Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens (3 page)

The other end of the loop was tied to the only thing of any weight
close enough to her back door – her porch swing. It was a
freestanding model that could be moved around pretty easily by a
couple of people. She'd seen it moved many times over the years, but
usually it took a pretty good effort on the part of the movers
because it was shaped so awkwardly. By tying off the rope to that
swing, she ensured Angie would be encumbered by the apparatus and if
she was really lucky, it would hold her long enough to walk around
front and backtrack through the house to shut the rear door again.

Lots of ifs.

5

Marty's plan started out exactly as she intended.

Angie came screaming and flailing out the door, and there was a
remote opportunity for Angie to grab Marty before she was able to
clear the distance the rope allowed Angie to run. While Angie
stumbled, stood up, and lunged at her—she was silently lifting
and pushing her cane, trundling forward to save her life. She managed
to get clear of the rope's length but was dismayed to see how easily
the swing was shifting under the weight of a plague-driven nurse.
Angie was slightly above average in height and weight for a woman of
her age, but the sickness seemed to give her some added oomph even as
it took away some of her mass.

It wasn't long and Marty was out through the front gate of the
yard, making her way between the two redstone flats. She was very
dizzy from the effort, and suddenly had to lean against the house for
a full minute while she regained her bearings and settled her vision.
She didn't make it very far up the corridor, and she sensed it,
despite her groggy condition. Angie meanwhile had been moving angrily
in her direction the whole time. She had made it through the
gate—Marty had left it open in her haste!—and had managed
to drag the swing half the distance from the porch. Marty could hear
the swing slide off the concrete into the grass, hoping that would
slow her down as she rested.

The fog lifted just enough, and Marty was able to take one step at
a time, constantly leaning against the wall to steady herself. The
relentless fury of the sirens was clashing in counterpoint with the
angry screams from Angie. Marty was definitely panicking now, in
danger of falling over for the last time right there.

Angie had made more progress down the narrow corridor, with twenty
feet of rope behind her linked to the swing. Just as it appeared she
was close enough to claw her prey, the porch swing contraption ran up
against the gate—and would not fit through. Not even close.

Martinette was too dizzy to turn around, but she heard the thunk
of the chair frame against the fence. She couldn't even manage a
little smile at her good luck. She could only focus on her feet below
her, and her hand on the wall to her right. One foot. One foot. One
hand. Repeat. Her feet seemed to be in molasses.

“Lord I don't mind if you call me to you today, but please
let me make it inside so Liam doesn't go outside again to look for
me,” she said softly half to herself, half to her Redeemer.

With colossal effort she reached the front corner of her house.
She leaned to her right to view the front of the house, while also
positioning herself to turn her head and see Angie furiously
thrashing back the way she'd just come. No time to delay. She turned
her head back to the front, and began her final push to the front
door, up the small ramp her grandson had built for her so she could
avoid the two steps up to her front porch and entryway.

The ramp was built with sturdy hand railings which provided a
solid purchase on the incline, but even so she was seeing stars when
she finally had the door handle in her grasp. She was swaying
dangerously. The handle was on the left side of the door, and
currently was all that was keeping her on her feet. This was it. She
pushed the latch—and it was locked! Of course the keys were
inside. Angie does most of the door-locking these days...

Maybe I could sit a spell?

No!

Steeling herself for one more task, she grabbed her cane—no,
her cane had fallen somewhere in the corridor on the side of the
house. She looked down and noticed she was holding her Rosary with
her free hand, rather than the cane. Marty was devoutly religious,
but depended on that cane too. The only explanation she could summon
was that she thought she was going to die back there and made the
switch from the worldly cane to the spiritual talisman to prepare to
meet her maker. She now assumed her time had not yet come. Back to
business—

“Looks like I'll have to do it the hard way.”

She propped herself against her door, then dragged herself
leftward along a few feet of the brick facade, leaning hard the whole
way. Then she was in front of Angie's door. The entry doors for the
upstairs and downstairs flats were next to one another. The door
handle for the upstairs flat was on the right side of the door.
Looking now at her hands, she could see she'd scraped them good and
hard the last few minutes. She was really out of it. If Angie's door
was unlocked she knew the interior door was open—and she could
reach her own flat. If...

She pushed the latch and pushed the door—and it was also
locked!

Have mercy!

She considered sitting down and letting the end come. It wasn't
suicide—forbidden by her faith—rather an honest end to a
hard day.

Teetering between sitting and standing however, she remembered
something through the dizzying haze and stress of the moment. Angie
had often complained about her front door sticking when she tried to
push it open. Several handymen had been through over the years trying
to fix it, but none of them seemed willing to replace the whole door
frame. They were confident each time they had loosened it for good.
Later it would stick again. Sometimes you had to really push hard on
the door and depress the latch at the same time to get it to
dislodge. It was no problem for the relatively young Angie, but for
her... If Angie's door was unlocked, she would still have to use
strength to get in.

She looked to her right again—no sound was coming from the
corridor. Was that good or bad? She tried the latch, giving it a
half-spirited second attempt and a little shove. It would not budge.
The stars were swimming dreamily in her eyes. She took a moment to
lean her head directly against the door and rest.

She came into focus just in time to look to her right and take in
a horrible sight. Standing at the corner of the house was Angie—still
with the rope looped around her neck, the end hidden somewhere around
the corner. The swing chair could not have fit through the gate;
Angie was free of it. The sick nurse reoriented on her quarry and
began closing in for the kill.

Marty had no time for a prayer. It was pure instinct and
perseverance driving her at that moment. She knew in her heart that
door was unlocked—Angie was a trusting soul unafraid of the
outside world, going in and out with great frequency to do her
chores. She smashed the latch with both her tiny wrinkled hands while
pushing with everything she had against the door itself. It would
only work if it was really unlocked. If if if.

Marty spilled through the door as the sound of rage from Angie
quickly grew louder, even eclipsing the incessant sirens still
abusing the neighborhood. Only by the grace of God did she manage to
hang on to the door handle so the heavy door didn't throw her to the
ground as it opened. Now all she had to do was close it again.
Physics was on her side. The door was heavy enough that as soon as
she pushed it on its way to closing, it also forced back the hands
which had reached the door just a few seconds too late to affect its
trajectory. Angie was unable to make the sharp right turn at the door
jam to put her hand into the diminishing gap. The door slammed, and
was quickly double-locked.

She didn't remember the stumbling walk from the front of her house
to the rear. Couldn't remember if Angie stayed in the front or moved
to the back, observing her through the side windows. She had no
recollection of closing the back door, and pulling the curtains shut
on the kitchen window. She didn't know how she reached her bed and
fell in fully-clothed, shoes and all. Rosary in hand, she would
barely recall the little prayer she said before finally losing
consciousness.

Dear Lord. Please help Liam find his way home safely.

She fell asleep to the sound of trumpets.

“Where's Liam? Where's Liam?” That was the sound of
Liam's worst nightmare the past few months. Mom and dad and their
incessant, demanding, infuriating repetition of that question. It was
almost like they were afraid to let him out of their sight. As if he
were still a five-year-old. In a mad stroke of irony, it was the one
thing that made staying at his great-grandma Marty's house bearable.
She didn't ask stupid questions.

He ran out of her house this morning as soon as possible, just as
he'd done most of the previous three weeks, to find refuge among his
own kind online and do important things like slaying the undead and
e-chatting with his friends back in civilization. His home away from
home away from home was the public library.

“I'm going to the
libary
Grandma. See ya tonight!”
He reveled in mispronouncing the word library, though his reasoning
wasn't to antagonize his sweet old great-grandmother. He butchered it
on purpose because his dad said it was a special broken word that was
“more obnoxious than bloody fingernails on a chalkboard.”

Shouldn't tell me your weakness dad!

Liam knew his father's second most-hated word was nu-cue-lar
power—but it was harder to fit into everyday conversation. So,
as a sarcastic homage to his father, he continued the tradition.
Today Grandma only answered him with an affirmative grunt as he
walked out the door to relative freedom.

Though it broke the unwritten teenage rule of time
management—awake all night and sleep all day, like
Vampires—today he reached the library just as it opened at
eight o’ clock. He wasn't interested in small talk, or chatting
up strangers, so he didn't care to know the name of the well-dressed
somewhat older woman who unlocked the doors and sat behind the
counter every day, but she at least recognized him with a wave. He
figured it was the blue jeans and soft-drink-logo shirts he liked to
wear.

“Good morning and welcome back. I didn't expect anyone
today.”

He didn't think to ask her why. He was anxious to avoid any
chit-chat and get to the computer area so he could set up shop. He
passed by with a hurried wave in her direction.

When he arrived in the technology area, the computers were still
turned off. He turned on the PC where he had taken a seat. While he
waited for it to spin up, the woman came along and turned on the
half-dozen or so other computers. He could see she had a frown on her
face, but Liam kept his nose in his phone, trying to begin text
conversations with his other friends who should be coming online.
Normally there would be three or four of his friends from school—a
cabal that would meet in one of their homes during the summer. Liam
was the exile, since he was staying with his grandma in the city this
summer.

“Where is everyone?” he wrote to the lone avatar
sitting on his screen.

“Dunno. You have the game loaded yet?”

Liam wasn't in a rush to get things started, since he knew he'd be
at the library all day. As the computer came online, he logged into
the server for
World of Undead Soldiers
, and leisurely
prepared his soldiers while he was waiting. His friends should be
crawling out of bed and joining up soon.

He sat there fiddling with things for another fifteen minutes. He
and his lone friend wanted to give the other guys a chance to link up
before they headed into the wilderness. It was always harder to jump
in on the run.

At last they made the call. The other guys weren't going to make
it.

He thought it was highly unusual
all three
were missing,
but it was no reason to cancel the engagement.

All thoughts turned to the battlefield as he and his friend were
immediately “in it” fighting for their lives with their
reduced group of players.

Liam's sense of time went away as the game consumed him.

An hour went by when he got some texts from JT, one of his AWOL
buddies.

***

“I got the guns. Where u want them?”

“Dad?”

“Oh srry Liam. That was 4 dad. Hope you guys are running 2.
Like a real adventure!”

“cya”

***

Is this a joke?

The texts showed up on his phone in one blast, as if they were
delayed.

He tried to reply but got a 'network busy' message.

He thought about asking his in-game friend what he thought of
those texts, but the computer game screen was frozen. Forced to
observe the real world, he felt a sudden and powerful vibration. Some
of the computer monitors rattled and a couple flashed off and back
on. But the important thing was the connection...

Losing connection to the internet happened rarely with modern
technology and infrastructure, but when it did it always happened at
the worst possible time. Looking at his screen he could see a host of
undead and supernaturals just coming into view. The game world would
continue running while his character just stood there and died.

“Crap!”

He knew he'd said it too loudly in the library, but looking around
he saw no one else who might have gotten offended. There were no
other patrons besides himself.

Even the woman behind the desk was out of view.

Suddenly, and to his great delight, the screen unfroze. His
character was still alive! He re-joined the battle, to the relief of
his friend who was getting his butt handed to him in the storm of
creatures. Together they stood a chance.