Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (34 page)

“Funny thing. When you didn't show up, that Elsa woman
claimed you'd taken off on your own. Anyone who knows you wouldn't
believe that crap. It only took a little snooping before we found
someone who saw a man being thrown from a bridge. You I assume?”

John nodded.

“We put it together and figured out this was where you'd
be.” He smiled broadly. “When we got close, we heard you
ordering people on your radios. We knew we'd made the right choice.”

“Sonofabitch. My security has gone to shit.”

“Don't worry, general. We'll take good care of you. The
warriors I brought with me will fight here with you. They hated
leaving the town to die and are glad to join the fight to save it.
The civvy cars back there are the families of these soldiers—and
people who joined up when they saw us drive by. There's a lot of
holdouts out there.”

A man waved and yelled on top of the levee, getting their
attention.

“Shall we go check it out, Vince?” he asked.

John smiled inwardly at his charmed existence. Vince was the third
person to defer to his leadership. He'd gone from dead man to
practically being the King of Cairo—or would that be Pharaoh—in
no time flat. Elsa might have done him a favor. Some day he'd have
the resources to tell her in person. Just before he put a bullet
between those cold eyes...

Together they jogged up the incline of the levee. Vince was a
short stocky man with a dark tan. And fifteen years younger, at
least. He jogged easily by his side. When they reached the top, they
had a clear view of the road as it crossed the ditch and went north
to the interstate.

Far in the distance, they saw the horizon moving.

“What the?” John asked. He'd left his binoculars in
the pickup truck.

As they watched, the shapes on the interstate started down toward
the fields, adding to those already there. The number of zombies was
legion.

“I told you, we brought a few with us.”

“My God. Those are all zombies?”

Some were running. Some jogged. Some ran sideways in odd patterns.
Others ambled directly for the town. It was a black tide washing down
from the highway…

“You guys got here at just the right time. My people have
spears. We need tanks. Armor. Smart bombs. Cruise missiles.
Everything.”

“Well, it's just us. No air support. No missiles. No
indirects, I'm afraid. Elsa kept the Paladins close to her.”

John extended his hand to the man who'd just saved all their
lives. Given them a chance, anyway. “Colonel, I'd buck you up
to General if I could. I can't officially promote you to cook now,
you understand.”

They shook hands, holding firm as if to confirm their fates were
intertwined. “Don't sweat it, sir. If we make it through this
shitstorm then maybe we can go to Army headquarters, wherever that
is, and complain.”

When they were done, they watched the growing storm on the
horizon.

John was ready to issue his first order for the great battle
ahead.

Lana and Liam emerged from the dark staircase into a well-lit
reception hall. There was no other way to describe it. The ceiling
was thirty feet high and twenty-foot murals decorated the upper walls
all around them. Skylights on the roof provided the light, while six
massive modern-looking chandeliers hung uselessly below them. There
were several rooms linked to the central chamber, including one with
large windows facing east. Liam saw part of one leg of the Arch in
that direction.

“That way. We need to check that out,” he pleaded.

But before they could move, two plain-clothes men appeared with
weapons raised. They didn't look happy.

“Down. Weapons down.” They both had pistols drawn, but
they weren't pointing directly at them.

“We're bears. In fact, I'm the
Polar Princess
.”

Liam mimicked his mother, who had her arms up in the air. He
studied the men's faces as his mom spoke. Their eyes lit up when she
said her weird name, then narrowed again.

“Really?” one said with obvious skepticism. “I'm
going to need more proof than just your word.”

Lana turned to Liam. “That's the trouble with having the
gift of invisibility. You can never turn it off.” Then, to the
men, she continued, “but I'll prove it if you can take me to
Travis or Haylee.”

“What makes you think they're here?”

“Well, for starters, I'm the one that told them to be here.
If they're not here, I failed in my promise to bring the movement out
of the ruins of Washington D.C.”

That seemed to get their attention. One of the men holstered his
pistol, though Liam couldn't ignore the other man. His olive drab
ball cap was filthy, but there was a polar bear embossed over a drab
version of the American flag.

“If you'll kindly hand over your weapons we'll get your
squared away. If you are who you say, you'll understand why we have
to treat you this way.”

“Of course.” Lana handed over her weapons. Liam did
the same.

“The AK has a jam anyway,” he said as he handed it to
dirty hat. The man may have nodded, but didn't smile.

They walked across the great room toward the chamber with all the
windows. He was dying to look down on the city from this high up. The
bit of the Arch leg in his view was curved, like it was very near the
top of that structure. More of it was revealed, the closer they got
to the windows.

One of the other rooms was dark. If it had windows, they'd been
covered over. The interior light illuminated some of the people in
there. The headphones and other blinking LED lights suggested they
were working with computers or radios.

They walked through what was once a rather elegant dining area, or
restaurant. The round tables had been stripped of their silverware,
but they still retained fancy centerpieces and their white
tablecloths. Several people sat around the tables quietly talking.
Many watched as they were directed forward by the guards. It struck
him that they were all normal-looking men and women, dressed like
they'd just come off the street of any pre-disaster day.

“You can both sit here.” The man had led them to a
small table right against a window. Liam took his seat but turned to
take in the view before either man could say a further word.

On the forty-second floor they were about two-thirds as high as
the Arch. He could see the entire structure from the feet to the tiny
slitted windows on the top. The gleaming stainless steel twinkled in
the sunlight. The late morning sun cast a shadow underneath that
leaned slightly in his direction.

Beyond the Arch he had the perfect view of the Mississippi River
and all the bridges that had once crossed it. There were several
ruined bridges to the north, but his eye was drawn to the Poplar
Street Bridge to the south. That was where all the barges and debris
had been caught when the span of the bridge had dropped into the
river—which was responsible for his soggy adventure with
Grandma and Victoria. Now only remnants of the great blockade
remained, mostly in the form of driftwood and an old barge container
wrapped around the remaining concrete pier on the near shore. The
interstate on the far shore was empty, as no one wanted to get
into
St. Louis back when the bridges were closed. Anyone lucky enough to
get caught in Illinois just kept on driving to who-knows-where.
Cairo, maybe.

The new bridge was being built across the river. From a point on
the other side near a large grain silo, barge after barge had been
lined up side by side and a metallic covering was placed on top, from
one to the next. From as high as he was, his best guess was the new
bridge would allow two big trucks to travel next to each other. The
long barges allowed plenty of room for the makeshift roadway, and he
estimated there was plenty of room for more roads if they had enough
decking.

He saw the crumpled crane parked on the floating platform just
downriver from the main bridge. Silent testimony to one small success
of his day.

On the near shore there was a lot of construction, too. A huge
platform and a short section of roadway linked to the Missouri side
of the river, as if waiting for the rest of the bridge to arrive.
Liam tried to count how many they were short, but found it hard to
measure. In the end he decided they were about seventy-five percent
across. A few barges were tethered together upstream. Their
destination was pretty obvious.

Finally, on the far shore he got a good look at the small
vehicles—small from his vantage point—hunkered in the
trees above the water. The huge Abrams tanks crouched like lions,
their guns trained on the Missouri side.

“Liam!” Lana practically shouted in his ear as she
leaned over the table.

He snapped to the inside of the room.

“Gosh, it's like you're five again.” She said it
without malice, but Liam was embarrassed.

“I was...distracted by all that.” He pointed outside.

“I want you to meet the leader of the Polar Bears here in
St. Louis.”

He stood up to accept a handshake from a full-bearded man with
well-groomed red hair and piercing gray eyes flanking a thin nose.

“It's a true honor, young man.”

2

“Liam, this is Travis Rhoads. He's one of the leaders here.”

The man's hand swallowed his and squeezed it with a manly grip.
His beard and mustache hid his lips, but his cheeks rose as he
smiled. His eyes tried to smile too, but they didn't quite rise to
the occasion. When the greeting was over, Liam noticed the Golden
Retriever at the man's side. He bent down without thinking to pet the
dog.

“This is Chief. He's my best pal.” He reached to
scratch behind a shaggy ear.

“Who's a good dog?” Liam felt his own smile explode as
he swept his hands over the clean coat of the retriever. He didn't
even mind when his face got licked in return. In the three or so
weeks since the zombies arrived, he'd had no time for the simple
pleasure of petting a dog. It reminded him of better times…

Dammit. I'm gonna cry right in front of the leader of the Polar
Bears.

He focused all his energy—and his eyes—down to Chief
as he listened to his mom talk to Travis.

“I'm glad you made it all right. Who the hell ordered you to
strike at the Bailey bridge? You'd have to get incredibly lucky to
knock it out. And they'll just keep building it, no matter what
happened.”

“Jason Hawkes and I decided it had to be done. We met a
guy—Hans Grubmeyer—who turned us on to those tanks. Gave
us the manuals which explained all the computer upgrades that had
been done to them. They were easier to operate than a forklift. We
decided to go for it.”

“I'm glad you're OK. I never thought I'd see the day tanks
were rolling around in St. Louis. And Tigers. That's next to
impossible!” He laughed.

That sent Chief onto his hind legs and further into Liam's arms.
He struggled to keep the dog from tipping him over.

“But you shouldn't have risked yourself like that. You're
too important to be driving around in tanks. That's a profession with
a short lifespan these days, and I'm not talking about the walkers
either. Once we saw the A-10s in action we figured it was game over.”

“We got lucky. And I had some help from my son.”

He felt their eyes on him, but he continued with the dog because
it made the most sense to him in that moment. His mom talking to a
military commander about driving tanks in the Zombie Apocalypse was
anything but…

“We lost Jason's tank. He's still out there as best we can
tell. You guys are lucky in one regard. The military is over at Scott
Air Force Base with a fleet of OV-10 Broncos. Basically they're the
Vietnam War version of the A-10. Instead of jet engines, they're
propeller-driven. They're slower, but far more maneuverable. Much
better for work inside a city like this. Instead of two A-10s you
would have had ten Bronco's sniffing for you. We aren't sure why they
weren't called up, but we think there are a lot of problems between
them and the convoy.”

“You mean zombies?”

Travis laughed. “Zombies? Yeah, the dead are like zombies, I
guess. They are thick to the east where the convoy is coming through.
Plus there's been a lot of noise from a garrison down in Cairo,
Illinois. They've been—”

“Cairo?” Liam stood up. “What about Cairo?
That's where my Grandma is.”

Travis looked at him for a long moment. “Rose is in Cairo?”

It was a common misunderstanding. He seldom called Grandma Marty
by her proper name, which was
Great-Grandma
Marty. It was just
easier and shorter to leave off the “Great.” Though now
that it had come up again, he'd have to start considering how he can
be clear about his relatives in the future.

“No, my Great-Grandma Marty.”

“Ah, of course.” Travis looked at his mom and then
back to him. “As best I know, Cairo itself is still intact. The
convoy from the East Coast is cutting through the Midwest along two
interstates. One group is going through Indiana and Ohio, while the
other is a bit further south, going through Kentucky. Makes sense
with that many vehicles. But every military unit between Washington
D.C. and Denver is being called together to support the main
effort—they really want to get the seat of government to St.
Louis. The units in Cairo were ordered to head north two days ago.”

“Leaving the town undefended,” Liam murmured.

He imagined the big ditch filled with water, and filled with
zombies. He'd given the town extra time because of the defenses
they'd built, but if the Army had abandoned them, it shortened their
lifespan by a couple orders of magnitude.

And Grandma's to almost nothing.

While he didn't say it, he wondered how he could get to Cairo
again. He would never leave without Victoria, however, and while it
was childish to think it, he felt great regret he allowed himself to
be separated from her.