Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Siren Songs (35 page)

4

“VERY FUNNY, LIAM!”

“Liam, listen. Your parents are inside, but
they aren't alone. Trust me, you can't go in right now.”

“DIDN'T I JUST TELL YOU I WAS DONE WITH YOUR
GAMES!”

“So what do we do? Are we just going to
stand here with this Humvee in my yard?”

Victoria didn't have an answer. Everything was in
flux for both of them. Planning was impossible in such circumstances.
Liam had to improvise.

“I trust you. What do you want to do?”

Victoria looked at him, relaxing slightly. Then a
smile appeared on her face, quite incongruous with the situation
around them. “Run!” She sprinted like she was in a race.

Liam noticed she was wearing running shoes instead
of her broken flats. She ran directly behind the Humvee and behind
the next door neighbor's house. Liam stayed close behind. She dropped
behind a small patio wall to take stock of things. They were
temporarily safe from the soldiers. Even those in the woods wouldn't
have a clean shot at them.

The shooting started.

They both dropped their heads instinctively, but
Victoria was first to pop back up. “They aren't shooting at
us!”

Liam raised his head. He could just see the back
of the Humvee from his vantage point.

Some loud pops came from inside Liam's perforated
home. There were shots also coming from the woods.

The Humvees immediately moved forward into the
front yards. No doubt escaping the firepower coming from the woods
behind them.

Over it all he could hear Hayes cussing.

“Serves him right.”

A few moments later Liam was ecstatic to see his
mom and dad crawl out of the massive hole in the backside of their
house, followed closely by Phil. All three were covered in blood from
inside the house. They came to rest low against the foundation, much
as he and Victoria were low behind the patio wall.

Just in time, too. A massive barrage of gunfire
came through the house. The Humvees had obviously recovered from the
surprise and were dishing out the heavy stuff in retaliation.

The slope of the front yard was such that the
bullets traveling into and through the house were going ten or
fifteen feet over the heads of the people in the woods behind the
home. Liam could see those folks now scrambling to escape any stray
bullets or ricochets. A 50 cal deflection to the body would be a
death sentence.

Victoria tapped Liam's shoulder. The noise of
battle was still loud, but not deafening. “Follow me! Let's see
what's happening in the front.”

“But my parents!”

Together they watched as his parents continued to
lay low against the concrete foundation. They would be safe there for
the time being. They were pinned down. They couldn't run to the woods
for fear of getting a round in the back. They couldn't run between
the houses because of the open corridor currently being peppered with
heavy duty rounds.

Liam wanted to see what was happening. Maybe they
could help affect the outcome of the battle, even if they didn't have
any guns. Well, besides the mostly empty Ruger he was carrying.

They took off at a run, continuing their race.
Victoria ran two houses up, using the backyards to avoid any exposure
to Hayes and his team. The Army guys continued to focus their fire on
Liam's increasingly rickety house in front of them.

Victoria walked in the back sliding door of the
neighbor's house as if she owned the place. He had to struggle to
keep up with her.

She brought him to the front room and was
impressed to see a crude bulwark of wood below the front window of
the house. As he crouched low with her he could see a pair of heavy
iron sewer lids, and in front of those was dirt and rock. It seemed
like a formidable defensive position, even against machine guns.

“Welcome to Observation Post Victoria. This
is where you and I were supposed to run when everything turned to
hell. It didn't go down exactly as we had expected, but at least we
made it this far. Liam, I'm so happy to see you. There's so much I
want to tell you, but there's no time. We have to see what Hayes is
doing.”

Looking out the window, they had a beautiful view
of the whole situation. There was Poole's burnt out house, complete
with dead bodies on the lawn left to rot. In the middle of the street
were three Humvees, each with a heavy machine gun dumping all they
could into Liam's house. Next to his driveway he could see his
bicycle had been tipped over and the trailer dumped out. The fake
grandma he had put together with sticks and trash had been thrown out
into the street.

Grandma wasn't in his trailer. She was safe with
Drew.

“I can't believe it worked.” He said
it as much to himself as Victoria.

“Yeah, well you really pissed him off. I
hope you weren't planning on getting Christmas cards from him ever
again?”

As they watched, Victoria explained what she
could. “Mel put most of this together. She was in the military.
Did she mention that to you? Well, Phil and your dad helped a lot,
too. They got your text message you were coming home as well as your
warning about Hayes. They immediately began planning for his next
visit. The whole time your mom and dad wanted to go out looking for
you, but we all talked them out of it. Instead we worked on getting
the basement situated so Phil could hide in the secret room.”

On the street, one of the Humvee's machine guns
stopped firing. Its operator slumped in his perch. The other two
started swinging their guns wildly around the neighborhood as other
sources of gunfire emerged.

“Anyway, their plan was to get you and me
and Grandma safe, and then spring this trap on them. There are
positions like this one in almost all the houses on your street. A
few of your neighbors joined in to help, though most of the houses
were empty. We enlisted the help of some guys from a neighborhood
over the hill too.”

A few rounds impacted on the front of the house,
sending them both to the ground.

“The plan called for surrounding the guys in
the trucks, and forcing them to either fight it out or make them
leave. It looks like they are sticking around until the end.”

“Suits me fine.”

They risked a look down the street. One of the
Humvees had backed itself up directly into Poole's former house. It
managed to smash into the former garage space, but it didn't make it
very far into the debris. It was out of the action.

From their left they heard an obnoxiously loud
gunshot. Loud even for the ongoing gun battle.

Another bang.

Pause.

Another bang.

“That's a sniper rifle. One of the new guys
brought it with him.”

Liam was looking to his left to try to see where
the noise was coming from, but then he panned to where he figured the
shots were going. The remaining two machine gun operators were put
down, and the side windows of both surviving Humvees were blown in.

Over the next minute or so it became obvious the
battle was over. No one was firing back from the trucks. Soon enough
hands could be seen surrendering.

Was the fight to save Grandma finally over? With
Hayes dead, maybe they could fade away and live out their lives in
peace.

I can dream.

5

It took several minutes before anyone felt
confident enough to walk out to the Humvees and tender the surrender
of any survivors.

Please let Hayes be dead.

In the relative quiet on the street, Liam heard a
helicopter fly over and hover somewhere beyond the entrance to the
subdivision.

Phil was somewhere near the military trucks, but
out of sight. He yelled for any survivors to exit the vehicles and
lay face down on the street. A couple of doors opened. One on each
Humvee.

Please let Hayes be dead.

Liam decided he had to be down there.

“Liam, just wait! Let's watch from up here.
Safely.”

He paused before leaving the front room of the
house. “I have to see if he's dead. I need this to be over.”

With that, he ran out the back door, and toward
his answer.

As he ran he saw many of his friends and neighbors
emerging from their hiding places. In small groups they emerged from
many of the houses on the street. All with rifles of some kind held
at the ready. They were there to cover the surrender.

Liam walked next to Phil as he too emerged from
Liam's garage. His own SUV was abandoned inside—it looked like
Swiss Cheese.

“Heya, Phil.”

“Hi, Liam. Good to see you.”

“You, too. Thanks for helping my parents.”

“It was easy with your dad's secret room. It
was our secret weapon.”

They both got serious as they neared the men on
the ground. Liam had his tiny gun out.

Please let Hayes be dead.

He wasn't dead.

Of course.

There was Hayes. His leg was bloodied, but seemed
in good spirits.

“I salute you, Liam. The fake grandma trick was a well-executed deception. But you've just declared war on the
United States of America. You'll never get away with this. I'll make
sure this is the last mistake you ever make.”

Liam looked around for his red-headed driver. She
wasn't one of the three survivors.

“Sorry about your people Hayes. I never
wanted any of this. I just wanted you to leave us alone.”

“Ask not what you can do for your country,
ask what your country can do to you. Your country is coming for you,
Liam. You were already on a kill list. Your whole family was. But I
froze it. If you kill me, it will
un
freeze. It won't be
pretty, I promise you that.”

Liam looked around. Phil was close. Victoria had
caught up and was standing nearby too. His parents were walking
across their defiled front lawn, covered in the mess from inside the
house.

Mom and Dad!

He had finally found them, alive. But the reunion
had to wait. Hayes ruined even that.

His “group” of survivors was
formidable, he had to admit. But to think of them in a war with their
own country was beyond his imagination.

Liam turned around. “I want to make a movie.” He pulled out his phone. He set things up, then gave it to his mom. “Mom,
can you record me?”

When all was ready, he spoke into the camera.

“Hello, I'm Liam Peters. My grandma is
Martinnette Peters. Today, which is eight days since the sirens,
these men attacked my house with the intention of taking my grandma
to do experiments on her relating to the plague. We did
not
give permission for this to happen, and in return we were viciously
attacked in an attempt to take her anyway. My mom is going to sweep
the scene so you can see the devastation these men brought to us.
Note my house is no longer suitable for habitation thanks to them.”

His mom panned the camera in a 360 degree sweep.

“Where is Grandma? Put her on camera!”

It was Hayes.

“Tell the camera how you fired first!”

Uh oh.

He hesitated. Should he continue filming?

His dad saw what was happening, and softly said
“Well done, Liam. We can edit the film. Don't give him a
voice.”

Liam figured that would be his only brush with TV
stardom.

“Does anyone object if we let these two
soldiers go? Take their weapons and let them go on down the street.”

Liam felt it would set a bad precedent to kill
them, and they couldn't hold them prisoner indefinitely. Fortunately,
no one objected.

The soldiers ran like hell into the woods once
released.

The third Humvee was sitting in the ruins of
Poole's house. The driver's door was open but when Liam's neighbors
investigated they said there were two dead men inside.

Did red-head get away?

Briefly he looked around, hoping to catch a
glimpse of her, but to no avail.

Now, what to do with Hayes?

Liam felt the press of his gun against his hip. It
was reminding him it was there, ready to do its duty for him. One
bullet to the temple and the Hayes problem goes away forever.

Forever. It was the word that scared him the most.
Killing Hayes would be something that would stay with him forever
too. Looking at the bleeding man on the pavement—a place once
innocent and pure, where he learned to first ride his bike, where
he'd run and play—he couldn't fathom killing a man. Could he
allow
him to be killed? He had no doubt someone in his group
could do it, if asked. Mel had done almost that exact thing to those
injured criminals from Poole's house. Would that still put the stain
of cold-blooded murder on him?

These are issues he never encountered in any of
his video game adventures. The bad guy was
always
slain. The
line between hero and villain was always crisp.

Real life was much more of a mess. He'd been
learning that lesson since he'd walked out his grandma's door, into
the apocalypse. Each lesson stacked on the next, guiding him and his
friends to this point in time. The next ethical puzzle to be solved
amidst the rotation of true moral north during the societal
implosion. Many had done it in his books. A simple trigger pull and
all those future problems go away...

As if sensing his internal dissension, Victoria
stood next to him and took his hand. It was warm. Comforting. Alive.
Would his decision have been easier if she had really died at the
hands of this man?

It would certainly change the equation, though he
couldn't say whether he would still be able to pull the trigger.
Probably? Maybe?

“Would anyone object if we let Hayes go?”
He said it quietly.

He secretly hoped someone would object and jump in
to do what he couldn't, but everyone was following his lead. Mel had
run up late, but even she assented to his release.

“Just go then.”

“You know what this means, Liam. I can't
stop what happens next, even if I wanted to.”