Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 (26 page)

Victoria leaned over the side, but Hayes yanked her back. In the
instant she could see below, a man had shot up at her from a floor
down. She looked at the ceiling and saw the impact.

“Whoa!” was all she could say.

“I swear to God, I'm going to shoot anyone who comes up this
stairwell,” Hayes shouted.

Victoria looked at him like he was crazy.

“Trust me. Do as I say,” he said quietly.

“Come on now. We don't want no trouble.” Laughter from
below. The footfalls on the concrete stairs were quiet but distinct.
They were on the way up.

She mouthed “What are you doing?” while she hunched
her shoulders.

He smiled in return.

Seconds rattled by like a freight train bearing down on a blown
bridge. She saw nothing that would make any kind of weapon. The only
thing besides the door was an inset bulb in the ceiling. Things were
moving too fast to a bad end.

“Get down,” Hayes whispered. He showed her by laying
flat on his stomach. “Stay down, no matter what.”

“This is your plan? Lie down and die?” She briefly
considered jumping down the stairs and attacking the two men, but she
knew where that would end.

“Trust me!”

She did as instructed, resigned to whatever fate Hayes had steered
her into.

Liam wouldn't have let us get caught so easily.

He had a knack for getting them out of tight situations. She left
him for one day, and she'd been snared in several traps. Hayes would
have her killed, after all.

“Well, well. She said you were the most dangerous man alive.
But I think she made a mistake.” Victoria kept her head down,
as if to ignore what unfolded around her.

Another man laughed. Their feet clomped on the final steps. She
felt the shift in the air. They were on the landing with her and
Hayes.

“Elsa is right about a lot of things, but I'm not sure she'd
be
fired up
by your incompetence.”

A malicious laugh. “I think she'll be just fine when I show
her your body. You just gonna lay there? After all the trouble we
went through to find you?”

“You knew I was here. How hard could it have been? She could
have had me
fired
.”

“Hmm. I guess that's true. She's been, eh, busy. I guess she
just had some free time for you today.”

“Maybe. You know what they say, though?”

“No, what?”

“Fire the gun. Fire it!”

A brief laugh. “All right, if you ins—”

The stairwell became a deafening shooting gallery of gunfire. A
combination of metallic clinks, ricochets off the cement, and the wet
impacts of bullets on flesh intermingled in Victoria's ears. It only
lasted for a few seconds, and when it stopped the only sounds
remaining were those of bodies sliding down the steps. When they
descended to the next landing, it became unnaturally silent.

“Well, that worked out. Thank you, overwatch.”

“Who?”

On his knees, Hayes tapped his ear and turned to her. He wore a
tiny ear piece. Whoever was on the other end had helped him. The
disturbing thing was that he had to have prepared for this. Who could
have anticipated he'd need help in this spot?

“How?”

He shushed her. “I plan ahead,” he said quietly.

On her knees, she got a look at the door. It had been perforated
by gunfire from the other side.

Hayes was up and pushing through to the outside before she could
ask another of her many questions. She caught sight of several
floating drones.

When she followed him through, it took great effort to follow him
onto the rooftop. Three big, black drones hovered in formation about
twenty feet from the door. All of them had guns which hung from the
lower portion of their frames. Those guns still pointed at her and
Hayes.

“Uhh, Hayes?”

“Don't sweat it. These are mine.”

“One of these attacked me. Are you sure?” She didn't
plan it consciously, but she had placed herself behind Hayes,
relative to the drones.

“I can see you don't trust me. We'd both be dead if these
hadn't come along when they did. They're friendly.”

“Yeah, real friendly.” Then, she made an association.
“You were telling them to fire, weren't you.”

“Smart girl. I was wondering if my feed was working,”
he said with mock anger, she supposed he was talking to whoever was
listening to him.

“So what do we do now?” They still didn't have any
weapons… “Hey, we can grab their rifles!”

She turned to go back.

“No, there will be more of them in the stairwell. These
things will keep us safe until our white knight arrives.”

She made it to the door before admitting he was right. If she went
down the steps, she'd be outside the protection of the drones. As
much as she wanted a gun, she would have to trust he knew what he was
talking about.

From twenty floors up, she could see for miles in the clear air of
the early morning. Despite the whir of the mechanized copters nearby,
she could hear the drone of a large plane somewhere above. Another
aircraft—possibly a helicopter—whined out there, too.

When the drone fired a shot into the stairwell, her heart
ricocheted off both lungs.

4

She'd crouched down on the hard asphalt surface when the drone
fired its gun, which turned out to be the right thing to do. Hayes
was down with her, though he was faced the opposite way, still
looking at the sky.

“What are we doing here?” she shouted, afraid another
shot was coming.

“I told you. Rescue.”

The three drones hovered nearby.

“Those things rescued us, but what now?”

Hayes spun around while crouched so he faced her. He wore a smile.
His thatched shirt was damp with sweat.

“We're going to jump.”

Her expression was blank. She'd known him long enough to know he
could seldom be trusted to tell the truth. Especially under stress.

“That way.” He pointed to the next building, the top
of which was just visible at about the same level as their rooftop.
“Follow me.”

They ran from the drones and made it to the gap between the two
buildings. It was about ten feet wide, though the roof edge was a few
feet lower than theirs. The surface was covered in small brown
pebbles.

“There. That's where we're going.” He pointed to the
far side of the next building, beyond a large bank of idle air
conditioner fans. A series of steps led up to a flat platform big
enough for a helicopter to land. There was a nearby pole with an
orange sock-flag hanging limply from the top. The blinking lights
were harder to see in the bright morning sun, but there was no doubt
it was a rooftop landing pad.

She demanded evidence as such because of what she had to do to get
there. They were twenty floors up, and the narrow space between the
buildings below was filled with overflowing garbage dumpsters. The
trash had not been collected in weeks.

“I could land in the trash,” she mused to herself.

“No, you'd die,” Hayes responded with finality.

She looked at him anew. “We have to jump this? Are you sure
this is the only way?”

“Yep. I know it doesn't look it, but I've got this planned
out.”

“How?”

He tapped his ear again.

While they conversed a small black drone floated up from the gap.
“Hello, Douglas. Nice to see you,” a mechanical-sounding
woman's voice belted out.

“I wish I could say the same. Sorry about your men.”

“Ha. Spare me the false sentiments. I've got prisons full of
good help. You're not sorry about anything you've done in your whole
life.”

“Would you believe me if I said I was sorry that Dutch
died?”

The drone hovered. The thought process of the person on the other
end was conveyed by the machine.

“I'm going to get payback for what you and your friends took
from me,” she said slowly and with clear enunciation.

“I didn't kill him, though. You want the girl and her
boyfriend,” he pleaded.

Victoria found it distasteful, but very Hayes.

“You let them go!” she screamed. Then, with a burning
anger, she spoke quickly. “Don't think for a second you can get
out of this. You let those kids go, then your
dear wifey
shot
his team, leaving my guy outnumbered on that river crossing. Those
kids were the bullet, but you pulled the trigger. It's how you do
everything.”

Hayes looked at Victoria. “Well, I had to try, right?”
He still maintained his smile, but he was using his hands to wave her
backward.

She took a few steps back, which put some separation between
herself, the drone, and Hayes.

This is the part where he shoots me like a bullet…

Her fears were confirmed when he motioned for her to jump the gap.
He used his hands to signify a running person making a very obvious
leap over something. As he did so, he moved the opposite direction on
the roof, so they were both on opposite sides of the drone. She
mimicked him by moving many yards beyond the edge. There was a small
lip they'd have to clear as part of their effort.

“Go!”

Victoria froze. Hayes ran for it. With surprising speed he jumped
the lip of the building, flew across the gap, then landed in a heap
on the far side. She could just see his upper body because of her
positioning.

It was her turn. But before she could move one foot, a spinning
drone blade whirred up from below where Hayes had just jumped. The
white carapace had a menacing device underneath—a gun.

“Now or never, Vicky!”

The drone's gun had turned on Hayes, but he was watching her.
Waving her on.

She ran for it. As she neared the edge she had the inspiration to
change directions. A slight course correction toward the smaller
voice drone.

She cleared the lip. Time ground to halt as she sailed the gap,
and it appeared to give her enough time to both float and turn her
head to see another drone rising at the exact spot where she'd been
aiming. It would have been a mirror image of what happened to Hayes,
but her drone had the advantage of coming into view the instant she
jumped. If she'd gone with Hayes, they'd have both barely cleared it.
If she'd gone late…

She crashed on the rocky surface of the roof. The pea gravel
forced her off her feet with a painful slide. Hayes grabbed her arm
before she settled to a stop and she was back on her feet and on the
run. Time was still running funny, and in her heightened awareness,
she noticed the strange dart lodged in his right arm.

“Run, girl, run!” she thought.

5

They'd gotten between the industrial air conditioners. The
galvanized steel sheets of the outer skins of the units made it easy
to slide between them. They were arranged in rows and columns, so
they could hide from view of the two drones while they planned their
next move.

“What were those things?”

“Part of the plan, my dear. I told you I like to plan ahead.
Well, that's kind of a motto of these people.”

“Like, they have special drones that try to catch people
jumping buildings?” she asked with mock wonder.

He ignored her tone. “They have drones to help them get
control of a city filled with zombies. I don't know what their
functions are, exactly, but it fits their modus operandi. Why spend
manpower killing zombies, spreading the infection, etcetera, when
you can build a bunch of drones to go out—night and day—killing
the plague victims.”

“And potential plague victims,” she said with
understanding.

“Yes.” He paused, breathing hard from their exertion.
“I guess that's what they'd do. Kill everyone.” His smile
was gone. “They're thinking
far
ahead.”

“Hans said his family had been planning for something since
the second World War,” she volunteered. Hans' secret was out of
the bag.

“The NIS is a government agency, but it is also a way of
life for these people. They watched over the levers of state while
privately planning for its collapse. My wife's, uh, family, hinted as
much. But my interest was in medicine and immunology. I didn't care
about stockpiling berets in secret mines. I always thought that was
kind of crazy.”

It was Victoria's turn to laugh. “We're in the Zombie
Apocalypse, now. I think every kind of crazy is back on the table.
And Hans was proof they knew how to stockpile.”

“So what do we do now? What was that spiky thing in your
arm?”

“It was either a poison dart, or a mixed drink swizzle
stick,” he snickered.

She looked at him with a suitable frown. And a touch of fear. Of
all the rotten luck, she figured if Hayes died here on this rooftop,
she'd follow soon after.

“Don't worry. If it was poison, we'd be short one man
already.”

Always a joke.

A rush of air washed over them. A drone was nearby. A big one.

“Who was talking on the little drone? Elsa, I assume?”

“In the flesh. Though I have no idea where she is. She could
control that drone from Afghanistan if she wanted.”

By a coincidence of timing, the small talkie drone appeared just
overhead. The space between the air conditioners was wide enough for
the small thing to drop in, if it wanted. For now, it hung a few feet
above the units.

“You can't hide in there forever. I'll get control of those
drones you hacked, and my men will be along shortly to collect you. I
was going to make your death simple and fast, but you're costing me
time and men. I think I'm going to have to change my plans and make
your death a little more...painful.” The drone laughed.

“I got us painful death. Sorry about that,” Hayes
joked.

Liam! I need you.

She willed her thoughts to reach out to him, hoping by some
miracle he would ride to her rescue. She didn't believe for a second
that he'd fallen into a trap or had been killed or captured. Even if
she couldn't hear his thoughts, she felt his presence.