballistics data for the .50 caliber shells littering the streets below.

She raised the goggles, on a hunch. None of what she saw on the computer screen was actually happening below. Instead, there was just bombed-out wreckage and countless bodies being picked over by birds. Though the sea of zombies everywhere else was consistent in both versions.

She put the goggles back on, watching what she figured out had to be a replay of what took place down there.

An M1A2 Abrams tank's engine whined in the canyon of the street below.

“Rock n' roll.” That was a replay she could appreciate.

The lone tank drove through crowds of zombies almost directly below her. Sixty-eight tons of steel crushed the dead as it cruised along the few streets not packed with abandoned cars. Even from thirty stories up Blue could see the armored hulk was bathed in blood as it created a furrow in the zombie horde. It paused and the automated machine gun on top came to life; it punched into the mass of zombies around the tank—those still standing—and elicited more bloodletting. For a beautiful moment, there were almost no upright zombies within a cone fifty yards wide near the slayer. The pause didn't last long. As soon as the engines revved up to move, the inexorable wave of the undead sloshed back into the cleared space, though more than a few tripped or slipped over the entrails of their fallen brethren. Many dropped down to lap up the pools of blood.

Blue's stomach tried to hide.

The tank was the main attraction, but the rest of the park was no less impressive. A cordon had been created around the entire green space. Almost a mile long and half a mile wide, the island of green was filled with refugees. The air carried the lamentation of children, likely afraid of both the zombies at their door and the loud cracks of gunfire keeping the monsters at bay. The police had created a thin blue line of protection around the park. On this side, untold infected. On that side, a remnant of life trying to escape the city.

The computer spewed out information. As she thought about certain elements of the picture, the interface called up facts of relevance. She was catching on.

“Tell me about the bridges. Why aren't people going across to Illinois.”

>>Bridges: Order given, General Hodges, II Corps, United States Army. No civilians allowed to transit bridges from Missouri to Illinois. Preventative to stop infection. Additional data: Secret order, General Hodges, from CENTCOM. Terminate groups of 50 or more zombies by any means necessary. Collateral damage of human civilians authorized. All bridges to Missouri to be destroyed.

“That figures.”

The computer seemed to return to its original query, listing every piece of minutia it could find in the landscape in front of her. It was too much.

“Computer. Where can I get safe?”

>>Safety. Negative infection. Computing…

Reams of data spun in front of her once more, revealing an answer.

She ran from the north side of the building to the south. The computer had a green haze attached to an MRAP currently plowing through an ocean of zombies.

“So I have to get off this building, get through those zombies, and hitch a ride?” She looked down at her ruined blouse and pants. “And all I have is one lousy shotgun and these bloody clothes.” Thinking for a long while, she realized she had the most important survival tool already on her person.

“Computer, show me a safe route.”

Her eyes studied the maps and data, absorbing as much as she could on the fly. She was happy the computer showed her a way that didn't involve going back inside.

“Time to improvise.” In a few minutes, she assembled enough construction rope and fire hose to get her down the side of the building. She threw it all over, but noticed another wire was already hanging down the exterior. It came out an open space only a few floors below. She wondered if that's how she got in.

The thought spun up the computer interface.

>>Path of ingress. Blue.

She watched herself on surveillance cameras. She didn't climb the wire, but instead entered through a window from the roof of the parking garage far below. Another much taller woman entered with her. At the sight of the mysterious woman, an ember of a past life floated by.

“Let's jog Forest Park, huh?”

The next scene showed them sneaking into the hotel atrium. With weapons slung, they carried long metal stakes. They planted them on the floor when zombies ran at them. The tips drove into the skulls. It was bloody business.

They reached the open stairwell; small flashlights were out. Camera after camera showed them ascending. As they neared the top, an interior security camera showed several zombies standing on floor 30. As if they were waiting at the door.

“Impossible. Zombies can't plan.” A pause. “Unless someone put them there.”

Even watching herself she felt the dread of what was coming. There had to be twenty zombie men and women standing behind that door. Did chance place them there? She couldn't decide—didn't want to believe it was a trap set by someone.

Level 28.

Level 29.

She queried the computer, desperate to jump ahead.

>>Subject: Ms. Juvy Manzano. Status: Deceased.

“Oh sweet Jesus.”

At the thirtieth floor, the two of them stepped out. Blue noted she was toting an AK-47 and the other woman—Juvy—carried the Mossberg. She watched the replay as the trap was sprung.

Blue rolled through the door. From one knee, she began firing at the zombies standing ten or fifteen feet away. Juvy emerged from the darkness at about the same time. She swept both sides of the open door, catching the closest zombies before they could spring at Blue. A body fell into the doorway.

The scene went on. They systematically swept the remaining zombies in a well-orchestrated display of gun handling. One shot at zombies close up, the other aimed for those in a ring further away. Together they brought down a considerable number of the attackers with little direct threat to themselves.

The scene shifted. Another camera showed scores of zombies climbing the stairwell. It was a mixture of every size, shape, and state of decay. The snippets of camera footage in the stairwells was a horrible kaleidoscope of zombiedom. Little kids in happy-colored clothes ran with large men wearing basketball uniforms. All rising in the tube of the stairwell. Heading for her and Juvy.

The first of the undead tumbled out of the doorway. The dead body had kept that door from sealing. She remembered it all now that she saw it. She was scared when they came through. They were both surprised. That never happened before. The two women on the camera looked stunned. Distracted.

From another camera view, Blue realized why.

“That little bitch.” The young woman in the raincoat was there, on the floor below, looking up at the action. She had some kind of hold on her and Juvy.

More zombies tumbled out of the darkness. Juvy snapped out of it first, grabbing Blue's arm and pulling her along the walkway. Toward a room she knew.

The scene shifted to one last camera. Both women stood at the doorway to the hotel room where she'd woken up. Her own figure was trying to hold off the increasing number of zombies coming out of the stairwell while Juvy worked at the room's door. Some crept along the railing, out of their view in the replay, as Dawes had done.

As Juvy opened the door, a zombie from inside met the push of zombies—and the girls—from outside. At the last moment, Juvy tried to push Blue inside and shut the door, but the swarm carried them all in. For a full minute, the scene showed the mass of zombies standing outside, excited at the prospect of food. There was no room for more to go in…

Blue broke into tears. It was clear now what had to happen.

“How did I survive?” She said it without emotion. It seemed impossible.

The computer threw up a crap ton of data, but didn't answer the question. There was no camera in the room. Blue took it to mean the computer didn't want to admit she had asked the impossible of it.

There was Juvy at the door. She had taken the AK-47. She lined up each shot in rapid succession at point blank range, felling the zombies at a torrid pace. It was an impossible display of skill and luck. When she had created a little hole for herself, she turned around and used both hands to pull the hotel room door shut. How many bodies were lying in that space?

Blue fast-forwarded the camera in her mind, getting past the horrible end of Juvy. Her body must have been in that pile outside the room where she woke up…

Her anger at what the zombies had done—what someone had made them do—burned like a tiny sun in her chest. But for now her mission was much more basic than revenge. It was survival. The computer showed her the location of the MRAP moving around the nearby streets. If she timed it right she would have a shot of catching it.

Blue cinched up her pants. She didn't understand who she was, why she went into a hotel filled with a horde of zombies, or how'd she survived. All she knew for sure was she had to catch that truck.

Blue held the shotgun as best she could, and started over the edge. She pulled up the goggles so they wouldn't distract her. She didn't need them anymore, anyway. She could hear the engine of her target.

Chapter 3: Cairo

Liam woke up in a dingy room draped with tacky wallpaper showing little toy soldiers. The small bunk bed mattress sagged sadly as he tried to sit up. The top bunk sagged in a similar fashion above him. He ran his fingers through his wild hair, expecting to pick out pieces of mud and debris left from his swim in the Mississippi, but he was surprised to only find clean hair.

He looked at the pair of cargo shorts he wore—not his—and became concerned that if he couldn't remember a shower or how he got dressed, someone had to have done it for him. He was pretty sure it wasn't Great Grandma.

Well, that's embarrassing, he said to himself.

His arms were sore, and scraped up one side and down the other. Bright sunlight shone through the small, bare, wood-framed window. It drenched his skin as if he were under a microscope. The scratches were souvenirs from his days of travel and survival since the sirens went off...he didn't know how many days ago. The most momentous event in human history and he had no idea how long ago it happened.

Grandma would probably say it doesn't matter. Just live in the day. Or some other platitude that was both generic, and true. He didn't quite have the same knack for positivity she did.

The room contained nothing but the bed and a small desk, with no chair. Several bottled waters sat on top of the desk; they called to him.

As he gained his feet, he felt pretty good. He had a hard time remembering the details now, but he knew he hit his head when he fell on the hood of the MRAP. And then—it got fuzzy. As if to acknowledge his memory, he touched the side of his head. It was tender with a small pliable scab, but he must not have come out too bad if he didn't have a bandage.

The water invigorated him. He downed a whole bottle and reached for another, but checked himself from grabbing it. Voices carried from beyond the room. He went for the cheap brass handle on the wooden door. He had to know his situation.

He opened the door to step out, but once opened, he hesitated in the entry for a long time. The tiny undecorated living room was part of a small residential house. There were many people lounging about.

Grandma thumbed through a magazine as she sat next to a pretty young girl on a squat cloth sofa. A half dozen other people sat on old metal chairs or sprawled on the wooden floor. Most appeared to be about his age. Their heads were buried in tablets, smartphones, and laptops. Many wore headphones, and none looked up at him. The detached companionship reminded him of any number of school functions over the years.

“Grandma,” he called.

Grandma Marty turned and gave him a big smile. So did her friend.

No way.

“Victoria?”

She stood up and moved the four paces across the room, and gave him a tight hug. When she pulled away, she kept her arms around his neck as she spoke. “I'm glad you're OK. The wound didn't look bad, but it did bleed something awful. I was afraid you were going to be out a lot longer.”

He had a million questions. But only one thing was on his mind in the moment.

“Victoria, you're gorgeous.” As he said it, he had a momentary flash of embarrassment. Paying compliments to girls was brand new territory for him, and doing it for a girlfriend in front of a room full of peers was cutting edge. But after all they'd been through together, he had no plans to spend his time navel-gazing about his feelings for her. No one else seemed to care.

She had cleaned up. She wore a perfectly white tank top with a modest neckline. Her shirt bracketed her cheerful silver cross necklace. She wore a pair of dark blue jeans, and even still had his belt around her waist—along with his leather holster, though it was currently empty. She found a relatively new pair of running shoes—they were white and bright yellow. But mostly he was impressed by how well she cleaned up her face.

Almost since they'd met, her face had suffered extensively. First when she was beat up in the Arch by looters, then when she'd fallen after getting shot, and finally when she lost her tooth jumping in a creek. The tooth was still missing, but it didn't detract from her image. Now those bruises were nearly healed and she had a chance to comb her hair and put it into a ponytail.

Her emerald eyes pierced his blues. She stood on her toes, gave him a quick peck on the lips, and separated. Liam was aware again of all the other young people in the room.

And Grandma. He moved to the sofa with great cheer; he sat next to her while Victoria scrunched in on his other side, with her legs folded under her.

“Hi, Grandma. How ya doing?”

“Oh, Liam. I'm so happy to see you all right. You gave us a fright on the plane.”

“I don't really remember the flight.” He looked around, trying to look out the windows to the street beyond. He saw other houses; his first impression was he was in some beat down little subdivision in the suburbs of St. Louis. “We aren't at Camp Hope, are we?”

“No, I'm afraid not.”

Victoria jumped in, “We're in Cairo, Illinois.” She pronounced it like care-oh ella noise.

He looked at her and she returned a smile. She was being silly.

Grandma continued. “That's right. The military brought us here, along with everyone who made it from that terrible stadium.” She paused while she appeared to swish her tongue around inside her mouth. To Liam, it reminded him of a stereotypical thing an elderly person might do, but he did it himself as he watched—suddenly aware he was still very thirsty. “When the plane was airborne, I thought they were going to open the hatch and throw us off the back. The Marines weren't too happy we helped bring the infected onto the field.”

“We killed all those people.” He said it, echoing himself from inside the MRAP while still in the city, though he couldn't decide if it was absolutely true. He hoped Grandma would tell him he was being dramatic.

“Well, we did let the infected into the stadium. I guess we have to take the blame for it.” She crossed herself.

No, we can't have really killed them. All of them.

He looked at Victoria, hoping she would argue the point, but she stared at the floor in front of them, suddenly very quiet.

Liam kept going. “OK, so we killed them. We didn't ask to be there. We didn't know they were there. We just wanted to survive.”

Once he'd said it, he knew what was coming. He stepped on every landmine in their short discussion.

He waited for it, but neither seemed willing to rub it in. “Of course everyone would want to survive. Some would do more than others to make that happen,” he imagined they'd say. “And Phil tried to warn us,” they would add.

Wanting to move past the ugly truth, Liam asked, “So what do we do now? Grab Mel and Phil and get back to my parents at Camp Hope?”

The strange silence continued. While the rest of the people in the room continued to push buttons and play games, Grandma and Victoria were both uncharacteristically quiet. The fashion magazine idled on Grandma's lap.

“What? My parents are coming here?” He smiled, but he could tell by their faces that wasn't it.

“Come on guys, you're freaking me out. That's not funny when zombies walk the Earth.”

He had a hard time looking at both of them, since they were sitting on opposite sides, but he did catch a nod between them.

“Liam, when we got off the plane we didn't find Melissa or Phil.” Victoria held his arm as she continued, “We don't know for certain they didn't get off the plane when it landed, but nobody remembers seeing them. They wouldn't just run away. The only thing that makes sense is they never got on in the first place.”

Liam had been with Phil almost since the beginning. He'd come to think of him as part of his A-team of survival experts. Melissa had been a good solid addition too. He thought she may even have been more valuable than Phil for her military prowess.

“OK. So we go out and look for them. Scour the camp.” He looked at Victoria, knowing Grandma wasn't going to be doing much search and rescue at her age.

Victoria gave him sad eyes. “Liam...”

“What? What am I missing here?”

Holding his arm tighter, “Liam, that was two days ago. You were exhausted. Injured. We didn't want to wake you up for this. If they were here, someone would have found them by now.”

He flopped backward into the cushion of the sofa. Now Grandma held his other arm. He felt like his head was spinning, even though he felt fine. He thought Mel and Phil had been harmed by the survivalists back at Camp Hope, but he left before he was forced to see that truth. Then they showed up in the MRAP and saved him, Grandma, and Victoria in the city. And then...

“Two days? A lifetime of things could happen in two days. We have to go look for them. And then we have to find my parents.” He said it without conviction. His whole life recently had been a series of rescues. How many more could he endure?

On the other hand, sitting on his butt was the last thing he wanted to do.

2

Liam's compass spun wildly. Here, he was elated to be safe with Victoria and Grandma. Over here, he was angrily accepting that Mel and Phil were almost certainly dead. Finally, as the compass finished its sweep, he was terrified his parents sat back at the Boy Scout camp worrying about his fate.

He reached for his phone. Two days ago, it was waterlogged and presumably broken. Today…

“Um. My phone's gone.”

“No, I have it.” She pointed to a nearby table. “I charged it for you. They have everything here for techies. I also put it in a sealed plastic bag. For the next time you go swimming with it.”

She chuckled.

"It's working again?" he said excitedly. “Thank you!”

He jumped off the couch, grabbed it and removed it from the bag, and thumbed through the screens to get what he wanted. While he worked, he continued, "Victoria, get in there with Grandma. I'm going to take this photo if it—"

For many days he lamented he never took Victoria's photograph with his phone. In the Old Days, he would take pictures of urinal cakes as goofs to send his friends. Now, taking such pictures seemed the height of civilization. But before he could get the camera app loaded, he saw something else.

"Oh no. I have a text message. I'm not sure who it's from."

Victoria hopped up to get a look at his phone's screen. She looked at the message and the phone number where it originated, but said nothing further.

He looked up and saw Grandma with a patient face. As always.

"OK, Grandma, this is what it says, but I don't get it." He cleared his throat as if it were an important radio announcement. "Liam. Need to go to Koch Hospital Quarry. See research." The number was prefixed by the 435 area code. It was from the day before.

"Grandma, did you send this? Like you did the other one." Back at the Riverside medical lab, a strange message had appeared on Victoria's phone, supposedly sent by someone using Liam's phone. Grandma was holding it at the time, though the message could have been sent hours earlier based on how frequently the cell phone towers dropped service.

"Oh, I'm afraid it wasn't me. I don't know how that other one was sent to Victoria either. I only barely managed to contact you, Liam."

It was true enough. She had gotten one message through to him, giving him an X to mark the spot where she was being held captive. It was by far the most important text he'd ever gotten—and it came during a gunfight to boot. But now...

Victoria finally spoke. "I should tell you this town has the internet. It even has cell service, though the people who run the place say most of the other towers are down in the surrounding states, so there aren't really many people to talk to."

"Wait, internet is working? How?"

Victoria sat on the arm of the sofa. "From what I've gathered, this place is a hub of sorts for all the surrounding country. When the zombies came, local governments and some military retreated here and brought as much tech as they could. There's a huge parking lot with nothing but tractor trailers and generators humming next to them. But," she heaved a large sigh, "like the cell towers, there's not much to do on the internet because lots of the cities are completely offline."

Liam wasn't exactly sure how the internet worked, but he knew there were transmission lines between cities which carried data—they were always laying more fibre cable next to highways. But if the cities were dead, there'd be no one to manage the hubs, and with no one to manage those, it was only a matter of time before they either went offline because of power loss or even something as dumb as a zombie tripping over a network cable. Not many techs would be on duty either.

"So we have cell phones but no one to call, and internet but no websites to visit."

Victoria nodded solemnly.

"Children, don't fret. Liam, I'm sure your parents are fine. We're safe. That's what they'd want for you. For you both." She winked at Victoria; her smile was reassuring.

Liam studied the area outside the home's windows. Again he saw the small, squat houses nearby, and appreciated how forlorn they seemed. A few people milled about on the tiny street—there were small weed-strewn sidewalks, but people studiously avoided them. The yards were unkempt, and judging by the age and condition of several derelict cars and trucks parked under huge shade trees, were that way even before the Apocalypse. He peered out as far as he could and saw some multi-story stone buildings a couple blocks over. Mostly he saw grass though. Like houses had once lined the streets, but only one or two out of ten still managed to survive.

Kind of like us.

"Are all these people," he turned to those sitting in the room with him, and quieted his voice, "are we all refugees here?"

Victoria answered, "When we got off the plane, they took you to a large tent. It looked like it was for the Army or something. Most of the Marines from those planes went there too. They all had something wrong with them it seemed," she chuckled, "though they weren't complaining as much as you."

He put his hand to his head wound without realizing it. "Well, I wasn't right in the head."

With a smile, she continued, "They wouldn't let me stay with you, and I needed to take care of Grandma. They walked us all a few blocks from the landing area and handed us off to some town officials for temporary housing. We got in a golf cart and they ferried us here and told us to get comfortable. They said the residents of this street had all gone and we were welcome to stay wherever we could find room. Grandma and I chose this house because...it had the least blood inside."

Liam gulped. His stomach was legendary for betraying him in the sight of blood, though he was getting better about it.

“They gave us some clean clothes, a bar of soap per house, and told us we could get water over at the courthouse. And...we haven't heard anything for two days.”

“How did I get here?”

“I ran back and made sure you found your way to me. To us.” She pointed to Grandma, though she smiled, too.

Liam didn't want to ask the next question. It had been bothering him since he woke up and it would forever burn bright until he knew the truth.

“So how did I get in these clothes?”

Victoria's face turned red, but said, “What are you, five? Would you rather Grandma got you out of those filthy clothes and cleaned you up a little?”

As he thought about it he came to the conclusion that no, he really wouldn't prefer Grandma handle that particular chore.

As was common with the trio, they all had a good chuckle at Liam's expense.

3

Liam and Victoria left Grandma in the refugee-filled home and walked toward the center of town. Victoria knew the way. He wanted to see things for himself, and she seemed happy to get out with him.

As they walked, Liam tried to reply to the mystery text, but nothing came back.

“I have service. It should be going through.”

“Yeah, well maybe they don't have service,” she looked over to see the phone number again, “in the 435 area code. Where is that anyway?”

Liam shrugged, ready to write it off, until he remembered where they were.

“Hey, I can look it up!” He giggled as he tapped the browser for the internet. With a few swipes and clicks he had his answer. The biggest search engine survived the zombies, so far.

“This is what I've been missing all these weeks. The ability to answer simple questions.” He held the screen in front of Victoria's face as they strode down the middle of the car-less street.

“Utah.” She said it in a deep voice, as if it revealed a mystery.

Liam brought it back, then looked at it for several paces. “OK, that tells us nothing.” He couldn't help but be disappointed, but he didn't know why. He had his answer, after all.

On his mental map, Utah was a veritable black hole. He knew Colorado as mountainous. Nevada had Las Vegas. But Utah?

“I don't know about Utah, but I do know about Illinois.” She pointed ahead. “I don't think we're going to get in there.”

Ahead of them, at the large stone building being used as the command center for the town, a large crowd of people hovered about. The diverse group appeared agitated.

As they approached the outer fringes, Liam took Victoria's hand. She gave him a smile, then put on her serious face.

“Excuse me,” she called to a smattering of people on the outer edge of the crowd, “what's happening here?”

A middle-aged black woman dressed in black slacks and a long-sleeved black shirt with a sequined cat outline on the front answered her call. “You don't know?” She made a pointed effort to look Victoria up and down. “You folks come in here and take our houses and you don't know what's going on?” She ended with a very deliberate “humpf” sound.

Victoria looked taken aback. Unsure. So Liam tried his hand.

“Sorry ma'am. I hit my head and have been in the hospital. My girlfriend has been watching over me. We really don't know.”

The woman's mood softened, but just a little. “You two little kids don't have to worry about it, but us older folks do. Food rations is being tied to work on the line. Can you believe that shee-it?”

Liam and Victoria both looked at each other with blank faces.

“Are you kidding me? How long you been out?” She began speaking very fast. “When the Army came in here, the first thing they did was clear half the town and put us all together like sardines. Then they watched us like hawks. Next thing they began burning all the trees north of town. All of them! Finally, they began digging the line.” She said it with dramatic flair, but seemed disappointed it didn't elicit a reaction from them. “Oh fine. The line is a big ditch they been digging up north of here to cut across from one river to the next. Ohio to Mississippi. We'll be on an island. Get it? They gonna keep them zombies out of here completely once it's done.”

“Wow, that's a really good idea,” Liam volunteered.

“Yeah? Then you go up there and dig! I'm too old and tired to be digging holes.”

“Ma'am, why don't you want to dig? Isn't it going to protect all of us?”

Victoria added a soft hum in agreement, as if it were perfectly obvious.

The woman turned hostile. “Oh sure. You come in, take my house. Take over my town. Interrupt with all your comin's and goin's with those awful planes. And then you bring those infected people to Cairo's doorstep. Dontcha' know we've been getting' along jus' fine until you'all show'd up.” Her dialect seemed to change the angrier she got.

Victoria pulled his hand, moving him.

“Oh yeah! You two gonna go back home and sleep while I gotta dig yo' damned hole!” Other agitated people turned their direction. Many, but not all, were black. Victoria whispered that the town, until the sirens, was a sleepy and predominantly black community.

They moved around the crowd for several minutes, but there was no one in the middle giving work assignments or otherwise signifying someone in charge. As they walked, they saw the crowd was actually a queue, and the line went inside a large three-story building that looked like something out of the 1800's. It was made of large stones, ringed by a low black metal fence, and even had old-looking decorative cannons at the corners of the small patch of grass surrounding the structure. On the backside, people walked out with shovels, and headed north.

Liam wondered if they were going to hand him a shovel.

As if reading his mind, Victoria spoke quietly, “I think we better head back. I'm not sure what we can do here. This wasn't happening the last time I was here.” They'd gone around the building and came back along the other side of the angry residents. “Though I vote we take a different street to avoid that mean woman.”

“Agreed. Though if someone came in and took over my street—” He hesitated as it dawned on him someone did come in and take over his street. They were dead when they arrived too. “Follow me.”

When they reached the area where the lady had chided them, she was still there, yelling into the air at no one in particular. He didn't know why it bothered him so much, but he couldn't walk away without responding to her accusations.

“Ma'am?” He got her attention quickly, as she'd been eying him as he approached, though she tried to feign surprise.

“You two again?”

“Look, I appreciate what you said. I lived south of St. Louis up until about two weeks ago.” Actually, he thought, even that wasn't true. He lived in the city of St. Louis two weeks ago. But the story was the same everywhere. “I lived in a nice little subdivision, a lot like this place,” he swept his hand behind him, “but if they're digging a ditch to keep out the z—the infected—you better be out there digging.”

She looked taken aback, but he kept going.

“On my street, when the infected arrived, they came by the thousands.” He began to speak louder. “First in ones and twos, but they never stopped. And my street was filled with refugees, just like your town. People who came from the north, hoping to outrun the sick.”

He was aware a few more people were listening.

“They came into my backyard. They broke through my window. We ran to the basement. They filled the entire house. To the brim. Anyone left outside...was dead.” He left out most of the grisly details of his rescue: blood dripping through the floorboards, pieces of the zombies strewn over his lawn, the loss of Victoria. “When we finally came out of our home, the sick had moved on. But my house was destroyed. My neighbor's house was burned to the ground. In fact, my whole neighborhood looked like a war zone. And almost no one else survived.”

He knew he was exaggerating for effect, but the end result was perfectly true.

“I can never go back home.” He paused, amazed that he had a considerable number of people listening. “It was wiped off the map by the zombies.”

He felt he had them. Surely the message was clear, though he didn't intend anything more than convincing the lone woman. But she pulled the wrong message from his speech.

“Zombies?” She said it loudly, as if to bring the listeners back to her side. “Look child, I appreciate your fantasies, and I'm sorry your house got burned down, but I'm not scared of no zombies. Nuh uh. Last year I had a robber break in and I shot 'em dead, yes sir. If these zombies make it to kare-roh, you can bet they gonna get what's coming to 'em.”

Then, with a flourish she turned away from him and yelled, “And I ain't digging no damned ditch!”

Liam let himself be pulled forcefully by Victoria.

4

They were halfway back to their temporary house when Liam finally stopped.

“All right, that didn't go as planned.” He looked at her and couldn't help but smile in her presence.

“What? What's so funny?” A crooked smile hung on her face.

Liam's smile grew bigger. Most of his smile was because he just liked being around her, but a not inconsiderable part was because of what he saw in the yard behind her.

“You know, you may regret joining up with me for the Apocalypse.” He nodded to the pile of bikes under the massive tree in the unkempt lawn behind her. “I'm going to take one of those bikes and go look at this ditch they're digging. I'm not going to spend my life lounging in a house like those kids back there and I'm not going to push a shovel either. Not when there are bigger problems facing us all...” His speech petered out.

Her smile didn't diminish. “So, what I'm hearing is that you suffer from ants-in-the-pants syndrome, and it just won't let you settle down and watch the grass grow. Maybe enjoy a lemonade on a quiet patch of backyard? Stuff normal people do?”

Liam wanted to be a writer. He had more or less took an oath at the dying figure of Agent Duchesne that he would document the destruction of the world, if for no other reason than ensure the proper people were blamed when the history books were finally printed again. He couldn't tell a story if he was thumbing a smartphone with other teens, or “shoveling shit in Louisiana” while a war was going on. He would have to give credit to General Patton for that bit, if he remembered.

They walked through the yard and Liam reached out and touched Victoria's side. “You're it!” He took off running through the tall grass, laughing. He made his way to the bikes.

She sauntered along to the pile as he was pulling one out. “Not in the mood for games?” He grinned.

“You'll know when I'm in the mood for games, mister.” She was stern, but she was seldom able to pretend to be angry or mad, which was something Liam loved about her.

Fortunately, the bikes they selected hadn't been there for very long. The tires were low, but not flat. Liam didn't even flinch at the need to ride a bright lime green women's cruiser. Victoria's was pink.

The town of Cairo was smaller than he thought it would be. He could see most of it by looking in all directions along the gridded road system. The central building they'd just left was about midway between the north end of town where there was some kind of metal gate, and the south end of town where there were lots of trees. Beyond and above the trees he saw two metal-trussed bridges. It was a mystery where the bridges went, or what they crossed. He assumed it was the two rivers.

Riding through the town, he saw many more refugees. If he didn't know they were there, he might have missed them. Most were faces inside the dark interiors. Hiding.

Others were bolder, like them, and stood on the stoops or walked in the nearby yards. Some waved. Most kept to themselves. By and large, they were white with a few rare other assorted races, leaving Liam to wonder whether the woman back at the building was telling the truth. Did all these people come in and kick the native residents to the curb? He didn't doubt it would be done by "the authorities," but the biggest question was why. Why go through the trouble of kicking people out? Why not just have refugees live with the natives?

Once again he turned introspective, remembering how he felt when those refugees came up his own street. Or when they were on the highway. Everyone wanted the refugees to keep going. For several minutes, he churned the pedals as he followed Victoria.

She pointed to her left. "Let's go that way. It looks like there's a way to get up on that levee."

The levee wasn't obvious from inside the town, but as they neared the edge he was struck by how big it was. It was basically a miles-long huge pile of dirt, covered by grass. "It looks like a prison wall. The town is a prison."

Victoria replied, "With walls like this, I wonder why they need to dig a ditch?"

Liam had no idea.

The grassy slope was too steep to ride. They hopped off and pushed their steeds up the incline. With a huff, Liam pushed his onto the flat gravel service road on the ribbon of levee above the town. Victoria was a moment behind.

"Wow," he said.

She repeated him as she saw the same thing.

They were at the highest point of a narrow peninsula. From his position, the levee road receded into the distance to the south, toward the two large bridges. Looming large to the West was the Mississippi River. The ugly brown water moved fast. He could see that from several hundred yards away, across some newly planted farmland.

"What in the heck is that?" She pointed to a side channel of the Mississippi river. It was about a mile long and completely filled with barges, barge towboats, and smaller watercraft. At the head of the inlet were two bright white towboats pushing drifting boats and other debris into the protected harbor.

"It looks like they're junk collectors," he replied.

Across town, to the east, lay the Ohio River. He couldn't tell if the locals had a similar operation on that side, but it was similarly filled with barges, towboats, and a multitude of other boats.

Victoria pointed north. "Let's go up that way." She didn't wait for an answer, she just started riding.

"Hey! Wait up." He jumped on his bike, steadying himself as he tried to get the pedals moving, and rolled after her.

He didn't catch right up. She was pumping hard to stay ahead of him. She turned back once with a wry smile, daring him to catch her.

They both laughed as he rose to the challenge and tried in earnest to catch her. The sub-par inflation of the tires and the uneven surface of the gravel road made it hard going for both of them. When they reached the junction where the levee going north met the one crossing the north boundary of the town, Victoria stopped with a skid.

Liam was only a few seconds behind her. "I was going to get you," he shouted with joy.

The mirth drained away when he saw why Victoria had stopped.

She turned to him. "I think we found the ditch."

He took in everything and had a new perspective on the geography of the town. It was bracketed on three sides by the waters of the two big rivers. The land pointed like a finger to the south. At the very southern tip, the two bridges spanned each river. On the north side, where they held their bikes, the levee provided one layer of defense against the farmland and patches of forest to the north. However, the authorities had taken it several steps further. The levee was the first layer. About a hundred yards north of the massive levee was a similarly impressive trench. It was filled with heavy equipment and hundreds of people with shovels. On the western edge, where it would have met the Mississippi, men were crawling over large wooden beams drilled up and down in the mud. It was a check dam to keep the water out until the ditch was ready. Liam could see the plan was to create a type of moat in front of the levee. On paper, it was a very formidable barrier of entry to the town.

North of the ditch was a swath of destruction of charred and barren land. The woman had mentioned burning. All the trees and vegetation had been stripped from the land—giving the defenders clear visibility up to the interstate miles to the north.

All told, this town had used its unique geography to maximum effect.

Liam reflected on every book about zombies he'd ever read. No matter how strong the fortress, no matter how dedicated the watchmen…

“I give this place two weeks.”

5

Victoria gave him a knowing look. “This is where you tell me what you're thinking, right?”

He laid his bike on the gravel, and tentatively felt his head wound after it was down. “Did you know today was my birthday? When I checked my phone earlier I noticed a little reminder.” He walked off the pathway to sit on the upper incline of the levee, facing the Mississippi and the workers at the ditch. He spoke as Victoria did the same.

“I've decided I'm going to be seventeen from now on.” He looked at her as she sat next to him. “Do you think people will believe I'm seventeen?”

“Why? Why seventeen?”

He took a long time to look out over all the work being done on the defenses of his new home.

“Because of that. Because of zombies. Because of people like Hayes. The survivalists. The military. I can't be a kid anymore. This place, this situation we've found ourselves in—it requires someone older. And, because no one is going to be checking ID in the Apocalypse, I figure I can get away with it.”

He'd made the realization about identity many days ago. He just never imagined he would be one to capitalize on it.

“Well, I guess it makes sense.”

Feeling the need to justify himself, he continued, “That woman back there, she's wrong. She can complain all she wants about digging and losing houses. But you've seen them in action. If the zombies come through here in the numbers we saw in St. Louis, even the ditches won't help them. Then she'll wish she'd been out there to make the ditch a foot wider or deeper, instead of causing trouble.”

He pulled at some grass, then turned back to her. She was very close. “I hate to admit this, because I've spent two days in recovery, or whatever, but I want to leave. I want to find my parents. I want to—” He slid his phone from his pocket and showed it to her. “—find the reason for this text message. And to do that...you and I can't get stuck in this place handling dirt. The woman did have one thing right: there's no way she should have to dig if all those people in our house are just sitting around playing video games. That won't last long. When the military comes calling, we need to be gone.”

“Hmm. Well, then it sounds like we have a few pieces of housekeeping to take care of before we get started.” She coughed to get his attention. When he turned in her direction, she notified him of her intentions by puckering her lips.

When their kiss was over, she pulled away with a broad smile. “That's for the big one-seven. Happy birthday.”

Thinking fast, Liam shot back, “Actually, why don't I say I'm eighteen instead. Happy one-eight?” He puckered his lips, but she gave him a mock slap on the cheek instead.

“No way you're getting past me. If you're gonna be eighteen, then I'll have to change my age to nineteen. Pretty soon we'll both be thirty and I don't want to age that fast.”

She tried to fake a stern look, but relented under his puppy dog eyes. “Oh alright. I'll give you one to grow on.”

Liam and Victoria kissed for a length of time well short of what he wanted, but given the hard labor being done on the fields below them, he grudgingly admitted she got the time exactly correct. They both stood to leave.

“Wait a minute.”

“We should leave, there's a truck coming.” She pointed the direction they'd come from. A white pickup truck was slowly driving along the gravel road on top of the levee. It was still far down the line.

His phone was already out, so he had no problem calling up a map. Much of the internet was down, but luckily he was able to access the map service of one of the largest online search engines. In fifteen seconds, he had what he was looking for. “Wow, the internet is fast when no one's on it.”

“Koch Hospital Quarry. That's what the message said.” He paused, looking at the data. “Oh crap. I know this place.”

He held up his phone to show her, but she didn't recognize it. He pocketed his phone and talked as they gathered their bikes.

“Let me take you back in time...oh, about two weeks...a young boy and his hot, overdressed Apocalypse Friend took a ride on a train to escape St. Louis. Ringing any bells?” He knew it would, she was there. “And on that train ride, they happened upon a pit quarry where cars drove off the nearby highway into a loop the loop going down into the mine—”

He was trying to be funny, but made a sad observation that tempered his humor. He ended it abruptly with, “—it's the place where Jones died.”

They walked down the inside slope of the levee, into town.

“The place was crawling with zombies. You really expect to go back there?”

Liam thought about the irony. They took a train out of the city on a rail line that ran along the edge of the Mississippi River. Later, they paddled a boat up the river right along the same route. The big difference was they were too exhausted paddling the boat to dwell on the fact they had been there before. Now, the thought of going back to the place Jones sacrificed himself by driving a large dump truck over the zombie horde wasn't sitting well with him.

“I don't want to. Thinking about all those zombies from that train ride gives me the creeps. But we know the zombies have been moving around, called by the sirens downtown and then chased out again when they shut off. We might be OK.”

Liam expected her to point out the weak link in his plan: “might.”

“Well, step one of your plan was kissing me. What's step two?” She paused, but caught herself. “And you can't say kissing again.” She laughed as she sat up on her bike, ready to pedal back to the house.

“In that case, step two is finding weapons and food. Step three is finding transportation north. Step four is...”

As they rode and discussed their goals, he realized how flimsy the whole thing sounded—when spoken out loud. On the thinnest of clues, he was going to head out into the wilderness with his girlfriend, on the off chance something was going on at the very quarry where he witnessed thousands of zombies attacking living people trying to escape the city. At best, they might find clues as to the origin of the plague as the text message suggested. At worst, they might find themselves dead.

None of the alternatives were attractive though. Being put to work, used up, on a futile effort to forestall the zombies from kicking this place into the river. Or put in prison. He wondered if he was a wanted man by the Marine Corps.

As he rode, the part of his brain where he compartmentalized the concept of “hero” spilled out into his psyche. It tended to get him into danger, but he looked into the small homes as he rode by. Each was filled with refugees from somewhere else. Memphis. St. Louis. Cincinnati. And he couldn't help but think each and every one of them was going to die soon, unless someone did something more than dig ditches. They need someone to be the hero.

He wanted to be the guy to look ahead for them. See the big picture. He could think of plenty of examples of literary heroes even younger than him. He wasn't just going sit around and wait for someone else to be heroic for him.

Thinking back to the crowd complaining about the digging, and the crowd of wretched people already doing the digging, he understood that just because there was a Zombie Apocalypse in progress, it didn't mean everyone magically joined hands in a mutual effort to survive. The old problems remained: mistrust, allocation of dwindling resources, self-defense, food, water, power, internet. There were ten thousand things the good people of Cairo, Illinois had to deal with on any given day. All of it was tactical—local.

Liam thought of himself as a strategic thinker. His books all said the hero would have to break out from the rest of the population. It would take someone with foresight to save mankind by finding the cure.

It isn't down in that ditch. But maybe it's down in a quarry.

He tried to convince himself it was a hero's plan.

Chapter 4: Ghosts of the Colonel

Liam was willing to travel anywhere if he thought there was a chance they'd learn something new about the crisis afflicting the world, but he liked to have as much intel as possible when he put his life on the line. The text message was cryptic, to be sure. The only other possible clue was the data chip he carried—

—he slapped his pocket, worried the photograph had been taken when he...was stripped...of his old clothes. Victoria had indeed replaced it.

Phew.

He'd been thinking about the data chip during their bike ride and was struck by something so obvious he'd almost missed it.

“When we get back to our house, we should see if any of those guys have a laptop we could borrow. If we can find one with a card reader, we might be able to read what's on the colonel's data chip. Then we might know more about what we're dealing with.”

“Sounds good!” Victoria reveled in the breeze as they cruised through the squat houses of the residential area. He let himself go, just a little, and simply enjoyed his time with her having what, in the old days, was called “fun.”

By the time they reached their destination, Liam had already prepared his speech for the other kids inside. As he laid his bike in the grass in front of the house, he noticed some downed branches and small trees on the side of the property.

“When we leave we can check out those trees to see if we can make some spears. They look like the size we need.” Victoria nodded as she parked her cruiser.

“And also,” he continued, “if we find a laptop, and if it has a card reader, and if we can borrow it, we should go somewhere private to look at this.” He patted his pocket. “As much as I would love to get a group of friends to go with us to investigate that mine, I don't want to be responsible for anyone.”

He saw her look. “You are all I can handle.”

“Handle? You think you can handle me?” She hopped around the back tire of her bike and stretched out to capture him, but he sidestepped her and started to zig zag across the yard. She gave chase and for a few moments they ran in crazy circles, laughing and giggling.

It ended when Liam slipped in the tall grass, and Victoria tripped and fell over his legs. They both ended up on their backs as they caught their breath.

“Oh man, we're going to have chiggers out the yin yang,” he said. He looked at his legs below his cargo shorts. The grass was thick and unkempt.

“Chiggers?” she replied.

“You don't have chiggers in Colorado?”

“You mean mosquitoes?”

“No, much worse.” He stood back up, sticky with sweat, and brushed his exposed lower legs. She wore jeans, so she focused on her arms. “Everything is always worse, these days.” His mood turned sour. “We can't even enjoy five minutes of fun anymore.”

“Hey.” She looked at him while she held her arms in front of her so he could pull her off the ground. “I had fun on our bike ride. That was nice.”

A tour of our zombie defenses; every boy's dream.

He smiled, partially mollified. It was fun. Her smile cut through almost all his other worries, save one.

“Do you think Grandma will be safe here? Will she be OK without us to look out for her?” He scanned the neighborhood. A few people walked up and down the street; they looked lost. He imagined each house had a similar group of strangers trying to get a handle on what they were going to do next to survive. His path led back to St. Louis, but Grandma's days of travel were likely over, at least until she had both reliable transportation and somewhere safe to go.

“I think you worry too much, Mr. Peters.” She gave him a playful push and took off around the side of the house. He was left standing there. An older couple happened to be walking the street nearby and he felt their eyes on him. They gave him a little wave.

He returned a clumsy salute, then gave chase.

2

Victoria volunteered to go inside and secure a laptop. It took her about five minutes and she came out and sat down on the back porch steps next to him. She handed him a very thin silvery model.

Liam's expression presented a question for her.

“I just flashed my eyebrows and a young lad about your age surrendered his laptop for me.” She giggled playfully.

He had no idea whether she was telling the truth. The look on his face said exactly that.

“Oh Liam, you're too gullible. Do you think I'd do that?” She didn't give him time to answer. “No! I told Grandma what we needed and she asked the other kids. A youngster gave up his laptop for her, along with this funny card reader, just like you asked. Lucky, huh?”

He tried to mask his naivete with a laugh. He truly had no idea what she was capable of doing with her charm, though he had no doubt she could make a formidable opponent when she put her mind to it.

“OK, let's see what we've got.” He pulled out the chip from off the back of the photograph. He punched it into the tiny card reader, pulled up the hard drive, and saw it was filled with video files. He was tempted to start at the end, but decided if they were going to honor the man's memory, they should at least view them in the order he'd labeled them.

The first video showed Colonel McMurphy at his desk inside the dingy tent where Liam had originally met him. He was the administrator of the Elk Meadow research camp. In the video, he had set up the camera in the back corner of his tent so it put him in the center of the frame, but whoever sat at his desk would be in the frame too, facing the camera. His first reaction was to wonder if his first visit was in this list of videos somewhere. Was he that important?

“Test. Test. Test. I'm Colonel Rufus McMurphy, recording this for anyone I deem important enough to need to see it.” He laughed like he just told a sad joke, then stood up and moved toward the camera, apparently to turn it off.

The video was short and sweet.

The next one was just as short.

“I don't know how to use this video editing software, so I just have to put whole movies into my folder. The next video is when I first met Ms. Jane Spencer. Health and Human Services.”

Liam had heard that name before. When he saw her on the video, he knew for sure.

“Our friend, Jane!”

“Shh!” was Victoria's reply.

In the video, the red-headed woman walked into the tent wearing a white button-down blouse, with the top couple buttons undone—not unreasonable given the apparent temperature in the scene. She also wore a long black skirt and a military-style cap which looked completely out of place.

He'd never seen Jane wear clothing like that, so he thought it was kind of funny. “Wow. She's dressed like she's in a music video.”

Victoria elbowed him to be quiet, but he heard her laugh too.

Jane walked in and reached across the colonel's desk to shake his hand. She leaned over, giving the colonel an inappropriate view down her shirt.

Victoria gave a curt whistle. “Wow, she's workin' him.”

“Welcome to the Elk Meadow Camp, Ms. uhhh?”

“Spencer. Jane Spencer. HHS.” She held his hand for a moment, looked pointedly in his eyes, then pulled back. “Thanks for inviting me here.”

“Please, sit down. I'm afraid we don't have all the creature comforts yet, but we do have chairs.”

She took a seat.

“Colonel, I'll get right to it. I'd like this camp to be the first fallback position for our main operation in downtown St. Louis. As you've been briefed, we're expecting a large number of—let's call them immigrants—who will be residing in our—hotel—down by the Arch. The facility is very secure, so don't concern yourself with worry there, but we can't control what happens in the streets outside that facility and it could make operational security of our personnel very difficult. I like to plan three steps ahead in everything I do, and I believe having this delightful country retreat as my first fallback will be advantageous to us both.”

“Both?”

“Of course. You see, my group has access to all manner of government equipment. Even some cutting edge stuff they haven't sent out to you Army-types yet. If you take care of protecting my refuge here, I'll provide you with as much gear as you require.”

“That's very generous of you. I guess HHS is pretty much running the show now, huh?” He tried to be friendly about it, but Liam detected a deeper question there.

“Strictly speaking, I'm not with HHS. More of an adjunct working with the Centers for Disease Control, but for the purpose of placing me in an org chart, HHS is close enough. I was told I could count on your team to execute our mission though; does that sound right?”

Liam saw through her conniving ways. Did the colonel?

“Yes. I've been instructed to give you every accommodation here.”

“Thank you, Colonel, I really appreciate that. But don't worry, it's not like I'm going to take your air conditioned tent or anything, I'll just be looking for a dry space on a rainy day. I can depend on you for that, right?”

“Won't be a problem.” His tone was neutral.

“I'm going to leave one of my assistants here to discuss the details with you. I have to be getting back to my main office to continue the preparations there. Time is growing short.” She paused for a moment, studying the colonel, as her demeanor changed from pleasant to inquisitive and then back to jovial. “However, in the next week or two, I insist you come downtown to see what we're doing. I think you are the type of man who would like to know what he's fighting for. And fighting against. Deal?”

The colonel nodded.

“Work it out with my assistant.” She stood up and moved closer to his desk. She held her arm out for a handshake, and waited this time for the colonel to reach across his desk to her.

Liam spoke up. “Did you see that, she made the colonel lean over to shake her hand. She put herself in charge.” None of it came as a surprise. Hayes and his wife had run around like they owned the Apocalypse. It was because they were part of the National Internal Security organization, or were, and literally could do whatever they wanted.

She was gone in moments.

In the video, McMurphy slumped in his chair. He picked up the same photo he would later give to Liam. He held it as long as he could until one of his helpers walked in.

The video ended.

3

Liam's finger hovered over the button to start the next video. “So we know Jane was over the colonel, but this doesn't really tell us anything new, right?”

“Not that I can see. Let's check out the next one.”

The colonel began with another introduction video. He was at his desk. “I'm not proud of this next one. I acted like a teenaged boy, but it's important I show the world what we're dealing with.”

The intro ended and Liam clicked the next one. Instead of a view from the corner of the tent, this one was obviously a hidden camera. It looked like it was a view from the front of the colonel's face. Liam could imagine a camera on the rim of his cap, or possibly on a pair of glasses. The scene re-focused as he changed directions with his head. It opened with him walking behind Jane inside the Riverside Hotel. Liam and Victoria both knew the place as a dark stinky place full of zombies, but in the video, it was bright and fresh.

“Welcome to my secret lair, colonel. Moo ha ha.”

Spencer was laughing hysterically and pretending to pet an imaginary cat. She wore another white blouse, and with the improved camera quality, Liam could see it was wildly inappropriate and revealing. She also wore a tight pair of khaki shorts.

Victoria had no comment on her obvious flaunting of her...assets...in front of the colonel.

“Oh, lighten up. I'm just having some fun.”

“With all due respect, there's nothing fun about this virus.”

Spencer switched gears in one fluid motion.

“Shall we get right to it?” Her alternating demeanor was unsettling. Taken with her dress code, Liam wondered if she was trying to keep the older man off balance.

She began walking across the large open room. Liam recognized it as the top level of the hotel.

“Colonel, what do you know so far about the virus?”

The colonel had to talk to her back as they both walked.

“I'm afraid we know very little. My camp has had a few potential infected, but they all turned out to be carrying the actual flu, influenza. I've not seen the Doomsday Bug. Not sure I would know it if I saw it.”

“Yuck, I hate that name. It should have been named something cool like Terminator Flu or The Fifth Horseman. Something Apocalypse-y. Don't you think?”

He said nothing.

“But OK, whatever. I'll show you the virus. Stay with me through here.” Spencer had crossed the room and plunged down another stairwell. It was very dark. She was just a shadow in the video. Liam's eyes had yet to adjust to the switch from daylight to this. He had just about adjusted to total darkness—

Without warning, the colonel ran into something. The camera rattled and flickered.

“Oh, sorry ma'am!”

He had run right into her backside.

“Mmm hmm. The lights in this stairwell aren't working. This is our floor.”

He followed as she went out into the well-lit floor, the camera struggling to adapt to the changing brightness. The colonel's camera observed everything on each side, as if he were trying to avoid looking at the woman ahead of him. Other men and women in military uniforms walked around on this level, though none were close. They were on a circular walkway looking out over the wide open interior of the tubular hotel. Again, Liam had recently been in that exact place, though he didn't know what floor they were on.

“My team has been busy in several parts of the world, doing research on this thing. Trying to get clues on its origin. How we might contain it. So far, zip.”

She walked along the inside railing, dragging her hand on the metalwork, giving the colonel the opportunity to look over the side with his hidden camera. More workers were on other floors, moving here and there. On a floor very near the bottom, the video showed someone in a neck collar with a long pole attached behind them, being pushed along by two helpers. The person was covered head-to-toe in some kind of mesh wrap. Hard to say for sure from so high up, and the video was unable to clearly identify the situation beyond that.

“What are they doing down there with that man?” He pointed down. She looked over the side as she walked, and answered in a distracted fashion.

“Ohhh, they're probably bringing in another flu victim. Finding a room.”

“Ma'am, are all these rooms filled with the sick? Are we safe here?”

She giggled slightly as she replied, “Don't be ridiculous. Even we don't have the resources to fly in that many sick people from across the globe. No, we put a score of the newest victims down on the lower levels. Up here, we keep a few special cases, like the one I'm about to show you.”

He tried to stifle his own laugh, but couldn't prevent it from coming out.

At that, Spencer stopped and turned around. She looked right into the camera.

“You think what we're doing here is funny?”

Struggling to regain himself, he replied, “No, ma'am. It's just that if you were bringing these sick people here—well, you've got them in the middle of the city. Surely you see the huge risk you're taking? This is the plot of a bad horror movie. Why aren't you sending them to my camp out in the country where their ability to escape and do harm is minimized? I have a ten-foot fence around the entire place and soldiers prepared to defend it.”

“You military men are all the same. Always thinking about the fight. Do you have any idea how many bombs have been dropped overseas trying to squelch outbreaks? How many tanks have ground the infected to paste to reduce the spread? Satellites. Aircraft carriers. Stealth bombers. All manner of killing. And do you know how much that military thinking has helped the cause of mankind?”

“Right here.” She held up her hand, making the symbol of zero. “Squat. Sure, maybe it bought you and me some time to prepare our Last Will and Testaments, but the reality is no one will be around to read them. And do you know why, Colonel? Can you think beyond the bullet?”

She took a step back.

“Camps. Cordons. Cities. It won't matter. But maybe I'm being unfair. You don't know what humanity is dealing with. Well, I'm not gonna tell you. I'm going to show you. This isn't patient zero—we've had no luck finding that prize—but this might be patient 100 or 1000. Close enough to the beginning to expose the flaw in your mindset.”

She pulled out a key card and moved to a nearby door. The colonel and his camera followed.

“Get yourself together, old man. What I'm about to show you is going to cause you to soil your pants. I hate to be so blunt, but you'll have to prove me wrong.”

Liam was on the edge of the seat to see what was inside, but the colonel's camera drifted with Jane as she opened the door and walked with it.

He's checking her out.

Liam struggled to understand why the colonel would be drawn so obviously to the attractive woman—knowing he had a wife and son—but he remembered the girl in the nightgown in the rail yard as well as the strange attraction some of the zombies had on Victoria on floor twenty. Perhaps the colonel was similarly affected.

As the door opened, she drifted with it.

“This is where the infection will take humanity.”

When she was concealed by the heavy and very open door, the colonel seemed to be released from her spell and he turned to focus on the big revelation.

He looked into the wrecked room, and saw the plague victim standing inside the darkened space.

“Oh my God in Heaven.”

4

Liam didn't know what he was looking at. It was obvious to him it was a zombie, but it was unlike any he'd seen since the sirens. He wore a military uniform of some kind, but it had been muddied and bloodied, making it impossible for Liam to identify. The thing's skin was plastered to its bones, as if it had no muscle mass. The skin, where visible, was black.

“The eyes,” the colonel whispered.

Off camera, the voice of Jane answered. “Yes, the eyes are haunting, huh? We haven't quite figured them out, but we know they can sense living humans, even in their...condition.”

Liam could stare because the colonel was staring. The zombie had no eyes in his sockets, but he—it—seemed to look directly at the camera. His arms and legs were bound in heavy chains to a large metal box behind him. The beds had been removed from the room.

“Where...where did you find this one?”

“Funny you should ask. This is a local—found him down in a quarry of all places. We call him Twelve.” Liam hoped the colonel would ask about the name, but...

“This man looks—”

“Dead? Yeah. The infected like him are pretty much dead.”

“So, my camps have to prepare. How do I cure this?” He shook his head in the video. “No. This has to be some kind of mistake. A prank. Right?”

Liam appreciated that Jane had seemed to keep him off guard whenever they interacted, and she did seem to have a twisted sense of humor. Maybe this was an elaborate prank. Some kind of initiation for the grisly business they'd soon be doing.

“Can I have your sidearm?”

The camera turned to her, then with a series of shakes, it displayed a man's hand holding a large pistol.

“I'm afraid it isn't very modern. I've had this 1911 since I entered the service.”

“Oh yeah? When was that? No, I don't care.”

A series of loud bangs resonated in the camera's audio, though they came across as impotent pops on the tinny speakers of the laptop. She was shooting the zombie in the chest. Liam didn't count how many rounds she'd fired, but in moments, the camera panned from the zombie's chest to her outstretched arm with the quiet gun, then back to the zombie. Either she'd run out of ammo, or had proven her point.

“You still think this is a prank?” she yelled.

Liam knew both their ears would be ringing.

“Lord help me, I don't. What is that?”

“It doesn't scare you?”

He seemed to consider. “I, uh...”

“Let me put this another way. Do you think I should have sent this to your happy little village, now that you've seen it?”

Liam was impressed. The colonel had no response to her relentless attack.

After a few moments, Jane began talking in an almost-normal voice.

“Colonel, I showed this to you, but I want you to know there is almost no one on this continent that knows what you now know. Can you imagine if this got out?” She'd said it in a funny way, as if she was goading the old man.

At last, he seemed to regain his composure. But as before, the colonel only went for the questions of consequence. “Why are you showing me this, Ms. Spencer? This isn't about camps or cures, is it?”

She laughed. “You want to know something funny? You had it exactly right. The cure to these things is bombs and grinding under tank treads with extreme malice. The rest of your Army is doing that overseas. Giving you, me, and other scientists the time we need to prepare our country for what's ahead. I brought you here, Colonel McMurphy, because I need to know I can trust you. It's going to take men of your caliber to bring us through this plague and I don't have time to run an extensive profile on you. If I felt you were someone I couldn't trust, I might have just shoved you in the room with Twelve here.”

The colonel's camera panned to her face. It was deadly serious, but at the extreme end of an awkward silence, she cracked a smile.

“I'm joking, of course! Health and Human Services would revoke my parking pass if I did that. I mainly wanted to see if you would freak out on me.” She turned serious. “Sir, if there's one thing we need, it's people who can follow orders without freaking out. When these things show up in your camp, you are going to need a steady hand at the helm. I need a steady hand out there. Can I count on you?”

The camera turned back to the zombie in the tattered uniform. When he began speaking, he did not look back at Jane.

“Yes, you can count on me, ma'am.”

The video stopped.

Liam set the laptop a bit off to his side, and turned to Victoria. “So the colonel knew about this all along. He knew there were these dead—things—out there, but he never showed one to me. He never even mentioned it. He seemed to be focused on...”

He looked out into the yard. It was vibrant green. Alive.

“The colonel stayed focused on curing the other disease. Hayes and Duchesne said there were three viruses out there. This dead, whatever it is, creature is not the same as the zombies we've been seeing all over St. Louis. Or Chicago. Or anywhere.”

He recalled the Riverside Hotel had each floor labeled to signify which city the zombies had come from. Hayes said they were different depending on where they found them. But which floor had this particular zombie been on?

“He said something about the regular old flu being the first virus. Then a modified flu virus was the second virus. And finally, the third virus was more like Ebola. But what virus can bring the dead back to life?”

He laughed, going back to his books on zombies. Just when he thought he'd come to terms with the presence of blood-sucking zombies, he was faced with the textbook definition of a zombie. Now, even after seeing it with his own eyes, he had difficulty accepting such a creature existed.

A small window popped up on the screen, asking him to confirm the update of some piece of software. He tapped the no button, then returned to the window containing the videos.

He clicked the next one.

5

It was another introductory video, back in the colonel's tent.

It began with a long pause. He sat at his desk turned away from the camera. Liam couldn't tell for sure, but he believed he was looking at the photograph of his wife and son.

“This next video is what this is all about. Ms. Spencer probably didn't know that I'd figured out where that soldier had come from. She said she trusted me, but I'm sure she didn't fully trust me if she didn't give me the courtesy of telling me the origin of a man who had so obviously been found near a military cemetery. But she'd given me enough. He was U.S. Army, but his uniform was from World War II.”

In the video, he turned to the camera as he swiveled his chair.

“Susan, I hope this video reaches you. I think you are the only person who would believe I'm not pulling an elaborate hoax when you see this. I need someone to know about this, or I'll go insane. I'm going to do everything I can to send all these videos to you, and you can decide who needs to see them. You have these videos, the Mile 444 files, and all the research on the more recent infected I could put on this datachip.”

The video flicked off.

“Liam, is he talking about the same quarry?”

“Yes, there are one too many coincidences about that quarry. And it's next door to the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. That's the exact kind of place where one might find a soldier dressed in World War II garb. Though I have no idea why he would have been found in the quarry.”

“Well then, that's where we need to go. This proves it. Those people were doing something down there. We just need to find out what.” She seemed chipper.

“You seem to be enjoying this. Did you see the same video I did?” He laughed, but it was insincere.

“Oh yeah, zombies, zombies, and...oh yeah, zombies. So what's new? Look, Hayes and Jane and whoever else they work for are obviously up to no good. You said it yourself. We can either stay back here safe and snug until the zombies come for us, or we can throw ourselves into the impossible task of going out there to take the fight to them. They already shot me once. I've got eight lives to go.”

I still don't think we watched the same video.

Her enthusiasm took the edge off what he'd witnessed. She had a knack for that.

“OK then, let's see what we're in for...”

But the screen was frozen.

He tried to push the mouse around with the tiny touch pad, but the computer had locked up. Over the years, he'd probably seen ten thousand computer lock ups. He pressed the power, waited several seconds, then pressed it again so it would restart.

“You're right. I am anxious to get out there and figure this out. The colonel was frightened by the sight of the zombie, but other than being way uglier than the zombies we've been dealing with, it didn't look any worse.”

He bumped her with his shoulder as the computer beeped during reboot.

“I have to admit, I'm so glad we met. I'm so glad you stuck with me throughout all those weeks of running around and confusion. I wouldn't want to go back out there without you.”

He looked at her face, longing for another excuse to kiss her, but the computer was back on the desktop, waiting for him to do something. He almost found the willpower to turn away from her, but she grabbed him.

“Liam, I'm not blind to the danger. Deep down I'm scared to death of what I saw on that movie, and what's out there. Zombies. The dead. People like Duchesne and Hayes and the NIS. But I'm more scared of sitting here and dying with this whole happy town. I'm scared of being told to dig in the mud until the guns run out of ammo. I'm scared of starving to death. I'm scared of pretty much everything.”

She touched his elbow with her fingertips.

“So don't take my willingness to seek out danger as recklessness or, God forbid, a suicidal streak. I'm glad too, that I have you with me. We aren't quitters.”

He turned back to the screen, biting his tongue as he felt himself get emotional.

She's willing to follow me into the circles of Hell.

He imagined the spiral road of the pit quarry as just that: Dante's nine circles. The rest of the world was the tenth circle...

Finally, the computer was ready, as was he. He called up the file browser, and searched for the data chip once more. He was sure he'd gotten himself back, but was puzzled by what he saw on the screen.

He pulled the data chip out, then placed it back into the slot.

Still, what he saw was not right.

“Um. I think we have a problem.”

He clicked the keys, moved the mouse, and cycled through menus. Finally, after many long minutes and several queries by Victoria, he knew what had happened.

“Our data just got erased.”

Victoria, not one for cussing, simply said, “Well, poo.”

Chapter 5: Oxbow Lake

Liam set the laptop aside and looked out into the yard. He felt as if he'd just been scammed and had his bank account drained. There wasn't a thing he could do about it.

After a suitable reflection period, he spoke up. “We have to go there. To the mine. It's got the answers we need. We know that much from what we saw.”

They discussed logistics for a long time, then got into the details. Liam felt better, despite the erasure of his data, the more they talked about tangible advancements of their plan.

“What do we use for weapons?”

“I don't think anyone is going to hand us some guns,” though he recalled people handing out guns back in the early days, at the Arch. “We have to get to work making spears. I want us to have something to defend ourselves with if we go back out there.”

Victoria seemed to take it in stride. She got up and scoured the yard for the type of straight wood they'd need for a spear. He was pleased to see she didn't need to be told what to do. He looked for his own while they chatted.

“You know, you could stay here. Watch over Grandma.” He said it with as much nonchalance as he could muster, though he definitely wanted her to come with him so he wouldn't be alone.

“Oh really? I thought she was going with us.” She said it while looking away from him, into a dense bramble. She was in the process of yanking out a large downed branch that had been in there for a long while.

Could they take her up the river, over to the…No, it was madness. He was absolutely sure of that.

“I know you're joking, ha-ha. We can't risk taking her outside the wire again unless we have both a tank for transportation and a destination defended by an army.” He laughed. “No, she stays.”

He pulled out his knife and got to work on the branch. He felt it was adequate for a nice-sized spear. Victoria dragged over her find.

“Too dry. You need one that isn't so brittle.” He could see the wood was too old.

In time, they both found the pieces they needed and Liam got busy with the whittling. They sat under the shade tree as he worked.

Fifteen minutes later, he was satisfied with his creation. “Here we go. My first Hope Spear in Cairo, Illinois.” He bent the dialect, just as she had earlier. “May you never need it.”

Fat chance of that.

He passed the spear to her, taking her raw stick to begin work on the companion. As he put his head down, he lost track of time. When he looked up, Grandma was sitting inside the screened-in porch, watching them.

He waved, and Victoria's eyes followed to see who was inside.

An awkward silence passed between all three. Finally, Grandma cleared her throat, then began, “I can tell you two are thinking about leaving.”

He looked at Victoria with a little smile. Her face said, “She's got us.”

“It's OK, I know. I just know. I see these kids inside,” she nodded toward the interior of the home behind her, “and I see you two out there. The difference is night and day. I have to say it doesn't please me to see you go, but someone has to do it. I missed my chance by a few years.” She gave a hearty chuckle. At 104, she probably missed adventuring by a few decades, though that didn't stop her from being active during their escape from St. Louis.

Liam increased the speed and pressure he applied to the spear now taking shape out of the raw wood. He felt his emotions reaching up to him. He didn't want a sloppy goodbye.

“We'll leave tomorrow. It's getting too late in the day to be doing anything silly like walking out of a walled fortress into—”

He checked his bravado. He wanted to be brave for Grandma, but that was hard to do when there were so many monsters outside. He could claim to be unafraid of what was out there. Explain how prepared they were. But none of it was true, and she of all people knew the truth. On paper, it was really dumb to leave.

“—into a world run by people like Hayes and Duchesne.” Somehow it felt less intense to think about the dangers posed by men than it did the mindless and insatiable zombies. At least men can sometimes be reasoned with.

“I understand. I'll be praying for you. Do you know how you'll get up north?”

That was a hurdle he'd hoped to tackle tomorrow. There had to be convoys or something going north. Cairo wouldn't have cut themselves off completely from the rest of the country.

But before he could explain what he didn't know, a voice called out from the nearby bedroom window of the house. It was the same room Liam vacated earlier in the day. He thought back and recalled the springs of the bed above him were depressed. Someone was sleeping up there...or listening.

“I know how you can get to St. Louis. But you have to take me with you.”

It sounded like the voice of a child, though the dark shadows of the backyard made the face in the window nothing more than a vague outline.

“I won't say anything more unless you promise.”

Liam looked at Victoria. She shrugged, mirroring his own thoughts.

He put on the appearance of thinking about it for many seconds while he whittled, but knew he was going to agree.

He felt the drama in the moment, so went with it. “We'll be a terrific traveling triad.”

As he waited for the girl to come out, he realized how stupid it was to accept someone into his group, sight unseen. A proper fighting unit, in the spirit he was used to with his online game World of Undead Soldiers, included people with diverse skills so any encounter could be tackled by the special abilities of the team. Division of labor, and all that. What skills were they about to pick up? That question was better answered before the invitation to join.

Liam did not feel warm and fuzzy when Grandma called out, “No, it can't be you!”

2

Liam knew her. It was the girl he'd saved from the top of the MRAP. She was black, but fair skinned. More of a mixed race. She had her hair tightly pulled back in a ponytail. As she turned in the large screen door to talk to Grandma, he could see her hair went all the way down to her waist. It was wound in braids and had an ostentatious blue bow near the top.

“You got a problem with me? Why can't it be me?”

Her tone was forceful, but not malicious.

Liam stood up, holding his spear. It was almost done, except it didn't have a deadly point yet. He wanted to get a better look at the girl. At that thought, he turned to Victoria to see her reaction. She was intently watching the screen door too.

When he rescued the girl from the roof of the MRAP, she hadn't said anything. He was able to coax her from her hiding place, then he fell, then she ran away. Seeing her again forced him to try to recall details about her, but he couldn't. All he could remember was that she was soaked head to toe in blood and appeared small. Nonetheless, the fact she was unable to get herself to move to save her own life did not inspire confidence.

Grandma looked out the screen to Liam. Her face illustrated a question for him, but he didn't know what.

With a sigh, she turned back to the girl. “I saw you in my dreams. I saw you climb from underneath some dead bodies in a pitch dark room. I saw you running from the zombie inside the Riverside Hotel. I saw you looking out over the army of infected down below. I saw...”

Liam could only watch as Grandma appeared to strain hard to remember. He had no idea what she was talking about, or how he could help her. He motioned to Victoria and they both closed the distance to the screen door.

“Oh, I don't know. I kind of lost you after that. But I saw you when Liam got you down off the MRAP. You left him lying on the ground. You ran to save your life. Not his.”

The girl turned to Liam. “This is your Grandma, right? Is she messed up in the head?”

Liam vigorously shook his head in the negative.

“Hmm, well she seems messed up. I don't remember any hotel. I think I would remember waking up in a pile of bodies, don't you?” She too seemed to strain her face, searching for a memory, just as Grandma had moments earlier. “But I...”

She turned to face Liam and Victoria through the screen. Liam got his first good look at her. She was about his age—an older teen. She'd been given a bright green pair of jeans; he knew they weren't hers because she had been wearing ripped slacks when he rescued her. The one thing he noticed on her body was all the scratch marks. He assumed they were caused by the other survivors up on the roof during the fighting for position up there.

She was short. She appeared as a normal adult height while standing next to the hunched figure of Grandma, but she was probably quite a bit shorter than Victoria. Under five feet. Her hair was jet black and pulled tightly back over her head, the blue bow peeked from behind. Her face was round and pretty, with soft eyes.

“I can't remember how I got on top of that truck. I just kind of woke up there.” She looked at her arms. He could see all the scratches on them, even through the mesh of the screen. Her face had lots of small scratches too, though they weren't as serious.

“And I don't think I would have left you lying on the ground. I just didn't see you.”

Victoria made some kind of sound in her throat.

“Look, I'm from St. Louis. My sisters are there. My family is there. I'd really like to get back.” As she spoke, she opened the screen and stepped through just as a small orange tabby tried to escape with her.

Liam watched with amusement as the cat pawed at the screen, though his attention returned to the girl when she walked right up into his personal space.

“Please. I'll be quiet. Just get me to St. Louis and I'll get out of your hair.”

He wanted to tell her flat out she wasn't going to go. She'd left him on the ground…

Or, maybe she's telling the truth. She didn't see me.

His head was a wreck when he fell off the truck, so he had no idea if the girl was telling the truth. There was a lot going on during the evacuation. And, he couldn't overlook the fact she said she knew how to get there. For all her shortcomings, she was one step ahead of him.

“If we go with you, how do you plan to get us there?”

“Oh no, that's not how it works. I tell you now, and then you run off and leave me. That's how it happens on TV.”

Liam hadn't thought of running off, but he allowed he might have done it in this circumstance.

Victoria stepped closer to him, too. “You can go, but Liam's in charge.” She said it with a commanding tone he'd not heard before.

The two girls studied each other. Liam felt immediately uncomfortable. But it only lasted a few seconds.

“Believe me. I'm no leader. Just bring me along and we'll all be happy.”

The girl smiled at Victoria, and she mimicked the emotion, but her eyes told Liam the full story. A wary distrust. He knew trust was a rare commodity these days. There were just as many bad people using lies to get ahead as there were good people willing to believe those lies. He took the opportunity to remind himself to ration out trust like water in the desert.

Liam took a step back, to get himself out of the girl's space. “OK. How soon can we leave?”

She turned to him with a genuine smile. “Get your sleep. We'll leave first thing tomorrow. We'll be in St. Louis by dinnertime.”

Liam doubted there was a home to return to, or that they could reach St. Louis in such a time frame, but nothing was perfect anymore. He knew better than to argue.

She was walking back inside when Liam realized he'd overlooked something important. “Hey, what's your name?”

The girl stopped at the door. “My name's Blue.”

3

The morning went by in a whirlwind. Liam woke to find a piece of paper had been placed in the collar of his shirt. It simply said to walk east until he reached the water. Blue would be waiting. It ended with a time: 9:00 a.m.

He spent a few minutes saying goodbye to Grandma. The previous night they'd had plenty of time to catch up, share details of their stories over the past few weeks, and prepare for their time apart. Victoria was by his side the whole time. They separated with a warm three-person hug.

“We'll be back as soon as we can, Grandma,” were his final words.

He arrived at the docks walking hand in hand with Victoria. When he first saw Blue on the deck of the boat, he was impressed by how delightful she looked. She wore a light blue short-sleeved top with some kind of ruffles on the ends of the sleeves. She still had the same green jeans, but they fit her very well. She got lucky. His own cargo pants required him to super-tighten his belt to hold them up. Victoria's jeans—blue—fit her very well too.

For just a fraction of an instant, he imagined that Blue liked him and was going to try to wedge her way between he and Victoria—bringing drama into their already over-dramatic lives. But the thought receded as quickly as it surged. There was no way on God's green Earth he was going to betray what he had with Victoria. He'd die for her. They'd even agreed that one day—when the current crisis ended—they would be happily married together. No amount of pretty girls was worth the one sure thing in a world of infinite chaos.

He tightened his hand around Victoria's and pulled her to him. He'd evidently surprised her.

He tucked his spear under his free arm so he could hold her with both hands. “I don't know what lies ahead, but we may not have an opportunity to be alone for a while. I want to tell you that I'll be there for you. If you're taken again. Shot again. Dragged away by zombies or bad guys. I will die trying to get to you.”

A wide smile. “Why Liam, that's the nicest thing any boyfriend has ever said to me.” She was being playful, then turned serious. “But the world is so dangerous I think I'd rather someone tell me that instead of something sappy and romantic.”

He thought that was a rebuke. His eyes must have betrayed him.

“No, no. I didn't mean it like that. The only thing we can count on out there is each other. I mean it when I say no one has said anything nicer to me. I've never had someone I can...count on...absolutely like I can with you. Looking back at boyfriends in my life, I don't think any of them would have been able to hang with you in the Zombie Apocalypse. Makes me wonder what I saw in them in the first place.”

He didn't think he was anything special. He certainly wasn't that strong. He wasn't a genius. He wasn't a fighter by nature. Most of what made him “special” was his desire to not be a dope in front of her. He worked extremely hard at that.

They briefly kissed and then separated before they walked up the ramp to the boat. It was irrational, but he hoped Blue saw them together. He couldn't afford the distraction, but having a pretty girl on his arm stroked his ego in a strange new way.

Is this what married men feel like?

As they reached the boat, he pledged to stop thinking such thoughts and just focus on the mission. He tried to look at it as a military operation.

First, travel. Second, find the quarry and get inside. Third, do something. He called it X because he didn't really know what he'd find. Then, his plan went into the weeds: do Y and Z and then somewhere down the line get back here to Grandma and report the findings.

And it all started with the pretty girl.

No, she's just a girl, not pretty. At all.

“Hi guys. Welcome aboard,” Blue said with great cheer. “You can lay your weapons up there,” she pointed to open floor near the front. Some other gear was stowed there.

“Thanks.”

The boat was about thirty feet long. It had a large compartment surrounding a couple seats right in the middle. A steering wheel and radio equipment was on the dashboard in front of the right-hand seat. The other seat was on the left side of a small aisle to the front of the boat. There were buttons and levers on a dashboard panel in front of that seat too, though its function wasn't obvious.

As he looked around, Blue continued, “This is a Corps of Engineers service boat. They use them to inspect survey markers, buoys, and other equipment up and down the river. This one makes a regular run up to the north, and then it comes back.”

“How the heck do you know that,” Victoria asked.

“Hospital. I went in with you.” She smiled at Liam. “I met the captain while I was there. We got to talking. He lost his partner a few days ago.” She looked around at the sound of someone approaching.

“Here he comes now.”

The man was a caricature of a salty old sea captain. He was tanned to the point of being cooked. He wore a loose button down shirt that may have been a Hawaiian shirt at one time, but now was faded almost to white. His jeans were covered in grease or something grease-like, though he evidently tried to wash it out from time to time. The large work boots and faded camo boonie cap completed his ensemble.

He had thick facial hair which was mostly gray. His thick eyebrows sat above his angry eyes.

“You said you were bringing soldiers.” He looked around dramatically in front of Liam and Victoria. “I don't see soldiers.”

“Hi. Yeah. I said I would find fighters. These two pulled me out of the city. See? Fighters.”

The captain gave a distasteful look at Liam. He gave a too-long look at Victoria. The sirens in his head began to spin up.

“Well. I guess if they rescued you...” He looked at Blue, and Liam noticed his eyes flitted here and there over her figure. He ran over a mental checklist; a reference dive into his post-apocalyptic literature. Was this going to be the guy that offed him so he could float down the river with two young women as his prisoners? It had happened before, though he couldn't think of a specific instance from his books to give him guidance.

But he had to pull up the big boy pants. He gripped his spear a little tighter. “We may not look it, but we are fighters, sir.” He didn't think he quite had the hang of projecting an aura of competence in fighting, though he certainly felt confident of his fighting abilities if Victoria was at risk.

“I'm Liam, and this is Victoria.”

Oh man! I should have used fake names.

The captain seemed to appraise him once more, but gave him no clues as to his conclusion. Instead, to Blue he said, “All right, girl. We'll go north. But if one of them things gets aboard, they better earn their keep.” To Liam, he only said, “The name is Jam. Go sit down.”

Evidently manners were a forgotten art on the water.

4

The boat, dubbed Lucy's Football, cleared the moorings and the captain seemed to take it slow while he went over some gauges inside the enclosed work area he had in the middle of the boat. There was no room to sit in the front, and Liam wasn't invited into the enclosed cabin, so he chose to stand in the back of the boat. He hung on to a tie-down just outside the plexiglass windows of the captain's area. Blue remained inside with the captain, leaving him alone with Victoria.

She stood next to him at first, but the captain came out and yelled at them to split up so they weren't both on the same side. “You're weighing us down on the starboard,” he said in a loud, gruff voice.

Victoria stood on the opposite side, facing Liam. “Are we gonna have fun, or what?” she asked with a big smile.

“Always something to do in the Zombie Apocalypse.”

He knew they were going on a dangerous journey, but he couldn't help him but try to take the edge of their nerves by trying to be funny.

“Yarg! You young whipper-snappers are jammin' me garbage scow. Your whale of girl be weighing us down!” He pretended he was smoking a pipe as he spoke, and he and Victoria both laughed. Already thinking of what to say next, he turned to see a motion in the window next to his head. The captain was scowling at him. Liam froze where he was, hand up to his mouth and all.

The captain cracked open the small door. “These walls be not soundproof.” Far from being a good-humored response, his face displayed real disgust, seemingly out of proportion to Liam's antics. He slammed the door shut once more.

He was still frozen with his hand at his mouth. He swiveled his eyes just to confirm the captain was looking away, and then he pretended to take one final pull on his imaginary pipe before putting it away. The dual outboard motors throttled up and they both had to hang on as the boat accelerated into the huge waterway.

The most prominent feature of this part of the river was the number of barges. The entire shore was lined with them. As they cleared the other ships near the dock where they launched, the river was almost solid with the rust-red and dull grey shipping barges common on the big rivers of the Midwest. Either every barge captain for a thousand miles decided to dock here, or these people collected barges like trophies. It made for a jaw-dropping introduction to the journey.

The boat raced out into the middle of the channel, heading for a large bridge crossing the Ohio. He'd seen it while in the town up on the levee. It was graced with metallic girders and was painted an ancient sea gray. As they closed the distance, he could see a few people walking the roadway up there, but there were no vehicles in sight. Above it, there were huge sea birds darting in and out of massive nests placed on top.

The far side of the river looked like a popular gravel bar during a college fraternity float trip. Hundreds of barges had been run up onto the shore to keep them from floating away. The only thing he didn't see were coeds dancing up on the mud banks next to their boats. Instead, there were serious-looking men tying off huge ropes or driving excavating equipment to make more room for more barges. Several dredging barges were pulling silt and mud from the riverbed to improve the clearance of the towboats pushing their cargo into parking spaces.

He wanted to ask the captain what all this was about, but he also wanted to keep his mouth shut. As they went under the bridge, he began to understand the scale of the whole operation. The Mississippi river joined with the Ohio at a great junction and full and empty barges were parked over every square inch of that intersection. There were more tows pushing barges in ones and twos as they came off the Mississippi. They pushed them into the parking lot on the Ohio side.

Liam couldn't see any pattern to their machinations. From water level, all he could see was the sides of barges almost 360 degrees around him. Barges were twenty deep on each side of the river.

“Amazing, isn't it?” Victoria spoke loud enough to be heard over the motors.

“What do you think it's all for?” he retorted. It looked like a massive recovery operation, though he wondered what was inside all the thousands of holds. When he was at the top of the Arch, he watched a barge pass by laden with infected souls standing around like they were on a sunset cruise. Did they end up here?

Then he thought of all the barges which broke through the blockade of debris back up in St. Louis.

“Hey, do you think Duchesne's body is here somewhere?”

“Oh. I hope not.”

The man had been killed by a barge. It would be fitting if he did end up here.

The Mississippi wasn't quite as filled with barges. They seemed to be using the Ohio side as the corral for all the loose livestock. However, as they sailed along for a few minutes, it became clear there was a complex operation on this river too. They'd seen it from up on the levee the day before.

On the right, there was a long, thin island covered with trees. There was a narrow strip of water between the island and the shore, which Liam imagined was the pit lane of a race track. It was filled with the metal barge cargo haulers. When they reached the far end, Liam was impressed with the recovery operation guiding rogue barges to the safety of the small passage. A few pleasure boats drifted down the river too, and the smaller tows pounced on them like herding sheepdogs. The larger tugs waited nearby for larger runaways. Others worked their captured boats into the pit area as he watched.

He counted at least ten tugboats operating in the waters near the mouth of the recovery zone. About half of those were the larger tugs designed to push heavy loads on the riverways. There was clearly still a lot of loose boats floating from the north if that many boats were still netting them.

The last thing they saw of Cairo was the dredging operation for the anti-zombie ditch. Much of the dirt for the hole was stacked on the south side of that excavation, presumably so the defenders would have clear fields of fire on any zombies that somehow cleared the scorched flatlands to the north and made it into the ditch. If they managed to survive that long, they'd have to climb the formidable southern bank and then continue up the pile itself.

He turned around to see if Victoria was seeing the same thing. “Do you think that ditch will hold off the zombies?” They'd discussed secure bases before, but Liam always referenced his zombie literature when the subject was broached. His research would say there was nowhere on Earth that was safe from the zombies. But he hoped some places were safer than others. Cairo seemed pretty prepared, and he was willing to revise his previous guess that the place would last only two weeks. He allowed they might make it for longer.

When she didn't answer, he turned to face her. “What?”

Victoria looked at him with sadness. She shook her head no. “The zombies will make it in. Maybe one of these barges will tip over and spill hundreds of them onto shore. Maybe just one will float from upstream and shake himself off in town. Maybe one is already there, just waiting for someone to open the wrong door. I just don't think anywhere is going to be safe until every one of those things is dead and buried. Or burned.”

She turned to look out her side of the boat.

His enthusiasm for Cairo's chances waned. The ditch was impressive and the cooperation it took to get it in place was a bright spot in the otherwise blight-stricken world of the plague, but in the end, she was correct. The length it survived was secondary to the fact it would fall.

With her back to him, he spoke, but only to himself. “I think you pulled exactly the right lesson from my books. You didn't even have to read them.”

5

Liam and Victoria got tired of standing in the hot sun, so they each took a seat on the rear deck, facing each other from opposite sides. They could speak if they needed but, for the most part, they were silent as the boat plowed the waves up the dirty river.

Several times along the way, they'd feel lurches to either side as the boat swerved around and through debris or runaway barges. One item in particular bothered the captain enough to leave his cabin and stand on the back deck as the boat idled. They all stood and watched as a huge tank of some kind floated by.

“It's a propane tank. A big one. A fifty-foot whale!” the captain said. Then he said he'd have to call it in to the teams in Cairo so they didn't miss it.

It gave Liam a narrow window of opportunity to talk to him. “Why are they collecting all that stuff?”

The captain paused, seemed to consider a response, then continued inside. Blue, standing in the doorway, spoke quietly. “They're trying to gather supplies, instead of letting them drain out into the Gulf of Mexico.” She closed the door, choosing to stay inside.

Liam broke the rules. He walked over to Victoria.

“Why do you think she's staying inside with him? Aren't we better company?”

“Well, I am. But you? You did make fun of the captain after all.” She winked at him.

He huffed. “Well you laughed too,” he said with a fake hurt voice. Then he thought better of it and moved back to his side of the boat. There's only one rule when taking a boat ride in the Zombie Apocalypse: don't piss off the captain.

A few hours went by with nothing to do but sit and nod off. The sun was high overhead when the motors' pitch changed and the boat slowed. That got them both off their feet.

The captain piloted the boat into another small side channel off the main river. There were no structures or anything man-made anywhere in sight. Liam's mind was filled with years of video games, movies, and books about dangerous times and dangerous men.

“Is this the part where we get killed? We are about as far away from other people as we can be.” Then, with a fair bit of drama added, “There are to be no witnesses...”

Victoria laughed, but she looked at him with serious eyes. She looked into the cabin to get a sense of what the captain was up to, but the tinting and bright sunlight made that difficult.

All they could do was watch as the channel began to narrow. In a few minutes, they came around a small bend and approached another, larger, boat that was anchored in the middle of the creek or small river they'd been touring.

More thoughts bounced through his head, speaking only of trouble. They could be gun runners, deviant hillbillies, a secretive medical team—it wouldn't be his first, or maybe it was simply the angry sea captain's club.

The motors were a dull hum as the boat drifted twenty or thirty feet from the other.

Panic swept through Liam's over-active brain as he realized his only weapon—his spear—was in the front of the boat. He'd have to pass the captain to get it.

“Or, he tossed it over the side while we weren't looking,” he thought. That would be a hilarious end to his ill-planned mission. “Death by stupidity.”

He moved over to Victoria's side, aware he might be chewed out again. Maybe he would push her overboard so they could swim to safety, though the chance of that succeeding were slim when a motorboat was involved.

A few minutes went by and Liam's fear was being bested by his curiosity. To Victoria, he said, “Either kill us or get on with whatever you're doing.”

Almost as if on cue, the captain came out of his cabin. Blue stood once more at the doorway.

The captain walked up to him, sharing some of his bad breath. “When we pull up alongside them, I need you two to grab the ropes and hold us in place. I want to make this handoff quick.”

“Handoff?”

“You two aren't going to give me trouble, are you?” He reached into a large pocket in his pants. There was something blocky. He started to pull it out.

Liam tried to step backward, but he hit the starboard motor. “We don't want any violence, captain, sir.”

The man's hand paused. He looked down at his pocket as if seeing the situation for the first time. He laughed quietly.

Then he pulled out the object. “Reach for the sky,” he said with a raspy voice. The banana rocked in his hand and tilted toward Liam. “I know you two aren't going to give me any trouble at the oxbow gas station, right? Cause if you do—” He pointed the banana and made a “pew pew” sound at both of them.

Liam's heart exited the highway of insane fear and decelerated to the normal operating fear he felt all the time. He'd have to think of a way to stop seeing every situation as a trap designed to capture or kill him. Not everyone in the world could be out to get him.

Just some of them.

The fuel transfer operation proceeded without any kidnappings, shootings, or fights between crews.

Chapter 6: Grandma Dreams of Pink

Grandma watched the refugee kids in the living room of the house. They had managed to spend the entire day with their technological devices—phones, tablets, whatnots—while she did nothing but sit and stare out the window into the lonely town of Cairo. More people were coming in as refugees, she assumed, because they were led to this or that house on the street. A few teens found their way to her house, making her wonder if she'd been placed in the wrong home. She was older than everyone else by 80 or 90 years.

She was refreshed for the middle of the day, but felt the drift toward a nap nonetheless. It was as if her body wanted to turn itself off. Another side effect of aging. Or...

The familiar energy surged through her body. Another dream was coming, and she wondered if it would be as horrible as the last.

In the middle ground between awake and dreaming she was dismayed to see the same girl as before.

I should never have let Liam go with her.

2

Ten days since the sirens.

Saffron slammed the door shut, a second before the first zombie made contact with the glass. She felt the steel vibrate, but could be sure of one thing—there was no way through. Needing confirmation, she turned around to look out the small view port into the near-darkness through the glass. More of the undead were stacking up behind the first. She was breathing as if she'd just finished a race, which wasn't far off the mark. She'd just climbed to the top of the Gateway Arch.

“Thank you guys—” She spread the words around her deep gasps for air.

Unless the zombies could organize themselves and pull the door open, it would be impossible for them to get through. That, at least, was good news. Beyond the first landing, there could possibly be thousands of zombies on the stairs of the north leg of the Arch. Two or three for each of the 1076 steps. The bodies of her fellow survivors were lying on about twenty of them.

“—for getting me to the top.”

The banging and moaning of the zombies faded as she walked the final steps to the summit of the Arch, out of the tram-loading area. The light from the observation area was a powerful magnet, drawing her out of the darkness. Her legs screamed at each of those final steps. She choked back the sadness to stay alert. Even so, her adrenaline ebbed. All she wanted was to lay herself down and go to sleep.

She froze near the top. Ahead, a lone figure; a silhouette staring out the tiny window. Saffron was unable to tell if she was alive or dead. It didn't matter in the end because she had no weapons.

“Hello?”

The woman gave no clue to her condition. Saffron chanced a few more steps up the slanted deck of the topmost segment of the Arch observation platform. The small windows on each side of the walkway gave her enough light to be sure the woman was alive.

“Are you OK?” As she said it she knew it sounded insane. Of course she wasn't. Nobody was.

The woman was dressed in blue jeans and a light t-shirt. She was covered in the detritus of hand-to-hand combat with the plague victims. Saffron looked down at her own clothing. The gray capris had become red with blood splatter. Her button-down shirt suffered from the same abuse. She unbuttoned it and tossed it back down the canted floor behind her. Her own t-shirt was glowing white compared to the woman's.

She moved behind her, intending to look over the top of the Arch to see into the south leg tram loading area, and was disturbed to see the woman held a pistol at her side. She kept walking to give the woman some room. There was something wrong with her, beyond the background noise of despair and fear everyone shared.

“My name's Saffron. What's yours?”

The woman remained stone-still as she looked down through the observation window. Saffron looked out her own window, thinking of better times when she was here. In normal times, parents would be holding young children as they lay on top of the slanted windows. She leaned down to get a better look.

Outside, she saw…

“It's the end of the world.” The woman spoke in almost a whisper.

“Ain't that the truth.” The lush green grass and remaining trees of the park below clashed profoundly with the dead bodies, surging zombies, and running groups of survivors fighting for an extra minute or two of life. To the west, as far as Saffron could see, crowds of infected crammed the streets of downtown St. Louis—heading to the last people left alive in the city. “But at least they'll die out in the sunshine.”

Saffron turned back to the stranger, and tried to engage her once more. “I'm Saffron.”

After another minute of silence, Saffron brought up the big guns.

“Where did you go to high school?”

The young woman turned to look at her, but remained silent. Saffron took it as a positive sign. “I went to Northwest. You?”

“Where did I go to high school?” It droned out of her, and she seemed to think hard. “I went to Ursuline Academy. I graduated...a few years ago. Why does it matter?”

“I'll tell you why it matters. I know who you are. You think I'm a hillbilly from Jefferson County who shops at Walmart, and I think you're a rich snob from the suburbs who shops at the Galleria? Am I right?”

She tried to be cheery with the stereotypes of St. Louis—she meant it as a joke. It was normally a safe ice breaker. Instead the woman began to sob.

“It's all gone, isn't it? Walmart. Galleria. High school?”

The gun hung like damp laundry at the woman's side. For the first time, Saffron understood what was going on here.

“No, they aren't all gone. I was part of a group. There's help out there. What's your name?”

“Christine.” She spoke like a robot.

“Well, Christine, it looks like we both made it to the safest place in St. Louis, huh?”

Christine slunk down against the wall below the windows. Saffron sat down on the other side of the tight space, facing her.

Christine explained her situation. “We thought that, too. What was safer than the Arch? My boyfriend and I live downtown—lived—and he was determined to get us here. We found some of his friends, and some other people along the way, and made it to the south leg down in the museum. The doors were blown apart at the bottom, and we were fighting the whole way to the top. The men were armed with shovels and a few guns. They sacrificed themselves to protect me and other women. Eventually, it was just me. I shut the door at the top just like you did.” She sniffled. “So who's coming to rescue you?”

Saffron considered sugar-coating it, but couldn't come up with anything that would ring true. Instead, she shook her head in the negative. No one was coming...

Christine set the pistol on her lap, as she silently cried.

Saffron stood up to get a view out the east side. She'd heard through the rumor mill the Army was patiently waiting on the eastern shore, but she saw no evidence over there. If they were over there watching all of her friends die, including her, she was going to be very angry. Unable to decide if she felt better or worse in not seeing the military, she resumed her own survival effort.

“Christine. Is there any way to get down the south leg? You said there were zombies following you. How many?”

The woman looked up to answer, but just shook her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“There has to be another way down.”

“There is.” With a shaking hand, Christine pulled the gun off her lap, and vaguely pointed it at her head. “I'm going out on my terms. When I'm ready. I'm not going to die of thirst in this coffin.”

That's what it was. A sealed stainless steel coffin. Saffron figured they'd both die and be preserved for eternity.

“Hey, your boyfriend wouldn't want you to give up, would he? My—friends—wouldn't want me to give up either. We have to keep trying.”

Christine slapped the gun down in her lap again. It was the kind of careless gun handling which got people killed. “Look around. Do you see any doors we can use? Both legs are filled with zombies. The tram cars aren't operational. What else do you want?”

“To live,” she thought.

She studied the interior of the observation deck. It was remarkably bare. The only blemishes were the bloody footprints from her own shoes and long-dried smears of blood here and there. The windows didn't open of course...but it gave her an idea. Moving to the very apex of the Arch, she noticed a square on the ceiling above her. It was about as wide as a man, and it gave the lone clue what it was for.

“Hey, help me up so I can reach this.” She was pointing up as Christine looked at her. “I think this pops away and there's a door to the outside.”

With wild eyes the girl focused on her, and began to laugh. “Are you serious?” As a response, Saffron jumped up as high as she could, and pushed the square covering. It popped out of its channel, revealing something above it. A hatch was up there.

Instead of jumping up to help, the girl merely pulled her knees up to her chest and put her head down. She continued to cry. Saffron was about to write her off completely when she froze. The girl had stopped sobbing and froze as well. The floor panel beneath Christine's feet was moving.

“Oh, Christ. They're under us.”

Every twenty feet or so on the curved walkway, pieces of the metal were bending upward. Things were trying to push them upward.

Christine jumped up, and the panel nearly popped open. The eyes of the zombie peeking through were enough to get them both moving.

“Help me.” Saffron was forceful, but tried to remain quiet. Christine grabbed her around the waist as if to lift her, Saffron pointed out that though they were both small women, she was stronger. She would lift. Her back strained in the effort, but they only needed an extra foot or two so she could pull the ceiling panel down, and then see about the top hatch itself.

She couldn't look up, as her strength and focus was entirely on lifting. Saffron could hear the growing moans of the zombies sneaking through the gap beneath them. They became agitated once they knew the girls were above them. Banging under the floor also grew louder.

“Oh shit. There's a padlock on the round hatch.”

“Of course. Can't have a tourist stepping out for a smoke,” she thought.

“Can you shoot it out?” It worked in the movies, so seemed a worthwhile thing to suggest.

“Put me down. I can't.”

She didn't want to drop her. She wasn't sure she could lift her again. With an “oomf” she let her down. The floor panels moved in several areas. The one closest to them was almost off. The zombies were relentless, but not remotely smart.

Christine showed her the gun. “This is empty. I spent them all coming up.”

“I thought you were going to kill yourself.” She said it without emotion, wishing maybe there were two bullets in the thing.

“Yeah, I probably would have been dead before you arrived if I had bullets left in the clip.”

Saffron resisted correcting her nomenclature. It was just a steel boat anchor now.

“Hey! You can use it to beat the shit out of the lock.”

They both looked at the gun as something brand new. Saying nothing, they both got back into position. Saffron heaved. Christine began to attack the lock.

The first panel flipped completely up. It was just a little bit too small for the zombie to easily climb through. It must have been slinking under the floor and wasn't able to bend enough to get out. But it would eventually. It was able to contort in ways beyond a normal human body.

“Bang bang bang.” The gun battered against the lock. Saffron was afraid to ask for status reports. The banging was its own report.

“Please hurry.” She was having trouble holding the girl up.

More panels popped. Hands and arms began reaching up from the floor in many spots. A zombie had emerged from a panel far down the walkway, nearest the tram station on the south side. It was on the smaller side. An infected young boy.

“They're coming through. You have to hurry.”

“This lock is really tough. I don't think—”

Saffron tightened her grip. She willed Christine to break the damned lock.

“—I got it!”

Both tumbled to the floor as Saffron's arms gave out. The lock bounced down the incline of the floor.

“Give me the gun,” she commanded.

“But it's—”

Saffron took it from her. She stood and walked toward the small infected person—she couldn't use the term “child”—as it moved in her direction. She swung the butt of the gun with as much force as she could muster, ending at the boy's cheek. Her first swing broke the jaw but took another horrible pair of cracks to damage the head for good. She stepped around the grabbing hands of the crawlers as she made it back to the hatch.

“Get ready. I'm going to lift you to the top.”

Christine moved as instructed. Other panels were completely off. The biological hazards below were straining in unnatural ways to free themselves from the conduits.

Saffron put the gun in her waistband, then made as if she was going to lift the smaller woman.

“What?”

Christine looked up through the hatch. “What are we going to do up there?”

There was no time to consider whether it was a good idea. It was the only idea that would allow them to stay alive.

“Sunbathe.” She said it as calmly as she could.

“Sunbathe?” A long hesitation. “Yeah, OK.”

She grabbed the other woman around her thighs and hefted her up. Christine was able to gain leverage on the hatch, but Saffron had to really push her to get her through.

From above, “Oh my God. It's windy up here,” she yelled.

“Yeah, well, as long as you aren't getting bit,” Saffron grumbled to herself.

Another zombie had snaked out of the subfloor. It appeared to be a small-framed teen boy. He'd lost his shirt along the way, but his black chest and side was drenched in fresh blood. A recent victim of the virus—probably from the crowd directly below.

It gained its feet as Saffron jumped for the hatch. She was able to grab the outer lip, but she panicked as she realized she couldn't pull herself up. Not after the exhausting climb and fight in the stairwell coming up. She hung for a second.

“Think girl. Think!”

“Are you coming up?” From above, Christine seemed oblivious.

“Yeah, why don't you come down and lift me up,” she muttered softly.

She pulled out the pistol, intent to do harm to the teen boy. She was getting slow, however, and her swing was a second too late to make solid contact with the zombie's head. Rather than hitting it with the gun, she hit the thing's head with her wrist. The gun got loose and tumbled to the floor. The zombie winced too, but kept its feet.

A panel directly below her rattled. She didn't fall over, but the shock almost made her lose her footing.

The teen re-oriented on her. On a hunch, she dropped to a squat and pulled up the floor panel. It was light, probably aluminum, and was about a twenty inch square.

She noticed the woman squished into the narrow space, trying to turn to look up at her. The thing wore a bright red shirt, which did a remarkable job of camouflaging the blood on it.

From a crouch, she swung the panel like a banshee. With a heavy grunt from a place in her soul she was unaware existed, the sharp edge ripped into the teen zombie's stomach. Blood and parts spilled out.

Again the zombie was forced to the side, its muscles damaged but its body unbroken.

She stood, gripped the panel, and swung it again as hard as she could. This time it cut into the boy's neck. It was already damaged from the boy's own encounter with a zombie, and it allowed her to make a good, solid, cut.

“I don't believe it.” She panted as her strength continued to wane.

The boy's throat was indeed severed, but the spine held it in place. His noggin was canted unnaturally to one side, but he was still coming back for her.

She threw down the panel. It slid on the floor, loosely covering the red shirt woman. She was close to getting out. Many were close to escape now. Hands reached up from many panels on the floor.

“The panels,” she shouted to herself.

The windows of the Arch sit on what are effectively small shelves, so people can look down. Saffron hopped onto one shelf and then pushed herself off with all her strength and grabbed the boys neck—and twisted.

The thing cried out until a satisfying snap occurred on its neck. With nothing left to hold it in place, the momentum carried the head from the body. Surprised, Saffron threw it while the rest of the body collapsed at her feet.

She was mesmerized as the head rolled down the incline of the floor, bounced off the side a couple times, hopped over some of the open panels, and then rolled into the darkness toward the tram loading area. Gone.

She shook her head vigorously to clear her mind of what just happened.

“The panels, girl. Get the panels!”

She found the panel she had tossed down, and pulled it from the red shirt woman—now facing up from the floor—and placed it under the hatch to the outside.

She repeated the process several more times until the panels were stacked about a foot high. She dared not try more as she could see two or three zombies far down the walkway standing up and starting her way. The crawlspace was more spacious farther away from the apex.

“Just a little more time. You got this.” She told herself.

Christine's face was up in the hatch, looking down with terror.

With a tentative first step, she placed her foot on the stack of panels. It immediately tipped over.

“No. No. No.”

She looked closer at the stack. The panels had a slight curve to them, to match the curvature of the top of the Arch. She didn't notice it in her haste. She rearranged the panels, then chanced a look over her shoulder.

“This is it,” she shouted up to Christine.

“Or I'm dead,” she mumbled.

The stack was steady. Her legs, though wobbly from exhaustion, held her in position. She grabbed the hatch above. The sunlight drizzling in through the gap was heavenly.

With a final grunt, she jumped. With her arms, she pulled at the same time. Christine grabbed her shirt and pulled, too. It got her just enough leverage she could get her elbows outside the hatch. For a moment, she hung with her legs dangling inside the Arch. Her torso outside.

The view was spectacular.

Something brushed her below. She spun her legs and was horrified to make several contacts. Multiple zombies were on her. She heard the moans as she pushed them back with a weak kick.

“Help me up,” she screamed. Christine looked surprised and frightened by her tone. Instead of helping, she slid away, toward the big warning lamp next to the hatch. She hugged it, looking away from Saffron.

She had no time to plead. She'd have to do it herself.

More hands on her legs. She strained to pull herself up with her arms. She was normally a fairly strong teenager, especially for her small frame, but her strength had been stolen from her.

She swung her leg backward. She made contact with something.

Then she put her feet forward and found something standing almost next to her. She decided it was her last chance. She raised one of her feet, risking a bite, and found the shoulder—or maybe the top of the head of a short zombie—and pushed off like a step.

Her ploy worked. With the extra support of her leg, she shimmied up through the hatch. Rather than hoot and celebrate, she spun around to look down.

A half dozen people looked up at her with bloody mouths, bleeding eyes, and outstretched hands.

“What have we wrought?” She peered down for many minutes as more came out of the gaps in the floor. Soon the entire space was filled. She was about two feet beyond their reach. She didn't think there was any way they could figure out a way up, but to be safe she knew she had to get out of their view.

When she finally looked up, Christine was gone.

She didn't bother calling for her. She took over the spot on the warning lamp. It provided the only handhold on the upper surface of the Arch, beyond the lip of the hatch. The warmth of the metal in the July sun was a firm reminder that she was still alive. Below her, in the Arch, the moans and longing grunts of the infected continued unabated. It was like radio static blaring from the tiny hatch.

She lost track of time. A couple days. A couple nights. The pangs of thirst were as constant and withering as the wind.

“Christine saw this coming. She took the easy way out,” she said to herself.

The view was incredible. From her perch on the top of the structure, she could see the entire city of St. Louis for thirty miles in any direction.

“A beautiful way to die.”

In the distance, she heard the whine of aircraft. She changed direction and saw a spectacle taking place inside Busch Stadium. Two large ungainly looking helicopter-planes were taking off from the field. The first to rise hovered near the ground, then slid sideways into the stands where it appeared to take a seat. Even from up there she could see the people and zombies scramble toward it.

The other aircraft had similar issues but the people hanging on the back ramp were pushed out by someone on the inside. The machine stabilized, then rose.

Saffron began to yell, though she was terrified to realize her voice was gone. She was so thirsty her throat wouldn't respond. Instead, she wheezed for help.

The beast rose above the stadium, its rotors and wings folded forward, and it began to depart—changing from helicopter mode to airplane mode. It would have been impressive if it didn't represent death for her.

As the plane became a speck in the distance she reflected on Christine's method of exiting this situation. Just one quick slide or jump and it's all over…

Her head was a haze. The wind became unnaturally calm, as if it wanted her to jump.

She stood up, though she was very unsteady and weak. As she gained her bearings, she held onto the light. The moaning from inside the Arch was a reminder she could never fight her way through the interior.

“I'm sorry, Mom. I couldn't save them. I couldn't even find them.”

Saffron moved closer to the edge. Despite herself she had to move on one knee. She was too weak to stand on her own. The survival instinct still injected itself into her psyche, telling her to be careful, lest she fall over the side to her death.

At the edge she hesitated. Looking upon the city 600 feet below, she saw fires burning in the distance, people scrambling on rooftops in every direction, and the infected rambling everywhere in the park directly below and the urban nightmare beyond. She was too high to hear the screams.

Willing herself to stand, she trembled on the precipice.

“Any last words?”

She had none.

“Well—”

A small black helicopter ripped between the legs of the Arch, fifty feet below her. She was too tired to be shocked. Two more purred right behind it; they headed for the wall of buildings of the city. The trio of gunships banked hard to the left and swooped back into the park, like young teens at a skateboard park. Machine guns on each side of the birds spewed out tiny sparks toward the crowds of the sick below.

She took a knee.

The helicopters raked the ground as they darted back and forth in the once lush park. The grounds had already been bombed, burned, and befouled by an earlier battle, so the dead fell upon the rotting casualties from that engagement.

Saffron became dizzy at the excitement. Standing after so much time off her feet made her head spin. Now she was in real danger.

“Why should I care?”

The instinct to die fought the instinct to live.

“You have to live. You have to take care of them.”

“I'm sorry, momma, I can't. They've been lost.”

On her knees now, her hands gripped the sun-warmed metal to remain stable as she watched below. But the wind increased. Dangerously so. It beckoned her. It wanted to see her fly.

“I could just tip forward and be done with it.”

“No, turn around. Stay alive. There is hope.”

“Ha!”

She looked once more below, though her eyes swam in white streaks. The black dots of the copters cavorted with those in her vision. There was nothing to be gained in watching.

All she could do was slide herself on her knees. A little at a time, she turned to move back to the lamp.

When she faced the proper direction, the wind became a tornado. In front of her, causing the grief, was a dark angel.

Inside the windshield, a man gave her a thumbs up sign.

“Well, that was unexpected.”

Time faded out once more.

Chapter 7: Distractions

Liam knew he was asleep. He'd drifted under with the rhythm of the boat on the river. What he didn't know was how he got to this place.

The cityscape was from his video game, World of Undead Soldiers. It wasn't unusual to dream about the game—he played it all the time. For the past six months or so, he'd been having gaming dreams so much he considered cutting back his game time, though that was a short-lived hope once the light of day caught him. Until today, he hadn't had any gaming dreams since the sirens...

The game wasn't known for complicated story lines or missions. Often it simply came down to how well the characters could aim and how fast they could reload their guns.

He had a gun. A combat shotgun.

“My favorite. Oh yeah!” The thing had some heft to it. The folding stock was retracted, making it easier to carry, but less accurate to fire. With some effort, he extended the stock and pressed it against his shoulder as a test.

“Nice.”

He searched himself for ammo and was pleased to find a mag pouch hanging off his belt. He didn't know how many shells were in there, but he guessed about fifty. That was the limit in his game.

It didn't seem safe to remain in the middle of the road, so he trotted over to the nearest skyscraper entrance. From there, like his game, he'd assess the landscape and determine his next steps.

The changing perspective allowed him to look up and see the building across the street was on fire in several places, mostly near the top.

“Eye-candy, put in there by the game developers.” It really did feel real, but he saw the little details that were inserted to make the city more dynamic and interesting. The fires, the torn sections of roadway as if bombs had fallen—or sewers had collapsed, and the bodies…

A body lay just ahead. It was propped against the outer glass of the front facade of the building. Blood was smeared in a short streak behind the man's head. Cautiously, he approached the victim. He was dressed as a businessman. There was a hole behind his head, in the glass. It was a telltale sign of what happened to him.

“Zombies always die by a shot to the head. Is that a universal truth?”

They also die if you blow them to bits. Or dip them in acid. Or freeze them and then break them apart. Or...

Yes, there were many ways to kill, but on the open streets, by average people, there was only one realistic method.

Destroy the brain.

He moved on to the edge of the building, and could see down the next street. His mission came into focus. A big yellow school bus hunched on flat tires at the next intersection. And yes, he lamented, it was surrounded by a couple dozen zombies. They pawed at the door and left sickly reddish brown streaks wherever they touched the clean yellow exterior.

“Why does this seem so familiar?” His game had many types of missions for players to challenge themselves. Some required attacking the zombies to force the way to rescue. Others demanded the player survive for a period of time against an ever-growing horde. The most complicated required stealth. Getting around a city crawling with zombies was something he knew a little about…

“There are always weapons up in the buildings.” The game allowed players to carry one weapon at the outset, but others could be picked up on the map. If this was a dream meant to mimic the functionality of Undead Soldiers, he'd have to go up into the burning building.

He broke the glass next to the dead man. In moments, he was inside and in the staircase. He clicked on his flashlight—players always had one available in the game—and made it to the first floor without incident. It wasn't long and he was overlooking the bus from a corner office.

“Could I shoot them from up here?” He judged he had 50 shells. Their effectiveness was reduced at his current distance. He was maybe thirty yards from the bus. He could hit them, but not be sure he'd damage the heads. That would be a necessity.

He stood and watched, wondering what his next course of action should be. Go up the stairs to find any number of rifles, compound bows, or fire axes, as he'd do in his game world, or go back outside and distract them, kill a few, and make it into the bus just to see what's inside. From there, who knows. He'd learned it was best not to overthink the scenarios. After all, the game was designed to be played by kids, and they didn't have the same game problem-solving skills as a sixteen-year-old.

He felt mildly bad for feeling pride in that statement, but it had to be true.

Nearly about to turn around, he saw movement across the intersection. Someone was crouched behind a column under the building across from his own. The person wore all-black clothing. He couldn't make out anything more.

Studying the scene, he noticed someone else on the diagonal corner. And a third could be seen below the remaining building on the other corner.

In a flash, he realized what was happening.

“Cooperative play!” He had three helpers in the game with him. Together they were challenged to secure the bus. Now it all made sense.

They came out shooting. He watched the one across the street he'd seen first, as that one was directly in his line of sight. He too had a shotgun—

“A girl!”

The player was using a female avatar. Not uncommon in the game. Whether it was an actual girl was less clear, though doubtful. He looked at his own body to see if he was an avatar, but felt relief that he was really him instead of his in-game avatar.

The rules of this place were nebulous.

She led with a shotgun, rattling off six shots with great precision. She only missed one of her targets on the third shot. She put it down with the fourth. She fired slugs. They ripped great holes in the heads of those she targeted to die.

When she ran out of shells, she ran down the street to his right, reloaded, and then began moving back toward the zombies. The small crowd of them around the bus pulled itself apart as the zombies individually pursued the three killers on the three corners of the street.

“I should be down there.”

Not knowing what else to do, he squatted down at the door of the office and aimed upward into the glass, intending to make a hole so he could shoot down. He ticked off the safety, then let a round go.

“Crap!”

It put a small hole in the window, but it didn't shatter apart as he'd hoped.

He got back up to look at the girl below. He wondered if, here inside his dream, the girl was Victoria. It would make sense he'd dream about her, since she was literally feet away from him on the boat. But the girl definitely had black hair. It was both darker and longer than Victoria's. He couldn't see her face to be sure.

She had made a lot of progress. More zombies lay on the ground behind her, and he could only marvel as she swung a fire axe at a charging businesswoman. She let go of the axe as it, and the zombie, fell to her side.

The other fighters were similarly dispatching their cadre of infected. One of them had a sword. The last one had a baseball bat with spikes on the end. She swung it and twirled it in her hands like an expert baseball player showing off in the batter's box.

He saw his reflection in the glass. His mouth hung open.

The girl below swung her shotgun by its heat shield at a small male in a bright blue ball cap running toward her. He could almost hear the thunk sound through the thick glass. The hat, thick with blood, popped off his head and fell to the ground.

She ran back toward her building, reloading. A few zombies trailed her.

“I need to get down there.”

He ran through the building, retracing his steps. He stepped out of the broken front window and turned to run toward the bus. But when he came around the corner, the action was over. The girl wasn't anywhere to be seen. None of them were.

It was irrational, but he worried they were inside the bus. In the game, all the players had to be on the victory point in order to end the game in a victory—kind of like capture the flag. If one of them was missing, and the game ended, it was considered a loss for all of them.

“I'm here!” He kept his shotgun out, but he ran as fast as its bulk, and the heavy ammo pouch, would allow. In moments, he arrived at the outer layer of dead zombies. Each had a grisly entry and exit wound from the high-velocity slugs.

The going was tough as he closed the distance to the bus doors. He became aware of the blood stains on the sides and the glass on the doors was smeared to the point he couldn't see inside.

Somehow he knew the doors would open.

No one was in the driver's seat. A sign on the top riser said, “Watch Your Step.” He ascended the few steps and peeked over the railing so he could see into the seating area.

“Liam?”

“Grandma?”

He rose to the main floor, and looked down at the tiny form sitting in the first seat. She looked as small as the school kids that should be on a bus like this.

“Oh, it's good to see you again. You always rescue me.”

There was some truth to that statement. He had rescued her from Hayes and Duchesne, but he got the sense she was talking about something different.

“This dream is very odd, Grandma. What is this place?”

She looked at him for a long moment, her head tilted a little to the side. “Liam? Is it really you? You've never spoken here before.”

He returned the confused look, thinking that he'd never been here before. Instead of an answer, he looked into the back of the bus. The three players were there, just as he'd expected. They were huddled in the last row of seats, talking to each other.

“I—”

He did a double-take. One of the figures had turned her head, he was sure they were all girls now, to reveal a blue bow.

“I think I'm in your dream.”

He turned back to her, but she was gone.

Looking up, the girls were gone.

Thinking of his game, he realized the match had ended.

The screaming in his head was real.

2

“Liam! Wake up.” Someone shook him hard.

“I'm up. I'm up.”

The boat had slowed on the river. He got off the fiberglass floor and looked where Victoria pointed.

A large mud flat ran along the riverbank. It was about a hundred yards wide from shore to open water and ran for a mile in each direction. Up the river, a barge had run aground and tipped in the deep mud, allowing its contents to escape. A hundred zombies spilled out and were waist deep in the quagmire along the muddy bank.

Victoria pointed to a small figure struggling in the mud, well downriver from the bulk of the zombies, and nearly half way across the flats—heading for the water. Several infected struggled in the mud near the figure—they were leaders of the slow motion escape. The animated figure waved arms in the classic symbol of “I'm here. Save me!”

Liam's instincts kicked in.

“We have to save her.”

“Her?” Victoria mused. She looked again, as if to confirm his observation.

Banging on the window of the control room, he pointed to the girl, hoping it was understood what he wanted. In a moment, the door opened and Blue came out.

“The captain said we can't get involved. It could be a trap. He also said you shouldn't be standing out in the open like you are.”

That got his attention. He looked around, suddenly aware he was standing hilariously upright on the back of a huge bullseye on the river. He began to crouch, but reconsidered.

“We can't leave someone to die. Why did the captain slow down—” He decided to yell to the captain directly. “Why did you slow down if you weren't going to save her?”

“She is very persuasive.”

Liam could only assume he was talking about Blue. He studied the look on her face. He imagined he saw an agreement there.

“All...right.” He let the words drawl out of his mouth, while he thought of a response.

They were about twenty-five yards from the edge of the mud flat. The current wasn't as strong toward the shallows. He saw how it was going to play out.

Sitting down, he took off his shoes and socks. Then, with some embarrassment, he took off his jeans. Then his shirt. He thanked the fates for putting him in boxer briefs today.

“Don't leave without me.” He shouted it to the captain, but was looking at Blue. He couldn't quite figure out how she and the captain fit together.

He looked at Victoria, aware he was almost naked, smiled, and then jumped feet first over the side. It only took a few strokes to reach the beginning of the muddy bank. He easily made it ashore, but was disheartened to see how far his hands and feet sunk into the loose mud where it transitioned with the water. It was the consistency of very wet play dough.

Once he was on the edge of the mud field, his struggle began. The mud was hungry as it chomped at his feet and refused to let him pull his legs back out.

Speaking aloud, he tried to calm himself. “How did she get that far in the mud?”

The girl was making forward progress, but the mud got deeper the further she went. The last ten yards for her would be up to her waist if she let herself sink down too much.

Liam took a different tact. He let himself fall sideways so he could get his whole body on the muddy surface. It worked to an extent, though it was almost as difficult to move himself forward. In an instant, he was covered with dirty mud.

“We've got ya!” he shouted to the young girl. She too had become a filthy mess. Her clothes were caked with the mud. Wherever she'd come from, she'd been in mud there too.

“Help me. Don't let me die.”

“You and me both,” he replied to himself.

The infected were closing the gap. They too were covered in the mud, making it difficult to identify their sex or occupations. A couple had long stringy hair, suggesting they were females. All of them were hideous crawling through the viscous mud.

The boat behind him revved its engines, though he couldn't tell what it was doing. A few moments later, he heard Victoria call his name. When he turned around, he could see the boat had gone upstream and was now drifting back down, closer to the mud than when he jumped.

Victoria threw a spear toward him. Her intentions were good, but she evidently thought she was going to hit him with it, so she underthrew it. Instead of reaching anywhere close to him, the thing splashed in the water and sank.

He sighed.

“It's OK,” he shouted back. He was shocked how tired he'd become from just the short distance he'd made it into the mud. He turned his attention back to the girl. She'd stopped. They looked at each other at the same moment, and he saw the exhaustion.

“I'm not going to let them get you. Keep moving. I will too.” They were about twenty feet apart. The handful of zombies struggled behind her. One had fallen behind. It appeared as if it had sunk so far in the mud it would never get free. A gangly little man made the best progress toward its prey. It flailed and flopped on the surface, much as Liam was doing. There wasn't much time left.

He pushed himself forward, though it struck him he had no weapons.

“Maybe I can hurl harsh language at them,” he joked.

The boat was revving up again. He heard a splash, but he was too close to the girl to turn around now.

“I've got you. Just a few feet more.”

He was tempted to tell her not to look back, but it seemed silly to say now. They could both hear the angry moans of the sick chasing her, though only Liam could see them.

As she closed the distance, he had a piece of inspiration.

“I want you to get out of the mud if you can. Lay on top of it. And slide toward me.”

She did as he instructed, while he did the opposite. He dug himself into the mud so he was standing in a muddy pit up to his thighs.

“I'm going to pull you and then let go,” he shouted.

She said nothing, but her eyes told him she'd heard.

The last few feet were a struggle for her and Liam hoped she wouldn't look back, but when their fingers touched, Liam did as he promised. He grabbed both her hands and pulled her toward him and then kept her going on top of the mud for another five or six feet. It was enough to get her out of immediate danger.

And himself into it.

3

When the girl slid by, she nearly ran into Victoria.

“Victoria!” She had jumped over the boat just like he'd done, but instead of showing up empty-handed, she brought their one remaining spear.

She had stripped down to her underwear, the same as him. Despite all the danger, he found himself looking at her body. During her struggles through the mud along the path he had taken, she noticed his dumb looks.

“Eyes forward, soldier!” She smiled, but it was grim.

Liam assumed she was going to toss the spear to him, but she kept coming until she was next to him.

“What are you waiting for? Get out of here. She'll need help to the boat.” There was no ambiguity in her statement.

She stood with her legs slightly spread, a little ahead and behind her. The fighting stance indicated her willingness to engage the first zombie. He'd wriggled through the mud and was only a few feet from her now.

His options were to either wrestle her for the spear, or get the hell out of there.

“You better follow me.” He threw himself backward into the deeper mud, behind her. As he righted himself in the disturbed mud, his eyes were drawn to her muddy figure. He noted, with some innocence, that she wore the same black boxer briefs as him. It must have been all that was available at for refugees in Cairo.

Victoria lifted her spear, then let it drop onto the head of the zombie. Liam couldn't see it, because she was between him and the infected, but he heard the sucking sound as the spear came out.

She looked around for the other zombies. He saw them too, coalescing toward her from various angles. Reading the angles, she made a decision to run for it. She pulled a leg out with her own sucking sound, and soon faced Liam.

“What are you gawking at? Git!”

It was all the prodding required. He turned around, and he was confident he could hear her sloshing loudly behind him as they headed for open water.

Victoria did stop once. He turned when he didn't hear her moving, and was impressed as he watched her again lift the spear over her head and slam it into one of the female zombies with the seaweed hair. Victoria caught her looking up from a prone position on the mud, and the spear drilled into her eye. He did not watch it come back out.

The boat remained out on the water, doing the equivalent of a hover. The motor was holding it still against the current. He saw the shape of the captain inside his bubble, while Blue stood in the back with an anxious face. From time to time she would wave, as if beckoning him to hurry back to her.

“Where else am I going to go,” he muttered to himself.

When he reached what he judged was the absolute edge of the mud flat, he turned around again. Victoria was pushing herself hard through the mud, chased by a curious group of flailing mad pursuers. Everyone was coated with the mud over most of their bodies, including Victoria. She must have fallen when he was faced the other way. She was still spitting the stuff out as she slid up to him.

Just before she arrived, he dove out into the water. He had a terrible deja vu though, which insisted he look over his shoulder—to be absolutely sure she followed him. Still gripping her spear, and moments ahead of the four remaining zombies, she jumped, or more properly, fell into the slow-moving waters.

They drifted as they swam, and the boat began to drift backward as well. The zombies continued their pursuit as well, unaware they couldn't swim.

“Or, maybe they can swim.” He wondered about that, then remembered the zombie under the water back in St. Louis. After a few more strokes, he did absorb the implications. Suddenly he imagined zombies littered the riverbed below him.

He drifted and paddled water while he looked for Victoria. She was nowhere to be seen.

“Victoria?”

Panic swept through him. He'd drifted with the current fifty or more feet from where he'd fought his way ashore. The muddy bodies of the two dead zombies lay like small mounds of dirt over their graves.

On the river side, he saw the girl as she boarded Lucy's Football.

But no Victoria.

Then he felt a bump against his upper leg. A grip. Then a poke.

His skin crawled. He wanted to scream in fear, but didn't know how. He was too scared to remember.

When Victoria popped out of the water with her eyes closed, he couldn't have been more shocked. He tried to yell at her, but still nothing would come out.

“I'm so sorry. I wanted to get this mud off before we got back in the boat.”

She floated next to him, with a bemused look. “What?”

Should I tell her she almost made me scream like a schoolgirl?

He liked to be honest with her, but that felt a little too honest.

“I'm glad you made it, that's all. I didn't see you in the water until just now.”

He figured that was a good explanation.

The boat had drifted closer to them, so getting out of the filthy water would be much easier. Liam was glad; he'd nearly reached his limit of endurance after creeping through the glue-like mud.

Blue had tossed a rope ladder over the side. Victoria made Liam go up the ladder first. He didn't know why until he was half way up and his rear was hanging in the wind.

“Oh, right.” He tried to hold his dignity as he climbed aboard. Blue's grasp as he cleared the edge was both welcome and a reminder he was nearly naked.

I almost died, and all I can think about is girls.

He wondered if his brain was programmed that way, or if there was something wrong with him.

He sat down hard against the inner wall of the boat, where he'd been sleeping before he was interrupted from his slumber. In moments, a soaked Victoria slapped down on the deck across the boat from him. She looked a lot more winded than she let on in the water. Her chest heaved up and down. Sitting as she was, her toes touched his. For a moment, that was the most reassuring feeling in the world.

That's when he noticed the girl he'd rescued. She was on the floor at the very back of the boat. He'd missed her coming in. But now…

Her muddy clothes were only marginally cleaner after a dip in the water. Her hair was still a mangy, tangled mess of long black locks coated in the thick mud. Only her face was clean. Liam got his first good look at who he'd risked his life to save.

The girl looked just like Blue. As in, exactly like her.

4

“Guys, this is my sister, Saffron.”

“Pink,” the girl repeated.

“Uh, I mean Pink.” She laughed, as if it was no big deal. “She came out of St. Louis and got stranded out here. Lucky we came along when we did, hey 'sis?”

The girl huddled on the floor, but didn't say anything further.

Liam had nothing but questions. About ten to be exact, but he started with the most basic.

“Why do you call yourself colors?” He looked at Pink, but it was obviously addressed to both her and Blue. He thought both of the mixed-race girls were very attractive, though both were very short for teens.

The girls shared a look, then Blue answered. “It's from a book we read last summer. Every year, our local library has a reading contest and me and my sister here have our own competition to see who can read the most books. We both got caught up in a series of books about magical Adepts. The main hero is the Blue Adept, so naturally I chose Blue. I think Saffron just likes the color Pink.” She smiled at the slouching figure on the floor. The other girl tilted her head up and gave a thumbs up, then tilted her head back to her chest.

He didn't want to bother the new girl, but Blue was fair game.

“But why now?”

Liam heard her response, though he thought he was hearing himself talk.

“Don't you get it? Everything is gone now. No more school. No more libraries. No more nuthin'. We can be whoever we want.”

It made sense to him. He changed his age on the fly, for the same reason. But there was one troubling fact emerging from the cloud of his recent incident in the mud and water. One that made him feel chilled to the bone, even though the hot sun beat him from above. He wasn't ready to voice it to the group, though he would definitely be asking Victoria as soon as he could.

Why, pray tell my dear Watson, have I rescued two colored twins from near-certain death? What are the odds?

Grandma had recently said some things were improbable, though not impossible. This seemed to be one of those improbable coincidences.

He was dying to ask Victoria, but she had also curled up in a ball and shut her eyes. He too felt the pull of sleep. It seemed the only safe thing to do these days in the long, hot afternoons. Especially when you are safe on the back of a boat, well away from the zombies lurking below...

He felt himself tip sideways a little as the boat accelerated.

Blue excused herself to return the captain's side. She pulled open the door and stepped into the interior. Then the captain put the hammer down and they began to fly up the river. He shut his eyes, believing there was nothing else to do with most of his crewmates asleep.

Before he knew it, Victoria tapped him on the shoulder. When he opened his eyes, she sat next to him. He had to look away, as she still wasn't dressed properly.

“Oh, grow up, Liam,” she giggled. She spoke so only Liam could hear. “Listen, something isn't right here. What are the odds you pull Blue off the MRAP one day, and practically the next day you pull her sister—PINK—out of a random mud bank? This can't be a coincidence.”

He followed his heart, and leaned in to kiss her.

When he was done, she wore a big smile. “What was that for? Saving your life?”

“Oh, man. I forgot all about that. I think it happens so often these days, I don't even notice.” He laughed, but there was an underlying sadness at the necessity of it. “But no, I kissed the smartest girl in the world. Or, at least the girl who thinks along the same weird lines as me. I had just made the same observation and I was sad to see you had gone to sleep. I really wanted to ask you that exact question.”

“Well?”

He hunched his shoulders. “Dunno.” So far he had nothing but flimsy speculation. Blue was almost left behind for dead. If she planned her escape up to that point, she did a terrible job closing the deal. She was smashed to the roof of the MRAP. She would have been dead if he hadn't noticed her.

And Pink, or Saffron, was exposed on the mud flat well before the boat showed up. She couldn't have known anyone would rescue her. She was going to die, too.

Except they didn't. Twice.

As a postscript to their discussion, he continued. “One thing I know for sure, something doesn't smell right here. I don't just mean you,” he said with a teasing look at her. Quieter despite the drone of the motors, he went on. “I don't like whatever it is Blue is doing inside this cabin with the captain. I don't like whatever it is that brought her twin to this boat. And now, I'm beginning to wonder if we've gotten ourselves into something more than we can handle by going to that mine. I don't like any of it.”

She turned toward him with mock exaggeration. “Liam Peters. Are you saying you aren't enjoying your time here in the Apocalypse? Is that it? …Cause I will stop this whole thing right now and take us back to the beginning if that's going to be your attitude.”

Ah, back to the tree under the Arch. He wouldn't mind going back to when they met. It was as clumsy as it was exciting for him. One of the few bright spots from those early days.

But time marches on. They rocked as the boat sped up the river, the air dried their bodies, and Liam and Victoria both managed to get their clean clothes back on before any more trouble found them. He didn't think he'd like fighting zombies in the open with just his drawers to protect him from bites.

The afternoon wore on into tedium, and sleep.

Nearly out, he sprang awake with an important piece of awareness from his recent dream. Something he missed the first time. He'd assumed the dream represented some subconscious, um, desire, for Blue. That's why he saw the blue bow on one of the three figures in the back of the bus. But something told him he also saw a pink bow.

That's what I'm talking about. I don't like this one bit.

He kept that piece of information to himself, for now. Having weird dreams was Grandma's specialty...

5

Victoria kicked him gently to wake him up.

“Don't you ever sleep?”

She looked down at him condescendingly, hands on her hips and head cocked. “And all you ever do is sleep. What am I going to do with you?” She straightened and smiled as she reached down to help him up.

“You'll want to see this.”

When he had his footing, she walked him across the deck to her side. There, across the river, was the bridge they'd seen two times now in their travels. The blown bridge over the Meramec River. The bridge was a couple hundred yards up that river, but they could easily see the downed span where the wrecking ball ruined it. That crane still towered over the ruin.

Liam laughed. “I wonder how many times we're going to pass that thing?”

He was happy to watch it from a distance. He had nothing but bad memories from their first encounter and didn't want to relive them now. Content he was safe and dry, he relished his time standing next to Victoria. The rocking motion of the boat ensured he rubbed up against her arm from time to time. It made him feel giddy.

His peace was disturbed as the captain kicked open the door. Nothing was said to them, but he was talking in a loud voice to someone on the radio and wanted he and Victoria to hear.

“No copy. Say again.” He angrily yelled it to whomever was on the other end of the connection.

“You are entering a restricted waterway. The channel north of Interstate 255 is closed due to navigational hazards. Over.”

The captain passed quiet words with Blue. Liam couldn't hear what was being said. He considered going inside the cabin to escape some of the noise of the motors, but he'd received no invite.

“Understood. We have freight to deliver to the Koch Hospital Quarry. We will hold to the south of the interstate. Over.”

The radio was quiet for a full minute. The captain made no effort to slow to wait for permission.

Then the voice continued. “Negative, Lucy's Football. For your own safety, we require that you turn around. Do not proceed. How do you copy?”

Blue came out of the shaded cabin with several bottles of water. She seemed calm and refreshed as she handed them out. A great contrast to Liam and Victoria, who spent the day covered in residue from the river and the sweat of a hot day. Her sister looked even worse, and she hadn't woken up since the rescue. She somehow slept just in front of the two motors, occasionally sliding side to side as the boat made course corrections in the choppy current.

“Hey Pink,” she shouted. “Wake up. There's trouble.”

The girl stirred while Blue turned to Liam. “You guys sure you want to do this? The captain said he would try to get you close, but it doesn't look like he can get you all the way to the docking platform in front of the mine.”

Liam looked at Victoria, but he knew her mind already. “Just have him get us close and we can walk the rest of the way. We can't be more than a few miles now.”

He didn't want to tempt fate. That was always bad these days.

As he turned to Victoria, he noticed a drone hovering about a hundred feet over their heads. It looked like it was attached to the boat because it moved at exactly the same speed.

The girls noticed it, too, as they scanned the sky to see what he was watching.

“Everyone smile for the camera,” Victoria joked. Liam laughed, despite himself. The last time she'd gotten her picture taken, it had been by Duchesne—the man who tried to kill Liam's whole family.

Note to self: take her picture!

He waved like he was on a luxury yacht putting on a show for the paparazzi. He was startled when he leveled his head back toward the front and saw the captain. He was in the doorway.

“What's wrong with you, kid? Don't you know they're taking your picture?” He looked at the three girls in turn. “All of you. You shouldn't take this lightly. Never let them see your face if you can help it.”

Liam's mouth was open, but Victoria beat him. “Who do you think is taking our picture?”

The grizzled man gave a look of disgust and turned to go back to the controls. As an apparent afterthought, he stopped and looked out of the shaded cabin. His voice was calmer.

“Well, at least you stupid kids make me look more like a party boat than a serious threat.” Then he shook his head and turned away for good. The door was still open; it swayed with the turbulence below the boat.

Liam had to practically bite his tongue not to reply. His first instinct was to explain how wrong the captain was about the crew he was carrying, though he felt he learned his lesson over the last few weeks about bragging to strangers. But the real reason he didn't reply was because he was a stupid kid in this instance, and it made him realize how fast he reverted back to his old care-free self on this trip.

He looked at Victoria, wondering what she was thinking. Surely she could make the same case to the captain. Did she also understand how right the man was? Her countenance told him nothing. She was playing it cool, like him.

Blue helped Pink in the back. The drone above them had come down almost to eye level. It was black with four fans, one on each corner. The enclosure above the fans was circular, about the size of a small car tire. On instinct he moved to the door and pulled it shut. He slammed it with as much force as he could muster. He hoped the captain would notice why.

Soon they all watched helplessly as the thing lazily hovered next to the boat as they continued up the river. The captain yelled obscenities at someone, probably on the radio.

Liam couldn't eliminate the possibility he was yelling at him.

The boat lurched to the left, into the path of the drone. It easily maneuvered out of the way, and sped ahead of them so it could hover in front of the bow, as if telling the captain to stop. He responded by accelerating.

The four of them standing on the back had to hang on to the sides.

Liam watched ahead as the captain opened the door on the front of his cabin. He brought something up he'd been holding. A gun.

Through the glass he watched as the captain lined up a shot with his shotgun, then pumped off a quick couple of shots. The sounds were loud in the open air.

He missed the drone, and it dipped low to the water's surface and then sped away from them. The captain didn't waste any more shots.

Liam used the opportunity to voice his concerns to Victoria. “I didn't say this at the time, but do you think the people taking those pictures know who we are? Like, specifically who we are and what we've done?”

Victoria looked at the two girls at the back of the boat. Pink was on the ground again, crying. Blue remained on her feet, but was studiously watching the drone as it flew toward the Illinois shore. She then turned back to him.

“I bet whoever is looking at those photos probably has us already figured out. Duchesne said he had bosses over in Illinois. Maybe they had agents down in Cairo watching us leave. Who knows? But even if we weren't on a watchlist before, we have to be now. We're accomplices to this,” she pointed into the cabin, “jerk.”

He grabbed her hand as he held onto the railing with his other hand. They watched ahead as the land got closer.

Chapter 8: Deepest Darkest

The captain ran the boat as near to shore as he dared, but continued northward despite the warnings he'd been given. Liam decided his life was in enough danger so he'd confront the surly man. He shuffled over the shifting deck to grasp the edge of the door and speak to him.

“Sir, uh, captain, I think we deserve to know what's going on. Who was on the radio?”

The man didn't look back. He stood in front of his controls. One large screen to his right showed a rolling script of colors and beeped loudly in the small cabin. He reached over and shut off the screen, and the warnings stopped.

“That is your new lord and master, the kings of St. Louis.”

When the man failed to laugh, Liam countered, “I've been downtown, there's nobody in charge.”

“Bingo! There is no one in charge. But there are groups taking charge. This side of the river,” he nodded to Missouri, “is controlled by a group of Marines. That side is controlled by some damned fool Army unit that got lost after the Battle of St. Louis. Up north of the city and into Illinois is in the reach of the official US Army fortress—and they've been taking what they want all the way to the Mississippi River from their base near Springfield.”

Liam was surprised at the depth of the man's knowledge. “What about the rest of the city?” He'd seen the Marines a few times now, and each time, he saw fewer of them. “The military can't control the whole thing.”

“You're smart kid. No, they can't. And they don't. A few parts are controlled by leftovers of local governments. Others are maintained by groups of neighborhoods protecting each other. Even the Catholic Church has organized defensive pockets for their flocks. They had the resources to try it, at least. But most of the city is controlled by the undead.”

“You mean the zombies?”

The captain turned around with crazy eyes. “You on drugs? Zombies? No, these are the walking dead. Spirits that come back from the dead.” As he turned around, he continued, “I saw barges of 'em tossed out like trash and sent to float the river until some dumb riverboat crew happened upon them.”

Liam knew exactly what the man was talking about. He'd been swimming inside just such a ship. But he held his tongue. In a few moments, the man continued on his own.

“Me and Pete ran this boat for twenty-five years. Well, not this boat, but boats like it. We ran the river together. When the Final Day arrived, we were on the river...”

He faded away for a few long seconds.

“After all that...stuff, he and I ended up in Cairo, needing to refuel. Credit cards stopped working, and with no other money, we started working for that town. Our job was to go out and find resources for the city government, until stuff got better. A few days ago, a few miles south of here, we see a large flotilla of loose barges bumpin' and grindin' down the waterway. We picked out one barge to dock with and evaluate its cargo. I had to stay with the boat, but Pete went up and boarded to check it out. He got up there OK, and walked out of my sight on the high deck. Five minutes later, he came back with a gunshot wound to his chest.”

Another long pause.

“Someone shot him. He kept repeating the word 'shore' which I took to mean someone on the shore did it. I got him to Cairo, they threw him in their third-rate medical clinic where he died not much later. There—”

“And that's where he found me.” It was Blue. She'd come up behind Liam. “I was in the hospital with Pete, and—”

The captain cut her off. “I need you guys to sit down and hold tight. We're going to beach right up here.”

Liam was full of questions, but he admitted he always had questions.

Back out on the rear deck, he took a seat next to Victoria. Blue and Pink sat across from them. They all huddled as close as they could to the cabin, toward the middle of the boat. Liam was once again reminded how much better he felt having Victoria by his side. She grabbed onto his arm. He smiled at her and was relieved to see she didn't have any fear on her face.

“We're having fun, right?” She smiled big, her missing top tooth a reminder of their prior adventures.

“Oh yeah, flying drones, muddy escapes, and boat crashes are my idea of a good time. I think all our dates should be this fun.” He laughed, felt her tighten her grip, and then lay her head on his shoulder.

“You two make a cute couple.” Blue smiled, then turned serious. “Thank you for helping my sister, really. But I'm sorry for whatever comes next. I didn't know St. Louis would be this messed up.”

That was the story of his life. Never knowing what was out the door, around the corner, or down the river. Well, that was mostly true. The one constant was death.

“I'm glad you found your sister. Is she OK?” Blue's twin had hardly said a word the last several hours, and slept most of the ride in. Liam guessed she was exhausted from her tough crawl through the mud, though he figured she'd be recovering by now. That made him concerned.

Pink wore dirty gray capris and a top that may have been white at one time, but was muddy brown today. He didn't see any bite marks. Just lots and lots of scratches.

“Hold on everybody!” the captain yelled from inside.

The front of the boat ran into the mud and several feet up onto the shore. The captain had found a tiny inlet of a creek that afforded a gentle approach and landing, which was good because much of the shore here was otherwise steep and rocky.

When he'd gotten it solidly on the bank, he shut off the motors and trimmed them up as far as they would go.

Everyone was deathly quiet. By some agreement, no one talked or otherwise made a sound. Liam could hear the birds chirping and the leaves rustling in the trees. Water gently splashed up against the hull.

It was idyllic until a new, mechanical sound drifted on the wind.

A drone.

2

The captain had opened the door to the front section of the boat. Liam went through to grab his stuff.

“OK, who here knows how to shoot a gun?” He looked at Liam first, then at the girls. Victoria was fast to raise her hand, but Pink and Blue just shook their heads. After sizing everyone up, he pulled a pistol out of a cubby hole near the passenger seat and tried to hand it to Liam.

“Sir, you'd be better off giving it to Victoria. She's got a steadier aim than me. I'll carry a spear.”

The captain seemed to think about it, then relented and handed the Glock to Victoria. “All right. We need everyone armed once we get off the boat.” He rooted around in some boxes stuffed under the consoles and came out with a large wrench and some kind of metal rod. He handed those to Pink and Blue.

“The first thing we have to do is run. We have to get up onto the bluff and into the woods so we can lose our tail.”

“Why don't you just shoot it?”

He looked at Liam with a serious face. “We can't waste the ammo.”

The captain grabbed his shotgun and slung it over his shoulder. He also grabbed a long metal pole with a hook on the end. When he saw Liam eying it, he seemed to sense the need to defend his choice. “It's aluminum, so it won't last, but I should be able to get a few good hits in with it.”

Liam had to give it to the captain, he seemed to understand the zombie threat. All except the part about them being possessed spirits. That was nuts.

As they all made landfall, the drone hovered high above them, unmoving.

“Just run, guys, they know we're here already.” Liam watched as the captain's big work boots carried him up the rocky bank into a tight row of trees next to the river. The two girls followed.

Victoria waved him forward while patting the Glock tucked into her pants on her hip. “I've got your six.” She smiled, as did he.

In less than a minute, they were all under the relative safety of the first line of trees along the riverbank, but the drone had dipped a little lower so it had a direct line of sight to them under the canopy. There was no way to hide from it. On the landward side of the trees, there was a large field of small shoots of corn. Beyond that, a steep cliff with large houses on top. He realized he knew exactly where he was.

“Hey, this is Cliff Cave Park. We have to get to that gap over there,” he pointed to a dip in the cliffs to their right, about a mile away, “because that's where the road comes in.” He knew that for a fact, because on his earlier trip on the train escape from St. Louis, the engineer stopped at that road to pick up her husband. Somehow he felt much better knowing where he was.

“All right, ladies, run for them hills!”

Liam wondered if he intentionally lumped him in with the ladies. Did he lose his man card when he refused the gun?

He thought about it the whole run over the bumpy field. Everyone held together until they reached the railroad tracks that ran along the base of the cliff. Liam looked left, hoping to see the train engine called Valkyrie parked somewhere in that direction, but the tracks bent out of sight around the base of the cliff. In the other direction, he could see the railroad crossing for the road they sought. The captain and the two girls were already walking in that direction. He hung back as Victoria clambered up the rocky slope of the railroad grade.

“What's wrong?”

“How did you know what I'm thinking?”

She laughed. “Because you're always thinking. But sometimes you think more than others, like now.”

He was aware one half of their guns was getting away; he didn't want them to get too far ahead. “I just want to get to the mine and see what's there. Suddenly we're hitched to two strange girls and a boat captain without a boat. I just have a bad feeling we're heading into more trouble than we need right now.”

He started walking, indicating she should walk next to him.

“Well, where's the mine? Isn't it up these tracks? Maybe we could just keep going. Leave them to go their own way.”

“Hmm.” He chewed on the idea, but was reminded they had no weapons of their own beside the spear. If they kept going, they'd have to surrender the pistol. Two people with one spear would not do very well in a giant hole potentially filled with zombies. Of course, the closer he got to the quarry, the more he admitted how silly the whole plan had been. He just didn't know how to express his feelings to Victoria without sounding scared.

You are scared, dummy.

They all regrouped at the intersection. A large parking lot and a huge wooden pavilion were the only indicators of the park nearby. A sad looking red pickup truck was the lone vehicle parked there. To their left, the access road snaked up the wooded valley between the two hills that backed up to the cliffs along the tracks. The captain made as if he was getting his bearings, and then tore into the woods, climbing the hill on the north side of the road.

To Victoria, Liam whispered, “He's already heading toward the quarry. It's just on the other side of this hill. We can at least see what's up there. Maybe get a good look into the pit before we go any further.”

“Sounds like a plan. Maybe when we're in the woods you can make me a new spear.”

Louder now, he spoke as he started up the hill after the others, “Yeah, about dropping that spear. I'm going to need you to pay for that. I put a lot of good time and effort into that one.”

“Seriously? Why don't you bill me.” She then made a raspberry sound with her tongue.

He paused on the rocky slope, and looked back at her. “Oh, that's how it's going to be? Maybe I will bill you. You told Duchesne I blew up that railroad bridge. That's really going to cut into my inheritance.”

As he started scrambling up the rocky hillside, he was still laughing as he heard her pass along a sheepish, “Oops!”

3

The access to the cliffs overlooking the river became very steep near the top, but the group made it with only minor delays. Pink needed the most help because she still seemed exhausted from her earlier escape. When they made it to the top, they had a majestic view up and down the big river. To their left, north, they saw the big arched red span of the Jefferson Barracks Bridge. If the interstate was open, cars would be zipping over it from Missouri into Illinois. Now, there was no movement. To their right, the river was visible for several miles before it meandered around a bend, out of sight. It was easy to see why they were spotted in their boat.

With that thought, Liam looked around, wondering if the drone operators were nearby. He only saw trees.

“Is that Illinois?” Pink asked. “Up where we live, Illinois is a dirty place with a bunch of factories chugging pollution in the air. Down here, it looks beautiful.”

He looked again, seeing the land as a first-time observer rather than a jaded local. Beyond the river was a line of woodland. A large floodplain sprawled a couple miles further, until it met an escarpment much like the one on which he now stood. It was pretty amazing.

And dead.

Ugh. He ruined it for himself as he looked again and saw only miles and miles of farmland that would never be plowed again. If there was no fuel for the tractors, and no one to drive them, and no one to sell seed, and no one with money at all…

He turned away, continuing the last few feet to the long crest of the hill. He heard the rest of the group gathering themselves to follow. Even the captain lingered.

While lost in his thoughts, he walked by a group of people sitting in the brush to his left. When he heard them, he turned around with the spear pointed at them. A little boy, about ten, put up his hands. Several of his compatriots did the same. Liam dipped the spear.

It wasn't one boy, or one group of people. All around him, deep into the woods, people sat and stood in small groups. They were amazingly quiet.

His own people came up slowly, and fell in line next to him.

“Who are you with?” the captain inquired of the nearest men. They were dressed in dirty khaki shorts or jeans and were either bare-chested or sported sweat-soaked dirty shirts, as if they were at a backyard barbeque that had been going on for a week.

They said nothing, but they pointed further up the hill.

With a huff, the captain spun and walked on. Liam was quick to follow, though Victoria passed a gentle “thank you” to the pointer.

She caught up to him and whispered, “What are we getting into here?”

They walked with the vista on their right and the sad-looking people on their left until they reached a large flat area along the edge. The cliffs continued for a hundred yards or more, but this looked like the summit.

“Get out of the open, you kids,” a man commanded from inside the canopy.

For the second time today he found himself making a juicy target to an imaginary sniper. And he was seen as a kid...

When they were all into the trees, they approached a command center of sorts. A dozen men and women dressed in camouflage lazily watched as they came up the path. Many held binoculars as they looked out of the trees, down toward the river. A couple sat near a small wooden table with a radio. Weapons stood against the base of trees all over the place.

“Did our guards let you through? We saw your boat come up the river, and we saw you run across the fields, but we didn't know where you were headed.” The blonde man was a hunter, not military. Or at least dressed as a hunter. He had long pants imprinted with a confusing woodland pattern. He wore a short-sleeved t-shirt, but it was the same pattern. He was middle aged, but looked younger because he had little facial hair growth. He had serious blue eyes and a furrowed brow.

Liam opened his mouth, but the captain replied, “We didn't see anyone. We just climbed up from the railroad tracks below.”

The man leaned hard against a large black oak. “My God, anyone could have walked into our camp.” He remained there, looking at Liam and the others in turn.

He stood up straight again. “My name's Jason.” He wiped his forehead. Liam recognized the burden of command under which the man suffered. He was responsible for all these people in the woods. “We have guards watching the flats around this area. The dead don't climb the steep rocks, like you did. But we should know better.”

Liam knew there were zombies that could climb. He said nothing to further spook the man. Surely he'd learned his lesson.

“We'll have to put someone over there.”

The men and women reminded him of the survivalist group that attacked Camp Hope. It inspired him to be clever, and cautious.

“Hi, I'm Sam and this is Becky.” He pointed to Victoria. She caught on immediately and introduced herself as such. He was ready to high five her, and start talking about chickens and guns as they had done back at Riverside, but—

“I thought you said your names were Liam and Victoria?”

Liam turned to the captain, ready to soak him with lava-hot anger, but the man's face held no malice or sarcasm for once. He seemed genuinely surprised.

With a slow turn back to Jason, he was ready to fall on his sword and admit the truth. Jason didn't wait.

“I don't care who you are. If you have food you can call yourself Santa Claus, for all I care.”

The captain, to Liam's surprise, pulled out a small bag and handed it to the man.

“Some dried fish. It's all I got, right now.”

Liam looked again at the group of people spread in the woods around them. The sallow looks and longing eyes were clues to their status. But something else caught his eyes. Something more troubling. The kids weren't lounging or playing. They were digging. Worse, there were several white splotches on the sides of tree trunks throughout the area. Someone had cut into the bark.

These people were starving.

4

Once proper introductions were made—using Liam's real name—they were given an overview of the camp, confirming Liam's own observations. But the reason the camp was here on this hilltop built upon something the captain said earlier about control of the region.

“We arrived here a week ago after the dead came through our subdivision, followed by the looters. Most of these people live around here, but our houses are either gone or occupied by refugees from inside the city. We've been going out in small groups to ransack our own homes, looking for supplies, but there isn't much left.”

Jason then pointed out to the river.

“But the longer we stayed here, the larger the group became. There are a lot of people who want to cross the river, but there are Army units on the far side of the bridge that keep turning people away.” He pointed to the bridge, though there was only one. “The Army controls those farmlands over there. But we don't know how many of them there are. But they do have tanks.”

Victoria let out a quiet whistle.

“Yeah, no kidding. We don't think they'd actually hurt us, but they probably wouldn't like what we've been doing from up here.” He chuckled as he reoriented them to look down below.

“This is the high point around here. Anyone heading east tries the bridge first, gets turned around, then comes up here to plan what to do next. They never head north into the city. Too many of the dead. And no one goes into the pit either.”

I know someone who will.

“So, they come here. To my starving friends. Sometimes they offer food, but most people are as bad off as we are. That's why they're trying to move on to somewhere new. When it gets dark, we run small teams down below and we have a couple small jon boats with stout paddles. We help them across in return for whatever food they have left. Sometimes we bring people back.”

“Why don't you fish down there? Plenty of fish to be had.” The captain undoubtedly knew what he was talking about.

Jason let out a tired laugh. “Gee, why didn't we think of that?” He looked at the captain who seemed to take offense to his mirth. “Oh, I'm just kidding, buddy. We do a little fishing when we can. But people are scared to leave the protective bubble we've got up here. In the daytime, anyone caught out in the open is a target for the undead, or for snipers, or for pirates. At night, it only gets worse.”

He turned serious. “Fishing is a great idea. I didn't mean anything by it. I'm grateful you brought what you did to feed the kids. That's why we were hoping you'd be interested in using your boat to help us do some fishing.”

The captain took a moment, rubbing his chin. “I'm here on business, actually. I'm...” His voice trailed off, though he came around a moment later as if just coming up with what to say. “I know. I could use some help on my boat. I need to go back down the river to Cairo, Illinois. You provide some help and your men can fish the whole way up and back.”

Jason's eyes lit up, then he turned to Liam and the three girls. “But aren't these kids your crew?”

“No. They, ahh, were just helping me get up to St. Louis.” A look passed between Blue and the captain.

The camp leader caught it. He had a pistol on his hip in a black leather holster. Liam noticed it earlier, but thought nothing of it. Everyone had to be armed these days. But, he thought earlier the holster had a clip holding it shut. Now it was open…

“Fair enough. But let me give you the lay of the land, just so you know where I'm coming from.” Jason pointed over the river. “Illinois is a mess. There's at least one Army unit guarding the bridge. Whatever is beyond, we don't know. The Marines are a few miles south of here. They are on a cliff, just like this one, watching the river and foraging homes to the south. To the north is the main part of the city. The dead own that. But, there are other groups we've encountered. Everyone needs protection. Everyone needs to belong, eh, friend?”

“Yes, friend.”

The two stared at each other for several long moments. Liam looked at Victoria and the twins, though they didn't seem to sense the tension as he did. His internal alarms were going off, though he didn't understand why.

The captain continued in a slow, deliberate voice, “Some of those groups a real thorn in your side, I take it?”

The tension in the air was palpable and taut. The two men faced each other now, only a few feet between them. The captain's shotgun was still on his back, however. Jason had folded his arms in front of his chest.

Jason turned to Liam and the girls. “Would you mind if I spoke to your captain for a few minutes? I think he and I need to clear the air on something.” He motioned for the captain to follow him. Liam was left with his companions. They all passed a look of confusion, although Liam imagined that Blue's was somewhat inauthentic.

He kept his thoughts to himself, desperate to get Victoria away from the color twins so he could share his concerns. Getting that separation would be difficult, he admitted. Ever since they left the boat, he had the sneaking suspicion Pink was becoming enamored with him. It was innocent at first. She ran near him across the field. She looked back at him a little too often as they walked the train tracks. Then she needed his help up the rocks one too many times to be coincidence. And now, just as he wanted to have some privacy, she was right up on his side—opposite Victoria. Blue hovered nearby.

The hero gets the girl, right?

He admitted there was a time, back when he played World of Undead Soldiers, that the thought of rescuing a damsel in distress actually appealed to him, but now…

One beautiful heroine partner was all he could handle.

He took Victoria's hand and squeezed.

5

The captain and Jason were gone for ten minutes before Liam found the excuse he needed to get Victoria to himself. They'd taken a seat near the edge of the woods, so he stood up before making his announcement.

“Victoria, you and I haven't had any alone time in a while, will you take a walk with me?” He bent down with his elbow out, as if to pull her along on a romantic stroll.

“Why, I'd be delighted, sir.” She spoke in a passable southern accent.

When she was attached to his arm, he looked at the twins. “We'll be back in a little bit.” He hoped they got the message.

They walked in and out of the treeline along the cliff's edge for many minutes before he turned around to confirm they weren't being followed. He saw no pursuit, but he kept his voice very low.

“I don't trust those girls. They kind of creep me out, you know?”

Victoria wore a smirk. “And I thought you'd like having a fawning girl all over you.”

He stopped, pulling her into his arms. He peered into her emeralds with as much seriousness as he could muster. “I want nothing to do with her, or any girl but you. I only just realized she was sticking to me, I swear.”

Victoria studied his face, then looked back toward the camp before stealing a quick kiss from him. “Liam, you may find this hard to believe, but I trust you more than you probably can understand. Not just in a keep-the-zombies-off-me way either.” Still quiet, she spoke quickly. “Before I met you, I was...promised...to a real jerk of a young man—”

Liam felt his face betray his cool exterior. He tried to recover, but she read him.

“—No, it's OK, listen. We were promised to one day get engaged and get married. Childhood sweethearts. Foolish high school fantasies.” A sarcastic laugh escaped. “But there was something I didn't know about him until it was too late. I was too stupid to realize it. I only figured it out when he...”

Her strong eyes dropped from his.

Liam was frozen, torn between shock and compassion for her difficulty. He pulled one hand from hers and used it to lift her chin. He gave a weak smile, willing her to continue.

“He drove me into the middle of the forest—we were supposed to be meeting friends for a weekend camping trip—and he said something to the effect of 'Oh Vicky, we're practically married anyway; we should consummate the marriage early.' He said that word as if it were dirty. I guess in his mind that was what marriage was all about.”

She regained her fortitude and was able to look him in the eyes again. “He raped me, Liam. I was so scared and confused, I couldn't fight him. I didn't have a clue how. He was someone I loved. I trusted. Or, I thought I did.”

Liam wiped a tear at the edge of her lashes. She looked away again, though off to the side rather than down. She wasn't embarrassed, but looked like she was thinking.

“I never said anything about that night to anyone. I pretended it didn't happen. But I knew right there I was going to escape him. That's why I applied for that pre-medical internship in St. Louis. That's how I came to be in the city when the zombies came. That's how I came to find you.”

She looked at him once more, with tears of joy.

“But that sonofabitch never knew I was leaving. I broke it off publicly, I told my parents I wasn't in love and never wanted to see him again. When the time came, I just got in my car and drove. I threw out his ring somewhere in Kansas.” She laughed heartily at that.

Liam didn't know what to say.

“My point is that I trust you with my deepest, darkest secrets. You are a good man, Liam Peters. And that's why I think it's cute that Pink is smitten with you. She senses your goodness too.”

Again, Liam was speechless.

He didn't view himself as a good person in the religious sense. Hell, he hardly ever went to church before the sirens. He had no idea why God would allow such evil in the world, but he believed there had to be a continuum between good and evil. Victoria's “fiance” was clearly aligned with the latter, while he imagined he would always fight for what was right. She was in a position to judge whether he was good or evil. He was pleased he passed the test. Sure, he wanted to do right by the one person he cared deeply about here on this cliff's edge, but also because he knew the world was broken badly, and it could never be fixed by someone who goes around raping helpless young girls. It was no contest really; he was the better man.

He pulled her along while she regained her composure. He was happy to learn about her past, but he also wanted to keep her moving into the future, with him.

“Is it wrong that I want to kill him?”

She was silent for several strides, before she sniffled once and responded, “We've talked about this before. Will we always have to be killing people in this new reality? Is it wrong to want to kill him? I can't say. But I do know this: if he ever saw me again, I can't imagine he'd be too happy. And, if he saw you—”

She stopped, as if making a painful realization.

“Oh Liam, I didn't mean to say it like that. I'm sure he's dead. He has to be. You and I have so much to worry about, we don't need to think of some loser in Colorado right now.”

They walked a few minutes in silence, and came to a point where the cliff above the railroad tracks met the cliff surrounding the large pit mine he'd been seeking. Beyond, he could see the tracks go under the big red bridge. A line of cars ran from the highway, along a small access road, and into the mine. Just as he remembered, the line of cars descended the mine in several spirals before entering a gaping hole in the wall at the bottom. It was large enough for the big dump trucks to enter, which made the cars far below seem like toys.

They'd reached their goal.

Still holding her hand, he finished his thought from earlier. “I don't want to kill him. I really don't want to kill anyone, not even the zombies. But we have to do a lot of things we don't want to do these days. Killing the evil things out there is just part of the deal. I'll do it if I have to, without hesitation, to protect you and anyone else I love. And, I'll kill the zombies too.”

He had just taken a seat on a white piece of the exposed rock at the edge of the woods when a military jet passed with silence as it went bullet-fast over the treetops above them. It headed for the bridge—

The crack of the blown sound barrier moved the forest.

Chapter 9: Spiraling Down

The sleek fighter jet banked to the south and became a tiny point in moments. The noise and surprise had sent him into the weeds. He found his feet just as Victoria found hers.

“What was that all about?” she shouted.

He took in the mine and the surrounding cliffs and hills. He could see a way down, but they'd have to continue along the cliff for another few hundred yards. Or they could go back.

“I don't know.” He grabbed her hand. “Let's go. We can leave them behind and do this ourselves.”

She hesitated for a moment, but seemed to relent. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” But she was clearly torn. She paused after only a handful of steps. “I...I don't know. What if we need help? What if they go looking for us?”

Liam let go of her, appreciating her concerns. “They'll figure we went to the mine, just like we told them.” He hadn't even convinced himself.

“No, we have to tell someone. Just so I can sleep at night.”

He doubted anything would help him sleep at night, but she was right.

“OK, we'll find the captain and tell him we'll be on our way.”

She perked up at that, and she pulled him this time.

They'd walked along the edge of the cliff for several minutes when Blue and Pink appeared ahead, running in their direction.

When they met, the girls pointed in the direction they were already moving. “We're leaving. Just go!” They each carried their crude weapons.

Liam was unsure. “We have to tell the captain where we're going.”

“Trust me, the captain isn't who you think. We have to run.” They didn't wait. Liam watched them get lost in the underbrush.

“OK, this is weird.”

Victoria agreed, but had no brilliant ideas.

“Follow?” He was inclined to follow them, if only because they were more pleasant than the captain. Whatever that man had going on with Jason, the look in their eyes during their brief exchange earlier told him they were both driven men.

She nodded, and they began to trot after the girls.

They caught up at almost the same point they'd been overlooking the pit mine earlier. When he reached the clearing, he searched the sky for more planes.

“We're going down in that mine to look for clues about the zombie plague.” The literal truth fell out of his mouth before he was able to stop himself.

The girls both turned to him with a smile. “As long as you keep the captain away from us, we're with you.”

“Why? What's wrong with the captain? Why were you so chummy with him?” He eyed Blue.

“Run with us, and I'll tell you.” She and Pink started along the cliff edge, heading around the outside of the mine toward the far side where they could descend to the first level of the spiral road to the bottom.

The girls were small for teens, but they were quick. Though Pink seemed to lag, she wasn't struggling. Liam's overactive imagination began to wonder if she was sandbagging earlier just so he would help her up those rocks. When he caught up to them, Blue began to share what she knew, just as she'd promised.

“When I was in the hospital down in Cairo, I listened to Pete the whole night he lay there in a state. He died the next morning, but he told me everything I needed to know about the captain.”

She breathed heavily as they jogged.

“And what was that?” He was unhappy to realize he also sounded winded. He'd lost much of his base of fitness after two plus weeks of a horrible diet, high stress, and no training.

Hard to get training miles in during the Apocalypse.

“They're part of some secret group that runs guns up and down the river. They communicate with other groups hidden along their route, like that fuel barge thingy we saw.”

More running.

“I got him to take us in exchange for my silence, but he changed the terms on me. I don't want to discuss it, but I'm not going back.”

Many thoughts swirled. How would they get back to Cairo? What if the captain was following them? Will he want his Glock back? Out here, a gun was the equivalent of a gold brick. Surely he'd want it back.

They continued to run, though Liam felt worse and worse about it. He checked behind them as often as he could, and didn't see any pursuit. That meant exactly nothing. He knew that from hard experience.

It took them ten minutes to run around the curve of the cliff and reach the gentle slope going down to the top level of the mine. The last time he'd seen this place, it was crawling with thousands of zombies, and a lesser number of human survivors, but now all he saw were empty cars and the dead.

The dead.

Something about that word made him stop.

“Hey, hold up.” The twins ran a few paces, but did come to a halt. Victoria ran up behind him.

“Does anyone else find it odd the dead bodies are still down there? How long does it take for bodies to break down or get eaten? It has been two weeks since we were here, and those bodies are all still where we left them.”

He could see the biggest piles near the railroad tracks. That's where the most shooting happened, so the most bodies were stacked up there. But he could also see a path of crushed and dismembered zombies lying on the road below. That was where Jones ran over the dead with his dump truck—before falling over the edge.

“Hey, I see Jones' truck.” It was a bit of a non-sequitur, but he was stream-of-consciousness now. “And those bodies over by the railroad tracks, Victoria and I helped make those piles.”

Pink chose that moment to speak up. “Wow, you are one bad ass, Liam.”

He turned to Victoria with a shrug, then Pink. “Uh, thanks. There were lots of people on the train though, not just me.”

Victoria, ever helpful, expanded his thought. “But it was Liam's idea to use the dump truck. He helped save lots of people with that one.”

He looked at her to find her smiling. He raised his shoulders as if to say, “Why?” She loved to rib him when he tried to play down his heroics.

Maybe he was a hero of a sort, but the real hero died in that dump truck. The mood of the group was already fragile, so he didn't want to use it as an opportunity to dwell any further on the sacrifice of Officer Jones. It steeled him to man up for what was ahead.

From his vantage point, he could see the spiral road full of cars falling down into the mine.

Lots of heroes died there.

2

They drifted among the cars as they went down. He was in front, with Blue. Victoria and Pink were a couple car-lengths behind, quietly chatting.

“Why this mine? What are you looking for?”

The answers to that question were endless. How do you explain you are trying to save the world? But he'd already blurted out the thrust of his mission earlier.

“I'm trying to find the cure to the plague. I was...told...this was the place to look.”

“Who told you? What could possibly be down there? You sure you trust them?”

Her questions hit the mark. A random phone text message was a flimsy premise to pack up from a safe city, travel by boat hundreds of miles, and then try to gain access to a pit mine he was pretty sure was packed with zombies. Yet, he'd learn to trust his instincts the past couple weeks. They often—not always—put him on the correct path. Plus, this time, he had no other options if he hoped to do more than sit things out in a safe house.

“A friend gave me a tip. This mine is supposed to have some kind of information that will help Victoria and I track down the people who made the plague so we can get help curing it.”

She was quiet for a long minute.

He tried to make the sale, though he didn't know why he should care what she thought. “You probably wouldn't believe this, but we actually met one of the guys who released the plague. We helped kill him.”

There was a lot of nuance in the real story, but he didn't have time for a data dump.

Still, she remained silent for another couple minutes while they continued by car after car. They passed the wreckage of the dump truck that Jones drove off the edge. He wasn't surprised to see there was no body inside the cab, even though the superstructure of metal was crushed and ripped apart. Other than one cursory look inside, he didn't make a big deal about what was otherwise a very sad moment for him. Victoria made no effort to stop, either.

“You really think there's a cure for this?” Blue pointed to the line of cars. He almost answered with a snap reply, but he took some time to think over the question. The implication was much broader than he'd given her credit for, initially.

Since the sirens blared, he'd seen things getting worse from one day to the next. There were some high points, such as Camp Hope, but even that had been overrun and he had no idea how it fared today. Or if Mom and Dad were making out OK there. Cairo held out some promise, though he'd already accepted it was doomed. He kept that thought in a locked vault deep inside him, because he couldn't spend his days worried sick about Grandma. If the zombies overran the place, she'd be the first casualty. He was sure of that. But, through it all, his only tangible hope for surviving the zombie infection and all it brought was that he would document everything—with a notebook he'd had yet to find—and eventually play a part in rebuilding once they'd gotten the zombies sorted. He had to believe the cure was both literal and figurative.

“Yes. My Grandma once said something to the effect the cure starts with me. If I'm not willing to go out and find it, the world would die. Everyone thinks someone else is going to do it. Eventually, someone has to do it. So why not me? And Victoria of course, we're partners.”

“Is she your lover? I see the way you look at her.”

Liam felt his face explode in redness. “I, uh. We? I'm not—”

Blue laughed. “Say no more, Mr. Smooth. I was just asking for a friend.” She made sure he was looking; she winked at him and nodded her head backward.

Liam stammered, trying to formulate a reply. Eventually he bagged the idea and just shut up.

About halfway down the spiral, they came to a large white passenger van. They'd been talking in normal voices up until that point, but they all shut up as it became obvious what was inside.

“My God.” Victoria had caught up and stood by his side as they looked ahead.

The van was filled with the infected. At least as best they could see. The large windows lining the van were all filled with bloody hand prints. As they watched the shadows inside, bloody hands rubbed in several spots on the glass.

It was like some kind of sick wind-up toy. The longer they watched, the more animated the hands became. They swished faster and faster along the glass, then they began to pound from time to time. The van started to rock slightly.

“Move it.” Liam spoke forcefully, but in a hushed voice.

They formed a line as they walked between the edge of the road—and the twenty-foot cliff below them to the next level of the road—and the van itself. The passengers erupted in screams and moans, creating a terrible storm inside the confined space. The van rocked wildly and hands started to pop through the glass. Blood flowed in torrents as flesh was sliced by the glass. The friendly carpool van soon had several streaks of red as macabre accents.

As they all ran, Liam turned back to see the first bloody mass pour out the shattered side window.

“Don't stop, guys. One of them just got out.”

He ignored that several other cars also had moving shapes inside. If people were already sick, or bitten, as they made their way down this ramp, it wasn't a big leap to imagine them turning into zombies inside their vehicles, and then sitting there until something drove them to get out. He was horrified to realize they were now bait as they ran past more and more cars with deadly fish in their glass bowls looking for their first meal.

The only creature in pursuit, so far, was the one from the white van. And, because Liam was accustomed to disappointment these days, he wasn't surprised at all when he tried to guess how fast it was moving. It was going very fast.

In fact, one might say the thing was running.

3

Liam tried to get a feel for the land. They were getting close to the bottom, but it would still be many minutes before they covered the distance to the black hole down there. He had no idea what they'd find at the entrance. It could be blocked or stuffed with zombies. They needed to take it slow.

A hundred yards ahead, he saw what he needed.

“Guys! Jump in the back of that pickup truck. We have to fight this zombie before we go further down.”

He hoped they'd heard him. It was dangerous to call out, but they were spread out and he had no other option, short of stopping and fighting alone. He knew that was as good as suicide, in most cases. It wasn't that he was scared of fighting any one zombie, but he had a primal fear of twisting an ankle or getting his head stuck in a drain pipe and then dying the death of an idiot.

It was always safer to stay with your team. He'd learned that in video games, and used those lessons now in life.

Pink and Blue were already inside the bed of the truck, their makeshift weapons at the ready. Victoria scrambled up next. He followed her in, spear under his armpit.

When he turned around, the zombie was nearly upon them. It had made good time down the slope of the road. Others followed. He looked across the pit to the road above and saw a few figures here or there stumbling down the road. They weren't moving very fast, but those zombies would go until they reached whatever was at the bottom, now that they had something to chase. If his group started at the bottom, they could have sucked all the zombies right out the top of the place.

If only.

Liam braced himself with his spear. Victoria had the Glock out.

“Don't shoot unless you have no choice.” He assumed she understood why.

She turned to the twins, eying the wrench. “Are you going to use that?”

Pink timidly handed it to her. Blue kept her grip on her metal rod.

The running zombie was blood-soaked, but it was once a teenage girl. Thin and slight of frame, it was covered completely in both wet and dried blood, as if it had been soaking in the stuff for days. The fresh blood was undoubtedly from its escape through the broken window. She wore tattered jeans shorts, though he couldn't tell if they were designed that way or had been torn recently. She had on the remains of a tasteful light-colored top, though its color was difficult to guess given the red all over it.

The girl zombie surprised him by zigging behind the sedan behind the pickup truck. She jumped up onto the back and, as she found her feet, continued running over the roof and onto the hood. Then she jumped the gap between the two vehicles and made a clumsy effort to grab onto the tailgate. Her subsequent fall would have been comedy gold if she weren't trying to eat them.

The girl screamed in an unworldly howl.

“That's new,” he said to no one in particular.

A moment later, the truck bed leapt up, bouncing him about a foot above metal. Something had slammed hard onto the roof of the small cab.

He looked up. There were two faces on the edge of the cliff up on the next level of the road. Those zombies could continue to walk down the road and reach them in twenty minutes, or they could just jump and close the distance in moments.

The jumper zombie was a mess in the bent metal, but it wasn't dead. It tried to pull itself from the dented cab.

“I got it.” Victoria went with her wrench in that direction. Liam had no time to watch as the teen zombie stuck her head over the back tailgate, reminding him he had his own problems.

His feet felt like they were made of worms. He couldn't get a solid footing, but he thrust the spear toward the head of the girl. He could tell it was a bad push as it was happening. Instead of piercing the eye and brain, it went through the left cheek and glanced off her jaw. It sent a splash of blood onto his spear and his hands. The wound was horrific to look at, but not even a bother for the zombie.

She snapped at the spear and grabbed for it. Her hands were a slippery mess, so she couldn't wrest control of it, but with blood all over his end of the spear it became less effective for him, too. It was hard to grip the wood and get another shot.

OK, so these things have a design flaw.

He recoiled at the disgusting scene. He tried to kick her face, though that only bought him a few seconds. He slid in the bed of the truck, more from fright than the drips of blood down there.

Victoria let out a series of grunts as she pummeled the zombie on the roof.

Pink and Blue huddled together in the middle of the cargo bed, seemingly paralyzed with fear. Above, another zombie started his jump. He judged the distance, angle of approach, and position of his friends—and knew it was going to be close.

He made it to his knees, and used his spear to shove the girls toward the cab. They tumbled into Victoria, who had her wrench high above her head in the midst of another killing blow. All three fell against the cab and the grievously wounded zombie there.

In a flash, the zombie from above dropped exactly where the two girls had been standing. The thing had no grace whatsoever; it fell head-first onto the metal. He couldn't look directly at the remains of its head, but he knew it was absolutely out of action.

The teen zombie was over the edge and upon him. Not knowing what else to do, he held up the spear and she landed on top of it. Unlike the movies, she didn't fall on the spear as it passed through her. Instead, the spear entered her chest and got stuck on something. She stood there flailing in anger, trying to reach him.

Victoria, recovering from the interruption from the other girls, turned to Liam's zombie.

“Get out of the way,” she shouted to them.

Still, they stood with little movement.

She got around them and swung the wrench with great force. The heavy metal tool fell squarely on the top of the teen's skull, making a sick crunch as it impacted. Liam had to look away as Victoria proceeded to dismantle it from the inside out until the head was more or less a pile of mush.

“Come on Liam, I need you.”

He heard it as an echo in his head.

“Come on Liam, I need you.”

That time he heard it clearly.

“I'm here.” He balanced the dead zombie on his spear as he got up. The thing had slumped down, so he pushed her backward as he drew the spear from her. He had an inspiration to wipe the spear on her clothes to clean it off, but she had no clean patch of clothing on her. Instead, he used his jeans.

A third zombie fell from above. This one landed on the tailgate—another horrible attempt to shortcut the roadway. It fell to the outside, leaving a large dent and a clump of hair on the back of the truck.

They looked at each other, then above. More heads had reached the shortcut.

Together, they came to the same conclusion.

“Run!”

4

Liam tapped the twins before he got out.

He assumed they'd follow him. He was several cars down the road before it registered they did not.

“Victoria, stop!” She was a few cars ahead of him.

He turned around, wishing at that moment he'd just run off with Victoria when they had the chance. He gripped his spear as he'd gotten it reasonably clear of fluids.

“Blue! Pink! Run!”

They were huddled together in the truck bed, near the cab. Just where he'd left them.

“Hey! We have to go.” He stood off the side, hoping they'd get the hint and jump the side to him. When they made no effort to comply with his reasonable request, he did the only thing he could think would help.

He turned his spear around and poked them with it.

“Ouch.”

Not knowing how to play this—he'd seen people freeze in battle several times the past few weeks, including himself on more than one occasion—he decided to use humor.

He turned on his British voice—he was a fan of goofy British humor. “Pardon me, ma' ladies. Things seem to have gone pear-shaped here. Fancy a walk fer a rescue?”

It had the intended effect. The both turned to him with the look of confused humor.

He held out his hand. Pink was first and took his hand as he helped her over the edge, Blue jumped the side on her own.

He pushed them down the road, willing them to find some haste. He heard the thud of another zombie as it slammed into the pickup truck.

Whatever smart planning he intended to do on the way down had to be sacrificed for speed. They kept running straight ahead on the road, not stopping to look into the cars and trucks, or finding places to fight the growing numbers behind them.

I knew this looked too easy.

When they reached the bottom, Liam looked up. It was a confusing mass of activity on each of the levels of the spiral. Walking zombies. Running zombies. Some jumped the edges, though most did not. Somehow they knew to keep trudging down the road and they'd eventually reach their prey. If it was any kind of intelligence, it reminded him of a bloodhound.

They were far ahead of most of the zombies, though the bottom of the pit mine was filled with more cars. An area about the size of a football field was crammed with abandoned vehicles. Now that they were close, he figured any remaining dead inside those cars would catch wind of them. Then it would all be over.

They stayed away from the parking lot, and headed for the thirty-foot wide black hole of the pit mine entrance.

A huge sign was inset in the rocks above and outside the entrance. It once acted as a friendly reminder for truck drivers and mine workers, but someone had defaced it permanently. It said, “Congratulations! You have had,” followed by a blank space with numerous shotgun blasts in the sign, “days since the last injury at your quarry.”

Beyond the sign, still near the front of the illuminated entrance section, it looked like someone had lined up a bunch of cars, then blew them all up, then blew up the debris. Large rocks had fallen from one wall, and there was a good-sized hole on the floor of the rocky tunnel. The walls were blackened and scorched. His first thought was that a tank had blasted its way into the tunnel, though that was impossible given all the intact cars on the one road in they'd just descended. He'd seen a tank tear into the zombies inside a similar, if smaller, tunnel back at the Arch. If this place was crawling with zombies, a tank would be a great start to cleaning them up. Or…

He thought of the jet that screamed overhead while they sat up on the cliff. Another piece of random data plopped out of his head, too. Back at the Arch, he'd learned the military attacked large groups of zombies wherever they could find them.

At one time there were a lot of zombie here.

They all stood at the threshold of the darkness, unsure.

He turned around and tried to guess how many zombies he could see moving above him on the mine road. Dozens for sure. Maybe a hundred. Enough to require an air strike if someone discovered them? The pilot from earlier had nearly flown over the mine on his sneaky pass above them. It wasn't unreasonable to think he'd be back.

He looked into the blackness, suddenly aware of an important piece of missing survival gear.

“Does anyone have a light?”

The groans gave him his answer.

“How could you have overlooked something so obvious,” Blue asked. He heard Pink crying softly.

The zombies from the road were very close now, and other zombies lurked in the parking lot of cars. Whatever he was going to do, it had to be now. He had a notion to go toward the parked cars and try to find a flashlight, but he could easily be cut off by those from the roadway. His team consisted of fifty percent deadweight, further making any decision a potentially deadly one.

He admitted to himself he didn't know what to do. It was a full minute of pacing before Victoria finally asked him.

“You don't have any ideas, do you?”

He pulled her aside. “We can't leave these two behind while you and I go look for a light. They can't fight. I don't know what to do.”

“Liam!” Blue called. “We have more trouble.”

“Well, that just figures. And here I was worried this was going to be too easy.”

Up the road, minutes behind, they could also see the running group of zombies. They were dressed just like the teenage girl from the van. The rest must have busted open more windows, or maybe they hit the button to unlatch a door. Bottom line: they were all out, and heading their way.

He turned around. “I guess it's just like in that Fellowship movie. We have but one way to go.”

Blue surprised him, as she knew the movie he referenced. “Yeah, but they had Gandalf's staff to guide them. What do we have?”

Liam had no retort.

“We trust in God,” Victoria offered as she grabbed his hand.

Behind him, the girls replied with a sound he interpreted as “wishful thinking.”

5

They walked about a hundred yards into the darkness. The faint light was adequate to that point because the floor was smooth and they could hold onto the parked cars. Once they'd cleared the entrance, with the destroyed cars, the line of traffic resumed. They walked in silence far into the tomb. Liam thought he heard banging on several of the cars here, but it was too dark to see for sure.

Just keep walking.

Behind them, far back at the lighted entrance, figures moved.

“They're with us now. What do we do?” The question came out of his mouth, but it was directed at himself.

“I guess we could find a car and climb inside. We might be able to hold them off for a while. Or maybe we could hide under the cars and hope they lose interest. Or we could just go into the darkness for as long as we can.”

“I vote that one.” Victoria's voice drifted out of the deep shadows around him. He thought she was behind him, but she could be next to him, or on the other side of the line of cars.

“Yeah, we aren't hiding and dying in here.” Blue seemed to have the most resolve of the twins, but Liam was curious why she even bothered to come if she was so frightened.

“Blue, thanks for helping us get this far. Even if we don't make it, I appreciate that you got the captain to bring us up here.”

“My pleasure, I guess.”

“But if you don't mind me asking, why did you offer to help us at all? You could have stayed safe down in Cairo and we'd be none the wiser. We might even have found another boat up here.”

“I don't know. Maybe it just felt like the right thing to do, after you saved me back on top of that truck.”

And then you left me for dead.

It was tempting to remind her of that, but now wasn't the time.

“Well, I'm sorry if this is how our story ends. Dead inside a damp stone quarry tunnel, eaten by—”

“Hey. We ain't dead yet. Just keep going. I'm not stopping, I can tell you that.”

From behind him, a hand found his shoulder. Victoria's touch bolstered him in the darkness, which was now nearly complete. The tunnel had begun to turn to the right, cutting any remaining light to nothing.

Sensing they had turned both a literal and figurative corner, Liam offered some advice. “Everyone move as fast as you can. There has to be some survivors, or at least some gear left by survivors. We might get lucky and find a flashlight. Or help. Or anything. Just don't stop.”

They used the cars to guide them. He assumed as long as they followed the cars they were heading the right way, though he thought they passed through a few intersections because the cars were parked in different directions. They always went forward.

A couple times, the tunnel was illuminated by the equivalent of starlight by the tiny LED blinking lights of car alarm systems. The soft blues or reds blinked on and off, giving them faint snapshots of the tunnel around them.

One such car had movement inside. The repeating blinks outlined the zombie strapped into the passenger seat. They passed close enough they could see the thing's eyes were fixated on the only light in its world. Liam almost felt sad for it, but he drifted by slowly so as not to call attention to himself.

Far behind, they heard the distinctive howl of another of the teen girl zombies.

“Why do they do that?” Victoria asked. “Just to creep us out?”

Liam searched his zombie lore and couldn't come up with an explanation. He'd have to rely on guesswork.

“I think it's some kind of call to arms. When the other one did it, the zombies above started to jump on us. She alerted them to our presence.”

His earlier theory on bloodhounds really troubled him though. He had begun to believe they were using their senses to follow the cars well beyond the ability of any zombies to follow them from outside, but if those howlers somehow tracked them in the dark, then no distance would be enough to get away. They'd be overwhelmed as more zombies followed those howls even if they made it to the center of the earth.

Victoria whispered to him, as if unsure it was something he wanted to hear. “If we get attacked from behind, we'll never be able to fight back in the dark. We could turn on some headlights of these cars and maybe see where we are. At least we wouldn't be surprised.

Liam stopped. With a slap, he smacked his own forehead. “Of course. Argh, I'm such an idiot. We're walking by two huge flashlights every time we pass a vehicle.”

He gripped Victoria firmly and guided his lips to hers, hitting her nose first.

“I love you,” he whispered. Louder, he said, “You may have just saved our lives.”

They waited until they found another car with an LED. It was the only way to see the interior and ensure no zombies waited for a doorman to let them out. It only took a few minutes.

Liam opened the door and fumbled with the steering column until he found the lights. When they turned on, the headlight beams deflected off the sports car in front of them and sent light in all directions. His eyes took a minute to adjust. He turned on the dome light so he could see into the rear seats, though nothing of any value was back there. Some baby clothes and a broken down cardboard box.

He jumped out.

“OK, this is our chance. Search the cars. Turn on the headlights of every car we can find. If we find a flashlight, we can run ahead and leave the zombies behind us.”

Until we hit a wall.

He kept his negativity in check, but at some point the mine had to branch off or end or do something. It couldn't go on forever like this.

Then they'd have to fight. Him, his girlfriend, and two scaredy-cats.

A thought flew into his funnel—too many years growing up on a British train show—and it seemed impossible, but he actually thought he'd rather have Grandma with him than these two walking colors.

“At least she made me stronger.” He hadn't intended to say it out loud, but Victoria was close enough she heard him.

“That's so weird, I was just thinking how much I miss Grandma.”

More lights came on ahead as Pink or Blue found another car with working headlights.

Behind, very close, he heard the familiar howl.

“Grandma, I hope you're praying for us.”

“Amen,” answered Victoria.

Chapter 10: Grandma Dreams of Black

Two days since the sirens.

Indigo Hamilton woke up where she went to sleep. In the front seat of her mom's car, in traffic. She wasn't sure how long she'd been out, or how far they'd moved, but she took her nap in the middle of the day and it was now dark outside.

When her mother saw her stir, she smiled. “I'm sorry, we haven't gotten very far.”

Indigo looked around, gaining her bearings. “We haven't moved at all, have we?”

She eyed the back seat of the small car, wishing the rest of her family was with them. They'd tried to get out of St. Louis when all the commotion started up—that's what her mom called it—and they'd been separated. The cell phone network had gone up and down, but after a long string of failed tries, they'd finally established the rest of the family was leaving St. Louis with other relatives. The message was short and clear: get out of St. Louis.

They were facing east, toward Indianapolis—home to her relatives. But the highway had been stopped since last night. Her mom's face held back the fear. Only her eyes betrayed her. She was unable to squelch it completely, and Indigo had a sixth sense for the feelings of others.

Ahead, many people had pulled over to the side of the highway and lay in the grass, waiting. She wanted to get out and stretch, but something told her to stay in the car. It wasn't so much the rumors of vicious attacks by sick people, but more of a superstition. As if exiting the car would be the last thing she ever did, so she needed to make it count.

Another hour went by as they sat listening to music on her smartphone. She had it plugged into the charger and the aux port, so they could hear the music through the speakers of the car. As one song bled into the next, the line ahead started to display brake lights in the night. It meant people were starting their cars, and finally, the line was starting to move.

“Hey, lookie there. We're moving.” Her mom was genuinely happy. The veil of fear slid away for just a little while. People in the grass jumped up and ran to their cars before the line left them behind. Frantic merging followed, but people were mostly civilized about letting them back in. Her mom even let in a large passenger van, proving that the fear truly had receded.

But a mile along and Indigo felt it return in a wave.

“Oh no. What's this?”

The highway was blocked ahead. The powerful red warning lights on top of the twin spans of the bridge laughed at them from above. They were so close to escaping the gridlock of St. Louis, and now they'd reached the end. In her head, Indigo imagined them smashing through the construction barrels guiding them all off the highway, but just in front of the bridge they could see piles of box-like containers stacked and arranged to create a makeshift wall across the entire eight lanes of highway. The bridge was closed in both directions.

And those left on this side were being directed to an off ramp. When they reached the bottom of the ramp, they could turn left and follow the bulk of the traffic. Or turn right down a narrow road.

“That way will take us back to St. Louis,” her mom was talking to herself as she pointed left, but Indigo offered her own suggestion.

“Then let's not do that. Where do you think those people are going?” The cars turning to the right were continuing south along a dirty paved road. There were no road signs or other clues as to where they were going.

“What's the worst that can happen? We all get stuck in traffic?” Her mom chuckled, as did Indigo, but she knew her mom was scared. She was getting there too.

The traffic bunched up again, and soon she saw the same white van ahead of them.

A man ran out of the weeds and up to the van. She was only half paying attention until someone in the van opened the door for a moment and then some kind of altercation took place. It ended with the man getting a kick to his chest. He tumbled back into the weeds next to the road, then got up and ran past Indigo without a sideways glance.

“Did you see that?” She felt the panic in her voice, but her mom was in the driver's seat and didn't have a line of sight to the passenger door of the vehicle ahead. All she saw was some crazy guy run by.

“Yeah, hardly the time to be out jogging.” Her chuckle was forced. She kept her eyes forward. Indigo fingered the door lock button, thankful it was already locked.

Several minutes passed without a word. The music continued to drone, but she wasn't listening anymore. When one of her favorite songs came on—an upbeat anthem—she ripped the cord out of the radio. The music was replaced with that horrible emergency broadcast loop.

“...we advise you find safer jurisdictions. No emergency services are currently in operation. If you have an emergency—”

She shut it off.

If you have an emergency, no help is coming.

She willed herself to become invisible. She willed the car to become invisible to “the crazies” going for jogs outside.

“There's another one!” She surprised herself and her mom at her exclamation. A man stumbled along the road in the same direction they were going. He was on her side, so she could watch him up ahead. As each car or truck passed, he tried to grab on. He more or less bounced from car to car like a sad version of Frankenstein until he reached the van in front of them. Those people, possibly angered by the last pedestrian, opened the door swiftly. It struck the passerby with a thud loud enough she heard it behind the closed windows of her own car. The man went tumbling off the road.

As her car pulled alongside the downed man, she could see he was covered in blood. At first she believed the car door had done the damage, and indeed it had caused some blood on the man's forehead, but the man's neck was a neckerchief of blood. The top of his tan shirt looked like a red dickie. The thing—she couldn't call it a man anymore—looked up at her from the ground.

She slouched in her seat, willing it to ignore her.

Please go to the next car.

Her car lurched ahead with traffic, and in time, she risked a look out her window. The man was no longer in view. It probably did go bother other cars. She thanked her lucky stars.

As she turned forward once more, she was just in time to see the sign indicating where they were going.

“A quarry? This whole line is going into a quarry? Really?”

Her mom clutched the wheel in a vise grip. She rode the bumper of the van ahead of them. “We go where they go. Anywhere but here.”

Indigo wondered if anywhere was always better than here.

2

At one critical junction, Indigo saw they had a chance to divert from following the crowd. There were railroad tracks going next to the mine, they shot off into the darkness toward a cliff face being lit up by the lights of the cars now entering the property.

“Mom, maybe we could drive down those tracks? Get away, you know?”

To her credit, her mom did look where she pointed, but the response was typical. “No, we have to stick with the crowd. Someone up ahead knows where we're going. Maybe they set this up to protect us?”

Indigo felt the car tilt forward as it started down the slope of the mine's entrance road. Once she was into the event horizon, she could see the snake of headlights going round and round the spiral until they disappeared to some point below. Her panic was building.

“Mom, we can't go down there. There's no way out!”

“Oh honey, we have to follow instructions. All these people can't be going down there without guidance. It will be fine.” Her tone betrayed her words.

That's the universal parent red flag for “I don't know what I'm doing!” Indigo recognized it, and her fear spiraled worse than the road.

After they were committed, and had gotten through most of the first loop, Indigo was in five alarm fear territory. Several times, men and women had run by them in both directions. Some screaming to turn around. Others screaming the cars weren't moving fast enough. A couple times, she looked out her window into the rocky cliff face of the mine wall and saw dark shapes clinging to the shadows. She imagined they were sleeping.

Yes, of course they're sleeping.

Eventually she stopped looking out her window.

“Mom...do you think A-Z and Saffy made it over the river?” The terms of endearment for her sister's sprang from their mom. The woman loved her nicknames. Her friends called her sissy. Even at the hospital.

Indigo took a long time to respond. Her eyes stared into the back of the white van. She didn't know for sure, but she suspected her mom had a fear of driving along the cliff's edge, though it could also be a hundred other fears in the dark of night. When she did respond, she almost didn't recognize her mom's voice. It had become deep and husky, like she was straining hard to speak.

“This isn't a safe space. This isn't a government help center. This is...a death trap. I've taken my daughter into a death trap.”

“Mom!” Her mom jumped, as if she was asleep. “You're scaring me. Quit it!”

She looked at her with sadness in her eyes. “I'm so sorry. I can't do this. I just can't.”

Indigo felt the fear bubble over. Not just her, but the whole line of cars. More people ran by, in both directions. The traffic had stopped. The van ahead had gone dark. They turned off all their lights, apparently parking right on the road. Looking down into the pit, many others were shutting off their lights. A great mass of cars at the bottom were already mostly off; they'd lined up to park at the bottom. She could see into a gaping maw at the bottom of the mine. A line of cars poked inside. Their lights remained on.

“I can't. I just can't.”

“Mom. I said quit it.” She was stern, but she didn't know where this was coming from. She'd never known her mom to act like this.

“This was a mistake. We can't die like this. We won't die like this.”

More people ran by, most went down the road now. Several screamed as if they were dying.

Without warning, a man fell from the sky and slammed onto the front hood of their car. He didn't hit it square though, he hit the very front edge. Her mom began to scream. Indigo covered her ears, but couldn't look away.

Slowly, the man got up. His face was a wreck. One eye...was missing. Blood covered his left side. Maybe it was all from the fall, but she didn't think so.

The man was lit by the headlights of the car. With deliberate motion, the man walked to the inside edge of the mine. Without so much as a look either way, he stepped off the edge to points unknown below.

That was enough to break her mom. In seconds, the hysterical woman had opened her door and began running back up the hill.

“I'm not going in there. I have to get out. Go back!” Those were the last words she could hear from her mom before she became background noise among all the other screaming and shouting.

Indigo sat in shock.

The driver's door hung wide open. She stared at it, imagining that someone was going to see it and jump inside at any second.

You have to move. Go follow her. Be a good daughter.

She didn't listen to that voice inside her head.

A minute went by. The door was still open. People ran by. One man clipped it and tumbled over the edge.

Close it. Do something!

The voice was insistent, but her body would not respond.

Another minute went by. She began to imagine it would be her mom that came back through the door. Of course she would come back to save her daughter.

Of course. But where is she? Run, girl.

That voice was new. Could she run? Shouldn't she wait for mom? She imagined the trouble she'd be in if she didn't wait.

“Mom said wait for help. There was help here. Follow the crowds.” She talked to herself to steel her soul for what she was about to do.

Still, she waited.

Just one more minute.

And then someone came inside the door. More like she bounced off the door and fell inside. The blood from the thing splashed violently all over the dashboard.

Indigo was no longer herself.

She saw a hand that looked exactly like hers open the door, then slam it shut. The thing in her mother's seat looked at her, but she ignored what it was.

Run girl, run!

3

The first mistake she appreciated was forgetting her shoes. She'd been in the car so long she'd long since kicked off her fancy sandals to stay comfortable in the cramped space.

That, however, was minor compared to her second mistake.

“This is unreal,” she shouted.

She had only made it fifteen feet from her car when she looked inside the white van they'd been following. A young woman's face was squished up against the glass near the back seats. Her hair was a bloody, clumpy, mess. Long strands had been pasted with the sticky red glue so as she leaned forward her hair stuck to the glass. It made it appear she had the wind in her hair.

Others inside the van were thrashing about. She'd gotten too close. She didn't dare look at them. Instead, she squatted down and moved past it at a tentative pace. There was so much going on, she didn't know what to do.

“I could run back with momma. Take care of her.”

You'd die.

“I could just go back up the ramp, get out of the pit.”

You'd die.

“Hide?”

You'd die.

“Well dammit, what do you want me to do?”

She answered her own question when she looked down to the mouth of the mine. Everyone who could run headed for it. The lights of the cars down there were strobing as people ran through their beams.

Even on her section of road, the stream of people running downhill continued to swell. All cars had stopped.

In the distance, she heard a train horn. And, o' happy day, the sun would soon be up. Almost in a blink, she realized the light of day was creeping into the spiral of death around her.

She took off. Down.

A few minutes went by and another man fell from the sky. He landed just short of a large RV parked on the narrow road. He'd come from twenty or thirty feet above and crumpled before her eyes. She slowed just enough to see the man's head tilt toward her. The bones of his legs had shattered and looked like a sick broom with the bristle-shards projecting from his calves.

“Better luck next time, loser.” Her resolve improved as she continued to run in the wide circle, nearing the bottom as the light of the sun drenched the upper crust of the far side of the quarry like hot butter on a bagel.

Her stomach complained as she thought about it.

More train horns. It was approaching the quarry, though she was too far down to know from which way. She was near the flats at the bottom, but took the time to look at the road she'd just come down. People continued to enter the mine on the top tier—they ran along the edge for the most part—though some tried to go back out as they saw what they were getting into.

Gunfire had become commonplace throughout the night as well. She couldn't remember when it started. It just was. Now the chatter was constant.

She told herself that was her third mistake of the young morning. Without a weapon, she was as helpless as a new babe against the sort of horrible people she'd seen arguing with the people in the van. And now the people in the van. And the not-dead jumper. And the person in her mom's seat. They'd been ruined by some kind of sickness.

“Think. You have to think.”

She steadied herself against the back of a black jeep Wrangler. The truck had the plastic windows and cloth top, making it dead simple to look inside. The answer stared her in the face.

It took five minutes to scramble inside the unlocked Jeep, figure out how to get into the tight back seat, and then unscrew the bolts to free the offroader's jack. She threw it out the door, and jumped out after it.

It was too heavy to carry as it was, but she figured out how to remove the base and the other non-essentials. The pace of people running by dwindled...which made her body scream in fear. But her mind kept her on task.

“You can do this. This is your ticket, girl.”

After too much time, she had what she needed. The narrow metal bar for the jack was about four feet long, made of heavy steel, and it had holes along the length which made it lighter and gave it the appearance of a small ladder. She picked it up and felt its weight.

She was very short for her age, but very strong.

“Look out world, I'm a teen dynamo!”

She swung the metal bar from side to side, testing her agility with it, and felt pretty proud for equipping herself with something useful.

She looked again in the Jeep, hoping against hope for a pair of shoes.

That's when a pudgy middle-age man ran up from behind her and shoved her hard into the open door.

“Give me that!” His eyes were crazed, and only saw the red bar she'd set next to her.

But the man was winded and clumsy in his efforts. Though she was surprised, she wasn't injured. She adeptly grabbed the bar and let it fall to the ground. She then stepped around the door, reached down to the bar and picked it up. In the amount of time that took, another man—one of the sick ones—had run up behind the first.

She stood up, weapon at the ready, and watched in disbelief as the blood splashed all over the glass of the open door. She lurched to avoid it before realizing the window was closed.

She ran from the screams of the man.

She ran from screams of the roadway above her.

Into the earth.

The screaming continued there, but at least she had a weapon. And she resolved that not one person would ever stop her from surviving whatever came next.

The lights of the tunnel were bright into the distance, but a long flicker caused everyone to scream wildly.

Everyone but her.

4

Marty woke from her nap with a start. The feel of the electricity in her head faded fast.

She struggled to find her rosary. The dreams felt more real than ever, and while she suspected all these visions of the girl who left with Liam were merely her imagination playing tricks on her, she couldn't help feel there was something more to it. The girl—Blue, Saffron, Indigo, whatever she called herself—was dangerous.

Sadly, she couldn't pick up the phone and warn him.

Chapter 11: Voices in the Dark

“I found something,” whispered Victoria.

“A flashlight?”

“No, something better. I think it's a tire changer tool.”

She showed it to him by holding it up in the faint light coming from far behind. It was a piece of steel about twenty inches long, shaped like the letter L. On the short end, it had a fitting to remove the lug nuts from a wheel. On the other—

“Oh yeah. It's sharp.” He heard the smile in her voice, though her face remained masked in deep shadow. They'd found a few cars with working lights, but as they continued further into the industrial mine's tunnel they had trouble finding vehicles with power in their batteries. They might have been run down back when the cars first arrived. That was his best guess.

“Keep it close.”

He didn't want to worry her, but he couldn't temper his own concern. Blue and Pink were many cars ahead. They weren't very good at keeping quiet. Once, one of them even slammed a door shut. Yet he couldn't yell at them. If they found trouble, he didn't know what he'd do.

Behind him, he could hear footsteps and the angry moans of the infected. They should have caught up to them already, but they'd been leaving car doors open wherever they could and that was—he believed—slowing them down.

In another minute, he almost ran into one of the girls. They'd stopped and waited near the driver's door of a late model sedan.

“There's a blinking light in this one, but we can't see inside. It has tinted windows. Should we open it?”

A howl from behind. It was hard to judge distance of sound in the confined space, but he thought it was very close.

A hand pounded on the window of the mystery car.

“Get out of here,” he quietly urged them all.

A faint voice yelped from inside the car. “Don't go!” The door latch clicked as Liam hung between running and staying. The others had already moved out, including Victoria.

He pivoted back, but stayed away from the door. “Are you OK?”

The door opened with a loud squeak. The hinge needed some oil. A dim light spilled out from the car. The man held a flashlight.

“Is this a rescue,” the man inquired. The light was dim, but the man pointed it in Liam's eyes. He still didn't get out of the car. “I'm not getting out unless you have a platoon of soldiers with you.”

Liam moved so he could see inside the car. As he got closer, the stench of the filth overwhelmed him.

“Oh my—” He put his hand over his mouth, cutting himself off.

“I have to know. Is the Army here to rescue me?”

The man on the rear seat wore fatigues. Liam didn't care to ascertain what branch he was with. Instead, he took a step back toward the tunnel wall. He tried to make it look casual, though it didn't look like the man much cared.

“No, I guess not. You're just a kid. Those others were just kids, too, weren't they? Do you have any food?” The flashlight was in his face again. “Just a little? I've been here for...”

The flashlight went to the man's watch.

“A week. A week,” he repeated with surprise. “Water drips from the ceiling, but not food.”

He's not right.

Louder, the man repeated himself. “Kid, I said, do you have any food?” The beam, weak as it was, landed on his face. But now the man had his feet outside the door.

“N-no, sir. We've been looking for food in here.” He was always looking for food.

“Liar. Kids always lie.” The man reached for something behind him. The light moved up to the man's head, and he tucked the flashlight between his head and shoulders. That gave him a free hand so he could bring his gun around and spin the revolver's cylinder like he was in a cowboy western.

“Don't really recall how many bullets I got anymore.” He snorted, then chuckled, like he'd remembered something. “You feel lucky, kid?” More laughing. He was too loud.

“Let's find out.” The guy stood up, but had to lean heavily against the open car door. His light was still wedged in his neck like he was holding a phone to his ear.

“Been a while since I've stood up. Feels good.”

Liam wanted to run, but the man was so close he didn't think he could get away. This had all happened so fast, he wasn't prepared for it. As he stood waiting, his mind imagined shapes lurking just outside the reach of the glow of the flashlight. Zombies had to be nearby…

The man was pretty big. When he finally took a step from the support of the door, he straightened up, and Liam guessed he was well over six feet tall.

He weakly held his spear, knowing it was useless in this situation.

Delay. Every second of life counts.

“You can search me. I don't have anything.”

“You know what they do with liars in the Army? They shoot 'em!” The man laughed with lots of nervous energy.

Liam didn't think that was exactly true, but he wasn't going to smart back.

The gun came out of the darkness; its smooth outline was well defined by the flashlight behind it.

Smile for the camera.

Liam saw the details of the gun in his face for just a fraction of a second. A flash of light filled the tunnel; during that instant, he saw behind the man.

The soldier's gun went off just as the other burst faded.

He felt something hot snap at his left ear. The pain was confusing, as his head was assaulted by the sound of the two gunshots. He was unable to judge if the pain was due to his ear drums exploding, or something else.

All the gunplay happened in slow motion, though strangely his concern was elsewhere. His eyes focused on something he'd seen during that initial wave of light. The light had gone out like a radar pulse. His mind assembled the data and reported its findings.

A zombie squatted on the roof of the car behind them.

Its head was cocked as it looked right at him.

2

The soldier fell over where he stood. The light flickered as it slammed into the rocky ground.

Victoria, with the Glock, stood in triumph. She spoke, but Liam couldn't hear her over the constant scream in his ears.

He reached down for the flashlight and yelled, “Run!” as loud as he could. In moments, he and Victoria raced along the narrow space between the wall of the tunnel and the cars parked in the long traffic jam. They quickly caught up to both of the girls. They'd been moving as instructed, but were unable to run until he caught up with the only portable light in this section of the tunnel.

They yelled something at him, but he still couldn't hear.

He just pointed and ran, hoping it was obvious what was happening.

The tunnel turned sharply to the right, which he took on the run with the girls in tow. He looked back to ensure they were there; the light was dimming even as he ran.

“No!” He yelled at the light in his hand, knowing it was stupid but unsure what else to do. He saw this expedition ending in the back of one of these cars as they were surrounded by hungry zombies.

He'd almost stopped to check a car door—to find their last redoubt—when the tunnel came to a final “T” junction. It was a confusing tangle of cars, bodies, and rock piles. He swung the light in an arc across the scene, and tried to piece it together.

To the left, the traffic jam continued as far as he could see. To the right, a few of the big mining dump trucks were parked next to each other at the cusp of a larger room. Cars had tried ramming into them, but that clearly failed. The big trucks seemed to huddle together to block traffic in that direction. They most assuredly had blocked the line of cars here.

Liam found a hole between the trucks large enough for people to fit through, and he held the light as he stood next to the crevice—pointing the way. Victoria stood by him, allowing the two girls to get through first. She gave him a hasty smile and began to wedge herself between the trucks. Then it was his turn.

He threw himself into the gap as if his life depended on it. The hand on his arm suggested he'd once again made the right call.

A faint howl made it through his foggy brain. Lots of screams came from the other direction. He was tempted to yell for everyone to be quiet and scream one at a time, so he knew what was happening.

I'm going crazy. That's clear now.

He didn't look back. He felt more hands reaching for him in the tight space.

Scooting along the truck, he absently wondered if zombies could get into tight spaces. It seemed like a pretty complicated task for the dumb things…

Fingertips on his shoulder gave him his answer.

Seconds later, he fell out the back side of the truck roadblock.

With very little breath in his lungs, and a mouth as dry as the desert wind, he yelled, “Fight them here!”

He still had his spear, but it felt small in his hands. He put the flashlight on the ground so it pointed to the gap. With a flourish, he turned with his spear to stop them from coming through. He sensed as much as saw Victoria and the two girls standing behind the next truck. The dim light almost couldn't reach them.

The first zombie squirted through, and had gained its freedom before he could bring his spear to bear. It moved toward the girls.

He hoped Victoria could read his mind, but he yelled the obvious to be sure. “Get that one!”

A second zombie poked its head from between the two trucks. Liam set himself upon it with growing anger. He channeled his fear at almost being shot, and his fear of this dark space, and used that to thrust with all his strength. The spear plunged into its face, though even with all his pent up anger, he was unable to look at the damage he'd wrought upon it.

Rather than fall to the ground, the body of the zombie wedged itself into the space between the two trucks. The next zombie in line behind it comically peeked over the head of its slumping partner and Liam dispatched it—her—as well.

He could see what would eventually happen. As more and more zombies got into the gap they would eventually push their dead comrades forward to clear the space. But for the moment, he could turn his attention to the one that got away…

In the ugly light, he saw the male zombie had on a too-tight fitness shirt and running shorts. He had fallen upon Blue. He imagined she was screaming, but he couldn't be sure. Victoria was over the zombie swinging her tire iron like a mad woman.

As it happened, he added audio to what he was seeing.

“Crack! There goes the skull.”

It went rigid for a moment, then dropped like a lead balloon on top of Blue. Victoria struggled to get the man to roll over until Pink came out of the shadows to give her a hand.

His head was still a mess. His ears alternated between a tinny ringing, a high pitched whistle, and perfect silence. Once in a great while, voices would filter through, but he couldn't be sure what was being said.

He felt hands on his arm, and jumped once again. But they were friendly—Victoria picked up the flashlight, pointed it forward, and pulled him with her.

There were no lights in the new area, and the flashlight continued to flicker and dance as they ran. But there were no cars parked here. That, at least, made it different.

He corrected himself. There was one light. It was tiny in the darkness ahead. It took another couple of minutes of unsteady walking to piece together what they were approaching. When he finally knew what it was, he had regained a little of his hearing and a lot of his hope.

It was a glass door.

3

A dull blue glow came through the frosted glass of the single door. It looked like a typical door you'd see attached to any strip mall tenant across America. Here, it was inset into a smooth concrete face—and looked completely at odds with the mine.

Victoria swung the light from side to side on the rock, and there was a large metal door twenty or thirty feet to the left, almost outside the range of the poor light. Once she'd made her sweep, she turned it off.

It sounded distant, but Liam definitely heard her this time. Only a sharp pain remained in his left ear, but he could take it. “We need to save this light, in case we really need it.”

He looked around and didn't like the fact he stood with Blue and Pink as they stared at the door. Almost without thinking, he took a step forward to be closer to Victoria—currently the only person who seemed to be doing something.

She rattled the glass door, but it didn't budge. In return, he scooted next to the door, and tried to look inside. The door revealed no clues, save one.

“There's a bar across it. Here,” he said, as he slid his finger from one edge to the other, “to here. This thing's keeping it closed.”

Victoria gently pushed him back a step and gave him the “shush” symbol. Her eyes conveyed a similar message.

He nodded, and tried to whisper, “Sorry.” The gentle blue light illuminated the two girls—one of whom was also named Blue, which he found hilarious—but nothing beyond them. A black void enveloped everything but the door.

“Stand back, guys.” Victoria's voice was starting to register at a normal volume again. As he began to turn back to her, he heard the shattering of glass. When he looked at her, she had shattered the entire pane of the door. It had splintered into thousands of fragments, many of which fell to the ground as he watched. Victoria used her tire iron to scrape the remainder from the edges—causing shards to spray all over the rocks at their feet.

Liam saw into the room. Security lights around the edge of banks of computers were bright blue. The main lights on the ceiling were all out.

Victoria stuck her head into the room, then kept going. She had to duck under the heavy steel bar that had been placed into the handle of the door on one end, and into some kind of bracket on the other side. It ensured the door could not be opened in the conventional fashion.

Here I am again, ruining someone's refuge.

He hated to admit it, but dying on the doorstep of a refuge because he didn't want to break the glass seemed like a stupid option, too. He was too important to die like that.

Too important, am I?

Was he starting to believe his own press? Hadn't Hayes said something very close to that back when they were under the Arch? He claimed he was too valuable to the research effort to waste himself fighting hand-to-hand to protect others.

He searched his feelings. He didn't think he'd told anyone to fight for him while he watched. That's how he'd know he'd gone round the bend.

As it was, he was the second person into the room, and that was only because he didn't know Victoria was going to go through before him. Pink and Blue followed him in.

The control room—he called it that, but he really had no idea what it was—had walls on three sides. The fourth side was covered by big glass windows. He walked toward it and immediately recognized he was looking through the glass at the big garage door he'd seen from outside the blue door.

“So the computer guys are in here, and the worker guys are out there?”

Victoria sidled up next to him. “What do you think they did in here?”

They'd both seen the interior of Riverside Hotel and Casino, so nothing was off the table in terms of possible uses for the place. Even so, Liam couldn't fathom the purpose of the control room or the larger facility outside the glass. A lone door beckoned them.

“We should look around here, first.”

He thought that made perfect sense. Something about the blackness outside the windows made him uneasy. It was more pronounced than the fear he had for the zombies somewhere outside the now-broken glass window through which they'd entered. They were known unknowns. Whatever was in that other room was an unknown unknown. Big difference.

They realized pretty quickly the bank of computers were in power-save mode. He moved a mouse on one of them and the screen blinked back to life. The bright light from the huge monitor forced him to squint until his eyes could absorb it all in comfort.

He turned to Victoria, unable to control his excitement. He smiled, “I wonder if the internet's working?”

“I have an auction ending, would you mind checking it.” She leaned to watch over his shoulder, and while there, rubbed her fingers through his hair, partly to tussle it, and partly—he hoped—as a sign of affection. But when her hand grazed his ear, he winced.

She jumped back. “Liam. There's blood.”

He'd forgotten all about it. His whole head hurt already, he'd almost overlooked the pain of having his ear partially shot off.

All the girls looked as Victoria used the dying flashlight to observe the damage. She spent a lot of time prodding near the wound, and she even used her shirt to get some of the blood out of his hair and lower ear. Her analysis was that it wasn't that serious, though. The bullet had removed the top half-inch of his ear.

“My God, you were lucky.” That passed for Victoria's official prognosis.

He worried a little, as he realized he could hear almost nothing out of that ear, but even that was tempered by what he saw on the computer screen.

The internet was up.

4

He decided now wasn't the time to worry about security. He logged into his online account, and found himself faced with pages of emails. Many had been sent in the last two weeks.

“Ha! They must have automated emails. The most recent ones showed up just today.” He laughed quietly at the thought of computers continuing to send out spam long after mankind had lost the ability to receive them. He took a moment to force that into his memory; he wanted to include that in his book someday.

He cracked his knuckles, and prepared to tackle the wall of spam. He wanted to see if anything important had been sent to him by friends or family. He may never get another chance to find out where they'd all gone.

He'd just started to sort when a chat window popped up. Since he was logged into his profile, anyone looking for him would see that he was online. The words scrolled out a letter at a time. “Thank God! Worried about you, Liam.”

“Huh?” He leaned back. “Look at this.” He meant it for Victoria, but all the girls crowded around him.

The white box waited for his reply. The identity of the person on the other line just said, “Anonymous User,” and no other information was given in Anonymous' profile.

“Who is this?” he typed back.

“Go into WOUS.” The chat window showed the other person had logged off.

He turned around and pointedly looked at the broken window on the door. Somewhere out there, zombies were trying to get through the dump truck road block. Would he have time to play a silly game?

Part of him really desired to play. He hadn't touched it since just before the sirens went off. That game was, more or less, the last normal thing he did before the zombies came. After that, it was survival all day, every day.

He had no other plan, and whoever was on the other end knew who he was. That alone made it worthwhile to see what they had to say. With a few clicks, he found the game installer and had it loaded onto this computer in sixty seconds.

“Wow, this computer is fast!”

The girls continued to hover around him. Victoria's hand was on the back of his neck. He took a deep breath as he fired up the game.

He guessed none of them had ever seen it, so he took the time while it loaded to explain what he was doing. “So, this game is about...”

The words got caught in his throat. His eyes watered as emotion surged. With a cough, he tried to play it cool—he had three girls hanging on his every word—but his efforts failed. Where seconds before he was ecstatic at being able to play this game, he was now losing it. He had no idea why.

He felt Victoria stroke his back.

She can read me like a book.

The tears rolled down his cheeks; he continued to stare at the screen. It waited for his input.

“Liam?” Blue asked. “Are you cryin'?” She kind of laughed, though Liam felt his chair move and heard something that sounded like a kick.

After a short pause, she continued, “Seriously, you OK?”

Is anyone good, anymore?

The game represented an era he would never get back. It was the past, just as sure as cavemen or covered wagons. Though both, he dourly noted, would find homes in the current world more readily than a video game. He desperately wished he could jump in the game and never look back.

“I, uh,” he shook his head and tried to wipe his tears like it was no big deal, “just got a little nostalgic, I guess. I played this game on the very last day of...how things were before the zombies.”

As his vision cleared, he could see the game wanted his login information. He prepared himself for the laughter.

“Meat me in Yonkers? What kind of a name is that?” Blue asked.

The loading panel popped up once he was in the game world, and the three girls saw his avatar in all its glory—all her glory.

“What. The. Hell?” Blue actually pointed to the girl avatar.

The game designers let players build their own characters. It was very flexible, and Liam was proud he had chosen an avatar that would stand out amongst the millions of other players in the game. “Meat me in Yonkers” was a tiny young black woman, with her hair in a tight bun on the back of her head. She wore exactly what you'd imagine of a sixteen-year-old boy's imagination: black combat boots, a tight-fitting red dress cut low so her cleavage showed. He liked to think of her as part Lara Croft and part Alice, and just as tough. He'd never seen another player with the same look.

The girls were stunned to silence. He started talking to compensate for the awkwardness.

“So yeah, Yonks has lots of weapons she can use, but right now she has a Katana on her back while she holds her M16. I gave her raw meat gauntlets for her arms—the zombies bite on those if they get up on her. She's got knives and a couple of guns strapped to her legs under her dress. And—”

“Why is she black?” It was Pink.

“Yeah, Liam, why is your super-hot chicky player avatar black? Why isn't she a super-hot brunette future nurse avatar?” He could hear the smile in her voice behind him. She took things even less seriously than he did sometimes. She had described herself.

He admitted his earlier sadness was sloughing off. He turned to the pair of part-black young girls standing next to him, seeing them, not as colors this time, but as parallels to the woman he had built inside the game. A woman he admitted he found to be a very attractive, though fake, amalgam of strong females from the movies. He'd never, until that moment, thought of why he made her black, other than it made her look exotic. If he squinted his eyes, he could imagine either of the twins stepping in for Yonks. That unsettled him.

Unable to answer beyond a shrug, he turned back to the game. Inside the virtual world, the pretty young woman stood inside a convenience store.

“This is where you start. It's a safe base to stock up on supplies.”

A virtual man walked in and a voice bubble popped up over his head. Yet, they heard no sounds. He turned up the volume on the computer and heard a woman's voice. No one was ever what they seemed, inside the game.

Just like the Apocalypse.

5

“—hear me, can you?” came through the speakers.

He spoke at the screen, hoping there was a microphone attached. It was too dark to see for sure. “I hear you. Who are you?”

“Don't worry about that. The less you know, the safer we both shall remain.”

The woman's voice had a tinny quality to it, like it was coming from the far end of a long tube. It had a vaguely non-human quality, though he could still understand it perfectly.

“OK, then what are you doing inside this game?”

“Extra layers of protection. Your email is almost certainly monitored. Chat from there would also be tracked. I knew you had this game and while we are in here, our transmission is encrypted.”

Inside the game, another text window came on screen. It was used by players who didn't have microphones, though that was so rare, he almost never used text chat. Now a text message appeared.

“Liam, continue talking. This chat window is secure.”

“Seems legit. I guess. But why should we listen to you?” Liam spoke, continuing the charade.

On the screen, the words popped up as the person on the other line keyed them in. The same person, he assumed, spoke over the speakers, though he had to focus on the text to read it.

“Liam. Can't trust anyone. The triplets with you are something new. Not sure if can trust. I erased the data on the chip you got from Colonel Rufus McMurphy. If you were caught with it, you'd be shot on sight.”

He was less concerned about the three girls with him being spies, than with the data chip. The colonel had entrusted it to him, and he'd allowed it to be deleted back in Cairo.

He talked, probably with inane babble, to the computer screen as a distraction while he typed. “Who is listening in?”

In seconds, a reply came back. “You met them already. They are the group most responsible for unleashing the plague on us Americans. But plague was already overseas when they did it. It was cover-up to blame others.”

Liam had a hard time with the timeline of the various plagues ravaging the world. He'd need an outline when he wrote his book. Hayes and Duchesne had both agreed it was the NIS—National Internal Security—that released the plague that infected humans in such a horrific way that Liam could only describe them as zombies.

The NIS is listening.

He typed back, “All right. Nothing secure anymore. How do I know I can trust you?”

The reply came back after a delay. All the words splashed on the screen at once. “You don't. But I hope to gain your trust after I show you this. Sadly, unless you have headphones there is no way to prevent this from behind heard, and possibly recorded on your end.”

The screen froze, then returned to normal. The male avatar moved inside the virtual store until he stood next to a TV on the wall. On the screen, totally incongruous with the game itself, was an image of Colonel McMurphy. When Yonkers stood close to the screen within the screen, the video began. It started with the colonel speaking into the camera. Liam recognized the backdrop as the tent at Elk Meadow—the research facility where he'd met the man.

He looked around for headphones, wondering if it was even worth it—anyone listening in would have to come deep into a mine full of zombies to give him a spanking. Before he could do more than glance around, the video started.

“Hi Susan. I hope this makes it to you. If anyone knew I made these videos, I'd probably be tossed into the zombie pen I've got out back. This is conspiracy stuff beyond anything I thought possible. I don't even know where to begin...”

At his desk, the colonel picked up a picture frame and showed it to the camera. It had a red-haired woman and a young teen about Liam's age. It was the photo the colonel would give to him later. When stuff went nutso at the camp...

“This is why I'm doing this. Why I'm risking everything. These two people right here.”

He put the frame down as he spoke faster, and slightly quieter.

“Two days ago, I was shown something. I know you'll find this hard to believe, but I'm not crazy. Please know that. I...I've seen the dead walk. I mean real dead people, putting one foot in front of the other. These people, these government pinheads, think they've stumbled on the secret to immortality. Argh, how do I say this without sounding crazy here?”

The gray-haired man looked away, then back at the camera with a direct gaze at him—though Liam knew he was really talking to his wife.

“I saw a dead man rise from his pine box. They threw the lid open, and as God as my witness, something wicked and evil possessed that body and it pulled itself over the edge and it fell onto the floor. Then, with great effort, it stood on its feet and ambled toward us...”

Liam saw fear in his eyes, even two days removed from the event.

“The eyes, dear. The thing had no eyes...but it could see. I could feel its stare on me. It came for me.” He laughed a nervous laugh. “But they turned on special lights which froze it in its tracks. Then they ushered us out of the control room and back to our trucks. They said we had to know what was coming so we had the stomach to do what needed doin'. I've been thinking about it ever since. Not getting any work done here, and Hayes is riding me hard to have things ready.”

He again looked off camera. This time when he continued it was almost a whisper.

“Susan, I have to tell someone. I can't trust anyone here with me as it's clear Hayes has ears everywhere. I don't think he works for who he says he does. He has more power than he lets on. They have me doing research, but his team—his Riverside team—is light years ahead of the rest of us. I asked where they got the man, coffin and all, and all they said was the man did his duty for his country once when he died, and a second time when he came back to life. That can only mean one thing: they pulled him from an actual cemetery. Why would they do that, Susan? Why?”

He readjusted himself at his desk, almost pleading with his wife to believe him.

“I do know this much: the dead man was dressed in army fatigues. They were very old, perhaps World War II vintage. I think he came from the National Cemetery over at Jefferson Barracks. It's by that big quarry—”

The screen froze inside the game.

Everyone was frozen outside the game, too.

6

“Is that the answer?” Liam asked it rhetorically, though he didn't really intend to ask it at all—at least not out loud. He'd been trying to square the men and women he'd seen suffer under the effects of the zombie plague since day one. Were they dead people infected with something that brought them back to life, or were they living people so sick they appeared dead? The word “zombie” was something he ascribed to them, though the more popular, and he had to admit more accurate, term most people used was infected. They had been stricken with a sickness, but the disease process remained a mystery to him, even after meeting the guy who concocted the disease in the first place.

One of the plagues.

Yes, there was that. The big difficulty for them all was there were at least three different viruses involved with this devil's brew of apocalyptic pandemics. Hayes had said as much. But now, if the colonel was telling the truth, the actual buried-in-the-ground dead could also get infected and be made to rise from their graves. That, right there, was the exact definition of a zombie. The thought did not give him comfort.

He answered himself. “The answer to the big question of whether these are zombies or not.”

Blue laughed, “Who the hell is askin' that question? The big question is where do we go to get safe. Does your computer friend have that answer?” She leaned toward the computer and repeated herself. “Where can we get safe, Honkey Tonk?”

Liam didn't correct her mistake. His avatar wouldn't have the answer. That honor belonged to the male avatar—Anonymous.

The woman on the audio link did respond by typing something in the screen.

“Liam. Please clear your three friends from the terminal. I have to say something for you alone. Please hurry. This link won't last forever. Once they figure out where you are, they'll cut me off.”

He wanted to ask question after question, but she instilled a sense of haste into him.

“Guys, give me a minute?” He winked at Victoria, though in the soft blue light he was unsure if she caught it.

The twins mumbled, but walked away from him nonetheless, toward computers on the other side of the room. Victoria seemed less sure of leaving, but she walked several paces in the opposite direction. The control room wasn't much bigger than his family room back at home, so they all remained close. But they couldn't see the small text on the screen, he was sure of that.

“OK, I'm alone,” he typed.

“Liam. I'm being told there is someone trying to trace this connection. I've got a very talented crew working with me. I was able to see you inside the Riverside Hotel—you got my message about shutting off the power. I had hoped that by cutting the power, it would trap Hayes in the building until the good guys could get there and snatch him, but you know how that went.”

Yeah, he knew. The power went out, the zombies spilled out of their cages, and he and Victoria had to rappel down the outside of a skyscraper to escape. Hayes just got in his helicopter and seemingly had it much easier. The mysterious call to Victoria's phone actually endangered him more than it ever was a threat to Hayes. But, as Grandma would say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, or sometimes not at all.” It all worked out because he and Victoria made it work out.

“We do have people on the ground near you. There's a man we've contacted on the radio named Jason Hawkes on a bluff near that mine. Get out of the quarry and find him. He can help you stay safe.”

Figures it would be him.

“We walked through his camp. One of our party said he was with bad guys. Gun runners or something. He kind of creeped us all out. Should we go back?”

“Hang on.”

A full thirty seconds passed as Liam stared at the blinking cursor on the screen.

“Liam, this is very important. If I get cut off, you must get out of the mine. They'll be coming.”

His mind swam in questions.

“Liam, you've found triplets. You have to get them out of there. You are in great danger.”

That was the second time she'd used that word. He heard a movie line echo in his head. He didn't think the word meant what she thought it did…

“Triplets? I have twins, plus Victoria. Not triplets tho.”

Another long silence.

A burst of characters shot onto the screen, as if someone cut and paste a long answer. It was an email message from someone named Indigo Hamilton to “Mom.”

“Dear mom. I know you'll never get this. I know you're dead. But if you ever do see this—by some miracle—I wanted to tell you I love you and I miss you. Things are getting bad in here. More infected at the exit of the mine and more people in here dying and becoming infected. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I love you. Love to Saffron and Azure. Goodbye for now. XX OO IH.”

“We identified your two friends when you entered the mine. We've confirmed they're all sisters. The third one is in there with you, unless she died. She sent her email from the terminal you're using.”

The words flew as he watched.

“Liam, someone on the outside got the idea it takes three people to study the effects of the plague. We're trying to figure it out on this end. Does that mean anything to you?”

At that moment, he remembered the words of Colonel McMurphy as he was in the throes of the virus. He said something to the effect he couldn't totally trust Liam because there were groups that would love to steal his information. That man did indeed have a lot of secret information, though in the end he did share it with Liam by giving him the data chip. Over the past few days, he'd allowed that data to fall into the hands of whoever was at the end of the digital link ending on this computer screen. Not only would it take him too long to explain everything that he'd experienced with Grandma, himself, and Victoria, he wasn't willing to trust that information to someone named Anonymous.

“No, sorry.”

“OK, that's OK. Get the missing girl if you can, but get out.”

His high paranoia returned. He imagined it was Hayes on the other end, or his red-headed wife, guiding him on another misadventure so that he could take over at the last second and avoid doing all the hard work. He'd done that on his initial escape from St. Louis, and he'd had Liam and Grandma jumping through hoops all the way up until the point he took her blood sample with him, after she'd been infected by him. He wanted to end the call.

“Right. So how do we get past all the zombies out there?”

“More than one exit. Schematics. You have to get out. Find Jason. He knows your Dad. Friends. Patriots. Get—”

The text just ended.

Outside the room, through the broken glass of the small door, red emergency lights began to spin. They looked like the lights you'd find on the top of a police cruiser.

Liam and the girls walked to the shattered door still being blocked by the useless metal bar. It was rust red, with a stamped badge on one end from a 4x4 company.

Sirens began to howl. First, far away in the mine. As each new horn started, he could tell they were getting closer. In a minute, a siren spun up just outside the door. The room with the dump trucks blocking the entrance was very large now that they could see it all, but remained practically empty. He already knew there was a garage door on the near wall, but he saw another large door across the vast room. Large rounded pillars of rough stone supported the ceiling throughout.

There was a missing triplet somewhere nearby.

Triplets. Three players in his weird World of Undead Soldiers dream. He knew now, looking back, those girls were all very similar to the two standing next to him, which meant the remaining triplet would fit into that dream too.

When he got on the bus in his dream, Grandma had wondered if he was really in her dream. What if she was in his? Both in the same dream? And, if that was true, was he responsible for bringing the girls to his side?

He turned to the cavernous space next to the control room, to peer through the larger glass windows on that side. If the third girl had been in this room, it made the most sense to think she'd continued into the adjacent room.

“Blue, Pink, you have a sister, don't you? You're triplets.”

“Yeah, so?” Blue didn't seem to find it odd he would know that.

“Did you know she was here? In this mine?”

The girls walked up to him as Pink responded, “Indy? She's here?” She shook Liam's arm. “Where? Where is she?”

“That's what we're going to find out.” He pointed in the direction he was going, urging them to follow. When he reached the glass door, he looked out into the still-dark room carved from stone. On the near side of the room, he saw a double row of blue string lights lying on the ground. They made a type of path into the darkness, though he couldn't see where they ended while he was still inside the control room.

“Victoria, you with me?”

“Of course. What's wrong, Liam?”

He wished he could tell her. He'd shut off the computer before anyone could see what the woman on the other end had transmitted. Someone was coming for them from outside. Zombies were blocking their escape. A set of triplets would soon be his responsibility. A mysterious typist gave him instructions he couldn't believe, not completely. And, to top it all off, the person they were trying to link up with was a friend of his dad. He didn't think it would help with morale if he dumped that on her, even if he could get her away from the other two.

He held the door handle, about to pull it, when one question popped in his head he knew had an answer. “Blue, Pink, if we do find your sister,” it was completely silly to think it, and it felt silly to ask it, but he thought it was important enough to push through all that and ask, “what color will she be?”

The response was even and simultaneous.

“Black.”

Chapter 12: Columbarium

Liam wasn't surprised. There was something odd about the girls, beyond the strange way they just dropped into his life. Again, questions stacked up inside his brain. What were they doing before the sirens? How come they got separated? What were they doing in the weeks since the sirens? What made them go to the particular spot where he found them?

Not impossible. Just improbable.

Those words echoed from Grandma. What would she say about these two? Back in Cairo, she seemed to know Blue from a dream she'd had.

That's another question!

But he had to tuck all those questions into their own drawers. He was much too busy being scared. The three girls had lined up behind him as they walked into the vast chamber. The line of lights on the ground led off into the darkness. Just enough to see the way, but not bright enough to cut through the pitch black elsewhere. The reflection of blue on the rough ceiling was the only comfort. It felt like walking over a rocky covered bridge with an abyss on each side.

His brain created wild fantasies about creatures in the darkness. Here, he could see a multi-tentacled monster; there, he could see a hockey-masked murderer holding a machete. His eyes strained to see the edge, they wanted to see the edge, if only to assign the proper scale to the place. They tried, to no avail. Eventually he determined it would make him feel much better to watch his path along the blue lights and ignore everything else.

A hum came from the darkness ahead. The sound bounced off the raw earth all around them, but Liam thought he recognized the source.

“Hold up. Do you hear that?” He took a knee as he said it. The blue light was still dim, but his eyes had gotten used to it. The walkway lights were now illuminating the large cavernous room. He could see the floor and ceiling, and one rough-hewn wall was about fifty feet to his right. The left wall was still hidden, somewhere out in the darkness beyond the ability of the ambient light to reach. Or, more likely, beyond the ability of his own eyes to register. He did see great columns of rock, spaced every fifty feet or so; they held up the roof.

The girls all heard the sound, but no one offered any suggestions on what it might be.

When it arrived, it was as he expected. The drone generated a slight breeze as it hovered about five feet above them, just below the rock ceiling. Earlier in the day—or yesterday, he'd lost track of time—a similar drone had hovered above the boat. Whether it was the exact same model, he couldn't say.

“You want me to bash it in?” Blue asked. She picked up a fist-sized rock to make her point. The captain would have shot it down.

He realized he was in charge. Looking around, he saw the three girls crouched in an arc behind him. Now, seeing the formation, he was literally leading them.

Time to say something smart.

“No, whoever is using that drone is here in the tunnels with us. We can't turn around on account of the zom—infected. We need to make friends.”

...or we're dead.

He thought he did pretty well.

Because he didn't know what else to do, he waved at the drone.

It hovered in place, but he knew he was being observed. He felt the eyes through the camera of the sophisticated hardware.

“We only want a place to hide. We won't take your food.” It seemed reasonable to assume the craft could hear audio.

The drone tilted gently and began to move. It got lower, scooted around Liam, and seemed to focus on the girls. After a few moments, the drone moved even closer to the girls. It was closest to Blue.

“I could knock this thing out of the air...just say the word.”

“No!” Liam wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, but he was confident no good could come from destroying the aircraft. “Just let it look.”

It hovered for a full minute, then moved to Pink. Liam's imagination took flight and he began to fret the thing had a gun, but his rational side fought back at the notion. There were a lot more efficient ways of killing than putting a gun on a drone, especially deep in a dark mine.

Just turn out the lights.

He shuddered at the thought. They were at the mercy of the lights.

The drone seemed to finish its sweep. The fan noise increased as it tilted again and went the opposite direction—back toward the control room.

“Well, they know we're here,” Victoria said with some amusement.

Blue, ever serious, replied, “We've just been checked out by a creepy machine, and you think it's funny? The captain was right about you two.”

“What does that—”

The sound of the drone whizzing by cut off Victoria mid-sentence. It appeared to continue ahead, but it stopped and came back to hover in front of them. Then it jumped ahead, then came back.

“I think it's trying to tell us something,” Victoria observed.

It was pretty obvious the drone wanted them to move forward. Liam stood and was ready to follow when he caught the sound of something behind them. The blue lights on the path far behind them started to wink out.

“Guys...”

They all looked behind. The lights continued to wink out, though it was random. One wink here. One there. Sometimes they'd come back on for a second, then die out again.

The drone actually bumped Liam in the back. His muscles locked up in fright, until he realized what it was.

“OK, guys. Droney says we've got to move. I'm gonna say we should run.”

Blue, as if in a dream, replied, “Those are people. Heading this way.”

Liam knew he had to move, but the surprise of the drone on his back and the sight of a crowd so thick it choked the lights behind them made him hesitate. The twins started to run. Victoria grabbed him by the arm.

“I'm following you,” she said.

“Yeah...we should run now.” He said it to her, but the words were meant for his legs. They weren't listening to his brain.

Luckily, Victoria pulled him.

They ran after the drone.

2

The cavern was immense. The large columns on the left continued as they ran. In a couple minutes, they came to the first body on the ground. Despite everything, the twins stopped when they reached it.

It was badly mangled and despite the blue ambiance, he knew the pool of liquid underneath the corpse was blood red. He'd seen lots of zombie remains over the past weeks—this one had been shot by a powerful caliber. It had ripped several holes in the torso and the killing shot was on the side of its head. A large piece of skull was missing.

On any other day, he might have lost his lunch at the sight.

This time he kept it together. “Keep running, guys.”

In moments, they saw more bodies. Then scores of them. Finally, hundreds. They were piled up in an arc from their left to their right. The bodies got so thick they had to step on them to keep moving forward.

Pink whimpered as the number of bodies increased. The stink grew in tandem.

Blue seemed to take it all in stride until she had to climb on the first one. “I...I don't know if I can do this. I don't know why, but I'm...”

Liam, already on a small pile of the dead, steadied himself by holding the belt of one of them, and turned around.

He wanted to be brave, but his speech started with an involuntary shiver. “Uh...I don't like this either.” A million thoughts scrambled his brain. He wondered if he should cajole them with kind words or yell at this with anger to get them moving. If he failed to inspire them, they might die. On the other hand—

“Fight or die, girls. We don't care.” Victoria pushed Liam from behind. “You, too. Keep moving.”

A hand reached out for his leg. When it grabbed him, he screamed like a girl.

Real smooth.

All the girls screamed in reply; Victoria recovered the fastest. She pushed him harder.

That got him moving. He fumbled with his spear, but he couldn't see the face of the one pawing at him. It would take time to find it, and digging through the bodies was low on his list right now.

He pulled his leg free, then continued across the pile of bodies. If the girls wanted to die back there, he couldn't do anything for them. His brain tried to square his feeling of wanting to save them with the reality of needing to save himself, and Victoria. The prodding of Victoria and the now-angry buzz of the drone nearby spurred him on.

The sounds of crying almost made him turn around, but Victoria whispered, “They're coming.” That kept him going forward, too.

The bodies were piled two or three deep, but he saw them spread out on the ground all around. It was darker here because they had collapsed on the blue strands of light. The path continued forward; he thought he saw a shape on the wall ahead—another large door.

Several red beams of light reached out of the darkness and converged on his chest.

When Victoria caught up to him, she tried to push him. This time, he couldn't move at all.

“I've got a problem here.” His voice was high-pitched, but he wasn't embarrassed. It was his extreme panic voice, though he tried with all he was worth to keep it together. “There are...lasers...aiming at my chest.”

Victoria, perhaps not believing him, scrambled next to him. When she arrived, a couple of the lasers moved to her white shirt, making large red blotches in the darkness.

With the force of a fist to his face, he realized where he was. Bodies everywhere, but mostly in an even arc from left to right, as if someone had sighted in the distance and shot anything that made it into that space.

He reached over to Victoria. “Can I have the flashlight, please?”

With mechanical motions, he was able to get it from her and turn it on. At first, it refused to light, but he banged it with his hand and a tired glow came forth. He turned it on the pile of dead, confirming his suspicions.

“These people were all shot. Look at them.” He panned the light on the bodies closest to them. It wasn't strong enough to see much beyond a few feet. All the bodies had terrible wounds. The amount of blood was sickening. He felt his stomach retch, though it was completely empty.

“These were zombies...” He said it almost with relief, though the implications were no less damning for them. Not with laser sights drilling into their hearts.

He turned to Victoria with the light. It was almost completely dead. In the final gasps though, he saw the recognition on her face. He felt it on his own. Together, they turned forward and screamed.

“We're alive!”

“Don't shoot!”

A few moments of silence followed.

The reply flew out of the darkness.

3

“Saffron! Azure! Get over here.”

The girls, sounding distant from over the pile of bodies, shouted back. “Indigo!”

They came up next to Liam and bear crawled over the worst of the pile. He followed them with Victoria next to him. The lasers vacillated among the four, as if unsure which to choose. With certain death behind, and the possibility of death dancing on his chest, he prayed.

Please God, don't let my friends die on a pile of zombie bodies.

He'd learned a lesson from Grandma Marty about praying. She once told him she never prayed for herself. Instead, she prayed for others. Liam wondered if she really meant that, or if it was some kind of adult way of making him think of other people first. Whatever the truth, he thought it made a lot of sense as he slid across the remains of the dead.

The bodies cleared up as they moved closer to the source of the lasers. The blue lights on the floor reemerged, and the overall lighting situation improved. Liam felt he was seldom surprised these days, so it was with almost businesslike recognition he saw the big machine guns lining the wall with the door. He counted six of them, spaced about ten feet apart. The farthest one was almost invisible to his left, out in the darkness.

A young girl stood in the small doorway to the right of the larger, closed metal door inset into the rock face. It was very much like the last big room he'd been in, although the smaller door was not frosted glass—it was heavy steel. A little light spilled out from inside, setting the girl in profile for those in the darkness. Liam knew the girl even before he could make out her features. She was, after all, as short as the two girls already with him.

Blue and Pink ran ahead to their sister. Liam grabbed Victoria's hand and followed.

“Hurry guys. We have to get inside. I'll turn on the guns again.” The triplets hugged briefly then disappeared from view.

Victoria had a knack for reading his mind. She voiced his thoughts with a close whisper. “Lucky that their sister is the one operating these guns, huh?”

He nodded, though she probably didn't see him in the darkness. He let her go up a couple steps to reach the doorway. When he mounted the steps, he turned around, wondering how close the zombie pursuit had come to reaching them.

He was genuinely shocked when a nearby gun barked several times as it fired. Its laser had found something at the edge of its awareness. The zombies had come very close to catching up. He threw himself through the doorway and shut it with a bang. He stood with his back against it to catch his wits, and heard more of the guns start up. The sound was muffled through the doorway. He could feel them as much as hear them.

“OK, this is too much. Who are you three?”

He was still at the door, but the three girls were nearby in front of a big computer monitor. They were talking to each other in a tight hug-huddle, apparently unaware he said anything.

The guns chugged outside the door, and he had a hard time separating himself from the metal. It was as if part of him wanted to be back there. Part of him wanted to get caught. He reveled in the vibrations from the machine guns.

Victoria looked lost. She stood between him and the other girls with her hands on her hips. She either wanted to peel him off the door, or listen to what the girls were saying.

Peel me off the door!

With a flourish, she turned to the big monitor near the girls. “My God. There's an infinite number of them!”

That got everyone's attention. Even Liam managed to free himself. The control room was very similar to the one they'd left earlier, though it had white lights on the walls, rather than deep blue. They seemed extra dim as if they only got half the electricity they required. Still, it was enough to see the third triplet. She was identical to the other two, of course, but was covered—absolutely covered—in dried and peeling blood. It was as if she took a bath in the stuff, and then picked off what she could from her skin, but was unable to get it out of her clothing. As he closed the distance, he thought she smelled horrible, though he couldn't say for sure as they were all covered in blood now from their climb over the kill zone.

The new girl took a moment to introduce herself. She reached her hand out to Liam. “Hi, I'm Indigo, but you can call me—”

“Black.”

The girl paused her handshake. “How did you know that?” She nodded to her sisters. “They tell you?”

“Yeah.” He wanted to believe they had agreed beforehand what they would call themselves in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse, but just thinking it sounded stupid in his head.

“We told him,” the other girls agreed.

They all gathered around the computer screen. It displayed a view from what was apparently a floating camera in the room outside.

“Is this the drone?” Liam asked.

He shivered again, involuntarily. He wrapped his arms around himself without thinking about it.

Black happened to look at him as he did it. “Yeah, it's cold down here. I thought about going out to get some extra clothes from those people, but...”

She turned back to the screen, describing what the drone was observing. “When I first saw you, I wondered how you'd gotten through that door back there. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you broke the glass. I would have done the same. But you could have at least blocked the second door.”

Liam knew they'd made a mistake.

“But that isn't the worst part. These people you see out there...” She put her finger on the computer screen to point to them. For the first time in his life, it didn't bother him. “...they came from across the courtyard.”

“Oh, I guess I should explain.” She punched up some keys and a map of the mine appeared. She again began to drag her finger around the screen.

“You guys came in the only door to this place. The one with the dump trucks. They get an A for effort on that one. F for delivery though.” A sad laugh. “So most of the people who came down into this wing of the mine went across the courtyard area where you came in. I don't know for sure, but I was told they keep some more dump trucks and other equipment over there. They like to have backups on every level.”

“Most went that way?” He asked.

“Yeah, a few people who work here tried to get everyone into that doorway. I wasn't going to go anywhere near a large group of people, especially not in an enclosed space. I went through the blue door. Plus, I was pretty messed up though after my—”

She looked away from everyone for a few seconds. “—my descent into this place.” She stood up and turned to her sisters. “I don't think Mom made it. She...she ran to get out of the mine. I had to run the other way or I would have died, too.”

Her sisters gave her a hug, and Victoria spoke up. “You did the right thing. I had to leave my friends behind. It sucked.” She put her hand on the scrum of girls. A hand reached out in thanks.

Liam's eyes returned to the monitor. He sat down at the terminal and cleared the map. He brought up the screen showing the scene outside. The drone watched as more and more zombies arrived at the bodies of their friends and continued on, unaware what was ahead. A small rise of bodies formed in the middle. It created a rudimentary defilade for those coming up behind the leaders. Many of the clumsy things fell over their mates and sort of crawl-walked onto the pile. This kept them low enough to avoid the bullets of the automated guns. They sought targets elsewhere.

The guns continued to fire, but many rounds went over the backs of those slithering across the pre-sighted killbox. In minutes, those same crawling zombies crested the little rise. Some were shot on sight, but others slid down the other bodies. Even if they took a bullet, they continued—unless it was a headshot. The guns had to readjust constantly. They weren't smart enough to aim for the head, but by the sheer numbers of bullets, they often did hit their head.

The controls for moving the drone were labeled on the screen. With the mouse and keyboard, he quickly learned the basic maneuvers so he could turn the drone to face the guns. About half of them turned on their automated paths, but they weren't firing.

“Uh oh.”

The girls had all turned to watch him work, and he heard mumbles of curses. They all saw how this game would end. On a whim, he asked Black if the drone had a gun.

“Nope. They told me it was just a camera.”

He turned to her, looking up. Even from the chair, he didn't have to look up very far.

“Who told you? Where are they?”

Black looked at him with a serious face.

“Yeah.” She dragged out the word, as if hesitant to get into it. “About that...”

4

“So, I said I broke off from the main group. I came through the blue door and the computer room there. I hid under the desks for a long time. Days, maybe. But I had to find water. I wasn't going back out the way I'd come. I was convinced there were infected just outside...”

She pointed to the computer screen with the drone footage. Only a couple of the guns still had ammunition.

“I ran deeper into the mine, and I came through there. But back then, there were no dead bodies. Just a couple soldiers inside this room, watching things on the outside, just like we're doing here.”

The second-to-last gun dropped out of action.

“Timothy and Frank. Ha! I'll never forget their names for as long as I live. We spent days in this room. For a long time, we sat doing nothing. They gave themselves time on the computer, but they said I didn't have clearance. Sometimes they showed me the news of the plague up top from websites they liked, but mostly I just hung around. They wouldn't let me go deeper into the mine—through that door.” She pointed to the inside door of the control room. “At least not at first.”

“Days went by, but eventually the dead started to show up. The guns started to shoot. It wasn't constant, but hour after hour the guns would go off. They had a drone they used to do surveillance of the columbarium, but they brought it in so they could see into the room you just came through.”

“Columbarium?” Victoria again anticipated his own question.

“Yeah, it's what they called this room.” She pointed to the dark windows on the far wall. “I think it means it's where they store ashes of the dead.”

Liam's dry mouth reminded him of another point. “Do you have any water here?”

Black pointed to some hard hats in the corner. “We filled up those hats with water, help yourself. There's plenty in the mine, as long as the dead aren't nearby.”

The whole party drank from the hats, as Black continued.

“Anyway, they told me what was through there, but they refused to show me. They were more scared of what was back there than they were of the dead piling up at our front door.”

She got up and moved to the interior door. Like the previous control room, the wall was made up of large windows, and the light of the room spilled out into another large cavern. The large metal door for trucks was just outside the window. Liam wondered how many big rooms were in the system. He didn't recall seeing many chambers beyond the first on the map.

“Then the Army came. A few days ago.”

“The Army?” Blue lit up. “Are they here to rescue us?”

“I wish,” Black replied. They somehow tapped into the feed on the drone and told the boys they were coming in. They got really weird though. Said I had to hide, just for my own safety. We argued, of course—I didn't want to hide when rescue was so close. But they pulled guns on me. Threatened me. So they let me out into the next room and gave me a light and told me to go find a quiet place and stay silent.”

“None of it made sense. Until I heard the shooting. I saw the Army guys come through the control room. Three of them. They just kept going into this room, then they disappeared in the darkness. I haven't seen them since.”

Liam realized what she was saying. “They're still here? How long ago was that?”

Black turned around, facing the room. “That was yesterday.” She held up her arm and pointed to her wristwatch. “This was Timothy's. I took it from his body.”

None of it made any sense.

“So the Army came through, and killed the Army guys?”

“Nope,” Black replied, “they weren't Army. Neither group was, it turns out. Just a bunch of boys pretending. Doing work for their bosses up there.” She pointed up, her meaning clear. “Timothy was still alive when I found him. He told me why he'd been killed. He told me what he was protecting. It was why the other group had come here.” She was thumbing in the direction out the window.

“What, Black? What were they protecting in there?” Blue asked.

“It sounds cliche but you really have to see it for yourself. Words don't do it justice.”

She collected herself, then made like she was going to open the door. She pulled a lever on the wall. Lights in the larger room started to spark. “It will take the lights a while to warm up. We'll get out there just in time to see them come on.”

On the computer monitor, Liam noticed all the guns outside had stopped firing. Somewhere along the way, he failed to notice the lack of gunfire outside the room. But he still jumped when the banging began on the metal door.

Black saw he was looking at the drone footage. The screen showed the other side of the door. More and more zombies stacked up in the frame. The front cadre beat on the door with great force, though for once, Liam felt confident they could not break it down no matter how many were out there. Only a few could assault the door at the same time because of the small flight of steps leading to it.

Black returned to the terminal. With the mouse, she whisked the drone into the darkness and landed it. “We need to save its power in case we need it later. I don't think we can grab it through the door anymore to recharge it.” She laughed a little, though the implications were anything but funny.

On her feet again, she moved to the interior door. “Hurry, guys. You've got to see this as the lights come on.”

“But you said the Army guys are still out there, somewhere, right?” Liam was concerned they were about to be ambushed.

“They aren't Army. And yes, they are still in the room. But they won't give us any trouble. I took care of them.”

Without waiting for a reply, she ran out the door.

“Come on, hurry!”

5

Liam followed Black's two sisters, with Victoria in tow. Nothing made any sense. He thought it was the lack of proper light playing tricks on his mind. Everything seemed out of balance in the darkness, low lights, and long shadows everywhere.

And the heat. The new cave was a raw shock. Hotter and drier than the summer day outside.

Ahead, Black flicked on a high-powered flashlight as she jogged. The room was larger than the last one, or at least higher. He saw the glint of metal hovering on each side of him, though he couldn't make out the shapes. On the walls and columns of the room, lights began to flicker. They reminded him of the ancient lights in his high school gymnasium. They seemed to take an eternity to light up. His teachers were always hesitant to turn off the lights for short periods of time, because they took so long to come back on.

They were coming on now.

“Hurry! We're almost there.”

She was twenty-five yards ahead, but Liam saw her come to a stop. She turned out her flashlight, but there was a low light from the cumulative effect of all the lights around them starting to come on.

They arrived together in what turned out to be a large intersection in the center of an incredible interior space hollowed out of solid limestone. He was covered in sweat from just a few minutes of running.

Black spoke. “Some dumbass got the idea a quarry would be a safe place to go in the event the dead started to walk the earth. Timothy said it was because of some TV show about zombies—those fake people hid in a mine and made it look easy. But people who came into this mine never found safety.” She paused dramatically, apparently because she was being dramatic. “And this is why.”

The lights remained dim, but Liam could now see most of the cavern. Indeed, it was a cavern. It was much bigger than he imagined—hundreds of yards in every direction from where they stood. They were smack in the middle. A row of raw stone columns extended along an axis he imagined as north and south and another went east and west. They'd come up the north-south axis. The ceiling was probably forty feet above the solid rock under their feet in every direction.

And as far as he could see in every direction, the floor was crammed with tanks. Genuine armored fighting vehicles. Parked in tidy rows.

Victoria whistled.

Liam was speechless.

The lights continued to brighten. Each degree of brightness seemed to reveal another row of tanks further in the distance.

Black continued with her dramatic revelation. “Timothy told me he was part of a group fighting the people who released the plague. These tanks would eventually be used to take back the land stolen by those people. You know, so the United States could rebuild.”

Liam still had no response to the number of tanks arrayed before him. He believed he was somewhat of an expert in tanks—he'd played military-themed games over the years—but he only recognized some of the models.

In front of him, he saw line after line of the M1A2 Abrams. It was the main battle tank of the U.S. military, and one of them had recently saved him and Grandma from the advancing zombies. He remembered them well. But he also saw tanks he pictured as being from World War II. Sherman tanks. They were endless. He turned around and saw other models he thought he knew, but wasn't sure. One long row appeared to be Russian. He might even see a short row of German tanks. How they were here, he couldn't even guess. To what end?

He was dizzy at the sight of the tank farm. If any Army could get all these tanks working, even if they just got the Abrams tanks working, they would be unstoppable.

A snippet of his conversation with Duchesne popped into his head. He mentioned people waiting in their bunkers until the time was right to rebuild. Government functionaries, business leaders, corporate cabals, and the heads of state. All of them were sitting in safety somewhere. Is this what they would use when they reclaimed the country?

“I wanted to kill these guys, but I didn't have it in me. The Patriot Snowballers might have unleashed the plague, but I don't think these three pushed the button to do it.” She had walked toward the first row of Abrams tanks but pointed to a second row of older models behind them. “I couldn't get some of these newer tanks opened, so I put them inside one of those in that row and roped off the hatches.”

Liam's head spun.

“Wait a second, wait just a second. Do you mean to tell me the Patriot people released the plague?”

“Yeah, Timothy talked about it all the time. Showed it to me on his news websites. They marched on Washington D.C., and wrote out their demands. They wanted the President to give up his term. They wanted to strengthen the Tenth Amendment—something about States having more rights. They basically claimed to want to go back to 1776 and start over. Naturally, the President refused. And when he did, the Snowballers just released the plague along with their manifesto, claiming that if they couldn't have the government they wanted, they'd just blast the world back to the Stone Age so they could start over and make things better. Can you believe that shit?”

It was the exact opposite story he'd heard from Hayes and Duchesne. They had said it was the President who had released the plague, because he wanted to kill the Snowballers marching on his seat of power.

Both sounded reasonable, except for one little detail. The list of names of his family. Anyone related to Rose Peters—his grandma from Colorado. She'd helped the Patriots along. She'd—

His mind threw out a curveball. Something so far-fetched he wanted to laugh. A laugh wouldn't come out in the face of so many tanks. This had grown much bigger than a world-ending plague.

What if they targeted my family because they thought we were the terrorists.

And, taking it to the logical conclusion…

Grandma Rose released the plague, making the rest of her family enemies of the state.

It sounded absurd. But then, so did zombies. So did everything he'd heard in the past few weeks. Multiple viruses. Grandma's visions. Just being here in this room. It was all absurd for a teenager who, until recently, spent all his time playing fantasy-based video games. Now those fantasy games seemed like pale imitations.

“No, that's not right.” Victoria started to speak up, but Liam caught her.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?” He didn't give her a chance to respond. He pulled her backward, away from the triplets.

Over his shoulder, he called, “We'll be right back.”

When he thought they had enough space, he spoke quietly.

“My dad had flags of a Polar Bear in his ammo room. That person on the computer said my dad was friends with the Patriot guy we passed on the ridge. And Duchesne admitted it was the President who released the plague on them. If we tell Black we have sympathies with the Snowballers, she might throw us in a tank, too.”

Victoria's reply wasn't what he expected. “Do we have sympathies with them? What if Black is right? How can we be sure?”

“No! We don't—” He said it too loud, but he was angry she would even suggest such a thing.

“Shhh! Take it easy. I was only playing devil's advocate. I've met four members of your family; you aren't the type to release a plague.” She laughed while holding his hand firmly.

His hackles laid back down. To be fair, he tested the devil's idea. His brain processed an image of Grandma Rose pouring out a vial of glowing green goo into the drinking reservoir of a big city. Then he tried to analyze whether it was possible. He tried to square that with the image of that same Grandma running to rescue him from drowning all those years ago. The math didn't add up.

“No, my Grandma would never have done that. The Snowballers have to be the good guys. And anyway the colonel said the plague started overseas. He never mentioned patriots or presidents.”

A voice called out from behind them. It was one of the triplets, but Liam couldn't identify which. They all sounded the same, he'd decided.

“They got out!”

Liam found himself in a strange place. He was happy the good guys escaped, but he was cavorting with the girl who had somehow captured them. That made him a potential enemy, rather than a friend.

He felt exposed standing in the open, so he grabbed Victoria and ushered her between two of the big Abrams tanks.

Right into the barrel of a gun. It was attached to a Patriot.

6

“Don't say a word. I don't want to hurt you two.”

Liam raised his arms, spear in hand. He backed up to be next to Victoria. Together, they barely fit in the space between the two tanks.

“Liam? Victoria?” A girl called loudly for them.

A long period of silence ensued. Part of him imagined the triplets running in and out of the tanks like bad-ass video game avatars from World of Undead Soldiers. This scenario would fit well in the game. Survive at all costs, save your captured friends. But the whole episode ended with a bit more realism than his game.

A male voice called out. “We've got them, Dave.”

The man pointing the rifle at them motioned to Liam. “Go ahead, let's go see what we can see.”

He grabbed Victoria's hand as they backed out. The three girls were several tanks down the row, sitting on the ground with their hands on their heads. They looked beaten.

Black saw them. “Sorry guys, I didn't know there was a hatch on the bottoms of those older tanks.”

“It's OK,” Liam said. “I think these are the good guys.”

“What? No! They killed Tim and Frank.”

The guy behind Liam spoke loudly toward the girls ahead. “They tried to shoot us. We didn't want to kill them.”

To Liam—or no one in particular—the man grumbled: “We should be killing those dead things, instead of each other.”

“Amen, brother,” is what came out of Liam's mouth. After he'd said it, he waited for a response. The man became quiet as they walked the remaining distance to the girls. Liam and Victoria took a seat with them.

“I heard these two talking about being with the Bears, Clarence. Said his father's one.”

“We can't take a chance. Maybe it's a trick. Those last two guys almost tricked us, too.”

Dave seemed uninterested in pushing the issue.

Liam was also unsure he wanted to push the issue. If they were truly Patriots, he believed they'd come to no harm. However, if they were part of the NIS, or just about any other government agency, they might come to harm for being associated with an anti-government group. Especially if the official word going around was that they were responsible for releasing the plague on everyone else. He had to admit, it was brilliant propaganda. Foment unrest against the citizens so they, the agents of the government, could swoop in and pick up the pieces. But he knew it was never that simple. There were plenty of good guys in government, too. There was no litmus test to determine the good guys from the bad, except by their actions. So far, this group of men had been treated like criminals. Would they reciprocate?

The guy who seemed to be the leader, Clarence, spoke softly to the five of them. “Look, I'm not going to do anything to hurt you kids. I'm sorry we killed your friends, but look at this place. Why do you think they were guarding this?”

Black spoke up. “They said you were coming to take it over.”

The man released a hearty guffaw. “Me, and what army? What am I gonna do, drive each tank out of here and come back for the next. It would take me ten lifetimes. That doesn't include the time it would take to get these relics started and then clear all the cars outside.”

It made sense to Liam. “Then why did you come through here, if not for the tanks?”

“Your crafty friend delayed us, but we're going to finish our mission. It's just down the road.” He pointed ahead, deeper into the tank room. “I'll let you come with, but you have to surrender all your guns.”

Liam looked at all the girls, settling on Black. She had to be armed, though she didn't display any weapons. How else could she have ordered these men into the tank?

Victoria let them know she was going to pull out the Glock. She set it down behind her. Liam watched as the man picked it up and stuck it into his waistband.

Black also pulled out a gun. She carelessly tossed it behind her. The leader picked it up with a quiet laugh.

“You can keep the hand tools. Never know when the infected are going to jump out. But if you try to use those on us, we won't be stingy with our bullets. Deal?”

Black seemed to speak for the triplets. She agreed with a forlorn, “Yeahhh.”

Liam was quick with his own affirmation. He took comfort, no matter how small, in holding his spear.

“Then let's get started. You guys walk that way. We'll follow.”

The triplets led them all. When they crossed the east-west axis, they had to step over an inset pair of railroad tracks. To the left, hundreds of yards down the tracks, Liam could see an industrial-sized metal door. To the right, the tracks went under another door in the distance. But there was a short train parked on the line. It faced the other way, but it pulled several flat cars loaded with tanks he recognized: World War II vintage Tiger tanks.

“Oh man.” Liam stopped at the sight and pointed. “Those. Those tanks are rare.”

Clarence backed him up. “That explains how they get them in and out.” He looked at Black. “Well, maybe I could finish the job of taking all these tanks if I had a train.”

Liam heard her sarcastically laugh behind him.

Everyone had stopped in the main intersection of the room. Liam wore his desire to see the train on his face, and Clarence seemed to share his curiosity.

“Let's check it out.”

A short ways down the tracks they passed a number of different models of tanks. Each row ended at the aisle so they could see each tank in profile. Liam hardly recognized any of them, but he knew the distinctive German Tiger. They came to a section that had been cleared out. A good number of Tigers were gone from their assigned row. Based on the numbers of missing, and the tanks on the train, more than a few had been used somewhere else...or they were being brought in.

“Where are they taking them?” Victoria asked the group, to no avail.

Everyone moved past two flatbed cars toward the engine. Liam was disturbed to see blood all over the pair of tank haulers. Like there'd been a battle here.

He walked along past the flats and saw the side of the engine. It was painted a happy bright orange and looked like the engines that pulled his train out of St. Louis. In fact—

“Damn. It says Valkyrie.” He saw the name in black lettering stenciled on the side of the engine, just as it was on his train. This was his.

“You know this train?” Clarence seemed impressed.

“Victoria and I rode this. Well, these two engines pulled our train out of St. Louis on day three. I remember because it was named Valkyrie.” He pointed to the moniker. “We left it at the end of the tracks at a blown bridge. Not far from here. Someone must have brought it back, and put it to work. And I think...”

He walked a few yards back to the flat car, looked, and then nodded. “Yep, these flatcars are the same. This blood is dried. It's ten-something days old.”

“What's a Valkyrie? Isn't it some kind of angel?” Pink asked her sisters. They'd mentioned reading a lot, so it didn't surprise him Blue had the answer: “Valkyries are from Norse mythology. They had something to do with taking slain warriors to Valhalla, if I remember right.”

“What does it have to do with a train?” Liam asked rhetorically. No one had an answer.

They spent a few minutes looking around, but the only point of interest was the large metal door far down the tracks. Somehow it had to be opened to let the trains in and out.

“All right, this is interesting and all, but we need to keep moving. I'm two days behind schedule.” Clarence got them back on the main path. Ten minutes later, they had crossed the room and stood before a hole in the wall. It was about as big as pickup truck and carved right into the rock face. Vehicles had gone in and out, as the dual tracks were obvious on the ground.

“Through there.” The men each had flashlights on their rifles. They turned them on as they walked out of the light of the tank room. They entered a dark chamber with a low ceiling. It was low enough Liam could touch it if he wanted, though he wasn't brave enough to try it with three guns pointed at his back. The tanks were practically cheery in comparison to the dark space they were entering.

Clarence spoke once they were all inside. “The tanks aren't why we're here. They surprised us as much as they did you. Whoever put those in here had been doing it for a long time. The Tigers on that train are from the Second World War. Many others are American tanks from that war. Probably built in factories right here in St. Louis and then stored here. But the people who put the tanks here were also playing around with something else,” he added dramatically.

He swung his flashlight around. The walls were rough cut by mining equipment. The whole area looked like it was done in a hasty fashion. Large chunks of stone dotted the floor as if they'd been left in a hurried retreat. Several strange-looking pieces of digging equipment hid in the shadows in the corner. Parked until needed.

“Here we go. Here's one.” Liam looked up where the man pointed his light. Something had been carved out of the ceiling. It was a hole about the dimensions of a motorcycle, though that made no sense. As the light of the flashlight bounced inside the hole, he looked up and saw a long wooden plank above, sealing the roof of the hole maybe ten feet above. He imagined he was looking up at the underside of the floor of someone's rustic log cabin.

“What is it?” His curiosity always beat out his own safety.

“Look around the room. What do you see?”

The lights of the guns swept the room. Several more holes on the ceiling were apparent. They were dark shadows dripping down into the room from above.

And yet, they were not random. Liam got his bearings and saw they made neat lines, starting with the one they'd reached first. It was a corner, just as the tanks had made a corner where the rows met.

Found him down in a quarry.

Next door to the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.

These tunnels go on for miles.

The reality snapped in place. Liam saw the rows for what they were.

“Oh my God.”

He felt the eyes of the girls on him.

“We're underneath the cemetery. They were digging out the bodies from down here. This is just as McMurphy imagined.”

To his left, the empty holes in the ceiling went on for as far as the powerful flashlight could reach.

Chapter 13: Dragon's Teeth

Liam sat on a large rock just outside the room one of the men had dubbed “the drop out room” because whoever was in charge here had drilled through solid rock up to the bottoms of the military coffins in the National Cemetery, then brought down the remains.

When he discovered the pile of broken coffins and discarded artifacts of the soldiers, he couldn't take it. He had to get out, back to the light of the tank room.

At least this room makes sense.

The lights were bright enough he could see all the but furthest corners of the big cavern. Tanks of every color stared silently back at him.

“Still think the Patriots are the good guys?” It was Black. Her two sisters followed her through the gap in the wall. Pink sat on a nearby rock while Blue and Black stood next to each other. They had ganged up on him.

“They're here to find bodies in there, aren't they? They're going to use them to spread the infection. I heard what that guy said. Your dad was part of the Patriot Snowball movement. He helped kill the world.”

Liam was too stunned to respond.

Blue added, “I—I appreciate what you did to save Pink. But you have to see how awful those Patriot people are.”

Black seemed to think on that. Eventually she added, “Yeah, thanks for saving her. But when we get out of here, me and my sisters will be on our way. We don't want to spend any more time with y'all and your people.”

Liam didn't know how to take that. While he fashioned a reply, Victoria walked out of the drop out room. She'd been lingering with the three men as they swept the room.

She took a knee right next to Liam, but spoke loud enough so they could all hear.

“They're still looking for something back there. They won't tell me what, but it would make sense they're looking for whatever was in those coffins that got broken open.”

Liam, unable to formulate a proper reply to the girls, turned instead to Victoria. “I'm sorry, I couldn't stay in there. Someone broke open those coffins. The thought—they must have taken the bodies right out of those boxes and threw down everything else.”

Noting the girls nearby, he continued, “And these three seem to believe my dad has some involvement in all this.” He swept his hand between the tanks and the drop out room. “As if he could have desecrated graves like that.”

Victoria turned to the other girls, but didn't say anything.

Pink spoke to the whole group. Her voice and mannerisms were more reserved than her sisters. “I want to say something. You guys wouldn't believe where I've been if I told you. I've seen zombies crush the life out of one individual and I've seen them swarm over whole crowds. I've, like, seen them scrunch themselves into small metal ducts, and I've seen them spread out across vast open spaces. I—” She choked up, and as she did so, Blue moved back to comfort her. “I'm OK. I saw those sick people slither out of a tipped barge on that muddy bank. I thought that's where I was gonna die...”

She'd been talking while looking down, but now looked over to Liam. “But those two...came along and pulled me out of that mud. They could have kept on driving and left me for dead, no questions asked. But they stopped.” She smiled weakly at Liam. “And...I've been watching him every minute since then. He hasn't said a mean thing about anyone, even that icky captain guy. He treats his girlfriend with respect. He got us this far into the mine. He helped us find you.” She pointed to Black. “I don't think he could have anything to do with the people who, like, released the plague and stuff.”

Black stepped closer to her, and spoke quietly. “That's not what I'm saying 'sis. He may be a good guy, but his father, and those three in the other room, aren't. We gotta be Valkyries—just like the name on that train engine. Strong. Fighters. Independent. We can't be anywhere near him or them, or those guys are gonna get us in trouble. Maybe hurt us.”

The two looked at Blue, as if she carried the most important vote. Liam couldn't see her expression as she was turned the other way, but he heard her soft voice. “He rescued me too. I was dead.” She paused a long time. “As good as dead, I think. And Cairo was a flurry of activity with the military and people digging in to protect the town. I didn't see any Snowball people there, so they weren't the ones rebuilding. But I've not seen Liam or Victoria do anything that suggests they aren't honest people. I think he's telling the truth. At least he doesn't think his father is involved in spreading the plague.”

Better than nothing.

He felt he should be doing a better job of defending the Patriots, but he had no evidence beyond what he already believed to be true. His dad would never align with any group that released biological weapons upon mankind. He'd been in the presence of two men who had every opportunity to lay blame on the Snowball movement, and both admitted it was someone in the U.S. Government who released the plague to kill the Patriot march, not the other way around. But of course he wasn't recording his conversations to be able to prove it.

Black, still conversing with her sisters, asked, “All right, so then do we stick with these people when we get out, or get the hell out of their sight? I vote we run.”

The question hung on the hot, dry air.

2

The three men stormed out of the drop out room.

“Any of you kids have food? I'm starving.” It was Dave.

Clarence was a few steps behind. He ignored the question. “We've got to go.”

“Did you find what you're looking for,” Liam asked.

Clarence stopped nearby. “Nothing's left. They took the bodies somewhere. We have to get back and report our findings.”

“Can we come with?” Victoria asked. When she saw Liam look at her, she continued. “What? I want to stick by the guys with the guns.” She left it at that.

Clarence ran a finger over his lips while he considered her request. “We'll get you out of the mine. I don't want it on my conscience I let five kids die, but you should consider being more careful—stick with some adults. Things are dangerous now.”

Liam laughed internally at the towering irony in that statement. As if they only just now realized the danger because some older fellow pointed it out. He wanted to reply with all the dangerous things he'd survived since the sirens, but he knew it wouldn't help their plans to escape. It turns out, in this case, they did need the help of adults. Or lots of kids with guns, though none of those were nearby.

Victoria coughed, and Liam thought he detected a hint of a laugh within.

“Yeah, so we'll help you get to the surface with us, but then you're on your own. We, uhh, have somewhere to be.”

“A secret meeting, huh?”

Clarence turned to Victoria. “Yeah, something like that.” Then he motioned to the entire group to circle around him. He pointed to his third man. “Travis here has an idea.”

Travis began. “When we came in, we had a map of the entire mine. We took it from one of the offices up top. It was a large roll with many pages. I threw out what wasn't on our route so I could keep this one.”

He pulled out a folded square map that was about four feet across. He showed it to them, then walked to a nearby tank chassis so he could lay it flat on the angled front hull. They all drifted to stand in front of the display.

M60 Patton. That was the model of the tank stenciled in white lettering beneath the turret. Instead of the traditional white star of the US Army, it carried a big white “V” on the side of the turret.

Travis began by pointing to his map. “This is how we came in. If you came in through the front door, you probably came the same way.” He showed them the series of tunnels, noting they were all clogged with family sedans right now.

Liam really wanted to get a tank started, roll over all those cars, and then just keep going up and out of the spiral of death. He tried to listen, though exhaustion took a toll on him, and the heat wasn't helping. Victoria's hand was on his back, propping him up, he imagined.

“And then we all came into the room blocked by those dump trucks.” He pointed to the room on the map. “You can see it actually has four entrances. The first is the one blocked by the trucks. The next is the one with the blue door, where we all went through. But the next one goes deeper into the production part of the mine, while the last one—across from the blue door—is where we think we might be able to escape.” He turned, pointing to the sisters. “Did any of you see survivors when you came in?”

Black, the one in the mine the longest, said the only two people she met after the initial sprint into the pit were the soldiers guarding the computer room. Everyone else must have found refuge in some of the chambers closer to the entrance. At least, that was her best guess.

Blue and Pink saw the same number of survivors as Liam—one. And he was homicidal.

“OK, so maybe we'll get lucky. If no other survivors got into that room, and if none of the infected followed them in, we might be able to escape through there.” He jabbed his finger at the room. Liam noticed it was near the edge of the sheet. A dotted line continued beyond, signifying the system joined another map sheet.

“And what's beyond that room, huh?” Black asked.

“Well, that's just it. It's literally off the map. But look here.” He held up the map, folding it in such a way he could look at the tiny text of the map up close. “Right here. It says 'to original mine and opening.'”

Liam saw it. They all did. Plain text and clear meaning. But he didn't like the middle part of the plan.

“So, I see where we are. I see where we need to go, but how to do we get past all those zombies sitting outside the door of the computer room now?” He explained where they'd left the horde.

Travis looked at Clarence, sharing the question.

For a long time, Clarence looked at the map as Travis held it, then he took it for himself to study it. The group began drifting apart, as if to wait for the word when they'd be summoned once more. It wasn't long.

“I'd never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad we found five healthy kids. You guys are going to save all our bacon on this.”

I'm not going to like this.

3

Liam was right. As was typical for planning during the Apocalypse, the plan sucked. But, he allowed that it did make sense if they had any hope of surviving the horde of zombies now lounging with the dead machine guns.

He held both of Victoria's hands with his own. “You ready for another crazy plan?”

“There isn't one piece of the plan I like. I especially don't like the part where we separate. Please promise you'll come back to me. I can't bear to think of doing this alone.”

The sweat pouring from her forehead wasn't just from the heat. She shared his nervous energy and anticipation. But, saying something positive was crucial because there was no way to sit out the escape. No rescue was coming.

“Do you remember when we first met, and I was as nervous as a new kid on my first day of school?”

“Of course. You made Grandma run over my hand and then you stammered through the next five minutes of conversation before you settled down. I thought it was kind of cute how nervous you were.” She giggled softly, allowing the humor in.

“Right, well I never told you what it was that calmed me down. Can you guess? It's something on you.”

She shook her head no, but looked down at herself. “I'm wearing all different clothes—thank God—so I'm not sure what it could have been.”

Liam saw his opening. “Thank God you have one thing on the same.” He pointed to her silver necklace. “This necklace. I can't explain it. When I saw it that first time, it made realize you were one of the good guys in a world gone bad. I couldn't possibly be intimidated or nervous around someone like that.”

He smiled broadly at her. “Though I'm still not positive what I believe. I believe there has to be a God out there, but I'm beginning to think maybe he isn't very interested in the mess we've created here.” He pointed to the nearby room. “Nobody who believes in God could have ripped those bodies out of their graves like that. I think we're dealing with true evil. Though they aren't demons or devils with pitchforks. They are people who have gone rotten.”

Their eyes locked.

“Look, my point is that you and your faith were a big reason I was able to survive this far. I need you to keep that up. Keep inspiring me to look for God in all this. I need to believe this isn't all for nothing. If you can do that, I promise you I'll never stop trying to get us out of these crazy situations.”

He thought she was going to lean in and kiss him. But before he could embrace her, Black interjected. “What kind of bullshit are you feeding each other? God? An all-powerful being pulling the levers and waiting for prayers just so he can answer them? Do you hear yourselves?” She laughed with definite malice.

Victoria shot back, “So what do you believe? If anything?”

“I don't believe there's a man in a chair up there, lording over all of us. I don't believe there's anything up there. It's just us. You, me, the people who released the plague. The people fighting it. Maybe this is good versus bad, but not God versus the Devil. That sound ridiculous.”

She pointed to her sisters. “We were brought up to think for ourselves. Take responsibility for our own choices—good or bad—and not blame them on others, or expect others to fix our problems.”

Blue nodded, though Liam thought he saw a flicker of disagreement in Pink's eyes. Still, they were getting nowhere with a religious discussion inside the Mine of Death.

“Hey, guys. Can we save this for another time? We have a job to do.” He hated to cut off Victoria as she appeared to be gearing up for an argument, which he was prepared to see through to the end, but not right now.

He pulled Victoria away from the others and after a brief pause for her to catch her breath, he kept her occupied with her new job.

“So we need to go in there and get some of those wooden boxes, you ready? I can't do it without you.” Something about them freaked him out.

Victoria nodded her head, then the whole group went into the drop out room and began dragging out the broken caskets. They put them in a pile very near the first row of tanks outside that room. Liam absolutely refused to touch anything else in the pile of artifacts left by those who desecrated the graves in the first place. None of the others seemed willing to test that taboo either. When they were done, they had a pile eight feet high with about twenty wooden caskets of varying quality.

“You ready, folks?” Clarence looked at the kids.

No one said no, though no one said yes, either. He took that as his cue.

He handed a lighter to Liam. “Give us twenty minutes to get to the doors, then light this pile.”

“Good luck everyone.” Then, with as much humor as he could muster, Clarence ended with, “Don't leave without us, huh?”

The girls might have laughed. Liam did not.

We need you guys. You have the guns.

4

Liam's brow dripped with sweat as he tried to light the fire. A small flame danced in the husk of one of the coffins. He prayed it would spread soon to the rest of the pile of kindling so they could ensure the plan would work as it was intended.

As he blew into the flames, he checked the shoes of his companions. Victoria was the most prepared. She wore her snazzy yellow running shoes she'd gotten back in Cairo. Blue had a decent pair of sneakers as well. Pink had a mangled pair of tennis shoes—she managed to keep them from being removed from her feet by the grabby mud. They looked like hell, but at least she could walk in them.

Black's shoes were the worst. Her boots were two sizes too large, and went half way up her shins.

Liam caught her attention, then nodded at her feet. “Nice boots.” He forced a smile, but his concern was deadly serious. Anyone without good shoes would have trouble with a plan that included running for your life.

“I came into the mine with no shoes. My watch isn't the only thing I took from Timothy.”

The fire began to catch. There was no going back. He threw some larger pieces on the fire and the dried wood caught and spread like mad. In just a few minutes, the fire had exploded over the entire pile.

Job one, done.

Far across the cavern, they waited for the next phase of their escape to kick in. And, almost as if they'd planned it, two men came running out of the dark tunnel and jumped up onto a tank, and then climbed inside. Even from hundreds of yards away, their fear was palpable.

“Where's the third one?” One of the girls spoke, but he couldn't tell who. His entire focus was on the opening.

The last man came running out of the tunnel, but he was chased by one of the fast zombies. The man ignored the tank, perhaps sure he couldn't make it to safety. Instead, he ran for the fire. In moments, the black hole belched out more of the dead. They weren't running, thank God, but there were so many, it probably wouldn't matter.

The signal fire turned out to be superfluous. The running man—he still couldn't tell which one—brought in all the zombies anyway.

A slice of panic cut through Liam. He steadied himself by looking at the fire, then he turned to the girls.

“We all know what to do. Let the zombies get into the room, let them get close to us, then get lost in the tanks and run out that door.” He pointed behind him, to the door currently full of zombies.

Victoria gave a weak smile. She'd picked up a stout metal bar that had once been attached to a coffin. The other girls just stared at the doorway behind him, each holding their own hand-to-hand weapon.

His spear felt totally inadequate for what he needed to do, but at least it was something.

When he reached the halfway point across the room, Liam was sure it was Clarence. The slightly older man had slowed down considerably. He was clutching his waist as if he had a bad cramp. He turned around once, then changed course to try to jump on one of the large Abrams tanks. He managed to scramble up to the main deck, but he was unable to get the hatch open before the running zombie bounded up and sprang onto the deck with him.

He pulled out his sidearm and managed to put the zombie down with two shots. Then he crawled to the top of the turret, opened the top hatch, and fell inside. The portal was closed as the faster of the walking zombies found the tank and started banging on the exterior.

The wave continued to wash around that tank. It headed for Liam's fire down the middle corridor of the room.

“We got this,” he said, mostly to seem brave.

“Just zig zag through the tanks and make your way back to safety. Easy!”

He knew that was a lie, but what else could he say. “We're all gonna get caught. Nice knowin' ya!”

He started to scream and yell at the zombies, ensuring the greatest number continued to push into the big space. For the plan to work, they needed the zombies to move toward the fire so there were fewer of them on the side with the exit.

Where did all these zombies come from?

He'd seen zombies get out of some of the cars while on the way in, but the numbers had swelled. Now if he cared to count them, he'd wager they were in the thousands. Almost every one headed their way.

They let them get to within about fifty yards. Close enough they were spotted. The zombies ramped up their moaning when they saw fresh food. They were off-the-chain loud with hunger groans and shouts. Liam felt his stomach quiver in fear, but he caught himself before he lost control.

To Victoria he shouted, “I love you!”

She replied, “I love you too, Liam. Don't stop running!”

They each took off to the right. Victoria went into the first column of tanks while he ran on the outer wall for another twenty-five yards and then stopped.

This is where I may ruin my shorts.

He waited. He could see Blue running in the opposite direction from him along the outer wall. Her job, like his, was to get the zombies to follow them up the columns of tanks so they'd get as far into the room as possible. Then all the runners were going to cut back to the door by running on the outer wall near the last row of tanks. He and Victoria had gone right. The sisters all went left.

The first zombie stumbled and fell as he got around the corner tank, nearest the fire. Liam almost felt sorry for it. It seemed to take a long time to push itself off the floor and then stand upright. With an almost comic timing, it noticed Liam and snapped its head sideways as if it was upset its tumble had been noticed. Others were soon behind it, and the chase was on.

5

Liam's plan was supposed to be simple. Run to the corner of the room, turn, then run the length of the room, turn, then run to the door. Getting to the corner was easy. With adequate lighting and his runner's form, he easily outpaced the clumsy zombies by a wide mile. But again, he had to wait so the zombies got a good look at him. He had to draw them to him.

The man who tripped had managed to stay in front of the dozens of follow on friends. It almost seemed like he tried to make up for his embarrassment by working harder than any of the others.

“Good job, runner!” he shouted. Partly to keep himself focused. Partly to encourage the zombies to go the last few yards into the corner.

He saw Victoria. She was already running back along the length of the room. No zombies were behind her, which was good. If they got between them, it would mean he was cut off.

“Got to run!”

No longer fooling around, he sprinted to catch up to Victoria. He knew she was no slouch, and in fact, had already crossed the half-way point of the room. In a few moments, he too reached the mid-point, but he slid to a stop in the dry dust and rock when he saw what was there.

The railroad tracks lay in grooves in the rock. The pair of them went underneath a huge vault-like door. The door was metallic, and bowed slightly outward. Though he couldn't see the thickness, it had the bulk of solid steel several feet thick, like the door had its own gravity. There were no hinges, no handles, and no signage. But it was a door nonetheless.

It was large enough to fit a train engine, which made sense given the fact the train tracks went underneath it. Impressive as that was, the real reason he stopped was because of the black dome hanging from an overhang a few feet above the door. In the dark recess, away from the direct glare of the powerful lights, he saw a tiny red light flashing on and off. Inside the dome, he imagined a video camera. He felt it was on and watching what was happening outside its front door.

Briefly, he waved his arm up at the camera—willing whoever was inside to open the door. But a quick look back told him his chance of getting safely inside the giant door was already past. The zombies made good time and closed in on him. More zombies walked up the middle aisle, along the railroad tracks. Yet the thing that really got him moving was seeing a zombie pop out of one of the columns of tanks in the direction Victoria had already run.

Uh oh. I'm behind them.

Sprinting for his life now, he ran directly toward the lone zombie. It was a tall, skinny man. His shirt had been ripped off, leaving his bare upper body exposed to the elements. He looked like he'd been rolling around on sharp rocks, as he was covered in scratches and smeared blood. His face was splashed with blood too, but his teeth were unnaturally white as he snarled with anger at Liam.

Meanwhile, Liam's mind constructed the most heroic action he could do: run, jump with the spear in hand, and drive the wooden stake into the brain of the hapless zombie. Then he'd continue running like he owned the place.

But that wasn't the safe way.

Rather than risk a chance encounter with the straggler, he ducked into the tanks. As he did so, another male zombie emerged to join the tall one. He didn't get a good look at it, but didn't try either. He was feeling the call of panic.

He ran into the column, ran lengthwise between two tanks, then turned right at the first row to run between the front of the tanks on the right, and the rear of the tanks on the left. He didn't recognize the models, but they looked to be World War II vintage—as if they'd been sitting in this room for a long time. The overhead lights were unable to completely pierce the darkness between the tightly packed tanks, giving a creepy aura to the steel beasts.

The cavern swallowed noise for the most part, but the drone of the zombies was steady and loud. There were far more than any of them had guessed.

Ahead, a zombie walked by. Maybe three tanks ahead. The woman didn't look from side to side. She just kept her head straight.

Liam ran. He turned as he entered the channel where he thought he'd seen the woman. She was indeed there; she had reached the rear row where white-teeth zombie had been. He only caught a glimpse of her as he ran, but he was terrified of the hand which touched his shoulder from his left side. He didn't look back. He focused on running.

Row after row of tanks were ahead of him. More zombies funneled down each column, and he knew it would only take one to block his path for good. Then he'd be surrounded—and eaten.

No, they'd only drain my blood. As if that's better…

It happened sooner than he'd hoped. A zombie ahead lazily turned the corner toward him, as if it were just wandering randomly.

Liam didn't wait, he turned to the right, made a quick recalculation, then pulled himself on top of one of the tanks. This time he knew the tank model. It was the distinctive rounded hull of a Sherman tank, white star and all.

From the higher vantage point, he saw the whole scene. The heads of the zombies inside the aisles between the tanks bobbed everywhere. They were thickest in the middle of the room, as he expected, but they were spreading out in all directions like water filling an ice cube tray. Several more had reached the outer wall behind him.

His stomach lurched at the realization he was completely surrounded while deep inside a rock quarry. With a hard lean against the turret of his tank, he took a moment to catch his breath. His mind played tricks on him as he heard what he thought was the screams of girls from elsewhere in the room.

“Liam!”

He recognized that one. He swept the ground behind his tank, but quickly grasped Victoria wasn't on the ground at all. She waved her arms while standing on the flat rear deck of her own tank. The arms of zombies reached up at her, though they had no chance to reach her as high as she was.

Not without climbing.

That got him moving. The jump from one tank to the next was easy. Much easier than jumping from one moving barge to the next with Great-Grandma on his back. The zombies couldn't see him as he jumped, and by the time he registered on their fresh food radar, he was already out of sight—jumping to the next tank. In sixty seconds, he hugged Victoria.

“Oh my God, Liam. This is unbelievable. Where did all these people come from?”

Liam didn't want to share his thoughts. Not here. On the day they'd passed this mine, a few days after the sirens, the line of cars going down the spiral road was endless. The entire highway had been blocked by the closed bridges, and the mine seemed like a place to hide. As Black had said, everyone seemed to think a quarry was a good idea, though he hoped it wasn't because of a TV show. They'd passed car after car inside the mine too, which means there were potentially thousands of survivors, maybe tens of thousands, deep in the corridors of the mines. Travis had said he threw out most of the maps because they were too bulky to carry. That could mean the tunnels went on for miles and miles in all directions…

And they were all coming here.

As more zombies spotted them on the open deck, they began to converge around the old tank. He felt Victoria tighten her grip on him, as if she was afraid she'd fall over the side into the waiting arms of the dead men and women below.

“I think we may have made a mistake coming here.”

He didn't disagree, but he was silent—he scanned the room, searching for the key to their escape he knew had to be there. He was the hero, time to start acting like one.

Layers of fear mixed with panic and the reality of it all settled in.

There's no escape. Not from down here.

Chapter 14: Undead Soldiers

Liam and Victoria held each other as the zombies swirled about on the ground below them. The deck of the tank was higher than any one zombie, but Liam had seen enough of them to know that once enough of them got together, they would start to trample each other and climb up over the bodies of their fallen friends.

And, if they were from Chicago...

He surveyed the crowd and found one that seemed to have figured out how to scramble up the side of the tank treads, very much like using a ladder.

“That one!” He pointed to the climber. “She's climbing. We have to move.”

He scanned the tank park, and focused on where he thought the first two men had gone. The plan called for them to jump into a tank nearest the exit, and then all the zombies were supposed to be drawn by the fire deep into the room. Liam and the girls were then to run around the outside of the parked tanks and meet up with the men once more, then run along the blue rope lights until they could escape. It was basically a huge bait and switch.

Only, the switch never happened because the bait was still drawing the zombies through the front door.

Liam led the way as he jumped from one Sherman tank to the next, heading in the direction he hoped he'd find the men. They scrambled, hopped, and climbed tank after tank, often only inches above the straining arms and hands of the infected horde. When they reached the last one in the corner, they had to turn to the left so they could jump the tanks in the column. That would bring them closest to the entrance, and to the place he hoped the men were hiding.

“Liam...” Victoria's voice wavered.

He leaned against the fifteen-foot long gun barrel while he looked over his shoulder. “Just keep going. Don't look down.”

Victoria moved to the top of the turret, a few feet behind him. She crouched down, so as to steady herself from a terminal tumble. “It isn't down I'm worried about. It's across.” She pointed to the next tank.

Unlike the jumps from side to side, the gap from the front of one tank to the back of the other was much greater. And, as the fronts dipped down, the tail ends of these tanks were blocky and high. If they were going backward, it would be a snap. Going forward was going to be a challenge.

There was no time for fancy plans. Already a zombie was grabbing the side of the tank and—no matter how clumsy the attempt—was managing to climb up the side. It seems there were more than a few people from Chicago hiding in this mine.

He ran down the short front piece of hull, placed his foot on the flat front fender, then jumped. He landed on the back deck, though he stumbled a bit on the uneven metal. He wasn't in any real danger of failing to make the jump, but they'd have to do it god-knows how many times to get where they were going.

Victoria moved to the spot he'd just vacated on the tank behind him. She smiled weakly, then made the short run and took her jump. She landed at about the same spot, and even tripped the same way he did.

“You weren't supposed to fall.”

“I do what you do,” she said with a real smile while she sucked in air from her burst across.

“We better keep moving.”

She took his hand as they both stood up on the rear deck. “You truly know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Just wait until you see how I get us out of here.” Once he'd said it, he felt the pressure building once more.

Why can't I just keep my mouth shut?

He swept the room as they inched around the turret of the olive drab tank, but he still saw nothing that gave him any hope he could deliver on his glib promise to wow Victoria. The big vault door was the only thing that might give him some hope if there was any indication from within that help was to be had. His heart told him someone saw him, but his head informed him it didn't really matter because there were so many zombies in their front yard now. If they were huddled in there for protection, he didn't think now was the time they'd come out.

Another jump. They cleared the gap to the next tank, though the ground had become packed with sick-looking spectators. A few zombies had made it onto the tank behind them, though they had trouble staying upright on the uneven surface of the sloped vehicle. One fell to the side, the other made an honest effort to cross the gap behind him but he too fell into the crowd.

The next few tanks were uneventful. They were getting better at jumping and had it down to a science by the time they reached the tenth row. But then the olive gave way to tan, and the technology ramped up from mid-twentieth century to last week. They reached the first of the many rows of M1 Abrams.

Liam cleared the distance with no issues. The Abrams was slightly higher than the rear of the Sherman, but it was flatter and easier to plant a landing for him. Ahead, the deck of the newer tanks was easier to walk on and jumping would be less risky.

He turned to catch Victoria—if she needed help, which he never presumed she did—and watched as a hand grabbed her just as he planted her foot to make the jump. It stole some of her inertia and she fell a foot short of where she aimed. She landed with her stomach up against the rear of the Abrams, and let out a loud croak when she did so.

Liam was on his knees in a second, but there were so many zombies below, it would have been a miracle if she wasn't grabbed.

“I've got ya!” He had one wrist, then the other. She hung over the side and he could only watch as an ugly, broken image of a man grabbed Victoria's leg and took a bite. She was shocked and reacted with a backward kick which threw the man off. But others had her too.

Liam saw Victoria turn back to him, a look in her eyes he'd not seen before.

“NO!” He refused to yield. Whether she was bitten or not, he was going to get her onto the deck. He braced his legs and pulled with everything he had, the deficiencies in his diet temporarily ignored. Victoria, to her credit, pushed herself up the side of the armored fighting vehicle to help, though she yelped a couple more times as the zombies took their opportunities to bite where they could.

The only thing that saved her was the zombies were more interested in using their teeth, than their arms. They made no effort to pull her back into their makeshift mosh pit.

Liam dragged her as far up the deck as he could. Right up to the rear of the boxy turret.

He was afraid to look.

2

“Liam. You can let go. You saved me.”

He hadn't loosened his grip, though they were temporarily safe. He was afraid that once he let go, she would start to change into a zombie, and he couldn't imagine what that meant for him. What he'd have to do...or if he wanted to do those things.

If she dies, I die. I knew this is how it would go down.

But he relented. Victoria pulled her arms from his, and scooched up the deck so she was leaning against the turret. Liam mimicked her by taking the seat next to her.

When they first met, he was afraid to look at her bare legs because he found her distractingly pretty. Her legs were well-sculpted runner's legs. Now, he felt the same fear at looking at her legs, though the reason was something else entirely.

Victoria pulled her legs to her and looked them over. She was wearing blue jeans—because she hated to get mosquito bites.

“I think I'm good. They bit at my legs, but they couldn't break through the material of these jeans.” She pointed to the bloody bite marks, but when she pulled her jeans up to her knees, there were no abrasions—just a few ugly bruises.

She let out a fatalistic laugh. “I'll take it.”

Liam's swirl of emotions got the best of him. He leaned over to her and felt the waterworks start. She seemed to take it all in stride.

“Someone's looking out for me,” she laughed again, though it sounded like she was also tearing up.

“I thought we were both dead.” He didn't tell her that he meant that literally, as he was ready to fight to the death against all the zombies to get away from having to kill the zombie version of her. But it was near enough to the truth.

“Well, we're not out of this yet. And maybe next time you'll consider wearing jeans too?” She said it to be funny. Something he desperately needed to hear. But there was truth there too.

He pulled back and looked at her, sharing tears. “I'm going to wear a full set of armor next time I find one.”

She stood up first, and pulled him to his feet.

“Onward?”

He looked ahead once more, they had five or six rows to go. Five or six more jumps and they'd know the fate of the men supposedly leading this operation. His only hope was that they had some miraculous plan, because he still had none.

The jumps between the Abrams tanks went much faster, and with less danger. The front deck and rear deck of the modern battle tank were almost the same height, so it was practically a walk in the park to skip from one to the next, no matter what was below them.

Lava is below us. That's less scary than what's really down there.

He played the children's game of jumping the imaginary lava until they reached the last tank in the column, which was also the last tank in its row. It was the cornerstone tank where the men were supposed to be hiding.

Liam rapped on the outer metal of the turret, hoping those inside could hear it over the generalized noise of all the angry zombies humming below.

The top hatch popped open in seconds.

“Hey, Liam. You made it. There are a few more than we thought.” It was Dave.

Typical understatement.

“Did you see Clarence? We saw him run into the tanks, but we had to jump in this first one before we saw where he went.”

He was slightly out of breath from his tank hopping, but he answered when he could. “We saw him run into the room, that way,” he pointed toward the fire, “but not sure he's still there.”

Then, to the important question for the adults in the room. “So what's the plan?” He'd spent weeks thinking of plans to help people escape zombies, often drawing from his voluminous reading of zombie books. Often, he wondered why it took a teen boy to solve the problems of adults, but he'd resigned himself to not knowing the answer. It may have been as simple as he just came up with good ideas faster than anyone else, or maybe he always saw the obvious answer to the questions. Or, maybe he was just super lucky.

But this time, he literally had no idea whatsoever how to escape this fix. He wanted to dish off that problem to someone else for a change. The only problem was they were already a man down—Clarence, their leader, was missing.

He wasn't reassured by the look he got in return.

Liam was distracted by a sudden burst of noise. The zombies seemed to scream as one. He felt a hand on his back—Victoria—seeming to convey a dictionary's worth of messaging in its simultaneous firmness and gentleness. It was a caring and strength which said, “This is bad, but we're in this together.”

Liam looked to the commotion. Across the wide road which marked the middle path linking the entrance with the intersection at the middle of the room as well as the drop out room, he saw three figures standing on the nearest tank. It was almost a mirror image of his own tank—currently with three forms on the top. But the three girls were distinctive with their diminutive size and fancy braids.

“They made it,” he shouted.

The hand on his back passed on another subtle message. It told him to look the other way, toward the entrance. His eyes focused on a sorry-looking group of soldiers. They wore tattered uniforms, a few had thread-bare hats, but most just had ragged heads of hair. They walked as a group, as if they were still in the Army, though Liam knew it has to be a coincidence. The other zombies also seemed to give the soldiers some space, though that had to be coincidence.

Liam, out of ideas and attempting to counter the abject terror he felt upon seeing them, simply said, “Well, I guess we know what happened to those desecrated graves.”

The hand on his back remained silent.

3

“Liam! Victoria!” One of the girls from across the aisle yelled for them.

Liam waved.

Blue shouted as loud as possible, but it barely made it across the hundred or so yelling zombies between them. She pointed into the room, toward the fire. She said something he missed, but he heard her last words, “—that way!” He gave her a thumbs up, and the three girls immediately bounded to the tank next to them.

“I guess we're going that way.” He was talking to Victoria, but Dave heard him and shouted down to Travis they were leaving. Liam held Victoria's hand as they waited for the men to come out of the tank.

“You ready to go back in?” He wasn't. He hoped she would counter his misgivings about going back into the meat of the room they'd just spent time escaping.

She took his other hand and as they stood there in the midst of the chaos, she started to pray. She said it quietly, almost as if she was ashamed of the act. When she was done, she explained why.

“I prayed and I wished upon a star and blew out my birthday candles. I couldn't let you hear my wish or it wouldn't come true.” She smiled, and Liam couldn't tell if she was serious or joking. In the end, it didn't matter. They would need all the help they could get.

“Amen,” he said.

As was her way, she took off while he stood there with a dumb look on his face. He followed her to the next tank, though he turned back to confirm Travis had indeed come out.

Deeper into the room they went, retracing the steps they'd taken before the zombies arrived. The men caught up, their rifles slung over their shoulders.

“Look for Clarence! He has to be here, somewhere.”

Liam hadn't been looking down for a while. He made his jumps, and ignored everything below. If Clarence was down there, he'd better show up. And yet, he peeked down once and came to the conclusion if the man was down there, he was already dead. The spaces between the tanks was now completely stuffed with zombies dressed like civilians of all stripes who had made a wrong turn at the fake blood factory. He forced himself to believe it was fake blood.

They reached the middle of the room. On their right was the main corridor which Liam labeled the north-south road. The Valkyrie was still parked where they'd left it. In front of them was the east-west road with the railroad tracks. It was about forty feet across, though on the near corner there was one of the large columns holding up the ceiling.

While the roadway was far from empty, Liam saw their chance. He waited for Travis and Dave to reach the last tank, then laid out his plan. In the back of his head he wondered if he was stating the obvious, or if it was really a good plan that the others hadn't considered.

“We have to cross this space. You two help us get across with your guns, and we'll help you get across with our—” He suddenly felt very inadequate. The men had powerful rifles, while he held a little wooden spear. Victoria held an even less beefy piece of coffin wood.

You go to war with the army you have...

He didn't give anyone a chance to think about it. Each second they delayed, the more zombies would see them and move in their direction.

He found the first zombie as he hit the rocky ground. He thrust his spear through its face, then pulled it back out with authority. The man wore a lime-green light jacket—a fact he found important at the time. Victoria hit the ground as he stepped a half a dozen steps toward the middle of the road. A small child was in his way and he hesitated for half a second before doing the deed.

I hate the Apocalypse.

Victoria surged ahead, taking the next zombie. The shard of wood she carried went into the flesh of the older woman, but she squealed at the impact, then moaned as she pulled it out. Without a sideways glance to him, she yelled, “Splinters!” and kept going.

Travis and Dave used the time to prepare their rifles. Two near-simultaneous shots rang out, downing two zombies in front of them.

Liam pushed on, keeping up with Victoria. They each cleared two more zombies, then they reached the next row of tanks. Victoria climbed up, but he stood his ground. Someone would have to—

Nope!

There were too many. He wanted to stand in the breech and clear the gap for the men to cross, but that was impossible. He scrambled up the tank and found Victoria looking back at the men, motioning for them to get across.

He was tempted to wave them off, but he knew this was their only chance. If they were really lucky, they might be able to fight their way across.

Victoria, perhaps sensing his thoughts, held fast to his arm.

He turned to her. “Not this time. This little spear can't help. If only they'd given you your gun back.”

It brought him no comfort to know the men had been wrong in taking it away. No one could trust anyone these days. But in this case, it cost them.

He stared across the gap, watching as the roadway filled up with more of the infected. While he wavered between running some more or yelling something encouraging to the two men, the dead soldiers walked around the corner. They'd come down the middle of the room, and now turned down the cross street.

Liam gave the two men a lot of respect. He would be unloading his rifle right about now, but they were more restrained. “We'll catch up!” Dave yelled. They waved at Liam as if telling him to keep going. They ran and jumped along the column of tanks, headed toward the large vault door at the end. Liam wondered if it would open for these Patriots. He doubted it.

Victoria pulled him. The order of the day continued to be: run for your life!

4

They jumped tank after tank, heading in the direction given by the triplets. He had no idea what they planned to do once they reached the end of the line, but he was relieved to see they had managed to cross the wide cross street, just like he and Victoria had done.

They tried to yell out to Clarence, who had to be in one of the tanks on which they ran, but he didn't pop out. There was no way to check them all and still outpace the growing horde. Zombies were everywhere around them, but thickest behind.

And what was ahead? A stone wall with one hole that led to a room full of desecrated remains and sky lights in the rock ceiling with no view of the sky.

Still, he searched for the means of escape.

Front door was jammed with the infected. Scratch.

The back door had no exits. Scratch.

The vault door didn't open. Scratch.

The railroad tracks had to go somewhere...

He began to see where the triplets were going with this. They'd been on that side of the room. Maybe they found an exit.

He reached the last tank just as the girls dodged a zombie and ran into the drop out room.

Suicide? That's their plan?

Victoria ran up against him. She, too, saw where the girls had run. There were only a few lingering zombies in the last row. It was now or never.

In his ear, she asked, “Do we follow them?”

It was time for the hero to make his choice. He saw no reason to follow them, but he thought back to all the strange coincidences which drove them all together. He found all three sisters in mysterious circumstances. Perhaps dumb luck. Or maybe something else.

But something, for sure.

“Let's follow. Don't ask me why, cuz I don't know. Call it faith.”

He was down in a moment. He speared the closest zombie as Victoria hit the ground next to him. She also used her makeshift spear, but it ran through the neck of her target. She yanked it out and pushed it away instead. They ran for the opening with no room to spare. Liam was unsurprised to see some of the undead soldiers walking down the main aisle as if they had been tracking them.

“Hurry! Inside.”

The light of the tank hall reached into the drop out room, but without the flashlights of the Patriots, it was more dark than light. Liam had to do a double take when he saw one of the triplets rise up into the darkness on the ceiling.

“What the?”

He ran over to the hole, his eyes trying to adjust to the increasing darkness.

He saw the dark shapes of the three girls above him. They each straddled the rough cut hole like they were climbing a chimney. There was enough room for all three of them.

“What the hell are you doing? Is this your plan? To die in here?”

Black called down. “No dummy. There's eight feet of earth above us. We just have to dig through.” She paused while she adjusted her footing and climbed another foot. “What are you waiting for? Fight or die,” she said. “Start digging a grave if you want to live.”

Liam was mortified. He stepped back, so he couldn't see the girls. He noticed they had a piece of a broken casket below the hole. They'd used it to climb up.

Victoria grabbed the box, moved it to the next hole, then stood there looking at him.

“What are you waiting for? I need you to pull me up.”

He turned back to the opening—the soldiers ambled ever closer. Other zombies hovered behind the first cadre of the old soldiers. He imagined it was a sign of respect, but maybe they were lined up by speed.

He got up onto the casket, put his spear into the grasp of his belt, then pulled himself up into the grave with a boost from Victoria. The limestone opening was perfectly spaced so he could put a foot on each side and hold himself in the gap. Victoria stepped up on the box below him, looked once over her shoulder, then she grabbed for his hands. As he straddled the rock faces, he held her in his arms.

“Don't pull me up yet.”

She hung for a second, then she used her feet to kick over the box below her.

“OK, now would be good. Hurry!”

Liam's strength ran hot and cold. He felt very drained as she hung on. But the shadows on the rocks below suggested the zombies were close. Her life was literally in his hands. He pulled with everything he had. When she was high enough, he pulled her into his chest and she grabbed hold of his body. Then she aligned her legs so she also straddled the grave.

“Climb!”

It really didn't need to be said, but he said it anyway.

They managed to climb all the way up to the wooden blockage they'd seen earlier when they had flashlights. The air was cold, like death, despite the heat of the room they'd just been in. He felt a chill rock his body as his sweat cooled on his skin.

He used his spear to pierce the wooden roof. It was very thin plywood. Within a few minutes, they had the plywood removed. It dropped to the floor, and now they had raw dirt above them. An image popped into his mind of all the dirt falling from above, pushing both of them down to the floor, but that didn't happen. It was packed too tightly.

Below, the dark shadows hovered. His eyes took time to adjust, but soon he could see the soldiers packed tight directly below—arms up, straining for prey.

Victoria took one end of the narrow grave and Liam planted himself on the other. He had his spear, and she had her makeshift wooden poker. Together they began thrusting up into the dirt. It fell in clumps on top of them, then down onto the zombies standing below.

“Uh oh. Let's say by some miracle we get through all this dirt. It's just going to make a pile below us and those things are going to climb up here and get us. Wouldn't that be a funny way to die?”

“We can't worry about it now. We have no choices anymore. Fight or die, right?”

She was right of course, though he was left scratching his head how he had allowed this to happen.

Maybe this was the only possible way out. If that was true, the triplets may have just saved their lives.

If not, at least we'll already be in our graves when we die.

Small comfort.

5

Hours ticked by, though time lost all meaning in the insufferably cramped space. With each thrust of his spear, Liam felt himself losing steam. The cool he had felt upon climbing into the upside down grave had long since given way to extreme heat. The heat of exertion, yes, but also the heat of stress and the pressure of standing with legs spread across the gap for hours on end. He'd had no water for hours, and had sweat out buckets since.

“Hey! Kid! I don't hear that spear.”

He snapped out of his stupor. He'd been staring upward, but he wasn't moving his digging implement. Victoria, without knowing it, may have saved his life—again. It was becoming a regular thing with him as they pushed higher. He was drifting.

“Don't call me kid, kid.” He let out a raspy laugh.

“Don't fall asleep!” She yelled it, more for the shock value than any real need. It did help him focus.

The pile of dirt below was getting higher. He could sense, rather than see, they'd made a lot of progress upward. His feet were now spread across the gap into the dirt walls, instead of the rock layers below. That at least gave his feet some relief. But not his legs. Or his arms. His arms were screaming louder than the sirens on day one.

Another heft upward with the spear released a little more dirt. He'd gotten good at closing his eyes as the debris came down, but this time he was too slow and some of the dirt got in his eyes. It surprised him he had almost no tears in his eyes to wash it away.

He coughed. There was a lot of dust in the air. The floor beneath them was hard to make out between the darkness, the dead standing there, and the dust itself.

“Hey—” He coughed violently. Speaking while inhaling the dust nearly made him fall.

When he settled back down, he finally got it out. “We uh, we might be getting close. Dry dust from up top can only mean we are reaching the surface.”

“Keep digging.” She sounded tired, but her voice remained strong. He could no longer see her at all, though she was only a couple feet away. He could tell by her voice she was a little lower than him, but he wasn't surprised given the low quality wood she was using to crack soil over her head. He had unwittingly taken a solid tool for the task, the sharp edge of the spear had long since been worn down.

He braced himself for another push upward.

“This is it,” he said without enthusiasm.

“You've said that the last 100 times.”

“And this time I'm going to be right.” It was the only thing that kept him going. The supreme thought that one of these times, he was going to poke through the sod and end this nightmare.

By returning to the regular nightmare of the topside Apocalypse.

Everything is crap now.

His psyche was at low tide. Which was why he was so surprised when he felt his spear go up and out through the top. When he pulled it back down, he closed his eyes as the dirt and dust coated his head and face. Then he opened his eyes and was rewarded with the piercing ray of light coming through a tiny hole.

“Liam?” His name was an echo.

“Liam!”

“What?”

“You're staring up. Are you in there?”

With even the drip of light coming through, Victoria was able to see what she was doing and clear a section of the dirt on her side so she could reach the top. Together, they widened the hole so they would fit through.

Liam hesitated.

“What is it?”

“I don't know if I can lift my arms above my head one more time. And to get out through that hole...”

“We'll need our arms. OK, let's rest for a minute.”

Liam wasn't going to argue, but he really wanted to do more than rest. He wanted to sleep. He tried to lean back against the rear wall of the grave so he could rest his upper body.

“Stay with me. Don't you dare.”

“Huh?” He knew what she wanted of him, but he really needed to just take a little breather.

“Liam, dammit, stay with me!”

That got his attention. “Why Victoria, I've never heard you cuss like that.” He knew that was a half-truth. She normally was very reserved in her off-color commentary, though she did lay down some foul language when they escaped the city and thought Grandma had died. “It isn't very ladylike.”

He was joking with her, but he saw the smile on her face too. She pulled out the big guns to keep him awake.

“Are you ready to get out of this grave? I sure as hell am.”

Liam, ever smiling, only replied with a long, “Umm,” as in, “Umm, I'm gonna tell.”

He had to admit, if she was trying to goad him into trying to climb, it worked. Not because of what she said, but that she'd said it at all. Her minor breach of language etiquette told him she was seriously worried about him.

He pushed up with his legs. He would have to use his arms, but first he could position himself a little higher on the wall. He'd gotten his head into the narrow part of the hole above, not quite poking out of the grave itself, but his arms soon would be.

“Wouldn't it be funny if there are a pack of zombies above us?” He said it to be funny. His dark humor was meant to ward off the bad thoughts, as odd as that felt to him.

“I doubt zombies would hang around in cemeteries. There's no fresh victims there.”

“You know, I was thinking the very same thing.”

He threw his spear up through the hole, then with all the energy he had left, he pushed his arms up as well. He had to work away some of the loose dirt, but he was able to use his arms while he pulled his legs up the sides of the walls. Like some sick worm, he slid out of the grave onto his belly. The headstone was only inches away.

“Charles Everett. U.S. Navy. Blah blah blah. 1943.” His eyes couldn't focus on all the words.

He slowly turned around to look back down the hole. A pretty face looked up at him.

“Victoria!”

“Yeah, I'm still here. Care to help?”

He hung his arms down and pulled up her wooden pick. What was once several feet long was now about the size of a dagger. It must have broken apart as she tore into the dirt.

“Hold on to me and use your feet to climb. The edge is too unstable to put too much weight with your arms.”

“That's perfect. My arms are toast.”

He knew the feeling. It took him a long time to get her out of the hole, but soon she lay next to him on the lush green turf of the cemetery.

Sleep sounded divine. As did water. A tall cool glass of Mountain Dew would be salvation.

“Liam!”

“Why are you screaming at me?”

“I called your name about five times. You aren't responding to me.”

He couldn't think of anything funny to aid his defense. All he could say was, “Oh.”

She continued when she had his attention. “Look, over there.” She pointed, though she didn't raise her arm from the ground.

A large hole had been excavated from the grave next door.

6

He took a moment to scan the cemetery landscape. Tens of thousands of white headstones stood in martial rows on every hillside as far as he could see. They'd emerged on a flat, low section of the cemetery. Slopes rose on either side, though he literally thanked God there were no zombies anywhere in his field of view. That, at least, gave them some time to rest.

The girls were nowhere in sight. He figured they made good on their plan to separate from him.

He rolled over toward Victoria. She was filthy. Her face was covered in dirt and mud, like she'd been at an expensive spa and had it caked on. Her white top was now mostly brown from all the dust and dirt that mixed with her sweat. The bottom half of each of the legs of her jeans were well-soiled with mud. That was from planting her legs in the muddy walls for—

He looked at his watch. It was late afternoon, but he had no idea how long they'd dug. He didn't think to check the time when they started out. For every minute of however long they were in the grave, he thought the climbing zombies were going to come up and grab him, but they never did. The creepy soldier guys just stood vigil, moaning and clawing upward, but the dirt that fell on them was spread out and compacted.

In the bright light, he could hardly believe such a scene was mere feet away. The sounds from below were muffled by the soddy edges and thick earth in the hole.

“Where do you think they went?” He could hardly talk.

“Where did they come from...where did they go?” She let out a giddy laugh, though her voice was dry like his. “I think I'm finally going crazy, Liam. I really don't care. I just climbed out of a grave! They saved us.”

“I thought that was my job?” It came out in a whisper.

She looked at him. He only saw her pretty eyes.

“You did your job. You got us out of there.” She nodded to the hole.

He was too tired to argue. Instead, he stood.

“Come on. We need water.” He enjoyed being on his feet, thankful that his arms hung to his sides at rest, while he looked for his target. “This way.”

He had gone ten paces when he remembered Victoria.

Good boyfriends help their girlfriends.

But she was already on her feet. He absently thought she was stronger than he was. She was more likely to pull him to his feet. This time was different because he was insane with thirst, and had a touch of delirium.

My excuse. I'm stickin' to it.

As he expected, the low point of the cemetery contained a small creek. He stumbled into the rocky depression—it was more of a drainage ditch than a natural creek—but it contained his prize. Years of Boy Scout warning blared in his head about drinking untreated water, but he threw all the books into the fire of his thirst. He was not going to be denied by science.

He nearly fell as he bent down to stick his face into a particularly deep section of the creek. He took long, dangerous gulps. The water filled his stomach until he could feel its weight inside him.

Victoria put her head in next to his. All was quiet for a long time.

Liam, finally sated, used the water to wash his face and eyes. When he was done, he felt like the proverbial million bucks.

Down the creek, and beyond the cemetery, he could see the dingy brown of the Mississippi. They had almost gone full circle.

He grabbed her and pointed where he was going. He was too tired to explain.

They stumbled through the cemetery, wary for the dead, and the undead. He was careful to go around the plots, as if to atone for the desecration they'd inflicted upon the robbed grave sites.

You had no choice.

Well, other than death.

He had no energy for moral dilemmas. He'd done what was necessary to survive, though it didn't sit well with him once he'd made the realization. How many men and women used the same excuse in his zombie books? The one excuse that seemed to always exonerate any crime.

He hopped over the low stone wall marking the boundary of the cemetery. He then crossed the railroad tracks next to the river, and scrambled down the rocky bank. In moments, he stood alone at the edge of the wide river.

The quiet was only broken by small ripples along the shore, or birds in the distance. A woodpecker far away registered as the loudest noise until Victoria came tumbling down the rocky bank. He watched her on unsteady feet as she closed the final few paces to stand beside him.

“Are we safe? What do we do now, swim?”

He thought that sounded exactly perfect. He swooned a bit at the thought of the cool water around him. He'd last felt it jumping in to save Pink.

“We'll find some driftwood and float away,” he finally replied.

Overhead, far across the river, he saw the movement of a drone.

He pointed. “Can't we get some peace and quiet?”

Victoria said nothing.

Minutes later, still waiting for driftwood to float by, Liam's phone rang in his pocket. He'd absolutely forgotten about it since he pulled it out in the boat, not wanting to risk getting it wet when he jumped overboard.

From inside the plastic bag he could see the data. It was a text message from the same 435 area code that sent them to the quarry. It was brief and to the point. “Now you know truth. Swim away.”

He didn't bother replying. The person on the other end knew he was alive. That was all that mattered, for now. Patriots. Villains. Cures. Plagues. Life. Death. These all swirled through his exhausted mind.

“We're going to wait until a large tree floats by, we're going to grab on, then float with it until we find the boat parked downriver. If it's there, we're going to take it. If not, we keep swimming. They told me to find Jason up on that cliff, but I'm going to Camp Hope. I need to find my parents. My dad. I need to know if he knew about this place. I need to know—”

He spoke so only the two of them could possibly hear. “I need to know once and for all if my dad had anything to do with the Patriot Snowball movement. Maybe he knew the men who died helping us escape.”

“I'm with you. Always.”

She grabbed his hand and they steadied each other as they watched the water flow by. They'd jump when the time was right.

Together.

Epilogue

For once, things went exactly as Liam planned. They'd found the boat left by the captain. They had no way to know if he was coming back, but they left a note sticking out from under a rock saying where they were going. It said they were coming back.

The powerful boat made short work of the smaller Meramec River. It took less than an hour to speed up the increasingly narrow river until they reached the same point he and Victoria had first arrived at the river after leaving the Beaumont Boy Scout Reservation a week ago. From there, it was a mile walk to the front gate of the camp.

When he arrived, he was recognized by the Scouts defending it. His spear matched many of the spears carried by the guards. The Hope Spears were a specialty of the place. He was excited to tell tales of what his spear had seen and done recently. But first, he had to find his parents.

He vaguely recalled the cheering crowds. The fawning younger Scouts. The pats on the back. The camp had been emptying out when he left, but now it was back to its former size—and looked to be growing even larger.

Must find parents.

His dad had broken his leg, so the natural place to find him would be the infirmary. It was where he last saw him, though on the day he left, he only said goodbye to Mom because Dad was so badly injured and couldn't come out to see him. Though if he'd told them he was leaving the camp, he thought his dad might have tried to come out to stop him.

Word spread rapidly. His mom found him.

“Liam, thank God you're all right. Where have you been?”

The age old question. In the Old World, he saw the question as an invasion of his privacy. Where are you going? Who will you be with? Are girls going to be there? All the things that used to make him upset were tossed aside. Now he was glad to share his tale, because he'd made it back to tell it.

Finally, after all his “missions” to save Grandma and help find the cure, he would offload the task to someone who could actually make things happen. If anyone was more prepared for the Apocalypse than his father, he hadn't found him.

“Hi Mom. We found Grandma in the city—”

They hugged while they spoke.

“We left her in Cairo, Illinois, she's safe there.”

His head was dizzy at the feeling of security he felt in his mother's arms. But it couldn't last. He released her.

“We figured out something important about the plague.” He scanned the area, wondering if he would be shot by a mysterious assassin for revealing the secret. In the end, after all he'd been through, he fought away the fear. “It affects the dead. It apparently lasts forever. Like, literally forever.”

He conducted another sweep of the nearby camp. “Where's dad? I need to ask him some important questions right away. He may be in danger.”

He began walking to the bullet-ridden and boarded up administration building, as he assumed he'd be inside. When his mom didn't follow, he motioned for her to come to him. When she demurred, he turned back to face her.

“He's somewhere else?”

Her eyes were sad. Like she'd been crying a lot.

“The survivalists came back?”

A head shake no.

“Zombies?”

Another head shake.

He tried to force something positive into the mix. His heart warned him not to do it, but he wasn't going to listen to the warnings of his brain.

“He went to a hospital?” His voice was tentative, as if he knew it was a lie.

Her tears answered his question.

It was unfair, but anger spilled out, rather than sadness. “What then? Where the hell is he? I've survived a lot of stinking death out there. I climbed out of a freakin' grave. I really need to talk to him. The fate of the country is at stake. Maybe the world!”

His mom cried freely. It was obvious to any bystander why.

Still, Liam pushed. “Where is he, Mom? Where?”

2

His dad's grave was just a stick in a muddy mound on top of one of the nearby hills. The camp made a best effort to bury all the people who died during the recent attack by the survivalists. An attack made to find him, he was sad to admit.

I ruin every safe space I encounter.

Victoria walked with him up the hill. His mom followed too, but she remained behind—she seemed hesitant to get too close to Liam in his condition. The only thing she'd gotten out was that he died because of the wound on his leg. He'd shattered a leg bone and without proper antibiotics it had become infected and he'd caught something which made him burn up. He died suddenly, not long after Liam left the camp.

“Why! Dad, why?” He was mad now. A visceral anger at the suspicion his dad knew more than he let on, but more than that, he was mad his dad didn't trust him with that knowledge. It could have made all the difference in the effort to fight—

For what? The truth? For the cure? What could he have known that would have made any difference in the fact there was a massive cavern with hundreds of tanks in it? Did he know about that? Wouldn't that have been the first place he'd taken the family if he did?

He ran through a multitude of possibilities, but the only thing that made any sense was that his dad really didn't know about that place. Whoever was behind that great steel vault had to be someone other than the Snowballers.

He fell to his knees at the grave. Vertigo struck as he looked down at the ground.

Is he clawing up through the mud, like I did?

Without thinking about it, he moved backward on his knees. Just a foot. Enough to not be in the way.

“Dad. I really needed your help.” He said it with resignation. Victoria took it as her invitation to kneel next to him. She put her hand through his arm, and held him.

He was reduced to tears. At some point, his mother closed the distance and stood next to him. She looked down at the grave with him.

“He was very proud of you, Liam. I think he knew he wasn't going to make it. He made me promise to tell you of his pride in you, though I refused to listen to him. I never saw the end coming.”

Liam realized he'd been a jerk. He'd lost a father. She'd lost her husband. If he lost Victoria now, it would destroy him. He'd been very nearly ready to kill himself back in the tank room when he thought she'd been bitten. His mom was stronger than he was. That became apparent once he took five seconds to think about it.

He stood to be next to her.

“I'm sorry, Mom. I had no right to yell at you.”

He held her, just as Victoria had held him. After a long period of silence, his mom spoke.

“Liam, your dad left you some notes I think you're going to want to see.”

The anger burst out, totally outside his control. “I knew it! He was involved.”

“Liam, before you say anything else, you need to see them. It's not what you think.”

He could think of a lot. His dad worked for the bad guys. He was part of the government conspiracy. He was part of the Patriot Snowball plot, and he did release the plague. He was in league with Hayes and Duchesne and everyone Liam hated right now. He stood against everything he'd taught Liam since he was a baby. The bad thoughts flowed like the river. His exhaustion, grief, and sour mood wouldn't harbor any thought his dad was really a good guy.

Was he good or bad?

He wouldn't be able to rest until he knew the truth.

“Let's go,” he said in a spiteful voice. Then, upon seeing Victoria's silent rebuke, and realizing he was being a complete jackass, he softened it.

“Please, Mom, I have to know.”

###

Acknowledgments

Thank you for reading Last Fight of the Valkyries!

If you've read this far, I think it's safe to say you qualify as a “superfan” of my books. Seriously, whether you loved them or merely survived them, I want to take this opportunity to shake your hand in appreciation. The series has taken on a life of its own and brought me to places I never imagined just a few short months ago.

I hope you are enjoying the ride!

E.E. Isherwood, April 17, 2016

E.E. Isherwood’s other books

Minus America – After an event sweeps from coast to coast, nearly everyone in mainland USA disappears. Only piles of clothes remain. Can the last Americans survive long enough to learn how it happened? Five books.

Impact
(co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books.

Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood
Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens
My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!

SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 5

Zombies vs Polar Bears
Since the Sirens
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.

You are either on the State's enemies list, or you are helping write it.

Prologue

“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.

Chapter 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.

In the morning he retreated to a private room inside the administration building to absorb the contents he was positive would give him the answers he sought. After reading it six or seven more times, he still wasn't sure what his father's dying words meant for him.

Shifting on his feet, he started again, at the beginning. It was written in his father's large-block printing, which drove him nuts. Seeing all-caps in his online lifestyle was reserved for shouting and online newbies. Liam winced at the notion his father loved to push his buttons, just as much as he enjoyed pushing his dad's. His misuse of the word libary was one example, but his father's text seemed to be one final button push, though it was without malice. It was as if his father enjoyed the back and forth they'd had. That made him feel even worse...

DEAR LIAM,

BEFORE I GET TO THE TRUTH, LET ME SAY I'M SORRY I CAN'T TELL YOU IN PERSON HOW PROUD I AM OF ALL YOU'VE DONE FOR GRANDMA MARTY, AND FOR YOURSELF SURVIVING THIS PLAGUE. GETTING HER OUT OF THE CITY, RESCUING HER FROM ELK MEADOW, AND GETTING HER BACK TO OUR HOME WERE FEATS ABOUT WHICH I STAND IN AWE.

NOW YOU'VE GONE OFF TO RESCUE HER ONE MORE TIME. I CAN'T SAY I'M HAPPY HOW YOU'VE LEFT YOUR MOTHER AND ME, BUT I GUESS I UNDERSTAND. YOU ARE RIDING A LUCKY STREAK. I HOPE YOU FIND HER—

He looked up, for the eighth time, at this exact spot. His dad never knew he did rescue grandma that last time. He found her in the Riverside Hotel downtown, held by Douglas Hayes and the National Internal Security agent Duchesne. His dad would have been proud he overcame so much to pull her out of that mess. The subsequent rescue and ride in the Osprey to Cairo, IL might have made him proud too, except that Liam suffered some head trauma rescuing a girl and wasn't really an active participant in the end.

He continued reading.

—AND BRING HER BACK TO YOUR MOTHER. SHE IS SPECIAL.

I KNOW YOU THINK I HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH ALL...THIS...OUTBREAK SITUATION. THAT I KNEW ABOUT IT AHEAD OF TIME AND SENT YOU TO LIVE WITH GRANDMA TO SOMEHOW PROTECT YOU. I TOLD YOU THE TRUTH BACK WHEN YOU ASKED ME. I HAD NO IDEA ZOMBIES WERE COMING. NO ONE COULD HAVE KNOWN THAT. BUT I KNEW SOMETHING WAS COMING. THE INCONVENIENT FACT YOU AND I WERE AT EACH OTHERS THROATS THIS PAST SPRING MADE IT EASY TO PUT YOU OUT OF HARM'S WAY. OR SO I THOUGHT HAHA.

Liam stopped here too, as he had done on previous readings. His father had sent him to live with Grandma Marty in the city, but that turned out to be a mistake—in Liam's mind—because it was much more dangerous for him. However, it probably saved Grandma's life. They got out of the city together. But he wondered how his father could have known he'd need guns. The two small pistols he'd stashed in Grandma's basement turned out to be instrumental in getting him to safety. Without weapons, he would have had to depend on the goodwill of others. That was something in short supply.

YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE ME IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS ALL RANDOM CHANCE. ABOUT SIX MONTHS AGO I GOT A CALL FROM YOUR GRANDMA ROSE. SHE WAS OUT WEST SOMEWHERE AND SAID SHE STUMBLED UPON SOMETHING AFTER SHE WON HER ELECTION THAT SHE NEEDED TO TELL SOMEONE SHE COULD TRUST. WHO COULD SHE TRUST MORE THAN HER OWN SON, RIGHT?

IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING YOUR MOM ALREADY KNOWS ALL THIS. BUT IT IS VERY DANGEROUS, AND HAS BEEN FOR A LONG TIME. IN FACT, GRANDMA ROSE LEARNED ABOUT THESE PEOPLE FROM HER HUSBAND. HE WAS KILLED, YOU KNOW, JUST FOR POKING AROUND BEHIND THE WRONG CURTAINS. THAT'S WHY ROSE JUMPED INTO POLITICS. SHE WANTED TO CARRY GRANDPA CLYDE'S DEATH BACK TO THEM. YOU KNOW HOW DRIVEN SHE WAS.

Liam wondered about the use of the word was. Did his father mean to say Grandma Rose was now dead? The rest of the letter gave no clue, and that was really the most disturbing part of the whole thing. That, and the fact his dad died shortly after he'd written this.

He looked around. He was inside a small room in the administration building of Camp Hope. The Boy Scout camp had become a home of sorts since he'd first found the place with Grandma weeks ago. The Scouts were able to keep the place organized and defended much longer than most other refuges he'd stumbled upon lately. And, to their credit, they'd survived Liam's attempt to get their place overrun by zombies.

Give yourself a break, Liam, he thought.

He didn't really believe he was responsible for causing the survivalist group to come in shooting, any more than he believed he directly caused the collapse of Busch Stadium. They were, at worst, accidents. But Camp Hope survived that assault and was still going strong. That made this camp the most secure place he knew about in the St. Louis area. A place he should feel safe.

He felt a chill, despite the intense July heat. Somewhere out there he imagined people were working on plans to kill him and his whole family. He'd seen the list with all the names. Now he was getting answers as to why his name was on that list. It all tied back to his Grandma Rose.

ME? I THINK MOTHER NATURE IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF ME. MY BROKEN LEG HURTS BEYOND WORDS—WHY DO YOU THINK I'M SHOUTING AT YOU HAHA. THERE ARE NO MEDICATIONS LEFT AND I'M TOO WEAK TO GO OUT LOOKING FOR ANY. NO ONE KNOWS WHERE TO GO ANYWAY. THIS MAY BE THE END OF THE BEGINNING, LIAM. NOW THINGS ARE GOING TO GET HARD.

I'M SORRY.

SO. THE TRUTH. I PROMISED I WOULD GET TO THAT.

The letter went on. He crumpled the paper, as he had done seven times before. He was angry that his father knew so much, but wouldn't tell him until it was much too late. He was angry Grandma Rose was tangled up in all this, and she involved his father and his mother. And finally, for reasons he couldn't explain, he was mad as hell his father died and walked away from all the chaos currently gripping the family. Even knowing he was buried on the nearby hill didn't temper his white-hot pain.

Fortunately, Victoria rescued him from another rehash of the end of the letter.

2

“Hey, can I come in?” she asked as she approached.

“Yes, I'm through here.”

She walked over to him and gave him a hug. At that moment it was exactly what he needed to counteract the anger. He was mostly unashamed as the tears dripped on her shoulder.

It took several minutes before he was willing to release her.

Victoria's green eyes steadied his. “Is the letter that bad?” She smiled tentatively.

Wiping his eyes, he showed her the note. She read through it while he used the sleeve of his shirt to finish the job. By the time she was done, he felt almost normal.

“Wow. You told me all the way back on those railroad tracks that your dad knew something. I bet you didn't know this is what it would be about, huh?” Her laughter was sympathetic.

“All this time I thought he was part of some secret Patriot group tying to stir up shit just because they didn't like paying taxes, or something. Even after Duchesne explained it, I thought the Patriot Snowball was all about free stuff.”

Liam and Victoria had been told the Patriots were attacked by elements of the Federal Government as the protest group marched across America to Washington D.C. A plague was released to prevent them from storming the capital. However, the government didn't know it was a zombie plague. The President thought it would make everyone get sick with a bad case of the flu. Enough sneezing in a group that large, and it would be easy to see everyone infected in hours.

Only the flu was much worse than anyone predicted. That was the unofficial story.

The official story given over what remained of mass media, Liam learned, was that the Patriots unleashed the plague as they arrived at the capital. Instead of being done to soften up the defenses, it was done to eliminate the entire city so they could take it over. Though he was certain his father believed the city was already filled with mindless zombies working in government buildings throughout the area, the thought of his father unleashing anything so destructive on the innocent citizens of Washington D.C. was impossible to accept.

The letter proved that much, if nothing else.

“So your grandma Rose pretty much started the Patriot Snowball. Wow.”

“Yeah, so we can be sure she or my dad didn't release the plague,” he said with a weak laugh, “but we still can't be entirely sure the Polar Bears didn't plan the eventual violence. Maybe they did release the plague under cover of fighting a bigger conspiracy.” He thought of any number of heinous acts done in the name of a greater good. “They could release it because they knew my Grandma would never be thought capable of it. Nor my dad.”

“I don't think we know enough to say anything right now. It doesn't really matter, does it?”

Did it matter if his dad was associated with murderers? Probably not in the short term. Everyone was too busy fighting the encroaching hordes of zombies to worry about people in the next county, next city, next state. But part of him thought it was imperative to know for sure if the Patriot Snowball had been corrupted, or maliciously slandered by a collapsing government intent on hiding a more egregious sin committed by their own side.

“You're right. It doesn't change the basics. I feel better about my dad. And my mom.” He grunted. “I was a real jerk to her, wasn't I?”

He'd yelled at her and acted like a baby when she told him about his dad's death. Now that he'd regained his senses, he felt the sting of his own words.

“Well.” She looked at the floor, saying everything that needed to be said.

“OK. I'll go apologize. But you and I need to do something before we go back out there.” In happier times this may have been the point where he embraced her with a kiss—they had rare privacy and safety at that moment—but he continued to think about the overarching goal of finding the cure to the plague as well as documenting the whole thing for future citizens of whatever country emerged from this dark time. He wanted to write it all down in a book.

He spoke in a whisper. “We can't stay here. My mom is going to argue against leaving, I just know it. Now that we're here I feel like we have to get back to Cairo and help Grandma. Protect her. This is too big not tell her.”

“Maybe it's better to have your family spread out? Maybe she is safer there?” She gave him a hopeful look.

Liam wondered if Grandma Marty already knew about her own daughter-in-law's secret. If Rose was spinning up some big conspiracy theory, and she got his mother and father involved, it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine she'd gotten other people in her family up to speed as well. He tried to replay days of material in his head, searching for anything that would tip him off that Grandma Marty was aware of the people working with his parents. Either he missed something obvious, or she was in the dark, just like him.

Nobody is in the dark as much as me.

He looked at his girlfriend. She had gone with him into the black pit of the mine. She crawled out through the hollowed grave, same as him. She knew exactly as much as he did about the conspiracy that had engulfed his family. They were both in the dark. He was glad for the company.

“Nowhere is safe anymore. I vote we go back to Cairo and bring Grandma here. I want us all together again so we can look out for each other. That's the only thing we can count on, anymore.”

As she'd done so many times in the past, she took his hand and firmly pulled him out of the private space.

His spirits moved up just a notch.

3

They found his mom in another room of the administration building filled with radios. When they walked in, he was surprised to see a dozen older teen boys sitting around various types of radios in the small conference room. Most wore headphones to mask the sound, but some of the larger radios were on the back wall and one in particular was allowed to bellow across the room.

“...the last report from the would-be rescuers of Plattenville was they had secured several intersections and bridges around the bayou town, but there were too many infected to keep them at bay. We will update you if we get any live feeds out of that part of Louisiana.”

Another newscast began talking about Wisconsin, but Liam's attention was pulled away by his mother. She neared, but appeared afraid to touch him.

Liam reached out to her and, like Victoria, they embraced for a long time. The apology was understood. It brought down his animosity with his mother, but the radio continued to broadcast over his shoulder.

“...the guard units spread out and surrounded the former makeshift medical collection point in the school’s gymnasium.” The radio broadcast cut to what was obviously a local reporter. Gunfire was constant and boisterous. A woman's voice barely cut through. “What you are hearing is the significant effort being undertaken to subdue the infection here in Racine. For two days the Guard has worked to cordon off this section of the city and compress the circle by killing everything inside. Block by block they've managed to finally reach this spot.” More gunfire kicked up, making it all but impossible to understand the woman.

Liam looked around as he separated from his mom. Several of the operators had one earphone off so they could listen to the main radio.

“What's going on here?”

His mom shushed him, though she pointed to the radio to indicate why.

The woman could be heard talking to someone, but it was still washing out with the waves of violence in the background of the broadcast.

Her voice returned with her yells. “We have to leave! We are being told to leave. But I can see—”

Gunfire.

“—holy shit. They were hiding.”

Gunfire, though less of it.

The woman's screeching only increased in volume. “The little f—— bit me! Get it off!”

Liam was horrified by the scene, but inwardly laughed that of all government departments it would be the FCC that would survive. Here they were bleeping out the bad words of a dying reporter as she was broadcasting to a dying world.

Well done, FCC. Well done. You've protected my delicate ears.

“If anyone can hear me. They were dead, then they came back to life. Right in front of us. Right—”

A loud squeal blasted out of the speakers, like the signal was lost. Liam, and the others, lamely stared at the radio for several seconds before someone thought to turn the volume down.

His mom led him and Victoria out of the room. “It's bad out there. I mean places beyond our valley. The sick behave differently in different parts of the country.”

Liam had been out there. He knew. But it was disheartening to hear the situation was just as bad in Racine, Wisconsin as it was in St. Louis, Missouri. He'd hoped somewhere had it better.

His mom surprised him as she grabbed both his arms and held him fast. “Listen, you two. There's something heading this way. A convoy. A big one. It's parked in West Virginia right now. It's coming to St. Louis from the East Coast. You know what that means?”

Liam had no idea. Victoria shook her head in the negative, which helped him feel better at his own ignorance.

“It means St. Louis is about to become an armed camp.”

“Isn't that a good thing? They can protect everyone from the zombies.”

Mom looked at Liam. “Every indication is this convoy is made up of all the remnants of the previous government. All the senators, representatives, judges...the new president. They're traveling with tanks, helicopters, planes. They have a hundred miles of big rigs. Two hundred miles of civilians in tow. All trying to get through hordes of zombies. And they're bringing it all here.”

The problem was staring at him, he knew it.

“But isn't the point to rescue people?” He looked at Victoria, as another check on his sanity, but she had the look of someone in the dark, too. He thought it would be great to have all those military forces ringing the city, fighting off the zombies so they could rebuild a little of the city and eek out survival there.

His mom appeared agitated. “Did your dad not mention the NIS?”

He nodded. A wisp of anger returned at his mom's obtuse implication. His dad asked him to show the letter to his mom after he'd read it. He wasn't ready to do that.

“Well, the people coming here are the same people he warned you about. The National Internal Security agents will be at the head of that column. And they'll be at the back, too, probably cutting people loose they consider to be threats to them.” She looked at Victoria and him in turn. “The people coming here are evil, guys. They have to be stopped.”

Liam looked at his mom, seeing something in her for the first time. Something of his father had rubbed off on her. Instead of being the nurturing woman he'd always known, she was now advocating for something deadly in an already dangerous world. It surprised and scared him.

His mom was suggesting they go to war.

4

“War? With America?”

“No Liam, the USA is dead. The people coming here are not the same people that ran things before the outbreak. Sure they might look the same, and function in some of the same roles as before, but their motives have been exposed. These are the people who knew the infection was coming and prepared for it. They left everyone else, including your father, on their own. Now they're coming to pick up the pieces as heroes, instead of the villains they deserve to be labeled.”

He thought back to the first victims of the zombie outbreak. The woman he dubbed “yoga lady” was his first direct experience up close with a zombie, though he'd seen one other zombie before her. Grandma Marty's nurse Angie had become one, and chased his grandma to a photo finish. He'd also spent a lot of time among the survivors down under the Arch, and on the escape out of the city. In those travels he'd also run into several layers of government, none of which seemed to be any better off than him. That included police captains, Army generals, and scores of policemen from several jurisdictions. If any of them were “in on it,” they wouldn't have let themselves get caught in the often hopeless positions out in the wilds of the Zombie Apocalypse. How many of the people now heading to St. Louis were part of that ruling cabal that might be most directly responsible for the plague? Even if those people existed, did that mean those with them deserved the same fate?

Or, put on its ear, was the Patriot Snowball movement about making everyone with any association to government pay for the sins of the inner sanctum of politicians? If this was to be a war, he didn't expect judges and senators to be out on the front lines.

He didn't have the energy to argue with her. “How long until they get here?”

“I've heard a few things on the news. They're reporting it in the clear, as your dad would say. The convoy is moving very slow. Lots of downed bridges and wrecks to clear. They could be here in a week or a month. Depending on what's in front of them...”

A month in zombie time was forever. The whole city could have gone feral by then.

“Victoria and I are going to get Grandma before they arrive...” He didn't look at Victoria. They had discussed it earlier. “Wait. Back up. The Snowballers are in front of that convoy. You aren't going out to slow them, are you?” His dad he could see as part of a noble group of saboteurs, but not his dear old mom—no matter what the letter implied.

“What? Why do you say it like that?” She held her arms out from her sides, offering herself as exhibit A. “What about me, specifically, makes you think I wouldn't go out to try to protect you? Your father and I got into the city, then back out, without a single scratch on us. I think I can take of myself pretty damned well.” She finished by putting her hands on her hips, daring him to disagree.

When he said nothing, she continued. “You won't understand this, but I have to stay busy. If I stop and think about your father wasting away here in the infirmary with no help to give him, and the fact he is now buried on that hilltop...well, let's just say my thoughts aren't pretty, right now.” She smiled at Liam, then at Victoria. “But protecting you two. That's something worth fighting for.”

Strangely, Liam did understand her. Losing Victoria had been a possibility since the moment they'd met. He had in fact “lost” her several times—thinking she was dead or had abandoned them. But she had found her way back to him. Those times while she was gone, though. He'd had some dark thoughts; he wondered if his mom would be encouraged to know he had felt similarly bad or disappointed his thoughts involved his own death. Rather than say that, he opted to only nod in the affirmative. Whatever he felt at thinking Victoria was dead, it couldn't play on the same ball field as his mom, who knew Dad was gone.

“So you're leaving us?” He tried to keep it from sounding like a baby bird that fell from its nest.

His mom laughed, with her best fake smile. “Oh Liam. Do you think I would leave my only son at this dark hour? Not a chance! But, if I can do anything to slow down those people, I'm going to take it. I'll help anyone willing to try.”

“OK, then you'll go with us to get Grandma?”

“If what you told me was true about that mine—and I have no reason to doubt you—it sounds to me like the fight is already here in St. Louis, on multiple levels. The Polar Bears are nearby and are exploring the same rabbit holes started by your Grandpa Clyde, and continued by Rose. I think the sooner we can get Marty up here and in their care, the better off I'll sleep at night.”

“Do you know where Grandma Rose is?” he asked his mom.

“I don't think anyone knows where she is, for sure. Your father and I often talked about that, toward the end.” Her face displayed a tight-lipped smile, but her eyes and the bags underneath refused even a suggestion of humor. Liam knew her pain was too fresh.

“I want to get Grandma Marty, then I want to find Grandma Rose. She knows how this all fits together better than anyone. I need the answers to the big questions about this plague.” He didn't mention his mom's role, which he now knew was more than she was admitting.

He waited for his mom to speak up, but she said nothing.

5

Camp Hope had grown so large it was difficult to get a meeting with the camp directors. In prior visits Liam was famous for getting impromptu meetings with them, at all hours of the day. But he also knew one of the Boy Scout leaders personally—Mr. Lee, a man who fell victim to forces searching for Liam—and thus had an “in.” Today he had no cards to play.

His mom had spent most of her time since arrival hovering around the inside of the administration building. First as a helper for her husband, and later she stuck around because she didn't know where else to go. All her time there allowed her to make many friends in the Scout hierarchy. That's what got her into the radio room and what now got her into the food supply area.

If they'd been there to sack the place, they would have gained nothing. There was no food remaining. Not a crumb. The only thing in the pantry was water. Bottles and bottles of it. The Scouts were good about saving bottles, purifying water, then re-filling them for future use. The three of them each pulled two bottles from the shelves.

They returned to the radio room, as that seemed to be the only official place in the building they could all access. His mom stepped away to talk to one of the radio operators, leaving him with Victoria.

“We aren't going to get far if we don't get some food,” Victoria whispered to him.

The sparse larder helped him comprehend the grim reality of the valley. All the people had come here as a safe place to get away from the zombies, but without food there was no long-term hope for the place. His stomach rumbled loudly at the mere mention of food. Even with all the noise in the room Victoria heard it. She held his arm, but didn't offer her usual cheer at the prospect of another adventure. That was unusual.

He spoke while staring at a tiny yellow shortwave radio held by a young man sitting close by. “Am I being stupid? Should we find a place to hunker down and be like everyone else—ride this thing out?”

“I don't know where that place would be. Not here. You saw the food storage. I'm not sure how this place isn't in riot mode already. Maybe the Scouts help with that. Who knows. But I do think bringing Grandma here would be a mistake. We should get back to Cairo and stay there, instead. Whatever's going to happen when that convoy arrives, or all those tanks roll out of that cave...we need to be far away.”

He'd wondered if they should have stayed in Cairo almost since they'd left that town two days ago with such high aspirations. He desperately wanted to find the cure, and find the people responsible for releasing the plague, but losing Dad was a left jab to the gut. Learning that the group of men and women most responsible for causing the plague were coming to St. Louis to make it their new home—that was an uppercut to the jaw. Now he was swooning in indecision about his future. The thought of going anywhere dangerous with his own mother just added to the confusion.

He motioned Victoria back a few steps, and she took his hint.

“Hold on, you two.” His mom was on him in a flash. “You aren't thinking of leaving without me, are you?” She gave him a knowing smile, then touched her nose. “I know how you two operate. I'm on the lookout for you to sneak away. I'm glad you two weren't together back in the time before. I couldn't ever let you kids out of my sight.”

He wasn't sure what she meant by that, though the blush on Victoria's face gave him a hint. He wanted to move on. “We could just walk away from you in the middle of the night somewhere.” Liam said it to be funny, but knew he'd failed. He would never leave his mom for dead, which was a more realistic term for “alone” out in the world.

She scowled. “Just wait here. I'm getting the most up to date information I can, before we leave this camp.”

When she was back with the radio operators, Liam let himself relax. “I can't leave her. I couldn't leave anyone I l—love.” He looked at Victoria. “I just don't know how effective I can be if I have to watch out for my girlfriend and my mom at the same time.”

“Liam, you of all people should know better after hanging with your great grandma all that time. We women can take care of ourselves. I think your mom is tougher than you give her credit for.”

The letter spoke of such things, though he wasn't ready to accept it.

He watched as his mom talked among the various radio operators. She was a model of poise and conservation of energy. She didn't spend time yacking over trifles. She was asking pointed questions and writing notes in a tiny notebook she kept in her back pocket. The same pocket normally reserved for her phone...which she no longer had. He accepted she was coming.

They gathered guns, packs, and a few supplies and walked out of the busy camp. Liam suffered from extreme guilt that he was endangering his mother for no good reason. If she was important to some political movement, going into the wilderness wasn't very smart. Was he being stupid for taking her? Did he have a choice?

As they walked, he bumped hips with Victoria, evoking a smile. Always looking ahead, his best case scenario was to get his mom to Cairo and let her take care of Grandma Marty. They would both be safe there. Then he and Victoria would give them the slip and go back out to find the cure. Victoria was right in suggesting the women in his life could more than take care of themselves, but it made it easier when they weren't all in the same foxhole as him.

Victoria, on the flipside, was the one person he couldn't be without when facing the zombies.

His dreams kept him busy all the way until they boarded the boat.

Chapter 2: Visitors

Martinette Peters knew the dream immediately. Her ability to stay lucid during her increasingly complex dreams improved each time she drifted off. Sadly, that was becoming more and more frequent these days.

“Al, I know you're here.”

In the very first dream she had after the sirens, Al had met her in this place—a representation of the tiny backyard of the flat she lived in for all of her adult life. Only now, instead of the pristine lawn and flower beds, she only saw ruins. The quaint birdbath had been tipped over, and if she wasn't mistaken, someone had taken the time to lift the basin and carry it to the sidewalk so they could shatter it.

“Who would do such a thing? Al, come out!” Her 104-year-old voice box was strong in her dreams.

The neighbors' houses were in various states of disrepair. Every day of the zombie epidemic took the lives of more people, but it also consumed their belongings and property. Several houses had been burned to cinders. The house to her left was a pile of red bricks. Dusty ribbons of smoke escaped from the wreckage deep below. It was almost enough to make her cry—she knew Mrs. Anderson for fifty years.

“Lord, give me the strength to endure...”

Her prayers to God had gone unheeded of late. She once thought Al, her late husband, was an angel sent from God to visit her in these dreams. He gave her information to help her and Liam escape several life-or-death encounters. Or, he explained in a more recent dream, she constructed those answers on her own. She didn't want to believe it. She had felt God's hand guiding her.

“Hiya Marty.”

“Al!” She spun around—something impossible to do on her old legs outside of this place—and smiled broadly at the man. She knew he wasn't really her husband, but the reaction to his face was automatic.

“Still not sure what you did, huh? Is it really so hard to believe God would give you the tools to save yourself, and then stand back and enjoy watching you succeed?”

“But what if I'd failed?”

“Ah, yes. What if?”

She waited for more, but remembered that was his way.

“So you knew I wouldn't fail.”

Al laughed. It was identical to the laugh of her husband. But this wasn't her husband, and she could see the subtle differences the more she studied him. A slightly different way of holding his lips as he smiled. A little deeper furrow between his brows. The tiniest difference in how he held her eyes.

“I told you. Random chance, and the execution thereof, is often the most sought after state for any all-knowing being.”

“You aren't going to tell me, are you?” Now it was her turn to laugh.

“I'm either an agent of God sent to give you all the answers, or your own mind constructing the answers from that marvelous storehouse of memories inside your brain. Which would give you more comfort?”

Her faith in God was absolute. She'd seen too much in her lifetime to doubt that there was a higher power. But Al had often given her good, if sideways, advice about her own relationship with the Almighty. In this case, she would prefer to use her God-given talents to the best of her ability to solve her own problems. She admitted this made her feel proud, but at the same time she wanted to believe it would in some tiny way allow God to focus time on people who needed it more.

“That's the old Marty I love!”

Al could read her mind.

“No, I'm in your mind. Remember?”

“Of course I do. You never let me forget. Now, what are we doing here?” The question she most wanted to ask was why he'd been gone. But if he was in her mind, he never could have left. While she was dwelling on that conundrum, Al broke in.

“You've got a special gift, Marty. You can access your memories in a way most people can only dream about.” He paused for a few seconds. “Hey, I just made a joke.”

Inwardly she groaned. That was another difference between this Al and the real one. His sense of humor.

“Oh give me a break, Marty, my dear. There isn't much to laugh about out there. I don't have much material.”

She shifted in the tall grass. “You were saying?”

“Yes, the dreams of the dark girl.” He reached out for her hand and pulled her to the back of the yard as he spoke. “The young girl with the fancy braids and the overflow of weapons.”

“I saw her in different places. Like she got around. I'm quite certain I've never seen her before. You can't tell me she was something I thought up. I'd never conjure such a violent creature.”

They approached the freestanding one-car garage at the back of the yard. A long two weeks ago she found her lasso in this same structure. It was step one of her escape from Angie, and from the city itself. Without that rope, she'd probably be dead. Yet, the sad-looking little building didn't bring her the comfort of that incident. It brought her the only one that really mattered: it was the place where she accidentally killed her own daughter. It took the threat of death from Angie to make her forget that incident just one time so she could walk in and get that rope. Now it tumbled back with a tangible punch to her midsection. Her heart broke.

She leaned against the open side door. It had been kicked open. The wood of the door jam was splintered. Al stood in the doorway.

“Marty. My love. You have a wonderful gift. The infection didn't affect you the same way it did for almost everyone else. I want to show it to you. But you have to come inside.” He walked into the ransacked garage.

On the precipice, she heard something behind her. A rumbling of motors. And a powerful whine.

She looked over her shoulder. An impossible shape tore through the small alleyway. It pushed over fencing and the outer edges of other garages. The cracks and claps of wood got steadily louder in the few moments she watched.

Al's voice became distant. The whine from the big tank dominated her awareness. It pushed a wave of garbage and infected in front of it. It was horrible, but she couldn't look away.

“My God. What's coming?”

2

Marty woke up in the tiny family room she'd been staying in since she arrived in Cairo.

“Are you OK, ma'am?” One of the teens on the floor nearby had a serious look on her face. “You jumped.” Her smile showed concern.

“Oh yes—” Her look conveyed a question.

“Debbie.”

“Yes, Debbie. I'm fine. Just bad dreams.”

The girl went back to her tablet. She was keying in letters with her fingertips at the same frantic pace as she had before Marty fell asleep. Other teens were strewn about the room engaged in similar pursuits. They did keep one wall clear, though, and Marty was disturbed to see the television sitting there was playing a news broadcast about a great convoy cutting across West Virginia. The same type of tank she'd seen in her dream was slowly driving over a parking lot through a group of dead people.

“...and this was the scene in Charleston yesterday as the Operation Renew America pushed through the downtown. As you can see from this footage, the infected put up a good fight.”

More imagery showed large groups of sick people converging on the tanks and other vehicles of the convoy, but weapons tore into them. She was relieved they blurred the video, rather than show the gruesome details. The tanks moved through a narrow downtown street firing their canons and letting loose with their machine guns. It terrified Marty to watch, but the TV reporter seemed to revel in it.

“You wouldn't believe it,” the male reporter screamed, “the sick are walling up against the tanks but they are being raked by the bullets from the coaxials. Rock and Roll!” He then went on a series of hoots and whoops while his cameraman panned up ahead to watch the action unfold. Buildings were blown apart, trees were cut in half, and derelict cars were pushed out of the way by a tank with a big plow leading them all.

“Is this what you wanted me to see, Al,” she said to herself. None of the kids looked at her, which was good. She was just the crazy old lady sitting in the teen game room. Suited her just fine.

She followed news of the convoy for a few more minutes, but grew bored. It was getting on toward lunch time when someone knocked once and then opened the front door.

A tired-looking soldier strode through. A couple others stayed outside, and, after weeks of being around people with guns, she noticed their rifles were in hand.

“Excuse me. I'm looking for Liam Peters,” he announced to the room.

Several of the teens looked up with a fast head shake, but returned to their distractions with nary a second glance.

“Hi. I'm Liam's great-grandmother.” As she said it, she wondered if she should say it. Liam would probably yell at her for being too open. She needed to work on not trusting people.

The soldier held his canvas cap in his hand as he crossed the room.

“Please excuse me if I don't get up,” she twittered. Anyone looking at her would probably assume she would never get up again. Little did they know what she'd seen and done the past two weeks…

“No, please don't. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brandyweis. I met Mr. Peters on a reconnaissance mission through Beaumont Scout Reservation a week or so ago. He came up on my radar as having stowed aboard a Marine O-22 Osprey evacuating my boys out of St. Louis. I've been a little busy here, but I've been meaning to find him and have a few words. Do you know where he is, ma'am?”

The man was tall and grim-faced. He had small cuts on his chin, like he'd shaved with a rusty razor. The stains of blood permeated his uniform, though he'd made a noble effort to get it clean.

“Sir, you've just asked the right question.” She was quoting Al. “Where is he.” After a long pause, she continued. “He is out there.” She pointed to the window.

“In the town?”

“No, beyond the town. He took a boat to the north.”

“He left the safety of the town? That's crazy.” He seemed to think on it. “Then again...he left the safety of Beaumont to escape me. And then he shows up inside a stadium full of infected where I lost one of my irreplaceable birds. Does he have a deathwish? Is he some kind of disaster tourist?”

“Tourist?” She laughed heartily at that. The thought he would have taken her out of her house just to tour the landscape was as hilarious as it was insane. “No, no. Nothing like that. He's trying to save the world.”

It was the officer's turn to laugh. “I suppose you're going to tell me he's looking for the cure? He said something to that effect when we met last. And let me tell you, my world since then has been a major shitstorm—oh, sorry. It has been a major string of disasters, one after the next. I lost men fighting outside the camp. I lost men getting downtown. I lost men downtown. I lost men evacuating downtown. Are you seeing a pattern here?”

“Yes, I'm afraid I do.”

“And here is this boy. Liam. He seems to show up everywhere I'm having my disasters. Do you think that's a coincidence, ma'am?”

He seemed to get a little taller as his anger increased. She figured he'd earned the right to be upset, but it had to be misplaced. Liam and Victoria couldn't be responsible for killing his men.

“And now you tell me he went back out for more.” He punched his hat. Marty snuck a look around the room and saw many of the teens were surreptitiously listening. It was a long minute before the colonel spoke again.

“Ma'am. Do you have any idea why anyone would leave this place and go looking for trouble. Is he working for someone?”

Her smile was real. “Lieutenant Colonel, you won't believe me if I told you...but I'm going to tell you anyway. Liam has it in his head he's going to find out who released the plague and he's going to nail them to the wall. Also, while he's out there, he's going to find the cure so we can all live to read the book he's going to write about what really happened here. He says it's all tied around some group called the National Internal Security.”

He looked down at her with penetrating blue eyes. She held his gaze as long as she could, but eventually she relented. She prayed it didn't weaken her message, since it was completely true.

“Thank you for your time.” He spun around to leave.

“Wait! Are you going to go find him?”

“Ma'am. I've got about twenty percent of my original battalion. Between deserters trying to get home to save their families and attacks by infected, I may soon have unit on paper only. I've got almost nothing left of my heavy equipment and my access to my own air assets is being threatened by some damned Army two-star running the show in Cairo. If I wanted to find him, I would have to walk out the front gate myself and do it.”

“He would be worth it, sir. Liam has survived out there alone. I believe he'll find the cure and save us all.”

“I wish him the best. I really do. Good day to you.”

He stepped out the front door, but before he shut the door he spoke to his companions.

“Get me in touch with St. Louis recon.”

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.

Chapter 3: Arizona

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.

He and Victoria showed his mom to the covered cab while he started the twin outboard motors. The sense of deja vu overwhelmed him as he and Victoria once more took to the river to go find Grandma. Last time they were going to St. Louis. Now, to Cairo. The patterns of the Zombie Apocalypse were hard to explain.

“Liam, are you sure you can use this boat?”

He shared a knowing look with Victoria as she rooted around inside the cabin. “Yeah mom, we know the owner.” He placed his gun and his backpack next to the captain's chair.

“And this owner said it was OK to use his boat?” She gave him a motherly scowl.

“Ehh. It's kind of a gray area.”

The gruff captain didn't abandon his boat precisely, but Liam wasn't thinking straight after surviving his time underground. He hadn't lost any sleep over it, though he felt just a tinge of guilt now that his mom was shining a light on the issue.

His mom gave both kids a disapproving look.

“What? I promise once we get to Grandma I'll make sure it gets back to him.” He felt confident because his plan was to drop his mom in Cairo. He and Victoria would need the boat to get back to St. Louis.

“Ah ha!” Victoria pulled out a bag from a compartment next to the passenger's seat. “He was holding out on us.” With a flourish she dumped about a dozen energy bars on the floor. They were the same ones he'd seen on many of the people arriving at Camp Hope. They were given to them at another distribution center for refugees. Somewhere there were probably pallets of them.

Maybe they are in a storage room next to those tanks.

Like so much of the collapse, things happened so fast there was no time for proper planning. Wherever the energy bars came from, they were probably limited to the stocks they had on hand. In the weeks before the sirens the transportation network had ground to a halt, and getting that many bars to a refugee camp once the sirens went off was impossible. The highways had become parking lots.

He wolfed one down without a further thought about its origin. The women did the same. They gulped water from the bottles they'd brought and for a few minutes he was perfectly content with the modern equivalent of a full belly. The soft lap of water under the hull of the boat, the early morning air, and the shade of the trees above, made him think of taking a nap. Someday...

The boat coughed noisily before he throttled up and got them moving downriver. It was going to be at least an hour before they reached the Mississippi River, where they'd turn right and go south to the southern tip of Illinois. He hoped the fuel would last that long, but if it didn't, they could continue downriver with the current. It should be a pleasant journey compared to the disastrous ride upriver.

He scanned the shore for threats. First one side, then the other, until he felt his mom's eyes on him.

“You know, your dad constantly told me it should have been him out there rescuing Grandma and doing these things you've been doing. I told him his biggest contribution was giving you the common sense training you needed to survive. In that regard, your father was out there doing those things with you. He'll always be with you as long as you remember his lessons.” She squirmed on the uncomfortable chair. “But that didn't make him feel much better about you being out here while he was in that building.”

“Believe me, there were lots of times I wanted to find you and dad and just hand over Grandma and be done with it. But the longer I stayed out there—out here—the more I realized there was nowhere safe for anyone. The safest place we've seen is Cairo, Illinois, and I predicted it would only last two weeks.” Cairo jogged his memory.

“Oh, if anyone asks, I'm seventeen now.”

His mom gave Victoria a sideways smile. “They grow up so fast.” She looked back to Liam. “But that doesn't change who you are. People are still going to see you as a young boy. I can't help but see you as my little boy. I'll probably see you that way when you have gray hair,” she added with a friendly giggle.

“Well, people have to stop. None of the books I've read on zombies have survivors complaining about a person's age. As long as they can kill zombies, who cares?”

“You'll understand someday. Parents care. We always want what comes next to be better than what we had. When people see kids today, they know that's no longer possible. I saw it in the eyes of parents every day back at camp. My parents worried about getting me a college education. For you, and you Victoria, I worry that I can find a strong wall and some fresh ammo. That won't change whether you are seventeen or sixteen. Me? I just want to enjoy our time together, no matter what age you pretend to be. Happy birthday by the way.”

“Thanks. Victoria already gave me my birthday surprise.”

“Oh, she did?” Her tone was haughty, with just a touch of mirth.

He looked at Victoria to see her cheeks blush, and he wondered what he'd said wrong.

His mom continued to watch him with a surprised look on her face.

“What?” he asked.

“A surprise, Liam? Is that what young people call it today?”

He put it all together. He'd insinuated something more affectionate between himself and Victoria.

“Oh man, no. I meant she gave me a birthday kiss with one to grow on. It was a real surprise after weeks of terrorizing scares. I really appreciated it.”

“Ohh.” His mom and Victoria both burst out in laughter, though he couldn't quite muster his own laugh. Sure it was a wonderful kiss, but it was from an earlier era. A time before he knew his dad was dead.

Once again, he focused on the journey. Scanning the shore and managing the boat distracted him from the loss.

Twenty minutes later, they passed below a big highway bridge. On a prior journey he'd felt threatened by the hanging nets under the nearby railroad bridge but now the powerful boat sped right under the bridges. When he turned around to check his progress, he saw another boat bouncing on the waves just behind him.

One of the men pointed a rifle right at him.

He looked very familiar.

2

The man used his free hand to motion for Liam to stop his boat.

“We've got company,” he said matter-of-factly.

His mom turned behind and went for her rifle, but Liam stopped her. “Mom, they could have shot us at any time. They still can. I'm going to stop and see what they want. You keep the guns in here and I'll talk to them.”

“Absolutely not. I'll talk to them. You keep the guns in here.”

He wanted to argue with her, but there wasn't time. He decelerated, then stopped the boat in the middle of the narrow channel. The engines idled in case they needed to make a hasty exit. The other boat came right up and an older man jumped on board Lucy's Football. He wore the same worn button down shirt he had on days ago.

“Give me my GD boat back! Drop those weapons.”

The captain had found them. Liam didn't bother staying in the cabin, nor did he bring his gun with him. It was the captain's boat, after all.

“Mom, I know him. He's, uh, the owner.”

“Not the owner. This expensive piece of government equipment belongs to the United States Corps of Engineers. But I'm responsible for it.” Then, as if it needed to be said. “I'm taking it back.” He walked into the pilot's cabin.

“Fine. We're probably going to the same spot anyway. Cairo.”

“Oh no. That's not how it works. You ship-stealing kids and your soccer mom friend here are going to get out right here and now. We've been tracking you since yesterday. We saw you take the boat from up on the cliffs. Only I didn't know it was you, per se. But now it makes perfect sense. Trick us into thinking you were going down into the pit, then steal the boat. A nice little racket you got there.”

The blonde haired, middle aged man in the other boat was someone Liam recognized, too. Jason Hawkes. He'd been told over the secure text link down in the mine that he should find Mr. Hawkes and that he could trust him. That he knew his father. Did that also mean he knew his mother?

He carefully observed Jason as he tied off his boat and boarded the Football. If he knew his mother, he was very smart about hiding it. His mom didn't show any recognition either.

What's happening to me? I don't trust my own mother?

He snapped himself out of it.

“Fine. Can you take my mom? She had no part in stealing the boat.”

“Liam, no. I'll stay with you.”

“No! Someone has to get back to Grandma and watch over her. If it isn't us, then it has to be you.”

“Mr. Hawkes, I believe you knew my father. Jerry Peters? Will you please take my mother downriver with you?”

It was a desperate play, but the captain looked ready to run aground and push him onto shore. They were already closing the short distance to the bank.

“Jerry Peters?” He seemed to study his feet. “I don't recall anyone by that name. Where did he work?”

“We don't have time to play hard to get, sir. My dad is dead. He died of an infection to his leg.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, kid. But I don't know of any Jerry Peters.”

The hull of the boat gently struck the rocky shore. The captain made good on his threat to put them off the boat. All that was left was the old heave ho. Or maybe a plank.

“There you go, kids. Now get out. I'll take one of these guns as payment for my trouble.” He'd grabbed one of his dad's AKs, which stoked a deep resentment inside Liam. That was his dad's gun.

The captain tossed the other two guns on shore. At least he'd left them with something to defend themselves. Plus they weren't all that far from Camp Hope. But, this was possibly the last boat capable of making it back to Grandma.

Victoria and his mom were already ashore. The gun pointed at his back suggested he join them.

He decided to take one last crack at the man.

“I received a message in the mine. It was from someone watching over me there. She said I needed to escape the mine and report to you. That you knew my dad. That you were part of the Patriot Snowball.” That last part was a white lie, but it all added up. Who else would his dad work with? Most definitely not the NIS.

His heart stopped beating for a moment.

Could he?

Impossible, or just improbable?

“Patriot Snowball? You hear that Cap'n? These folks think we're part of some rebellious group of traitors against fellow Americans. What do you say to that?”

The captain laughed. Liam didn't know why. Blue accused him of running guns up and down the river for the Patriots. Surely he wasn't doing that for the government. They didn't need the help.

But what if they were with the NIS? Did they need the help?

He felt the barrel of the gun in his back. Things had taken a turn toward the serious. His mom was edging her way toward her gun. He could see where this could potentially go.

The NIS? It was incredibly far-fetched.

“OK, not Patriots then. Are you with the National Internal Security?”

The captain, behind him, whispered in his ear. “You know, if anyone knows that secret they are ordered by NIS field guides to kill that person on sight.”

Oh God. This is it.

His mom was close to her gun, but there's no way she could get to it while the barrel of the captain's gun was drilling into his own back.

He tried to think it through.

Maybe if he dived sideways…

“Lucky for you, you had it right the first time. I'm just jackin' with ya, anyway. You seem to be wound tighter than a ship's anchor.”

The gun barrel dropped.

By some miracle, his mom had reached down and aimed the gun toward Jason. He responded by raising his hands.

“We're all friends here. We're all Polar Bears,” the captain said in a comforting voice.

3

“Sorry about that, Liam. I had to be sure you weren't a spy for the NIS. They have an uncanny ability to be everywhere and see everything.”

“So you don't know my mom?”

“Nope. Though I wish I did.” Jason held his hand out to help Lana back in the boat—but he froze.

Liam peered out to where the man was looking, but saw nothing.

“What is—”

“Shh.”

He made as if to pull the girls into the boat, but everyone stopped.

A strong smell enveloped them. It arrived on a slight breeze. To Liam it reminded him of pancakes and syrup, but it also contained a sour smell, like roots of tree.

The smell made his head spin. He fell to one knee, unsure what caused it. His mom retched, while Jason took several steps backward, toward the main cabin. Liam heard a splash of water.

“Victoria? Where are you?” After he'd said it, he couldn't remember if he said it out loud, or merely thought it. Victoria was still on the shore, he decided.

With it.

He could see the zombie standing behind a nearby cottonwood tree. He was hard to make out because he wore camouflage BDUs. Liam had gotten better about identifying branches of service—the zombie was an ex-Marine.

But Liam couldn't see straight.

The zombie took a few steps in his direction, as if testing the terrain. Waiting for a gunshot, or a sword blade. When none came, it continued to move closer.

“Have to run.” He spoke in a calm tone to Jason, who was crumpled on the floor near the cabin.

The zombie took its time. Liam, through the haze in his brain, accepted he was looking at something new. And, as if to prove it, the zombie began climbing a large tree. The branches hung low over the boat. It was a creative, if unnecessary, way for it to board the vessel.

“Have to run,” he repeated to himself.

The zombie moved fast into the tree. He began to weave through the middle branches as it searched for the one that was directly above Lucy's Football.

It's that one, you stupid zombie.

But it wasn't totally stupid. Through the fog he recognized that simple fact.

From deep in his memory he searched for a parallel in his zombie lore. A smart zombie? Then it isn't a zombie at all, is it? But zombies had to have some intelligence; enough to identify food. Even a snake, with its tiny brain, was able to sneak up on its prey. A snail, with barely the ability to move, was smart enough to find food. And now this zombie, supposedly dumber than most boxes of hammers, had the ability to stand upright, crawl up a tree, and plot a simple course to prey.

And it had something else. Liam couldn't put his finger on it, though he knew it should be obvious.

More splashes of water.

In his memory he summoned an image of a zombie in a pink nightgown.

He laughed inwardly. “Yeah, that was the time I lost myself and declared my love for a zombie version of Victoria. That thing made me lose my mind.”

Lose my mind.

The echo in his head was real.

Lose…

It was making him lose it again. He had lost it.

“The smell. The smell is the zombie!”

He called out, but no one seemed to care. The zombie had found the correct path and was close to finding its way down the branch, where it would soon jump on board.

On his hands and knees he slunk into the cabin. The throttle was right there. The motors were still idling.

The captain still needs to toss us ashore.

He tried to catch sight of the zombie up in the tree, but he couldn't see it. He reached for the controls.

With great force he jammed the throttle in reverse, and the motors went from zero to reverse. The powerful propellers grabbed the water and jerked the whole boat backward. The zombie had timed it as best it could, but the surprise move by Liam seemingly threw it off its game. It fell from the tree and banged heavily off the front end of the boat, then splashed into the water.

The fog quickly wore off. Liam caught the motors again and clutched them into forward to keep from running backward into the far shore. He did his best to straighten the boat so he could see what was happening. He noted Jason was still on the floor near the front. Victoria was on shore, on her back.

The zombie was in the water—swimming.

“Victoria! Move!”

And his mother was there, too. She was on the ground as well, hunched over from getting sick.

He stepped forward to get a better view of the water. He looked everywhere for a gun, but his mom and Victoria were with their guns, though they didn't look to be in any condition to use them. The captain had taken an AK, but the captain wasn't anywhere he could see.

“Captain?”

He glanced to the rear deck, but the old sea dog wasn't out there. He wasn't on the boat.

It took a few frantic seconds to spy him, but it was obvious once he'd found him in the water. He was madly thrashing away fifty yards down the river.

And half the distance between the captain and the boat, he saw the zombie. It swam, though not very well.

Liam looked at the girls on the bank and decided to take a chance. If this new alpha-level zombie doubled back, he would use the boat to chase him. The only gun left on board was the one currently wrapped around Jason. Maybe the fresh air would help him recover from...the scent of the thing.

He spun the boat in the direction he needed to go, and gunned it.

4

Liam had made his decision in record time. He got the boat moving in the right direction and made no discernible mistakes. Yet he still didn't reach the zombie before it managed to get a hand on the tiring captain.

He laid off the motors, unable to get any closer for fear of hitting both the swimming figures.

Do something!

With the engines back in idle, the boat floated by the struggling form of the captain, now besieged by this new type of zombie. Liam ran to Jason to try to get his AR free of its entanglement.

“Jason! I need help. Now!” He screamed at the man, hoping to break the spell. But Jason looked into the distance, like he was seeing something horrible coming for him.

He ran to the captain's toolbox. Days ago he'd pulled out a couple of heavy tools for the girls to use as weapons. The seconds ticked off as he dug for what he needed.

“You can't go in the water, Liam,” a scared voice called out from his mind. “It'll drown you.”

He grabbed a hammer and a heavy pipe wrench. Neither was appropriate for what he needed...and then he saw the right tool. He threw down the others and pulled out the much lighter one. He ran back to Jason, the seconds continued to roll, and he used the box cutter to snip through Jason's rifle sling. It allowed him to pull the rifle away from the still-reeling man.

He struggled to his feet. Tried to find the zombie and the captain, but it took fifteen seconds. The captain popped up, gasping for breath, twenty feet downriver. He aimed the rifle, tripped off the safety, and hoped to find his target.

“Oh God,” cried the captain. He rolled on his back, calling out in pain.

“Where is it?” Liam shouted.

“Help me,” was the only reply. And he sounded weak.

Liam searched in futility. If the zombie had drowned—if that were possible—would it drag along the bottom, or float to the top? If there was no air in the lungs, wouldn't it go down? He couldn't say for sure.

He returned to the steering wheel and gingerly moved the boat closer to the captain. Jason was snapping out of it, too, but he still wasn't doing more than sitting up.

“Captain, you have to climb aboard.”

Liam tossed him a rope tied to a small white buoy. That allowed him to hold on until Jason sobered up enough to pull him inside. With an eye on the river, Liam returned to his mom and Victoria, who were both standing in anticipation of his arrival. Both had their rifles in hand.

They wasted no time talking. When the boat touched the shore, both women jumped in and Liam backed into the water.

“What the hell was that thing?” Lana asked, breathlessly.

“Some kind of alpha zombie,” Liam responded, thinking of his own naming convention for it.

The captain cried out in pain. Jason had made him comfortable near the rear door to the cabin. Liam was in that exact spot, days ago. Also after a run in with zombies.

“The bastard got me. He scratched my arm all to hell.”

“Did he bite you?”

“No, I kept him busy. But he dug into me pretty good.” His arm was a bloody mess near the shoulder. It didn't look like a bite, at least.

The captain knew his boat. He directed Liam to the medical kit, his mom patched him up, and in ten minutes the captain was pushing the motors as fast as they'd go on the tight river.

The five of them barely fit in the cabin, but no one wanted to be out in the open, even though it was silly to think of anything catching them at thirty miles an hour on the water.

In no time they reached the end of the Meramec River. A mangled bridge lay half in the water. Liam recognized it as “his” bridge. The one he'd crossed on that first day. The train engine was supposed to be parked nearby, but it had been taken into the underground cavern with all the tanks in it. The bridge was familiar, but foreign. Lots of wood had floated down the river and gotten tangled up in the metal trusswork riding near the surface of the water.

The captain surprised them all by dropping from breakneck speed to a full stop just past the bridge.

“Everyone out!” He shouted. “Go with Jason.”

“Wait, what?” Liam replied.

“You can't toss us out. We have to get to Cairo.”

“No one's going to Cairo, but me.” He laughed an unhealthy laugh. “I'm injured, folks. I don't know what that thing was, but it messed me up. I can feel it in my veins. I'm not taking no for an answer.” He stood and looked at them. “Jason needs to get back to his people. He only offered to help me get my boat back. I have it. I'm gone.”

Liam expected Jason to protest, but he did not.

“Captain, please. I have to get to my Grandma.”

He tossed Liam a notepad with a pencil attached. “Write her vitals here. I'll try to get this to her. Just after they give me medical treatment.”

It made sense. Cairo had the only working medical facility—more of a tent—that he'd seen since the sirens. His gamble was they'd have something to treat whatever it was he caught. He looked horrible, but without a bite, the bleeding should stop soon and he should be fine. A note was better than nothing.

He scribbled down a short note to Grandma, described her, and then set the notepad on the passenger's seat.

“Please get this to her.”

“I'll try, son. Now get the hell off my boat and out of my life.”

The boat moved forward to the shore, but Jason was in the back near a floor board that had bounced up during the high-speed cruising. He had pulled up the decking and smiled over what was beneath him.

“Well, I wish I'd known that was there when I needed it,” Liam remarked.

The ship captain was a gun runner after all. He saw that his stash had been found.

“Take what you want. I don't care anymore. It belongs to the Snowballers, anyway.”

5

Standing on the shore with his dad's AK-47 again, Liam watched the captain throttle up and out of his life, at least for now. He took in the surroundings, piecing it together from the brief time he was here last. The large power plant sat idle. Large piles of coal stood vigil nearby...waiting for someone to shovel them onto the conveyor belt going into the facility. No one came out, though he recalled there being some survivors inside back then.

“We need to move. I don't know what that thing was, but it might be swimming down the river to this point. I say we get gone before it arrives.”

With some trepidation, Liam turned his back on the river. For hundreds of yards he turned around to see if they were being followed. They found the railroad tracks huddled at the base of the tall bluff face which ran along this section of the river. Even then, he turned around every so often, sure they were being followed by the strange new creature.

“Liam, you can relax. There's nothing back there.” His mom sounded comforting, but he couldn't take her at her word this time.

“Yeah, we can see all the way back there on these tracks. It can't sneak up on us,” Victoria added.

But the sick-smelling aroma hung in his nostrils as they walked. It could be above them on the bluffs—

How could it have climbed that high?

Or below them hiding in the woods below the railroad grade—

How could it have kept up with the boat going thirty miles per hour?

Or, mystery of mysteries, maybe it was already in front of them—

Now you're being crazy.

Liam didn't know.

“I just want to get somewhere we have four walls around us.” The alpha zombie had deeply affected him. Its ability to project, and then combine skills of other zombies he'd had the misfortune to encounter, well, it made him appreciate how stupid zombies really were. Often in the books they were slow, plodding creatures. Sometimes they were fast, but still pretty dumb. The one behind them—he was sure it was still pursuing them—had displayed climbing skills and swimming skills along with whatever aromatic concoction it emitted. What if there were others who could run? Hell, maybe that one could, but never had the chance.

No, it couldn't run he decided. That's why it didn't march directly for them. It was smart enough to recognize the weakness was above. If it could have run, the whole thing would already be over and he himself would now be walking around looking for the blood of more victims.

“Here lies the great historian, Liam Peters—only recorded the first five minutes of the Zombie Apocalypse,” his epitaph would say.

One more look behind.

“This is something new. We have to tell someone. These Arizonas—they're going to get the drop on everyone.”

“Arizonas?” Jason asked.

“Yeah, Alpha Zombies. A-Z. It's shorthand.”

Victoria laughed, perhaps remembering his effort to label zombies as “zuellas” early in the crisis. That conversation seemed like it happened last year. Each day of the apocalypse was like a month in the Old World. He put his hand on his head, imagining the gray hairs sprouting even now.

“Liam, is this what you do on your adventures?” his mom wondered. “Is this for your book?”

“Uh, no. I just think someone needs to name these things, so that when my book does get written, I can...I mean historians can put the proper names to the beasts we've run into.”

“He wants to name them,” Jason offered.

Feeling cornered, he tried to retreat in another direction.

“What was it with the captain? How did you two get working together?”

“The Patriots are everywhere, Liam. And nowhere. We actually met before the Ebola Squared virus busted out. His partner, Peter, was in my softball league. We got to talking one night after a game and learned we both had the same sympathies in the political realm. I never would have imagined in a million years he and I would end up working together like this. The zombies have made each survivor infinitely more valuable for the skills they possess. We needed a way to transport supplies on the river. And there he was. He survived.”

Until now. Until he met me.

He kept that to himself.

“So he brings in guns from Cairo?”

“I never asked him where they came from. But think about it. All those barges floating down the river. There's no telling what could have been in all those containers. I've watched them float by for weeks. He said they captured them down there. If you think about it, Cairo is possibly the richest town in America right now.”

Liam had thought nothing about money since the sirens ended society. But his hunger told him that at some point someone was going to have to start growing food or slaughtering cattle, and for anyone to buy that food they are going to need money or other goods for trade. In that light, Cairo actually could be one of the most wealthy towns in America. That assumes the upriver towns don't go looking for their missing barges and cargo.

“So there are Polar Bears in Cairo?” It seemed obvious, but it opened new avenues. If he had friends there, besides the captain, maybe he could get messages to Grandma.

“Liam, let me ask you an important question. It's what I ask every person who claims to want to join with da Bears.” He'd said it funny, though Liam couldn't guess why.

“In the Twentieth Century there was one institution that towered above all others in the sheer number of people it exterminated from the earth. Can you guess what it was?”

Liam knew the answer.

“The Nazis.”

“Nope. They were efficient killers, for sure. And they worked over the Jews to the breaking point. But they by themselves pale in comparison to this institution. You have to think bigger.”

He only had a vague recollection, even with his Polar Bear father, about the big events in history. He was familiar with the important dates in American History—1776, 1865, 1945—but he'd never had to know about the number of deaths per century. Who would even teach such a thing?

They continued to walk the tracks, but Jason let him off the hook.

“The institution is government. 250 million killed in the Twentieth Century alone. I'm talking about Democide, Liam.”

The word was foreign. Jason expected as much because he continued right along.

“We all complain about political parties and we think America is broken and all that, but the real enemy is the very institution of government. It has the capacity for some good, but when it goes off the rails,” he kicked a rail, “it goes big. It's the single biggest killer in the twentieth century. The Nazis were bad, but they weren't as bad as the Communists in the Soviet Union or China. The statists use the apparatus of government to punish those that won't say the correct thing or think the correct way.”

“But we've moved beyond all that. We've evolved,” said Victoria.

Liam wasn't going to argue with his girlfriend. It made sense. No big genocides had happened recently, that he could remember.

“You think so, huh? But until this conversation you weren't even aware the word existed, or that nearly the equivalent of the population of the United States was rounded up and exterminated in the last hundred years. How can you say something can't happen, if you don't even know it exists?”

No one had any retort.

Jason continued. “How many people do you think have been killed by this plague? Millions? Billions? Almost everyone?”

Liam stopped. “Wait just a damn minute. Are you saying that governments put out this plague to kill their own citizens? How does that even make sense?”

“I'll answer your question with a question. How does it make sense that the Soviet Union killed almost seventy million of its own people? Who do you think makes the decisions of government?”

“Politicians?”

“Wrong. Bureaucrats. The true engine of the state. It took people to drive the Jews in cattle cars to the ovens. It took people to march the walking dead into the gulag archipelago of Russia. And it took people to create and disperse the bug that killed us all.”

He gave Liam a serious look.

“This was no accident, Liam. You have to know that. And the people who did it are in our own government. And they want you dead, you dead, you dead, and me dead.”

“But why,” asked Victoria in almost a whisper.

“That's what the Patriot Snowball was all about. We wanted to expose the faceless bureaucrats. Who were the anonymous political action committees, corporate shills, and lobbyists behind all the decisions made at the highest levels of government? Who was really in control of the most powerful and potentially destructive force in modern history? And these days, we want to know what they knew about the virus.”

“An NIS agent spilled the beans. He said it was the President who released it.”

“Partial credit, my friend. Partial credit.”

Jason looked to the path up the side of the escarpment.

“We're almost back to my people. We'll have to continue this later.”

“Wait,” Victoria cried. “Are you some kind of secret agent? How did you learn all this stuff?”

“Agent? No,” he said with a chortle, “I was a lowly college professor. Educators are popular with our group.” He pointed at his temple, then tapped it with a smile. “We know where the bodies are buried.”

Chapter 4: Jason Hawkes

When the group reached the top of the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, Liam was reacquainted with the desperate group of survivors huddled in the woods up there. On his last pass through, the people were patiently waiting for their opportunity to cross to Illinois. He figured some of them had made the trip, but he also guessed there were more today than there were two days ago.

Jason walked them right into a circle of serious-looking men and women in various types of camouflage clothing, tending radios.

“This is the heart of our network. Old-school shortwave radios.”

Liam whispered to Jason. “Won't they track you here?”

“We only listen, up here. We move around if we need to broadcast. We, uh, have a central leadership team that feeds us news and orders.”

Liam wondered if his dad had been a part of that leadership team. If his note was true, he almost certainly was. He kept that to himself, for now, and showed genuine appreciation for the people listening to the radios. They played their part to keep people alive.

“Excuse me. I need to check in. You can make yourselves comfortable in the waiting room.” He pointed to a clump of trees with a smile. “We also have some bottles of water.”

Bottled water was ubiquitous. It was almost as if someone para-dropped pallets of plastic water bottles into St. Louis because everyone carried one. Those sitting in the dry leaves where Jason had pointed were still sealed, which was good. He dodged a bullet when he drank the creek water the other day; an activity he wanted to avoid doing again.

His mom excused herself to talk to Jason, leaving him and Victoria on their own.

“Just like old times,” Victoria said with a sad smile as they sat down under the leafy canopy. “You and me against the world.”

He looked back to his mom. “But now we have to take care of my mom. I thought I'd lost you both when that Arizona jumped for the boat.”

She laughed. “That's what you're going with?”

“What?”

“Arizona?” We're calling it an Arizona zombie?” Her head was cocked sideways, daring him to agree.

“Well technically it's an alpha zombie, but yes. Whoever discovers new species of animals gets to name it.” Once again he felt his science teacher would be proud he was putting her guidance to good use. He felt an inner tension start to let go. Things were getting back to normal with Victoria, his rock. Getting out of dangerous scrapes was preferable to dwelling on the death of his father. The only thing that made it seem less shocking was that so many other people were also dead. It broke his heart, as it would for any child, but it did not break his soul. He couldn't take time off to grieve when the forest could reach out and grab him at any second…

He looked around, wondering if he imagined that as part of an elaborate sixth-sense. But all he saw were the hungry faces of young and old spread among the trees.

“It was scary, whatever we're going to call it. If every zombie was as smart as that one, we'd all be dead already. You and I wouldn't have ever made it out of the tank room. Normal zombies suddenly seem pretty stupid, don't ya think?”

He tried to remember Ms. Bunting's science class. He wasn't a model student, but she made things interesting, so he listened more than he might have otherwise. They had a unit on crossbreeding of pea plants by some geneticist who figured out that certain characteristics are passed on to successive generations. The Arizona had displayed several characteristics in one package, like it had accumulated them from somewhere. But without breeding…

“Ugg.”

“What?” Victoria answered.

“I just had a horrible thought.” He shook his head. “Do you think the zombies can...breed?”

He thought of a book series which involved zombies doing “it” with their victims, but something that terrible couldn't possibly be real. It was an unlikely possibility...but one he had to admit he couldn't discount out of hand.

She gave him the “did you hit your head in the shallow end of the pool again” look.

“I know, right. It's horrible. But how do you think that one zombie got all those skills? It could climb, jump, swim, and...whatever that smell trick is called. It had to get those from somewhere. But...”

“But zombies don't have baby zombies.”

They sat together, side by side, until Victoria snapped her fingers. “What if it wasn't a zombie at all? What if it was a human disguised as a zombie? That would explain how it did all those things. Maybe when it fell in the water all his makeup washed off and that's why he had to disappear.”

“Hmm.” Liam thought about it. It did make a lot of sense. Then he thought about another zombie book he'd read a long time ago. There was something about it that applied to this situation…

“Or, I read about people who went crazy in a zombie plague and started to act like zombies, even though they were still human. They gnawed on other humans, behaved like zombies and even mingled with them. I forget what they were called, but they basically took pretending to a whole new level.”

“That would make more sense than thinking a human put on a zombie costume to attack us for no good reason. He may have really thought he was a zombie, and we just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He wondered about that. It was more frightening to think that something as cunning as an Arizona in how it approached, could also be cunning in how it selected its prey in the first place. If it had been successful in killing them all, it would have eliminated a Snowball leader, a patriot gun-running captain, and a tight family unit who had the inside track on the NIS.

The implications were too terrible to share with Victoria.

What are the implications? For real.

He wasn't sure he believed it. Could it be real? Could zombies be programmed to seek out specific targets and attack them?

No, that's got to be something I read in the fiction section.

He was on a roll thinking about his books, and the examples within, but he couldn't remember ever reading about programmable zombies. That was a relief, though he reluctantly admitted it still didn't mean it was false.

He only smiled at Victoria, hoping she wasn't a mind reader.

2

Lana returned to Liam and Victoria, providing the needed distraction for Liam. He didn't want to put any more fear into the girls than was necessary. Zombies were terrifying enough without thinking they could sniff out specific enemies. Early in the disaster, while on the train out of St. Louis, he imagined the zombies were following them with a purpose, but they were also on an obnoxiously loud train leaving the city in the dead of night. What else were they going to follow? But the idea formed they could follow him...and now this.

“Hey guys. Cairo is still intact. I knew you'd be concerned about Grandma. So am I. One of the radio operators said the town is being deluged by zombies from the north, but they have strong defenses in place.”

“Liam and I walked on their levees and saw the huge ditch they built. They had tanks and other weapons pointed in that direction, too. They can handle them.”

Liam wanted to point out the futility of defending any refuge in the long run, but he was already thinking negative thoughts and didn't want to compound them. He nodded to let his mom know he'd heard.

“But there are problems.” She took a seat against a small tree across from them, then looked around. There were people nearby, but not within quiet-voice range.

“I heard Jason talking with his people. They gave him a bunch of bad news. Something about that big convoy. About the Army across the river. Boats. They were feeding it all too him. He walked away with one of them, so I came over here to not be too nosy.” She smiled.

Liam wondered if she thought of his dad at times like this. He would have been at home in a bank of shortwave radios sitting in a random forest somewhere. Was this up her alley, too?

“Mom, do you like this kind of stuff?”

She looked surprised. “What? You mean smelling like sweat, looking like I always just woke up, and crying eight hours of the day?” She softened. “I'm sorry. What do you mean, exactly.”

“No, I just meant doing the stuff that dad liked to do. Shoot guns. Run around in the woods. Collect ammo.” He thought of his dad's secret stash of guns and ammo in their basement. Most of it had been destroyed, he knew, though they each held the distinctive AK-47 rifles which his dad had horded. They pulled extra 7.62x39 ammo from Lucy's Football. “Or did you do it because you, um, loved him.”

“Oh Liam. I loved him because he did all that stuff. He was too stoic to tell you how much he loved you in that note, but he would have done anything to protect you and I. He did do something to protect us. He got all those guns together, all those camping supplies, all that gear. He was prepared for anything. It was only bad luck that took it all away, and bad luck that took him away, before he could properly tell you why he did everything he did.” She paused. “He did it for you. So you would be prepared and could survive the hard times—these hard times. It's why we both did what we did.”

She laughed.

“Do I love spending my nights with ten thousand other campers, cleaning weapons, and sneaking through forests? Not really. But I'm here because this is how I can best show my love for you—and for you Victoria.” Lana teared up a little. Liam bit his tongue to prevent his own sadness from leaking out. He worried that her tone made it sound like she was going away. She was at the end of her contribution…

“I love you, too.” Victoria made her way over to his mom and crouched to give her a big hug.

Why does this feel like goodbye?

“Your father would have divorced me if he thought for a second I would abandon you when things got really tough. Of course that was never an issue with us, as we both knew I was committed to his...cause. But we both knew what it could mean.”

Through her tears, Victoria responded. “It would mean giving weapons to young boys so they could go around giving funny names to zombies.”

“What?”

“Oh nothing, Mrs. Peters. Just something your son and I were discussing.”

She was trying to perk Liam up.

Jason arrived as Victoria moved back to her sitting tree.

“Hey guys. Thanks for waiting. It's going to be busy for me. I was away with the captain for too long.”

Liam was grateful he didn't place the blame where it belonged. On him.

“I'm afraid I don't have much for you to do up here. There's no food. Little shelter. And now, not even a decent boat.”

He squatted down so everyone was roughly in a semi-circle next to him. “But the worst part is the convoy. Everyone's talking about it from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains. No one is sure where it's going, but it looks to be heading this way.”

“We heard it was coming here,” Lana replied.

“St. Louis?”

“We heard it on NPR.”

“Not on other channels? You know NPR can't be trusted anymore. They control the radio. CSPAN controls the remaining television broadcasts. You know who controls them both.”

“Why would they lie about their destination?”

“If I was going to St. Louis, I would say I was going to Texas or North Dakota. I wouldn't want people waiting for me along the way. It would give plenty of time to set traps or other blockages.”

Liam looked at Jason. “You sure you're a professor? You sound like a military strategist.”

“Ha! Well thanks for that, but no. I studied history in college, and I teach the same at Saint Louis University.” He paused. “Taught.”

“OK, so if they aren't going to St. Louis, where are they going?” his mom asked.

“Or...what if they are coming here and don't care if people know it. What would that get them?” Liam wondered.

They all looked at each other, but no answers were forthcoming.

3

“The convoy isn't our real concern. I'm afraid we've reached a limit here. People are about to start eating each other, and I'm not even joking. My comrades have told me several people have gotten into fights over the smallest scraps, and threats have been made to kill and then eat victims for one reason or another.”

“Is there anything we can do to help,” Lana asked.

Jason looked at them all for a long time, and suddenly appeared as an exhausted shell to Liam. It wasn't apparent when he was animatedly talking about NPR or convoys, but now...he was talking about people in his care.

“Guys, I'm glad you're here. Lana, I sure wish Jerry were here, but I'm truly grateful you showed up when you did. I need some fresh eyes on this.” He swept his arms around him. “I need to know if what I'm planning to do is right.”

Lana replied, “I'll do my best. What's your plan?”

“My team is worried we're going to die in this forest. HQ wants us to wait it out...but that's not going to work for me. A huge convoy led by a corrupted military is coming this way and the only surviving bridge on the river is right next to us. It doesn't take a college professor to know this high ground is going to be the first target to secure when they arrive. We have to move.”

Liam was quick to respond. “Camp Hope. The old Beaumont Boy Scout Reservation. It's where we've been staying. It's in a valley, and is very secure.”

“But do they have food?”

Liam admitted that was the missing puzzle piece almost everywhere he'd been.

“Cairo?” He offered.

“They have food there?”

He couldn't say for absolute sure, though he thought that with all the barges they'd secured, some food had to be in them.

“I think so.” It sounded more like a question than an answer.

Jason sighed deeply, then spoke quietly. “There's a place we've been hearing about on the shorts. It was mentioned once by leadership. They supposedly have food stockpiled, lots of water, even medical care. But it's very hard to get to.”

Liam could think of a lot of places that would be safe, but hard to get to. Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado—the old home of NORAD. Maybe an island in the tropics. A secret base on the polar ice cap where one citizen could watch the Zombie Apocalypse in perfect safety.

But Jason's refuge was much closer. “You guys know Forest Park, right?”

Liam and his mom nodded, but Victoria wasn't sure.

“It's the huge park in what you might consider mid-town St. Louis. It sits behind all those medical buildings. Barnes Hospital and all that.”

Victoria lit up. “Yes! My internship was at Washington University and I crossed a big park to get to the hospitals where they had us, well, helping the infected. I just didn't know what it was called. I never had time for a tour.”

“There you go. It's one of the biggest urban parks in America. Bigger than New York Central Park. But apparently, and this is hearsay remember, the government of St. Louis was able to hold things together in that small part of the city, in and near the park with the help of those medical facilities.”

Liam reflected on the other big refuge set up by the city—the area underneath the Gateway Arch. It collapsed under its own weight, and then it was blown to smithereens by the military. If there were other camps in St. Louis they might also have been blown up.

But if there was a camp.

You can go there and destroy it.

He rolled his mind's eyes. He didn't truly believe he was responsible for destroying all those places. The Arch. The quarry. The bridge out of St. Louis. And on and on and on the list went.

No, not really. I don't believe it.

He had himself mostly convinced when he returned to what Jason and the others were saying.

“Hey Liam, I might finally get back to my dorm room,” Victoria said happily.

“I swore I would never go back into St. Louis. We lost so much the last time—Mel, Phil. We almost lost Grandma Marty. Now, going back in seems a waste of their lives. I don't know if I can do it.”

“Liam, I hear you. But unless you know of somewhere that definitely can feed my people, I think it's our best chance. My map guy already has a route planned. Fifteen miles. Half a day. We can walk it in.”

“Yeah, but those fifteen miles are crawling with zombies. You didn't see how many were in downtown. They were moving outward.”

Jason looked at him for a long time. His face was serious, and he spoke at an even lower tone. Victoria and Lana leaned in. “Look, I appreciate your concern. You guys don't even have to come along. But we have to do something. My team can barely walk. A few more days they'll barely be able to crawl. I can't even send them out to scavenge. The hungrier they get, the more desperate acts they'll attempt. My recovery teams suffer loss after loss out there, and find almost nothing.”

Liam was desperate to think of alternatives.

“Maybe you could wait until the convoy arrives. Then they'll give you some food.” It sounded as stupid as he felt after he said it.

“Yeah, I'm sure they'll feed us on the way to the ovens...”

That brought it all into focus. “But if you go to Forest Park, aren't you getting in bed with the enemy. Aren't they part of the government that's waiting on that convoy?”

“I don't know, Liam. I really don't. But if they'll feed us, we'll at least have the strength to move somewhere else before the real threat arrives. It's not like we have signs on us that say we're enemies of the state. We'll appear like every other refugee with growling stomachs.”

That won't be hard to fake.

4

“You don't want to go into the city again, do you?” Victoria asked.

Victoria and Liam stood off to the side as Jason and his helpers went around to all the campers and explained what they were doing. Jason explained there was only a small cadre of “card carrying Patriots” in his group. Most really were civilians trying to get to other places. They couldn't care less who was guiding them, as long as food was the reward.

“Who does? I'll go, but only because we—and believe me this sounds crazy to say—appear to be the strongest and healthiest of these people. I think we can actually make a difference. I'd much rather walk away. Maybe find some driftwood and sail down to Cairo and wait it all out in a bunker with Grandma. But then I wouldn't be able to write much of a book, and I certainly wouldn't be any closer to finding the cure.” He pulled her closer, and for a moment forgot all his other troubles…

“What?” she said with a wry smile.

“Oh, sorry...you distracted me.”

It was unexpected, but she pulled him in for a kiss. He imagined his mom somewhere nearby scowling at him, but he knew that was unreasonable. By all accounts she really liked Victoria. She even said she loved her.

He was lost in the moment.

A cough interrupted them. “I'm sorry, you two. We're moving out.” His mom continued on, helping others get to their feet.

Victoria continued as if they'd been talking all along. “I think if we go to the city, it's our opportunity to find someone who can help us. Someone who knows the right people working on the cure. If hospitals are still open like Jason said, they would be the best places to start. You'll see.”

He let her go and felt the loss when he lost the contact.

She bent over to grab her rifle. He stood by watching.

“Eyes forward, mister,” she said without looking back.

How the hell did she know?

Girls always know, you dope.

He was still laughing when they'd both gotten their gear and were on the way.

“What's so funny?” Victoria asked.

“Oh, you. You make me do stupid things, like checking you out when you bend over to get your military rifle during the Zombie Apocalypse. This whole thing—I mean dating—isn't how I imagined it.”

“I'll tell you a secret, my young apprentice...” she nudged his side as she walked. “I wanted you to notice.” She smiled widely. “We're both still alive, Liam. I'm sorry all this happened around us, but I love you dang it, and I'm going to enjoy it until the day we—”

They both knew what word came next.

“We both find a final refuge.”

“Exactly,” she confirmed. With that, she sped up. He realized she was doing it again. She turned around with another devious smile before truly double timing it along the dirt trail.

His mind was tempered by the sick and weak people dropping into the outgoing line, though none of them looked infirm or elderly. They looked exactly as you might imagine friends and neighbors after they'd been camping for two weeks with lots of water, but little food.

None of them were very talkative, which suited Liam fine. His mom volunteered to stay near the front with Jason. She wasn't a soldier but she wasn't wasting away like everyone else. That gave her a great value simply for being alert. For the same reason Victoria offered to stay in the middle of the group. Liam, always a glutton for punishment, offered to be at the back.

He came across a few people who weren't coming. They'd assembled in the central area vacated by the radio operators. One of the older women was tossing her sleeping bag near the others when Liam walked up. Her hair was gray and her clothes were the color of dirt from so much time in the forest.

“What you lookin' at, kid?” said the filth-covered woman.

“You aren't going with us?”

She laughed briefly. “Why should we go with them? We all heard the rumors. Help is coming to us. All we gotta do is wait here and it will roll right over that bridge.”

Others nodded.

“The guys you're following are going to get you killed. We've been safe in these woods because the river and the cliff are on our front, and we have that big pit mine on our north side. It deflects all the zombies in other directions. If we leave, the zombies are going to be all over us.”

That's exactly what Liam feared was going to happen.

“But you'll starve. You don't know when the convoy is going to get here.”

The woman gave him a new look. A darkness in her eyes. Liam couldn't explain the feeling he drew from it.

“Kid, we got plenty of food. Don't you worry about us.”

A few snorts from the others.

He scanned the dozen or so people and thought, perhaps unfairly, they didn't seem quite as starved and weak as the others. Like they fed on evil, rather than food. The weapon slung over his shoulder tugged at him; a reminder.

The last of the others up the trail were in danger of leaving his view. It had to be his imagination, but the strange feeling of darkness hung over him. He didn't want to be left alone with the woman, though she made no motions of overt hostility. As he watched, they seemed to relax and return to normalcy. Maybe his mind wasn't so fresh, after all.

They want me gone, though. I feel it.

“OK then, good luck with that.”

He couldn't help trotting away. If he could have run without looking panicked, he would have done so. It only took several seconds to catch up to the man at the end of the walking line. Far from being left behind, the person—indeed the whole line—had already stopped.

He removed his rifle from his back, just to be prepared.

The group remaining behind was now barely visible through the dense foliage of the forest floor. He could see the shirts and backs of the heads of several, but was disappointed he was in the perfect spot to see the face of the old woman. She watched him just as he watched her.

And she still looked...evil.

“Liam!” He startled and would have dropped his rifle if the sling wasn't wrapped around his hand.

“Oh my God, Victoria, I almost pissed myself.”

“Obviously. What are you doing back here, scaring yourself?” She laughed with the same good humor they'd shared earlier.

“I'm supposed to tell you we've stopped.” She giggled some more.

Liam resisted a look over his shoulder. He recalled a Bible story of a woman turning to salt for looking back. His eyes were glued to Victoria, though not for any romantic reason. She was his foundation in the chaos. She would pull him up the trail, and out of the self-spook zone he was trapped in.

Victoria, suffering no such self-doubts that he could see, looked back down trail. She must have caught sight of the old woman because she waved in her direction.

“Those people are the idiots staying, huh?”

“Yes,” he said with a newfound finality. “Those are the idiots hoping to be rescued by someone three states away.”

“Good luck then.” She laughed and started back up the trail, stepping around the tired-looking survivors waiting for the group to start moving again. She began to jog as the line did start to move.

He watched her as long as he could, until he too moved up the trail.

5

The plan was to walk around the pit mine, up the railroad tracks along the river for a couple miles, then follow a large floodway system into mid-town St. Louis. They'd made it beyond the mine—he'd passed it for the third time since the sirens, happy as could be they weren't going down there again—and were walking the train tracks next to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery before Victoria came back to him.

“Hey, this is where we came out of the cemetery, right?”

Liam looked around. He thought it was, but he wasn't right in the head when they emerged from that grave. The nod he gave her was more for show.

Somewhere over the nearby hill was a military grave with a deep shaft leading down to a huge cavern full of zombies. Those zombies might still be looking up at the tiny gap of light seeping through the hole Liam and Victoria used to crawl out. Or, a nearby hole used by the triplets.

“Do you think Blue, Pink, and Black are out there, somewhere?”

Victoria sidled up to him. There was plenty of room to walk along the wide railroad tracks. Even the zombies seemed thinner here, a fact Liam attributed to the lack of food in the nearby cemetery.

“They have to be somewhere, right. They came out of the grave, same as us.”

That part was true. Liam assumed they ran away because he and his father represented “the enemy.” They believed the Patriot Snowball was the instrument of the world's destruction, just as they were told by “the authorities.” The bureaucrats would do everything in their power to cover up the truth if they were the ones who let the virus go. Since the only media left were the ones directly operated by the remnants of the government, what else would a person expect them to say?

But his mind was in rapid-fire conspiracy mode. It seemed to get that way the more desperate their situation became.

“What if they went back in the grave?” He said it slowly, like he was thinking the thought and pronouncing it at the same time.

Why didn't I think of that while we were there?

Because it's the musing of a crazy person.

He felt his mind argue the details, but there was no reason to throw it out without consideration.

Victoria walked along, her foot crunching on the heavy trap rock supporting the railroad ties. He knew she was thinking. Probably considering whether he'd finally gotten to the point where he'd be asked to put on the mental diapers.

“What if. What if they made the hole on the surface, but were somehow pulled back into the hole. Or fell back into the hole. The first one fell and the others went back down to help her?”

She had managed to think of something even worse than him.

“OK, so you and I crawled out of our hole and walked away from theirs without even checking to see if they were still down there. I wonder...” He stopped and looked toward the cemetery. Suddenly it seemed very important to establish if they were near that dark hole.

“No, Liam, you can't. If they were still down there—and I don't think they were—they wouldn't be there this many days later. We have to believe they made it out. I really don't think they reached the surface and fell back in, nor do I really consider it likely they reached the surface and then decided it was smart to jump back in. Those girls were weird, but they were pretty smart, too.”

It was far fetched. Even he could admit that. But they were so odd, he could almost believe they'd go back in.

He walked forward again, and grabbed her hand tightly. “I don't know what made me think that. I think I've been spooked one time too many, or something.”

“You're distracted by your dad. Having your mom around. It's understandable.”

Gunfire from up ahead.

They'd seen very few zombies so far. Liam was beginning to wonder if they'd all cleared out of town. But there were still some here and there. The town wasn't abandoned by the zombie army.

“I better get back to the middle. These people we're with are a lot like zombies. They just walk until you tell them to stop. If you don't—bang! Right into the drink.” She smiled at her joke, obviously trying to cheer him.

“I'll see you soon, sweetie,” she chimed as she turned and ran.

She called me sweetie.

He felt the smile on his face as he walked behind the trailing members of the group. As the cemetery fell behind, and they approached a large, low, warehouse nestled below the cliff along the river, he saw a number of zombies emerge from the inside.

Even from a distance he noted the zombies were dressed in military uniforms. Not the simple BDUs of men and women in combat, but the formal dress uniforms used for ceremonial duties. Events like dances, award's ceremonies, and…burials.

The warehouse sat next to the cemetery. Its function was obvious. It was how fallen soldiers arrived to be processed. And a group of walking humans was just the thing to rouse them.

Gunfire escalated as Liam got his own rifle ready.

6

Shooting zombies was easy, under the right conditions. Liam had taken a spot along the railroad tracks where he could lay on the rocks, put his rifle on the rail, and squeeze away. He'd gotten pretty good at using the AK, and the red dot scope on his dad's rifle was secure and true.

But, like all battles, this one had to end. The problem for the group of survivors was the zombies weren't letting up, no matter how many they put down. They were only twenty five yards from the warehouse, and though it was large, he didn't believe the whole thing could be full. And even if it was full, they had to be reaching the last few zombies stuffed inside.

He had gone through half his ammo—he carried four 30-round magazines. Each time he put down one of the already-dead soldiers, he felt remorse. Something about shooting “friendly” soldiers felt wrong on a subconscious level.

Yeah, and shooting civilian zombies feels right!

Most of the survivors had guns. Looking up the line he saw every type and style of firearms. Handguns, both semi-autos and revolvers. Numerous shotguns. All types of rifles from ancient Mosen's to modern AR-patterns. It made him feel a deep pride in his fellow man—they were working together to protect each other on this nondescript piece of track.

When he stood up, he could see the front of the line a hundred yards ahead. The decision was easy. He ran. He'd made it twenty feet when he saw a zombie in the water pawing its way toward shore. The second shot managed to find the head and the swimmer sank below the surface. The column was potentially in danger from two directions now.

He picked up the pace.

On the way, he passed Victoria. She crouched behind the railroad embankment, tending a young woman who had been shot in the hip. A revolver lay nearby. He had no time for questions. He smiled at Victoria as he sped up to reach Jason and the leaders of the procession.

“Jason! We have to move forward.” He yelled it at him, but hoped others would hear it as well.

“We know, kid. There's a big group of infected around the next bend. My scouts are looking for another way past them.”

That made perfect sense.

“We're running out of ammo back there. The zombies are also coming out of the water.”

That didn't seem to surprise him, but Jason put his hand on his hips as if thinking. His eyes darted over all parts of the battle, including the water.

Liam stepped closer. He didn't know if Jason was one of those guys, but he knew adults sometimes didn't like getting suggestions from “kids,” like him. “I used to run with my track team on a trail nearby. You go up into the park,” he pointed away from the warehouse, up into some nearby woods, “and it will get us out of here.”

“Where does it go?”

Liam wracked his brain. The trail meandered through Jefferson Barracks Park, a big suburban parkland that bordered the cemetery. There was a bridge that carried the walking and bicycle trail over the railroad tracks further down the line. He was pretty sure it would get them past the blockage of zombies. He explained it to Jason and he immediately pushed his team in the direction Liam had indicated.

For his part, he started for his station at the back of the line, but Jason caught him.

“Hey, no. You need to be up front. Show us where to go.”

He looked down at his feet, comforted he still had on his running shoes, though not his best pair. “OK. Follow me.” He took off into the woods, sure he'd recognize something once he got into the main part of the park.

In sixty seconds Liam paused at a paved bike trail. He assumed it was the one he sought.

“This is—”

No one was behind him. He ran so fast he dropped all his followers. So he ran back through the woods until he found the lead elements of the survivors. They were as surprised as he was when he found them.

“This way!”

The second time he ran a lot slower. The tired people followed, and the path through the woods was getting trampled into place. He hoped Victoria and those in the back would manage to follow.

When he got them to the trail he pointed in the direction they should go. No one waited for extra incentive, they took to the path and ran.

For a moment he stared into the dense undergrowth along the path in the other direction—back toward the cemetery. He could see the neat rows of white headstones in the distance. A whiff of something came and went.

Feet, don't fail me.

He watched for a moment as more people came out of the woods and turned onto the assigned trail, then he took off to try to catch the front. Gunfire chattered behind as, he supposed, the trailing people worked to detach themselves from the pursuing zombie soldiers.

The howl of a zombie came from the woods. It was the haunting call he'd heard down in the pit mine. The “call to arms” zombie.

You need to think of a better name, in your free time.

He was at the front of the line again before he let himself relax. Based on the time, he figured it was about a mile along the bike path from where they came in, to the point where it met the pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks. From there it would merge with another bike path and they'd be heading into the city. But now…

Everyone halted at the edge of the bridge. Someone motioned for him to be quiet as he approached.

This can't be good.

Chapter 5: Pulling Back

“General, I'm going to explain this one more time so we're on the same page, here.”

Ms. Cantwell had spent fifteen minutes complaining about every detail of his organization and deployment of his forces and only his strict adherence to the chain of command prevented him from saying or doing something he might regret.

“I don't want your tanks and jeeps and men up on the interstate. I want them here. On my wall.”

He must have looked like he was going to—once more—explain why that was a bad idea, because she continued before he got his mouth open.

“I know all your military strategerie, General, and I don't care. We need to show these people they have help out there or they're going to revolt.”

“Wouldn't it be better if the infected never came within their sight?” he thought. The rest of the room looked at him with sympathetic eyes. He was in charge of the military operation, yes, but the one thing made clear to him from above was that Elsa's “department” had the final say on everything. Everything!

He forced himself to control his tone. She may be a stupid bureaucrat, but he was a soldier. He respected the office—whatever it was—rather than the occupant.

“Ma'am I can't have my own men shooting their fellow soldiers in the back. If I pull resources back to the wall, we'll effectively cede the battlefield to the infected. They'll be able to walk or drag themselves up to your magnificent ditch and we'll have to fight them from fixed emplacements on the levee.”

“So you can pull them back?”

“Just so we're clear—”

“Yes, dammit, we're clear. You don't want to pull back. I do. I outrank you, so make it happen, sir.”

The town's leaders and military attachés in the room squirmed, though he was a stone statute. He'd just been dressed down in front of all of them by a civilian woman who couldn't identify an enfilade or defilade to save her life.

“Ma'am.”

“OK, now that we have that cleared up,” she sneered once more at him, which he thought totally unnecessary, “we need to discuss 'Operation Renew America' as they've named themselves.”

John Jasper wished he were in West Virginia right now. He'd more or less lost contact with CENTCOM, but his own intel people maintained contacts with as many other units on US soil as they could. Right now Third Army was plowing across the continent with the equivalent of seven divisions. Two of them were armored. One was Marine Corps. Because of overseas deployments and general manpower shortages, they were all understrength, same as his paper battalion.

He leaned back in his chair, imagining for a moment the glory of leading such a formation. It would probably be the last great modern Army, before everyone was socked under by the Ebola Express train. Outside, he could hear the Paladins hammering the fields beyond the interstate. They were sitting in a nearby ball field, and he reveled in watching his water bottle shake, just a little, as they sent rounds downrange. He got lucky with those. They were being redeployed to the East Coast when everything went to shit, and he had the foresight to commandeer the train and bring it here.

“...isn't that right, general?”

“Say again.” He didn't apologize, he simply didn't want to listen to her.

“I said, can you put those canons outside the wall, too?”

She wants it both ways, he lamented. A show of force, but doing the least possible good. About what he expected.

The Paladin wasn't really made to get into firefights directly with the enemy, it was more of a fire-over-the-horizon weapons platform. However, that assumed the enemy was going to fire back. These sick people only used their fists. Decision: Paladin by a country mile.

“I can put anything you want outside the wall. I can put my Paladins, my Abrams, and my Aladdins.”

“Good. Thank you. Make it happen.”

He snickered inwardly. He had nothing called an Aladdin. It simply proved his point. The civilian leadership had no idea of the forces they were playing with.

“And General, I need it done by tonight.”

“It shall be done.” His sing-song response was dangerously insubordinate. It felt surreal, but his entire existence in Cairo was happenstance. He was ordered to oversee the defense of St. Louis, but at the last minute the Army brass called off that operation and others handled the maneuvers in Illinois that stopped the sick from crossing the river. While he was in limbo waiting for orders that never came, he took things in his own hands after he found the Paladins sitting on a siding out in the corn rows of southern Illinois. He rode the first one into town himself. The first real action of his career.

And his best assets were being used as propaganda toys by some floozy from DHS.

His martial senses demanded he go out the gates on his war horses and die in glorious battle, perhaps in hand-to-hand combat with the undead, but he was also a practical man. The vagaries of life had tossed him to the one spot where there was a real defense against the specific threat created by these sick people. Cairo, Illinois was a finger of land now cut off by a watery sluice his men designed. To leave, even to situate units outside the gates, was a tremendous waste of manpower and as taught by the Russians during their big war—real estate. The reason he wanted his men and heavy weapons miles away on the interstate was that it kept the fighting far from the town. They had great visibility up on the highway. They had long firing lanes. And the infected just walked right into them. It was a turkey shoot.

Giving up all that space was a travesty.

But, following orders was still in his blood. For all he knew, the President could show up at his front gate tomorrow. He needed to be ready. He needed to be seen as a team player.

2

After the meeting, Ms. Cantwell invited him to her private chambers. She'd taken over the mayor's office inside the laughably small community center. He had no idea where the sweaty man had been sent.

“Sit, General. Thanks for coming.”

“Your welcome?”

“I know what you're thinking: I sounded all pissed off in there so why am I being nice in private? Let me explain this to you, politely this time.” She smiled as she offered him a chair in front of the mayor's desk. He was tempted to stand, but there was no point.

“Corn bread?” She offered him a piece from her desk. He demurred, though he was hungry, because he didn't want to owe her.

“Plans are set in motion, Major General John Jasper, and I need your help.”

“You've always had it, ma'am.”

“Do I? Do I really? I wonder.” There was a gleam in her eye he found disturbing.

“I bet you think I'm a real dope. Ordering you to move around silly trucks, or pull back here and push forward there, don't you?”

He said nothing.

“I get it. I'm a civilian in sheep's clothing in a man's world filled with zombies.”

Bingo!

“But I'm much more than that, John. And I want to show you.”

He became uncomfortable with her casual use of his name and at her insinuation. The door was shut, the drapes were in front of the window. Was she about to come on to him? Get him to do her bidding by leaning on her feminine “charms.” A part of him was flattered by it, as much as he would have to refuse…

She walked around the desk and pulled up the companion chair to the one in which he sat. She scooted right next to him and leaned over. Her perfume enveloped him.

He found himself moving to the far side of his own chair, away from her gravity well.

“Now, John, you have me all wrong. I assure you, you have no idea what I'm about to do.”

It didn't reassure him.

With lightning-fast reflexes she pulled out a pistol—from where, he didn't know—and had it pressed against his temple.

“I know you think I'm a docile creature, John. I've got news for you. I'm not. I could kill you twice before you thought about screaming for help.”

He did not scream.

She pulled the trigger.

He winced as the gun clicked, empty.

“If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead. I could have had you killed when you set up shop in my town, John. But it just so happens I need you. We need to work together to hold off the zombies while I do my job.”

He willed himself to breathe.

In. Out. Nice and normal, John.

“You aren't with Homeland Security, are you?”

“Ooh, now that's no fun. Asking questions with answers you don't need to know.” She rapped him lightly on the head with her pistol. “I can tell you my department trains their women very thoroughly, and I know when I'm being bullshitted, Mr. Aladdin, so keep that in mind the next time you want to insult me in front of the civilians.”

Keeping his voice steady, he replied. “I thought I was helping you. Spending my men on your precious defenses. Reeling them in so the battle happens closer to town. That sort of stuff.”

“Oh John. I already told you. I'm not what you think I am. If you believe I don't know what I'm doing by pulling your men back, well...that just means I'm doing my job properly.” She let out a bubbly laugh. “I'm just a girl, after all.”

He was coming around to what this was all about. He was right from the beginning. “You want leverage over me? You'll tell people we're sleeping together if I don't. That sort of thing?”

“Tsk tsk. You don't get it, do you?” She leaned in, without the gun this time, and got right up to his ear, and whispered. “There are over fifty kinds of zombies, John. Fifty. Think about that, just for a second. I need you and your guns to kill them.”

She pulled back, speaking louder. “Let me tell you a story about a very special lady in our town, and maybe that will help you understand.”

“Two blocks down, in that feces stain of a motel near the front gate, I have a prisoner who escaped from an unofficial Homeland detention facility less than a week ago. She was listed in my records as a medical test subject. A Ms. Peters. A volunteer who gave herself up to science in the effort to find a cure. And do you know what the results were?”

“I'm sure you'll let me know.”

“Of course. The results were: no results.”

“She didn't get tested?”

“That was my first thought as well, but I happened to know the base facilitator, so I looked up his records. And do you know what I found?”

The general feigned interest, though part of it was getting to him. Watching her lose control of her people was gratifying in itself.

“His records were gone, too. My administrator!” She stood up from her chair, but stayed next to it. “So I used secondary sources. My department flies drones around, everywhere. Leftovers from ridiculous grants from after nine-eleven. Anyway, the drone footage showed my administrator fleeing the scene in a helicopter, and Mrs. Peters escaping the research facility with two teenagers.”

She smiled down at him. “I'm sure you can understand how much it hurts to have someone in your chain of command disobey orders, and usually it can be corrected with a smart rap on the bottom. What do you do when your star commander not only disobeys you, but also kills your friend? What do you do when that administrator kills U.S. Marines. Army units. You name it. What do you do?”

“Hunt him down and kill him.”

“Now you're getting somewhere. So this woman shows up in my town, but the man who let her go is nowhere to be found...”

“With all due respect, this sounds like a local law enforcement problem.”

A quiet laugh. “You misunderstand. I bring him up—his name is Hayes by the way—because I want you to know what we're up against. He's the man who cataloged all the different types of zombies as part of his experiments. He's a very dangerous individual, for so many reasons. That's why it's important you follow my orders with precision and, if possible, good cheer when in front of the others.”

He stifled a laugh.

“Oh, yuck it up. It sounds crazy, right? But there's something I need to tell you about him. He holds the cure to the plague.”

His face was blank.

“The cure, John. He found it.”

“How in the hell do you know that? You said he got away.”

“I'm very good at what I do. Better than you'll ever know. I've found the person he infected. A person now sitting quite comfortably—well, maybe she's a bit hot—and definitely healthy in the hotel I mentioned.”

“She's here?”

“Yes, she's here, but my employee, and the cure, is not.”

He knew this punchline.

“And you want me to go out and find him.”

“See! You do get me.”

3

John got in his Humvee and drove away from the community center. He would re-deploy his units as instructed, though he still didn't understand the reasons. But first, he stopped in the old motel. His truck pulled up to the black swimming pool.

“Fancy a dip, sir?”

“Nice try, Tom. Maybe after this all settles down I'll take a long soak, and I don't mean sweating in this humidity.” He wiped his brow. “Wait here for me, will you?”

The motel was decorated at one time with maroon paint, though most of it had peeled and chipped away. It was the kind of place that would be rented by the hour in Junction City or Pueblo. Here, during a disaster of Biblical proportions, it was five star.

He sauntered along the walkway, searching for his target. Most rooms were open and airy, as if management wanted to keep them on display to prove they weren't as seedy as the place suggested.

It only took him a few rooms to find one with the drapes pulled. He tried the door, not surprised it was locked.

He knocked. “Ms. Peters? Are you in there?” It seemed a diversion from his primary duties, but the whole tone of Elsa's exposition had infuriated him once he left her orbit. If there was a prisoner who had defied her, he wanted to know why. He didn't believe the nonsense about finding a cure. He saw exactly what was going on. She was trying to get rid of him. In that regard, Mrs. Peters could be a valuable ally.

“I'm locked in,” came a quiet voice from inside the door.

“Do you need help?”

“It is rather hot in here.”

It was enough of a request.

“Stand back, ma'am. I'm going to kick in the door.”

“Give me a minute.” After a literal minute, she continued. “I'm clear.”

“No rush, lady,” he said softly.

He wasn't so old he couldn't kick the door. The paper-thin walls were guarded by ancient wooden doors which should have been replaced back in the 1960's. It gave away easily on the first kick.

The old John Jasper came storming through the door, but when he saw the elderly and very small lady sitting on the edge of the bed...

“What? Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought I was breaking someone out.”

“Well, mercy me. I don't know who you intended to break out, but I'm glad you've let in some fresh air. They were trying to kill me, I think.”

He looked at her with more scrutiny. The little white-haired woman was possibly the oldest person he'd ever seen. She was the last person he expected to constitute a threat to Ms. Cantwell. After the way she'd talked about her, he imagined a woman locked in chains that might not hold her.

“I'm Grandma Marty. I'm 104. Praise God for small miracles.” She smiled at him.

“I, uh. Ms. Cantwell made it sound like you were a threat.”

“Oh, she's a terrible woman. She cut the power cord for my air conditioner.” She pointed down to the severed cord. “Do you have any water?”

He ran to the sink and filled one of the dusty old cups. At least it was clean.

“Bless you—”

“John.”

“Bless you, John. I thought they were going to do what the zombies couldn't—get me to die.”

“She said you survived the plague. That a guy named Hayes did some tests on you and then he scrubbed the results from the system.”

“Oh, he did? That's a surprise.”

“So you don't know about that?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know why Elsa would want me to track down this Hayes character? Does he really have a cure?”

The old woman took her time answering. He felt the weight of time bearing down on him. He needed to get to his men, then he could focus on Elsa from behind his weapons, if need be. Something wasn't right in all this.

“I really don't know. He was a doctor with the CDC, I think. My mind gets fuzzy these days.” She held her hand to the side of her head, as if to emphasize where she was using her brain.

He couldn't see anything important about the old woman. She continued to ramble nonsense, but she ended with something he took as legitimate.

“Are you with Colonel Brandyweis?”

“No.” He'd heard that name before. There was an alphabet soup of senior ranks in the town, but he couldn't place the name. “Who's he with?”

“Who's he with?” she repeated, though a bit weaker than before. Her age was a factor in her ability to answer simple questions, he'd decided.

“I. Don't. Remember.”

He thought it was a lost cause, and was backing to the door, when she stumbled on the answer.

“He said he commanded the bird planes, I think.”

Marines.

“Somebody has to have some damned answers,” he muttered, already thinking how to get a hold of the colonel.

“I've been trying for weeks to get answers, my son.”

“What do you mean?”

“Answers from Al. He's either an angel or a figment of my imagination. No one will tell me. What do you think? Am I crazy?”

John looked at her for a long while. The droopy eyes. The incoherent speech. The woman wasn't just elderly, she suffered from heat exhaustion. Maybe something more.

“Ma'am, I'm going to take you to the medical station. You need some help.”

“That's right Al, I helped Liam. I helped the girl. I did good.”

Her eyes rolled up into her head.

John shouted out the door.

“Tom—come here, I need you!”

4

John stood on the top of the levee, overlooking the entire operation below. He felt the relief of being among his men again, and away from strange women. The pullback of the tanks and men from up north had gone smoothly, and they had redeployed at the base of the levee so he could roll them up and fire over the berm behind the ditch when the time came. Until then, he didn't want to have his best tanks providing high profiles for any would-be hostiles. He wasn't facing Soviet Guards Armored units in World War III, but it was his job to act like he was.

What better time for a surprise attack.

The Paladins were also tucked in below the levee. They'd have to be brought to the very top to get a clean shot down onto the bad guys, which didn't suit his style at all. Firing over the heads of friendly units a hundred meters ahead was dangerous. As long as he didn't have bullets coming in from the other direction, he didn't think it necessary to endanger the men. Especially since there would probably never be a single replacement for one he lost. The machines were irreplaceable.

As dusk fell, he actually felt pretty good about the turn of events. It was a shame to give up so much ground, but now he would have a front seat to command his men, almost as they did back in Revolutionary War days. He'd yell commands, then watch them enacted before his eyes. Killing infected wasn't nearly as complex as killing Redcoats, but ultimately more satisfying because the things were so vile. There was no quarter given, or asked.

Two Humvees came upon him as their headlights cut through the ubiquitous dust his units lifted from the great field to the north.

It's her. What now?

Tom had stood by him while he issues orders via the radio. Other commanders had come and gone over the course of the afternoon, but currently it was just the pair of them.

“Hello, General. I trust you've done as I've asked?”

“Yes, ma'am. All my units are now effectively outside the town, as you requested.”

“Nice work. I would send up a recommendation of a commendation for your efforts, but I don't think anyone is active in your chain of command.”

He pretended to laugh.

By way of a reply, she walked right up to him and got an inch from his body. She was shorter than him, but not by much. Her blue eyes were cold.

“Aww General, we could have been so good together. There are so many zombies, so many types of zombies, it would have taken a lifetime to kill them all. We need good men who can give and follow orders.”

The impulse to step back was overpowering. He fought it.

“We'll stop them here, I assure you.” He was unaccustomed to the feeling of inferiority she instilled in him. His voice didn't carry his usual confidence.

She smiled, looked at him for a long moment, then backed away.

“It really is impressive, is it not? This entire field will be crawling with the dead, soon. The whole state is walking this way.”

John had nothing to say.

She turned around, as if to leave, then halted.

“There is one more thing, General.”

“Yes?”

“What did Ms. Peters tell you?”

The soldiers getting out of the Humvees were not his own.

“I don't suppose you'd listen to my orders if I told you to arrest this woman?”

Their lack of reply was answer enough.

Chapter 6: River of Blood

Liam was at the edge of the ten-foot-wide pedestrian bridge, along with the leaders of the group fleeing toward mid-town. As he crept up to see what was below, he heard the familiar angry moans of the zombies before he saw them. He also smelled them. In large groups they carried the smell of death far and wide. Some even mastered that smell, which gave off some strange vibes to anyone unfortunate enough to smell them. It had happened to him in the railyard. Victoria on the side of that building. And all of them back on that boat.

He wondered what a pack of them would do.

Hundreds of zombies were on the railroad tracks below the walkway. It was perhaps a hundred feet across, made of concrete, but with metal side railings. There was no way to hide someone on the bridge.

“We have to find another way,” he said quietly to those near the front. He thought it was pretty obvious. The original plan was to run through the park to get around the unexpected group of zombies on the tracks, but that group was bigger than anyone expected.

“But what about them?” A young woman pointed to the far end of the bridge. He didn't see them at first because they were lying down and the bridge had a slight arch to it. But now that he knew where to look...

“The scouts?”

She nodded. “They must have gotten over, but don't know how to get back without drawing those crazies in.”

The situation was dangerous. They were far out on the span, very near the far exit on the far side of the tracks. But that exit was exposed. The zombies below would surely see them. And if they came back toward the main group…

He wished he could use his phone to look at a map, but it wasn't linking up with any towers. One of the problems with depending on the internet to always be there. But the group couldn't possibly cross the bridge. They would have to go on city streets for a while until they reached the bike path on another block. Well away from the gaggle of zombies below.

A plan formed in his head, but it was the usual half-baked craziness he told himself he needed to control. He found it disconcerting how many times regular people allowed a sixteen-year-old boy to come up with ways to save their lives. He admitted this time he was probably the most fit, given their head start on starving themselves, but he much preferred other people think of the master plans and he simply help refine them. He was uncomfortable doing all the thinking.

In five minutes he was set up. Victoria decided to join him, because she wouldn't take no for an answer. A fact he appreciated.

Lana and Jason listened as he explained his plan, and their role in it. As expected, his mom said absolutely not, though Jason was more pragmatic. Saving the two men on the far side was going to take some creativity.

“Are you sure about this?” Jason asked.

“Unless you have radios?”

“I do, in fact, but I don't have chargers to run them. That's why my scouts had to come back and talk to me. The good news is those two can run.”

He looked at his own shoes, out of habit, whenever the topic of running came up. They were always ready for the abuse he gave them.

His mental map of the area was simple. The bridge crossed the railroad tracks, and they ran north and south along the big river. He could see the water through the trees beyond the two stranded men. A mile to the north was the floodway which would take them away from the river and into the city. The safest way, they all thought, was to walk along the tracks where the zombies would be light, but that turned out to be false. Now they would have to run through the houses where—he hoped—all those zombies had come from. They'd reach the floodway that way.

Jason led the column at a fast pace into the backyards of the nearby houses. He said he was going to keep them off the streets until they reached the bike path along the floodway, then they were going to follow that to Forest Park. He was going to drive them hard, but most weren't in any condition to run that far, that fast. A few gunshots indicated the homes weren't entirely abandoned. Their progress could be tracked as the gunfire grew more distant.

His mom was the last to leave, taking his backpack with her. He was glad she wasn't going to be around for what he needed to do. It wasn't because it was hero stuff, as he called it, but because he didn't want to have to worry about her as well as himself and Victoria.

Almost before he knew it, Victoria was the only one left. They sat and talked for fifteen minutes, or so. Often they would wave to the two men on the far end of the span, letting them know they hadn't been left behind. He thought about kissing Victoria, but it never felt right with the moaning dead, and the two men hanging on their every move. If he pulled her out of their view, they might think they'd been left for dead. That could lead to desperate acts.

Liam had instructed Jason he would wait an hour and then set his plan in motion, but scarcely twenty minutes had gone by when he knew he was out of time. The horde below had either grown, or moved, because some of them had wondered up the hillside and could nearly see them sitting on the safe end of the bridge.

“If we go now, the main group won't be far enough away,” Liam said with rising panic.

“If you don't go now, those two men won't make it.”

The good of the many. Or the two. A dozen books and movies cascaded upon him with the very same scenario, but he couldn't get it to apply to his moment. The bottom line was he wouldn't leave a man to die if he could help it.

“I'm going for it. You with me?”

She gave him a good luck kiss. “Go get 'em, sport.”

He ran out onto the bridge, attempting to stay low and in the middle so he'd only be seen by zombies far out in the crowd. That worked to an extent, but he was seen. By the time he'd covered the distance to the far end of the bridge, the roar was deafening. He crouched next to the men.

“You guys ready to run? We've got to run to catch the main group!” He had to yell to be heard over the roiling masses below.

“Do you have any water?” one of the men asked. Both of them were in their thirties or forties, well cut, and athletic. They wore the right shoes.

“No, sorry.” That was an obvious mistake in his plan. His own water was in his backpack, walking away.

“We're going to run over the bridge again, then keep going.”

“How far?”

“Just until we catch up to the main group.”

“How long have they been gone?”

“Twenty or so minutes.”

The two men cringed.

“What's wrong?”

It became obvious when they stood up. Despite outward appearances of vigor, both men were thin with sallow looks on their faces. If they'd once been in good shape for running, which Liam imagined was what got them the scout roles in the first place, they were now used up. The gaunt look of weeks of little or no food painted both their bodies.

The maniacal engine of zombie murmurs below accelerated to new levels as the trio came into full view on the decking. Contrary to what he thought, the crowd below didn't wait for him to get back over the bridge before they started up the far side of the embankment below them. They went up immediately.

He was already running as the first shots rang out from Victoria's gun.

2

“Oh God. This isn't a rescue!” said one of the scouts with a blue sport-type shirt. They'd reached the end of the span, toward the supposedly safe side, and it was very nearly engulfed by the sick. Men, women, and children of all ages came up from the crowd under the bridge...toward the food. Besides the generalized dirty appearance of everyone in the crowd, most carried signs of the severe bleeding common with the disease process. Neck wounds. Head wounds. All indicators they had been stricken by the bite of zombies, and then became zombies themselves.

Victoria popped off a few rounds to one woman in a colorful purple dress who had gotten close.

“Run!” she cried.

Liam thought back to the words of Captain Osborne as they escaped the Arch. He'd rallied the troops by saying something like “Run like hell, boys!” Now, with even greater urgency, he didn't think it would endear the two men to him. It was understood they needed to run. Like hell.

Victoria started to run as the trio approached. Together they turned down a nearby street. It was densely packed with small, but tidy brick houses in the blue collar neighborhood. The only clue to what had come through here, probably several times, was a home here or there had been replaced by black piles of ash.

They settled in to the run. Victoria and Liam maintained the lead, ostensibly because they knew where they were going. The two trailing runners, with names Liam didn't know, quickly fell behind.

“We're running too fast,” Victoria said through her own heavy breathing.

“Yeah, we sprinted out of there.” He laughed nervously. Slowing down didn't seem appropriate, but neither would a massive heart attack.

They held up enough for the two men to catch them, and then they all slowed down to what Liam called a fast jog.

“Thanks for waiting,” blue shirt said, we can't keep up with you kids.

The other man ripped off his shirt while they ran. The effort to keep their moderate pace was already intense for him.

He's not going to make it.

The shirtless man stumbled a little.

Beyond the two men, he saw the zombies. He assumed there would be some of the fast zombies in a crowd that large, but he was dismayed to see at least twenty, spread out over a hundred yards. All following them. Worse, zombies came out from among the houses the more they ran. They picked up a runner here or there.

Along the fringes, walking zombies always made an effort to chase, but they couldn't keep pace.

It only took a quarter of a mile to reach the bike path, a relief because he thought it was farther away. He remembered riding his bike and running a few times along the trail. It wound through blocks and blocks of single-family homes on the tight city streets, though it was most notable because it ran parallel to a major storm water drainage channel designed to prevent flooding. The lack of rain the past few weeks meant the “river” was now dry.

“That way,” he pointed along the bike path toward the heart of the city.

They found their rhythm on the urban trail. Houses on the left. Dried waterway on the right, below them. Somewhere up ahead, the rest of the group was trying to stay out in front of them.

This is a simple math problem. The result is you ruining it for them...

If they kept running, it wouldn't be long before Group B caught up with the slower people in Group A. A twenty-minute lead wasn't very long, especially if Group A wasn't moving very fast. On any other run he would be clear of mind and able to think of pretty much anything he wanted, including math puzzles. It was one of the benefits of running he loved. However, the screams of the zombies, and the fear of being caught, canceled any and all benefits of this effort, save staying alive.

“Guys, we're going to catch up with the main group too fast. We have to delay. Draw them off.”

“Screw that, kid. We're going right up this path before we kill ourselves.”

“They aren't going to make it,” Victoria said as she leaned into him.

“Shit.”

She smiled, sharing his sentiment, if not his language.

Behind, the same fast zombies from under the bridge galloped along in uneven bounds but they made consistent time. Their numbers had doubled, he estimated, and more runners came out from each block they passed. Soon they'd have hundreds of followers.

“Let's go down there,” he shouted. Without waiting, he pushed Victoria's arm in the direction he wanted to go. If the two men needed to get to the main group quickly, the companion water channel was the way to do it while drawing the least attention.

The drainage system was named River des Peres, though most times it was a dry riverbed about two hundred feet across. It only flowed after heavy rains, or if the Mississippi River was running high enough to push its water up the channel. Currently it had the equivalent of a small creek meandering roughly down the middle. When he descended the gently sloped stone-packed bank, he found it slightly easier to run on the flat gravel-strewn bottom.

The zombies weren't fooled. They also came down the bank, though several of them fell on the uneven terrain.

“We're losing a couple!”

He was proud of himself for thinking of going down into the river bed. With any luck they'd run right up the river and pop out at Forest Park. The bike path above had numerous signs explaining the history and geography of this river. He'd stopped and read them on prior visits. The floodway went exactly where they wanted to go.

The two men will finally see me as a hero.

The four runners clumped up again so they could communicate.

“Nice job, kid. Now the zombies on the streets can't see us. We might make this after all.”

The other man, without the shirt, nodded agreement, but still looked like he was close to throwing up from the exertion.

“Yeah, nice work, kid,” Victoria said as she gave him a pat on the shoulder.

Ten minutes later he was riding high on his success when they rounded a bend in the channel and came face to face with the last thing he expected to see down there.

In fact, it surprised him so much he stopped running. Belatedly, Victoria came to a stop as well. She looked over his shoulder to the zombies running behind. They'd found the pace needed to keep the infected far enough back they weren't a threat, but didn't tax the two men to the point they'd give up.

Liam thought he had it all down to a science. Ten easy miles to rescue.

That was before he saw Jason and his mom and the rest of the motley group of survivors.

They were in the channel, too.

3

The shirtless man came to a stop next to Liam.

“It was a good try. But we're done for.”

The insinuation was there. Liam had failed. His rescue only delayed the attack that started back on the railroad tracks. And though there were fewer zombies, they were fast. In a group, they were the worst type he knew about. The Arizona still didn't fit neatly in his zombie classification manual. He hoped that was a one-off aberration.

Science class: who knew it would be this useful?

Victoria tugged at his arm. She was panting like him, but he didn't think she looked as scared as he felt inside. She pointed to the top of the opposite shore. “We can draw them off that way.”

He saw it right away, once he was looking for it. The far bank would make them highly visible to the trailing zombies. The stonework was near-pristine white, as if it were painted that way. The people down in the main part of the riverway would be difficult to spot, by comparison.

“You. Are. A genius.” He didn't wait. She paced him.

They ran through the shallow water and started up the bank. He assumed the two men would follow, but they either saw them and decided it was suicide, or didn't see them and weren't stopping for anything.

“Hey, up here,” he yelled back.

They definitely saw him, but continued on.

“What do we do?” he asked Victoria. It took less than a minute and they stood at the top edge of the drainage. The zombies were almost directly below. Some had followed them, but most continued toward the two men in front of them, and the main group beyond.

“Do what I do,” she said.

While he watched, she jumped a small chain link fence, pulled her rifle off her shoulder, and set it on the top bar. He stepped back when she squeezed off a round down into the runners below.

“Duh.”

He jumped the fence and mimicked her actions. Together they both knocked a few down and got their attention. The loud noise raised heads and got many of them running across the small rivulet and up the bank to them.

He giggled maniacally as they felled one after the other. “This is fun!”

Deep down he knew it was wrong, but they'd run so far, so fast, he was in a euphoric “runner's high” and was happy to make good on his earlier mistakes. Their feat would be even better if the two men had followed them, but that couldn't be helped.

The infected didn't line up in neat rows for him to count, but he guessed there were fifty or so coming up the embankment for them, and about half that number running for Jason and his mom. The pops of guns down there had already started. The long, flat bottom of the riverway gave perfect fields of fire to the defenders.

Things got complicated when the first runners arrived at the fence. He pulled back as the first crashed into and shook the metal links. It was about ten feet down the line from Victoria.

“I've got it.” Liam stepped back from the fence, walked directly behind Victoria, and put one into the brainpan of the young man—now infected—and put him down.

In those few seconds, several more assaulted the fence. Victoria fired off a few shots, but had to pull off the fence to avoid getting grabbed. His fight or flight response hovered between the two options while he determined if the zombies were going to hop the fence. Certain kinds of zombies could do it, he was absolutely sure of that.

It unfolded as he watched, but as was so typical with these life-or-death encounters, it didn't go at all how he anticipated.

First, one running zombie came up to the fence and got across. It was more of a forward dive over the fence, and the skinny woman smacked the rock hard as she landed. Victoria and Liam both had their guns in their hands, but they stepped backwards a few more paces before they remembered that fact. In Liam's case, he leaned toward running. If they could all do that, they were in real trouble.

Victoria kept her head and fired at the female zombie. It took her several shots—the woman was fast and moved unpredictably—but she put her down.

“Did you see that? These zombies can run and jump,” she screamed into his ringing ears.

Seconds later, they realized that wasn't true. The lady had made it over the fence by getting lucky, but the others hit the fence and stood there grasping at air, like a “typical” zombie would do when faced with a simple challenge outside of its skillset. Things like doorknobs, elevator buttons, and tool usage were beyond the ability of most zombies.

So far.

He tried to stay focused on the moment. The leading zombies on the fence continued their fruitless grabbing, but the bulk of the runners behind them ran against their fellows and seemed to make a conscious decision to slide by and then run back down the rocks toward the exposed people at the bottom. If there was any thought to it, Liam couldn't say. If the choice was between people behind a fence or people standing out in the open, he didn't think even the most IQ-deprived zombie could mess that up.

The runners picked up speed as they aimed themselves for the victims below.

Liam shifted again, hoping to shoot some as they ran away, but a second before he pulled the trigger he remembered one important rule of shooting guns. His dad drilled in the “four rules” of firearms with the tenacity of a bulldog. And now it all paid off.

Through his sights he had a dream shot lined up on the backs of the heads of the infected, but slightly to the right of his red dot, down at the bottom, he saw his mother.

“Always know what's behind your target, son.”

4

Lana crouched as she fired. Jason was nearby, as were several other shooters from the survivors down in the riverbed.

Liam pulled up from his scope to get a better look at what was happening.

The initial group of zombies followed the two men toward his mom. Those two men never stopped running. They were rounding the next bend of the waterway, out of the picture. Many others were jogging, limping, or walking away, too. Those that remained at the bottom were trying to give the others the time they needed to get away.

A big part of him wanted to dispatch the runners that were still trying to figure out why they were being prevented from reaching their victims only a few feet away. The chain link fence was wobbling, but he didn't think it would collapse, yet. Eventually every fence falls…

“Victoria, we have to help my mom.”

“I know, but how?”

“Follow me,” he shouted.

He trotted to the right, in the direction the survivors were moving. Thinking on the run, he didn't let the closest zombies obscure his view of those below. His mom was playing a simple game of leapfrog with the men and women below. A few would shoot, then scurry backward and find another place to stop. They'd wait for the next few shooters to run by, then they would shoot their guns a couple times before doing the same. How they managed to organize such a thing was a mystery.

The zombies running down the side were the real threat because they were coming from a new direction. He only had a few seconds to do something.

He jumped the fence, heading upriver along the bank.

“Liam!”

“Follow me!”

He heard her rush the fence and hop over it, but he didn't look back. He found his place and ran down the embankment, roughly parallel to the zombies doing the same behind him. The leaders had already reached the bottom, but he could still affect the trajectory of those following.

He settled in and brought his AK to bear, wondering how many rounds he'd already fired. “Always count your shots,” he dad had counseled. Back at the range it seemed a waste of time and effort, but now it made sense.

For a few glorious seconds he shot at the zombies in profile, from the side. He was firing away from his own mother now. Initially he thought this was was going to be a massacre, but after several misses he came to the belated conclusion that firing at running zombies from the side was much harder than it looked.

The next few seconds were good and bad news. He soon had much better views of the zombies because those at the top were now running directly for him. From the front, their heads didn't move as much. The bad news was they were now running directly for him.

“Remind me again why I don't plan military tactics, oh yeah, this,” he said to himself.

Victoria was at his side, and soon they both were able to get a few shots off. But it was a hopeless position. It wasn't that there were too many zombies, but they were closing distance too quickly and there was no way to get them all.

“Now we run, boyfriend!”

“Good call, girlfriend.”

He suspected she was trying to keep him calm with humor. It usually worked, though he felt his bladder wobble as he stood up in front of the closing runners. It was a confusing mixture of zombies and humans running in many different directions. The end result, if this was the end, was that not all the zombies from above went down to his mom's position. Many had made it halfway down, only to be diverted again by the targets closest to them—Liam and Victoria.

But running over the sloped rocks was not as easy as running the bike path or the bottom of the riverbed. There were large holes in many places, as some of the fill rocks had broken or been removed over the decades.

Fancy a broken ankle?

He thought back to his first encounters with Angie, back on day one. He was terrified of breaking an ankle and being overwhelmed by the sick nurse. Now he had the equivalent of twenty sick nurses thirsty for him to twist his ankle in the uneven rocks.

Of course the zombies were far less concerned with the ground below them. One loud crack made Liam look back. A large male zombie put a foot into a hole and showed Liam what he could expect if he did the same. The man tumbled down the slope. His exposed lower leg had snapped and the bone protruded ominously from inside…

The shooters on the bottom had kept moving. The threat from above was real, but Liam's ploy had made it possible for the people down there to line up their shots and make them count. The crackle of gunfire was even and disciplined. Something about the whole thing made Liam think, once again, that Jason's group had some training for this.

Victoria was in the lead, and she angled them down toward the bottom at the bend in the river.

“Watch these rocks. Lots of loose ones.”

He was impressed at her dexterity as she cleared a large section of oblong rocks that didn't fit at all with the even shapes of the stones lining the rest of the slope. He held his rifle in both hands in front of him and used it as a counterweight to balance himself as he hopped from rock to rock on the move.

Don't fall.

He bounced left and right, and downward.

Falling is dying.

Victoria cleared the obstacle and landed on the river's bottom. It was, in fact, paved in concrete there. All he had to do was get off the rocks…

You aren't going to make it.

He didn't close his eyes, but he turned off his mind as he willed his feet to be light as he sailed over the last of the rocks. When his foot hit the concrete bottom he let out a whoop completely out of line with what any observer might think appropriate. The field of rocks wouldn't get a second look in the Old World. But here, with zombies behind, the unknown ahead, and most importantly his girlfriend already through the obstacle—it was the most important task of his life.

He turned around. “Suck it, rocks!”

The zombies hit the uneven rocks and fell like trees. Their numbers had decreased considerably, so he could appreciate the irony without endangering his life. With his mom nearby, and Victoria behind him, he crouched and brought his rifle to bear.

Time to end this race.

The sad click of his gun was the last thing he expected.

5

“Come on, Liam. Run!” It was his mom with a perfectly reasonable request. He couldn't believe he was out of ammo, when the zombies were in such a prime exposed position. It was always easier to hit them when they were down. He'd done it numerous times, especially back at the watchtower at Camp Hope. But now running seemed like the best idea in the world.

Victoria helped him up. “Follow your mom.”

He slung his useless rifle and started running, again. On any other day before the sirens he could have run five miles without breaking a sweat. Ten miles would be a challenge. Fifteen miles would be difficult, but doable with proper hydration and all that. He ran track in high school, as it was the only sport he really enjoyed. His parents insisted he “do something” and not just be a “2:40 student” that cut out everyday with the final bell. He put in his time, rode the public bus home on track nights, and suffered along with everyone else. But it did get him in great shape.

In the Zombie Apocalypse, good cardio was a treasured skill to have, but one of the most difficult to maintain. There weren't very many places to get a good morning run in to keep up with it, and without regular exercise every other day, the body would revert to a baseline of fitness mediocrity pretty fast. Also, eating had become a spectator sport for most adults—kids were given priority for food. It was the one time Liam wished he was still a kid. It was ironic he was too old for food, but too young for everything else…

In short, he was wheezing with everyone else as they ran to catch up with the people who took off ahead of them. A few minutes went by when they started to see people sitting on the rocks ahead.

Jason shouted ahead. “Run! You have to run.”

In moments Liam and Victoria reached those who had stopped. They were ashen and spent. The man and woman were probably in their fifties or early sixties. Not out of shape by appearance, but they were doubled over panting like they'd completed a marathon.

He didn't know what to say to them that would get them moving, beyond what they had to see was coming up the channel behind them all. The zombies were now all down in the floodway bottom, screaming and howling at the prey they could see fifty yards ahead of them. On flat ground the zombies weren't as fast as an average human runner, he'd decided, but they didn't suffer from the hassles of water consumption, chafing, or fatigue.

“You guys…have...to run.”

“We're done for. We can't go another step,” the man said. He had a rifle, but the magazine was missing. When he saw Liam looking at it he explained they had no ammo to continue the fight.

He didn't want to admit defeat for the couple. It suddenly seemed important he help them escape. That's why he reached for the arm of the lady to pull her up.

“Come on. Go.”

The lady made no effort to stand, and the man actually pushed him away.

“Leave us be. We're dead, can't you see that? We're all dead...” His voice trailed away as he watched the zombies hone in.

From nearby, Lana called out to Liam. “Move your asses, Liam and Victoria. Now!”

She was still shooting, though only with single shots at anything that got too close. The main group of zombie runners was still a rock's throw away. They should be able to outpace them, if he ran right away.

Victoria did what needed to be done. She pulled Liam's arm and got him moving.

“God bless you,” she said to the couple as they left.

“Ha!” the man laughed. “God left us a long time before this.”

Victoria pulled harder. “Run.”

As they got up to speed they ran through the shallow water and linked up with Jason and Lana, along with the few shooters still able to run and fire a gun.

“Liam, thanks for getting those things off of us.”

“I'm sorry I brought them down here. I didn't know you'd be here.”

Jason laughed as he ran. “Yeah, we didn't plan this very well, did we? But we did OK.”

He stopped and surveyed the runners behind. Liam was tempted to turn around, too, as he knew the pair of survivors would soon be overcome, but Victoria seemed to sense his thoughts. She kept her arm on his and continued to pull him.

He looked at her. “You think I was going to stop, don't you?” Even though it was true, he thought it was worth asking.

“I know you pretty well, now. It doesn't come naturally to let someone go. I expected you to go back there and beat those zombies with the butt of your gun.” She laughed, but it was forced.

“Yeah, I thought about it. But I can't save someone who won't try to save themselves.”

They ran in silence for many minutes, Liam was lost in own thoughts when Jason ran by at a slightly faster pace.

“I need to get ahead and see how my people are doing.”

“We'll take of things back here,” Lana replied.

The next hour was a blur for Liam. Every ten minutes or so he would pass another survivor who had reached the end of their endurance. Most simply laid down to wait for the end. One put himself in a small side tunnel, armed to the teeth. Liam thought his plan was pretty good, except that the further they ran the shallower the drainage became. Instead of two hundred feet across, it was now scarcely fifty and had little depth. They could almost see into the nearby houses as they ran along. Each time they shot, a zombie or two would wander along to investigate. Then they would naturally find their way into the storm sewer waterway. He would run out of bullets before the number of zombies reached zero.

As if that's ever gonna happen.

Also, more runners had joined the pursuit the further into the system they got. There was no longer a chain link fence along the edge. Anyone could walk right in. Or run.

By the time they reached the end of the open-air portion of the river, dusk had fallen. The massive waterway was now just an industrial-sized storm drain that ended at the gaping maw of three huge tunnels. They'd have to continue by walking underground.

Jason stood next to the left tunnel.

As Liam walked up, he panted wildly. There'd been plenty of water along the way, but almost no one was willing to drink from the sewer. The smell alone was enough to dissuade him, but the odd coloration of the water backed his reasoning.

He leaned on Victoria, or she leaned on him. He didn't care.

“This way, guys. We're almost there. Just another mile.”

Liam didn't say anything, nor did Victoria.

He thought he heard Jason lament some of his people took the wrong tunnel, but he couldn't be sure. His mom led them into the darkness. She had the foresight to bring a small light. Or maybe it was on her rifle. It didn't matter.

His head was spinning madly as the howling behind them began.

Ahead, encouragement from the race spectators.

I can do it, dad.

Chapter 7: Forest Park

Liam woke up in bed. More like a cot. It took him a few minutes to get his bearings, understand he was inside a huge circus-sized tent, and sit up to get his first look.

Rows and rows of oversized cots were filled with the sick and injured. A few were strapped in, suggesting they'd been bitten by zombies or were otherwise possibly infected. If the staff running the place knew they were infected, they would have taken them out and terminated them before they could pass the communicable disease via their teeth. He was thankful he wasn't under any restraints.

Most of the patients he recognized, by sight anyway, as being from his group. Jason and his Polar Bears. They stood out by their ragged clothing and gaunt features. Most were sound asleep, despite the general noise within the confined space of the tent.

He'd been in such a tent before. Back at Elk Meadow—the tent where he witnessed the elderly Bart get deliberately infected so the medical team could watch how it affected him. That elicited a ripple of fear, but he took comfort that there were so many people of such different ages that this couldn't possibly be the same situation.

Next to him, also in bed, he saw the sleeping form of Victoria. He'd started to think she was some kind of superhero by how well she held up in the stresses of everything. She could outrun him, outshoot him, she was super smart, and she was about a hundred times better looking than he was. She was a thousand miles from her own family, yet she never seemed to let it get her down. And now, finally, she was down for the count, just like him.

A couple women huddled over a computer on a mobile metal stand. Liam likened it to an audio/video cart from his high school. This one was probably being used for medical records…

Or they're playing solitaire.

In a world where half the population are zombies, does anyone care about keeping track of patient records? Does privacy exist anymore? Was he listed in those computer records? Maybe there was a little warning flag that said “If you find this boy, called 1-800-NIS-GETU.” He thought that sounded totally feasible.

“Liam,” his mom called to him from near the medical cart. Not loud enough to wake the numerous sleeping forms nearby, but loud enough he could hear her. When she made her way to his bedside, she spoke softly.

“I shouldn't have shouted like that. I'm happy to see you awake.”

“Where are we? What happened?”

“We had a long night is what happened. We spent hours wandering those tunnels, looking for the way out, here in the park. A few wrong turns and a few zombies made for a terrible trip. When we finally made it out, and were led by some kindly guards to this tent, you kids both plopped down and slept the sleep of the dead.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, I slept, trust me. But I got up with the sunrise to see if I could help any of these nurses. It turns out this is a proper medical facility, the staff at least, and they have both the manpower and know-how to take care of things without my help.”

Thinking back to his dad's letter, and his family's home life before the sirens, if his dad was the “gun guy” in their clandestine preparations, his mom was the “medic” and often carried a medical kit and treated minor injuries on their family outings. Liam never thought to ask if it was a hobby or if she had some formal training. Back then, he didn't care. It was just something that was. She was adept at temporarily fixing his dad's broken leg, even if it later killed him…

He wished his dad was in a bed here, too.

“Is Victoria OK?” He looked at his girlfriend as he said it.

“I'm sure she's fine. Once we made it into the tunnels we managed not to lose anyone.” She appeared to think that over. “Actually, Jason said some of his people went down a wrong tunnel right at the beginning. He stayed at the exit of the tunnels to wait for them. I think he wanted to go back in, but he was as exhausted as everyone else. Not in any shape to be a hero.”

He whispered his next words. “Do these people know who we are?”

Lana nodded. “I wanted to give them fake names, but they took our pictures before we knew what was happening. They say it's the only way they can keep track of their numbers in the park, but they had my name and other medical information on their computers before I shut my eyes to sleep. They called me by name when they did rounds. Our identities are known. It's unclear whether they know anything else.”

She didn't have to remind him there was a list of all his family members—targets of the NIS. Douglas Hayes said he called off the hit squads, but that was before he himself was targeted. There was no way to know whether the order still existed to terminate everyone related to him. Those left alive.

He put his feet on the trampled grass below the cot. Thankfully no one had stripped him of his clothing, or shoes. He really did just throw himself down so he could sleep.

“I'm dying of thirst.”

“Plenty of water here. Follow me.”

He rose to follow. The temptation was there to rouse Victoria, but he knew the rule—never wake sleeping babies, or sleeping girlfriends. She looked so peaceful when the muscles in her face relaxed. He'd once thought she looked even more beautiful when she slept. It was the carefree look she would have had if the zombies had never arrived. But he also remembered she had her own problems back in Colorado before everything went to crap. No matter. Whatever stresses she carried, he was going to let her sleep without them for a little while longer.

2

“Ah, look who it is, our hero,” Lana said as she guided Liam to the table filled with water bottles. She was indicating the Asian woman in clean teal hospital scrubs standing at the same table.

“Doctor Yu.”

The woman turned. Liam guessed she was Japanese, though he couldn't be sure.

“Yes? Is everything OK?”

“Oh, there's not an emergency.”

Liam listened but was focused on the water bottles. The closer he got to his drink, the less he cared about anything else happening in the tent. He spun off the top and planted the bottle on his lips.

For the next thirty seconds a nuclear bomb couldn't divert him from his bottle.

“Liam?”

His mom said something.

She's calling you!

“Yes?”

“Liam. This is Doctor Yu. Did you hear me? She helped us all last night. She whipped up a recovery drink concoction that we all drank before we went to sleep.”

He had no recollection of drinking anything last night.

The doctor smiled. She was young—he expected a gray-haired and wise doctor, but she was probably in her thirties. Her black hair peeked out of a medical head covering, though he didn't see any surgical suites where such a thing would be necessary.

“Hi, Liam. I was telling your mother I'm surprised you're up and around, but I'm happy to have helped. Too many of us aren't getting proper nutrition, and it sounded like you had an amazing run to safety.”

That was statement was filled with nuance. The journey from the cliff down south saw him do stupid things and heroic things. Unsure if that made him an idiot or a hero, he could only nod his head in thanks.

His mom, filling in for him, explained how he drew off the infected in the drainage system and further noted the speed of the pursuit. That got the doctor's attention.

“Wait, you say the infected can run? We haven't seen that here. Or, I haven't. I haven't been outside the perimeter since the beginning.”

He wondered what her story was, but right now he didn't care. “There are lots of different kinds of zombies, ma'am, uh, Doctor. There are runners. Climbers. Sleepwalkers. A few others. And there's one I call an Arizona—alpha zombie—because it can do all of the above.”

The look on her face made him rewind his words.

Oh yeah, I said the magic “Z” word.

He couldn't imagine how anyone could deny the obvious. These weren't just infected humans. They were out-and-out zombies. He was tired of people denying the truth.

“Zombies, Doctor. They're zombies.” He nodded his head vigorously as he grabbed another water bottle. They were just sitting there for the taking, he wasn't going to be shy.

She gave him a dubious look. “The CDC is here. Their guidance has been that these people are stricken with a virulent version of Ebola—”

“And two flu viruses, yes, I know.” Liam had listened to Douglas Hayes explain all of it to him.

The doctor appeared even more taken aback. She looked around. “How do you know that? They said that was some kind of national secret. The hospital administration only told a few of us doctors, in strictest confidence.”

Liam wasn't interested in playing games. He was too tired. He'd seen too much of the secretive world of Zombie Apocalypse medicine.

“Secret? Doesn't anyone share medical breakthroughs? There are three viruses fighting each other—or working together, they weren't clear on that. My grandma was infected by a researcher, but here's the funny thing, she's still alive. And kicking. It didn't affect her. It's because she's 104. Too old to get infected,” he laughed sarcastically. “It all makes sense, am I right?”

Both women were looking at him like he'd just detached his own head, though he guessed his mom's look was because he sounded like a teenaged jerk, again.

“How do you know all that? I don't even know all that,” the doctor said in a quiet, if incredulous, voice.

“The CDC didn't tell you?”

“The CDC is up in the hospital.” She pointed out of the tent, as if he could see it. “I've been down here in containment.”

Uh oh.

“Containment? We're in some kind of quarantine?”

The doctor seemed to make a decision. “You can see the place on our way to the tower. You have to share your information with the lead medical team. This might be the breakthrough they've been searching for.”

“You aren't part of the team looking for a cure?”

“No, but isn't everyone searching for it? If you have even the slightest chance of telling them something new, I'm going to get you up there. Follow me.”

She pulled off her head covering and began to unravel herself from her outer layer of scrubs. Much to his surprise she wore simple cargo shorts and a light-blue t-shirt with the St. Louis Blues hockey team logo on it.

When she saw him looking at it, she remarked, “I'm down to the last of my clean clothes.” Then she moved toward the exit.

He thought back to that first encounter with the mock CDC group under the Arch. They pretended to be completely in the dark about everything related to the cure. Even claimed the CDC itself was hacked to remove any references to the plague, or how it might be cured. Now this doctor wanted to take him to meet more researchers looking for that same thing. Was it another trap?

His imagination was shifting into high gear. He had to ground himself…

They walked right by Victoria and he knew what he'd have to do.

“I want to take my...” He wanted to say girlfriend, but he had no idea where he was, or what these people were all about. His information was in the medical system, the NIS undoubtedly has access to those records, and if they wanted him he would be easy to find. There might not be a tomorrow and a simple girlfriend might be refused as non-essential to a CDC meet-n-greet.

“I want to take my wife with me.” He pointed to Victoria. She was still soundly sleeping under a light blanket.

The doctor and his mom both seemed surprised, but his mom didn't voice the question that was evidently on her lips.

“Sure. She is more than welcome to go with you.”

Damn right she is.

3

He'd been given privacy to wake Victoria. He sat on the edge of her cot, and drank her in for as long as he dared.

An older gentleman was in the next cot reading a book. He looked fine, except for the straps peeking out from underneath his blanket. His arms were free, and he could sit up, but he couldn't get out of bed. His eyes went back to Victoria before he caught the man's attention. Time to bring her back to this reality.

“Victoria. Wake up,” he cooed softly.

As he watched, sleeping and beautiful Victoria transformed into waking “zombie mode” Victoria. Still pretty, despite vestiges of the violence that had visited her face the past few weeks. She turned serious as she sat up on her elbows.

“What's wrong?”

“You're not going to believe this...”

He helped her out of bed—she had also left her yellow running shoes on. He grabbed his backpack, stuffed it with waters, then they hefted their rifles over their shoulders. He walked her to the exit in a hurry. When he left the tent he was taken aback at the size of the refugee camp sprawled around him.

“Holy Cow.” Victoria stopped to adjust to the morning sunshine while they both surveyed the scene.

It went on as far as the eye could see in the once-pristine urban parkland. The tent sat on a hilltop near the middle of the park grounds, surrounded by a razor wire. To his left he could see ball fields. Ahead of him, the municipal golf course. To his right, more ball fields. All filled with people. Some had brought tents or tarps, but many milled around on their feet or sat in groups. Cooking fires smoldered, and half-cut trees dotted the scene.

Beyond the golf course and the park boundary, he saw a wall of low skyscrapers. The red medical cross on the tallest gave him his first clue where they were heading. The doctor had mentioned a tower.

“Those! Those are the buildings where I worked. All those are hospitals.” She pointed to a line of six or seven buildings on the edge of the park.

“Come on.” He grabbed her hand as they walked through an open razor wire gate, toward his mom and the doctor. The main road had been kept clear for foot traffic, and they'd made it twenty or thirty yards in the direction of the buildings already.

“Uh, I should mention...I told the doctor you were my...” He suddenly felt very guilty, and maybe a little childish.

“What? You tell her I was your bodyguard?” she giggled.

“No, something else,” he said sheepishly.

“I was your...sister?”

They looked nothing alike, but maybe that wasn't too far off the mark. It was probably smarter than what he did tell her.

“Nope. I said you were my wife.”

She was quiet for several seconds, obviously thinking of the implications.

“They have our information, Victoria. They took our pictures and have our names and all I could think of was whether the NIS was going to come in and kill us, and I just thought—”

Victoria stopped. “It's OK. Really.” She smiled a big smile, though Liam always noticed the missing upper tooth she'd lost at the bombing of his house. “That was pretty smart. It might throw them off the trail a little bit.”

“Well, they have our pictures and our names...” He tried to unravel his own excuse.

“Liam.” She looked directly into his eyes. “You did good. I think it's kind of cute you'd think of that, rather than make me your sister. Imagine the horror of the doc if she saw us doing this—”

She gave him one of her patented heavenly-but-short kisses, then grabbed his hand and pulled him along.

“Of course, you know, it's just pretend. Right? You're going to have to court me properly if you want my hand in marriage.” She squeezed his hand with hers, as if to emphasize the point.

They were walking toward more trouble, but he felt infinitely better than he had moments before. When they caught up to the two women, he was positively bubbly.

Doctor Yu, seeing them come alongside her, and how happy Liam was, made an apparent medical diagnosis. “Wow, you two newlyweds don't fit in this place at all. Maybe I should get married.” She laughed, though it was tempered by the many sad-looking people around them.

That finally deflated his own buoyancy.

“You can't appreciate this place until you're up in the tower. It's huge.”

“How are all these people surviving? Who's feeding them? Protecting them?”

“You mean protecting us. All this is protected by an outer defense ring of barriers, armed citizens, and police around the park to keep the sick from making it in and spreading the infection.”

“What about the inside? Are there no infections from inside the camp?”

“That's why we have the medical stations in those tents. Anyone who gets sick, or comes into the camp like you did, gets placed in those tents for observation.”

That gave Liam pause. He understood there was the potential for patients to exhibit symptoms in that tent—he'd seen the restraints. But the infection could be fast. He'd seen it take less than a minute from end to end, bite to raving-mad zombie. If that had happened in the tent…

“And what if we had turned into zombies? How would you have stopped us?”

Doctor Yu displayed no emotion as she lifted her shirt just high enough to show him her waist. There, tucked in nice and neat, was a small pistol. “This is one of my new surgical instruments.”

He was glad to have felt such exuberance when he left the tent with Victoria. By the time they reached the entrance to the hospital, it had completely dissipated.

4

“You'll have to leave your weapons at the front desk.”

The three of them must have shared a look of distrust.

“Don't worry. There are guards on every floor, and many doctors with guns. But we've found that people coming in from the outside...they can be very, um, how can I say this politely? Jumpy.”

It rang true to Liam. Besides, his AK-47 was empty. He pulled it off his shoulder and placed it in a large gray bin, along with his two remaining empty magazines. Lana and Victoria did the same. He couldn't remember if either of them had handguns, but if they did, they made no motion to surrender them.

When that was complete, Doctor Yu paced them to the waiting elevator.

“You have power here?”

“Yes, limited power. This facility has a coal-fired power-generating station. It's old, but it works. Saves us a lot of calorie expenditures climbing stairs.” She laughed as she pressed the button and the doors closed.

The soothing music betrayed the seriousness of his life at that moment. The clean elevator car offered a step back into the Old World. Going to the hospital was never a pleasant experience, but he'd give anything to be visiting a friend who had an appendix removed, rather than having to step back out into this world being gnawed apart by the zombie plague.

With a ding, they reached the twentieth floor. When the doors opened they were greeted by two men dressed in Army BDUs. They'd been looking out the large windows, but turned as they exited the elevator.

Doctor Yu waved, and Liam mimicked her, trying to be friendly. The men gave a nod, then gave his mom and Victoria a look, but seemed to lose interest quickly. As they walked down the hall he chanced a look back under the pretense of looking at some wall art, and saw both men had reoriented on them as they departed…

Is that normal behavior, or Zombie Apocalypse behavior?

He was trying to solve that riddle when the doctor pulled them to a stop. She indicated they should look out the window. Below them, he could see the full length and width of the park. Every piece of open greenery was taken up by camping people, though most were in the area of the golf courses and ball fields, where it was flat.

“The park is two miles long and one wide. Everyone who's still alive in the city is probably here.” She sounded sad, despite the good news.

“How long can this go on?” He muttered to himself. It was a lament, more than anything, because he knew it could not.

“The city of St. Louis had stockpiles of food and water for civil emergencies—tornadoes, earthquakes, that sort of thing. The city officials have kept it coming. People who live nearby usually come with as much food as they could take from their homes.”

“Bring it with them? If they had food, why would they leave their homes?”

His very first decision with Grandma was whether they should use her home as bunker and ride out the disaster. He was happy to realized he'd made the right call on that score. They had plenty of food, and probably could have lasted at least this long, but the long-term prognosis was grim.

Doctor Yu turned to him. “You must be from the county. Out there,” she pointed out the window, “is the city. Most folks don't own guns, and the few that do were smart enough to leave right away for greener pastures. Those that are left are at the mercy of gangs of criminals who go house to house looking for loot. Those gangs are strong enough to hold off the zombies, and they're strong enough to kick out anyone who resists them. Trust me, you don't want to be out there alone.”

“So they're here for protection,” Victoria said with understanding.

“Yes. But also they're waiting for things to get back on their feet. Help is coming, my friends. The government is returning.”

Yeah, about that. We aren't exactly fans.

The three of them smiled to the doctor. Liam wondered if they were all thinking the same thing he was. The convoy fighting across the continent wasn't carrying their government anymore. Not if they were the ones who unleashed the plague…

“What if they can't make it?” He never doubted they'd make it, but something made him ask the question. He wanted to know if the doctor was a strategic thinker, like he was.

Her face was hard to read. Maybe a kind of sadness, or sympathy, for him.

“I know it's hard to understand. There are tens of thousands of people down there who need help. Most cities are probably destroyed and overrun, but ours still has a fighting chance. Survivors are hanging on and the government is coming to take care of them. To carry on the fight against the infection. To help find the cure. Don't you see that?”

He wasn't sure how to respond. Being a downer amid such hope wasn't really his style. But she beat him to the punch and continued talking.

“You know, it's nice that you two are married. You'll be creating the first generation of the renewed America once we solve this.”

The heat from his blushing cheeks radiated off the glass windows.

5

“Welcome to the Barnes Hospital medical complex,” a graying man in business attire waved them into his office. Liam let his mom and Doctor Yu sit in the pair of chairs nearest the desk, while he and Victoria stood behind them. No one offered to shake hands.

“My name is Bosley Devareaux. When Miki told me your story I felt I had to meet you. Getting those people across town in River des Peres was a stroke of genius. I told my security team we should look at that for moving our own people around town to try to bring in more supplies,” he laughed while he pushed himself back into his plush chair.

“Thank you for letting us in,” Lana said.

Sorry we're going to ruin it all for you.

Once again he thought the timer had been reset on a safe refuge. But he'd been wrong about Cairo, so maybe the curse was broken, finally.

“Think nothing of it, we have plenty to get us by until help arrives.” He pointed to a small computer monitor on his desk. When he turned the screen, they could all see scenes of the television coverage of the convoy. CSPAN ran continual programming, it appeared.

He turned up the volume, assuming everyone wanted to hear. They were in the middle of a broadcast from on top of a truck parked near a bridge.

“The Army followed orders to the letter in those first days. Bridge after bridge was destroyed in the initial effort to control the infected. Now, as you can see, the convoy has been faced with the results of those orders. After days fighting in and around Charleston, the vanguard of the convoy is now using a two-lane bridge near...” The announcer looked away from the camera to get his information. “The town of Elanor, West Virginia. From here, they are trying to get back to Interstate 64.” The man was reporting while under an umbrella. Liam could see a gentle rain in the background, but he also saw the trusses of the bridge now laden with vehicles.

The reporter grabbed his ear, as if listening to someone from off screen.

“That's right Marcia. We still don't have any reports from the other columns. The area around Pittsburgh was particularly tough going. My understanding is that this convoy tried to go through underpopulated regions like West Virginia to keep away from the undead. But even here we've seen plenty. The real enemy is the good work done by the military—”

Mr. Devareaux switched the sound back off, though Liam couldn't take his eyes away from all the military hardware crossing the bridge in silence. That really could help keep this place alive. If they were coming to help. He wasn't anywhere near convinced on that point.

“Once they get here, we can get back to doing the important work of finding the cure to this thing. Getting those sick back in their homes and away from trouble out there, or getting hurt and killed by scared people.”

Liam held his tongue.

“And let me tell you, we've got a long way to go.”

“You mean with a cure?” Lana asked.

“With everything. Much of my staff has been diverted taking care of sprained ankles and purifying drinking water, if you can believe that. But yes, the cure is the reason we exist right now. This entire complex is conducting research for the CDC, as is the Washington University staff down at the far end of Forest Park. Those are the only two facilities still doing research in the St. Louis area, that I know about.”

Liam thought about Riverside, Elk Meadow, the pit mine, and wherever Hayes had gone. Research was being done…

“Liam, tell Mr. Devareaux here—”

“Please, call me Bosley. We can't be formal in such times.”

“Very well. Tell him what you told me. What you know.”

He looked to Victoria and she nodded ever so slightly. Her eyes said to spill it all.

“Did you know...the virus didn't infect my Grandma because she was too old?”

“How—”

“She's 104.”

He jotted some notes on the pad of paper in front of him. The images on his monitor were still a distraction, but Liam tried to focus on the man.

“A man named Douglas Hayes said he was with the CDC. I met him almost at the beginning of the crisis, and he followed us out of the city. To make a long story short, he infected my Grandma, but she didn't get sick.”

Bosley put his pen in his mouth, thinking. “104. That would mean she was born when? 1912, 1913, or so?”

Lana nodded in the affirmative.

“What was going on back then?” Bosley asked. “World War I, Lusitania sinking, the Spanish Flu.”

Liam had heard of World War I, mostly from his dad. He couldn't remember ever discussing it in school. Nor the Lusitania or the Spanish Flu. His history books mostly focused on Civil Rights and Hippies. That was his recollection, anyway.

“Did your Grandma get the flu when she was a kid? I wouldn't expect you'd know that, but it would be useful to study. Maybe this new disease shares something in common with the one a hundred years ago, and that's why your Grandma has her immunity. But we've checked all known strains of flu and didn't find any matches.”

“Yeah, Hayes said one of the flu viruses was man-made. He might even have mentioned Spanish Flu. I can't recall. But that's why it's so deadly.”

Victoria agreed, “Hayes did mention Spanish Flu, now that you said it out loud. He said this one was like that one in how deadly it was. He didn't say they were the same, though.”

“Well, that's still a valuable clue. Is there any way you can put me in touch with this Mr. Hayes? I don't recall hearing that name in any of the CDC personnel in our facility.”

Not on your life, mister.

“Well, we don't know where he is right now,” he said. “But he seemed to have the ability to order people around. He probably ended up at a medical facility to continue his research. He drew blood from my Grandma and took it with him.

“OK, is there any way we could have access to your Grandmother?”

His mom looked back at him. A warning.

“My grandma...couldn't make it here.” He left it up to the man's imagination what he meant. With so much death, he could only infer one thing.

“I'm sorry. Truly.”

“Surely you have other elderly people here you can test? That would actually confirm what my Grandma did. That they carry some kind of immunity, right?”

Bosley sat up in his chair, looking right at him. “That's exactly correct, son. And now that you've pointed us in the right direction we can investigate this angle. But there's something you have to understand about the medical profession. About these hospitals. About the world out those windows.” He pointed behind him. “Hard decisions had to be made about the medicines and time of our staff. The added stresses...”

He faded out. Sat back in his chair.

Doctor Yu, perhaps sensing her duty as the medical professional, took up the story from her boss. She stood and spoke in a low voice. “I'm sorry to say, most of the elderly were the first to be, um, let go. When it was clear what this disease was, and how it was affecting the city, we decided it was best to discharge the patients with the least chance of surviving without extensive resources from our diminishing stockpiles.”

“When you say discharge, you really mean you sent them to die, right?” He knew it was sensible, and he'd seen more dead elderly since the sirens than probably anyone else in the room. But it didn't make him feel good that his great grandma could have been tossed out, had she been here.

Victoria held his hand. She knew the implications.

“I'm sorry, that's correct. We helped make them as comfortable as possible if they weren't able to live without help. Others, we tried to ensure they had someone who could take them home. Friends. Relatives. For a while there were enterprising people driving cars for food. Some went with them. Where they went from there, we'll never know.”

Liam again saw the ironies in his life. After weeks of time trying to keep his grandma, and others like her, alive in the face of zombies and malicious CDC agents...these people were tossing those same elderly people out the door like so much garbage. Now, when everything depended on finding test subjects to help track down the cure, none could be found.

An unsettling thought flew into his brain. Something that made his empty stomach churn.

He was in the same position as Douglas Hayes. He needed elderly test subjects.

What the hell is this world coming to?

6

“So you're telling us you have no one of sufficient age here in the hospital, or out there?” Lana pointed to the large crowd out the window, though they couldn't see them directly from inside the room.

“We have no one here in the hospital over the age of about eighty. To be fair, we had to turn a lot of people younger than that away, too. Everyone has high blood pressure these days. Almost everyone is on medications of some kind, you know. Some of those medications are actually keeping them alive. We had to retain some of those medications for future purposes, rather than let them get consumed for no good end. Supplies of new drugs stopped on day one.”

It all made sense, but Liam hated the thought.

Bosley continued. “And down there? No one of sufficient age could live in a sweltering tent for three weeks, without well-stocked food or medications. Many people lined up to get into the hospital, claiming their loved ones had the right to be saved. Those lines are gone...” He trailed off, obviously not proud of that aspect.

“But you have to understand. This was all done so that the rest of us could survive. The strong. The healthy. The young.” He pointed to Liam and Victoria as if they were spokespeople for the youth contingent.

“Sir, it's urgent you help us find someone of sufficient age to test. If my great grandma were here I think she would even volunteer for it, now that we know real medical people are after this. The disease is worse than you can imagine. Victoria and I have seen it affect people even after death.”

He explained the exhumed soldiers they'd encountered down in the pit mine.

“Impossible!” He slammed his fists on the desk in a surprising reaction. “This disease is not some supernatural horseshit. The dead are dead, and will stay dead, do you understand? We have to focus on the living.”

Everyone's eyes were on Bosley.

“Miki, would you be kind enough to show our guests to the front door?” Then he looked at Liam as Lana rose. “I wish your Grandma was here. A cure might be as simple as comparing her blood with another infected victim. I just don't know. I don't know how we can make this right.”

Liam saw the worry in the man's face. He'd been remarkably calm while they were speaking, but the talk about the elderly seemed to shake him. As if he'd come to regret his part in that decision.

You and me both, friend. Hard choices enough to go around.

They left the office and regrouped back at the windows near the elevator, away from the two military-looking men guarding the doors.

“I'm sorry for that. He carries the weight of this place on his shoulders. We were lucky he saw us, actually. I radioed up after we talked and he insisted he meet you.”

There were no other people in the hallways. Liam absently wondered what other commitments the man had. He should be swimming in meetings, he guessed.

Miki carried on. “And I think I can help us find a suitable test subject. But I'll have to break some patient confidentiality rules to do it.” She smiled weakly. “Follow me.”

In moments they were at a nurses' station and she was punching up some records. There was no one else around, which was enough reason to ask about it.

“Uh, why aren't there people in these rooms? Where are the nurses?”

The doctor didn't respond right away. She appeared lost in the names and data on the screen.

When he repeated himself, she responded. “Oh, yeah. The top ten floors are empty. There aren't enough nurses for starters. Many of them ran on those first days to get home with their families. A few brought their families here, so they could work. Most never came back. But beyond that, we don't have bedsheets, supplies, medicines, or any of the other million things it takes to run a hospital. Bosley and his team made the right call on that. We focused on who we could save, and we focused on running the hospital with only the amount of staff that could handle it. These rooms are empty because every piece of equipment and supplies was moved down and consumed on the lower floors.”

She returned to her screen.

“Here he is.” She pointed her finger at the screen, touching it. Liam used to think of this as a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard annoyance, but these days he let it slide like he did back in the mine.

“Hans Grubmeyer. Aged 105! Wow. I didn't know he was that old.”

“You know this man?”

“Know him? No. I met him here in the hospital. He came in with severe headaches and, uh...I'm not really supposed to share this, but he needed glasses.” A short laugh. “He was pretty 'with it' for the most part, but the thing that stood out was that he had no other medical conditions. He didn't take any medications. No nothing. With all the other old people we turned away, I had it in my head this man might be able to make it.”

“He was healthy? You kicked him out?” Liam sensed he used a little too much accusation in his tone, but he couldn't help what he felt.

“No, not at all. He wanted to leave. Said he had an appointment or something. I thought he went nuts, but I watched him walk across the street, into the park.”

“So why tell us about him?” Victoria asked.

“You guys look like you can handle yourself. You know the stakes. I think you're perfectly suited for what I see on this computer screen.”

With her dainty finger she pointed at the address where the man lived.

“Like I thought. He lives close enough to walk home. His address is just north of the park. If you can get him to come back, we might just be on the road to a cure.”

Sounds easy as pie.

Victoria grasped his hand and squeezed.

Chapter 8: The Naples Soldier

Liam and Victoria sat together in the sunny afternoon air. A thousand different smells wafted up from the large field full of people below their shady hillside. They were far from alone, but it was what passed for privacy in the crowded park.

“You know, we could tell them we'd bring Grandma here if they gave us a boat.” She looked at him with a friendly smile.

Was this park safer than Cairo, Illinois? The place had the numbers and they'd figured out how to keep the zombies outside the perimeter all this time, but it had no formidable rivers protecting it. Cairo would be nearly impenetrable once they got that canal built between the two great waterways.

On the other hand, if government restored order in St. Louis, it might become habitable again. That might be worth the risk of grabbing her.

He was troubled by his thoughts of letting Grandma have testing done to her. After all they'd fought against with Hayes and Duchesne and his NIS team, would it be surrender to let Grandma be subjected to testing anyway?

It matters who is doing the testing.

There it was. Testing wasn't the real problem.

“If they had a helicopter, I'd try it. I wouldn't mind having Grandma here with us so we're all together, but I don't think she'd make it on a boat. She wouldn't have made it on our last boat ride—and that climb up the bluff.”

“Or the walk down into the mine,” she reminded him.

“No, she wouldn't have liked that one bit,” he laughed.

“So then, do we go out and try to find this Hans guy? What if he's dead already?”

“I don't know. Do we wander around going door to door looking for other other hundred-year-olds? They have to be a rare species now.”

Even before the sirens they were rare. Now...how many would there be in the city?

He pulled out his phone. This was something he could answer. He got it out of the protective plastic bag and turned it on.

“We have a signal here!” He suspected as much when he saw the mobile medical cart and functioning hospitals. They would blanket the place with wireless access to the internet. They were even kind enough not to require a password.

The phone still had good charge from when he had electrical access back in Cairo. In a few clicks he found the information he needed. Ironically, it was a government website for the 2010 census.

“Looks like Missouri had 1166 people over one hundred years of age in 2010. It doesn't say how many are in St. Louis, but if this is for the whole state, maybe half of them are here.”

“So about 550 as a best case scenario?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

From there they whittled the numbers down based on survivability. If hospitals like this one had sent them home for lack of care, would that be common elsewhere? Liam had already heard how retirement communities had dried up and blown away. A certain percentage had to have gotten in cars and drove with families to escape the city, much as he and Grandma had done. Those that rode it out…

Victoria had leaned in to read his phone, too. “Wow, one third of those 100-year-olds lived by themselves! I had no idea. I thought your Grandma was unique when you said she lived on her own.”

His thoughts quickly turned dark. Those people would make the easiest targets for criminals and hungry neighbors, much as he worried back when he weighed leaving Grandma alone in her home so he could go find help. If he'd done that, she'd almost certainly be dead right now.

After all their calculations, the number they came up with was 100. And that was wildly conservative, based on a lot of hope.

“If there are 100 people over 100 left in St. Louis, and they are spread out over the entire city and county, it could mean—”

“That we'd never find one by going door to door,” he replied.

“We could check here in the park. Surely someone must have come here and survived?”

He'd been sneaking looks as he walked to the hospital and walked back. He hadn't seen anyone he'd consider to be retired, much less elderly, out in the fields. If there were older people about, they were well-hidden. Probably under the trees or inside one of the many outbuildings throughout the park. He allowed there could be some ancient survivors out there, but Doctor Yu said she hadn't seen any, and it could take a week to walk all over the huge park.

On the other hand, they had the exact address of a 105-year-old man. He looked at the note Doctor Yu had given him with the address, then punched it up on his phone—thankful he had access to the basics of the internet again—and was surprised how close it was. He looked at the address, then looked to the north. He held up his phone, lining up the map with what he was seeing. “His house is right there.” He pointed to a large mansion which was literally across the street from the park.

“No wonder he didn't want to stay in the park or hospital. His house is here already.”

They both looked across the park to the distant mansion. It was in a row of similar homes, like millionaires of the early 1900's had agreed this was the ideal place to put down roots.

They had their destination.

2

When they got back to the medical tent, his mom had gathered Jason and a handful of the other Polar Bears.

“Liam, Jason and these men and women would like to go with you. I told them what you were doing, and why you were getting the old man.”

He was inclined to wave them off, as he felt the most comfortable when it was just him and Victoria, but they weren't asking.

“You helped get us out of that river. We'll help you with whatever you need.” His partners all nodded agreement. There were four men and two women, besides Jason and his mom. They were passing ammunition around before he could say no, though he and Victoria only received ten rounds of the caliber they needed for their AKs. As rifles go, they weren't exactly common. The others had AR-15s and one guy had a rifle he didn't recognize at all.

“You guys are welcome to drink up. We also have a small supply of food.” Doctor Yu pointed to a footlocker next to the water table he hadn't noticed before. He could see it was filled with the same energy bars he'd seen floating around many times during the emergency, including back in Lucy's Football.

The doctor read his mind. “Ten pallets of those things came off the back of some big transport planes. They dropped them right on the camp—had to, really—though they injured several campers. What could we do?” She shrugged.

“How many can we take?” Liam wanted to take the whole chest, but knew the answer was closer to zero.

“We're allotted one per day. Starvation rations. About 200 calories. If you bring back the gentleman, I'll make sure you each get an extra.”

Part of him bristled at the kinda-sorta bribe, but how many people were out in the park right now dreaming of a second bar? And how many people were trapped in their homes—with nothing? He decided to allow her to be generous to them.

There was no thought of saving the bar. All of them wolfed them down before they left the big tent. They were walking through the crowd when Liam's stomach reported a malfunction. It had been given a taste of a meal and wanted more… He was already lost in the thought of his “bonus” bar.

The crowd thinned out as they neared the edge of the park. There were no people when they crossed the four-lane avenue. Unlike everywhere else in the city, this street was completely clear of debris and derelict vehicles. It was an uninterrupted two-mile stretch of the Old World. Even the mansions had clean yards—mowed to boot.

“What's the dealio? These people not get the memo the world died a couple weeks ago?” One of the bears asked to anyone who would listen.

As Liam stepped on the curb and began traipsing through the yard of their target home, he thought of a recent zombie movie which featured, of all people, Bill Murray as himself. His mansion had everything a person could need to survive the Zombie Apocalypse, including a movie theater, but the heroes of the movie intruded and ruined it all for Mr. Murray.

Just like I do. I ruin it for everyone I meet.

Moments later, the group huddled on the large front stoop and Jason rang the doorbell.

A face appeared in the curtains of a window near the door. It was an old man.

“What do you want? I told you people to stay away,” he shouted with some difficulty.

“Mr. Grubmeyer, we aren't refugees. We, ah, work for the hospital.”

“Whatever it is, I don't want it. Go away.”

The curtains swished and the man was gone. Jason and Lana traded looks. Before they could act, Liam spoke up. “If he doesn't want to come, we should let him go. There have to be others.”

He didn't share his real reason for not wanting to press the issue with Hans. The man had found a piece of safety. Who were they to bring it all down for him?

“Hey, don't worry. We get him, he gets tested, everyone's happy. Bippity Bam!” Jason smiled at Lana, though she was more reserved. Then he ran down the steps of the stoop, went to the nearby window where the face had last been seen, and used the butt of his rifle to crack the window. It shattered easily and the pieces rained down on Jason's boots.

Jason was looking at the people on the stoop when Liam saw the thin barrel of a gun at the window. He tried to shout a warning, but Jason turned into it just as it went off. He fell backward to the grass and everyone else scattered. Most of them ran for the sides of the house, though Liam and Victoria fell onto the steps—out of the line of sight of the gun in the window.

“I told you to stay out!” Shouted the old man.

Jason sounded winded, but he managed to get out “We need him alive.”

“Don't shoot!” Lana cried. She'd gone down the steps too, and waited while she looked at Jason. He'd managed to crawl himself up against the front wall of the big stone house. Mr. Grubmeyer would have to reach outside the window to shoot him. He pulled out his own rifle to be ready for that, even if it meant shooting the man they were trying to capture.

“We don't want to hurt you.” Lana kept shouting.

“You just wait! You'll get yours! You broke my window. You were coming to take me.”

Liam saw how this was going to go down. Soon the man would be dead. Maybe Jason would be dead. His only hope was to engage the man and talk him down.

He popped his head up. He couldn't see through the breezy white drapes. It was dark inside, made more so by the sunny day outside. The ten feet wouldn't give him any chance of avoiding any shots coming from inside. Victoria pulled him back down.

“Liam, no.”

“I have to try. He's going to get hurt.”

“Well, he shot first.”

She was right, as usual. But still…

“Hey, Hans, my Grandma is 104. I rescued her from the city.”

No response.

“I rescued her from some bad CDC people. They pretended to want to find a cure. They were up to no good, so I got her out of there.”

The man was quiet as he spoke. “They came here too early. I missed it all.”

“Sir? What?”

Now louder, he shouted. “I said I'm not going anywhere, don't you get it?”

Liam's head was down, but he could see the top half of the window. The black shape of the barrel came out once more and he instinctively dropped his head. An instant later another shot came out.”

“Dammit, I'm just talking!” Liam shouted up the steps.

Another shot rang out, then there was a commotion inside. The man could be heard screaming, though Liam also heard what sounded like crying. The man was, if he was reading his sounds correctly, being subdued.

When the front door opened, he knew he was right.

All eyes turned to Jason.

3

Jason had been hit by a small caliber rifle. That's what he told those around Lana, who had tended to him. It pierced his camo t-shirt, but there was hardly any blood under his arm.

“The old man can't shoot straight,” Jason chimed. “In other words, I got lucky. He grazed me.”

They all moved inside and shut the front door. Two shots had just gone into the park, and Liam hoped they landed harmlessly in a tree or in the grass.

When they got inside, it became clear why Hans had wanted to return home. It was completely jammed full with crates, boxes, and sealed five-gallon buckets. It reminded him of the home repair store he and his dad used to frequent—long before he was kicked out of the house. The mansion was incredible in scale, but the walkways were reduced to vertical crawlspaces to get through them.

“What...is this place?” Jason croaked. He had his shirt off and Lana was tending a laughably small gauze pad for his gunshot wound.

The man was breathing heavily under the guard of a man and a woman. His lever-action rifle had been tossed across the room, which wasn't that far with the crates.

“You're ruining it! Ruining it! I have to wait for them.”

“No, sir. You have to come with us. We need to get you over the medical center where they can help you.”

Hans straightened at those words. “No, listen. I have to stay right here. They're supposed to come for me.”

“The convoy?” Lana asked him.

“What? No. Well, I don't know how they'll get here. But look at this place. I'm perfectly set up to live here until they get here.” He looked directly at Liam. “You. You can let me stay and I'll let you and your girl stay with me. We can defend it together, no?”

Liam thought he could live out his entire life inside these walls with all the goodies he had stockpiled. And those boxes near the front door weren't old either. Dates were stamped boldly on many of them, and they were current. This had been delivered recently.

“I just need to make one phone call and I can have rescue here to save us from those people out there.”

“He's off his rocker,” said the short woman guarding him. Her rifle was pointed at the floor.

Liam wandered around as they talked. Hallways departed in several directions from the main entryway of the front door. The story was the same in every direction. Boxes and more boxes.

“This could feed a lot of people over in the park,” Victoria whispered to him.

“Or a small group, for a long time,” he replied while wondering if that made him sound like a greedy bastard. Her only response was a head nod. Suddenly life had gotten a whole lot more complicated. Was their responsibility for the snowballers in their little group, or the large camp of survivors outside their front door. And, it wasn't even theirs. Hans still owned it, and to take it from him—no matter how valid the reason—would be an injustice.

“I say we get him over to the hospital where they can study him, or whatever they're going to do, and the rest of us stay here and keep watch over his supplies.” Jason turned to Hans. “And we might help ourselves to a few things as payment for shooting me.”

Hans seemed really put out. “But you broke my window. I had every right to defend myself.” Emotion washed over him, and he shed a few tears. Liam was unsure how he felt about what was happening.

“You can't take me. I have to wait. They are coming.”

Liam needed more information. He didn't think he could tell these men and women what to do, but maybe if they learned more about the man they'd reconsider.

“Sir, who are you? Why should we trust you? Who's coming?”

Hans sat up and brushed aside his tears. He perked up and was almost cheery in a flash.

“Yes, yes. These are good questions. Come, let me tell you my story.”

Liam sat in a nearby chair. Victoria found a small sofa a bit further away from Hans. The others stood nearby. No other chairs were free of the crates stacked all over the mansion.

“Yes, my story...”

4

“I was born in 1911. Germany. My family was wealthy, but even that didn't prevent us from feeling the effects of the wars. The First World War was a time of hunger—even as a kid I remember being hungry—and the diseases afterward were horrible. I lost two brothers to Influenza. I carry their memory with me, even today.”

The old man shifted.

“World War II was the same. Deprivation. Hunger. Destruction. Again my family was wealthy. We ran factories that made ball bearings and other parts for war production. I was too old to fight by that time, though I was in the military—every healthy man was, in the end—but my military police unit was in charge of protecting my family's property. An advantage of money, even in the world of National Socialism.” He winked at Liam.

“After the war, my family, ah, how do I say this? We prepared for the next war. We used our money to always prepare.” He waved his arms around the tight room, as if it were obvious how all the stuff fit into what he was saying.

“Later we moved to America and brought all our toys with us...” He looked at the supplies, and said in a distant voice. “But I missed the boat, in the end.”

Liam looked around. They had to be thinking the same thing he was.

“Sir, you're here. You made the boat to America.”

“America? No, I'm talking about the next boat. To the one beyond America.” After he said it, he began to laugh, as if he were catching his own joke after the fact.

He wants to go to China or something…

Jason had his shirt back on. “All right. Lana and your family can take Hans here up into the medical tower. I'll go with you, but my people are going to stay here to keep the place free of looters. We can't afford to lose all this.”

“Sounds fine,” Lana replied.

“Hey, boss. There's ammo back here. I think you should see this.”

Liam followed the voices into Hans' back porch. It was covered by a roof and had glass windows around the large space, but currently it was stacked twenty-high with boxes of ammunition. He couldn't even guess how many rounds were packed in.

“7.62, 5.56, .308, and some others. Whoa! 7.62x54. Someone has some old weaponry,” a man's voice came from in the room, but he was behind some of the pallets and couldn't be seen.

“Where do you keep the guns, Hans?”

“I keep no guns, save the one I used on you.” Liam thought he saw the man smile, but it was hard to tell.

“Check the basement.”

Lana walked over to him and spoke in a low voice. Liam could barely hear her. “This isn't right. We can't take all this.”

“I appreciate your opinion, I really do. But you weren't starving out there. The movement was in danger of dying on that cliff edge. We can't afford not to take this. All of it.” He seemed to appreciate that he was overheard. “And besides, he shot me...”

“Just keep in mind, my son saved your movement. If we're willing to do anything to survive, we aren't any better than what's coming down the highway.”

“We have guns, Jason. A shit-ton pile of guns down here.” One of the men shouted from the basement. He sounded distant as his voice echoed through the walls of boxes.

“Well, this is interesting. A man of German origin sits alone on a pile of supplies across the street from a major refugee center. Does this smell fishy to anyone else?”

That seemed to even get his mom's attention. All eyes were on Hans.

“I already told you. I was supposed to be gone. They were coming to take me, and my contribution, to safety. But things happened too quickly. The timeline was early by about a year. And, once I figured it out...it was already too late. I guess they came while I was in the hospital for a couple days for some pain I had in my head. Now I have to hope they return once more.”

“Who's coming back?” Liam inquired, for what he felt was the fifth time.

Hans looked at him sadly. “You've broken my window, pushed me down, pointed guns at me, stolen my supplies, threatened to take me away, and now you want me to answer your questions? You are worse than the SS back in Germany.”

His father watched lots of history shows on television, though Liam only tuned in when there was something “cool” happening, such as tank battles or recreations of battles from history. That's why he knew the SS were Hitler's elite troops—and the most feared. They were the guys killing partisans and throwing the switches on the ovens of the Holocaust. To be compared to them was insane. The man was crazy, after all.

“You have us all wrong you old coot. We're the Polar Bears. We're the Patriot Snowball. We are the absolute furthest thing from the SS you can possibly imagine.”

It was the first time he described himself as a patriot, even though he'd been caucusing with them since he was old enough to understand the principles his dad supported. Those of freedom and individuality. Those were aligned completely against the fascist and statist views of people like Hans. Liam figured he'd have his whole life to explore how much he wanted to be a part of the same political views as his father, but the zombies forced his hand.

Securing all this as booty for the group would allow them to continue to operate outside the reach of the government convoy now crossing from West Virginia to Kentucky. That was more than 99.9% of America could claim right now. If they trampled on the rights of one dubiously sane man, was it really that bad?

He was still sorting his feelings as they walked Hans along the tree-lined street toward the hospital.

5

As they walked, Victoria spoke to Hans. “How come you don't share your stockpile with those people?” She nodded to the fields nearby, still packed with people.

“Why should I? I spent my whole life preparing. They didn't walk out their door with a damned thing. What do I owe them?”

Liam had faced a similar dilemma back in his own home when another group of refugees flooded his suburban street. His dad had the foresight to stockpile food and ammunition in their basement, and they all decided—including his father—not to pass out the food to those outside. Back then, their reasoning was that it would only feed the crowd for one night, or it would feed his own family for weeks or months. The good of the many or the good of the few? They'd chosen the good of the few. Was this the same scenario?

He didn't see the difference, but said nothing. If there was an inequity here, Victoria or his mom would surely call it out.

“You don't feel sorry for them?” Victoria continued.

“No. Bear with me as I explain.” He leaned on Liam and Victoria as they walked him. Much like they walked Grandma days ago. It all felt oddly wrong to him.

“Once you live through calamity, you never forget it. This is why people who survived the Great Depression seemed to save their money no matter how good the economy got. They knew it could always get worse. Sadly, most of those people were so frugal they didn't spend their money to prepare for this situation.” He moved a little faster than Grandma. His legs were longer, and his back was a little straighter. Still, he had trouble talking and walking at the speed they were going.

“People who survived starvation will never let their larder get down to nothing. People who have had their guns taken away will never let that happen again. In my case I was the one taking the guns away,” he laughed, but it carried more sarcasm than humor. “People who have been wronged can never forget it. That's why I have to wait for them. They are going to fix things for those of us that remain.”

He turned to Liam and whispered. “One phone call and I can have my rescue. Will you let me call? You have a phone, no?”

“Why would you need a rescue? Where would you go?”

Hans didn't seem to like talking about it. Liam realized, too late, he replied in full volume to the man's whispered plea.

Later, as they walked, Hans finally answered. “They're going to wipe them all away. Then we can take over.”

The man had talked about Germans, the SS, and the military. He suspected the man was some Nazi holdover, waiting for his chance to build a German army or something similarly crazy, but when he asked the man if he was a closet Nazi he only laughed.

“You are too young to know what I'm talking about. Don't let it trouble you, my son. You two will be needed to help repopulate the earth when this is all over. It will turn out well for you.”

This time his face didn't turn red—he didn't think—as Hans was the second person today to mention having babies with Victoria. He did look over to her and saw the concern. Something wasn't right with the guy. It would be the ravings of a madman, except that he had a fortress full of ammunition and supplies. Either he was a rich crazy person with a hoarder's attitude, or a rich man who prepares for the worst. And, apparently, he knew the worst was coming.

Except he's left behind, like us.

He wrestled with all the pieces as they neared the front entrance of the hospital. For all the chaos inside the park, the roads ringing the green parts of Forest Park were kept remarkably clear. While he thought the roads were empty, they came to understand the roads were used by emergency vehicles and police cars. Several went screaming by, to somewhere down on the other end of the park.

“I just need to make a call.”

Liam stopped. Victoria and Hans stopped with him. Lana, with no such burden, walked a few more paces before also stopping. The four of them huddled on the empty street.

“Hans, you have to tell us. Who are you going to call. I have a phone right here. Just tell me. Please.” He didn't really know if the man could say anything that would give him the confidence to pass his phone to him.

“My family was wealthy.”

So you keep saying!

“In Germany we owned lots of land in Bavaria. Mountains, you see—”

Liam interrupted. “Is that in the Alps, by chance?”

“Yes. Of course. Not as famous as the vaunted Eagle's Nest where Hitler took his vacations, but we liked it that way. When the war ended, we packed away our treasures pilfered from the war effort. Local officials were eager to help such an esteemed businessman as my father. The tunnels were used, much like my home is today, to store everything we'd need if war came again. He wanted my family to survive, you see. Our fortune bought us the ticket we needed to ride out any calamity. I carried on his legacy here in America, though we are now even more wealthy than we were back then. But...wealth means nothing when you're 105.”

He thought back to his dad's letter. The block-lettering words populated the crumpled paper that was even now in his pocket—far from destroyed, as his father requested. But the word “Alps” resonated.

“Please, sir, who are you going to call.”

“A lifeboat. Maybe you two help me and you can still have your children, yes?”

Liam searched all around. The looks of his mom and Victoria mirrored the confusion on his face.

War effort. Germans. Tunnels. It was long shot, but Liam saw a common thread emerging. A troubling association that would be terrible, if true.

He ventured to ask his question, though he tried to keep his tone neutral.

“Mr. Grubmeyer, you said your family owned a ball bearing factory. I'm curious what the ball bearings were used for.”

Hans looked at him, like he just asked an important question. “Tanks, my son. Lots and lots of tanks.”

One glance at Victoria and he was sure she was thinking of the same deep, dark cavern full of vintage tanks.

6

Liam and Victoria were alone. He asked his mom to sit with Hans on a park bench near the hospital.

“I have an idea, but I don't know if it's smart.”

“Let me hear it,” she replied.

“I think we should let him make his call. I think he's for real.”

She watched Hans from a short distance away, while he spoke. “Mmm hmm. Why do you think he didn't call his life boat, or whatever, until now?”

“Maybe the phones don't work. Maybe he forgot? Who knows.”

He studied her face, but didn't see her usual agreement.

“I don't know. It seems dangerous.” She shifted to face him. “You know, this is a pretty good place here. I'm even pretty close to my dorm room.” She'd talked about going back to her dorm since they'd met. It was step one in her own journey home. He felt the twinge of jealously he'd felt back then when she mentioned going home. Like he wanted her to find her own family, but he didn't want her to leave just yet. It was ludicrous to think she was going to get home now, especially as a result of checking into her dorm room, but he couldn't shake the feeling as she warmed herself to the idea.

“I really could go to my dorm room. Get that change of clothes I mentioned,” she quietly laughed with him.

“You could get the Bible you were after,” he said tentatively.

That was a loaded statement. She carried the tiny travel Bible he had given to her, and that same Bible had literally taken a bullet for her.

“My parents gave that to me. I wouldn't leave it behind if I ever went home, but how would I carry it around with me? Can you imagine how silly it would be to carry a big book when running scared from those zombies in the sewers?”

Were things getting back to normal? The hospital was working—supporting the living in the park. He'd just been inside a veritable supermarket of consumables stockpiled by Mr. Grubmeyer. The destruction of the zombie plague was outside their view at that moment. It wasn't hard to imagine the world as it was. All except for the huge numbers of refugees taking shelter in the park, but currently they were shielded from most of them by the thick tree cover in their corner of the greenspace.

“I hope you don't go home.”

“Uh, thanks.” Her curt tone woke him up.

“Oh, no. I don't mean it like that.”

“You want me to stay here and help your family, forever?” Her arms were on her hips. “How am I supposed to take that? Is this about going back to my dorm?”

“No, no, no. I shouldn't have said it like that.” He took a deep breath to think how he wanted to defuse the bomb.

“When we first met, you said you wanted to go back to your dorm, then get on a plane and go back to Colorado. I can't explain why I felt it, but I was jealous. Here's this great girl I met under the worst possible conditions, and she not only gets to fly out of it all, but she gets to go back to her family. I had so many commitments.”

They both knew his whole focus of getting Grandma out of the city was to get to his mom and dad so he could put her in the hands of the adults.

“I guess I still see your dorm as step one in taking you away from me.”

“Liam Peters, you are the dumbest boy I've ever met.” She frowned, but Liam saw a trace of a smile as she turned away and walked back to his mom.

He ran up as Victoria spoke.

“If we give you a phone, what exactly will happen?”

Hans sat hunched over on the bench. Lana had her hand on his back, like she'd been patting him. She motioned with her free hand using her pointer finger. “Just a minute,” it said.

Victoria's face was hard to read. She waited patiently, but didn't speak.

Finally, Hans was able to respond. “Sorry. I'm a little winded. I think I've been playing bunker soldier for too many days.”

“What happens when you make your call,” Victoria repeated.

“If we're lucky, someone will answer the phone. After that, it all depends on luck.”

“Liam and I don't do well with luck. You are going to tell me exactly what you expect to happen. If not, so help me, I'll march you back to your bunker and put you in one of those boxes.”

She kept her eyes on Hans, but she turned slightly. “I'm sick and tired of being the victim of circumstance in the Zombie Apocalypse. I was caught out on day one. I was shot on day five. I lost this tooth on day eight,” she pointed to the gap in her top row of teeth, “and I crawled out of a soldier's grave on day six-freaking-teen. Now my husband here thinks I'm ready to pick up and leave him. Dang it, I'm sick of it. This is going my way or the highway, mister!”

Liam was in shock.

Hans was less perturbed. “Aren't you two a little young to be married?”

Victoria's eyes burned. She almost said something, then calmly walked off waving her arms, like she would after a long run to get blood flowing in them.

“Sir,” he moved closer to him, “we'll make a deal with you. You can make your call, but you have to give my friends access to your stockpile.”

“Son, I'll do ya one better. You take me back home, we forget this little business with the bloodwork, and I'll take you and your girl with me.”

“I don't know that she'd go with me at this moment,” he volunteered quietly. His mom's look was neutral.

He'd never seen Victoria so angry. It didn't seem possible she would leave him, not really, but his lack of experience with girlfriends could be a multi-volume novel. He could be missing something very obvious in all this.

“I'll tell you what...” Liam and Hans argued the terms, though everyone seemed satisfied at the compromise.

Everyone save Victoria. She stood underneath the crooked branches of a magnolia.

Hans would make the call when they got back to his home. But before that could happen, he knew what he needed to do to make things right with his girlfriend.

“Mom, will you walk him back? I need to take Victoria for a walk.”

She smiled a knowing smile.

Chapter 9: White Flag

Marty's dream had gone on for too long, she decided. She walked down a long rock-hewn corridor filled with cars and trucks—abandoned apparently. The tunnel was wide enough for two lanes of traffic, but everyone was faced the same direction. That was the way she walked, candle in hand.

“Al?” Her voice was weaker than she intended, but this dream had her chilled to the bone. She even felt the cold, which was new for her sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking? Is that what I've been doing?

The votive candle fit snugly in her hand, though the wax was beginning to drizzle down the sides as it burned. She dared not disturb it, however, as she had no way to relight it. To lose light here would be a nightmare within a nightmare.

“Al?” she called a bit louder. “Where are you?”

Lately her lucid dreams were happening without Al's presence. That's when she saw the young girl. But then he'd returned as they stood in her ruined backyard. Until… Something had come down the alley, destroying the neighborhood. Was Al gone, too?

Far behind her, she heard the solitary moan of one of the infected.

The word “Vombies” popped in her head. Where had she heard that before? Someone called these things a combination of zombie and vampire. It was on the edge of her awareness, but it wouldn't appear.

“See Al, my memory is anything but special.”

A breeze from ahead washed over the tiny flame. It flickered, and appeared in danger of being extinguished, but she cupped her other hand around it to shield it.

On she went.

The cavern became larger, like she was exiting the highway of cars, and entering an underground hall full of them. The light reflected from the chrome and glass of an unknown number of vehicles, but they went on beyond the reach of her tiny light.

“Al, please. I need to wake up.”

Could she? Why didn't she think of that before? Prior to her, eh, vivid dreams—which started about six months ago—she had the ability to rouse herself from sleep by recognizing she was dreaming while inside her dream. She'd mastered the skill over a lifetime of nightmares—mostly revolving around that little garage.

Maybe that garage has been destroyed.

She searched her thoughts. The last dream she could remember with Al, something had been coming. Something that destroyed the other garages and outbuildings along the alley. Maybe it finally took care of the dark place that she was unable to ever truly leave behind. Why else would she stay in the same house after her husband died? After the neighborhood lost its value. After she should have downsized.

If the garage was gone, maybe she was free. Perhaps Al was a vestige of that prison, and without the weight of the accident with baby Victoria tying her down, she was moving on.

She admitted it was the thinnest of theories.

In the large cavern, she was given no hints about what she should do. So, she walked on.

Car after car passed, though these were different than the ones in tunnel. Where those were intact, these were all ravaged and bloody near the windows. She'd seen it many times before—infected had broken the glass and got inside, or the occupants had gotten out.

The mix of cars and trucks gave way to all trucks. They looked like the type a power company would use to fix the lines. They each had a rectangular back end that had an arm with a bucket the workers would use to rise up and fix the transformers on telephone poles. The weak light hardly disturbed the trucks as she walked by.

“Metropolitan Power and Light,” she said aloud.

She had to be somewhere other than St. Louis. The local power outfit was called AmerenUE. Several members of her extended family worked there over the years.

“Where am I, Al?” If the direct approach didn't work, she thought she could coax him out with a question.

It took her many minutes to cross the room. The wind sheer against the candle increased the further she made it into the parking lot of trucks, and to compensate she had to shield the flame with her hand in an ever-tighter, and painful, semi-circle. She lost the ability to see much beyond the sides of the trucks right next to her, but she was compelled to continue.

Eventually she came to a low wire she had to step over. She continued for a few more feet before she came to the conclusion she was through the truck park. But ahead…

Nothing.

There were no trucks. No reflections. The light didn't reach anything.

She spoke a short prayer, asking for guidance.

She heard a sound on the wind.

“Marty?” A man's voice, very faint. It could be Al, but she couldn't be sure.

“Al? This is Marty, yes!”

“Grandma Marty? Is it possible?”

“Yes, Al. I'm here!”

The man's voice was still hard to hear. The wind was tossing the light from side to side, making it difficult to see anything at all. She kept looking at her hand to focus on protecting the light, but it ruined her night vision.

Louder, the voice broke through. “Marty. Don't take another step. There's no bottom.”

It was not Al's voice.

2

Marty woke in a bed, with the nearby sounds of heavy artillery. Rather than worry about that, she tried to capture the gist of the dream before it faded. It made her think of staying put. “Don't take another step,” the voice had said. Stay in Cairo? Is that what her brain, memories, or whatever, were advising her to do? It sort of made sense.

More loud noises brought her out of her reverie. The kids were awake, too, and they all sat at the front window watching the light show. Outside, very close, guns fired over and over.

“They're shooting on the other side of the levee.”

It wasn't a kid. They weren't teens at the window.

“Where am I?”

A nurse came out of the darkness. “Hello ma'am. You're in the Cairo community center. This floor is reserved for people of your, ah, age.” She smiled, but her eyes said it was too early in the morning and she wasn't yet ready to suffer stupid questions.

“What's going on out there?”

There were three large windows, and though the lights were off in the room, there was some light leaking in from the hallway. But even if there were no lights on, the light from the battle would have illuminated everything. It was like the paparazzi were outside the window snapping photos over and over.

“They're giving it to the zombies. The Army, that is.”

She looked outside again and saw something in the sky light up and send a finger of light down to the ground. As she watched, it moved for several seconds before turning off. Another beam followed the first, like it was a pattern. A dull chatter came through the window each time the light went on and off. It was a counterpoint to the reports of the big guns.

“Tanks. Planes. Artillery. They're sending those things to hell,” the nurse offered. She looked at all the people standing at the windows. It had to be the middle of the night as they were all in their bed clothes. Marty used the light of the guns to sweep the room. There were a dozen beds, like a communal hospital ward.

Or a crazy house.

I'm not crazy!

She argued with herself for a time, before realizing how crazy that was.

I don't want to be crazy.

“Those are Paladins. They got the big stuff here to protect us,” one of her male companions said from the window.

Things seemed to be well in hand, so she let herself drift back to sleep. She wasn't sure which reality was the nightmare anymore.

When she woke, it was daytime. But the activity and buzz in the room was just the same as she'd left it last night. People were still at the window.

“What is this all about?” She was a little perturbed, but she chalked it up to lack of sleep. She hated hospitals because half the time the nurses didn't tell the patient when things were going to happen. The other half of the time, the nurses didn't even know. It made her anxious on the best of days.

She got out of bed and cleaned herself up a bit. She was in hospital scrubs, which further darkened her mood.

“Lord, give me strength.”

Her prayer was so she could stand up. Always a gamble with her back and all the exertion she'd endured lately. She was secretly happy someone had parked a rolling walker by her bedside. The old Marty would have taken it as an insult, but now she needed it to get to the window. She was compelled to know what was happening…

The windows were crowded, but the others gave her room to wheel up to the glass. She wasn't surprised to see she was, by far, the oldest person in the room. It had been a long time since she'd seen a peer from her age group. The one-hundred and older set was dying off.

Outside, there were people running too and fro, like a bad movie. There was no order to it. The building she was in was several stories high and was apparently a focal point for many of the runners.

“Where is everyone going?”

“Oh, mercy me,” said one lady with her at the window. “No one knows what's going on. We just know they left us.”

“The nurses? I saw one last night,” she thought about it for a second, “though I haven't seen one this morning.” She'd only been awake for a few minutes, but her experience told her a room full of elderly would require at least one nurse, around the clock. Probably two or three if the retirement community was an accredited facility.

“No, not in here, though you're right. I've not seen any, either. No, I'm talking about out there.” She pointed down. “They said the Army stopped shooting the zombies.”

The sounds from last night were gone. She'd not thought about it, though it should have been the first thing she noticed after such a violent overnight.

“Maybe they stopped them all?” Marty knew that wasn't right. Her dreams were weird, but often gave her clues she would later recognize. Conveniently after the fact, she lamented. But the dream of something coming down the alley seemed to fit. Whatever “it” was, the Army had fought it outside Cairo and the battle was over. Or…

She turned it over and over.

Or, the Army was defeated.

What could defeat the U.S. Army? Zombies wouldn't have a chance against guns and bombs.

The other woman turned from outside to look Marty in the face. Her old blue eyes focused from behind her spectacles. “Are you all right?” She said sympathetically. “You look lost.”

“I'm fine,” Marty responded. “I'm confused how the Army could have lost against the zombies. Last night I heard them give them all they had. The light show kept me up.”

“Yeah, that was something, wasn't it? The Army didn't lose, my dear. Oh no, it's much worse than that. They've abandoned us.”

For the first time in her life, she was glad to have a sturdy rolling walker. She leaned hard against the brakes on the handlebars, while she assimilated the horrible new data.

3

It took a lot of begging and cajoling, but Marty managed to get dressed, go downstairs, and make it outside. Several nurses tried to stop her, but she was adamant on leaving.

“I'm not going to waste away in a bed when so much is going on,” was her war cry.

But she wasn't going to walk to the levee on her own. Fortunately, age had its privileges. An older black gentleman wheeled up in a green six-wheeled motorized cart. To her eyes it was a golf cart, though it said John Deere Gator on the side.

“Where ya goin' ma'am?” He had a canvas boonie hat and wore a bright red buttoned shirt. Despite the heat, he seemed relaxed. A direct contrast with all the crazy people running around the town.

“I want to see over the levee.”

His eyes widened. “Really? You sure that's a good idea? I heard the Army's gone n' left us. Could be trouble there.”

“Please. I have to see. I need to know what to do next.”

“Got big plans, do ya?” He was friendly, and didn't even protest when a couple of young women hopped in the bed of his vehicle.

“Where ya girls going?” he repeated to them.

“The waterfront. Boats are leaving.”

“Really? That seems kinda dumb. Where can ya get to that's safer n' here?”

Neither girl responded. Marty couldn't turn her head enough to look back at them, but she judged they were college-aged. She frowned that anyone could survive this long and not have a plan for saving themselves. It pained her that her own plan was so nebulous, but, in her defense, she had to depend on others for almost everything she did. Those girls, so young and strong, were free to save themselves. All they needed was some proper foresight.

“Take the girls to the levee first, please.” She wasn't sure if the man had decided which destination to hit first, but he seemed happy enough to listen to her request. If the girls had thoughts on the issue, they didn't reveal them.

Don't let anyone push you around.

She didn't want to say that out loud, but she felt sorry for the girls. They were letting themselves flow with the situation, instead of controlling it. If they were trying to escape, they were going to the one place where that would be most difficult. The places closest to the zombies. Did they even know?

Without looking back, she asked, “You girls from around here?”

“No, we came up from Memphis. Rumor said this was the only town with any protection from those devil thingies.”

“You mean zombies,” the man suggested.

They didn't reply right away. “You think they're zombies? Aren't those pretend?”

“And devils are more real?” he answered.

“Well, they're in the Bible at least. That makes them real, right?”

Marty inwardly shrugged. She'd heard every interpretation of the Bible over the years. Some got it right. Some not. It wasn't her place to judge. Whatever they were, the girls were letting themselves get dragged closer to them, and they didn't seem to appreciate the danger.

“Sir, what's your name?” Marty asked.

“Name's Duncan Franks. I used to live here in town, but started farming a piece of land over'n Missouri a couple years ago. Came back when it all went to hell. Turns out I was smart. Got my family to safety, anyway. And here I am going toward the danger, huh?”

The girls spoke with each other in hushed voices while sitting in the Gator's bed behind her. The transition from pavement to gravel signified their climb up the levee embankment on the north side of town. In moments they would see over the top and she would have a sense of what her next step was going to be. The girls chatted hastily the entire way up, but fell silent as they neared the summit.

Marty watched as Duncan weaved through several other vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians standing on top of the big levee. They went about a hundred yards to the west before he picked an open spot and parked his Gator so it faced north—toward the open fields and water-filled pit that protected the town.

It was a smoky moonscape. Far across the fields, some trees near the interstate were still smoldering from fires that had stripped them to bare toothpicks in the earth. Closer in, the field was littered with thousands of bodies of the infected. It reminded her of pictures of trenches the First World War. This was a true no-man's land, because the things out there weren't men. They were dead, certainly, though the field writhed with movement as the zombies that weren't beheaded tried to crawl, or grasp their way toward the town. A rare zombie even found it's feet, though it seemed they walked in circles—shocked at the violence of the night. Even a zombie suffered when it's head was rearranged by such violence, she assumed.

Nearer to her, she could barely see into the trench the Army had taken such pains to build. The check dam near the river had been blown apart with explosives, and the water of the Mississippi mingled with the water passing in front of the town from left to right. She couldn't see the water because the builders had displaced the soil to a big berm along the southern bank. It seemed to provide a very formidable barrier to climb. The Army placed a small metal bridge over the waterway—it was the only way into town from the north.

Everyone was lost in their own thoughts at the scene. Even the two girls were mute.

A few screams rose up to their right. Pointed fingers extended toward the source. Marty's eyes followed them and saw a hand slapping on top of the berm—the last defense—repeatedly.

“Something's trying to get up the berm. How is that even possible,” she asked rhetorically.

Townspeople, anxious to do something after such a shock, began shooting.

The hand snapped back, out of sight, possibly hit.

A few cheers rose up.

Marty was struck by the mood. It was festive at what was clearly a victory against a large number of zombies, but subdued that their saviors had abandoned them in the dark of night. They were on their own. She wondered if the people were properly scared now.

The scattered cheers turned to disappointment.

Then they turned to confusion.

The hand on the berm was holding up a shirt. It was like a dirty white flag of the dead. Could zombies surrender?

Marty, and every person who saw it, leaned forward.

4

“Girls, can you jump out the back please?”

It took a few moments, but as soon as they were clear, Marty felt the Gator lurch forward and then down the front side of the levee. They made it two-thirds up the berm before the tires wouldn't move them forward another inch. Duncan threw on the parking brake, then jumped out. He beat several other men and women who had run down the levee and walked up the berm.

Marty watched as they helped the person who raised the flag, and she was truly surprised who she saw being carried in her direction.

“General Jasper!” she blurted out.

He'd used his white undershirt as his makeshift signal, though from closer in she could see it was stained with a mix of mud and blood. There was a hole on his left side, like he'd been stabbed, shot, or...bitten.

“Here, someone help him down. I'll turn the Gator around and I can give him a ride to the center of town.” He handed the general to a younger man, then spun Marty and the little cart around so it was at the bottom of the hill, ready to give the injured man a ride.

To their credit the two young women got back in the Gator, too. They offered to help stabilize the general on what would be a bumpy ride on the way back across the levee.

Marty couldn't turn around properly as she had to hold on while the machine sped along.

“A general huh? How'd you get down in that gully?”

“I'm a Major General—two stars—though I've probably been mustered out, dishonorably.” He laughed weakly.

“Why mustard?” asked one of the girls.

“No,” a painful laugh, “it means I was sent home because someone didn't like my attitude. And, though I hate to point fingers because I take full responsibility for my actions, my situation was caused by that woman right there.”

Marty knew he was pointing at her. Duncan was looking right at her.

When they got to the top of the levee, Duncan pulled off the road and turned off the motor.

“This woman put you in that hellscape? How?”

“No, not at all. I'm sure she has no idea what she's done. Mrs. Peters, pleased to see you again.”

Marty was able to shift on the bright yellow seat so she could see the injured general. “I'm glad to see you too, sir. I had nothing to do with you ending up there, I'm sure of that.”

“I think you were supposed to die in that room, ma'am. I interrupted that plan, then I compounded it by taking you to the town's infirmary. You were with other people. You were safe from them.” He coughed and winced in pain as he grabbed his side.

One of the girls begged Duncan to continue, but he seemed on the fence.

“That woman, Elsa whatever, told me who she was with.”

“Homeland Security, though I never believed that.” The general replied.

“No, she was affiliated with a man who chased my grandson and his girlfriend in downtown St. Louis. He worked for a government agency, I think they are security guards, or something. Their letters are NIS.”

“What does that stand for, ma'am?” a girl asked from behind her.

“I don't remember.” She expected the general to know. “I'm old, you understand.” She found herself a little guilty at dumping the responsibility on the ash pile of old age, but it was plain as day she didn't know. Why else, than old age?

A failing mind, perchance?

She wanted it to be old age.

“She was upset I talked to you, but I think she was more upset that I refused her orders. I'm still bound by my oath to serve this nation, so I can't tell you any details of what's going on beyond what I'm certain you already know. There's a convoy coming from the East Coast. When it gets to Illinois, they want us to be out there to protect them, then join with them as they reach their final destination. Elsa ordered me to move all my men north to support that effort, no matter what effect that would have on Cairo.”

“So you refused,” Duncan suggested.

“More than that. I tried to have her arrested when she asked me about Mrs. Peters—her prisoner. The soldiers should have obeyed me, but it turns out they weren't real soldiers. They were loyal to her, not the United States Constitution. I spent the night in her unit's “care,” and I woke up when I hit the water out there. They threw me from the bridge last night on their way out.”

He made a gesture toward his stomach, though Marty couldn't see it properly. “I got this when I fell off the bridge. I landed on some debris left in the trench. I used that crap to climb onto the berm, but after all the bombing and strafing last night, the dirt had turned to mud. It took me all night to fingernail my way up that hill...to almost get shot for my trouble.” He laughed, then coughed.

“Please. I'm exhausted.”

Duncan started the motor and he threw it into gear.

Despite the horrors, she enjoyed the wind in her hair on their way back to the heart of town.

5

Marty was allowed to sit with the general while he was patched up. He seemed to appreciate her presence, though she had no idea why. The stern-looking general softened when he looked at her.

“This is going to hurt, sir.” One of the nurses proceeded to pour some liquid on his side, then wipe up the mess.

Through the pain he spoke to Marty. “You remind me of my grandmother. She was only 99, but we were close. I can't explain why, really. My mother and I weren't even that close. But her. Something about her always set me at peace. A way of talking without saying anything, if you know what I mean.”

Marty nodded, though she admitted she didn't know for sure. She shared her time with many of her younger family members. Some were very talkative, and she had to fight to get them to leave—she still loved them—and others were more reserved. They'd share smiles and a brief word here or there, but they didn't come round to chat. People were different, that's all.

Thinking of a two-star general as someone's grandkid almost made her giggle.

The nurse had to step out, leaving the room to Marty and John.

“She wanted you dead, Marty. I can't figure it out, either. She said you were injected with the cure. Is that true?”

“I think so. A man named Douglas Hayes injected me with something. Liam told me he thought it was the cure.”

“Hayes? Elsa wanted me to find him and kill him.”

Grandma took a long time to reply. The general couldn't know how confused she was about Hayes, even beyond her normal confusion about all that happened around her. Hayes had followed them out of the city, shot Victoria, kidnapped her and Liam, and just when it seemed he couldn't get any worse, he helped the kids escape from the Riverside Hotel. He claimed he was working on the cure...but also…

“Hayes was part of the team that created and delivered the virus. He told us.”

“God god! Are you sure? And Hayes was working with Elsa. Is Homeland Security behind all this?” He seemed to be trying to convince himself, so Marty didn't interfere. He looked at her. “Are you sure about this? This is a game-changer.”

“I think so. He caused the plague, but he also said he was looking for the cure. I don't think he thought it was going to be like this.” She swept her hands.

“This makes no sense. Elsa wanted her own man dead? And you?”

“You'd have to ask Liam. He's writing a book about it. He keeps track of the details.”

“You mentioned Liam back in your motel room.”

“I did? He's my great-grandson and helper.”

“You were out of it,” he laughed guardedly. “And I didn't press you on it.”

“You would like him. He's a real go-getter. He got me out of St. Louis in the days after the sirens, then he and Victoria rescued me from the NIS people.”

“He must be pretty tough. If Elsa belongs to the same group, her people are ruthless. They caught this old warrior with his pants down. Now they're leading my men somewhere out in Indian country. But if they're so clever, why would they kill the one person who had the cure?”

“I don't know. I'm just an old woman trying to stay alive from one day to the next. Even without zombies, my days are in short supply. I admit I sometimes don't worry about the details. And my dreams. My oh my. Don't get me started. I see some strange things—I'm dreading the word 'dementia' when I get back to see a proper doctor.”

He studied her. “You don't seem crazy to me. You were right about Elsa, by the way. She is a horrible person, and not just for cutting your air conditioning. She pulled a gun on me. Threatened to kill me. I should have come back and arrested her on the spot, but then I'd be dead and would never have known about you. I guess it worked out as it was supposed to.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“I can't argue that, ma'am. But we have a job to do. Once they get me patched up I need to get back up on that levee. The battle last night was intense and one-sided, but without my tanks, gun carriers, and airplanes, we're going to be fighting them with pop guns and harsh language. What we need is an ICBM to drop from space and clear all of southern Illinois. It would almost be worth it to lose the land if we never had to worry about millions of infected citizens again.”

“Millions?”

“Yes. I'm sure Elsa didn't advertise this, but the big rivers are catching all the sick from Chicago and Indianapolis and pushing them right to our doorstep. We killed tens of thousands last night. Millions are on the way.”

“Oh dear. Well, I'll do what I can from my bedside. I'll be praying.”

“I need bodies, more n' anything right now. You know where I can get some people to fight?”

At first her mind thought of nothing that would help, but she slowly came to understand what was at stake and where she might find some people willing to do something about it.

Time to put down the tablets and join the real world.

She smiled.

Chapter 10: Colorado

“I never in my wildest fantasies thought you and I would be doing this,” Victoria said as she smiled widely at Liam.

“Me either. So what do we do? Do it at the same time, or do you want me to go first?”

“Heck no, I'll show you how this is done.”

Liam stepped back, content to give her the floor. She was better at this sort of thing…

He covered his ears.

The explosive force of the AK-47 filled the small hallway and Liam felt as much as heard the gunshot. It only took two shots to ruin the lock of the dorm door. Victoria explained that her key card and hospital ID badge had been on a lanyard she wore all the time on campus—except she took it off the night of the disaster so she could go out with her friends. She had the card in a small hidden pocket inside the evening dress she'd worn for so long those first days. It never occurred to her to take it out and keep it with her. The melted remains of the plastic card were in the ruins of Liam's neighborhood.

He shut the door and locked it with the deadbolt. It was above the main door handle, and hadn't been locked because it had to be turned manually from the inside. A piece of luck.

They'd left Hans and his mom so he could take Victoria to her old dorm room.

When they walked into her room it was like walking into the ancient past. A pair of tidy beds lined opposite walls and a long desk linked the two beds at the front of the room. The light of the evening filtered through the partially-opened blinds protecting the large window.

Victoria walked directly to her desk. It was bare, save for a few large books. A box sat on the floor with some personal effects from one of the two occupants of the room—Liam couldn't say.

“I'm here. I can't...believe it.” Victoria looked at her desk, then out the window to the treetops in the big courtyard. Another dorm building was on the far side. Liam could hear the wobble in her voice as she spoke. “It never should have ended like this.” Watching her from the back, her shoulders slumped and he heard soft crying. He stepped up to her and put his arms around her, and for once didn't say anything.

That isn't to say he didn't want to tell her everything was going to be OK, or that they'd make the best of things. Lots of things came to his head, but something told him now was the time to shut up and just hold on.

It took five minutes before she turned to face him. She'd been crying the whole time.

“I want this life back. The one where my worst stresses are my tests, or getting to class on time. The one where my biggest fear is getting a B. The one where I live happily ever after as a doctor...” The tears ratcheted back up and she leaned into him for a tight hug.

“Please tell me we can have that life. We can bring it all back.”

“I, uh...”

What can I tell her without lying?

“I'm trying. We're trying. That's why we take chances. Why we crawl out of graves, run down sewer pipes, and risk doing it over and over again. So we can bring...as much of it back as we can.”

She was quiet for another couple of minutes.

“Hey, there's my duffel of clothes.” She untangled herself from him and walked to the other end of her bed. A nylon bag with one long zipper lay with clothes strewn on top of it, like it had been picked through.

“I never even had time to get situated in my room when I arrived. I tossed my junk here, they threw scrubs at me, and I only came back to sleep for the next few weeks. I always thought I'd have time to put my clothes into drawers.”

The slatted doors of the closet in the back of the room were part-way open, and some colorful dresses hung from hangers. She'd obviously gotten those squared away.

Liam sat on the bed. “Maybe we can live here for a while? Surely this is better than being in a tent down in the park?”

Victoria didn't answer, so he kept talking. “Do you know where your roommate went? Is she, uh, safe?”

She stopped what she was doing with the bag and her arms fell to her side. To Liam, it appeared she was defeated. “I'm sure she's dead. She hasn't been here, has she?”

“OK, I'm sorry. I was just asking.” He was treading in dangerous waters. The warning indicators were there, but he had no idea how he'd arrived.

After several minutes, she plopped herself on the bed next to him. She had a small gray bag sitting on her lap. It was about the size of a large purse. When she saw him looking at it, she put her hands over it. “Hey, don't look at a girl's makeup bag.”

“You need all that for makeup?”

“You're too funny,” she said wistfully. “No, it isn't all makeup. This is what I use when I use the dorm's communal bathroom.”

He was poised to ask about sharing a bathroom with other people, and how it seemed kind of primitive for a fancy dorm like this, but after three weeks sharing much worse spaces for bathrooms, it suddenly seemed the pinnacle of civilization.

“I need to sleep.” She sounded like a drone.

Unable to guess her intentions, he stood up. “I'll let you sleep here. I'll keep watch outside.” It didn't seem likely there'd be zombies here, but if other dorm rooms were locked like hers, there was a real chance a zombie was lurking in one of those rooms. He'd read that trope a million times.

“No, don't go.”

His heart was withering under the mixed messaging he'd been getting ever since they'd arrived at Forest Park. What was it she needed, or wanted? For the first time since he'd met her, they were completely alone with no threats nearby, whatsoever.

She dropped her bag at the foot of the bed, then crawled toward her pillow and threw herself upon it. She took a deep whiff as if it had just come out of the wash.

“My God. This is what Colorado smelled like, back then. Cleeeean.”

Her head was turned sideways on her pillow, as she looked at him.

“Liam. Will you sleep in Casey's bed? I want you close.”

He felt rejected. He felt elated. Stay. Go. But mostly, stay.

“I'll be here.” He tossed himself into the other single bed, wrinkling the perfect covers. The pillow carried the faint scent of laundry detergent and a girl's perfume. It was from a different era...

For no reason whatsoever he began to tear up.

He had to flip so he was looking at the wall, rather than Victoria.

The AK-47 semi-automatic rifle was lying right next to him. He'd placed it there as a hedge.

I guess I don't believe we are completely alone, after all.

2

Liam woke when something banged on the window. The light in the room was all wrong. Instead of being draped in shadows, sunlight came through the blinds.

“A bird.”

“What?”

“That was a bird hitting the window. We are only three floors up and with all the trees around, the birds get confused when they see the shiny windows of the dorm. It's in the brochure.” Her voice carried a trace of mirth.

She sat at her desk, head in a book.

“Did I sleep all night? I told Mom we'd only be a while.”

“We both did. I guess we really needed it, huh?” She turned to him, her face neutral. He was frozen midway through his jump out of bed—which Victoria was in the room? Was it the angry Victoria from the park? The sad Victoria from last night? Or was it the “old” Victoria he'd been traveling with?

“Oh, Liam. I'm so sorry for how I've been acting. I've not been very mature.” She shifted so her chair faced him, and she pulled her legs off the floor and folded them underneath her. He didn't expect to see her in pajamas, but there she was. Her legs were bare, as the pajama shorts were made for summer. A detail he couldn't possibly overlook...

“Coming back here has done some strange things to me. Seeing all the same buildings where I spent so much time after coming here from my home—and all that baggage. This room. My old clothes. Even my toothbrush! This was freedom like I'd never really known...”

He knew, to an extent, how she felt. His own return to his boyhood home had summoned strange new feelings as well. Mostly he accepted that his life from before the sirens was dead and buried. His dependence on his parents was over. He had to look forward.

But…

What if he had first arrived at his own home today? Victoria had been “in the wild” for almost three weeks. Getting back to things she identified with her time prior to the zombies would be emotional, no doubt about it. His job was to tip-toe through the minefield and help her through to the other side. Otherwise, she might never leave the room.

He finally got out of his bed, shoes and all. The long desk had a second chair on Casey's side of the room, which he pulled and placed near Victoria.

“Holy crap! You have cookies?”

“They're stale, but yeah. I forgot I brought these. I had them in my duffel—all the way from home.” She offered some of the chocolate chip cookies, which he inhaled in huge bites.

“Mmm, best cookies I've ever had.”

“Someone has been in the room. I had a bunch of other food in a box. It's gone.”

“But the door was locked, wasn't it?” They tried the door before they opened it. It could only be opened with a key card.

“Locked, yeah. Either Casey came back and only took the food, or some administrator came through here and pilfered students' supplies. Probably assumed I was never coming back.” She smiled, for real. “They were almost correct.”

He scooted his chair close to her.

“I'm sorry for what I said yesterday. I do want you to make it home. I want to go with you. You helped me get Grandma to safety. That was supposed to be step one in our plan to find the cure, restore the world, then get you home after it's all over. I think I freaked out when you said your dorm was here—like you were going to take a shortcut and go home without me.”

“That's why I said you were a dummy, you big dummy.” She smiled, though a trace of a tear etched its way down the edge of her nose.

“So what do we do next?”

“Obviously, we start by eating all these cookies.” She handed him the full sleeve, while she patted the partially eaten one.

“Um, aren't you the medical student. Won't it make us sick to eat all these?”

She expressed mock shock. “Liam! Are you afraid you'll get a tummy ache?” Then she reached over and punched his shoulder. “Man up!”

Finally he could laugh with her.

They ate in near-silence for a couple minutes. Various “Mmm's” and “Ahh's” of their cookie-eating slipped out from time to time. It was as close to Heaven as Liam had been since the sirens.

While he worked on the last few, Victoria got up and moved to a pile of clothes she'd tossed on her bed and began rooting around. He couldn't guess what she was going to pull out, though he felt his heart race at the implications of being there with her. In a dorm room. A private. Dorm. Room.

The combination of the injection of sugar, ample sleep, and smells of perfume in the room made his head start to spin. He wanted to say something classy, to show that he understood everything she'd been going through and that he was there for her, and everything was going to be all right. Heroes always said that to the cute damsels. However, he had come to appreciate one important fact about girls in the around-the-clock overtime training session he'd had with Victoria since the day they'd met. This was as much her story as it was his. In fact, in many ways, she'd kept him going through all their challenges, not the other way around. Much of his fear of her leaving was based around that simple truth.

He couldn't take his eyes off her. The conservative plaid pajamas were what you'd expect for living in proximity to other students, but the shorts showed off her powerful runners' legs. Except for the early days when she wore her dress, she chose to wear full-length jeans which were unquestionably practical, though they kept her legs hidden.

Victoria caught him looking, though he wasn't trying to hide it. “Gosh, Liam. I haven't shaved my legs in weeks. Please eat your cookies.”

What happened next he decided he'd leave out of his books.

3

The walk back to the reality of Forest Park was pleasant. The dorms were unguarded, and underpopulated, like a ghost town. Her building was located on the campus of Washington University, even though the medical center was located on the far end of the park. She explained her internship got her book training at the school, and practical learning at the nearby hospital.

“Do you think your mom will be mad we didn't come home last night?”

He giggled, then began to fret. What if she was mad? He hadn't told her where he was going or who he'd been with. He'd, in fact, broken every rule laid down by his parents for how to conduct himself back in the Old World. If this was then, he imagined, he would probably get grounded for spending the night—unsupervised—with a girl.

As it was, they found his mom on the front lawn of Hans Grubmeyer's mansion. They were heading that way because they had no idea where his mom would be, for certain. It seemed the best first place to look. His arrangement with Hans allowed them to use his supplies, but said nothing about staying there.

“Heya, kids.” His mom appeared cheery.

When Liam got closer, his first question derived from his confusion about his mixed bag of roles. He was a son. A boyfriend. A neophyte Polar Bear. A hero. But he was also sixteen…

“You aren't mad?” He knew she knew what he meant.

Lana laughed. “Liam, you survived on your own while supporting an elderly woman, with Victoria's assistance. If you're afraid I would yell at you for missing curfew you can rest easy.” She smiled.

“Good morning, Victoria.”

“Hi, Mrs. Peters.”

“Girl, if you call me Mrs. Peters again, I'm going to put you on a curfew.”

With a laugh, Victoria repeated, “Hi Lana. Good morning.”

“We were, uh...we were...” He fumbled the words, the implications building uncomfortably. It suddenly seemed important to build a fiction around a whole night.

Victoria jumped right in. “Lana, you'll be happy to know Liam was a perfect gentleman. We slept in separate beds in my dorm room. We fell asleep and didn't wake up until this morning.”

“We had cookies!” he blurted.

“I'm sure you did,” Lana said cryptically.

I'm sure I'm the butt of a joke here…

“No, I actually ate cookies.”

As an answer, Lana and Victoria laughed together.

“Come on guys, you're going to want to see what Hans has inside. He's ready to make his call.”

“You didn't let him call last night?”

“Nope. We wanted you two here. Plus, your phone is one of the few still with a charge.”

Liam felt his face explode in embarrassment.

Everyone knows.

He waited for the assault of questions, but neither Jason nor any of his fellow patriots made any mention of his youthful problems. They were all business.

Doctor Yu was there as well. They met her on the stairs to the second floor. When she saw them, she turned around to walk back up with them.

“Good morning,” the doctor said. “Thank you for inviting me here. I was waiting to draw some of his blood. If what you said was true—and I have no doubt about that—his blood should hold some clues that we've been overlooking. If there is any link to the Spanish Flu, we'll find it.”

She held the handle of a small toolbox-shaped container. It has the familiar symbol of “bio-hazard” emblazoned on the sides.

“I'll draw the blood and be on my way. Thank you, Liam.”

He adjusted the terms of letting Hans make his call to include allowing Doctor Yu to take a sample of his blood. It dawned on him that if she was waiting here today, it probably meant she had come by last night and waited with everyone else for him to come back from Victoria's.

Does the whole world know?

He felt his face blushing, despite his best effort to be an adult about it.

“Liam, relax. You're acting like a robot.” Victoria held his arm with both of hers as they walked into the confined space of one of the upstairs rooms of the mansion. While the downstairs was crammed with boxes, the upstairs was mostly clothing, tents, and other lightweight things.

They found Hans sitting in a large recliner in front of a huge flat panel television that was currently off.

“Finally! There's the young lovers. We're on your time, it would seem.”

Oh God. Even the old man.

Victoria was more measured. “Thank you for waiting. We fell asleep last night by accident.”

Hans grumbled, but re-focused when Miki began working with his arm.

“You people need my blood for what, exactly?”

“Field trials. We are testing blood for a possible cure.”

He seemed to chew on something in his mouth, though he wasn't eating.

“That's good, I suppose.”

After a small yelp, he allowed his blood to be drawn in peace. As soon as she pulled out the needle, he asked for Liam's phone. He pulled it from his sealed plastic bag, careful to avoid dropping the folded image given to him by Colonel McMurphy. He'd taped the data chip back under the mailing label where it came from. He swiped open his phone and handed it to him with the phone keypad ready to accept Hans' input.

“Turn around, please.”

“Are you serious?” Liam asked. He shared a look with Victoria.

“I'll see you,” Doctor Yu waved to Liam and the others in the room as she left.

Victoria directed him so he faced away from Hans. Lana and Jason did the same. Everyone had a bemused look on their face.

As a condition of letting him use his phone, Liam insisted the man had to use the speaker function. Hans offered no protest. But that only made the fact Liam had to turn around that much sillier.

The phone took an abnormally long time to begin ringing once he'd keyed in the numbers. He was on the verge of turning around to see if his phone had a signal when it began to ring noisily.

When the phone clicked, a man's voice answered.

“Switchboard.”

Hans paused when he heard that word.

“Karandash 777.” He paused again. “Betona-meshalka 775.” A pause. “Machina 773.”

“Authorized. Thank you Mr. Grubmeyer. Standby.”

A short while later, a female voice jumped on the line.

“Mr. Grubmeyer. We show this is an unsecured line. Did you lose your phone again?” The tone was professional, but Liam heard a trace of frustration.

“I...did. I lost my phone...again.”

“Voice analysis concurs. You are Mr. Grubmeyer.”

“No shit it's me. I just told you.”

“Please remain calm. We can't take any chances, sir. You know that.”

With exasperation, Hans replied. “Of course I know that. Why else would I be calling?”

“Sir, we are detecting signs of stress. Are you acting under coercion?”

How the hell could they know that?

“We're checking cameras. Stand by.”

Liam looked to Jason. He was already moving.

4

“Sir, our drones show a young woman exiting your residence. Are there others inside?”

Jason froze at the door out of the room. Liam held his breath. He didn't know what would happen if Hans said yes. Maybe they'd blow up his house to eliminate a perceived threat.

“Just my doctor. I haven't been feeling well.” Then he yelled in the phone, “I'm 105 and you left me behind!”

“Calm down, sir. We're transferring you to operations liaison. You'll be speaking with Adrienne. Thank you for being a supporter to our cause.”

Pleasant music came on.

“They have me on hold. You three can rest easy. I want this more than you do, trust me.”

The rest of the call had all the drama of an insurance claim. Hans had to go through more checks of his authorization codes, but once he was through, he explained what he wanted from his “budget” as it was called, and the kindly woman on the other end gave him options for delivery. Unfortunately, he had to take delivery at a railroad siding near downtown as the track switches near the Arch had been bombed during the Battle for St. Louis. If those were still working, the train could have delivered its payload almost at the doorstep of Forest Park. A second line using a more circuitous route had a derailed engine blocking the line. They said it could be some time before that wreckage was cleared.

Liam listened with fascination. Far from being a disorganized rabble that characterized most of the government he'd encountered, these people seemed positively energized by the situation outside.

“We show a high concentration of biologicals between your position and the drop point. Do you have a means of safely traversing the hazard?”

Hans was silent. Liam sneaked a peek. His arm was trembling, like the phone in his hand was getting very heavy. He was thinking.

“Sir?”

“Yes. I'll have to send my people to get them.”

“Sir, that's highly irregular. Are you—”

“Dammit, lady! I'm 105. How the hell am I going to fight through to your worthless drop point? Is it my fault the tracks are blown? I'm sending people to get it. MY people.”

“Understood. We'll have your package delivered in approximately twelve hours.”

Hans screamed what sounded like foul language in German, but he was cordial in a final English goodbye.

After he hung up, he told them they could turn back around. Jason, on the far side of the room, was already facing Hans, though Hans' back was facing the door. No one really seemed to know what to say.

“Now we wait,” he said as he handed his phone back to Liam.

Victoria motioned for him to leave the room, then she took him down the stairs. They were out on the front lawn before she spoke.

“Liam, I've been thinking about this since we got here. Please don't be mad, but I don't want to go with you to get those tanks. That is where you're going, isn't it?”

He assumed he'd be part of the group going out to get it. He'd fallen in with the Polar Bears and was willing to help them with this recovery. Now that he was with them, he wanted to learn everything he could about them. Having a tank or two to support the defense of Forest Park was an advantage he couldn't overlook. But not having Victoria…

“Yes. I suppose so. If my mom's going, I need to be there with her. I need you to be there, too,” he said hopefully.

She'd changed her clothes. The jeans were fresh and bright with little flowers embroidered onto the front pockets. Ironically the jeans were faded to look aged. In a nod to the heat they'd been suffering under, she wore a black tank top with spaghetti straps, but she also had an airy long-sleeved overshirt wrapped around her waist. She'd fixed her hair, more like reconstructed it, by putting it into a ponytail. In short, she was once again stunning to him, as she might have looked prior to the Zombie Apocalypse. For that reason alone he wanted her by his side.

“My place, for now, is here.” She pointed back toward the University campus. “I want to help Doctor Yu in whatever capacity I can. I want to get some experience doing what she's doing—what researchers are doing—and maybe one day I'll be able to help us more directly in finding that cure.”

“But you do help me. Every second we're together.” It came out with a little more whine than he wanted.

“I know. I do. But we aren't breaking up or anything like that. I need some time to process my feelings from being in my dorm room. I need some time…to say goodbye to that life. I think this is how I need to do that.”

He watched her for many seconds, waiting for her to change her mind or even suggest the decision was difficult. All he saw was eagerness in her eyes.

Don't be a needy kid. Be a man. That's an order!

“OK. I can't pretend I like the idea, but I do understand it. If I had come home to my parents after three weeks of being on the road and you told me to go right back out again, I might want some time, too.” Her smile grew as he spoke. “You have to promise me you WILL NOT leave this city without me. For any reason. I'd never find you out there.”

Neither of them spoke of the very real possibility the park would fall of its own accord, and she would fall with it. Her staying was still a better bet than what he was going out to do. If she wasn't going to complain about that, he wasn't going to complain about her choices.

I can up the odds by bringing home a tank.

It seemed like a good trade.

5

Getting through the gate out of the park was easy. All manner of debris lined the outer border of the lands controlled by the group managing Forest Park. As best Liam could gather without finding the actual leader of the place, everyone worked together to wedge cars, trucks, and especially long-haul trailers to block the roads and open spaces around the refuge. On the east side of the park, where the hospitals were located, the main “gate” turned out to be a small access door into a tight alleyway between two of the tall buildings. Two men dressed like soldiers—they weren't military—manned a balcony checkpoint. They had rifles, but only popped up to give Liam's small group a thumbs up sign. Looking down the canyon toward the street beyond, there were no zombies on patrol. There were several bodies on the ground, though. Trouble had found this little nook…

At the corner of the alley and the main road beyond, they paused to survey their route.

“I don't see anything,” whispered Jason. Lana stood next to and behind him a little. She was hunched over so she could see around the corner, too. Also by Jason was a young red-headed woman in military drab clothes. He'd seen her during the desperate run up the waterway, but he'd never met her. Her hair was long, but was in a pony tail that stood up on the back of her head. He studied it with great curiosity and guessed it helped lift her hair off her neck—keeping her cool. The bears had been playing soldier in the woods when they'd met, and their woodland camo clothing was now out of place in the urban setting. Two other middle-aged men stood behind Liam. They'd been on the run as well and seemed to have survived unharmed.

Liam was impressed. St. Louis had been crawling with zombies just a few days ago. No. Not a few days ago. It had almost been a week since he was last downtown. They were currently about five miles from the tall buildings near the Gateway Arch. He could see them if he looked down the avenue. But no zombies.

Maybe they're busy chewing the fat with friends?

Between Forest Park and downtown it was a mixture of multi-family brick flats, older single family brick homes, and a smattering of small businesses along the four-lane street. It would be a pleasant walk down a parade route if they used the street, but that was suicide. There were zombies out there. Had to be. They simply couldn't see them yet.

“All right. We might as well all stick together when we cross this street. We'll aim for that alley, then we'll follow that until we can weave around to the railroad tracks.”

Their plan was to avoid the dense part of the city completely, and instead walk along the tracks of Metrolink—the St. Louis above-ground equivalent of a subway system. It would take them through the manufacturing sector south of downtown, and would deposit them close to the rail siding where their delivery would be waiting.

While everyone checked their gear, Liam thought he saw someone in a small deli across the block. A dark face—he was sure of it—popped up in the window, then went back down.

There's zombies all right.

They ran. The alley was empty as far as they could see toward downtown, though they only walked it a block or two. Then they turned right, to the south, and soon found the rails. Everyone kept close, and quiet.

Things started getting weird about a mile in. A familiar smell came in on a light breeze. He couldn't place it. It reminded him of the smell of spilled soda on sticky hot summertime blacktop at Six Flags. Sweet, but with a touch of revulsion.

It dissipated quickly, and they continued on.

The railroad right-of-way was genius. He wished he'd thought of it. Each side the railroad was lined with trees, buildings, or high embankments of dirt. The city people living nearby didn't want to see the trains all day and night, so they did their best to hide them. They did see zombies from time to time, but other than a few knifings—they were trying to stay quiet—it wasn't necessary to engage many.

They'd passed an abandoned grain elevator, a parking lot with an endless sea of yellow school buses, and went under several segments of the raised highways which snaked through the city. They saw more zombies hovering about, but they tended to stay near buildings where presumably they sensed food inside. If they had a clue a gravy train was walking by, they'd have sprinted to the food trough. The railroad kept them off the radar.

There it is again.

The smell was back, stronger.

“Guys, hold up,” he spoke as quietly as he could to stop Jason at the front.

“Mom, do you smell that?”

She crouched, as they all did, and took a moment to consider. With a nod of understanding she admitted she did. “We smelled something like this when we were attacked on the boat. There's an Arizona out there.”

Liam was surprised but pleased his mom used the term he created for the new type of zombie.

“A what?”

Lana indicated he should tell them.

“It's a zombie that has several traits in one package. It can climb like the Chicago zombies. It can swim. It can send off this...smell...that can make you see things. It almost got our group while we were on a river.”

That got everyone alert. They formed a nearly perfect circle as a first line of defense.

“We have to find cover. Head for that railroad shed. We have to be getting close to our destination.”

With great discipline they continued along the tracks until they came to a split in the rails as they entered a switching yard. There were a handful of train cars sitting on the many sidings, but they ran toward a long enclosed building which appeared to house train engines so they could get out of the weather. Or maybe it was used to repair them.

A figure appeared on the other side of the yard, but it disappeared in a grouping of boxcars. At the cusp of the building, Liam stopped to get a better look, but it didn't show up again. As he turned his head toward the door, and his friends, he pretended he was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It was childish, but what would a zombie know about such things. All his movements suggested he was going inside the door, and he did walk through the threshold, but as soon as he was out of sight he turned around and then popped his head back outside. There, near the box cars, he watched as the Arizona ran further along the tracks.

It's following us.

6

The building was exactly as he imagined. It had the volume of two or three high school gymnasiums strung one after the other, with rows of windows near the top to keep the place well lit. Several train engines were parked inside, some with clear signs of malfunction. Panels were opened, with their dirty diesel engines exposed. Some had wheels removed. Mechanic's cranes and rigging filled the voids on the edges of the room.

“Mom. It's the same type of zombie out there. In fact, I think it's the exact one that attacked us before.”

“You mean the one that swam after the captain,” Jason asked.

“Yes. I recognized the zombie's uniform.”

“Is that possible?” the redhead asked. Jason looked at her, but said nothing.

“We keep moving. Stay alert,” he said at last.

They all ran to the opposite end of the building. The sun shone through the door as it rose high in the eastern sky of mid-morning.

One of the men nibbled on something as they waited at the door. The starving Polar Bears had indulged in some of the food Hans had horded as part of their agreement, just as he himself had indulged in the chocolate chip cookies. His memories tried to remind him of Victoria, but he pushed it aside.

Stay in the moment. Get the tank. Be the hero.

There it was. He wasn't going to over-complicate things.

“OK. We have guns. Everyone stay calm. A zombie is a zombie.”

Liam knew Jason didn't really believe that. He was there when the Arizona attacked, but he knew why he said what he did.

“Just a little bit farther and we're there. Let's go.” He quietly slipped out and ran along a parked line of tanker cars. The black containers were linked together as far as he could see them as they curved with the track toward the south, out of the rail yard. The day was still heating up, but the black cars radiated every drop of sunshine and blasted it back at him.

The others followed. Though they didn't discuss it, he decided to let everyone pass so he was the caboose of the expedition. He ran along just behind the two men, but let himself look back every chance he got. The feeling of being followed was overpowering, and the more he ran the more he let his nose believe the odor of the Arizona was getting stronger.

Ahead, the others halted at the last tanker car. One of the men ran into the back of the redhead woman, eliciting a quick exchange of curse words.

“You need to apologize for hitting me.”

“The hell I do, it was an accident.”

“What are you, stupid?” She pointed up. “It's broad daylight. How'd you miss me? You wanted to smack my ass.”

“If I wanted to smack you, I—” He moved quickly and his hand spanked loudly against her butt, leaving her open-mouthed shocked.

With a vicious scream she threw herself at him, clawing at his face.

He felt an anger rising inside him, as well. Anger that they were endangering everyone by making so much noise. Human voices were the dinner bell of the dead.

Look back.

While the two wrestled, the others were slow to react. It seemed to catch everyone so far off guard they didn't know what steps to take to solve the problem.

Look behind you. That's the problem.

He was able to appreciate their tactical situation the more he thought about it. They were exposed on the one side of the train cars. To the north, he could see the skyscrapers tightly huddled in downtown St. Louis. The train tracks here had little cover, but there were no buildings nearby for zombies to hide, either. The only possible way a zombie could get them would be…

He looked at the dirty tanker. Oil gooped off the end of the “hitch” thing that would link this last car with the next one. There was a ladder to the top of the tubular hold. And up there...

The Arizona dropped on the man and woman, sending all three to the ground in a heap. The sight of the zombie broke the spell, and everyone moved as if they'd been released.

Liam's first reaction was to pull the second man backwards. He did it to shake the man out of his stupor, but his face was grim and serious, reassuring Liam he didn't need additional help.

His mom and Jason, in the front of the group, were also alert now. They were moving away from the scrum, but both were bringing their rifles to bear. He did the same, though there was no obvious way to shoot the zombie at that moment.

Screw that, Liam. Be the hero.

In seconds he moved toward the struggling people on the ground. The redhead and man were no longer fighting each other, but were so stunned by the falling zombie they hadn't been able to properly defend themselves. There was blood involved…

Liam took the butt of his gun and raised it high, then forced it down on what he thought was the zombie's skull. Things were moving so fast he missed on the first strike. To his amazement the zombie wheeled back and turned on him.

“No,” was all he could say before it separated itself from the two on the ground and lunged at him. But the woman had caught the zombie's foot. How she could see was beyond Liam's understanding. Her face was a bloody mess.

But the zombie surged against its captor and was free with a powerful yank of its leg.

Liam was fumbled with his gun, desperate to get the business end facing the proper direction, but it wasn't going to be fast enough. He'd taken two steps back, the zombie had taken one step forward, when the left side of the Arizona's head popped and a loud metallic bang followed. Something had struck both the zombie and the tanker car. Distant thunder of a gunshot followed. It had come from somewhere toward the city.

The group's paralysis ended. Jason and Lana grabbed the redhead, and he and the remaining man pulled up the injured man.

“Run for it!” Jason yelled.

Liam wanted to argue that whoever saved them was obviously friendly, but he wasn't in charge. Five minutes later they came to a split in the rail. The main rail line continued on, to the south, into the heart of the manufacturing buildings in this part of the city. But the secondary rail of a siding led to an abandoned parking lot.

Two forms sat in one corner of the lot, shielded by the larger buildings nearby. Both were the size of big dump trucks, with long barrels pointing out the front like rulers in the hands of Catholic nuns—he'd seen that in a movie. Bulky and squat, the tanks broke all his preconceptions about what would happen at the end of the world.

A pair of World War II German Tiger tanks—very similar to the ones he saw down in the mine—waited for their new owners.

Chapter 11: V for Victoria

Victoria wasn't happy to see Liam walking away with Lana, but she was relieved she would have some time to herself. Part of her wanted to explore why she felt so upset at seeing her own dorm room, but another part needed Liam to step away for a short time so she wouldn't say something mean she would later regret.

I'm sorry, Liam, I'm trying to hold it all together, too.

The first place she went with her newfound freedom was back to her dorm room. Once her door was secure she pulled out a photo album she had stuffed behind her bed. She slid on top of her blankets and leaned against the wall with it in her arms. The mauve-colored binder held what remained of her life in Colorado. Paging through the photos was something she desperately wanted to do, but feared it so much she couldn't do it when Liam was around.

The first dozen or so pages had been purged of most of their photos. Here or there she saw pictures of herself with her parents, her friends, or her relatives. The white gouges once held pictures of him. She couldn't even say his name, she hated him so much. The name “Darby” was engraved in the soft paper where one of the photos had been removed. She erased the name, but the impression of her own pencil was harder to hide.

Finally, she got to the photo she was searching for.

I miss you, sis. I pray for you every day and ask God to take care of you.

In the photo she had her arm draped over the shoulder of her older sister. They were both dressed like marathon runners. The sports attire and ear-to-ear grins complimented the fancy medals they both held up for the camera. She remembered Mom and Dad being in the stands, cheering for their girls.

Valerie was a few years older, and, she believed, a whole lot prettier. The picture showed them both draped in sweat, but Val seemed to wear it better. Her hair was shorter, for one. Her own long hair looked like hell. Kind of like it did all the time now, with all her zombie escapades.

The tears came out in torrents, and wouldn't stop until she turned the page many minutes later.

The number of missing photos of him decreased the further into the book she got. After the breakup there were none, but by then she was most of the way through the keepsake. Her mom put it together for her before she knew about the breakup and she didn't think to remove the photos herself before giving it to her daughter. Victoria was too forgiving to worry about the oversights. Those photos were either still blowing around the wastelands of western Kansas, or they'd disintegrated in the winds and rain out there.

A photo of her dad caught her eye. They had gone together on a rare father-daughter hike to Mt. Evans. The scene showed her and her father huddled together in the insane winds of the fourteen-thousand foot peak. Her own hair was standing straight out to the side, while her dad's shaggy mop showed almost no sign of being windblown. Whoever they got to take the picture had a steady hand because the quality was incredible.

I'm sorry Daddy. I'm sorry for not telling you and Mom the truth...about Dar—

She didn't want to say the name, even in her own thoughts.

Gee, why would that be?

She'd told her parents about the breakup of course, but being “promised” to someone required a little deeper explanation. That's what she thought, back then. So she did the only thing that made any sense after suffering the indignity he suffered upon her.

She told a lie.

A photo of her mother in her kitchen appeared on the page below her. Images danced in her head of numerous family gatherings where her mom would be in the kitchen and she and her sister were there to help her. It was a piece of her life she cherished deeply. Liam's relationship with his parents had been complicated the last months before the zombies, but hers had been idyllic. In retrospect, it was like the calm before the storm. So many good memories in that kitchen…

It was where she sat her mom down and told her fib. She wasn't brave enough to lie to her dad, so she begged her mom to relay the story to him.

“Mom, D and I have stopped courting. It's not his fault! I like another boy.”

She played it over in her head, and was struck how immature she sounded. But she was a different person those few months ago. The kind of person who mistook heartbreak and embarrassment as it related to a violent crime. Back then she had no idea, at all, how to clearly explain what had happened.

It stung her to admit it, even though she was absolutely certain she hadn't dishonored her mother and father with the tall tale. Two wrongs sometimes make a right. It would have served no one to reveal to them that she'd been ra—

The tears returned.

She knew all the lies she'd used on herself.

We were practically married, so maybe it wasn't really...

I didn't do enough to fight him off, so maybe it was my...

My parents will hate me and think I'm damaged if I tell them…

“Oh Vicky, I want you—blah, blah, blah. Lie, lie, lie,” she voiced with scorn.

She looked at one of the empty white blotches in the book. A missing image of a monster.

She threw the album against the wall over Casey's bed as she screamed, “I didn't want YOU!”

And then, quieter, “Dammit.”

2

An hour later she felt much better. Her soul still carried some rough edges, but she no longer had any misgivings about her own spiritual well-being. She'd asked for forgiveness—though none was needed—for deceiving her parents and prayed for his soul.

He's gonna need it.

Exercise always made her feel better. She took off her loaner sneakers and found her good pair of running shoes. Like the smell of her sheets, the shoes carried a lot of Colorado miles on them. A reminder of her past—good and bad. Mostly good.

She went outside for a short jog. She wasn't dressed for it, and her legs were sore from the run in the floodway, but she needed to feel the rhythm of the road beneath her own shoes. It felt heavenly to coast through the stately university grounds, but the heat forced her back to a walk after only a short time.

There were lots of young people moving about from place to place. A few seemed to enjoy the day as they sat on park benches or up against trees while they read. The apocalypse suddenly seemed far away.

As she alternately jogged and walked the campus, she figured she might find the people doing medical research. That's why she stayed behind, and it seemed natural to take the bull by the horns. Running gave her the confidence to poke around. It took her several entries into abandoned buildings, but she arrived at the place she figured she'd have the best chance of finding Dr. Yu. The Whitaker Hall of Biomedical Engineering loomed over her.

“If she's not in there, I'll eat my hat,” she said softly.

Inside was twice as busy as she imagined. The halls swarmed with the youth of college students and older people who had to be researchers and faculty. A desk near the front door was crammed with ten people, mostly students. Only one looked up at her as she approached.

“Testing or reporting?”

When Victoria didn't answer right away, the young woman stood up to get a better look at her. Victoria was overwhelmed by all the activity.

“What's all the—”

“You either have to go to testing or report any effects you've had, down that way.” She pointed down a long hallway.

“I'm looking for Doctor Yu.”

“All the docs are in testing, that way, and up.” She pointed to a wide staircase off to one side of the reception area. When Victoria still didn't appear to get it, she huffed a little, then sat down as if she was totally put out.

Victoria knew the type. She didn't want to further interact with the greeter, so she started up the steps. Nearby, more steps went down below the main floor. That flight had even more people running up and down.

As she hovered, a voice spoke out. “That goes to the tunnels. That's how people get around, ya know?”

Victoria stood there while she was passed by a great number of students. The girl that stayed by her side was shorter than she was, but older. Her blonde hair was wrapped in a tight bun. It seemed to be the style as she looked around.

Easy to keep clean.

“I'm sorry. This is just all a little overwhelming. I haven't seen this many young people in one place since...”

The end of that sentence involved blood and zombie pursuit. She'd seen all those young people in the nightclub where she danced across the ribbon of time between the Old World and the New.

“Yeah, I've not seen anyone new come in for a few days. You stand out because you have the thousand yard stare. Everyone comes in with it, though most lose it when they see what we're doing here.”

Despite the commotion around them, the girl hung out her hand. “I'm Lilly.”

Victoria looked at it, and wondered if she saw it correctly. “I thought shaking hands would have been a dead art by now.” She laughed to show she wasn't being hostile.

“No, we still do it here.”

Victoria took it.

“I'm Victoria. Nice to meet you.”

“Testing is upstairs.”

“So I've been told.”

With a smile, Lilly brushed her arm and asked her to follow. Victoria stayed with her, but pulled on her long-sleeve shirt. She hadn't brought it for warmth exactly, but it did stave off the chill. Medical buildings were always cool. This one seemed downright cold, but she attributed that to not feeling proper air conditioning in weeks.

When they got to the second level, Lilly pointed to the stairs to the third. “There's more testing up there, but you want to be on this floor where things are a little more lively.”

Victoria saw only a few people going up and down the stairs leading to the uppermost floor.

“You came at the right time. We have several openings in the program. You can have one of mine. I've have to study two at a time for the past three shifts because we have so many.”

Victoria played along, nodding and grunting in the affirmative when necessary. She believed she could figure this out once she had a better sense of what kind of research was being done. The confidence she tried to project was the opposite of how she felt.

Lilly took her down a long hallway, then turned abruptly into a room to their right. She had to push open a heavy door and hold it for Victoria.

There were no lights on in the room, and the sun was on the opposite side of the building, so there was a false darkness when she walked in. Her eyes adjusted in moments, and when she saw the layout, she knew exactly what she'd walked into.

Bed after bed lined the walls and made neat rows down the middle of the long room. Like a middle-school classroom with beds instead of desks. Each bed had a person lying there, and most had another sitting beside them. She estimated about forty total, in four long lines.

Victoria looked around for a person she figured had to be in the room.

Not over there.

Not there.

There!

Near the other end, the security man walked between the rows with an even face and dull green hospital scrubs. He could have been a doctor of medicine except that he wore a big back belt around his midsection and even from a distance she could see the big pistol perched there, next to several long and thin tools she took as spikes, or stakes. The gear of a killer of zombies...

“Here you go. You can take this one,” Lilly said pleasantly.

It was a man she recognized. He was one of the scouts Liam rescued when he ran across the pedestrian bridge the other day.

“Hello again,” he said.

3

Victoria sat next to him. His hands and arms were restrained.

“Hello yourself. I didn't know you got bitten.”

“Sorta. In the tunnels. We got lost. I dropped behind and nearly fell apart under the weight of one of them things...but Jason came and got me. He was about five seconds too late to make a difference.” Though it was clumsy, he pointed his head down toward his right arm. “Got me on the hand with a nasty scratch. When I arrived in the park, they separated me and a few others and walked us over here. They said they were going to give us medical attention, but when I woke up...well, here I was.”

“They tricked you?”

“Tricked? Yeah, I guess it was kind of a trick. But what else could they do? I was a threat, even though I didn't get bitten. They aren't taking any chances.”

“And you're OK with this?” Victoria felt her sense of right and wrong being trampled, mostly because of the restraints.

“I'm too tired to care, to be honest. You and your friend pulled us off that bridge and you ran every ounce of care out of me on the way here. Really, that was the bravest thing I ever seen.”

“Well, Liam believes in what you guys are doing. You created a baby Polar Bear.” As she said it, she looked around the room at all the young people watching over the injured. Did they have any idea what was happening beyond the safety of their campus?

Did we ever?

“Yeah, well Jason and that woman really know their stuff. Keep everyone on task. Said we were coming down here for an important mission and all that. Like I said, I was tired. Even before we ran here, we were out of food. Out of time.” He looked up at the ceiling tiles.

“I'm Victoria, by the way.”

“Neil. I'd shake your hand, but...” He chuckled softly.

She put her hand on his good hand, defying his pessimism. He turned with a tired smile. “Thanks.”

They sat in silence for a long time, as there wasn't much to talk about in the crowded room. Most of the other young people had electronic devices with them, so they could stay busy while doing their monitoring. Victoria had no such luxury.

After an hour or so, some kids rolled in a cart with some bottled waters and a pile of energy bars.

“Lunch time!” the cart pusher yelled.

That got things moving. Victoria watched the procedure and figured out the attendants got food for themselves and their patient. Since they couldn't use their hands, she'd have to put the bar in Neil's mouth so he could chew it. It was all familiar to her, since she spent a frantic few weeks in the hospitals before the crisis in the United States spun out of control. This clean building was a far cry from a hospital ward full of sick people beaten down with Extra-Ebola or Influenza.

After getting Neil squared away, she ate her own bar and sucked down the water. She discarded “eating like a lady” a long time ago.

By chance, she saw Doctor Yu walk by the door.

“Don't go away, huh?” she said with pep as she sprang up to catch her.

“Doctor Yu!”

The doctor was near the stairwell, though it wasn't clear if she was going to go up or down. She turned around as Victoria caught up with her.

“Hi, doctor.”

“What are you doing here? Did you come to get that man's blood back? Because that isn't—”

“Oh, no. Not at all. No, I'm here to ask you if I can help, though I've already fallen in back there. Sitting with the sick.”

The doctor looked behind Victoria. “Sitting? You are part of that?”

By tone alone Victoria realized she was confused.

“Is that OK? Isn't this what you're doing?”

“No, not my team. I was coming from upstairs to get some supplies. This floor is another project. More of...hedge...against a larger outbreak.”

“You bring in the sick to make sure they aren't infected, right?”

“Yeah, something like that. Listen, this isn't a good place to talk. Will you join me at the medical tent out in the park this evening? We can talk more then.”

“Sure.” It pleased her greatly to be making plans to do things more in advance than the next zombie attack. “See ya then.”

She sat back down next to Neil, but he was asleep. She didn't even have a book to read.

I wonder what Liam's book is going to say about the Zombie Apocalypse up to this point? Am I living at the start of a book now, or at the end, as things return to normal?

She wrestled the idea as she sat and stared at the floor throughout the afternoon. The only relief came at dinnertime, when the small cart came back in with more water and energy bars. This time she was given two.

“Almost enough calories for a quarter of the day,” she said to Neil. Everyone downed their bars, though several youngsters around her claimed they were going to try to make them last. They did, for ten or fifteen minutes. Hunger came before lofty notions of “spreading it out.”

Soon she was done with her second bar, too.

4

Once again she followed the lead of the other students in the room. Everyone stood up at around six o' clock, said their goodbyes, then made for the door.

Though she was the one moving, Victoria tried to employ her bedside manners for the man in her care. “Will you be back tomorrow for more fun?”

“I don't think I'll be going nowhere,” he said without much enthusiasm. Wires and tubes poked out from underneath a blanket covering his bottom half and she wondered if he could get up at all. If the patients didn't get up at some point they ran the risk of developing worse problems, including bed sores. But there didn't appear to be anyone in charge.

“We just leave the room? Who takes care of you overnight?”

“Don't know. I slept through all of last night.”

She asked a nearby woman who seemed on high alert. “Excuse me, what happens overnight?”

“They don't tell you?”

“I wasn't told anything, except come in here and keep this man company.”

“Well, some of 'em come back. Most don't.”

Victoria looked at some of the other patients, who had to have heard her talk. None met her eye.

“You mean tomorrow morning some of you will be gone?”

“Not some. Most. I've been here three nights. Two of those nights they come in and took people. The first night they probably did too, but I was too tired and never woke up when they were here.”

“Who's they? Where did those people go? Where do new people come from?”

The woman laughed. A couple of the others in the area also cracked smiles, but still wouldn't address her directly.

“We hope we'll see you tomorrow.”

She was about to press the question when a few men—and one mean-looking woman—came through the door into the mostly emptied room. The patients were still there, but few of the attendants.

“All right people, the doctor is in da house!” A man dressed in a campus security uniform yelled to the few students left, including her. “You need to be gone, now!”

“I'll check on you in the morning.” She headed for the door.

“I hope I'm here,” came back in a hushed voice.

Once out of the room the students all went down the stairs, then they continued down into the lower stairwell where they could catch the tunnel back to wherever they came from.

Briefly, she looked for Lilly, but that was fruitless. She walked out the front door and made directly for the medical tent out in the crowd of Forest Park. Doctor Yu should be there, waiting.

The gunshots almost surprised her. Somewhere on campus, someone was unloading round after round. The noises of the shots echoed around the buildings on the brick campus as she walked. Constantly she increased her speed until she was nearly at a jog when she reached the edge of the big crowd.

It took her ten minutes to reach the tent, then another hour before Doctor Yu was free to talk.

“Thanks for seeing me. Can I help you while we talk?”

“Sure, you can roll up these bandages with me.” The doctor was pulling dried bandage wraps off a clothesline. “These are for people with circulation problems. We wrap them around their legs to keep water from pooling there. I like to keep them neat...though between you and I, the longer this goes on, the more other doctors are going to raid these things until the circ folks have nothing to use.”

“Triage?”

“You might say that, though the people who need these probably need them more than anyone with a laceration or bite.” She paused. “Thanks for stopping by. I, uh, wanted to see what made you go to that research group? I thought you were going outside with Liam.”

“I was, but I thought I could do more good here. I was in the Barnes Hospital internship when the stuff hit the fan.”

“Really? That's a great—was a great program.”

“I just want to do something to help while I try to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.” Victoria smiled, hoping it would rub off on the doctor.

“You should stay away from those people. I know we are post-apocalypse and all, but their methods aren't very scientific. They go through test subjects too quickly to really know if they're doing any good.”

“Are they working on a cure?”

“Who isn't?” She paused, considered her reply, then continued. “Actually, me, most times. I have to split duties here in the camp with those in the research division. The bosses don't want to antagonize all these people by pulling back on the medical staff, though I know he wants to. Saving civilization will come from research, not papering over skinned knees.”

“You sound like Liam. Always looking at the big picture.”

Yet, it still didn't add up.

“It's pretty dull work. How do they get all those kids in there to watch over them. Why so many like that?”

Doctor Yu stared at her for a long while. She finished wrapping a long stretchy bandage and looked up.

“What?”

“They didn't tell you what you were studying there? Did they tell you what was on the top floor?”

“No, what's on the top floor?”

5

Victoria waited until it was after midnight. Miki Yu had given her all the instructions she'd need to see things for herself. The doctor said she would wash her hands of the affair if she was caught, but otherwise seemed anxious that Victoria discover the truth.

All the watchmen had their eyes focused on the zombies outside the walls—so Yu had claimed. As she slid through the darkness to the research building, she was inclined to believe it. There weren't any guard stations, lights, or movement. In the distance she could hear the ever-present gunfire of the city, but none close by.

The key, she was told, was to go to a nearby dorm building and find the tunnel underneath the campus. Her own dorm was too far from the core of the university, so it wasn't part of the interlocking system. She flicked on a small flashlight and began walking in the direction she needed to go.

“They don't lock the place down like they should. Students don't leave their beds, much less their rooms, when they think zombies are nearby. They simply turn out the lights and nobody moves all night,” Doctor Yu had explained.

So why am I the idiot out after curfew breaking all the rules. That isn't me, at all. This is Liam.

She reached the sign for Whitaker and went up the steps. Miki said there may be a lone guard wandering around on the first floor, and again she was right on the money. Victoria watched as the man drifted down one hallway and then she softly ran across the entryway to the stairwell up. She heard her own shoes and thought they sounded like bongos plodding across the floor, but the man didn't come running.

On the second floor she reached the top step and waited. There were no guards visible.

“Don't worry about the second floor,” Yu advised. “Go to the third.”

Is Neil still in there?

She thought about what she wanted to do. Go up, or check on the man she'd sat with most of the day. Yu said go, but her nurse's heart wanted to ensure he was either gone, or being tended to by a night crew.

She tip-toed across the linoleum floor, sure that her frying pans were alerting everyone on the floor. But her soft-soled running shoes served her well. She arrived at the door of the research room and could look inside. A soft light came in through the many outer windows. The moon was at just the right angle.

Her eyes took time to adjust.

First she could make out the white sheets of the beds. They were still in there, though that didn't surprise her. They wouldn't move beds around.

There were a couple nurses patrolling the room. She picked them up as her eyes continued to absorb the details of the dark room.

I think there are people in those beds.

She looked down at the door, and considered whether she could get it open so she could take a closer look. Surely the nurses wouldn't mind some extra help, would they?

There were no light on. At all.

Something wasn't right.

The nurses walked among the patients, though some moved faster than others. That alone gave her pause. The night shift should have fewer nurses, not more. She counted five.

A different research project?

Her pupils grew larger and the data coming in became even more detailed.

The nurses weren't dressed like nurses. They were in civilian clothes.

She thought she could see a face. It was glistening.

It fell into place like the final pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle.

The odd movements. The lurches. The searching behavior. The wetness on their heads. On their necks.

Oh God, no.

There were zombies in the room. It suddenly made sense. The zombies were walking among the test subjects—they were left in there. The nearest body on the bed was still strapped in. It was too dark to see any facial details, but there was definitely a restraint over their mouth. It could be the fear she felt, but she thought the test subjects were squirming.

Whatever was going on inside, she wanted nothing to do with it.

She looked down the hallway, found it clear, then looked once more into the room.

A zombie face appeared in the window of the door.

She froze.

In the moonlight she watched as it appeared to sniff the door and cock its head like it was listening for something. The filth on its face wasn't visible in the terrible light, but when it licked the glass she could see the disgusting film that had to be red.

She prayed it would leave the door so she could escape unnoticed. She hadn't even brought her gun. There wasn't supposed to be any threat inside the walls. On the spot she decided from that day onward she was going to take a gun into the shower with her.

With a loud snort, the zombie moved out of her field of view. She was just about to move when something told her to stay still. Almost as she resolved to keep her feet planted, the zombie came back to the window—as if it were playing a game with her.

Sensing nothing new, it left faster the second time.

She ran. First to the stairs, then down a few steps.

No. Liam would go up. I know he would. I can't let him down.

With great effort she spun on her heels, and trod upward.

6

The third floor was also the top level. She was dismayed to face a set of closed doors when she reached the top. The crazy thing was the lack of adequate security. If there were zombies afoot, experiment or not, there should be Army tanks surrounding the building. That's how she'd do it, if asked.

Well, V, do you leave this place and get a good night's rest, or pull the doors and find out what's going on up here? Your call.

She argued with herself for many minutes. At one point she was convinced she was better off leaving, but an image of Grandma Marty popped in her head. If Grandma was inside those doors, and there was something she could do about it, by God she needed to go inside.

At last, she made up her mind to do it. She pressed on the door latch to try to get the twin doors to open just enough to let her through, but they made a loud squeaking sound when she moved them even a little bit. Years of misuse must have made them less than optimal.

Get it over with, silly.

She pulled one of the doors and slipped through. It was impossible to keep the door from coming back to the closed position, and when it did, the noise echoed in the interior hallway. A curse word was on the tip of her tongue, but she managed to hold it in.

The top floor had one long hallway running end to end. She was roughly in the middle. Moonlight fell into both ends—it reflected off the trees and other buildings. If nothing else it provided her a framework from which to search the floor. She had all night.

The first few rooms nearest the stairwell were filled with beds, but they were most definitely empty. They may have been overflow for the research on the floor below.

One room had the soft glow she associated with computer screens. She peeked in through the window on the door and confirmed her suspicions. A bank of monitors glowed with the motion of a dozen rudimentary screen savers.

After a quick look inside to ensure there weren't any guards asleep at their desk, she looked both ways in the hallway and then tried the doorway. It swung open without the faintest sound.

Oh sure, now I get the quiet door.

There was a small click when it shut behind her, but if no one came running for the larger doors, they weren't coming for that one. She took a seat in the nearest chair and pulled the nearest keyboard. She clicked a letter to see which screen saver kicked off. The closest monitor lit up with a live video feed. It had a little indicator near the bottom which displayed “recording.”

She studied it for a minute, until it made sense. The camera was displaying the room downstairs. The false light of the computer made it easy to see the five zombies walking among the beds, but also the faces on the people laying there. Most were in states of horror. They shook. They quaked. They were likely screaming for help under their gags. It was horrible to watch, though it wasn't clear at all what the purpose of the experiment might have been.

She jiggled the mouse of another computer and the display monitor showed another room with just a few people tied into their beds. It was much darker there, but she had a feeling she knew the identities of those people—or at least their ages.

My butt they sent them all home.

In quick succession she got all the video monitors working. Room after room showed beds in darkened rooms. Some were like hospital wards with many beds, but most only displayed a few beds. One showed a scene with two beds in a small room.

It caught her eye because of the box sitting on the floor between the two of them. It was something she recognized.

Her stomach dipped, ducked, and then dodged a little.

“No. No. No,” she whispered.

She moved over to that computer and jostled the mouse around. After some trial and error she found what she was looking for: the controls for the camera.

Within moments she had readjusted the camera and saw her photo album lying on Casey's bed.

Oh my God. No.

Working the controls she rewound the tape. The live feed dropped to the corner of the screen, unaffected by what she was doing in the main portion of the window.

It went back far enough she could see herself just before she tossed the book. She didn't want to relive that, so she rewound it even further.

Soon it showed her and Liam early yesterday morning, near her bed.

Oh no. Please.

There they were…

She backed it up angrily. Whoever watched this tape was a pervert, she knew that for absolutely certain. This was the only way something so innocent could be ruined forever as part of someone's voyeuristic recording. She would have deleted it right on the spot, but she suspected there could be a clue as to the origin if she watched from the beginning. Maybe whoever set it up would be sloppy at the outset. It suddenly made sense why all her food had been taken...

It only took a few minutes to reach the end of the tape, which was the beginning of the recording. At the starting point she hit play so she could watch the moment the thing came online.

The scene showed her dorm room under the harsh light of electric lighting. There was no timestamp, though she could tell by how fast it rewound that it couldn't have been more than a few days. The date blinked “1969” like it had never been set.

A person walked across the screen—in her dorm room. That person was involved in setting all this up. She slumped in her chair, sure she knew who it was. Someone she was praying she'd never see again.

Behind her, the voice belonging to that person startled her onto her feet.

“Hello, Vicky.”

No. No. NO!

Chapter 12: Antique Tanks

Liam and his teammates approached the Tiger tanks with great caution. He had hoped it would be as easy as walking up, hopping in, and driving away, but he was pretty sure it wouldn't be that simple. Nothing was, these days.

The tanks weren't sleek and modern-looking like the M1 Abrams tanks which were the mainstay of popular American culture—both from movies and news broadcasts from wars overseas. These were boxy and angular, with flat sides and rectangular plates which covered the treads on each side. Two big exhausts hugged the back side, and the large turret on the top held the deadly gun toward the front. Liam fought against the urge to run up and climb all over one of them like playground equipment...

“Well, this is what we came to get,” Jason said as they walked along the backside of the building.

“You think someone is guarding them?” Lana asked.

Liam said nothing, but kept his eyes on the windows near the tanks. Someone was here in the last twelve hours, at a minimum. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

“Maybe, but we called this in. They'll be expecting us if they're up there, just as Liam said. We might as well act like we own the place.”

Liam had discussed this pickup with Hans. The man seemed anxious to help and said he was doing it because he really wanted what was coming to him after he was left behind. The tanks were his, and he'd get them. Thus, he needed Liam and the others to follow through on their end by hoofing it to the tanks, and bringing them back to him. He was very forthcoming overall, though he admitted he couldn't predict who, if anyone, would be at the drop. Also, Hans gave no clue how an elderly man would be able to operate the tanks, much less climb into one...

“Lower your weapons,” a man called out from a second floor window. Liam couldn't see him, but it sounded like it came from right on top of the tanks. “We've got you. Just come in nice and slow and no one gets hurt, right?”

A man in dark tactical gear walked out of the building, near the far tank. He had the mannerisms and dress code of a professional soldier. His swagger as he approached Jason was apparent.

“My men have you bracketed. Don't bother doing nuthin' stupid, m'kay? We're just here as a precaution. Heard the gunshot earlier and figured that's where you'd be coming from.”

Liam's blood pressure soared as he tried to be casual. Though they didn't wear uniforms, he recognized the man's appearance as matching the men Duchesne traveled with. Both back on that bridge over the highway and when they were carrying his boat down at the riverfront. Plus, he'd seen plenty of bodies in the Riverside Hotel with matching equipment. Sort of a cross between ninja and infantryman. He figured the NIS was involved in this, but seeing them in person again rattled him.

Jason pushed his rifle on its sling back over his shoulder, then extended an arm to shake the man's hand.

“Ah, no thanks. We don't take chances with the plague,” he laughed quietly. “I appreciate the offer. My name is...Cliff Hammerich. My team is on overwatch. Others are...about. We're the lead team in this sector of the city, now.”

“Got ya, Cliff. We had trouble with a strange zombie back there. Thanks for shooting it for us.”

“That wasn't us. There are many holdouts in these warehouses. Came here thinking they'd live large off metric tons of food, but instead found this area is mostly dedicated to the construction industry. Not too many left, I'd guess. But at least one, huh?”

Jason nodded. “Well, I'm surprised they got you pulling duty for a simple delivery like this. Old man Grubmeyer sent us down here without many instructions, though, so we didn't really know what to expect.”

“Understood. We've been informed by Control that since this is the first deployment, and a bit earlier than expected, we needed to have a strike team here to ensure there were no problems.” He laughed, but it was still measured and low in volume. Like he thought zombies were somewhere near. “We halfway expected him to show up. You know they are kind of pissed the old codger didn't make it to safety when he was told.”

“I think he hopes to ride it out until the convoy gets here, you know?”

“Don't we all. Things can finally get going once we have all our friends in town.”

He turned away when another soldier—a tall, beefy blonde-haired woman who looked like she'd lived her life alternately in the gym and in fistfights—stood in the doorway of the building. That gave Jason a chance to face his team, as well.

“You all know what to do. Check out your tanks so we can get out of here and leave these guys to do their job.” His eyes fell on Liam with a knowing look.

Stay sharp.

Liam climbed up the front of the first Tiger. Since he was technically not part of the Polar Bears operational unit, he wasn't designated to operate the heavy machine. His “job” was to sit in the turret and stay safe. Lana climbed up after him. Her job, to his astonishment, was to drive.

“I thought you were going to be with me?” he whispered.

“Change of plan. Me and Jason are the drivers. And—”

He looked up when she stopped herself. She was watching something happening on the ground.

The man who was attacked by the Arizona was pushing and shoving against the man trying to help him along. He'd been bloodied almost as much as the red-head, but none of it looked life threatening or even that painful. More like bumps and bruises from the initial jump on top of him.

The man became even more agitated as Liam watched.

“Calm down, Dean, damn!” said the man trying to keep him under control. But Dean continued to push and pull, eventually breaking free. The commotion now had the attention of everyone who could see it.

“I can't do this. I'm...” He hit himself in the head a few times. A few steps and he was well clear of the other man. That guy held his ground, maybe sensing that the time to grab him had passed.

Dean screamed for a wild-eyed few seconds, then took off along the wall of the building, away from them all.

Liam wondered if anyone would give chase, but everyone seemed too stunned.

Cliff walked back to Jason, but spoke loud enough they could all understand him. “Is anyone going to tell me what just happened?”

Something new.

2

“He must have been bitten or scratched by that zombie that fell on him.” Jason said it, but he slowly turned to the red-head woman who was also part of the scrum. Though her face was covered in smeared-off blood, she seemed the model of calm compared to Dean.

“What?” she said when Jason faced her.

“You feeling OK, Annie?”

“If you mean do I feel like going for a jog in the zombie railyard of death, the answer is no. I feel like staying right here.” She pointed to the ground beneath her feet.

Jason strode next to her. “Did you get bitten? Where'd all that blood come from?”

“This ain't my blood Jace, trust me. That thing splashed its own juices on me when it pushed me over.”

She used her sleeves to wipe more of the drying blood from the edges of her face where it still remained. Jason studied her up close, then seemed satisfied. “Let me know if you get any, um, urges, like Dean.”

With a quiet laugh they all went back to their tasks, though it left Liam with many doubts since Annie was supposed to be in the turret with him.

The plan was to have one driver in each tank, with the other two people riding as passengers in the safety of the turret, keeping an eye out for trouble. The turret was designed to have had three people in it, so two would be roomy. But now they were a man down... Lana and Jason moved to the second Tiger, discussing their manpower shortage, while Liam sat on the front edge of his tank and was vigilant in his search for zombies.

None showed up, for which he was glad, but Cliff came over and leaned against the industrial gray tank.

“Hell of a thing, this tank.” His eyes bore into Liam's. He went almost all the way to panic mode, sure the man knew who he was. What he did.

Cool, Liam. Play it cool. He's only an NIS baddy, not a mind-reader.

He decided to stick to the truth. “I wish I was old enough to drive one of these.”

“Didn't the old man tell you all how to drive? That's the hardest part. But back when this girl was new, it was crewed by boys not any older than you. What are you, seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Seventeen.” The lie came out easily because he'd declared to Victoria he was skipping sixteen.

“Yeah, see. Young soldiers back then fought and died for years in the war. This tank would have been safer than most, mind you, at least until later in the war. Here, in the Final War, you'd have similar safety. The dead can't exactly shoot guns, can they?”

They both looked to the right, following a noise that had come from that way. He saw nothing, though Dean had gone that direction.

“And let me tell you, these old tanks aren't what they used to be. This thing couldn't hold off an M1 Abrams for five seconds, but it can hold its own against most everything else that you'll get from the ground here in the city. We've added some upgrades.” He laughed dryly. “And made it easier for kids like you to drive them around. The wizards added modern electronics to this antique.”

He thought about how he could broach an important topic. Something someone “in the know” would naturally assume was coming from a fellow NIS traveler.

“So did the old man keep his tanks down in the Koch Hospital Quarry?”

The mine had to be crawling with zombies. Liam really wanted to know how anyone could get back in there, clear them out, and then load tanks on railroad cars. But the answer he sought didn't come.

“No, these two were parked somewhere else.”

His chat was interrupted by his mom. She passed in front of them, then jumped up on the tank with impressive athleticism.

“OK, we've got this figured out. Liam, you'll still be in the turret. Annie will join you. I'll drive.”

On the other tank, Jason climbed into the circular hatch on the middle deck, near the front. His mom opened the driver's hatch for her tank, allowing him to look down at a confusing array of dials, levers, and a funny-looking steering wheel.

“Gonna be tight,” Lana said. Liam's hackles got worked up when Cliff's eyes watched his mother shimmy herself into the hatch.

Lana craned her neck and looked up at him. A pistol was in her hand, and she held it up. “Keep this by you.”

He grabbed it and stuffed it into the front pocket of his jeans. Lana wagged her finger at him, motioning him to come down to her level. He leaned in, near her face.

“Keep your eye on Annie,” she whispered.

“You think there's gonna be a problem?”

“Your father rubbed off on me, I guess. Always be prepared, right?”

“I wish he were here. He would love driving a tank,” Liam smiled weakly into the dark compartment.

“Liam, you have no idea. We're going to make him proud. Now go. Put on your headphones. Someone was nice enough to set these up so we could talk inside the tank without shouting.” She held up a pair of big headphones with a boom microphone.

“OK. Will do.” He gave her a thumbs up, then noticed Cliff was still hanging around. His mom was inside the hull and was out of his sight, which pleased him. On a whim he gave that man the thumbs up, too. He hoped it stated the plain fact they were getting ready to leave.

Liam climbed up onto the turret. It was roughly circular with a flat roof. The main gun pointed out from the turret and extended to a point somewhere above his mom in the front. Though the tanks back in the mine had markings suggesting they had once been weapons used in past wars, this one had no markings of any kind, except for the random dabs of gray camouflage. He couldn't see the sides of his own tank, but he looked across to Jason's, searching for anything that would give a clue to who's army it belonged to. Nothing.

Except—

He thought he saw something faint on the side of the other turret. To confirm, he looked at the side of his own and saw the same animal. It was just an outline of a lizard. About the size of his hand.

I give you, the Lizard Army!

He wasn't laughing as Jason's tank began to crank over and he worked his way into the turret interior.

3

“Liam, there's a switch on the lower wall near your side with a little piston. You have to move that up and down about eight or nine times to prime the fuel lines for me.”

He found the little box on the wall and did as instructed. “Done.”

“OK, sit tight. There's a lot of steps here.” She giggled like a little girl at Christmastime.

“Mom, in ten million years I wouldn't have imagined us inside a tank.” A continuing thought was that he couldn't believe she was driving while he was sight-seeing up top, but if his dad was here, he and his mom would both have been in the turret. Though, dwelling on the letter in his pocket, he wondered if his mom and dad would both be driving the tanks.

He tried to man up, as Victoria would say, but he ran afoul of his own feelings when he remembered his dad would never ever be a part of his life again. His attention was broken when the engine turned over and his mom hooted in the headphones.

The Tiger's engine sounded like an old sports car, with a heavy, deep-throated rumble. The need for the headphones became apparent as it was loud in the interior. He looked over to Annie, who had slumped into the turret on the other side of the workings of the gun. The light shone in from the two open hatches above them.

The tank lurched, then they started to move. Immediately Lana turned the whole thing so it was facing back the way they'd come. They moved for a thirty seconds or so, and then she shifted back down until they were stopped with the engine running.

“Jason is going to go first. Liam, I think it would be best if you kept your hatch closed and stayed inside the turret—there could be people shooting at us.”

An automatic response was going to be something to the effect “Who would shoot at a tank?” but he'd seen it all. Someone would shoot at the tank. He had no doubt about it. As to why. It was as simple as “It was there.” People were insane.

Jason's tank roared by. The dust of the parking lot trailed behind him.

“Moving,” said his mom. Jason's voice hopped on their channel. “Follow me, stay close, out.”

The tanks moved onto the rail line. They approached the parked line of tanker cars, then the Tigers rolled along the right-of-way next to it. No shots rang out from the mysterious person who dispatched the Arizona. Ten minutes later, Jason angled his tank and, it appeared, was heading toward downtown St. Louis.

As if knowing it would generate a question, Jason was on the radio. “Change of plan. We'll get some eyes on downtown, then drive back on the roads. Nothing is going to touch us in these things. Over.”

“Roger. Charlie Mike,” his mom said.

Charlie Mike? Continue mission? Mom, you're talking like a soldier.

His pride for his mother was tempered by the road ahead. There were no people along the train tracks, and thus there were few zombies. The road was a different story. As they approached, the number of ambient zombies began to rise. Liam popped his head from the top hatch to get a better look. No zombie could get on their tank while they were moving. He guessed...

They were on a major thoroughfare when Jason came on again.

“Don't stop. Run them down. Out.”

He didn't think his mom needed such a directive. Dead was dead. Plowing over a zombie with a tank was a hell of a way to go. Worse than being hit with an MRAP.

Jason's tank veered to the left as they cruised along, and seconds later Liam watched in horror as a red mush appeared on the street underneath the back of its left track. The blood of the creature stuck to the treads and he watched it come through again and again like a bicycle chain past the pedals.

Lana made no effort to run them over, but soon it was impossible not to hit one. The tank was so wide it was hard to miss those standing in the street, though she did weave from side to side where she had room. It wasn't long before she didn't have the room, and Liam watched as a young running boy slid underneath the nose of his Tiger. Gone.

In a few more minutes, as the crowd got thick, Jason turned directly to the right. Instead of going toward downtown he was heading for the Mississippi River. Liam stayed low in the hatch so he could keep his bearings. The Arch loomed above him on his left. They were just south of it. Which meant they weren't heading west toward Forest Park.

“Mom, what's Jason doing? I think he took a wrong turn.”

“We'll follow him, and see.”

My zombie sense is tingling.

4

The number of zombies decreased sharply as they navigated through the warehouses and the tall chain link dividers of the warehouse district. Given enough time, the zombies from the street would follow the path of the loud tank, but for the moment the area was clear.

They parked the two tanks one behind the other in a narrow lane between two warehouses. There were no windows or other openings, so they could be fairly certain nothing was going to attack them from the sides. That's what Jason said when he hopped back from his Tiger to theirs. He unslung his rifle and shot behind the tank a couple times. “Those runners kept up with us,” he said nonchalantly.

He crouched on the front deck as he spoke. Lana stuck her head out of her driver's hatch while Liam and Annie both stood up in theirs. “Lana, you and I will run ahead and check on our route. Liam, you can look back that way for any more runners. Mike will focus on the front.” He pointed to the other man in his turret. “Annie, if you're up to it, you can keep watch with Liam.”

She nodded, though Liam noticed her eyes were droopy. Either she was really tired, or something was wrong with her.

“Annie, you look—”

“Like shit? Yeah, I know Jay. I'll be fine. I'm not going for a run. I promise.” She laughed, but no one else did.

“We aren't heading back to Forest Park?”

Instead of answering Liam's question directly, Jason passed a look to Lana. In turn she hopped out of her driver's seat, pulled out her rifle after her, and stood up. “Liam, this is important, OK? Just guard that back side and we'll be on our way soon enough.”

He smiled at her, and she returned the gesture, though her eyes seemed more serious.

She jumped to the other tank with Jason, then they scrambled down the front of the beast, and ran up the corridor toward a big concrete wall. In a couple minutes they were out of sight.

Annie's gun was lying on top of the turret. It vaguely faced forward while she stared that way. Liam looked backward with his gun propped smartly on the upside down hatch lid. The way they were both supposed to be watching.

“Run, kid.”

He spun his head around. Annie looked progressively worse. The blood dripping from her ear was definitely new.

“What?”

“I said, run. I'm not right.”

“Why the hell didn't you tell my mom, or Jason?”

“You think I have a choice? Whatever this is inside me...it's tricky. I'm having trouble knowing the difference between my voice, and...not my voice.” Her gun was now pointing somewhat in his direction.

The lower half of his body was still inside the turret compartment. He felt for the pistol in his pants pocket, hoping to find the security it gave him minutes earlier. He held it out of her sight, for the moment.

“I don't care anymore. I lost my lover back in that drainage ditch. This is fitting, I guess.”

There was no one else around, but Mike in the other tank. He was looking the other way. His mom had run around the corner at the end of the lane between the buildings—out of sight. The gun handle was soaked, he was so nervous. The conflict between getting out and running for it, or staying in and fighting was in full bloom.

Man up.

“You have to leave, Annie. If you're infected. Get out of here.”

“What...so you can shoot me in the back?” Her head drooped. Both ears had blood draining—just enough to be noticed. “I'm—” She cocked her head sideways, as if listening for something. “I can hear them.”

“Who?” His curiosity often overcame his fears. He was bolstered by the feel of steel in his hand. He pointed it at her.

She leaned over like she was straining to hear something, and then she fell back inside her compartment, out of his view. He squatted back into his own hatch so he could see Annie on the other side of the main gun's breech. She was starting to get upset, just as Dean had done.

He stood back up, willing his mother to come back. She wasn't there. It was on him.

There were few good choices. The handgun was in his hand, though he couldn't ignore the shakes in his arm. Shooting the girl was the last thing he wanted to do, no matter her condition. If he missed, inside the turret, would the bullet ricochet back to him?

With some effort he lowered himself back into the tank. He fell into his seat and then tried to check on Annie's condition. To his surprise he only saw her feet as they went up through the top of her exit, trailed by the wire from her communications getup. He warily stood back up.

“Annie!”

Adding “Where are you going?” was unnecessary. She'd been taken by the same force that had captured Dean. The girl hung herself off the back of the tank, dropped, then ran. In less than a minute she had gone far enough she could turn down a side street, out of his sight.

Only after she was gone did he think about using his rifle to put her down.

Is that the right term? Could I shoot a her in the back? Was she a zombie?

All kinds of questions without answers.

He had five minutes to sit and ruminate. Lana and Jason approached at a run from ahead. They both jumped up on the tank, then Lana continued to the second and made for her driver's position. She made no mention of Annie though he wanted her to ask.

The engines roared to life, much louder now that he was exposed and between the two concrete buildings. The tanks got up to speed and headed for the ten-foot concrete wall ahead of them. When they cleared the buildings it became apparent the wall extended in both directions. It was plastered with colorful graffiti and sat just beyond five or six sets of railroad tracks.

“Hang on, you two. We're going to swing around the floodwall for this next part.”

“Um, Annie's gone. She ran away. Like Dean.”

He could almost hear his mom thinking. Weighing the pros and cons of the loss of Annie with whatever she was doing. Liam found her new focus a little troubling. The mom he'd known all his life was kind and compassionate, and losing an entire human being from a three-man crew would be something requiring serious attention.

“OK. Just sit tight. This is almost done.”

It took him a further minute to ask what she'd meant by that. The noise and vibrations of the heavy tank told him they were crossing rough ground.

“We're going to blow up the temporary bridge to St. Louis. We have to stop the convoy from getting here.”

“What? The convoy? It's in West Virginia, isn't it?”

“Don't believe what you see on the news. Never. It's much closer than that.”

Cliff Hammerich called the Tiger an antique. Going to war seemed like a pretty dumb thing to do with an antique. There was also another bridge ten miles south of the city. They'd walked right under it...

The tank sputtered and came to a stop.

“Jason. Wait,” she said over the radio.

“Roger that. Waiting. Out.”

Another moment's pause. Lana spoke directly into her microphone. “Liam, would you mind climbing down from the tank for a few minutes? We checked this area for zombies and it's clear. You'll be fine for a few minutes.”

“Why? What's happening?”

“You have to trust me. I need you to get down. Take your rifle and my handgun.”

He wanted to argue, but things were moving too fast and he couldn't keep up. Tanks, special zombies, and NIS hit squads had made him lose his proverbial marbles. Now his mother wanted him out of the safety of the steel cage so he could stand alone in a world filled with zombies. Though it struck him as self-destructive, he took off his headphones and climbed out and down the tank.

The spray-painted barrier was a floodwall. Seeing it reminded him of any number of floods over the years with news crews getting footage of how high the water came to topping the wall. An opening the width of a street was just ahead. The movable flood doors were all the way open. And, once his foot was on the ground, Lana had her tank moving forward for the gap in the wall, close behind Jason.

That was the moment he realized the idea of getting the tanks was not really his idea at all. And, to further the discovery process, he wasn't on a rescue mission for some old tanks. He was on a strike mission, to stop the arrival of an enemy army.

And the only word that resonated as he stood in the July sunshine was “antique.”

5

Liam watched as the two Tigers each released a couple small drones—the size of large birds—from a box behind their turrets. With small propellers pushing them, they took off straight up for about fifty feet, then began angling toward the river beyond the floodwall.

He tried to guess the functions of the drones—they looked alien next to the 75-year-old tanks—but nothing came to mind. Cliff had said there were enhancements done to the old beasts, though drones aren't what he expected.

Liam's own situation became his prime concern. The large crowds of the city weren't on the scene yet, but there were zombies in the neighborhood. One stout young man ambled out of a nearby warehouse through a large wrecked set of garage-style doors. He got his rifle ready to dispatch it, but had to let it get a little closer so he had a hope of hitting it in the head, for a proper zombie headshot. At that moment he really wished he had Victoria with him, as her skill with rifles at long range was much better than his own.

I'm missing half my zombie-killing team.

Another zombie ran around the corner down at the far end of the warehouse, perhaps drawn by the noise of the tanks. He was looking at two targets, neither of which he felt comfortable shooting, yet. The one in the nearest door—dressed like a utility worker—would be closest, though the runner might close the gap so they were equally distant when he could make sure he would hit the head.

He took a knee and aimed for the first one. It was still a hundred yards away, but he didn't want to risk letting them both close with him. His first shot was a miss.

From the knee he threw himself on the rocky ground so he could use both elbows to steady himself. His arm was still a little unsteady, as he knew it would be, but he took a deep breath and tried to re-acquire the zombie. The small scope helped a little, but the thing was lurching from side to side, making a clean shot very difficult. The blood-crusted face was a further distraction.

His second shot hit, but tore through the man's torso. On the third shot the zombie tumbled to the ground. It was passed by the runner. Now it was just the two of them.

Remember to breathe.

The trigger squeezed and he felt himself push the barrel down in anticipation of the recoil, but he only noticed this because the gun didn't fire. His normally reliable AK-47 finally jammed on him.

The zombie was twenty feet away—the sweet spot for him—and he no time to clear the jam.

Half his remaining time was spent getting to his feet. Then he held the rifle as a baseball bat. He'd seen Officer Jones do the same with his shotgun so many days ago. This zombie was some kind of warehouse worker. The overalls and name tag were sure giveaways. He was only missing the hardhat…

Instead of swinging the butt of the gun, he decided to ram it into the zombie's face as he ran into him. It seemed a safer bet. He'd missed enough swings lately to want to try to mix it up. It didn't seem like they were learning to defend themselves per se, but they were unpredictable. He had no backup if he misjudged.

With a firm thrust of the warm gun barrel, he planted the gun's stock square in the man's face. Liam tried not to look at the resulting destruction, but his face was already pretty messed up so it was hard to judge effectiveness. Between the bite on his neck and the bloody effluence of the initial disease process, the man already looked like hell. With broken teeth and a collapsed nose...it didn't much matter.

The zombie continued ahead, pushing into Liam, but the gun's impact had blunted the attack.

The rifle was no use in close quarters combat. Inside the reach of his arms, the zombie was too close to hit again with any force. The rifle did, however, provide a buffer between the teeth of the zombie and his own neck. He was able to use it to hold off the stumbling creature until he could ensure it wasn't going to strike. The hit to the head had dazed it, if such a thing was possible with the sick, and Liam used the extra seconds to readjust himself so he could get out of its reach and bring the rifle back around for another hit.

The longer the struggle went on, the more disoriented the zombie became. Its face was horrible to look at—the blood was running freely, splashing Liam's clothes.

Liam figured he had things well in hand when he tripped on a rail. He was closer to the train tracks than he thought. He fell backward and the zombie man fell with him.

His back flared in pain as he hit the uneven rocks below, and the weight of the man only added to his misery. The rifle he'd been using as a wedge had moved and he was shocked to feel the barrel of the gun on his own neck. Though the gun was jammed, it scared him to his core.

Liam reached into his own pocket while the horrible image of the man above him shifted, always searching for somewhere to bite.

Can they bite if their teeth are busted out?

Good one, Liam. Put that in your book!

The man didn't notice as Liam brought the Glock to bear next to his head. Liam hesitated. The target was directly above his own, and shooting the zombie would be messy.

If the infections spread by blood alone…

He closed his eyes.

He fired once.

6

Liam stood up in the sunshine of the day. His entire chest was covered in blood, and he could feel it on his head and face, too. He'd already gotten splashed by blood as the zombie fought him, so firing the gun didn't seem relevant to that score. However, he didn't count on being doused in the red gore.

Is this the end of my run as a hero? I never wrote a word of my book.

He waited. The noise of the tanks behind him felt miles away.

Removing his shirt, he used it to wipe his face and clear the worst of it. Some of it, he was dead sure, had to have gotten in his mouth or in his eyes—both death sentences in zombie fiction. He counted in his head, thinking of a zombie movie where the man counted off how long it took for the infection to take root, though he had no idea who he'd tell if he arrived at a number.

A distant pair of explosions shook him.

Or rather, two nearby explosions. His ears absorbed the sound and he woke up to the fact both Tiger tanks had fired their main guns. Zombies from the city had weaved their way through the warehouses and now he saw them in the corridor where the tanks had been parked.

“Run, Liam!” he shouted to himself. “You aren't a zombie!”

With nowhere to go that was safe, he ran for the tanks. They had to be safer than taking on a crowd of zombies in hand-to-hand combat.

Time seemed to be running slow as he slung his rifle and accelerated toward safety.

The dull roar of the big guns remained, but he could also hear the screams and yelps of the zombies as they finally saw prey. That drove him on.

He tried to concentrate on the fact he was jumping over train tracks, as each one represented one more vector of death in the Zombie Apocalypse. He didn't think he was ever going to lose that fear.

As he arrived at the tanks, they fired again. The blast was loud, and the swirl of fumes from the gun barrel engulfed him as he ran up the side. With a cough he managed to jump and pull himself up onto the decking. His mom's tank was on the right of the other, and both were turned slightly toward the left. The gun barrels were aimed in the same general direction…

He could see the ruins of a railroad bridge and the downed interstate bridge just to the north. There were a few lingering pieces of the blockade he'd escaped days ago, but mostly the collapsed decking hid in the jagged surf of the fast-moving water. Beyond was something Liam had trouble piecing together. It looked like barges had been lined up side-by-side and the military put a sturdy deck on the tops so vehicles could cross. It was completed to about two-thirds of the way over the river. Twenty or so of the barges huddled under the new span.

Towboats were moving others into place, and a big crane sat on a purpose-built barge for construction. The two tanks were firing on that crane as puffs of smoke came out of holes in the backside of it.

Another shot went out from the tank below him, then the whole turret swiveled a few inches. The gun had a new target. He leaned on the edge of the turret, intent to get inside, but movement caught his eye on the far bank, just above where the new bridge joined with the shore. His worst nightmare faced him.

He opened the top hatched and yelled into the interior as loud as he could, hoping his mom would hear.

“There are tanks on the far shore.” Then, thinking of the military jargon his dad liked, he added, “They're at eleven o' clock!”

“I told you to get off—” Her voice stopped, obviously distracted.

A puff of smoke appeared across the brown Mississippi. His back of the napkin guess put it at a mile away. He froze as he waited for what he knew was coming.

In quick succession Liam saw two explosions at the front of Jason's tank. He didn't wait around to find out if Jason's crew jumped out. His concern was much closer.

“Mom! Get out of there.”

As an answer, her tank fired another shot. He didn't care where it landed.

“They're shooting us!”

He heard her yell something back, but over all the noise he didn't know what it was. Something punched through the floodwall nearby, indicating a return shot was close to its mark. The zombies spilling out from between the warehouses behind him seemed like a high school pep rally compared to the M1 Abrams tank or tanks firing at them.

The Tiger lurched. He'd never been happier in his life to move. It began to back up, and as it did, he threw himself into the turret compartment where he'd been before.

He'd dropped his bloodied shirt, so he scraped his back on the way down. That was the last concern on his taxed mind.

I'm going to die in a wink and not even know it.

Another explosion rocked him. His mom was cursing as she continued to reverse. He pulled the hatch shut above him, then fell into the seat and held on. In seconds he found his headphones and put them on.

“Keep going Lana. Get out of here,” Jason was yelling. How he was still alive was a miracle.

“Did we get it?” his mom asked over the radio.

Liam felt the hull rotate. The beast was turning around so it was aimed back into the city. He sensed they were behind the floodwall, out of sight of the lethal tanks across the river.

“Yes. The crane fell. We got it.”

“Good,” she replied. Then, softly: “That one's for you, Jerry, my love.”

After everything he'd just seen, he had no frame of reference of what to say in response. Even with tanks, they'd been tossing peas at the big steel monster making its way across the river. Taking out the helper crane was likely the best they could hope for, but at what cost? U.S. tanks fired at them, a multitude of zombies bared down on them, and they were nowhere near where they should be.

I get into worse troubles when Victoria isn't around...

He almost laughed.

Chapter 13: Warthogs, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

“Mom. What's going on here? We're supposed to be getting those things to protect Forest Park, not shoot at bridges.”

I sure as hell have no business in a war.

Cliff said boys like him had fought in Tiger tanks for the Germans back in World War II, and it seemed impossible. Killing the odd zombie to stay alive was one thing. Using tanks, shooting at cranes, and playing soldier was something completely outside his comfort zone. He experienced an irrational compulsion to jump out and make a run for it...

He propped himself up so he could look outside using the vision ports. Ahead, they were entering the gap between the same two warehouses they'd used as cover earlier. Only now the narrow roadway was filled with zombies. They'd followed them from the roadway and had been funneled into the tight space between the two buildings.

The twin exhausts of Jason's tank belched out black fumes as it accelerated into the…

“Oh God,” was his mom's reply.

The Tiger plowed into, and over, the horde. Whereas the tread of the tank carried the blood and goop of a single zombie as they arrived, now each wide tread spit out a disgusting mixture of clothing, dark red blood, and the light speckles of broken and smashed bones.

“Hang on, Liam.”

The crowd was so thick most of the infected were either smashed outright, or pushed down underneath the center of the tank. Some survived by accidentally hugging the walls of the warehouses as the tanks passed. A few found their way onto the decks. Those in the middle trough popped back up as Jason's tank passed over them or they fell sideways in the grime and remains of their smashed brothers and sisters. The worst were those who had been halved…

Liam looked away as the tank shuddered. His tank smashed the injured and the few still standing.

For many seconds he listened to the sickening crunches and the shrieks of the second deaths happening to the zombies. Even for him it was too much. He smashed his headphones over his ears as he tried to block out everything else.

“Lana. You there?”

“I'm here.”

“I've got an issue. I...uh…can't see out my vision slit. These bastards have clogged it. Blood is dripping inside the leaky seals above me. Mike can guide me, but I'll need to stop, somewhere.”

Liam focused on pressing the headphones. A jarring motion followed a sliding action as his mom's driving skidded them around on the materials below. The machine bumped into a wall. He felt the turret rotate automatically. A brief movement...

He had to look. With great resolve he took in the destruction. Jason's Tiger was getting hung up in the mess. On each side he only had a foot or two to spare—he judged the tank had to be 10 feet across—and the zombies in front of the tank were either getting sucked under or pushed up onto the deck. It was like walking into deeper and deeper water at the beach.

Lana drove her tank into the back of the other, then throttled up. The movement of the turret ensured the main gun didn't hit the tank ahead. It reminded Liam of the Valkyrie pushing the dead engine ahead of it.

“Just aim straight, Jason, we'll push through.”

More active zombies made it onto the lead tank, and some began jumping onto his own, now that the two were essentially one. Where he could see the walls next to them, they were smeared with blood at the forces pushing against them.

Even after all he'd seen, he felt his stomach gurgle. His disgust of blood was rekindled.

“When we clear this corridor, I need you to lead.” Jason laughed like he was having fun.

“Understood. Out.” Lana was all business, perhaps because she had the same view as Liam.

A climbing zombie managed to get in front of Liam's vision port.

Panic mode made him do silly things. He called out. “Mom, zombies are on our roof,” but he said it in sing-song, as a child would do when telling on someone.

Item 519 for things I never dreamed I'd say in real life.

Before Lana could reply, they emerged from between the buildings. The lone zombie he could see on their deck remained stationary, as if trying to hold on. Another fifty yards, around a couple turns, and Jason's Tiger slid to a stop. Lana drove herself up alongside. He was able to see the other tank, and a few walking zombies, through a side vision slit. Jason had opened his driver's hatch, used a handgun to knock down a couple of the closest zombies, and wiped the mess off his tiny window. He motioned for Lana to continue while he spoke in his microphone.

“Keep going. You know the way.”

Lana threw it into gear and the tank pulled ahead.

While the tank got to speed, a new sound came from inside. A beeping noise repeated on the other side of the turret where Annie had been sitting. It was getting picked up by his own microphone, causing feedback.

As he leaned over the breech of the main gun, he saw the old tank had been fitted with a modern video screen. The view was from above.

“The drones!” he said to himself.

“What is that, Liam?”

He was unable to respond right away. The video looked down on the two tanks from high above. He could see the path they'd just traversed—it was a bloody nightmare of crushed bodies, ruined survivors, and a good number of stragglers tripping and sliding in the wake of the two metal monsters. But the beeping coincided with a flashing indicator at the bottom of the screen. It said “Airspace Warning,” though it gave no clues what that might mean.

“I'm trying to figure it out. I see us on this video monitor. It says airspace warning in big red letters.”

“Oh crap.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means the drones aren't alone up there. Hang on, we have to get to cover.”

He decided to slide himself over the middle of the compartment so he could sit in Annie's chair and get a better look at the video equipment. The acceleration felt good—it meant his mom was true to her word in getting them closer to cover. If something unfriendly was above them, he doubted he wanted to know what it was.

The screen was fascinating. It was like watching a video game. The two tanks lumbered along the old warehouse streets, often running over clumps of loitering zombies, while trying to head north and west into downtown. Most of the great traffic jams were further out from the city center, but there were a fair number of abandoned cars on the main paved streets. Neither tank tried to crush any of the cars—though it was something he sincerely hoped they'd do.

“Liam. If you can see us on the monitor, can you tell me which way is better ahead? This street splits in two directions coming up.”

The drone wasn't flying high enough to see both options ahead. He could only see a block or two beyond the intersection. Even that gave him enough information, however, as the way to the right was pointed directly at the Gateway Arch. A place he did not want to go…

“Go left. The right is a dead end.”

“Got it.”

The drone hovered above them and moved as they moved. It was like a trained guard dog.

The beeping continued as they made the left turn, but the camera suddenly shifted to a different perspective. A second image appeared on a split-screen. That one was pointed directly at the Arch grounds, and Liam got a good look at some kind of construction project under the monument. It seemed to be linked to the nearby river crossing, as if both were part of a larger effort for the Mississippi River waterfront there.

But the camera wasn't looking at those things. His attention was drawn to two tiny shapes moving toward them. They were small and black. Liam had seen similar flying craft for the past several weeks, especially in this part of downtown.

Send in the drones.

2

The ballet above them was impressive to watch. As he lurched along in the stuffy and cramped turret of what he hoped was an invulnerable tank, the drones danced around each other in the air above. As the camera angles sat side-by-side, he figured out both drones were up there, and the drones from Jason's tank had to be up there somewhere, as well. The two enemy drones had to be from the Arch bridgehead. He could only guess who was in charge of those.

With a reverent tone, he spoke into the mic. “The drones are fighting above us.”

Jason's voice responded. “They're programmed to protect us. One is used for guidance and target acquisition, but the other is designed to watch the sky and sync up with the reactive armor.” He cut out for a second, then returned to the channel with some cursing. “Mike, can you see them yet?”

Jason's assistant responded. “Negative. I'm getting word two A-10s are scrambling from the Downtown St. Louis Airport just across the river. They'll be here in minutes.”

“Can we shoot them with our guns?” Liam blurted out on the radio.

Jason laughed. “Not unless you're incredibly lucky. We could barely hit that huge stationary crane, and we had help from our computers.”

Liam often said he was a lucky kid. Maybe this was what he was supposed to do? Spin the turret, find a target, and blow it out of the sky.

Sounds like an impossible shot from a stupid movie.

He had no intention of dueling two Warthogs—the most lethal tank killers in the air.

“We have to split up. Head for the tall buildings up ahead. We should be able to make it,” Jason said. Liam was stuck on the use of the “should” word. As in “This should have been a quiet drive back to Victoria.”

The computer screen showed the two tanks diverge. Jason turned north toward some apartment high rises, while their own tank headed for a large open parking lot.

“Mom. Is that where we want to go?”

The tank's engine screamed. The iconic clinks and clanks of the treads underneath had become white noise with everything else going on, but he noticed all of it now as he sensed their vulnerability. The drone footage showed them crawling—slowly—over the empty parking lot. Row after row of white parking spaces passed below them. An odd zombie roamed here or there, but none were in their way.

“No, not at all. I want to get us across this lot and underneath that highway.”

With the drone it was hard to look ahead, but now he could see the edges of Busch Stadium—the site of his recent escape from this very city—and the elevated east-west highway to the south of it. It would give them excellent cover as long as they stayed below it. He could see—

A flash of something black. With wings. Right on the camera itself. The downward-looking drone wobbled dangerously and then went offline. That side of the screen went to static. At that last moment he could have sworn he saw...a huge bird's talons.

The other half of the screen was the side-looking drone. It had been tracking the arrival of the enemy drones, though Liam hardly paid any attention to it as he was absorbed by their journey to the safety of the highway.

“Mom, they knocked down one of our drones. We lost our top view.”

“We're almost there. Hang on.” The tank slowed and dropped over a small ledge, as best he could tell. Something metallic rubbed on the outside and then they were moving normally again.

“OK, we're under the raised highway. We can follow this west for a few blocks, but our goal is to the north.”

He sat for a little while, stewing in questions.

“What happened to getting back to Forest Park and...Victoria.” Though he mainly wanted to get back to her, he mentioned the park first so it wouldn't seem like he was girl-crazy, or something similarly anti-hero in nature.

“I do, too. Trust me. But your idea about getting these weapons was something we couldn't pass up. I'm mad we didn't cause more damage, but that isn't your concern.”

“You're talking like this was some kind of attack. We're just civilians playing soldier. It doesn't make any sense.”

He thought back to his dad's letter. The words on the pages were burned into his memory, though he still couldn't understand what it all meant. How his mom fit into it.

“I'm going to tell you everything. I promise. But we have to get you to safety or else every blown bridge in America isn't going to be worth losing you.” She laughed. “You probably won't believe me, but we thought we'd roll up with our tanks and surprise them. We've heard there have been mass defections of the military throughout the country, but these guys didn't get that memo.”

“So the Polar Bears are fighting the United States now?”

“Yes and no. I told you, we have to get there and then I can show you why I did this.”

“Where? Where are we going?”

“Polar Bear HQ. Six blocks north of here.”

Unable to watch the drone footage, and not sure of the shaky picture being sent back by the side-looking camera, Liam leaned forward to look out his own vision port. The paved street was shaded by the bridge above, but he saw sunshine off to the sides. That was open space. Soon they'd have to expose themselves.

He was certain he saw two shadows zoom across the open ground. It could only mean the Warthogs were searching for them…

If they haven't found us already.

3

The tank idled under the bridge. Lana had scraped the side of the center pier, keeping them hidden underneath while they tried to see where the planes had gone.

“They're drones are going to find us before the planes...”

His mom's voice was oddly comforting in his headphones. Despite being in a life-or-death situation, she reminded him of better times, and it bolstered his spirits. The fact she was driving a tank, and he was watching drone footage up in the skies above him, did nothing to change his point of view.

“We'll have to run for it. Two blocks to the north we can get between those buildings and then zig zag through the last few blocks until we reach the tallest building in St. Louis. That's where we're going. That's where the Patriot Snowball moved their most important people.”

“Including you?” His dad's letter said as much.

“We'll see who's there. Then you can decide how important I am.”

One of the shadows appeared over the parking lot. It moved from north to south, very fast.

“One of them just passed overhead. I don't know where the other one went.”

The tank jumped forward. “I'm going for it.”

“Screw it.” Liam popped the hatch and poked his head out into the cooler, and fresher air. The tank left the shadow of the bridge just as he got in his position. While getting a better view of the plane was a priority, he had a different problem to deal with.

He pulled the Glock from his pocket. The zombie he'd seen long ago on the top of the tank was still there. It required him to crane his neck over the side of the turret, but he was able to see why the zombie had remained where it was. It was slurping on a slick patch of blood coating the front deck of the tank.

Liam aimed the gun at the frumpy woman's head. She wore summer clothes—shorts and short-sleeved shirt—but the colors were muted by dried blood. Her long hair was pointed up in the air, like she'd gone to sleep with wet blood in her hair and then woke up and kept it that way. His first shot went high, clipping the crusty hair.

That got her attention. The speed of some zombies was astonishing. She popped up the instant the shot whizzed by her. However, she lacked any grace. The zombie slipped on the bloody mess in which she'd been kneeling, and fell backward. With the forward motion of the tank she was unable to right herself and she tumbled off the left edge, bounced off the track guards, and fell out of sight.

The words double tap screamed at him, but the woman was on the ground. She'd fallen face first and her neck looked even worse than it did before she fell. A few stumbles were all she could muster in pursuit, and he judged that shooting her would be a waste of ammo.

She'll be the one that gets me, in the end.

He looked back one more time, wondering if he'd just jinxed himself. If there weren't predators flying overhead they could do a loop so he could strike her down. It's the only way to be sure…

They'd cleared half the distance when the A-10 came in low and slow behind them. He'd been watching that direction because it was the only way they could be attacked. The buildings ahead provided a screen. Unless they were in a movie, the planes wouldn't be flying sideways between buildings to get at them.

The buzzing sound from the plane came after the rounds landed on the roadway ahead of them. Some of them skipped on the pavement and shattered many windows in the buildings ahead. As it did each time he heard it, the sound of the Warthog’s rotating Gatling gun reminded him of the horns of the Apocalypse. He instinctively dropped into the turret to shield himself, but his rational mind knew nothing could save him if the bird had the correct bead on them.

The bridge saved them on the first pass. The hog had to fire over the top of the highway and that didn't give it enough room to point its nose downward. Liam watched as the pilot kicked the plane in the gut and bank it hard right as it screamed eastward. He figured the pilot could see, the same as him, that the tank would be inside that kill zone by the time he looped around for a second strike. In moments the plane was gone, leaving Liam to wonder how much time they had left.

“Mom, he's coming around. He's going to have us.”

He dropped back into his seat on the interior, a plan forming in his cluttered mind. The monitor still displayed the video feed of the second little drone. It seemed to be on remote as it had been following them on their drive without any guidance from a person. Yet it seemed likely—

“There you are.”

A little joystick was attached to a small box set off to the side of the screen. It was lost in the darkness of a nook in the wall, but he pulled it out and watched with relief as the drone shifted position with his adjustment. Years of video gaming yielded high dividends in that moment as he turned it so the camera faced south—where the Warthog would replicate its last strafing run. There were a lot of things he didn't know about flying it, but the only one that mattered was how far away it would go. That would determine whether his stupid plan would work or not.

The A-10 showed up as a dot. As expected, it was flying just above the tops of the low buildings in this part of the city, and it was going so slow he expected it to fall right out of the sky. The pilot had timed it perfectly as the Tiger would be in the meat of where the rounds fell on the last run.

His drone hovered over the top of the raised highway behind them. The cars and trucks on top were frozen in time—from the early roadblocks and bridge closures. The drone steadily watched to the south. The dot grew in size. The distinctive shape of the A-10 Warthog could not be mistaken from the front. Its wings were very nearly flat, like one long plank supporting the narrow airframe in the middle. The twin-turbine engines hung off the back like a burly weightlifter hauling two kegs on his shoulders. If there was one thing Liam remembered about the plane, it was its survivability. It could almost lose a full wing and still make it back to base…

Which made his task that much harder.

With fine adjustments he moved the drone into position in front of a sleek white bus. He kept the drone at the bridge, as he had the line where the plane and the drone would meet. Now he only needed the pilot to see it, so he dipped the drone almost to the top of the white bus. The black drone and the white paint might catch his eye…

The Warthog closed in a few seconds, and Liam lifted the little bird so it would appear in front of the pilot's canopy or his own video feed—he had no idea how an A-10 pilot would see the battlefield. In the two seconds he had before it could angle down on him and his mom, he jinked the joystick and tried to maneuver the drone so it would go into the Warthog's spinning engine. He'd seen it done in a movie and hoped it would blow off.

His ham-handed attempt seemed laughable as the tiny drone and the huge plane came together. But, to his shock, the pilot lifted his plane so he would miss the drone, and then continued upward without firing his chaingun, repeating the steep bank he'd done before.

He threw down the joystick and jumped up to see out his hatch again. They'd entered the safety of the tall buildings.

I doubt anyone would believe what just happened.

4

Skyscrapers greeted them with welcoming arms, but the streets remained hostile. Zombies were thicker around the great symbols of modern man, as if they retained the memories of all they represented. Or, he surmised, they grouped up on the urban streets because they were too stupid to figure out how to get out of town.

Yeah, that. I want you zombies to stay stupid...

The Tiger turned a corner, heading east. Liam watched from his perch in the hatch on the turret. The echo of the A-10's gun reverberated in the valley of the skyscrapers, making it impossible to tell where the sounds originated. Since his own tank wasn't under attack, it had to be Jason's taking fire. Lana tried to call Jason on the radio, but didn't get anything back.

A strong explosion rumbled somewhere nearby, suggesting they weren't just using death-dealing Gatling guns.

“Gettin' close.”

He almost responded with relief when he saw a plane in the distance. It was far away—beyond the Arch to the east—but a puff of smoke caught his eye. It was suddenly a huge danger.

“Mom, turn!”

“Where, Liam? We're almost there.”

“Just freakin' turn!” he screamed.

That was enough to get her attention. The Tiger slowly banked left onto a cross street, ignoring the infected zombies shambling in the street. He dropped into the turret and held his breath. The missile was definitely heading directly for them, down the length of the main street between the tall city blocks.

The heat of the explosion came in through the opening above him. A shockwave rocked the tank, but otherwise they were unharmed.

“Good call,” echoed distantly in his 'phones.

He was up and looking back. The zombies in the intersection had been knocked down, but not vaporized as he expected, by the near-miss. His eyes scanned both directions along the smaller avenue—searching for more missiles—but the buildings to the north and south were aligned so that nothing could shoot them from a distance. Of course, a crafty pilot could drop something on them from directly above, but that was a threat he didn't want to consider just yet.

Or rockets.

Or suicide drones.

Or a nuke.

There were a million and one ways to die in the Zombie Apocalypse.

“We have to turn onto the next street and head east for one more block.”

An old cartoon popped in his head. Everyone was running from door to door in a long hallway and you could never guess from which door the characters would pop out next. It was random and unpredictable—and it gave him an idea.

“Mom. Turn the tank around. They'll be waiting for us on this next street. They won't be looking for us on the last one.”

The tank stopped before they'd reached the intersection. She worked the controls to spin them around.

“You're clever, like your father.”

My dead father…

He felt his elation drain out. Still happy he said something smart, but remembering his father at that moment was too much to bear. They swung left onto the main road they'd just vacated—Liam saw a fire still burning on the first floor of the office building where the missile had gone when it missed them. The lobby entryway would never be the same, though the destruction wasn't as devastating as he assumed it'd be. They were firing tank killers, not bunker busters.

Lana gunned the engine as they veered erratically around the zombies wandering the roadway. Some she hit out of necessity, but she made an honest effort to miss them. He was unsure how he felt about that. Killing them was horrible, but leaving them alive was equally frightening. Every body on this street would need to be put down at some point...

His eyes willed a “dot” not to show up on the horizon. The devilish call of the A-10 sounded from elsewhere in the city, but it wasn't on their street. For a second he saw the gray plane from the side. It was by the Arch grounds. The tank started to drift to the right.

“Hang on. We're going in!”

The tank crunched a newspaper kiosk, a couple trash cans, and headed for the glass facade of one of newer-looking skyscrapers on the street. He ducked into his hiding place just as the Tiger breached the translucent entryway. Glass tinkled down on top of the tank, though only small shards found their way into the turret hatch.

The Tiger sounded louder in the enclosed space, and it came to a stop at the moment Liam got the nerve to stand and look outside once more. The lobby was simple, with several businesses on the ground floor, and plenty of room for a tank in the middle. Lana had driven it well inside—away from the windows.

“Grab your gun. They'll follow us in, I'm sure.”

It was understood what she meant, though now it could also mean missiles, drones, or soldiers.

He had his AK-47 in hand, still with a round wedged in the chamber he needed to clear, and climbed from the hatch. Almost as if by magic, the drone that he'd used to scare off the A-10—that was his story—flew in through the big hole in the front of the building, returned to the tank, and tucked itself back into the box on the back of the turret. The other drone box was still open, and Liam felt an irrational sadness, as that piece of equipment would never again return.

He climbed down to the tiled floor and ran toward the stairwell nearby.

“No! This isn't the building. We have to cross the street,” she yelled as she ran, rifle in hand, toward the hole opened by the tank.

“Why?”

“Travis would kill me if I parked the tank in his building. It would give him away,” she laughed, but there was fear in her voice. “Now hurry.”

She was outside before he could say another word.

He slung his rifle as he cleared the glass frontage. The crunch of broken glass a distant distraction. There were too many zombies zeroing in on them.

“Just run!” His mom was already into the street.

The pistol was in his hand, though he had no idea how many rounds he had left. That mystery could get him killed…

Lana made it to the far side, turned around, and whacked two zombies that had gotten close to him. He felt he could outpace them, but she saw them as a threat. He wasn't complaining.

As he caught up to her, she turned and they ran together up to the building directly across from where she'd parked the Tiger. The doors were locked, as he expected, and the revolving door wouldn't budge, so Lana put a round through one of the front windows. The glass shattered and she stepped through. He was about to do the same when something glanced off his head. He instinctively ducked, though laughably too late.

A woman zombie in a torn business suit stood tentatively behind a decorative tree nearby. She'd thrown something—a little bottle of soda!

Monkey's fling poop. This isn't intelligence.

He stepped through, thinking about flying bricks and other dangerous objects. Always something to be worried about.

They were inside a huge sophisticated-looking lobby. Two escalators—frozen without power—rose to a balcony level above. Large plants and small trees tastefully decorated the area, though numerous sitting areas near them had been ruined. It looked as if a riot had come through here. Not hard to imagine.

They ran over the tiled floor to the escalator. It was unnatural to put his foot on it and not get carried upward, but he sprinted up the steps with a tired effort.

As they reached the top, Lana halted. The view of the tank inside the lobby across the street was too much for either to pass up. She had parked it as far inside as she could get it. Nothing could shoot it from the air—unless missiles could turn sideways—though anyone driving by couldn't miss the path of destruction leading up to and inside that building.

From his vantage point, he could see a magnificent glass chandelier hung just above the tank, highlighting two pieces of Old World technology that seemed out of place in this new one. Of all the crazy things, Liam realized it was the chandelier that didn't really fit anymore. The weapon of war was currently the only thing useful to their survival.

And my mom just drove us across a hostile city in it.

He looked ahead, wondering if this day was ever going to make sense. The cry of zombies entering the lobby reinforced his suspicion it never would.

5

The zombies were coming in from both directions on the street, as if they all knew the destruction wrought by the tank was going to lead them to blood. A few stumbled into the lobby across the street, but more came to the hole in the glass they'd used to get into their current building. He wanted to run, but the science of it drew him in.

How the hell are they doing this?

Was it movement that attracted them? Noise? Smell? He'd likened them to bloodhounds a couple times over the past weeks, but there had to be limits. Did they continue to track him no matter how far he went? Maybe they did, and he'd just been moving too far and fast to notice. Now, somehow, they knew the tank was empty but this lobby had live bait.

That got him moving. There were too many variables to consider, and having bloodhound zombies that were going to follow him to the ends of the earth was one irrational fear he didn't want to carry. But he'd seen all kinds of...skills. Chicago zombies could climb. Other zombies could project some kind of smell that could make people do crazy things. Maybe St. Louis zombies excelled at following prey. And at least one knew how to toss bottles.

Taking it to its conclusion, it could mean all those zombies that he'd seen over the past weeks had followed him out of St. Louis, chased him across the county, then followed him to Cairo, Illinois. Did they follow him back up the river, and into the pit mine? Were they even now stacking themselves up with all those zombies he'd seen down in the mine so they could escape from the open grave? A horrible, never-ending stream of undead spewing forth from the cemetery plot…

He shivered. It was very unlikely, and driven by his imagination under stress, but so much of what he'd seen so far had been unlikely. Zombies themselves were fictional creatures, yet here they were. Here he was living the fiction. If zombies were real, it wasn't a stretch to think they could follow him forever.

More zombies came into the lobby. One slid on the glass and fell, but most kept their feet. The bulk of them went for the steps—he was the only living thing they could see—but a few went for different parts of the lobby.

He organized his thoughts around tossing a curse at them, but he held it in. No sense alerting them all to his presence. As he stepped away from the railing he honed in on where his mom had gone.”

“Hurry,” she said from across the wide, posh lobby.

She was at a door, holding it open. The industrial carpet covered his footfalls and he raced fifty feet without looking back. He rushed into the darkness, and she pulled the door closed.

A few zombies arrived at the door only a few seconds later. He didn't even know runners were following.

I'm getting sloppy.

The zombies beat on the door, and looked through the narrow glass window in the middle, but they wouldn't see anything inside unless they could see in the dark.

Liam knew conceptually what a threat that would be, but he was dealing with his fatigue by not caring about all the wonderful skills these zombies could have.

“I need a rest.”

Lana laughed nervously. “I'd love to stop here for a long nap. I can tell you need one.” He saw her face in profile as the light from the lobby reflected through the door's window. “Sheesh. I'm sorry about all this. I had no idea we'd get tangled up with the military so soon.”

“You mean you expected to get tangled up with them later? Mom, just tell me what this is about. Why did dad's letter say you were some kind of spy? Are you still?”

“Walk with me. We have to go to the top floor.”

He sighed, but laughed at the irony. He'd already walked up a flight of stairs to the top of the Arch. No building was taller than the Arch in St. Louis.

I can do this.

He bounded to the first landing. Somewhere in the darkness he wondered if there was a plaque with the world-record time for climbing to the top of this building. “I think we can beat seven minutes to the top,” he joked. That was the record to the top of the Arch. This had to be shorter.

“You go right ahead. Dear old mom is going to take it one step at a time.” She popped on a little flashlight that was very bright and moved slowly up the first flight.

Victoria didn't get the joke, either, when he'd said it back at the Arch. He'd made the mistake of calling her Vicky, which led to an uncomfortable 1076-step climb. Hoping to head off another bad ascent, he thought of something else.

“Um, so tell me what we'll find upstairs.”

“I once told you none of this is what you think. Your father's role. Mine. Yours. I've been trying to figure out a way to explain it without sounding like I'm insane.”

“Mom, zombies walk the earth. My girlfriend and I run from the infected when we're on our dates. And I've just watched you drive a World War II tank into a skyscraper. I know you're insane. We all are.”

“You may be right about that. I think your father was the only one who seemed at home in the chaos.” She reached her hand to him as she neared. “Liam. I'm so sorry you lost your dad.”

In his heart he wanted to open up. He'd kept himself distracted since he'd found out, but the emotions were a turbulent undercurrent which welled to the surface at the worst times. Now would be a particularly bad time.

“Mom, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be selfish. You lost—”

“Stop. You're only fifteen—no, you're sixteen, correct?”

“Well, now I'm seventeen,” he said, seriously. It felt good to distract both of them.

She was quiet for many seconds. “I knew that. Victoria gave you a kiss, with one to grow on.” She laughed as she said it.

She began to climb the next flight.

“Tell me again why you're seventeen. That sounds interesting.”

OK, she wants the distraction, too.

They climbed flight after flight, led by the light. His mom asked a lot of questions about his journey over the past several weeks, as he did of her. But always they avoided their shared loss or talk about what his mom and dad were involved with. The entire climb was a mental relief valve after all the stress they'd suffered of late.

When they got to the highest floor they stood in front of a fire door with a large number 42 on it. That particular number held special meaning for him. Years of reading books brought him to this moment. A joke only he would appreciate.

“The answer to life, the universe—”

“And everything,” she added.

He jerked his head to look at her. She smiled and winked in the glow of her flashlight. The question was what troubled him. There was so much he didn't know about the woman who raised him. How much would be answered on the other side of 42?

She grabbed for the door handle…

Chapter 14: Illinois

John Jasper wasn't sure if he was still a general or not. He hadn't been formally relieved of duty, though being tossed into a ditch full of zombies surely counted as some kind of unofficial paperwork. His uniform had been ruined in the muddy ditch, so his “uniform” today consisted of his black boots, a pair of loaner multicam pants, and a clean white t-shirt, also a loaner. The lack of military decorum troubled him, but he needed to be easily seen by the men and women he'd rounded up to help with defense. He figured when his next paycheck showed up, he'd know if he was still in the service.

Inwardly he smiled. The thought of a mailman dropping his check off here in this miserable town was a hoot. Seeing his charges on the nearby levee brought his serious face back.

“Come down here, guys.” He spoke into a hand-held bullhorn.

A gaggle of citizens had gathered to help with the defense of their town. Without his own men and military hardware guarding the northern approaches to Cairo, it was only a matter of time before the whole thing came crumbling down. Unless he could get these people to do the work of the mixed battalion Elsa had taken away from him.

He estimated there were a few hundred people. On the left, it was mostly townsfolk. The group was largely black, and consisted of able-bodied men and women dressed in old t-shirts and dirty pants—like they'd come to do some work. On the right, the crowd was more mixed. They were the refugees taking shelter in the town. As Marty Peters had said, many of them were teenagers and young adults. Those who had previously been hunkering down—hiding, he suspected—in the abandoned houses of the town. He'd found volunteers to encourage them to come here today.

“Listen up. The Army had to go put out other fires. Help other towns.” The truth was the Army abandoned them, but he didn't think that would motivate anyone. “They left me here to help you organize a defense.” As expected, there was rumbling in the crowd. “Listen! Look at what they left you. How many towns in America have a fifty-foot ditch filled with water protecting their front gate? How many towns have huge rivers on the remaining three sides? There is nowhere better, I guarantee it.”

That was likely true. If Elsa was correct, those with the fancy bunkers had given them up on the East Coast so they could move to St. Louis. That might make St. Louis a safer bet in the long term, but he doubted it was very safe at that exact moment. Getting these people the truth seemed important after all the lies he'd been told. He'd survived politically-motivated career threats, and had done fine navigating the end of the world up until his toss on his ass, so he was ready to fight for this town. He needed them to fight for him, too.

“They abandoned us! They threw you out. You aren't even a general, now.”

Damn. It had to be you.

The mayor had promised not to get involved, but of course he couldn't leave it alone. The sweaty man stood in the middle of his constituents on the left side of the group. Everyone erupted in conversation at that.

He used the electric megaphone to emit a loud screech, which quieted most people.

“Your mayor is correct. I was tossed out. I didn't want to abandon your town. I ignored my orders to leave you.”

The mayor wouldn't know the details of his separation from his own troops.

“You can ignore my help, but believe me when I say I want you people to live. I want this town to survive.”

There was some commotion up on the top of the levee. Most of the crowd had moved down so they could stand and sit in the tall grass, though a few were up top. A woman in a wheelchair was speaking, though not very loud.

“I can't hear you,” he replied.

“She said she wants to hear your ideas,” a man shouted from the side of the woman. The little woman waved to him and gave him the thumbs up.

Marty Peters. Thank you.

Having an ally was important in any battlefield situation, but he'd never imagined it would be a little 104-year-old woman who could help him through this. The crowd clapped in agreement.

“The framework is here. Everyone with a gun needs to be on this berm behind me.” He pointed over his shoulder to the big pile of dirt stacked in front of the water feature. “We line the top of that and we can shoot each infected person as they're approaching on the flat farmland just on the other side.” He wanted them dead before they reached the water-filled ditch. When he was swimming down there he noticed there was no current. Every body that fell in there would stay there. Get enough bodies...and the advantage would be gone. It would take an incredible number to fill it, but not an insurmountable number. Not with millions heading his way…

The biggest problem after manpower was firepower. The idiot mayor had spent years of his term ensuring guns found no place in his town limits. Now, when they needed them most, the mayor insisted the military be trusted with the task, not his people. John wondered what he had to be thinking at that precise moment when he realized he'd screwed himself.

On the other side, the refugees had come in with pretty much nothing but the clothes on their back. The group from up north that had come in on the Osprey had a few guns, but St. Louis wasn't a bastion of gun culture, either.

Only the people who got here from nearby farms seemed to have guns, though most of those were shotguns. Suitable for close encounters, but not for headshots from the top of the berm.

And ammo. He figured anyone that had a gun would have consumed ammo to get to Cairo. And Cairo had no gun stores...

Bottom line, no matter what these people wanted him to do, he was already missing a key ingredient necessary for their mutual survival.

2

John walked up to Marty in her wheelchair, and cordially shushed away the teenagers by her side.

“Thank you, Marty.”

After selling his plan to the townspeople and refugees they all separated to return to their homes and prepare. A few men stayed to guard the berm. They were the “Zombie-Killers” the mayor had complained about days earlier, but the truth was they were the only ones already prepared to defend anything. They were too few, however, to truly guard the northern approaches. But the dozen men and women with rifles had become his most effective fighting force.

Marty shook her head. “I didn't do anything but tell the truth. If a general tells me how to defend my town, I'm going to listen.”

“You'd be surprised how many times people refuse to listen to reason. Politics. Race. Religion. They all cloud judgment in one way or another. The mayor believed guns would be the death of his town up until this moment. You think he learned his lesson?”

Another head shake.

“But thank you, anyway, for backing me up. I think most people now realize where we are. Too many zombies and not enough us.”

“Thank you for staying. I've seen a lot of brave people lately, but a lot of scared ones as well. You could have left us and no one would have been the wiser. Surely a general could be useful to that convoy out there?”

He looked at the diminutive woman in the wheelchair. She was wrinkled and aged, but her eyes were sharp. “It crossed my mind. I won't lie to you. But Elsa and her allies scare me.” John looked around to ensure no one was listening. Most people had crested the levee and walked down the hill into town. “If she can commandeer U.S. Army troops and jettison a two-star general with no repercussions, she has more power than I do. Even if I found my way back to friendly troops, I don't think she'd let me enjoy the safety.”

A little louder, he continued. “No, I'm staying right here. Find out who I can trust. Bide my time until an opportunity presents itself for me to pursue her. But first—”

“You have to defend little old ladies in wheelchairs.”

They both laughed as he grabbed the handles of her chair and pushed her toward the Gator. Her teen friends waited there.

“Do you think they'll be able to fight?” They were both pointed toward the subjects of his question.

“I'm old, General. I don't know what anyone will do, anymore. People either fight, or they don't. If you'd asked me three weeks ago if Liam would fight, I would have said probably not. Like these kids, I always saw him on his smartphone, computer tablets, and whatnots. It was all he ever talked about. If things had been different, it would have been him sitting in those houses back there, tapping his screen. They all have it in them to fight. He showed me that.”

“I've seen the kids we get in boot camp, these days.” He sighed. “Maybe I'm getting too old for this. Look at them. They look like children.”

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” she giggled.

“Oh, so you do have dementia? I'm old enough to be your son.”

“Maybe, but don't underestimate these kids today. Every generation looks on the next with fear they will break all that had been built. It's natural to think it.”

He worried that the time of building was gone.

“I need them to fight. I need to find weapons.” He spoke softly, as they were getting close.

“Liam and I found a Boy Scout camp. They used wooden poles to make spears. They called them something, but I can't remember. Every Scout in the camp carried one, and those boys knew how to use them. Or so I was told...”

“Spears, huh? I think we can do that.”

“Here you go, Mrs. Peters,” he said in his most formal voice. “Your protectors, as promised.”

It pleased him to see the kids fly from the Gator to help her board the passenger seat. They broke down her chair and tossed it in the back, then they jumped in with it. A young woman gave him a commendable effort at a salute, then she drove them all away.

He was left to his thoughts. From his vantage point he could see the entire battlefield to the north of town. That's what it was.

Far in the distance, the interstate. It ran east and west, from left to right, several miles away. It represented the boundary of the area he'd designated as a killzone for his troops. It was much too large for the civilians to control, however. He had to think smaller now.

Between the highway and the ditch, there was nothing but ruined farmland. They'd already stripped away all the foliage to make it easier to pick targets, so it took on the appearance of a World War I no-man's land, complete with big craters and ruined bodies. They were fortunate the bodies of the infected didn't seem to decompose. The smell was still bad, but not what he'd expected.

They're unnatural in every way.

The farmland had one road splitting it in half. It linked the interstate with the town itself, and provided the only bridge over the trench his team had created in front of the town. It was the first major obstacle they'd created—on the assumption the infected would eventually get that far. With tanks and other fighting vehicles he figured it would be weeks before the dead could get through. Now…

The ditch ran across the near end of the farmland, from the Ohio on his right to the Mississippi on his left. The berm of dirt blocked his view of the water, but he'd already seen that up close.

Several of his team sat up on the berm, watching the fields beyond. A few zombies approached, but not many. It was like the tide had come in last night, and now it was out again.

The very last defensive measure was the thirty foot levee on which he currently stood. If he had proper soldiers he could hold it for a long time—he never used the word indefinitely—but with his current helpers he believed if the infected made it to this point it would already be over.

Looking behind him, into town, he saw nothing which would provide a suitable fortress. There were no large structures that could fit everyone. He'd already taken a tour of the town with the mayor and there was only one structure of any size, but it had lots of weaknesses. It was an abandoned factory on the Ohio River side of town.

He looked beyond, to the barges lining the Ohio River beyond the factory. Those were going to be their final destinations. If the town fell, they'd all float downriver and hope they'd find another town to take them in.

He lamented he was building luck into his military strategy.

On the berm someone let loose a round across the fields.

The tide is returning.

3

“What's your name, ma'am?”

“Chloe, sir.”

John had requested the leader of the “Zombie-Killers” to visit him at the town center, as he wanted to discuss deputizing the group to be his cadre of leadership for everyone else. He couldn't manage the whole defense by himself.

“You've been defending the town, without support?”

“Sir, if you mean me, as a woman, then the answer is no. I have a ten-man team backing me up.”

He scrutinized her. Cropped hair. Serious eyes. Loose-fitting, but smart urban clothing. She'd been splashed with blood…

“You a soldier?”

“Ex, sir. Two tours in Iraq with military police. The 414th, sir.”

“And you organized these guys?”

“Not exactly. They were part of a website team devoted to zombie killing, sir.”

“Zombie killing? How did they organize that with a website after the power died?”

She laughed. “You wouldn't believe this, sir, but they were 'zombie killers' before there were real zombies. They pretended zombies were real, then trained as if they were coming. That included things like gun handling, small unit maneuvers, reconnaissance, and basic first aid.”

“Sounds like basic training.”

“Yes, some of them are also ex-military, though most are just people who liked shooting guns. Luckily, that was the one skill they needed in those earliest days. That, and the ability to recognize the danger as it emerged. We were based in St. Louis, but we all hopped a barge with our families the minute things went to shit, uh, sir, and ended up here.”

“And then you patrolled the shores, in direct conflict with the mayor of Cairo?”

“With all due respect, that man is an asshole. We do what needs to be done to protect our families.”

“Agreed. We're going to do what needs to be done to survive.”

“He's already done the damage, sir. Sent that barge—”

John held up his hand, stopping her mid-sentence. He'd heard the rumor, but he had no way to know if it was true. Supposedly a barge of military gear had gotten loose and floated down the river, then was caught by the teams pulling the barges near Cairo. Once the mayor found out about it, he ordered it be released and allowed to continue downstream. It did no good to dwell on what could have been.

“Focus on what we can control, soldier.” She wasn't really a soldier, nor was he. Neither of them seemed concerned with his terminology. “We need to find weapons for everyone who can carry one. For starters, whatever guns people can bring to the table, we'll encourage them to come forth. But for the rest, we need to use whatever we can find in town. Spears, especially, would be useful. Everyone with a little strength can point a spear at the bad guys' heads.”

“Where?”

“The port. Use rebar. Cut metal from the barges. We have plenty of them. There has to be a machine shop with all the old factories and barge towboats around here.”

“Makes sense. Are you putting me in charge of that operation, sir?”

“Do you want it?”

“I want to save this town. It's not my home, but my family is here. If you want me to make spears, I'll make you spears to kill those things.”

“I have no orders. Nothing. You'll have to do it all yourself.”

“You can count on me, sir.”

“Then you're dismissed.” He saluted her because it felt right. “Good luck to you,” he offered as she walked out. It wasn't protocol, exactly, but he was learning to ease into civilian life, after all.

Another man entered the room as she turned the corner. No salutes were involved. It was a man allied with the mayor, possibly his chief of staff or other functionary. They'd never spoken.

“Sir, could I have a minute?”

“Sure.” He stood up to shake the man's hand, but he demurred.

“Don't take it the wrong way. I'm scared to death of turning into an undead soul. My name is Joshua.”

Lots of people had stopped shaking hands, but it still felt uncivilized.

“Hello Joshua, I'm John. Please, sit down.”

The man was dark-skinned, like the mayor, but that was the only commonality with the sweaty leader of the town. He was much younger, and wore shorts and a light button-down, short-sleeved shirt. He seemed cool and relaxed, despite the heat and humidity of southern Illinois.

“I'm here because the mayor says he doesn't recognize your authority.”

“So you're here to threaten me?”

There's not much I can do to stop you.

“Oh no, just the opposite. We tossed him out. Whatever's heading our way, the sick aren't going to be talked to death. We need someone in charge who can defend this town.”

“So you want me to lead the whole town?”

“There is no precedent for this. Whatever this is, the bottom line is you need to lead the defense of this town. What happens after all the infected are dead at our doorstep is something we can address later.”

It called to his ego. First Chloe had deferred to him to tell her how to defend the town, and now Joshua was asking the same. He was being “volunteered” to the head of the fight. No one seemed to mind that he'd been tossed into a pit by the Army he supposedly led. It touched upon his earlier feelings of superiority. People saw it in him, no matter what uniform he wore.

He had so many things he wanted to get done, even beyond the immediacy of defending these people. The cargo barge the mayor had floated downstream might still be out there, undisturbed. He wanted to find Douglas Hayes, if for no other reason than to learn more about his primary enemy—human enemy—Elsa Cantwell. She was going to regret her decision to toss him out of his career, no matter how powerful she might be. Yep, he had much to do. Step one was keeping his base intact.

“Joshua, I'll defend this town...to the death.”

He hadn't meant to say that last bit, but once said, he felt he'd planted his flag on it.

So be it.

4

The next morning, as part of his inspection of the northern defenses, he looked out on the field of undead in front of him. Overnight the number of them had increased, and the defenders had been picking them off as they neared the water-filled ditch. As instructed, they waited until the infected were close, but didn't allow them to get into the ditch. The infect—

Oh the hell with it. I'm calling you guys zombies.

He laughed to himself, acknowledging he lost his mind.

Then he heard the sound of thunder in the distance. There were clouds above him, but they all appeared friendly.

Another boom. This time he got his bearings. It came from up by the highway. He stood next to a civilian pickup truck which was loaned to him. He held up the pair of binoculars that had also been loaned. And his rifle. And his handgun. And his clothes…

He swept the field, but saw nothing. He dropped the glasses, and waited. The next round of thunder came from a point he identified as being very near where the road met the interstate. And there…

I don't believe it.

A pair of Abrams tanks came off the interstate and slid down the embankment into the field. Behind them, other vehicles crept down the hill. He counted a few, but was distracted again as the tanks kicked up a pair of dusty smoke plumes as they sped through the ruined field. They didn't fire their main guns, though they did sweep the field from side to side as they drove. When they approached the town, they veered toward the road and cruised onto the little bridge. He was whooping and hooting along with the other townspeople who saw it.

The big levee to the north of the town had a large hole at the base where a huge flood door could be drawn across the north-south road to keep out flood waters. The tanks rolled through that gate and stopped just inside the town at a small high school football field.

He almost lost control of the pickup truck as he drove it down the access road, he was in such a hurry to greet the tankers. When he skidded to a stop on the dusty pavement, he jumped out and approached the military trucks assembling on the field. Besides the two tanks, he saw several Humvees, a couple Bradley's, several service vehicles—he hoped with ammo for the tanks, a fuel tanker, and a surprising number of civilian off road vehicles.

It was a miracle, yes, but not their salvation. They'd hardly make a dent in what was coming.

A man popped up out of the commander's hatch of the lead tank. He removed his helmet and saluted John. It took him a minute to put it all together.

“Lieutenant Colonel Thompson,” he shouted.

The soldier hopped down to the main deck of his tank, then came off the side with a little more care. He turned and walked up to John as more of the vehicles parked. Even while appreciating their appearance, he was saddened to see so many civilian vehicles as opposed to military. He continually ran the numbers…

When he neared, he spoke. “General. We're here as volunteers.”

John looked at all the new men and women watching him. The concept of mutiny was alien to a man of his rank, but he'd already been dismissed with malice, so what concern was it of his why these soldiers had come back. His next words could affect his ability to keep control over all the forces swirling around Cairo.

“Colonel Thompson. We can use any help you can give us. We're defending these citizens,” he pointed to the people who had come out to watch the arrival of the tanks, “until we remove the threats to them.”

Softly, the colonel responded. “You better be ready. We almost didn't make it. We had a third M1 protecting the back of the column, but it got bogged down a couple miles to the north. We tried to extract it, but there were so many zombies following us we didn't have the time. They'll be here soon, I'm afraid.”

“How many? We were told millions had migrated in this direction.”

“Hard to say. There is a lot of land out there. But they've been out there a long time, walking in this direction. They seem to group up and add to their number, like rain storms. By the time they hit the rivers here, there could be millions of them. I'm afraid we brought some of them to you, too. They like to follow...”

“That's what I thought. We've been seeing an increase each day, though some days are worse than others.” He thought of the battle the night before his units abandoned him.

Still speaking quietly to each other, John asked the important question. “Why did you come back?”

“Funny thing. When you didn't show up, that Elsa woman claimed you'd taken off on your own. Anyone who knows you wouldn't believe that crap. It only took a little snooping before we found someone who saw a man being thrown from a bridge. You I assume?”

John nodded.

“We put it together and figured out this was where you'd be.” He smiled broadly. “When we got close, we heard you ordering people on your radios. We knew we'd made the right choice.”

“Sonofabitch. My security has gone to shit.”

“Don't worry, general. We'll take good care of you. The warriors I brought with me will fight here with you. They hated leaving the town to die and are glad to join the fight to save it. The civvy cars back there are the families of these soldiers—and people who joined up when they saw us drive by. There's a lot of holdouts out there.”

A man waved and yelled on top of the levee, getting their attention.

“Shall we go check it out, Vince?” he asked.

John smiled inwardly at his charmed existence. Vince was the third person to defer to his leadership. He'd gone from dead man to practically being the King of Cairo—or would that be Pharaoh—in no time flat. Elsa might have done him a favor. Some day he'd have the resources to tell her in person. Just before he put a bullet between those cold eyes...

Together they jogged up the incline of the levee. Vince was a short stocky man with a dark tan. And fifteen years younger, at least. He jogged easily by his side. When they reached the top, they had a clear view of the road as it crossed the ditch and went north to the interstate.

Far in the distance, they saw the horizon moving.

“What the?” John asked. He'd left his binoculars in the pickup truck.

As they watched, the shapes on the interstate started down toward the fields, adding to those already there. The number of zombies was legion.

“I told you, we brought a few with us.”

“My God. Those are all zombies?”

Some were running. Some jogged. Some ran sideways in odd patterns. Others ambled directly for the town. It was a black tide washing down from the highway…

“You guys got here at just the right time. My people have spears. We need tanks. Armor. Smart bombs. Cruise missiles. Everything.”

“Well, it's just us. No air support. No missiles. No indirects, I'm afraid. Elsa kept the Paladins close to her.”

John extended his hand to the man who'd just saved all their lives. Given them a chance, anyway. “Colonel, I'd buck you up to General if I could. I can't officially promote you to cook now, you understand.”

They shook hands, holding firm as if to confirm their fates were intertwined. “Don't sweat it, sir. If we make it through this shitstorm then maybe we can go to Army headquarters, wherever that is, and complain.”

When they were done, they watched the growing storm on the horizon.

John was ready to issue his first order for the great battle ahead.

Chapter 15: Polar Bears' Den

Lana and Liam emerged from the dark staircase into a well-lit reception hall. There was no other way to describe it. The ceiling was thirty feet high and twenty-foot murals decorated the upper walls all around them. Skylights on the roof provided the light, while six massive modern-looking chandeliers hung uselessly below them. There were several rooms linked to the central chamber, including one with large windows facing east. Liam saw part of one leg of the Arch in that direction.

“That way. We need to check that out,” he pleaded.

But before they could move, two plain-clothes men appeared with weapons raised. They didn't look happy.

“Down. Weapons down.” They both had pistols drawn, but they weren't pointing directly at them.

“We're bears. In fact, I'm the Polar Princess.”

Liam mimicked his mother, who had her arms up in the air. He studied the men's faces as his mom spoke. Their eyes lit up when she said her weird name, then narrowed again.

“Really?” one said with obvious skepticism. “I'm going to need more proof than just your word.”

Lana turned to Liam. “That's the trouble with having the gift of invisibility. You can never turn it off.” Then, to the men, she continued, “but I'll prove it if you can take me to Travis or Haylee.”

“What makes you think they're here?”

“Well, for starters, I'm the one that told them to be here. If they're not here, I failed in my promise to bring the movement out of the ruins of Washington D.C.”

That seemed to get their attention. One of the men holstered his pistol, though Liam couldn't ignore the other man. His olive drab ball cap was filthy, but there was a polar bear embossed over a drab version of the American flag.

“If you'll kindly hand over your weapons we'll get your squared away. If you are who you say, you'll understand why we have to treat you this way.”

“Of course.” Lana handed over her weapons. Liam did the same.

“The AK has a jam anyway,” he said as he handed it to dirty hat. The man may have nodded, but didn't smile.

They walked across the great room toward the chamber with all the windows. He was dying to look down on the city from this high up. The bit of the Arch leg in his view was curved, like it was very near the top of that structure. More of it was revealed, the closer they got to the windows.

One of the other rooms was dark. If it had windows, they'd been covered over. The interior light illuminated some of the people in there. The headphones and other blinking LED lights suggested they were working with computers or radios.

They walked through what was once a rather elegant dining area, or restaurant. The round tables had been stripped of their silverware, but they still retained fancy centerpieces and their white tablecloths. Several people sat around the tables quietly talking. Many watched as they were directed forward by the guards. It struck him that they were all normal-looking men and women, dressed like they'd just come off the street of any pre-disaster day.

“You can both sit here.” The man had led them to a small table right against a window. Liam took his seat but turned to take in the view before either man could say a further word.

On the forty-second floor they were about two-thirds as high as the Arch. He could see the entire structure from the feet to the tiny slitted windows on the top. The gleaming stainless steel twinkled in the sunlight. The late morning sun cast a shadow underneath that leaned slightly in his direction.

Beyond the Arch he had the perfect view of the Mississippi River and all the bridges that had once crossed it. There were several ruined bridges to the north, but his eye was drawn to the Poplar Street Bridge to the south. That was where all the barges and debris had been caught when the span of the bridge had dropped into the river—which was responsible for his soggy adventure with Grandma and Victoria. Now only remnants of the great blockade remained, mostly in the form of driftwood and an old barge container wrapped around the remaining concrete pier on the near shore. The interstate on the far shore was empty, as no one wanted to get into St. Louis back when the bridges were closed. Anyone lucky enough to get caught in Illinois just kept on driving to who-knows-where. Cairo, maybe.

The new bridge was being built across the river. From a point on the other side near a large grain silo, barge after barge had been lined up side by side and a metallic covering was placed on top, from one to the next. From as high as he was, his best guess was the new bridge would allow two big trucks to travel next to each other. The long barges allowed plenty of room for the makeshift roadway, and he estimated there was plenty of room for more roads if they had enough decking.

He saw the crumpled crane parked on the floating platform just downriver from the main bridge. Silent testimony to one small success of his day.

On the near shore there was a lot of construction, too. A huge platform and a short section of roadway linked to the Missouri side of the river, as if waiting for the rest of the bridge to arrive. Liam tried to count how many they were short, but found it hard to measure. In the end he decided they were about seventy-five percent across. A few barges were tethered together upstream. Their destination was pretty obvious.

Finally, on the far shore he got a good look at the small vehicles—small from his vantage point—hunkered in the trees above the water. The huge Abrams tanks crouched like lions, their guns trained on the Missouri side.

“Liam!” Lana practically shouted in his ear as she leaned over the table.

He snapped to the inside of the room.

“Gosh, it's like you're five again.” She said it without malice, but Liam was embarrassed.

“I was...distracted by all that.” He pointed outside.

“I want you to meet the leader of the Polar Bears here in St. Louis.”

He stood up to accept a handshake from a full-bearded man with well-groomed red hair and piercing gray eyes flanking a thin nose.

“It's a true honor, young man.”

2

“Liam, this is Travis Rhoads. He's one of the leaders here.”

The man's hand swallowed his and squeezed it with a manly grip. His beard and mustache hid his lips, but his cheeks rose as he smiled. His eyes tried to smile too, but they didn't quite rise to the occasion. When the greeting was over, Liam noticed the Golden Retriever at the man's side. He bent down without thinking to pet the dog.

“This is Chief. He's my best pal.” He reached to scratch behind a shaggy ear.

“Who's a good dog?” Liam felt his own smile explode as he swept his hands over the clean coat of the retriever. He didn't even mind when his face got licked in return. In the three or so weeks since the zombies arrived, he'd had no time for the simple pleasure of petting a dog. It reminded him of better times…

Dammit. I'm gonna cry right in front of the leader of the Polar Bears.

He focused all his energy—and his eyes—down to Chief as he listened to his mom talk to Travis.

“I'm glad you made it all right. Who the hell ordered you to strike at the Bailey bridge? You'd have to get incredibly lucky to knock it out. And they'll just keep building it, no matter what happened.”

“Jason Hawkes and I decided it had to be done. We met a guy—Hans Grubmeyer—who turned us on to those tanks. Gave us the manuals which explained all the computer upgrades that had been done to them. They were easier to operate than a forklift. We decided to go for it.”

“I'm glad you're OK. I never thought I'd see the day tanks were rolling around in St. Louis. And Tigers. That's next to impossible!” He laughed.

That sent Chief onto his hind legs and further into Liam's arms. He struggled to keep the dog from tipping him over.

“But you shouldn't have risked yourself like that. You're too important to be driving around in tanks. That's a profession with a short lifespan these days, and I'm not talking about the walkers either. Once we saw the A-10s in action we figured it was game over.”

“We got lucky. And I had some help from my son.”

He felt their eyes on him, but he continued with the dog because it made the most sense to him in that moment. His mom talking to a military commander about driving tanks in the Zombie Apocalypse was anything but…

“We lost Jason's tank. He's still out there as best we can tell. You guys are lucky in one regard. The military is over at Scott Air Force Base with a fleet of OV-10 Broncos. Basically they're the Vietnam War version of the A-10. Instead of jet engines, they're propeller-driven. They're slower, but far more maneuverable. Much better for work inside a city like this. Instead of two A-10s you would have had ten Bronco's sniffing for you. We aren't sure why they weren't called up, but we think there are a lot of problems between them and the convoy.”

“You mean zombies?”

Travis laughed. “Zombies? Yeah, the dead are like zombies, I guess. They are thick to the east where the convoy is coming through. Plus there's been a lot of noise from a garrison down in Cairo, Illinois. They've been—”

“Cairo?” Liam stood up. “What about Cairo? That's where my Grandma is.”

Travis looked at him for a long moment. “Rose is in Cairo?”

It was a common misunderstanding. He seldom called Grandma Marty by her proper name, which was Great-Grandma Marty. It was just easier and shorter to leave off the “Great.” Though now that it had come up again, he'd have to start considering how he can be clear about his relatives in the future.

“No, my Great-Grandma Marty.”

“Ah, of course.” Travis looked at his mom and then back to him. “As best I know, Cairo itself is still intact. The convoy from the East Coast is cutting through the Midwest along two interstates. One group is going through Indiana and Ohio, while the other is a bit further south, going through Kentucky. Makes sense with that many vehicles. But every military unit between Washington D.C. and Denver is being called together to support the main effort—they really want to get the seat of government to St. Louis. The units in Cairo were ordered to head north two days ago.”

“Leaving the town undefended,” Liam murmured.

He imagined the big ditch filled with water, and filled with zombies. He'd given the town extra time because of the defenses they'd built, but if the Army had abandoned them, it shortened their lifespan by a couple orders of magnitude.

And Grandma's to almost nothing.

While he didn't say it, he wondered how he could get to Cairo again. He would never leave without Victoria, however, and while it was childish to think it, he felt great regret he allowed himself to be separated from her.

“We'll figure something out,” Lana said in her comforting tone, “but we have so many problems right now I don't know where to start. Convoys. Refugee camps. Those strange new zombies...”

The word hung on the air like fresh-cut fish bait until Travis bit.

“What, exactly, does that mean?”

3

“You haven't seen anything odd in the zombies, down there?” Lana pointed out the window.

Before Travis could answer, Liam added, “Didn't you send those three men to the Koch Hospital Quarry to find the dead soldiers?” Someone sent them in. Someone, perhaps the same person, sent him in. Even though the text came from an area code in Utah, it felt right that a control center here in St. Louis would be the one to send them to the local mine.

Travis focused his attention on Liam. “What do you know about my men? I did send them into that mine, based on a tip. I sent a six-man team. Did they make it out?”

Liam explained his own journey at a very top level of simplification. He saved the details for when he met the three Polar Bears inside the cavern full of tanks.

“There were only three when I met them. They said they were looking for a chamber where soldiers bodies were stolen from the military cemetery, from below. We didn't really have time for a detailed talk. Those dead soldiers attacked us, along with hundreds of other zombies, down in that mine. The last time I saw your men they were trapped on the wrong side of a crowd of biters, but at least two of them—Dave and Travis, I think—were alive. The third one, Clarence, we thought had taken refuge in a tank.”

He went on to explain how he'd escaped.

“Wow, that's hardcore, son. The infection can bring the dead to life. Shit. And crawling out through that grave. That was really smart. Did you figure that out?”

Liam left out most of the story, including the role of the three young girls. Mostly because it sounded implausible that a set of triplets had met up with him through random circumstance, but also because he didn't know how to explain their contribution, or where they'd gone after they, too, escaped.

“My girlfriend helped.”

“Hmm. My information was similarly vague, but we deemed it important enough to investigate.”

Travis looked at Lana. “He knows about our true enemy, right?”

She nodded.

“I was told the NIS had a research team working in that mine, and that they stumbled onto one vector for the spread of the disease. Anyone who sees these sick people—these zombies—senses that the human souls of those poor bastards are gone. The people are, in fact, dead.”

He paused. Liam thought the man looked a little shaken. That's about the same time Chief nuzzled up against his right hip. Travis dropped his hand and absently stroked the dog on the head and behind his ears.

“And,” he continued, “that some dead people carried the disease long before the outbreak happened here in the States.”

“That's exactly what they found. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to drill up to the bottom of those soldiers' coffins and pull them into the mine below. We didn't see it happen, but I saw video of a soldier inside a coffin. He was practically a skeleton.”

Travis looked at Lana. “This is all as you said. This has gone on for a long time...”

Lana nodded. Liam once again wondered whether the woman standing there was the same mom who baked him pancakes, or helped him with his homework, or hugged his father after one of his tirades against the ignorant American electorate. She was always the voice of reason. His father was always the rebel.

“Liam has also found out a key piece of the NIS research. They're investigating centenarians as possibly immune to the E-squared.”

“Centenarians? We'd heard something similar. Walk with me.”

The two guards had remained on the far edge of the room, but Travis whisked them away. The trio, plus Chief, left the dining area, returned to the great hall, and then entered the darkness of the computer room.

“This is where we do our listening. This whole building is a listening post. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on out there. Lots of shortwave chatter. Some intercepts on DOD frequencies. We have some talented people here, and some loyal followers inside the government still feed us intel. We can piece things together pretty well.”

Travis walked up to an older man with a pure-white beard. He had a kindly face that reminded Liam of Santa Claus. He wore a Hawaiian shirt with Orange surf boards and green palm trees. He had headphones around his neck, but he wasn't listening to them. He was leaning far back in his chair, stretching.

“Donnie.” He got the man's attention. “You'll never guess who I've got here.”

The man stood.

“This is Polar Princess.”

“Well, I'll be...” He raised his hand to shake hers. “I'm your biggest fan.”

“Oh, it's nothing. Really. We all do what we can.” She smiled as she shook his hand, and once more Liam was left with questions.

“Donnie listens to most everything out there. He keeps us in tune with the pulse of the enemy.”

“He's busy as shit—oh excuse me ma'am.”

“It's all right,” Lana laughed.

“He's damned busy. The convoy is sucking up most of the air time, but the military is cutting through the highways with their plows and tractors—clearing it for the second wave of units who sweep for the infected so the civilians can pass. Recon elements of the first military units are getting close to East St. Louis. That's how spread out they are.”

“But aren't they still in West Virginia?” Liam blurted.

“You got that right, kid, a big group of them are bogged down with traffic jams, damaged infrastructure, and citizens who get angry once they realize the military is leaving them behind. When a whole infantry division drives by your home without clearing out the undead, well, it makes people do stupid things.”

“You mean they're fighting the Army?”

“Army. Navy. Marines. They're all making the trek across the nation right now. Coming right here to this little berg.” He laughed. St. Louis was small compared to cities on the East Coast, but few would call it little. It was just about the right size to start over…

“Tell them about the hundred-year-olds, Donnie.”

“Oh, that.”

4

“We've been hearing these weird directives within departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and the CDC. Some of them mention research ongoing with people described as centaur-, centur—”

“Centenarians,” Travis added. He smiled. “My girlfriend is a school teacher.”

“Right. That. These elderly people are being rounded up as a possible source of the cure.”

Liam nodded, having seen it firsthand.

“But other directives seem to say just the opposite. That the infected search out old people. Are drawn to them. And the order says to turn them away and avoid them at all cost.”

Liam searched his memory. Were the zombies tracking him, or Grandma? Did they follow her out of the city? Follow her downtown to Riverside? Follow her to Cairo? Could it be that simple?

“My great-grandma is in Cairo, Illinois. Have you heard anything from there?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. There are a lot of complicated military operations down in southern Illinois. The dead from Chicago have swarmed in that direction, as have the dead from other cities in the region. But there was an encrypted NIS transmission we cracked specifically mentioning the termination of one of the oldest people in that part of the state, like it was some kind of achievement.”

Liam jumped on that statement. “Did they say a name?”

Donnie looked at Travis, though Liam didn't detect any non-verbal communication. “No. No names were mentioned. As best I can remember the military was abandoning the town, something about the dismissal of a rogue general, and the termination of a hundred-and-something old lady. But no name, that I recall.”

“Oh, God. That has to be Grandma.” He turned to his mom.

“We don't know that for sure. There have to be other elderly survivors,” she replied.

“Yeah, kid. This was one transmission. We can't read too much into it,” Donnie added.

He read everything into it. His heart wanted to flee the building and jump in the river and go find out.

I'd have to get Victoria, first.

“Tell her about the mine.”

“OK. Yeah. There's a lot of traffic centered on a mine to the south of here—”

“Koch Hospital Quarry,” Liam interjected.

“Yeah, so you already know it. We're still trying to crack the encryption on those messages, but we know the traffic is from an antenna near there. We also have a sloppy station broadcasting from a hand-held radio across the Mississippi from the mine. He mentioned a recovery operation underway, but that the mine had filled with infected and they were going nowhere fast.”

Inwardly he laughed. It was absolutely full of them.

“That mine is crammed with tanks. Hundreds of them. Most were pretty old, like the Tiger tanks we snagged, but there are Abrams tanks down there, too. And...”

He wondered if he should hold anything back. His mom already knew what he'd found down there, but if he couldn't trust the leaders of her movement, who could he trust?

“And there's a big vault door with a video camera watching outside. I think there are people hiding down there. People from before the Zombie Apocalypse.”

Travis turned to Lana. “Whose side are they on?”

“I have no idea. Whatever Liam stumbled on down there, it isn't something I know about.”

“They didn't open the door for us when it could have made a difference. They might have been able to save your three people.”

Travis stepped away and paced in a small back and forth pattern. Chief was with him the whole time. He knelt down to pet his dog while he appeared to think.

“I've got too many irons in the fire,” he said to Chief. “What do I do now?”

He stood up once again, and looked at Liam. “Can you get a team back into that place? If we can get those tanks before their owners, we might be able to win this war before it begins.”

“You want me to go back into that mine?”

“You'd be perfect to do it. You could save us a lot of time by leading us right to the tanks. I'd send your team with plenty of weapons to handle the undead. We've already seen those tanks are operational. We can send fifty people and bring back fifty tanks.”

“There's no way to drive the tanks out. The tunnels are filled with abandoned cars and trucks.”

“Where did the two Tiger's come from?”

“The NIS guy said they came from a different place. They were equally upset that the zombies had taken over that mine.”

“Nonetheless, we have a convoy bearing down on us and not enough weapons to do much about it. We never imagined we'd have to fight the full weight of the U.S. Military, did we?”

Lana shook her head. “We thought we'd march into D.C. and end everything without firing a shot.”

“Well, the march was not without its good days. I met the girl of my dreams, I had my faithful service dog the whole way, and I was only shot at on odd-numbered days. Thanks to you, we made it almost the entire way without any true violence.”

“I'm sorry we couldn't get you to the finish line.”

“Ah, such heady days,” Travis laughed. “The time we thought we could actually make a difference to the flow of history.”

“When?” Liam asked. He was notorious for not paying attention to the news, and he knew the Patriot Snowball movement had marched on Washington D.C. to protest the recent presidential elections, but he still wasn't sure of the details. He wasn't sure he could trust what he'd been told by Hayes or Duchesne.

Travis gave his mom “the look.” The raised eyebrows and accompanying mouth-ajar posture.

“You mean you didn't tell your own son the story?”

She shook her head, a little sadness cradled her face.

“Then I think its time for him to meet the source of the Patriot Snowball movement, don't you?”

Lana waved her hand, deferring the decision to him.

Chapter 16: Clarisse McClellan

Travis led Chief to another wing of the top floor of the skyscraper. Instead of tables or radios, the space had dozens of couches, some with sheets draped around them for nominal privacy.

“This is where the crew can catch some shut eye. She'll be by the windows. Maybe we can find you a shirt, too,” he said as he looked at Liam.

Liam walked through the couches without looking around. He wondered if anyone could sleep in such conditions, but there were several men and women doing a fine job of it. In the far corner, near the windows, was a small roped-off area where some young children noisily played. Opposite that area, a young black woman sat on a folding chair as she looked out the large windows. They were facing south, toward the ball stadium. The wreck of the Osprey was still there, he was sure, though it was hidden by the stands from where he was.

When the woman saw Travis, her face lit up, then she jumped up to hug him.

“I just woke up, baby.”

“I'm glad. I didn't want to disturb you after all the trouble last night.”

Liam was left to wonder what had happened.

“Honey, I want you to meet someone—in person—we've talked to for months.” He smiled and extended his hand toward Lana. “I give you, Polar Princess. And this,” he pointed to the twenty-something young woman, “is Clarisse McClellan.”

“Naw, my real name is Haylee. You don't have to call me by my literary handle.” She stuck her hand out.

“And I'm Lana Peters. Please don't call me princess.” Both women laughed while they shook hands.

“Travis here had talked you up.”

Travis had his arms tightly wrapped around Haylee.

“Yeah, he does that. He likes to pretend the whole thing was my idea, but he was a big part of it, too.”

Liam had a chance to compare the two leaders of the Patriot Snowball. He was a tall man with a red beard, the demeanor of a soldier, and the look of an auto mechanic. She was about average height for a woman, very pretty, with no hard edges or mannerisms. Almost dainty. Far from the look of a leader or a fighter.

“You're too modest, dear.” Travis looked down at her. “Liam is Lana's son. She never told him your story,” he said mischievously.

“Seriously?” Her face scrunched up, as if it were incredible. “You? You haven't told your own son what this movement was all about? What we did?”

Lana appeared defensive. “It's complicated. My husband, Jerry, was the face of our little cabal. He died a few days ago. I've not really...been the same. I didn't want to bring him into this world, too soon.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry.” Haylee broke from Travis and hugged Lana. Liam expected waterworks from the two women, but they were tougher than him. He surreptitiously wiped a tear away.

When they separated, Haylee offered to continue.

“I'll give you the short version. There are any number of TV documentaries about me, though almost all of them were shot and edited to make me look like an idiot with no idea what I was fighting for.” Her sarcasm was palpable.

She faced outside the window as she spoke.

“I was a high school history teacher. That's my secret. If you don't know history, you're a clean slate ready to accept what any fool politician or the politician's education machine wants to feed to you as the truth. Most of America today has no idea who was President ten years ago. Some have no idea who is President today.”

She looked at them over her shoulder. “I don't mean today today. I mean when things were still normal.”

Looking outside once more, she went on. “Without knowing why, young people fell into line with what media told them was cool, told them which candidates they should vote for, and how they could get the free stuff that was coming to them. They were never told who would pay for it, or what would eventually happen when other people's money ran out—as it always does. This has been going on for fifty years, actually. I stood up and said the toughest word in American politics: NO!”

She turned fully around. “Liam, did you know about any of this as it was happening? The Patriot Snowball started in the bitter cold of January of this year. Where were you?”

He thought back. Either he was in school, or playing his video games after school.

“Um, what do you mean?”

“I want to know why you don't know about the greatest movement in American history. It happened while you and your peers had access to the most powerful communications tool in existence. The Internet should have been swimming with news about the movement. It was, if you knew where to look.”

He strained to remember anything about the events she referenced. If he was pressed, he might admit to remembering someone talking about a big march at school, but that was a stretch. He may have overheard a teacher, but he'd never spoken directly to any of his friends about it, nor had he ever heard the term Patriot Snowball until well after the sirens.

“I can tell by the look on your face you weren't informed about it. That's my point. The media tried to mock me. My first interview with that reverend was a joke. They made me look like a crackpot. Later interviews were taped and then either edited to a few sound bites, or simply discarded. It wasn't until we were in Ohio, with tens of thousands of marchers filling the highways, that they had to cover it. And even then they tried to paint us as disgruntled veterans looking for handouts, instead of what we actually were.”

“And what were you?”

“I'm glad you asked.”

2

“I've never been a boat rocker, though I studied plenty of examples from world history. I studied nobodies who stepped in and did what needed to be done. Not that I ever advocated publicly prior to my first step. That's why no one would have expected me to lead a national movement.”

Liam would agree. She looked exactly as you would expect of a kid-friendly school teacher.

She sighed, as if she'd told this story a million times.

“The thing is, I could see firsthand how our education system failed my students. I'll give you the most salient example.” She looked at Liam. “Do you know who Clarisse McClellan was?”

Liam shook his head.

“Guy Montag?”

Another shake.

“Ray Bradbury?”

“He was a writer...I think he wrote about Mars.”

“Well, pretty good. More than most of my students knew. Clarisse and Guy were characters in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It's a book about how history can be scrubbed, but more importantly it's a book about how willing we—the people—will accept, and even facilitate that scrubbing. I saw this in my students. Clarisse corrupted the main character—made him think for himself, of all things—and for that she was killed. The firemen were responsible for burning books. Books were outlawed...”

She looked at Liam with sad eyes.

“...and my students didn't think that was a bad thing. Sure, they felt bad Guy and Clarisse got mixed up with the law, but they truly believed the “authorities” were looking out for the people. The book was written in the nineteen-fifties, but it very nearly described the dumbing down of people on social media. It was as if he knew that once we started sharing memes and trading “likes” on inflammatory headlines instead of reading books, we'd be ripe for separating our present from our past. Once that happens, well, anything is possible. People become blank slates, willing to accept what they're told. My students had been so well—indoctrinated is the word I often use—that they accepted the social order in Fahrenheit 451 because the people were happy, safe from conflicting and divisive opinions, and had everything they needed. The ending was overlooked, of course. That is the fiction, in their minds.”

She laughed. “And the one thing he got wrong in his book was the role of the professors. Instead of being guardians of knowledge, they've become the firemen. They want dumb kids out of high school. Then they can fill their heads with more mush. You can't trust a single one.”

“Jason Hawkes said he was a college professor,” he challenged.

“Yeah, and he's Guy Montag...or close to it. I'm Clarisse—a freethinking teacher in an industry designed for conformity. But don't worry. Plenty of teachers broke free with me.”

She cleared her throat. “This is the official story.”

A smile to Travis.

“In the early morning cold of Boulder, Colorado, in January, I got out of my car on the highway after it was shut down by a popular group of paid grievance protesters. At first I was angry they kept me from getting to my job—teaching children—but as I talked to them and listened to how ignorant they were, I got angry at the system for allowing such idiots to gain the favor of the national media. These were the people who were proud to believe the lies.”

She stepped next to Travis, and put her arm around his waist. “And who do you think was in the very first car in that ten-mile-long traffic jam those a-holes created?” She squeezed, making the association.

“I don't read many books, I'm afraid. I go by “The Terminator,” he said with a mock Austrian accent and some laughter.

“Anywayyy, I got into an argument with one of the protesters, which was caught on someone's camera phone. Little did I know it was all filmed by a news network, but they hid the tape. Har de har the joke was on them because I got pushed down to the ground by that wench and it was caught on tape by a citizen. That's what people remember. The simple history teacher getting tossed down by the ignorant, paid rabble-rouser.”

She giggled. “Travis got out of his car, picked me up, and together we organized the people and vehicles behind us to force that entire group off the highway so we could get real citizens moving again. We provided the blueprint of how to break the group's grip. Even the news couldn't spin it away as it happened, which was why they had to ridicule me when they finally got an interview.”

“So how did you start marching?”

“That is a long and complicated story.” She seemed to think on the issue.

Lana interjected. “You can tell him about Rose. She's Liam's grandmother.”

Haylee looked at her. “You sure? OK, then. I met her at a town hall meeting. She was my congresswoman, newly elected, and she came to Boulder to get a feel for the wants and needs of her constituents. I was there to ask her about the national movement I knew was fake, but she wouldn't take my question. Later, a representative of hers pulled me aside, said she recognized me, and let me know Rose wanted to talk to me privately. Needless to say, that meeting went really well and we kind of helped each other with the idea of marching on Washington. I started walking the next day.”

“And she walked all the way to Leesburg, Virginia,” Travis said proudly.

“Actually, I made it to the Oval Office, but that's not important. Leesburg is where a few small airplanes sprayed the entire march with what we found out later was the plague that started this whole thing.”

“So you didn't release the plague on Washington? That's what the news says.”

“Helll no. We were marching to change the direction of politics, not murder a city, or a nation. Murder my own students for crying out loud. I'm aware they're trying to blame us for all this destruction, but you can tell by their problems in West Virginia they haven't been very convincing.”

“The TV says they are being swamped by zombies.”

Haylee smiled. “Yeah, they would say that, wouldn't they? But there were cameras on the ground when the planes went over us. We knew. Now, with two versions out there, which do you think people believe? That our group was marching peacefully when sprayed? Or the other version, where we were the aggressors? It's no contest. Those aren't all zombies attacking the convoy. Word is spreading, even in the Apocalypse, along the East Coast. They've been abandoned by the government. The people who created the plague, and a lot of innocent people in the government and military who had nothing to do with it, are now targets for the angry mob. They use TV and radio to try to deflect some of that anger on us, but it isn't working as they hoped. That's always been their mistake. They never understood the people they served.”

She spoke that last sentence with emphasis.

“I was told by two members of the National Internal Security that the President gave the green light to drop the plague on you guys. If we could prove it, somehow, we could broadcast that truth and send the remains of the government into hiding.”

It was all fitting into his long-term plan to write the book on the true story behind the Zombie Apocalypse. Who pressed the button. Who knew about it. Who—eventually—cured it. That last part was still TBD—to be done. Well, all of it was TBD.

“When the mist fell over us, we thought it would be tear gas or some other non-lethal chemical agent. After we all inhaled it—we didn't plan on needing gas masks—everyone felt relieved it had no effect. It wasn't until the next day people began to get sick. It was bad, but it wasn't what you see today. The flu-like symptoms started to spread through the crowd like wildfire, eventually breaking the back of the march and doing a fine job of sending us all home on public transportation, aircraft, and so forth. By the time we all made it home, we'd likely infected half the nation.”

“But no one turned into zombies?”

She laughed at the word. He was used to it. “No. There was no taste for blood in the air.”

“Hayes told me—he was one of the NIS researchers, he said he created the flu that dropped on you—that his plague was designed to get you all sick, and nothing more. But it interacted with two other diseases floating around. The combination of the three is what resulted in the zombie outbreak.”

“Well, that adds up at least. It was a week later when we started seeing reports of problems in the eastern cities. Those closest to the virus released over Virginia.”

“So we can say for certain the Patriot Snowball movement didn't release the plague?” Liam asked tentatively, like he was taking an order from a customer at a diner.

“Absolutely not. Though one could argue we were the reason for the plague being released. If we'd not gone to Washington, maybe all this wouldn't have happened.”

My old friend “unintended consequences.”

He didn't think they could blame themselves for the actions of a malicious government, or at least a portion of government. His book would be right on this point, if nothing else.

Lana touched Liam on the arm. “I think we need to focus on the here and now. The holdouts from the government, led as best we can tell by agents of the NIS, will soon be here in St. Louis. They want this city, for the same reason we do. It's centrally located in a country that soon will be dependent on ground transportation or river transport, and has some natural choke points to hold off the zombie hordes. We need to figure out if there's any way we can prevent that convoy from crossing that river—either by the bridge below us or one of the few still standing.”

“If Liam can get us to those tanks, we might have a chance,” Travis offered.

“Liam?” his mom asked, still holding his arm gently. “Is that something you feel comfortable doing?”

No.

“I'll think about it. This is all a lot to absorb.”

“I know how you feel,” Haylee added, “I was teaching high school and then leading a group of ex-military jugheads—”

“Jarheads! But I prefer grunts, dear. We don't want those dirty Marines,” but he smiled widely as he said it, like it was their joke.

“OK, I herded these cats across the country. I had no idea what I was doing. It took someone behind the scenes to get us all where we needed to go. Kept us fed. Kept us on the right roads. Watched out for roadblocks, hostile towns, and managed our social media connections.”

As she spoke, she looked at Lana, who smiled in return.

“Mom?”

He knew it was true. His dad's letter said as much.

3

“I already know my mom was important. I've known since I read my dad's letter.” Here, with these people, there could be no secrets.

He thought back to the first time he read his father's words.

I'M SORRY.

SO. THE TRUTH. I PROMISED I WOULD GET TO THAT.

THE TRUTH IS OUR FAMILY HAS BEEN IN THE FIGHT FAR LONGER THAN THIS SPRING. I SWEAR ON MY HONOR I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT ANY OF THIS BEFORE YOUR GRANDMA ROSE CALLED ME, EARLIER THIS YEAR. BUT, YOUR MOTHER KNEW…

WOW. WHERE DO I BEGIN?

YOUR GRANDFATHER ALOYSIUS SERVED AS AN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER IN WW2. AFTER THE WAR HE FOUND EVIDENCE OF HORDING OF MILITARY EQUIPMENT BY PROMINENT GERMAN FAMILIES, BUT HE WAS UNABLE TO DISCOVER ANYTHING MORE THAN WHISPERS. HE TRACKED IT DOWN FOR SEVERAL YEARS ON HIS OWN TIME, SCOURING GERMANY FOR WHAT HE WAS SURE WAS A CONSPIRACY BY THE NAZIS TO STORM BACK OUT ON THE WORLD.

HE KEPT HIS NOTES HIDDEN, AND ONLY SHARED THEM WITH HIS SON, YOUR GRANDFATHER CLYDE. CLYDE POKED AROUND AS PART OF HIS JOB IN THE OIL INDUSTRY, AND HE DIED UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE ALPS.

THAT'S HOW YOUR GRANDMA ROSE CAME TO OWN THE NOTES FROM BOTH MEN. SHE TOLD ME GRANDPA CLYDE FOUND A CACHE OF WEAPONS IN A REMOTE ALPINE VILLAGE AND—THIS IS SOMETHING I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE—THAT THE WEAPONS AND VEHICLES WERE PART OF A GLOBAL EFFORT TO SAVE THE HUMAN RACE FROM THE APOCALYPSE. CAN YOU IMAGINE? THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE PLOT OF ONE OF YOUR SCI-FI MOVIES. EXCEPT HERE WE ARE, RIGHT?

ANYWAY, ROSE SAW SOMETHING IN YOUR MOTHER AND PASSED THE NOTES AND HER THOUGHTS WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE. YOUR MOM SAYS IT WAS BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T WANT ME TO GO OUT AND GET MYSELF KILLED. IRONIC, HUH?

THEY WORKED TOGETHER FOR A FEW YEARS, AND FIGURED OUT THERE WERE CACHES IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND AUSTRALIA, TOO. PROBABLY RUSSIA. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH NAZIS.

THIS ALL CAME TO A HEAD WHEN YOUR GRANDMA ROSE WAS ELECTED TO OFFICE. SHE WAS PAID A VISIT BY A NASTY GROUP CALLED THE NATIONAL INTERNAL SECURITY THAT THREATENED TO KILL HER AND HER ENTIRE FAMILY IF SHE DIDN'T PLAY BY THEIR RULES. THAT, THEY SAID, WAS HOW THEY CONTROLLED THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT. BY FEAR.

YOUR GRANDMA ALREADY SUSPECTED SOMETHING LIKE THAT WOULD HAPPEN, AND SHE WAS PREPARED. WITH YOUR MOM'S HELP SHE BEGAN TO ORGANIZE GOOD PEOPLE TO THE CAUSE, AND EVENTUALLY ROSE BROUGHT ME IN. THE ENTIRE PATRIOT SNOWBALL MOVEMENT WALKED BY OUR FRONT DOOR HERE IN ST. LOUIS AND I NEVER KNEW IT WAS YOUR MOM GUIDING IT. SHE'S THAT GOOD. SHE WANTED TO PROTECT YOU AND I IF SHE WAS FOUND OUT.

GRANDMA ROSE REVEALED HERSELF AT THE END, WHEN SHE THOUGHT WE'D WON. THE PRESIDENT MET WITH THE LEADERS, BUT WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT TURNED OUT. THAT'S HOW WE ENDED UP ON THAT HIT LIST OF NAMES.

ONLY NOW, ON MY DEATHBED, DID SHE TELL ME THE TRUTH OF HER ROLE. SHE MAY CUT OUT THIS PART OF THE LETTER IF I'M NOT ALIVE TO HAND IT TO YOU. SHE'LL DO WHAT'S BEST FOR US BOTH. SHE LOVES YOU VERY MUCH AND ALL HER SPY STUFF (SHE HATES THAT TERM) IS BECAUSE SHE WANTS YOU TO HAVE A FREE COUNTRY AGAIN SO YOUR CHILDREN DON'T HAVE TO LIVE IN FEAR OF THEIR OWN LEADERS.

IT'S REALLY THAT SIMPLE.

MY LEG IS HURTING SOMETHING FIERCE. I HAVE TO END THIS HERE. I'LL TRY TO WRITE ANOTHER LETTER TOMORROW IF I FEEL UP TO IT. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. YOUR MOM AND I REALLY LIKE VICTORIA. I HOPE YOU TWO SURVIVE, TOGETHER.

PLEASE DESTROY THIS LETTER, LIAM. IF THIS WAS FOUND BY OUR ENEMIES, IT WOULD INCRIMINATE YOU IN A DANGEROUS WAY. RIGHT NOW, THEY DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU AT ALL, THOUGH YOU ARE A POTENTIAL THREAT. IF YOU SHOW UP ON THEIR RADAR YOU MIGHT BECOME A LARGER THREAT TO THEM.

GOOD LUCK,

DAD

Sorry dad, I think they already know all about me.

He felt the crumpled paper in his pocket once more. He read it every free chance he got. It was getting soft from how many times he folded and abused it. To destroy it was to destroy the last remaining piece of his father's life. To save it was to save a piece of him, even though it put his own life in danger.

Lana put hers arm around him, and in front of the vaunted leaders of the Patriot Snowball movement, he silently cried. He couldn't even explain why. Was it because his dad was gone? Maybe, but he'd loosely come to terms over the last few days. Was he crying because he felt the subdued grief in his mom? Was it because the radio guy said Grandma was dead? Could he feel the deep sadness of Haylee and Travis—him with his ever-present dog—after losing so many of their own friends and fellow marchers? Was it the ultimate failure of their movement? Was it the zombies scouring the streets below for human flesh? Was it the military struggling to build the bridge over the river? A bridge that would probably lead to his family's final destruction?

In the end he cried because he only had one bright point of light in his life. A rare spark of goodness and hope in a world spinning wildly out of control. And at that moment, it was a hole his mom, the Polar Bears, and even the revelations of the day couldn't fill.

I need Victoria. I need her in my arms.

Yes, he decided, even the thought made him feel much better. He sucked it up, pulled back from his mom, wiped his tears, and said, “What's the plan?”

4

Haylee and Travis left Liam and Lana to their own devices. Over the next couple hours the building became a hive of activity. At times he thought it was because they'd found Jason or his tank, but that report never came in. The radio operators found no evidence he'd been killed, nor had they heard him on any of their monitored frequencies. It was like he disappeared.

Eventually the Bears returned their weapons—Liam's was un-jammed and cleaned—and provided food and water. He was aching to sit in close to one of the windows overlooking the Arch grounds, but Travis explained that it was dangerous to stay in view of the Illinois shore for very long. The other directions were fine, but not the east. “The shores have eyes,” he advised.

He and Lana rested in the sofa room. Liam spoke quietly. “What do we do now? Are you some kind of leader here?”

She smiled faintly. “No, I don't think so. You saw how little I know about anything military. I tried to pay attention when your dad talked about guns, survival craft, and all that, but anything beyond camping out the back of a car was more than I could handle.”

“Then how did you become the leader Dad said you were? He said you guided the entire march?”

She looked around, then leaned in. “You may not want to hear how I did it.”

“Oh yes I do.”

“Well, you know that game you always played?”

“World of Undead Soldiers?”

“Uh huh. That's the one. I saw you playing that day after day and it got me interested in how many other players were out there. You know, a mom likes to know her son's friends.” She smiled, then winked, like Grandma Marty would do. “And I found a news article about how someone inside the State Department used characters inside the game to pass sensitive information back and forth from embassies overseas. I did some digging and found out the people who make that game take data encryption and player security very seriously. So seriously, in fact, there was a push to get them to loosen the security so police and intelligence agencies weren't blocked out. They told them they'd think about it...which was the politically sensitive way for them to drag their feet.”

“So you used my game to lead a revolution?”

“Not exactly. I talked to others inside the game—mom's, grandma's, and others—who were on the routes taken by the marchers, and I shared that information with the march leaders so they could plan accordingly. You'd be surprised how many times protesters were sent somewhere to cause trouble and we caught them before they could set up their blockades. Of course we didn't get them all...”

It meant nothing to Liam. He didn't follow the march at all.

I was playing a game full of moms?

“What a minute. Are you saying you were in my game, the same time I was?”

“That's the best part. When you were online, it shielded what I was doing. When you were in the game I could blend in with your data—just on the off chance someone was sniffing around outside our house. It was an elegant solution.”

“So it was you that contacted me inside the mine? Told me about—”

“No. I haven't been online since the infection spread.”

“Well, then it must have been another mom. Someone knew I was there. Someone sent me a text message to get me to go there.” He paused, thinking. “Where is Grandma Rose? Was it her?”

“I'm afraid even I don't know where she is. She went into hiding after she and Haylee met with the President. That was just before the end, when the planes dusted the marchers. She may have been captured, or she's on the run somewhere. You know she's on that list, too.”

He had to find her, eventually. It was well down his list of mission critical objectives. To write his book he'd need her perspective—assuming she was alive—in all this. His priorities were much closer to home.

“So what do we do here?”

“We have to go down in that mine and get those tanks. You can make the difference in saving the entire country.”

“You want to go to war?”

“No, Liam. I want to stop a war. Those people coming here,” she pointed out the window, though they weren't facing east toward the convoy, “aren't going to be happy to see us. Anyone they think was responsible for ending our entire way of life is going to be a target for their anger.”

“But we didn't end everything. They did.”

“Some of them did. That's what makes this so difficult. Only some of them did, but we have no way of separating the good from the bad. Our only hope is to convince all of them we are strong enough to defend ourselves and that we want to live in peace.”

He was the veteran of years of zombie books, books about the end of the world, and movies and video games with similar themes. He could tell a lost cause when he saw one.

“Um, Mom. The entire eastern part of the country is coming here. We are one little city in their way. Not even a military organization. Fighting is impossible. We can barely fight the zombies walking the streets outside.”

“We have to try. They said the march on the nation's capitol was impossible, too. Don't underestimate yourself.” She laughed, speaking more freely now that they weren't state secrets.

“What about the cure? What about Grandma Marty? What about—”

His voice skipped, just a little.

“—Victoria?”

“One thing at a time. It should be easy for you to get our boys into that mine. Once we have the tanks we can take care of those other things. There are lots of military men and women defecting to our cause every day. Some of them bring equipment with them. We might have a helicopter or two we can use.”

“If it doesn't get shot out of the sky.”

“We're not at war.”

“Yet.” But a thought popped in his head. “Or are we? Do they know it was you that shot the crane? We drove the tank right into that building for crying out loud. How are they not swarming this place?”

He became agitated. It had been hours and they'd done nothing to prepare.

“They have lookouts here. They monitor the radio. The bad guys aren't coming for us.” She kept her voice low, which Liam suspected was to keep his panic from affecting the other people lounging nearby.

“Oh, all right. I guess I can see where all this is going...”

“It will be OK. I promise.”

He wanted to believe her. Her voice was soothing and calmed him outwardly, but the deeper turmoil boiling inside was something he fought hard to conceal.

Mom. Do you know you just lied to me?

5

Thirty minutes after their discussion, Lana was asleep on one of the plush sofas. The afternoon sun poked through the windows. He'd seen exhaustion the past few weeks and knew he could have slept inside a gunfight a couple times, but he was wide awake with the prospects of his mission at that moment. A secret mission.

He moved out of the rest area with his cleaned rifle slung over his shoulder. The great hall was subdued, though the radio room took up the slack. As best he could tell, it was where most people had gone.

That was fine by him. He used the opportunity to move toward the EXIT sign over the stairwell door. His was almost there when he heard a man's voice.

“Liam! Hold up.”

Chief ran up to him, like he'd been ordered to attack with licks and affection.

Travis followed. He was holding a small backpack and a light tan t-shirt. “I got these ready for you.” He handed both to Liam. His own pack was still in the tank.

“What are you talking about?”

“You're leaving, aren't you? I could see it in your eyes this whole time. Trust me when I tell you I've seen that look a thousand times. It's the look of a soldier who misses his girl—or guy—back at home. Other men have that look when they've had enough fighting, though that's not you.”

He pointed to Chief. “He's my savior. When I came back from the war, I was a broken man. Two tours in the sandbox. Purple Heart. Other medals that don't mean shit. I got him through a veteran's group that helps people like me.”

“You mean heroes?” His dad often equated veterans with heroes. At times he went out of his way to shake hands with them and thank them for their service. Liam sort of understood the sentiment at the time, but now, with his own near-death experiences under his belt, he appreciated what it might be like to have bullets shot at you day after day, for years. He'd only been playing at being the hero for less than three weeks.

Travis laughed. “That's funny. No, not heroes. Just men and women doing a job no one else will do. We volunteered for it. And I can tell you've got your mission in mind already. Wherever you're going, you'll need this bag. I've got a few mags for your AK—nice furniture on it by the way—a couple bites of food, and a few bottles of water. I think there's a knife and some other gear. Whatever I had lying around.” He handed Liam a small flashlight. “What's her name?”

How had he been caught so easily? His mom knew when he was about to sneak out of Camp Hope, too. He would have to work on that. It upset him to have to deal with Travis, but he felt a strange pride that an ex-soldier would see something in him, and treat him like a man rather than turn him in.

“Victoria,” he said tentatively. “My mom doesn't need me for this war stuff. I appreciate all you guys are doing, but it's not my fight. Beating Democide, or whatever. Maybe if all the zombies were gone, I'd want to help. Now I have to get back to my girl. She's what I care about most in this world, and she's the only thing worth risking my life to save.”

“I'm glad that's what it is. I didn't think you looked like the type to want to fight the dead just for fun.” He ushered Liam the last few feet toward the door. “And I would go to any length to rescue Haylee if she were out there. I get it. Be smart. Stay in buildings. Sewers. Anything to shield yourself from the dead. I wouldn't let you go if I didn't think you could handle it.”

“Will you tell my mom, when she wakes up? Let her know I'm OK?”

“Sure thing. She may even understand.”

“I doubt that. I think she already has me leading the fight with your group. A family thing,” he laughed quietly. “Trust me, you don't want me doing anything remotely military.” He changed the subject. “I'll be back. But if you go for the tanks in that mine, they are down the spiral road, you go into the tunnel and go straight back all the way to the end. There's a big room blocked by dump trucks. Go through them, then through a couple control rooms on the right—the tanks are back there. But there are lots of zombies down there. I can't stress that enough.”

“We'll handle it, don't worry.”

Liam leaned to pet Chief on the head. “I'll try to come back here,” he repeated himself, as if trying to make it true.

“Hey. If you find somewhere safe. Stay there. That's what your mom would want. I'll make sure she doesn't try anything crazy, either.”

“I'll do my best.” He couldn't see past the instant he found Victoria again. He'd had a day of endless running, tense gunfights, numerous near-death experiences, and had even rode inside a vintage tank. But the one moment that towered above all the others was from his time that morning with Victoria. When she changed out of her pajamas—

He truly had been a gentleman, though he still agreed with his earlier assessment to leave that part out of his future book. But enough had happened that it was the only thing he could think about. Zombies. Guns. Tanks. Nuclear bombs. Nothing had the impact of his own girlfriend. And she was only a short six-mile run away from him. Sixty minutes, tops. He'd outrun zombies on a longer run while in the floodway. This run would be shorter, but with a bigger payoff. He was motivated.

“All right. Get out of here.”

He hesitated at the door. The man couldn't be more than twenty five or thirty. It was hard to tell with his fuzzy beard and old eyes.

“Am I doing the right thing?”

“What does your heart tell you?”

He thought about Victoria. “That I would rip the heads off every zombie between me and her just to be with her again.”

“Then that's your mission. And do yourself a favor, when you find her, never let her go again. There's too many broken people as it is...”

He thought of his mom, without his dad. He thought of Grandma. She was likely dead, too. Losing loved ones had been repeated millions of times in the last few weeks. And he voluntarily left Victoria.

Cures. War. Patriotism. None of that matters if I don't have someone to fight for.

He patted the backpack as he slung it over one bare shoulder.

“Thanks for this. Good luck stopping those guys,” he nodded to the windows with the Arch—and the bridge—outside.

“And to you. The Polar Bears all wish you well.”

Liam plunged into the dark stairwell.

Epilogue

“Try to keep up Dar,” Emil said as he smiled back at her.

I'm fine right here, behind you.

Darcy was on foot patrol through fields of goopy river mud, but she wasn't complaining. The Zombie-Killers had new orders from the general. And, once given, she begged Chloe to pair her up with the other teen so they could keep watch on the Mississippi River shoreline to the east of Cairo. The walk was hot and tiring on a normal day, but nothing bothered her this afternoon.

Is it sexist if I fall down and have him help me up?

Yes? No? Do I care?

Her thoughts distracted her, passing the time while she searched for the encouragement to ask him to go out with her. Whatever that meant anymore.

Life had been tough since the zombies came. She refused to think about those days, or how she came to Cairo. None of those downers needed to be rehashed.

But she did think of the many high school parties she'd attended over the years, and especially party favors provided by her hosts. She could use some of that liquid courage out here. Drugs and alcohol had not made a comeback, at least not that she'd found. Having food was the big score back in town.

Maybe he has a girlfriend already?

It didn't ring true. Every minute of the last week they'd been working with the Zombie-Killers, her eyes were on him. He never seemed interested in other girls. At worst, he seemed constantly distracted.

When she slipped and fell over a deep root hidden in the mud, it was totally unplanned.

“Arg,” she yelled without thinking. Her whole front side plopped into a deep patch of the stinky mud. Both hands were pushed out in an attempt to catch herself, but they sank up to her shoulders instead of stopping her fall. Her knees, shins, and shoes were already muddy, but now her skort soaked it in, too.

“Are you all right?” Emil's shoes sucked in and out of the mud as he backtracked. “Oh, man! You're a mess!” His laughter, always quick to make her heart race, now made it skip.

Cards. Play the cards you've been dealt.

“I don't believe it,” she looked up as he arrived. Her chin had touched the mud, but her face was spared. Small consolation as everything else facing down was now covered in filth, including the frayed ends of her dirty blonde hair. “I can't move.”

There was no remorse or second-guessing. She really did need help. The mud seemed bottomless and it had its own gravity.

Emil approached cautiously, remarking that the mud was much deeper where she had fallen. From ahead, he reached for her arm and she used one arm to clumsily reach for him. Together they managed to slide her to where it was much shallower, but mud slid down into the front of her shirt the whole way. It felt awful.

“You might want to leave some of that mud in the river. You're wearing it all,” he said in a humorous tone.

Darcy wanted to reply with something witty, but she found herself winded. She used her middle finger—and a smile—to convey her sentiments. Only when she'd caught her breath did she use a little more subtlety.

“Can you help me up? I weigh twice as much now.”

She felt his strong hands lift her from her elbows. His grip was firm and steady. When he had her on her feet, still in six inches of mud, she was looking right into his face. The mud below him was a little deeper. His cowboy hat shielded his blue eyes from the punishing sun. She was magically drawn to them.

“I'm such a ditz. I guess I'm not much of a fighter, huh?” She smiled, searching for evidence her aspirations were taking hold.

“Well...I wouldn't say that. But you do have a little on your chin.”

He wiped his hand on his own shirt—which was pristine compared to hers—and then carefully used his fingers to wipe the dirt from her face.

The signs were there.

Just a little closer.

He smiled when he noticed her eyes were locked on his.

Now!

She leaned in for a kiss, but he pulled back almost as if she wanted to bite him.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed.

She'd misread something. Her eyes blinked several times in a row as she searched for the answer.

“Whoa, what? Don't you want to kiss me?” The pleading didn't make it into her voice, she hoped.

He looked at her, but then turned away.

“Let's keep moving.”

“No! Wait. I'm—”

What am I? Sorry? Desperate? Determined to make you mine?

“I just wanted some time alone with you.”

“So you fell in the mud?” he said with a questioning laugh.

She tried not to take it the wrong way. He was laughing. There was still a chance she could make it work.

“No, but maybe it was meant to be...” she giggled naughtily as she considered her next ploy. It didn't take long to figure it out. “And, I'm filthy. I think I need to take this off and soak it in the river.” She began to lift her shirt, though she had a hard time grabbing the bottom hem since it was slathered with mud.

Yes. Look at me.

He had stopped in his tracks. Facing her, he seemed to hesitate.

She knew she had him.

“Not so bad, huh?” She wasn't cheerleader material. Or scholarship material. Honesty was easy at the end of the world. But she wasn't horrible, either. Getting boys with alcohol was never a problem. Getting one with her body alone was a challenge, but an enjoyable one.

She lifted her shirt so it was over her head. One arm was free. She'd deal with the bra later. For now…

The thing wouldn't go all the way over. The mud was very heavy, and slippery, and she found herself caught up in her own clothing. But, she thought quickly, perhaps that, too, could be used to her advantage.

“I'm, uh, stuck again. Will you give me a hand?”

A little girlish giggle for good measure.

He laughed, and it sounded genuine. She had him. It was music to her ears.

“I'll help you out—” he began.

Emil cursed as if he were stung.

“What the hell? Oh, God. No!”

“What? What is it?” She struggled in her shirt, for real. She couldn't get it up and over. Getting it to go back down was also giving her fits. There was no way to get her arm back in.

“Run!”

Her sense of panic spiked. With a heave she nearly ripped her shirt as it fell back down partway over her chest, still with one arm out of its sleeve. When she saw what freaked out Emil...

She screamed.

A body? A zombie. He'd been in the deep mud, but not buried. It had pulled Emil off his feet and took a healthy bite out of the boy's neck. The mud's surface had a deep red liquid spreading around from the wound. Emil was now stuck in the mud, as she had been moments before. The zombie was pulling itself free, next to him.

She screamed again.

“Help, Darcy,” he said weakly.

Forgotten through all her machinations with him, her rifle hung uselessly on her back. In her haste and hormone-addled game, she had tried to remove her shirt without first taking off her rifle. The sling was tight over her shoulder. It was no surprise she couldn't lift her shirt over her head.

She tried to loose the rifle from its perch, but it was no use. Even if she got it off, Emil was lost.

It's my fault.

No shit it was.

She ran in the opposite direction. Toward the river. Toward the deeper mud, though it took her several leaps and jumps before she appreciated her mistake.

Why can't I think, today?

She blamed it on all her losses. All the running. The dying days. The dying nights. Round the clock death. And finally, alone with a cute boy, all she could think was that they were alive.

The zombie bellowed behind her. The sound was a whip that drove her into the deeper mud of a mud flat. She wasn't far from the shore, and not far from the open water beyond. Swimming entered her mind.

A boat!

A steel-gray boat had been run up onto the flat. It had two engines on the back and a small cabin right in the middle.

“Help me!” she screamed.

The waist-deep mud had become almost impossible to claw through.

“Help!”

The volume of her voice waned as she tired beyond words. Getting out of the mud with Emil had taxed her. This had her bankrupt. And only a dozen more feet to the boat.

Another yell from behind. She didn't look back.

“Oh God. Please help me.” With great effort she managed another couple of steps. The boat was tantalizingly close.

“Hey, is anyone there?”

It was likely no one was on the beached craft. Surely they'd have heard her...

Her lungs burned and her muscles cramped. Soon she'd be frozen for good. She turned to see the shore. The zombie which claimed Emil was now standing on a little mound of dirt at the edge of the mud field. Though it had come from further inland, she noticed it was standing at the end of a path of disturbed mud leading to the boat.

The boat did have at least one passenger, she decided.

With another powerful twist she managed another step.

Her life flashed before her eyes, which she assumed only happened when a person was about to die. The edge of the motorboat was so near, yet impossibly far. The mud only got deeper. It was too wet to get on top, and too deep to push through.

Even releasing the gun on her back seemed a monumental chore.

She looked back to shore, getting a read on her chances.

Now, there were two zombies.

I'm screwed.

###

Acknowledgments

Thank you for reading Zombies vs Polar Bears!

This book, like all my books, came out of my keyboard in ways I didn't expect. The three main characters keep trying to find ways to split up, and I keep trying to find ways to keep them together. But the Zombie Apocalypse calls each person differently. To survive, we all need someone we can count on absolutely. For Liam, that person is Victoria. I think she feels much the same way. That's why the next book is titled the way it is. Can these two kids grow up and have a happily ever after when zombies are on every street corner? We shall see.

Please allow me to call out a good friend in this space. Brent L. has pre-read each of my books before I released them, essentially ensuring that I wasn't putting big shotgun holes in the continuity, or story. He has been a beta reader, a critic, and a great supporter of my work. If I had ten more of him I would probably be a bestseller. He's that good! If you would like to join my team and help fashion the story and beta read the earliest versions of future books, please look me up. For now, thank you Brent!

I hope you are enjoying the ride!

E.E. Isherwood, June 19, 2016

E.E. Isherwood’s other books

Minus America – After an event sweeps from coast to coast, nearly everyone in mainland USA disappears. Only piles of clothes remain. Can the last Americans survive long enough to learn how it happened? Five books.

Impact
(co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books.

Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood
Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens
My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!

SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 6

Zombies Ever After
Since the Sirens

Book 6

© 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.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Miss Liberty, our beloved daffy rescue greyhound. She passed during the penning of this volume and I immortalized her in "ink" the same day. Watch out for her. She's fast!

You wrecked my truck, boy.
You ate my dog, boy.
Have you lost your mind, boy?
When our love died, my heart shattered.
But my soul escaped, boy.
Now you run from me, so run, boy, run.
--Midnight Foxes (found scratched in blood on basement floor)

Prologue

Major General John Jasper sat on a hard chair. He'd been tied to it by the same team that captured him on the levee outside of Cairo, Illinois. He had a bag over his head, reminding him of any number of interrogations from his time overseas. There, he was on the other side of the cloth. The hours of monotony gave him plenty of time to think about what he did wrong. Explosions and gunfire rattled the room from somewhere close by. His men were out there, fighting.

Elsa and her team had bagged him while he maneuvered the ad hoc battalion of Army units near the big ditch to the north. For some reason, she wanted all his men outside the town, though his military brain could fathom no legitimate reason for doing so. The Paladins were not well-suited to direct fire. That's why he had them among the houses to the south, so they could rain the hurt on the zombies as they came over the interstate to the north. Keep the fighting miles from population, instead of at the front gate.

Homeland Security had taken charge of all military operations inside the continental United States, getting around Constitutional roadblocks, as part of the government's response to the zombie outbreak—he'd long since given up trying to call them by other names—and her role in Homeland gave her direct control of his units. Up until that day she'd deferred to him on tactical issues. He never imagined she would relieve him of duty. How many other two-star generals could she tap here in Nowhere, USA?

“I did everything she asked, and she still sacked me,” he thought. Though, being totally honest with himself, he knew what he did wrong.

“Mrs. Peters. I shouldn't have gone to see Mrs. Peters.” Elsa never prohibited his movements, but she did suggest the 104-year-old woman was her prisoner. By all indications Elsa had made every effort to kill her, which was confusing as hell, since she was supposedly cured of the zombie plague.

And then you broke her out.

It seemed the chivalrous thing to do. Marty Peters had gone loopy from heat exhaustion because Elsa had cut her air conditioner power cord, and the temperature in the room had gone into the stratosphere. If he hadn't gone there, she would be dead.

“So what's the score, general?” he said to himself. “Elsa knows where Marty came from, and knows the doctor who cured her. That doctor went AWOL; then Marty shows up in Cairo. Elsa finds the old woman and locks her up, intending to kill her. Why? She wanted me to go track down the good doctor. Why?”

Nothing made sense. Zombies. Elsa. Cures, or no cures.

Elsa wasn't who she said she was. He was sure of that. Homeland Security was led by boot-licker bureaucrats whose idea of “security” was patting down toddlers and feeling up women at airports. Obviously, they failed in epic fashion in preventing travelers from bringing in the plague from overseas. He was far from a patriot in the vein of the Patriot Snowball movement, but he didn't believe for one second they were capable of causing the zombie plague. His sources all insisted it came from overseas. Homeland dropped the ten-thousand-pound ball.

And that's why she wants to blame old ladies and rogue administrators.

So, Marty Peters was the good guy. Whatever else she had going on, she was an enemy of Elsa Cantwell. That made her his friend, though it didn't elude his steel trap mind that his biggest assistance to his new ally was getting himself relieved of duty and tossed out of the Zulu World War, just when it was getting important he be there with his men. She was probably back in her prison room by now. Or dead.

He tried for the hundredth time to jiggle his hands in the bindings. Unlike the movies, he was unable to free himself and make a heroic escape. Before all this, he was comfortable in his desk job—a few years from retirement and the good life on a tiny wooded lake somewhere—and his physical training had been a bit lax. That was costing him, now.

A door opened, then closed. Someone had come into the room. He tensed up, listening.

“Hello, John,” a female voice taunted.

“Good—” he didn't know if it was day or night. “—morning?” He'd been taken at dusk, and it felt like days since he'd been hauled away.

“Not quite.” Elsa pulled the bag from his head. He was in the same room where Marty had been kept. The dirty motel was near the front gate of the town, which explained how he heard the fighting over the levee, to the north.

And Elsa had completely changed. Far from the attractive, but reserved-looking blonde woman he'd known since she arrived in Cairo, she had transformed into—

“You're undoubtedly wondering why I'm dressed like this?” she nodded to him as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room. He couldn't take his eyes off her, despite his inability to properly focus, or his general disdain for her.

The woman was in her thirties but had the body of a woman in her twenties. She looked like she had just come from the gym, where she apparently ripped up the StairMaster as well as the free weights. She wore tight-fitting black capris and a similarly tight orange sports bra. But now that he could see the silhouettes of her powerful legs and the muscle definition on her arms, he could see she'd been a wolf-in-sheep's clothing all along. He was focused on her mind, and the dumb decisions she seemed to make. It never crossed his mind she was as strong as this…

“Did you know eight of the ten women in my graduating class were CrossFit champions in their respective countries? I was top girl for several years when I was a transplant in Iceland. Look it up sometime.” She laughed. “You probably thought I was a pushover, and that's why you didn't respect me in our meetings, or when you went to free Mrs. Peters from this detention facility.” She swept her arms around the room.

“I didn't know this was a prison.”

“No, I guess you weren't as smart as I'd hoped. Maybe losing you won't be the blow I thought it would be.”

He couldn't help feel the sting of that statement. Elsa's six-pack abs drew his eyes when he should have been paying attention to her words. He missed some of what she said next.

“...and that's why you're here, John. I told you I needed someone I could trust to do what was asked of them. You've gone off the reservation. Now you have to pay for that, I'm sorry to say.”

He looked up, to her cool blue eyes. “I thought she was a threat. I had to see for myself. But she's just an old lady. All I did was get her medical help.”

He was telling the truth, though now he was glad he set her free.

While she responded, Elsa untied the rope around his feet, then his hands. “John, there's so much you don't know, I wouldn't know where to start. Homeland Security has many branches, and the division I work for has been planning for this event for a long goddamn time, and you and that old lady aren't going to mess it up for me. That's the main thrust of what this is all about tonight.”

As the ropes came off his hands, he imagined himself lunging at her and putting a stop to whatever it was she was doing, but his old arms had been bent backward, and the soreness prevented him from moving them quickly to his lap, much less using them to tackle her.

Her quads bulged in her stretch pants.

“I know what you're thinking, John. Can you take me? Well, Major General, do you think you can take down a helpless little girl like me?” She laughed, knowing his impotence at that moment.

“It's not very fair. I can't even move my arms.” He tried to convey bravado, but the truth was still unflattering to a career soldier. He finally got both arms to his lap and rubbed his hands to restore blood flow.

“I'll tell you what I'll do,” she said as she walked to and opened the motel room door. “If you can get by me in the next sixty seconds, I'll let you go on your way. If you don't, I'll kill you.” She giggled. “Sounds fun, doesn't it?” Her smile was evil.

He took a deep breath and continued to rub his hands. The feeling was just starting to come back.

“Fifty seconds left, John.”

“Give me a second.”

“You don't have many of those left. You aren't getting out of this door.”

Another ten seconds went by. He tried to stand, which went better than he assumed it would. He plopped heavily back down. A plan formed in his head.

More hand rubbing. “Why are you doing this? You can't off a two-star just because...”

He hoped that was true. It would have been accurate before the sirens.

“That's what I've been trying to tell you, stud. I can do whatever the hell I want.”

But why? Who the hell are you?

“Thirty seconds left. Tick tock.”

John imagined himself doing the actions, knocking Elsa down, then running for his men. Maybe he could convince them to arrest her. It wasn't very clever, but most military actions succeeded when they were dead simple.

“Wow. Nothing? Are you just going to die there? I'm so disappointed in you.”

He feigned having trouble standing. When he made it to his feet, he turned part-way around and pretended to lean on the chair back.

With a firm grasp in both his hands—still in pain—he lifted the wooden chair from the floor and turned as fast as his body would allow, throwing it the ten feet over to Elsa. In his head, he intended to follow the chair for a deadly second strike, but that turned out to be something his thirty-year-old self could have done. Not his current self.

Elsa was clipped on one arm. She let out an ambiguous sound, like air hissing, as she dodged. It took John several seconds to reach her. He knew he'd taken too long.

The smile on her face invited the challenge.

They met a few feet from the door, but Elsa dipped low as she put a shoulder into the side of his ribs. He tried to grab her.

What the!

His arms slid harmlessly over her oiled-up midsection. She'd positioned herself behind him and in one fluid motion put her arms around his neck and flung herself onto his back. He saw himself in the dirty mirror on the wall. A bemused look on his face signaled his acceptance of how this was going to go down.

Elsa's knees dug into his back as she pulled on his neck. The woman knew her stuff.

He let himself fall backward, praying he'd crush her. The stars in his eyes from her painful grasp didn't give him many options.

“I should have walked her out the door with her on my back. Then I would have won the bet,” he thought as he hit the carpet.

Things happened so fast he couldn't keep up. Elsa hung on but flipped around from his back to his front as he fell backward. He landed on the hard carpet, and she let go for a brief second but re-mounted a second later. She straddled his neck, so her strong legs trapped his head.

He looked up at his beautiful killer.

“Nice try, John. It restores some faith in my decision to bring you into my circle, though you ended up failing all around. Most people do. Half the people are below average, all the time, don't ya know? You can take comfort you have a long line of failures marching before you.”

His face was probably beet red, though he couldn't voice a witty retort. It didn't matter. Her thighs were crushing him.

“Good help is so hard to find, but I'll muddle through this.” She hunched over, bringing her face as close to his as she could. “I'm taking your soldiers, John. I'm taking them into the wild, and I'm going to use them up. I needed all your boys outside the fence so these dumb townies had no idea you would abandon them. And, since you won't be alive to explain, they will curse your name until they're all dead, too. Two problems solved, with the bonus that the fault is all yours. You will be forever known as the general who killed Cairo. Maybe they'll make a monument after this is all over.”

She didn't wait for a reply, though she called to someone outside the room. “Zeke, I need you to toss the general in the pit after I get all the soldiers beyond the highway. I want these people to have his body handy, so they don't come looking for him.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“We leave this dump in five.”

Chapter 1: Run, Boy, Run

Nineteen days since the sirens.

Liam halted between two floors of a St. Louis skyscraper. He pulled the backpack from his shoulder and set it on the floor. There was enough light from above he could see what he was doing. Looking down the dark stairwell, he'd soon need a flashlight.

He'd just left his mom, Travis, and Haylee on floor 42—they were all influential members of the Patriot Snowball—so he could get back to Victoria. On the steps, alone, he could think things through.

He put on the tan T-shirt given to him by Travis. It said “Yuengling Drinking Team” in big block letters on the front. It struck him as funny he wouldn't legally be able to drink for another five years. The Old World standards had likely been thrown out, though. He could probably walk in and get served at any bar, as long as he had something to trade. Paper money would soon be worthless. It hadn't crossed his mind much lately because there was nowhere open and nothing to buy. His cheap wallet was back in Grandma Marty's basement. He'd tossed it on his bed that first day after he came home from the library. It held his library card and an Imo's Pizza punch card. He was only two visits away from his “frequent pie-er” bonus pizza.

Mmm. Pizza.

He was near-starving. His mouth watered at the thought. Pizza and beer. Two joys of life now fading from the planet. He rooted through the backpack Travis gave to him as he left the lair of the Polar Bears. As he guessed, it had two of the energy bars—both strawberry flavored—that had been handed out by local governments at the outset of the collapse. Travis had packed three of the FEMA-issued plastic bottled waters, too.

His thoughts turned inward once he had the shirt on. He was on the cusp of doing something stupid, again. Leaving the safety of the group of freedom fighters so he could go out—alone—and run the streets back to Victoria seemed more and more insane as he thought things through. Was he doing it because he'd been dazzled by Victoria earlier that day when they were both alone in her old dorm room? He didn't like to think of himself a victim of circumstance, but it sure seemed like he was going back to her because he was “girl crazy,” or something.

It didn't change the fact he was crazy for her. He'd told Travis he'd tear the heads off every zombie between himself and Victoria if he had to. In the relative calm of the stairwell, that still held true. Given the choice of fighting in a war alongside his mom—even if he agreed with her—or going back to be with the girl of his dreams, he thought he was making the right call. His mom didn't need him. Victoria did.

No, she's stronger than you, Liam. You need her.

There it was. Did it mean he was growing up? Was it a sign of maturity to think being with a girl was more important than being with his mom? His mom had said something about being glad he and Victoria weren't together before the Zombie Apocalypse. It was a confusing statement when she said it, but with enough time to think about it, he accepted she was right. He'd disobey any order, curfew, or grounding to be with Victoria. Somehow that lessened his belief he was being mature about the whole thing, but the more he pictured her in his head, the more he was ready to go find her.

He admitted his reasoning was suspect, his schemes were clumsy, and his mom would not approve, but he was absolutely sure Victoria would be glad to see him walk through her dorm room again. Nothing could shake him from that vision, and that was all the green light he needed to continue with his journey toward her. Plus, it distracted from the sadness for his now-dead father, and probably-dead Grandma Marty. If Victoria died while he was off pretending he was part of a rebel army...it wouldn't be good.

He got up again and walked down the steps with grim fortitude. He only stopped once, to get out the little flashlight. He held that in his left hand, while he held a Glock pistol in his right. He kept the backpack and his AK-47 slung over his shoulders.

When he hit the ground floor—where he and his mom came in—he paused before opening the door. Such practice was common these days, so he didn't pat himself on the back for taking the basic precaution in the Zombie Apocalypse. But he was thankful of his caution because the lobby was half-filled by wandering zombies.

When they entered the building earlier, a good number of zombies followed—he didn't stop to count them—but he judged there were more of them inside the lobby than he'd seen on the streets around the building. Once again he was reminded of bloodhounds. Somehow the zombies he'd interacted with earlier in the day had found him. That was the only logical explanation. The infected always seemed to keep coming once they had victims in their sights.

He stepped away from the tiny glass window in the fire door. Pushing the door open and making a run for it was suicide. No amount of bravery or “girl crazy” energy was going to change that fact.

Do I go back up and pretend this never happened? I could be back by mom's side in twenty minutes. Play it off as a joke. Or, go down into the basement and look for a way out?

The calculus of his equation resulted in an answer of Victoria. The only way to solve all the variables was to keep going forward.

He snuck away from the door and flicked the light back on as he descended to the next level.

2

He'd forgotten something important about his arrival in the building. They came in through the glass on the ground floor lobby, but they took an escalator up one level. That's where they'd gone into the stairwell. From behind the window of the door, he looked out on the marble entryway and could just see the broken window next to the revolving door that opened up to the street outside. Pulling back, he could see the big letter G for ground floor on the wall next to the door. He'd been off by one.

There were zombies outside the door, but only a few. Compared to the floor above, it was a ghost town. Judging their position and speed, he visualized himself dodging them and exiting to the street.

“Don't open that door.”

A male voice from behind made him jump.

The small flashlight was enough to see the face in the darkness on the landing below. The stairs continued downward to who-knows-what. Fear and surprise had paralyzed him, so he was content to stand his ground and respond. He spoke just loud enough to be heard inside the empty stairwell, but, he hoped, not outside the door.

“You scared the crap out of me.”

“You can't let them in above. They already got in...below.”

Looking closer, the man had evidently crawled up the steps. The stairwell continued down on the left side of the landing, and the man's legs were hidden down the next flight. He had blood stains on his back.

“You've been bitten, haven't you?”

He laughed with a wet cough. “They're all dead, down there. I'm the only one on this side of the garage. Others might have gotten out through the main gate. And yeah, I'm done for.”

He scraped himself across the concrete and managed to prop himself up and sit against the wall. A smear followed him.

“Don't suppose you have a smoke?”

The man was middle-aged. He had scruff for a beard like he'd not been able to shave in ages. He wore a bright Hawaiian shirt, and in many ways looked very much like his dad.

Liam hopped down a couple of risers, then sat so he could talk in a quieter voice.

“I don't smoke. Are you with the people upstairs?”

He shook his head. “There are people up and down all these buildings. Tryin' to stay alive as best we can. My group was in the garage. We sent people out through the opening to scout for food and water. We also sent people up into this building, but it had been picked clean. Just ransacked offices.”

Liam wondered if the Polar Bears had done the ransacking. It made sense if the skyscraper was their base of operations for the city.

“Then we had one of our people—a young woman—come back from one of those snatch-and-grabs with a nasty scratch on her arm. Said it was done by one of them zombies, but she didn't get chomped. We fixed her up and thought nothing of it. Left her with her father.”

He knew where this was going. That morning he'd seen two of his fellow travelers get scratched and then...walk away. Like they'd been brainwashed.

“But she wasn't good to go. An hour later we found her attached to the neck of her dad...it was god-awful. But the worst part was what she did next.” His breathing was labored, but his voice was steady. “We naturally tried to pull her off—several of us—and she sprayed blood in our faces. One big exhale, and we were all infected. But it affected us in different ways. Some turned in minutes. Others, like me, are dragging it out. I had time to fight to protect my family...but in the end, it was—”

He choked up, planting a hand over his face.

In a whisper, he said, “Some of those things went berserk like I never seen before. Biting. Scratching. Spitting. It all happened so fast. A few dozen of us—all survivors of the worst of things the past few weeks. All fighters. The whole place was wiped out.”

“And you don't know if any got into the stairwells, or went upstairs?”

“No, it's just me. I had to—”

A big sniffle.

“—put down whoever I could.”

Well, thank you for that small favor.

He was concerned this would interfere with his desire to leave the building and find Victoria, but the man's answer told him otherwise.

“Will you do me a solid?”

“I'll do whatever I can.”

“Shoot me dead. I don't want to be one of them things. I don't want to kill anyone else.”

“But you haven't turned. Maybe you won't.”

“Everyone does, son. Everyone does.”

He thought of Grandma Marty.

Not everyone.

“I don't know...if I can.”

“Never killed anyone, huh?”

That was a loaded question. It all depended on whether the zombies were dead or alive, and whether he believed they could be restored to health with a cure. The honest answer was that he'd never put down anyone who wasn't a direct threat to himself or his friends and family. Putting a gun to the man's head in this stairwell would be something new.

But if he was infected, it was a matter of time before a decision had to be made.

3

Liam stared at the body. He'd haggled with the man, and finally, he loaned him his Glock. Now the back of the man's head was a messy stain on the concrete wall. The pistol had fallen to the guy's far side, giving him one more dilemma.

The gun had the man's blood on it.

Getting blood on him could be a death sentence.

Losing the gun to superstition could also be a death sentence.

The infection was everywhere, and nowhere. Getting bit was an immediate death sentence, but getting scratched also had some effect on people, though not everyone. He'd seen plenty of people fight hand-to-hand with zombies, and survive. He'd also been sprayed with blood, so that wasn't always the end, either. But the man had said there was something different down there. She spit blood at them. For some reason, that put fear in him that the blood on the gun was dangerous.

He took off his new shirt.

I need to travel with wet wipes!

Using a small pocketknife, he cut off one of his sleeves. It would provide enough material to clean the gun, but it would still allow him to wear the shirt. He wasn't fond of walking around in the hot sun without one. He'd done too much of that already. His shoulders were well-burnt.

The tan rag gave him what he needed to grab the gun and clean most of the mess from the grip. He was sure there were still microscopic traces of blood, but he hoped there wasn't enough to infect him.

With his shirt back on and the gun in his pocket, he ascended the stairs and went back to the ground floor window. He studied the outside for a couple of minutes until he'd convinced himself it was safe enough to make a run for it.

The door opened outward and was silent. His shoes were also quiet, but he couldn't stay out of the zombie's line of sight. The call went up from a few zombies on the ground floor lobby, which was echoed by a greater number of the infected up on the second level.

He avoided a couple of clumsy zombies near the broken glass window where he'd entered the building earlier that day, and ran into the bright light of the afternoon. Across the street, he could see the much larger hole where his mom drove the Tiger tank through the front lobby of that skyscraper. He feared there would be government agents—or even zombies—but the street was surprisingly empty.

The zombies followed him in the windows of the lobby, rather than exit through the broken glass. They were nice enough to box themselves in and give him a head start.

He took off at a jog.

Only six easy miles to Victoria.

Seemed simple, which was why he was on the lookout for anything that would cost him time.

The rhythm of the run soon captured him. He relaxed as he found his pace, and hit his stride running down the middle of the narrow urban street. His father, the marathoner in the family, had run these streets many times—and he'd been there to cheer. His current fears were the potholes and many open manhole covers, along with numerous corpses littering the route.

He breathed in and out, as evenly as possible. Nearly three weeks of poor diet and no sleep almost made him forget these basic things, but they came back soon enough. The pack and rifle made things a bit tougher, but it was a small price to pay for the ultimate protection on these streets.

Running by the glass frontage of a newer building allowed him to see himself in profile. Unless it was his imagination, he looked older, now. He appeared more competent in what he was doing. Running. Fighting. Thinking. He was sixteen, calling himself seventeen, and going on thirty. Dog years of the Zombie plague.

And what was behind those glass windows? As he ran by, he tried not to think about or look too closely in the windows. There had to be both survivors and zombies in most of the buildings around the city. His sincere hope was that all the buildings were locked, just like the one he'd exited. But, if zombies did run out, he was ready. His pace would keep him ahead of them.

He looked up. An irrational part of his mind pictured zombies falling from high up the canyon of skyscrapers, but there were none in the air.

“Just everyone stay inside, m'kay?” he said quietly, over his heavy breathing. The pack and rifle, and the uncomfortable way the Glock sat in his front pocket, had an effect on his endurance. He considered stopping for a quick break.

Four weeks of hard living and my base is gone...

At that moment a white drone buzzed by him from behind, about ten feet over his head. It drew his attention ahead, where he saw evidence of more zombies. A small park sat nestled along the street, between a large Greek-looking building and a row of parking structures. The drone made directly for that area and hovered and rotated among the zombies there.

He ran up to a newspaper kiosk—long since looted—and waited to see what was happening. Alternate routes formed in his head.

The drone was bigger than most drones he'd seen of late. It was about the size of a refrigerator, and looked like a small helicopter, rather than the style with fans on all four corners. It was very agile and seemed to work its way through the small crowd, avoiding the many trees with ease. After a few minutes, it raced off toward another block.

He took off at a run again. He stayed on the broad street but crossed to the far side so he wouldn't run by the infected souls inside the tiny park. They appeared to be lying on the grass and on the numerous benches surrounded by huge piles of garbage. He was too fast to get caught.

He was mostly right. The zombies didn't get up and run after him.

In fact, a couple of them waved.

4

Liam did a double take. The men—and a few women—were lying or squatting in piles of garbage stacked around the once-pleasant urban park. It was a long, thin park about one city block long with a crisscross of paved walkways and some glass-block sculptures that looked more like restroom walls than artwork. Old trees mingled with several telephone poles the length of the park. The dense canopy shaded the area.

He ran on for a few more yards but forced himself to stop. No real zombies were behind him, and whatever was happening here certainly warranted asking the question.

“What are you guys doing out in the open?” he shouted.

In response, several of the people shushed him, then waved him in. Seeing no immediate threats, he obliged. The closer he got, the worse the smell became. It appeared as if the group had scavenged through every dumpster in the city, and made sure to bring their prizes back to the park. Here he saw a huge mound of rolled up diapers. Next to it was a big pile of bones—from meat and fish, as best he could tell. Both piles were smothered by flies. Other stacks had bottles, cans, and newspapers, as if these people were conscientious about recycling. He tried to refrain from holding his nose, but when he got into...the trash fort, he had to pull his shirt over his nose to block the smell as best he could.

“Yeah, it grows on ya, lil' dude,” said a man of unknown age. He was filthy beyond words, with a beard down to his sternum. It, and his hair, and indeed all of him, was covered in blotches of ketchup, mustard, blood, and much worse. Only his voice gave a clue to his older age, as it was rich and deep.

“You live here?”

“Mmm hmm. Since s'start.”

The man's eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. Liam suspected the other people nearby were similarly affected. Perhaps there were toxins in the trash.

“How? Aren't the zombies here?” He was sure they were. He and his mom had driven the tank not two blocks over. There were plenty of zombies around when they were in the armored Tiger, but none were visible right then.

“Nah. Those sick dudes leave us...uh, alone.” The man pulled up his hand—which had been hidden—and put a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth and took a deep drag, evidently satisfied. He puffed out the smoke, and Liam understood it wasn't quite a cigarette.

He searched his literature. There should be no reason these people survived this long if they'd been in the park since day one. The thought of zombies staying away from trash didn't add up. As time went on, they were becoming more and more filthy, too. Being out in the elements for three weeks, combined with never taking a second to clean oneself, would make anyone a mess. He'd been lucky he'd spent so many adventures in and along rivers, as that gave him the opportunity to “hose off” once in a while. Also, back in Victoria's room, they capitalized on some of her cleaning products.

The man was no longer looking at him and seemed to have no intention of speaking more.

“Hey! Sir?”

A slow turn. The man noticed him again. “Oh, yeah? I remember you. Got any papers?”

Liam looked around. It made no sense.

“No. I'm, uh, going to Forest Park. I saw you guys here and wondered why you haven't been...”

A couple of flies bounced to and fro on the man's beard. His eyes showed no hope that he would finish the thought.

“Well, you all should be dead,” he said with a tense laugh.

A couple of other trash people wandered over, including one woman—again, he couldn't give her an age beyond older than him and younger than Grandma—wearing a full-length sun dress with faded paisley swirls. It might have been pretty at one time, but now it was covered in the same filth as the man's clothes. Like she'd been collecting trash and rolling in what came out of each bag. But she also had something on her arm. A kind of big rubber band up near her shoulder. The lower part of her arm was purple. He was tempted to say something, but it was too creepy. Surely she had to know her arm wasn't right?

The man stroked his beard, which revealed a couple cigarette butts, a shiny blue pen cap, and a moving bug or two. He tried to focus on Liam. “We dead. Been dead for a lonnnng time.”

Liam took a step back, into a nearby pile of empty trash bags. He jumped when one of them yelped. A small mangy-looking chihuahua hopped out. It fared no better than its humans.

“Well, thanks for talking. I should get going.”

“Wait. Have you seen ma' husband?” asked the woman.

“No. Sorry.”

She cussed heavily, and angrily. The thrust of her complaint was that her husband took off with the drugs. Others nearby were similarly agitated by the story.

“Did you take his stuff?” she asked sadly.

“I don't know about that. Sorry. I have to go, really.” This time, he purposely stepped into the pile of trash, through the same gap he entered.

“Wait, kid,” said the bearded guy. He'd trailed Liam to the outer line of debris, and made like he didn't want the others to hear. After an impressive effort to steady himself, his eyes almost looked focused and normal. He expected to be let in on their survival secret.

“Do you have any papers?”

Liam had known a few stoners in school. The type of kids who smoked weed and partied hard on the weekends. Several of them, he found through friends, actually got their “agriculture” from their parents—because they saw no harm in it. But that was about the limit of his exposure to drugs. He'd heard about harder stuff—smack, spank, crank, or whatever it was called, but his friends weren't in that scene. His group spent their money on Mountain Dew and monthly subscriptions to their online games.

But these people. They'd been afflicted in the worst way by drugs. He could see that now.

Do drugs make a person so dead inside even the zombies don't want them?

The incident would have to go in his book. He'd try to get back here, someday, and see if he could figure it out. For now...

“Good luck to you,” he said in a normal voice. If any of them heard him—they were looking right at him—they said nothing to show it. The woman spoke to herself in low, angry tones, and the man continued to stare straight ahead. Others picked through trash or sat dejectedly on the benches. One man stood against a telephone pole and repeatedly struck it with his head.

He turned and ran into the street again, seeking cleaner air.

5

He ran two blocks before seeing zombies again. Ahead, several loitered near the broken windows of a row of sandwich shops and trendy boutiques. A few more hovered near a super-long black RV tipped over in the middle of an intersection. They seemed lethargic, rather than their usual roaming selves, but he figured they'd not seen prey in a while. Somehow they'd missed the action with the tanks and gunfire further back in the city.

He backtracked a block, hoping to use a safer cross street, but both directions had zombies standing around. He studied the area, hoping not to have to return to the trashy area. Running past them was an option, too, but he didn't think it was smart to run toward the zombies if he didn't have to, yet.

On the other side of the street, there was a low-rise structure with a huge word spray-painted on the front brick wall which said “SAFE” with an arrow pointing to a single wooden door.

Better safe, than sorry, eh old bean?

His imaginary voice sometimes carried a British accent.

He ran for the door, disappointed to see several of the zombies on the other side of the road turn as they heard him approach.

Luckily, they didn't come running. He was too fast for them to have any chance of catching him, even if they did.

The door was unlocked, so he pushed through and stepped into a narrow hallway. Steps leading up to another level were about ten feet beyond the entrance. Once the door was closed, he held it—and his breath—to see if the zombies would follow and bang on the door. He was sure they would...but a minute went by, and nothing happened.

“That's odd,” he whispered.

He stood up straight and collected his wits. A small window above the door allowed a little light into the chamber, but it remained dark and stuffy. Safety meant many things these days, and having a door between him and the zombies was close enough to it.

“Let's see what's upstairs,” he murmured to himself.

He took two steps and then felt the sensation of free fall. The wooden floor had given way, and he dropped almost straight down. His reflexes kicked in, and he managed to cushion his fall on the hard floor and roll himself forward to further save himself.

On all fours, he caught his breath from the fall and the fright of it. He'd been totally off guard.

Are things falling apart this quickly?

There would be no more maintenance of infrastructure…

His thoughts were squelched by the moans of zombies.

The hole he'd fallen through had covered itself back up. He couldn't see the light from above. There was no light at all, now.

A quiet realization fell upon him, and he was silent while he tried to solve the puzzle.

He'd spent enough time at night with zombies around to know their sound, and he had some experience judging distance in the dark. Some of the more distant zombies were calling out from a long way away. Others were very close. He was in a large chamber.

He pulled off his backpack and his rifle. An overpowering urge toward silence compelled him to move with painfully slow motions. As if disturbing the air was all it would take to bring the zombies to him. For all he knew, there was a type of zombie that could hone in on air movements. He froze for a long time…

The zipper on the pack echoed off the far wall; he was sure of that. The friction between his hand and the canvas bag had all the subtlety of an explosive new movie. Removing the flashlight from his other gear was the final insult that would get him killed. Each second he was sure he'd feel the touch.

But it didn't come.

An eternity later he had the flashlight in his hand, but he was as afraid of turning it on as he was of sitting there in the dark. The cacophony of sound had grown louder as if they all fed off each other. He was convinced there were hundreds of zombies in the room with him…

This is why I need Victoria with me.

Despite everything, thinking about her put a tiny smile on his face. He imagined how mad she'd be if she knew he wished she was there, in the dark, with zombies screaming for her blood, just so he would have the courage to turn on a flashlight.

Still, it sat unlit in his hand.

He hoped his eyes would adjust to the darkness. He sought any illumination to try to get a sense of things. Even in the pit mine, there were dim lights enough he could see.

He tried the trapdoor again, but his hands couldn't touch anything up there. He couldn't crawl blindly through a room full of zombies. And he wasn't ready to die in place.

Just pretend Victoria is here.

“You ready for this, girlfriend?”

“Let's do this, boyfriend.”

The flashlight switched on with a loud click.

Even with the diffuse beam of the flashlight, he was glad Victoria wasn't there to see it.

6

He was in a long hallway. On the right side, a concrete wall. On the other...

He swept the light to his left. It was a metal cage. Several zombies had their arms through the metal links. Reaching for him. He was nauseated to see the arms had been stripped of skin, as if they'd been pushed and pulled through the rough metal cage—it was a type of chain link enclosure—for a very long time.

The nature of the trap was revealed. Before the plague, it had been a kennel for dogs. A long line of ten-foot tall chain link cages faded away in the darkness. He'd fallen on the service walkway where attendants could walk the dogs to their cages. A small, broken chair was the only thing near him.

He recoiled toward the wall, dismayed to see he would have to walk the gauntlet by all the cages if he had any hope of escaping. The nearest cage had four or five zombies. He used the light to get a better look at them.

The visual registered on his retinas, but he didn't allow the data to reach his brain.

He hefted his pack over his shoulders, then picked up his rifle.

“You can do this,” he said aloud.

The whole row of cages became animated. They had a human target.

Liam felt for the concrete and began to slide his shoulder along the cool wall. With his pack on, he didn't want to face the cages, but he didn't want to face the wall, either, lest he get grabbed by his backpack.

He stopped when he felt a finger touch his shoulder.

“Screw this!”

Working fast, he dropped the backpack to the floor and pressed his back up against the wall. Using the light, he was able to judge the distance better. There was no way anything could reach him while he was against the wall.

He put his foot through a loop of the pack, then used his foot to pull it on the slick floor.

The cages became a pandemonium of noise. He looked a second time but didn't allow himself to see who was inside.

Some zombies moaned in the traditional dirge of the dead. Those were “typical” specimens. A few yelps and whoops called out from up and down the row. Those were the “call to arms” model he recognized from his run-ins with them. He assumed they were the ones spinning up all the others. But there was something new in the mix. A constant humming sound, which he nearly found sad. It was like an opera singer—a woman—carrying the same melodious note for as long as she could. It was only broken when the singer needed to fill her lungs again.

He braced himself, thinking the goal was to make him give up. A kind of aural equivalent of the dreamer zombies, who seemed to operate through the use of smell. If he could be made to hallucinate through smell, there was no reason to doubt he could fall victim to sound...but he couldn't hold a gun and a flashlight and cover both his ears at the same time.

Finally, mid-way down the row of cages, he smelled the tell-tale sickly sweet syrup.

“Hey Victoria, there's one of each kind of zombie in here. How funny is that?”

“I know, right.”

Still, he ignored how the zombies were dressed.

“We have to keep moving,” he said to motivational Victoria.

He kept his eyes forward, and couldn't help notice a cage had bowed outward. It had a particularly rambunctious group of large zombies inside, and they pushed the dog cage to its limit. While the largest were unable to put their arms through, a smaller zombie with very long arms was able to almost touch the wall. As he got there, it became evident the cage had been ripped from its foundation. The entire thing had moved toward the wall.

The noise was approaching jet turbine levels of insanity.

“I can talk to myself because I can't hear myself think,” he laughed.

“You zombies are so stupid...”

“How stupid are we?” he said in a feminine voice.

“You're so stupid...” In the mayhem he was unable to think of a suitable insult. Nothing he could say would make this room right. Not even humor.

He crouched down and wrapped the backpack strap around his leg as best he could. Then he got on all fours and crawled as fast as he could. The zombie in the busted cage could have reached him if she'd gotten down, but she was too busy reaching for him from the standing position.

Maybe the woman sensed what she'd missed because she began to “sing.” It was a stark contrast to the anger and violence swirling through all the other cages. That said, it did nothing to lessen his anxiety as none of this made a lick of sense.

He directed the light ahead, praying for a door. Something to take him out of this nightmare.

The beam reflected off one of the cages ahead. Through the hallway of remaining arms, he could see the cage door was slightly ajar, as if it had been left open. Still on his hands, he crawled the remaining distance, never looking up at the standing zombies.

Each cage had three or four specimens, leading him to an estimate of fifty or so people, though they made noise for several times that many. This was an important math problem to solve because if the door of the last cage was open, he had to know how many runaways were playing hide and seek.

The last cage in the row was empty.

Across from the open cage door, there was a narrow opening in the wall. It had to be the way up.

Without looking back, or thinking about what he'd seen, he untangled his pack and pulled it over one shoulder as he regained his feet.

When his light touched the stairway up, it illuminated one of the escapees.

He felt lucky it was so loud. No one heard him scream like a school girl.

Chapter 2: Midnight Foxes

The sole's of Liam's feet froze on the cement.

The woman lay sprawled as if sliding up the stairs. Her platinum blonde hair was filthy and matted, as he'd expect any zombie to be these days. He fumbled for his AK-47. It got caught up in his backpack strap, and then he had trouble releasing the safety. With sweaty hands, he engaged the charging handle, but it kicked out an unspent round as it fed in the next. He'd forgotten he'd already done that.

He took a step back.

Her head came off the riser and turned, seeking the light.

He brought his rifle to bear at the exact moment the woman's face came into view.

Two things happened simultaneously: Liam fired the gun, and the woman hoarsely cried, in English, the words “Help me.”

The shock of the gunshot was obscene in the tiny staircase. He dropped his flashlight in panic and had enough time to wonder if he really saw—and heard—what he imagined he did. A living woman.

He scrambled for the light as it rolled on the floor.

“Don't shoot!” the woman screamed. It took a shout to overcome his ringing ears and the general din of the terrors in the cages.

He seized the flashlight, and held it on the floor for a few seconds, as if giving the scene time to settle down. If he brought up his gun and lit up the woman once more, he was afraid he'd shoot her.

The woman cried. A soft cooing background noise in the general chaos of the basement. Raising the flashlight, she remained sprawled out on several steps. Her face was down again.

“I won't shoot you,” he called out over the noise.

Her response evaporated into the shouting and moaning.

He leaned in close, tapping her on her bare shoulder. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fire my gun.”

Though she wasn't watching, he set the gun down on the bottom step.

“See, I don't have a gun now.”

The woman lifted her head, unsure. Her face was filthy, her hair was a blitz of frizz and dirt, but her eyes were full of life.

He tilted the flashlight so it wouldn't shine in her face, hoping that would help reinforce his non-violent intentions. Deep down, his own fear was growing because he'd almost killed her for no good reason. Giving the gun to the man in the other stairwell was merely facilitating a suicide. This would have been murder.

I need one of Grandma's priest friends to explain right and wrong out here.

He finally heard her.

“Please. Kill me.”

He leaned in, closer.

“What?”

“I said, please KILL ME!” The words managed to break through the generalized noise. After she'd said her piece, she dropped her head once more. It was a combination of resignation and fatigue if Liam was reading zombie apocalypse emotions properly.

“I can't kill you. I'm going to...rescue you.”

It was his first instinct, but he had no idea where he was or how he could help her. For all he knew, there were ten men with guns on the next floor. Even if he had Victoria, escape was uncertain. With the poor, broken creature on the steps, it might be impossible.

The woman continued to cry. He wanted to make this right, but speaking was difficult in the noise, and he wanted to get away from the things in the cages.

“I'm going to see what's upstairs. See if we can get out.”

He heard her say something, but he had to ask her to repeat it.

“I said they'll kill you.” She continued in a mechanical tone. “If you set one foot upstairs, you'll wish you hadn't. That's what they told us.”

Liam started to piece the place together, though he didn't want to lay it all out for himself. Instead, he cinched his backpack, grabbed his gun, and ascended the steps—carefully stepping over the woman as she continued to lay still on the incline. Whatever was up there, he was willing to chance it with his rifle leading the way.

The noise abated slightly as he reached the top step. He figured they'd settle down eventually if he were completely silent. But then he'd be stuck on the steps with the woman.

The wooden door was unlocked. He opened it just a crack and tried to look into the room.

All he saw was a blank wall. Ahead was another hallway, so he had to open the door almost all the way to check it.

Light came in at the end of the short hall, from what he guessed was a room facing the outside. The door swung all the way open, a fact he belatedly realized would have revealed if anyone was waiting back there.

“Let's do this,” he said to himself. The groans and yelling from below came through the door, but it wasn't as loud as he feared. His ears buzzed from the loud gunshot earlier, so he assumed his hearing had been affected. The noise could be incredible, and he'd not know it. Still, no one was running to the sound, which was something.

He crept to the end of the hallway and peeked around the corner. His palms remained sweaty as he held his rifle with a death grip. His finger wasn't on the trigger—his dad taught him to keep his trigger-finger to the side, to avoid accidental discharges. He wondered if the shooting below was an accidental discharge or just plain stupidity. It only now occurred to him that he'd missed his target at less than three feet. The bullet had entered the wooden staircase, rather than the woman.

He tried to concentrate on the new room. The windows faced the street that intersected the one with the tipped RV. He was sure there should have been some zombies standing around out there, but he didn't see any.

A soft hum was somewhere nearby. He leaned outward to get a better look and saw the carapace of one of the white drones he'd seen flying earlier. It hovered outside the broken windows. He was in what appeared to be a pet store.

He shivered uncontrollably.

Several bodies lay on the floor, nearest the front windows. Pools of blood surrounded those he could see.

Let me guess; there are more bad guys hiding.

He knelt down, to think and to survey the room. There were more dead on the floor near the back of the store. None of them stirred, which was good. It meant they weren't zombies.

The drone floated away.

He crawled toward the front. He craved the outdoors again, though he decided to check one of the men to see if he could figure out what had happened. While thinking of the best route, a piece of one of the display windows crashed to the floor with the sound a million wine glasses clinking.

That got him moving in the most direct route.

When he reached the man, he knew he'd been alive when he took a bullet. He still held an unlit cigar in his fingers. Liam could hardly look at the remains because the head had been severely damaged by a high-powered firearm. The results spoke for themselves. He would not become a zombie.

But he did have a strange blue piece of metal attached to what remained of his head. It was about three inches long and very thin. It reminded him of the blue thing tangled in the trash man's beard.

“Looks like a tiny arrow,” he said aloud. “What do you make of that, Victoria?”

“Maybe there are miniature zombies, shooting tiny bows,” he giggled like her.

Yeah, that's what she would say.

He was almost ready to pull it out when he noticed another one on the next closest body.

And the one beyond.

And…

2

He scrambled around the room, with his rifle attached to his back for ease-of-movement. Each body had the same blue thing stuck somewhere on the upper body. Many had it near the head. All the little arrows leaned to the front. They'd come from outside the front window. And they were shot after the men were down on the floor.

The drone noise outside returned, and he had a premonition it was looking for him.

He moved quickly and stayed low as he returned to the rear hallway. There he paused to see what would happen next. The miniature helicopter floated by, almost comically, from his perspective. It looked lost as it moved slowly from one broken pane of glass on the left to the far side of the store on the right.

But as it drifted off stage, a new player arrived. He couldn't tell if it was another drone, but a boxy metallic object came into view on the far right of the street. It guided itself to the very center of the broken windows, then paused.

An apparatus on top swiveled rapidly in his direction, and he had half a second to duck.

The shot impacted against the rear wall, behind where his upper body was a moment earlier.

On the floor, he fast crawled for the door downstairs. The moans and cries of the zombies cheered him on.

Another hole appeared in the wall to his left, just above his drooped head. No doubt who was the target.

Three shots came in rapid fire as he covered the final ten feet. The last one jolted him, and he felt the splash of blood on his back. With a great burst of energy, he threw himself into the stairwell and tumbled down the steps, collapsing into the woman. He hit her with such force they both tumbled to the hard basement floor.

He knocked himself good on the way down but didn't lose consciousness. The liquid on his back dripped to the floor, and he was relieved to see it was only his water from his backpack. The bullet must have passed through it...

The excitement of the fall had redoubled the noise of the zombies in the cages, and the crying of the woman—he couldn't tell if she was injured—added to the mayhem of the moment. He pulled out his light, though he could see well enough from the upstairs doorway, which remained open.

“Are you—” he started to say. But movement at the top caught his eye. Something that looked like a small tank on two little treads had maneuvered itself close to the doorway. It was just the right width to fit in the hallway, but it seemed to have problems getting closer to the edge of the steps. The treads rotated on the door frame. The gun on top was angled down.

He pulled the woman away from the bottom step, though she didn't want to come willingly. There was nowhere to go that didn't involve nearing the zombies in the room.

A crack from up the steps. He peeked around the corner as he pulled her. The door was tearing from its hinges. The toy tank seemed angry as the treads made progress chunking through the wood on each side.

“We have to hurry,” he shouted. Looking down, he doubted the woman heard him because she didn't pick up the pace. He felt the wall, intending to drag her low, as he'd come through the first time. They'd hole up at the end of the little service walkway, where he'd dropped into this nightmare.

He'd only gotten her a short way when the wooden door banged a few times on its way down the steps, then it bounced and slid into the open enclosure across from the steps. A mechanical whine followed.

He ignored the reaching hands from the bowed out cage. The woman finally caught on that she had to move fast. Or she just did whatever she was told. In any case, she was there when he cleared the damaged cage, and he stood up and ran the last few yards to the end of the corridor.

At the end he made a snap decision. He pulled off his rifle, which sent the woman to the ground again. But he aimed it at the zombies in the first cage. With the aid of his light to aim, he managed to put three of them down in quick succession...he was working on shooting the lock when the weapons platform poked out of the stairwell. Its gun swiveled to the far side of the room, giving him an extra few seconds to blow out the lock.

“Quick, get inside,” he shouted as the cage swung open. And again he doubted the woman heard him.

The gun began to swing to his side, so he stepped into the enclosure. The woman stayed on the floor. She pushed herself into the deepest blackness of the corner of the hallway...directly below where he'd come in.

He flicked off his light, to give them both a chance.

The drone now had a light on top, pointing where its gun aimed.

The zombies in all the cages became apoplectic with all the activity just out of their reach. Liam knew, or was pretty sure, the tank was going to come down the corridor.

Like it's tracking me.

That stirred his memory.

The small drone had come before the tank, upstairs. But the small helicopter-like drone had also passed above him before he met the bums in the park.

The tank had shot his backpack.

While kneeling among the bodies of the three zombies, he pulled off his backpack and set it on the backs of one of the dead creatures. Yes, it had been wrecked by the gun blast—an entry hole was on one side, and the exit was on the other. But there, as he pretty much expected, was a little wire arrow. Only his was red.

He kicked his backpack into the corner, nearest the zombies in the next cage. They didn't notice that at all, and instead continued to reach for him through the metal cage links. Blood dripped from their ruined arms. He moved himself to the far corner, up against the back wall.

A loud buzzing sound came from the ground-based drone.

Then, gunfire.

Among all the bodies, it wasn't hard to play dead.

3

The drone released one shot after another. He got as low as he could on the floor, though with bullets in the air he felt as if he were standing.

But it wasn't shooting at him.

The volume of the zombies was cut in half after thirty seconds. The drone's tread scraped the bent cage but got by. Then the shots got closer. Each volley unleashed a splash of blood into his cage.

After four or five blasts, he was entirely covered with blood and gore. The strange angles of the light from the drone made all the movement and blood more chaotic.

The next shot took down the zombie in the cage directly next to his. She slumped but remained on her feet, as her arms were already in the fencing. She hung there, looking at him.

Another splash of blood.

He covered his mouth to keep silent while pushing his face into the corner, willing himself to become small and invisible.

The light grew brighter as the tank trundled along, ever closer. His was last in line.

The other two zombies pulled themselves from the fence to attack the light, but they were felled in seconds by the mechanical monster. Two more sprays of blood washed over him, and he shut his eyelids—always worried blood would get him through the eyes.

The room fell silent, save the whine of the engine and the treads of the tank creaking on the concrete. It was right outside the cage.

Grandma, please pray for me.

He thought about praying for himself, but she always talked about how she would pray for others, and never herself. That stuck with him, he was surprised to realize.

The sound of the engine stopped, and the gun erupted close by. He waited for his head to detach from his body...

He counted to ten.

The woman was crying.

Please, be quiet.

He wondered if the machine could sense living people or just zombies.

He rattled off another ten count.

The machine started to back up. It had the familiar beeping of a commercial truck reversing itself on a street. A minute later the engine hum grew with the sound of treads on the stairs. It took a long minute for it to get to the top, but when the tracks rumbled over the wooden floor above he knew it had indeed left the basement.

Soon, the sounds stopped. He hoped that meant it had left the building, though he couldn't discount the notion it was parked upstairs waiting for him to show himself.

The woman's weeping became tired and erratic like she'd cried herself out. He figured if her crying hadn't attracted the eye of the tank, he was probably OK to open his own eyes and see what had become of the place.

With a click, he turned on the light.

He put his hand over his mouth to keep from yelping in shock. The zombies had been put down with ruthless precision by the thing's gun. It had been programmed to aim for the head—there was no question of that. Each of the zombies had been messily ruined up top. Every square inch of all the nearby cages was doused with the sickening blackness of blood. He felt it on himself but tried to ignore it. He pulled at the material of the front of his shirt and felt the wetness stuck to his chest.

The light fell near the woman, who was softly whimpering in her corner. She was also splashed with blood, though it wasn't as thick on her.

Finally, he took another look at his backpack. It had been shot twice now, and the material was ravaged. It, too, was soaked in water and blood. He rooted around and was surprised the magazine was still intact, as was a pocketknife. His energy bars and water bottles were ruined. One of the straps was also shredded, though he was able to heft it on his back with the remaining one. He felt compelled to keep it, as it had been given to him by Travis. A man he wanted to return the pack to, someday.

“Are you all right,” he gently asked.

“Is this Hell?”

“What? No. This is St. Louis.” He found it disturbing, but not unsurprising, given what had happened in the basement, both before and after he arrived.

“I'm dead. These—things—are dead. We're all dead,” she said in a hurried cadence.

“No, we're alive. You're going to make it. That, um, drone...it only targets these things.” He pulled out the red arrow from his pack and showed it to her, as if it made total sense.

He pulled off his shirt and offered it to her. “Um, sorry it's wet, but you can use this to cover yourself up. I'm sorry I couldn't help you sooner. The men upstairs are all dead. You're safe.”

He was reminded of his mom's words. Telling someone they were safe while zombies walked the streets was an outright lie. She'd known that. He knew that. But saying it made him feel better, and he was sure it made her feel better. Her whimpering slowed to nothing, and she began to wring out the blood from his one-sleeved T-shirt.

While they waited, he didn't know how to talk to her without addressing the elephant in the room. Sometimes asking survivors to tell their story helped relieve tension, but he figured this scenario would be the complete opposite. So he stayed in safer territory.

“What did you do before the zombies?”

The woman was only wearing underwear. Liam's shirt was a bit large on her, but she didn't complain. Once it was on, she stood up and moved into the enclosure with him.

“You ever hear of Midnight Foxes?”

Her voice was distinctively southern, now that he could hear it.

4

“I'm originally from Jacksonville, Florida, but I've been living in Nashville, Tennessee on account of the recording studio. I'm the lead singer for Midnight Foxes.”

Liam showed no recognition.

“Midnight Foxes? You've never heard of us?”

“I listen to classic rock, mostly.”

“Oh,” she said with a touch of rejection. “Well, we're a country band. Three multi-talented ladies with a string of gold records behind us. Nothing? You really haven't heard of us.”

“Ma'am, I didn't even know there was a Patriot Snowball when it was happening.”

“Wow. You must live in a dungeon.” After she said it, she looked at her current locale. She let out a little whimper. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

“No, it's fine. I was big into video games...didn't pay attention to the news. I missed a lot.”

“We were trying to drive back from touring in Colorado when the world went south. We gave a ride to our roadies and PR people, as well. Our tour bus ran out of gas. We watched as it was attacked and turned over by a mob. Our driver was killed, but the rest of our group was herded down here...by those men.”

She choked on a sob. “They offed Mick—our bass guitarist—outright. But they kept us girls...”

He didn't sweep his light over the cages, but he allowed an inkling of understanding to seep into his brain. All the caged zombies had been women. None of them had much in the way of intact clothing. The inference was still too much for him. The thought of his mother, or Victoria, in someplace like this...

I have to get back to her.

He didn't want to continue to press her for answers, but...

“How did they all become zombies?”

She looked at him for a long moment.

“What's your name?”

“Liam.”

“Hi, Liam. I'm Denise. Well, my stage name is Monique, but I guess that name is dead, now. You haven't heard of me, anyhow.” She laughed a sad laugh. “Us girls were taken upstairs. We'd get some food and water, and allowed to clean ourselves up a little, but then...”

He looked at her expectantly, but eventually he figured out what she was avoiding.

She went on. “Sometimes others came through the trapdoor. Men would be shot on sight. Women would be tossed in the cages. Sometimes that meant other women were taken out, to make room. That went on for a month, it seems...”

“This is day twenty since the sirens.”

“Oh. It feels like forever. Well, one day—not sure how many days ago—one of the new girls on the far end of the cages started acting funny. We could all see it happen. When we figured out she was infected, we all screamed for our lives...but no one heard us. She converted the other two in her cage, and then the disease spread down the cages day after day. When it got into the one next to mine, me and two women I didn't know started to throw ourselves at the front door and we managed to bend the lock. They built these things for dogs, not humans.”

She paused, thinking.

“But the real dogs were upstairs. My two friends ran up there to break out.”

She teared up and spoke with reverent tones. “They shot them in the head and tossed them back down the steps. I was so scared I was next...”

She sniffled. “When nothing happened, I moved them into the last cage to get the bodies away from me, but there was nowhere for me to go that was safe, so I returned to the steps. At least I couldn't see any of those sick women.”

“And the men never came down to check on you?”

“Naw. I think they infected us. Put us out of our misery. They argued constantly about money and drugs and turf while we were...up there.”

It was horrible to contemplate.

“Are you...infected?”

“Kid, I'm having a real bad day,” she said with a spark of defiance, “what the ever hell makes you think I care if I'm infected, now?”

Deep down, he wanted to express his intention to save her. She'd been through so much, he felt it was his duty to bring her to some form of safety. Make it all worthwhile. But the Zombie Apocalypse didn't work like that. Not anymore. There were no happy endings, as far as he could tell.

The best he could do was get her to temporary safety, with the expectation the place would fall apart soon after that. The whole town was in danger of becoming one big war zone, if the patriots really intended to make a stand here. If he were in charge, he would take the patriots to some other city. A city not on the priority list for the remaining all-powerful government forces, led by the National Internal Security agents. That seemed like a solid strategy to him, though he freely admitted military strategy wasn't his thing.

“I'm trying to get back to my girlfriend. You're welcome to come with me. If you aren't infected.”

She studied him for a few seconds. “You may be the person I'd least suspect was in this shit hole for a girl. She must be pretty special.”

As he collected his backpack, he nodded. “Oh, she is. But I'm not out here because of her. I'm out here because of my mom. She took me somewhere I didn't want to be, and now I'm trying to fix that mistake.”

“Sounds complicated. I'll shut up, now.”

“No, it's OK. And not that complicated. I found someone in this mess that I never want to be separated from again. Zombies aren't going to stop me. Toy tanks aren't going to stop me. Nothing on Earth is going to stop me from getting back to her.”

“Wow, good. I want to stick with you.” After a pause, “Do you have a gun for me?”

He wasn't sure she was ready for a gun, given how shaky and weak she appeared. Though it wasn't his place to tell her what she could and couldn't do.

“The men upstairs had guns on their bodies. We should both grab what we can, and then get out of here.”

She nodded.

He ignored all the bodies in the cages as they walked for the stairwell. The cage that had been bowed outward had been pushed back in by the tank drone. He was unwilling to look at the zombie remains, though he sensed some were still hanging by their arms.

The wooden steps had gouges torn from each riser where the mini tank had crept down and back up the stairs. It had been dripping with blood, now that he could see the steps in the light. The same blood that splashed him had also covered the chassis of the single-minded killer robot.

Which Apocalypse am I in?

5

In the dim light of the stairwell, he turned to Denise and put his finger over his lips, indicating quiet. He had no idea if the killer drone was still upstairs, but he had to assume it was. He climbed the stairs like a snake and peeked over the top edge to see if he was about to take a shot to the face.

There was nothing. He was impressed to see the big holes in the wall where the drone had shot at him earlier. Now that he knew it was aiming for the tag on his backpack, it made sense why the shots were too high as he crawled down the hallway. If he had stood and run, the shots might have been closer to his body...

He crawled to the first hole in the wall, while Denise held fast near the top step. She wore his tan Yuengling shirt, thought it was now sickly red. He was bare-chested again, making him wonder if he kept doing that to show off.

Yeah, I subject myself to insane situations so I can flex my muscles and impress the ladies.

It was funny to him because he wasn't a bodybuilder. He was a runner. Perhaps he'd do it for Victoria, but not some random country music singer.

He stifled nervous laughter.

The hole revealed nothing. He could see down one row of the pet store's aisles, but he couldn't see much else.

Something was in front of the next hole, so it was useless.

The final hole in the wall was a bit higher. He could see the windows at the front of the store, but couldn't be sure the tank drone wasn't in one of the other aisles. The only way to be sure was to walk out there.

Liam wondered if he could outlast the drone if it were there. It didn't make sense to have a drone sit inside the pet store unless it knew for certain he was there. And, if it knew he was there, it could have easily killed him down in the cages. That meant the drone was likely not there.

He stayed low in a crouch, but walked from one end of the store to the other, using the back row to look down each aisle. The drone wasn't visible. A large hole in the front facade suggested the entry and exit point.

When he got back to Denise, he let himself talk a little louder than he had before.

“I think we're clear. I don't see the tank drone or the helicopter drone.”

“There's more than one? That's horrible.”

“I think the floating one tags zombies, and the other goes around shooting them.”

Though he couldn't rectify the difference between the blue tags and the red ones.

A distant beeping sound resonated from the streets outside. It was the tank, and it was far away.

“We just have to avoid any drones, if we want to get out of this place.” He meant the city, but right now he would be happy to leave the building behind. His bare chest was an itchy, drying mess of blood. A pool of water was high on his list of requirements for the day. Or a hot shower...

“First, if you come up to the front, we can find you a gun.”

She smiled and followed.

They both stayed low. There were several men on the floor, surrounded by pools of fresh blood. The blue arrows made him think them through. The red arrows were for living, animated creatures. That's why it was shot at him but hit his backpack.

The blue tag was for dead people. As in, no longer moving. These men were tagged after they'd hit the floor. That's why all the arrows pointed toward the window.

He searched the room for the red tags. They were all sitting in a neat row on the checkout counter like they'd all deposited them there. He could visualize the drone going by, shooting tags at the men inside the pet store. Mystified, they pulled them back out, gathered to compare notes, and were taken by surprise when the tank drone arrived.

But if they took out the arrows, how could they be targeted?

He looked at the red arrows with the purpose of solving the mystery. The only way they could be targeted after the darts were removed was if the darts deposited something inside the victim. The dart itself was secondary.

When he looked at the tip, he didn't see anything obvious to suggest there was something attached, but he knew there was. There had to be.

It made him sad to do it, but he took off his backpack and emptied it. Whatever was on the dart, it was probably still inside the pack. He couldn't take that chance.

He transferred what he could to the pockets of his jeans, and tossed the backpack out the front window. He half-expected it to be shot by a waiting drone but breathed a sigh of relief when it harmlessly fell to the ground. Around him, the store had been ransacked and gutted, but there had to be some sort of doggie baggie, yuck yuck, he could use to carry his stuff.

Denise made noises near the back of the store. He heard the clank of metal. It sounded like someone had dropped silverware on the hard wooden floor.

He walked in her direction, searching for a bag, and wondering to himself whether Victoria liked country music. They'd never spoken of music, though it was something he was fond of talking about before the sirens. It was one other thing, besides gaming, that he did pretty much all the time. It would be cool to roll into Forest Park with a big country music star on his arm. Extra points if Victoria liked country music.

He had a smile on his face when he rounded the corner.

A bloody knife was on the floor.

His country music star was already dead.

Chapter 3: Tracers

Liam ran like hell. Straight out the front of the pet store, into the street. He didn't care about zombies. The death rattle of the country singer snapped something in him. It made his suffering through the dog kennels and his fight with the tank drone seem irrelevant.

He'd failed to anticipate she'd do something like that. She'd asked for a weapon as soon as she could, but he assumed she needed it to defend herself from both zombies and the sick men who had abused her.

But she used it for a much darker purpose. He didn't want to envision the level of sadness he'd have to endure before he'd consider ending his own life. Also, he pushed down the suffering she endured with the other women in those cages...

So he made for the exit as fast as his feet would carry him.

He turned the corner and ran the street with the Foxes' tipped tour bus at the far end. He had his rifle in his hands, ready to fire. As before, the zombies on the street stood around looking at him, but they didn't move from their positions. When he reached the big converted tour R/V, the chains around the feet of the zombies explained the why of it. Though he was nearly out of this horror scene, he stopped to look back.

The trap was nearly perfect. The one side of the street had seven or eight zombies tied to the building and some of the parking meters near the curb. At first glance they appeared to be threatening—as if they would cross the street. The zombies set up near the tipped R/V kept a wandering survivor from running in that direction. Left with few alternatives, a new arrival would see the “safe” sign on the wall and run to and through the mysterious door, to safety.

Only it wasn't safe. It was, as Denise said, Hell.

Victoria said we'd all be killing each other. We'd become bad people to stave off the worst people.

It was all coming true.

He skated by the remaining zombies and the R/V. A whole new stretch of city opened up in front of him. He could see to the west for many blocks as the hot afternoon sun shone in his face. Far ahead he saw one of the floating drones, but he didn't see the land-based model. For the first time, he considered that there could be several of each kind.

The middle lane of the five-lane avenue was dubbed the “suicide lane” by his older friends who could drive. It was the only lane where you could go either way, making it instantly dangerous. He chose that one and leaned into a jog again.

The rhythm of running returned, and after the first block, he felt comfortable with what he was doing. His heart slowed down from his panic, and he forced himself to take deep breaths to support his oxygen levels.

I'm going to run straight through. No more detours.

He made it two more blocks before he tripped on a small rope someone had strung across the road. He saw it as he approached, but ignored it because it—when he was ten feet away—was positively on the pavement. It was just past a small four-door subcompact that had been abandoned in the middle of the lane. His eyes were drawn to the car, and at the last second the rope sprang up.

He tumbled hard, and it knocked the wind out of him.

As he struggled to figure out what was happening, he heard the footfalls of someone running. Several someones.

Something smacked him on the side of the head…

When he woke up, it was nearly dark. Several propeller-driven aircraft buzzed above the city, but the cracks of gunfire nearby were of more concern.

And something burned on the skin of his neck.

I've been bitten!

He put his hand on the painful patch and was relieved and distraught to feel the familiar shape of a needle. Not a bite. While he was out, another drone must have hovered by, noticed he was still alive, and tagged him. For termination.

Getting to his knees took some effort. His head spun, and he felt as if he'd been kicked in more places than just his head.

He'd been relieved of everything. He'd been attacked by thieves this time. No rapists, murderers, or cannibals. In the hierarchy of evil, he figured he'd gotten off lightly.

It took him a few minutes to collect his thoughts, then snake his way to the nearby derelict car. The metal hulk would give him a piece of safety from which to consider what to do next. Part of him wanted to find a place to spend the night, but an angry part of him wanted to continue his run—no matter what. Victoria was still only an hour away.

And each second I waste out here, the more danger she's in.

That probably wasn't true. Deep down he knew she was as safe as anyone could be in the city. She was probably eating more cookies in her dorm room, wondering when he'd be back. If all had gone to plan, he assumed he'd have been back well before dinnertime. Now the sun was almost down.

Gunfire.

He also heard the familiar beeps of the droid tank. It was backing up, somewhere nearby.

The ground shook beneath him. A powerful explosion had gone off, to the north. A few seconds later he felt a dull shockwave of air.

The high-rises of St. Louis were many blocks behind him. The city was too small to have many, in the first place. He was now in a less-crowded section of the city with two- and three-story buildings along the street. Ahead he could see what appeared to be a larger seven- or eight-story hotel. Beyond that, more of the same stretched westward until he'd reach the much taller row of hospitals that lined the eastern edge Forest Park. He couldn't see them yet, however, because he was looking up a large hill. The street would take him up the hill that in a previous life had given his dad fits when he ran marathons in this town.

I can do this.

His fingertips felt the soothing cool of the car. Then they pushed him off into the sunset run.

2

Unencumbered with anything besides his shoes and jeans, he felt light and fleet. It was disappointing to lose another of his dad's guns—he lost “Moses” two weeks ago—but he didn't have that far to go, and despite his emotional and physical exhaustion, he felt good enough at the moment to assure himself he could make the jog to Victoria.

In a couple of blocks, he started to see some zombies on the ground. Shot in the head with a high-powered gun, just like he'd seen done by the drone tank. If he took the time to search the corpses, he was sure there were little arrows stuck to them.

More planes flew overhead. They conducted a ballet in the sky much as they had done many weeks ago above the Arch. Somewhere, out in the city, he imagined Jason and his Tiger tank driving frantically to avoid the ire of those birds above. His mom made the best decision possible when she abandoned the tank inside the lobby of the skyscraper. Until the planes were gone, tanks were more or less useless.

His mind drifted as he ran, though he shook his head roughly to try to keep himself focused on all the dangers around him.

Zombies, for starters.

Emotionless drones, for a second helping of fun.

Random falling bombs, for dessert.

And that didn't include the things he couldn't predict, like dog cages full of captive zombies.

Block after block passed by. He struggled up the urban hill and took in the view on the other side. The sunset was a brilliant orange and pink and was much more vivid than any sunset he could recall seeing in his life.

The world is on fire, and it looks beautiful.

Someone fired a gun—close by—interrupting his appreciation of the sky. The pavement snapped near his feet.

“Die you zombie scum!”

He had no time to argue. He sprinted toward the other side of the street doing the zigs and zags he'd seen a million times on TV.

Another shot chased him.

“That's right you little shit, run and hide. We're gonna get ya,” a deep male voice called out.

With no choices, he ran between two buildings. If the shooter was directly behind him, he'd be an easy target with no way to jink side-to-side. Another shot did follow, but he heard no ricochets or whizzing, so he began to think he had a chance. As he approached an eight-foot chain link fence blocking the alley, he sprang to the top, more or less carefully climbed over the top, and dropped to the far side. In two more seconds he had the corner of the building between himself and the bullets.

His breathing was heavy, forcing him to lean over to catch his breath.

This is where they get you. A million books on zombies say this is it.

What he didn't know was whether he would be shot for looking like a zombie—his upper torso was still covered with the dried blood of the dog cage zombies—or would be killed by a zombie for looking edible. The mosquitoes of July swarmed him, adding the final insult.

He was in an empty parking lot behind another brick building. A law firm name graced the one intact window on the entryway to the little office; papers were strewn about inside, and some had been tossed out the door, too.

Not knowing what else to do, he went inside. In the failing light, he could view the reception area with no problem, but a pair of hallways led away into the darkness.

The place had been ransacked, as he expected, but he was sure there had to be something he could use as a weapon. The reception desk was a coven of destruction, but he did find a sharp pair of scissors.

Better than my fists.

Feeling the smallest bit more self-assured, he tried to get deeper into the place. The nearest hallway turned out to be the restrooms. Nothing useful would be there; he didn't even have to go.

The other hallway went to the offices, and he intended to try the nearest when he remembered a zombie movie where something like this came up.

“Hey, any of you jerks hiding in here?” He said it loud enough to be heard in the hallway and attached offices.

The seconds counted by. He was beginning to think the coast was going to be clear, but the ugly moan of a zombie started from somewhere at the end of the hallway.

Then a soft pounding on a door, like someone with mittens was hitting it.

A minute went by with the same constant sound before he was willing to chance walking into the hall. Much like his earlier experience up in the Arch, it was sometimes safer to go with the direction where you know there was a zombie, than the one where you aren't sure. If the zombie wasn't on him already, it might be stuck behind a door.

The first office had an open door. Like the front of the establishment, everything had been tossed carelessly within the room. Even the desk had been put on its side. The computer looked new and fancy, and very broken. The only thing that was remotely of use was a coat rack with a suit jacket tangled up in its arms. Everything was on the floor, but he got busy unhooking the jacket and put it on. It was very tight, and he was almost ready to take it back off, but he figured it would be better than nothing right now. To be mistaken for a bloody zombie would be far worse than an ill-fitting suit coat.

I don't even know how to tie a tie.

Fortunately, there wasn't a tie.

The coat rack almost had the right length and heft to fashion a crude spear, but he quickly deduced it would be way too heavy. That got him thinking, though, and he searched the room for alternatives.

He settled on a stout wooden chair that probably had been used by clients anxious to sue for luxuries of the Old World. It took him three tries to swing the chair over his head and break it. When he finally managed that feat, he pulled out a leg. It felt about right, but it wouldn't make a very good spear. It still had some of the seat attached. It did make a fair club he could swing.

The scissors went into his pants pocket, then he picked up the club and swung it around the room to test it. He discounted his prior failures of swinging weapons and made himself believe this time would be different.

He walked back out into the night, with mismatched clothes and weapons.

“I'm coming home, Victoria,” he said with quiet certainty.

He ran some more.

3

Each building on the avenue had a small parking lot behind it, complete with dumpsters, abandoned cars, and the occasional zombie. Things were spread out so he could see what was coming up. That's how he saw the helicopter drone emerge from a building up ahead and shoot a tag at a couple of zombies loitering nearby.

Then it vectored for him.

Once more, he turned to the left. He ran to an abandoned pickup truck and slid underneath.

He listened for the drone to arrive. Gunshots were constant, though most of them were far away.

I need someone to shoot this drone.

The whirl of the blades sent air under the truck. The drone was somewhere above. He moved as far to the other side of the undercarriage as he dared. In the twilight, he expected to see the flash of aircraft lights, but the drone didn't seem to need them.

The wind shifted, and he sensed the drone was on the move. He returned to the center of the truck, waiting for what he'd need to do next. His club was useless. The scissors were a joke.

After a few moments, he felt the air blowing up through the legs of his jeans. He angled his head so he could see behind the truck, and the drone had nearly landed on the pavement behind him. A small tube on its underside pointed at him.

“Oh, crap!”

He slid out the left side, pushing his club with him. The machine lifted off, and he felt it get close to him as he crouch-ran to the front of the truck. The old Ford was in the middle of an empty lot. He had nowhere to go.

Maybe I could get inside the cab?

Before he could finish his thought, the drone jumped upward so it was on top of the cab, about ten feet off the ground. The little gun tube swiveled to him.

Almost without planning it, he hefted the wooden club and let it go toward the copter. It impacted the underside of the rotors with a loud crack. Pieces of wood flew back at him, and the drone tipped backward. He ducked himself down to the front bumper, worried it would tip over on top of him and catch him with one of the deadly blades. That would be a horrible way to die.

The truck lurched as the drone banged loudly in the bed of the truck. The blades weren't stopping, but they clanged over and over on the metal.

Rather than gawk at it, he ran.

As he rounded the corner of a building onto the next street over, he heard the drone begin to emit a high-pitched siren. It sounded a lot like a cry for help. He found a dark nook and squatted down to catch his breath, again—needing the break. The sprinting was more than he could handle.

While he waited, another drone flew by. It came from across the street and passed near enough he felt the wash of its blades. It went in the direction of its fallen friend.

“Feet, I need you,” he whispered.

There were no other—obvious—threats on the street, so he got back to it. Now he was without his chair-club. He only had what jiggled in his pocket.

I'm breaking the cardinal rule of life: running with scissors!

He giggled to himself and enjoyed the distraction as he notched another couple of blocks. That's when he tripped—again.

This time, it was more of a slip. He saw dirt or something on the street, but the low light was tricky. He didn't count on banana-peeling the underlying layer of fluid. He was back on his feet in a flash, pants soaked in god-knows-what, looking for the inevitable attacker, like the previous trap.

But nothing came at him.

The debris on the ground was horrifying. And he'd seen something like it before. Two wide swathes of crushed bodies lay upon the ground right there in the street. The Tiger tanks made the same horrific tracks when they crushed all the zombies between the warehouses earlier that day. But these tracks looked to be weeks old. They'd intermingled with dust, trash, and foliage. But here and there he could watch a lone hand move or the remains of a head with an ever-moving mouth. Where there were no bodies, such as where he slipped, the tanks had left slick tracks of blood and other gore. Crushed and compacted.

He tuned it out.

This isn't happening!

His stomach rebelled, but he didn't throw up. He ignored that he'd slipped on the effluence of the remains of things that had been pulverized days or weeks ago by heavy-treaded army tanks.

The scissors mocked him from his pocket. He was carrying a useless weapon in a world where rocket-propelled grenades were the order of the day.

Where the tank had gone was not his concern.

Whose side it was on was not his concern.

His concern was ahead. He stepped over the tracks and picked up the pace.

Running at night wasn't his thing.

4

He ran for about ten minutes while the darkness fell. There were no street lights or other electrical sources. He thought the darkness would be an advantage against the crazy people who might shoot at him, but it turned out to be a big liability for fending off zombies.

Almost without realizing it, he'd picked up a handful of runners. Among all the other noises of the city, and his own footfalls, he almost missed the sound of feet behind him. He kept to the middle of the street, hoping to avoid tripwires or piles of human remains, but a quick look back while running across an intersection let him make out at least three or four people chasing him.

“I don't suppose you're alive, huh?”

No response.

Damn.

He steadied himself. Forest Park was still miles away, and now he had a fan club. The risk of falling or getting delayed in any way had just become instantly deadly.

For a little while, he tried to tune them out. Just like any number of track and cross country meets he'd endured. He wasn't a contender in most of them, but he was a finisher. That was all that mattered, most times.

A large search light peered down from a helicopter to his right, as he cruised through the night.

Two jets flew very low, almost directly above his head. He absently thought about bombs—he was on their flight path—but resolved that if he was ever given time to think about bombs, he probably wasn't being bombed.

Blocks ahead he watched as someone fired a machine gun—an honest-to-god machine gun—as they sent the tracers skipping across an intersection. The rounds danced from his left to his right. A big spotlight at ground level illuminated the intersection for a few seconds, then turned off.

He considered slowing down so he could avoid that cross street until the shots were gone, but slow wasn't in his vocabulary. He continued ahead, though it didn't look like the bullets were letting up.

At the last intersection before the dangerous one, the attack stopped. He picked up his pace, intending to get across in the lull.

Did they stop, or are they reloading?

That was the most important question on Earth.

When he arrived at the road, he looked both ways as he would on any other run. A pair of Humvees were far down the road on his left. Shockingly, both sat under powerful spotlights, almost like they wanted to be seen. Each also aimed searchlights where they fired their guns. They were two intersections down, and they each fired down different roads. At that moment they weren't firing his way.

He sprinted. The cross street was huge—it felt like a superhighway—and it took him an eternity to cross it. The entire time he imagined the gunners changing their aim, so the bullets came his way.

A tracer flashed in front of him.

He'd made it a little over half way, but the rounds started passing in front of him.

The searchlight caught him in full view.

He threw himself down and lined himself up so his head faced the guns. He didn't know if that was a bigger risk than spreading himself out lengthwise, but it seemed to make sense. His head was turned so he could see the runners behind him.

Five or six had tagged along. They were closer than he figured they'd be.

Unlike him, they made no effort to get low. As the gunners up the street noticed their rounds were making contact with something, both gunners focused efforts on Liam's intersection. The runners stood out in the glare of light.

The first zombie was halved, and he fell with a disgusting splash to the pavement. He'd only made it a short ways across.

Liam used the distraction to claw his way toward a body that had been shot earlier. It put something between him and the gun trucks, though it would offer no protection if the bullets wanted him.

One gunner stopped, but the other swept the entire road again. It brought down a second zombie, and when it hit, the tracers spun off in odd directions. In the uneven light, Liam saw the woman get shredded.

The second gunner started up again. His shots were short, so the rounds hit the road between Liam and the Humvees, and the rounds skipped over his intersection. Several skipped right over his head. Some made funny sounds as they went by.

One of the runners made it all the way to Liam and tripped over him as he lay there.

As was common with the zombies, it struck the ground with great force, without using its arms to catch itself. The hollow slap of its skull on the asphalt would have been funny in any other situation. Now, not so much.

The zombie seemed to notice him as it struggled to get up. Instead of finding its feet, it crawled toward Liam. It wore shorts and a white tank top with bloody accents.

He struggled to get out the scissors.

Several more rounds whizzed right over the zombie.

“Just a little lower,” he shouted, knowing he wouldn't be heard.

The gunfire stopped completely.

He propped himself up on his elbow, intending to prepare to fight the crawler, and the gunfire resumed. Both guns angrily pounded the intersection like it had killed the gunners' pet cat.

The zombie was unafraid. It closed the distance. The scissors felt miserable in his hand, but he readied them.

At the last second, he gambled on another tactic.

Using his experience with squats, he got to his feet and then sprang up.

The tracer rounds bounced and skipped wildly further down the street, but he ignored the danger. As expected, the zombie got to his feet as well.

All the better to grab my prey...

He dropped back down and tried to continue drag-crawling himself across the street. His black suit jacket would be harder to see than the man's white shirt. Or, he hoped that would be the case.

A repetitive thumping noise sounded from the zombie. It had been struck several times in succession, but it stumbled after Liam. He moved as fast as he could on his hands and knees, but figured if the zombie caught him—it would bring the angry thumps with it.

More impacts.

He imagined a tracer flew underneath his chest as he was on his hands and knees. Maybe it was the fear.

He picked up the speed like he was doing exercises with his track team.

“Who can cross the intersection the fastest, without standing and running? Go!”

In ten seconds he was across and had another corner of a building between himself and the gunners. He got to his feet and looked back.

The pursuit had been wiped out. The zombie closest to him had huge chunks removed from his chest, and one of his arms had been taken clean off. His white shirt had turned sickly black, and blood poured from a large hole in its head. It had taken the full force of an untold number of machine gun rounds. And, it had almost made it.

The lights flicked off.

Liam waited for fifteen seconds and then peeked around the corner. The Humvees were aiming their lights down other roads now.

Behind him, a couple of runner zombies came into the intersection, saw the lights, then headed that direction. It was as if they'd been following him but now had juicier targets.

Since they had lights on themselves, along with powerful weapons, he allowed that he was glad the zombies were targeting someone else for a change. If he wanted to get safe, getting to those guns might be the right choice to survive the night, but that wasn't the direction he was heading.

His journey westward continued.

5

He tried to guess how far he'd come since he'd left the Polar Bears. With all the distractions and changes in directions, he estimated he'd gone three or four miles. That left at least two to go.

A twenty-minute run under ideal conditions.

He felt the dead weight of fatigue hit him hard. The combination of the drain of adrenaline and the fall of night had him wishing he could get off his feet and rest.

Push on!

The zombies were out there, but he kept moving fast enough they couldn't see him. He thought there could be runners behind him, but he couldn't be sure. His footfalls were stealthy compared to the zombies, and if they were back there—he'd never assume they weren't—they were very quiet.

More gunfire from every direction in the city. The chatter of the machine guns was distinctive, but a thousand other guns were being discharged over the urban landscape. Rarely, someone would shoot close enough to worry him.

This city has lost its mind.

If he looked down the cross streets to his left, he'd often see the tracers of the Humvees two blocks over. They skipped or arced to the west in the same direction he was going. But they couldn't reach him.

When he was only a couple blocks outside Forest Park, he saw the dim lights of the medical towers ahead. They still used generators to keep the places lit and functioning. They called to him.

“I'm here, Liam.”

“I'm coming, girlfriend,” he said to the darkness. The reply was the ricochet of a bullet. It snapped somewhere close. That got him to move from the middle of the road and approach more cautiously.

As he closed the distance to the park, he became aware of where all the gunfire was originating. It wasn't just all over the city. It was a very specific point in the city. A perimeter, actually.

The boundary of the park was a combination of derelict cars, parking barriers, and whatever junk people could stack in piles. They'd filled the gap between buildings. It presented a formidable barrier to keep the zombies out, assuming the defenders had sufficient ammo and that the military wasn't instructed to bomb the place to oblivion.

But the larger problem was that he was now on the outside, looking in. Those gunshots were coming in his direction. The far side of a big intersection was blocked by city buses, dump trucks, and other large vehicles. A few men with spotlights walked on top, illuminating the zombies in the street outside their position. Gunners would then dispatch them. A ton of bodies littered the intersection.

They appeared to be using a similar tactic as the military down the road. They were drawing in the zombies by using light, which gave them clear shots at the easy targets. The biggest difference was the caliber being used. No machine guns or tracer rounds, here.

Liam heard men and women yelling from across the street, but they sounded as if they were on the other side of a wide river. The zombies in the “river” between them kept him from yelling out to them. In the darkness of night, anything could happen.

A jet screeched overhead.

Choppers whomped in the distance.

Always gunfire.

Amidst all the confusion, he felt something sting him on the back of his shoulder. He reached back and froze.

A little helicopter drone hummed by, well overhead. It moved with silent grace over the intersection, and he could hear the little wisps of air as the drone tagged other zombies standing out there. It didn't hurt to remove the little tag, and in the darkness he had no way to know what color his was. All he could think about was that he was now targeted for death.

A methodical cadence of gunfire erupted nearby. Four shots in a row. He searched the intersection as it sounded as if it were coming from that direction.

He saw it. It was on the next block. The little drone tank came out through the glass frontage of a fast food chain store. With a quick turn, it engaged some zombies on the parking lot, then headed for the road.

He threw down the drone's tag. He briefly considered throwing it into the flat, but couldn't say for sure if anyone still lived there. It would be a terrible way to die—some kid throwing a killer drone tracking device into your living room. One country music star was enough responsibility for him…

He crawled along the base of the brick home, looking for a way inside. It pained him to do it, but he needed a place to hole up until the light of day. He'd never get across the intersection, or the road, or the barrier, if he had to run out of the black of night to do it.

But he wasn't going to sleep in the streets, either.

There was a tiny side window to the basement, as he hoped. The home was very similar to Grandma Marty's. He had to push firmly with the bottom of his shoes, but the lock was weak. He pushed the window open and then slithered feet-first into the basement.

If there were survivors waiting down there—or zombies—he'd take his chances with them, rather than deal with that tank drone again. It continued to shoot at will in the night.

Please, just one night of safety.

It was rare for him to pray outright, but he was so tired he pretty much forgot Grandma's rule never to pray for himself.

6

He fell asleep and dropped into a dream. It was a vividly bright day in Grandma Marty's backyard. The grass was a lush green, and the flower gardens were in full bloom. While he walked, he studied the larger neighborhood. It took some time to process.

I know I'm dreaming. That's odd.

The small garage at the end of the lot was flattened. Every garage and fence on the near side of the alleyway had been similarly smashed. Several houses, including the one next to Grandma, had been burnt to the ground. He made sure her home was OK, and to his relief, it stood with resilience as it looked down on him.

The top level was Angie's apartment inside the two-story brick building. So many memories flooded his mind, but he kept grounded by remembering he was inside his dream. Being in this house, so much like hers, probably jogged something in his memory.

“I'll avoid Angie's room like the plague,” he said with laughter. He figured if he was dreaming, he might as well enjoy it.

From inside Grandma's house, he heard screams. In fact, they were coming from the basement—his old bunk space. Much as he'd done in real life, he went to the side of the house and found the narrow basement windows. He kicked one in, then slid through.

His bed was still there. It hadn't been touched. His gaming laptop was on the bedspread, just as he'd left it. While fighting the deep longing for the computer, he looked at the rear doorway. It was just as well he didn't try the basement door, the dryer he'd placed in front of that door was still there.

It was as if he'd just stepped out. Minus the fact the other houses were in ruins. That wasn't something he'd witnessed.

Am I seeing the house as it is now?

Another scream. He recognized Victoria. It came from deeper in the basement, which looked like a hoarder's stash, once he walked beyond his little living space. He inched through the junk and noted with some pride the gap in the rafters where his dad had left him the small-caliber guns. Those had saved his life, and Grandma's life. He was positive of that.

“Liam, please hurry,” Victoria's voice was soft and wistful.

He became driven. Deeper he went. The dream basement was different in one major way. It was much larger. The piles of junk continued for minutes while he struggled through, and then over them. He ignored the changing scenery below him.

Here, piles of garbage bags.

Next, piles of bodies, stacked neatly.

He had to crawl over a pyramid of beer cans.

Stacks of large bags of dog food.

What the hell?

Finally, he reached the end of the basement. His Grandpa had kept several shelves of old shortwave radios. Liam always assumed it was because of his time back in the war, but he'd never thought to ask. His Grandpa Al had long since passed away, and it seemed a waste of effort to ask Grandma Marty—a woman famous for not touching a piece of technology her whole life.

“Open the door. Help us, girl!”

A voice was on one of the radios. Or, more accurately, was coming out of the radio.

He studied the old-school frequency dial. It was circular with a little arrow that pointed to the various frequencies listed on the slider as it spun past. It looked like something from his Grandpa's days in the service.

Ancient.

When he got close, he could read the tiny lettering. The word “Victoria” sat between numeric frequencies. As if Victoria was a frequency.

He touched nothing but got close to the speaker so he could hear what was happening.

“I'm so sorry. I can't open the door,” a girl said with a forceful tone.

“Victoria, is that you?” He was in a dream, why not call out?

There were clear sounds of zombies. Groaning. Moaning. A distant call-to-arms zombie—he was still working on what to call that one. It sounded like a major infestation of them. Though the language was animalistic, he got the gist of it. They wanted to kill his girlfriend.

“Liam?”

It was her. She was in trouble, but he could help.

“Don't let them in! You have to survive,” he shouted.

“I know. I'm trying,” she replied, sounding tired.

He waited while the noises of the infected peaked on the broadcast dial. Whereas it started with lots of people cussing and screaming, it ended with only the sounds of zombies.

Victoria's voice was distant when she finally returned. “They're all dead now.”

“I know. You did the right thing,” he said softly. His voice betrayed the happiness he felt she was still alive. He'd helped protect her.

Liam woke up to see the treads of the tank outside his window. It was daylight, now. And he'd been found.

“You have to survive,” he whispered to himself, “because I'm pretty much dead.”

Chapter 4: Homecoming

Liam had no clue what to make the treads at the window. Was it just passing by? Looking for him?

His priority was staying quiet, but with the dream he'd just had it made him wonder if he shouted out in his sleep. Grandma had woken up screaming many times on their adventures, which called to question whether her dreams were as bad as his...or his were as bad as hers. She had said she visited Grandpa Al.

It can't be coincidence.

He focused on the window above.

The miniature tank plodded forward, to the left of the window as he looked at it. When it was gone, he ran to the short staircase to the main level of the house. The layout was all different, but the piles of old junk reminded him once again that his dream of Grandma's house was probably prompted by the similarity to this one. Even the wooden stairs were old and rickety, like hers.

At the upstairs door, he took it slow. The scissors were pointed toward trouble. When the door opened, he was struck in the face by the stench of the dead. He'd grown accustomed to the distinctive odor, though here in the stuffy house it was heavy enough to coat his nostrils.

He put the sleeve of his jacket over his mouth and nose to defend against the stench. One foot was backing down the stairs when he caught motion outside the window of the well-worn kitchen in front of him. The black drone hovered nearby. Behind it, another type of drone was treading air.

Slowly, he sank to the floor.

I'm not going to die in some random basement.

He drug himself over the linoleum of the kitchen, then onto the wooden floor of the home's central hallway. The front room was darker with 1970's shag carpet and thick drapes pulled closed. As he approached, the smell got worse. His eyes began to water.

He had no choice. The open windows of the kitchen wouldn't allow him to stay there, and the lack of exits in the basement was a deal breaker. The darker living room was the best of a bunch of crappy options.

When he got in the room...

He'd seen a lot the past many weeks. Broken bodies. Horrible images of death. The captives in the cages. Zombies destroyed in the worst possible ways. But here he saw something that took his breath away...

An ancient man sat in a big cushy recliner. Compared to the chair, he was tiny. If Liam had to guess an age, he'd put the man right at one hundred.

Next to him, in a smaller chair, was a younger-looking elderly man—also dead.

“Why are you showing me this?” he whispered through his jacket sleeve. After he'd said it, he wondered who he was asking.

His belief in God had waxed and waned over the last few weeks. It was strongest in the presence of Grandma Marty but had flagged as he was exposed to more and more degradation in the Zombie Apocalypse. Victoria helped bolster his belief, but now she wasn't around, either. It was disconcerting to think his belief ultimately came down to whether or not those around him believed.

However, the sight of the two dead men in the otherwise normal-looking living room did nothing to inspire belief in a higher power. Just the opposite, in fact. These two men had given up...

He wanted to look away, but he was drawn to them. Made himself look at them. It couldn't be coincidence he'd seen three suicides in a row...

Don't let this be you, Liam.

It reassured him. He would never allow himself to reach that low that he'd take his own life.

“Fight!” the triplets had told him.

Hey, at least you don't have to climb out of a grave today.

He silently laughed, but the day was young. Anything could happen.

Finally, as he was on the verge of looking away, he saw something important. It was the cause of such devastation on the bodies of the dead men.

The double-barreled shotgun had fallen between the two chairs. And there on an end table was a box of twenty-five shells. It was worth the smell and the fright to get a real weapon.

He was already on his knees, so he crawled to the gun and pulled it from its cranny. He tried to watch both men, assuming they were going to wake up and attack him—even without a good portion of their heads. Neither moved a dead muscle.

When he had the gun, he got the shells, then moved across the room and sat up against the wall. The smell was ripe, the drones were somewhere outside, and he felt his day was looking up.

The shotgun had been chopped. Rather than the stereotypical hunting shotgun, it had been made to look like a rap gangster's weapon. The chamber broke open so he could feed in two side-by-side shells, then he snapped it shut with force. He set it over his legs, using it as a substitute comfort blanket.

Then, he waited.

A shadow passed over the front windows.

If a round came through the glass, he tried to imagine where he would run. Maybe he would jump in the chair with the old man and use him as a meat shield. He was positive something like that had been done in the zombie books he'd read. He got lost in thought, asking himself if he had it in him to pull the decaying corpse on top of him...and the drone was soon out of sight.

I have to get out of here.

2

Armed as he was, he risked getting closer to the windows to see what was happening outside.

On the front side, the house abutted the main street which was now the outer perimeter of the Forest Park refugee camp. On the far side, there were a string of urban flats with the taller medical buildings behind them. In the daylight, he saw the line of cars and buses blocking the intersection, but also the amount of work that went into boarding up each house along the street. Cars had been wedged in the narrow corridors between each house, further reinforcing the defenses.

After establishing his bearings, it was clear he'd run too far and was now on the north edge of the park. He was closer to the west side, but it was a beneficial error because it put him nearer to Victoria's campus and dorm.

He crept back to the kitchen so he could see the backyard, but he was pretty sure one of the drones was still back there. The ominous hum kept him on edge.

The glass door shattered, and something slammed into the wall near his shoulder.

Though he was already on high alert, it caused him to freeze in panic.

While he watched, a mini tank crumpled the aluminum storm door and drove itself right into the kitchen.

The black drone was behind it.

Run!

He spun around and ran for the front room. Another gunshot hit a lamp next to him as he ran. He felt the splash of glass on his right arm.

The door to the outside was ahead of him. An array of possibilities scrolled across his eyes.

Fight the drone with the shotgun. Not likely.

Run parallel to the Forest Park perimeter. Get caught by the air drones.

Run toward the perimeter across the street. Get shot by the defenders.

The door took a few seconds to unlock and open. The front screen door was also locked—the owners must have bolted the place down—giving the tank drone extra time to crunch through the kitchen table and chairs. He could hear it breaking those things apart.

When he made it onto the front stoop, he had to make his choice.

It wasn't a hard decision. He ran across the street.

It was the only scenario that didn't directly involve mindless drones.

Liam waved his arms in a regular pattern as he fled into the street. His shotgun was in one hand, but he didn't point it at the defenders. The hope was the humans over there would see him and, most importantly, not shoot him as a zombie.

“Help,” he shouted as he ran.

The gunfire background noise of the city was ebbing low at the moment, giving him a chance to be heard. The street was several lanes wide.

Much to his surprise, the defenders didn't welcome him. Gunfire came in his direction.

“I'm not a threat,” he shouted. But he also turned, and got very low. Now he was running down the middle of the street, in full view of the defenders and the drones.

Smooth move, Liam.

He looked back to the house. Two drones had come over the top of the house and were in pursuit. The tank drone was probably still inside, though he imagined it storming out of the front part of the house like some kind of mechanical Kool-Aid Man.

Ahead, he saw an incongruity in the pavement. A chance at escape. Already running, he ran as fast as his feet could carry him.

When he reached the sewer lid, he slid down and got to work lifting the circular piece of iron. As any number of books and movies would attest, all he had to do was lift it and start his climb down. There was no way the drones could follow, nor could they remove the lid if he shut it behind him.

But, he was betrayed by TV. The lid was heavier than he imagined, but it also didn't have any hand holds for him to grab. Instead, it had a series of small holes. He would need a big hook to lift it.

Torn between running some more and struggling to get a couple more fingers in so he could keep trying—he never even budged it—he felt the blast of air currents from a drone. It was the black one. The white one was nearby but seemed to be satisfied to stand off from the action.

Liam put up his hands, then stood. If he couldn't sneak down the drain, and he couldn't make it to the living people in the blockade, he wasn't going take a bullet while lying down. The drone didn't seem vulnerable to a shotgun blast, which was just as well since he left the gun lying on the ground. A part of him hoped whoever was controlling the drone would see him surrender, and not order it to kill him. The gun on the bottom was only five feet away, pointed at his neck.

Right where I got hit with the tag from the other drone.

While he marveled at the ruthless efficiency of whoever was controlling the drones, he didn't immediately hear the nearby gunfire. Only when bullets started to snap off the outer shell of the drone did the threat present itself.

He ducked back to the ground.

The drone rotated, so it faced the park defenders back at the intersection. They were only a hundred yards away. A bullet whizzed by—missing both him and the drone. Danger was everywhere.

In his haste he forgot to grab the box of ammo for the shotgun, so he only had the two shells he'd loaded earlier. Unsure if he was doing the right thing, but unwilling to do nothing, he picked up the shotgun.

More pings hit the drone; it returned fire with a few quick shots.

Liam did the only thing he could think of that might help. He aimed for the drone.

The white helicopter shot one of its tagging arrows at him as if to defend its black mate. It hit him in the meat of his shoulder and hurt much more than the last one.

Now angry and scared, he focused on putting the two rounds in the most vulnerable part of the floating menace next to him. He couldn't identify a definitive weak spot in the workings, so he just aimed for what he figured was the backside.

He pulled the first trigger and felt the powerful recoil. The target erupted in a flurry of sparks.

When he pulled the second trigger, he was a little bit off target, but it tore into the upper mantle of the drone and also probably struck the rotors. It was hard to tell because he was hesitant to look directly at it as he fired in such proximity.

The black drone dipped a couple of feet after the second shot, then recovered. A smell of burnt electrical components washed over him. It also stopped firing.

The white drone repeatedly fired at him, but the little arrows were more of a nuisance than anything.

He ran for the blockade.

3

As he ran for the people, several dogs sprang out from among the houses on that side of the road and made directly for him. In happier times the wild dogs might have been looking to him as a playmate. Today, he wasn't so sure. At the lead was a wicked-fast dark-brindled Greyhound.

He concentrated on avoiding the bodies of zombies that had been shot while keeping a good pace across the open roadway. Though it might have been unnecessary, he waved his hands from time to time, to signal he was intelligent. All it took was one nervous shooter. He'd read that trope a thousand times.

The black drone continued to sputter where it was, and the white drone followed him for a short time, continually punching him with tiny tagging spears. In a matter of seconds, the Greyhound caught him, and he believed the dog was going to jump on him and attack, but it decelerated at the last second and paced him. The other dogs surrounded him, but they didn't attack, either. He felt as if they were conducting escort duty, though he recognized he was in full-on panic.

A few dogs yelped as the drone fired tags at them.

Moments later, as he neared the intersection manned by the people of Forest Park, they waved him in between two of the large vehicles. The dogs trotted down the street, rather than follow him, leaving him to wonder about what the strange pack represented. The drone went after the dogs.

Above, several men and women aimed rifles back into the street, but they held their fire. He simultaneously hoped they'd fire on the drones, but not on the friendly dogs. He was too winded to make suggestions either way as he ran through the makeshift gate.

“Close it up,” a clear male voice called out.

Liam ran twenty yards beyond before stopping behind the barricade. The wreckage of another black drone littered the street and provided a suitable resting point. Though he only ran for a short distance, he'd spent it all on the last sprint. He was breathing hard and was hunched over when a man about his dad's age found him. He wore a blue baseball cap with a C on it, and had a cheerful face bracketed by a dark, full beard.

“You got lucky, kid. We nearly shot ya.”

“Yeah...I noticed.” He picked off the tagging darts. There were ten of them, all on his right side, and back. “Did you see those dogs?”

“Streets are full of dogs. You know how many people let their dogs go? They thought they was helping 'em out. But, yeah, them dogs was acting real strange. Happen to you a lot?”

Liam shrugged, not sure himself.

The man helped him pull the darts while he spoke. “And those droids been sweepin' nearby for a couple of days. We saw 'em down the streets toward downtown. This is as far west as they've been, so far as I know.” He moved in front of Liam so they could talk face-to-face. “But this is the first time I've seen them bother a healthy person. That's why we shot it.”

“What about this one?” Liam pointed to the broken drone on the ground.

“Dunno. My shift started a couple hours ago. Heard there was a shooting here last night. Something about sneaky zombies.”

He'd said it with something Liam read as incrimination.

Though he was covered with dried blood, which had blackened and cracked all over his chest and hands, he still wore the suit jacket and carried a now-useless shotgun. If he pretended to be a zombie, he figured he'd have no problem being a convincing specimen.

“I'm not a zombie. I promise.” He set the shotgun on the ground. “And I'm not a threat, either. I just came here to find my girlfriend.”

The man laughed. “This is about a girl? Well, why didn't you say so?” As Liam stood up straight and continued to catch his breath, the man called back behind him toward the roadblock. “Hey Sue, this boy is here on a count of a girl.”

More laughter. And a few cat calls.

“We had Black Widow here last night,” one man cried out.

Liam felt his cheeks redden, mostly from anger.

“Don't take it personally, kid. These people haven't had much to laugh about. We lost a heaping of good folks overnight. Helping you find your girl is something any of these people would rather do than shooting at those dead things, ya know?”

He calmed back down. After what he'd seen on his run, this was nothing to fret over.

“I tried to come in last night, but you shot at me.”

The man smiled. “Have you looked at yourself, kid? I don't even think your girlfriend would recognize you.”

“She and I end up like this a lot.”

The man re-appraised him. “Why do I feel you're not telling a fib?”

He reached out a hand. “My name's Randolph. I'm one of the suckers in charge of this intersection.”

“Liam. Why are you a sucker?”

Randolph looked around, apparently to see if they were out of earshot of the others. “I'm guessing you came from downtown?”

Liam nodded.

“We see the planes overhead. Hear the battle. Now these drones show up shooting. I'm managing the gate on the edge of it all. What the hell is going on out there?”

Wow, a question I can answer.

Liam thought of a movie where they made fun of an obscure guard for having the answers to some of the most secretive mysteries of the organization he worked for. Now, the table was flipped. He knew some of the big secrets of the Zombie Apocalypse, and this guard knew nothing.

“To the south there's a pit mine full of hundreds of tanks from World War II that some secretive group represented by a lizard have been stashing for fifty years. Don't bother trying to collect them, though, because a cemetery's worth of undead soldiers are guarding them. But if you do get a tank or two, don't drive them downtown. We tried that. Warthogs dropped from the sky to kill our Tigers, but we survived long enough to reach the Polar Bears. Let me tell you, if you want some tough fighters on your side, da 'Bears are the people you want. They're part of a hundred-year struggle against government corruption, led by families like mine, so it would seem.”

He took a deep breath. “And finally, the United States government has been infiltrated by a secretive bureaucratic organization called the National Internal Security. They're trying to hunt down elderly people like my great-grandma, but they're also leading a massive convoy from the East Coast to their new home here in St. Louis. The Polar Bears, led by a school teacher holed up in a building downtown,” he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder, “is waiting for them. Oh yeah, and my mom used my video game to lead a national march across the country before the zombies came.”

Randolph watched him the whole time and nodded where appropriate. Liam waited for the laughter, but it never came.

“Your mom was a leader in the Patriot Snowball?”

“You've heard of it?”

At that, Randolph finally did laugh.

4

They chatted about his statement for a few minutes. Randolph turned out to be an active listener who asked a lot of pointed questions about many aspects of his previous outline of events. He took Liam's story at face value, which pleased him greatly, but they couldn't make any sense of the tail end of his tale. Neither had any clue about the drones. Liam explained the relationship between the floating ones and the tank model on the ground, but it was a mystery who controlled them.

“We know the Army's nearby. They shoot those machine guns up and down the roads in the night. They spray rounds down their firing lanes, knocking down lots of infected. Only zombies would be dumb enough to get into those kill zones.”

Ummmmm.

“We have to hide when they shoot because those things travel up the road to our blockade. Had one woman get clipped when they first did it. She'll live...”

They both stood looking back toward downtown as the conversation lulled. It gave him the chance to look at the reverse side of the blockade, where the shooters were on watch.

“Why don't the zombies come over the top of your roadblock?” He'd seen them stack up and get over larger obstacles.

“We've had some close calls, but those days seem to be gone. Now...they wander in alone for the most part.”

“You think they're thinning out? There were still a lot of them downtown yesterday morning.”

“I don't know about downtown, but out here in the Central West End, we haven't seen groups of them for days.”

“But there are still piles of them in the street.” He had wondered about the bodies even before this street. Back when he went into the pit mine, he'd noted many of the same zombies he'd faced on day three were still lying along the railroad tracks on the property. It was like they didn't decompose.

“Yeah, we have nowhere to bury the dead, so we haven't been exposing ourselves out in the street to collect them. We take fire from resident human stragglers over there, just to keep us from trying.”

“I was shot at, too,” he reminded Randolph. “It's the Wild West.”

“You're safe here. We got somethin' good back in the park. If you've been there, you know.”

The park!

“Thank you, Randolph, for getting me through your line. I'll never forget it. But I have to keep moving.”

“I understand. My wife is holding together a little lean-to in the camp. It's what passes for a life, until we get back on our feet.”

“You think this is going to end?”

“Kid, I did a tour in Afghanistan, right at the beginning. I saw town after town of people living in rock huts. No clean water. Little food. No concept of hygiene. Weather and landscape that would make most men want to lay down and die. Yet they did just dandy,” he said wistfully. “And so can we. Every structure you see is a rock hut. Basic shelter. Hygiene is going to get dicey. Food...iffy. We have good climate, lots of vegetation, good crop potential. We have it way better than those savages, don't ya think?”

“But we have zombies. Are we going to fight them forever?” He wasn't sure why the guy would know...

Randolph thought about it, then answered in a way that reminded him of any number of school lectures. “Are you willing to fight them forever?”

Liam thought about a scene in the far future. He and Victoria are sitting on the front porch of a large farmhouse, watching their kids play nearby. A zombie comes stumbling out of a row of corn...he has his rifle at the ready in a flash. But Victoria, the better shot, puts it down first.

Then he imagines himself on his deathbed. A very old man. And a zombie comes crashing down the hallway of a hospital. Too weak to use a rifle, he lifts his lightweight 22 caliber pistol and puts a round into the brain pan of the undead.

Vigilance would be the price of life, going forward. Unless a cure could be found. Something to either reverse the process or...eliminate all of them at once. Right there, at the intersection, only vigilance looked like a realistic possibility.

“Sir, I just walked out of a building of heavily-armed resistance fighters and cleared six miles of Zombie Hell to be with a girl I just met. There is nothing I wouldn't do to protect her.” He felt himself grip the empty shotgun.

Randolph held out his hand to shake goodbye. “Liam, my young friend, it's going to take an attitude like that to get through this. What humanity needs now is fighters. People to hold back the savages. You've seen what it's like out there, and things haven't even gotten bad yet.”

They shook briefly. Liam had a look on his face that was easy to read.

“I know. You think the worst is over. Most people do.” He swept his hands around in all directions. “See all this? All those people back in the park. It's too much. The Afghans got by because they're spread out and have minimal needs. Our people have lots of needs.”

Randolph laughed sarcastically. “Drugs. Have you seen people in withdrawal from drugs? You seen anybody with the DT's because they got no more alcohol?”

Liam didn't know what to make of the lost souls back in the park. They might fit the description, though as far as he knew they were still on drugs.

“Some people will do anything. Absolutely anything. To get more drugs. And that doesn't include most of the people who died outright when they ran out of lifesaving medicines. Some of those people will still be out there, too. They need medicine every day, just to stay alive. What do you think they'd be willing to do to secure a few extra days of existence?”

“Anything?”

“Anything,” he said with sureness. “And until we all have our own stone huts, and our own source of reliable food to go with them, shooting the odd zombie is going to be the easy part. Knowing who to trust from your fellow man. That's going to be the part that requires real vigilance.”

Again, the concept of building a good group of people around him seemed to come to the fore. He and Victoria were the core; he was sure of that. He wished he could get his mom back, without her baggage of being important. Everyone else he'd hoped would join his team had either died or gone missing. He was a survival molecule consisting of exactly one atom. “Team Liam,” as he'd once described his survival group, needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Time to go find my other half.

"I've got to go."

Randolph shook his hand.

"Go get her, kid. Live a long life. Do it for old Randolph," he said with a cheeky smile.

"I will."

5

Liam continued his journey for another couple of blocks, but being inside the cordon around the park made the jog pleasant. After a few minutes, he reached the last street between concrete and grass. He'd almost gone full circle. He studied where he was. He entered the park midway between Victoria's dorm and Hans' house. He desperately wanted to run directly to Victoria's dorm room—where he hoped she'd be—but he had a couple of stops he needed to make. With people ahead, he tucked the shotgun into his suit jacket sleeve.

First, he ran to a nearby creek in the park. The water wasn't deep, nor particularly clear, but he wanted the blood off. He stripped down to his black boxers and walked in with his sneakers on. If the people nearby cared, they didn't voice any objections. For all he knew, the creek was for clean drinking water. He hoped not, since he was turning it practically red in his little pool.

He got out and air dried for a few minutes, content to rest on the grass. The creek was in an area of the park with relatively few people compared to elsewhere. Several black families had congregated together on a nearby hillside, while many more white families huddled downstream, on the other side of the creek.

Is this how it's always going to be?

To be fair, it could have been coincidence. He'd heard of racism, and had interacted with several different races of people on his journeys, but had never seen it in real life. His dad gave a passing mention to race when he was teaching him how to drive to Grandma's house in the city, but he couldn't recall the specifics of it.

When he thought he was dry enough, he pulled on his jeans. He ended up walking those back into the creek, since they were covered in gore, too. When he was done, only his empty shotgun and the jacket were dry.

Good enough. I'm outta here.

“Hey, guy. Don't go that way.”

The voice came from behind him. A greasy-looking young man, not much older than him, strode up. His red hair perched on top of his high forehead. His clothes were torn and dirty like he'd started the Apocalypse by visiting the charity bins for his attire.

“You want to stay away from them,” he nodded menacingly to the black families on the low hill. They were between him and his destination.

“Um, why is that?”

He cackled. “You nuts? They caused this disease. You touch them. You die.”

He was positively sure that was false, but not surprised rumors like that existed. The man didn't look like he was in the mood for debate.

“Oh, thanks.” He started to walk off.

“Hey now. Just a minute. There's a fee for good advice.”

Liam knew how this was going to go down. In one explosive action, he launched into a sprint. He aimed for a nearby group of people—color was unimportant—and had to excuse himself as he deflected off the arm of a standing woman. There was another creek behind them, so he had to readjust to his right, toward another group of campers a couple of dozen yards away.

The young guy was in pursuit, and though Liam seemed to have surprised him initially, he was taller, and by appearances, faster, than him. He was also cutting off some of the gap by angling toward where Liam was running.

To compensate, Liam turned and jumped into the creek. It was actually hip-deep there, so it took him many seconds to get across. He heard a splash behind as he got up to speed on the far side. Frantic for somewhere to go, he searched for a police car or other sign of authority.

I could use the scissors on him.

He laughed inwardly. Scissors would be more effective on a living person than a zombie, but it would be a weapon of very last resort. He'd long since lost the ability to get the drop on the guy.

There were a lot of people now, sitting and standing in small groups within the park, and many were angry at him for running through their space. The only consolation was complaints from those same people when the greasy guy went through.

Inspiration struck. He turned right, heading north.

His only real scare came when a burly guy tried to grab him. He figured a casual observer might think he was running from the law—or what passed for it in the park—and had tried to make a citizen's arrest. The guy managed to get a hand on his jacket, but he spun and let it slide off. It took real skill to keep the shotgun in his hands while he pulled that maneuver, but he managed. When the man saw the gun, he put up his own hands in a “Sorry, bro” gesture. Liam let the jacket drop.

Finally, he ran up the small hill he'd seen while taking his bath. As expected, the young fellow refused to pursue him, and instead stayed well behind while flinging insulting names and dire warnings about their next meeting.

He felt bad for using the black people as his shield, and he hoped his actions wouldn't get them in trouble in some way, so he kept running through their area, though with more care so as not to stir any resentments. If he managed to piss them off, he'd be out of places to run for help.

All I want is to find Victoria. Is that too much to ask?

6

Next, he stopped at Hans Grubmeyer's mansion to get ammo for his street sweeper. By an agreement between the old man and the Patriot Snowball movement, he'd consented to let them—

Am I “them”?

—use the supplies in his home in exchange for allowing him to call his people to deliver the Tiger tanks to him. Something they never did...

He decided to go in through the back door. Unsure if it would attract attention to himself, it seemed the stealthiest way to enter. The threat of the greasy runner kept him in the proverbial shadows.

Plus, he realized all the ammo was stacked on the back porch. He searched the pallets of boxes until he found a huge tower of shotgun shells. With much effort, he tore the wrapping and a paper box so he could grab a few shells. The first two went in his gun; the rest he stuffed in his jeans pockets until they bulged like chipmunk cheeks.

He walked in through the back door, expecting to find one of the Polar Bears. They were supposed to be guarding the place.

“Hello?” he called. Then, thinking he was being funny, he continued, “Honey, I'm back from the Zombie Apocalypse.” If Victoria was here, he wanted her to hear the funny Liam she'd been missing.

He wanted to hear her laughter.

The hallways were exactly as he remembered them. Despite the size of the mansion, the walking paths were narrow crevices because boxes of supplies were stacked to the ceiling everywhere there was floor space. All paths led to the front room.

He saw the foot on the ground and cradled his shotgun. A quick look behind him—for an ambush—showed nothing. The foot faced down, like someone was dead on the floor. Already committed, and having announced himself loudly, he continued to look around the corner so he could see into the main room.

Bodies were everywhere.

Oh God.

The two Polar Bears he'd met before he'd left were dead. They'd been pushed to one side of the room, but the nasty black pool of blood beneath them suggested they'd been dead for a while.

There were several of the infantry-ninja characters he associated with the NIS. He was surprised to realize he recognized them. One was the bodybuilder woman he'd seen the previous morning when they first got to the tanks. The other was Cliff Hammerich. He appeared to be dead as he sat up against a bunch of wooden crates, but he held a large wooden box over his outstretched legs.

Liam was going to investigate when he saw a light-colored long-sleeved shirt hanging on the back of a folding chair. In a room full of military equipment and dead soldiers, it stood out like a flare in the darkness.

Cautiously, he crossed the living room until he could reach for the shirt. He held it to his face and took a deep breath. In that instant, he knew who's it was. Was she dead in this house, or had she gotten out?

The shotgun felt great in his hands. It was a pretty good weapon for sneaking around the tight spaces of the mansion. He eyed the various hallways out of the room, wondering if there was an intelligent way to conduct a search. While looking down the left hallway, his eyes fell once more to the box on Cliff's lap. It seemed to call out to be opened.

“What were you trying to protect?” he quietly asked.

It was about the size of a breadbox. He gently lifted the lid. A white piece of paper sat on a bunch of rags.

“Dear Elsa. You lose.”

It meant nothing to him, so he gingerly pulled the towels and cloth rags out of the box. He didn't know what to expect, but the digital readout of numbers counting down was among the last.

“15...14...”

He sprang up, suddenly doubting which way he should run.

Go back where I know it's safe, or go out the front?

He decided to try the front door. It was locked. It wasn't just locked, he realized, it had been boarded shut.

Use the window!

Hans had shot through the open window when they first met. He knew it was big enough to escape through. But someone had placed a wire mesh over the windows and screwed the wire to the wall.

“Oh, shit!” he blurted.

The whole place had been made into a fortress.

Unsure how many seconds he had left, he took off for the rear of the house. He spared one second to grab Victoria's shirt on his way out.

His Zombie Apocalypse danger meter was pegged in the red zone. But while escaping an exploding house was the first mission, he also couldn't help think about falling and hurting his ankle. Once again, even something as innocuous as a sprained ankle could get him killed. He lost a second or two because of his extra care, but he whizzed by the porch full of ammo—the danger meter found a few extra bars—and headed straight into the palatial backyard.

His goal was a lone ancient pine tree in the middle of the grassy landscape. Fifty feet away.

He was halfway there when the first explosion rocked the house.

Keep going!

A second later a second tremor shook the ground. Each moment he expected a great fireball would reach out and smother him in death.

Two more blasts, and this time he sensed the heat, though it sounded like the explosions were still inside the house.

He was feet from the tree when he finally got what he expected. A massive explosion ripped out the back of the house and he felt a hot barbecue grill blast of heat on his bare back.

He jumped for the safety of the tree.

His only thought was whether Victoria was burning inside.

Chapter 5: Bathed in Fire

Liam woke up against the protective barrier of the gigantic pine tree. He'd found the only cover in the entire yard he could reach before the house exploded, and it saved him.

Thank you, Mr. Lodgepole Pine.

A prayer of thanks to God was on the tip of his tongue when a man in a military uniform popped through the shrubs near the back of the large yard. A black battle rifle pointed menacingly in his direction. Liam's sad-looking shotgun lay in the grass a few feet away. He'd let go of that, but had held Victoria's shirt during the explosion and subsequent cook off of all the ammo—a show which continued even now.

Six more soldiers appeared. He recognized the whir of a small drone hovering nearby, though they kept it out of sight. The men kept their distance from the house fire. Most took a knee, but one man jogged through their line and covered the distance to him. He kept the tree between himself and the fire.

Liam was too surprised to say anything as the man approached.

The Marine was far less jovial than their last meeting. Weeks ago, back at Camp Hope, Liam and Victoria had “escaped” into the woods, rather than help the military.

“Mr. Peters,” he said with maximum hostility.

Over the days and weeks of the disaster, he'd had his run-ins with the United States Marine Corps, and he'd discussed it endlessly in the down times with Mel, Phil, and his father. One thing that had come up was the proper battle cry. It was different for each branch of the military. He had no defense for what he'd done, so he was left with falling on his sword.

“Oorah, sir.”

“Don't give me shit, son.” Lt. Colonel Joseph Brandyweis strode next to him and looked around the trunk of the great tree so he could see the ruins of the mansion. He whistled. “I knew you were trouble. I just knew it. You teenagers are nothing but.” He turned back to Liam. “The world is burning in disease, and my task is hunting down a snot-nosed punk kid who seems to be at the scene of every big fire—and here you are causing the damned things. Is this all you've been doing?”

“Sir, I didn't cause this. It was—”

“Save it. I can't trust a word you say. Not after that stunt back in the woods.”

“I gave you that phone number!” He was a little more emotional than he wanted. But it was true he did give him the phone number of where Grandma Marty was being held. He didn't want that overlooked.

“Son, do you know how many of my men died because of that phone number?” His tone was only slightly less hostile.

Liam had a pretty good guess. He'd seen the bodies of the Marines, not to mention he saw the other V-22 Osprey crash in Busch Stadium while his plane dusted off stuffed with survivors. That was a question he didn't want to touch.

“I had no idea any of that would happen,” he said with proper contrition. Then, hoping with all his will he could change the direction of the conversation, he continued. “How did you find me? I've been...lost. By myself. For days.”

The colonel studied him. Liam switched places and imagined what he must look like. He'd cleaned himself up, but only superficially. He still had no shirt on and carried angry red welts from being stuck a dozen times by the tagging darts. His blue jeans were muddy, bloody, and dirty. His once-colorful running shoes were now drab brown. His hair was probably standing straight up like a troll doll.

He innocently ran a hand through his hair, as he wondered if it had been burned off in the explosion. His fingers ran through actual hair, causing him to sigh in relief.

“You look like hell, I'll give you that,” he said while scanning both sides of the yard. “And where's your girlfriend? She involved in this, too?”

Liam felt the sting of emotion. The mere thought of Victoria had caused him to tear up in front of the Polar Bear leaders when he was in their headquarters. He was not going to let that happen, ever again. Instead of being sad at his separation from her, he let himself be angry.

“No. No, she's not,” he said without really knowing the truth. “I've just spent days trying to get to Forest Park because she's supposed to be here. I walked up to this house because she was helping an old man here as his nurse last time I was with her. I found a bunch of—”

Can I trust you?

“—National Internal Security assassins lying dead on the floor of the place, along with some of my friends, and when I opened a box sitting on one of the assassin's laps, it had a curt 'Dear Elsa' note and a bomb inside. The only thing of Victoria's I found inside was this shirt. She wasn't in there,” he said with authority.

He expected an angry reply. Braced for it.

“What do you mean, a 'Dear Elsa' note?”

Liam was surprised. “Well, um, there was a note written on a paper inside the box. It said 'Dear Elsa. You lose.' though I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.”

“I don't know, either. But there is a Ms. Elsa Cantwell running the show in Cairo, Illinois. In fact, I had to avoid her to get my last Osprey in the air.” He looked at Liam with what he read as sympathy. “Everyone is stretched thin out here. Me and my boys are operating at the limits of our authority. Your grandma said you were risking your life to find a cure to this mess. She believed it. I didn't believe when she told me, but I've been thinking about it ever since. You've been at the center of every disaster my unit has had since the beginning. You should be dead ten times over. Here you are standing outside another firestorm.” The building behind them continued to flame up and cook off ammunition. “For the love of God, will you tell me what's driving you to always be in danger?”

“Only if we can get away from this fire.”

“Deal.”

2

Later, after moving a few backyards down from the burning home, he sat down on with the Lt. Colonel, and—as he had with the Polar Bears—explained much of what he knew about “the outside.” The only difference was he didn’t want to give away his mom’s role or the existence of the Patriot Snowball headquarters nearby. He painted the patriots with a light brush.

Brandyweis held a long, penetrating stare after his tale was done. Liam pretended to adjust his new black t-shirt, which had been liberated from a nearby abandoned mansion by one of the Marines. It had a picture of a honey badger, which he thought was hilarious. Still, he tried to meet the man’s glare, if only to convey that his story was mostly true. He didn’t lie. He just left certain parts out.

“So you went into a nightmare quarry filled with zombies based on an anonymous text message from someone in Utah? Son, are you having me on?”

“It’s true. We already had videos from Colonel McMurphy showing how dead people had been infected and became zombies, too. I think he was terrified of them. We were pretty sure those experiments were taking place near the national cemetery by that mine. And they were,” he said confidently.

Brandyweis held his cloth cap in his hand and slapped it against his knee. “Dammit. I was hoping you’d have something actionable.”

“You could go in the mine and see the graves for yourself. There are a lot of zombies down there.”

“So you keep telling me,” he said with skepticism. “Almost as if you want me to go down there and never come back.” Though the words were biting, he made it clear he didn’t believe Liam would do that.

“No, I wouldn’t recommend anyone go back down there...ever. I’ve never seen that many zombies in one place. Although—”

He’d left out that the cavern deep inside the mine was filled with military hardware and a big security vault door. While he still didn’t know the relationship between that room and the Patriot Snowball, he was ninety-nine percent certain they had nothing to do with it. They’d lost men investigating it, too. Yet, trusting Brandyweis had its own hazards.

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s just that I did see that many zombies in one other place. The research facility where I rescued my grandma. The zombies stood around the base of that building like they were lined up to get into a rock concert. Victoria and I zip-lined across them from a bridge, but there were thousands upon thousands, in one big group.”

“Zip-lined?” He eyed Liam again as if waiting for the big crack up. When Liam managed to hold his stare, he went on. “And that’s where the big pile of elderly is located?”

“Yes, Douglas Hayes and his research team were doing experiments at the top of the structure, and they dropped the dead people down into the lobby. It was one of the more gruesome things I’ve seen.”

“OK, at least I know you aren’t making that up. My team reporting seeing the same thing when they were in there. But they came in through the sewers...” He stopped talking. They both knew the fate of that team of Marines.

Brandyweis held his ear as he listened to his comms gear. He quietly replied “Affirmative” but continued to chat with Liam.

They sat on some patio chairs while behind another large mansion.

“I sent my boys into that tower thinking it was a legitimate research facility. We followed up on the phone number you gave us. Our intel said that phone was inside, and you said your grandma—and your phone—would be with Hayes. We even knew Homeland Security had rented the building for a year before the disaster—while the structure was being built. I had no reason to suspect we’d be ambushed by a damned research team.”

He sighed deeply.

“I’m not going to make that mistake again, but the world keeps getting more and more dangerous. If we’d found you a few minutes earlier, we might have followed you into that mansion and me—and my team—would now be dead.”

So would I, don’t forget.

“I’m beginning to think you lead a charmed life or something.”

Liam was quick to react, having had the same thoughts recently. “No, sir. I’m not charmed. My dad died from a stupid leg wound a few days ago. My girlfriend has gone missing. My grandma is probably dead if Cairo is under siege. Hell, my whole family is on a government kill list—”

He hadn’t intended to bring that up.

“—and, uh, one of my friends got blown up by a fifty-five-gallon barrel of explosives.”

“Back it up. Tell me about this kill list.”

Liam didn’t want to reveal anything he knew abut the Patriot Snowball, and though he was related to one of the primary leaders of the group—his Grandma Rose, who was also a congresswoman—he steered in another, less truthful direction.

“When I was in the Riverside Hotel to rescue my grandma, there was another guy there. A guy I think helped to kill your Marines. His name was Duchesne. He, uh, never said his first name. When he found out who I was, he said my whole family was on a kill list. Though he and Hayes were part of the same organization, Hayes said he removed my family from the list. The two argued about it.”

An embellishment of the truth, if ever there was one. After speaking it, he briefly thought about his own book. Once written, and with everything placed in sequence, would people like Brandyweis hate him for stretching the truth like this? Was history always written like that?

“Any idea why your whole family would be on a list?”

“They didn’t say.”

It’s OK to lie when you're protecting your family.

3

“I’ve got to make my move, son. I can’t park my oversized rescue plane for more than a few minutes here in the city, or it will get overwhelmed with refugees looking for a way out. There are a hundred gawkers watching your mansion burn. But I can’t have it flying around waiting for me, either. I need you to tell me what comes next, and we’ll go there together.”

“What comes next,” he said wistfully.

I’d like to settle down with Victoria, have a house with a white-picket fence…

“I appreciate your offer, I really do. But I just ran all the way across the city to find my girlfriend. She's my mission, right now.”

Liam waited for the angry Marine Corps drill sergeant routine.

Brandyweis gave him a thoughtful look, with the same deep fatigue everyone carried. “I'm up against a wall. I've got to deliver. But I’m going to give you six hours to find your girl. When you do, bring her back here,” he pointed to the stone pavers of the patio below him, “and we’ll pull you both out of the city.”

“What about you? Where will you be?”

“This may surprise you, but I can’t walk ten feet in a crowd anymore without getting swamped with requests for help. Word gets around, you see. People think the military abandoned them, and when they see us, some of them take that real serious.”

“Sir, the military did abandon some people. The entire East Coast, in fact.”

He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Elsa and her team assured us it was an orderly evacuation and that everyone was invited to come to St. Louis in the super convoy. Operation Renew. I’ve seen the images, though. It looks anything but organized, and people are pissed.”

“Is Elsa a general?”

Brandyweis laughed a healthy laugh. “Oh, no. No. She’s part of Homeland Security. They’ve taken over crisis management, which put her in charge of the defense of Cairo. None of the civilian leaders wanted the military in charge, though they still wanted us around to do the fighting, of course.”

“Homeland Security? Duchesne mentioned them as his cover.” He thought back to their first meeting on overpass south of St. Louis. “And he was really an NIS agent. Hayes said he was with Homeland once, but also with the CDC.”

The colonel’s jovial attitude nosedived. “Elsa is some sort of double agent?”

Liam waited for the thought-process to reach the goal line.

“No, that’s not possible. We had orders from multiple chains of command, instructing us to defer to her leadership in southern Illinois.”

Fumble.

“I don’t know what this National Internal Security stuff is, but it can’t be everywhere.”

“How do I know you aren’t NIS?” Liam asked in a non-threatening voice.

Brandyweis looked at him angrily, but caught himself. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. If there is a secretive group running around infiltrating our research teams, it could be anyone. But if I was NIS, why would I run my boys up that tower to have them killed? Why would I sacrifice one of my Ospreys in that scrum in the stadium?” His voice trailed off.

“I wasn’t serious,” Liam offered.

“No, you have every right. If what you say is true—and I have every intention of trusting you on that—you’ve been betrayed multiple times. You should doubt everyone’s motives, including mine.”

Liam felt a little guilty that he lied to him, but he remained silent until he thought back to that meeting with Duchesne in the hotel where he revealed he’d been tracking Victoria’s cell phone.

“It might help me trust you if you told me how you found me.”

After a few moments, Brandyweis stood from his chair. “It was pretty easy, I’m afraid, and not very creative.” He waved one of his men over. Liam expected it to be Jax—it just seemed that was destiny—but it was a well-tanned man with cropped hair and a serious face.

“This is Lance Corporal Thomas. He’s our resident techie. Show ‘em what you got there. Tell me who this is.” He pointed to Liam.

The black box-like device was about the size of a laptop computer. It had a screen on the top portion, and a keyboard on the lower section and a small saucer-like extension sticking out of the keyboard. After typing some stuff in, he held the device so the saucer pointed at Liam, then after a few moments, the Thomas read the report.

“Liam Peters. Age, sixteen. Blood type, AB neg. Current residence...”

The report was very thorough. Not only did it give details about who he was, it also gave details about his health, family’s health, and possible diseases he may one day get. That was magical enough, but when it started to get into known associations he saw where it was going…

“Victoria Hennessey, resident of Denver, Colorado. Denise Rawlings, resident of Jacksonville, Florida. Haylee—”

“OK, I get it!” he said with mock anger. It scared him that the computer had that much information about him, and it doubly scared him that it could know he had made contact with the source of the Patriot Snowball, but he had to know how such a thing was possible. “How the hell can it know who I’ve met? I only saw Denise for a few minutes yesterday. She killed herself when I was trying to save her...” His exasperation masked his fear that the strange device would list every contact he’d had earlier that day. His mom, Haylee, Travis, Jason Hawkes. The list went on—all enemies of the United States government, apparently.

Brandyweis motioned to the other Marine, giving permission to reveal the secret, he hoped.

“We were given these DNA sniffers a few days ago, down in Cairo. They wanted us to take read outs of the dead bodies on the ground so we could start to account for all the infected. They were perfect because we didn't have to touch them. They said special teams were going out with tracking darts so we could then find and identify the bodies.”

The colonel continued. “It was a long shot, but I put your name into the database and it returned several hits this morning. It says you’ve been tagged twenty-two times,” he laughed. “What have you been doing to get yourself tagged over and over?”

He gave the Marines his most serious look. “I don’t think they’re tagging zombies. I think they’re putting everyone down who’s still alive in that part of the city where I escaped.”

Both men laughed. Brandyweis responded. “Son, I appreciate your honesty, but—”

Liam held up his hand. “Wait! Where is the drone that you had with you when you found me by that tree?”

He got blank stares.

He clearly enunciated his words, as if speaking clearly would make them understand faster. “When you found me by the tree, I heard a drone. I know what they sound like. It was hovering close by. You had a drone.”

“Son, if we had a drone I’d have no reason not to tell you. There was no drone in the air when we found you.”

Liam scanned the big yard, confident he was being watched. He didn’t hear the whirl of copter blades, but his imagination insisted it was out there.

“We should get inside,” he said with the first hint of panic.

“OK, you wanna tell me why.”

“Sir, there was a drone. I’ve been running from them all morning. These things aren’t just tagging zombies; they're tagging everyone. And when they tag you, the next thing they do is shoot you.”

They busted through the swing-away patio doors of the mansion—no one had come out to chase them away—and made their way inside. Liam was comforted to have a roof over his head, and thrilled to have Marines surrounding him, but wary of the responsibility he was putting on himself by aligning with them. Though the colonel didn’t blame him for getting his men killed, he took it upon himself to give them every ounce of information they’d need, going forward.

It took him fifteen minutes to explain his encounters with the various drones. Then, another thirty of follow-up before they believed him. As time passed he began to doubt his own memory. Maybe there wasn't a drone, after all.

Still, he'd done what he could to prepare them. Just in case. Whatever happened next would not be on him.

4

The little tank appeared at the far end of the yard. Liam, almost glad to see it, pointed. “I told you!”

“Yeah, looks like you were right. Now let us do our jobs. You keep your head down,” Brandyweis said emphatically.

“Can I have my shotgun back?”

“No, you’ll be fine. You have six of meanest hombres in St. Louis guarding you.”

It was silly, he knew, but he pulled out the shotgun shells from his pocket and set them next to the wall. If he got his gun back he'd have a stash ready.

“I thought you had ten men?” he went on.

“I do. Four are keeping the Osprey in flight. Just stay down.”

Liam couldn’t guess how the Marines were going to handle the drones, but he knew they’d have a much easier job of it than he did. He assumed as soon as it was clear the Marines had him in custody they would depart.

“If they think you have me captured, won’t they go away?”

“That’s an excellent question. But I’m not going to risk it.”

The tank trundled through the overgrown grass of the yard. It wasn’t quite the same model he’d seen in the pet store, but he couldn’t readily identify what made it so. It had the same treads, was about the same size, and had a gun on top...but it had some extra junk on the top surface. It seemed smaller in the large grassy yard, but he figured it was about the size of a typical riding lawnmower.

“Give it a warning shot, Max.”

A loud crack came from the floor above. He couldn’t see outside, but there was no explosion, so he figured the sniper wasn’t aiming for a hit.

The colonel got up to the hole in the glass. “We are United States Marines. I order you to stand down,” he bellowed. He casually ducked back like he didn’t expect a response, and the other glass door shattered as the reports of gunshots rolled across the yard.

Liam popped up, against orders, to see the scene. The little tank in the yard was stopped, and looked like a lost child. No smoke from a gunshot. The shots had to have come from elsewhere.

“There are more drones,” he yelled, though he thought it was pretty obvious.

“Or ground pounders. We may not be alone.”

He hadn’t thought of that. If the NIS could track him, they may have figured now was the time to eliminate him.

A powerful green laser came from the hedge at the back of the yard. It pointed above Liam—to the second floor. Then a shot followed.

“Take it out,” he ordered on his radio.

The Marines fired at will. He put his head down as a natural reaction to gunfire.

The familiar crack of the sniper rifle rose over the din of all the other guns, including the colonel’s battle rifle. Brandyweis edged to a window, broke the glass, then waited for a response. There were several windows on the back of the ground floor of the house, and he broke each in turn. When he reached the last window in the large living room, he turned back toward Liam with a serious look.

“Get down!”

It reminded him of the frustration he’d often visited upon his dad. In their arguments over the past six months, he reveled in angering his old man so that he’d loose his cool. The colonel’s frustration at something as simple as keeping his head down was the same tone his father often had. He complied.

A couple of rounds came through the back window near Brandyweis. They struck some wildlife heads that had been mounted to the wall. An impressive deer with a massive pair of antlers fell from its mount after it had been hit.

A large mirror on the wall followed suit.

The colonel fired through a broken window, then pulled back.

Liam chanced another look and saw the drone tank had moved about half the distance to the house from where it was last.

He felt the air move near his head. A pop from the yard followed the clink of more glass behind him where the bullet had struck.

“The drone is getting closer,” he offered.

The colonel looked at him with a scowl, perhaps seeing the same futility as his father. Then he put a few more shots on target before again pulling back from the lead flight path.

A green laser swept the room. When it struck the broken glass of the windows or the remains of the mirrors on the rear wall, it broke into multiple directions like a laser show he’d seen at the Missouri Planetarium.

While he thought about that more pleasant memory, a small drone came in through the open back windows. It was hovering above him before he had a chance to move. It was different than the bigger helicopter drones he’d seen earlier in the day. It was more like the tiny drones he’d watched come out of the compartments on the Tiger tanks. It hovered on four small fans but consisted mainly of one central hull with a shiny black orb.

He searched for a tiny gun or even a tagging device, but it appeared harmless. He did begin to crawl backward, hoping to find a table or something solid he could put between him and the trespasser, but it exploded over his head before he got anywhere. It slammed to the ground and its fans shut off. The colonel had used his rifle to good effect.

“Run upstairs, kid. They know exactly where you are.”

He stood up to run, but the green laser found him.

I know! Get down!

5

Liam didn’t wait to find out if he’d been hit. He’d gotten good at fast-crawling over the past several weeks, and he crawled for all he was worth. First into a nearby hallway, then he searched for the stairs up.

Another Marine stood in the front foyer, peeking out a window next to the front door. His back was to him, so he wasn’t noticed.

The stairs were nearby. He was surprised that two of the green lasers blazed through two different windows and nearly touched when they reached him. Rather than dip, he jumped a few steps and continued upward. Too late, a bullet bit at the steps below him.

He hesitated at the top step. Daylight shone in the open hallway on the second floor, meaning a drone could probably see him once he made himself visible.

A few seconds into his deliberations, an explosion rocked the home. Smoke wafted up the stairs, and he could tell the explosion happened at the front door. The body of the Marine guard was on the floor.

Crap. Crap. Crap!

“Kid, over here!” Another Marine stood across the hallway, toward the far end. He waved from inside the door frame of a room.

Liam looked back down. The engine of a drone tank spun up, and it was moments before he saw the treads appear through the smoke. He threw himself into the upstairs hallway, righted himself, then fast-crawled again toward the open door.

“There’s a drone tank coming up those stairs. They killed your man at the front door.”

“Roger. Get in. Get low,” the man said with a gruff voice.

He slid into a huge tiled bathroom, then backed up against a clawfoot bathtub. The Marine continued to guard the door, his weapon drawn. Liam couldn’t help but notice he had a knife belted to his leg and carried a sidearm in a holster on his hip.

“No, kid. Get in the tub,” he said with force. He pulled a grenade from his chest rigging but waited until Liam was in the tub before he pulled the pin.

“Grenade in the front stairwell,” he said calmly. Liam expected him to yell, but the Marines seemed to be communicating via the comm links in their ears.

A few moments later, his tub rocked.

The Marine shut the door and ran over to him. The look on his face was a grim determination. “Kid, you won’t believe this. A flying drone caught my grenade and carried it down the hall before it exploded.”

It didn’t phase Liam. Nothing would anymore. “Can you try another?”

“All out. Been using them a lot, lately.”

“So what do we do now?” He climbed out of the tub, eyeing the window, and the trees of the backyard.

“What is this thing coming after you? Does it have a weakness?”

“I used a shotgun to mess up a flying drone from the back, but the colonel took my gun. I saw a drone tank before, but I ran instead of fighting it.”

As he talked quietly, he walked to the back window. The Marine yanked him back a split second before the green laser appeared.

“No going that way.”

“Sir, we’re trapped up here. Bathroom. North end of house,” he reported to the team. Then, facing him, he continued, “All right, kid. You get back in the tub. We’ll see where this goes.”

“I can fight. Give me a gun.” He eyed the sidearm.

“Well, it can’t hurt.” He pulled the gun out of his holster and handed it to him, barrel facing down. “Just don’t shoot me,” he said with a nervous laugh.

He jumped in the tub again, disappointed at how heavy the gun felt.

“The safety’s off, kid.”

There was nowhere to hide, so the Marine stood behind where the door would open. The large shower area was glass, so that wasn’t an option for anyone.

It was sixty seconds before he heard the engine of the tank drone in the hallway. It struggled to get up the steps, as the other had back at the pet store, but it sounded smooth as it trundled down the hall to his door. He jumped at the first bang on the wood.

Two green lasers appeared in the air above him.

“Sir, the kid is in a big tub. Safe for a few.”

The concussive force of the Marine’s rifle startled him again. He’d expected the drone to be shooting, but if there were lasers on the second floor, it meant the floaters were directly outside. They were engaging the only target they could see.

A spent shell fell into the tub, into his shirt sleeve.

“Ouch!”

He squirmed to get it out, and in the process stuck his head above the lip of the tub. He saw at least one drone outside, though there were two beams. The crack of wood followed.

“Get down!” his companion yelled between deafening blasts.

Many shots ensued, including the sound of the drone tank’s gun. He recognized it for what it was.

The Marine hit the floor screaming in pain, but he continued to fire.

I can’t let him die for me.

He stuck up his head, intending to fire his gun. The battle rifle was pointed right at him. Again, he ducked. After the Marine shot out through the window, the whine of an engine was punctuated by a violent crash against the window frame.

That was his cue. He got to his knees, then aimed at the tank drone. It looked twice as large as he remembered it, now that it was only a few feet away. The gun was unable to aim down at the injured man below it, so it was trying to back itself up to find the angle it needed to hit its target.

He fired several wild shots, then ducked back into the tub. The gun on the tank could hit him at that level.

A shot did hit the side of the tub, but the heavy steel deflected it with a dull thud. He felt it hit, but there was no penetration.

He was ready to declare a stalemate, but then he saw the return of one of the green lasers.

6

The first round impacted the Marine—he yelped—but the following four or five seemed to have missed.

The drone’s tracks came back into the room. They slid on the broken glass and debris as the tank approached the tub. With a final clank of steel on steel, it stopped. From the bottom of the tub, he could see the edge of the thing’s superstructure and the big gun on top, though it couldn’t possibly aim down at him as it was now too close. In a way, it was a classic standoff. He considered shooting the pistol, but there was no obvious point he could hit which would shut the whole thing down like you see in the movies.

“Liam Peters?” A distant metallic female voice called to him.

“Umm.”

One of the small drones hovered in through the broken windows. The force of the air from the fans filled the tub with turbulence. When it was over him, he saw both the black orb and a speaker in the plastic casing around it.

“Mr. Peters?”

“Yes. You got me.” There was no possible way they didn’t know it was him. He had twenty-two tags embedded in him which said as much.

“You’ve been a hard gentleman to find—”

Someone interrupted the woman in the speaker.

“Are you f’ing kidding me? She got out?” the voice said quietly in response. After a pause, she continued.

“I said, you are a hard person to find. I had to move drones all over the city to get to you.”

“Why?”

“Why, huh? Do you remember Agent Duchesne? I’m sure you do. You left him to die on that shipwreck.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s just say this is for him.”

“But he tried to kill me. I didn’t want him to die.”

He didn’t think the truth would help. He was happy to see the man die because he was responsible for infecting Grandma. Then he tried to kill them all in the river. That he died was a bonus, by his reckoning.

“The reasons are unimportant. We all do bad things in the service of our country. He was a big piece of my own future. So, thanks for that, you little shit.” The words were vicious, but the tinny speaker didn’t do them justice. He considered telling her, but his life was on the line. Humor usually backfired on him when the stakes were high.

“Well, aren’t you going to tell me who you are? My money’s on this being that dirtbag’s mom. You sound like an angry mom.”

Dammit, Liam. You said no humor.

“Mom? Are you really that stupid? No, I don’t guess you are. You’ve survived trips back and forth to Cairo, and I’m guessing you’re responsible for walking off with two of our tanks. Not the activities of an innocent child. Who are you with? Tell me that, and I might let you go, for now.”

He took a chance.

“Elsa? Is this Elsa? I have a note for you.”

Silence for a long pause.

“OK, it doesn’t matter. Who has a message for me?”

He didn’t know the who. Only the what. “It said, Dear Elsa. You lose. Then a bomb exploded and blew up the home of Hans Grubmeyer.”

The woman began to cuss but keyed off her microphone before she completed her first word.

She came back with serenity. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Peters. It gives me great pleasure to tell you your Grandma Marty is now dying with the miserable town of Cairo, Illinois. You left her here, and I finished her off. Her life isn’t worth a tenth of Michael’s, but it's a start. I have a list here with several more of your family members. It will provide a fun diversion from my more pressing duties, like rebuilding the world.”

Liam was crestfallen. He knew about the list but wanted to believe Hayes had been telling the truth when he said that list had been stopped.

His options were to grovel to this tinny-voiced drone or remain defiant until the end.

A violent series of explosions erupted inside the tiny bathroom. He figured the drone was self-destructing or something. It would be a sure way to eliminate him. For twenty seconds the room was a smoky echo chamber of ear-splitting bangs and the sound of bullets impacting heavy metal.

He closed his eyes, not because he was scared, but because he imagined debris dropping in his eyes from all the shrapnel raining on him. The drone bumped into the tub several times but soon stopped altogether. If the voice was still speaking, he couldn’t hear it.

A deep hum and vibration came from outside the house, rattling the glass on the floor. Then a hand touched him.

“Come on, sleeping beauty. Time to run.” It was Brandyweis.

He jumped out and followed. Three other Marines hovered outside the bathroom door, aiming their weapons up and down the hallway.

“Go! Go! Go! We’ll be out in thirty seconds.”

The other end of the hallway was a mangled mess. Where the grenade had gone off, it stripped the paint off the wall and punched holes through them in several places. The glass window at the end was blown out.

The stairwell was once the model of moneyed beauty. The fancy carpet and ornate wooden banister had been ruined as the drone bumped and climbed its way to the upper floor.

All of them were on the ground floor in moments. Brandyweis continued out the front door without stopping. Liam followed.

When he exited the remains of the front door—

Hey, this reminds me of my house!

—he was rewarded with a sight that thrilled him.

The V-22 Osprey landed on the wide avenue between the row of mansions and the large municipal park beyond. It was bouncing lightly as if it had only just landed and wanted to get back off the ground.

“Run!” Someone shouted.

He wasn’t going to wait for an invitation. He crossed the lawn, easily pacing the larger, gear-clad Marines. As he approached, a woman in a small window near the front gave a thumbs up sign and then adjusted a huge gun on her door. The gun barrel began to spin and soon rounds tore into the mansion behind them as she traded fire with multiple drones pushing rounds the opposite way.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

A Gatling gun. The similarity to the destruction of his parents' house was uncanny.

While the gun screamed up front, they ran up the ramp on the rear. It was already going up as he reached the central cargo space. He also noticed people from the park had begun to run toward the plane...but he tried to keep that in perspective. If he successfully found a cure, all those people would be saved. More than could ever make it on one flight out.

Once they realized someone was shooting guns in their direction—the overshots of the drones—the whole procession stopped and dropped.

He was just able to reach a tie-down strap to hold on as the plane cleared the trees.

My God, that was close.

7

When he could take a breath, he appreciated how close he'd come to getting crossed off the list. His luck held, though as the big bird morphed from a helicopter into an airplane, he cussed into the rotor noise: he'd forgotten the handgun back in the tub.

He needed a list to keep track of all the expensive weapons he'd misplaced recently.

The Marines plugged him into the comm system so he could communicate with the Lt. Colonel without shouting. They discussed the assault, Elsa’s role, and what it could mean for their next mission. Liam remained focused on the one thing he could understand from all the new problems of the day.

“I need to find Victoria. We can't leave her.” He wondered if they were flying high above her, or if she was far away, or...dead.

He had to know.

On a whim, he said the first thing that came into his mind. “Hey, sir, do you think that machine will tell me where Victoria is? Is she in the tracking system?”

“I sincerely doubt it. It might know her name and information, but not her locale. She would have had to have been tagged, like you were. And if she was in Forest Park before you, the drones hadn’t made it that far west.”

“But they did make it. You just saw them.”

He thought it was so obvious it didn’t need saying, but he was determined to get them to use the computer to answer for certain.

In minutes, the Marine named Thomas—his name plate said Zinsky—brought the laptop-thing. He punched in a few keys, then took a minute to look at the screen. Liam couldn’t see what he was looking at.

After too long, Brandyweis asked him for a report.

“Well, sir. The kid said she was in Forest Park, but this is showing her several screens away. It shows her near Cairo, Illinois.”

“That’s not possible!”

She promised she wouldn’t leave me.

“Sir, I’ve checked the data. She's definitely there. But it also has her account flagged. You better see this.” He motioned for his superior to come to him.

Brandyweis got up from his seat and bent over to read the computer.

“You're sure about this?”

Liam could hear the colonel talk on the comm system.

Thomas nodded.

Brandyweis turned to him. “Son, this is saying your girlfriend was tagged before the disaster. The notes say she was admitted to a routine exam when she started working at Barnes Hospital. While she was there, this tag was inserted underneath her skin.

His mind spun. Duchesne said they tracked her by her phone. That was an easy lie for him to make. If he knew the tracking was more insidious, it didn’t cost him anything to blame it on the phone. But that would also mean he knew people were being tracked before the sirens got things started.

Would Victoria have any idea?

They can find us both, at any time.

Staying with Marines suddenly seemed the reasonable course of action. “Sir, I’ll follow you to the end of time if you can get me to Victoria in Cairo. If she left this park without telling me, I think she's in a lot of danger. The cure has to wait for this one thing.”

The plane rattled as the colonel stood nearby, studying him. He felt the harsh stare of the man now dictating the next phase of his life, but he met his eyes. There was no weakness when Victoria’s safety was on the line.

He needed the colonel. Desperately.

Chapter 6: Trust Issues

While Liam was asleep in the basement nearby.

Victoria was in the video control room of the Whitaker building on the Washington University campus of St. Louis. She’d just seen herself on a video recording set in her dorm room—someone had been spying on her.

“Vicky,” said a man’s voice behind her.

She was startled, but not afraid. She knew who it was and settled herself so as not to give him power over her.

“Hayes,” she said without emotion as she turned on her heels.

“Oh, I thought I’d surprise you. You look like you expected to find me here.”

“When I saw the elderly on the monitors, I thought of you. I had a feeling we’d see you again. I’m sorry it happened so soon.” Left unsaid was that Hayes had her shot in a previous meeting, though their most recent meeting was complicated—he’d helped her and Liam escape from the Riverside Hotel.

“Believe me; I wish this meet up didn’t need to happen, either. But the situation outside is dire, and it turns out I need your help.”

She turned her hip toward him. “You want to shoot me again? Here you go. I'm still healing, so it will really hurt.”

Hayes shook his head emphatically. “No, no, we have to get past that. I’ve said I was sorry, and I am.”

His contrition seemed genuine, as it did the last time, but she could never fully trust a man who had shot a gun at her, no matter the stakes.

“You need Grandma Marty. That’s why you're here.”

A long stare. “I don’t fault you for doubting me—”

“You need her. Just say it.”

He was a middle-aged man, now dressed in khaki pants and a light blue crisscrossed button-down shirt. He often seemed jovial in their prior encounters. Like he somehow enjoyed the chaos.

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. I need her.”

“A ha! Knew it.”

“I need her, but so do you. We all do.”

“Yes, great. Not surprising. But before we get to that, why were you spying on my room? Are you a sick pervert, in addition to being an attempted murder—oh, I’m sorry, we’ve moved beyond that incident,” she said with mock conviction.

Now he started to look like he was off balance. “No, it isn’t like that. I swear.” He pointed to the video screen now frozen on a still image of her old dorm room. “I don't have access to my old, um, tracking tools. That room is the only link I had to find you again. If you hadn’t come back, I might never have figured out where you’d taken Marty.”

“And nothing I did there was of any interest to you, other than finding me?”

“Why? What happened there?” he said with too-obvious curiosity.

She couldn’t tell if he knew, but he’d watched part of the tape because he’d used the name “Vicky” which she yelled out when she thought she was totally alone in the room. That was bad enough. But her real fear was that he’d watched the entire tape.

Earlier in the day she and Liam had gotten involved romantically in her room, after several weeks together out in the wild. They both assumed they had the place to themselves and made good on that time alone. It was nobody’s business what they did, but standing in front of this video screen made something innocent seem tawdry and dirty. After her prior relationship disaster—summed up in that single word "Vicky," the intrusion hurt deeply.

“Just tell me how I can erase this tape. I’ll help you if I decide I agree with what you’re doing.”

“No questions asked?”

“Oh, nuh-uh. It doesn’t work like that. I’m going to ask lots of questions. I happen to know exactly where Grandma Marty is, but I’m going to guard her like my own Nana, for now. If you want to know where she is, the first step you’re going to need to take is to erase this tape.” It was her turn to point to the video screen of her room.

“Deal,” he said with his old charm. He went to fidgeting with the controls while she stood on and watched.

Maybe it was coincidence, and he intended to use the tape just to find her. But here he was in the control room at just the time she arrived, and he’d gotten her to agree to his terms. All he had to do was erase a tape he should never have had in the first place.

She sighed.

Was I just played?

Hayes stepped back. “Here, this button will erase that entire log. It’s been on a continuous feed, so you’ll erase the whole thing. Then I’ll turn it off.”

Studying the image, she tried to guess where the camera had been hidden. Her best guess was that it was in the closet at the back of the room. The view was through one of the slats on the metallic door.

“I’ll be destroying that camera when I get back there.”

He seemed hurt. “No, don’t do that.”

She held her hands on her hips, indignantly.

“I’m serious. Remove it, but don’t ruin it. The factory that made that camera is probably burning somewhere in China. They’ve been hit with this virus, same as us. If you destroy that piece of technology, there will never be another one like it. At least not for a very long time.”

“I thought you said you were working on a cure?”

He laughed quietly. “The last time we met, I believed we were on track to find a cure and save the remaining population. That’s true enough. But today, weeks later, I’m a little less enthusiastic about our ability to save human civilization.”

“Is that your job? Save civilization? Wasn’t it to spread a virus?”

He finally looked serious. “I deserve your scorn. I made the virus that was dropped on those marchers and hell was unleashed, rather than just giving some politician a victory. But I told you before; I’m a changed man now. I’m trying to end this disaster before it wipes mankind and his civilization off the Earth, forever. After everything I’ve seen, the race now is to save the former. The latter is already gone.”

“And so you tracked me down to help with that.”

“Honest. Let me show you what I’ve been doing here.”

He led her out of the control room, and down the steps.

2

“Don’t,” she said quietly.

Hayes had walked up to the double doors of the room where she’d earlier witnessed the zombies walking among the test subjects.

He turned to her while at the door. “Don’t worry; this is a controlled experiment.” She could just make out the smile in the low light. But when he turned back around, a zombie was at the window. Hayes jumped.

“Oh shit!”

He stumbled back a few steps before regaining control.

“They’re never at the door.”

“I might have riled them up,” she offered. They had scared her in much the same way before she left to go upstairs.

“Yeah, well, it’s all good. We’ll just have to look around that one.”

He moved back to the door, and she stayed close, but behind him. She didn’t trust him not to open the door and toss her in. That would make a fun “experiment,” she was sure.

The blood-soaked zombie hovered, but as she got a better look at him—he was dressed in hospital scrubs—she noticed he wore the equivalent of a bridle. A strap wrapped around his head, and a thick piece of leather or another material was wedged tightly into its mouth, so it was prevented from closing its jaw. It couldn’t bite a banana, much less skin.

“When I was here, I saw these zombies walking through those people in the beds. People I knew during the day, today. I watched over one of them, only to find out they were being abused at night by this sick prank.”

He turned back to her. “Prank? This isn’t a prank. Far from it. We’re witnessing the first zombies not to attack humans when they have the chance. Those people in there are alive.”

With a nod to the window, he continued. “Look inside. Those people are fine. It’s the zombies who are different.”

As instructed, she checked it out. The closest zombie was an unwelcome distraction, but its behavior was a far cry from the violence and attacks always associated with them. Still, it was pawing at the door.

But, sure enough, there were other zombies walking the room, and while they seemed to make circuits around the beds of patients, they did not attack them.

“It’s a sick experiment. How are you allowed to do this?”

“I still have my resources. I had the University stand down from guarding this place, so I could be assured I could conduct these tests in private. They give me people suspected of being infected, and I send them back people I know are clean. Everyone wins.”

She peered into the room, wondering if the people lying in the beds would agree with him. Unaccountable testing was a nightmare scenario for an ethical nurse or doctor. Her impulse was to go in there and kill the zombies and release the victims.

“Do you see any patterns?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“Should I?”

“Just watch them.”

She took a few minutes to study them. The zombies on patrol did move around to all parts of the room, but if they were making any patterns, she couldn’t see them. Sometimes the zombies would appear to stop, or make slow, deliberate reversals of direction, but as far as she could deduce, they weren’t doing anything in a pattern.

“I don’t see anything unusual, beyond zombies not attacking them.”

“Hmm. I’m disappointed. You seemed pretty sharp,” he said with mock sadness.

“Just tell me.”

He strode away from the door, heading back up the steps.

“This way, please. Keep up.”

In moments, back in the video room, Hayes keyed in some data and the room below appeared on the screen. The camera was on infrared, so the low light was not a factor.

The images were from a previous time frame. The tell was that the zombie at the door was walking the room, rather than looking for intruders.

“OK, watch again from this camera angle. You should see it.”

Minutes went by as she watched.

She tried to think of something to say that would sound intelligent, but by all appearances, the movements were completely random.

“Nothing?”

She remained silent.

“Let me speed it up.” He pressed some buttons, and the image sped into high gear. With the advantage of speed, the pattern became stunningly obvious.

“They always move to the same spots.”

“Exactly! Though the movements seem to be random, they spend extra time at a select few of the people. And what do you think they have in common? Take your time.”

She watched in awe as the pattern continued to scream at her. It was almost embarrassing that she’d missed it earlier. It was like the zombies hovered at those waypoints and either turned around or lingered just a bit longer than they should. But while pattern screamed at her now, she couldn’t deduce the point of commonality among those particular victims.

Thinking back to her day, she recalled the root cause of why those people were in the room in the first place. Something that might explain everything.

“They're infected?”

After a dramatic delay, Hayes looked at her and gave her the thumbs up sign. He was also transfixed by the pattern. Finally, he pulled himself away and looked at her. “Yes, sorry. You got that one right. High marks for you, after all. We’ve figured out that the docile zombies search out other zombies, but because they’re being affected by the trial vaccine, they seem to get confused when they run into them. That’s the hesitation you see. But, given enough time, say an entire night in a controlled environment, we can tell who has been infected.”

“But what does that prove? We already know who’s infected. Like, almost everyone!”

“Ah, but that’s the part you’re missing, here. Those people are infected with the virus, but they aren’t displaying symptoms. They’re carriers, but they don’t spread the disease in any way we can tell.”

“Typhoid Mary’s.”

“Yes, that’s an apt comparison, but Mary Mallon didn't care if she was infected. She knowingly spread Typhoid despite repeatedly causing death and destruction in her wake. These people have no way of knowing they were infected. We ask all kinds of questions when they were ‘volunteered’ for this quarantine system. We can’t find anything that ties them all together. Nothing that says how they were all infected.”

“Or why.”

“Yes, or why. But you can see our problem, can’t you? I mean humanity’s problem.”

She thought of all the people huddled together in the park, waiting as refugees for the world to recover so they could go back out and rebuild. Some percentage of them could already be infected, and no one in the world could pick them out of a crowd.

Except Hayes. That figures.

3

“So the whole thing with Grandma and the elderly people you killed was just a sideshow so you could walk these zombies among the living and find these carriers?”

“Oh, I wish it were that simple. And please, I didn’t kill them for sport. We were in crisis mode. We still are. No, I stumbled on this while developing the work on Marty’s blood. I injected her blood into a raving feral zombie, and the results are what you see on the screen. It appears to make the zombies docile and harmless. That’s a step in the right direction. With more blood, and more time, I think I could refine this and find the cure itself. But this side effect, this latent infection, troubles me more than words can say. It’s almost like the virus is fighting back. Like it knew I was close to a cure, so it has gone deeper to hide.”

“And the elderly?”

It was his turn to sigh long and loudly. “Those early days were the easy ones, I’m afraid. We had many willing volunteers in that critical age bracket. Men and women lining up to do their duty to find the cure and protect their loved ones. Make a difference, before they passed on. But now...”

He looked at her, remaining uncharacteristically serious. “Our half-dozen advanced medical facilities were once loaded with elderly patients, but some nitwit administrator kicked out everyone over seventy-five. Sent them home to die. They wanted to focus on those with better chances for survival.”

“Triage,” she said flatly.

“Yes. Exactly. But little did they know the cure could only come from someone over the age of 100. They literally chased off the people who could cure everyone.”

“You have some on this floor. I saw them. Surely you can find more elderly? Grandma Marty isn’t the only one to survive. There have to be hundreds in St. Louis, even now.” She and Liam had looked up the census data for age, and also found one centenarian practically around the corner. Hans Grubmeyer was 105. She held onto that piece of information, for now.

“As I said. The heady early days of gathering those people are gone. We have a few test subjects up here, but they are all spry eighty-year-olds. Anyone left alive today, of suitable age, is hunkered down in bunkers or other defensive strongholds with other survivors. They aren’t likely to come out so they can get involved in virus research.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you killed all your original test subjects?” She knew it was wrong to prod him, but she didn’t want him to forget that she knew what he did.

“You aren’t going to let it go, are you?”

“After you let us go to chase Duchesne, he almost killed us. A couple of times, in fact. But Liam, Grandma, and I were able to escape, and a barge ran him over and killed him—”

“He’s dead?”

“Oh, he’s dead,” she said with glee. The two weren’t friends, as best she could tell, but they knew each other. “And after we left—”

Hayes interrupted her. “Sorry. He’s dead?” he asked again with some skepticism.

“Yes, as a door nail, whatever that means.”

Hayes paced the small room, looking nervous.

“What’s the big deal? He was a real...jerk.”

“It’s not him. I was hoping you two would get away and that he would conduct his usual inept pursuit. If he’s gone, that means...”

“Wait a minute. You sent us out there knowing we’d get caught?”

“Well, I knew you’d stop at nothing to rescue Marty. Plus, I planned to help out a little. And yes, I assumed you’d get caught, but I also knew how resourceful you two kids were—Dutch thought you were beneath him. That’s why I figured he’d fail. I never imagined he'd let himself get killed by you two.”

“We didn’t kill him. He died while trying to kill us.”

“It doesn’t matter. This changes the whole scenario. For you, and—worse—for me.” He stopped pacing and seemed to ponder his next move.

“What’s the big deal? If he’s dead, we’re in the clear. No one can possibly know where we went. You didn’t know where we went, and you still don’t know where Grandma is.”

And I’m less inclined to tell you now.

“The hierarchy of the NIS is very rigid. A lot of it is based on the oldest and best-bred families from around the world. Most of them immigrated here, to America, because of the endless opportunities for money and connections. But those families are all working together, and intermarriage is strictly controlled. The ultimate taboo is marrying outside approved families because that means the offending family member must be convinced to call it off by any means necessary, or the entire family of the outsider must be brought in. And that happens about as often as a sheep marries a fox.”

“So, let me guess. Duchesne had a wife.”

“Oh, it’s worse than that. He had a fiancée.”

4

“Sooo, this bad guy dies while trying to capture us, and his girlfriend is going to come and get revenge? While zombies are killing everyone. Seriously?”

“I know how it sounds, but these people spent their whole lives preparing for a very specific set of events. The woman in question, Ms. Elsa Cantwell, was a fitness champion in Iceland—where she grew up. She is a master of close quarters combat and has studied police and military reactions to mob violence and chaos—why do you think she did that?”

Victoria could guess, but he was on a roll.

“I’ll tell you. She was preparing herself for the extreme violence of the fall of man.”

He looked at her, seeming to want a response.

“And?” she said with a bit of impatience.

“And, the iron bitch was smitten by that asshole and his cowboy boots. They were both...” Hayes looked around the small room filled with video monitors as if deciding if any were pointed at them. “They were both going to have a prominent place in the new government. Their marriage would have bound their two families during the transitional period.”

“You know, the more you talk, the less I believe you. This sounds more like fairy tale material than real life.”

“Or any number of arranged marriages over the centuries in the monarchies of Europe.”

“Whoa? Are you saying this has been going on that long?”

“No, not at all. I’m saying that what I’m telling you is not that unusual. Powerful people work together. These are some very powerful people.”

Victoria felt the frustration. Here, in front of her, was a medical experiment showing some important keys to unlocking the virus—maybe finding a cure. And the one man who seemed to be at the forefront of the research was distracted by a revenge-seeking Icelandic woman. The world was upside down.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but why the hell should I care about Duchesne and his crazy girl? Though I don’t want to help you, specifically, I do want to help my fellow humans in getting a cure worked up. What I see here is an incredible advance toward that end. I want to...” she swallowed hard, emphasizing the pain in the words, “help you.”

“Ahh, my young friend. How I wish that were possible.”

“What? Why? The cure could be right here,” she pointed at the walking zombies.

“It probably is. But I have to leave. I should already be gone.”

“Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

Hayes grabbed a chair, spun it around, then sat on it so he was facing the wrong way. He used the wooden back to support his crossed arms.

“When Janey and I left the Riverside Hotel in our helicopter, we could have gone anywhere. We probably should have gone and found a quiet forest and hunkered down until the end. Instead, we came here. My sources said the hospitals in this area had managed to hold things together, and the research at the University continued throughout the disaster. The community came together, where most others broke apart. Well, you saw what it was like downtown. Total chaos.”

She nodded.

“I had Marty’s blood. I had a responsibility to at least look at it. This was the only place I could go,” he said quietly.

“We figured you were going to Washington, D.C. to give it to the President, or something,” she said with a slight laugh.

“Yeah, I guess I came across that way. But blood wouldn’t have lasted that long. So we flew here. I was lucky that Federal authorities were already working with the locals, and I was able to insert myself into their org chart. Walk in with blood and a lab coat and you’ll be golden,” he said with his usual charm.

He nervously tapped his fingers on his elbows on the back of the chair. “That arrangement lasted all this time. Because I happen to be a real immunologist, and I do know a lot about how this disease was created,” he tapped his nose. “I was able to run this place after a few days. It helped that lots of the medical staff melted away. Pretty much only the foreign educators and grad students stuck around. The administrators running the refugee camp eventually put me in charge of all medical research at the university. And we made great progress. Finally.”

“But?”

If you tell me this is all going to be ruined because of a jilted lover, I’m going to scream.

“I did something bad.”

She pursed her lips with a painful look on her face. Like she’d just watched a figure skater do a Triple Axel and land in the stands.

“Yes, it's true. And you’re going to hate me for this. I couldn’t give them my real name when I came here. Remember, I was part of the NIS organization. They know everything about me, though I may have tinkered with my DNA tracker code,” he giggled. “But I assumed with all the other problems they’ve got going on, it would be a long time before they had a free hand to go searching for me. I helped you guys along by killing Duchesne’s men, and I figured you’d gotten away clean when I saw you coming back across the wreck on the river. I didn’t realize you’d—I didn’t realize he’d died. I might have done things differently.”

“Why? What name did you use?”

“Sam Stevens.”

She’d heard the name before, but she couldn’t place it. Her face said as much.

“You kids have the worst memory. Too many video games.”

“I don’t play—”

“I’m kidding. Geez. That’s the name Liam gave to Duchesne when he was trying to trick him. Dutch told me the story as you guys were coming up into the hotel. While we were...administering to Grandma Marty.”

“Infecting her,” she said, to clarify.

“Well, when we got here I needed a name, and I thought it would be funny to assume a name created by my favorite teen thorn in my side, Liam.”

“I still don’t get it. If it’s a fake name, how would anyone find you? Like, ever?”

Hayes spoke fast. “Victoria, listen. When Liam gave Dutch that fake name, it was associated with a photograph taken on that interchange back in the early days. Back when you refused my assistance, the first time,” he said pointedly. Before she could protest, he held up his hand so he could continue. “The name was associated with the face, and eventually, when they figured out Sam was actually Liam, it became a known alias. Duchesne was last seen with two teens and myself and my wife after a major battle with the Marines and Army units. She’s going to be looking for all of us. And it won’t take her long to plug in the pseudonym and find out that person is doing scientific heavy lifting here at the university. I doubt she’ll be fooled into believing Liam is the scientist,” he said with a laugh.

Victoria tried to piece together the timeline. Keeping track of time was very difficult when the rhythm of the days and weeks was upset so completely. “That was over a week ago. Wouldn’t she be here seeking her revenge, by now?”

“Ah yeah, that’s just it. I was able to keep my identity a secret up until today. I’ve been ‘Doctor Stevens’ to all the people here in this building. Very simple, right? Could be anyone, right?”

She nodded.

“But this afternoon the head cheese came here and wanted me to fill out a W-4!”

He’d been waiting for a different reaction than the blank look she gave him.

“Tax forms. He wanted to make sure I filled out the proper paperwork so the government could pay me. Can you believe that?” He paused, seeing it still wasn’t registering. “So, I filled out the form with the full name. Sam Stevens suddenly existed in the Federal data warehouse. A hit showed up on a running search on a computer and Elsa ran to the nearest helicopter for St. Louis with her strike team.”

“How can you be so sure? I thought the government was supposed to be inept, and everything takes forever? You probably have weeks before they figure it out. You should stay and finish your research.”

“Nope. It was keyed in, and she got it, almost in real time. I know because I know how the NIS operates. They’ll be here.”

“But how can you be sure,” she repeated in almost a whisper.

“Because there is one thing you never want to do when you're working with someone who operates at routine peak efficiency: underestimate them. The second you let your guard down, there they are. Elsa is the kind of woman who does push-ups in her sleep. Running a search of the Federal database for select keywords is probably how she relaxes. You can’t assume she’s anything but top notch.”

So, this is about a jilted lover.

She considered screaming as she promised but heeded Hayes’ advice. Elsa could be outside the door, listening for her.

5

“So what are you going to do?” Victoria asked.

“Me? Don’t you mean us? If she’s coming, she’s coming for all of us. I blew it for you two. I admit that, and maybe I’m sorry. But you and Liam are on her radar, too. Probably more than me since you were there when he...died.”

“Why do you keep saying it like that? Oh, I don’t care. How the heck can she possibly know where me and Liam are?”

“Sam Stevens is here. Liam’s alias. She’ll know it isn’t him, but she’ll be looking for him in the area. And Victoria Hennessey, resident of a dorm very close to the building where Douglas Hayes was moonlighting as a researcher. I erased the video of your room—I promise—but how many of these other cameras do you think you’ve been on? Cameras in the hospitals. Have you been in the hospitals?” he asked with recrimination.

“Actually,” Victoria continued, “I’ve been to the top floor. Talked to Mr. Deveraux about work you’d done on the cure.”

He seemed taken aback. “Well. There you go. You’ve hitched yourself to my fate. And when was that?”

“Today. He gave us approval to pull blood from a local man—105-years-old—who lives just across the street from the park. I’m here tonight because Doctor Yu was uncomfortable with your experiments.”

“She’s a good Doc. Now it all makes sense. I thought it was strange how this all went down. You kids show up blabbing to the authorities, probably trying to make yourselves look important, and you pull me into this, in effect destroying all the work we’ve been doing—”

“You said you used the fake name that brought her here. You can’t blame us.”

“So it's a total coincidence you talked to Bos this very day, and then he comes over here collecting information about his research team?”

She looked sheepish.

“That’s what I thought.” He took a deep breath. “OK, I admit I may have had some culpability with this. It doesn’t matter, in the end. She’s coming, and she’s bringing revenge with her. It’s how these people operate. They’re all a little unhinged.”

I know someone that fits that mold. I’m looking right at him…

“And she’s going to find us if we don’t take measures to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He turned very serious. “I know you hate me for what I’ve done. I’ve created a monster with this virus—”

And you shot me. Don’t forget that one!

She felt like rubbing that in his face, but his tone and sudden seriousness wasn’t Hayes at all. He was scared.

“—but I’ve been trying to atone for my mistake by working on the cure. You see that, right?”

He waved his hands at the video screens. The monitor with the zombies moving at fast-forward was looping as if to support his words.

“Liam said you lie about everything. I absolutely trust him. As much as I absolutely don’t trust you. For all I know this is an elaborate plan you’ve set up to capture Grandma again.”

He was going to speak, but she held up her hand, much as he had done moments before. “But. In this instance, I do believe you. It sounds nuts on the face of it, but every NIS person I’ve met has had a streak of crazy in them. Including you.”

“Thanks. I—”

She held up her hand again, more forcefully, she imagined.

“I’m not done! The first thing we need to do is find Liam. He’s supposed to return to Forest Park after he does...a task...for his mother.” She danced around why he was really out of the park. He was getting a tank for the mysterious Hans Grubmeyer. A man who had already been brought up in her conversation with Hayes. A man who seemed to tie them all together. “He’ll be returning to the home of Mr. Grubmeyer.”

“Aged 105?”

“The very same.”

“I have to ask. Who else knows about Liam’s, ahh, task? Is it something that would have been told to others? Over radio, perhaps? Where is he?”

She wasn’t going to tell him where he was. Even torture couldn’t do that—she prayed. But his question about who else knew was a tough one. Hans knew, of course. Some of the Patriot Snowball people knew. Liam’s mom knew. Jason Hawkes knew. In a few moments she had a list of over ten people. It suddenly seemed like a major security hole.

“I think a lot of people know, but I don’t think they would be sloppy with that knowledge.”

Hayes stood up and stretched like he was prepping for a foot race. “Step 1 is to get out of this building. It will be a priority of the strike team. Step 2, we can try to find Liam, but we can’t waste a lot of time. Our own priority should be finding transport out of here. We have to get to Grandma.”

“Ah ha!” she echoed herself, “You are trying to capture her.”

“Yes, you caught me,” he said in monotone. Then, in his regular voice, “You still don’t understand. If I wanted Marty now, I would just ask you. You can see what we’re doing here. Progress is being made, and it doesn’t involve the unfortunate deaths of my early research. You have to see that.”

She stood, unmoved.

“OK. I have a helicopter, which you know. I could have drugged you and put you on the copter and forced you to take me to Grandma—”

She rose to that. Her own experience being forced to do anything was something he couldn’t know.

He must have seen the anger in her eyes. “No, please! I’m trying to make you see there are a million ways this could go down, but I truly want you as my partner. For God’s sake, I don’t need more enemies.”

She fumed internally but didn’t know what to say. He was speaking the truth, even if she hated him for his insinuation.

“I’m staying because I want to help you find Liam. Once you two are together, and calmed down,” he said with a test of mirth, “we can focus on helping your Grandma. She is the most vulnerable of us all because she will stand out wherever she is.”

“And then you want to run tests on her,” she said with the remains of her anger.

“Yes. I’ll be honest about that. But this time I need to take blood, not inject it. I know my word isn’t worth anything to you, but on my honor that’s the truth. I believe she can help us get this cure correct.”

“But we won’t have anywhere to do your research. We can’t come back here, can we?”

“We’ll have to deal with that when we get there. Maybe there’s a research lab where she is?”

He was fishing for her location. Torn whether to divulge the information or not, she felt she wasn’t quite ready to trust him. At the very least she wanted other people around when she told him. That way he couldn’t drug her, or otherwise coerce her to do his bidding. She didn’t think he was lying about what he was telling her. It all added up in an insane way. And that’s what troubled her the most.

You can’t trust him, girl. N-O, no!

Chapter 7: Run, Girl, Run

Hayes stood to go out the door, but paused and turned back to her.

“Before we go, I have to ask. What do you see in that boy?”

Victoria had been prepared to leave, so it was about the last thing she expected. “Uh, what?”

“Liam. It’s cute how you two found each other in the disaster, but you don’t seem to have much in common, you know? Classy girl in a black dress. An unkempt boy chasing after his Great-Grandma.”

The situation came into focus. It was the middle of the night, in a building that had been cleared by Hayes so he could conduct ‘somewhat-illegal’ experiments in peace. If he wanted to take advantage of her, there wasn’t much she could do to stop him, though she would try. He was married—so he said—but he was also NIS, which was becoming synonymous with doing the least likely thing she could imagine.

That’s not gonna happen.

While he stood at the door, she remained by the video controls, searching for a weapon. He seemed to take that as assent to continue speaking.

“It’s just that...well, you’re so pretty...”

The desk had nothing she could use as a weapon. A red stapler. A small pen. Spiral notebooks.

“When Jane and I got married, it was more or less arranged. We had a few great years. Even had a daughter. But in the organization, the biggest factor in marriage is how the two families can benefit each other. My family had extensive inroads in the medical community. Hers was—”

He smiled at her.

“—actually, that’s classified.” He sighed, with a touch of sadness. She couldn’t tell if it was real, or simulated. “The old habits die hard. I would never do anything to hurt her, even if I don’t love her. And her father saved my ass...”

Hayes went on, describing their relationship in more detail than she really cared to know. The takeaway was that he seemed to be putting himself on the market for romance, which was precisely the wrong thing to do, given her own background. More than that, it was the wrong thing to do to any woman in this situation. That he didn’t see that made her angry at how stupid he was.

“...I guess what I’m saying is that I look at you—a bright future in the medical field—and him and his future in, um, zombie slaying, and I don’t see the draw. You know?”

Hayes hadn’t moved from the door. No weapons magically appeared for her. She wasn’t sure she’d need one, but ‘zombie slayer’ Liam would insist she always have one. The irony of no weapons in the security monitoring station didn’t escape her.

“What, exactly, is your point?” she said defensively.

He studied her. She wondered if he was sizing her up, until he looked at the door itself, then back at her. “Oh! No, it isn’t like that.” He held out his arms and waved her to go through the door. “No, this isn’t a proposition. I’m much too old for you,” he laughed.

“Then what is this all about?”

When they were outside the door in the moonlit hallway, he spoke while she moved to the far side of the door. She was free to run if she wanted.

“My point is very simple. You don’t need Liam, right now. He chose to go off and do, whatever you said he was doing, and you have the opportunity to help him and everyone else, here.”

“You want me to abandon him?”

“No, of course not. Just give him a break, like he did to you.”

He was way off. She was the one who chose not to go with him, but she saw where he was going with this.

“Not that it matters, but Liam saved my life. Several times.”

“He got you into those situations,” he interjected.

She laughed. “Did he get me shot by your team? Is that really what you’re saying?” she said, almost daring him to respond. When he said nothing, she went on. “No, now isn’t the time to sit by and do nothing. Liam and his grandma believe each person has to step up and try to save the world. Some people are boarding up the windows of their homes, intending to die in place. Others are running to the North Pole, or wherever they think they’ll find safety. But Liam has chosen to go into danger so he can help everyone. That’s part of why I need him.”

“But you don’t need him right now. We can go off, grab Grandma, and collect him later.”

There was some truth to that. She did voluntarily let him go with his mom. But she needed the time alone to—lay her old life to rest. It had nothing to do with him, other than she needed to exit the Liam roller coaster just long enough to tend to her own affairs. Thinking about him in this context made her grateful how easy he’d made it for her. He didn’t complain when she pretty much insisted she needed to do this by herself. It reinforced every feeling she had for him.

Though Hayes stood nearby, she felt the smile on her face as she recalled their moment behind the big tree after they’d escaped from St. Louis. She thought she’d have to kiss him first, but after she’d pulled him behind the tree—away from the eyes of the police and other refugees—he’d figured out her clever plan and leaned in to kiss her. It was short but so worth it.

When they were done, she whispered a thank you in his ear. He probably thought it was because he’d helped her get out of the city, but it was much larger than that. He’d given her hope to look ahead, finally, after being on the run from her life since that dark night in the Colorado woods. That feeling of escape washed over her once more, and she knew Hayes wouldn’t understand.

“No. You’ve got to trust me on that. There is no way I’d leave this camp without Liam. Case closed.” She folded her arms across her chest. It felt pouty, but her point was made.

Liam, please hurry.

2

“I—” Hayes began. He looked down the hall, past her.

“Wha—”

He shushed her. In the creepy hallway, there was no need to question him. She watched his face. His finger remained over his lips, as if he still saw the object behind her.

It took thirty seconds, then he sprang for the open door of the control room, trying to pull her in. She hesitated to go back in, after all they’d just discussed, but relented.

Hayes whispered. “There’s someone at the far end of the hall.”

“A guard?”

“I sent the guards outside. I wanted to be alone with you.”

She looked at him with a frown.

“No, not like that. I wanted to be able to talk to you without being overheard. The NIS is still a hidden organization. I didn’t want to endanger those men’s lives by getting them involved.”

It seemed reasonable, though that made her more suspicious of the entire chain of events tonight. He was always thinking ahead.

And I’m always thinking behind.

The realization was important, but she tucked it away for another day. If the guards were gone…

“A student perhaps? Out for a moonlight stroll?” she said it to be funny, but it didn’t ring true. Even in the brief time she’d spent with the research students, they’d seemed frightened and pliable. The days of midnight pranks were long gone.

“No. I followed you through the tunnel and locked the gate.”

She didn’t know there even was a gate down there, but it made sense.

“I don’t suppose you told the guards to lock the doors, did you?”

Hayes was at the edge of the door, peeking out. When he came back in, he looked at her with a yes nod. “I needed to make sure you and I had this meeting. The guards were instructed to keep the doors locked, and they wouldn’t have done it any other way. There are zombies in this building, and the safety of the whole camp depends on them staying in here.”

She looked at him like he’d just stepped in dog dirt.

“What? You think I knew this would happen?”

“You locked yourself into a building with zombies. What did you think was going to happen?”

He looked past her.

“The monitors.”

As quietly as he could, he pulled the door shut. It had a stout security deadbolt, which he secured.

“We’ll be safe in here,” he assured her. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

At the security desk, the feeds showed different parts of the building. The only one turned off was the one in her dorm room. He pointed to the screen where the patients were under observation. The zombies that were previously walking around the bedded patients were no longer there. The front door was propped open.

They watched the screens. One of the walking zombies showed up on the stairs. Moving down to the basement. In the strange infrared vision, she could only say it was a woman in a dress.

After a time, a second zombie showed up on the stairs. Moving up to their floor. There was at least one more already on their level, at the end of the hall.

“I hate to ask something so obvious, but when you locked us in here, did you think to bring a gun?”

His eyes told her what she already knew. Despite his hand in the Zombie Apocalypse, he seemed to hate the idea of using guns.

“Do we have a radio, at least? Can we call in the guards?”

“I, uh...”

“You removed the radios, didn't you?” She was getting angry.

“Well, I couldn't have you calling for help before I got a chance to talk to you, alone.”

“Dang it. Now I have to spend my whole night in a tiny room with the one man...”

He waited for her to finish her thought. When she didn't, he tried it himself. “The one man who can save humanity?”

“I was going to say the one man who tried to have me killed, but then I realized there are a lot of men—and women—who wanted me dead, along with everyone else. Why is the NIS so evil?”

Her Christian background searched for a good versus evil angle to things, though it couldn't reconcile Hayes. A man who helped design the plague, and seemed to be the only one working to fix it.

“You'd be surprised, I think, if you met those people. The ones I know, at least. They're bureaucrats, politicians, soldiers. They get up and eat breakfast just like you. You couldn't pick them out of a crowd of average people if you tried. That's what makes them so dangerous.”

“Us. You were supposed to say 'that's what makes us so dangerous,' right?”

“You still think I'm working for them?”

“I don't know who you're working for. This whole—” she waved her arms wildly, trying to signify both the video monitors and the world outside “—scenario you've created tonight. It's insane. Why not just invite me in the light of day and explain what you were doing? All of this—” she gestured with her arms again “—was just stupid and unnecessary. Frankly, it's what I would expect from someone working for a super-secret government agency.”

“Sometimes I wish I could go back to the old ways. Not because it was evil or because I wanted to work on viruses, but because it was safe. There are probably medical teams working in one of the fortresses around the country, making the same discoveries I am. And they're doing it in the comfort of impenetrable walls. By comparison, I'm on the front lines of this disease, risking myself every minute I'm out here.”

“But you're making these great discoveries. Even if your methods are unorthodox, and I'm not saying I agree with them, but even I can't deny this is a huge discovery.”

That seemed to perk him up. “So you'll help me?”

“When we get out, I still want to try to find Liam. Then he and I will decide what to do next. We're a team,” she said with finality.

It's going to be a long night.

3

They spent another half hour studying the monitors, though they were only able to say definitively where two of the released zombies had gone. The woman in the lower level had gone missing.

“I hate to bring this up. We have to get a warning to those guards before they come back in the building. If they unlock the doors, the zombies may jump on them and get free.”

“They're trained to handle that. We just have to wait it out,” Hayes said matter-of-factly.

Deep down, she wanted to listen to him. Just sit back and wait for sunrise, and let the guys with guns handle the trouble. But there was a whole refugee camp behind that thin blue line of guards. If the zombies got past them, it put everyone in danger, including—perhaps—Liam.

“Dang it, Hayes, are you going to make me be the man, here?”

“What? What'd I say?”

“You're planning to let those guards get attacked, just because you don't want to risk yourself?”

He'd been that way back when they escaped from the Arch, but he seemed to have learned nothing since then.

“Never get involved, when you don't have to.”

“But we have to,” she barked. “We have to think of the camp. If just one of those zombies gets into the crowd, what do you think will happen?”

“They have muzzles on, Vicky, don't sweat it.”

“Don't call me that.” Her anger was reaching a high simmer. “Don't ever call me that.”

Hayes looked shocked at her response.

She went on. “We absolutely cannot risk it.”

She looked around for the tenth time, searching in vain for anything she could use as a weapon. A small utility shelf yielded a tape measure, some duct tape, and a ten-inch long flat head screwdriver. When she picked it up, it was like she'd struck gold.

“This!”

“What are you going to do with that? Unhinge the doors?” he chuckled.

“I'm going to put those zombies down.”

“Whoa. You're nuts. Just sit in here and we're golden.”

If he felt any shame under her glare, he gave no indication.

“That's how you're gonna play it?” she asked. “Fine. I'll go out and fight them, and you can stay in here and watch TV. All I need to do is get to a window and yell down. It should be easy as cake since we can watch the monitors to avoid the bad guys.”

On paper, it was cake.

The cake is a lie.

She wondered where the thought came from.

Bennie.

A boy from her old high school used the saying all the time in the cafeteria when cake was served. She never cared enough to ask him, but his friends always seemed to laugh at the joke. If she ever saw him again, she would tell him that he was right about that. So much of life was a lie, including the cake.

She hoped he'd argue, but he was soon by the door motioning toward the lock.

“When you go out, I'll lock this door again and watch you on the monitors.”

“And if I need help?”

“I'm sure the guards will hear you. Cake, right?” He laughed a little, which she interpreted as his satisfaction at having caught her in her own saying.

“Sure.” He wasn't going to be of any help.

A quick check of the screens placed the zombies in between the floors, on opposite ends of the hallway. The basement zombie was still missing, but it was last seen in the lowest level. Out of her way.

Without fanfare, she unbolted the door and walked into the hallway. As promised, Hayes locked it behind her. The security bolt was surprisingly loud in the nighttime hallway.

“Just a stroll to a room with a window,” she whispered to herself.

The screwdriver felt tiny in her hand. In moments she found an open doorway in a room with a window. It was set up like a classroom. Desks in neat rows.

She closed the door behind her.

The windows beckoned her.

Maybe this will be cake.

Inwardly she laughed. The whole affair would make a funny story if Bennie survived.

The window slid upward and the warm air of the night blew in her face. A tinge of the smells of thousands of people in the park nearby accompanied the wind, but it was minimal. In the distance, many small fires danced. Cooking whatever was left to eat.

Above, the stars were brilliant. Without the light of the city, it was easy to see the stars as if she were in the wilderness of her home state. She enjoyed the feeling and the memories for a few moments before searching the grounds below for evidence of the guards.

“Hello?” she called down as loud as she dared. “Is anyone there? I need help.”

The paved walkways of the campus led away from the building to other structures nearby, but there weren't any students cavorting about as she would have expected of a university campus of old. It was dead outside.

The university was near the park, but the campfires were hundreds of yards away. She considered screaming—they'd surely hear her.

She jumped as someone beat on the door of the classroom.

“Holy crap!” The cuss word slipped out.

A constant, though quiet, pounding continued as she inched forward. A head danced in the tiny slit window on the right side of the wooden door. She'd been caught.

The screwdriver seemed to cause her hand to become clammy. She moved it to her left hand and wiped the sweat on her jeans. If she was going to use it, she'd put it back in her strong hand. For instance, if the door broke open and a zombie spilled through.

Maybe all of them are out there?

She switched hands again.

The shape continued to move in an agitated fashion as she approached the door. She imagined it getting angrier as she got closer. That forced her to consider hiding behind a desk, out of sight. Maybe it would die down and forget about her.

Onward she walked. She was close enough to see its face.

It wasn't a zombie. Somehow it seemed fitting Hayes would screw up something as simple as walking across a hallway.

She opened the door, and he reached for her.

“Come. Hurry!” he shouted. His voice echoed in the hall.

They returned to the security room. Hayes slammed the door and ran to the screens.

“There! Look! Look!”

“Oh crap,” she said. This time, she intended to use the word.

4

All the people in the research room had been untied and set free. In an almost comical coincidence, a scream echoed in the sealed building. The noise registered on the camera audio and through the doorway behind them.

“You have to stay in here. We'll wait this out,” Hayes repeated himself from earlier.

“Are you crazy? We have to warn people. Save those poor test subjects.”

“No.” Hayes stood up and moved to the door. “We're safe right here.”

Victoria still held the screwdriver, though she felt she was seeing it for the first time. “Hayes. If you try to stop me, we're both going to regret it. I'll fight you to get out there.”

He studied her face. “I don't doubt that for a second.” He moved away from the door but pointed to it. “I'm locking this again. I'll watch on the screens.”

“Really? You're going to let a girl go out there and fight while you stay in this room and hide?”

“You can't guilt trip me, though I don't blame you for trying. I've already told you; I can't die in a senseless battle with the zombies. The safe play is to wait here and get out when help arrives. Then I can continue my research.”

“Who do you think let all those people go?”

“Probably an animal rights group. Some of the students have expressed concerns over the treatment of the test subjects, though they were a tiny minority.”

She felt a passing nudge of guilt. She felt the injustice when she first arrived. It was only later when she understood the need for the experiment that she let it go. And, once she saw the results, it was clear Hayes had done a true service in the drive for a cure.

But that didn't feel like what was happening here. Student activists would want everyone to see them. It was just the way they thought. This was something else. The guards were gone. The zombies were released. Then the people were sent out after them.

She checked the hallway using the monitor. It was still clear, though another scream rose up from below. After taking a deep breath, she moved to the door and held the handle.

“I won't come back for you,” she said with finality.

“I'll be here in the morning.”

Victoria opened the door, then stepped outside. Before she pulled the door shut behind her, she looked at Hayes as he stood watching her. “If I didn't know better, I'd say the NIS has already found you.” The door clanged as it shut.

Dark shapes moved in the moonlight at one end of the hallway.

She ran back to the classroom, quietly closed the door, then found the open window again.

Below, it was still, and quiet. The guards remained elusive.

“Help!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. She cupped her hands to harness her voice and sent it out toward the campers in the park. She continued to scream in other directions, and then waited in silence, hoping for a reply.

Banging started on the door. This time it was heavy and irregular.

Muffled cries of help came from the hallway.

“We saw you! Help us!”

She hesitated halfway back to the door. Hayes had said some of the people were already infected, though it was latent. If she opened the door, Typhoid Mary could walk right through.

But you sat with them all day. If they were infected, you'd have gotten sick.

That had the opposite effect as she would have thought. She did indeed spend the day with them, but if she was sick, she couldn't risk giving them the infection.

But everyone would have been infected in there.

She moved closer, but stopped short.

If everyone was infected in the experiment, no one could leave the building. It would have to be purged. If it prevented the spread to the larger camp, she could accept that.

Her hand was on the door when someone on the outside banged their head on the small window. The glass shattered but didn't blow out. She watched as blood splashed heavily upon the glass. Screams pierced the stillness of the room.

“Open the door. Help us, girl!” one of the shapes called to her. She recoiled in horror that it reminded her of Liam. Would she open the door if it was him?

“I'm so sorry. I can't open the door,” she with grim determination.

“Victoria, is that you?”

“Liam?”

The young man in the darkness could be Liam. She had her hand on the thrown lock, but checked herself.

“Don't let them in! You have to survive,” the Liam-figure insisted.

“I know. I'm trying.”

The voice seemed to come from inside her head. Either the person outside was Liam and he'd just spoken to her, or she was hallucinating from too little sleep.

It could only be the latter.

The people outside became a bloody scrum of hand-to-hand combat. Victims would alternatively plead with her to let them in, or lash at her with the look of bloody hatred. Some ran. Others came. In minutes, there was only hatred on the other side of the door, though it was unclear if it was true hatred or the look of death that mimicked hatred on their faces.

“They're all dead now,” she said to herself.

“I know. You did the right thing,” the Liam-shape said. Except it wasn't alive now.

Definitely. I'm seeing things.

Victoria stepped away from the door.

Did I let them all die?

She prayed for forgiveness.

“Forgive me, Lord, I...couldn't help them.”

While she prayed, the scratching and pounding on the door sped up. They all wanted in.

Hayes, safe in his room, was across the hall from all those zombies. No help was coming from that direction.

She returned to the window.

As before, there was no one outside. Her screams had gone unheeded.

“Help!” Her voice broke. She wasn't used to screaming at the top of her lungs.

The banging on the door was feverish now.

“Defend yourself,” she said.

It took her five minutes, but she tipped over the desks and laid them down end-to-end from one side of the classroom to the door. The zombies would have to break the lock, then push the door and the entire row of desks out of the way. She felt a tiny bit safer once that task was done, but it didn't get her any closer to preventing the escape of all the infected.

Whatever she was going to do, it had to involve the window.

5

The night air blew at her again. This time, it wasn't as welcoming. She figured out the breeze was coming in from the park, which meant her voice was fighting against the wind.

“You have to do this yourself, Victoria.”

The building was made of oversized bricks. She hung outside the window to get a better look at the wall, thinking she could climb down. Her assessment was that it would be futile to try. Maybe a rock climber could give it a try, but she had no experience with such things. A more likely scenario for her was that she'd try, and fall from the third floor.

On the other end of the classroom's row of windows, she saw a metal drain spout.

“Yes!”

The last window opened easily, and she found she could reach the downspout, too. But climbing out the window and holding onto the pipe was still very dangerous.

“Help!” This time, she shouted toward the other buildings on the campus. They were fifty or so yards away, but shouldn't be as affected by the wind. Someone had to hear her.

Minutes ticked by, and still no one came.

“Maybe those buildings have all been infected, ha ha.”

She talked to herself to calm her nerves, but wherever she came up with that—it chilled her to the core.

Wouldn't there be screams?

“What if someone infected everyone in their sleep?” she whispered in awe of the vileness of it.

Back at the window by the downspout, she knew what she had to do.

In moments she had shimmied so she sat on the window sill but faced outside the window. Her feet dangled into the emptiness of the night. Laughter from the park had caught the wind, mocking her.

She could reach the pipe with her arms, but it would take some athleticism to grasp it and not fall.

Another deep breath.

With one quick motion, and without really thinking about it, she jumped to the pipe and gave it a death grip with both arms. It was about ten inches across and felt firm on the side of the building.

A “sproing” sound from above accompanied movement of the drain. It detached from where it came out of the wall near the roof and swayed a foot away from the building.

“Oh God.”

She let herself slip down the tube a few feet. The loose pipe swung out, then flew back against the wall, clanging loudly. After a short drop, she found a bracket holding the drain. It caught her hands—she cried at the pain as she stopped. It put her between floors two and three.

“OK, steady. You can do this.”

Her shoes gripped the rough bricks, and she let herself descend a few more feet. It put her next to the window on floor two. Movement caught her eye in the windows near the spout, and she froze.

A pale face in the dim light bobbed into the center of the closest window, as if sensing she was close by. She assumed the zombie couldn't see her—she couldn't tell if it was a man or woman—because it wasn't trying to break out the glass.

She held herself still, but the pain quickly became unbearable. The pipe wasn't big enough to hug and hold herself, so most of her grip was coming from her hands. She shifted her feet, looking for something where she could dig in her toes to take some of the weight off, but it was useless.

“God, give me the strength.”

The zombie loitered. Another was further down the row of windows.

Her palms started to slip. The anxiety and adrenaline of the moment betrayed her.

First, and inch or two. She fought it.

The zombie was still right there. Searching.

Another inch slid by. Her feet searched in futility, while her hands continued to loosen.

“Go away,” she willed it.

It looked right at her. She closed her eyes, putting all her effort in holding perfectly still. Despite all her prayers and a phenomenal effort, she began to slide. There was no way to stop it. She opened her eyes and was disappointed to see the zombie watch as she slid out of its view.

Banging started on the glass above as she held on as best she could the rest of the way down. She was going fast enough that the next set of brackets caught her by surprise. It was so painful she let go of the pipe and fell the last ten feet to the decorative shrubs surrounding the building. Though she landed on her feet, she collapsed in a heap when she touched down.

She froze on the ground. If she blended in with the foliage, maybe the zombies would lose track of her. If they were at the windows on the first floor, she would be mere feet away. She was unwilling to move so she could look in those windows. Instead, she studied the sky and listened.

More laughter taunted her from the camp, but it was countered by screams from inside the research building. She was certain the zombie she'd seen on floor two was banging away at the glass above her. Would it break the window, then come tumbling down? Would the group on floor three break through the classroom door and do the same? It seemed unlikely, but as Grandma Marty would say, not impossible.

She thought she heard the chirp of continuous machine gun fire from far away.

That's what I need here. A machine gun crew to kill everyone inside the building.

Except for Hayes, right?

She was mostly sure she didn't want him shot.

Well, maybe just a little.

6

“Get up. Run!”

The resolve was there, but doubt, too. Where could she run that would have help? Though she was willing to scream bloody murder while up in the building, now she wondered if it was right to go to the camp and rile everyone up in the middle of the night. She needed somewhere that had soldiers, ready to help. She only knew one place where she was absolutely sure she could find such people.

After a few deep breaths to steady her nerves, she deliberately got up and began to jog directly away from the building. Her desire was to avoid getting too close to the windows so as not to cause zombies to jump out to grab her, but once she was far enough away, she realized she'd done something just as dangerous. She was now visible to every zombie looking out the windows on all three floors.

The tinkle of glass urged her to run faster.

Are they free?

She ran.

Her goal was the outer defense wall. It had to be close, as she’d heard shooting from that direction from time to time since she’d been on campus, but she hadn’t the time or will to go check it out.

Until I need it in the middle of the night!

The Whitaker building was out of sight now, and she rounded the corner of another building when she fell hard to the concrete walkway.

She’d tripped over something, and had skinned up the pads of her palms. But that was the furthest from her mind when she saw two men standing in the darkness nearby.

“Help! Zombies! In the Whitaker research building.”

It felt great to unload the important information, but when she got to her feet she got a better look at the two men. In the darkness, it was hard to make out details, but they each wore some kind of face mask—of a skeleton head. They wore black boots, black pants, and black shirts. Somewhere in the shadows, she glimpsed the metallic aura of rifles.

Instead of running to help, the two men strolled to her. By the time she’d found her feet, she was in a new kind of danger.

“Well, well. Lookie here. She made it out. That’s a first.” The voice came from the taller man.

“Yep. That’s new. What do you think our orders are, now?”

The tall man laughed maliciously. “Have fun?”

Victoria took a step back and tripped—again—on the obstruction on the ground. This time, she got a better look at it.

At him.

One of the security guards had been placed in the shrubs, but his legs stuck out onto the path.

“What...what do you guys want? I need help in the building. The zombies are going to flood the park.”

“Missy, don’t ya think we know that?” short guy laughed as he stood above her. The white skull face stared down at her.

“You guys let them all out. But why?”

Short guy roughly pulled her to her feet. His strength frightened her. He let go, but tall guy was almost next to her. Both men quietly chuckled, like they were in on a joke she didn’t know. She stood with her hands on her hips, hoping it conveyed some kind of defiance. And...

“This is the point where we reveal our grand plan, right T?” the short one said.

“You know it, C. We’re going to spill the beans and then she goes off and reports back to Hayes.”

The tall guy looked at the short guy, like he’d said something off-script, but turned back to Victoria in a moment.

“Or, this is the point where we use the dead of night to have some fun with our date.”

The short man was now directly to her side. The tall guy stood to her front. Her options were nearly gone.

She leaned to begin running, but short guy grabbed her arms from behind and guffawed. “Not gonna happen, girly girl. We didn’t wake up today, you know.”

The tall guy, standing in front of her, growled. He moved so he was inches away from her. “Our orders were to terminate you and your boyfriend inside that freak show. The zombies were supposed to do it for us, nice and neat, but I’m going to enjoy interrogating you.”

Short guy held her upper arms, as if pointing her to the tall guy. When her hands were on her hips, she’d gotten her hand on the screwdriver handle. She’d stuck it down her jeans, but put it through one of her belt loops, so it was convenient to grab.

The man behind let go of one arm and rubbed one of her spaghetti straps off her shoulder while he whispered in her ear. “I’ll interrogate you from back here—”

She didn’t wait for the punchline. The screwdriver came out, and she held it like she would hold a sword by the hilt. Then, with the lower half of her arm, she swung it like a metal pike—aiming for the voice and face of the man hovering near her shoulder. She knew she landed the blow when he let her go. He took the screwdriver out of her hands.

“Ahhhhh!” short guy screamed. Like her a moment before, he tripped over the feet on the ground. His voice was loud and angry, but he was definitely on the ground below her.

She ran in the confusion. With a burst of speed, she dodged tall guy and ran back the way she’d come, putting the corner of the new building between herself and the NIS assassins.

Run, girl, run!

She sprinted along the short end of the building, then turned left to run along the back edge of the same building. She hoped the men were behind her, though she also wondered if she’d gotten the guy good enough that he wouldn’t follow her at all. Put a screwdriver into the face of a zombie, and they’re done for. It should work the same for a living human.

A couple of gunshots rattled the night, from ahead. Her only hope was finding the wall.

Although…

“What if they just kill the guards?” she said to herself as she paced her run.

There were a lot of variables in play. How many were there? Why were they here? Would they follow her into population?

On the last point, she was fairly certain they would. If short guy survived her screwdriver strike, he’d be hungry for revenge. Hayes said they were built that way. The only consolation was that even if they caught her, she’d at least drawn first blood from them. Whatever they were going to do to her tonight, they were never going to let her go.

Her stomach swooned at the thought. The NIS men were there to kill her.

“We see you little girl. Run, run, run, but you can’t hide.”

“And you’re going to wish you hadn’t knifed my associate. He’s pretty pissed,” tall guy said with a hearty laugh. He sounded very close.

There was nothing for her to do, except run for her life.

Chapter 8: Victoria's Secret

Running was one thing Victoria knew she could keep up for a long time, even in the Apocalypse. Her good jogging shoes were comfortable, her pacing felt good, and because outrunning bullets was ridiculous, she continuously made swerves and turns to keep trees, statues, gates, and buildings between herself and her pursuit. She headed for the wall.

“You can’t get away, hot stuff,” a sing-songing man called to her.

To her surprise, a gaggle of students stood in front of one of the dorm buildings. Part of her was desperate to mix in with them and disappear, but she couldn’t trust that the men behind her weren’t watching. If they saw her go in, the presence of some students wouldn’t stop them. They might even kill them all, just because…

None of them had weapons. They stood in the low light of a few lanterns with dreary eyes and colorful pajamas.

She passed them without comment. Only select buildings had electrical power, and none of the courtesy lights on the walkways were functional. If she wasn’t seen, the men might assume she’d gone into the dorm…

She called back once she was past them. “Get back in your dorm, you idiots!”

She rounded a corner of an administration building and felt her stomach muscles clench at the sight of safety. Ahead were the large fires kept up by the men and women on the barricade surrounding the park, the university, and the hospitals. There had to be dozens of people. Surely it was enough to fight off two men, one of whom was wounded?

Most stood on car roofs and rested their weapons on large shipping containers, facing outward.

“Help!” she croaked. Her throat was hoarse.

The butterflies skittered across her tummy. She wasn’t safe, yet.

She picked up her pace. She ran across a large grassy space sitting on a gentle hill—once a pleasant place for students to study in the shade—and onto the street behind the barricade. Now that she could see how it was constructed, she judged she had aimed for the best possible place.

The line of containers and other debris was on the near side of the intersection, giving clear fields of fire out into the night. Someone had designed fifty-five gallon drums so they could be placed on top of the containers and burn brightly, toward the street beyond.

Altogether, it made her feel the people knew what they were doing.

Victoria clapped her hands, hoping to get their attention.

She heard snaps behind her. It reminded her of someone banging two pieces of wood together.

Ahead, a defender stood stiffly, then dropped to the ground.

Then another.

“Help!” she shouted, this time with more force. “You're being shot at!”

It took entirely too long for the people to get it. Another couple of them fell, including a woman who she judged to be the closest to her on the wall.

“They’re behind me!” her voice broke at the word me.

She jumped behind a parked car off to the side of the barricade. She had reached her goal but brought trouble with her. The people had been ambushed from behind and were now hidden among the cars of the blockade, just like her.

She heard the zing of bullets on the frame of the vehicle.

“We told you, little girl, you couldn’t get away. The people of this cowbell town can’t help you.” She knew the voice was Tall Guy.

“I owe you one eye, you little bitch. I’m gonna collect from you.”

As emphasis, several more shots pinged off the car she was using as cover.

They know exactly where I am.

Across the street, next to the wall, she saw shapes moving inside an old time gas station building. Several ran out the back door, which she could see from her perspective, but a large hedge blocked it from most everywhere else.

“I’m over here,” she said with a tremble of fear in her voice. If her voice carried, they should hear her, even though she wasn’t yelling. “Help!” she said a little louder.

“Shut your mouth,” a female voice called from a different direction on the barricade.

“There are two men, dressed in black, shooting at you,” she said as loud as she could without screaming. “And they released zombies inside the Whitaker building,” she added with relief. If she died, she’d at least warned them.

She prayed in the flickering light of multiple fires.

Though the situation was dire, she asked herself the type of question Liam often presented to her.

“Can I pray for those two men to die?”

It didn’t feel right, but as much as she wanted to fight the truth of things, she had to admit there was going to be a lot more killing—and death—the longer the Zombie Apocalypse continued. And, if tonight were any indication of the state of the world, it would go on for a long time. Accepting that, prayers for the killing of evil people would become the norm, not the exception.

She tried it on for size.

“God, please help us kill those men,” she whispered in prayer.

That feels completely wrong.

It was true, she wished them dead, but asking God to go around killing people...well, it just didn’t seem appropriate.

She tried to build in nuance. “God, please help us eliminate the threats to your good people.”

“Arg. That can’t be right.”

Secretly, she knew she was distracting herself from the situation she was in. From time to time, a bullet spanked her car. Like they were taunting her. But they also shot at others.

A new noise peaked her interest. A low hum and whirring sound. From above.

She looked for the source, and saw a dark shape up in the sky, barely visible above the blockade. The little black helicopter hung in the air, appearing frozen.

I shouldn’t pray for those men to die. I should pray for their threat to be eliminated.

She could pretend, for a moment, that the goal was to capture them and get them to convert to goodness, but it seemed unlikely. They weren’t soldiers fighting for a lost cause. They were zealots. There could be no negotiation with zealots.

“God, though our side may not be righteous, please give us the strength to dispatch true evil. Please help the good guys.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it felt right.

Would God even deign to get involved in an obscure gun battle on some dark street corner in the middle of the Zombie plague? Probably not. But it made her feel better and gave her strength.

And why is that helicopter coming down?

2

The turbulence of the tar-black drone swept over the nearby fires, tilting them heavily too and fro. Something about it made it seem ominous. As it descended into the firelight, she saw an apparatus on the undercarriage.

When it was about ten feet above her, the long tube swung her way.

“Okie dokie. A gun,” she whispered, not wanting to believe it.

Though she’d just calmed her nerves through prayer, the jittery feeling of nervousness came back at the sight of the drone’s weaponry. It wasn’t being operated by the people on the roadblock.

“Duh, girl.”

She rolled over, then tried to get underneath the car. Her eyes were on that gun the whole time.

The problem was the car. It was a sports car, and sat low to the ground. If she had unlimited time, she might be able to shimmy herself into the tight space, but on this night, under these conditions…

Her legs went under, but the rest of her hung out the back end. She looked like a mechanic trying to get underneath. Or a mechanic that had a car drop on top of her.

She scooted sideways, hoping to go toward the side. It occurred to her that would put her in view of the two shooters.

Die by drone, or by ass—jerks.

She sighed. “I just can’t win.”

“God, forgive me my trespasses...”

She closed her eyes.

Gunshots started nearby. The drone fired its gun, too—very loud because it was so close. She panicked, pulled out her legs, and stood to run. If she were going to die, she wouldn’t do it lying down.

The men over at the gas station fired their rifles at the drone. It fired back.

Shots dinged off the vehicle, and she crouched back down where she’d been. There was so much going on, she didn’t know what she should do.

Run.

Stay.

Hide.

Surrender.

“Ha!”

She wondered who would accept her surrender?

A lull in the gunfire gave her inspiration. It wasn’t suicide, exactly, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.

She sprang up, guessing the drone was facing away from her. The bottom running gear was just inside her reach so she grabbed for it. The extra weight caused the drone to tilt dangerously even as it’s internal workings fought to stay upright. She continued to tip it, so it was almost sideways. She stayed with it as long as she could, but let go before it impacted in the turn lane.

The rotor blades jangled loudly for a fraction of a second as they struck, then the whole drone skipped to its other side—her side—where it also banged angrily on the street. It was too much for the fragile thing. The blades sheered off, and the motor sputtered sadly to a stop.

She ran over and kicked it, so the gun faced away from the blockade.

More shots echoed in the night from behind her. This time, the reports were loud and burly, not the relatively silent snaps of the assassins. Maybe they’d given up with their weak guns and were now using heavier ones.

She crouched behind the drone, which was now between her and the shooters out in the darkness. It caused her to wonder if the drone was solid enough to protect her from bullets.

It has to be.

“God, thank you for letting me help out.”

She had time to wonder if it was God that gave her the idea to take out the drone? Or was it her, all along? Did it matter? She couldn't decide.

The shooting sounds came from multiple directions now. Either there were more assassins or the blockade people were engaging Tall and Short guys.

“This isn’t over!” Short Guy shouted.

His voice was drowned out by a swarm of gunshots.

Silence followed.

She got close to the drone and was no longer able to move. Her fear was that Short Guy was approaching her—ready to make good on his promise. If she lay perfectly still, maybe he would miss her. Much like she kept still to keep the zombies from being attracted to her.

They’re both extreme evil. Maybe what works for one, works for the other…

Her thoughts turned inward while she waited. Though there had to be living people nearby, no one made a peep. Her imagination ran wild, and pictured a horde of infected coming over the blockade, now that no one was manning it. That would be the ultimate insult to her intentions. She wanted to find these people so they could prevent zombies from getting out of the research building, and here she was making sure zombies broke into the rest of the camp.

It was a full ten minutes before a gravelly man’s voice called out.

“All clear, people. The shooter is dead.”

Only one?

Around her, other defenders popped up from their hiding places. She let herself be the last to stand up. There was no confusion about her role. A man walked right up to her.

“You better have a damned good reason for getting my friends killed.”

“Unfortunately, I do.”

3

In minutes, she explained what she could. There were deadly assassins roaming the darkness, they’d released zombies inside Whitaker, and it was imperative someone get over there and terminate an entire building of them.

They were understandably hesitant. Their numbers were halved on the blockade by just two of the NIS guys—it turned out Short Guy was still out there—and going into the darkness to find more wasn't a high priority for them.

The gravelly-voiced leader introduced himself as “Sparks.” He was a fierce-looking black man clad in military garb. He was a lean six feet tall and moved with the same grace she'd seen in other long-serving military men. A complicated-looking set of goggles balanced on the top of his head.

“So if we don't go in there and clean them up, these super-soldiers—”

“They're with a group called the National Internal Security—NIS.” She wasn't going to keep that a secret anymore. Not after they'd just lost so many men and women.

“These NIS soldiers are here to release the zombies? They want to kill everyone in the camp? Little lady that makes no damned sense.”

“I know. I wouldn't believe it, either. But if you go to the building, it will be obvious what's happening. You have to stop them.”

He looked her up and down. “You have a weapon?”

“I had a screwdriver”

“Against zombies and assassins? You are either very brave or very stupid.”

“Stupid,” she said with an even tone. “I couldn't protect myself, or the camp. I had to run to get you.” She looked around at the survivors of the ambush. “I'm sorry I brought these guys to you. I didn't think they'd be that aggressive.”

Sparks gave her a look she couldn't read.

“I need three of you to come with me. I don't care who, but I need volunteers. I also need two of you to stay here until the morning shift arrives. Tell them to keep their eyes open on both sides of the blockade. Spread the word down the line.”

It didn't take long, and Sparks had his team. Victoria tried to explain where the building was located, but her directions weren't very good. She could walk him back there, but the campus was so big and convoluted…

“It's past the quadrangle. On the left.”

“That's enough. We'll find Whitaker from there. But we're taking a different way.” He pointed into the darkness of the campus. “There are too many places to get jumped if we head straight in. We're going to go south along the blockade—where it's hopefully safer—and then make our way up the south edge of campus and come at the building from the far side. It will take a lot longer, but we can take them by surprise.”

Victoria didn't like the word “longer”, but it did seem reasonable.

Sparks pulled a gun off one of the dead women at the blockade. He spent time at her body—praying perhaps—and returned with her gun. “You know how to shoot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. We may need your help. Everyone has to fight, tonight.”

She thought of Hayes huddled in the security room, waiting for rescue. Here, Sparks was outfitting her to be on the team that pulls him to safety.

Hayes read me perfectly. I'm going to save him.

“Is there anything else we need to know?” Sparks asked as he looked squarely at Victoria.

“There's a scientist trapped on the third floor. He sent me out to get help.”

“He sent you?”

“He's…complicated.”

At best.

“Anything else?”

She could think of reams of information they probably didn't know, but for this mission, there was only one really important thing they needed to know.

“He was working on a cure to the plague. As best I could tell from my time with him, he was close. But he also found that some of the people in his test group carried the plague, but didn't turn into zombies. They are Typhoid Mary's,” she said expectantly.

Blank looks in the darkness. She glanced up. Dawn was on the air. A faint glow in the eastern sky.

“You can't let anyone out of that building who might be infected.”

“So how do we rescue your boyfriend?”

“He's not my—oh, it doesn't matter, dang it. You have to save the scientist, but you can't free the zombies. There are at least thirty inside, that I know about. If they get out, they'll rip through Forest Park.”

Sparks pulled out a green pack of Newports. He removed one with deliberate care, then placed it in his mouth, but didn't light it.

“If you're lying to me, I'll make sure your life is miserable and short.” His eyes penetrated hers, but she didn't flinch. He was searching for deception, of which she had none.

“Sir, if there are no zombies in that building I'll happily take what's coming to me. But there are. And they're evil. And dangerous. I can't stop them on my own.”

The stare down continued for many moments. She looked at his eyebrows, rather than his eyes, so she could maintain his molten glare. Eventually, he struck an old-school Zippo lighter against his leg, then lit up his cigarette. After he sucked in a deep breath, he held it, then blew it out to his side.

“I think you're telling the truth. The guy we killed was a marksman, I'll give him that. The one that got away is gonna be none too happy we killed his compadre,” he said with humor.

“Terry and Jill, you guys are front. Me and the co-ed are in the middle. Carl, you got tail gunner.”

“My name is Victoria,” she said a bit too defensively.

“Me and Vee are in the middle. Everyone good?”

She nodded. Others responded in the affirmative.

They walked into the night.

4

By the time they had eyes on the Whitaker Building, dawn was in full bloom. Victoria huddled with Sparks at the edge of a large parking lot, while his team set up. No one had spotted any additional shooters.

“This place is going to be crawling with students, soon. We need to make it happen.”

She didn't doubt him, but she wondered what “it” was going to be. The man had barely said two words to her since they began, so she knew better than to ask him to reveal what he was planning. She wondered if he knew. Now that she saw the building in the light of day, she remembered how big it was. It would be a complicated operation to storm it and kill every zombie inside.

Minutes hurtled by. A student appeared out of nowhere and made it all the way to the front door of the building before anyone noticed her. The girl seemed to try the handle of the door, peer inside, then pause like she didn't know what to do.

“Shouldn't we be up there? Telling people to steer clear?”

Sparks seemed to think on it. Victoria thought he was going to answer, but when she turned to him, he was looking elsewhere.

“I think we need to warn everyone,” she said with finality.

Eventually, the girl moved on. Victoria released the breath she didn't know she was holding, as the brightly-dressed student fell out of view.

Sparks remained noncommittal.

She figured it was another ten minutes before he spoke.

“Ah, there you are,” he said to someone behind her.

Terry and Jill ran up carrying a large blue container between them.

“This thing is so heavy, I thought I was going to bust a nut,” Terry said quietly.

“Me, too,” Jill said with a laugh.

“You guys ready?” Sparks asked them.

They agreed, but Victoria became instantly worried. “Wait a second. You're going to start a fire?”

“You got a problem with that? You said those zombies were a huge threat. These buildings are ancient. We start a little fire in a front room, and the whole thing will burn. I'm sure of it.”

“Um, yeah, that's probably true. But my friend is on the top floor. He won't survive if you burn the place to the ground.”

“Look, Vee, I appreciate you calling this to our attention, but our alternatives are pretty thin. We can either go in shooting, and maybe kill them all, and maybe lose some of us,” he swept his pointer finger to their small group, “or we can light a little fire and enjoy the sight of burning zombies from the comfort of far away.”

“That's what I choose,” said Terry happily.

Victoria smacked her forehead. “I should have done this myself.” She knew it was foolish to say, but it was her first thought.

“Our priority is protecting the camp, not your sissy scientist. And besides,” Sparks continued, “there are men who want to shoot us hiding somewhere nearby. It will take a few seconds to toss the fuel and run. It could take hours to clear a building that size. We could get ambushed at any point along the way. What do you think has better odds for my people?”

The demeanor of the trio around her was enough to dissuade her from continuing her line of reasoning. They were right; she was sad to admit. She wondered if she could go and get other helpers from elsewhere in the camp, but there was no time to be picky.

“Will you give me a few minutes to try to warn him? He's watching on security cameras. I can get a message to him.”

Sparks tossed the butt of a Newport. He had the half-empty pack in his hands to grab another. “Makes no difference to me. Unless I'm missing something, the zombies are good and locked on the inside. As long as no one comes along with a key, we can afford to wait. And watch.”

“I'm going over that way,” she pointed to one of the dorms behind her. “They have a tunnel that goes underneath this parking lot. I know that tunnel is on the cameras.”

“We'll cover you as long as we can,” Sparks added.

“Thanks.” She stood up to go, weapon in hand, but felt she needed to say something more. “I'm, uh, really sorry I got your people shot, sir. But I think saving this one scientist may make up for that. I think he can save us. Save our families.”

Sparks took a long drag. “My family is already dead. But thanks for trying to make things right.”

Victoria turned and ran for the dorm. She couldn't bear the pain of the man.

On the run, she checked her sides as best she could. Short Guy could be anywhere. Behind any derelict car. Behind any tree. Up in any window. She pushed it back and ran forward.

The front doors were unlocked, as expected. A couple of students stood in the foyer, munching on the energy bars they'll all been given. They looked as miserable as she felt. The early light of dawn reminded her of her sleep deprivation.

“Hiya,” she said with all the cheer she could muster. Their eyes were drawn to her rifle, and her earlier sadness morphed into anger. They recoiled at the sight of the gun, as if she were carrying a little demon with her. This far into the disaster she figured it had to be obvious to everyone still alive that guns were their only true salvation.

Or spears, rebar, shovels, or…

She could list a lot of zombie-killing tools, but none were as efficient and safe to the user as the gun.

They'd spent too much time on campus, under the protection of people with guns, to recognize things had changed.

She thought about that for as long as it took her to go down the stairs to the tunnel system. Only when she was at the bottom did it strike her she had no light source.

5

The tunnels were almost pitch black. Fortunately, planners had anticipated just such an event by placing small opaque windows on the ceiling that let in some of the light from above. The morning was still very young, however, so not much light made it down. It wasn't solid darkness, at least.

The rifle fortified her resolve as she shuffled along the tunnel. She had an irrational fear there were steps ahead of her, though the thought of putting steps in such a confined and dark area almost made her laugh.

In the light of day the tunnels never seemed very long, but now…

She took many minutes to walk the distance she covered in seconds when she ran across the parking lot above her. Various side tunnels joined hers, though her destination was directly ahead. When she thought she'd certainly gotten to the end, she did see the end another twenty or thirty feet ahead of her. The gate, which Hayes had said he locked, was there. But it had been partially opened.

Oh no.

She felt the weight of zombies behind her. Could they have gotten by her in the darkness? Were they in other tunnels? Suddenly, the thought of going on didn't seem so smart.

While she considered what to do, a form came out of a dark corner. She raised the rifle so she had a good bead on it.

But it didn't lunge at her. It appeared lost.

The form was someone she recognized from the experimental group from the day before, and from the video feed tonight. The teen girl wore a darling red sundress. It was a type of clothing unheard of out in the world anymore, so here in the safety of the campus, it got her noticed.

But as she came into focus, her beauty was gone. Her ashen gray skin was terribly mangled on the side of her head and face. Her neck carried the telltale signs of massive trauma—a zombie had recently infected her. And here she was, in the sights of Victoria's rifle, doing nothing.

Her finger hovered on the trigger. She wanted to pull it. She was certain she was going to pull it.

After I see what she does. Then I kill her.

The zombie had to have noticed her. It was getting lighter every minute, and the two girls were now only a handful of feet from each other. The girl in the red dress turned and faced Victoria—she stared at her, or in her direction, for a long minute. She sniffed the air. She cocked her head. It was as if Victoria was invisible.

She paid attention to as many details as she could. The girl had to be something special. A new kind of zombie, as Liam would undoubtedly say. But what would he call her?

After several minutes, the girl turned and walked into the metal gate. It seemed to readjust.

Is she blind?

It would explain everything. A blind zombie would depend on other senses to find food.

But it hadn't done very well using those senses. Victoria had made sounds and had to smell like something. Besides the perfume still lingering on her clothes, she'd been sweating like crazy since she began her escape from the zombies, then from the pair of NIS jerks.

Blind, and deaf?

That seemed closer to the truth.

She chanced moving closer to the zombie. The blood on the girl's neck glistened. As more light filtered down from above, the more ruined the girl appeared. From one side she almost appeared normal—save the grayish skin—and from the other, she was a horror movie. Yet, Victoria could imagine her mostly as a normal girl caught up in the events of the night, the same as her. Only one girl was under restraint, while the other was free to escape the calamity. A blind and deaf person would have had a very rough time in the Zombie Apocalypse…

It sobered her thoughts.

“Do you hear me?” she said before she had time to talk herself out of it.

The girl turned her way.

“Ah,” she said much quieter. “You do hear me.”

She moved sideways as fast as she could, making sure she held tight to her weapon. Her finger was next to the trigger. Ready.

As she feared, the zombie turned to where she moved. It had seen her, after all.

It could both see and hear her, yet didn't attack.

The zombie snapped her jaw—clacking her teeth loudly. She seemed to lose interest in Victoria and turned back toward the gate, and the research building from which she came.

“I don't know what's going on here,” she whispered to herself.

But she knew.

No. That's impossible.

Hayes said as much. Showed it to her on the screen.

No. It can't be. That would mean…

The zombie jumped and barked in a high-pitched chirp. She nearly dropped her gun.

A man came down the steps of the research building firing a rifle over and over into the red dress girl. It only seemed to anger her. She exploded from her standing position and charged the man. Shot after shot went into the girl, some of which exited her back as Victoria watched in stone-like terror.

The man's rifle clicked loudly. He was out of ammo. Instead of reloading on the fly, he continued toward the girl with purpose. That's when he saw Victoria near the gate.

“Just a minute, my dear. I'll be with you.”

It was Short Guy. He had a bandanna over his ruined right eye.

The red dress zombie was perforated, but her head was intact. Zombies can be put down in many different ways, though the head is always a requirement to take it out of action completely. However, that doesn't mean it can magically move and attack even after the rest of its body is destroyed. Her leg appeared shattered, her arms didn't work, and the holes in her backside were soaking the rest of her dress in blood. She barely made it to Short Guy, and it took him one solid crack with his rifle stock to put her down for good.

He kept coming toward her.

“Now it's your turn, you little bitch.”

6

“I don't think so.” She raised her rifle.

He stopped in his tracks. In the dim light, it was hard to read his face. The anger was there but also surprise. With a swallow, he seemed to try a new tact.

“There's going to be a wave of zombies coming down behind me. Then they'll take you to Hell, where you belong.” His empty rifle fell to the floor.

“I don't think you understand who goes to Hell,” she said sadly.

Would Hell be anything like this night?

She forced herself into the moment. Having philosophical debates over her feelings would not help keep her alive. Only the gun in her hand was doing that, now.

“Well, you'd better arrest me so we can both get out of here. They're coming.”

“Why? Why would you let them out?” She took a step back as she spoke. He took a step forward.

“Easy. Rid the world of the filth out there in the camp. A few zombies get loose. Poof. Problem solved,” he laughed.

“What's so funny about that? You can't just go around killing that many people for no reason.”

He looked at her with the same evil eyes she'd seen in that Colorado forest. “Sweet thighs, you have no idea what's going on, do you? You probably think this is gonna pass. We're all gonna survive and then rebuild. Am I right?” He laughed sarcastically. “We haven't even gotten to the real in-your-face killing, yet.”

She took another step back. She was close to the gate. He continued to slowly move forward. Her gun remained trained on him, but it didn't seem to evoke the same fear she'd have felt had their positions been reversed.

“I can see by your eyes you don't get it. Why would you? This is a rebirth. A renewal. Of mankind.”

“With zombies?” she croaked. Screams echoed in the tunnel. They came from behind Short Guy, up in the building. Distant gunfire cracked up there, too.

“The zombies are better than nukes and bombs and they leave infrastructure intact.”

“Don't move another foot,” she said with her rifle pointed at his chest.

“You think I'm afraid of you?” He wasn't stepping toward her with haste, but he wasn't slowing down. “I eat girls like you for breakfast.”

“I will shoot you.” She knew she would, but she didn't want to. She had another idea in mind for him. But it would take time…

Not sure if it was worth it, she took a chance and fired the gun. She expected a loud bang, but it was only a dainty snap. She wasn't aiming at Short Guy. She only wanted to scare him.

Her sudden action did appear to startle the NIS agent, but not for very long.

She wanted to close the gate on him, but the diversion didn't work. He was only twenty feet from her. They both seemed to size up the situation and came to wildly opposite conclusions.

Short Guy charged her.

Victoria steadied herself, then pulled the trigger several times as fast as she could.

The sound from the gun reminded her of the guns she'd used with Liam, back in the early days. The little pistols they'd used had .22 caliber ammunition, which was easy to carry in big bricks, but required precise aim to do any good against zombies.

Round after round went into Short Guy's chest, but he marched on with a wicked smile on his face.

Is this a BB gun?

He was very close when she lifted the gun and aimed for his head. BB gun or not, it should hurt anyone to get shot in the face.

She got off one final shot before he was on top of her. He yelled loudly as he grasped her and pulled her to the floor. The gun, useless though it was, clattered away loudly in the empty tunnel.

Short Guy was in pain. His voice was labored, and the epitome of angry.

“I'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do,” he shouted, almost in her ear.

His grip was vise-like. In moments he had her pinned to the ground, though he struggled to right himself on top of her. He seemed to pause to catch his breath while he lay heavily over her chest.

He giggled maniacally.

“Maybe I'll make you pay twice,” he said with a raspy whisper. His hand searched her waist. Its intent was obvious.

She squirmed desperately against him. Afraid of what she would see in his eyes when he finally had her in a helpless position. What that hand signified.

The gun was far away. She'd lost the screwdriver. She'd—

The screwdriver!

Maybe he kept it? It was the sort of thing someone would do if they wanted revenge. And these guys were all about revenge...

Short Guy continued to struggle while lying flat on her chest. She continued to resist, but fought him with her arms...she struck him on his hip and tried to hit his back. She managed to land a terribly weak blow on something solid.

“Enough of this,” he said madly.

Victoria had her head turned away from him, while she struggled to reach for his last weapon. She didn't see the strike coming. Short Guy banged his head against hers, which was a double hit because hers was already on the hard floor.

Her vision blurred as he finally got the energy he needed to push himself up to straddle her properly. Between the pain in her head and the tears welling in her eyes, she could barely see him. He was a specter hovering above her.

Though loathe to admit it, she was dreadfully scared. He'd gained the leverage needed. It was the signal her death was on the way...and whatever else he was going to do to her prior to that. Her strength flagged.

She closed her eyes for a long few seconds to clear them. When she opened them, she screamed in horror.

“What? Never seen a guy with no eyes?” he cackled. “Oh, you're gonna pay. Once for each eye.”

She pushed back with all her remaining strength, grasping at his backside.

Then she let her head fall back to the concrete. She was spent.

“She said you were fighters. You and that doofus and his Grandma. But you're just stupid kids. Stupid f—”

She tensed up and plunged the screwdriver into Short Guy's left ear with everything she had. When she didn't think it would go in any further, she pushed some more.

Short guy leaned away at first, but seemed to pause. Almost like he waited to see if that was the best she had. Like he did when he didn't care that she shot him multiple times.

She panicked, and let go of a deep sob.

It's not working!

She wondered if she'd missed his brain and only wounded him. There was no hope of surprising him a second time.

But Short Guy was definitely hurt.

“Oh.” A long pause. “Oh. Oww.”

He fell to her chest again. She might end up dying from being smothered…

He spoke into her armpit. “You don't have a chance, you know. None of you do. If it ain't these zombies, it will be others. We've planned this to the last body, and you have no idea where the zombies are coming from.”

Thinking back to the red dressed zombie, and her strange reaction at their meeting, Victoria had more than enough research in her pocket to respond.

“No, Mr. Short Guy, I know exactly where the zombies are coming from.”

She banged on the screwdriver handle, but there was no reaction from the body. He was gone.

The only good thing the man had done in the short, miserable time she'd known him was to not turn into a zombie. A bullet to the eye and a screwdriver to the ear made sure of that.

When the dead man rose up from her chest, it took her a few seconds to recognize that Hayes had come down from his refuge, after all. He pulled the guy off.

“We have to close this gate. They're about to burn the building,” he said as if he were reading a weather report.

“You saw me on the camera?” she asked dreamily.

“Yep, that's how I knew to come down here.”

That's great, but not why I asked. Not at all.

Chapter 9: Mile 444

Hayes had to help Victoria through the tunnel and out into the sunlight of the morning. The shock of the assault was bad enough, but the realization she may be infected sent her onto psychological thin ice. Her mind raced as her body ached.

I must get out of here. Run away.

The few students she’d seen, plus the men and women at the barricade, were a small glimpse of the total number of survivors within the killing range of a single zombie. Just one was all it would take to wipe everyone off the map. Unable to know for sure if what she’d seen down in the tunnel was the result of her truly being infected, or was simply another strange behavior of the zombie horde, she fell back on her long history of hypochondria. Now that the suggestion was in her head, she was convinced she was infected.

The sting of daylight didn’t brighten her mood.

“You all right? Did you get bitten?” Hayes had released her now that they were outside, and somewhat safe, but he seemed to study the blood over her shirt and pants—likely looking for bites.

She huffed. “I’m fine.” Then, with more grace. “He caught me off guard. I guess I got startled.”

Hayes stood next to her. “Well, you should be scared. That man was part of an NIS hit team, no doubt about it. They all dress like there’s only one color of clothing.” He handed her the black rifle she'd dropped.

She didn’t want to admit it, but Hayes probably saved her life. After getting her to her feet, he helped close and lock the gate in the tunnel. He assured her none of the zombies escaped the building, and in fact all of them were at the front windows of all three floors watching a growing throng of students—and security people from the barricade—as they attempted to start a fire.

They soon watched the action in real time. Sparks and his crew had filled some kind of push cart, and it was burning wildly.

“They’ll torch the whole place. Zombie problem solved,” he said evenly.

“It’ll ruin all your research...”

She was conflicted into silence. On the one hand, the research Hayes had done there was incredible, and could lead to a cure. On the other, clearing the building would be dangerous, and the risk of one of them getting out would only increase if security teams went in looking for trouble.

The NIS had done their job too well.

“The man I killed. The shorter guy. Do you know what he was doing in that lower level before I arrived?”

Surely he wasn’t waiting just for me.

Or, she thought, that was exactly what someone like him would do. He guessed that’s where she would go next. Did he know Hayes was locked up there?

Suddenly the conspiracy launched into an infinite regression. Hayes was in on it. He communicated with Short Guy, and they were working together to bring her back so they could take care of her, and the zombies, in one fell swoop.

Then she remembered that if she was infected—a modern day Typhoid Victoria—she should be put down. Maybe they were trying to do her a favor…

“Hello? You in there?”

Victoria came back. “Oh, I’m—sorry, what?”

“Do you want to watch these guys torch the place, or can we move on?”

The guys from the barricade weren’t that far away.

“I need to go tell them thanks. They saved both our lives.”

“OK. I’ll wait over there,” he pointed to the far end of the parking lot, which was the edge of campus and the beginnings of Forest Park.

He walked off, leaving her alone in the first rays of sunshine coming in through the tall, stately trees of the campus. She tried to gather her wits as she neared Sparks. The smell of burning paper was on the air.

“Hey, there she is!” Sparks said with gusto. “Perfect timing. You were short and sweet. So were we.” He pointed to the cart filled with flames. They’d filled it with books.

“Yeah, I, uh, wanted to tell you I got the man I was looking for. And I—”

She wanted to say she killed the assassin, but it sounded ridiculous. Like she was some kind of counter-terrorist soldier—which was pretty much the furthest thing from the truth.

“—found the guy who shot your people. He was attacked by a zombie.”

Despite the gray lie, the story sounded plausible and served the same purpose, in the end.

“Ah, that’s good news. We’ll burn his body with all the others.”

She pawed the rifle strap over her shoulder, and brought it around to her front. “Do you want this back? I fired it at that hitman, but he laughed when I shot him.”

“No, keep it.” He got close enough to look it over. “That's chambered in point-22 caliber.” He laughed. “It looks bad ass, but it won't do much good against Kevlar or the undead. But it's all I can give you.”

She sighed. Short Guy's gun was lying somewhere in the tunnel...though she was pretty sure it was now on the wrong side of the gate.

“Thanks,” she said as she pushed it to her back again.

“I have to go,” she continued. “I need to find my boyfriend, and get my scientist friend another lab,” she pointed to the one they were about to destroy.

“Lots of space on this campus. You’ll have no problem on that score.”

She was sure he was right, though he couldn’t know the NIS was already here looking for Hayes. No matter what building he wanted to use for his research, they’d not let him do it.

Maybe I could do it myself? I could cure myself.

Her spirits sunk at the recollection she’d momentarily forgotten about that. It would be empowering to think she could research the plague and cure herself and everyone else...but this was reality. She was an amateur bedpan changer, not a medical professional. She needed Hayes, just as much as he apparently needed her.

She wondered if he would have ever come out of his security room if she’d not found rescue. In another universe she would have been killed by Short Guy, or red dress girl, then she herself could have ended up killing Hayes at some point inside that building.

Focus on the now, girl. You kept him alive. Go find Liam.

2

Hayes watched her approach.

“You bounce back quick,” he said with a smile.

“So do you. Did you realize you’d have died if I hadn’t found help? Short Guy was about to close the gate on you. I don’t think anyone would have found you if the zombies had gotten out from that building.”

“That short guy, as you call him, probably had more years of training in the art of killing than you've been alive. You're one tough chick, I'll give you that.”

They walked along the road that would take them by the park, the row of mansions, or to the hospitals on the opposite end of Forest Park. She tried to think of the best place to go next, knowing there were people who wanted her dead lurking about.

The park would take her to Doctor Yu.

The hospitals might lead her to someone in charge. Someone who could protect her.

The mansions—Hans' home was there. That's where she figured she'd see Liam if he returned from his task for the old man.

“Liam would freak out if he saw you and me together.”

“Is he the jealous type?” he said with his old egotistical charm.

“No. Well, I don't know. No!” she sputtered. “I'm talking about you being a crazy researcher who shoots little girls and kidnaps grandparents. That guy.”

He let her accusations go.

“He has to know what I'm doing. You have to tell him.”

She looked at him, rising to the challenge.

“He and I spent time in a deep mine not far from here. We saw bodies pulled from caskets—dead bodies—that became animated zombies. Care to comment?”

They walked in silence for a long time. She figured she'd finally cornered him on something important. Her ace card was that she and Liam had gotten a hold of Colonel McMurphy's secret videos showing his discoveries of the place, but that wasn't her secret to reveal. Not to Hayes.

“How did you guys get down there?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, I suppose not.” He laughed in a guarded fashion. “I'm going to take a guess here and say that someone knows you've been down there. Someone in the NIS?”

She searched her memories. They had no encounters with the NIS while in the mine. At least, no one advertised themselves as such. The three men who claimed to be Polar Bears were left behind in the tank room. They knew. Whoever communicated over the computer link knew. The three missing girls knew. Lots of people knew.

“Uh huh. I'll take it by your silence that it wasn't a complete secret.”

Hayes walked to stand under one of the large trees that lined the avenue. He looked around like he was about to share a secret, then spoke in a low voice. “The Mile 444 Project isn't something I was involved in directly, but I knew about it because of its implications for finding a cure. If you could reanimate the dead, imagine what you could do for the sick, right?”

He rubbed his hands like he was cold. “Before the sirens, a discovery was made out in Colorado. Something that suggested the disease circling the planet was more than we were led to believe. We later came to understand it changes to meet the unique characteristics of localities where it spreads. Thus, Chicago zombies have a version of the disease that is very different from those in Colorado. A sick person in Utah is going to be unrecognizable to a zombie in Uganda. It isn't surprising, given local foods, local customs, minerals in the drinking water, and so forth. But what really surprised us is that the disease could affect dead flesh and bones.”

With a nod, his voice became a whisper. “The service men and women they dug up down there were supposed to be used for testing, but once the NIS mission changed from causing the infection to making it as bad as possible, they started to dig up more and more bodies. What they did with them, I have no idea.”

“There are hundreds of them down in that mine.”

“Then you need to stay far away.”

“Oh, I'm never going back down there. Don't you worry.”

With a little less discretion, Hayes spoke louder. “I had nothing to do with all that, though I wish I could get my hands on some of that reanimated blood. It might give us further clues in how the disease is spreading, and how it stays virulent in decaying bodies.”

“Good luck with that,” she said as she began walking once more.

Hayes jogged a few paces to catch up. “You know, I could use your help. I need to find a new lab, but I'll need help when I get there. It's just me, now. You could be a real asset.”

She'd come full circle. Her whole purpose—most of her purpose—of staying behind was to see if she help Doctor Yu and others with the effort to formulate a cure. When they'd arrived, and given Yu and her boss new information about what they'd learned on their journey, she thought for sure that was the beginning of the end. The time when real scientists and doctors got to work to solve the whole thing.

But the truth was much different. The research on the cure was being done by the one man she'd hoped never to see again. To her chagrin, he'd made real discoveries. He'd given everyone a legitimate lead toward a final cure.

She had to trust him to continue that research, in the open. If he made off to a secret base again, he might find the cure, but who knows how he'd use it when the time came to share it with the world. Her trust issues wouldn't let her ignore the possibilities.

“There's a house, just up ahead, where we might find Liam.”

The first step, once again, was to find her partner. She wanted to have multiple eyes on Hayes, and together the two of them could ensure Doctor Cure didn't run off again.

She also admitted the need to stay close to the one man who might be able to cure her own infection.

3

Hayes walked the street with a type of giddiness.

“Why the heck are you so happy?”

“Oh, it feels good to be partnered with someone again. You have no idea—well, you have some idea—what it's like to get on the NIS's bad side.”

“Yeah, they put your whole family on a kill list, isn't that right?” They both knew of the existence of the secret list of Liam's family members. All of whom had been designated as enemies of the state.

“True. But now that world is dead, my own family's chances are about the same as everyone else's. Even though I'm technically a traitor to the cause, the odds of them finding my entire family and terminating them is very low. Some of them are already fighting back.”

Victoria sighed. “I don't understand you people at all. You fight. You connive. You betray.”

“Just like every other group of humans on the planet. For all their bravado and careful planning, they couldn't factor out human nature. Sometimes people do the exact opposite of what you and I think they should. Even on super secret committees and hit teams. But make no mistake. There are true believers. They would sell out their own children to protect the cause.”

“And what is...the cause,” she said dramatically.

“The continuation of mankind, of course.”

“What? No. It can't be that simple. This has to be about power. Money. Something important.”

“All that is part of it. A necessary component. But that isn't why these people spend their lives in pursuit of their goals. It is much simpler. It is the most basic thing in existence. They want their families to go on forever.”

Victoria stopped in the middle of the empty street. “I don't believe you. They're killing everyone on Earth! If their goal was long life, they'd have built hospitals, conducted research, trained doctors and scientists. You know, the stuff that keeps people alive,” she said hotly.

“You're right of course. That was their goal, for many decades. They had a hand in many of the important scientific discoveries of the last fifty years. But this new crisis hit them like a freight train. They had no way to head it off. They—”

He looked around.

“—I was there when all this began. I already told you my role. I helped the President release the plague on those marchers. I thought I was protecting humanity—protecting the institutions which had the most hope of doing exactly what I just said.” He paused.

“But it got out of hand.”

“Yes, the plague was already loose, overseas. My innocuous virus helped spread it across America, much faster than it might have otherwise. But it was always coming. And once the NIS knew this, they enacted their own plans to protect themselves, and their families, at the expense of everyone else. They stripped the treasury. Promoted and demoted the right people. They even tolerated my research until they realized my priorities had changed. I was unwilling to do whatever it took to protect the cause.”

“So you're hated because you want to cure everyone, and not just those they deem important?”

He touched his nose, signifying she was right.

She went back and forth over who the NIS hated more. Her and Liam, or Hayes. She was leaning toward Hayes.

“Up ahead is a house of an old man. He, uh, was someone I drew blood from because of his age. We kind of made a base there, rather than hang out in the park.”

“Or your dorm room,” he said with a knowing smile.

“Or my dorm room, you perv.” She did not return the smile.

“So what's his deal? He like Grandma Marty?”

“He's...interesting.” It was all she could say without revealing the truth.

“Let's go meet him. We can grab Liam and go.”

She wondered where he intended to go, but saved that for later. As they walked up the front path of the big home, she unslung her rifle and tried to look like she knew what she was doing. She thumbed the safety, though it was already in the “hot” position. She hadn't given a thought to safety since she'd taken the rifle.

“The last time we knocked on the door he fired a gun at us,” she said with no humor.

“Maybe I'll wait over here,” he said as he walked off to the side.

Fine.

“Hello? Mr. Grubmeyer? I'm picking up Liam.” She wished it to be true.

She repeated herself at the bottom of the steps to his front stoop.

“Don't shoot,” she called out.

After a few long seconds, she moved a few steps up and repeated herself. In time she was at the door.

The heavy wooden door had a large metal handle, which she assumed was locked. She gave it a tentative push and felt the door open a couple of inches. She let go and froze.

“Mr. Grubmeyer?”

A long pause.

She turned back to Hayes, standing nearby in the yard. “I'm going in. I have to.”

“Knock yourself out. Let me know what you find,” he said with a smile.

I'll be the man. Again.

The door swung in gracefully. As expected, the front room was filled with boxes of supplies. The place looked like a loading dock. Wooden crates were stacked to the ceiling. Every inch of the floor had supplies, leaving very little space in the middle for a couple of chairs. Hallways led to the back of the house and to the stairwell. She knew the place well, but the silence was eerie.

She backed to the front door, swung it all the way open, and looked for Hayes. He'd moved closer and was at the foot of the steps.

“I don't see anyone inside. Will you come in? It's creepy.”

He doesn't have to know I'm scared.

There should be someone from the Patriot Snowball group inside. They'd made an arrangement with Hans—Liam did. They'd go pick up his tanks for him, and he'd provide provisions. A kind of hidden base for them to use this close to Forest Park. It was a match made in Heaven, or so she thought.

Hayes hesitated at the front steps.

“Please?”

The turmoil was visible on his face. Come inside to help the teenage girl, or stay outside where it was safe. She wasn't about to complain that he owed her. She wanted to save that for future use.

He came up the steps with care, and when he reached the front door and saw inside he hesitated.

Victoria looked inside. All she saw were the boxes.

“What is it?”

“Who lives here, did you say?”

“Hans Grubmeyer.”

“How did you find him?” His face was pale.

She tried to arrange the chain of events properly.

“We were looking for old people at the hospital. They said Hans had been released recently and sent back home. We found him here. It was the address listed on his admission paperwork.”

“Where's Liam? Why isn't he here?” Hayes' voice was uncharacteristically emotional.

“He's out. Why does it matter?”

“Because you won't tell me. And the fact you've just walked us into an NIS supply drop doesn't give me much comfort, either.”

Something moved in the shadows of the hallway.

God. Don't let this be the end.

She readied her rifle.

4

Victoria got down on one knee like Liam had shown her. With careful aim, she put several rounds into the face of the military-looking male zombie stumbling out of the hallway. As soon as it hit the light, she knew he wasn't NIS. It was one of the Patriots left behind to keep the place safe until Liam and Lana returned.

Though the bullets were tiny, her aim was true. The zombie slid noisily on the wooden floor and came to a rest a few feet from her.

“I got him,” she turned to tell Hayes, but he had gone.

“You big sissy!”

She removed one of her hands from the gun, noticed it was shaking, and then gripped the frame again.

“Hans?” she said with trepidation.

No reply came from within the house.

“Is it clear?” Hayes asked from somewhere out front.

“Yes. The zombie is dead.”

Victoria poked her head down each of the two hallways but wasn't interested in searching the whole house. For the moment, she was content to know the front room was safe.

Hayes was there when she backed into the front room.

“What are you good for?” she asked with a scalding tone.

He didn't reply.

When she got a look at the zombie, it had something on its face that screamed for her attention. It was a white sheet of paper, and it had been duct taped to the side of the man's face.

“One of us needs to check this out,” she pointed to the sheet with the barrel of her rifle. “It has to be you unless you want to hold the gun.”

“O-OK,” he replied.

After much effort to remove the duct tape without ripping the paper, he had it in his hand. It was a folded sheet of stout paper with fancy wording on the front.

“It's a wedding invitation.”

“Seriously? What does that mean?”

“I told you. These people play to win. This is Elsa's. The invite is for her wedding with one M. Duchesne.”

“What's it doing here?” she asked, though she was starting to get a sense of it.

He stared at it for a long moment, then showed it to her. Someone used a pen to print large block letters near the top of the page. It said: “For Douglas Hayes, wedding crasher.”

“Who's it from?”

“It was Elsa. She knew I'd come here.” His voice remained panicky. “Which is why we have to get out. Now.” He threw down the paper, and backed to the door.

“But what's going on?”

“Don't you see, this is a trap.”

“Help.” The voice came from inside the room, but from behind some of the towers of boxes.

She looked at Hayes. He'd heard the voice, but kept going for the door.

“We have to help.” She didn't know if that was true.

“No, we have to run.”

“Help, please,” came the male voice.

“We hear you,” she said firmly. Then she carefully picked her way to a corner of the room with a small gap in the boxes. The work boots of a man on the floor came into view.

“I'm here. Who are you?” she asked before she stuck her head around.

“I'm shot. I recognized your voice. You are...begins with a V...” the man said weakly.

“Victoria,” she replied.

She peeked around the corner, waiting to get shot. But the man was down. No weapons visible.

“Hayes, I need help,” she called out. To her surprise, he found her in moments. Together they lifted the man from his hiding spot, as that was what it appeared to be, and got him to a chair in the cramped room.

“It was the old man. He shot us. Said he wasn't going to be taken alive.”

“How many were you?” Hayes asked.

“Me and Becker. We walked out back for some fresh air, leaving that old bastard alone. All he did was sleep, anyway. We heard gunshots and ran. When we came back, it was just him and his pop gun standing over the bodies of two men in black uniforms. He looked all proud like he'd just bagged a couple of lions on safari. We thought someone had tried to rob him and were even congratulating him on being such a good shot—and that's when the sonofabitch shot us, too.”

He took a deep breath, appearing to be in pain. He had several bloody spots on his upper chest. “Beck went right down. Hans was a good shot, I'm afraid. I think he figured me for dead because I stumbled into this room and threw myself into the boxes to get away from him. He shouted some nonsense that 'she' wasn't going to kill him. That the assassination attempt would fail.”

“Where is he?”

“No idea.”

“Do you know anything about this,” Victoria picked up the nearby leaflet. The injured man held it while he read the names.

“Elsa,” he said with recognition. “He said this name a couple of times. Didn't know what he meant. Still don't,” he said with finality.

Victoria looked at Hayes, who seemed to wear an “I-told-you-so” face. “Elsa did this. She's sweeping up messes.” He looked at her. “Me. You. This Hans guy. Though I have no idea what he did to cross them.”

“The tanks,” croaked the man.

“What?”

He turned to Hayes. “The old man told the kid about the tanks. Sent him to go get them. He went on about how he shouldn't have done that.”

“Military tanks? He sent him to get a real tank?”

The man nodded as best he could. “These people have hundreds of 'em.”

Hayes pivoted toward her. It was her turn to look sheepish. “Is this true? Liam went off to get tanks? You didn't think that was worth telling me? And who is this guy?” he pointed, “and why was he here in NIS-land with you and oh-so-innocent Liam?”

Victoria felt defensive but was unable to reconcile the need to protect Liam with the need to tell Hayes about Liam's comings and goings, even if her omission resulted in her ongoing disaster of a morning with Hayes.

“I didn't tell you because it's none of your business.”

Hayes' eyes swept the room and seemed to make a realization. He let out a deep breath. “I get it. You don't trust me. But you've just walked us into the head of an important NIS family. Maybe the most senior member in the Midwest. That man sent your boyfriend on some kind of wild goose chase—I assure you whatever tanks he thinks he was getting will not be given to him. He's going to get himself killed. And now Elsa is trying to kill a senior member of the organization... And you walked me right through his front door.”

He ripped the wedding invitation from the hands of the wounded man. “And this! Elsa had this left so I would find it. It won't mean anything to anyone else. She knew I'd show up. She wanted me to find this. She's playing with us,” he said with derision. “So thanks for that, Vicky.”

5

“Hans knew she'd come to get him,” the guy wheezed. “And he was working on a bomb. The man talks to himself,” he gurgled.

Victoria kneeled down to him. “Just rest. We'll figure this out.”

Hayes looked around the room. “I don't see a bomb.”

“Help me up.”

“No. You're shot.”

“Sweetie, I'm dead already. No one is going to fix a wound like this,” he nodded his head to a serious gash on the side of his chest. “But I think I can help you.”

Together, they lifted him to his feet. After he got his bearings, he spoke tiredly. “There. That's the box.”

Victoria and Hayes put him down in the clear part of the room where an open-topped metallic box sat on the lap of one of the NIS corpses. When he examined it, he smiled with satisfaction.

“How did you know this had explosives in it?”

“The long answer involves the military, a chicken, and a million lines of code. The short answer is this box wasn't here before. The old man was puttering around with something, and this has to be it.”

“Will it go off?” she said with reverence. She pulled off her long-sleeved shirt as the exertion of the morning had made it expendable.

“Nah. It has to be wired up. I would have been surprised if the old man could do it.”

“Can you?”

He chuckled. “I'm guessing neither of you can do this.” When they didn't reply, he continued. “So yeah, I can. If that Elsa lady comes through here, she'll get quite the surprise.”

“Well, get to it,” Hayes said with haste. He then pulled Victoria down the hallway, toward the back door. They were next to the porch filled with ammo before he spoke.

“He tried to get things going with this suitcase surprise, but the old man isn't coming back. She'll be out for blood if he took down her people. He's fleeing the scene of the crime.”

“So where will he go?”

“Hard to say. Depends on how much of a planner he was. Who his friends are on the outside. But I don't think an old man has much chance to get very far.”

“Hmm, kind of like Grandma Marty?” she said with a touch of condescension.

Hayes studied her face. “Look. Things are a lot different than even a few weeks ago. The people outside are weaker, and the zombies are stronger. Anyone with the means to avoid the zombies—like the NIS—can prey on the survivors with impunity. She could drop on the roof of this mansion, kill us, and be back to her camp before dinner. She has that kind of reach. It all depends on how much immediate risk the old man poses to her.”

Victoria had a light go on. “Could he pose more risk than a scientific researcher close to finding a cure? Research, you say, she is doing everything she can to destroy?”

“This isn't a flight of fancy. She wants the disease to spread. It has to kill everyone.”

“But then she'd die.” It sounded empty as she spoke it.

“No, I'm sure they have a team working on the cure, too. They control the best scientists in the world. I know that for a fact from my time...uh...”

“Designing the plague in the first place.”

He rubbed the back of his head, signaling what passed for embarrassment for him. As always, he regained his composure in record time.

“It doesn't matter who's at the top of the Elsa Pyramid of Hate. At least two of her men are dead in this house,” he laughed. “She's coming back. Here. If we set this bomb, it may be our only chance to take her out.”

“While he sets up the bomb, can we continue our search for Liam?” She was going to check with Doctor Yu, but if that didn't yield anything she was going right to the administrator. Someone had to be able to find him.

What if he's back in the dorm room?

Hayes responded while she was lost in thought.

“...you know? That's why we have to get out of here.”

“Leave? No! I have to find him.”

If Liam had gone back to her dorm room to wait for her, it would be the ultimate insult to all her running and searching. But she believed what Hayes was saying about Elsa and her team. She could search new places, but going back would be impossible for the time being.

“There are a hundred thousand people out there.” His face signaled a new thought. “I bet you didn't know the food's running out?”

“What? When?”

“A couple of days. They're already cutting back. Do you know what that means?”

“People can survive for a long time without food. I saw it out at Camp Hope.”

“That was a quaint little valley of Kumbaya Boy Scouts. This is a whole city.” He spoke quietly but forcefully. “And that assumes the NIS doesn't airlift a bunch of zombies here to wipe everyone out.”

Her face went slack.

“Oh, it's true. Or, it could happen. These people will stop at nothing to ensure their plans go off without a hitch.”

“They want to survive at our expense?”

“Yes. You are either with them or against them. They entertain no middle ground.”

“We have to warn someone,” she said tiredly.

Hayes laughed. “Yeah, excuse us. There is a super duper secret organization planning to drop zombies on you, or release them from a lab, or put rabid infected dogs into your camp.” He looked at her with a deadly serious expression. “Who would believe us?”

“But you were inside. You know.”

“Victoria, even you don't believe me.”

For once, he spoke the truth.

6

“The old goat has everything. He was prepared for World War III.” They'd learned the man's name was Nick. He lifted a fancy box that fit snugly in both arms. “Including this.”

“What is it?” Hayes asked.

“It's just a box,” he giggled wetly.

Victoria and Hayes shared a look.

“But. But this box will serve nicely to spring our trap.”

He lifted the lid and made a “boom” sound.

Hayes' eyes lit up with understanding. He moved like a dervish as he planned his revenge. For once Victoria could marvel at his efficiency and craftiness without worrying for her own safety.

It took a long thirty minutes to set up the room. They'd found rolls of chicken wire out back, which Hayes explained would be his insurance policy that Elsa couldn't toss the box out the front windows. They strung the wire over the windows, then boarded the front door shut. His goal was to get Elsa in the room, then make it so she would find the box, read the note he was going to leave her, and have a few seconds to appreciate the fact she'd been beaten.

“I wish I could leave a camera here so I could watch her face.”

“You put one in my dorm room, can I get it for you?” she laughed, but only on the outside. She wasn't ever going to forgive him for that intrusion.

“No,” he said without addressing her sarcasm, “When we hear the boom, we'll know we got her.”

“And what if Liam shows up first?”

“I got ya covered,” Hayes said smoothly. He held up a sheet of paper.

“Liam. Meet me in Bosley Deveraux's office. Love, Victoria,” she read aloud.

“We'll nail that to the front door. If Elsa sees it first, it won't matter. She'll still come in. If Liam sees it first, he'll run like a lovesick puppy to Bosley's.”

“I'll nail this to the door,” she said as she grabbed it. “I'll go through the back door.”

She had a bounce in her step as she walked through the fresh morning grass. She stopped under a plum tree and took a deep breath. The air was humid and already warm, but she was out of the view of the refugees in the park and away from Hayes for a short time. It gave her a chance to enjoy the beauty of nature, just for a minute.

Ahead, on the ground, the bright orange plumage of a Robin bounded to and fro as it searched for worms. Life for the bird went on as if nothing of any consequence was happening in the world around it.

“God, if it's your will, please help the people in the park escape the fate of having zombies put in their midst. Protect them from such evil.”

It was an impossible prayer. More of a wish. Could anyone, God included, protect all those people? It wasn't very likely.

Not impossible. Just improbable.

Those were Grandma Marty's words.

“Come back to me, Liam. Hurry.”

The bird flew away as she walked to the front of the house. In moments she had the paper secured to the front door with a couple of nails she'd taken from Hans' supplies.

Looking at her work, and the words Hayes had written, she felt guilty for not writing them herself. Almost as if it were a crime for Hayes to speak for her.

She shook it off as unreasonable. Hayes ran up to her, keeping her thoughts on the moment.

“We have to go. All is set inside.”

“What about Nick?”

After a pause, Hayes shook his head.

“He died?”

“He was bleeding all over the place. There was nothing we could do for him. You saw that.”

She didn't know what she saw. Though the wound was serious…

“I should have tried to help him,” she said with sudden regret. “I was too worried about your revenge plot.”

“Revenge? No, this isn't about revenge. This is about self-preservation. That's the only thing that matters.”

“Spoken like a true NIS adherent,” she said with venom.

“I was NIS, no doubt about it. I did bad things. I don't deny it. But when I saw what the NIS wanted to do after the virus mutated...”

He stepped closer to her.

“Victoria, if you believe just one thing about me, you have to believe I truly want to find the cure. Not for the NIS. Not even for myself—though I hope there's enough for me—but for those people over there,” he pointed to the refugees in the huge park. “My self-preservation is theirs as well.”

Her emotion rushed out like a deflating balloon. It was hard to maintain constant anger and doubt at someone she had to work with. “Let's just go. I want to find Liam.”

What if I infect him?

Already emotionally spent, it went to the back burner.

“We'll try Bosley's office, just like the note says,” he pointed to the door.

“You think that's where he'd be?” She was sure Liam wouldn't go there.

“No, not at all. We're going there to let them know the threats they're facing, and we'll tell them Liam is going to be instrumental in helping stave off the attacks from the outside.”

“We're going to lie?”

He looked taken aback. “Lie? Heavens no! We're going to save your boyfriend's life.”

She looked at him with troubled eyes but allowed his words to sooth her.

It's a very small lie. And, with Liam here, we really can save more lives.

She said nothing on the walk along the mile-long empty avenue. The mature trees lining each side provided shade and a pleasant atmosphere. She could almost ignore the edges of the large crowd in the park on her right.

When they entered the hospital, she still wasn't sure she was doing the right thing.

What if I infect everyone?

Chapter 10: Freefall

They reached Bosley Deveraux's office at the top of the hospital tower without incident. The two guards at the elevator patted them down, even though Victoria left her rifle at the gun check on the main floor. The patting was something new. Last time she'd been on the floor, they weren't bothered. Of course, that time she was with Doctor Yu, instead of Douglas Hayes.

Unless they just want to touch me.

Worried that was true, she suffered the indignity in silence, then moved away as soon as they gave the OK. She never made eye contact with them but sensed the stares as she walked away. She was glad to make it to the camp administrator's office.

Deveraux didn't get up from his desk. “Damn you, Doctor Stevens. What are you doing to my research facilities?”

As on her last visit, the administrator sat looking at a screen with a video feed. It had been playing footage from the convoy now heading to St. Louis, but she couldn't be sure that was what he was watching this time.

“Good to see you, too, Bosley,” Hayes said with his best attempt at charm. “And since when do I get patted down?” He acted offended, though he was faking it—just like his false name.

“Since you started setting fires!” He banged on the desk.

“Me? No, you've got me all wrong. She and I,” he pointed to Victoria, “were trapped in the security room when the zombies broke containment.”

“And what were you two doing in the security room, if I may ask?”

Victoria's face burned. The thought of doing anything improper with Hayes was repulsive. She was prepared for Hayes to run with that fiction, but he surprised her.

“She was accosted in the tunnel on the way to her dorm. I saw her on the cameras and guided her in. She was instrumental in getting us to safety, and alerting the authorities on the defense wall. They came and got us, and cleared out the infected. Sadly, the only way to do that and still keep their men safe was to burn the insides of the building.” He spoke as if he were reading a prepared statement. To Victoria, it came across as the absolute truth. He'd only left out certain details…

Deveraux looked at her for a long moment. Just long enough to make her uncomfortable. “I guess I owe you thanks. Doctor Stevens has made many advancements in the search for the cure in that building, and losing all that work would be tragic, though losing him would be a global loss.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Hayes responded with a smile. “But, Bos, we have a new problem.”

The man slumped back in his high-backed swivel chair. “Just what I need. More problems.” He nodded to the screen but didn't turn up the sound. “The convoy is still stuck in West Virginia. They say the bridges have been stressed by all the heavy equipment passing over them. The repairs are taking a lot of time, and the whole effort seems in danger of failure.”

Hayes took a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk and put his feet on the edge of the desk like he owned the place. “You only see what they want you to see. I guarantee they aren't holding things up because of some rusty bridges.”

“Then what?”

“Oh, probably too many infected. Or too many people falling prey to the zombies. Or, worst of all, maybe the convoy is already here.”

The two men stared at each other. Victoria couldn't see Hayes' face, but Bosley's eyes were rigid. His eventual response was measured. “And why would that be the worst of all, doctor?”

Hayes looked up to Victoria with a smile, then turned back to the desk. “Because, sir, it would mean our time in this dangerous hellhole called the Zombie Apocalypse might be coming to an end.” Victoria could hear the smile. Deveraux did not return it.

“I don't get you. You do such good work in the lab, but you are a complete jagoff everywhere else.”

“See! That right there is why I need to get up here more. The socializing.”

Victoria was unsure how to feel. Hayes was always a jerk, that much was true, but Deveraux more or less threw her and Liam out the last time, after they had suggested the zombie disease was much worse than anyone knew. A fact he seemed determined to ignore on both visits.

“Why did you really come here, doctor. I'm a very busy man.”

“I can see that. Watching TV and drinking Scotch can take a lot out of a man.” Hayes reached to the desk and lifted a napkin which had been placed over a clear glass of a golden liquid.

“Screw you. Do you have any idea what I have to deal with here? Lists of dead. Threats of infection. Diminishing medical supplies.”

“Don't forget, you're almost out of food,” Hayes prodded.

Deveraux actually rolled his eyes. “Yes, that, too. And now I have my most hopeful line of research go up in smoke because you and this slut wanted to play sneak and slide in a private room.”

“Hey!” Victoria shouted, though Hayes was already speaking.

“I told you, there's nothing going on like that. In fact, we came to ask about her boyfriend, Liam.”

“You met him a couple days ago, with Doctor Yu,” she said with accusation.

Deveraux reached for his glass, then downed the remaining two fingers of Scotch. He set the glass back on his desk with great care, apparently thinking as he did so.

“Liam won't be coming back, I'm afraid to say.” He clicked some letters on his keyboard and the computer monitor flipped from images of the convoy to a still image of an old man walking along the main avenue outside the hospital.

“Hans Grubmeyer,” Victoria let slip.

“Yes. After you left my office the last time, you asked one of my nurses for some proprietary information about elderly people in the area. She explained where you'd gone. From there it was easy to piece everything together. We watched all the people who went in. All the people who went out. Our counter-surveillance operation is small but efficient. We watched Liam and his friends leave the compound, and we know he hasn't come back in. None of them have. They're dead.”

Hayes was quiet. She watched him, waiting for the snarky response.

“A shame about the research, though. Your appearance in camp really helped take us to the next level.” Deveraux looked at Hayes with a frown. “If it were up to me...”

Victoria turned to Hayes and used his fake name. “Doctor Stevens? What's going on here?”

Hayes stood up, stretching like he was bored, then turned to her. “This is the end of the line for you, I'm afraid.”

“What? No! We have to save Liam. Together. Like you promised.”

But it was obvious. She'd been led into a trap. Hayes had betrayed her.

2

“Um, no. That's not what's happening at all,” Deveraux said with a pleasant voice. “You are being arrested for destruction of government research. This is the end for both of you.”

Hayes looked hurt, but she felt a tiny bit of relief when she saw his expression.

“Aw man, I thought you and I had an understanding? I bring you terrorists like Victoria, and you let me do my research in peace.” He winked at her.

“We're way beyond agreements, Douglas Reginald Hayes. She said you were the most dangerous person within a hundred miles of here—”

“Only a hundred?”

“—and you walked right in my office.”

“She'll be so pleased.”

“Yes. She will,” Deveraux said with growing anger.

“Will someone please tell me what the...heck...is going on here?”

Hayes responded to Victoria with mock seriousness. “Deveraux is doing the bidding of one Ms. Elsa Cantwell.”

“Elsa? From the invitation? She controls him?”

“No one controls me, Missy. But Homeland Security is in charge of everything you see out my windows. She's the only one who can get me the supplies I need to keep my people alive.”

Victoria spoke with dawning understanding. “He doesn't know?”

Hayes responded. “No, he still thinks there's a Homeland Security.”

That peaked Deveraux's interest. “What are you saying? Of course there's still a Homeland Security.” He pointed to the screen, though it still showed Hans. “The convoy is being guided by Homeland. The video feeds are Homeland. My food comes from Homeland.”

Hayes laughed with scorn. “You must be dumber than I thought. Elsa is the one who burned the research. Elsa is the one who sent a team to kill Hans in his home. She's trying to kill me, Victoria, and, in time, she'll kill you and everyone in your precious camp. You can't sit up here and run out the clock on this disaster.”

The camp director didn't try to hide his actions. He reached for a bottle he'd apparently set on the floor under his desk, then poured himself a full tumbler. With a deep sniff, he tipped it back and downed the whole thing in several big gulps.

“You better watch that bad habit,” Hayes said to annoy him. Which it clearly did.

“Your mouth is a bad habit,” he said lamely.

“So where is Hans?” Victoria queried. If they knew where the old man had gone, it might give her a clue to where Liam had gone.

“We don't know. He was last seen walking the streets, but he disappeared from his tail. No one took that old man seriously as an escape threat.”

Hayes laughed.

“Yeah, it's all fun and games, but you are under arrest, and when Elsa gets here we'll see if you're still laughing.”

“When will she be here,” she said innocently.

“When she's here. I don't make the timeline; I just run the biggest damned camp of refugees in the Midwest.”

“She's playing you,” Hayes said with his normal charm.

“Shut up. Just shut up!” Deveraux was sweating profusely. The hospital still had nominal power, but the air conditioning had been set extremely high. His condition—including glassy eyes and slurring speech—had nothing to do with heat.

“Where is she, Bos, old friend?”

“Old friend? We've only known each other for two weeks,” he laughed weakly. “And you lied to me the whole time.”

“I meant that one day when we look back on this, we'd be old friends,” he said with a smooth cadence. “One day we'll look back on the time when we figured out that things weren't what they seemed.”

“Ha! Her young beau came in here spouting about dead bodies being reanimated by this virus. Some kind of supernatural mumbo jumbo. Your research says people can carry the virus and not appear to be sick at all—”

Victoria gulped, involuntarily.

“—and suddenly a 105-year-old walks out of our safety. None of this makes any sense.” He looked at his empty glass. “And this convoy. I've been watching it for days. Praying it gets here before everything goes to shit.” He pointed out the window. “You haven't been down there. People are losing patience with us. With me. They want answers. They want to go home. They want food. They want. They want. They f'ing want!”

Deveraux took his glass and threw it at the wall. In a stroke of irony, it hit a wooden picture frame for some artsy tapestry and plopped gently onto a nearby pile of papers. It was unbroken.

“God, I can't even get mad properly.”

“Sir, you have to let us go. I only want to find my boyfriend, and get out of here.” She didn't want to speak for Hayes. She didn't really know, for certain, what his intentions were.

The man laughed wildly. “See! Who the hell wants to leave the safety of this camp? We are the only safe place left. And you want to leave. Why? Help is almost here.”

She felt sorry for him. He seemed pitiful with his drinking and impotent in his anger, but he seemed genuine in his hope to keep his place running.

Hayes remained quiet.

“Mr. Deveraux. I've seen some incredible things outside of your camp. I've seen dead men walk. I've watched hordes of undead sweep over the healthy. I've climbed out of a grave. This man,” she pointed to Hayes, “was once my worst enemy. He shot me, in fact. But I believe him that Elsa is not with Homeland Security. She's with another organization.” She looked at Hayes, but he wasn't stopping her. “They're called the National Internal Security. I met one of their agents a while ago. He said they caused the plague, and I believe their goal is to kill us all. That's why I'm asking you, please, to let us go. We'll get out of your hair, and you'll never hear from us again.”

A lie?

“She said you were dangerous,” he pointed to Hayes, “but I think you are far more dangerous, young lady.”

He keyed his phone. “Melanie, I'm sending my two guests back down. Please give them their weapons and direct them to the gate.”

“Shall I tell your other party to wait, before going up?”

Deveraux held the button, evidently processing the possibilities with his alcohol-fueled brain.

3

Hayes didn't wait. “Come on.” He grabbed her by the arm.

“I'm coming.”

She expected Deveraux to say something, but he stayed silent at his desk. She gave him one last look before she was out the door, and he never stopped staring at the phone on his desk.

Outside the office, they saw the two security men in front of the elevators. They were looking outside the windows, but when the elevator dinged they turned to face the visitors.

“I guess she let them come up,” he whispered. “Follow me.”

The sign for the stairs was nearby, but they had to walk toward the elevators for a few yards. One of the men spotted them but returned his gaze to the elevator in front of him.

“They saw us,” she whispered.

Hayes opened the fire door as quietly as he could. He proceeded through and held the door for her. The moment before she walked through, she caught sight of a person coming out of the elevator. She couldn't be sure, but it looked like a woman.

The door snapped shut while they stood just inside. Hayes started up the steps.

“Shouldn't we go down?” she asked incredulously.

“Trust me. We have to go up.” He didn't wait for her.

Left with two bad options, she decided to follow. Not because she trusted him, but…

Why am I following him?

In a few short moments, they were at the top door. She didn't have time to answer her own question.

“Hayes!” a man called from below them. “We know it's you.”

Hayes froze against the door, then put his head against it. Victoria began to say something, and he raised his finger for her to wait one moment. He'd shifted, so his ear was against the solid metal.

“I'm armed,” he shouted while apparently hugging the door.

Victoria leaned over the side, but Hayes yanked her back. In the instant she could see below, a man had shot up at her from a floor down. She looked at the ceiling and saw the impact.

“Whoa!” was all she could say.

“I swear to God, I'm going to shoot anyone who comes up this stairwell,” Hayes shouted.

Victoria looked at him like he was crazy.

“Trust me. Do as I say,” he said quietly.

“Come on now. We don't want no trouble.” Laughter from below. The footfalls on the concrete stairs were quiet but distinct. They were on the way up.

She mouthed “What are you doing?” while she hunched her shoulders.

He smiled in return.

Seconds rattled by like a freight train bearing down on a blown bridge. She saw nothing that would make any kind of weapon. The only thing besides the door was an inset bulb in the ceiling. Things were moving too fast to a bad end.

“Get down,” Hayes whispered. He showed her by laying flat on his stomach. “Stay down, no matter what.”

“This is your plan? Lie down and die?” She briefly considered jumping down the stairs and attacking the two men, but she knew where that would end.

“Trust me!”

She did as instructed, resigned to whatever fate Hayes had steered her into.

Liam wouldn't have let us get caught so easily.

He had a knack for getting them out of tight situations. She left him for one day, and she'd been snared in several traps. Hayes would have her killed, after all.

“Well, well. She said you were the most dangerous man alive. But I think she made a mistake.” Victoria kept her head down, as if to ignore what unfolded around her.

Another man laughed. Their feet clomped on the final steps. She felt the shift in the air. They were on the landing with her and Hayes.

“Elsa is right about a lot of things, but I'm not sure she'd be fired up by your incompetence.”

A malicious laugh. “I think she'll be just fine when I show her your body. You just gonna lay there? After all the trouble we went through to find you?”

“You knew I was here. How hard could it have been? She could have had me fired.”

“Hmm. I guess that's true. She's been, eh, busy. I guess she just had some free time for you today.”

“Maybe. You know what they say, though?”

“No, what?”

“Fire the gun. Fire it!”

A brief laugh. “All right, if you ins—”

The stairwell became a deafening shooting gallery of gunfire. A combination of metallic clinks, ricochets off the cement, and the wet impacts of bullets on flesh intermingled in Victoria's ears. It only lasted for a few seconds, and when it stopped the only sounds remaining were those of bodies sliding down the steps. When they descended to the next landing, it became unnaturally silent.

“Well, that worked out. Thank you, overwatch.”

“Who?”

On his knees, Hayes tapped his ear and turned to her. He wore a tiny ear piece. Whoever was on the other end had helped him. The disturbing thing was that he had to have prepared for this. Who could have anticipated he'd need help in this spot?

“How?”

He shushed her. “I plan ahead,” he said quietly.

On her knees, she got a look at the door. It had been perforated by gunfire from the other side.

Hayes was up and pushing through to the outside before she could ask another of her many questions. She caught sight of several floating drones.

When she followed him through, it took great effort to follow him onto the rooftop. Three big, black drones hovered in formation about twenty feet from the door. All of them had guns which hung from the lower portion of their frames. Those guns still pointed at her and Hayes.

“Uhh, Hayes?”

“Don't sweat it. These are mine.”

“One of these attacked me. Are you sure?” She didn't plan it consciously, but she had placed herself behind Hayes, relative to the drones.

“I can see you don't trust me. We'd both be dead if these hadn't come along when they did. They're friendly.”

“Yeah, real friendly.” Then, she made an association. “You were telling them to fire, weren't you.”

“Smart girl. I was wondering if my feed was working,” he said with mock anger, she supposed he was talking to whoever was listening to him.

“So what do we do now?” They still didn't have any weapons… “Hey, we can grab their rifles!”

She turned to go back.

“No, there will be more of them in the stairwell. These things will keep us safe until our white knight arrives.”

She made it to the door before admitting he was right. If she went down the steps, she'd be outside the protection of the drones. As much as she wanted a gun, she would have to trust he knew what he was talking about.

From twenty floors up, she could see for miles in the clear air of the early morning. Despite the whir of the mechanized copters nearby, she could hear the drone of a large plane somewhere above. Another aircraft—possibly a helicopter—whined out there, too.

When the drone fired a shot into the stairwell, her heart ricocheted off both lungs.

4

She'd crouched down on the hard asphalt surface when the drone fired its gun, which turned out to be the right thing to do. Hayes was down with her, though he was faced the opposite way, still looking at the sky.

“What are we doing here?” she shouted, afraid another shot was coming.

“I told you. Rescue.”

The three drones hovered nearby.

“Those things rescued us, but what now?”

Hayes spun around while crouched so he faced her. He wore a smile. His thatched shirt was damp with sweat.

“We're going to jump.”

Her expression was blank. She'd known him long enough to know he could seldom be trusted to tell the truth. Especially under stress.

“That way.” He pointed to the next building, the top of which was just visible at about the same level as their rooftop. “Follow me.”

They ran from the drones and made it to the gap between the two buildings. It was about ten feet wide, though the roof edge was a few feet lower than theirs. The surface was covered in small brown pebbles.

“There. That's where we're going.” He pointed to the far side of the next building, beyond a large bank of idle air conditioner fans. A series of steps led up to a flat platform big enough for a helicopter to land. There was a nearby pole with an orange sock-flag hanging limply from the top. The blinking lights were harder to see in the bright morning sun, but there was no doubt it was a rooftop landing pad.

She demanded evidence as such because of what she had to do to get there. They were twenty floors up, and the narrow space between the buildings below was filled with overflowing garbage dumpsters. The trash had not been collected in weeks.

“I could land in the trash,” she mused to herself.

“No, you'd die,” Hayes responded with finality.

She looked at him anew. “We have to jump this? Are you sure this is the only way?”

“Yep. I know it doesn't look it, but I've got this planned out.”

“How?”

He tapped his ear again.

While they conversed a small black drone floated up from the gap. “Hello, Douglas. Nice to see you,” a mechanical-sounding woman's voice belted out.

“I wish I could say the same. Sorry about your men.”

“Ha. Spare me the false sentiments. I've got prisons full of good help. You're not sorry about anything you've done in your whole life.”

“Would you believe me if I said I was sorry that Dutch died?”

The drone hovered. The thought process of the person on the other end was conveyed by the machine.

“I'm going to get payback for what you and your friends took from me,” she said slowly and with clear enunciation.

“I didn't kill him, though. You want the girl and her boyfriend,” he pleaded.

Victoria found it distasteful, but very Hayes.

“You let them go!” she screamed. Then, with a burning anger, she spoke quickly. “Don't think for a second you can get out of this. You let those kids go, then your dear wifey shot his team, leaving my guy outnumbered on that river crossing. Those kids were the bullet, but you pulled the trigger. It's how you do everything.”

Hayes looked at Victoria. “Well, I had to try, right?” He still maintained his smile, but he was using his hands to wave her backward.

She took a few steps back, which put some separation between herself, the drone, and Hayes.

This is the part where he shoots me like a bullet…

Her fears were confirmed when he motioned for her to jump the gap. He used his hands to signify a running person making a very obvious leap over something. As he did so, he moved the opposite direction on the roof, so they were both on opposite sides of the drone. She mimicked him by moving many yards beyond the edge. There was a small lip they'd have to clear as part of their effort.

“Go!”

Victoria froze. Hayes ran for it. With surprising speed he jumped the lip of the building, flew across the gap, then landed in a heap on the far side. She could just see his upper body because of her positioning.

It was her turn. But before she could move one foot, a spinning drone blade whirred up from below where Hayes had just jumped. The white carapace had a menacing device underneath—a gun.

“Now or never, Vicky!”

The drone's gun had turned on Hayes, but he was watching her. Waving her on.

She ran for it. As she neared the edge she had the inspiration to change directions. A slight course correction toward the smaller voice drone.

She cleared the lip. Time ground to halt as she sailed the gap, and it appeared to give her enough time to both float and turn her head to see another drone rising at the exact spot where she'd been aiming. It would have been a mirror image of what happened to Hayes, but her drone had the advantage of coming into view the instant she jumped. If she'd gone with Hayes, they'd have both barely cleared it. If she'd gone late…

She crashed on the rocky surface of the roof. The pea gravel forced her off her feet with a painful slide. Hayes grabbed her arm before she settled to a stop and she was back on her feet and on the run. Time was still running funny, and in her heightened awareness, she noticed the strange dart lodged in his right arm.

“Run, girl, run!” she thought.

5

They'd gotten between the industrial air conditioners. The galvanized steel sheets of the outer skins of the units made it easy to slide between them. They were arranged in rows and columns, so they could hide from view of the two drones while they planned their next move.

“What were those things?”

“Part of the plan, my dear. I told you I like to plan ahead. Well, that's kind of a motto of these people.”

“Like, they have special drones that try to catch people jumping buildings?” she asked with mock wonder.

He ignored her tone. “They have drones to help them get control of a city filled with zombies. I don't know what their functions are, exactly, but it fits their modus operandi. Why spend manpower killing zombies, spreading the infection, etcetera, when you can build a bunch of drones to go out—night and day—killing the plague victims.”

“And potential plague victims,” she said with understanding.

“Yes.” He paused, breathing hard from their exertion. “I guess that's what they'd do. Kill everyone.” His smile was gone. “They're thinking far ahead.”

“Hans said his family had been planning for something since the second World War,” she volunteered. Hans' secret was out of the bag.

“The NIS is a government agency, but it is also a way of life for these people. They watched over the levers of state while privately planning for its collapse. My wife's, uh, family, hinted as much. But my interest was in medicine and immunology. I didn't care about stockpiling berets in secret mines. I always thought that was kind of crazy.”

It was Victoria's turn to laugh. “We're in the Zombie Apocalypse, now. I think every kind of crazy is back on the table. And Hans was proof they knew how to stockpile.”

“So what do we do now? What was that spiky thing in your arm?”

“It was either a poison dart, or a mixed drink swizzle stick,” he snickered.

She looked at him with a suitable frown. And a touch of fear. Of all the rotten luck, she figured if Hayes died here on this rooftop, she'd follow soon after.

“Don't worry. If it was poison, we'd be short one man already.”

Always a joke.

A rush of air washed over them. A drone was nearby. A big one.

“Who was talking on the little drone? Elsa, I assume?”

“In the flesh. Though I have no idea where she is. She could control that drone from Afghanistan if she wanted.”

By a coincidence of timing, the small talkie drone appeared just overhead. The space between the air conditioners was wide enough for the small thing to drop in, if it wanted. For now, it hung a few feet above the units.

“You can't hide in there forever. I'll get control of those drones you hacked, and my men will be along shortly to collect you. I was going to make your death simple and fast, but you're costing me time and men. I think I'm going to have to change my plans and make your death a little more...painful.” The drone laughed.

“I got us painful death. Sorry about that,” Hayes joked.

Liam! I need you.

She willed her thoughts to reach out to him, hoping by some miracle he would ride to her rescue. She didn't believe for a second that he'd fallen into a trap or had been killed or captured. Even if she couldn't hear his thoughts, she felt his presence.

“You have to get us out of here, Hayes. Tell me you have a plan?”

“Oh, I do.”

“He always has a plan,” said the drone. “This time, his plan has failed. I'm almost through to those drones.”

Hayes whispered. “She wouldn't say that unless she was having trouble,” he said with a wink.

“Get ready to run,” he said, almost too quiet to hear.

Louder, he said, “Vicky has a hidden gun. It's going to cost you some more men to come in and get us.”

“Oh, Douglas. You're such a terrible liar. As a man, you wouldn't understand how absurd that statement was. She was patted down. Her clothing wouldn't allow a pocket knife to be hidden, much less a big bad gun. Care to try again?”

Hayes counted off with his fingers.

Three.

Two.

One finger, up to the drone.

He ran. She followed him along the central column between the long rows of A/C units. They were going toward the far end and the landing platform.

“It's going to be close,” Hayes shouted back to her.

“What is? What are we doing?”

“Just run!”

As if I have a choice.

They cleared the last unit and were in the open. For the moment the air was clear of any air traffic. They hit the steps up to the flat landing platform, hopping a small gate on the top step which said: “Danger: Spinning Rotors” in mean lettering.

Hayes crouched just inside the gate. When she settled next to him, they both looked back. The three drones on the other building were still hovering in front of the exit doorway.

“One of the drones is down,” he said plainly.

Looking again, she'd been mistaken. The third drone was over there, but it had landed, and its rotor was slowly spinning down.

“If she can't take control, all she has to do is turn them off.”

A second drone was descending, too.

The two white drones still hovered high above. Hayes nodded to them.

“They'll come down when given the orders. There's no way they didn't see us run up here.”

Moments went by. She knew they'd be swooping in, and they had no defenses up on the flat surface of the helipad.

6

The two drones above began moving their way. The little black “talkie” joined them like a cattle dog driving the sheep.

A gust of air caught them from behind, nearly pushing Victoria into the protective gate. A white helicopter had come in at high speed from somewhere behind them, and it was angled up steeply as it tried to rid itself of speed.

“Oh my God,” was all she could say as it bore down on them.

In seconds the force diminished from tornado to gale force. Hayes was up.

“Run!”

The helicopter had righted itself and made as if it was going to land on the platform. She looked at the two smaller drone helicopters, and they had closed half the distance.

She ran.

She recognized the helicopter. It was the same one Hayes used to capture Grandma Marty, and later it was how he and Jane escaped Riverside. Hayes leaped into the open back door. The skids bounced up slightly, then came back down.

Hayes motioned for her to drop down, which she found odd, but his face was so uncharacteristically serious she did as he indicated. As she went down, he slid the door shut.

“Oh, shiitake!”

In one long second, a drone passed over her head, slammed into the almost-closed door of the helicopter, and shattered into tiny bits. Some of the debris bounced back at her, but the rotors tumbled with a good bit of the engine mechanism to the back of the bigger copter. Much of the rest of it deflected underneath.

The door slid back open while the pilot maneuvered to steady the helicopter.

Hayes was frantically motioning her to come to him.

A quick look behind. The other white drone was close, but still hovering.

On her feet, she felt the sting of something square in the middle of her back. It caused her to stumble the last few feet, but she caught herself on the side of the copter. Hayes reached down to pull her in.

“Quick!” he shouted.

Another sting in her back.

She got her foot in the cabin.

Sting. She'd been hit again. This one pierced her right butt cheek.

“Ow!”

The door slid shut, but the window was shattered, and the hole exposed her to further harassment from the drone. She and Hayes both fell to the floor.

“Go! We're in.”

The helicopter tilted to the right.

We made it.

“Hold on,” Hayes shouted. As if it needed to be said—

Something slammed into her door. A broken fan blade sailed above her head and shattered the far side window, but didn't break through. It and a mass of other debris came in through the left window and piled up on the far side floor.

They'd crashed the other drone into the helicopter.

She hugged the aluminum floor as the pilot made a best effort to get her to fall into every seat and door. When they finally steadied to an even flight path, she was up against the broken rotor blade. The smell of an electrical fire was strong in the compartment. Several components of the broken drone were smoldering, but not on fire.

A series of explosions rocked the aircraft. The pilot banked hard to the left, giving them all a view of the mansion exploding almost directly below. It was a big bomb—

Hans' mansion.

Hayes crawled to the front of the cabin, then tossed back a pair of headphones for her. She planted them on her head as her stomach lurched and she lifted off the floor—hovering for a fraction of a second. The pilot had dipped the aircraft. She slid forward as she returned to the floor, then clawed her way to a seat.

The wind blew through the broken door window, making the wind noise intolerable until she had the 'phones on.

“Vicky, you there?”

She put the boom mic in front of her mouth. “Don't call me Vicky,” she replied brusquely.

“You OK?”

“I'm alive.”

“Elsa sprung our trap! But we're being pursued by her drones. We have to stay low and fast to avoid them.”

She wasn't able to argue. Glued as she was to her seat, she could only see forward, into the cockpit. The pilot sat on the left—her red hair was bracketed by her headphones, and Hayes sat on the right. Each of them leaned with the changes in directions. Their flight path seemed random and unsteady, which was probably their intention.

“Are we going to find Liam?”

Jane turned back to her, though her mirrored sunglasses hid her expression. She wore a frown.

Hayes was the one to respond. “We have to get away for a while. I'm sorry. Those drones were suicidal for us. Elsa was suicidal for us.”

Silence for several seconds.

“Victoria. We have to find Grandma.” He handed back a heavy clipboard with a pen attached to a metal chain. “Please. Write it down. We'll take no chances of being overheard. Who knows what kind of listening equipment is on that broken drone.” He pointed to the pile of junk which had rolled all over the rear cabin floor.

She sat with the clipboard on her lap. Thinking.

“I made a promise to Liam that I wouldn't leave without telling him where I was going.” She spoke quietly, though it was picked up in the comm system.

She ran the numbers, as Liam often joked. Could she be put down somewhere, then sneak back into the camp? What if Liam never—

No! Liam is fine. Just like me.

Could they look for Liam from the helicopter? She admitted she had no idea where to start in the city. The only information she had was that he went to a railroad loading dock somewhere near downtown. That left a lot of ground to search.

All while drones attempted suicide by slamming into them.

“Victoria. I know how you feel. Trust me. But we have to clear this airspace. If they send a plane to fetch us, we'd have no chance. You have to give us a destination.” Jane's voice was soothing and made total sense.

I'm sorry Liam.

She judged that of all the bad options, Liam would want her to protect his Grandma above all else. Hayes had shown her clear proof he had a lead on the cure, and that it was all due to the blood he'd drawn from her. It stood to reason that the next step was to work with him get more samples humanely. Surely Grandma would cooperate if it was all explained to her by someone who had seen the results, so far.

Elsa was the x-factor. What if she told Hayes where to find Grandma, and Elsa followed them in? What if this was all an elaborate trap to get her to reveal her location? Hayes said he planned ahead, and that Elsa planned even further ahead than he did.

She was gripped by indecision.

“Please. I can't keep flying in circles.”

Do what Liam would do.

He would have some suitably crafty plan that would get her where she wanted to go, but wouldn't reveal the location of Grandma until she could be sure of their intentions. Somehow, he'd been able to protect the old woman through the Apocalypse, and now she had to do the same.

I'm not going to betray her. "Don't trust anyone," is what Liam would say.

With a long sigh, she picked up the pen and wrote her response.

She handed the board back to Hayes.

He turned back with a frown after looking at her answer but said nothing. He handed it to Jane.

The helicopter turned south.

Chapter 11: Warfighter

Nineteen days since the sirens.

John Jasper stood on the levee, engulfed in quiet admiration for the army of undead crawling, walking, and running toward humanity’s last refuge. Though Cairo, Illinois was far from the last human-occupied town in the dying world, it was his town. The men and women behind him had given him the keys to their fair village, with the simple caveat he must help them survive. They placed their trust in him, and this was the moment he decided he would do everything in his still-considerable power to save it.

Twenty-four hours ago he'd been stripped of his command and arrested by Elsa, then—though he didn't advertise it—he'd been beaten up by the skulking woman. He was tossed into a watery grave by her minions, but he clawed his way back to life, only to discover she'd taken his battalion to points unknown. Yesterday he spent his day organizing the civilians to defend their own town, but today he'd gotten lucky when some of his unit returned. However, they were pursued by the textbook definition of a horde. Now, standing there, he had a few final minutes to prepare.

As he’d done many times before, he studied the layout of the battlefield. Always searching for the advantage over an unpredictable enemy.

The town of Cairo sat on a wedge of land that looked like a long finger, pointing south. On the west, the Mississippi River streamed fast and wide. On the east, the mighty Ohio did the same. He could see both rivers from his position up on top of the east-west levee that was now the northernmost berm—a wedding band at the base of the finger—between the zombies and his people. Below the levee, to the north, was the massive public works effort the locals called “the ditch.” Elsa and her people had ordered the construction, and the result was an impressive water-filled obstacle that would be very difficult for the zombies to get across.

Looking back on those days, he recalled an innocent statement Elsa made about the construction that only now made sense.

“This ditch project ought to keep the locals too busy to revolt.”

It was the kind of thing a government employee might joke about, but it had kept the locals very busy—and tired—at the same time she was planning her own secretive projects. Even when she ordered him to put his military units outside the levees so as to not intimidate the locals, he didn’t see what she was really up to. She’d tricked him. Tricked the whole town.

Now most of his defensive units had been ordered to the north to support the Orwellian-named “Operation Renew America” convoy, while he was left with nothing.

I do have the rebels.

The irony stuck him, even in the face of such pressing danger, and he had to reconcile it all.

Elsa had been worried about rebellion for some reason. She put those men and women to work digging and toiling in the hot sun. They had no time to do much else. His military force was kept busy fighting off the odd zombie rush, or planning for the larger battle she assured him was coming. Then, it was her that ended up being the rebel. She left in the middle of the night with his troops, and the town became an open buffet for the zombies.

But some of his men came back. They disobeyed orders to return so he could command them. Was he the traitor? Were they? And, strangely, he didn’t know if Elsa was really a traitor. As a creature of the chain of command, he felt strongly there had to be someone left alive above them all. And if that person or persons had a grasp of the bigger picture, his actions could be hobbling that effort. Any general could appreciate that.

They shouldn’t have cut me out of the loop.

He turned to Colonel Vince Thompson as his anger flamed out. He had no time, once his mind was made up, to dwell on the past. “I need your tanks up on this levee, spaced out with a couple of hundred yards between the two. You don’t have to worry about return fire, so use the front of the levee to get the best angles. Sweep what you can out there,” he pointed to the arriving horde, “but try to focus on the thickest bunches. Our ammo isn’t endless.”

As he pointed to the eastern side of the levee, he gave instructions for the Bradley’s and the Humvees. His goal was to provide enough firepower along the levee that they could knock down the bulk of the zombies before they reached the ditch. He had no illusions about their fate if enough zombies stacked themselves into that waterway. It would take tens of thousands of bodies to fill it up, but there were many times that number advancing across the field. They were still pouring over the distant interstate.

Between his introspection and handing out orders, the fastest elements of the tide had crossed to about the midpoint of the field.

“Close the gate,” he shouted down to the team in charge of that. In moments, the heavy flood door began to creak its way across the tunnel and road into town. When sealed, they would be surrounded on all sides by a steep levee, and a moat. Essentially they’d become a medieval fortress town.

The modern steel of the Abrams and Bradley’s was welcome, but he feared the real battle would be won or lost by Chloe and her teams of spear-builders. Yesterday he’d tasked her with arming the citizens in any way they could, and it was decided that since guns were scarce in the town thanks to the former mayor, they would have to depend on spears and other hand-held weapons.

This is exactly like a medieval battle.

If they had more time, they could have killed deer for sinew and crafted bows from local trees. They could have fashioned stakes to skewer the approaching zombies. Maybe they’d have had time to build catapults. Then the similarities to those ancient battles would have been complete.

Even now a gaggle of teenaged boys traipsed across a field in the town, heading for him on the levee. They carried metal poles—Chloe had delivered for him.

He recognized the fear on their faces, even from such a distance.

It was the same fear he kept hidden from his own.

2

“How did it come to this? Why are they all coming here?” Tom—his longtime friend and aid—asked.

“Elsa said it was because of the rivers. They wandered out from Chicago and Indy, hit the rivers, and found their way here.”

“So are these from Chicago or Indianapolis?”

“Who knows. It doesn’t matter. They’re here, now.”

The two Abrams tanks had come up the ramp and were in the process of getting into position on opposite ends of the levee. There was a lot of ground to cover—about a mile. He sent the two Bradley’s to the far end where the levee bowed north a little. They would fire their M242's almost sideways, along the frontage of the ditch. His hope was they would catch the zombies before they could fall into the waterway and clog it up.

That effort will fail.

For all his planning, he knew how it would end. That’s why he tried to stay in the moment. He wanted to do the best he could in the time he had.

“The Humvees will stay in the middle. I want them to spray that bridge over the ditch, Tom. Let them know.” The ditch started from an existing waterway which channeled water away from the levee frontage. It was now several times wider, and much deeper. He didn’t have the resources to blow the one stout bridge over it.

Tom, holding the radio, sent the message. The trucks had been waiting on the ramp up, and now sprang to action with their orders. When he was done, they both watched the dance.

“I wish I had air power. That’s one thing Elsa took from us that we can’t duplicate.”

“Maybe we should have tethered men in balloons out in that field. It would have distracted those things from coming here,” Tom said with a touch of regret.

“We could have used little blimps with fresh meat hanging from them, and walked those zombies right into the rivers. Tom, you’re a genius!” John replied, though he wasn’t serious. He didn’t have balloons, blimps, or bloody meat. But something that simple could have helped them.

Tom, rising to the challenge, continued. “We could have built more ditches. Maybe put some bungee sticks at the bottom. Or, maybe we dump glue out there, so they all get stuck. Or—”

“Glue?” John said thoughtfully.

“As if, huh?”

"Yeah," he said with distraction. He didn't want to fix himself and his people to this levee, or this town if he could help it.

He looked at the sky, then grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper. He scribbled something down, and handed it to Tom. The other man looked at it grimly, then pocketed it.

“Find me one of those and you’ll be the hero of Cairo.”

"You want me out of the battle?"

"I want you here, but need you there," he said while pointing at the paper. "I think that's where we're going to end up."

"I'll be as fast as I can." Tom smiled, then began his jog down the ramp, off the levee. Before he got too far he stopped and turned around. “Good luck, sir.” He snapped a salute, then kept going.

“Everyone has their mission,” he said quietly while looking at the creeping mass of death as it continued to slither across the miles of farmland to his north.

Men and women from the town streamed up the ramp, taking their place on top of the levee. Many were there to watch, he was disappointed to see, but he wouldn’t ask them to leave. Much like the early Civil War battle at Bull Run, the citizens had to see firsthand what this new type of warfare would entail. It would either send them screaming, or harden their souls so they could do what was needed to survive.

Others were there to fight. Some had guns. Too few. Many of the others carried shovels, hoes, and sharp sticks. One older black woman had a bright yellow broom handle that had a deadly point on one end. The broom’s bristles were still attached to the other.

The teens with the metal spears made it close to the top of the levee, though they stood on the backside, as if unwilling to face the menace they knew was over the top. So much like every young man in every war ever fought. They would fit into any of the eternal PowerPoint slideshows on morale and new recruits he’d endured over his career.

“You boys! Over here. Front and center.” Though he wasn’t dressed like a general, his voice carried the order and pulled them over to him.

When they were standing a few feet away, he saw their eyes were universally sucked out to sea, at the black tide seeping in. There wasn’t much he could say about that.

“I see you’ve got your spears. Did Miss Chloe make those for you?”

The three boys seemed to silently defer to each other for who would respond. Finally, a teen boy that could have been a football star in a past life began. “No, sir. Chloe has a team working with construction materials, but she insisted we all learn how to cut our own. We made these spears.”

His trust in Chloe was well placed.

“That’s excellent. After today, you will need to know those skills so you can take care of your own families. Your own towns. This is the JV match.”

The lie sailed off his tongue like the catapult he wished he had. He wanted them to feel confident heading into this fight, and parsing it in their own language seemed appropriate. The truth, in this instance, would only send them to an early grave. And then he’d have to put them down, too.

One of the other boys spoke up. Looking at the trio, they all could have been high school athletes. “A man showed us how to fight with this,” he held up his sharpened rebar spear, “so we can thrust it into the zombies' brains and yank it back out.”

Each piece of rebar was about two feet long but had a six-inch right hook at the base. The boys showed him how they would hold the base, point the thing kind of like a gun, and then drill it into the head of the enemy combatants. They explained that the natural serrations of the steel rods would keep them from getting stuck inside…

The boy’s faces paled as they discussed the implications of how it could get stuck.

“Don’t worry about it, men. These aren’t people anymore—”

So help me God, they can’t be.

“—they're the undead. Our loved ones are gone. These things are just the disease walking their bodies around, as the ultimate insult to you, to me, and everyone who loved the people they were. You will be doing the greatest service to humanity by putting them out of their misery.”

It was as close as he’d come to a pep talk. And it was only for the three boys in his earshot. But he was pleased to see it seemed to work. They visibly gripped their spears tighter and patted each other on the back as a show of mutual support. They even—almost—looked at the dark wave without flinching.

He hadn’t created unthinking fighting machines with his few words—he would need weeks of basic training to take an honest crack at that—but he’d given them a bit more courage than they had when they walked up the hill. That would have to be enough.

3

It wasn’t long before the first shots barked out from the big dogs. The Bradley’s on the far end were putting rounds on target. The small arms fire of rifles and shotguns was constant background noise he didn’t even notice anymore. It just always chattered away, somewhere.

Though the dark waters were filling the fields in front of him, the fact was zombies had been hitting his line almost continuously for weeks. Sometimes singly, but often in small groups. A few times they’d had major assaults, as on the night he was tossed in the ditch. A small part of his mind wondered if the zombies ebbed and flowed here based on his own drama. First, they rose up when he was in danger from traitors. Now, they were attacking to test his mettle at defending Cairo on his terms.

Am I being tested?

There was no more time for introspection. He got into his Humvee and prepared to lead his men and women into battle. He eyed the radio, wondering if some signals intelligence shop was listening in. Maybe this battle would be recorded and studied by future warfighters, in a new West Point.

“Warfighters? Why not?”

In a few minutes, he had assigned call signs to all his equipment—all ten pieces. Two Abrams, Two Bradley’s, and six Humvees, including his own. He was Warfighter. The others were simply named Alpha 1 and 2, Bravo 1 and 2, and so on. He had no recon, no heavy weapons platoons, no foot soldiers to speak of, besides the townsfolk. They were outside his radio net and had no real leader besides himself.

He hopped back out of the truck and found the three boys. They were crouched low on the military crest of the levee—not that they knew the term—while waiting for the battle to begin.

“You three!”

When they saw him, they came over again, as if knowing they were wanted.

“Please tell me one of you young men was a quarterback in high school,” he said grimly.

One of them stepped up, though with hesitation. “I wasn’t a starter, but I can throw the ball.”

“That’s not what I need, son. I need a leader. Someone who can take my orders—I’m the QB today—and tell my soldiers what to do. Think you can handle that? You three are going to be my runners, making you the most important pieces of my battle plan.”

He thought this was the time they’d either sack up or whither away.

“You can count on us, sir,” said the backup QB.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Tyler, sir. And this is Xander and Rando.” He gestured to the other two in turn.

“Excellent. You’ll each have a zone.” He pointed to the western Abrams tank, still adjusting itself far down the levee. “Xander, you’ll be down there.” He pointed to the eastern end. “Rando, you’ve got that end. And Tyler, you’ve got the middle. I’m counting on you, as that’s where the battle will be won or lost.”

“What do you want us to do,” Tyler asked with a hint of fear.

“Don’t worry about that. You just do what I say, and everything will be fine. Just hang out right next to my truck and I’ll send you with orders soon enough.”

He motioned Tyler to follow him to his open door. The voices on the radio were still calm and collected, which was good.

“I want you to get over to that crowd of spectators. I want them off the top of the levee, but they can watch from the backside. I need to have room to drive my vehicles back and forth on this road.” He studied the boy’s face to see how he would handle the necessary task. “And when you’ve got that done, I want you to find another boy and ask him to find Chloe, wherever she’s making spears, and tell her to get moving. We’re out of time.”

“Go!”

The salute was clumsy, but he returned it. His snap judgment was that Tyler would serve him well.

“Xander and Rando, up front.”

The boys ran to him.

“You two sound like professional wrestling names. You’re not wrestlers, are you?”

Two head shakes.

“I need each of you to go to that group of townies—my foot soldiers—and get five or six of them to go stand near each tank. Their jobs are to keep the people away, so the tanks don’t run them over, but eventually, they might be called upon to defend each tank from the zombies.”

The implications were clear and damning. It was an admission of the outcome of the battle, even before it began.

“You have a problem?”

The two boys shared a look but said nothing. They shook their heads no.

“This is war. I need you two out there helping me. We all have to contribute.”

He considered doubling up on the pressure for them, making them feel key to the whole victory, but in the balancing act between spurring them to action or making them soil their pants, he stuck with the former. They would either figure it out, or they wouldn’t.

As they ran off, a black man in a green John Deere Gator rolled up. Marty Peters sat next to him. A tiny woman holding on for dear life to the side rail, clearly uncomfortable.

He jumped out to greet her.

“Come to watch the show?”

To watch me?

“Oh, my lands, no. But Duncan insisted. And he’s my ride.”

“She’s too modest,” replied Duncan. “Marty pointed out that we needed to be up here seeing the news, as she called it, so we can be ready to run if things go bad.” He pointed down into the town. “If we wait for zombies to arrive in the town square, it would be too late to escape.”

“Sounds like good judgment. Why don’t you two stay here with me? If things get bad, we can all go down in my armored truck.” He patted his Humvee’s door.

“We don’t want to be a bother,” Marty replied.

“Not at all. I would be honored, in fact.”

His mind would not stop delving into introspection. Having Marty around sated a deep need to be seen during his greatest hour, but it was also a reminder—like the Roman Emperors of old—that he must account for the fragility of man. His defense would mean nothing if the town was overrun and people like Marty were consumed.

The plans altered, in a tiny way, to accommodate her. He wouldn’t admit, even to himself, how he intended to end this impossible fight. The three boys, his own men, and the townies may perish, but not her. There was something special about her he couldn’t quite place. But he felt it.

Alpha-1 fired its main gun, sending a wave of sound over the spectators, and a wave of tiny balls into the ocean of undead. The modern equivalent of grapeshot was devastating to a great swath of zombies now approaching the ditch.

I’ll keep you alive, Marty.

A cheer rose up as first blood was drawn.

4

Alpha-1 and -2 took turns plastering the zombie swarm with their shotgun rounds, and despite the great number of fallen, he was compelled to stop them.

The Abrams tanks carried a mixture of ammo, most of it designed to counter enemy tanks. Here in middle America, war planners probably didn’t anticipate the need for canister ammo to be used against citizens in the open. As such, they would have very few rounds of the distinctly anti-personnel rounds, and too many of the anti-vehicle rounds.

“Alphas, this is Warfighter actual. Hold onto your M1028 rounds. How copy?”

The radio crackled. “Warfighter actual, this is Alpha-1. Hold on M1028 rounds. Good copy. Over.”

Alpha-2 said the same.

“Give ‘em hell with the fifty cals. Out,” he ordered.

At some point, he may order them to use the anti-tank rounds on the zombies, though he didn’t think they’d be effective in the least. For now, he held that order. Everything cost money, and he’d probably never get replacements. Some day a platoon of Soviet armor could drive through Illinois—he had to be ready.

Today, the mere act of moving the tanks up onto the levee cost fuel—another irreplaceable commodity. He’d need to conserve that, too.

The leading edge of the zombies—a group of runners that looked like they belonged to a track club—reached the ditch and ran right over the edge. They fell five or six feet into the water, and out of view. He knew from personal experience it was difficult to claw up the near side of the ditch—where the dirt had been piled—but it was possible. Even though he knew those first zombies wouldn’t swim across and claw their way up in just a few seconds, he expected a hand to pop up at the top of the berm any moment.

It distracted him until a group of five or six black men and a couple of women ran by, led by Xander. The boy gave him a wave, and he returned it with a salute. Everything was going surprisingly well on the planning side.

“No plan survives contact with the enemy.” What would von Moltke think of this battle?

Upon study, he realized the running zombies must walk most of the time. Otherwise, there’d be no way to explain how they weren’t miles ahead of the rest of the walking dead.

As the horde closed the distance, he began to hear them. The guttural moans grew, but so did an odd collection of screeches, wails, and the very unusual sing-song calls of some of them. The runners were the vanguard, but even they were acting strangely. Some of the leaders ran head-first into the ditch, but others were deflected by the water and ran sideways along the moat. Most appeared to be aimless, but others happened upon the bridge and crossed.

“...survives contact.”

If all the runner zombies converged on the bridge, they could cross it en masse and be upon the levee spectators in less than a minute. He didn’t think it was likely, but he wasn’t going to mess this up by assuming they were as dumb as they seemed.

“Bravo-2. I need you to move to block the bridge down there.” It pained him to sacrifice a vehicle, but there was no other way… “I’ll try to find a replacement for you, but you are the fastest I have right now. Please confirm. Over.”

No reply.

“Bravo-2, this is Warfighter actual. Do you copy?”

Static.

“Bravo-1, do you copy?”

He got out of his Humvee and looked in the direction of the Bradley’s. He had to climb onto the hood so he could see over the crowd. Dillon hadn’t been able to clear the spectators, though to his credit he was motioning some of them back.

“What the actual horseshit is this?”

Bravo-1, far down the line, began to move toward the ditch. It crawled off the hill, started up the earthen berm, then bogged down on the top. The tracks spun, but he could see it was high-centered on its hull.

Bravo-2 had gone down the other side of the levee, into town.

He jumped down, and returned to his radio, intending to get his answer.

The screams of the people on the levee made him stop. The confused crowd scattered in multiple directions. Most ran down the backside of the levee into town, but some ran toward the zombies. Some simply fell where they stood…

“What's going on here?”

Marty happened to be nearby. “They’re scared,” she said with finality.

“But why?” His statement was incredible, even to himself. The why was pretty easy. The real question was “why now?”

At that moment a sickly sweet smell washed over him. It reminded him of a school janitor's puke dust. It came in like the first gust of a major thunderstorm.

Without realizing it, he jumped in his Humvee and pulled the heavy door shut with a slam.

Voices on the radio called to him. Someone called Alpha-something wanted a sitrep from their commander. Orders needed to be given.

“Warfighter. This is Alpha-2. Our foot support is banging on the hull and shooting at us to let them in. What are your orders? Over.” The man on the radio was annoyed.

He should kill them all.

“No!” he said aloud.

His hands were on the steering wheel. Was he about to drive away? What direction was he planning to go? He admitted it didn’t matter.

“General John Jasper, United States Army. Get a grip!”

He took a deep breath, inhaling the stink from outside.

It was in the truck with him.

“The zombies exude the smell of fear. Amazing...”

He sat frozen for a moment, but his head cleared as he did so.

“This is Warfighter actual. The zombies are causing this. They're causing the panic. Please respond. Over.” On the modern battlefield they'd be buttoned up for fear of NBC attacks, but who would fear radiation or poison gas when fighting zombies?

“Warfighter actual, this is Bravo-2. We’re OK. We, uh, woke up in this new position.”

“Bravo-1 is back on station.”

He opened the door, and waited for the smell to overcome him again, but it seemed to have been spent on the initial blast. The sick smell was there, but he was able to tune it out.

While he had his troopers back in the game, the civilians had it much worse. They lacked the discipline and support system of the military, and—John imagined—they suffered accordingly. Some of them ran over the bridge, into the approaching zombies, while those on the back of the levee were now inside the town.

But the thing that caught his attention more than anything else was the little green Gator. Much like Bravo-2, the driver of that vehicle had been overcome by the olfactory assault and had driven madly in the wrong direction. In seconds he’d taken the vehicle down the levee and had it nearly to the top of the berm.

As he watched, the driver continued to run up the berm, then over. He’d tossed himself into the ditch now filling with zombies.

Just before he toppled over the far side, the tiny woman passenger threw herself out of her seat, and onto the dirt pile. She was visible to all the humans and zombies alike.

Nope. My plan didn’t survive for ten minutes.

Chapter 12: Gator Ride

Marty felt the soil beneath her. The smell of the earth overpowered the stench of the dead. Her arms and legs ached, but she didn’t feel the unmistakable pain of a break. The soft ground had cushioned her fall from the slow-moving, doomed Gator.

“Mr. Duncan, are you there?”

She hoped he jumped at the last second, as she did.

There was no response. The zombies, however, were much louder as they arrived below her. She was sprawled, front side down, facing out over the fields. The zombies were without number as they surged in her direction. Below her, in the water-filled ditch, scores of them splashed and thrashed against each other. It was a bubbling cauldron of evil.

“They aren’t evil, Marty.”

“Al! Thank God.”

“Hiya Marty,” he said with his signature Jersey drawl. “They aren’t evil. They aren’t anything. They’re mindless bodies that don’t know they’re dead.”

Al sat next to her on the dirt. He, too, looked out over the approaching wave. It was like being in the front row of a movie theater. She was compelled to move backward...but not without Al.

“I’ve failed you, Al. I couldn’t protect anyone in my family during this plague. The only one I could help was Liam, and he’s gone again. If this is what the rest of the world looks like, I don’t think any of us can survive.”

“You hear the sirens’ call, Marty. You have a gift.”

It made no sense, but she was used to his confusing words. Or her own confusion. She still wasn’t sure if Al was in her mind, or if her mind made him up. Either way, he forced her to make choices, which she admitted had kept her alive through some desperate times.

“If I hear the call, why couldn’t I talk to you while I’ve been here in Cairo?”

He didn’t say anything, but he nodded out to the zombies.

“You’re not going to say, are you?”

“Marty, your search for answers is admirable, but as I’ve told you before, you can unlock the answers from your own brain.”

She didn’t turn around, though she knew the general and his tanks wouldn’t be there. She heard no gunfire from back there, reinforcing her belief she was dreaming. Daydream. Nightmare. Whatever.

“I couldn't hear you because the zombies weren’t here.”

“That sounds implausible,” Al echoed from an earlier conversation.

“But not impossible,” she retorted. “I’ve been safe inside the town, far from any zombies.”

“Maybe that’s it,” he said cryptically, “but what are you planning to do to save them?” He pointed out into the field, where she saw Liam and Victoria standing on an abandoned tank as they tried to fend off the infected horde.

In the pit of her stomach, she felt a firm yank. The realization that she was somehow responsible for their safety—her, a 104-year-old woman now lying on the leading edge of millions of zombies—made her cringe.

“But you already helped me save them,” she said weakly. Though true, that was all in the past.

“And now I’m going to help you help them again. This doesn’t end until you find the cure to the plague, my dear Marty.”

“Is this about that old computer?”

She thought back to her earlier meeting, where Al showed her an ancient computer in a closed room. After she had accessed it, she was able to...control a single zombie. It had saved the lives of Liam and Victoria when they most needed help.

“You three have an important connection. That computer was merely a way to organize your mind and access information there.”

“No. That’s not true at all. I saw you move that zombie so it helped Liam.”

“My dear. That sounds like magic. Are you suggesting the world is filled with magic? That you are a sorceress and that you and I used that magic to cause it to rescue him?”

That stuck a nerve against her religious sensibilities. She didn’t believe in magic. Her belief was in a single benevolent God.

“No...I think, I...”

Her words failed her.

“My sweet, dear Martinette. You’ve overlooked something very important from our first meeting, but now isn’t the time for loquacious expositions. You really are lying here on this berm, and those zombies are definitely over there, trying to get at you. They are attempting to get at us both.”

“What? How? You can see in both worlds?” It seemed obvious since he said he was in her mind. Supposedly he could see through her eyes, but his words suggested something more.

In a prior meeting, he had waved off the notion that he was an agent of God. Or, at least didn’t explicitly say he was. He suggested he was part of her mind, helping her cope with all the bad things that happened to her since the zombies came. But he left open the possibility of...something else.

“Or...” were his final words from that conversation. If he wasn’t speaking for God, and he wasn’t her own brain making things up, that could mean any number of things...

She startled herself awake. The pain in her arms and legs was real this time. The same as she felt inside her dream.

It has to be God.

Whatever else was going on, God was guiding her. For now, she would trust in that to get her and her family to safety.

Wherever that was.

2

Marty felt someone touching her back, helping her sit up properly. She judged it was just about the last person in the world she expected.

A young teen girl—Debbie—that she knew from her time back in the refugee house. She’d never seen the girl without her phone, but now she looked like something out of a movie. She wore big black boots, black pants, and wore two long-sleeved shirts that draped over her like wild capes. The ensemble was completed by a military-style ball cap that she might have gotten from a surplus store or any of the soldiers that had been protecting the city.

“Are you OK, Grandma?” Debbie asked her.

“I’m fine,” she said with suitable ambiguity. She wasn’t fine, but she didn’t like to complain. “Just a little shaken.”

“The stink, like, made everyone go crazy for a few minutes. You were lucky.”

They both faced the horde, but could also see down into the water. The implication that she should have gone over the side with the dazed Mr. Franks was obvious. The very back of the gator stuck out of the water on the far side. Duncan was nowhere to be seen, though many ruined bodies moved in the putrid waterway.

“Come on, let’s get you up.”

By the time she was on her feet, several other people had run up to offer help.

“How did you get here so fast, Miss Debbie?”

Several arms reached for her as she eased her way down the berm. It left her free to listen to the girl.

“After I met you in our house, I, like, felt a connection with you. I wanted to go with you when those men, uh, took you with that woman, but, like, I didn’t want to be a buttinski.”

Marty giggled weakly. It would be the first teenager in a long time that wanted to spend time with her.

Go easy on Liam. He came around, in the end.

“I’ve been looking for you ever since. I, like, searched houses, and stuff.”

“This whole time? Thank you, Debbie.”

“Well, I, mmm, didn’t find you until today. They gave us these spears,” she bent her back so Marty could see the rust-colored spear lashed to her back, “and told us to walk to the levee. That’s when I, uh, noticed you in that green cart thingy.”

She seemed embarrassed.

“It’s OK, child.”

“Well, I didn’t want to be geeky, and fangirl on you, but I happened to be watching when that wave of puking gas came over us all. I tossed my cookies right away, I mean, like, right away. But I felt totally fine after that. I watched your driver take you down the hill, and I started running right then. I stopped when I thought you were going over the top, but I started again when I saw you jump out. That was, really brave, you know?”

For her part, the young girl seemed to have made a miraculous transformation, though her soft spoken voice betrayed the look of woman warrior she tried to convey. The layers of clothing might be designed to fend off the bites of zombies, but she would still have to take her spear and jam it into the face of a zombie. Marty was unsure the girl could do it...or if she realized what would soon be required of her.

They began their way back up the levee. “Please take me over to that man,” she said as she pointed to the general.

The gunfire picked up as people regained their senses after the tsunami of horrid smells dissipated. By the time she’d reached the summit, many of those who had run down the backside had also returned. The nearby tank adjusted its turret and fired its machine gun as it sought targets. A man on top operated a second machine gun, though he fired less frequently.

The general was in the front seat of his truck, but leaning out the open door. His face was pale, like maybe he’d gotten sick, too.

“Hello, Ms. Peters. I thought your goose was cooked.”

“That makes two of us. I guess it wasn’t my time.” She pointed up.

“Well, you jumped out at the right time,” he said with a weak smile.

“I wonder. I think...” Her mind was a little fuzzy, so she wasn’t sure she could make the claim. But something told her she’d seen it correctly. “...that Duncan pushed me out. I wasn’t right, either, and I wasn’t holding on as tightly as I should. I felt someone push my back, and I tumbled out of that seat, onto the dirt. It was still a miracle I didn’t break anything, but that cart was near to the ground.”

“Well, maybe Duncan knew what he was doing, even though he was overcome,” the general offered.

“Then Debbie came and got me.”

Debbie and the general smiled at each other.

“Marty, I want you off this levee. We don’t know what else is coming. I expect it will get worse before we get an upper hand.” He looked at Debbie. “Can you walk her down there?” He pointed to the inside of the front gate where the military vehicles and their families had come through. “Someone can give her a ride to a safer place in the town.”

Marty saw the uncertainty on his face.

She thought of Al’s words. Something she was missing. Was she supposed to leave? What would she do about Liam? Leaving was an option, and soon it might be a requirement, but for now she had time. And, she knew what she’d do with that time.

“My dear, let’s do as the general asks. If you take me down there, I’m sure we can find some help. I’d very much like to go back to your home.”

It’s where Liam will return. At the very least I need to leave him a note.

Her mind planned what she would write, but without having the slightest idea where she would go, her note was destined to be blank.

3

“My great-grandson, Liam, usually walks me like this.”

Debbie steadied her arm as she paced her down the gravel road on the inner slope of the levee. It wasn’t very far, but they weren't moving very fast.

“He was the boy that came from, like, the hospital, right?”

“Yes, dear, he was injured rescuing me in St. Louis.”

“I heard you all talking when he woke up. So, that pretty girl with him was his...girlfriend, right?”

Marty looked at her and winked.

“Well...I thought so. They both ran out together the day he, um, woke up. Then I guess they left together the next day?”

“That’s correct.”

“So they’re not coming back?” she asked with too much nonchalance.

She searched her feelings. The dream she had with Al placed both kids out in the middle of the zombie horde, alive, but in great peril. Was that allegory, or was it literal? If the latter, how could she have possibly known that? Al never made much sense, but lately, he made less sense than usual. Whatever the explanation, she was unable to answer Debbie’s question with authority.

“Why do you ask?” Her voice carried concern.

Debbie looked at her, and her eyes grew wide. “Oh, no reason. Well. I guess there is a reason, but it’s stupid. Just ignore me.”

She turned forward and continued down the ramp. Marty sensed that Debbie wanted her to pursue her answer.

“They’re coming back. I’m sure of it. I just can’t say when, dear.”

“Good,” she said with cheer. Then, looking at Marty with horror on her face, she followed up with, “No! I didn’t mean it like that.” She physically rubbed her hand over her face, like she wanted to wash away her effort. “I, like, am happy to help you out is all. I’ll take care of you until they make it back.”

Marty was glad for the help but was concerned for the girl. She hadn’t said two words in the days they were in the house—her face had been glued to her phone as she punched keys on it—but now she seemed to be a different person. Was it fear? Bravery? Confusion?

“That’s delightful. I would love to have the help.” It was the truth, but she was wary. In the Old World she would have never thought twice about the motives of someone so eager to help her, but here, now, everything had to be questioned. The very thought turned her inward for the remainder of their walk.

Finding a ride was easy. Getting back to the house was easy. Debbie remembered exactly where to go, and the young woman driving the SUV was eager to deliver them and get back to the front gate. Her husband was one of the soldiers up on the levee.

When they got inside, the silence was comparatively shocking. The levee was on the far side of town, and while the noise of the battle was constant—like roofers nailing in shingles two streets over—it was far enough away to be filtered out.

No one else was in the house, which was a switch from the last time she’d been there.

“My dear, where are all the kids?” She didn’t expect all the young people to be there, as they had been asked to fight with spears, but the younger kids surely wouldn’t be out there, too.

“Oh, they, like, moved them all to the middle of town. In the town center, I think.” She finished with an upward inflection, making her statement sound like a question.

“Shouldn’t we go there, too? I think maybe we should.”

“No, you can sit in your comfortable chair, like you were.” She helped Marty to the same chair where she’d spent her days while they were all together.

When she was down, she kept her face steady and calm, though she felt something else. A deep-seated fear that this wasn’t going to end well.

“Debbie. What’s wrong?” She didn’t know if that was the right tact to take, but something was wrong. She just couldn’t pin it down.

“Oh. Um.” She hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“How old are you, Debbie?”

“How old am I?” She seemed to think about it. “Seventeen, I think. I don’t know the year.”

“Seventeen. That’s a great age. Liam’s friend Victoria is seven—”

“Don’t talk about her, OK? I’m going to take care of you, Grandma.”

“Until Liam returns, right?”

Debbie’s face was sweat-covered and full of confusion. The inside of the house was much warmer than the outside air because it had been sealed like a tomb. Not as hot as the motel where she almost died, but not much better.

“I have to help you, Grandma. I, like, have to show him I can do it.”

“Liam?”

“No! The President of the United States!” She smirked. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. You need to rest for a while. When Liam gets here, we’ll get you to safety.”

Debbie sat in a chair across the room. Marty assumed she’d pull out her phone and start texting again, but the girl seemed true to her word about being tired. She crossed her arms and lowered her head to her chest, as if to sleep.

Marty had been leaning forward in her chair, hoping to convince Debbie not to leave her there. But now, in the face of the girl’s obvious need to rest, she let herself lean back into the soft recliner seat. It would be very difficult to get out of the plush chair without assistance, but if she was going to do it, she needed to park her weary muscles for a little while.

She wasn’t exactly in danger, but not safe, either. Debbie was disturbed, but she didn’t sense anything malicious about her. Maybe a good sleep would do the girl some good.

Minutes later, a distant tornado siren cranked up. It was eerily similar to the tornado sirens she’d heard on that first day, back in her home in St. Louis. Those sirens screamed for an hour, and they announced the end of the world.

These sirens only howled for sixty seconds.

Nothing trumps the end of the world.

She hoped.

Chapter 13: JDAM

As Marty and the young girl walked off the levee, John Jasper cleared his head. The defensive line had been scattered and weakened, but the zombies were too uncoordinated to take advantage of that. A comparable human force could have run themselves over the open bridge in the middle, and have been among the confused defenders in a relatively short time. The zombies, on the other hand, hit the ditch from end to end, almost at the same time. It weakened their punch.

He looked at his people. Several men and women had partially, or completely, stripped off their clothes and were doing who-knows-what in the grass on both sides of the levees. Many others were recovering from being hunched over—tossing their cookies, like the general. Others ran away. Some fought with each other. A critical few went toward the zombies.

Some stripped, puked, then fought.

It could have been worse.

He reestablished contact with his units. First, by voice. Tyler, Xander, and Rando were all nearby, though Rando had run to the base of the levee before returning. After ensuring they were solid, he worked on getting in touch with his vehicles.

The Bradley that had nearly driven into the ditch reported that they'd gotten themselves together—they were back in the game. He thought about using the other Bradley to pull the first one off the berm, but in the end, it wouldn't really matter. It could fire its main gun—the deadly M242 chain gun—and its lighter machine gun from where it sat on the dirt pile. He wasn't going to risk an extraction unless the situation out in the field stabilized.

He took a deep breath. He'd survived the critical initial contact with the enemy. So what if he'd thrown up. At least he didn't run from battle or drive himself over to the enemy side. The wave of gas created by the zombies affected everyone differently, it would seem.

“Alpha-1 and -2, focus fire on those approaching the ditch. How copy, over.”

They responded in the affirmative, but it illustrated a new problem. Alpha-2 couldn't fire anywhere near the immobilized Bradley in front of it. And, because of where the Bradley sat on the mound, it couldn't fire down and hit the zombies closest to the ditch in its sector.

Alpha-1, on his left, executed his orders perfectly. The Abrams' machine gun swept just over the top of the berm behind the ditch, and it made a satisfying swath of destruction hundreds of yards into the first echelons of the endless zombie horde. The walkers had approached behind the runners, and the crowd was growing. As best he could tell, the runners had all fallen into the water...lost from view.

The job of his military units was to keep the followers from jumping in and clogging the pipes.

Minutes later, tornado sirens spun up from the town at his back.

“Yeah, why not. Let's call them in,” he barked.

Someone is really trying to screw me over.

The emergency sirens turned off almost as soon as they got to full strength, which gave him some relief. It cleared his head so he could focus on the driving melody of gunfire. The louder the music, the more zombies fell. He likened it to Death Metal—a musical genre he hated each time his men cranked it. It was the right soundtrack as he watched the zombies get shredded up and down the line.

The dance continued for several hours. As morning turned to afternoon, Napoleon's maxim about who is really the King of the Battlefield became a factor. It wasn't the biggest guns, or the bravest soldiers. An army marches on its stomach—it depends on supply. The quartermaster would determine the outcome of this battle, too.

He had a lot of time to think about it. Each time the truck came up the ramp of the levee to deliver ammo to his vehicles, it was one resupply closer to the end. The bullets would run out before the zombies…

They kept coming. There were so many, in fact, they had practically come to a stop. Like your typical evening commute on the interstate—there were too many bodies packed into the fields.

The zombies nearest the tanks and guns were pushed back by the force of the cold steel heading their way. It seemed to confuse them and spin them in the wrong direction. That swirl of indecision was the only thing keeping the defenders alive. And that worked into the evening until his radio crackled.

“We're out of 7.62."

He watched the writhing mass of death out in the fields. The men and women of his command had achieved the impossible. They'd held the zombies for almost a full day by whittling away at the leading edge of their battle force. The resulting stack of dead and injured zombies was ten feet high and a mile long. Each time a zombie fell, more took its place—mashing it into the ground to become part of the foundation of the dynamic monument they were all constructing.

Without the 7.62 ammo to fuel their most effective weapons, he had to think of alternatives.

The Humvees were all parked in the middle, belt-feeding their ammo in controlled bursts onto the far end of the bridge. It was the most vulnerable point of their defense, and worth every round they'd expended there. Belatedly, he wished he'd thought of a way to blow the bridge. If the zombies got in, they'd never need the road again anyway. But blowing a bridge—even with tanks—was not an easy proposition.

Over the course of the day more and more people showed up with the spears Chloe had provided. She was earning her keep. By the time the sun was nearing the horizon, there were hundreds of people on the levee nervously holding their makeshift spears. About an equal number of people stood below the levee—nearest the town. They appeared to be the young, infirm, or groups of women managing gaggles of children. He wanted to order them away from the tip of the spear but guessed they wouldn't dare leave their loved ones on the fighting line, no matter if it made sense or not.

He caught sight of his runner, Tyler, and called him over. “You've done excellent work out there, son. But I have a new challenge for you.” He pointed down into the town. “See those cars down there? We need them up here. Pointing toward the zombies. Once it turns dark, we need to maintain the light. Get it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, son. Good luck.”

He wondered if they could survive until nightfall, but they'd have to be prepared in case they did.

2

Before the darkness fell, he OK'd the use of the remaining canister rounds from each Abrams. The shotgun blasts were by far the deadliest and most effective single rounds in his arsenal, but he had precious few of them. Even the munitions truck only carried a few extras per tank. The rest of the spare rounds, as he feared, were for use against enemy armor. He still wasn't ready to waste those.

The canisters served one important purpose, though he didn't realize it at first. Because the Bradley was in its way, Alpha-2 had to fire into the crowd at angles, instead of directly forward. This created angular ridges of broken bodies, which served as funnels to keep the dead moving along those piles, instead of straight toward the ditch.

“Alpha-1. Use canister at a 45-degree angle—about 2 o'clock—into the crowd. Alpha-2, continue to fire at your ten o' clock. Wait for zombies to fill in the gaps, then fire again. Out.”

He didn't wait for the confirmation. They each turned their turrets in the required direction, and the murdering continued.

No, they're already dead. Never forget that.

The rounds went out and knocked down bodies like bowling pins. The tungsten balls of the shotgun-like shells traveled several hundred yards into the crowd until their energy was completely absorbed by the thick number of bodies. As instructed, the tanks would wait for the zombies to walk over their fallen brothers and sisters before unloading another one on them.

It was grisly. He almost couldn't watch as heads detached and bodies evaporated. But the consolation was that it created a wedge of a sort, painted into the crowd using dead bodies as the medium. If the zombies were a waterfall, tumbling down toward the ditch, the tanks had created an inverted V shape, which would deflect the follow-on zombies away from the central bridge.

He was mesmerized by the destruction when he snapped to attention.

“John, John, John. Tsk, tsk. Who gave you permission to use my toys?”

Elsa's smooth, feminine voice cut through the harsh gargle of boring sitreps and ammunition requests. And, he admitted, it scared him.

“John? I know you're there. I can see you sitting in your little truck.”

He looked up, knowing a drone had to be flying. He spied the toothpick-thin drone with its long, narrow wings high above. He waved.

“That's right. I'm up here. Always watching. And, John, I don't like what I'm seeing.”

He keyed his mic, knowing there was no point in ignoring her.

“What can I do for you, Elsa? I'm sort of busy here.” He figured the noise of gunfire would bleed through as his supporting evidence.

“I guess I should have known you'd survive. I should have shot you myself, then thrown you in that cesspool. No matter. That can be fixed. But I can't have you messing up my plans with your traitorous rebels.”

“We aren't rebels, ma'am; we're United States Army.”

“You were Army. Just like those men and women playing soldier up in St. Louis were citizens of this great country. Now you're all rebels.”

That navy man said St. Louis was crawling with Polar Bears—a euphemism for citizens who rose up against the government as part of the Patriot Snowball movement. Though he had no love for the movement or what they stood for, he didn't feel particularly offended to now be lumped in with them. If the government was run by Elsa and her minions, he figured "rebel" described him fairly well now.

When he didn't rise to her bait, she kept at it. “You know what that means, don't you? What does the United States of America do to traitors?”

“Promotes them, apparently.”

She laughed heartily. “Oh, John. I love your spirit. That must be the zombie perfume getting to you. No, give me a second and I'll tell you...”

He watched as the Abrams' continued to hammer at the zombies. They'd done an admirable job of laying down the hate in precisely the places he envisioned when he thought up the idea of channeling the dead. It would put more zombies on each end of the ditch, but less in the exact center—and the bridge.

In a minute Elsa came back on his channel. “Military time. Hard to judge these things. You know?”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“OK, let's try this again.” She coughed openly as if to prepare for a speech. “What does the United—”

He caught the glint of metal as it fell from the sky, but it was only a fraction of a second, and on the edge of his vision. When he turned, an explosion ripped into the wayward Bradley nearest the ditch. The explosion was so powerful, it blew down several of the civilians on that end of the levee. He felt the lurch of the earth a moment after impact.

“Dammit!” Elsa complained. “I wanted that to be timed better. Maybe the next one,” she said with a laugh.

He was on his microphone in an instant, seeing this for what it was. He spoke in a calm voice.

“This is Warfighter actual. Alpha-1 and -2, disengage. I repeat, disengage. We are under attack from—”

Would they believe him if he said Air Force? Under attack from members of the same team? Could he explain the nuance of who was firing at them?

“—unknown elements.” It was a lame declaration.

“Move into the town. How copy?”

“Oh John. I hope you notice I didn't drop it on you. Did you? I hope so. It means you aren't a threat to me. Your military hardware is the real danger to me. Just thought you ought to know that.”

There was no time for personal vendettas. He looked at his deployment. The other Bradley was far down the levee, working things on that end. If he pulled everyone back, the end would come that much sooner. If he left them to die from the air, it would also end.

He had to preserve his forces. No matter the cost. If he couldn't kill zombies from the ideal spot on the levee, he would kill them from inside the town. From another town. From wherever he found himself.

Life was long and left many opportunities for the use of precious military equipment. These were his men. His tools. He was going to save them.

“Warfighter actual. All units, abandon the levee. Find cover in the town. Out.”

“Dear John,” she laughed, “it's not me, it's you. Run, run, run. I'm gonna find you.”

Don't you have better things to do?

He wondered about that as he abandoned his own Humvee and ran to the civilians standing out on the levee, looking confused and distracted by what just happened. It only took him a minute to listen to rumors that the zombies had a magical weapon now. One that could obliterate a perfectly good armored fighting vehicle like it was nothing.

The crowd was a flight risk. It was up to him to calm it. He needed the civilians more than ever before. They all needed each other if they were to survive until tomorrow.

Somewhere above, he imagined, another 2,000-pound JDAM was waiting to pounce.

That thought stuck with him as night draped itself over the chaos.

Chapter 14: Jane

Victoria was jarred awake as a door slammed shut. In her groggy state, she observed how the helicopter tipped forward, and they began another ascent.

“Did we land?” she called out. Then, noticing Hayes was gone, she leaned so she could see outside.

A gigantic complex of steel and concrete structures filled the entire window view. White dust coated everything, like someone had shaken dirty powdered confectionery sugar from above.

“What is this place?”

“Biggest concrete plant in the world,” Jane called out from the pilot’s seat.

“You’re kidding,” she said in disbelief, though she couldn’t fathom how she could possibly know whether Jane was lying. Or that it mattered.

“But why did he get out. Why didn’t we?”

The craft banked to the left, and she saw down to the surface of the Mississippi River. They’d evidently not gone far off their course. When they stabilized again, several hundred feet up, Jane answered her.

“He said to tell you thanks, but that he can’t go to Cairo. Things are dangerous there, now.”

“Oh, but it’s OK for you and me?” The implication was that Jane was the man’s wife. Surely…

“He put me in charge of getting you to Cairo, then retrieving the old woman.”

“She has a name. It’s Marty,” she voiced into the mic for the internal comms.

“Yes. Marty. We’re going to rescue her.”

She didn’t know how to respond. Was a thank you in order, or was this all part of Hayes’ convoluted forward-thinking that he calls planning? What could possibly be more important at a concrete plant than in the city where the object of his testing had to be found?

Victoria sat back in her seat, finally giving up on watching where they were going. “You know, I don’t get you. What do you see in that guy?” she echoed his question from the security room. She didn’t expect a reply from her kinda-sort enemy, but she’d spent enough time with the man to feel a kinship of a sort with her. If she found him insufferable in just a few hours together, what must his wife think?

Jane laughed. “He’s not so bad, once you understand what motivates him.” She looked back at Victoria but didn’t elaborate.

“And, frankly, I didn’t have much choice.”

“He said something about arranged marriages...”

“Yeah, he likes to use that as an excuse, but that wasn’t really what brought us together. Or what keeps us together.”

“Because you know what motivates him?”

“Partly. He has changed since this crisis started, but for the better, actually. In the old days, he was consumed by his damned research. He was convinced he’d cure the world of Cancer. But when his priority shifted to...other goals, well, he became even more driven. I think once the plague was released, and he saw the effects, he started to relax.”

Victoria was stunned by the inappropriateness of her glib attitude but had nothing to say.

“Anyway, fixing the plague has become his driving force. But for once it's something I can directly help him with, which makes us a team again. It really feels good.”

Again, the impossibility of feeling good while the world burned was bone-jarringly insensitive to all those who had suffered because of the man. But, the whole thing forced her to look at her own relationship in another manner.

Was her relationship with Liam helped or hindered by the Zombie Apocalypse? Would she have a relationship, otherwise? Was it fair to ask questions she already knew the answers to?

They had a lot of bad times during their nightmare weeks on the run, but also some good ones. The first thing that popped in her head was that first innocent kiss behind the tree when they’d escaped St. Louis. She’d whispered in his ear that she was so glad they’d met, and that she was thankful he had rescued her. The sense of relief wasn’t just because they’d gotten out of the city filled with zombies, but that he made her forget the reason she’d left Colorado in the first place. It was one of the greatest feelings she’d experienced since leaving home.

She admitted the zombies had allowed some good things to happen. Maybe it wasn’t so bad that Hayes and his wife got to have a second chance, too.

“He still can be an ass,” Victoria said with finality.

“Oh, no question there,” Jane said with a chuckle. “But that ass is going to save the world. I firmly believe that with all my heart.”

“Don’t trust anyone.” Liam’s voice filled her mind. “You’re riding in a helicopter with the wife of the sneakiest man in America. Be careful.”

It didn’t feel like a trap, though she allowed anything was possible now that she was a prisoner inside the helicopter. She could fly her anywhere, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She had no weapons. No way to change the flow of the day.

Leaning to the window again, she watched for another thirty minutes as the chopper cruised over the countryside below. Except for the odd fire here or there, it was hard to tell anything had changed with the world. The country was still the country. Just a bunch of trees, same as before.

It all changed as they approached Cairo. She knew what to expect in terms of the big pile up of barges along the river, but she had no idea what to think of the standing room only crowd of zombies in the fields north of the town.

“Oh my God,” Victoria exclaimed into the mic.

Jane slowed the craft. “Looks like they had a hell of a fight last night,” she reported.

There were thousands of dead zombie bodies in the field. They’d been stacked up like dried leaves all along the ditch, and the waterway was solidly choked with bodies in several places. From high in the helicopter, it was hard to make out individuals in the crowd, but the moving mass appeared to flow over the bridges of the dead and then spread out again like ants from a mound.

“They’re still alive! There!” she shouted, though it was impossible for Jane to know where she pointed.

Pockets of defenders stood on the big pile of dirt behind the waterway. It appeared the dead had crossed and then gotten behind the defenders in several places. The tiny pockets of men and women lunged at the encroaching zombies when they got too close. But it was an impossible battle.

The zombies outnumbered them thousands to one.

2

“She’s down there, isn’t she?” Jane asked plainly.

Victoria had tried to throw them off the scent by pointing to the nearby town of Wickliffe, Kentucky. It was pretty much across the river from Cairo, and her plan was to land there and get a sense of whether this was truly a rescue or something more deadly for Grandma. She wasn’t going to risk her life until she knew.

But now, seeing the horde of zombies breaking through the defenses of the town, what choice did she have? Jane flew her over the middle of Cairo and seemed to slow down as if waiting for the answer. Victoria studied the landscape below, but couldn’t readily pick out where she’d left Grandma Marty in her temporary home.

There were no zombies running down the streets of the town, at least she didn’t see any from up in the sky, but that time was coming.

“Yes,” she said as she deflated. “But I don’t remember exactly which house we were in.”

“You have to try,” Jane replied.

She was on the cusp of picking a place to set the helicopter down when several plinks rattled off the outside of the copter. Jane banked hard to her right and made for the edge of town. Two more clangs—gunfire she realized—followed.

“They're shooting at us?” Victoria’s question was rhetorical.

They re-crossed the Mississippi and banked for a landing. She watched a huge dust storm far across the flat Missouri farmland for the few moments she faced that direction. Soon they touched down in the treeline across the river from Cairo. Jane explained the helicopter would be hidden from trigger-happy townsfolk, but would be close enough they could get back before the town itself collapsed.

“We’re walking?”

“No, we’re running,” Jane said while unhooking herself from the controls and radio equipment. In moments they both stood outside the damaged sliding door. With a conspiratorial grin, Jane removed a small panel which revealed a storage space inside the hull. She pulled out two black rifles and several magazines each. Victoria spied another rifle she left behind. It was much larger.

“That’s my baby,” Jane said with the pride of any new mother. “But she’s too heavy to carry so far.”

Then, pointing at the rifle she’d given to Victoria, she continued. “You aren’t going to shoot me with that, are you?” Her smile was soft, but her eyes were rocks.

“No. I can’t say I trust you, but right now we both want the same thing. To save Grandma from that wall of zombies.”

Jane handed her the magazines. “Keep these handy. We’re going to need them.” She took off at a jog.

Victoria, looking at the unlocked helicopter, spoke as she ran to catch up. “Aren’t you worried someone is going to steal your ride?”

“Eh, what are the odds of the finder being able to fly a helicopter? We’ll be fine.”

Victoria wasn’t sure. “We’ll be fine” was code for “I have no idea.” But there was no other choice. At least they weren’t bullet magnets on the ground.

Things became more chaotic as they crossed the fields on the Missouri side of the river and reached the narrow, two-lane bridge which linked their side with Illinois. Several people ran down the middle of the bridge—away from town. Women and children, mostly. The children were ushered with yells and screams to keep moving. All were on foot because some trucks had been parked in the middle of the span to block vehicle traffic.

Crossing the old bridge gave them a look below. The brown river was choked with barges. There were more than she could count. It was almost possible to walk from one side of the great river to the other...they were piled up that badly. Cairo had taken capturing the runaways to a whole new level.

A giant plane came in over the bridge low, and slow. She recognized it from their many earlier encounters. A V-22 Osprey. It swooped in above the town then tilted its wings as it descended—changing from plane mode to helicopter mode. It went behind some trees in the foreground of her view, so she didn’t know where it went down. She assumed it was part of the evacuation effort and was glad to see it.

Distracted by the plane, that’s when she saw a group of people walking a ramp onto a single barge near the middle of the river. It was hooked to a lone towboat, like they were preparing to depart. The people on the move appeared to be elderly, and that was all she needed.

“There! Those people. We have to check that out.”

Jane, when she saw where she was looking, held out her rifle so she could look through the scope. After a moment’s worry that the other woman was going to shoot down at the people, she realized what she was doing and used her own scope in the same fashion. Sure enough, they were elderly.

“Why are they walking to that boat?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know. But if they're as old as I think they are, we have to assume Grandma is down there somewhere. And we have to hurry!” The people were close to their getaway boat, and no one appeared to be following them. They’d walked across several adjoining barges which were lashed together—she had experience jumping over such boats—and it wouldn’t take them long to get inside the last one.

“All right. It’s worth a look.”

Dang right, it is.

3

They had no incidents getting over the long bridge, past a group of men organizing a roadblock at the far end, or getting down to the floating parking lot of barges. They ran up a plank and crossed several others as they crossed empty barges. The one they sought was closest to the middle of the river and still moored to the others as they approached. They had weapons drawn.

“What are we going to do if there are guards?”

“What makes you think they’ll have guards?” Jane replied, with apparent skepticism.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that every time I walk into one of these situations, someone points a gun in my face? Ringing any bells?”

“That was one time,” Jane said with an attempt to lighten the mood.

Victoria was angry but kept it inside. The rifle in her hands was her insurance card, this time.

“After you,” she motioned to Jane.

The barge was one of the big ones. About two hundred feet long and fifty across. It was covered by a long series of metallic toppers, so she couldn’t see what was inside the hold. The elderly people had gone in on one side, where there were steps. On the far end, the barge had some tall antennas and a large satellite dish sitting on the open deck. That was curious enough to warrant checking out the boat, as no other barge she’d seen had such accoutrements.

Jane didn’t hesitate, though she gripped her rifle tightly, and held it to her face as she moved closer to the steps to go down into the hold.

Victoria studied the towboat at the other end. The windows of the bridge wrapped all the way around the superstructure of that ship, so the captain could see the entire river, but she couldn’t tell if anyone was watching them from inside.

I’m sure this is all just a friendly checkup.

The stairs down were made of fresh wood like they’d been built for this one thing. She followed Jane, who’d gone the ten or so feet to the bottom. She stepped off so Victoria could stand next to her.

The people she’d seen earlier stood nearby as a group. They looked scared and tired. One or two had taken seats against the metal wall of the hull. The lighting was dim, but white LED lights lined the floor everywhere she looked.

When they got close to them, they lowered their rifles.

An old man met them as they neared. “We surrender.” Some chuckles followed from the others. If Liam were here, he’d criticize them for surrendering. He’d want them all to be armed, so two girls wouldn’t have the drop on them.

“Sorry, what is this place?” Victoria asked.

“Can’t you see? It’s a hospital?” the old man answered.

Victoria looked again. She’d been so focused on the threat posed by the unarmed people; she didn’t see the rest of the interior. It was two hundred linear feet of beds. Each bed had a light hanging down from above it, though only a few beds had patients in them.

She and Jane walked around.

“It really is a hospital,” Jane agreed.

They both stared in wonder. Having a hospital out on the river meant it could go anywhere to provide services. It would be a great asset to anyone fighting against the zombies who, so far, didn’t have the ability to swim and board ships like this one.

“Who’s in charge?” There were no nurses or doctors to answer Jane’s query. Just some sleeping patients and the group of newcomers. “And how did you know to come here?” Jane continued.

Victoria looked back, waiting for the answer.

“A young woman told us to get over here straight away. She said this was part of the official evacuation effort.”

“All of you?” Victoria probed.

The others nodded.

She walked tentatively into the area of beds. There were probably ten long rows of them. The first patient she could find was also an elderly woman. Not Grandma. That got her running. Out of all the beds, maybe ten percent had people in them. The cool hull seemed to help with temperature, but it was still humid—most patients were sweating as they lay there.

But, more troubling, was the fact they were all attached to wires and a type of harness over their heads. They seemed to be out of it.

When she’d run up and down all the rows, she was satisfied Grandma was not among them. She didn’t know if she was happy or sad at the realization. These people had to be safer than those in danger of being overrun by the horde.

She returned to Jane with a question on her face.

“I don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Victoria, pointing over her shoulder, replied, “Actually, I’ve seen something like it. I, uh...” Her attention was stolen by movement at the front of the barge.

A black drone had floated down the stairs and hovered silently, out of the way. Another came in behind it. And a third.

“Friends of yours?” she asked Jane.

The angular machines hovered at the base of the steps, as if waiting for orders.

“Nope. I have no friends,” she replied with finality.

Chapter 15: Fighting Retreat

Marty tried to get out of her chair, but her back was, as Liam would say, toast. She sat in the darkness of the cozy old home with her kinda-sorta captor. Debbie didn’t say she was a prisoner, but she wouldn’t help Marty up so she could leave. It was a request she refused over and over, until finally she went into the other room, pulled some bedding and a pillow into the family room, and went to sleep at Marty’s feet. Now, even if she could pop out of her chair with the help of magic, she wouldn’t be able to step over or around Debbie without rousing her.

The saddest part was the girl seemed to be deeply asleep—even the distinct whining of a tank barreling through the neighborhood didn’t bring her around. When it came by, Marty believed it had gone through the backyard, but as the night dragged on she doubted what she’d heard.

So, she did the only sensible thing for her situation.

“Al, you better talk to me when I fall asleep,” she whispered.

She woke with the sun high in the morning sky. Rays of sunshine raked the empty kitchen, reminding her of many pleasant years of cooking and baking in her home. Who owned this house before the horrible zombies came here? Was that person still alive, somewhere?

And Al? He never showed up, though she remembered many of her dreams from the night before. They were “normal” ones, though, not those induced by Al and his dream-within-a-dream routine. It wasn’t relief she felt, however, as now she needed him more than ever. She was alone—Liam and Victoria were still up the river on their boat—and the general had hinted things were going to get bad in the town. He didn’t say she should leave, but that was written between the lines.

At her feet, Debbie’s bedding was an explosive mess of sheets, pillows, and comforters all over the floor. It was too hot to need any of those for sleeping under, but she probably needed them to cushion herself on the hard floor. Whatever it was for, she wasn’t among the wreckage.

“Debbie?” she said cautiously. She needed the girl but wanted her to be gone, too.

No response.

She called louder to the same effect.

Time to do this myself.

In an act that immediately reminded her of that first day in her St. Louis living room, she cautiously rose to her feet, using the arms of the chair as her guides. Her rest the night before had helped her back, but not as much as it would have with proper sleep in a proper bed. Sleeping in a chair brought out new soreness in her body.

Once on her feet, she looked for her cane. Or, she thought, even that darned walker. But this was a home for youngsters. The only cane recently inside had been her own, and she managed to misplace it.

Pretending she was only 99, she grabbed the arm of the chair and moved to the wall. She wall-walked to the front door.

“Where will I go?” she said to the empty room, talking to herself exactly as she used to do back home. She giggled at the realization. She was, after all, still alive. For her, that was a thought worth celebrating.

“Who would have thought,” she mused, “that an old lady like me would be in a pickle like this. Looking for a walker when so many zombies are upon us.”

That sobered her.

The front door was flimsy wood and opened easily. With a few stumbles, she reached the edge of the front stoop so she could see the world outside.

It was worse than she feared. Because several lots had no houses sitting on them—the old town had been stripped of many over the years of decline—her view of the scene allowed her to see several streets over. People were running on her street, on the next street, as far as she could see streets further into town. All of them were heading to the south—away from the battle in the north.

In her yard, she saw a swath of destruction emerge from the side of the house—dual troughs of dirt had been torn from the thick grass. The cause of that mess sat in the lot across and down the street a few houses. One of the tanks from the levee had driven there, apparently through her backyard, and it came to a rest under the impressive crown of a towering old tree.

Two streets over she happened to glimpse Debbie walking between a pair of hobbling elderly women. Everyone else was going south, but her direction was against the grain—toward her stoop.

It gave her a moment to ask what could drive the young girl to collect more elderly. It was almost as if she was doing a service project of some kind.

“Save the elderly people from the zombies,” she chuckled. “Well, not this old bird.”

With great care, she stepped out onto the front walkway and made her way to the street. Once there, she knew she would get assistance. It embarrassed her to do it, but almost no one would pass an elderly woman swaying in the middle of the roadway.

To her surprise, many people did pass her with not so much as a look.

Oh, heavens me. Things are bad.

But, with great relief, she felt someone grab her arm.

When she looked at her helper, she thought it was just about the last person in the world she expected.

2

“General! What are you doing here?”

“I’m planning,” he said curtly.

With the whole town running in terror, and the leader of its defenses on her elbow, she didn’t dare bring up her trivial problems.

“Actually, this is called a fighting retreat, Ms. Peters. Elsa bombed me yesterday so I had to move my vehicles into the town. We've been fighting with spears at the ditch all night. Now I have my people in a line behind us, trying to go door to door to evacuate what we can before the zombies catch us.” As if to emphasize that line, he shoved her to go faster—beyond her comfort zone.

It struck her that this might be where her story ends. After a few paces of fast-walking, she stopped him.

“General, I’m not your concern. Leave me here. Protect these other people.” She pointed back to Debbie, who was at that moment walking over the lawn to the house she just left. “That girl helped me get out. She's trying to help others escape. She needs your help, more than I do.”

He looked back, but only for a moment.

“You aren’t going to understand this. I’m not sure I do. But Elsa wanted you dead. There's a reason for that. Whatever that reason is, that makes me inclined to refuse her wish and save you myself.” His eyes conveyed the seriousness of that statement. “Now are you going to walk with me, or not?”

She’d lived a long and happy life. Though she admired his sentiment and shared his desire to deny that woman anything, she couldn’t be responsible for dragging him down while trying to take care of a spent soul like her. She did her best attempt to pull herself free, intent on doing a movie-quality evasion of him. Of course, she came nowhere near pulling it off.

“Leave me be.”

His response was rapid and decisive.

Before she knew what was happening, she was in his arms.

“Oh! No. Put me down, please.” Her words carried no weight. They were as light as she was in the strong arms of the military man.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I was taught to always honor my elders, and I admit this is borderline disrespect. But we’re in danger of losing the whole town because of that woman’s actions, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk away and leave you to die when I could easily save you.”

Marty didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t make him put her down, even if she wanted to get violent—which was never going to happen. As with a sizable portion of her later life, she was now being swept up in events, and totally dependent on another human being for her care.

Al, why didn’t you answer me?

In those moments she reflected on Al’s absence. Was he giving her a message? Was it up to her what she did next? That seemed right. He could have given her a destination, and she would have done anything in her power to get there. But he didn’t work like that. The being masquerading as her late husband liked to be mysterious. She laughed a little at the more-than-obvious thought.

So where would a mysterious being want her to go? Liam would be looking for her. She was sure of that.

I didn’t leave him a note!

The realization stunned her, but the more she thought about it—

I still don’t know where I’m going.

“Dear Liam, I left the house in the arms of a general. Points unknown. Best wishes. Grandma.” That thought was as accurate a note as she could leave at the moment.

The general wouldn’t take her back to that house, even if she begged.

“I can hear them, general,” she said softly. The yelps of the zombies carried on the air.

“Marty, listen to me. The lines are about gone. The town is going down. I’m going to leave you somewhere safe, but you have to trust me. I’m going to get you out of here, and then we can see how you and Elsa fit together. Deal?”

“Are you giving me a choice?”

“No.”

“Well, then. Carry on.”

She would be on the lookout for her escape. Wherever he was going to put her, it would not be safe. And worse, it would endanger others. She’d spent too long already allowing people to fight for her, and die for her. Liam, especially. She was as proud of him now as she was ashamed at her own selfishness through all this bother.

It wouldn’t be suicide to let myself get caught, would it? Not if I tried, for a little while, to escape them.

Her mind was aflutter with competing life directives when she finally saw what the general was going to do with her.

Chapter 16: Chloe

John knew how it would end. Always did, once he saw the zombies coming over the interstate. And every death was the result of Elsa—and whatever group she worked for—and her abandonment of these people. Deep down he wanted to walk away from this fight so he could prepare for the next one, but, alas, that wasn’t going to happen.

He'd gotten Ms. Peters to a safe spot. One victory among a string of fighting defeats.

“Sir, everyone who’s getting out is behind us.”

“And we have nowhere to go,” he replied.

“Sir?”

There were two bridges on the southern tip of the peninsula on which the town of Cairo had been settled. Today it was essentially an island, since the ditch linked the two rivers on the north side. It had been filled with bodies, so maybe that disqualified it from being an island. A strange thought given the gravity of the situation.

There were hundreds of barges floating around the town, as part of the recovery efforts of the past several weeks. He could have jumped any one of those, cut it loose, and gotten his men out. But not the equipment. That’s why he’d made every effort to get his surviving tanks, Humvees, and Bradley’s to the southernmost bridges. But now that he was there…

“The mayor did us one last favor,” he said with derision.

While they were busy fighting zombies hand-to-hand up in the north, the mayor and some of his public works lackeys had been here, in the south, clogging up the bridges with every vehicle they could find. Somehow they’d even managed to wedge a truck-sized shipping container on the Missouri bridge.

“We can just climb over that garbage, sir,” the civilian man said.

John didn’t reply. They’d spent the morning fighting a delaying action block after block in the long, narrow town, and he assumed this was going to be where he rides off into the sunset after a job well-done. He'd even gotten lucky and found Marty wandering about. But their escape was in jeopardy.

The mayor had made sure he couldn’t get his heavy equipment out of the town. He couldn’t say for certain the old man knew what he was doing—maybe he got a call from Elsa. The end result was the same: the mayor screwed him over.

There were barges out on the water with cranes attached—the port area had two he knew about—and with unlimited time he could have this bridge cleared using those cranes. But he had minutes, not hours.

He reached into his Humvee, searching for a miracle. “This is Warfighter actual.” He called to his aid Tom using the designation he'd written on the piece of paper. "Dunkirk, how copy?”

Nothing but static.

He’d tried to keep his radio chatter to a minimum because Elsa was always listening, but this was important. The surveillance drones did slow circles over Cairo, reminding him of the wider world and his lack of a role in it.

“Tom, dammit, are you there?”

He’d sent his assistant out the previous day, and he feared he’d come to harm. If he’d come through it might have made this whole fiasco more palatable. As it was, he was going to have to abandon all his equipment to the zombies. Maybe someday he could come back and collect it…

That gave him his out.

As civilians streamed through the blockages on the Kentucky bridge, he gathered the remnants of his unit. He had the two Abrams, four remaining Humvees, a mostly-empty supply truck, and a rabble of civilian cars. Both Bradley’s had been lost—one by the JDAM, the other due to a maintenance failure. It made him laugh to think he was probably still the most powerful man for hundreds of miles. The two tanks would make him invincible in a world where everyone used spears.

“Mount up. We’re going to the most southern tip. We’ll swim if we have to, but I’m not abandoning these tanks until I have no other choice.”

Some of the men looked at the bridge—he knew they were considering their own odds. But to their credit, everyone followed him into a little park that sat on the southern tip of the fake island. The buildings of the town faded away, and the last few hundred yards south of the bridges was a pleasant grassy parkland. They were outside the levee system, so the ground sat very near the water level. Hundreds of barges rode the water in every direction.

He shut off the Humvee and sat for a moment staring out at the water. This was the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The Mississippi came in from his right, linking with the other waterway in a large V. One jump and he could float in perfect safety all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

That made him laugh. There would be no such easy escape.

He got out of his truck, intending to explain his reasoning at what had to look like a desperation play, but an Osprey swept in from just above the Missouri-side bridge, it rumbled almost directly over his position, then flew north in what could only be described as a landing maneuver. His instinct said it was Elsa coming in to gloat.

He thought through all the possibilities of the day. Fight or flight time. The noontime sun smacked down on him—hastening the need for action.

“Change of plan, gentlemen. I need volunteers for a dual mission. Some of you are going to cut loose these barges so we can clear a beachhead. While that is going on, the rest of us are going back into town.”

“I’ll go with you,” Chloe said without any hesitation.

Chloe. You wonderful woman.

2

Chloe explained how she’d just left the port area—and her makeshift spear factory—because zombies came a’ knockin’. When a tank drove by she figured that was the last hurrah. Her people helped get civilians over the Kentucky bridge, but she decided to throw her fate in with the general.

“I’m glad you made it.” Then, looking at the rest of his men, he noticed there was an almost even mix of civilians and formal military. Perhaps the transition was already taking place. The order of the old military was giving way to a citizen army. “I’m glad you all made it here,” he said loudly.

“I have one more mission, then we’re going to jump in that water,” he pointed behind him, “and swim to safety.”

That brightened everyone up.

“I need to go back into town. I think the woman who screwed us all was on that plane. I’d like some payback, wouldn’t you?”

He got some cheers, but he knew they were being polite. After fighting all day and all night, no one—not even him—truly wanted to go back in. The only reason they weren’t fighting them at that moment was that so many people refused to leave their homes, even when faced with the black tide, that the zombies were delayed by those holdouts. If anyone was looking at the scene from above, they would see rings of zombie surrounding homes. Donuts of death on a final platter of humanity.

But that grisly image encouraged him that he wasn’t asking his men and women to commit suicide.

In a few minutes, he had his fighting force. A dozen volunteers jumped on each of the tanks, spears and guns at the ready. The Humvees collectively had about a thousand rounds of ammo left, but they could also run over stragglers if need be. A few brave souls got in those trucks to help the drivers.

The remainder of his men were given the task of guarding their piece of the park. At the very least he needed some free space so his troopers could evacuate their tanks and jump in the water. Some of the civilians were already knee-deep at the water's edge.

It didn’t take long to get back into the town. A few humans ran for their lives, always to the south. In just a couple of blocks they found the zombies. Not every zombie had waited to see what was inside the juicy homes—they kept moving after the prey they saw on foot.

“Don’t waste ammo. Fire only if the zombies are a threat. Alpha-1 and -2 run over what you can.”

Given their license to kill, the tank drivers made every effort to hit the zombies in the streets. It resulted in horrific smears on the pavement, which he dutifully avoided, but it had to be done. Chloe, sitting in the passenger seat next to him, made a fake retching sound.

“It’s just awful,” she said.

“This whole thing is awful.” He looked over to her while he drove. “I’ll never be able to thank you for what you did to help the defenses here. Your spears kept us in the game for almost twelve full hours through the dead of night. Probably saved a lot of lives in the evacuation, too. Can you imagine all this happening in the dark?”

“No problem, sir. I heard how you used car headlights up there. That saved lives, too,” she insisted. “My dad was Army. Only a Colonel, mind you, but I guess I felt if I could do right by a general, I could do right by him.”

He looked back at the road. The two tanks were aggressively running down zombies, because the road was thick with them as they progressed into the main part of town.

“I guarantee you he would be proud of you.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’ve lost a good part of my Zombie Killers defending our factory. Two of my people—along with a sickened boat captain—found their way behind our lines. Tore us up. We put them down, but each death is a force reduction we can’t survive. We’re not going to make it, are we?”

“Here? I’m not planning on getting us killed—”

“No. I mean anywhere. These zombies are...endless.”

“If we can get somewhere with high walls, and with no crazy bitch administrator running it, and no rogue boat drivers, we might have a chance.”

“I thought this place was it, you know? We had a good plan.”

“I did, too, Chloe. But there will be other opportunities. That’s what this little trip is all about. I want to put a stop to the person who brought us down. Then we’ll be on our way.”

“If you point me to the person who did all this, I’ll kill them myself,” she said coldly.

He turned to her again, just for a second. The tone of her voice made him consider whether her father would be proud of what she'd become, after all. His own revenge was one thing—a known quantity—but he had second thoughts about involving other people in his final quest. If he got this young woman killed while engaged in something that he didn’t really need to do…

I need to do this. For her, and for me.

Whatever else he did, Elsa had to be stopped. Chloe’s dad would agree. That woman had turned out to be a bigger threat to their personal safety than the zombies. She was one person. If he couldn’t stop the endless rain of zombies, he could at least remove that one threat so she couldn’t do this all again somewhere else.

He would be doing the world a great service, even if it cost Chloe her life. Or his own.

This has to happen.

3

John drove around a corner and saw the big bird had landed in one of the large empty lots of the neighborhood where he’d recently found Marty.

“What are the odds of that?” he asked rhetorically.

Chloe answered. “What’s that, sir?”

“Oh, there’s more going on than I can explain right now. This can’t be coincidence Elsa would come to this street. She once tried to kill a good friend of mine who lived nearby.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK. She’s alive and safe. But this plane has to be here because she wanted to finish the job.”

The Osprey’s back ramp was down. The big props were locked in the hover position, and the rotors continued to spin, but it was unquestionably waiting—not taking off. A few Marines fanned out on the ramp, and they picked off zombies as they got close. He wondered if they knew what was trickling down through the town to the north of them.

“Hold here!” John shouted into his radio. He didn’t know how to contact the Marines. He was outside his own chain of command at the moment.

“I’ll flag them down, sir.”

Before he could say anything, she hopped out of the armored truck and ran toward the Osprey with her arms up. Twice on the march in she had to use her spear to put down zombies. One was a huge man dressed as a firefighter. Her first strike was ineffective, but she kept her cool and got in a second killing strike before it could harm her.

“Your dad truly would be proud of you,” he said to the windshield.

In sixty seconds she’d established contact, and waved his group in.

“Chloe, I’m going to make a special medal for you,” he said when he ran up the ramp to meet her. He saluted the Marines.

They didn’t salute him.

You're dressed like a bum!

He’d forgotten what he must look like. His white T-shirt in no way designated him as a leader. Since he’d been pulled out of the ditch, he’d gotten his white shirt completely filthy with mud, sweat, and blood—some of it his own, he was sorry to admit, from where he injured himself on that fall. He’d have to have that looked at if he lived long enough.

“I’m Major General John Jasper,” he shouted in the man's ear. “Though I’ll be the first to tell you I’m not really with the U.S. Army anymore.”

The Marines gave no ground.

“It’s true. We follow this man because he kept us alive. You had to have seen the zombies on our north wall when you came in? He helped us hold them out there overnight. Now we’re trying to evac the town.”

John willed her to ask about Elsa, but she didn’t bring it up.

“Isn’t that why you’re here,” John added.

One of the Marines made a decision to talk. He pulled them off the ramp, away from the noisy rotors. The two others kept watch from the ramp, though now they had help from two tanks and four Humvees. If they relaxed, John couldn’t tell.

“We report to Lt. Col. Brandyweis, U.S.M.C. We are based here in Cairo, under a Major General Jasper.” He looked at him like he was a bum. “But we’re here to collect a person of interest. Our rescue mission is for her.”

“You mean Elsa Cantwell?”

“No, sir. I’m under orders, sir, so I won’t give out her name.” The Marine was annoyed. John had known enough of them to know when they felt they’d let themselves down. He managed to coax a critical piece of information from him, and he knew it.

“Son, this is important. Elsa Cantwell is responsible for blowing this town to Hell. I’m going to arrest her. If you know where she is, you’d be the hero, here.”

Though it was a reasonable request, the Marine didn’t bite.

He tried a different line of questioning.

“We’re also looking for a Ms. Marty Peters. She was reported living on this street.”

The Marine looked at him stiffly, evidently uncomfortable dealing with a man who could be his boss, but who looked like a store clerk. John saw a glint of recognition in his eyes.

He nodded, then walked away with Chloe in tow.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but they came for a woman who lives on this street. In fact, I saw her come out of that house, right over there.”

He guided her as he walked.

Three Marines and his own men watched as he approached the house.

The crack of gunfire from one of the Marines reminded him his time was running out.

Danger close.

Zombies were everywhere on the streets to the north.

Chapter 17: Debbie's Double Barrel

“You aren’t going to believe this, but you got a call on my secure phone.” Colonel Brandyweis handed him a smartphone.

“Who is it?” Liam asked with awe.

“They won’t say. But they know everything about where we are, who I am, and who you are. They were very persuasive.” He laughed.

“Here, you’ll need this.” He handed Liam a headset that was plugged into his phone. “So you can hear her over the prop noise.”

They were talking loudly inside the Osprey, but he agreed that having headphones and a mic would make a phone call much more practical. And private.

The phone displayed “unknown caller” on the screen.

“Uh, hello?”

“Hello, Liam. Thanks for taking my call.”

“I didn’t have much choice. Who is this?” The voice was feminine but filtered to hide her identity. It was the same distorted voice he'd heard days earlier in the quarry.

“I’m a friend. Listen. I know where you’re going. You have to get them to turn around. You can’t go to...that town. It's overrun.”

He felt it in the pit of his stomach. The Polar Bears had hinted that Cairo was in imminent danger, but he wouldn’t believe it until he saw it. It felt childish to say it that way, but he certainly wasn’t going to turn around because some voice on the phone asked him not to.

“I can tell you’re thinking if I’m telling the truth. I assure you, I’m watching a video feed of more zombies than I can count going over the line of water north of town. The zombies are breaking through.”

“Why are you calling me? What difference would it make if I went there? If the zombies have the town, we’ll just go somewhere else. I have to get my Grandma.”

“And it has nothing to do with your girlfriend?”

“How do you know about her? Who the hell is this?” His inner child came out for some odd reason. “I’ll hang up this phone if you don’t tell me!”

“I...I can’t tell you. This call is secure, or so I’m told, but I can’t risk my whole operation...”

“Well, we’re in trouble then. I’m not listening to you just because you said so.”

The line was silent for a long time. So long that he had to ask if anyone was still there.

He was answered by a series of clicks, then the sound of a ringing phone on the other end.

A woman answered.

“Who is this?” was the first thing out of her mouth. Liam recognized the voice immediately.

“Mom?”

“Liam? Is it you?”

“Yeah, Mom. It’s me. How did you call me? I’m not even—”

“Call you? No, you called me.”

“Mom, I knew it was you. You don’t have to pretend.”

Lana seemed to recover her wits. Her voice also gathered strength and speed.

“Liam, where are you? I’ve been worried sick since you’ve left. I've, uh, gone looking for you. I'm parked outside H's house, but it's on fire. Do you know about this?”

He began to doubt it was his mom earlier. She was very convincing that she was as surprised as he was at their fortuitous connection.

“I ran from downtown to Forest Park, but I didn’t find Victoria. I, um, saw that fire, too. Not long ago. I’m on a plane heading back to where I left Grandma. I think Victoria is there.”

He didn’t want to give away where he was going. The conspiracy-minded Polar Bears had at least done that for him.

“No! You can’t go there. It’s falling apart down there.”

“That’s what she said. Before you came on the line. I’m going down there, Mom. Don’t try to stop me. I have to know if they're OK. After that...I don’t care.”

“Dammit, Liam, why do you keep running away from me? Give me some time, maybe I can get some help to you.”

“If it's as bad as you say, I can’t wait. We're already on our way. I’m in good hands.”

“Liam please—” his mom pleaded. She was cut off, mid-sentence.

“Hi Liam, this is Grandma Rose.”

He sat in stunned silence.

“Are you there?”

Lana heard her mother-in-law. “Rose. What are you doing?” She sounded more incredulous than happy to hear her.

“Lana, if I remained silent while my own grandson threw his life away you would never forgive me.”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t worry about that. So they’ll know where I am.”

“Grandma. Is it really you? What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you. You have to get away from Cairo. A very bad woman made sure every zombie from Chicago and Indianapolis found their way to that tiny town—and they are there at this moment. There’ll be hell to pay.”

“I...I know. But Grandma Marty is there. My girlfriend is there.”

“Liam, listen to your Grandma. Marty wouldn’t want you to risk your life for her.”

“Victoria wouldn’t either. We all say that to protect each other from harm. That’s why I have to get them.”

“Liam, hang on a second,” Rose requested. A series of clicks and chirps took over the line.

After a few moments, he called out, “Hello?”

No response.

“Hello?” he called louder, as if that would help.

Another click and he heard his mom’s voice at the very end of a word like she’d been talking on another line.

Rose spoke to him. “Liam, listen. This is very important. I have an agent in Cairo that has eyes on Marty. She’s going to get out. Do you hear me? She's going to get out. You don’t have to go there. Your mother and I agree on this. We need you to stay clear.”

“What about Victoria? The Marines said she has a chip in her. A tracking chip. She’s down there. I’m not going to leave her to die.”

Lana responded. “Liam, I love Victoria. She can take care of herself. I need to protect you from going into a horde of zombies. You know that, right? It’s already too late.”

“I know that, Mom. But I’m going. Call me in a few hours and I’ll tell you if I survived.”

He hung up the phone. The inner child screamed for him to do it, but he mostly did it because he didn’t want to be talked out of it. There would never be enough of a threat to get him to avoid rescuing the girl he loved.

It was nice to know Grandma would be safe.

2

The Osprey came in over the town low enough he could see the disaster unfolding everywhere on the ditch line. The dead had already crossed using the bodies of those stacked in the water as they were cut down by the defenders. When he last saw the ditch, he could imagine such a thing happening, but it seemed beyond the realm of possibility. Now, having seen it done, it looked pretty simple.

The plane swung wide around the town, looped up north over the interstate, then made another tight loop over the center of town, giving he and Brandyweis time to study the situation.

“The buildings look intact. The zombies are just now getting over that levee.” He pointed down to the defenders of the town. A line of citizens stood at the top of the big levee, and jousted with the advanced line of zombies as they came up the hill. But there were huge gaps in the defensive line, and some of the zombies were already on the backside of the levee.

“Where's your Grandma’s house?”

Liam looked down like he was looking at a map. He identified the central building he and Victoria had visited on the day he woke up and walked the few blocks back to where he thought he remembered the house. He pointed to a large field.

“I think if you land there I can walk you in. It’s on that street; I’m pretty sure.” Being above the trees made it difficult to see all the homes nestled under the leaves, but it was his best guess.

Brandyweis ordered the pilot to fly the Osprey south over the Missouri bridge, declaring he wanted to sweep the southern tip of the peninsula. A couple of Abrams tanks sat on a parking lot near the meeting point of the two rivers. Lots of people and a few other vehicles were close by, but he didn’t see any zombies.

"Looks like they've got an evacuation plan. That's good," Brandyweis said. “Take your seat. We’ll touchdown where you said. We know what we're dealing with. We have to be quick.”

Liam nodded. He was grateful the man had trusted him enough to travel all this way on the word of a kid. That’s what he felt, anyway. Somehow he was lucky enough to get rescued by Marines, then airlifted by Marines, all to rescue his family. Not many people would have the same backup.

As soon as he felt the plane touch down, he was out of his seat. Brandyweis beat him to the back door. By the time it was down, they were both on the run.

“It’s there. That’s it!”

The yard where he playfully rolled with Victoria was just ahead. The yard, however, had been destroyed. He’d spent enough time with tanks to recognize the destruction one of them could do to the landscape. It had ripped through the backyard—flattening several of the small trees he’d searched for spears—and turned so it could go into the next yard and cross the street. Another swath of destruction began a few houses down, where it went back into the grass.

They ran up to the walkway, but the Marine halted him.

“Liam, we don’t know what’s inside. Let me make sure it’s clear before you go in? OK?”

He immediately felt naked. He was unarmed.

“Can I have a weapon?”

He handed him a big knife. “This is all I have, besides Mike-Sixteen here.” He nodded down to his rifle.

“Thanks.” It wasn't a shiny rifle, but at least it wouldn't cost as much when he inevitably lost it.

When they reached the door, Brandyweis turned to him. “For what it’s worth, I respect what you’re doing. Saving your Grandma is very noble.”

“I’m here for two people,” he answered. He was proud the military man thought so highly of him, but he’d had plenty of time to think things through on the plane. His mom and Grandma Rose both warned him against showing up here, though they were wrong—the town hadn’t yet fallen. But they were right, he was ashamed to admit, that it wasn’t really a smart play to come all this way for Grandma. Not if they knew she was safe already. Instead, his real reason for risking his life was Victoria. And, if he knew Victoria at all, the reason she was back in Cairo without him had to be because she was here for Grandma, as well.

Find Grandma. Find Victoria.

Brandyweis kicked the front door in. The distressed wooden frame gave way on the first attempt.

Grandma wasn’t in the front room. It was a long shot that she’d be in the exact spot where he’d last seen her. The floor was covered with bedding and pillows. Like a mouse had been hoarding materials for its home.

“Dang it; nothing is ever easy. I really hoped she’d be here,” Liam said with frustration.

“Don’t worry, how far could a 104-year-old woman go?” Brandyweis tried to be funny, but Liam couldn’t laugh. Not after the day he’d had, and how close he’d come to finding her. “I’m sure she’s—”

A shocking noise almost made him crap his pants. A fraction of a second later he knew it was a shotgun blast.

A crazy-looking girl in the hallway had just used her shotgun to kill Brandyweis.

3

Liam was stunned. He saw the girl. Saw the shotgun. Saw what it did. Naturally, he knew the threat to himself. But he couldn’t move.

An image of Yoga Girl flashed across his memory. Yep, he was frozen in inaction just like the very first encounter he’d had with a zombie.

The girl came out of the darkened hallway, and Liam recognized her—sort of. Like someone he remembered by sight from his kindergarten class.

“Liam!” the girl shouted with relief. “It’s you! I thought you two were zombies. I mean you broke open the door, and, like, came inside.”

He couldn’t move. Or talk. Or think, he discovered.

“Liam? It’s me. Debbie.” She was much too happy for what had just happened. He managed to turn his head to see the crumpled body next to his feet. The gun was right there, too.

“Like, that was a close one, huh?” She pointed the shotgun to Brandyweis.

“He wasn’t a zombie,” Liam said in a low voice, but with fiery anger.

“Oh, I’m sure he was. Look at him. He’s, like, gooey, and stuff.”

He wanted to reach out and wring her neck, but he still couldn’t move a muscle. The ringing in his ears reminded him, over and over, how close he’d just come to death. And he’d lost a friend.

Then, just as he was getting his muscles to respond, he saw two people walk out from the rooms at the back of the hall. They were very old…

“Liam. Before you complain, I, like, did try to get your grandma. I had her right here, in fact.” She pointed to the recliner chair. “But I got greedy. I, um, like found two more outside and was bringing them here when your grandma walked away. She escaped.”

“What...what are you talking about?” His voice was quaking. The fear was still riding high.

“Your grandma. I had her. I, like, kept her safe, and stuff. You know, just like you did.” She pointed to the other two elderly women. “See, I keep them safe like you showed me.”

“I showed you?” He was absolutely sure he’d never interacted with her.

“Oh yeah, I heard the story of how you got your Grandma out of the city when the zombies first came here, then, like, from that military camp in your bicycle, and how you rescued her from that terrible zombie factory downtown. Then, like, you got her into the plane.” She smiled widely. “Liam, you’re my hero. That’s why I’m, like, mimicking you.”

The moment overcame him, he wanted to let out a great sob, which was how he felt inside, but instead he let out a deep roar of a laugh.

Debbie was taken aback. “What’s wrong, Liam. Did I do something wrong? I, like, know your girlfriend isn’t here. I’m sorry. Is that why you’re mad?”

“Is that why I’m mad?” he said with incredulity. “You mean you have no idea?” He pointed down. “You just—like—shot a good man. You don’t seem to care. And capturing little old ladies? What the hell is it you think I do out there?”

It didn’t affect her in the way he expected. She didn’t react with anger.

“Liam. You have it all wrong. I’m doing this to save them. Just. Like. You.” She giggled like a hyena. “You’ll see. I can show you,” she said excitedly, as if she just remembered her ability.

“What? I’m not going anywhere with you.” Part of him expected the other Marines to come charging in after their fallen leader, but there were only three of them besides the two pilots. There was so much gunfire already in the town, the shotgun blast would be one pop among hundreds. Outside, other gunfire kept getting closer.

“You have to. I have to show you. I want to make you proud of me.” Her shotgun pointed in multiple directions as she swung it around carelessly. But lots of time it was pointed at him, signalling he really had no choice.

He had a dozen witty retorts, but the girl had something wrong with her. Clearly. The two ladies she’d “captured” looked terrified. He rolled his eyes.

Here we go again.

“All right. I’ll go with you. But only to help the two ladies you’ve got frightened to death.”

Somehow he’d taken on the role of protector for the elderly. And, paradoxically, this Debbie person had keyed in on that and made it out to be something evil. Instead of protecting the aged, she was endangering them. Somewhere along the way, he would have his chance to put an end to this.

They left the house out of the view of the Marines on the Osprey. Debbie was at least that smart. Or maybe it was dumb luck.

They headed west, toward the towering bridge that went across to Missouri. He’d crossed the very same a half hour before. Back when a character named Lt. Colonel Brandyweis still existed in the world.

Goodbye, sir.

Chapter 18: Secret Mission

John approached the house and stopped short of the front door. It had been kicked open, then shut again. The door jam was splintered.

He looked back to the Osprey and his unit. They were down the street, shooting random walking zombies in the area. One quick glance north toward the meat of the approaching zombie horde now snaking its way through the streets of the town and he calculated his odds of getting back, getting more men, then checking the house. There wasn’t enough time.

“Stick with me,” he said as he pushed through. Chloe followed, with one of her spears.

“Oh, God.” An Army officer lay upon the wooden floor, among several sheets and pillows. His leg twitched pitifully as John watched. The spray of blood on the wall and floor was evidence of the level of violence which had practically removed the officer’s head. He'd been shot within the last several minutes.

He rolled the man over so he could see his name tape. “Brandyweis. Marty had mentioned this man. He was involved in this, too, though I'm not sure how.”

He hovered around the dead body while Chloe searched the house. In a moment, she called out. “They left through the back door. They can’t be far,” she said with a drop in her voice.

“What is it?”

“Zombies, sir. Lots of them.”

Chloe walked back into the room. “Who shot him, sir?”

“I don’t know. This day just keeps getting stranger...”

His eyes fell upon the dead body. Was Brandyweis here to hurt Marty, or was he like him—trying to protect Ms. Peters from Elsa and her operatives. Maybe he was killed by a robber. Anything goes in anarchy.

“Sir, there a shit-ton of zombies outside. We need to get back to the world.” She opened the front door to reinforce the urgency.

He picked up the dead man’s rifle. No sense leaving it for the dead.

They ran outside, then, out of duty, he walked up to the Marines. A couple of young women—filthy with blood, and screaming they were still alive—ran straight into the back of the plane. A small contingent of survivors huddled inside. “Did you guys hear a gunshot from inside the house? Your man is dead. Brandyweis.”

Three guns were trained on him.

He put his hands up, as did Chloe.

“We didn’t kill him,” she stated loudly. “Someone used a shotgun to clip his head off.”

The Marines shared a look, then lowered their weapons a little. One resumed sniping nearby zombies. More were on the way.

If they were lying, there’d be no way to prove them wrong. There simply wasn’t time.

The senior Marine spoke up. “There was a boy with him. Was he dead, too?”

John turned to Chloe, who had searched the house. She shook her head.

“No, son. We saw no one else in the house, but the back door was opened like someone had just left.”

The Marine looked at the tanks and Humvees, then back at John.

“I guess you’re leading this goat rope now, uh, sir. What are your orders, general?”

Inwardly, John respected the Marines’ ability to roll with anything. A man in a white T-shirt walks up to them in the midst of a zombie overrun situation, and they calmly deferred to him as the most senior commander in the shitstorm. Of course, he could never utter complimentary words for a Marine in front of his own men.

They talked for a minute about radio frequencies, the situation in the streets around them, and the plan he hoped to execute down at the southern tip of the town. But his last order was the most important.

“Get this bird in the air. Get those civilians to safety,” he said while pointing to those in the back of the plane. He said it mainly to cover his own ass. There weren’t many townsfolk left alive, other than those who refused to leave their homes. But if the Marines saw any before liftoff, it would be good to authorize them to grab as many as possible. “And then I want you to head south to Wickliffe, Kentucky.” He pointed south. “It’s the next town down the river. That’s the rally point for what’s left.”

“Understood.”

“And Marine?” he shouted over the rotor noise.

“Sir?”

“I’m sorry about your CO.”

With a grim nod, he went back to the defense of the aircraft for a moment. He said something to his two teammates, then ran inside.

John ushered Chloe off the ramp, and toward his patrol.

“Listen,” he said just loud enough for her to hear him. “I have a special job for you. You’ve done some good work on our defenses, and I can only trust this to someone who understands the big picture. My command has been compromised, though I think any traitors would have left a long time ago.”

He stopped her midway between the tanks and the Osprey.

“In that tank is a dear friend of mine. She’s 104. Her name is Marty Peters.”

“The one you've been protecting,”

He nodded and motioned to the tank.

“If something should happen to me, I’m tasking you with keeping her alive. She is an enemy of my enemy, if that makes any sense to you.”

“Perfectly, sir. But, sir, what if something does happen to you? Where do you want her to go?”

She always goes right to the core of the problem.

“That dead man in there was looking for Ms. Peters. The woman who left me for dead tried to have Ms. Peters killed. I walked in on that attempt and put a stop to it. Now, I’m...ah, I guess you'd say marked, because of that. It may be better if I didn’t tell you where to take her. If I’m killed, your life will be in danger.”

He watched for her reaction.

“Disappear. I can do that.” She reached out her hand to shake it when a Blackhawk helicopter caught his eye gliding low near the Missouri bridge—out over the barges below that span. There had been no such helicopters in Cairo since he’d been there, which suggested the people inside were not his.

The back door of Marty’s house faced the Missouri bridge. Chloe said they’d run out the back door and must have gone in that direction. They certainly didn’t go north, into the zombie horde.

“Sir, we’ve got to leave.”

The ramp of the Osprey had already folded up. A couple 50’s on the roofs of the Humvees rattled and pointed at the arriving wave of zombies. Two runners actually passed John and Chloe as they stood there, only to be put down by the service pistol of one of the Humvee drivers. He’d held his gun out his window, gangster style.

Everything is breaking down. And here I’m about to do something stupid.

“Chloe, go. Take care of Marty.”

“What about you?”

He looked to the nearby bridge, and the chopper floating next to it.

“I’ll catch up with you. Trust me!”

He knew what he had to do to protect his men, his equipment, the old lady in Alpha-1, and any future they might have after today.

He banged on Brandyweis’s rifle, then slung it over his shoulder. It was mostly to bolster himself for what he was about to do. He passed orders using the radio of the nearest Humvee, then ran.

The Osprey glided up and leaned south. His ground team spun around and tore off, though they’d only get as far as the southern point of land at the confluence of the rivers. Unless Tom showed up with his miracle, it looked like saving the vehicles was going to be out of his hands. He breathed lighter knowing his men and women would escape, even if they had to swim.

He silently thanked his people for not trying to follow him.

Elsa would expect me to roll in with my tanks and machine guns. She’ll never expect a lowly old general to sneak up on her.

Getting to the Missouri bridge was harder than it looked. The ground to the south and west of town was wide open and flat, which was perfect terrain to be seen by the fastest zombies devouring the rest of Cairo. Several times he had to line up his shots and put down runners as they approached him.

He breathed in deep heaves when he reached the rough shoreline next to the procession of barges floating in the Mississippi. The Blackhawk still drifted near where it had been, and now he could see ropes being tossed down from the open rear compartment.

There was no thought of taking things slow and reconnoitering the site from the safety of the woods. The zombies saw him on the open fields, and there were too many behind him.

Whatever was going to happen, he’d lost the element of surprise.

The helicopter seemed to settle over one of the outermost barges still attached to a small towboat. There was a primitive walkway over all the barges between the shore and that outer barge. He got to the top of the first ramp. He kicked the plank so he couldn't be followed by the zombies. There was about a five-foot differential any zombie would have to climb if they wanted to follow him. He'd prefer fifty feet, but it was better than zero.

Far ahead, a pair of young kids each escorted a hunched-over old lady. They walked the decks of the barges tethered together, but he guessed they were going to the same destination as him, under the helicopter. Like magic, they all moved toward the same spot.

“What the hell?” He ducked down behind some maritime equipment on the front of one of the barges.

The kids looked up at the helicopter, but went down, out of his sight.

He wanted to run toward the action, but a direct charge against a Blackhawk was folly.

He stayed low and moved in a different direction.

Chapter 19: Uptalk

The drones kept their station near the exit of the barge. Victoria and Jane had just enough time to chat with the small number of awake elderly in the boat before another disturbance drew everyone's attention to the stairs again.

Two sets of feet started down. She somewhat recognized the teen girl holding a senior citizen companion.

Victoria watched as the young woman reached the metal floor of the makeshift hospital barge. The old woman on her arm wasn’t Marty. She had mixed feelings. Wouldn't Grandma be in a boat full of people her age? But if they were collecting the elderly, wouldn't it be better she wasn't there?

A second couple came down the steps behind her, and her roller coaster emotions headed upward again. It wasn't her. A teenaged boy with sloppy hair helped the elderly woman to the base of the steps. She moved a step in that direction, then stopped when she confirmed who he was.

“Liam!”

He looked up at her, then made sure the two little old ladies helped each other stand, and finally ran to her.

They closed thirty or so feet of distance and were seemingly about to throw themselves into an embrace when Victoria pulled up short and pushed out her arm to him.

“Wait, Liam. Just wait.”

“What?”

“I, uh. Need a moment.”

She wanted to tell him she was infected, but with all her soul she wanted to experience the comfort of his arms. Though it had only been a couple days, it felt like they’d been separated for a lifetime. Now was the time to indulge in expressions of love and assurances such a time apart would never happen again.

But what if I’m infected?

Her mind was very confused at the lengthy chain of questions she now had for herself.

Was she infected? That was the foundation for all the rest. If she was infected, when did she get the virus? Or, more properly, did she already expose Liam to its effects. What if he was immune, like Marty? Then it would be OK to hug him.

We haven’t shared everything, but we’ve shared enough.

They’d breathed the same air. Shared the same food. Even kissed.

She had to hug him. Her body screamed for her to do it.

“I think...I think I’m infected,” she said with deep sadness. “I don’t want you to get it,” she tossed the words like a dead fish onto the cutting board.

Liam took some time to interpret her words and the emotions behind them. She saw his mind working by reading his face. The rest of the room could have been on fire, but her attention was on him.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure I’m actually infected. Hayes told me,” she said flatly.

“Hayes?” He looked around, finally noticing her traveling partner, Jane.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Hi,” Jane said, “I saved your girlfriend’s life, so you’re welcome.” She wasn’t mean about it, but wasn’t exactly friendly, either.

Liam’s head was on a swivel.

“He’s not here, Liam. Hayes.”

“Where'd he go?”

“He got out of the helicopter somewhere on the way. A big concrete factory.”

She noted he was unarmed. Debbie carried a double-barreled shotgun, though. It stoked her curiosity, but first, she had to resolve the present crisis.

“Liam, listen. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think we—Jane and Doug included—are being hunted.”

“I came here because you have a tracking device on you. Maybe, in you.” He pointed to her chest.

“Liam, I’m scared,” she said it quietly, hoping only he would hear.

“Me too. I have so much I want to tell you.”

“I do, too. But you can’t touch me.” She stepped back once, to emphasize her point. Her voice cracked at the final two words.

Liam stepped forward one step. “I don’t know what to say. You don’t look like a zombie,” he said with a smile.

“No, it’s not like that. Hayes said there are carriers of the disease who don’t know they have it. They go out and infect others...”

“Hayes,” he said angrily. “How did he find you? What's his deal?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. Hayes saved my life, the same as Jane did.”

She saw the conflict on his face.

“You can’t trust him. I don’t trust him. I don’t think you can possibly be infected. You’ve been with me...”

She assumed he meant to end that with “the whole time,” but both knew that wasn’t true. Even when they were together on their adventures, there were periods when they were separated. Like when she was shot.

He changed his line of reasoning. “Victoria. I love you. We’ve been together, uh, in close proximity, that if you had any sickness, I’m sure I would have caught it.” He winked at her.

She wanted to believe his words. But if he was wrong, she’d kill him just as surely as if she was a zombie.

“I can’t be certain. I would never want to risk your life. Not like this.”

Before she knew what was happening, he had rushed in and wrapped his arms around her. She melted into him with an emotional sob.

“Liam, no…”

“Silly girl,” he whispered, “where you go, I go. There’s no way you can be infected.”

“You can touch me, but we shouldn’t—”

He kissed her. She tasted the salt of her own tears, and she embraced him. In front of the sick in the beds, Jane, Debbie, and numerous drone operators sitting who-knows-where, she finally allowed herself to risk her feelings, and her life, with Liam.

Her belief that she was infected receded into an inconsequential corner of her mind. The incident with the zombie girl in the red dress was just a coincidence. Hayes was the liar he'd always been.

The rest of her brain embraced the soul of her Zombie Apocalypse partner.

Thank you, Liam, for accepting me.

2

“We’re in this together, and I don’t believe for a second you’re infected,” Liam assured her.

The teen girl interrupted. “Excuse me, um, Liam. Hi, Victoria. Can you help me get these women to their beds?”

His face looked as confused as her own. “I don’t know, Debbie,” he said in a whisper.

Debbie walked a few feet away, then turned back when she saw Liam hadn't moved. “Liam. Help me,” she said with a touch of anger.

“OK, right.” He smiled at Victoria, gripped her arms tightly as a reassurance, then walked off. He eyed her rifle with a deliberate glance.

The instant he was gone, Jane sidled up to her. “I can’t figure out what this place is supposed to be. There are no doctors or nurses.”

Victoria scanned the room—it was like the experiment back at Washington University in some ways—but she couldn’t solve it, either. Debbie guided Liam and the two women to the closest beds.

“We should go,” Jane whispered, almost in her ear, “while we still can.”

“Those drones could shoot us if they wanted us dead. I’ve seen them,” she whispered back.

“We have to try. I can’t...we can’t get trapped, like this.”

She looked at Jane anew. Her red hair had become messed up from her headphones, and windblown from the air whipping through their helicopter. Her face remained unemotional, even as she sounded scared. It was impossible to read her.

“Did you know this would happen? That we would get trapped?” Victoria had learned enough over the weeks to never underestimate anyone.

“No. You were supposed to take us to Marty, remember? Now we're in some laboratory from Hell.”

Victoria looked around. “It doesn't look that bad.”

Jane firmly gripped her arm. “Haven't you been paying attention? Someone wants us dead. They want Douglas and me to die—”

“Because of Duchesne.”

“Bah. That's the easy answer. Revenge. You've been part of this almost since the beginning. This can't be a coincidence. It just can't be.” She ran her hand through her sweaty hair, apparently not pretending at being worried. “Duchesne came for Marty. He could have killed us on the spot. You were there.”

The NIS agent had them dead to rights. That was true. But he left Hayes and Jane in what might be billed as an overly elaborate plan to kill them later. Why not just put bullets in their heads?

“And how is this girl involved?” she indicated Debbie, now helping settle in one of the old ladies. The woman wore a light green pantsuit, reminding her of Grandma Marty when they'd first met. She seemed docile in the face of so many guns.

Liam's charge, perhaps because he had no gun, was much more vocal. She yelled for a nurse over and over as he guided her to a bed.

“Nurse, I don't want to be here!”

Liam said something, but Victoria was out of earshot. He was probably trying to say something funny to her, though it wasn't working. Debbie put an end to her complaints when she came over brandishing her shotgun. Liam stepped back from the bed, surely thinking of whether to overpower the girl.

“I think I recognize her from the house where Grandma and I waited for Liam to get better after our escape from...Duchesne. There were lots of other teens in the house, and I'm pretty sure she was there.” She couldn't be positive as it was hard to identify people from always seeing the tops of their heads as they leaned down to their tablets and smartphones. She wished she would have taken the time to get to know them. Make allies. Identify enemies.

Debbie and Liam returned, and the four of them formed a tight knot in between two rows of beds, about twenty or thirty feet from the wide stairwell—and the hovering drones.

“Debbie. Why are you bringing people to this boat?” Jane asked with innocence.

The girl stood very close to Liam, and her gun was pointed directly at the floor. Any one of them could overpower her in a second, yet no one did. Behind Debbie, the drones remaining menacingly stationary.

“I'm, like, an assistant to the Mayor of the town. He asked me to keep watch on any elderly people I could find while things were nice. But, um, when the town, like, um, got zombie-fied, and stuff, he told me I could be a big help by evacuating these—” she waved around the room “—million-year-old people.”

Victoria was about to reply, but Debbie continued.

“He said that, um...I could, like, have any car I wanted. I could get away,” she said with seriousness. “It was easy, until, like, now. Most people wanted to get out of the town before those, um, things, ate them.”

“But what happened to these people?” Jane interjected.

“What do you mean?”

Jane huffed in frustration. “They aren't awake! Can't you see that? This whole thing—it isn't normal.”

“How am I supposed to know? I'm, like, just the delivery girl.”

She spoke with an annoying uptalk. Victoria thought she sounded like she'd spent her life watching her tablet, instead of paying attention in school.

“But, like, the owner of this boat is almost here,” she said evenly.

Liam, this might be it.

She tried to talk to him using her mind. Willing him to know how she felt.

I love you, no matter how this ends.

Chapter 20: John Wayne

John watched as the Blackhawk maneuvered over the river. He was positive it didn't belong. Whatever it was doing, he had to know. Though not a gambling man, he'd bet Elsa was in that chopper. The ropes hung down, and someone at the top had come to the door...waiting.

From where he was, it might be possible to walk to hundreds of the interlocking barges sitting on the waterway. But the one under the helicopter was his destination.

He hunched over and pretended he was forty years older.

This is nuts.

He figured he had two cards to play. Either he could charge in, bullets flying, or he could labor in as if he were a disoriented old man. And what better way to play the old man than to wander the barges as if he were lost? To him, it made sense.

It pained him to do it, but he placed the rifle in a cranny behind some spools of metallic wire. No old timer would wander around with a gun slung over his shoulder. He still had his pistol and had no intention of throwing that down.

He rubbed his sunburned head. His scalp and thinning hair yelled at him for losing his hat. If he'd been forty years younger, the prospect of sneaking up on a mysterious situation might even have thrilled him. Now, his legs felt heavy as he jumped the short way from the first boat to the second. No one bothered to put ramps between them other than the direct route to the helicopter.

For many minutes he bounced from barge to barge, but always he moved closer to the one he wanted. There was some concern he would be mistaken for a zombie—he could see scores of them on the shore—so he stopped frequently to rub his back or tie his shoes. Things no zombie would do.

“I need some luck,” he said to his shoes on one stoppage.

Luck isn't a tactic, John.

As he neared the action, he lost faith in himself. Any second he would get noticed. Or shot. Or worse—captured.

His zig-zag path took him to an open-topped barge parked diagonally upriver from his target. The pile of bodies inside made him stop. The container was mostly empty, but near one corner a hundred bodies lay in a heap like they'd been tossed down from the top deck.

He'd seen plenty of corpses the last few weeks. Enough to last a lifetime. But these made him consider stopping his charade and run back to his tanks and forget this little side trip. They were all elderly. Most he recognized by their skin color as local townsfolk—a good portion were ancient black women. They were dressed in a colorful, but macabre heap—hands, heads, and shoes poked out the edges. One mixed group of gray-haired men was dressed in orange jumpsuits like they'd been taken from a prison. In fact…

He looked closer. They were chained together.

My God. What is this?

The ship stank. The bodies had been in the hot sun for too long.

Unwilling to give up on his mission, he closed the distance to the towboat. The tinted windows of the bridge wrapped around the superstructure, and he assumed he was being watched. Surely, the men in the helicopter had seen him, though somewhere along the line the people up there had roped down. His situational awareness was a disaster.

He pressed forward and got onto the deck of the all-white towboat. It was designed to push the flat cargo containers up and down the river and was the width of one barge. It happened to be paired to just one of those vessels. The helicopter hung above it, with two long ropes hanging down to the deck of the barge, confirming he had gone about this the right way.

The door into the crew space was marked with a series of imposing warnings stenciled onto the paint.

“Property of Ste. Genevieve Cement Fabrika.”

“MOPP 4 required beyond this point.”

A pair of logos—one for nuclear and one for biohazard—rounded out the advertising on the door.

No, at the very bottom, a comparatively gentle warning advised that hardhats are also required.

“I don't even have that,” he said to himself.

He went for the handle, but it was locked.

Sensing he was running out of time, he followed some steps up to a narrow deck which ran along the outside window of the bridge on the second level. From up there he could see the length of the barge. A satellite dish was on the near end. At the far end, there was a hole in the outer covering and some steps going down.

He put his face up against the window of the bridge—right at the corner. He hoped he could get some intel on who was running the boat, but he was disappointed. He could see nothing. Next to the window, a nearby door had a small porthole window, but he didn't see anything through there, either.

“OK, we'll do it the hard way,” he said in a normal voice as he pulled out his pistol.

He raised his arm, intending to strike at the window where he'd just been peeking in.

That's when the mechanical lock of the door cycled, and it swung open a few inches.

“Please don't,” said an emotional male voice.

“Identify yourself,” John replied. Part of him laughed at the thought there were a dozen armed men inside, just waiting for him to come through the door. His ruse got him this far, but wouldn't work a second longer.

“I...I just work here. I can't risk the equipment.”

“That doesn't tell me who you are.”

“I'm Bill Dredsel. I keep the Elma Jean running. Who the hell are you?”

John made a decision. If there were twelve men with guns, he'd have no chance. He decided to be bold. He pushed through the door, gun in hand.

A skinny old-timer in dirty overalls skittered backward into the bridge compartment.

John almost dropped his gun when he saw the place. After weeks of primitive living, blood 'n guts fighting hand-to-hand, and the rickety town of Cairo—he felt like he'd walked onto the space shuttle. The wrap-around windows showed the barge sitting in front of them, but it was filled with computer data, as if it were also a giant computer screen.

The area where he'd planned to smash the glass had a running string of data falling like snow from top to bottom. It became clear why the man didn't want him to break the window. It was more than mere glass.

Bill had his hands up, though he kept stepping backward. John was happy to see the proper amount of fear on the man's face.

“All right, mister,” he said in his best cowboy-movie voice, “I want to know everything that's going on. And we'll start right here.” He pointed to one corner of the carnival display of information—it showed four people standing in an area that looked like the ward of a hospital.

They were surrounded by several armed figures dressed in black.

Chapter 21: Threat Level 5

Liam had seen the helicopter hovering when they came into the hold of the barge, so he wasn't too surprised to see drones or more people come down the steps. After settling the two old women—the one endlessly called out for a nurse—he stood talking to the three younger women as the intruders dropped in.

He held Victoria by the waist. He wanted to keep her close until he could think of a way to get out of what was turning out to be a multi-layered prison.

Debbie with her shotgun.

The drones.

Whoever was in charge of the creepy hospital.

The helicopter.

And, should he make it outside again, the town was surely overrun with zombies.

Debbie seemed to anger at the sight of him holding Victoria. Even as the new men approached, she raised her shotgun toward him.

“Liam. I thought we had something. I, like, saved all these—” she started to laugh. “Oh, my. This has been fun, but I can't keep up this silly charade. Who talks like that?”

She stepped back toward the approaching dark-clad figures.

“I'm done talking like that. My mom is here—finally,” she shouted back to the new arrivals.

One of the men walked up to Debbie with a DNA sniffer.

“This is her.”

Debbie smiled wickedly while she pointed her shotgun at Liam, but her face cringed when the newcomer reached to her and injected something in her neck. A second later, she dropped to the floor like she had been turned off.

The shotgun fell to the metal hull and clanged loudly. Though it was impossible, he waited for the gun to fire itself.

Dad would scold me for thinking such nonsense.

There were three men, each dressed in black tactical gear and wearing face masks.

“Drop your weapons!”

Victoria set her rifle down, as did Jane.

Two of the men grabbed Debbie and pulled her toward the steps.

“Wait,” Jane cried out. “What do you want with her?”

“Elsa Cantwell is wanted for conspiracy to commit genocide. That's all you need to know.”

“You want a teenager for genocide?” Liam blurted out.

That seemed to take the man by surprise. Even from behind his mask, Liam saw the indecision. The man turned around, crouched next to Debbie, and whisked away her hair. It had covered her face as she went down.

“Oh shit. He's right. Check this. Fast,” he said to an assistant.

The machine was pointed to Debbie again. It only took a few seconds.

“Sir, this says it is Ms. Cantwell. The DNA checks out.”

“We've been played.” The man ripped off his face mask. He was middle aged, about the same as his dad, but he wore cropped hair and had the chiseled features of a movie superstar. He looked around the room, settling on Liam and his friends since they were the only ones on their feet.

“Sir, the drones?” Victoria asked as he approached.

“Ours. Well, they became ours. Look, I don't have much time. What's going on here? Who are you people? Why the beds?”

“You mean you don't know?” Liam asked with disbelief.

The man laughed.

His partner came up beside him, using the machine on the three of them. He only needed to get close before the thing bleeped.

“Holy shit! These three are Priority Level 5 targets.”

The weapons of the men came up in unison.

Liam tightened his grip on Victoria's soft midsection.

“We're innocent,” Liam said weakly.

“This kid is wanted in connection with bio-terrorism,” the man with the equipment said while pointing to Liam. “This girl is listed as infected, deceased. And this woman—”

The seriousness of the charges affected the men. They stepped back several big steps.

“Damn. This woman is supposed to have offed the President.”

“That figures,” retorted Jane.

“Sir, we are cleared to terminate these three on sight. In fact, someone wrote in some notes. It states several penal codes that will apply if we don't shoot them on sight.”

Victoria moved closer to him, though they were already about as tight as they could be. She looked up. “Thanks for coming for me. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He didn't care how it would look. He swept Victoria in his arms and kissed her.

There are worse ways to go out.

The kiss was a record-breaker. It was his first since their rendezvous in her dorm room, and it was something he'd been thinking about every minute since. It was everything he'd dreamed, and it made him completely forget the cruel world infected everything except what he had in those final seconds…

The kiss went on longer than he could have hoped. It truly was a good trade, if they had to die.

“Wait just a damned minute,” said the leader at last. “Just a damned minute.”

Liam heard the words and sensed the change. He really wanted to keep on kissing her, but they read each others' minds and pulled apart, together. Her smile and moist eyes encouraged him to look back to the intruders.

“If that's not Elsa, how in the world do we know these people are the threats we see here? Do they look like the world's most dangerous terrorists? This one is just a kid.” They pointed at him.

“We need more information.” Looking at Liam, he said, “I don't suppose you'd tell us whether this information is true? Are you the most dangerous boy in America?”

Well, it depends on who you are.

Out of his mouth, he professed a much more mundane explanation.

“This Debbie girl asked my girlfriend and me to help her bring elderly people to this boat. We wanted to help. They were being left behind for the zombies to get them.”

“And her?” He pointed to Jane.

“I'm his mother,” she said matter-of-factly. “We live in Cairo, of course, and I chased these two when I thought they had come out on these barges to have sex. You know, being the end of the world and all.”

Liam felt his face flare up in embarrassment. But he couldn't exactly counter her argument without destroying his fabricated story. “Yeah, my mom saved us from doing something stupid,” he said without emotion.

“Sir, there's no way we're going to find four Level 5's in this toilet of a town in nowhere, USA. This has to be a mistake. Our data has been hacked.”

The leader looked around, evidently thinking it over.

Liam rubbed Victoria's back. It was all he could to keep his hands busy because the other one was shaking at his side.

2

“We bag 'em all. Take them back to base. Let HQ sort out the truth.”

Liam let out an audible sigh of relief.

“Sir, we're looking for Marty Peters, my great-grandma. Does your computer have a location for her?”

The computer man looked at the leader, who replied with a curt, “Do it.”

In a few moments, the man quite forcefully smacked his own head. “She's in the system. We now have five of them! We've struck gold.” He pointed to the machine. “It says Ms. Martinette Peters is wanted for involvement in the trafficking of bio-toxins across state lines. We are ordered, and I quote, to terminate her at extreme distance and ensure body and biological remnants are purged thoroughly in a hyper-temperature smelter.” He laughed. “Who the hell writes this stuff?”

“But where is she? Is it in there?”

“Yeah, sure kid. It shows her not far away, in the town.”

He figured she was on the run. She wasn't at the house he'd checked.

The questions were there, but he wanted to know something else. A dark force he suspected was behind all this, no matter what Victoria thought.

“I um, have one more name. My dad. If it's not too much trouble could you look him up? Then I won't bother you again.”

“That won't be necessary, son. He's waiting for us right where we left him.” Jane looked right at him.

“His name is Douglas Hayes. Just tell me where he is, so I know he's OK.”

The computer operator seemed hesitant, but the leader nodded. “One more. That's all I can handle.”

In moments, the man had his answer. His face revealed his surprise before he voiced it.

“Well, thank the lard for good taste. We've cooked a half-dozen doozies. This guy is the worst one of all. A Homeland Security special adjunct in charge of studying the spread of the ZF one dash one zero strain of influenza. It says he infected the lab and escaped with several virulent samples of the virus.” He paused, his eyes continuing to read what must have been a lengthy blotter.

“Good God! Intel says he was part of the division that secretly helped the Patriot Snowball rebels infect D.C. Then he did some work overseas. Finally...oh come on! This can't be true. It says his role in the insurrection was to sanitize the city of St. Louis of all life.”

Secretly, Liam knew at least some of that was true. What about the rest? If they knew what was really happening would they kill them instantly? How did he let himself get dealt into the game, so these men thought his own father was a mass murdering lunatic? What did that make him?

Afraid to know the truth, he had to ask. “And his location?”

“It says he's right here, of course. Cairo. What is this place? A criminal convention?”

Liam felt Victoria turn toward Jane, but no words were passed.

The leader walked up to him. “You three better give me some answers. I'm authorized to terminate you on sight. Do you know what kind of power that gives me?”

“Sir, are you with the Polar Bears?” Liam had to eliminate that possibility.

“I ask the questions. I'll give you five seconds to start talking.”

“Or what?” asked Jane. “How dare you threaten me and my son.”

“Or I drag your ass onto my helicopter, and I drop you in Supermax prison. That might be a fate worse than death, right now. By some miracle, most inmates survived this crisis. Isolated living, I guess.”

“We have rights,” Victoria added.

The man looked at her with the first hint of sadness. “Ma'am I used to work for a special branch of the United States government. I swore an oath to a Constitution which no longer exists. My country no longer exists. It's been taken over by an insider coup. Your rights were stripped by those people. My job now is to take it back. Your rights extend up to and including me shooting you three in the face if I believe for a second you are as dangerous as this computer says you are.”

He got as close as he dared. “Someone had better say something.”

“I'm a Snowballer,” Liam said while thinking of Mom. “My goal is the same as yours—to restore this nation to what it was before. Three weeks ago I didn't know how good I had it. I did nothing but play video games, and I didn't even know about the Patriot Snowball group back then. But I ran into some of them. They told me what the government agents did to them. They told me about all the experiments.” He pointed to the nearby beds. “This place is one of those experimental sites. I'm sure of it. We're here to stop the people responsible for this. Though I admit, we aren't doing a very good job.”

“And the others?”

“We're all patriots.” He was careful not to lie about Jane. He didn't know what she was, other than the wife of the man who shot his girlfriend. Her loyalties remained suspect, even though she was with Victoria. “Victoria and I helped my great-grandma Marty Peters escape from the Riverside Hotel and Casino in downtown St. Louis. They were doing experiments there with elderly citizens, and they had captured many different specimens suffering from the zombie plague.”

He took a deep breath, adamant he could keep this momentum going.

“And we witnessed the death of an Agent Duchesne, who was part of a government agency called the NIS—National Internal Security. They're the ones who released the plague on the Patriot Snowball. Not the other way around. They knew about the plague long before it came to America. After we escaped, we found more evidence of the creation of the plague down in the Koch Hospital Mine. They did their experiments on bodies of soldiers they stole from the National Cemetery.”

Victoria jumped in. “And I was, uh, working with Liam's dad at Washington University when the NIS destroyed his lab. He'd discovered that some people are infected with the plague and don't even know it. The NIS wanted the plague spread far and wide. They even claimed they used a hidden signal in the tornado sirens to get the zombies to move faster during the first few hours. They're the bad guys, sir.”

The leader stepped closer and looked at Jane with a cold stare.

“My name's Ben, ma'am. Not at all pleased to meet you, but I'll protect you, if I can. I have to ask: do you have any control over your kids? It sounds like they're getting into a lot of trouble,” he said with no irony.

“They've caused me more sleepless nights than you can imagine,” she said with a forced smile.

Ben turned around and waved them all toward the steps.

“I don't believe any of it, of course. But HQ will get to the truth. I'm not coming out of this empty handed.” Then, quieter, “Not again.”

3

While they'd talked, the drones had come to rest on the metal of the hull. The propellers were rapidly slowing.

Near the steps, the leader noticed them and spun around. “If any of you tries anything, I will kill you. Are we clear?”

“Crystal, sir,” said Liam, knowing the answer.

“We've apparently lost control of these drones. I didn't order them to stand down. Jay, check for threats. I'll radio up top. We're getting clear.” He pulled out a radio and called for his flight.

His man went up the steps, then promptly tumbled back down. Dead. A bullet had struck him in the back of the head.

A gun was in Liam's face before he had taken one deep breath after seeing the body.

“Who's with you? Tell me or you're dead!”

He couldn't speak. His stomach was ready to unload, though.

“There's no one,” Jane piped up. “I swear. We came alone. Don't kill him, please,” she pleaded with passing sincerity.

The barrel of the gun wavered.

“Dammit!”

The gun pointed to the floor.

He put up a finger to quiet everyone, then got back on his radio.

“Jolly Roger, this is Crusader One. Abort, abort, abort.”

There was no reply.

“Jolly Roger—”

The whine of the helicopter increased, then an explosion above sent shards of shrapnel through the metal roof of the barge an instant later. A blast of heat poured down the stairwell, into the compartment. Everyone ran deeper into the hold. One big section of the roof buckled inward, as if something heavy had landed on it. The scraping of metal and the repetitive clangs on the outer hull strongly suggested the helicopter had been destroyed.

“It's a damned trap!” Ben yelled. “Get to the other end.” They all ran down the length of the hull. The younger people helped the older set get along to relative safety.

Most of the debris landed about mid-way down the length of the line of beds. A big piece of steaming hot metal struck one of the sleeping bodies. It collapsed part of the bed, and as Liam ran by he was horrified to see it had taken off one of the man's legs. The scary part, he realized, was that the man didn't wake up.

He kept eyes forward. There were others in the area, and he didn't want to know if any of those had been struck. There was nothing to be done for any of them. Right now his priority was Victoria. They ran hand-in-hand.

When they reached the other end of the boat, he was disappointed. There was no exit. He assumed this was because the space was normally used to store coal, or rock, or grain. Not people. The designers never anticipated a second exit would be necessary.

“Ben, are you guys military?” Jane asked.

“We're Secret Service,” he said as he searched the walls and ceiling.

“Secret Service,” Jane repeated. “Is the president around?”

“I couldn't tell you if he was, but we do more than protect the man. We protect the office. Whether you know it or not, you said the magic words. If you know about the NIS and aren't killing us for hearing it, we can more or less assume you aren't NIS.”

Liam thought of Jane. She was, at one time, NIS. How deep did that loyalty run? Was she honest about working against them? She'd outright killed NIS agents with her sniper rifle, but he'd learned to doubt everything with Hayes, and, by extension, his wife.

“The beds! Quick, stack the beds,” Ben ordered. Using two empty beds, they managed to stand high enough to reach the metal barrier over the roof. It was like a series of shallow arches, each about ten feet wide, that were placed one next to the other for the entire length. For all he knew, they were hundreds or thousands of pounds in weight. Ben tried to push one up, but it didn't budge at all. He got up there to help, but the result was the same.

“I think they're bolted together above us,” Ben said with a hint of defeatism.

They came off the bed, and Ben took a seat as Liam came down and stood on the floor. “Polar Bear, huh? I don't suppose you can call them, can you?” He was clearly joking, though Liam probably could call his mom. She was so far away the best he could hope to do was tell her goodbye. Maybe now was the time for that...

“If you're a Polar Bear, that officially makes us enemies of the domestic sort, but I'm going to let you off on a technicality. Currently, I have no idea who is running the country. The Polar Bears seem to be the only people rallying citizens around that Constitution I mentioned.”

“They're not involved in this,” he told Ben.

I'm pretty sure.

“Someone just downed a military chopper and assassinated a good man. No matter who they are, they've got the drop on us. And now we're trapped with all these dead people.”

Ben stood up.

“OK. I don't know what's happening here. If you're part of some elaborate ruse to get us here, I promise I'll make you pay before I'm taken alive. You get me?”

Liam got it. No matter who came down the steps, he might get shot for simply being there.

This time, Victoria pulled him in close.

4

“Liam, I saw Hayes get off a helicopter far up the river. I don't know how, or even why, he'd be here in Cairo.”

Liam and Victoria split off from Ben and his partner and kept their voices low enough Jane couldn't hear.

“That tracking system is pretty impressive. It told me you were in Cairo. I would never have left Forest Park if I wasn't sure you were here.”

“And I would have never left, either, but we were attacked by NIS. They almost killed me and Hayes. They did kill some of the Polar Bears in Hans' house.”

“I know! I found them. And your shirt,” he said with a smile. “I knew you were there.”

“Hayes left a bomb,” Victoria said with a start, though it was clear Liam survived.

“I found it. Poof,” he made a gesture with his hand of an explosion. “I ran out the back door and hid behind a tree. The whole place went up. And...I lost your shirt.”

She hugged him, laughing softly.

“One of the dying patriots helped set it up. Hayes was sure he'd kill this Elsa chick. They have some kind of relationship.”

“You mean like they're in love?” he said with wonder.

“I don't know. I don't think so. She included an invitation to her wedding when she killed the men in Hans' living room. Like she knew he was coming, and that he would be the one to read it. He said she was trying to get even for killing Duchesne, who was her fiancé.”

Liam looked out over the beds. Ben and his partner had flipped beds on opposite sides of the room and faced the distant staircase. He didn't think it was likely an enemy agent would just walk down those steps like there was no threat down here. If these guys were Secret Service, he imagined they were pretty much the best of the best.

Debbie and the drones remained on the floor, bathed in the daylight coming in from the opening above the steps.

“Why do you think Hayes is here? Why didn't he come with us?”

Liam faced her, but he couldn't say what he truly thought.

Hayes lied about everything.

“I don't know. If he's here, maybe this Elsa person is here? Maybe he hoped to surprise her,” he offered.

Liam called out to Ben. “You said Elsa was wanted for genocide. What exactly did she do?”

Ben set his gun on the side of the bed, which was facing up at the ceiling. He ducked down a little so he could address Liam. “Elsa Cantwell was part of the overthrow of the democratically elected government we had before the last election. We didn't see it as it happened, but once the infection spread across the world...let's just say cybersecurity became a thing of the past. Government secrets were hacked and released in torrents. Old debts were settled. Talented freelancers engaged in brute force attacks with no worry of being caught. None of it mattered because the government itself was fading.”

“Except for you guys.” He thought it was obvious.

“Yes, we have some very talented freelancers, too. And they were more than anxious to hunker down in a government safe house in exchange for the use of their talents. I'd call it World War III, though most people never saw it. What you see out there now is World War IV—the sticks and stones edition.”

“But why go after Elsa now?”

Ben looked at him with sadness. “Do you know what it's like to be the only ones fighting for everyone else? The Marines. Army. Air Force. They're all focused on killing the zombies. We're a relatively small organization. We recently lost a President. Maybe two. Our street cred is mighty low.”

“So you wanted to prove to the world who was responsible for besting you?” he said, finally understanding their motive. It was exactly like his own. Track down those responsible for ending the world—and pin them to the wall in his tell-all history book.

“No. We're aren't vindictive. We need to find Elsa because she's used government hackers—for a long time—to write herself into many of the FEMA and Homeland Security org charts. Without the President, and an unknown number of people in the Presidential chain of command gone, we have no way of knowing who is actually in charge of this nation. The line of succession works wonderfully, except when all the members are missing. In fact, whole families are missing. Not just the person in line for the Presidency.”

“Whole families? Like, someone went out and killed the family members of anyone close to the Presidency? Would that include Senators and Representatives?”

“Possibly. The Speaker of the House is number two. The president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate can assume the presidency if the first two are dead. There are seventeen people who can assume the presidency, starting at the Vice President, and ending with the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

“Homeland Security,” Liam said with realization. “You said Elsa wrote herself into the org charts there. She wouldn't by chance be in charge of the whole shebang, would she?”

Ben studied him. “You catch on fast. Who did you say you were again?” He smiled, but it was guarded. “But she isn't the head of the organization, as far as we know. At this moment, in this boat, I really can't say.”

He laughed while he turned back toward the stairwell.

“My family was on a kill list, like you just mentioned. Everyone up and down my family tree was on that list.” He couldn't reveal it was Hayes that canceled the hit.

“Do you have any family members in government? Maybe a Secretary of Energy or Transportation perhaps? There are a lot of Secretaries in the line.”

“My Grandma was a member of the House of Representatives, from Colorado.”

“Rose Peters?”

The fact that he knew the name before he'd said it was greatly troubling.

5

The look on his face probably spoke for him.

“I have to know all the tier one officials. She happens to be very special, though. She disappeared a few months ago, at the height of that Snowball business. She was wanted for treason. Did you know that?”

He shook his head.

“It was all a sham, of course. We know that now. But back then, boy howdy, the FBI was on the hunt for her.”

They both looked to the front, where the drones began to hover once again.

“I guess they hacked our hack,” he said with a determined grin. “I've got to pay attention.” He turned back, using the bed as concealment.

But not cover, as Dad would have pointed out. Bullets could come right through the bed sheets and flimsy mattress. The hold had a distinct deficiency of anything solid to hide behind.

The drones hovered for a few moments once they were fully operational, then went up through the gap in the roof above the stairs, like balloons escaping a party. When they cleared the area, only the beeping of the patients' electronic monitoring devices and the soft gurgle of the water flowing beneath them remained.

He was about to make a comment when another drone fell through the opening. A small drone he recognized right away as matching the style of the one he'd seen back in Forest Park. The one that talked to him in Grubmeyer's bathroom. He'd finally been caught, but he could hardly believe how much had to come together for her to find him a second time.

“Are we having fun down here?” The tinny voice was Elsa's.

“Hello Elsa,” Jane yelled.

The boxy little drone zeroed in on them and floated right between Ben's men to be near him and Victoria. Evidently, Jane wasn't of interest to the operator.

“Liam. I'm so glad we've run into each other again. I've finally got you where I can talk to you in peace.”

The distant echoes of gunfire called out that lie for him.

“Sorry for shooting your man, Ben,” said the drone as it turned toward the Secret Service leader. “But I can't chance anyone getting away. I've got some of the most dangerous people in America right there with you. Did you know?”

Ben looked at him, then at Victoria and Jane. He saw that the man was being tested.

“I know what it says on my computer, but I have reason to suspect my system's been hacked. These two kids don't look like they could rip open a teddy bear, much less threaten the U-S-of-A.”

“That's their secret. They look like a couple of clueless teenagers, even act like it most of the time. But put them in a corner and they fight like the freakish badger on his shirt. Watch out,” she said with a laugh. “We tracked Mr. Liam across several miles of hostile territory in downtown St. Louis. He evaded everything—and I mean everything—to get to his girly friend in the park.”

Victoria squeezed his hand.

“And the girl is just as bad. She escaped from several, uh, situations I've been monitoring from my mobile headquarters. Assisted by primo enemy numeral uno. A man I think you all know, and some of you love, Mr. Douglas Hayes.”

Some commotion rang through the speaker before she continued.

“I tracked you all coming down here. It was a nice effort for Douggie to try to get himself clear of you all, but I found him. I found all of you. The boy who weaseled himself into our little secret. The girl who can't keep herself from poking into places she doesn't belong. The brave Secret Service dopes who have been on a months-long wild goose chase. The renegade doctor and his wife, who just can't get it through their head that this is a killing operation, not a life saving one. Who else is down there?”

They all looked around.

“What about all these people in the beds?” Liam called out.

“Oh, they're part of another of our experiments. Did you know that the oldest people in our trials were able to channel zombies using their minds? Why do you think so many found their way to Cairo? I wish Jasper were here—I had him convinced it was mere chance that all of them came ambling down along the shores of the rivers. That it was bad luck.” Her laughter was not friendly.

“These zombies you see out there are from Chicago and Indianapolis, but I'll let you in on a little secret of mine because it excites me so much. The zombies from St. Louis are coming down the shore of the Mississippi, too. They're the ones this is all about. They have a very special skill. Did you know?”

While the discussion was ongoing, Ben had moved a lot closer to the front steps. Elsa either let him go or didn't know he'd gone. Whatever it was, she finally called him out.

“Don't bother, Ben. My drones are up top, safe from your hackers now at the bottom of the river. If anyone so much as sticks their head up top, my drone buddies will take it off. Oh yeah,” she started. Someone interrupted her on her end, and the line stopped broadcasting for a moment.

Finally, she returned. “Sorry about that. I'll let you keep guessing about the St. Louis zombies. Maybe you'll figure it out when we start loading them onto all the barges so helpfully gathered by the city of Cairo,” she laughed. “Meanwhile, I have good news to share. I have a surprise package about to head your way. You'll never guess what it is.”

He was pretty sure it wasn't anything he'd like.

“Have any of you heard of the Broken Angel delivery system?”

No one responded.

“Ben, I'm surprised. Oh, well. You see, when you get into the weeds of what the government really does, you find some pretty cool stuff. It turns out there are ICBM's sitting in North Dakota which have been stripped of their nukes. The eggheads thought it would be neat to slap on a conventional warhead, tighten up the guidance package, and roll it out as some kind of special delivery system when they wanted to decapitate a foreign government. Can you imagine?”

Liam looked at Ben, as the resident agent of the government. He merely shrugged.

“All that money! Pissed away on a weapon that could never get off the ground without alerting the world to a possible nuclear missile strike in progress. How do you reassure anyone you aren't launching a nuke? Only one thing could result.”

“Nu-cue-lar war,” he said with awe.

He'd finally found his use for the annoying word.

“That's right,” said the voice in the drone. “But now, with the whole world offline. Well, no one will care that a missile took off from ass-end-city N-D and was on a trajectory to armpit-lane I-L.”

“You're ICBM'ing us?” Ben shouted.

“That's right, suckers. If I don't use these weapons now, I may never get the chance again. This is the end of the world people. Everything left is single-use.”

The tinny speaker laughed.

“But before I get the satisfaction of watching your little boat sink with the world's biggest bullet, I'm coming aboard to collect something of mine. I'll be along in a jiff,” she added with good cheer. “I need the two kids—without guns—on the top deck in sixty seconds. No SS. No old timers. No one named Hayes. You all can stay down there. And Liam?”

“Uh huh.”

“Bring the unconscious girl.”

He turned to Victoria, sensing that they'd really, truly, for real, reached the end of their adventures.

“Well, partner...” he sighed.

She looked at him with watery eyes, but she didn't have the look of defeat. Far from it.

“Death by nuclear missile. I think we've graduated to the big leagues,” she said with a smile and a wink.

ICBM or not, the Secret Service guys had a look about them. He'd seen it before. Elsa had said it herself.

The honey badgers were up against the wall.

Chapter 22: Simple Solution

Liam and Victoria managed to get the groggy girl to the top deck. It felt good to be in the sunlight of the day but tilting his head upward only reminded him something was heading his way from above the sprinkle of clouds.

“You think a missile is already on its way?”

“I don't know. What do your books say about this?” Victoria laughed and then grunted as the girl's feet got caught on the top step.

“They all say we should be running...”

“But?”

“Well, you and I could jump in the water. Probably escape. But what about those people in the beds downstairs? They're going to die if this boat is destroyed.”

Before she could answer, a fifty-foot fast-moving orange racing boat ripped through the water as it approached from the north. When it neared the edge of the barge, the pilot decelerated and reversed the tuned engines expertly, so the long, thin wedge of a boat slid right up next to bulky freight-hauler. As it settled in the water, a lithe blonde woman in a tight-fitting black outfit climbed from the open-topped driver's area near the back onto the deck of her boat and then hopped to the barge. A menacing-looking drone detached from a metal frame attached to the back of the boat. It floated up with two guns that hung out from its lower frame. Unlike the other drones, this had been painted dark gray and was marked as U.S. Air Force property.

“Greetings, sports fans,” the woman shouted as she approached. The gray drone was loud. The four large fan blades cut the air next to its master. The noise and wind it generated made it hard to hear. The other drones—the ones that had been down in the hold—also floated above them, but they were smaller and quieter than her new guard dog.

“Hello?” he replied.

She tapped something on her hip, and the monster drone backed off.

“Ah, better? We can at least talk for a few moments without that thing bothering us. My name is Elsa.”

“We know! You're nuking us. What could we possibly say to you?” Victoria yelled, ignoring the fact it had gotten quiet.

Liam used the time to look her over. Her outfit was similar to a wetsuit but seemed much more flexible. He was almost embarrassed at the level of detail it revealed of the woman's figure, but he saw it for what it was: protection against zombies. She wore gloves and simple boots. There was no skin showing below her head. The skin went up to her chin—

“Ah, young man. I see you're admiring my...assets, huh?” She smiled, but her tone made it sound like he was ogling her.

“It's a zombie-proof skin, isn't it?”

“Yes. DARPA has the coolest toys. Somehow, a senator on some appropriations committee got funding for this getup. He was convinced a zombie shit-storm was coming, and he wanted his very own suit of armor so he could survive it. I think he'd watched too many movies.”

She walked absently on the wide decking at the front of the barge, and Liam couldn't help but notice she was showing herself off as she moved about.

“He got them to make the damned things! Imagine my surprise when my team found them. It was part of a whole kit. Some zombie author made a list of what you'd need to survive, and Senator Doofy used that list to prepare, right down to a weird pickax he was going to carry. Naturally, I ensured I got one of the female versions so I wouldn't look like I had a diaper on under a man's version.”

“How do you—”

“Don't ask, kid. All you need to know is why I'm wearing this.”

“Um, because you started the Zombie Apocalypse?” Victoria said with an intentional uptalk.

“Ah, you sound like my daughter,” she motioned to Debbie, “when she plays her part.”

Liam let go of the girl's hand. She fell to the metal surface, but he made sure it wasn't far enough to hurt her.

“Your daughter? She mentioned her mother was coming,” Liam spoke while he took a step away from Debbie.

“Wouldn't you? She's the only good thing left in my world. She was finally going to have a new father...”

He became distracted by his thoughts. Internally, he tried to visualize how he could use Debbie as leverage to free himself and the people on the boat. If he had a gun, he might be able to do it, but with drones watching his every move that didn't seem likely. He wasn't even sure what he'd say.

“Guess again,” she shouted. “Why am I wearing this suit?” Liam could barely hear her now that she'd moved backward, but her motions were clear. She was waving someone up from inside the cabin of her racing boat.

“Mom!”

His heart passed on several beats.

Elsa guided Lana up onto the deck of her boat, then indicated she should stand there. She looked tired and bruised—her hair had been shaved from a chunk of the left side of her head. What was left on that side barely reached her ear.

“Don't you move,” Elsa said to him. Victoria had also taken a few steps forward. “I have another surprise,” she said with a cackle.

The next person to come out of the cabin made Liam's blood flow backward.

“Dad?”

2

The shock of seeing his dad lasted only long enough for his heart to restart. He ran the final few yards to the edge of the barge and threatened to jump onto the flat top-deck of the cigarette boat. His mom was zip-tied and had a gag in her mouth. Her eyes were sad—focused on him.

His dad—

“Liam Peters. I'm pleased to re-acquaint you with your late father. I had some trouble finding him. He was buried, don't ya know?” Her laugh was malicious.

His dad was a zombie. The creature—he willed himself to see it as something other than the man who was once his father—was attached to a loop at the end of a metal bar held by another man dressed in the funky skin. The zombie stumbled as the man pushed him onto the deck. It saw Lana and tried to lean toward her, though the man kept it in check.

“What are you doing?” he shouted. “You dug up my dad?” he said with a frantic voice.

Victoria held firm to his arm, but she emitted a shriek, like she was fighting back the horror.

“Liam, there's something you should know about me. I'm a "just do it" girl. I never quit. I never roll over. I never lose my focus. Once you killed my lover, the gloves came off.”

He'd been there when her fiancé died, but he didn't kill him. A point she probably already knew, since she'd watched it with drones.

“I've followed you. Your family. Your friends. I've been trying to get you all in one place, so I could have the pleasure of killing them all in front of your Grandma, but I've got to hand it to you people. You are hard to catch. Those three black girls you had with you in the mine? Where did they go?”

He stood, stone-faced, while looking at his parents. Even if he knew where the strange girls had gone, he'd resist telling her.

“It doesn't matter. You left some people in your MRAP—Hayes' MRAP—down in Busch Stadium. Didn't you? I figured it was abandoned, but my intel says no one went in before it magically drove away after you were gone. That means someone was still inside.”

Mel and Phil are alive?

“You've been very lucky. Too lucky, I'd say. Is your Grandma pulling your strings?” she said matter-of-factly. “I wonder.”

Unwilling to give her the pleasure of seeing his anger, he kept still.

“I don't care,” she spoke with venom. “Rose is still AWOL, though we traced her call to you. We'll find her. For now, I'll settle for them,” she said as she pointed at Mom and Dad. “The two people you care about more than anyone else in the world. Plus, Victoria and Marty,” she chuffed. “I've got you here,” she pointed to Victoria, “and Marty is with my sleeper agent. She should be here soon enough to see the fireworks.”

Grandma's alive, too?

It became hard to hold back. He wanted to yell and scream and rescue Mom, but he didn't know how that could happen. And if Grandma was around…

He stood there. Emotionless on the surface.

Jerry thrashed against his brace, causing Lana to side-step.

“Don't fight him, yet,” Elsa said to Lana, without bothering to look at her.

Lana's eyes re-focused on Liam.

Elsa pointed at Mom. “I found her with no problem. She followed you to Forest Park. In a tank!” she giggled. “Yeah, funniest thing. She used that old tank to cross the dead land between the St. Louis Arch and Forest Park—looking for you. I found her gawking at the home you blew up, Liam. It was a simple matter of intercepting her, separating her from her Polar Bear pals, and stuffing her into this speedboat with her late husband. It's been a real interesting ride, let me tell you.”

Liam felt heartbroken for his mom. She had started crying, though she fought it.

His mind was afire with ten different feelings. He'd been betrayed. Friends were still alive, he thought were dead. Grandma was alive. Line after line scrolled through his train of thought until he reached the final one.

“It can't end like this,” he whispered to Victoria.

There had to be a way he could save them all. Had to be.

Throughout much of his journey, he'd felt like he had a guardian angel watching over him. Someone there to pull the trigger to remove threats at just the right time. That angel had used an entire towboat and its barges to run down Duchesne back in St. Louis. That piece of “good luck” actually started the whole process which brought them all to this moment. Maybe it would have been better if they'd perished there. Now, more people were going to die.

Because of him.

“Liam, we have to do something. Fast,” Victoria said out of the side of her mouth. They couldn't be heard by Elsa because of the distance between them, but she seemed to understand their motives.

She cut the tether on his dad.

“God. No. Please.”

3

The zombie that was formerly his dad used his newfound freedom to lunge at the person facing him. Liam found it strange to think first of how his mom's neck had been cleared of all distractions—her shaved hair suddenly made perfect sense. It was the exact spot where the zombie attacked.

The Quantum Virus was about to claim another victim.

He pulled out the knife given to him by Brandyweis. It was a huge military knife with one sharp serrated edge. He judged it to be similar to a Bowie knife, which was one of the weapons in World of Undead Soldiers. Not a very good one, he noted. It could be thrown in the game—something he'd never done before.

Lana, knowing she was doomed, let herself fall backward. The additional weight of the Dad-zombie propelled them across and down the slick, rounded surface of the motorboat.

As they moved, he threw the knife as hard as he could at his father. He used all the hatred he had for Elsa and what she'd done by digging him up and putting him in front of his mom. It sank into his dad's side, but there was no question it would serve no role in stopping him. The knife's only function was to make him feel that he'd tried.

Lana fell into the water with the zombie, beyond his sight.

She didn't want me to see her die.

“You bitch!” Liam screamed as he tried to lunge at her. Victoria held his arm, which he both fought and relished. The man behind Elsa had a gun trained on him.

Elsa tapped her side, and the gray guard dog lurched so it sat between them as well.

“No more weapons! We're not done,” she said with finality.

Liam was burning with anger—and despair, but as with so many encounters of late, he felt helpless in equal measure. Maybe he could have reached her and pushed her into the water, but then the drone would kill Victoria and everyone else. And he couldn't be sure he'd best the woman in the water.

She held up her wrist and spoke into it. “Janey Fitzhume-Hayes, come on down,” she added a laugh before dropping her arm.

“I know she's not a friend of yours, but I figure killing her will pass the time for us until my consolation prize arrives. Once Marty is here, we can wrap this up and I can get back to the responsibilities of seeking the real prize: Rose Peters.”

“Why? Why are you doing this? None of this makes any sense. What do my grandmas have to do with the world?” he replied with embers of anger flaming high.

The drone moved so they could talk, though the man's gun remained pointed at him.

Elsa looked at her wrist like she was checking the time. “I've got time to kill. Why not.”

She moved to the edge of her boat. Close enough to talk normally.

“The world was doomed, kid. The Spanish Flu was the key. That's how we found the Quantum Virus. Looking at preserved samples, we were able to extrapolate its structure down to the sub-atomic level. A smart immunologist whom you know noticed the base composition had changed over the course of the few years we had good enough microscopes to get down to that level. He deduced the virus embeds itself in a host and needs about a hundred years before it activates. Because our, um, helper virus used the code from the Spanish Flu strain of Influenza, and because that had been building itself for those hundred years, it became much more virulent than we ever imagined. Ironically, those with the most immunity were the people alive during the time of the original epidemic in 1918, although some elderly people also had limited immunity from spending so much time with their older immune family members.”

She laughed, though not as heartily as before.

“Once we started, we had to ride the bucking bronco all the way to the end. We're managing this crisis so that when the Quantum Virus runs its course, we'll be there to pick up the pieces.”

“But you released the virus to kill citizens. Why are you after my family!”

“Settle. Settle,” she said calmly. “If you want to reshape the world as an ideal image, you have to ensure you're the one controlling all the clay. There was too much deadweight in our government. Too many payments to keep people quiet. To keep them in line. Do you know my group has been paying off politicians since the Founding Fathers' time?”

Liam's head wobbled with the foreign-sounding history lesson. As far as he could tell, it had nothing to do with his mom and dad's deaths, or his grandma's.

She sighed tightly. “What I mean, my young Mr. Peters is that it became too expensive to control the world. We're using this as an opportunity to scale back our financial obligations—our bribes if you will—and start over with a smaller, but more powerful, cadre of politicos.”

His blank looks were working.

“Dammit. Don't you see? In order to control a politician, you have to own him. When my predecessors started this game back in the early 1800's, money was plentiful and politicians were few. Today, it's the opposite. Those same families have controlled the levers of power for too long. They've become complacent, even in their bathtubs of money. We're going to start over with fewer politicians.”

“And fewer people,” Victoria spoke with great sadness.

“Yes, the Quantum Virus was unexpected, as I said. But, since I'm now the head of Homeland Security, I'm in line for the Presidency. Lots of room out here for the few left in the line of succession to find themselves in accidents. I'll just have to renounce my dual citizenship to Iceland, without worrying about those pesky Constitutionalists griping about not being natural born,” she chuckled. “And once I'm President of the United States, none of this will matter. If there are only a handful of people left, we can rebuild the whole world.”

“You are beyond insane,” he finally said.

“Don't use that word!” she shouted, sounding exactly like an insane person. “The United States was an engine that drove the world with money. My peers and I shaped the world using that money. We told politicians what to think. We told them when to fight wars. When to sell. When to buy. And we were very good at it. We took the United States to the pinnacle of civilization.”

He put his hands on his ears. The words drove him mad. It couldn't be something so base as money. Zombies were not created as a debt-eraser for a group of rich people. His mom and dad didn't die for greenbacks.

“So, what, you're like the Illuminati, or whatever? I've seen the movie,” Victoria's voice passed through his hands because she was so close. He loosened them so he could hear the reply.

“We have many names. If anyone hints at revealing our true name, they and their entire family are murdered outright. Sometimes we set nations at war to exterminate those families.”

“Like saying National Internal Security,” he challenged while dropping his hands.

“The NIS is one of our fronts, yes. And you will die for saying the name. Mark my words.”

Her calm demeanor frightened him to the bone. Here was someone willing to kill the people he loved right in front of him, but also kill the entire world around all of them. There was no limit to the level of…

“You're evil,” he said flatly.

“What? You think I'm 'he who must not be named?'” she said dramatically. “Hey, what about this? Have you heard the initials RF?”

He looked at Victoria and saw no recognition.

“Aww, damn. You must not read horror books.”

He took serious issue with the statement but didn't care what she thought about his depth of literary knowledge, positive he'd read many more zombie books than her. Her frustration at not being able to goad him was seemingly tiring her to their conversation.

“Anyway,” she said, “I'm not the devil if that's what you're thinking. God doesn't exist.” She pointed to Victoria's cross on her necklace. “And praying will get you nothing but disappointment.”

“But you are the devil,” Liam replied. “And the only way ultimate evil can exist is if ultimate good is out there, too. If the world were controlled by evil, it would always look like this.” He pointed out into the broken world as he said it. “God may not be a person, but God works through good people. I've seen it. And I know a group of evil men and women like you could not have run the world for so long and not messed it up sooner.”

“Actually, Liam, they did.”

Jane had come up and joined them from the hold.

4

“Tell them I'm not crazy, Jane.”

“Oh, you are. But that doesn't mean you're a liar.” She turned to Liam and Victoria as she came up next to them. “Douglas and I were deep in their ranks before all this happened. I saw firsthand how they could nudge legislation, or pay off a foreign country to keep oil prices low. I've seen how they contract hits on people and prune back family trees. But the thing that turned us off—made us risk death day after day—was their relish for the chaos. I'd been brought up my whole life thinking we were doing a necessary duty to the world—pushing it in the right direction. But the reality was just the opposite. The world was being ruined by what we'd become. The final straw was this virus. We could have easily put out a warning that saved a lot of lives. Instead, we let the world get bitten. Some of us even enjoyed the result.”

Jane spoke up. “You killed Douglas, didn't you?”

“I picked him up at your family business, where you dropped him off. He's floating somewhere close I'd expect,” she said with a girlish giggle.

Liam expected her to cry or show some kind of emotional distress, but she seemed outwardly serene. She swiped at her brow, then dropped her forearm to her mouth so it blocked it from Elsa's view.

“Good luck,” she said in a low voice. She said something else, in a whisper, which sounded like “I love you Clara,” but it made no sense.

Before Liam could reply she'd reached behind her and pulled out a boxy-looking pistol. The sound was deafening as she fired multiple times at Elsa.

Elsa dodged the first volley and slid across the deck back into the driver's compartment of her boat, along with the man. He watched her skin-tight uniform as she dove. Jane tried to follow, but the gray drone intercepted her.

He and Victoria both dropped to the deck at the moment the confrontation started, but the women were so fast he was able to watch nearly the whole thing before he thought to get himself flat.

The drone was about thirty feet away, to their right. When she was about halfway to the boat, it oriented on her and unleashed hell. Its twin guns lit up even as Jane tried to knock it out of the sky.

More guns cracked behind them. The Secret Service agents fired their rifles at the drone while poking out the top of the stairs.

Just as it looked like she might survive the open-air crossing, Jane fell heavily to the metal. The gun skittered across the deck, into the water. Blood saturated the back of her shirt as she lay face-down. Where moments before she was vivacious and energetic in her efforts to kill Elsa, now she was wide-eyed and dead.

The drone swung its guns toward the Secret Service agents, firing all the while. But Jane had scored at least one hit. One of its blades was noticeably erratic, and the whole unit tipped as the other three fans compensated. The guns were also firing wild, which gave him no reassurance as he kept low. To his surprise he was on top of Debbie, ensuring she wouldn't be struck by a bullet.

The one time I don't want to be the hero.

But that wasn't necessarily true. He'd protect anyone…

Except, maybe, her.

Once Elsa was out of sight, he was able to eye the drone as it took more damage from Ben and his partner.

The problem was the remaining drones. Even as they beat the junkyard dog into submission—knocking out a second fan motor—the surviving drones closed the distance with the agents. A volley of gunfire sent the two men back down into the hold.

“What do we do?” he wondered.

Victoria's face was blank. When she saw him protecting Debbie, she scooted up next to him to help.

“We pray.”

He heard and then felt the turbine wash of one of the drones as it hovered above them. Its single gun faced the stairwell. If it looked down, he'd be dead.

One of the smaller drones hovered over the steps when it exploded in a shower of sparks. It fell straight into the hold.

He heard a distant pane of glass shatter. That noise was followed a moment later by the whip-smack of a gun shot and ricochet from the chassis of the metal hulk above them. The thing turned and let loose with its gun onto what Liam guessed was the bridge of the barge towboat attached to them.

From such distance, he couldn't see the identity of the shooter.

In the commotion of the firefight, Debbie became animated. In seconds she seemed completely awake. He and Victoria were both on top of her, so she could only turn her head side-to-side.

“Get OFF!” she said as she squirmed.

“Be quiet. You want to get us killed?”

“Us killed? What's happening? Where's my mom? She's supposed to pick me up,” she said in a slightly whiny voice.

“She's in a boat speeding away from here,” Liam replied. The powerful engine of the big watercraft echoed off the barges on the other side of the river.

“You guys win the battle, but not the war.” Elsa's voice came from the little unarmed drone she'd used to communicate with them. “The launch vehicle is already out of the tube. You have to clear out of there. Jump in the water. Swim away. Take my daughter and I may let today slide.”

He looked at Victoria. At Elsa's daughter. Finally, they looked at the metal roofing of the hold below.

“Are you thinking what I am?” he asked her.

“Use this boat to ram this girl's failed mother?”

“No, I hadn't thought of that. But I like where you're going,” he said with a sliver of humor. “We need to move this barge so we can save the people below.”

“Where can we take them to get away from a nuclear missile?” Victoria asked.

Debbie grunted in pain. “Can you please get off? I know where we can go. My mom told me to report if they ever moved this barge. There's only one place she didn't want it. That's where we'll be safe.”

Liam pulled back a little. “And where might that be?”

Chapter 23: Elma Jean

Jasper had used the distractions at the front of his boat to crawl across the barges back to where he'd left his rifle. The lips and lids of the varying types of barges in the flotilla provided the cover he needed. He avoided looking into the cargo box filled with bodies. The smell was enough to keep him moving.

Once Elsa showed up he knew his only chance was to punch through her drones if he was going to have any chance of stopping her. He waited with his rifle in the captain's perch until the right moment to risk his position.

He watched the young woman get felled by the dark drone, then watched the two Secret Service agents pepper it with enough lead to knock it down. The scene was a flurry of flying robots hovering around the deck of the boat, some with guns, some not. He selectively fired on those he felt were the most threat to the kids lying on the deck and left the SS men to fend for themselves until he knew the others were safe. The Elma Jean had enough surveillance tech he could hear the discussions on the front side of the barge—200 feet away.

He already knew why he didn't like Elsa, but once she explained who she was, he thought about putting a bullet through her brain and ending it. The thing stopping him was the ICBM she claimed to have launched. If he knew his math, they didn't have much time to get to safe ground. The North Dakota to Illinois routes was measured in minutes. And he didn't know when the missile cleared its hatch.

When the firing stopped, he was happy to see the three kids running his way.

“Toss off the lines,” he shouted down to them while pointing to the heavy ropes linking them with the next row of barges. The boy skidded to a stop, turned around, and ran forward again. The girls continued until they reached the cleat at the back.

“Fire her up,” he ordered Bill.

The delay gave him a moment to study Elsa driving her boat in the choppy brown water just off the starboard bow.

“She's staying close,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Her daughter is still here,” Bill replied.

“Of course,” he thought.

The gunfight was fast, but deadly. One woman was dead at the cost of a few drones. It was some kind of miracle those kids managed to lay right out in the open and not get swept by all the gunfire.

The two girls came in the hatch, followed a second later by the boy.

“This is Debbie,” the boy started before he was inside the room. “A missile is heading for us! She knows where to go.”

“Well, all right then.”

She pointed and Bill nodded gravely.

“There's an ICBM heading for us,” the boy said.

“You're Liam, right? This boat has excellent hearing. I've heard everything spoken down there.”

“You've been up here the whole time?” Victoria asked.

John pointed to the bodies in the nearby barge. From up in the bridge they could all see down into the cargo area and what was inside.

“I had to be sure what I was dealing with. I followed Liam and this other girl when they brought those older women.”

Victoria smiled at Liam like she was proud of him.

“I'm here to kill Elsa,” he said with a stoic voice as he and everyone else felt the towboat accelerate.

“Get in line,” Liam responded. “She's pretty much the top person responsible for giving us the zombies.”

“I almost can't believe that. I was with her in Cairo. I've seen her operate. She's smart and seems full of herself, but destroying the world? I always thought it would be a man in a big chair with a white cat.”

“I've been trying to figure this out,” Liam explained, “because I promised the dead fiancé of that maniac I would find out whoever was responsible and make sure the world knows who to blame. Does this ship have recording equipment?”

Bill, working the controls of the ship, nodded.

“Then we have the evidence we need. If we get this to someone in charge, we can—”

“There is no one in charge,” he replied to Liam. “The government has been pared down below the critical mass needed to keep things operational. Yes, there are military units still fighting along with the convoy, but I'll be damned if I can find anyone higher than me in the chain of command. And look at me—a two-star general piloting a barge. That's the extent of my authority.”

The three kids gave him serious looks.

“One thing at a time. First, we save the ship. Then, we get that bitch—”

“She's my mom,” Debbie said vacantly.

He paused to consider the poor girl's situation.

“I'm sorry your mom is the queen of all bitches.”

Debbie gave him the faintest of smiles in return.

2

Bill the pilot had the barge moving at what John thought was a high rate of speed. The water was fairly calm, but swirled in muddy eddies all the way across. The dull green superstructure of the bridge towered above them and the shadow of the highway soon eclipsed the sun. They were heading for a gap in the fleet of parked barges. Apparently, the towboat operators frowned on parking barges near the bridge pylons. That gave them all the room they needed.

“You're gonna feel a jolt,” Bill warned. “Brace yourselves.”

Ten seconds later they all leaned forward as the front of the barge ahead of them ran part-way up onto the riverbank underneath the bridge. Bill gunned the engines then throttled back. The towboat drifted with the current, but he increased the propeller speed. He used the powerful engine to push against the current. As long as they kept at it, they could hold the barge partially on the shore.

“With a little luck, we can pull her back off.”

Luck. Yes. An ICBM's-worth of luck.

“What do we do now?” Liam asked.

“You guys go back down into the hold. Make sure those SS guys knows what we're doing. Keep an eye on those snow birds,” he said with a smile.

The two girls ran out right away, but he stopped Liam.

“Your grandma is still alive. I saw her this morning back in Cairo.”

Liam stepped back in the room.

“Where?”

John pointed down and across the river to the point of land formed where the Mississippi River and the Ohio river joined together. It wasn't more than a mile away.

“I left her with Chloe, one of the few people I trust over there. She'll get her to that point," he showed Liam the southern tip of land where his people were waiting for him, "and then they'll get out of Dodge. The zombies have taken the rest of the town. Be quick.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your grandma was very proud of you. I thought she was nuts when she first told me about you. Going off into the wild. Getting yourself in sticky situations like this one. But you did good. I had a whole Army battalion behind me, and I couldn't pin Elsa down.”

“Well, we don't have her yet, but thanks to your recording device we have the evidence we need.”

Liam gave him a thumbs up before taking off after the two girls.

“Bill, if you show me what to do, I can man this station while you get below.”

“Pfft,” he huffed out. “You Army men are all the same. Always want to be the heroes.” Bill gave him a harsh look but cracked himself up before John could reply.

“Let me guess. Navy?” he said cheerfully to Bill.

“Yep, did a tour in 'Nam on the America. SAR, mostly.”

“Well Bill, USN, we're about to see the might and fury of United States Air Force.”

“So they're going to miss us by a whole state?”

They shared a laugh as the roof dropped in on them.

Chapter 24: Non-Linear

Liam's awareness returned, slowly.

His face was on well-manicured grass, which was odd because his previous memory was running down the length of the industrial-metal decking of a Mississippi River barge…

“What happened?” he asked himself.

While sitting up, he discovered Victoria. She was similarly sprawled on the turf next to him but also stirring. Her black tank top and faded jeans appeared fresh out of the washer. His “gifted” black honey badger t-shirt had returned to just-bought condition as well.

“Liam?”

“I'm right here.” He reached out and touched her hip to let her know he was close.

The grass was bright green, as if lit by the sun, but when he turned to the sky it was dark as night. Stars and constellations graced the heavens from horizon to horizon around him. Only the waterfall blocked his—

“A waterfall from space,” he said rhetorically.

“I'm not feeling right. I'm hallucinating,” she answered.

“No, I think we both are.”

They helped each other so they could stand and properly take in the view. The waterfall fell from the darkness above, which made him realize something was affecting his perspectives. Stars above were clear, like each one magnified when he looked at it, but if he saw them from the corner of his eye they fell back among their peers.

“It's all real,” said a weak voice behind them.

Liam spun around, knowing it was Grandma.

“You're alive!” he shouted, followed a moment later by, “I think.”

His excitement was tempered by the impossibility of everything around him. They all hugged while Grandma sat on a stone bench at one edge of the grassy patch, near a cliff overlooking an ocean. They watched the green-tinted water light up with the ferocity of an electrical storm. As far out as he could see, the water appeared agitated under the surface.

“I'm so happy to see you,” Victoria said while they held each other tightly.

“Grandma. That woman dug up—” his voice wavered, “—Dad. Elsa infected him, like those soldiers we saw in the mine. He attacked Mom.” It was all he could say before getting too emotional.

The hug continued while Grandma spoke.

“Mercy, me. I'm so sorry you had to see that. Just remember, it wasn't your dad. Jerry died a long time ago.”

Liam found himself impressed with her composure. Jerry was her grandson, after all.

Finally, with one final squeeze, he stepped back. He and Victoria took a seat on opposite sides of her, so they could all watch the spectacle in the water.

“What is this place?” he asked, assuming she would know. “Are we dead?”

“I don't think so,” Grandma replied. “This is where Al has been taking me ever since the zombies arrived. He said this was inside my own mind.” Her speech slowed as if she didn't believe those final words. “Which means you two can't be real.”

Liam protested. “We're real! I was running with Victoria, and Debbie, when I...blacked out...I think. I'm not really sure. But I'm not in your imagination,” he said with conviction.

“I remember the same thing. I was running with Liam when I heard a loud banging noise, followed by blackness. I should be on the barge.”

Grandma made a sound. An audible “hmm,” like she was impressed.

“I don't know. Maybe this is real.”

“Where are you? I mean out there?” he asked.

“I'm in a truck in Cairo. I'm with Chloe. A sweet girl who is a friend of the man protecting the town. I heard...a sound. Chloe screamed. I think I hit my head.”

“A friend?” Liam spoke with disbelief. “Elsa said she had an agent of hers bringing you to her. She was excited to hurt you. She wanted to hurt all of us—our whole family—because of Grandma Rose. She wants to be president of the country or something.”

“Chloe isn't a spy,” she said, but Liam wasn't happy to hear a wedge of doubt in those words.

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. No one seemed to know what to say next. Liam certainly didn't. If they were dead, it was a nice place to end up. If they were still alive, he couldn't imagine what had brought them there.

“Does it always take this long when you come here?” he asked her.

“No, usually Al is here guiding me. Or he takes me other places, like that bridge from your book.”

He laughed gently. “I wish we were there. I'd like to go into those books for real. Maybe if we're dead, that's what the afterlife is all about? Experiencing the memories of others. We can drop into story after story, forever.”

“I wouldn't want to drop into the books you read, Liam,” Victoria said from the other end of the bench. “I've had enough of zombies and scary stuff for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, they're not that bad. None of them really scared me. They weren't real, you know. This is real.” He laughed. “Not where we are now. I mean the world with barges and infected and ICBM's.”

“ICBM's,” he and Victoria echoed the letters.

They both leaned forward to look at each other across from Grandma. “The missile hit us. That's why we're dead,” he said with the sound of “of course” in his tone.

“None of you are dead.” The voice sounded electronic at first, but resolved into a man's voice. Like it was adjusting itself.

They all got up.

2

“Al!”

“Great-Grandpa? You're real?”

“Hiya Marty,” the man said. “Hi Liam.”

“He's not really Al,” Grandma offered.

“No, it's a convenient form so that I can communicate with you.”

“What do you look like, then?” Victoria chimed in.

Al smiled broadly. “You all love to ask questions.”

“You've been talking to my Grandma all this time and you haven't shown her what you actually look like?”

He put on a brave face, but he was terrified inside. Dealing with zombies was one thing, but interacting with ghosts was upping the “OMG” factor.

“I can see there's no use in continuing until I explain what I am.”

Liam nodded, as if that would force Al to continue down that line of thinking.

“I will tell you, and show you, but first I want you to take a short walk with me. Deal?”

Everyone agreed, but when he reached for Grandma to help her move, she had already started. She didn't need a hand. Her back seemed straighter, and thus she appeared taller. The hair remained white like the snow, but her gait suggested a much younger woman.

They walked around the pond below the waterfall. It appeared as a grotto of ferns, shrubbery, and exotic flowers. The water was clear and deep, and he could see to the rocky white bottom below the surface. A small creek flowed from the pond toward the cliff near the ocean.

“I've explained this all to Marty. This waterfall is a representation of how she sees my computer network. All the planets are linked on the waterfall like computers on the internet. Some stations are lit up, and some are dark. It all depends on a few factors I'll get to in a moment.”

"A computer system?" Marty asked quizzically. "This isn't outer space?"

"You'll see," Al assured her.

Liam was dizzy looking up at the tumbling water. He recalled a photo of Angel Falls in one of his school textbooks and imagined this was higher and wider than that one, but without any frame of reference to compare and contrast, he had no way to know. As they rounded the pool and approached the falling water, it became obvious the water was frozen—not moving.

“The water is moving, Liam. But it moves at Galactic Time, which is different than how you experience time.”

“It's amazing,” Victoria said, sharing his sense of wonder. She held his hand while pointing to everything, like a kid at the zoo. “Are we moving fast or does Galactic Time move slower?”

“GT moves at a glacial pace compared to how you experience time. It has to so that I can manage everything that needs...managing. I'm not all-powerful, you know,” he said while smiling at her.

“So what are you?” she countered.

“That's coming. Just a little bit farther.”

He led them to the edge of the waterfall. A rocky face sat off to the right side, and an inset door was apparently their destination.

“I've been in there,” Grandma said, possibly to calm everyone.

“Indeed, my dear woman. You have. She helped save you kids when you were sucked under that debris a couple of weeks ago. Did she ever tell you that?”

“No,” Liam said with understanding. “But I always wondered how that zombie swam up and pushed us to safety. That was you?”

“Oh, Al exaggerates. He did all the work. I was a bystander.”

They all arrived at the door. “Marty, you could run down a thief and still call yourself a bystander,” Al said with a healthy chuckle. “I always believed you were going to save the world. I think that day will come. But, more immediately, we talked about how you could survive the disease, didn't we.”

“You helped me,” she admitted, “along with God.”

“Yes, but God helps those who help themselves. And you three have been helping yourselves—I don't mean it like you've taken from others, I mean you've kept each other alive. Always looked out for each other, and the people you met along the way.”

“But I infected people,” Victoria said quietly.

“There are lots of carriers, my young friend. You mustn't fault yourself for what was done to you.”

“I...I killed people?”

“Not at all. You were used to spread the disease. At this point, I'd wager everyone has been exposed to it. And...once you found Marty.” He seemed to be building up to something, but he held it to himself.

He continued. “You have to understand this. I can't bring you to this place. You have to find it yourself. To do that, there must be three...um, let's call them inputs because I can't think of a parallel. Three people tied together in both proximity and through their emotions. You three have succeeded in that regard, where few others have even tried. Your love for each other has emotionally invested the three of you, and that energy is what has allowed Marty to open this door.”

The door was ajar by about six inches.

“That's where I helped control the swimming zombie,” she added. “There were blue dots and red dots, and such...”

“We just gave him a little nudge,” Al said while passing through the doorway. “But that's because there was only one of you. Now, we have the proper number.”

Liam walked into the room, feeling like he was in a dream. If he was dead, which was still a real possibility, he couldn't figure out why he put a dumpy-looking old computer on a table in the middle of the control room he now entered. It looked like it was about a hundred years old, and had a computer screen with plain green characters on a black background.

Unable to ignore it, and sure it was the answer to whether he was dead or alive, he walked right up to the terminal. A single line flashed patiently at the top of the screen. On. Off. On. Off.

“Welcome aboard.”

3

“This, my heroic trio, is the payback for all your recent suffering and trauma. It isn't actually the little computer you see here. This is just what Marty sees in her mind when she thinks about the word 'computer.'”

“Oh, Grandma,” Liam said with some humor. “You're way behind the times.”

"This is why the waterfall is representing all the computing power in this universe. It's hard for her to visualize such a complicated system without using cosmic terminology."

"That makes perfect sense." He turned to Grandma. "Computers aren't magic or outer-spacey. They're just a bunch of bits and bytes and hard drives..." In just a few words, he'd managed to hopelessly complicate things for her.

"Or, they could also be seen as one computer linked to a waterfall of other computers." Her imagination had built this place. He couldn't explain his feeling of disappointment. He imagined how fantastic it would have been to be dead and have the universe at his fingertips.

“So, how do we use this "waterfall" computer?” Liam said. Turning to Al, “Can we use this?”

“Yes. All three of you can.”

He re-oriented on the terminal. “How?”

“You three have to touch it. It's the final physical link which will confirm you three have access to what's inside. Marty often speaks of miracles. This is the miracle. You three are the first to figure it all out.”

Liam looked at the other two. Neither Grandma nor Victoria showed any recognition at what they'd done. Al seemed to respond to their doubt.

“Just touch the computer, please.”

Again, he looked at the others. Victoria remained still, but Grandma moved closer to the console. She reached out to touch it. “Al hasn't lied to me in all this time. I think we can trust him.”

“If it's good enough for Grandma, I'm in,” said Victoria as she, too, reached out for the computer.

Al stood off to one side, a kindly smile on his face.

“Well,” Liam said with a deep sigh, “if this is some kind of a trick, it's been pretty magnificent.”

“Not a trick,” Al said as Liam reached out his hand.

A series of words sounded in his head—like magic.

“System Boot: Standby for recognition sequence.”

It was a woman's voice. Friendly, but with a touch of a robotic cadence.

“Liam Peters: Uploading.”

A picture emerged showing Victoria through his own eyes, as if he were reliving a memory. He recognized the memory as it played on the screen. It was just after they'd escaped St. Louis, on the third day after the sirens. They had snuck away from Grandma, though she was sleeping only a few feet away on the other side of the large Poplar tree where they'd come to rest.

Liam was watching Victoria as she stood next to the tree. He knew they were having a conversation, but that aspect of this memory seemed to be secondary.

He could feel the emotion he was sensing at the time. His heart was beating like a race horse. His palms were sweaty because Victoria was boldly looking directly in his eyes.

“I was wondering if you could tell me more about the shadow government?” Victoria asked that question, knowing Liam would understand it was code for “kiss me you fool.”

In the memory, his heart was reaching an explosive crescendo. He was feeling excitement wrapped with abject fear. A fear on a different level than what he felt faced with all the zombies they'd escaped. He understood at some level this emotion was stronger than all those others.

And then he leaned in and kissed her passionately. It was their first kiss. It was the first time he'd kissed a girl. He could sense his emotion as it happened. Pure, amazing, joy.

Though she slept in the scene, the real Marty giggled with childlike delight.

The kiss lasted a long minute. His emotions toward Victoria were crushing him. Not love exactly, not yet anyway, but after all they'd been through he knew he would do anything to protect the new girl in his life. A promise he knew he'd kept since that kiss.

When they finished, he wanted to do it again immediately. Very badly. But Victoria had taken him in and held him close and whispered something in his ear. He admitted he'd forgotten all about it, as he was so overwhelmed by what had just happened.

“Thank you for giving me a reason to live.”

The memory ended, causing Liam to instantly miss the powerful emotions he'd just re-experienced. Would he ever have a similarly powerful emotion with Victoria?

I hope so. I love Victoria. I crave that emotion only with her.

His thoughts, translated to words, showed up as green text on the 8088 computer from the relic pile.

“Aww, Liam. I love you, too. I remember that moment like it was yesterday.”

His face burned red with embarrassment—Grandma just saw into his private thoughts—but he felt pride that he'd helped Victoria on that day and that they'd helped each other ever since.

The woman announced,“Status: Liam network is clean. One-half of pair-bond network established.

“Thanks. I think,” he replied.

Wait. Pair what?

“Martinette Peters: Uploading.”

The next memory was Grandma's. He recognized her features even though she appeared almost as young as him inside the memory. After a brief ride in an old car—the memory knew it as a 1926 Model T Runabout—Grandma sped up an alley until she arrived at her small garage. It was the same alley and garage at the home she'd lived in her entire life. The same one where he'd been staying this summer.

“No, please. Not this,” the real Marty in the room cried out.

Liam felt her fear.

“Marty, you must share this. Please,” said Al.

The memory never stopped. Liam wondered what could have his grandma so agitated. She was usually cool on the stool.

Driving faster than he ever imagined her, she slung the car around the corner of the garage and stood on the brakes. She was obviously showing off, though no one else was around. Liam felt the thump of something bang off the front. They all felt it. Grandma's emotions assigned pain to that bump.

Grandma whimpered for a moment but seemed to catch herself.

“What is it, Grandma?” Nothing about it made any sense. Did she run over her favorite bike? Did they have skateboards back then? He ran through his own garage, imagining what would make such a sound.

In the scene, young Marty froze as she climbed down from the driver's compartment. Something on the floor had caught her eye.

“Impossible. It can't be,” young and old Marty said at the same time. Liam felt the confusion, though he wasn't sure how, or why.

Young Marty stalked toward the front of the car—willing herself not to see what was there.

A tiny white shoe.

It broke Liam's heart to see the next few moments. Marty finally made it to the front—and saw her little girl sprawled out on the oily floor.

“I left her in her basket in the backyard so I could go for a joy ride. I was only gone for a few minutes. Baby Victoria always slept soundly. Something made her get up and go into that garage. I never had a clue she was there.” Her voice was weak, but she wasn't crying profusely, which was what he felt like doing now that he felt her internal pain.

“Status: Martinette network is clean. Master controller for triad established.”

Liam ignored the computer. “How did you go on, Grandma?”

“Prayer. Lots of prayer. It helped me, it really did.”

“I love you, Grandma,” Victoria said to her from across the terminal.

“I love you, too, Victoria,” she said with her wink.

Liam realized there'd always been a connection between them, even before he and her became more than just “apocalypse friends.” Grandma had a daughter again, in a matter of speaking.

“Victoria Hennessey: Uploading.”

Liam wondered what the system would show of the girl he'd come to know and love over the last several weeks. It appeared to be taking emotional memories from each of them.

Liam frowned when he saw the first images. He imaged it would be his face. Instead, it was a significantly older boy—a young man.

Victoria's emotions are a stormy sea upon seeing the face.

Love. Distrust. Confusion.

“Victoria I love you, let's seal the deal tonight.”

Fear.

Liam noted it was real fear, not the giddy fear he felt when trying to kiss her for the first time.

“I'm sorry Darby, you know my parents wouldn't approve,” she laughs nervously, desperate to get his train of thought on something else.

“But do you approve?” He smiles widely, but his eyes are cagey.

Something unsettling passes through Victoria's mind.

Exposure. Lost. Alone.

Victoria looks at her surroundings. She is in a truck with the young man, in a remote part of a dense forest.

“We passed the Ranger station back there a ways. Maybe we could get directions.”

She was near home, in Colorado, but she was also adrift in the middle of the ocean. She had made the suggestion, but her heart knew it would fall on deaf ears.

The next several minutes were a blur. Victoria purposely fogged over it.

Betrayal. Sin. Evil. Embarrassment. Fear.

Liam felt them all.

“Don't worry Vicky, now we'll be together forever. We're promised," he said while holding her hand and pointing to the Promise Ring he'd given her. "That's as good as married.” He took a deep drag on a cigarette in the darkness of the back seat of his big pickup truck. Her memory focused on the evil look in his eyes, revealed by that tiny red fire.

Again, Liam expected her to break down at the imagery, but as Grandma before her, she faced her memory with calm once she knew she couldn't control it.

The memory skipped to something else.

“What. The. HELL!”

In that flash, he saw his own face after he'd just run over Victoria's hand with Grandma's wheelchair. It was the first time they'd met. He secretly hoped her first emotion on seeing him would be true love, but what showed on the screen was much better.

It said, “Not Darby.”

The memories ceased as suddenly as they began. The computer was just an old box again.

The digital voice started up. “Status: Altered virus has been purged. Victoria network is clean. Remaining half of pair-bond network established.”

A second line was added to the green and black computer screen. Like the first, it sat near the top and flashed on and off in rhythm with its mate.

“Network: Access Pending. Physical terminal awaiting input.”

4

“This is the end, Marty, Liam, and Victoria. The end, for me.”

“You're leaving us?” Grandma replied.

“Well, I was never here,” he replied with a smile. “But you don't need me anymore. My role was to find an appropriate trio with the qualities necessary to unlock the mainframe. It requires a human pair-bond and a complimentary elder, or controller, to guide them. This is how the network was designed before it was corrupted. Three is an important concept in this computer system. First, your triad must open the gate—if we can call this place a gate—and then, after the pair-bond has produced a suitable offspring, a new triad is formed. The elder is replaced by the child.”

“But I have other elders,” Liam began. He didn't finish his thought because he couldn't be sure anyone was left alive.

“And so do I,” Victoria continued firmly.

“Of course. And if you had traveled with a different elder, this equation of emotional bonds might be different. I found Marty first because the Quantum Virus is both pure and mature inside her. That's why she could access her memory with such precision, and it's why she kept the two of you—and others—from getting infected by the corrupted version of the virus—the zombie plague, as you call it.”

“So, it's a helpful virus?”

Al looked at Victoria very seriously, as if deciding whether to respond.

“Only now, at the infancy of the medical advances of modern medicine and sub-atomic microscopy has humanity learned about this evolutionary virus. The most salient point with regard to Marty is that it requires approximately 100 years before it matures. For most of history, humans died before they were thirty...”

“Has it been around that long?” Liam asked. "Are you some kind of alien?"

"Are you?" Al shot back.

"What does that mean?" he replied.

“I'm its caretaker. I've been listening to this...system...for a long period of non-linear time. It has an underlying signal that calls out. It wants to be discovered.”

“This is weird,” Victoria whispered. “I'm not sure we're not dead,” she said, without humor.

“This is life, Victoria. The things that bring you together are...life. The sight of a man in uniform. The smell of a woman's hair. The firm embrace of a boy you favor,” he smirked at her. “These are the physical links. I'm also talking about the emotional bonds unique to humans. The timeless sadness of the loss of a family member. The undying memory of first love. Surviving trauma and rebuilding a life. The three of you are survivors, no doubt, but you are good survivors. You are agents of the light. Of what is right. I think you'd be shocked to know how rare that is.”

Liam's face had to be red.

First love.

He reveled in that statement while looking at the object of that love. The smell of her hair had been a powerful draw. It was one of the many exciting memories from their time in her dorm room. Something he hoped he would never forget.

Yet, something didn't add up. He was a survivor, and survivors don't take things on faith.

“You speak as if you aren't really here, but how are we talking to you? If we have access to the computer, can we find out where you are? Outside of this room.” It seemed as reasonable a question as one could ask, but he added, “Where are we, for real?”

“Ah, of course. You naturally want evidence. Doubting Thomas, as they say.”

He returned a blank look.

“I'll explain it to you if we get out of here,” Victoria advised with a little humor.

“Humanity has a dangerous edge. To reveal this terminal would be, by all indications, a death sentence. This is a conundrum I've been trying to solve for a long, long time. Imagine if arrows pointed to a secret location, like needles in the desert, and a team of your scientists arrived to study it. Knowing what you know, do you think this gift would be shared with others? Would it be preserved? Or...”

He paused for emphasis.

“Would it be corrupted?”

“It would have to be saved,” Victoria exclaimed. “We wouldn't destroy something so wonderful,” she said with too much doubt.

“My friends. The Quantum Virus was designed to make human beings whole. It could cure all disease. Reverse aging. It would enable you to live forever. But, scientists stumbled on a weakness in the design. Instead of letting everyone live forever, they self-selected the gift for themselves. For the rest of humanity, they used that weakness to reverse its effects...”

“My God,” Liam replied. “We did this.”

“They stay dead forever,” Marty continued, turning to Al. “You said these pour souls would stand around until the sun burned out.”

“There's that precise memory,” Al said with a brief laugh. “What should have been a gift has been turned into a curse. Your scientists tinkered, unable to find the source of the gift, but they've destroyed the wrapping paper.”

Liam sighed. A part of him wished he were dead. He sought escape from the responsibilities he'd been socked under. Caring for Grandma. Protecting her from a smorgasbord of scientists—

“Hayes knows!” he blurted.

A second later.

“But he's dead. Dang.”

“I bet Elsa knows. She seems to have her fingers in everything,” Victoria added.

"No. Not Elsa. It's Grandma Rose. That's the reason Elsa is after her. This has always been about her. Killing my family was supposed to draw her out. Hell, it almost did—she called me on my way to Cairo."

"What kind of stuff is your grandma into?" Victoria asked.

"I have no idea. I never imagined she'd be into computers and viruses, though."

"Be careful, Liam. I won't say if you're right or wrong, but I will say finding her will be hazardous to you. If any one of you falls, the access to the others will fall, too. Then, there's no telling who could gain access to this network."

He looked at Grandma anew. Keeping her alive was already difficult—now it was off the chain. She could die at any moment of "old age."

Al walked to the door out of the small room. The three of them were left at the ancient computer screen, which had reverted to a single line of code.

“You can ask the computer anything you want, but I have to warn you. The three of you are linked together. You have been given a gift—very close to what was intended when this system was designed. But it will protect itself, too. If people like Elsa capture and try to use you...well, I can't promise it will allow that.” He paused in thought, then seemed to want to wrap things up. “Marty, my dear. Our time is at an end. I shall truly miss you.”

“Well, OK. I guess I'll miss you. I miss the real Al dearly. Never doubt that,” she said seriously.

“I'm sorry once more for the innocent deception. I know I promised to show you my real form, but I'm afraid it isn't that interesting.”

He faded out with a flicker, like an old TV set turning off. At the last instant, he became a point of light and shot into the terminal. Lines of code scrolled down the old computer monitor for several seconds before it returned to one blinking cursor.

Sensing time was a factor, Liam followed him and hit the keyboard to get some answers. The first question was easy, and he keyed it in with the speed of an experienced gamer. While he waited for a reply, he keyed in a second question, hoping it could handle two threads at once. There were a million questions he wanted to ask it, but only two were necessary at that moment.

“Ah ha!” he shouted as the answers popped up.

“Liam. Grandma's gone.”

5

He woke up on the rocky shoreline of a muddy river. The sun beat down on him and the buzz of grasshoppers was the only sound on the air. There was a hand on his right arm as he lay there—he could feel it twitch.

A zombie!

He rolled away so the hand fell from him, and he was relieved it was only Victoria. She was in a deep sleep. Her hands and arms were twitching slightly like a puppy trying to run in a dream. He found the word he liked to describe it: cute. With effort he committed the sight to memory, intending to use it for his book.

The book I haven't even started.

With a light touch, he shook her arm to rouse her. In moments she raised her head from her rocky patch. To his amazement, they were soaking wet but weren't as dirty as he expected after a dip in the muddy river. Victoria's hairdo got the worst of it, as her headband was gone and her hair went looking for it.

“Can you believe this is all real?” he started. “Wait. You saw all that, right? The computer room? The waterfall? The ocean and stars?”

She studied him. He felt giddy when their eyes met. So many possibilities!

“Um, what are you talking about?” she said softly.

He turned to look at the bridge. Many of the beached barges on this side of the river had broken free and floated away. The barge they'd been on was nowhere in sight. Only a small piece of the towboat was visible underneath the broken girders, as if it sank and came to a rest on the bottom. The cargo barge—containing all the people in the beds—must have gone to the bottom as well. The old green bridge was missing one of its Missouri-side spans. As best he could tell, the ICBM came down through the trusses of the bridge, struck the concrete highway, then continued through to impact their boat. Since they were still alive, he assumed he and Victoria were thrown from the barge when it struck.

“We saw Grandma?” he said weakly, realizing he may have hallucinated the whole, wonderful meeting.

For many moments he watched her with a sinking thought he'd been dreaming. But the side of her mouth turned into a tiny smile...then exploded into one.

“Got ya!”

“Are you kidding me?” he said with mock anger. He shuffled over to her and they rolled together on the rocks and mud of the bank. It was unbridled relief after so much suffering and death, even though the thoughts of his mom and dad killed him. This—human contact and life—was what he needed more than anything in those seconds. Whatever came next would have to wait.

They wrestled for a minute until Victoria pinned him while sitting on his stomach. The rocks hurt his back, but he ignored the pain.

“So we're pair-bonded, huh?” she said with a coy smile. “The funky computer man said so.”

“I, uh, I, um.”

“Wow, you're sooo eloquent.”

He saw the kiss coming. She'd telegraphed it, and added smoke signals to be sure.

As she leaned down, something struck her on the head, and she bounced backward.

“Liam Peters,” a female voice said without emotion.

He hopped up to a crouch. Elsa—still in her tight-fitting uniform—had wet hair, too. Like she'd been in the river. It was hard to tell as her defensive skin wicked water. Her boots were soggy, though.

“Where's my daughter?”

He needed a moment to think, but his response flowed easily once he saw her.

“Little Debbie? I have no freaking clue. You nuked her!”

He turned to tend to Victoria, heedless of what Elsa had to say.

“You were supposed to get her to safety. It's the whole reason I let you go and you are alive, so where is she?”

“You've hurt my girlfriend you stupid bi—”

He turned back to sneer at her, but found a gun pointed in his direction.

“You recognize this?”

It was an old-looking handgun, but he knew it.

“That's mine.”

“I found this down on the St. Louis riverfront. Isn't that funny? Your mom knew it. I had her scared shitless on the way here that I had killed you and taken this for myself. I admit, that felt good.”

Elsa's laugh rubbed him raw, like a cat's tongue abusing his skin.

At the water's edge, with Victoria out cold but safe in his arms, he was once again faced with the prospect of losing her. He was almost indifferent to the dangers. So many, and all the time.

Though he was prone to jumping into things he didn't understand, this time, he knew what to do.

“God, if you've got one more for me...”

He picked up a rock of just the right size.

“You've already lost, Elsa. You. Your allies. Whatever you think is going to happen now, there are men and women across America willing to stand up and stop it. My mom and dad both did.”

“Ha! They're floating to the Gulf of Mexico. Who else ya got?”

“My grandma unlocked the Quantum Virus. I've been inside the system and I've seen what it is.” He'd seen a million movies with the next line. “If you kill me, you'll never find out.”

“Hmm, that is interesting. Hayes said this possibility existed and he had an in for getting to the core of that elusive supercomputer. I didn't believe him, of course.”

She looked at him, long and hard. Finally, she put her gun into a small pocket of her suit.

That was his moment.

6

The rock left his hand as she was looking down at her side to tend to her firearm.

On second glance, she was keying something on her arm…

The rock's trajectory was right on, and he timed it perfectly. His guardian angel was back! Or thousands of sessions throwing ball with Dad... It struck her above her temple. The impact startled her and she dropped the gun down the rock-strewn bank. Liam was already on the move.

Ignore the gun.

He saw the whole thing like he was in slow motion. If he went for the gun, he risked her getting there first or her jumping on him as he bent down to retrieve it. He would have done the same thing if their roles were reversed. The only chance he had was to dive on her and put her down. She seemed like a dainty woman. With a gash in her head.

He launched himself, intending to knock her off her feet. When he struck her suit, he was surprised that it seemed to deflect him. She went tumbling, but so did he.

A rock, pick one up!

He searched for a rock big enough to throw at her while she was on her back, but he was a few steps from anything useful. At a loss, he grabbed a handful of dry sand and threw it at her face.

She rolled over, shouting obscenities. He gained some satisfaction at her distress, but she lived up to her reputation by rolling to the gun while pretending to be out of commission.

She shrieked in anger and raised it. He had just enough time to get next to her before it went off. The sand affected her aim. He used the time to throw himself onto her gun arm—hoping to force her to drop it.

Once again he slipped on the strange suit, but his hands reached the gun—a normal gun—and together they held it as they rolled around on the rock, sand, and dirt.

“I'm going to kill you, kid. You and your girly are dead.”

“Victoria, help!” He had to hope she was coming to.

The gun went off as they struggled to control it. She was much stronger than he was. A fact he was quickly coming to appreciate.

“Ooh, you're a slippy one. And I'm the one wearing the suit,” she laughed, though she also sounded winded.

She tried to punch him in the jaw, but her aim was sloppy in the tussle.

The distraction of it made him lose his footing—he was between being on his knees and getting to his feet—and began to slip on the uneven surface. The gun was still in his grasp, but he was soon going to be at a severe disadvantage. If she maintained herself somewhat upright, he would be underneath her in moments.

He felt the rocks below his back. She made it to the crouching stance and had plenty of leverage to yank the gun from him.

No!

But simple physics beat him. Her strength helped end it that much faster.

“Nice knowing ya,” she said as she brought the gun to bear.

A flash behind her.

A loud grunt.

Someone brought a big rock down on Elsa's head...but in the fluidity of the battle, she'd moved, so the rock fell on her neck and shoulder. She replied with a wail and let go of the gun. She recovered from the surprise in seconds. It was enough time to see Victoria—blood on her head—hunched over, searching for another rock.

Elsa rolled a few paces away, always moving.

No choice. Get the gun.

He lunged for it. Time hung around his neck like kryptonite. He crashed to the rocks but soon felt the sand-covered gun in his hand. The weight of it rekindled countless outings with his father to shoot the gun now in his possession.

“I'm going to kill your girlfriend the second after I kill you. Put that in your stinkin' book!” Elsa launched herself at him.

Victoria fell to one knee. Hurt.

He fired in the same motion as aiming at Elsa's head. She wasn't a zombie, but her outfit made her immune to zombie bites, and maybe bullets. He wasn't taking any chances.

The first shot glanced off the side of her skull.

He was ready for it.

She was off her feet—springing at him with all she had left—and madly cursing.

He had time for only one more shot.

Aim for the eyes.

The little gun snapped once.

Elsa crashed into him, and they fell to the dirty bank together. She landed on top, taking them both into the water. She screaming in anger and madness, cursing while they thrashed together in the shallows. He was going to test his theory on whether he could best her in the water…

“Die you little punk! I'm going to kill you. Kill her. Kill grandma. I'm going to nuke your whole goddamn state!”

She was on top of him before he knew what was happening. His head dunked while she situated herself above him, but it came up when she solidified herself. She pulled him out so she could talk down to him.

“I'm so done with playing around,” she said breathlessly. One of her eyes was shut from his gunshot.

Victoria came tumbling into the water—jumping on Elsa's back and sending them both flailing into the water. He was pushed under by their combined weight.

When he surfaced, unencumbered, both women were screaming while splashing sideways in the knee-deep water. He took two steps and landed on top of Elsa. He grabbed her hair with both his hands and pulled with all he had left. Her screams went up a notch.

“You're both dead!”

“I don't think so,” he replied. Victoria used the distraction to stand and avoid Elsa's reach. As she got her bearings and saw what he was doing, she jumped on her as well. The combined effort kept her from finding her own feet, then she fell forward under the surface.

“Hold on!” he shouted.

He saw what was coming, and had a momentary lapse that almost gave Elsa enough wiggle room to escape.

I'm going to kill a person.

“We got her!” Victoria shouted.

Elsa was gyrating like a fish, but Liam used his anger at what she did to his parents to ensure his grip was unbreakable. Together they held the slick woman under the choppy water until it was clear she wasn't going to get back up.

Soon, their deep heaving breaths were all that remained for sound.

The water calmed.

Together they let her go, and she floated in the water. With great effort, he assisted Victoria back to the shore where they both fell heavily. He coughed out some lingering water while she hunched over to catch her breath.

Exhaustion overcame him and he fell flat.

“I guess prayer really does work,” he said to himself when he was finally able.

“I'd say that was all you,” Victoria said through her own exhaustion. She sounded happy. “You killed her.”

“I killed her?”

“We did it together,” she corrected. “And we should make sure she's really dead.”

A million zombies books would agree.

They pulled Elsa to shore and rolled her onto her back. As he looked at her pale face, he expected an explosion of blood and bone from where the bullet had struck, but it turned out to be a bloody eye and not much more. It reminded him of another shooting victim. The thief that pretended to be a police officer. Someone had shot that man dead just as he was about to injure him. At the time, he assumed it was another kindly man in a window.

But now, seeing the small caliber gun's damage on Elsa's face, he was sure he knew who had saved his life that day.

Victoria plopped down, then patted the ground next to her, urging him to sit.

“You're injured...uh, again,” he said with all sincerity.

“She rang my bell, but I'm getting used to it.”

“Lucky for me, huh? A few more seconds and I'd be floating down the river...” he sighed, “with my parents.”

“I'm sorry. Really, really sorry. That was a horrible thing to do to your mom and dad.”

“I could cry, but I don't have time.” He pointed to the wreckage of the bridge on the one side, and the smoke drifting up from Cairo across the river. “She's the first person—real, live, person—I've killed since the sirens. I can't believe how empty I feel. I should be dancing for joy.”

“You get used to it.” Unlike him, she'd already killed more than one “real” person.

She'd been distracted back at her dorm room—leading to their separate journeys to this patch of shoreline—and he wondered if the weight of killing had caught up to her. Like those soldiers who get post-traumatic stress syndrome.

But she didn't elaborate. Instead, she leaned back onto her elbows, like she was having a pleasant day at the beach. “My head is killing me. I think I need to take a little nap.”

“But we have to rescue Grandma. Elsa said her agent has her. Over there,” he said while pointing to Cairo.

“Never make it. Bridge is out, and we'll never swim directly across this fast-moving river unless we run miles upriver first. I'm not feeling like a run or a swim at the moment, either.” She held her hand on her bloody head to staunch the wound.

The rattle of gunfire was continuous on the far side of the river. Through the fleet of barges parked up and down both sides of the river he watched as a ferry captain ran his ship ashore at the southern tip of the town. Military vehicles piled on, along with what he hoped was a suitable contingent of soldiers and other survivors from the town. While he was conducting his failed rescue of the sleepers in the boat, someone was getting it done over there.

“At least they're getting out.” He pointed to the ferry.

“Maybe Grandma's on it?”

“I don't know. I wish we could ask the Quantum computer.”

When he heard himself ask the question, he tried to access it by thinking of it. He didn't know how else to do it. Though nothing happened, he had a sense he was on the right track.

“Maybe it only works when Grandma is around?”

“Oh. You mean she's moving away from us?”

Victoria grabbed his knee, pulling him close so they sat hip to hip.

“We're alive. Thanks to you. She's alive, too. No one is going to hurt her. She's too valuable.” She faced him, though blood ran from a small gash above her ear. “If she's being held prisoner by the most powerful government agency left, I'd say, in a weird way, she's safe for now, you know? Liam, we know what we have to do. Al told us. We have to go find where that real computer is running.”

“And what will that tell us?”

“Who's behind all of this. Whoever made that virus obviously has access to advanced technology. Maybe there's some biotech firm that discovered the cure to Cancer or whatever, and they're sitting on that cure because it accidentally cured all other diseases. Maybe they wouldn't want to cure everything at once? Al said as much.”

He admired her spirit.

“Wow. I thought I was the one who cooked up conspiracies,” he said with a chuckle.

“I saw what you asked the computer,” she said while smiling.

The most important question was one he'd thought up in the moment. He wanted to know where Elsa's greatest enemy—his Grandma Rose—was hiding. Now that Elsa was dead, he wasn't going to assume everything would suddenly return to peaceful mode. The zombies were out there, getting stronger day after day. The Operation Renew convoy was still heading for St. Louis, with all the military units left from the East Coast along with millions of survivors. Elsa said she was in line to become president of the United States. That's why she wanted Grandma Rose out of the way. But he had to suspect she was more involved with the virus itself.

“Where's my Grandma?”

“Not that one,” she said with bright eyes and a smile.

“I asked it where your parents are hiding.”

“The answer was the same for both, wasn't it?”

“Pretty close. Both are in Colorado.”

“If they have Grandma, maybe it will help to be so far away from her. That way they can't make her operate the Quantum computer and tell them where we are. Or where it is. They'll never figure out where we went.”

He wasn't so sure. Drones hovered above the water, like they were lost. If Elsa was dead, maybe it was over.

“What do you think Al meant by non-linear time? Is that like time travel, or something?” he asked, while watching the water.

“I have no idea. Hans seemed to think this all began during the Spanish Flu in nineteen-whatever a hundred years ago. That seems to add up in a strange way. I guess we'll know when we find it.”

Colorado, here we come.

Even as he sat there thinking, the drones seemed to perk up. They all began going upriver, out of Cairo. He turned that way to see a gigantic cloud of dust envelope the shore up that way. Like a herd of cattle arriving at the watering hole.

“Liam, look. I saw that cloud on the way in.” Victoria pointed the way he faced. “Come on. We have to go.”

She took off up the bank—in the opposite direction. The drones weren't just going up the river; they were also coming across the waterway. Toward him.

No, toward their dead leader.

“I wish I could kill you over and over,” he said to her body.

Then, as with so many of his adventures, he ran. He couldn't help watch Victoria's fancy jeans as she scrambled up the rocky shore toward the treeline.

“Eyes forward, mister,” she laughed, somehow knowing he was already drawn that way.

He felt hope return. He had his running partner again.

Epilogue

Twenty-one days since the sirens.

Lana woke up with a wet cough. She'd washed ashore after falling in the river tied to her dead husband. The very thought of it made her shiver, no matter the heat of the new day.

The start of her journey was chaotic as she and Jerry floated between the parked barges or got sucked underneath them. The current carried them ever downriver, ensuring all she needed to do was hold her breath and keep kicking her feet. Soon the barges of Cairo fell far behind.

Eventually, her hands broke free of the zip ties. That's when the real fight began—against the current. She paddled until nightfall, unable to get out of the main channel. Once it got dark, and exhausted beyond words, she gripped some driftwood and let the river take her where it would. Sleep finally took her—until she ran aground.

“Liam,” she thought. “Please be OK.”

When she fell from the barge—out of his sight—she fought to keep her distance from “it” as the dead man flailed in the water with her. The thing that her husband had become—a zombie—had no traces left of the loving person he once was. The father of her only son.

Elsa had them together in that speedboat all the way from St. Louis, and that was enough of a hell for her. Jerry had been chained to the decking, but his vacant eyes and mud-stained and blackened skin were haunting echoes of his former life. She desperately wanted to know how it was possible to dig up a dead man and bring him back to half-life, but she had no interest in talking to Elsa. Several volunteer Polar Bears had helped her get back to her son in Forest Park, only to be greeted in an ambush by the crazy woman and her strike team.

Those four men and women were dead because of her.

Liam is going to die because of me too. I lost him.

“Cut yourself some slack,” she argued with herself, “keeping tabs on Liam was never easy, even before this sickness struck.” In fact, she and Jerry had spent the better part of the last six months arguing with him over his behavior. While Liam did fine in school, he often blew off homework so he could hang out with his friends. Computers. Tablets. Texting. Every distraction she could think of that drove a mother insane—he was into it. Everything but school work.

At least he wasn't into drugs.

That gave her some comfort, but online games were their own kind of addiction. The event that drove Liam out of the house involved gaming—he'd spent the night at a friend's house, but neglected to tell anyone where he'd gone. After a night of alternately crying in fear that he'd hurt himself and screaming in anger that he did it on purpose to hurt them, she and Jerry were ready for war. When Liam walked through the front door the next morning as if nothing had happened, she snapped.

They grounded him. Took away his laptop. Tried to make his life miserable. His response was that he'd go to the library and play his game. No big deal.

After much yelling and anger, she “woke up” at the back window of the house holding his laptop. She'd been thinking about throwing it through the glass. His apparent lack of concern over anything made punishing him impossible.

Getting him out of her sight was the only solution. She was ever thankful Jerry handled the logistics with Grandma Marty so that she could stay out of it. Her love was absolute, of course, but her anger flared up from depths previously unknown. She wanted him gone—just for a while.

And she'd felt guilty from the moment he'd walked out.

Day after day she argued with Jerry to let him come back. And each time he would respond that his time away would do everyone some good. Liam would realize what it was like to live without mom and dad to cater to his every need, and they would get some much-needed peace and quiet for the summer. They could recharge batteries for the start of school in the fall.

She wanted to go visit him at Grandmas, but Jerry insisted that would only diminish the punishment. He cut a deal with her that they would go see him on his birthday.

The sirens killed the world before that meeting could take place.

So much time wasted on arguing.

The disputes with Liam were trying enough, but she'd also argued too much with Jerry. Their disagreement over “visiting rights” with Liam had driven a wedge between them. The crevice widened after it became clear Liam and Grandma had gone out into the city. It all happened because she'd sent him away.

“I'm so sorry Jer. I wasted our last days together being mad at you. I should have spent my time telling you how much I loved you.”

Their relationship was more a brushfire of tension and small arguments than all out war, but maybe that would have been better. One big battle to get it all over and done with.

The weak consolation was that she'd forgiven him before he passed away from his infection. That was too late to matter, though.

And here at her rock, she was utterly alone. There was no sign of Cairo. Not even any barges. She wanted to believe Liam could have survived Elsa, but she was completely in control. It was unlikely he did.

“I'm going to find out,” she said to the water.

She cautiously rose to her feet and took a few tentative steps through the shallow water near the bank. Something pulled hard at her right leg, making her hop in surprise.

“Oh no,” she said as she remembered what was attached to her.

The rope was longer than it seemed while they were swimming. About ten feet by the looks of it. Jerry's leg was tied on the other end, and his body had wedged into some larger rocks just out of the water. She figured wave action pushed him out.

“You have to do it, Lana.” The words gave her courage as she got close enough to touch the blade in his side. With the burly knife, she could put the zombie down for good.

She gripped it and her heart rumbled to life. Her breathing increased, and she lost herself in tunnel vision.

“He's already dead, Lana.”

The face was hidden—a fact for which she was glad—but it seemed to be sleeping on a big rock. His skin had cleaned up considerably in the water. The dirt and discoloration of the grave had been washed away. Dirty or not, it could flip over and bite her in two seconds. She steeled herself for the final act of their marriage.

“I love you, Jerry. Goodbye.”

She was pulling at the knife when the zombie spoke.

“I love you, too.”

###

E.E. Isherwood’s other books

Minus America – After an event sweeps from coast to coast, nearly everyone in mainland USA disappears. Only piles of clothes remain. Can the last Americans survive long enough to learn how it happened? Five books.

Impact
(co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books.

Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood
Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens
My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!

SINCE THE SIRENS BOOK 7

Zombie Escape
Since the Sirens
Book 7

© 2018 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.

Chapter 1. Wrong room

The bootheel region of Missouri. Day 20 since the sirens ended the world.

Liam and Victoria were on foot and on the run—again—from the horde of infected. The billowing cloud of dust over the tree line to the north indicated the size of the pursuit. His girlfriend's running shoes ahead of him only created tiny puffs, and he wondered how many zombie feet stomped across the Missouri farmland behind them.

“Liam, keep up!” Victoria cried out with concern.

He'd been falling behind for a while. The menacing cloud was one thing, but he'd also begun to absorb the fact his mother had been killed by a zombified version of his father when they both fell in the river. Even if he didn't see her get bitten, he felt in his heart she was dead. His usual optimism had been chased down and consumed, just as he was in danger of having done to him if he didn't keep moving.

“You won't lose me. Not again.” He tried to sound positive, though he felt the opposite.

“Darned tooten' you won't,” Victoria replied.

The landscape didn't help his mood. They were in the middle of a vast piece of farmland not far from where they emerged from the Mississippi River. The ground was perfectly flat, and he saw for miles in every direction. The light-colored soil was loose between the endless rows of the small, emerald green plants they trampled, like it had recently been plowed.

They'd been running at a fast jog for several miles, but Victoria wouldn't slow down. After swimming out of the river, he felt refreshed by the cool water, but it didn't take long before the heat and humidity of the afternoon made him hot and sticky. He'd hoped she would voluntarily rest, but he couldn't wait another minute.

“I think I need to stop,” he said with disappointment. For a moment he thought she might think less of him for taking a break, but she wasn't like that. Mostly, he knew it wasn't a good idea to stop when the zombie threat was so close.

She came to a halt and put her arms on her hips as she looked to the next tree line. After breathing several deep breaths while hunched over, she turned to face him. “We can stop, but only for a minute. They're still back there.”

She fell to her knees in between two rows of the mystery crop. He hunkered down in front of her. If he got on his belly he would be invisible to any onlooker. A great proposition if he had the energy to get back up. As it was, he thought he'd have trouble regaining his feet.

“Do you think they're really following us?” he asked.

Her face remained grim as she looked to the horizon from just above the plants. “The dust is getting closer. That's all I know for sure.”

He didn't really expect her to answer otherwise. Elsa Cantwell had said a horde of zombies had been walking from St. Louis, and they had a special ability which made them particularly useful to her. Unlike the other horde attacking Cairo from Chicago and Indianapolis, the ones from St. Louis were stuck on this side of the river, in Missouri. Elsa never revealed what would happen to the zombies once they arrived because he'd killed her thirty minutes ago.

“I'm glad she's dead,” he said between his heavy breathing. “She had to pay for killing my mom ... and dad.” He'd seen his father's grave back at Camp Hope. If Elsa had told the truth, she dug him out of the ground, reanimated him—or maybe he'd become a zombie underground already—and then forced him to attack his mom while he watched. It helped him immensely to think of Elsa as the monster that arranged those events, so her death didn't feel as sickening to him.

“Liam,” Victoria said softly while sliding closer to him. Close enough to put her hand on his arm. “I'm so sorry again about your mom and dad. That was totally awful what Elsa did to them. But look at me--”

He looked into her eyes.

“You did the right thing. You HAD to kill her. She was a murderer, for sure, and I think that was the least of her crimes. When she attacked us at the waterfront, she intended to kill us both. That's called self-defense and that's totally normal.”

She steadied her breath before she could continue. “In fact, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I don't think it matters at this point.” She giggled, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “Did you know even your little old grandma killed someone in self-defense recently?”

She meant it as a wild revelation, but his face showed no surprise.

“You knew?” she asked.

“Not until I saw Elsa in the water with that wound to her eye,” he replied. “It looked the same as the crook Grandma shot while I was knocked out on the street that day. If things had happened differently, I might have never known,” he said while testing laughter. “How did you find out?”

“Oh, us girls talk, you know?” She smiled broadly, searching his face for understanding.

“I see how it is.” His heart was broken but he made a best effort to give her a cheerful grin. Deep down, he thought he could wallow in his despair and she wouldn't be critical of him, but they were in the middle of a field with zombies bearing down on them, and that wasn't the time to play the victim.

“Do you see anywhere we can get safe?” he remarked as he lifted his head over the rows. A light green truss bridge was miles to the left of them. Twinkles of sunlight reflected off hundreds of cars parked just short of the bridge, and in the fields next to it. People abandoned them, it appeared, so they could walk into Illinois and try to find safety in Cairo. He thought back to his neighbor's story of people hiding in their cars at roadblocks and bottlenecks on the highways and was ready to suggest they turn that direction to find an open vehicle.

She looked the other way. “There.”

Her finger marked a structure in the distance.

Do they head to the lone farmhouse and move away from the zombies, or risk getting closer to the zombies but have all those cars to search?

He knew what she would say.

2

Before they got up from their hiding spot, he noticed a shirtless man running along a tree line far across the field closer to the bridge than the house. He was conspicuous because he was going toward the approaching dust cloud, rather than away—like a normal person.

“You coming?” She grabbed his arm and pulled him up but seemed to notice he was fixated on the running guy. “See something?”

The runner was unsettling, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Rather than frazzle her nerves further, he kept it to himself.

“Nothing but that gigantic cloud of death,” he said with dry sarcasm, and a smile.

“I know, right? It's huge. I can only imagine how many people are in it.”

He wondered about that. How many people could be in it? Elsa said the horde was pulled to Cairo using some kind of mind experiment being run on those people in the hull of the barge they'd just escaped. It was struck by the non-nuclear ICBM, killing all onboard and tossing him and Victoria from the deck as the explosion took place. If Elsa was telling the truth, they were the instruments that sucked in the zombies from cities to the north. He saw the hordes infiltrate Cairo with his own eyes. A number he couldn't quantify—maybe millions. A similar number could have come from St. Louis.

If there were millions—even tens of thousands—no car, farmhouse, or armored tank would be enough to survive them out here in the open. They could surround them and wait forever for them to come out.

He ran with his doubts almost all the way across the field. The threat from behind was foremost in his mind, but he also saw the farmhouse as another potential trap. All it was lacking was the word, “safe” spray-painted on the front door.

“Hold up a minute,” he said when they were a couple hundred yards away. “When I was in the city by myself I did something dumb and got trapped. It was an innocent-looking building, a lot like this one.” He pointed to the farmhouse. “I'm not ... I'm not sure we should go in there, now that I see it.”

She faced the building and seemed to think on it. “We have to trust someone. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're really after you.” She laughed on it.

“Yeah, well, how many paranoid people do you know who have seen the things we have? Grandma has gotten us into a lot of trouble, you know. I wouldn't be surprised if Elsa herself walked out that front door.” He, too, was laughing, but there was a kernel of truth there. Nothing had been normal since he left Grandma Marty's house. He tried to count the days, but he couldn't do it. He figured they'd been fighting zombies for about three weeks.

“Oh, so this is Grandma's fault?” Her smile was playful.

He sighed, knowing he'd been beaten. “No, of course not. I just mean with Hayes, the National Internal Security a-holes, and all that. You know I don't blame her for all those things. Everything I've seen and done has left me with few people I trust with my life.”

“Am I one of them?” she asked in a sly voice.

“Come on, you know that I trust you, absolutely.”

“All right, then. Trust me when I say we have to get inside the house.” She pointed behind her. “We need food, water, and maybe ten minutes of peace and quiet. Not that I expect any of those things. I'd settle for just one. But we'd get none of those searching the cars because the zombies are too close.”

To make her point, a few leading wisps of dust blew by.

“We should go to the house?” He was being deliberately unhelpful, though in a playful way. He felt the house was dangerous because it was unknown but admitted the time for heading to the parked cars had passed them by. Whatever was coming under the screen of that dust had gotten a lot closer and showed no sign of slowing.

A distant howl-man or animal, he couldn't tell-came on the wind, from the north.

“What are we waiting for,” he jested as he motioned for her to continue keeping the pace.

The little Ruger pistol was uncomfortable in his waistband as he jogged. He'd gone back and picked it up at the river bank after putting Elsa out of his misery. It gave him one last look at the woman who'd given them so much grief-and for such a stupid reason. Whatever threats were ahead, the gun might help. He only had three shells left in the mag which would be about as effective at stopping the zombies as cursing.

Unless we use it to kill ourselves.

He frowned as he ran, disappointed that was where his mind took him. The thought came from a movie he once watched with his dad. The heroes made it through two hours of hell and were only feet away from salvation when they decided, as a group, to commit suicide. It left his dad yelling at the screen at how stupid it was. For him, he didn't feel the anger as much as confusion. He believed he would rather use those bullets on the bad guys-no matter how ineffective-than turn it on his friends. Die fighting, and whatever. But suicide? He'd seen enough of that already.

Not on my watch.

He concentrated on the young woman running ahead. Victoria's figure was, uh, very distracting. She'd been wearing her new jogging shoes, long jeans with fancy stitching on the back pockets, and a black tank top. Everything was soaked with dirty water from their swim in the Mississippi, and her blue and pink shoes and lower pantlegs were covered in dust and mud, making it appear like her legs came right out of the soil. Nonetheless, her shape gave him something to take his mind off his burning lungs and tired legs.

He also daydreamed about their time together in her dorm room.

Somewhere during the run, the crops changed from the Irish-green plants to small stalks of corn. The overall landscape remained the same, however. Flat fields for miles and miles, with narrow rows of trees that seemed to mark boundaries far out there.

He was lost in thought when she abruptly stopped, and he almost smacked into her attractive pockets.

“Sorry,” he said as he pushed off her backside.

“No you're not,” she replied with a tired giggle.

They were just a few feet from the mile-long gravel road as it met the tree-lined yard nearest the house. A rocky driveway circled the structure, but he had trouble seeing what was back there due to some large shrubs.

They both needed a few minutes to cool down from the run and he used every foot of the front lawn to catch his breath. He made himself stop looking at Victoria and concentrate on the porch of the old farmstead as they approached. The wrap around sitting area was covered by an overhanging roof, as if the house kept its arms wrapped around it for protection.

“Do you hear music,” he asked as straining to hear. Between the racket of the zombies and his own heavy breathing, it was hard to tell.

“You're nuts, Liam. I only hear them.” She pointed backward.

“Yeah, I guess.”

The two-story farmhouse looked about a hundred years old, though it and the grounds had been well-maintained. When he was close to the house he finally saw around the shrubbery. A couple of large green tractors sat on a gravel lot between the house and a modern-looking outbuilding with a couple large white garage doors. A few ancient oak trees dotted the yard and provided shade for the home. The house, trees, and outbuilding came across sort of like an island surrounded by miles and miles of flat fields.

He looked behind and realized Victoria called it right.

“We're here with no time to spare,” he said. “I'm glad I listened to you.”

“Aw, shucks. I wish I had my phone with me. I'd love to get a recording of you saying that.” She smiled and had a flirty twinkle in her eyes.

He was flush from running so long in the hot sun, but he felt his cheeks burn hot with emotion. She successfully kept him moving in the right direction and had taken his mind off Mom and Dad at the same time. He wanted to lay down and mourn their loss, but that had to wait. Victoria's joke reminded him how much he counted on her to lift his spirits in these terrible times. She did that when he found out his dad died the first time, and she'd do it now, for his mom.

He considered professing his love for all that she brought into his life, but the pressure of the moment kept him from doing so.

“I guess I'm glad my phone was toasted, too,” he said with a sarcastic laugh, “or you'd have some real leverage over me.”

“Oh, I don't need that. Trust me,” she said matter-of-factly before turning to him and giving a playful wink.

His heart was smitten by her suggestive words, but he didn't have time to press the issue. They ran up the steps and halted at the front door, followed a second later by a whirling stream of dust.

A small sign next to the door said they'd arrived at, “Winter's Sage Clinic, Roger Wilder, M.D.”

“We're in luck,” Victoria said. “They'll take care of us at a clinic.”

He was more focused on what was behind them. The cloud had already blotted out the bridge and most of the field they'd just crossed. Whatever was going to happen next would start with a knock.

He let Victoria have the honors.

3

“Go away!” A female voice called from the other side of the portal.

“We need help,” Victoria yelled. “The zombies are coming.”

“They're already here,” he mumbled under his breath.

Victoria gave him a knowing look.

“Please,” she shouted.

Now the distinct sound of zombies yelling, moaning, and groaning arrived on the wind. They sounded far away, but it fast became constant. Up until that moment he hoped and prayed whatever was causing that cloud was anything but zombies. Now there was no denying it.

“Tell her she'll need help. We have a gun,” he said quietly.

She used his words, but the reply wasn't what they expected.

“We? I can let you in, but you can't bring in any guns.”

“Oh, hell no--”

“Liam. What are we supposed to do? Run?”

“Maybe we could hide in that building.” The tan outbuilding was about half the size of the house, and he imagined it might be a little stronger than the wooden structure. At least there were no windows.

They discussed their options privately for a minute before the voice called to them again. “That's our offer. We don't want guns.” She emphasized the word we, like it was special.

Yells came from behind and they kept getting closer.

Victoria held out her hands, palms up, in the sign of “I don't know what to say.”

In reply, he held up one finger and sprinted down the length of the porch, hopped off the end, and went around the corner. While trying to avoid the windows on that side of the house he stashed the gun in a leafy green bush. To throw the occupants off his trail, he continued to run down the side of the house and go around back. He didn't study the outbuilding or the parking area for the tractors and his only delay was when he tripped over the edge of a gigantic blue tarp lying over a small mound.

“Liam, don't be that guy,” he said under his breath as he got back to his feet.

He ran for the far side of the house and continued into the front. When he got back to the front porch, he came up behind Victoria because she was still looking the other way.

“Hey,” he shouted.

She jumped, startled, and turned around. “Oh my Gosh!”

“Sorry,” he replied. “I had to take care of something.” He took Victoria in his arms and whispered in her ear. “We only had three rounds left, anyway. I hid the gun in a bush on the side of the house with the tractors.”

They separated.

“We agree. No guns!” Victoria shouted, as the noise behind them had continued to grow. Individual groans had morphed into one long engine-like hum.

No response.

“We said no guns! We got rid of it.”

Still nothing.

“What did I say wrong?” she asked him.

Liam shrugged. They stood there for a few seconds and he heard music again. He was about to make a comment about it when she yelled.

“I said we have-” she began in a loud voice, but the door opened and surprised them both. A gun-barrel poked out.

“-no guns.” Her voice trailed off.

“We're unarmed,” Liam added. “Seriously.”

The door swung open, inviting them in.

A young teen boy in a black cowboy hat kept a small shotgun trained on Liam as he made room for Victoria to follow. In moments, the door was shut, the noise outside had been reduced, and they could breathe with relief they weren't left outside for dead.

Victoria raised her hands, so he did the same.

“We're not a threat. We're the good guys,” he offered.

“I'll be the judge of that,” said a woman across the room. She, too, was armed with a shotgun though hers was much larger and looked comparatively more threatening than the boy's, even from so far away.

“My son will show you a seat,” she said stiffly. Her shotgun directed them to a fancy loveseat in the middle of the room. It was part of an expensive-looking and very clean sectional sofa-set. It directed the focus of the living area to a monster-sized flat-panel television hung from the far wall. It wasn't what he expected of the old house.

The woman was older, in her fifties he guessed, and dressed a lot like he imagined country folk: brown cowboy boots up to the knees of her blue jeans, frilly denim shirt, and work gloves. She had jet black hair cut super short and her face was round and kindly, but she had dead blue eyes which he recognized in survivors who had spent too much time around zombies.

“What are you doing here? You recruitin'? Lookin' for some help? We're shut down until this storm blows over.” She appeared to be talking directly to him.

“Help, yes,” Liam replied. “I'm, uh. I mean we aren't from around here. We got separated from our friends and my great-grandma in Cairo.” He threw in his grandma because it might make them seem less frightening. The woman was obviously protecting her son.

Their captor stood by a rocking chair while the young boy hovered somewhere behind them.

“Ma'am, they're almost here,” the boy called in a timid voice.

“I know. Not much to be done about it.” Then she looked at Liam. “You aren't here for any other reason? You know what we do here?”

He did a quick scan of the interior of the home to see if he could answer her question. It looked like any number of houses owned by family and friends. Though the exterior was ancient, the furniture, art, and the appliances he could see in the kitchen all reminded him of home. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

He tried to relax as he spoke. “I'm just here to protect Victoria and me from that horde.” She squeezed his hand, making him turn to her. A quick smile and a glance at her crucifix, and he felt much better. He'd discovered that silver cross pendant helped to calm him when he got nervous around people. It worked when he'd first met her, and he'd been doing it ever since.

The woman seemed relieved at his reply, which he took as a good sign. She nodded and smiled to the boy behind him. That also seemed encouraging.

“Glad you aren't with the recruiters. Them folk do some good work against them zombies, but they ain't getting my Russ.”

She pointed to Liam still on the couch. “Will you help my son at the front door? And you stay right there, m'kay?” she added as she turned to Victoria.

Victoria let go of his hand and he got up to walk back to the door.

“I hid my gun,” he admitted to the woman. “I think there's still time for me to grab it, so we can help protect you.” They were clearly going to put him to work on the most dangerous point of the house, but if that was the price of admission he was willing to pay it. He had a chance to help these people and protect his girlfriend.

The cloud loomed large out the front windows, but it wasn't quite on top of them. He figured he could run to that bush and be back well before the dust reached him.

Liam winced when something hard smacked the small of his back.

“Hey!” he yelped.

“Sorry, kid,” the woman cooed softly behind him, “I can't take any chances with your kind. Just keep walking, or I shoot.”

The boy ahead of him opened the door and the woman's shotgun shoved him right out onto the front porch. Only after he was outside-and facing the arriving horde-did he think to yell to Victoria.

The door slammed as he yelled for her.

“Liam!” He heard her call his name, but it was hard to hear over the impending storm.

Zombies emerged from the leading part of the cloud and they were close.

4

Panic flooded into his bowels and he almost did the cartoon version of hopping one foot to the other with indecision. Zombies were near, and Victoria continued to shout from inside, but he had no illusions he had a chance against two shotguns.

“Run!” he said loudly to himself.

Since he'd already taken one lap around the house, he sprinted in the direction of the bush where he'd stashed his gun, but at the end of the porch he paused. Unlike most prior engagements with large masses of the infected, this one had no runners out in front. The line was uneven, certainly, but it was as if an entire stadium of attendees agreed to walk as fast as they could over the field and toward the house. He could only guess where the line ended, but they were spread across most of the large fields to the east of the house-toward the river.

He plumbed his experience with them as he hovered on the edge of the porch. If they were only walking, he could probably outrun the whole lot of them. But he'd have to leave Victoria behind. After so much effort to find her over the past few days, and soaking in an hour of her positive energy, he knew he couldn't let her go even for a little while.

He scanned the property. The tractors figured prominently, but he had no idea how to get one started. There was more farm equipment and maybe a storage tank in the trees on the far side of the outbuilding, but that didn't look like anything useful to him, either. Only the outbuilding itself seemed to offer an alternative to the main farmhouse, but he'd take a big risk running in that direction if there was no way in.

“Yeah, these folks seem like they'd leave the doors unlocked,” he said in jest.

There was no time for mistakes, so he decided to stay close to Victoria.

He jumped off the porch and looked for a way into a basement or side window, but that would open the way for zombies to follow him. He needed something higher, so he looked to the roof because he remembered seeing two window boxes sticking up from the shingles.

The lowest point of the roof was right above the edge of the porch and he thought he might be able to reach it. He only needed something small to stand on.

His palms became greasy with sweat as the zombie noises intensified. His heartbeat was thumping as fast as it did when he was running, even while he stood there doing nothing.

“Focus!” he said to himself.

There was a small decorative barrel on the porch which the owners had used as a planter and it appeared to be the height he needed. He got back on the porch and snuck by the front windows to avoid detection, then dragged the planter over the wooden planks for about twenty feet. With a firm push, it tipped over and fell off the edge to the gravel below. A quick hop down and he was able to right it.

A howl of anger pierced the generalized din. They were nearly there.

“I hope none of you can climb.”

In moments he stood on the barrel and extended his arms.

He was about a foot below the edge.

“Please God, help me fly.” He echoed a prayer Grandma Marty had used in a previous tight scrape. He ran through that hailstorm of bullets in the Arch lobby and survived, but that seemed easy compared to the threat coming down on him at that moment.

He hopped a bit to test his plan. His balance on top of the barrel was precarious and his half-jump made the barrel wobble. It remained upright as he came back down, but now he was freaking out about his chances. One look at the front lawn said his window of survival was rapidly closing.

The zombies didn't run, but he was sure they saw him. Dozens headed right for him with their arms held out in the, “me want blood,” pose.

“One more time. This is for the final play of the Super Bowl.” He turned to his announcer voice. “It's fourth and long. Liam Peters has the ball. He needs a touchdown ... ” His voice trailed off as he looked up at the edge of the roof, visualizing what he needed to do.

Jump. Hold. Pull.

He squatted down and felt the barrel shift underneath him.

Why didn't I make sure it was stable?

So many variables. So little time.

He sprang with everything he had. The barrel held until the last instant, but then it moved and tipped.

It happened like a silent film in his head. He watched as his two hands reached upward and passed the chipped paint on the side of the roof's support. When they were positioned properly he attempted to grab the rough edge of the shingles. There was a very narrow channel along the edge-probably to prevent water from dumping on anyone walking onto the porch.

In his film, his fingers gripped that edging with a vise grip.

But the production wasn't totally silent. The dry wooden barrel made a crunch sound as it fell sideways on the rocks.

“Get up there!” he shouted to himself.

He pulled for a moment until he felt something touch his pant leg.

“Aww shit!” slipped out as he pulled his legs as high as he could.

An image popped in his head. Something he couldn't have shut out if he tried. A recent episode from his high school. An event he really didn't need to think about, involving his gym teacher recording stats for each student as part of a national fitness evaluation. There were many variables they chronicled including distance running, long jumping, and for whatever reason they wanted to know how long students could “plank.” But all that was secondary to his least favorite category on the chart: pull-ups.

He pretended to think about how many he could do back then, but it was only a stall for time. As a runner, most of his efforts focused on putting miles on his feet. The running categories he aced. But the pull ups? He couldn't do a single damned one of them.

5

“You can do it, boyfriend,” he said, mimicking Victoria's inspiring voice.

The shingles of the roof burned under his fingertips. Ignoring that was easy with the threat below. He used his feet to cheat on this all-important test of his physical strength. His dexterity allowed him to push up with the soles of his shoes on the corner pillar of the porch while pulling with his hands and arms. Together, he was able to shimmy himself part-way onto the roof. His bare arms were flush with the asphalt surface and it really burned!

“Yee-ow!”

He was either going to burn to death or get eaten. He used the pain on his arms to convince his muscles to get him over the edge by doing his one semi-legal pull-up. Liam shut his eyes and pulled with everything he had. Below him, there was almost certainly a zombie holding out his arms.

“Yes! Touchdown!” he screamed when he'd pushed himself up and onto the shingles. Only when none of his body was hanging over the side did he allow himself a breath. And even then, the heat of the roof forced him to his feet again. He stood up and waved his burning arms to cool them off, but also to see what he'd escaped.

It was like looking down on a herd of wildebeests from those films in class. The two-story house was tiny next to the horde and the dust storm swirling around the participants. In those few seconds of victory his head became light and the world swam in his vision.

Too little water.

Too little food.

Crap-tacular sleep for weeks on end.

The sweet syrupy stench of the infected.

That annoying ghost music again.

He had the good sense-in that last moment-to tilt himself away from the roof's edge.

When he woke up he knew he'd only been out for a few seconds because his face was plastered to the hot shingles, but it wasn't sizzling like bacon, yet.

“Aww man,” he screamed in pain. “Come on!”

He had to push up with his fleshy palms, forcing another yelp.

The zombies trampled over the front lawn and melted around both sides of the house like a hot lava flow. That first wave of nauseous gas faded away, but the dust kept getting worse.

It was impossible to look at each man and woman, but little things caught his eye. A woman in a bright yellow dress with a thick rope laced around her chest and arms, so they were pinned to her side. A heavy black woman wore her Sunday best, complete with a huge-brimmed black hat with peacock feathers poking out the sides. A teen boy, about his size and age, wearing a Mountain Dew t-shirt almost identical to the one he wore those first days of the disaster. Had that kid been playing video games on that last day, too?

He couldn't stand there a moment longer.

From where he stood, he could walk on the flat surface above the porch from one end to the other or climb to the topmost ridge of the house's roof. Getting up top might be useful at some point, he reasoned, but he made for the two windowed dormers close by. The white-framed windows of the second floor would get him off the fiery hot roof as well as get him out of view of the arriving horde.

The first one was already open. Without looking inside, he practically jumped through the frame to get out of the dust and hide from the horde.

A small sheetless bed sat along the long wall of the room but there wasn't much else being used in there. It appeared as if the room had been tilted so all the remaining contents slid into the corner. A disorganized pile of stuffed animals and children's clothes suggested the space was once owned by a kid.

He took a moment to calm himself. He'd just been thrown out of a house, separated from Victoria, almost caught by the zombies, and practically burned by the black tar shingles of the roof. He didn't have time to get his pistol, so now he had no weapon. That was a major handicap in the zombie apocalypse.

Liam gave the pile of junk a quick search but there was nothing close to a weapon, not even a chair he could bust to make a club, so he had to look elsewhere.

The door to the hallway was ajar so he continued deeper into the house. The floor was dried hardwood-like it hadn't been cared for in years. It occurred to him he could be squeaking with each step he took, alerting those below to his presence, but he dispelled that image by listening to the crowd outside. It was so loud now it had become a constant, suitably creepy, howl.

The floor vibrated with the energy of the zombie footfalls.

A hallway ran the length of the house and he counted four other doors on the upstairs level. One sad-looking carpet runner straddled the middle of the walkway from his end all the way to the steps down the hall, but otherwise there was very little in the way of décor. There were a couple of pictures on the wall, but his attention was drawn to the nearest. It was a small faded photograph of an older man and woman standing behind a large group of boys and girls. The kids wore jeans and pleated skirts and most of the boys wore cowboy hats. Though the photo seemed recent, it reminded him of Little House on the Prairie.

The woman in the photo didn't look like the shotgun momma downstairs, but he couldn't be sure. That reminded him of his task, and he desperately wanted to find a weapon and rescue Victoria, so he left the picture and continued his search.

A water would be nice, too.

The door across the hall was open, so he peeked in. All the contents had been pushed to the far corner just like in the first room, except it also had a mattress on the floor.

A man sat alone on the filthy mattress to his left, but he faced the back window of the room. The man was older, with short gray hair that looked like it hadn't been combed in ages, and he wore a type of uniform Liam recognized.

“Hello, Father,” Liam said with a respectful tone.

The holy man slowly turned to him. “I'm a reverend, actually, my son.”

Liam walked in a few paces, expecting him to get up, but the man remained where he was. His white thingy on the front of his collar was filthy and out of place, like he'd been fooling with it over and over. He was dressed in a button-down black shirt and black pants exactly as Father Cahill, and other priests preferred when they weren't in the long robes of a formal service.

He held out his hand toward the guy, but he didn't reciprocate.

“Won't you sit a spell?” The man patted the disgusting mattress.

“No, I, uh, need to stay on my feet or I'll fall asleep,” he lied. “My name is ... Sam Stevens,” Liam lied again. He resolved to be anyone but Liam Peters right now. So many people seemed to know who and where he was-he needed a break from those issues. Whoever this priest was, he didn't need to know his real name.

“Sam. I'm Lucifer.”

The horrified look on Liam's face must have been what he'd intended, because the priest giggled. The sweat dripped from his forehead, around his bushy brown eyebrows, and onto his cheeks. Despite the sweltering heat, the sad-looking man had failed to open the rear window.

“Seriously?” Liam asked with a bit of fear in his voice.

“No,” the man continued with a soul-crushing sigh. “Not really. But I might as well be, you know?”

Liam had no idea what he was going on about, so he just shrugged.

The man pointed to the nearby window. Though they couldn't see the crowd below, the dust was almost thick enough to knock on the glass. The sky had darkened a little as the artificial storm blotted the sun.

Still on the mattress, the man looked up at him and appeared to straighten his collar and sit a little taller.

“My name is really Daniel. Somehow, my son, I've fallen so far I've become the lord of Hell.”

He imagined the zombie howls outside were laughing, now, and that sent a deep chill right down to his sweat-soaked bones.

6

“What d-did you say?” With the noise rattling the house, it was easy to pretend he didn't hear the soft-spoken man.

“There is no God with a capital G, you fool. That's what I'm saying!” A switch had been flipped. Daniel pounded the mattress one time with both his fists. “This place. These people. Those people,” he pointed outside. “Those are the damned. They are our future.”

“No. There's a cure, Father, uh, sir.”

Daniel wiped his sweaty face with both hands. “I'm a reverend! I'm a-” He froze, like he'd just remembered something. “I was a-”

With a lot of visible effort, Daniel rose from the bed and walked to the window.

“You see those people?” He pointed down to the zombies. “Each one died. Each one was supposed to see the face of god, like we've been told for thousands of years. The Bible says so. The church says so. Your mommy and daddy told you it was so, right?”

Liam nodded, mostly to be polite because his parents never put it quite in those terms.

“But the truth is that there's nothing beyond the veil. You just keep going-like them.” His head leaned against the glass as his voice faded. When he started again he gently tapped his forehead on the wooden frame. “I've seen them come out of the ground. Have you?”

He started to reply, but Daniel wasn't done.

“We buried the children. They died almost on the first day ... ” This time he sounded like he was crying as he spoke. “What do I know about burying people?” he said, louder. “It wasn't my fault, honest. It wasn't!”

“It wasn't your fault,” Liam offered in reply. Hoping it was what Daniel wanted to hear.

“Damn right. I didn't know any better. The holes were too shallow. So, the next day I came out to pray and the soulless shell reached out of the dirt and grabbed me.” He sniffled. “I think that's when I figured it out,” he said in his soft voice once more. “You know? You can see it, right?”

“Sure,” he replied as if testing the waters of agreement.

Daniel swiveled his head, so he could face him. “Are you saying I deserved it? Are you?”

He had no idea how to talk to the increasingly distraught man, so he just shrugged defensively.

“No, I guess you didn't.”

Daniel looked back outside.

“It proves God doesn't exist. These empty people are what we become when we die. God doesn't come down and take us to Heaven,” he said in an accusatory declaration to the zombies outside. “And if there is no God, it doesn't matter what we do here.” He swept his arm back in the room, though he remained facing the zombies. “It doesn't matter.”

Was it smart to argue with an unhinged priest, he wondered. What could he gain? He looked around the room, again in search of something he could use to rescue Victoria, but it had been stripped of anything remotely useful in that department.

What the hell?

The last thing he expected to see was a knife on the child's mattress. Daniel had been sitting on it but left it there when he went to the window.

“So, you lost faith in God?” He stepped backward, putting a little distance from Daniel.

“You could say that,” he said with great weight. “Or you could say I reveled in the release it gave me. I don't know why I behaved that way ... was I always a bad person?”

“What do you mean?” he said evenly. He was soon closer to the bed than Daniel.

“I was a rich man. My flock was far from wealthy-mostly farmers and river rats-but they believed. Oh, did they. Each Sunday they would throw their money at me and beg me to help God forgive their sins. As if that was what God wanted.” He laughed, and not in a funny way. “The joke's on them!”

Liam stood in front of the bed, next to the knife.

“And it was on me. I was a sinner, too.” He turned to where Liam had been previously. He reoriented on his new position, seemingly oblivious to the shift. “I was the biggest sinner; do you know why?”

He shook his head emphatically.

Daniel's face was dark and brooding under his sheen of sweat and his clothes appeared saturated as if he'd run through a sprinkler. Liam hoped he'd at least open a window since he was right there, but he seemed disinterested in his own condition.

“I knew God didn't exist, all along.” This time he cackled like a hyena. “I knew!”

Liam continued to shake his head without committing himself to a reply. Daniel was becoming unstable the more they talked, and he found it hard to know what answers the man wanted to hear.

If he comes for me, I'll grab the knife.

“You don't understand. How could you? You are still a child. But let me ask you a question that will help color it in for you. If God existed, do you think clergymen around the world would abuse little children? Do you think they would advocate stoning women? Do you think they would pocket money from their flocks? Do you? Are these not major, damning sins? And yet we do them without stop.”

Liam's head bobbed as a way of responding to those questions, rather than press him to explain himself some more. It seemed dangerous to do anything but show support.

“Prostitutes. Boys. Preying on the weak. The stupid. Stealing innocence. Do you think a true man of God would do those things?”

More head shaking, though it dawned on Liam he was listening to a confession of sorts. His pity was shifting toward something else.

“They trusted me. Trusted us all. And how did we-I-repay them?” He was quiet again and sobbing messily. “By dragging them to Hell with me.”

Daniel noticed the knife again and his eyes widened almost comically. Liam reached down to pick it up, but the man wasn't bothered.

“The knife wasn't for you, my child.”

“Don't call me that. I'm not a kid. Not anymore.” Now that he had the knife, his fear abated. “It wasn't for you, either. Was it? Was it!”

Liam felt his anger behind his eyes and he wouldn't have been surprised if steam came off his head.

The priest's eyes betrayed him.

“I told you the truth. I'm Lucifer. I'm the Evil One. I just can't stop myself.”

“You are a priest dammit. You should know there can't be evil without good. If you're Lucifer, there has to be a God. They have to balance.”

Though he had no time to dwell on it, he admitted his response was as much from reading zombie books as it was from any religious dealings in his life. Though Grandma Marty could undoubtedly argue religion all day long with this guy, his beliefs were more along the lines of how the universe balanced itself. If there was only evil, nothing could ever get done. Absolute evil was pure chaos. A thrashing mosh pit of devils could not cure Cancer, put a man on the Moon, or come together as a community to fight off a horde of zombies.

“And I suppose you are claiming the mantle of God?” Daniel boomed as if Liam had done something unspeakable. “Have you no sin?”

How would Grandma answer this?

“There are always choices. In this hand-” he held out his left, with the knife, “-is evil. And in this one, good. When I think of what you've done, I put you in this hand.” He held up the knife. “You had a choice to hurt your victims, and you gave yourself permission. That wasn't God or the devil. That was you. I'm not a great person, but I am a good one. If that fact gives me some God cred over you-a man supposed to know better-then so be it. But if you hurt another human being, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

She would have done that better.

“Could you kill a man?”

He thought of Elsa, knowing without question he could. Daniel must have saw it in his eyes.

“Oh. I see. You've been outside for a long time.”

Daniel seemed to think on it for a few moments.

Then he lunged.

Chapter 2. Denial Ain't Just in Egypt

Daniel came at him with the grace of a trash truck. His broadcast of intentions was accompanied by a shrill “kill me!” Liam saw the suicidal look in the broken man's eyes and had a full two seconds to think about the order but hadn't reached a conclusion as the man slammed into him. They fell out into the hallway and tumbled to the hardwood.

Liam's back slammed the floor and the musty carpet released decade's old dust. In one of those odd moments of clarity he noticed the smell reminded him of Grandma Marty's house. He longed for the basement where he spent part of his summer with her, even though it had the same musty stench. At least the only zombies he knew back then were in his books and video games.

The impact left him breathless, but otherwise unharmed. Except-

Something warm and wet burned his stomach and chest. A sharp pain began to grow ...

I've been cut.

He let out a breath and tried to still his racing heart.

Figures. I cut myself with the knife.

Liam wondered if the pain of a knife wound in the belly would keep growing but after several seconds of waiting he decided it wasn't that bad. That made him second guess the whole thing.

Daniel had ended up on top of him, looking down. The whites of his brown eyes were red and glazy. Whereas he was previously sad and a little crazy, he now appeared calm and happy. A half-smile radiated from above.

“Thank you, my son.”

“For what?” Liam wheezed under the man's weight.

Still not positive he hadn't been stabbed, he pushed Daniel, so he dropped to the floor next to him. The pain receded from his abdomen-it was the hilt of the knife, not the blade. It had been pointed up when they impacted, though he had no recollection of holding it in any particular direction. It could have just as easily been pointing down.

The blood from Daniel's wound had spilled out profusely, ruining his already-distressed black honey badger T-shirt. There was a time he would have puked at the sight of so much blood on him, but this only caused him to thank his luck it wasn't his. The reverend was on his side, looking at him with dying eyes.

“Thank you for kicking me out of Purgatory. I deserve ... worse for what I've done here.” He continued with a weak sob. “I'm so sorry,” he let out a wet cough, “for what god made me. I'm so-”

His eyes stared forward.

Liam was still pissed. “What god made you? Screw you, dude. Those were your choices.” He pushed off the dead man and got to a crouch. “I hope you can still hear me in there, sicko.”

Daniel must have done terrible things if he wanted to die, but part of him wished he could have kept the man alive because his death was pretty fast. If Liam found out he'd hurt any kids he would have done more to make him pay for his crimes before letting him off the hook, but he was sort of relieved, the more he thought about it, to be free of such an evil person.

“Good riddance,” he said to the body.

At that moment, the main thing of consequence from his encounter with Daniel stuck out of the man's stomach.

When he pulled at the knife, more blood squirted over his arm like it sought one last chance to survive.

“Yuck.”

He stood up straight and was horrified to see thick blood streaking down his pants. The coppery smell was something that seemed to follow him everywhere.

“I'm in a horror movie,” he said, as much to bolster his spirits as to state the truth.

He was ready to put it behind him when he noticed a small black book sticking out of the man's front pants pocket. Liam instantly knew what it was because he'd been looking for one for a long time. He bent over to pick it up.

“New Testament.”

Well, that just figures.

He held it there and studied it like it was alive. The bible belonged to a man who invoked god's name to do unspeakable things. Did he learn those lessons inside the pages of the sacred book? Was it really the same book Grandma used when she sought comfort from the disasters of her life, like the death of her daughter? Could he even take a book that was in the possession of such an evil guy?

Liam couldn't make up his mind. If he gave it to Victoria, would he have to tell her where it was from? More importantly, could he or should he hide that from her? Wouldn't that be wrong? He would always know.

He went back and forth for longer than he felt comfortable standing in that hallway. In the end, he took the little bible because he was sure he could get rid of it if he had second thoughts.

There was nothing else he wanted to find on the dead man, so he got moving.

His foot slipped in the pooling blood before he'd gotten two steps away. Though he didn't fall, he spun around and walked backward, suddenly aware Daniel might rise up as a zombie. Some books he'd read suggested every dead person had to be skewered in the head to prevent their eventual rise as a zombie. That was an unsettling thought.

He stepped backward several more times, watching for movement ...

“You sent a boy, Margaret!” a man screamed from inside the next room down the hall. “I wanted Elise.”

Liam tried to keep an eye on Daniel as he looked inside the room, but once he saw the people in there he felt way less threatened by the dead man.

Like the other two rooms, this one had a single dirty mattress on the floor toward the left side. However, this place wasn't ransacked and destroyed to the same degree as the others. A few pictures hung on the walls, there was a tiny nightstand still next to the mattress, and a plastic chair sat by itself in front of the rear window.

A portly man in sweatpants reclined on the mattress with his patio-umbrella-sized shirt unbuttoned so his stomach could bulge out. Tons of empty blue beer cans littered the bed and the area around it. Liam felt repulsed in a primordial way-as if he wasn't just ugly but his soul was rotten as well. After meeting the damaged Daniel, he expected this guy to be totally broken.

Since the farmhouse was quite large, all the rooms were much bigger than what he was used to in his modest suburban “ranch” home. He guessed each bedroom was about twice as large as his own living quarters and it was at least twenty feet from the door to the back window. The mattress had been tossed on one side of the spacious room, but the man looked at something Liam couldn't see because the other wall was blocked by the half-open door.

“Margaret!” the big man shouted with clear anger. “Get your ass up here or it'll be your turn.”

When there was no reply, the man turned to Liam with obvious distaste. “Did she send you as a joke? What's with all the blood? Did the priest order up some more fun?”

Liam fumed but he didn't know how to respond. There was no hiding the fact he was covered with blood from his stomach to his shoes and held a knife covered in the stuff. The continued droning noise from outside the house couldn't be overlooked, either. And yet the man remained calm.

“I-I, uh, was sent up here to tell you she was working on getting what you need.”

“She's dressing up my doll?” he said with a disgusting smack of his lips.

“Sure,” Liam replied.

“I see. Was that the noise out in the hall? Was there a problem in the other rooms? Did one of the others take my special girl?”

It disgusted him to play along, and as much as he wanted to shut the door and go save Victoria, he still didn't have a proper weapon, nor did he fully understand what was going on in the farmhouse. Every detail would help him plan his rescue.

“Margaret said you'd be pissed with her, but she got messed up with some intruders. Said to help keep you company until she sorted things down there. And no, I checked on the others. They're fine.” The lies came easily in front of the sleezy man.

“And the blood?” He nodded to Liam's pants because they were saturated with sticky blood.

“I'm not supposed to tell you ... ”

“Out with it, boy, or you'll be sorry.” As emphasis he reached behind his mattress and wielded a tiny revolver. He made a show of breaking open the chamber and spinning it. Then he slapped it shut again and pointed it at the far wall out of Liam's line of sight.

“A zombie. One of the other, uh, visitors, must have been bitten. Margaret sent me up to take care of it.”

“A cleaner, huh?” He put the pistol back where he'd got it. “I can appreciate that.”

“Really”? he said with as much innocence as possible.

“Yeah. You and me are the same, boy. We clean up the messes.”

Liam faked a smile and somehow found himself even more disgusted with the man.

2

The man motioned him inside. “Come on in, cleaner.”

Liam stuck the knife in his front pocket-blade down-because he didn't want to seem like a threat. He'd heard the phrase about how stupid it was to bring a knife to a gunfight but there was no way out.

“Okay,” Liam replied while trying to stifle his cringe response.

He went in because he had no alternatives. The two hostile women downstairs would not be happy to see him, he was sure of that. This big man had some kind of relationship with at least one of the women, so none of them were his friend. He also went in to get out of the line of sight of Daniel's body. If he reanimated, it would be better for Liam if he wasn't the first morsel of food in the new zombie's vision.

He took three steps in the room and stopped cold. He glanced behind the door, then he looked at the man, and once again to the wall. He felt the disgusting man's eyes sizing him up. Trying to see how Liam would react to what could very well be described as a science project.

In that instant his eyes seemed to say. “I'm watching you, boy. One wrong move and you're dead.”

Despite knowing the risk, Liam froze and absorbed the scene. There was a foreign-looking but very pretty middle-aged woman, a similar-looking teenaged girl with thick glasses, and a plump little girl with brown hair draped over her eyes, like she was hiding. They were bare-footed and wore dirty white gowns that had the feminine sensibilities of garbage bags. The three of them were bound upright against the dingy wall by a thick rope net-like something used to catch fish on the high seas.

His gut reaction was the woman on the right was the mother of the two girls on the left, so he focused on her. She had long wavy brown hair and olive skin. He imagined she was Greek or Italian. She was top-heavy and very curvy, despite the effects of the bag she wore for clothing. Even in the brief second he observed her, the woman's fierce brown eyes warned him not to look at her daughters.

“I, uh, ... ” He didn't know what to say. He had to figure out what the hell was going on.

It appeared as if someone had sacked a jewelry store and dumped the contents of entire cases on top of them. The mother wore several tiaras, a few dozen necklaces, innumerable bracelets, and her ears were pierced all over with earrings. They'd been on this wall for some time, because the blood had dried around those piercings.

The floor under them was littered with rings and gems as if they'd been placed on the mom and her daughters, but then fell off over time.

An empty space signified someone was missing from the net. Between the woman and the younger girls there was an opening where the net hung freely.

The two young girls had the same hair color and olive skin, looking very much like their mother. They were also saddled with gold jewelry like their mom, but their ears hadn't been ravaged as seriously.

The dresses ruined it all, because someone had painted the word, “SLAVE,” on all three of them.

What reaction does this deserve?

He forced himself to say nothing. Turning back to the man, he did his best to steady his voice-and soul. “Can I get anything for you while you wait?”

“You bastard! Help us!” cried the mother.

“Don't mind them. They are my worst enemies. They're gonna get what they deserve.”

He thought of the person missing from the net, hoping he could sound intelligent. “Did we get rid of the husband?” His thumb hooked back toward the wall behind him.

The big man looked around him with a smile. “No, that was her oldest daughter. She had three daughters. Can you believe it? Eventually, I'm going to kill each one while she watches.”

Liam shivered, which the man noticed.

“You have a problem with that?” he said in a dark voice.

“No, I, uh, just remembered all the zombies outside coming this way. Hard to put that out of the mind, you know?”

Thinking of them did cause him to shake again.

“Please help me. Kill me, but not my daughters. Pleeeassse.” The woman's plea was like fingernails on the chalkboard. Every ounce of his being wanted to knife the man and free the family, but he had to know what was going on, first. He couldn't risk that gun.

Keeping his back to the girls, he tried to engage the man in conversation.

“I'm Sam by the way. Sam from St. Louis.”

“St. Louis Sam? I'm Sikeston Wilder,” he laughed.

“Margaret wouldn't want me getting involved, but you know kids and all. I can't help asking about your visitors.” Liam asked his question with a double heaping of indifference.

“They are my worst enemies.”

He almost laughed because he had plenty of enemies and none of them were little girls. Elsa. Duchesne. Hayes-sort of. The government traitors his mom and her patriots were fighting. The mindless zombies. Those frames of reference were high on his mind as he tried to reply. The woman didn't look like an Elsa-fit and predatory-though the flowing pillow case made it hard to determine if she was a physical threat.

Unable to guess intelligently, he said the first thing that came to his mind. “Did she steal your mail?”

Grandma Marty sometimes asked if Liam saw someone steal her mail. She spent a lot of time penning letters to members of her family because she refused to use email. Looking back, Liam understood why relatives didn't always write back in a timely fashion, but grandma was convinced the letters were poached by thieves.

“Steal my mail? Are you insane, boy? No. Of course not. This woman has been a thorn in my side for ages. She ruined me. Now it's her turn to pay.”

“You deserved it!”

“Shush woman. Don't make me tell you again.”

Liam refused his urge to turn around and look at her with sympathetic eyes.

The woman shook in her net. Her jewelry jangled and a few pieces fell to the floor. He imagined her defiantly resisting his command by making noise in other ways, though none of it made any sense. Even the reverend was easier to understand.

Wilder sighed. “Well, this all has been a letdown. If I have to wait for Margaret to get Sabella's daughter ready, I might as well rub her nose in it,” he chuckled with an ugly gurgle in his throat.

The man glared at the woman in the net. “Yes. We've known each other for a long time.”

3

“I run a medical clinic out of this house.” He pointed at the floor. “And I did my damnedest to keep people alive as the plague swept through the area.”

The woman on the wall laughed but didn't otherwise respond.

“Sabella and her ilk made my job twice as difficult, even when the undead crawled down the roadside where they protested. The biblical Apocalypse itself didn't get them to quit. In fact, it encouraged 'em, I think.”

The giant of a man pushed himself from the soiled mattress, so he could stand. It took him a good long time to right himself, giving Liam plenty of time to study the layout. Gun. Bed. Nutjob. Girls. He also had time to look out the window on the back of the house to the continuing dust devils swirling out there, though he remained guarded in his glances at the woman and her kids.

With heavy panting the sweaty man stood and moved toward the woman, so he could be close to the netted wall. He seemed to gain satisfaction from smiling at the girls.

“So, even when I was doing my job, these bitches protested me. Probably wishing I'd be shut down and closed forever--”

Sabella shook her chains, but Liam didn't look at her.

“Okay, maybe they got that one right, but not for the reason they think. I had to shut down the main clinic because we ran out of everything. We also got robbed early on. Probably it was her and her friends,” he said as if he were plumbing for answers. “But the joke was on them.”

Wilder walked on bare feet and yelped when he stepped on one of the pieces of jewelry, but he kicked his foot so whatever it was went flying. He got right next to Sabella. Now Liam had no choice but to look at her. He was surprised at her defiance, even in the face of such an imposing and disgusting man.

“I wanted them to think we were out of business,” he said with a deep laugh. “I had backup supplies in my back garage.” He pointed out the window. “And they kept on coming to me. Wanted me to take care of their 'issues,' same as every other damned day. And things were peachy until you-know-who comes back and holds signs at the end of my driveway again. Do you think that's right, Sam?”

Liam played along, shaking his head.

“Of course not. You don't bother a man at his home.” He got super close to Sabella and spoke softly. “The whole world has gone to hell. Why did you come back and bother me? You should have left well enough alone and we could all be dying in our own happy ways, don't ya think?”

Sabella didn't speak, but she shook her head forcefully and angrily left and right.

Wilder's face reddened, and he took a swing at her. Liam flinched, but held still. The attack was clumsy due to his size and health, but his hand was so large he couldn't help but hit his target. Only after her head was turned forcefully to one side did Liam notice she'd already been deeply bruised on the face. Her skin color helped hide it.

The woman spit blood on the floor and seemed ready for the next one.

“She thinks if she stops me, God will shine down on her, or something. Whatever these people believe I don't really care. I know what I do is right, and that's that.”

The youngest girl was in tears, but the oldest had the same defiant look of her mother. She had a few bruises, too.

“She's brainwashed, Sam. Her, her friends,” he pointed at the oldest girl, “and her daughters. Look at the anger there. That's why we're all here today. I'm gonna take that anger right out of 'em. Turn it into fear. That's what these women need. A little fear will go a long way to making things right in this new world. They got to know their place.”

Liam was desperate for something to keep the giant talking while he glided innocent-like toward the gun. “Is Margaret your wife?”

Wilder turned his bulk to Liam. “Why do you ask? Is she giving you googly-eyes?”

“No. No, sir.”

“It doesn't matter. It's safe to say we've both dabbled. And yes, she is my wife, but she started out as my nurse.” His face turned serious like a switch had been thrown. “Now? I think our new business has ruined whatever we had. She only wants to help them, not me.” He pointed out the window again.

“The zombies?” Liam asked with surprise.

“Zombies? What the hell, son? No, I'm talking about the women who came to me in droves since the end of the world.”

Liam had no idea what he was talking about. He was a doctor of some kind, that much was easy to figure out because it said Winter Sage Clinic by the front door, but what doctor would end up hammering nets over their patients in a sick place like the farmhouse? He thought of television shows and the best he could come up with was something he was almost embarrassed to suggest.

“Are you a plastic surgeon?”

The oldest girl gave him an incredulous glare-he'd seen it before from Victoria. The one that said he'd managed to break a world record for asking a stupid question.

Wilder laughed uncontrollably and the girl shook her head like Liam was a lost cause.

“You are rich, kid. Where did Margaret find you? Did the recruiters nab you but throw you back?”

He had no response. He was several levels deep in his hole of mass confusion.

“I don't deal with the outside of women's bodies. I deal with what's inside. With what wants to be got out.”

He looked around the room again, sweeping Wilder, the resilient brown woman and her heavier than normal young daughter and knew in that moment what he'd stumbled into. What such a gigantic man would be doing with these women out in the middle of nowhere. He spoke just loud enough to be heard over the noises outside the house, but low enough to be respectful.

“This is some kind of fat-shaming camp, isn't it?”

The older girl flung her head back, so it thunked on the hollow wall.

4

Wilder laughed at Liam so long that he came away with tears and a runny nose. Liam found it disgusting, even ignoring the fact he was the object of such hilarity. He'd been wrong in his guess, but he couldn't figure out what made it so funny.

“Sam, you might be the dumbest teenager I've ever come across. And trust me when I tell you I've seen some of the dumbest.” He started to laugh more, but held it in. “No, not fat camp. This is more like a-how shall we say it-a baby extraction camp.”

Liam searched his literature. He tended to skip the sections of his books where babies were involved. There was always a baby born in zombie books-sometimes it was living, others it was a little zombie. He got tired of the trope. But what if babies were zombies? Then having someone pull them out would be a good thing. How would one know?

Heartbeat, you dummy.

If the baby had no heartbeat, could it safely be assumed it was a zombie? He didn't know. Did zombies have a heartbeat? Did they have a circulatory system? How did they process the blood they ingested? Suddenly he had a bunch of questions about the creatures he'd been avoiding for weeks.

Maybe a mother would feel the baby, even if it was a little zombie. In that case, there'd be no way to know if it was alive or dead inside. If it continued to have a heartbeat as a zombie, and continued to move as a living baby, how could anyone know its status?

Maybe the decision to get it out simply came down to the perception of the person carrying it. If the mother thinks it's a monster, she could have it removed. If she thought it was a regular baby, no problem. But what if a monster came out, after all that waiting? He'd be scared of that result, too. But what would he do in those shoes?

A pre-emptive removal. An abor--

“Oh, geez.”

His lame realization sent Wilder into another fit of laughter. He slapped his thigh a few times like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, but then he got serious. “Of course, since I'm in the biz, the townsfolk and farmers nearby brought me their dead kids to bury. That does something to a man, you know?” He glanced at Liam for a few seconds, then burst out in laughter once more as if remembering Liam's dumb look.

Liam couldn't contain his anger.

That's it!

His fury and embarrassment prodded him as sure as any whip. Dozens of beer cans flew into the air as he fell on the mattress, but he ignored them and grabbed for the gun hidden near the wall. His hand felt around at the spot where he was sure Wilder had placed it, but found nothing. He looked over into the few inches between the mattress and the wall to confirm it was gone.

“My god, you truly are a dumb kid. You think I'd leave my weapon lying there all stupid-like and just waiting to be took?”

Liam sprang to his feet, but Wilder had his gun pointed at him from ten feet away.

“I should just shoot you dead right here and now, but my wife would be upset if I killed one of her helpers-even a very dumb one. So, we gonna have trouble, or not? Why don't you lay down that fancy knife I see sticking out of your pocket?”

He pulled out the knife, watching carefully as the blood came off the metal when it rubbed against his pants.

This isn't how it ends.

For one second, he made like he was going to bend over and set the knife on the bed, but he used his position to wind up a throw and whip the knife side-arm toward the battleship-sized target. It brought back the memory of throwing that other knife into his zombie father's back as he fell off the barge not two hours ago.

“Whoa!” Wilder screamed as he stepped back to avoid the strike. The knife went under his raised arm and impacted the wall where the girls stood. Wilder recovered and aimed the gun at Liam.

“Aw crap!” he yelled as he looked at escaping through the door.

Wilder opened fire with the revolver and the sound of the first shot was a heavy metal eleven on the volume dial.

Liam ducked out of habit, but before he got off the mattress his foot tore through the worn fabric and he fell face-first onto the wooden floor. His shoe was caught in the bedspring and he had to move backward to untangle himself. He felt his luck had finally, and completely, run out.

Wilder fired his gun over and over. Liam was close enough to smell the acrid smoke of each shot and he even felt the jet of gas come out with each bullet.

“Stand still, you little puke.”

Liam realized his unpredictable motions may have saved his life. He was still attempting to get his shoe free of the springs when he heard the hammer pound metal without a corresponding gun shot. Liam stood hesitantly, with one foot still stuck in the inner workings of the bed, while he took stock. He wondered if the bare-chested hulk of a man had more bullets hidden somewhere.

Wilder threw the gun at him and the impact actually hurt his collarbone.

“Sonofa!” Liam blurted out.

The big man moved toward him and had his hand on his arm before he could think of a counter. The meaty paw swallowed his forearm and pushed him back onto the mattress but his foot remained painfully lodged in the springs as Wilder smashed him down.

“Take a seat, little man,” he shouted.

Liam felt like he was in a movie watching it all play out. He guessed the man was every bit of four-hundred pounds. That was painful and pointed to an ill-end, but he was mostly disgusted by his sweaty skin, the nasty chest hair of his open shirt, and industrial accident level of body odor.

In moments, he couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe with the deadweight on top of him. He was disappointed in himself for letting Victoria down, but he also felt bad he hadn't been able to save the woman and her family. That would have been a nice addition to his yet-to-be-written book on the end of the world.

“I'll tell you, little man. I don't care if you are Margaret's long-lost love child. When you try to kill me, I do kill you. It's the new law in the Apocalypse.” He was winded, too. Even the act of falling down had tired him, but his job was far easier than Liam's.

He tried to work his arms to jab the man, but the best he could manage was the energy of a sad tickle. “Night, night,” the man replied in a dreamy echo.

Wilder continued. “Ow. What's that?”

The pressure on Liam let up, just a tiny bit.

A wet slap noise came from somewhere nearby. Liam heard it despite the ringing in his ears from the gunshots at close quarters.

“Ugh,” Wilder said as if unsure what was happening.

A second wet slap followed.

“Ugh,” the giant man repeated.

The wet slap sound happened over and over and over. He lost count somewhere around twenty.

Wilder spoke again while looking at Liam's face, though it made no sense. “You bitch.” He attempted to lift himself off Liam, but his arms wobbled.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

Blood came from over Wilder's shoulder and it dripped onto Liam and the mattress.

Slap. Slap.

A girl's warped face appeared over Wilder's shoulder. It was the older of the girls from the wall. The flash of a knife appeared, along with a sick grin, then she sank the blade into the shoulder of her tormentor.

“Margaret, help! Get her off!” Wilder spun to the side and crushed Liam further into the mattress. His big arm caught the girl, so she flew backwards, and Wilder went after her. When he released Liam, he had to lie there and catch his breath in huge.

“I'm going to kill you, and then your mom, and then your two sisters. You're all dead now.”

Liam's chest heaved several more times, but he began his effort to free himself. He was in a dire hurry, so he tried yanking his foot right out of the snagged shoe. After the second or third try, it came out with several stinging jabs of the metal, but he got back to his feet and ignored any pain. Like so many scrapes with death in the past, he understood what was at stake, now. The big man was injured but wanted to take someone down with him.

Wilder stood in front of the fallen girl. His hit must have knocked her out. The fat man seemed unable to decide if he should strike the girl again or go after the others on the wall.

“I'm gonna kill you all,” Wilder repeated robotically.

The big man had a dozen bloody holes in the backside of his shirt. He was up on his feet, but Liam wagered the man was really hurt because he swayed a bit as he trudged toward Sabella.

“Your daughters are just as annoying as you,” he said with tired anger. He slapped her, but it lacked the impact of his previous strike.

“Let them go and you can have me,” she pleaded in a rushed voice. “I won't make any trouble if you spare them.”

“Not on your life, bichhh,” he slurred. “Margey, where are you?”

Liam used the distraction of the conversation to make his move.

“Don't try it, boy,” Wilder shouted with what passed for authority in his voice. Liam paid him no heed. He scrambled behind the towering man and picked up the knife from where the girl had dropped it. He had a momentary vision of a Bible story about David and Goliath, though he couldn't place odds on the fight inside the room. On his feet, his tiny knife glistened with Wilder's blood.

He threw himself at the fat man with the knife firmly in his right hand. Wilder came at him, too, but jerked back for a second because Sabella had snared his hand with one of the ropes. It was a minor distraction, but it was just what Liam needed.

He'd read a lot of books spanning many different genres. Two popped in his head at that moment. The first was about a whole audience from a rock concert who got abducted and had to fight each other to the death for the pleasure of some aliens. One of the fighters had to bite into the other man's artery near his groin to stay alive. He doubted, even here, he could do such a thing. But the other story he recalled from one of his least favorite classes: Classical Literature. He'd learned about Achilles and his one weakness.

Rather than try to take on the huge man in a fruitless head-to-head matchup, he slid on the floor, lined up his knife with the back of Wilder's ankle, then gave it a sickening jerk into the meaty tendons back there.

Liam was horrified by the blood that spurted out. It was a geyser spray that shot all over him and Sabella.

“Margaret. Help me dammit!” His call for assistance wasn't nearly loud enough to be heard downstairs.

Wilder stepped sideways so he could see Liam.

“Damn you, Sam,” Wilder declared, finally sounding like defeat was in his voice. “I'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do!” The big guy lined himself up to fall on Liam.

No way am I dying like a pancake.

He rolled himself like a hot dog. First, he took a few spins toward the door but then stopped when he guessed Wilder had committed himself. He hopped himself onto the mattress just as the weight of the dying man impacted the floor. The giant's fall rattled the walls.

Wilder groaned in pain but Liam didn't feel sorry for him. His severed ankle continued to spray haphazardly around the room, but it got weaker in spurts.

“All I wanted was that bitch to pay for shadowing me all those years. I guess it won't be me, though. Maybe you can get her killed. I know what's outside ... we're all dead anyway. I just wanted to have some fun until ... ”

He drifted off, leaving Liam to wonder if he was dead.

Liam sat up on the floor, but he jumped when Wilder continued talking.

“I said, all I wanted ... some fun.”

“You won't have any fun where you're going,” Liam replied.

Wilder whimpered once as if he stood on the bridge between this world and the next and could see what awaited him, but then he stopped breathing and fell still.

Liam stood up and backed away. Finally, he could look at the woman on the wall with the sympathy she deserved.

5

He stood in front of the mother with the knife in his hand.

“I was never with him,” he said quickly. “I just had to wait for my moment to attack him.”

“I don't care who you are. You saved us.”

She looked down at his knife. “Don't worry about me. Help my daughter.”

Ignoring her, he cut the net, so her hand was free and then he handed her the knife. “Here, cut yourself out. I'll check on her.”

The fallen girl's gold jewelry lay all over the floor like it had run off when she hit the ground. He kicked away some of the trinkets to clear the floor and pulled her to a sitting position near the back window.

“Hello? Anyone home?” The girl's eyes were half-open, but they seemed out of focus.

He looked at the woman, now cutting her little girl out of the net. “What's her name?”

“Leah.”

“Oh, hey, Leah. You in there?” He gently held her upright by putting both hands on her shoulders.

“Is Mom alive?” she said in a groggy voice.

“Yes,” he replied. “You saved me, too, so thank you.”

“You threw the knife at my face,” Leah replied like it was no big deal.

“Uh, sorry about that. I was aiming for the fat man.”

Leah chuckled. “He was disgusting.”

“Agreed,” Liam replied.

The mother freed the little girl and Liam expected her to come over and tend to her injured daughter, but she went knife-in-hand over to Wilder's body and set upon him like a mad woman. The slapping sounds came fast and furious with her grunts as she plunged the knife into the corpse repeatedly. Her final act was to madly drive the knife deep into his throat, as if to forever silence his tormenting voice.

Breathing hard, Sabella came over to him with anger in her eyes. She was also covered by the blood spray from Wilder's ankle and that made her seem absolutely insane. “No one messes with my daughters.”

Liam shook his head with gusto and held up his hands in surrender. The woman had a look in her eyes that was one part crazy and one part deadly. She'd left the knife in Wilder, but the blood on her hands was evidence enough she really didn't need it.

“Are you and I going to have trouble?”

He'd been tending to the older daughter out of a sincere desire to help, but after all they'd been through he could imagine how he might appear.

“No. I, uh, told you the truth. I don't belong here. These freaks threw me out the front door and I almost got killed by the zombies. I had to climb on the roof to stay alive.”

Sabella looked at him for a moment, then ripped the jewelry off her body. First the tiaras and other easy stuff. She grabbed the necklaces by the fistful and yanked them over her head. She pulled off rings and bracelets and let them all fall to the wooden floor. She winced as she pulled out the bloody earrings. The young girl helped the older one still sitting on the floor. In the end, Sabella kept on a single simple necklace with a cross hanging from it.

Much as it did when he met Victoria, he felt comforted.

“You're Christians?” he asked while pointing to the necklace.

“Yuh huh,” she replied. “Aren't you?”

Liam raised his shoulders, honestly unsure what he'd call himself.

“This necklace is the only religious item I got to take with me when my parents left Egypt for the last time. Our kind weren't welcome there, as you probably know ... ”

Liam didn't know, but he nodded anyway.

“All this garbage means nothing to me,” she pointed to the gold, silver, and gems she'd tossed down. “Only my daughters and my Savior matter out here.”

“Uh huh,” he said to keep her talking.

“You gotta get right with God before it's too late. I do admit, however, you were the answer to my prayers. You came along at just the right time, so maybe you and the big man have some kind of arrangement?” Her voice was now clear and strong, with a touch of a southern accent.

“I'm nothing special. Me and my girlfriend are trying to survive this, same as you guys.”

The girls closed ranks with their mother after they'd removed all their jewelry. The three white pillow cases they wore for clothing were plastered with blood, so they looked like they'd just escaped a sorority house serial killer-sponsored pillow fight. Liam was impressed they weren't wallowing in tears after what just happened.

“Look, I appreciate what you've done here,” Sabella said as she noticed him looking over their stained clothes. “Christ knows how you got here, but my family still isn't whole. I have one more daughter I have to find. My oldest.”

He looked at Leah, a question there.

“No, she's my second-born. My oldest is twenty. They took her when we got here. Said she had to spend some time out back before they'd bring her up here. That's what that jackass was waiting for.”

“I'm looking for someone, too. My girlfriend was just taken by the women on the first level. A reverend killed himself in the next room when I walked in and I'm pretty freaked out about knifing this big dude. I have no idea why any of this is happening. I wasn't joking earlier when I guessed those stupid things in front of Wilder.” He felt a little ashamed thinking of his bad guesswork.

She looked at him with sad eyes, perhaps trying to decide how much she could say without upsetting her kids. “This is a home for Black Widows. A place where young girls are drawn with the promise of a new life, only to have their souls ripped out and replaced with lumps of molten lead.”

While the mother tended to her daughters he bent down and picked up a huge diamond ring that had bounced near the window. It felt heavy in his hand and he wondered how he could return it to the woman who owned it.

“The reverend wouldn't tell me what he was doing here, but I guessed it was something bad. He, um ... ” Liam was coming to grips with the fact that in the past twenty minutes he'd been responsible for the deaths of two men.

But they deserved it.

He faced a moral dilemma. So many of his books dwelled on the right and wrong of it, but when it was his time he felt he'd done humanity a service by getting rid of them. Though, he couldn't shake the feeling he'd done something very wrong. No trial. No arrests. Only death for the guilty.

“He killed himself with my knife,” he said with true sadness despite knowing the man had a dark soul.

She gave him a knowing look. “This place is Hell. Women come here to get clean. Men come here to get dirty.”

He shook his head, still unsure.

“Momma. I see Leezy.” The little girl interrupted while she stood at the back window.

Sabella ran to her side to see where she had been looking. He pocketed the ring and looked out back as well, but there was only one place she could mean: the outbuilding.

“I see Elise, too, baby. You found her.” She rubbed the girl's neck in comfort.

It wasn't just their sister. A whole host of people stood on the roof, and more were coming out of a small hatch as they watched. Most of them were young girls-unarmed. Several were men with guns, though a few women also carried them. Something had obviously happened inside the outbuilding, forcing everyone to the roof to get away from the zombies swarming around them all.

About ten people were on the roof but more climbed out of the tiny hatch.

“They're trapped, like us,” he said flatly.

An untold number of zombies stood between the house and the outbuilding. The far larger horde had surrounded the entire homestead and he guessed that once the dust settled down, he'd see zombies for miles in every direction.

He now had one knife for defense, and one woman with two daughters attached to his rescue team.

He let his forehead bang the windowpane.

The young girl surprised him when she grasped his free hand.

“My name is Susan. Thank you for saving us, sir.” She wore a wide smile, though her puffy cheeks and wet eyes betrayed her recent terrors.

“You're welcome, Susan. My name is ... ”

He was cut off by movement across the way. The large metal garage door crumpled inward because there were too many zombies pressed against it. For just a moment he thought he caught sight of a disco ball, but he had to duck.

Gunfire erupted like a whole infantry division was hiding in that building.

He poked his head just high enough to see survivors continue to bubble out of the hatch like their very lives depended on it.

“We've got to hurry,” Sabella exclaimed.

Chapter 3. Toxic

Victoria felt the relief of escaping the incoming horde of zombies. She practically sank into the comfortable sofa as the woman and her son got Liam situated near the front door. She craned her neck to steal a look at her boyfriend because she was so happy they were together again.

Liam and the other two walked back toward the entryway where she'd come in. It all seemed normal until the young boy opened the front door.

“Umm, zombies,” she mumbled to herself. There was now nothing between her and the approaching dust cloud.

The woman spoke briefly with Liam, but then he went right out the front door. Dust swirled in through the open doorway as if it wanted to hide from the zombies, too. Russ slammed it shut as soon as Liam was gone.

“Liam!” she screamed, but the door was already closed.

“What are you doing?” Victoria shouted as she got back on her feet. Both guns were trained on her in moments, so there was no thought of fighting them. Even so, she took a few steps around the couch as if she might go toward the door.

“You can stay, but he has to go,” the woman said in a vaguely southern voice.

“Why? He's my ... husband.” She and Liam had recently begun to pretend they were married because it seemed to open more doors for them. Now she needed that to be literal.

“Of course he is. But he can't be here.” Then, in an offhanded tone, she added, “He'll be fine.”

“But there are a million billion zombies marching this way,” she said with real fear and a tight grip on the back edge of the love seat.

“Look, missy, you got to understand we have a certain way of doing things here. The girls come in. The boys pack off, so we can take care of business. Get it?” She then gave Victoria a curious look. “You're lucky. You aren't showing, yet.”

A male voice complained from the floor above. “Margaret. I'm waiting.” The woman seemed to recoil. It was brief, and she tried to hide it, but Victoria knew that look.

The young boy, still at the front window, spoke without turning around. “There are a lot. Comin' this way, Ma.”

The woman looked at the boy, then back to Victoria. “I'm Margaret,” she said with a thousand-yard sigh. “Let's get you over to the shop before this storm blows in.” Her free arm was out, motioning her to walk across the room.

“Storm? This isn't a storm. These are-”

“Of course, kid. I know what they are. I know why they're here. That's why we have to move fast.”

You can't possibly know why they're here.

“No way. I'd rather go outside with him.”

Victoria went to the front window and let out a feminine gasp straight from a B-movie. She felt silly after the fact, but it was a natural reaction to the tsunami wave of zombies just beyond the front lawn.

“Oh dear God,” Victoria exhaled.

“Suit yourself,” Margaret said. “You're not a prisoner. You're free to go back out there if you want.”

Victoria thought about it, but the zombies were now on the lawn. Liam wasn't on the front porch that she could see from her vantage point, so she leaned against the window to scan the far edges of the porch.

Liam!

His legs dangled from the edge of the porch's roof to her left. It warmed her soul to see him getting up to safety, but when a zombie clawed at his legs she almost went out there to help him.

Liam kicked the man and then pulled his legs up and out of her sight.

He's safe.

“I'm sorry,” Margaret said, not sounding too remorseful. “I think we both know he wasn't your husband. He was here to offload his trouble, just like all the others. We're jus' helping him along.”

Margaret's shotgun got closer to her. “We're going out the back door. Russ, stay close.”

“So, I am your prisoner,” Victoria said defensively.

“Call it what you will,” Margaret said over her shoulder as she walked away. “You see what's out there. We've got to get over to the shack with the others.”

Russ ran by Victoria without looking at her and caught up to his mom. “What about Roger upstairs?” His concern seemed forced.

“Don't you worry about him,” his mother replied firmly, “you're more important.”

Without any options, Victoria followed them. They weaved through the large farmhouse until they entered a mud room at the back door and she saw what was behind the house.

Wisps of dust blew around on the gravel parking lot between the farmhouse and the boxy metal outbuilding on the other side. Two big white garage doors faced the gravel lot, but they were closed. Someone's head peeked out from a normal-sized door to the left of the truck-sized ones. The man apparently saw Margaret because they waved to each other.

“We're running to him. Got it?”

Victoria said she understood, but something about the whole scene made her doubt where this was heading. “What's over there? Why can't we get up on the top floor and stay here?”

“You are a curious kitty. Trust me. You don't want to be up on the top floor,” she said in a dark voice. “That's another side of our business that has gone ... bust.”

Russ shifted on his feet with a nervous energy, but she couldn't see his face.

Margaret looked at her with sadness. “I know this is scary. You came here because you had nowhere else to turn. The world is ending, and you didn't know how to cope. I feel for you, dear. I do. But I-”

“No, that's not-”

She shushed her. “You're scared. Every girl who comes through my door feels the same way. Trust me when I say we're gonna make it alright again. Zombies or no zombies. Sound good?” Her smile was strained, and her eyes had liar written all over them, but Victoria had two shotguns within five feet of her. Something was going on, but her only course of action was to do as she was told. Whatever threat they presented, the zombies were real. Once they arrived, she needed to be in the strongest position she could find. The metal structure appeared the better choice over the old wooden farmhouse.

“All right,” she said slowly. “But if we're going outside anyway, can we bring my husband along? The zombies will get him if we don't.”

It seemed reasonably stated. Surely, they didn't want him to die.

“I promise, if we see him out there we'll get him to safety. Deal?” Margaret motioned with her shotgun toward the door and Russ opened it. Dry dust came in with the hot air and it smelled of manure and death.

She hopped down the back steps of the patio and looked straight up for Liam. There was no porch on the back side of the house, so the roof was high above the second level windows. If Liam was up there, he'd have no way of getting back down in time to run with her.

The horde of zombies came around the sides of the house, and they'd arrive in moments. Nonetheless, she slowed to a trot while in the middle of the parking area and looked for anything Liam could use to get off the roof.

Two green tractors remained parked on the far side of the gravel drive, and other cars were wedged in some trees behind the outbuilding. Shrubs surrounded the small patio where she'd come out, and a plot of grass behind the house had a big blue tarp over it. None of it would help get Liam down.

“Liam!” Victoria shouted. “We're going over there!”

She didn't see him anywhere on the back side of the roof.

Victoria felt a shove. “Go on. Run!” Margaret shouted. “I said go,” she added with an angry bark.

Russ never slowed down. His cowboy boots clunked on the ground as he ran and he held his hat on his head with his free hand. Margaret was dressed in a light blue skirt and a flowery top, like a cowgirl. She assumed they were mother and son, though they didn't really look that similar.

She ran as slowly as she could. Liam had to be up there. Despite the tummy-rumbling drone of all the moaning zombies and the growing smell of death on the air, she slowed almost to a stop just short of the man in the door.

“Move it!” A strong poke of the gun hit her back.

“I have to wait for Liam. He's on your roof. You said-”

“Roof? No way. Forget it, sweetheart. He's gone.”

“No, he's not.”

Margaret pushed the gun, and it really hurt.

A zombie stepped from around the corner of the metal building, underscoring how serious the situation had become. Margaret pulled the barrel off her back, raised the gun to her shoulder, then let one go. Victoria jumped at the concussion, then recoiled at the damage done to the old man's head.

Margaret didn't turn to her, but kept the gun focused on the nearby corner.

“This is it, girl. You want to live, get in that door. If not, die out here. I don't care as long as me and my boy are safe.” She had to yell because the horde was in a frenzy now that the zombies saw living people.

When Margaret ran in the door, Victoria felt the weight of the moment. She could stay outside, dodge the arriving legion of walking dead, and possibly get back over to Liam. Or, she could step through the portal to safety.

One last look around. Liam still wasn't up on the roof. She desperately wanted to see him waving to her from his safe perch, but it wasn't to be.

“Show me you're alive,” she said while nudging toward the opening. “I'll run to you.” Her heart tried to tear through her shirt to keep her there for one last chance to see Liam, but there was nothing but zombies as far as she could see.

A firm hand grabbed her arm and she let herself be pulled through the door.

“Run, Liam!” she screamed.

The door cut her off.

2

It took her a moment to catch her breath, but when she calmed herself enough to think about it, the noise inside the structure was louder than the approaching storm of infected.

I guess Liam did hear music.

It was as if a rock concert had been moved into the shed with men and women yelling and screaming-happily-and having the time of their lives.

Victoria recognized the song because she hated the female artist.

“I'll say this place is Toxic!” She said it aloud, but no one could possibly hear her over the song.

The outbuilding might once have been used to store heavy machinery to work the farm, but now it was hollowed out so that the giant bay could be used as a makeshift dance floor. By her estimation there were fifty people bouncing and jumping under some colored lights in a space about the size of half a tennis court.

A ladder went up to a small loft, though she couldn't see what was stored up there.

“Come on,” Margaret shouted as she pulled her along the edge of the revelers. Victoria let herself be led again, because her brain was unable to square the difference between the threat outside and the apparent ignorance of the people inside. She couldn't help but think back to her own first zombie encounter at a nightclub with an atmosphere very much like the current one. Surely the people here knew what awaited them outside?

An old bearded man wearing potato chip crumbs around his mouth came stumbling up to Victoria as if she had a sign on her that said, “I'm new here.” The music was too loud to hear him talk, but she knew what he wanted.

“I hate this song!” she yelled back while shaking her head.

The man pressed in to ask her again, but Margaret and Russ moved her along.

A second man came up who was a lot cleaner than the first guy, but he had no shirt on and wore a dozen thick necklaces like he was flaunting both his chest and his wealth. There was no scenario where that would have been attractive to her, but especially not in the farmhouse garage. She didn't give him a chance to ask.

“This song really sucks, right?” She shook her head with great exaggeration as the man reached out to drag her to the dance floor. He managed to get his fingers around her wrist but she immediately got away because he was slippery with oil.

The man wasn't taking no as her answer, however, and he pulled at her ponytail as she walked away.

“Ouch!” she whipped back and spun around because he didn't let go.

Margaret and Russ both had to wield their shotguns to get the guy to let her go, but he wasn't happy about it. The man leered at Russ like he was a traitor.

“I mean I really HATE it!” she shouted back to the slippery man. It took a supreme effort not to stick her tongue out at him or give him the finger, but the man was obviously desperate, and she couldn't be sure he wasn't armed.

They were soon away from the dancers, but her fear and confusion surged as she was forced through a door on the rear wall. She feared they were going back outside, but it instead took her into a long, thin wedge of a room. When the door was shut behind, it blocked a good degree of the music.

“You'll want to cut that hair short, like mine,” the woman said while running her fingers through her sweaty, obviously self-cut short hair. “Not just for the jerks out there, but for lice and dirt, too.”

Just what I need: hygiene advice.

“What the hell is this place,” she shouted to change the subject. “Your music is terrible, by the way.”

Her complaints about the tunes stemmed from her dislike of how she was being led around as if she were a piece of meat. It was a small way of controlling the moral high ground with these strangers.

“That is one piece of our business. I'm afraid you came in at the very end of the party.” Margaret laughed weakly.

“Wait a minute. Who are you people?” She raised her hands as if to push everyone back from her, so she could get a better look.

Margaret handed her shotgun to Russ. “Here, keep watch.”

Then, as she adjusted some equipment in the low light of the room, she addressed Victoria's concerns. “This will undoubtedly be the last one of these we do. I'm glad we could get you in, dear. But we did a lot of things here after the world went to crap. My boss ran a clinic up in Sikeston, though we had to come back here when things got bad. Started running it out of his shed,” she laughed anxiously. “But they found us. Everyone found us. Word spreads, you know?”

Victoria nodded to keep her talking but the woman's focus was on some medical equipment.

“First, we let them come, get their stuff done, and then leave. But everything has a cost, right? We realized pretty quick we wasn't gonna make it unless we got paid in usable currency. First it was food, but then nobody had food. Ironic, huh? We're on a farm surrounded by young corn stalks but had nothing to eat.”

Again, Victoria nodded and smiled, happy to be distracted from the music pounding the walls, which in turn hid the sound of the zombies outside.

“So we traded in ... services. We get the girls here and get them squared away, then they contract with us to work off the debt. It was all very hush hush at first, but soon everyone wanted to dispose of their 'little problems' when it was clear what it would mean going forward. Who can take care of a family when the dead are crashing through your living room?” She put a happy spin on her words, but she remained obviously nervous as she continued to fiddle with nobs and dials in the darkness.

“Things spun out of control, I'm afraid. We aren't professionals at this, mind you, so once word got around what we was doin' here, strange men showed up and began to advise us-then they sort of took over. More girls showed up and then more men showed up. Rich and powerful men. They all saw us for what we were. Even some of the cops stopped by ... to shake us down. We became, how should I say this? We became a place where goods and services traded hands enough to run an entire town. At least for a while.”

Margaret looked directly at her. “And you're the last one, sweetie. Lucky for you there won't be any need to work this off. I'm doing one on the house for ya. Call it karma. It's going to be harder to run for a little while, but long term your odds will be better with jus' you and your husband. It's what they all say.”

Victoria appreciated the framework of her explanation. Some kind of business arrangement had been struck. A relationship that included a dance club, apparently. And lots of clients, even now, at the end. But she'd been talking in riddles as to what was expected of her, in this room.

“So, what do you think?” Margaret appeared sympathetic for the first time.

“I'm, uh, glad you want to help my husband and me-”

Victoria jumped.

At that moment hands pounded on the exterior wall. They rattled one side of the room while music shook the other.

Her heart rate was out of control.

“B-but you have it all wrong about why I'm here, I think. We came from Cairo. There was a big fight between an endless wave of zombies and the whole town was destroyed. We got away and saw your house as a place to hide until the horde passes.”

Margaret did a double take. “You aren't pregnant?”

“No, I, uh. No!” It came together with stunning speed. Girls arrived here, desperate to erase their “little problems” as Margaret called them. But they had to pay off their debt, and men came to trade services. In a world without medical facilities and support staff, having a baby would scare a lot of women and young girls to seek this place-no matter the payment. It would become a well-traveled destination from far and wide. Margaret and her boss would be rich in a world bereft of hope.

“Well then,” Margaret sighed. “I guess you found as good a place as any to die.”

3

Victoria studied Russ for the first time. He was a younger teen, even younger than Liam. She noticed he was missing one of his top teeth and had a black eye, like he'd been in a fight. Long blonde hair drooped from under his hat as if he wanted to hide that eye. As she thought it over, Russ had tried to keep himself faced away from Victoria since the moment they met. When he noticed her checking him out, his head drooped so the brim of his hat blocked her view.

She didn't see any hope in talking to the shy kid, so she turned to Margaret. “Can I go? I need to find my husband.”

“Hmm. I'm sorry about that. I guess you were telling the truth. I believed you when you said you weren't recruiting soldiers to join the militias, but I assumed he was here to dump you off and collect payment. Lots of men hunt down desperate girls. Some make 'em desperate, if you catch my meaning. Then they bring 'em here and the shakedown crew pays 'em to go get more.”

“Wait. What? People get paid for bringing girls here? That's horrible.”

Margaret ignored the banging on the walls. “Sometimes things happen faster than you can control 'em. We never intended for all this to happen. It just did. We stayed alive as long as we could. Not proud of what we done, but in a strange way we all took care of each other. Now, all those bad men with guns will help us survive this.” She pointed to the back wall where the zombies continued to pound.

Victoria was tempted to go off on the woman's insanity, but there was now too much noise to speak intelligently.

“Might as well get a drink!” Margaret shouted as she waved to Russ to get his attention. She then pointed to the door of the dance hall and he opened it for her. Victoria felt as much as heard the blast of dance music, but sunlight also reflected through the opening.

“Oh, shit!” Margaret screamed. “Shut it!”

Gunfire erupted in the dance room. One of the tall garage doors had sagged in under the weight of the zombies and the revelers freaked as the stink and chaos leaked into their safe space.

Russ slammed the door.

But we can save them.

She didn't know how she felt about not helping any of the people on the other side, including girls she knew had to be innocent victims, but any chance of helping was shelved by Margaret. She stood in front of the door with her shotgun at the ready. Someone was already on the other side banging to be let inside.

“I know what you're thinking: why not help some of them people?” Margaret shouted as she shook her head. “They ain't got a chance. If we let them through, those things might get in, too. I ain't taking that chance with Russ here.”

Victoria held up her hands in mock surrender.

A woman's scream pierced the air just as the music shut off and for a few moments the whole outbuilding seemed to take a deep breath. Even the banging on the back wall subsided as if the zombies knew the front door had been breached. In that lull, Victoria heard footsteps on the roof above the little room.

“They're going to ride it out up top,” Margaret said in a normal voice.

Seconds later, the screams and shouting and gunfire came back louder than before.

Victoria's stammering heart needed a distraction, so she looked around for something to block the door. Liam would want her to always be thinking about survival tactics. A small medical table stood by a chair bolted to the cement floor.

The single bulb above them flickered, causing them all to gaze at it. She broke the moment by motioning to the table.

“Help me move it over there,” she said while pointing to the door.

Margaret set down her gun and helped her get it done. They found a metal filing cabinet that was the perfect size to wedge between the table and the back wall, so the door could not swing inward at all.

But they were far from safe because a gunshot tore through the metal next to the door. A few more followed as they all got on the floor in the secret room. She held her breath for sixty seconds, expecting more, but she inhaled again before any additional holes appeared.

“I think we're-”

A long burst of gunfire chugged in the other room. The bullets came in through the inner wall and clanged against medical equipment or snapped through the back wall and out into the horde, letting in more light.

“Stay down!” Victoria yelled to her two captors.

More guns opened up as if it was a last stand of some sort. Bullets flew wild and perforated the back wall from end to end. All she could do was hug the floor and close her eyes.

The rally didn't last long. After about thirty seconds, the many became few, then none. When it was done, she opened her eyes and looked in horror as blood dripped through many of the holes on the dance floor side. Someone had unleashed hell on the zombies inside the room.

Russ screamed for help, but he wasn't the one who was hurt. During the volley he'd slid himself onto his mom's chest as if he was protecting her from the bullets, but the look of despair on his face indicated that he'd failed.

“Oh God,” Victoria let slip out.

At least one of the bullets found a mark down near the floor because the woman's side had burst open.

She surveyed the medical equipment. “Is there anything we can use here? Bandages? Antiseptic? Alcohol, even?”

Margaret's face was pale as she shook her head no.

The boy slid back to look at his mother. There was no longer any reason to protect her from the bullets because all the people in the next room seemed to be dead.

Victoria crouched as she moved around the room looking for anything that would help with the wound, but the best she found was a heating plate with a pot of cold water on it. A few medical instruments stuck out of the container.

“This is all you have?” Victoria yelled in disbelief.

Margaret said something, but only Russ heard her.

“What did she say?” she asked him.

“None of your damned business.” Russ looked at her defiantly for a moment but threw his head down again. Victoria noticed his gun was carelessly placed on the floor next to his mom.

“We have to go out and get help.” She got up and walked directly to the shotgun and picked it up. She checked the chamber to ensure there were rounds in the gun, pleased there were.

“I'm sorry for doing this, but I'm getting out of here.” She felt better being in charge, but soon regretted taking the gun. Margaret was bleeding out and her son was begging her not to die. Even if by some miracle she could get out of the building and find help, the woman was going to die.

Well, poop.

She could curse the woman for what she'd done with her farm, including tossing Liam out the front door and leading her into the hidden room, but there was no denying she'd kept her son alive in the breakdown of civilization.

Maybe it was the only way?

No, I'd never allow this.

In her heart she knew that was true but admitted she couldn't possibly understand how it all happened to this family. Margaret said they started out small and it got out of control because of bad men who preyed on and made victims of them all.

Never.

Unable to do anything but stare at the dying woman and listen to the banging and scraping on all the walls around her, she leaned back against the table in front of the door. The gunfire had stopped. Only the moans remained.

She could almost talk at a normal level.

“I'm sorry about your mom.”

4

Russ scrambled around the floor, looking for something. Victoria was bemused until they both saw the object of his search at the same moment. Fortunately, Margaret's gun was up against the table where she was already leaning. Russ's eyes burned with tears and anger, but he said nothing to confirm he'd been looking for the gun.

The gentle bumps from people on the roof were heard in between the noises of the horde outside and the intruders in the next room. They'd quieted down, relatively speaking, because there were no more easy pickin's. At least, that's how she imagined it. Somehow the zombies outside knew the action was on the roof, not inside. With any luck, she'd be forgotten in the tiny room. But for how long? Was she destined to spend the rest of her life there? The questions burned at her while she kept her eye on Russ.

“She's gone,” the boy said while choking up.

She knelt down to pat the guy on the back.

“Get off me,” he hissed. “She tried to protect you. Help you. I don't know who you are, but I hate you.” He looked at the door, confirming it was closed. “I want you to get out of here,” he added weakly. “Like your stupid husband.”

Her hackles rose up to the challenge, but she had to take comfort in having control of the guns. She could easily throw his mom's misdeeds in his face or explain all her own struggles that made her end up under his mom's “protection,” but none of that mattered. The woman was a corpse on the floor, and they were alive. It could have been any of them, or all of them. The apocalypse was completely random.

It struck her why his mom spoke in such indirect sentences. She tried to shield her son from the worst of what went on at their home.

“I know you hate me. I'm really really sorry about your mom. I never meant any of this to happen when we walked up to your front door today. I'm-” she tried to think of the least controversial thing she could say, “-trying to get back to my own parents in Colorado.”

“I hope they're dead,” he snapped.

I should have seen that coming.

“Look. We have to work together to survive. That's the way it is now. Working together with people you dislike. Not that I dislike you.” She didn't. There was a deep feeling of sadness for him, though.

“Well I hate you. My mom protected whores like you and left me to get beat up and pushed around. Now look at her!”

Victoria reconsidered if Margaret sheltered him a little too much. What message would she have told him for girls brought here against their will? How would she describe the men? Some unsavory characters had to be coming in and out of his house for the past several weeks. Men devoid of morals, intent to capitalize on the desperate women and girls who arrived here before them. It was his mom that made it all happen, so he probably had reason to be angry.

“Fine. Hate me. But we still have to work together to get out of here.”

“We're dead,” he yelled and pointed at Margaret's body. “My mom died. I'm as good as dead now, too.”

“No, we'll make it. Trust me.”

He spit at her legs for an answer.

She took a deep breath.

Three weeks ago, the thought of this place would have sent her into a panic attack. Men and women being used like currency was abhorrent. Two weeks ago, after seeing the worst of mankind and the zombies chasing them, finding a place like this would have been a huge embarrassment to her sensibilities, but nothing more. Today, in week three, it was what it was. Just one more speedbump in her survival.

I'm not dying in an abortion clinic.

She held both shotguns and moved away from Russ. Though the room was small, she hoped there was something she could use either for defense against the zombies, or offense against them so she could get back to the farm.

Among filing cabinets and dusty boxes toward one end she found a small brown refrigerator like college students use in their dorm rooms. She immediately thought of her room back at Washington University and her pleasant time with Liam back there.

Inwardly, she glowed, but at that moment the only thing she wanted to see in that refrigerator was ice cold water. She pulled the handle to get a look inside and was disappointed. There were rows of uniform-looking containers, but they weren't the beverages she sought.

She pulled out a small glass bottle with a funny-looking stopper on top. She recognized it immediately for what it was. A medical vial used for injecting the contents into people.

Russ remained by his mom, so Victoria walked the vial back to the light. Her brief tenure in the medical internship had given her ample access to all kinds of medicines, dispensers, bottles, and needles, but this one had her confused. Rather than give the name and description of the contents as required, it simply gave the dosage instructions.

“Administer 5cc per procedure.”

It also had an ominous black plastic seal around the top which had to be torn before the bottle could be opened. It said “Property of FEMA. We stay healthy, together.”

“Holy cow plop,” she said to herself. Russ looked up, though his face remained passive.

Victoria ran back to the little fridge and pulled out the rest of the bottles. After a quick count she thought to look for a trash can. If the bottles were what she thought, the plastic caps and empty bottles had to be close by. It wasn't like trash service had been working.

When she found the can-with a bullet hole on each side, like a shot had passed right through it-she dumped it on the floor. A dozen or so bottles rolled around noisily.

“Are you trying to kill us,” Russ whispered, scared.

Victoria did some mental math. At least ten of the bottles were here, and the dosage said 5cc-a pretty significant amount for an injection. The bottles were 30ml each, meaning each one was good for about six doses. If the trash represented all of them, there had been approximately sixty girls injected with whatever was inside the containers.

In her scramble to account for the bottles and count them, she'd left the guns untended.

Russ got up and already had one in his hands.

“Crap. Crap. Crap.” Victoria set down the bottles and raised her arms in surrender again.

5

“Tell me right now what you are doing. Why are you counting like that?” Russ held his mom's shotgun-the dangerous-looking one.

Victoria lowered her arms. “Are we good?”

Russ nodded. “Just tell me.”

She let her shoulders hunch as she propped herself on her knees next to the bottles. “I've seen these before. These black-topped vials are used for injecting patients. You stick the needle into this top screen and you get a sterile contact with the contents. This particular one says the doctor needs 5 cubic centimeters of fluid for this FEMA-controlled agent. I had this stuff injected in me before the zombies came. I remember because of this black band. I saw my nurse use her fingernails to dig into the plastic and rip it off. She seemed more bothered than anything. But that stuck with me.”

She sighed.

“And later I found out that I was injected with a walking-version of the zombie plague. One that spreads to others but doesn't infect me. Funny, huh? Funny that the same thing was given to all the girls who passed through here, probably thinking they were getting some kind of immunity. It all depends on what FEMA told your mom.”

“They poisoned us?”

Victoria noted he included himself in the victim group.

“I'm afraid so.” She hesitated, wondering if she should engage him. Then figured she had nothing to lose. “Look. Maybe your mom only said she injected this stuff. Maybe she fought back-”

“No. She used it. I saw her.” Russ's look was distant, but he held firm to the gun.

“OK. Don't panic. I have ... an immunity to the plague that can help you, too.”

The gun came up. “How stupid do I look? You come in ahead of the zampires, kill my mom, and poke around her medical fridge. I'm not believing anything you say.”

Like tipping over a cliff, she couldn't resist responding. “You call them zampires? I know someone who would love to know that.”

“Shut up,” he screamed.

She raised her hands, signaling her acceptance.

Tears welled in Russ's eyes. “Just shut it. I need to think.” He backed away a few steps, allowing Victoria to relax just a bit. Victoria couldn't imagine what must be going through his head.

“I'm infected?” Russ spoke quietly and sounded incredulous. “Mom did this to me?”

“She couldn't have known.”

“Shut up! I'm a zampire? I'm evil like Roger?” He appeared to freeze in deep thought.

Moments later, he shot a look to her like he'd figured something out. He put the stock of the shotgun on the floor and leaned over it.

“No thanks,” he said with hatred.

Victoria, seeing the setup, jumped to her feet and threw herself sideways toward him. The gun went off and the buckshot missed Russ's head and went up through the roof. A wild scream came back down.

A few seconds later, several guns opened new holes in the roof as she and Russ dove under the steel table. The clanks of shots hitting medical equipment and passing back and forth through the metal of the shed continued for an eternity.

The boy belatedly realized he wanted to die and he shuffled back out from under the table.

“Don't!” Victoria yelled over the furious noise. “Please. I need you.”

Russ stayed on the floor in the wide open but remained unhurt when the shots stopped completely. “Just kill me. I deserve it. Just kill me. I deserve it.”

His methodical chant was intended to convince her to do the deed, but it only made her mad. “Dammit, Russ. You lived through three weeks of Hell. I get it. Your mom is dead. I get it. She infected you. And others. I freaking get it!”

Her voice was strong and loud as her hearing came back.

“But you're alive. That makes you special. You can play a part in rebuilding this crummy world. I can't do that on my own. We need strong young men like you. All the girls here are strong survivors. You guys are what we need to fight back.”

Russ was curled up in a ball on the concrete floor, unwilling or unable to respond.

She sat next to him, ensuring the gun was at his feet-away from them both. The screams from above had gone away, though shadows moved across the numerous holes up there where the metal had been perforated. A part of her thought someone would see them or hear them and finish them off, but it was one worry among hundreds at that moment. The pounding of the infected had died back down. It was quiet enough for them to talk and be heard.

“My mother was a nurse, too. She worked at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Denver her whole life. She'd tell me stories about the horrible things she saw there, but she always backed them up by saying how much care was given to those patients and how most of them-through proper treatment and lots of love-survived and went on to live healthy lives. She told me the most important thing was to believe you were working for God, using the hands He'd lent us, to fix those too weak or sick to help themselves. She must have seen some awful stuff, but she always came home cheerful and upbeat. Every day. Since I've been old enough to notice.”

She turned to Russ, still crouched in a ball.

“She's why I wanted to go into medicine. I wanted to see if I had it in me to look into the face of sickness, desperation, and even death-and still have a smile on my face. I think I have my answer. Your mom helped me see it, too.”

Russ finally responded. “How?”

“This place. There are a million things your mom could have done to save herself or save you alone. She could have run for the hills, or swam down the river. Maybe you all could have hidden in this shed forever and not be bothered. But she chose to help the women who came to her in the best way she knew how. I might disagree with all my heart about whether it was right or wrong, but I don't think she did it because she hated these girls. She loved them. She loved you.”

There was no way to know what was in Margaret's heart, but it didn't matter. She was trying to convince Russ the fiction was true.

“And I'm sure she had no idea what was in these vials. FEMA probably told her it was protection from the plague, or maybe that it was the cure. I've heard a lot crazier things over the past three weeks. The government is tracking down 100-year-old women for experiments, there are Polar Bears running around St. Louis, and all of the East Coast is in a convoy heading this way. Crazy stuff, all of it.”

“Am I infected,” he said in a muffle.

“Who knows. Maybe these vials are all a placebo. This is some kind of control batch for a country-wide experiment. You have to understand there are a lot of things it could be. We just don't know.”

Russ cried softly, and this time when Victoria put her hand on him she wasn't rebuffed.

Take small steps. We'll get there.

Chapter 4. Propane accessories

Liam watched with a feeling of futility as the zombie men and women kept forcing their way through the collapsed garage door. Someone was still alive because gunfire continued over there, but it was losing steam fast.

The zombies below his window stood shoulder-to-shoulder as far as he could see in the orange haze of the dust cloud. He figured most of them would be trying to get the people in the outbuilding, but the nearest ones reached up and pined for him like spurned lovers.

“I don't see how we can get over there,” he said while cupping his chin in thought.

Sabella's daughter was stuck on the other side of that river of dead. He was more than willing to help with any rescue, but only after he knew Victoria was safe. It was past time to get downstairs and check on her.

He sighed.

“OK, the first things we need are some weapons.” He turned around to find Sabella and her daughters had left the room while he was lost in thought at the window.

“Hey, wait up,” he called, unsure if he should shout or remain quiet. There were at least two dead men on the upper floor, but there was no way to know if there were others. The thought of the pair of armed women downstairs encouraged him to stop at Wilder's body. The dead man had numerous cuts down his back as well as the final one on the side of his head.

Liam needed that knife, so he pulled it out of the bone. The vibration sickened him as it rubbed the man's skull on the way out. He wiped the blood from the blade using the ruined mattress. Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed the empty revolver from where it had fallen near the bed. Finally, he stood up, jumped over the man's legs, and went out the door.

There were four bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor, along with a large utility closet at the end of the hall. The door hung open and the girls stood around putting on clothes. Sabella looked at him with concern, and once he understood what they were doing, he turned his back on them.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“It's all right, Sam,” Sabella said in a kind voice. “I know you aren't the kind of person who would make us wear these.”

He glanced back to her briefly. She held up the horrible dress she'd been forced to wear and showed him the word SLAVE again.

“He enjoyed watching us suffer both mentally and physically,” she spit out. “This was his idea of sticking it to us, but we're no one's slaves.”

“How long have you been here?” he asked to try to change the subject.

The mother and her girls continued to get dressed and Liam didn't get his answer. He figured it was none of his business, so he reoriented on the nearby stairwell to listen for Victoria. The noise of the horde outside was as constant as a Spring downpour, making it hard to hear anything else. If anyone inside the house was talking below, he couldn't hear them.

“I have to find Victoria, my, uh-” Too late, he used her real name. Somehow, he didn't think Sabella would care if he told her the truth. She didn't seem like a government spy. “Girlfriend. And my name isn't Sam, it's Liam. I used Sam because we're, uh, on the run and I didn't trust that guy. We came in here to escape that horde from St. Louis.”

Among the swishing of clothing and grunts while getting dressed, Sabella finally replied. “Ha! I didn't trust him, either. How do you know they are from St. Louis? That's a long way from here.”

“I don't know how to explain it. Some bad people sucked them out of the city and made them come here. To what end I have no idea. How they did it ... ” He knew the old people in the boat had something to do with it. Mind control? A manipulation of the quantum computer? Pheromones? Was anything too crazy in the Apocalypse? “ ... I don't really know, either.”

“Sounds made up. This has to be every dead person in the world. There are so many.”

He thought of all the zombies he'd seen over in Cairo. Though the fields around them were vast, there were far more zombies on the other side of the river right now. Would Sabella believe him? Did her girls need to know of such titanic threats out there?

“There are a lot,” he said with a settled voice.

Minutes later, and still without any noise from below, the girls and their mom were fully dressed again.

“You can turn around. Thanks for that. We haven't had much in the way of courtesy lately.” The mother pulled a scrunchy from her black jeans and used it to gather her hair behind her. Only a few long, curly bangs managed to escape that fate.

She saw him watching. “My hair hates this humidity, but I'm not brave enough to cut it short like this one.” She meant her older daughter.

Sabella and her girls were dressed in typical suburban fare-mostly jeans and airy tops suitable for the thick Missouri air. Sabella's cross remained visible on her exposed neckline and now both girls displayed similar pendants around their necks. She'd said they'd fled from Egypt because of their religion, so it was no shocker they were pretty serious about it.

“You ready?” Sabella asked.

“Yeah, but I was thinking ... “

He intended to explain his own situation further and what might be downstairs, but she clomped down the steps like she owned the place. The girls trailed down after her like a couple of ducklings. Susan, maybe seven years old, held onto the older girl's shirt ahead of her. The youngster waged war between letting out heavy sobs and keeping it in.

“We're coming down,” Sabella shouted.

He tucked the knife in his pocket and followed down the steps. From the stairs he saw into the kitchen, a dining room, and part of the front family room where he'd come in with his girlfriend.

“This way,” he said, taking the lead from Sabella.

Liam strode into the family room, but Victoria and her captors weren't there. He searched behind the loveseat and behind other furniture just to satisfy himself she wasn't being hidden from him. There was one more room upstairs he forgot to check. Could she have been taken up there? Was there a basement?

Liam froze when he saw the faces in the front window.

“Stop!” he hissed. “They see us.”

To their credit, the girls stopped immediately. Like they'd been trained in the art of zombie evasion. Sabella also made a respectable effort to halt, though she was closer to the window than anyone. A gauzy set of drapes blocked the panes of glass, but it wasn't hard to identify the shapes moving around out on the porch.

Slowly, he knelt on the floor and crawled to the sofa-putting it between him and the windows. Seeing his example, the others did the same. It was just long enough they could all huddle there.

“Where would they have gone,” he asked. “My girlfriend isn't here.”

“Was she pretty or pregnant?” Sabella asked seriously.

“Um, yeah, I like her,” he said as if unsure what she was asking. “She definitely isn't pregnant. No way.”

“Of course you like your girlfriend,” she whisper-laughed. “Was she pretty enough that maybe they took her from you for her looks?”

Liam studied the olive-skinned beauty and put two and two together. Sabella continued talking when she saw it click in his mind.

“Margaret and her son must have taken her out to the shed we saw in the window. That's where Elise is. That's where they take all the new girls.”

He was afraid to ask but had to. “What do they do to them over there?”

“If a girl is pregnant, Wilder or his nurse will rip it out, but I'm not sure where that happens. That fat loser said they make the girls visit with patrons in that garage, and I have a pretty good idea what that means. All I know for sure is what they were going to do to me and mine in this house before you saved us. There isn't anything good going on in either place. Since your friend is with my daughter we have to save them both.”

She began to slither on her belly toward the back of the house.

“Where are you going?”

“To save my daughter,” she said just loud enough to be heard over the horde. A few zombies knocked on the glass and the exterior of the house, but it seemed uneven, like they were just doing it because that was their “thing.” Not because they sensed anyone inside. He figured they'd come through the windows if they knew for sure there were living people in the room.

The two daughters held their ground behind the sofa.

“Aren't you going to help my mom?” the older girl said in a snarky voice that reminded him of Victoria. Her glasses sat low on her nose like a librarian glaring at a noisy patron.

It caught him by surprise.

She huffed as if Liam was on the clock. “Are you going to help her, or not?”'

The look in her eyes said he better get his butt in gear.

2

“What are you going to do?” he asked Sabella as she stood next to the back door. Zombies hovered near the back windows just like they did in the front. More drapes covered the glass, making it difficult for anyone to see in, but he never wanted to underestimate how fast that thin glass would break if they were spotted. He crouched down to get out of the zombies' lines of sight while he chatted.

Sabella hadn't let up for a moment since he met her, so it didn't surprise him she was trying to solve the riddle of how to get across the ocean of plague victims. He tried not to take it personally that she wasn't asking him for his advice, but he had to admit he had no idea how to get across, so he was happy to see what she had in mind.

“See that barbeque pit?”

He saw one out the back door, but he couldn't look for long.

“Yes.”

“I'm going to open this door and you're going to wheel it back inside. Can you do that?”

“I think so. Yeah. But why?”

“I'll show you when you get it in here.”

He peeked out the window of the back door to get a better look at the outside. The rear patio was separated from the parking area behind the house by a small hedge, so it was nowhere near as crowded. There were one or two infected milling about near the grill, but it could have been much worse.

“Can your oldest daughter help me?” He pointed to the living room where the pair of girls had stayed.

“My oldest is over there,” she pointed to the people on the nearby roof. “My girls have done enough. You'll be fine. Have a little faith.” She chucked him on the shoulder.

If you only knew what I've seen.

He didn't argue because he trusted her for some reason and because there was no time to wallow in indecision. The patio was practically zombie free at the moment, and it could fill up in seconds if they weren't careful.

“One sec,” he whispered while holding up his pointer finger. There was no way he was going out there without some kind of serious weapon. The knife in his pocket was fine for what it was, but a farmhouse kitchen probably had something a little more substantial. He skidded on his hands and knees into the kitchen and it didn't take him long to pick out a big meat cleaver. It felt balanced and heavy in his hand and appeared to be extremely sharp.

When he got back to the door, Sabella gave him a grim smile. He felt like he'd earned her approval.

“Ready?” she asked.

He peeked over the bottom edge of the window again and still only saw the two zombies-both men-wandering around the secluded patio. A nearly infinite number of them were everywhere else, but he made a conscious effort not to notice them.

He took a deep breath. “I'm ready.”

“Remember, run out there, pull it back in. That's it.”

Somehow, he didn't think it would be that simple, but it was a goal.

She pulled opened the door just enough to let him out. The two drifters weren't facing his direction, so he had a couple of seconds to really taste the air and think about how his plan was going to work. Unfortunately, he came to the conclusion that no matter how fast he was getting the grill, the two would be on him before he could get back inside. Sabella, for all her planning, didn't seem like she was going to run out and help him.

The grip of the knife became slippery as his adrenaline kicked in. His breathing became short and labored as his heart got a running start for what was about to happen.

The nearest zombie remained oblivious, but the far one was turning toward him.

“Shitballs,” he said under his breath.

The cleaver felt heavy as it became certain he'd need to use it. He judged the distance to the nearest zombie-an older man a foot taller than him-and sprang up. His instinct was to swing the cleaver sideways, but he knew better. Instead, he raised it and then cranked it down on the man's head with everything he had. True to its name, the cleaver hit hard and sank several inches into the zombie's brains.

Brains!

The man fell in a heap to the patio pavers without making a sound. The zombie took the cleaver with him, because it was stuck in the bone. The second zombie raised the alarm, however, as it came for him. In those few seconds Liam had to decide if he should mess with the big blade, pull out his smaller knife, or run for the grill and just get it over with. He selected the grill, which sat about the same distance between him and the zombie.

It was no contest because this wasn't one of the fast zombies. Liam made it to the stainless-steel barbecue grill a couple of seconds before the walking zombie was going to reach him. The cooker was on rollers, which made it easy to get it going.

A howl went up from the infected on the other side of the row of shrubs. He was now on borrowed time because they'd definitely come for him.

“Run, the white elephants are loose!” he said as he remembered something random his dad used to say.

The pursuing zombie man was shorter and heavier than the first. It walked surprisingly slow, giving Liam the time he needed to make it to the door. The grill would roll in just ahead of the zombie-if he was lucky.

But when he got close to the door, Sabella remained parked behind the glass. She pointed off to the side. He let the unit slam into the closed door, then pulled out his knife. His anger swelled as he turned to meet the ashen-faced man.

The swirl of colors beyond the hedge wasn't his concern. The red-shirted man was.

They met right behind the grill, and the man's momentum carried them both into the cooker's lid, nearly tipping the whole thing over. In seconds he had two hands attached to his arms as he fell sideways. The knife remained in his hand, but he couldn't get it to a position where it would do any good.

He slammed to the stonework of the patio and tried to keep the zombie from getting directly on top of him. They rolled back and forth as he tried to maintain the upper hand. Whatever the zombie thought about the strategy of the fight, his main concern appeared to be getting his jaw closer to Liam's neck. That's when he pulled up his knee to the man's stomach, attempting to use it as a wedge to maintain some distance. When he forced his knee upward, it induced the rotting man to unload the contents of his stomach right on Liam's chest.

He didn't look at it. Whatever it was, the stuff was cold and smelled exactly like a dead animal on the side of the road. It took all of his strength to hold the sicko at bay, but his real surprise came as the grill chassis rolled away-into the house.

“Help!” he called out.

The zombie used its own stomach contents to grease the skids and get his face ever closer to Liam's. For the first time since the sirens, he got a good look at the diseased gray skin, the pockmarks of broken blood vessels everywhere possible, and eyes that were bright red from so much blood running from them. The man wasn't breathing on him, which was a relief, but the proximity of his horrible mouth was enough to make him queasy.

“Don't leave me out here,” he said with declining strength. The fight with the zombie was at a stalemate, but he knew only one of them had unlimited energy.

“Help me!” he squawked.

3

The knife was still in his hand, but there was nowhere to stick it that would hurt the creature. At best he might inconvenience him with a poke in the side of his rib cage. Maybe that's the way he was meant to go out. Always fighting until the very last moment.

“No,” he screamed. Then, he pushed with all he had left ... and did get the man to budge an inch. It was like he was superhuman. The only thing keeping the game alive was his leg and knee because it kept the zombie off balance.

“Victoria!” he shouted with all the breath he had left. He knew she wouldn't come in to rescue him, but it felt right to say her name. The feeling of defiance grew inside of him and Liam looked right in the man's vacant eyes. The hungry orbs looked back at him for a moment but then they opened wide-almost like the zombie man was surprised.

Black fluid leaked from behind the zombie's ears and fell in a stream onto Liam's face. The smell was even worse than the man's corpse-tacular breath, and he screamed in horror like a little kid.

“Oh, shut up, Liam. I wasn't going to leave you.”

“Sabella,” he exhaled in relief.

She pushed the zombie from his chest, then grabbed his shirt behind his shoulders and dragged him on his back all the way inside the house. He had a front row seat to watch as bodies poured over the hedge in all directions. The knife felt feather-light and useless in his hand. The door shut just as they closed in on their downed prey.

“Block the door, hurry.”

He didn't need to be told twice. He pushed the large wooden kitchen table, so it was in front of the door. The very next instant, he wiped furiously at the goo plastered to his neck and face. Fists and arms came through the glass of the door, but he remained a bit hidden by the drapes. Still, the zombies had a clear shot at living flesh and were excited at the prospect of capturing one.

While he moved more furniture in front of the door, making it harder and harder to force the door open for those on the other side, the glass started to break on several nearby windows. He yelped at the noise but remained on task. Sabella was doing something with the rescued grill, though he had no idea what could be so important.

“Girls, back upstairs. We're going outside. Go!” She ran into the kitchen and began rifling through drawers and cabinets.

“You're coming, right?” he asked her. For some reason he thought of Victoria and her heroics weeks ago at the Arch. She willingly sacrificed herself to save others-something he should have thought of doing-and now Sabella appeared to be preparing for a similar action.

“Ah ha!” She came running out with a bottle of liquor, which made him sad. This wasn't heroism-she appeared to be giving up. Drinking oneself to death was pretty common these days. While he was thinking it over, she threw the bottle to him and instructed him to hold onto it. Then she gripped the propane tank she'd yanked from underneath the grill. It had a black tube attached to the top that was several feet long.

When they went up the steps, windows on the ground floor started shattering all over the house. It was as if someone had alerted the zombies to the fact someone was inside the house. Suddenly, everyone wanted in.

Sabella made it a few steps up and started to drag the canister. He was unsure if he should help her because he didn't want to be sexist, or anything like that.

“What are you waiting for? Help me get this damned thing up the steps, will ya?”

The paper-white cylinder of propane was heavy. The two of them were able to carry it side-by-side, but it took extra time to get it all the way to the second floor. They then ran into Wilder's room because it was closest to the stairs. They made it to the window facing the outbuilding.

“Crap.” Sabella pointed up. “There's no access to the roof, here. You said you climbed in from the roof?”

“Yep, but I came in from the front. Follow me.” He almost kicked Wilder on the way out but had to focus on holding the heavy canister. They went past the body of the reverend in the hallway and went into the room where he first came into the house. He closed the door when they were all in, not sure if the zombies were inside the house. Wherever they were, putting an extra door in their way was always the right thing to do.

“Through here, then climb to the top. We should be able to see the other building.” Quieter, and to Sabella alone, he mentioned a minor detail he'd thought of while looking out the window, earlier. “If those guys are as bad as you say, they may shoot us for being out there.”

The girls were already out and standing on the front side of the roof. She put her foot out the window but stopped to address his concern. “I need you to stay with them on this side-out of sight. Once I do my thing I'll come back over the peak. If they do shoot me ... ”

She looked at him, suggesting with her eyes that he was being given a responsibility.

With a head nod he added, “What are you going to do?”

“Ha, they won't know what hit them.” Her smile was grim, but her eyes lit up like she'd just had a brilliant idea.

4

They worked the propane out the window and together set it upright on the flat area above the porch. Sabella pulled out a knife and tinkered with the tank's hardware along with the liquor bottle. By all appearances, she was going to make it blow up, but standing outside gave him a lot more to worry about.

Her daughters sat on the roof near the window where the pitch wasn't as steep. They watched in silence as the zombies stood around in their massive dust-swept herd. He whistled a bit because he was awestruck by the size of the horde but otherwise kept his fascination to himself.

If he pretended the zombies were normal humans, he could imagine the field was one big block party with revelers standing around talking. Some areas were thick with people, while others were less crowded. They clumped together like high school cliques at the prom. Only the zombies closest to the house were agitated and mobile. Those beyond that inner ring were largely motionless, like they were waiting for something.

It was tempting to think of the farmstead as the center of the crowd, but he was convinced they were more tightly packed toward the river. That was the core, and somewhere in that direction Grandma Marty was in danger. He thought back to talking to her by that big waterfall. His directive was to get her and Victoria to Colorado where they would somehow find the physical version of the Quantum computer.

He focused hard and tried to reach out his mind to Grandma but didn't hear her reply. Victoria had to be closer, so he tried to talk to her in his head, too, but that also failed. As best he could figure out, it only worked when the three of them were relatively close by. The last time they used the telepathic whatever-it-was-called, they had one river separating them. Now they had the river and miles of zombies between them, assuming Grandma was still somewhere near Cairo.

“This is what's going to happen.” Sabella interrupted his thoughts, but he was glad to stop thinking about the impossible odds of finding one old woman in the broken-down world.

“He and I will pull this up to the top, then he'll come back down. You will all wait right here.” She looked at Leah and Susan with a tight-lipped smile for each, but she stopped on him. “Your job is to keep my girls safe.”

What about my girl?

He wondered how he'd gotten caught up with such responsibility, but she did save his life, just as he had saved hers. As far as responsibility went during the end times, they were practically family.

“Let's do this,” she said.

“Good luck, mom,” Leah added. She pointedly avoided looking at Liam.

“I love you,” Sabella replied.

“Come back down soon,” Susan peeped. She was constantly on the verge of tears. He guessed both girls felt that way, but the older one hid it better.

She smiled widely, then turned from them. He grabbed the handle of the canister with her and they started up the twenty or so feet to the top. Just short of the summit they paused and crouched down as if they'd planned it. He used his shoulder to brace the propane tank while they sorted out their next moves.

“I think I have a problem, Liam. I won't be able to throw this like I thought.”

Sabella was a shapely woman of about average height and weight, but unless she was made of muscles like Elsa, there was no way she could toss the tank far enough out into the crowd to make a difference.

“You want it between the house and the other building, don't you?”

“Yeah, I let myself get caught up in the excitement. I really wanted to blow the crap out of those zombies and storm over there and get Elise. But that's kinda stupid.”

He peeked over the crest. Nothing had changed. The men and women appeared to have settled in on the roof of the metal building, and zombies banged on the base of it just as they were doing to the farmhouse. By his reckoning there was no rescue possible for anyone.

“I think it can work. If we make it, at least you can be with your daughter. They have guns to protect her.”

If they don't shoot us, first.

He squinted because he thought he saw Victoria on the roof over there. She had a black top similar to Victoria's, but her hair wasn't as dark. Most of the women sat in a circle surrounded by the people with guns, so he couldn't see everyone, but he was pretty sure she had to be up there.

“So how do you want to do this?” he asked.

Sabella shifted and took a knee. “I'm sorry, Liam, but this is hard for me. My husband left me years ago and I've been kind of pissed at men since then. We got caught up in this place and my opinion hasn't gotten any better, except for you.”

It was Liam's turn to shift uncomfortably on the slope of the roof.

“But with you, my biggest problem is that you're just a kid-I mean a young man. Younger than my Leah. It's, uh, hard to look at you as help out here.” She didn't sound embarrassed.

He took a deep breath. “I get that a lot. If you think it's hard for you, imagine what it's like for me. I read a ton of zombie books and a lot of those stories have actually helped me figure things out in this apocalypse, but it is pretty routine that people don't trust me. I once had access to a whole truckload of guns being given away, but they passed over me because of my age. I really could have used one, too, to protect my grandma.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Sabella replied.

“No, she's not dead,” he said with a quiet laugh. “She's out there, somewhere.” He pointed east over the endless horde.

“Oh, well, I'm sorry she's out there,” she said.

“Me too,” he replied.

“I'll try to look at you as a young man, but please don't take it personally if I mess up.”

“I promise I won't.”

“Well, I was hoping you'd have some ideas on how to do this,” she replied while biting her lip with an anxious smile.

He looked over the top again. He could throw a baseball and hit the other building with no problem. The flat gravel lot below would make any explosion more effective at knocking down the zombies in the open space, so maybe they didn't have to throw it that far. On the other hand, getting it to the middle would ensure both ends would get equal destruction.

“The girls should be inside, ready to run across,” he suggested.

“Are you kidding me? Run out there with those things? They aren't leaving this roof.” She turned and looked at the girls sitting on the roof below.

“It will just be us?” he asked.

“No, just me,” she replied. “I'll grab Elise and be back before the zombies recover.”

He was torn between competing directives. Staying there and protecting the girls appealed to his sheepdog sensibilities, but he also wanted to go and find Victoria in equal measure.

Liam decided to let her call the shots, for now. If, by some miracle, he spotted Victoria, he was pretty sure he'd cross the parking lot no matter what the motherly Sabella told him to do.

5

Sabella was ready to go but he hesitated. There had to be something else they could do to prepare for the crossing. Search the house for guns. Craft spears and clubs from the wood furniture. See if there was a basement where they could fall back. Use the phone.

The phone!

“Hold on. I might be able to call someone.” He shifted on his feet, still propping up the cylinder with Sabella's help, and got the phone out of his pocket. The plastic bag he'd used as waterproofing came out with big rips. The phone was soaked from his swim in the river and it finally had enough of his abuse.

She commented when she saw his disappointment. “Unless you have someone flying a helicopter nearby, there is no one that could have helped you.”

He knew she was right. Hours ago, he had a V-22 Osprey which might have saved him, not to mention what resources Grandma Rose could have given him. Sabella had no idea what he'd been through to end up on the farmhouse roof, and he doubted she would believe him even if he was utterly honest.

“You talk to your girlfriend and your grandma in your head? Yeah, right, kid,” she'd laugh. “You fought off assassins, used a dummy of your grandma in a bicycle trailer, rappelled down a skyscraper hotel, went up all the stairs in the Arch, drove a tank, were attacked by drones ... ” and on she would go. He couldn't prove any of it. Maybe if Victoria was around to back him up.

“No, I don't have a copter, but I figured dialing 9-1-1 was worth a try,” he said. Not the truth, but not really a lie, either.

“Look, I know this doesn't have much of a chance, but I can't do nothing, because my baby girl is over there.”

“No, not much of a chance,” he echoed.

Sabella huffed with impatience.

“All right,” he said quickly. “We'll give it a try. It can't hurt.”

He outlined what he would do, and though he never expressed faith it would work, they were at least going to give it an honest effort. In the back of his head he wondered how big of an explosion would result. If it was big enough, it might get some attention from the military back toward Cairo. Eventually they might be rescued, but someone had to know they were there.

“Thank you,” she said. “Your mother would be so proud of you. I hope to tell her someday how you saved my family.”

That stung, but he didn't sour the moment by telling her that was an impossible request.

What would he say? “Sorry, my mom was tossed into the river tied to my zombie father. Thanks for mentioning it.”

Instead, he kept his mouth shut and got a firm grip on the propane tank. Sabella nodded, then cranked open the top valve.

“Let's just get this over with,” he said while trying to sound positive.

“Together?” she asked. They stood and lifted the tank between them and walked over the ridge of the roof and went down the steep slope. They were in clear view of the men and women on the far side. He knew because they started pointing and waving.

When they had the tank to the edge of the house they set it back down.

“I hope this works,” Sabella commented. Then she took a knife from her pocket and put a big cut in the rubber hose. Gas hissed out at what he thought was an alarming rate.

“Won't this blow up in our hands,” he said while fighting the panic.

“I don't think so, but let's toss it and duck down to be safe.”

They picked it up as they stood on the roof two floors above the patio. With several firm swings they got the metal tank in motion.

“3, 2, 1, throw!” he shouted.

The tank flew out of their hands and had a good trajectory.

“Down,” they shouted at each other.

While it was in the air, they both fell to the roof and covered their heads, fearing an explosion. He held his breath and closed his eyes as tight as he could to be safe. Sixty seconds went by without the big boom, but he was sure he heard men laughing.

“Why didn't it explode?” Sabella asked as she sat up next to him.

Liam had a clear view of the white tank. He didn't expect it to go to the exact middle, but he hoped it would get close. Instead, it barely cleared the hedge around the patio, putting it maybe a quarter of the way to the far building. A female zombie bore the brunt of the cannister. The professionally-dressed woman's head and neck were indented and bloody where the heavy tank impacted, and she fought to get out of the hedge where she'd fallen.

Sabella pulled out the liquor bottle, popped the top, took a swig and offered it to him.

“In my book, you aren't too young for this.”

“No, but thanks,” he replied.

“Okay, but this is your only chance. It's going to be gone in a sec.”

He was curious about the white-label on the bottle, but he knew enough about drinking to know it could impair his ability to save Victoria, and nothing was worth that.

“Nah,” he said.

“That's probably the right answer,” she said with a chuckle. “Don't tell Leah I offered this.”

He smiled back to her, aware that a couple of men continued to laugh and wolf whistle at Sabella.

Rather than take more swigs, she put a dish towel into the open end and then used a small lighter to fire it up. Without fanfare she tossed the flaming bomb down to where the propane tank had fallen. Again, they both fell to the roof, expecting a big boom.

After several moments of waiting, he peered down to see a pitiful little fire at the edge of the hedge. A few zombies were aflame, and there was a four-foot stream of fire coming out of the broken propane hose, but it wasn't blowing up as they hoped.

Together they watched the fire spread in the bushes and jump on a few more zombies-their clothes seemed to catch fire easily-but it was clear they'd failed in their primary goal of making the propane tank blow up.

The men guffawed as if watching pure comedic gold.

“I think we need a gun to rip it open,” he suggested in a dispirited voice. “Or maybe we can direct those laughing guys over there to shoot it. They have the guns.”

“No, let's get back over the roof. We have to think of something else.” She started up the shingles and he was quick to follow. When he made it to the crest he turned around and had a better view of what they'd started.

“Um, Sabella, you better look at this.”

6

He stared down for a couple of minutes because it was like watching the spread of a plague in real time.

The shrubs at the end of the patio burned feverishly, now. Fire spread rapidly on the wind and jumped around while he watched. The jet of flame from the propane hose shot through the bushes and went into the crowd. As one zombie entered the piercing flame, he or she would catch fire and then move to avoid the stimulus. That would open the space for others to walk in and get burned. It became a vicious cycle.

In a few minutes, there were dozens of zombies fighting the fire on themselves-yelling and screaming with echoes of humanity. Their clothing went up like tinder, and the flames took on a life of their own as they sought out new victims.

Liam caught a whiff of the burning flesh and immediately lost his lunch. Between Wilder's blood on his face, that zombie's stomach contents on his shirt, and this new stench wafting into his nose, his body had endured enough.

He unloaded but there was almost nothing in his stomach, so it wasn't as embarrassing as it might have been. Some of the men continued to laugh, and the excitement over there rose slightly when he did his thing, but the laughing seemed to be settling down.

Sabella remained serious. “This is great, but it isn't hurting them. Well, I mean it isn't killing them,” she said after watching for a bit. Her daughters came up to see why he and their mom remained on the ridge of the roof. Sabella didn't turn them away, though he felt it was truly horrible to allow younger kids to see the fire.

I'm a kid. She should turn me away from this.

No matter what he told Sabella and everyone else, he didn't mind being “just a kid” inside his head. In no universe should a sixteen-year-old boy have to protect his great-grandma from zombies, or only date pretty girls when the world is ending, or watch the terrible things flames did to zombie flesh. He longed for that Pinocchio wish of wanting to be a real boy.

Liam stood speechless as the fire took on a life of its own and spread like mad.

Would the whole crowd from horizon to horizon soon be naked and burned? They were dead as far as he was concerned, but it still didn't feel right. It would be far more humane to put zombies out of their misery, rather than make them suffer needlessly in a mass fire. On a more practical side, the zombies burned out of their clothes appeared more ghoulish and horrible than the others.

The men on the roof cursed and yelled instead of laughed. Sometimes it came across with uncanny clarity. A few times they fired guns, but as best he could tell they didn't aim at them. Instead, they attacked the fire walkers. He wondered if those bad men had some civility after all. Putting those sad zombies down was a good thing.

For a few minutes, the fire jumped from zombie to zombie in an ever-growing and distinctly visible ring of orange and yellow chaos. He couldn't see the fire below the farmhouse roof, but the wooden structure was probably in great danger. The burn line spread to the outbuilding and promptly surrounded it. It also moved toward the copse of trees adjacent to the metal structure. That's where the men were really putting down the infected. Not that it mattered. There were far too many. Men and women stumbled into the small wood and fire hit the underbrush like splashes of gasoline. The fire got to work consuming everything that would burn.

“What's that?” he pointed to the small clump of woods beyond the two green tractors. The trees next to the outbuilding seemed to be a hidden storage area. There were several long racks of firewood, a couple pallets of plywood, and tons of rebar and other building materials. Once the fire burned away the camouflage netting covering it all, it went to work on the rest.

There was also a large silvery tank on stilts. The netting burned away in a flash, making it seem to shine in the sunlight once it was revealed.

“I'm not sure,” she replied dryly.

“You don't think it's got gas in it?” The big round container was at the edge of the gravel parking area. If this was a farm and if the outbuilding was used to store farm equipment, it made perfect sense the owners would benefit from a storage tank for their fuel. It was about the size of a small car, but it felt jumbo jet-sized because it now sat inside an intense cooking fire.

The men on the other building were no longer laughing, waving, shooting, or shouting. They saw the fuel tank for what it was and tried to get as far away from it as possible. Some people slid off the roof as they crowded to the far side to get away from what was coming.

A few gunshots peppered the people on the roof and bodies were thrown over the side.

“They're killing each other,” Liam remarked while staying low on the rooftop.

As the minutes ticked by, the crowd got smaller as it pressed against the rear corner of the outbuilding. The men struggled to get as much distance from the tank as they could, but it came with a toll.

When the fire raged in anger up the trees and around the fuel tank, the bad men pushed a group of girls and women over the side. Liam gasped along with Sabella because it was probably her daughter being tossed away. Zombies were pretty thick in front of the outbuilding, but he couldn't see what was happening on the backside where they went down.

“I'm going to kill those sons of bitches,” Sabella declared. “Somehow. Some way. I'm going to make them pay for doing that.”

“We don't know for sure,” he started to say as there was a loud pop at the front of the fuel tank.

The fire had lapped at the round cylinder like a Thanksgiving turkey inside a hot oven and it was finally done cooking.

“Get down,” he yelled, figuring something bad was coming. He pushed Susan down, so her head was lower than the topmost ridge of the roof. The four of them sat on the front side of the roof but he wondered if that would even matter.

What followed was a deep boom he'd not felt since the bombs fell on the Arch grounds. The house rattled underneath him, and a hot heat seared the top of his head and doused him in the stink of gasoline and burned flesh. An intense heat baked them even as it stole all the oxygen.

His ears failed him while he choked. The explosion was so loud and the concussion so intense he only heard silence and a distant metallic echo. He felt the air rush back over the roof as if filling in the space the explosion had created. A distinct mushroom cloud punched the sky like an inky black fist.

As he lifted his head a secondary explosion ripped through the echoes in his ears. He felt it, more than heard it. There was a brush of heat, but nothing like the previous one.

Sabella's girls screamed and cried out in fear, though they seemed far away. For some time, he put his hands on his ears, then popped them off again-trying to get his ears to register something. He almost jumped when someone tapped his shoulder.

Sabella pointed over the top, but he couldn't look away from her. The once pretty woman was now covered in black residue and her luxurious brown hair seemed dried out and faded. Blood ran in a little trickle from her left nostril. Even her silver cross was blackened by the event.

“Are you okay?” he shouted. He wasn't deaf, but his ears weren't right.

She nodded. “The girls are shaken, but fine. Look!”

He finally turned to see what they'd unleashed.

The fuel tank exploded, no doubt about that. It had stripped the leaves and other greenery from the trees and undergrowth around it. The upper branches of the trees remained intact, but they burned like tall candles on the flat farmland. Black soot covered everything that got touched by the explosion and a sickly black smoke rose from whatever was left burning.

The zombies got the worst of it.

“Oh my God,” Sabella said. Her voice came to him from somewhere down a long tunnel.

She pushed her curious girls back below the ridge of the roof, so they couldn't look. He, on the other hand, could not look away. The fuel had burned so hot it melted many of the zombies into smudges nearest the fuel bomb, and many sickening piles of flesh floundered between the structures. Those farther out from the blast burned from head to toe and screamed in blood-stilling cries that penetrated his damaged ears like sacrificial daggers. When the dust and smoke cleared from around the farmhouse, he fully expected to see the rest of the zombies unaffected and in good health.

“I have to go over there,” Sabella said in a sad voice.

Liam couldn't stop her, but he put his hand on her shoulder to try. Now was the time to make a run for it because the zombies had been pushed back like the Red Sea out on the parking lot, but he feared what they would find if they rushed over there. He tried not to think of where Victoria was at that moment because no one could have survived that explosion.

The air soon cleared enough they could see some of the outbuilding. The explosion had ripped the roof off the left half of the structure where it was closest to the fuel bomb. The front wall had been crushed inward, and the interior was a cauldron of dancing flames.

Smoke and dust swirled for a moment before moving off the right half of the metallic building like a magician pulling back his cape.

Sabella made the sign of the cross and kissed her necklace.

“Lord, what have I done?” she said sullenly.

No one remained on what little was left of the roof.

Chapter 5. Mama bear

The steel walls around Victoria buckled with an explosion. It was jet-engine loud and oven-door hot for those first few seconds. Metal ripped and bent and for a second it felt like the whole building was going to tip over. Everything in the room that wasn't bolted down hopped or fell until it was all on the floor. Flames briefly shot in the room from a long, thin gap where the ceiling met the inner wall.

Much too late, she yelled, “get down,” and dropped to the floor. The cool concrete pad offered very little comfort as fingers of flame wandered in under the door.

“Stuff something under there,” she called to Russ because he was closer to the doorway.

The boy never moved however, and it struck her she couldn't hear her own voice. She felt the reverberation in her lungs, but her ears weren't working. A second later she choked on the fumes and all thoughts of “doing something” turned to a fish-like gasping for air.

Please God, I'm sorry for my sins. Forgive ...

When she came to, the first thing she noticed was that someone had moved her to the end of the room, near the tipped over refrigerator. A teen boy was out cold next to her and they were surrounded by junk like it had fallen from shelves. In her lightheadedness she forgot his name. It took several firm shakes on his back to get him to acknowledge her.

“Just ten more minutes, mom,” he complained. “No, I don't have any homework-well, maybe just a little.”

She shook harder.

“I'll make the bus, stop it,” he demanded in a burst of anger.

“Hey, wake up!” She really jostled him.

He spun over like a crocodile and looked at her with wide eyes. The power had gone off, so the hanging bulb was useless, but the roof had warped and separated in several places. Light beamed down from the openings. It also came through the bullet holes in the outer wall.

“Where are we?” she started to say before he cut her off.

“Shhh,” the boy said in a quiet voice. “Listen.”

Her head was a groggy mess, but she remembered all the noise. She exhaled with gratitude that she wasn't deaf, but it was oddly quiet. There wasn't anything to be heard inside or out. No tapping on the roof, no banging on the walls, no music, no shouting, no guns.

What were we doing? Zombies, I think.

The dream world where she'd met Marty and Liam was, she'd convinced herself, a manifestation of Heaven. A doormat to the wonders of the heavenly universe. Now she imagined the loud and chaotic zombie world had ended and she would go into the peace-and blessed silence-of that waterfall place. Liam would be there, and Marty would show up soon enough. Eventually her sister and parents would arrive. They'd be on the journey together. It would be-

“Hey, you in there?” the blonde teen boy asked with a tap on her shoulder.

Her head swayed because the stink of fuel sat heavy in the room. Liam stood up and tumbled into the outer wall.

Not Liam, you goof. That's ... I can't think of his name.

While she struggled to remember the name of the young boy, he used the wall and a sideways table to guide himself toward the door. Away from her.

“Liam, don't go without me,” she croaked.

“Who's Liam?” the boy replied.

“Who is Liam,” she thought as she stood up. The dizzying feeling was strong, and it took a second to hold onto a wall, but she knew an emergency was taking place around her.

“Russ,” she yelled. “Your name is Russ-ty.”

“No, jus' Russ,” he said while examining the door and placing his hands on it. “I don't hear anything. I think we can go out.”

“Russ,” she repeated, as much to herself so it would sink in.

Liam is my boyfriend. My missing boyfriend.

“Yes, let's go.” In a daze she grabbed Margaret's shotgun as well as the other one. As she made her way behind Russ she intended to give one of them to him, but she hesitated. Russ turned to see her holding the guns and seemed surprised.

“You trust me?” he asked.

“Why shouldn't I?” She knew there was a reason, but exhaustion combined with the fumes made it hard to think.

He pointed to the ceiling.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, feeling bad for having forgot he almost killed himself. “I'm so so sorry your mom died in here. Is there anything I can do for you?”

As the seconds passed, her head cleared from the fog of the fuel and lack of clean oxygen. There was no doubt she'd saved him from killing himself in the heat of that moment, but there was also no illusion she could prevent him from doing it if that's what he really wanted. They were all riding the coaster without seatbelts, now.

“You can let me have a gun,” he said sadly. “I promise I won't hurt myself.”

There was no time for lectures on the value of life, or whatever, so she decided to let things play out. She offered the smaller shotgun and he took it with a smile.

“We're getting out of here,” she said. “Whatever wrecked this place might have killed all the zombies, because I don't hear them.”

They spent a precious few seconds clearing the junk away from the door, so they could get out.

When the door swung open a crack, Russ picked up the gun again and turned to her. “Thanks for stopping me. I'm not sure why I did that. I know my-” he looked at his dead mother on the floor, “-mom wouldn't want me to give up. I'm not going to. Ever,” he said with emphasis.

She smiled in return, happy mostly that she didn't have to worry about him.

“You ready to run for it?” he asked.

“Every danged day,” she replied gravely.

He pulled the door open all the way.

2

She felt like she'd walked into an oven and started sweating buckets. It was hot, yes, but the grisly baking of zombie flesh was already done. She was blessed with a medical professional's stomach, but Russ only held out for a few seconds.

Neither of them stopped moving toward the wide opening at the front.

Fire had consumed the room and turned everything-everyone-into ash and ... bits. Black ooze symbolized where zombies had once stood on the dance floor. A heavy blanket of smoldering smoke lay draped over the room, but the fire had burned itself out for the most part. She avoided looking directly at the remains, for fear of seeing them move.

The roof of the building had been taken clean off the front part. Sunlight poked through the smoke trails above. For the first time she had a sense of how powerful the explosion was. When she reached the door, where Russ had already arrived, she stood next to him and took in the scene with awe.

Bodies lay strewn everywhere. To her right, nearest the skeletal remains of the two tractors and the ashy remnants of the undergrowth beyond, the zombies had become goopy heaps exactly like those inside. To her left, the corpses were wrecked, burned, and disfigured, but a few still moved an arm or leg.

The mixture of gasoline, flesh, and random synthetic smells finally made her gag. Her stomach made it halfway up her throat, but she choked it back down.

“This is ... just horrible,” she said in a distant voice.

Beyond those nearest the garage, the condition of the zombies improved. At the outer edge of the blast radius-beyond the house-the crowd of infected remained thick and menacing. The only thing saving them, she guessed, was their erratic movements and lack of direction. They seemed to walk in circles, fall down, roll around on the grass, or stay perfectly still. A precious few walked in her direction across the wasteland.

“Let's get back to the house.”

She heard him, but her attention was focused on the roof of the farmhouse directly in front of her. A figure stood on the peak of the roof and waved at her like he wanted her to come up.

Her eyes watered up because she'd never been so happy to see someone. There was so much wreckage and death around the outbuilding that she expected the farmhouse to be gone, but there it was. And Liam was there, too.

“Liam!” she shouted. “He's up there. Let's go.”

She took off in front of Russ, so he had to follow her across the smoky parking area. She made for the back door of the house on the patio. It was easy to see because the back of the house had been blackened by the explosion. All the windows were shattered, and the hedges and trees were stripped bare. Much of the siding had been blown away, revealing plywood and heavy support beams holding up the walls. The giant blue tarp that she'd last seen on the ground behind the house had been blown into the sky and was now draped over the back side of the roof.

“I'm coming!” she shouted up to Liam just before she lost sight of him.

“I can't wait!” he yelled back.

The house looked like it had been violently torched, though it wasn't on fire as best she could tell.

Russ caught up to her on the patio but they both slowed near a black cylinder making a hissing sound. It was stuck in the hedge and a small jet of fire pointed down into the dirt.

“Is this the bomb?” Russ asked.

“Maybe,” was all she could say as she felt herself float by. It looked like a propane tank from the family barbecue, which would make sense if they were near the patio. If it blew up while they passed, the whole show would end in a flash. It was hard to peel her eyes from it until she reached the door to the house.

Russ jumped up through the window pane of the doorway but didn't fall on the other side. He was on a table, and he slid along the top while broken glass clinked on the kitchen floor below him.

She was ready to follow him into the house when she noticed a plot of ground just beyond the patio. The bare soil had once been covered by the giant blue tarp, but now it was exposed.

The ground writhed in a way that unsettled a deep sliver of her soul. The soil bubbled and fell upon itself like a million worms were fighting each other to escape a Robin. Even from twenty yards away she could make out bits and pieces of what they were.

Victoria grabbed her cross necklace and held it like a talisman as she felt herself drawn over to get a better look. The zombies at the outer edge of the blast zone still stood around like the explosion had confused and delayed them, but that wouldn't last forever. She was right out in the open in full sight of the horde, but there was nothing that could stop her from satisfying her curiosity.

“Where are you going?” Russ called with worry.

“I have to see this,” she replied as if being led aside by a powerful but invisible hand.

The ground looked like it could have once been a good-sized garden, twenty feet across. It had been dug up in many places so that not a trace of vegetation remained. Like everything else nearby, it had been doused by a black film from the fire. It made the grayish skin of the moving things much easier to spot.

“Please, no. Not this.”

A tiny hand grabbed for air from the soil near her dirty running shoes. Little legs stuck out not far away as if a baby had been buried head first.

“Please.” Her eyes were already watery but now she wept.

The more she studied the garden, the more bodies she identified. There were so many of them that it was hard to identify individuals, but something in her brain clicked and she saw the plot of land as one, big pile of dirt mixed with premature baby zombies. The blue tarp had been keeping them from crawling away, or at least kept them out of sight, but now they had daylight and room to crawl.

“Margaret, you ... ” Victoria wanted to cuss at the woman but no word she could think of was appropriate enough for the hatred she felt while standing there looking at the fruits of the woman's labors.

At least they can't walk, she thought with sick relief. The thought of baby zombies running around the world like feral kittens scared her almost as much as their big brothers and sisters. She wasn't sure she could kill one of the little things, no matter if they were zombies.

Russ screamed for her to come back. She turned to go because as much as she hated his mom, there was no reason Russ had to know about the graveyard. However, before she left one of the tiny figures actually stood up and took a few wobbly steps in her direction. Victoria took in every detail of the terrible monster as it held out its arms and steps over its brothers and sisters, but it was too much to take when it voiced a pint-sized growl.

Victoria closed her eyes in fear and her stomach used the distraction to sneak out of its prison. She spun around as her body heaved wildly and got away from the flesh pile and stumbled back onto the patio.

She tried to stay clinical to remain calm. “If the babies died in the womb, would they try to kill their own mothers?” It was a horrible scenario to contemplate.

Victoria cried openly as she came through the window.

“What? Why did you stop?” He strained to see what was behind the house.

She whipped her head to see if the babies were visible, but they were just a bit too far to the left.

“I thought one of the dead bodies was Liam,” she said in an unconvincing voice.

Russ gave her a sideways look. “You saw him on the roof.”

Oops.

“Well, I, um, can't think straight with this gasoline smell, you know?” It was kind of true. The gas remained heavy in the air, but it had dissipated since they left the garage area. Still, she was glad he seemed to accept that.

“I'll get you to him,” he said. “Please don't cry.”

She smiled at him and gave a thumbs-up sign. Russ turned and walked deeper into the house. Seeing Liam again would take the edge off her horrible discovery, for sure.

She trailed behind him toward the front room of the house but skidded to a stop on the ash-covered wooden floor. He'd paused to see something around the corner.

“Survivors,” he said with a half-turn back to her.

He lifted his shotgun, aimed at something she couldn't see around the corner, then started to fire. She swore her hearing was going because the gun didn't seem that loud. As Russ stepped forward, out of view, she made her way along the wall, so she could peek around, too. A large number of infected were already inside the house. A couple had small flames popping and hissing on their clothes and skin, while seven or eight others were untouched.

The young boy was fearless as he aimed his gun and fired at the zombies. He even knew to aim for the head. While he cranked out four or five shots, she pointed her shotgun to a different part of the living room and made her way toward the first one. By an unhappy coincidence it was a teenager about the same age as her. She was one of the two on fire.

Margaret's shotgun was powerful as it kicked into her shoulder. She'd aimed for the zombie's head as she fired but looked away at the last instant, so she didn't have to watch the horrible damage she'd inflict on it. That small deviation took her aim off her head so when she fired it ravaged the side of her face, ear, and hair, but didn't put her down. It continued its advance, forcing her to waste a second shot. Her eyes never left the target.

The second blast put it down for good. It was a horrific wound that she hated to inflict, but it was now life or death.

The gun was an automatic. It fed in the next round and she pointed it at the next nearest zombie. It was a man dressed in blue jeans and a blue and red plaid shirt. He could have been her father. Without hesitation she fired the gun. It was impossible to miss at such range and it went into the man's face with an intense roar and a sickening thump.

Russ worked his way over to her as she downed a couple more. It took a few shots for her to realize the zombies weren't swarming over them from inside the room. Unlike most other encounters where they would see their prey and make directly for it, this time they seemed listless and disoriented. Already somewhat disheartened over the need to eviscerate heads with the shotguns, that feeling increased when they had dispatched all of the infected in the room without breaking a sweat. It was a true fish in a barrel situation.

“Hey, that was pretty easy,” Russ said, echoing her thoughts. He didn't seem to mind the setup.

“I guess the bomb confused them, same as us. That wasn't a fair fight.” She knew that wasn't true, but she couldn't help giving human qualities to the things that had once been humans. Much as she might pretend to make her cat Sprinkles talk like a human using her own voice, she assigned humanity's rules of fair play to the zombies. They weren't human, any more than that cat. Therefore, what she just did was both fair and necessary. Each and every zombie would have to be killed before she and Liam would be safe. There was no right or wrong about how it was done.

“Let's go upstairs,” she said with a sigh. “I want to get away from death for a few minutes and get back to my boyfriend.”

3

When she got up the steps she halted at the sight of a man dressed in black lying in blood far down the hallway. The grip on her gun tightened as she passed the first room. A fat guy was on the floor in another pool of blood.

“So much for getting away from death. This place is horrible.”

“My mom didn't do this,” Russ stated defensively. The boy took a long time to look at the big man inside the room. “She couldn't have.”

She'd seen Liam alive, so whoever did this was of less concern to her than the survival of her guy. Arguing with Russ would get her nowhere.

“Let's just get to the roof,” was the best she could offer.

Russ hesitated for a half a minute before he left the doorway of the room with the dead man.

By trial and error, they checked the other rooms but didn't find a way onto the roof. They made it to the last door in the hallway and found it locked.

“They must be through here,” she said. The problem was that she didn't want to knock on the door or make a lot of noise, even if they'd just shot up the room downstairs. Liam had to know she was coming, right? He'd be along to unlock it.

Without asking, Russ whipped up his shotgun and squeezed off a round into the door handle.

Victoria jumped back in shock and her adrenaline made her run a few paces before she caught herself.

“Are you crazy!” she shouted.

“I'm opening the door for you,” he replied in a loud voice to account for the blast. He kicked at the door and it easily popped open.

A bunch of junk was piled in the corner, but the open window made it clear that was where they needed to go. She stuck her head outside and saw Liam walking down the steep part of the roof, rubbing debris out of his wild hair. His face was blotched with soot, and his shirt and pants were soaked with god-knows what.

But he was alive.

When he saw movement at the window, he trotted over to help her out of the dormer. She didn't really need the help, but it felt nice to have a boy dote on her. Liam was always a gentleman, and after her time with Margaret and those men, it was the antidote to their venomous advances.

“Victoria,” he yelled, too loud. “Am I glad to see you. I thought I heard gunshots in the house. Was that you?”

“Heya Liam. That was us.” She replied in a quiet voice because she wanted to talk to him alone.

“Ears,” he said, while pointing to his own ear. “I can barely hear.”

Rather than try to explain anything, she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a bear hug. Her eyes watered at the reunion, and his firm hug in reply, but she was aware of several people sitting on the roof nearby. An exotic-looking woman walked along the sloped roof to the window. Russ hovered at the window but seemed reluctant to come onto the roof with her.

She separated from Liam and spoke while looking directly at his face, so she could articulate her words for him. “I was so worried about you.”

Tears streamed from her eyes, but she didn't care.

He gently touched her cheek and wiped a tear.

“You have no idea,” he said, still quite loud. “I thought you were dead until I saw you running below. I can't believe anyone could have survived down there.”

The new woman pulled at her shoulder a little on the rough side. “I'm glad you made it. Did you see my daughter over there? Did anyone else make it?”

“I, um, don't know. Me and Russ hid in a back room when the bomb went off. I didn't see anyone else when we ran back across.”

“It was a gas tank,” Liam corrected.

The woman's hair blew in the wind as she seemed to think.

“Who are these people,” Victoria asked, pointing to the woman and two girls huddled nearby.

“They were trapped with me. They helped me escape.”

The standing woman replied. “He's being modest. He came into the room where that fat pig was getting ready to abuse my girls and took care of things.”

“I saw a man covered in blood in the other room. Liam did that?”

“Some of it. A lot of it was my Leah,” she nodded toward the oldest-looking girl, “but without him we'd be in bad shape.”

“And the priest?” she asked of Liam.

“Not a priest. A reverend.” He pounded his ear as if trying to get it working again. “He made me kill him. He was ... sick.”

She expected a detailed response, but he appeared distracted by his hearing loss. She figured he would tell her when he was ready.

A moment or two later, his eyes hardened when he saw something behind her.

“What is he doing here?” his voice wasn't as loud, but it was angry.

Liam had last saw Russ when his mom pushed him out the front door of the farmhouse. He had no way to know what happened since then. She grabbed his arm as he started to go around her.

“His mom is dead. He wasn't a part of all this.” Her grip on his arm was tight, but he didn't fight her. It may have been because he immediately believed her, or the sight of the shotgun in Russ's hands. She watched as the two stood facing each other for a long moment, but Russ broke the impasse by setting the gun down and showing his empty hands.

“I'm so sorry,” Russ replied with emotion. “I had no idea she would throw you out. I didn't know what went on up here. Mom never let me leave the main floor. I swear.” He sat on the floor inside the room, out of their sight.

“But my mom is dead now, so don't worry about me,” he pouted.

Liam looked at her with a question in his eyes but ended up only shaking his head.

She heard the boy crying inside the room and that seemed to make up Liam's mind.

“Fine,” Liam said to her. “It doesn't much matter because we're all trapped together. I'm glad I have you back.” He tried to pull her back into his arms.

The last thing she wanted to do was push him away, but time was critical, so she grabbed one of his hands. “Liam, you have no idea how thankful I am to see you, but we have to get inside.” She spoke with haste. “The zombies are confused, or whatever, because of that explosion. This may be our only chance to get away.”

Liam craned his neck and scanned the fields around them. “We're still surrounded. How are we going to get out of here?”

“Girls, follow me,” the dark-haired woman said.

“That's Sabella,” Liam added. “She's driven to protect her daughters, as you can see.”

Sabella climbed through the window by Russ, then helped her two girls go through as well.

“Maybe she knows how to get out?” Victoria said while still holding one of his hands.

“It wouldn't surprise me. She's the one that started the fire to get to her daughter over where you were.”

“That wasn't you?”

Liam cupped his hand so only she would hear. “She thought I was just a dumb teenager.”

“We went over that,” Sabella shot back from inside the room. “I was wrong.”

Liam stopped using his hand to shield his voice and just smiled. “We sorted it out. I did get the propane tank for her.”

“We saw it hissing in the bushes when we came up here,” she replied with happiness. In the next instant she remembered what else she'd seen behind the house and her mood darkened.

“It didn't go off? Wow. That's amazing. I guess they aren't as dangerous as we assumed. We thought it would blow up and we could walk across to you.”

Like magic, he helped restore her mood.

“Aww, you were coming for me?” she said with affection.

“Of course. What did you think this was about?”

“So, you blew up the whole place just to get me back?” She was happy on one level, but it was tempered by the recognition so many innocent people had died along the way.

“Sabella blew it up to get her daughter back. I'd blow up the world to get you--” he started to say.

An orange ball of fire erupted on the eastern horizon, right over Cairo. The event started to the north and moved south in a long line, like a string of firecrackers. For a few moments it was one large, orange dome, but then it fizzled out. As the flame died, a shockwave blew over them and something like the rumble of thunder went on for many seconds.

She was awestruck by the event until a new sound became evident on the breeze.

“Do you hear sirens?” Liam asked with a shaky voice.

4

Sabella popped her head back out. “Was that thunder? Are those tornado sirens?”

Victoria and Liam still faced east. The orange glow was gone, but a black plume of smoke had replaced it.

“Holy shit,” Sabella said with awe. “Is Cairo on fire?”

They listened as the wail drifted in and out on the breeze. The dust from the shuffling feet of the horde was a distraction, and they couldn't see Cairo directly because it was so far away, but it was safe to say the sounds came from that direction.

“What did you see?” Sabella continued.

“I'm not sure,” Victoria replied. “It was like a fireball moving through the sky. Must be something big happening in the town.”

“The Air Force,” Liam added. “They did something like this to a camp called Elk Meadow and then to my subdivision, but it looks like they've gotten more efficient about it. That fireball was big enough to burn up all the zombies we saw back in Cairo.”

“That's impossible,” Victoria said with reverence.

“No, just--”

“Improbable,” she interjected before he could finish Grandma Marty's famous saying.

They shared a quick smile.

Another sound rumbled from closer to home.

“Someone's alive,” Liam shouted.

They looked at each other, then bounded up the roof to the peak.

She arrived a step after him and oriented on the disturbance.

“Engines!” he said.

Several motorcycles revved to life, along with a couple of cars. They had been parked at the edge of the field on the far side of the trees. Prior to the explosion, the leaves hid the second parking area, so it couldn't be seen from the house. Now, after the gasoline bomb scoured away all the leaves, it was easy to see fifteen or twenty vehicles parked back there.

As they knelt on the hot surface of the shingles, the little caravan took off to the northwest. The horde was thick in that direction, but not nearly as solid as the east. She thought they might have a chance.

“Look.” Liam pointed in the same direction, but a little to the north. She found his mark and looked out as far as she could.

“Is that a train?” she asked.

“No, those are definitely trucks.”

A line of tractor trailers followed a powerful-looking black vehicle that was a cross between an eighteen-wheeler, a bulldozer, and a steam locomotive. It didn't go very fast, but it separated the crowd like a zipper. The cargo haulers followed close behind so that it looked a lot like a train. The procession went on for miles until she couldn't see it through the trees far to the north.

While they observed what they could, Sabella ran up the slope to be with them. Her interest was in the motorcycles.

“More are alive? Is my baby over there?”

The pickup truck in the lead plowed into the infected standing on the edge of the blast zone. A number of people huddled in the back bed. Another truck followed, and a dozen or so motorcycles chased the two leaders before the zombies could close back in. It was a miniature version of the giant parade up on the main road.

“How close is that road,” Liam asked Sabella.

“How would I know?”

“Well, um, you were here before this horde arrived. I thought ... ”

“I was brought here against my will. I was blindfolded and in a lot of pain.” Her voice trailed off as she continued to watch the survivors depart. Finally, seemingly spent, she sat heavily onto the peak of the roof. “I've lost my baby girl.”

Victoria didn't know what to say and when Sabella began to weep she was even less sure. If her daughter was lost, would she be as composed?

The motorcade was deep into the crowd when another pair of motorcycles cranked over. The smoke was heavy for a few moments and only cleared up when they were driving away. Both were driven by men, and each had a woman behind them.

“My God, that's her. That's Elise.”

Sabella stood up and seemed to inhale deeply. “Elise!”

Victoria swore she saw the girl turn her head, but before she could say for sure, the motorcycles joined the great trails of dust kicked up by the first group of vehicles. All of it added to the debris already aloft from the zombies.

Soon, Sabella only had the sound of the bikes to comfort her.

She screamed for her daughter several more times, but each was less forceful.

When the wind shifted again, she made out the little caravan as it went directly for the flow of big rigs.

“They are heading toward the truck convoy, I guess,” she said to Sabella. “Maybe they'll find some help. Maybe she'll be alright.”

Victoria watched for her to sit back down and descend into tears, but she surprised her by running down the roof to the entry for the window. She assumed she wanted to comfort her other two daughters.

“You saved them, huh?” she said to Liam when they were alone.

“You would have done the same. This place was some kind of brothel and, uh, a clinic.”

“I know. Margaret and the fat guy were abortionists. But the girls who came here never got to leave. They used them.”

“The reverend I killed said he harmed women, here. He was in his room all alone when I arrived, but it looked like it had been well-used. Fat man, too. They were regulars, though I think he was also the husband of that woman downstairs.”

“Ugh, that makes him Russ's father.”

“Step-father, actually,” Russ replied.

They'd been talking loud enough to be heard from the window lower on the roof, and Russ stuck his head out to talk with them.

“Roger wasn't my real dad, thank God. He had something wrong with him, I think, because he was responsible for all that went on here. An evil that I never noticed before the zombies. I saw him, by the way, when we came upstairs. He's in that first room.”

“That fat man?” Victoria blurted out.

Russ nodded.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

“It's okay. It's just so hard to believe he's dead, you know? I've known him since I was a little boy, but he was always kind of standoff-ish? Like he didn't want to be hassled with me. I rarely saw him because he worked so much in his clinic. That was fine with me, but the things I've seen him do the past few weeks. How long has he been a grade-A butt muncher?”

Though Margaret appeared keen to take care of a baby for her, she didn't seem to revel in it. It was too late to ask her what she thought of her also-late husband, but Russ asked his mom about a man named Roger when they all left the house. She didn't run up there to save him. Was he the same man calling for Margaret in those first confusing minutes? She recalled how his voice made her cringe.

“Maybe I knew. Always knew, I mean. When we came here, and I saw him involved with the people coming in and going out, I knew. Young girls came here crying, and they just sort of stuck around. Sometimes they'd ask me to help them, but I didn't know how. It kind of seemed like a game-first they said the world ended, then the zombies came, then all these pretty girls ... ”

He seemed embarrassed at the realization. “What I can't figure out is why my mom did it. She wasn't an evil person. I never heard her be mean to anyone.”

“Well I bet-” Liam started before she shushed him. He flashed a bemused look but didn't argue.

“Your mom took care of you. Kept you alive. That's all that matters. If she could have done it any other way, she would have. I believe that after having met her. I really do.”

Privately, she knew there were no good guys in the running of a brothel-dance hall-abortion parlor. Margaret could have left at anytime and taken her son with her, but she chose not to. If she left her dirtbag husband in the end, maybe that was a bit of good, but it was far too late to do much for the girls stuck out in the shed.

5

“This is your house, right?” Liam asked.

Russ seemed embarrassed but nodded yes.

“I don't suppose you have any supplies?” Liam continued. “We should stock up while the zombies are distracted. They seem to be focused on everything but this house right now.”

“Lots. Mom had me do inventory all the time ... ” Russ stopped for a second as if making a realization. “Which kept me down in the basement a lot. There's tons down there, but some things are in the kitchen pantry, too.”

“I'm sorry about your mother,” Liam replied in a grave voice. “My mom just died, too. Out there.” He pointed toward the black cloud over Cairo.

Victoria decided to give the two some space while they spoke of loss. Her parents were alive and well in Colorado, as far as she knew, and she was never going to let go of that. Hearing them talk about such things wasn't good for maintaining that belief.

She stood tall and made herself busy watching vehicles.

Far to the north, the fleeing motorcycles and trucks continued to bounce across the dusty field and were mostly out of the dense part of the horde. They approached the tractor-trailers on the road like a group of robbers on horseback matching the speed of the money train in the Wild West. At the last moment, they seemed to merge with the flow of traffic and head in the same direction.

“Hey Russ. I need you for a second.” Sabella called out from the hallway.

Victoria glanced back. Liam crouched at the window still talking with Russ. The blonde-haired boy smiled at her when their eyes met. That small act made her feel good because he didn't seem to hate her, anymore.

“Hey guys,” Russ said, “I'll be right back after I see what she wants.”

“Yeah, sure,” Liam said with a bit of indifference.

She spoke once it was clear Russ had gone out of the room. “He's not all bad, and he almost killed himself in that shed. I think he's ashamed of what he saw.”

“Well, good.” Liam said it with confidence but corrected himself almost immediately. “I mean. Not good. I'm just not happy with him or his family right now, but I'll get over it.”

“You will,” she replied. “You have a good heart.”

“It's been tested,” he said with the sound of exhaustion.

He stood up next to her and they both watched things unfold in the fields.

“Would you like a drink of water?” she asked in a cheerful way.

“Hell yeah. I'm dying of thirst.” He looked her up and down, then glanced all around where they stood. She showed him her empty hands before he finally caught on. “You don't have water, do you?”

She grinned at him.

“You did that to me back at the Arch. You'd think I'd catch on.”

Victoria took his hand and noticed his skin felt hot. They'd been on the move since they met up on that barge in Cairo earlier in the day and hadn't touched any drinking water since then.

The sirens continued to call from the town, and she observed something else in that direction. “Liam. Look.” She pointed to the zombies. “They're facing the same way.”

Indeed, they all appeared to be facing the river.

“Let's look over the roof,” she said with excitement.

She trotted up the steep roof until it was possible to see the horde in the fields to the west, beyond the outbuilding. The zombies didn't line up with military order, but they had some uniformity because their faces were all visible. None were turned around or sideways as she saw them from her perspective. They all seemed to orient their bodies on her, but she took comfort that those on the sides of the farmhouse were also facing east and not at her.

They were also shuffling their feet.

“They, uh, are moving as a group again,” Liam said in a whisper.

They spent a few minutes observing how the infected walked like someone was ringing the dinner triangle in Cairo. There was still a bit of a clearing around the farmhouse from where the fire raged, but it was getting smaller as the zombies moved from west to east.

“Holy Sheefu,” Victoria exclaimed as she pointed to the parking lot. “What are they doing?”

Sabella's reddish-brown hair swished from side to side as she ran toward the shed. Russ trailed just behind her, trying to keep up. The boy looked over his shoulder once to wave to her and Liam, but then continued beyond the shed. In moments, they were lost from sight.

“And where are her daughters?” she replied.

“She's getting a car,” Liam said in an even voice. “Then she's going to take them with her.”

“Let's get downstairs,” she suggested. It seemed like a pretty good idea.

They slid down the roof as a car engine started up. When they got inside and back to the first floor she was surprised to see the two girls standing at the back windows, watching their mother. She expected a car to spin across the rocks like in a movie, but the car engine faded, rather than approach the house.

The two girls held each other and cried. The oldest one turned to her. “She's gone after Elise with that boy. Mom said to wait here.”

Liam surprised her by kneeling down in front of the little one. “Susan, your mom knows what she's doing. You don't have to be scared.”

He looked back up at her and smiled.

She then noticed the other girl. “Hi!” she said in a friendly voice. “I'm Victoria. Pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand to shake.

“Hiya,” she said with a bit of uncertainty. “I'm Leah. I guess I'm glad to meet you, too.”

“Your mom is pretty brave,” she said to both girls.

“Too brave,” Leah responded.

“Don't say that,” Susan chided her. “Mommy will bring back Leezy.”

Leah huffed but let it go.

She almost let slip that it was suicide to go out there unarmed, but the thought made her realize she'd lost track of her shotgun. She remembered setting it down on the edge of the roof when she climbed out the upper floor window, but it wasn't there when she came back in or she would have brought it downstairs with her.

“Your mom took my gun?” she asked.

“Yeah, she took a gun, some ammo, and bottles of water,” Leah said.

“Ammo?” Liam snapped back. “Where is that?”

“Water?” Victoria added. “Is there more?”

Leah pointed to the kitchen pantry, which had to be the one Russ mentioned earlier. The little closet was a nook in the wall with dust-covered contents on several deep shelves. At one time there was a big lock to hold the door shut, but it had been left open. When Liam looked in, he whistled in awe.

She tried to whistle, too, but her lips were too parched.

The cupboard was stuffed front to back with canned goods, water bottles, flashlights, batteries, cooking oil, flour bags, rice sacks, and big cardboard boxes labeled with ammo calibers on the side. There was a small box with six or seven can openers, just for good measure.

Victoria playfully pushed Liam aside and pulled out one of the many plastic water bottles. She nearly bit the cap off and chugged the contents. Half of it went down her shirt but she didn't care in the least.

“Wow, drink much?” Liam said sarcastically.

She finished off the bottle and glanced at him with mild embarrassment. “Sorry about that. Once I made that joke about water, I couldn't stop thinking about it.”

He opened his own bottle and downed it with similar results.

“Is this the best water you've ever had?” she gushed.

Liam tossed down his empty and yanked out a second. She followed his lead and they both consumed them with noisy gulps and more spilled product.

“They need more manners,” Susan said as if telling on them. “Pee-eww,” she added.

Victoria halted for a second and glanced at Liam's filthy face and clothing. The front of his shirt had been soaked in blood and some kind of black goo, but it had dried for the most part. Now, as the water from the bottle drizzled down his neck, it reactivated that mess. Some of it dripped onto the floor of the kitchen and it smelled terrible.

She looked at her own feet, glad that she wasn't covered in the same stuff. Both of them slowed their drinking so it wouldn't spill as much.

“Where did this come from?” Leah wondered.

Victoria was glad to talk about anything but her bad manners. “Margaret said they started out accepting food as payment, but that later on no one had food to trade. It's what started the whole thing with gambling, prostitution, and worse.”

“They made a killing,” Liam replied as he set his half-empty bottle on the counter. “We can eat like kings.”

She was thinking things through when Liam sprang to action. He spoke to the girls, who had been watching them drink. “Get pillow cases, sheets, anything to put this food in. We'll carry it upstairs to the roof. I'll grab this water.” He pointed to the pile of government-issued water bottles on the floor of the pantry.

While everyone was running around searching, she noticed a small, yellow radio poking from one of the shelves. It was the kind of weather radio her mom and dad used when they planned to spend the day in the mountains of Colorado. Dad liked to get his weather “raw” as he would say, direct from NOAA, rather than one of the talking heads on the television.

The device had batteries and started right up. It was already tuned to the proper station and a man spoke as if he were reading a note.

“-at $45 a gallon. You are reminded that hoarding and gouging will not be tolerated. This crisis will pass. Your Federal Family is working night and day to restore order, starting right here in St. Louis ... ”

“Liam, we have news,” she shouted.

He and the girls came back in a hurry and she held out the radio.

“-come back north on Highway 55. Come east on Highway 70 or 44. Come west on Highway 64 or 70. You will be cared for. You will be well-protected by the new President of the United States. Before we loop this message, here is a final thought of survival from President Cantwell.”

She glanced at Liam and saw his mouth hang wide open with surprise.

“Good day America. Your first task is getting here. Walk. Run. Bicycle. Find a vehicle if you can. Just get here. We will take care of you, your family, and your friends. Much of the East Coast convoy will be arriving any day. The infection is everywhere. Those afflicted will be very dangerous and must be avoided at all costs. They are dangerous, but the real threat comes from those healthy humans intent to make this lifeboat sink. They want to fight you. Stop you from finding safety. Who knows why, maybe they believe they are individualists with a sick understanding of the founding of this country. They want us all to live in log homes and read the Bible to each other. They call themselves patriots and rebels, but they are anarchists. Following this broadcast, a FEMA official will list names of the most dangerous of those rebels ... ”

Uh oh.

The radio felt heavy in her hands. Liam's fingers were on his chin, like he was thinking. She read his mind, then turned off the radio.

“Wait. Why did you turn it off?” Leah asked.

“We need to save the batteries. We'll take it up on the roof with us. We have to get this stuff out of this closet before the zombies return.”

And I know a name or three that are going to be on that list.

The girls hardly cared, but Liam looked relieved she turned it off.

“I'm going to put it aside.” Victoria said it as a throwaway statement, but she went to another room and listened to the broadcast at the lowest volume.

The man on the radio read name after name at the speed of an auctioneer. It took minutes to go through the list of most wanted citizens and it felt a lot like listening to school closings on a snowy day, but this time she did not want to hear anything familiar.

Just as she was ready to turn it off and get back to packing the supplies, the man's voice slowed to normal.

“And here are some of the most dangerous individuals to the restored government. Due to poor communications we can't say if they are alive or dead, but we are offering substantial rewards in food and housing to anyone with information leading to their arrest or capture.”

She didn't recognize all the names but knew a good portion. Travis, Haylee, Liam's mom and dad, Mel and Phil, and numerous people they'd come in contact with over the last few weeks. Doctor Yu was in there. Hans Grubmeyer. General Jasper. She flinched when her parents' names were read. The man seemed to savor reporting on Liam's grandma Rose, then his great-grandma Marty. Finally, her name was read with Liam's. They included Liam's alias of Sam Stevens. More names continued, but she'd heard enough.

With a dainty flick of the button she turned the radio off. Somewhere in the ruined living room a clock ticked in a comforting rhythm. She thought of any number of classroom tests over the years where she heard that same gentle clicking.

A loud noise in the kitchen brought her back to reality.

6

Little Susan dropped her bag of canned food on the linoleum floor. She scurried to clean up the mess, and Victoria stooped down to help. The girl's chubby hands wobbled.

“Heya, can I help you?”

Susan was choked up, but she tried to hold steady as she responded. “Will my mommy come back? The radio said ... ”

Victoria looked into her eyes, trying to fathom all that she had seen since coming to the farmhouse. She probably wondered why there were so many bad people in the world after living a dream life in a comfortable home with a loving mom and-by all accounts-some wonderful sisters. If she and Liam hadn't come along, what might have happened to her?

“Don't worry about the news. Your mom is very brave. Did you know that? I think she is one of the bravest people I've met since ... ” she drifted off, not sure how to phrase it so it didn't sound end-of-the-world scary. “Since I started traveling with Liam.”

She swiveled to where Liam was grabbing another load of bottles to take upstairs. “Do you and him have a little girl, like me?”

“No. We aren't married, yet,” she winked at her.

“But does he get on top of you like that fat man tried with mommy?”

“Whoa! No, let's not talk about that. It's all over, m'kay? You're safe now. Do you understand?”

She fired up her distraction protocol-something she'd learned with her niece and many second cousins-to get the young girl working on the task in front of her. Together they cleaned up the spilled cans, and she walked Susan up the steps and to the window leading to the roof. They deposited the food on the flattest part of the roof over the front porch. She also put the radio there and wondered what they'd do if it rained. There were a few clouds on the horizon, but it was otherwise hot, dry, and dusty.

The day marched wearily toward evening and each trip up the steps reminded her how exhausted she'd gotten. Even the shingles invited her to lay down and take a quick nap, but the horde below was too unsettling to consider it. The giant crowd continued to walk itself toward the sirens in the east, as if drawn by them. The constant hum of their combined moans, groans, and something that sounded like crying would not subside.

On her way back down the hallway on the second floor, she excused herself from Susan, so she could take care of a couple of things. She dragged the reverend into his room and shut the door, then did the same to “the fat man.” A big key to maintaining the distraction protocol was to remove the unwanted stimuli. She couldn't very well remove all the zombies outside the house, but she closed those doors.

Zombies had long since filled in the empty space created by the explosion, and a few stragglers came in the broken back windows on the lower floor of the house. After reloading it with ammo from the pantry, she used the lone shotgun to knock down those intruders while the others carried the goods.

The howling sirens seemed to overrule the zombies' instinct to attack living people on sight, and she spent several tense minutes watching the crowd walk by after each shotgun blast, but they did not pursue the sound.

After she and Liam decided they had enough supplies, they all went out and sat on the roof above the porch. It felt nice to be in the open air rather than the stuffy old house. She held the little shotgun on her lap like a security blanket. She'd rather have the bigger shotgun, but the smaller twenty-gauge was better than nothing.

Not long after taking a seat, Susan crawled into her lap, so she had to put the shotgun next to her. However, she had to move it again when Leah wanted to be close to her little sister.

“Is that mommy?” Susan asked each time she saw a vehicle in the distance.

The dust fouled everyone's vision but every so often the wind would clear the air and they could see the line of trucks still on the main road.

“No, Suzy, I'll tell you when she's coming back, okay?” Leah replied.

“Okay,” Susan answered each time.

Besides eating the canned food and consuming bottles of water, they had nothing to do but watch the zombies walk away. Late in the evening the wind picked up and shifted to the east, so it created the impression the great crowd was walking into the dust storm and out of their lives. She was positive they were being drawn to the distant sirens near the river.

The big rig trucks kept coming, and they all headed toward Cairo, the same as the crowd of infected. When night fell, the string of head and tail lights was the only earthbound landmark she could make out. A faint aura of illumination came from the river, as if there was a great party taking place on the other side of the dusty cloud.

“What do you think is happening there,” she eventually asked Liam, while looking his way.

He nodded to her, like he was coming out of a reverie himself. “Elsa said this wasn't about the zombies from Chicago, it was all about the zombies from St. Louis. I've been trying to solve that riddle. The zombies we saw here today were all the same, did you notice that? There were no runners, no jumpers, no dreamers. And thank God there were no Alphas. Just plain old zombies. I can't figure out why.”

“Wait up. You think there are different kinds of zombies?” Leah spoke softly while stroking Susan's hair. “They do different things?”

She looked at Liam with a knowing grin because he loved telling people the secrets they'd picked up, especially when he could data dump about the origins of the different types.

“Oh, yeah, I do, and they do,” he answered.

He became animated as he explained each type and where he first identified them. The “dreamer” zombie once fooled him into thinking he saw Victoria in a nightgown on an early night of the disaster. The “climber” zombies that he'd first seen in the experimental corral at Elk Meadow research station. The “Alpha” zombie he'd encountered several times. That one seemed to combine many zombie skills into one deadly predator.

“But you don't know about these zombies?” Leah pointed to the horde out in the darkness.

“No. The only thing that comes to mind is they are extremely average. They will bite you in the neck, arm, or leg looking for blood, but every zombie does that. I thought maybe they were the first type to dismember their victims because at least one kind does that.” She knew he was thinking of that foot he'd found in the car he used to escape with Grandma. “But we haven't seen them do that, here, so I guess they're just regular zombies. Maybe that's what I have to call them.”

Before it got too dark, Susan climbed off her lap and pulled something out of her pocket. “I found this in the bathroom. Can I paint your nails?”

She looked down at her fingernails and cringed at how mangled they'd become. Several were scratched from clawing the rocks at that riverbank and she'd spent many an hour biting her nails over the past few weeks. The free edges had absolutely no length.

“I don't know. My nails aren't very ... ”

“Please, please, please, Vicky, I want to,” Susan interrupted.

“Don't call her--” Liam snapped back.

“No, it's okay, Liam.” She turned to Susan who didn't seem like she heard Liam anyway. “You can call me Vicky.” She found it impossible to refuse the little girl. “And you can paint my nails. I'd love that.”

She smiled at Liam to assure him everything was good. She once bit his head off for calling her Vicky because it was the nickname used by her no-good ex-fiancé. Normally, she hated it, but nothing Susan said could upset her.

“I'm going to paint your nails, then I want to fix your ponytail, okay?”

“Do your worst,” she replied.

Susan was an expert with the cherry red polish and took her time to get each nail just right. The sun set just as she finished on the nails, so she hurried to untangle Victoria's messy ponytail and put it back in a tight weave. It was very dark by the time that was finished, but she wanted to pay the girl back.

“Tomorrow, I'm going to paint your nails, kiddo.”

“Oh, goodie. I can't wait.”

“Me, either,” Victoria said as the girl slid over to be next to her sister.

Activity on the roof died down as the nightfall became total. Clouds moved in and blocked the stars and the moon. It wasn't long before the two sisters drifted to sleep. Susan pulled her sister's arm around her like a seatbelt, as if she feared someone would toss her off the roof. To the zombies. To the bad men. To the sad woman who let her house descend into a freakshow.

The zombies shuffled to the east and the line of truck lights went with them. Victoria was so happy to be back with Liam, even if they picked up the two girls in the farmhouse. She was relatively safe on the roof and had more supplies than she ever dreamed possible, but the radio broadcast and all the running of the day left her more worried than ever.

She finally drifted off to sleep, but like so many nights over the past three weeks, she woke up when someone screamed.

Chapter 6. Wiped clean

Cairo, Illinois. While Liam and Victoria approach the farmhouse.

Marty Peters woke up to find herself in the passenger seat of a large, comfortable pickup truck. She sat up as straight as her 104-year-old frame could tolerate.

“Where am I, Robbie?” she said with a groggy voice. “I have to find Liam.”

“Shhh,” a woman replied. “Marty, wake up,”

“Oh, heavens. Chloe, is that you?”

The young woman nodded from the plush driver's seat. She was dressed in tan pants with strange patterns, like camouflage with computer-generated colors and shapes. A similarly colored long-sleeve shirt was slung over the back of her seat, and her white tank top was splotched with dirt and blood. She'd seen the same splotches on lots of people during the fighting in Cairo.

“Yep,” Chloe said matter-of-factly. “You awake now? You talk in your sleep, ma'am.”

“Did I say anything interesting?”

Chloe looked at her across the big center console of the truck and pointed to the dozen bottles of water on the floorboard under her short legs.

“No, I'm fine, dear,” Marty replied.

Chloe's look became a glare.

“Oh, okay,” Marty said with relief. “I guess I could use a sip.”

“We have a lot of running to do to get out of Dodge. You'll need your strength.” Chloe took a swig from her own bottle.

She wanted to ask the woman again about whether she heard her talk in her sleep, but Chloe was already looking out her side window as if on high alert.

What do I remember from just now?

Her body may have seemed like it was sleeping, but her mind was floating somewhere else inside a giant computer where she also met up with her great-grandson Liam, his girlfriend Victoria, and a man who looked like her late husband, Al. Unlike any dream, she remembered every detail about the meeting. Al had said he was a kind of gatherer of operators and that the three of them comprised a triad of special people who could get inside it. To her it was all magic, but Liam and Victoria seemed less impressed, like it was all a game.

The last thing she saw with clarity was that the computer itself was in Colorado. Liam had asked it that all-important question because it requested they all go there, together. That would be wonderful, except she now had no idea if the kids were dead, alive, or trapped in that computer. In the real world, the last thing she remembered was when Major General Jasper entrusted her safety to Chloe. Chloe drove a huge red pickup truck with large tires, two ridiculous smoke stacks behind the windows, and a bumper sticker that said, “Rolling Coal.”

There had also been a large explosion and endless waves of infected.

“Are we alone?” Marty asked. The town was overrun with zombies, and Chloe's state of high alert made her suspect they were near.

“No,” Chloe replied while scanning from window to window.

Marty was too short to easily see over the dashboard, but the truck was parked under a roof, so she figured they were inside a garage.

“I've got a skeleton crew of Zombie Killers with me,” Chloe went on. “We're trying to. No, I'm trying to make good on a promise I made to the general.”

That got her attention. She made a best effort to sit up in the spacious front seat. “He put you in charge of me, didn't he? Oh, dear. I could slap that man. I really don't like people risking their lives for me.”

Chloe gave her a slideways look. “He said you were special.”

“Oh, my stars. I'm no one special.” Marty did a double take. “Your hair!”

The pretty woman had short hair that reminded Marty of someone in the military, but now it was bright orange.

“Hemi orange. Found some in the garage, so I painted my head.”

“Yes, dear, I can see that. But why?” Marty giggled despite herself.

“Don't want to get shot. Me and my team all painted our heads, so we would stand out among the thousands of men and women zombies in our neighborhood. You can't be too careful around guns, you know.”

Marty bobbled her head but then had a terrible thought.

“You aren't going to paint mine, are you?” She'd come well outside her comfort zone the last three weeks since the arrival of the zombies, but she had to put her foot down somewhere.

Chloe held a reply as if to keep Marty in suspense, but then laughed. “No, you'll always have one of us orange-heads at your side. We'll spare you the paint.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

Chloe seemed to get right back to business. “The general also said there were dangerous people after you.”

“I, ahh ... Hmm. I don't know, truthfully, who is after me. I've met the woman who ran the town, and she did put me in a terribly hot hotel room, but ... ” Though she wanted to be totally open with Chloe, Liam cautioned that some people were double-agents working for the government. He thought Marty was in danger of being whisked away to another hidden lab where they would experiment on her special blood. So, she didn't mention anything about a conspiracy. “But I was in a car accident on the levee and my mind's been scrambled ever since.”

Chloe's expression was hard to read, but her tone was one of defiance. “He said it was a personal favor. I'm to take care of you. Hide you. Keep you safe.”

“Hide me,” she echoed with a mix of awe and disappointment. Her first priority was finding out where Liam had gone. Did he get his information and head off to Colorado? Wouldn't he need her if they were all to access the computer? She had many questions, and no way of finding answers. Not to the important stuff. “Where can we hide that those things won't get us?” The memory of millions of them outside the town clawed at her.

“I don't know. They, uh, digested the town over the last few hours. I'm waiting to see where they go next, so we can make our move. I want to go before nightfall. My lookouts are up on the roof. They'll let us know when it's time to go.”

“The town is still here?”

“The town, yes. The people, not so much. Most left before the levees were breached. The general at least gave them that. Some fought to the death behind the water-filled moat so the rest of us could escape, but that didn't stop the horde for long. Once it filled up with dead they just walked across. Then it was a race into the buildings and houses of the town. I was able to get what was left of my team out in time, but the general assigned me for this special mission. I then grabbed the few that were left and here we are. Lots of people are still holding out. The zombies are strong but some of these old buildings are made of stone or steel. They'll survive for a while. Each zombie delayed here in town isn't swarming over the next town or swimming after the ferry carrying the general's tanks and men to the south.”

“That's very interesting, dear. Can you tell me, please, if that means you've given up your own escape so you can take me in another direction? That seems very dangerous and I'm not happy about that one bit.” She smacked her dentures as an exclamation point of her emotions.

“Ma'am, I'm sorry to say this: we gave up our seats on the lifeboat to get you somewhere else. General Jasper believed someone had infiltrated his unit and he couldn't trust anyone but me to take care of you. Part of it, I think, was that he didn't want to be burdened with you. I know it sounds harsh, but I watched him talk about you, and he really seemed distracted. Another piece of it was that he told me you were important to finding the cure. That other powerful people were closing in to get you. He put his trust in me to get you to safety, and anonymity, so that's what I'm going to do. You don't have a choice in that.”

“Oh, my dear, we all have a choice,” she said with resignation. She thought again of ending her own life but brushed it aside quickly. It may save Chloe from the burden of protecting her and give the woman a better chance of surviving in the near term, but Al-the computer-made it clear she was part of something larger now. The computer program she, Liam, and Victoria had opened. A computer that may lead them to the cure. Her choice now was to make good on the belief she was a key part of saving everyone on Earth.

She gulped loudly at her own revelation. “I ... ” Ready to explain where she needed to go, she and Chloe were interrupted as two orange-haired men ran up to the truck. They jumped into the bed of the pickup and sidled up to the rear window, so they could talk to Chloe.

Chloe waited for her to finish for a moment, but then turned around when one of the men knocked on the window. “Here comes the news.”

2

The two men, both about the age of her grandson-Liam's father-started talking at once.

“They're almost through.”

“We have to go.”

“Whoa, one at a time,” Chloe replied. “Craig, what'd you see?”

“There are more than we can count out there. So many, in fact, they can stand on the shoulders of those underneath. They scramble onto rooftops, then start to yank off shingles and plywood to get at the people inside. Most of the other buildings with windows have long since been overrun. We're one of the last ones. You picked good, Chlo, but we gotta roll.”

Craig looked at her and smiled. “Pleased to meet you, miss. I'm Craig Johnstone. This is my associate Mark Talley. We'll be saving you, today.”

Chloe laughed, not unkindly. “Well, we're all here to save each other. We're all gonna make it, got it?”

“God is my co-pilot,” Marty added. “He always has been.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said with a mock salute. “I think I'm going to like flying with you.”

She wasn't so sure given what he'd just told her about the outside. Now that she had it in context, the sound of the zombies was a constant buzz from beyond the walls of their refuge. Her deepest desire was to be told the zombies went looking for trouble somewhere else. Anywhere else. Instead, they were still here, and she was in deep trouble.

“So, what's the plan, guys?” Mark asked. He was a stout balding man with a friendly face. The bright orange paint was especially smooth above his forehead where he'd lost his hair. From her spot in the front it was hard to see him in the truck bed, but he wore heavy gloves and held his bloody metal spear up against the rear window frame. He'd done a lot of work with it.

“Here, take a water.” Chloe handed them each a bottle, which they downed in unison. While they drank, she sketched out some ideas. “I don't know what we'll find outside. This truck can get us through some shit, but it has a limit, I'm afraid. If we get bogged down, break an axle, get a flat, run out of gas, or if any of a hundred other random problems strike us-we're dead. Unless anyone has a better plan, I say we drive like hell to the north and hope we can get through the thick of them. If they stop us in the town, we have a chance of finding another house to take shelter, but I don't know how we'll get inside. We can't exactly climb ladders or go through windows with Marty, can we?” Her smile was forced. “But I think we can do this. We'll get north of the levee and the ditch, then use the interstate to put some miles behind us. We'll head east-”

“No,” Marty blurted. “I mean, please. I'd like to go to the west. Will that be OK?”

“West, huh?” She appeared to consider, then added. “I was figuring on going east into the Smokey's over on the other side of Kentucky. There's no big cities the whole way. We'll shoot right between Louisville and Nashville.”

“My Liam is going west. I have to join him.”

“To where? Does he know something we don't?” Her question was paired with probing eyes.

“Kids. They know so much of technology and talk in words I've never heard before. Things he says ... ” she chuckled, “confuse me all the time. It takes all I can to listen to him and not feel overwhelmed. I am certain he knows something we don't. He's a smart boy.”

“So, you don't know where he's going? He's heading west with no destination in mind? That doesn't sound so smart,” she said with respectful sarcasm.

Marty realized they would never go somewhere on such a flimsy premise.

“He's going to Colorado ... ”

To find a supercomputer that talks to him.

“ ... to help his girlfriend find her parents.”

Chloe's brow furrowed as she thought about it. She squinted her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Marty took a guess at the woman's pain. “You have someone to the east, don't you?” she touched Chloe's arm in sympathy.

“No, it's fine. I can go west just as easily as east. The main thing is to get away from population. What we see here has to be the bulk of citizens from three states. Up in the mountains they can't get together like this. They'll be spread out ... ”

Chloe seemed as if she was going to continue, but the pause kept going.

“The Rockies sounds good to me,” said Mark, interrupting.

Craig, however, was less enthused. “My family is in St. Louis. If they're still alive.”

“Mine too,” Chloe agreed with a depressed voice. “Not my mom or dad, they died a few years ago. My brother ... my ex-. Lots of ex's.” Her laugh was strained. “But I'm not going back to a city. I've had enough of zombies coming in waves like this.”

A silence broke out, but Marty hoped to head it off. “Do you have family, Mark?” After another long pause, she tried to see his face out back. As expected, the eyes told her everything she needed to know. “I'm sorry. I'll pray for them. Since the sirens woke me out of my old life I've been praying non-stop for the people in my life.” She was talking to them all. “At my age, every family member I lose is someone younger than me. Someone who had a lot of living left to do. It was my great-grandson and his girlfriend that ended up saving me. Can you believe it? Two wonderful children saved an old geezer like me.” She giggled, despite the seriousness of her delivery. “And now I look at you kids-stop, I know you aren't kids.” Another chuckle. “But to my eyes you are. I'm one-hundred-and-four. I've seen it all. I'll be praying for you, your families, and the world we're driving into. The Lord will provide.”

Chloe answered with “Amen,” as did one of the men. She couldn't tell which. “Let's get out of Cairo and find some clean air, then we can decide who's going where. For starters we'll head west. At least that way we can put a river between us and this sick crowd. Sound fair?”

The men gave Chloe their approval, but not with much enthusiasm. Marty realized the sounds of the zombies had become much louder even in those few moments they'd been talking.

“They're here,” Chloe said, stating the obvious.

3

“Right. Just like when we came in. Mark, you bang open the door then jump back in the truck. We'll plow into them and see how far we get.”

“Nice knowin' y'all,” Mark said with fatalistic humor.

Marty watched Mark run past her side of the truck and go to a shut garage door ahead of them. She had to stretch to see over the big hood of the pickup. Chloe kicked over the engine at the same time and revved it. It was a powerful motor that echoed in the confined space. Black smoke from the dual stacks swirled all around them. Craig coughed.

“Sorry,” Chloe said over her shoulder.

The fumes came in through the window, making her cover her mouth and nose with her sleeve. For a split second the acrid smell reminded her of that day, long ago, in her own garage. It had been filled with similar scents when she had her accident with her little girl.

She let her sleeve drop, her heart wavering. It wasn't just her emotions that made her heart skip a few beats, there was something else happening to her.

I wish I had my rosary.

The world brightened, and her head became light on her shoulders. Heaven had finally come to call.

Hallelujah!

Only that wasn't it at all. The truck dipped as Mark got back on the bed of the truck. They pulled up the tailgate and slammed it shut. Chloe raced the engine, tossed the gear lever, and the tires barked. The acceleration of the big truck kept her firmly in the back of her seat. It was either her heart or an impact that made her wince.

The truck launched out of the garage bay and she recognized the sound and feeling of zombies bouncing off the front bumper. They were solid thuds. Unmistakable. Walking dead people were lined up far down the street. Some looked at her. Some away. Those closest seemed to peer into her soul. Those were the ones she feared.

“Aww man,” Chloe cried as the scope of the crowd became apparent. She whipped the wheel right and then left, making Marty swish from side to side in her seat. Her head neared the side window glass and hands reached up for her from outside.

It almost felt like a black and white movie because all the clothes were pretty much the same color, now. The colors of the rainbow had been washed away from the zombies except browns from the dusty fields or reddish black from the endless blood splatters.

Marty grunted to herself when she saw one man with blue-ish slime and chunks all over his face.

Somehow, Chloe saw the same man. “He's wearing someone's brains.”

It didn't surprise her at all because she'd seen what these zombies had to endure on the way in. The machine guns and tank shells worked over the crowd as it pressed in on Cairo, and it seemed like none of the survivors got across without paying some cost. The only brightly dressed people were the townies because they'd become zombies without being out in the mud or blood.

“This ain't gonna work,” Chloe strained while gripping the wheel as the truck plowed into ten or more bodies at once. Marty's breath was shallow, and her panic blossomed. She couldn't speak at that moment, but she wanted to call for help because the infected seemed to converge on them. The anger of the crowd outside was palpable, as were the furious cries of Mark and Craig out in the open bed of the truck. They cheered when they scored some kills from their perch, but there were far too many for two guys to handle. Even an old lady knew it.

“Hang on,” Chloe yelled. Marty held onto the door handle, though the turn was so sharp she lost her grip. When the truck straightened, the motion sat her upright, so she could see forward again. Chloe drove them between two houses, but she didn't know if they were on pavement or grass.

The motor growled, and the exhaust pipes rumbled as the truck regained some speed. The beating of hands immediately decreased, but the clonks and plonks off the front of the truck went wild as if they were heading into bowling pins. Marty watched in horror as a head rolled up the windshield, leaving a bloody trail over the glass.

Chloe giggled like she was crazy. “Man, the owner of this rig is going to hate me.”

Marty drew in a deep breath, and still suffered some kind of episode with her heart. It would beat for a few seconds, then stop for ... too long. Then it would beat some more. Stop for ...

“H-” Her voice was weak, and the word help would not come out.

“I know,” Chloe answered. “Hang on.” The truck dropped out from underneath her as it flew off a steep curb. Marty felt the seatbelt grab her legs and shoulder-keeping her in her seat. Then the opposite happened, she dropped into the seat with force as the truck bottomed out. The men in the back slammed into the rear window and cussed.

“Oh God, I forgot about them,” Chloe said under her breath before she turned back to them. “Sorry! Come inside!” Her foot came off the gas. In the reprieve, the two men slithered in through the open sliding glass window. The truck hit another couple of victims, and Chloe had to brake hard while turning again.

“You trying to shake us, Chlo?” Craig joked.

“No, I didn't realize we'd be off roading it. Sorry about that.”

“It wasn't her fault,” Marty wanted to say. But her voice was broken. She felt her own throat, wondering if she was being constricted by her seatbelt, but that wasn't it.

The truck popped out between two dilapidated houses onto what had to be the main drag through town. Marty couldn't speak, and if she could she would not have used the same curses as her companions, though her feelings were surely just as hopeless. The zombies were thick on the street for the mile or so to the levee to the north. Beyond that, there was no way to know.

“We may have made a mistake,” Mark said while sucking in air. The two orange-haired men sat the second row of the crew cab. Craig's response was almost inaudible to her, but he cussed endlessly with words she'd never heard.

Chloe ignored all the complaints and drove the truck at about thirty miles an hour through one sliver of the crowd. The bashing sounds reached a crescendo during the crossing but then dropped to nothing as the truck went into the parking lot of a shuttered fast food joint. Marty bounced with everyone else as some zombies slid underneath the tires, but through the blood smears of the windshield she figured out Chloe's plan. Because all the zombies moved from north to south, their movement created small shadows on the south side of buildings that were devoid of bodies. The parking lot was one such void. She recalled the sound of rain on the roof of Al's Plymouth and how it would stop briefly when they went under bridges on the highway. A moment or two later, as Chloe maneuvered the truck onto the next street, the rain resumed.

Over and over they entered those shadows, often plowing through backyards or side lots of the flat old town. Sometimes fencing created artificial zombie-free pockets, but usually they weren't that lucky. The clunks of pedestrians being run over, and over, was frightening and continuous.

Marty was short on breath, fearful of her own death inside that truck, and confused over the turn of events in which she found herself. Was she ready to die? It was never a question back in the Old World. Comfortable with herself and her relationship with God, death would merely be the peeling back of the veil of the material world, so she could be with those who had gone before her. Though she never took it for granted she would reach Heaven, she felt she'd done everything humanly possible to live a good life that any benevolent God would approve. But lately, and that dad-gummed computer system was to blame, she'd come to worry that she hadn't quite done enough in the worldly realm. God had something in store for her, and death would interfere with that. As foreign as it felt to her, she wasn't completely ready to pass on.

“We're getting out,” Chloe shouted. “There's the levee.”

She was lucky to fall into the hands of the orange-haired woman. She would commend the general if she ever saw him again.

Chloe's driving and intuition zig-zagged them through town from one void to the next. Several times they'd veered dangerously as they slid through clumps of infected. One time she high-centered the truck on the dead and even putting it into four-wheel-drive didn't get them free. Mark and Craig had to go back out into the truck bed to give some counterweight. The men fought hand-to-hand with some of the zombies, then jumped back inside when the tires finally gripped the bloody cement.

Marty still held her seatbelt strap as they reached the top of the levee. There were no more thumps on the hood and there were almost no zombies standing outside the passenger window, so she began to think they were home free.

Rather than celebrate, Chloe put the truck into park, stared out the front for a few moments, then banged her head on the steering wheel. The woman fought to keep from crying, but a couple of sobs escaped.

“Just one break for crying out loud,” Chloe said through gritted teeth.

Marty's heart pulsed erratically. Three beats and a long pause, like the next two or three heartbeats were missing. Over and over.

She sat up in her seat, making a desperate effort to see what spooked Chloe. The seatbelt clicked, so she was free of it.

Three beats and a pause.

She used a handhold on the top of the door to get her head above the dashboard, so she could see to the north.

I'm more helpless than a child.

Three beats and a pause.

The town of Cairo had been built on a three-mile-long peninsula at the intersection of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. An earthen levee formed a protective barrier around the flood-prone municipality, and Chloe had stopped at the “wedding ring” area of levee that was supposed to block off the rest of the thin finger of land to the south.

The blue sky and puffy white clouds were breathtaking in their contrast to the earthly terror below them. It looked like Hell had bubbled up from underneath the fields and things that had once been men and women lay in bloody piles for a solid square mile. Bullets and shells had devastated the bodies of the zombies and turned the soil red out there, but they weren't the losers of the battle. Humvees and other military hardware littered the landscape where they got stuck in the mud or were overrun by superior numbers. A mile-long canal had hastily been cut between the two rivers and was supposed to be the final line of defense in front of the town, but dead bodies filled it up and the zombies used them as bridges across.

Chloe had driven them out of the zombie-filled streets and getting to the top of the levee seemed like an escape, but there were far more zombies outside of town. They lined up all the way to the distant highway, as if waiting to get into a rock concert.

“I've failed you,” the woman said to Marty while making a pointed effort to keep her tears and sadness hidden.

Any other time she would comfort Chloe and tell her she was wrong, but Marty was more concerned with her uncooperative heart.

Three beats and a pause.

And more pause.

The pause just wouldn't stop.

Oh no.

4

“Marty, wake up.”

“Al?” she replied. Over the past three weeks her dead husband had talked to her in visions. It wasn't really her husband but was some kind of computer avatar using his appearance. She didn't completely trust anyone who faked being the love of her life, but he hadn't given her any reason to distrust him, either.

“Liam and Victoria are across the river in Missouri. You need to be with them. They need you.”

“Your world is so confusing,” she mumbled. “Computers. Other universes. I'm not built for it.”

“Marty, you are,” Al's voice told her. “I can't help you anymore. You'll have a new guide soon to get you near the mainframe. But the most important thing is that you go there with Liam and Victoria because you three are the key to unlocking it.”

“Unlock,” Marty echoed.

“Right,” Al continued in a much fainter voice. “If you fail, or one of you dies, another triad will be selected to open it. I'd prefer if it was you three, Marty. Not everyone with the means to get here has such a good heart.”

“It will be us,” she droned.

“Get back to Liam. Help Victoria. Work as a team. Right now, you have to get into the water. A storm is coming.”

“Storm coming, friends into the water,” she paraphrased.

Her heart was working again, so that threat had passed, but she felt out of sorts. Normally, when talking to Al, she knew she was with him, but this time it felt like he'd come to her. Maybe that was why her ticker acted up? Marty kept her eyes closed, still not sure if she was living or dying.

“Miss, are you okay?” a male voice called to her.

Someone gently tapped her left arm and she opened her eyes to find herself back inside the cramped truck.

“I'm fine,” she said. “I must have dozed off.” She made the sign of the cross out of habit. Talking to Al felt a bit like chatting with the divine, even if she wasn't certain of the origins of the voice.

“You picked a hell of a time to sleep,” Mark replied.

“We have to do something,” Chloe sniffled, but sounded confident again. “Look up there.”

Marty craned her neck to look into the sky through the front windshield. She tried to avoid looking down on the large number of zombies trudging over the great battlefield, but soon spied motion in the air above the interstate near the horizon.

Three large planes seemed to hang in the sky because they moved so slow. Four giant propellers drove each one and the fat fuselages made her think of pregnant women because they had such girth.

“Anyone know what they are?” Chloe asked.

No one answered as the planes got closer and seemed to get lower to the ground. They flew side-by-side, but kept enough space between each other, so they were far enough apart to cover the mile-wide swath of battlefield between the interstate and the levee north of Cairo.

“Are they bombers?” Mark asked. The two men were crammed into the cab and watched with rapt attention toward the planes. However, everyone jumped when a zombie slammed a fist against Chloe's driver's-side window.

“Good god!” Chloe screamed. “They're here.”

Zombies had come up both sides of the levee and the first one in line had dozens more behind it. Marty saw the broken woman outside the smeared glass and felt sorry for her. The hair was caked in mud and blood, but it was once long, luxurious blonde hair on a vibrant young woman in a tank top. She turned to look out her own window and saw more people that had been changed into the walking horrors that now filled the fields and town of Cairo. Dressed like normal folks, but with dead eyes and bloody features.

“Lord, help us,” she let slip.

“Oh, no,” Chloe replied. “Those planes aren't dropping bombs. Look at them.”

Despite the banging on the glass, they all looked out the front window. The planes now had fluffy trails of white behind them. From miles away, they looked like tiny thunderstorms dropping rain on the fields, and the line of mist grew in length and spread to the sides as the planes cruised straight toward the levee.

Chloe revved the engine, but hesitated.

“I don't want to be in that, but where should I go?” The mist hovered above the ground but continued to spread in all directions like syrup spreading over a flapjack. The white spray poured out of the planes as they continued their flight paths right toward Cairo.

And the truck.

Chloe turned all around, looking out the windows. To the north, there was nothing but farm fields with dead and shambling zombies in a mile-wide flatland that extended miles toward the interstate. The town behind them was also overrun with zombies. Going back was not an option.

“The river?” Mark offered.

“Marty said something about friends in the water,” Chloe replied. “That's where we need to go.”

“Has anyone noticed the other planes?” Craig asked. He'd been quiet since he'd come in through the back window. Marty had almost forgotten about him.

He pointed high in the sky behind the first row of overgrown crop dusters.

“We don't have time to stick around,” Chloe said with her old command voice. She revved the engine again and stomped on the gas. The tires slid on the gravel surface at the top of the levee and rocks pinged off the wheel wells.

A couple bodies also rattled the front bumper.

“Where are you going?” Mark asked.

Since the truck was driving east, Marty had to lean forward and look to the left to see the aircraft. The pregnant planes kept getting more massive as they approached. Two of them were going to cross the levee behind them, but the last one approached on a line that would drop its load directly on top of them.

“Hang on!” Chloe yelled as she braced herself against the steering wheel.

Marty sat back in her seat just as the truck smashed into a pair of zombies. A red mash of body parts splashed over the front of the hood and something bounced off the windshield leaving yet another red blotch there. It was a miracle the glass didn't crack where it hit.

The plane was almost directly overhead.

“We're going to go off the levee close to the river,” Chloe pointed forward. “Up ahead. Mark. Craig. You two will be responsible for getting Marty safely out of the truck.”

Another body hit the front of the truck and everyone inside rose a bit as the truck bounced. When it touched the ground again, Chloe struggled to keep it straight.

“Oh, shit,” she said after she had it in line again. “I almost lost it.”

She leaned near the wheel and looked at Marty. “We're going to crash into the water I'm sorry to say. But I think we want to be far away from these zombies.”

“I trust you, dear,” Marty replied in a pleasant voice.

“I'll try to make it painless,” Chloe said as she leaned back in her seat and focused again on driving. They were only a few seconds from the end of the northern part of the levee. The barrier made a sharp turn to the south, so it could protect the eastern edge of the town of Cairo, but they weren't going that way.

The roar of the plane came with a sense of space closing around her. Once more, she wished for a rosary.

“Don't worry about me,” Marty said to be cheerful, “I've been swimming in a river just a few weeks ago with my great-grandson. I'll be fine.”

Chloe gave her a look that conveyed uncertainty. She was used to it. No one thinks a 104-year-old woman is capable of much of anything. Not that she blamed them. In fact, most of her life she thought the same thing.

But she'd done a bit of growing in the last few weeks.

She watched the edge of the levee approach and appreciated that they were seconds ahead of the white mist falling from the plane. Her last thought before they went over was that it started to smell an awful lot like the gas station.

5

Marty lurched forward in the firm cradle of the seatbelt. Fifty feet below and a hundred yards away the Ohio River flowed in a gentle bend from her left to her right. The muddy waterway was stuffed with recovered rust-red barges except for a narrow, cleared channel down the middle. It reminded her of a bathtub full of kid toys.

“Oh, hell,” Chloe said while guiding the truck down the grassy slope.

“What's your move?” Craig asked for all of them.

“I don't--” she cut herself off as she whipped the wheel and narrowly avoided a pipe sticking out of the ground.

The roar of the planes continued behind them, but Marty was unable to crane her neck that far backward. The best she could do was strain to look in the mirror out her window, but she was disappointed to only see a white cloud hanging back there.

“They're over the town,” Mark said with urgency.

“I know,” the young woman snapped back.

The truck made it off the steep bank of the levee and onto the more level approaches to the river, but now they saw nothing but barges lined up and down the bank with no easy way to reach the waterline. Chloe had to veer to the right and the truck canted dangerously toward the waterfront.

Both men shouted as they fell sideways in the rear part of the cab.

Marty's eyes were drawn to the sky to her right, above the town. The white cloud had been pulled over the buildings, but more planes followed and dropped even more liquid. The black shapes cut through the haze like sharks lurking in the riptide and she was floating out to sea.

“Hail Mary, full of grace ... ” she said in a whisper.

The truck bounced up and down as Chloe dodged swales and mounds of dirt along the riverbank.

Marty's heart acted up again due to the growing threat, but instead of the unusual rhythm she experienced before, it was now all over the place. She put her hand on her chest and remembered what it felt like to have a heartbeat more suitable for jogging than cross stitching. It pounded along like she was a spry twenty-two again. The rest of her body couldn't keep up, especially her lungs, so she began sucking in air and found it difficult to speak.

A lone zombie stood at the top of the levee and Marty saw it as clear as she'd ever seen anything in her whole life. The black shape was impossible to miss against the backdrop of white behind it. Yet, even as she watched, the sky became increasingly orange.

Marty coughed what little was left in her lungs, making an ambiguous sound. She pounded on the side window to get Chloe's attention.

“Oh, God,” Chloe replied.

The men gasped from the back seat.

“They torched it!” Mark cried out.

The color orange grew in intensity from behind the levee, as if someone were shining a light to cut through the dense white smoke. The truck began to turn away just as Marty witnessed tendrils of fire rise up into the sky like a strange kind of ground-to-sky lightning.

“Hold on, guys, I'm going to ram those barges.” Chloe mashed the gas pedal, and after changing course one last time, they all saw how their ride was going to end.

“Wait. Wait. Wait!” Craig shouted.

But the orange glow changed the tint of everything around them. The red barges. The green trees. The brown water. It all took on a supernatural light from the event in the sky behind them.

Marty found it impossible to control her heartrate because she'd never felt so afraid. Not even when Liam pushed her wheelchair in front of those looters back at the Arch. She'd been in a lot of scrapes with Liam, but she'd learned to trust his instincts about survival. Now, she was out of her element.

Chloe hunched herself over the wheel with a desperate look on her face as she scanned the edge of the parking lot of ships. The giant barges were lined up with their noses up on the shore, so it was hard to even see the water.

“Shit,” Chloe spat with gritted teeth.

“They're blowing it all,” Mark said breathlessly.

Marty's vision became a narrow tunnel bracketed by black circles. The lack of oxygen was taking a toll.

“Find Liam,” she groaned. If anyone heard her, they made no reply. She didn't blame them because their own lives were in peril at that instant.

I guess I'm ready, Lord, if it be your will.

Her pinhole vision became almost solid orange even as a wall of black shapes approached ahead of her. The truck headed for the water, but Marty had no way of telling if Chloe intended to literally ram the barges or if she had something else in mind. Knowing the young woman even the short time she did, Marty was inclined to trust she had a plan.

The engine roared.

An instant later the seatbelt snapped, and she lurched forward. Everyone screamed. One of the men flew into the dashboard from between the seats with a sickening crack.

After a few minutes of listening to the others yell and cuss, Marty's heart rate came out of the clouds and settled down, so she could breathe.

And her feet were wet.

“My heavens!” she exclaimed.

“Shh,” Chloe said in a hurried way.

“What?”

“Mark is helping Craig out the back window and up onto the barges,” Chloe said. “Your turn is next.”

Marty took in her surroundings. The side mirror out her window was gone. Instead, there was a wet wall of rusty iron. The same wall of red was outside of Chloe's window, but the glass on her side had shattered. Water splashed at the windshield from over the top of the truck's hood.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I found a wedge of space between two beached barges and drove us as far as I could into the water. We can still get free through the back slider, then we climb onto the barges and maybe walk our way to safety. I don't think the zombies can get up there. We have to hurry because these boats are shifting, and my truck will crumple like a Coke can between them.”

Marty took a deep breath and relished the feel of air in her lungs.

“And the orange glow?” she asked timidly.

“A firebomb. They dropped fuel from those giant planes and then a spark caught and blew it up. Or maybe they touched it off themselves. It was a miles-long explosion. I've never seen anything like it.”

“And you expect me to climb out?” Marty said with uncertainty.

“We'll help you. I have no doubt you can do it.”

Mark popped his head back inside the window. “Your turn, speed racer.”

“Yeah, let's see you do better,” Chloe responded defensively.

“I'm kidding, boss. You did good.”

Chloe looked at Marty before turning back to Mark. “I'm sorry. I feel like I wrecked a perfectly good getaway vehicle.”

“You did what you had to do. It's clear up top. I promise.” Mark tapped Marty on the shoulder. “We'll get you up there.”

Marty had no doubt it could be done. Liam would have cheered her on just as sure as these kind people were doing. She hated the idea of slowing them down and being the burden once more, but there was no alternative. If God kept her alive so she could do some good for the world, then who was she to doubt His purpose. As so many times before, there was an opportunity to go on living even after endless calamity. Did the bomb cleanse the earth behind the levee? Was it safe to go outside the truck again? Would they find something up on top of the barges to help them get back to Liam?

She suffered the indignity of being hauled out like a piece of wood. She was shoved through the back window, carried on a shoulder, and then handed up from one man to the next until she stood on the deck of a barge.

She finally saw the horror caused by the fire bomb.

It wasn't that it killed everyone, but that it left some of them alive.

Small groups of zombies stumbled down the levee while their bodies burned with unnatural ferocity. They came over the top of the levee and made for the river, as if a deep part of their ruined memory was left intact so they knew water could quench the fire.

Marty jumped when Mark fired his rifle. A nearby zombie fell over, still a hundred feet from his goal.

“No shots!” the orange-haired woman screamed.

“But this is cruel,” Mark replied. He stayed his weapon for the moment.

“I know,” Chloe said, “but we'll need every round. The bomb was big, but it didn't get them all. Not even close. We have lots of fighting ahead of us.”

Mark looked down his scope at another zombie but didn't fire. He merely grunted and turned away.

The sad-looking fire walker made it almost all the way to where the truck was mashed between the two barges, but then fell over in the mud a few feet shy of the water.

Marty said a little prayer for whoever that once was.

The three of them watched as more flaming zombies came over the top of the levee and stumbled down toward the barges as if looking for something to end the fire. Almost to a person they reached the mud along the edge of the river and then their feet got stuck. A few managed to touch the front hull of the parked barges and one or two made it into the water by Chloe's pickup truck.

“This is just terrible,” Marty admitted. “We should pray for them.”

“They were already dead, ma'am,” Chloe replied. “Nothing living could have survived burning like that for so long.”

Mark and Craig refused to watch, but Marty felt like someone needed to witness the end of the battle for Cairo. She'd been in the town before the zombies arrived, and she was there when the wall of stench rolled in and overcame the military defenders. She was there when everyone retreated back into the town and now she was there when the zombies met their match.

Still, she did shed a few tears for such terrible cruelty taking place in her lifetime.

In the end, hundreds of the infected creatures fell along the shore or burned down to their bones as they stood in the mud.

“They are like the Terracotta Warriors of China,” Chloe said with sadness after things settled down.

“Say what?” Marty replied.

“I saw the travelling exhibit at the art museum. These zombies are frozen in their death poses forever. All they need is spears and stuff and they'd be like those frozen warriors of old.”

“I don't know about all that,” she replied, “but I have to say thanks for rescuing me from their fate. No one should end up like them.”

Chloe ran her fingers through her orange hair. “You're welcome. We've got to keep moving.”

“Why?”

Chloe pointed to some distant barges along the shore to the south. “Those.”

Zombies had found a way onto the barrages somewhere in that direction. Even from a mile away Marty could tell they'd come from the town because their clothing was mostly burned away.

“Are they coming this way?” Marty whispered.

“We have to assume they are. That's our luck, you know?”

“Where can we go?” Marty asked.

“Not that way, and not that way, either.” Chloe pointed to the zombies far down the way, but also to some zombies standing aboard barges in the other direction. A few of those were wandering in their direction. The boats were no longer the safe place they expected.

“I guess we head for the middle and hope we get rescued.” Chloe pointed toward the center of the river.

“Do hurry, dear.” Marty leaned against the other woman and they began their trek. The moans and cries of the zombies became audible on the breeze.

They were already getting closer.

Chapter 7. Watch out for no-names

Liam woke up in the middle of the night, shivering, despite the soggy humidity of southeastern Missouri in the summertime. He'd been dreaming about zombies, fire, death, and lots of running. It was typical of the types of nightmares he saw when he shut his eyes.

A lone cricket erratically chirped on and off, as if it was also up at the wrong hour.

It didn't help that it was impossible to spend the night in a comfortable bed, under a roof, and with some degree of safety. He was sure he had a decent night of sleep somewhere along the way, but the only one that stuck out was spending that one night in Victoria's dorm room a few days ago. He'd been on the move almost the whole time since then.

His leg muscles ached from the hard run away from the river, and just thinking about the pursuit made his heart rate spike. But no matter how exhausted he'd become from days and days of chaos, sleeping soundly on the open roof was pretty much impossible for him.

And yet the group of girls he was with all seemed to be out cold. Even Victoria was curled up next to him and her regular breathing suggested she was at peace for once.

He felt some relief at waking up when he did. There was more than enough running and hiding in his daytime life, he didn't need more of it in his sleeping time.

As he sat up and looked into the dull glare of light still coming from near Cairo, he wiped his hand over his face to erase his sleep and reflect on what he'd been dreaming about.

Running for my life.

Always running, yes, but tonight he realized he was chasing someone in his dream, rather than running away from zombies.

He peered into the darkness. There was heavy cloud cover and the aura of light from the faraway town barely made it to the farm, but there was enough to see the tree line at the distant edge of the fields. In his dream, he'd been standing in those trees while looking at the house. Not surprising when he thought about how many zombies were out there in the darkness at that moment.

Liam shivered again. An odd feeling swept over him and he immediately considered bumping Victoria to wake her up. She would then say he's crazy for being scared of the dark, they'd both have a laugh, and he could then get back to sleep.

He almost did prod his girlfriend, but her breathing was unusually calm at that moment. Most times while Victoria napped, her eyes fluttered, and her breathing was ragged and strained, as if also on the run in her nightmares. Somehow, she was getting good sleep on the hard roof, and he wasn't going to ruin that for her.

In the end, he let her be. Grandma always said to let sleeping dogs lie. No, that wasn't the right thing. Victoria wouldn't like that comparison.

“Don't wake a sleeping baby,” he heard his mom's voice advise.

He figured Victoria would prefer that a lot more, but he still didn't wake her.

He stretched his legs to work out some of the lactic acid and constantly shifted around because the shingles made it feel like he sat on concrete. Susan and Leah slept less peacefully than Victoria, but their breathing suggested they were also catching some z's. His eyes fell on Victoria again, then he looked up the slope of the roof, then at the dark sky. It took him several minutes to admit he didn't want to look back to the oily black tree line.

Over the past three weeks he'd come to appreciate he lived in a virtual surveillance state. Something so complicated and complete, even his paranoid dad wouldn't have believed it. Drones flew and rolled across the terrain seeking him out. He'd been tagged with numerous tracking darts and probably carried traces of them with him even now. And if that wasn't enough, he'd been made aware that he'd been alternately tracked by US Marines, the Air Force, and the NIS operatives who'd never stopped looking for him.

Gee, I wonder why I'm dreaming about running?

He chuckled at the futility of it all. It was beginning to look like being caught by someone was his fate.

The longer he sat there, the more convinced he was that someone was in the darkness at that moment watching him. The hair on his neck stood on end and he shivered uncontrollably for a couple of seconds. This time he had to really fight the urge to wake up his friend.

Liam lay himself back onto the roof and put his arms behind his head as he looked up into the dark sky. There were no visible stars above because of the clouds, but just thinking about them reminded him of Grandma's happy place with the waterfall and computer. Al said he, Victoria, and Grandma were bonded as a triad because they'd shared key emotional markers in their memories. It was going to help them unlock the computer in Colorado, or whatever it was. He still wasn't sure what to make of that mystical world of the Quantum Computer other than he was sure the memories they'd shared with each other were real. Grandma and Victoria both confirmed them in real life and he shared his own powerful memory of his first kiss with Victoria.

A smile washed over his face at that memory and he relaxed a bit as he savored it. He wet his lips involuntarily as he imagined her kissing him and he snickered at the thought of waking her now, so he could kiss her again. It was a fun diversion for a few minutes, but if he didn't wake her because he was scared, he sure as hell wasn't going to wake her to steal a smooch. Maybe someday when that fear of chasing and running wasn't so overpowering and distracting he would wake her in the most pleasant way possible, but if her dreams were anything like his he'd be shoved off the roof before she even woke up.

The apocalypse really sucks.

His imagination went to work rebuilding every detail of that one moment with Victoria during their escape from the city where they weren't under the threat of death. Where a kiss wasn't just possible, but appropriate with the new girl he'd brought with him out of the dying metropolis. His mind focused on her black dress, long brown hair, and her smooth, feminine skin.

It was enough to almost calm him to sleep.

When something brushed against his hair, he thought it was Victoria waking up because she'd somehow caught his thoughts and decided to make good on his desire to kiss her.

Another touch, but against his ear this time.

Please. Please. Please.

He kept his heavy eyes closed to see if she'd wake him. If Victoria wanted to kiss him as bad as he wanted to return it, and if that's what she did in the next ten seconds, he was going to dance up and down the roof no matter how much noise it would make.

Victoria, I'm already awake.

He spoke inside his head, sure she could hear him as they had done before inside the Quantum computer.

He heard no reply, but the pressure on his neck suggested she was close. Part of him wanted to spring “awake” and jump into a kiss, but he decided to play his part until the end.

“Ouch,” he blurted out into the silence. He regretted breaking the magic, but she'd actually hurt him when she pinched his neck.

He sat up a little and shifted so he could face her while supporting his head with one arm.

“I didn't know you'd be so rough--” he said to the shape lying next to him.

She didn't reply.

“Victoria?” He asked it in a quiet voice, but his apoco-senses tingled because something wasn't right.

Unsure if the night and his tired brain were playing tricks on him, he slapped his cheeks a few times to bring himself to full alert.

“Victoria,” he said a bit louder.

Still, she didn't stir.

He reached for her but bumped into something else that recoiled when touched.

“Oh, shit,” he said softly while sliding sideways away from it, but then he calmed back down because he knew what it was.

“Victoria, wake up. There are animals in our food,” he said in a forceful way. His years in Boy Scouts had given him a lot of experience dealing with nocturnal creatures seeking food in his campsite, and he and the girls had been careless opening the treasure trove of canned goods and other wonders they'd brought up from the pantry.

He shoved her a bit, so she knew he meant business.

Something bit his hand as he touched her. There was pressure, but it didn't break skin. A lot like whatever pinched his neck.

“Ok, this is too weird.”

“What's happening?” Victoria said in a froggy voice as she woke up.

He experienced a little regret. She'd been asleep the whole time, so this was never going to be that wonderful dream of her waking him up. No matter how many squirrels or raccoons infested their food, it hurt more that he missed an opportunity to spend a quiet moment with his girl.

He reached for his flashlight, resigned to the fact some of the food would be ruined.

Please don't be a racoon.

Squirrels and chipmunks were the least of the nuisance animals because they would run at the light, but some raccoons put up a fight for their newfound dinners and they usually brought all their friends. It would be a challenge to chase them off the roof.

He clicked on the light and shined it toward Victoria.

The small white shape crawled between them and glowed with an almost supernatural whiteness under the harshness of the high-powered flashlight.

None of his camping merit badges could have prepared him for this intruder.

It was a baby.

2

His first instinct was to scream because that's what normal people did in the face of such things, but the sight of the tiny, half-charred, premature creature was more than his mind could handle at that moment. However, when he swept the light over the still-groggy Victoria and the young girls on her far side, it became clear screaming was probably the right thing to do.

“Get up!” he shouted in a scream-like voice.

He hopped into a crouch, danced around the baby, and pulled at Victoria to get her off her back.

“Oh, good God, you scared me,” she replied. “What is it?”

He shined the light onto the threat. “That!”

Victoria screamed and scrambled away from the baby like it was on fire. He held her tight, so she didn't fall off the roof.

“Zombie babies,” he blurted. He pointed the light at the one closest to him, but he shifted the light again and tried not to jump out of his sneakers at how many of the little zombies were up there with them.

“Get off me!” Leah cried out.

There had to be two dozen of the little monsters and some were in the nooks and crannies of Leah and Susan's clothing, like they wanted to snuggle up with the sleepers. It might have been cute if their condition and very existence wasn't so horrible.

Victoria brushed at her hair and a chipmunk-sized preemie tumbled out. She danced from foot to foot as if she didn't want to step on the misshapen baby zombie as it hit the roof and rolled a few times.

Everyone made it to their feet and the two daughters swiped at their clothing to clear out the passengers.

“Eww. Eww. Eww!” Susan shouted as she flailed wildly at her shirt and backed herself closer to the edge of the roof.

“Whoa!” Liam grabbed her arm a split-second before she went over.

The young girl didn't even say thanks or acknowledge what just happened. Instead, she ran for her older sister, still screaming like mad.

“Back inside,” he ordered. “Grab what you can of the supplies.”

Victoria snapped on a second flashlight, and was first to the window, but she didn't go inside.

He felt a crunch under his foot, but he refused to shine his light down there to see what it was. Better to ignore the hideous truth.

“Liam,” Victoria gushed with emotion. “I saw those things down under that blue tarp. The whole backyard garden was full of them.”

“How did they get up here? No, no time for that. Just get us out of here.” He practically pushed her into the window, but she resisted once she put some light in that direction.

“Please go inside,” he said with as much calm as he could summon.

“Liam. Look.” Victoria angled her light and looked inside the bedroom where he'd come in so long ago.

The preemies came from a vent on the floor, and several of them clawed their way out as he watched. Others formed a line of tiny walking zombies as they made their way to the window. One of them reached the low sill and hopped itself up like something out of a cartoon.

Or a horror movie.

“This is insane,” he said as he watched the baby stand erect inches from his light.

It was stark naked, but its skin had been torched during the fireball he and Sabella had created, making it impossible to tell the sex of the ghoulish figure. It had the wonkish proportions of a baby, but it stood like it had practiced walking for a long time. The fire had taken its eyes and the toothless mouth hung open in a voiceless scream.

He shivered at the sight of the monster and made no effort to hide his feeling from the others.

“I think my fear response is broken,” he said with a measured chuckle. “How is this happening? I'm so scared right now I can't look away.”

“What do we do?” Susan wailed.

“Yeah, what do we do?” Leah echoed while sounding properly frightened.

Victoria put her hand on his and that snapped him out of it. He tore his eyes away from the cold, dead baby zombie.

“The other window,” he said as if remembering it existed. “We can escape that way.”

He pushed the baby back into the room without actually looking at it, then he grabbed the window and slid it down to shut it. Unless they were prone to great violence he didn't think they could get back through the sealed double-pane glass.

“We can't stay up here,” Victoria said as they all shuffled toward the other window facing the front of the house, “but if those creepy zombies are everywhere inside I think I'd rather jump off the roof.”

Sabella's daughters openly wept as they passed more of the tiny shapes writhing around on the shingles. Some tried to stand up and find the living people so close to them. Others fast-crawled like it was an easier mode of transport for them. One even cried like it was a real, living baby. That freaked him out the most.

Even knowing they were zombies didn't help him kick them out of his way. He couldn't bring himself to hurt the little things, and no one else seemed willing to harm them, either.

“Please don't be in there,” he said when he reached the second window.

He set his bag of supplies next to the dormer and shined his light inside, praying there were no little ones scurrying about.

After a few seconds, he shut off his light, stepped back from the window, and let out a heavy sigh.

“What is it? Can we go?” Victoria plopped her bag of canned goods next to his.

“We just can't win,” he said in a dejected voice.

“What is it? Are they in there?” Victoria strained to see around him with her light.

“No, not babies, but there is a huge dead man sitting on the mattress,” he replied.

The girls' weeping got even louder, and he knew why.

Their torturer blocked the path to freedom.

3

While fretting over a solution, a vehicle's engine caught his attention from out in the darkness. A pair of headlights turned into the mile-long gravel driveway leading up to the farmhouse.

He turned to Victoria. “Rescue?”

She shrugged, then added, “Bad guys coming back for revenge?”

Liam chuckled to alleviate his fear. “Since when are you the downer?”

“It must be a side effect of waking up with little, uh, zombies crawling all over me. I want to go back and jump in that filthy river to wash away the feeling of those little hands.”

“Ah, yeah, I see your point.” He almost went on about how that first one tricked him into thinking she'd kissed him but decided to never speak of it to anyone.

If they had teeth, that fake kiss would have killed me.

That brought him back to the moment. No matter who was driving up, it was a way out. Even though most of the zombies had walked toward the river, and away from the house, some still shuffled their feet on the rocky parking area below. To get to the car they had to get off the roof. To do that, they had to face the baby zombies in one room or Wilder's huge plague-stricken body in the other.

Victoria had the small shotgun with plenty of ammo, so they could reasonably enter either room and kill whatever was inside, but it was revolting to think of shooting the preemie zombies no matter what they were now.

“We'll go through Wilder's room,” he said flatly. He could almost sense the reluctance of the girls, but luckily Victoria didn't share their sense of misfortune.

“I'm on it.” Victoria didn't even try to open the window. She smashed the glass with the butt of her wooden shotgun and then hopped through.

“After you,” he said, quite impressed at her initiative.

Liam watched as she crouched through the window and stepped down. He couldn't help but notice the bling on the back pockets of her jeans because the tiny stones reflected in the rays of his flashlight.

A few seconds went by before the shotgun went off inside the room. Little Susan smashed her hands over her ears because of the noise.

“It's all right,” he said to the girl even if he wasn't sure that was true.

Victoria's flashlight beam flitted from wall to wall and wouldn't focus on any one thing, but there was lots of movement. He waved his light inside to try to figure out what was happening.

“You need help?” he asked as he put one foot in the window. There was no doubt he would go in there and help his girlfriend, but she was the one with the gun and he didn't want to get in her way.

She ran up to him screaming, but she wasn't alone.

Wilder had somehow grabbed Victoria and had her in a bear hug as they headed right for the window frame.

“Help!” Victoria yelped a fraction of a second before impact.

“Aw crap!” he responded as he jumped away from the window. It looked like they were both going to come barreling out of the rectangular frame, but Wilder's shoulder impacted the side with a crack. The two of them bounced and went back inside the room.

Liam's eyes double-blinked as he tried to understand her situation.

“Liam,” Victoria cried out in a winded voice.

The big man had Victoria and her shotgun trapped in his arms. It was like he snapped her off the ground and carried her around like his toy. Given his evil intents as a living person, Liam wondered if that made him an even worse specimen as a zombie. He thought of a zombie book that was based around the Rapture. Good people went on living normally, but bad people's souls were destroyed, and their bodies morphed into zombies. Naturally, there were far more zombies than those left behind.

He tried to use zombie books to give him hints on how to handle them in real life, but that moment of reflection offered him no advice. He figured the only way to help his girlfriend was to get inside the bear cage and do what he could. Wilder was now a mortal danger, whether he'd been evil or not.

“I'm coming,” he advised Victoria.

Liam looked at Sabella's girls and then hopped in through the damaged window frame. He kept his light on Wilder but that became difficult as the huge man spun around and continued to carry Victoria from one wall to the next.

“Choking!” Victoria wheezed.

There was nothing left in the room which served as a potential weapon. When Wilder used this room, he seemed to want it devoid of anything that could hurt him. Liam's only chance was to wrangle the shotgun from him and turn the zombie's face into spaghetti.

Liam's heart rate went up Mt. Everest as he got closer. He only made one quick swipe for the gun before being pushed over by the flailing bodies.

“Crap on a stick!” he shouted.

Victoria made a few more wheezing sounds, but it was totally obvious what Wilder was doing to her.

Is he a new kind of zombie?

Zombies had abilities largely dependent on what city they came from. Those from Chicago liked to climb. Kansas City zombies had the ability to cause momentary illusions. Some zombies could swim. Now he was seeing a brand-new attack in the form of the bear hug. Such an attack would leave a helpless, dying young woman ripe for stealing her blood as the parting shot.

He thought of Sabella's dagger, her big shotgun, and Wilder's empty handgun. So many weapons but none were right there with him. Even the canister of propane would have been useful to crush a skull here.

Wilder continued to move around the room like a pinball trapped between four bumpers.

Liam took a deep breath, still unsure what he was going to do. It crossed his mind to jump onto Wilder's back and try to hurt or somehow distract him, but Victoria needed help immediately.

He did the first thing that crossed his mind.

“God help me, this is stupid.”

His heart was beating four hundred miles an hour, but he lined up where Wilder was heading and then he threw himself toward the giant's feet. He slammed onto the wooden floor just ahead of the guy's bare foot and hoped he planned it all correctly.

Wilder's other foot kicked Liam in the rib cage but he tried to keep still so he wouldn't be dragged along. That seemed to take the zombie by surprise, and Wilder stumbled forward. A living person might have been able to compensate for the obstruction and remain upright, but zombie Wilder carried Victoria in his arms and he was unable to distribute his weight. He sounded angry as he fell forward.

Liam had no time to plan where Victoria was going to end up when the mountain of a man came crashing down, but between the darkness, the flashlight beam, and random chance, there was probably no way to figure it out.

Wilder fell over and Victoria let out a squeal as she tumbled to the floor.

He ignored his bruised ribs and made it to his knees, so he could shine the light toward her. Wilder and Victoria were still glued together despite lying sideways on the floor.

“Come on,” he begged.

“Sh-gunnn,” Victoria wheezed as if using the last of her breath.

She cradled the shotgun in her arms because that's where it was when Wilder got her, but it stuck out a lot more than it did before she fell, and the barrel pointed right at him. His insides were already shifting with anxiety, but he almost lost his bladder at how dangerous the room had become.

“I got it,” he said to her as he reached for the metal barrel and pulled.

It wouldn't budge.

Either Wilder had a grip on it, or Victoria still held it herself.

“Victoria, you have to let go of the gun.”

He tested it again, but still it was stuck in between Victoria and the zombie.

What if she pulls the trigger?

“Victoria! Let go!”

He yanked harder and she croaked words he couldn't understand. This time the gun started to move.

“That's it. Almost free.” He spoke with grim determination because she was almost passed out.

He yanked as hard as he was able and drew the gun from its wedged position. It squirted out as if Wilder had let it go, and he fell backward with the gun.

Once he was sure he had it in his possession he got to his feet, wiped the sweat out of his eyes, then tried to hold the flashlight and the gun at the same time. Victoria's light had fallen and rolled against the mattress on the floor, doing them no good. His own light illuminated the pair on the floor, but as he held the shotgun at the ready he realized it was going to be impossible to fire it and not hit his girlfriend.

While he managed to steal the shotgun from Wilder's bear hug, he wasn't letting up on Victoria in the least. If anything, he seemed to have a tighter grip on her as they both lay side to side because she'd stopped struggling.

“Help.” Victoria barely whispered.

He recalled a move Officer Jones had shown him early on during the disaster.

Liam swallowed hard and then ran behind Wilder with the shotgun and light. When he reached the man's upper back he set the light on the floor and tried to angle it at Wilder's head.

He needed both hands free for what he intended to do next.

4

Liam raised the shotgun over his head, lined up Wilder's thinning scalp, and swung down with every ounce of his strength. In that fatal second, he had time to wonder if he would miss and end up hitting the girl he loved more than anything, but the butt of the stock cracked into the skull of the huge man before he could change his mind.

Wilder froze for a second and then kept shaking Victoria, kind of like a skip in a record, but Liam hefted the gun once more and brought it down with all his remaining strength to another satisfying crack. That stopped Wilder completely.

It was almost too grisly to scrutinize, so he had to keep it in his peripheral vision. Lots of black, oily, liquid drained onto the floor, which mixed with the fountains of blood already on Wilder's clothes as well as the floor below him. Most of that originated from his first death at the hands of Leah.

Victoria pulled herself free of the big arms as if taking off a winter coat. She rolled over on her stomach and took some gigantic breaths. Liam stood there catching his own breath after his exertion but stepped over the body to be closer to the beautiful woman he saved.

“Thank you,” she said into the floor.

“We should have kept track,” he said before needing to take a huge breath, “how many times we've saved each other since we met.”

She didn't reply for twenty or thirty seconds, but then Victoria rolled again so she could look up at him. Her smile was like looking at the sunrise after a long night.

“I probably saved you more times,” she said with obvious effort.

They both laughed a little at the exaggeration. The reality was that it was probably closer to fifty-fifty.

Liam helped Victoria to a sitting position. He kept one hand on her back to steady her and used the other to brush her arm and provide comfort.

“That was close,” she whispered.

“I'll say. I wanted to shoot him, but I figured I'd hit you.”

“It was totally my fault. My first shot was a total miss. Can you believe that? I pulled the trigger on my second shot figuring there was no way I could miss twice, and I think I did make contact, but that one didn't bring him down, either. He was already so bloody I couldn't tell where I got him, but before I could let off a third shot he got me in his arms.” She coughed as she tried to laugh.

“There's a lesson there,” Liam said with good humor.

“Don't stop until the zombie is dead on the ground,” she replied.

“Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's called a double tap in zombie literature.”

“You two alright?” Leah finally asked through the window. Susan wasn't visible, but he heard her sobbing from nearby.

“Yeah, just a minute,” he replied.

“The truck is almost here,” Leah added. “Can we get out that way?”

Part of him wanted to avoid ever coming back into this room, or letting the youngest girls see what a mess it had become, but the other room was even worse. He couldn't imagine how messed up he'd be if he had to crush all those premature zombies. Even within sight of the goo seeping from Wilder, he got the willies remembering the sensation of being gummed by the toothless monster on the roof.

“Yes, just hurry. Bring in the bags but don't look at anything in here if you can help it.” Liam still didn't look directly at Wilder's head but picked up the shotgun and brushed the bloody stock onto the mattress.

“You gonna be okay?” he asked her.

Her breathing was getting back to normal, but her voice was still shaky and weak. “I think so. I'm ready to leave, though, if that's the question.”

He laughed. “Everywhere we go is a disappointment. One of these days we're going to end up somewhere nice. I promise.”

Liam hopped to his feet and held out his hands. The last nice place he could clearly remember was Victoria's dorm room. It was the second time tonight he'd thought about it, and not just because he and Victoria spent time together. In addition to providing his most recent restful night of sleep, the place was famous for clean sheets, lack of any blood or guts on the floor, and zero point zero zombies to worry about.

She got to her feet as the others came in through the busted-out window.

“Hang on a sec,” he said as he turned the door handle and opened the door. He peered into the dark hallway and realized he needed his flashlight. He picked up his light and snapped up hers as well.

“I'll hold the light,” she suggested. “You can hold the gun for a while.”

“Deal,” he said as he gave one light to her and pocketed the second.

In moments, the two girls were inside the stuffy room. They'd brought the two pillow cases of food and water with them. Liam didn't really want to make the little one carry the heavy bag, but he needed to focus on the gun and he wanted Victoria's attention on holding the light.

The engine noise of the truck grew louder as it sped up the gravel driveway, so he was out of time to think of a better way.

“Follow me, girls. Please drag those bags with us, okay? I'm going to the kitchen first. We need some ammo for this gun.” Liam assumed there were more shells in the magazine of the 20-gauge shotgun, but he had no idea how many. They'd fired two and that's all he really knew about it.

Also, there were probably shells in the bags of food and supplies the girls held in their hands, but it didn't seem smart to take the time to dump them out to look. There was a whole closet full of ammo in the kitchen.

As long as there were no zombies in the lower level.

Liam tip-toed at the head of the procession as they walked along the hallway. He didn't dare go back and open the door to the room with the little kids in it, and he prayed they weren't going to follow him, now.

“Hey, can you shut that door?” he called back to whatever girl was last out of Wilder's room.

He felt a tiny bit better when the latch clicked.

Victoria put her hand on his back, signaling he should keep going.

He put on his brave face and started down the stairs.

The flashlight was slippery in his hands because his palm was soaked with perspiration driven by fear. The beam of light swung from one side of the main level to the other as he came down the steps. Any couch or table could have a zombie crouched behind it, just ready to pounce.

As he hit the last step, the eerie feeling he was about to get ambushed began to evaporate. If anything was going to jump him, he didn't think they were smart enough to resist once they saw a light or some kind of movement. If there were any zombies in the main floor, at least in the main living room area by the steps, they would have already jumped them.

“This way,” he whispered.

Like a blind man leading a team through an unfamiliar cave system, he led the line of girls from the living room to the kitchen. There were no jumpers, runners, or climbers in there, either, but he did see movement through the broken windows out behind the house.

“Shhh,” he said in a barely audible voice.

He motioned for everyone to keep low as he crossed the glass-littered kitchen tiles.

Getting the ammo was easy because the closet door for the pantry still hung open from their last visit. He absently thought of his mother and how it would have driven her crazy that he didn't close the door after using it.

A pang of grief clawed up and out of his throat and he almost choked up thinking about her falling into the river with Dad, but Victoria still had her hand attached to his back and that gave him the strength to stay on his mission.

Sixty seconds later he had a ton of the 20-gauge shells inside his pockets and he'd given more to Victoria. He took an extra box and threw it in Leah's pillow case. The last thing he did was stuff two additional shells into the loading port to replace those Victoria fired.

“That should keep us in business for a while. I don't see any more to take.” He was ready to commandeer every shell he could find, but 20-gauge was nowhere near as common as all the boxes of 12-gauge. He thought about grabbing some boxes of those for good measure, but it seemed stupid because he didn't have the right gun for them.

By the time he'd gotten his stuff together the truck was right next to the house. The lights bounced off the twisted metal of the outbuilding but then changed direction as if the vehicle was turning around. The telltale sound of air brakes made him realize the car was actually a big truck.

“Leah, you take the girls to the front and wait for me and Victoria. We have to check one more thing before we leave.”

“We do?” Victoria asked with surprise.

He took a long, calming breath. His heartbeat was still going recklessly fast but that wasn't going to change while zombies were on the next floor.

“When I was living back at grandma's place, I lived in the basement. Through a door just like that one.” He pointed his light to the only closed door at the far end of the kitchen. “And they wouldn't keep all this ammo here if they didn't also keep some guns around to use it.”

“If you say what I think you're going to say, I'm going to ... ”

“Kiss me?” he said with a chuckle. He'd been thinking about kissing her all night and it was a distraction he couldn't shake.

Victoria strode right up to him, so they were standing inches apart, but instead of kissing him passionately, she slapped him playfully on the cheek.

“Liam, I'm crazy about you, too, but are you insane? We have to get out of here. Now. This instant. No, last instant.”

“I know,” he said with a bit of sadness. “If the owners of this house were collecting payment for services, they would keep the larger payments in a spot safer than a common kitchen cupboard. Probably in the basement. I think it is worth the risk to find out.”

Victoria seemed to think about it for a few seconds, then put her hand on his chest, right over his ticker. She'd just got into a pre-medical program at Washington University, and she obviously knew some anatomy. “So, we woke up screaming today but one heart attack before breakfast wasn't enough for you? Is that what you're telling me?”

They both laughed a little at their playful banter, but he heard the doubt in her voice. He sincerely tried to hide it in his own.

“Two is my limit on heart attacks, but let's see if we can keep it at one.”

5

They only had the one shotgun, so he had to think of how to get down the stairs without leaving the two girls unarmed on the main floor. He called them back from the living room, so they were all close while he worked on the puzzle.

He could leave the gun with them while he went downstairs, but that seemed overly dangerous for him and Victoria. They could all go together for mutual protection, but he didn't like taking the girls into trouble if he could help it. He and Victoria could take the gun for themselves but leaving Sabella's daughters without any means of defense while zombies were close was an epic fail. When the mother came back, she would expect to find both daughters in good health. That's why she left them with him.

As he thought it through, he wondered if going in the basement was such a good idea. After standing there without a plan for a bit, he pulled Victoria aside.

“You may have a point about two heart attacks. Is this worth it? Maybe the arriving vehicle is a friend?”

Victoria looked at him using the diffuse light of her flashlight while she pointed it at the floor. Almost at the same time they shared a knowing smile.

“Liam, I hate having to say it, but the more I think about it the more I agree we have to go down there. They probably aren't friends. When is the last time we've been that lucky? We need to assume whoever is coming up that driveway is here to kill us.”

“Right,” he replied with a smile at her jab, “we need to find more weapons.”

Having a 20-gauge shotgun was a start, but it was a lot like having the small .22 caliber pistols. It was the bare minimum of security, but it couldn't get the job done against multiple enemies at the same time nor could it reach out and touch someone like a proper rifle would do.

She got super close to his face and whispered. “Why don't we all go through the basement door. The girls can wait on the steps while you and I explore down there.”

The truck's engine sounded like it was in the house because it was so close.

“Let's do it,” he replied.

Liam turned to Sabella's girls. “We're going to check the basement for supplies and weapons. We haven't seen any guns to go with all this ammo and I have a hunch they kept them down there out of sight. My dad did the same thing.”

He wondered about equating his father with anything that went on in this house, but it was too late to take it back.

“Won't the rescue truck leave without us?” Susan squeaked.

Liam couldn't promise anything to the little girl except that he knew they were safer in the kitchen then they'd be if they walked out into the world with only one small shotgun between the four of them.

“They won't leave,” he said as if it was positively true. “You guys are going to stand in the stairwell behind the closed door while she and I check out the bottom level.” Liam pointed to Victoria and her light.

Susan had hardly stopped the tears since they first discovered those baby zombies, but now she grabbed the hip of her older sister and tried to hide there.

“Can I have the gun?” the oldest asked.

“Maybe,” he replied without taking time to think it through.

“Liam?” Victoria said with surprise.

In the dark kitchen it was hard to see expressions or get a read on how serious Leah had been in her question, but once he'd agreed to it, the solution seemed acceptable to him.

“Trust me,” he said to Victoria with more calm in his voice than he felt in his stomach.

Liam went to the basement door and grabbed at the handle. After one check back to ensure Victoria was at his side and the girls were in line behind her, he had another idea.

“Here, you give me the light. You get the shotgun.” He held out the shotgun, safely pointed at the floor, and traded with Victoria.

He smiled at the other girls. “She's a better shot than me.”

None of the three could possibly see his hands shaking in the darkness. So much was riding on his decisions he felt the pressure return from those earliest days of the zombie apocalypse. The shaking wasn't crazy wild like the old days but having people depend on him to not be “that guy” who ruins things in the zombie apocalypse caused it to come back. Victoria always seemed so calm and collected when his insides were turning to spaghetti. Giving her the shotgun was the smart play.

He opened the door with a flourish, expecting zombies to be stuffed into the portal, but his light pierced the dark all the way to the dirt floor at the bottom of the steps.

“Let's go,” he said.

He and Victoria went into the stairwell side-by-side and went about half the way down. With a light touch on her arm he silently asked her to stop. The others were on the steps above him. When he heard the metal click of the door's latch, he knew they had some security at their backs.

“Hey, is this the way to fourth period math class?” he shouted.

The girls all jumped with the unexpected outburst.

“Sorry,” he said in a quieter voice. “I'm seeing if we are alone. You guys take math, right?” It was his intention to lighten the mood, but Susan was inconsolable, and he admitted it would have been better to warn them he was going to make some noise.

Despite the levity, he slid closer to Victoria and her gun almost without thinking about it. If a zombie did run out of the shadows of the creepy basement, she was going to save all their lives. The girls behind him seemed to close in as well.

They stood there for half a minute. He'd been holding his breath and finally let it out with a gasp.

“Ok, we must be alone. Victoria, give the gun to Leah. She'll guard our backs.”

Victoria didn't hand the gun over right away. She kept it pointed toward the basement as if sure the attack was still coming.

“Hey, we don't have much time,” he gently called over to her.

“Oh, right.” She didn't seem glad to release it, but she did hand the gun up the steps to the older sister.

“Thanks,” the girl said.

He took a monster breath. The door above was shut and he was about to walk into the basement with only a flashlight as a weapon. He gripped a belt loop with his free hand to keep it from shaking.

Victoria also had a flashlight and she started down the steps, causing him to follow one step behind.

They hit the dirt floor of the musty old cellar and swept their lights all over the place. Long ago, the owners had made shelves out of two-by-fours and plywood but now they were dingy and covered with black mold. The stuff on them wasn't in much better shape. It reminded him so much of all the old junk Grandma Marty kept in her basement, minus the mold.

The rumble of the truck was still evident, but it was much more subdued now that they were underground.

His light touched on numerous cardboard boxes on the edge of falling apart from age. There were old tools, wooden crates, pieces of rusty iron, and dozens of clear containers full of nuts, screws, and nails.

But no weapons.

“There's nothing here,” Victoria said in a whisper.

Despite advice from untold books and movies, he separated from her so he could search the back part of the basement further from the steps. It was a rather large basement, but the rows of shelving made it feel cramped.

“Let's search the whole thing,” he replied.

He walked down one of the rows and felt as if zombies were about to reach out from the other side of the shelves with each step he took. He found himself holding his breath again and he wondered if his heart had gotten to beating so fast it was impossible to tell one beat from the next.

I have to do this.

His father had a secret room in his boyhood home where he kept all his weapons hidden from prying eyes. Liam didn't believe it was a common thing by any stretch, but if anyone would have their booty hidden, it was going to be an illegal brothel and, uh, whatever else went on in this place. The owners made no effort to clean up the old shelves, but maybe they used a different part of the large basement.

Something crunched on the bare soil beneath his feet, but he refused to look down because that was always a mistake.

There was a door ahead of him.

“Victoria. I've found something.” He said it quietly, but his voice was smothered by the soggy boxes and other crap on the shelves as sure as if he was deep in rows of musty books at the library.

Like everything else, the door was covered in nasty black mold. It might have once been painted white or gray, but now almost blended into the tired red bricks that formed the wall in front of him.

His light focused on the door handle and he took some comfort that even though it was old copper or something, it was really clean. Like it had been used.

Got ya!

As he reached for the handle, an air horn ripped through the silence and caused him to jump six inches in the air.

“Shit!”

The truck was getting impatient.

He regained his composure and pushed the door open.

6

“I've come home,” he blurted out.

He entered the heating and cooling room for the house. The furnace area and the floor of the room was kept super clean, unlike the rest of the basement. Twenty-foot shelves lined the back wall.

“We hit the jackpot!” he cried out to Victoria.

The shelves were brand new and constructed with fresh-looking pine boards. Every type of gun he could imagine had been lined up on the new shelves as if they were on display at the sporting goods store. He giggled at the sight of it because his dad lined up his guns the same way.

She replied, but he couldn't hear her exact words.

“Liam, you're a genius,” he said in a quiet voice. “Liam, you're a brilliant boyfriend.” He ran through a few options for what he imagined her saying to him as he stepped closer to the guns.

It really did look like a gun store. There was a large plastic bin next to one of the shelves filled with every type of handgun he could imagine. There was another box filled with holsters and belts.

His light ran up and down the line and he didn't know which guns he should pick up. Some he recognized, like the AR-15 and AK-47, and there were a few big sniper rifles that reminded him of that one inside the box truck for that gun store he'd run across on the Arch parking lot all those weeks ago.

They were all there for the taking.

“Liam!” Victoria yelled from far away. He'd gotten good at reading the undertones of her voice. She wasn't in danger, but she did want him to come out there.

He laughed out loud again at the magical kingdom he'd stumbled upon.

He also took a step toward one of the big sniper rifles when something caught his eye just above the guns.

The outer wall was made up of tired old bricks and many of them had already fallen out, so it looked like the missing teeth of a hockey player. But it was impossible to miss the movement on the face of the wall.

One of the bricks shuffled from side to side like something was pushing it out.

He froze mid-step.

A pair of tiny eyes reflected his light from the weapons shelf.

Once he saw them, something kicked over in his mind. It took a mental picture of the whole room as his light beam swept it from one end to the other.

Movement inside the box of holsters.

A foot sticking up from near a line of AR-15s.

A face looking out of the furnace vent.

That shivering brick about to topple out of the wall.

“Liam! Help!”

He'd been wrong about her voice.

What do I do?

The stone fell from the wall and a little body slid out of the gap and landed on the weapon's shelf with a wet slap. Liam oriented himself in the house, adjusting the map as he left the kitchen, went down the steps, and came through the last door. The wall in front of him was in the backyard, under the blue tarp Victoria had warned him about.

“How many of you are there?” he said with some awe and complete fear.

It was almost as if he'd roused them from their slumber. More bricks began to shuffle behind the shelves, but he also noticed a hole in the wall near the furnace where a couple zombie babies fell out. They ran into a hole at the base of the furnace and climbed up into the venting.

“Oh, god. They're all over the house.” His shaking hands were now jelly.

“Liam, where are you?” Victoria shouted. That time she sounded close.

Everything below his waist was petrified, and he couldn't step backward. It angered him because he knew he was doing it, but the sight of each of the preemie zombies added a weight to his legs that he couldn't shake off.

Victoria burst through the door behind him.

“Come with--,” she started to say. “Wow. All those guns!”

Then, perhaps knowing his state of mind, she ran up and shoved him in the back to get him moving. “Just grab something and let's get out of here. These nasties are coming out of the walls. Bigger ones, too.”

“Bigger?” he said dreamily.

“Yeah, get us some guns and let's go meet that truck, m'kay?” she replied.

“Sure,” he said with a bit more confidence.

Victoria ran over to the rack and appeared to grab the first gun she could find. It was an old-looking rifle with worn out wood furniture on the stock and grip.

“This is an AK, right?” she said as she lifted it off the shelf. “Like we used before?”

“Yes, but my dad would probably tell us to take AR's. More common ammo.” He still wasn't out of his haze but talking about his dad's favorite topic helped.

“Is there ammo upstairs for this?” she said with insistence while still holding the black and brown AK she'd picked up.

“Yeah, plenty.”

She pulled another off the shelf and one of the preemie zombies fell with it because it had been latched onto the long strap.

Ignore that.

“Here. Now we both have the same gun. Let's go.”

“What about the girls?”

She slung the first over her shoulder and grabbed two more AK's. He didn't think Susan was in any shape to carry a heavy weapon, but he would have said the same thing about his tiny grandma, so he tried not to judge.

He used the strap of his rifle to put it on his back and also grabbed two more. If Sabella and Russ returned, they could use this model as well. They'd never have a better chance to load up on firearms.

The shotgun roared from the stairwell, but it was still a dull echo because of the dirt floor and numerous cardboard boxes packed into the basement.

“Go. Go!” He pointed to the door.

A tiny shape ran up to his leg and made a comical leap for him. He thought about kicking it, but Grandma's voice stayed his foot. Just as it did when he wanted to run over Angie with the car. It was just as easy to step out of the way and run like hell.

He pulled the door shut as he passed through. Other baby zombies shot out of the blackness of that room and a few bounced off his leg like playful cats. He continued to fight the urge to kick them, knowing that despite their hideous appearance they really couldn't harm him without any teeth to break the skin.

Victoria cried out as one of the tinies sprang from a high shelf and got tangled in her long hair. He hated to think of her cutting her long locks, but if there was ever a good reason he believed this was it.

“Get it off me!” she said while spinning around.

“Hold still,” he replied.

As they swiped at the monster struggling in her tangles, he couldn't help but think of what they should call those baby zombies, but for once he was out of ideas. The horrific conditions on the farm, the desperate reasons for its very existence, and the terrible fate of the tiny creatures all conspired to prevent him from willing them to have any name at all.

The no-names.

“It's out,” he yelled when he saw it fall.

He hopped over where it landed and didn't look back. After a brief run they were out of the shelving area and back to the bottom of the wooden stairs.

Leah fired the shotgun again and the concussion actually blew Liam's hair back on his head.

“Good god!” he screamed. “It's us!” He held up his flashlight. “We have the lights,” he added as if more proof was needed.

“Look out!” Leah yelled as she motioned them out of the way. “There's some little kids.” Her gun pointed to the left of Liam and Victoria.

A dirt-covered zombie in old rags stood almost next to him. Several of its friends were dead on the floor nearby, mangled by the shotgun. They weren't babies, but it was hard to tell how old they'd been when alive because their skin was bloated and black and all shot up. The one nearest him stood taller than his knees but not as tall as his belt.

Liam peered down into its blood-encrusted eyes just as it seemed to notice him and look up. The animalistic youngster bared his blackened and bloody baby teeth as if to put Liam on notice he was now part of the game.

“Shoot it!” he yelled as he sidestepped away.

Leah pulled the trigger, but it clicked without doing anything.

“I'm out!”

She'd fired off the rest of the shotshells while they were in the other room. He'd given the gun to her but kept all the extra shells in his own pocket. There were also more rounds in the pillow cases, but there was no time to dig them out.

So, he closed his eyes and did the unthinkable.

He kicked the toddler like a soccer ball.

“Yee-oww!” he screamed because it hurt his foot and shin more than he anticipated.

The boy went flying into a low shelf and some boxes fell over on top of it.

Liam pushed Victoria ahead of him and they all started toward the upstairs door. Kicking wasn't going to kill a zombie, but it did give them the few necessary seconds to get away from it.

“Wilder said he buried lots of kids for the town.” Liam spoke with the anxiety of a chain-smoker on quitting day.

“Forget about it. Just run!” she replied.

As he looked over the edge of the staircase to the rest of the basement, it was as if the dinner bell had sounded and all the no-names were crawling, hopping, and running toward the keepers of the food.

His light also caught sight of movement at one of the windows near the back of the cellar. A ghostly-white face looked through the glass. A face with no eyes.

The girls tumbled into the kitchen and cleared out of the stairs, leaving Liam momentarily alone with all the beasts slithering toward him inside the cellar.

But it was the one behind the glass that scared him the most. His legs turned wobbly and he had to hold onto the banister to steady himself.

“Liam?” Victoria hissed as she sped down the steps to grab him and pull.

“No. Look.” His flashlight ignored everything below them and shined on the window.

“We have to--” she said before cutting herself off. “What is it?”

“It's following us,” he whispered.

The scraping sounds of little hands and feet on the wooden steps was impossible to ignore but he couldn't take the light off his target.

“It's just like the one we saw inside the Riverside Hotel,” she whispered in his ear.

“I think it is the exact one we saw there,” he replied with reverence. “There is something familiar about him.”

“That's impossible.” Victoria had gotten so close to him that he felt her voice in his ear as much as he heard it.

“We have to get out of here. This thing is causing all of this.” To make his point he tilted the beam down the steps.

“Oh, God!” Victoria yelled.

She pulled him with all her might and got him moving.

“Run, Liam. To the truck!”

They reached the kitchen, but he couldn't resist a final glance back.

Tiny, muddy shapes hopped on every step below. The toddler he'd kicked was at the bottom and appeared to be a giant next to all the others. It gave him that same cold chill from before but he gently shut the flimsy wooden door so he wouldn't risk damaging it.

The truck let it rip with another long blast with the air horn, but Liam was too scared to even flinch.

As he stood there in the kitchen, baby zombies squirmed in the walls and duct work all around him.

He had to get them out of there.

Chapter 8. 100% Dave

Victoria leaned against the door after Liam made sure it was closed and locked. The flashlights provided uneven light in the kitchen, and it was difficult to see his face, but she knew him well enough to appreciate he'd been rattled.

“You okay?” she asked.

He stood there breathing heavily and seemingly lost in thought, but then he glanced over to her.

“I'll admit, I'm freaked out right now. I swear I hear things in the walls.”

She strained to listen, but the noise in the stairwell was fast becoming a stampede of little feet. A second before she replied, Liam switched thoughts on her.

“That thing at the window can't be legit, can it?”

“What do you mean? We both saw it there. It was definitely real.”

“Yeah, but--” he started to say. Tiny hands rapped on the door and she hopped away at the same moment he did.

“Come on, Liam. Let's get ammo for these guns and then get the Hellmann's Mayo out of here. If we see that blind zombie, we'll just shoot it in the head like all the others. No need to freak out, right?”

He smiled at her, but she wasn't blind to the shakiness of his hands as he carried the guns and his light. For her part, seeing all the aborted babies brought back to life was horrific enough, but her rudimentary medical training gave her a minimal resistance to it. Liam was obviously more affected.

She followed him to the pantry.

After a few moments of scanning the shelves, he found what they needed.

“Grab all of these you can.” Liam pointed to small black boxes labelled with Russian markings and English translations describing the contents as 500 rounds of 7.62x39 ammunition. He yanked one off the shelf, opened the packaging to get at the rounds, then crouched on the floor to load one of the magazines.

She also grabbed one, but the weight surprised her because it was like lifting a shoebox full of lead. “This is too heavy to carry more than one,” she said.

“Yeah, all we have to do is get as much as we can to the truck, then we'll redistribute it to each rifle. We are never coming back to this place.”

She shuffled the boxes on the shelf and determined there were four of the big containers of ammo. Each big box had about ten smaller boxes of fifty rounds.

“We can help,” Leah said.

“Yeah, good. We're all going to need guns.” Victoria handed the two free rifles to her. “Grab as many boxes of ammo as you can and get to the front door. We're leaving.”

Leah first looked at the guns in her hand like they were going to kill her on the spot, but then seemed to think over her options and came to the only sensible solution for her dilemma.

By the time she gave away the extra guns, Liam had his magazine loaded and he popped it into the underside of the AK.

“I'm ready,” he said. “Can you give me a couple more boxes? I'll load yours.”

“Shouldn't we leave?” she replied.

He set the loaded rifle next to him and pulled out the mag from the second one. A cartridge slid out of his fingers and bounced off the wooden floor. Liam cussed under his breath.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No, it's not you. I can't stop thinking about them. Those little monsters were just ... wrong. I've been scared lots of times, but not like this. Something isn't right with the world now that I know all those things are zombiefied and bitey like the rest of the population. As my friend JT used to say, the shit just got real.”

He ignored the dropped shell and grabbed another and continued to load.

“I know we need to go. I know that guy is in the window. I know those no-name things are behind the door, in the vents, and on the roof, but dammit I need a minute or two to put my head back on or I'm going to run out the front door screaming. Loading ammo is helping.” He chuckled but just barely.

“I understand,” she replied. She mostly understood his situation. One look at the bodies inside the upstairs rooms told the story of what he'd been doing while she was being whisked over to the outbuilding. She really wished they could have been there for each other. Whenever they got separated, things always got extra messy.

Liam methodically loaded thirty rounds into the second gun while she pulled together every box of ammo she could find.

“Girls, I need to drop some more stuff in your bags,” she called out to Sabella's daughters.

They hadn't gone far.

“Will you help me carry mine?” the youngest said.

“Of course,” Victoria replied. She used her flashlight to look in the face of the young girl. The light reflected off long streams of tears and her puffy eyes.

“We'll both help,” Leah said.

“T-thank you,” little Susan replied with a bit of a stutter.

Victoria put her hand on the girl's shoulder and realized she twitched every few seconds as if each passing moment was a jump scare in the darkened kitchen. It couldn't have been easy for her to see all those babies and toddlers because she wouldn't fully understand what was wrong with them.

None of us do.

“Hey, it's going to be okay,” she said while placing her hand on the girl's shoulder.

The truck driver was even more anxious than they were, she determined, because the horn went on and off every few seconds. She really wanted to get all the supplies they could, but now wished she could get a message out there to tell him to shut the heck up. Victoria imagined that noise was the reason more fingers clawed at the base of the door to the basement.

After pushing the heavy boxes of ammo into the girls' bulging pillow cases, she crouched next to Liam.

“We're ready when you are,” she said with nervousness in her voice. “Actually, I've been ready to leave since we knocked on the front door.”

“Me too,” Liam replied with no hesitation. “Finally, we've got some guns, so no one can take advantage of you. Here, take this loaded one and give me your empty.”

He handed her a loaded magazine and she took a long moment to free the empty from her gun. She had some experience loading the metal box back into the body of the rifle, but there was a trick to it that was difficult to do while juggling a flashlight in the darkness. She laughed it off, but Liam seemed to sense her problem and he helped by shining his light to show her the groove where she needed to seat it.

“Woo hoo!” she cried when it rocked into place with a satisfying click.

Liam stood up and slung the two extra rifles over his shoulder and held the third in his hands.  “We'll top off the rest when we can. We have three loaded guns, now.”

She and Leah dragged the heavy pillow cases as they followed Liam through the dark living room. The headlights of the truck shined brightly into the wrecked interior of the house and gave Liam a dark silhouette as he stood behind the front door.

“I don't care who is in that truck,” he declared. “We have to escape this house.”

She got up next to Liam and dropped her supplies.

They both clicked off the safeties of their guns, pulled the charging handles to seat a round in the chamber, and then propped the stocks on their hips while pointing the guns at the roof.

She and Liam both looked at each other and smiled.

“We look like we own the place, don't we?” he suggested.

“I'm just glad I got it right,” she said while thinking of the times she messed that up in the past.

“You could have fooled me,” he said. “I think you make the better warrior pose.”

“We'll take a vote someday when we aren't in mortal danger.”

“Deal,” he said, still in a good mood.

“Stick with me as we go out there. I doubt they are here to hurt us, but we can't be sure. If they are ... ”

“We're right behind you,” she replied.

2

Liam led everyone through the door and onto the broad front porch. A huge eighteen-wheeler idled in the yard. It had used the open landscape to angle properly so it could turn back onto the driveway as soon as it picked them up.

“Girls!” a woman shouted with glee out the driver's window.

The two daughters screeched with ear-splitting joy.

“Mom!”

Susan turned to Victoria with an expectant expression.

“Yeah, go ahead,” she answered. “But please drag this over there, okay?” She held out the bag of supplies.

“I'll help you, Zu,” Leah said in reply.

The bags thumped on the wooden stairs as they dragged them down.

She stayed with Liam on the porch, ready to fire on any threats. She swept her gun from side to side like she'd seen on television and was careful never to point it at Liam, the girls, or the truck. Liam was doing the exact same motion next to her which made her proud to be thinking like an experienced survivor.

When the girls reached the truck, Victoria was ready to head out after them, but Liam didn't move.

“What is it?” she asked.

Liam held the two extra guns over his shoulder but had the other pointed toward the side of the house.

“Promise you won't laugh?” he said.

“This is hardly the time for laughter. I'm more likely going to pee my pants if we don't get to that truck.” She had no reason to suspect Sabella would rescue her daughters and then leave her and Liam standing on the porch, but when she woke up today she had no idea she'd be running from tiny zombie babies, so she wasn't taking any chances.

“My dad's gun is still in that bush around the corner. I'd really like to get it, but that creature is behind the house and I'm afraid I'll run into it. Can you believe it? I have three guns on me, and I'm still afraid of a lone zombie.”

She considered his humorous scenario for a moment but didn't laugh. There was nothing funny about seeing that strange, eyeless zombie twice in the past few weeks.

“You don't want to leave the gun because it was your dad's?”

The whole porch was lit up by the headlights of the truck, so she clearly saw his reluctant nod.

“I'm positive your dad wouldn't want you to do anything dangerous for material things. We literally have more guns and ammo than we can carry, and these can actually hurt the zombies. That little pistol helped us through some tough times, but these bad boys are going to get us to that final piece of safety. Going into the darkness to retrieve one more doesn't make any sense.”

Liam shifted on his feet for a long moment and she was sure he was going to go for it anyway. She didn't take it personally because Liam had been impulsive and daring since they'd met. If anything, she was mentally prepared to go with him to grab it.

“You're right,” he said in a relieved voice. “It would be dumb. This zombie has me all weirded out.”

“To be fair,” she replied, “that thing doesn't act like a zombie. The little baby--”

“I call them no-names,” Liam interrupted.

She chuckled nervously. “Right. The little no-names seemed to come out of the wall to get away from it. The blind guy might have driven them to go higher in the house in the first place. They were afraid of it, too.”

He turned back to her. “Ya think? That actually makes sense.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She felt her voice was a bit more accusatory than she intended.

“No, sorry,” he replied immediately. “I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that it makes perfect sense why I'm so frightened. It has some kind of power over the other zombies. Like an Arizona zombie on steroids.”

“So, we're leaving?” she asked.

“Yeah, I'm taking your advice. My dad would scream at me if I went off into the darkness for something that wasn't absolutely essential to my survival.”

He patted his gun on the side like it was a faithful dog, then waved her forward. “After you.”

It warmed her heart to see his eyes twinkle in the headlights.

That was momentary, however, because glass broke loudly from somewhere inside the farmhouse. Either the little no-names were tearing things up, or the eyeless zombie was getting ever closer. Or maybe average run-of-the-mill blood-seeking zombies were breaking in from the backyard again.

Zombies were everywhere and nowhere at the same time in the darkness.

“Run for it,” she said while heading down the steps of the front porch.

She looked back once, just to make sure he followed.

“Come on!” Susan screamed from the open driver's door of the truck. Leah was still climbing in after her sister but struggled to get the second heavy pillowcase into the cab.

She and Liam crossed the last few yards while the driver gunned the engine like it was the evil car from that movie Christine. It made her run faster, but it was also probably drawing out every zombie from miles around.

They'd almost made it when a male voice called down.

“Go around to the other side.”

Victoria glanced at Liam as he sidled up next to her.

“The other side,” he said as if the zombies were nipping at his ankles.

“Go!”

They crossed in front of the bright headlights and her imagination filled in everything the lights didn't touch. She was sure zombies were pressing in from all directions because of all the noise and light. The no-names had to be slithering across the grass of the yard, and the eyeless leader was pushing them on. All that was missing was some kind of flying zombie.

She looked up into the dark, cloudy sky, suddenly sure something was going to drop in on her.

A young woman hung out of the passenger door to keep it open for them. The beautiful bronze color of her skin matched that of her mother.

“You must be Elise,” Victoria said as she hopped up.

“Get inside,” the girl answered. “We have to go.”

“Thanks for coming to get us,” Liam said as he followed her in.

“We came back for my sisters, not you,” Elise snapped.

Liam slammed the door behind him but paused for a second when he saw Russ sharing the seat with Elise. “Hey,” Liam said. “Glad you made it.”

Victoria didn't think Liam really meant it but after Russ helped throw him out of the house she thought he did a good job faking it.

“You too,” the boy replied.

Liam shifted and spoke to the driver. “You have to get us out of here. The house is full of zombies.”

“I'm way ahead of you,” the driver replied. “But seriously, kid, where isn't there a 100% zombie overload around here?”

Victoria quickly shuffled to the rear of the spacious cab. The interior lights shined down on a small unkempt bed which served as the back seat for the over-the-road truck. Leah and Susan had piled on Sabella and the three of them hugged each other to celebrate their reunion.

She and Liam piled the AK's on the floor in the cramped space, but she tumbled into him as the driver hit the gas. Together, they fell onto the bed next to the others.

“Sorry,” Liam blurted out like he'd just spilled his drink on her.

She held him for a few seconds, content for a brief instant to be in his arms where she felt a little bit safe. He returned the warmth in their shared moment but then they adjusted so they could sit side-by-side like properly chaperoned students.

The driver spun the truck around to get out of the yard, cussing the whole time.

“You were right, kid. Something weird about that house. Looks like a whole herd of cats is coming out the front.”

Liam couldn't not look. He jumped up to peer out the passenger-side window. She tried to resist the urge to get up, but that only lasted about two seconds. She leaned on Liam's back to see over and around Russ and Elise in the front seat.

“Oh, man,” Russ said. “Where'd they all come from?”

Victoria hesitated from telling him what his mom and step-dad had been doing all those years, up to and including the three weeks since the sirens. She thought it was now self-evident, although it was easy to mistake the scrambling little zombies for a herd of felines in the pre-dawn darkness.

“We don't even have cats,” Russ added.

The white shapes poured off the front porch and ran into the yard as if the house itself was unleashing them upon the world, but just before the truck turned completely away from the house, she saw what was really driving them.

Liam gulped.

She assumed he saw the eyeless zombie standing in the bushes next to the farmhouse, too.

Victoria comforted him by gently rubbing his back, but admitted it also helped her. Having someone close during these dark times was a big part of survival. After spending weeks with Liam, it was almost impossible to imagine what she'd be doing at that moment if their paths hadn't crossed.

The driver worked through countless gears as the truck traveled the mile-long gravel driveway toward the other trucks on the main road, but she and Liam held that pose, as if each was unwilling to break the magic.

When they were moving along at a good clip, the driver looked over his shoulder at his new passengers.

“I hate cats,” he said enigmatically.

Victoria had a few moments to decide whether he was joking or not.

Liam laughed brightly. “I'm deathly allergic, so I'm glad we escaped those cats before they got all over us.” He emphasized the word cats.

“Yeah,” Victoria agreed with understanding. She waited for Susan or Leah to offer opinions, but they hadn't seen what came out the front door. They were content to hug their mom, and Victoria was pleased to never mention the truth to Russ.

“I'm also allergic to --,” Liam began.

A blue light came out of the darkness from eye-level straight ahead.

“What the hell?” the driver strained to say as the truck bounced roughly to a stop on the gravel. The airbrakes whined and complained through it all.

A floating object hovered fifty feet ahead and it emitted a narrow beam of blue light that reminded her of a one-act laser show.

The truck's headlights threw just enough light in return.

It was a military-grade drone.

3

She and Liam crawled back toward the rear compartment. She picked up her rifle and noticed Liam did the same, but Sabella reached across and held them fast.

“No,” Sabella whispered. “These things were all over the loading zone. We can't shoot it, or they'll send more.”

“Loading zone?” Liam asked.

“Just wait,” the dark-haired woman replied.

“Listen to Sabella,” the driver said without looking back. “It surprised me is all. I've seen these before.”

“I'm not going back to the house, no matter what,” Liam whispered to her before taking her hand in his.

The driver rolled down his window and hung his head out the side.

“What do you want?” he called tiredly to the drone.

The black shape closed the distance until it hovered about ten feet over the truck, but then it dropped until it was almost next to the driver. The little blue light shined inside the cab, but Victoria didn't think it could see the rear seating area.

“Why did you deviate from your assigned route?” a tinny-sounding male voice asked from a speaker on the drone.

“Had to drop the kids off at school,” the driver deadpanned.

“Come again,” the voice replied.

“I tried to turn a pair of deuces into a royal flush,” the driver said in the same business-like manner.

“Driver 2521, this is a violation of the terms of your contract. No further deviation from your assigned route will be tolerated.”

“Look, I suffered six hours of your rolling parking lot and you wouldn't let me out of my rig, the least you could do was let me crap in a proper toilet. I'm almost back on the road, no harm done.”

Victoria's stomach was rolled up like a sleeping bag at that moment, but the driver seemed to be having fun.

The drone whirred for ten or fifteen seconds without replying. Her heartbeat ratcheted up a few notches as she felt the energy in the air build toward something dangerous. She'd tangled with drones back at Forest Park as well as on the barge in Cairo.

“Just get back on your route,” the tin voice said with frustration.

“You got it, boss,” the driver replied.

The man rolled up his window as the drone shot off into the night. He then turned around and smiled at everyone behind him.

He was practically a kid, probably not much older than her. The dashboard lights illuminated his toothy smile, blue eyes, and long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. She would have pegged him as a barista at Starbucks if he wasn't already behind the wheel of the big rig.

Before anyone said anything else, he put the truck into gear and got them rolling. He tapped something on top of his dashboard.

“Ok, guys, that was just another hiccup from our friends in the sky. We've seen how insane it was at the port and just when it seemed it couldn't get any weirder, Sabella and Elise jumped in my truck. Now we have more kids with guns. Crazy, huh? Am I right, Internet?”

“Who are you talking to?” Liam asked.

“Oh, no one right now. I need to upload my file to the internet when we get back to civilization. Then, I'll be famous.” He leaned closer to what had to be his camera on the dash. “You'll make me famous, right my peeps? Back me up, here.”

“Mom, who is this guy,” Leah asked in a quiet voice. “What's happening right now?”

Sabella took a deep breath as she sat next to her daughters. “I stole that car and chased after the men who took our Elise.” She motioned to her daughter in the passenger seat. “And they drove as a group to the same place all those trucks were going. I think they figured it was the way to safety.”

She laughed to herself.

“It wasn't,” she added with sarcasm.

“How did you find her?” Leah asked.

“The military set up giant walls along the road and everyone had to stay on the pavement. The big rigs lined up one after the other in the right lane, which allowed the cars and motorcycles to speed by on the left because there was no outgoing traffic. The fools got caught at a military checkpoint before they realized what it was.”

“What was it?” Victoria asked of the mother.

“Yeah, mommy, what was it?” Susan repeated.

“I couldn't see over the walls, but they weren't perfectly aligned pieces of concrete. Whenever I looked through the cracks, I saw men and women walking in a giant cloud of dust.”

“The zombies that were standing around the house,” Liam suggested.

“Yes,” Sabella agreed. “They went to the edge of the river.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” Leah asked.

“I don't know. But once those assholes reached the checkpoint I crashed my car into theirs before any of them could turn around or back up. Some of the bikes escaped, but Elise's driver tipped his bike over and that gave her a chance to run. That's when the men at the checkpoint started shooting.”

Sabella seemed to choke up a bit and she grasped Susan's hands.

“I don't want to get too detailed, because of little ears.”

“Momma, I can handle it,” Susan complained.

“Mm-hmm. I know you can, sweetie.”

Sabella steadied her breathing before going on.

“Russ and I abandoned our car to follow Elise as she tried to get away from both the bad men and the checkpoint guys. We ran along the line of trucks not sure if they were going to shoot us, too. I couldn't take her over the fence because of all the zombies there, so we were at the mercy of the truck drivers on that road.”

The driver chose that moment to jump in. “It's a common misperception that truck drivers are a bunch of losers with tattoos and bad attitudes. The reality is that most of us are pretty normal people. When I see two women running from trouble, I open my door. I even let in the cowboy.” He nodded to Russ in the seat next to him and also pointed to the camera and gave it a thumbs-up sign. “Cuz' that's what the Internet would want, one-hundred percent.”

“Truckaduck opened his passenger door and we snuck inside. He said a couple of the bad guys ran by, but they were chased by the checkpoint men. We hid here in the back until he picked up his freight and then I begged him to get the rest of you.”

“She didn't have to beg. I really did need to stop.” He put his hand over the camera like he was hiding something. “I peed out the door when they weren't looking,” he whispered.

“Yuck,” Victoria replied. She thought about it for a second, then added, “But thanks for coming to get us.”

4

Like a good jog to start the day, the sound of the big rig motor and sight of the passing farmland symbolized a fresh start.

When the truck got onto the paved highway, they had to wait for a couple of big trucks to speed by before they could jump in behind them.

“The loading zone is that way,” the driver pointed to the left, “but they have a big loop you go through, so all the trucks come back to this road. It was lucky for Sabella we passed right by this house. As you just saw, they don't like us taking detours.”

He turned the truck to join the others on the road and he worked through gear after gear to catch up to them. When the speed was where he wanted it, he released the gear shifter. A little yellow duck had been cut open and smashed over the shifter nob.

“So, you like ducks?” she asked the driver. It didn't feel right to talk to the back of his head, so she slid on her knees between the two front seats.

“Oh yeah. Well, sort of. It started kind of as a prank. I used to snap pictures of the duck whenever I traveled to new states, but eventually I hit most of the lower 48 and it just kind of sat there. I get a lot of feedback on my video channel about how I should call myself Rubber Duck after some old trucker movie, but I've never had time to watch it.”

“You have a lot of followers?” she asked.

“It goes up and down. Lately, it's gone down to almost zero, but at one time I had 50,000 views on each video.”

Liam whistled in awe from the back seat.

“Is that a lot?” Sabella asked.

The driver half-turned to her. “For a trucker, yeah. For an internet video star, not really. But I built my following after years of showing this country to my fans.”

“They just watch you drive? Isn't that kind of dull?” she asked.

He looked at the camera by cocking his head to the side. “You guys think I'm boring?”

“I didn't mean anything by it,” she replied quickly.

He laughed. “I hear it all the time, especially from my family. They don't believe I make almost as much money from these stupid videos as I do from the freight hauls, but people are interested to see what it's like out there in the wide-open highway.”

“What's your real name?” she asked, “or should we always call you Truckaduck?”

“No, that would be kind of crazy. My real name is Dave. Dave Amberleigh, from a little town called Albion, Indiana. This here is Angela,” he patted the dashboard, “my faithful steed. Named her after my mother.”

“So, Dave from Indiana,” Liam began, “how did you end up here in the boot of Missouri and what did they have you pick up back there?”

The truck hummed along at sixty miles an hour and the digital clock showed it was almost five in the morning. The first glint of sunrise crept over the broad horizon. She wanted to think the new day was filled with hope, especially after all the bad luck they'd been having, but Liam's question reminded her that they knew virtually nothing about what was happening in the wider world.

Dave took a while to respond, but when he did he seemed to have rehearsed his answer like it was part of his routine.

“I know I don't look it, but I've been hauling freight for about ten years. Got started right out of school because I had an uncle in the biz. I followed the rules, did my time, and eventually got better and better routes and payouts. But the past few months the transportation industry has been going down the shitter. When the fuel began to dry up, we got fewer and fewer jobs. Toward the end, I spent most of my time at the terminal in South Dakota waiting for a billable job.”

“We heard the fuel dried up about two weeks before the zombies came,” she said.

“Yep. I played a lot of foosball during that time. In fact, I hung out in the rec room for a whole week because almost no freight was moving at all. The jobs that came up paid out like a Caesar's Palace jackpot but those went to the drivers with the most seniority. It was only at the very last moment before the President's speech a bunch of jobs came through. Every driver left in the terminal got sent out that day.”

He sighed.

“Of course, we all thought it was the return of normal. Everyone shared high fives and goodbye's not knowing that we'd probably never see each other again. The next day I was uploading one of my videos to my audience when I realized the East Coast was collapsing from the Double Dog virus.”

“Double Dog?” Liam shot back. “I've never heard that one.”

“Yeah, it's not official. Some of the other truckers called it that because they double dog dare you to deliver freight to those cities. A lot of drivers who happened to be in the affected areas and were fans of my videos posted comments about what they saw there. Their advice was to stay far out in flyover country where the sick couldn't find us. Some drivers linked up and basically took ownership of their freight, so they could survive in little communes.”

“Is that what you did?” she asked as a follow up.

“Nah, my fans wouldn't approve,” he pointed to the camera. “I spent a lot of time in the upper tier of states and out west, far from the action, but eventually I had to go into Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma. A couple of days ago hundreds of drivers got notice to head to this new terminal in Wilson City, Missouri. Don't let the name fool ya'. You didn't even notice the ‘city' as we passed through it just now because it's only a couple abandoned restaurants and a few dozen run-down houses.”

“If the town is so small, why did so many trucks get sent?” Liam asked with exasperation.

“I don't know. It was a lightning-fast live load, which is trucker jargon for the shipper shoving the cargo into my trailer, but they didn't let me out of my cab nor did they require me to sign off once they shut and sealed my cargo doors.”

“Has that ever happened before?” she inquired.

“What? A live load? All the time.”

“I meant that you didn't know what they put in there.”

“Most of the time I only need to know the type of cargo, like if it is refrigerated, dry, or liquid. If it's perishable I have to clean out the inside to meet the government standards, so that's a giveaway. If I'm driving for Wal-Mart or one of the other big box stores, I always know it's retail crap. Could be ladies panties or eighty-thousand pounds of bird seed. But to answer your question, I don't get in the back and pop open boxes to confirm what I'm hauling.”

“If they rushed trucks in, it could be something good,” Liam replied as if thinking out loud. “Guns. Survival gear. Army stuff.”

“What are you saying, Liam?” she asked.

“Well, we know the Army just lost control of the other side of the river at Cairo. The survivors are clearing out to escape the hordes of zombies walking all over the place in this region. Seems like a pretty good way to get all their gear and people to safety if they had these big trucks swoop in and get them. They spent the time and effort to build those big walls to keep out the zombies at that exact spot they needed the evacuation. It seems too convenient for anything else.”

“Are all the trucks going to the same spot?” Sabella asked from her nook in the back.

Looking out the front window it sure looked like it. The row of trucks started to clump together as they rumbled along the perfectly flat two-lane highway.

“I don't know, actually,” Dave said with a touch of anxiety.

“Do you have a CB radio?” Liam asked. “Can't you just ask the trucks up ahead?”

Dave laughed. “Now that is another old trucker stereotype. I don't use a CB. Never needed one when I have my GPS, traffic apps on my phone, and fans who report accidents to me in real time. I don't have any interest in a CB.”

“What is your phone telling you right now?” Victoria asked.

He tapped it while it sat in its cradle on his dashboard not far from his rubber duck. She recognized the no internet symbol right away.

“Internet goes up and down depending on the day and what's around me. Out here in nowhere, Missouri, it's been down a lot. But I can easily answer your question when we stop for fuel. They'll have wireless.”

“When are you going to do that?” she wondered.

“In about two miles. We're going to be ‘makin' it' at the Love's travel truck stop in Charleston.”

No one said anything in reply, but she felt the tension become a real thing. All the other girls had just escaped a place where no one made love. Ever.

5

There was nothing to see out the windows except endless flat fields. They'd seen one or two zombies walking in the distance, as if they were lost, but other than those it was hard to tell the apocalypse had reached the farmlands.

Victoria scooted back to the rear seat as the truck continued along the boring, flat road.

“I'm bushed,” she said to Liam.

“Me too,” he replied. “I didn't sleep very well on that roof.”

“No surprise there,” she said with a chuckle.

He put his arm around her and she leaned in to lay her head on his shoulder, but first she gave it a quick inspection. His shirt was covered in blood and gore, but the fabric near his shoulder was free and clear. It did smell horrible, but she had to tune that out because she smelled just as bad. The well-mannered part of her brain worried that the two of them would get kicked out of the truck for bringing in such stink, but there was nothing to be done about it except breathe through the mouth.

She giggled softly as she settled onto Liam's clean shoulder.

They should have reached the gas station in just a few minutes, but traffic slowed them down to a crawl. Dave started and stopped his truck while keeping pace in the long line, and the rocking action and drone of machinery put her right to sleep.

“We're here!” Dave shouted.

She snapped awake. “I'm up. How long were we in that line?” It felt like hours.

“About ten minutes. They keep the hammer down at the bigger truck stops.”

Liam appeared to have fallen asleep as well, and she reluctantly yanked herself from his warm embrace.

“Ug. I need a bathroom break.” He stretched and playfully pushed her.

“Me, too,” she giggled.

“I need to go, also,” Susan said to her mom.

“Okay, why don't we all get out and stretch. Dave, can we go inside while you fuel up the truck? You won't leave us, will you?” Sabella's practical question carried her motherly authority because she was looking out for her girls.

“They wouldn't let me,” Dave replied, once again pointing to the camera.

“Please don't,” Sabella added in a calm voice.

Dave turned around and looked at everyone in the back. “I won't. I promise.”

She kicked at one of the rifles lying on the floor. “Do we need our guns?”

Dave shook his head. “I wouldn't. Gas stations are under the protection of armed guards around the clock. If you took guns out there you'd probably draw lots of attention to yourself. Unless you have a concealed gun?”

Victoria realized why Liam's little handgun might have been useful, but there was no way to go back and get it.

“Naw,” Liam said in a groggy voice. “I saw a whole box of pistols back at the farmhouse, but my attention was focused on the rifles. And the, uh, zombies in the walls. We'll leave the AKs here, so we don't stand out.”

She led Liam and the others toward the front and then followed Elise and Russ out the passenger door. 80's music blasted on the speakers outside, and once the door was ajar, it filled the cab.

“Close it, please,” Dave said while holding his hands over his ears like they were in dire pain.

“I'll get it,” Liam volunteered because he was the last one through.

Russ jumped down onto the pavement and then held out his hand.

“Thanks,” Victoria said as she hopped down.

“I'm going to stay with him,” Russ said only loud enough for her to hear.

“Dave? Why?” She glanced at the trailer of Dave's truck and noted how someone had painted, “Pool Supplies,” all the way down the side using giant black letters.

“I don't trust him. I've seen more shifty people in my life the past few weeks than I ever dreamed possible. Most of them looked perfectly normal, like anyone you'd meet on the street, but inside they were bad, evil souls.”

“Dave seems alright,” she replied.

“Exactly,” he snapped back. “That's why I have to stay and keep tabs on him. If he drives off with our guns and stuff, we're going to be stuck here. I want to get far away from that house.” He looked toward the horizon where the sun was almost ready to peak over the fields. The farmhouse wasn't visible from so far away, but he acted like it was right in front of them.

“What are we talking about?” Liam said as he came up next to her.

“Russ is going to keep watch while we go into the truck stop,” she replied.

“Good. I'm not happy about--oh, hell.” Something caught Liam's attention because he looked beyond her and Russ.

She traced his line of sight to what had him so agitated.

“That's just great,” she said with sarcasm.

“What?” Russ remarked as if not seeing anything worth the bother.

Victoria pointed at the Humvee's and army guys standing at the edge of the truck stop property. A group of them had gathered near a giant billboard with the name of the truck stop and its red heart logo.

“Yeah, so? That's awesome we have such good protection.” Russ pulled himself onto the bottom step of the big rig. “We can catch our breath while we're here because those dead people can't get us. Tell me when you guys are done because I might go inside and see what they've got.”

Russ continued up the side of the truck and closed the door.

Elise had been standing there the whole time, but Victoria wasn't sure if she'd heard any of what they'd said. The young woman looked longingly at the soldiers and only turned away from them when Victoria tapped her shoulder.

“Hi,” Victoria said with a smile.

“Oh, hi,” the young woman replied before turning right back to the soldiers. “Do you think they knew what was happening in that house? Did they leave us there to fend for ourselves?” She wrapped her arms around her t-shirt like she was hugging herself.

“No,” Victoria said with assurance. “I bet they don't know what's happening anywhere outside of this truck stop. Liam and I have been all over between here and St. Louis and the army is losing the fight against the zombies. I bet they are scared to leave the protection of places like this.”

“I don't know ... ”  Elise replied as if not wanting to believe her words.

Liam gently grabbed Victoria's arm and pulled her away.

“We have to get in and out without any fuss. There are army guys walking around these trucks.” He tilted his head toward a pair of soldiers talking to a driver at a different gas pump.

A long tractor trailer chose that moment to cross in front of where they looked. “Paper Clips” had been painted in big letters over the original shipping company.

“You think we're in danger?” she asked with a touch of panic.

Liam chuckled. “I should be glad these soldiers are on the line protecting us from the zombies, including that one that seems to be following us, but you and I have a history with government forces that I worry is going to never leave us alone.”

“Maybe we should split up?” she asked, hopeful he'd disagree with her.

They reached the door to the restaurant that was the anchor for the truck stop. Several grim men and a few women went in and out as they conducted their business of gassing up, paying for fuel, and eating an early breakfast. She let him lead her just out of the main path of people where they could have a final moment of privacy before entering the crowded interior.

“I don't know how Elsa was on that radio, but if she is somehow alive I'd bet anything she is watching for us to turn up at places like this.” Liam looked up and around the complex. “I don't see any of her drones, but I'm sure they are out there. For now, all we can do is act normal.”

“Like two teens on a road trip?” she asked in a bubbly voice.

Liam pursed his lips and seemed to think on it. “More like two teens who can't help but put their hands all over each other and kiss multiple times for no reason at all.”

“Liam Peters is that your attempt at being sly?”

She smiled and leaned in to give him nothing more than a quick peck on the lips but once committed she couldn't resist staying for a little extra.

People started to notice them after about five seconds.

“Don't feed the lizards, boy!” a random man cried out.

“I've got a sleeper cab you can use,” someone else added.

Then the wolf whistling caught like a virus and their private moment morphed into a big production.

They quickly separated.

“As I said, let's stay low-key.” Liam's voice was weighted with dry sarcasm.

They both laughed it off, but she grabbed his hand to drag him inside and away from the scene of the crime.

6

The 80's music blasting out by the gas pumps was almost drowned out by the sounds of life inside the packed restaurant. The area at the front was a small sales floor where normally there'd be rows of candy, chips, and sodas, but all the shelves had been pushed aside to make room for more tables.

“Nice,” Liam said.

Sabella and her daughters had come in another door and stood by the women's room near the back of the restaurant. Victoria wanted to go back there as well, if only to clean up a bit with some warm water, but the smells of the truck stop made her aware how hungry she was.

“I'm in Heaven,” she said.

“I smell cinnamon buns,” Liam replied as if he was also gripped by the aroma.

They cut through the crowd, so she could peek into the serving area. At one time it had been a chain fast food restaurant, but the signs had been ripped down and replaced with a cardboard placard that said “Eats.” The serving dishes behind the glass barrier sat under heat lamps.

Her eyes probably bulged at the long line of different delicacies.

“I want that and that and that,” Liam said to her as he pointed to the roast beef, potatoes, and one of the pies. “Then I want six buns and a heaping pile of butter for them.” Liam made a drooling sound while looking it all over.

She designed a meal in her head consisting of as much of the cornucopia as she could envision, but her heart dropped when she saw the pricing sign on the rear wall.

“Sold by the plate. $50 cash. No trades.”

“Liam, do you have any money?” she said with great doubt because she was pretty sure he didn't.

“Um. No.” Liam looked at the sign, too. “And there goes my stomach.”

“I need to use the restroom now,” Victoria said with dejection.

“Yeah, let's go.”

She stomped through the crowd like someone had promised a birthday party but popped all her balloons and chucked the cake into the dumpster. Her nose refused to let go of the smells, and her stomach begged her to turn back around and somehow buy the food, but her eyes kept her going in the other direction.

They strode past table after table of truckers indulging themselves on $50 per plate breakfasts. By the time they reached the back she considered begging for a bite of any of those delicacies.

“I think this is what Hell is like,” she said as they reached the less busy area around the restroom doors. “So much food, and not a bite to eat.”

“Hey, maybe Dave has some money we can borrow. All isn't lost, yet.” Liam's cheerful smile almost made her forget the temptations behind that glass. At the very least she took comfort that she wasn't suffering alone.

“I'll meet you right back here in a few,” he said.

“Race ya!” She made a huge effort to sound cheery.

Outwardly, she didn't want Liam to worry about her, but inside she was crying. It wasn't just that the smells reminded her of her incessant hunger, because other than the canned goods last night, she seldom ate well anymore. Instead, the pleasant aromas smelled like the holidays back home. Not only was she missing the food here in this Love's travel stop, but she might never experience the joy of her mom's cooking back home in Colorado.

She pushed through the restroom door and went right to the sink. She gasped at her appearance but slapped her hand over her mouth before she called unwanted attention to herself.

Her face looked like she'd used an old campfire for a pillow. While up on the roof of the farmhouse she'd made a half-hearted effort to clean herself up, but the harsh fluorescent lights above the row of sinks revealed every piece of soot she missed.

She turned on the water and began splashing it on her face. After doing that for a full minute, she came up for air.

Better. I need a spa day.

That made her think of her mom again. The pair of them often went into Denver and pampered themselves at a fancy salon and spa. They jokingly called it their, “day off,” from the stresses of their lives, but now she giggled to herself about how easy they had it. What she wouldn't give to be back home.

While she thought about home, she tried to make herself remember to ask Dave if he'd gone through Denver recently.

She splashed some more water on her face and tried to straighten her bangs. Susan had done a great job with the ponytail, but the rest of her head was a wreck. Bits of debris and dust found their way right down to her scalp. She didn't have the time or energy to get her hair wet. It had just dried from being in the river the previous day.

There were no towels, so she had to dry her face using her shirt. She pulled it up and gave a quick scrub, and then went to the line for the stalls. Victoria sighed deeply and appreciated that none of the others seemed to care what she'd just done.

The ladies standing around didn't scream out that they were rough and tumble truckers. Maybe they were a little rough around the edges, with a few more tattoos, cigarettes, and cleavage than the average restaurant back home, but inside the bubble of the restroom she could imagine this was a busy day at a perfectly normal eatery, and not a truck stop at the edge of the apocalypse.

When it was her turn she found herself near tears as she continued to dwell on how normal everything seemed. Women thanked each other for holding the door, they passed road information as they stood at the sinks, and shared knowledge about their big rigs that came across as a mix of womanly advice and burly trucker lingo.

They spoke of reward points on their fuel cards, quality and safety of the showers at the truck stop, the flirtations of the soldiers, and the lack of need to weigh and report their loads to the Department of Transportation. She also caught on that two women were talking quietly in the stall next to her.

“Did you do it with him?” the woman asked.

“Ew. No, sis. That's gross,” the other replied.

“Then why did he get in the truck with you?”

Victoria looked below the partition and saw two sets of work boots in the adjacent stall.

“I promised I'd let him cop a feel if he told me what it did.”

“You said you didn't let him touch you.” The other woman seemed miffed.

“Damn it, Delaney, you aren't listening to me. The lock isn't right, and I had to find out why. As soon as I walked around back to check my tandem, the inspector was all over me. I couldn't tell why until I got around to checking the rear doors. They wanted me away from that lock.”

“Why?” the other woman named Delaney asked in a voice almost too low for her to hear.

“Are you going to complain how I made him tell me?” the first one said.

A toilet flushed, and Victoria was sure she was going to miss the answer, but the woman continued to speak once the noise faded.

“ ... just let him feel up my shirt. No big deal.”

Victoria guessed the woman felt guilty for what she'd done, and she could empathize with her, but she really wanted her to just spill the beans.

“And?” the other woman said expectantly.

Delaney continued. “We have to get that lock off as soon as we can, but that's going to be harder than hell because they put a tracker in it. If the lock is opened, they'll come to investigate.”

“Shit, girl, does anyone know what we're carrying?”

“No, but you saw how important it was they keep the zombies behind those barricades for the pickup. It has to be important, probably really valuable.”

“Hells bells. We've got to find out.”

“You want me to do it with my shirt on or off?”

The other woman spoke so softly Victoria had to lean her ear right up against the metal partition to catch it all.

“There's a rumor going around we are carrying all the gold from Fort Knox. Some drivers are planning on making a break for it and living on the gold until the world gets back to normal.”

Delaney didn't miss a beat. “So, we'll do this shirt off, then.”

Both women laughed.

Chapter 9. Caught with the pin-up girl

Liam came out of the restroom and found he had beaten Victoria. He'd even taken an extra few seconds to wipe off his face in the sink and slick back his filthy hair.

Not wanting to go far, he stood against the wall to both wait for her and watch for trouble. He felt naked without a gun, but as far as he could tell none of the other people carried guns, either. At least, not openly.

While he held up the wall, a pair of attractive middle-age women rushed by. They both wore tight jeans and heavy leather boots, but also wore loose-fitting blouses that did nothing to hide their bras. One seemed to drag the other by her hand as they went into the ladies' room. He tried to guess whether they were drivers or locals, but also considered whether they were passengers or even slaves. His mind went down the rabbit hole of possibilities fueled by all the end-of-the-world books in his inventory. Women, it seemed, always got the worst of things when civil society broke apart and now he was watching it all happen in real time.

His curiosity ran rampant, but the women were long gone before he thought to ask them about their station. Someday he was going to write a book about his adventures and it would be great to interview women like that, for some local flavor. To kill the time, he tried to imagine the stories of other people walking in and out, but he didn't dare ask them.

We're in a truck stop surrounded by zombies. How much more do you need?

He hid his smirk lest anyone think he was there to cause trouble.

For the next several minutes he avoided eye contact and tried to make himself disappear in the hallway. The crowd was mostly unshaven men rushing in and out of the bathroom. When finished, they often fast-walked right out the front door like their trucks were going to leave without them.

Victoria finally came out, but she was pale white like she'd seen a horrible murder.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Come on. We have to go.” She grabbed his hand and pulled but stopped before he'd taken his first step. “You did your business, didn't you?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I did my transaction, thanks. Took you long enough.”

“There are only a few stalls,” she replied as she pulled him for real this time. “And I waited extra to listen to a pair of women talk about their mysterious cargo.”

He spoke in a low voice. “Is that some kind of sex term people use in these nasty public restrooms?”

Victoria looked over her shoulder with a scowl. “Just come with me. We've got to get back to the truck and talk to Dave.”

“I'm ready to go,” he added. “I'm never going to forget the smell, though. That bakery smell needs to be bottled and sold for less than fifty lousy bucks.”

“From sex to food. You sound like a typical teen boy when you aren't in mortal danger.” Victoria let herself laugh but he could tell she was strained.

“What is it? Why are we leaving so fast?”

They walked out the front doors and the crowd thinned out considerably as drivers headed off in different directions on the huge parking lot. Trucks continued to come in and go out the front entrance like an organized parade. They came in from the highway to the left, circled the restaurant reverse clockwise, went through the gas pumps, and then exited and got back on the roadway to the right. The interstate was two hundred yards in that direction.

When they were away from most of the drivers, she stopped him.

“The trucks are carrying something dangerous. I overheard a couple of drivers explain how the locks have trackers in them and cannot be opened until each truck gets to their destination.”

“So, what is it?” he answered. “Has anyone been able to look?”

“Rumor has it they're carrying gold from Fort Knox. The women, uh, tried to get one of the inspectors to tell her for sure, but all she learned was that the locks double as trackers.”

“Gold? Maybe, but that sounds far-fetched. Fort Knox is in Kentucky, isn't it?”

She shrugged. “Yes?” Her geography was passable, but most of it was based in Colorado where she lived most of her life.

“That would be nice, I guess, but gold wouldn't do anyone much good right now. Plus, why would they move it all over the country instead of guarding it in a fortress? Did they give you any other clues?”

“No, at least the women didn't say while I listened. It felt like they'd just gotten this information when they ran in there.”

“How'd she get him to tell her all that?” he asked.

Victoria bit her lip in a very girlish fashion, as if thinking of the proper answer in math class.

“She used her body,” she said simply.

It took him half a minute to think it through. “I see. Well, um, if she didn't hear it for sure, I'd say gold is out. I think it more likely to be related to what happened in Cairo, like maybe explosives, vials of the virus, or my personal favorite, guns.”

Victoria got excited. “I saw tons of bottles in that little outbuilding back at the farm. Russ's mom said the CDC gave them to her. It would make sense that she had them because she lived so close to the loading area.”

He snapped his fingers and met her eyes.

“They figured it out,” he said with excitement. “They had someone making the vaccine out here in the middle of nowhere so that the plague couldn't ruin the production before they could make enough of it. What better place would there be?”

Victoria spoke slowly. “And it would make sense they wouldn't want these drivers to crack into the back of the trucks. Dave said some drivers were stealing their payloads. One of these trucks could be worth ... whatever people are willing to pay for them.”

Liam scanned the gas station. The soldiers still huddled around their trucks on the edge of the action. None of them even fired their guns because there were no zombies nearby. That was amazing in itself because he'd not been anywhere that wasn't crawling with zombies or under their threat since he left the library all those weeks ago.

He caught sight of Dave's big black truck. Sabella and her girls stood by the driver next to the rig. When they saw him and Victoria they waved to come over.

“We better get back,” he said as he pointed to the truck and all those around it.

“Yeah,” she agreed before pointing to the interstate, “we need to find out where Dave is driving his trailer. Don't forget we can't get too far from your grandma.”

He laughed. “I won't forget about that, but I should tell you I still feel like she is close. Don't you?”

Victoria's deep green eyes studied him for a moment and he felt a wave of shyness pass over him as he held that wonderful gaze.

“I feel her, too,” she said. “It's weird, you know? It's like I know she's around, but not where she is. I even hear her voice from time to time.”

He focused on his girlfriend, put his fingers on his temples, and tried to speak to her using mental telepathy or whatever it was that they used before.

I love you.

He grinned from ear to ear.

“I love you, Liam, you big dope.” She winked at him in a way that made his legs wobble, but then she spun on her heels and walked away. For a few seconds he was unable to look at anything but her fancy blue jeans, but then he realized her reply wasn't exactly what he expected.

“Wait, did you hear me say that in your head?”

“I didn't have to,” she replied without looking back.

2

There were so many trucks it was almost impossible to see the soldiers out in the grass surrounding the truck stop. A few were stopped at the pumps, but others moved in and out like clockwork.

Many of the box trailers had huge words painted by hand onto their sides. Liam wasn't sure if they did that as a way of describing what they carried, but he didn't think Dave's truck was carrying “Pool Supplies.” A truck next to his said it had “Foot socks.” A third truck wrote theirs in huge red block letters which said “Toasters.”

Just what we need in the apocalypse!

A large white RV was parked beyond the last pump and it was also stamped with giant letters, but it wasn't describing its load. It said US Postal Service on the side.

Several drivers ran over to the postal truck and dropped off white and brown envelopes as if it was the day before Christmas.

“Victoria, I'll catch up to you. I want to see what's happening at the post office.”

She slowed down for him.

“Really? You think that's safe?” Her demeanor suggested he was already committed to going. “Okay, I'll make sure they wait for you.”

He gave her a little wave and then trotted in front of five or six big rigs taking on fuel. As he neared the RV, he avoided the line in front of a window where a woman took money and the packages. When he got a little further, he saw what he was looking for: information.

A huge bulletin board had been placed on the ground and leaned up against the back part of the truck's frame. At first, he thought it had pictures of people who were lost in the disaster and were being sought by their families, but the closer he got the less certain he was.

The word fugitives stood out like a lightning bolt at midnight.

He dropped to his knee to pretend to tie his shoe while he tried to scan the board. After all his run-ins with Elsa, Hayes, and the military he was pretty confident this board in some random gas station would have his picture on it. If anyone was a fugitive from the corrupt people inside the government, it was him.

By the time he finished tying his shoe a couple times he still hadn't found his picture, so he stood up and tried to be as nonchalant as possible while looking at the photographs on the board.

He read the words under one official-looking mugshot of a man that said he was wanted for single-handedly blowing up a M1 Abrams tank. Another photo showed a wild-haired woman in a grainy action shot and described her as a gold thief. Others were busted for impersonating FEMA representatives, so they could collect supplies from duped citizens. Some were responsible for breaking into bunkers of their neighbors and killing those inside. One picture described a particularly ugly man as having guided zombies to people in his small town as part of settling a grudge.

Finally, near the far-right side, he saw someone he recognized.

It was a picture of him and Victoria snapped as they stood on the deck of the barge in front of Elsa. It was obviously taken by a drone the day before, but it caught him off guard how fast they printed and shipped the picture, so it could be displayed in the truck stop. Based on his wide eyes and pained expression, the Liam in the picture was probably watching his mom and dad fall to their deaths.

He tried to calm his anger and focus on Victoria. The big, high-resolution photo showed her in remarkable detail and he found her image to be quite striking. In fact, standing there looking at it gave him an idea.

There was a lot of traffic in front of the window to the post office, so he leaned close to the board and tried to yank the picture right off. He only had a second, but he tore the paper in half and tossed the scrap side onto the ground behind the board.

“Hey, you.” A man called out from nearby.

Liam fought the urge to run or show any recognition he heard him. He started walking away from the board, hoping he could blend into the line at the window.

“Oh no you don't.” The man's voice was super close.

He walked at a fast pace but still didn't run. There was nowhere to go even if he could sprint like hell. His only hope was to blend in.

As he entered the line he stopped and tried to tie his shoe again to make himself as small as possible, but he felt the hand on his neck before he bent over completely.

“No. Over here, son.” A strong hand lifted his shirt and easily shoved him away from the line. He stumbled and nearly fell over as the whole thing surprised him.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I got confused.” His mind rattled off a series of excuses and prayed one of them would stick.

“I saw what you did. You took one of the pictures. Is there some reason you'd do that?” He acted like he already knew the answer.

The man was dressed in a crisp uniform and had a bunch of stripes on his sleeve. He was someone important. And he had a pistol in his free hand.

“Let me see what you've got,” the man demanded.

“Please, I don't want any trouble. I just--” He drew a blank on what to say to talk his way out of the encounter.

The man held out his empty palm.

Slowly, Liam held out the torn picture. Behind the soldier, somewhere across the parking lot, Victoria was standing around waiting for him to return. How crappy would it be if he led the soldiers right to her?

But he still couldn't think of anything that would help, so he handed over the paper and decided to beg for mercy. “I'm so sorry. I just thought she looked like someone back home.”

The man was probably in his thirties or forties. His blonde hair wasn't yet gray, but his eyes had strong lines around them like he'd seen a lot. Those eyes peered hard at the paper, then glared at Liam. Then he looked at the paper again.

“Someone back home looks like this girl?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you took this because the image reminded you of her?” he spoke as if he'd just solved a big mystery.

Yes, she and I are two of the most wanted criminals. Cuff us and stuff us.

The soldier looked around before speaking. “I think you are lying. Come with me.”

3

Liam once again thought about running, but only for a few seconds. Yes, they had the guns in the truck, but there was still no way to fight out of the mess.

He glanced over his shoulder as he rounded the corner, hopeful someone would see him and come to help. Victoria stood with her back to him over by the gas pumps as she chatted with Sabella and Dave. They didn't see him, either.

The soldier led him around to the backside of the post office RV. It was mostly out of sight of the other drivers, including his friends, but it was in full view of the soldiers guarding their vehicles out in the fields. Perhaps feeling confident he was under observation by his fellow army guys, he holstered his handgun.

“Okay, stop right here.” The man held up the picture of Victoria and displayed it for Liam again. He looked around as if to check if he would be heard by anyone else and then spoke quietly. “This girl is a highly-sought criminal working against the United States government. Sedition. Treason. You name it. Probably killed a bunch of pandas along the way. If you add all that stuff up, you know what you get?”

The man hesitated while expecting an answer from Liam.

“I, uh, don't know. She's dangerous?” He forced himself not to smile at the picture. Even knowing the serious events taking place at the very moment the picture was taken, he was smitten by the pretty girl with the determined look on her face. She was his rock. His fortress. His reason for keeping on in a dying world.

“Of course she's dangerous,” he said sarcastically. “Everyone on that board is dangerous. But this one is special, you know how I know?”

Liam shook his head immediately.

“Because the intel pogs sent me a huge stack of these pictures.” He almost put the picture in Liam's face. “More than any of the others.”

He chuckled. “It's a good thing, too, because the image of this girl has resulted in dozens of them being ripped off the board and taken by lonely truck drivers.”

Liam stood there listening, not sure what to make of that.

The soldier took a step back. “You mean you didn't take this because it has a hot girl on it? Isn't that why you ripped the guy away?”

A light came on in Liam's head and he scrambled to agree with the man.

“Yeah. Uh, I mean, yes, sir. I didn't want to say anything because you know, it's embarrassing.”

The soldier squinted at him and Liam doubted he was in any way convincing with his explanation, so he tried to plow on.

“Will you let me keep it? I mean, it is already torn.” He spoke as if he really was shy and embarrassed as hell. “Just don't tell my dad.”

“He's a driver?”

Liam cast his eyes low and nodded.

Please. Please. Please.

“Well, there's no harm done. I don't blame you, kid. She is a looker.”

Liam laughed with the man as a way of agreeing with him and then held out his hand.

“Just don't do it again because I have to go back inside and grab another one. I'm kind of tired of replacing them, so that's why I guard the damned board when I'm not on patrol.” His face changed from happy to sad like a switch had been thrown. “When I sit down and tell my grandchildren about this war, I'm sure they'll be real impressed that I kept this bulletin board safe, huh?”

The man quickly handed the picture to Liam. Fearful the guy might still figure things out, he tried to think of something intelligent but plausible to say.

“Are we really at war? Is that why all these army trucks are here?”

The man looked in his eyes and Liam felt he was searching for something, but his response was disarming.

“You been on the road with your dad a long time?”

Liam nodded. “We spent a lot of time at a farm in the middle of nowhere.”

“You should have stayed there. America has broken into islands of calm on a sea of zombies, plague, and chaos. What's left of the army is guarding fuel depots like this one on the major interstates to keep the trucks flowing. Once they grind to a halt, America dies.”

Liam stared at the picture of his girlfriend and tried to think what an innocent nobody would say in response to that.

“I have to get back to my dad. Can I go?” He tried not to sound anxious, but he probably showed just enough to seem real. There was nothing he wanted more at that moment than getting back to Victoria and getting the hell out of the gas station.

A couple of big, black drones flew by twenty feet off the ground and landed somewhere out in the field. They distracted the soldier for a moment.

“You will let me go,” he mentally ordered as he tried to mimic the Jedi mind trick.

“It won't be long and the whole war will be fought with robots and computers,” the soldier said in a hollow voice. “There won't be any of us soldiers left out here.”

Liam was bristling to brag about how he'd seen dozens of drones operating in urban St. Louis, but it seemed like too much information for a dumb kid to have. Under different circumstances he would probably enjoy talking with the soldier about how the war was being fought. It would help him with background research for his book.

“Anything to keep you from getting too close to those zombie things, huh?” He judged that was something an average kid would say.

The soldier seemed to wake up and look back to Liam.

“Yeah. Hey, let's get you back to your dad, right?” He motioned for Liam to step in front of him and go to the other side of the RV. “Keep that in your pocket, alright? I don't want others to know I have more of these.”

They both laughed.

Liam walked ahead and figured he was in the clear. When he rounded the corner and could see Victoria again he felt a wave of relief, so he waved goodbye to the soldier.

But the army guy didn't back off.

“I'll make sure you get back to your father,” the soldier said as he sped up to walk alongside him.

Oh crap.

4

“No, that's alright. I'll be fine.” Liam walked slower as he spoke.

The soldier didn't even look at him. “Protocol involving any minor under 18. I have to follow up, so I can log that you found your guardian.”

“You really don't have to,” Liam said as he halted. “I, uh, am going to be really embarrassed, you know?”

The man laughed. “How dumb do you think I am, kid?”

“No. I didn't mean--”

“I know what you meant,” he said, still chuckling. “I'm not going to tell him I found you stealing a pretty girl's picture. No, I'll tell him you and I ran into each other at the post office, you asked a few questions about the army units guarding the gas station, and that I simply wanted to make sure you got back safe. Just doin' my job, right?”

The soldier appeared to have no ulterior motive other than what he said but taking him back to the truck was going to be a disaster. For starters, no one there could possibly be his dad. For closers, it would be hard to explain why the girl in the picture was standing at Dave's truck wearing the exact same clothes as the photo.

Liam glanced around the parking lot, careful to avoid looking at his friends for more than a microsecond. As long as he didn't give them away, he could pretend any of the trucks belonged to his dad.

He bent over once again to pull the tying the shoestring trick despite knowing he was taking a risk. It took him no time to pull his laces open, but he pretended to have trouble getting them back together.

There was nowhere he could go that wouldn't eventually give him away. His only hope was to get the attention of his friends and somehow alert them to the problem. Maybe they could get away before he was finally figured out. Once on the road it would be impossible to check every truck for possible accomplices. And, if he ever got away he was going to have to figure out how to disguise himself and how to avoid doing stupid things like stealing pictures on a public bulletin board.

The soldier kicked him a bit on his shoe. “I do have things to do.”

He jumped up. “Yeah, sorry. Shoe's been giving me problems.”

Liam led the way toward the diesel pumps, but he angled enough that he wasn't heading right for Dave's truck. In moments he passed about thirty feet in front of his friends, but he didn't look over.

Sabella's little girl called out for Liam, but he didn't even glance in her direction. Instead, he kept his eyes forward and used his peripheral vision to ensure the soldier walking next to him didn't look toward Susan.

Liam walked a bit further, then stopped and pointed to a truck parked on the big lot behind the restaurant. “That red one is my dad's, but he isn't there. I think he's still in the bathroom because it was really crowded. And he has bowel problems,” he added lamely.

“Geez, you're going to make me work for this,” the soldier replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Let's go to the shitter. I have to hand you off.”

“Can't you just say you handed me off?” He held up the photograph again, mostly to show the soldier, but he also hoped his friends saw what he was doing.

If they saw me.

The soldier put his hands on his hips with clear impatience.

“Fine,” he said with as much teen angst as he could muster. “I'll try to find him in there.”

Liam led him directly for the side door of the restaurant and tried to look back over his shoulders to his friends, but one of the other trucks had finished fueling and started moving forward, so he couldn't see them.

The inside was just as busy as before and he deliberately walked into the dense part of the crowd standing near the ordering counter. It took him longer than necessary to get through all the drivers standing there looking at food, but his delay paid off when he walked into Sabella's back.

“Sa--” he started to say before catching himself.

“What?” the soldier said from a shadow's distance away.

“Oh, nothing. So, you want me to find my dad in the bathroom and have him take me from you? That's all?”

“Yes, for the tenth time. Hurry it up, too. I think I want to get a bite once you are out of my hair.”

“It does smell good,” Liam agreed.

He ran several scenarios through his head about how to further delay the soldier, including begging him to order food, but everything felt super obvious that he would be stalling. But then he thought of the one thing that might buy some precious seconds without being stupid about it. He remembered a similar ploy back on that bridge where he outsmarted Duchesne.

“Dad!” he called out across the room.

“There he is,” he said with excitement to the soldier.

“Thank god,” the man replied with relief.

Liam walked fast, but not too fast, toward the front door of the restaurant. He let people get in his way and he struggled to get around tables of men chowing on grub.

“Dad, over here!” he cried out when he thought he couldn't wait another second to keep the deception working.

Liam kept moving toward the front and reached the stream of men walking in and out the front doors. Those entering all had that look of ecstasy when they got hit in the face by the pleasant aroma of the food, while those on the way out carried more sour expressions. Unfortunately, he needed one of those on the way out.

“Dad,” he said as he reached a man he'd picked out because he had the same dark hair as his. Liam tapped him on the shoulder before he could get out the front door.

The man spun around and Liam faked being surprised.

“Yah?” the man said in a neutral voice.

“Oh, sorry, I thought you were my dad.”

The man looked at Liam for a half-second and the soldier for a fraction longer, then spun around and walked out.

Liam turned to the soldier. “I really thought that was him.” He banged his head. “Sorry, I'm not really awake, yet.”

The soldier seemed unimpressed.

“Let's go check the bathroom. I bet that's where he is.” Liam pointed where he was going to go.

“I'm getting tired of this. If he's not there I'm just going to take you to the guard station and get rid of you. Get it?”

Liam gulped.

“I do.”

5

From over at the front door Liam thought he saw Dave head into the restroom. If Sabella told him to go in there and pretend to be his dad, he figured that was bound to fail. Dave was nowhere near old enough to be a fake dad to a teenager. Maybe Dave took a gun in with him and was going to do something violent to save him from the soldier.

Liam was conflicted because he didn't want to hurt the guy if he didn't have to. All in all, the soldier had treated him with respect, and he didn't deserve to die for that.

He walked toward the restrooms like a man on death row.

After a few paces, the soldier poked him in the side. “Hurry it up.”

Liam reached the men's room and allowed a couple guys to walk out the door, but then he went inside. Whatever the reason Dave went in there, Liam had committed himself to ending the game in the bathroom. The last chapter of his story wasn't going to be as glorious as he'd hoped.

“Dad?” Liam said once he was inside. His voice wasn't loud enough to be heard, but part of that was because he was uncertain what had happened to Dave. He wasn't there.

“Son is that you?” someone called out from inside one of the stalls.

“Yeah, dad, it's me,” Liam replied, sounding defeated. “I got in trouble.”

“Son of a bitch!” Dave replied as he played the part. “What did you do, now?

“Sir, can you come out, so I can hand him over to you?” the soldier said.

Many of the men at the sinks started to clear out. A couple of guys came in through the door and then went right back out. Liam secretly hoped a revolution would begin inside the restroom but knew that was far-fetched. If Dave was telling the truth, most of these drivers were working on government contracts. While Liam had no doubt about their individual patriotism, putting food on the table while the world crumbled away would give them little incentive to rise up against the men paying for their survival.

There would be no magic rescue from them.

“I'm uh, sorry. I've got a bad case of the diarrhea. I'm in the middle of something important right now, if you know what I mean.”

“And you've got hemorrhoids,” Liam said with a sheepish glance at the soldier.

Dave sighed heavily inside the stall. “I'd not like to make that public, son, but thanks. Yes, I've got a lot going on in here and I don't need a son acting up on the outside.”

“Great. I should have just let you take the damned picture.” The soldier was now visibly upset at how long Liam had bothered him.

“Just give me your driver number and I'll consider the case closed,” he said to the stall door.

Dave was quiet for a long moment but then grunted loudly. “2522! Oh, god, what a mess!”

Liam wanted to laugh at Dave's performance, but the soldier wasn't impressed. He shuffled back and forth for a moment as if thinking, then turned to Liam and curled his lip in disgust.

“Consider yourself disposed of,” the man said as he pushed aside an incoming trucker before going out the door.

“Thanks,” Liam said to be polite.

He didn't even realize his heart rate had gone off the charts the past several minutes and now he let out a long exhale as he tried to control his pulse.

“Are you ready to go, son?” Dave asked timidly from inside the stall.

“Yeah, we have to get out of here,” Liam replied. Some of the other men washing their hands in the sinks looked at him, but most kept their eyes on their business.

Dave came out of the stall holding his camera. “That was awesome, son,” he said with a huge grin.

“What are you doing with that?” Liam asked with surprise.

“Live streaming our escape,” he said in a conspiratorial voice.

Liam cringed like a vampire faced with garlic as the camera pointed in his direction. He wanted to yell at Dave but decided the only course of action he could take was to get back to the truck as quick as possible.

He stormed out the door.

Sabella met him a moment later.

“Victoria and my girls are waiting in the truck,” she said quietly. “Did he help you? That was brilliant telling me your plan,” she added.

“It would have all been awesome if he hadn't filmed the whole thing,” he said while pointing his thumb at Dave coming out the bathroom door.

Sabella put her hands on her hips in a “I'm going to kick his butt,” stance, but he kind of pushed her back so she'd start walking.

“Trust me, we have to get out of here right this instant. It might already be too late.”

“Really? Why? Are you in the clear?” She asked the questions but walked alongside him through the crowd at the front counter. He went straight for the side doors where he came in.

“I'm kind of wanted by the police,” he said to the brunette mother of three. “I'll explain later.”

He imagined the soldier was waiting for him behind every group of drivers. Liam tried to find him while at the same time making himself as hard to see as possible. He couldn't afford more questions and there would be no second chance at using his fake dad. No one would believe the man had to spend so much time on the can.

When he reached the glass doors, Liam hesitated. No one was going in or out at that second, but he still wasn't able to see the soldier.

Dave talked while he walked up behind Liam.

“Liam is looking out at Angela where his girlfriend Victoria is undoubtedly pining for him. Hoping for his safety. But I, the awesome Truckaduck, rescued him, right Internet? Please leave your message for Liam in the comments. Let him know how I did playing as his dad.”

Dave chuckled nervously, and Liam hoped he was properly scared at what they were doing, but he doubted the man had any idea who might be watching his live broadcast.

“And for the record,” Dave said while looking into his camera lens as he went out the doors, “I do not have hemorrhoids, right guys? That was 100% acting!”

When the doors opened, Liam was hit in the face by the loud 80s music again. It wasn't the classic rock he enjoyed but was crap he always avoided when it came on the radio. Not only was it ungodly loud, but whoever thought he needed to, “ce-le-brate good times, c'mon,” obviously didn't know an apocalypse was in progress.

Dave walked briskly and held his hands over his ears as if he was in the rain.

Liam followed, wondering what Dave's problem was. Not only was the fool worried about his image to a non-existent audience, and seemingly couldn't tolerate loud 80s jams, but he was broadcasting their very uncertain escape. If he didn't get to the truck in the next few moments, he feared he'd punch Dave square in the face for being so reckless.

He hasn't really met the apocalypse. I'm going to bring it to him.

Liam felt bad for the thought because he always seemed to ruin things for each new person he encountered. Other than grandma, and Victoria, he tended to make things worse for everyone he met. Even his parents got caught up in the intrigue shading his life right now.

Sabella caught up to him. “Is that why you called yourself Sam back in that room? Or is this something different?”

“I can't explain, now. This is different, I think.”

“Mmm hmm,” she said in a pitch he recognized as full of doubt.

He sped up a little to catch Dave just before he reached the truck he'd named after his mother.

“Sorry, Dave,” he said in a voice only loud enough for him to hear. “For getting you mixed up in my problems, but also, thanks for coming to get me.”

“We'll get some great feedback on this broadcast, I promise,” Dave said as if he was having fun. “Now, let's get out of the 80's.”

They boarded the truck and got back to their seats. It took far too long for Dave to get them moving again, but once the tires started to roll, Liam let out the breath caught in his throat.

“We made it,” he whispered to Victoria sitting next to him on the rear seat.

He noticed they were a man short.

“Hey, wait! Where's Russ?” he asked.

Elise whipped her head in his direction. “You scared him off.”

“Now, now,” her mom said with calm. “He didn't want to get too far from home. Said he has family around here.”

“Hmm,” Liam said to himself. Then to Victoria: “Did he tell you he was leaving?”

“No, he was fine when I last saw him.”

“Dave, what did he say to you?” Liam asked. He didn't much care for the other boy, but he didn't like abandoning anyone without cause.

“Just what Sabella said. He saw the cops all over you and didn't want anything to do with my plan to help you out. Said he'd rather take his chances with family. Then he ran off.”

Liam was torn. Part of him was happy to see Russ go, but his conscience argued that he should try to talk him into staying. Whatever else he was, the boy was an extra gun.

The truck rolled through the parking area while he tried to figure out the right thing to do. Once they were on the highway, there was no going back.

“I, uh ... ” he mumbled.

The decision was made for him when the sirens began.

“He'll be safer here,” Liam said with sudden confidence. “We have to go.”

6

Several Humvees came whipping around the fuel pumps along with a Missouri Highway Patrol car with its sirens blaring.

“Floor it!” Liam shouted when it was clear who they were after.

Dave looked over his shoulder very briefly. “You haven't driven a truck, have you? Flooring it isn't even a thing.”

Liam strained to look out the side windows, sure the police were going to be right alongside them. After giving Russ the benefit of the doubt just seconds ago, he wondered if the boy had turned them in. His blood pressure reached third stage separation up in the atmosphere and his tension went into freefall.

“What are we going to do?” he said anxiously to Victoria. “I think I blew this.”

“What did you do?” Elise asked. She had the whole front seat to herself since Russ was gone. “Cuz I'm not getting in trouble for you.”

“Are you really wanted by the police?” Sabella asked. She might have been considering whether her debt to Liam for saving her girls once had already been paid. Liam wouldn't blame her.

“Not exactly.” He handed over the picture of Victoria. Even with one half missing, the list of crimes in small print was extensive.

“Oh, shit,” the mother said while the scene outside continued to play out.

Liam believed the sirens were coming for him, but they passed Dave's truck and blocked off a rig a few positions in front of them.

“Are they stopping us all?” Victoria asked while straining to see over the dashboard.

Dave downshifted and put his foot on the break to wait and see.

“It says you destroyed samples of the cure. You killed government agents. You aided and abetted the Patriot Snowball leadership. Trespassing into restricted zones. Murder?” Sabella still read the print beneath Victoria's picture and Liam suddenly regretted revealing it. “Geez, and this is only half of the crimes listed. What was on the other half?”

Now Sabella held out the paper like it was dripping with blood.

“None of it is true, exactly,” he said in a soothing voice.

“What is not exact about this? I do appreciate you helping my family survive, but I can't travel with someone who commits crimes against the federal government. Not like this.”

“Liam is telling the truth,” Victoria said. “I've been with him since the beginning and he's been attacked by the government because they wanted to test on his great-grandma.”

“Does that mean you fought back against the people wanting to find the cure?” Sabella replied.

“Now this is interesting, am I right, Internet?” Dave leaned toward his camera that he stuck back on his dashboard.

“Dave, please turn that off,” Liam said in an even voice.

“Internet, should I turn you off? I think not.” Dave smiled and shook his head at the tiny camera.

“They're moving!” Elise said with relief. “We're going to make it.”

The line of trucks leaving the truck stop was being directed around the one stopped by the police and soldiers. Dave interrupted his own discussion with his audience, so he could put the truck in gear and keep up with the hauler in front of him.

“Dave. Please. You have to turn that off.” Liam was feeling a combination of anxiety and anger because of the danger he'd put them in, and the extra hazards now being created by Dave and his connection with his fans.

“Just a minute. When we get on the road I'll pause it.”

Liam was deflated. He couldn't blurt out why it had to be turned off without giving himself away. He accepted that if he was patient for a few minutes, it would eventually be turned off.

“Here we go,” Dave said to his camera. “We're getting out of this dumpy town and back onto the safety of the highway. I promise I'll tell you everything that happened to us back there when I get this thing jammed onto cruise control. Right? Yep. 100% top grade right-on!”

Liam sat higher in his seat to try to watch the scene out the window. The military had surrounded the target truck, and had their guns pointed up to the driver. Just as Dave drove by, Liam caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel of the other truck. He appeared ready for a fight.

“Oh, God!” Liam shouted.

Hell broke open as guns started firing back and forth right outside their window.

“Hang on!” Dave did his best to stomp on the gas and turn to the right out of the truck stop and onto the connector road.

The unmistakable sound of buckshot rattled off metal from somewhere behind.

Several bursts of machine guns followed. It wasn't the uneven shooting from semi-automatic rifles like the AK or AR, but more methodical and longer-lasting volleys of gunfire. The military-grade full-auto hardware was put to good use against the rogue driver.

As they put some distance between them and the targeted trucker, the sound of gunshots faded away.

Dave turned toward the entrance ramp for the interstate and solemnly worked through the gears while his passengers sat in stunned silence.

“Mommy are they going to shoot us like that?” little Susan asked her mom.

“No, dear, they aren't. I promise.”

Dave had them onto the empty highway before anyone spoke again.

“Sweet Jesus. I did that.” Dave spoke with a ton of remorse.

“What do you mean?” Victoria asked.

Dave shut off his camera.

“When we drove by that stopped rig I noticed the driver number we all have plastered on our doors. It's the same one I told that soldier who was holding Liam. 2252.”

Everyone in the cab turned to Liam.

He cleared his throat. “I, uh, needed you to turn off the camera so I could tell you. If I had any idea you'd be doing a live broadcast I would have mentioned my background earlier, but this all took me by surprise, too. First the zombies chased Victoria and me into that farmhouse. Then we got attacked. Then the fireball happened. Those, um, small zombies. I've not had a lick of proper sleep so I'm not at peak Liam right this minute.”

“And this? What of it is true, exactly?” Sabella showed him the wanted poster.

“It isn't black or white, but we've only done good things. You have to believe that. We aren't terrorists, or murderers, or treasonists, or whatever.” He took a deep breath and steadied his nerves.

“But I should tell you the government does think Victoria and I are criminals because of how we've behaved while protecting my great-grandma from them.”

He exhaled like he'd just bared his soul.

Then he waited for them to toss him out.

Chapter 10. Seeing the waters of creation

On the Mississippi River, south of Cairo. While Liam is leaving the farmhouse in Dave's truck.

Lana double-blinked in amazement at her dead husband lying in the shallow water. He was a zombie when they fell overboard the previous day, and they floated together all night in the swift current of the Mississippi River. Now, in the first light of dawn, he'd spoken to her.

She'd just pulled a big knife out of his side.

“I love you, Lana,” the zombie said while still face down at the edge of the shore.

She looked around for a brief second, wondering if she was part of a terrible prank.

“Hello? Who said that?”

Her husband's body shifted.

“Ouch, that sucked,” the zombie replied.

In those final seconds before they fell in the water, Liam threw the knife to try to kill his zombie dad, but it missed its mark and went into the zombie's side. Now that she'd pulled it free, it seemed to cause pain to the corpse.

She raised the bloody knife in the air, ready to stab it-him-in the head. The necessary final act of every zombie.

“It's me, Lan. Is my voice working? I said I love you, too.”

She dropped the knife, as much out of shock as relief she wouldn't have to use it. Yet, she was afraid to bend down to him.

“It can't be,” she said wistfully. “I saw you. You were a zombie.”

They were brought together so Jerry would infect her in front of Liam. Elsa Cantwell had arranged the encounter as payback for the troubles her son had caused her and by all indications the slimy woman had succeeded. Liam's horrified expression was the last thing she saw before Jerry lunged at her and they both fell off the boat and into the brown muck of the river. The current pulled her away before seeing Liam's fate.

Over the long hours floating down the river she'd alternated between fits of crying and bouts of rage. It never seemed important to untie the ten-foot rope on her leg that linked her to Jerry, but now she was glad she waited.

“I know how you feel,” he said. “I can't believe it, either, but here I am.”

It appeared to take a lot of effort, but Jerry rolled himself over. She saw his face had regained its color, and much of the bloody discharge that was standard equipment for the zombies had been washed away. He didn't look quite back to normal but was maybe close to how he might look if he was taking his first steps after a bad bout of influenza.

“You cut your hair,” he said, wincing in pain. “Looks nice.”

She felt herself choke up. Elsa had shaved part of the left side of her head to make it easy for Jerry to take a bite from her neck. It looked anything but nice.

Lana touched that part of her scalp.

“Thanks. But, Jerry, we buried you in the ground. You were-”

“Dead,” he said simply. “I know. Well, I don't know that part. I don't remember anything happening on the ground, but the proverbial white light consumed me the whole time.”

“You went to Heaven?” she asked, hoping for concrete evidence of just that.

“I don't know, honestly. My head is all fuzzy.” He put his hand on the side of his head and bopped it a few times as if to clear the water from his ears.

She didn't know how to feel. Shock, certainly. Disbelief was a close second.

“Where did we first meet?” She wanted to quiz him to confirm his identity.

“Big Texas Bar and Dance Emporium.”

“First words to me?”

“Would you care to dance?

“First time we got together?”

“That trip to Minnesota to see your aunt. She had to drive to town on business and we had the place all to ourselves. The window of that bedroom was situated just perfect, so I could watch the sun set on your soft skin. It was the most gorgeous sunset I've ever seen.” He tilted his head, “Until just now. Seeing dawn's first light on you right now is the most beautiful sight of my life.”

She fought her emotions to keep from blushing. Her body had done some hard time since that sunny bedroom so long ago.  Her head was partially shaved, she got punched a few times, and was thrown into the stinky river. None of that could have done her any favors in the beauty department. Then again, Jerry always did have a way with words.

But she couldn't afford to let sentiment cloud her judgment. She wanted to drop down and hug him, but something wasn't right about the whole affair. After seeing millions of zombies scour the land and the world of men fall apart like wet cardboard, she thought of herself as immune to girlish fantasy.

“Your husband is alive,” she thought. “That makes TOTAL sense.”

“Are you a robot? A cyborg? Some kind of living manikin?” Her science fiction repertoire wasn't very deep. That was Liam's area, but she'd picked up enough watching movies with him over the years.

“I just am, babe.” He gazed in her eyes and a familiar signal passed between them, like she'd been given access to peer into his soul. They were the same eyes she'd come to know better than her own.

She fell to him. “Oh Jerry. How is this possible?”

Tears followed. The hardness of numerous days on the road of the zombie apocalypse, many without him by her side, faded away. He wasn't dead. He wasn't a zombie. He was just Jerry again.

“I don't care,” he replied in her ear. “I just want to enjoy your warmth.”

They hugged for a long time. Eventually that turned to kissing.

When they broke contact, it wasn't because she wanted to stop.

“I have to move,” Jerry said with disappointment. “There's a rock in my back that's going to kill me again.”

The laughter wiped away the tears of sadness.

She helped him crawl up the bank until they both sat on a long rock. They joined hands and watched the water of the river crawl by. The mist-shrouded far shore seemed every bit of a mile away.

“Where do you think we are?” she said when the silence became too much.

“Alive,” he said. “That's good enough for me.”

She giggled, then pretended to look around the rocky riverbank. “I need to find someone else alive and see if you're visible to them.”.

He looked taken aback. “You think I'm a ghost?”

She held his intense brown eyes and felt his return was too good to be true. She'd had no sleep, endured prolonged dehydration, and suffered grief and high anxiety for days. Combined, that could make her think a lot of crazy things. Especially the one she wanted more than anything since the day she buried him: to see her husband alive one more time.

“I, uh ... ” She wasn't sure what she thought.

He finally cracked a smile, unable to keep his straight face. They both started to laugh. Hers was nervous at first, as if there was still a joke being played on her. But in seconds she let herself go and the laughing became loud and playful.

If he was a ghost, then she would embrace her insanity. If he wasn't, then she'd just witnessed the biggest miracle to take place since Jesus rose from the dead. Too bad there wasn't a priest around to confirm the event for posterity.

The gravity of the event made her stop laughing, but she played it off as needing to get moving. She pulled him off his seat, worried that he'd been put back in her life for a special reason. If she could get him far away from the place of his rising, maybe she could keep him all to herself.

It made her feel like a terrible church-goer, but miracles only come along once in a lifetime. For a wife that had her husband returned to her, she guarded that achievement with fierce jealousy.

“Let's go, my love,” she said in a dreamy voice.

She guided him away from the river.

2

They only got a few steps before Jerry fell to his knees. She held on as best she could.

“I'm not myself,” he quipped.

“Your leg?” she asked. His lower leg had been broken clean through on the fibula a few weeks ago. It's what spawned the infection that eventually took his life.

“No, my broken leg feels a million times better.”

“Really?” The fact he could get up and walk at all was a minor miracle. Sure, it paled next to coming back to life, but she was overwhelmed with emotion with every detail of the reunion.

“Is it your side?” She pulled up his shirt like a doting wife but gasped because the knife wound had already partially healed.

“It's not my leg or my side. I'm just dizzy.”

She searched the riverbank for somewhere better than the open rocks near the water's edge.

“Can you make it over there, to those trees? It will shield us when the sun comes up.” It never really got cool in the overnight hours, but being out of the water made her appreciate the thick humidity was going to ruin the day.

He nodded, and they tried to walk again, but he fell to his knees. “I'll crawl,” he croaked.

“No, this is fine,” she replied, trying not to sound disappointed. She'd hoped he'd be endowed with superhuman powers as long as miracles were happening.

“Nonsense,” he said. “We can't stay in the open. I don't want you out in the sun.”

She laughed. “You sound like Grandma Marty. You never think of yourself.”

“I guess some of her good parenting rubbed off. I learned from the best.” He laughed, though he was faced down on all fours.

She wanted to blame herself for a series of bad decisions the last few weeks that led to the probable death of Liam back on that barge, but she didn't want to saddle Jerry with the same guilt. Not yet, anyway. Someday they'd have to talk about it.

So, she helped him crawl over the rocks and dirt until they made it to where they agreed was a comfy place to hole up. She spun him over, so he could sit against the trunk of a large Willow.

“You good?” she asked.

He responded with a thumb up.

She studied his face and eyes and didn't see anything out of the ordinary, now that he was alive.

“Alive?” she thought.

She smiled and reached her hand out for his chest. He tried to intercept it, but she waved him off.

“I have to check something,” she said matter-of-factly. She was in charge of the family medical dealings because of all their prepping back before the zombie apocalypse, but now she had nothing but her hands with which to treat him.

He looked at her seriously, then smiled. “My heart?”

She held his gaze and nodded.

“I know you have one. But I have to feel it. I have to know you're really here.”

“Feel me up. I don't mind.” He put his hands behind his head like he was relaxing on a Hawaiian beach.

“Uh, okay Mr. Miracle.”

She couldn't help but exhale with relief when her hand immediately felt the powerful heartbeat through his damp shirt. Instead of pulling her hand away, she bent over, and placed the shaved side of her head upon his chest. The sound of his heart made it all so much more real.

“It is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard, my love.” She was once again moved to tears.

“Hey,” he whispered. “It's going to be alright.”

Lana listened to his beating heart in one ear while the sound of rustling leaves filled the other. A Cardinal tweeted from somewhere nearby. The bubbling river drifted by as it had done for ages. She could almost ignore the damp air.

It was a little piece of Heaven, but it had to end eventually.

“I just had my husband returned to me from the grave, and all I can think about is our son. I think he's dead, Jerry.”

Jerry gripped her hand tightly. “How? Why? What happened?”

Lana took a few seconds to collect her thoughts. She'd been replaying it over and over in her head, but it always ended with Liam somewhere out of her sight.

“We were on a barge with Liam and Victoria and some others. A bitch named Elsa wanted you to infect me in front of Liam because he'd hurt her boyfriend, or something.”

She choked up.

Jerry rubbed her back as she tried to continue.

“She made Liam watch me and you fall over the side. She made him watch us die.” A heaving sob caught in her throat.

The rubbing on her back became more fervent. “Hey there. He's a strong kid with a resourcefulness I didn't know he had. I took him shooting and camping and showed him the tools he'd need to survive any calamity, but after what I saw him do between our house and that Boy Scout camp, I'd say he taught me a few things, too.”

He brushed the hair from her face, so he could look at her directly.

“One day I'm going to tell him that,” he said softly.

For a few minutes she was content to rest on his chest and enjoy the sounds of life. But much too soon her mind was consumed by a crosstalk of questions and possible answers.

“I gave Liam that letter,” she said when she could talk without sobbing.

A chuckle in his chest interrupted the peace of his heartbeat. “And?”

“He wasn't too happy.”

“I'm sure he got over it,” he replied.

“No. He really didn't. He didn't want to know his family had ties to a revolution. I had him safe with the Patriot Snowball gang in downtown St. Louis, including Travis and Haylee, but he snuck out by himself and went across the city, so he could be with Victoria.”

“Are you freakin' kidding me?” he chuffed. “Well I guess I didn't teach him as much as I thought.”

“Don't be too hard on him, Jer,” she chuckled. “We both did silly things. I jumped in a panzer tank and chased after him.”

“Panzer is German for tank, honey.”

“Seriously?”

Jerry gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry. You were saying?”

“I chased him in a German Tiger tank ... ”

Lana gave him a sideways glance as if seeking his approval for her description. It was all in good fun, and she relished every word he spoke, even when he corrected her military lingo.

All he did was grin, so she went on. “Yeah. I think we both went nuts after losing you. Each in our own way. We went out into danger and somehow both ended up in Cairo, Illinois. I saw him for two horrible minutes before ... the end.”

“But Liam survived his journey there,” he said with enthusiasm. “He crossed the city alone. I'd say that was the dumbest thing he's ever done, but I guess I can understand. I'd do the same for you.”

Her sobs ramped up again, but he was quick to intercept them.

“Hey,” he said, lifting her chin. “I didn't mean it like that. Liam did good. He learned my lessons. If he can cross a city of zombies in one piece, I bet he figured out a way to survive in Cairo, too.”

“You really think so?” she pleaded, her eyes damp with tears.

“Oh, sure. Our family has a history of tough fighters. You. Marty. My dad. And now Liam.”

“You, too,” she added.

“Yeah, even me. Fighting back from the grave-” His voice trailed off.

She watched his eyes convey momentary confusion, then go back to normal.

“So, all we have to do is get your dizziness under control and we can go back up the river and see our son.”

“I'd love to see the look on his face when I show up alive,” Jerry replied.

For a long time, she drowned herself in the orderly rhythm of his heart; it provided an anchor to all the chaos that she'd faced of late.

Before she fell asleep she thought briefly of the large explosion she'd seen and felt as she floated away from Cairo.

“No use souring the mood,” she thought to herself. If Liam didn't die on that boat at the hands of Elsa Cantwell, he surely avoided that massive explosion. He seemed to draw disaster to himself and thrive on it. That made her laugh a tiny bit.

Her watch read 4:44.

She nodded off while absently wondering if she heard boat horns.

3

The slapping of water against the shore woke her. It was darker than it was while holding Jerry, like it had become night again, but he remained in the same place under the Willow tree.

A well-lit towboat pushed a grouping of barges down the river. Its wake trailed behind, making lots of noise as it struck the rocks.

She stood up, ensuring Jerry remained out. He needed his sleep, she assumed, more than she did.

To the left, upstream, another towboat waved its spotlight from side to side. The long beams penetrated a thin veil of fog near the water's surface. It reminded her of a spaceship for some reason.

When the waves of the first boat passed, everything settled down at the shore. The engines faded on the one downstream, and the other wasn't close enough to hear.

A lone cricket chirped in the distance as if something needed to make a sound.

“Hello, Lana Marie,” a man's soft voice called from a nearby bush.

“Who's there?” she shot back with balled fists.

A soldier stepped from the darkness. He had a glow to him, like a television screen. When he got close, she recognized him from old photographs.

“Grandpa Al?” She'd never met Jerry's paternal grandfather, but Grandma Marty talked about him all the time, including how he'd fought in World War II. She knew his life's story better than she did her own grandparents-both of whom passed when she was a teenager.

“Hiya,” he said, seemingly reaffirming her guess.

“Oh no, am I dead?” She spun to Jerry. He remained where he fell asleep, but she kneeled to check his heartbeat. When she found it, she looked back up. “He's alive.”

Al continued to gaze at her with a friendly smile but said nothing.

“Am I sleepwalking? Liam swore he did this. And he saw you.”

“And he was right,” he said in a friendly voice. “You thought he was lying?”

“Maybe. No. I guess not. Not with everything else going on in the world. Things aren't what they used to be. I've just seen Jerry rise from the dead. Now I've seen a talking bush.”

Al laughed. “I assure you, that is all coincidence.”

“Um, rising from the dead? How can that be a coincidence?”

He turned serious, though still had a partial smile. “I meant the bush. Resurrection is not a miracle. That's science, my dear. All of this that you see in this broken world is scientifically possible. And be glad, too. There would need to be so many miracles any deity would grow bored down here.”

He swept his arm out over the river. “Though a few good miracles could stop those boats. I wouldn't complain if God got a little involved.”

She cocked her head. “So, you're saying God could get involved?”

He smiled, then offered his hand to pull her up.

She obliged.

“I'm saying I have no idea what God does. Maybe she takes an interest. Maybe it humors her to nudge a few people in the right direction. Or, maybe she put me in my position, so I could do the nudging. I honestly don't know.”

“She?”

“Don't you see God as a woman? I won't say I can read your mind, but I can see what I like to think of as background noise. Everyone carries it.”

“I guess I never thought of it. It's hard to fight the image I grew up with: the bearded man in the white robes.”

“God has to be female because no man could create a being as mysterious as a woman,” he said with a chuckle.

She laughed, as well. “We're not that complicated. Especially when our best friends are returned to us from the dead.”

“Yeah, about that,” he said, sounding dramatically less enthusiastic.

“You came to take him back,” she said with disappointment.

He pushed out his hands like he was trying to stop her from advancing. “No. Not at all. I shouldn't have said it like that. What I was going to say is that I'm glad your Jerry came back from where he was, because I need you to do something for me.”

She gave him a serious brow-furrowed glare. “How do I know you're telling the truth? Maybe you're playing me? How do I know you're really Al and not some kind of monster?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Gosh, you Peters' are a tough crowd. Every one of you has asked if I'm the devil in disguise. I say even if I was a devil, that would be good for you. It would mean there was a God. We could all celebrate.”

She shook her head. “I'd rather have a God without a devil.”

“Or a devil without a God?” he replied. “Can you imagine what that world would look like?”

Lana pointed in the general direction of the river and the world beyond. “Umm, a little like that?”

“Point taken, but it could be so much worse.”

“Okay. Provisionally, let's say I believe you are here to help us.”

“Yes. Thank you.” He turned and pointed to the boats. “Let's start with those.”

“Are they coming from Cairo? I got thrown in the water and bounced off hundreds of them parked near that town. I couldn't tell what they were for.”

“This, uh, vision you see is from last night,” Al replied. “They only move in the darkest hours. When you passed out drifting on the river, these boats sped by.”

“Why? What are they doing?”

“They're the start of the next phase of this unfortunate mistake. This disease. And, what comes next is shaping up to be much worse than what we've seen already. There are some bad and obscenely powerful people working around the clock to make everything worse. I can't say it any plainer than that.”

“Is this what you told Marty and Liam?”

“No. Not at all. They have a role to play, too. And they're playing that role as well as can be expected, though not as well as I had hoped. That's why I'm enlisting you and your husband.”

“To help Liam? Is he still alive?”

His eyes twinkled in the starlight. “He and Victoria live, yes.”

She exhaled what she'd been holding in her lungs. “And Marty?”

“Also alive, though-” He trailed off.

“What? She is alive though, right?”

“Yes. And you can help-”

“I've got to see him,” she shot back. “Can you show him to me?”

“No, my dear. There's no time for that. I'm sorry.”

She stared at him with arms crossed, waiting for him to explain, but he didn't elaborate.

“That's it? You show up and tell me my son is alive, but so sorry you can't see him? You can't stop me, you know. Just tell me where he is.” She sounded more defiant than she felt. It wouldn't take much to stop her if she had to carry Jerry on her back.

“Please. I'm on your side. In due course you will see your son again. If all goes to plan. But you can make that day come so much faster if you let me help you.”

Her frustration burned through. “So, you want me to see my son, but first I have to help you? That sounds more like blackmail.”

“It would be much easier if I showed you,” he said matter-of-factly. Before she could offer any protest, he touched her on the shoulder.

The world spun under her feet.

4

“Welcome to my home,” Al said while sweeping his hand in front of them both.

She stood on a cliff overlooking an ocean. Though the sky above was black and filled with stars, the water was green and constantly lit up by flashes of what could only be described as underwater lightning.

A cool breeze swept up from below. Looking down at her feet, she had no shoes or socks. The grass below was crisp and lush, like any number of golf greens from television.

“My God. This is-this is just amazing. But where?”

“Where are you?” He laughed heartily. “You aren't dead, if that's what you're thinking. Though I often wonder if you'd know it if you were.”

“It's breathtaking. It's-wait.” She turned around to address him. “What did ... ”

Her question fizzled when she looked over his shoulders. A lush grove of small trees and shrubs huddled around a little pond beneath a majestic waterfall that went straight up into the heavens. There was no top to it, and no rocks behind it. The water fell from a column that seemingly went up to the stars.

Behind that unbelievable feature there was an ancient forest of odd-shaped trees that had to be hundreds of feet tall. Their bases were thick, and their leafless branches interlocked to form one long forest edge along the cliff above the ocean. She imagined Sequoia Redwoods had somehow bedded ancient Oaks to produce such chaotic shapes. The waterfall seemed to drop from somewhere above the highest point of the dark forest.

“ ... you say?” She could barely contain her emotions after the day she'd been having. Losing a husband. Losing a son. Regaining both. Seeing this.

Al dished the tour information as if he'd seen it a million times yet wanted to impress one more patron. “This is my place in the multiverse. I've already described all this to Marty, Liam, and Victoria. What you see is organized in a way your eyes can process. The sea is the engine that powers each universe along this coastline. Those are represented by these waterfalls.”

Lana glanced both directions along the coast and picked out dozens of waterfalls in the miles of cliff within her view. Her eyes seemed to play tricks on her because the more she looked in one direction, it felt like she picked out more and more detail. It caused her to experience a brief bout of vertigo, so she closed her eyes.

“Wow.”

“It is a lot to take in,” he agreed.

She needed to start small, so she opened her eyes and motioned beyond the waterfall. “And the dead trees back there?”

“Hmm. I'd best describe them as old universes. Each universe ages and expires. They dry up. Every molecule across that creation comes to a stop. Becomes petrified wood, to use a term you might understand.”

“The forest goes on forever?” It clearly went a long way in each direction on the coast, but it was impossible to see how far inland it went while standing where she was.

“I don't really know. I've never needed to go find out,” he said, as if realizing a surprising fact.

“Is our universe dying? Is it one of those trees?”

“Dying is such a harsh word. It has been doing that since the instant of the Big Bang, if we are talking in absolutes. But more precisely, no, your universe is not dying. The nutrients from the waterfall are feeding that small tree next to the pond.”

He pointed to one that might have been an impressive Christmas tree back on earth, but here appeared as a tiny evergreen pine.

“That little thing?”

“Yep. This universe is currently in its 14th billions of years old. When it reaches its final days, it will be as big as those giant trees you see behind it.”

“Wow,” she repeated. “The universe is just getting started.”

“I didn't bring you here to sight-see, I'm afraid. I've brought you here to explain what your family is doing, and how you can help them.”

She'd allowed herself to embrace the distraction, but the word family brought her back from the tour.

“Liam was here,” she said matter-of-factly, putting it all together.

“Yep.”

“And he's not dead?” she asked, still not sure she was ready to accept his earlier answer.

“No, and I can prove it. Come over here.” He urged her to follow as he walked around the grove toward a rock face in the cliff next to the waterfall.

After staring up at the tumbling water, she noticed it wasn't moving.

“Why is it stopped like that?” she wondered.

“I wish I had the time to explain everything in detail,” he said while still walking. “Suffice to say it moves at a different speed while we are in this place. It allows me to take time off from my duties so that I can speak with you. Put another way, if the water fell in what you call real time, I would never be able to interact with your kind like we're doing right now.”

“Because you'd be moving as fast as a computer chip?”

Al stopped in his tracks. “That's it, exactly, my dear. This waterfall is a representation of your universe moving at a processing speed beyond your comprehension, but I'm able to adjust your perception to match this place so that we can talk.”

“Can't you freeze time, or whatever, so we can do this without being in a rush?”

“I have a lot of powers, but freezing time isn't one of them. This waterfall is, in fact, moving. You just have to get very close and watch for a long time to notice. Every second you and I spend here requires energy. It also takes me away from other areas of concern in the universe.”

She wanted to ask more questions, but they came up on a glass window.

“You have windows in Heaven?” She had a hard time putting the place into perspective. If it wasn't Heaven, it was certainly heavenly.

“Big, yes, but this isn't the ever after.” He pointed away from his waterfall to others along the cliff. “This does go on pretty much forever, though. I do get over to some of my neighbors for a cup of sugar.”

She looked longingly at the next waterfall. It could have been a mile away, or hundreds. It was mesmerizing to try to figure it out. But, eventually, she realized he'd told a joke.

“Sugar, huh? I bet. Did Liam freak out when he was here? Cuz I feel like I might freak out.” She wrapped her arms around herself as a defense mechanism, as if she were trying to stay warm.

“No, and neither did his great-grandma,” he said with a little chuckle.

She looked at him. “You mean your wife, right?”

“Of course. My dearest Martinette. She was the key to the whole thing. This,” he directed her toward the door.

Inside the glass window of the door was a small circular room with other doors that looked like the one at which she stood. Hers was the only one she could see through. In the middle of the room was a very sleek laptop with a lit display in screensaver mode. After every wondrous second she'd spent absorbing the magnitude and brilliance of the landscape, the laptop came across as the most alien.

“What is it?” she said with breathtaking awe.

She felt his eyes as he stood next to her at the window. “It's a laptop.”

“No,” she peered at him, searching for a joke, “I know what it is. I mean what is it, here?”

He laughed it off. “Of course. Marty saw this device as something else. I had to be sure you and I were in sync, looking at it now. As to what it is, that is complicated.”

“Look, I've had a long day. Can you just give me a straight answer?”

He grinned. “That's why I like your family. Always right to the point.” He turned back to the computer.

“Marty was the key. She bonded with Liam and Victoria through the trials of the disaster and the sharing of their most powerful memories. Your psychologists might call it a trading of memory engrams, but they functioned as three-factor authentication passwords to access this computer you see on the table.”

“They used it?” she said with surprise.

“They were in this room, Lana, and they got the computer running. In essence, they loaded the program that has the potential to reverse this, uh, flaw in the system. That error was created when military scientists from another agency hacked in and changed one core function of what was supposed to be the dawn of a new version of humanity.”

“You're talking about the zombies? This thing created the zombies?” She shifted on her feet, as if looking inside was forbidden.

“Yes. And no. Your scientists discovered the signal and, as much as it pains me to admit, I was outplayed. Never in my entire experience has anyone been able to manipulate the code like that.”

“Wait just a damned minute,” she said, turning to him. “All this is a fancy way of saying this is just a dream, right? A computer caused the zombies? Liam and Marty-of all people-got in there and are going to save the human race? How the hell would anyone believe that? Marty doesn't know how to use the remote control for her television!”

“Once the hackers got in, there was very little to do. They may not even know they did it. One virtual switch changed from 1 to 0. From life, to death. After that, it was out of our hands.”

“Well, Mr. Computer Brainiac, just switch it back.”

“The computer program belatedly put up defenses, but it was far too late. Liam, Marty and Victoria are working on fixing that broken switch. Those three formed the triad necessary to gain access to begin the repairs. The program was restarted, but the servers need, uh, what you would call a hard reboot. That's why they are going to Colorado.”

“What?” she said breathlessly. “This is all bullshit. I'm calling you on this. It doesn't make any sense.”

She took several steps away from the door, then put her back to him.

“It doesn't have to make sense, for it to be true,” Al said softly. “I wouldn't bring you here to lie to you. I gave you back your husband as a down payment.”

That got her attention.

5

He directed her to a stone park bench she'd not noticed before. It was near the edge of the cliff, so she could watch the water from the nearby pond snake along a little creek, then tumble over the edge into the sea far below. Unlike the water she'd seen on the main waterfall, this was flowing exactly as water should flow.

“Just as the infection can pass from victim to victim through bites, the cure can pass from survivor to survivor through touching, bodily fluids, or simply breathing on them,” he stated without any drama.

“The cure? Who has the cure? Is the plague over?”

“Far from it. No, the infection spun out of control before any cure could be synthesized. What was once going to be the savior of humanity became its doom. The infection was the cure, before it was corrupted.”

“But you cured my Jerry. It can be done, right?”

He looked at her with sad eyes.

“He's alive, right?”

She could have punched him for how long he took to respond. But he finally did.

“Yes. We were able to use your proximity to him on your boat ride to deliver the proper DNA changes. But even that was an almost-miss because it still wasn't enough time. We were fortunate you two floated together for so many hours after. It gave it the time needed to reformat his genes. It was very unusual how it worked out.”

“We got lucky? Is that what you're saying?”

“Maybe. You call it luck. I call it timely intervention. The end result is the same. Jerry is alive.”

Her shoulders slumped. “So now we owe you. That's what you're telling me.”

“Dear Lana. After the mistakes I've made here, I can never repay my debt. But I'm trying. You owe me nothing, but I hope you still feel something for your own son?”

“That's a stupid question.”

“As it should be. What I'm asking you to do. Why I helped give you Jerry back. It all ties in with Liam and his journey. My ability to help him is limited to people left alive. Most are consumed with basic survival now and only work for themselves. I've had to go all the way back to his parents to secure reliable assistance.” He chuckled, but it came across as distant and sad.

She got off the bench and faced him. “I'll help Liam. There's no question about that. Ever. But if I help you I want to know EXACTLY what this place is. What is it Liam is trying to do?”

He smiled. “Doubting Thomas? I know him well.”

Patting the seat, he invited her to sit once again. “Please.”

She sat back down, though was on the edge and faced toward him.

“The mainframe is near Denver, Colorado. It's well-hidden inside a bio-engineering firm called Southern Cross Logistics.” He halted with a smile.

She caught on. “Logistics?”

With a wink, he continued. “I said they were well-hidden. This company has affiliates in many countries and airports across the world. What better way to deliver their products, eh?”

“And?”

“Yes, and the mainframe is tied into transmission beacons in those faraway places. A transmission can be sent to deliver the cure. Or deliver the plague. Or do nothing. Currently, thanks to Liam and his friends, the system is idle. But humanity needs it to be active, so SCL can repair what they've done.”

“Why not just call them on the phone? Why all the mystery? Surely, they want to fix this, too?”

He looked down to the turf by his feet. It was an oddly expressive emotion she read as embarrassment.

“They don't want to fix it, do they?”

He lifted his head toward her. “No, Lana, they do not. But the good news is that Liam locked them out of their own computer. It is quite sophisticated, but the scale and scope of the disaster appears to have surprised them, too. They got caught by their own security hangups.”

“Dang it. You're telling me they want Liam to come there and unlock it, aren't you?”

His smile was weak. “Once unlocked, it can be used for good or evil. But yes, Liam has to unlock it. They don't know where Liam is, but you can rest assured they are looking for him.”

“He can't do it,” she declared. “We have to stop him to stop them.”

He shook his head. “No, Lana. We have to trust he and Marty will know what to do when they arrive. They won't voluntarily let anyone bad have access to the system. They are very strong when they are inside the program. I know they can do it.”

“Well, we can warn them. Help them.”

His head continued to shake.

She couldn't contain the exasperation. “What? Why are you against everything I say?”

“Liam is already on his way. If you had a helicopter maybe you could catch him, though finding him would be difficult. He isn't going to wave you down. He's going to hide.”

“You could guide me. Do that DNA talking thingy. You could-”

“Lana, listen. Maybe I could get you to him. Maybe. I want your help because of something I know you can do. A way to help Liam on the ground in a way no one else on Earth can do right now.”

She searched his eyes for sarcasm, but he wasn't joking.

“No one else?” she said with her own biting wit.

“You ran an entire revolution from inside your son's video game. I think that makes you pretty special.”

It didn't feel that special to her, but she did use Liam's World of Undead Soldiers game to communicate in secret with other cells of the Patriot Snowball movement. What started as a hundred marchers in the middle of America picked up steam with each town they passed until they had millions of protesters in the procession. They made it as far as the gates of Washington D.C. itself. That flashpoint is where the zombie virus was weaponized and used to push back the marchers.

She was tired of arguing. “You want me to let my own son wander across the apocalypse without my help, hoping he can make it across half the country to someplace in Colorado?”

“That's not what I had in mind at all. Will you let me explain?”

Thinking she had nothing to lose, she listened as he laid it out. Several times she looked over her shoulder as he outlined what the waterfall represented, what he'd told Liam and Marty, and how the trio fit into the scheme he'd dreamed up.

When he finished, he added one last chip to sweeten the pot for her.

“You have to return to St. Louis to help slow down the bad people crossing the country. Not all are stopping in that city. Some are going to continue west to try to capture Liam.”

“Why? Why can't anyone just help Liam and fix the world?”

“I wish that were the way of things. One of the unique qualities of mankind is that it often does things that are against its self-interest. Odd to be sure, but I've come to appreciate that is what drives you to greatness as well.”

“You are talking crazy again.”

“I know,” Al said with a smile. “Wars are illogical and self-defeating, but they also drive technology to new heights. Many of your advances have come from war, including the very coding that allowed you to hack into this server and change the course of history.”

“And I can change all that?”

“Yes. Yes, you can.”

Her last memory of the meeting was shaking Al's hand.

6

Lana woke with a start and checked her watch. It was a little past five. She pinched her cheek, unsure what was real.

“Would I know I wasn't dreaming?” she thought. “Or, as Al said, would I know if I was dead?”

She assumed those were questions for philosophers. The only one she really cared about had to do with Jerry.

“Hey, sleepy. Wake up,” she called with a loud voice.

Jerry hadn't moved from where he sat against the tree.

“Am I still alive?” he asked.

“I was just wondering the same thing,” she said with a friendly laugh. “About us both.”

He briefly looked up to the sky. “Looks like were in nautical twilight. We moving out, boss?”

“Oh, Jer. I had the worst dream.” She fell onto his chest like she was earlier. It calmed her after so much excitement.

She told him everything she could remember, up until the business end of the meeting when Al instructed her to meet a helper, then engage in dangerous activity in St. Louis.

“We have to find Liam,” he said when she was done. “We can't let this happen.”

She sighed and listened to the rise and fall of his chest for a few minutes. Thinking.

“Lana?” he asked while stroking her hair. “You in there?”

A distant bird chirped in the dawn, testing whether it was too early to begin the day's chores perhaps. She imagined the whole world in its own deep breath. The pause between the start of the disaster and whatever was to come next. A strange version of Jerry's grandfather had swooped in and changed the trajectory of her whole life. Instead of spending every moment getting back to her son, her mission was to head in the opposite direction. It was always a long shot to find him, but it felt like giving up. Even if what Al said was completely true. A point she wasn't sure she believed.

“I think it's crap,” Jerry said, breaking the silence. “I literally came back from the dead. I've gotten to see my wife. By God I'm going to see my son.”

But she didn't feel the same. Of course, she wanted to see Liam, but Al spoke of helping him by focusing on her own expertise. If everything worked out, there was a chance Liam could reach Colorado and reverse the destruction that had befallen humanity because of a rogue company and their illicit computer program.

Could it be that simple?

“Jerry, my love, I want to see Liam more than you can possibly know. But the odds of us finding him in this world is next to nothing. If Al was telling the truth, Liam is on his way to do something important. If Al was lying, and Liam didn't survive Cairo, I don't think I want to know the truth.”

“But-”

She waved him off. “Let me finish, dear. Whether Liam is alive or dead, we know there are some bad people in this world who are taking advantage of the chaos. I saw a good number of them when I was Elsa's prisoner up in St. Louis. And-”

She thought of Haylee and Travis smiling at her as they stood on an empty Interstate a few months prior to the arrival of the zombies. They were the core leaders of the Patriot Snowball movement. She left the other two a couple of days ago when she struck out on her own to chase after Liam.

“And I think I can do the most good by going back and helping run things in St. Louis. They're going to need all the help they can get if half of what Al said was true.”

“How does that help us find Liam?”

“It doesn't,” she said, fighting back tears. That prompted her to sit up, so they were looking at each other. “It doesn't.”

“Then, baby, why?”

She chuckled through the tears. “I was so mad at Liam for leaving me when we were both downtown. When we were safe in that building. But I was madder at myself for not realizing the truth: there was nowhere safe. There still isn't. Hasn't been since we grabbed our rifles and went looking for him at Marty's and there won't be again until someone does something.”

“Going back to St. Louis,” he said simply. “You want to fight?”

She nodded. “I want to continue the battle Rose started and Haylee and Travis continued.”

Rose was a name mentioned by Al in their planning discussions at the waterfall. She was Lana's mother-in-law and was a Congresswoman from Colorado. Much of Lana's responsibilities the past few months was passing communications between the Snowballers and their biggest supporter in government. Eventually, Rose had to go into hiding for that support.

Lana paused a moment, but then continued her train of thought. “Government troops are under the control of Elsa's people. We have to fight them. Separate them, if we can. But most of all we have to stop them in St. Louis.”

“Why there?”

“There's a convoy of millions of people coming from the East Coast. St. Louis is to be the new capital of a rump version of America. The coasts are lost to the zombies. They want to hold the center.”

“Maybe that's a good thing? Get some order back. Some security.”

She shot him an ill-look, but also couldn't help but grin at the irony. “Jerry Peters. Doomsday Prepper. Are you actually saying you want your arch-nemesis the government to set up shop in the very city in which you live? I do declare,” she said, ending in the dialect of a southern belle.

“I'm sorry, but I've been dead a while,” he laughed. “What would you have me do?”

“We have to fight. We have to keep Elsa and her team from having five free minutes to go find Liam. We have to keep them so invested in St. Louis they'll forget Liam is moving away from them.”

“You want us to fight at the Black Gate,” he said matter-of-factly. “Is that it?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

He giggled. “It's from a movie. Don't worry. I know you want us to be the decoys and I'm in. It goes without saying, my love, I'd follow you into Hell itself. I would have before I died but coming back from the dead makes me feel invincible.”

“Well, don't forget you aren't,” she said with a bit of a bite. She hopped to her feet and pulled Jerry to his.

He swayed like the dizzy spell had come back but seemed to recover faster this time.

“Where are we going, boss? We have one knife between us, no food, no supplies, and I'm still feeling woozy, so we really aren't ready to take on an entire city.”

7

“That way,” Jerry suggested while pointing away from the river.

“Any reason?” Lana asked.

“Unless we find a speedboat lying around we are going to need a vehicle to get back home. I figure we can't be too far from some kind of road. Hopefully we can find someone living who can help us. A friendly farmer, for example.”

She stepped into some brambles and held back one of the branches, so Jerry could go through unharmed. His white teeth seemed to shine as he walked by, but her mood cratered when she caught sight of the dark splotch on his shirt where she pulled out the knife.

“Does your side hurt? I wish I could patch you up.”

“No, strangely it doesn't. It itches like crazy but doesn't hurt.”

“Wait a second,” she said as she held his arm to stop him. “Take off your shirt.”

Jerry stood there for a moment and then shrugged. “When the wife says drop ‘em, I drop ‘em.” He chuckled as he undid the buttons down the front of his loose-fitting denim shirt. Once it was off, he spun around.

Lana rubbed the tips of her fingers over the wound, sure she was going to cause him to wince in pain, but he didn't make any noise at all. The wound had sealed itself and appeared to be more of a scar than an open knife cut.

“This doesn't hurt?”

“No, not at all. In fact, if you keep touching me in that way ... ”

She pulled back as if struck by lightning.

“Oh, I didn't mean anything,” he blurted.

“No. I'm sorry. It's me. I've got so much on my mind I almost forgot what it would be like to have you back in my life, and touching you is the last thing in the world I thought I'd be doing at this very moment.”

“But you don't think of me as a creepy dead man, do you?” he said with a hint of doubt.

“Not at all.” She spun him around and pulled his face to hers. “I love you, Jerry Peters. More than you know. You have a heartbeat and you are warm to the touch. The second we have some peace and quiet and we don't smell like moldy laundry pulled from a river, we're going to rip off all these clothes and celebrate life together. But for now, I--”

Two headlights turned on from some trees about fifty feet away. They both turned toward the lights as if they were two teens caught on Lover's Lane.

“What do we do?” she said with incredulity.

Jerry didn't respond. He seemed as frozen in place as her.

She considered running, but the occupants of the vehicle were already out and walking into the beams of light. It wasn't so dark that the headlights cast the newcomers in shadows, but her eyes took a moment to adjust.

“You still have that knife,” Jerry finally whispered.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Lana and Jerry is that you?” a woman called out.

Lana wondered if this was all a setup after all. Someone put thoughts in her mind that she was talking to a dead relative, but it was some way to track her down. All her plans to return to St. Louis to fight as part of the group of patriots would end in failure if she was caught.

She took a step backward as if ready to run.

“Lana and Jerry Peters? I'm Mel. This dark drink of water next to me is Phil. We've found you, so we could rescue you and your family.”

“Mel?” Jerry replied softly so only Lana could hear.

“Could it be?” she asked.

“Where is the last time you saw me?” Jerry called out in a loud voice.

“Beaumont,” the woman replied. “Phil and I left with some scouts in this MRAP to go rescue your son, which we did by the way. Now we're here to do the same for you.”

“And how'd you find us?” Lana finally said.

“It's a long story. It involves Hayes, a DNA tracker, and a whole lotta luck.”

“I think she's telling the truth,” she whispered to Jerry.

“Yeah, they could kill us if they wanted. I think we have to go with them.”

“Shall we?” she said while waving her hand to show Jerry the way.

“Oh, no, ladies first,” he motioned back to her with the same gesture.

“Fine,” she replied heavily. Her exhaustion and the ups and downs of the last 24-hours was like a physical weight pressing on her shoulders as she trampled over the thick underbrush to meet Mel.

“We're coming out!” Jerry shouted from behind her.

“We're unarmed, mostly,” she added. It seemed prudent not to be seen as a threat, just in case it was some kind of trick.

“Hi,” Mel said simply when they came to within a few feet of her. She had a weapon slung on her back but appeared otherwise unconcerned about security.

Lana looked at the woman for a long moment and then burst into tears of joy. “Mel! You have no idea.”

The two women hugged. Mel also cried but made more of an effort to hold it together. “I'm so happy to see you two. You have no idea what we went through to get here.”

Lana pulled out from her hug and looked at Mel in the young light of the day.

“Ha! I think we have you beat on strange stories. Jerry was dead.” Lana pointed at her husband standing sheepishly nearby.

Mel leaned over and looked at him standing there.

“The broken leg looks good, too,” she said.

Jerry nodded. “I've been given an upgrade, apparently.”

The next few minutes were a flurry of catching up all that had happened to each of them over the past two weeks since they'd last been with each other. For Lana and Jerry, the centerpiece of their story focused on how Jerry had died and then been brought back to life by something Elsa had done to him. For Mel and Phil, it centered around being found by Hayes, spending some time in the St. Louis county jail, and then being released with a tracker to go find Liam and his family.

Liam was the thread that tied them all together, even when he wasn't there with them.

“We can find him with this,” Mel said when she showed them the tracker. “We came for you guys, first, because you weren't moving around as much. It has some trouble when the location shifts quickly, like if the target is moving fast. Liam and Victoria have been getting around,” she said with a laugh.

“Where are they now?” Lana asked anxiously.

“Not far. They've been flying and boating between St. Louis and Cairo so much that we've gotten whiplash driving back and forth to try to keep up. Last night they finally stopped, but we were already heading for you guys. They seemed to be lodging at a farmhouse twenty miles from here. We can snatch them up, but first I think you should see this person.”

Mel held out the device and the little screen showed a map with a red blip turning on and off.

“This seems to be in the middle of the Mississippi River,” Jerry said when he saw it.” Lana and I just came from there.”

Mel nodded. “You'll never guess who this is.”

“Victoria?” Lana asked without conviction.

“Nope. She's with Liam.”

“Good,” Lana said with relief.

“They've been out after curfew a lot,” Jerry added with his old humor.

Lana playfully punched him on the shoulder.

“I give up,” Lana said after realizing it could be anyone.

Mel looked up from the screen. “Would you believe it if I said this was Liam's grandma?”

“Marty?” Lana said with amusement. “And she's heading right for us at this very minute?” The blip on the screen was moving on the river.

“What are the odds?” Jerry asked.

“Impossible,” Lana replied.

Phil had joined in the welcoming hugs and handshakes but remained silent until just then. “There's lots of that going around. That woman has more lives than a cat, apparently, and has Heaven itself behind her.”

Lana wondered about that, especially after her vision or dream she'd had with Al. She was dying to ask Grandma Marty about how her husband was giving advice on a higher spiritual plane. It certainly felt like Heaven was behind her.

“Well, let's go get her,” Jerry suggested happily. “I've got a story to share.”

Lana laughed heartily. She finally had something to be happy about and a purpose which drove her. Finding her son and her grandmother-in-law were both amazing, as was the miracle of getting her husband back, but she couldn't help but wonder what Al would say of her change of plans. Surely, he'd agree that going to St. Louis to combat the government was less important than reuniting her family with Liam.

Al won't mind if I get Liam first, then go to St. Louis, will he?

They all climbed into the MRAP but Lana started to feel a sense of guilt for having her doubts about Al. She was already starting to wonder what she'd do if she had Jerry and Liam safe in her arms. What would it feel like to have a whole family again? She let that feeling soak in for a few seconds and immediately realized it would be next to impossible to willingly go back out into danger.

“Next stop, Marty Peters,” Mel said like she was the pilot of a plane.

Lana fell onto the bench seat and took Jerry in her arms.

“Still dizzy?” she whispered so she wouldn't embarrass him.

“A little, but I think it keeps getting better.”

Lana recalled that falling feeling when Al whisked her away to his waterfall world. The very thought made her stomach swoon, but it made her appreciate the power she'd witnessed. Jerry was dead, but now he was alive. Somehow, Al had made that happen. Maybe, in some cosmic way, he'd heard and answered her prayers.

Just let me get my Liam and I'll do whatever you want.

A part of her couldn't shake the feeling she was making deals with the devil.

Or that she was lying about that last part.

Chapter 11. Meeting Robbie

Cairo, IL. While Liam watches Sabella drive away as he sits on the farmhouse roof.

Marty sat on the hot decking of a barge near the middle of the Ohio River. The sun beat down from almost directly overhead and made the metal surface nearly unbearable. She had to use the tips of her fingers to steady herself because she didn't want to burn her soft palms.

Someone had placed her there not long ago, but her irregular heartbeat episode had left her light-headed and sluggish. She was content to watch the muddy water swirl below the boat, but a gunshot scared her back into the reality of the situation on the deck.

“One's over there!” Chloe yelled a second before another burst.

“Two on this side,” Mark cried out.

“What's going on?” Marty asked as she resisted the urge to cover her ears. The guns did weird things to her hearing aide.

“We were in a wreck. Now we're fighting for our lives on these barges.” Craig sat next to her with his shotgun sitting on his lap. He nursed his arm like it was broken and she remembered he'd been flung into the front seat when the truck ran into the water.

“I'm so sorry you're hurt. I hope I'm not slowing you down?”

“No, miss. We're safe for the moment and there isn't really anywhere else to go. We're waiting to see if we can flag down a boat.” He pointed out into what was left of the main channel of the Ohio River. The city of Cairo had made an industry of collecting a thousand barges from up and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and the anchored fleet practically reached from one side of the river to the other. The cargo-haulers were mostly flat, however, which made it easy to see the dead from miles away.

Chloe seemed to guard her territory while standing on the next barge over. She fell to one knee, fired her big black rifle at a man walking fifty feet away, and then shoved a woman who managed to get right next to her. The plague victim fell over the side, out of sight. The orange-haired woman looked down at her gun for a moment, then out over the barges, then over to Mark.

“Hey, Mark,” she shouted. “Do everything you can to save ammo. Push ‘em over. Smack ‘em with the stock. Give ‘em some of your used car salesman razzle dazzle.”

“On it!” Mark laughed from his spot two barges upriver.

Chloe jumped from her boat to the next as if trying to widen the safety net around her and Craig. Marty counted a dozen zombies nearby, but there were hundreds of barges moored together, so it was impossible to know how many more were close.

“Mark sold cars,” Craig said with a touch of humor. “I worked in a wastewater treatment plant. Can you believe we're here?”

“I was cross-stitching a holiday pillow when the zombies struck,” she said without humor. A moment later she caught herself and struck an upbeat tone. “What I mean is, it doesn't matter what you did prior to this terrible disaster. I think you three have performed as well as any soldier, and I've known quite a few.”

He tapped his shotgun. “We're going to need to step it up. Some of the barges have ramps to the shore. That's why they're up here with us. The longer we sit here, the more are going to come, even after that fire burned most of them. Too many survived.”

Marty responded with a noncommittal “Mmm-hmm.” The gurgle of water from the current rushing underneath all the barges reminded her of the scale of the place. There could be dozens of ramps along the miles of shoreline and zombies could be walking up each one at that moment. That didn't count the infected that were already on the barges when the bomb went off. The soldiers and townspeople fought to protect their town, not the floating metal coffins.

Why did I use that word?

She turned to get a better look at the river channel. Surely someone piloting a boat would stop for her? Being an ancient woman of 104 almost always gave her the perk of getting help from strangers. Her age had brought new problems in the age of the Apocalypse, but there had to be good people left.

Marty closed her eyes and prayed.

Please, God, send us one of your Good Samaritans to help save my friends.

Her spiritual guilt flared like that orange explosion over Cairo. Marty came dangerously close to praying for herself. Her new friends would die trying to help her, so a prayer for them was, in reality, a prayer for her own safety. However, she didn't know how to seek intercession from a higher power while absolutely refusing help for herself.

And, while I've got you on the line, please help Liam and the rest of the family.

Since the sirens went off she hadn't seen any of her extended family, but in the days leading up to the disaster she'd been visited in an endless procession of them. Jerry came by most frequently because he did most of the maintenance on the house itself, but she knew part of the reason he came so much toward the end was because Liam was living with her. She also got visited from a dozen other family members over those last weeks. Each of them was now enduring the end of the world in whatever way they could.  Praying for each of them individually would take a lot of time, but that's what she did to keep busy while her protectors fought for their lives.

It took an hour before she felt satisfied she'd hit every bit of family she could recall. Some names of the girlfriends and boyfriends of the younger generation escaped her memory, but she did her best. When finished with those she hoped were still alive, she focused on those she knew were dead.

Al, her husband, because he had filled her life with such joy when he was alive. His duplicate had led her through the disaster these past few weeks by showing her his waterfall universe, multiverse, or whatever he called it. She still didn't understand what it all meant, but she couldn't deny his help had saved lives.

Robert, her son, died in Korea ages ago. She remembered him as a smartly-dressed soldier running out her front door to catch a ride to Union Station and head off to war.

Victoria, her first-born daughter. She'd recently shared the details of her little baby's death with Liam and his Victoria, but even thinking about her decades later made her heart skip a few beats because it was so terrible.

God, forgive me.

It was a prayer she'd said every day of her life since the accident.

She continued with Jerry, Liam's dear father. Liam said Elsa dug him up and made him into a zombie to attack his wife. It was too horrible to contemplate.

She was consumed over the next several minutes praying for her parents, uncles, cousins, and numerous friends she'd lost over the past century. It was a supreme disappointment to realize she couldn't remember them all. Faces and places, yes, but names were getting difficult to keep straight.

More recently, she recalled the names of those who helped her and Liam escape the city: Jones, the big policeman from the train. The Captain of police who got them out of the Arch. Phil's partner who died in front of her. All those poor test subjects at Riverside.

Time flew by during her introspection, or maybe she dozed off somewhere along the way. She shook her head and hoped to get back into the moment. Craig was still next to her with the shotgun right where he had it before.

“You are a car salesman?” she asked as if continuing their earlier conversation.

Craig gave her a sideways glance. “That's Mark. I work in plumbing.”

“Oh, yes. I'm so sorry.”

“That was hours ago, miss. You've got nothing to apologize for.”

It was evening and the sun hung low in the western sky. They seemed no closer to rescue, and if no boats came by, it was going to be a long, dark night on the barge. She wasn't looking forward to another uncomfortable night of sleep. Her legs were already tingly from lack of blood flow from sitting in one place for too long.

“We have to do something,” she said to Craig. She felt as if she were channeling Al, who claimed to always be watching and rooting for her.

Chloe was a small orange-haired speck far down the line of boats. Mark was a bit closer but stood between them and the shore as if to head off any direct line of attack toward Marty and Craig.

The town still smoldered from the big fuel-air explosion set off earlier, but it wasn't as thick as it had been. Zombies still came over the top of the levee in small numbers, but they didn't seem to get onto the boats anywhere close to where the truck crashed. She imagined them standing in the mud right next to the truck, however, waiting for the moment a living person came up to the edge of the beached barge.

“Liam would do something,” she said to herself. “What would he do?”

Several rifle blasts alerted her to trouble from Chloe's direction.

Craig stood up because he heard it too. “Aww, she's using her last bullets. That's just friggin' great.”

“What is it?” she said quietly. She was pretty sure that tone of voice could only mean one thing.

“Too many zombies,” he said dully.

2

Chloe ran and hopped from barge to barge. Twenty or more zombies followed her at faster than walking pace like bees chasing a honey thief. Marty guessed there were lots of gaps between the barges because zombies fell out of sight more than a few times as the woman sprinted to get away.

Marty studied her surroundings because she was desperate to do something. Her barge was covered with metal roofing, so it was impossible to say what it carried. However, the most redeeming feature had nothing to do with cargo. She looked to the river and then to the lashings holding her boat to the next one.

“We can let this barge go loose and float away with it.” She pointed to the heavy ropes tied on the one side.

Craig gave her a doubtful glance but did a double take when he noticed she was serious.

“We won't have any control, but I guess that's better than fighting all those zombies.”

“That's what my great-grandson would do,” she said proudly.

“Yeah, that's got to work.” He turned to the others and whistled using two fingers. The loud screech caught the attention of Mark and Chloe because they both waved as if they'd heard it.

“We have to work fast,” Craig suggested as he went to the rope holding the back end of the barge.

“Oh, I'll do what I can.” She looked at the size of the rope holding the middle of the barge and felt tiny in its presence because it was as thick as a man's leg. “But I have to be honest. I could barely manage a tiny lasso rope so lifting this thing might be beyond my ability.” She wasn't a woman to give up so easily, but there was just no way her tiny hands could even grip the stout barge rope.

Craig immediately ran into his own problems. He didn't have the full use of one of his arms and it took him several minutes to unwind the rear rope from the next barge, so it would release.

“One down,” he declared as he ran to the middle tie-down next to Marty.

“I need help,” she said sadly.

“No problem,” he said as he got into position. It took him even longer to unwind the rope from around the giant nautical cleat.

Marty kept one eye on him and the other on Chloe and her pursuit. She continued to jump over the gaps between the tethered boats, but she was starting to slow down. The number of zombies behind her was now larger than before, like the bees were calling in reinforcements from shore. It didn't take her long to figure out some of the infected people popped out from the cargo holds as she ran by.

“Got it!” Craig shouted as he threw off the line. “One to go.”

He ran forward along the edge of the hull as the current caught the back of the 200-foot metal ship and slowly tugged it away from the main fleet. The front tie-down held them in place, however.

Mark was almost back to the boat, and he headed for Craig at the front, so she started moving in that direction.

Craig cussed up a storm right up until he noticed her standing there.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Not unless you can push this barge against the current to release the pressure on this rope. I can't unhook us from the next barge because of all the tension on the line.”

“Oh, dear, I don't think I can help with that.” Marty looked around for tools or machinery to assist, but the deck was clean.

“Can you cut it?” she asked.

Craig's face was drenched with sweat and fear, but it lit up at those words. He pulled out a pocket knife, opened the blade, and began cutting the strands. By the time Mark hopped aboard he'd barely made any progress because the rope was massive and under intense strain.

“What's going on here?” Mark asked.

“The lady wants to take a boat ride,” Craig said as he pumped the knife back and forth with his one good hand.

Chloe wasn't far now. She'd been running in a wide arc but now came at them directly as if she sensed the boat was about to leave. The zombies behind her made good time in their pursuit and Marty guessed maybe fifty were coming.

“You just gonna stand there?” Craig asked the other man. He cut at the line like a madman and sounded quite winded.

“I got this,” Mark answered by pulling out a larger knife from a sheath on his belt. Together the men tore into the rope and began making some progress.

“Chloe! Over here.” Marty waved her arm to get the woman's attention.

“She's getting closer,” Marty said to the men. Their faces and arms were immediately drenched in sweat because of the humidity as their blades worked back and forth on the taut line.

Craig sat back and shook his good arm like it was hot from labor. When he caught sight of Chloe he also waved at her. “We're launching this barge!”

The running woman acknowledged him and tried turning to lead the zombies toward shore, but many were already too close to Marty and the barge. The swarm of bees broke ranks and it became a free-for-all as some turned to follow the orange-haired woman while others converged on Marty.

“Oh, no,” Marty said as she took a step back.

Chloe changed her plan, too, and raced right for the boat.

“Hurry up, man,” Craig said to Mark.

“I could use your--” just as the rope snapped with a wild twang.

The three of them all fell over as the boat slid away from the fleet.

Mark sat up and looked to Chloe. “Run!”

She hopped from one barge to the next in a direct line toward them. At one point she actually ran past some of the shuffling zombies who were more focused on Marty, Craig, and Mark.

“I'm going to jump for it,” Chloe huffed.

Marty remained seated on the hot steel of the deck and watched in helplessness as the gap widened between the free barge and those still moored together. The current wasn't very fast but seemed to want the boat in the middle of the channel rather than let it linger near the others.

Chloe ducked under the reaching arms of a man wearing nothing but a bright yellow raincoat and ran right toward the final edge. Marty held her breath because she thought the distance was too great to jump.

The running woman seemed to reach the same conclusion because she called off her jump and turned to run downriver on the long edge of the boats. The zombies kind of reorganized as if they sensed Chloe still hadn't escaped. The swarm pursued the only person left to grab.

“I'm out of ammo,” she called over with labored breathing.

“Me too,” Mark answered.

“I have a few rounds left,” Craig said while holding up his shotgun.

“I can make it,” Chloe wheezed. She then held out her rifle and wound up as if to throw it. “Watch out!”

Chloe side-armed her rifle so it flew toward the middle of the barge behind Marty and the others. The gun clanged onto the metal covering over the cargo hold before it came to a rest in one of the long grooves.

“I think she's coming to get her gun,” Mark said with a grin.

Marty looked downriver to a place where a few barges jutted further out into the river than the others. She glanced at Chloe and back to the place downstream and figured that was the same calculation the other woman had made.

Since the barge had no motor and they had no way to guide it, all Marty could do was watch where the current took them. She got back to her feet and looked into the wide gap between her and the other barges. A hand poked up from the filthy brown water and wiggled some fingers almost in a wave to her.

She didn't know what to do. Was it a trick of her tired eyes? Why would anyone be swimming in the river?

“You can do it!” Mark shouted.

“We're going to be close down there,” Craig added while pointing to the upcoming passing.

“Craig, Mark,” Marty said in a too-quiet voice.

Chloe paced the slow-moving barge as they all went down the river. She made great time running on the long walkways at the edge of each flat boat, but the jumps from one to the next sometimes required her to slow so she could judge distances. The zombies, led, it seemed, by the yellow-raincoat guy, sometimes fell in those gaps, but generally kept up with her.

Marty made her own calculations and worried they wouldn't be close enough for Chloe to jump aboard, even at the point nearest the parked fleet. In fact, they continued to drift out into the main channel.

And there are now two hands down there.

Marty froze with indecision. If Chloe missed the place where the barge was closest she might not ever get another chance to join them, but if she jumped and fell in the water it would also be very bad for her.

“I think I see zombies in the water,” Marty declared. Her soft voice hardly rose above the moans of the zombies chasing Chloe.

The free-floating barge was only yards from the closest point. She dared herself to look into the water one more time and she gasped at the sight. The hands were still there, bobbing in the swift current. A head was just beneath the surface, but it was hard to see in the dirt-brown water. It wasn't some vision she was having.

She called out again with as much volume as she could muster.

“There are zombies in the water!”

Her voice met Chloe already in the air.

3

Chloe was far more athletic than Marty would have guessed. She sprang from the parked barge and sailed a good ten feet above the hazardous water. The man with the raincoat tumbled in after her but the others stopped before they made that mistake.

Marty hadn't even thought of how the woman would grab onto anything once she got near the boat, but she aimed directly for the frayed rope the men had cut moments before.

“Oomph!” Chloe cried out when she hit the side.

“Hang on,” both men shouted in unison.

Marty bit her hand to keep from screaming. The barge decking was maybe five feet above the waterline, so Chloe's lower legs splashed in the water and up against the hull. The zombie hands seemed to float right for her.

Mark and Craig worked at pulling her up.

“Please get her out of there,” she said in a hopeful voice.

“Climb, woman!” Mark shouted over the side while he tugged her arms.

The hands in the water lunged just as Chloe's boots came out. Marty gasped as the zombie banged up against the hull and then seemed to get sucked underneath.

Chloe came up over the side and fell to the deck with a big smile on her face. The men sat next to her and caught their breath like they'd just run a marathon. Marty took a seat on the edge of the cargo hold so she didn't have to get down onto the deck itself.

Marty was reluctant to ask but had to know. “Did any of you see those hands in the water?”

“I saw the hands behind me,” Chloe joked.

“I didn't see anything. I was watching that sweet jump.” Mark pointed to Chloe sprawled on the deck.

She looked at Craig, but he simply shook his head.

Marty scanned the water one last time. Their ride had drifted into the middle of the channel and they were temporarily safe from the land-locked zombies still pining for them on the fleet of parked barges. The gaggle of zombies seemed to meander along the edge of the boats, but somehow knew the humans were out of reach.

A flash of yellow caught her eye drifting near the surface. The lead zombie's raincoat bubbled up to the top and floated downriver as if lost. Somewhere below the surface, that zombie man was now naked. She was certain there were at least two zombies down there.

Chloe seemed amped up. “Today is my lucky day,” she bragged while still trying to catch her breath. “There's a pier in that mess of boats and all the zombies walked right onto the barges from shore when they saw me. I can't believe I got away.”

“Thank you, Lord, for getting her to safety,” Marty said in a meek voice.

“Amen,” the wild-haired woman answered, somehow hearing her.

“Ma'am, I think we've escaped. I've got to be honest with you: When we were sitting in that garage I didn't think there was any way we'd get out of Cairo. Then when we saw all those zombies from up on the levee I figured we were dead.  When we hit the river I also thought we'd had it. Now, running back to you guys I thought I was toast.”

She and the two men laughed together.

“But I'm beginning to think General Jasper was right about you. There is something special going on when we are in your presence. It's like you have a direct line to the almighty. There is no way we should even be alive right now.”

“Well, she did let me break my arm,” Craig said with a coy smile while still looking at Marty.

“Oh, I don't have anything special to do with all this,” she replied as she waved her arm in acknowledgement that “this” meant Cairo, the killing fields, and the nearby barges.

“Ma'am, I'll follow you to the end of time,” Mark said in jest.

Marty turned serious. She was flattered that these young people wanted to help her out, but she knew from hard experience anyone tagging along with her was bound to end up in a much worse state than when they started. Victoria had been shot for trying to protect her. Liam got into endless trouble because of her. How many people were dead expressly because they knew of her?

“I don't know,” she said sadly.

“What's wrong?” Chloe asked with reverence. “We've made it. We've escaped.”

Marty turned to watch the river for a few moments. Their barge was the biggest thing moving on the river.  Driftwood, tree branches, a yellow raincoat, and a handful of water bottles floated along with them. The zombies chasing them had backed off and lost interest, so now it was just them on the river. By all indications they did escape, but she didn't feel that way at all.

“You mentioned John Jasper,” Marty replied in a deeply tired voice. “He was a good man.”

“Yes, he was,” Chloe agreed.

“But I don't know if I'm worth all the people dying to protect me. He handed me off to you, but you didn't know what you were being given. I'm a ... “

Marty tried to think of the right word.

“Gift,” Chloe said without hesitation.

“I was going to say burden,” she replied.

“Everyone over sixty says the same thing. My dad is retired military and he never lets me help him with anything. He won't let me cut his grass, do his dishes, or toss his laundry in the wash without him reading me the riot act. And every damned time he says the same thing: I don't want to be a burden.”

Chloe lost some of her spunk.

“You aren't saying anything I haven't heard a million times already. However, Jasper put you in my care because he said you were special. After seeing how you remained calm and collected in the face of all these zombies, I never want to let you go. I felt calmer just being around you. Like I could do anything if I put my mind to it. There's no way I would have rammed my truck like that for anyone else.”

She looked at her two friends sitting to her right. “Sorry guys, no offense, but if it makes you feel any better I probably wouldn't have rammed the truck to save myself if I'd been alone.”

Both men smiled and took the slight with grace.

“But any plans you may have had to rejoin your grandson are probably ruined. For that, I am sorry.” She looked down the river in the direction they headed. A bridge loomed a mile ahead.

“To be honest, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. Liam and Victoria said they were close to me while I was in Cairo, but now?” She looked to the west toward the ruined town. Lots of ash and smoke rose up behind the levee.

They all sat in silence while the barge spun in circles. Marty felt like her life of late had spun wildly out of control just like the boat under her. She bounced between numerous caretakers over the past few weeks and did little of her own volition. Oh, she knew Al tried to suggest she was doing enough just by surviving and that she had some critical tasks that would help humanity, but those were too big to think about day in and day out.

Minutes later, they approached the long bridge that linked Illinois with Kentucky. A few people still ran from west to east, but they had to climb over piles of junk stacked between the metal girders up there as some kind of roadblock.

Mark pointed up. “You think they are better off than us?”

“At least we have a ride,” Craig replied with a brief chuckle.

Marty watched as they went under the old bridge. For a few tense seconds it looked like they were going to slam into the support pylon in the middle of the river, but the barge seemed to veer away at the last possible moment. A few of the people on the bridge waved, but they were far too high to communicate back and forth, and no one dared jump from such height.

When they went a bit further on the water, they passed the mouth of the Mississippi River as it joined the Ohio. The water got choppy and for a short distance there was almost a straight line where the muddy water of the Ohio met the comparatively cleaner water of the other river.

Not far up that channel she got a good look at the ruins of the bridge linking Illinois with Missouri. It had been bent and broken near the Missouri shore, but the rest of the span was still intact. The greenish metal girders stood high above the roadway.

Was Liam up that way, she wondered. He mentioned he'd been on a barge.

There was no way to know, but she stared in that direction until she lost sight of both bridges when the barge carried them around a bend in the river. The number of parked barges also dwindled to nothing, as if their keepers didn't want them too far from the town. Thirty minutes later there were no signs of man anywhere along the riverbanks.

She took a deep breath of the damp river air because it reminded her of family fishing and boating trips. It would be impossible to count all the times she'd been out on or near the water, but the muddy banks and sickly decay of fish provided powerful jogs of her memory. She savored it for a little while until that yellow raincoat appeared again. It swirled in a nearby eddy and reminded her that the water was no longer a happy place.

Marty tried to make herself comfortable on the hard deck of the ship but figured it was a lost cause. She resolved that if she was going to be kept awake with discomfort she would use the time wisely.

I'm not letting my guard down for a second.

She searched intently for that raincoat in the water, sure it was still nearby.

A minute or two after making her pledge, she felt herself drift off to sleep.

I'll nap for five minutes.

4

“What time is it?” Marty said as she opened her eyes in the dim light of the world. With the meandering path of the river and the endless spinning of the barge she had no idea which way was east or west, thus she had no way of knowing if it was dusk or dawn.

The cooler air suggested it was dawn and her aching bones agreed.

“Five-something in the morning,” Mark said.

Marty groaned heavily when she sat up straight. At some point in the night she'd fallen over on her side. Someone had moved her closer to the side rail of the boat, or she'd gotten up and moved herself. She had no memory of it, either way.

“Sorry we didn't have a pillow for you,” Mark added. “It was a suck night for all of us.”

Craig still had his eyes closed on the far side of Mark. The dawn light was just bright enough to see his pasty white face.

A feminine shape stood at the front of the boat.

“How's she doing?” Marty asked him while looking to Chloe.

“Dunno. She was up there before I woke up. She could have been standing there all night for all I know.”

Marty waited a minute to see if her back was going to stop it's complaining.

“Mark, dear, will you help me to my feet? I'd like to go up front.”

“Sure.” He helped her up and steadied her arm until she seemed ready to move.

“Thank you, I'll be fine.” Walking was always a challenge at her age, but today her legs felt unusually strong.

A thin layer of fog hovered just above water level, giving the river a mystical quality. The barge floated almost halfway between both shores and the front end happened to be facing downriver like it should.

“Good morning, Chloe. Did you get any sleep?”

“A little. How did the rest of you sleep through all the barge traffic?”

“There was traffic?” Marty looked around in surprise.

“It's long gone. We got passed by about twenty towboats pushing one or two barges in front of them. They were nimble enough to avoid hitting us but careless enough that they didn't stop to rescue us. I waved at a couple of them and they just kept going.”

“I heard ‘em,” Mark added. “I just couldn't lift myself off the metal because I was too tired to care.”

Chloe turned to face Marty. “May I hold your hand? I'd like to avoid having you fall into the water.”

She glanced over the front edge of the decking with a wary eye. “I wouldn't say no to such a polite offer.”

The orange-haired woman put her arm through the crook of Marty's elbow and held fast. When they turned forward together, she spoke again.

“I thought I heard trucks on the shore and once I even saw some headlights, but that was hours ago. When I fell asleep I had ten dreams about crashing this barge into something, can you believe it?”

Marty looked at the pretty young woman who had done so much to save her. “You like being in control of things, don't you?” Marty spoke softly so the others couldn't hear her.

“Ya. I guess that comes from being in a military family and serving two tours in Iraq myself. My Type-A personality refuses to accept we are floating down this river without the proverbial paddle. Even when we reach the shore I have no idea what I'm supposed to do to keep you alive. We've basically run out of ammo. We have no food. No transportation. No destination. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“You did your best with what you had. The general couldn't have found a more capable person to take care of me. You have to believe that, dear.”

“Maybe,” she replied wistfully.

“You know, it's funny, but I get these voices in my head telling me what to do to stay alive. Sometimes they guide me in the right direction, but this is so big and complicated no one could know how to make the right choices in every situation. That's why I end up in the hands of friends and family a lot.”

Marty chuckled before continuing.

“I used to think that was a bad thing, but I've met some of the best of humanity since this disaster started.” Marty tapped Chloe on the elbow. “You are one of the brightest stars I've had on my journey. For that, I thank you.”

Chloe responded with a faint smile. “You're welcome. And I have to be honest with you about something else. Yesterday, I said I wasn't sure if I could have rammed the truck to save my own life. I had to fight zombies to get to southern Illinois. I had to fight the infected with my team of Zombie Killers inside and around Cairo. I had to fight through those creatures to get you to safety because Jasper gave me that task. But Marty, if I was on my own now I'm not sure I could do any of it, you know?”

Marty peered into the woman's deep blue eyes as the morning kept getting a little brighter. Chloe fought back tears.

“If I ran out of people to fight for, I might just give up. You saw those millions of zombies out there. There is a whole world of zombies beyond this little piece of America. It's too much for one person to stay alive.”

Marty nodded, wishing she knew the right words. With so much darkness in the world she found comfort in her faith, but she didn't presume to suggest that's what drove everyone else. Liam once promised her he would think about going back to church, but now there were no churches. She didn't even have a bible to read.

Marty got lost in thought longer than she realized.

“I'm sorry, I don't want to bring you down,” Chloe said.

“No, dear, it's me. I guess my sleep last night wasn't very refreshing.” She tried to laugh but it was tough because she was pretty miserable. Her muscles ached from overuse and her bones felt bruised from sleeping in odd positions. She silently admitted Chloe was the main reason she was still on her feet.

Chloe verbally switched gears. “All those towboats pushing barges downriver made sure I got barely a wink. I figured we were going to run into each one of them, but we must be floating just outside the main channel, or we had more of your good luck.”

“I didn't hear any barges at all, dear.” Despite feeling like she'd been rode hard and put away wet yesterday, she was certain nothing woke her in the overnight hours.

“Wow. Lucky you. The tugs sped by like they were in a hurry. Maybe that's why they didn't stop when I waved. I was standing here to be ready for one to go by when it got light, but I haven't seen or heard one since the darkest part of the night. You really didn't hear anything?” Chloe seemed surprised.

Marty knew the right card to play. “When you are as old as me, hearing takes a lot of focus.”

“I don't doubt it. I--” Chloe started to say.

They looked at each other because they both heard a noise.

“The truck engine,” the young woman said with anxiety.

Marty did her best to hear it again, but it was either too far away or her hearing aides were unable to pick it up. She watched Chloe lean toward shore as she listened, but soon she relaxed as if the noise was gone for her, too.

“I know I heard something,” Chloe finally said.

“Are you worried about it?” Marty replied.

“Jasper put the fear of God in me. He said bad people wanted to take you away.” She sighed heavily. “But I also know we can't live on this barge forever. There isn't much in the way of cities down the river this way. Not until Memphis and I don't even know how far that is. Over a hundred miles for sure.”

“Oh. I see.”

“On the other hand, maybe floating for a while will take us away from all the chaos near Cairo. Then maybe we'd find someone neutral, you know?”

Marty nodded.

“On the third hand, if someone showed up here and offered to get us to dry land and away from zombies, I might take that option.”

“A real pickle,” she agreed.

Marty and Chloe stood there listening for a long time. She was unable to hear the sound of the truck, but birds sang out from the wooded shore not far away. It was a worthy consolation prize.

“This is more my speed,” Chloe said in a soothing tone. “Not a zombie to be found.”

Marty nodded in agreement, content to stand with her on the prow overlooking the misty waterway.

It was nice for a while, but something made Marty look down to some motion in the water off to the side.

“Oh, my stars!” She reached over and gripped Chloe's arm as hard as she could.

Chloe's head whipped around in an instant. “What was that? Was it a zombie?”

Marty stared for ten or fifteen seconds before she relaxed her hand.

Chloe chuckled with a bit of fatalism in her tone. “Don't fall over, huh?”

“Yeah, don't fall,” Marty said from a thousand miles away. More like ten thousand miles. Whatever distance it was from Missouri to Korea because the man's face staring up at her for those few seconds was, she was certain, the spitting image of her dead son Robert.

But he'd been dead since 1951.

5

They floated in silence for another half hour. Marty kept her eyes on the water next to the boat, silently hoping the zombie would return so she could reassure herself that it wasn't actually her dead son at all. His body was safely interred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery and not floating in the river in some bizarre stroke of bad luck. Fate could not be that cruel.

Chloe continued to listen for the engine and a couple times she reported hearing it come or go. She was convinced there was only one truck, but she couldn't give any sense of whether that was good or bad. Marty figured that was good news because she'd seen General Jasper with all his military toys and never wanted to be on the wrong side of those men and women.

That's why I thought I saw Robbie.

She pieced together all the ways her mind played tricks on her lately. After spending so much time with Jasper and the military, and Al dressed in his soldier's uniform inside her visions, it was natural to think about Robert and his military service. Seeing that zombie in the water only reminded her of her son. There was no way it was really him.

It wasn't long, and they finally saw the vehicle. It was a multi-colored armored truck with six wheels and it reminded her of the one driven by Hayes and later by Mel and Phil. It was parked on the rocky shoreline pointed toward the water as if it was waiting for them to float by.

The barge drifted closer to the Missouri side of the river than the Kentucky side, but it was still a hundred yards out on the water. It made it difficult to see the people standing and waving next to the truck.

Marty gave a tentative wave but mostly because it seemed polite.

“Do you know them?” Chloe asked.

“No. Do you?”

“Nope, but I was hoping you did.” She looked to the two men. “Either of you know them?”

Mark had Craig out of his sleep but neither man knew who they were.

The barge floated onward down the river and the people on the shore jumped in their truck and retreated into the trees.

“Guess they just wanted to wave at us,” Chloe said without conviction.

Marty shared her concern. In her experience no one did anything anymore if it didn't have a purpose. The four people waving out to the barge had to want something.

She spent a long time imagining what drove the mystery people to show themselves. Was it a trap? Were they seeking help? Were they trying to warn the boat about trouble ahead?

A half hour later they saw the truck again. It was parked at the end of a pile of rocks that extended out into the river as part of the engineering works that kept the middle of the river flowing rapidly. The same four people stood and waved while standing in front of the truck at the point closest to the barge.

Marty's life raft was going to pass the rocky projection with about fifty feet to spare. The four of them moved to the side of the barge as it drifted in the current. This time they would get a good look at the visitors.

Even with her bad vision she saw the shape of her grandson Jerry.

Except Liam said he was dead. That made two dead people she'd seen today.

I'm seeing ghosts.

The man's identity was confusing, but she was positive the woman standing beside him was Lana.

“How is this possible?” Marty blurted out.

“You know them,” Chloe said without making it a question.

“Yes, but one of them is dead.”

“I knew it. Somehow I just knew you'd come through for us.” Chloe waved at the people on the bank. “Wait. Dead?”

When the barge neared the truck, Marty was certain she recognized all four of the people waving back.

“That's my grandson and his wife. The other two are Mel and Phil. They helped rescue me weeks ago.” Her heart beat too fast for her old body and her head lightened. Had Liam made a mistake? He said Jerry was dead and he attacked Lana, yet there they are.

“Chloe, would you be a dear and shout to them that I recognize them?”

Chloe smiled. “Aye, aye, skipper.”

“Marty Peters says hello!”

“Hi Grandma,” Lana shouted back with a wild wave.

“We need to get you off that barge,” Jerry shouted a heartbeat later.

It was undoubtedly him.

Chloe spoke without waiting for Marty. “We'd love it if you had any ideas. We're on this waterway without a paddle.” She laughed at her joke.

There seemed to be some kind of argument on the shore as Phil took off his shirt. The barge floated a bit more and passed directly in front of the truck. Marty used those moments to figure out what Phil planned to do.

“No!” she shouted. “There are zombies in the water!”

Her voice might have been heard by those at shore, but it didn't seem to dissuade Phil. He started to scramble down the giant limestone rocks toward the water's edge.

“No! You can't make it. There is something below us. Find another way!” Chloe cupped her hand as she shouted toward shore and that seemed to do the trick. Phil got right up to the water, but Mel called him back.

The four people on the shore stared for a moment, perhaps unsure what to do next.

“We'll think of something!” Jerry finally shouted from afar. The whole group climbed into the truck and it backed off the embankment and disappeared into the trees once more.

Marty chanced another look over the edge right below her. This time she saw the face before it could dip beneath the waves. She didn't want to believe who it was because it couldn't be him.

Had she heard Liam wrong? Jerry wasn't dead at all. Was he? Was her brain playing tricks?

God, please don't let me get dementia.

As much as she hated asking for anything from heaven above, there would be nothing worse than losing control of her mind. After all that she'd seen and done the past few weeks, it made sense why it would push her mind off the mental cliff at a high rate of speed. If seeing her dead husband in a wonderland of stars and waterfalls didn't do it, perhaps seeing her dead son underneath her boat would get the job done.

Just thinking about her son evoked so many painful memories of his loss in the Korean conflict. Staring into the muddy churn below made her realize for certain how unstable she'd become.

I could end it by falling over.

A powerful voice deep in her soul told her it was the right thing to do. It would solve all her problems. It would ensure no one put themselves in harm's way for her. It would keep Liam from wasting his life trying to track her down and rescue her. All that talk of cure would fall to someone else. Her daughter Victoria was safe with Liam, her dead grandson Jerry came back to life, and her lost son Robert was now found.

No, that's all mixed up.

Despite being against her religion, she assured herself it wasn't really suicide.

The smell of maple syrup overwhelmed her. She'd smelled it before but couldn't place it.

That last breakfast with Robbie?

The memory felt wrong. It had something to do with the gator ride back at the ditch in front of Cairo. When the zombies arrived, they brought the smell with them. They brought breakfast with them?

It wasn't her making the decision. It was them.

That solved all her ethical and moral dilemmas.

She was compelled to fall over the side.

So that's what she did.

Chapter 12. Save our souls

A few minutes outside Love's Truck Plaza, near Charleston, MO.

“They shot the other driver,” Dave said with a mix of shock and remorse into the camera. “Did you guys see that? Tell me you saw that?”

It was hard to tell if he was talking to his dashcam or the people inside the truck with him. Liam wondered if the viewers on the broadcast could have possibly seen anything, especially since there was no direct connection to the Internet. That thought reminded him of something important he'd realized back at the truck stop.

“Dave, you have to turn that thing off. If the government sees Victoria and I are with you, that's going to cause a lot of trouble.”

The cab fell silent.

Dave drove down the highway while apparently thinking it over, but a quarter of a mile later he reached to the dash and clicked it off. The happy-go-lucky young man held the wheel as he turned in his seat to look back to Liam. “Trouble for who?”

“Whom,” Sabella replied with emphasis. “Trouble for whom.”

Leah, the middle sister, made a sound of frustration with her lips. “Mom, you are so extra. We've just survived a gunfight and you're being a substitute teacher again.”

Liam turned to Victoria and rolled his eyes. He did it to be funny, but he also wanted to think how to reply to Dave. The truth is that if Dave's video was broadcast to the Internet as he said, then everyone in the bootheel of Missouri could be in danger. If Liam went around telling everyone he met about the shadowy National Internal Security group and their plans to wipe out the bad part of humanity with their plague, the odds were good they'd swoop in and kill each and every living person just for being near Liam and his friends. Yet, saying that all to Dave while in the presence of the girls wasn't a great idea, either.

“Mainly me and Victoria,” he said after suffering the withering stare of the driver. “Mostly,” he added after a slight pause.

“That boy told us about dreamer zombies and runners,” Susan squeaked.

Everyone waited for his reply. Victoria's hand on his knee was the only friendly vibe he had at that moment.

“Look, guys. It's no big deal, really. The government is after my grandma because she is 104-years-old. It turns out the cure to the plague is found in the blood of people over the age of 100.”

Sabella replied in a stern voice. “Then your grandma needs to get her buns to help them.”

“Yeah, she tried that.” Liam ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. “How do I explain this without sounding like a conspiracy theorist?”

He put his hands in his lap and took a calming breath.

“All right. Here it is.”

Liam explained the high points of his three-week adventure since the zombies came, and he touched on how grandma fit into the government plans for finding a cure, but he left out the parts that required him to name names or reveal the people of the NIS. He described them as members of this or that government agency rather than give them names or titles. There was a part of him that wanted these people to know the truth, but little girls like Susan didn't deserve to become fugitives just because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. If Elsa Cantwell's agency caught up to them and somehow made them talk, they would be unable to say anything that would get them in trouble, so maybe they would be let go.

“We escaped that great horde of zombies and made it to the farmhouse where we met Sabella and her daughters. You pretty much know the rest.” Liam looked at Dave and hoped it all made sense. He once again reminded himself to find some notebooks and pens, so he could start keeping notes for his eventual book about the whole thing.

They approached an interchange where two interstates came together. A handful of other rigs cruised along with them, but most turned to go north toward St. Louis. Liam's ride was heading south, toward Memphis. Dave slowed and took the cloverleaf turn in a low gear, which seemingly gave him time to consider Liam's story.

“So, you are really running from one agency and trying to find another wing of the government, correct?”

“Yes. But first I have to find my Grandma. She was supposed to be safe in Cairo, but as I've said that town is now some kind of zombie magnet. You saw them lined up when you made your pickup.”

“No lying, we saw it, didn't we? That was 100% legit crazy.” Dave looked to his camera but stopped talking to it when he remembered it was off.

“Highway 55 southbound, guys,” Dave said with disappointment, as if no one was out there listening to him.

Victoria spoke up. “You talk to those guys a lot, don't you?”

“The road can get pretty lonely. I mean I do alright with the ladies, but most of them are in a hurry, if you catch my drift. They jump in my truck, then jump back out. There isn't much chance of finding a stable girlfriend when you spend your whole life at seventy miles an hour.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the cab as Elise shifted in the passenger seat. Dave made a point of not looking over to her, which only made it more obvious he was doing it.

Eventually, Dave seemed to realize his words. He shot a look to Sabella, then to Liam. “Hey, you want to help me check my load? There's a pull-off up ahead and I want to see if those bullets damaged any of my hoses.”

“We could all use some fresh air,” Sabella added.

“Agreed,” Elise said.

As promised, there was an extra lane of highway where it was easy to pull over to the side and check things out. Liam grabbed one of his guns and followed Dave out his door. A passing truck blew by and nearly blew him over.

“Bastards are supposed to clear a lane for stopped drivers,” Dave said in a pissed off voice. “Courtesy is a thing of the past I guess.”

Almost as he said it, a second truck came by at a similar speed, but it moved over to the center lane to be as far away from Dave's truck as possible. The driver even waved as he flew by. The wash of wind wasn't nearly as bad.

“Ha,” Dave said with a chuckle once it was quiet enough to talk. “That driver moved over to make a liar out of me. Crazy how that happens.”

“Yeah, I've seen some odd coincidences out here,” Liam replied.

Dave went to work looking at the hoses and wires linking the front part of his truck with the cargo hauler in the back. There weren't as many hoses as he expected.

“Everything was good back at the Love's, but all I need is one nick in my lines and the brakes won't work. Then we either blow some tires from dragging them along or we fly off a cliff because we can't stop. Don't want that.”

“Uh, no. No, we don't.”

“That whole deal was weird. They wouldn't let us leave our cabs to check any of this shit when we picked up. Normally, after taking on cargo, I'd secure all my lines, put my own lock on the back, and set my tandems depending how the load sits inside the trailer. After driving through their operation and taking on whatever they put back there, they just sent me on my merry way.”

“And that's unusual?”

Dave laughed. “You have no idea. The Department of Transportation has me fill out a damned book explaining my whole day. If I reach a certain number of hours behind the wheel I have to pull over and shut down.”

“That's good, right? You don't fall asleep behind the wheel?”

Dave looked at him like he'd just said something stupid.

“You like people watching you?”

Liam saw the humor because Dave put a camera on himself and talked to total strangers as part of his day, but he understood the man's point. Liam had spent the last few weeks under the watchful eye of drones, surveillance cameras, and spies.

“No, I definitely don't,” he replied.

“Well, good news,” Dave said as he got back to the task in front of him. “It looks like the gunshots didn't screw with my lines, if nothing else.” He touched the blue and red wires as if to confirm they were tight but didn't adjust them. “Let's check the back.”

He and Dave slowly made their way along the side of the trailer. The pony-tailed driver looked over the area where the cab mated with the cargo puller.

“Fifth wheel looks good. Not easy to mess that up.” He banged on the metal side of the trailer. “But I still check it whenever I walk by.”

“How many trucks do you think made pickups like you did?” Liam asked breezily.

“You saw the line. Hundreds, probably. Maybe thousands.” He pulled out his phone and looked at it while he walked alongside his trailer. A couple of 18-wheelers scooted over to the middle lane just before they roared by.

“A few trucks are going by us every couple of minutes. I bet they are all from Wilson City because when I arrived last night, there wasn't a single truck on the road going the opposite direction.”

“Wow.” Liam walked behind the other man but stopped when he heard something odd.

The noise of the two trucks faded as they sped away on the highway and no more were close from the other direction, so there would soon be relative quiet.

He stood glued to his spot while trying to confirm what he imagined he heard.

“Dave, I--”

A sound like fingernails on a chalkboard came from inside the truck.

Liam looked underneath to see if Victoria or the girls were on the other side. He wouldn't put it past Victoria to pull some kind of prank, even if it wasn't a very good one. She'd been trying to keep his spirits up since they came out of the river.

There was no one there, so whatever it was had to be inside.

“Zombies!” Liam blurted.

Dave spun around, still holding his phone.

“Where?”

Liam pointed to the trailer.

“What? Why would there be zombies inside? That's insane.” Dave stopped mid-sentence when the scratching noise became a bit louder.

“Nah, that sounds like hogs. Kind of dumb to put them in enclosed trailers because they'll be dead by the time we reach the drop off, but they'll still be edible. Food is king these days.”

Liam couldn't argue with his logic, but it didn't feel right. Dave picked up his load while inside a giant horde of zombies. Those same zombies walked in unison toward where the trailers were making their pickups. He'd originally thought that was because the army was escaping over there, but now the reason seemed clear.

“I can tell you for sure by doing this,” Liam said in a determined voice.

He slammed his palms on the outside of the trailer and then shouted at the top of his lungs, “Dinner time!”

They both froze so they could listen to the response.

Not only did the scratching and pawing ratchet up along the entire length of the trailer, but the whole thing shifted as if whatever was in there suddenly moved to one side.

2

“Well ain't that a pantload and a half?” Dave said as the noise and commotion settled back down. “They are paying me to haul sick people?”

Liam looked behind Dave in the direction they came from. The only vehicles on the highway were the big rigs. Another pair crawled toward them but were still miles away on the perfectly flat stretch of highway.

“There were millions of them in that crowd,” Liam said in a weak voice. “Do you think they loaded them all?”

“When I loaded my truck, there were tons of ‘em standing around outside the barricades.”

“We watched as they loaded your trucks all night long. The crowd of infected got smaller as they moved toward the river and the loading area. Somehow, they got rid of a good portion of them.” Liam's mind raced to remember anything Elsa or Hayes might have told him about their intentions but came up blank.

Dave eyed the cargo hauler for a moment. “That thing is fifty-three feet long and a little over eight wide. I've never gotten into the people-hauling business, but figure maybe six rows of fifty crammed together.”

Liam did the math. “300 zombies?”

“Give or take. Probably a lot less because you won't get them to line up.” Dave let out a nervous chuckle.

“We have to do something,” he replied.

“Your friend said they are tracking these trailers. I guess this explains why.”

“Victoria has to know. She won't believe it, either.” Liam's mind was already thinking of how to get rid of the cargo. They could push the truck over a cliff to kill all those inside, but there was nothing but flat fields for as far as he could see in every direction. Even the highway seemed like it was stretched over a dining room table because it had no hills or dips.

“Wait just a damned minute,” Dave demanded. “I don't think they are zombies. Listen.” Dave put his finger to his lips to signify silence for Liam.

Sure enough, he heard something that couldn't be from a zombie and it came from inside the truck.

Someone was tapping the back wall of the trailer, probably with their knuckles.

“Tap tap tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap.”

“S.O.S. they said at the same time.”

“Shit on a shingle, those are living people,” Dave added as he turned to go to the back of the trailer.

Liam grabbed his sleeve to stop him. “You aren't going to open it, are you?”

Dave nodded. “I'm 100% going to open it. You heard that knocking. I bet everyone is alive in there just begging to be let out. I don't care how much they pay me, I'm not hauling people.”

Echoes of That Guy ran through his mind. Was Dave going to do something stupid and be That Guy responsible for their deaths?

“Wait,” Liam said as he let him go. “None of them are screaming or anything.” He put his ear up against the metal exterior of the side of the trailer and motioned for Dave to do the same.

“Maybe they have gags in their mouths?” the driver suggested.

Liam yelled “Knock once if you are alive!”

Immediately the trailer burst into chaos again and the clawing and banging gave no hint of a unified response, other than what one would expect from infected seeking food. Dave stepped back when the whole trailer rocked side-to-side over the back wheels.

It took several minutes for the noise to die back down, and during that time Dave made no effort to make good on opening the back doors.

“I don't know what to say. They aren't alive, are they?”

Liam shook his head.

“What do we do? This is 100% messed up, ya' know?”

Liam flashed a grim smile. “Trust me, I know messed up. The people who loaded these trailers are experts at messing things up. It's their jobs, I think.”

“Geeze Louise,” Dave rambled, “I can't take these monsters to my destination, can I?”

Liam was going to reply but Dave snapped his fingers.

“Disposal! That's what we're doing. We are getting rid of these things. Taking them somewhere to be destroyed. That makes sense, right?”

“Maybe, but there is one little problem.” Liam stepped toward the front of the trailer again and tapped out S.O.S. in Morse code with his knuckles.

The reply was the same.

“Are we going to throw the living person in the trash, too?” Liam wondered aloud.

“Baby out with the bathwater?” Dave asked with a trace of his usual humor.

“Right. This is totally jacked up. I need to talk to Victoria.” Liam looked at Dave with a serious face. “You aren't going to open those doors, are you?”

Zombie books and movies were littered with guys like Dave who said one thing and did the opposite, so he studied the man for an extra-long time even after he shook his head in the affirmative.

“For the love of God, Dave, if you are going to open those doors just tell me right now and I'll get my gun and do it with you. The last thing we need is a surprise.”

“You aren't very trusting for a kid,” Dave responded, trying to be funny.

“Not after what I've seen. The only person I trust in this world is up front. She doesn't screw around when life and death is on the line. Please tell me I can trust you on this. No opening the doors!”

Dave hesitated in a way that made Liam nervous. He felt the pull of the rifle slung over his shoulder and wondered for the millionth time if this was his life now. Kill or be killed, and only because the person standing next to him was too stupid to grasp the new dangers in this world.

But Dave seemed to relax. “I'm going back to the cab to stay as far away from this trailer as I can. I admit I wanted to open the doors, but if those people were alive back there they would have let us know.”

“Except for the one guy. He's definitely alive.”

“Right,” Dave replied. “But I don't know how he's doing it.”

“Me, either,” Liam replied as he walked back toward the front.

The signal knocks on the wall of the trailer got louder as if the person knew they were leaving, so Liam stopped and went back a bit.

“We'll get you out of there,” he called in a loud voice.

It was hard to tell if the survivor heard him because the rest of the trailer broke out in bedlam once again.

3

The others had to hear the sound for themselves, so before they could leave everyone got out of the truck to go back and listen.

They all agreed someone was alive because of the repeated S.O.S call for help, but no one could figure out how. The only point where they found consensus was that they had to rescue the person.

Sabella had the first suggestion. “What if we unhook the trailer and then shoot through the sides?”

“No, we might hit the living person,” Liam responded.

“We also couldn't get many headshots,” Victoria added. She patted the strap of her AK.

“Could we tip over the trailer, so it ripped open?” Elise offered?

“Then we'd have a bunch of zombies running around,” Liam replied a split-second later.

The young woman looked at him with a frown. “What makes you an expert on this stuff?”

Sabella stepped up. “He saved us, Liz. Give him a break.”

Elise studied him with squinted and intense eyes. “I don't care. I don't trust anyone who obviously enjoys being out here and dealing with this ... this shit.”

Liam was taken aback. He took no joy at all suffering through everything he'd done to date, but deep down he admitted he'd gotten along much better than most people. Yes, it scared the crap out of him a lot of times and his hands shook wildly on occasion as if to remind him how frightened he was, but he attributed his overall mental persistence in the face of so many zombies to all the books he'd read on the subject. The survivors are always those who are mentally tough and can think things through before they act.

He looked at Dave, wondering if he really would have opened the doors if he'd not been there to stop him. It seemed totally illogical.

“I assure you I don't want to be here a second longer than I have to, but we are here. If we don't do something to help people--like that person stuck inside the back of the trailer--we are all doomed. My grandma would explain it better, but basically, we have to keep civilization going. We must do the right thing, even when no one else in society is watching. If we don't ... ” he thought of all the books that ended with the total collapse of mankind, “there won't be anyone left to get the cure and rebuild the world.”

Victoria stepped next to him, so her hip touched his. “This is why I travel with this guy. He always does what's right. And Liam is right about this, too. We have to get this poor soul out of there, and then we have to see if all these other trucks are carrying prisoners inside with the zombies. I think we can all agree that isn't right.”

“I, uh, don't want a fight,” Sabella replied. “I have to get my girls to safety. Far away from these zombies. Far away from men like Wilder. There has to be somewhere we can go that will take care of my girls? Doesn't the government have FEMA camps, or whatever?”

“I once heard news of a camp set up in East St. Louis, but that was on the radio on almost the first day. We found something like a camp at Forest Park in St. Louis, but that was going downhill when we left. Since then, I haven't heard anything about distant camps. Most of the East Coast is coming this way, so if there are places of safety maybe they are in the middle of the country or to the west.”

He glanced to Victoria.

“I'm with Liam. He forgot about the big Boy Scout camp we found, but it wasn't run by FEMA. It's been four or five days since we saw it, so who knows if it survived. We've talked to a lot of government types and never heard a word about where to go. I guess Cairo was a camp, right?” She looked back to Liam.

“Yeah, I guess. It was a holdout, at least.”

“But you said Cairo was destroyed,” Sabella responded. “Is nowhere safe, now?”

“Yeah, at least around these parts,” Liam replied.

He glanced at little Susan and smiled when he caught her eye. “But don't worry, m'kay? If there is somewhere safe out there, we'll find it.”

Susan smiled while holding onto her mom's pant leg.

They stood as a group near the fifth wheel and Liam happened to look down the highway. He didn't want to start a new topic if the big rigs were near because the noise would drown him out. However, this time a red sports car caught his eye.

“Well, look at that,” he said.

The others turned to where he focused his attention.

An ancient red convertible stayed in the near lane as it closed the distance. He and everyone else took a step back toward the truck because it was going to pass close.

“What's he doing?” Sabella asked with alarm.

“That's one of the original Mustangs,” Dave remarked.

The sportscar driver had the hammer down and he approached like a bullet.

A white-bearded old man drove the car and a similarly old-looking woman sat next to him. She had on a pair of big sunglasses and the wind whipped her long white hair behind her.

The driver hugged the yellow line at the edge of the highway, but at the last second, he raised his fist in the air and shouted. “Waaa-hooo” as he blasted by.

“Looks like someone is having fun,” Dave said with a laugh.

“He could have killed us,” Sabella replied.

Liam knew they were both right, but he sided with Dave. The old guy was probably taking his hot rod out for one last cruise and just wanted someone to see him go.

They spread out a bit after the Mustang passed, but Liam got right back to business.

“Dave?” He asked. “You're the driver. What do you think of the cargo?”

“I'm kind of glad I don't have my peeps watching because I don't think I've been acting very smart of late. I still can't believe what I'm hauling. I've been thinking about our discussion earlier, Liam. Even if I thought we were taking these zombies to disposal centers, why are we all going to different destinations? Wouldn't it make more sense to take them all to the same place?”

Liam nodded in agreement.

“But the trucks left the truck stop going all different directions. What possible reason could there be to put zombies in the back of our trucks and send us all over the place?”

“And why are the locks set up so they can be tracked?” Victoria asked. “Those two women back in the truck stop said the authorities would come looking for any truck that went off course. We saw that when Dave picked us up, but why?”

Liam rubbed the piece of jewelry in his pocket while he thought it over. Elsa said something about the importance of the group of zombies from St. Louis. While the army and everyone else dealt with the zombies in front of Cairo that came from Chicago and Indianapolis, the real threat was marching in a great dust cloud down the western side of the Mississippi River. But this part of the plan made no sense at all. If Elsa somehow controlled them, she could have used the group of a million zombies to attack anywhere she wanted.

That was nuts, but she didn't put it past Elsa after he witnessed the kinds of resources she had at her disposal, up to and including an intercontinental ballistic missile.

So, if she wasn't using the zombies as a great army to do her bidding, then why the hell was it assembled in the first place?

“Dave, I never did ask. Where are you supposed to deliver them?”

Dave looked shocked. “I can't do this job this anymore. I don't care what they're paying.”

“I know, and I agree, but just tell me where they were supposed to go.”

“Phoenix, Arizona.”

“That tells us nothing,” Sabella replied with sadness.

“No,” Liam said, “it does tell us one thing: whoever is on the receiving end of this delivery, they are almost certainly part of the conspiracy. Someone has to be there to open the lock and take ownership of the contents.”

“Uh, I think it's whomever,” Sabella said with a bit of cheek.

“Oh, mom,” Leah gasped. She ripped off her glasses as if she meant business. “You are so embarrassing.”

Sabella smiled at Liam with a knowing look. She'd made him the recipient of her corrections, but she probably did it to comfort Leah.

For that he was glad, because his next suggestion was going to make everyone upset.

It was time to mount a rescue.

Chapter 13. Peeping Tom

The farmhouse.

Zombie Robert looked into the window and watched the boy and girl go up the steps and out of his sight. His warped mind felt the presence of many little bodies around him, but he wanted nothing to do with them.

The only thing that mattered was the boy because they shared the same blood.

The Zombie crept along the back edge of the house and turned the corner to go to the front. He reached the edge of the front porch but halted at the sight of the big machine parked on the front lawn. It rumbled menacingly and spewed out black smoke that acted as a warning. The living Robert might have recognized it as the fear of technology, but Zombie Robert merely saw it as something that could interfere with his quest to find the boy.

He took a few steps backward and leaned against a small bush on the side of the house to wait.

Waiting was his expertise.

It wasn't long before the front door of the house opened. Zombie Robert sensed the vibration and took that as his cue to move back up to the porch.

The boy stood not twenty feet away, but he carried guns. The painful sticks he knew so well.

There was something inside him that wanted to rush the porch and meet up with the boy, but it shared a place with another voice that wanted him to remain still where he stood. It seemed the safer choice.

Zombie Robert stood there for a long time as the boy and his friends mounted the machine on the lawn and rode it out of his sight.

He felt something that living Robert would have known as loss. He'd been very close to his target and now that target was speeding away.

The zombie ran after the truck as it rolled over the gravel of the driveway, but he had to turn away as it neared the roadway. There were other big trucks and their lights would find him. The boy's truck joined the others and faded into the night until it was a tiny red light on the horizon.

Unable to feel frustration or despair, Robert had nothing else to do but follow the scent for as long as it took.

However, less than a mile down the road the wind caught him just right and he smelled something even more powerful than the boy. Someone else shared his blood and demanded his attention.

He stopped to sort through the two competing directives.

The boy was close.

The new scent was far.

The boy was moving away.

The new scent seemed to be getting closer.

Zombie Robert had no capacity for surprise or elation, but a word crept up from deep inside his broken mind. It had some residual power from when he was alive, and it came out as the closest thing to excitement for a zombie.

Mother.

Despite the powerful draw of the word, he was unable to decide for many minutes which way he should go. He became as still as a scarecrow in the dark cornfield until a new stimulus interrupted him.

“Reorient. Reacquire.” Those two words stood out from the noise in his brain. He felt compelled to obey them immediately. Zombie Robert might have remembered such words from his time in Korea.

He turned around in the field and headed in a new direction. He wanted to meet her so bad, though none of those words were possible in his ruined brain pan. Yet, that strange longing gave him purpose and drive he didn't have up until that moment.

That's when he figured out how to sprint.

He ran all night in the flat fields and he only stopped at the break of dawn when he finally saw her. The woman who he would have called mother stood on a floating box on the big water.

Swim.

He didn't wait a further second once he saw the woman and jumped right into the water to go to her. Zombie Robert couldn't know that normal Robert wasn't a swimmer. It didn't care. A skill was required to reach “mother” and so he used it.

The brown water presented no challenge for him because he didn't need air. When the current buffeted him and dragged him to the bottom he used that to spring himself downstream at top speed. After minutes of repeating that action he neared the great floating box.

There was no way to grip the boat and climb to his Mother. It was wet and smooth on the outside everywhere he looked. At one point he came up from under the hull and found his Mother looking right at him.

He ducked back into the water despite the deep longing to reach her. The others on the box had the long sticks that could hurt him. He chanced one more look at her from under the waves, but she still watched.

In his zombie way, Robert wished his mother would leave those with the dangerous sticks and come meet him in the water. That strange sensation filled his zombie brain until there was nothing more important than having her come to him. It almost felt like a skill he'd developed. Running. Sprinting all night. Swimming. These were skills, too.

Now, he tapped into the new one.

Jump to me, Mother.

Jump to me so I can taste your life-giving blood.

At least, that's what he would think if he had a brain.

Seconds later, someone splashed into the water next to him.

Mother?

Chapter 14. MRAP swim club

Day 21. Morning. On the bank of the Mississippi River.

“Do you think Grandma was surprised to see me?” Jerry asked.

Lana watched the floating barge over her shoulder as she climbed in the back of the MRAP. Mel jumped in the front and had it going the moment the back door was shut.

“She might not have heard you were dead,” Lana replied with a coy smile. She was so happy to have her husband back she'd probably never get tired of that feeling of reunion.

“Yeah, I guess you're right. I figured the first thing she'd say to me is that I'm looking good for a dead man, and then I could reply with the line about how my death has been greatly exaggerated.”

“Hey zombie, you guys need to stop talking about death,” Phil called back from the front seat with a laugh.

“Well, you try dying and coming back to life and see if you can shut up about it,” Jerry replied.

Lana laughed along with the two men because they'd been ribbing each other constantly as they got reacquainted. Jerry gave the ex-cop trouble for bragging how much he enjoyed dating Mel, the driver. The kicker was that Mel hated all the men in their group when she first arrived at Lana and Jerry's doorstep.

Phil got back at him by poking fun at how he'd spent time as a zombie.

She didn't think it was tactful, but the apocalypse changes everyone.

“Oh, shit!” Mel screamed.

Before Lana could ask what's wrong, she slid down the bench seat and hit the back door because the heavy military truck accelerated.

“What is it?” Lana finally got out.

Jerry sat next to her and together they held onto the loose seat belts while the truck bounced on the rocky shore.

“You, uh, won't believe me,” Mel said as she worked the steering wheel, brakes, and gas of the truck like a highly-skilled maestro.

Phil turned back to the passenger compartment. “Your grandmother fell overboard.” He was gravely serious, now.

“We can catch them,” Mel added.

“Then what?” Lana asked of Jerry.

“Is this thing amphibious?” he replied. He then asked the same question in a louder voice to the pair in the front.

“No,” Mel answered right away. “We'd sink like a rock.”

“Then what are we doing?” Lana said. But she quickly added, “I mean, what can we do to help her?” She tried to look out one of the small porthole windows on the side of the truck, but they were moving too fast and her weight shifted as Mel maneuvered along the riverbank.

“I'm trying to get in front of them. Then one of us can swim out there ... ” Mel let that hang in the air before looking over to Phil. “That makes sense, right?”

Phil's reply was only meant for Mel, but she heard it well enough.

“They said zombies were in the water. How do we fight them?”

Mel continued driving and didn't answer.

“I'll go, too,” Lana called up to them.

“Then I'm going--” Jerry replied in an instant.

“No, you swim like a cat on bath day. No way.” Lana said it jokingly, but it was the truth. Jerry was a lot of things, but he didn't mix with water.

Jerry wanted to argue, and she saw the conflict on his face, but he knew she was right.

“I want you standing behind me with a rifle. Shoot anything that comes close to us.” Lana pointed to the rack of AR's lashed against the bulkhead of the MRAP. Mel and Phil came prepared.

Jerry spoke in a voice only she could hear. “Are you sure? I know I could swim out there because it isn't that far.”

She admired his persistence and recognized he was trying to play the hero without being loud enough for the others to hear their discussion. He knew as well as her that her way made the most sense. Still, being the man, he had to try to get himself into the maximum amount of danger.

“I can't have you dying again,” she said in jest as she tried to touch his cheek. It came across as more of a slap because the truck hopped and slid to a stop.

“This is the end,” Mel shouted. “Nothing but mud ahead.”

She and Jerry let go of the seat belts and got to business. He pulled one of the black rifles from its cradle and she pushed open the back doors.

It took her eyes a second or two to adjust to the brightness of the day outside the dim truck, but it was impossible to miss the lone barge floating a hundred feet out in the current. Mel had managed to get them in front of the boat, but it would pass them in the next thirty seconds, max.

She untied her boots and kicked them off like it was a race, then she danced her way on the rocky shore right up to the water's edge. Jerry was at her side by the time she was ready to jump in.

Mel didn't even wait to say anything to them. She jumped out of the MRAP with her gun and ran down the shoreline toward the mud flat.

Phil ran up next to Lana and tossed off his already-untied boots.

“You ready?” he said.

“Go!” she replied.

There was no time to kiss Jerry or otherwise make a scene. All she did was wave and he did the same in return. The water was at her waist before she belatedly called back to him.

“I love you, Jerry Peters. Don't you go dying on me again.”

“Don't you die on me,” he replied before hastily adding, “and I love you, too.”

It struck her how dangerous it was to get in the water with zombies.

He must really trust me.

Before she got too far into the water she yanked Liam's knife from her belt and gripped it with her right hand. It might slow her down a tiny bit but there was no way in hell she was going into deep water without some way to protect herself.

She noticed Phil had his own knife out.

The shirtless man gave her a grim nod and then launched himself into deeper water.

“We're coming grandma!” she shouted. The barge was almost parallel to the shore now and she'd have to hustle to keep up with it.

Fortunately for her, the current helped guide her in the right direction.

2

She and Phil reached the rust colored barge hull at about the same time. The current swirled sticks and other small pieces of debris in random directions as if the boat was causing the turbulence. She expected to find grandma right there fighting for her life to stay afloat, but she was nowhere to be found.

“They are floating away!”

Lana looked up to the deck of the boat. A lone man leaned over the edge and pointed into the water just ahead of them. He nursed one of his arms like he'd been hurt.

“Where are the others?” Lana shouted back.

“Swimming!” He continued to point ahead.

Phil had been doing his best to hold onto the smooth hull of the boat but now used it to push himself away.

“We have to swim,” he said to her.

The current was her best friend for the next few moments as it jetted her with a speed she could never do on her own. In short order they caught up to the first swimmer.

“She was right here!” an orange-haired woman shouted.

Lana scanned the water for any sign of life. If they were on a still pond they might be able to use wave action and bubbles to hone in on the drowning person, but out here it was all bubbles and waves. The water was a silty mud-brown and it endlessly swirled in fast-moving eddies and whirlpools.

The three of them floated along for twenty or thirty seconds as they all searched the churn for grandma.

Finally, the old woman's head shot out of the water a few feet away from Lana.

“Shit! Here she is!” she shouted to the others.

Marty had her eyes closed but breathed out with obvious relief at finding air again.

“Robbie, no,” Marty cried out. “Why are you doing this?”

Lana shifted to be next to Marty, but the current swept her away just a bit faster.

“Marty! It's us!” Lana cried out.

Marty opened her eyes. “Victoria?”

“No, it's--” Lana began.

“Chloe! Marty, it's Chloe. Where is Mark?”

Lana watched as the frail woman seemed to make a left turn in the water as she entered one of the powerful eddies. She had to pull hard against the water to keep up with her and then get into the same current.

Phil made a similar move and entered the swirling patch of water from the far side. The three of them spun around like they were on a carnival ride while continuing down the river.

“Marty, we have to get you out of the water.” She ignored how much she wanted to get out, too.

“No. No, you can't. He won't let you. He's here to take me home.”

Lana looked at Phil and saw he was just as confused as her, but he swam over to Marty and took her in his arms.

“She's been acting strange,” Chloe shouted from outside the swirl. She chopped at the water to get into the proper current but seemed to have trouble keeping up.

“And where's Mark?” Chloe added.

Lana didn't have time to figure it all out. “Phil. Help me get her ashore, right.”

“Way ahead of you,” he replied as he treaded water. “We're coming up on a dike.”

Downriver there was a line of big rocks sticking out into the river like it was meant to keep the water away from shore. If they could reach it in time it would save them some extra swimming all the way to the riverbank itself.

Lana felt something hit her leg and thought it was a rock or tree stump.

She kicked her legs and then tried to tuck them in to avoid hitting more rocks, but that made it harder to float in the whirlpool.

“We're almost there,” she advised Phil.

Jerry and Mel ran together on the shore to stay with them. They had to crawl over some big trees that fell along the bank but managed to keep up pretty well. With Jerry watching over her it was all going to turn out fine.

Something grabbed her foot and it wasn't a rock.

“Holy!”

She didn't have time to finish her thought because her mouth was full of water as she went under the surface.

Lana screamed out of reflex but stopped when it became clear she was in serious trouble and needed to hold her breath.

It was impossible to see anything as she was held under by the anchor on her leg. She knew it was a hand when a second one grabbed her. That sent her along the razor's edge of panic.

She did her best to kick, but that had no effect. Even in her frantic state she knew a zombie would never be kicked off.

Lana hunched over, so she could wield the knife already in her hand. The current twirled her around, but the zombie ensured she didn't accidentally float away.

She slashed at the hands and arms like a madwoman. She dealt out several pokes, then used the serrated edge to dig into flesh down to the bone.

But still the thing held fast to her leg.

The seconds ticked by and she admitted to herself the panic was real. Her chest heaved as her body tried to collect air.

No, I don't die like this. My son needs me.

A million thoughts swirled through her brain just as the muddy water twirled her around in circles in the river. She saw Liam in her mind's eye just moments after he was born. He was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen in her entire life.

Nope. This isn't it.

Using every ounce of her strength she bent even further down and used the arms of the zombie as anchors to pull herself closer to it. She worried in that instant about putting her hand into its mouth and ending up dead anyway, but that was a price she was willing to pay if she was able to do her final act.

She reached the head of the man and managed to avoid the face completely. She felt his ear and grabbed onto his hair. It was just long enough to get a good, solid grip.

Then she started poking the face.

Die!

There were stars in her eyes before she felt the hands release her leg. One of her attacks hit home by passing through the face and entering the brain. It was horrific to think about doing such awful acts, but if it got her back to the surface and back to her beautiful Liam ... she was willing to do it.

With a final kick she reached for the surface.

Her body made her open her eyes because she had to know how far she was from life-giving air. Even through the muddy haze she knew she was inches from it.

A single inch.

Her fingers felt the air.

An instant before salvation something else grabbed her leg and pulled her back down.

She didn't even have time to be disappointed.

3

Lana expected to wake up in Heaven or maybe never wake up at all. The fact that the thought passed through her brain suggested she ended up somewhere after meeting her fate at the hands of the zombie in that river.

“Zombie!” she shouted and sat up.

Jerry knelt next to her and held her arm as if she was going to get up and run away.

Phil stood nearby with Marty in his arms. The old woman leaned heavily into the shirtless man and smiled at her.

Mel stood in the background with her rifle at the ready.

And the woman she guessed was Chloe knelt on her other side.

“Hi, just relax,” Chloe advised.

“I'm alive?” Lana replied with disbelief.

“Yeah, welcome back to zombie hell,” Jerry said with a chuckle. “You made it.”

“I drowned,” she said as if it was big news.

“Yeah, your foot got caught in between two of the rocks along the front face of the dike. Phil here got Marty to shore and then saw your hand reaching up just below the surface.”

“A zombie had me,” she replied while at the same time realizing her foot hurt like hell.

“No, just a rock,” Phil said. “Your sock ripped off and you have some scrapes on your foot. Rock.”

She sat there looking at everyone for a moment before looking out to the water. “We're all safe?”

“No,” Chloe said immediately. “I lost Mark. He went under and never came back up.”

She thought back to the zombie that had her leg. She might have been caught by a rock at the end, but the rest of the attack was real. For sure.

“Did he have short hair?” she asked in a timid voice.

“Yeah, why?” Chloe responded. “You see him?” She looked behind her in the direction Lana faced.

“No. I'm just asking.”

Chloe gave her a hard stare before her face tensed in a new fashion. “And I'm in the process of losing Craig. He's floating on the barge down the river.”

Lana turned to the river. The barge was almost around a bend far down the river.

“I've been out that long?” she said. “Someone is still on that?” Lana remembered seeing the man with the bum arm when she swam by.

“Yes. We yelled back and forth, and he said he didn't want us risking our lives for him. He said he'd wash ashore eventually and that he'd try to catch up to us later.”

Lana scanned her friends again and her eyes fell on Marty.

“Jerry was dead,” she blurted out, nearly in tears.

The old woman smiled in her usual disarming way.

“I prayed for him,” Marty said softly, “and the Lord provided. I prayed for Liam, too.” She turned to the water. “And I prayed for my son, Robert. He was the one who got me into the water.”

Lana's smile faded. “He pulled you into the water? You didn't fall over?”

“Yes. And no. I heard his voice in my head and I felt compelled to fall over the side and be with him. A powerful force pulled me in.”

Jerry tapped her arm. “She's convinced my dead uncle came back to find her.”

She glanced at grandma Marty before looking at him. “And did he?”

Jerry shrugged. “I came back, didn't I?”

“Liam said you were dead,” Marty responded.

“Liam? Where is he?” She thought of the memory of him when he was born and felt a maternal pang to find her son.

It was Marty's turn to lose her smile. “I don't know, dear. The last time I saw him in person was ... ” she bit her lip as if thinking. “Cairo, before the zombies arrived. But I spoke to him in my head just yesterday. He was alive and, on the run, not far from Cairo.”

“Where?” she asked with insistence.

“I really don't know. It was more of a vision.” Marty seemed disappointed.

Mel stepped closer to the group. “Finding him should be easy. We have the tracker.”

Chloe also stepped closer. “Can you use it to find Mark? That would be fantastic.”

Mel smiled. “The man who gave it to us said it only worked on Liam, his mom, and grandma Marty. I think he hard-coded the names from Liam's family because we've tried others, including ourselves, to no effect.”

It took almost a half hour to get everyone back to the MRAP. Jerry supported Lana and her bloody foot while Phil held onto Marty as she walked on the rough riverbank. After her swim, which she seemed reluctant to talk about, she came out of the water exhausted. Lana just assumed it was fatigue that kept her quiet.

“So, Chloe, how do you know Marty?” she asked the new woman.

“Ma'am,” Chloe said to grandma, “can I tell them?”

“I trust these people until the end of time,” she said with a giggle. “Spill the beans!” she said with a little hop.

“Yeah, right. Well, I found Marty back in Cairo as the zombies started to attack the town. I oversaw some of the defenses, and that put me in position to talk to some of the leaders in charge over there. A general gave me the task of keeping her safe from harm.”

“Wow, grandma, you knew a general?” Jerry asked.

Marty was quiet for several paces. “Yes, the general was a good man.”

Jerry glanced over to Lana and seemed to realize what had been said.

“I'm sorry for your loss.”

“No, it's fine. He died in the most noble way possible. He went off to put a stop to the schemes of that vile woman, Elsa. I guess he died when the bomb dropped on him.”

“My God, what have you been involved with?” Lana exclaimed.

“I know I'm a drag on you fine people and so many died in Cairo because of me. On any normal day I would have been able to resist whatever force that was that made me jump in the water. I'm not one for suicide, you know.”

Marty sighed.

“But there has been too much death for me. Millions died at Cairo if you include the infected. It was terrible.”

“But necessary,” Chloe interjected.

“Yes, of course,” Marty agreed. “I don't want to take away from what you did to keep people alive. And there are survivors.”

“Us,” Chloe replied.

“Yeah, we've had an eventful escape,” Marty said with a forced chuckle. “But we've still got things to do. The vision in my head said we had to go to Colorado to unlock a computer and that I needed Liam and Victoria to completely open it.”

“Well, let's find out where he is,” Lana said in agreement.

“We have the tracker,” Mel reminded them.

“I can sense him,” Marty said as if embarrassed. “In my head, I can sense where he is.”

“Is he far?” Lana inquired without caring how it was possible.

“No, not at all. I can sometimes hear his voice. And Victoria's.”

“That's great!” Lana replied.

“Yes, but there is one problem,” Marty said with sadness.

“What? Is Liam in danger?” Lana blurted out.

“Always. He's always in danger.” Marty made Phil stop so she could turn and look at Lana. “But my son has gone off to find him, too. I can sense him in there as well.”

Lana studied the woman's eyes for a long moment wondering if she'd finally cracked. She looked terrible with her mud-stained green pantsuit and her thin white curls. But her eyes seemed bright and alert compared to the rest of her body. She didn't detect any confusion or doubt.

“What does that even mean?” Lana finally asked.

Marty turned back to Phil. “It really bends my brisket to ask this of you, but can you carry me the rest of the way. I tried to walk as fast as possible, but I'm slowing us down too much. We have to get to Liam.”

“Sure, ma'am,” Phil replied. “Anything for you.”

Lana watched as Phil gently heaved her and set her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

“Why? Why are we in a hurry?” Lana asked her once they were on the move again. “Was that really your son?”

“Yes. I don't know how he found me, but he did. He tried to kill me, I'm sure of that now. He had trouble getting a hold of me while I flailed for my life in that water. Of course, the water didn't cooperate with either of us.” She giggled. “But he really got scared off when Chloe and Mark jumped in after me and once you and Phil arrived he was already swimming away.”

“Zombies can swim?” Mel asked.

“Some of them can. Robert can.”

“And you know where he's going?” Lana pressed.

“I'm afraid so. His brain only has one directive, as best I can tell, and it involves killing everyone in our bloodline.”

“What? That's insane. Why would a zombie do that?” Lana hesitated before adding. “I mean I know they want to kill, but why us? Why Liam specifically?”

“I don't know, dear. Al said the zombies were a mistake. A one instead of a zero, or something. Maybe there is also a two instead of a three in Robert's brain?”

“That's not how computers work,” Chloe replied softly.

“Nonetheless,” Marty pressed on, “Robbie couldn't bring me down with so much family around to help me.” She paused for a moment. “Thank you, all, by the way. Oh, my. My manners have disappeared.”

“It's fine. What about Liam?” Lana asked.

“So, Liam is close, and he doesn't have any other family to protect him. I think Robert could sense my connection with Liam and fed off that. He and I both saw Liam at the same time.”

Lana turned and rolled her eyes. On the one hand there was no question they had to find Liam. If he was close by, nothing was going to stop her from tracking him down. They used the tracker to find Marty because she was closest, and it was the right call, but now she felt a little guilty for putting her son second.

She tried to imagine Marty's situation with her dead son. She didn't know if she'd lose her mind a bit, too, if she lost Liam. In these crazy times, could Marty's dead son had somehow come back to life as a zombie and haunt her so much she would want to jump in a dangerous river?

Those eyes seemed so steady and calm, but what was behind them?

Lana didn't know what to believe in regard to Marty, but there was no point in deliberating about it. Once they reached the MRAP it was a simple matter of plugging in Liam's name and seeing where he was.

Ten minutes later, that's exactly what happened.

“He's close to that truck stop,” Jerry said while pointing to the map in the tracker. “Not ten miles away.”

“Liam, my sunshine, we're coming,” Lana whispered to herself.

Mel turned the MRAP around and backtracked along the shore. Soon they'd find the road. Then the highway. Then the truck stop.

Then she'd have her family back in her arms.

There was nothing more powerful to motivate her.

Chapter 15. A gathering of minds

Day 21. Morning.

Zombie Robert came ashore not far downstream from the one he saw as Mother. Since he lacked any vocabulary, or vocal chords, he could not call out to her or say he was sorry for almost drowning her. His directive was to taste her blood because it was from the same line as his. That's all he wanted from her, but when he summoned her into the water to collect, things didn't go as expected.

The small woman fell from the boat and then thrashed wildly in his arms. Several times he almost had her glowing arteries in front of his teeth, but the stream itself seemed to fight against him. The water pulled and pushed and thrust him in so many directions, it made it difficult to do two things at once. Because his brain was rotten, he forgot he didn't need to swim at all, because he was already dead.

Then the other two jumped in and ruined it all.

The orange-haired woman went for Mother and tried to yank her away.

The man went right for him.

When Robert lost the hold on his mother the zombie reverted to its default setting of viciously attacking any living person. If it could reflect on the difference between the man and his Mother, he might have said he wanted to be gentle with his blood kin. He was compelled to tenderly bite her neck where the blood ran fast and thick.

The man, however, was a threat, and he reacted viciously to repel it.

Rather than bother with the niceties of the neck, he grappled with the man and bit him over and over wherever he found skin. Arms. Face. Ankle.

They sank to the bottom and rolled over rocks as they fought, but the outcome was written almost at first contact. Robert the Korean War soldier would have recognized a fellow warrior giving his life, so others could live. Zombie Robert only saw it as an annoyance to be dealt with, same as all the other little missions he'd endured on his path to tracking down his family.

By the time he separated from his newly infected friend, Robert was caught in a faster current than all the others.

He took some comfort that the one called "Mark" was now part of him. He was a soldier in the army of zombies and he was still close to those rescuing Mother. Would it be compelled to continue the mission of the one who infected it?

Yes or no? Even Zombie Robert understood that stark choice.

Others were in the river, now. New people. Robert couldn't see them, but their voices cried out for Mother and they slapped the water as they closed the distance to her.

The answer was yes. Zombie Mark went on the attack against one of the arriving swimmers.

They engaged in duel to the death in the fast current, just as he had done with Mother. Despite having no feelings or sense of time, Zombie Robert might have seemed anxious as he floated in the fast current and waited for the result of the ongoing melee. Zombie Mark made a best effort to grab, drown, and bite one of the women.

It was a near-run thing, but suddenly Mark turned off. Disappeared from whatever passed through his soggy brain as a link to nearby zombies. His foe did not appear as one of them, either, which meant Mark had failed.

Also, Mother escaped.

Zombie Robert spent no time resting or drying out once he found his way to shore. He got to his feet and started to run upriver, toward his target. The scent of his mother was overwhelming.

He paused and sniffed the air when his brain registered new targets. More family members were close. It was, for someone dead for almost seventy years, like walking up to the gates of Heaven and anticipating the imminent reunion of lost loved ones.

Mother.

The living Jerry.

The living Liam.

Their blood was the same as his, and he knew their names because Mother did. He was driven to find them because they would be powerful additions to his unit/family/army. In return, their blood would restore his strength. They could live forever, together.

He took off with renewed energy. A living person would call it excitement and he ran at top speed because of that fake feeling. Whatever it was, it clouded his already low-functioning brain, so he didn't notice it when he ran twenty yards into a Mississippi River mud flat. The thick goopy river muck grabbed him all the way up to his thighs.

The zombie had no sense of futility or frustration, but it did look down at the mud for a long minute. An observer might have wondered if the zombie was engaged in some primitive thought to figure out what went wrong.

She is near.

His Mother drove him to plow through the challenge with superhuman strength. Or extra-human strength. Zombie Robert would have no textbook definition of what it/he was. Robert's compulsion to bring his family into the fold made him something of a zealot in the zombie community. That dedication is what drove him to claw, crawl, and thrust himself across fifty yards of soupy mud.

It took many minutes to cross the low spot along the bank, and when he was free of it, he got up and started running like nothing unusual had happened.

He finally caught sight of Mother, but he was too late. She was rescued now and was in the company of four living helpers.

And one of them was the other family member he knew as Jerry.

Something prevented him from attacking at that instant. It might have been self-preservation, but it felt different. More of a warning from deep inside him. His body's muscles refused to move, no matter how much the rest of him saw his opportunity to pounce on his prey.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Zombie Robert had no choice. The group of souls got inside the multi-colored metal box sitting on six black circles and moved out of his sight.

The instant the box disappeared, he went back into tracking mode. It continued to make noise as it went through the trees next to the river, but he didn't even need that. The vehicle's exhaust fell as thick as the trail of a garden slug and would be easy to follow, so he started after it.

Zombie Robert was good at running, and the truck he pursued didn't go very fast on the broken landscape. It took a path through the woods that allowed Robert to keep his virtual eye on the container holding his mother, but he finally lost it when it went onto a hard surface road and sped off to the horizon.

However, by that point he had a good bead on the third person he'd been tracking. The boy he'd seen at the farmhouse. The one called Liam.

And he suddenly knew exactly where to find the boy.

Mother would lead him right there.

Chapter 16. A can of worms

Day 21. Morning. On the interstate a few miles west of Charleston, MO.

Victoria shifted uneasily in the back seat of the tractor-trailer cab. Liam and Dave had shown them all the evidence someone was locked in the back trailer with the zombies, but Dave wanted to get them back on the highway to avoid drawing attention from the drone police.

“We have to get that guy out of there,” Liam said. He sat next to her but fidgeted like a three-year-old. “He needs our help.”

“No way,” Sabella replied in a scolding tone. “Let's take the truck and let professionals handle it.” She paused a second while she looked out the front window. “There! On that sign. It says New Madrid is only fifteen miles from here. There has to be someone there who can help.”

Victoria thought she mispronounced the city name because it didn't sound like the capital of Spain but more like mad-rid. She thought about asking why, but she learned to follow Liam's lead in things like this, because he was a local and she was from Colorado. Part of that lesson came from the town of Cairo, which was pronounced nothing at all like the city in Egypt. She figured the people in the Midwest were just lousy at names.

Liam seemed to think on it, and she couldn't see what Dave's reaction was at that moment. However, she'd learned more than names on her journey.

“We can't risk taking zombies into a town. If there are as many as we think back there, they could destroy the entire population in about five minutes.”

“She's right,” Liam added, “We have to solve this problem out here in the middle of nowhere.” He motioned outside to the endless farm fields.

“Well, let me out, first,” Elise said in a biting tone from the front seat.

Victoria put her hand on Liam's leg because she thought he was going to rise to the fight from the young woman, but he sat back on the bed instead.

“We have to do it safely,” he said in a low voice.

Sabella and Susan sat next to him, but they seemed distracted.

“We need to push the zombies out the back like a sleeve of crackers,” she whispered to him. The rectangular truck was shaped exactly like a long package of saltines, so that was the first thing that came to her mind.

“But what about the guy?” Liam asked in the same conspiratorial low voice.

She thought it over for a few seconds. “If he's alive, how is he even in there with the zombies?”

“Hmm,” was Liam's reply.

They drove for a few more minutes in total silence before Liam said something.

“I have an idea that will keep the zombies far from any town and also minimize the risk to us. It won't work unless we can find the right place to do it safely.”

“I'm listening,” Dave said from behind the wheel. He tapped his video camera. “If you guys have any ideas, leave them in the comments.”

“That's off, right?” Victoria asked immediately.

Dave let his hand sit on the camera for a few seconds before replying. “Yeah, it's just a habit, I guess. I hate how I can't record this for posterity.”

“Can you record it but not put it online,” she asked.

“That might not be safe,” Liam added.

“Said the boy with the world after him,” Elise remarked without looking back.

Dave seemed to decide. “Yeah, as long as I don't dump the files onto my channel they will stay on my laptop. If I promise not to upload them will you let me at least make a record of this journey? This is 100% spicy, am I right?”

Victoria rolled her eyes. There were some people who always had to make a production of everything. She wondered if Dave recorded himself making breakfast just so he could report that to his channel or post it to social media. A lot of her friends from school did that, too.

Liam looked over as if searching for her opinion on the matter. It flattered her whenever he did that, and she appreciated that he saw her as his partner. There was no question Liam was better than her last nightmare of a boyfriend, but he was also a better person than most boyfriends she or her close friends had ever had.

She smiled at him, content to know he understood that smile as saying “I'm cool. Whatever you think.”

Liam gave a small nod and a big grin.

“All right. Go ahead and record.”

Dave jumped in his seat like he'd been given mom's approval to pick out any candy he wanted from the checkout lane.

“Hells to the yeah! I'm back in business.” Dave turned on the camera, which still pointed forward to show the viewers the road. “Greetings fellow travelers, I've got something to show you today. I've just learned that I'm hauling a load of zombies.”

He paused in his dialogue.

“Whoa! Don't bite my head off. Har har. Get it? I didn't know what that last pickup was all about until my friend Lia--Leslie pointed out there is a living person trapped in the back of my trailer. Only then did I find out it is also full of those infected bastards. Scary, right, guys? This is 100% legit BS, right here.”

Liam snapped his fingers while looking at the highway out the front window. “There! See if that bridge has water under it.”

Dave turned around with a smile, then talked to the camera. “That's Leslie again. He comes up with all the good ideas and, uh, he's a little young to be giving orders but he has a look to him, you know guys, like he's been up to his knees in the dead portion of my audience.”

Liam seemed a little flustered to be described as such, but he was all business once he explained his plan. As they neared the bridge, Dave pulled onto the shoulder to confirm what was below.

“Yep, water.”

“Perfect,” Liam replied.

“Tell my audience what you have in mind.”

Victoria paled when she heard her boyfriend explain what they were going to do.

He's read too many zombie books.

2

The interstate was built to have two lanes in each direction with a large grass median between them. Where it crossed a stream, like the scene in front of the truck, there were two bridges set about twenty feet apart from each other. They got out of the rig and walked to the edge of the bridge to look at the water about thirty feet below.

“It's a drainage canal,” Sabella said when she walked up with Susan in tow. “I see these all the time in the countryside around Sikeston.”

“What do they use them for?” Liam asked.

“Drainage?” Sabella replied with a bit of humor. “I really have no idea.”

“It's perfect,” Liam said. “It is far enough down to give us plenty of time.”

She listened to his plan and only added suggestions where she thought he was putting himself into too much danger. At first, he was going to do it all on his own, but she politely insisted she go with him.

Liam got the olive-skinned woman's attention. “Hey, um, Sabella, would you and your two oldest want to keep watch on things? You know, hold the rifles in case of emergency.”

“We'll stay in the truck,” Elise said, “while you guys get yourselves killed out here.”

“Yeah, despite what I did back at the farm, I'm scared of guns,” Leah added with clear embarrassment.

“You did great,” Victoria said with encouragement.

“Bless her heart,” Sabella said of Leah. Then she turned to her and Liam. “I'll have my shotgun, you can count on that, but I have to be in the truck with them. I didn't agree to this, and I don't want to risk my children for anything. You understand that, right?”

The family walked off to get back in the cab. Leah and Susan both held their mom's hand, but Elise was several strides ahead.

“Okay,” Liam said with a wedge of defeat in his voice.

Victoria didn't blame them for wanting to stick together. It was risky to try to save the man in the trailer, but Liam was obviously committed to doing what he could for him. The safest place for the squeamish was going to be inside Dave's truck.

“Come on, Rambo, let's get our guns.” She laughed because she knew him too well.

“I'm not Rambo! I never-”

“I know, silly. I just wanted to push your buttons a smidge. Do you hate me?”

That got him to smile and she knew it worked. She held his hand as they walked back to the truck.

They didn't waste any time once back. She and Liam scrambled into the cab, grabbed their rifles and emptied one of the pillow cases so they could fill it up with ammo.

“Good luck,” Dave said as they climbed back down.

“Thanks,” she and Liam replied at the same time.

Her raggedy-haired boyfriend carried the bag on his back while they walked toward the far end of the bridge. It was mid-morning on a summer's day during the apocalypse, and he had a spring in his step she'd not seen in a long time, like he didn't have a care in the world.

“You're having fun out here, aren't you?” she said with playful accusation.

He looked back like he didn't want to be overheard. “I didn't want to tell the others this or have this show up on an internet video channel, but that creepy farmhouse really got me down. There was so much death and, um, evil, there that it pretty much paralyzed me.”

“Me too,” she added.

“Right. But Grandma kept going under much worse conditions for her entire life. She lost her daughter for crying out loud. That is some legit suffering, you know? I've been silently praying a lot. I've been asking what I should do out here. Should I go on? Try to find that cure? Open the quantum computer thingy?”

They reached the end of the southbound bridge, walked across the grassy median, and headed onto the northbound span.

“In the end, I don't know if it was God, or my conscience, or whatever, but I realized that if I died shaking in fear and in poor spirits that is what people would remember about me. Grandma went her whole life without sharing that about her daughter and I always thought she was the happiest and most well-adjusted person I knew.”

“You mean hide the pain?” she volunteered.

“No, not hide it. Just not be bothered by it. I'm scared as hell right now. Zombies could jump out of any bush along the road. Be behind any tree. But almost every tree out there doesn't have a zombie behind it. I'm choosing to ‘pull a grandma' and adjust my outlook to match what I want it to be.”

“And what's that?”

“Happy. Helpful. Positive. If there is a God watching all this action I want to give him every reason to want me on His team. I don't know what Grandma would call it. Heck, I told her I would seriously think about going to church again if we survived this.”

She interrupted him. “You didn't go to church?” Her voice held mock accusation.

“I did. And then I didn't. It's a long story.” He laughed and then stopped walking because they'd reached the middle of the span.

He motioned to the tree-lined banks of the watery canal below them, then out to the flat farmlands surrounding it.

“This is my new church and for once in my life I'm comfortable being in it. I want to do right by God and help Him rid the world of this, mmm, scourge. Or maybe it's a blight. I'm not sure. Whatever this disease is, I'm going to clean it up.”

“That's a noble goal, but why are you so happy about it? The world is still a big mess. Powerful people are after us. Your parents ... ”

Liam set his rifle against the concrete railing and turned to her. He didn't look happy until their eyes met.

“My dad would kick my ass if I let his death, or anything else, keep me from doing what was right. I realized that after I, uh, killed those two men back at the farmhouse. They were probably seen as good men: a doctor and a reverend. Pillars of the community. But when the shit spanked the fan blades they fell apart. That was two rooms in the infinitely large house of insanity that is this zombie apocalypse.”

He held one of her hands with both of his.

“People we love are going to die. Lots of them already have. And so many have died without knowing the joys of life, like little kids, and those no-names back at the farmhouse. I want to fight for them.”

“How, Liam? How do you fight an entire world of zombies?”

“I've found two things out here that make all the difference. God has given me the courage to not fear death. And, um, you have given me the courage to not fear life.”

He beamed at her.

“And as long as I have no fear of either of those things, I'm going to stay positive and play this game until I'm out of coins, you know? I'm going to fix the quantum computer. I'm going to save who I can. I'm going to own these zombies.” He pointed to the truck parked up against the edge of the next bridge.

“I don't know that I can ever be as positive as you out here, but I think I can try.” A tear drizzled down her cheek. “And thank you for thinking so much of me. I didn't really know I was that helpful to you.”

“Yeah, I'm lucky to have found you.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” She smiled and leaned in to kiss him.

“Hey, love birds! Let's get this over with. My audience is waiting.”

She looked at Liam with blurry eyes.

He stole a quick kiss and then picked up his gun.

It was time to own some zombies.

3

Dave parked his truck, so the rear door of the trailer hung off the edge of the southbound bridge. He and Sabella and her daughters stayed inside the cab. It was the smart play, since the zombies would all be pouring out the back, but at least they could drive off if there was any emergency.

She and Liam held the AK-47's they liberated from the farmhouse, but if things went as expected they wouldn't need to shoot at all.

“I don't want to say this is foolproof, but--” Liam began.

“Don't say it, Mr. Positive. You know what happens. You're going to jinx us.”

“I don't see how. The doors open, and the zombies see us. Bingo bango as dad used to say. Unless they can jump twenty feet without a running start, there is absolutely no way they can get onto this bridge from over there.”

She tried to find the flaw in his plan but trusted that he'd thought it through like he always did. The canal below was seventy or eighty feet across and had to be pretty deep. The zombies would fall down there and wash away with the current.

“You guys ready?” Dave shouted.

Victoria gave him a thumbs-up, then aimed her rifle at the mysterious lock on the back of the trailer. The women in the bathroom said it was some kind of tracker, but it occurred to her now that the truck was in position that it might fall down into the water. In the movies, that would make hide it from the bad guys.

Liam's positivity is contagious. Who knew?

She had the iron sights lined up on the lock twenty feet away.

“Ready?” she asked him one last time.

“Go for it,” Liam answered.

She fired and flinched hard at the noise, despite being the one firing the gun.

The bullet landed about an inch above the lock.

“So loud!” she shouted.

Liam had his hands over his ears.

She lined up the lock again and exhaled.

The second crack of the rifle made her ears hurt from the concussive noise, but that didn't matter because she'd hit the lock. It exploded in a satisfying little fireball and fell out of sight.

“Yes!” she shouted.

An instant later, two lines of intense fire about six feet apart appeared along the side of the trailer. They moved together like a laser beam slicing metal from near the back doors up toward the front. The burning torch-like lines seemed to compromise the structure of the container because the metal between the cuts warped and bowed outward.

“Oh shit,” Victoria deadpanned, her effort to keep her language clean momentarily forgotten.

At almost the same time, the back doors flung open, and zombies lunged for her just as Liam said they would.

Adrenaline mainlined her veins, and she tensed up like she was going to run.

Ten blood-soaked zombies fell out the back in one big heap and went into the water below. However, as the side walls bowed ever further outward, hands, feet, and heads appeared in the growing gaps. The first zombie fell out the side and landed head first on the concrete with a solid thunk.

More followed that first one until the entire side ripped open and zombies got forced through the six-foot gap like sausage from a grinder.

“We're in trouble,” Liam said in a massive understatement.

“Yeah,” she said in dream-like agreement.

Victoria fought the urge to run because Liam wasn't running. Her knees wobbled, and her tummy felt funny, but she raised her rifle and zeroed in on the first zombie she saw. A moment before she let the shot go, she looked behind its head and caught sight of Dave crouching at his window. His cartoon-sized eyes broadcast fear from a hundred feet away.

“I can't shoot, or I might hit Dave and the others,” she said lamely.

The two women at the truck stop were right about the locks, but they got the payload all wrong. Whoever set up the transportation of the zombies must have also had a failsafe in case drivers got nosey about what they carried. What better way to eliminate such a threat than a huge swarm of zombies? Since they had trackers installed, they could come in and clean up the runaways and no one would be any wiser about what happened to the driver.

Liam's plan to get on the other bridge saved them from the immediate onslaught of zombies, but it wouldn't help their friends inside the big rig.

“Dave, go,” she said while tentatively waving her arm to him. She looked over to Liam. “They should go, right?”

She felt a little disoriented from the shockwave of the first explosion, and the sun-bright glare from the metal slicers only added to it. However, she felt responsible for what was happening, so she made herself focus on Liam.

He had both hands on the railing as if similarly awestruck, but her question got his attention right away.

“Yeah, I would go,” he replied.

“Dave! Drive!” she shouted as loud as she could.

Her motions became forceful as well, willing Dave to get the truck moving.

“Shoot those,” Liam said as he pulled up his rifle and aimed it to the far side of the truck. Opposite walls of the long trailer had been blown outward by the cutting charges, and zombies tumbled out like bloody mudslides from each side.

Victoria raised her rifle and carefully lined up a shot but didn't pull the trigger.

Liam fired off a few rounds but then stopped so they both held the same pose.

“Um, Victoria?”

“Yeah?”

“I was way off on this one,” he said with a breathless wheeze. “There's no positive spin I can give it.”

Whoever put the zombies inside the truck did it with ruthless efficiency. They'd been stuffed in there like a frozen block of ice which later melted into tiny cubes of flesh. So many zombies fell out, it was a clown car driven up from the deepest circle of Hell.

Dave finally gave it some gas and pulled the mangled trailer from the edge of the bridge. He blew the horn several times, but Victoria had no idea what he was trying to do. The zombies on the far bridge had already found their feet and swelled toward the head of the big black truck before it got away.

Liam took a deep breath.  “We have to keep our heads, Victoria.” He smiled at her in a way that was totally out of place given the situation. “I love you. Whatever happens from here on out, we'll do it together, okay? We own these guys, remember?”

“I remember,” she agreed.

Liam continued, “And God, if you're watching, please take care of my Grandma. She could use a little help.”

“And maybe a little for us?” she squeaked.

“Amen,” Liam added.

He patted his old-school rifle. “Let's do this.”

4

The truck slow-rolled across the bridge even as zombies continued to pour out the sides and back. She belatedly realized that as the truck pulled away those falling out the back door hit the pavement instead of the water.

“How many do you think there are?” she asked as Liam pulled off the metal magazine to reload.

“I have no idea. There are still a bunch in the truck.” He reached into the pillowcase and pulled out a box of ammo.

“I think there are a hundred already out of the truck,” she said while watching it continue away. It shot people out the sides and back like her dad's grass seed spreader.

“Probably. This box says there are 500 rounds of 7.62x39. Do you think that will be enough?” He laughed and actually seemed to relish the challenge.

“Well, I guess we'll see,” she replied while trying to catch some of his enthusiasm.

Once the truck was off to the far side of the bridge, she felt confident she wasn't going to accidentally hit living people, so she leveled the rifle and squeezed off a few shots.

“Got one!” she cried.

“499 to go,” Liam replied with a laugh. He banged his mag back into the body of his rifle and stood close by.

“You take the hundred on the left and I'll take the hundred on the right.” He didn't wait for her to answer but instead delivered shots toward his targets. More and more of those falling off the truck stood up and tried to decide between chasing the large truck or lunging for the tasty-looking couple firing guns at them.

The zombies were definitely the same as those from the farmer's fields they'd seen the day before. They'd been covered in dust from their trek from St. Louis, and a few stood out because they were blackened and burned. There was no doubt in her mind those were from Liam's fireball back at the farmhouse.

Most of the zombies chased Dave's truck as he sped off to the south. A small portion stood up against the railing of the southbound bridge as if thinking about how to get across to her and Liam. However, a few fast-walked the opposite way up the highway, and it exposed a critical flaw in their short-term prognosis for surviving this encounter.

Liam fired off a couple of shots and brought down one of the lady zombies going to his right. A large man was close behind, presenting a big target for him.

She tried to speak, but her voice wouldn't come out. Her throat was totally dry from fear until she forced herself to calm down.

“Liam,” she finally said, “if those things get off that bridge ... ” she intentionally left that hanging.

“Yeah, I'm on it. I've got a number 16 for it.” He fired off several more shots at the large stray far to the right, but the zombie walked with uneven steps. Several blotches of black blood appeared on the man's dingy white shirt, but his head remained intact.

More followed that first one.

He turned back to her with a boyish grin. “I messed up my count. I'll get it. I promise.”

She didn't have time to worry about Liam's side of the crowd, because her side was in even worse shape. Dave was now off the bridge and speeding away, but zombies kept falling out the back. Most landed in sickening positions that would have killed normal people, but the infected tumblers did their best to get to their feet and look for victims.

Most turned back toward her, because the truck was moving way too fast.

She squatted down and rested her elbows on the three-foot tall railing, so she had a solid base to shoot across the gap. It took her several rounds to zone in the iron sights, but once she did, it became an elementary matter of picking out heads and putting bullets right in the center of them.

Her heart missed a few beats when she imagined Dave was never coming back.

Steady, girl.

Victoria burned through the rest of her ammo until she pulled the trigger, and nothing happened.

“I'm out,” she cried with anxiety.

“Me, too,” he replied in a calmer voice. “That means we've killed sixty total, right?” He laughed because they both knew it wasn't true.

“I think I killed two with one shot,” she bragged.

“Count it,” he said.

They both dug into the large box of ammo and pulled out the smaller containers with twenty rounds inside. They split them open and dumped the contents on the pavement, so it was easier to grab individual cartridges and stuff them in the mags. Her fingers were a little shaky from the adrenaline and fear, but so was Liam's.

“You okay?” she asked him.

He saw her glance at his hands as he picked at his pile. “I'm good. Nice and steady, you know?”

She wished they had taken all the mags so there wasn't so much reloading to do, but that would have left the others without ammo for their rifles. She prayed they were loading their own and preparing to fire off a few to help them.

While loading her thirty rounds, the zombies made it off the bridge to their right. At the opposite end, a larger group was already crossing the median. Soon they would be trapped between both forces.

“Dave, we need you,” she said in her calmest voice. Her heart pounded with abandon inside her chest, but she didn't want Liam to suspect how scared she was.

“He knows,” Liam replied. “Right? He knows to come get us.”

It was one of those little details that seemed so obvious it didn't need to be said, but Victoria really wished it had.

“Yeah, he'll come for us,” she said with great effort to believe it.

Looking far down the highway, Dave still hadn't turned around.

“Lock and load,” Liam said as he pulled the charging handle. “Don't be stingy with the ammo. Use it all.” He gently kicked the big box sitting between them.

“Right,” she replied.

She glanced at the zombies comically reaching out for her from across the gap between the bridges and wished all the zombies were that stupid. The whole zombie apocalypse would be over in minutes if they were.

She laughed nervously to herself.

Liam fired a long-distance shot at a lone zombie that was the first to make it onto their bridge.

“29 left,” he said quietly to himself.

She remembered what Liam had taught her about gun handling. He said it was important to count ammo as it was fired, so you knew when you were going to need to reload, but she was just focusing on the actual firing part of his advice. She got down on her hands and knees before laying down on the cool cement.

Deep, calming breath. Exhale. Fire.

Her chest heaved like the high seas and it was nearly impossible to steady herself without outright holding her breath for two seconds. If she tried it longer, she saw spots in her vision.

Be calm, like Liam.

She missed the head of the first zombie that came onto the pavement at the end of her side of the bridge, but she took a little pride that her shot sheared off the waifish woman's foot. It wouldn't kill her, but it did take her out of the attack for a while.

29 left.

More walked out of the grassy median and got onto the bridge. She fired a few more times and immediately lost track of her numbers.

Dang it!

She looked beyond the zombies at the edge of the bridge and felt relief at seeing Dave on his way back. His truck crossed from the southbound lanes to the northbound side and smoke belched out the stacks as Dave drove it to rescue her and Liam.

“He's coming back!” she yelled.

She fired another round, but the next trigger pull did nothing.

“I'm out!” she shouted with excitement and fear while getting to her feet.

Victoria was surprised how fast thirty rounds went out the barrel. Of those thirty, she thought she'd hit maybe five in the head. The other shots, including the footless lady, were either useless hits or complete misses. Her efficiency was pretty poor if it took 30 shots to bring down five zombies. So far, she'd managed to down the strays coming onto the bridge, but more came up the median each minute. She had to somehow get better at shooting.

Liam was already at the cache of ammo. He shoved cartridges into the boxy magazine as fast as he could. His fingers shook, but he tried to hide it from her by turning away.

“Oh, thank God,” she said softly. “I thought it was just me.” Her heavy breathing made it difficult to speak.

“Liam, look,” she said with urgency.

When he turned around, she showed him how her hand was shaking just like his.

“We got this,” she breathed out. “I'm scared, too, but we can do this together. Just have some fun.” She smiled and winked, and he responded immediately.

“It's easy to say, right? I'm trying to take my own advice.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. “It's going to save us.”

They both finished loading their next thirty with what she thought was impressive speed. Liam turned around and started his count of shots, but when she spun around to get back into position, she couldn't pull the trigger.

Not while Dave's truck approached from behind her targets.

5

Even after just reassuring Liam, she had to take a few deep breaths to purge the fear. More zombies ambled onto the decking a hundred feet away, and she lost confidence in her ability to stop them all.

Liam popped off round after round in a nice, even cadence.

“Twelve, eleven, ten,” he mumbled to himself between the shots.

She fired a few rounds and scored a couple of key headshots, improving her kill ratio, but no improvement was going to save them, because the mass of zombies that had gone after Dave's truck were now coming back onto the far end of their bridge.

“L-Liam!” she stutter-shouted to get his attention over the shooting.

He stopped firing and may have turned around, but she didn't want to take her eyes off the south end of the bridge.

“I'm almost out,” he said to her back. “You shoot on my side while I reload. Got it?”

“Ya, but ... zombies coming,” was all she could say as she tore herself away from her side.

“I know,” he said with haste.

Once she had her back to the onrushing zombies, she was able to scurry to where Liam had already created a nice little mess of spent shell casings. There were far fewer zombies on his side, and they were more spread out, so it was easier to see her bullets make a dent in their numbers.

She ran through her ammo in seconds. She killed five or six of the close ones, giving her and Liam some breathing room. A larger grouping was down near the end of the span, but it would take some time for them to walk across. She turned back to Liam and the ammo cache. Her head swooned with the thought of the impending disaster because the zombies on the south end of the bridge were almost upon them.

“I'm ready for your great plan, now,” she said in jest.

Dave was still a quarter of a mile away but moving at highway speed. The zombies filling that end of the bridge were going to be on them a lot sooner than Dave could reach them.

Liam handed her a full magazine. “Take this. Give me yours.”

She did as he asked.

“Liam, they are super close. We have to run away.”

“I had you shoot on my side, because I thought we could cut a path, but that isn't going to work.” He frantically pushed shell after shell into the second magazine.

She slammed the mag in her rifle. “Should I shoot them?” It seemed a dumb question, but Liam was up to something.

“Wait,” he advised.

“Oh kay,” she said slowly.

Dave was close enough for her to make out details inside his truck. His blonde hair practically glowed as it was hit by rays of sunshine. Sabella was also in the front seat and held her rifle up on the dashboard like she was anxious to fire it out the glass. Victoria thought the cavalry had arrived.

But the lead zombies were only a few yards away.

Liam pounded his magazine into the housing and then tapped her on the shoulder. “Sling it. We're going swimming.”

She did as he commanded but wasn't sure she heard him right.

“We can't swim in that,” she said in a high pitch. “There's zombies in the water.”

“There's zombies everywhere. We have to get off this bridge.” He led her by the wrist and held her steady as she hopped up on the low railing. “We're going for that piece of shore, then we'll run up to the highway in that direction.” He motioned toward the north bank because there were far fewer zombies on that end of the bridge.

“I trust you, but--” she started to say.

Liam pushed her over the side.

Her first instinct was to be pissed that he would do that, but she rotated in mid-air to see something had bumped Liam, too. One of the zombies had reached him before he could get up on the railing with her.

“Liam!”

She shouted it as one long word until she splashed feet-first into the canal. Her new ponytail was the last thing to enter the canal.

The impact was shocking as the bubbles percolated around her body. Compared to the muggy, hot morning, the water was almost cold. Her feet slammed into the shallow bottom, but she recovered and used that to push her way back to the surface.

She came out of the water to the sound of gunfire but got sucked down again by her momentum. She didn't dare open her eyes in the murky green water because it was likely filled with zombies. The water pressure made blood pulse against her ear drums as if to remind her how close she was to death.

When she came up the second time, she flailed her arms like crazy to keep from slipping back into that silent darkness.

“Come on, Liam. Jump!”

She did her best to rub water out of her eyes, so she could see the edge of the bridge high above, because she had to know Liam was alright.

He wasn't hanging over the side, yet.

“Liam!” she screamed.

More gunfire rattled from up on the decking.

“Come on,” she begged quietly. “Please, Liam. Jump.”

She knew him well enough to know he wasn't up there trying to be a hero. He was in real trouble.

More shots echoed above her and they were less chaotic than the previous ones. She took that as a good sign.

Until a mailman zombie came over the side.

“Oh, crap on a cracker!”

The uniformed man made a noise as he fell, clearly not dead. She used all her strength to get out of the way, and he splashed down right where she'd been.

It spent a second under the water just as she did, but then it seemed well enough to poke her hip and grab for her legs.

“Liam!” she screeched. Her breathing was erratic, and she kicked and flailed with her arms and legs to move even further from where the zombie had come down. Her sneakers made contact with the infected man a couple of times, but she did get free.

Must get out of the water.

She paddled like mad for the shore where Liam had pointed earlier.

“Geronimo!” Liam yelled from above.

The angle of his jump was going to put him right where the mailman had touched down, and he still hadn't come back to the surface. She had just enough time to look at him and then the bubbly water below his feet. He held his arms at his side like he'd done this before and he shot into the water a tiny bit upstream from the mailman.

“Oh, God,” she said in a worried voice.

Instead of going for shore, she went back toward her boyfriend. She kicked and pawed at the water, and she was right next to him by the time he popped up.

“Wow! That was close!” Liam's voice was almost hoarse.

“There's one right here,” she replied, using the current to move him downstream from that cursed spot.

“The mail dude?” He spat out some water and rubbed his eyes.

She nodded but tried to hide her fear. Her heart hadn't stopped pounding since the explosion, but now it tried to beat quietly so as not to stir up the zombie in the water below them. There was no way she was going to mention all the other zombies that had fallen out the back of the truck. They were down in the water, too, and the current wasn't strong enough to move them very far.

“Come on, we have to get out of here,” she whispered. “Follow me.”

Something touched her knee as she kicked, causing her to alligator roll a few times, just to be sure it couldn't grip her.

“This way,” she repeated, as if nothing happened.

Her vision tunneled big time as Liam went over the same spot. When she estimated he'd cleared the dangerous area, she paddled some more, but her hand immediately made contact with something warm and mushy, like a plate full of spaghetti under the water. She ignored that, but desperately wished she had the ability to walk on water.

“Ball up your fists,” she advised. The image of spaghetti made her think of putting her finger in the mouth of a zombie. That's not how she wanted to go out.

“Good call,” he replied as he splashed behind her.

Dave sounded his horn again from very close. It resonated between both tree-lined shores like they were inside a closed room. He blew it as he sped across the bridge.

“Holy hell!” Liam shouted.

She looked back and then up. A whole mess of zombies and zombie body parts fell over the side of the bridge in a giant wave, starting from the south side.

The top half of a screaming zombie woman splashed in the small space between the two of them. Long, bloody tendons and stuff from her severed legs followed her under the water like the tail of a meteorite.

Arms, hands, and mangled bodies splashed all around them. Pieces crashed into the trees on the north bank, too. The cracks of branches sounded like gunfire.

“We have to get out,” she said with the last shreds of her fake calm.

“You ain't lyin',” he replied.

The half-woman popped out of the frothy water right in her face. Something was wrong with her eyes, like they'd been blown outward, but her blood-stained teeth were totally fine. They snapped over and over as if driven by a little motor.

Victoria belted out a full-on horror movie scream.

Without thinking, she pushed the woman's forehead, but that sent her right at Liam.

“Look out!” she yelled after realizing what she'd done.

The woman snapped her teeth and reached for Liam with her arms, but without legs to steady herself, she went right back under the water. Her long, stringy blonde hair was soon lost from sight.

“I can't believe I did that,” Victoria blurted out.

“Don't worry. I want to scream, too.”

A last few zombies shot into the trees on the far side of the canal as Dave finally let off his horn. The air brakes whined while he downshifted somewhere above them.

“He's cleared a path on the bridge,” Liam said as he treaded water with her.

“Let's get up there!” she replied, finally getting her thought process back.

Each stroke brought them closer to the bank, but she was convinced the zombies were playing games with them. There is no way they'd let them go that easily, right? When her feet finally touched the bottom, she kicked off, thinking it was a zombie.

“We made it,” she said breathlessly. The bank was steep, so she grabbed onto a tree root to steady herself, then she extended her hand to Liam. He smiled as she pulled him up and he hopped out of the water. She scrambled up after him, not wanting to spend an extra second with her shoes in the water. By the time Liam could reach an arm to help her to dry land, she was already there.

They both crouched next to the tree's roots while catching their breath, but they didn't waste any time because the moans of zombies was thick on the air.

“We have to keep moving,” he said between his heaving breaths.

She finally looked out onto the water and where they were relative to the bridges.

“Liam, we're on the wrong side,” she said when she realized she'd taken him to the closest shore instead of the one to the north.

He scanned the area as if seeing it for the first time.

“Hmm, you're right, but we're not going back in the water.”

“Thank God,” she said with real relief.

She took the deepest breath she could, sucking air all the way down into the deepest pockets of her lungs. The ones that can only be reached when life itself is at stake. After holding it for a few seconds, she exhaled most of the fear.

It felt better now that she was out of the water. She managed to get her panic back in the closet, but it was only one blood-splashed half-body from jumping back out. The forest slope was probably full of them.

“Now we climb?” she took a few steps toward the steep hill that would get them back up to the highway.

“Now we escape,” Liam replied with a touch of his previous good humor.

6

They went up the wooded incline from the waterway toward the highway but paused at a small wooden fence.

“I used up all my ammo,” Liam said as he hopped the fence in one easy jump. His chest still rose and fell from their exertion in the water. The hop barely added to it.

“You want mine?” she asked with similar effort to catch her breath.

“If I had the time I might split the load between both our guns, but you are the better shot anyway. Just make them count when we get into trouble.”

“You didn't say, if, we get into trouble,” she said in jest.

“No, we're totally gonna get into trouble in a few minutes.” He pointed up the hill.

“We could run the other way,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Would you?” he asked.

She thought about it as she hopped the fence. “No, I guess not. We have to get back on that truck. Whatever hornet's nest we just kicked over has to be stopped.”

“Wouldn't it be funny if this was someone besides Elsa and her people? Can you imagine dialing up more enemies for us to deal with?”

She chuckled quietly. “And to think some teens are sitting in their quiet little fallout shelters playing games on their phones.”

“And you get stuck out here with me,” Liam whispered.

Ahead, she saw movement up near the roadway.

“I wouldn't mind a quiet day or two but being with you feels like I'm doing something worthwhile. I want to have kids someday, too, and I don't want them to get the idea I just sat on my big fat butt while other people did all the important stuff to make things right after the zombies came.”

Liam put his hand in his front pocket like he was going to take out his wallet, but then he seemed to change his mind.

“Almost there,” he said.

They walked in silence for a few moments. She'd just dumped a whole truckload of innuendo that Liam normally would have pounced on in a heartbeat. She mentioned having kids and her own posterior. It wasn't her intention to talk so glibly about those things, but after surviving that terrible swim, making babies and talking about butts were attractive alternatives.

The fact that Liam didn't rise to either one reminded her how much danger they still faced.

Liam pointed up the hill and moved his two middle fingers like legs walking along.

The infected were ahead.

He gestured in a line parallel to the roadway and motioned for her to follow. They went along the base of the small hill created by the bridge abutments, but after a few minutes, he stopped. “We need to get up on the highway and see where Dave is. We can't let him drive by without stopping.”

“You think he'd do that to us?” she whispered. Dave's truck was still nearby because she heard the engine and brake noises, but judging by the volume, it was on the other side of the bridge.

“Do you?” He exhaled through his teeth. “I don't think he would on purpose, but he saw me jump from the bridge, and he probably can't go looking for us even if he wanted to. We have to make it obvious we're still alive and escaped all those zombies he chucked over the side.”

“Makes sense.”

She followed him up through the trees until they were out in the tall grass next to the highway. From their new vantage point, they had a great view of hundreds of men and women walking in all different directions around the bridge complex. Most faced away from them because Dave's truck was over there, but more than a few looked their way, too.

“Dave is still driving away,” she said in a quiet voice.

“He'll turn around,” Liam stated as fact.

“What do we do if he doesn't?” she asked. “We always plan for the worst, right?”

Liam seemed quieted by her statement, but she didn't mean anything by it.

“You couldn't have known there'd be a bomb, Liam. I thought it was a great plan. Foolproof, as you said.”

He seemed to think on it for a minute before replying. “Yeah, I guess. Maybe I got a little cocky. I was in the bright sunshine, I was about to dump some zombies in the toilet, and my girl was by my side. I should have thought through everything that could have wrecked my perfect strategy.”

“He's coming back. I see him.” She pointed up the highway. Dave's rig headed onto the southbound bridge where the explosion took place. It was also where the most zombies still stood around.

“This is going to be messy,” he said. “We have to run.”

Liam faced the bridges, so she thought he meant run toward Dave.

“No, we should run that way,” she replied pointing to the south.

Liam turned to look at her and her pointer. “You and I think alike. That's what I meant, actually. We have to put as much distance as we can from those things. He can't pick us up if there are zombies all over us.”

“I wouldn't mind putting some distance from them, either,” she said in an agreeable voice. “Though my running shoes are all squishy.”

She leaned from side to side to make the water bubble out of her orange sneakers.

“Come on, we have to take our chances. I know we can outrun them, because I did it when I went to find you. I needed to be with you again, so I ran from downtown to Forest Park in one pull.”

He trotted up the last part of the hill.

She melted at his words. It was nice to be wanted.

“I'm right behind you,” she said with the same saucy tone Liam often used when he wanted her to know he was checking her out.

“I wouldn't want it any other way,” he called back.

She laughed until they reached the pavement. The lonely yellow slashes between the lanes pointed right back to the bridge and a trough of bloody zombies and half-people. The guardrails were dripping blood and other gore. There were still a lot of zombies on the span, but most looked over the sides or stood outside of Dave's flight path. Almost as if they feared the truck would come through again.

She noticed the white pillowcase sitting where they'd left it. “Our ammo supply. We need that.”

“We have more in the truck. Let's forget about that one.”

“I'm not going to argue,” she whispered.

“Run,” he said in a cautious tone. “I think they're distracted.” He didn't turn to her, but kind of pushed her back to get her going.

She turned to obey, but a tall man in hospital scrubs came out of the median, almost on all fours. He stood up and lunged for her with arms outstretched.

“Shittake!” she shouted with surprise while raising her rifle. Her

Zombies were normally bloody messes on their faces, but this man had the worst case of road rash she'd ever imagined. It appeared as if he'd been dragged along the highway and his forehead, nose, and chin had been used as the skid plate. The revulsion and desire to put him down was instinctual.

Liam tried to stop her by reaching for her gun, but she squeezed the trigger and put a shell right in its flat face.

The report of the shot seemed louder for some reason.

“Sorry for grabbing,” Liam said while pulling at her sleeve. “I thought we could avoid trouble.”

Movement caught her eye in the median and on the southbound lanes on the far side of the grassy middle area. “They're all over.”

“Yeah, Dave dumped ‘em everywhere.” Liam laughed nervously.

“Just run!” she yelled.

Liam trotted and then ran, and she followed a moment later.

He let her catch up and then they jogged together as fast as they could maintain the pace. The grass along the highway hadn't been cut in weeks, so it was two or three feet tall. A few zombies crawled on the pavement ahead of them, as if they never got off the roadway once they fell out of the truck, but others lurked in the tall grass next to it.

When they saw the living humans they moved toward them like bears to honey.

She was surprised how fast she became winded and for the first time in her life realized she was out of shape. Their diet had been horrible the past few weeks and exercise for fun was a thing of the past. Lack of sleep, pressing stress, and swimming for the first time in years, also contributed to her fatigued state.

She had to say something to get her mind off how surrounded they were.

“Oh, god, I'm my mom,” she blurted out.

“What do you mean?” Liam glanced over to her.

“Mom always complains about being old. ‘Don't get old, Victoria, because everything starts to break down,' she would say. We'd laugh together, and I'd think nothing of it.”

She tried to avoid looking at the fast-walkers hanging out in the weeds ahead of them. As long as they kept moving at a good clip, they had a chance of slipping by before they could get grabbed, but it was going to be close.

“She loved running, too, and always complained how she didn't have time for it anymore. I never thought I would feel the same way, but we aren't exactly eating healthy, if you know what I mean.” Her voice sounded winded and a little beaten, which is how she felt inside.

“Don't think about that. Think about those chocolate chip cookies we had back in your dorm room-”

“You ate them, not me,” she replied quickly.

He laughed. “Yeah, sorry about that. Think about cookies, and soda, and Pop-Tarts, and the stuff of civilization.”

She briefly looked down at her soaked clothes and the dirt caked on her recently painted red nails. “I'd kill for a shower.”

They ran in silence for a few paces. Her breathing was much louder than his.

“I'd like a shower, too,” he added in his hopeful boyfriend voice.

“You need one,” she tried to say in a joking way, but her strained tone made it seem more like a demand.

“Just find a rhythm that works for you, Victoria, and we'll make it home.”

“Sorry about that,” she wheezed. “I was trying to be funny.”

“I know,” he replied. “I caught a whiff of myself coming out of that river.”

“No, I meant-”

He didn't let her finish. “I know what you meant. It's all good.”

They ran side-by-side as more zombies rose from the weeds and grass.

His encouragement helped immensely, and she settled in and started to feel better with each footfall.

At least until the sounds of brakes and skidding tires filled the air far behind her.

7

“Dave stopped!” she shouted after confirming over her shoulder. “Why did he stop?”

“I don't know,” he said between breaths. “We have to keep moving.”

She laughed despite the gravity of their situation. “I'll run until you fall over, Liam. Don't worry about me.” She was talking a good game, but she felt more out of sorts than any run she'd been on before, including those first ones after the winter when she was most out of shape.

“Just like any other foot race,” he said in a sensible voice.

When she looked back at Dave she noticed one of the female zombies was power walking and almost keeping up with them. The woman had been dressed in a blue pantsuit, like she was a banker or executive. She was in such good shape, even for a zombie, that Victoria imagined she used her lunch hours to walk a few miles each day.

She stopped, spun around, and held her breath. The air immediately begged to be let back in her lungs. It only took a couple of seconds to bring the rifle to bare on the power-suited zombie, but her eyes were aflutter with black dots as she pulled the trigger.

The woman fell flat on her face.

Victoria hunched over and sucked in several quick breaths.

Other zombies were on their tail, but none were as close as the woman had been.

Liam was many paces ahead, but he'd slowed.

“You coming?” he asked with concern.

She stood up and started after him, while trying to pretend she wasn't dizzy from lack of oxygen.

“See,” Liam puffed, “that's why I gave you the ammo.”

Her boyfriend turned around just as a red-shirted zombie came up onto the pavement and lurched for him. Liam hefted his rifle behind his shoulder and swung it by the barrel toward the zombie man's head.

Victoria looked away at the last second but heard the shattering crack of its skull. She had to hop over the body because she was too tired to go around it, but her foot slipped a little in the pool of blackish blood when she landed on the other side.

“Whoa,” she croaked. She managed to keep her feet, but it sent shockwaves into her leg muscles because of the abuse.

Keep your feet, girl.

Victoria had to know how long was left, so she glanced over her shoulder again to see how close Dave had gotten, but she almost whined when the truck was still on the north side of the bridge.

“What's he doing back there?” she complained.

The engine sounds revved up and down, so it was clear Dave hadn't just parked his truck, but it was too much to turn around and study his methods.

“Just don't stop,” Liam wheezed.

For all her practice over the years, Victoria felt terrible that she wasn't putting on a runner's clinic with Liam. They'd done plenty of running of late, including that stretch from the river to the farmhouse, but the swimming had done her in.

Dave's truck hit a few gears and made the sounds of a big rig on the move. His horn blared again but that turned out to be a bad thing.

Heads popped up from the grass far ahead like prairie dogs scanning for hawks. All the rest of the zombies he'd dropped along the highway seemed to come to life.

“Aw Dave, man, you're killing us.” Liam's voice sounded as bad as hers.

She gripped her rifle knowing she'd have to use it.

A small dark-haired woman emerged from the wavy grass as Liam got close. Her dress was the color of the dirt farm fields, like she'd been wallowing in a pig's mud puddle. He was half-watching over his left shoulder and didn't see the dirty woman coming from his right.

“Liam, wait!” she yelled.

She stopped and got to a kneeling position. She couldn't hold her breath without seeing stars. While her chest ran wild, she did her best to line up the shot because the woman was only a few yards from Liam. He noticed her at the last second, but it was too late.

Victoria let off three quick shots, but only the third connected with the target. The woman acted weird as she fell to the pavement near Liam's shoes. Instead of a messy face plant like most zombies, she seemed to lay down and curl up into a ball like it was time for bed.

There was no time to think about it. She stood back up, swayed a bit as her eyes danced with black spots, and then continued to trot behind her fellow runner.

A long minute later, Liam slowed down as bad as her.

“Hey Liam, you want a drink of water?”

“I hate you,” he replied with a grim laugh.

“Yeah, I love you, too,” she said.

The sound of Dave's engine got closer behind her, but she couldn't determine the exact distance. She also felt that if she turned around one more time, she might tip over and die.

Her feet slammed the pavement as the humid heat of the morning created a blanket of smothering sweat. They couldn't have gone half a mile, but it felt like an ultramarathon to her.

The stars in her eyes made it hard to concentrate on anything but putting one foot in front of the next. A couple of times she might have felt the touch of zombies as they lunged for her, but she managed to keep her wits and not trip over or get caught.

Liam bowled into a teen girl and sent her skittering off the side of the road. He kept running, but the girl got right back up and oriented on Victoria as she trailed behind. She was far too tired to push the girl herself, so she raised her rifle and tried to shoot while on the move.

She ripped off an unknown number of shots but missed them all. The girl hissed at her, perhaps as a kind of mocking gesture, and then scrambled to her like it was her turn to attack.

The rifle clicked. Empty.

“Liam, I'm toast,” she said as the stars crowded her eyes.

The girl was a platinum blonde with the same gray, washed out fabric for her jeans and blouse as all the other zombies in the great herd back at the farm.

She experienced the sensation of movement.

Victoria dropped her gun and felt the heat of the concrete as both palms cooked on the pavement. She looked up at the girl as she ran the last few paces.

Did I fall?

The zombie girl was probably pretty before the apocalypse, but blood poured out of her eyes and nose, so it was hard to look at her objectively.

“Last one!” Liam screamed.

A gunshot blast roared from point blank range.

The girl's face exploded with blood and brain matter as a bullet passed through her head. The body ran a few more paces before toppling over at Victoria's feet.

“Oh, God,” she said as if watching a nightmare while frozen in her bed.

Engine noise and air brakes signaled the arrival of the truck. The heat and stink of diesel machinery washed over her, but it was as sweet as Colorado mountain air at that instant.

Dave to the rescue?

She imagined it was Sabella who took out the girl, but the more she focused on the impact, and how Liam often counted his shots down to the last round, it was obvious the bullet came from the other direction.

Liam gingerly pulled her off the ground.

“You got her?” Victoria said with exhaustion dominating her words. “I thought you were out.”

“I was out of bullets for me, but I always keep one for you.”

She smiled into his blue eyes and saw the love there. “Liam, that may be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Then she fell over.

Chapter 17. All of us, together

Day 21. Late morning. Interstate 55, a few miles north of New Madrid, Missouri.

Liam's lungs smoldered with burning pain as he gasped for air. Sabella handed him a bottled water, but he couldn't drink just yet.

“Thank you for stopping that last one, Liam.” Victoria sat next to him breathing just as hard.

It took him two breaths to reply. “No. Problem.”

“I'm sorry for the delay,” Dave said from the driver's seat. “I saw you guys jump the side and didn't know where you'd come up. We thought we saw you on the bridge and slowed down to look, but Sabella caught sight of you running, so we shot over here to pick you up.”

Liam leaned toward Dave as best he could. “You definitely aren't carrying pool supplies.”

He thought it would lighten the mood, but Dave wasn't able to respond.

“You almost got us killed,” Elise deadpanned while glaring at him. “So, thanks.”

Sabella's oldest daughter was really getting on his nerves, but he tried not to take it personally. Whatever happened to her in the farmhouse and in the disco shed, it gave her the right to be angry. He just wished she'd stop picking him to express it.

Dave tapped the camera and sounded excited as hell. “I was recording. I got it all. Not the first explosion, I'm sorry to say. I wasn't expecting that. But I got the drive out and back, then when I plowed into that shitstorm on the bridge. Wow!”

Liam doubted Dave had any clue that he made it rain body parts on him and Victoria.

“I'd like to get a copy.” Victoria replied with still-hurried breathing, but hers wasn't quite as desperate-sounding as his. When he knocked that last girl over, he felt like every muscle in his body complained, but he faked being fine in front of his girlfriend. He wondered if he was more out of shape than her.

Liam gave her a sideways glance.

“What?” she said to him. “I want to see what you were doing up on the bridge while I was swimming in the water. I thought you were dead meat.” Victoria took his hand in hers.

“Me, too,” he said after he sucked in a huge breath.

“So what happened to my truck?” Dave asked in a more serious voice. “I can guess that you shot the lock, but how did the rest of the truck split open?”

“Something blew up in there,” Victoria answered. “It was like an explosion that tore the metal in long strips, wouldn't you say?” She turned to Liam expecting confirmation.

“Yeah, it was like the truck had been rigged to blow open if the lock was broken. She hit the target and it set off the chain reaction.”

“But how?” Dave asked.

He looked at Victoria and wondered if she had any guesses. Even after all the strange military hardware he'd seen over the past few weeks, he'd never seen anything like this.

“I don't know,” he finally replied. “Maybe they put something in there when they loaded you up. However they did it, the explosions didn't do much to hurt the zombies. They spilled out the second it happened.”

“Is he okay?” Dave inquired.

Liam looked quizzically at Victoria and then back to Dave. “I'm okay, yeah.”

“No, kid. The prisoner. He's got to be dead, right?”

He laughed at his stupidity. “Sorry. We didn't get a good look back there. Should we stop and check?” His breathing was close to normal again, but his heart rate continued to cruise along at 30,000 feet.

“No way!” Elise shouted from the passenger seat. “Dave, you can't stop again, because it's too dangerous. Mom, back me up.”

Dave turned to her and seemed to be torn.

“You need to take us somewhere we can get out safely, Dave,” Sabella said from the back. “My daughter is right. We can't stop again out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Dave nodded but didn't reply.

“Fair enough,” Liam responded. “What's up ahead?” He had to admit what they did was pretty dangerous, so getting the mother and daughters to safety made a lot of sense.

Dave banged his hand on the steering wheel. “Finally, something I can answer. Up ahead we have another well-defended truck stop. I wasn't going to stop for another few hours because we just topped off our fuel, but after losing our cargo I think a pit stop is a good idea. I can report the loss and hope they don't fine me.”

Liam wondered whether Dave would get in trouble for losing his cargo. If he played dumb, maybe he could blame it on bandits, or something. Dave had to know it was too dangerous to mention what they really did at the bridge.

“Is there anywhere else we can go?” he asked the ponytailed driver. “Like if we didn't want to get too close to armed guards.”

“Armored truck stops are most of what you get on the road in Missouri. You might find a mom-and-pop restaurant still open, if they have the manpower to defend it, but those are pretty rare because food deliveries from the big depots are impossible. Small towns might have some resources still intact, but I try to avoid them.”

“Wouldn't they give you help?” Victoria asked.

“Maybe,” Dave replied. “But me and my fans have seen some pretty dicey shit over the weeks. Some towns see my truck as a gold mine to be looted. I actually had to drive through a roadblock in Minnesota along with some other rigs. Their mayor tried to impound a bunch of us at a truck stop inside the city limits.”

“We have guns,” Leah said while pointing to the AK's piled on the floor. “No one is going to tell us what to do.”

Her mom patted her on the leg. “Now, now. We don't want to be troublemakers out here. We need to get somewhere safe and let things work themselves out.”

Leah huffed. “You can't be serious? After all that protesting you did at that doctor's place? After getting us sucked into that horrible scene? After almost getting us killed ... ” Leah's voice faded as if the word reminded her how close they'd come.

Liam tried not to be too nosy about it, but he glanced at Sabella's distraught facial features and saw the indecision. She'd been a fighter since the moment he'd met her, but now he saw something else in her.

“I made a mistake,” she said simply. “I didn't realize what was happening in the cities and that the disease was spreading here so fast.” Sabella waved her hand to indicate she spoke of the world outside the truck. “I had no idea men had become so desperate or that truck drivers only stopped and fueled up with guys with guns to watch over them. I never could have guessed kids like Liam and Victoria fought against government agencies with all their powerful weapons. None of this was in my vocabulary three weeks ago.”

The hard-nosed Egyptian woman seemed beaten in a way, but also stronger for having survived so much. He tried to compare her journey to his own and was unable to understand her shift until he saw little Susan tucked under her mom's arm.

“I spent so much time trying to bring attention to what was happening in that farmhouse clinic that I lost sight of what was happening around my own babies.”

“Oh, mom, seriously?” Leah said with her teen girl pout.

“Seriously,” Sabella replied. “The only thing on earth that matters to me, now, is getting you girls to safety.” The woman leaned over to him and Victoria. “I appreciate what you two did for me and my kin, but we have to get away from you, you understand? No hard feelings.”

Liam nodded grimly and saw his future with Victoria in a fresh light. They'd joked about marriage as necessary in the apocalypse, and the quantum computer described them as a “pair-bond” with all the baggage that implied. It also suggested their eventual child would be crucial in replacing Grandma in their triad, but having kids out here was scary. Almost as scary as zombies, he thought with a dark sense of humor.

His heartrate went straight up toward the highest boundaries of the atmosphere when he thought of being responsible for Victoria's baby. He also wondered if he'd done the incorrect thing by taking the diamond ring he'd found on the floor up in Wilder's room. Was it stealing? Was it wrong to benefit from the loss of the true owner of the ring? Or was it just the thing he needed to get Victoria to say yes to a more formal partnership in the zombie apocalypse? He'd almost given it to her before they shot off the lock back on that bridge.

It's too soon!

“Yeah, I don't blame you,” he said while hiding his internal worry. “Let's get you guys safe, then me and Victoria will investigate the trailer and see if the guy back there is still alive.”

“Truck stop it is,” Dave declared. “It isn't far, thank God.”

2

While they rumbled down the highway another rig pulled next to them. He heard the whine of the tires on the pavement before he saw the truck out the small porthole on the side of the seating area.

“They're checking out the damage,” Dave said as if he knew Liam would ask.

“He has no clue what's in his own trailer,” Liam replied.

“A she, actually. She's spicy!” Dave said while he peered into his camera.

Liam chuckled and glanced at Victoria. “You doing better?”

“Yes. I'm fine, now. I need to do calisthenics or yoga to loosen up next time. I'm totally out of shape.”

“Cardio,” he replied in a knowing voice. “It is the prime rule.”

Victoria drank from a water bottle and then continued. “I should not have slowed down on that run. It put us both in danger.”

“How about this. When we get to somewhere safe, we'll invest in a treadmill and a weight bench. There has to be plenty of them out there, you know?” He smiled at her and wiped a trickle of water that fell to her chin.

“You always know what to say,” she replied, “but you think too small sometimes. With the world being the way it is, we can take over an entire gymnasium. I want it all. Pool. Track. Spa. Zumba studio.”

“I don't even know what that is,” he said with a laugh.

“I'll show you when we get it. Not before.”

The driver of the passing truck blew her air horn once and then sped up to get by. She merged into Dave's lane and steadily pulled away. When they reached the turn off for the truck stop ten minutes later, her tractor trailer was at least a mile ahead.

“Won't everyone stop here?” he asked Dave. “Why didn't she?”

“Most of us gassed up back at Wilson City's truck stop and we'll run the tanks dry with that. Besides fuel, the only thing that can get us out of the hammer lane is Indian food.”

Liam again looked at Victoria like he was missing a joke.

She grinned at him. “He means an upset stomach, you big dummy.”

Leah giggled but Elise scoffed like it was disgusting.

Dave pulled the truck off the interstate, went across the bridge that spanned the highway, and rolled on the side road a short way toward the bustle of the truck plaza. The air brakes hissed as he stopped on the side of the 10-lane entryway.

“We aren't driving up to the door?” Elise snapped.

“No,” Dave replied. “I want to keep my trailer away from the others. We still don't know what's back there.”

Liam was impressed because he didn't think of that.

Dave cleared his throat and looked at his passengers. He seemed uncomfortable. “Sabella, you and yours should get over to the restaurant before we do this.”

Elise took that as her cue to open the passenger door and climb out. Leah took off after her, but she did pause briefly to smile at him and Victoria as she went out.

Sabella got up, and Susan held onto her belt loop as if afraid to get separated, even inside the cab of the truck.

“Thank you, Susan,” Victoria said to the little girl. “I love my new ponytail.” She pulled it over her shoulder to display it. “I'm going to show all my friends.”

Susan flashed a timid smile.

“And my nails are still red, see?” She brushed them on her shirt to wipe off some of the dirt but held them up a second later.

“They are very pretty,” Susan said in barely a whisper.

Victoria held her hand for a second. “It's going to be okay, you got it?”

The pudgy girl shook her head gravely and then looked up to her mom. “Can we go now?”

Sabella looked at Liam. “Thanks again.” Then she moved up to pat Dave on the shoulder. “And thank you for picking us up in the first place. We owe you guys our lives.”

“Don't mention it,” Dave replied. “I'm 100% sure it was the right thing to do, and I know my fans would agree. Subscribe to my channel and you'll see yourself in my videos.” Dave spoke with excitement and a lack of self-awareness Liam found troubling given all they'd been through, but he still didn't think Dave truly understood the new world. He'd been driving around in his big safe rig, while he and Victoria fought off zombies at the bloody tip of the spear.

“Yeah, well, I don't think I want to remember this part of my life,” Sabella said with a cautious chuckle.

“It'll be out there if you want it, though,” Dave said. “But bye for now.”

Sabella leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. For the tiniest moment Liam felt jealous she didn't do that to him, but regained his footing when Victoria squeezed his knee.

“Be safe,” Victoria said as the woman climbed over the front seat.

A second after the mother was out of sight, Victoria called out to her. “Sabella, don't you want your stuff?”

The dark-haired woman stuck her head back in.

Victoria pointed to the pillowcases piled in the back of the rig next to her feet. “Some of this is yours.”

“No,” Sabella answered. “You guys will need them more than us. We'll be with people.”

“Uh, okay,” Victoria replied. “Thanks.”

“You want some more ammo?” Liam asked. The woman had never parted with Margaret's shotgun, and she kept it slung on her back.

“I did take some ammo for this, thanks.”

She patted her gun strap and left.

“Speaking of ammo ... ” Liam said.

Liam rifled through the bags and pulled out another big carton of cartridges for the AKs. A surprising number of shotgun shell boxes remained in the bag, and he hoped the woman had taken enough.

“We have guns and tons of ammo. Why didn't she give her two oldest daughters a gun?” he asked.

“Well, they can't take them into the truck stop if this one is like the last,” she replied.

“None of them allows guns,” Dave said sounding a million miles away.

“They'll have to pry that shotgun from her. I don't think she'll give it up.” Victoria sounded proud of the fierce mother.

“Load ‘em up,” Liam said as he gave two of the boxes of twenty to Victoria.

When he had what he needed, he went to the passenger seat and sat down so he could watch outside. A moment later, Victoria surprised him when she used her hip to push him over.

“Make room, bub,” she said with a laugh.

It was nice to be so close to her, but her touch was also distracting. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing of him.

“You stink,” she said like it was truly dreadful.

Nope.

“So do you,” he said with realization. They'd come into the truck soaked with the water from the canal and they coated that grime with sweat from outrunning two lanes of zombies.

No matter how bad they both smelled, he wanted to be close to her and reveled in the fact she didn't get up and go somewhere with fresher air. Her presence did make it harder to load the magazine in his lap, but that was nothing new.

He collected his thoughts and peered over the big truck stop. Armed men stood near Humvees in the grass at the edge of the property, just as they had done at the last one. The guys weren't soldiers, however, but dressed in black uniforms with no visible markings.

“Why are those guys, here?” he asked with rising tension in his voice.

Victoria leaned to look at the men. “Uh, oh.”

Dave leaned over to see what they were talking about. “Contractors. Some call them mercenaries. They're cool, though. Pretty much just like the army out here. They kill zombies that threaten the pumps.”

Dave then looked at the big rearview mirror on his door. “They're more than enough to help us with the trailer.” He reverted to sounding distant again. “I saw guys just like ‘em lay down their lives so a convoy could escape a burning town somewhere in Ohio. That fire drove all the zombies out at once, and those pay-to-play boys held the bridge, so we could all escape.”

“Wow,” Liam said to fake sounding impressed.

Some of them had noticed Dave's wrecked truck, because they hopped in their Humvees or pointed in their direction. He wondered if he should leave it alone, but he worried the black-clad mercs weren't what they appeared, and he had to warn him before they arrived.

“You should be aware that contractors, or whatever, have helped some bad elements in the government. They ... ” Liam's voice trailed off because he risked telling too much to the innocent driver. Dave didn't need to know that Elsa travelled with contractors a lot. Maybe the NIS was built by contractors?

He regrouped and tried to sound like it was intentional. “I just worry that they won't be as competent as the army would be, you know?”

“You two kids did just fine with the zombies, and those are adults with tons o' guns,” he said cheerfully. “They'll keep us safe.” Without waiting for any reply, he continued. “You ready to do this?”

Liam and Victoria both finished loading their magazines and banged the metal containers into their respective guns.

“We're ready,” he said. The mercenaries were already on their way.

Liam smiled and leaned in to kiss his girl on the cheek, but she turned her face and met his lips. Not one to complain, he used the tender moment to wordlessly express how happy he was they were in this together. They'd survived another near-death experience and were finally about to close the book on their escape from Elsa on that muddy beach. The truck stop was finally a port of safety where they could take a deep breath and use the peace to think through their next moves.

Finding grandma was job one. It might be too much to ask of Dave to drive them around the countryside looking for her, but there were lots of other trucks and drivers at the truck stop. He was sure someone would help them, especially after he revealed what they carried in their trailers.

They would be hailed as heroes.

Thanks kids. Here's the key to the restaurant and our 50-dollar plates!

All that assumed the guys approaching weren't affiliated with the National Internal Security apparatus.

He and Victoria unlocked their tongues. It was always sooner than he wanted.

Dave blew the horn three short honks, then three long, then finished with three short again. It was the S.O.S. pattern used by the man inside the trailer.

“Nice one,” Liam said to the driver. “They saw us come in, I guess, because they are pulling up right now. They probably saw your trailer and freaked.” He wondered if the contractors jumped to action so fast because they knew what was inside the wasted interior of the damaged trailer.

Victoria whispered tantalizingly close to his ear. “Are they coming to rescue the guy they put in the back?” It struck him again how lucky he was to end up with someone like her. Not only was she a total babe, but she mostly saw the world just like he did. He imagined his life if he'd fallen in with someone like Elise. Yes, she was also very attractive but that didn't count for much, anymore. Her biggest flaw was her attitude and the fact she'd not said anything nice since they'd met. Who could survive long-term in the face of such negativity?

He was going to face her and share that sentiment, but she held him in place and took a playful nibble on his ear lobe.

“Ouch, what was that for?” he said in jest.

“Don't think I didn't notice you push me off that bridge. Don't let it happen again, okay? We always jump together.” Victoria's whispering made him want to stay in the safety of the cab and forget about every other problem in his life. Zombies, Elsa, Hayes, Grandma, his dead parents. They all seemed mercifully distant while she was breathing life into his ear.

But the contractors arrived sooner than he would have liked. A fair number of truckers stood on the tarmac in front of the restaurant, too. He didn't blame them for being curious about a truck that had a corkscrew trailer behind it.

“Let's go see them clean up the mess,” Dave said as he exited the truck.

Liam grabbed his rifle.

“You think they'll let us walk out armed?” she wondered.

“We know there are bad guys back there. I'm carrying a gun to protect my girlfriend, so screw their rules.”

Her answer was not complicated.

She took her gun, too.

3

Liam held out his free hand to support Victoria as she came off the last step of Dave's rig. Any other time she might have mocked his efforts and jumped next to him to show him up, but this time she took his hand.

“I'm getting old,” she said in her mom's voice she'd used earlier.

“I think you look great,” he blurted out. A second later, he noticed the music playing at the nearby gas pumps. It was loud at the source, but they were parked far across the lot. “That's Supertramp! One of my fave's.”

“Is that 60's music?” she asked him.

“No,” he replied as if hurt. “At least I don't think so. It's from the 70s and 80s.”

“Supertramp is still around, kid,” Dave said from across the gap between the trailer and the back of his cab. “And I like your taste in music.”

He turned back to Victoria. “He likes my tastes.”

She smiled but was distracted by someone coming up to them. They let go of each other and unslung their rifles at the same time.

Liam figured the security guys were going to run to the trailer and set up a perimeter, or something, but they went straight for him, instead. One of the Humvees came across the grass and pulled up next to them.

“Son, you'll have to drop the weapon,” a man said from inside the military vehicle.

Liam ignored him completely.

“Let's go,” he said under his breath to Victoria.

They walked toward the back of the trailer.

“Son, there are no weapons allowed on the property. The sign clearly says ... ”

Liam held his rifle at the low ready while scanning for movement through the holes in the trailer. They kept about ten feet from the side panel and never took their eyes from it. Tons of zombies had fallen out back at the bridge, but he didn't know if any remained inside.

The trailer was so warped and damaged that light shone in from the other side. Most of the walls between the two long cuts had fallen outward and hung down from the top like a wing. The zombies had squirted out below it, but it created such a space that if anyone stood in the trailer, he figured he'd see them.

A second before they reached the rear deck, a thin male zombie slid out the back and fell with a bloody splash right in front of them.

The man wore long pants and a short-sleeved shirt but was so covered in blood it was impossible to see the original colors.

“Oh, God,” Victoria said with more sadness than surprise.

Liam almost felt sorry for him because both his arms had been removed as well as most of his feet. The unfortunate soul continued to snap his teeth like any healthy zombie and it tried to slither toward him and attack.

Liam leveled his rifle and snapped a shot from the hip while on the move. The head of the zombie bounced back, and his body shut down an instant later.

A few seconds later, the contractors ran up behind him with weapons at the ready.

“Kid, where'd you get that?” a security guy asked. “It's dangerous to shoot so close to people.”

Liam got to the back of the truck and found both doors hung wide open. Bodies, blood, and burned clothing littered the wooden floor of the trailer along the entire length. He was simultaneously hit with a smell that had teeth almost as lethal as the zombies themselves. It was as if rotting meat was rolled up and dropped into a raging dumpster fire fueled by a chili cookoff's line of port-o-potties. The truck seemed to belch it all right into his face.

Liam's eyes teared up.

“Oh my God! It burns!” he shouted while he yanked the collar of his shirt over his nose for a small bit of protection. He didn't want to puke in front of the arriving audience but wasn't sure he could hold it.

Victoria gagged and gripped his arm.

Liam closed his eyes and let Victoria's touch settle him down.

While he fought the smell, the security guy from the Humvee came around back and looked into the truck like he owned the place. The smartly dressed man wore a black baseball cap, had a well-trimmed mustache, and looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. Everything about him suggested he was the leader on the scene.

“Accidents need reports, but we don't do that here,” the leader said in a smarmy voice. He continued but changed his tone as the mouth of the trailer got to him. “You can't park ... ”

He bent over and threw up on his shoe. At any other time or circumstance Liam would have laughed out loud at how stupid the man looked, but now he was on the knife-edge of losing his stomach, too. Seeing others puke often did that to him, even when he wasn't staring into the jaws of a zombie blender.

“Aw crap,” he said as he hunched over. His stomach lurched with one great upheaval, but nothing came out. He used that piece of luck to get a grip on himself and try to do what needed to be done.

“There's a guy trapped in there,” Liam said while still holding his knees. “We need to see if he's okay.” He pointed into the mess without looking in there.

“I heard the guy,” Dave said from nearby. Liam glanced over at him and noticed he stood off to the side as if he couldn't take the smell.

The security leader coughed and sounded disappointed rather than concerned. “In there?”

More security guys arrived at the back of the truck and almost to a man coughed up lunch when they looked inside. Liam decided if he didn't commit himself to climbing in, he might never do it.

“Victoria, I really need you.” He didn't think she'd lost her lunch but didn't inquire.

He climbed onto the back of the trailer and ignored getting blood all over his palms. Victoria climbed in next to him and smiled.

“Are we having a good time?” she asked.

“Living the dream, right?” he replied.

“So romantic,” she said while holding the inside of her elbow over her nose.

He was ready to walk through the destruction when the leader of security climbed in and stood next to him. Liam got a good look at the taller man and saw the mistrust in his eyes.

“I'm Captain Hamilton,” he coughed. “Is this your truck? You better have a damned good explanation for all this, or I'm going to take you both into custody.”

Liam wondered if the man had seen Dave get out of the driver's seat but decided it didn't matter at that moment.

“We came from the pickup in Wilson City and had a malfunction back here, as you can see.” He smashed his mouth and nose back into his sleeve.

“Just show me the man and we'll get out of here, okay?”

Liam couldn't argue with that. He stepped ahead into the muck and debris searching for zombies that were still alive. There were many body parts, and several whole bodies with damaged or severed heads, but nothing moved.

They had to go all the way to the front wall of the trailer before they finally saw movement. The explosion that ripped apart the walls and back of the truck had failed to do any damage in the front, so it created a shadowy alcove up there, but something did survive.

“Help,” a man croaked from the darkness.

Liam took a step forward because it had to be the guy they wanted to rescue.

“Wait, back up,” the security man ordered Liam. He took a few seconds to unsnap something on his belt, then pulled out a flashlight. When he shined it at the source of the voice, Liam cried out in despair.

Hamilton took a shot with his gun before Liam even knew what was going on.

“Holy shit!” Liam screamed in fright.

The security guy tried to shoot again, but Liam struck the man's arm.

“He's alive!” Liam shouted.

Hamilton aimed the gun and his light at Liam's face. For several long seconds, Liam stared down the barrel and wondered if the man behind the flashlight was going to pull the trigger.

“Hey, it's alright,” Victoria said from nearby. “It was a mistake. Sir, please put the gun down.”

Liam had flashbacks to Hayes shooting Victoria in the hip. She got extremely lucky in how she survived, but he doubted the same luck would apply to him. If he was shot point-blank in this truck, it would be lights out.

Security guys outside the truck yelled.

“I'm fine,” the leader shouted back to them. “Don't come in here.” His tone was full of authority for his men, but when he turned back to Liam, he didn't seem so certain.

“I thought he was one of them,” Hamilton said mechanically.

Slowly, like a one-quarter speed replay, the guy lowered his weapon.

“Don't ever touch me,” Hamilton said with seething anger.

Liam glanced to Victoria as if seeking someone stable. “He's alive.”

Her brunette hair glowed like a halo from the backlight of sunshine coming in from the gaping rips in the truck wall behind her. “I know,” she said in a kindly voice, “we have to save him.”

Victoria gestured to the man in the darkness, so Hamilton knew where to point his light. Eventually, he did.

A living man was on the floor.

He'd been wrapped in chain-link fence like he'd been rolled up in a carpet by some kind of mob boss. The fence was held in place by metal wire spun around the outside.

Liam tried to determine if the man had been shot by the trigger-happy security guy, but every square inch of his body was covered in blood except the whites of his eyes. It would have been easy to mistake the man for a zombie if he hadn't said something.

“Are you okay?” Liam said before he realized how absurd he sounded. “I mean, we're here to save you. We'll get you out of that cage.”

“She said I'd be free,” the man responded with despair.

Liam stepped closer, but Hamilton put his arm across Liam's chest. “Wait.”

“Rivers! Jives! I need you two up here.”

Someone at the back of the truck groaned loudly. A short time later, two security guys struggled onto the bloody deck of the truck and made their way to Liam and the guy wrapped in the chains.

“I want you to get this man to safety, do you understand? He needs to be cleaned up and given some food, then we'll get to the bottom of how these people are transporting prisoners like this.”

Liam watched as the men each took an end of the chain-link and dragged the survivor toward the back like they were movers hauling away an old sofa. The man's arm stuck straight up over his head, like he raised his hand as he was wrapped in the fence. It allowed him to tap the wall with his bloody knuckles. Liam wanted to commend him for thinking ahead.

“Well, wait a minute,” Liam blurted out. “We saved that man. We have to know his story. Who he is.”

“I'm with the Patriot Snow--” the chained man said in a wispy voice, as if he'd not touched water in days.

“Get him out of here!” Hamilton shouted to his men before turning back to Liam. “Look, you two, I don't know what kind of game you're running here, but we haven't had a single incident since we took this gas station under our protection. We aren't going to start now.”

Liam's head swam in the stench and his eyes watered with whatever fumes came out of blood and guts from the dead, but he pulled at Victoria's hand to get her moving.

“Hang on.” Liam jogged toward the back where it was less stuffy. “He said he's with the Patriot Snowballers. Is that what he said?”

He'd spent some time with the Snowballers and his mom was one of the big leaders of the movement. Before she died. He knew loyalties were mixed everywhere in America when it came to whether or not the apocalypse was caused by those Patriots, so he had to be careful about showing too much sympathy for the man. Still, he couldn't let him get taken away without so much as a name.

“Hey, guy. We heard your S.O.S. What's your name?”

The two security guys slid the blood-stained chain link bundle off the back deck of the truck into waiting hands. The man in the fence shut his eyes when he went into the late morning sunshine, but Liam got a good look at him as he jumped down, too.

“Sir, who are you?” he asked the prisoner. “Who put you in there?”

“Emerson, Preston J. Chief Petty off--”

“Take that man to the command tent. I want him out and cleaned up by the time I get over there, do you understand?” He talked over the man at Liam's feet.

“Will we get to meet him?” Liam asked Hamilton.

“Sure, kid. I always allow teenagers unfettered access to my command tent. Makes perfect sense, right?” He hopped down and slipped a little on the pooling blood from the original zombie that had fallen out.

“What I meant to say was no. I'm going to find out what you've been doing between here and Wilson City and then we'll have a nice, long chat. Better have your shipping papers ready because I'm going to look ‘em over with an electron microscope.”

Liam chafed at the insult but looked at the dozens of heavily armed security guys and realized how stupid he must look standing there with his one little rifle.

“If I see you move this truck I'm going to come out shooting, you understand? You don't leave until I get my answers.”

Liam nodded.

“And do your best to clean up Mr. Meatball here,” he pointed to the armless man on the nearby pavement.

He nodded again but had no intention of touching the body. He recalled several zombie books he'd read over the years in regard to the sanitation problems caused by all the death, but that was one problem he'd avoided in real life. He shuddered at the thought of being responsible for burning or burying so many bodies all across the world.

Preston looked up at Liam from inside the chain-link. Liam used his free hand to give him his best effort at a salute.

“She said I'd be free,” the man repeated with failing strength.

Ten or fifteen drivers had arrived and stood next to the truck. They saw the man come out of the trailer. Liam thought back to how he manipulated Duchesne on that bridge in St. Louis and wondered if he could distract Hamilton long enough to get some answers, but a man stuck something in Preston's neck.

The security guy didn't even bother hiding what he'd done. He held the syringe in his hand and nodded to his boss.

Liam also took things in stride. All the drivers had witnessed what came out of the truck. They could plainly see the trucks were transporting zombies. As far as he could tell, the charade was over. He wasn't convinced Hamilton and his friends were NIS, but they weren't good guys, either. They silenced Preston when he said he was US Military.

That made them bad guys in his mind.

He wanted to get the bad guys to admit defeat, and he was about to help that along.

Time to tip over some apple carts.

4

“Dave, will you help me get these people together?” He showed Dave how a group of curious onlookers had formed at the back of the truck, but the pony-tailed driver seemed hesitant to go near the back of his trailer.

Before he could answer, a small red sportscar sped out the exit of the truck stop. “Hey! It's that guy.” Liam pointed to the Mustang that had passed them on the highway.

The grey-haired man stomped on the gas and took the right turn while burning his tires the whole way. Smoked poured out the back and the tires chirped a few times as he shifted gears, but he was over the bridge and heading for the highway in twenty seconds.

“He lost his lady,” Victoria noted.

“She wasn't in there?” Liam asked. He'd been watching the car's tires, not the occupants.

“He's probably scared shitless,” Dave said. “Speaking of scared, can we meet over there?” Dave pointed to the base of the tall sign for the Flying J truck stop.

Liam sighed because he was frustrated, but quickly decided it was better to be away from the security guys, even if it meant leaving the truck. Anyone with half a brain could figure out the story just by looking at the raging gashes along both sides of the trailer.

Even Mustang guy could figure it out.

About ten or fifteen drivers joined them at the sign.

“Hey, my name is, uh, Pierre. Pierre Chesterton. I've been riding along with Dave since we picked up our cargo in Wilson City. Did you all get your cargo from there, too?”

Most of the guys and gals raised their hands.

“Are we carrying what y'all had back there?” one of the gray-haired drivers asked. He wore a greasy ball cap and gray overalls like his whole life revolved around trucks.

“I think so. Me and my girlfriend blew off the lock because we heard that man tapping on the walls of the truck to get us an S.O.S. We also heard the zombies scraping at us when we shouted, and that really freaked us out. To protect ourselves, we backed the trailer over a river bridge, so the zombies would fall away harmlessly. The people who put the plague victims back must have anticipated we'd open it, so they included a bomb to release all the zombies at once. It was a failsafe.”

Thinking about it from the safety of having survived it, the booby trap was perfect. Anyone who dared crack open the lock would surely die in the effort. If Liam hadn't thought to park the truck on that bridge, it would have been impossible to survive against the hundreds of zombies shoved out by the explosion.

“Sounds like science fiction bullshit,” overalls dude replied.

“What do I care what the cargo is?” another man called out from the small crowd. “I just want to get paid. My family is counting on me.”

He had no idea how to reply to that. If the man didn't see the problem with delivering zombies in the first place, how could he convince him otherwise? Liam didn't even know why they were transporting them. Maybe, as Dave suggested, they were collecting the infected for later disposal. Maybe the locks and explosives were rigged wrong? What if they were designed to kill the zombies rather than blow apart the truck and release them?

He admitted his mind was prone to drift toward conspiracies and seldom to the simple explanations.

Yet, it did seem like overkill to have trucks explode at all, especially as it would almost always endanger the driver. Wouldn't it make more sense to tell the driver what they had back there, so they could be careful?

“I've been thinking about that and the only answer I have is that the zombies are being hauled for some evil purpose. Did they give you guns to protect yourself? Did they give you any warning about the dangerous cargo?”

Liam looked around the truck stop and made a show of counting every trailer he saw, including the few coming and going on the nearby connector road.

“There are fifty trucks here, give or take. If you all have a load just like ours, that means you are each carrying two or three hundred zombies. I'm not a trucker, so I can't answer this, but would you do things any differently if they told you these were zombies? Does it help not knowing?”

He tried to keep accusation out of his voice, but the driver's question about money rubbed him the wrong way. He'd spent three weeks fighting the government's abuse of the elderly, so he would be an instrument of good versus the evil of the zombies and their creators. Now he dealt with men who seemed more interested in the almighty dollar than doing what was right.

Liam eyed the contractors and wondered if they were much different than the trucker. Were they aware of the payloads and willing to keep quiet so that they could take food home to their families? What would he do if Victoria needed to protect their child?

That gave him butterflies in his stomach. It was the first time he'd directly thought of Victoria as the mother of his child.

I'm way too young for that.

A few drivers left the group and slinked away as if they feared being associated with the owner of the destroyed trailer, but most of them stuck around while he spoke.

“I believed him,” Dave said as he came up next to Liam and Victoria. “I drove this truck and met, um, Pierre, and some others not far out of Wilson. The kid was the first to hear the man's taps for help and he risked his life way more than I ever would have. I can't say for sure what you might find if you opened your own locks, but I'm 100% sure they didn't want me to find out I had zombies in the back of my trailer. I think it's worth considering, especially if we have ten or fifteen thousand zombies parked here on this lot with us.”

A couple more of the drivers left the group and jogged away. A few drivers arrived late, and one guy parked his truck next to Dave's so he could hop out and find out what was being discussed.

“The problem is the fancy locks,” Liam continued. “I can't tell you how to open them without having them go off.”

One of the female drivers raised her hand and started talking. “We can unhitch the loads and drop them into the river or into a lake. That will make sure those zombies don't get out.”

Liam nodded and caught sight of a black drone hovering near the truck stop's sign high above everyone's heads. He looked away as fast as possible but wondered if he'd been obvious about it.

Who's at the other end of that thing?

“And what if we're hauling gold or food?” a driver yelled from the back row.

“Just tap on your trailers. See if you hear zombies.” It seemed so obvious.

“I want them gone,” someone yelled.

The discussion continued with ideas about neutralizing the trailers. One guy knew about a cement factory where they could bury the boxes and seal them up forever. Someone suggested pushing them off a high cliff to flatten all the zombies, though there was some disagreement whether that would do the trick of killing them all. One woman used to work for the power company and suggested lining up all the trailers and electrocuting all the zombies.

“Can we all agree the cargo is probably really dangerous?” Liam finally said after waiting and listening.

No one objected.

“Now we have to stop all the others out there.” He faked sounding upbeat as the drivers returned to their rigs. “Stick around at the restaurant until we all figure this out,” he shouted at their backs as they walked away.

During their talk, more trucks entered and left the parking lot. Each second of delay meant other trailers were that much closer to their destinations. He'd watched the trucks drive by for hours while sitting on the roof of the farmhouse and had no illusions that stopping the fifty trucks on this lot was going to make much of a difference.

But it was a start.

5

“That went rather well. My audience will love your speech.” Dave held his camera, but Liam felt certain it wasn't broadcasting live because they'd been over the danger.

“I did my best, 100%,” he said mimicking Dave's common phrase.

“I'm sorry about broadcasting at the last truck stop. I hope I didn't get you in trouble.”

Liam didn't look up but felt the robotic eyes of the quadcopter drone above him.

“Don't worry about it. The important thing is that you had nothing to do with my actions. You were just a guy who picked up a couple of hitchhikers.”

“Well, no, I was more than that,” Dave protested. “I wanted to open the cargo and help that guy.”

“Right, but you had nothing to do with anything else. I was the one who alerted you to zombies inside your truck and all that.”

“Okay, yeah, but I'm on board. I want to figure out who did this and make them pay.” The driver held his web camera. “Look, Liam, um, I mean Pierre, you've turned me on to some serious shit baking in the oven of American government. I'm not going to sit by and let those people get away from it.”

Liam smacked his own head. He leaned in and gave Dave the shush sign and then whispered to him. “There's a drone up above listening. I was trying to get you off the hook.”

Dave immediately looked up and since there was no point pretending he didn't know about it, Liam looked up as well.

The drone was still present, as was a second aircraft about a thousand feet in the air. The higher one had two long fuselages joined together by a boxy middle part, kind of like a catamaran in the sky. He also noticed the sound of jet engines on the horizon, but they quickly faded away.

Dave looked at his camera and pointed it to the sky. “Well, my friends, it seems as if your host has bitten off more than he can chew. My young accomplice has pointed out winged predators above our heads and suggested they are listening to us. It may not be safe for you to be watching this.”

Dave looked at Liam with a serious face. “Hey, kid. You seem plugged in. Have you ever heard of government agents hurting people for just watching an illicit broadcast? Is my audience in danger?”

Liam shrugged at first, but the man deserved more than that. He knew for a fact his mom had used a multiplayer online video game to pass information around to other patriots. Even people like Mom got away with it during the period before the zombie apocalypse, but now he assumed there were many fewer channels and a lot less living viewers tuning in. Maybe the government had more overseers than there were people alive to watch illicit channels. That would mean that Dave's people were in danger.

“Dave, the honest answer is that I don't know, but I've seen and talked to a bunch of people from the other side. Defectors, I think. They told me to be careful in everything I did. If you and your followers are using the internet, you may be almost the only ones, now. That would make it very easy to track, you know?”

It was kind of funny to imagine that with the whole world in the crapper, anyone would tune in to watch a random trucker, but then he remembered how some of his friends would spend hours watching and laughing at videos of guys getting their nads smashed. If given the choice between Truckaduck and a blank screen, most people would watch a guy drive a truck.

“Will you excuse me? I need to think about some things. I made a down payment on ridding myself of the contents of my stomach after seeing what was inside my trailer. I think I'd like to finish that transaction in the bathroom, if you know what I mean?” Dave headed for the restaurant behind most of the other drivers but spun around as if he'd thought of something important. His ponytail twirled with him.

“When I met you, I was pretending to use the can. Now, here I am talking about the toilet again. Funny how that works, huh?”

He trotted off to catch up with the others.

Victoria hip-checked him as he stood there looking at the truck stop restaurant from the front. He was glad for the distraction.

“Heya, you did good,” she said.

“I don't know. It didn't have the satisfaction of really putting the knife into Elsa's people, if these are her guys.”

“We saw her die, Liam. Whatever was making her voice come out of the radio, it wasn't her. You shot her in the eye and we drowned her for good measure.”

“Yeah, I know, but someone is driving the drone up there. Someone is flying those jets. These security men are paid by someone.”

“You know I'm with you all the way, but maybe we can relax a little bit. These might be leftovers from the rest of the government that isn't led by a corrupt CrossFit champion and her savage minions. Am I right?”

She hipped him one more time. “Come on, let's go inside. I need to get this smell out of my nose, and I want to see if they are baking something yummy in there. Wanna check it out?”

A couple Humvees sped by and left the truck plaza like there was an emergency somewhere.

“It's ten miles up the highway!” he shouted to them. “You'll find a couple hundred of your missing zombies!”

They both laughed as they started across the parking lot toward the restaurant.

“There's a drone over your head,” he said in a discrete manner. “Don't look up there.”

“Who would do that?”

“Dave,” he said with a chuckle. “I tried to help the guy out, but now he is more invested in this conspiracy than we are, I think.”

“I like Dave,” she replied. “I hope he's okay.”

“Yeah, he's alright,” he said. He was a little spacey, but otherwise seemed like a standup guy. He did come back for them at the bridge, which was nine-tenths of his opinion.

They walked into the restaurant ready for the smells, but they were caught off guard by all the people.

“It looks like your message is spreading,” she said with awe as she slung her rifle over her shoulder.

“Um. Yeah.”

Unlike the last truck stop, this one was full of people holding and passing around guns. More people brought in guns from the back doors like they'd gone out to their trucks to get them.

“Excuse me, ma'am,” Liam said to a young, attractive woman walking in right next to him, “why are you carrying a gun here?”

The woman stopped and glared at Liam, but then softened when she saw Victoria was with him. She patted the little revolver tucked into her belt near her belly button. “Rumor has it the rigs out there are all full of zombies. Ain't no one taking any chances of one of them getting out, y'know what I mean?”

The woman swished her blonde hair out of her eyes. “Besides, you two seem to have me beat in the firepower department. I want to stick with you if the zombies come.”

Liam felt powerful knowing he had the heavy weaponry needed to fend off zombies. He got the feeling all the time with Victoria, but it meant a lot that the stranger woman looked up to them to support her in the event of a zombie outbreak. He took that as encouragement to do everything in his power to guard the woman and others at the truck stop.

He was also glad to see folks ready to defend themselves, too, as that took a lot of the responsibility from his shoulders. For so long it was just him and Victoria, or him and Grandma. These were average American people--not government agents or helpless refugees. After reading so many depressing zombie books, he knew there was no such thing as a safe haven in the zombie apocalypse but being around so much weaponry made him almost feel safe.

He smiled as the woman strode away.

“Another citizen helped,” he said as if he was a superhero.

“Don't get a big head,” Victoria replied with good humor.

“Liam and Victoria,” a woman called to them.

Sabella came running up a second later with her daughters in tow like ducklings on a pond. She had her shotgun in her hands and pointed it at the ceiling.

“Liam, where's Dave? We have to leave right now!”

“What? Why?” He looked around expecting something obviously wrong, such as a horde of zombies marching in.

“The security people are gone. They sped away and left us here.”

He'd noticed the two Humvees leaving and knew that couldn't have been all of them.

“That's crazy,” he said before halting. He looked out the windows of the restaurant toward the grassy areas flanking the truck stop. The parked trucks blocked much of his view of the grass at the edge of the parking lot, but the guys weren't visible in those gaps.

He saw something odd in a long opening between two rigs near the back of the property. A lone man stood on top of a large pile of dirt, but he couldn't tell which way he faced.

“Don't freak out,” he advised her, while taking the same advice. “Let's find Dave,” he agreed.

6

Liam couldn't stop himself from getting excited as they crossed the restaurant. His palms were greasy with sweat in moments and his heart rate began shifting through all the gears toward the top end. The pace maxed out when he finally caught sight of a line of Humvees getting on the nearby highway. That meant it wasn't Sabella's imagination.

“Liam--” Victoria began.

“Those guys were a bunch of scrubs,” he snapped back. “They're leaving civilians behind. But why?”

He slipped into conspiracy territory and frowned inwardly that it felt like familiar territory.

I started a rebellion.

His first instinct was that he'd been too glib with Hamilton in front of the drivers. Not only did he refuse to drop his weapon, but he tried to get the prisoner to talk about the Patriot Snowball movement.

“He tried to kill him!” he blurted out as if it was obvious.

Victoria didn't stop walking with him and didn't ask what he meant.

“That Hamilton guy knew someone was going to be in that cage. He tried to kill Preston before I knew he was alive. That's what that was all about.”

“Yeah, I think you're right but why are they leaving?” she replied. “They got what they wanted.”

“I may have, um, started some trouble.”

“Liam Peters, when have you ever started trouble?” Contrary to how he felt, she seemed to enjoy ribbing him about it.

“Well, there was that one time ... ” he said with laughter. “And this time I think the drone people knew I stirred up all these drivers. I mean, look at them all.” He pointed to a big man standing by the side door with a shotgun in his hand and three pistols tucked into his tight belt.

“Wouldn't that help them if there are zombies around? Where in the world can you go where people aren't armed and ready to help each other?”

He could think of a lot of places outside of America, but here in the heartland almost no one could go ten feet without meeting someone carrying a weapon anymore. The rules prohibiting guns might have worked while security ringed the gas station, but not once the contractors bugged out.

“If those were Elsa's people and they figured out who we are, they may have decided to pull their old tricks on us.”

“What,” she said, suddenly very serious. “Are they going to drop a rocket on us? Use big bombs? Send in the Marines?”

“We have survived a lot,” he said in agreement.

“And we'll survive this. We'll get everyone on the road and out of here as soon as we find Dave.”

Liam tried to quell his anxiety, but he felt that old sense of impending doom. He was used to it, now, and wasn't willing to ignore it for much longer. If they couldn't find Dave, and none of the other drivers would help, he was ready to start running again into the nearby farmlands. Safety had to be somewhere out there.

“Awe, hell,” Sabella groaned. “Why is he leaving?”

Dave's truck had already made most of a U-turn on its way out of the front entrance.

“He must have doubled back while we were inside,” Victoria said with sadness, “but why?”

Liam stood and watched the truck pull away and could imagine him furiously recounting his story to his followers as he spoke into the camera. Did he scare the guy too much with his warnings about drones and attacks on his audience? Sabella wanted to be clear of him and Victoria, too, so maybe that was just the sentiment going around.

The utensils and plates of the restaurant rattled as something powerful shook the whole building.

Liam scanned the front parking lot and saw nothing but normal activity. He jogged toward the back and made his way into a clump of other drivers looking toward the gas pumps and parking area in the rear.

Victoria came up next to him.

“Someone blew a lock,” he said with caution so only she heard him.

She pointed to smoke rising from behind the front row of trucks at the pumps.

“Idiot,” Liam murmured. “I shouldn't have said anything until we figured this out. Now security is gone, and people want to know if I, the young boy who can't possibly have a clue, was telling the truth.”

“You can't blame yourself,” she replied while watching with rapt attention to the parking lot. Several drivers ran toward the sound of the blast, a few with red fire extinguishers in their hands.

“I know. But--” He stopped cold.

It escaped his notice until now, but as he watched the drivers running toward the flames he happened to see a unique vehicle parked at the far-left pump. Several people stood near the front tires as if they were about to walk toward the restaurant when the explosion interrupted their plans.

That looks exactly like Mom and Dad.

He really missed them. It was painful to think of those last moments when Mom fell off the boat as she was chased by her zombie husband. And he felt horrible that his final act with either of them was to throw a knife into his dad's back.

He blinked to clear the hallucination generated by stress and wishful thinking.

And the pair was still there.

“Hey, isn't that Grandma Marty?” Victoria exclaimed. “And Mel?” Her voice rose with excitement.

It was her turn to take a pause as if she'd seen a ghost.

“And your mom and dad. How is that possible?” She put her arm on his shoulder and pointed to where he was already gazing.

“No, that can't be,” he said with great doubt.

“And that's Phil! Praise the Lord it's really them.”

They were a hundred feet away standing on the dirty pavement of the well-used truck stop. His parents. His grandma. Lost friends.

He turned to Victoria. “Is this real?”

“Huh?”

“I mean are we in that waterfall place again? Is all this a dream?”

After the ICBM landed, he felt as if he'd died and gone to Heaven. Even after his great-grandpa Al told him it was a real place, he harbored a suspicion that it was actually a complicated after-life experience. Maybe Heaven wasn't all about sitting in clouds with angels but was actually more like a high school service project where you had to do good deeds to earn your wings.

“Are we dead?” he blurted out.

Sabella and her daughters had followed and stood next to Victoria as they all looked outside. She leaned over to him.

“Kid, you've got to hold it together,” she hissed. “My daughters don't need to hear that.”

Liam robotically pulled the AK-47 off his shoulder. “I have to go out there and see.”

Victoria's green eyes were pools of calm in the increasingly chaotic restaurant. Some people ran in shouting for help while others ran outside with weapons drawn. Other than the people huddled at the rear window watching the action unfold, everyone was in motion.

His family was going back toward their multi-colored camouflage MRAP.

“I'm sure it was them. We have to go.” He spoke to Victoria while locking his eyes with hers and pleading his case.

“What? You think I'd let you go out there alone?”

Screams rose up from somewhere beyond his field of vision.

“We've got to get out there,” he repeated.

She unfurled her rifle and pulled the charging handle like it was second nature.

The image of his girlfriend holding that gun and standing at the ready to go do battle with him made his heart soar. The little metal cross on her chest reminded him that if this was all some kind of test from a higher power, he was going to be playing for the side represented by Light.

God or Heaven or whatever that waterfall represented, he at least knew the zombies were the bad guys, and he didn't fear them near as much as he once did. Even some of the good guys weren't that good, and he hated that he felt mad that Dave turned out the way he did.

Another explosion tore through one of the trucks parked in the front row of the fuel terminal. A secondary explosion lit up one of the gas islands and that seemed to trigger an electrical shut down because all the lights in the restaurant flickered off. He suddenly and inexplicably missed the loud music.

Two more explosions created a one-two tremor which shook the tables and silverware behind him.

Grandma and his parents were gone. He plainly saw Mel climb through the driver's door of the MRAP like she'd done a hundred times while he was with her.

“We're out of time,” he declared.

“What's happening?” Sabella said, finally sounding worried.

Liam held onto Victoria with one hand and held his rifle and the window frame with his other. The shaking continued and grew at an alarming pace.

Blast after blast ripped open trailers out on the parking lot.

A nearby truck with big orange lettering exploded and the debris shattered the windows in the front of the eatery.

“Shit!” Sabella cried out. “We have to run!”

Liam wasn't so sure. As more of the trailers exploded he had an idea what was really happening. None of them were accidental or caused by nosy drivers.

“They want us all dead,” he said in a droning voice during a pause in the sequence of explosions.

“What? Who?” Sabella yelled.

Victoria was quiet as all the action took place around them and Liam knew why: she was thinking the same thing as him. They were on the same wavelength now.

Liam, we have to get to Grandma.

Victoria's voice was clear and inside his head. Their telepathy had returned.

“Victoria, I hear you,” he said aloud.

I mean, I hear you, he said in his mind.

Liam, is that you?

Grandma Marty? Liam replied. It was exactly as they had done before when they were close to each other. It confirmed what he had trouble believing with his own eyes.

It's me, Liam. And hello Victoria, she continued. Are you at this truck stop?

Yes. Is that Mom and Dad? Are they really alive? He was afraid to know the answer because he thought it was impossible.

They are alive, yes, but you have to run, Liam. There are zombies everywhere.

Liam didn't need that piece of intel because he saw them all spilling out of the big trailers from one end of the lot to the other, but if his parents were alive he wasn't going to stop until he saw them. After seeing Mom go over the side of that barge, he thought it was a death sentence. And Dad was a zombie. How could he survive that?

I'm inside. I'm coming for you.

A piercing static noise filled Liam's head and he was unable to speak for a few moments until it faded.

What was that? He asked his grandma.

She didn't reply. Instead the wave of static returned. It was like music played so loud it was impossible to hear any of the instruments or lyrics.

“God, what is that?” he asked Victoria. “You hear it?” Her brow was furrowed so her quick nod was all the confirmation he needed.

The static seemed to adjust and get a bit quieter.

Grandma? He called to her.

Still the interruption continued but the volume kept getting lower.

Another explosion rocked the truck stop, but Liam was hardly paying attention.

A creepy voice called out from the static.

Mother?

It hit Liam like a freight train with no brakes. He didn't know the voice, but he did know inside his soul, inside his blood, it was family. It was as if the telepathic wavelength also gave key data about the speaker.

Mother? The man's voice repeated.

Something in his brain recognized where the man was located, as if the telepathic voice was throwing real sound waves.

Liam looked out the window to the edge of the parking lot where he'd seen the lone man standing. He was a mud-covered mess, but Liam recognized the shirtless man as the zombie he'd seen back at the farmhouse. It had somehow run across the fields and arrived here just as the place fell apart. It was exactly like what happened as the farm fell to pieces.

He had no idea how it was in his head or why it called for “mother.”

I hear you, Grandma's voice replied in a timid fashion.

Liam was torn with indecision. He had to warn her about the danger of the guy, but he desperately had to know who it was.

Mother, the voice repeated.

I am here, Robbie Grandma replied.

Together, the strange voice said.

Liam watched as the lone zombie took a step down the dirt pile toward the parking lot. A hundred other zombies swirled around on the tarmac like leaves caught in a dervish, with more pouring out of the trucks each moment.

The small black drone continued to hover over the action. Hamilton was probably laughing at how he'd neatly disposed of Liam the troublemaker. A second or so later, two fighter jets cracked the sound barrier as they shot across the sky just above the great cloud of smoke rising from the remote truck stop.

The noise sent the patrons into further panic.

He mentally hiked up his big boy pants because there was a lot of work to do.

Victoria, you with me? He asked inside his head.

Always.

We each have thirty rounds. Let's kill sixty zombies.

Don't save the last one for me this time, she replied with a forced laugh.

I won't. The last one is for that loner zombie who keeps ruining our lives.

He released the safety and put the first round into the chamber.

I'm coming for you Grandma, he said.

Yes, I come get you, the creepy voice replied.

###

Epilogue. Escape in progress

Day 21. Noon. Missouri Correctional Center in Pacific, MO.

“You were supposed to report any abnormal activity to the block captain,” Drew said in a nasally tone.

“Yeah, well, what is he going to do? Put me in prison?”

Vince laughed at his own joke but not for very long. He'd used that one a hundred times the past few weeks.

Drew, the pencil-thin white dude doing time for wire fraud, was his runner. The warden tried to pair up tech-savvy runners with drone chasers that had the best reflexes. Vince was beginning to wonder about that, however, because Drew knew very little about all the computer crap now stacked in the open cell.

“Dammit, just let me figure this out before you go calling in the boss,” Vince said without taking his eyes off the computer screen.

“You think you can figure out where he's going?”

Vince was pinched almost a dozen years ago for gunning down a rival gang member at a seedy nightclub. The warden must have looked up his whole rap sheet, because he mentioned very specific things from his past. Like the fact he drew his weapon at the same time as his target and killed the guy while dodging the return bullet.

He always had quick fingers.

The club might have swept it all under the carpet and let him dump the body as one of the many unsolved murders in the city, but the bullet meant for him went through the skull of a young lady with powerful parents.

He'd been touring the Missouri corrections and hospitality system ever since.

The computer screen was a lot like a video game and showed a perspective as if Vince was looking through the eyes of a man running across a farm field in the morning sun.

“The controls have been flaky as hell since that fall off the Osprey, but it is mostly back to normal. I've been running him where he wants to go and we keep seeing the same targets. Somehow it knows what it's doing.”

“Dude, it's a zombie. How can it know anything?”

Vince shrugged. It wasn't his job to train his helper. The runner's job was to collect the block captain, or, god forbid, the warden, if the remote zombie experienced anything out of the ordinary. So far, he'd only called for help twice. Once when it got lost in the quarry and seemed unable to get out of a deep pit. He also called for help when it fell off the military plane. The zombie grabbed the landing gear before takeoff like it was in a spy thriller, but it fell just before the plane landed in Cairo. That time the warden had to bring in specialists dressed in black uniforms to deal with something they called telemetry.

Vince didn't care about all that. His motivation was to do a good job, so he could continue getting food and free living space behind a high fence. Whatever they wanted him to do, he was Johnny Agreeable. The prison population was cut in half two weeks ago, and rumors were all over the place on what happened to them. Everyone saw them get on the busses, but after that it was a mystery. Some said they were killed off. Others thought they were on beaches in Mexico. The warden simply said they'd been given their freedom.

He didn't care to know the details, but he'd seen more than a few orange jumpsuits attack the fences and get put down by the guards. At first, he imagined they were prisoners who desperately wanted to get back in to safety, but now that he'd been given a firsthand view of the outside world through the eyes of a dead man, he realized those were dead men, too.

It was all intentional. A sick reminder from the guards that however you got released from prison, it was now a death sentence.

“I'm going to run this a little longer, D-man. You can just chill in the corner and stay out of my face.”

“I don't want to watch dirt, anyway,” the young man pouted.

Vince didn't mind watching. Even boring shit on the screen was better than anything he could do or see on the inside of the prison. When he really focused on the screen, it felt like he was free and on the run. Other than the tiny loop of track in the prison yard, he'd not felt the wind on his face in over a decade.

He watched as the running man approached a building at the edge of some fields. It was obviously a truck stop based on the tall billboard-sized logo and the size of the trailers moving back and forth from the nearby interstate.

“What do you see there?” he asked the screen.

“Anything?” Drew inquired as if anxious to do something, too.

“Nope. Nothing but field.”

The zombie ran full speed across the last few hundred yards of open ground until it stood on a small mound of dirt just outside the bustle of the Flyin' J truck stop.

Vince would literally kill someone if he could have a 64-ounce fountain Coke from that place. While his remote signal waited in front of the carbonated promised land, he wondered what the zombie was thinking. Could it think? Nothing he'd seen over the past few weeks suggested these things could string two thoughts together, but something in their brains had to be working, right?

The last zombie he controlled died in a rail yard a week ago. Analysts in black suits took him to a special room they called a skiff and asked him a bunch of questions about those last moments. What was the zombie doing? Was there any warning of impending attack? Did he push the zombie into a situation where it resisted his directives?

He answered as best he could and figured no matter what he said they were going to throw him over the fence for losing one of their “assets,” but they didn't.

They took a buttload of notes and advised him to be more careful, and then they returned him to his cell with a new zombie to control. He'd been driving this one for a week, so he figured he'd worked out the kinks.

The main thing was keeping the zombie out of situations where it was certain to die. He had to creep around on the edges of the apocalypse to avoid the bullets of survivors. What little they told him suggested their goal was preserving these special zombies until they were needed later on.

He didn't ask questions. As long as the food kept coming, he was going to do whatever they asked and keep his guy out of trouble.

“Whoa, mister zombie. We need to back off this one.” Vince used the joystick to move the zombie back off the small hill overlooking the truck stop, but it was reluctant to do as it was told.

“There it is, again,” he whispered to himself.

“Trouble?” Drew asked as he looked up from his lady's underwear catalogue that passed as reading material given to them by the management.

“No,” he replied tersely.

He flicked a red switch on one of the electrical gadgets sitting next to the computer screen. During training they said it could be used to nudge the remote units, kind of like a dog's shock collar.

“Back off,” he commanded the screen. After he said it, he realized his voice would bring Drew over.

The zombie held firm as it stood on the hill. The truck stop was a hub of activity, but Vince couldn't figure out why the zombie was there, or why it wouldn't leave.

“At least there's no security at that one,” Drew said from over his shoulder, “but you should get him out of there. Those truckers are packing, I guarantee it.”

Vince grunted, not wanting to otherwise acknowledge that his runner was right.

“What the hell?” he said. The security wasn't there, but they were on the highway as if they'd just left. “Those Humvees are all driving away.”

“That's weird,” Drew agreed in a serious voice.

Interference buzzed in his ear. It got louder until he had to tilt his headphones up, so they weren't right over his ears.

Someone was going to notice the zombie if he didn't get control of the unit.

“Get off the damned hill,” he said as he spoke into the mic. No one could say for sure the zombies understood language, but the black suits let on there was anecdotal evidence at least some of the subjects did what they were asked. Vince panicked a little because the zombie was in the worst possible position to be shot down and a replay of the tapes would show that he did nothing to move him off that hilltop.

He suddenly needed his weasel partner.

“Go get the cap'. Go!”

“I should get the block captain?” Drew asked in surprise. “Why don't you just pull him back?”

Vince wasn't in the mood to argue with the guy.

“I never thought of that, you ass! Just friggin' go! This thing is not under my control. It's not my fault.” He knew it wasn't good to blame someone else for his problem, but he wasn't taking the fall for what was obviously a glitch. The sooner the block captain knew, the sooner he'd be off the hook for whatever followed.

Drew moved to the open cell door, but still watched the screen.

“If you don't get the captain right this second, it's going to be your fault this thing got capped. Comprende amigo?”

Drew ran out of the cell with hot feet.

On the screen, the interference got worse. The audio feed went out first, but the visual feed dropped a few seconds later. It wasn't the typical headshot because those dropped the feed, and the system went dark at the same time.

This was something else.

He came to the conclusion something cut the signal, but the zombie was almost certainly still standing where it was. Assuming it wasn't shot dead right away, it would probably try to find the nearest person and kill them.

Vince thought about the implications of that and decided he didn't really care. The people who put him in prison were out there. Maybe that zombie would kill one of them for him. He suddenly found himself wishing it all the best in that effort.

“I guess you're free,” he mumbled into the mic.

A new voice punched through the interference for just a second. “Mother?”

“Hello?” Vince replied.

Static.

He stared into the blank screen for another sixty seconds until the block captain and the warden ran into Vince's cell. The little bastard brought them both to cover his own ass.

Vince spun around in his chair to face the music.

He figured he'd soon be free, too.

###

Acknowledgments

Thank you for reading all seven books in the Since the Sirens series. I’ve written something like 30 other novels since I wrote the first word of this series, and I’ve loved every one of them, but these stories remain some of my favorites. I think much of the reason is they’re set in my hometown of St. Louis, which makes every location meaningful to me as both a reader and the author. Any trip I take through the city elicits memories of scenes I placed in the books.

Another reason these are so interesting to me is because the story is far from over. I was tempted to write a few more chapters and slap them at the end of book 7 as part of this box set, so it wouldn’t end on a cliffhanger, but that would only create confusion in the minds of readers who already bought the books separately. I didn’t want to force them to buy the box set just to see more of the story. That’s not how I do business.

However, the story is frozen at a moment in time where Liam and his friends and family come face to face with one special zombie watching them from afar. I fully intend to pen book 8 and continue the journey, and I do hope you’ll become a fan and follow my newsletter to learn when it will hit bookshelves. Reader interest, in the form of emails, Facebook posts, and reviews, is how I decide which book to write next. If you liked this story, and want more, please leave a review!

For now, thank you again for spending time in my world.

EE Isherwood

January 12, 2021

E.E. Isherwood’s other books

Minus America – After an event sweeps from coast to coast, nearly everyone in mainland USA disappears. Only piles of clothes remain. Can the last Americans survive long enough to learn how it happened? Five books.

Impact
(co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books.

Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood
Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens
My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!