Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Siren Songs (22 page)

“Is he fighting it?” The colonel said it with
incredulity.

“Sir, we don't know. This telemetry data is all out of sync.
I need more time to tell you what I'm looking at.”

The colonel moved closer to the action, leaving Liam standing in
front of the observation chairs. It did occur to him he was
witnessing, nay, participating, in the first act of the last chapter
of the camp itself.

This is where we all get infected.

But his curiosity would not be sated so easily, even against such
fears.

“I don't believe it!”

Everyone stopped at the exclamation from the doctor. She was
standing at her station, but pointing to the patient. She moved
around the scanner so she could look at Bart's face. She needed the
visual confirmation before she would add, “He's awake.”

No one was moving but the colonel. He moved to the near side of
table, where he could see Bart's face too. Now Liam moved closer, if
only so he could observe the whole spectacle. He was standing toward
Bart's feet, but could still get a serviceable look at the man's
face. And his eyes.

“Hello, sir. Can you hear me? Do you know what's happening?”

“Janey? I hear you.”

“Sir. Do you know where you are?”

“I hear you better now. What is this place?”

“Sir, you are in the Elk Meadow Research Facility. You are
here as a volunteer. You are helping us with our research.”

“It really is beautiful here. It's so good to see you
again.”

“Um, it's good to see you too, sir. How do you feel? Are you
in pain?”

Bart was now looking straight up, not at anyone inside the room,
but up into the scanner shroud around his head. He kept talking. “Am
I dead? I don't feel dead. This seems so real.”

“No, sir, you aren't dead. We see your vitals and you're
doing just fine. Can you tell us if you're in any pain?”

“You know I'm not a praying man, but I think this calls for
a prayer. Janey has been found! And who's that? Clara my ahn-gyel!
How are you still alive? Where are we?” He looked around as if
he was seeing more than the metal contraption above him. And then
began a prayer, first in English, but as he went along it digressed
into gibberish, or maybe a foreign language.

For several minutes Bart talked in fits and starts.

While the room was focused on the man on the table, Liam sat back
in a rickety metal chair. He conducted a drill involving his cell
phone and his fast hands. While the phone was in his pocket he was
able to swipe through the lock screen. When he felt safe no one was
looking, he turned away from Bart and his observers and whipped out
his phone, found the recording feature, started to record, noted the
Wi-Fi signal indicator once again, and then dropped it back in his
pocket.

He knew it was dangerous, but something unusual was happening
here, and he wasn't going to let the opportunity go to waste. If he
got out of here, someone might be able to decipher this nonsense.

He stayed in his chair for ten minutes, wondering the whole time
if he had a guilty look on his face. No one bothered him as Bart
rambled on and on.

Until Bart called for Liam.

In crystal clear English.

Then, all eyes were on him.

3

Liam looked up with genuine surprise. He pointed to himself as if
to say “Did he say me?”

Everyone nodded in unison. The colonel punctuated it by beckoning
him to come to the table.

They all huddled around Bart as Liam closed ranks. He was looking
at Liam from under the device. “Hello, Liam. Thank you for the
kind words back in the truck. Give my regards to Marty.”

Liam was struggling to find an appropriate answer.

From his left side, the colonel was nudging him. The unsaid words
were, “Keep him talking.”

What do you ask a man with dementia, infected with zombie blood,
who is under observation from a government agency of indeterminate
nature? People always love talking about themselves. “Did you
find Janey? How's she doing?”

“I found Janey here in Heaven. Yes. She looks marvelous.
I'll be joining her soon. Her husband is here, too. He and Janey were
by my side every day until the world ended. And my angel, Clara,
too.”

Was dementia creeping back into his words?

“Mr. Bart, do you know where you are right now?”

“I'm under observation at the Elk Meadow Research Facility.
I am a volunteer. I am helping with research.”

If Liam didn't know better, that was snark from the old guy.

Now Bart was talking in a hushed voice. “But I've learned
something in this place, inside your machine. Something they didn't
want me to find out. A secret.”

His next words were a whisper. Everyone leaned in to hear. “They
can read my mind, but I can read theirs too. Clara, my little angel,
showed me the truth about what they did to her.”

Bart began looking left and right in the chamber as if he was
seeing something and reacting. “Damn you! You've given me no
choice. Let me tell them the truth.”

He was yelling, causing everyone at the operating table to jump
back in surprise. But then he resumed speaking very softly, inviting
everyone to get closer once more to listen. “They killed Clara
because there can only be three. I want you to know that much.
They've threatened to do much worse to me. I have to do what they
want. God forgive me. Forgive me, my Clara. For what comes next I can
only say...I'm sorry.”

Everyone had leaned in to listen to the wisp of a man. The medical
team was on one side, and Liam and the colonel were on the
other—Bart's left. The colonel remained closest to Bart's head,
determined to not miss anything spoken between Bart and Liam.

While everyone was focused on the words coming out of his mouth,
Bart had somehow worked his left arm out of its restraint. He didn't
even have to be quick about his next deed. He grabbed a very
surprised colonel and with uncanny strength was able to pull him the
last foot or so to his face. In doing so the colonel's head slammed
into the CT device. Bart sunk his teeth into the side of his face.

Liam sputtered backward, as did the medical team.

Almost before their eyes Bart's vitals spiked and then flatlined.
He was dead.

Liam took a few more steps back. To their credit, the medical team
rebounded from their initial horror and were back in action. One was
securing the hand of Bart and was working on reattaching it to the
operating table while the other two attended to their leader.

Liam kept moving back. One small step at a time.

This is it. I'm living THAT moment when it all goes to Hell.

His mind was exploring the breadth and depth of the collapse of
mankind. Did it all start in some government lab just like this? An
experiment gone wrong spawns the undead to march on their nefarious
journey? Or was the original virus released intentionally and
methodically by a malicious purveyor of death? A cult? A secret
organization? A foreign government? Terrorists? The colonel swore he
knew nothing about its origin, but maybe it was above his pay grade?

The colonel regained his feet, hand covering the bloody marks on
the side of his face. Any other day it would be an unremarkable wound
needing minor treatment, but here in this context it meant he was
already a dead man. He looked over the scene from end-to-end. The
anxious staffers. The dead patient. Liam moving slowly backward. He
spoke to Liam first.

“Dammit, kid. Maybe I should have tossed you into the corral
after all. Huh?” He gave a weak laugh. “I've got to take
care of one thing. I think you know what it is.”

He stood up to his full height and saluted his staff. “Good
luck and godspeed everyone.” He pulled out his gun. Liam
expected him to kill himself right on the spot, but instead he aimed
the gun at Bart and put a round through the man's head. He took off
through the backdoor of the tent's main room.

Liam was paralyzed with fear.

He heard several gun shots.

An air raid siren began to wail.

Liam put two and two together and remembered the jets above. But
they couldn't get here that quickly, could they?

“Are we about to be bombed?”

He said it to the remaining staff members, who shared his sense of
uncertainty at the moment. The doctor answered.

“Protocol dictates when a base is compromised it will be
terminated by the Air Force. But that siren is just the alarm for the
camp to evacuate. The colonel must be giving us a chance to get out
while we can. He's the only one outside this room who knows the
plague is here. In fact, we probably could have contained it if we
had killed him immediately.”

Liam didn't like the look in her eye. Was she somehow blaming him?
No sense waiting around, Liam spun around and ran out of the tent.

And into chaos once more.

4

It had literally been ninety seconds since the sirens cranked up
in the camp. Already all the Humvees were speeding away, toward the
front gate of the park. Only the MRAP was lagging behind because of
its size and weight. The doctor and medical staff from the tent he
just left had mounted a Humvee and were on their way out.

Standing there marveling at the speed everything had happened,
Liam figured the camp staff must have already had one foot in their
vehicles the whole time. There was no other explanation for how fast
they evacuated. He had no doubt Hayes was in the lead.

He ran hard to Grandma's tent. The air raid siren spun down as he
closed the distance.

When he arrived, all the survivors were sitting up and alert,
including the one he wanted. “Grandma! You won't believe my
story, but we have to get out of here. The Air Force is going to bomb
this place out of existence.”

“That didn't take long.”

Liam wasn't surprised these people had been left behind. Not after
he saw how they were treated and where they were all destined to end
up. But he did begin to fret about getting everyone safely out. He
couldn't very well take off with Grandma and say “best wishes”
to everyone else.

While he was in the midst of thinking through his options, he saw
the colonel walking his way. When they saw each other, he motioned
for Liam to come to him. There was no point in refusing.

“Hello, sir.”

“Listen, son, I don't have much time. I've seen this plague
take root more times than I want to remember.”

He gave Liam a photograph. It was folded and torn, as if it had
come from a broken picture frame. “This is my wife and son. I
know you'll probably never meet them, but if this ship ever rights
itself and you get to Denver please tell them my last words were my
love for them. I wrote their address on the back. This photo is my
most prized possession in life Liam. Guard it well and get it to them
if you can.”

The photo showed two people on a mountaintop. The wife was pretty
with wind-blown red hair down to her shoulders. Seeing the son, he
understood why the colonel had been treating him as a human being.
The boy standing in the photo looked to be about Liam's age. He even
had the same shaggy haircut common in his generation.

“I'm actually honored, sir.”

“The other thing I want to give you is your pistol and
pocket knife back. I'd give you mine too but I just emptied the mag
firing in the air. Spurring my people to get the hell out of here. We
all have to be armed in today's—,” a pause while he
searched his lexicon, “society.”

“Thank you.”

“I still can't trust you completely, but you're the closest
thing I have left to a confidant. Everyone else has run off.”
He tried to laugh, but it was more of a sad cough. “First
things first. I showed you two kinds of zombies in the back forty.
There is a facility in downtown St. Louis housing dozens of different
types of zombies. They bring them in from other cities. I was there.
I know what this infection eventually does to a person. It's why I've
worked to the bitter end to find a cure. You might find someone with
answers there. Secondly, I—”

He contorted in a fit of pain.

“—I ensured all the data from our work here was
uploaded to our central servers so other doctors can see what
happened. We have some big ass data connections so I have no doubt it
will make it out before any unpleasantness from the sky. What you saw
today was an incredible deviation from every other infected patient.
It was his age. I know it. That man was 106! Your grandmother is a
precious resource. The data will confirm it. You—”

More contortions.

“—Oh shit, I'm in trouble.”

He stumbled to one knee. Straining to resist, or at least give the
appearance of resistance. Maybe the old soldier just wanted a heroic
exit.

“Keep your grandma alive. Help us find the connection
between age and the virus. Help us find the cure. Get her to another
camp. Humanity depends—”

He dropped his other knee, and screamed.

“God forgive me!”

Then, almost in a whimper, “I won't end up like...”

“I love you, Susan.”

Unceremoniously, he pulled out his sidearm, looked at Liam with
real sadness, and put a round into his own head.

He had saved at least one bullet for himself.

The colonel turned out to be a decent guy, at least by the
standards of the apocalypse. Liam would have enjoyed giving him a
witty rejoinder that he would never in a million years take Grandma
to another facility like this one, but he didn't feel the need to
dump on the man's last words. However, he did glean one significant
piece of information potentially useful in reuniting his own family.

Big ass data connections.

5

He ran back to Grandma and her friends. He wished he knew how long
he had. The colonel seemed satisfied there was enough time for the
data to upload, so maybe they had some leeway.

“Grandma, you and the others have to start walking out of
here! I'll be right back!” He didn't even wait for a response.
He felt he had to move as fast as possible to get what he wanted to
do, done.