Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (45 page)

Elsa rolled a few paces away, always moving.

No choice. Get the gun.

He lunged for it. Time hung around his neck like kryptonite. He
crashed to the rocks but soon felt the sand-covered gun in his hand.
The weight of it rekindled countless outings with his father to shoot
the gun now in his possession.

“I'm going to kill your girlfriend the second after I kill
you. Put that in your stinkin' book!” Elsa launched herself at
him.

Victoria fell to one knee. Hurt.

He fired in the same motion as aiming at Elsa's head. She wasn't a
zombie, but her outfit made her immune to zombie bites, and maybe
bullets. He wasn't taking any chances.

The first shot glanced off the side of her skull.

He was ready for it.

She was off her feet—springing at him with all she had
left—and madly cursing.

He had time for only one more shot.

Aim for the eyes.

The little gun snapped once.

Elsa crashed into him, and they fell to the dirty bank together.
She landed on top, taking them both into the water. She screaming in
anger and madness, cursing while they thrashed together in the
shallows. He was going to test his theory on whether he could best
her in the water…

“Die you little punk! I'm going to kill you. Kill her. Kill
grandma. I'm going to nuke your whole goddamn state!”

She was on top of him before he knew what was happening. His head
dunked while she situated herself above him, but it came up when she
solidified herself. She pulled him out so she could talk down to him.

“I'm
so
done with playing around,” she said
breathlessly. One of her eyes was shut from his gunshot.

Victoria came tumbling into the water—jumping on Elsa's back
and sending them both flailing into the water. He was pushed under by
their combined weight.

When he surfaced, unencumbered, both women were screaming while
splashing sideways in the knee-deep water. He took two steps and
landed on top of Elsa. He grabbed her hair with both his hands and
pulled with all he had left. Her screams went up a notch.

“You're both dead!”

“I don't think so,” he replied. Victoria used the
distraction to stand and avoid Elsa's reach. As she got her bearings
and saw what he was doing, she jumped on her as well. The combined
effort kept her from finding her own feet, then she fell forward
under the surface.

“Hold on!” he shouted.

He saw what was coming, and had a momentary lapse that almost gave
Elsa enough wiggle room to escape.

I'm going to kill a person.

“We got her!” Victoria shouted.

Elsa was gyrating like a fish, but Liam used his anger at what she
did to his parents to ensure his grip was unbreakable. Together they
held the slick woman under the choppy water until it was clear she
wasn't going to get back up.

Soon, their deep heaving breaths were all that remained for sound.

The water calmed.

Together they let her go, and she floated in the water. With great
effort, he assisted Victoria back to the shore where they both fell
heavily. He coughed out some lingering water while she hunched over
to catch her breath.

Exhaustion overcame him and he fell flat.

“I guess prayer really does work,” he said to himself
when he was finally able.

“I'd say that was all you,” Victoria said through her
own exhaustion. She sounded happy. “You killed her.”

“I killed her?”

“We did it together,” she corrected. “And we
should make sure she's really dead.”

A million zombies books would agree.

They pulled Elsa to shore and rolled her onto her back. As he
looked at her pale face, he expected an explosion of blood and bone
from where the bullet had struck, but it turned out to be a bloody
eye and not much more. It reminded him of another shooting victim.
The thief that pretended to be a police officer. Someone had shot
that man dead just as he was about to injure him. At the time, he
assumed it was another kindly man in a window.

But now, seeing the small caliber gun's damage on Elsa's face, he
was sure he knew who had saved his life that day.

Victoria plopped down, then patted the ground next to her, urging
him to sit.

“You're injured...uh, again,” he said with all
sincerity.

“She rang my bell, but I'm getting used to it.”

“Lucky for me, huh? A few more seconds and I'd be floating
down the river...” he sighed, “with my parents.”

“I'm sorry. Really, really sorry. That was a horrible thing
to do to your mom and dad.”

“I could cry, but I don't have time.” He pointed to
the wreckage of the bridge on the one side, and the smoke drifting up
from Cairo across the river. “She's the first person—real,
live, person—I've killed since the sirens. I can't believe how
empty I feel. I should be dancing for joy.”

“You get used to it.” Unlike him, she'd already killed
more than one “real” person.

She'd been distracted back at her dorm room—leading to their
separate journeys to this patch of shoreline—and he wondered if
the weight of killing had caught up to her. Like those soldiers who
get post-traumatic stress syndrome.

But she didn't elaborate. Instead, she leaned back onto her
elbows, like she was having a pleasant day at the beach. “My
head is killing me. I think I need to take a little nap.”

“But we have to rescue Grandma. Elsa said her agent has her.
Over there,” he said while pointing to Cairo.

“Never make it. Bridge is out, and we'll never swim directly
across this fast-moving river unless we run miles upriver first. I'm
not feeling like a run or a swim at the moment, either.” She
held her hand on her bloody head to staunch the wound.

The rattle of gunfire was continuous on the far side of the river.
Through the fleet of barges parked up and down both sides of the
river he watched as a ferry captain ran his ship ashore at the
southern tip of the town. Military vehicles piled on, along with what
he hoped was a suitable contingent of soldiers and other survivors
from the town. While he was conducting his failed rescue of the
sleepers in the boat, someone was getting it done over there.

“At least they're getting out.” He pointed to the
ferry.

“Maybe Grandma's on it?”

“I don't know. I wish we could ask the Quantum computer.”

When he heard himself ask the question, he tried to access it by
thinking of it. He didn't know how else to do it. Though nothing
happened, he had a sense he was on the right track.

“Maybe it only works when Grandma is around?”

“Oh. You mean she's moving away from us?”

Victoria grabbed his knee, pulling him close so they sat hip to
hip.

“We're alive. Thanks to you. She's alive, too. No one is
going to hurt her. She's too valuable.” She faced him, though
blood ran from a small gash above her ear. “If she's being held
prisoner by the most powerful government agency left, I'd say, in a
weird way, she's safe for now, you know? Liam, we know what we have
to do. Al told us. We have to go find where that real computer is
running.”

“And what will that tell us?”

“Who's behind all of this. Whoever made that virus obviously
has access to advanced technology. Maybe there's some biotech firm
that discovered the cure to Cancer or whatever, and they're sitting
on that cure because it accidentally cured all other diseases. Maybe
they wouldn't want to cure everything at once? Al said as much.”

He admired her spirit.

“Wow. I thought I was the one who cooked up conspiracies,”
he said with a chuckle.

“I saw what you asked the computer,” she said while
smiling.

The most important question was one he'd thought up in the moment.
He wanted to know where Elsa's greatest enemy—his Grandma
Rose—was hiding. Now that Elsa was dead, he wasn't going to
assume everything would suddenly return to peaceful mode. The zombies
were out there, getting stronger day after day. The Operation Renew
convoy was still heading for St. Louis, with all the military units
left from the East Coast along with millions of survivors. Elsa said
she was in line to become president of the United States. That's why
she wanted Grandma Rose out of the way. But he had to suspect she was
more involved with the virus itself.

“Where's my Grandma?”

“Not that one,” she said with bright eyes and a smile.

“I asked it where your parents are hiding.”

“The answer was the same for both, wasn't it?”

“Pretty close. Both are in Colorado.”

“If they have Grandma, maybe it will help to be so far away
from her. That way they can't make her operate the Quantum computer
and tell them where we are. Or where
it
is. They'll never
figure out where we went.”

He wasn't so sure. Drones hovered above the water, like they were
lost. If Elsa was dead, maybe it
was
over.

“What do you think Al meant by non-linear time? Is that like
time travel, or something?” he asked, while watching the water.

“I have no idea. Hans seemed to think this all began during
the Spanish Flu in nineteen-whatever a hundred years ago. That seems
to add up in a strange way. I guess we'll know when we find it.”

Colorado, here we come.

Even as he sat there thinking, the drones seemed to perk up. They
all began going upriver, out of Cairo. He turned that way to see a
gigantic cloud of dust envelope the shore up that way. Like a herd of
cattle arriving at the watering hole.

“Liam, look. I saw that cloud on the way in.” Victoria
pointed the way he faced. “Come on. We have to go.”

She took off up the bank—in the opposite direction. The drones weren't just going up the
river; they were also coming across the waterway. Toward him.

No, toward their dead leader.

“I wish I could kill you over and over,” he said to her
body.

Then, as with so many of his adventures, he ran. He couldn't help
watch Victoria's fancy jeans as she scrambled up the rocky shore
toward the treeline.

“Eyes forward, mister,” she laughed, somehow knowing
he was already drawn that way.

He felt hope return. He had his running partner again.

Twenty-one days since the sirens.

Lana woke up with a wet cough. She'd washed ashore after falling
in the river tied to her dead husband. The very thought of it made
her shiver, no matter the heat of the new day.

The start of her journey was chaotic as she and Jerry floated
between the parked barges or got sucked underneath them. The current
carried them ever downriver, ensuring all she needed to do was hold
her breath and keep kicking her feet. Soon the barges of Cairo fell
far behind.

Eventually, her hands broke free of the zip ties. That's when the
real fight began—against the current. She paddled until
nightfall, unable to get out of the main channel. Once it got dark,
and exhausted beyond words, she gripped some driftwood and let the
river take her where it would. Sleep finally took her—until she
ran aground.

“Liam,” she thought. “Please be OK.”

When she fell from the barge—out of his sight—she
fought to keep her distance from “it” as the dead man
flailed in the water with her. The thing that her husband had
become—a zombie—had no traces left of the loving person
he once was. The father of her only son.

Elsa had them together in that speedboat all the way from St.
Louis, and that was enough of a hell for her. Jerry had been chained
to the decking, but his vacant eyes and mud-stained and blackened
skin were haunting echoes of his former life. She desperately wanted
to know how it was possible to dig up a dead man and bring him back
to half-life, but she had no interest in talking to Elsa. Several
volunteer Polar Bears had helped her get back to her son in Forest
Park, only to be greeted in an ambush by the crazy woman and her
strike team.

Those four men and women were dead because of her.

Liam is going to die because of me too. I lost him.

“Cut yourself some slack,” she argued with herself,
“keeping tabs on Liam was never easy, even before this sickness
struck.” In fact, she and Jerry had spent the better part of
the last six months arguing with him over his behavior. While Liam
did fine in school, he often blew off homework so he could hang out
with his friends. Computers. Tablets. Texting. Every distraction she
could think of that drove a mother insane—he was into it.
Everything but school work.

At least he wasn't into drugs.

That gave her some comfort, but online games were their own kind
of addiction. The event that drove Liam out of the house involved
gaming—he'd spent the night at a friend's house, but neglected
to tell anyone where he'd gone. After a night of alternately crying
in fear that he'd hurt himself and screaming in anger that he did it
on purpose to hurt them, she and Jerry were ready for war. When Liam
walked through the front door the next morning as if nothing had
happened, she snapped.

They grounded him. Took away his laptop. Tried to make his life
miserable. His response was that he'd go to the library and play his
game. No big deal.

After much yelling and anger, she “woke up” at the
back window of the house holding his laptop. She'd been thinking
about throwing it through the glass. His apparent lack of concern
over anything made punishing him impossible.

Getting him out of her sight was the only solution. She was ever
thankful Jerry handled the logistics with Grandma Marty so that she
could stay out of it. Her love was absolute, of course, but her anger
flared up from depths previously unknown. She wanted him gone—just
for a while.

And she'd felt guilty from the moment he'd walked out.

Day after day she argued with Jerry to let him come back. And each
time he would respond that his time away would do everyone some good.
Liam would realize what it was like to live without mom and dad to
cater to his every need, and they would get some much-needed peace
and quiet for the summer. They could recharge batteries for the start
of school in the fall.