Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (38 page)

The seriousness of the charges affected the men. They stepped back
several big steps.

“Damn. This woman is supposed to have offed the President.”

“That figures,” retorted Jane.

“Sir, we are cleared to terminate these three on sight. In
fact, someone wrote in some notes. It states several penal codes that
will apply if we
don't
shoot them on sight.”

Victoria moved closer to him, though they were already about as
tight as they could be. She looked up. “Thanks for coming for
me. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He didn't care how it would look. He swept Victoria in his arms
and kissed her.

There are worse ways to go out.

The kiss was a record-breaker. It was his first since their
rendezvous in her dorm room, and it was something he'd been thinking
about every minute since. It was everything he'd dreamed, and it made
him completely forget the cruel world infected everything except what
he had in those final seconds…

The kiss went on longer than he could have hoped. It truly was a
good trade, if they had to die.

“Wait just a damned minute,” said the leader at last.
“Just a damned minute.”

Liam heard the words and sensed the change. He really wanted to
keep on kissing her, but they read each others' minds and pulled
apart, together. Her smile and moist eyes encouraged him to look back
to the intruders.

“If that's not Elsa, how in the world do we know these
people are the threats we see here? Do they look like the world's
most dangerous terrorists? This one is just a kid.” Of course,
they pointed at him.

“We need more information.” Looking at Liam, he said,
“I don't suppose you'd tell us whether this information is
true? Are you the most dangerous boy in America?”

Well, it depends on who you are.

Out of his mouth, he professed a much more mundane explanation.

“This Debbie girl asked my girlfriend and me to help her
bring elderly people to this boat. We wanted to help. They were being
left behind for the zombies to get them.”

“And her?” He pointed to Jane.

“I'm his mother,” she said matter-of-factly. “We
live in Cairo, of course, and I chased these two when I thought they
had come out on these barges to have sex. You know, being the end of
the world and all.”

Liam felt his face flare up in embarrassment. But he couldn't
exactly counter her argument without destroying his fabricated story.
“Yeah, my mom saved us from doing something stupid,” he
said without emotion.

“Sir, there's no way we're going to find four Level 5's in
this toilet of a town in nowhere, USA. This has to be a mistake. Our
data has been hacked.”

The leader looked around, evidently thinking it over.

Liam rubbed Victoria's back. It was all he could to keep his hands
busy because the other one was shaking at his side.

2

“We bag 'em all. Take them back to base. Let HQ sort out the
truth.”

Liam let out an audible sigh of relief.

“Sir, we're looking for Marty Peters, my great-grandma. Does
your computer have a location for her?”

The computer man looked at the leader, who replied with a curt,
“Do it.”

In a few moments, the man quite forcefully smacked his own head.
“She's in the system. We now have five of them! We've struck
gold.” He pointed to the machine. “It says Ms. Martinette
Peters is wanted for involvement in the trafficking of bio-toxins
across state lines. We are ordered, and I quote, to terminate her at
extreme distance and ensure body and biological remnants are purged
thoroughly in a hyper-temperature smelter.” He laughed. “Who
the hell writes this stuff?”

“But where is she? Is it in there?”

“Yeah, sure kid. It shows her not far away, in the town.”

He figured she was on the run. She wasn't at the house he'd
checked.

The questions were there, but he wanted to know something else. A
dark force he suspected was behind all this, no matter what Victoria
thought.

“I um, have one more name. My dad. If it's not too much
trouble could you look him up? Then I won't bother you again.”

“That won't be necessary,
son
. He's waiting for us
right
where we left him
.” Jane looked right at him.

“His name is Douglas Hayes. Just tell me where he is, so I
know he's OK.”

The computer operator seemed hesitant, but the leader nodded. “One
more. That's all I can handle.”

In moments, the man had his answer. His face revealed his surprise
before he voiced it.

“Well, thank the lard for good taste. We've cooked a
half-dozen doozies. This guy is the worst one of all. A Homeland
Security special adjunct in charge of studying the spread of the ZF
one dash one zero strain of influenza. It says he infected the lab
and escaped with several virulent samples of the virus.” He
paused, his eyes continuing to read what must have been a lengthy
blotter.

“Good God! Intel says he was part of the division that
secretly helped the Patriot Snowball rebels infect D.C. Then he did
some work overseas. Finally...oh come on! This can't be true. It says
his role in the insurrection was to sanitize the city of St. Louis of
all life.”

Secretly, Liam knew at least some of that was true. What about the
rest? If they knew what was really happening would they kill them
instantly? How did he let himself get dealt into the game, so these
men thought his own father was a mass murdering lunatic? What did
that make him?

Afraid to know the truth, he had to ask. “And his location?”

“It says he's right here, of course. Cairo. What is this
place? A criminal convention?”

Liam felt Victoria turn toward Jane, but no words were passed.

The leader walked up to him. “You three better give me some
answers. I'm authorized to terminate you on sight. Do you know what
kind of power that gives me?”

“Sir, are you with the Polar Bears?” Liam had to
eliminate that possibility.

“I ask the questions. I'll give you five seconds to start
talking.”

“Or what?” asked Jane. “How dare you threaten me
and my son.”

“Or I drag your ass onto my helicopter, and I drop you in
Supermax prison. That might be a fate worse than death, right now. By
some miracle, most inmates survived this crisis. Isolated living, I
guess.”

“We have rights,” Victoria added.

The man looked at her with the first hint of sadness. “Ma'am
I used to work for a special branch of the United States government.
I swore an oath to a Constitution which no longer exists. My country
no longer exists. It's been taken over by an insider coup. Your
rights were stripped by those people. My job now is to take it back.
Your rights extend up to and including me shooting you three in the
face if I believe for a second you are as dangerous as this computer
says you are.”

He got as close as he dared. “Someone had better say
something
.”

“I'm a Snowballer,” Liam said while thinking of Mom.
“My goal is the same as yours—to restore this nation to
what it was before. Three weeks ago I didn't know how good I had it.
I did nothing but play video games, and I didn't even know about the
Patriot Snowball group back then. But I ran into some of them. They
told me what the government agents did to them. They told me about
all the experiments.” He pointed to the nearby beds. “This
place is one of those experimental sites. I'm sure of it. We're here
to stop the people responsible for this. Though I admit, we aren't
doing a very good job.”

“And the others?”

“We're all patriots.” He was careful not to lie about
Jane. He didn't know what she was, other than the wife of the man who
shot his girlfriend. Her loyalties remained suspect, even though she
was with Victoria. “Victoria and I helped my great-grandma
Marty Peters escape from the Riverside Hotel and Casino in downtown
St. Louis. They were doing experiments there with elderly citizens,
and they had captured many different specimens suffering from the
zombie plague.”

He took a deep breath, adamant he could keep this momentum going.

“And we witnessed the death of an Agent Duchesne, who was
part of a government agency called the NIS—National Internal
Security. They're the ones who released the plague on the Patriot
Snowball. Not the other way around. They knew about the plague long
before it came to America. After we escaped, we found more evidence
of the creation of the plague down in the Koch Hospital Mine. They
did their experiments on bodies of soldiers they stole from the
National Cemetery.”

Victoria jumped in. “And I was, uh, working with Liam's dad
at Washington University when the NIS destroyed his lab. He'd
discovered that some people are infected with the plague and don't
even know it. The NIS wanted the plague spread far and wide. They
even claimed they used a hidden signal in the tornado sirens to get
the zombies to move faster during the first few hours. They're the
bad guys, sir.”

The leader stepped closer and looked at Jane with a cold stare.

“My name's Ben, ma'am. Not at all pleased to meet you, but
I'll protect you, if I can. I have to ask: do you have any control
over your kids? It sounds like they're getting into a lot of
trouble,” he said with no irony.

“They've caused me more sleepless nights than you can
imagine,” she said with a forced smile.

Ben turned around and waved them all toward the steps.

“I don't believe any of it, of course. But HQ will get to
the truth. I'm not coming out of this empty handed.” Then,
quieter, “Not again.”

3

While they'd talked, the drones had come to rest on the metal of
the hull. The propellers were rapidly slowing.

Near the steps, the leader noticed them and spun around. “If
any of you tries anything, I will kill you. Are we clear?”

“Crystal, sir,” said Liam, knowing the answer.

“We've apparently lost control of these drones. I didn't
order them to stand down. Jay, check for threats. I'll radio up top.
We're getting clear.” He pulled out a radio and called for his
flight.

His man went up the steps, then promptly tumbled back down. Dead.
A bullet had struck him in the back of the head.

A gun was in Liam's face before he had taken one deep breath after
seeing the body.

“Who's with you? Tell me or you're dead!”

He couldn't speak. His stomach was ready to unload, though.

“There's no one,” Jane piped up. “I swear. We
came alone. Don't kill him, please,” she pleaded with passing
sincerity.

The barrel of the gun wavered.

“Dammit!”

The gun pointed to the floor.

He put up a finger to quiet everyone, then got back on his radio.

“Jolly Roger, this is Crusader One. Abort, abort, abort.”

There was no reply.

“Jolly Roger—”

The whine of the helicopter increased, then an explosion above
sent shards of shrapnel through the metal roof of the barge an
instant later. A blast of heat poured down the stairwell, into the
compartment. Everyone ran deeper into the hold. One big section of
the roof buckled inward, as if something heavy had landed on it. The
scraping of metal and the repetitive clangs on the outer hull
strongly suggested the helicopter had been destroyed.

“It's a damned trap!” Ben yelled. “Get to the
other end.” They all ran down the length of the hull. The
younger people helped the older set get along to relative safety.

Most of the debris landed about mid-way down the length of the
line of beds. A big piece of steaming hot metal struck one of the
sleeping bodies. It collapsed part of the bed, and as Liam ran by he
was horrified to see it had taken off one of the man's legs. The
scary part, he realized, was that the man didn't wake up.

He kept eyes forward. There were others in the area, and he didn't
want to know if any of those had been struck. There was nothing to be
done for any of them. Right now his priority was Victoria. They ran
hand-in-hand.

When they reached the other end of the boat, he was disappointed.
There was no exit. He assumed this was because the space was normally
used to store coal, or rock, or grain. Not people. The designers
never anticipated a second exit would be necessary.

“Ben, are you guys military?” Jane asked.

“We're Secret Service,” he said as he searched the
walls and ceiling.

“Secret Service,” Jane repeated. “Is the
president around?”

“I couldn't tell you if he was, but we do more than protect
the man. We protect the office. Whether you know it or not, you said
the magic words. If you know about the NIS and aren't killing us for
hearing it, we can more or less assume you aren't NIS.”

Liam thought of Jane. She was, at one time, NIS. How deep did that
loyalty run? Was she honest about working against them? She'd
outright killed NIS agents with her sniper rifle, but he'd learned to
doubt everything with Hayes, and, by extension, his wife.

“The beds! Quick, stack the beds,” Ben ordered. Using
two empty beds, they managed to stand high enough to reach the metal
barrier over the roof. It was like a series of shallow arches, each
about ten feet wide, that were placed one next to the other for the
entire length. For all he knew, they were hundreds or thousands of
pounds in weight. Ben tried to push one up, but it didn't budge at
all. He got up there to help, but the result was the same.

“I think they're bolted together above us,” Ben said
with a hint of defeatism.

They came off the bed, and Ben took a seat as Liam came down and
stood on the floor. “Polar Bear, huh? I don't suppose you can
call them, can you?” He was clearly joking, though Liam
probably could call his mom. She was so far away the best he could
hope to do was tell her goodbye. Maybe now was the time for that...

“If you're a Polar Bear, that officially makes us enemies of
the domestic sort, but I'm going to let you off on a technicality.
Currently, I have no idea who is running the country. The Polar Bears
seem to be the only people rallying citizens around that Constitution
I mentioned.”