Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (12 page)

“Sir, I didn't cause this. It was—”

“Save it. I can't trust a word you say. Not after that stunt
back in the woods.”

“I gave you that phone number!” He was a little more
emotional than he wanted. But it was true he did give him the phone
number of where Grandma Marty was being held. He didn't want that
overlooked.

“Son, do you know how many of my men died because of that
phone number?” His tone was only slightly less hostile.

Liam had a pretty good guess. He'd seen the bodies of the Marines,
not to mention he saw the other V-22 Osprey crash in Busch Stadium
while his plane dusted off stuffed with survivors. That was a
question he didn't want to touch.

“I had no idea any of that would happen,” he said with
proper contrition. Then, hoping with all his will he could change the
direction of the conversation, he continued. “How did you find
me? I've been...lost. By myself. For days.”

The colonel studied him. Liam switched places and imagined what he
must look like. He'd cleaned himself up, but only superficially. He
still had no shirt on and carried angry red welts from being stuck a
dozen times by the tagging darts. His blue jeans were muddy, bloody,
and dirty. His once-colorful running shoes were now drab brown. His
hair was probably standing straight up like a troll doll.

He innocently ran a hand through his hair, as he wondered if it
had been burned off in the explosion. His fingers ran through actual
hair, causing him to sigh in relief.

“You look like hell, I'll give you that,” he said
while scanning both sides of the yard. “And where's your
girlfriend? She involved in this, too?”

Liam felt the sting of emotion. The mere thought of Victoria had
caused him to tear up in front of the Polar Bear leaders when he was
in their headquarters. He was not going to let that happen, ever
again. Instead of being sad at his separation from her, he let
himself be angry.

“No. No, she's not,” he said without really knowing
the truth. “I've just spent days trying to get to Forest Park
because she's supposed to be here. I walked up to this house because
she was helping an old man here as his nurse last time I was with
her. I found a bunch of—”

Can I trust you?

“—National Internal Security assassins lying dead on
the floor of the place, along with some of my friends, and when I
opened a box sitting on one of the assassin's laps, it had a curt
'Dear Elsa' note and a bomb inside. The only thing of Victoria's I
found inside was this shirt. She wasn't in there,” he said with
authority.

He expected an angry reply. Braced for it.

“What do you mean, a 'Dear Elsa' note?”

Liam was surprised. “Well, um, there was a note written on a
paper inside the box. It said 'Dear Elsa. You lose.' though I have no
idea what that's supposed to mean.”

“I don't know, either. But there is a Ms. Elsa Cantwell
running the show in Cairo, Illinois. In fact, I had to avoid her to
get my
last
Osprey in the air.” He looked at Liam with
what he read as sympathy. “Everyone is stretched thin out here.
Me and my boys are operating at the limits of our authority. Your
grandma said you were risking your life to find a cure to this mess.
She believed it. I didn't believe when she told me, but I've been
thinking about it ever since. You've been at the center of every
disaster my unit has had since the beginning. You should be dead ten
times over. Here you are standing outside another firestorm.”
The building behind them continued to flame up and cook off
ammunition. “For the love of God, will you tell me what's
driving you to always be in danger?”

“Only if we can get away from this fire.”

“Deal.”

2

Later, after moving a few backyards down from the burning home, he
sat down on with the Lt. Colonel, and—as he had with the Polar
Bears—explained much of what he knew about “the outside.”
The only difference was he didn’t want to give away his mom’s
role or the existence of the Patriot Snowball headquarters nearby. He
painted the patriots with a light brush.

Brandyweis held a long, penetrating stare after his tale was done.
Liam pretended to adjust his new black t-shirt, which had been
liberated from a nearby abandoned mansion by one of the Marines. It
had a picture of a honey badger, which he thought was hilarious.
Still, he tried to meet the man’s glare, if only to convey that
his story was mostly true. He didn’t lie. He just left certain
parts out.

“So you went into a nightmare quarry filled with zombies
based on an anonymous text message from someone in Utah? Son, are you
having me on?”

“It’s true. We already had videos from Colonel
McMurphy showing how dead people had been infected and became
zombies, too. I think he was terrified of them. We were pretty sure
those experiments were taking place near the national cemetery by
that mine. And they were,” he said confidently.

Brandyweis held his cloth cap in his hand and slapped it against
his knee. “Dammit. I was hoping you’d have something
actionable.”

“You could go in the mine and see the graves for yourself.
There are a lot of zombies down there.”

“So you keep telling me,” he said with skepticism.
“Almost as if you want me to go down there and never come
back.” Though the words were biting, he made it clear he didn’t
believe Liam would do that.

“No, I wouldn’t recommend anyone go back down
there...ever. I’ve never seen that many zombies in one place.
Although—”

He’d left out that the cavern deep inside the mine was
filled with military hardware and a big security vault door. While he
still didn’t know the relationship between that room and the
Patriot Snowball, he was ninety-nine percent certain they had nothing
to do with it. They’d lost men investigating it, too. Yet,
trusting Brandyweis had its own hazards.

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s just that I did see that many zombies in
one other place. The research facility where I rescued my grandma.
The zombies stood around the base of that building like they were
lined up to get into a rock concert. Victoria and I zip-lined across
them from a bridge, but there were thousands upon thousands, in one
big group.”

“Zip-lined?” He eyed Liam again as if waiting for the
big crack up. When Liam managed to hold his stare, he went on. “And
that’s where the big pile of elderly is located?”

“Yes, Douglas Hayes and his research team were doing
experiments at the top of the structure, and they dropped the dead
people down into the lobby. It was one of the more gruesome things
I’ve seen.”

“OK, at least I know you aren’t making that up. My
team reporting seeing the same thing when they were in there. But
they came in through the sewers...” He stopped talking. They
both knew the fate of that team of Marines.

Brandyweis held his ear as he listened to his comms gear. He
quietly replied “Affirmative” but continued to chat with
Liam.

They sat on some patio chairs while behind another large mansion.

“I sent my boys into that tower thinking it was a legitimate
research facility. We followed up on the phone number you gave us.
Our intel said that phone was inside, and you said your grandma—and
your phone—would be with Hayes. We even knew Homeland Security
had rented the building for a year before the disaster—while
the structure was being built. I had no reason to suspect we’d
be ambushed by a damned research team.”

He sighed deeply.

“I’m not going to make that mistake again, but the
world keeps getting more and more dangerous. If we’d found you
a few minutes earlier, we might have followed you into that mansion
and me—and my team—would now be dead.”

So would I, don’t forget.

“I’m beginning to think you lead a charmed life or
something.”

Liam was quick to react, having had the same thoughts recently.
“No, sir. I’m not charmed. My dad died from a stupid leg
wound a few days ago. My girlfriend has gone missing. My grandma is
probably dead if Cairo is under siege. Hell, my whole family is on a
government kill list—”

He hadn’t intended to bring that up.

“—and, uh, one of my friends got blown up by a
fifty-five-gallon barrel of explosives.”

“Back it up. Tell me about this kill list.”

Liam didn’t want to reveal anything he knew abut the Patriot
Snowball, and though he was related to one of the primary leaders of
the group—his Grandma Rose, who was also a congresswoman—he
steered in another, less truthful direction.

“When I was in the Riverside Hotel to rescue my grandma,
there was another guy there. A guy I think helped to kill your
Marines. His name was Duchesne. He, uh, never said his first name.
When he found out who I was, he said my whole family was on a kill
list. Though he and Hayes were part of the same organization, Hayes
said he removed my family from the list. The two argued about it.”

An embellishment of the truth, if ever there was one. After
speaking it, he briefly thought about his own book. Once written, and
with everything placed in sequence, would people like Brandyweis hate
him for stretching the truth like this? Was history always written
like that?

“Any idea why your whole family would be on a list?”

“They didn’t say.”

It’s OK to lie when you're protecting your family.

3

“I’ve got to make my move, son. I can’t park my
oversized rescue plane for more than a few minutes here in the city,
or it will get overwhelmed with refugees looking for a way out. There
are a hundred gawkers watching your mansion burn. But I can’t
have it flying around waiting for me, either. I need you to tell me
what comes next, and we’ll go there together.”

“What comes next,” he said wistfully.

I’d like to settle down with Victoria, have a house with
a white-picket fence…

“I appreciate your offer, I really do. But I just ran all
the way across the city to find my girlfriend. She's my mission,
right now.”

Liam waited for the angry Marine Corps drill sergeant routine.

Brandyweis gave him a thoughtful look, with the same deep fatigue
everyone carried. “I'm up against a wall. I've got to deliver.
But I’m going to give you six hours to find your girl. When you
do, bring her back here,” he pointed to the stone pavers of the
patio below him, “and we’ll pull you both out of the
city.”

“What about you? Where will you be?”

“This may surprise you, but I can’t walk ten feet in a
crowd anymore without getting swamped with requests for help. Word
gets around, you see. People think the military abandoned them, and
when they see us, some of them take that real serious.”

“Sir, the military did abandon some people. The entire East
Coast, in fact.”

He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Elsa and her team
assured us it was an orderly evacuation and that everyone was invited
to come to St. Louis in the super convoy. Operation Renew. I’ve
seen the images, though. It looks anything but organized, and people
are pissed.”

“Is Elsa a general?”

Brandyweis laughed a healthy laugh. “Oh, no. No. She’s
part of Homeland Security. They’ve taken over crisis
management, which put her in charge of the defense of Cairo. None of
the civilian leaders wanted the military in charge, though they still
wanted us around to do the fighting, of course.”

“Homeland Security? Duchesne mentioned them as his cover.”
He thought back to their first meeting on overpass south of St.
Louis. “And he was really an NIS agent. Hayes said he was with
Homeland once, but also with the CDC.”

The colonel’s jovial attitude nosedived. “Elsa is some
sort of double agent?”

Liam waited for the thought-process to reach the goal line.

“No, that’s not possible. We had orders from multiple
chains of command, instructing us to defer to her leadership in
southern Illinois.”

Fumble.

“I don’t know what this National Internal Security
stuff is, but it can’t be everywhere.”

“How do I know you aren’t NIS?” Liam asked in a
non-threatening voice.

Brandyweis looked at him angrily, but caught himself. “Yeah,
I guess you’re right. If there is a secretive group running
around infiltrating our research teams, it could be anyone. But if I
was NIS, why would I run my boys up that tower to have them killed?
Why would I sacrifice one of my Ospreys in that scrum in the
stadium?” His voice trailed off.

“I wasn’t serious,” Liam offered.

“No, you have every right. If what you say is true—and
I have every intention of trusting you on that—you’ve
been betrayed multiple times. You should doubt everyone’s
motives, including mine.”

Liam felt a little guilty that he lied to him, but he remained
silent until he thought back to that meeting with Duchesne in the
hotel where he revealed he’d been tracking Victoria’s
cell phone.

“It might help me trust you if you told me how you found
me.”

After a few moments, Brandyweis stood from his chair. “It
was pretty easy, I’m afraid, and not very creative.” He
waved one of his men over. Liam expected it to be Jax—it just
seemed that was destiny—but it was a well-tanned man with
cropped hair and a serious face.

“This is Lance Corporal Thomas. He’s our resident
techie. Show ‘em what you got there. Tell me who this is.”
He pointed to Liam.

The black box-like device was about the size of a laptop computer.
It had a screen on the top portion, and a keyboard on the lower
section and a small saucer-like extension sticking out of the
keyboard. After typing some stuff in, he held the device so the
saucer pointed at Liam, then after a few moments, the Thomas read the
report.

“Liam Peters. Age, sixteen. Blood type, AB neg. Current
residence...”

The report was very thorough. Not only did it give details about
who he was, it also gave details about his health, family’s
health, and possible diseases he may one day get. That was magical
enough, but when it started to get into known associations he saw
where it was going…