Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (2 page)

In the morning he retreated to a private room inside the
administration building to absorb the contents he was
positive
would give him the answers he sought. After reading it six or seven
more times, he still wasn't sure what his father's dying words meant
for him.

Shifting on his feet, he started again, at the beginning. It was
written in his father's large-block printing, which drove him nuts.
Seeing all-caps in his online lifestyle was reserved for shouting and
online newbies. Liam winced at the notion his father loved to push
his buttons, just as much as he enjoyed pushing his dad's. His misuse
of the word
libary
was one example, but his father's text seemed to be one final button
push, though it was without malice. It was as if his father enjoyed
the back and forth they'd had. That made him feel even worse...

DEAR LIAM,

BEFORE I GET TO THE TRUTH, LET ME SAY I'M SORRY I CAN'T TELL YOU
IN PERSON HOW PROUD I AM OF ALL YOU'VE DONE FOR GRANDMA MARTY, AND
FOR YOURSELF SURVIVING THIS PLAGUE. GETTING HER OUT OF THE CITY,
RESCUING HER FROM ELK MEADOW, AND GETTING HER BACK TO OUR HOME WERE
FEATS ABOUT WHICH I STAND IN AWE.

NOW YOU'VE GONE OFF TO RESCUE HER ONE MORE TIME. I CAN'T SAY I'M
HAPPY HOW YOU'VE LEFT YOUR MOTHER AND ME, BUT I GUESS I UNDERSTAND.
YOU ARE RIDING A LUCKY STREAK. I HOPE YOU FIND HER—

He looked up, for the eighth time, at this exact spot. His dad
never knew he
did
rescue grandma that last time. He found her
in the Riverside Hotel downtown, held by Douglas Hayes and the
National Internal Security agent Duchesne. His dad would have been
proud he overcame so much to pull her out of that mess. The
subsequent rescue and ride in the Osprey to Cairo, IL might have made
him proud too, except that Liam suffered some head trauma rescuing a
girl and wasn't really an active participant in the end.

He continued reading.

—AND BRING HER BACK TO YOUR MOTHER. SHE IS SPECIAL.

I KNOW YOU THINK I HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH ALL...THIS...OUTBREAK
SITUATION. THAT I KNEW ABOUT IT AHEAD OF TIME AND SENT YOU TO LIVE
WITH GRANDMA TO SOMEHOW PROTECT YOU. I TOLD YOU THE TRUTH BACK WHEN
YOU ASKED ME. I HAD NO IDEA ZOMBIES WERE COMING. NO ONE COULD HAVE
KNOWN THAT. BUT I KNEW SOMETHING WAS COMING. THE INCONVENIENT FACT
YOU AND I WERE AT EACH OTHERS THROATS THIS PAST SPRING MADE IT EASY
TO PUT YOU OUT OF HARM'S WAY. OR SO I THOUGHT HAHA.

Liam stopped here too, as he had done on previous readings. His
father had sent him to live with Grandma Marty in the city, but that
turned out to be a mistake—in Liam's mind—because it was
much more dangerous for him. However, it probably saved Grandma's
life. They got out of the city together. But he wondered how his
father could have known he'd need guns. The two small pistols he'd
stashed in Grandma's basement turned out to be instrumental in
getting him to safety. Without weapons, he would have had to depend
on the goodwill of others. That was something in short supply.

YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE ME IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS ALL RANDOM CHANCE.
ABOUT SIX MONTHS AGO I GOT A CALL FROM YOUR GRANDMA ROSE. SHE WAS OUT
WEST SOMEWHERE AND SAID SHE STUMBLED UPON SOMETHING AFTER SHE WON HER
ELECTION THAT SHE NEEDED TO TELL SOMEONE SHE COULD TRUST. WHO COULD
SHE TRUST MORE THAN HER OWN SON, RIGHT?

IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING YOUR MOM ALREADY KNOWS ALL THIS. BUT IT IS
VERY DANGEROUS, AND HAS BEEN FOR A LONG TIME. IN FACT, GRANDMA ROSE
LEARNED ABOUT THESE PEOPLE FROM HER HUSBAND. HE WAS KILLED, YOU KNOW,
JUST FOR POKING AROUND BEHIND THE WRONG CURTAINS. THAT'S WHY ROSE
JUMPED INTO POLITICS. SHE WANTED TO CARRY GRANDPA CLYDE'S DEATH BACK
TO THEM. YOU KNOW HOW DRIVEN SHE WAS.

Liam wondered about the use of the word
was
. Did his father
mean to say Grandma Rose was now dead? The rest of the letter gave no
clue, and that was really the most disturbing part of the whole
thing. That, and the fact his dad died shortly after he'd written
this.

He looked around. He was inside a small room in the administration
building of Camp Hope. The Boy Scout camp had become a home of sorts
since he'd first found the place with Grandma weeks ago. The Scouts
were able to keep the place organized and defended much longer than
most other refuges he'd stumbled upon lately. And, to their credit,
they'd survived Liam's attempt to get their place overrun by zombies.

Give yourself a break, Liam,
he thought.

He didn't really believe he was responsible for causing the
survivalist group to come in shooting, any more than he believed he
directly caused the collapse of Busch Stadium. They were, at worst,
accidents. But Camp Hope survived that assault and was still going
strong. That made this camp the most secure place he knew about in
the St. Louis area. A place he should feel safe.

He felt a chill, despite the intense July heat. Somewhere out
there he imagined people were working on plans to kill him and his
whole family. He'd seen the list with all the names. Now he was
getting answers as to why his name was on that list. It all tied back
to his Grandma Rose.

ME? I THINK MOTHER NATURE IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF ME. MY BROKEN
LEG HURTS BEYOND WORDS—WHY DO YOU THINK I'M SHOUTING AT YOU
HAHA. THERE ARE NO MEDICATIONS LEFT AND I'M TOO WEAK TO GO OUT
LOOKING FOR ANY. NO ONE KNOWS WHERE TO GO ANYWAY. THIS MAY BE THE END
OF THE BEGINNING, LIAM. NOW THINGS ARE GOING TO GET HARD.

I'M SORRY.

SO. THE TRUTH. I PROMISED I WOULD GET TO THAT.

The letter went on. He crumpled the paper, as he had done seven
times before. He was angry that his father knew so much, but wouldn't
tell him until it was much too late. He was angry Grandma Rose was
tangled up in all this, and she involved his father
and
his
mother. And finally, for reasons he couldn't explain, he was mad as
hell his father died and walked away from all the chaos currently
gripping the family. Even knowing he was buried on the nearby hill
didn't temper his white-hot pain.

Fortunately, Victoria rescued him from another rehash of the end
of the letter.

2

“Hey, can I come in?” she asked as she approached.

“Yes, I'm through here.”

She walked over to him and gave him a hug. At that moment it was
exactly what he needed to counteract the anger. He was mostly
unashamed as the tears dripped on her shoulder.

It took several minutes before he was willing to release her.

Victoria's green eyes steadied his. “Is the letter that
bad?” She smiled tentatively.

Wiping his eyes, he showed her the note. She read through it while
he used the sleeve of his shirt to finish the job. By the time she
was done, he felt almost normal.

“Wow. You told me all the way back on those railroad tracks
that your dad knew something. I bet you didn't know
this
is
what it would be about, huh?” Her laughter was sympathetic.

“All this time I thought he was part of some secret Patriot
group tying to stir up shit just because they didn't like paying
taxes, or something. Even after Duchesne explained it, I thought the
Patriot Snowball was all about free stuff.”

Liam and Victoria had been told the Patriots were attacked by
elements of the Federal Government as the protest group marched
across America to Washington D.C. A plague was released to prevent
them from storming the capital. However, the government didn't know
it was a
zombie
plague. The President thought it would make
everyone get sick with a bad case of the flu. Enough sneezing in a
group that large, and it would be easy to see everyone infected in
hours.

Only the flu was much worse than anyone predicted. That was the
unofficial story.

The official story given over what remained of mass media, Liam
learned, was that the Patriots unleashed the plague as they arrived
at the capital. Instead of being done to soften up the defenses, it
was done to eliminate the entire city so they could take it over.
Though he was certain his father believed the city was already filled
with mindless zombies working in government buildings throughout the
area, the thought of his father unleashing anything so destructive on
the innocent citizens of Washington D.C. was impossible to accept.

The letter proved that much, if nothing else.

“So your grandma Rose pretty much started the Patriot
Snowball. Wow.”

“Yeah, so we can be sure she or my dad didn't release the
plague,” he said with a weak laugh, “but we still can't
be entirely sure the Polar Bears didn't plan the eventual violence.
Maybe they did release the plague under cover of fighting a bigger
conspiracy.” He thought of any number of heinous acts done in
the name of a greater good. “They could release it because they
knew my Grandma would never be thought capable of it. Nor my dad.”

“I don't think we know enough to say anything right now. It
doesn't really matter, does it?”

Did it matter if his dad was associated with murderers? Probably
not in the short term. Everyone was too busy fighting the encroaching
hordes of zombies to worry about people in the next county, next
city, next state. But part of him thought it was imperative to know
for sure if the Patriot Snowball had been corrupted, or maliciously
slandered by a collapsing government intent on hiding a more
egregious sin committed by their own side.

“You're right. It doesn't change the basics. I feel better
about my dad. And my mom.” He grunted. “I was a real jerk
to her, wasn't I?”

He'd yelled at her and acted like a baby when she told him about
his dad's death. Now that he'd regained his senses, he felt the sting
of his own words.

“Well.” She looked at the floor, saying everything
that needed to be said.

“OK. I'll go apologize. But you and I need to do something
before we go back out there.” In happier times this may have
been the point where he embraced her with a kiss—they had rare
privacy and safety at that moment—but he continued to think
about the overarching goal of finding the cure to the plague as well
as documenting the whole thing for future citizens of whatever
country emerged from this dark time. He wanted to write it all down
in a book.

He spoke in a whisper. “We can't stay here. My mom is going
to argue against leaving, I just know it. Now that we're here I feel
like we have to get back to Cairo and help Grandma. Protect her. This
is too big not tell her.”

“Maybe it's better to have your family spread out? Maybe she
is safer there?” She gave him a hopeful look.

Liam wondered if Grandma Marty already knew about her own
daughter-in-law's secret. If Rose was spinning up some big conspiracy
theory, and she got his mother and father involved, it wasn't much of
a stretch to imagine she'd gotten other people in her family up to
speed as well. He tried to replay days of material in his head,
searching for anything that would tip him off that Grandma Marty was
aware of the people working with his parents. Either he missed
something obvious, or she was in the dark, just like him.

Nobody is in the dark as much as me.

He looked at his girlfriend. She had gone with him into the black
pit of the mine. She crawled out through the hollowed grave, same as
him. She knew exactly as much as he did about the conspiracy that had
engulfed his family. They were both in the dark. He was glad for the
company.

“Nowhere is safe anymore. I vote we go back to Cairo and
bring Grandma here. I want us all together again so we can look out
for each other. That's the only thing we can count on, anymore.”

As she'd done so many times in the past, she took his hand and
firmly pulled him out of the private space.

His spirits moved up just a notch.

3

They found his mom in another room of the administration building
filled with radios. When they walked in, he was surprised to see a
dozen older teen boys sitting around various types of radios in the
small conference room. Most wore headphones to mask the sound, but
some of the larger radios were on the back wall and one in particular
was allowed to bellow across the room.

“...the last report from the would-be rescuers of
Plattenville was they had secured several intersections and bridges
around the bayou town, but there were too many infected to keep them
at bay. We will update you if we get any live feeds out of that part
of Louisiana.”

Another newscast began talking about Wisconsin, but Liam's
attention was pulled away by his mother. She neared, but appeared
afraid to touch him.

Liam reached out to her and, like Victoria, they embraced for a
long time. The apology was understood. It brought down his animosity
with his mother, but the radio continued to broadcast over his
shoulder.

“...the guard units spread out and surrounded the former
makeshift medical collection point in the school’s gymnasium.”
The radio broadcast cut to what was obviously a local reporter.
Gunfire was constant and boisterous. A woman's voice barely cut
through. “What you are hearing is the significant effort being
undertaken to subdue the infection here in Racine. For two days the
Guard has worked to cordon off this section of the city and compress
the circle by killing everything inside. Block by block they've
managed to finally reach this spot.” More gunfire kicked up,
making it all but impossible to understand the woman.

Liam looked around as he separated from his mom. Several of the
operators had one earphone off so they could listen to the main
radio.

“What's going on here?”

His mom shushed him, though she pointed to the radio to indicate
why.

The woman could be heard talking to someone, but it was still
washing out with the waves of violence in the background of the
broadcast.

Her voice returned with her yells. “We have to leave! We are
being told to leave. But I can see—”