Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (22 page)

“Me either. So what do we do? Do it at the same time, or do
you want me to go first?”

“Heck no, I'll show you how this is done.”

Liam stepped back, content to give her the floor. She was better
at this sort of thing…

He covered his ears.

The explosive force of the AK-47 filled the small hallway and Liam
felt as much as heard the gunshot. It only took two shots to ruin the
lock of the dorm door. Victoria explained that her key card and
hospital ID badge had been on a lanyard she wore all the time on
campus—except she took it off the night of the disaster so she
could go out with her friends. She had the card in a small hidden
pocket inside the evening dress she'd worn for so long those first
days. It never occurred to her to take it out and keep it with her.
The melted remains of the plastic card were in the ruins of Liam's
neighborhood.

He shut the door and locked it with the deadbolt. It was above the
main door handle, and hadn't been locked because it had to be turned
manually from the inside. A piece of luck.

They'd left Hans and his mom so he could take Victoria to her old
dorm room.

When they walked into her room it was like walking into the
ancient past. A pair of tidy beds lined opposite walls and a long
desk linked the two beds at the front of the room. The light of the
evening filtered through the partially-opened blinds protecting the
large window.

Victoria walked directly to her desk. It was bare, save for a few
large books. A box sat on the floor with some personal effects from
one of the two occupants of the room—Liam couldn't say.

“I'm here. I can't...believe it.” Victoria looked at
her desk, then out the window to the treetops in the big courtyard.
Another dorm building was on the far side. Liam could hear the wobble
in her voice as she spoke. “It never should have ended like
this.” Watching her from the back, her shoulders slumped and he
heard soft crying. He stepped up to her and put his arms around her,
and for once didn't say anything.

That isn't to say he didn't want to tell her everything was going
to be OK, or that they'd make the best of things. Lots of things came
to his head, but something told him now was the time to shut up and
just hold on.

It took five minutes before she turned to face him. She'd been
crying the whole time.

“I want
this
life back. The one where my worst
stresses are my tests, or getting to class on time. The one where my
biggest fear is getting a B. The one where I live happily ever after
as a doctor...” The tears ratcheted back up and she leaned into
him for a tight hug.

“Please tell me we can have that life. We can bring it all
back.”

“I, uh...”

What can I tell her without lying?

“I'm trying. We're trying. That's why we take chances. Why
we crawl out of graves, run down sewer pipes, and risk doing it over
and over again. So we can bring...as much of it back as we can.”

She was quiet for another couple of minutes.

“Hey, there's my duffel of clothes.” She untangled
herself from him and walked to the other end of her bed. A nylon bag
with one long zipper lay with clothes strewn on top of it, like it
had been picked through.

“I never even had time to get situated in my room when I
arrived. I tossed my junk here, they threw scrubs at me, and I only
came back to sleep for the next few weeks. I always thought I'd have
time to put my clothes into drawers.”

The slatted doors of the closet in the back of the room were
part-way open, and some colorful dresses hung from hangers. She'd
obviously gotten those squared away.

Liam sat on the bed. “Maybe we can live here for a while?
Surely this is better than being in a tent down in the park?”

Victoria didn't answer, so he kept talking. “Do you know
where your roommate went? Is she, uh, safe?”

She stopped what she was doing with the bag and her arms fell to
her side. To Liam, it appeared she was defeated. “I'm
sure
she's dead. She hasn't been here, has she?”

“OK, I'm sorry. I was just asking.” He was treading in
dangerous waters. The warning indicators were there, but he had no
idea how he'd arrived.

After several minutes, she plopped herself on the bed next to him.
She had a small gray bag sitting on her lap. It was about the size of
a large purse. When she saw him looking at it, she put her hands over
it. “Hey, don't look at a girl's makeup bag.”

“You need
all that
for makeup?”

“You're too funny,” she said wistfully. “No, it
isn't
all
makeup. This is what I use when I use the dorm's
communal bathroom.”

He was poised to ask about sharing a bathroom with other people,
and how it seemed kind of primitive for a fancy dorm like this, but
after three weeks sharing much worse spaces for bathrooms, it
suddenly seemed the pinnacle of civilization.

“I need to sleep.” She sounded like a drone.

Unable to guess her intentions, he stood up. “I'll let you
sleep here. I'll keep watch outside.” It didn't seem likely
there'd be zombies here, but if other dorm rooms were locked like
hers, there was a real chance a zombie was lurking in one of those
rooms. He'd read that trope a million times.

“No, don't go.”

His heart was withering under the mixed messaging he'd been
getting ever since they'd arrived at Forest Park. What was it she
needed, or wanted? For the first time since he'd met her, they were
completely alone with no threats nearby, whatsoever.

She dropped her bag at the foot of the bed, then crawled toward
her pillow and threw herself upon it. She took a deep whiff as if it
had just come out of the wash.

“My God. This is what Colorado smelled like, back then.
Cleeeean.”

Her head was turned sideways on her pillow, as she looked at him.

“Liam. Will you sleep in Casey's bed? I want you close.”

He felt rejected. He felt elated. Stay. Go. But mostly, stay.

“I'll be here.” He tossed himself into the other
single bed, wrinkling the perfect covers. The pillow carried the
faint scent of laundry detergent and a girl's perfume. It
was
from a different era...

For no reason whatsoever he began to tear up.

He had to flip so he was looking at the wall, rather than
Victoria.

The AK-47 semi-automatic rifle was lying right next to him. He'd
placed it there as a hedge.

I guess I don't believe we are completely alone, after all.

2

Liam woke when something banged on the window. The light in the
room was all wrong. Instead of being draped in shadows, sunlight came
through the blinds.

“A bird.”

“What?”

“That was a bird hitting the window. We are only three
floors up and with all the trees around, the birds get confused when
they see the shiny windows of the dorm. It's in the brochure.”
Her voice carried a trace of mirth.

She sat at her desk, head in a book.

“Did I sleep all night? I told Mom we'd only be a while.”

“We both did. I guess we really needed it, huh?” She
turned to him, her face neutral. He was frozen midway through his
jump out of bed—which Victoria was in the room? Was it the
angry Victoria from the park? The sad Victoria from last night? Or
was it the “old” Victoria he'd been traveling with?

“Oh, Liam. I'm so sorry for how I've been acting. I've not
been very mature.” She shifted so her chair faced him, and she
pulled her legs off the floor and folded them underneath her. He
didn't expect to see her in pajamas, but there she was. Her legs were
bare, as the pajama shorts were made for summer. A detail he couldn't
possibly overlook...

“Coming back here has done some strange things to me. Seeing
all the same buildings where I spent so much time after coming here
from my home—and all that baggage. This room. My old clothes.
Even my toothbrush! This was freedom like I'd never really known...”

He knew, to an extent, how she felt. His own return to his boyhood
home had summoned strange new feelings as well. Mostly he accepted
that his life from before the sirens was dead and buried. His
dependence on his parents was over. He had to look forward.

But…

What if he had first arrived at his own home today? Victoria had
been “in the wild” for almost three weeks. Getting back
to things she identified with her time prior to the zombies would be
emotional, no doubt about it. His job was to tip-toe through the
minefield and help her through to the other side. Otherwise, she
might never leave the room.

He finally got out of his bed, shoes and all. The long desk had a
second chair on Casey's side of the room, which he pulled and placed
near Victoria.

“Holy crap! You have cookies?”

“They're stale, but yeah. I forgot I brought these. I had
them in my duffel—all the way from home.” She offered
some of the chocolate chip cookies, which he inhaled in huge bites.

“Mmm, best cookies I've ever had.”

“Someone has been in the room. I had a bunch of other food
in a box. It's gone.”

“But the door was locked, wasn't it?” They tried the
door before they opened it. It could only be opened with a key card.

“Locked, yeah. Either Casey came back and only took the
food, or some administrator came through here and pilfered students'
supplies. Probably assumed I was never coming back.” She
smiled, for real. “They were almost correct.”

He scooted his chair close to her.

“I'm sorry for what I said yesterday. I
do
want you
to make it home. I want to go with you. You helped me get Grandma to
safety. That was supposed to be step one in our plan to find the
cure, restore the world, then get you home after it's all over. I
think I freaked out when you said your dorm was here—like you
were going to take a shortcut and go home without me.”

“That's why I said you were a dummy, you big dummy.”
She smiled, though a trace of a tear etched its way down the edge of
her nose.

“So what do we do next?”

“Obviously, we start by eating all these cookies.” She
handed him the full sleeve, while she patted the partially eaten one.

“Um, aren't you the medical student. Won't it make us sick
to eat all these?”

She expressed mock shock. “Liam! Are you afraid you'll get a
tummy ache?” Then she reached over and punched his shoulder.
“Man up!”

Finally he could laugh
with
her.

They ate in near-silence for a couple minutes. Various “Mmm's”
and “Ahh's” of their cookie-eating slipped out from time
to time. It was as close to Heaven as Liam had been since the sirens.

While he worked on the last few, Victoria got up and moved to a
pile of clothes she'd tossed on her bed and began rooting around. He
couldn't guess what she was going to pull out, though he felt his
heart race at the implications of being there with her. In a dorm
room. A private. Dorm. Room.

The combination of the injection of sugar, ample sleep, and smells
of perfume in the room made his head start to spin. He wanted to say
something classy, to show that he understood everything she'd been
going through and that he was there for her, and everything
was
going to be all right. Heroes always said that to the cute damsels.
However, he had come to appreciate one important fact about girls in
the around-the-clock overtime training session he'd had with Victoria
since the day they'd met. This was as much her story as it was his.
In fact, in many ways, she'd kept
him
going through all their
challenges, not the other way around. Much of his fear of her leaving
was based around that simple truth.

He couldn't take his eyes off her. The conservative plaid pajamas
were what you'd expect for living in proximity to other students, but
the shorts showed off her powerful runners' legs. Except for the
early days when she wore her dress, she chose to wear full-length
jeans which were unquestionably practical, though they kept her legs
hidden.

Victoria caught him looking, though he wasn't trying to hide it.
“Gosh, Liam. I haven't shaved my legs in weeks. Please eat your
cookies.”

What happened next he decided he'd leave out of his books.

3

The walk back to the reality of Forest Park was pleasant. The
dorms were unguarded, and underpopulated, like a ghost town. Her
building was located on the campus of Washington University, even
though the medical center was located on the far end of the park. She
explained her internship got her book training at the school, and
practical learning at the nearby hospital.

“Do you think your mom will be mad we didn't come home last
night?”

He giggled, then began to fret. What if she was mad? He hadn't
told her where he was going or who he'd been with. He'd, in fact,
broken every rule laid down by his parents for how to conduct himself
back in the Old World. If this was then, he imagined, he would
probably get grounded for spending the night—unsupervised—with
a girl.

As it was, they found his mom on the front lawn of Hans
Grubmeyer's mansion. They were heading that way because they had no
idea where his mom would be, for certain. It seemed the best first
place to look. His arrangement with Hans allowed them to use his
supplies, but said nothing about staying there.

“Heya, kids.” His mom appeared cheery.

When Liam got closer, his first question derived from his
confusion about his mixed bag of roles. He was a son. A boyfriend. A
neophyte Polar Bear. A hero. But he was also sixteen…

“You aren't mad?” He knew she knew what he meant.

Lana laughed. “Liam, you survived on your own while
supporting an elderly woman, with Victoria's assistance. If you're
afraid I would yell at you for missing curfew you can rest easy.”
She smiled.

“Good morning, Victoria.”