Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Siren Songs (39 page)

“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. Bad luck, as his dad had 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 was
focused on finding Grandma too. It would be so easy to ignore Grandma
and instead tackle the not inconsequential matter of survival
day-to-day. It spoke well that Victoria wasn't just a pretty face,
but had a sense of duty matching his own.

“You are 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 next task?”

Now he was put on the spot. He
was
always drawing parallels
to the stories he'd read. Stories about zombies were all over the
place in subject matter, and of varying instructiveness to the real
life zombie apocalypse. In general, stories about captured group
members depended on clues provided by the author to help the heroes
discover the location of their missing friend. Sometimes that was
done in a ham-handed fashion, while others were more realistic.
Always there were clues though. Now, when it mattered, Liam saw no
such clues.

He felt in his pocket, thinking he was overlooking something. His
pocketknife was in one, and the family picture given to him by
Colonel McMurhpy was in the other. He pulled it out, seeing the man
he watched shoot himself in the head back at the government medical
camp—just after he was bit by a zombie test subject. It also
displayed his wife and teenage boy. 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 the last moments of the man. 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?”

“I met a Colonel back at the Elk Meadow Camp. 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.”

“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 1000 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 pulled her out of her chair. Together 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 were able to
ride out the darkness with only 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 to do 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 of the crisis. Melissa wanted to scout
out from Liam's ruined neighborhood to find like-minded souls who
wanted 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. They too
had been talking and thinking.

“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've been 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. Liam's mind had trouble processing what was so valuable
about them, but writers in the zombie genre seemed confident on this
point. He was content to put an asterisk on the thought for now.

He intended to present his group as being a valuable addition to
the Boy Scout Camp 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 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—well not unless you count
Mark, who was a man they'd met days earlier giving water to refugees
on the highway. 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 put it all in perspective. “So all we have to do
is get our guns and ammo, walk through the back roads of the county,
and knock on the door of the Boy Scout camp and see if they 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.

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. It would have been easy to
write that tower into this story, but Liam and his friends were in a
different part of the town—they couldn't have seen it. 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 Duschene 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.

The final book will be out in February 2016 and will also feature
St. Louis locales. Look for it at all the finer ebook retailers.

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 my trilogy.
With this book out the door, it's time to look ahead.

E.E. Isherwood

E. E. Isherwood has penned three books about the infected zombies,
along with several short stories describing the wreckage they left
behind. He has designs for many more tales. His long-time fascination
with the end of the world blossomed decades ago after reading the
1949 classic
Earth Abides
. Zombies are just a handy vehicle
which allows him to observe how society breaks down in the face of
such withering calamity.

Isherwood lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife and family.
He stays deep in a bunker with steepled fingers, always awaiting the
arrival of the first wave of zombies.

Find him online at www.zombiebooks.net.

E.E. Isherwood currently has three books in the
Sirens of the
Zombie Apocalypse
universe. Visit his website at
www.zombiebooks.net
to be
informed when future titles are launched.

The
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse
series

“Start the Sirens” (Introductory short story)

Since the Sirens

Siren Songs