Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (9 page)

From inside Grandma's house, he heard screams. In fact, they were
coming from the basement—his old bunk space. Much as he'd done
in real life, he went to the side of the house and found the narrow
basement windows. He kicked one in, then slid through.

His bed was still there. It hadn't been touched. His gaming laptop
was on the bedspread, just as he'd left it. While fighting the deep
longing for the computer, he looked at the rear doorway. It was just
as well he didn't try the basement door, the dryer he'd placed in
front of that door was still there.

It was as if he'd just stepped out. Minus the fact the other
houses were in ruins. That wasn't something he'd witnessed.

Am I seeing the house as it is now?

Another scream. He recognized Victoria. It came from deeper in the
basement, which looked like a hoarder's stash, once he walked beyond
his little living space. He inched through the junk and noted with
some pride the gap in the rafters where his dad had left him the
small-caliber guns. Those had saved his life, and Grandma's life. He
was positive of that.

“Liam, please hurry,” Victoria's voice was soft and
wistful.

He became driven. Deeper he went. The dream basement was different
in one major way. It was much larger. The piles of junk continued for
minutes while he struggled through, and then over them. He ignored
the changing scenery below him.

Here, piles of garbage bags.

Next, piles of bodies, stacked neatly.

He had to crawl over a pyramid of beer cans.

Stacks of large bags of dog food.

What the hell?

Finally, he reached the end of the basement. His Grandpa had kept
several shelves of old shortwave radios. Liam always assumed it was
because of his time back in the war, but he'd never thought to ask.
His Grandpa Al had long since passed away, and it seemed a waste of
effort to ask Grandma Marty—a woman famous for not touching a
piece of technology her whole life.

“Open the door. Help us, girl!”

A voice was on one of the radios. Or, more accurately, was coming
out of the radio.

He studied the old-school frequency dial. It was circular with a
little arrow that pointed to the various frequencies listed on the
slider as it spun past. It looked like something from his Grandpa's
days in the service.

Ancient.

When he got close, he could read the tiny lettering. The word
“Victoria” sat between numeric frequencies. As if
Victoria was a frequency.

He touched nothing but got close to the speaker so he could hear
what was happening.

“I'm so sorry. I can't open the door,” a girl said
with a forceful tone.

“Victoria, is that you?” He was in a dream, why not
call out?

There were clear sounds of zombies. Groaning. Moaning. A distant
call-to-arms zombie—he was still working on what to call that
one. It sounded like a major infestation of them. Though the language
was animalistic, he got the gist of it. They wanted to kill his
girlfriend.

“Liam?”

It
was
her. She was in trouble, but he could help.

“Don't let them in! You have to survive,” he shouted.

“I know. I'm trying,” she replied, sounding tired.

He waited while the noises of the infected peaked on the broadcast
dial. Whereas it started with lots of people cussing and screaming,
it ended with only the sounds of zombies.

Victoria's voice was distant when she finally returned. “They're
all dead now.”

“I know. You did the right thing,” he said softly. His
voice betrayed the happiness he felt she was still alive. He'd helped
protect her.

Liam woke up to see the treads of the tank outside his window. It
was daylight, now. And he'd been found.

“You have to survive,” he whispered to himself,
“because I'm pretty much dead.”

Liam had no clue what to make the treads at the window. Was it
just passing by? Looking for him?

His priority was staying quiet, but with the dream he'd just had
it made him wonder if he shouted out in his sleep. Grandma had woken
up screaming many times on their adventures, which called to question
whether her dreams were as bad as his...or his were as bad as hers.
She had said she visited Grandpa Al.

It can't be coincidence.

He focused on the window above.

The miniature tank plodded forward, to the left of the window as
he looked at it. When it was gone, he ran to the short staircase to
the main level of the house. The layout was all different, but the
piles of old junk reminded him once again that his dream of Grandma's
house was probably prompted by the similarity to this one. Even the
wooden stairs were old and rickety, like hers.

At the upstairs door, he took it slow. The scissors were pointed
toward trouble. When the door opened, he was struck in the face by
the stench of the dead. He'd grown accustomed to the distinctive
odor, though here in the stuffy house it was heavy enough to coat his
nostrils.

He put the sleeve of his jacket over his mouth and nose to defend
against the stench. One foot was backing down the stairs when he
caught motion outside the window of the well-worn kitchen in front of
him. The black drone hovered nearby. Behind it, another type of drone
was treading air.

Slowly, he sank to the floor.

I'm not going to die in some random basement.

He drug himself over the linoleum of the kitchen, then onto the
wooden floor of the home's central hallway. The front room was darker
with 1970's shag carpet and thick drapes pulled closed. As he
approached, the smell got worse. His eyes began to water.

He had no choice. The open windows of the kitchen wouldn't allow
him to stay there, and the lack of exits in the basement was a deal
breaker. The darker living room was the best of a bunch of crappy
options.

When he got in the room...

He'd seen a lot the past many weeks. Broken bodies. Horrible
images of death. The captives in the cages. Zombies destroyed in the
worst possible ways. But here he saw something that took his breath
away...

An ancient man sat in a big cushy recliner. Compared to the chair,
he was tiny. If Liam had to guess an age, he'd put the man right at
one hundred.

Next to him, in a smaller chair, was a younger-looking elderly
man—also dead.

“Why are you showing me this?” he whispered through
his jacket sleeve. After he'd said it, he wondered who he was asking.

His belief in God had waxed and waned over the last few weeks. It
was strongest in the presence of Grandma Marty but had flagged as he
was exposed to more and more degradation in the Zombie Apocalypse.
Victoria helped bolster his belief, but now she wasn't around,
either. It was disconcerting to think his belief ultimately came down
to whether or not those around him believed.

However, the sight of the two dead men in the otherwise
normal-looking living room did nothing to inspire belief in a higher
power. Just the opposite, in fact. These two men had given up...

He wanted to look away, but he was drawn to them. Made himself
look at them. It couldn't be coincidence he'd seen three suicides in
a row...

Don't let this be you, Liam.

It reassured him. He would never allow himself to reach that low
that he'd take his own life.

“Fight!” the triplets had told him.

Hey, at least you don't have to climb out of a grave today.

He silently laughed, but the day was young. Anything could happen.

Finally, as he was on the verge of looking away, he saw something
important. It was the cause of such devastation on the bodies of the
dead men.

The double-barreled shotgun had fallen between the two chairs. And
there on an end table was a box of twenty-five shells. It was worth
the smell and the fright to get a real weapon.

He was already on his knees, so he crawled to the gun and pulled
it from its cranny. He tried to watch both men, assuming they were
going to wake up and attack him—even without a good portion of
their heads. Neither moved a dead muscle.

When he had the gun, he got the shells, then moved across the room
and sat up against the wall. The smell was ripe, the drones were
somewhere outside, and he felt his day was looking up.

The shotgun had been chopped. Rather than the stereotypical
hunting shotgun, it had been made to look like a rap gangster's
weapon. The chamber broke open so he could feed in two side-by-side
shells, then he snapped it shut with force. He set it over his legs,
using it as a substitute comfort blanket.

Then, he waited.

A shadow passed over the front windows.

If a round came through the glass, he tried to imagine where he
would run. Maybe he would jump in the chair with the old man and use
him as a meat shield. He was positive something like that had been
done in the zombie books he'd read. He got lost in thought, asking
himself if he had it in him to pull the decaying corpse on top of
him...and the drone was soon out of sight.

I have to get out of here.

2

Armed as he was, he risked getting closer to the windows to see
what was happening outside.

On the front side, the house abutted the main street which was now
the outer perimeter of the Forest Park refugee camp. On the far side,
there were a string of urban flats with the taller medical buildings
behind them. In the daylight, he saw the line of cars and buses
blocking the intersection, but also the amount of work that went into
boarding up each house along the street. Cars had been wedged in the
narrow corridors between each house, further reinforcing the
defenses.

After establishing his bearings, it was clear he'd run too far and
was now on the north edge of the park. He was closer to the west
side, but it was a beneficial error because it put him nearer to
Victoria's campus and dorm.

He crept back to the kitchen so he could see the backyard, but he
was pretty sure one of the drones was still back there. The ominous
hum kept him on edge.

The glass door shattered, and something slammed into the wall near
his shoulder.

Though he was already on high alert, it caused him to freeze in
panic.

While he watched, a mini tank crumpled the aluminum storm door and
drove itself right into the kitchen.

The black drone was behind it.

Run!

He spun around and ran for the front room. Another gunshot hit a
lamp next to him as he ran. He felt the splash of glass on his right
arm.

The door to the outside was ahead of him. An array of
possibilities scrolled across his eyes.

Fight the drone with the shotgun. Not likely.

Run parallel to the Forest Park perimeter. Get caught by the air
drones.

Run toward the perimeter across the street. Get shot by the
defenders.

The door took a few seconds to unlock and open. The front screen
door was also locked—the owners must have bolted the place
down—giving the tank drone extra time to crunch through the
kitchen table and chairs. He could hear it breaking those things
apart.

When he made it onto the front stoop, he had to make his choice.

It wasn't a hard decision. He ran across the street.

It was the only scenario that didn't directly involve mindless
drones.

Liam waved his arms in a regular pattern as he fled into the
street. His shotgun was in one hand, but he didn't point it at the
defenders. The hope was the humans over there would see him and, most
importantly, not shoot him as a zombie.

“Help,” he shouted as he ran.

The gunfire background noise of the city was ebbing low at the
moment, giving him a chance to be heard. The street was several lanes
wide.

Much to his surprise, the defenders didn't welcome him. Gunfire
came in his direction.

“I'm not a threat,” he shouted. But he also turned,
and got very low. Now he was running down the middle of the street,
in full view of the defenders and the drones.

Smooth move, Liam.

He looked back to the house. Two drones had come over the top of
the house and were in pursuit. The tank drone was probably still
inside, though he imagined it storming out of the front part of the
house like some kind of mechanical Kool-Aid Man.

Ahead, he saw an incongruity in the pavement. A chance at escape.
Already running, he ran as fast as his feet could carry him.

When he reached the sewer lid, he slid down and got to work
lifting the circular piece of iron. As any number of books and movies
would attest, all he had to do was lift it and start his climb down.
There was no way the drones could follow, nor could they remove the
lid if he shut it behind him.

But, he was betrayed by TV. The lid was heavier than he imagined,
but it also didn't have any hand holds for him to grab. Instead, it
had a series of small holes. He would need a big hook to lift it.

Torn between running some more and struggling to get a couple more
fingers in so he could keep trying—he never even budged it—he
felt the blast of air currents from a drone. It was the black one.
The white one was nearby but seemed to be satisfied to stand off from
the action.

Liam put up his hands, then stood. If he couldn't sneak down the
drain, and he couldn't make it to the living people in the blockade,
he wasn't going take a bullet while lying down. The drone didn't seem
vulnerable to a shotgun blast, which was just as well since he left
the gun lying on the ground. A part of him hoped whoever was
controlling the drone would see him surrender, and not order it to
kill him. The gun on the bottom was only five feet away, pointed at
his neck.

Right where I got hit with the tag from the other drone.

While he marveled at the ruthless efficiency of whoever was
controlling the drones, he didn't immediately hear the nearby
gunfire. Only when bullets started to snap off the outer shell of the
drone did the threat present itself.