Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (35 page)

“We'll figure something out,” Lana said in her
comforting tone, “but we have so many problems right now I
don't know where to start. Convoys. Refugee camps. Those strange new
zombies...”

The word hung on the air like fresh-cut fish bait until Travis
bit.

“What, exactly, does
that
mean?”

3

“You haven't seen anything odd in the zombies, down there?”
Lana pointed out the window.

Before Travis could answer, Liam added, “Didn't you send
those three men to the Koch Hospital Quarry to find the dead
soldiers?” Someone sent them in. Someone, perhaps the same
person, sent
him
in. Even though the text came from an area
code in Utah, it felt right that a control center here in St. Louis
would be the one to send them to the local mine.

Travis focused his attention on Liam. “What do you know
about my men? I did send them into that mine, based on a tip. I sent
a six-man team. Did they make it out?”

Liam explained his own journey at a very top level of
simplification. He saved the details for when he met the three Polar
Bears inside the cavern full of tanks.

“There were only three when I met them. They said they were
looking for a chamber where soldiers bodies were stolen from the
military cemetery, from below. We didn't really have time for a
detailed talk. Those dead soldiers attacked us, along with hundreds
of other zombies, down in that mine. The last time I saw your men
they were trapped on the wrong side of a crowd of biters, but at
least two of them—Dave and Travis, I think—were alive.
The third one, Clarence, we thought had taken refuge in a tank.”

He went on to explain how he'd escaped.

“Wow, that's hardcore, son. The infection can bring the dead
to life. Shit. And crawling out through that grave. That was really
smart. Did you figure that out?”

Liam left out most of the story, including the role of the three
young girls. Mostly because it sounded implausible that a set of
triplets had met up with him through random circumstance, but also
because he didn't know how to explain their contribution, or where
they'd gone after they, too, escaped.

“My girlfriend helped.”

“Hmm. My information was similarly vague, but we deemed it
important enough to investigate.”

Travis looked at Lana. “He knows about our true enemy,
right?”

She nodded.

“I was told the NIS had a research team working in that
mine, and that they stumbled onto one vector for the spread of the
disease. Anyone who sees these sick people—these zombies—senses
that the human souls of those poor bastards are gone. The people are,
in fact, dead.”

He paused. Liam thought the man looked a little shaken. That's
about the same time Chief nuzzled up against his right hip. Travis
dropped his hand and absently stroked the dog on the head and behind
his ears.

“And,” he continued, “that some dead people
carried the disease long before the outbreak happened here in the
States.”

“That's exactly what they found. Someone had gone through a
lot of trouble to drill up to the bottom of those soldiers' coffins
and pull them into the mine below. We didn't see it happen, but I saw
video of a soldier inside a coffin. He was practically a skeleton.”

Travis looked at Lana. “This is all as you said. This has
gone on for a long time...”

Lana nodded. Liam once again wondered whether the woman standing
there was the same mom who baked him pancakes, or helped him with his
homework, or hugged his father after one of his tirades against the
ignorant American electorate. She was always the voice of reason. His
father was always the rebel.

“Liam has also found out a key piece of the NIS research.
They're investigating centenarians as possibly immune to the
E-squared.”

“Centenarians? We'd heard something similar. Walk with me.”

The two guards had remained on the far edge of the room, but
Travis whisked them away. The trio, plus Chief, left the dining area,
returned to the great hall, and then entered the darkness of the
computer room.

“This is where we do our listening. This whole building is a
listening post. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on
out there. Lots of shortwave chatter. Some intercepts on DOD
frequencies. We have some talented people here, and some loyal
followers inside the government still feed us intel. We can piece
things together pretty well.”

Travis walked up to an older man with a pure-white beard. He had a
kindly face that reminded Liam of Santa Claus. He wore a Hawaiian
shirt with Orange surf boards and green palm trees. He had headphones
around his neck, but he wasn't listening to them. He was leaning far
back in his chair, stretching.

“Donnie.” He got the man's attention. “You'll
never guess who I've got here.”

The man stood.

“This is
Polar Princess
.”

“Well, I'll be...” He raised his hand to shake hers.
“I'm your biggest fan.”

“Oh, it's nothing. Really. We all do what we can.” She
smiled as she shook his hand, and once more Liam was left with
questions.

“Donnie listens to most everything out there. He keeps us in
tune with the pulse of the enemy.”

“He's busy as shit—oh excuse me ma'am.”

“It's all right,” Lana laughed.

“He's damned busy. The convoy is sucking up most of the air
time, but the military is cutting through the highways with their
plows and tractors—clearing it for the second wave of units who
sweep for the infected so the civilians can pass. Recon elements of
the first military units are getting close to East St. Louis. That's
how spread out they are.”

“But aren't they still in West Virginia?” Liam
blurted.

“You got that right, kid, a big group of them are bogged
down with traffic jams, damaged infrastructure, and citizens who get
angry once they realize the military is leaving them behind. When a
whole infantry division drives by your home without clearing out the
undead, well, it makes people do stupid things.”

“You mean they're fighting the Army?”

“Army. Navy. Marines. They're all making the trek across the
nation right now. Coming right here to this little berg.” He
laughed. St. Louis was small compared to cities on the East Coast,
but few would call it little. It was just about the right size to
start over…

“Tell them about the hundred-year-olds, Donnie.”

“Oh, that.”

4

“We've been hearing these weird directives within
departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and the
CDC. Some of them mention research ongoing with people described as
centaur-, centur—”

“Centenarians,” Travis added. He smiled. “My
girlfriend is a school teacher.”

“Right. That. These elderly people are being rounded up as a
possible source of the cure.”

Liam nodded, having seen it firsthand.

“But other directives seem to say just the opposite. That
the infected search out old people. Are drawn to them. And the order
says to turn them away and avoid them at all cost.”

Liam searched his memory. Were the zombies tracking him, or
Grandma? Did they follow her out of the city? Follow her downtown to
Riverside? Follow her to Cairo? Could it be that simple?

“My great-grandma is in Cairo, Illinois. Have you heard
anything from there?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. There are a lot of complicated
military operations down in southern Illinois. The dead from Chicago
have swarmed in that direction, as have the dead from other cities in
the region. But there was an encrypted NIS transmission we cracked
specifically mentioning the termination of one of the oldest people
in that part of the state, like it was some kind of achievement.”

Liam jumped on that statement. “Did they say a name?”

Donnie looked at Travis, though Liam didn't detect any non-verbal
communication. “No. No names were mentioned. As best I can
remember the military was abandoning the town, something about the
dismissal of a rogue general, and the termination of a
hundred-and-something old lady. But no name, that I recall.”

“Oh, God. That
has
to be Grandma.” He turned to
his mom.

“We don't know that for sure. There have to be other elderly
survivors,” she replied.

“Yeah, kid. This was one transmission. We can't read too
much into it,” Donnie added.

He read
everything
into it. His heart wanted to flee the
building and jump in the river and go find out.

I'd have to get Victoria, first.

“Tell her about the mine.”

“OK. Yeah. There's a lot of traffic centered on a mine to
the south of here—”

“Koch Hospital Quarry,” Liam interjected.

“Yeah, so you already know it. We're still trying to crack
the encryption on those messages, but we know the traffic is from an
antenna near there. We also have a sloppy station broadcasting from a
hand-held radio across the Mississippi from the mine. He mentioned a
recovery operation underway, but that the mine had filled with
infected and they were going nowhere fast.”

Inwardly he laughed. It was absolutely full of them.

“That mine is crammed with tanks. Hundreds of them. Most
were pretty old, like the Tiger tanks we snagged, but there are
Abrams tanks down there, too. And...”

He wondered if he should hold anything back. His mom already knew
what he'd found down there, but if he couldn't trust the leaders of
her movement, who could he trust?

“And there's a big vault door with a video camera watching
outside. I think there are people hiding down there. People from
before
the Zombie Apocalypse.”

Travis turned to Lana. “Whose side are they on?”

“I have no idea. Whatever Liam stumbled on down there, it
isn't something I know about.”

“They didn't open the door for us when it could have made a
difference. They might have been able to save your three people.”

Travis stepped away and paced in a small back and forth pattern.
Chief was with him the whole time. He knelt down to pet his dog while
he appeared to think.

“I've got too many irons in the fire,” he said to
Chief. “What do I do now?”

He stood up once again, and looked at Liam. “Can you get a
team back into that place? If we can get those tanks before their
owners, we might be able to win this war before it begins.”

“You want me to go back
into
that mine?”

“You'd be perfect to do it. You could save us a lot of time
by leading us right to the tanks. I'd send your team with plenty of
weapons to handle the undead. We've already seen those tanks are
operational. We can send fifty people and bring back fifty tanks.”

“There's no way to drive the tanks out. The tunnels are
filled with abandoned cars and trucks.”

“Where did the two Tiger's come from?”

“The NIS guy said they came from a different place. They
were equally upset that the zombies had taken over that mine.”

“Nonetheless, we have a convoy bearing down on us and not
enough weapons to do much about it. We never imagined we'd have to
fight the full weight of the U.S. Military, did we?”

Lana shook her head. “We thought we'd march into D.C. and
end everything without firing a shot.”

“Well, the march was not without its good days. I met the
girl of my dreams, I had my faithful service dog the whole way, and I
was only shot at on odd-numbered days. Thanks to you, we made it
almost the entire way without any true violence.”

“I'm sorry we couldn't get you to the finish line.”

“Ah, such heady days,” Travis laughed. “The time
we thought we could actually make a difference to the flow of
history.”

“When?” Liam asked. He was notorious for not paying
attention to the news, and he knew the Patriot Snowball movement had
marched on Washington D.C. to protest the recent presidential
elections, but he still wasn't sure of the details. He wasn't sure he
could trust what he'd been told by Hayes or Duchesne.

Travis gave his mom “the look.” The raised eyebrows
and accompanying mouth-ajar posture.

“You mean you didn't tell your own son the story?”

She shook her head, a little sadness cradled her face.

“Then I think its time for him to meet the source of the
Patriot Snowball movement, don't you?”

Lana waved her hand, deferring the decision to him.

Travis led Chief to another wing of the top floor of the
skyscraper. Instead of tables or radios, the space had dozens of
couches, some with sheets draped around them for nominal privacy.

“This is where the crew can catch some shut eye. She'll be
by the windows. Maybe we can find you a shirt, too,” he said as
he looked at Liam.

Liam walked through the couches without looking around. He
wondered if anyone could sleep in such conditions, but there were
several men and women doing a fine job of it. In the far corner, near
the windows, was a small roped-off area where some young children
noisily played. Opposite that area, a young black woman sat on a
folding chair as she looked out the large windows. They were facing
south, toward the ball stadium. The wreck of the Osprey was still
there, he was sure, though it was hidden by the stands from where he
was.

When the woman saw Travis, her face lit up, then she jumped up to
hug him.

“I just woke up, baby.”

“I'm glad. I didn't want to disturb you after all the
trouble last night.”

Liam was left to wonder what had happened.

“Honey, I want you to meet someone—in person—we've
talked to for months.” He smiled and extended his hand toward
Lana. “I give you,
Polar Princess
. And this,” he
pointed to the twenty-something young woman, “is
Clarisse
McClellan
.”

“Naw, my real name is Haylee. You don't have to call me by
my literary handle.” She stuck her hand out.