Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (5 page)

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. As he moved, a big chunk of one of the display windows
crashed to the floor with the sound a million wine glasses clinking.

That got him moving.

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.”