Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Siren Songs (10 page)

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
you're 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. “Me personally, I
never understood politicians' fetish with controlling ammo. If you
practice shooting you know you can go through thousands of rounds of
ammo in a busy afternoon of training. Your dad's ammo supply 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-47's, 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 anyway 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.”

Liam did as instructed. 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. Lots
of people were out and sitting in the grass or in the shade of the
nearby trees, but we needed to stay comfortable so 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, each new person had tales of those
zombies that were taking over the city up 'n St. Louis. 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 zombies 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.”