Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (13 page)

“Just until we catch up to the main group.”

“How long have they been gone?”

“Twenty or so minutes.”

The two men cringed.

“What's wrong?”

It became obvious when they stood up. Despite outward appearances
of vigor, both men were thin with sallow looks on their faces. If
they'd once been in good shape for running, which Liam imagined was
what got them the scout roles in the first place, they were now used
up. The gaunt look of weeks of little or no food painted both their
bodies.

The maniacal engine of zombie murmurs below accelerated to new
levels as the trio came into full view on the decking. Contrary to
what he thought, the crowd below didn't wait for him to get back over
the bridge before they started up the far side of the embankment
below them. They went up immediately.

He was already running as the first shots rang out from Victoria's
gun.

2

“Oh God. This isn't a rescue!” said one of the scouts
with a blue sport-type shirt. They'd reached the end of the span,
toward the supposedly safe side, and it was very nearly engulfed by
the sick. Men, women, and children of all ages came up from the crowd
under the bridge...toward the food. Besides the generalized dirty
appearance of everyone in the crowd, most carried signs of the severe
bleeding common with the disease process. Neck wounds. Head wounds.
All indicators they had been stricken by the bite of zombies, and
then became zombies themselves.

Victoria popped off a few rounds to one woman in a colorful purple
dress who had gotten close.

“Run!” she cried.

Liam thought back to the words of Captain Osborne as they escaped
the Arch. He'd rallied the troops by saying something like “Run
like hell, boys!” Now, with even greater urgency, he didn't
think it would endear the two men to him. It was understood they
needed to run. Like hell.

Victoria started to run as the trio approached. Together they
turned down a nearby street. It was densely packed with small, but
tidy brick houses in the blue collar neighborhood. The only clue to
what had come through here, probably several times, was a home here
or there had been replaced by black piles of ash.

They settled in to the run. Victoria and Liam maintained the lead,
ostensibly because they knew where they were going. The two trailing
runners, with names Liam didn't know, quickly fell behind.

“We're running too fast,” Victoria said through her
own heavy breathing.

“Yeah, we sprinted out of there.” He laughed
nervously. Slowing down didn't seem appropriate, but neither would a
massive heart attack.

They held up enough for the two men to catch them, and then they
all slowed down to what Liam called a fast jog.

“Thanks for waiting,” blue shirt said, we can't keep
up with you kids.

The other man ripped off his shirt while they ran. The effort to
keep their moderate pace was already intense for him.

He's not going to make it.

The shirtless man stumbled a little.

Beyond the two men, he saw the zombies. He assumed there would be
some of the fast zombies in a crowd that large, but he was dismayed
to see at least twenty, spread out over a hundred yards. All
following them. Worse, zombies came out from among the houses the
more they ran. They picked up a runner here or there.

Along the fringes, walking zombies always made an effort to chase,
but they couldn't keep pace.

It only took a quarter of a mile to reach the bike path, a relief
because he thought it was farther away. He remembered riding his bike
and running a few times along the trail. It wound through blocks and
blocks of single-family homes on the tight city streets, though it
was most notable because it ran parallel to a major storm water
drainage channel designed to prevent flooding. The lack of rain the
past few weeks meant the “river” was now dry.

“That way,” he pointed along the bike path toward the
heart of the city.

They found their rhythm on the urban trail. Houses on the left.
Dried waterway on the right, below them. Somewhere up ahead, the rest
of the group was trying to stay out in front of them.

This is a simple math problem. The result is you ruining it for
them...

If they kept running, it wouldn't be long before Group B caught up
with the slower people in Group A. A twenty-minute lead wasn't very
long, especially if Group A wasn't moving very fast. On any other run
he would be clear of mind and able to think of pretty much anything
he wanted, including math puzzles. It was one of the benefits of
running he loved. However, the screams of the zombies, and the fear
of being caught, canceled any and all benefits of this effort, save
staying alive.

“Guys, we're going to catch up with the main group too fast.
We have to delay. Draw them off.”

“Screw that, kid. We're going right up this path before we
kill ourselves.”

“They aren't going to make it,” Victoria said as she
leaned into him.

“Shit.”

She smiled, sharing his sentiment, if not his language.

Behind, the same fast zombies from under the bridge galloped along
in uneven bounds but they made consistent time. Their numbers had
doubled, he estimated, and more runners came out from each block they
passed. Soon they'd have hundreds of followers.

“Let's go down there,” he shouted. Without waiting, he
pushed Victoria's arm in the direction he wanted to go. If the two
men needed to get to the main group quickly, the companion water
channel was the way to do it while drawing the least attention.

The drainage system was named River des Peres, though most times
it was a dry riverbed about two hundred feet across. It only flowed
after heavy rains, or if the Mississippi River was running high
enough to push its water up the channel. Currently it had the
equivalent of a small creek meandering roughly down the middle. When
he descended the gently sloped stone-packed bank, he found it
slightly easier to run on the flat gravel-strewn bottom.

The zombies weren't fooled. They also came down the bank, though
several of them fell on the uneven terrain.

“We're losing a couple!”

He was proud of himself for thinking of going down into the river
bed. With any luck they'd run right up the river and pop out at
Forest Park. The bike path above had numerous signs explaining the
history and geography of this river. He'd stopped and read them on
prior visits. The floodway went exactly where they wanted to go.

The two men will finally see me as a hero.

The four runners clumped up again so they could communicate.

“Nice job, kid. Now the zombies on the streets can't see us.
We might make this after all.”

The other man, without the shirt, nodded agreement, but still
looked like he was close to throwing up from the exertion.

“Yeah, nice work, kid,” Victoria said as she gave him
a pat on the shoulder.

Ten minutes later he was riding high on his success when they
rounded a bend in the channel and came face to face with the last
thing he expected to see down there.

In fact, it surprised him so much he stopped running. Belatedly,
Victoria came to a stop as well. She looked over his shoulder to the
zombies running behind. They'd found the pace needed to keep the
infected far enough back they weren't a threat, but didn't tax the
two men to the point they'd give up.

Liam thought he had it all down to a science. Ten easy miles to
rescue.

That was before he saw Jason and his mom and the rest of the
motley group of survivors.

They were in the channel, too.

3

The shirtless man came to a stop next to Liam.

“It was a good try. But we're done for.”

The insinuation was there. Liam had failed. His rescue only
delayed the attack that started back on the railroad tracks. And
though there were fewer zombies, they were fast. In a group, they
were the worst type he knew about. The Arizona still didn't fit
neatly in his zombie classification manual. He hoped that was a
one-off
aberration
.

Science class: who knew it would be this useful?

Victoria tugged at his arm. She was panting like him, but he
didn't think she looked as scared as he felt inside. She pointed to
the top of the opposite shore. “We can draw them off that way.”

He saw it right away, once he was looking for it. The far bank
would make them highly visible to the trailing zombies. The stonework
was near-pristine white, as if it were painted that way. The people
down in the main part of the riverway would be difficult to spot, by
comparison.

“You. Are. A genius.” He didn't wait. She paced him.

They ran through the shallow water and started up the bank. He
assumed the two men would follow, but they either saw them and
decided it was suicide, or didn't see them and weren't stopping for
anything.

“Hey, up here,” he yelled back.

They definitely saw him, but continued on.

“What do we do?” he asked Victoria. It took less than
a minute and they stood at the top edge of the drainage. The zombies
were almost directly below. Some had followed them, but most
continued toward the two men in front of them, and the main group
beyond.

“Do what I do,” she said.

While he watched, she jumped a small chain link fence, pulled her
rifle off her shoulder, and set it on the top bar. He stepped back
when she squeezed off a round down into the runners below.

“Duh.”

He jumped the fence and mimicked her actions. Together they both
knocked a few down and got their attention. The loud noise raised
heads and got many of them running across the small rivulet and up
the bank to them.

He giggled maniacally as they felled one after the other. “This
is fun!”

Deep down he knew it was wrong, but they'd run so far, so fast, he
was in a euphoric “runner's high” and was happy to make
good on his earlier mistakes. Their feat would be even better if the
two men had followed them, but that couldn't be helped.

The infected didn't line up in neat rows for him to count, but he
guessed there were fifty or so coming up the embankment for them, and
about half that number running for Jason and his mom. The pops of
guns down there had already started. The long, flat bottom of the
riverway gave perfect fields of fire to the defenders.

Things got complicated when the first runners arrived at the
fence. He pulled back as the first crashed into and shook the metal
links. It was about ten feet down the line from Victoria.

“I've got it.” Liam stepped back from the fence,
walked directly behind Victoria, and put one into the brainpan of the
young man—now infected—and put him down.

In those few seconds, several more assaulted the fence. Victoria
fired off a few shots, but had to pull off the fence to avoid getting
grabbed. His fight or flight response hovered between the two options
while he determined if the zombies were going to hop the fence.
Certain kinds of zombies could do it, he was absolutely sure of that.

It unfolded as he watched, but as was so typical with these
life-or-death encounters, it didn't go at all how he anticipated.

First, one running zombie came up to the fence and got across. It
was more of a forward dive over the fence, and the skinny woman
smacked the rock hard as she landed. Victoria and Liam both had their
guns in their hands, but they stepped backwards a few more paces
before they remembered that fact. In Liam's case, he leaned toward
running. If they could all do that, they were in real trouble.

Victoria kept her head and fired at the female zombie. It took her
several shots—the woman was fast and moved unpredictably—but
she put her down.

“Did you see that? These zombies can run
and
jump,”
she screamed into his ringing ears.

Seconds later, they realized that wasn't true. The lady had made
it over the fence by getting lucky, but the others hit the fence and
stood there grasping at air, like a “typical” zombie
would do when faced with a simple challenge outside of its skillset.
Things like doorknobs, elevator buttons, and tool usage were beyond
the ability of most zombies.

So far.

He tried to stay focused on the moment. The leading zombies on the
fence continued their fruitless grabbing, but the bulk of the runners
behind them ran against their fellows and seemed to make a conscious
decision to slide by and then run back down the rocks toward the
exposed people at the bottom. If there was any thought to it, Liam
couldn't say. If the choice was between people behind a fence or
people standing out in the open, he didn't think even the most
IQ-deprived zombie could mess that up.

The runners picked up speed as they aimed themselves for the
victims below.

Liam shifted again, hoping to shoot some as they ran away, but a
second before he pulled the trigger he remembered one important rule
of shooting guns. His dad drilled in the “four rules” of
firearms with the tenacity of a bulldog. And now it all paid off.

Through his sights he had a dream shot lined up on the backs of
the heads of the infected, but slightly to the right of his red dot,
down at the bottom, he saw his mother.

“Always know what's behind your target, son.”

4

Lana crouched as she fired. Jason was nearby, as were several
other shooters from the survivors down in the riverbed.

Liam pulled up from his scope to get a better look at what was
happening.

The initial group of zombies followed the two men toward his mom.
Those two men never stopped running. They were rounding the next bend
of the waterway, out of the picture. Many others were jogging,
limping, or walking away, too. Those that remained at the bottom were
trying to give the others the time they needed to get away.