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

She choked on a sob. “They offed Mick—our bass
guitarist—outright. But they kept us girls...”

He didn't sweep his light over the cages, but he allowed an
inkling of understanding to seep into his brain. All the caged
zombies had been women. None of them had much in the way of intact
clothing. The inference was still too much for him. The thought of
his mother, or Victoria, in someplace like this...

I have to get back to her.

He didn't want to continue to press her for answers, but...

“How did they all become zombies?”

She looked at him for a long moment.

“What's your name?”

“Liam.”

“Hi, Liam. I'm Denise. Well, my stage name is Monique, but I
guess that name is dead, now. You haven't heard of me, anyhow.”
She laughed a sad laugh. “Us girls were taken upstairs. We'd
get some food and water, and allowed to clean ourselves up a little,
but then...”

He looked at her expectantly, but eventually he figured out what
she was avoiding.

She went on. “Sometimes others came through the trapdoor.
Men would be shot on sight. Women would be tossed in the cages.
Sometimes that meant other women were taken
out
, to make room.
That went on for a month, it seems...”

“This is day twenty since the sirens.”

“Oh. It feels like forever. Well, one day—not sure how
many days ago—one of the new girls on the far end of the cages
started acting funny. We could all see it happen. When we figured out
she was infected, we all screamed for our lives...but no one heard
us. She converted the other two in her cage, and then the disease
spread down the cages day after day. When it got into the one next to
mine, me and two women I didn't know started to throw ourselves at
the front door and we managed to bend the lock. They built these
things for dogs, not humans.”

She paused, thinking.

“But the real dogs were upstairs. My two friends ran up
there to break out.”

She teared up and spoke with reverent tones. “They shot them
in the head and tossed them back down the steps. I was so scared I
was next...”

She sniffled. “When nothing happened, I moved them into the
last cage to get the bodies away from me, but there was nowhere for
me to go that was safe, so I returned to the steps. At least I
couldn't see any of those sick women.”

“And the men never came down to check on you?”

“Naw. I think they infected us. Put us out of our misery.
They argued constantly about money and drugs and turf while we
were...up there.”

It was horrible to contemplate.

“Are you...infected?”

“Kid, I'm having a real bad day,” she said with a
spark of defiance, “what the ever hell makes you think I care
if I'm infected, now?”

Deep down, he wanted to express his intention to save her. She'd
been through so much, he felt it was his duty to bring her to some
form of safety. Make it all worthwhile. But the Zombie Apocalypse
didn't work like that. Not anymore. There were no happy endings, as
far as he could tell.

The best he could do was get her to temporary safety, with the
expectation the place would fall apart soon after that. The whole
town was in danger of becoming one big war zone, if the patriots
really intended to make a stand here. If he were in charge, he would
take the patriots to some
other
city. A city not on the
priority list for the remaining all-powerful government forces, led
by the National Internal Security agents. That seemed like a solid
strategy to him, though he freely admitted military strategy wasn't
his thing.

“I'm trying to get back to my girlfriend. You're welcome to
come with me.
If
you aren't infected.”

She studied him for a few seconds. “You may be the person
I'd least suspect was in this shit hole for a girl. She must be
pretty special.”

As he collected his backpack, he nodded. “Oh, she is. But
I'm not out here because of her. I'm out here because of my mom. She
took me somewhere I didn't want to be, and now I'm trying to fix that
mistake.”

“Sounds complicated. I'll shut up, now.”

“No, it's OK. And not that complicated. I found someone in
this mess that I never want to be separated from again. Zombies
aren't going to stop me. Toy tanks aren't going to stop me. Nothing
on Earth is going to stop me from getting back to her.”

“Wow, good. I want to stick with you.” After a pause,
“Do you have a gun for me?”

He wasn't sure she was ready for a gun, given how shaky and weak
she appeared. Though it wasn't his place to tell her what she could
and couldn't do.

“The men upstairs had guns on their bodies. We should both
grab what we can, and then get out of here.”

That placated her. He ignored all the bodies in the cages as they
walked for the stairwell. The cage that had been bowed outward had
been pushed back in by the tank drone. He was unwilling to look at
the zombie remains, though he sensed some were still hanging by their
arms.

The wooden steps had gouges torn from each riser where the mini
tank had crept down and back up the stairs. It had been dripping with
blood, now that he could see the steps in the light. The same blood
that splashed him had also covered the chassis of the single-minded
killer robot.

Which Apocalypse am I in?

5

In the dim light of the stairwell, he turned to Denise and put his
finger over his lips, indicating quiet. He had no idea if the killer
drone was still upstairs, but he had to assume it was. He climbed the
stairs like a snake and peeked over the top edge to see if he was
about to take a shot to the face.

There was nothing. He was impressed to see the big holes in the
wall where the drone had shot at him earlier. Now that he knew it was
aiming for the tag on his backpack, it made sense why the shots were
too high as he crawled down the hallway. If he had stood and run, the
shots might have been closer to his body...

He crawled to the first hole in the wall, while Denise held fast
near the top step. She wore his tan Yuengling shirt, thought it was
now sickly red. He was bare-chested again, making him wonder if he
kept doing that to show off.

Yeah, I subject myself to insane situations so I can flex my
muscles and impress the ladies.

It was funny to him because he wasn't a bodybuilder. He was a
runner. Perhaps he'd do it for Victoria, but not some random country
music singer.

He stifled nervous laughter.

The hole revealed nothing. He could see down one row of the pet
store's aisles, but he couldn't see much else.

Something was in front of the next whole, so it was useless.

The final hole in the wall was a bit higher. He could see the
windows at the front of the store, but couldn't be sure the tank
drone wasn't elsewhere in the store. The only way to be sure was to
walk out there.

Liam wondered if he could outlast the drone if it were there. It
didn't make sense to have a drone sit inside the pet store unless it
knew for certain he was there. And, if it knew he was there, it could
have easily killed him down in the cages. That meant the drone was
likely
not
there.

He stayed low in a crouch, but walked from one end of the store to
the other, using the back row to look down each aisle. The drone
wasn't visible. A large hole in the front facade suggested the entry
and exit point.

When he got back to Denise, he let himself talk a little louder
than he had before.

“I think we're clear. I don't see the tank drone or the
helicopter drone.”

“There's more than one? That's horrible.”

“I think the floating one tags zombies, and the other goes
around shooting them.”

Though he couldn't rectify the difference between the blue tags
and the red ones.

A distant beeping sound resonated from the streets outside. It was
the tank, and it was far away.

“We just have to avoid any drones, if we want to get out of
this place.” He meant the city, but right now he would be happy
to leave the building behind. His bare chest was an itchy, drying
mess of blood. A pool of water was high on his list of requirements
for the day. Or a hot shower...

“First, if you come up to the front, we can find you a gun.”

She smiled and followed.

They both stayed low. There were several men on the floor,
surrounded by pools of fresh blood. The blue arrows made him think
them through. The red arrows were for living, animated creatures.
That's why it was shot at him but hit his backpack.

The blue tag was for dead people. As in, no longer moving. These
men were tagged after they'd hit the floor. That's why all the arrows
pointed toward the window.

He searched the room for the red tags. They were all sitting in a
neat row on the checkout counter like they'd all deposited them
there. He could visualize the drone going by, shooting tags at the
men inside the pet store. Mystified, they pulled them back out,
gathered to compare notes, and were taken by surprise when the tank
drone arrived.

But if they took out the arrows, how could they be targeted?

He looked at the red arrows with the purpose of solving the
mystery. The only way they could be targeted after the darts were
removed was if the darts deposited something inside the victim. The
dart itself was secondary.

When he looked at the tip, he didn't see anything obvious to
suggest there was something attached, but he knew there was. There
had to be.

It made him sad to do it, but he took off his backpack and emptied
it. Whatever was on the dart, it was probably still inside the pack.
He couldn't take that chance.

He transferred what he could to the pockets of his jeans, and
tossed the backpack out the front window. He half-expected it to be
shot by a waiting drone but breathed a sigh of relief when it
harmlessly fell to the ground. Around him, the store had been
ransacked and gutted, but there had to be some sort of doggie baggie,
yuck yuck, he could use to carry his stuff.

Denise made noises near the back of the store. He heard the clank
of metal. It sounded like someone had dropped silverware on the hard
wooden floor.

He walked in her direction, searching for a bag, and wondering to
himself whether Victoria liked country music. They'd never spoken of
music, though it was something he was fond of talking about before
the sirens. It was one other thing, besides gaming, that he did
pretty much all the time. It would be cool to roll into Forest Park
with a big country music star on his arm. Extra points if Victoria
liked country music.

He had a smile on his face when he rounded the corner.

A bloody knife was on the floor.

His country music star was already dead.

Liam ran like hell. Straight out the front of the pet store, into
the street. He didn't care about zombies. The death rattle of the
country singer snapped something in him. It made his suffering
through the dog kennels and his fight with the tank drone seem
irrelevant.

He'd failed to anticipate she'd do something like that. She'd
asked for a weapon as soon as she could, but he assumed she needed it
to defend herself from both zombies and the sick men who had abused
her.

But she used it for a much darker purpose. He didn't want to
envision the level of sadness he'd have to endure before he'd
consider ending his own life. Also, he pushed down the suffering she
endured with the other women in those cages...

So he made for the exit as fast as his feet would carry him.

He turned the corner and ran the street with the Foxes' tipped
tour bus at the far end. He had his rifle in his hands, ready to
fire. As before, the zombies on the street stood around looking at
him, but they didn't move from their positions. When he reached the
big converted tour R/V, the chains around the feet of the zombies
explained the why of it. Though he was nearly out of this horror
scene, he stopped to look back.

The trap was nearly perfect. The one side of the street had seven
or eight zombies tied to the building and some of the parking meters
near the curb. At first glance they appeared to be threatening—as
if they would cross the street. The zombies set up near the tipped
R/V kept a wandering survivor from running in that direction. Left
with few alternatives, a new arrival would see the “safe”
sign on the wall and run to and through the mysterious door, to
safety.

Only it wasn't safe. It was, as Denise said, Hell.

Victoria said we'd all be killing each other. We'd become bad
people to stave off the worst people.

It was all coming true.

He skated by the remaining zombies and the R/V. A whole new
stretch of city opened up in front of him. He could see to the west
for many blocks as the hot afternoon sun shone in his face. Far ahead
he saw one of the floating drones, but he didn't see the land-based
model. For the first time, he considered that there could be several
of each kind.

The middle lane of the five-lane avenue was dubbed the “suicide
lane” by his older friends who could drive. It was the only
lane where you could go either way, making it instantly dangerous. He
chose that one and leaned into a jog again.

The rhythm of running returned, and after the first block, he felt
comfortable with what he was doing. His heart slowed down from his
panic, and he forced himself to take deep breaths to support his
oxygen levels.

I'm going to run straight through. No more detours.

He made it two more blocks before he tripped on a small rope
someone had strung across the road. He saw it as he approached, but
ignored it because it—when he was ten feet away—was
positively on the pavement. It was just past a small four-door
subcompact that had been abandoned in the middle of the lane. His
eyes were drawn to the car, and at the last second the rope sprang
up.