Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Siren Songs (20 page)

“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, dontchya 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. Several men and women had climbed the nets to try to flee
these guys. They were relieved to see us, though not for long. We
weren't there to save them, only acquire samples. 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 coverups,
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.