Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6
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Authors: E.E. Isherwood
Zombies Ever After:
Sirens
of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6
© 2016 E.E. Isherwood. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
businesses, companies, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in
any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
From E.E.
Isherwood
Since the Sirens
Siren Songs
Stop the
Sirens
Last Fight of the Valkyries
Zombies vs Polar
Bears
Zombies Ever After
Post Apocalyptic Ponies
Post
Apocalyptic Mustangs
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Zombies Ever After
Introduction
We last saw Liam in
Zombies vs Polar Bears
as
he prepared to leave the den of the patriots in downtown St. Louis.
He wasn't interested in civil war—he just wanted to get back to
Victoria.
Victoria, meanwhile, took some time to herself to
reflect on the past she left behind in Colorado. While investigating
the third floor of the Whitaker research lab on the campus of her
university, she came across a video feed showing her dorm room. An
old acquaintance called to her from the darkness…
And Grandma was still in Cairo, Illinois. She became
a pawn between General Jasper and Elsa Cantwell, but now there's
nothing but zombies in front of her and the defenders of the town.
Book 6 begins with a look back at how John Jasper
found himself in the watery ditch north of Cairo.
Welcome back.
E.E. Isherwood
September, 2016
You wrecked my truck, boy.
You ate my dog, boy.
Have you lost your mind, boy?
When our love died, my heart shattered.
But my soul escaped, boy.
Now you run from me, so run, boy, run.
--Midnight Foxes (found scratched on basement floor)
of Contents
Chapter 17: Debbie's Double Barrel
Major General John Jasper sat on a hard chair. He'd been tied to
it by the same team that captured him on the levee outside of Cairo,
Illinois. He had a bag over his head, reminding him of any number of
interrogations from his time overseas. There, he was on the other
side of the cloth. The hours of monotony gave him plenty of time to
think about what he did wrong. Explosions and gunfire rattled the
room from somewhere close by.
His
men were out there,
fighting.
Elsa and her team had bagged him while he maneuvered the ad hoc
battalion of Army units near the big ditch to the north. For some
reason, she wanted all his men outside the town, though his military
brain could fathom no legitimate reason for doing so. The Paladins
were not well-suited to direct fire. That's why he had them among the
houses to the south, so they could rain the hurt on the zombies as
they came over the interstate to the north. Keep the fighting miles
from population, instead of at the front gate.
Homeland Security had taken charge of all military operations
inside the continental United States, getting around Constitutional
roadblocks, as part of the government's response to the zombie
outbreak—he'd long since given up trying to call them by other
names—and her role in Homeland gave her direct control of his
units. Up until that day she'd deferred to him on tactical issues. He
never imagined she would relieve him of duty. How many other two-star
generals could she tap here in Nowhere, USA?
“I did everything she asked, and she still sacked me,”
he thought. Though, being totally honest with himself, he knew what
he did wrong.
“Mrs. Peters. I shouldn't have gone to see Mrs. Peters.”
Elsa never prohibited his movements, but she did suggest the
104-year-old woman was her prisoner. By all indications Elsa had made
every effort to kill her, which was confusing as hell, since she was
supposedly cured of the zombie plague.
And then you broke her out.
It seemed the chivalrous thing to do. Marty Peters had gone loopy
from heat exhaustion because Elsa had cut her air conditioner power
cord, and the temperature in the room had gone into the stratosphere.
If he hadn't gone there, she
would
be dead.
“So what's the score, general?” he said to himself.
“Elsa knows where Marty came from, and knows the doctor who
cured her. That doctor went AWOL; then Marty shows up in Cairo. Elsa
finds the old woman and locks her up, intending to kill her. Why? She
wanted me to go track down the good doctor. Why?”
Nothing made sense. Zombies. Elsa. Cures, or no cures.
Elsa wasn't who she said she was. He was sure of that. Homeland
Security was led by boot-licker bureaucrats whose idea of “security”
was patting down toddlers and feeling up women at airports.
Obviously, they failed in epic fashion in preventing travelers from
bringing in the plague from overseas. He was far from a patriot in
the vein of the Patriot Snowball movement, but he didn't believe for
one second they were capable of causing the zombie plague. His
sources all insisted it came from overseas. Homeland dropped the
ten-thousand-pound ball.
And that's why she wants to blame old ladies and rogue
administrators.
So, Marty Peters was the good guy. Whatever else she had going on,
she was an enemy of Elsa Cantwell. That made her his friend, though
it didn't elude his steel trap mind that his biggest assistance to
his new ally was getting himself relieved of duty and tossed out of
the Z
th
World War, just when it was getting important he
be there with his men. She was probably back in her prison room by
now. Or dead.
He tried for the hundredth time to jiggle his hands in the
bindings. Unlike the movies, he was unable to free himself and make a
heroic escape. Before all this, he was comfortable in his desk job—a
few years from retirement and the good life on a tiny wooded lake
somewhere—and his physical training had been a bit lax. That
was costing him, now.
A door opened, then closed. Someone had come into the room. He
tensed up, listening.
“Hello, John,” a female voice taunted.
“Good—” he didn't know if it was day or night.
“—morning?” He'd been taken at dusk, and it felt
like days since he'd been hauled away.
“Not quite.” Elsa pulled the bag from his head. He was
in the same room where Marty had been kept. The dirty motel was near
the front gate of the town, which explained how he heard the fighting
over the levee, to the north.
And Elsa had completely changed. Far from the attractive, but
reserved-looking blonde woman he'd known since she arrived in Cairo,
she had transformed into—
“You're undoubtedly wondering why I'm dressed like this?”
she nodded to him as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room.
He couldn't take his eyes off her, despite his inability to properly
focus, or his general disdain for her.
The woman was in her thirties, but had the body of a woman in her
twenties. She looked like she had just come from the gym, where she
apparently ripped up the StairMaster as well as the free weights. She
wore tight-fitting black capris and a similarly tight orange sports
bra. But now that he could see the silhouettes of her powerful legs
and the muscle definition on her arms, he could see she'd been a
wolf-in-sheep's clothing all along. He was focused on her mind, and
the dumb decisions she seemed to make. It never crossed his mind she
was as strong as this…
“Did you know eight of the ten women in my graduating class
were CrossFit champions in their respective countries? I was top girl
for several years in my home country of Iceland. Look it up
sometime.” She laughed. “You probably thought I was a
pushover, and that's why you didn't respect me in our meetings, or
when you went to free Mrs. Peters from this detention facility.”
She swept her arms around the room.
“I didn't know this was a prison.”
“No, I guess you weren't as smart as I'd hoped. Maybe losing
you won't be the blow I thought it would be.”
He couldn't help feel the sting of that statement. Elsa's six-pack
abs drew his eyes when he should have been paying attention to her
words. He missed some of what she said next.
“...and that's why you're here, John. I told you I needed
someone I could trust to do what was asked of them. You've gone off
the reservation. Now you have to pay for that, I'm sorry to say.”
He looked up, to her cool blue eyes. With the blonde hair he
really could imagine she was from Iceland, though her English was
flawless. “I thought she was a threat. I had to see for myself.
But she's just an old lady. All I did was get her medical help.”
He was telling the truth, though now he was glad he set her free.
While she responded, Elsa untied the rope around his feet, then
his hands. “John, there's so much you don't know, I wouldn't
know where to start. Homeland Security has many branches, and the
division I work for has been planning for this event for a long
goddamn time, and you and that old lady aren't going to mess it up
for me. That's the main thrust of what this is all about tonight.”
As the ropes came off his hands, he imagined himself lunging at
her and putting a stop to whatever it was she was doing, but his old
arms had been bent backward, and the soreness prevented him from
moving them quickly to his lap, much less using them to tackle her.
Her quads bulged in her stretch pants.
“I know what you're thinking, John. Can you take me? Well,
Major General, do you think you can take down a helpless little girl
like me?” She laughed, knowing his impotence at that moment.
“It's not very fair. I can't even move my arms.” He
tried to convey bravado, but the truth was still unflattering to a
career soldier. He finally got both arms to his lap and rubbed his
hands to restore blood flow.
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” she said as she walked
to and opened the motel room door. “If you can get by me in the
next sixty seconds, I'll let you go on your way. If you don't, I'll
kill you.” She giggled. “Sounds fun, doesn't it?”
Her smile was evil.
He took a deep breath and continued to rub his hands. The feeling
was just starting to come back.
“Fifty seconds left, John.”
“Give me a second.”
“You don't have many of those left. You aren't getting out
of this door.”
Another ten seconds went by. He tried to stand, which went better
than he assumed it would. He plopped heavily back down. A plan formed
in his head.
More hand rubbing. “Why are you doing this? You can't off a
two-star just because...”
He hoped that was true. It would have been accurate before the
sirens.
“That's what I've been trying to tell you, stud. I can do
whatever the hell I want.”
But why? Who the hell are you?
“Thirty seconds left. Tick tock.”
John imagined himself doing the actions, knocking Elsa down, then
running for his men. Maybe he could convince them to arrest her. It
wasn't very clever, but most military actions succeeded when they
were dead simple.
“Wow. Nothing? Are you just going to die there? I'm so
disappointed in you.”
He feigned having trouble standing. When he made it to his feet,
he turned part-way around and pretended to lean on the chair back.
With a firm grasp in both his hands—still in pain—he
lifted the wooden chair from the floor and turned as fast as his body
would allow, throwing it the ten feet over to Elsa. In his head, he
intended to follow the chair for a deadly second strike, but that
turned out to be something his thirty-year-old self could have done.
Not his current self.