Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (7 page)

“Have to run,” he repeated to himself.

The zombie moved fast into the tree. He began to weave through the
middle branches as it searched for the one that was directly above
Lucy's Football
.

It's that one, you stupid zombie.

But it wasn't totally stupid. Through the fog he recognized that
simple fact.

From deep in his memory he searched for a parallel in his zombie
lore. A smart zombie? Then it isn't a zombie at all, is it? But
zombies had to have
some
intelligence; enough to identify
food. Even a snake, with its tiny brain, was able to sneak up on its
prey. A snail, with barely the ability to move, was smart enough to
find food. And now this zombie, supposedly dumber than most boxes of
hammers, had the ability to stand upright, crawl up a tree, and plot
a simple course to prey.

And it had something else. Liam couldn't put his finger on it,
though he knew it should be obvious.

More splashes of water.

In his memory he summoned an image of a zombie in a pink
nightgown.

He laughed inwardly. “Yeah, that was the time I lost myself
and declared my love for a zombie version of Victoria. That thing
made me lose my mind.”

Lose my mind.

The echo in his head was real.

Lose…

It was making him lose it again. He
had
lost it.

“The smell. The smell is the zombie!”

He called out, but no one seemed to care. The zombie had found the
correct path and was close to finding its way down the branch, where
it would soon jump on board.

On his hands and knees he slunk into the cabin. The throttle was
right there. The motors were still idling.

The captain still needs to toss us ashore.

He tried to catch sight of the zombie up in the tree, but he
couldn't see it. He reached for the controls.

With great force he jammed the throttle in reverse, and the motors
went from zero to reverse. The powerful propellers grabbed the water
and jerked the whole boat backward. The zombie had timed it as best
it could, but the surprise move by Liam seemingly threw it off its
game. It fell from the tree and banged heavily off the front end of
the boat, then splashed into the water.

The fog quickly wore off. Liam caught the motors again and
clutched them into forward to keep from running backward into the far
shore. He did his best to straighten the boat so he could see what
was happening. He noted Jason was still on the floor near the front.
Victoria was on shore, on her back.

The zombie was in the water—swimming.

“Victoria! Move!”

And his mother was there, too. She was on the ground as well,
hunched over from getting sick.

He stepped forward to get a better view of the water. He looked
everywhere for a gun, but his mom and Victoria were with their guns,
though they didn't look to be in any condition to use them. The
captain had taken an AK, but the captain wasn't anywhere he could
see.

“Captain?”

He glanced to the rear deck, but the old sea dog wasn't out there.
He wasn't on the boat.

It took a few frantic seconds to spy him, but it was obvious once
he'd found him in the water. He was madly thrashing away fifty yards
down the river.

And half the distance between the captain and the boat, he saw the
zombie. It swam, though not very well.

Liam looked at the girls on the bank and decided to take a chance.
If this new alpha-level zombie doubled back, he would use the boat to
chase him. The only gun left on board was the one currently wrapped
around Jason. Maybe the fresh air would help him recover from...the
scent of the thing.

He spun the boat in the direction he needed to go, and gunned it.

4

Liam had made his decision in record time. He got the boat moving
in the right direction and made no discernible mistakes. Yet he still
didn't reach the zombie before it managed to get a hand on the tiring
captain.

He laid off the motors, unable to get any closer for fear of
hitting both the swimming figures.

Do something!

With the engines back in idle, the boat floated by the struggling
form of the captain, now besieged by this new type of zombie. Liam
ran to Jason to try to get his AR free of its entanglement.

“Jason! I need help. Now!” He screamed at the man,
hoping to break the spell. But Jason looked into the distance, like
he was seeing something horrible coming for him.

He ran to the captain's toolbox. Days ago he'd pulled out a couple
of heavy tools for the girls to use as weapons. The seconds ticked
off as he dug for what he needed.

“You can't go in the water, Liam,” a scared voice
called out from his mind. “It'll drown you.”

He grabbed a hammer and a heavy pipe wrench. Neither was
appropriate for what he needed...and then he saw the
right
tool. He threw down the others and pulled out the much lighter one.
He ran back to Jason, the seconds continued to roll, and he used the
box cutter to snip through Jason's rifle sling. It allowed him to
pull the rifle away from the still-reeling man.

He struggled to his feet. Tried to find the zombie and the
captain, but it took fifteen seconds. The captain popped up, gasping
for breath, twenty feet downriver. He aimed the rifle, tripped off
the safety, and hoped to find his target.

“Oh God,” cried the captain. He rolled on his back,
calling out in pain.

“Where is it?” Liam shouted.

“Help me,” was the only reply. And he sounded weak.

Liam searched in futility. If the zombie had drowned—if that
were possible—would it drag along the bottom, or float to the
top? If there was no air in the lungs, wouldn't it go down? He
couldn't say for sure.

He returned to the steering wheel and gingerly moved the boat
closer to the captain. Jason was snapping out of it, too, but he
still wasn't doing more than sitting up.

“Captain, you have to climb aboard.”

Liam tossed him a rope tied to a small white buoy. That allowed
him to hold on until Jason sobered up enough to pull him inside. With
an eye on the river, Liam returned to his mom and Victoria, who were
both standing in anticipation of his arrival. Both had their rifles
in hand.

They wasted no time talking. When the boat touched the shore, both
women jumped in and Liam backed into the water.

“What the hell was that thing?” Lana asked,
breathlessly.

“Some kind of alpha zombie,” Liam responded, thinking
of his own naming convention for it.

The captain cried out in pain. Jason had made him comfortable near
the rear door to the cabin. Liam was in that exact spot, days ago.
Also after a run in with zombies.

“The bastard got me. He scratched my arm all to hell.”

“Did he bite you?”

“No, I kept him busy. But he dug into me pretty good.”
His arm was a bloody mess near the shoulder. It didn't look like a
bite, at least.

The captain knew his boat. He directed Liam to the medical kit,
his mom patched him up, and in ten minutes the captain was pushing
the motors as fast as they'd go on the tight river.

The five of them barely fit in the cabin, but no one wanted to be
out in the open, even though it was silly to think of anything
catching them at thirty miles an hour on the water.

In no time they reached the end of the Meramec River. A mangled
bridge lay half in the water. Liam recognized it as “his”
bridge. The one he'd crossed on that first day. The train engine was
supposed to be parked nearby, but it had been taken into the
underground cavern with all the tanks in it. The bridge was familiar,
but foreign. Lots of wood had floated down the river and gotten
tangled up in the metal trusswork riding near the surface of the
water.

The captain surprised them all by dropping from breakneck speed to
a full stop just past the bridge.

“Everyone out!” He shouted. “Go with Jason.”

“Wait, what?” Liam replied.

“You can't toss us out. We have to get to Cairo.”

“No one's going to Cairo, but me.” He laughed an
unhealthy laugh. “I'm injured, folks. I don't know what that
thing was, but it messed me up. I can feel it in my veins. I'm not
taking no for an answer.” He stood and looked at them. “Jason
needs to get back to his people. He only offered to help me get my
boat back. I have it. I'm gone.”

Liam expected Jason to protest, but he did not.

“Captain, please. I have to get to my Grandma.”

He tossed Liam a notepad with a pencil attached. “Write her
vitals here. I'll try to get this to her. Just after they give me
medical treatment.”

It made sense. Cairo had the only working medical facility—more
of a tent—that he'd seen since the sirens. His gamble was
they'd have something to treat whatever it was he caught. He looked
horrible, but without a bite, the bleeding should stop soon and he
should be fine. A note was better than nothing.

He scribbled down a short note to Grandma, described her, and then
set the notepad on the passenger's seat.

“Please get this to her.”

“I'll try, son. Now get the hell off my boat and out of my
life.”

The boat moved forward to the shore, but Jason was in the back
near a floor board that had bounced up during the high-speed
cruising. He had pulled up the decking and smiled over what was
beneath him.

“Well, I wish I'd known that was there when I needed it,”
Liam remarked.

The ship captain was a gun runner after all. He saw that his stash
had been found.

“Take what you want. I don't care anymore. It belongs to the
Snowballers, anyway.”

5

Standing on the shore with his dad's AK-47 again, Liam watched the
captain throttle up and out of his life, at least for now. He took in
the surroundings, piecing it together from the brief time he was here
last. The large power plant sat idle. Large piles of coal stood vigil
nearby...waiting for someone to shovel them onto the conveyor belt
going into the facility. No one came out, though he recalled there
being some survivors inside back then.

“We need to move. I don't know what that thing was, but it
might be swimming down the river to this point. I say we get gone
before it arrives.”

With some trepidation, Liam turned his back on the river. For
hundreds of yards he turned around to see if they were being
followed. They found the railroad tracks huddled at the base of the
tall bluff face which ran along this section of the river. Even then,
he turned around every so often, sure they were being followed by the
strange new creature.

“Liam, you can relax. There's nothing back there.” His
mom sounded comforting, but he couldn't take her at her word this
time.

“Yeah, we can see all the way back there on these tracks. It
can't sneak up on us,” Victoria added.

But the sick-smelling aroma hung in his nostrils as they walked.
It could be above them on the bluffs—

How could it have climbed that high?

Or below them hiding in the woods below the railroad grade—

How could it have kept up with the boat going thirty miles per
hour?

Or, mystery of mysteries, maybe it was already in front of them—

Now you're being crazy.

Liam didn't know.

“I just want to get somewhere we have four walls around us.”
The alpha zombie had deeply affected him. Its ability to project, and
then combine skills of other zombies he'd had the misfortune to
encounter, well, it made him appreciate how stupid zombies really
were. Often in the books they were slow, plodding creatures.
Sometimes they were fast, but still pretty dumb. The one behind
them—he was sure it was still pursuing them—had displayed
climbing skills and swimming skills along with whatever aromatic
concoction it emitted. What if there were others who could run? Hell,
maybe that one could, but never had the chance.

No, it couldn't run he decided. That's why it didn't march
directly for them. It was smart enough to recognize the weakness was
above. If it could have run, the whole thing would already be over
and he himself would now be walking around looking for the blood of
more victims.

“Here lies the great historian, Liam Peters—only
recorded the first five minutes of the Zombie Apocalypse,” his
epitaph would say.

One more look behind.

“This is something new. We have to tell someone. These
Arizonas—they're going to get the drop on everyone.”

“Arizonas?” Jason asked.

“Yeah, Alpha Zombies. A-Z. It's shorthand.”

Victoria laughed, perhaps remembering his effort to label zombies
as “zuellas” early in the crisis. That conversation
seemed like it happened last year. Each day of the apocalypse was
like a month in the Old World. He put his hand on his head, imagining
the gray hairs sprouting even now.

“Liam, is this what you do on your adventures?” his
mom wondered. “Is this for your book?”

“Uh, no. I just think someone needs to name these things, so
that when my book does get written, I can...I mean historians can put
the proper names to the beasts we've run into.”

“He wants to name them,” Jason offered.

Feeling cornered, he tried to retreat in another direction.

“What was it with the captain? How did you two get working
together?”

“The Patriots are everywhere, Liam. And nowhere. We actually
met before the Ebola Squared virus busted out. His partner, Peter,
was in my softball league. We got to talking one night after a game
and learned we both had the same sympathies in the political realm. I
never would have imagined in a million years he and I would end up
working together like this. The zombies have made each survivor
infinitely more valuable for the skills they possess. We needed a way
to transport supplies on the river. And there he was. He survived.”