Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Siren Songs (17 page)

“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.

“Ummm, 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 was sitting 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 was 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.

“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.